Grazhir

So, this is my founder. He was what randomly rolled up, and the only things I changed were his eye colour (but as I'm pretty sure all my eye files [and skintones] are properly geneticized, it won't cause the problems that custom ones usually do) and turned the corners of his mouth down slightly (so that he didn't appear to always be smiling). Naturally, the first shot I take of him he's frowning. Meh.

He's not exactly the most handsome fellow in the world (he's no Nimby!) but he'll do, and he's been properly tarted up with an earring, neckchain, maybe a ring, and a watch.

Frankly, university this time around was dreadfully boring and tedious (since it's a bad, bad idea to skip through it faster with the finals clock), but that tends to be the case, even more so than usual, when your game keeps crashing at whim, forcing you to redo the skills you just maxed and friends you just made, several times over, until you finally get hit with a clue-by-four from memory about what caused this sort of thing in the past, and you go checking for hack conflicts. Duh!

And because the university "years" are dreadfully boring, you get treated to a series of the usual sort of pictures until poor Aaron ends up living a life of misery, at which point they might still be boring, unless I develop some kind of mysterious talent at telling sim stories in addition to writing fanfiction.

After a bit of fuzting around to get the initially required skills for the semester and a bit of College Rampage, Aaron skipped off (walked, really, and don't I love the option from Bon Voyage to "walk to lot") to a place downtown called Timeless (yes, that's a joke). And now, the obligatory smustling picture.

Sadly, after a while, it became necessary to ban all Potterverse peoples, teens, and elders from the lot in order to allow for more "normal" townies to appear, but it was fun while it lasted. I refuse to use the Potterverse characters as spouse fodder, even though they are proper townies, and as they were clogging up the lot they had to go for a while. (They're not made from archetypes, so sprogs off them might not settle into a "real" facial structure until adulthood, and that upsets me.)

Bats escaped the ban, but only because I like her. Hermione was doing the funky llama of her own accord, while Molly and Percy were being poor sports and merely crowding the dance floor like inconvenient statues.

A while later Aaron had the fortune to stumble over Contessa Toni, but after he got her in his little black book she and Bats had some sort of words. Apparently they don't much care for each other, but I can't remember what they were doing at the time.

Bats apparently loves to sunbathe, and suprisingly, so does Voldybear. Personally, I think it's a lost cause for him. Timeless is a beach lot, of course, in the desert island downtown of Sand Point. Aaron will eventually be living in Sand Point, since I never place anyone in the main neighborhood if I can help it. Why bother with the extra loading time for visiting downtown community lots?

As anyone knows who's read an episode of SimLife, no venture downtown is complete if nobody kicks the pixies out of somebody. In this case Hermione, who happens to be as mean as they come, loves to go around poking people and otherwise being a real bitch. Bill doesn't take that kind of shit, though, and he kicked her to the curb after a fight which lasted around two sim hours. Go fight club!

Meet... Shivani, pictured here telling Lucius all about her recent trip Downeast, and how much flight travel aggravates her fear of heights. She was, in fact, stuck in the window seat both ways, and frequently chanted in her mind "We're gonna die!" when she inadvertently looked out the window. Interestingly enough, Lucius doesn't like airplanes, either.

Of course, as far as simselves go... it's not like I have pointed ears, or hair that short, or even have a fringe.

Baby, it's cold outside, and the townies are... in bathing suits? Shivani looks darned cute in her outerwear (I think those are Bean boots), and is apparently one of the few people on the lot with any sense. I made Shivani primarily to have a simself of sorts, since it's practically a rule to have a creator running around popping up unexpectedly, or as the plot determines... not that this has anything resembling a plot.

Skipping ahead until near the end of sophomore year, Aaron has all skills maxed, is maintaining a 4.0 GPA, and has 24 best friends, including:

Now, since I want to unlock Education and Military first, Aaron set out to woo Devon, as he's an automatic unlock for Military. The thing is, neither of them were cooperating, not one bit! At 100/100, nothing Aaron did caused either of them to fall in love, and a handful of socials kept getting rejected (like backrubs, hugs, certain kisses and flirts), which made their STR/LTR yo-yo nastily. Not even ACR helped, though it did bypass a lot of the rejection.

Finally, in a fit of desperation, Aaron called up the gypsy and purchased a supply of Love Potion #8.5 (he even had a want to do this, which was nifty) and knocked one back. Progress was made when Aaron fell in love, but Devon...? Right. So I cheated, made him selectible long enough for him to knock back a potion, and worked it from his end a few times, at which point he cooperated and fell into crush.

He went back to being unselectible, and things went normally from there, including a proposal. It was just super frustrating, because both of them had the locked want to fall in love. By rights I should have chosen someone else, but... the game is buggy enough without it failing me so early on from a sure thing.

(In retrospect, I must wonder if this was a case of noinstantloves interfering.)

It was only after they fell in love that Devon would allow Aaron to make him over to get a better hairstyle, which will be seen later, I suppose.

The cheerleader looks... desperate, don't you think? The hazards of binning hair properly result in girls like her flaunting her desire to get married... or maybe she was a bridesmade that morning and forgot to fix her hair before invading Aaron's dorm and being a nuisance. (Yeah, yeah, I didn't put the walls up, but she was at the window and I didn't feel like doing the remove wall/walls up/hit PrintScreen/hit undo thing.)

And as you can see I was kind to my little sim peoples and put a roof over the damn hot tub so nobody died from lightning strikes. Their friendships are too important for them to be dying left, right, and sideways, and I can't bloody well plead them back and have them end up as playables, now can I. If that sort of thing becomes the usual epidemic, I'd have no edjumacated friends to call up for spouse duty later on.

Also in the picture is a girl that appeared one day for no reason I can discern. Time proved out that she's a dormie, but none of the original set died or was married out, so where did she come from? Either way, Josefina is another best friend in Aaron's little black book.

Proof positive (not that anyone needed it), that ACR is alive and well in Bon Voyage, as Arthur and Molly have a quickie in the photobooth, attracting the attention of Charlie, who hoots and cheers in a way I think is downright squicky considering. The massage table girl also cheers, but that's probably because she'll most likely never see any action of her own in the next century or so.