Outtakes – Introduction

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Serious parenting fail…



Some pictures that couldn't be used in the story... starting at the beginning...

When Samantha made her first ‘unofficial’ visit to Richmond, I sent her to the bookstore because I’d already decided that she’d get a job there… Orlando Centowski was still alive at the time, and she noticed him immediately...

Uh… sorry, no. 

Having established that she likes older men, we decided to try again…

… ok, both of them!  So, make that older married men… with emotional issues…

Although he wasn’t in the story, Kyle was actually there during all the scenes at the shop… as he owned it, I couldn’t play it without him.  For story purposes, he’s not supposed to be there after Orlando died, so I’d usually send him out the back to read or do something on the computer.  It worked most of the time, although occasionally he’d get bored and wander out.  This is what was actually going on during Samantha’s job interview…

Rose decided to join in as well, but Samantha just wanted breakfast! :)

She moved into the boarding house (an apartment lot, where each ‘apartment’ is just a bedroom, with shared kitchen/bathrooms), where she showed her practical side:

And as far as the men go, she made her preference clear quite early in the piece…

We got a lot of that.

Ever had an entire storyline summed up in one picture :)

Yeah, sorry, Samantha, he’s very married.  But he was still glad to have her around…

Kyle is less sympathetic :)

… but then he and Cory have never exactly been in harmony…

Kyle: Congratulations on peeing your pants!
Cory: *thinks any praise from Kyle is a good thing*

Autonomous friendly hug from Cory.
Samantha: *is very happy*

Serder wants Rose to know that, should his son prove unsatisfactory, she has other options…

Sam just wants them to stop!

I keep writing about Kyle being a neat-freak, that’s because his 10 neatness points have become his most distinctive personality trait in-game.  He does this happy fist-pump thing whenever I direct him to clean something, and they’ve never needed a maid or anything because he usually wakes up early and autonomously cleans the house.  He really can’t stand anything dirty…

… minutes before overdosing himself, Kyle decides to leave the shop with clean windows…

As my hospital is a community lot, he can’t really live there, so I moved him into a room in the boarding house.  He immediately got on with bringing the place up to his standards…

… and also took literally every opportunity to get to know the other residents…

Andrew:  …and I never realised that this was what they meant by ”communal bathrooms”…
(although there was no way I could use it in the story, this picture was the whole reason Samantha mentioned the lack of privacy to Andrew here… :)    )

Samantha:  OMG, this is sooooooo exciting!!!!
Andrew: *help!*

One last thing... a very strange glitch…

Alex thinks his sister is a dog.  And its only Alex who ever shows this glitch, and only with Rose… wouldn’t be half as annoying if it didn’t take up almost all his wants slots.

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So, its June 2024 Richmond time, this is the end of my storytelling-orientated 'introduction', and I'm now back to playing my households seqentually in my usual round.  Looking back at my progress so far, however, I noticed a problem - I intended to have Samantha Bradshaw here for about 6 r/l weeks to 2 r/l months.  I've been blogging for 2 r/l months now... but only covered 6 sim-months of Samantha's 18-month stay!

Obviously I need to speed things up a bit...

With that in mind, I made a couple of decisions - firstly, although I'll be playing more households, I won't blog everyone that I play - whether or not they appear will depend on what is happening with them, there's plenty of time to meet the full hood after Samantha has moved on.  I've also rewritten the round so that most of the first households I play are the ones you've met already, to continue the current storylines in good time (ie you won't have to wait toooo long to find out who's pregnant :)   ).  So, although my gameplay is back to 'normal', from the point of view of the blog, not much will change... when Samantha leaves at the end of the current round (June 2025 or so), I'll take another look at my play style/blog style and take things from there...