Round 26: Summer 2023
Narrated by Hope Collins
last update/next update
Filippo Moretti is 68, Emil Collins is 51, Anna is 45, Nathan is 13 and Hope is 12.
(Tessa Novak is 14, Dominic Lachance is 13 and Julia Gray is 12)
(Tessa Novak is 14, Dominic Lachance is 13 and Julia Gray is 12)
Narrated by Hope Collins
Lately, I've been helping Grandpa out in his vegetable garden. He always wanted us to, but I never really took an interest in it until this summer.
It's something that Grandma would have really liked. I still miss her sometimes, so it's nice to do something to feel close to her.
Our garden finally got a perfect score from the garden club and they installed this wishing well in our yard for us. Grandpa did most of the work on the veggies and everything but I feel pretty proud of us both anyway.
Since getting into gardening, I've been doing a lot of reading about environmental issues and I've always finding new problems to be concerned about. I like to try to get people to sign petitions but getting out to the maximum amount of people means I need wheels, so I need to beg my parents for a ride.
If Dad is free, he's usually willing to take me.
Last weekend, Dad was working and I had to ask Mum. Mum is not particularly concerned about saving the planet.
I mean, she doesn't want the planet to explode or anything but I don't think she really "gets" it.
She kept telling me to get Grandpa to take me. Grandpa is too old to go following me all around town all day, so I got Dad to talk to her into it before he left for work. He's pretty good at getting her to bend to his will.
Mum wasn't thrilled and we had to make stops for more coffee every 20 minutes but she did take me, at least.
People tend to make a run for it when they see me approaching with my clipboard.
You're not supposed to ask people to sign your petitions inside stores but I do it anyway. My age works in my favour; people tend to just think it's cute and if they don't, they just figure I didn't know any better.
I usually get a fair few signatures, so I guess I'm doing okay.
Some people are so rude though! Geez...it takes like 3 seconds to sign your name. What's the big deal?
While I'm trying to get people to sign, Mum drinks an unbelievable amount of coffee and socialises. She told me later that this guy was "an old friend". Uh huh. Old boyfriend, probably.
Anyway, old boyfriend or not, I do appreciate Mum shuttling me around. I know she gets bored. She doesn't get bored with me but she's not really with me when I'm doing my petitions.
But we usually go and have a late lunch together at the mall after I finish for the day. It's a good opportunity for girl talk. Mum isn't all uptight about boys and stuff like some of my friends' parents are, so I can talk to her about that kind of thing.
Like Dominic. He's Nathan's best friend but he's so cute!
The only other person I told was Julia.
Mum was way less obvious about it. Way to make it totally apparent that we were talking about him. Lucky he wasn't watching.
Nathan's always inviting Tessa over as well. She's such a show-off. You should see her leaping over the sprinkler like a mad woman.
Nathan and Tessa like each other. He's always checking himself out in the mirror before she comes over. I walked in on him doing it once and it was hilarious!
Julia's got kind of a crush on Nathan too, God knows why.
He's just my lame brother and he's not interested in her.
Too wrapped up in Tessa.
Tessa and Nathan aren't actually dating but only because her parents won't let her until she's 15. Otherwise, they probably would be.
Julia knows all this, but she's not put off. She's constantly telling Tessa and Nathan how much better she is than Tessa. It is true though! Imagine if she and Nathan got married! Then Julia and I could be sisters!
Whatever though. I'm kind of glad Nathan is into Tessa right now, because it means I can have Dominic to myself.
I even managed to get my first kiss. Well...I kissed him, because I could tell he wasn't going to and it was just a peck, really. But it was still my first kiss.
Julia hasn't kissed anybody yet, so I still have some bragging rights about it!Notes:
- Title is from Revolutionary Kind by Gomez.
- Anna rolled the Errands ROS this round, so it fell to her to chaperone Hope through her new found environmental activism. Hope's OTH is Fitness and she's a Family/Pleasure Sim but she has the LTW to become an ecological guru, so I wanted to make sense of it somehow.
- Owen is somewhere in between an "old friend" and an "old boyfriend" for Anna. They had a very brief fling while at college.
- Tessa autonomously kissed Nathan, which I'm sort of surprised took until now. Hope had a very persistent unlocked first kiss want, so I let her.
- None of these kids are actually dating, even though I think Anna and probably Emil would likely be fine with their kids dating. Tessa's parents are not cool with her dating yet so that's not happening (officially). My rule with this sort of thing is that the 12 year-olds can have their first kiss and maybe a tiny bit of flirting but no boyfriend/girlfriend thing until they're a little older. Most of my teens lately haven't even found anyone until they were a little older. I haven't had so many raging hormones around since Finn and Victoria were this age! There will be no Jacob and Patience style shenanigans this time, as all these kids have woohoo turned off in the ACR tokens!
I loved how you tied in her LTW into the update. I have to find out how to turn off woohoo in the individual tokens. I wonder if you can turn off kissing as well? I think ACR should gradually allow romance interactions-much like they have the percentage for trying for babies-which doesn't seem to work for my sims-they're always getting pregnant.
ReplyDeleteApple Valley, thanks! I wasn't sure how I was going to work this ROS and tying it to Hope's LTW worked pretty well. It fleshes out Hope a bit too, which is always good.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you can turn off kissing in ACR, which is kind of a shame. I thought you could but I just checked and I was mistaken. It would be very cool if ACR could work by age, although it's probably better if it doesn't. Someone like Hope would totally be kissing boys at 12 but for someone like Lia, it wouldn't be quite in character. So I'm kind of glad I can control it myself.
It's super cute to see your teens with their first crushes and all that! Awww... adorable.
ReplyDeleteAnd Hope, haha, somehow its fitting that a daughter of Anna and Emil is such a little activist.
Aww, young teens in love are so cute! No hanky panky though. I have a similar rule in Wellington: innocent kissing and flirting is allowed for 12-year-olds but that's it!
ReplyDeleteI like how you wrote Hope's LTW in. And getting those signatures for petitions is a great idea. Is that clipboard part of the custom prop hack by Adele and Decorgal at MTS? Is it easy to use? I've been wanting to try it but haven't gotten around to it yet.
I loved how you described the relationship between Hope and her mom. Her mom seems like a real character--a socialite, but pretty pragmatic.
ReplyDeleteI love how you insterted Hope's LTW into the update!
ReplyDeleteIt's always nice to see young love :)
Well this entire post made me think of summer and miss being a young kid playing in the sprinkler. Julia's expression was hilarious! That is SO totally obvious Julia! And OMGosh on Tessa and the sprinkler! Hilarious!!!
ReplyDeleteHope is adorable walking around talking with the adults.
Lunar, I really missed writing stuff like this about this age group but lately, my teens have been too imbalanced gender-wise to do much stuff with crushes and the like.
ReplyDeleteHope is pushy like her mum and bold like both her parents; she's a perfect activist!
Sari, yeah, it gets a little creepy when 12 year-olds do more than that. We're venturing into Jacob and Patience territory then!
And yes, that's the custom prop hack in action! It's really easy to use. You just select the prop you want and then the pose (the appropriate pose is under the same menu as the prop) and then they go about their business. Removing the prop is just as simple but I didn't even need to do that this time because leaving the lot gets rid of the pose and prop anyway.
Francesca, I see Anna as the type who is probably a better mother of teens than of children. She's probably only just finding her stride as a mother now, though she's still Anna. She had the kids for Emil's sake. He was desperate for them and would have loved a third.
Tanja, thanks! It's not quite young love yet. Crush, perhaps!
Maisie, I know, it looks like fun, doesn't it? It's still warm enough for sprinklers here but alas, I'm 28! But I love these kids, they're so much fun.
Hope knows she's adorable and she uses it to her advantage, too. ;)