Saturday 5 June 2010

Purple sneakers

Round 27: Autumn 2025
last update/next update

Emil Collins is 53, Anna is 47, Nathan is 15 and Hope is 14.
(Tessa is 16, Dominic and Malcolm are both 15 and Julia is 14)

Narrated by Nathan Collins

It's a little strange in the house since Grandpa died. Quieter, I guess. Dad, especially. I'm usually the only quiet one in this house but Dad has been pretty down.


We haven't had any shortage of visitors though.

Dad has been wanting to spend a lot of time with his brothers and sisters, so there seem to always be family members over.

After Dad, I think Hope is missing Grandpa the most.

For the last few years, she and Grandpa were working really hard on the vegetable patch he started, so she's trying to keep that going. If we're at home, she's usually out there.

So because I know she's in kind of a funk, I'm trying to be nice to her.

She's occasionally okay but she really makes it hard to like her sometimes!

Hope just has such a sense of entitlement! I've got my licence now and she thinks that makes me her personal chauffeur.

And Mum takes her side and tells me I have to take her. It's even worse because Hope is so...smug about it.

Mum says she's too busy to take her. Yeah. Real busy.

Anyway, so now I'm normally the one who has to drive her around whenever Hope gets a bug up her butt about some stupid tree being cut down or something and wants to go and hassle the governor about it.

You need an appointment to see the governor but of course, Hope thinks she's above all that. She's never got past the campaign workers.

They always tell her the same thing. "We'll pass your concerns on to Governor Gottlieb". As if they really do.

I guess Hope buys it though, or else she wouldn't keep going back every time she thinks she needs to save the world.

Hope's activism takes up most of her time; study takes up most of mine.

I don't really mind. I like school and I actually like studying too. It kind of rankles that Hope never has to study, hands in all of her assignments late and she still makes straight As.

I have to work pretty hard to maintain those kinds of grades, which is something Tessa doesn't really get. She's always calling me and asking me to come and hang out.

Tessa wants me to spend all of my free time with her but I can't do that. I can hang out on weekends, but during the week, I've got work to do.

My sister is still going out with Dominic and I really am not happy about it.

She was crazy about Dominic for a while and now she spends half the time talking to Malcolm.

I feel bad for him, being pushed to the side like he so often does. I kind of had a feeling Hope would be like that.

Dominic gets a lot of girls chasing him - way more than I ever have - but so far, he hasn't really shown much interest in any of them, except for Hope.

I do like Tessa. She's fun and she's cute and everything.

She just doesn't get that I can't hang out with her 24/7 though and she's getting really annoying constantly nagging me about it. She even nags me about it when we're already hanging out. She wants to know when we can next hang out.

So I decided to end it. I thought I did it pretty gently but I guess Tessa didn't think so. She seemed really upset.

I think she's kind of mad too.

I guess maybe I should have reconsidered breaking up with her in public. People were looking. I just got so annoyed and it was kind of a spur of the moment decision. I couldn't take it any more!

It didn't take Julia long to try to move in. I'm not falling for her crap though. She used to have a crush on me but I think she's just trying to make Jack Benton jealous now. They kissed at school a couple of months ago and she's annoyed that he hasn't asked her out since then.

Notes:
  • Title is from Purple Sneakers by You Am I.
  • Seeing Nathan and Hope are both over 14 now (the working age in Sullivan), I wanted to get them a job this round. I did it for Nathan with no problem but Hope crashed every time. It was the exact same problem I had with Ione when she aged to teen. I went back to that entry to see if I'd written anything about how I fixed it and noticed Ione was wearing the same leggings as Hope wears. So on a whim, I changed Hope's clothes briefly and she got a job with no problem. Isn't that just the oddest fix ever? I don't know if it's the mesh, the recolour or how a clothing mesh could affect getting a job but I'm very glad I figured it out.
  • Evan, Ione and Caleb all dropped over autonomously. Evan and Ione even arrived together, like a real couple would. Adorable! I love that sort of thing!
  • I really wish there was a way to view the full list of who got how much money in that life insurance pop up when elders die. Filippo's policy apparently paid out to 23 different people and I'd kind of like to know who most of them were! Each of his kids got $10,000 (very welcome for Caleb and Evan's families!) and Nick got $2500, which will come in handy for him too.
  • Nathan and Tessa broke up because she rolls tons of wants for him and he doesn't roll any for her, ever, even when they're on the same lot. He really does only ever want to study. Which really makes the fact that Hope's grades are higher than his even sadder. Hope never wants to skill, yet she has an A and he has a B.

15 comments:

  1. Man, that is so strange about teh job and the crashing. Maybe I need to try that when I have a certain lot crash.

    A lot happened this round, a break up, two love intrests, dealing with a death in the family, and legal driver! Woopie! LOL

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  2. Riverdale, thanks for reading!

    I know, it's a very weird problem, isn't it? I PMed Xandher at TSR about it, in case she didn't know yet. It's definitely something worth checking if you're getting crashes. It can't hurt.

    Yeah, there was a bit going on this round, wasn't there? LOL. This is my third break up this round and we're only 6 months in!

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  3. The Collins kids are really cute. I love the freckles. And I just checked Nathan's profile and saw his personality. Wow, talk about extremes!

    And wow, Filippo still spreading the love in his death to 23 sims! And it's good that it went to some sims that really need it, too.

    And yes, that's really weird about the dress and the crashing. How is it that clothes can stop a sim from getting a job is beyond me. And I just put those outfits in so I'll have to remember this issue when I put someone in that outfit.

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  4. Maybe her leggins were too colorful?! I don't know, this game is so weird sometimes. I'm glad you got it fixed and it's good to know about this bug if I ever happen to get it.

    I think Tessa has the right to be mad since Nathan dumped her in public but on the other hand he had every right to dump her. She shouldn't nag when all he does is study.

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  5. Hmm, I wonder if there are other Xandher clothing causing crashes. Good thing you found the connection.

    Hope was a bit smug about being driven around, I can already see her trying to get a job with the mayor next round so she can persue her causes.

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  6. Awww :( I was still missing Filippo, this made me sad :( I love your freckled skins, they make your sims look so much more realistic! I think that Nathan should give Julia a try, she's really adorable, I bet they'd make a cute couple :P And yes, I double Apple Valley in saying that I could soooo see Hope trying to get a job close to the mayor :D

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  7. Danielle, oh, yeah, I forgot about Nathan's stats! I think he's the most extreme Sim I have though Nick is close.

    The life insurance worked out pretty well for some of my Sims! Caleb should be able to take Cara on that honeymoon they've been waiting 8 years for and if they want another baby this round, Evan and Ione might put it towards a new house.

    I remember reading about the same problem happening with an adult male shirt from All About Style. I don't know if she pulled it or fixed it though. It was years ago.

    Sari, Nathan and Tessa were probably both in the wrong here. But they're polar opposites in almost every way possible, so I think splitting up was the right decision (maybe not in public!), even if Tessa doesn't see it now.

    Apple Valley, you know, I don't know! I'm trying to remember if I've had any of my other Sims try to find a job wearing Xandher clothes and I can't think of any.

    Hope is quite smug in general. She takes after her mother and she's very spoiled. I was going to put her in the teen politics track but it didn't roll up, unfortunately!

    Tessa, aw, I was missing Filippo too. He was a presence in this house for a long time. I never used to care much when my elders died but I've been quite sad about the last few. I'm getting more attached to my Sims, I think.

    Those aren't freckled skintones though, they're just Corvidophile's freckle masks. There are four and I usually use two different ones on top of each other so it varies slightly depending on which Sim it is.

    Ha, Nathan and Julia? Right now, she's just his little sister's friend which makes her spectacularly unappealing to him. And Nathan's not so into dating anyway - Tessa pursued him. But he and Julia do have one bolt together, so we'll see what happens.

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  8. Wow I never looked closely at Nick's traits before. He's pretty extreme, too.

    And too bad the politics career didn't roll up for Hope because I could definitely see her in there. Poor Athena would have her hands full.

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  9. Danielle, I don't think I'll put Hope in politics now, actually. I've been rethinking it and she's the type of person who would be able to make more changes by putting pressure on from the outside. Athena will still have her hands full, I think! As well as whoever becomes governor next; this is Athena's last term.

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  10. haha on Nathan's remark about breaking up in public. Yeah, he should have done it in private, lol.

    I also love that she's asking about the "next" time they can hang out when they are already together. I know those type of people, always planning the next thing, not fully enjoying "this" moment/event.

    Poor guy though, working so hard, and his sister still does better than him. I really like this brother/sister combo, him being nice to her, her being smug. Ah, they are great.

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  11. Maisie, yes, Nathan's not very nice, so these kinds of things don't really occur to him until later on!

    Nathan and Hope are fun. They're both mean but the Maxis traits are pretty boring unless you spin them a little. So I like to interpret mean in different ways. I think of Hope as a little snobby (and yeah, smug) like her mother and Nathan as kind of an anti-social grump.

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  12. I love Hope. She's such an interesting character, and it's so funny how like her mom she iss and yet at the same time how not like her mother she is.

    Meanwhile, Nathan seems like such a nice kid. Where in the world did he get that from, lol?

    That is the weirdest fix I've heard of yet, but it's possible. Don't know how it happens, but I've heard of things like that. Just not such a drastic case where it might have been some leggings causing the issue.

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  13. Lunar, LOL, I like Hope too. She's enough like Anna to amuse me but different enough for possible conflicts.

    Nathan...well. He's not nice but because he's so shy, I think most of his not-nice thoughts stay in his head. But uh...yeah. There's no way a kid of Emil and Anna's was going to have any more than one nice point!

    I never heard back from Xandher so we might never know about these crazy leggings! I sent her a PM over at TSR and requested a read receipt and it says she hasn't read it yet. But yeah, definitely an odd fix but I'm just glad it was an easy one!

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  14. Ah, fourteen year-old love, lol! I love Nathan and Hope and their smugness. They're an entertaining pair! :)

    Poor Tessa though, being dumped in front of everybody like that!

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  15. Laura, I guess Nathan and Hope would have to be entertaining, considering who their parents are! I always loved Emil and Anna too (still do, I'll add).

    And yeah...Tessa's pretty pissed. Rightly so!

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