Thursday 6 April 2017

Update 1-6

Eventually, it was time for Jonah to come home. He'd had a great adventure, but he was looking forward to seeing his wife, son, and cats again.
It was like he'd never left in the first place, to his relief. In fact, it even seemed like Kylie and Zachary were still having the same conversation.
First thing he did when he got home was tell the story of his adventures to the rest of his family, showing off the gemstones and relics he brought home with him. He decided to let Zachary fawn over the pretty gemstones for a while before he sold them off. He did decide to keep one relic - A stone snake, which now sits on his dresser next to the photograph of him and Kylie, and Kylie's hero trophy. Now,  Jonah finally had an achievement he could show off to the world.
With Jonah back home, life was back to usual. Everything was all about Kylie again, but Jonah didn't mind so much. He just focused on enjoying life, and spending more time with his son.
One day, Kylie was out practicing guitar by the bookstore when suddenly, it began to rain. Before she could get inside, she was struck by lightning! She survived, but needed new clothes and a good bath. The lady sitting next to her didn't even care. Rude.

The next morning, some young man neither Kylie nor Jonah had ever met before wandered into the house. He came into Zachary's room, greeted Kylie, and then just walked off.
Kylie went to go chase after him to ask him what he wanted and why he thought it was okay to just walk into their house, but got distracted as she saw something from the corner of her eye.
Seeing a cat in the Attaway household was not unusual, but seeing this particular cat most certainly was. Did the man leave her here? Kylie ran outside to talk to him about it, but he'd already driven off.  Whether they liked it or not, the cat was their's.
They called her Kerri. Kerri fit in just fine, adding to the sea of pathing errors known as cats with no problems at all.
Pumpkin in particular seemed fond of her.
Nothing much happened for a while. Jonah returned to China for a few days, to sort out unfinished business, but very little actual tomb raiding occurred. However, he did come home with quite a lot of shiny metals and gems for Zachary to look at until he sold them. This brought quite a lot of cash. He also found another snake, this one made of jade. I thought it was prettier so I put the jade snake on the dresser and sold the original stone one.

When he came back, a surprise for Kylie awaited. More co-workers!
Immediately Kylie began to share stories of her experiences with these new rookies, in hopes that they wouldn't make the same mistakes she did.
"....So I had to run all the way across town to put out this fire. Long story short, maintain your fire engine. Oh, and did I tell you about the time I decided to celebrate my birthday in the middle of an emergency? See, I'd decided beforehand that I absolutely must celebrate it at a certain time..."
Kylie droned on for quite a while, but her co-worker and the random paparazzi who'd followed him in didn't seem to mind.
One of her other co-workers was a vampire, so Kylie decided to stay a good length away from her to talk. It didn't occur to her that this might be a bit presumptuous - this lady was quite friendly, for a vampire, and wasn't going to bite her.
When an actual emergency came by, though, her co-workers were ultimately useless. Instead of coming along to help Kylie, they instead ran to the door and started pointing at the fire engine as if she didn't know where it was. And then even as she drove off, they kept pointing.
The cash brought in by Jonah and Kylie was enough for them to replace those ruined chairs and finally buy a nice-ish TV, without going completely broke afterwards.
For some reason, Kylie's fire extinguisher shoots orange juice now.

Eventually, the time came for Zachary to grow into a teenager. This time, his parents wanted him to have a party and a celebration with all of his friends, so they threw a birthday party for him. It also happened to be Kylie's birthday, so they invited her co-workers too. Between the invited guests, the uninvited party crashers, and five cats, it was pretty hard to get around.
Despite it being his party, Zachary decided to sit down and do his homework instead of socialise. There were too many strangers for his own liking.
Once he was done with that, though, he did go to his room to talk to his friend.
"Did you know it's my birthday today? I'm turning thirteen!! I'll be a teenager now, isn't it great?!"
"Yeah, happy birthday!"
Meanwhile, Zachary's imaginary friend got jealous of the attention Zachary was giving to this other girl (who's name I've forgotten) and sulked.

While the two children were talking in his bedroom, all of the other guests left. They only realised this when it was time to grow up.
Zachary also celebrated his imaginary friend's birthday.

And then, the worst nightmare of any simmer happened.
I saved and quit the game after their birthdays because it was getting late and I wanted to sleep. When I woke up the next morning and loaded the game again...
Luckily, after fishing around through a whole bunch of backups and the Time Machine (Thanks, Apple) I did manage to find an un-corrupt version of the save and salvage my game. It did set me back a while.
Quite a while. That's in China.
I played ahead back to their birthdays, but this time - no party. By the way, Zachary's friend now no longer exists.

With Zachary no longer being a child that needs to play with toys, his room got rearranged.
The laptop would be used by Jonah more often than Zachary and I don't think he ever pulled a book from that shelf, but it looks nice.
The next morning was Spooky Day, so Zachary decided to partake in an activity he'd missed out on as a child - trick-or-treating.
However, instead of delicious candy, all Zachary got was a silly looking garden gnome. Perhaps next time he should try putting on a costume, and visiting more than one house.
That would have to wait, though, as the Attaway family decided to go visit the Autumn festival.
Zachary and Kylie decided to try out that haunted house.
Apparently, it was so terrifying that Zachary wet himself.
"I-I think I left the kitchen tap on!" He shouted suddenly, running off home to clean himself up and make sure he hadn't flooded the house.
With Zachary gone, Kylie and Jonah were left alone. Jonah wanted to try his hand at apple bobbing, but Kylie refused to let him.
"How many other people have stuck their faces in that water? And who knows how old those apples are. Come on, let's play something sensible like chess instead."

It wasn't until he was sitting right across from her that Jonah realised just how old his wife was getting. She'd aged well.
No, not just Kylie. Jonah was getting old too. He hadn't realised it for such a long time, since he was so busy looking after his son and going out on adventures, but time was taking its toll on the both of them.
Later that night, Jonah invited Kylie outside to watch the stars, just as he had done many, many years ago, when they were young, when Zachary was just a glint in their eyes. They were happy then, and they were happy now. Despite everything they'd been through, they had no regrets.

----
I'm currently as far as the beginning of generation two as of writing this, oops.

Extra images, as per usual -
Zachary's first day of school
The kid has a healthy imagination
Does his fair share of chores, too, which is more then can be said for a lot of kids his age
Kerri Attaway
Jonah likes to read pregnancy books while doing his laundry, despite nobody being pregnant.
Oooh, relics!
Taiga brought in a rare bug, which is now being displayed in Zachary's room.
Jonah helping his son with his homework
Girl, the door is right there. You don't need to be shown the way out.
The garden is getting pretty full
Some random guy decided to dance with Kylie. It doesn't count as cheating apparently, but still. She's married. Bro. Stop.
Bro, you're not even inside the damn house. Just walk away.
You see this big house? All of the windows caught fire at some point. All of them. It took forever to put them all out.
YOU'RE A FIREFIGHTER. DON'T JUST STAND THERE AND FREAK OUT, HELP KYLIE WITH THIS MASSIVE FIRE
Zachary's birthday 2.0
Kylie's birthday 2.0
Elder Kylie
Teen Zachary
The mascot got attacked by a zombie. That was satisfying.
Elder Jonah

2 comments:

  1. Hmm, it seems my last comment didn't go through, so now I have to remember what I said. XD

    I like Jonah's comment that Kylie and Zachary having the same conversation as when he left. XD I understand why EA did that, but it is kind of weird to come back and find the rest of your sims doing the exact tjomg as when you left.

    That sucks that you had to restart from so early in your save, but I'm glad you were able to find a save that worked! I'm terrified of that happening to my sims and them being lost forever. :[

    Aww, Jonah and Kylie are so sweet! <3

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    1. Oh dear! I've had comments that haven't gone through before as well, I feel your pain.

      I'm glad you like it. That was just one of those things that I _had_ to comment on, ahaha. I don't blame EA for it at all, because I'd rather this than find they've been on autonomy and done weird things that I don't want them to, but it can be a little jarring. I've been playing ahead again, and where I am in the game Zachary's just come home from college and Kylie was still doing the exact same serenade and Jonah was still walking across the garden to go listen.

      Honestly, losing saves sucks. This was actually my luckiest case of it happening though. In the past I've had crashes where I've lost my entire save permanently, including one case where I was nearing the end of a difficult challenge.
      Or worse - in the past, when I didn't have my own computer and had to share with the rest of my family. Sometimes I'd come on and find that my little brother had just mindlessly overwritten my save with some other game he was playing. No hope of retrieving it. R. I. P. the Michealsons, forever replaced by the "asdfgh" family.

      I'm glad you like them! Romance isn't an experience I've had personally, so it's nice to hear I'm not messing it up or anything in my writing.

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