Well, wait no more folks! The first segment of the homeless simself saga is here! ;D
These are the chosen simselves:
From left to right:
Meet Holley (The Handyman), Lynda (The Fisherman), Maegnas (The Charmer), Sawyer (The Collector), Jill (The Writer), Sue (The Thinker), Jo (The Gardner), and Tina (The Cook)
Okay, before I go too much further, I'd like to explain a bit about this mini-story and why these sims have these titles. I'm currently play testing a challenge that I'm creating. These eight sims are the unfortunate guinea pigs for this experiment.
Once I've worked out all the kinks, with the help of Jo and Jill, who are also play testing this challenge, I will post the rules for those of you who wish to give this a go.
This experiment involves eight simselves without a home. They are now living in an abandoned park and are expected to eventually make their way 'off the streets' and into a decent home. They are starting out with only $150.00 to their names. This meager amount must be enough to sustain them until they are able to 'earn' some more cash to prevent a visit by the repoman, for if he comes, all is lost!
Each 'job' a sim has serves a specific purpose in the challenge. The 'jobs' play a very important role to the survival of these wayward sims, as you will learn as this story progresses.
I chose Maegnas as The Charmer because she is the only simself so far that listed Charismatic as one of her traits. Jo is The Gardener because green thumb is one of hers. Although Jill also has green thumb as a trait, her LTW is to be a great writer, so she is The Writer. Natural cook is one of my traits, therefore I am The Cook. There are no simselves posted here who have handiness as one of their traits, but since Holley is 'good', I made her The Handyman because maybe she would like to repair things for the good of the group.
Both Lynda and Sue listed 'genius' as one of their traits, but Sue also wants to be a great chess player, so I made her The Thinker. Besides, Lynda was always so great at hooking men as a romance sim in TS2, I decided to see how good she would at hooking fish, so she is The Fisherman.
Sawyer has kleptomaniac listed as his fifth adult trait, so I thought he would make good as The Collector, and boy has he collected some interesting things as you will soon see.
Upon arrival to their new 'home', everyone just stands under the willow tree for bit, looking dumbfounded.
Suddenly, it seems that everyone begins talking all at once. (I let the willow tree fade out so we could see everyone...lol.
Since there is nothing on the lot, but some benches and a restroom, everyone begins to flock toward that to investigate. Sue finds the fact there are mirrors especially exciting.
After everyone has properly inspected the restrooms, they begin to flock and gather outside.
A few seem to still have the mirrors on their minds, while I am wondering if I can make friends with any of these people. Jill seems to have romance on the brain.
Everyone begins a discussion as to what they should do next. They know their situation is critical, so their next move is very important. While a group of six all try to decide the next step, Mae begins to study for her first charisma skill from the book that had mysteriously materialized in her inventory. Books are not allowed in this quest, except in the case of The Charmer, if they come with one. The reason for this is that until the first charisma skill point is earned, no skill points can be gained by interacting with others. Mae was grateful to have a book because if she didn't, she would have had to practice a boring speech at the mirror.
Mae quickly gained her first skill point and then put the book away, never to be used again.
While Mae had been reading, Lynda was working on gain a fishing skill point. She knew it was very important and worked really hard to reach her goal.
But, Lynda was not to reach that goal just yet. Before she had gotten very far along, she heard a great commotion. Everyone was calling her to hurry up and come because 'the committee' had decided that the best course of action was to go somewhere to find some food before everyone became too hungry and too tired to do so.
Everyone began to run toward the free shuttle bus they heard approaching.
You know and I know that it was really a taxi, but since homeless folks do not have money to use for taxis, we shall pretend it's a free shuttle bus...lol. In this challenge, every sim must leave the lot at least once a day. They may go somewhere all together, or they may go to different places, but there is a limit of thirty-two commands a day to be divided up between sims as needed. So, they must be used wisely.
The group had agreed that visiting the community garden would be a great place to start.
There seemed to be a bit of confusion at first, but then Jill and Jo hurried off to harvest some plants while everyone else just sort of milled around, getting to know a few of their neighbors.
Upon returning to the park, Jo dropped a few apples around for the people to pick up when they got hungry.
Sawyer: "Well, ladies, not that this hasn't been fun, but I'm going to go grab one of those apples before they're all gone. I'm starving!"
Late evening arrived and everyone was exhausted.
Jo and Lynda:
Holley and Sawyer:
Sue and Mae:
Jill and me:
The park benches were old, splintery, and uncomfortable, so there was a a lot of shuffling and moving around during the night. Soon, Sawyer had had enough and was up looking around for someone with whom to talk.
It wasn't long before everyone was up and about, wondering what the future held for them in this dire situation. Mae, ever the charmer, was working on getting to know Sue better, but all Sue could think about was food. The apple she'd had the afternoon before had sustained anyone for long.
She moved away, with Mae and Jo not far behind. Sue: "I don't know about you guys, but I could really go for some fish'n chips right about now!"
Mae: "Either that, or a big pot of stew. Any kind would do!"
Lynda continued working on her desire to gain some fishing skills while Holley and I carried on a quiet conversation nearby. Holley: The sun will be up soon, what will we do then?"
The sun rose and there were decisions to made. (Oops, I forgot to put the walls up on the john...lol) Jill: "I sure wish there was a way I could write. Writing a great novel has always been a dream of mine!" She sighed heavily.
Sawyer: "Duh, go to the library. The have computers there you can use for free!" So, that's what she did.
The fruits and vegetables that Jo had collected the day before were nearly gone, so she decided to go some 'midnight farming' at a neighbor's home.
Meanwhile, Jill practiced her writing until she finally was rewarded with her first skill point. She is only allowed to practice writing until The Thinker (Sue) has earned four logic points by playing chess on community lots. There are other factors involved before she can actually begin earning money as writer, but I have to play further to see if those are going to work.
Fortunately, Jill broke the computer, which gave Holley the opportunity to work on gaining her first skill point. Luckily, she did not get electrocuted and gained the point she so desperately needed. Now she has the option to tinker in between repairs so she can gain her skill points more quickly.
Everyone else decided to go to the gym to utilize the free showers there. Their motto was, "Just because we are homeless, it doesn't mean we have to let ourselves be followed around by green stink trails all the time. Unfortunately, the downside of going to the gym was that after everyone had showered, they all wanted to use the gym equipment, which made them stinky again. Sawyer decided to have a dip in the pool.
Poor Sue got stuck in a loop of sniffing herself, fanning, and holding her nose. The resetSim cheat had to be used one her, which sent her back to the home lot. This brought her hygiene and other needs back up, but still left her with the green cloud following her around.
Sawyer, who has a touch of kleptomania, decided to not go home empty handed. He stole one of showers from the gym.
Unfortunately, he was not allowed to keep it because it is against policy to change the lot in any way by buying or building things.
It was returned to the owner via the mailbox. Later, Sawyer wished he had sold it for cash, since the shower never actually showed back up at the gym.
Jo had gotten tired and smelly doing all that harvesting, so she called upon Jill to help out and harvest the things she had not gotten around to. Sadly, Jill stayed so long that she became exhausted and decided to take a nap amongst the plants.
Back at home, everyone began turning in for the night.
Jill eventually made it back home and found a bench, even the the dirt in the garden had been more soft and pliable than the splintery wooden bench.
Lynda was the first to wake and realized that during the middle of the night shufflings, she had wound up on the bench next to Sue. She made her way to the bathroom and promptly broke the sink. Soon the others followed and suddenly there were broken things everywhere in the tuny shack.
Of course, Holley soon showed up to begin fixing things.
She fixed the sink in the second bathroom while several others carried on conversations in the other, trying to decide their course of action for the day.
As she plunged the clogged toilet, she began to wonder the heck she had to be so 'good'.
The next segment of this pic-spam story is going to be hidden under a spoiler, to preserve a bit of shock factor. The sight you are about so see, most certainly held more than a bit of shock factor for me! I was playing around, looking at other things on the lot when I panned in on this:
Cuddling? *EEK* What the....? Needless to say, I was totally surprised! I was surprised mainly because these two had not even made friends and yet, here they were.... cuddling!
Then I began to think that Sue was one cuddly sim because of this:
Then, it seemed as if a pattern was developing because I became the first to get in a bit of cuddle time with The Sawyernator...lol
Soon, I started thinking that maybe these were 'comfort cuddles' because a whole lotta cuddling was going on!
Jill became the next to get a bit of cuddle time with Sawyer.
Sadly, it was interrupted by flirty Lynda, who felt the need to pick that time to compliment Sawyer's appearance.
Once Lynda had moved on to other things, The Charmer moved in.
I just HAD to share this pic...lol:
Looks like Holley is the fourth to give the Sawyerinator a whirl..lol!
Mae, whispering: "Hey Jo, do you happen to have anymore of those goodies stashed anywhere? I'm starved!
Eventually, I think I figured out what all the cuddling was about. There are no fun objects on the lot, except for the pond, but no one seems to fishing autonmously. I checked the needs of some of the cuddling sims and figured out that cuddling raises the fun need. So, for fun, these sims like to spend time cuddling. I still like to think of it as 'comfort' cuddles, because I know if I found myself in a situation like like theirs, I would need lots of comforting...lol
Well, I think this is a good place to leave things for now. This is little more than half the pictures I've collected so far, but I think over ninety pictures is a bit much for one post, so I will save the rest for later. Since they are already posted on photobucket, all I have to do is post them here and write the text, so I may do it later today, or I may just surprise my family and actually do something around here...lol
I hope you all enjoyed this. It wasn't exactly my greatest piece of writing, but this is mainly to show what life has been like for this set of homeless simselves so far. Until next time....
I spent all morning organizing the pic so that I could find them when I am ready, then I had a Dr. appointment. Then I came home to finish getting the pics together, but I'm SO tired today! *sigh*
I have to get around to mine today! Of course I can't this morning as I am going out, but when I get back!
