Body to body

The Daye family are alright as they are, but they could be better, right?  They could do with… body shaper experimenting!

Polaroid got “stronger” on the lowest setting.  Hmm.  I’m not entirely sure why she thinks those ‘muscles’ are worth checking out.

On the highest setting, however, she’s practically Arnie.

Adrian Mole meanwhile went for the superskinny look – though this was also on the lowest setting.  I guess he’d have become nigh on invisible on the highest setting given how much thinner this made him.

Fuji became weaker, with no discernible difference, despite being on the highest setting.

And as for Eddie Kidd…

He porked out a fair bit – again, this is the lowest setting.

I changed them all back afterwards, though. I kind of like my simmies to be as nature (and exercise/diet) intended.  The body shaper is kind of fun, but not really our thing.  It could be very handy for stories though.  Another little titbit: You also need to leave it a while before it’ll let you adjust a second sim/readjust your original sim.

Body shaping over with, let’s return to the battle over the fast learner LTR.  Several of you said that it wasn’t the most expensive cooker that gives the efficient learning moodlet, but the second most expensive one.  I gave the Dayes a kitchen makeover so now they own most of the available cabinets and cookers as well as all the dishwashers and trash compactors.  I haven’t been spending their money too much as they’ve been saving up for businesses, which is why you haven’t seen a yard full of cars and whatnot yet.  They still have a few businesses to buy but I relented and let them have more kitchen stuff so they could experiment.

Fuji and Polaroid both cooked pancakes on the stove and both got the moodlet and the same amount of skill boosting.  Still, I thought I’d give fast learner one last experiment just to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Both were on the same level in writing and were set to improve writing skill at the same time – and they both increased at the same time.  Fast learner really, really doesn’t work.  Trust  me.

Gandalf has been given carefree, so I set up some experiments with this one as well.  Firstly, I monitored him and Polaroid doing normal things to see how quickly their fun declined but it was hard to tell, so I then dragged them down to ‘stressed’ to see how quickly they picked it back up.  Polaroid got to halfway faster but I wasn’t monitoring what they were both doing closely enough, so I shoved them in front of the telly until they maxed out their happiness (both were at halfway at the time).  Gandalf’s happiness filled up faster, but not massively.  It seems to have about the same impact as hardly hungry and dirt defiant – i.e. some, but not a significant amount.

Our experimentees then played some chess so that Gandalf could achieve his LTW.  He now has a perfect mind and a perfect body.

I put that perfect body to use by sending him to the athletics tournament where he kicked butt and won us 1,000 simoleans.  He was a few hundred LTH off a point so I indulged a few of his wants.

Firstly he got to befriend his father.  We’d also had the pop-up that he would die soon, and indeed Harry did die that evening, so you know, that was a touching thing to do and all.

Gandalf then indulged in some brotherly banter with Adrian Mole.  Ady mocked his grumpiness…

…so Gandalf mocked Adrian Mole’s hydrophobia.

He also accused his big brother of being mean.  For some reason Adrian took offence to this despite being mean pretty much all of the time.

And to tip him over into the point-scoring LTH range, I indulged one final whim – yes, Gandalf got to beat up his big brother, and with that he moved out.

Gandalf isn’t the only one who’s mean to Adrian Mole.  Hydrophobia does nothing when he’s bathing or playing with the sprinklers, but swimming gives him -30 for three hours, and it lasts even when he’s out of the pool.  Still, hardly the worst thing in the world.

With Gandalf moved out, I wanted to get Ming Si moved in.  He spent much of his time in the family home standing around singing those Chinese songs which Evel used to sing a lot and Polaroid and Discus are always performing too.

I saw in another legacy recently that when two sim lovers toured the theatre they got caught woohooing in there, so I sent Polaroid and Ming Si.  Polaroid got the ‘impressed’ moodlet and a wink from seeing unexpected sights.  Is that a euphemism?

Ming Si left again without getting to move in.  Sigh.

As for their son, well, little Karate is the spitting image of his mother, which is good because Polaroid’s pretty and Ming Si is rather severe looking.

As always, Eddie was on hand to toddler skill and play with his grandson.  He was on his way to potty train him, when I got this pop-up:

I was stunned, especially as the camera hadn’t moved to him.  Still, I guess that solves the ghosts dying of old age mystery.  Eddie Kidd was 92.  He had over 220K LTH, three children, two grandchildren and blitzed photography.  He was a great sim and proved to be a very worthy heir.

I quickly clicked on Karate to see what was happening to catch a whoosh of Eddie’s spirit going into the urn.  There was no grim reaper, and none of the family had grieving moodlets either, which is rather cool.  What isn’t cool is the scruffy old cheapo urn that miserable sims get.  Eddie Kidd was by far and away the happiest member of this family ever (though Polaroid is over 175K happy at the moment and Fuji’s not far behind.  Thomas was pretty dang happy too) and all he gets is a scruffy box.

I buried him and Harry Houdini alongside each other. As you can see, Harry has a died of old age gravestone but Eddie still has the small drowning one he was born with and I presume his ghost will stay blue. The menu text says he can’t be resurrected so next time we get an Oh My Ghost! opportunity (which, quite frankly, we could do with so I can get Electric Elvis to come back and sire some more babies) I’ll pick up his grave and see if the menu option to resurrect him shows or not.  It’s weird to think that Gen 3 are all dead now, they were such a great generation, and Gen 4 are all still YAs so they seem like kids!

Join us next time for Karate and Discus ageing up, yet another return visit of Ming Si, more on tutoring children, more stars named after Adrian Mole books, the arrival of pyromania and another Gen 5 nooboo. My computer has to go back in for repair though, so the next update’s likely to be the last one for another week or two. SIGH.