Gilbert Jacquet

When Gilbert passed by Jonah Powers´ house and made friends with him, I was reminded how much I adore him, so I decided he will be the next person in my neighborhood I want to introduce.

He is another pre-made character from the game, he came with the Open for Business Expansion. He lived with his mother (sic!) Denise:

Source: Wiki

I completely ignored this pre-made town for quite a while because I was really having issues with the game crashing over and over again, especially when I tried to load the Universities or Bluewater Village. After lots and lots of researching I found out this is due to a Mac-specific problem of allowing only a certain amount of files loaded with any program, known as the File Limit Problem. Since I have 6 GB of custom content in my game, this was really causing the problem. I found this uber-cool tutorial on how to fix it, and since then my game has been running totally smoothly, except a crash here and there with a camera mod.

When I started opening businesses in Sims 2, after a while I noticed these annoying customers always dropping in and buying nothing, telling the shop-owner they did not have any money. When trying to make-over these characters, I could never find them under "Townies" or "Downtonies". I then suddenly realized these were existing characters, and went to check them out.

Yeah, Gilbert living with his terrible mother Denise. I found her incredibly annoying. She was always involved in fights in my shops, causing the customer happiness to drop. I don´t know who started it, probably my bad boy Ontario, but these two really kept picking at each other, and it was only getting worse over time.

I mean, look at him. Does he look like someone who causes trouble anywhere?

He sure does :-) After I started paying more attention to my Sim´s personalities, I realized he only has two nice points, so this might explain why he has so many enemies. When someone looked through the telescope during daytime, it was Ontario who came running after him to beat him up. Now I have a mod that prevents this, Ontario is married and has calmed down a bit :-)

This is the other Sim I mentioned earlier who on one day had this funny blue glow around him.

Anyway, Denise was really bugging me, and it didn´t help that she also was buggy for some reason, causing the jumping bug etc. And, come on, a grown-up man still living with his nagging old mother?

Source: Wiki

Gilbert quickly received a make-over, and Denise was thrown out of the house and deleted from the bin. A bad thing, because it still leaves a lot of character files dangling around in the background of the game, but I only learned that later.

Playing Gilbert became a bit boring, and I was ready to leave him until I caught him like this:

Wow, that puppy-eyed look surely touched my heart! There he was, sitting alone in this ugly old-fashioned kitchen, being all by himself after I had thrown out his mother, giving me THAT look. Yeah, my Sims still surprise me :-) Of course, I could not abandon him after that. Instead, I spent the good deal of a day redecorating his house and turning it into a little dollhouse :-)

I remember now why I thought he was shy and lonely :-) Just reading the Wiki, I realize he is just sloppy and lazy, but has seven points for outgoing. Duh! This explains a lot!

Here is the dollhouse:

Judging from the flower bouquets, I think he was a Romance Sim in the beginning. Not really sure.

He dated Carl "Carla" Richter, Richard Adams and Cissy Trussard, but no "coupling" felt really right. His latest crush is Jeremiah.

I tried to run the J´ Adore Bakery he owned, but found it very tedious. I thought a Servo might help with the cooking, and thus Kira got created. She is using Sherabim´s totally stunning Steampunk Robot Set, and there is a default replacement set by Amaryll on Garden of Shadows.



She looks as if to say: What have I gotten myself into? :-)

She is a true beauty:

She developed a crush on Aristides Richter, Carl "Carla" Richter´s Servo. But only after a long struggle to stop her from making out with Gilbert. Since the Sim who initiates the Servo transfers his personality onto him or her, Servos and their respective masters are the perfect match for each other and always share three bolts in chemistry. Which creates some funny situations if you don´t watch :-)

Latest addition to the household is Azrael Whatshislastnameagain:

All my Servos love pets, especially stray ones. In the long hours of the night, they have nothing else to do and start picking up stray pets and train them. At least mine do :-) Klinny has made these adorable wings for pets, and some more cute pet-related stuff.

Jeremiah (with the Bodybuilder mesh) feels a little out of place and too big for this small dollhouse. Well, sometimes a couple just does not work for me, and I am afraid Jeremiah/Gilbert fall into this category.

Jonah Powers IV

This is a continuation of these three posts: Jonah Powers I, Jonah Powers II, Jonah Powers III

To sum it up, Jonah met Eldred while in college, fell in love with him and proposed. The two stayed in a Greek House. Jonah could not completely forget about his first love, Mitch Indie, though, so this is when the confusion started. When Jonah graduated, I thought I follow him along in this blog :-)

Winter has fallen:

Jonah is completely content to just work on his skills. He does surprisingly well in his Showbiz career and due to no distracting wishes to meet somebody, call somebody, juggle cups, jump on the sofa or go out, he gets promoted very quickly.

He is either sitting on the sofa studying, or working out. Very boring, I mostly run the game on very fast forward :-) As he earns more money, I re-decorate the lot here and there.

The only exciting thing that happens is a visit from a wolf:

Then Gilbert Jacquet passes by, and to end the tedium, I let Jonah greet him and makro becoming friends, which is accomplished in no time!! Wow, that was the fastest friends-making I have ever witnessed!

Gilbert is another beloved character of mine (which is an indicator of picspam to come!), and gets invited to lunch.

Then Jonah starts having thought bubbles of Gilbert with lots of hearts around them, and I think: "Oh, oh!" And, indeed, they share two bolts. This explains why the friend-making was so easy. In my imagination, Gilbert is a shy guy, a little lonely, longing for a committed relationship, but he has not found Mr. or Mrs. Right yet.

To my surprise, he has shown up in several night clubs around town flirting like crazy recently, so I have to rethink my assessment of him :-)

Maybe he is getting a little desperate as time passes and he finds no one he really loves. Currently, he has an affair with Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is one of the few Sims in town who does not appreciate the "outgoing" attitude which is present in the neighborhood, so I am afraid this relationship is already doomed.

So, I let Jonah and Gilbert just go on and watch what happens.

Seems I really have to re-evaluate Gilbert´s nature :-) He starts the conversation during lunch with speaking about Woohoo, which is a subject Jonah enjoys, you could have guessed that.

Then Jonah speaks about oil. Umm, I will rather not comment on that, but in my opinion the conversation is getting a bit slippery, pardon the pun :-). Then, before things can get completely out of control, Jonah has to leave for work. He works at the Broadway by now with very late hours.

After getting promoted to Broadway Star, it is time for some new clothes. He must have been freezing to death by now in his fancy but flimsy outfit. He walks over to Alice´s Amazing Clothes in Downtown to buy some outfit that are more appropriate for the season. I decide he likes blue, and blue he gets!

Some "scope the room" action shows Renee as the best match, but Jonah does not even roll the want to talk to him. Sheesh! I knew Knowledge Sims like to study, but Jonah seems completely self-contained. Oh well, I just let him go his way.

It is interesting though that when Knowledge Sims live with somebody, they constantly roll the wish to flirt, kiss, make-out, wohoo. They are even worse than Romance Sims :-) But this obviously does not apply when they live alone. I think I could as well let Jonah happily die of old age without ever speaking to anybody in person again. As long as he can study and use his mobile phone, he is perfectly content.

This is how his wants panel usually looks. Gain skill points, meet ghost, meet wolf, cheat death. Talking somebody into preparing a meal comes up very rarely. The fear of some of his close friends dying cycles through: Fear of Mitch dying, Fear of Wynona dying, Fear of Eldred dying. But his fear can not be so bad because he has no inclination to check in on his friends :-)

The next day, he calls Gilbert. I have the "autoyak" mod from MATY installed, which gives you the option to "call friends" when clicking on the Sim. Since I also have another hack in the game, I think from TheNinthWaveSims, which prevents the relationship from decaying, he usually calls the Sim friend with whom he has the lowest relationship score, which is Gilbert at present.

They amuse me some more with their choice of subjects:

Public Wohoo

Love

The next day is Jonah´s day off work, and I decide he is allowed to invite one of his love interests. I roll a die, and guess who is the lucky winner? Gilbert.

Gilbert loses absolutely no time, right after the welcome hug he starts flirting. Gilbert, stop being so desperate!!

The flirting is followed by some silly pillow-fighting, which I cancel before the two faint. Right after that, Gilbert heads to the bed to "relax". Umm, Gilbert!!

At some point, I was thinking of doing some sort of bachelor challenge with Jonah, throwing him in a household with Mitch Indie, Gilbert Jacquet and Eldred Rice. But if I really sense into Jonah (or rather my projection of him), I realize he misses Eldred. Really, really misses him. And I cave in, as usual :-) Instead of hopping into bed with Gilbert, who is not even a close friend (silly ACR!), Gilbert gets a hug, a breakdance show which now makes them close friends, and then is waved goodbye. Sorry Gilbert!

And then Eldred gets called, yeah! :-) And hugged passionately when he arrives.

Eldred pulls his act together and start some ACR-induced arm-kissing.

He receives a gift from Jonah (some old books for the fellow Knowledge Sim):

And then the fiancés get some quality time together :-)

*sigh* Don´t they just look adorable together?

And my desire for romance and happy endings is finally fulfilled. End of Story so far :-) Because Eldred is still in college, and I have some kids and teenagers waiting to grow older and join the Greek House where he lives, his moving in with Jonah will have to wait for a while. Hope you enjoyed my silly ramblings! At least I did :-)

***

 Update: If you want to see how the story continued, read here.

Meet Matt, the Mad Hatter

So, this is Matt Hatter, slowdancing with Alice in Wonderland. I love how he keeps looking at me, like saying: "Ok, now what? You put me in this silly costume, put that strange woman in front of me, what do you want me to do now?" :-)

I have a long-time obsession with "Alice in Wonderland", the story, the graphics - I just love it. And I had this Alice Sim sitting in my bin for quite a while, actually two Sims, one "regular" Alice (the one above) and one Alice from American McGee´s Alice game. When I played the "Asylum Challenge", the regular Alice was my main character, and I kept her in my game. Of course Alice needs a Mad Hatter, too, and this is my version of it.

At first, I intended to have the McGee-Alice and Matt be together as a family. I even created their son, Lewis, but for some reason, I never put Matt into the household, so poor troubled Alice was forced to raise her spoiled son alone. (I right now can´t find the link to person who created this Sim, sorry. She did a great job!) The Alice Sim is by HattheCat.

After a bit of a rough start, he has developed quite well.

But I am digressing :-) (Sheesh, I am shy to say something about Lewis. In fact, he is another incarnation of beauty in my game. This picture is one of my all time favorites from the game EVER! It is an impromptu shot that I was lucky to catch. I love the hair - Nouk texture, I think. I love the skin -most likely Ephemera. It has such a beautiful, pearl like shimmer - just fabulous. The lips, the expression - I love freakin´ love this picture - just so you know! :-))

Here is an Photoshop version of the shot:

Ok, back to Matt.

I really tried to find him a female mate. He was a Romance Sim to begin with, but I so quickly get bored of these, so eventually I turned him into a Knowledge Sim.

He met Elizabeth Cuthbert:

I thought he and Cissy Trussard looked cute together:

And indeed they got along quite well with each other. Even though she looks like she wants to steal the sandwich from his hand.

 

 

He even stuck a big heart on his hat to demonstrate his affection for Cissy:

   

Ok, just being very silly here. The mesh for the hat is a bit too big, so the rotating heart that appears when characters fall in love looked like it was tagged to the hat :-)

But when it comes to "being bored easily", Cissy is even worse than Rae.  She and Matt spent a lovely weekend at his house, then she left and forgot about him.

So, Matt spent some time at his Wonderland Amusement Park, drinking tea, pondering the future, getting high on his bubble machine ...

Studying ...

 Pondering some more ...

Then he invited Rae over, who had welcomed him first. Or maybe Rae dropped by, I don´t remember.  I suddenly realized the two share three bolts with each other. And from then on it was like preaching to the choir.




So, sometimes the game really surprises me with its choices, but these two get along so well with each other! Matt moved in with Rae, and I thought this household with two Knowledge Sims would be perfect to try out the new alien abduction mod I just had downloaded - abduction guaranteed!

On the right our unsuspecting victim, dancing blissfully ignorant with Rae´s Servo Nautilus in front of the stereo.

Then, as all good Knowledge Sims should do, he looked through the telescope and whammo! got abducted promptly. I am mean, I know :-)

Uh, yeah.

Matt doing the pregnant walk - too funny :-) Probably not for him.

I did a pregnancy scan, and he even expected twins, to my great delight! And a while later the game crashed :( Not sure why, it did not want to open a lot when I sent him there, and all was lost. So poor Matt had to do the whole process again, and this time it was only a single pregnancy. Kind of sad ... I never had twins in my game so far. It would have been a double-premiere.

And then Luna was born, my first half-alien baby. Well, not completely alien, I am using Almighty Hat´s "Stolen by Fairies" multi-pollination technician mod and skins, and she looks really cute, at least as a baby.

Yeah, go ahead Rae, ignore the birth completely and work more on your guitar playing skills :-)

At least Matt stuck some pacifier on his hat to celebrate the occasion.

Matt unsuccessfully practicing mimikry:

Cute Luna with Matt´s eyes, taking her first bath in the sink and enjoying it:

 

 Nautilus trying to keep calm in all this mess: 

Having Servos as nannies is such a relief.

And since the "failed twin pregnancy due to a crash" had planted an idea in my head, poor Matt had to go through the whole process again, because now I wanted TWO alien babies in my game :-) I forgot to take shots of the telescope watching again, though.

Some more slow dancing ...

  

Popping a belly ...

 

Giving birth, this time the household pays a little more attention to the screaming ... 

 

And here comes Flux Hatter!

 

Certainly more alien looking than Luna.

 

 A very patient Servo ...

On a whim, Raeburn decides that having babies is a wonderful thing (he has raised "only" four so far, more than any other Sim in the game), especially if it is not him who has to carry them, and Matt gets pregnant again, this time from Rae with the help of the "pregnancy for all genders" mod.

More tomorrow!!