Lewis Riddell - Dorian Cyrus

 Lewis grew up as the very troubled son of Alice McGee Riddell. If you´ve ever played American McGee´s Alice, you will know why he was troubled :-)

Initially, I wanted to add Matt Hatter to the family, but never got around to it, so Alice became a single mom. I used a premade house which was just perfect, Hovel Haven Factory by oph3lia. It was cluttered from top to bottom, with alcohol bottles lying around, so the troubled, alcohol-addicted Mom was born.

Lewis rather indiscreminately sought the attention of older men, here he is with Ode by mouseyblue. Despite his poor social background and lack of support, he managed to make it to college, where he met Dorian Cyrus.

Dorian was the love child of Sheena Cyrus and Edward Black.


 

Sadly, Dorian was so incredibly ugly as a kid, I did not take any pictures, and he had to undergo plastic surgery later.

So, Dorian had everything Lewis never had, loving, gentle parents, a safe environment to grow up, lots of encouragement and a good education. Nevertheless, when the two met, it was love at first sight.

By that time, I learned how to redecorate dorms (boolprop dormspecifictoolsdisabled false), and their dorm received a huge makeover, turning it into a Victorian/Steampunk era university. Here are their two respective rooms:

Dorian is a real hunk :-)

All was well, until Lewis felt Dorian didn´t love him enough. If you have had such a difficult upbringing like he did, eventually the old pain resurfaces. He decided to become a Romance Sim and had various love affairs, but could not really leave Dorian, who stayed surprisingly calm in all this turmoil. Lewis was very upset when Wynona moved in, feeling very jealous and afraid to lose Dorian.

The issue was not really resolved when both finished college, and despite that they decided to stay in a place together, the House of Five Gables by katalina. It received a makeover, but is not yet finished because the two don´t have that much money yet.

Both were not really sure if they wanted to stay together. Dorian was getting a bit tired by Lewis´ indecisiveness and his capricious attitude. Nevertheless, both rolled wants to hug each other, kiss each other, make-out with each other ...

One thing led to another on one beautiful winter day. Both had come home from work, it was snowing outside, they cuddled on the sofa, when suddenly I heard this lullaby tune and thought: Oops! Someone just got pregnant unexpectedly.

It turned out it was Dorian! This was the second unplanned pregnancy in the game (first was Carlotta). If I remember it correctly, I had the Autonomous Casual Romance Adjuster not yet spawned on both occasions. Lewis did not hesitate a second and proposed to Dorian, and they threw another of their famous parties on the same day to celebrate the wedding.

Aeon Adams, son of Akira and Tony Adams, now grown-up and in college, was one of their guests. I thought he looked stunning, just like his grandfather Raeburn Shadowbane.

Here is an older pic of the Shadowbane clan, Rae in the back, Akira and her mother Sheena Cyrus in the middle, Elaine Cyrus, Akira´s daughter in the front. In between you can see Aeon, he is Elaine´s brother.

Did I mention I think Aeon looks stunning? :-) The Shadowbanes/Cyruses make very beautiful kids. No plastic surgery ever needed :-)

Other party guests, Luna Hatter, Wynona Carrion, Dorian´s father Edward. Totally love the girl´s dresses! Wynona looks a bit as if she just bit into a lemon.

Dorian pops a belly soon after ...

Ah, great choice of colors, program :-)

And when he was all alone one afternoon, the baby came. Poor Dorian, but he managed well, and at least he did not have to deal with his partner giving him the "Bleh!" afterwards, like Count Maxim with Cissy. It is a girl, and I named her Stella.

Dorian looks so proud :-)

The house is not very big, so it was a bit of a hassle to find a place for the nursery. Lewis insisted on more Steampunk style.


 

***

While going through my folders, I just stumbled over this image of Lewis mother, Alice McGee. I want to participate in a contest over at DeviantArt organized by TheSimsWorld, "Fairytales and Folklore", and picked "Alice in Wonderland" as my theme. Alice had already received a heavy make-over, because she was just too troubled. So, I sent the poor woman into rehab, got her some beautiful clothes from Zauma, and invited her to Wonderland, a community lot owned by Matt Hatter.

I took about 300 more shots, and will participate with another image, but I kinda liked this one very much:

More images from that shoot can be found here.

That´s it for today :-) Thanks for reading!

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.