Oceanview: Week 4 (Capp)
May. 15th, 2018 03:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarkbotanyaGreetings, and welcome back to the Oceanview BACC! This week, Oceanview gets a couple of immigrants from my version of Veronaville. Those familiar with The Sims 2 will probably recognize their last name, but these two don't appear in the Maxis-made neighborhood.
Allow me to introduce Helena Capp and her husband Demetrius, who immediately started making out as soon as I loaded their lot. Two-bolt couples, tch, what can you do? They've bought a large plot of land near the waterfront, with space for the large, luxurious Tudor house they plan on building for their future family.
Now, once they break this little cannoodle-fest up, let's get their profiles!
Helena Capp is the youngest child of Juliette Capp and her husband Paris, after sisters Imogen and Catherine and brother Edmund. She's a Fortune Sim with the LTW to become a business tycoon (a true Capp if there ever was one!). To her, moving to Oceanview is an opportunity to expand her family's influence while building a name for herself outside of the confines of Veronaville, where everyone still sees her as Imogen and Catherine's cute little sister. Her zodiac sign is Gemini, with personality point allocation of 5/6/7/3/4: neither neat nor sloppy, fairly personable, active, serious, and a little grouchy. Her secondary aspiration is Family.
Demetrius, Helena's devoted husband, is a Popularity Sim who sees the move to Oceanview as an opportunity to help build the new city's community. He's an Aries with personality points of 5/8/4/3/5: about as tidy as his wife, quite the people person, a little lazy, serious, and not particularly nice or mean. His secondary aspiration is Fortune, and his lifetime want is to become mayor. It'll be a while before we get a Politics position open, though, so I hope he doesn't mind waiting a bit.
Interestingly, Demetrius began the game with the want to have a baby in his panel, a rarity for a Popularity Sim. You know they're in love when they roll that want.
Helena and Demetrius start off with a setup like Lillian's: a computer on a lawn for job searching and business purchases. Unfortunately, the Business career isn't available today, so we'll just have to make do with Sim-owned businesses. Ready to rake in the cash, Helena?
"Definitely. If Demetrius and I are going to start a family here, we need to be established both financially and in the community."
The Capps' first business is Contessa Community Gardens, named rather obviously after Helena's great-grandmother and placed just down the road from the home lot. It's little more than a chess table and some terrain paints right now, but it should work as a way to grind some badges, and eventually money once the sales badges are up. For now, though, we're setting the tickets to "Expensive", so the two new CAS Sims with no badges can still sell them.
Both of them immediately get right to work, though Helena's sales socials seem to be a bit more successful. Considering that neither of them have any Charisma points yet and Demetrius's Outgoing and Nice points are both higher than Helena's, I find this a bit odd. Still, anything that gets customers to stick around is appreciated... and anything that doesn't gets a frowny-face. Demetrius's sales actually get off to such a rocky start that I relegate him to the chess table for a while.
He does come back eventually, but at that point Helena's lead in badge progress is firmly established. Here she is displaying a very Victoria-like reaction to her bronze badge. Meanwhile, I'm mostly thinking, "Oooh, we can see the lighthouse from here!"
Demetrius eventually does get his bronze badge too, but it happens much later. Perhaps the business owner has a bonus or something.
The next morning, Helena gets her silver badge. She actually got to make a lot of badge progress with Clovis here, because his "will I buy this" meter would not fill up no matter how many sales socials she succeeded with. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that the lot was already technically full for its low business level, but regardless... thanks, Clovis!
"My pleasure! I'm always happy to help a Sim in need."
At this point, I got pretty bored of trying to badge both Helena and Demetrius, so I relegated Demetrius to gardening duty while Helena continued with sales. It still took forever with the tight customer limit, but we did get some networking events to spice things up. This lovely townie gave Helena a high-end computer!
And finally, we hit the gold! The badges really don't like showing up. Note Demetrius's elbow at the edge of the frame as he provides some backup; we had some customers leave in a batch, so he got to help out when there were more customers thinking about buying tickets than Helena could schmooze at once.
With this final sales badge, however, he gets relegated to the tomatoes once again...
...while Helena amps up the prices and whips out the Dazzle! She's really good at it, too; I have yet to encounter a customer who's refused it.
As the money rolls in, I discover that the earnings from the business count for both Helena and Demetrius, which is a pretty sweet deal, because they keep rolling wants to earn certain amounts of money. With the ticket prices set to 999 Simoleons each, their aspiration bars quickly rocket into the stratosphere.
Now that we have some funds to work with, Contessa Community Gardens starts coming together. Real bathrooms and a cute little gazebo pretty much fulfill this lot's architecture quota, while a couple of ponds and a smattering of trees and bushes add flair to the terrain.
We also get a visit from our lovely founder!
"Welcome to Oceanview, Mrs. Capp! This garden seems to be coming together well."
"Thank you, Ms. Star... can I call you Victoria?"
"Oh, of course! We're neighbors now, after all. May I call you Helena?"
"Yes! I loved your books, by the way. Amelia was such an inspiring character!"
Time flows on, at least in the business wormhole, and Demetrius and Victoria bond over a mutual interest in the paranormal while Helena chats with some of the other guests. The Capps will need all the family friends they can get for the Business and Politics career tracks, after all.
I'm not sure which memory this was, but I think it was 25k.
Gardening badge progress is a bit slower than sales, but both Demetrius and Helena manage to get their Bronze badge. Demetrius had a head start in this one, though. Gardening might seem like an odd choice for the Capps, but their home in Veronaville is surrounded by farms, and they seem like the kind of posh English types who would have a perfectly-manicured garden and conservatory to boast about to the neighbors. It's just a bummer that neither of these Sims has Nature as their OTH.
Witchiness is Demetrius's turn-off, so this wasn't entirely unexpected, but I was still kind of amused when he reverse-heart-farted over Connie. He didn't do any of that with Victoria when she showed up, so I guess evil witchiness is more repulsive to him than good witchiness.
Eventually, earnings rise over 50k as indicated by Helena and Demetrius's memories, and I have her shoo everyone off the lot so they can go home and begin construction of their dream home...
...though this prototype is about as much as one motherlode's worth can buy.
I really haven't played around with terrain enough in my builds so far, and the Capps seem like the fancy-majestic-house-on-a-hill type, so I decided to indulge a little when it came to landscape design. It's very unfinished at this stage, though, so what looks kind of normal from here is pretty bizarre from behind. I'll smooth out the slopes and fill in the rest of the garden later, when I have a bigger budget.
As for the house itself, I went for a more modern-looking kind of bricks on what will be the ground floor in an attempt to make this a kind of "neo-Tudor" type of thing rather than the pseudo-Renaissance aesthetic of the Maxis-made Veronaville houses. I've also set up a little greenhouse-slash-conservatory, though that's not so much to keep the plants awake as it is because it will look nice on the finished product. Once Helena and Demetrius have more money to spare, there will be quite a bit of expansion, vertically and horizontally.
Now that they have a roof over their heads, I have Helena start building her skills for the Business career...
...while Demetrius, being a Popularity Sim, gets to work on the family friend count.
Helena gets up in the middle of the night to check for jobs, but Business still isn't available. Well, more time for skilling, I suppose.
Not much happens on Tuesday, though Demetrius does get his silver gardnening badge while setting things up in the greenhouse. I also have him build up a few skills, only some of which are for his eventual political career. The rest are more helpful around the house. He hasn't been rolling any job-related wants, so I suppose he's content with being a house-husband and business co-owner for now.
At 12AM on Wednesday, Helena finally finds an opening in the Business career! She starts as a Field Sales Representative, which is... about where she would be if she'd gotten the job on Monday and then gotten a promotion per day. Not exactly a huge head start, but we can work with it!
Helena goes to work in the morning with more than enough skiil points and family friends...
...and comes home with a promotion to Junior Executive, right on schedule. Chance cards could be helpful in speeding the process eventually, but at this point in the Business career they're relatively low-impact. I'll just have to make sure to get that Business Instinct perk ASAP so that they'll have the highest chance of good results for those upper levels.
Still, riding the promotion train isn't going to get these Sims anywhere close to enough money to finish their house. It's time for drastic measures.
My previous experiences with OFB have taught me that the easiest way to grind up sales badges and business perks is to open a retail store. Helena and Demetrius don't really have the money to buy and/or build a decent one, though, so I first have Helena make a quick visit to Contessa Community Gardens.
Once that's done, she heads home and purhcases the deed to this lovely place: Case Clothed Businesswear (no, I will not apologize for that pun). I know Oceanview already has a clothing store, but Case Clothed and Rockstar Regalia definitely cater to different clientele, or at least to different needs of the same clientele.
Business gets off to a ridiculously good start. With two Sims to run the place between mood-ups, I hardly ever have to close the store. Before that even becomes a concern, though, we get a chance to dazzle the reviewer into giving us, yes, the Best of the Best Award. On the first night. Helena, you ROCK.
Wait... she's wearing her business outfit. Renesmee Uglacy was wearing that same outfit when she conned a reviewer into giving her the Best of the Best Award. Coincidence? I think... so.
Good press and near-constant service keep the customers flooding in. It gets harder to go on mood-up breaks (like the shower Helena took to get back into her everyday outfit... what, I like it better than her work clothes), but stars, aspiration points, and business perks roll in like crazy.
Retail stores also help a lot with badges, as well as giving photo evidence that yes, they do appear sometimes. Just... not when I want them to. I don't care about the restocking badge nearly as much as I care about the sales and gardening ones, dammit!
We also get a few networking events... this guy gave Helena a TV, I think. I really wish we'd gotten the guaranteed promotion one, but no, instead we get offers of blind dates for someone whose spouse is standing RIGHT THERE. She did get the higher wages one at some point, though, so that's nice.
And there it is... the final star that pushed Case Clothed Businesswear up to Level 10.
Yeah. I spent that much time here. There are a lot more pictures, but when I sat down to write up this section of the week, I figured that including them all would just bog down the story with unnecessary detail. The important thing is, Case Clothed is now a Level 10 business, so the Business career has another position open. Head starts on getting subhoods are always good.
Plus, getting a Level 10 business gave Helena so many aspiration points.
With all that done, Helena and Demetrius head back through the time warp with matching gold Sales and Cashiering badges. The bank account has grown a bit, but it's still not enough... and with two Dazzle-capable Sims in the household, well, there's only one thing to do...
...and that's to head for the gardens.
Now that both Helena and Demetrius can use Dazzle, ticket price can be set all the way up to 19999. The customers now need about two Dazzles each from two different Sims, but when they do buy a ticket, it's worth it. It's especially worth it when they decide to stick around for more than an hour, and the 20k chunks just keep falling into my greedy little hands.
By the time I get bored and send them back through the time warp, Helena and Demetrius are multimillionaires. They also managed to scrape together a gold Gardening badge each between dazzlings.
Now that they're rolling in more money than they could ever possibly hope to spend, Helena and Demetrius get to come home to this.
Larger windows and crisper colors make this a bit more modern than the houses of Helena's hometown, but the overall design retains a distinct Renaissance feel. Landscaping is still somewhat in progress, but the broad strokes are done. I'm holding off on placing flowers and shrubs until either service calls are unlocked or I cave and get a mod that stops them from wilting. Non-food-bearing plants are more of an aesthetic thing, after all, so it's not like being able to leave them alone gives me some kind of tremendous advantage over a BACC player who just doesn't bother with them.
Shortly after they arrive, walkby townie Angela Martell gets Helena the instant promotion networking event. For that, I'm putting her name down as a potential move-in.
Though Helena and Demetrius came back from their money-grubbing trip shortly after a mood-up, they don't really get to do anything visually interesting for the rest of the night. However, in the process of skilling them, I discover that Demetrius's predestined hobby is Music and Dance. Perhaps he'd be a good fit for the Music career if he starts rolling the job wants before Politics opens up.
I also decide that they should get working on some population growth before Helena goes to work. The camera was quickly taken to the other side of the lot to allow them some privacy.
Helena comes home with a promotion to Executive, and is right up against her skill buffer, so I pretty much just spend the rest of the day skilling her. She's not going to be able to get us a business district this week, but that doesn't mean she can slack off. Thankfully, most Fortune Sims are pretty much allergic to slacking off.
I've kept Helena's skills in line with what she needs for her job, but with Demetrius, I've got a bit of leeway, so he's been studying cooking. I don't want this house I spent hours building to catch fire, and I have another idea for a business in the works.
Like Wednesday evening, Thursday evening is pretty much skilling, skilling, and more skilling, so let's fast-forward to Friday morning.
The only things these two have actually harvested so far are apples and tomatoes, and I'm really not sure how those can be used to make cereal. Maybe it's magic; that would explain the sparkles.
Sparkly food may be a little dangerous for Sims' waistlines, but at least it helps with pregnant Sims' rapidly-decaying Hunger motive.
Helena's workday goes well, and she comes home with a promotion to Senior Manager...
...then immediately goes BOOMP!
This baby is being ridiculously easy on Helena, by the way. Her needs are relatively stable (which, to be fair, might be because she's got some Slower Need Decay aspiration benefits), and she didn't get morning sickness even once.
Helena's maternity leave coincides with her weekend, which works quite well for both of us. She hates missing work, and I just want to get a shopping district ASAP.
To make sure she gets promoted next week, we get back into the routine: skilling and networking until the cows come home.
Fast forward, and... SECOND BOOMP!
Demetrius and I are both getting a little stir crazy waiting for the nooboo, so I check my business ideas, pop out into the neighborhood for a little building, and then send him to the computer to make a couple purchases. More community lots mean more CAS points, after all, and eventually a higher Sim Multiplier.
Our first new business is the Upscale, a swanky lounge in the middle of town, right across from Celestial Dance, our other "club" venue. The furnishings are still a little sparse, but it has enough entertainment value to keep guests happy while they hemmorhage 999 Simoleons an hour into the family's vast coffers.
It even has a pool!
Demetrius and I didn't stay at the Upscale very long, but we did get a visit from Victoria. She walked right onto the lot as soon as it opened. I can't tell whether she's giving her blessing or scoping out the competition... the bland face is hard to read.
Oh, hey, you can see the new Capp house from here!
The second new business is a bit closer to home, right next to Contessa Community Gardens. This is Royal English Bakery, just a little place for Demetrius to use that Cooking skill for fun and profit. He's still a good few points from max, though, so I'll just come back to this at a later date.
Back at the home lot, after much waiting (and discovering that Helena's predestined hobby is Film and Literature)...
...the fateful hour arrives.
"Helena? Honey? Are you okay? Do I need to do anything?"
"Just... stand there... all I have to do is spin..."
"Actually, could you hold this one for a second?"
Wait... what? Oh no... nonononono... HELENA WHY?!?
DOUBLE NOOBOO, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?
Yes, guys, it's twins. At least I got them in a family that's ready for it. Demetrius will have his hands full caring for these little larvae, but I think he can handle it... and I did time it so that they won't spend too much time in the helpless infant stage once they come out of the Not Being Played time warp next week. I guess I know now why Helena's pregnancy went so easy on her... it was to make up for the impending days of hell trying to keep up with the needs of two tiny children.
Anyway, it's two girls, and from what I can see right now, they're both mini-Helenas: blond hair, gray eyes, pale skin. Demetrius is holding Claudia, and Helena's got Cymbeline. Yes, I know Cymbeline is a guy's name in the actual play, but so was Ariel, and Ariel Capp is a girl too.
Well, um... time to add another crib to the nursery, I guess...
Usually, when I put a fridge in the nursery, it's just me being lazy. This time? It is legitimately to keep the kids from starving. I don't want to even come close with these little nuggets. Social workers aren't allowed in Oceanview except for dropping off adoptables.
Hey, look, a new sport for the Sim Olympics: synchronized putting-babies-in-cribs!
With thie kiddos in bed, Helena and Demetrius each cope in their own way. Demetrius... seems to be going slightly insane.
"I'm a Popularity Sim... we don't tend to family good, and now I have twins. TWINS! At least I have you to talk to, right, Miss Braeburn? You're a good friend."
Helena, meanwhile, is doing something a little more constructive.
"All our current politicians suck, so here's my speech about why my husband would do a better job than all of them combined."
Uh... a bit on the nose there, don't you think?
"I just gave birth. Cut me some slack."
And so, we wrap up this week with the little twinsies happily snoozing away in their matching cribs (Claudia on the left, Cymbeline on the right), blissfully unaware of their parents' internal crises. I'm a little bummed that we don't get to see their toddler faces this week, but I guess that's something to look forward to in the next Capp entry. I'll be caking them up to toddlers at 6PM on Monday.
The Capps' university tax for the week comes to... holy shit, 161,710 Simoleons. These Sims are obscenely wealthy.
Next time in Oceanview, we'll check in with our second ex-townie, Dominique Beaumont. I already have a few ideas for what to do with her week, and the builds for them should be a good bit easier than the ones I had to throw together for this entry. Until then, happy Simming!
Allow me to introduce Helena Capp and her husband Demetrius, who immediately started making out as soon as I loaded their lot. Two-bolt couples, tch, what can you do? They've bought a large plot of land near the waterfront, with space for the large, luxurious Tudor house they plan on building for their future family.
Now, once they break this little cannoodle-fest up, let's get their profiles!
Helena Capp is the youngest child of Juliette Capp and her husband Paris, after sisters Imogen and Catherine and brother Edmund. She's a Fortune Sim with the LTW to become a business tycoon (a true Capp if there ever was one!). To her, moving to Oceanview is an opportunity to expand her family's influence while building a name for herself outside of the confines of Veronaville, where everyone still sees her as Imogen and Catherine's cute little sister. Her zodiac sign is Gemini, with personality point allocation of 5/6/7/3/4: neither neat nor sloppy, fairly personable, active, serious, and a little grouchy. Her secondary aspiration is Family.
Demetrius, Helena's devoted husband, is a Popularity Sim who sees the move to Oceanview as an opportunity to help build the new city's community. He's an Aries with personality points of 5/8/4/3/5: about as tidy as his wife, quite the people person, a little lazy, serious, and not particularly nice or mean. His secondary aspiration is Fortune, and his lifetime want is to become mayor. It'll be a while before we get a Politics position open, though, so I hope he doesn't mind waiting a bit.
Interestingly, Demetrius began the game with the want to have a baby in his panel, a rarity for a Popularity Sim. You know they're in love when they roll that want.
Helena and Demetrius start off with a setup like Lillian's: a computer on a lawn for job searching and business purchases. Unfortunately, the Business career isn't available today, so we'll just have to make do with Sim-owned businesses. Ready to rake in the cash, Helena?
"Definitely. If Demetrius and I are going to start a family here, we need to be established both financially and in the community."
The Capps' first business is Contessa Community Gardens, named rather obviously after Helena's great-grandmother and placed just down the road from the home lot. It's little more than a chess table and some terrain paints right now, but it should work as a way to grind some badges, and eventually money once the sales badges are up. For now, though, we're setting the tickets to "Expensive", so the two new CAS Sims with no badges can still sell them.
Both of them immediately get right to work, though Helena's sales socials seem to be a bit more successful. Considering that neither of them have any Charisma points yet and Demetrius's Outgoing and Nice points are both higher than Helena's, I find this a bit odd. Still, anything that gets customers to stick around is appreciated... and anything that doesn't gets a frowny-face. Demetrius's sales actually get off to such a rocky start that I relegate him to the chess table for a while.
He does come back eventually, but at that point Helena's lead in badge progress is firmly established. Here she is displaying a very Victoria-like reaction to her bronze badge. Meanwhile, I'm mostly thinking, "Oooh, we can see the lighthouse from here!"
Demetrius eventually does get his bronze badge too, but it happens much later. Perhaps the business owner has a bonus or something.
The next morning, Helena gets her silver badge. She actually got to make a lot of badge progress with Clovis here, because his "will I buy this" meter would not fill up no matter how many sales socials she succeeded with. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that the lot was already technically full for its low business level, but regardless... thanks, Clovis!
"My pleasure! I'm always happy to help a Sim in need."
At this point, I got pretty bored of trying to badge both Helena and Demetrius, so I relegated Demetrius to gardening duty while Helena continued with sales. It still took forever with the tight customer limit, but we did get some networking events to spice things up. This lovely townie gave Helena a high-end computer!
And finally, we hit the gold! The badges really don't like showing up. Note Demetrius's elbow at the edge of the frame as he provides some backup; we had some customers leave in a batch, so he got to help out when there were more customers thinking about buying tickets than Helena could schmooze at once.
With this final sales badge, however, he gets relegated to the tomatoes once again...
...while Helena amps up the prices and whips out the Dazzle! She's really good at it, too; I have yet to encounter a customer who's refused it.
As the money rolls in, I discover that the earnings from the business count for both Helena and Demetrius, which is a pretty sweet deal, because they keep rolling wants to earn certain amounts of money. With the ticket prices set to 999 Simoleons each, their aspiration bars quickly rocket into the stratosphere.
Now that we have some funds to work with, Contessa Community Gardens starts coming together. Real bathrooms and a cute little gazebo pretty much fulfill this lot's architecture quota, while a couple of ponds and a smattering of trees and bushes add flair to the terrain.
We also get a visit from our lovely founder!
"Welcome to Oceanview, Mrs. Capp! This garden seems to be coming together well."
"Thank you, Ms. Star... can I call you Victoria?"
"Oh, of course! We're neighbors now, after all. May I call you Helena?"
"Yes! I loved your books, by the way. Amelia was such an inspiring character!"
Time flows on, at least in the business wormhole, and Demetrius and Victoria bond over a mutual interest in the paranormal while Helena chats with some of the other guests. The Capps will need all the family friends they can get for the Business and Politics career tracks, after all.
I'm not sure which memory this was, but I think it was 25k.
Gardening badge progress is a bit slower than sales, but both Demetrius and Helena manage to get their Bronze badge. Demetrius had a head start in this one, though. Gardening might seem like an odd choice for the Capps, but their home in Veronaville is surrounded by farms, and they seem like the kind of posh English types who would have a perfectly-manicured garden and conservatory to boast about to the neighbors. It's just a bummer that neither of these Sims has Nature as their OTH.
Witchiness is Demetrius's turn-off, so this wasn't entirely unexpected, but I was still kind of amused when he reverse-heart-farted over Connie. He didn't do any of that with Victoria when she showed up, so I guess evil witchiness is more repulsive to him than good witchiness.
Eventually, earnings rise over 50k as indicated by Helena and Demetrius's memories, and I have her shoo everyone off the lot so they can go home and begin construction of their dream home...
...though this prototype is about as much as one motherlode's worth can buy.
I really haven't played around with terrain enough in my builds so far, and the Capps seem like the fancy-majestic-house-on-a-hill type, so I decided to indulge a little when it came to landscape design. It's very unfinished at this stage, though, so what looks kind of normal from here is pretty bizarre from behind. I'll smooth out the slopes and fill in the rest of the garden later, when I have a bigger budget.
As for the house itself, I went for a more modern-looking kind of bricks on what will be the ground floor in an attempt to make this a kind of "neo-Tudor" type of thing rather than the pseudo-Renaissance aesthetic of the Maxis-made Veronaville houses. I've also set up a little greenhouse-slash-conservatory, though that's not so much to keep the plants awake as it is because it will look nice on the finished product. Once Helena and Demetrius have more money to spare, there will be quite a bit of expansion, vertically and horizontally.
Now that they have a roof over their heads, I have Helena start building her skills for the Business career...
...while Demetrius, being a Popularity Sim, gets to work on the family friend count.
Helena gets up in the middle of the night to check for jobs, but Business still isn't available. Well, more time for skilling, I suppose.
Not much happens on Tuesday, though Demetrius does get his silver gardnening badge while setting things up in the greenhouse. I also have him build up a few skills, only some of which are for his eventual political career. The rest are more helpful around the house. He hasn't been rolling any job-related wants, so I suppose he's content with being a house-husband and business co-owner for now.
At 12AM on Wednesday, Helena finally finds an opening in the Business career! She starts as a Field Sales Representative, which is... about where she would be if she'd gotten the job on Monday and then gotten a promotion per day. Not exactly a huge head start, but we can work with it!
Helena goes to work in the morning with more than enough skiil points and family friends...
...and comes home with a promotion to Junior Executive, right on schedule. Chance cards could be helpful in speeding the process eventually, but at this point in the Business career they're relatively low-impact. I'll just have to make sure to get that Business Instinct perk ASAP so that they'll have the highest chance of good results for those upper levels.
Still, riding the promotion train isn't going to get these Sims anywhere close to enough money to finish their house. It's time for drastic measures.
My previous experiences with OFB have taught me that the easiest way to grind up sales badges and business perks is to open a retail store. Helena and Demetrius don't really have the money to buy and/or build a decent one, though, so I first have Helena make a quick visit to Contessa Community Gardens.
Once that's done, she heads home and purhcases the deed to this lovely place: Case Clothed Businesswear (no, I will not apologize for that pun). I know Oceanview already has a clothing store, but Case Clothed and Rockstar Regalia definitely cater to different clientele, or at least to different needs of the same clientele.
Business gets off to a ridiculously good start. With two Sims to run the place between mood-ups, I hardly ever have to close the store. Before that even becomes a concern, though, we get a chance to dazzle the reviewer into giving us, yes, the Best of the Best Award. On the first night. Helena, you ROCK.
Wait... she's wearing her business outfit. Renesmee Uglacy was wearing that same outfit when she conned a reviewer into giving her the Best of the Best Award. Coincidence? I think... so.
Good press and near-constant service keep the customers flooding in. It gets harder to go on mood-up breaks (like the shower Helena took to get back into her everyday outfit... what, I like it better than her work clothes), but stars, aspiration points, and business perks roll in like crazy.
Retail stores also help a lot with badges, as well as giving photo evidence that yes, they do appear sometimes. Just... not when I want them to. I don't care about the restocking badge nearly as much as I care about the sales and gardening ones, dammit!
We also get a few networking events... this guy gave Helena a TV, I think. I really wish we'd gotten the guaranteed promotion one, but no, instead we get offers of blind dates for someone whose spouse is standing RIGHT THERE. She did get the higher wages one at some point, though, so that's nice.
And there it is... the final star that pushed Case Clothed Businesswear up to Level 10.
Yeah. I spent that much time here. There are a lot more pictures, but when I sat down to write up this section of the week, I figured that including them all would just bog down the story with unnecessary detail. The important thing is, Case Clothed is now a Level 10 business, so the Business career has another position open. Head starts on getting subhoods are always good.
Plus, getting a Level 10 business gave Helena so many aspiration points.
With all that done, Helena and Demetrius head back through the time warp with matching gold Sales and Cashiering badges. The bank account has grown a bit, but it's still not enough... and with two Dazzle-capable Sims in the household, well, there's only one thing to do...
...and that's to head for the gardens.
Now that both Helena and Demetrius can use Dazzle, ticket price can be set all the way up to 19999. The customers now need about two Dazzles each from two different Sims, but when they do buy a ticket, it's worth it. It's especially worth it when they decide to stick around for more than an hour, and the 20k chunks just keep falling into my greedy little hands.
By the time I get bored and send them back through the time warp, Helena and Demetrius are multimillionaires. They also managed to scrape together a gold Gardening badge each between dazzlings.
Now that they're rolling in more money than they could ever possibly hope to spend, Helena and Demetrius get to come home to this.
Larger windows and crisper colors make this a bit more modern than the houses of Helena's hometown, but the overall design retains a distinct Renaissance feel. Landscaping is still somewhat in progress, but the broad strokes are done. I'm holding off on placing flowers and shrubs until either service calls are unlocked or I cave and get a mod that stops them from wilting. Non-food-bearing plants are more of an aesthetic thing, after all, so it's not like being able to leave them alone gives me some kind of tremendous advantage over a BACC player who just doesn't bother with them.
Shortly after they arrive, walkby townie Angela Martell gets Helena the instant promotion networking event. For that, I'm putting her name down as a potential move-in.
Though Helena and Demetrius came back from their money-grubbing trip shortly after a mood-up, they don't really get to do anything visually interesting for the rest of the night. However, in the process of skilling them, I discover that Demetrius's predestined hobby is Music and Dance. Perhaps he'd be a good fit for the Music career if he starts rolling the job wants before Politics opens up.
I also decide that they should get working on some population growth before Helena goes to work. The camera was quickly taken to the other side of the lot to allow them some privacy.
Helena comes home with a promotion to Executive, and is right up against her skill buffer, so I pretty much just spend the rest of the day skilling her. She's not going to be able to get us a business district this week, but that doesn't mean she can slack off. Thankfully, most Fortune Sims are pretty much allergic to slacking off.
I've kept Helena's skills in line with what she needs for her job, but with Demetrius, I've got a bit of leeway, so he's been studying cooking. I don't want this house I spent hours building to catch fire, and I have another idea for a business in the works.
Like Wednesday evening, Thursday evening is pretty much skilling, skilling, and more skilling, so let's fast-forward to Friday morning.
The only things these two have actually harvested so far are apples and tomatoes, and I'm really not sure how those can be used to make cereal. Maybe it's magic; that would explain the sparkles.
Sparkly food may be a little dangerous for Sims' waistlines, but at least it helps with pregnant Sims' rapidly-decaying Hunger motive.
Helena's workday goes well, and she comes home with a promotion to Senior Manager...
...then immediately goes BOOMP!
This baby is being ridiculously easy on Helena, by the way. Her needs are relatively stable (which, to be fair, might be because she's got some Slower Need Decay aspiration benefits), and she didn't get morning sickness even once.
Helena's maternity leave coincides with her weekend, which works quite well for both of us. She hates missing work, and I just want to get a shopping district ASAP.
To make sure she gets promoted next week, we get back into the routine: skilling and networking until the cows come home.
Fast forward, and... SECOND BOOMP!
Demetrius and I are both getting a little stir crazy waiting for the nooboo, so I check my business ideas, pop out into the neighborhood for a little building, and then send him to the computer to make a couple purchases. More community lots mean more CAS points, after all, and eventually a higher Sim Multiplier.
Our first new business is the Upscale, a swanky lounge in the middle of town, right across from Celestial Dance, our other "club" venue. The furnishings are still a little sparse, but it has enough entertainment value to keep guests happy while they hemmorhage 999 Simoleons an hour into the family's vast coffers.
It even has a pool!
Demetrius and I didn't stay at the Upscale very long, but we did get a visit from Victoria. She walked right onto the lot as soon as it opened. I can't tell whether she's giving her blessing or scoping out the competition... the bland face is hard to read.
Oh, hey, you can see the new Capp house from here!
The second new business is a bit closer to home, right next to Contessa Community Gardens. This is Royal English Bakery, just a little place for Demetrius to use that Cooking skill for fun and profit. He's still a good few points from max, though, so I'll just come back to this at a later date.
Back at the home lot, after much waiting (and discovering that Helena's predestined hobby is Film and Literature)...
...the fateful hour arrives.
"Helena? Honey? Are you okay? Do I need to do anything?"
"Just... stand there... all I have to do is spin..."
"Actually, could you hold this one for a second?"
Wait... what? Oh no... nonononono... HELENA WHY?!?
DOUBLE NOOBOO, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?
Yes, guys, it's twins. At least I got them in a family that's ready for it. Demetrius will have his hands full caring for these little larvae, but I think he can handle it... and I did time it so that they won't spend too much time in the helpless infant stage once they come out of the Not Being Played time warp next week. I guess I know now why Helena's pregnancy went so easy on her... it was to make up for the impending days of hell trying to keep up with the needs of two tiny children.
Anyway, it's two girls, and from what I can see right now, they're both mini-Helenas: blond hair, gray eyes, pale skin. Demetrius is holding Claudia, and Helena's got Cymbeline. Yes, I know Cymbeline is a guy's name in the actual play, but so was Ariel, and Ariel Capp is a girl too.
Well, um... time to add another crib to the nursery, I guess...
Usually, when I put a fridge in the nursery, it's just me being lazy. This time? It is legitimately to keep the kids from starving. I don't want to even come close with these little nuggets. Social workers aren't allowed in Oceanview except for dropping off adoptables.
Hey, look, a new sport for the Sim Olympics: synchronized putting-babies-in-cribs!
With thie kiddos in bed, Helena and Demetrius each cope in their own way. Demetrius... seems to be going slightly insane.
"I'm a Popularity Sim... we don't tend to family good, and now I have twins. TWINS! At least I have you to talk to, right, Miss Braeburn? You're a good friend."
Helena, meanwhile, is doing something a little more constructive.
"All our current politicians suck, so here's my speech about why my husband would do a better job than all of them combined."
Uh... a bit on the nose there, don't you think?
"I just gave birth. Cut me some slack."
And so, we wrap up this week with the little twinsies happily snoozing away in their matching cribs (Claudia on the left, Cymbeline on the right), blissfully unaware of their parents' internal crises. I'm a little bummed that we don't get to see their toddler faces this week, but I guess that's something to look forward to in the next Capp entry. I'll be caking them up to toddlers at 6PM on Monday.
The Capps' university tax for the week comes to... holy shit, 161,710 Simoleons. These Sims are obscenely wealthy.
Next time in Oceanview, we'll check in with our second ex-townie, Dominique Beaumont. I already have a few ideas for what to do with her week, and the builds for them should be a good bit easier than the ones I had to throw together for this entry. Until then, happy Simming!
