The Spitting Llamas

Jason spends the next two days working on his charisma and writing skills and writing articles and reviews for the paper.

It takes a lot of coffee, a lost friendship or two (because of negative stories) and being banned from the theatre for not liking the movie, but at the end of the week Jason is promoted to Weather Man.

* * *

In the meantime Benjamin is still working on his guitar skill.

He still can't join the band profession - apparently he needs to form a band before he can register at City Hall.

 

* * *

Christal Kim is now a Dealer of Destinies, so she's only one step away from achieving her LTW. (One of the last two still needed to have done it all!)

(I don't think the cristal ball helps in her career - but it does look cool!)

Christal only works on weekdays. Jason, on the other hand, has weekends off. So I can switch between them and get both of them up that career ladder.

First, Jason gets married. Another private wedding, nobody feels like making a fuss. (Well, actually I don't want to bother with trying to get good wedding pictures!)

The couple move into the Bingsly home. And of course this means Jason gets a few days off to go on a honeymoon, or settle in, or something...

 

* * *

Benjamin has asked Maggie Cherie (aka Margaret McGovern or actually Margaret Younger, these days) to join his band. They call themselves The Cherrypickers. (Or maybe "Maggie and the Cherrypickers, as Maggie of course wants to headline!)

Darrin Younger and Christal Kim agree to join as well.

 

Margaret and Darrin invite them to come live on their little farm so they can all practice together.

Benjamin puts a bed up in the attic over the garage, and Christal puts hers in what used to be the outdoor bathroom (before the invention of all-in-one bathrooms and outhouses).

* * *

I started reading up on the band skill, and apparently it's supposed to 'trigger' when your Sim joins a band. It's a toggle, apparently.
If this is so, this would mean that NRaas gets in the way, if it got toggled from -01 to 00, it won't go up again, because it's not a skill that can be leveled?

I tried disbanding The Cherrypickers and creating a new band, the Spitting Llamas. That didn't do anything for the band skill either. It's still at 00.
So I decided to cheat Benjamin up to "band skill" level 1. Now he can register as self-employed in the band career.
I never saw any kind of band skill appear in the skill journal, which some sources said should happen.

I'm not sure whether EA broke the 'band' skill or it's a mod conflict with NRaas, but I just hope the career path will still work for Benjamin.

* * *

Benjamin is now officially making money in the "band" profession. The other three are in their regular jobs and have the band as a side hustle.

Here are the Spitting Llamas - jamming for tips. (No, it's not a gig. Nobody has offered them a gig yet.)

Benjamin decides to play the keyboard, because Darrin actually needs to master the guitar skill for his LTW. And Benjamin needs to level up all other instruments, so it makes more sense for him to go with one he doesn't have mastered.

Nobody else gets their hidden band skill up from 0 to 1, which sort of seems to confirm it's a toggle rather than a learnable skill.

Benjamin manages to get his first 800 Simoleons in tips and the band has gone from Attic Act to Garage Band. He figures out that he needs to be jamming (even if he is by himself), and only tips that go into his personal jar count for the career promotion.

 

The next level he reaches is Subway Trawler. Too bad there's no subway on Winchester. After that, the Spitting Llamas become a Dive Bar Opening Act.

There are no opportunities for gigs offered at all. Maybe because there are so few stages in town, or maybe because the system is broken, or doesn't work well outside Bridgeport... There are so many ways in which EA could have screwed it up, I'm inclined to blame them, not my town!

The Journalist and the Fortune Teller

There is a new room to the back of the retirement home. Mena Mendez, the housekeeper, uses this for herself.

This leaves room for one more couple. Currently Yi Quan and Wu are both elders, but the Bingsly family are older. And Jason could use the room, too. Jason recently reconnected with his highschool friend Celestine Younger, Darrin Younger's sister.

She's now a young adult, too, and she's grown up to be 'blindingly stunning' - at least in Jason's eyes.

Jason is working on his lifetime wish - to become a Star News Anchor. He's moving up to level 5 in his career, and after he goes out with Celestine to celebrate, he decides to pop the question. So now he's engaged.

He uses some of the money from his promotion to make some minor alterations to the house. A small extension to the back (there isn't much room on the lot), and some moving of the walls, and now there's room for a basement.

With the house extending further back, his father's sculpting station doesn't really fit in the garden any longer, so it gets moved to the basement, too.

* * *

In the meantime Christal Kim is fed up with living with her parents.

She doesn't want to move out until she's finished her lifetime wish - after which I'll give up on the fortune teller career, because it needs so many rabbithole workers (six at least before the game keeps pulling in new immigrants).

To get a boost in her career, Christal decided to do some private readings around town.

Susannah doesn't seem to be too thrilled with her fortune.

* * *

Elsewhere in town Benjamin Adams aged up to young adult. His lifetime wish is to be a one-sim band, but but he decides that for now, he wants to form a band with a few others. (He's not sure who to ask yet, though!)

He wants to register as a band member at city hall, but gets told his skill isn't high enough, which is annoying.

He trades bedrooms with his younger brother, because Walter's bedroom has access to the tower room, and Benjamin needs a place for his instruments.

For now he's concentrating on his guitar skill, but he needs to do some reading up on how to register as a band. City Council regulations can be confusing.

Another Funeral, another Wedding

And then there was Bernadette Kim. She achieved her wish of becoming a Deep Sea Diver, and is not particularly enjoying being a fortune teller. She loves diving, and she seems to like the local mermaid, too.

She decides one day that she wants a necklace of shark teeth. She's athletic, so she does manage to defeat six sharks in a row. She uses steak for shark bait, and they keep coming. (I admit I put in extra spawners!)

Of course after a while she starts running out of air. But she keeps swimming around, examining coral, gathering some shells, and waiting for more sharks.

Finally, she's gasping for air. (And it becomes really difficult to keep her from surfacing!) The next shark proves to be one too many.

So that's another funeral. And Huan Chao has to dive to get his child's remains for the second time. Now they just have one daughter left, and of course their grandchildren and daughter-in-law who still live with them.

The difficulties with this death are of course keeping a Sim under water when they're starting to gasp for air. And also, having the shark kill them before the lack of oxygen does. The first try when she did die, it was from 'running out of air' - not the ghost I was looking for. All in all it took five tries to kill her off. Death is TOO hard in this game.

 

So, that's another death. And that means that I have now personally experienced every type of death in this game. I'm done killing Sims on purpose (I'm still hoping some may die by accident, though!)

* * *

After these two funerals, there was another wedding, also a private one. New inhabitants Jonah Brown and Holly Sue Mack got married. 

For now they've moved in with Jonah's parents. There's just slightly more room there. They're hoping to move into a little house of their own soon, though.

* * *

A Lifetime Wish, a Wedding and a Funeral

So, first of all, Margaret did get to the top of her career doing nothing but sing-a-grams, and one single gig at the casino.

She's now a Vocal Legend. So that's that Lifetime Wish taken care of.

Now that she is established in her career, she and Darrin decide it's time to get married and start thinking of having a family.

Just a private ceremony - Margaret doesn't want to deal with paparazzi. (Maybe that's why they got married after sunset, too?)

* * *

Brendan Thao took longer to ascend the career ladder. I think it's because of the lack of gigs, which means he had to make all of his money performing for tips.

He also tried out his tricks on his parents - who got pretty tired of his Box of Mystery.

Still, after skewering and disappearing his parents a few times, he got a new toy: the Box of Danger. Now he does know that Winchester's previous star magician, Leonard Harrell, got killed in this box. But Brendan is convinced HE will be able to pull of that Watery Grave trick.

To get there, though, he will first have to master the Buried Alive trick and get up a level. So that's what he tries. It goes fine the first dozen or so times.

 

But then it doesn't.... 

 

So yeah, that's one more death to cross of my murder list.

Maggie Cheri - Local Favourite

Margaret, or Maggie Cheri, is doing really well in her career. Her private life is also going well. She got the option to move in with her fiancé, Darrin Young.

However, it made a lot more sense for Darrin to move in with her. Since the tragic death by meteor of both of his parents, Darrin and his sister live with their aunt and uncle, Julien and Ginny Bernard.

So Darrin moves into Margaret's very pink cottage.

Darrin isn't doing well in his job as a politician, so Margaret encourages him to study up on his charisma. He goes a bit overboard, and manages to get from 0 to 6 in a day. He even starts on Volume III.

And in the meantime Margaret is working hard. She gets promoted to Local Favorite, and gets a new career outfit - just in time for winter!

The only thing she does about it, though, is to find herself a matching hat. 

She performs a ton of sing-a-grams, including a romantic one for her mother. Now *that* is embarassing! 

It does get her promoted to Local Phenomenon. The dress she gets to wear isn't any more season-appropriate than the previous one, though.

Margaret is now halfway her chosen career path. Still mostly doing sing-a-grams, though. She's on fire. No, literally, she's on fire!

Fortunately the person she was performing for was her father, who happens to have a fire extinguisher up his sleeve somewhere... (Where DO Sims keep that junk?)

She really soars through her promotions, though - mostly just performing for tips and doing sing-a-grams.

* * *

Another Sim working on a showtime career is Brendan Thao. He wants to be a magician, in spite of the fact that this isn't the luckiest profession - the town's previous magician, Leonard Harrell, died in the Box of Danger, doing the Watery Grave trick.

Brendan is of course not going to do that trick. He'll stick to Buried Alive. (Mostly because that's one of the few death types the Builder - that would be me, the local SimGoddess - does not have in the collection yet. He's doooooomed... Muhahahahaha....)

Anyway, Brendan isn't ready for the Box of Danger yet, he's only at level 4. 

I think he'll need to be at level 7 before he can start trying to die - erhm - performing the impressive tricks.

* * * 

Also, while I was focussing on Margaret and Brendan, Sophia Harrell died. She was Daniel's wife, who started out as a babysitter in Mesa Valley. 

Daniel is heartbroken.

 

Actually, Daniel, his brother Nathan and the Thao twins are all over 85, so it may not be too long before they, too, will die.