It's time to make some goopy carbonara

wabadebadoo! (that's simlish for "i'm on fire!")

The good news is: I hit my deadline of getting #MIBWIP to betas before my birthday and I’m now sitting here stewing in having nothing to do. Yay for hitting deadlines! Boo for my hyperactive brain getting bored in 5 minutes.

The other good news: after dragging it out for years, I've finally decided to buy a new gaming set up. My gaming PC was almost ten years old and I realized it’d be cheaper to just replace it than to upgrade it part by part. And since I play most of my games on Playstation now since I rarely have to worry about system requirements there, I figured I could save space and go for a mid-tier gaming laptop. Now, my possibilities are endless.

I can play The Sims in bed.

I will also die on the hill that creating your book characters and putting them in a house together to see who dies first counts as writing.

For the purposes of this experiment, we’ll be playing with a couple sets of characters. Hayden and Hallie from Love and Other Conspiracies, El and Carter from #MIBWIP, and Stellan and Myra from a paranormal romance series I hope to do something with one day.

Let’s get started:

Here we have Hallie, with her signature fun hair and patterned leggings. I gave her the romance aspiration because she’s a gal who just wants to be loved. She’s also got the creative, geek, and good traits.

And Hayden — tattooed, plaid wearing, and with my new purchase of the outdoor retreat pack, full hiking boots so he can disappear into the woods whenever he desires. He has the StrangerVille mystery aspiration because of course he does. His notable traits are Loner and Loves Outdoors.

Now we have El and Carter from #MIBWIP, who I haven’t talked at length about, but here’s the short brief.

El is a social media influencer with nearly a million followers, whose traits are self-absorbed, materialistic, and ambitious. Her lifelong goal is to be a proper celebrity.

Carter is interesting because in MIBWIP, he literally wears one thing — a black and white suit — nearly the entire book. Seriously, he does not wear anything else until the last few chapters. So he is constantly clad in suit, suspenders, tie, fedora, but with the added quirk of constantly wearing black converse.

Onto Stellan and Myra — I don’t talk about this project much because I’ve been a) trying to write it the right way for literally 10 years, and I’m still not sure what form it’s going to take. It’s a paranormal romance that I feel like has the energy of a campy mid-2010s urban fantasy and the humor of What We Do in the Shadows. Anyhoo, I love these two and the rest of the characters in their books, so we’re putting them here.

Myra is a pint-sized ball of kickass, with a penchant for biting people she doesn’t like and a love of books, soft pants, and big sweaters. She has the family aspiration because one of her big wants in life is a family and found family is a huge theme of this series.

Stellan has always been hard because there’s no way to make him without him just looking like Edward Cullen. He has the soulmate aspiration because he too wants to be loved, but is also a bookworm, a loner, and good.

Now onto playing. I spent the first couple of days messing around with houses and buildings, so you’ll see quite a few different locations here. Here’s the whole squad hanging out.

The next thing to do is get them all set up in their prospective couples and careers. I downloaded some career mods, so Hayden is a Podcast Host, and Hallie works in Media Production. So, fitting. El is clearly a Simstagram Influencer, and Carter is going to be a Detective, though it is a little bit more like being a cop than being a Man in Black, but he solves mysteries. So it’ll do.

Stellan isn’t going to have a job because in his book, he is a monster and skilled warrior, so there’s really no Sims equivalent. Myra’s going to be a writer.

Hayden and Stellan become fast friends, which is fitting. They’re both pretty level-headed soft boys with little appreciation for drama and much simping for their respective girls.

In the process, I got a screenshot that is a renaissance painting, I think:

*adele voice* hello, it’s me

It feels somewhat accurate that Carter has chosen a random bathroom in the house to begin his courtship with El.

We sent Carter to work where he did all kinds of good crime-solving.

And then he was the first Sim to pee his pants, which feels right.

Meanwhile, Hayden embraced his inner man of the woods and adopted some chickens and befriended a llama.

In our new residence, Hayden also adopted a cow, and after a nice WooHoo in the animal shed with Hallie, she promptly fled at the sight of the first animal.

Love and Other Conspiracies (Berkley 2024)

Par for the course, Myra and Stellan are the most stable and well-established couple in the house and are happily minding their own business and playing chess together. So very The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 of them.

We suffered our first fire — Hallie lit herself on fire trying to make hot dogs and now has a petrifying fear of fire. El was there to save the day, living up to the Smokey the Bear reference she makes in the first chapter of the book.

Cut to Carter, who is crying in bed because he feels like his life has no purpose. It seems like law enforcement is not the job for him…

Then he got attacked by our beekeeping setup, so just call this Carter Brody and the No Good Very Bad Day.

You know who is having a good day? Stellan, who just befriended this little wild bunny!

Now, here’s where shit begins to go off the rails. It’s in line with Stellan and Myra’s character to move quickly and get married young. It’s what I imagine they’d do in their story. So, they get engaged and we buy a wedding arch so they can get married.

Marriage Attempt 1: Halfway through the ceremony, Myra’s tiredness meter plummets and she falls asleep on the ground. Stellan leaves to barbecue.

Marriage Attempt 2: All is going well, no one is too tired, no one wants to barbecue. So they get to the marriage arch, and all of a sudden — ominous music begins to play and my game is teleported to a random field somewhere else, to find some dying little dog and the Grim Reaper coming to claim its soul.

I don’t know this dog. I have never seen this dog.

However, this does not impact my wedding and Stellan and Myra are happily married. I sent them on a fun little honeymoon to the woods, where they went hiking, fishing, and WooHoo-d plenty. They now have two kids — twins, which is fitting — and I had to build a baby compound in the basement and hack the game so I can have a larger household size.

The only other notable event is that Hayden and Hallie are now married, too, but there were no cute pictures for this time because it all happened really fast.

So, it turns out that these Sims are actually decent at staying alive, which means we’re going to have to keep playing and I’ll have to keep updating you guys. I may look into adding some more mods to make the gameplay experience a little more off the wall to spice it up.

soon soon! (simlish for goodbye)