Narrated by Delaney Tesla
Cacey is leaving for the Wolff Legacy
My aunt, Cacey, told me today she was going to be leaving Oasis Springs. She's being reassigned by the spy agency, and the whole family was going with her.
(Way to beg the question, Cacey).
I started begging for answers.
"To Willow Creek, right?"
I started begging for answers.
"To Willow Creek, right?"
"No, not Willow Creek," she said.
"They have agents in Granite Falls??! Lucky you! When can we come visit?"
Cacey told me she wasn't going to Granite Falls, and we weren't going to be able to visit. But she said she was going to wait till after this baby was born, to leave, so she could help me with Ewan.
"Well, where are you going?" I asked.
"That's a hard question to answer," she said.
Very early the next morning I couldn't sleep, I was pacing, and I finally woke Alexander up.
Cacey's leaving Oasis Springs. She's leaving everywhere and she can't tell me where she's going or why she's going there. And she's taking Dashle, Dennis, and Darryl!
Alexander immediately started speculating about where Cacey could go, if she wasn't going to Willow Creek or Granite Falls. Now that he started to think about it, he'd always assumed there were other places, but he hadn't actually every heard of another place from a person he knew. He'd never known anyone from another place.
Cacey was leaving in about 6 months. We had some time to try to get to the bottom of this.
Meanwhile, Ryleigh and I were both expecting babies. Ryleigh was having twins, so after the births, we'd both have two kids!
Not everyone was as happy for Ryleigh as I was.
Ryleigh has an employee in her division named Eliza Pancakes. Eliza has probably come to just about every party we've had, but never become a friend. She and Ryleigh really dislike each other. Which is weird, because they are both neat perfectionists!
One day when Ryleigh was out jogging, Eliza came by, and Ryleigh shared her big news with her.
Ryleigh told me Eliza is excited that maybe she can take Ryleigh's job while she is on family leave. Ryleigh was livid.
This pregnancy tired me out, just like when I was expecting Ewan. When I needed rest, Ewan would often come in my room to be near me.
As the baby grew, so did my questions about Cacey leaving.
Cacey had made it clear that she would not be telling us details of where she was going, so I didn't even push anymore, with her. I started doing some research. There's information about all kinds of places on the internet, but the more I thought about it, Alexander is right. I don't actually know anyone who lived in those places.
There are jokes about a place called Sunset Valley; and there are famous places called Strangetown and Pleasantview, from TV. Alexander likes a zombie show about a place called Moonlight Falls. There are even tropical places like Twikki Island, which I've told my nephews about around the campfire.
Cacey had made it clear that she would not be telling us details of where she was going, so I didn't even push anymore, with her. I started doing some research. There's information about all kinds of places on the internet, but the more I thought about it, Alexander is right. I don't actually know anyone who lived in those places.
There are jokes about a place called Sunset Valley; and there are famous places called Strangetown and Pleasantview, from TV. Alexander likes a zombie show about a place called Moonlight Falls. There are even tropical places like Twikki Island, which I've told my nephews about around the campfire.
Even more disturbing, I tried to remember a specific memory from my trips into space, and realized that I HAVE NO MEMORIES of my space flights, or looking down on the earth. It's like I disappeared during those flights, and came back with a feeling that I had accomplished space flight, but no memory.
The evening of the cookout came. Alexander, the Grillmaster, was practicing his arts.
Ewan, my little Gloomy Guy, didn't understand why we needed to celebrate something that was a tragedy.
I told him that we were not celebrating Cacey and the boys leaving. We were celebrating what they mean to us.
The party was fun, but overshadowed by Cacey and her family's departure.
Gavin, Cacey's husband, played guitar and tried to cheer us up.
Cacey had her own worries.
"Am I doing the right thing, leaving Delaney?" she pleaded with her mother's grave, torn between the niece she had cared for and the drive to find the truth.
She was intrigued by the glimmer that there is more reality out there, than she had ever thought of before. But leaving Delaney, Ewan, Alexander, and Bella, her best friend, was not easy.
Since Cacey was leaving, she entrusted the family urns to me and we built a little garden for them. Before, she had kept them in a safe place at her house.
One night not long after we built the garden, I walked into the bathroom to wash the dishes, and could swear I saw my mom there, cleaning.
I turned around and walked right back out. With Cacey leaving, and all the excitement of building the memorial garden, I think I just have my mom on my mind a lot more these days.
Early the next morning, I found Ewan doing his homework, talking as if someone was helping him.
And there were dirty dishes all over the patio, even though I saw Alexander clean up before he went to bed. I tried to calm myself down. When I'm pregnant, messes around the house really bother me.
Despite the need to process all this, time proceeded. Ryleigh and I were both very close to delivering our babies. Cacey was helping around the house all the time.
Alexander took over the plant care, although he couldn't fertilize them for me. I had a lot of time with Ewan.
The next morning I felt compelled to dress for work, even though I was on family leave. Then I had a strong craving for pancakes.
But by the time I was ready to eat the pancakes, I could tell I was in labor.
I was determined to eat those pancakes! But the pains were coming fast and hard.
I finally abandoned the pancakes, went into the bedroom, and delivered little Elise.
Welcome, Elise!
Meanwhile, Ryleigh had just delivered twins a few hours before me. Welcome, Rachel and Rianna!
Ryleigh said Dante was in a typical pre-birth panic for quite a while.
But when Rachel and Rianna were born he was the one who knew what he was doing. Ryleigh's never thought about having children until this pregnancy, but Dante is very family-oriented.
Back at Delaney's house, everyone wanted to delay, but the time came when Cacey had to leave.
Delaney tried to stop time, keep this moment from ending.
Notes:
I love this screencap! Ryleigh's telling Eliza, "Talk to the Hand!"
After building the graveyard and placing the markers, Cacey had a visit from the two snobs, her dad and her sister.
In the morning all the ghosts returned to the graveyard (remember playing 100 ghosts in the graveyard as a kid?!)
I love how Delaney is on 'supernatural' overload.
ReplyDeleteConspiracy theories?
Disappearing memories?
Odd, transparent figures that look startlingly like lost loved ones?
Yeah, it is starting to seem a bit like Fringe... now we just need some gore and a police station, hmm.
DeleteHow Convenient!
DeleteWow, this is an incredibly mysterious chapter. You take the quirky details of being a sim and make them sound so ominous. I love it.
ReplyDeleteAre we going to hear more about Cacey?
I thought you'd lost all your Generation 2 sims except Cacey, so the urns are a surprise.
Thanks for reading, Susan!
DeleteFloorRaisin, aka Whattheplum, said she could send me a few screenshots to use as postcards, and I'm sure we'll be able to reference what's going on with Cacey and her family in the Wolff Legacy. I was sad to delete them from my game, but I feel like it will be worth it to have ties.
I lost the Gen 2 sims, then downloaded them from the Gallery, then killed them off rather than update all their skills, relationships, aspiration levels, etc by cheating. Here's the link to the post with a picture of them after I aged them back up, and before they were killed off. (http://simdalesims.blogspot.com/2014/12/wow-its-been-almost-month.html) It was really hard to do but in the end I just wasn't willing to go through all those hoops for cloned sims.
Cacey had the urns in her inventory up till now, because there has been a glitch with the game, and although it is better than it was before, they are still doing it, where sims go out and mourn so much. They really need to tweak the advertising on the graves. It is pretty annoying. But I decided to go ahead and put them back anyway and just cancel the interaction most of the time.
Oh, you know, I actually read that post where you aged up the downloaded sims and then killed them off. I just forgot. Heh. I just downloaded my favorite sim off the Exchange to do the same thing because his gravestone glitched out and disappeared.
DeleteOh, so you're sending Cacey and family to be in another legacy, and you're going to maintain continuity! That's pretty awesome! I can't wait to see how that works out.
I forgot to mention that the birth scene made me laugh out loud. Giving birth in a space suit while trying to eat pancakes. So Sims.
Aww I'm really sad and disappointed to see Cacey leave with all those boys. Especially with baby Elise here now. :( You are stronger than me, being able to send sims away or *gasp* delete from my game (or kill for that matter!), I'm just a softie.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad she still has Ryleigh, love the picture of her talking to her baby like an adult. I do hope she doesn't lose her position, is that a possibility? I'm glad that Ryleigh finally had babies, so they can have their kids grow up together.
I'm very curious to see what happens now with Delaney's memory loss, and what really happened to her while she was in space! Looking forward to the next update! And oh my! Ewan, way too cute! Love that sweet, gloomy face!
Thanks for commenting, Maisie, I know, I still feel guilty about killing off Delaney's family. And it was not easy to send the triplets away, I had lots of plans for them. But it will be great to see them take on a life of their own.
DeleteRyleigh is such a neat perfectionist, she is a very rigid mom. And you will like that one of her daughters rolled the evil trait. There are so many kids in the neighborhood after woohoo weekend, I decided to roll for traits again. Ryleigh can't actually lose her job to Eliza; I was just interpreting why Eliza would be so excited for Ryleigh when they strongly dislike each other. Because Eliza is a materialistic neat perfectionist!
I have formally adopted the way Echo Weaver rolls for her traits in her Sims 3 legacy-- and was so happy to see Ewan get the gloomy trait. Plus, it runs in the Goth family anyway! She rolls for the first several traits, but if she rolls one she's already used, she isn't required to take it. Then she picks their final trait. (I think I've got that right). But Ewan rolled for gloomy right away.
I will refrain from asking questions that include the answer ;) I only feel that I know the answer because it seems so familiar to things I'm working to bring out in my own Sims 4 stories! Your sims' reality is likely somewhat different than mine. Michio Kaku says there could be a tiny universe right in this room, and clearly he's correct :P
ReplyDeleteStarwing, thanks! And thanks for not giving away too much in your reply! My sims are way behind many others in their quest for truth, and honestly, I don't anticipate most of them ever starting the journey. It will be a limited subplot :-)
DeleteAbout tiny universes, I put up a bulletin board for Horton Hears a Who, for our trait of perseverance. He had a tiny universe on a dandelion! Thank you for mentioning Michio Kaku, I hadn't heard of him before but I wonder if his ideas had some impact on the recent movie, Interstellar?
I majored in Religion, focused in culture and religion, (so not strong in sciences) but I am interested in translated quantum physics and am really enjoying how you are exploring that in your story, The Uncertainty Principle.
By translated quantum physics I mean described in ordinary language for those who don't speak equations.
DeletePoor Delaney. Cacey has been the closest thing she's had to a mother for a big chunk of her life, so saying goodbye to that will be difficult.
ReplyDeleteI think I missed something that everyone else seems to have picked up on though. So you're sending the family to another simmer to play? What made you come to that decision? I'll definitely miss seeing Cacey's family here!
Hi Carla, FloorRaisin was asking for families with kids, for her Wolff Legacy, and I remembered how much it always meant to me to see Benjiman in Starr's neighborhood, so I took the leap.
DeleteThe other thing that is going on is that there is a Symposium for Game Aware Sims in March, at Sim Writers.com, which is a fun event and I'm tying in a bit of a subplot with that (or attempting to). None of my sims have been game aware, but some are starting to wonder, and Cacey's departure was a pivotal event for Alexander and Delaney to have some questions.
But I don't plan for that theme (game aware sims) to take over the story, it will just be a theme and subplot for a while.
I guess you could say, I'm motivated in this decision by trying to build new friendships with others playing sims 4, whose blogging I really enjoy.
Sim Writers.com? What is this, and why haven't I heard of it?
DeleteI have never cross-pollinated a sim and deleted it from my own game. I and everyone I've exchanged sims with have kept all our sims and compared their different lives in alternate universes. I love doing this. As you say, it's one of the best ways to build social bonds in the community.
I think Sims Writers.com is really new, and I happened to stumble on it when Cathy Tea, a Sims 4 blogger, was featured on the EA site when I was checking to see if there was a game update to Sims 4. I kind of jumped at the chance to network with some other Sims 4 bloggers, because I've been privileged to be part of an awesome Sims 2 community and loved it, but now that I'm writing Sims 4 stories it was a little lonelier. Sims Writers.com has forums for Sims 2 and Sims 3, too. You can list your story on your blog page within the community and list when you update, and find other sims writers there. If you google simswriters.com, it will come up.
DeleteI hadn't thought of keeping Cacey's family AND sending them to the other neighborhood! (Facepalm, argh). That would have been cool. Before when I sent a sim to Apple Valley, Starr had offered to take him because I rolled a Random Occurrence Scenario (ROS) and he had to leave my Sims 2 'hood forever.
I have been desperate to network with other Sims writers. I honestly couldn't care less which game; the community IMHO is primarily about the writers. As you may have noticed reading through my archives, I did have a lovely group for years. In fact, we even have a little Facebook community. I'm the only person left in that group who is still at it. Things started getting sparse in 2014, and I have been trying to network my way into a new community like nobody's business. So far, it's been surprisingly hard going. My old community just *happened*.
DeleteI post on Google+, Boolprop, and EA forums, and I participate in ImaginingMystic's Legacy Challenge blog. Boolprop is great, but the user base seems to have vacated Sims 3 almost immediately after Sims 4 came out. :-/
If Simswriters.com has an active community, I'll head over there immediately!
Well, I'm just glad I could help! As for community happening, that's why i felt so privileged to be included by other players that I met through Sims 2, it is really nice to be part of something and I don't take it for granted. It's just, once I started playing Sims 4, it was also fun to find people who also enjoy that game. Otherwise, I agree with you, the game doesn' t matter. Even though I'm not keeping up my S2 game due to lack of time to do both, I still love reading those friends' blogs and am so glad they are still posting. Good luck with simswriters.com!
DeleteSo most of the simmers at Boolprop vacated for Sims 4 right away? It was the opposite dynamic at N99. Sometimes I felt like I was the only person posting on the Sims 4 forum because so few simmers there were interested in Sims 4. N99 is an awesome community, though.
Good grief. I've never heard of N99 either. Can I just search on that?
DeleteBoolprop.net is a nice forum focused largely on legacy and challenge stories, but also with some general social areas. I checked, and S4 is definitely where the action is.
N99 Sims Forum is at http://starlightsims.yuku.com/. But I am not sure how you join it (I think Carla, who commented above, helped me get in touch with the person who started it, Barb so I could ask to join). Carla is a moderator there so if you don't see a way to join or contact them when you navigate there, you could contact her and I'm sure she'd help you out. N99 is a really nice place, very civil, helpful, and so many extremely knowledgeable simmers who are talented at making cc, maintaining, and modding the game (neither of which I can do)- if you like tinkering with your game and keeping it running well, you will probably find some people you really get on with well there. I suspect the main reason Sims 4 isn't too popular around N99 is that people who know their stuff (as in, not me) can tell its a dumbed down game engine compared with Sims 2 and 3.
DeleteI haven't played yet, but it doesn't look like a dumbed down game engine to me. I think EA/Maxis vastly underestimated how important some features were to the fans, and once the disappointment got rolling, it's been difficult to quell, especially amongst the hard-core players. Then again, as a hard-core Sims 3 player, I put up with a lot of S3-bashing on the forums from S2 players. I guess it's the nature of passionate fandom.
DeleteI suspect that a lot of folks like what they're doing and just don't want to change. Or they have projects they want to complete before considering a new game. That's a totally random example, of course ;-).
Actually, it is not accurate anyway for me to speak for what other players think. One thing that people have said bothers them about Sims 4, and I don't like, but I am pretty happy to play around it for now, is that the game engine itself, or game programming, dictates more goals to the player than did either Sims 2 or Sims 3, especially if you play Sims 3 with opportunities off.
DeleteIt does seem to be the nature of passionate fandom, as you say, that disappointment can be so keen.
To me, each game has its strengths and weaknesses, and I guess I was ready for a change, in fact, seeking change. I absolutely adored Sims 2 up until the day I played Sims 4 first, and still do, but for me, the maintenance of the Sims 2 game, as operating systems changed, got to be a chore. I liked learning how to do it, but sometimes I wanted to be able to just start up my game and so many times I had 45 minutes to play, and took 3/4 of the time trying to get the game to work.
Sims 4 is so easy to start up and play, and maintain. And I love the Sims themselves. They are pretty close to the Sims 2 when it comes to seeming to have a life of their own, from my point of view.
I hadn't thought about the goals. I'll have to see what I think.
DeleteI like watching sims get smarter, with more built-in personality in each game. And I'm very excited about the work Sims 4 put into improved routing and optimization.
I can't remember if you said before-- did you get a chance to play the free trial Sims 4? I really like the routing and the way Sim autonomy is much more life-like -- they seek out other sims and they don't just wait for you to choose an interaction; but I like that they autonomously don't quickly go to extremes, unless it is based on a trait. Like my evil sims will autonomously choose mischievous or mean interactions, but most sims will just chat till you give them something more specific.
DeleteHaha. I was just writing about this in the SimsWriters forums.
DeleteI played the CAS demo and loved it. But I can't play the actual game because I don't have the disk space. I play Sims on a laptop with a 150G harddrive partition. Sims 3 takes up almost exactly 100G of that space, and the operating system takes up most of the space. So without a new computer (not going to happen any time soon), I can't play Sims 4 without uninstalling Sims 3, and that won't happen any time soon.
So I just read other simmers' blogs and speculate about how awesome it will be ;-)
Sims 4 does take a lot of space on the hard drive-- and I heard Get to Work will require 9 GB! But Sims 3 is incredible, with its weather, and tons of content. My Sims 3 and Sims 2 takes up about 100 GB too, and I have had to start to figure out how to manage storage spaces to be able to have them all on the computer at the same time, which is why I ended up losing my first Sims 4 save file. But that's a long story. Luckily, I was able to get a new computer for my birthday last year that has about a TB of space and GEFORCE GTX, which makes me quite happy. Skyrim, which I also love to play, loads the graphics faster than the PlayStation 3 when you walk around. I am very grateful to be able to have it.
DeleteAll caught up! And Im enjoying this new subplot of game awareness! I have been reading and reading to catch up to this latest chapter, and I also enjoy reading the comments. It was great to be able to read what happened to Delaney's family, I had missed that part, but had been very curious about it.
ReplyDeleteI love the way youve built and decorated their homes, btw. Im not a builder but I get so much inspiration from seeing how you and other Sims 4 bloggers play your games. I enjoy reading the parts where family and friends meet up together, and dine or vacation together.
Its huge that Cacey and her family are leaving. She's the root of Delaney's side of the family, now that everyone else is gone. I will be interested to see how Delaney copes with Cacey's leaving. I know the Goth's are becoming more of a focus in her life now..and Im enjoying it very much.
Id like to know how you plan out a home, to build..and where you get your inspiration for layout plans. It seems like you make really good use of space for their homes, for rockets, gardens and family cemeteries. :P lol Im so jealous. I always download houses, and they never quite have everything the way I need it. lol
It means a lot to me that you read through the last dozen posts to catch up! I'm glad the game awareness part isn't just annoying :-)
DeleteAnd thank you for the compliments about my building. Building is my passion in the sims, and I like to play my own lots, but I see so many people's lots that are far beyond my skill level or use beautiful CC that I'm not ready to put in the game. (Right now I'm still playing Sims 4 vanilla) except the occasional mod or item that I place temporarily.
I like to play my own lots because I can make them just how I want (within my abilities, ha). Anyway, you asked how I plan out a home etc. I rarely dream up the design myself, actually. Often, I google whatever style or type I am thinking of building and get some key ideas about how I want the outside to look, from one or more designs. Then I build a shell of how I want it to look on the outside, and make sure it works with the game's and my limitations. Then I start planning out the floorplan, placing objects that require a certain amount of space as I go (while I'm deciding room sizes etc), to make sure I don't end up with unusable space that's too small. I keep the sims' hobbies and family size, etc in mind. I just keep tweaking the inside and outside of the house until it works for the situation I'm building it for and looks appealing to me. Then I finish decorating and furnishing, depending on the style.
I'm so excited about these Sims being over in the Wolff Clan Galaxy! I hear they're doing great things! :)
ReplyDeleteCathy, me too, it is so much fun to see my sims thriving over there in another place. It was super cool that FloorRaisin/Whattheplum described their personalities like I see them, without me telling her about them (although I think she did read a few posts about Cacey).
DeleteThanks for taking the time to comment; if you usually use WordPress it is a real pain to comment in Blogger, I think. I started a WordPress account just to comment on other blogs more easily, and still have "one day" plans to move the blog to WordPress.