The Colossus of Belladonna Cove

There is a storm a-brewin’ in Sims country. We are still in the calm before it, but there are squalls. So before it comes down on us like the vengeance of Thor, let’s look around and see how the land lies.

We’ll start at the top.

Bella Donna: When I decided to run this Sims game, where I played an entire neighborhood of created characters, I picked Belladonna Cove, one of the standard neighborhoods that come with The Sims 2 on PC. I played it the last time I had a long-running Sims game – in which I tried to build an entire village of polygamists, guys who had multiple loves each in their own home with their own children, and the guy would support his secondary wives while living with his First Wife – and I like the look of it. Plus it has a large statue of a woman holding a Sim spindle, and that was perfect for this aspect. See, I wanted there to be a benevolent overlord, one who kept the peace; so I made a good witch. I named her Bella Donna, because she rules the Cove, maintaining the peace. She looks like Glenda the Good Witch, blonde and blue-eyed and wearing all white witch garb. She has a cat, which I named Elphaba, and she is the only Sim who does not age. Once I made her, I worked hard to have her meet all of the people in the neighborhood, make friends with them all, and then I had them pay her tribute – they bought various interesting and expensive items, invited Bella over, and then Gave Gift and handed her the TV, or the computer, or the nice stove, or the roller rink. If they needed more lifetime, I wouldn’t have them buy the green juice; I had Bella give it to them. Youth was the witch’s gift. Bella went into the Political career, and was rapidly elected Mayor of Belladonna Cove.

It worked great, but eventually I felt like Bella was getting bored. So I had her fall in love: with Contessa Lisa Raymond, one of the vampires in the Downtown expansion to my neighborhood. Then the Contessa – who appreciates the finer things, and couldn’t understand why Bella lived in a simple single-family home near the shore – convinced Bella to move into the biggest house available, the haunted mansion on top of the highest hill. She did so, and Lisa moved in with her and they wed.

But the happy couple’s time is limited. Because Bella has become distracted, and evil has arisen in her Cove.

Carlos Contender

The Mrs.

Carlos and Jessica Contender: Carlos is one of the fun characters: he started as an Elder Sim, but he had oodles of money, and he had the Romance aspiration and the Massive Attraction trait, so he was still a player, which was the character description set up for him. I found it was incredibly easy for Carlos to seduce women he met out on the town, take them on dates and WooHoo, and so he rapidly seduced three of the available ladies. But Carlos had a target on his back: he was old, he was wealthy; and Jessica Peterson started out living in a trailer park, and wishing she could meet a man who would take care of her. As soon as she connected with Carlos, it was no contest: although she had a fling or two while the two of them were dating, he soon fell in love and proposed. They wed, and Jessica moved in with her new wealthy husband, and began waiting for him to die. But Jessica was soon surprised to find that Carlos had lost none of his virility: she soon became pregnant, and then gave birth to twins, which the Hall-of-Fame boxer Carlos named Cassius and Clay Contender. And after that, Carlos just would not die. Seriously: that Sim got to be 100 “days” old, then 105, and every time I played the family, as the kids grew to toddlers and then children and then started approaching their teens, and Jessica got older and older – I gave her a jar of green juice, because my original intent was to have her play the field once she inherited Carlos’s money – I just kept waiting for him to croak.

Finally, at the ripe old age of 108, Carlos’s lifebar looked pretty full. So I had him have his last day (I hoped): he hung out with his kids, and since he is the brother of one of the other characters, I had him invite that whole family over and reconcile with all of them, bringing back up friendships that I had let lapse. And indeed: I could not have coordinated it better, because that same day, while his family surrounded him and exactly at the moment that his two boys grew to be teenagers, the Reaper came for Carlos. His sons grew, celebrated their happy youth – and then immediately started mourning their father’s death.

Gabriel and Chastity: These two, Gabriel Green and Chastity Gere, were roommates in this awesome converted garage in the “downtown” looking area of the Cove. And the story that came with them was this: Gabriel was in love with Chastity, but she was still playing the field. So yeah: Gabriel worked longer hours than she did, and while he was gone, she would Greet any guys who walked by the house, build a relationship, take them on a date, and then bring them home and WooHoo them. Then the guy would leave, and Gabriel would come home none the wiser. I decided to hook the two of them up, because I liked Gabriel and I figured Chastity-of-the-ironic-name wouldn’t pass up a sure thing, so they had a home-date and a WooHoo. But then the inevitable happened, and Gabriel came home early and caught her. Heartbroken, he threw her out, met a nice game-generated girl named Vanessa, settled down, and now they have two kids and a dog named Wilbur. Chastity I moved into her own home and tried to turn into the town pump, but something glitched and every time I played her the game crashed, so she was relegated to the limbo of the Family Bin.

The Clevelands: Jason and Melissa are both Money oriented, and he wanted to be Captain Hero of the police force, while she wanted to be a Criminal Mastermind. And this struck me as so odd that I decided they would have to be very strange. So I decided I would warp their children. They already had a teenaged son, and that was fine; Melissa wasn’t actually employed as a criminal yet, so young Justin escaped to college before things got weird. But Melissa wanted another baby, and so the two of them had Mason: and Mason has lived a very strange childhood. His parents taught him nothing as a toddler – not how to speak, not how to walk, and they never potty-trained him; instead, they Lectured him every chance they got, starting as an infant, every time he soiled himself. Then they would give him baths. That kid got dozens of baths, daily baths, in between being alternatively chewed out and neglected. So now, Mason really loves water, and both hates and loves his parents. And he is still a child, but at some point, he is going to kill first Jason and then Melissa, and then embark on a career as a serial killer who will invite people over, get them into his pool, and then remove the ladder and watch them drown.

As I said, my darker Sims urges proved impossible to suppress.

Geoff Rutherford and Connor Weir: These two bros started as friends living together so they could afford the nice house, said their storyline; so I decided they would be swingers. They would meet and marry, have children – still living in the same house together – and then wife swap and have two more children. I loved this plan (and thought of it as adding fuel to Mason Cleveland’s madness-fire, because Geoff is Mason’s uncle, Melissa Cleveland’s brother). But two things went wrong: after Geoff started fooling around with Connor’s wife, and they fell in love, Geoff’s own wife came home and Geoff made out with her – which sent Connor’s wife into a jealous rage. That shit never goes away, not when they’re all living in the same house. And even worse: Geoff and his wife had twins. And only after playing them up to toddlers did I realize: there were now seven Sims in the house. I could not make two new wife-swapped babies until one of the kids moved out. So I scrapped this whole family into the bin, and replaced them with . . .

Trent, Trisha, and Tina Traveller. Not my fault.

And their dear friends, the Gavigans

The Travelers and Gavigans: Two families, each with a young child, that I put into the same household once I moved Geoff and Connor out to limbo. I was more careful this time, and I got Trent Traveller to woo, seduce, and impregnate Mary Gavigan, and then Nathan Gavigan got it on with Trisha Traveller. Now there are two babies in the household, a Gavigan who is half Traveller, and a Traveller who is half Gavigan. (This, by the way, is the family I was talking about when I got the weird look from the passing jogger, when I said, “I got my swingers to impregnate each others’ wives!”) I also had the two pre-made kids, who rapidly became teenagers, fall in love with each other; they will be a couple for life, a strange twist I liked so much I’m going to do it again with the two new children – who also don’t share any blood, though the father of each is actually married to the mother of the other. My plan at this point is to make this the strangest family tree I can think of – I want to move the two teens out and then have both women WooHoo and conceive by the same guy, and then I will move a new young woman into the house and have her bear children by both of the men. I do not know how I will be able to manage all of that – but I’m going to try.

Samantha on the left, Kim on the right.

The DeBateaus and Cordials: So this was the last family set that I went a little strange with. Though I blame the game for giving me the storyline in the first place. Two sisters, Samantha and Kim Cordial, who were, according to their bio, so fiercely competitive they didn’t know if they could live together. So Kim was one of the early – well, contenders – for the hand of the wealthy Carlos; thus I sent Samantha after the richest guy in town, Armand DeBateau. Kim lost Carlos to the trailer-trash, but Samantha won Armand, married him and moved into the penthouse he shared with his adopted teenaged daughter Tara. She got pregnant on their wedding night, and then I sent them on a honeymoon, my first attempt at a Sims vacation. It was fun, except I found something out: you can’t have children on vacation, so Samantha’s pregnancy didn’t develop at all over the two days they were there – but she was already feeling the misery of pregnancy, the rapid decline of comfort and energy and bladder and hunger, and the morning sickness that leads to vomiting and green stinky toilets. So yeah: never take a pregnant woman on a beach vacation. A lesson from the Sims.

But of course, this situation made Kim mad. So Kim did two things: first, she became an evil witch – it was perfect because the Cordial house had a secret room behind a turning bookcase, which was the ideal place for her cauldron and spellbook – and second, she went after her sister’s husband. And she got him, too, because there is no loyalty in the Simverse. He dated her, WooHooed with her, and impregnated her. After she gave birth to her daughter Hecate, she invited her sister and brother-in-law over, presented the child, kissed Armand in front of Samantha, and we had ourselves a good old blow-up.

After that, I decided to make Kim the town WooHoo-machine, since Chastity wasn’t working. And so she’s been raising her child and WooHooing with every guy she can – including Armand, who came back for reconciliation. And that’s all been fine – but Kim is an evil witch, as well. A powerful one.

And there’s a storm coming.