A Romance Sim's Worst Nightmare!

[baratron]

For reasons which I will eventually explain, there are two bizarre new families in my current Sims 2 game. One is a family that consists entirely of clones of SimKasson (6, in total), all in the same outfit but with different coloured hair so I can tell them apart. The other is a sim who is Not Me. Alice Notme has my hair, clothes, colouring, personality and interests, but because I completely suck at making sims that look like real people, her face isn't much like mine at all. It doesn't actually matter, as she won't get named in the story and you won't see her face .

So I made Alice on Wednesday night & moved her into a house. After a few sim hours the "welcome wagon" came round. Alice was greeted by a random Townie called Marissa, the Original Sean T. Drinkwater and Kasson Clone #1 (the blue-haired one who was recently squashed by a satellite). Amused by the opportunity, I ignored the random Townie & greeted the two boys. For some reason (I can't think why?! ) Alice had one lightning bolt of attraction for Sean, and three for the KassonClone. OK, so not surprising at all - but it was surprising that both the boys had lightning bolts for Alice! (This is weird because I DID NOT deliberately set any of the sims in that Neighbourhood to like a Sim Me - in fact, I haven't touched the default Turn-Ons & Turn-Offs of the Freezepop sims, and I set the clones' Turn-Ons/Turn-Offs completely at random.) The Original Sean had one lightning bolt for Alice, but he's a real person, so he's not having a romantic relationship in my game without the real Sean's consent. The KassonClone, on the other hand, is a clone (and not only do clones not exist in real life, but the real Kasson is amused by my sims) - and he had THREE lightning bolts right back! You know I just had to run with it and see what happened...

So within a couple of hours Alice NotMe and K-One Clone were getting, uh, friendly. Very friendly. The only problem is, SimKasson and all his clones have very few Outgoing points, compared to Alice, who has 7. This means that "I" kept initiating actions that he didn't like. So I had to wait for him to do them to me first, as that seems to "unlock" the action for me to be able to do it back to him.

Did someone say "wish fulfillment"? That's right! All I want in real life is my own pet KassonClone to love and hug. I don't want the real Kasson, he has a life of his own several thousand miles away, but I want a clone of him to keep in my secret dungeon house. I'd dye his hair a different colour from the actual Kasson, so they didn't get confused, and give him all the books and musical instruments he needed, and take him out & buy him tight PVC clothing, which he could model for me. It'd be the perfect relationship .

Or maybe not.

After our first date, K-One showed up at the house with a single red rose and card. Romantic, eh? By our second date, he was already thinking of marriage. Uh-oh. So there I was, thinking that the hardest thing would be whether Alice was happy with one KassonClone, or if she wanted to collect the whole set. Silly me! I forgot the way the game throws curveballs at you. Alice is, of course, a Romance sim. Romance sims have Wants like "Have 2 loves at once" and "Make Out with 3 people". They Fear engagement, marriage and kids. K-One is a Pleasure Seeker sim - and they generally have Wants like "Watch TV", "Juggle", "Play Video Games", "Play Chess" and "Go Swimming". Short-term goals that are easily manageable. They're not supposed to have Wants like "Get Engaged to Alice"! I was hoping the marriage thing would be temporary, but no. Now he won't even go on dates with me any more! He just wants to come round and hold my hand and hope that I kiss him! (While Alice gets Wants like "Kiss K-One", K-One gets Wants like "Be Kissed By Alice". He never wants to initiate anything. It's very "Caring For Your Introvert" time ).

ARGH!!

So now I have a choice of three things to do with these sims:
1) Let K-One propose to Alice, and she'll turn it down and send him into Aspiration Failure. I couldn't do that! It'd break his little heart!
2) Let K-One propose to Alice, and have her accept, so she goes into Aspiration Failure. (A worthy fate for a Romance sim, say some, but not if she's ME! It's not my fault the Romance mod isn't updated for NL yet!).
3) Rewire his head with the Renuyu-Senso-Orb and change his Aspiration to Romance. And then scream as he turns out to be the first Romance sim in history who actually wants to get married.

I'm amused to discover that I wouldn't be able to do monogamy, even with a Kasson Clone. And I remain amused that the initial getting together happened more-or-less autonomously. Did the game check which existing residents of the Neighbourhood were most likely to be attracted to Alice when it created the welcome wagon, or was its choice completely random? I will never actually know.

And, er, does anyone know how to get him to go on dates with me again? 'Cos they were kinda fun, and Alice has a Want for Public Woohoo right now. Maybe that'll offset the -5000 in Aspiration she'll get if he proposes .

[Ancient Sim]

Is that Klasson sim available for download anywhere?  I checked Gromit's stuff on MTS2, but couldn't find the cloning machine thingy, which is a shame as it looked interesting. 

To answer your last question, I've found that welcome wagons usually do contain Sims who have varied numbers of lightning bolts for the Sims in the household, as do walkbys a lot of the time.  I think it's probably deliberate.  Unfortunately, the game doesn't seem to take any notice of whether they're committed to someone else or not, or even whether they're compatible in age.  As for your Sims, you could always marry them off in SimPE and add the memories, that way neither of them would take any aspiration point failure, it'd just be a 'given', so to speak.

[baratron]

Heh - sorry to disappoint you. It's a Display Cabinet . The cloning was achieved using a large number of cheat codes and a sneaky bit of hidden floor. That's all I'm saying! (PM if you want details, although I seem to have deleted the PM I sent someone else with all the details in).

None of the Freezepop sims are available to download because I'm a little uncertain what the real-life Freezepop feel about it. Kasson told me to write more stories, Liz said it was "insane... in a good way", and Sean hasn't said anything. (And Sean's in the story twice - there are 2 of him! He should have an opinion, damn him!).

I could probably let you have one of the clones when I'm finished with them? They'll need good homes .

[Regina]

Since NL, Romance sims are always rolling the want to get married.  You should've seen screenshots of one of Brynne's sim's wants.  If I remember right he wanted to either get engaged and/or married to several of his loves, woohoo with some others, invite someone over or some such.  At any rate, it was completely insane!