Sims 4: Arthur the Hero

When last we left my Sim-version of the DCU, Bruce Wayne had detected for us, following the clue of a dog dish, that J'onn had moved with his "niece" (no relation) and dog to Atlantis (my renamed version of Sulani, the Sims Pacific Island-y world).  And when I saw the house I couldn't blame them. 

When I set up this game, I had placed many Atlantis-appropriate lots in advance, including one that I'd been imagining moving Arthur & his brood into.  

One with an open hallway-adjacent pool on EVERY FLOOR

Clearly, after his early experiences, J'onn had NO intention of ever being more than jump away from a fire-extinguishing body of water.  Fair enough, JJ. Meanwhile, in

Arthur "Aquaman" Curry, Jackson "Aqualad" Hyde, Garth "Big-Headed Purple-Eyed Freak" Doesn't-Deserve-A-Lastname, and Salty "The Aquadog" Curry were living in Amnesty Bay (my reskinned Brindleton Bay, the Sims's Atlantic Seaboard town) in four adjacent houses 

connected by an underground pool.

And were miserable. Sure, it sounds cool, but large cool-looking Sim houses are very often logistical nightmares to LIVE in.  Originally, Mera had been living with them, but I just couldn't juggle that many residents so she moved out; as a mermaid, she was suffering worst of all, and really need to live in Atlantis. They had no neighbors or friends, and the frequent thunderstorms terrified Garth.

To be fair, everything terrifies Garth.

So rather than evict JJ, I simply had Arthur move in with him, since they were pals already (as much as they were pals with anyone) and the place had six bedrooms.  The change has done wonders for all involved. Access to the beach and ocean is a blessing for the aquatic characters; the Martians are happy to be out of the desert, and they are immune to the sunburn common on the islands. Arthur is a lifeguard, which is only a part-time job, but they don't need more money and he's happier protecting lives than he was ruling.  Maybe I'll have J'onn buy a movie theater!

As often happens in comics, characters that don't quite stand on their own, work quite well in concert, and the household is now neither boring nor chaotic.  The adults have plenty of time for their own pursuits (including Arthur's pursuit of Mera, Diana, and others).

Which sometimes involves skinny-dipping with dolphins he commands; 
who are we to judge?

The teens support each other, 

Being thoroughly disappointed in Garth requires a team effort, really.

everyone helps take care of the dogs, 

They also entertain each other, as dogs do.

and even Garth isn't scared all the time now.

Sometimes he's just sad instead.

This is a huge improvement over their pre-reboot Sim-lives, where Arthur was slaving away unappreciated at his custom job in the Monarchy, while his wife Mera was unhappily trying to hold down a job as a marine environmentalist while squeezing out heirs, whom she had to leave largely in the care of her erratic twin sister, Siren, who was married to Arthur's evil (and only sporadically employed) half-brother Orm, all of whom lived in a giant many-leveled lighthouse,

Don't let the hat fool you; he was NOT fine.

with (of course) an underground pool

Ping-pong, Arthur? It's all so painfully bourgeois.

 and a separate evil underground lair for Orm and Siren.  

I'll confess: I miss the lair, with its centralized pool/aquarium room, World Domination Room, and Pipe Organ Room.

I think Arthur is much happier now living his life-guard lifestyle in his tropical world with  his chosen family.

What could be greater than a king? 

A hero!

INTERLUDE: For Chip Zdarsky

 How To Make Me Not Read Your Batman Comics:

"When DC approached me to write Batman, I immediately thought about things that could really challenge the character mentally, physically, and in terms of his relationships," Zdarsky said in an interview with ComicBook. "Failsafe is his Doomsday.”

Doomsday.  Lovechild of the Hulk and Porcupine Pete. Solomon Grundy's less articulate cousin.  Blockbuster without motivation.  The Living Plot Device.  The Monstrum Ex Machina.  Compound-Noun. Literally, the most-lazily-created character created in my lifetime (certainly in proportion to its role).

That was your immediate thought of what to do? For BATMAN?  

DC. Or DISCOVERY, if necessary. A word, if you will.

Please hire an adult to write Batman (have any of you seen his latest film?).

Rather than

Chip Zdarksy

  

Sims 4: Poor J'onn

Poor J'onn. Never quite the center of even his own story.

Could be worse. Could be on fire.

J'onn works really well as a Sim, because there are alien Sims, they can look a lot like he's supposed to, and they can disguise themselves as human just as he does.

How J'onn really looks.
At least, when the tuna casserole turns out below expectations.

There's a perfect "Apex City" style neighborhood for him: Strangerville, so called because it's weird, lots of aliens live there, and it's home to a mystery storyline about an extraterrestrial spore invasion that infests and controls the populace.  All it's missing is the giant robot bears.

Who knows, maybe there are some hidden in the Military Base.  

It was perfect for him! What could possibly go wrong? Well, I should have gotten the hint when, on his first weekend, he goes to visit Arthur, who was making dinner, and, as soon as he walks in the kitchen, the stove catches fire because it saw him coming.  Then, after he recovered from that panic (because, if you think Martians are afraid of fire, you should see how Sims react), he returned home to use the restroom where the toilet BURST INTO FLAMES AND SET HIM ON FIRE.  Welcome to Apex City.

Reproduction of original event. It happens often enough.
Pity about the dress.

After that vibrant start, I settled J'onn into a trailer with his dog, Jupiter, who became a star on Simstagram, because JJ was always posting cute pics of him. 

Damned adorable is what it is.

J'onn, however, remained nearly friendless because all he did was go to his job as a private detective and spend every spare moment tracking down 'the mystery of Strangerville' so he could prepare to defeat the big bad Mother Plant and become the Hero of Strangerville.

The pics of the big fight are redacted because the mystery is supposed to remain that way, but suffice it to say the only other person to survive the fight was Hal Jordan, because of course it was.

His actual default pose.

And then...

Nothing.  He forewent all personal and professional development for the sake of being the hero and solving the mystery.  Being the Hero of Strangerville means J'onn gets an occasion stale cupcake mailed to him by fans and gets free conspiracy books at the Curio Shop near the trailer park.  In the end, all he has to show for it is Level 10 Cooking Skill from eating alone every night, some surveillance recordings of Hal Jordan, and a great many cute pics of Jupiter.

Dog's damned adorable, though.

I'd tried to jump-start his post-mystery life by forming a club of around him of other aliens who liked to go to the movies and use their alien powers. How perfect is that?! I even made him a space-themed movie theater, tagged it as an alien hangout, and made it the club hub.  

And popcorn is free.

He even found himself a like-minded alien boyfriend whose human disguise was also an African-American. What could possibly go wrong? Well, leave it to J'onn, the Charlie Brown of the Justice League Gang, to figure out a way. 

I popped in once only to discover he forgotten his boyfriend. Not overlooked or ghosted. Forgotten. As if they had never met. They had to be reintroduced. I figured it was some glitch, these things happen, it's a very complex game. So he started another relationship, with a female alien.  And it happened again.  I wondered: was there something wrong with J'onn's mind?!

The very idea is unthinkable.

Next time, I stuck with him to watch his every move and learned the truth. Turns out, J'onn was being repeatedly betrayed by his paramours. One of their alien powers is mindwiping.  After a while with J'onn they would simply decide, I suppose, that they were tired of him and... WIPED all knowledge of their relationships from his mind.  Ouch.  Poor J'onn.

What kind of monster does such a thing?

Anyway, when my multiverse had a reboot--er, I mean, I started a new game--for all my DC characters, in order to broaden J'onn's life, I added Miss Martian to his household and moved them out of the trailer park to a nice regular house.  

From which they prompted disappeared.

I discovered this only by accident when I went looking for Bruce Wayne, of all people.  Unbeknownst to me, he had moved into their house immediately after they left; the clue was Jupiter's dog dish, which was still full of unspoiled dog-food.  

Do NOT mess with Jupiter's dog dish.

I suppose Bruce was eager to solve the town's new mystery, because detectives gotta detective.  Working with Bruce, I found that J'onn and M'gann, tired of living in a desert town full of hicks, grunts, and weirdos who send them stale cupcakes, had used some of their recently increased autonomy to move to...

We'll look for them there tomorrow.

Sims 4: Ollie, Eye of the Storm

Meanwhile in

As chaotic as the Sims can be (answer: VERY), you'd imagine that Oliver Queen, center of the Arrowverse, man of a thousand supporting casts, notable hothead, renegade, and rabble-rouser would be one of the most chaotic of all. 

In fact: no.  In what is apparently a Sims version of comic book irony, no matter what happens Ollie is NOT chaotic. Ollie himself always seems... pretty mellow, no matter what chaos is going on around him, which is good since ALL IS CHAOS AROUND HIM.  Ollie isn't chaotic; he's some kind of chaos generator, like maybe his mother was a Mandelbrot. 

I set him up in a nice big industrial style residence (a 'converted former factory'), and for roommates gave him Roy Harper, Dinah Lance, and Rene "Wild Dog" Ramirez, because I like Wild Dog.

Okay. Maybe "like" isn't exactly the right word.

Pool in the back, gym in the basement. Rene to friend/cook, Roy to sidekick/student, Dinah to girlfriend/garden. This is O.G. Dinah; Golden Age Dinah, the florist, which made her the main household breadwinner. You see, flowers (and flower arrangements) in the Sims are extremely profitable; they are practically money trees. I mean, they aren't literally money trees, because there ARE literal money trees in the Sims. But one doesn't use those because those are considered tacky and unrealistic.

God forbid anything in The Sims be tacky and unrealistic.

Meanwhile Ollie was supposed to rise up the corporate tree as a rich business person; you know, Ollie of Queen Consolidated Whatever.  Instead of Ollie the Tech Entrepreneur. Or Ollie the public relations expert. Or Ollie the anthropologist of native american cultures. Or anti-establishment Ollie. Or... face it, there are a lot of Ollies to choose from.  

A Downloaded Diggle and one-out-of-30 Felicities also lived in "Star City', which was my rebrand of the Sims Evergreen Harbor, the center of the game's eco-living gameplay.  It gave Ollie a port city he could literally help clean up! It was perfect. What could possibly go wrong?  But this is Ollie we're talking about...

The job didn't work out almost immediately.   Ollie got a chance card about whether he should confront unethical practices among the higher ups at his workplace, which, being Ollie, I could not let him ignore. It would be like Clark kicking a puppy. So the fat-cats fired Ollie, who I then entered into politics, because, hey, that's a thing he does.  Rene wasn't doing anything other cook, so he joined the career, too, just like on the TV show, to keep Ollie company at work!  

That's when things really started to fall apart.  Dinah found about, um, That Thing between Ollie and Roy that was happening when I wasn't looking.

Well. maybe I looked a little.

Apparently EVERYONE finds Ollie irresistible and he's too polite to say no.  

Sim salmon ladder.

Their relationship was always pretty forced (they had nothing in common, other than a love of the treadmill); he was a loner by nature and she was strongly independent, so she broke up with him but stayed in the house. Awkward.  That's when she changed her hair from natural black to bottle blonde and got that sweet custom motorcycle I had to search the entire internet for.

And worth every second.

So I quickly fixed her up with the FIRST townie who came along to keep her engaged so she didn't wander off and, I dunno, shack up with Alfred or something.  That turned out to be Eco-master Knox Greenburg (the skinny goofy NPC who bores everyone talking about recycling and water collectors and grub farming).

Like, yoinks!

They both like nature and plants and (unlike Oliver) Knox, being an NPC, had no outside interests (other than grubs). She'd seemed happier than I'd ever seen her (off the treadmill). Plus, Dinah was also great for Knox, making him get a decent job (civil designer, green technology expert) and sending him to the gym (and the barber), which turned out way way way way way way better than you'd imagine.

Like, YOINKS!

Apparently he's also dynamite in the sack because they kept each other VERY busy.  SO busy, that one time when starting the game after a re-fresh, I forgot to throw a necessary default switch, and, well, Dinah was suddenly eating for two. A shotgun wedding was held pronto, because no way would I let a superhero have an illegitimate child! 

Except for Barry, of course. More on that later.  

Well, that wedding was a utter disaster in 100 ways that I'm still in therapy for, but all you need to know is that the deadline on the event ALMOST ran out without Knox and Dinah (who was very visibly pregnant in her white wedding dress) getting married because when I needed her at the altar she was RUNNING on the treadmill.  Sometimes a Sim will get obsessed with a particular activity for no discernible reason; she's an active type, and no matter what happened, the second I wasn't watching her, she'd head for the treadmill.

She's long-since divorced from Knox now and when I went to check on her tonight this is where I found her.  Happy as a clam.

Meanwhile, Ollie and Rene were spending all their time campaigning together and Rene's whole function in the game was supporting Ollie, who was lonely and irresistible and... well.  So now Ollie and Rene are sharing a bedroom (and then some), Knox and Dinah have one baby (Stamen) with another in the oven), and Roy is hanging out at the hookah bar. Oh, and Ollie's campaign is a shambles because, well, Ollie's just not very NICE.  He simply lacks the patience for campaigning. 

I never had the heart to bring Felicity and Diggle into this mess. They lead entirely separate, successful, quiet lives on the other side of Star City, discussing African percussion and John's underdeveloped wardrobe.

But Rene's popularity is soaring; he's getting votes, rallying crowds, passing ordinances; the town is transforming overnight into a high-tech eco-mecca thanks to him (and Knox); he surpasses Ollie easily as a natural celebrity and is obviously headed for city hall and maybe the White House.  

"Of course you do, but... I'm jes' sayin', hoss;
polls say voters wan' a mayor who owns a shirt."

So I let Oliver quit and become an Internet Personality, figuring maybe being a cantankerous jerk can be profitable that way.  That, naturally, didn't work out, because he didn't have the patience for all the upkeep of posting and editing (and he kept doing dumb stuff that lost followers), so he quit and did nothing around the house, while Rene did everything for him, the household, and the city. The Greenburgs moved out to open up a flower shop, but as the kids grew, Dinah clearly resented being stuck as a mother and the arguing with Knox got worse and worse... and after What Barry Did there was no turning back. 

I'm sure it all makes perfect sense. IF you're Barry.
Because NONE of it ever bothers him one iota.

She divorced Knox, leaving him alone to run the flower shop and raise three boys (if you count the clone).  Or a least it would have been alone if a disenchanted Rene hadn't autonomously stopped by to visit his old, lonely housemate Knox one rainy evening, and... well. 

Two of the boys are in college, one's a professional ballplayer, Knox's brother runs the flower shop, Rene married Knox, got a star on the Walk of Fame and they retired having made so much money that they very easily live on investment income (as do all the children, who don't really have to work, and Knox's mothers and sisters).

Meanwhile, Roy's still in school because I didn't have the heart to age him up for fear he'd abandon Ollie, who's renting out rooms at the factory-house and still doing the only thing he really seems to enjoy.

Beating Roy at darts.

But I still have hope. Through it all, Oliver seems unfazed, and his latest career should be perfect for a man like him: secret agent! He's fit, he's self-assured, he's into *ahem* casual romance, he's a loner. What could possibly go wrong?

...
I... just can't even any more.

Sims 4: Boring Bruce, Clark, & Diana

You'd think that "The Trinity", the DCU's three biggest stars, would be as exciting as Sims as they are as superheroes. Alas. 

Meanwhile, in Metropolis...

Clark is boring because he's perfect. He doesn't have superpowers, but the version I downloaded of him has most relevant skills maxed out, so there is nothing for him to learn.

When and where and why did he have time to learn archaeology?

DJ mixing and dancing? No; MC Kent I will not buy.

Gourmet cooking? The man who eats rocks and puts ketchup on boeuf bourguignon?

Parenting? ORLY? Does Supergirl get a vote on this?

Granted, Kal got a very early start on the Rocket Science thing.

Does Clark even know that videogames exist,
let alone take the time to master Road Rival Alpha and Genie's Curse?

He doesn't have any career ambitions because he's already as high as he needs to be in the (custom) journalism career; I have to expend effort to prevent him from being promoted to on on-air newsreader.

Because how ridiculous would that be?

Not even the 'naughty mod' spices him up little because you can't let him really be 'naughty' with anyone except someone he's properly dating and whom he loves and respects because... he's Superman. And, Silver Age notwithstanding, that's pretty much one person at a time. Because as much as I love the idea of creating Lana Lang in Smallville (as I have renamed the Sims' rural world) and giving her beehives so that like a proper Insect Queen she can train the swarms to go attack Lois, the fact is, Lois lives in an apartment in the big city and bees don't take elevators.

"Jimmy, are you sure you don't want some--"
"I already ate, Clark, thanks."

Mostly Clark makes dinner for other people, spends his time on the street befriending people, making them feel better, mentoring them in skills (because he has all of them), and visiting Smallville and doing errands for the townsfolk. It makes him happy.  Once he builds up some money, maybe I'll buy him a weekend place there, so he can marry Lois and get her to raise some kids there, or at least just get her away from Barry.

More on that later.

Meanwhile, in Gotham City,

"Forgotten Hollow" to regular Sims players

Bruce is Brucing. He's comedically rich, so he needs no job.  Alfred does all the domestic work. That's a lie, of course, because they have a maid service, Alfred mostly cooks and looks after the Orphan Bruce adopted when I wasn't looking because of course he did.

"Alfred, to really complete our Depressing Decor we need an Orphan.
And don't FEED this one so much. Ruins the effect."

That's also a lie, because they have a regular nanny service. Alfred mostly looks after Bruce. I should have Bruce spend time tom-catting around but you know his heart's not really in it, because that would be FUN.  I don't feel the need to have him 'propagate' when you know he just wants to adopt orphans. At some point I should send him some of Barry's excess kids.  But more on that later.

From a storytelling perspective, I AM interested for Bruce's sake in this custom career, because I am capable of fixing so that it's available not just for adults but for teens and children, too. Even orphans.

Wayne & Co. live in the neighborhood where it's always night-time because it's designed for vampires, although I got rid of all those because you certainly can't have a bunch of bat-people running around Gotham City. It's logistically hard to play Bruce because he lives in a big weird mansion and Sims tend to get lost in those.  Perhaps I'll have him get a dog named Ace, train him to attack, and then roam around the worlds looking for people who are being mean so he can sic the dog on them. That seems like something he'd enjoy.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC,

Diana lives with her twin brother, Jason, her pal Etta, and Etta's adopted son, whose name (Demetrius?) always escapes me because I didn't pick it, and Etta's dog, Caramel, which I remember because "Caramel Candy" is funny.

And adorable.

Diana works in the (custom) International Relations career, which uses the language barriers mod (one of my favorites!), so she spends a lot of time studying foreign languages and reading Classical literature (which fortunately I created for her). She's a career-gal, so rather than dating per se, she has FWBs, mostly Cisco Ramon's older brother, Dante, the concert pianist, because he's (1) straight; (2) vaguely Themysciran-looking; and (3) without any other narrative function in the game.  

Just do whatever she tells you to, Dante, and you probably won't get hurt, much.

Oh and Lex, of all people, because, even though I created him as an evil rich scientific genius who lives in a penthouse in Metropolis, he's decided he'd rather paint and hang out in downtown coffee shops hawking his paintings and hitting on anyone pretty who shows interest in them, which is how they met.  Diana likes the sensitive artistic type. 

"That's to GO, please. I have art to create.
And Kryptonians to kill."

As I said, the Sims far outnumber me and I can barely control one of them at a time.  Maybe I should have made Steve Trevor. Or Trevor Barnes. Or BOTH.  Then they could fight over Diana's affections. 

But knowing the Sims, who are notoriously omnisexual, they'd probably wind up falling for each other when I was in some other world and I'd come back to find them living in a household named "Trevor Trevor" and Diana attending their wedding in Tartosa and hooking up with one (or more) of the Ramon Brothers at the reception (like that time at the bowling alley disco that I refuse to talk about). And the less said about the thing with her and Barry the better.

Etta, at least, has some verve; she's a college gal, getting her culinary degree, meaning she visits bizarre recipes upon the household regularly and grows vegetables out back. 

I like her style, though.

I was going to set her up with an active lesbian love life and make her the leader of a sorority (since the Sims can create those), but she went and nonsensically adopted a child before I could get that going and it's all a bit too much for me to juggle.

So smart they sweat lightbulbs.

Jason has no job; he's a stay-at-home brother.  He's Greek, so he just makes pottery, works out, plays the lyre, plays chess or spars with Diana when she asks, and has sex with townies of any gender or life-state whenever they ask. I should probably just download the custom olive trees for him to complete the picture. 

In case you thought I was a liar.

So, as you can see...

these guys are the boring ones.