If you popped your head in here a couple days ago, you saw where I started what's become known as a "Sims 2 diary" among those so pathetic as to feel the need to chronicle the lives of their imaginary computer friends. The difference here is I'm using the people who hang out on this Web site as the characters!

... making me the guy who took people off the Internet he's never met in real life and put them in a game with himself so as to have vicarious friends. So never mind. I'm still pretty pathetic.

Regardless, the family is together, the house is now built, so let's see what happens when they get inside.

Just as a quick note: In giving the characters personalities, I tried to give the people they're based on carte blanche as to what identifiers they wanted. Three of the eight didn't respond to my query, so yah boo sucks, I built 'em myself. The point behind this exercise was so I could just kinda let them do whatever, only occasionally giving them a nudge in the necessary direction (using the wants and needs as my guide). The Sims 2 AI is smarter, but these bastards aren't gonna get any jobs unless I tell them to.

When you invent a lot in the middle of nowhere, the game lets you name it. I'm assuming this is normally the street address or whatever, but I went ahead and called it Al-Azif, after our beloved Nicholas Yu, whose comic brought us together in the first place. You could say Al-Azif was the foundation on which our friendship was built, but talk like that makes me want to kick myself in the nuts.

Q99: "Dear diary, today Endy built us a house. It's awesome of him to do that! I can't wait to have all kinds of madcap adventures! Hopefully involving zombies."

Already the more world-devouring-inclined are having talks about how to properly clench an iron fist around the globe. X obviously feels that Dick Cheney and Halliburton have the right idea.

Hee hee! Global destruction is hilarious!

KC and Endy, on the other hand, are clearly not starting off on the right foot. Most certainly it has to do with Endy making a crack about Hello Kitty.

Although ... they seem oddly happy about hating each other from the get-go.

As the girl, Kris doesn't have those problems. All she has to do here is talk about some lips and Log swoons and wants to be her boyfriend.

For his part, Gray attempts to get his schwerve on by making jokes about the master of the house. Kris clearly thinks it's hilarious. A PLAGUE! A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR ... ah, who am I kidding? My life is a joke.

Table manners? Overrated.

Kris-chan: "You know, all I wanted was a freakin' sandwich and I end up surrounded by dorks. Why do I have to be the girl anyway? Why couldn't it have been Anj or Zoe?"

Liquid-X: "Hey, baby, what say you and the only employed member of this household go out with some of the money I'll be raking in as a newly-hired campaign worker?"

Yeah, with the aspiration and zodiac sign I picked for X, he wanted to go into politics. Some people just can't be saved. (Actually, when I played this game in the original Sims I ended up picking a political track for X as well. Weird.) Later, Kris took a job as a security guard and KC ended up joining the military. That'll crush the girly out of him.

TheLazarus: "Hmm, I wonder if anybody ever told Log that people made out of wood should probably not mess around with the oven."

Indeed, it looked like KC was going to give us some action by starting the first real kitchen fire, but as it turned out he just burned the spaghetti. Not as thrilling as it seemed, though everybody within a 20-foot radius was excited to tell him how badly it stank.

Laz, on the other hand, got mad skills. Dude couldn't get enough of that cookbook. He read it for pretty much the entire day, starting when I saw that huh, Laz wants to earn a cooking skill point, I'll point him that direction and ending when he finally put the book down by himself, presumably because of the gnawing pains of his stomach eating itself.

And what's the first thing Laz makes with his new cooking skills? TV dinner. I swear to whatever supreme being you want this came after the cookbook-reading.

Meanwhile, other members of the household are impressing themselves on the locals in an effort to earn some free cookies or whatever the welcome wagon brings in Strangetown. Here we see Gray apparently pissing off one of the X-men. Hell hath no fury like an African queen scorned.

On the other side of the house, Endy, following the programming of his romance aspiration, has jumped headlong into the bullshit song-and-dance about marriage he thinks every woman wants to hear. Jenny Smith appears to be buying it. Until ...

Jenny: "Giggle! Like, your friend was just totally hitting on me! He smells!"

Storm reacts with disapproval at X's joke. Apparently, she finds nothing funny about the lack of radioactive Twinkies.

Don't hate the player, hate the game, baby.

I don't know what that means.

As a side note, to leave my house, this woman just kinda ... phased out of existence. She made it out the door, it looked like she was going to say goodbye to Laz, and ... foop! I wonder if she got abducted by aliens. Of course they'd have left Laz alone, assuming he's one of their own.

Either every single book in existence is full of new and exciting surprises and thrilling twist-turns that leave Kris on the edge of her seat, or she just can't read without moving her lips. This look never left her face while there was a book in her hands.

Eventually, Pollination Tech #9 gets fed up and leaves, unable to stand the company of these insufferable geeks and their massive group-study session any longer.

Even Log is bored with the whole thing. Hey, if you bastards would have done something cool like light yourself on fire, I'd have something more exciting to write about.

Endymion: "Dahling, you look MAHVELOUS!"

Apparently the whole earlier argument fiasco has blown over, and KC is once again happy to be rooming with Endy. UNTIL ...

KellysCappuccino: "Dear diary, today Endy jammed us in this little house. I hate that jerk! There's not even a TV!"

Meanwhile, across the street, Buhtterfly and Streon plot revenge. OMG CLIFFHANGAR

Posted by Endymion at February 20, 2005 02:07 AM