Lots of sims at Uni, lots of matchmaking, and less time than ever.

1. Hi there! Welcome to the college chapter for Already in Progress!
Oh, and also 100 Days of Awesome. And there’s some relevance to
Ruth’s (un)Officially Wacky Boolprop Challenge in there too.
I don’t like how long Uni is, is what I’m saying, and I don’t play
through it in little discrete segments – I send everyone in the ‘hood
in nice big batches.
Of course, immediately before this batch arrived at school, I put in
a semester-length-altering mod by Cyjon that drastically decreases
the amount of time that Uni lasts. We’ll see what kind of impact
that has on the game, shall we?

2. Let’s go through and follow each sim through their college career,
shall we? There were overlapping batches of sims at Uni this time,
so you won’t get everyone’s full college career, but you’ll still get a
lot of good stuff.
First up is Nicholas, who Grew Up into the pirate outfit.
Theoretically, I should default replace this outfit, since I never use
it, but I like having it around.

3. Nicholas moved to the agricultural school (you know, the one with
the cow mascot instead of the llama mascot) and promptly started
working on all things agricultural, including growing all of the
wonderful crops from Sun&Moon over at Plumb Bob Keep, and
working with Gwenke’s revised version of the functional beehives.
You don’t want to know how long it took me to figure out that the
beehives weren’t working because I had only installed the file for
the object, and not the files for the animations or the harvested
products.
Trust me, you really don’t want to know.

4. Nicholas being Nicholas, as soon as he found classmates to play
chess with, he started trying to cheat them.
VYN HSU: What am I supposed to be looking at? I don’t see
anything surprising.

5. VYN: Hey! What do you think you’re doing?!
NICHOLAS: Nothing. I wasn’t doing anything. You’re not mad at
me.
VYN: Yes I am! And you weren’t doing “nothing” – you were
cheating.
NICHOLAS (fixes Vyn with an intense gaze): I wasn’t doing
anything. You’re not mad at me.
VYN: Baloney! You were too doing something! And I am pissed!
NICHOLAS (fixes Vyn with an even more intense gaze, now with
an edge of desperation): You’re not mad at me.
VYN: Horse pucky! I’m not playing with you anymore – cheater!

6. Nicholas attempted to repair things, but his tried-and-true intense
gaze wasn’t working on Vyn, and she proved pretty immovable.
VYN: Get lost! What, do you think you have some kind of mind
control powers or something?
NICHOLAS: But –
VYN: Not interested.

7. Vyn kept her distance from Nicholas for quite a bit, until they both
turned up at the local bar for country dance night. As it turns out,
Nicholas’s two-step is pretty decent, as are his sweetheart, his
spinout, and his pretzel. And he’s a good lead and a considerate
partner.
You really can tell a lot about a man by how he leads a dance. It’s a
good sign if he pays attention and adapts to his partner, and also if
he’s a good communicator – using his voice if necessary, but bonus
points if he only needs his hands, arms, and light pressure.

8. Vyn started being more agreeable to hanging out with Nicholas
after that.

9. And even proved amenable to some flirty behavior as long as
intense gazes were not involved.

10. In fact, by the end of Uni, Vyn had a big ol’ red heart in her
relationship panel for Nicholas. (I know this because I made her
playable briefly.)
Nicholas, for his part, had a 100/100 relationship with Vyn, BFF
status, and a Want in his panel to get a big ol’ red heart as well as
lesser interaction Wants. He even had the option to propose
marriage. Unfortunately, no matter what I did, that red heart was
not forthcoming.
I even tried making Vyn selectable and having her flirt with him,
which is how I know about her Relationship panel, but no dice.

11. So Nicholas ended up graduating – in a truly terrible transition
outfit – without officially falling in love with Vyn. As you can see,
he was pretty bummed about it.
My plan is when I play Nicholas in Sandersville, I’ll invite Vyn
over and see if I can get that red heart. If not, but if Nicholas is still
into Vyn, I’ll just cheat it into the panel. It’s just a glitch that it’s not
there.

12. While in high school, Nicholas was going steady with Helen. They
broke up when they went to Uni, and here is a picture of Helen
when she arrived at school.
She actually Grew Up into a pretty okay outfit – I just had to
change out her pants for slightly less awful ones and she was good
to go.

13. I can’t say that Helen did much exciting this rotation. In fact, I’m
afraid I rather neglected her until partway through senior year,
when I noticed that she wanted to go on a date, so I hired the
matchmaker for her.

14. I’m sure you can see how well that went.
Is that a Want to Fall In Love with someone she hasn’t seen in three
years in Helen’s Want panel? Why yes, I do believe it is!

15. Helen spent a lot of time cleaning, because as it turns out, she’s
rather tidy. As Alexander is also rather tidy, they ended up spending
time together. See him hiding in the back there?
You haven’t seen Alexander come to Uni yet because we aren’t up
to him yet, but he did arrive at Uni. Alexander’s freshman year
coincided with Helen’s junior year.
So now you know.

16. Alexander and Helen got along well enough that they decided to try
going on a date before she moved back home.
Well, Helen decided and Alexander had no particular objection to
the idea.

17. But, well, you can see how well that went.
Is that a Want to Fall In Love with someone that Helen hasn’t even
seen in four years? Why, I do believe it is!
And is that a Want to Be Good Friends But That’s All in
Alexander’s Want panel? Why, I do believe you are correct!

18. So Helen graduated into this little number and moved back to
Sandersville without a romantic partner lined up.
Well, it’s not the end of the world. And I don’t think anyone at Uni
was enough into games anyway.

19. There was a third sim who came to Uni at the same time as Helen
and Nicholas: Georgiana Tsirkunov, from my 100 Days challenge,
which is written as a reality show: 100 Days of Awesome. You can
find it on my LJ if you are so inclined. [/shameless self-promotion]
Georgiana is the granddaughter of Descartes Tsvirkunov, so you
know she is awesome.

20. Unfortunately, it appears that I repeatedly tended to play Georgiana
right after my computer did another Windows update. This is
unfortunate because when Windows updates, it disables my FRAPS
75% of the time – don’t ask me why, because it makes no sense.
Because of this, I have generally gotten in the habit of taking
double pictures: one with FRAPS and one with the in-game
camera. But sometimes I forget, and poor Georgy was a victim of
my forgetting.
Georgy is Pleasure/Romance, and wanted to start a Greek House. I
moved her into a new place and obtained a Greek charter, and do
you know what she did?

21. Rolled a Want to do group research.
The lucky fellow who got to be her research partner was Paul
Wheeler, who was her boyfriend in high school. Paul is two years
younger than Georgiana, and so his freshman year lined up with her
junior year.

22. Unlike Helen and Nicholas, Georgiana and Paul did not break up,
and they were perfectly happy to be reunited.

23. Georgiana actually had a pretty awesome college career, pledging in a
new member, throwing a successful toga party, and getting the downstairs
bathroom into really great shape, plus making a decent start on the kitchen
and the library. She got put on academic probation once, but only because
parties are more awesome.
About the only thing Georgiana didn’t do was woohoo Paul, but only
because back in her home challenge, it’s possible to get points for First
Woohoo. Trust me, those purple heart Wants are mutually permalocked.
But really will have to trust me, because this is the only picture I have,
and it’s of Georgiana moving back to Sandersville after graduation.

24. In terms of flow, this is a good place to tell you about Paul’s Uni
career to date. You can be forgiven for thinking this is a picture of
Alexander instead, since Paul is wearing the shirt you already saw
on Alexander and there is a certain resemblance and similarity of
coloring, but you can tell this is Paul because he has blue eyes.
Alexander has alien eyes.
The shirt fit Alexander better than it did Paul, and as far as that
buzz cut?

25. Nopenopnopenopenopenope. Paul looks much better with his own
curls back.
Interesting tidbit here, or at least potentially interesting: Now that I
have the baby hair mod, I will give sims curly or straight hair
through the rest of their life depending on what they had as a baby.
(Bald hair is a wild card.)
It doesn’t work that way so much in real life – I personally had
really quite straight hair until I was about eight, and now it will do
corkscrew curls if the weather’s right, and frizz if it isn’t.

26. This isn’t the best picture, perhaps but it does show how Paul likes
to socialize regularly. Sometimes it’s with his sisters (by adoption),
Lavinia and Trudy.
Incidentally, you can find the nifty board game over at Around The
Sims. It’s cloned from mahjong, so sims will really play.

27. Paul doesn’t limit his socializing to family, though. He’s perfectly
happy to socialize with other people, like this dormie whose name I
forget.

28. Although of course he enjoyed socializing with his girlfriend the
best.
If this bit and the next bits seem rather short, it’s because this crop
of sims only had two years at Uni because of the way my rotations
work.

29. Paul was adopted at the same time as Trudy, so for all practical
purposes, they are brother and sister. Here is a picture of Trudy
when she arrived at Uni.
I don’t think I made any changes at all to Trudy’s transition outfit.
Not because I particularly like it, but just because I couldn’t really
think of anything that would be better and didn’t feel strongly
enough about it to go digging.

30. Here you see the outfit in its full glory. Brown and green, Trudy’s
colors, and fairly practical. What else could you ask for?
Trudy was pretty good about amusing herself and getting along
with people. Of course, she doesn’t need any help with earning skill
points, so she could safely be left to her own devices without
jeopardizing her GPA.

31. Trudy randomized as mildly straight in the original ‘hood, and as
mildly gay in the rebuilt ‘hood, so I figured she’d be thrilled about
hanging out with two young college girls in their really rather
scanty underwear.

32. I figured wrong. Trudy consistently heartfarted the elderly male
cook. After a bit of investigation, I have concluded that this is
because he is the only overweight person she knows who is also in
possession of a hat.

33. The third member of the family to arrive at Uni was Lavinia, the
biological daughter of Trudy and Paul’s adoptive parents. Lavinia is
a rather girly girl and quite fond of pink, so while the overall feel of
her transition outfit was right for her, the brown had to go.

34. Lavinia kept rolling Wants for dates, so I decided to indulge her.
You’re only young once, right?
I even spent over $1,000 per date for her.
Okay, not much more, but more is still more.

35. Lavinia liked the nanny all right as a person, but there just wasn’t
any spark there. And of course there was the forty-year age
difference. That’s a pretty hard hurdle to clear, and there wasn’t
enough chemistry – or interest – to bother.

36. Lavinia got along a bit better with the Garden Hobby Club Lady,
but still – I tend to interpret Wants to do generic, non-relationship
things like Buy A Bubble Blower or Win A Dance Contest as a sign
of non-interest. And that Want to Gain A Skill Point is definitely a
bad omen.

37. Which is not to say that Lavinia didn’t find anyone she was attracted to
in her first two years at school – she did, very powerfully. So
powerfully, in fact, that she did the “swoon” thing every time she
walked into a room where Draupadi was.
Now, the first time I every played TS2, this behavior is what convinced
me that Johnny Smith and Ripp Grunt needed to be together forever.
Unfortunately for Lavinia, Draupadi is a) completely straight and b)
committed to Deadeye.
Don’t remember who Deadeye is? I recommend reading Ruth’s
(un)Officially Wacky Boolprop Challenge, available on my LJ.
[/shameless self-promotion]

38. I didn’t get a picture of Alexander when he moved to Uni. I don’t
know if that is because I forgot, because that was a point where
FRAPS was not working, or if that is because I looked at the
picture of Paul and thought it was a picture of Alexander because I
didn’t notice the eyes and therefore deliberately didn’t take a
“second” picture.
Instead, have a picture of Alexander’s dorm room door, which will
at least give you an idea of what he looked like when he got there.

39. You probably remember Alexander from his one date with Helen –
you know, the one twenty-two slides back? Alexander was a perfect
gentleman, and rolled the Want to be friends with Helen, but had no
romantic interest in her.

40. When Alexander later rolled the Want to talk to this dormie (whose
name I neglected to write down), I thought perhaps he was
interested in her romantically as well. (To be fair, that’s often what
it means when sims roll that Want for other sims that they are not
already friends with or related to.)
Nope, he actively heartbarfs her. But they have pleasant
conversations.

41. In fact, Alexander’s Pop nature seems to be largely dominant, as he
is all about making friends. I’m thinking that next rotation,
Alexander and perhaps Paul with start a Greek House. Alexander’s
not really much of a party animal, and I’m wondering if perhaps I
need two Greek houses per gender – one for party girls/boys and
one for study girls/boys, but for now at least one Greek House each
is probably plenty.

42. I have the same problem with a transition picture for Draupadi as I
had for Alexander, except that I can’t use the excuse that I might
have thought that Paul was Draupadi. Resemblances aside, I can
tell male sims from female sims pretty well just about always.
Anyway, here is a picture of Draupadi’s door to show you what she
looked like when she arrived.

43. In fact, this is the only picture I managed to get of Draupadi,
although it does show that she became friends with Paul by playing
kicky bag.
It’s embarrassing how few pictures I have of some sims. I suppose
that’s something I’ll have to pay attention to with the new, shorter
Uni. Before, if I only took pictures of a sim 5% of the time, there
were still enough pics to put something together. Now… not so
much.
So I think I’ll leave you here, with a sincere apology for the trailing
off at the end. Until next time, Happy Simming!