Ah, chaos ensues! Having never attempted to run a household with 41 Sims before, I of course was not completely certain that either the game or my computer could handle the workload. I did run a test or two beforehand just to make sure that the game could actually manage to load with this many Sims in a house, but until I actually tried cramming this many Sims into this particular house I was unsure how the game would respond. Not totally unexpectedly, there were a few problems.
Specifically, the game seems to only be able to manage to move around so many Sims at once, leaving the others standing there doing nothing in the meantime. But since they were able to move around at least somewhat, I figured that I'd forge ahead anyway as it didn't matter to me if a few Sims died off (which ones would be pretty much random, so that's fair I suppose). And if some of them died then the rest of them would be better able to take care of themselves better due to less demand being placed on the game. And if they all managed to survive, the plan called for the rather large number of nine Sims to be voted out and that ought to help considerably.
Of course, whenever you make plans, Fate laughs at you.
I should note that I didn't take many pics of the first couple of days
besides the ones for the Character List page, as masses of pictures of
Sims passing out and wetting themselves gets boring after awhile. And
sufficeth to say, every Sim did both of those at least once. Well, except Ace, the Bat-Hound (as opposed to Ace, the metahuman) who was incapable of wetting himself by virtue of not wearing pants.
The first sign of trouble was this lovely lady showing up on Tuesday morning. She's the local government's Social Worker whose duty it is to remove neglected pets and children. In this case, she's here for...
Ace, the Bat-Hound, who was being totally ignored by the household of Sims who were too busy standing around wetting themselves to pay attention to him. Alas!
This is hardly the proper environment for a pet anyway... The chaos only gets worse as the moments tick by.
And by Tuesday evening our Social Worker friend has returned to inform me that it's not a proper environment for children either.
So here's the last we'll see of poor Phoebe, who was experiencing trouble finding anything to eat. A common problem in this household, as you'll soon see, but being a child she has the good fortune of being taken away before she starves to death.
Oswald Cobblepot, on the other hand, is not quite so lucky. Seems he was too busy laughing at the misfortunes of others to ever grab anything to eat. A detail that seems unlike him to forget, but there you go. He keeled over Tuesday evening, shortly after Phoebe was taken off.
Robert Langstrom had not been standing there laughing at everyone, but in spite of wandering around the house a lot he never made it to the food either. But this is just the tip of the iceberg...
Heather Glass also failed to ever eat. As evidenced by the dirty plates on the tables above, many of the Sims
did eat, but since the game was only moving around a portion of the Sims at any one time the odds that it would actually send a hungry Sim to go eat something, and that another Sim wouldn't get in their way before they got there were apparently too low.
Though whether Jonathan Crane died of hunger or heartbreak over Heather, I'm unsure.
Or whether Edward Nigma died of hunger or heartbreak over Jonathan, for that matter. (They
did die in that order... Nina's fine, however...)
Hugo Strange was the next one to kick the bucket. It's not that I wasn't
trying to feed them and didn't see some deaths coming - I even added a buffet table and had someone stock it Monday morning in an effort to prevent the catastrophe, but while many Sims took advantage, many didn't.
Dick Grayson was one of them. By this time we're into Sims that
did eat a little something, like a snow cone, but not a proper meal during the first few days.
That list includes Alison Bell. Of course, by this time I'm somewhat freaking out, as Sims are dropping like flies and we're now past the point of needing a vote off for Week 1. Come on, Sims, eat!
Don't be like poor Oliver Queen here, who starved to death at Dick's feet. Sadly, a part of the problem is that their still living housemates are freaking out over the deaths rather than grabbing food. The death toll may have been quite a bit lower if the Grim Reaper had been quicker to clean up the corpses.
But the incarnation of death keeps getting slowed by Sims who just don't think that it's their time. Here is the ghost of Ozzy, begging on his knees and no doubt offering the a large some of money. Sadly, bribery does not work on death.
While everyone's standing around, we also lose Jervis Tetch...
The Joker...
Lex Luthor...
Zahira Ormarr... (Though in her case I half suspect that her cause of death was getting trampled by all the still living Sims rushing to mourn all the dying Sims)
Clark Kent...
Harriett Bennett...
Autumn Hertz...
Pamela Isley...
Joan Leland...
Iris Ledford...
And finally, Brynmor Jerr. (Though I'm pretty sure he was impaled by that chair...)
Of course, I hardly expected the Sims to be dying off in these numbers. And having just over half the population of the household die in just the first few days of the competition is hardly fair. I could try restarting the whole competition, but though there's a few things I think I could do to make a few fewer Sims die, I suspect that it wouldn't be by much. However, after pondering the issue I decided that what I'm going to do is carry on with this competition even with such a massive reduction in population,
but I'm going to play the competition a second time when it's finished with the Sims who died or were removed this first week as the only contestants so you'll get to see all these Sims again. Does that sound fair?
And we're now down to 19 Sims in the household, which is running smooth as silk. Here's many of the survivors getting something to eat now that the game can easily tell them to do so. All of them are absolutely miserable by now, of course, (and most are in dire need of a shower) but since the starving don't seem to have any trouble getting food at this point the crisis is over.
Sims
do possess some capacity to mourn a loss, however. Though it seems that they mostly remember only the last one. Poor Brynmor Jerr! Nobody can seem to remember who you are, but we all miss you so much!
And now that everyone's able to take care of their basic needs, they have some free time to to socialize. Here's Mary no doubt feeling inadequate after seeing Selina in her pajamas. But she'll have to get used to that - everyone here wanders around in their pajamas.
And here's Harley comforting Victor about his tragic loss of Alison. Quite a few of the forum pairings were broken during the tragedy, but perhaps that will only make things more interesting when the survivors start pairing off, as they tend to inevitably do.
But let's not let all this sadness spoil the fun! As promised, this week we're letting the contestants choose a Sim to win this motorcycle. I delayed it a couple of days (it is now Friday) since the appointed day for the voting was right while everyone was sloughing off their mortal coil, but we had to have them vote for something since we're obviously not going to be voting anyone out this week.
Nathaniel's attempt to flirt with Harley, whether due to actually liking her or attempting to win her vote for the motorcycle, falls flat. It's just too soon after losing Mister J.
His father, Jeremiah, shows him how it's done: First you comfort the poor girl, then when she's done mourning she'll be all yours.
But not everyone is being so friendly. Mary has apparently taken an intense dislike to Dinah, and expresses it with a series of slaps to the face. Remarkably, Dinah manages to control her temper and doesn't strike back. Jeremiah, meanwhile, is not yet over the tragic loss of Brynmor.
And neither is Black Mask, and amusingly enough he has an instant attraction for Jeremiah the second they have a moment to chat.
But Lola the socialite and Ace the moody metahuman hate each other practically on sight.
Ace is upset enough by the exchange that she smashes the dollhouse in the Arcade, only to get grounded by Dinah.
Later Black Mask is seen comforting Jeremiah as he sheds some manly, manly tears.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Gordon wanders over to the martial arts equipment by the pool and gains enough skills to earn a white belt.
But finally, Friday evening comes and the votes are counted. It takes two rounds of voting to break the tie between Nathaniel, Jason, Nina, and Victor, but in the end Victor just edges out Jason for the prize. If he looks unhappy about it, it's because he's still not come to terms with the loss of poor Brynmor...
But for the most part the Sims seem to not let something as minor as half of everyone dying spoil their fun. Mary here is a huge fan of the water slide.
And for those of you who seem to think that Hawkgirl is nothing but a grump, my investigations of someone blasting music led me to her dancing in her underwear to some hip hop in the Black room. Something that seems totally in character to her player.
Kory, of course, prefers to be out in the sun, so here she is enjoying the sprinkler on Saturday morning.
Though in spite of all the amusements offered by this mansion, you can't avoid personality conflicts. For those who are unaware, Dr. Arkham and Commissioner Gordon do not get along. In this exchange, Jeremiah complained about Good people, James accused him of being Evil, and then Jeremiah asked him to take out the trash. James said okay, and promptly went and did so.
Dinah spends her morning earning her white belt by using the martial arts equipment.
Not to be outdone, Jason earns his that afternoon.
Two-Face and the Commissioner spend most of the afternoon playing a friendly game of catch with a football.
But Saturday evening, a quick chat between Black Mask and Lola turns very ugly very fast.
This is one man who isn't afraid to hurt a woman and Lola's hardly a fighter so Black Mask wins easily.
Of course, if there's going to be such violence in the household, Dinah's going to be the one coming out on top! She earns her yellow belt after some more training.
And once again, Jason's not about to let Dinah surpass his skills.
But Sunday morning arrives, the week ends, and the dining room gets a makeover. Thanks to the massive reduction in Sim numbers, we're skipping ahead to Week 4 of my schedule, so the Black, White, and Purple rooms are all now locked. Since sleep was hardly on anyone's mind while everyone was starving to death and there were plenty of places to sleep after so many Sims died there hasn't been much drama surrounding the scarcity of places to sleep, but there will be now...
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