Ashanti Datlow Lights the Torch
(Sorry for the low-quality images in the post. Don't worry the images will improve soon, I hadn't realized it was set on low quality until after I had booted out of the game.)
I absolutely love reading the series The Years Best Fantasy and Horror and used to check the books out of the library and read them avidly when I was in high school. Terri Windling is the editor of the Fantasy portion of the series. She also wrote several other fantasy novels that I am a huge fan of, hence my reason for naming my Legacy Challenge family after her. The Horror portion of the series, on the other hand, the part of the series that I read whilst holding my breath and with all the lights on in the house, is edited by a woman named Ellen Datlow.
Enter Ashanti Datlow, founder of my I'm Surrounded by Idiots family and bearer of the torch.
I decided to start Ashanti out as a Young Adult, I had only played University through once at this point, with Cadmus' older sister Selene, but I hadn't yet played out the after-college scenario so I was pretty eager to try that out.
Ashanti seemed to be the odd-Sim out at college. She always seemed to cheer for the wrong team at Sports Parties.
And, get in the way of other Young Adults when they were trying to hang out.
She also had a heck of time tracking down the other Sims. It seems that just before they were all set to become best friends the person would disappear from the dorm for several days. Finally she went shopping and got herself a cellphone so she could call them at ungodly hours and pester them about where they had run off to.
Not even a semester passed and suddenly a limo pulled up with this young woman inside who immediately walked up to Ashanti and began acting like, well, an idiot.
Turns out it was only a secret society that wasn't planning anything worse then hanging out at all hours in a house without a working phone. Which is probably the only reason the place is still a secret.
Ashanti finished college and settled in at her new place in Aridia. She was ready to find a job and a man, in whatever order they came to her in. Unfortunately her welcome wagon was made up of nothing but teens. And, since there was nothing fun to do in her very poor house, they spent their time playing with, of all things, the refrigerator.
Since the entire neighborhood was filled with nothing but teenagers I ended up having Ashanti call up one of her professors, Prof. Jove and invite him to move in. Typical NPC didn't bring in his promised §1,000 but I was able to get him a job, unfortunately it was in the Artist career track.
Jove was a Popularity Sim, just like Ashanti now was, so they got along swimmingly, though I think this was more due to my control of Ashanti then Jove's sunny disposition.
The man was a prankster, and a meanie. Every time Ashanti introduced him to one of her friends he would prank them, poke them, argue with them, shove them, slap them and make them cry.
The above was his "I'm waiting to do something in my que" pose. No kidding, the guy was intense.
Because he was so ill-mannered, he could never make any friends, I also never let him fight but maybe I should have, I hear Popularity Sims have wants to beat people up sometimes. His aspiration got pretty low and he started having nightmares.
He was even autonomously painting masterpieces at that point. But since Sims won't sell their own paintings, and I can't have Ashanti influence them to, Ashanti ended up getting the aspiration points for it.
It ended up being really hard having Ashanti be able to get anything done since she had to baby-sit Jove all the time. Inviting over people to keep Jove occupied stopped working after awhile because Jove began simply ignoring them or storming off in a huff after they didn't respond positively to his abusive behavior. It wasn't long before the social bunny came calling.
Aside from the fact that Jove was mean, he was also a bit lazy. He didn't like cleaning up after himself, and he hated having to go all the way upstairs to shower so he often just sponge bathed using the sink downstairs instead.
Meanwhile Ashanti had managed to attain perma-platinum by being Mayor for one day. I then got her a job in the Life Science career. Using the new funds I added onto the house expanding it from the little one bedroom home into a ten room monstrosity that I like very much.
This was done in preparation for the next generation which, after trying two times, Ashanti and Jove managed successfully to conceive.
Posted by Bitsy at 03:04 PM Comments
Looks interesting and challenging... I'm hooked I'll be reading :)
Posted by: Loki on December 1, 2005 04:19 PM
Awesome! I already feel sorry for Ashanti, surrounded by all those...well, idiots. It's too bad Jove turned out to be such a mean guy, but it does make for an entertaining story! I think the ISBI challenge can be a lot of fun, and makes you play in ways you don't normally play. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about the Datlows. How do you like University, by the way?
Posted by: Jen on December 7, 2005 11:29 AM
I really enjoy University for the most part. The hype had died down by the time I had installed it and all I was hearing was the bad things: the bugs, how boring college was, things like that.
I really like how they worked the instruments and the pool table into the game, and the College Station has such great music I ended up porting it out to MP3.
And, I think if you are just trying to get through college as fast as you can, college can be very boring. If you are looking for ways to make it interesting though, it isn't that hard to have fun.
Posted by: Bitsy on December 7, 2005 03:44 PM
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