#bacc... in space!

These two are probably my most problematic, worst at parenting, worst at staying out of cheating drama, worst at adulthood 3 days from elderdom couple.

Chemistry makes up for most of that bullshit tough and they are never not all over each other.

And like, with the adulthood and domesticity. Lethe tries. Look, she made some sandwiches.

Which obvi looks even more pathetic when her own son not only knows what a vegetable is, but also how to use them.

And like, whatever, this was the point of colony children. They’re meant to grow up inherently better at coping with the wasteland lifestyle.

So while Orcus is a beauty, a charmer and a chef, Sedna kinda glumly does what she’s good at out of what seems like a sense of duty. Coping looks different on different personalities I guess.

Well, I say colony children. The twins finally join Furfur in adulthood!

Into it.

Yes, lovely.

She’s still an awkward nerd baby though.

Having watched her two children fully grow up, Styx decides to put her body to use while there’s still time.

And she’s right to do so because the years do catch up with her.

Or like, maybe not? So you filled your athletic skill bar, you’re still gonna die like everyone else.

A minimal makeover, a touch of the swap witch about her.

And of course it still very much works.

Lethe, being what she is, will not make a lifestyle change, get on a treadmill or acknowledge Father Time creeping up behind her.

Kicked in the kneecaps and elbowed in the back by father time.

So our final original settler reaches elderhood, with no deaths so far!

Still a very good look though.

And obv this is all still a thing.

To a point.

Anyway.

So the kids are beautiful and don’t deserve to sleep in a hallway above the stairs, so I remodeled a bit to suit their needs.

Some fancy screen walls for privacy.

At this point the Kuiper-Opik converted lab house is a nightmare labyrinth of stairs, glass and partition walls, and Orcus wanted to throw a birthday party to trap as many unwitting guests as possible in the halls of postmodern architecture.

Happy 18th/21st/whatever, enjoy your geriatric pancake party. The birthday kids even fit at the kitchen table with most of the guests.

Happy official breakup laboratory pancake brunch!

These two had kind of a thing when Orcus was still a teen and already I was uncomfortable with the age difference. Going through the old posts now I realized that they actually got close when Gusayn was a kid, so whatever happens when they both grow up, I will always side-eye them.

They’re definitely at different life stages at this point.

And like, whatever, the many old people at least enjoy the party, and that was the point of the exercise.

So while the parents socialize, Orcus sorts out the end of his childhood romance, and everyone just has a grand old time, Sedna is just

Venus Altair, beautiful angel, violin champ.

We got to enjoy this perfect face for a few more moments before...

Level up!

Apart from her perfect face, Venus has a perfect creativity skill and grew into a Pleasure aspiration, because of course she did.

So beautiful, so good around the house.

Venus goes over to the family karaoke bar and tries to help out keeping the customers entertained.

And it works!

For like five minutes!

How many years have I spent agonizing over whether the dads of these two should bone down or what. (Like three years is the answer.) And I ended up saying no over and over, dragging it out. And they didn’t. Because I’m fucking weak and I am sorry.

And now the dads are all dried up! But what if.

Anyway, speaking of the bone.

Fortis finds himself an amazing iridescent woman to match his hair.

(there’s a spoiler in this pic!) Fortis is  generally the most sexually active settler around, and with all that chemistry he’s probably set for life WRT fresh ass. All those wants that crop up that I’ve always found pretty out there? 20 children, 50 simultaneous lovers, a million public WooHoos? For Fortis they actually feel fairly achievable.

There’s a main squeeze though.

Ganymede is still extremely into Fortis in a monogamous kinda fashion, but doesn’t seem to mind all the shiny-skinned women and suchlike in his life.

My other perfect baby. My airhead fashion god.

It’s so sweet how he encourages him.

Like remember how in The Nanny Fran was like, even though we’re married now I want to be making my own money! And mister Sheffield was like, but babe, your income comes out of my income? That’s pretty fucked up tbh, from like both a feminist and class perspective. Like she was promoted to wife and got to do all the motherhood labour for free now.

Anyway.

Regal.

All this though?

Still very much a thing.

I’ve been watching a bunch of old Hollywood classics and I think it’s rubbed off on my aestethic for Ganymede at least.

He luxuriates.

Mmmmm with the silky PJs.

Fashion and fancy sleepwear are taken seriously in this household.

Which reminds me.

So we have all of these three fancy infants. These useless perfect flesh forms. Toddling around in their embroidered waistcoats, playing clappy hands and hiding the odd sausage with beautiful friends and strangers alike.

But what about the glorious beast of woman who enables their lifestye through like decades worth of hard work, personal charisma, creative power and entrepreneurial spirit.

She knows how to make her own entertainment, and that is where the years catch up with her.

That’s such a frustrating look for her to age into, I feel. The shapeless nightgown, the messy white hair. It’s like, that’s what the world wants her to be, man. Like, as a postmenopausal woman.

Fuck that, man. As opposed to people like Mycota or the General, and even Ganymede, Bauble jumps at the chance of another ferocious self-reinvention.

Eat it.

Now back to the bubbles.

Bauble calls up her fuck buddy, who also went for the extreme makeover: death-approaches-inevitably edition, and they boogie down in embarrassing old people dace fashion.

She aged like Thursday and didn’t wear anything except fancy PJs even once for the rest of the week. And thing is, she doesn’t have to. It’s her world everyone else lives in.

So as one can tell, Orcus is still super into himself and will head for a mirror to preen the second I leave him alone. And now he has even more reasons to, because he at last also stumbled into the deathtrap that is the exercise bike.

Did him a lot of good too

See, this is the kind of body you want to see flex. Take notes, Ganymede.

The kids in general seem to be turning out to be better, smarter, stronger, kinder versions of the various assholes in their parents generation. Orcus is basically Ganymede, because he is tall, dark and pretty, but he doesn’t fail at being a Popularity sim because he actually has friends.

(this aint weird)

Congrats on your one BFF, mom. You're a fucking loser.

Meanwhile Sedna might be Mycota or Bauble, because she’s all smart and industrious.

She consistently puts out Masterpieces which already puts her ahead of the older artists like Arrai and Bauble.

Her gardening is going pretty well too, and. And! Turns out she can talk to people!

See the lovely baby marvel at not being socially inadequate after all. Sedna now has like 2 friends out of the house, so her early social failures were 100% down to Furfur. Who is an asshole. But we already knew that.

She is still my weird uncomfortable bb tho.

Now I didn’t actually notice this as it was happening, but being a quiet nerd child got Orcus to like level 9 on the cooking skill, and a lot of enthusiasm for food.

So he got sent down to the water hole to maybe expand on that.

Fishing is reasonably successful, and as usual Orcus can’t help making friends everywhere he goes. Looks like he and Kelp are both being attracted to Bauble’s ginger boyfriend. Did not expect that  that from either of them.

I’d like people to appreciate just how fucking friendly Orcus is. That woman there with the black hat? That’s the burglar who took Lethe’s first robot station. Orcus’ want upon growing up the next day was to see that woman’s ghost. He wanted her dead.

How the fuck do you go from that to nearly 50 friendship points?? - all while still furious with her.

Attraction to ginger man confirmed. And yes, he is on the phone with Bauble, being a good friend, telling her how hot her boyfriend is.

That’s not weird either.

The point is, the kids really are alright, and things seem to be looking up for the Azha Sea colony.

So what about the parents who made all of that blossoming possible with their genitalia and whatnot?

So this is a thing. Fortis lives here now.

He has his own room away from everyone on the community part of the lot. But like.

How this game works is that people have Wants and that’s what we end up doing.

And then they go to sleep and like. Alright.

Anyway, Fortis is weirdly pretty and useful to have around.

He does alright with the pretty pretty baby, who is at this point getting the best upbringing out of all the children of the colony, having been born into the wealthiest household with the highest adult/baby ratio on top of that.

So everyone loves Venus and takes care of her, and -

Oh wow ok. Definitely growing into her mouth there.

At this point it was time to celebrate Venus’s fucking face and invest some of our profits back into the business. And maybe get some nice stuff for the house as well.

So now we can offer a pool table and bubble blower, that were presumably, like, carved from the barren rocks. Turns out the Altairs haven’t quite forgotten where they came from and most of the funds ended up being invested into nice things for the house after all.

(The piano was also carved from the rocks, or it grew in Mycota’s orchards. Hush. Music is good for children’s brains. Or is that fetuses? Does it stop being good at a point?)

Anyway, the new decor really frames Venus quite nicely.

Fortis gets a double bed because he’s not supposed to be a second class household member, and it’s the first place Ganymede heads when he gets sleepy. It was odd but very precious.

To cement his place in order of things, Fortis tries interacting with the customers.

Surprise, they are poorly socialized assholes.

But the thing about Fortis is, he is a Romance sim. And how we run things here is that people get to follow their Wants.

So the thing with the public sex is that it’s Fortis’s favourite thing now.

That’s the park bench where Bauble earned her karaoke machine.

I had him take the blue guy to the park because I didn’t want to unlock any doors to customers on the home lot, and that’s how Fortis got super into fucking people outdoors.

Looks like he does quite well at it too. Helps to have 2 bolts with pretty much everyone you know I guess.

(And that does include Bauble. We don’t talk about it.)

(Oh and Ganymede also got fucked on that park bench. Fortis wanted 3 public woohoos after all.)

(We’re at 5 now.)

When not trying to get laid Fortis is gross and funny

But also extremely adorable and, like, paternal. 

Venus looks to be really into music and Ganymede, like, helps. But now that Fortis is around, he doesn’t spend as much time with her as he used to. Instead he rediscovers his old dream of Getting Fit.

And he even gets on that bike of his own free will, it’s amazing.

Still can’t do a proper pushup though. Wtf is that weak shit

Yeah whatever.

Bauble of course still has this guy, but not that much time for him.

She has authentic colony art to produce.

I kind of want her to have a kid to pass on her pretty eyes alone, but it’s not happening. She just wants to paint, take baths, and buy nice things. Ginger dude never even spent a whole night over.

And Bauble seems to like Venus a lot, so we’re all fine with her inheriting everything.

Oh yeah, Styx still hates Ganymede.

And then the most unlikely grey lizard man goes all neighbourly on everyone. He will not be polite to anyone ever, but can apparently also not abide a mess.

In hopes of raising a generation of people who are maybe a little better at people, I Gusayn come over to bond with Venus.

They hit it of well enough, and now Venus has a friend her age and will not grow up all spoilt and sheltered with only doting  adults for company and everything will be lovely and she will have a perfect life because she is a pretty pretty little angel.

Anyway.

Gusayn doesn’t just materialize out of thin air, I had Ganymede ask Arrai to bring him over. And the thing is.

They both have proven to produce beautiful children seperately. And they have 3 bolts. The only other people to have 3 bolts are Mycota and Kelp, and they were basically fucking 24/7. And Ganymede and Fortis aren’t like that, and the General doesn’t seem to object. And this is like the most intense and longest lasting UST situation in the entire history of this entire thing. Alright, maybe not even “unresolved”. More like “not completely and utterly consummated“.

To start off, Bauble got herself a fancy new hairstyle with a kitchen knife and some industrial paint left over from renovations on the second warehouse.

And something at last awakened inside Ganymede

So we went about finding him a date

His name is Fortis, his aesthetic is kind of intense, but Ganymede seemed into it.

Suddenly I'm not sure if this is the face with which I want to risk fucking up Ganymede's potentially perfect children.

But it does help with the business.

And they are kind of adorable.

Oh you poor, confused darling. Is this what happens when Romance sims fall in love?

Somebody needs to give him a hug and teach him about, like, committed nonmonogamy.

And maybe, like, soon

(AHAHAHAHA)

But yeah, that date went well.

Meanwhile, Bauble has discovered a different way to ensure customer satisfaction

free jelly!

Free jelly for everyone!

Mycota came by to have a Fun Night Out with her one Girl Friend. Monogamy with the lizard guy (monohemipenisy?) is making her almost socially conventional. I am concerned.

Ganymede shows off his maternity fashions in front of the customers. He's dealing alright, but does look just a tiny bit dead inside. Or that is his natural lack of personality shining through.

But of course it isn't long before he gets to show some feelings, and they are mostly Aauuurgh

Like a lioness, feeling that her hour is upon her, steals away from the pride to bear her cubs in solitude, Ganymede takes himself behind a screen where no one can see. 

Maybe he's just really embarrassed about bodily fluids.

Regardless of his motivations, Ganymede gave birth to one girl, who was given the name Venus.

Is that a smile at last? Well it should be, because Venus is a precious little weirdo.

Though she did inherit Fortis's fucked up lower face. But those blue eyes do a lot for her, and she will probably grow into the mouth a bit.

Ganymede contemplates parenthood listlessly

and doesn't seem to find joy in his daughters milestones.

He doesn't return to his pre-pregnancy clothes and takes long, contemplative baths. His aspiration is Popularity, and I guess the isolation that comes with peeing yourself all the time because of pregnancy and then taking care of a baby  got him down a bit.

But he does the parenting work, and the parenting work pays off.

A new best friend was pretty much all it took to return Ganymede from depressive tedium to pleasant blandness.

Ganymede may be all fine now, but Bauble isn't happy to see her fledgling entertainment business weighed down by child-rearing duties, and quickly ties Fortis to the family by hiring him as a cleaner.

His job is mostly to pick up the used jelly plates, but I haven't locked the doors properly so he goes on to clean their entire house, all without ever running into Ganymede or Venus.

The thing with Fortis is, he is most likely not a complete asshole, and won't run from fatherhood all the way to his home planet.

Townies, such as they are, are temporary space-tourists so the only thing for Fortis to do is to become an official settler. If he moves into the Altair household, possibly pursuing his relationship with Ganymede, or gets his own place remains to be seen.

But let me return to Venus real quick.

Yeah that is an intense baby.

  The more I look at her, the more convinced I am that she is the perfect combination of Ganymede's classical beauty and Fortis's wild, nigh-demonic presence.

Furfur at last has people her age around, and I am trying again with Sedna. They talk about birds once and it's cute, but that's it and I'm not gonna force anything.

Orcus of course is Furfur's BFF

right until he discovers that there is a chess table in the house.

The really weird thing is that Furfur has way more in common with Sedna, personality-wise, than with Orcus. Maybe it's some sort of polarities situation. Don't ask me, I have a B in physics.

An important thing you should know about Furfur is that girl is addicted to pancakes. She always has a pancake wish, and luckily there is someone around to fulfill that.

You surprisingly not-terrible parent, you.

Awkward underpants breakfast with the children

Arrai, don't.

what

All-righty, I'm chosing to interpret this as we are getting Ganymede pregnant. We are doing this, all of us.

But maybe not right now.

Right, maybe not in a while. (hahaha. AHAHAHAHA!)

What with the anticipated expenses of more babies, the General makes himself useful, harnessing the creative sewing power of underpants as Styx did before him.

He also steps up with Furfur, so that Arrai spends his days mostly cooking, eating, and - once in a while - paiinting.

Fat + pregnant = massive fucking sim, holy shit

Anyway, in her last days as an only child both parents find time to spend with Furfur

(who is a dirty dirty cheater)

as well as with each other, and it's all very precious.

"They're doing it again, aren't they."

But not for too long:

Haha fuck you, remember how you took a nap on the couch when someone was having your baby.

Will we ever get to see a sweet paternal reaction to babies? The General just walked away once the birthing was over and everyone seemed fine. Still, somewhat less inappropriate than any of the others at this point.

Anyway. We have a boy, there's one of him, and his name is Gusayn.

Ahahaha, alright, definitely more of General Y.B.'s features there.

Arrai is surprisingly okay with potty training.

Tough the General still does most of the active parenting. 

my two precious ugly-cute children

General Y.B. + Parenthood = OTP

Despite everyone's best efforts Gusayn is a big whiny baby just like his sister was at that age, but right now it's hard to care about his dumb baby drama because...

Furfur is having a birthday!

I am choosing to end this here, on a nore of glorious, glorious cheekbones.