I just had a guy sim tonight who choked to death at a party after eating some cookies. At least I think that's what happened. He was a guest, and he wasn't ill at home or anything.

Since a few people here were nice enough to give me comments on my bachelorette challenge story, and I know some of you also played the challenge yourselves, I thought I would ask if anyone wants to nominate a female sim to audition to play in my next bachelor challenge story. I thought it might be more interesting if I played with 7 single girl sims that other people made. Feel free to make them as freaky in appearance or personality as you like.
I am also taking suggestions for which of the spare guys you think should be the bachelor. Part 5 of the story is available, and the last part will be up tommorrow.
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=53193

I've been playing this challenge with 2 families because i had a plan to marry their kids off. The first family started with one guy, and it was going well untill he married badly. It was Ericka the gardner girl, who has horrible personality, but is actually quite neat. She hasn't had any accidents, but Derk, her husband caught her cheating (she's romance), and since the marriage is not going so well, and she is annoying, I am wondering if they can break up and I can move her out, or will that incur I penalty? My reading of the rules is that it would be okay, but I wanted to check. I know she can't move back in later, but no one wants her to.

I had a problem with my second family (started with a couple) because the guy wouldn't pee on bushes, but from reading the posts here it seems he wasn't quite outgoing enough. The woman is happy to remain an emailian, and they will raise their child(ren) email, so they will be excellent potential mates for the orthodox emailian family.

Working on a story, but I want to finish the bachelorette series first.

I had a romance sim who got this want twice. She racked up 5 service sims, got the aspiration points for it, and then a few days later, wanted to do it again. So maybe all those service sims she did it with *before* having the want don't count? Has anyone ever seen a want to woohoo with 10 service sims?

Those extra two professors are probably the ones who are always hanging around on the porch.There are always a couple who don't seem to actually be teaching anything (very realistic).  My college sims occasionally met a third professor in Junior year - although that was in my totally buggy and now deleted neigbourhood.

So much fighting and crying and hand wriinging. Renatus, that was really very funny.
I just put up my episode 3. There was a little burst of jealousy.
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=52609

Episode 2 of my matchmaking challenge is up.
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=52471

It's quite interesting, because I was predicting that the family sim guy would be doing a lot better with my single girl (also family) than he is.

I just put the first episode of my batchelorette story up. Here's the link.
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=52134

I so want more people to play this challenge because it is so funny.

No, I didn't use a jealousy mod; the sims only get jealous if they see an interaction like flirting.  I was just careful to have a "date" room, and sent the other sims off to the shower or whatever until it was their turn. Of course, I did have a few slapfests because of spontaneous flirting. It's part of the fun. One of the modifications of the rules I made was to do with this. I found that often after a sim was voted out, the batchelor/ette would suddenly want to be friends or flirt with him/her. When there was a relationship meltdown because of jealousy, I used the option of bringing back a previous suitor, if he/she had a higher score than any of those remaining in the house. Hope that makes sense.

No! Totally don't! The romance sims don't always do the best, and it's much more fun to watch the interactions with sims of differents personalities. Remember, romance sims hate committment, and the object of the challenge is ostensibly to create a couple. If you wanted to narrow it down, then I would make a maximum of 3 romance sims. If your single is romance, he/she is quite likely to surprise you by picking a sim of a different aspiration.

What, like, if you don't laugh, you'll cry? I once had a plagiarist complain about his F because he had written parts of the essay (i.e. two sentences) himself, and shouldn't he get credit for that?

Here's the link for the batchelor/batchelorette challenge.
http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=&threadID=031a419c4f27c583acce60268b0a3626&directoryID=22&startRow=1#5280cd68b75d4c5c7eb74c4675171fa9

I've played it a few times, and it is always totally hilarious. I did modify the rules somewhat; basically, during the "dates" I try to give my sims some time to initiate their own interactions, and I fiddled a bit with the required interactions. I should post my modifications, I guess.

I just started writing a story based on the challenge; the first episode is nearly done.

I guess it is also a matter of need and priorities. I spend a lot of time dealing with plagiarists, and not that much with thieves and murderers, so I have a skewed ethical sensibility about academic integrity.
In the case of "ripping off" the people who called me on the psychic line, I think they mainly called because they had no one tot talk to (or no one who would sypathise with their crackpot position), just as much as they called for genuine psychic advice, so I think I did give them what they wanted, partly.
Just as a side note, I would like to say, I wish that in Sims U, the "write my term paper" thing had an option for a negative consequence if you get caught, just like the hacking of grades. There also should be a "buy paper from internet" option with the same possible negative consequences.

See, this is what I thought; there is a lot of stress about money at the beginning, but you would have to be a really poor player for it to continue into the third generation. I like the challenges involving more than one house much more because the interaction between families can make for fun stories. The best one-house challenge I have seen is the batchelor/batchelorette one. I played it a few times because it was just so damn funny, and it only takes 7 sim days.

Ah, ethics. There are some jobs you will do when you are a penurious grad student. Personally, I drew the line at writing essays for money; feeding a line to sad idiots seemed more palatable than my other options.

I've been reading some of the recommended ones - they are so much better than the ordinary 5-star dreck. I have read a bunch of Legacy stories and I have noticed that they are all quite same-y. Not having played the Legacy challenge myself (all that marrying NPCs and townies is a total turn-off), I have to ask - is the Legacy challenge fun? It seems like it could be quite, quite dull.

ROMANTIC IMAGES??? I used to live in Melbourne, and some of my friends had their houses destroyed the year I was in grade 12, and we lost our beach house (yeah, yeah, boo hoo) in a bushfire. I don't attach any romance to the word. Who are they thinking of? This is the stupidest explanation I have ever heard.

Yay! I love the money order. It makes lots of fun story scenarios possible when you play a number of households in a neighbourhood. One of my favourites is having a romance sim who lives alone, and has very generous "visitors".

The other day I had a sim give birth while her husband was in the shower. Turns out it was twins, so he came running, in the pixelated nude, to grab twin 1. Very funny, and yet realistic.

Rohina: May I ask if you would consider yourself genuine or not? I tend to agree that there are indeed some sad buggers out there who just need to interact with someone, but to behave as you did seems a little harsh. After all, if there's nowt to say, then don't say anything and tell 'em they're wasting their hardearned. Just my view, is all.

I have certainly had some experiences that I would describe as empathic, and one or two episodes of precognition. My grandmother used to work for the police in her town as a psychic, so if a psychic pedigree matters, I have one. (A lot of people think I am cold and unsympathetic and sarcastic, which is a perhaps a side effect of me often blocking emotions because I can get overwhelmed by strong emotion if I don't block it, or maybe I am just a sarcastic bitch). I am an excellent tarot reader; I used to used it when I was an academic counsellor because tarot is a great way to get people to talk about difficult emotional issues. I am often conflicted about my abilities, because I am also a highly educated person, and I know how to think critically, but I can't always dismiss my own experience, even if I can't prove it empirically.

The phone thing is a major rip-off. It's way more expensive than seeing a good tarot reader in person, and most of the people who phone will hang up if you tell them the truth about their issues. When you are paid by the minute, if you want to make money, you tell people what they want to hear to keep them on the phone.

Open invitiation: send me a message with a question (general or specific), and I'll read your cards for you. Any of you. But not till tomorrow afternoon because it *is* the first day of semester.

I would usually have established that they want to talk about their relationship - almost everyone who calls wants to do that. But if it isn't, well, then you say, "I see that is could be a woman/man in a position of influence in your life who is very controlling; it could be a boss, or possibly a family member." Which covers almost every other possibility. I mean, most people have a person in their life who bugs the hell out of them, and it's nice to attribute that to the person being bad (which is how they interpret "controlling"). People who call want to talk, mostly, and if you sound totally sympathetic, no matter how much of a jerk you think they are, then they will think you are psychic.

I used to read tarot over the phone for extra money (excellent job if you are pregant, because you can do it from bed), and I found you can't go wrong with "your boy/girlfriend's ex is very controlling".

I've just started writing stories, so I have been reading a few as well, because my interest was piqued. Most of them are dreadful ( maybe it's because I'm an English Professor, but I was seriously offended by how pathetic a random sampling was). Anyway, reggikko's are fantastic. I laughed like anything. Here's the link to reggikko's page: http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/uploads.php?user_id=1132625&asset_type=story

Of course, I also really like my stories. They aren't legacy ones, though; they're coming from my version of the Kingdom Challenge. http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/mysimpage.php?user_id=797212