Chapter 81: Some Fires

Rex continues to be terrifying.

Fischer sets fire to some rainbow gems.

Sometimes he's just emo like that. He wants a visual representation of his feelings.

Being Ashby's son, he knows the ins and outs of fire, and how the strange rainbow gems will cause it to quickly die.

Fischer somehow knows Yasu is going to be a genius, like her grandfather.

"They'll expect a lot of you," he warns the sleeping girl. "I may even expect a lot of you. I'm sorry."

Fischer takes Yasu out for a stroll around Riverview.

Yasu points excitedly to the meteor in their front yard.

Rivers yeah!

What's up cousin Javier. You live in a crappy trailer house now, eh?

Conspiracies.

"Do you like my new bathing suit?" Ashby wants to know.

Looking at the floral pattern, Rex is reminded to water the garden.

And then some hot tub time.

As soon as Rex sets foot in the water, the alarms go off, letting Ashby know there's another fire she must deal with. But we don't need pictures of that.

Pharaoh enjoys himself as well.

Though he was once so strong and athletic, these days Rex relies on a cane.

He's so grumpy, it's hard to want to take him anywhere.

But when Rex trips and falls outside the store, Ashby sits down with him.

"Uhm," she says, pointing to the stars. "Do you remember when you told me you were an Aquarius?"

"Honestly I'd forgotten I'm an Aquarius," Rex admits.

"Somehow I knew I'd be with you forever." She frowns. "I know it wasn't because of the sign. It was just... you."

With his own sons, Rex was an education tyrant. With his granddaughters he takes a more lenient approach, and only whips out the books when he needs to bore them to sleep.

The next day Rex is at it again, at the Riverview Saloon.

Being annoyed at the world.

Harassing random people.

Harassing poor defenseless Rio.

Ashby does a bit of housework, cleaning up before the guests arrive for Xue and Yasu's birthday party.

The guests decide Rex's garden is THE place to be.

Since governor blue-hair has recently turned elder, Pauline's sister, Rose Pate, is currently the only Archer to have the original color. While Pauline's facial structure takes after Arthur, her sister takes after their mother.

Rose and Pauline's parents broke up recently. They were never married. The age difference was just too much of a hurdle.

Iago steps out of his limo and into the back yard, bellowing out his best mad cackle.

That entrance is usually a hit at fund raising events, but Rose is terrified and runs away.

It's not a proper party until one of the great uncles screams "JEREMIAH WAS A BULLFROG!" and follows up with a guitar performance.

A few feet away, Rex is displeased to see Donovan. Why does Ashby keep inviting Donovan?

So what if Donovan's parents are dead and he and his insane brother Kerry have no families of their own?

Rex would kick Donovan's ass if he was a younger man today.

But since he's old and falling apart, he shuffles away, grumbling.

Luke chimes in with a keyboard. He's not very good, but he tries to keep up with his Uncle Rio.

"Do you want to dance, Fischer?" Felicia asks.

"Always."

"You're so sweet," she says, as he twirls her around once. "I wish I could find a guy like you."

The last Fischer spoke to his cousin Felicia, it was online, and she had nothing but good things to say about her latest boyfriend, Jefferson Burr. From her tone, something has happened, and Fischer feels a little guilty for being such a recluse lately. There's so much in the town to keep up with. "Why am I sweet? How do you know I'm not a jerk inside?"

"Well you're quiet and you listen." Felicia giggles. "But mostly it's because I can tell you care. I know you'd never hurt anybody, you know?"

"What happened with Jefferson?"

"Ergh, he was awful! The feeding... it got worse and worse! And now that Pauline is grown up, he's after her. I'll never trust a vampire again."

Fischer's expression darkens. "I could buy out his business. I could ruin him."

Felicia giggles. "Ruin your boss, Fischer? Is that a favor for me or for you?"

"I don't know. Jeff is-"

"It's okay," Felicia cuts him off. "I'm okay."

"As long as you don't go back to Tam."

"I know, right? That guy was such a slob. AND he went out with me when he knew Kipp had a crush on him! I swear, I didn't know, but Kipp was cold to me for the longest time."

Speaking of Kipp, here she is looking concerned after her elderly mother runs off to save the criminals... again... after they tried to steal the clouds... again.

See the sky darkening over Kipp's shoulder?

The party was interrupted by Ashby's leaving, but it's not over.

Kipp managed to skip off to the hot tub between this picture and the last.

Yasu becomes a child.

Ashby calls to let her family know she'll be home soon, so they wait before giving Xue her turn at the cake.

In the meantime, Luke and Fischer go to the painting garage to discuss art.

Luke surprises Fischer by attacking him with a pillow.

"Aren't we a bit old for this?" Fischer complains. He wonders when Luke developed those Jedi muscles.

Most of the guests have gone by the time Xue gets her cake.

BUT THE CAKE BURSTS INTO FLAMES.

Fischer gives us his best "annoyed rich boy" look.

Little Yasu will NEVAR FORGET this.

Rex whips out a fire extinguisher to help his firefighter wife battle the flames.

Fischer and Luke panic unhelpfully.

Rex can breathe a sigh of relief once the flames are down to a tiny, manageable size.

Luke continues to scream like a banshee.

All this fire gives Yasu inspiration.

True, it's deadly stuff... both fire and inspiration... but they can be used for such awesome.

The cake is ruined, but Xue is still a toddler.

Ashby decides to solve this with a second cake. By now it's so late, Karate Hero Jazz is able to attend.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
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Etc.: This isn't a cliffhanger, everyone's fine.

So YAYYY my very first birthday cake fire ever. And then a second one right after that.

Yasu is an excitable, eccentric genius. Xue is a randomly rolled couch potato angler virtuoso (so a person with conflicting desires I suppose!). Yasu's first two traits were randomly rolled as well.

You know what would have been cool? It would have been cool if you could give two old people canes, and have them spar.

On a more serious note, I'm disappointed that the cane isn't CASTable. How will I ever make a Doctor House sim?

And the memories crap is annoying. The photos thing appearing over peoples' heads makes it more difficult to get good pictures. And no I don't want to SHARE every mundane detail of my sim's life. .......Oh wait I already have a blog about that oops.

As I'm sure you know if you've been reading the topic on MTS, I experienced a horrible photos/paintings glitch after installing Generations. All of the sim-created paintings in my family inventory and sims' inventories have gone missing. The ones on the walls are fine. Also the photos still in the cameras, or photos my sims had in their inventory or family inventory, have vanished. Fresh cameras can be used, but old cameras will lock up the sim trying to take more photos, if the old camera should have had pictures still in it. When I view the pictures in the old cameras, none are there, BUT I get an option to sell them all for boodles of money. So I am hoping against hope that I can somehow retrieve them, because I had quite the collection of pictures of everybody as kids or teens or toddlers. ='(

If you're getting Generations, my suggestion to you is to put all paintings or photos ON THE WALLS.

If I'd known about this glitch, it would have saved my collection. Unfortunately this glitch has not been a huge deal to most players, because I guess photography isn't such a big part of their gaming experience. So I've only seen one or two other people complaining.

Regardless, I'm having a lot of fun with the new expansion pack. I do think EA was being incredibly lazy by not giving us a new town, but it's still a proper expansion pack. As usual, the expansion pack contains more stuff than all the stuff packs put together... or at least it feels that way. I don't know how EA gets off selling stuff packs, heh.