Sims 4 Overthinking: The Great Depression

By Bay Posted Friday Dec 30, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, The Sims Overthinking 12 comments

Finally! Over a month into the project and we’re actually going forward in the years. We started in roughly 1915, with a house built by a clearly upper-middle-class couple of the time. They’ve built it for parties and entertaining, and with all the mistakes a typical couple in their early 20s would make. If we go off of averages for newlyweds of the year, she’s about 21 and he’s 25, her father paid for the house, and they have a cook who they pay very little. Let’s give them a last name to make talking about them easier as the years go on…

Okay, I googled ‘funny last names 1900’ and I got the results one might expect if an 11-year-old was playing mad-libs for the first time. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I can’t seriously write Mr. and Mrs. Assman 60 times. Uhhh…Smith, whatever, they’re placeholders anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Smith it is.

Give yourselves one last look, this will be the last screenshot of the original.
Give yourselves one last look, this will be the last screenshot of the original.

To jump forward, we’re going to start with twenty years. Our couple had a lot of big ideas for this place, gardening, parties, and some children. Unfortunately for them, this means that they had mouths to feed when the Great Depression hit, 14 years after the house was first built. If they had started a few years earlier, their kids might have all been 14 and older, old enough to go off to find work elsewhere, but no such luck.

The cook would have been the first thing to go since they could no longer afford to pay her. They’ll be turning the house into a bed-and-breakfast to pay for their needs going forward. Mrs. Smith will take over the cooking and cleaning, and bedrooms will be turned into spaces for renters. Now, they don’t have any money to make changes to the house itself, so all we’ll be doing at this stage is adding the damages that happen during this time that they can’t pay to fix.

First, we age the garden. Mr. Smith lost interest in gardening long before the depression hit, but now it’s half-wild with them no longer being able to pay someone else to do it. Next, we plan from the top down where the damage is in the house.

Man, if only dozens of builders had told Mr. and Mrs. Smith that the area above the attic they insisted on having ‘didn’t have enough drainage’ and ‘would eventually cause damage’, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. Oh, they did? They just didn’t listen? Damn.

In all actuality, though, there would have been problems no matter what. No matter how clever and thinking ahead they were, they were going to have issues when the money ran out. It’s a shame they didn’t think ahead, but both smart and stupid were all in the same storm at that point in history. Let’s check what is right below that leak…

Ah, a bedroom, geez. Well, it’s one of the two bigger bedrooms so it’s where the kids are sleeping, so they can rent out the nicer rooms. Mom and Dad will be in what used to be the study, the smallest ‘bedroom’ they have. The laws for room size and needs haven’t been passed yet, but by the time they have, history will have forgotten it was ever not a bedroom.

Hold on…

Uh oh
Uh oh

I’ve been counting four bedrooms. Shit.

The top right is the master bedroom, the bottom right is the kid’s room, the left is the study, and…

Oops
Oops

That isn’t a fourth bedroom, it can’t be, it’s too small…This is the fifth post in this series and I haven’t put in the toilet yet. Fuck. Okay.

So, Mom and Dad aren’t sharing the study, the whole Smith family is sleeping in Casa de la Mildew so they can rent out their remaining two rooms. I can totally count. Let’s just…

Never happened.
Never happened.

Let’s just pretend I built this twenty years ago like I was supposed to, and move on.

The awful pink tile is actually an ode to the bathroom in the house I grew up in, built around the same time. For some reason, though, in my house growing up, there were five blue tiles that didn’t match anything else, right by the toilet. I suppose the builders must have run out of the right color around there, but it mystified childhood me. I tried to hit those five tiles in every pattern I could think of, hoping they opened up some magic door with the right combination. No such luck.

I can’t imagine the nightmare of this family, plus renters, trying to share one bathroom, especially in the mornings when everyone needs it, but life will go on.

Next week, we should hit the 1950s and exit the depression, but for now, the Smiths will just have to deal with it.

We’ve got something special posting at midnight of the new year, which many of you may have seen the announcement for over on Patreon already. I’m excited to finally go up to two posts a week with the new project, we’ll see how it goes.

 


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12 thoughts on “Sims 4 Overthinking: The Great Depression

  1. BlueHorus says:

    I think Assman is a great surname! It’s the guy in charge of the asses, and that was an important job!

    Alternatively, you could have the couple’s names be Joe and Faye King, if you want to be a bit more subtle…

  2. MelTorefas says:

    I grew up in this sort of house (though much less fancy). There were additions built on, a garage converted into a bedroom, a giant empty under-house area that frequently hosted colonies of feral cats, and one bathroom for the seven of us. Fun times, fun times.

  3. RCN says:

    Oh, you can totally just use the excuse that during that time it was forbidden to depict a bathroom in any shape or form.

    Then you’d also need to make the Smiths sleep in different beds, though, and at the time it was practically illegal to divorce…

  4. Dreadjaws says:

    The bathroom is pretty nice, size-wise. I think my current bathroom is a bit larger. I like having a large bathroom. In nearly every house I’ve lived in or I’ve visited (either from friends or family) bathrooms have been very small. I suppose there must be a logistical reason for it (aside from the “it’s easier to clean” BS I keep hearing), but I really find them very constricting. Yeah, it’s the one room in the house where you’re likely to spend the less time on a daily basis, but that’s no reason to make it uncomfortable. If I were to slip on the floor in either of my parents’ bathrooms I’d hit my head about seven times on the way to the floor.

    1. Fizban says:

      Just because you don’t spend much time in there, doesn’t mean you spend no time in there. Using the bathroom is non-negotiable, multiple times per day. Even people who don’t cook or do laundry or any other chores still need to use the bathroom, every person in the house, regardless of age or ability. More room equals more usability. If a bedroom is a little small, you have slightly less room to put your stuff in, oh well. If the bathroom, kitchen, laundry, etc are too small, every day is a little bit more miserable, only getting worse with age.

      1. RCN says:

        Lol. I’m talking about the Hays Code, which along several things censored the depiction of bathrooms in cinema and TV because it would be a scandal to suggest people have to poop.

        http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2008/05/hollywoods-censor-joseph-i-breen-and.html

        (EDIT: whoops, thought you were replying to me, for some reason)

  5. Philadelphus says:

    For some reason, though, in my house growing up, there were five blue tiles that didn’t match anything else, right by the toilet. I suppose the builders must have run out of the right color around there, but it mystified childhood me. I tried to hit those five tiles in every pattern I could think of, hoping they opened up some magic door with the right combination. No such luck.

    Oh man, so relatable.

    Mr. Smith lost interest in gardening long before the depression hit, but now it’s half-wild with them no longer being able to pay someone else to do it.

    Does the Sims allow you to place vegetable gardens? Admittedly I’m sure people reacted to the Depression in a lot of different ways, but turning (some) arable yard space into a source of food seems like a decent idea for the time, especially if they’re poor enough to need to take boarders. Though maybe Mr. Smith is simply too tired outside work hours to handle a garden.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      I haven’t actually played the game* but IIRC there is both some kind of farming expansion and some kind of eco/thrifty living expansion (that lets you dumpsterdive among other things) so… maybe? I’m almost certain I remember growing produce in the third game…

      *I installed the base, now free, game inspired by this series… which is when I discovered the “everybody hates everybody” bug hit. I think that’s still not fixed?

  6. Sleeping Dragon says:

    Dwarf Fortress!

    See, it kept bothering me what this idea of seeing a place change through the years was reminding me of and it only today hit me that I was thinking of Dwarf Fortress world generation. I wish more games used this kind of thing where they simulated history. Like, usually if they have random generation it’s just that, random within certain parameters whereas observing the process take place or rerolling for interesting results can be almost as fun as the game itself.

    (I know there is a recent game that’s sort of a fantasy godsim but you can just let things take their course and observe… I remember reading about it but the name eludes me now)

  7. Octal says:

    Years later, someone just walls off that area with the bucket.

  8. Alberek says:

    I didn’t know there were “decorations” to show the “passage of time” in some buildings… seems like a Halloween add on.
    How else would you make spooky mansions?

    Assman isn’t a bad family name, but how about “The Bouts”

  9. DanB says:

    Some of the tiles got cracked, and were replaced by someone who didn’t care about the color enough to special order 5 of the right color.

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