Baker Bloch stands before the vacated Collagesity apartment formerly occupied by Cyberpaperdoll and her then lover/boyfriend Roger Pine Ridge. As we have seen in the story so far, they’ve moved to Iris in the center of the Heterocera continent, not too awful far northeast of Collagesity actually — only about 4 sims away using a diagonal measurement, or about a kilometer and a half in distance. But now Cyberpaperdoll seems to have left Roger alone in that watery place for a more exciting and hipper man (Bandit Boy). Last we see of Pine Ridge, he’s debating whether to unburden his recent woes on fellow Iris resident Bill (Wheeler). We’ll see how that develops.
But Cyberpaperdoll and Roger are not the only ones to leave Collagesity recently. Rocky Racco’s duplicate dwelling place, also attached to the SoSo Mall, has essentially been cleaned out, save a picture of David Bowie and a meditation pillow. Where is the furry wordsmith, curious readers may ask? It could be that he went back to Olde Lapara Towne, perhaps staying with cousins Sport and Racket up in the mountains above that virtual burg, or maybe assuming his old job at the town’s hotel where we first picked up with his story. But at any rate, he’s gone from Collagesity, perhaps never to return.
And also the 2 apartments in the Kidd Tower, formerly occupied by Mr. Babyface and Greg Ogden, are now unfurnished and currently unavailable to rent. My guess for these two is that they simply transitioned over to Middletown on the Jeogeot continent when Billy Jean Kidd created a doppleganger tower there in “Collagesity 2017 Later”, or novel 6 of our Collagesity series. *That* became more the real Kidd Tower, since The Kidd lived inside it and not the one in Collagesity. Again: best guess. Like the rest — but especially Rocky Racco, I believe — they will be missed. Doesn’t mean that they can’t return of course, but they’ll be missed in the meantime. And this is another structure attached to the SoSo Mall.
So just utilizing these pieces of information alone, it might seem that Collagesity is in a bit of trouble, especially since this is the first time we’ve really talked about my town in any depth in the present work, which is now halfway completed. But actually I believe this isn’t the case. To explain my reasonings for this determination, let’s start with the recent land ownership changes for Our Second Lyfe premium members as copied from the company blog.
As of March 14, 2018, pricing for each mainland tier allotment has been reduced by 10%. Additionally, Premium subscribers now receive 1024m² of bonus land allotment, doubled from the previous 512m².
Baker Bloch formerly owned 8704 square meters of land in Collagesity, maxing out his 40 dollar tier allowance. But now with the bump up of bonus land allotment from 512 to 1024, coupled with the 10% price reduction on tier, he can now own 9216 square meters of land at *35* dollars a month. And that’s exactly what I’ve chosen to have him do and be responsible for. Now let’s turn to the other town owner Baker Blinker, or, I should now say, *former* owner. For just after the price changes were announced, I decided that Wheeler Wilson should take over Baker Blinker’s land, since she has assumed the lion’s share of female roles in the blog, including Mabel — that’s the most important new addition in my eyes. And Baker Blinker herself, as a core avatar, hasn’t played a major factor in Collagesity novels since “Collagesity 2016 Later”, which is *5 1/2* Collagesity novels back as of this writing. True, she does play Karl in the present novel (congrats B. Blinker again!), but that doesn’t offset Wheeler’s Annie/Mabel/Bill power trio in my estimation. It was simply time to do this. But while Baker Blinker owned 1536 square meters to Baker Bloch’s 8704, her successor Wheeler only owns 1024 meters, which means she pays *0* dollars in tier each month under the new rules (as opposed to Baker Blinker’s 8 dollars a month tier payment for the 1536). Overall, I’m saving 13 dollars a month for the exact same amount of land (combined, in each case: 10,240). Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it really is long term. And justification enough from that alone to continue Collagesity into the forseeable future. The novels are still going strong — why not?
But the recombination of lands also gave Baker Bloch a considerably larger amount of free prims to work with — 504 as of this writing. The drawback is that Wheeler has very few prims left over from her 1024, even with the empty or near empty apartments surrounding SoSo Mall we talked about earlier. Again, it may not sound like much of a change, but it actually is. Baker Bloch has more power to enact his overall vision within Collagesity now, and with a more consolidated land base. Mabel (Wheeler) will continue to argue for the movement of her prim heavy Heartsdale Victorian style house to Collagesity. But Baker, I feel, has other plans…
The 2 owners of Collagesity staring at each other across a shared property line.
