Fellows

Unwitting participants in a reality TV show.

Ranchion
Somewhere between a ranch house and a mansion, this luxurious abode has so many creature comforts it almost seems like you'd never need to leave it for any reason.

Bedrooms: 2
Bathrooms: 1
House type: Hacienda-style ranch
Max. occupancy: 6 (actual) | 12 (theoretical)
Inspired by the first-season Big Brother house. When contestants get voted off the show, some kind of time-consuming challenge is held outside on the patio and the production crew comes into the house to remove a bed from the bedroom. The idea is, the last two contestants are supposed to be a man and a woman, who will sleep in the same bed. In practise, however, this will not work as the producers intend.

DaQuan
Our first contestant, DaQuan is a college basketball star and current coach of the SimCity Llamas. Hailing from SimCity's Riverline district, his hobbies include swimming, pumping some serious iron, and looking at himself in the mirror.

Astrological sign: Aries
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Ashanté
Our second contestant, Ashanté recently graduated SimCity Technical Institute with a degree in architecture and carpentry. Originally from Miniopolis' Sim Quarter, her favourite food is smoked salmon and cream cheese on bagels. Best of luck to her!

Astrological sign: Cancer
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Mario
Our third contestant, Mario is a lifeguard at the Will R. Wright Family Recreation Center in Alphaville. In his day job, he's a fireman with modelling aspirations. When not on duty, Mario enjoys reading "Lothario" magazine but JUST for the interviews, honest! He also likes fishing and playing soccer with his league.

Astrological sign: Gemini
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Mickey
Our fourth contestant, Mickey was voted Miss SimNation three years running. Recently, she's launched her career as a magazine editor, starting the niche periodical "Mushroom Forager's Monthly". She appreciates the finer things in life; such as leather jackets, smoke-filled biker bars, and playing pool 'til dawn and then some. Good luck on our little game!

Astrological sign: Aquarius
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Chaz
Our fifth contestant, Chaz gave up a boring job in the mailroom to be here. He has aspirations of playing guitar in a band, and writes his own music. While not wasting away in the basement of Goldbrick & Jonas, he enjoys playing competitive videogames and hosts LAN parties every month.

Astrological sign: Aquarius
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The brainchild of Cable Ace Award winner, Del Renta, and cyberpunk author-turned-corporate sellout, Willem Weintraub; Fellows was made as a followup to last year's summer reality show blockbuster, Shipwreck Island. These shows, along with The Intern with Malcolm Landgraab, comprise SimTV's Sunday night "Virtual Reality" programming block.

The premise is simple: get 12 conventionally-attractive people into the same house and let their playground fantasy tendencies re-emerge to create drama, intrigue, and romance... and, where necessary for ratings' sake, prod or bribe them a bit off-camera into doing something interesting. The show has already been running for 7 weeks and only 5 contestants of the original 12 remain in the house. However...

...only one of them signed up for it.

Contrary to their biographies on the official Fellows website, each "contestant" actually believes they are at a luxury resort and the others are their roommates. The cameras are very well-hidden inside the light recesses and the crown moulding, while microphones are hidden in all the tables on the property to pick up private conversations. While this approach doesn't provide the same opportunity for one-on-one interviews mid-game, like Shipwreck Island, it lends itself to greater spontaneity and fewer accusations that the whole thing is an act.

But, it is an act. Chaz is the only one who actually signed up for the show—and not because he wanted to win the top prize. Chaz is actually Del Renta's secretary, on undercover assignment within the house. While the show itself isn't scripted, Chaz initiates conflict between the contestants to create ratings. His employer communicates with him over a secret telephone within the otherwise locked bathroom cabinet, to which Chaz has the only key. If he mislays the keys or encounters some other situation that requires the producers' urgent attention, he gives a signal to any of the cameras; place his left elbow in his right hand and tap his left cheek twice with his index finger. If he is alone, he looks directly into a camera to give this signal, otherwise it's innocuous enough not to raise anyone's suspicions in a group shot. Once he gives the signal, he excuses himself and goes to the kitchen, where he uses a secret door behind the refrigerator to exit the house and confer with the producers. Incidentally, he knows where the cameras are because he was on the house's original design team and knows which of the recessed lights contain cameras.

Only once a contestant has been voted out of the house are they made aware that they were on television. While the top prize is §1 Million, each contestant receives a consolation prize of §10.000. Apart from giving them something for their trouble, it's also designed to prevent them making a scene or punching someone, or worse—breaking back into the house and revealing the subterfuge.

The player gets to Sunshine Acres after Fellows has been on the air for several weeks and more than half the contestants are gone. Let's have a look at the ones who were voted off, shall we?

Martina
Being the first contestant voted off a game show you didn't know you were playing was bound to be a bit awkward. The reason her housemates wanted to get rid of her was apparently that she simply wasn't congenial enough. From her perspective, she was on vacation and found her resort full of the strangest assemblage of people she'd seen since her last jury duty. Immediately closing herself off from her surroundings, she spent most of her week drinking and was glad to finally leave the house. On her last day there, she began to at least acquaint herself with Mickey, whom she recognised from a bar she goes to sometimes. According to Del Renta, her exit interview went so badly that they couldn't air it, and elected to play the entire end credits sequence at normal speed to fill the time. The §10.000 consolation prize was apparently improvised by host, Pritchard Locksley, in order to prevent having his shins broken.

Ricky
Having developed a reputation with viewers of the first episode as something of a womaniser, Ricky was voted out by fans in an unofficial poll ahead of the next episode. Indeed, he'd spent much of his 2-week stay harrassing Ashanté and Ariel, and had been insulting to DaQuan. Before bedtime on his penultimate day in the house, he called DaQuan a racist slur and Chaz had to intervene in order to prevent a fistfight. On Chaz' suggestion, Ricky's consolation prize was lowered to a new television set instead of the §10.000 that had been given to Martina. Ricky was almost unanimously voted out in the next round, with all but one vote being against him (Ricky himself had voted for DaQuan).

Jessie
On summer break from college, Jessie was the youngest member of the ensemble, aged only 21. An aspiring stand-up comedian and voice actor, she had great fun imitating the mannerisms of her housemates. Unlike the others, she suspected something was a bit too artificial about this so-called "luxury resort" from the moment she entered the house through the strange pentagonal vestibule, which she referred to as the "airlock". She commonly looked around the house for cameras and even found one of them; the one in the southernmost end of the kitchen, positioned to monitor the refrigerator. Chaz managed to convince her that the resort owners would naturally want to have security countermeasures against theft and vandalism, which she seemed to accept, at least until she found a cardioid microphone affixed to the underside of her nightstand. Without telling anyone about it until her exit interview, she decided that she had stumbled upon a social experiment, but admitted it was not nearly the strangest thing that had ever happened to her, saying only, "Dude, I go to UBrite." When asked how she managed to avoid being chased by Ricky during the previous round, she had told him that she was only 17. After discovering the subterfuge, she requested to be voted out, despite being almost universally adored by her housemates and the fans. She told host, Pritchard, that being cavey to the fact she was being watched would have ruined her performance.

Pete
Pete's departure from the house had been accidental. While he had been the fan favourite to win the contest after Jessie left, he and Mario had been horsing around by the pool and he fell off the top of the waterslide onto the pavement. Being a firefighter, Mario had some experience with emergency first-response and determined that Pete dislocated his shoulder and most likely suffered a concussion. While pretending to look on curiously, Chaz issued the secret signal and a medic was on-site in a matter of seconds. Before this, he gained fan support by falling in love with Lupé and was often seen chatting with her in the sitting room. A sous-chef at Can-Can in East Jerome, Pete frequently cooked for his housemates and spent most of his time in the kitchen, entirely by choice. As in, Chaz didn't make him do it. With him gone, the housemates have had to make do with various convenience foods, but occasionally a catering team shows up to prepare gourmet food. This occurred for the first time while Pete was still in the house, and he remarked at the time that he was glad he didn't have to cook for a change. Though he had been injured badly enough on the Fellows premises to require surgery, he decided not to press charges. Even though his departure was an accident, no voting took place that week.

Lupé
As mentioned, Lupé and Pete fell in love with each other sometime between the 2nd and 3rd episode. Neither is precisely sure how it happened, but she would tell you that she didn't think much of him based on first impressions. However, one of the first interactions they had was after Pete had made dinner one night—he had overheard her mention to Ashanté she was lactose intolerant. So, while the rest of the housemates got fettucine alfredo, he made spaghetti marinara specially for her. They got onto talking about food after dinner and Lupé mentioned how her parents operated a Creole restaurant when she was a kid. It turned out that Pete's apprenticeship was in a Creole restaurant. The next day for lunch, he made pasta boudin out of some leftover fettucine. When Pete left the house, Lupé took it pretty hard; just as Jessie had done, she requested to be voted out next. Tracking down the hospital Pete was staying in, she was there when his anaesthesia wore off. At last check, they're back at home in East Jerome and still dating. She used her §10.000 to start her own computer and phone repair shop in the plaza at the crossroads of 64th & Charles.

Tyrone
Next to Pete and Mario, Tyrone was considered by fans to be the most handsome of the male contestants. Tyrone fansites were commonly found on the fan webring, and he was the first male contestant to be made for the Jennadoll™ Fellows playset (along with Ariel). However, despite his popularity outside the house, Tyrone was seen by his housemates as confrontational and angry. Unless he had a drink in his hand, he tended to randomly lash out at people and famously made a scene about an empty toilet paper dispenser, which was widely lampooned on late-night TV. He had been the only one to vote for someone other than Martina in the first round, where he voted for Jessie, claiming that she was too young to be around a bunch of weirdoes like him and Ricky. Relative to that, Tyrone had been the only one to form any kind of bond with Ricky, as they both had the same womanising tendencies. However, Tyrone was less proactive about pursuing the women in the house, instead preferring to wait for them to come to him. He was voted out after failing the Online Gaming challenge and costing his team the §1000 bonus. At least officially. When the team lost the challenge, Chaz remarked that his daughter was going to have to go without new braces as a result of their loss; however, this had been goading at Del Renta's request, due to SimTV's plan to give Tyrone his own show that would begin airing after Fellows ended, and they needed 5 weeks' production time for the first 3 episodes.

Ariel
Another fan favourite, Ariel made friends easily. She, Ashanté, and Jessie got along very well, up until the point Jessie uncovered the "reality show" element to their stay and realised that all their conversations were being monitored. Once Jessie left, Ariel and Ashanté stayed friends, though. Common fan speculation was that Ariel was in love with Ashanté, mostly due to an incident shortly after the latter had been insulted by Mickey and Ariel consoled her by saying Mickey was "just jealous of your looks" and "she wishes she was half as pretty as you are". When she said this, she appeared to falter as though she had not intended to say that, instigating the fan speculation. A popular piece of fan-created art on AllAboard.com at the time was of Ashanté pinning a smiling Ariel to the wall with her boobs, and a number of erotic fanfics about the 2 were written. When Pete left, Ariel was the only one who ever attempted cooking; she used gravy mix, ground beef, tater tots, and green beans to make a casserole she called "dog food", based upon its appearance being roughly similar to tinned dog food. Ariel was voted out during an elimination challenge at the pool. When she left the show, she found a website; arashante.com; that was dedicated to Ariel x Ashanté fan works, and came out on the forum, confirming that their suspicions had been correct and she had "a major crush" on her, but did not suspect that Ashanté felt the same way. As to where this potential relationship will go in the future? Viewers will have to wait for Ashanté to be voted out of the house to find out.

The house, its inhabitants, and their backstories are all based on the TV reality show, Big Brother. The Sims and Big Brother intersected almost perfectly, as the first episode of the US version aired only 4 months after the game was released. SO MANY stories were uploaded to the Exchange, so many skins and meshes went with them. Honestly, something Will Wright said about the game's popularity at GDC 2001 stuck with me, and it made me realise something about how popular culture works. In 2000, most people who were playing videogames on any system were males, so The Sims—more or less of a virtual dollhouse—didn't do overnight numbers. There was a core group of enthusiasts who had been following SimWatch, but the game's popularity was lateral instead of vertical. People were trying the game out because it was new, not thinking much about it, their wives, sisters, and girlfriends would walk by the room, see them playing the "toilet simulator", and discover the game's social depth; and so, it was women who made the game popular. Moreover—and here's what I meant about pop culture—the US debut of Big Brother happened during The Sims's initial discovery period, and the main audience here was, again, women. And women talk. I mean, we talk a lot about a variety of topics. So, naturally, Big Brother fans were going to find The Sims fans at some point and discover that there's a way to, essentially, conduct your own Big Brother house right in your computer. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if it turned out that The Sims began surging in popularity after the first episode of Big Brother aired. Their premises are so similar, they're almost in lock-step; especially as, for the first 2 years, you couldn't take your sims out of their houses, so you almost needed a Big Brother-style household to ensure they wouldn't tank their Social motive.

The other theme of the house is constant monitoring. The duplicity of the corporate feudal state is a common theme in my writing; here, it's expressed as a purported vacation resort that is actually the venue for the summer's hottest new reality show. With few exceptions, the people in the house don't know they're being monitored, and the one who finds out takes her first opportunity to haul ass out of there. There is also a mole inside the house whose instructions are to make sure the network gets ratings. Just like the real Big Brother show, Fellows is an absurdisation of the surveillance state—something the corporate feudal state can point at and say, "At least you're not like them." Whereas the contestants on Big Brother are explicitly aware that their privacy is forfeit (hence the title), Fellows is more like your smartphone in that it's designed to conceal the fact that you're being constantly monitored. Chaz stands in for Alexa here—not Alexa Besties, but your Amazon Echo— filling in the bits of your behaviour that your other smart technology might otherwise miss. Do you make shopping lists on paper? That's a missed opportunity for marketing analytics! But if you're given to muttering to yourself, Alexa knows what you're going to buy. Uh, sorry, this wasn't supposed to turn into a privacy lecture...

The house isn't really based on any particular iteration of the Big Brother house, it just has several things in common with it. Communal bedrooms, gender-segregated; a pool out back, lots of space to move around, and the only windows in the house are between common areas, affording no ability to see outside the confines of the show. Since it's The Sims, I had to break that rule in places so I could get rooms to light up without the need for lamps, but only with the clarestory windows and a high hedgerow blocking anyone's ability to climb up and have a look inside. Also, it has a couple things that the TV show's house doesn't; namely a purpose-built chess table, wet bars, computers, and a big-screen TV capable of receiving regular broadcasts. I did want this place to look luxurious, after all.

The voted-off contestants are all from various places in SimNation, so they probably will not make any appearance in Sunshine Acres in the future. After all, who would want to take a vacation in their own hometown? Also, I don't think I made this bit clear: Ashanté is about 7 inches taller than Ariel. I know that you can't change heights in The Sims, just take my word for it. I don't know, I might bring Ariel back... but I'll need to make a better outfit for her. Oh yes, by the way—Ashanté and Chaz' outfits were made by me. I used a custom colour fill in Creator for Ashante's shorts, but no new garments. Chaz's sweatshirt is a modified version of the university sweatshirt from the stock game.