5.38 Stairway to Somewhere

Dylan had big plans. As soon as he started high school, he began taking practice advanced placement exams for university.

He wasn’t terribly thrilled by his scores, though. Sky tried to remind him that he’d just begun high school. Maybe he’d be more ready for university when he was further in his current classes.

Dylan wasn’t terribly moved by this argument. He was ready to be grown up, and he was ready for it now. He began joining after school study groups to boost his placement scores.

Forest had a few suggestions about where Dylan might direct his ambition.

Dylan even thought about it for a while.

But it was really just a hypothetical exercise that he was using to be polite. Dylan found the very idea of breaking the law pretty upsetting. He tried to stay away from his uncle’s pretty unjust form of justice as much as possible. Besides, Uncle Forest was just extra creepy lately.

Sawyer still seemed to be happiest alone in his room, grouping his blocks by color and building them into symmetrical geometric shapes.

Sky was having some success on socializing him, though.

He no longer pulled away when she held him, but when she tickled, it often took him a long time to remember to laugh.

Sky’s performance at the park pavilion was on that kind of creepy night that made your bones shiver.

Still, it was pretty well-attended.

She sang her heart out.

Crowd reaction was all over the map, from cheers to smiles to people checking their phones. Some of the listeners in the back might as well have been dead.



Xia tried to make up the difference with her own cheers. So much so that when Sky took her bow, she could tell how much of the response was Xia’s.

It was pretty embarrassing. She’d hoped her performance debut would be more… positive.

She made the second set into a Ghostwriter performance. The clouds opened up as she stepped down from the stage, but they’d played in worse. A lot of the crowd ran for cover, but the dedicated fans stayed to listen.

They had a new keyboardist now, Cliffton Hodgins, son of Sky’s long-suffering obstetrician Dr. Sebastian Hodgins.

At home, Dylan was now older enough to be in charge while Sky and Xia were out. He made sure Sawyer was in bed on time, but Abby was not about to let him boss her around. She stayed up playing queen until her parents came home. Dylan tried to ignore her and focus on his studies.

In the living room, the Sample ancestors were having a reunion. They mostly spent it playing video games together.

And then there were more Sing-O-Grams.

Her great-nephew Tomas Sample-Royale bought one to cheer up his roommate, Charlotte Stemple.

It seemed to be mostly a friend thing, since Charlotte most definitely preferred women.

Even with the lesbian community starved for new blood, Sky couldn’t muster the slightest attraction to Charlotte.

It was almost like they were sisters.

And then there was the time her bubble-maker exploded while she was performing for Faith Cagley.



Becoming a singing star was incredibly hard work.

———-
Just some slice-of-life stuff. There are a few better views of teen Dylan. 
Yes, that was a zombie attending Sky’s park performance. The performance was a bomb — probably early performances are often a bomb. But the effect was that she got a high relationship with everyone who watched while they were watching, then took a nasty hit to those relationships at the end because the performance sucked. This resulted in a great notification window that I’ve lost, telling Sky that she wasn’t spending time with the zombie, and it wasn’t her friend anymore.

Sorry about how dark the stage was. Once you’ve set up a stage for a performance, you don’t get another chance to edit it. I clearly did not light it up properly. I’m still trying to figure out how to do that.

I probably shouldn’t show so many Sing-O-Grams, but I JUST LOVE THEM. 
I also don’t using show ghost shots, but that was all four generations hanging out in one room, and it was so cute.

9 thoughts on “5.38 Stairway to Somewhere

  1. Wow, Dylan sure grows up fast! 🙂 I'm already proud of him, because he is so studious and willing to work hard for his success. That one will definitely find his way in life.

  2. "Some of the listeners in the back might as well have been dead" Haha! Love it!!!

    Such a funny chapter. Maybe the Sim Fates are telling Sky that she should stick to being a member of Ghost Writer.

    Also, I've mentioned it before but my three year old cousin Cody is autistic and you've captured Sawyer's personality perfectly. Especially with the building blocks and needing everything symmetrical. This Christmas, Cody took all the baubles of the tree and put them all in order according to size, colour and shape. He couldn't understand why they were all on the tree! Sawyer reminds me of him a lot 🙂

  3. Haha! I saw the zombie crawl out of the earth right before Sky's performance, and I thought, "Great, now it's going to go around and attack her audience." So instead it watched the show and became her friend! I busted out laughing.

    I'm so glad you appreciate Sawyer.

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