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3.16 Meet the Family

Sep1

Fabian Branch Sample began his first day of married life by making breakfast.

Mac ‘n’ cheese. Well, it was a great breakfast when he was a bachelor.

Zahra, not the most inspired of communicators, pretty much broke the news to her family by letting them watch the new state of affairs. They were surprised but supportive.

“So, dear, it looks like you got married last night.”

“Yeah. It seemed like the thing to do.”

“He seems like a nice man, dear, but he doesn’t bring in much of a salary. Do you think we can afford it?”

“MOM!”

(Fabian did bring in about 1100 simonleons, which I think is the lowest amount any spouse has brought into the family so far. Law enforcement clearly does not pay.)

The men were even lower key.

“You gonna make my daughter happy?”

“Yup.”

“Thought so.”

(The men spontaneously bonding in their underwear was pretty awesome.)

Fabian and Adjo were already pals for reasons only the Sims game was tracking. I have to guess it’s mostly because they’re both people people, so they could hardly bump into each other in any context without becoming friends. Shanni didn’t have a lot of use for men that she wasn’t staking a claim on, and Fabian really wasn’t her type anyway, but they coexisted all right.

He pledged to help with Charles, but mostly what he did was take over other household responsibilities so that Zahra could spend more time with him.

He also convinced her that subtle pink accents in their bedroom was not only manly, but tasteful. Zahra, who didn’t pay much attention to aesthetics anyway, let him have his way.

(Yes, his favorite color is pink. I notice you can see him telling her this on their park date when they were teens. Fabian is such a Sensitive New Age Guy. I have vivid memories of adding pink accents to their bedroom and even photographing it, and I can neither find the photographs nor evidence of the pink in later photos. Did I do this on a version of the game that crashed on me? The world may never know. I’m at least two weeks beyond this, Sim-time, and I’ll have re-redecorate their bedroom.)

Things got back to routine in the Sample household, and in due course, Zahra and Fabian had happy news to report.

3.15 Loving Life

Sep1

Fabian worked long hours, but he spent as much time as he could at the Sample house, talking to Zahra. They filled the air with talk about computers, new discoveries at the science institute, and stars a million light years away. He was a beat cop now, but his dream was to get back behind a computer keyboard and become a forensics expert. Zahra should have realized that he’d never have moved this far away from science without a plan.

But it didn’t take a rocket scientist, or more effectively, a social engineer to figure out what he wanted.

Fabian had a gift for gab. He knew just what to say and how to say it, and he was even better at NOT saying things in a way that made them perfectly understood. Zahra’s husband was not just dead. He was dead twice over. She could let her life end here too, or she could start building something new. He’d rather if she was going to start something new, she did it with him.

But did she want something new with anyone? Zahra had spent her whole life loving Cycl0n3. She’d never expected to find herself single.

Things started to get out of hand.

Then they got really out of hand.

Was this what she really wanted? It certainly felt good.

Zahra spent a lot of time alone, thinking about what she wanted her life to be, and eventually things fell into place. It really was about choosing life over death. She wanted to love life again. And Fabian’s devotion had always been unwavering. If there was anyone in her life she could trust, it was him.

Zahra hated parties and crowds, fancy dresses and pretty jewelry. When she knew what she wanted, she invited Fabian to meet her alone at the beach at dusk.

There, she asked him to start a new life with her.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

And so, still frightened, Zahra stepped into the unknown.

(Woo. I’d always thought that Fabian would make a good alternate mate for Zahra, but when I got a look at his traits, he’s like her perfect man. He’s just like Cycl0n3, except with Charisma and social skills.)

3.14 It’s All About Love

Aug29

Adjo was ready to graduate from high school, and he barely had any romantic history. There’d been a brief thing with Kalylynn Langerak, and this flirtation with Darlene Bunch that never got past naughty glances in English class.

His heart just wasn’t it. Who wanted to be second fiddle to Shanni all the time? He wanted one great love. He wanted it to be the real thing. And he’d always known who he wanted that person to be.

He called Toya Ursine and invited her over.

He poured his soul out to her. “Everything I’ve done, everyone I’ve met, I’ve always known I wanted to be doing it with you.”

Toya was visibly moved, but she shook herself free of the spell.

“You’re a great boy, really,” she said. “But I think you might have the wrong idea about me. You know, my dad really isn’t a very nice person….”

That was the Understatement that Ate Cleveland. Rachel Ursine’s second husband Harvey was the lord of the Sunset Valley underworld. In a town not very well known for it’s gangs, he was the ganglord.

“He didn’t do anything to you?” Adjo demanded, breathless.

“Oh, no!” Toya cried. “Nothing like that. It’s just, well, I don’t want you to get mixed up in anything.”

“I know who I want to be with,” Adjo said boldly. “Nothing about your family is going to change that. No risk is going to scare me off. I love whom I love.”

“You… love me?” Toya gasped.

“I always have,” Adjo confessed.

This time, she wasn’t so quick to push him away.

“Oh, what the hell,” she murmured, almost to herself. “You only live once.”

(Adjo never did stop collecting romantic wishes about Toya. All I needed was to be a bit more persistent the first time, but this makes for more fun story anyway :). )

3.13 Who’s It All About?

Aug27

Adjo and Mortimer Goth really hit it off at school, and Adjo invited him over after school to check out some video games.

The Goth family was a bit of legend in Sunset Valley, and Shanni’s eyes got wide when Adjo told her who was on his way over. “Goth?” she demanded. “Do you know how much money they have?”

Adjo honestly didn’t know. Less that the Landgraabs, more than the Samples. Something like that.

Shanni was there waiting for the two boys when they arrived home.

And she only had eyes for Mortimer. She asked him about his family and his opinions of their classmates. She hung on his every word.

Pretty soon, they only had eyes for each other.

Shanni didn’t even need to bother with meaningful glances in her brother’s direction. Adjo knew a lost cause when he saw one, and there was no point in getting between Shanni and her prey. He grabbed his guitar and went out.

Leaving Shanni to her important work.

Why did she keep doing this, Adjo asked himself. Shanni was more than just beautiful. She was smart and witty. She had a great sense of color and art. He’d even seen a few of her closely-guarded manuscripts, and she wasn’t a bad writer either. But she seemed to value herself only when she was grabbing the attention of some new guy.

Adjo wished she would find someone who really meant something to her and settle down. True love was worth working on. It wasn’t something to throw around.

Adjo set down his guitar. He knew what he had to do.

3.12 True Friends

Aug19

One evening, as Zahra was weeding the garden, her cell phone rang. It was Fabian Branch.

“I know this sounds dorky,” he said, “but I’ve been really getting into cooking. I know your mom used to grow this amazing stuff in your back yard. Would you be willing to let me have some of the harvest? I can make it worth your while. Wait, I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

Zahra hung up and smiled. It was a ploy, of course, to get her mind off things. But it was a kind ploy.

After work the next day, she dropped by Fabian’s house. He’d moved out from the huge den of the Branch clan and was living with a couple of roommates. A policeman’s salary barely made ends meet.

Fabian was delighted to see her and asked all sorts of questions about work. They had more to talk about than Zahra had realized. Fabian was a beat cop now, but he was studying to be a Forensic Analyst. He was up-to-date on all the scientific and computational advances. Zahra should have realized he wouldn’t be able to stay away from science; they’d grown up looking at the stars and speculating about what might live among them.

Eventually, Fabian admitted his real purpose.

“I was worried about you,” he said, scuffing his foot in the grass. “I know you have a big family and lots of support, but I didn’t want you to feel alone.”

Zahra was touched. Sometimes you could be alone in a crowd, and sometimes it could be hardest to talk to people you saw every day. And Zahra had never beaten around the bush about her and Cylc0n3, weird as the relationship might have seemed. Fabian was one guy who would never be phased by the world of the weird.

“Maybe we should hang out more in person,” she suggested. “Would you like to come by my house this week?”

Fabian’s eyes lit up. Zahra hoped he realized she meant to stay friends.

(Heh. I’ve never pushed these two together. In fact, they’re still friends because Fabian calls her autonomously. Right after Cycl0n3 “died,” Zahra got a bona-fide gardener’s opportunity to bring him some produce to cook with.)

3.11 Aftermath

Aug18

(Hey there! I’m trying to get past my writer’s block and get back to posting.)

You couldn’t call it death for someone who was already dead, could you? In the end, it didn’t really matter. Cycl0n3’s loss hit the Sample family like a ton of bricks. Everyone did their best to cope in their own way.

Shanni lost herself in Zahra’s best friend Fabian’s younger brother, Richard Branch.

(Yes, they’re brothers. Ida Branch has a dark skin tone, while Mr. Branch — whose name I forgot — had a light one. Here we see the non-subtlety of Sims 3 skin tone genetics.)

He was one heck of a kisser.

He also turned out to be one scary dude. There they were, making sweet nothings at each other in the hallway of the Branch house, when he suddenly started screaming at her. Something about ants. And aliens. Hoooboy. Shanni just stood there and took it, too frightened to say anything.

And he was holding his baby brother at the time.

At last, he stormed off, talking loudly to himself. Shanni got out of there right quick. She wanted comfort, but not that much.

(I failed to get the really good pictures of Richard ranting to himself. He did in fact go off at her in a dangerous-looking way in the middle of flirting. I’m guessing he’s Hotheaded, and he’s definitely Insane.)

(Also, it’s probably not obvious, but this scene happened in the old Frio house where our story began. The majority of the Branch clan has moved in here. Their father died of old age, and Fabian, the eldest, is also living elsewhere, with a roommate I think. So I think think Ida Branch and the three younger brothers Richard, Connor, and Tyrone are all living here together. Mamma Branch didn’t make no girls.)

Lance and Layla clung to each other. Life was short, and they were in their golden years. Zahra’s loss was just a grim picture of what they faced too.

(Spontaneous affection between Sims is so cute. Lance and Layla can’t get enough of each other these days.)

Everyone wanted to be there for Charles.

(This is Lance, tapping his foot, waiting for Adjo to finish playing with Charles so he can have a turn.)

And they tried to be there for Zahra, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She threw herself into her work, climbing the promotion ladder at the science center with alarming speed. After the first couple of nights, she never let any of her family see her cry.

Late at night, she whispered to Charles about his father.

Charles, as little as he was, seemed to understand.

3.10 Going Home

Jul5

It was Zahra’s day off, and she and Cycl0n3 took a much-needed morning together. They slept in luxuriously late. Adjo made sure that little Charles was taken care of before the twins headed off to school.

Romance was in the air. Lance jumped up at breakfast and asked Layla out on a date. She spent such long hours working at the bistro, and she never got a chance to experience the romantic atmosphere as a customer. He wanted to fix that.

The two of them looked sharp in their formals.

The afternoon was everything they’d hoped it would be.

Cycl0n3 and Zahra rolled out of bed and quickly fell into the usual topic of conversation: their son.

But this time Cycl0n3 called a halt to it. Zahra had been working her tail off at the science lab, then coming home to work her tail off tending to Charles. She needed to take some time to herself away from both work AND family.

He kicked her out of the house to spend the afternoon at the spa getting a massage. But not before he showed her is appreciation.

It turned out to be the last wish he would have a chance to fulfil.

Alone in the house, he headed downstairs to play with Charles.

They read together from a math-for-toddlers book. Charles’ eerie ghost voice piped up against his father’s. Cycl0n3 felt completely fulfilled.

And then a strange sensation came over him. It was as if the wind blew through him, and he was the wind, and it called to him from beyond the pale.

Alone on the back deck, Charles went on reading until Mommy came home.

Zahra returned, flushed with a good massage and feeling carefree, to find her ghostly son alone in the house. At first she was furious. “Where is your father?” she demanded of little Charles.

Charles looked up at her with penetrating inhuman eyes, and she realized for the first time that he truly was something different.

“Daddy went home,” he said.

Then her eyes fell on an urn sitting on the deck. She hadn’t noticed it in the pile of Charles’ toys. Suddenly she understood.

Nobody knew exactly what the science lab had done to Cycl0n3. Somehow, in her heart, she’d always just assumed he was immortal in his half-ghost, half-human form. Apparently not. The Netherworld had called him back.

She picked up the urn and placed it in her bedroom, hoping against hope that he’d rise again, in whatever ghostly form he was permitted. But even when the other family ghosts came out to play, the urn was silent.

Goodnight, Cycl0n3.

(It turns out that Cycl0n3 was “living” on borrowed time. I knew he had a lifespan of sorts, and that he’d be called back into his gravestone eventually. However, when he married Zahra and changed his name, his gravestone got borked. Apparently EA in its infinite wisdom was using character name to attach the ghost to the gravestone, and Cycl0n3 Sample couldn’t be using Cycl0n3 Sw0rd’s gravestone. This caused some other glitches I was struggling with, since the character was now duplicated — the version of him in his gravestone and the version I was playing. When I figured this out, I had to use some of Twallan’s mods to get him to terminate gracefully, but that also ended up destroying his gravestone. I’m terribly grumpy about this; I wanted the whole family to be in the graveyard. I’m still trying to see if I can export Cycl0n3 from a previous save file and get him properly stowed in a gravestone, but I may just call myself lucky for having a functioning game file and give up.)

(ETA: Fixed the last picture. Somehow the mood was lost when instead of Zahra sleeping alone, the last pic was of Shanni taking a bubble bath. Woot.)

3.9 Moving On

Jul3

Shanni thought long and hard about what might have gone wrong with Miraj.

The problem was, she decided, that she’d been too passive. She’d let Miraj come to her. She just needed to seek him out and tell him how neglected she felt. So, she took a deep breath and turned up at his doorstep after his shift at his after school job.

He smiled when he saw her at the door and invited her inside. That was a good first step. Maybe all of this was a misunderstanding.

Then everything started to go sideways. She started talking, and then she couldn’t stop. Her frustration and anger just kept pouring out until she wasn’t sure what she was saying. His job was keeping him from her. His family was keeping him from her. It was all THEM! THEY were keeping him from her!

(Wherein I discover the, “Talk about Conspiracies” option in her socialization menu. With that and “Freak Out,” I think I am in love with Neurotic sims.)

Miraj blinked. “Uhhhh,” he said. “I have no idea what you just said. Maybe you should sit down, take a deep breath, and calm down.”

Calm down? Calm down! That was enough. Shanni’d had it.

There had to be some guy in all of Sunset Valley who wanted to spend time with her.

Adjo, on the other hand, was still nursing a broken heart.

Lance, who had his nose in all of his children’s business since he hung up his adventuring duds, had plenty of advice to give. But mostly, he was willing to listen to Adjo’s sob story and take it seriously.

“Toya’s a great girl, but you know what they say about fish in the sea. There has to be a girl out there who appreciates a guy who wants to make a commitment.”

Adjo wasn’t ready to go looking for other girls, so he scheduled a guy’s night out with his best bud Malcolm Landgraab instead. Malcolm was an incredibly unassuming guy, considering that he was from the richest old money in Sunset Valley. The two of them got together to hang out on the strip and chat. Malcolm listened to Adjo play guitar for a while. Then they did their homework together.

Malcom listened to Adjo talk about Toya and Lance’s idea that he should look for other girls. “I don’t know,” Malcolm said wistfully. “I think she might come around. Not that you ought to hang around waiting or anything.”

At which point, curfew had passed without them even noticing.

(What happened to the rest of my pics of this outing? Well, whatever.)

So it was another trip home in a cop car, and another lecture, this time from Lance. Adjo was starting to get used to being the naughty kid.

3.8 Stir Crazy

Jun29

Charles made it to toddlerhood in the way much like his less ghostlike family members.

And the rest of the clan got busy teaching him and showing him more about life.

Charles’s first word was “food.” Good eating boy.

(Or is that “bowl”? “Spoon”? Help me here!)

There was plenty of help with Charles. Zahra loved him very much, and she was fascinated to see this strange new life form growing every day. But she now had learned the hard way — she was not meant to be a stay at home mom.

Zahra had been climbing the walls so long that you could see her fingernail marks in the plaster. But no matter what she tried, she couldn’t persuade the Science Center to take her back a day sooner. Zahra couldn’t contain her frustration. There was so much science to be done!

She tried to distract herself with her favorite leisure activity.

Or well, that was now her second leisure activity.

Her old friend Fabian Branch called her up a few times to cheer her up.

That was nice, but Fabian was busy at the police station, and he didn’t have a lot of time to drop by.

At last, the interminable maternity leave lifted, and Zahra was off like a shot. With the amount of preparation she’d done at home and her fresh enthusiasm to be back on the job, she got a promotion her very first day back.

That was that. She’d taken the career hit for having a family. Now was time to make science.

3.7 Mixed Signals

Jun26

It didn’t take Shanni all that long to get over Michael Bachelor. Her new flame was Miraj Alvi. She caught him watching her in gym class and invited him over her place. Soon they were going steady. He also had a part-time job, which drove Shanni crazy, but it was a lot easier to get his time than it had been Michael’s.

Shanni had visions of candlelit dinners at the bistro where Miraj surprised her with little gifts of jewelery. Despite his job, Miraj insisted he didn’t have that kind of money. They used to take long walks at Central Park instead and gaze into each other’s eyes.

She thought about him all the time. She wondered how far to go in their makeout sessions. She hated that most of the time, they hung out at her place where her parents were watching.

One day, she invited him to the park after dark, thinking they could find some real privacy in the shadows with no parents to watch.

Miraj showed up, but he was cold to her. Whenever she sat down with him on a bench to get cuddly, he jumped up and walked away. She felt like she was chasing him all over the park.

Then he said, “You call that a date? Call me when you grow up,” and walked away.

Shanni was stunned. What had she done wrong?

Adjo was crushed at the disastrous end to his date with Toya.

It took him days to bring himself to talk to her again. Once he got his courage back, he invited her to hang out at the community pool. That seemed like a neutral enough location.

They stayed there until after dark, talking about anything and everything. Adjo pulled out all the stops.

But when he finally confessed his feelings to her, she laughed nervously. She just didn’t see him that way. He was more like a brother to her. Couldn’t they still be friends?

Adjo forced himself to smile. Of course they could. No hard feelings. It wasn’t a big deal anyway.

He invited her into the pool and started a game of splashing.

And, hey, he was sure he could hold his breath underwater longer than she could.

Toya had a fantastic time. She wanted him to call her again tomorrow.

Adjo scraped up the pieces of his heart and headed home.