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.

Where’d Everybody Go?

Jul21

Wow. Pretty much at the same time I slacked off posting, four other Sims legacy blogs I’ve been reading also stopped. One returned today. Yay!

I am not dead, nor have I abandoned this blog. In fact, I have played ahead at least two Sim-weeks left to post, there’s a lot to tell! It’s just been easier to play than post for the last few weeks. I’m going to kick myself in the butt presently.

Coming soon: Love! Heartbreak! Drama! Career challenges! Babies!

But all you guys who are being so quiet — come back!

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.

3.6 It Takes a Village

Jun23

So…. what is a ghost’s baby? A baby ghost. Zahra’s mystery was solved.

In any other family, this would have caused a stir. Well, all right, even here there was a bit of a stir. But these were the Samples. Samples are brave. Samples love nothing more than to sit down and have a fireside chat with the ghosts of their dead relatives.

When Zahra told her father that she had married Cycl0n3, he blinked and said, “You don’t think he’s a bit old for you? Seeing how he dated your grandmother, and he’s dead and all?” One she’d convinced him that she was truly happy, he shrugged and gave her his blessing. Before that moment, he hadn’t really thought of Cycl0n3 as any different than Susie or Connor. Ghosts have a right to be happy too, after all.

That’s just a bit of context to describe why the freakout at the Sample household wasn’t particularly freaked or out.

Lance was particularly delighted with his grandson. He’d have been delighted if Charles were green with tentacles.

Adjo couldn’t stop tickling and cuddling the new arrival.

All-in-all Zahra had plenty of help. Whenever Charles whimpered, someone was there with a bottle and a diaper, and for all that nobody really had to lose much sleep.

And of all of the Samples, Cycl0n3 was the most beside himself with pride and joy. Charles was his son. He’d made a new life, if a life was what this was, and if it wasn’t who cared anyway?

He’d longingly cared for Zahra, then Adjo and Shanni as babies, always figuring that his time was past. Now he had a wife and a new son. All was right with the world

3.5 Welcome Charles

Jun19

The Sample house was aflutter about the arrival of a new grandbaby.

None were more aflutter than Cycl0n3.

Everyone tried to prepare as much as they could.

The big question that nobody was asking was exactly what Zahra was carrying. A ghost’s baby would be… what? Zahra alone seemed unbothered by this. If anything, she was more excited by the big unknown. Her pregnancy was part impending motherhood and part science experiment, and that suited her just fine. She would have been disappointed if the child turned out to be an ordinary baby.

What she wasn’t ready for was just how much maternity leave was going to drive her crazy. She was climbing the walls for tasks to do. She took over most of the gardening from Layla.

She taught herself how to upgrade her computer.

And she counted down the days until the blessed day. When it came, she was more than ready.

Cycl0n3 was less ready. Connor’s ghost even drifted by to watch the excitement.

Charles Babbage Sample was born at 3:15 AM, and he didn’t disappoint.

He was definitely an unusual baby.

(WOOT! Ghost baby!)

3.4 Love in the Wrong Places

Jun17

Adjo and Shanni were still joined at the hip. They did as much as they could together.

But now that they were teens, their personalities began to really diverge.

Shanni took up cooking.

Adjo discovered his grandmother’s guitar in a closet, dusted it off, and started to strum.

It turned out he had a natural talent. He hadn’t been able to keep his little hands off the xylophone when he was a toddler.

But most of all, Shanni discovered *men*. Every day, she came home from school raving about some hot boy in homeroom or gym class.

The first boy she talked about two days in a row was Michael Bachelor. She virtually stalked him on the phone to get him to go out with her.

Adjo, on the other hand, just liked people. He was particularly popular with married women with children. He developed such a platonic entourage of older women that Layla started to get nervous.

He also loved his family in a way that Shanni couldn’t seem to understand.

Once Shanni was able to get Michael to answer her calls, it wasn’t long before she had him wrapped around her little finger.

They couldn’t keep their hands of each other.

The problem was, most of the time when Shanni called, Michael wasn’t home. He claimed he had a part-time job at the bookstore that ate up all his time. Adjo also had a part-time job at the grocery store for about three days before he quit from stress. (Dude. Part-time jobs for teens SUCK. They get no time to do more than school, work, and homework until the weekend. AND they get stressed out.) He saw Michael hanging around talking to his friends after work when he was supposed to be visiting Shannni.

When Shanni found out, she freaked out.

She broke up with Michael then and there. She didn’t have time for men who didn’t have time for her.

Adjo, on the other hand, developed a show, shy crush on Toya Ursine. Sure, she was his second cousin, but that just made the connection deeper on, like, a family level.

He got her to go out to the movies with him, and he was just starting to get her to warm up to him when the POLICE showed up.

Instead of a girlfriend, he was treated to a lecture from his mom about staying out after curfew.