aondaneedles:

I wanted something without commitment, to play whenever I don’t feel like playing Middleground, so I came up with this. My goal is to have all six children of Jon Smith Tricou grow up into adults (don’t know whether I’ll send them to college or not) and ultimately have one of them reach the top of the Occult career and revive Jon Smith and his family (a college degree would be helpful for that), all while leading happier lives than they- presumably- had before. For an added challenge, I might turn some of them into supernaturals during this… challenge?

So, this is 31 Mendoza Drive, the quite shabby home of the Teens (gotta appreciate Eaxis ‘moldy’/’shabby’ wallpapers. They are great!).

Swan, Kestrel, Tiave and Orion come back from school with varying degrees of happiness about their marks. Because each of them brought home a friend from school, poor Loren is beamed out of the school bus. I have no idea where Patrick is, but he is there. Somewhere.

God; I miss these guys. 

I think I’ll play them for a bit today.

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That very same night, I found out I was pregnant again. Josie would get her sibling after all!

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I hadn’t had a job in months, quickly burning through my meagre savings. I was stuck in a trailer park in one of the weirdest towns I’ve ever seen, pregnant with a married man’s child yet again- although I was eerily sure Opal and Edward would be weirdly okay with it. But I hadn’t seen them in weeks, not after that awkward evening, and I was not sure I could face them ever again. Apart from that, did I want to raise my children in a town like this?

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Thank Plumbob I stumbled upon an ad in the Sim City News the next morning. “Waiter/ waitress needed for grand reopening. Minimum wage plus tips. For further information, please call Isabella Monty”

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So a few days after Josie’s birthday, both of us packed their bags, locked the trailer behind us and headed to Veronaville.

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The party moved to the living room, where things got weird pretty quickly- there were very public displays of affection and I was sure that the couples that found each other over the evening weren’t the ones that came there together. Well, I guess that explains how the adults of the town kept themselves entertained.

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Eventually, the host approached me and started flirting with me, his wife looking on pretty amused, I didn’t hesitate for long. I was incredibly drunk, at an all-time low, and craving for some kind of affection.

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We quickly ended up in his bedroom.

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The name of the woman was Opal. She and her husband Edward appeared to hold dinner parties quite regularly. Their house looked like it hadn’t been renovated for the past few decades, much like most of the other houses in the neighbourhood. The neighbours fit the picture, as well. Apart from the teens, everyone dressed like it was still 1955. Still, it was quite nice to get outside for once.

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It was an entertaining evening. The food was good, conversation very conservative, but not boring…

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… and there was plenty of booze.

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Plumbbob, I drank way too much that night.

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Josie was a cheerful little baby. She always spent most of the day in a little bouncy chair I bought for her at the local toy store.

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It was just the two of us and I must admit that I felt a little sorry for her. I grew up as an only child and had always envied my friends who grew up with siblings. I wanted nothing more than for her to have a real family and siblings, too, but our current situation was so far from the normal family I had always dreamed about…

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For a long time, the scheduled phone calls from my friends were the only outside contact I had. Caring for Josie was nice, but after a few weeks, I got cabin fever. So when a local woman invited me to a dinner party (I later found out that she was the mother of the boy I met at the store), I gladly agreed.

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One thing I immediately noticed was the weirdness of the local architecture. It was very artistic, like someone asked himself “how could I make this quirky?” and then did. The local grocery store/ clothing store also featured a model train on the first floor. I never figured out why.

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One one of my rare trips to the store I met this young boy. He knew the town’s architect and tried to explain the reasoning behind those weird quirks, but I quickly lost interest.

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He was actually very nice to me and even invited me to come and have dinner with his parents if I wanted to. I almost agreed, as my curiosity got the better of me. I actually hadn’t seen a lot of adults around. No one seemed to go out other than the boy, a girl around his age and a young woman. What did the adults of Desiderata Valley do all day? 

But I came here for a reason: to get some peace and quiet after the events of the past months. I made up some excuse and waddled home. Those walks became more and more exhausting each day.