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rainbowfic2025-06-17 02:17 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-06-17 02:17 pm
Light Black #13 [Crimes Against Romance]
Name: Passunder
Story: Crimes Against Romance(Alternative title: Be Gay, Do Crime)
Colors: Light Black #13: Rotate
Styles and Supplies: Life Drawing, Gesso, Gift Wrap, Thread, Portrait, Graffiti (May-June Parents Challenge), Oils (your character is gay and loves their life), Acrylic (June 16 2025: "Your character finds a journal or a letter that explains or reveals something important that they would never have known otherwise.")
Word Count: 6030
Rating: Technically G, but there are hints of non-G-rated stuff happening off-screen
Warnings: Introduction of 15 different on-screen characters, and a couple off-screen characters who are haunting the narrative
Characters and Established Relationships: (deep breath) Aubrey Bren/Irfan Pai, River Bren/Tabitha Bren, Gail Bren, Jeanine Bren, Anne Bren/Gavin Newson Bren, Benjamin Bren, Daniel Bren, Noah Bren, Andrew Bren Goss/Vamsi Goss, Sadie Gregory, Bess Gregory
Dates: March and April of 1996 (but see the Gesso Notes about the passage of time)
Summary: Aubrey discovers secrets in his grandmother's house during a Passover seder.
Notes: This ismy tawdry gay Sims telenovela a story I came up with for some sims in an ancient Sims 2 neighborhood about organized crime and crooked lawyers that I never got to realize because the neighborhood got deleted in 2013, but this story has never been deleted from my brain. Silvercat said on the Discord that this kind of Sims story about original characters counts as original and counts as Gesso for Rainbowfic purposes, so I figured I would actually write it up and post it. There should be 33 more installments, but most of the rest of this won't come until after I've finished the Fulcrum, because I want to use a completely different set of lists for it. I technically could have waited to post this, too, since I'll be using Light Black for a long time still to come, but this particular scene was burning a hole in my brain and I had to write it now. I've added notes about the Gesso borrowings, since I don't expect people to actually be familiar with 20-year-old video games, and also included the in-game portraits of all of the sims, since I do actually still have them.
As was hopefully communicated by the telenovela title, this story runs on high octane interpersonal drama and really tropey romance, which is kind of par for the course for stories I come up with for my sims, really, although this specific piece of it is uncharacteristically normal. This is also very much a grey-versus-black morality story - the protagonists are not really good guys, and don't have a lot of illusions about that, but they should at least be significantly more sympathetic than the antagonists.
Saturday, March 23, 1996
A couple weeks before they were due to fly to New York for Spring Break, Aubrey got a call from his grandmother. He filled Irfan in on it the next day.
“So, my Grandma Jeanine is having a Passover seder on the third, and since we’re flying on the fourth, she wants us to come to the seder before we leave. We’ll drive down there the night of the third, have dinner with my family, stay the night in the house, and then Grandma Jeanine will drive us to the airport in the morning. We can leave the car at her house until we get back. Is that alright?”
“Fine with me,” said Irfan. He seemed cautiously optimistic. “I was wondering when I would get to meet your folks, since we’re already going to see mine. I actually didn’t know you were Jewish, though.”
Aubrey shrugged. “I guess I’m Jewish in kind of the same way that most people are Christian, or the way that you’re Muslim — I don’t care about any of that stuff, I’m just related to some people who do.”
“Like your grandma?”
“My parents, too. My dad’s still got that convert’s zeal, you know. I think my sister practices a bit, too, but she’s more chill about it. Like, she won’t actually kick you out of her house if you want to eat a cheeseburger in there, sort of thing.”
“Is that something that actually happened with your folks?”
“Well, my dad likes to joke that that’s what happened with Seth, but we all know there was more to it than that.”
“I’m sort of wondering what my dad will think of it, now,” said Irfan, thoughtfully. “He doesn’t think there are any black Jews.”
“Most people either decide I’m not Jewish enough, or not black enough, or both. I’m used to it.”
“I know it’s dumb,” said Irfan. “It’s a melting pot here, right? No reason a black person couldn’t get married to a Jewish person. I think my dad is just… very used to New York.”
Aubrey laughed a little bit. “Not exactly what happened with my family,” he said. “I mean yeah, one of my parents is white, and one of my parents is a convert, but actually in our case, both of those people are my dad.”
“So your mom was a black Jew, too?”
“Yeah. Her mom — that’s Grandma Jeanine — looks I guess probably more like what your dad would expect a Jewish person to look like. Mom’s dad… well, presumably he was black. I guess none of us really know for sure, because the only person who knows anything at all about him is Grandma Jeanine, and she has never told anyone else any of it. When we were kids, we used to tell each other ghost stories about how Grandma Jeanine kept him tied up in a secret basement under the house and leached his life force away like a vampire, and that’s how she stays looking no more than 35 despite the fact that she must be ancient by now. That’s just the kind of person Grandma Jeanine is. Like, don’t get me wrong, she always had our backs, but you didn’t want to get on her bad side. Even Seth had that figured out.”
“Isn’t it more likely that he just left her, or something?”
“Sure, I guess maybe he did walk out on her at some point and left her to raise a kid on her own. But I’m just saying, if that actually happened that way, his body is definitely buried in a shallow grave somewhere. I don’t think you can actually get away with doing something like that to Grandma Jeanine.”
“Well, it sounds like meeting her will be interesting, at any rate,” said Irfan. “I don’t know how this sort of thing works, is there anything I need to do, or bring?”
“Nah, just bring yourself. You’re literally going to get an instruction manual to follow.”
Wednesday, April 3, 1996
They pulled up to Grandma Jeanine’s house in Aubrey’s car and parked it on the gravel in front of the house. He saw that Anne's and Noah’s cars were already there — Gail might already be here, too, since she didn’t have a car, but they had beaten Uncle Andrew.
Irfan surveyed the house and his eyebrows shot up. “This place is massive.”
“Yeah, it’s very old. I’m not actually sure how many generations it’s been in the family. The only people who live here now are just my parents and Grandma Jeanine, but there were six of us kids growing up — me, my four siblings, and Uncle Andrew — and we all got our own rooms here. That’s how big it is. I know Anne was thinking of selling her house and moving back in here with her husband and kids, actually, now that the rest of us have all left.”
“That’s your sister?”
“Yeah. Come inside and you’ll meet all of them.”
Dad greeted them at the door, with a hug for Aubrey and then a handshake for Irfan. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. You’re Irfan, correct? My name is River, I’m Aubrey’s dad.” He paused in that faux-dramatic way he always did and then added, “I know. My parents were a bit weird about naming their kids, they were sort of proto-hippies in a way.”
“I didn’t say anything,” said Irfan.
“And now you don’t have to. Tell me, son, are you 21 yet?”
“Yes sir,” said Irfan.
“Alright. So you know, we do have wine here tonight. And in fact, the haggadah is going to occasionally tell you to drink a glass of wine. I just want to let you know that you are not actually required to drink a whole glass of wine, you can instead just drink, like, a small sip of wine, if you would like. In fact, I would really like to encourage you to do that, because the haggadah is going to repeat that instruction to drink a glass of wine four separate times, and I would very much like you to not drink four glasses of wine tonight. Do you understand?”
“I understand, sir,” said Irfan.
“Good. In fact, if you don’t want any wine, that’s also an option. We also have grape juice.”
“Thank you, sir, but I will have the wine,” said Irfan. “We are not driving anywhere tonight.”
Dad took their luggage with the promise that it would wind up in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and they made their way over to the dining table. “Sorry about him,” Aubrey muttered.
Irfan laughed. “It’s alright,” he said. “I get where he’s coming from.”
Gail had indeed already arrived and was sitting at the long table alone, sipping grape juice and seeming bored, while Mom deposited some small bowls on Grandma Jeanine’s massive ornate seder plate and then disappeared back into the kitchen again. When she saw Aubrey, she excitedly patted the seat next to her, and Aubrey obliged her by sitting it, with Irfan taking the next seat over.
“Who’s this?” Gail asked, and then, before Aubrey could answer, followed up with, “Ooh, are you Irfan? I’ve heard about you!” She gave him a big smile. “I’m Gail.”
“I’ve heard about you, too,” said Irfan, and they grinned at each other across Aubrey. “How are you liking college so far?”
“It’s fun!” said Gail. “Lots of parties. If Dad asks, though none of them have any alcohol involved. Nope. None at all.” They shared a laugh, and Aubrey allowed himself to feel optimistic about the rest of the evening.
Grandma Jeanine, looking thirty years younger than Mom as always, came out of the kitchen and put a larger bowl of charoset on the table. Then she stopped, and came over to the three of them. “You must be Irfan, then,” she said, in a tone of voice that wasn’t exactly warm, but didn’t seem hostile, either.
“Yes, ma’am.” Irfan stood up and turned to face her, holding his hand out for a handshake, but she did not take it.
“What are you studying?” Grandma Jeanine asked.
“Chemistry,” said Irfan happily. “I think I can get into some 500-levels next year, and hopefully after that I’ll have the transcript and references I need to get into the graduate school. I’m really looking forward to that, it’s the whole reason I came out here in the first place.”
Grandma Jeanine showed no outward signs of being impressed. “No other plans?” she asked. “Just academia?”
“Well, mostly academia, for the moment, anyway.” Irfan seemed at a bit of a loss. Aubrey knew he’d been pouring everything into his grad school plans, lately.
Grandma Jeanine turned her face to Aubrey, and for a moment it seemed to him as if he were the one being judged here. Something in her expression said: You can do better. She turned her attention back to Irfan and said simply, “You’ll do.” Then she went back into the kitchen.
Irfan sank back into his chair somewhat nervously and said, “I see what you mean about her. I almost get the feeling that whatever she was hoping for wasn’t something that would have passed muster with your dad.”
It wasn’t something Aubrey would actually voice in this place, in this company, but he had often wondered himself if Grandma Jeanine was involved in something less than savory, or if she knew more than she should about some of the things that he was involved in. Some of the people he worked with like to talk about a “family business”, but as far as Aubrey was concerned, there was family, and there was business, and ideally those two things would live in two completely separate universes and never touch. He knew enough economic jargon already to misdirect questions about exactly how much money he had or where it had come from. Grandma Jeanine had never even asked, but maybe she didn’t need to.
In the meantime, Anne had ambled over to the table and took the seat opposite Aubrey. She shifted and massaged her back a bit. She wasn’t visibly pregnant yet, but maybe it was starting to take its toll, anyway. “How is kid number three?” Aubrey asked. Anne was eight years older than him and already had everything he wanted out of life: a husband, a house, complete with a white picket fence, even two and a half kids and a dog. A fetus counted as half a kid, basically, right? He was still planning out the husband part of the equation for himself, when and how he should propose to Irfan. It was still another year until they graduated, and it would probably be weird to get married before then, but he definitely wanted to be married by some point in the next two years, if at all possible.
Anne smiled. “Not too bad, actually. I did just recently get confirmation that it’s not going to be twins this time, which was really the main thing I was hoping for. Everything else is gravy, honestly.” She turned Aubrey’s left. “I guess you’re Irfan, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Aubrey’s sister, Anne.” She pointed over towards the living room, where they could see two toddlers fighting over some toy trucks and two adults sitting on the couches observing them and chatting. “Those are my twins, Ben and Dan, and my husband Gavin, with the brown hair, and my brother Noah, with the glasses. If we don’t have someone supervising the kids before the dinner, Ben will find a way to inhale all of the horseradish before we can even start.”
“Kid’s sinuses are built different,” said Aubrey.
Gail laughed. “Aubrey, we’re going to do the afikomen later, right?” she asked.
“I think we’re too old for that, aren’t we?”
“No we aren’t! Until the terror twins are tall enough to reach Dad’s hiding places, we’re still the youngest ones here who can do it.”
“You mean, you’re the youngest.” For all that he did like Gail, she did act like she was still in high school sometimes. Alright, it had in fact been less than a year since she’d been in high school, but still.
“In a couple of years I’m going to make Dad lower the difficulty of that game so that the twins can play,” Anne said. “You two better make the most of your extortion racket before that happens.”
“Extortion racket?” Irfan asked.
“There’s going to be a special piece of matza called the afikomen,” Anne explained. “At some point, Dad will get up to go to the bathroom, and secretly hide it somewhere in the house. We need it for the end of the seder, so when that point comes, these guys will go search the house for it. What’s supposed to happen is that they return to the table with it and Dad pays them for it, but Dad was never really generous with the afikomen money and the game wasn’t really fair to Gail when they were younger, so what they actually do is re-hide the afikomen in a different, usually completely insane, hiding place, and then pretend like they couldn’t find it. When Dad goes to his hiding place and finds it empty, he then has to pay them both whatever they ask for or be forced to search the entire house himself for it, and as previously mentioned, their hiding places are absolutely mental.”
“We never actually forced him to search for it himself,” Aubrey put in, feeling like that wasn’t clear enough from Anne’s explanation. It was one thing to hold power over someone and even to use it, but to force an issue and call in your debts like that usually wasn’t worth it. Alliances were far too valuable to be worth sacrificing for whatever temporary benefit you could get from that. He’d only done something like that once, and it had earned him an annoying enemy; he had no plans to ever do it again, in either of his double lives. Dad had his limits, and Aubrey had already seen Seth push on past them, and had no inclination to follow in his footsteps.
“Come on, Aubrey,” said Gail, beside him. “You weren’t too old for this last year.”
“Humor her,” Irfan whispered to his left.
“What?”
“Humor her. Your sister still wants to have fun with you. That’s a good thing.”
Aubrey considered for a moment that maybe tonight wasn’t just about Irfan and his family coming away with good impressions of each other. “Alright,” he said to Gail. “We’ll do the afikomen together.” She reached over and pulled him into a sideways hug.
The doorbell rang, and Dad reappeared from upstairs to answer it. He greeted Uncle Andrew and his wife with a nod; they weren’t the most talkative people, which was fine with Aubrey, who didn’t prefer to have discussions with Uncle Andrew if at all possible, anyway.
Irfan watched them with some trepidation. “Who is that?” he asked, and then, “And… why is he green? His eyes…”
“It’s just Uncle Andrew and his wife Vamsi,” said Aubrey. “Supposedly Grandma Jeanine got abducted by aliens at one point and then gave birth to him nine months later, but I wasn’t even born yet.” Uncle Andrew was only one year older than Anne and Seth, so even though he was in Mom’s generation, Aubrey had grown up with him as just one more older brother, and not a particularly nice one, at that. But he thought he had memories of a time when Uncle Andrew’s skin was a different color — still green, for sure, but more like the color of honeydew melon, or a green grape, whereas now in adulthood it seemed darker, more saturated, and a little bit iridescent. He would have asked someone if his memories were correct or not, but you weren’t supposed to talk about Uncle Andrew being green; it was rude.
“Oh,” said Irfan. “I’ve… actually heard about that happening before, actually. Wild to see it in person.”
The last of the special seder foods had been brought out, and Mom and Grandma Jeanine seemed to be done in the kitchen, for now. Mom brought out the cup and basin they would use for the hand-washing and put it next to Dad’s place at the head of the table, and called to the others in the living room, and they began to assemble. Across from them, Gavin helped Ben and Dan into chairs next to Anne that had been padded with extra cushions so they could reach the table, and then seated himself on Anne’s other side. Anne surreptitiously moved a bowl of horseradish closer to Aubrey’s side of the table.
Dad began handing out haggadahs. “This is the instruction manual I told you about,” Aubrey explained. “You just do what it says, it’s really easy.” Irfan nodded, flipping through the first few pages of it, and then took a minute to survey the table.
“Is that for your other brother?” he asked, pointing at the unoccupied place setting. “I think you said his name was Seth, right? Are we waiting on him?”
“No, my twin will not be joining us tonight,” said Anne. “He hasn’t been in touch with us for, oh… I think it’s been six years, now. I really doubt that’s going to change now. That wine glass is for Elijah.”
“Who’s Elijah? I don’t think I remember him being mentioned...”
Anne laughed. “Sorry, I meant the Prophet Elijah. We are going to open the door for him at the end of the seder, and supposedly he comes in, like a ghost, and drinks some of the wine.”
“Oh.” Irfan laughed a little, too, seeming relieved.
The doorbell rang again. Aubrey looked at the door curiously, along with everyone else; no one else was expected tonight. “It’s Elijah,” whispered Gail, and then succumbed to a fit of giggles.
Dad got back up to answer the door, and this time Mom trailed behind him. He opened the door, and they could hear a woman’s voice from the other side, saying: “I’m sorry, I might have gotten the wrong address, but are you by any chance Seth Bren’s parents?”
Noah got up and followed his parents to the door; Aubrey felt compelled to do the same, and soon realized Gail was coming with him. Anne started to rise, but then her husband put a hand on her shoulder, and after some wordless communication, she settled back into her seat, but kept her head craned towards the door. The others stayed seated, but Aubrey saw Grandma Jeanine’s face get very focused and intense. Uncle Andrew and Vamsi alone seemed to be ignoring the interruption entirely.
Outside the door was a young blond woman wearing a blue beret and a pair of very narrow square-framed glasses. An equally blond little girl maybe a couple years older than Ben and Dan hid behind her legs. “I’m sorry,” she said, again, clearly a little intimidated by the larger number of people who had gathered, “I don’t mean to bother you. It’s just… I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him for two weeks now. I know he isn’t close to you anymore, but I was wondering if you might be able to help me find him. I can’t— Any job I could get wouldn’t cover the cost of childcare, and the rent is coming due…”
“It’s alright,” said Dad. “You can stay here if you like, we’ll deal with your lease. We have plenty of space here, and my mother-in-law is retired, so she can watch your daughter if you need her to. And don’t worry — we’ll track down my wretched son and see that he does his duty by you. What is your name?”
“I’m Sadie,” the woman said. “Sadie Gregory, and my daughter is Bess. And I’m sorry to ask this too, but do you have something for us to eat tonight? There is so little money…”
“We have a lot of food prepared for tonight, actually,” said Mom. “There is definitely a place at the table for two more. Please, come in.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” said Sadie. “Thank you—” she hesitated.
“You can call me Tabitha,” said Mom. “Or ‘Mom’, if you like.”
“Thank you, Tabitha,” said Sadie.
Dad stepped back and motioned for the gaggle of people to clear away from the doorway. “‘Let all who are hungry come and eat,’” he said. “Please join us.”
Two new places were cleared next to where Mom was sitting and place settings were assembled. Sadie and her daughter accepted glasses of grape juice. She looked around at all of the people, the bowls laid out on the table, and hand-washing basin. “Oh,” she said. “It’s something special tonight, isn’t it? I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Dad. “You’re in luck, this holiday comes with instructions.” He placed a haggadah in front of her. “All of the Hebrew is translated and transliterated, and the instructions are all in English. You can just follow along.” She nodded.
At last, the seder began. Glasses of wine, washing of hands, spilling drops of “blood” and recounting the plagues; Aubrey knew it all already, so he spent his time surreptitiously observing Irfan, who seemed to finding the whole process fun. Good, maybe, since they’d probably be back here on subsequent years, or maybe not, if Irfan was going to want Aubrey to do this in their own home eventually. Gail sang Mah Nishtanah somewhat reluctantly; a tradition for the youngest child that wasn’t as fun as the afikomen hunt, apparently. Eventually it came time to tell the story of Exodus, and they went around the table in order, with Ben going out of turn specifically to tell his favorite part, where Joseph had accused Benjamin of stealing in order to coerce Jacob to come to Egypt, although Anne had to remind him that it was a false accusation and Benjamin hadn’t actually stolen anything. Aubrey idly wondered if he was going to still think stealing was cool as an adult, and then quickly shoved that idea down. Family was family and business was business.
Mom and Grandma Jeanine went back into the kitchen and returned with the meal, and they ate, discussing family matters, and college, and jobs, and the twins’ antics. When they were done, they passed around candied fruit slices and after a few more steps in the haggadah it was time to retrieve the afikomen.
Gail stood up and pulled on Aubrey’s arm. “Come on!” she said, excitedly.
He had promised, and Irfan was watching him, so he allowed himself to be pulled away. Gail ran off to the living room and began looking among the stacks of movies that sat behind the TV. Aubrey started with a bookshelf — a massive floor-to-ceiling one that was wide enough to fit two doorways into, with ornately carved frames. This one had been in the house for as long as he could remember, and it certainly looked eternal. One of Dad’s favorite afikomen-hiding strategies was to place the afikomen between two books on a bookshelf, leaving only a telltale bit of napkin sticking out. He scanned the shelf for pieces of napkin, or for books that seemed set too far apart, with something small between them. He thought he saw a suspicious gap between two books, but as he peered closer, he saw that there was a small book in the spot between them, very thin, and recessed in towards the back of the shelf. The lettering was a bad contrast with the cover and the light was poor, and all he could make out of the title was “MYSTERY”. Huh. Was there a mystery novel here that he hadn’t read? A very short one, obviously, but still, he was curious. He wedged his fingers into the space between the larger books and tried to pull the smaller one out, but it had seemingly been in its place for too long, and was stuck fast. He tried for a better grip and pulled harder.
Suddenly, he was blindsided by some solid, heavy object that hit him right on the side of the head and threw him to the ground. Something else must have happened, too, and it was now pitch black. In a panic, for a moment, he wondered if his vision had been damaged; he got back up to his hands and knees and felt for the bookshelf, and then, when he found it, felt around with some desperate hope for the light switch that he knew was to its right.
The light switch wasn’t there. He felt around the whole area several times, before somewhat frantically moving further along the wall, and ahh, there was the light switch. He flipped it, and to his intense relief, a light did turn on. It wasn’t the overhead light of the living room that he had expected, though, but a bare hanging lightbulb, which swung wildly as he turned and bumped into it. He stared at it; he’d never seen anything like this anywhere in Grandma Jeanine’s house before.
He looked around, now that the light was on. He was, indeed, no longer in the living room, but now in a very small, claustrophobic space, with the bookshelf still there to his left, but no doorways or windows that he could see.
“Aubrey?” He heard Gail’s voice, but could not see where she might be. The sound had come from the bookshelf, he realized. He went back to it, and put his ear to it, and heard her call for him again, from farther away this time. She was on the other side of it, he realized.
He looked at the bookshelf again, and once again found that tiny book that only said “MYSTERY” on the spine. Was that it, then? A secret bookshelf, that spun around when you pulled out a specific book, and guarded the entrance to a secret room? He guessed that if anyone was going to have something like that in their house, it was going to be Grandma Jeanine. He looked around the room again. The lightbulb had almost stopped swinging, and now that the shadows had settled, he could see that there was a yawning black pit further on past the bookshelf from the light switch. Stairs at the top led down into the darkness.
Down into a secret basement under the house.
God, he thought. If his mysterious grandfather really was tied up in a secret basement under Grandma Jeanine’s house, he’d… he’d volunteer to do the afikomen hunt with Gail every year until he was 30.
It occurred to him that Gail would probably really enjoy this secret, and it would be fun to explore this basement with her. And maybe Irfan would see them laughing together afterwards and would be pleased with him, and it would make a very nice start to their Spring Break. But a thought from earlier returned to him, about Grandma Jeanine’s possible underworld connections. If that were at all true, there might be things in this basement that were dangerous for Gail to know about. He decided that he’d go check it out himself first, and if he didn’t find anything of professional interest, he’d go back and get Gail.
He carefully made his way down the stairs, thinking of how easy it would be to break his neck in the dark; there was no railing other than walls on either side. When he made it to the bottom, his final steps echoed ominously. He felt the walls until he found a light switch.
Unlike in the secret room, the switch here controlled an array of overhead lights that fully illuminated the space. It was huge; the basement must span the entire foundation. How the house did not simply collapse in on this vast space, he had no idea.
Most of the space was actually unoccupied. There were only three points of interest — a dance sphere like the ones you sometimes saw in clubs, massive as always but fundamentally very ordinary; something that looked like a very large pot or kettle; and some kind of stone structure lurking behind the dance sphere.
He approached the dance sphere first. Gail liked these things, but he’d never really been a fan. He guessed they might be fun if you were very fit and didn’t mind the possibility of throwing up afterwards. Why had Grandma Jeanine decided to install this one inside her house? As he came closer, he saw that a note had been stuck to the LCD panel where you were supposed to input the difficulty setting; it read: “For mothership, dial 999”. Ok. He had no interest in further investigating whatever weird relationship Grandma Jeanine might have with the aliens — he did want children, but not badly enough to petition aliens to do unnatural things to him, or to have children that would remind him of Uncle Andrew in any way. Even if he had wanted to meet them, he wasn’t insane enough to use this thing on difficulty level 999; if this four-word note that he had no particular reason to trust turned out to be wrong, they would probably be power-washing him out of the drywall.
The stone structure behind the dance sphere was a complex carving of multiple nested platforms leading up to two tall ones on either side, each topped with a carved stone monkey facing inwards. In the center was a much smaller platform upon which sat a large metal cup. He’d thought at first that might be gold, but picking it up to look at it better, it seemed more like polished bronze. It was empty; he turned it over a few times, inspected the bottom and the sides, but could see nothing special about it. There was nothing nearby that looked like it was intended to fill it, or be filled by it. Eventually, he placed it back on the platform and went across to the large kettle.
The kettle (or dare he say: cauldron) was about waist-height and sat suspended above a burner on the floor in a metal cradle. A long wooden spoon sat propped up by one side of the lip. It was empty, currently, but maybe it had something to do with the metal cup. Next to it was a podium, and on the podium was a book, open to about halfway through. He read what was written on the open page: “The past, once known, is no longer relevant.” He flipped through other pages, and saw strange rhymes, and recipes for things he had never heard of: “Magically Spiced Sugar”, said one; another was “Enchanted Essence of Cur Tails”.
As he paged through the book, a piece of paper fell out. At the top, it read “Club Dante Ban List”, followed by a list of names that he did not recognize. Next to the last, a hyphen, followed by “Check with J.”
This set off warning bells; Club Dante was a business supposedly run by local millionaire Malcolm Landgraab, who lived by himself in a mansion out in the suburbs and rarely showed his face at any of his many businesses, let alone outside of them. But everyone on Aubrey’s side of the law knew that all of the properties that were officially owned by Malcolm were fronts for someone called Joey “the Comb”, who Aubrey knew only by reputation. No one really knew if Malcolm was Joey, and that was the source of his millions, if he was just part of the front and was being paid under the table, or if he was a completely fictional character and Joey just put on a blond wig occasionally and strolled around the mansion’s gardens. Maybe he didn’t even need a blond wig, or any kind of disguise — Aubrey had never actually seen Joey, and didn’t know anyone who had. He had no desire to get involved with anything Joey “the Comb” was involved with — regardless of whether you were pro-Joey or anti-Joey, it was a great way to get assassins showing up to meet you at inconvenient times. His own small operation was already lucrative enough that he didn’t feel the need to ally with any of the bigger fish and would just as soon they settled their differences with each other out of range of his business. He didn’t know what Grandma Jeanine had to do with Club Dante, and it was very much in his best interests to not care.
He carefully placed the piece of paper back between the same two pages it had fallen out of, and then turned the pages of the book back to where they had been opened to initially. He would not show Gail this basement, and he would do his best to hide that he had ever been here. He went back to stairs leading up, flipped off the basement lights, and carefully ascended in darkness.
At the top of the stairs, next to the bookshelf once again, he found the tiny book that had triggered the secret door. He put one hand on it, and the turned off the hanging lightbulb, plunging the space into darkness once again, and then pulled; this time, when he felt the bookshelf begin to move under his hand, he stepped forward into the open space and managed to avoid having the other side of the shelf hit him on its way around.
As expected, he wound up back in the living room. Gail was nowhere to be seen, and the others at the table didn’t seem to have noticed anything and were still talking amongst themselves. He could not see Grandma Jeanine from where he stood, which, with luck, meant that she could not see him, either.
He headed upstairs in search of Gail. Halfway up, he bumped into her on landing, coming down. “Where’d you go?” she asked. “I lost you for a while, there. I found the afikomen — I hid it at the bottom of the laundry hamper.”
“Gail!” He hissed. “We have to eat that later.”
“What? It’s wrapped in a napkin, it’ll be fine. Let’s go get Dad.”
He allowed himself to be led back to the table, where they played through the extortion racket, as Anne had termed it. Dad played his part and brought them to his hiding place, which was, as Aubrey had expected, a bookshelf, but not the one that hid the secret door. Aubrey made his pitch for the money; they each got $10, which was honestly amazing for an afikomen haul; maybe Dad was feeling especially magnanimous after taking in Sadie. He was not any more thrilled than Aubrey had been at Gail’s choice of hiding place, but he did have to admit that the afikomen was fully wrapped in a napkin and therefore probably fine. They took it back to the table, where Dad carefully broke it into 15 pieces and passed them around to be eaten.
Dad got up and opened the door for Elijah. At this point, Aubrey half expected some other uninvited guest to show up instead — Seth himself, maybe, or Malcolm Landgraab, or Joey “the Comb” — but no one appeared in the night outside the door.
They sang the last few songs, and then it was time for the others to leave. He hugged Anne and Gail goodbye, exchanged a nod with Noah, and cautiously watched Uncle Andrew and Vamsi gather their things, but luckily they did not approach. He watched Grandma Jeanine as she helped his parents stack the dishes. He almost wanted to approach her and ask some coded questions — almost. If anyone could protect him in the more violent arenas it would be her, and he could not deny that she had always been on his side and would be a powerful ally. But ultimately, he could not see a reward in it to balance that risk, and simply went upstairs with Irfan after the cleanup was complete. He did not say anything to her the following morning either, when she drove them to the airport.
Gesso Notes
Time: The Sims 2 was released in 2004, and it thus features all of the latest and greatest in the technology and fashion of 2004: CRT monitors, flip phones, MP3 players, skinny jeans, outfits inspired by Avril Lavigne, etc. Some of the people who are still playing this game in 2025 try to bring their games into the modern day with mods; other people install even more mods and try to actually evolve technology and fashion as the generations pass in their game. I don't do either of those things - for me, six generations of sims having come and gone and the neighborhood still being trapped in a 2004 time bubble is a fundamental part of this game and I would never do anything to change that. So, this is also part of the Gesso borrowing: regardless of what date it says it is on the post, culturally, technologically, and spiritually, it is actually 2004. (Except for the skinny jeans, I've always hated skinny jeans and actually modded them out of my game.) There is going to be one glaring anachronism, which is the normalization of gay marriage, since pretty much everyone has been using the gay marriage mod since before gay marriage was even legal IRL and I've actually forgotten what it's like to play the game without it. I have put specific dates on this story, but they are mainly there just to show what happened in what order and how long it's been since whatever event, and how old the characters are. The dates were chosen in such a way that the event that kicks off the main plot happens at the beginning of 2004, naturally.
Place: The game feels very California to me, so for all intents and purposes, Sim City is a large city in California. There are a few references to places outside of Sim City in this story (like for example, New York in this piece), so that should give some indication of how far away they are. The city is not based on any real-world city, in California or otherwise, and isn't a big focus of the story.
Names: Not super relevant for this particular story, but my general Sims naming convention is that for het couples, the man changes his last name to the woman's, and then their kids take the shared last name, and the man retains his original name as a "bachelor name" similar to how women retain maiden names in real life. There's only one het marriage that is at all important to the plot of this story, and this is just to explain the names of the married couples in the character listings, mostly.
Secret Door Bookshelf: There's a bookshelf in the game called Very Mysterious Shelving which functions like a regular bookshelf, but also snaps into the wall like a door has an option to read a "Mysteriously Mysterious Mystery Novel" that causes the bookshelf to spin around and your sim to wind up on the other side of the wall it's on. Here is an extremely poor-quality video of this in action.
How the house did not simply collapse in on this vast space, he had no idea: Sim architecture is notoriously unconstrained by the laws of physics. Technically, if you try to put a floor tile above completely empty space the game will tell you that it needs support, but you can just place a pillar there temporarily, and then when you're done building the floor you can just delete the pillar and it's fine. You don't even need a cheat. This is even more true for basements, where you basically have to trick the game into even building the basement in the first place. (You can also do stuff like put a trash chute on a wall that has another room directly on the other side of it and the trash just disappears into an alternate dimension.) This particular house really does have a massive, foundation-spanning basement in it, and it's a wonderful place to store ridiculously large objects. It's not normally locked behind a secret door bookshelf, though, that addition was something I did.
Alien Abduction and the Dance Sphere: Sims can get abducted by aliens, generally using the expensive telescope, and if they are male, they come back pregnant and then give birth to a green baby. This is, of course, a reference to the movie Alien, but most people, myself included, don't really embrace the body horror aspect of this and just go "Ooh, I need me some more green babies." Accordingly, there are a bunch of mods out there to allow female sims to have alien babies as well. Anyway, if your sim has been abducted at least once via the telescope already, they can also be abducted via the dance sphere object, if they successfully use it on the highest difficulty (in the game there are only three difficulties). The people who made the mods allowing female sims to have alien babies apparently didn't know about this feature, though, so I actually had to make my own mod to allow female alien pregnancy from dance sphere abductions specifically for Grandma Jeanine.
The Chalice of Days: The stone structure with the cup is an object called the Chalice of Days, which is actually from The Sims 2: Castaway Stories, one of the two "stories" games that were made for consoles. These were fairly different than the PC game, in that instead of being open sandboxes they had defined plotlines that you had follow along with and I believe you could only play with premade sims. They had several unique objects in them, which have been extracted by modders and made available for the PC game, including this one. This object allows elder sims to drink from the cup and magically return to the beginning of adulthood. It's not the only way to extend a sim's life pretty much indefinitely, but it was something I used with Jeanine, since at one point I decided I was actually going to let her die of old age like everyone else and allowed her to age to elderhood, but eventually I changed my mind.
A lot of the pictures you can find of this online are actually of a reworked version using a different (much less impressive) mesh. I am using the original one with the original mesh from Castaway Stories, which looks like this:
"The past, once known, is no longer relevant", Magically Spiced Sugar, and Enchanted Essence of Cur Tails: The quote is the first part of the Tabula Rasa spell, which erases a sim's memory: "The past, once known is no longer relevant. Remove all this Sim's memories. Past and present!" Magically Spiced Sugar and Enchanted Essence of Cur Tails are potions that witches can make, which change sims' personalities to make them nice and mean, respectively. These are intended as Hints.
Club Dante and Malcolm Landgraab: Club Dante and Malcolm Landgraab came with the Bluewater Village shopping district that shipped with the Open For Business expansion, which existed mainly to contain a bunch of businesses run by playable sims to let the player experience the running-a-business gameplay out of the box. Malcolm Landgraab is a kind of generic evil capitalist dude who owns multiple Bluewater Village businesses whose most notable feature is that EA decided to give him supervillain eyebrows which create horrifying-looking toddlers if you actually let him procreate. Anyway, Club Dante is a nightclub that is one of his businesses. He is not really a character in this story as such, he is mainly just set dressing, and his name will probably not appear again.
Joey "the Comb": This is actually a reference to a fandom character. The name is from the description of the Life of Crime restriction in the fan-created Apocalypse Challenge:
To the best of my knowledge, this isn't a reference to any piece of EA text in the game, like for example anything associated with the actual Criminal career. Obviously this story isn't an apocalypse scenario, but I've seen people do stuff with the Joey "the Comb" character in their apocalypse challenge games and thought it would be fun to reuse the name for this purpose here.
Sim Notes
I say these are original characters, but there are different types of sims involved here with different degrees of originality, so I'll outline them all below.
Generally, sims can be classified into six groups based on degree of originality. I list them below in order from least original/most EA content to most original/least EA content:
Finally, there are also some characters in the story who were never sims in my neighborhood at all and were created entirely originally to fill some role in the story, some of whom are fairly major characters. Basically, anyone who appears in a character list without a last name falls into this category. If I were doing a more traditional sims story, I would probably create them in Create-A-Sim in order to take story-related pictures of them, but I am not that organized and the neighborhood is dead, anyway.
Sim Pictures
Even though this neighborhood has been pining for the fjords for 12 years I do still actually have the game-generated portraits of all of the sims, because I created a family tree for these guys and uploaded the pictures to it. So, here they are.
Aubrey Bren is a born-in-game sim, the son of Tabitha and River. Here is his portrait as an adult (after graduating from college):
Irfan Pai started his life as this downtownie teen. I did reroll his lifetime want to something that actually matched his aspiration, and he got Become a Mad Scientist, which has always said chemistry to me, so he became a chemistry guy. This is what he looked like in my game as an adult after college:
He actually originally started dating Aubrey when they were teens, but I have changed this in the story to them only meeting in college because I've gotten a little tired of and generally disillusioned with the style of marry-your-high-school-sweetheart-and-live-happily-ever-after gameplay I'd been doing during this time period, and also for plot reasons which will become apparent when I flesh out the rest of Aubrey's backstory.
Since the Random Number God gave him a first name that has significance in Islam and a last name that comes from a part of India that doesn't seem to traditionally have a lot of Muslims, I decided that his family were relatively recent immigrants from India who had converted to Islam for whatever reason. They are not going to be super important; the main reason they live in New York is so that I didn't have to make them actual on-screen characters; Aubrey has enough family members for both of them.
River Bren started life as the slob NPC from Nightlife. His bachelor name has been lost to history and I actually forgot that this was who Tabitha married until I went to look him up in the Sims Wiki for this post. He did not persist in slob behaviors after I moved him in and was overall a pretty decent sim. This was his adult portrait in my game:
I have no memory of why I chose to dress him that way.
Tabitha Bren is a born-in-game sim, although obviously her parentage is a spoiler. Here is her portrait as an elder:
Gail Bren is a born-in-game sim, daughter of Tabitha and River. Here is her portrait from after she graduated college:
Jeanine Bren is a born-in-game sim, but her parentage is an unknown mystery as far as this story is concerned. This is her portrait as an adult:
Anne Bren is a born-in-game sim, daughter of Tabitha and River. Here is her adult portrait:
Gavin Newson Bren began life as the premade playable sim Gavin Newson, who starts as a teen in a family of two teens, two children, and two toddlers who are kind of a challenge scenario. I wasn't interested in actually playing them as intended, so turned the sims into townies, and Gavin and his sister Ginger later got attached to two of my playables romantically. Neither him nor his sister are ever appearing in the story again. This is what he looked like as an adult in my game:
Benjamin Bren is a born-in-game sim, the son of Anne and Gavin. This is his portrait as a teen:
Daniel Bren is a born-in-game sim, the son of Anne and Gavin, Benjamin's twin. This is his portrait as a teen:
Noah Bren is a born-in-game sim, the son of Tabitha and River, the middle child in between Seth/Anne and Aubrey. This is his portrait as an adult:
For completeness's sake the last (well, technically first) child of Tabitha and River is of course Seth Bren, Anne's twin. This was his adult portrait:
I can't be sure anymore due to the neighborhood no longer existing, but I think that Seth, Noah, and Aubrey may all have the same face due to an issue with the game's random number generation that I wasn't properly compensating for at the time. Anne would have avoided this bug by being the second-born twin, and Gail seems to have avoided it as well just based on the fact that she has a different skin color than her siblings. But if you're not as faceblind as me and are looking at these three going, hmm, these sims all look kind of similar, you probably aren't wrong.
Sadie Gregory started life as this downtownie. I dyed her hair to match Seth's turn-ons and gave her a slightly different hat, and this is what she looked like in my game:
The dye job is not part of the story because I didn't want to make it look like I was going for some kind of Game of Thrones-esque "why is this child of two dark-haired people mysteriously blond" storyline.
Bess Gregory is a born-in-game sim, the daughter of Sadie and Seth. This is her portrait as a teen:
Andrew Bren Goss is a born-in-game sim, the son of Jeanine and one of my custom alien pollinators, I forget which one off the top of my head. This is his portrait as an adult:
As hinted at in the story, this color green is not actually the color of the default alien skin I use, it's actually the evil witch overlay. As you can see, he was also rocking his evil witch duds just casually around the neighborhood, which is not the case in this story. The only reason I can use the description I gave as a hint here is because I'm writing up these notes, though - the unmodded evil witch overlay actually looks like this.
Vamsi Goss started her life as this University townie. This was her adult portrait in my game:
Cast Cuts
This was a very large family, and Aubrey actually had some other close family members who were cut from the cast of this story for various reasons. So, just in case you thought it was ridiculous to introduce 15 characters here, not even counting Seth, Aubrey's grandpa, Malcolm Landgraab and Joey "the Comb", I am here to tell you that it could have been even worse.
First, Uncle Andrew had some kids, because what is even the point of aliens if they are not injecting alien DNA into the gene pool, am I right:
Technically, he's only been married for three years at this point in the timeline, so most of them wouldn't have been born yet anyway, but I decided the story just worked a lot better if he never had any kids at any point in time.
Noah had a girlfriend:
She was a premade playable from one of the universities whose name was Blossom Moonbeam. Due to my naming conventions, when she married Noah, his last name also became Moonbeam, and then they had a child whose last name was Moonbeam:
Partly these sims were cut because they were all very boring (Noah himself was also very boring and the only reason he wasn't cut was that it would be kind of weird if Aubrey's next oldest sibling was eight years older than him), but it was also because their last name was Moonbeam. Apparently it's fine if Grandma Jeanine gets abducted by aliens via a dance sphere and gives birth to a chestburster who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, this is a fine thing to happen in this story, but people named Moonbeam are just too weird.
Gail had a couple different boyfriends:
The first of these was a born-in-game sim belonging to another family in the neighborhood, and the second was a well-known main-neighborhood townie named Abhijeet Deppiesse, although his last name had become Grundstrom due to having married another woman in the neighborhood. Don't worry though, all of Gail's stuff was consensual poly shenanigans, no one was cheating. I believe she would have been with the first boyfriend at this point in the timeline, but not yet with Abhijeet. First boyfriend almost made the cast list, but got cut because there were already entirely too many people in this piece anyway.
Grandma Jeanine had some girlfriends:
The first one she met when she was still young, they grew old together and eventually the girlfriend died of old age. She must have been a townie of some description, but I no longer have any memory of what she originally looked like, so I can't look her up on the Sims Wiki. The second is premade playable Melody Tinker who I actually played in a more or less standard way but eventually murdered due to her lot becoming corrupted. She was then resurrected by one of her sons and at this point began dating Grandma Jeanine, though they never lived together. You can imagine that she is still part of the story and is just never mentioned, since I don't think Aubrey really would have known her, as her relationship with Jeanine didn’t start until after all of Tabitha’s children had left the house, and she never lived with Grandma Jeanine, but I decided to remove the first girlfriend for reasons that will hopefully become obvious when the mysteries surrounding Jeanine are resolved at the end of the story.
Finally, Grandma Jeanine did have a second alien child:
Her first alien child (Andrew) was the result of a telescope abduction - the reason I had the dance sphere installed was so that I could get her abducted on command to have future alien children, like this one here. Unfortunately, this one turned out extremely nice and boring. You can also see from her portrait what the real alien skin color actually looks like in my game.
Story: Crimes Against Romance
Colors: Light Black #13: Rotate
Styles and Supplies: Life Drawing, Gesso, Gift Wrap, Thread, Portrait, Graffiti (May-June Parents Challenge), Oils (your character is gay and loves their life), Acrylic (June 16 2025: "Your character finds a journal or a letter that explains or reveals something important that they would never have known otherwise.")
Word Count: 6030
Rating: Technically G, but there are hints of non-G-rated stuff happening off-screen
Warnings: Introduction of 15 different on-screen characters, and a couple off-screen characters who are haunting the narrative
Characters and Established Relationships: (deep breath) Aubrey Bren/Irfan Pai, River Bren/Tabitha Bren, Gail Bren, Jeanine Bren, Anne Bren/Gavin Newson Bren, Benjamin Bren, Daniel Bren, Noah Bren, Andrew Bren Goss/Vamsi Goss, Sadie Gregory, Bess Gregory
Dates: March and April of 1996 (but see the Gesso Notes about the passage of time)
Summary: Aubrey discovers secrets in his grandmother's house during a Passover seder.
Notes: This is
As was hopefully communicated by the telenovela title, this story runs on high octane interpersonal drama and really tropey romance, which is kind of par for the course for stories I come up with for my sims, really, although this specific piece of it is uncharacteristically normal. This is also very much a grey-versus-black morality story - the protagonists are not really good guys, and don't have a lot of illusions about that, but they should at least be significantly more sympathetic than the antagonists.
Saturday, March 23, 1996
A couple weeks before they were due to fly to New York for Spring Break, Aubrey got a call from his grandmother. He filled Irfan in on it the next day.
“So, my Grandma Jeanine is having a Passover seder on the third, and since we’re flying on the fourth, she wants us to come to the seder before we leave. We’ll drive down there the night of the third, have dinner with my family, stay the night in the house, and then Grandma Jeanine will drive us to the airport in the morning. We can leave the car at her house until we get back. Is that alright?”
“Fine with me,” said Irfan. He seemed cautiously optimistic. “I was wondering when I would get to meet your folks, since we’re already going to see mine. I actually didn’t know you were Jewish, though.”
Aubrey shrugged. “I guess I’m Jewish in kind of the same way that most people are Christian, or the way that you’re Muslim — I don’t care about any of that stuff, I’m just related to some people who do.”
“Like your grandma?”
“My parents, too. My dad’s still got that convert’s zeal, you know. I think my sister practices a bit, too, but she’s more chill about it. Like, she won’t actually kick you out of her house if you want to eat a cheeseburger in there, sort of thing.”
“Is that something that actually happened with your folks?”
“Well, my dad likes to joke that that’s what happened with Seth, but we all know there was more to it than that.”
“I’m sort of wondering what my dad will think of it, now,” said Irfan, thoughtfully. “He doesn’t think there are any black Jews.”
“Most people either decide I’m not Jewish enough, or not black enough, or both. I’m used to it.”
“I know it’s dumb,” said Irfan. “It’s a melting pot here, right? No reason a black person couldn’t get married to a Jewish person. I think my dad is just… very used to New York.”
Aubrey laughed a little bit. “Not exactly what happened with my family,” he said. “I mean yeah, one of my parents is white, and one of my parents is a convert, but actually in our case, both of those people are my dad.”
“So your mom was a black Jew, too?”
“Yeah. Her mom — that’s Grandma Jeanine — looks I guess probably more like what your dad would expect a Jewish person to look like. Mom’s dad… well, presumably he was black. I guess none of us really know for sure, because the only person who knows anything at all about him is Grandma Jeanine, and she has never told anyone else any of it. When we were kids, we used to tell each other ghost stories about how Grandma Jeanine kept him tied up in a secret basement under the house and leached his life force away like a vampire, and that’s how she stays looking no more than 35 despite the fact that she must be ancient by now. That’s just the kind of person Grandma Jeanine is. Like, don’t get me wrong, she always had our backs, but you didn’t want to get on her bad side. Even Seth had that figured out.”
“Isn’t it more likely that he just left her, or something?”
“Sure, I guess maybe he did walk out on her at some point and left her to raise a kid on her own. But I’m just saying, if that actually happened that way, his body is definitely buried in a shallow grave somewhere. I don’t think you can actually get away with doing something like that to Grandma Jeanine.”
“Well, it sounds like meeting her will be interesting, at any rate,” said Irfan. “I don’t know how this sort of thing works, is there anything I need to do, or bring?”
“Nah, just bring yourself. You’re literally going to get an instruction manual to follow.”
Wednesday, April 3, 1996
They pulled up to Grandma Jeanine’s house in Aubrey’s car and parked it on the gravel in front of the house. He saw that Anne's and Noah’s cars were already there — Gail might already be here, too, since she didn’t have a car, but they had beaten Uncle Andrew.
Irfan surveyed the house and his eyebrows shot up. “This place is massive.”
“Yeah, it’s very old. I’m not actually sure how many generations it’s been in the family. The only people who live here now are just my parents and Grandma Jeanine, but there were six of us kids growing up — me, my four siblings, and Uncle Andrew — and we all got our own rooms here. That’s how big it is. I know Anne was thinking of selling her house and moving back in here with her husband and kids, actually, now that the rest of us have all left.”
“That’s your sister?”
“Yeah. Come inside and you’ll meet all of them.”
Dad greeted them at the door, with a hug for Aubrey and then a handshake for Irfan. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. You’re Irfan, correct? My name is River, I’m Aubrey’s dad.” He paused in that faux-dramatic way he always did and then added, “I know. My parents were a bit weird about naming their kids, they were sort of proto-hippies in a way.”
“I didn’t say anything,” said Irfan.
“And now you don’t have to. Tell me, son, are you 21 yet?”
“Yes sir,” said Irfan.
“Alright. So you know, we do have wine here tonight. And in fact, the haggadah is going to occasionally tell you to drink a glass of wine. I just want to let you know that you are not actually required to drink a whole glass of wine, you can instead just drink, like, a small sip of wine, if you would like. In fact, I would really like to encourage you to do that, because the haggadah is going to repeat that instruction to drink a glass of wine four separate times, and I would very much like you to not drink four glasses of wine tonight. Do you understand?”
“I understand, sir,” said Irfan.
“Good. In fact, if you don’t want any wine, that’s also an option. We also have grape juice.”
“Thank you, sir, but I will have the wine,” said Irfan. “We are not driving anywhere tonight.”
Dad took their luggage with the promise that it would wind up in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and they made their way over to the dining table. “Sorry about him,” Aubrey muttered.
Irfan laughed. “It’s alright,” he said. “I get where he’s coming from.”
Gail had indeed already arrived and was sitting at the long table alone, sipping grape juice and seeming bored, while Mom deposited some small bowls on Grandma Jeanine’s massive ornate seder plate and then disappeared back into the kitchen again. When she saw Aubrey, she excitedly patted the seat next to her, and Aubrey obliged her by sitting it, with Irfan taking the next seat over.
“Who’s this?” Gail asked, and then, before Aubrey could answer, followed up with, “Ooh, are you Irfan? I’ve heard about you!” She gave him a big smile. “I’m Gail.”
“I’ve heard about you, too,” said Irfan, and they grinned at each other across Aubrey. “How are you liking college so far?”
“It’s fun!” said Gail. “Lots of parties. If Dad asks, though none of them have any alcohol involved. Nope. None at all.” They shared a laugh, and Aubrey allowed himself to feel optimistic about the rest of the evening.
Grandma Jeanine, looking thirty years younger than Mom as always, came out of the kitchen and put a larger bowl of charoset on the table. Then she stopped, and came over to the three of them. “You must be Irfan, then,” she said, in a tone of voice that wasn’t exactly warm, but didn’t seem hostile, either.
“Yes, ma’am.” Irfan stood up and turned to face her, holding his hand out for a handshake, but she did not take it.
“What are you studying?” Grandma Jeanine asked.
“Chemistry,” said Irfan happily. “I think I can get into some 500-levels next year, and hopefully after that I’ll have the transcript and references I need to get into the graduate school. I’m really looking forward to that, it’s the whole reason I came out here in the first place.”
Grandma Jeanine showed no outward signs of being impressed. “No other plans?” she asked. “Just academia?”
“Well, mostly academia, for the moment, anyway.” Irfan seemed at a bit of a loss. Aubrey knew he’d been pouring everything into his grad school plans, lately.
Grandma Jeanine turned her face to Aubrey, and for a moment it seemed to him as if he were the one being judged here. Something in her expression said: You can do better. She turned her attention back to Irfan and said simply, “You’ll do.” Then she went back into the kitchen.
Irfan sank back into his chair somewhat nervously and said, “I see what you mean about her. I almost get the feeling that whatever she was hoping for wasn’t something that would have passed muster with your dad.”
It wasn’t something Aubrey would actually voice in this place, in this company, but he had often wondered himself if Grandma Jeanine was involved in something less than savory, or if she knew more than she should about some of the things that he was involved in. Some of the people he worked with like to talk about a “family business”, but as far as Aubrey was concerned, there was family, and there was business, and ideally those two things would live in two completely separate universes and never touch. He knew enough economic jargon already to misdirect questions about exactly how much money he had or where it had come from. Grandma Jeanine had never even asked, but maybe she didn’t need to.
In the meantime, Anne had ambled over to the table and took the seat opposite Aubrey. She shifted and massaged her back a bit. She wasn’t visibly pregnant yet, but maybe it was starting to take its toll, anyway. “How is kid number three?” Aubrey asked. Anne was eight years older than him and already had everything he wanted out of life: a husband, a house, complete with a white picket fence, even two and a half kids and a dog. A fetus counted as half a kid, basically, right? He was still planning out the husband part of the equation for himself, when and how he should propose to Irfan. It was still another year until they graduated, and it would probably be weird to get married before then, but he definitely wanted to be married by some point in the next two years, if at all possible.
Anne smiled. “Not too bad, actually. I did just recently get confirmation that it’s not going to be twins this time, which was really the main thing I was hoping for. Everything else is gravy, honestly.” She turned Aubrey’s left. “I guess you’re Irfan, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Aubrey’s sister, Anne.” She pointed over towards the living room, where they could see two toddlers fighting over some toy trucks and two adults sitting on the couches observing them and chatting. “Those are my twins, Ben and Dan, and my husband Gavin, with the brown hair, and my brother Noah, with the glasses. If we don’t have someone supervising the kids before the dinner, Ben will find a way to inhale all of the horseradish before we can even start.”
“Kid’s sinuses are built different,” said Aubrey.
Gail laughed. “Aubrey, we’re going to do the afikomen later, right?” she asked.
“I think we’re too old for that, aren’t we?”
“No we aren’t! Until the terror twins are tall enough to reach Dad’s hiding places, we’re still the youngest ones here who can do it.”
“You mean, you’re the youngest.” For all that he did like Gail, she did act like she was still in high school sometimes. Alright, it had in fact been less than a year since she’d been in high school, but still.
“In a couple of years I’m going to make Dad lower the difficulty of that game so that the twins can play,” Anne said. “You two better make the most of your extortion racket before that happens.”
“Extortion racket?” Irfan asked.
“There’s going to be a special piece of matza called the afikomen,” Anne explained. “At some point, Dad will get up to go to the bathroom, and secretly hide it somewhere in the house. We need it for the end of the seder, so when that point comes, these guys will go search the house for it. What’s supposed to happen is that they return to the table with it and Dad pays them for it, but Dad was never really generous with the afikomen money and the game wasn’t really fair to Gail when they were younger, so what they actually do is re-hide the afikomen in a different, usually completely insane, hiding place, and then pretend like they couldn’t find it. When Dad goes to his hiding place and finds it empty, he then has to pay them both whatever they ask for or be forced to search the entire house himself for it, and as previously mentioned, their hiding places are absolutely mental.”
“We never actually forced him to search for it himself,” Aubrey put in, feeling like that wasn’t clear enough from Anne’s explanation. It was one thing to hold power over someone and even to use it, but to force an issue and call in your debts like that usually wasn’t worth it. Alliances were far too valuable to be worth sacrificing for whatever temporary benefit you could get from that. He’d only done something like that once, and it had earned him an annoying enemy; he had no plans to ever do it again, in either of his double lives. Dad had his limits, and Aubrey had already seen Seth push on past them, and had no inclination to follow in his footsteps.
“Come on, Aubrey,” said Gail, beside him. “You weren’t too old for this last year.”
“Humor her,” Irfan whispered to his left.
“What?”
“Humor her. Your sister still wants to have fun with you. That’s a good thing.”
Aubrey considered for a moment that maybe tonight wasn’t just about Irfan and his family coming away with good impressions of each other. “Alright,” he said to Gail. “We’ll do the afikomen together.” She reached over and pulled him into a sideways hug.
The doorbell rang, and Dad reappeared from upstairs to answer it. He greeted Uncle Andrew and his wife with a nod; they weren’t the most talkative people, which was fine with Aubrey, who didn’t prefer to have discussions with Uncle Andrew if at all possible, anyway.
Irfan watched them with some trepidation. “Who is that?” he asked, and then, “And… why is he green? His eyes…”
“It’s just Uncle Andrew and his wife Vamsi,” said Aubrey. “Supposedly Grandma Jeanine got abducted by aliens at one point and then gave birth to him nine months later, but I wasn’t even born yet.” Uncle Andrew was only one year older than Anne and Seth, so even though he was in Mom’s generation, Aubrey had grown up with him as just one more older brother, and not a particularly nice one, at that. But he thought he had memories of a time when Uncle Andrew’s skin was a different color — still green, for sure, but more like the color of honeydew melon, or a green grape, whereas now in adulthood it seemed darker, more saturated, and a little bit iridescent. He would have asked someone if his memories were correct or not, but you weren’t supposed to talk about Uncle Andrew being green; it was rude.
“Oh,” said Irfan. “I’ve… actually heard about that happening before, actually. Wild to see it in person.”
The last of the special seder foods had been brought out, and Mom and Grandma Jeanine seemed to be done in the kitchen, for now. Mom brought out the cup and basin they would use for the hand-washing and put it next to Dad’s place at the head of the table, and called to the others in the living room, and they began to assemble. Across from them, Gavin helped Ben and Dan into chairs next to Anne that had been padded with extra cushions so they could reach the table, and then seated himself on Anne’s other side. Anne surreptitiously moved a bowl of horseradish closer to Aubrey’s side of the table.
Dad began handing out haggadahs. “This is the instruction manual I told you about,” Aubrey explained. “You just do what it says, it’s really easy.” Irfan nodded, flipping through the first few pages of it, and then took a minute to survey the table.
“Is that for your other brother?” he asked, pointing at the unoccupied place setting. “I think you said his name was Seth, right? Are we waiting on him?”
“No, my twin will not be joining us tonight,” said Anne. “He hasn’t been in touch with us for, oh… I think it’s been six years, now. I really doubt that’s going to change now. That wine glass is for Elijah.”
“Who’s Elijah? I don’t think I remember him being mentioned...”
Anne laughed. “Sorry, I meant the Prophet Elijah. We are going to open the door for him at the end of the seder, and supposedly he comes in, like a ghost, and drinks some of the wine.”
“Oh.” Irfan laughed a little, too, seeming relieved.
The doorbell rang again. Aubrey looked at the door curiously, along with everyone else; no one else was expected tonight. “It’s Elijah,” whispered Gail, and then succumbed to a fit of giggles.
Dad got back up to answer the door, and this time Mom trailed behind him. He opened the door, and they could hear a woman’s voice from the other side, saying: “I’m sorry, I might have gotten the wrong address, but are you by any chance Seth Bren’s parents?”
Noah got up and followed his parents to the door; Aubrey felt compelled to do the same, and soon realized Gail was coming with him. Anne started to rise, but then her husband put a hand on her shoulder, and after some wordless communication, she settled back into her seat, but kept her head craned towards the door. The others stayed seated, but Aubrey saw Grandma Jeanine’s face get very focused and intense. Uncle Andrew and Vamsi alone seemed to be ignoring the interruption entirely.
Outside the door was a young blond woman wearing a blue beret and a pair of very narrow square-framed glasses. An equally blond little girl maybe a couple years older than Ben and Dan hid behind her legs. “I’m sorry,” she said, again, clearly a little intimidated by the larger number of people who had gathered, “I don’t mean to bother you. It’s just… I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him for two weeks now. I know he isn’t close to you anymore, but I was wondering if you might be able to help me find him. I can’t— Any job I could get wouldn’t cover the cost of childcare, and the rent is coming due…”
“It’s alright,” said Dad. “You can stay here if you like, we’ll deal with your lease. We have plenty of space here, and my mother-in-law is retired, so she can watch your daughter if you need her to. And don’t worry — we’ll track down my wretched son and see that he does his duty by you. What is your name?”
“I’m Sadie,” the woman said. “Sadie Gregory, and my daughter is Bess. And I’m sorry to ask this too, but do you have something for us to eat tonight? There is so little money…”
“We have a lot of food prepared for tonight, actually,” said Mom. “There is definitely a place at the table for two more. Please, come in.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” said Sadie. “Thank you—” she hesitated.
“You can call me Tabitha,” said Mom. “Or ‘Mom’, if you like.”
“Thank you, Tabitha,” said Sadie.
Dad stepped back and motioned for the gaggle of people to clear away from the doorway. “‘Let all who are hungry come and eat,’” he said. “Please join us.”
Two new places were cleared next to where Mom was sitting and place settings were assembled. Sadie and her daughter accepted glasses of grape juice. She looked around at all of the people, the bowls laid out on the table, and hand-washing basin. “Oh,” she said. “It’s something special tonight, isn’t it? I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Dad. “You’re in luck, this holiday comes with instructions.” He placed a haggadah in front of her. “All of the Hebrew is translated and transliterated, and the instructions are all in English. You can just follow along.” She nodded.
At last, the seder began. Glasses of wine, washing of hands, spilling drops of “blood” and recounting the plagues; Aubrey knew it all already, so he spent his time surreptitiously observing Irfan, who seemed to finding the whole process fun. Good, maybe, since they’d probably be back here on subsequent years, or maybe not, if Irfan was going to want Aubrey to do this in their own home eventually. Gail sang Mah Nishtanah somewhat reluctantly; a tradition for the youngest child that wasn’t as fun as the afikomen hunt, apparently. Eventually it came time to tell the story of Exodus, and they went around the table in order, with Ben going out of turn specifically to tell his favorite part, where Joseph had accused Benjamin of stealing in order to coerce Jacob to come to Egypt, although Anne had to remind him that it was a false accusation and Benjamin hadn’t actually stolen anything. Aubrey idly wondered if he was going to still think stealing was cool as an adult, and then quickly shoved that idea down. Family was family and business was business.
Mom and Grandma Jeanine went back into the kitchen and returned with the meal, and they ate, discussing family matters, and college, and jobs, and the twins’ antics. When they were done, they passed around candied fruit slices and after a few more steps in the haggadah it was time to retrieve the afikomen.
Gail stood up and pulled on Aubrey’s arm. “Come on!” she said, excitedly.
He had promised, and Irfan was watching him, so he allowed himself to be pulled away. Gail ran off to the living room and began looking among the stacks of movies that sat behind the TV. Aubrey started with a bookshelf — a massive floor-to-ceiling one that was wide enough to fit two doorways into, with ornately carved frames. This one had been in the house for as long as he could remember, and it certainly looked eternal. One of Dad’s favorite afikomen-hiding strategies was to place the afikomen between two books on a bookshelf, leaving only a telltale bit of napkin sticking out. He scanned the shelf for pieces of napkin, or for books that seemed set too far apart, with something small between them. He thought he saw a suspicious gap between two books, but as he peered closer, he saw that there was a small book in the spot between them, very thin, and recessed in towards the back of the shelf. The lettering was a bad contrast with the cover and the light was poor, and all he could make out of the title was “MYSTERY”. Huh. Was there a mystery novel here that he hadn’t read? A very short one, obviously, but still, he was curious. He wedged his fingers into the space between the larger books and tried to pull the smaller one out, but it had seemingly been in its place for too long, and was stuck fast. He tried for a better grip and pulled harder.
Suddenly, he was blindsided by some solid, heavy object that hit him right on the side of the head and threw him to the ground. Something else must have happened, too, and it was now pitch black. In a panic, for a moment, he wondered if his vision had been damaged; he got back up to his hands and knees and felt for the bookshelf, and then, when he found it, felt around with some desperate hope for the light switch that he knew was to its right.
The light switch wasn’t there. He felt around the whole area several times, before somewhat frantically moving further along the wall, and ahh, there was the light switch. He flipped it, and to his intense relief, a light did turn on. It wasn’t the overhead light of the living room that he had expected, though, but a bare hanging lightbulb, which swung wildly as he turned and bumped into it. He stared at it; he’d never seen anything like this anywhere in Grandma Jeanine’s house before.
He looked around, now that the light was on. He was, indeed, no longer in the living room, but now in a very small, claustrophobic space, with the bookshelf still there to his left, but no doorways or windows that he could see.
“Aubrey?” He heard Gail’s voice, but could not see where she might be. The sound had come from the bookshelf, he realized. He went back to it, and put his ear to it, and heard her call for him again, from farther away this time. She was on the other side of it, he realized.
He looked at the bookshelf again, and once again found that tiny book that only said “MYSTERY” on the spine. Was that it, then? A secret bookshelf, that spun around when you pulled out a specific book, and guarded the entrance to a secret room? He guessed that if anyone was going to have something like that in their house, it was going to be Grandma Jeanine. He looked around the room again. The lightbulb had almost stopped swinging, and now that the shadows had settled, he could see that there was a yawning black pit further on past the bookshelf from the light switch. Stairs at the top led down into the darkness.
Down into a secret basement under the house.
God, he thought. If his mysterious grandfather really was tied up in a secret basement under Grandma Jeanine’s house, he’d… he’d volunteer to do the afikomen hunt with Gail every year until he was 30.
It occurred to him that Gail would probably really enjoy this secret, and it would be fun to explore this basement with her. And maybe Irfan would see them laughing together afterwards and would be pleased with him, and it would make a very nice start to their Spring Break. But a thought from earlier returned to him, about Grandma Jeanine’s possible underworld connections. If that were at all true, there might be things in this basement that were dangerous for Gail to know about. He decided that he’d go check it out himself first, and if he didn’t find anything of professional interest, he’d go back and get Gail.
He carefully made his way down the stairs, thinking of how easy it would be to break his neck in the dark; there was no railing other than walls on either side. When he made it to the bottom, his final steps echoed ominously. He felt the walls until he found a light switch.
Unlike in the secret room, the switch here controlled an array of overhead lights that fully illuminated the space. It was huge; the basement must span the entire foundation. How the house did not simply collapse in on this vast space, he had no idea.
Most of the space was actually unoccupied. There were only three points of interest — a dance sphere like the ones you sometimes saw in clubs, massive as always but fundamentally very ordinary; something that looked like a very large pot or kettle; and some kind of stone structure lurking behind the dance sphere.
He approached the dance sphere first. Gail liked these things, but he’d never really been a fan. He guessed they might be fun if you were very fit and didn’t mind the possibility of throwing up afterwards. Why had Grandma Jeanine decided to install this one inside her house? As he came closer, he saw that a note had been stuck to the LCD panel where you were supposed to input the difficulty setting; it read: “For mothership, dial 999”. Ok. He had no interest in further investigating whatever weird relationship Grandma Jeanine might have with the aliens — he did want children, but not badly enough to petition aliens to do unnatural things to him, or to have children that would remind him of Uncle Andrew in any way. Even if he had wanted to meet them, he wasn’t insane enough to use this thing on difficulty level 999; if this four-word note that he had no particular reason to trust turned out to be wrong, they would probably be power-washing him out of the drywall.
The stone structure behind the dance sphere was a complex carving of multiple nested platforms leading up to two tall ones on either side, each topped with a carved stone monkey facing inwards. In the center was a much smaller platform upon which sat a large metal cup. He’d thought at first that might be gold, but picking it up to look at it better, it seemed more like polished bronze. It was empty; he turned it over a few times, inspected the bottom and the sides, but could see nothing special about it. There was nothing nearby that looked like it was intended to fill it, or be filled by it. Eventually, he placed it back on the platform and went across to the large kettle.
The kettle (or dare he say: cauldron) was about waist-height and sat suspended above a burner on the floor in a metal cradle. A long wooden spoon sat propped up by one side of the lip. It was empty, currently, but maybe it had something to do with the metal cup. Next to it was a podium, and on the podium was a book, open to about halfway through. He read what was written on the open page: “The past, once known, is no longer relevant.” He flipped through other pages, and saw strange rhymes, and recipes for things he had never heard of: “Magically Spiced Sugar”, said one; another was “Enchanted Essence of Cur Tails”.
As he paged through the book, a piece of paper fell out. At the top, it read “Club Dante Ban List”, followed by a list of names that he did not recognize. Next to the last, a hyphen, followed by “Check with J.”
This set off warning bells; Club Dante was a business supposedly run by local millionaire Malcolm Landgraab, who lived by himself in a mansion out in the suburbs and rarely showed his face at any of his many businesses, let alone outside of them. But everyone on Aubrey’s side of the law knew that all of the properties that were officially owned by Malcolm were fronts for someone called Joey “the Comb”, who Aubrey knew only by reputation. No one really knew if Malcolm was Joey, and that was the source of his millions, if he was just part of the front and was being paid under the table, or if he was a completely fictional character and Joey just put on a blond wig occasionally and strolled around the mansion’s gardens. Maybe he didn’t even need a blond wig, or any kind of disguise — Aubrey had never actually seen Joey, and didn’t know anyone who had. He had no desire to get involved with anything Joey “the Comb” was involved with — regardless of whether you were pro-Joey or anti-Joey, it was a great way to get assassins showing up to meet you at inconvenient times. His own small operation was already lucrative enough that he didn’t feel the need to ally with any of the bigger fish and would just as soon they settled their differences with each other out of range of his business. He didn’t know what Grandma Jeanine had to do with Club Dante, and it was very much in his best interests to not care.
He carefully placed the piece of paper back between the same two pages it had fallen out of, and then turned the pages of the book back to where they had been opened to initially. He would not show Gail this basement, and he would do his best to hide that he had ever been here. He went back to stairs leading up, flipped off the basement lights, and carefully ascended in darkness.
At the top of the stairs, next to the bookshelf once again, he found the tiny book that had triggered the secret door. He put one hand on it, and the turned off the hanging lightbulb, plunging the space into darkness once again, and then pulled; this time, when he felt the bookshelf begin to move under his hand, he stepped forward into the open space and managed to avoid having the other side of the shelf hit him on its way around.
As expected, he wound up back in the living room. Gail was nowhere to be seen, and the others at the table didn’t seem to have noticed anything and were still talking amongst themselves. He could not see Grandma Jeanine from where he stood, which, with luck, meant that she could not see him, either.
He headed upstairs in search of Gail. Halfway up, he bumped into her on landing, coming down. “Where’d you go?” she asked. “I lost you for a while, there. I found the afikomen — I hid it at the bottom of the laundry hamper.”
“Gail!” He hissed. “We have to eat that later.”
“What? It’s wrapped in a napkin, it’ll be fine. Let’s go get Dad.”
He allowed himself to be led back to the table, where they played through the extortion racket, as Anne had termed it. Dad played his part and brought them to his hiding place, which was, as Aubrey had expected, a bookshelf, but not the one that hid the secret door. Aubrey made his pitch for the money; they each got $10, which was honestly amazing for an afikomen haul; maybe Dad was feeling especially magnanimous after taking in Sadie. He was not any more thrilled than Aubrey had been at Gail’s choice of hiding place, but he did have to admit that the afikomen was fully wrapped in a napkin and therefore probably fine. They took it back to the table, where Dad carefully broke it into 15 pieces and passed them around to be eaten.
Dad got up and opened the door for Elijah. At this point, Aubrey half expected some other uninvited guest to show up instead — Seth himself, maybe, or Malcolm Landgraab, or Joey “the Comb” — but no one appeared in the night outside the door.
They sang the last few songs, and then it was time for the others to leave. He hugged Anne and Gail goodbye, exchanged a nod with Noah, and cautiously watched Uncle Andrew and Vamsi gather their things, but luckily they did not approach. He watched Grandma Jeanine as she helped his parents stack the dishes. He almost wanted to approach her and ask some coded questions — almost. If anyone could protect him in the more violent arenas it would be her, and he could not deny that she had always been on his side and would be a powerful ally. But ultimately, he could not see a reward in it to balance that risk, and simply went upstairs with Irfan after the cleanup was complete. He did not say anything to her the following morning either, when she drove them to the airport.
Gesso Notes
Time: The Sims 2 was released in 2004, and it thus features all of the latest and greatest in the technology and fashion of 2004: CRT monitors, flip phones, MP3 players, skinny jeans, outfits inspired by Avril Lavigne, etc. Some of the people who are still playing this game in 2025 try to bring their games into the modern day with mods; other people install even more mods and try to actually evolve technology and fashion as the generations pass in their game. I don't do either of those things - for me, six generations of sims having come and gone and the neighborhood still being trapped in a 2004 time bubble is a fundamental part of this game and I would never do anything to change that. So, this is also part of the Gesso borrowing: regardless of what date it says it is on the post, culturally, technologically, and spiritually, it is actually 2004. (Except for the skinny jeans, I've always hated skinny jeans and actually modded them out of my game.) There is going to be one glaring anachronism, which is the normalization of gay marriage, since pretty much everyone has been using the gay marriage mod since before gay marriage was even legal IRL and I've actually forgotten what it's like to play the game without it. I have put specific dates on this story, but they are mainly there just to show what happened in what order and how long it's been since whatever event, and how old the characters are. The dates were chosen in such a way that the event that kicks off the main plot happens at the beginning of 2004, naturally.
Place: The game feels very California to me, so for all intents and purposes, Sim City is a large city in California. There are a few references to places outside of Sim City in this story (like for example, New York in this piece), so that should give some indication of how far away they are. The city is not based on any real-world city, in California or otherwise, and isn't a big focus of the story.
Names: Not super relevant for this particular story, but my general Sims naming convention is that for het couples, the man changes his last name to the woman's, and then their kids take the shared last name, and the man retains his original name as a "bachelor name" similar to how women retain maiden names in real life. There's only one het marriage that is at all important to the plot of this story, and this is just to explain the names of the married couples in the character listings, mostly.
Secret Door Bookshelf: There's a bookshelf in the game called Very Mysterious Shelving which functions like a regular bookshelf, but also snaps into the wall like a door has an option to read a "Mysteriously Mysterious Mystery Novel" that causes the bookshelf to spin around and your sim to wind up on the other side of the wall it's on. Here is an extremely poor-quality video of this in action.
How the house did not simply collapse in on this vast space, he had no idea: Sim architecture is notoriously unconstrained by the laws of physics. Technically, if you try to put a floor tile above completely empty space the game will tell you that it needs support, but you can just place a pillar there temporarily, and then when you're done building the floor you can just delete the pillar and it's fine. You don't even need a cheat. This is even more true for basements, where you basically have to trick the game into even building the basement in the first place. (You can also do stuff like put a trash chute on a wall that has another room directly on the other side of it and the trash just disappears into an alternate dimension.) This particular house really does have a massive, foundation-spanning basement in it, and it's a wonderful place to store ridiculously large objects. It's not normally locked behind a secret door bookshelf, though, that addition was something I did.
Alien Abduction and the Dance Sphere: Sims can get abducted by aliens, generally using the expensive telescope, and if they are male, they come back pregnant and then give birth to a green baby. This is, of course, a reference to the movie Alien, but most people, myself included, don't really embrace the body horror aspect of this and just go "Ooh, I need me some more green babies." Accordingly, there are a bunch of mods out there to allow female sims to have alien babies as well. Anyway, if your sim has been abducted at least once via the telescope already, they can also be abducted via the dance sphere object, if they successfully use it on the highest difficulty (in the game there are only three difficulties). The people who made the mods allowing female sims to have alien babies apparently didn't know about this feature, though, so I actually had to make my own mod to allow female alien pregnancy from dance sphere abductions specifically for Grandma Jeanine.
The Chalice of Days: The stone structure with the cup is an object called the Chalice of Days, which is actually from The Sims 2: Castaway Stories, one of the two "stories" games that were made for consoles. These were fairly different than the PC game, in that instead of being open sandboxes they had defined plotlines that you had follow along with and I believe you could only play with premade sims. They had several unique objects in them, which have been extracted by modders and made available for the PC game, including this one. This object allows elder sims to drink from the cup and magically return to the beginning of adulthood. It's not the only way to extend a sim's life pretty much indefinitely, but it was something I used with Jeanine, since at one point I decided I was actually going to let her die of old age like everyone else and allowed her to age to elderhood, but eventually I changed my mind.
A lot of the pictures you can find of this online are actually of a reworked version using a different (much less impressive) mesh. I am using the original one with the original mesh from Castaway Stories, which looks like this:
"The past, once known, is no longer relevant", Magically Spiced Sugar, and Enchanted Essence of Cur Tails: The quote is the first part of the Tabula Rasa spell, which erases a sim's memory: "The past, once known is no longer relevant. Remove all this Sim's memories. Past and present!" Magically Spiced Sugar and Enchanted Essence of Cur Tails are potions that witches can make, which change sims' personalities to make them nice and mean, respectively. These are intended as Hints.
Club Dante and Malcolm Landgraab: Club Dante and Malcolm Landgraab came with the Bluewater Village shopping district that shipped with the Open For Business expansion, which existed mainly to contain a bunch of businesses run by playable sims to let the player experience the running-a-business gameplay out of the box. Malcolm Landgraab is a kind of generic evil capitalist dude who owns multiple Bluewater Village businesses whose most notable feature is that EA decided to give him supervillain eyebrows which create horrifying-looking toddlers if you actually let him procreate. Anyway, Club Dante is a nightclub that is one of his businesses. He is not really a character in this story as such, he is mainly just set dressing, and his name will probably not appear again.
Joey "the Comb": This is actually a reference to a fandom character. The name is from the description of the Life of Crime restriction in the fan-created Apocalypse Challenge:
"Nice place you have. I’d hate to see anything bad happen to it."
The local organized crime family has taken advantage of the lawlessness in the region to set up a protection racket. Joey "The Comb" and his goons force people to pay hefty sums to ensure nothing "bad" happens to what few possessions they have left. While some try to fight the mob, most just give in and pay.
To the best of my knowledge, this isn't a reference to any piece of EA text in the game, like for example anything associated with the actual Criminal career. Obviously this story isn't an apocalypse scenario, but I've seen people do stuff with the Joey "the Comb" character in their apocalypse challenge games and thought it would be fun to reuse the name for this purpose here.
Sim Notes
I say these are original characters, but there are different types of sims involved here with different degrees of originality, so I'll outline them all below.
Generally, sims can be classified into six groups based on degree of originality. I list them below in order from least original/most EA content to most original/least EA content:
- Premade playable sims, who have EA-created names, appearances, personalities, aspirations, backstories, and family and non-family relationships with other sims. A few of these actually do show up as minor characters, but only one of them has any dialog, and in all cases I've completely ignored or rewritten all of their backstories and relationships, so I consider them as kind of AU versions of those characters. In this piece, only Anne's husband Gavin falls into this category (and Malcolm Landgraab, although as I said, he is not really a character in the story, per se).
- Premade main-neighborhood townies and NPCs, who have EA-created names, appearances, personalities, and aspirations, but no canonical backstory or relationships. These are non-playable characters who appear randomly on lots and are there for your playable sims to make friends with and romance. Some of them are well-known and do have enduring fanon characteristics. There is only one character in the story who falls into this category, who has not been introduced yet, and I will probably use the name of another one in another place in passing.
- Premade sub-neighborhood townies and NPCs, who are very similar to the last category, with the exception that their names are randomized. These are the non-playable characters attached to sub-neighborhoods like Bluewater Village, the University neighborhoods, and Downtown. Since they are not readily identifiable by name, they are generally not well-known and don't have any fanon attached to them. A number of sims in this story fall into this category, the most central of whom is Irfan. Also in this section we have Sadie, River, and Vamsi. I believe there is only one other one who hasn't been mentioned yet.
- Randomly generated townies and NPCs. When you use up the existing non-playable characters, the game generates new ones to take their places; the Apartment Life expansion also randomly generates sims to be apartment neighbors. I don't believe there are any of these in this story.
- Born-in-game sims, whose hair, eye, and skin colors, as well as their personalities, are inherited genetically from their parents, but who were named and styled by me and whose aspirations were determined randomly. Most of the characters in the story are in this category, including everyone in this section who hasn't already been mentioned.
- Sims created using the Create-A-Sim tool. This tool gives you complete creative control over almost every aspect of the sim. I honestly do not use this very much, I generally use it to create a single sim and then spend the rest of my time playing generation after generation of their descendants. My one Create-A-Sim sim in this neighborhood died a long time ago, from the perspective of this story, and does not appear here.
Finally, there are also some characters in the story who were never sims in my neighborhood at all and were created entirely originally to fill some role in the story, some of whom are fairly major characters. Basically, anyone who appears in a character list without a last name falls into this category. If I were doing a more traditional sims story, I would probably create them in Create-A-Sim in order to take story-related pictures of them, but I am not that organized and the neighborhood is dead, anyway.
Sim Pictures
Even though this neighborhood has been pining for the fjords for 12 years I do still actually have the game-generated portraits of all of the sims, because I created a family tree for these guys and uploaded the pictures to it. So, here they are.
Aubrey Bren is a born-in-game sim, the son of Tabitha and River. Here is his portrait as an adult (after graduating from college):
Irfan Pai started his life as this downtownie teen. I did reroll his lifetime want to something that actually matched his aspiration, and he got Become a Mad Scientist, which has always said chemistry to me, so he became a chemistry guy. This is what he looked like in my game as an adult after college:
He actually originally started dating Aubrey when they were teens, but I have changed this in the story to them only meeting in college because I've gotten a little tired of and generally disillusioned with the style of marry-your-high-school-sweetheart-and-live-happily-ever-after gameplay I'd been doing during this time period, and also for plot reasons which will become apparent when I flesh out the rest of Aubrey's backstory.
Since the Random Number God gave him a first name that has significance in Islam and a last name that comes from a part of India that doesn't seem to traditionally have a lot of Muslims, I decided that his family were relatively recent immigrants from India who had converted to Islam for whatever reason. They are not going to be super important; the main reason they live in New York is so that I didn't have to make them actual on-screen characters; Aubrey has enough family members for both of them.
River Bren started life as the slob NPC from Nightlife. His bachelor name has been lost to history and I actually forgot that this was who Tabitha married until I went to look him up in the Sims Wiki for this post. He did not persist in slob behaviors after I moved him in and was overall a pretty decent sim. This was his adult portrait in my game:
I have no memory of why I chose to dress him that way.
Tabitha Bren is a born-in-game sim, although obviously her parentage is a spoiler. Here is her portrait as an elder:
Gail Bren is a born-in-game sim, daughter of Tabitha and River. Here is her portrait from after she graduated college:
Jeanine Bren is a born-in-game sim, but her parentage is an unknown mystery as far as this story is concerned. This is her portrait as an adult:
Anne Bren is a born-in-game sim, daughter of Tabitha and River. Here is her adult portrait:
Gavin Newson Bren began life as the premade playable sim Gavin Newson, who starts as a teen in a family of two teens, two children, and two toddlers who are kind of a challenge scenario. I wasn't interested in actually playing them as intended, so turned the sims into townies, and Gavin and his sister Ginger later got attached to two of my playables romantically. Neither him nor his sister are ever appearing in the story again. This is what he looked like as an adult in my game:
Benjamin Bren is a born-in-game sim, the son of Anne and Gavin. This is his portrait as a teen:
Daniel Bren is a born-in-game sim, the son of Anne and Gavin, Benjamin's twin. This is his portrait as a teen:
Noah Bren is a born-in-game sim, the son of Tabitha and River, the middle child in between Seth/Anne and Aubrey. This is his portrait as an adult:
For completeness's sake the last (well, technically first) child of Tabitha and River is of course Seth Bren, Anne's twin. This was his adult portrait:
I can't be sure anymore due to the neighborhood no longer existing, but I think that Seth, Noah, and Aubrey may all have the same face due to an issue with the game's random number generation that I wasn't properly compensating for at the time. Anne would have avoided this bug by being the second-born twin, and Gail seems to have avoided it as well just based on the fact that she has a different skin color than her siblings. But if you're not as faceblind as me and are looking at these three going, hmm, these sims all look kind of similar, you probably aren't wrong.
Sadie Gregory started life as this downtownie. I dyed her hair to match Seth's turn-ons and gave her a slightly different hat, and this is what she looked like in my game:
The dye job is not part of the story because I didn't want to make it look like I was going for some kind of Game of Thrones-esque "why is this child of two dark-haired people mysteriously blond" storyline.
Bess Gregory is a born-in-game sim, the daughter of Sadie and Seth. This is her portrait as a teen:
Andrew Bren Goss is a born-in-game sim, the son of Jeanine and one of my custom alien pollinators, I forget which one off the top of my head. This is his portrait as an adult:
As hinted at in the story, this color green is not actually the color of the default alien skin I use, it's actually the evil witch overlay. As you can see, he was also rocking his evil witch duds just casually around the neighborhood, which is not the case in this story. The only reason I can use the description I gave as a hint here is because I'm writing up these notes, though - the unmodded evil witch overlay actually looks like this.
Vamsi Goss started her life as this University townie. This was her adult portrait in my game:
Cast Cuts
This was a very large family, and Aubrey actually had some other close family members who were cut from the cast of this story for various reasons. So, just in case you thought it was ridiculous to introduce 15 characters here, not even counting Seth, Aubrey's grandpa, Malcolm Landgraab and Joey "the Comb", I am here to tell you that it could have been even worse.
First, Uncle Andrew had some kids, because what is even the point of aliens if they are not injecting alien DNA into the gene pool, am I right:
Technically, he's only been married for three years at this point in the timeline, so most of them wouldn't have been born yet anyway, but I decided the story just worked a lot better if he never had any kids at any point in time.
Noah had a girlfriend:
She was a premade playable from one of the universities whose name was Blossom Moonbeam. Due to my naming conventions, when she married Noah, his last name also became Moonbeam, and then they had a child whose last name was Moonbeam:
Partly these sims were cut because they were all very boring (Noah himself was also very boring and the only reason he wasn't cut was that it would be kind of weird if Aubrey's next oldest sibling was eight years older than him), but it was also because their last name was Moonbeam. Apparently it's fine if Grandma Jeanine gets abducted by aliens via a dance sphere and gives birth to a chestburster who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, this is a fine thing to happen in this story, but people named Moonbeam are just too weird.
Gail had a couple different boyfriends:
The first of these was a born-in-game sim belonging to another family in the neighborhood, and the second was a well-known main-neighborhood townie named Abhijeet Deppiesse, although his last name had become Grundstrom due to having married another woman in the neighborhood. Don't worry though, all of Gail's stuff was consensual poly shenanigans, no one was cheating. I believe she would have been with the first boyfriend at this point in the timeline, but not yet with Abhijeet. First boyfriend almost made the cast list, but got cut because there were already entirely too many people in this piece anyway.
Grandma Jeanine had some girlfriends:
The first one she met when she was still young, they grew old together and eventually the girlfriend died of old age. She must have been a townie of some description, but I no longer have any memory of what she originally looked like, so I can't look her up on the Sims Wiki. The second is premade playable Melody Tinker who I actually played in a more or less standard way but eventually murdered due to her lot becoming corrupted. She was then resurrected by one of her sons and at this point began dating Grandma Jeanine, though they never lived together. You can imagine that she is still part of the story and is just never mentioned, since I don't think Aubrey really would have known her, as her relationship with Jeanine didn’t start until after all of Tabitha’s children had left the house, and she never lived with Grandma Jeanine, but I decided to remove the first girlfriend for reasons that will hopefully become obvious when the mysteries surrounding Jeanine are resolved at the end of the story.
Finally, Grandma Jeanine did have a second alien child:
Her first alien child (Andrew) was the result of a telescope abduction - the reason I had the dance sphere installed was so that I could get her abducted on command to have future alien children, like this one here. Unfortunately, this one turned out extremely nice and boring. You can also see from her portrait what the real alien skin color actually looks like in my game.
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This needs a tag for the story. Just to be clear, the story name for the tag should be "Crimes Against Romance" and "Be Gay, Do Crime" is just a joke.
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Thank you, I hope it lives up to expectations when I get back to posting it! Jeanine was my favorite sim in that neighborhood, they do have to be pretty special before I start letting them live forever.
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Thank you! The alien stuff really isn't unusual at all in the context of Sims stories (well, at least for Sims 2, it's my understanding that they didn't carry that feature forward into the later games), but Sims stories are usually written in an at least somewhat goofy manner (and are usually carried mainly by game screenshots rather than 6k words of prose), so I struggled a bit trying to think how exactly to introduce it in this more serious format.
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I played the Sims a little when I was much younger (in 2004, I think, actually) and I loved seeing all the little game nods here. Also loved Aubrey being like "well sure Pesach is a good enough time to introduce the family, at least there's instructions for the meal" because BIG MOOD. When you have a large and bonkers family you want some kind of manual for some of it. Great job.
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Thank you! I hope you like the rest of it, when it eventually gets posted. And honestly, as an autistic person, I always really liked that Pesach came with instructions. Tu BiShvat was fun, too, although we didn't always celebrate it.
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1. blockbuster
2. “[...]my memory is reasonably good—unlike yours, dear sir!”
“Mine is erratic,” he said imperturbably. “I remember only what interests me.”
― Georgette Heyer
3. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/91/ce/14/91ce1453f984147ef83e6b01ba2f609b.jpg
4. Mine and yours
5. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/bd/f9/2f/bdf92f5bde3f12ef79ea1be15f2f1402.jpg
6. https://64.media.tumblr.com/91acfc89ebe57d654df70cdcb6719816/b0355f82ac02dac4-01/s540x810/00f9790a1265a406907788dd1dec693e89ee04dc.jpg
7. https://i.pinimg.com/564x/e7/a0/ca/e7a0ca21dab19ee24b2bfb5acf7fef8a.jpg
8. Three Little Birds, Bob Marley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ind7BEZgWJU
9. “I fear that I am not the best possible person for this, but I am the best possible person available at this time, which is much the same thing.” ― T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Grace
10. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/6d/06/aa/6d06aafb5fac8e4f6fe08e6350d49185.jpg
11. If you guys were as mean as you are ugly, then maybe you'd be trouble! - Panthro, Thundercats (1985)
12. "What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world, remains and is immortal." - Mason Albert Pike
13. "I've got nothing to conclude. I was just talking for the sake of talking." - Stargate Atlantis