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rainbowfic2025-08-17 02:59 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-08-17 02:59 pm
Warm Heart #18 [Tales From the Neighborhood]
Name: A Delivery
Story: Tales From the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: Michael, Robert, and Stephen
Colors: Warm Heart #18: Favour
Styles and Supplies: Vaudeville, Life Drawing, Gesso, Embroidery, Feathers (August 17, 1998: Bill Clinton opines on what the meaning of 'is' is), Modeling Clay (this image prompt)
Word Count: 894
Rating: T
Warnings: Swearing, Discussion of casual sex
Characters: Michael Wolf, Stephen Bren
Summary: Stephen has a favor to ask.
Notes: Remember what Alex Upsnott said he did with the cowplant?
Bzzt… bzzt…
Click
“Hey, it’s Michael. What’s up?”
“Hey Michael, it’s Stephen, listen, could I ask you for a favor?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“It’s about that house you bought. You still have that house, right?”
“Of course. It didn’t grow legs and wander off. This place is amazing, Stephen. I told you guys before that it has three bedrooms, so we can each have our own, but there’s also a big open area upstairs. I think it’s big enough that we could put in a pool table. I know Robert doesn’t care about games that aren’t football, but you’re with me here, right?”
“Definitely. Was just thinking I was going to miss the pool table here after I graduate, actually. Glad I won’t have to.”
“The only issue I’ve found with this house so far is that for some reason I always forget what I was doing when going into the first floor bathroom. Bad feng shui or something.”
“I’m honestly still having some trouble believing you actually have this house. How did you afford it, anyway? I can’t remember if you said.”
“Well… this might sound kind of bad, actually. You know Malcolm Landgraab?”
“Of course I know Malcolm Landgraab, everyone knows Malcolm Landgraab. Are you saying that Malcolm fucking Landgraab bought you a house for some reason?”
“Well, he didn’t not buy me the house.”
“Ok, I think I believe Robert when he says you are a good lay, now.”
“It wasn’t like that!”
“But it wasn’t not like that, right?”
“It was about my art, ok? He loves art. He hosts, like, shows and stuff for up-and-coming artists at his mansion, and often it really kicks off their careers. He looked at some of my paintings and said he thought they were really good, that they had a lot of potential. And then he bought some of them for… a lot of money.”
“Oh. So you went to one of the shows at his mansion and showed off your work? That’s pretty neat.”
“Not… exactly. He was looking at my stuff in my apartment, actually.”
“Right. And why was he in your apartment? What was he doing there, Michael?”
“Look—”
“Did this conversation happen before or after you fucked?”
“After. But look—”
“Like I said.”
“You said you had a favor to ask of me, Stephen. What is your favor.”
“Oh, yeah. So, Robert and I bought this plant on simBay. A really cool plant. I just wanted to check and make sure it was still cool to have the guy deliver it to the house.”
“A plant? What kind of plant is this that you can’t just keep it with you at the campus housing?”
“It’s kind of large. Very large, actually.”
“How large are we talking? Did you buy a tree? There’s already a tree here.”
“No. It’s this really cool and incredibly rare plant that I’ve been learning about in the capstone course, actually, it’s called Laganaphyllis simnovorii and it’s incredible. Like, it’s legitimately the secret to eternal life, if used correctly. And, uh, it might be like, a tiny little bit illegal, so maybe keep it out of sight of the neighbors.”
“Illegal? Stephen, what have you gotten us into?”
“Only a little illegal, we just don’t have the exact right permit, but I’m sure we can resolve that later. The guy is also delivering a case of ham, just keep it in the freezer until it’s time to feed the plant.”
“Feed the plant? With ham? Why does this plant eat ham instead of like, I don’t know, compost, or something? Am I supposed to bury the ham in the dirt next to it, or what?”
“No. It has a mouth, you know, like a Venus Flytrap.”
“A very large Venus Flytrap. What does it eat normally? Not flies, I’m guessing.”
“Ham. It eats ham. Unless… well, we might have to change up its diet, occasionally, to get it to give us the goods.”
“‘Change up it’s diet.’ With what? What are you planning to feed to this plant, Stephen?”
“Well, I don’t know. We’ll have to see what opportunities present themselves.”
“Opportunities? What kind of opportunities? Stray cats? Lost children? Nosy neighbors?”
“I really think you’re jumping to conclusions, here. Relax, it’ll be fine. Just make very sure to keep the ham ready.”
“How much ham is this thing going to go through? How long do I have until it runs out and your plant starts eating people?”
“You should be good until we graduate, don’t worry, it only needs to eat like once a week or so. Maybe a little more than once a week, just to be on the safe side. I’ll handle the ham going forward, you don’t have to worry about it at all.”
“I can’t believe you were giving me shit about my private life and now you’re trying to install Audrey 2 at our house.”
“‘Private life.’ Ha, that’s a good joke.”
“Stephen, you are insane.”
“You don’t understand how amazing this luck is, though. Don’t you get it? We might live forever.”
“This is still you asking me for a favor, right? I can still say no, right?”
“Well, we did kind of already buy it, and the guy is already en route to the house. I just wanted to let you know to expect him.”
“STEPHEN!”
Malcolm Landgraab (again) and how Michael was able to afford this house:
So, I had always planned for these three guys to wind up sharing a house after college, but they had no money for the house. Michael graduated a bit ahead of the other two, flat broke, so I stuck him in a shoebox apartment that I keep around specifically for broke college grads and figured I would wait for the others to graduate and see if someone wound up with a spare genie lamp or something.
Entry-level jobs are kind of a waste of time in terms of earning money, and at the time, Michael had a lifetime want to woohoo 20 different sims, so I figured his time would probably be better spent trying to knock out the lifetime want. The most efficient way to sleep with large numbers of people in a short period of time is to go on dates, because the dates all wind up at woohoo if you play them right and start with a reasonably good relationship with the datee, and also, whenever you hit a date score threshold, both sims get a massive refresh to all of their needs, so if you're quick, you can basically just chain dates one after the other and never actually have to take a break to satisfy anyone's needs because they are all just living off of magical date fumes or something. The only thing that actually prevents you from doing a 24/7 date marathon is that visitors will automatically go home between 2 AM and 6 AM and also can't be invited over during this time. So, he did have to take one 4-hour break every 24 hours. (This isn't a problem if both sims live on the lot, but in that case, you're more likely to be interrupted by, say, having to go to work, or children needing care.) Dating also means that you wind up satisfying a whole lot of wants, because this is how you earn date score, and I personally love satisfying their wants. It feels much better if he gets to 20 woohoos by actually rolling a specific want for every single one of them, which is not necessarily guaranteed outside of the date context. (Well. Maybe not guaranteed for people who aren't Michael. Michael is a little special.)
Anyway, when you get the date score all the way to maximum (which is basically guaranteed if you get to the woohoo), then the date will come back to the lot later with a big bouquet of flowers (which I think can make other people jealous if you don't have the jealousy system severely nerfed like I do), and sometimes they will also leave behind an expensive object as a gift. Michael had no room for any of this crap in his shoebox apartment, and some of these objects are quite large - people leave dance spheres, DJ booths, karaoke machines and some other stuff that really has no business being on a residential lot. So I put one date bouquet on top of the fridge and sold everything else. And after selling all of those expensive objects... suddenly he had enough money for a house.
So, it turns out that not only is sex work possible in this game, it's also extremely lucrative, much better than any actual career. After this experience, I would probably have labeled date marathoning as an exploit that is Not Allowed in my neighborhood, if not for the fact that there are certain date-related lifetime wants that pretty much require some degree of date marathoning to achieve, and also because it's incredibly boring and I never want to do it again unless I'm trying to satisfy one of those insane lifetime wants.
Anyway, Malcolm Landgraab was one of the 20 people that Michael dated in this way; I can't remember right now exactly how much he personally contributed to the house fund, I just thought it would be kind of funny if, in this story, he had contributed all of it. Do note that this Malcolm Landgraab is from an alternate universe relative to the one in the Crimes Against Romance story, and is not involved in any criminal activity here, in this story he is really just a rich guy. However, like in Crimes Against Romance, he's not really a character in this story and won't be appearing again.
Laganaphyllis simnovorii: This is the canonical scientific name of the cowplant, and it actually really does come from the name of the last class in the biology major: "Senior Thesis: The Laganaphyllis Simnovorii". This comes from lagana (Latin for "cakes", a reference to the cake tongue), phyllis which is probably meant to be the Greek root from "chlorophyll", and simnovorii which is obviously dog-Latin for "sim-eating".
Michael Wolf is a born in game sim. He is a bit unique in that his mother began life as an NPC (I think she was an animal control officer, but I'm not sure; I summoned her to meet my playables with a mod), and his father was actually a random townie who doesn't matter at all and has been removed from his family tree with a modjust in case that increased his dating pool by one. Anyway, as a result, he's technically not related to anyone else in the hood who isn't directly descended from his mother. However, his mother had relationships with other sims who were connected to the overall family tree, so he has some quasi-family relationships to other sims.
Here is his adult portrait:
For example, Stephen Bren is not Michael's brother, but also not not Michael's brother. Stephen's father is actually the born in game playable sim who I summoned Michael's mother to be a girlfriend for originally, and they subsequently became part of a larger polycule involving Stephen's dad's cousin, and former EA-created sorority girl Heather Huffington. There will probably be somewhat more information about how this family is put together in later installments of this plot thread. Stephen is also Alex Upsnott’s first cousin once removed. Note that this is an alternate universe from the Crimes Against Romance universe, so this Bren family is unrelated to the one in that story.
Here is Stephen's adult portrait:
As you can see, he is an alien, although he is one of the more human-looking aliens in the neighborhood. (He does later have some much more interesting-looking children, though.) This is not important for this specific story, but will be important later. Since Stephen's other biological parent was an alien, and his dad is not married to Michael's mom, the game does not consider them related, but I consider them related.
Robert is going to be a major on-screen character in a couple installments, so I will wait to introduce him until then.
Story: Tales From the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: Michael, Robert, and Stephen
Colors: Warm Heart #18: Favour
Styles and Supplies: Vaudeville, Life Drawing, Gesso, Embroidery, Feathers (August 17, 1998: Bill Clinton opines on what the meaning of 'is' is), Modeling Clay (this image prompt)
Word Count: 894
Rating: T
Warnings: Swearing, Discussion of casual sex
Characters: Michael Wolf, Stephen Bren
Summary: Stephen has a favor to ask.
Notes: Remember what Alex Upsnott said he did with the cowplant?
Bzzt… bzzt…
Click
“Hey, it’s Michael. What’s up?”
“Hey Michael, it’s Stephen, listen, could I ask you for a favor?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“It’s about that house you bought. You still have that house, right?”
“Of course. It didn’t grow legs and wander off. This place is amazing, Stephen. I told you guys before that it has three bedrooms, so we can each have our own, but there’s also a big open area upstairs. I think it’s big enough that we could put in a pool table. I know Robert doesn’t care about games that aren’t football, but you’re with me here, right?”
“Definitely. Was just thinking I was going to miss the pool table here after I graduate, actually. Glad I won’t have to.”
“The only issue I’ve found with this house so far is that for some reason I always forget what I was doing when going into the first floor bathroom. Bad feng shui or something.”
“I’m honestly still having some trouble believing you actually have this house. How did you afford it, anyway? I can’t remember if you said.”
“Well… this might sound kind of bad, actually. You know Malcolm Landgraab?”
“Of course I know Malcolm Landgraab, everyone knows Malcolm Landgraab. Are you saying that Malcolm fucking Landgraab bought you a house for some reason?”
“Well, he didn’t not buy me the house.”
“Ok, I think I believe Robert when he says you are a good lay, now.”
“It wasn’t like that!”
“But it wasn’t not like that, right?”
“It was about my art, ok? He loves art. He hosts, like, shows and stuff for up-and-coming artists at his mansion, and often it really kicks off their careers. He looked at some of my paintings and said he thought they were really good, that they had a lot of potential. And then he bought some of them for… a lot of money.”
“Oh. So you went to one of the shows at his mansion and showed off your work? That’s pretty neat.”
“Not… exactly. He was looking at my stuff in my apartment, actually.”
“Right. And why was he in your apartment? What was he doing there, Michael?”
“Look—”
“Did this conversation happen before or after you fucked?”
“After. But look—”
“Like I said.”
“You said you had a favor to ask of me, Stephen. What is your favor.”
“Oh, yeah. So, Robert and I bought this plant on simBay. A really cool plant. I just wanted to check and make sure it was still cool to have the guy deliver it to the house.”
“A plant? What kind of plant is this that you can’t just keep it with you at the campus housing?”
“It’s kind of large. Very large, actually.”
“How large are we talking? Did you buy a tree? There’s already a tree here.”
“No. It’s this really cool and incredibly rare plant that I’ve been learning about in the capstone course, actually, it’s called Laganaphyllis simnovorii and it’s incredible. Like, it’s legitimately the secret to eternal life, if used correctly. And, uh, it might be like, a tiny little bit illegal, so maybe keep it out of sight of the neighbors.”
“Illegal? Stephen, what have you gotten us into?”
“Only a little illegal, we just don’t have the exact right permit, but I’m sure we can resolve that later. The guy is also delivering a case of ham, just keep it in the freezer until it’s time to feed the plant.”
“Feed the plant? With ham? Why does this plant eat ham instead of like, I don’t know, compost, or something? Am I supposed to bury the ham in the dirt next to it, or what?”
“No. It has a mouth, you know, like a Venus Flytrap.”
“A very large Venus Flytrap. What does it eat normally? Not flies, I’m guessing.”
“Ham. It eats ham. Unless… well, we might have to change up its diet, occasionally, to get it to give us the goods.”
“‘Change up it’s diet.’ With what? What are you planning to feed to this plant, Stephen?”
“Well, I don’t know. We’ll have to see what opportunities present themselves.”
“Opportunities? What kind of opportunities? Stray cats? Lost children? Nosy neighbors?”
“I really think you’re jumping to conclusions, here. Relax, it’ll be fine. Just make very sure to keep the ham ready.”
“How much ham is this thing going to go through? How long do I have until it runs out and your plant starts eating people?”
“You should be good until we graduate, don’t worry, it only needs to eat like once a week or so. Maybe a little more than once a week, just to be on the safe side. I’ll handle the ham going forward, you don’t have to worry about it at all.”
“I can’t believe you were giving me shit about my private life and now you’re trying to install Audrey 2 at our house.”
“‘Private life.’ Ha, that’s a good joke.”
“Stephen, you are insane.”
“You don’t understand how amazing this luck is, though. Don’t you get it? We might live forever.”
“This is still you asking me for a favor, right? I can still say no, right?”
“Well, we did kind of already buy it, and the guy is already en route to the house. I just wanted to let you know to expect him.”
“STEPHEN!”
Malcolm Landgraab (again) and how Michael was able to afford this house:
So, I had always planned for these three guys to wind up sharing a house after college, but they had no money for the house. Michael graduated a bit ahead of the other two, flat broke, so I stuck him in a shoebox apartment that I keep around specifically for broke college grads and figured I would wait for the others to graduate and see if someone wound up with a spare genie lamp or something.
Entry-level jobs are kind of a waste of time in terms of earning money, and at the time, Michael had a lifetime want to woohoo 20 different sims, so I figured his time would probably be better spent trying to knock out the lifetime want. The most efficient way to sleep with large numbers of people in a short period of time is to go on dates, because the dates all wind up at woohoo if you play them right and start with a reasonably good relationship with the datee, and also, whenever you hit a date score threshold, both sims get a massive refresh to all of their needs, so if you're quick, you can basically just chain dates one after the other and never actually have to take a break to satisfy anyone's needs because they are all just living off of magical date fumes or something. The only thing that actually prevents you from doing a 24/7 date marathon is that visitors will automatically go home between 2 AM and 6 AM and also can't be invited over during this time. So, he did have to take one 4-hour break every 24 hours. (This isn't a problem if both sims live on the lot, but in that case, you're more likely to be interrupted by, say, having to go to work, or children needing care.) Dating also means that you wind up satisfying a whole lot of wants, because this is how you earn date score, and I personally love satisfying their wants. It feels much better if he gets to 20 woohoos by actually rolling a specific want for every single one of them, which is not necessarily guaranteed outside of the date context. (Well. Maybe not guaranteed for people who aren't Michael. Michael is a little special.)
Anyway, when you get the date score all the way to maximum (which is basically guaranteed if you get to the woohoo), then the date will come back to the lot later with a big bouquet of flowers (which I think can make other people jealous if you don't have the jealousy system severely nerfed like I do), and sometimes they will also leave behind an expensive object as a gift. Michael had no room for any of this crap in his shoebox apartment, and some of these objects are quite large - people leave dance spheres, DJ booths, karaoke machines and some other stuff that really has no business being on a residential lot. So I put one date bouquet on top of the fridge and sold everything else. And after selling all of those expensive objects... suddenly he had enough money for a house.
So, it turns out that not only is sex work possible in this game, it's also extremely lucrative, much better than any actual career. After this experience, I would probably have labeled date marathoning as an exploit that is Not Allowed in my neighborhood, if not for the fact that there are certain date-related lifetime wants that pretty much require some degree of date marathoning to achieve, and also because it's incredibly boring and I never want to do it again unless I'm trying to satisfy one of those insane lifetime wants.
Anyway, Malcolm Landgraab was one of the 20 people that Michael dated in this way; I can't remember right now exactly how much he personally contributed to the house fund, I just thought it would be kind of funny if, in this story, he had contributed all of it. Do note that this Malcolm Landgraab is from an alternate universe relative to the one in the Crimes Against Romance story, and is not involved in any criminal activity here, in this story he is really just a rich guy. However, like in Crimes Against Romance, he's not really a character in this story and won't be appearing again.
Laganaphyllis simnovorii: This is the canonical scientific name of the cowplant, and it actually really does come from the name of the last class in the biology major: "Senior Thesis: The Laganaphyllis Simnovorii". This comes from lagana (Latin for "cakes", a reference to the cake tongue), phyllis which is probably meant to be the Greek root from "chlorophyll", and simnovorii which is obviously dog-Latin for "sim-eating".
Michael Wolf is a born in game sim. He is a bit unique in that his mother began life as an NPC (I think she was an animal control officer, but I'm not sure; I summoned her to meet my playables with a mod), and his father was actually a random townie who doesn't matter at all and has been removed from his family tree with a mod
Here is his adult portrait:
For example, Stephen Bren is not Michael's brother, but also not not Michael's brother. Stephen's father is actually the born in game playable sim who I summoned Michael's mother to be a girlfriend for originally, and they subsequently became part of a larger polycule involving Stephen's dad's cousin, and former EA-created sorority girl Heather Huffington. There will probably be somewhat more information about how this family is put together in later installments of this plot thread. Stephen is also Alex Upsnott’s first cousin once removed. Note that this is an alternate universe from the Crimes Against Romance universe, so this Bren family is unrelated to the one in that story.
Here is Stephen's adult portrait:
As you can see, he is an alien, although he is one of the more human-looking aliens in the neighborhood. (He does later have some much more interesting-looking children, though.) This is not important for this specific story, but will be important later. Since Stephen's other biological parent was an alien, and his dad is not married to Michael's mom, the game does not consider them related, but I consider them related.
Robert is going to be a major on-screen character in a couple installments, so I will wait to introduce him until then.
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(And, ha, it's been long enough that I'd nearly forgotten the whole random alien thing again.)
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Yup! Haha. It has been a while since that last Sims post, hasn't it? These are going to be somewhat more frequent now, because I have a bunch of extra Warm Heart prompts to use up that didn't make it into the Fulcrum.
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Thank you! I actually just finished editing 11,000 words of these three, and Stephen is pretty fun to write. Although that one is less funny and more serious.