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rainbowfic2026-05-25 03:04 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2026-05-25 03:04 pm
Bittersweet #6, Color of the Day May 25 2026 [Tales from the Neighborhood]
Name: Tessa and Marie
Story: Tales From the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: The Earlier Generation
Colors: Bittersweet #6: Old Photographs, Color of the Day May 25, 2026: Poignant
Styles and Supplies: Gesso, Seed Beads, Canvas, Novelty Bead (this image, given here), Tempera ("Death represents transformation, endings and new beginnings. When the Death card shows up it tells you that things will not be the same again. A transformation is taking place, you are growing and changing with the circumstances you find yourself in. Nothing stays the same forever, and the Death card represents the necessary death of something old to make way for something new.")
Word Count: 2,042
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Tessa Ramirez, Marie Bren, Sophie Bren, Elizabeth Bren, Anne Bren
Summary: Tessa had never had a sister before.
Notes: This is a story about an older generation of sims in my neighborhood, and everyone who appears here is dead of old age in the current game. See the sim notes for how they are related to my current characters. I'm still not entirely happy with the ending, blargh.
Tessa would always remember the day she met Marie. Her parents had argued for weeks; about what, she hadn’t really understood at the time. Eventually, her father had seemed to win the argument, her mother conceding defeat and leaving to fume somewhere in private, leaving Tessa to her father.
Her father had taken her in his car to another house, a much smaller and less-well-kept house, with no car parked in front of it. He’d knocked on the door, and woman answered, pale-skinned and red-headed with deep purple eyes that stuck in Tessa’s memory.
“Sophie,” he’d said.
She’d nodded, guardedly, like she knew him well enough not to trust him. Behind her legs, a girl peered at Tessa as she stood next to her father — black hair and dusky skin like her father’s, but purple eyes like Sophie’s.
“This is Tessa,” her father had said.
“Ahh,” said Sophie, and looked down at the other child. “This is Marie.”
Tessa had never had a sister before. Papa had wanted Marie to be part of the family, too. He had invited her over to play games with Tessa, and Tessa had showed her all of her favorite places and her favorite toys. But Mama still wouldn’t have it, and would throw icy glares in Marie’s direction when she was there, and Marie seemed overwhelmed by all of Tessa’s toys, anyway. So eventually, Marie stopped coming to Tessa’s house, and Tessa went to hers, instead.
It was a smaller house, with fewer rooms, and fewer toys, and a smaller yard, but that just meant they spent more time using their imaginations. One day, Marie would climb the tree in the yard and be a glorious queen, and Tessa would be a loyal councilor, bringing her things from the house and yard as she pleased; then they switched, for a time. On another day, they were two wolves in a pack, howling at the moon and digging holes in the ground. As the years went on, they ceased these games and were content to sit together under the tree, eating fruits from its branches and talking about their friends and classes.
One day, they found a real wolf, passing through the woods behind Marie’s house, and Marie tried to pet it, but it only bit her and ran away. That evening, Marie somehow transformed into one of its cousins; after the initial shock had worn off, they had a great deal of fun chasing each other through the woods, or with Tessa riding a sled dragged by Marie’s powerful jaws. The next day, Marie had returned to normal, but the transformation took place again, every day at sunset.
When it came time to go to college, there were many options for Tessa; far away places with haughty reputations that promised her the world. But when she learned that Sophie could only afford to send Marie to the local Sim State University, she told her parents she wanted to go there instead. She couldn’t imagine going off to a strange new place without Marie.
They arranged to share a dorm in a crowded building, and made new friends. When students from a rival school showed up to vandalize the building, Marie used the strength and ferocity she’d gained from her time as a wolf to set them straight and drive them off. At the same time, she was becoming a keen scientist and studying physics and the laws of nature; Tessa instead pursued theater.
One day, Tessa was walking back to the dorm from a late-night theater production, and saw a strange green light. As she went toward it, she saw it was coming from the side of the physics building, forming a shifting network of points and lines. The patterns seemed to change as she moved back and forth between them; on her third time past, the light flashed brilliantly. For one moment, her entire field of vision was suffused with bright green light, and in the next, she knew no more.
Some time later, Tessa picked herself up off the ground in front of the physics building. It was full daylight now, and also significantly warmer, almost as if it was no longer winter. She looked back at the wall, but the strange green patterns seemed to have disappeared.
She returned to her dorm, only to find it occupied by two other girls, whom she had never seen before. In the argument that ensued, the housing director was eventually summoned.
“You said your name is Tessa?” he asked. “Tessa Ramirez?”
“Yes,” said Tessa, dumbfounded.
“Come with me,” he said.
“It has been a long time since you enrolled here and were assigned that room,” he explained, back in his office. “Decades. Generations. You were one of the victims of a physics experiment gone wrong, all those years ago. All of the others were found, sent forward to less remote futures. You were the last one to be accounted for.”
She was told that her parents had paid the rest of her tuition already, and that she was free to continue her studies. Overwhelmed by the amount of time that had seemingly passed, she nevertheless did so, attending classes with students she had never met taught by professors she had never known. Wherever she went, the news about how she had come to be there followed her, and she only made one real friend — a boy named Julien, who invited her to his cramped house on campus, and used the oven there to make delicious cakes and pies of all kinds. He asked her many questions about what things had been like before her transportation, but eerily, nothing really seemed to have changed. It was all still the same culture, the same food, the same language, the same politics, just with a brand new set of faces.
Graduation came, but she did not truly identify with the year number that was printed on her certificate. It still seemed too large, too impossible, too futuristic. But somehow, it was hers.
As expected, she found that the house she had lived in with her parents had long since been sold to someone else, and was no longer her home. She discovered that her parents had left her a lot of money in an account they had opened long ago, and she was able to buy a new house, which she invited Julien to live in with her. Only after settling in did she cautiously approach the small house where she had spent her days with Marie.
The house was much bigger now, and there were now two cars parked in front of it. Fearful that it might have been sold to a stranger as well, she knocked on the door.
Her knock was answered by a young woman around her own age, with black hair and deep purple eyes. Unable to think of what to say, Tessa simply asked, “Is Marie Bren here?”
“Marie was my grandmother,” the woman said. “She is here, in a manner of speaking; her gravestone decorates the yard, along with her husband’s. My name is Elizabeth.”
“Oh,” said Tessa. With how many years had passed, she hadn’t really had any hope that Marie might still be alive, but hearing that she was truly dead made it sound that much more final.
“Are you by any chance Tessa Ramirez?” asked Elizabeth.
“I am,” said Tessa.
Elizabeth smiled. “We worried that you might never return. Please come inside.” She left the doorway and called off into the house, “Mama! Tessa is here!”
Elizabeth led Tessa into a living room that was much nicer than she had ever seen in this house before, and a few minutes later, an elderly woman with the same purple eyes whose hair still showed the fading remnants of Sophie’s red color appeared at another doorway. She had the same lean predatory stance that Marie had always had after her misadventure with the wolf, and Tessa had no doubt that she must also become a russet wolf with the setting of the sun.
“I’m very glad I lived to meet you in person,” the old woman said. “I was starting to think I might not make it. I am Anne; Marie was my mother. She left some things for you, for when you returned.”
Anne disappeared again, and came back with a large box. The box was full of photographs; Marie at her wedding, getting married to a blond boy that Tessa had known when they were in college together; family photographs of the two of them with four young children; Marie in a smart-looking suit, addressing a crowd from the Mayor’s podium in City Hall; Anne and her siblings as teenagers and young adults; pictures of Marie’s children surrounded by their own children.
“She was the Mayor?” asked Tessa.
“For a few years, at least,” said Anne. “But it was lots of meetings, appointment, press releases. And they all had to be over by sunset.” She pulled a VHS tape from the bottom of the box. “There’s this, too.”
They played the tape on the living room television set. In the video, a much younger Anne pulled back from the frame, revealing Marie seated on the couch that Tessa now sat on. She was older, and more wrinkled, and the color had started to fade from her hair. In the video, Anne sat back on the floor, and briefly directed her gaze to where a pair of toddlers with black hair and purple eyes, one girl, and one boy, fought over some blocks together. In front of the television, Elizabeth made a face at them.
“Tessa,” said Marie in the video, “I have to hope that one day you will see this. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t mourn that my sister and I could not be there for each other during the best parts of our lives. That so much time has passed since I last saw you; that I may die without ever seeing you again. But I will not live forever, and the university will not give me an estimate on when they think you might reappear. So I am recording this for Anne to give to you, in case I do not live to see that day.”
Tessa blinked tears out of her eyes, and accepted a box of tissues from Elizabeth. She sat there and watched the video as Marie told her about her life, about her husband and children and grandchildren, about her tenure as Mayor and the other jobs she’d held, about how she’d given her mother Sophie a comfortable living in her old age.
At the end, Anne took the tape out of the player and put it back in the box. “All of this is yours if you want it,” she said. “These are all duplicates that were made for you.”
When she left with the box, she didn’t feel exactly happy, but some of her sorrow had been laid to rest. She went back to her new house with it, and Julien helped her sort and catalog all of the photographs, and frame a few of the more important ones.
She visited Anne and Elizabeth from time to time after that, to pay her respects to Marie’s grave, and later also to Anne’s, when the passage of time came for her as well. She attended Elizabeth’s wedding, and Elizabeth also attended hers, when she finally married Julien. It was not the same as it would have been with Marie, but it was something at least, some remnant of their old friendship.
She did her part to keep Marie alive, telling stories of her to her and Julien’s daughters, tales that would have been beyond living memory in any other household, but which were clear recollections for her.
As she grew older, she started to wonder if she would see Marie again in death, if they would be able to reunite finally in heaven. It had been so long since she had seen Marie that she had only a faint hope, but she clung to it even as her own family grew and her own legacy trailed behind her. Whatever else happened, she would always retain that hope.
Gesso Notes
I had made Tessa and her family into townies at the beginning of this neighborhood, and never originally intended to play them. What happened here with the time travel was actually the following:
It's common for people to make a Greek House on campus for their sims and then reuse it for future generations. However, when you move the last sim out of the Greek House, it is automatically dissolved, so typically people move in someone after the last person leaves and then just don't play them at all until the next generation goes to college.
The first generation, I had no Greek House, since the only sim going to college was Marie, but when Marie's children went, I did actually create one. And then, to hold the Greek House for the next generation, I figured I'd move in Tessa, who was still a townie and therefore hadn't aged, since Tessa was technically Marie's children's aunt. She then sat unplayed in the Greek House until their children went to college. Then, after I finished playing her college career, I decided I wanted to add her to my neighborhood permanently. So that's how she wound up being a little older than Elizabeth. After Elizabeth's generation, I had no more need to hold the Greek House like this, because at that point the generations started to overlap each other and the first of the next one started college before the last of the current one finished.
Werewolves: Sims can become werewolves if they get bitten by a special wolf NPC. In the early stages of this neighborhood I had a number of them, but after a while I got a little bored of them because they basically don't need to sleep and are awake at all hours of the day, which means they can accomplish way more than a normal sim can.
Sim Notes
Tessa Ramirez is actually a premade sim although she starts the game as a child, and basically nothing about her on that page is relevant to this story, so she is kind of an AU version here. In this neighborhood, her father had an affair with my neighborhood founder, and his child wound up becoming the ancestor of almost all of the other sims in the neighborhood. This is Tessa's adult portrait:
Sophie Bren was my neighborhood founder. I don't have a picture of her as an adult anymore, but this is her as an elder:
Marie Bren was the daughter of Sophie and Tessa's dad, and the ancestor of most of my sims who aren't Tessa's descendants. This was her elder portrait (the pose is because she's a werewolf):
Sophie and Marie did not actually have the purple eyes described here - the purple eyes are actually just a replacement I have for one of the blues, since I thought the game did not need two different blue eye colors. Sophie actually had grey eyes, and Marie had brown, the same color as Tessa and her father, and the purple eyes came from Marie's husband. But the purple eyes have basically completely taken over my hood at this point, so I figured I'd put them onto these older sims, too.
Julien Cooke Ramirez is actually a premade sim as well, although he didn't stay a cook and eventually went into journalism. I did not really change his appearance in my game. Tessa and Julien are the parents of Victoria and Bethany from earlier stories.
Anne Bren was a born in game sim, the daughter of Marie and her husband Kevin. This was her adult portrait (she was also a werewolf):
Anne had only two siblings in my game: Margaret, who was the grandmother that Grant was originally named after, and Brian, who married premade sorority girl Brittany Upsnott and founded the Upsnott family. The four sibling here is meant to be a fictional person who is Stephen's grandparent in the story, since I moved him in the family tree.
Elizabeth Bren was a born in game sim, the daughter of Anne and some random townie who I can't remember anymore. (Anne never had any long-term partner, and all of her children are the children of random townies.) This was her adult portrait:
Her twin brother was Stephen's dad in my game. Of her other (half) siblings, one is Robert's mom (who is actually still alive in my game, unlike the rest of these guys) and one was Robert's uncle who ran the gay bar while Michael and Robert were in college, who died just recently. She also has a much younger sibling who probably will not show up in these stories at all. Elizabeth herself is the mother of Matilda, who runs LuLu Lounge and appeared in the First Kiss story (and will appear in some future stories as well).
Story: Tales From the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: The Earlier Generation
Colors: Bittersweet #6: Old Photographs, Color of the Day May 25, 2026: Poignant
Styles and Supplies: Gesso, Seed Beads, Canvas, Novelty Bead (this image, given here), Tempera ("Death represents transformation, endings and new beginnings. When the Death card shows up it tells you that things will not be the same again. A transformation is taking place, you are growing and changing with the circumstances you find yourself in. Nothing stays the same forever, and the Death card represents the necessary death of something old to make way for something new.")
Word Count: 2,042
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Tessa Ramirez, Marie Bren, Sophie Bren, Elizabeth Bren, Anne Bren
Summary: Tessa had never had a sister before.
Notes: This is a story about an older generation of sims in my neighborhood, and everyone who appears here is dead of old age in the current game. See the sim notes for how they are related to my current characters. I'm still not entirely happy with the ending, blargh.
Tessa would always remember the day she met Marie. Her parents had argued for weeks; about what, she hadn’t really understood at the time. Eventually, her father had seemed to win the argument, her mother conceding defeat and leaving to fume somewhere in private, leaving Tessa to her father.
Her father had taken her in his car to another house, a much smaller and less-well-kept house, with no car parked in front of it. He’d knocked on the door, and woman answered, pale-skinned and red-headed with deep purple eyes that stuck in Tessa’s memory.
“Sophie,” he’d said.
She’d nodded, guardedly, like she knew him well enough not to trust him. Behind her legs, a girl peered at Tessa as she stood next to her father — black hair and dusky skin like her father’s, but purple eyes like Sophie’s.
“This is Tessa,” her father had said.
“Ahh,” said Sophie, and looked down at the other child. “This is Marie.”
Tessa had never had a sister before. Papa had wanted Marie to be part of the family, too. He had invited her over to play games with Tessa, and Tessa had showed her all of her favorite places and her favorite toys. But Mama still wouldn’t have it, and would throw icy glares in Marie’s direction when she was there, and Marie seemed overwhelmed by all of Tessa’s toys, anyway. So eventually, Marie stopped coming to Tessa’s house, and Tessa went to hers, instead.
It was a smaller house, with fewer rooms, and fewer toys, and a smaller yard, but that just meant they spent more time using their imaginations. One day, Marie would climb the tree in the yard and be a glorious queen, and Tessa would be a loyal councilor, bringing her things from the house and yard as she pleased; then they switched, for a time. On another day, they were two wolves in a pack, howling at the moon and digging holes in the ground. As the years went on, they ceased these games and were content to sit together under the tree, eating fruits from its branches and talking about their friends and classes.
One day, they found a real wolf, passing through the woods behind Marie’s house, and Marie tried to pet it, but it only bit her and ran away. That evening, Marie somehow transformed into one of its cousins; after the initial shock had worn off, they had a great deal of fun chasing each other through the woods, or with Tessa riding a sled dragged by Marie’s powerful jaws. The next day, Marie had returned to normal, but the transformation took place again, every day at sunset.
When it came time to go to college, there were many options for Tessa; far away places with haughty reputations that promised her the world. But when she learned that Sophie could only afford to send Marie to the local Sim State University, she told her parents she wanted to go there instead. She couldn’t imagine going off to a strange new place without Marie.
They arranged to share a dorm in a crowded building, and made new friends. When students from a rival school showed up to vandalize the building, Marie used the strength and ferocity she’d gained from her time as a wolf to set them straight and drive them off. At the same time, she was becoming a keen scientist and studying physics and the laws of nature; Tessa instead pursued theater.
One day, Tessa was walking back to the dorm from a late-night theater production, and saw a strange green light. As she went toward it, she saw it was coming from the side of the physics building, forming a shifting network of points and lines. The patterns seemed to change as she moved back and forth between them; on her third time past, the light flashed brilliantly. For one moment, her entire field of vision was suffused with bright green light, and in the next, she knew no more.
Some time later, Tessa picked herself up off the ground in front of the physics building. It was full daylight now, and also significantly warmer, almost as if it was no longer winter. She looked back at the wall, but the strange green patterns seemed to have disappeared.
She returned to her dorm, only to find it occupied by two other girls, whom she had never seen before. In the argument that ensued, the housing director was eventually summoned.
“You said your name is Tessa?” he asked. “Tessa Ramirez?”
“Yes,” said Tessa, dumbfounded.
“Come with me,” he said.
“It has been a long time since you enrolled here and were assigned that room,” he explained, back in his office. “Decades. Generations. You were one of the victims of a physics experiment gone wrong, all those years ago. All of the others were found, sent forward to less remote futures. You were the last one to be accounted for.”
She was told that her parents had paid the rest of her tuition already, and that she was free to continue her studies. Overwhelmed by the amount of time that had seemingly passed, she nevertheless did so, attending classes with students she had never met taught by professors she had never known. Wherever she went, the news about how she had come to be there followed her, and she only made one real friend — a boy named Julien, who invited her to his cramped house on campus, and used the oven there to make delicious cakes and pies of all kinds. He asked her many questions about what things had been like before her transportation, but eerily, nothing really seemed to have changed. It was all still the same culture, the same food, the same language, the same politics, just with a brand new set of faces.
Graduation came, but she did not truly identify with the year number that was printed on her certificate. It still seemed too large, too impossible, too futuristic. But somehow, it was hers.
As expected, she found that the house she had lived in with her parents had long since been sold to someone else, and was no longer her home. She discovered that her parents had left her a lot of money in an account they had opened long ago, and she was able to buy a new house, which she invited Julien to live in with her. Only after settling in did she cautiously approach the small house where she had spent her days with Marie.
The house was much bigger now, and there were now two cars parked in front of it. Fearful that it might have been sold to a stranger as well, she knocked on the door.
Her knock was answered by a young woman around her own age, with black hair and deep purple eyes. Unable to think of what to say, Tessa simply asked, “Is Marie Bren here?”
“Marie was my grandmother,” the woman said. “She is here, in a manner of speaking; her gravestone decorates the yard, along with her husband’s. My name is Elizabeth.”
“Oh,” said Tessa. With how many years had passed, she hadn’t really had any hope that Marie might still be alive, but hearing that she was truly dead made it sound that much more final.
“Are you by any chance Tessa Ramirez?” asked Elizabeth.
“I am,” said Tessa.
Elizabeth smiled. “We worried that you might never return. Please come inside.” She left the doorway and called off into the house, “Mama! Tessa is here!”
Elizabeth led Tessa into a living room that was much nicer than she had ever seen in this house before, and a few minutes later, an elderly woman with the same purple eyes whose hair still showed the fading remnants of Sophie’s red color appeared at another doorway. She had the same lean predatory stance that Marie had always had after her misadventure with the wolf, and Tessa had no doubt that she must also become a russet wolf with the setting of the sun.
“I’m very glad I lived to meet you in person,” the old woman said. “I was starting to think I might not make it. I am Anne; Marie was my mother. She left some things for you, for when you returned.”
Anne disappeared again, and came back with a large box. The box was full of photographs; Marie at her wedding, getting married to a blond boy that Tessa had known when they were in college together; family photographs of the two of them with four young children; Marie in a smart-looking suit, addressing a crowd from the Mayor’s podium in City Hall; Anne and her siblings as teenagers and young adults; pictures of Marie’s children surrounded by their own children.
“She was the Mayor?” asked Tessa.
“For a few years, at least,” said Anne. “But it was lots of meetings, appointment, press releases. And they all had to be over by sunset.” She pulled a VHS tape from the bottom of the box. “There’s this, too.”
They played the tape on the living room television set. In the video, a much younger Anne pulled back from the frame, revealing Marie seated on the couch that Tessa now sat on. She was older, and more wrinkled, and the color had started to fade from her hair. In the video, Anne sat back on the floor, and briefly directed her gaze to where a pair of toddlers with black hair and purple eyes, one girl, and one boy, fought over some blocks together. In front of the television, Elizabeth made a face at them.
“Tessa,” said Marie in the video, “I have to hope that one day you will see this. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t mourn that my sister and I could not be there for each other during the best parts of our lives. That so much time has passed since I last saw you; that I may die without ever seeing you again. But I will not live forever, and the university will not give me an estimate on when they think you might reappear. So I am recording this for Anne to give to you, in case I do not live to see that day.”
Tessa blinked tears out of her eyes, and accepted a box of tissues from Elizabeth. She sat there and watched the video as Marie told her about her life, about her husband and children and grandchildren, about her tenure as Mayor and the other jobs she’d held, about how she’d given her mother Sophie a comfortable living in her old age.
At the end, Anne took the tape out of the player and put it back in the box. “All of this is yours if you want it,” she said. “These are all duplicates that were made for you.”
When she left with the box, she didn’t feel exactly happy, but some of her sorrow had been laid to rest. She went back to her new house with it, and Julien helped her sort and catalog all of the photographs, and frame a few of the more important ones.
She visited Anne and Elizabeth from time to time after that, to pay her respects to Marie’s grave, and later also to Anne’s, when the passage of time came for her as well. She attended Elizabeth’s wedding, and Elizabeth also attended hers, when she finally married Julien. It was not the same as it would have been with Marie, but it was something at least, some remnant of their old friendship.
She did her part to keep Marie alive, telling stories of her to her and Julien’s daughters, tales that would have been beyond living memory in any other household, but which were clear recollections for her.
As she grew older, she started to wonder if she would see Marie again in death, if they would be able to reunite finally in heaven. It had been so long since she had seen Marie that she had only a faint hope, but she clung to it even as her own family grew and her own legacy trailed behind her. Whatever else happened, she would always retain that hope.
Gesso Notes
I had made Tessa and her family into townies at the beginning of this neighborhood, and never originally intended to play them. What happened here with the time travel was actually the following:
It's common for people to make a Greek House on campus for their sims and then reuse it for future generations. However, when you move the last sim out of the Greek House, it is automatically dissolved, so typically people move in someone after the last person leaves and then just don't play them at all until the next generation goes to college.
The first generation, I had no Greek House, since the only sim going to college was Marie, but when Marie's children went, I did actually create one. And then, to hold the Greek House for the next generation, I figured I'd move in Tessa, who was still a townie and therefore hadn't aged, since Tessa was technically Marie's children's aunt. She then sat unplayed in the Greek House until their children went to college. Then, after I finished playing her college career, I decided I wanted to add her to my neighborhood permanently. So that's how she wound up being a little older than Elizabeth. After Elizabeth's generation, I had no more need to hold the Greek House like this, because at that point the generations started to overlap each other and the first of the next one started college before the last of the current one finished.
Werewolves: Sims can become werewolves if they get bitten by a special wolf NPC. In the early stages of this neighborhood I had a number of them, but after a while I got a little bored of them because they basically don't need to sleep and are awake at all hours of the day, which means they can accomplish way more than a normal sim can.
Sim Notes
Tessa Ramirez is actually a premade sim although she starts the game as a child, and basically nothing about her on that page is relevant to this story, so she is kind of an AU version here. In this neighborhood, her father had an affair with my neighborhood founder, and his child wound up becoming the ancestor of almost all of the other sims in the neighborhood. This is Tessa's adult portrait:
Sophie Bren was my neighborhood founder. I don't have a picture of her as an adult anymore, but this is her as an elder:
Marie Bren was the daughter of Sophie and Tessa's dad, and the ancestor of most of my sims who aren't Tessa's descendants. This was her elder portrait (the pose is because she's a werewolf):
Sophie and Marie did not actually have the purple eyes described here - the purple eyes are actually just a replacement I have for one of the blues, since I thought the game did not need two different blue eye colors. Sophie actually had grey eyes, and Marie had brown, the same color as Tessa and her father, and the purple eyes came from Marie's husband. But the purple eyes have basically completely taken over my hood at this point, so I figured I'd put them onto these older sims, too.
Julien Cooke Ramirez is actually a premade sim as well, although he didn't stay a cook and eventually went into journalism. I did not really change his appearance in my game. Tessa and Julien are the parents of Victoria and Bethany from earlier stories.
Anne Bren was a born in game sim, the daughter of Marie and her husband Kevin. This was her adult portrait (she was also a werewolf):
Anne had only two siblings in my game: Margaret, who was the grandmother that Grant was originally named after, and Brian, who married premade sorority girl Brittany Upsnott and founded the Upsnott family. The four sibling here is meant to be a fictional person who is Stephen's grandparent in the story, since I moved him in the family tree.
Elizabeth Bren was a born in game sim, the daughter of Anne and some random townie who I can't remember anymore. (Anne never had any long-term partner, and all of her children are the children of random townies.) This was her adult portrait:
Her twin brother was Stephen's dad in my game. Of her other (half) siblings, one is Robert's mom (who is actually still alive in my game, unlike the rest of these guys) and one was Robert's uncle who ran the gay bar while Michael and Robert were in college, who died just recently. She also has a much younger sibling who probably will not show up in these stories at all. Elizabeth herself is the mother of Matilda, who runs LuLu Lounge and appeared in the First Kiss story (and will appear in some future stories as well).