4

Fairisle

Even the most normal family has drama with 3 17-year-old daughters under 1 roof

- Content warning: Pregnancy mention

Tract-O-Rama
When the tract housing boom began in the late 1970s, it was originally intended to get the average apartment renter out of the city centre and into the suburbs. However, it has since been co-opted by middle managers and small-time executives looking for status symbols and only finding what was once reasonably-priced real estate.

Bedrooms: 4 (expandable to 5)
Bathrooms: 3
Floors: 2
Basement? Yes
House type: Tract house
Max. occupancy: 10 theoretical, 5 practical
Originally built to accommodate 5 male roommates, I couldn't make their story work. I'd kept intending to take real-estate photos and upload this lot to ModTheSims, but it always seemed to get pre-empted by something and ultimately never got there. It was a pretty simple renovation to get it working for a family unit instead. One of the bedrooms was in the basement originally, but once I decided to move teen girls in here, I decided to change that space into a study.

The Fairisle family moved to Newcrest in order to be nearer to Robert's new job as network-security consultant. The triplets, now juniors at HS-118, have their sights set on college. Belinda wants to make the track team, Tina is working on a graphic novel, and Cyndi discovered a passion for chess that she never had for cheerleading. Melissa, meanwhile is content with her life, but now nearing menopause, that little voice that's been saying "have another baby" for 15 years has gotten much louder lately.

Robert
An ordinary man with an ordinary job, Robert lives by three simple rules: do your best, save time for having fun, and always stick by your family.
Astrological sign: Aries
Lifestage: Adult (aged 45)
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Melissa
Melissa used to be an exterminator, crawling about in crawlspaces, clambering about in attics, spraying roaches, spiders, bedbugs, and such. By sheer exposure, there's no creepy crawly that will move her now, even though she hung up her spray nozzle for good when she got too pregnant to fit into her jumpsuit anymore.
Astrological sign: Taurus
Lifestage: Adult (aged 41)
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Belinda
The relative oldest of the triplets, Belinda can't be contained indoors some days. She loves the smell of grass on a warm afternoon and hopes she can find some way to stay outside as much as possible in whatever career she ends up in.
Astrological sign: Libra
Lifestage: Teenager (aged 17)
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Tina
The relative middle-child of the triplets, Tina's childhood obsession with Pixelcrate got her into writing videogame music. As for a career, though? She's definitely leaning towards working in an office.
Astrological sign: Libra
Lifestage: Teenager (aged 17)
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Cyndi
The relative youngest of the triplets, Cyndi is the only member of HS-118's cheer team to ever quit the squad. Even though her looks made her popular, she prefers playing speed-chess. Her chess teammates are much more considerate than her cheer squad anyway.
Astrological sign: Libra
Lifestage: Teenager (aged 17)
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After living in Sunshine Acres for 12 years, Robert's employer, PisaPy Technologies, was purchased in a hostile takeover by Airstream Telecommunications and his entire department was downsized when the Sunshine Acres office shuttered. Fortunately, Robert's work on network security using fractal algorithms was widely admired in the tech sector and he was able to pivot to network security consultant for Braytek Biosciences. While necessitating a move to Newcrest, the family still fell within the coverage area of HS-118, which is where the triplets were headed next semester anyway. This allowed them to move without disrupting their daughters' lives or separating them from their friends, which everyone appreciated. They moved into a tract house outside Newcrest's business district, from where Robert's office building is visible across the lake.

Their choice of where to live was silently influenced by Melissa. Even though she managed to convince Robert that the basement bedroom would make a keen study, she secretly wanted to use it as an alternative bedroom for Cyndi so the 2nd bedroom on the ground floor could be repurposed into a nursery. While she hadn't made any concrete plans to have another baby, she would get the urge every so often. While she had managed to wrestle that urge into submission by looking at the family picture albums and volunteering to help at school functions, it came back with a vengeance when she celebrated her 40th birthday. When the girls went out with their friends to see Perpetual Stew for the Weary Traveller that night, she and Robert had unprotected sex, hoping that would do it, despite knowing she wasn't ovulating that week. Even though Melissa hasn't ever mentioned it, Robert has long suspected she wanted more kids. However, considering she got triplets on her very first pregnancy, he's been somewhat reluctant to try again. What if they strike it lucky a 2nd time and they end up with 3 more kids? What if they're boys this time? What if— well, suffice it to say, Robert doesn't think either of them could take 3 more kids. Maybe 1, but only 1.

Belinda, a sporty scamp since childhood, tried out for the school soccer team every year since sophomore year and finally got in. She loves playing almost as much as spending time at Riverchase Park, where she goes to study; occasionally, she and Tina will LARP Monsters & Mythos there, though this is becoming less frequent as they get older. Still, soccer takes up more of her time than she ever imagined, so there's not much time to spare for the park. The travelling, alone, is enough to make Belinda quit the team, but she forgets all about that when she's actually out on the pitch. She doesn't want to be a professional athlete, so she's trying to find a way of making "outside" into a career. Maybe for senior year, she'll go out for the track team instead? You know, change it up a little. She's gotten closer to the computer as a teenager than she ever was as a kid, and is learning how to write HTML. Her website is still mostly template-powered at the moment, but she's written a few test pages with basic HTML and limited CSS for her own use offline. What's her website about? Mostly her M&M characters, but it has a section on the HS-118 soccer team as well, and some pictures she took of Riverchase Park.

In 6th grade, Tina picked up some skill on the piano after Aunt Meg died and left everything to dad, including her Ohayo EPS-500. Tina was the only one who ever attempted to play the piano when they used to visit Aunt Meg at Christmas; Cyndi liked to play the lowest and highest notes, but Tina discovered how to play the C-Major scale, then on subsequent visits would play simplistic and often discordant passages. With the piano now in dad's possession, she graduated to chords and basic progressions. At her present skill level, she improvises piano music in the style of Pixelcrate's Free Craft mode and has discovered how to record her performances into the computer, where she puts the songs into Pixelcrate's userdata folder so they will play during the game itself. While Tina is aware that she could, theoretically, do this for a living— ie. write videogame music— she has never considered music as anything more than a hobby.

After Cyndi got to middle school, she replaced making picture books in SquirrelBrush with making slideshows in Hyperslide. A veritable Hyperslide wunderkind, she always got an A+ on any assignment where Hyperslide was involved. Other kids seemed to hate using it, complaining it was too technical, but Cyndi understood it all and could finish a high-quality presentation in under an hour (usually the 25 minutes alotted for class, then 10 more minutes editing after lunch and 15 more during study hall). While this fulfilled her desire to be creative visually, she carried on writing text, graduating from picture books to young-adult novellas where the drama was cranked up to 11. Her magnum opus was a story called Take My Hand, read at least 15.000 times on Quotever, which took her from sophomore to junior year to complete. However, her enjoyment of Hyperslide secured her a spot in the school A/V club, where she used Powerstudio and Filmake to create presentations for the school's various clubs and volunteer societies.

Last year, Cyndi tried out for the varsity cheer squad and was accepted, only because the cheer captain's first choice, Keely Kottrell, pulled out at the last minute. She had observed at the time how generic the auditioning group felt; being a room full of conventionally-attractive girls. At first, she felt flattered to be thought of as a cute girl, but it soon became apparent that the cheer squad was a toxic environment, full of manufactured drama. Moreover, the squad captain, Ms. Atkins, was a former Bridgeport Boundette who only got hired as a PE teacher because Vice-Principal Kowalski wanted her as his mistress. She was a demanding taskmaster for whom certain girls couldn't do anything right, and Cyndi was one of them. She stayed in the squad for the whole year for the prestige, but finally broke down after homecoming and admitted to Tina that she'd made a terrible mistake joining the squad. Even though the varsity football season was over, Ms. Atkins still insisted they meet for practise, despite having nowhere to go; Cyndi convinced her mum to intercede on her behalf, but the vice-principal was giving Ms. Atkins a wide latitude, presumably to get her to like him. On the encouragement of her sisters, Cyndi quit the squad. Having nothing else to do during study hall now, she started playing chess with her A/V club friend, Jonas. After a few days, he invited her to come to chess club; she was hesitant at first, thinking about a room full of Japanese culture enthusiasts with pocket protectors and lanyards, but she decided to try it out anyway. To her surprise, the boys in the club were all genuine and courteous— a refreshing change from the cheer squad. While some of their games got a bit heated, particularly whenever Cody gets trapped by a Scholar's Mate, Cyndi has enjoyed being in the club... which, is really less of a formal club or squad than just a gathering of chess nerds. Honestly, she much prefers being a chess nerd than a cheerleader. Being 1 of 2 girls in the group; the other being Gina Fletcher; she occasionally fields questions about how to approach girls and is sometimes used as a sounding-board for chess-related pickup lines, which always make her laugh. Some of the ways her teammates come up with to merge chess and romance are really clever. While all the boys are kind and considerate to her, never making her feel exposed or targeted despite being an ex-cheerleader, she is oddly finding herself drawn to Gina. She's quiet, soft-spoken, obsessed with trashy adult romance novels, and could beat a grandmaster without even putting down her iced coffee.

As far as career prospects, Belinda is considering either becoming a park ranger or buying a ride-on lawnmower and starting a landscaping business. Not that she knows much about landscaping, but she figures that she would go into business with someone who understands it better. Of course, on a more personal level, she knows that probably neither of these options will pan out. She's recently been experimenting with putting various films and covers over her smartphone camera lens and has been getting fairly good results posting on Stixy, so she can always fall back on photography.

Cyndi wants to become a veterinarian. The reason for this can be traced to an incident in freshman year where she encountered an injured dog outside the library. The way she tells it, the dog limped up to her and looked at her, hoping she could do something to ease its pain. Not knowing what to do, she told the librarian, who called Animal Control; the control officer had a policeman with him, and the policeman simply shot the dog with his sidearm. Apart from sowing a deep distrust of both the police and Animal Control, Cyndi felt she stood by and did nothing to help that poor little dog and, if she had known what to do, it would still be alive today. The amount of university education required to actually become a veterinary doctor is a bit daunting, but she's definitely leaning in that direction.

For whatever reason, Tina is enamoured by offices. She accompanied her dad to work one day in elementary school and loved every minute of it. While Robert was working, he let Tina use the vacant cubicle across the pathway to play on the internet and do homework. She pretended to be an employee, writing nonsense code into Notepad, sent a lot of "status report" emails to their family address, and even made small-talk with a couple of people in the breakroom. One of these people happened to be the company's regional manager, whom she consistently referred to as "Boss". While Robert was embarrassed at first, he could see how much Tina was enjoying the office atmosphere and gave her an "important assignment": using the paper shredder in the mail server room, shred all of the documents in his paper-recycling bin. He selected this venue because the 2 offices near it were vacant, so she could shred as little as 1 leaf at a time and no one would complain about the noise. These days, while Tina is more intent upon being a radio announcer, she would still jump at the chance to work in an office, even as just a data-entry clerk.

As for Robert and Melissa; Robert is still an avid computer guy, but he is becoming disillusioned by all the steps backwards in personal privacy that the tech sector has encouraged people to make over the past 20 years. For the past year, he has been writing a book on the subject of privacy in an interconnected world and is intent upon taking it on the lecture circuit when it's finished. When the girls turned 10, Melissa reasoned that they were old enough to clean their own rooms and do their own washing. Since Robert did most of the family's cooking, Melissa decided she no longer needed to play the part of stay-at-home mum. Not wanting to go back into pest control, she took a call-centre job, which lasted for 2 years. When the family moved to Newcrest, the thought of being a telephone representative was perfectly abhorrent, so she became a file clerk with the school district, since it was the most next most accessible job if she and Robert decided to have another baby. As for her career? Melissa sees being a mother as her career. It's a bit of a clicé, but considering she had uncertain career aspirations before she got married, and Robert makes enough at his own career to support their family on his own, she decided "why not?"

The Fairisle family is the only one I intend to bring over from Sunshine Acres. In the planning stages, I'd intended to set the story far enough into the future for Jenny Meecha and Tina Fairisle to be 22 years old and sharing a rental house in either Newcrest or Willow Creek. However, as I was making Robert and Melissa (so I could Play With Genetics and get Tina a more accurate look), I decided, "Well, let's go ahead and make the whole family." As I carried on making them, I realised I could do more with the Fairisle Sisters in high school than my original idea of Jenny and Tina living together.

I used to have another version of this family where Cyndi was pregnant... or, she looked pregnant, anyway. Despite the more realistic body morph mods I have installed, TS4 isn't great about understanding realistic fat arrangement, so fat bellies on particular body frames just end up making sims look pregnant. When the game was creating Cyndi, it gave her a fat belly on a thin frame, so I thought "you know what, let's develop this". So, I monkeyed around with her body a bit more to make her look realistically pregnant (it's not just the distended abdomen, you know; hips get wider, thighs and calves get thicker, the back arches forward, and boobs get bigger), and she did very much look pregnant at the end of it. I even made a whole page of lore about how Cyndi got there in the first place and all that stuff, but I decided ultimately that this isn't the time for that. This is only my first household in this new story, so let's not exhaust potential stories before we're ready for them. Someone in this neighbourhood is going to be a teen mum, but it's not Cyndi Fairisle.

Cyndi's former cheer captain, Ms. Atkins, I figure is the daughter of Elspeth Cook and Jett Atkins from The Sims 3 Late Night. Both their families are dysfunctional, with Jett coming from a broken home, so I transferred the "teen mum" angle to Elspeth instead. Their daughter, probably named Rose (considering how Jett's grandmother and aunt are named Hyacinth and Violet), returned to Bridgeport and became a cheerleader for the city's professional football team, moved to a Sunshine Acres-adjacent district on a family obligation, and got invited to coach physical education at HS-118 by the vice-principal. Going by the canon lore order (TS3-TS1-TS4-TS2), Elspeth's daughter would be 25 during TS1, making her about 35 in TS4. Rose has no actual interest in Vice-Principal Kowalski.

Incidentally, for anyone not familiar with American public school levels who might be mystified by the names I've been using: "high school" is our name for secondary school. It has 4 grade levels, colloquially referred to as freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. "Middle school" or "junior high" tends to occur between primary and secondary school, and it has 2 levels: 7th grade and 8th grade. While 6th grade is more commonly found at the end of primary school, some middle schools also contain 6th grade. Schools in very small or very large cities may group middle school in with primary school.

Now, then. Back to the point. Since the triplets are quite a bit older here than in Sunshine Acres, I've decided to give them some permanent character traits, drawing from my own life to do it. Belinda has a website. I also had a website when I was in high school, though I made mine in sophomore year as an assignment for Computer Apps II. I won't tell you what it was called, only that it was on Tripod and it looked really basic. There were no free webpage templates back then like there are now, but I want Belinda's website to look better than mine, so there's a TS4 version of sadgrl.online where she got a template from. Since she's the daughter of a software engineer, you can bet she's got access to every book ever written about computer code, so she's challenging herself to write webpages from scratch.

Tina is teaching herself how to play the piano and recording her performances into MP3 to customise a videogame with. I started playing the piano my first year of middle school and was teaching myself chord progressions by high school. My earliest piano improvs were based on The Sims Build Mode and I started using my Windows XP laptop and a patch cable to record myself in around about junior year of high school. I didn't put my performances into The Sims, though, because I didn't want to listen to myself; but I did with The Sims 2.

Cyndi is a Hyperslide wunderkind. Hyperslide is my name for Powerpoint (assembled from "HyperStudio" and "slideshow"). I loved putting together Powerpoint presentations and could work comparative wonders with animations. Of course, I couldn't convince Powerpoint to automate some of the more complex timings (such as a biology presentation where I had a tree explode, fall down, and get replaced by a house to illustrate deforestation), so I always made sure that, in a group assignment, I operated the slideshow myself. I always got an A+ on Powerpoints. That same Biology class presentation also had a spider scoot across the bottom of the slide; apparently, even the teacher didn't realise that you could bring elements in from offscreen.

For a couple revisions, Tina was going to be the future veterinarian. I even had that written here at one point. As I was writing about everyone's career prospects, I gave Cyndi my interest in office work... but it makes more sense for Tina to be the office worker and Cyndi to be the veterinarian. For a start, Cyndi has the "Dog Lover" trait, so that's a cinch. Also, I seemed to be focussing too much effort on Cyndi when my initial plan was to bring over only Tina. I like everything I wrote about Cyndi and Tina up to this point, but I decided they had to switch career aspirations. Belinda's nascent interest in photography is a reference to the alternate version of the Fairisle's story, where she uses her own money to buy an instant camera, photo album, and a dozen sheets of stickers. I do foresee her getting a DLSR camera and several kinds of lens filter and going into the photography business full-time.

I guess, the question now is, will Melissa have another baby? I haven't decided yet.