Chapter 62: Star-Crossed

 Nol becomes a teenager.

 So does Hawk.

 And Kimberly.

Nol still spends most of her time reading.

...Or... writing.

An idealistic hopeless romantic, she hopes to live a fantasy fairy tale life herself, someday.

Meanwhile, Hawk has developed a trait that makes him eat rocks for attention.

Holly finds it amusing, but Chad is horrified.

 Kimberly has developed symptoms of genius, as her mother hoped.

Paz measures her youngest daughter's brain activity with a cell phone. Talk about annoying!

After a charisma class, Kimberly begins flirting with Quincy Newbie, right in front of a crowd.

Quincy responds positively, and they go to the Archer place to talk some more. Quincy and Kimberly have several traits in common - possibly enough to make up for Quincy being significantly older than Kimberly.

Shifting focus to Paz, this week's big deal is with one of the Newbie cousins. The fights with Alison have made Paz rather unpopular around town.

Here, Alison's cousin Autumn insinuates that Holly's mother is probably Paz.

None of the old ladies move to stop the bar brawl. Not even Courtney the cop.

Paz never seems to win these brawl things.

And when Paz gets home, she finds her daughter talking about art with Alison's son.

Paz politely waits for Quincy to leave before shouting at Kimberly. It doesn't help matters that Quincy stays the night, and Paz is dressed for work the next morning before she tells the boy to get lost.

"And no one gave you permission to wear your grandmother's bracelets!"

Structured life is really getting Kimberly down. And Hawk wonders if he really has to eat this...

Hawk doesn't like meat very much. He doesn't like animals. Why would he want to eat them? So much fat. Gross.

Oh, wait. That green stuff on the toilet isn't just part of the room's theme...

It's an important day in Holly's life.

The day he discovers his father wasn't lying about the time machine, all these years.

"Okay. Where did you get that, Hol? Seriously."

He's definitely got his father's nose.

Perhaps City Hall should be notified of what's swimming in the river...

MUAHAAHAHAHAAAA not science. Just pissing off the neighbors. VRRRRMMM.

Hawk begins dating Alice. They both have orange hair and orange eyes, and orange is Hawk's favorite color.

The orange eyes probably mean they're related in some way, but if Alice doesn't care, Hawk doesn't care.

Unfortunately Hawk's first kiss is ruined by the appearance of Melody's ghost, which makes Alice faint.

Better luck tomorrow, Hawk.

Nol dates Pablo Wicks-Cantina, a sensitive and somewhat awkward boy.

She shows him around the house, hoping he is impressed by the money tree and eggplants. Sure enough, he reveals his sign. Aquarius. But Nol just says signs are silly; what she cares about is his personality.

Hawk's reaction to Pablo:

Despite her rather disagreeable family, Pablo isn't afraid of taking Nol home to meet his parents. His mother, Shayna, immediately recognizes Riverview's only author, and praises the teenager's five non-fiction books. Nol doesn't meet Dante Cantina, Pablo's father. Dante is a vampire on the prowl at this hour.

Holly ages up. Hawk wishes these loud celebrations were not in the middle of the night.

Holly is a man. Now he can move in with Rudy across the street.

Zephram was not the best or sanest father, but he loved his son dearly and Holly appreciates that.

Zephram is very sad to see Holly move out of the house. But he doesn't protest.

One kid autonomously skippin' school.

Two kids autonomously skippin' school. Right next to the school.

One day Pablo smiles at Nol, and she realizes he has fangs.

Pablo notices her discomfort! And launches into a nervous, stuttering explanation.

"I'm not a vampire," he assures her. "My father turned my mother, and me and my sister were born vampires, but my mother and I became human when I was still small. My father thinks we were poisoned by political enemies... um, he's really neurotic. I think he's tried to distance himself from me, since I'm normal. We've never had a close relationship. Um. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get into all that. Look, they're just teeth. I know they're horrible. My eyes don't glow though, and-"

Nol places two fingers over his mouth to shush him. "I like you as you are," she says.

"My next non-fiction book will be a study on vampires," Nol explains.

Hawk stares boredly at his peanut butter & jelly sandwich. "And I care why?"

Hawk finally gets his kiss with Alice.

And Kimberly gets her first kiss from Taylor Sargeant. Quincy Newbie was handsome, but he's already an adult and wasn't willing to wait for her.

This doesn't sit well with Paz. Taylor was raised by that awful Dalma woman, so "obviously" he's a bad person.

Talk to the hand, Mom! Kimberly will date who she wants!

To make a bad day worse, Zephram cooked three batches of Dim Sum and left them on the counter to rot while he inspected the silver bars in the basement for termites. There's nothing quite like the stench of rotting Dim Sum.

Cheering up with science.

Paz releases fish into the backyard pond.

Kimberly can't get away from science, even if she surrounds herself with black cat statues and masks of stupefying superstition.

Nol and Hawk are free to romance around the house, while Kimberly is forced to hang out with her boyfriend away from the eyes of their parents. So unfair!

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Etc.: The fruit-in-inventory trick worked, and Zephram is no longer making lime cobblers. Hooray!

No one has found the sculpting gnome with the miner. Boo!

Holly might have been my pick for heir, if I didn't feel obligated to choose one of Paz's kids because Paz was given the status of heir. So the roll for which kid became heir didn't include Holly.

Alice is the daughter of one of the Sargeants (who are descendants of Patricia McDermott and the Bobby(?) Sargeant I imported from Twinbrook) and Tana Archer-Forsythe, Kory's half-sister through their father Cody. Cody was the son of Zoya, who was daughter of  Fiona, who was Leona (generation 2)'s twin sister. Of course Kory's son, Chad, is Hawk's father. Alice's hair color is a bit off the game-given orange hair because of Martin's stylist career. When people wanted new hair colors, he only gave them little red streaks or something, or slightly darkened or lightened their natural hair color. Some people think it's totally dumb that changing a sim's hair color (dying it, you know) alters them genetically... but I appreciate the extra control.

Though it could have been solved with some extra programming; a check-box for "this hair color was dyed - use this other color here for genetic determination". Just a thought.

Nol and Kimberly managed to snag boyfriends who were not at all related to them. Yay!

Quincy was a far more distant relation than Alice. The last relatives he shares with the triplets would be Randy & Randi, rather than Cody & two different women. Quincy aged up too quickly to bother with, though.

(Quincy>Julian>Josephine>Halen>Fiona>Randies) vs (Kim>Paz>Paprika>Martin>Sacha>Leona>Randies). At this point in real life, it would be extremely unlikely for Kimberly and Quincy to know about their blood relationship. In real life, people move away from their home towns and lose contact. Because A) they hate everyone in their home town, or B) they have to leave because of lack of economic opportunity. The Sims universe removes B from the equation entirely. Of course there is C.) "I wanna see the world!!!!", but the vast majority of human beings are creatures of laziness and habit, bogged down with too many other concerns. Or maybe we wouldn't be, if zipping off to China were as simple as it is in the Sims3? ...Anyway, Quincy and Kimberly's ancestors all lived in the same small town, maximizing chances that they would have remained socially connected. On top of that, the Sims3 is a universe in which technology never advances. Randy & Randi could have taken color photos, documenting their entire lives. Those silly family tree websites might actually see RESULTS in such a universe. What would this do to the social network? What would be the acceptable thing to do, if you shared traceable ancestry with everyone in a 200 mile radius? Would anyone care?

I don't know.

Pablo may look kind of like he's related to Dax's family, but the evil eyes come from the Wicks line. I randomly gave a consignment store vanilla (Charlene Wicks) evil eyes and strange hair, and I am regretting it because Pablo looks terrible and his mother Shayna (Charlene's granddaughter) looks even worse. Unfortunately Taylor's traits make him a ridiculously unsuitable candidate for Nol's husband, so I let Kimberly have him.

Zephram wants to be a grandparent.