Justin and Stephanie, preface to an epic saga

This post is a recap I made, gearing up to begin this epic story, Drown, for Justin and Stephanie. You can absolutely just dive straight into chapter 1 here, but know that about a third of their story exists on the Lakeside Heights blog. Hence this recap, so you can skip reading those old stories if you’d like to begin here. 

I started writing this for NaNoWriMo 2015 and fell completely and hopelessly in love with it! Considering the outline for it, being at about 16 chapters at the moment (and not small chapters, either—full novel-sized chapters), I realized that the whole story is, in fact, about the size of a novel. Needless to say, I went back and forth and back and forth about whether it would be too big to do on the blog, much less too big for a simmed story (not even to mention that TS4 doesn’t have toddlers and there are many prominent toddler characters in this story).

This is a story I’ve wanted to share since I stopped blogging it five years ago on the LH blog. And the TS4 pictures I’ve managed to get from the game so far are just turning out so good. (Because you know, when the game cooperates and the scenes come into view, there is just something so rewarding about doing these sim-illustrated stories. So much so that I’m considering doing the book version of this as a partial graphic novel, because that’s something I’ve always wanted to do as well.) So whether it’s too big or not, the thing is that I started to blog pieces of it and now I can’t stop. So here we go.

There are essentially three parts to Drown. 1.) what happened on the old LH blog, 2.) what I’m posting here as round 2084: Drown, and 3.) the shared multi-family rotational timeline we will return to after Drown is over, which will, of course, include Justin and Stephanie and their whole crew. 

As for the first part, I don’t expect anyone to troll through an old blog full of hundreds of old stories to brush up on what happened to these guys before. So that’s why I’ve made this recap! There’s just too much to get through, and a lot of the older stories are quite sloppy, so here is a nice summary/reminder for everyone of what happened. However, I will also provide links in case anyone wishes to click over and read some of the older things (the ones that ever made it onto the blog, anyway).

Here we go!

— — — — — — — — —

2067: Stephanie and Justin meet in the second grade

— I sadly do not have ANY pictures of Justin in his childhood. I hardly have many of Stephanie, either. She was the last born Nova kid and her older siblings had so much juicy drama when Stephanie was a child, so I’m sorry to say I didn’t pay much attention to her. But I do know that she and Justin were very close little buddies, because Justin was a townie kid and especially back then I was NOT in the habit of growing up townie kids unless they made quite an impact on one of my playables. So he must have.


2075: Stephanie meets and befriends Keri

— They played soccer together in high school.


2077-78: Julian

— Stephanie dated a boy named Julian in high school. They had a moderate attraction to each other, but nothing that would keep her interest as she approached the idea of college.


2077: Justin is jealous?

— This was the first photo I ever took of Justin in LH, and one of the few I even have of him as a teenager at all, and he was harassing Tyler outside of Stephanie’s house. (While Stephanie was probably inside making out with her boyfriend.) Poor Tyler caught flack from pretty much all of Stephanie’s “boyfriends” just for existing.

But considering the story behind this picture, I think Justin was probably pretty jealous of her friends in their teen years. She became quite popular and made a lot of friends in high school, and especially when she started dating Julian, Justin must have been hard pressed to spend any devoted time with her like they used to. So Justin went from being her very best and only childhood friend, absolutely inseparable, to being just one of the bunch. That must have bothered him. He might have even been mad at her for it, not that he would ever say so.

For the record, I do not remember at all what kind of TS2 attraction level Stephanie had with Justin. I don’t seem to have ever noted it on the blog, either, but I do have this photo evidence that she used to heart fart over him. (And OMG how I miss heart farts, lol!)

2078: Senior prom, break ups and get togethers

— It was senior prom for Justin, Stephanie, and Julian, and junior prom for Keri. Keri considered taking another boy she used to mess around with, but neither of them really wanted that. So Stephanie set Keri up with Justin instead. Keri and Justin had their first date literally the exact night that Stephanie broke up with Julian.

Oh, where would the fates of the universe have led them if Keri had taken Chandler instead after all?!?


2078, fall: the crush

— This was one of the things that I didn’t think much of as it happened, but then it became more significant as other events played out. Stephanie’s first semester of college was a very confusing time. The summer after high school, something changed for Stephanie and she suddenly thought about Justin constantly and persistently, which was totally awkward for her since she JUST set him up with her friend, Keri. Oops.

Well, Stephanie was known for rushing into things without much thought, and I suppose this was yet another thing that she didn’t give much thought to before she did it. Then it was done and there didn’t seem to be any going back.

At this point in Justin’s life, I remember him thinking she was acting weird, but not being too concerned about it otherwise. He was eighteen and, well, he’d just lost his virginity to Keri. I suppose that was mostly all he could think about. But I will point out that there was this single moment, a blip, that Justin looked at Stephanie just a little bit more than friendly. And what was he thinking there? I don’t know because I never said one thing or another in the story. But I would only take a picture like that if I thought something might come of it later, even though I’d forgotten it ever happened. It did happen, for a split second.

But you know, sex with Keri! Being away from home for the first time, left to deal with his own hormones, is totally overwhelming for a young man. 

So Stephanie’s crush on Justin was so intense and consuming that to get her mind off of him, shy as she was, she sent herself on an insane dating spree to meet someone new. That landed her a few duds, much embarrassment, and finally, she met Jeremiah.


2079, fall: Stephanie meets Jeremiah

[note: For the sake of dramatic tension and book revisions, Stephanie will have met Jeremiah in the fall of 2079, rather than the winter of 2079 as was stated on the previous blog.]

All was well again. In fact, she never mentioned the crush again. It’s hard to say, knowing Stephanie and how secretive and closed off she is with her feelings, whether that meant it worked or whether she’d just stuffed it down as far as it would go and was content to leave it at that. Jeremiah was incredibly charming in the beginning. After a long bout of unrequited love of his own, he was also looking to bandage his broken heart with a new relationship.


2079: the sexing years


— Sex, sex, and more sex. Mostly in Bella’s bedroom? I don’t know why in that particular dorm, everybody wanted to do it in Bella’s bedroom, lol!

Keri came to college, and Steph and Justin started their second year. Stephanie dated Jeremiah, and Keri dated Justin, and the foursome was happy and had some fun times. If Stephanie still had any lingering qualms about passing off Justin to Keri, she didn’t make a big fuss about it. Jeremiah kept her suitably occupied, and Justin and Keri seemed totally into each other. That ship had sailed for Stephanie, she figured, so she would make the best of it with Jeremiah. Jeremiah charmed her friends as well and nestled himself into their little posse. The flush of new love and lots of sex kept everybody from thinking about anything too deeply here.


2080, spring: the OMG WTF trip to Three Lakes


— Okay, first keep in mind these guys are around 19-20 here, with the exception of Jeremiah, who was about 23, I think. I can only imagine the four of them thought one day, “Oh hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we all got married and bought houses across the street from each other, and we’d all be together forever and our kids could grow up and get married some day!?! Whee! Let’s go buy engagement rings!” Because that’s apparently about as much thought as any of them put into it.

Even when Jeremiah proposed the idea of eloping in a mountain lodge by the justice of the peace, Stephanie was like, “Sure, no biggie!” Not a single one of them had any foresight to think about whether this might be a spectacularly bad idea, or at the very least, maybe a slightly hazardous idea. So the trip ended with one couple engaged, another couple hitched in the lobby of some lodge, one college drop-out and one army deserter. Whee! Fun.

note: even in hindsight, I DO love it when my young sims make crazy impulsive decisions that will very likely come back to bite them on the ass when they’re older. I love letting myself get carried away with the whimsy of the moment, because that’s how young people are. I remember being 20 and making spectacularly bad decisions (and some really great ones too).

And then I write their parents’ POV and try to knock some sense into them. Of course, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes it does, though. Sometimes they don’t have parents, or a good relationship with their parents, and so they’re left to either wise up on their own or face the consequences. It’s all fun in this style of gameplay storytelling.


2081, fall: Justin and Keri get married


— Keri whines for a huge and expensive wedding, the biggest and the fanciest ever seen in Lakeside Heights, and she gets it while being a spectacular brat the entire time, in preparation, during, and after. They went on an equally big and expensive island honeymoon. They fought half of the time and had make-up sex the other half of the time.

This is a pretty good summary for Justin and Keri’s entire marriage—fighting and make-up sex.

Stephanie and Jeremiah did return briefly to attend the wedding. It was an incredibly complicated day for Stephanie with feelings of nostalgia and regret and finality and fondness and on top of it all, she and Jeremiah had just gotten pregnant.


2082, spring: Keri gets pregnant, too

— Justin and Keri were hardly married four months when Keri got pregnant. Granted, she was on birth control and she did not want a baby. Oops, my bad! I had some hiccups with my birth control mod that season, so this was not her fault. Keri didn’t quite know exactly what she wanted to do with her life just yet, but one thing she knew was that it was NOT in her plans to be a young mother. And she wasn’t especially happy about it, either.

She never said so (because these poor stories were so brief and glossed over back then), but knowing Keri, I bet she probably thought once or twice in a desperate moment about vetoing this pregnancy if you know what I mean. But then she realized that she was a married woman and it would look bad and totally selfish and that Justin would never forgive her for that. She really had nothing else going for her and would probably be able to afford a full-time live-in nanny if she wanted one, so she thought, “What the hell.”

Over these 4 years, there was lots of sex and babies and weddings and traveling, but very little mention of anything else otherwise, especially from Justin and Stephanie’s point of view. No mention of the intense crush Stephanie had on Justin in their freshman year. How was that just swept under the rug like that? I don’t even know. But then suddenly four years had passed and both couples are suddenly married with babies on the way and there’s a war starting. Much much more was mentioned of Keri, or Bella and Jeremiah, than anyone else.

In truth though, I just really wrote Stephanie out of the story for like, TWO WHOLE YEARS. And then when she did get another story, it had to do with Jeremiah and Bella mostly! And she didn’t get another story until months more after that. Oops. But besides the pregnancy, what happened to her in those years at the cabin with Jeremiah? Remember, she really hardly knew him when they got married. Why, exactly, did they decide to have a baby so soon? How was the new marriage? Was she happy? Was she lonely? Was she sad? Was she scared? Was she bored? I sort of dropped the ball on that one because I never said a damn thing about it from her POV.

I just wasn’t writing this story with the same level of detail back then. It was much more wants-driven than character-driven, which explains all the crazy weddings and oops babies and crazy non-oops babies. So much else got glossed over and forgotten about. So I can only imagine now what went on in their minds during that time, based on where they started and where they ended up. But then after the war started, I did start writing the story with more depth and detail, and I did take an interest in Stephanie again, and so I had a lot of blanks to fill in.


2082, June, summer: moving back home, reconnection


— Stephanie’s pregnancy, on the other hand, was wanted (in terms of sim wants, anyway—it was a huge stretch to try to explain why in terms of her character!) Another one of those impulsive decisions that Stephanie and Jeremiah were inclined to. They talked about it for a split second and it became a reality. They were going to be parents.

The two couples caught up with each other again and discovered how much had changed. The war was on the horizon and everyone was growing up. They were both expecting babies and finally coming down to earth from their whimsical adventures.


note: telling for Jeremiah’s character, here and elsewhere (with Bella, too, if you remember), is his fickle temper and intense jealousy over Stephanie’s past lovers and even flirtations. That will matter again later. (And note, in TS4, I have given his sim the “jealous” trait which is really kind of funny to play!)


2082, fall: wanna-be warrior


— After less than a year of marriage, Keri does some soul-searching and finally drops the bombshell that she intends to leave her new husband and soon-to-be newborn baby and go to war. Huge fights happen on all fronts.

This line was particularly telling: “He knows this conversation is far from over. Debates like this don’t end with Keri until she’s gotten her way. He wonders sometimes about her stubborn one-mindedness, how when she gets something in her head, she just doesn’t let go of it. Would there ever be a line she crossed with him that he couldn’t let slide? Have they actually found it?”

Sorry, Justin, I think we found out the answer to that question in the end.


2083, winter: concessions


— Justin says he’ll support her, but also that he’ll never like it.

Some of those conversations made me really sad to read over again, how everyone just let Keri do what she wanted so freely and selfishly, without any consequence. Even her own dad said so, “You married Keri Riley, what did you expect?”

Justin was never okay with this, but he did what he thought he was supposed to do, which was to support her decision. True, if he hadn’t, she would have done what she wanted anyway, and they would have ended up divorced anyway, but maybe he might have felt better about it? Hindsight and all. For all of her crying “it’s not fair!” she was never very fair to anyone but herself.

I do love Keri as a character, I just wouldn’t want to be married to her! And that’s one of the big differences between writing about sims and writing about characters. As a sim, bratty Keri was always funny and entertaining, but as a character, I could only wonder what a living hell it must have been to be her husband. I can’t recall if she ever gave an ounce to the poor guy (besides sex, I mean). It seemed like she only took and took and took.


2083, March: more concessions


— less unexpected, Jeremiah decides to make right with his botched military ties, and joins the recruits. In the months following Willow’s birth, Stephanie is saddled with some heavy postpartum depression and trouble bonding with baby Willow. She tries to keep it all together for her husband and family. Her parents are irate that they’ve yet again gone and done some crazy thing without regard to anyone else’s plans.

(notes: to make sense of novel revisions and because I didn’t want to write about a deserter the way Jeremiah did it in the LH blog, in the book version, Jeremiah was in the Coast Guard reserves. The story goes about the same, because no one ever expected the Coast Guard reserves to be called out to space, but they are, and Jeremiah needs to go.)

Notable here is how Stephanie takes quick and efficient advantage of the three minutes Jeremiah is in the bathroom to unload everything on her best friend. Justin is the first to ask Stephanie directly if she’s okay, which she is really not, and he knows it. Justin is an empathetic soul. And it builds upon other instances where Stephanie didn’t feel she could express herself freely with Jeremiah, times when he got jealous or angry or insecure, or her family who judged her and slighted her, and so she sought emotional comfort from Justin instead. Justin is and has always been a safe place to her.


2083, spring, funny stuff


— this exchange made me LOL: “Babe, you look great!” Keri says, pulling his shirt over his head and throwing it to the floor. She runs her hands all over him. “You better be good while I’m gone.” It’s laughable to him. Who ever had a crush on silly Justin Kim?

^ Who ever had a crush on silly Justin Kim? Hmmm, I wonder… ;)


2083, spring: the space secretary


— Justin is somewhat relieved that Keri will have a remotely safe post on the Lunar base. At least she probably won’t be the most at risk to die, but he’ll still be raising a newborn on his own, and that’s not ideal, either. Keri graduates and feels like the future is full of promise.


2083, May, the send-off


— the troops are finally called out. Stephanie loses her snot for a bit. Justin is there to comfort her, as usual.

[note: a necessary book revision (because I’m bad at research, lol!), Keri would have shipped out at a different time than Jeremiah did. Jeremiah went with the first wave of troops in May of 2083. Keri would have needed to wait 6 months after Lily’s birth to join most, if not all, branches of military service. So I’ll say that she went in October 2083. None of these guys had any stories written between May and October, so nothing else would need to be changed.]


2083, October, pressure points


— People are trying to figure out what’s wrong with Stephanie and how to fix it. Her family members try different things, some that help and some that don’t. She is feeling a little less numb at this point, and feeling more crazy mood swings. That’s a good thing, though she doesn’t know it yet. It means that she’s starting to feel *something* again, even if the feelings are scattered and chaotic.

Justin thinks it would be a good idea for Stephanie to have some spa time and get a massage (from his friend, hunky Corbin, of course, because Corbin makes everyone feel better?). The massage itself doesn’t soothe her at all, but it’s the thought that counts and it meant a lot to her that Justin tries.


2083, December: twinkly things in the dark


— Over the past couple of months, Justin started to notice Stephanie in a new way. Literally like a light just flipped on in his mind, much like the way it happened for her in freshman year of college. He’d always cared about Stephanie very deeply on a friendly level, but here, that started to change for him, slightly and slowly. But with as fuzzy a line as these two have always had between their very intimate friendship and affection for each other, it was probably bound to happen. It already did happen on Stephanie’s behalf.

There could be a lot of reasons that things changed for Justin now though—he was mad at Keri, he felt his marriage was a fraud, he felt unloved, he was resentful, he was lonely, he was horny, he was concerned for Stephanie’s well being, or maybe he’d just grown up and matured. Or maybe it really was something finally bubbling up that had been there all along. Time would tell. 

For the record though, I never planned from the beginning that both of these marriages (Justin and Keri, or Stephanie and Jeremiah) were destined to fail when they happened. But I did always know that their success would depend upon both marriages staying super strong. This thing between Stephanie and Justin was always going to be there when either of those marriages ran into trouble. Jeremiah was the noise she used to smother an inconvenient feeling, and when that noise is taken away, she finds that the feeling is still there.


2084, New Year’s Eve

— This was the last story these guys had on the LH blog. After the troops had been gone several months now, Stephanie and Justin are dealing with the growing resentments, sorrows, worries, and loneliness of their loved ones being gone. Just as Stephanie begins to pull herself out of a long fog, Justin is falling into a deep despair of his own, and their connection will prove to be a lifeline for them both.

—