Drown #7.6: origin stories

July 2085. Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 25, Jeremiah Day is 28. Lucy Harris is 19, Violet Deppiesse is 55.


In this full house, Stephanie's bedroom was one rare place where she and Justin could steal a moment of quiet together. Only a moment, probably, before one of the girls came bursting in or her parents came knocking. They had about an hour once he was home from work on Tuesdays and Thursdays before he had to leave again for guard duty at the road. Each family in the neighborhood took two six-hour shifts each week, and since Justin was the only member of their household that wasn't a child or elderly, pregnant or half-blind or minding a thousand children, it usually fell on him. He didn't mind, though. It was boring most of the time, but their neighborhood was one of the safest places in town because of it.

Then, just as they thought they might mess around for a few minutes before he had to go, Stephanie's phone rang. She didn’t answer it, but they both knew who it was. Since she lived with almost everyone she knew and all of her daycare kids had stopped being dropped off, she didn't get phone calls from that many people anymore.

"He’ll be mad," Justin said.

"Not as long as I call him back before he tries a second time," she said.

"Yeah, well, what is that? Like five minutes from now?"

the circle of life: birth, health, and death in my game

I thought I’d pop out a quickie gameplay post that I’ve been meaning to talk about. Population, aging, births, and death!

As it stands, my TS4 game has nearly 350 “playable” sims, meaning sims that are living in houses, tracked in my databases, and played occasionally in the rotation. You wouldn’t know most of these sims. Many of them haven’t worked their way into my story yet even as background fodder, but I’ve made them myself and would welcome them to date my sims someday if they want. Any other townies in the townie bin I couldn’t care less about. They are marked as unplayed and the game can cull them if it wants to.

Thank you to the For Rent pack for giving me places to put all these sims!

So here comes the math: to keep about 350 sims at an average life span of about 75 years, I need to add about 2 sims per aging year in the town. How it actually works out is that there are fewer older sims than younger ones, as sims start to die off in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. So what I aim for then is 3-4 sims born into every aging year.

Drown #7.5: welcome home

June 2085 — Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 25, Jeremiah Day is 28, Willow is 3, Lily is 2. Keri Riley is 24. Lucy Harris is 19, Violet Deppiesse is 55.

* I am done photoshopping toddlers, but I still need the girls to be part of this story if I'm going to finish it. You'll all just have to imagine that the girls are smaller than they look.

Jeremiah's next call came in the morning. In the daylight now, everything seemed lighter and less scary. The girls were awake and running between rooms in the hallway, singing and laughing. Maybe it was just the dark that made things scarier, all the shadows, all the unknown. Or Jeremiah seemed happier today, at least.

"You thought I was mad at you last night? Not at all. You’re being dramatic, Stephanie. You’re always such a downer, always picking out the worst in everything, mountains out of molehills."

You didn't see what you thought you saw. 

"I don’t do that," Stephanie said.

Drown #7.4: the rights and wrongs

June 2085 — Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 25, Jeremiah Day is 28. 

*** NSFW


Justin had Stephanie's earlobe between his lips and his body between her legs when her phone rang on the bedside table. "Don’t stop," she said. "Ignore it. I don’t care who it is."

So Justin didn’t stop.

Drown #7.3: the caretakers

April, 2085 — Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 25, Keri Riley is 24. Jeremy Nova is 69, Alice is 63, Lily is 2. Willow is 3.


You could see them up there in the daytime, if you looked really hard and in just the right light. Stephanie thought they looked like a swarm of metal insects, with their patterned synchronized movements. They didn’t seem to be doing anything at all that anyone knew of. They just flew.

After a couple of weeks, people began to go outside again once it became clear that the things weren’t trying to attack us. It was springtime at the end of the world, who wouldn’t want to see the trees and flowers blossom one last time? So people went jogging and walked their children to the playground. They should have been more unnerved than they were, maybe, but the sound these things made was not unpleasant.

Stephanie thought the sound was almost lovely, almost melodious, like listening to music as she ran. The things streaked across the sky at all hours, never stopping. The noise went on and on since they'd arrived, steady and constant, not enough to overpower the wind or the rain or the waves, but lying underneath it. It became the background noise of the whole world.

Rumors were that the military shot one out of the sky and was dissecting it. They were only rumors though. People talked on the sidewalks and playgrounds. People made up their own stories about what they didn't know.

Drown #7.2: first date at the end of the world

March 2085. Stephanie Day is 25, Justin Kim is 24.


Stephanie always knew that she wouldn't wear her wedding ring on her one real date with Justin before the end of the world. But she'd actually taken it off a few days ago and never put it back on. Justin hadn’t noticed yet. She didn’t know if she should make a big deal about it, if it warranted that kind of grand declaration or if she should just let it be.

She kind of wanted to see how long it would take before he noticed. She had this really great line planned. He would say, "Steph, you took off your wedding ring." And she’d say, "I had to, because it came from the wrong guy."

She giggled at the idea of it.

Then she finished dressing for her date. She tried to put on some makeup. She curled her hair as much as it would curl and she wove it into a loose braid. She wore girly shoes, even if they were flats. She sprayed some perfume onto her wrists and it somehow found her nose instead and made her sneeze.

Drown #7.1: the preparations

February 2085. Stephanie Day is 25, Justin Kim is 24. Alice Nova is 63, Jeremy Nova is 69. 

* briefly NSFW


Stephanie couldn't stop thinking about her wedding ring. She wondered what purpose it even served, since it clearly wasn't a magical force field that would protect her marriage. Justin took off his wedding ring three months ago, he cried for a minute or two, and he hasn't mentioned it since. He didn't seem the least bit bothered by it anymore, although she caught him sometimes staring at her ring and resigning himself to it with a soft sigh. She looked at her ring now, doubtfully, regretfully, and then she slipped it off her finger in one smooth motion. It came off as haphazardly as it went on in the first place.

It felt weird at first, although not entirely different. She slipped it back on, and then off again. She didn't own a jewelry box, so she tucked it into her sock drawer with what few pieces of jewelry she kept in a tiny wooden pillbox.