Wisteria Root Orchard Pt. 6
(Includes cc clothing by oakiyo, the HFO-x-Sentate-X-Joliebean collaboration, and ChereIndolente as well as midnitetech's Old-School Scribbler aspiration.)
Jacob published a book on his childhood in Evergreen Harbor, and he didn't expect anything to come from it. Little did he know that I decided to inject some family drama.
"Happy Love Day, Moonwood Mill! Come get your overpriced flowers because I know you didn't grow your own flowers to give to your loved ones. Yeah, especially you, Bob."
"Hi, random ghost! Can I help find some flowers?"
"Actually, I'm looking for my son Jacob, and my nephew has enough ghost powers to know he's here."
As it turns out, Jacob's original surname was Miller, lol. It's like he was destined to eventually come to Moonwood Mill. (Another fun fact I decided was that Jacob's bio dad also had stomach issues with eating meat. However, his bio dad has already passed onto the Netherworld because I didn't want to accidentally remove Kristopher from Jacob's family tree.)
I created Jacob's family by first creating Yolanda, rolling a d20 and consulting @faerietempest's Family Reunion CAS Challenge, and then finally changing two genetic features each time I made a new sim so there wouldn't be a family of look-alikes. Yolanda is the Family Recipe Gatekeeper, which I decided to represent by dressing her like a chef and adding a bunch of recipes from the Granny's Cookbook mod. Despite being a "gatekeeper", she gave a copy to Jacob. The Watsonian definition is that her nephew didn't get to grow up eating all the family food, and he deserves to be able to make it even though the family needs to go back to Evergreen Harbor (read: become homeless because I don't own Eco Lifestyle) after this. The Doylist explanation is that I decided to download every non-medieval BGC recipe that has ingredients that come from a fruit tree. This generation has an orchard, so I may as well use it as an ingredient for more things than just grilled plantains and apple pies.
Kennedy is the Instigator. In addition to finding Jacob and thus instigating this entire arc, I based him off the Instigator uncle in my family, down to the mustache. (Well, at least what my uncle might look like if he was Black instead of being whiter than I am.) If we had a handiness aspiration other than Nerd Brain, I would've given him that to further base him off my uncle, but because we don't and I can't see my uncle playing chess, Kenedy instead got Chief of Mischief. Plus, this sort of fits his ghost-seeing abilities since I don't However, he has a pointed hat because if I had all the packs, I would make Kennedy a spellcaster.
Finally, Nathan is the Holier Than Thou Student. He believes in using a notebook over modern word processors (as opposed to how Jacob has to handwrite his books because of Werewolf Epilepsy, aka the trait that causes computers and tv's to raise fury), and I specifically chose his liked/disliked activities and radio stations based on if they seemed stereotypically high-or-low brow. Nathan's appearance is also slightly based on my headcanons for Jonathan Sims from TMA's s1 outfit + s4/5 hair.
Anyways, Kennedy has some latent ghost abilities, much like Oriole, although his aren't quite as strong since he can't see into the Netherworld the way she can. His aunt's ghost saw Jacob's book, and Kennedy was able to use the connection between Yolanda and Jacob to find him. He didn't realize that Jacob was a werewolf, though, and there was even more tension when Yolanda and the Brooks discovered that Jacob's fiance was also a werewolf.
This caused some major tension within the family. They had a dinner party (that I forgot to take screenshots of) where Kristopher was at least able to convince Yolanda that Jacob hadn't been kidnapped and had a good childhood despite the trauma of Yolanda and her husband dying in a housefire caused by a fight between a vampire and the feral werewolf who turned Jacob. He also had to convince her that neither he, Rory, nor any member of the Moonwood Collective was the wolf who turned Jacob. Oriole also decided to helpfully drop werebies survival rates and how much worse they are when someone can't take the vaccine - these rates were burned into her memory as she tried to help Archer through the delirium when he was newly bitten and disowned by their parents. She considers herself lucky to still have her brother, and Jacob's bio-family should feel the same.
(I know werebies itself isn't fatal, at least not unless someone specifically installs a mod to make it that way. I still once had a glutton sim in a modless playthrough starve to death because werebies was making his hunger need drop far faster than I anticipate. Therefore, it can theoretically kill a sim.)
The dinner party was still tense, though. This tension wasn't helped by Archer eating raw meat at the table, but I didn't feel like making him eat harvestables, and he couldn't exactly eat the dinner that Candace had made. It also probably wasn't helped by Rory deciding to try and force Jacob's bio family to get used to having a werewolf in the family by remaining in wolf form the entire time, but this was 100% the game's fault.
After several stressful days in the Fujimoto-Volkov-Goth household, Jacob was able to convince Kennedy and Candace to become werewolf allies. Even if things remain awkward between Jacob and his mom, as well as between Jacob and his younger cousin, he'll at least have two connections with his biological family.
(Meanwhile, Stella kept trying to flirt with Kennedy. She also finished stage 2 of Renaissance Sim, so I decided to have her quit her job as an astronaut and become a chef.)
And then something I had no plans for happened.
Greg attacked Archer right outside the family home, and Archer lost both the fight and himself to fury overload. (Patchy continues to not scare anyone other than unsuspecting household members.) Archer went for a brief rampage, managing to avoid people while also trying to keep Greg in his sights so that Greg wouldn't hurt anyone else, before finally howling for help and turning back.
Jacob ran to find him and embraced his hurt and shaken fated mate. The two of them finally confessed their feelings to each other, and have decided to start planning their wedding for real.
I had planned on them not confessing until after Jacob's bio family split from the household and moved, but the Greg attack felt big enough to change my plans. Also speaking of changes after the Greg attack, I decided to switch up Archer's appearance to match his wounds as best I could! However, I couldn't find the exact same wounds, and didn't feel like looking for matching scar cc. I also nearly removed his original bite scar and had to add it back. 😅
