I'm doing my best to put everything into something resembling chronological order, with some shuffling to make the storylines read better. Click on the family name to get to the family-only summaries.

The Normals


Jane and John Normal were the first family I seriously created (apart from various 'ooh, look what I can do with all this custom content' families, which I may or may not import into this neighborhood later). They both have the Family aspiration, meaning that they want lots of meaningful interaction with family members, lots of kids, grandkids, etc. John got a job in the Political career, and Jane remained a housewife.





Their house:




Sims give birth pretty much wherever they are when Day 3 of their pregnancy is over, so Jane having her first son - John II - in the kitchen was practically tame.



John II quickly grew into a kid, and was joined by Joseph and finally Janet.





The floating bear is a bug that Maxis is aware of and will fix in the first patch (they're already working on it), but I dunno, it's a rather cool bug, having a creepy bear float around occasionally.



The kids continued to grow older. John II was an overachiever: as a kid and teenager, he constantly brought home A+ report cards, and as a teen he also got a job in the medical field and reached the highest level there. Because of him, all three kids got into private school.



Joseph, OTOH, wasn't the brightest bulb. He *was* scarily good at chess, but he got horrible grade in school. His father managed to get him a part-time job in the police track, where he did pretty well.

Janet was nice, but thoroughly average.

All was happy with the Normals.

Or was it?

Because the Normals were rather shocked to find out that their precious firstborn not only had a black friend (which they would have tolerated), no, he had a black *boyfriend*.



As soon as he turned into an adult, John II moved out. He still looks happy and hopeful just seconds after his transition... for now.



He continued with the medical field, and that led to a remarkable meeting with a ... pregnant male!! John II was fascinated!



(that's Pascal Curious, from the Maxis-made family. I moved the Curious brothers into my neighborhood and gave them makeovers.)

Nowadays, John II spends every night staring through his telescope, hoping to discover the truth about aliens on Earth.

(I'm currently trying - and trying, and trying, and trying - to get John II abducted, so that he'll come home pregnant. However, it's very difficult, no way is it a 1 in 20 chance, as Maxis claimed. Maxis has said that they'll fix this in the patch, but so far, I've put his story-line on hold. I also tried to get him to fall in love with Pascal, but they didn't like each other. *sigh* I guess poor John II will remain single for the rest of his life - I have no free male of his generation that I want to turn gay, and I don't like to use Townies).

So we end this tangent, and move back a bit in time to when the Normal kids were still just teenagers.

The Alien Family


S'tae is an engineered alien/human hybrid, sent to Earth to test whether or not crossbreeding was possible.



And guess who it is that walks right into her clutches:



John quickly fell for her flattery, and soon their long evening chats turned into something rather different:

this had predictable results:



When the time of birth was near, S'tae invited John to spend the night (maybe she had some racial memories of mothers devouring the father and feeding him to the newborn children?):



In the middle of the night, John II was woken by ungodly howls just in time to witness the birth:



err... make that birth*s*:



Suddenly, John realized just what he had done: cheated on his wife, with an *alien*, and sired two alien ... *things* (who look incredibly cute on the family portraits - like little smurfs without their white hats):



Promptly, he dropped the kid and ran away, never looking back.



It turned out that S'tae's method of raising kids was pretty much to just leave them lying around, except for feeding them once a day. She only got them cribs when they turned into toddlers and started to crawl around.



This is S'rul:



and this is K'nat (who seems to have some racial memory of cannibalism that he's trying out on dolls):



But in the end, against all odds, they grew up decently. They didn't do too well in school, but when they transitioned to teenager and to adult, they had green aspiration meters at least (all without me doing much of anything).









well, except for the fact that they hated each other as kids:



but once they turned into adults, they had gotten over it:




(I should note that this is a 'family kiss'. Sadly, incest is not possibly in Sims2. *sniff* Hopefully someone will eventually hack that.)

They moved out into a small house together. S'rul has the family aspiration, and K'nat has romance aspiration. Which is pretty much the "have woohoo with as many people as possible, and avoid any hints of marriage or kids' aspiration...

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with S'tae next. But here's a close-up of her face:



And this was their house (back when I thought she'd have one kid, not twins):

At this point, I decided to create 3 families so that I'd have spouses for the kids (the game knows that the Normal and Alien kids are half-siblings, and treats them as 'family', meaning that they can't intermarry).

The Everyman Family:



The elders are Rose and Marty Everyman - I made them because I wanted their daugther, Maria Rose, to carry the gene for both blond and red hair, so I had to make her parents. I immediately moved them out, into a throwaway lot, and put the speed on high, until they died. BTW, it takes nearly 2 days for a sim to starve to death.

Maria Rose married William, who's ... well, he's very nice. And he has a safe and secure job at the military, were he doesn't have to think much and gets to use his body skill.

Their two kids are Beth Rose and Billy. Beth Rose has the family aspiration, and wants a big family like her mother, but Billy goes after his grandmother: he has a fortune aspiration (meaning that he wants to earn lots of money and buy lots of expensive things)

Their house:






Beth Rose fell in love with Joseph when she was still a teenager, and went steady with him. Billy did share his first kiss with Janet, but mostly because she was his sister's boyfriend's sister.



Beth Rose did moderately well in school, but Billy was an overachiever: constant A+ report cards, and he reached the top of the business career for teens.

Eventually they grew up:



Beth Rose inherited her way of eating directly from her father, much to Billy's disgust:

The Cheater Family:



(I forgot to take overview pics of their house)

This family has brothers Adam and Baldwin Cheater. Adam is a Romance sim, Baldwin is a Family sim, and married to Evie. Together they have twins, Charles and Donald (he's the one with glasses).

Baldwin is another nice, but not too intelligent sim. He's on the Sports career path, where he had moderate success.

His brother is a more good-looking version of him, who's on the slacker career path.

Evie is the most intelligent of the bunch - thankfully her kids got their brains from her.

Nothing much to say yet about the kids. Both are rather intelligent, with mostly A+ grades.

The backstory for the family is that Evie and Adam were in love, but Adam, being a Romance sim, was afraid of commitment, so Evie ended up marrying his brother. But feelings remain...



And cheating often leads to predictable results:



The birth of the newest family member ended up as some kind of evening entertainment:



Interestingly enough, it was Donald who immediately took to the newest family member (a girl, Geraldine).



Donald and Charles both grew into adults shorty before the birth, here's a closeup of teenaged Charles (who absolutely didn't care for his sister. Their relationship quickly went to 0/0 and stayed there):



Donald really doesn't like Adam, partially because he hates it when Adam flirts with every female that crosses by their house:



but mostly because Adam actually got jealous when Evie was flirting with her husband, and *hit* Evie:



and then Adam broke down crying over it! Whimp!



Adam still hates Evie. Evie did manage to salvage her marriage. The brothers at least made up, eventually:



The kids grew up some more, Charles and Donald into adults, and Geraldine first into a kid and then into a teenager:



So far, Charles and Donald still live at home. Both are doing well at their jobs: Donald is on the politics career track, and Charles on the medical one.

Around this time, I also moved Adam out. I first wanted to put him in his own flat, where he could seduce ladies, but then I got bored with him, so he's dead now. Tragic, really - he probably caught some kid of sexual disease from one of his one-night stands...

(ok, he starved. But it was just because he was too exhausted from all the sex to cook. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it)

Evie really hates me for taking all these pictures:

The Strict Family:



(again, I forgot to take overview pics of the house.)

Do not be fooled by this seemingly happy picture: because the Strict family is a dark and unhappy place.

You see, Howard and Melisa strict had high plans for their only child, Fortuna. However, Fortuna ended up being a Romance sim, and ran away from home - with a very shady guy called Sowate! Howard, true to his last name, was having none of this: he came after them, and took care of Sowate in a very terminal way:



Then they locked Fortuna up in one room for the rest of her life. The room had a bed, a fridge, a counter with a trash compactor, a stove, a toilet, a sink, a phone and an easel. Fortuna knew exactly one non-family sim, the sister of her dead lover. The phone kept her social meter decent, the easel her fun meter. To wash, she had to take a sponge bath at the sink. As you might guess, she was rather unhappy.


(I never took many pictures of her - I kept planning to do it, until suddenly it was too late)

However, by the time Fortuna was dragged back home, she was already pregnant. So now her parents took on the task to raise their grand-child, Melihet, as well as possible.



You can image that this makes for unhappy sims. Melisa spent most of her time worrying, and Howard kept playing chess obsessively.



As she advanced in age, Melisa got stranger and stranger: eventually, she took to fighting with huge bunnies that no one but her could see:



Still, Melihet managed to grow up and get good grades, and even a little romance with Charles Cheater:





Eventually, all the worrying and insanity got to Melisa, and she died. And because she was so unhappy, she promptly came back as a ghost:



And because she was mean beyond the grave, she actually scared Fortuna to death.


(of course, I didn't manage to actually snap a picture of the death. Basically, Melisa frightened her, and then, when Fortuna was still reeling from seeing a ghost, frightened her again, and that did her in)

After an intense session of grieving, Melihet got over her family problems and moved on:





Howard, however, didn't do as well:



He was haunted for the rest of his (short) life, not just by his wife, but also by his daughter:



After his death (and of course he too became a ghost), Melihet grew up, and got a job in the political career path.

Side note: The Native Family

Originally, I had planned that once Fortuna Strict's parents were dead, she'd move in with her Sowate's sister, Tamak, but since she died before then, this Sim is now obsolete. I don't know if I'll do anything with her or not...

Now, let's go back to the Normals:


They were very gratified to find that Joseph at least was a good, normal boy, and they were happy when he fell in love with his childhood friend, Beth Rose. Joseph might not be the brightest bulb, but he has a good, steady job at the police-force. Sure, he never got promoted past Desk Sergeant, but at least that meant that he came home every day at 15:00 and had the weekends off.



A slightly awkward incident led Joseph to discover the concept of 'woohoo', and that his parents had done it at least 3 times in the past.



Soon he proposed to Beth Rose, and because I am a dork, he also married her right there (I didn't realize that I needed a wedding arch to have a wedding party and honeymoon. Oh well.)



So they had their wedding night at home (and Beth Rose actually went into the marriage as a virgin). They had so much fun they didn't even notice that below them, John had set the kitchen on fire:



This lead to a remodelling of the first floor:



John eventually reached the 'Judge' level in the Political career path. Then he and Jane turned into elders, and he retired.

Janet by now had grown up from a teenager into a woman. At first, she was young and hopeful, but as the years passed and she remained single and living at home, she started to take on looks and habits of an old maid. She even started dressing and wearing her hair like her mother had.



I had not anticipated that both John and Jane would take a violent dislike to their daughter-in-law. They kept being mean to her whenever they saw her. Since Joseph was at work all day, Janet became Beth Rose's only friend and confidante in the house:



Joseph and Beth Rose ended up with 2 children: John III and Josepha. John III inherited the huge ears from his mother (she's got them from her father). Beth Rose wears her hair to cleverly disguise them, but since toddlers are stuck with a default haircut, John III still has to show them to the world. Thankfully, he's yet too young to understand that people will ridicule him for them.



Time passed, and everyone was happy. It was during this time that Janet actually moved out of the house to marry Billy. We'll get to their story in a second.

However, all things end, and so eventually death took John. John III took it hard, but Jane was really a wreck over it:


(by then, John III had gotten much more sensitive and had taken to wearing his hair so that it covered his ears)

They buried John in the garden. Joseph looks very much like him, nowadays. Only fatter.



John left quite a bit of insurance money, I think he was worth about 40.000 simoleans.

Now, let's check on Janet and Billy Everyman:

Billy did eventually marry Janet. Not really for love, but because she was available (I have some half-formed idea that the firm he works for is conservative, and prefers it if their employees are solid family men. So he needed a wife, and she was handy). This time I actually managed to get them to have a real wedding, with arch and kissing and party and honeymoon.



Janet quickly became pregnant:



However, the pregnancy was hard on her, and she spend most of her time in bed. Billy... well, Billy often brought home a childhood friend of his, Melihet (actually, by that time she was a closer friend to Janet than to him). It started with just watching tv together, but soon got much more intimate:



It couldn't end well. Of course Janet found out:



Janet took their daughter, Jane Rose, and moved out into a tiny hovel, and tried to keep herself and her daughter fed on a minimum wage job as a dishwasher.



So when she met Beth Rose on a trip to the community lot, she fell into her arms sobbing and poured out all of her troubles.



Beth Rose, horribly lonely since both her kids were now in school, immediately proposed that Janet and Jane Rose should move back home. Janet agreed, so the Normals remodelled their first floor again:

To avoid excessive inbreeding, I again started some additional families. Here are the 2 families I've started so far (I do plan to start more):

The Fortune Family



Originally, she was meant to become the 2nd wife of Billy Everyman, but since they didn't manage to meet for 14 SimDays, by which time Su Ming has already reached the 'President' level of the Business career path, I decided to instead let her have a child with Donald Cheater.



This is the result, her daughter Su Wan, who's extremly clever (she was constantly fed smart milk as a toddler and thus already high skill levels when she turned into a kid):



Hm, not much story there, yet.

oh, and here's a picture of their home. There's not much variety in the currently available objects for the game, but there are some Asian-inspired ones, so I tried my best:

The Nordic Family






Heltwar and Gunnhildr may come from the cold north, but their passion is hot:



Heltwar is on the athletics track. He just loves working out, almost as much as he loves making passionate love to his wife, and making more and more children.

Gunnhildr stays at home, ready to raise their many children - I'm planning on 5. So far, they have 3, with one more on the way.

Their children up to now are all boys: Holgar Sven, Gunnar and Siegwulf. The whole family except Gunnar is an Aries. I'm going to see if this keep up - if it does, I'll see if I can get a storyline involving how Gunnar is completely different from the rest of his family. But it's too early to tell.

Based on the way the first 2 kids turned out when they reached child level (a bit ... stupid...), and the fact that Heltvar and Gunnhildr look quite similar in coloring, I've now decided on a backstory for this family:

Back in the cold cold north, they were actually siblings. Their love was so great that they didn't care that they were committing incest, they just needed to be together and have sex and breed. So they left and moved far away, to Normalville, where noone knows of their past, and they can keep mating and breeding like bunnies.