Chapter 18: The Yes Man

Shepard threw a party for himself for his birthday, and invited just about everyone from school. Chanel Knack-Racket just started high school recently, and has already gotten herself involved with both Dennis Sargeant and Elbert Goode-Brown. Shepard decides to help his friend Dennis out by convincing Chanel to choose him over Elbert.

Chanel is easily persuaded to at least show affection for Dennis here at the party, which sends Elbert off into a jealous rage. Wyoming freaks out over Elbert's rage.

Emilie Smith-Jones is also a new freshman at high school. As he's about to become a young adult, Shepard has no real interest in starting up a romance with a young teenager, but he's not going to be the only one at his party with no dance partner. Poor Elbert ends up in that position.

Only in Twinbrook could a girls as plain and mean-spirited as Chanel Knack-Racket be pursued so ardently.

Shepard is now a man. No one invited DeAndre Wolf, the aging rocker celebrity apparently has nothing better to do than crash teen birthday parties.

The first thing Shepard does for himself is two merge two of the second floor bedrooms into a large master suite for himself, which includes a study and private bathroom.

Ewan has been hankering for new stuff to upgrade.

Shepard gets a job as a podium polisher at City Hall. With his charisma, he immediately charms his way into a promotion as a ballot counter. Still small potatoes, but someday, he'll be leader of the free world.

After work, Shepard heads to the Red Rendevous every night, to mingle with his future constituents, and more importantly to find love. Or that's the hope anyway. Unfortunatly, most of the town's population are senior citizens, and the few younger women are all married. Twinbrook isn't much of a swinging singles scene.

With her sons growing up, Allyson is very concerned about how aging will affect appearance.

The living room gets a makeover.

Shepard got promoted to Yes Man. Soon, he'll be running for office himself. In the meantime, he settles in for another night of hot wings and schmoozing.

There had been rumors flying around recently about the newest residents to move into town. Three women and one man living together, apparently some kind of hippie orgy sex cult. There was even talk that these people might be witches. The male in particular seemed peculiar, with glowing red eyes.

One of the women from this suspected coven came into the Red Rendevous, and Shepard introduced himself. Her name was Lilly-Bo Chique, and she laughed at the suggestion that she and her roomates were witches.

"That's just silly, there's no such thing as witches," she said, "Beau is a vampire, that's why his eyes glow."

Shepard passes the vampire comment as a joke, and dances with Lilly-Bo.

"Where did you learn to dance like that?" Lilly asks, impressed with Shepard's moves.

"From my grandmother," Shepard answers. Lilly assumes he's joking.

Holly Greenwood, Mayor of Twinbrook and Shepard's boss, is pleased to see the romance blooming. She's aware of the attraction between Shepard and her married daughter Emerald, and long feared that if Shepard didn't find another outlet, things could get ugly for her family.

Shepard didn't mention the hippie orgy sex cult rumors to Lilly Bo. He doesn't care what goes on in her household, he's just happy she's interested in being in his bed.

While Shepard sleeps, Lilly Bo is awakened by strange sounds coming from the adjoined study. She lives with a vampire, but isn't prepared for the sight of a ghost.

Being an opene minded girl, she quickly gets over the initial revulsion and starts flirting with the ghost. He may be dead an incorporeal, but he's still a man, after all.

Shadow is outraged by the romantic advance. "You just came from my grandson's bed!"

Shepard and Lilly Bo become a regular thing, seeing each other every night after work. Shepard has met her two female roommates, one of them, marina Prattle, even got a job in his office, polishing the podiums. But no one has seen the mysterious Beau Merrick out on the town yet.

Having been caught having sex with Lilly Bo in public, Shepard has to prepare a speech explaining his behavior, which has outraged his small town.

Lilly Bo was feeling a little sick and couldn't make their usual date after work. So Shepard invited Marina Prattle out to the Red Rendevous for some hot wings.

After they eat, they dance.

Marina tells Shepard how sexy he is.

Shepard had been wanting to kiss Marina for some time now, and can no longer resist the urge. Marina is sure she'll get a promotion now.

Mindful of the potential for public scandal, Shepard takes Marina somewhere more private, like his bed, to pursue the romance.

Shepard wakes suddenly in the middle of the night. Marina is gone, and his grandfather's ghost is hovering by the bed.

"You better shape up," Shadow warns, "Or you'll be getting yourself in big trouble."

Challenge Notes:

Shepard completed his Luxury requirement. The living room got all new highest quality furniture. It's possible his bedroom suite could have counted for luxury, too, though that wasn't really replacing anything, since I moved his original bedroom set to the spare bedroom. But everything he got was top tier. I'm very happy because I really hated the original furniture and yellow wallpaper in this house. Now it looks much nicer. :D

His generation goal is perfect career, so he has to reach level 10 of the political career and max his charisma.

And he has to be the single parent of 2 children.

I took the 'Mixture of Good and Bad' family from Bridgeport and moved them to Twinbrook. That's vampire Beau Merrick and his three human romantic interests, Bianca Rubble, Lilly Bo Chique and Marina Prattle. As soon as they got to town, story progression had Beau impregnate Bianca, so there will be a little half-vampire on the way. And Shepard is romancing the two other girls, who all still live together.

Wyoming will age up and move next time I play. He has completed all the perfect children requirements, so generation 4 is officially finished with its requirements. Allyson may never achieve 5 stars of celebrity. Luckily, she doesn't have to.

Chapter 17: Emerald Crush

As a young overachiever, Shepard got a part time job in the bookstore. Ewan meets him in the schoolyard after school to make sure his homework gets done before his shift starts.

Ewan repairs the broken dishwasher while Allyson mops up the mess.

"I'm a superstar actress, I shouldn't be mopping up puddles. I should have a maid for this," Allyson complains. But Ewan insists that that they can't have strangers in the house who might be MorcuCorp spies.

Now when Allyson attends local parties, she isn't schmoozing with other celebrities; she's already befriended everyone in this town with any claim to fame. Instead, she finds herself the center of attention, having her photo taken and signing autographs. For once, Ewan has nothing to be jealous about.

"What's happening to me?"

"Dude, you're going through puberty. It'll just take a second."

Wyoming becomes a teen. He's a hopeless romantic. Hopeless, because there just aren't enough girls in this town.

Wyoming is also neurotic, so he frequently needs to look out the windows to be sure nothing is looking in.

And of course compulsive handwashing.

The few girls in high school are unattractive, taken or both, leaving party animal Shepard to dance by himself.

When Allyson gets invited to a party (swimsuit required) at the Greenwood house, Shepard tags along, hoping to spend some time with Emerald Greenwood, the only pretty girl in town. Emerald is not home, instead, the house is packed with all the elderly women in town. As a future politician, Shepard knows the importance of the senior vote and makes the most of the situation.

Silver Racket openly expresses her opinion of this dull party.

Emerald finally shows up as the party is winding down (as if it could possibly wind any further down than its starting position). She's a bit older than Shepard and has been going steady with Thomas Castor since forever, but now that Thomas has graduated, Shepard is hoping he has a chance. But he doesn't have time for more than a dance before the town's strict curfew forces him to leave. The next morning he learns Emerald aged up after the party and married her high school sweetheart right away.

"Grandpa, it's a school night! I have to get some sleep!"

Misty's ghost is startled by the approach of a burglar, but Shadow's daughter knows no fear.

Like her father, Allyson will fight to defend her home and property. Burglars will think twice before trying to rob the McDermotts.

In life, whenever Misty thought about training on the martial arts dummy, something always pulled her away, finding something else for her to do. Now that she's dead, she's free to use it all she wants.

At last, she's earned her first belt.

"So, why don't you and Shepard have girlfriends?" Allyson wants to know.

"Mom, have you seen the girls in this town?"

Since she's such a superstar, the studio has delivered a star trailer to Allyson home. Allyson's not sure what she's going to do with a trailer parked in her front yard.

Ewan comes up with a few ideas.

One of the girls from the babysitting agency, Rosalie Judd, moved in with the elderly Pidgins recently. Shepard met her at school and invited her back to the house. He'd intended to chat her up himself, but she developed an instant rapport with Wyoming. They are both Virgos and had an animated discussion about housecleaning techniques. So Shepard dropped himself out of the picture and let his little brother get the girl.

It's love at first sight for hopeless romantic Wyoming.

It's Saturday, and Wyoming has a date. He brushes his teeth three times before heading out to meet Rosalie. Because, you know, germs.

Wyoming meets Rosalie at the Red Rendevous. Today also happens to be Shepard's last day as a teenager, so he comes along hoping to find someone to celebrate with. Emerald Greenwood happens to be there, and dances with Shepard.

"Wow, your brother really knows how to dance," Rosalie remarks.

"Yeah, well, I brushed my teeth three times before I came here."

"Oh, good, I love a nice, clean mouth."

Shepard shows Emerald all his best moves.

"I'm going to be a man tomorrow, so I was thinking you and me could, you know..."

"That's sweet, Shepard, but I'm married."

It's his last night as a teen, and Shepard has never had a real date and he has a crush on a married woman. He tries not to be jealous of his brother's good luck.

Challenge Notes:

Both Allyson and Ewan have achieved their LTWs. Allyson has 4 stars of celebrity, and I'm not sure she'll ever get 5, though she keeps trying. As I've mentioned before, I use a mod that makes gaining celebrity status harder.

Shepard has fulfilled the Perfect Children requirements. Wyoming needs one more promotion in his part time job to fulfill his, and he has 7 days to do it, so that looks good.

Rosalie Judd was a recently spawned babysitter NPC. Since we are so short of females this generation, I added her to the Pidgin household (both women in that house are now childless elders). I did edit Rosalie in CAS so she wouldn't be vanilla. Her hair color was originally yellow blond, but I strawberried it up a bit, for flavor.