"Why do you want to spend so much time in a junkyard?" Meilin asks, not understanding her sister's newfound fascination.
"I just think it's a shame to waste stuff that could still be used," Rain answers.
While not exactly the most romantic spot in the world, the junkyard also offers Rain a private place to hangout with her boyfriend Francesco, away from her father's close supervision.
Even when Francesco is with her, Rain is absorbed in finding uses for the scrap she finds. While she dabbles in invention, Francesco works on his homework.
Tao approves of his daughter's decision to devote her life to making useful things out of things others have cast off, and buys the property for her, so that she can set up shop there when she graduates high school.
Meilin is livid, and screams at her father that it's not fair for him to buy property for Rain and nothing for her. Tao tries to explain that the junkyard isn't some toy he's offering to one and not the other, it's for Rain's future career.
"What about my future career?" Meilin shouts.
"You want to be a doctor," Tao answers, "I can't buy the hospital for you."
"You've always preferred Rain over me," Meilin retorts, getting to the heart of the matter.
Tao doesn't believe that's true, and doesn't realize that the small things he did for his second daughter, whose mother denied her existence, was giving his older daughter the impression that he favored her. He offers Meilin the family car, and expensive BWAN Speedster handed down to him through the generations, still in excellent condition. Meilin appears pacified by the gesture, but something has broken between father and daughter that the gift cannot heal. The night after her graduation, Meilin takes her car and elopes with Deon Wolff, leaving her family behind without a word.
Invention is not without its dangers, Rain discovers.
Besides dabbling in widgets and toys, Rain put the found scrap to use as sculpture.
Pyromania runs in her family, and Rain loves a good fire herself, but not when it's her pants that are on fire.
The little mishaps with fire have not deterred Rain from her purpose, and as soon as she graduates, she hires Allan Peoples to work for her, selling the the things she invents.
Having been burnt a few times and survived, Rain fearlessly detonates old appliances furniture left in the junkyard.
She set the charge properly; why isn't it exploding?
Rain survives the explosion, slightly charred.
Francesco moves in with Rain and her father now that they are both adults.
Chess, as Rain calls him, enjoys artistic pursuits like painting and playing guitar, but has chosen to go into business as a career.
Though he prefers solitude and working alone, he's forced himself into a busy office, believing that that's what he should do.
After the stress of being around his coworkers, who play the same juvenile pranks on him as they did in high school, Chess works off his anger and humiliation in the gym, which is usually empty at this time of day, and jogs home when the crowds start trickling in.
Not long after h moves in with her, Chess asks Rain to be his wife. She has always loved him and stood by him, proud of him despite the fact that all their peers labeled him a loser, because she sees the world, and him, with different eyes, and never lets the opinions of others cloud her judgment. Because she has no great love of parties and he hates crowds of any kind, they have a private wedding.
Now that they are elders and their children are grown, Tao and Adria are more open about their relationship, and she often spends the night as his place. They don't consider marriage however, as they both hope to help raise their grandchildren from their own homes.
One night, Tao is awakened by odd noises in his room. One of his grandmother's trinkets appears possessed, hovering and shaking in the air above the end table.
As the little chest settles back down into its place, the ghost of Harlan McDermott materializes. Tao was a toddler when his grandfather died, and he remembers him with great affection. He approaches the ghost and speaks to him, wondering if he's come back with some important message from beyond. But Harlan just wants to talk about the garden, and share cooking tips with his grandson.
After imparting a recipe for fruit parfait to Tao, Harlan hugs his grandson and disappears.
Challenge Notes: We are now on Generation 6 rules, Living Green and No Strangers. So, the family car went with Meilin and everyone has bikes. The dryer has been placed in the family inventory and a clothesline has been placed in the yard. I bought Rain her double bed when she was still a teen, before the restriction was in place. Tao sells all the produce he grows as his career is Farmer, but there is still so much left in the fridge from previous generations that we don't need his produce yet. Also, Regan's culinary career fridge reward keeps all meals preserved forever, so we actually still have some key lime pie leftover from Tao's party where Tomika broke up with him.
No Strangers will be easy for me, as I've explained before, I'm not a big user of NPC help to begin with, and with my heir in a self-employment type job, she won't ever need to call a babysitter for the one child her generation will have. With her handiness skills, she will easily be able to do any repairs that come up.
About Meilin and the lack of pictures of her as an adult: the rules require the non-heirs to be out of the house within 24hrs of becoming YA. The game was being very uncooperative with me in terms of getting her boyfriend, who turned YA a few days before her, over to the house so she could marry him and move out. To get her out on time, I had to move her out on her own and then use master controller to get her married. And I completely forgot to take any pics of her after her transition when I failed to get the marriage pics I wanted.
Francesco, or Chess as Rain is calling him, is the first spouse I've had to be totally incompatible with his rolled career. He's artistic, loser, loner, heavy sleeper, and absent-minded, and he has to be in business. His LTW is Renaissance SIm, and the three skills he's working on are painting, guitar and athletic, chosen based on the first three wishes he rolled for skills to learn.
I had to zone the junkyard I placed as a consignment store in order to buy it. When it was zoned as a junkyard, it was not available for purchase, but rezoning it to consignment shop made it available. So, I decided to make it a proper consignment shop with a register, which allows Rain to sell her inventions right there. She can't sell her sculptures, so right now they are decorating the junkyard. She can detonate any she doesn't like, and perhaps some will go into the park she will eventually build. She has the Descendant of Da Vinci LTW, to max invention, sculpture and painting.
No comments:
Post a Comment