The Gregory Legacy, Chapter 9

Welcome back to The Gregory Legacy! Sorry for the long time in between chapters, but rest assured that I do not abandon legacies. These guys are definitely back - we've got three birthdays, romance, and rocket ships to cover in this update. First, though, does this cover remind you of anything? It's almost the exact same pose Marjorie was in on the cover from chapter 3, and that amuses me. Anyway, let's get to it . . .

Where were we? Oh yes, Aaron is becoming a teen today. Let's check out the guest list. First, Dorian looks super excited to be invited to his nephew's birthday party. Part of it could be that his totally edgy party gear has not aged so well on him. Don't worry, Dorian! You're still . . . kind of . . . pulling it off. Yeah.

Corinne looks okay if she would stand up straight. That makes two guests, and I see the third in the distance.

Yes, it is my frequently mopey simself, simRoxy, who is also just super duper psyched to be invited to a party at the Gregorys' place. Geez, these guys look like they're going to a very fancy funeral, not a birthday party. Hopefully things look up from here.

Somehow I corralled everyone in the kitchen for the birthday, but Henry is the only one who couldn't be bothered to celebrate our heir of generation 3 becoming a teen.

"I just figured out how to become confident!"

Bully for you, Henry. Anyway, everyone perked up once the festivities began. I caved and got the upgrades for the base game when I bought GTW, so Aaron got a hamburger cake. I find those hilarious for some reason, so we'll probably see a lot of them over the legacy.

Henry: "Yay! Confetti!"
simRoxy: "Too little, too late, Henry. You missed your chance."

"Oh. My. God. Look at my eyebrows! They're amazing!"

What happened to Aaron? I mean, he dressed mostly competently and even in his favorite color (red), and his face isn't bad, but what the hell grew above his eyes?

"You know the controller's going to make you pluck those as soon as the party is over, right?"
"Pshaw. You're just jealous."
"Right."
"My eyebrow game is fierce!"
"Right."

Cake and drinks were enjoyed, and the party was well on its way to a gold medal. Drinks may have been enjoyed a little too much, judging by Tessa's face here. Hopefully she's not having a relapse of Spare Madness and juicing away her worries.

She did have a relapse of her mysterious disease, however, but a chaser of medicine after the cake fixed her right up again. It's weird that she's the only one who gets sick, but when I worked in retail, I used to get sick a lot too. I think it's handling all that money and stuff. Filthy customers, that kind of thing.

Everyone had had cake before the goal to eat cake popped up and we had run out of hamburger cake by that point, so Marjorie had to whip up a white cake real quick so we could force people to eat more cake. (Were there enough instances of the word 'cake' in that sentence?) That was the last party goal, though, and Aaron's birthday was a gold medal party.

The real MVP of the party, though, was the bartender. He made like two or three times as many drinks as there were people at the party, and he didn't get distracted once. It's one of the few times I've seen a hired party helper actually do their job in this game. Gold star for you, bartender! Now, let's take a closer look at the birthday boy.

Look at those magnificent caterpillars! Truly impressive. The shape, the thickness, the angle: these are fearsome eyebrows to behold. However, simRoxy is right and I'm making him get rid of them because they make him look evil and he's already hot-headed. I don't need evil, thank you very much.

 

Speaking of traits, Aaron picked up 'glutton' as his teenage trait. Joy. Amusingly, his grandfather, his father, and Corinne's husband are also gluttons. Dorian and Henry are the only males in this legacy who are not gluttons. Anyway, Aaron's eyebrows are still quite thick, but he looks a bit friendlier. He definitely takes after his dad in facial features a lot. Now that Natalie's nose has run its course, there's no trace of the founder left in the heir. :( Moving on, let's take a look at his overall makeover.

Okay, so, this t-shirt amuses me mightily because he is often crabby. Example A: his face in this picture. I kind of want to make it a theme. I want to open a bakery that only sells crab cakes and call it Aaron's Crab Shack. Alas, I hate running businesses, so you reading about it is as far as that dream will get. Aaron takes after his mother (post thin potion) in being a skinny thing. His father had a more muscular build when he was younger, though he's gotten a bit soft thanks to that whole glutton thing. I just can't wait to have another sim raiding my fridge all the time!

 

 "You're serious? Crab Cakes here is running the legacy from now on? I hope you're happy with your choice."

Firstly, I didn't choose it. It was random. Secondly, yeah, Aaron's okay-looking and doesn't have useful traits, but I've kind of gotten used to it after Marjorie. We'll be okay. Settle, Tessa. On another note, Aaron's aspiration is Big Happy Family. He's already going to have three kids by tradition, so looking over the requirements, the only problem will be keeping him around long enough for grandchildren requirements. Since a single youth potion is allowed per sim, that should happen, but this aspiration really makes you in it for the long haul. I don't really see Aaron as much of a family guy at the moment though he does get along well with everyone, but maybe that will evolve.

 

As the heir, Aaron is expected to perform well, while Henry mostly gets off the hook. I'm not even trying for his aspiration any more. The upside to Aaron's struggle is that he always gets help with his homework so he can get that high school A. I'm not really scoring, as I'm sure you've noticed, but I want my main sims to be as successful as possible.

 

We've seen a lot of Aaron this chapter, but what about everyone else? Marjorie is still working long hours as a gamer, and got the promotion to pro gamer. It's a lot easier now to do her daily task since it's just gaming, but the long days do leave her pretty tired. We're still about $100,000 short of reaching the final level of Mansion Baron for her and Tessa. It probably won't happen before Tessa becomes an adult, but Marjorie might still achieve it. The ghosts are hanging around too, and Natalie seems to be a little put off by her daughter falling asleep for a moment in the middle of a conversation with her.

 

Nathan is still on his quest to upgrade everything, and he's making great progress. The upstairs bathrooms and the computers are the only things that still need work. He also gardens and takes care of the house since he doesn't work. He's kind of a nice house husband to have around, except for the fact that he doesn't cook. Okay, enough spotlight on the rest of the family. If Aaron is going to have a big, happy family, he's going to need a spouse, preferably one who will be ready to marry him on the first day of adulthood. Let's go find one.

"Milady, might you grace me with your name?" Aaron says to a passerby at Oasis Spring's park right after she spawns.
"Are you for real?" she replies.

This is Dayna, and she is the first eligible female teen Aaron came across after hanging out at the park for a while. She's one of my legacy loves, made for the express purpose of being there for wooing, but she's a bit skeptical of Aaron's romantic technique.

"I'd hit that when it was of the appropriate age if I were her."

No one asked you, Creepy Fisher Lady.

Aaron and Dayna build up a pretty great friendship and he learns that she is a perfectionist and squeamish. Super. At this point, I'm just going to give up on getting good traits in the legacy. Random, useless, and/or negative ones? Bring them on. What trait she gets as an adult will be a mystery for a while, of course, but she and Aaron do make a cute couple, so we're going for it.

After a strong rapport has been established, Aaron tries a few flirts and they land successfully. Since he's just newly a teen, we're going to take this relationship slow. They have time to court at a leisurely pace.

"Just had a legacy heir confess his crush on me. This calls for a tentative-legacy-love-success duck face selfie. #dubious"

Hashtags aside, Dayna is being swept off her feet and Aaron is quite smitten. He starts rolling all kinds of whims for Dayna and they're both very flirty. Looks like this is happening.

"Oh yeah, I'm a stud. Just cloudgazed with a girl on my second day of teenagehood. Time to immortalize my studliness."
"I can still hear you, you know!"

Back home, it is the day before Nathan's elder birthday. Because she stopped aging while she was pregnant, Marjorie is still 5 or so days behind him. They decide to celebrate their last day of being the same age for a while with a woohoo. Happy birthday, indeed.

It's the next day, and it also happens to be Henry's teen birthday. He gets to go first, and almost everyone in the immediate family is ready to support him as he grows up.

Aaron: "Yay! Confetti!"
Marjorie: "Too little, too late, Aaron. Remember?"

And Henry grew up to be the clean-cut varsity basketball captain or something. That is so not Henry, but we've got one more birthday before I send them to CAS for cleanup.

The kids aren't too thrilled (they are all teens, after all), but Marjorie is there to celebrate her husband's birthday with panache.

After a quick trip to the dresser, Henry is back to his individual style, but he's picked up an interesting personality. He's now romantic as his second trait, and his aspiration is Nerd Brain, the same as his dad's. So a self-assured, romantic nerd? It wasn't easy to dress that, but I like the way he ended up, and I think Henry is adorable, so he shouldn't have any problems finding people to be romantic with. He's almost an exact clone of his dad's face. At least Aaron got his mom's chin, but Henry's face is all Nathan.

Nathan was a little less lucky with his aging, as he got quite round and I gave him one of the balding hairstyles because I'm a mean controller like that. It just looked right on him somehow. He was also difficult to dress, but that was because, while he's not carrying that much of a belly, the boy's got round sides that clip right into his arms. The aging weight gain in this game is weird sometimes. However, he's still a cutie in my opinion.

Henry: "Wow! High school homework is so fascinating! Why didn't you guys tell me how much fun this is?"
Tessa: "Groan. Thanks for reminding me: I still have to do mine later."
Aaron: "I'm clearly thinking about my homework and not daydreaming about Dayna."

After eating, Tessa gets to her homework too, and Aaron once again gets help with his. He's taking his sweet time getting an A, that's for sure.

This is Aaron's face when I tell him to go talk to my simself, who is visiting yet again. I want to keep her as a family friend, so it's your duty to befriend her, mister. No sass.

Apparently there's a bug that causes your sims not to be able to get past the impartial stage if there's a loading screen any time between first meet and becoming friends. Aaron met simRoxy when he was still a child, so there have been many loading screens, and sure enough, they can't get past impartial despite having a bar that should be high enough for 'good friends.' Grr. Hopefully she'll still visit when Marjorie and Nathan are gone, or they'll fix it before then. One or the other. (They fixed this the day after I wrote it, which was the day before I published it. Success!)

The Gregorys got a hot tub! However, again, none of them want anything to do with their backyard and I haven't forced them back there yet. They're such hermits. Nathan is still upgrading the hot tub so that when they do get a hankering for a soak, it'll be optimized.

Meanwhile, Aaron is getting a jump start on his future adult career. I'm going to have him be an astronaut, so I sold off the rocket that Nathan had built and upgraded so Aaron could work on his skill. I later read that he doesn't even need rocket science until after level 7 of the career and he should be working on logic and body skill instead, but that is a trial for next time.

With that, we've reached the end of another chapter. Thanks for reading, and please check in with me at SiMania or Boolprop. Next time we'll see Aaron grow up and get a move on with this legacy! Thanks for sticking with me and reading! :)