Let’s see what Aileen is up to while her ex is being deliriously happy with his new fiancé.
Shu’s ready to age up, which can only mean one thing: there’s about to be an extremely awkward party up in here and all his mom’s friends are invited! This shitshow needs to be appreciated from its ideal vantage point, which is very, very far away.
Let’s break down everything happening here. On top, Shu aging up in front of his mom and no one else. Left center, two of his mom’s friends watching his dad’s new dead partner, who does not have the Comedy skill, doing standup. Right center, Mike trolling the internet. Bottom, his mom’s new astronaut love interest using the treadmill at a child’s birthday party while Bennett Good inexplicably watches. Nowhere, Shu’s dad. What’s he up to?
But Shu can’t let a little thing like reality get him down! He ages up into one of his mom’s traits, Neat, and the aspiration Serial Romantic.
Why Serial Romantic? It felt right. Besides,
In 30 days, he is going to be such a dish—just like the cake that finally attracted guests to the main event. Not his mom, who is too tired for this; and not his dad, who isn’t done saying hi to all the plants.
Aileen eventually realized it was inappropriate to take a nap at her only son’s birthday party. Besides, Costco ordered too much man candy and she hasn’t gotten her free sample yet. (This is their first date, btw.)
The other guests are either making themselves comfortable upstairs, where there is nothing for them,
or making themselves uncomfortable downstairs.
Mercifully, the party ended, leaving the guests on their own to forget what took place tonight. The atmosphere of the Jensen-Liu household dwindled from hot mess to regular mess.
Shu’s room got a makeover, from non-matching kids-room blues to the inside-of-a-raspberry optimistic love dome we’re going to call the Age-Inappropriate Boudoir (A.I.B.).
Luckily for Shu, he aged up the day before the Romance Festival. What luck! Shu locates his tealest pair of glasses, powers through two cans of Axe, and heads over.
Too bad there were no teenagers at the Romance Festival.
Derrick (Athletic, probably Self-Assured, don’t remember or care) definitely has chemistry with Aileen. They both exercise a lot! They are similar in age. They, uh, occupy similar positions in space. Aileen is fortunate to get along so well with the one dateable bachelor in her entire world; that, and she has no ulterior motives for wanting to be in a relationship.
Shu knows that all cool kids get painting lessons at the Romance Festival (with both parents in attendance, to boot!), so he wasn’t disappointed—except they don’t, and he was. He had to succeed where Charlie had failed: finding where other teenagers hang out. Magnolia Promenade was his first guess. Teenagers like to be out in the open where parents and law enforcement can find them.
Yeah, there’s lots of ’em.
Shu takes a moment to weigh his options. Elsa (Genius, Cheerful, Swedish) is a fantastic choice. They’re friends. However, when I encouraged him to flirt with her, he stared blankly at her for ten minutes, then cancelled the interaction. Poor baby.
Genevieve (Dance Machine, Neat) is a little kicky, a little kooky, and Shu gets along with her just fine. Unfortunately, he ran into her an hour after chickening out. We decided it was still too early to try anything. For now, he’s just window shopping, practicing talking to girls until his palms stop sweating so much.
On the other end of the aggressive flirting spectrum is Shannon Bheeda (Hot-Headed, Vegetarian), who made damn well sure Shu was at her birthday party and invited absolutely no one else.
Ultimately, Shu did nothing but weigh his options and stare at people’s shoes. He might be doomed to spend his life trying to complete his first aspiration; he might be waiting for someone special, we don’t know. Let’s label him as a failed project for now and move on.
Meanwhile, Aileen is free to self-improve/love thanks to excellent coparenting from Xiyuan.
Aileen is a powerful goddess warrior. She sends out such strong positive vibes, in fact, even the former Miss Universe was inspired to step away from the bar.
Aileen is wellness incarnate. Aileen only listens to music in the Women of Color With High Self-Esteem genre, which for her is the Simlish version of “Worship” on repeat. (For additional sweet vibes, though, play “Fitness” while looking at the image above and pretend it’s diegetic.) She doesn’t need anyone, but if she wants to get her rocks off, she can.
Liu Crew,
heads to the park to reel in some fish, if you know what I mean.
Aileen is concerned about where Shu goes all day, but not concerned enough to punish him, or, heaven forfend, keep an eye on him every once in a while.
Aileen and Shu do occasionally have a normal mother-son relationship when they’re not trying to bone everyone. Magnet-school-prep-extra-credit-for-fun Shu somehow forgot to do his homework for some reason (see: the Liu sledgehammer approach to sexual awakening), and Aileen is helping get him back on track.
Wait—that’s the problem!
Shu was so focused on growing up, he forgot who he was! He’s Xiyuan’s protégé, for heck’s sakes! He grew up learning every possible artistic discipline; nay, he was a child violin prodigy! If he can’t talk to girls yet, he’ll bust out his father’s violin and speak with his bow.
The magic of the violin caused a girl in a blue dress to teleport behind him and go from 0-100 undressing him with her eyes. Now she’s just standing 9 feet behind him, waiting for him to notice her.
Shu calls her over; she introduces herself as Chantel Lucas. More importantly, even though Shu is wrapped up in conversation with Mariana, everything about Chantel’s body language screams THIS IS MINE NOW. Look at her! She’s mentally peeing around him in a circle. She’s going to lick him so no one else can have him.
Her traits are Creative and Erratic.
She’s PERFECT.
Ok, go to the Spice Festival and hit on her.
Shu doesn’t have any trouble complimenting or kissing Chantel; something about her is special. (Some idiot didn’t take a screenshot of their first kiss.) As they both careen through relationship milestones at the speed of hormones, neither of them stop to process what’s happening.
The date continues with Chantel and Shu playing some B-ball together (read: attended a joint therapy session), flirting the whole time, until they’re ready to take the next step in their relationship.
This is where we end: Aileen, Chantel, and Shu went home; presumably to hack something to an unending loop of “Worship,” write “Mrs. Xishu Liu” in all the margins of her notebooks and put teal glasses on a body pillow, and be a teenage boy, respectively.
We’ll have to wait until next time to see how having one partner each works out for Aileen and Shu.
Teenage hormones are wild, gang. This is an intense relationship!
You (1) are completely correct and (2) ain’t seen nothing yet.
There is so much happening in that one pic. The kissing in one corner, the literal ghost doing… what’s he doing? Is he doing stand-up for his new stepson’s birthday? Cause man, if so, congrats. That’s some dedication. I get a feeling Bernard is going to be a great (step)dad. Also, god, that reminds me of how much it sucks that we don’t get to have ghost babies in this iteration. How cute would a lil’ Bernard ghost baby have been! Can’t believe they took that possibility from us, man. Also love the fact that Bernard is being a more supportive parent here than Shu’s actual dad. In his defense, plants *are* good as hell. I’ve got about 10 of them in my tiny, tiny 12 m² tiny house (5 of which are dead or dying), so I totally get Xiyuan’s sentiment here.
Man, poor Shu… girls do be scary, of course, especially ones named Elsa. I want to take a moment here to applaud Shu for his absolutely impeccable fashion sense. Those purple sweatpants with that bright yellow tank top and those ugly-shade-of-yellow sneakers? A-ma-zing. I were a Sim, I’d be all over that. Not to mention those glasses!
I’m rooting so hard for Aileen. She deserves the fucking world, especially after all that happened. Also, damn, is she ripped! I’m digging it.
Chantel and Shu… I ship it. I’m rooting for them almost as hard as I am rooting for Aileen, here.
Too bad Bernard hates kids and doesn’t have the Comedy skill!
Shu’s fashion sense is very much “I’m hot enough to pull off weird shit.” Idk how much documentation there is of his crop-top phase. Those glasses are freaking everything to me. As for Aileen and Shutel—you wait. Just you wait.
He has a crop top phase? Hell yes! As you’ll find in my sequel, many a character (specifically hot vampires who, after centuries of being hot and fashionable, came to consider themselves to be above fashion) in there are all about the crop tops too. I can’t believe we were only given one male crop top by EA/Maxis… it’s a crime.
Also gotta admit I’m not sure I should be really scared for Aileen and Shutel here or not… I think I’m gonna be scared.
Oh no—I can’t find any pics of his crop top phase! I’ll just make him work out to show off his athletic-wear crop top.
So I usually stay away from stories about the occult because every mainstream story about vampires/ghosts/wizards/elves/what-have-you is the same damn thing with the same damn ideas and minor variations on the same damn trope, and relying too much on existing occult tropes stifles creativity, IMO, by encouraging world building within an existing structure instead of rewarding ideas that are truly new. But as I read more people’s blogs, I’m realizing that this is more a complaint about the mainstream media than the occult itself. Two of my favorite SimLit stories feature vampires (yours and Baking By Death), but the fact that they’re vampires isn’t central to the story, so the authors can deal with more nuanced consequences. Like that an immortal being could either stop caring and wear silly BS or have old-school taste (see feroshgirl’s Vlad, who wants to know if “you’re wearing THAT?!”). That shit’s funny! Why isn’t popular occult media more like that?
Doesn’t mean I’m going to, in a million years, ever going to download the vampire or magic packs. Or make a mermaid. (Bernard forced me to acknowledge the existence of ghosts by being too cute.)
I haven’t been too into mainstream occult media for that reason either. From what I know the only “mainstream media” that does have a funny take and explore the topic amazingly is What We Do In The Shadows. I don’t even know how I got into the occult for my gameplay and stories, cause I used to ALWAYS do realism gameplay… I think the main reason I went with the occult eventually was I could justify immortalizing all of my favorite Sims that way, hehe. 😅 Also that’s the reason why I’m not a fan of Caleb Vatore either, cause man he’s just such a mainstream type of vamp. He does feature in this story because I was too lazy to make any new vampires at that point LOL, but man…
Hah Aileen is a trainwreck and I’m loving it. Teen Shu is adorable, he looks so innocent but damn, that budoir 😆
Get ready to have opinions on Shu.
There were so many moments in this one that made me chuckle. Your writing is hilarious, man! I’d quote said moments back to you but I think that’d be annoying.
I can’t get over how much Chantel looks like Taylor Swift to me.
YOU CALLED THE TAY-TAY THING SO EARLY
Spectacular, really. The next person to make that parallel made it almost a year later, and after she became even more Taylor Swift, too.
“Unfaithful spouse shame rooms,” that cracked me up. But man, I feel bad for Aileen, having to make nice with your ex and his new ghost husband. No wonder she wanted to take a nap.
Shu and Chantel seem like a good match, though I can see there being teenage drama down the line (not sure what yet). I always find it so crazy that sims can be partnered with someone in a few short sim hours. Like, really? Are you sure you really like this person or even know this person? I guess only having a few personality traits helps, lol.
Ohohoh, get freaking ready for Shu and Chantel.
Oh, for sure, the speed of these guys cracks me up XD
Ok i’ve decided how i’m going to do this: i will pick out my ONE favorite jest to shout out in the comments. Voilà, this chapter’s: “She’s mentally peeing around him in a circle. She’s going to lick him so no one else can have him.”
Man, this chapter is so old but that’s one of the bits I clearly remember writing.
Dunno this happens to other people, but sometimes I look back at things I wrote and think “past Dolly, you were freaking nuts.”
Is Yuan genuinely interested in plants all of a sudden, or specifically those plants, or is it more like “avoid, avoid, avoid”? B/C I am going to give Yuan the benefit of the doubt that he’s NOT treating those plants like a child he doesn’t have (especially at his sim-child’s birthday).
I am strangely into Shu’s party-wear choice, despite being heavily against the color mustard yellow. It works for him. I will second that DAAAAAAAAAAYUM. All aboard the Shu-Shu train, because we all want a ride. Now that I’ve done my job for this comment…
“Costco ordered too much man candy and she hasn’t gotten her free sample yet.” BAHAHAHA. Who amongst us hasn’t gone to Costco during lunch to fill up on samples?! And more appropriately so, one taste was not sufficient for Aileen and needed to try Derrick and his hot ASStroNAUGHTY self once more. You go with your badass self in a closet! Enjoy that cake, bae!
Is Cruz honestly getting flirty with Shu?!?! LMAO. A baseball thought bubble too eh? I mean that could be read in all sorts of ways… A glove is something you insert your fist inside…. balls …. well that goes without saying…. then of course you have 1st base – home base and ….yup. Or perhaps they’re casually discussing baseball players in tight uniforms. Ah, youth.
Shu in that red robe (doing homework) looks like he’s already secured membership inside the Playboy Mansion LMAO.
Chantel and Shu look adorbs together. I nearly lost a lung laughing at your remark that she was circling him and would lick him to stake her claim! OHMYGAWDYES. All that was missing was Chantel giving Mariana the same side-eye that Aileen gave Shu in her Steve Jobs cosplay outfit shudder
” write “Mrs. Xishu Liu” in all the margins of her notebooks and put teal glasses on a body pillow, and be a teenage boy, respectively.” BAHAHA 1) THE TEENAGE DOODLINGS; and 2) Uhhhhh I am 99% certain that “be a teenage boy” means Shu will be using the tissue box, possibly more than once, before falling asleep.
LOVE so much about this. Your humor doesn’t fail and I love that it is throughout the story. Thanks for creating CT 😀