The Lucas/Liu/Haskins Conglomerate: To Being an ‘Us’ for Once

The smell of lobster cooked on a cheap stove and the sound of technical drills performed at a steadily increasing tempo clash for sensory dominance directly outside the 12th story window of an Arts District apartment.

Their progenitor pauses to admire the acoustics of his living room; the partially tiled floor had a wonderful effect on his tone, in contrast to the carpeted rooms of his A.(I./A.)B., counterproductive to soundproofing as it was. So that was one plus to leaving his dads with a two-finger salute and recruiting ~15% of his girlfriends to live in this semi-shitty apartment. Worrying about money counted as another, giving him just enough of a boundary to work with while preserving his mental freedom. Shu wrote an essay in high school, not that long ago, about the irony of restrictions being needed to maintain freedom, so he didn’t have the fantasies of limitlessness that some men his age do. But lately paradoxes like this are out-prioritized by the thesis statement of Wu-Tang Clan’s C.R.E.A.M.

Any excitement shown by our protagonist is negligible compared to that of Chantel Lucas (i.e., Girlfriend Zero; i.e., Don’t Look Now Shu She’s Behind You Again). Getting her boyfriend’s attention is almost trivial now. He sleeps in her room a solid three-fifths of the time.

Chantel had ambitions to become a great musician someday, likely inspired by her sole hobby as a teenager. Said hobby prevented her from taking any positive steps in this direction—if not the consensual stalking, then the lack of understanding of cause and effect characteristic of her species—but it wasn’t a complete wash, since she can feed two birds with one birdfeeder here and barge into the bathroom while Shu is showering to ask for lessons. Here she is at some party, being taught the B♭ minor scale on one of Xiyuan’s obnoxiously expensive heirlooms.

The other ~7.5% of girlfriends, Genevieve Haskins (i.e., Two! Common! Traits!), shares her boyfriend’s YOLO attitude. She and Shu have an unspoken agreement to let the other know if any parties are going on, and to drop everything and attend if so. But party animal isn’t a job, and recall Method Man et al.’s statement up there, so Gen works on her pro gaming career between pole dancing classes and passing out on benches. Here she is pwning Trace Beam for the world to see.

For this particular disconnected thruple, the drama is nonexistent. The Player reward would make things one-sided if Gen or Chantel had interest in dating anyone else, but one is just here for S&G and one is Chantel, respectively. Having to explain the situation is more annoying. “Shu” is generally regarded as either a sarcastic or obvious response to “who are you dating?”, depending on which social groups the asker frequents, so both women have gotten used to explaining that yes, they actually do live with him. Like in the same house. Gen invented a system to illustrate the hierarchy using tonal variation: there are “girlfriends,” girlfriends (also Max. That’s still going on), and GIRLFRIEND-girlfriends, where the latter group has only three people.

And so they bonded over having their shared dating life questioned so many times the explanation itself becomes a standup routine.

This would potentially be where a fourth party enters to create drama, fifth if we include Shannon, but surprising these guys in their space is risky. A Kramer type bursts through the front door without knocking. Never again.

After a couple weeks, the conglomerate settles into what could be considered a normal groove for them. Observe.

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After brushing and flossing, a five-step morning skincare ritual, and a thorough shower, Shu discusses the latest sports game with his girlfriends, sends them both off to work with a kiss, and heads to one of San Myshuno’s or Windenburg’s swankiest establishments to collect date rewards.

This woman (name and traits lost to time, ehh) hasn’t met him yet. Now she has. Kendra, left, texts Charlie something close to “oh god, he’s doing it again,” where “oh god” is meant to convey wry amusement more than surprise.

He chats her up, inviting her to a date at this exact club. She agrees.

Part of Shu’s job success involves exploiting a certain phenomenon where, on top of there being no good men in this town (Aileen’s Theorem), a certain mod defaults the straight-to-gay marriage ratio at 50% and only considers male Sims as marriage candidates for a selected single person. Hence, this universe currently has 50% straight couples, 50% gay male couples, no lesbian couples (a tragedy!), and loads of single women his mom’s age, all of who are dealing with the same central conflict as his mom. Best not to read into that too closely.

He earns gold for performing ten social interactions plus randomized additional goals (sit down! You have to), chooses not to make use of the closet for this particular date, and immediately asks to end the flirtationship.

He then heads to the bar to pitch his presence/purpose to another woman.

Such are the hazards of the job—Shu keeps track of his relationships and doesn’t have a scorched-earth policy, but if two clients in the same place have a similar build, outfit, haircut, and earrings, it can be hard to remember who you’re dating at the moment. Red Jacket 1 complicated things by continuing to pursue Shu while he was on his other date.

You know; standard stuff.

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Nighttime is when Shu checks Plumbook for parties, then either turns that mother out with Gen or performs chores/emotional labor at home. Do note that Shu is too unstructured to stick to even this routine, so the above only covers half his week. It’s safe to assume a couple days are spent playing instruments in several locations with or without Chantel and the rest is a mystery.

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Chantel is beginning to question Shu’s ability to commit.

She’s steadily climbing the ranks at her music job, all right, but occasionally loses the ability to focus as Shu-centric thoughts dominate her attention. Basketball wasn’t helping. The healthy solution—bringing him to work—was something she tried to implement by cartoonishly insisting he join the music career at times s.t. cutting the interactions down to the prompt/response and piecing them together would produce an amusing montage. And he tried. For a whole week! But putting Shu in a rabbit-hole job is like putting a fish on a bicycle in a barrel and shooting it.

More distressingly, he hasn’t proposed yet. Her wedding binder sits in a very conspicuous spot in the middle of the floor of her room, or on the bed pillow she prefers less, or attached to the mop handle with hair ties, so he knows what’s expected. She’s taken to curating a mental list of times he could have asked her to marry him, but didn’t, and going through it at regular intervals. The Romance Festival is an example—the one she left fiancé-less and on fire.

But the alternative solution of “dump the bastard” is hellish. She would never leave Shu. He hasn’t shown any desire to end the relationship, and he consistently stuck by her all this time, but the fear’s still there, operating in the background despite her best efforts to quash it. And she swears though it might seem like she’s complaining, this is the happiest she’s ever been.

He could be leading up to something special. Maybe next week.

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Tech enthusiast Gen has a documented hatred of rules to the point that she doesn’t conform to other rebels, so no one can tell if she’s cool or not; and an undocumented hatred of the word “guru” to describe those in the middle two groups of S.T.E.M., both for its cultural appropriative undertones and because she feels it oversells those types of skills in a damaging way. Especially if you’re calling yourself a guru—for fuck’s sakes, people, show, don’t tell. Real gurus don’t have to go around telling people they’re gurus. They just exist.

(If Gen had spoken to Aileen or Ana more, she may have realized the next step is Tech Enlightenment, and people who are enlightened have no desire to teach others, because all their desires are gone. They are decoupled from the outside world. Hence, it is impossible for any of the information we have on the process of becoming enlightened to be written by an actual enlightened person. So maybe the evolution of a tech guru is someone who has rid themselves of all desire to work and hates documenting their code.)

Gen’s top priorities are keeping in good cardiovascular shape so she can do sick dance moves and there is no second priority.

Forearm exercises, in particular, help her to avoid wrist strain from her competitive gaming career. The VR booths at GeekCon blew her mind—real life is dex-broken, giving her a huge advantage, and the technology could be used for some dancing or rhythm games in the future. She’d play the heck out of those.

But the highlight of Gen’s day is when one of either her or Shu’s friends tells them about a party zero minutes in advance, upon which she covers her sternum and collarbone area in two different colors of body glitter (guess which two. No, go on, guess) and dances until she dissolves into the synaesthetic blend of pulsing beats and lights. She lived for that; the strength of the stimuli meant she was feeling nearly the same thing as the person beside her. Give her enough time and the boundaries would blur. That’s what made her feel close to others, especially Shu, not words or opinions or actions. That visceral experience.

Then she and her dude pass out on adjacent benches. She’s getting pretty good at it.

If any deities are reading this, please make sleep a skill that can be improved instead of something millions of people can’t do and then they’re screwed forever. That would be great.