2.1 Insights to be Gained

Another day of daycare... 

Pancho says he's here to "help out" with the daycare... but Dot's pretty sure he's just here to play with the toys. 

Quartz is offered extra-credit if he brings a fish to science class. This is why he willingly stands outside, for hours, breathing in that "fish paste" scent he loves so much. 

It won't be long before he graduates. He's already agreed to move in with his dad when school is finished, who in his old age finds it increasingly difficult to care for his young daughter with Chase. 

Dot tries to split her time equally between her sisters, Lawanda, and Judd. 

Though sometimes the kids don't always get along... 

When Aloiso tries to sit down to do his homework, Quartz moves his dirty plate. "Sorry, this seat's taken." 

Why can't they get along? 

Dot asks Aloiso this very question. 

"He's just so....rude. And complains. He went fishing for a few hours and I think spent an hour in the shower scrubbing "the smell" away. Then he snapped at me for needing to use the toilet." 

"He's not easy to get along with sometimes," Dot concedes, "But it would be nice if you two could get along better..." 

Aloiso snorts, "Tell that to him, not me." 

Still, when Quartz comes outside to eat, Aloiso tries to make conversation. 

"Hey, maybe we could help Dot out today, together...?" 

Quartz nods, "Sounds good." 

Sometimes not every conversation is a battle. 

Good thing too, looks like Dot will be swamped today... 

Speaking of swamped... 

Damaris is running all over town to give sing-o-grams. Seems like lots of kids are graduating soon and their parents want to give them something nice for it. 

Damaris thinks of Quartz. She should get him something nice... 

Pancho, as usual, is running around where he probably shouldn't be. 

Now that he's older, though, his curfew isn't as strict. 

Kathy and Cartina see Pancho running around in the woods near their backyard and call him over. 

"Where ya going?" Kathy asks, "Forget your way home?" 

"Erm-," 

"Happens to me all the time," Kathy continues, "One time I was walking home from school, then I saw a butterfly, and chased it-," 

"-all the way to the beach. Then you got distracted by a kite, that actually turned out to be a bird," Catrina finishes for her sister, "She tells this story a lot." 

"It's a good one! Besides, I don't think Pancho's heard it before, right?" 

"I don't think so..." 

"Want to hear some more?" 

"Sure, I got a curfew to beat anyways," Pancho smiles good-naturedly. 

Quartz suddenly feels...older and more mature. 

So many insights to be gained! 

Like what to do when your house catches on fire! 

Aloiso screams. Damaris bravely fights the flames. Only Dot thinks of calling for help. 

Pancho walks in just as a firefighter comes barreling in. 

"Where's the fire!?" 

"Oh, my mother put it out..." 

"It was huge!" Aloiso contributes meaningfully to the conversation. 

They get 200 simoleons to compensate for the damages before the firefighter leaves. 

Replacing the stove and countertop was very expensive, which means Damaris is out bright and early the next day giving sing-o-grams. 

"Aw, DeAndre is so sweet..." Chase is happy with her present. 

Damaris feels daring enough to audition for a gig at this hoity-toity place. They've gotta give her a slot, right? 

Nope! Despite being the only singer in the entire city, Damaris is still denied. 

"This is...this is an injustice to my fans!" Damaris splutters angrily. 

"Uh huh. Tell me once you've hit the top 10  in the record charts, hon." 

Dot came here to belatedly celebrate her young adult birthday. 

I'm proud of you, an all too familiar whisper says to her. 

Jaron Jones-Goode stares in alarm when Dot suddenly starts crying. 

When she looks up, no one's there. 

But she feels her father's presence for the rest of the evening. 

Unable to really enjoy herself at the club, Dot goes to the library. She opens her email and finds several messages from a dating website. She sighs- she set it up after getting her laptop from her father, as a way to distract herself- and clicks the email to log in to the website. She's about to delete her profile when she sees the profile pictures of the men who have messaged her. 

She frowns. She knows one of them is definitely married. She writes a message back about how he "must have sent her a pm by mistake" and how it would be a shame if his wife were to see it. 

She looks at the time, and shakes her head. She's been here too long. She should go home. 

With the daycare going well and Damaris earning exorbitant amounts of money for her sing-o-grams, I can finally expand the upstairs into proper bedrooms. 

Ume and Una get a very pink girly room as wish-fulfillment for Damaris. 

With Quartz now living with his father, the boys' room only has a bunkbed. Damaris did her best with the decoration, getting their favourite colours (orange and white) on the walls and their beds. 

During Quartz's high school years, he actually did go to prom and ended up romantic interests with a vanilla sim. I have immigration turned on but the town's population is actually pretty low, so I decided to let her move into another household and be a permanent resident. I also edited her looks. Here she is- Shanda Crowe. Her favourite colour is not actually blue. 

The twins also age up. 

Their differences in appearance only get more pronounced with age, despite having the same ears and the same hair style. 

They get along much better than Quartz and Aloiso ever did. 

Dot often finds them playing together in their huge yard. 

Dot squints at the strange sculpture near the corner of the yard. Has that always been there? 

"Dooot! Come play with us!" Ume begs. 

"Not now, girls. I'm having lunch! I'll join you later." 

When Dot looks back up, the sculpture is gone. 

She does notice later, however, a strange statue near their front door. Her mother's fans sometimes leave her gifts. 

It too disappears when she turns her back. 

The family can now also afford a better car. Dot decides to take it for its first drive and gets her siblings to come with her to the park. 

"Are we there yeeeeet?" classic car conversations ensue. 

Her brothers and sisters unload into the park, all running in different directions. Dot decides to let them blow off some steam before wrangling them in for some family activities. 

" Barnaby! How are you?" Dot smiles at one of her old friends from high school. 

"You haven't called me...or texted me...did we mean nothing?" he pouts. 

"Huh?" it takes Dot a second to understand what he means. "Ohhh, you mean prom? Barnaby...we only had one dance together." 

"And I kissed you!" 

"On the cheek." 

"But I really liked you! I thought it was obvious." 

Dot frowns, "How was I supposed to know if you didn't say anything? I'm not a mind reader. You also didn't contact me at all afterwards..." 

Seeing that Barnaby is still upset, Dot pats his shoulder. "It's too bad that we've had this misunderstanding... but I think I'm too old for you anyways. It wouldn't be fair on either of us to wait until you graduate..." just as Dot was finishing up high school, Barnaby was finishing his first year. 

Barnaby tries to save face, "Yeah...I suppose you're right. Lots of fish in the sea, huh?" 

Dot smiles weakly, "Exactly. Good luck with school, Barnaby. I'll see you around." 

He watches Dot walk away silently, before going to the other side of the park to see his date. 

"What was that about?" Annemarie asks curiously. 

"I have class with her brother. We were just making some small talk," he half-lies. He has class with Pancho, but they don't ever talk in class. 

Still, Annemarie accepts his explanation and then drags him to the facepainting booth.

Dot herself watches her brother get into an eating contest. 

"Don't get sick!" she calls out to him. 

"Stooop you're embarrassing me," Aloiso whines, a blush creeping onto his face. His skin is so pale that it looks more like bruising. 

"Ew...Alo!" Dot has to close her eyes when her brother stops to vomit. 

"Are you ok?" she asks when he's done. 

He gives her a reassuring hug, "Yeah, never better..." 

Aloiso is very surprised, and concerned, when his sister then suddenly bursts into tears. 

"Dot! Dot, what's the matter?" Aloiso says soothingly to his older sister. 

"I just...suddenly, I missed my dad..." she sniffs. "I wanted to come to this festival with him someday...we just never had the time." 

"Well...we have time now! Let's do something together! All of us, come on!" Aloiso takes her by the hand to start tracking down their siblings.

It takes some time to get them all together, but they're able to get a nice picture together in the photo booth. 

"Thanks, Alo... I really needed that." 

"I'm happy it helped," he starts getting teary-eyed himself. He wipes his eyes. 

Ume, completely oblivious to the emotional turmoil of her siblings, impatiently taps her foot. "Can I go play princess now?" 

Dot laughs, "Go ahead. But don't go too far! Stay in the park!" 

"Ok!" Ume dashes off. 

They stay at the festival until well after dark. Aloiso finds himself playing soccer with Molly Coddle-Prudence. 

"I'll go easy on you!" she calls out. She's not particularly sporty, but did used to play soccer in high school. 

"Ha! Hit me with your best shot!" 

Molly shrugs, "Here goes nothin'." 

Aloiso blocks the ball easily. 

"Wait until I give it a real kick," Molly says. 

"Bring it ooooon!" 

Dot, tired from playing with her sisters, is taking a break near the fountain. One of Aloiso's competitors from the eating contest approaches her. 

"Hi, I was just wondering if your brother's alright. He threw up so much..." 

"Oh, he's fine! He's playing soccer over there." 

He smiles, "I'm glad he's alright. Hey are you related to that singer...what's her name...Pale Lamp?" 

Dot laughs, "Pale Vamp. Yeah, she's my mom. How'd you guess?" 

"You two look almost identical, it wasn't difficult to deduce..." he trails off, leaving something unspoken. 

"Something bothering you?" 

"I was going to ask you the same question," he replies, "Your eyes are swollen, so I guess you've been crying... but I don't want to pry." 

Dot shrugs, "No it's alright. My father passed away a while ago and it's been hard on me... but being here with my siblings makes me feel better." 

"Ah, so you're a people person?" 

Dot smiles, "I guess you could say that. How about you...? I don't know your name." 

"Justin, and you are...?"

"Dot." 

"Hmm... I think I notice a lot of things about people, if that's what you mean. But I don't have a crazy amount of friends or anything. Especially since I work in a science lab..." 

"Really? What do you do?" 

"I breed fish and robots." When Dot laughs his expression remains serious. 

"Oh...you actually... really?" 

Justin shrugs, "Lots of things are possible with genetic re-sequencing. And money." So much money. 

"But what's the point...?" 

Justin scratches his head, "I have often wondered the same thing. I don't have a clue." 

"So you're smart enough to change DNA...but not enough to know why?" she teases. 

"A scientist's dilemma, trust me."  

After they both chuckle Dot sits down. She pats the place next to her on the fountain, and Justin sits down too.

 Dot has more questions. "Tell me about you. " 

Justin nods, "Hmm... well, I've been messing around with computers and appliances since I was old enough to type... I once disassembled the coffee machine at work and couldn't put it back together. My boss was not happy with me." 

"When was that? Were you new?" 

Justin scratches his neck, "It was last week..." 

Dot snickers at him. "I only know how to fix plumbing... me and my younger brother once spent two hours before school trying to fix our shower, toilet, and sink." She shudders at the memory of all the water pooling around them. "I don't know what we were thinking... but we couldn't afford a repairman at the time." 

"Next time, you could call me," Justin offers with a smile. 

"Then I would need your number..." 

After a pause to exchange contact information, Justin continues with his life story, "No family, though, definitely not as big as yours." From his count, there are two teenage boys here who look exactly like Dot and two girls who have called out to her since he saw her at the eating competition. He can't imagine having so many siblings. "I was an only child. After university, I moved here to work at the lab. So far, no girlfriend or any kids or anything like that." 

"That sounds a bit lonely..." 

Justin shrugs, "Not really. Or at least, not until now. I haven't seen anyone who seems so...happy with theirs, until I met you." 

"That's...sad. Especially since we've only known each other for like, five minutes now?" 

"By my count, it's been at least six..." It's actually been nearly two hours, not that either of them are keeping track. Still, they both stand up, knowing that they should leave soon.

Dot laughs, then has to stop when a lump forms in her throat. "I'm sorry, just all this talk about family..."

"....makes you think about your father," Justin finishes for her. 

"Yeah..." 

He reaches out to hug her, surprising Dot a little. But she's grateful for the contact. 

"Are you always this nice to strangers?" Dot laughs. 

"You seemed to need it." 

"Thank you." She surprises him this time. 

"...are you going to answer that?" he says after a stunned silence. 

"I'm sorry, I was too forward, right? I didn't want to make you uncomfortable..." 

"No! No, it's fine, really. But, ah, maybe we should go out sometime? Get to know each other better past the tragic backstories?" 

He isn't as surprised when she kisses him the second time. 

"It's a deal." 

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AN: Blaaaah I hope the romance doesn't seem too forced. I was having real problems finding someone for Dot. There were so few sims in her age range at all, and most of them were either still in high school or already married. She became fast friends with Justin in game (who is actually Damaris's age...yeah...) and single so I figured let's go for it. I tried to make up for the quick romance with lots of conversation. I'm sure that was very exciting to read. 

I also messed up with Wei. He actually passed away in the club but for some reason I thought he had way earlier. Just accept his ghost appearing as a mystery... 

Justin's traits are: 

- Light sleeper

- Genius

- Handy

- Perceptive (hence how he seems to guess a lot of things about Dot in this conversation...not at all a cheap plot device, no sirree...) 

- Computer whiz

I was also super sure that I had photos of Quartz moving out. Woops. He appears sporadically in my other photos so he will appear again...sometime.