An unreasonable fear, distrust, or hatred of strangers, foreigners, or anything perceived as foreign or different.
~ From Dictionary.com
Fear breeds hatred. Hatred breeds violence. Violence is fueled by aggression, which runs rampant through the all-human, all-male household. Caught in the crossfire is a boy in his mid-teens, bound to one family by blood, and the other by friendship. All he wants is for the two sparring households to make up and move on, but what will it take for that to happen?
Author's Notes
For those of you not familiar with The Sims 2, the game comes with three default neighbourhoods: Pleasantview, Strangetown and Veronaville, all coming with their own characters and their histories (that you can elaborate on, as they tend to be pretty vague). This story is set in Strangetown and focuses on two particular families, although it does feature others too. This story is posted on Insimenator.net, where it has needed to be watered down to be suitable for a 13+ audience - this is the uncensored, mature version, complete with erotic scenes on occasion. It was going to be a two-parter, but it's grown so long I've had to make it a trilogy instead.
As you may be able to tell, I've put a lot of effort into this one, mostly meaning a testing/enhancing of my Photoshopping and picture-taking skills. You may also have noticed, I've changed the looks on a few sims, but I made sure you can still recognise them. There is/may be a few issues with the meshes, but I can't help those sadly.
This story is mainly about the aforementioned family feud, but there are sub-stories that add twists and turns to the main one. It's also in a different style to that you've previously seen from me (if you're familiar with my other stories, that is), and the chapters are longer and more picture-heavy (advance warning for those of you with slower connections). You may ask why I did such-and-such with so-and-so - this is just the way I imagine them to be for myself, or maybe even the way they act in my game - not elaborating much here, but one sim who may be horrible in other games is a sweetie in mine.
A word about the setting; my other stories are based in England as that 'hood was completely custom, whereas this one was made by Maxis. It's obvious from things like mailboxes and police uniforms that it was set in the States, so that's where I've kept it - now, I face the challenge of an English author working with American characters and settings. Although I think I've pulled it off pretty well, don't hesitate to pull me up on any mistakes I make, I'm bound to slip up here and there.
Special Thanks
AxelVal on InSim for stepping in as proof-reader
Joe Mulcahy and his video series for inspiring me to rescue Strangetown from the depths of my Program Files folder; also for providing other resources and allowing me to pick his brains regarding certain scenes
SaraMK at MATY for fixing the default neighbourhoods, and her tutorial on merging them
Decorgal at MTS2 for her posing hacks (especially her custom poses box)
Spookymuffin for tweaking Stargazer's main lighting mod
HystericalParoxysm at MTS2 for her Seasons lighting mod
XPTL297 and alkaloid for their default hair overrides
Oepu for her gorgeous skintones and whoever made them default
All you other CC creators and modders out there
Hope you enjoy the story!
