SimTopi Founders: The Markelly Family

[simtopi]

It starts with Brandon Markelly, a fortune Sim and his identical twin daughters, Lydia and Denise. When they moved to SimTopi, Brandon was a single father and hopeful businessman. He lost his wife years before to a rare disease so he was determined to be a good father to his twins.

Denise enjoys being the elder of the twins (born a few minutes earlier than her sister). She’s a clever and vivacious child who seems to be very aware of the world around her and her curiousity has often has gotten her in trouble in the past. Lydia is the opposite of Denise, shy, quiet and a little socially awkward. She is more interested in daydreaming than paying attention in class, and while her head is in the clouds, her grades tend to slip. Denise is protective of Lydia because of Lydia’s inherent naivety.

Brandon knows that his daughters are growing up, yet he’s busy chasing promotions, trying to earn money to open up his own business. He’s a good man, but he wants a good female influence for his girls. Down the street, Abigail Coontz moved in and being a good neighbour he went over to welcome her to the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, Abigail is a bit of a gold digger and when she first met Brandon, she only saw his earning potential.

It didn’t take long for Abigail to move in on Brandon. She was accustomed to using men for her own various needs. The last one was young Nate Marlen, who was the brother of her rival, Desmond Marlen. Desmond was an up and coming chef in the restaurant where she worked. His style was so unique and eclectic that his dishes were the talk of SimTopi and customers repeatedly would request his services even when she was working that night. Abigail tried to use Nate to get at Desmond. However, when her plan failed, she turned to Brandon who was prime to be deceived.

All it took was some charm and fake attention lathered on his children. Before long, he proposed to her and that same night she moved in.

However, Denise, being the bright one, could see through Abigail and the two instantly detested eachother. Lydia was far too kind and liked having Abigail around even though she could see her sister’s points. When the two became teenagers, Brandon schmoozed and with the help of Abigail’s cooking, managed to get them enrolled in private school. Not long after, they moved to a beautiful two storey condo in a recently restored and renovated building in Serverdown village to be closer to his business.

Denise was still not able to reconcile the fact that her dad married someone she thought was repulsive, in and out.

Brandon took a suggestion from a good friend and fellow entrepeneur, Malcolm Landgrabb IV. He bought a modern art gallery in Bluewater Village and took it to a level 6 business within a few days. With a bit more money, he bought a new space in Simtopi and called it ConMod Art, where he currently spends most of his time. As work got busier, he hired Nick Tranh to help manage the shop.

While working there one particularly busy afternoon, an old friend of his walked in, Felicia May.

Felicia was an attractive Sim working her way through the medical field. Brandon remembered her as positive and funny and they shared a lot of ideas.

He was surprised how good she looked after all this time. Felicia felt the same way about Brandon… he looked a lot better since his wife’s departure, but she could still tell that he looked stressed. Brandon wondered if she still played a mean game of chess. She took that as an offer and accepted an invitation for a chess game at his place.

Back at home Abigail was angry about how late Brandon would stay at his art gallery.

She had been trying to get him to open a restaurant for her but he would always demur from those conversations saying how difficult and expensive for him to run a restaurant. He preferred the less hectic business of selling art and home decor. And now he had a new “friend” that he brought over to play chess with that took up more of his time. He explained that he needed to practice his logic skills to get a promotion and Felicia was ideal to help him with it.

As well, Felicia was an old friend, an intern he met at the hospital where his wife stayed before she died. She did not treat his wife, but would often stay after her shift was over to keep Brandon company by playing chess with him in the hospital’s rec room. Brandon spent a lot of time in that hospital to be with his wife, and keeping his mind busy was the only thing that kept him sane. Felicia’s company was a godsend and he never had any other kinds of intentions about her. The implication insulted him.

The only thing that Abigail took from that story was that Brandon still referred to his daughters’ mother as “his wife”.

He knew she was unhappy but he was far too busy to deal with her needs. His daughters were teenagers now, and he was worried that he could no longer hold their attention so he spent a lot more time with them rather than with Abigail. He constantly thought of Abigail as another teenager in an adult body, but his patience with her was wearing thin. Abigail would take her frustrations out on Denise who argued with her constantly. It got to a point where Denise nearly ran away from home.

Other than arguing with Abigail, Denise would spend her time making fun of her, and dragging her sister on shopping trips to the mall just to get out of Abigail’s hair.

At the Blackberry Schoolhouse Cafe, she first met Evan Shaugnessy who was working as a cashier there.

She’d invite him over once in a while and they even snuck out together once to catch a late night horror show. Eventually the two became more than friends and shared eachother’s first kiss.

Lydia wasn’t too concerned with Abigail as her sister was. She saw that her dad was happy and secretly she was happy that she had a mother, even one as insensitive as Abigail was. Lydia had other things on her mind, namely a crush on a boy she met in highschool before she moved off to private school.

Clive Baird was a senior graduating that year while she was still a freshman. He saw her one day walking by his home and invited her in. They spent the evening together just talking and watching TV. He already was going steady with another girl, but still Lydia wished that she was his girlfriend. Once in a while she’d call Clive. He was in college now, and always seemed surprised that Lydia would call. He sounded stressed out and busy and their conversations were brief but she still liked to talk to him.

Everything came to a head one day when Malcolm Landgrabb IV called for Brandon. He wasn’t home, but Abigail took the call and had a lovely conversation with him. She invited Malcolm out for lunch to talk about her business ideas and Malcolm reluctantly agreed. At lunch, Abigail was back in full form. She pulled all the stops to seduce Malcolm, and though he resisted at first, it only took a few sweet words to play on his ego.

Malcolm was inherently a competetive man, so the idea that his friend’s wife was hitting on him appealed to that base instinct. He drove her home and in an awkward moment in the kitchen, Abigail and Malcolm began their affair. They didn’t know that Denise had come home from school and had caught them making out.

That day, Brandon was promoted to CEO, so he was able to come home an hour earlier than he normally did. Denise was waiting outside and told her father casually that something was cooking in the kitchen. Brandon thinking that it was his wife’s lovely dinner, went over and found Abigail and Malcolm in there. His patience with Abigail was about over.

First Brandon confronted his old “friend” Malcolm:

He and Malcolm got into a brawl, something Denise didn’t realize would happen. She wanted Abigail to get what she deserved but she didn’t want to see her dad fight. Lydia was the most upset and ran up to her room, distraught while Abigail just stood there and cheered.

Brandon soundly won the fight and kicked Malcolm out of his home. Abigail was exhilirated by the excitement over her, but was brought back down when Brandon demanded a divorce.

Soon it was just Brandon, Lydia and Denise again, though Denise’s victory was stained. Brandon was depressed and barely talked for weeks, throwing himself into his work.

As much as Denise was glad that Abigail had moved out, it bothered her to see her dad overwork himself so much. But that was the way he was… he threw himself into things to keep his mind busy so he wouldn’t have to deal with emotional pain. Lydia was upset at first… she hated to see her family broken up and her father depressed. But she knew it was for the best and saw what Denise saw; that Abigail cheated on her dad and wasn’t good for him. Like Denise, she wanted the best for him.

Up next… another beginning!