Insimenator.org

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The name Astor is usually accompanied by the thought of fame, fortune...perfection. But we are not related to John Jacob Astor, by blood or by fortune. My father, Edward Astor, unfortunately married a woman named Samantha. At the time, he knew her well, but didn't know her well enough to the know the person she didn't want him to know.

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Samantha became pregnant with their first child, my older brother, and even then Dad didn't notice. He was too happy to notice anything besides the fact that the woman he "loved" was going to have his baby.

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But even pregnant, she would go behind his back and love others. It was always more than one, but Dad would only ever find out about one of them. Me and my brother, however, would always secretly know that wasn't the truth.

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Henry Astor was their first son, and Dad loved him so much, and again he was blinded by his own happiness.

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Shortly after Henry, I was born, and I was named Craig Astor.

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After I was born, Dad started catching on to Samantha. She'd be out late without her phone, come home at two or three in the morning.

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Without knowing it, they fought just downstairs, and Samantha would always start it. Poking, shoving...anything to make Dad mad.

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Finally, after she came home so late, he told her to leave...

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...and she did so gladly, without once turning back to make sure Henry and I were happy. She didn't call to check on us and she never came by again to see us.

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Dad did what he could to make sure we were okay and happy.

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Henry would forever look up to Dad, and I think Dad would look up to Henry as well. I would sometimes catch him looking at him in an admiring way. Henry was always tough and made everyone sure that he was okay.

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And all the while, Dad never forgot about me. Henry was a demon on the piano and always played. Dad and I would dance or encourage him. He'd tried teaching me a few times, but I could never make my hands go together all at once.

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By the time I was a teenager, everything that had been around when Samantha was there was gone. The wall color had changed, pictures were put up and taken down...

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But Henry was always glued to the piano.

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The walls of our--Henry and mine--room were littered with drawings I'd done, things that twisted menacingly around the bed. Dad would joke, saying I needed to have a talk with a psychiatrist. Though I'd laugh, I was kind of sure he was right.

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Dad and Samantha's wedding photo, which had once hung in their--his--bedroom was now nothing more than a memory he'd rather think of as a nightmare.

cool

is there a second part?

Ooh - good writing and nice beginning.  I hope there's more - I'd love to see it.  Craig is a beautiful teen!

I love the beginning :D
Can't wait to see where this goes, you write really well :)

Thanks, guys, but through lots of careful tweeking, there are now changes, which means I need to rewrite. And yes... Craig (in the newer version his name will be Briar) is a beautiful teen, but sadly none of those pictures show it well. For some reason, I can only take one picture at a time, and every time I take another it overwrites the last one. So all those were stills form videos I took.

Maybe I'll have to start posting from Photobucket instead of TinyPic, or do something else. Does anyone know a good way to get fairly good pictures from the Sims 2, other than using the camera?

By the way, here's a good picture of the updated Astor children.

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f308/hannah_greenwood/Snapshot.jpg)
Briar in back, Henry in front, standing on one leg. And yeah...there is a reason that Henry has a different skin color than Briar.

I'm not sure if you still need help on the pictures but I'd recommend that, if you have a program where you can crop/resize pics, you get a screenshot program.
A screenshot program has hotkeys where you can take a picture of the whole screen and place the pics somewhere on your computer.
The one I use when i need it is located here:

http://www.colorpilot.com/screenshot.html  

I'm pretty sure it's free and it works fine. If you don't like it try searching for something like:

'screenshot program' or 'screen capture program'

I hope i helped!

This is interesting, I can't wait for more!

or Gadwin printscreen :)

That was a really great start!! i hope you update soon :)

and oh, cool.. i was searching for a screen cap program that worked, wicked!

Awsome!

it's great so far, i love henry, whered'you get his outfit if you dont mind me asking? (11+12 pics)
*claps* more updates please!
:D
and... about the screenshots, are you looking in the storytelling folder or the neighbourhoods one? if you go into neighbourhoods then select whichever neighbourhood, then into storytelling all your pictures should be there. if not then i haven't got a clue. :happy8:

Oh, my God... That's where they all were! Oh, you are a photo ANGEL! I never would have found them.

Oh, and I got Henry's outfit (I'm guessing you mean the one with suspenders) from the myos website. It's a package of about five or six different suspender outfits, and they are BEAUTIFUL ingame.

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The smell of something burning woke me up again. I wondered for only a second if the house was on fire, and then wondered if we should try and save Henry's piano, but decided that if the house was on fire he could manage without the music for a while.

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Halfway down the steps, the smell got worse. "Briar, go back to bed," Dad yelled, not even turning to look at me.
"How do you know it's me?" I called back, not stopping.
"Because Henry doesn't like getting up in the middle of the night, and you make a habit out of it," Dad said, smiling.

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"So what are you burning?" I asked, rubbing my hands in front of the fire. I really didn't care as long as I got some warmth. Dad had said time and again that he would get a normal heating and cooling system that didn't have a mind of its own, but it never happened.

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"Oh, you know," he mumbled, "things that don't matter anymore."
Ah. That basically translated into, "Shit your mom left behind that she will never see again."

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"Okay..." I said, "but without this being a cypher, what are you burning?"

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"Her wedding dress," he said slowly. Her wedding dress? Wow, he'd actually done it. Henry and I had made fun of him, because that dress had stayed in his closet for years and he hadn't touched it once. I wondered what made him change his mind now.

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The story is fairly old, I guess. Older than me at least, and slightly older than Henry. Our mom would wait until Dad ran off to work (after kissing her goodbye and telling her that he loved her) and then she'd run to phone and call up one of her many, many "gentlemen callers".

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From there, she may as well have not had a husband, but she did, and even though she knew it all too well, she'd kiss the men to greet them.
One of the guys she was with actually had a family, though he was never caught. Dad said that all the fun was knowing they could have a younger, maybe prettier girl on the side without the commitment.

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I'm not defending my mom, but she knew how to work with what she had. It didn't take her long to get from one thing to another, because she and her "friend" to do everything while Dad was gone. And they got busy...quickly.

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They did it on a pull out mattress that was normally used for company, and quickly after she'd clean everything, spray air freshener around, and pretend to be the good wife just as her screw of the day ran out the back door.

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It wasn't long before the consequences of her misdeeds showed up in a very real way. She got pregnant. Without any reason to doubt, Dad was happy. He'd rub her belly and talk to it, smiling the whole time...

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...and never realize how unhappy our mom had gotten. Whether she was unhappy, knowing what she'd done and seeing that the consequences were showing, I can't say.

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Now, most women would have learned their lesson by this time and would have stopped in their tracks, or they would have at least taken nine month detour from their gallivanting. But my mother was a trooper, a worker bee, and would not let her good men down.

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Even if there was something very big between them.

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Dad always stayed up late on the nights that our mom didn't have her phone to make sure she got home safe.

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He only ever yelled at her once about coming home late, and even then she just waved him off, but at the slightest sight that our mom may or may not cry in her "delicate situation", Dad cracked.

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He apologized a second later about yelling at her. Me and Henry would always say, though never to his face, that he was too gullible to be married to someone with the slightest bit more brain than him.

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The baby was born only a few hours later in their bedroom, Dad not knowing what to do and running around like his ass was on fire.

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"Their"--her--first child was a boy, and they named him Henry. Dad knew just by looking at him; Henry wasn't his, but like I said and like you've seen, Dad just can't judge people, let alone a baby who didn't have any say in whether it wanted to be born or not.

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So, Dad held him close without thinking anything else about it. He never mentioned it, or yelled at our mom and say that he didn't have to raise Henry because he wasn't his. Dad just held him, and he held him more than our mom would ever hold either of us.

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When Henry was about two and a half, our mom was pregnant again, and now I was the lucky owner of a nine month ride in the slimy room of life, commonly known as the womb.

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I was born in November, but don't let my mom's face fool you. She was only happy that she didn't look like a walking beached skank whale anymore. Dad put in the skank only after she was gone.

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My first memory of life was of Henry trying to distract me from the yelling going on downstairs. Mom had come in late, again, and had kissed a guy on the front steps. It was one of the few times she openly cheated, and though Dad knew she did every time she went out, he never said anything about it...except for that night.

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"I don't care if you disrespect our marriage, but you doing that in front of the boys, Sam! You can't do that!" He yelled. Again, he wasn't thinking about himself and used us as his shield to try and show her the error of her ways. It wasn't TV. She wasn't suddenly going to become a good mom and we weren't suddenly going to live in the deep south and talk like gentlemen while mother cooked pies in the kitchen. It just wasn't going to happen.

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"What do you care, Ed? Only one of them is yours to take care of!" she yelled back, using Henry against him. Dad never wanted to show it, but the fact that Henry wasn't his did bother him. Henry was the proof that our mom was an avid cheater.

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"They're both mine, and ONLY mine, to take care of! I want you out, now!" he yelled, and whether he really meant it then, Henry and I will never really know, but she did leave.

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Our mom left without a second glance back. She didn't run upstairs to hold me and Henry again, and she didn't look back while she was drove her car out of the driveway. She just left.

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Dad came up just as soon as she was gone and hugged us both, saying it over and over...

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"It'll be okay, guys," he said, "It'll all be okay."
Kids and babies will believe anything their parents say.

Aw...Poor Henry.  It must be hard on him trying to be the good older brother. :(

He's a good boy. :angel: I hate doing mean things to him, so I usually don't. He's such a sweetheart...

You're awsome, you know that?

This is amazing. <3

This is interesting, I can't wait for more!

no problem :angel:

and thanks, ive kinda broken my game... but as soon as it gets sorted those suspenders are mine :D

great update!

How do you get all of your pics on here? I can only do one at a time. Help?

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Henry had called me downstairs right before three, his hands firmly set on his hips. "I'm going to work," he said turning his back when he was sure I heard him. "Normal rules still apply; Dad's not here, don't burn the house down, don't burn yourself, if you're going to eat then there are some hot dogs in the fridge..."

"Okay, okay, okay!" I yelled, pushing him out the door. "God, Dad, go before your boss kicks the crap outta you!" He rolled his eyes and hugged me, kissing me on the forehead, and then let me go.

"See ya later, Briar!" he called, waving back. "Oh! Dad's new girlfriend is coming for dinner tonight." We shared a mutual moment of distaste.

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I'm not the best brother in the world. I know I'm not, even though Henry says he likes how I make sure he gets in the carpool for work, but that's not exactly right. I want to make sure he's long gone before making a call.

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I couldn't reach the phone fast enough. I had her on speed dial, and it seemed like forever that she would actually pick up, but only a couple of rings later she picked up with a breathless. "Hey, Briar, I'll be right there. Bye," she said and then the click.

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It was only a few minutes before I rushed out the front door and grabbed her up, kissing her hard. She squirmed in my arms, laughing and trying to push away, the whole time smiling.

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Her name was Nina Morgan, a "sort-of" fresh face in Pleasantview, moving here a couple of years back. I'd always wondered how she'd gotten eyes like those with her dad's being so dark. We'd hit it off pretty well...actually really well. The first time Henry and Dad were gone at the same time for any length of time, Nina had snuck over...and we'd become one time lovers, full time friends.

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"Hey, Briar," she giggled, looking me up and down. "Looking particularly like a burglar today, love." She pulled on the stripes of my shirt. Dad had said the same thing when I came in wearing it after making a run to Goodwill, but the way she said it...so not the way a dad would say it.

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"Nina, flattery will get you nowhere," I growled, pulling my hand away. She looked at me with a smile and one raised eyebrow, as if she didn't understand. "Please?"

"You gotta beg for it," she said, laughing. She couldn't be serious. I rolled my eyes. She was always doing something like that, but she was the best friend I could ever ask for...so what did it matter to me? Nina would do anything for me--obviously.

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"Let's make this more into a...part time lovers, kind of thing," I whispered, leaning in to her ear. She bent back, letting me stay on her shoulder.
"Well, when you put it like that..." she laughed, kissing me back. Her lips were soft, coated in a gloss that tasted like strawberries. We walked in, Nina trailing at my heels, smiling at me.

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"Henry's not here, right?" she aske, for the first time becoming a little nervous. It had happened once. The first and only time. Everything had already been done, but when I didn't come downstairs when Henry first called me, he came up and...there we were. He never told Dad, but had always since then been really protective. I think mostly of Nina, instead of me, but it always came down to him not wanting me having a girl over when he and Dad were both gone.

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"Of course not," I said. "He left just before you got here." She smiled again just as I turned to tell her that, and she mouthed a silent, "okay."

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"Remember, just in case someone does come in, you gotta be quiet, Nina," I warned. She sat across from me and rolled her eyes.

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"Oh, what was that?" she said, turning to look at me. "I don't think I was the one yelling, 'Oh, Nina! Oh, Nina!' the entire the entire time. I, Mr. Astor, was completely silent, except for the few times I had to quiet you down."

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"Yeah, yeah," I whined, reaching over for her. "Let's not get hung up in details. Come here." She curled to fit my body, hugging me tight and kissing me carefully.
"Gladly," she said, holding tighter.

I don't remember much about that, except that I loved it. Nina was right; I couldn't keep quiet, but neither could she. She'd laugh at me every so often when I'd whine because something hurt. But the one thing I do remember clearly is Henry yelling for me after everything was over.

"Briar, I'm home."

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"Crap," I hissed, sliding off the bed. Nina bit her lower lip, gathering her clothes off the bed and floor. I rushed to the window. Henry had just come in, his carpool driving off when I got to the window, but thankfully the ladder was still there.

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"The ladder's still just out the window," I said quickly. Nina sighed, pulling on her jacket quickly.
"I hate doing this," she murmured to herself.
"I know," I said, pulling on my pants and striped shirt. "I know, I know, I know. I hate it, too. We just...need to find a way to cope with time better." She shook her head and opened the door, grabbing the ladder. "That's not what I mean."

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"Hey, Henry," I yelled, running down the stairs. He looked at me just as Nina ran past the window and out of sight. What she'd said still echoed in my head. That wasn't what she meant? What did she mean, then?

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"Hey, Bri," he answered, turning to the refrigerator and digging out hamburger meat. After Dad got a good job at the hospital and Henry was old enough to take care of the both of us, he became the designated cook of the house.

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Dinner went normally; jokes and throwing food, trying to accuse one another of something. Except that night we had a new guest...

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Quite. A. Looker...right? All of Dad's girlfriends tried so hard to be part of our lives, but they always got hung on the fact that Dad was a pushover. That was the end of his last relationship. The woman thought that Henry was his son from a relationship before my mom, but after she found out that he wasn't Dad's kid at all, she couldn't look at Dad without seing, "wimp" stamped across his forehead. Nonetheless, they all tried, and all had failed.

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This lady was nice though. Henry liked her, at least, of course that was only because she could play piano and she hadn't found out about Henry's actual relationship to me and Dad yet. Everything was normal.

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We stayed up for Dad until he got home around two that morning...

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f308/hannah_greenwood/snapshot_35650101_15712cce.jpg)
...and Nina and I went back to being nothing more than part time lovers, full time friends.

Heart it!

ee!
i loves it, dont like that nina girl much though
:D

Hm...
Did Nina just mean she didn't like sneaking around and being part-time lovers or did she mean something else entirely...
Again...Hm..
Fantastic update!