Fox Sim Things

Ryder's life might as well be a tapestry of mistakes. Since being adopted as a pre-teen, his choices were questionable at best. His school-age days were marred with a history of drug and alcohol usage, smoking, expulsions, detentions, a few stints in juvenile detention, and two older adoptive parents who were more than a few times at their wit's end. The troubles persisted into high school, where he became a teen father - and promptly abandoned the mother of his child upon graduation.

Football was the only thing that kept him even slightly grounded, and while he played well, his grades were too pitiful to get him into any kind of post-secondary education on a sports ride. Not that Ryder was anticipated to be the next big thing in science and innovation.

So his streak of being terrible continued. Selling drugs wound up being a lucrative enough hustle and he was good at it, a charming salesman when money was to be made, and a brutal enforcer when cash was overdue. It seemed the only shiny thing in his future was a pair of handcuffs.

Ryder was twenty-three when his adoptive mother died. Though his father was perhaps the harsher of the two, his mother loved him from the start. She withstood his aggression, his anger, his shouting, his ear-blasting music. She picked him up from the drunk tank, bailed him out of jail, came to collect him when he totaled his car. And while he expected anger, expected her to hate him - abandon him like his biological parents must have - she only ever promised to care for him, to love him.

And suddenly, she was gone. She only knew him as a waste of skin, and held out hope all the while that he would be something better. That his pain would manifest in something useful to the world, to society. As far as she knew, he never did.

Her death marked a change in him, though, and it sparked great ambition in him. His father wasn't getting any younger, and Ryder became determined not to repeat the same mistake twice. He became (mostly) sober and got out of the dealing business, spent the money putting himself through school to become a paramedic. Now he's as good a father as he can be to his young daughter, spending every spare simoleon he has on her happiness.

Truthfully, Deborah and Marcus never thought they had bad kids.

Growing up, Devon and Noah were considered, by all accounts, to be pretty good kids. Mostly quiet, despite whatever petty squabbles siblings may go through. As an older sister, Devon was attentive and caring of her little sibling, even if they weren't all that far apart in age. As they grew up, Devon was always regarded as a bright, pretty girl, and Noah crawled around in her shadow - despite Devon's best attempts to drag them up alongside her.

Middle school began a shift in behaviour from both of them, the pair of siblings starting to fall into a more troubling routine. Noah, to escape the discomfort of ever being compared to his sister, had begun to fall behind in classes. He started smoking pot early, very early, and spent more time listening to music in the basement and playing video games than minding his schoolwork. And then there were other kids - the horrors.

While Devon always had it relatively easy, Noah did not. Uncomfortable in their skin, gangly, awkward, bullies buzzed around him like flies, gnashing their teeth and balling their fists.

A-student Devon wasted no time swooping in to protect her sibling. Where Noah was naturally made of softer stuff, Devon had a heart of steel - she had absolutely no qualms cutting down other students. It started verbally, but when her sibling came home with a fat lip or a swollen eye, she balled her own fists in response and marched back out to take vengeance - swift, brutal vengeance.

The pair only fell deeper into their roles come high school. Devon ruled the school with an iron fist. From being a pretty girl with good grades and a sweet heart, she'd become the ultimate mean girl. And Noah, in his small corner of the school, fell in with the other outcasts - but it meant he finally had friends, a change he held on to for dear life. It didn't mean he wasn't skipping class, though. It didn't mean he wasn't ending up in the principal's office with bruises, cuts, bumps.

And every time he did, another kid would show up soon after with the fear of tall blondes now pummeled into their very base DNA.

In the end, they were both ruled problem children, though even school staff was afraid to take disciplinary action on Devon Sykes(rumours told of an instance of a boy harassing Noah, insisting he was adopted, so Devon went down to their house to seduce the boy's mom and tear their family apart. School administrators, too, lived in fear of Devon Sykes).

Uriah Fox has always been a simple man of simple pleasures. Born and raised in San Sequoia, he spent most of his young life in San Myshuno, eager to get into the big city as soon as he was old enough to move out on his own.

That isn't to say he didn't love his family. After losing his father to heart disease early in life, his mother became a single parent early and did her absolute best with a house full of boys. Uriah, the eldest, left for San Myshuno but it wasn't an easy choice. To leave his family behind pained him. So he visited often, sent a bit of every paycheque home to help his mom, and called every night to try to make the distance feel a little less daunting.

It worked, for a while. Uriah loved the city, it was all he could ever dream of, and before long his second eldest brother came out to live with him as well. He was able to complete his schooling in childhood education and, after a good few years bouncing around as a TA, he was picked up for a full-time teaching opportunity at San Myshuno Elementary.

Life felt perfect. He published a few children's books(to no popularity, but self-satisfaction) and was able to spend his time teaching, doing something that mattered to him.

But life would have him back in San Sequioa with his family, and not for the reasons he'd hoped. His mother's passing left the Fox family reeling, unable to find footing. Uriah stayed in the family home with his siblings, working local jobs, taking substitute positions where available, whatever it took to keep them all afloat.

It's been almost a year now, and the family is on the road to recovery, but it hasn't been easy. He came home to essentially parent his youngest siblings, to arrange funeral costs for his mother, take on the mortgage - none of it has been easy. So his siblings worked together to send him off for a bit, give him a bit of a break and some time to himself.

While it was difficult to accept at first, Uriah's hope is to find creative inspiration on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If he could get into writing books again - good ones this time - he could work from San Sequioa, he could work from anywhere. He could teach kids all over the world, through his books.