A Touch of Randomness

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A Sims 2 alphabet legacy written by SimAddicted13. A chapter list can be found here [dead link]. Sometimes abbreviated as ATOR. The family is now in its 15th generation (generation N, couting the founding generation as the first).


Tropes used in A Touch of Randomness include:
  • Abusive Parents: Actually more of an abusive grandparent... Chad to his granddaughter Electra.
  • Alphabetical Theme Naming: This is the case with almost all the characters (at least all the ones born in the main legacy line), since the story is after all a Sims 2 alphabet legacy.
  • Author Avatar: Some would consider Electra this (but only before her later teen years/adult years).
  • Berserk Button: When talking to Electra, mentioning her childhood isn't the best of ideas... And please don't bring up the fact that Felicia herself is a descendant of Electra when hearing her say that everyone descended from her must die/have their life ruined in some unspeakable manner.
  • Breather Episode: Most chapters that cover the start of a new generation (new heir(ess) getting married and having kids) are usually this.
  • Cain and Abel: Chad and Cira, later Electra and Emily, and also House and Haley, to a lesser extent.
  • Cats Are Mean: Played straight with the female family cat, Manchas, a true evil mastermind. Subverted with the male cat, Cookie, who is quite sweet and harmless. Most of Error and Rodiek's cats are also subversions of this trope, not being evil at all.
  • Comes Great Responsibility: This trope ends up affecting most of the family heirs/heiresses.
  • Dark-Skinned Blond: Jemima, later Shannon and her sons Lawrence and Landon, for instance. Also, Lawrence and Hell's son Martin.
  • Door Step Baby: Kyril, found and raised by Johanna and Ashley.
  • Driven to Suicide: David after the death of his crush Clarice. This might have also been the case with Dio due to the intense family drama going on at the time of her death. It was never confirmed, though.
  • Everyone Is Related: Every character who isn't a simself spouse or a townie that by any chance has a role in the plot is descended from Calvin Random. (And even most of those who aren't Calvin's descendants become relatives by marriage.)
  • Evil Is Dumb: David Random is the very embodiment of this trope in this story. During the main plotty arc in early generation I, he manages to single-handedly ruin Bellatrix's evil plans by letting Emily in Electra cell without even keeping an eye on them, leading to the death of Emily, who was crucial to the next phase of the plan. Sure, Bellatrix was absolutely furious with him, and tried her best to fix the situation, but the outcome was not good for them, with Bellatrix going insane after accidentally killing her daughter Clarice and David ending up committing suicide because of Clarice's death.
  • Fiery Redhead: Hell is the best example of this trope in the story. Johanna is one too, but to a lesser extent. However, his trope is completely subverted by Morgause, Finbar and Annabeth's adopted daughter (also Helled's biological daughter), who, despite being a redhead, is sweet and shy to the point of being too naïve.
  • Gene Hunting: This happens with Finbar and Annabeth's adopted daughter, Morgause, who goes searching for her biological family during her late teen years. It ends very, very badly for her - she is drugged into a trance-like state by her psychotic biological grandmother, Lillian, and then falls from a third floor balcony to her death.
  • Give Him a Normal Life: Most likely what happened with Kyril, since everyone believes his biological parents are Jaenelle and Fernando, even though it was never 100% confirmed. Generations later, there was the case of Helled and her daughter. Being deeply ashamed of her one-night-stand with her ex-boyfriend, not knowing who the baby's actual father was and fearing her psychotic mother Lillian and equally psychotic distant relative Felicia would get hold of the child were more than enough reasons to give her up for adoption. Shortly after, the baby, later named Morgause was adopted by Finbar and his wife Annabeth (who had been rendered unable to have any more children after their firstborn's birth). However, this backfired tremendously when the teenaged and very, very naïve Morgause went to search for her biological relatives. She ended up finding the evil ones first, which resulted in her death.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: This is behind pretty much every fight over the heirship.
  • Happily Adopted: Morgause, adopted daughter of Finbar and Anna who is actually the biological daughter of Helled and either Lawrence or Landon.
  • Happily Married: Quite a few of the legacy couples. Aisha and Mil, Baruch and Mer, Fish and KR, Kennard and Shannon, Landon and Lala, and also some couples involving spares and descendants of spares, like Joey and Fermina, Finbar and Annabeth, Rodiek and Error.
  • Homosexual Reproduction: Since this is The Sims 2, pregnancy is possible for same-sex couples such as Aisha and Mil, Grizabella and Lisa and Johanna and Ashley. The use of this trope also enables Clarice to get pregnant with Grizabella's child as the main point of a plan to try to get the heiress to marry her.
  • It's Personal: Many of those who wanted to bring down Electra had suffered the loss of at least one close relative due to her insane murder rampages.
  • Kids Are Cruel: The best example would be how young Emil and Emily acted in regards to Chad's mistreatment of Electra after their mother's death. Miguel was also quite nasty towards his impressionable younger brother Moville.
  • Kill the Cutie: This happens in a recent chapter, where Lillian Tale essencially manipulates her naïve granddaughter Morgause just to mess with Morgause's biological mother, her much hated daughter Helled. Lillian then eventually causes Morgause's death by tricking her into falling from a balcony, while she's drugged and in a sort of trance.
  • Law of Inverse Fertility: Dio, who most definitely did not want children and was most likely trying to prevent pregnancy, eventually did become a mother...the result of three unplanned pregnancies. Her daughter Annabeth, who wanted a large family since she was very young, had serious complications during the birth of her first child, Liam. She was strongly advised not to give birth to any more children, because her death and/or the baby's would be extremely likely. She followed that advice and did not give birth to any more children (though she did adopt one).
  • My Beloved Smother: Johanna becomes this during her kids' teen years. Because of her past experiences with Fernando's deceit, she forbids them from dating anyone at all, and even from inviting friends over.
    • There is also Lillian from the House of Fallen Trees heirline, who loves her son Howl so much she ended up killing her own husband Gabriel and her daughter-in-law Rosa (Howl's own wife) so that no harm would come to Howl.
  • Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Subverted in pretty much all cases. Many of the main characters have been murdered during particularly plotty story arcs. Some of most uninteresting spares, who eventually fade into the background, have quite dull, but safe and mostly happy lives.
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Helena and Haley, and also some other descendants of Lisa.
  • Parental Favoritism: Very present in every single generation. The most extreme example is perhaps Jo's favoritism towards Electra. A second important example would be Grizabella favouring her youngest child, Haley. The most recent one would be the one of Lillian from the House of Fallen Trees heirline - the only one out of her family members she cares about is her son Howl. Just so that he would be safe, she killed her own husband Gabriel (Howl's father), Howl's own wife Rosa, and was very willing to do the same to her daughter Helled. Thankfully, Helled was saved at just the right time.
  • Put on a Bus: Most spares from the earlier generations. Since spares are immortal in this story, they just end up fading away and are (mostly) never heard from again.
  • Really Gets Around: Some of the Randoms with the Romance aspiration fall into this trope, Dio being the most notorious.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Felicia, who killed her mother Electra. Helled may very well end up becoming this also, since she has now vowed to kill her mother Lillian, after she caused the death of the daughter Helled gave up for adoption, Morgause.
  • Start of Darkness: The death of Electra's mother, Jo, was the catalyst to the beginning of her vigilante era, which later evolved into a series of insane murder rampages.
    • Also, for Felicia (Electra's daughter), the aforementioned murder rampages led to her developing a deep hatred towards her mother. This later caused her to side with Electra's worst enemy, Bellatrix, and commit matricide. After Electra, Bellatrix and David's deaths, she later became the main villain in the story.
  • The Unfavourite: Electra was this to her grandfather Chad, which led to her being completely and utterly ignored by the rest of the family. Helled fell victim to this trope as well generations later. Her father Gabriel loved both of his children equally, but her mother Lillian liked her son Howl so much better that she almost killed Helled herself, and did end up killing Gabriel, as well as Howl's wife Rosa, so that Howl would be safe from Felicia's plans.
  • Theme Twin Naming: Emil and Emily Random have very similar names, and unlike the other gen E children, who have unrelated names, they are both named after characters from Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. Irji and Nor Bettencourt, the twin children of Fiyero and Nessarose, are named after the actual children of their father's namesake in Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked.
  • Too Good for This Sinful Earth: House. Everyone adored him and thought he was going to become the best heir yet...until he got killed in mysterious circumstances when his oldest was only a child. Morgause was also loved by all members of her huge extended family, the Rodieks/Bettencourts. She was also good friends with Marta, Miguel and Lucy, who were her biological relatives. Her death at the hands of Lillian had a devastating effect on all that knew her well.
  • Underestimating Badassery: Emily did this with Electra, with disastrous consequences.
  • Unexpected Successor: Muriel, who ends up becoming the generation M heiress, despite being her parents' sixth and youngest child. She had not even been considered as an option when her parents and grandparents first decided who would be the gen M heir. After her sister Marta gave up the heirship, though, she was the only one who would take it.
  • Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: Most of the sets of twins in this family were boy/girl ones. The generation L heir, Landon, and his wife Ana Cláudia "Lala" had this particular trope happen to them three times in a row.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Bellatrix went insane after she accidentally shot her own daughter Clarice.
  • Your Cheating Heart: Nathan cheated on his wife Electra with her sister Emily.