Tell me about your custom families! What you like to create and their stories

Ohh you're in for a ride.

My 100% custom is the Klein family from Riverblossom Hills. It started with me making two single sims Brandon and Sheila. They were supposed to be gen x and I made sure they looked like young adults in the late 80s, early 90s. They lived HERE . They were able to afford better but wanted to save money. They were pretty grunge and artsy when it came to their vibe. Brandon was in a local band (Cleo Shibiku was the bassist) and Sheila was a model, though she learned to play a guitar and would sometimes join the band. They played in a local bar I made after a real life bar and I can't get over the fact that I lost it. They accidently had Adriana. Eventually they made enough to move into an old bar/home and turned it into a record store/cafe while the upper floor was their home. Sheila quit modeling so did Brandon left his band. They got married and had Penelope. Adriana and Penelope resemble Angela and Lilith except they have a close bond (maybe Gigi and Bella Hadid more). Adriana is very girly, slightly curvy and sunkissed with healthy light brown hair while Penelope is skinny, pale, alternative with gray hair (naturally dark brown). Penelope was a part time model but never made it big because she refused to look more conventional. The girls started helping once they became teens and the business reached lvl 10 little before they became adults. Brandon and Sheila aged gracefully and remained the cool and social people they were as young adults.They often travelled with the girls. They weren't strict towards their daughters which Penelope took advantage of. She often snuck out, had bad grades, hooked up with people, smoked, and experimented with girls and didn't have any goals in life. She picked up a guitar and was interested in anything art related. As for her social life, she eventually went steady with Leod McGreggor's son. Her parents were worried and tried disciplining her but eventually just hoped that she will grow out of her wild phase. Adriana was the sweet popular girl that was kind to everyone, her best friends were Sandra Roth and Cleo's daughter. She was quite unlucky with love in her teen years. She was also gifted in music and read a lot. Then Adriana and Penelope went to college, Adriana is studying psychology while Penelope was studying arts. Adriana is an immaculate senior dating an another senior while Penelope dropped out after a semester. She decided this after reading the Lifetime Happiness book and realized that college was a scam and that she should live in the moment. Her parents are furious with her and are no longer 'best friends'. They cut her out and she moved in with her boyfriend in a rundown apartment, who was also cut out financially (a.k.a. moved out and I reduced their net worth to 10k). Penelope endeavors in acting (Life Stories entertainment career) and is currently working as an extra, while her bf is in the band (Music career, plays for tips from time to time). Look how they're starting fresh exactly like Penelope's parents...

I have actually made very few totally-custom Sims, as I am more likely to take a fancy to randomly spawned Townies, Downtownies and Dormies, tweak them up and see where they go from there.

My first totally custom Sim was Will Marshall (I have mentioned him a few times before, I think), whom I created as a guardian for the surviving Grunt/Grant boys after General Buzz and Tank came to messy ends. He was designed to be "kind but firm", got the boys turned around and through college, and then got married and started his own family. He's rising fast in the Education career and will probably reach Education Minister before much longer.

I started University (La Fiesta Tech) with a clean template, so I needed some rich Sims to restart the Greek houses. I began by expanding the Vandermorgan family with a brother (BD Vandermorgan) for Lyla Vandermorgan Grunt, a wife for him (Sasha Vandermorgan), and their only child, son JG Vandermorgan. JG reopened Oresha-Hoh-Var, graduated with a high degree in Business, went into his father's company and eventually succeeded him as head of it. He has a (Townie) wife, five(!) children, a small mansion on the outskirts of Downtown, and a butler. (I made it a tradition that Vandermorgan men are identified only by initials, not names, so the three boys are CB, EB, and KB Vandermorgan, while the two girls, who get proper names, are Lyla (for JG's unlucky aunt) and Sasha (for his mother).

Tri-Frum was regenerated by Bedelia Balkis, an "old money" heiress from Somewhere Else (I haven't worked out her family tree). There was some buzz in college about her and JG Vandermorgan, but it came to nothing, with both of them insisting they were just good friends. She graduated with a medical degree, went into the Medicine career, and has been living frugally while working her way up the levels. She has had very little time for romance, and shares her small house with a Burmese cat, Skyler (an adopted Stray).

I almost forgot about the MacAbres, whom I re-created from my old Sims 1 game - I'm not sure if that counts as custom or not. They live in Pleasantville and fill the "charmingly weird" role taken in vanilla games by the Goths.

I think the only other mostly-custom Sim in my game is Camilla Vitamore(-Banks), who began as a Tri-Frum redesign and grew on me. She graduated in Culinary, went into that career, married (ex-Dormie) River Banks, and attained the rank of Celebrity Chef, from which she retired to reopen a Bluewater Village bakery (J'Adore, now S'Amore). To date the family includes two children, Luigi Vitamore (Camilla named him) and Bonnie Banks (River named her), and a cat named Allie (who took a lot of getting used to the household but seems to have settled in).

Everybody else is either a premade, random-spawned, or random-revamped (I like to recycle the Dormies so the same lot aren't still hanging around year after year after year). Oh yes, and there are a few "placeholder" Sims I either made or co-opted to head "households" that don't get played much (the FCI, where Loki and Circe Beaker are incarcerated, the Bluewater Village K9 Training Center - large dogs, and the Pleasantville Trick Dog Show - small dogs).

I mostly make custom sims, as I've had little interest in the premades and townies over the years except for in my early days (and even then I mostly preferred custom sims).

I usually take pictures or write stories about them (short snippets, or in some cases very long stories, like the Brooks family, who've been chugging along since 2008 - with a "break" for a few years while I get my game up and running from where it crashed head-first into a wall a few years back).

I like to play family-oriented, and mostly my sims tend to be a family straight out of CAS, parents + kids, with maybe the addition of baby(ies) later. They rarely end up with just 1 or 2 kids

I've had some favorites among the shorter stories/picture projects, like the Carter family (they're just adorable), the Evans family (where the dad ended up as a single parent to 5 kids, including newborn triplets), The Campbell family (who ended up adopting more than just a baby), and the Graham family (who had their hands full and then some), among others.

I used to enter into story-driven contests back in the days (I miss story contests... ), which inspired several of the families. I partly "blame" one of them for the Brooks family, because that one took off like a rocket ship with my imagination, along with a couple other things

I'm very tempted to introduce the ones I can still scramble together (cc-wise) into the Brooks hood, just to get them all aquainted, and for some potentially familiar faces. I've thrown out all the townies, and they need some random neighbors, so why not? Plus, I really like the Graham house makeover, so maybe the lot as well (even if I've overused that house)

Overwhelmingly I play custom Sims. From Andrew and his mum that I created on my first day as a simmer back in November 2012, to the Hamble family that I added to downtown Veronaville 4 days ago. I play The Sims 2 most days (and quickly get withdrawal symptoms if I can't play!). So what I won't and can't do is describe everything that all my numerous custom Sims have done over the past 11+ years! Perhaps sufficient to say that, since no Sim has ever died in my game, all the Sims I have ever played are still alive. And hopefully they'll all get played again some day!

I prefer the word "households" to "families" as quite a few of mine feature Sims who live together and are usually friends, but who are not related to each other. My custom households vary in size from single Sims to communes of up to eight Sims. I also have some multi-generational families. I like playing teens, so quite a lot of my households are teen-led. I think I play more Romance Sims than most players, and I certainly have a high proportion of gay and lesbian Sims in my game. Downtown Veronaville has become a centre of gay culture, with LGBT nightclubs.

I play some true custom 'hoods: New Desconia, Baldrair Bluffs, and Elswyn, and I play the base game 'hoods too: Pleasantview, Strangetown and Veronaville. But I think Veronaville is the most interesting of the 'hoods I play. Certainly the pre-mades are there, and they're quite important too, but the story of Veronaville today is certainly not all about Montys and Capps feuding with each other. Indeed, when I think of Veronaville, I don't think first of Capps and Montys; I think of it first as the town where my friend Andrew lives, with his mum and his husband, and where all his friends live. The town today has a positive vibe. As it emerges from its long history, into a centre of gay culture and avant garde fashion, it has become a really desirable place to live. Which I suppose is why all these custom Sims keep coming to live here.

Actually of course I keep making them in CAS. Sometimes I plan households in advance. But quite often a beautiful Sim just generates in CAS when I'm just "rolling the pacifier", and then I build a new household round them.

A lot of my custom Sims are young and gay -- or bi, and into free love. But I suppose my newest Hamble family is actually a very conventional "nuclear family" -- a young straight married couple with a school age child -- except for the minor detail that both parents are still in their teens!

I tend to play only custom Sims. I do like the premades and do occasionally play them from time to time, I just prefer to create my own stories around them.
The story mode feature helps for this, I really like it and I think it's quite underrated.
I have all sorts of themed neighbourhoods, from casual to medieval, so I do have some variety in theme.
I havethousands of custom Sims with unique stories and I don't have any favourite as I love all of them.

What is the story mode feature?

It's a small button in the ui when playing a family or being in a neighbourhood/subhood. It has an icon of a book. Your ingame photos taken are there and you can add captions, which allows for you to create whole stories and dialogues as well as family descriptions. In the times where the TS2 site still existed you could package it to the site, I think.
Here's a photo of it in my medieval steampunk neighbourhood as well as a picture for the button.

Oh dear. Does that family have the plague?