Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Prologue, Starlight Herself

I've booted up Sims 3 so I can play a legacy challenge instead of revising.  This one is based on the Chinese zodiac, and is inspired by these two posts; TheYayToast, DeadlyFang.  My challenge will be 14 generations, beginning with the incarnation of the stars themselves and ending with the Cat, the rejected sign.  I'm writing this halfway through the Rat, so I have few images.  Oh, also, I bought my Pc in 2013, so I've had to set all the image qualities right down low.  I've been playing the game so much that I've just bought my first expansion packs - seasons and generations.  I'm using Nraas's story progression mod and a few others which I'll talk about when I come to the point where I installed them.  I'm playing with a longer lifespan, though I'm still experimenting with exactly what I want.  A lot of the generations call for multiple kids, and I like to see how they turn out, so the baby, toddler, and childhood stages are a little shorter, while adulthood is a little longer.  Oh, because of exams/uni, I also block the game except for a 90 minute period every day.

I created Yuriko as a young adult, with the goal of being surrounded by family - raising five children from babies to teenagers.  She was a good, friendly, family-orientated, hopeless romantic who loved the outdoors.  I made her a little cabin in the woods - one room with an outhouse, right up near the waterfall.  She fell in love with Stiles McGraw and conceived Jacob, but he had a girlfriend, Emma Hatch.  Yuriko didn't really understand why this was a problem - stars are poly and pansexual - but they broke up.  She also didn't understand why Stiles was so reluctant to give her a baby - surely it is the goal of all beings to procreate?  After they broke up, she had two children, August and Leo, with Malcolm Landgrabb, and adopted Marie and Lucy, as part of increasing her understanding of sim-kind.  She worked in the grocery store for a while, but earned most of her money through gardening and fishing.

As Yuriko's - and yes, I know I used a Japanese name for a Chinese-inspired challenge, and I do know those cultures are different - children grew older, I began searching for my heir.  The first generation is The Rat - "a poor but quick-witted individual who has eyes for riches".  It was difficult to raise five children, so I didn't get to pick many traits and the game made Jake a genius.  He was also the cutest, most serious little child, so I chose him to focus on.  It made sense to me that, as the eldest, he had begun with the most resources which were depleted as the house became more crowded, and that this would be motivation to get rich.  He made straight As, got a job as soon as he could, wrote a book called "Too Many Babies!", and beat a couple of ranked chess opponents.  As his brothers grew older, August was sporty and Leo was arty.  I'm trying to get a portrait of each generation, and Leo was able to paint portraits of his mother and Jake.  Jake moved out as a young adult, just after his sisters grew to become teenagers.  He's a perfectionist, schmoozer, clumsy, ambitious genius.

Yuriko died on Jake's first visit home, and that's when I began building a family graveyard.  I also put a custom church - White Chapel Hill - on the lot across the road.  I'm undecided about whether to put Stiles or Malcolm in there.

Jake got promoted basically every day and was able to make his lifetime goal very, very quickly.  He'd started working out as a teenager - August was athletic, so we got the equipment for him, and then I worried that Jake was getting a bit pudgy - and he was asked to train Serena Ursine, as a skills challenge.  It was love at first sight and they started dating.  After a few weeks, he proposed and asked Serena to move in.  The problem there is the terms of the challenge.  The rat should;

• Start the game with low funds
• Join the business career
• Have Ambitious and Materialistic traits
• Marry for status instead of love
• Have four potential heirs

4 is the sticking point.  Firstly, it's hard to define what 'status' means in the sims.  Most families are rich, and the Landgrabbs and Goths had no eligible daughters.  My original plan was to have Jake criticise Serena's faults - from his perfectionist qualities, over the fact that she's a virtuoso who wants to be a star rather than having a 'serious' career, leading to their break-up.  I was then going to have Jake call his high school girlfriend Gwendolyn (I think, an auto-generated NPC Sim), drink a lot, conceive a child, and marry her.  They'd have a loveless marriage - he'd continue to drink a lot - and he'd resume his relationship with Serena when they were both older.  The first part of the plan worked out.  Serena quit her medical career, started working in music, got her first promotion and excitedly told Jake about it.  He responded by criticising her lack of ambition, she mocked his ambition, they argued and called off the engagement.  Then my time for the day ran out.

I felt so sad about it, all over the next day.  I didn't want Serena to find love with someone else.  I didn't want Jake to marry someone he wasn't even attracted to.  I didn't really want to continue playing if they couldn't be together, and happy.  I learned Gwen's other traits, and she was an insane kleptomaniac, which kind of worked for the society-wife-in-a-loveless-marriage storyline, but meh.  I decided to compromise, by which I mean, let Jake marry for love and carry on enjoying my game, but do my absolute best to achieve Serena's dream of becoming a star (I'm picturing like Adele-style).

Getting them back together was kind of darkly funny.  Jake mastered charisma pretty early on - a major factor in his business success - he could tell stories and jokes and charm her fairly quickly, but because he was still heartbroken, the speech bubbles implied that every punchline was "and then you broke my heart!".  She laughed anyway.  Serena proposed this time, so after their wedding my family name is 'Ursine'.  I kind of like it.  Also, custom content wedding outfit, and a bit of a make-over.  I DL'd a height slider mod, so my sims are different heights.  The ones who were alive when I installed it all stayed the same - except Jake and Serena, who I manually changed - but future generations should get a random value for it, and be realistically varied.  It kind of ruins the kissing animation, but I like how they all look together.

Incidentally, that's Lorelei Gilmore dancing with August in the background.  My world felt a bit empty, so I dropped in some random groups I DL'd years ago.  They include Lorelei, Rory, and Luke, and the cast of Final Fantasy VIII.  Quistis married an NPC, Zell and Rinoa got together, and Squall and Selphie are married and expecting their first children.  Jake has mastered charisma, and is now immediately friends with anyone he introduces himself to, and best friends if he stops for a chat.  He basically walks into a room and people swoon and say "what a guy!".  oh, and because of his career success, he's a partner in the bookstore and both restaurants.

Shortly after their wedding the baby want popped up for both of them.  Jake was hoping for a girl and Serena wanted a boy.  They had twins (after giving both fertility treatment; they'd already conceived, but it still worked), and I picked the first two traits with a random number generator.  Rosemary, the eldest, is an insane virtuoso, and Jasper is a clumsy (like his dad) loner (like his grandpa).  They both got imaginary friend dolls in the mail.  During their toddler-hood, Jake aged up and began having a mid-life crisis, but when it began suggesting things like "get a divorce" and "change jobs" I decided to consider it an illness and sent him to therapy.  I'm not yet decided whether Rosemary, Jasper, or one of the unborn will be the heir.  The next generation should be The Ox; "Raised in a cut throat family you have your parents ambition but a need to find love in your life that you didn’t get from your family". 

• Ambitious and Romantic traits
• Elope with your high school sweetheart
• Not close to/get along with any of your siblings
• Reach at least level 6 in career

I plan to give every child ambitious and romantic traits - which doesn't appear to be possible for babies, so I'll put those on when they age up - and I've decided that an imaginary friend is an acceptable substitute for eloping with a high school sweetheart.  The other post describes the Ox as "Dependable, ambitious, calm, methodical, born leader, patient, hardworking, conventional, steady, modest, logical, resolute, tenacious. Can be stubborn, dogmatic, hot-tempered, narrow-minded, materialistic, rigid, demanding", so I've decided their lifetime ambitious is to be president.  I don't think that's right for Jasper, the clumsy loner - who may well grow up to be a scientist, or perhaps an artist depending on his other traits - but it might be right for an insane musician like Rosemary.  We'll see what the other children end up with, and whether anything stands out.  The twins are still toddlers.  They've mastered the toddler skills and read some books, though they do like to play with their imaginary friend dolls rather than the toys.   In the background, August has gotten married to Sonya Hawley and they have two kids, Leo has two kids with Krista Goldstein - though they're not married and don't live together - and Lucy has one child with Miles Goldstein.  I moved August's family in with his dad, Malcolm Landgrabb, because the cabin in the woods was getting pretty crowded and a notification popped up that Malcolm was dying.

So, at the moment, I'm finding a candidate for my next heir.  I'm keeping Serena young with life fruits from Yuriko's still-thriving garden, since she was an adult when Jake was a young adult, and I want them both to see their children grow up.  Serena has just reached level 5 of the musician career, and is off maternity leave and at level 8 with the guitar, so that should hopefully go fairly quickly.  They've moved from Jake's bachelor pad to a bigger family home (I literally looked up blueprints for a 3-bedroom family home and built the house based on that), which I'm slowly furnishing as Jake's wages and money from his writing come in.  It's decorated with the greeting card photos they take at festivals and the portraits Leo painted, though I might move those to a mausoleum in my family graveyard soon, since I'm worried about forgetting to move them around.  I'm not sure when they'll have their next child; perhaps shortly before the twins age into teenagers.  They're not supposed to get on, and, for storytelling purposes, the idea of the twins being resentful of new children feels like it works better if they're a bit older.  They'll all have jobs as teenagers, so they won't be able to spend a lot of time together.