Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 4, The Rabbit

We're on a boat!  It's a custom world built by Potato Ballad Sims.  It's tiny, in one way, with only five lots, but they're all enormous.  I got Late Night because I wanted to have other, NPC sims living on the lots.  I also got Ambitions, so Bunny can be a horsewoman.  I worked out that, so far, I've spent £119.94 on the Sims 3, but I've also played for 232 hours, as of today, so that's around 52p per hour of entertainment.  Since I can read 100 pages in an hour, that's only a little more than a 99p Kindle book (the cheaper ones also tend to be the shorter ones), and dropping the more I play.

Alice has a job on the ship as a chef (I used custom rabbit hole rugs to place a diner, bookshop, spa, etc, on one of the lots).  My story is, she left Sunset Valley after her father died, and while this job doesn't pay much, it will take her somewhere new.  And it comes with a bed, shower, and meals.

Bunny, of course, is escaping from her mother.  She did bring the family graves with her, but the game now only acknowledges her relationship with Avery's ghost, and not her other ancestors.  

In the seven days they spend on the ship, Bunny spends most of her time partying, practicing ballet (she was forced to attend ballet club as a child), and enjoying the spa and cafe on the ship.  Her favourite food is sushi.

Alice is much poorer, so she spends most of her time after work watching TV in her room.  She and Bunny are close to one another, though Bunny's suite is much nicer.

One night, Bunny and Alice end up at the same bar and start jamming on their guitars together (since this is a holiday, I decided to fulfil as many wishes as possible, and they both wanted to learn how to play).

Halfway through the week, Bunny throws a pool party.

 Halfway through, she spots Alice talking to a guy she has a crush on, Antoine Crews, and goes over to convince him to kiss Alice.  I like her little "I got you, girl" face.  I made two groups of 8 random sims and put them into two of the lots, and he's one of them.  I like him because he wants to be a private detective, and I wanted to play with that career.  On that note, when I got Alice, I aged her down to a teenager then back up, so she'd be the same age as Bunny, i.e., on her first day of young adulthood rather than the last.  She got the 'savvy sculptor' trait, and I'd forgotten to check what it was before so I couldn't change it back.  I've decided to go with it.  Homeless-teen-grows-up-to-be-amazing-artist isn't a totally novel storyline, and it's another fun career to play with.

 On the last day, Alice and Antoine agree to move in together, and Bunny insists that they both move in with her when they arrive at Appaloosa Plains.  She needs a big house to raise horses in, and it might as well not be empty.  They can pay rent until they figure out what they want to do.  I'm not sure what Antoine's backstory is yet, but presumably it's something that lead him to become a private detective and to uproot his life.

And here's Bunny's ranch, on their first day in Appaloosa Plains.  Alice's life goal is to have 5 kids, so I'll probably have her and Antoine move out before they get started on that, since I'll want to focus on Bunny.  For now though, Bunny has lodgers!

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 4, The Rabbit

Bunny's teenage years are a cycle of school, horse-racing, and sleeping.  On the weekends, she makes time for extra training.  She sold Spring, her first horse, which was heartbreaking, but she needed the money and she knows he can't come where she's going next.

Robin died, and his ghost appeared only to accuse Jenna of cheating.

She didn't like that, so she fought with him and then sold his ashes.  Seeing his ghost didn't tick off her lifetime wish.  Apparently, it's a glitch that came with the game's work around of allowing second marriages, by making ghosts fiances only.  I've read that you can work around it by making the ghost a member of your household and remarrying them, but I'm not doing that.

Without Robin as a calming influence on Jenna, Bunny scarcely bothers coming home, spending most of her time either training or horses or at her secret bunker.

 The few times she does come home, Jenna scolds her and demands to know what she's been up to, but Bunny doesn't tell.

Two days before Bunny's birthday, she sells Autumn.  Autumn goes for nearly as much as Spring, despite still having the 'ornery' trait.

Then Bunny goes to say goodbye to her great-aunt Libby.  Libby's become a widow and remarried, hence the change of house.

The night before her birthday, Bunny liquidises all her family's assets, by selling the stables and her bunker, and their shares in the hospital and diner, after collecting the funds.

Then she throws her Uncle's ghost potion on herself.

Jenna's been working in her (locked) office all this time, and didn't know Bunny was in the house.  Bunny floats up through the floor, accuses Jenna of being evil, talks about her father's murder, and tell's Jenna that Bunny is dead. 

Then she quickly floats off to the (also locked) guest room, to spend the night.

Jenna seeks some comfort from Avery's ghost.  

When Bunny becomes an adult, all of her father's property and wealth become hers.  I suspect Jenna had a plan to prevent this, perhaps by murdering Bunny like she did Avery, leaving Jenna the sole beneficiary.  Bunny suspected that too.

The next morning, after Jenna has left for work, Bunny strips the house.  She's taking the family urns, portraits, and photos.  She intends to leave Jenna with the house.

 Elsewhere, Alice (of Alice and Kev) is also waiting for something.

Bunny goes up to a shack in the woods.  She doesn't know why she's drawn here.  She has no idea that this is where her great-great-grandmother, the embodiment of Starlight, lived out her days.  Still, it's here she celebrates her birthday, with the stranger who lives here now.

 Back at home, Jenna is noticing the changes, but it's too late.

On the beach, Alice and Bunny wait for their future to arrive.

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 4, The Rabbit

Bunny's childhood is so miserable - hiding from a murderous mother, everyone dying, not being able to ride horses which is the only thing she wants to do - that I aged her up a week early, and then added a week to the teenage life span in options.  I think of it as her having a growth spurt and lying about her age so she can enter horse competitions.

When I say "everyone dying", Piper has also passed away.  Her ghost sometimes appears, mostly to take naps on Bunny's old bed.  She might as well, no one else is using it.  Bunny is now sleeping in the guest room exclusively, with the door locked, sometimes watched over by ghosts.

This is Scarlett "Bunny" Ursine, and her horse, Spring, majestically riding along a cliffside to work out their feelings of grief, while Bunny realises that her lifetime's ambition is to be a Jockey.  That involves earning $40,000 simoleons through horses, and reaching rider level 10.

Shortly after this, prom happened and we got burgled.  Luckily, we have an alarm set up.  Bunny didn't have a date for prom - she was busy learning to ride and training Spring to jump - so she went alone.  Either aliens invaded or the punch was spiked - both are plausible.

Bunny missed the entire next day of school trying to befriend a wild horse, which tanked her grade.  She followed that up with a few days of hard work and an opportunity to catch a fish to raise her grade, which got her up to an A.  Now she's there, she'll stay there, as long as she doesn't miss another day, even if she has to do her homework at school.  She's not allowed to go on field trips - or rather, she's not asking her mother to sign the permission slips - so that's not going to mess it up either.

Bunny and Spring have been winning competitions.  So many that Bunny has been able to afford a second horse (she was going for less than $500 simoleons because she's untrained and ornery), a barn expansion to keep the second horse in, and a secret bunker, since the horse-riding competition rabbithole was right across town, and it was wearing them both out, competing on a school night, especially when they had to ride there and back.

Jenna's been ignoring Bunny because she heard through the grapevine that Robin Banks - the "party dancer" that Libby woohooed with at Haven's bachelorette party - is getting pretty old and single.  I'm hoping if she marries him and he dies of natural causes, that will get her lifetime wish to tick off.  If not, I can also go back to the save right before it happens and pop a ghost potion on him, see if that works.  Bunny still has two from Great Uncle Jasper.

It amused me that Libby called right after Robin Banks married her niece-in-law.  I also noticed that both Libby and Jenna are at the top of the journalist career right now - they're both Star News Anchors.  I like to think they're at rival stations.

They had a secret marriage in the hallway, but I've decided that they got married on one of Jenna's "adults only" vacations that the game keeps offering to get Bunny to throw a teen party.  She spends the time horse-riding and not worrying about being murdered in her bed.

This is Bunny's new horse, Autumn.  I got her because she's pretty.  And cheap, as mentioned above.  Bunny's now mastered riding, and Autumn got her first two riding points just getting home.  I've got Spring specialising in riding while Autumn specialises in jumping, though I'm hoping she'll eventually master both.  Spring has 3 more days before he becomes an elder, so I don't think I'll get every achievement for the riding skill with him - there's not enough time to win 15 advanced or international competitions.

I feel like it's when she's riding down these long hard roads or through the town that Bunny starts to dream of moving out into the countryside.  She's about 15-16 at the moment, so she still has a while to go before she can realise that dream.  It was also around this time that I used a mod to stop the police coming after her everytime she was riding home after 11pm.  Both of her paternal grandparents were in the police force - her grandfather Silas was the chief of police - and her father's cousin, Skye, is still a member.  I like to think they know her and trust her, and don't like her mother, so they won't be carting Bunny back to Jenna any time soon.

The ghosts are still around - here is Haven's, gazing across at the barn, while Spring practices racing by himself.  I cut down the tree between the lots - by going into the landscape editor on the world map - because it was massive and annoying me.

 This is Bunny's secret bunker.  It's on a teeny-tiny 10x10 lot right outside one of the massive mansions on the hill.  I like to think that one of their ancestors build it, decades ago, and they sold it to Bunny for $200 (the price of the land) because the world is peaceful and safe now.  She's fitted it out with her horse-earnings.  I gave myself a bit of leeway there, because they are very rich, and I don't think Jenna's very good at maths, or very interested in budgeting.  Bunny went to pick up the earnings from the properties they own in town and spent the money without it ever going through the family bank account.  I got the bunker so she can head straight there after school, have a nap and a snack - as can one of the horses, because there's a feeding trough thing above this - and they can be properly refreshed when they go to the horse competitions.  It's worked well, I feel like we're winning more.  One night, I even had time to enter two competitions in a row.  Spring has also more than paid for his keep by being put out to stud twice.

 Robin Banks isn't a bad stepfather, for the few days or weeks that we've got him.  He taught Bunny how to drive.  She prefers to ride her horses, but she does have her grandfather's police car, just in case she's trapped without a horse.

Oh, in another news, Jenna's given up on her plan to annoy Tracy by seducing Wyatt when she learned that Tracy had left her husband for Bruce, another one of Avery's sons.  That's him, on the left of the picture above.  I actually took the picture to show that Avery now has a grandson!  His name is Dedrick.  I am unsure why.