Tax season!

It's tax season in my game. I do try to run my neighborhood like an integrated 'hood, I just focus on the story aspect of it because I'm not too great with details.

Tax season is a great time for me to catch up on all the other families in my game. I really do enjoy playing them all, but rotation playing is not for me. Mostly because I don't play on any sort of schedule. I pretty much play once a week, sometimes less. (And even while playing Sims 3, I get hankerings to play my hand crafted neighborhood.)

Since I've been visiting all the families, I figured I'd share the stories of some of those sims who are not part of the main story, but who I love all the same. I sort of hesitated to throw out characters that I might not write about regularly, but why not? These characters often appear in background shots, or they might become a part of the story. The war idea is brewing, and I'm thinking about how to build up an army of playables. *rubs hands evilly together*


Let me start with Ariana Mellon (17)...


Ariana is the daughter of Lucy Hanby, and the niece of Ann Mellon (my crazy witch who's now in hiding).

She lives on the Mellon farm in the outskirts of town. A large chunk of her day is spent trying to get her lazy twin brother Adam (also 17) to help her take care of the animals and the small crops. The rest of her day is usually spent at their little shop with her mother selling pies and fresh produce to the town. The last part of her day is spent preparing pies for sale the next day.

You must see the problem already, can't you? She has NO life. From time to time, she'll get out of the house on a weekend and go hang out with the normal kids in town, but even then she feels out of place. Everyone knows her story, even if they don't know her. Mention her name and the automatic association is "Lucy Hanby, service NPC" which then leads to the rumor "they got kicked out of the Legacy House."

Ariana is the third girl in line snickering at the fallout from a Kate fart.

Sims have asked her before about it. It annoys her to no end. For the record-- they did NOT get kicked out. Her father, Walter Mellon, moved out to the country with Lucy. And then they had like seven kids (six living currently). Walter moved the family to the farm because he enjoys the life and the time they spend together.

Ariana's parents-- aren't all couples in love just like this?

Though it has to be tough for Ariana. Since the day she became a teen, she wanted to fall in love. Growing up with lovely dovey parents like Walter and Lucy has to have some sort of effect on her view of romance. Perhaps she thinks that people literally (and I really do mean literally not figuratively literally) just fall into love. They stumble across it like they find a good TV program. He'll just be there, and she'll be interested, and after having a wonderful conversation over some coffee they'll just know. After a few babies, they'll grow old together and make out on the front porch just like her mom and dad.

******

I thought I had more pictures of her, but I was surprised to find out that I really don't. Ariana is one I'm always watching. Nothing much has happened in her in her young life (no first kisses or boyfriends), but there's something about her... I suppose it's that I see her as a slightly sad sim waiting for the type of impossible sim love her parents have.