New Arrivals

Hello all, and welcome to Sunset Valley! My story starts with Frankie Stettner. Frankie is the oldest child of five but suffers from extreme low self-esteem. He loves people and nature, but the world seems to take every chance it gets to make him miserable. He left home to get away from the bullies and the disapproving parents, but now his situation is turning out to be more terrifying than he expected.

Frankie can’t seem to find a home within his budget, so he goes to look at some of the empty lots he can supposedly buy. “What am I supposed to do with an empty lot like this?” he’d asked to the realtor, but had gotten no response other than a shrug and a dismissive wave.

“Hey, you! You’re just like me!” The teen that called out to Frankie looks nothing like him. “I’m nothing like you,” Frankie says. She scowls, “I was talking about the hair.” He cringes internally, cursing his awkwardness.

It turns out “Z,” as she calls herself, lives around here, and offers to show Frankie around town. They go to the supermarket, where Frankie buys produce. 

“For planting,” he says. Z is bewildered.

They also go to the movies.

At night she takes him to the bar. Frankie may be a bit of a weirdo, but he’s surprisingly good company, and Z tells him so. Frankie raises his eyebrows at her. “Aren’t I a bit old for you?” Secretly, though, he’s grateful for the compliment.

“Shut up, ‘old man’, my birthday is tomorrow.”

Frankie and Z dance and chat through the night, and as the sun begins to come up Z has a secret to share. “I’m not really from here. I ran away, and I’m sleeping at the fire station.” Frankie’s head feels light, and he can’t stop smiling and moving his arms around. His brain doesn’t really register her words correctly, and he just laughs.

 “Show me.”

And the next morning…

Frankie decides to solve his unemployment problem, and consults Z on the matter. 

“I’ve always wanted to do good, make a change for people,” he says, “It’s corny, I know.” 

“You could be a super spy cop,” Z says, “I saw one on TV.” Frankie blinks at her. “I’m not brave enough,” he admits finally. 

“Shut up and apply for the job. We’ll work on your cowardice issue later,” she says, rolling her eyes.

Z treats herself to ice cream. “Figures that the stupid lights would go out on my birthday,” she thinks, before aging up in darkness. She decides to sign up for firefighter work. At least it’ll give her a legitimate excuse for staying at the station all the time. 

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Notes – Ok? OK. The lights in my game randomly decided to stop working, so apologies for some of the more badly lit shots.

My rolls for this generation are:

A.   Couple

B.   One Child

C.    Primary career Firefighter, Secondary Law enforcement (super spy)

D.   Hobby, or Obsession?

E.    Gourmet

“Z” was the first sim in my bin. I wasn’t planning on using her at first, but after looking at her traits, I couldn’t help but start thinking of her as my sim, so here she is. I switched out her technophobe trait, though. I can’t stand that trait. Her traits after aging up are: Artistic, Brave, Neurotic, Rebellious, and Heavy Sleeper.

Frankie Stettner is a sim I’ve used a LOT, for various career tracks and other tasks I put him up to, but one thing he hasn’t been before is a super spy. Also among the things he’s never done are: getting married, fathering children, and dying of old age.  So this will be bittersweet; Frankie will finally get to do many things his previous incarnations didn’t do, but, well… I don’t think I could bear to use him again after watching him die, so if this generation goes smoothly, I will lose a very precious Sim to me (sad). Lol. His traits are Coward, Hopeless Romantic, Green thumb, Good, Unlucky.

Anyway this is kind of a short first chapter because I’m nervous (ugh) and because I’m still getting the hang of remembering to take screenshots.