It’s a scrapbook, kind of. Jaycee Browning started as humbly as any other sim:
There are no real plans, goals, or challenges for this legacy. It began as a desire to play the new Parenthood pack. Just a girl who starts with nothing, but puts down her roots on an empty lot in Windenburg, builds a house from the ground up and raises a family there. For that reason, lifespan is set to long (at least for now). Aging for unplayed households is off.
Jaycee took her 20,000 and bought the lot. Careful not to stretch her limited funds too thin, she ended up with a one room house with the basic amenities - until she thought of the husband she hoped to meet soon (today, hopefully). Thus the one room house became two, but, not wanting to get ahead of herself, she bought two single beds instead of the double.
She started the garden right away, of course, and then called to find a job. The scientist career was chosen because… A) Watcher hasn’t played it yet. B) A certain gen 6 in a certain other story has plans to embark on this career path, and I want to see what it’s about. And C) it seems mighty useful, from what I hear.
And with the garden tended and nothing to do for the rest of the day, the spouse hunt began. Of course I had already gone into household management and temporarily added Jaycee-clones to all the households with desirable men, then played with their DNA in CAS to see who would make the best looking children…
Don Lothario, no surprise, was the winner, so Jaycee found herself on his doorstep, ready to steal him away from the Caliente girls. They had no idea that she was basically a homewrecker when they invited her in. She found him upstairs playing Blicblock.
“You know it’s sad when you live in a houseful of women, and this is what you’re doing with yourself,” Don tells her.
“I’ll show you a good time, if you’d like,” Jaycee offers smoothly (she surprised even herself). “Well, unless you actually like Block-Block.”
“It’s Blicblock, and I hate it,” says Don firmly. He turns off the computer and gives her an appreciative look. “...you friends with one of the girls?”
“No, actually, I’m here to see you,” she says - sheepishly, for she’s not normally so bold.
On a date at the Stargazer Lounge, Jaycee and Don soon find that they get along very well. They’re both romantics, anyway, and the flirting and kissing and whispering sweet nothings is smooth and feels right. In fact, they did most of it autonomously.
“Too easy,” says Jaycee, immediately selling the romantic reward after the gold medal date.
“Hey!” Don objects. “I thought that meant something! It’s supposed to be sentimental.”
Well, she does need the money. And speaking of… “How would you like to move in with me?” she asks him in a rush. She knows he’s non-committal, but she’s hoping it will work in her favor - he’s already committed to Katrina, after all. Maybe his non-committing desires will view her as the escape, and Katrina as the ball and chain.
It certainly seems so, anyway.
Though Don doesn’t seem so pleased with his decision once he arrives and sees the house.
“So I moved in with a new girl,” he says. “And we won’t even be sleeping in the same bed?”
“I’m just playing it safe,” she says defensively. “It’s not like we’ve known each other long!”
Don immediately buries his face in his hands, regretting his decision.
“But I bought you a dresser,” she tells him enticingly. Indeed, the house has once again undergone a tiny remodel to make space for the dresser. “So you can get out of that awful outfit, and especially those shoes.”
It does seem to cheer Don up. And he’s no longer got black hair, either.
“Well, that’s one good thing,” he admits, because the shoes were pretty ugly. He might look a little better, too.
Jaycee starts her new job the next day. The very first thing she notices is the garden.
“Score,” she says, helping herself to the harvest.
And then she is introduced to the invention constructor. Not only did the momentum conserver cost nothing to make, but she was also able to sell it for 100 simoleans.
But the most interesting part of the job, she discovers, is asking her coworkers for metals and crystals. Antwan immediately becomes her favorite go-to person for such things. And then, after analyzing them, she immediately sells them.
She sells her serums too, gets promoted on the first day, and arrives home that evening a good bit richer.
After harvesting the garden, and collecting a few frogs - not to mention the pay from Don’s first day of work (he’s a writer, naturally), and the leftovers from the original 20,000 - she’s able to scrape together enough money to buy a computer.
Of course, that tiny house doesn’t have much room left in it at all at this point. Two more empty rooms are added - one a bathroom, where the appropriate items are moved to, and the other the beginnings of a kitchen. The stove, refrigerator and that one measly counter end up there. And in the corner of what is now an entryway (but used to be the entirety of the house) sits Don’s new computer.
“Are you ready for Blicblock?” asks Jaycee, trying to pump him up. She's trying to be funny.
“No,” he says seriously. “I’m writing a children’s book. It’s about a boy who eats his turtle.”
Fortunately Jasmine Holiday is in town and it’s boost week. The new couple get their boosts and Don becomes a writing machine, churning out one book after another and self publishing them without needing to stop to eat or relieve himself (though he does complain occasionally about feeling a bit trapped). He soon gets to where he can sell his stories to real publishers. He keeps writing. His romance novels are the greatest.
“That was good timing,” remarks Jaycee, coming in from the garden and noting he’s already working on the second novel of the day. A truer statement has never been uttered - boost week is an excellent time to start a new, broke, inexperienced family. They’d be poor forever if it wasn’t for the now very slow decaying of needs. But by the end of the week Don’s multiple books alone bring in almost $3,000 per day.
And as for Jaycee… she’s received a few promotions. The kitchen is starting to look like a kitchen, with a bit more new counterspace. But best of all, the bathroom is complete. She can hardly make herself leave it.
“It’s our first complete room!”
“The bathroom!” says Don. “Of all the rooms, the bathroom was the priority!”
“Well, it was already halfway done with the things I bought at the start,” Jaycee points out. Indeed, it was the cheapest room to finish.
“I hope it’s the kitchen next,” Don tells her. “Kind of tired of standing up to eat.”
“So much for being an athletic guy,” she teases.
In his defense, he’s pretty much a computer geek now. Jaycee tells him that he can always eat on the toilet in the newly finished bathroom, if he’d like.
Still, the money goes fast when you’re constantly building and improving. Jaycee continues to do as much as she can to get a little bit more. She’s leveled her gardening enough to be able to take a cutting off the snapdragon plant at the lab. At home she grafts it to her strawberry bush, and then sits back to wait for the first of the dragonfruit to make an appearance. There’s also a grove of trees behind the lot that she raids every chance she gets.
She’s managed to breed a leopard frog from the ongoing reptile collection, and from there, a sunsurfer frog. She’s discovered that she can basically just breed the two exclusively over and over for a guaranteed $100-125 a day, or maybe even twice a day, but she hasn’t been paying much attention. So began the sale of all the worthless $10 frogs she owned.
(or, she couldn’t bear to part with them and shoved them all in Don’s pockets instead, leaving only the two for herself to avoid confusion).
She still sells everything she comes across at work. Sometimes it comes up to bite her later on, when she doesn’t have what she needs for a task, but so far she scrapes by. With only one out of three tasks updating, maybe, but she still gets by.
And so it actually starts to look like it might be a real house.
Don steps outside to publish his latest book and runs right into Jaycee, on her way in from the garden. Things are going so well that he became suddenly foolish and forgot he was noncommittal. There, he dropped to one knee and asked her to marry him.
She said yes, of course, and quickly, before he could change his mind.
And shortly after, she surprised him with a new bed (and another addition onto the house). They seem to be doing well enough now to start having children, with the kitchen well on it’s way. At any rate, they have a roof and a refrigerator (and a toilet), so why not get started?
And so they go. Every day brings in a little more cash. Every day they drain the funds again making new improvements to the house.
Here’s part of the kitchen:
And, just off of it, a small nook/family room type of thing:
They end up with a daughter they call Ember, which was a randomized name. She spends her time in the “master bedroom” which, when more funds arrive, will soon become a sitting room. For now it’s dark and lonely with only a fireplace for company. There’s no lights and no decorations.
Sometimes when she cries Don will deign to abandon his computer and tend to her, but Jaycee is the sim with the family oriented trait, and she’s usually the one to do all the work.
