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The Goldsmith Legacy
giullia
Posts: 25 Member
(Hi, everyone! I came here to show my first Sims 3 legacy, which I started a few days ago. I'm really enjoying it so far, and I hope you guys like it too).
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Roaring Heights International Airport. Local time is 8 am and the temperature is 86°F. For your safety and comfort, please remain seated with your seat belt fastened until the captain turns off the Fasten Seat Belt sign”.
Violet Goldsmith was taking a nap, tired after a long car ride from Riverview to Wichita and then a flight to California, but she woke up as soon as she heard the plane’s captain say they were finally landing in Roaring Heights. Ecstatic, she leaned over the window and saw for the first time the city she chose to live: tall buildings, crystalline seas, crowded beaches and beautiful parks.
She was not used to big cities. 21 years before, she was born in a small rural area in Kansas, and she spent her whole life there. Her parents were farmers like almost everyone else in Riverview, and Violet had six brothers and sisters. But she had spent her entire life dreaming of moving to California and becoming a famous actress, and Roaring Heights seemed like the perfect place for her. After she graduated high school, she worked for three years in a stationery to save money, until she finally could afford a house in Roaring Heights and a life away from her family.
However, being away from her hometown didn’t mean that Violet was alone. Her childhood friend Brooke had always dreamed of moving to the big city, just like her, so they went on this adventure together. They had always been very close and they were excited to be housemates. After the airplane landed, the two girls gathered their bags, left the airport and hopped into a cab.
The weather was hot, so it was good to be in a cab with air conditioning. Then the cab driver turned on the radio, and they giggled when Party in the U.S.A started playing. That song described exactly what they were doing and how they were feeling at that moment.
“I hopped off the plane at LAX,
With a dream and my cardigan,
Welcome to the land of fame excess,
Whoa, am I gonna fit in?“
“Just look at this, Vi! This must be the Roaring Heights Plaza!”, blurted Brooke, as they were passing across a huge park. She had purchased a tourist guide at the airport, and she looked continuously from the guide to the window. She then looked at the driver. “Could you leave us here, please? I need to take a closer look”.
“But… Brooke, we have our bags, and…”, Violet began to protest, but Brooke didn’t care. She grabbed her by her wrist and pulled her out of the car. Laughing, they chased each other until they were inside the park, and then they both stopped and just looked around for a second, astonished. They were used to mud, wide landscapes and farm houses. They never saw anything like that park and its surroundings.
“That’s awesome”.
Brooke Denton sighed, delighted with the view. She had a lot in common with Violet: she also grew up on a ranch, her parents were also farmers, she also had many siblings, and she also never had the opportunity to leave Riverview prior to that day. The girls met in kindergarten and had been inseparable since then, planning the day they would move out from their little town since they were kids. They both longed for fame and fortune. They both had many hopes for the future.
But there was still a few differences between them, of course. Violet was straight, while Brooke had come out as a lesbian in high school. Violet had taken drama classes her entire life, and even took part in some school plays, while Brooke wanted to be a musician and spent most days of her childhood playing guitar.
Their personalities were also different. Violet was charismatic and was used to be surrounded by friends anywhere she went, while Brooke kept to herself and only had one real friend. Violet was always worried about pleasing everybody, while Brooke was self-sufficient and never cared about what anyone else thought. Besides acting, Violet had a passion for books, and Brooke never cared about anything but her music.
“You know what? I feel that we’re going to be very happy here”, Violet stated, still looking around in awe. Brooke nodded.
“Sure thing. And, if something bad happens, we’ll still have each other”, she completed. Then she raised her hand and spoke in a high pitched voice, like when they were kids: “After all, we’re best friends forever. Give me five!”
Violet smiled and rolled her eyes. She didn’t feel like pretending she was a little kid again, as she felt that life had never been so good before. Still, she was glad to be there with Brooke, so she willingly high-fived her.
“What should we do now?”, asked Violet. She had spent her whole life dreaming of the moment they would arrive in Roaring Heights. Now they were finally there, and she didn’t know what she wanted to do first. “Maybe go to a café? Or a bar? Or the beach? I can’t wait to go to the beach, I’ve never done it before”.
“Hey, take it easy, we just got here. Maybe we should just go home and do some unpacking first”, Brooke said, proceeding to talk about how she forgot her favorite sweatshirt at her parents’s home and how she would have to call them and ask them to mail it to her. But Violet wasn’t listening anymore: she had just realized what she wanted to do. She turned her back and ran towards the other end of the park, ignoring Brooke’s dumbfounded questions.
The reason why she never bothered to explain why she ran away so suddenly was that Brooke would never understand it anyway. She knew her well enough to know that, even though she was passionate about music and their new life in California, she wasn’t good at seeing beauty in small things. Brooke would never understand if Violet explained to her the sudden urge to run to the place where she saw a group of beautiful monarch butterflies, just flying around.
Violet was mesmerized. Butterflies meant nothing to Brooke, but she saw them as a sign. A sign that good things would happen to her. She was feeling blessed, and she thought her situation couldn’t get any better. Then a butterfly landed on her hand.
“Look, Boo! This butterfly liked me!”, Violet said, whispering so she wouldn’t scare the butterfly. Brooke had given up yelling for her to come back and finally decided to follow her. She was now standing right behind Violet.
“Don’t be silly, it’s just a bug”, Brooke retorted, not even looking twice at the butterflies until another one of them landed on her nose for just a split second. After that, she couldn’t just act tough anymore. She raised her eyebrows and started laughing, and Violet did the same. “Alright, Vi, you won. The butterflies really seemed to like us. But that’s enough of this craziness, we really should get going. We haven’t even met our house yet!”
“Yeah, okay. Bye-bye, little buddy”, Violet told the butterfly, right before releasing it.
They had to rummage through their pockets to find enough coins to call another cab. All the money they had saved from the years they worked after high school was spent on their house, the furniture and their plane tickets, which left them completely broke. They needed to get jobs as fast as they could.
At least, the house was worth all the money they spent on it. It was really tiny, but it had a beautiful art déco architecture, two balconies, and huge windows that let the sunlight in. It was also located on a nice neighborhood, and it was just a few steps away from the community garden and the beach. Violet and Brooke stood in the sidewalk for a second, in silence, just admiring their new house.
Then Violet gathered the courage to go inside the house. And she wasn’t disappointed: all the furniture they bought had already been delivered, and the different tones of green worked well together, creating a cozy atmosphere. It looked even better than it had looked in the catalog of the real estate agency, and she loved it. Of course, she still dreamed of being famous and living in a much bigger house, but it was great just to be away from farms and dirt.
“You have to come inside, Boo! Our house is awesome!”, Violet yelled. But she didn’t wait for Brooke to come inside. Instead, she ran upstairs. She couldn’t wait to see her bedroom.
It was very small, like everything else in the house. There was just three pieces of furniture: a cheap bed, a bookcase and a dressing table, aside from a rug and a few posters on the wall. Still, there was barely any room to move around. It was cramped and not luxurious at all, but it was better than the place Violet used to share with her sisters. Nothing could be worse than four girls in one bedroom, stealing each other’s clothes and makeup, reading each other’s diaries and not letting anyone have any privacy.
Violet could already imagine herself spending many hours in her new bedroom, reading her books and rehearsing for plays.
But roles in plays wouldn’t come easy. Violet knew it, so she finished unpacking and looked up on-line for the number of a talent agency. She set up an appointment with an agent, who seemed eager to put his hands on 30% of the profits of every work he got for her. It was not great, but it was a good start, and she went to meet him in the agency with her hopes up.
Turned out the agent was a small, almost bald middle-aged man. He answered the phone four times while they were talking, and Violet listened to him arguing with one of his clients, claiming that it wasn’t his fault that the client didn’t get any role in months. He also didn’t seem interested at all in Violet’s work. After she signed their contract, all he had to say was “you better not suck”.
How would he know if I sucked? He didn’t ask for a demonstration or anything, Violet wondered, while leaving the agency. She was scared that signing that contract might have been a mistake. But what else was she supposed to do? Very few agencies wanted beginners like her. She walked down the street, distracted with those thoughts, and almost bumped into a man who was coming from the opposite direction.
“Oh!”, she exclaimed, stepping back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you coming”.
“No problem”, he said, with a charming smile on his face. “Did you just leave the talent agency? Because I’m headed there, actually”.
“I just signed a contract with them. And I must warn you that their deals aren’t that good”, she stated, feeling uncertainty and regret in her voice. That made him laugh.
“Yeah, I know. I work for them for a couple years now, and they never got me a good role. Most of the time, they only get you jobs for cleaning up sets and serving food to actors, then they tell you that you don’t get real jobs because you don’t work hard enough. Welcome, by the way”.
“Is it really that bad?”, she bit her lower lip.
“It has its ups and downs. May I ask your name?”
“I’m Violet Goldsmith, and I arrived from Kansas just a few days ago, hoping to become an actress. So far, this dream doesn’t seem about to come true”.
“Don’t think like that, everyone loves gorgeous girls coming from the countryside with wild dreams. You’ll do just fine. And, if you don’t, you can always join me and my friends. We’re all neglected actors, and we meet whenever we have some free time. In fact, we are meeting this friday at a bar. Would you like to come? Maybe you can make yourself a few friends”.
“I’d love to”, she agreed. She gave him her cell phone and he wrote down his number and his name: Mark.
(Well, that's half of the first chapter! If you want to read more, please access my blog. There's a lot more in there! Thank you very much for reading
).
The link: https://thegoldsmithlegacy.wordpress.com/
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Roaring Heights International Airport. Local time is 8 am and the temperature is 86°F. For your safety and comfort, please remain seated with your seat belt fastened until the captain turns off the Fasten Seat Belt sign”.
Violet Goldsmith was taking a nap, tired after a long car ride from Riverview to Wichita and then a flight to California, but she woke up as soon as she heard the plane’s captain say they were finally landing in Roaring Heights. Ecstatic, she leaned over the window and saw for the first time the city she chose to live: tall buildings, crystalline seas, crowded beaches and beautiful parks.
She was not used to big cities. 21 years before, she was born in a small rural area in Kansas, and she spent her whole life there. Her parents were farmers like almost everyone else in Riverview, and Violet had six brothers and sisters. But she had spent her entire life dreaming of moving to California and becoming a famous actress, and Roaring Heights seemed like the perfect place for her. After she graduated high school, she worked for three years in a stationery to save money, until she finally could afford a house in Roaring Heights and a life away from her family.
However, being away from her hometown didn’t mean that Violet was alone. Her childhood friend Brooke had always dreamed of moving to the big city, just like her, so they went on this adventure together. They had always been very close and they were excited to be housemates. After the airplane landed, the two girls gathered their bags, left the airport and hopped into a cab.
The weather was hot, so it was good to be in a cab with air conditioning. Then the cab driver turned on the radio, and they giggled when Party in the U.S.A started playing. That song described exactly what they were doing and how they were feeling at that moment.
“I hopped off the plane at LAX,
With a dream and my cardigan,
Welcome to the land of fame excess,
Whoa, am I gonna fit in?“
“Just look at this, Vi! This must be the Roaring Heights Plaza!”, blurted Brooke, as they were passing across a huge park. She had purchased a tourist guide at the airport, and she looked continuously from the guide to the window. She then looked at the driver. “Could you leave us here, please? I need to take a closer look”.
“But… Brooke, we have our bags, and…”, Violet began to protest, but Brooke didn’t care. She grabbed her by her wrist and pulled her out of the car. Laughing, they chased each other until they were inside the park, and then they both stopped and just looked around for a second, astonished. They were used to mud, wide landscapes and farm houses. They never saw anything like that park and its surroundings.
“That’s awesome”.
Brooke Denton sighed, delighted with the view. She had a lot in common with Violet: she also grew up on a ranch, her parents were also farmers, she also had many siblings, and she also never had the opportunity to leave Riverview prior to that day. The girls met in kindergarten and had been inseparable since then, planning the day they would move out from their little town since they were kids. They both longed for fame and fortune. They both had many hopes for the future.
But there was still a few differences between them, of course. Violet was straight, while Brooke had come out as a lesbian in high school. Violet had taken drama classes her entire life, and even took part in some school plays, while Brooke wanted to be a musician and spent most days of her childhood playing guitar.
Their personalities were also different. Violet was charismatic and was used to be surrounded by friends anywhere she went, while Brooke kept to herself and only had one real friend. Violet was always worried about pleasing everybody, while Brooke was self-sufficient and never cared about what anyone else thought. Besides acting, Violet had a passion for books, and Brooke never cared about anything but her music.
“You know what? I feel that we’re going to be very happy here”, Violet stated, still looking around in awe. Brooke nodded.
“Sure thing. And, if something bad happens, we’ll still have each other”, she completed. Then she raised her hand and spoke in a high pitched voice, like when they were kids: “After all, we’re best friends forever. Give me five!”
Violet smiled and rolled her eyes. She didn’t feel like pretending she was a little kid again, as she felt that life had never been so good before. Still, she was glad to be there with Brooke, so she willingly high-fived her.
“What should we do now?”, asked Violet. She had spent her whole life dreaming of the moment they would arrive in Roaring Heights. Now they were finally there, and she didn’t know what she wanted to do first. “Maybe go to a café? Or a bar? Or the beach? I can’t wait to go to the beach, I’ve never done it before”.
“Hey, take it easy, we just got here. Maybe we should just go home and do some unpacking first”, Brooke said, proceeding to talk about how she forgot her favorite sweatshirt at her parents’s home and how she would have to call them and ask them to mail it to her. But Violet wasn’t listening anymore: she had just realized what she wanted to do. She turned her back and ran towards the other end of the park, ignoring Brooke’s dumbfounded questions.
The reason why she never bothered to explain why she ran away so suddenly was that Brooke would never understand it anyway. She knew her well enough to know that, even though she was passionate about music and their new life in California, she wasn’t good at seeing beauty in small things. Brooke would never understand if Violet explained to her the sudden urge to run to the place where she saw a group of beautiful monarch butterflies, just flying around.
Violet was mesmerized. Butterflies meant nothing to Brooke, but she saw them as a sign. A sign that good things would happen to her. She was feeling blessed, and she thought her situation couldn’t get any better. Then a butterfly landed on her hand.
“Look, Boo! This butterfly liked me!”, Violet said, whispering so she wouldn’t scare the butterfly. Brooke had given up yelling for her to come back and finally decided to follow her. She was now standing right behind Violet.
“Don’t be silly, it’s just a bug”, Brooke retorted, not even looking twice at the butterflies until another one of them landed on her nose for just a split second. After that, she couldn’t just act tough anymore. She raised her eyebrows and started laughing, and Violet did the same. “Alright, Vi, you won. The butterflies really seemed to like us. But that’s enough of this craziness, we really should get going. We haven’t even met our house yet!”
“Yeah, okay. Bye-bye, little buddy”, Violet told the butterfly, right before releasing it.
They had to rummage through their pockets to find enough coins to call another cab. All the money they had saved from the years they worked after high school was spent on their house, the furniture and their plane tickets, which left them completely broke. They needed to get jobs as fast as they could.
At least, the house was worth all the money they spent on it. It was really tiny, but it had a beautiful art déco architecture, two balconies, and huge windows that let the sunlight in. It was also located on a nice neighborhood, and it was just a few steps away from the community garden and the beach. Violet and Brooke stood in the sidewalk for a second, in silence, just admiring their new house.
Then Violet gathered the courage to go inside the house. And she wasn’t disappointed: all the furniture they bought had already been delivered, and the different tones of green worked well together, creating a cozy atmosphere. It looked even better than it had looked in the catalog of the real estate agency, and she loved it. Of course, she still dreamed of being famous and living in a much bigger house, but it was great just to be away from farms and dirt.
“You have to come inside, Boo! Our house is awesome!”, Violet yelled. But she didn’t wait for Brooke to come inside. Instead, she ran upstairs. She couldn’t wait to see her bedroom.
It was very small, like everything else in the house. There was just three pieces of furniture: a cheap bed, a bookcase and a dressing table, aside from a rug and a few posters on the wall. Still, there was barely any room to move around. It was cramped and not luxurious at all, but it was better than the place Violet used to share with her sisters. Nothing could be worse than four girls in one bedroom, stealing each other’s clothes and makeup, reading each other’s diaries and not letting anyone have any privacy.
Violet could already imagine herself spending many hours in her new bedroom, reading her books and rehearsing for plays.
But roles in plays wouldn’t come easy. Violet knew it, so she finished unpacking and looked up on-line for the number of a talent agency. She set up an appointment with an agent, who seemed eager to put his hands on 30% of the profits of every work he got for her. It was not great, but it was a good start, and she went to meet him in the agency with her hopes up.
Turned out the agent was a small, almost bald middle-aged man. He answered the phone four times while they were talking, and Violet listened to him arguing with one of his clients, claiming that it wasn’t his fault that the client didn’t get any role in months. He also didn’t seem interested at all in Violet’s work. After she signed their contract, all he had to say was “you better not suck”.
How would he know if I sucked? He didn’t ask for a demonstration or anything, Violet wondered, while leaving the agency. She was scared that signing that contract might have been a mistake. But what else was she supposed to do? Very few agencies wanted beginners like her. She walked down the street, distracted with those thoughts, and almost bumped into a man who was coming from the opposite direction.
“Oh!”, she exclaimed, stepping back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you coming”.
“No problem”, he said, with a charming smile on his face. “Did you just leave the talent agency? Because I’m headed there, actually”.
“I just signed a contract with them. And I must warn you that their deals aren’t that good”, she stated, feeling uncertainty and regret in her voice. That made him laugh.
“Yeah, I know. I work for them for a couple years now, and they never got me a good role. Most of the time, they only get you jobs for cleaning up sets and serving food to actors, then they tell you that you don’t get real jobs because you don’t work hard enough. Welcome, by the way”.
“Is it really that bad?”, she bit her lower lip.
“It has its ups and downs. May I ask your name?”
“I’m Violet Goldsmith, and I arrived from Kansas just a few days ago, hoping to become an actress. So far, this dream doesn’t seem about to come true”.
“Don’t think like that, everyone loves gorgeous girls coming from the countryside with wild dreams. You’ll do just fine. And, if you don’t, you can always join me and my friends. We’re all neglected actors, and we meet whenever we have some free time. In fact, we are meeting this friday at a bar. Would you like to come? Maybe you can make yourself a few friends”.
“I’d love to”, she agreed. She gave him her cell phone and he wrote down his number and his name: Mark.
(Well, that's half of the first chapter! If you want to read more, please access my blog. There's a lot more in there! Thank you very much for reading
).The link: https://thegoldsmithlegacy.wordpress.com/
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“You want plain vodka?”
She nodded. If she was going to be alone the first time she went to a bar without Brooke in a new town where she didn’t have any friends, then she needed the strongest drink there was in the bar. All she wanted to do was to drink until she forgot what happened to her, then maybe call Brooke and ask to be picked up.
It took her two huge glasses of vodka to start feeling better. She kept telling herself that she didn’t need a bunch of failed actors anyway, she could have fun by herself. And she had Brooke. Still, it was hurtful to think why someone would invite her somewhere and then forget about her. It was even more hurtful to think that she might have been victim of a prank. People were starting to stare at her, possibly wondering what a young girl was doing alone at a bar. She finished her drink and searched for her wallet, decided to pay the bill and go home, when she heard a voice calling her name:
“Hey, Violet! Over here!”
She couldn’t believe it. A whole hour after the agreed time, there were Mark and two of his friends, entering the bar like they hadn’t just left her waiting for so long. Violet knew she should be mad at them, but she felt calm after all that vodka. And it was still early, it wouldn’t hurt if she hung around for a little longer and asked them what exactly had happened. She left her seat and went towards them, feeling a little dizzy because of the drinks.
“What’s wrong with you guys?”, she asked, noticing the puzzled looks on their faces. “Mark, you told me to be here at 9 pm. Now it’s past 10! I was almost going back home”.
She expected an apology, but they started laughing instead. “That’s something you need to learn about the big city, Violet: people are never on time”, Mark remarked.
“But we are glad that you didn’t go home”, added one of his friends, a tall man in a blue jacket. “Mark told us all about the pretty girl from Kansas he met, and it’s nice to finally meet you. Anyway, you can call me MD. And this here is our friend, Sam”.
Violet shook MD’s hand and proceeded to shake Sam’s hand too. However, Sam ignored her hand, pulling her into a tight hug instead. And, after letting go, she leaned forward to whisper something in Violet’s ear: “I’m sure we are going to be best friends, dear. I came from a small town as well, a few years ago. And it’s great to finally have another girl in our small group of neglected actors”.
The girls still talked for a few minutes, sharing their life experiences: how Violet felt after arriving in Roaring Heights, how it was for Sam to grow up in Iowa. Then Sam went to grab a drink and Violet started to talk with MD.
“I’ve actually been in a movie once”, he bragged to her. “It was a western movie, and there’s a scene when the cowboys are in a pub. Then the sheriff comes inside, and it’s me. I only had one line, but it’s the most famous line in the movie, I swear”.
Violet never heard of that movie or the line he quoted, but she smiled and said nothing about it. She was really liking spending time with Mark and his friends, but their stories made her worried. MD was almost 40 years old, way older than her, and he was trying to be an actor since graduating high school, but all he got was that stupid movie with that silly line. What if the same happened to her?
“Violet, come here. Let’s play some shuffleboard”, called Mark, probably noticing the weird look on her face while she talked to MD. She was grateful to end that conversation, so she allowed Mark to teach her how to play that game. “I know what you are thinking”, he said, “You just arrived and there’s a lot of people telling you about how their acting dreams didn’t come true. Must be overwhelming”.
“I’m just happy to have new friends”, she said, trying to be as friendly as possible. He smirked.
“You’re too nice. And pretty, if I may. I bet you’re the prettiest girl the talent agency has seen in years, but don’t let Sam know that I said it”.
She was flattered by the way Mark couldn’t say a phrase without complimenting her. If he was trying to make her fall for him, it worked. Soon she was batting her eyelashes and giggling at everything he said. After midnight, MD and Sam decided to go home, but Violet stayed at the bar with Mark, chatting, drinking and playing until closing time. She ended up so drunk that she could barely walk, so he gave her a ride home on his cheap, old car. “Thank you for a nice evening out”, she told him, when he stopped in front of her house. Then he leaned forward and kissed her.
Violet began going out with them every week. And, when she wasn’t with her new friends or begging the talent agency for jobs, she was spending time with Brooke. The two girls were on complete different schedules, with Brooke working mostly nights and Violet going to auditions during the day, but they still made their meals together and used that time to catch up. Brooke told her all about the jobs she was getting, playing in bars and parties, and Violet told her about Mark, Sam and MD.
“I’m glad that you have new friends, Vi, but I think you should be careful”, Brooke said one day, putting a mouthful of salad in her mouth. “You said they are all failed actors. That means they want you to fail too”.
“That’s not true. They want us all to succeed”, Violet answered. “Anyway, what are you doing next weekend?"
Brooke had been hired to play at a wedding that weekend, but the cerimony was luckily over before sunset. So she had a plenty of time to go home, take a shower and go with Violet to the boardwalk, like they planned while having lunch, a few days before. Both of them had already gone to the beach and to parties since arriving in Roaring Heights, but it was their first time facing the famous Sky High Roller Coaster. It was something they planned on doing since the first time they talked about moving to California, years before. And the time came: they were finally there, making another childhood dream come true.
There wasn’t any amusement parks in Riverview, which meant that the girls never felt the thrill of sitting in a roller coaster cart before. At first, they were both excited, but Violet began feeling ill as soon as the ride begun. “I don’t think that ride was a good idea, Boo”, she told her, feeling her stomach drop and her hands get sweaty. “I mean, it’s too fast… And too high…”
“Don’t be such a coward, we are still going slow. The real ride hasn’t even begun yet, and…”, Brooke’s sentence was cut off when the cart began to speed up in the rails, causing both girls to start screaming while water jets splashed on their faces.
And their screams grew even louder when the cart reached the peak of the roller coaster. Violet was frightened, but she also had to admit it was a unique experience, and that she was having a kind of fun she never had before. When they were about to fall, Brooke squeezed her hand, and Violet did the same. “I love you, Vi”, Brooke told her, in a hushed tone. Violet was a little taken aback by those words, but she assumed that she was just saying she loved her as a friend, so she smiled.
“I love you too, Boo. You are my best friend”.
“No, what I really mean is…”, she tried to say, but then they started to fall and she was cut off one more time.
Violet never really learnt what she meant, because they were busy laughing and screaming until the end of the ride, and then Brooke seemed to regret what she had started to say and told her to just forget it. And Violet really forgot it, dismissing it as something that didn’t matter. What was really important to her was that they were together, they were best friends and they had a blast together, like the old times, when they were not so busy with music and acting. And she was looking forward to more days like that one.
At the peak of the roller coaster, life seemed great.
(That's the other half of the first chapter! There's more chapters up on the blog. Thank you for reading, and I'd appreciate if you could leave a comment!)
- A Sims 3 Legacy Challenge.
Upon arriving in Roaring Heights, Violet was optimistic. Her dream of moving to California had come true, and she thought it wouldn’t be so hard to become an actress. After all, her drama teacher in high school always told her just how talented she was, and she had always been involved in school plays. But two years passed by, and the talent agency never got her good roles or auditions. She got many roles as an uncredited extra and even had a line in a cheap sci-fi movie, but that was all.
However, she refused to give up. She knew many stories of famous people who started from the bottom, and she wanted to be one of them. So she kept practicing for auditions and rehearsing, always aiming for a lead role that never came.
And she wasn’t the only one who was practicing until exhaustion. Brooke was becoming a renowned musician, sometimes playing in four or five parties a week, not to mention the bars and clubs that were always asking her to play there on weekends. She was very dedicated, and she was proud to play every song her clients requested, even the weirdest and rarest. Her repertoire went from Ed Sheeran to Mötley Crüe, and she was always learning new songs, practicing them all day long.
Violet was glad for her friend, but she envied her a little bit. It was hard to see everything working out for Brooke while she was just a neglected actress like all of her friends. It was also hard to see Brooke paying their bills and their food, while she couldn’t even afford a pizza.
Being around her friends and sharing experiences with them became Violet’s greatest relief. She no longer felt scared when she heard their stories about the lame roles they got. Instead, she shared with them her own stories. MD always laughed when she quoted her line in the sci-fi movie: “don’t underestimate us, earthling”. Sometimes, when neither Violet or her friends had money for drinks or food, they would stay at her house until the early hours of the morning, chatting and watching TV. Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem, because Brooke worked long hours at night and Violet had the house only for herself.
On the other hand, Brooke wasn’t amused the first time she got home at 3 am and found Violet’s friends laughing and screaming in the living room, with cans of beer and empty bags of chips scattered on the floor, and the music turned on at the loudest volume. Violet was cuddling with Mark in the couch, but she got up as soon as she saw the terrible look on her best friend’s face. “Hey, Boo. Sorry about the mess, I though you wouldn’t be back until morning, so I…”
“So you thought you could destroy our house?”, Brooke finished her sentence. What Violet wanted to say was that she intended to clean everything up before she arrived in the morning, but she didn’t get the chance to say anything else before Brooke continued: “You guys should be ashamed of coming to someone else’s house and doing this mess. I doubt that you do that in your own houses”.
“We are really sorry”, Mark said, trying to appease her. “Trust me, we are cleaning everything up. Just give us one hour or two”.
“That’s a lot of time!”, Brooke shrieked. Violet hadn’t seen her so angry since the day when a girl from their elementary school put glue on her hair, years ago.”I worked all night and now I want to sleep for a few hours, so I can wake up without feeling like crap this morning and practice the songs for a birthday party that will happen tomorrow afternoon. And I can’t rest while you’re all in my house. So just do me a favor and get out!”
Violet was appaled by her reaction, but she knew the house was hers too and she had every right to want a good night’s sleep. She started saying goodbye for her friends, and then Sam stormed: “You can’t just tell Vi what to do, you know. It’s her house too”.
“It’s okay, Sam, you don’t need to…”
“Oh, shut up”, Brooke said to Sam, not even listening to Violet. “I always told Violet she shouldn’t hang out with you and your friends, and here’s the reason. You are all a bunch of frustrated people who likes to discourage her, and you have no respect for her, for me or our house. If you don’t leave at the count of five, I’m calling the police”.
“And what if I stay?”, Sam challenged her, and then Violet couldn’t take it anymore. She wanted all her friends to get along, and that stupid fight was unbearable to her. Before Brooke had the opportunity to reply, she yelled:
“Enough!” It seemed to get their attentions, because all the people in the room looked at her. “Brooke, Sam is right when she says that you can’t boss me around in my own house. Sam, Brooke is right when she says that she deserves to sleep. Let’s just call it a night, okay? I’ll clean the house tomorrow and everything will be fine”.
Mark, Sam and MD left while Violet collected the trash from the floor. Brooke seemed to calm down after they were gone, and even helped her to pick up one can of beer. “Sorry that I yelled at you”, she said. “I didn’t mean to… I mean, I just got so mad when I saw you and that guy cuddling, and then I started screaming”.
“Why would you care?”, Violet asked, coldly.
“Well, I just worry about you. Friends do that”, she replied, but she didn’t sound very convincing. Violet wanted to ask her what was wrong, but it was late, she was very stressed out and couldn’t bring herself to continue that conversation. She collected the last bag of chips, said good night and went to bed.
A few weeks later, Violet’s agent got her a well-paid gig in another sci-fi movie, and she was very excited when she signed a contract for a whole year, instead of her usual contracts for just one scene. She went to the set to get her script the next day, and was disappointed to find out they wanted her to be just a recurring extra, without any lines or significance. At that moment, she just wanted to tell them to forget it and go away, but she still needed the money, so she stayed.
She kept coming to the set everyday to do her scenes, feeling her heart heavy, and she stayed there until everyone else had left, to admire the set and imagine how she would feel if she had a relevant role.
Violet did her best to get the director’s attention, so maybe he would think of her in his next movie, but all she got was constant requests to help clean up the set and cross the city to buy more fake blood, more fruits to the actor’s dressing rooms, and so on. She even helped the set decorators build a starship, which was actually kind of fun. It was not so fun, however, when she talked to the set decorators and found out that many of them were failed actors. “You are young, and you are allowed to dream”, an older man told her. “But when you are married and have children, like me, you just do what you can to get money and provide for your family”.
She had always imagined herself having her own family one day, but she just wanted it after she managed to be a famous actress. She had started thinking that day might never come, though.
She was glad when that year was over, the time stipulated in the contract ended, and she was free to start looking for better gigs. On her last day working on that sci-fi production, she climbed down the stairs to the set feeling more determined than she had ever been. She promised herself that would be the last time she worked as an extra.
Sbe put on her alien costume and the green makeup like she had done everyday in the past few months. Then she tried to engage in conversation with the producers of the movie, making sure to ask them to remember her in the future. Most of the producers said nothing, but one of them smiled and said: “sure, Vicky”.
It became rather obvious to her that the producers wouldn’t remember her, let alone call her for their future productions. The talent agency was also useless, never offering her good opportunities. Violet had to look for auditions on her own, and that’s what she did. As she didn’t have money to buy a computer, she spent her days in the library to use theirs.
She sent e-mails to every movie director or producer in Roaring Heights. She made a profile on a website aimed for beginner actors. She applied for so many auditions that she barely had time to do anything but rehearse and memorize lines. Still, most of the directors never seemed interested in her. A few of them even said they liked her performance, but admitted they were looking for celebrities.
She also refused every opportunity to work as an extra, so she could focus on auditions for decent roles. It wasn’t like she wanted just lead roles, she just wanted to have at least one line. But refusing other jobs brought her consequences, and she soon found herself completely broke. She had to ask Brooke to lend her money all the time, and nothing made her more embarrassed than having to ask for coins to get the subway and go for one more audition.
Brooke never complained, but Violet noticed how worried she was getting. She went to the grocery store and asked her if she needed food, she went to the drugstore and asked if she needed something, as if she thought that she was starving. Brooke also didn’t know about all of the roles she was refusing because she didn’t want to work as an extra, and thought simply that she wasn’t being offered any jobs. Once, when Violet was reading the newspaper after breakfast, she even tried offering her a job carrying and cleaning instruments for her musician friends, but Violet refused it too. She just had no time.
In the next few months, she lost a lot of weight, so focused on the auditions and rehearsals to auditions that she barely had time to eat. Although Brooke didn’t care to lend her money, she did care about Violet skipping meals. On a thursday morning, she woke up earlier and made a huge breakfast, including everything Violet liked to eat, to force some food into her mouth. Violet was touched by her act, but her phone rang as soon as she started to put marmalade on her toast. “I have to pick it up, it might be important”, she told Brooke, right before leaving the breakfast table.
But it wasn’t any producers or directors calling to give her feedback about any of her auditions. It was Sam. Violet tried not to be disappointed. “Hey, Sammy. What’s up?”
“Vi! Listen to me, we have no time to chat. Can you meet me at the subway station in thirty minutes? I’ll explain everything when we’re on our way”.
“When we’re on our way to where?”, asked Violet. Sam was talking fast and seemed to be overexcited, so she couldn’t really understand anything that she was saying. “Sam, slow down”.
“I can’t slow down! It’s an audition, Vi. Not any audition, but an audition to Roger Jankowski’s newest movie. And we are going, you and me! Just meet me at the subway station, can be? I just learnt about this audition a few minutes ago, and we are already late”.
All she understood was the name “Roger Jankowski” and the word “audition”, but that was enough for her to know that she wanted to go desperately. Roger was the most famous movie director in Roaring Heights. He wrote and directed many musical films, and received at least a dozen Oscars in the past twenty years. If Sam actually got them an audition to his newest movie, then she had every reason to be so excited. “I… Of course I want to go, Sam, but… I’m still wearing pajamas, and… And breakfast…”
“How can you think of breakfast with an audition like this going on?”, shrieked Sam. “It’s a chance of a lifetime, Vi. So you better hurry up, because if you aren’t there in thirty minutes, I’ll go without you!”
(Happy new year! As always, I'd like to thank you for reading. If you can, please access my blog and leave a comment! There's much more content in there. It would mean everything to me
- A Sims 3 Legacy Challenge.