Rotation 12: Ariel

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Finally, after many rotations of focusing on the other Olsens, it's Ariel's time to shine!

I had her apply to her schools and scholarships at the same time as Will and Luna, so I just held off on actually enrolling her until I had finished their terms. She'll be majoring in drama at Britechester, as I mentioned in the Olsens' last update, and she managed to snag the rising star scholarship after she levelled up some of her musical skills.

Back when I was still waiting on acceptance letters, I did actually have Ariel audition for her first acting job, so I'll start off her rotation there!

She gets her hair and makeup done without issue, but I seem to have a weird glitch in my game where it never actually applies the look needed for the part? It still marks the task as complete, so it's not a game-breaking bug, at least.

I don't think it has anything to do with Ariel being part-alien - I've run into the same problem in my Super Sim save, although she and Ariel both have green hair, so maybe that's what's causing it? I have no idea.

Her first costume fitting does not go quite as smoothly, but she does eventually get into the right clothes.

I love how upset she looks about being put in a hot dog costume. 

Her first job is a pirate-themed commercial for what appears to be laundry detergent, and Ariel delivers a flawless performance. I don't think she actually got gold for it - I hadn't realized that you need to complete as many of the pre-acting tasks as possible to get gold - but she didn't mess up any of her scenes!

Ariel rewards herself with some shitty, post-performance pizza before heading back home.

I can't tell if that wall has no wallpaper on purpose (like it's under construction?) or if one of the devs fucked up and forgot to paint it.

On the topic of build mode, Ariel moves into her new apartment in the fashion district, so let's take a tour of that!

I think I ended up keeping most of the original furniture in the living room, but I did add in a fancy mirror and microphone for Ariel to practice at.

The kitchen gets some new cabinets, and I'll have to figure out how to better light it at some point, because the dark black shadows on the underside of the cabinets drive me crazy.

Ariel's bedroom is the largest room in the apartment, and my favourite. It'd probably be more practical to use this as a living room or something, since it's so big, but I like it too much to try to squeeze it all into a smaller room.

Ariel's apparently important enough to warrant the welcome wagon, which consists of the Hendricks, who live next door, and Aquila, Persephone's girlfriend. Aquila actually lives in the next building over with some of my other alien townies, so it makes sense that she's there, but I'm not quite sure why Polly invited herself over...

 Ariel's already familiar with the Hendricks, so I had her focus on chatting up Aquila, because you never know when you'll need a photographer friend to take a portrait or ten of you...

I decided that I wanted to try out the new roommate feature with Ariel, so while the rest of the welcome wagon chatted downstairs, I had her put out an ad, and greet the first of her potential roommates.

The game sent over this cutie as the first applicant, so I had Ariel ask her to room together immediately. She's a madeover version of one of the Maxis-made gallery sims, and while her original name is Zoe Flores, I decided to change it to Xiomara, so that there's no confusion between her and Zoe Patel.

My logic there was that I've heard Xo used as a nickname for Xiomara, and Xo sounds like Zoe.

After the welcome wagon leaves, she heads downstairs to sample some of the fashion district's food.

Then she gets to work on her first term project, while Xiomara whips out a tablet to doodle.

Jess interrupts them both by throwing a party, but luckily Ariel's able to get her to turn the music down by asking politely.

In between homework and classes, I've been having Ariel work on a couple skills for her future acting roles. I know fitness gets used a lot, so she's been doing some of the dance videos, but I also gave her a yoga mat just for fun.

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While Ariel was at class, Xiomara had a guest over, and I was slightly disappointed to find them serenading her, because I was hoping she could be a potential love interest for Ariel.

As it turns out, I had nothing to worry about, because when Ariel got home from class later, Xiomara whipped out a guitar of her own to serenade Ariel with!

She topped it off with a little air kiss, and I was shook.

I had no idea the roommates could flirt with your sims! I was absolutely expecting them to just be a huge nuisance, but the fact that they can get a lil romance going on their own gives them so much potential.

Since Ariel can pick up acting jobs at any time, I've decided I want to try to have her work between classes. There's a tiny bit of overlap between the job and some of her classes, but for the most part I was able to get her to work by leaving class a little early.

Since she didn't get gold during her first commercial, and the acting aspiration requires it, I decided to have her try again with a pharmaceutical commercial.

This time I made sure to finish all of the work tasks before sending her up to act, and she managed to score her first gold!

To celebrate, I sent her over to Uptown to have a little cupcake treat.

And while she's there, I let her have a little soak in the hot tub over at the gym.

She's got some extra balcony space back at her apartment that I haven't been able to decorate yet, so I'll probably give her a private hot tub once she can afford it.

Xiomara has work every day so she's out of the apartment a lot, but I was able to get her and Ariel to sit down for a movie, to see if there were any more sparks between them.

This time, I had Ariel initiate a little flirting, and Xiomara seemed into it. I got them to build a tiny bit of the romantic relationship bar, so hopefully that'll encourage Xiomara to keep flirting with Ariel.

I like to think that Ariel has a thing for sporty-looking brunettes.

I don't really visit the food stands all that often in the spice district, but I've been having Ariel hit up the fashion district ones a lot.

While she was there, I found Caleb zooming around with a cup of coffee.

I also found Diego Lobo, High Fashion Warlock of San Myshuno, and tried to have Ariel get his autograph. He turned her down. :(

In an effort to build up some more fame - maybe the celebrities will actually let Ariel talk to them if she too is fabulous and famous - I had her do a bit of karaoke at Plant Honey Pop.

Diego Lobo waltzed in at some point, and after sitting down with Ariel for a bit, he actually agreed to sign an autograph for her this time.

And speaking of celebrities, I did have a Carlotta sighting before Ariel left. I did not have her ask for an autograph.

Ariel also gets her first set of grades in before she leaves, and she did better than I expected - I was worried skipping a bit of class to get her to work was going to knock her down to the Bs.

Once she got home, I had her start a little photo corner on her desk.

To my delight, Xiomara has been flirting with Ariel whenever they run into each other in the apartment, and I noticed she is very prone to giving Ariel compliments - Ariel gets a little confident moodlet whenever it happens.

I was hoping to send them down to the romance festival this rotation, but Xiomara had work, so I just sent Ariel down to grab some food, and see which of my couples decided to celebrate.

I found Jeff and Alec, and Felix and Cole.

Please note that Dr. "Unflirty" Felix Rudolf is back at it with his stealth flirt shenanigans.

Finally, I also found Kunal, who managed to climb on top of a table at some point?

Don't mind his hair, I was playing around with some other curly styles before Tiny Living came out, and I found the perfect hair for him.

Ariel made it to one last acting job this rotation, which was some sort of vampiric pirate romance show.

The costume always seems to give her the right hat, at least, but I still have no idea why she never gets any hair styling or makeup done. 

Some of the acting animations are really cool, and while I'm not normally a fan of reusing animations, it's kind of shame that you only get to see them here!

I do like that the game mixes it up by giving your same gay movie scenes. I'm not entirely sure if it's based on your sim's gender preference - I've had Ariel get some male love interests in her later scenes, despite only ever pairing her with women - but either way it's nice that they didn't make it exclusively hetero.

Anyways, she gets another gold for her performance today, but what she really needs is a gold movie performance for her aspiration, so I'll have to keep sending her to shoot shows until she gets a movie deal.

I've discovered that listening to music while skilling is a good way to keep a sim's fun up, so I invested in some earbuds for Ariel so that she can use them on the go.

In addition to her work-related skills, I've also had her pick up the baking skill. I haven't really explored it with any of my paraneighbours yet, so I thought it might make a nice hobby for her.

Xiomara has continued to flirt with Ariel, and I finally managed to send them out for a super late night coffee date after she finished work.

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This part of Windenburg is super pretty, but I haven't really visited it all that much. I think I need to add some better venues to the area.

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I was planning on waiting a little bit before having Ariel ask Xiomara to go steady, but she caught me off guard by asking Ariel herself out of the blue??

I didn't even get a proper picture of it, that's how shook I was by this sudden turn of events. Guys, roommates are gamechanging.

I know they asked us a few questions about tweaks to romantic relationships in one of the community surveys, so I wonder if we'll see more of this in a future patch!

Her second term comes to an end with an almost-straight A report card.

I love the Shakespeare references in the drama class titles. I'm sure some of the other classes have had referential titles, but I'm not enough of a science nerd to have caught them, haha. It's a shame I don't have any art majors this generation.