strangetomato | Discussion: Reflections on Maxis Sim Shipping

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Discussion: Reflections on Maxis Sim Shipping

I think the thing that really stands out for me now that I'm seriously considering my Maxis character shipping preferences is how I do not see either Dirk/Lilith or Angela/Dustin working out in the end. I never really have. Well, actually, I did have an early notion, when I first started to sim in Pleasantview, that Angela WOULD marry Dustin and live a terribly dissatisfying life of semi-poverty (Broke-style), with a criminal husband and a yard full of scary domerman pincers. (Have I mentioned my active imagination? This was way before I had any concept of sim storytelling for others. Just myself.) But now I just see Angela moving on to greener pastures, leaving Dustin to find someone else (Ginger Newson being my favourite contender at this point, given her parallel to Brandi, which is a life he knows all too well.)

I can't ever stop seeing Dirk eventually cheating on Lilith with Angela, causing a huge rift there. In my game, he always, always cheats on her, in fact. Usually with Angela, but sometimes with someone else, and often without any input from me. I don't know if he ends up with Angela, or if he eventually reconciles with Lilith, but somehow that HAS to happen for me. Lilith is all over the place for me. She nearly always gets tangled up with Don Lothario at some point in my game (*lowers voice* sometimes even while still a teen... Oh Don, you're just... yeah), and then I just see her as this amazing free spirit who maybe stays single forever. You know those amazing old ladies who were movie stars or artists or musicians, who were lovers to many famous people over the years (mostly men, but there were some exceptions, if you believe the rumours), but always stayed true to themselves and didn't settle down? Yeah, that's how I see Lilith Pleasant.

Also, Tara Kat/Chester Gieke is the nerdiest couple EVER, by far. Geeky nerds trump bookish nerds any day of the week. (That's one of mine, by the way, from my uberhood. The red hair is a bonus, but they also remind me of my cousin and her husband in an uncanny way, right down to the cat lady-ness and the too geeky/socially awkward to live hardcore videogame geek factors. I am so sold on that pairing. I've seen its proven results in RL, people! XD)

So, I'm opening the floor to other shipping chit-chat here. Please try not engage in any full-on shipping brawls, but if you feel the need to pen an impromptu shipping manifesto, then who are we to stop you? :D Go on and share your insights, amusing pairing stories from your game, and so on.

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There were actually A LOT of ships in those polls that just didn't work for me at all. Alexander Goth/anyone else is so weird to me for some reason. I guess I see him growing up to be completely asexual? Ditto with Nervous. And yet they had multiple ship possibilities.

I also giggled at Beau/Lucy because at this point your Beau is so completely embedded in my head and their relationship reads as purely platonic to me.

Honestly I mostly stuck to my obvious ships: Johnny/Ripp/Ophelia (and any combination there of), Buck/Jill, Bella/Mortimer, Nina/Don (though obvs that one will never work as a fully committed relationship). Also Frances/Beau and sometimes Frances/Tank (Tank/Lucy showed up quite a bit but I honestly just don't feel them that much - it's the same with Bottom/Vidcund. Though my feelings of ambivalence towards the latter is probably due to the fact that I find them both incredibly dull).

I've always broken up Dirk/Lilith and Angela/Dustin. They're teens, they can date a little. I usually tend to get Lilith into a good solid relationship and career, and have Angela fail in that dept.

I tend to agree somewhat, though I don't see either as completely asexual. And actually, Alexander Goth/Marla Biggs was one of mine, because they're basically clones of each other, but I think Marla'd be a lot warmer and more open to the world and so she'd be good for him. Also, she just looks like she belongs in the Goth family in a way that's goes beyond just being nerdy for me.

I voted for Beau/Lucy in one of the categories, but that was mostly because it wasn't up against much else that appealed to me. In an alternate interpretation, I could see it working, for sure. But yeah, my vision of Beau is pretty fully formed right now. His character just about wrote itself all in one fit of inspiration, and now I just imagine him laughing his ass off when I try to consider him with a woman.

We have all the same ships, I think. And you're the reason I eventually warmed to Nina/Don, though I also do not see it ever working out as a relationship. I didn't vote for any Don pairings, in fact. Not even Don/everyone, because relationship =/= random sexual encounter, and I can't see the man ever making good for anyone that way. He's a lost cause, too far gone, to ever really commit to anyone.

I have some pairings that I use but didn't nominate or anything (I voted, though, if it didn't conflict with anything I really cared about), because they just don't thrill me. I see them as a good pair, but I wouldn't exactly say "I ship it." I think the statement assumes you are somewhat invested in that outcome, right? In that sense, I'm not really a big shipper at all. I only have a handful of pairs that I'd fight for (possibly to the death? Watch out! XD), but I probably won't tell you who those are, for obvious reasons. ;)

(Sorry for the edits, but some mistakes totally wrecked my meanings.)

Edited 2010-11-11 14:37 (UTC)

Maybe it's the fact that high school relationships very rarely work out? Even if they do, I'd see them taking some time off from each other while they go to school and maybe getting back together in the end.

I really like your turn-around for Angela and Lilith. Things always balance out in the end, huh?

Yeah, like maybe they're really not so different after all. I also like to see the underdog succeed.

Totally agree. I'm all for the underdog. Sometimes, though, I prefer them to leave the struggle behind altogether to win on their own terms.

One of the things that popped out for me is that I have really mixed feelings about Vidcund Curious/Bottom Summerdream. On the one hand, I like the idea based on how you've approached it. But on the other, it kind of skeeves me, because I have such a strong image in my mind of Bottom as an innocent little girl -- and Vidcund has always seemed old before his time, to me. Not to mention, in my game he was basically asexual until he became an elder. So I see him needing Viagra to get it up to begin with. xD

The other thing that popped out was the dearth of F/F pairings. I know the poll came directly from nominations, so I'm not knocking aledstrange at all. Nor am I knocking those who nominated. I just think it's odd that there were so few F/F pairs. We see F/F in legacies all the time, so I know there's isn't a bias against it. But the Maxis pre-mades don't seem to inspire many F/F matches. I don't have any theories on why this is, I just think it's curious.

I kind of wish I had put in Kaylynn/Bella for an F/F pairing because I actually do like them together.

But I didn't actually nominate anything sooooo. XD

Yeah, I feel like I have no right to say anything because I didn't nominate either ^_^

I can certianly see that. I do think of them as having a rather large age difference. Bottom also seems really unconventional to me, like the Summerdreams as a whole, and I see her as being very mature for her age. In that sense, the idea of it as potential relationship doesn't bother me so much. I think they'd have a lot of compatibilies, despite the difference in age (and good game chemistry). And, really, it's no stranger than PT No. 9 and Jenny Smith. I think their age difference would be similar.

That's a very good point. I actually nominated one each of M/M and F/F, but it seems like even in the small amount of Maxis implied gay storylines, almost all are male (Nervous, Kent Capp, Jason Cleveland... though none of these are directly paired off another implied gay male), while the F/F pairings require the simmer to stretch it a little more (Jasmine/Zoe is all subtext, Alexandra O'Mackey... maybe). I think Circe is implied to be bisexual, and that one's a true rarity in the default settings. I quite appreciate that.

Is it just the fandom tendencies toward slash, while femme slash is a smaller, specialty market? Is it reflective of lesbian invisibility in real life? Who knows? For me, the percentage I nominated roughly reflected the percentage of gay pairings in my game, in which I tend toward reflecting real life percentages, with a slight increase. I also realize that most of my F/F pairings have one or more non-Maxis sim.

Oh, and I DO have one F/F Maxis pairing that I plan to use in my story, and unlike Chester/Tara, Alexander/Marla, and Dustin/Ginger, I really want to keep that one a surprise. I think it's a really good one.

You should have nominated! I think you would have added some interesting pairings, and it would have balanced out some of those WTF random slash pairings. :P (You just know I wanted to run in there and scold everyone for not taking this ship war seriously, dammit! XD)

Aw, that's too bad. I wish you had nominated, too. I'll bet you'd have come up with some interesting ones.

You're the original Johnny/Ripp simmer, afterall. Look at the huge contribution you made to the sim fandom! Think of the sexiness! XD

(Edited to correct "moninated." Though I snicker at potential meanings for that word. Something to do with the mons pubis, perhaps?)

Edited 2010-11-11 15:07 (UTC)

It used to be that if I sent Angela / Lilith / Dirk / Dustin to UNI together that Dirk would cheat on Lilith with Angela and Dustin would ignore both girls.

I still don't see Angela and Dustin working long term for me and I love Dustin/Ginger together. I'd despaired what to do with Dustin until the Newsons were added to the game but as soon as Dustin and Ginger met at a kid party in my megahood I knew they were destined.

I like Lilith and Dirk together, they're one of the few Maxis Canon ships that I endorse. But, I don't believe that they go from teen sweethearts straight to happily every after. Dirk and Lilith always drift apart and then drift back together for me. Part of my love for them is from taking them out of Maxis hoods and having them end up together in my main hood. In my main hood Dirk and Lilith never knew that they were 'supposed' to be together and yet when they ended up at UNI during the same generation they migrated towards each other. They're extremely devoted grandparents now and I adore them. Of course in that hood Angela became a romance sim and it's the only time I've ever really liked her either.

My personal huge huge Maxis ship is Alexander and Bottom. It's based on similar reasons as Dirk/Lilith. In my Legacy hood, where all Maxis sims are townies, Alex and Bottom were grown up in the same generation due to outside storyline factors. They were never intended to be together and rolled conflicting aspirations; but they insisted and I fell in love with them. I love them, love their boys, and am falling hard for their grandbabies. Megahood wise, when Bottom gets the aspiration I now see her as, they always end up together with very little need for me to do much than introduce them.

I could see Bo with Vidcund, they're an easy three bolt couple. The May-December romance (if played in a rotational fashion with aging at standard intervals) would leave Bottom a widow while barely an adult and she deserves a longer romance than that. Alex and Marla work as well, they're actually in the same dorm currently and there's a bit of stalking. However, Alex needs someone that isn't his clone. He needs someone that will shake him up on occasion and remove the stick, Bo does that.

I can't lie, I ship Nina/Don like it's my job; if I had to have an OTP, they would be it. Not in the traditional love-marriage-baby carriage way, but nothing will convince me they are not the most important people in each others' lives, and always will be. It's a mutually destructive relationship as long as they're failing to get their shit together, but at the same time there's also a lot of love there. Idk, I just love them so much. ;^;

I...actually wasn't all that excited about most of the ships in the poll (not that I can complain, seeing as how I didn't nominate anyone :P). A lot of the popular ones, I'm just not into. I'm not wild about Darren/Cassandra, for example, or any of the teen romances, Puck/Hermia aside. One canon pair I really love, Jason and Rose Greenman, didn't make the list at all, which was too bad.

I was a bit sad about the lack of F/F too, though. No Cassandra/Mary-Sue? Titania/Goneril? Catherine/Betty? Bueller? :(

I didn't see it till it was too late. Ah well!

LOL at the idea that I'm the original Johnny/Ripp simmer... I'm sure other people were doing that before me! I didn't even really know what sim storytelling was when that started, either. xD

LOL at moninated too. Mons + marinated... soaked in delicious juices...

Seems we have some similar takes, then. I was wondering who else nominated Dustin/Ginger for the poll. It was a pleasant surprise to see them nominated more than once! They really do have great chemistry and a wonderfully complex relationship between their back stories.

I can also see Dirk and Lilith getting together againg after it all. That's where they were when I abandoned my borking hoods a while back. They had graduated and moved in together, despite being on bad terms at that point. I have no idea where I intended to go from there. Lilith is always a wildcard in my games, as I mentioned.

I also give very compatible aspiration for Alexander and Bottom (knowledge/fortune and knowledge/family, respectively), so I can see that pairing working, too. I'm less sold on Alexander taking to the free-spirited Summerdream approach to life, but I'm sure there's a story in that somewhere, and I could see it in the right circumstances.

I'm a little looser with ages in my game, but I still think that Vidcund would be around for quite some time with Bottom, given the lengthy elder stage (and you know Vidcund has science on his side! XD). I also don't see Bottom having a problem with outliving her husband (and least not as a reason to avoid the relationship as a rule), and I could easily see her re-marrying after he dies, for sure. Bottom being married twice makes all kinds of sense to me.

I'm pretty into Alexander/Marla. Clone or not, I see them as having very different personalities and outlooks on life, while also being very similar. One of those couples that looks identical without even really intending to. As much as I agree that Alexander could use a good shaking up, I don't really see him as the type to go that route. I don't ever see him stepping too far out of his comfort zone.

Nobody will ever convince me that you aren't the mastermind behind Johnny/Ripp. You were the first one to put it out there, at least from where I was standing. Before that, it was nothing but Johnny/Tank as far as the eye could see! XD

LOL! Yes! I think we're on to something here. The next time I plan a BBQ...

Edited 2010-11-11 15:30 (UTC)

Oh, so now it's time to endorse our ships, I see... XD

Way before I even considered doing a Legacy, I exclusively played with Pleasantview. I'm not sure why, I guess the desert environment wasn't appealing to me. Therefore, the very first time I played with the Strangetown characters was when I began the Broke Legacy (because I took that as a challenge for me). This means I never played with the Strangetown characters the way "they were scripted" by Maxis. Most of what I know about these characters was learned from your story :D (especially the Beakers and the Curious).

I guess this is why all my noms were from Pleasantview, although I tried to add a couple noms from ST and Belladonna Cove.

I think that my canon OTP is Mortimer/Bella, if anything because their story is so weird and sad (my version of how they got together was contradicted by the Sims 3, though). I was one of the dummies who tried to resurrect Bella in the Sims 2 and was dissappointed that it never really worked.

I also ship Beau and Lucy, because that's what usually happened in my early games. Therefore, I was surprised when I ended going with Beau and Lilith in my Legacy, because it seemed like the more believable option according to the plot, although I don't ship it as a canon couple. But I loved them together and their children.

It took me a little while to warm to the idea of Beau and Frances from your story, but now I think they are adorable together. I voted for them too :)

As for your original question, I often had Lilith break up with Dirk and going out with Alexander (who by then was Dirk's "step-uncle", because I just can't let Cassandra marry Don, who I still think is behind Bella's abduction AND the father of Brandi's third kid). I also had Angela disowned by her parents and marrying Dustin in an act of rebellion after so many years of being the perfect twin. Yikes, I really turned that hood into a soap opera!

I agree about Dustin/Angela and Dirk/Lilith, especially the latter. The very first time I played PV they stayed together, the former had two daughters and the latter had a son that looked kinda like David Duchovny. But Lilith cheated on Dirk with some downtownie (the S4, long brown hair, green eyes, red shirt, prettified Face #1 one... can't believe I remember that!) and had... a girl, I think. I can see the unhappy marriage drama with Dustin and Angela, but Dirk and Lilith seem too different in personality to stick together in the long run. I like to think they'd remain friends, though. I once hooked Dirk up with DJ Verse, and I really liked that pairing. They were even 3-bolters. Might have to do that again. Also, Lilith + either Ripp or Tank kinda pleases me.

It's funny, I get invested in some ships from other people that don't even have a chance of happening with me as a player! Your version Johnny/Ophelia/Ripp is precious, but none of them ended up together as adults in my game. Likewise with emmelfish's Vidcund/Erin, ndainye's Dustin/Ginger, and some of the other more common ones like Beau/Lucy and Buck/Jill.

My Vidcund will always pine for Circe, and Erin usually ends up married into the Grunt family. Dirk and Lil eventually drift apart but Angela always ends up marrying Dustin and having 2.5 kids and a white picket fence because she thinks she has to because she's expected to be "perfect". So I don't ship them because they're NOT a great couple, but they always end up together anyway. I like the idea of Dustin with Ginger, but in my game Ginger has some serious daddy issues and she always ends up with an older, wealthier man like Armand DeBateau or Malcolm Landgraab.

I REALLY wish I didn't miss the nomination round, because I'm sure my Jasmine Rai/Zoe Zimmerman/DJ Verse threesome would have gotten a few votes. And what about Ripp/Jill or Buck/Frances? I don't think I saw those matches in the polls either.

Does the F/F pairing involve Capt'n Alexandra O'Mackey? :O (You don't have to answer that, though. ;))

Ah, but Simantics' implied Johnny/Tank was so much hotter than my Johnny/Ripp ever was...

"The two combatants slammed into each other with a strength that took both their breaths away. The tough young planes of their chiseled bodies slipped and slid against each other."

*sighs wistfully* It's too bad the pictures for her early stories have vanished.

The results of these polls show that your story is embedded into everybody's mind. :P

I do like most of your story pairings... I can't see Frances being with anybody else but Beau (or, Guy in my game- theyre just too sweet together) but I'm still not really into the Vidcund/Bottom or Tank/Lucy (probably because of the little guy in my icon *snicker*).

As far as the Maxis pairings go, I'm a die hard fan of Bella/Mortimer since they have been together in EVERY. SIMS. GAME. How could they NOT be together?

I see Dustin/Angela and Dirk/Lillith pretty much the same way as you. I never pay attention to the AL people (probably because I don't have the game installed on my computer) but I think Ginger would be a great match for Dustin too.

Dammit, I had a whole long reply typed out, then accidentally closed the browser window. >_<

I do really like V/B the way you've done it, and I'm really interested to see where you take them. Your Bottom is awesome (and she's even reconciled me to the name -- no small feat!) It's just that when I consider V/B in general, outside of your story, I can't help but see Bottom as a little girl. That's probably because I have never grown her up.

I did really like her when I was playing V-Ville. I saw her as being very creative. She was, in my mind, the one who painted her family's faces (for the party they're having when you open the household). And I saw her as understanding more of the complex relationships among the teens than you'd normally give a child credit for. But she's still fixed in my mind as a little girl. Except for yours, who is like a separate entity in my mind, if that makes sense.

I agree with your theory about the Maxis implied gay storylines. Even those are very kid-glovey in the way they presented them. I didn't realize Circe is implied to be bi... is that in her default attraction settings? I've never really looked into those.

I'm intrigued (as I'm sure you meant!) by this mysterious F/F Maxis pairing... ^_^

The thing with Alexandra O'Mackey is the lady pirate angle. Which brings to mind the famous Anne Bonney and Mary Read, always my OTP of lady pirates. ^_^

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Discussion: Reflections on Maxis Sim Shipping

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Reconstructed :P

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