Sims dream, and discussion about premade reluctance.

[strangetomato]

I had a dream about sims last night. I was playing the game, though of course it was more like this very large scale thing that I was observing in the dream. I think I had discovered a new premade character, possibly a university student, who was a pleasure sim and she had the LTW to "Have everyone's phone number." I think it was to be filled by meeting every sim in the game! :P I was excited to have discovered a new LTW in the game (and poor Pleasure sims need more than the two they're given). The character was a female with short black hair and pretty plain clothing. Nothing special, but I liked her. She was throwing a huge party.

Then the dream got weird and I was trying to screencap some of the odd scenes at this sim's party so I could share them. There was something about a General Buzz type character making out with a sim that looked like Bowser or a Sesame Street monster. Yeah, like I said, it got weird fast.

I've been playing through all the university characters lately, trying to get all the university premades out into the adult world for the current timeframe of S,HWC, to be replaced by the younger generation (any sims that were children or toddlers at game start). It's pretty fun, and I'm playing up the entire uberhood to be at roughly the 14 day mark (using the lot sync timer), but I'm finally feeling that reluctance some simmers mention about not wanting to play the premades because they feel it's ruining the stories and not using the "right" path for them. This usually doesn't bother me, but I tend to look at the S,HWC universe as my more or less official take on the premades, so I do feel this desire to set them all on some sort of best path for my take on things.

This is, no doubt, ridiculous. Many of these characters have at least two different paths that would be equally pleasing to me, and some of them are just complete wild cards. I've already played through a lot of it with the original versions of these hoods for my story and I liked that direction, but the second play through invariably brings new ideas and new chance happenings, ACR surprises, etc. No two plays through this game will ever be the same. That's part of what I like about it, and really, it's also part of my idea of the story universe that some rare sims are aware of the infinite versions of themselves out there, like their version of quantum physics.

Has anyone else had that feeling about the premades? I love trying different variations, but working on a complete uberhood has me feeling like I have to get this version "right."

Comments

[skellington7d.livejournal.com]

and really, it's also part of my idea of the story universe that some rare sims are aware of the infinite versions of themselves out there, like their version of quantum physics.

I've thought about this exact same thing! And with TS3/TS1 thrown into the mix, there can even be universes where Bella/Morty live happily ever after.

I am definitely set in my ways for how to play the Caliente/Goth/Lothario households, but I have a lot of fun exploring with the other families.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I definitely view Sims 3 as an alternate universe and it very much plays into the take I have on those things in my story (some of it was mentioned with Mr. Humble and the Cordials). I don't want to say too much more (in the off chance I might eventually try to finish my story - yeah, It's almost a joke at this point), but I do see Bella and Morty in Sims 3 as a sort of "do over" where they get a chance to be happy in the end. Sims 2 seems to stack the odds against them in most play throughs. In the same sense, Sims 1 is a universe where they're always happy and remain young forever.

I'm curious to know how you play those households in your "official" take on them. I'm assuming Dona ends up with Mortimer, based on some of the things you've posted before, but I have no idea on some of the others. It'd be interesting to see what you do without constraints to work within, like you have with the prequel.

As for me, I never used to pair Dina with Mortimer. I greatly resented that setup for years, even without any attachment to the Goths (never played them in Sims 1), but I do tend to play them together in my story versions. It just seems to make the most sense, and part of my approach in my uberhood is following through on the initial story prompts as they are implied to happen. Though I always have Cassandra get left at the altar by Don, even though I get the impression that that scenario is set up to be more 50/50. I just don't see Don ever getting married.

[skellington7d.livejournal.com]

I see Dina and Mortimer being intimately involved, but I think Cassandra being left at the altar (and Nina's involvement with Don) throws a wrench in their wedding plans.

It's always intrigued me that we're supposed to assume Dina was responsible for Bella's abduction because she's got an alien on her family tree. So I imagine if that gossip got out around Pleasantview, things would get unbearably bad for her, whether she had anything to do with the abduction or not.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

The scenario that I see a lot of the time in other people's games is that Cassandra does marry Don and Dina does marry Mortimer and then Dina and Don continue to do their thing behind both of their backs. It's an interesting one, especially given the soap opera nature of Pleasantview. I've played that one out, with Cassandra eventually catching them and divorcing Don. Once again, even if she marries Don, I don't see it lasting.

I'm not sure if the alien heritage is the key reason to suspect Dina (the timely arrival in Pleasantview with an eye on Mortimer sticks out a little more for me), but it does add an interesting layer to it. For me, it gives her a better reason for doing what she did, and a means of having it happen. I actually wrote something to link the two events just recently, though I'm not sure if I'll use it in the story or just make a little short out of it.

It's interesting to think of the alien background being problematic for Dina and Nina. I've always imagined it as being more of a well-kept secret for them. It's certainly an interesting tidbit that makes for good storytelling material.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

Haha, what an awesome dream. Pleasure sims do need more love. That sounds like a terrible LTW to fulfill, though! Hopefully it wouldn't include characters like drivers and social workers!

I completely know what you mean about wanting to pick the "right" or "best" way to play the premades. That's a big reason why I keep starting over, I want to get it all PERFECT... which is completely ridiculous, since there IS no perfect, no correct way to do things. It's a bit of a dangerous obsession.

I went back and looked over a couple of the last chapters of S,HWC recently and reread that part about Kimberly (right?) being aware that there's infinite "parallell universes (simverses?)" out there. It's very clever, and very true. Makes me think of that really stupid simsecret drama about an_nas' version of Tara Kat. OH NO IT WAS ALL WRONG. But there is no wrong, dammit!

...Except maybe when people completely change their faces (usually to face 1) and skintones, I still have a bit of a problem with that. :P

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I try to play Pleasure sims more often, but they're so one-track. They're almost as bad as Grilled Cheese sims, who become really tedious really fast. I pretty much keep it to only Natasha Una in the uberhood.

And yeah, that LTW would be better if it had a number to reach, maybe. But ALL the other sims? Haha! Pretty tough.

For some of the households, I have very defnite ideas of how I like to see things go, but others have a number of options that I like. I think I'm noticing it that much more with the Uni students because so many of them have nothing set up for them, so it's wide open. And now, with the unis all connected in the uberhood, there are so many possibilities.

I think the thing that gets me most are sim children. They REALLY make the hood your own, and this one set thing. There are so many possibilities with looks and personality. After they come along, everything is so much further from all the initial story shell. It's cool that it makes it your own, but also it feels so... final, somehow.

I think a huge part of the appeal of playing the premades is that there's no one true version of any of it. And God, that Tara Kat thing. It was a departure for the character, for sure, but sometimes I like to really mess with the interpretation of characters. There's nothing wrong with that. I've seen people do it and it was brilliant, and others have left me cold. But that's all part of the fun of it.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I usually have trouble knowing what to do with some of the Uni sims, it's like their past is TOO open... It varies a lot, though. I keep wanting to give them families and such, but then I have even MORE sims on my hands, that need to be played. :P

I agree about sim children. They're all unique to your game, and yet... once they're there, the storyline is, yes, final. I'm always thinking, what if they had children with someone else instead?

Indeed. I love looking at other people's interpretations. If I don't like them, I don't really feel the need to TELL anyone about it, I mean, each to their own. And it's a lot of fun when I come across a completely new take on a character that I find really cool. Sometimes it changes how I view that character myself.

BTW, completely unrelated, but I put your Lyla in my fixed-dead Strangetown, and she's adorable ingame. :) Too bad she's... dead.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

There's so much you can do with them, and I certainly have had more fun with the uni students I've fleshed out in one way or another, but recreating the families does add a lot of extra sims! I started in on that in my old Strangetown, but I think I'll only be doing that when it's essential for the story in the future. Like I'll keep the Worthingtons, but maybe skip making Guy Wrightly and Zoe Zimmerman's folks. You probably won't see them in the story anyway. If I needed to show them, I could always use another hood for it.

Then I have some original sims, too, which I have no problem with (some people are very Maxis-only about sim stories, but I don't mind seeing originals mixed in), but once again I need to watch the numbers.

I let ACR do its thing with some of the children in my game, so I have some odd pairings there and single parents, etc. I sort of like it, but then I also sort of don't in some cases. Oh well. *shrug* I suppose I could always give them up for adoption if I really want to go a different direction with it. (LOL - how cruel!)

It's funny, because I do sometimes feel invested enough in some of the premades to want to be like, "this is bullshit" to some of the things I see, but yeah... is it really necessary to say anything? As they say, just scroll on if you don't like it. And a lot of the time you see things that you really like, so it balances out. Half the fun is that my version is different from your version is different from their version, etc. I've had my share of run ins with so-called canon sticklers, though, so yeah...

Great! I'm glad it worked out for you. So, I guess the idea is that she can be resurrected now? It'd be interesting to see a story where Lyla suddenly just came back.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I recently made Roxie and Edwin Sharpe's parents (and made their mother, Michelle, the sister of Stella Roth). That was fun. I made Blossom Moonbeam's adoptive hippie parents once too, who I was very pleased with. But I'm not really very good at making my own original sims, I tend to lose interest in them quickly (sigh).

I don't mind other people's originals in premade stories, as long as they don't start outnumbering the premades. (But it's different when it's an original story with premades being used as "guest actors", that's fine, I just don't want to read a story I think is about Pleasantview and then you only see Brandi Broke every four chapters or something.)

Anyway. Haha, giving them up for adoption. I need to use adoption more in my game! I just... don't really want the randomly generated, straight face template ones. Hm. Guess I should make myself an adoption pool. If I play Pleasantview, I like to put the townie kids up for adoption, though.

Heheh, canon fights are kinda funny. Besides the stupid Tara Kat "drama", there hasn't been enough of that in simsecrets lately. :P

Lyla should indeed be able to be resurrected safely in this version, yes. I replaced all of her character files. I should be uploading Pleasantview and Strangetown sometime this week, they're pretty much done. I still can't absolutely guarantee that it's safe to resurrect everyone, but it's certainly a lot safer than it was. A lot of ghosts in Olive's graveyard were... incredibly broken. If you want some horror for Halloween, you should resurrect Lyla, Willow and Creon in the original Strangetown, and send them to the mirror a couple of times (I think you have to do it twice for it to stick), to see their ... true facial structure. Dear god.

The only thing I wasn't able to completely fix was Knut Futa, his personality and skills randomize when he's resurrected for some bizarre reason, instead of being what I set them to in SimPE. But he's not a wriggling adult baby with no aspiration, age, personalty, zodiac or wants, anymore. >_>

[chazzhay.livejournal.com]

I have my own ideas for my uberhood and like to adopt ideas from other people. I have things like Buzz getting engaged to a young dormie and Bella returning after many long years through some strange magic. Then I add things like stuff from Fortune and Romance and S,HWC. I'm still in the early stages and can't wait until I move on a few generations. I still can't imagine a version of the hood where only the premades children exist.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

It's funny how we pick things up from different places. I definitely have a couple of pairings that I picked up from the Maxis Ship Match at maxis_taste that I plan to work into my storyline. Other things are from my own experiments and from playing around with it in the game and even just thinking it through in a story sense. It's interesting when you think about how any one player makes decisions about playing the premades.

It's funny, also, that people can be so passionate about their preferences.

I would love to eventually play a neighborhood in a prosperity style to the point where none of the original inhabitants are alive. I think that'd be really cool. I'm not sure it'd ever happen in an uberhood, though. It's taking FOREVER to get everyone to 14 sim days.

[rin-sparrow.livejournal.com]

I have about 5 different über hoods on the go right now, because I want to do so many different things. I have a gender-reversed one I'm working on; One where I want to not make over their houses and just adjust furniture a bit; one where I try to get all the genetics are correct... I have so many ideas, but I just start a new hood instead of deleting an old one.
I'm also enamoured with premades right now, thus 5 über hoods:p

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Wow, five uberhoods is a lot! Do you find yourself playing the characters completely differently each time or are there certain storylines that you always play a certain way. I'm always curious about people who've played them so many times. I'm not really one of them, aside from Pleasantview, which I have replayed a number of times and even tried the gender-reversed version.

[rin-sparrow.livejournal.com]

Well, I downloaded the premades from maxis_taste, so they're "lazy" uberhoods. I just make a new neighbourhood and do things in a different ways from the 4 others. So, I don't get the scripted stuff from starting the families like normal.

I don't know if I play them VERY differently. I started one that was just a genetic free-for-all. Every sim is an adult, and I make everyone in the same family related to avoid hypothetical ickyness.

Right now, my "Genetic Correctness" hood is my favourite. All the PV sims before the game "starts". No children (except for Mary-Sue living with the Oldies), so I'm trying to at least get the right couples together. Ones without other family members just get paired together and married in CAS (like Brandi and Skip Broke). They've got 2 kids already, Dustin and Frida, because my game stopped responding after I actually had a boy born:S

Anyway, it's lots of fun to have a lot of options. I think I just like having so many so that I can please my sim OCD/ADHD.

[thegranddewru.livejournal.com]

You know, I never thought about it but that is why I tend not to play the premade sims, I feel like I'm going to ruin the story or somehow "play them wrong". But, your right, no two games are ever going to be the same anyway, so I should just let it go.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I'd definitely encourage you to let it go. There's so many options for these characters and part of what will form the story are your choices and actions. If you do this with character A, it leads character B to character C, which changes the plan for character D (who might hav intially been with character C), and so on.

Some of the greatest ideas can only be born from playing and then seeing the need to make something work for a character at that point. I feel like I pulled a lot of fun things together in my story, just because I had a certain character in a certain place and went looking for something to work with that scenario.

I think my main problem is when I have more than one great idea for a character and have to pick (though I suppose in a story, both could have happened). Because I spend so much time with the characters the way they are in my story, I want to make sure everything works the best for me the way it is. But yeah, in the end, it doesn't help anyone to worry about the road not taken.

[aledstrange.livejournal.com]

Personally, I used to worry about playing the game "right" at first a lot, but then I was constantly restarting new games too, and doing the same over and over, became tedious and boring over time, so I started experimenting with completely different scenarios in every game, even if it didn't make sense with maxis "canon".

Also, even though there's enough info about each sim/family to form an idea of their stories, there's never enough info to be completely sure about how and why things actually happened, so there isn't an absolute "right" or "wrong" in most cases.

In the case of Olive, for example. We can think that she killed everyone on her lot, and probably makes the most sense, however we only know that she's aware of the deaths because they are on her memories, but it doesn't actually say that she caused them anywhere, so the part of Olive being a Black widow/serial killer is only a theory formed by the players, but not part of canon in any way.

And is the same with probably all premade families/sims. Buzz Grunt, is another example. We can assume he hates all aliens, just for being aliens, but does he really? We only know for sure the he hates PT9, but does he hates him for being an alien, or other reasons? And what about the Curious? He seems to have a grudge with them since school, so the alien thing may have nothing to do with that. And about his kids? yes, he's strict and demanding, but characters aren't so one-tone either, so it doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't care or love his sons on his own way. (as he tends to be played in so many games/stories)

TL;DR: IMO, there's no such thing as totally right or wrong. There're clues and hints and overall ideas about each family/sim, but not enough info to form an absolute truth about any household.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, because repeat playthroughs sometimes cement one idea or another for me, but I can understand wanting to mix things up if you'd played it so many times. I don't think I'd have any interest in playing it from scratch that many times unless I made it really different, and I can see this in how I play Pleasantview. Early on, I played a Pleasantview where I randomly killed off half the town in a "natural disaster." That made things quite interesting.

I completely agree about the stories. They're not at all precise in their details. Some seem to heavily imply a certain set of incidents (like Olive and the Tricous), but the details are lacking. You have the photos and the bios and the (often confusing or impossible) sets of memories. And people don't have to play the stranger of the storylines at all. They can just play those lots quite straight as a normal family, though for me this seems like a wasted opportunity. I guess the storyteller in me will always prefer to untilize the more extreme interpretation.

And that's just what's already in the game. Once you start playing, things become even more optional. No two play throughs will ever be entirely the same.

I don't think I'd even consider the idea of a right or wrong path at all if it wasn't for the fact that I was writing a story with it. That does make me feel like I need to pick a best path for the sake of the story (because I spend so much time with it, for one, and I get stuck with the details I choose), but even then, it's all just a version, not necessarily the "right" one or even the only one I could see as plausible.

[simsforaranya.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, right before falling asleep last night, I had an idea for a fascinating story using premades - though more as actors in a story than trying to play out the maxis storyline. I ended up not getting up and writing it down because I'm too afraid people won't like my "take" on the characters. *is coward*

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. So you'd take them entirely out of context and use them as characters in a different setting? I like that idea. I often toyed with some similar metafictional things when I started writing S,HWC, like interviewing the actors that played the characters in the story or a story where Johnny, Ripp, and Ophelia are roommates in the "real world" and one of them was writing S,HWC.

I thnk you should do it. Why the hell not? :)

[selenecorvino.livejournal.com]

Why not? I'm enjoying your current story and would look forward to another of your creations.

[selenecorvino.livejournal.com]

I'm not really familiar with the pre-mades' storylines, but I enjoy reading S,HWC and your take on the various characters...

Anyway, I thought I'd try a new game with a few merged 'hoods and then let the characters themselves choose their paths...

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I wonder how different one's appreciation for a sim story would be based on whether you knew the backstories. For some things, it seems more rewarding to see how different details are spun in a story, but there's also something to be said for coming into something without expectations.

I'm a big proponent for letting the sims choose their own path. For all the thinking I do on the story hints and like to use the characters as a starting point for guiding the story, I love using chance gameplay happenings and LTWs to form the story, too. It's a lot of fun to try to work those things in.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yes, Bowser. Haha! Sometimes I wonder about my mind and the things it comes up with in dreams...

[dinuriel.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm a weirdo :P I don't really "play" much any more, but when I did play the premades, I always felt compelled to mess with the seemingly-intended storylines as much as possible, and then I'd reset the hoods and mess them up in a different way. I had a few constants, though. Like, Romeo Monty is always gay in my Veronaville. And Cassandra Goth usually gets killed off pretty early (probably a Simming blasphemy, but... I never found her to be an interesting character *dodges assorted flying objects*).

But I can kind of see how people might get that reservation, maybe? There are some strong hints with some of the families, and it's not like those implications can't be turned into interesting stories. Hell, you know better than I that there are a ton of great stories out their using the premade canon as a basis, seeing as yours is one of them ;)

Actually... maybe it just seems to be the prevailing community attitude these days? I'm just speaking as an observer here (primarily a lurker in the main community), but there seem to be certain agreements in regards to particular hoods and families and Sims and that seems to make people comfortable. I had a Veronaville story that I ended up losing interest in and therefore discontinuing; I never really advertised it, but I suspect it never would have caught on anyway, since it seemed like too much of a departure for the fandom and too much of a fan-work for the original-Sim crowd. It's a tough balance.

Aaaaand I've had way too much caffeine and am probably going off on way too many tangents for one night. Sorry about that :S

An Impossible Want ...

[nonikk63.livejournal.com]

... to get the perfect hood. Too be honest I haven't been trying that hard to follow the original Maxis provided plots all. I started reading your "S,HWC" a couple of days ago and for the first time I began to see the point of sticking closer to the story. It really is an amazing take on Strangetown. But in my own way I've also had this urge to get the "perfect" hood: everything nice and tidy in an organized context (as if life were like that …) I always tend to add to many new sims because I want more diversity in the gene pool and that does not work well with my want to make the hoods into working social systems. Ultimately it always starts to feel too messy and unplayable and then I start all over again. I've mostly been playing Pleasantview and Riverblossom Hills.

Making a story about RBH was an attempt to create something that I would like to go on playing, and it was successful, so I decided to do the same thing with Pleasantview. As soon as the thought was there, my imagination got into overdrive and for a couple of weeks I worked like crazy on it. It has been lying dormant since the beginning of this summer though, due to RL and energy issues. I really should try not to play at all for a couple of months and just read instead, that used to feel more than ok before. Well, like I could stay away from the game … :P But anyway, I don't feel that I have enough focus to work with the story right now, and I don't want to make crap of it, so it will lay dormant until I feel up to it. After reading "S,HWC" (I still have a couple of chapters left) I do regret some major changes I've made with Pleasantview, but I'm kind of overwhelmed right now and I guess my own imagination will recover. ;)

Right now I have other things on my mind. I had to start from scratch once more because today my game broke. At first I thought it was the hood that was corrupted, but changing that to an un-played version didn't work, as didn't removing all my CC – hacks and everything. I decided to make a clean start and un-installed the game. I then re-installed right away of course, but I will take this opportunity also to go through my enormous Downloads folder. I tend to get these download frenzies where I act like a shark that smells blood in the water: gobble, gobble, no brain at all. So I have like a zillion downloads, haphazard organized (if at all) and not half a clue where I got it all. Time to do something about it. That is a task that will take me a while – and take some effort … :p The Pleasantview story has a backup though that I will get back to eventually. When I started writing my take on RBH I didn't have a blog of my own, and I had the feeling that my audience wouldn't endure a darker kind of story, so everything is a little too nice, well adjusted and mainstreamy for my liking. With Pleasantview I intend to get a little bolder.

A little bit off topic ...

[nonikk63.livejournal.com]

... my previous post was, that is. I was too caught up in my own thoughts and still reading S,HWC.

I enjoy playing the premades, but I never found it the least interesting to continue the underlying plot. Instead I've always let them take alternate routes. When I opened the game for the first time, I didn't catch anything at all and really messed everything up. No one was to recognize any more. After that first time though, I've roughly followed their personalities and existing ties to each other, but still tweaked the story a lot. It felt to boring not to do so. S, HWC is the first story I've read that follows the given conditions and still surprises. It gave me a lot to think about, and I started thinking about my own reluctance to follow in Maxis' footstep, so to speak.

I've started a story about Pleasantville, that I still intend to write the way I originally meant to, but I've really given it some serious thought now and had to work my way through some sudden regrets. I found myself wishing that I had tried to follow the script a little closer. Most of all perhaps, I regretted bulldozing the whole of Pleasantville and build my own. But I'll get over that and get back to my original idea.

I do feel the urge now though to play a hood following the given conditions. Strangetown feels very tempting now, but I haven't played much of Veronaville either and the other pre-made hoods I hardly know at all. An überhood would be too much to take on for me – I still need to familiarize myself with the all the hoods separately. No need to say that I still have so much to learn about S2 that I feel completely disinterested in S3. (Apart from that I like the graphics in S2 better. I find the mild watercolour/cartoony quality so much easier on the eye. Not to speak of the sims themselves. But that is off topic too.)

The RBH I've been playing for my story got corrupted the other day, so I decided to start that one over from the beginning instead of going back to an old backup. There I won't be following the original settings much though, I am turning the hood more or less upside down again. I will for example add the townie Ingmar Backman to the hood from the start and make him the husband of Catherine Viejo (I got the feeling while I was playing it the last time, that he and Catherine had been married earlier and was happily divorced and still friends). That gives me the opportunity to add a daughter with Catherine's looks, because I love to play with the genetics. That is also what bothers me the most with playing the premades – I want a little more genetic diversity.

Another difficulty I find in sticking to the plot is, that it makes so much more fun to play around a little with the generations. In RBH this time, I think I will send Cleo and Patricia away to college for starters. Everything gets un out of sync and so new opportunities arise.

To follow the story line, turn to pg 12. To let the characters play it themselves, turn to pg 15...

[(Anonymous)]

Long-time lurker here and just wanted to say I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your "take" on Strangetown!

And what a crazy dream!! Bowser . . . LOL! I can see the (modified cow) Uni mesh now!

Re: the topic at hand, I found myself having that same "must be right" OCD affecting my desire to play the premade hoods, particularly PV. It got worse after the uberhoods were introduced--seemed harder to keep the story lines going in the direction they were "supposed to." ACR can really throw some curve balls! It got to the point that I wouldn't play the story hoods because I'd just screw it up and hate it.

But I've found that by keeping a "clean" copy of each hood tucked safely away somewhere, I can always reload and start from scratch again later . . . now I sit back, turn on all the hacks and mods and let randomness rule. It's a bit like those Choose Your Own Adventure books, but I let the sims decide where the game is going to go. I've ended up with some awesome stories!

Inevitably, however, I get bored by about the third generation and have to load up a fresh start. Ha! :)

I'm always amazed that even though they're bits of coding, some of them do seem to have their own personalities and desires. Some characters play the same role over and over, and others switch it up. Are they following a script, or did they find the path that worked for them in the simverse? Are the ones that change from time to time still trying to find their way or just having fun?

I've always wondered about Dina. She has sooo many background bits that could take her story just about anywhere, but she's always viewed as this evil scheming gold-digger. In every version of PV I've played, she goes after Morty with a vengeance (her rolls, not mine) and settles into family life almost immediately. It's pretty mutual from Morty's end, too. Even without secondary aspiration set Dina rolls wants for babies, playing with family members, etc. (Maybe my game is confused.) How did she go from a happily married woman in love with her (late) husband to a poor money-grubbing widow living with her sister vehemently chasing after the one rich, available man in town . . . who, btw (following the story lines/family trees), is her former brother-in-law and also grieving for a lost love? I suspect there are several secrets Michael took to his, uh, urn, that we are not privy to! My take is Dina was left to pick up the pieces however best she could, and found a sympathetic heart in Morty.

In my game Cassandra almost always ends up with Darren at some point and they have a zillion kids, usually all girls and every one of them gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous! Nina and Don usually have a set of twins together, and roll constant wants to flirt or woohoo with each other specifically--I usually move them in together to save play time. Adult Beau Broke somehow ALWAYS ends up meeting and immediately falling for Emily Lillard (one of the dressed-for-bowling employed townies; can't find her on a character's list tho), they make lots of money and babies and live happily ever after every. single. time.

I think my computer reads too many romance novels while I'm at work.

[intense-beare.livejournal.com]

ha! Bowser...I have recurring dreams where either I'm speaking Simlish and no one else understands me, or everyone speaks simlish but without the speech bubbles so i don't know what's going on. I have other dreams where my motives bar increases or decreases depending on what I'm doing and I check mine and my friends relationship bars to make sure we aren't furious with each other. Freaky.

Btw, I've been reading your journal and SHWC for a long time and I only just finished reading so I just thought I should come out of the lurking closet and reveal myself to tell you how amazing your story is. I love how you managed to keep the story interesting while sticking to the original storyline. For all my maxis-made neighbourhoods (minus Veronaville) I have to take my Sims completely out of context in order to keep me interested. I'm currently playing a plague-stricken Pleasantview and I messed around with all the "love" relations in Strangetown but even those neighbourhoods can't surpass my gen y attention span

Hi and a HUGE thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! First of all GREAT STORY! well done. I've very much enjoyed rediscovering your characters (saw them first YEARS ago). Reading through during a period when I was low, in a way I know is quite familiar to you, the continuation of the stories was very helpful!

One thing that does make me sad, and it's in the nature of EA's stinking lousy lack of bug-checking, is how many stories wind up with - game broke, can't continue. Including my own.

Good luck with your new computer too! Whether or no you continue with the stories, I'm sure you will do good stuff with the new machine. TS3, while still horribly buggy, is fun too - lots of new interactions, though maybe less good for story telling.

And now back on topic - I like playing the premades, and have done so many times. I did have a MegaHood for some time and that was great. To have so many premades to play with! I do enjoy premades and I actually use other people's self-Sims in my playing game, rather than Sims I make myself. Mostly. Simply because they are DIFFERENT. I've a tendency to make pretty much the same personality again and again. And I use a ROS at times too. I do know what you mean, I feel as if I want to get them "right" too.