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Strange Tomato ([personal profile] strangetomato) wrote2011-10-22 11:09 am
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Sims dream, and discussion about premade reluctance.

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."

[identity profile] dinuriel.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 06:13 am (UTC)(link)
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