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

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.