@haneul It’s certainly sparked a fun discussion! I’m glad I posted the questions in here 😄 I tried thinking of sims that could be seen as antagonistic in the Fiers and the only one that sprung to mind was
that boy that Deli used to have a crush on, that continuously put her down until she grew sick of him. I don’t think I’d call him a villain either, though. Just a potato. 😆
@_sims_Yimi You definitely created a fun discussion. I don't know what this says about me, but I'm always reluctant to label a character as a villain in others' writings because my idea of a villain and the author's/other readers' ideas of a villain are often different. I also like to get to the end of a writing, with all the facts, before I put such a strong judgment out there even though I really enjoy hearing my Sims/characters being judged. I don't equate villain with antagonist. In my mind, the antagonist and the protagonist are having some kind of conflict while the story centers the protagonist. A villain can be either or neither or both. Generally, I let characters be characters and don't think of them as anything but that. When it comes to Tales of Camelot, I'm not sure if I think any characters are villains. Some of them seem like relatively safe bets, but with others I'm fairly sure that there are important facts I need to be made aware of.
In my own writing, I like to have neither villains nor strong antagonists, which I think is dangerous because that reduces the potential for conflict, action, and interest. But I write very slowly already and I find that that kind of conflict gets in the way of the story I want to tell, so I like to keep it to a minimum. Now, I have to think of creative ways to keep things interesting, though.
@GlacierSnow I know it’s not exactly common, but it’s how I’ve approached villains for years and definitely how I plan them as a DM. My stories tends to be different shades of fantasy, and there’s usually something that the “heroes” have to stop or overcome. It’s a very often-used formula, but I’ve always liked it. I keep wanting to click the banner or link in your signature and then remember that there’s none there yet. Is your story in a forum thread somewhere? 🙂
@_sims_Yimi Thanks for your interest in my story! At the moment, I am not posting it online. I've just been sharing it by email with interested friends and family members. I'm still trying to decide if I want to put it online or not.
I like your way of thinking about villains. It's a helpful new way of looking at how I'm planning my story.
Generally, I let characters be characters and don't think of them as anything but that.
@haneul Same! I don't really think about narrative roles for characters when I'm writing. I just create a set of characters that interest me, who interact with each other in ways that interest me, and I think about who they are, as people, from their own point of view.
Is there any story or character that keeps returning to your mind even a long time after you finished writing it? Have you ever thought about writing more about those old stories and characters?
I'm asking this because, in my head, I'm very often returning back to stories I wrote years ago, and I think about how I would improve it now, what I would write differently and so on.
I mostly feel this for an old TS2 story I wrote years ago. I really bonded a lot with the protagonists, I liked to play with them and to write about their lives, somehow I miss the time when I was writing that story.
In some moments in which I feel particularly ambitious I even think about trying to recreate them on TS4 and to integrate new chapters to the story, or even to write a new one (probably following a different development), but I'm quite unsure about it... In any case, I have another ongoing story that I want to end before deciding what to do with the next one :P
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
@HermioneSims Good question! Also it would be cool to see yours TS2 Sims/stories brought into TS4! Although sometimes recreating older sims in TS4 can be difficult (for me, it's mainly due to the big change in art style. And also the comparative lack of customisation, like no customisable streaks, highlights in hair etc.)
Is there any story or character that keeps returning to your mind even a long time after you finished writing it? Have you ever thought about writing more about those old stories and characters?
- Áine from TSAHF, so much. I really love her so darn much and want her to have a prequel as well (Snow, stop making Untamed magic your obvious favourite, darn it!)- but it'll be difficult, mainly due to the fact it'd be set 300 years prior to TSAHF, and also the lack of CC/poses etc. will make recreating elements from her story nearly impossible to recreate. That, and I risk it being too thematically similar to the other three stories as well.
- There's also Ollie, the journalist from my Aliens Universe, of course not the kind who plays by the rules... I already revisited his backstory and built on it , but in the case of revisiting the character in my head, it's regretting decisions I made for his character's plot and having what I think would be better ideas, looking back on it. It was a challenge story, so there was a lot I had to leave out for him since he was a side character. I'd never change the plot of the existing story, though. I did try to do a darker AU comic-type thing of the character ages ago, but it was awful and I deleted it. The challenge story he's from always comes back to me because it was good fun for me to write. I tried to extend it into a no-rules legacy story of the rest of the family (from gen 4 onwards) but I gave up on it. The Aliens universe has a few backstory events I could try to write another story around, maybe. I'd like to revisit the Aliens universe again at some point.
- Part of me also wants to do a collection of short stories/chapters for the side characters in the Magic Universe, exploring a part of that character's life in more detail. For me it would be fun to see some more in-depth backstory for the other Sages and maybe the students of the academy as well. I know I haven't even finished the trilogy yet, but when I do I know I'll want to revisit some of the other characters sometime. There's a big element of backstory in the universe that I'd like to try and show in pictures, but I don't think I could do it any justice with screenshots.
Is there any story or character that keeps returning to your mind even a long time after you finished writing it? Have you ever thought about writing more about those old stories and characters?
@HermioneSims I originally wrote the story of Tusnelda and Trix in January-February 2018.
It was the first story I wrote and in the process I came to love the creative opportunity in the game.
The Danish site I shared their story on no longer exists.
It's been so much fun rewriting their story because I've learned so much since the spring of 2018. Moreover, readers' reactions and coincidences in the game have taken me on a whole other journey.
It's not boring.
Of course, you can also choose to control the script tightly with the corrections you want to add.
If there are any characters that keep rumbling in your head I'm sure it's going to be a satisfying challenge.
Is there any story or character that keeps returning to your mind even a long time after you finished writing it? Have you ever thought about writing more about those old stories and characters?
No. My story is ongoing and everyone at the start of it is still central to the plot. I do have my favourite chapters and character moments and sometimes I'll draw inspiration from them.
Is there any story or character that keeps returning to your mind even a long time after you finished writing it? Have you ever thought about writing more about those old stories and characters?
I still think of potential situations for the Racket-Rotter verse, long after I stopped writing for them. There's so much I still want to one day, in the (sadly distant) future, tap into in regards to the characters and their lives.
Also because Sagebear is pure awesomeness in dog form. I could probably write an entire story about just her adventures in Twinbrook.
@SnowBnuuy and @MonaSolstraale , thanks a lot for your insights on the matter! I think I still have quite a lot of time to think about it, for the moment I will probably try to reproduce characters and settings on a new save and try to see if I bond with them as much as with the original one, and if I get inspired for new adventures with them!
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
There’s not a lot of stories that I’ve finished, at least not a lot that I worked on for long enough to get really invested. I do think of characters from abandoned stories from time to time, though.
Does it count if it’s scenes from an ongoing story that happened in the past, but were cut or left out? There’s a child arc from the story that I am writing now that I regret not fleshing out more. I keep thinking of smaller scenes and chapters that would have gone well with what’s already there, or that would better foreshadow what happens later. I might add them when this arc is finished. I might not. I haven’t decided yet.
It might be very interesting to re-write a story that you made so long ago. It sounds like you really enjoyed that story, and I wonder what it would look like in TS4. If you do decide to remake it for TS4, let us know! 😊
@SnowBnuuy Áine was really interesting from the get-go. I’ve always been curious about her life when she was younger. It’s such a shame that CC doesn’t work on consoles- they’re an absolute lifesaver with historical stories.
@MonaSolstraale That’s right, Tusnelda was a rewrite of an older story, too! It’s amazing how you’re stayig true to Tusnelda’s story and incorporating the new things that the game throws at you at the same time. It is definitely not boring 😁
Hosting D&D sessions on the side. Interested in playing through some fantasy-themed shenanigans? Send me a message 😘
Well, with my question I mostly had in mind when I keep reflecting about scenes and characters I wrote about long ago, so abandoned stories and missing chapters/scenes do definitively count.
As for the remaking of that old story, for now I've started to remake the characters and some places in TS4, let's see where it brings me...
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
Is there any story or character that keeps returning to your mind even a long time after you finished writing it? Have you ever thought about writing more about those old stories and characters?
If characters from abandoned stories count, then yes. They occasionally come back and haunt me like ghosts. But I am unable to help them.
Characters from truly completed stories linger for a while, but as my attention turns to a new set of characters in a new story, they fade away.
Interestingly, there are a few characters in the SimLit I am currently writing who were named after characters in an old abandoned novel I was writing many years ago. But it's just a private little joke for myself, and has no actual importance in understanding the story.
New week, new questions. I don't know if this has been asked as a focused question, so:
- What books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit?
- How do these influences show up in your work?
- What books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit?
- How do these influences show up in your work?
Magic Universe stories:
A lot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons/Pathfinder, mostly. This comes across in a few ways that I can't really explain, but the most obvious is in the stronger 'ritual' spells that require physical components to cast, much like a lot of DnD spells do. Although this doesn't really come up, lower-ranked spellcasters also often need a verbal component to cast a spell (usually the spell's name), but higher-ranked spellcasters can cast spells without needing to say anything. I've taken inspiration from FeroshaCoutura's work in the sense of trying to spice up screenshots, making things a bit more exciting and also trying to manage a larger cast. The decision to have the Fae appear in the third story was based on _sims_yimi's Tales of Camelot. There's also a character based on someone from SnuffyBucket's Almost Eternal.
One character takes his name from an alchemical symbol. At first it was solely because it sounded like a cool name for a magic story, but then the 'lore' behind the symbol played a huge part of his backstory later on. A majority of Morgyn's backstory comes from various headcanons posted in this forum's 'Realm of Morgyn' thread. Their manner of speech was an offsite Simmer friend's idea. I also realise things got a bit crazier in the story after I started playing Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy.
Aliens Universe stories:
The aliens' 'heart pact' (Put simply, a sort of extreme Sixamian 'pinky promise') Was slightly inspired by Star Wars's Wookiee 'life debt', even though they're both fairly different. Sixamians' manner of reproduction is inspired by...wasps and bees, of all things. Their desire to try and find other species to mate with due to a large-scale reproductive issue in their own species, was an idea someone else on a sci-fi forum had for their own alien species. The Strangerville plants and their effects on other creatures are inspired by all sorts of beautiful and horrifying parasitic creatures. The Sixamian language takes most of its inspiration from Skyrim's dragons' language in the way it's written.
In general, both stories also have plenty of allegories of various IRL social issues. Most of it is unintentionally written, and I've only noticed after another reader has mentioned it- but some of it is intended to be allegorical.
- What books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit?
- How do these influences show up in your work?
I am a culture sponge and everything I've written in Sim 66 is based off a lot of books, movies and TV shows I've watched over the years. That's always my advice for people who want to write: Read tons of stuff. If you want to make films, watch a lot of films. If I'm going to list my top 5 inspirations for Sim 66 I would cite the following:
1. Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold. It's set in the 1920s but Gold's novel not only has fantastic and ingenious ideas throughout but his dialogue really fizzes. It's fast paced, witty and exciting to read. It's influenced the way I write dialogue.
2. Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush. It's both a novel by Hunter Davies and a 1968 movie and I'd recommend both. This is one of the most accurate and insightful coming of age comedies about that transition in a teenager's life between leaving school and getting on with the rest of your life. It does have plenty of daydream sequences but the moral core of the story is very resonant with real life. The 1968 movie has the bonus of having lots of great Sixties music and fashion in it.
3. That Girl. The classic 1960s sitcom starring Marlo Thomas as a young aspiring actress, Anne Marie and her chaotic relationship with her boyfriend, Don. Both Anne and Don make great Sixties protagonists and, again, the look of that show is a big influence on Sim 66.
4. The President's Analyst. A 1967 movie starring James Coburn as a top psychiatrist who becomes counsellor to the President of the United States which in turn brings him into contact with all manner of conspiracies and nutjob organisations...and they're all out to get him. A very intelligent comedy/spy movie and bits of it have crept into Sim 66.
5. Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About by Mil Millington. A really funny novel, written in the 2000s which has cracking dialogue, back and forth bantering and shows, in a funny way, the difference between the male and female brains.
- What books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit?
- How do these influences show up in your work?
My answer to both these questions is pretty much the same: a lot.
Basically, I'm basically pop culture trash, and things I like or otherwise seem fitting for the current situation, it usually will get wedged in somehow (usually as a type of reference).
What books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit?
How do these influences show up in your work?
For me this question is hard to answer with specifics. I get inspiration from all sorts of places, but almost none of it translates into a clear "this was inspired by that" connection for me. There have been a couple times when that's happened, but not many. Mostly, everything I read, see, watch, hear, experience and imagine gets run through some kind of internal blender and "stuff" comes out the other end that is hard for me to see what the original influences were anymore.
There are a few sources I can point out as having a general impact.
Terry Prattchet's Discworld series and Louis McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga are my two favorite fantasy and sci-fi series respectively. I've read those books over and over and I'd say it's probably impossible that none of that is influencing my writing. But I don't really write totally like either of them.
I read a lot of other fantasy series as well, and a decent amount of science fiction, and in general my ideas are probably influenced a lot by that.
Greek mythology has been an influence on all my creative work ever since I "discovered" it (courtesy of a very enthusiastic librarian) at the age of ten or so.
I often turn to random music videos on YouTube for inspiration when I am dealing with writer's block. Sometimes I'll just happen to stumble over something that gives me a new insight for a character or scene.
Old radio detective shows like Pat Novak, Richard Diamond, and Nero Wolf filter loosely into the style of writing I use for my vampire-detective character's POV chapters.
Traveling and hiking have always been important for me in getting the creative voice talking to me. Seeing places that are unfamiliar to me gives me ideas for scenes.
My own experiences living in countries that are not the one I grew up in have been repurposed and modified into some of the things that happen to my alien character who is trying to learn "human" language and culture.
I watch a lot of anime, and I've definitely found that seeping into the way I plan out and take my screenshots, as well as the type of stories I tell. Especially the anime that's more "slice of life with fantasy elements" rather than the "big adventure or epic fights" anime. I also frequently use anime images as a reference when making my custom poses, because doing so fits in better with the cartoony style of the existing game animations than using more realistic references.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, baroque and rococo paintings also have been a heavy influence on my screenshot style, particularly the night time shots. And for a non-SimLit story that I'm also working on, I actually drew my original inspiration for the plot from a bunch of different baroque, rococo, classic, and modern paintings.
- What books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit?
- How do these influences show up in your work?
@SnowBnuuy I like this question. But it's difficult for me to answer because I'm sure that I'm being influenced subconsciously in addition to all of the influences that I recognize, but I think that music is huge for me. Certain music and other media have certain vibes. I try to immerse myself in that and mirror it in my own story. I also curate music playlists to fit the vibe that I want.
An example of something I can name specifically is Sky Castle. I feel like I've been influence by it (at least a little bit). I watched it a few years back, and I recently re-watched a scene and was caught off-guard by how similar certain aspects of that drama were to my legacy. The parallels are somewhat subtle because I had no intention to copy and it's not that similar but the drama is satirical and about an "elite" group of people/education in Korea (which are themes/things that resonate with me anyway). One of the fathers is an over-the-top ridiculous out-of-line hilariously absurd professor and he feels so similar to Asher.
A lot of the media I consume is East Asian (Korean/Japanese) because I want to become extremely comfortable with 3 languages and 3 cultures, and I'm very comfortable with American stuff already - but it's hard for me to do 2 things (much less 3) at once, so my recent American pop culture knowledge is actually extremely lacking and I can't pull from common vampire tropes or fantasy (besides Twilight…) because I have no clue about those things.
- What books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit? - How do these influences show up in your work?
That's a harder question than how it could seem at first, because probably I'm not aware of most of the influences I'm subjected to...
Mostly when I was younger and I had more free time, I used to read a lot (mostly fantasy-supernatural and sci-fi novels), and these tend to be the genres I write about the most. I'm a fan of the Harry Potter universe (what a surprise, isn't it?), but I also liked a lot the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and some novels from writers like Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Stroud, Eoin Colfer...
I'm less into stories involving wars, battles and so forth. I also read manga and watch anime, my favourite one probably remains Fullmetal Alchemist (while now for example I'm following the last season of attack on titans). I'm a bit less into movies and tv series, mostly because they take too much time for my tastes. I'm not very into any romance novel/movie etc... instead, and also in my stories romance is rarely the main focus of the story for long.
My first long story, which is also the one for which I was considering a remaking with TS4 not so long ago, was a plot-driven story set in Hogwarts, so it's very easy to see where most of my inspiration came from and how the media have influenced it. I often follow several characters, and I have the feeling this is something I'm taking from anime/manga more than from the western media I follow. There are also some elements inspired by Fullmetal Alchemist in that story, a group of characters (and one in particular) inspired by the Bartimaeus Trilogy novels, and a few characters names I took from the games of the Professor Layton series.
The legacy I'm working on now instead is definitively more game-driven, so many of the things happening are related to the game dynamics. For example, the fact that aliens abduct people and can disguise themselves in the story is mostly a choice made on the basis of the game dynamics.
I admit that when I created the founder I tried to make someone who could fit within The Big Bang Theory cast, but then Stuart diverged quite a lot from them while getting older.
With this story in particular I'm trying to have some very unexpected events from time to time, probably because I like those as a reader, but I'm learning that writing unexpected plot twists the way some of the authors I named earlier do is way harder than how it seems by reading their books.
So that I'm a scientist myself, when writing a sci-fi plot I also try to throw in some technical terms and real scientific descriptions to make it sound more convincing and reasonable, and I also try to hide as much as possible the issues that would make the sci-fi elements included into the story impossible according to the known laws of physics. At some points I feel like I'm writing so impossible stuff (i.e. going against the conservation of energy law & co) that my physics professors should nullify some of my exams, but that's another story and shall be told another time...
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
That’s cool that you take a lot of inspiration from all sorts of cultures, Haneul! It’s interesting knowing where Asher’s inspiration may have come from.
@HermioneSims That’s cool to hear, especially the science-related stuff. I’ve had to look into scientific stuff a fair bit for my writing surprisingly, mainly into parasitic
/symbiotic etc. organisms for the Aliens universe stories, although I don’t bother to stay 100% accurate to the science. I moreso get ideas from it to make things slightly more believable, but I like to sort of ‘learn the rules before I break them’ sometimes. Though I can imagine for someone who works in the field too much ‘breaking the rules’ can be nightmarish to read or watch in a series etc.
I actually like the way you make the science sound believable with the terms, because for me you do it in a way I like and that isn’t jarring. You don’t do it in a way that makes all of your non-science-savvy readers have to Google definitions every ten seconds, and I love that.
@HermioneSims I love the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books too. I can't believe I forgot to mention them in my first answer to this question!
Douglas Adams has been one of my other favorite authors for a long time. I think, now that I'm thinking about it, one huge inspiration influence on my current SimLit story (at least in terms of how I'm approaching the overall plot) would be Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series. His way of creating a whole bunch of subplots that don't seem at all related until close to the end of the book is definitely what I have in mind for my story. I think his books have had a strong influence on me through almost all of my life in terms of my writing. It's just so deeply embedded in my way of thinking now, that I forget that's where I got that influence in the first place.
hat books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit?
- How do these influences show up in your work?
i'm back , i washaving mod game and orgin issues the last one was the worst.
friends. , i once called a chapter my eyes my eyes . which is a quote from the show. if you don't watch heres the setup. pheobe is looking through a windpw of a apartment ross intends to rent and sees monica and chandler dong it.
at the time ayden who was remarried seemed to rnjoy that actvity so i named the chapter my eyes my eyes. heres the weird part if i had waited 10 minutes i would ave had screenshots,
@SnowBnuuy , we are probably derailing a bit from the original question, but this is an interesting topic too. I tend to prefer sci-fi, paranormal and fantasy stories in which the whole setting can be traced back to very few supernatural elements or events, and in which all the differences from the "real world" are just consequences (either direct or not) of these few elements. It's a bit like imagining "what if scenarios" to me, in which I try to put together in a coherent way real and supernatural elements. This also means that I tend to introduce a lot of rules and limitations in my stories. This is also quite the opposite of that kind of fantasy stories in which magical elements are introduced conveniently exactly at the moment they are needed for the plot advancement, as if saying "it's magic anyway, anything can happen". That's one of the reasons why I'm not a great fan of The Chronicles of Narnia, for example.
Returning a bit back on the topic, this is also why I tend to reason about the science I know, or why I research a bit on the topics I don't know (mostly other cultures, or some psychology), when elaborating the next chapters of my stories.
@GlacierSnow , I've heard of Dirk Gently stories a couple of times but for some reason it never ended in my to-read list. Well, after reading your post I'm definitively very curious about it, I definitively have to look for it during my next trip to the book store!
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
@friendsfan367 That sounds cool. Would be a fun idea for chapter titles to make it like the show if you ever run out of chapter ideas : p ‘The One Where My Sim Glitches Out And Stands There For Two In-Game Days’ : p
@HermioneSims I’ll put my response in spoiler tags since my response is (and was) off the main topic (sorry!):
This is such an important point actually since I’ve read a lot of fantasy where the fantastical elements have zero consequence or limitations. Like people can just bang out any spell they want whenever they want and it just happens, no limits, no overexertion or running out of mana or anything. The limitations in my universe are similar to both the game and partially to DnD. Overcharge is a serious problem and repeated magic overexertion can lead to a fatal illness and other long term health conditions. Spells have a chance of failing if too overcharged, stronger versions of spells require physical components such as gems or plants that get used up by the spell’s power.
Comments
In my own writing, I like to have neither villains nor strong antagonists, which I think is dangerous because that reduces the potential for conflict, action, and interest. But I write very slowly already and I find that that kind of conflict gets in the way of the story I want to tell, so I like to keep it to a minimum. Now, I have to think of creative ways to keep things interesting, though.
@_sims_Yimi Thanks for your interest in my story! At the moment, I am not posting it online. I've just been sharing it by email with interested friends and family members. I'm still trying to decide if I want to put it online or not.
I like your way of thinking about villains. It's a helpful new way of looking at how I'm planning my story.
@haneul Same! I don't really think about narrative roles for characters when I'm writing. I just create a set of characters that interest me, who interact with each other in ways that interest me, and I think about who they are, as people, from their own point of view.
Is there any story or character that keeps returning to your mind even a long time after you finished writing it? Have you ever thought about writing more about those old stories and characters?
I'm asking this because, in my head, I'm very often returning back to stories I wrote years ago, and I think about how I would improve it now, what I would write differently and so on.
I mostly feel this for an old TS2 story I wrote years ago. I really bonded a lot with the protagonists, I liked to play with them and to write about their lives, somehow I miss the time when I was writing that story.
In some moments in which I feel particularly ambitious I even think about trying to recreate them on TS4 and to integrate new chapters to the story, or even to write a new one (probably following a different development), but I'm quite unsure about it... In any case, I have another ongoing story that I want to end before deciding what to do with the next one :P
Is there any story or character that keeps returning to your mind even a long time after you finished writing it? Have you ever thought about writing more about those old stories and characters?
- Áine from TSAHF, so much. I really love her so darn much and want her to have a prequel as well (Snow, stop making Untamed magic your obvious favourite, darn it!)- but it'll be difficult, mainly due to the fact it'd be set 300 years prior to TSAHF, and also the lack of CC/poses etc. will make recreating elements from her story nearly impossible to recreate. That, and I risk it being too thematically similar to the other three stories as well.
- There's also Ollie, the journalist from my Aliens Universe, of course not the kind who plays by the rules... I already revisited his backstory and built on it , but in the case of revisiting the character in my head, it's regretting decisions I made for his character's plot and having what I think would be better ideas, looking back on it. It was a challenge story, so there was a lot I had to leave out for him since he was a side character. I'd never change the plot of the existing story, though. I did try to do a darker AU comic-type thing of the character ages ago, but it was awful and I deleted it. The challenge story he's from always comes back to me because it was good fun for me to write. I tried to extend it into a no-rules legacy story of the rest of the family (from gen 4 onwards) but I gave up on it. The Aliens universe has a few backstory events I could try to write another story around, maybe. I'd like to revisit the Aliens universe again at some point.
- Part of me also wants to do a collection of short stories/chapters for the side characters in the Magic Universe, exploring a part of that character's life in more detail. For me it would be fun to see some more in-depth backstory for the other Sages and maybe the students of the academy as well. I know I haven't even finished the trilogy yet, but when I do I know I'll want to revisit some of the other characters sometime. There's a big element of backstory in the universe that I'd like to try and show in pictures, but I don't think I could do it any justice with screenshots.
It was the first story I wrote and in the process I came to love the creative opportunity in the game.
The Danish site I shared their story on no longer exists.
It's been so much fun rewriting their story because I've learned so much since the spring of 2018. Moreover, readers' reactions and coincidences in the game have taken me on a whole other journey.
It's not boring.
Of course, you can also choose to control the script tightly with the corrections you want to add.
If there are any characters that keep rumbling in your head I'm sure it's going to be a satisfying challenge.
No. My story is ongoing and everyone at the start of it is still central to the plot. I do have my favourite chapters and character moments and sometimes I'll draw inspiration from them.
Read Sim 66 here:https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/978195/sim-66/p1
https://kelloggjkellogg.blogspot.com/2020/10/sim-66-prologue.html
I still think of potential situations for the Racket-Rotter verse, long after I stopped writing for them. There's so much I still want to one day, in the (sadly distant) future, tap into in regards to the characters and their lives.
Also because Sagebear is pure awesomeness in dog form. I could probably write an entire story about just her adventures in Twinbrook.
Part One(Complete 9/24/16) /Part Two(on hold)/Short Stories(on hold)/Twinbrook 1996(on hold)/Ten Crystal Hearts (on hold)
I own the TS3 Store as of 12/11/16 (sort of. It's complicated)
There’s not a lot of stories that I’ve finished, at least not a lot that I worked on for long enough to get really invested. I do think of characters from abandoned stories from time to time, though.
Does it count if it’s scenes from an ongoing story that happened in the past, but were cut or left out? There’s a child arc from the story that I am writing now that I regret not fleshing out more. I keep thinking of smaller scenes and chapters that would have gone well with what’s already there, or that would better foreshadow what happens later. I might add them when this arc is finished. I might not. I haven’t decided yet.
It might be very interesting to re-write a story that you made so long ago. It sounds like you really enjoyed that story, and I wonder what it would look like in TS4. If you do decide to remake it for TS4, let us know! 😊
@SnowBnuuy Áine was really interesting from the get-go. I’ve always been curious about her life when she was younger. It’s such a shame that CC doesn’t work on consoles- they’re an absolute lifesaver with historical stories.
@MonaSolstraale That’s right, Tusnelda was a rewrite of an older story, too! It’s amazing how you’re stayig true to Tusnelda’s story and incorporating the new things that the game throws at you at the same time. It is definitely not boring 😁
Well, with my question I mostly had in mind when I keep reflecting about scenes and characters I wrote about long ago, so abandoned stories and missing chapters/scenes do definitively count.
As for the remaking of that old story, for now I've started to remake the characters and some places in TS4, let's see where it brings me...
If characters from abandoned stories count, then yes. They occasionally come back and haunt me like ghosts. But I am unable to help them.
Characters from truly completed stories linger for a while, but as my attention turns to a new set of characters in a new story, they fade away.
Interestingly, there are a few characters in the SimLit I am currently writing who were named after characters in an old abandoned novel I was writing many years ago. But it's just a private little joke for myself, and has no actual importance in understanding the story.
- What books/movies/games/other SimLits/authors/IRL stuff/other media have influenced your SimLit/given you inspiration for your SimLit?
- How do these influences show up in your work?
I'll answer this later!
- How do these influences show up in your work?
Magic Universe stories:
A lot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons/Pathfinder, mostly. This comes across in a few ways that I can't really explain, but the most obvious is in the stronger 'ritual' spells that require physical components to cast, much like a lot of DnD spells do. Although this doesn't really come up, lower-ranked spellcasters also often need a verbal component to cast a spell (usually the spell's name), but higher-ranked spellcasters can cast spells without needing to say anything. I've taken inspiration from FeroshaCoutura's work in the sense of trying to spice up screenshots, making things a bit more exciting and also trying to manage a larger cast. The decision to have the Fae appear in the third story was based on _sims_yimi's Tales of Camelot. There's also a character based on someone from SnuffyBucket's Almost Eternal.
One character takes his name from an alchemical symbol. At first it was solely because it sounded like a cool name for a magic story, but then the 'lore' behind the symbol played a huge part of his backstory later on. A majority of Morgyn's backstory comes from various headcanons posted in this forum's 'Realm of Morgyn' thread. Their manner of speech was an offsite Simmer friend's idea. I also realise things got a bit crazier in the story after I started playing Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy.
Aliens Universe stories:
The aliens' 'heart pact' (Put simply, a sort of extreme Sixamian 'pinky promise') Was slightly inspired by Star Wars's Wookiee 'life debt', even though they're both fairly different. Sixamians' manner of reproduction is inspired by...wasps and bees, of all things. Their desire to try and find other species to mate with due to a large-scale reproductive issue in their own species, was an idea someone else on a sci-fi forum had for their own alien species. The Strangerville plants and their effects on other creatures are inspired by all sorts of beautiful and horrifying parasitic creatures. The Sixamian language takes most of its inspiration from Skyrim's dragons' language in the way it's written.
In general, both stories also have plenty of allegories of various IRL social issues. Most of it is unintentionally written, and I've only noticed after another reader has mentioned it- but some of it is intended to be allegorical.
- How do these influences show up in your work?
I am a culture sponge and everything I've written in Sim 66 is based off a lot of books, movies and TV shows I've watched over the years. That's always my advice for people who want to write: Read tons of stuff. If you want to make films, watch a lot of films. If I'm going to list my top 5 inspirations for Sim 66 I would cite the following:
1. Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold. It's set in the 1920s but Gold's novel not only has fantastic and ingenious ideas throughout but his dialogue really fizzes. It's fast paced, witty and exciting to read. It's influenced the way I write dialogue.
2. Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush. It's both a novel by Hunter Davies and a 1968 movie and I'd recommend both. This is one of the most accurate and insightful coming of age comedies about that transition in a teenager's life between leaving school and getting on with the rest of your life. It does have plenty of daydream sequences but the moral core of the story is very resonant with real life. The 1968 movie has the bonus of having lots of great Sixties music and fashion in it.
3. That Girl. The classic 1960s sitcom starring Marlo Thomas as a young aspiring actress, Anne Marie and her chaotic relationship with her boyfriend, Don. Both Anne and Don make great Sixties protagonists and, again, the look of that show is a big influence on Sim 66.
4. The President's Analyst. A 1967 movie starring James Coburn as a top psychiatrist who becomes counsellor to the President of the United States which in turn brings him into contact with all manner of conspiracies and nutjob organisations...and they're all out to get him. A very intelligent comedy/spy movie and bits of it have crept into Sim 66.
5. Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About by Mil Millington. A really funny novel, written in the 2000s which has cracking dialogue, back and forth bantering and shows, in a funny way, the difference between the male and female brains.
Read Sim 66 here:https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/978195/sim-66/p1
https://kelloggjkellogg.blogspot.com/2020/10/sim-66-prologue.html
My answer to both these questions is pretty much the same: a lot.
Basically, I'm basically pop culture trash, and things I like or otherwise seem fitting for the current situation, it usually will get wedged in somehow (usually as a type of reference).
Part One(Complete 9/24/16) /Part Two(on hold)/Short Stories(on hold)/Twinbrook 1996(on hold)/Ten Crystal Hearts (on hold)
I own the TS3 Store as of 12/11/16 (sort of. It's complicated)
How do these influences show up in your work?
For me this question is hard to answer with specifics. I get inspiration from all sorts of places, but almost none of it translates into a clear "this was inspired by that" connection for me. There have been a couple times when that's happened, but not many. Mostly, everything I read, see, watch, hear, experience and imagine gets run through some kind of internal blender and "stuff" comes out the other end that is hard for me to see what the original influences were anymore.
There are a few sources I can point out as having a general impact.
Terry Prattchet's Discworld series and Louis McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga are my two favorite fantasy and sci-fi series respectively. I've read those books over and over and I'd say it's probably impossible that none of that is influencing my writing. But I don't really write totally like either of them.
I read a lot of other fantasy series as well, and a decent amount of science fiction, and in general my ideas are probably influenced a lot by that.
Greek mythology has been an influence on all my creative work ever since I "discovered" it (courtesy of a very enthusiastic librarian) at the age of ten or so.
I often turn to random music videos on YouTube for inspiration when I am dealing with writer's block. Sometimes I'll just happen to stumble over something that gives me a new insight for a character or scene.
Old radio detective shows like Pat Novak, Richard Diamond, and Nero Wolf filter loosely into the style of writing I use for my vampire-detective character's POV chapters.
Traveling and hiking have always been important for me in getting the creative voice talking to me. Seeing places that are unfamiliar to me gives me ideas for scenes.
My own experiences living in countries that are not the one I grew up in have been repurposed and modified into some of the things that happen to my alien character who is trying to learn "human" language and culture.
I watch a lot of anime, and I've definitely found that seeping into the way I plan out and take my screenshots, as well as the type of stories I tell. Especially the anime that's more "slice of life with fantasy elements" rather than the "big adventure or epic fights" anime. I also frequently use anime images as a reference when making my custom poses, because doing so fits in better with the cartoony style of the existing game animations than using more realistic references.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, baroque and rococo paintings also have been a heavy influence on my screenshot style, particularly the night time shots. And for a non-SimLit story that I'm also working on, I actually drew my original inspiration for the plot from a bunch of different baroque, rococo, classic, and modern paintings.
Despite me writing the question it was hard to answer in places. Some things I know are influences on my work but also I couldn’t tell you how : p
@SnowBnuuy I like this question.
An example of something I can name specifically is Sky Castle. I feel like I've been influence by it (at least a little bit). I watched it a few years back, and I recently re-watched a scene and was caught off-guard by how similar certain aspects of that drama were to my legacy. The parallels are somewhat subtle because I had no intention to copy and it's not that similar but the drama is satirical and about an "elite" group of people/education in Korea (which are themes/things that resonate with me anyway). One of the fathers is an over-the-top ridiculous out-of-line hilariously absurd professor and he feels so similar to Asher.
A lot of the media I consume is East Asian (Korean/Japanese) because I want to become extremely comfortable with 3 languages and 3 cultures, and I'm very comfortable with American stuff already - but it's hard for me to do 2 things (much less 3) at once, so my recent American pop culture knowledge is actually extremely lacking and I can't pull from common vampire tropes or fantasy (besides Twilight…) because I have no clue about those things.
- How do these influences show up in your work?
That's a harder question than how it could seem at first, because probably I'm not aware of most of the influences I'm subjected to...
Mostly when I was younger and I had more free time, I used to read a lot (mostly fantasy-supernatural and sci-fi novels), and these tend to be the genres I write about the most. I'm a fan of the Harry Potter universe (what a surprise, isn't it?), but I also liked a lot the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and some novels from writers like Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Stroud, Eoin Colfer...
I'm less into stories involving wars, battles and so forth. I also read manga and watch anime, my favourite one probably remains Fullmetal Alchemist (while now for example I'm following the last season of attack on titans). I'm a bit less into movies and tv series, mostly because they take too much time for my tastes. I'm not very into any romance novel/movie etc... instead, and also in my stories romance is rarely the main focus of the story for long.
My first long story, which is also the one for which I was considering a remaking with TS4 not so long ago, was a plot-driven story set in Hogwarts, so it's very easy to see where most of my inspiration came from and how the media have influenced it. I often follow several characters, and I have the feeling this is something I'm taking from anime/manga more than from the western media I follow. There are also some elements inspired by Fullmetal Alchemist in that story, a group of characters (and one in particular) inspired by the Bartimaeus Trilogy novels, and a few characters names I took from the games of the Professor Layton series.
The legacy I'm working on now instead is definitively more game-driven, so many of the things happening are related to the game dynamics. For example, the fact that aliens abduct people and can disguise themselves in the story is mostly a choice made on the basis of the game dynamics.
I admit that when I created the founder I tried to make someone who could fit within The Big Bang Theory cast, but then Stuart diverged quite a lot from them while getting older.
With this story in particular I'm trying to have some very unexpected events from time to time, probably because I like those as a reader, but I'm learning that writing unexpected plot twists the way some of the authors I named earlier do is way harder than how it seems by reading their books.
So that I'm a scientist myself, when writing a sci-fi plot I also try to throw in some technical terms and real scientific descriptions to make it sound more convincing and reasonable, and I also try to hide as much as possible the issues that would make the sci-fi elements included into the story impossible according to the known laws of physics. At some points I feel like I'm writing so impossible stuff (i.e. going against the conservation of energy law & co) that my physics professors should nullify some of my exams, but that's another story and shall be told another time...
@HermioneSims That’s cool to hear, especially the science-related stuff. I’ve had to look into scientific stuff a fair bit for my writing surprisingly, mainly into parasitic
/symbiotic etc. organisms for the Aliens universe stories, although I don’t bother to stay 100% accurate to the science. I moreso get ideas from it to make things slightly more believable, but I like to sort of ‘learn the rules before I break them’ sometimes. Though I can imagine for someone who works in the field too much ‘breaking the rules’ can be nightmarish to read or watch in a series etc.
I actually like the way you make the science sound believable with the terms, because for me you do it in a way I like and that isn’t jarring. You don’t do it in a way that makes all of your non-science-savvy readers have to Google definitions every ten seconds, and I love that.
Douglas Adams has been one of my other favorite authors for a long time. I think, now that I'm thinking about it, one huge inspiration influence on my current SimLit story (at least in terms of how I'm approaching the overall plot) would be Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series. His way of creating a whole bunch of subplots that don't seem at all related until close to the end of the book is definitely what I have in mind for my story. I think his books have had a strong influence on me through almost all of my life in terms of my writing. It's just so deeply embedded in my way of thinking now, that I forget that's where I got that influence in the first place.
- How do these influences show up in your work?
i'm back , i washaving mod game and orgin issues the last one was the worst.
friends. , i once called a chapter my eyes my eyes . which is a quote from the show. if you don't watch heres the setup. pheobe is looking through a windpw of a apartment ross intends to rent and sees monica and chandler dong it.
at the time ayden who was remarried seemed to rnjoy that actvity so i named the chapter my eyes my eyes. heres the weird part if i had waited 10 minutes i would ave had screenshots,
Returning a bit back on the topic, this is also why I tend to reason about the science I know, or why I research a bit on the topics I don't know (mostly other cultures, or some psychology), when elaborating the next chapters of my stories.
@GlacierSnow , I've heard of Dirk Gently stories a couple of times but for some reason it never ended in my to-read list. Well, after reading your post I'm definitively very curious about it, I definitively have to look for it during my next trip to the book store!
@HermioneSims I’ll put my response in spoiler tags since my response is (and was) off the main topic (sorry!):