Although I'm having fun writing out chapters for my royal story, I also like having a game-driven story in Magical Mastersons. Sometimes completely crazy stuff happens that you just cannot plan for, and trying to work it into your story is fun! You'd think a birthday party would be relatively simple - just invite over some friends, bake a cake, blow out the candles... right... ?
Also... how do you work out screenshots? What I mean is, how do you decided where to put them in your chapters? Although I'm still pretty new to using Pose Player, for example, it's all been pretty straightforward so far. I'm not very experienced at photo editing; all I can really do is make a screenshot black-and-white or sepia-toned. I can't edit in special effects or whatever. So far I have one chapter which is entirely screenshot-based, and it's relatively straightforward to write out a list of screenshots/poses I want to use and arrange them in chronological order.
My story, Sim 66, has evolved over time. At first it was entirely gameplay driven and I would write up the events of the day into prose form. After about a dozen chapters I started to combine gameplay with things I scripted in advance. Right now the method of plotting Sim 66 is to take one of the regular featured characters, look at what happened to them in previous chapters, work out where I roughly want them to be by the end of the chapter and play out the game noting all the incidents that happen along the way before writing it all up.
I'm frequently pausing the game, going into free camera mode and looking for the best moment to freeze frame and working out the best angle. I use a lot of techniques on framing that I learned in film school back in the day. I go for the rule of thirds, frequently have over the shoulder framings, use two shots, establishing shots, mids and then close ups to show characters having a dialogue.
As for photographic effects I tend not to use them unless I'm doing a flashback scene or creating a black and white photo. I've noticed that if you use the mouse thumbwheel in free camera move you can get a fish eye lens effect, which I will use at some point to show someone's altered state of mind.
As for placement of screenshots I match them to the dialogue. I always start and end each chapter with a screenshot.
I decided I wanna try reviving this thread again, so I went through some 'questions to ask writers' online and found one I don't think we've discussed this one yet
What do you hope your readers 'take away' from your writing?
I'll try and expand this question, since IDK if it'll make sense to everyone, since it's pretty vague. - Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
- How do you generally aim to make the reader feel as they're reading your story?
My response under the cut:
The thing with Divided is that it's equal parts 'me trying to make things meaningful' and 'this seemed cool / fun so I threw it in'.
Unsurprisingly, the main theme of the whole story is division, but I find some stories around such a theme tend to be quite one-dimensional and never fully explore it in-depth. It's also a story about people coming together, but not in a cutesy 'be nice to each other!' low-effort Twitter equality post kind of way. It's not always a willingness to work together, sometimes it's fighting quite literally for what you want and what you deserve. It's the importance of doing better, over wallowing in guilt- but also not necessarily 'feeling guilty is bad', more 'you can't centre yourself when you've done wrong, you have to centre whoever has been hurt by your actions'.
But the 'people coming together' part also comes from the fact that, sometimes, some people seem to think that folks from different walks of life can NEVER even try to understand each other. That there's no crossover of experience AT ALL between different people with differing experiences, and that in relating to someone else's struggle in an important way is seen as a bad thing. There's a lot of crossover of experience between all the characters in Divided despite the fact that many of them are from very different walks of life.
For example, You can look at both the male and female witches and, yes, the women get killed more often because witchfinders don't suspect men as often in this story. But what they share in common, is the fact that they both have to hide their true selves to survive, so the good folk try to look after each other. There's a time and a place for 'who has it worse', but sometimes the characters in the story need to overcome that to overcome the antagonists. However, it also covers the darker aspect that such stories often don't like to dip into, and that's the fact that sometimes, people within your 'group' may not necessarily be acting for the benefit of other folks who share their issues. Quite a few of the witches and other magic-folk are more than willing to throw other witches under the bus to save their own skins.
Another big part of most of my writing is that it's never about happiness, really, and is more often about acceptance. It's about the fact that things more often than not are awful, if not for you, then for others around you, and trying to clutch at straws for what comfort you can find amongst the chaos.
And yet another is that not everything needs to be understood. No-one knows the truth about the Watcher or even if the Watcher exists, and magic is beyond many people's understanding, even witches sometimes! Something I kind of wish a lot of readers and fantasy writers would remember is that sometimes there are no definite answers.
As for how I'm trying to make people feel with the story, a lot of it is actually tapping into readers' darker sides. Violeta especially is that sort of character, she's the complete embodiment of the dark feminine. And a lot of the debate that comes up amongst comments is 'how far is too far?' Some folk will call out the pacifists for not acting with violence, but when the more violent characters act upon it, sometimes they find themselves understanding why the pacifists do what they do- and vice-versa.
@SnowBnuuy What do you hope your readers 'take away' from your writing?
I'll try and expand this question, since IDK if it'll make sense to everyone, since it's pretty vague. - Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
- How do you generally aim to make the reader feel as they're reading your story?
Thanks for breathing new life into the thread with a really good question.
It is really interesting to read your thoughts. As I understand it, some are very basic..but can almost be called the archetypal theme that is your nerve in your writing. Friendship, evil, superstition, courage and the struggle for survival. Create a life with acceptance of what has become your lot in life.
Feel free to contradict me if I have misunderstood your answer
My response
My basic theme in all my stories is about personal development and finding joy and hope in the dark. I want none of my characters to be what they start out to be when the story ends. They will hopefully learn to make better and healthier personal choices during the story. I am not so afraid to deal with happiness. Maybe because I personally needed to move from a depressive, dark view of life to a more positive one. I don't think there is anything superficial or soft-hearted about them seeking and cultivating what gives them joy in life, as long as it is not at the expense of others.
I think that you often do not choose what you are exposed to in life, but that you have a personal choice with what you do with what you are exposed to. Every loss and crisis creates an opportunity for development. As a well-known person in this country express it. There's a gift in the 🐸🐸🐸🐸 and it's up to you to discover it. I think it is a good philosophy of life that creates hope.
I don't think it's as easy as it sounds and that's probably why it concerns me so much. On a personal level, as well as what applies to my characters in my story. I love happy endings and wish for my characters to experience happiness at some point. I am not very religious, but I still find great life wisdom and benefit in the Serenity Prayer. I hope it can be read in my stories.
Another part of my stories consists of playing and exploiting the game's possibilities.
I want my readers to feel well entertained and perhaps carried away by the characters' sorrows and triumphs, for better or for worse.
I think you've summed it up really well with that. I think especially with the historical theme of the story that definitely adds on to the struggle of survival, and how death is a massive theme even outside of the witch-hunts because of the time it takes place in.
I think now you mention it, courage is a big one as well, across almost every character. The witches' courage to live as true a life as they can despite everything. One character's courage to be his true self, another's to ditch something he's stood for and been in power for for years to finally do what's right, and another's to stand up to your control-freak of a father and go against years of tradition to do what's right for your country...there's a lot of that.
Answer to your post about your own story:
First off, sorry I'm so behind on your story ;-;
When I was writing my post, I was actually thinking of Tusnelda and Trix, it was the first of the other forum stories to come to mind because every chapter has its own little message or lesson, whether that's one for your readers or one for your characters, and how every chapter starts with a little introductory summary of sorts. I agree, I'd say T+T was mostly about finding joy in whatever part of life that you can, wheter that is an event, a person, and the biggest joy of all...a cat!
I definitely agree with what you said about happiness and that it's not 'soft-hearted' to seek it out, nor is it soft-hearted to write about it. A lot of people really seem to think that positive or joyful works have less meaning but that couldn't be further from the truth, for multiple reasons. And I think your story capturing elements of everyday life makes it no less powerful, and whilst us Simmers often love slice-of-life I wish people outside of this kind of community could see the value of it.
@SnowBnuuy I am glad to read your thoughts on Tusnelda and Trix. You don't have to regret that you are not up to date in their story.
It is often the case that you, as a reader, are preoccupied with a particular subject at times, and as for Simlit, it is quite common that they take up less space in the summer. It happens to me too.
I love your comment about finding the greatest joy in a cat. It was surprising and so true
Unfortunately, Trix takes up less space in my story as the character gallery has expanded. I still have to remember to give him his rightful place
It is often the case that positive stories are considered cheap and superficial. However, this is probably what all people seek in life, when basic needs such as food and safety are met. There is no easy shortcut to achieving true happiness. Finding your inner core is a lifelong challenge.
I was discussing streaming series with a friend yesterday and I said that I quickly lose interest in series where all the main characters are young and beautiful and with a 'perfect' body. Their challenges may be real and relevant, but their perfect exterior puts a distance on me.
I feel great empathy for the imperfect and it is in this connection that I try to create a positive and joy-filled life for my character.
As for readers outside the Simmers community, I unfortunately think that it is precisely the Sims characters that put up a barrier, as they think it is only about games. I have not yet managed to catch a single reader in my circle of friends
What do you hope your readers 'take away' from your writing?
I'll try and expand this question, since IDK if it'll make sense to everyone, since it's pretty vague. - Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
- How do you generally aim to make the reader feel as they're reading your story?
Each of my stories is different but there are a few themes that tie them together. Strong, independent women, positive female friendships, and acceptance of yourself and others. I don't like stories where women are portrayed as weak, helpless, and needing men to save them or save the day. In both of my stories women are as capable as the men around them. Even worse than that is always having women competing against one another and stabbing each other in the back, even friends. It is true in life that we feel compelled and conditioned to compete against one another and that irritates me to no end. I like the women in my stories to model a life that I wish we all had, that our girlfriends have our backs through thick and thin. With that said, Schemes and Dreams does go into the catty, b****y trope but I try to balance it out.
With Schemes and Dreams I want readers to be entertained but also to think about topics like acceptance, especially in terms of LGBTQ people. Under The Tartosan Sun I want readers to come away feeling happy and uplifted. I know the characters lead idyllic lives and bad things rarely happen to them, or at all really, and that turns some readers off. I wrote it that way to be different. I feel like some writers are maybe a bit reluctant to go down this path because readers seem to crave action, fighting, betrayal, death and destruction. I'm a hopeless romantic and a bit girly and I set those parts of my personality free in this story.😁
I decided I wanna try reviving this thread again, so I went through some 'questions to ask writers' online and found one I don't think we've discussed this one yet
What do you hope your readers 'take away' from your writing?
I'll try and expand this question, since IDK if it'll make sense to everyone, since it's pretty vague. - Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
- How do you generally aim to make the reader feel as they're reading your story?
Fun. I want my readers to be entertained. I hope they smile and are in expectation when they reach the end of each chapter. I'm not trying to be so serious and have political or social agendas and I see my writing as entertainment.
Life lessons? I don't want to moralise to my readers. I write from the perspectives of the characters, not imposing my morals on them but, inevitably, my own life lessons will leak into the story but I don't want my characters to be mere mouthpieces for my morals or that of some ideology unless it is appropriate for that character.
Themes? Again, not really. I set out to write a soap opera style story about multiple people's lives in a specific time period and not a story that is structured around a theme.
I can't control how my readers feel and I don't know what they feel when they read it. I don't want to force them to feel anything other than entertained. What I try to do is make Sim 66 immersive so that the readers suspend their disbelief just enough for them to feel like they're close up witnesses to what's going on and that they get swept up in the story. This is one of the reasons I write a lot of to and fro dialogue that's fast paced and spend less time writing long stretches of prose. I'm a believer in showing a character's persona via their speech and actions, not with a lot of internal monologing....although I have one character who breaks that rule. Even in Simlit, I'm a firm believer in the idea that you "show, don't tell".
I keep forgetting a lot of people write to entertain others, whereas I write to entertain myself and then make it the reader's problem later. XD Full answers under the cut for neatness.
@DaniRose2143 I really like this too, I remember when I was reading the Tartosan Sun one I really loved the way you write female characters. I also liked this when I read a few chapters of @hellohannah2 's story.
Weirdly enough I never used to have a lot of female characters, I admit I used to be awful at writing them, and usually wrote male characters...Growing up and esp. in my teens I could never relate to girls, partially because 90% of girls hated me and thought I 'wasn't a girl' or' are you a girl or are you a boy?' and other BLUGH stuff. (imagine how much those same girls would kick off now if I told them they were right all along. XD) Strangely I found writing women a lot easier once I was completely distanced from trying to 'emulate' femininity. Like to look at that experience from a distance and go 'wow that's actually kind of messed up'. But I don't really want my poor experiences with such a thing to colour everything I write. Feminine joy is a good thing, and slowly a lot of my characters are finding that in the historical context. < 3
@Kellogg_J_Kellogg I think 'life lessons' was a terrible choice of wording on my part actually I was really struggling with how to word my expansion of the question... XD I really wish I could just write something fun, but I struggle to do that.
There are a few more lighthearted chapters in between all of the edge going on, that's the best I can do. Even when I start by writing 'what won't end up being a dark story' it ends up that way. ;-; I did once plan a challenge-based story solely about a woman inheriting her father's vet business and got to chapter 1 before getting bored. I would still like to write something at some point based around pets / animals though and their importance in our lives. Tusnelda and Trix only made me want to do that even more.
Like I said to Mona and in a similar case with her story, I don't think everything needs to have any particular meaning. Sometimes just watching folks live their lives has enough meaning in itself, and sometimes those things can mean more because they're more relatable in a sense.
As to characters and viewpoints, a lot of my protagonists don't necessarily share my views. Violeta has some...very strong opinions on men, but I really don't buy her blanket statements that she often makes. And the Peteran outlook of 'turning a dark heart towards the light' doesn't always work IMO, but that's what most of them seem to think.
100% to all of this. Definitely, I think when it comes to stories there often aren't a lot of older characters with much agency. Usually if they're there they're only there to offer advice or do something 'stupid' and be comic relief, or they're there to just be support instead of having their own goals and such. The 'perfect' body thing is something I'm not a fan of either, partially because I like a little variety in characters and also because honestly it's just boring for me. This is why Aine kept her 'mum bod' after she gave birth, and it's also why I designed Reynold the way he is because I sometimes find guys are left out of the body positivity stuff. I always wondered why it was never the fat guy who could be the guy the girls in stories all swoon over, so I decided to write it myself : P
'I feel great empathy for the imperfect and it is in this connection that I try to create a positive and joy-filled life for my character.' YES TO THIS! I feel this. My only 2 IRL friends I have left don't have any time to read, but they'll listen to me info-dump even though they have no clue what I'm banging on about.
Interesting comments about perfect physical specimens. One of the things I noticed when doing the research on the 1960s and and was amassing my Pinterest folder with images from that era was how thin most people were. Even in found photos of everyday life people were a lot thinner back then and very few people were obese. Historically a lot of countries, especially in Europe, were coming away from an era of rationing and were still physically recovering...and it would take 20 years to do so from the end of WW2. If anything, in Sim 66 I tend to make background characters underweight and skinny to reflect this. It was a time where a lot of jobs involved physical labour instead of sitting behind a desk at work and at home so people were more active.
@Kellogg_J_Kellogg You bring up a great point about how reality shapes our sims.
Like most simmers I make my sims a reflection of my reality. I'm an adult onset (Type 2) diabetic. I became a fitness fanatic to balance that reality with the foods I prefer. My A1c is within .1 or .2 of being normal. As it is I'm now considered pre-diabetic. I was full blown diabetic at one point and 'overweight'. I didn't become skinny to meet the unrealistic expectations of what a woman should be but simply to get myself off of the medicine I was taking to control my diabetes. I only took insulin for a couple of weeks early on after my diagnosis because of medicine I was taking for an unrelated illness. It taught me I didn't want to ever do that again and so I started working out like a demon to get my weight down. It's something I do to this day and will until I die or until they find a cure for this disease. If I wasn't a diabetic I wouldn't care if I was skinny or fat and to that end I'm trying to make my newer sims more diverse in terms of body image. With my love of food, if I wasn't diabetic I would be thick and curvy.🙂
...albeit on opposite ends of the spectrum. I write almost exclusively female characters because that's where my heart and soul are. I could write male characters, but I don't want to. I can't relate even though I spent so many years allowing myself to be forced into that space in spite of what every fiber of my being said was exactly the opposite, simply to please others instead of myself. My stories are an expression of my true self. To those who aren't sure if transness is real, ask yourself, if you didn't know any different which gender would you consider me to be. It's hard to explain to those who haven't lived it. Life is extremely nuanced, it really isn't black or white, either/or. That's why Mimi from Schemes and Dreams speaks to me and I put so much energy into telling their story. Mimi is who I wish I had been when I was that age. That's more than I wanted to say about myself, but this being Pride Month, the topic, and the climate here in America I felt compelled to speak out.🙂
@DaniRose2143 Agh I feel that, things in the UK suck too. All the best to you though < 3 3 and a safe and joyful Pride month to you!
OMG this is amazing though. You get it but the other way around. This is why I love writing, because you can explore things more freely that you wish you could explore more IRL. My response isn't entirely on-topic to writing Simlit, but...
But I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to speak about it here < 3 (also I am squeeing that there are other trans writers on the forum who are active in these chat spaces, woop woop! You have no idea how happy that's made me haha.) This was exactly my feeling when I wrote Morgyn Ember as a main character in one of my stories, and it wasn't until they started talking about their gender at times that...that's actually when it sort of clicked XD I was like 'hey, this isn't so difficult to write about, I get- wait- oh! - oh. Ohhhh...'
So far in my more recent stories out of major characters, there's Helen, who's transfem, Leo, who's transmasc, Morgyn is nonbinary, and then there's a genderfluid character in my current one. I feel that actually, it's kind of difficult to explain sometimes when it comes to myself, because a lot of the time people are like 'so are you transmasc or transfem?' but I don't consider myself to be either. And because even 2 years after figuring it out, it's like X_X
In the story, it's only the nobility that take issue with such things. Everyone else just finds it super interesting that it's a possibility.
@SnowBnuuy As much as people in the US and UK think they are nothing alike...
...they are more alike than either side wants to admit. I've said it before and I sometimes wish I hadn't, but yes, I am trans. It doesn't define me. It doesn't define anyone. In my mind it's immaterial as it applies to anyone, myself included. I'm not angry that people don't get it. If it isn't your reality it's impossible to explain. Most people are born knowing which gender applies to them and there's no question. My brothers and sisters weren't so lucky. That's our reality and I can't put it into words what that cognitive dissonance is like, except that we're not who we're often portrayed to be. If your body and gender align at birth and you have no questions or doubts, be thankful. Knowing that they don't and being told you're wrong in spite of everything you know internally to be right can be hard, if not impossible, to deal with. Your not wrong. Only you can truly define who you are because no one else knows what's in your heart, only you.
Am I too late to join the conversation? Seems like I'm always trailing in behind, as the conversation is already shifting to something else. But I think @SnowBnuuy 's questions are really intriguing.
What do you hope your readers 'take away' from your writing?
I'll try and expand this question, since IDK if it'll make sense to everyone, since it's pretty vague. - Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
- How do you generally aim to make the reader feel as they're reading your story?
The below thoughts apply to all of my writing, not just Seventeen & Maldusk. In fact, I've tried to restrict the number of POV characters some in SAM so, it actually may be less evident in that story than in some of the stuff I used to write.
Theme, or message isn't generally foremost on my mind when I write. I'm usually most focused on getting inside the heads of all the characters in the story.
But I've found that no matter how I start out, I always seem to end up wanting readers to see that people aren't always who they seem to be from the outside, that everyone has complicated things going on in their lives, different opinions and different values, and different past experiences that shape the choices they make, and that it is possible to see an issue differently when you look at it from a different angle.
Put succinctly, I think my main themes typically are "It's complicated" and "Everyone is a person. Even if you don't agree with them."
The discussion on gender and character's genders is very interesting too. And very relevant to Seventeen & Maldusk.
I often feel a little weird joining this type of conversation. My upbringing was a little unusual, though it was totally the normal world to me as far as I knew when I was a child. I've only begun to realize how odd it was as an adult. But basically, in my family, my extended family (who were most of my social network as a kid and teen), and my small town rural Alaskan community, I could not see any difference between males and females when I was growing up. Physical body, yes. But nothing else. Everyone wore the same type of clothing (practical outdoorsy stuff), everyone did the same kinds of activities (hiking, camping, skiing, etc.), when there was work to be done, everyone pitched in. Women were just as likely to be seen chopping wood or mowing the lawn as men, while lots of men were good cooks and you'd see them carrying their babies around in baby backpacks. When my family went somewhere in the car, my parents traded back and forth the duty of driving, split 50/50 between them. Responsibilities and privileges in my family were based on age and maturity, never gender. And when large groups would gather we tended to split up and play/socialize by age rather than gender as well.
On top of that, a lot of the women in my family had boisterous, athletic, competitive, outspoken, often very messy personalities. And a lot of the men were thoughtful, quiet, bookish, highly organized types who would think very hard about their actions because they didn't want to upset anyone.
So I thought that gender roles/stereotypes I saw in books and movies were a thing of the past (or maybe even just something made up for dramatic effect), and I also had a concept of male and female behavior that was kind of "backwards" from mainstream notions. And I put a lot more weight on age than gender as a social organization scheme. I had no idea, until I hit adulthood and moved away, that anyone cared at all what sex or gender someone was. I honestly grew up believing that anyone could be anything, because no one in my community tried to tell me differently. Leaving home and entering the wider world, as been serious ongoing culture shock for me. And when I listen to others talk about gender, I feel really weird and excluded because I'm coming from such a different direction as everyone else, it's hard to even talk about basic things. There are aspects of how I feel about my own gender that could be described by words like "gender-fluid", or "non-binary". But those words only make sense in the context of mainstream notions of gender. In the context of how I grew up, they make no sense, because that's just how everyone around me was too. And the term "trans-male" which fits aspects of how I internally see myself, only makes sense in the context of the quiet, bookish men and outspoken competitive women I grew up with. So I feel very uncomfortable using any of those terms for myself when talking with other people. But I also feel like "cisgendered" gives entirely the wrong impression about me, since it comes with the mainstream assumptions of what gender even means.
This theme is definitely part of SAM. Ion's concept of gender from the Sixam homeworld is based on what humans would think of as age, and has nothing at all to do with sex or reproduction, as sixamnian biology is totally different from humans and sixamnian society is structured around the changing life stages (which Ion translates as "genders") rather than what humans think of as gender. Annie is "female" (assigned female at birth as well how she sees herself) but everything about her, from her choices of clothing, to her hobbies, to the career she is headed for is rooted in stuff that often gets attributed to "males", but that for me seems like totally normal "female" stuff because it's all the stuff that I like. Tre and Tristan haven't been explored as thoroughly as other characters yet, but they each have aspects to them that pull from both "masculine" and "feminine" traditions that will show up eventually as the story unfolds. Tre is totally comfortable in his own skin. Tristan has various mixed feelings and hang-ups about it. Some of the side characters (who haven't been developed much in the published chapters yet) also push various sorts of gender boundaries from a mainstream perspective, but for me just seem like "perfectly ordinary people" like the ones that I grew up with. Reuben is the only main character whose sense of his own gender mostly matches traditional gender norms, but his behavior toward other people is often toxic, and he is deeply unhappy with himself in many ways.
EDIT
Kudos to you if you read all that, because wow, I kind of word-vomited there. But I think I wanted to talk about that a lot.
I really like that even the comic relief style characters have depth to them, and I like that everyone has a story, and that you can’t predict what someone’s like or has been through because of preconceptions. Even Tre, the wild conspiracy theorist, (for the most part) doesn’t have any theories that would do harm, if I remember correctly, And IMO he’s far from a bad person. Just gullible : p
It’s really interesting how your background shaped your outlook like that, and It’s always interesting how different cultures place values on different things, and how these shape people’s outlooks later on. I imagine in that kind of environment it’s on everyone to do whatever they can to get through what I imagine to be horrible winter times and such.
And that’s so great to have another GNC Simmer/writer on the active part of the forum, yipee! And don’t worry if you can’t find a label that fits, it’s fine to not have one at all. I like how your experiences very much fit with Ion’s , entering a whole new environment and being like ‘huh?’ I like that you think about these things with cis characters as well, I think in some corners of the internet, both cis and trans people alike sometimes forget that cis people can be just as broad or subversive with gender expectations, in terms of expression and everything else.
Thanks @SnowBnuuy ! It's nice to have someone understand, or at least "get it". One of the things I love most about your story is how much of a wide range of personalities, perspectives, and variations on gender you have in your characters.
I'm late on this topic too, and so that I'm trying to type this on a phone during a long bus trip after an even longer work week, the content risks to be a bit fragmented. Anyway, here I am.
What do you hope your readers 'take away' from your writing?
- Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
- How do you generally aim to make the reader feel as they're reading your story?
- I mostly write for my own fun, and then for my readers', mostly because simlit is an hobby that occupy my thoughts quite often, and I don't want to feel too depressed when thinking about the disadventures of my sims. Anyway, even if the tone can be quite light-hearted and ironic, often the events happening to my sims are plain bad and unjust, and after having a little laught at the chapter's jokes I'm quite sure many chapters leave a more bitter feeling to reason about.
As for the topics instead, I try not to be too paternalistic about it, but I often tend to focus on the POV of characters or groups of people who are marginalised in one way or another. So that I mostly write sci-fi and fantasy, I also see it as a chance to draw a parallel between a fictional groups (like the aliens/sixamians) and real situations (sadly, many foreign people around my place are seen just as bad as the sixamians in my story), which obliges me to think more and go beyond (some of) my biases. Remaining on the Millers, another main topic will emerge starting in gen 7, and that will probably leave quite a lot to think about on my readers.
Finally, I think that another quite common topic is characters trying to find their own way. This is quite evident when I focus a whole story on teens and young adults, but also writing about the whole life of a sim in a legacy it tends to be a quite important topic.
The ongoing discussion about genders description is very interesting as well. I don't have much to say about it, other than about how I manage it within my stories.
I'm not a very feminine girl (no makeup nor skirts, for example) and I usually don't get along well with very macho guys, so when I plan my characters I always end quite far from the two extremes. Yet, at my place gender roles are still very evident in everyday life, and looking back at my legacy and at which characters do what now I see some pattern probably arising from my biases.
Up to now I've never been brave enough to include other gender options in my stories though. To write a meaningful character I need to be able to relate to them, to be in their heads, and this is the kind of situation where I would risk to repeat what I read/saw elsewhere (and fall into stereotypes) because it is something I don't personally know about.
Starting by posting my stories in Italy I also used to be a bit worried in introducing more varied sexual orientations as well. Partially it was because I was worried about the readers reaction, and partially I was unsure on how to write such a POV characters. Around the end of my legacy, however, I started to see that others were starting to post about such characters, and I decided to be braver on this respect. Honestly, I think to be quite bad at writing romance in general, and now I don't think I would make much more of a mess with a queer couple much more than I would do with an het one.
Post edited by HermioneSims on
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
I also was thinking of Kellogg’s story in this context as well and, from what I’ve read of Sim 66, and I really liked how it deals with that sort of thing in terms of the social backdrop and the characters that go against expectations of the time. (Warning for potential spoilers for it)
The main two who come to mind right away are Jeremy and Suzy, especially with Jeremy at first just wanting to live his life and have fun and find love, in comparison to a character like John Action who I’d say is more typically what you’d expect out of a man at that time. But then there’s also the part of Action dealing with his PTSD and such, and how especially at the time when people spoke about mental health way less, guys are just expected to get on with it, easier said than done. But then that’s still prevalent today IMO, despite people being more open about such things.
I know every period in history has its ‘people who decide the expectations of them aren’t what they want’ but I think it especially stands out in a time with a drastic amount of social change like the 60s. Which I guess every period of time has its drastic change, but hopefully people get what I’m trying to say XD
I get you, and I can imagine it feels that way with you being a woman in a STEM field as well. When it comes to dealing with the other stuff on the Italian sites, It’s hard to write about such things in an environment where you risk a large amount of people being vile about it, but I think you did a good job with it ^u^ I always like your characters too, I find in yours the guys seem to be the more laid back ones for the most part and the girls seem to be the more fiery ones (Venus immediately comes to mind)
I’m glad you think so < 3 I’m really glad you said that since I always hope some aspects of my characters will make people realise they’re not alone and that they deserve to have their places in fiction too. And I think that reaction just drives home how important rep can be to your readers, you never know who’s reading and who’s going to be over the moon about seeing such things in a story. and I’m also glad this discussion gave some of you an open place to open up about such things as well. It’s never easy to talk about in a lot of spaces.
I'm so late to this conversation - i was away all weekend but I read all of your responses and I'm enthralled. Thank you @SnowBnuuy for reviving this thread. When it gets going like this it's my favourite place to be on these forums. My two cents anyway, days late to the game lol.
What do you hope your readers 'take away' from your writing?
I'll try and expand this question, since IDK if it'll make sense to everyone, since it's pretty vague.
- Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
- How do you generally aim to make the reader feel as they're reading your story?
I wrote Lucky Girl as purely a selfish project - I just wanted to get it all out of me, honestly, and it didn't really matter who read it. I felt like I'd been left pretty traumatised (a dramatic word, but it feels apt enough) by my school/college years, and looking back now as a woman in her late 20s it was easier to get a more objective perspective on the things that happened. I always felt like there was never enough weight put on the impact that certain 'endings' can have on a person, particularly when you're young and going through it for the first time. Now I would say that that's the main theme, and what I most want to get across.
I feel like nobody talks about how traumatic female friend breakups are and how we have no point of reference in popular culture. Teenage friendships are so often portrayed as being silly and surface level and when the girls fight and stop being friends its, like, totally no big deal or whatever. The truth is, that like Evie and Kelly, the level of intertwinement can be intense. Girls take a lot from each other, they hold so much history, so many secrets, ammo to destroy one another's reputations, even, and that's why it's so hard to end it.
I really wanted readers to feel this, and step into the shoes of this teenage girl to empathise with her. Teenage girls are (or at least were, in my day) by FAR the most mocked demographic. Nobody takes them seriously. The things they enjoy are ridiculed and written off as embarrassing. They're often viewed as hysterical and overly dramatic, and I wanted people to see that things are genuinely hard for them, being caught between a girl and a woman is confusing, societal pressure to behave and appear in the correct and most acceptable way is intense. You get punished for trying too hard, not trying enough, not knowing what's cool, being a 'know it all' and accused of trying to get boys to 'pick you' just by merely existing and having a personality. I think I felt a lot of frustration, as a very emotionally intense teenager with a TERRIBLE self image. We weren't vapid airheads fawning over boy bands (even though sometimes we were doing that - love u, Joe Jonas), we were full human beings, living, breathing, feeling. Imagine that! I wanted justice, haha
Also I wanted readers to feel the pain of losing something they never had. Part 1 spoiler
but Evie's pain upon losing Jude at the end is no less valid just because he wasn't her boyfriend. She won't be taken seriously by anybody, because he was just a crush and she should be expected to move on. We can see that she tries to but the pain keeps on rearing its head. She's left to deal with infinite possibilities of what could have been, a perfect impression in her mind of an imperfect boy that was never hers. I needed to show this because this feeling overtook my life once too. Sometimes losing a person you never had is worse than breaking up with a partner, and its only amplified by the need to crush it down inside yourself because it's 'silly' to feel that way.
I suppose all in all that covers it. I also fully agree with what @MonaSolstraale wrote
My basic theme in all my stories is about personal development and finding joy and hope in the dark. I want none of my characters to be what they start out to be when the story ends. They will hopefully learn to make better and healthier personal choices during the story.
@hellohannah2 I'm glad everyone is getting in on this discussion < 3 I also love this thread too. It's fun seeing everyone's inner workings with their writing...and it's also fun to have an excuse to info-dump about things too. XD
Ah there's nothing wrong with writing for yourself! 90% of what I write is just wish fulfillment and making it everyone else's problem. Trust me, it isn't dramatic to call something traumatic < 3 < 3
Yeah, I feel that honestly and I'm glad you bought it up. Teenhood was awful, young adulthood not much better. I think from the AFAB perspective as well, there were so many screwed-up things that happened either to us or people we knew, and the fact that we had to navigate it all through trial and error because no-one really spoke about things like we do now...and it's that painful mid-20s realisation of how messed-up things were in both small and big ways, and sometimes wishing that you knew then what you know now, and it's messy.
Though she's in her twenties, my character who's kind of a sum-up of the messy experience of growing up female/AFAB is Clementia. She's the more left-out one in her family, in part because she doesn't have magic like her brother, but also gender does kind of play a part. and the situation she ends up in, trying to rise through the ranks as a woman in an environment where they aren't seen as much importance. And the fact that although she's a strong character, she's prone to breaking down and vulnerable moments. She just wants to try and find a close female companion of some sort.
This is what I liked about what I read of Lucky Girl, it was almost an ode to the lost joys of teenhood (going out with friends, having a full emotional range XD) etc but also the ups-and-downs of teenhood, but not sanitised or watered down in any way. People always act like teenagers are unimportant or stupid or that they aren't an important part of your life and it was good to see a three-dimensional look at that point of life.
Teenhood was awful, young adulthood not much better. I think from the AFAB perspective as well, there were so many screwed-up things that happened either to us or people we knew, and the fact that we had to navigate it all through trial and error because no-one really spoke about things like we do now...and it's that painful mid-20s realisation of how messed-up things were in both small and big ways, and sometimes wishing that you knew then what you know now, and it's messy.
I wanted to say this too, but didn't want to take up too much space. So many weird and horrible things happen when you're young that you can't understand until later. I often find myself having conversations with friends where they start telling a story from their teenhood that they always thought was funny, and then watch as their face falls in horror as we all realise together that what happened actually was HORRIBLE and not okay at all. We all square things away when we're young, unable to process the true extent.
Ah, I feel for Clementia and her experiences. I love that you've broached that subject in your story, and even though there are fantastical elements you haven't shied away from real world topics. I appreciate sometimes when stories do write about, for example, a post racial society or a world in which women and men are given equal standing, as it's fun escapism, but I prefer when the realities of our imperfect human society are interwoven with an authors fictional world. I think it adds a whole other level of depth and relatability. From even reading that one sentence about Clementia yearning for a close female companion, I feel instantly empathetic. It's brutal out there for some.
Thank you! I appreciate that. It definitely is an ode to teenhood, the most vivid period of my life so far. I somehow managed to cultivate the kind of experience that you see on TV, house parties and sneaking out and getting up to mischief, but it's really not the same as its portrayed in movies. Those are exactly as you've said - a two dimensional look at something, a glamorization of something that is wholly unglamourous.
I also was thinking of Kellogg’s story in this context as well and, from what I’ve read of Sim 66, and I really liked how it deals with that sort of thing in terms of the social backdrop and the characters that go against expectations of the time. (Warning for potential spoilers for it)
Thank you for that kind assessment of Sim 66 and you're spot on...
Thinking about all the main characters, and most of the regular supporting ones as well, the main thing that's going on with all of them is that they live in the most interesting of times. A lot of people's image of the 1960s is centred around drugs, sex, civil upheaval, Vietnam and going to the Moon. It is all those things but what is often missed out is that people at the time were very optimistic for a variety of reasons. It is a decade of hope. 20 years after WW2 and life in the West has never been better for most people in the entirety of human history and people actually thought that at the time. The problems that were there in terms of poverty, civil rights and peace were thought to be solvable within a generation.
So all the characters have some kind of hope and something to look forward to. Reality won't pan out quite that way in the future but for a group of people living in 1966 they can see the prospect of humans on the Moon within a few years, all the modern conveniences are affordable, the music, arts and culture are the most vibrant they've ever been in their lifetimes, there's no pining for a better world of the past (only the Sneedleys would disagree with that) and for a young person (under 30), there's opportunities everywhere.
And I've barely scratched the surface of the 1960s so far.
One of the things I've put into Sim 66 is a sense of community. There's the "Foundry Cove" gang that contains most of the characters. All very different people and yet they come together as a group of friends, a community. That expands with other supporting characters...the office colleagues of Jeremy, the people who hang out regularly at The Blue Velvet nightclub, Jamie and his schoolfriends who are trying to start a band, Action's fellow cops, Julia's fellow medical workers. Every time I introduce a new major character, I don't want them to be similar to any of the others that preceded them: I go in a different direction and THEN I put them into a community so they have to rub along with people they wouldn't normally be drawn to if they had a choice. How would a button down square, a trendy fashion journalist and a tough street cop all know each other otherwise?
The last 10 years in the real world has seen the atomisation of society into bubbles of like minded people and those bubbles are often disconnected from other bubbles. Nowadays how could you get all these disparate groups that like to label themselves together in a shared space and working alongside each other?
I'm going to finish by including a clip from a TV programme from 1969 that best illustrates the optimism of a generation. It is from a documentary called "Civilisation" by Sir Kenneth Clark, an art historian from that time. He puts it very well indeed.
I had a weird adolescence. I found it incredibly difficult to make friends and mostly kept to myself. I was never bullied, though.
I barely ever socialised outside of school. I didn’t really have any ‘typical’ teen experiences such as a teenage romance, or holiday with friends, or just going out and socialising/going to parties etc. I spent the vast majority of time at home, in my room.
My character Erytheia in the Mastersons story is a bit of wish fulfilment on my part: falling in love with your childhood best friend (who also happens to be a cute redhead). But wish fulfilment isn’t a bad thing
It’ll be particularly fun with the royal story. Dealing with growing up, but in a fairly “controlled” lifestyle and with the public and media scrutinising your every move.
- Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
Morality and devotion.
For a (hopefully) more in-depth explanation:
Simlit-wise, most of the characters in Chronicles are rather in the grey area morality wise (in fact, it really says something when the character with the most well-tuned moral compass is the dog). Of course, considering that the main antagonist is Evil itself in (mostly) human form, they're almost saints (which again, says something).
Basically, one form is 'doing questionable (if not outright illegal) things for loved ones'.
Something else to note is that their counterpart in this story isn't pure good. They represent 'better things', which, yes, can include a form of evil as well (namely, necessary evil).
Non-Simlit wise, this is also a thing. From a few different stories I've written:
1. "The earth I gave your ancestors has been polluted, so I'm taking it back...by force."
2. "My whole thing is to be a heel, but I'll give my life if it means all of existence will be saved."
3. "I lied to you to shield you from the even more awful truth, and I know you can save these kids."
4. "You made my best friend's wife cry, so now you have to pay with your life."
TL:DR: they did things that would contradict their usual feelings/took back something important to them because something unpleasant happened.
Comments
My story, Sim 66, has evolved over time. At first it was entirely gameplay driven and I would write up the events of the day into prose form. After about a dozen chapters I started to combine gameplay with things I scripted in advance. Right now the method of plotting Sim 66 is to take one of the regular featured characters, look at what happened to them in previous chapters, work out where I roughly want them to be by the end of the chapter and play out the game noting all the incidents that happen along the way before writing it all up.
I'm frequently pausing the game, going into free camera mode and looking for the best moment to freeze frame and working out the best angle. I use a lot of techniques on framing that I learned in film school back in the day. I go for the rule of thirds, frequently have over the shoulder framings, use two shots, establishing shots, mids and then close ups to show characters having a dialogue.
As for photographic effects I tend not to use them unless I'm doing a flashback scene or creating a black and white photo. I've noticed that if you use the mouse thumbwheel in free camera move you can get a fish eye lens effect, which I will use at some point to show someone's altered state of mind.
As for placement of screenshots I match them to the dialogue. I always start and end each chapter with a screenshot.
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 try and do that but for simulated people the benders move fast.
What do you hope your readers 'take away' from your writing?
I'll try and expand this question, since IDK if it'll make sense to everyone, since it's pretty vague.
- Are there any messages / life lessons etc. you try to get across in your story, or any themes you try to convey in your story?
- How do you generally aim to make the reader feel as they're reading your story?
My response under the cut:
Unsurprisingly, the main theme of the whole story is division, but I find some stories around such a theme tend to be quite one-dimensional and never fully explore it in-depth. It's also a story about people coming together, but not in a cutesy 'be nice to each other!' low-effort Twitter equality post kind of way. It's not always a willingness to work together, sometimes it's fighting quite literally for what you want and what you deserve. It's the importance of doing better, over wallowing in guilt- but also not necessarily 'feeling guilty is bad', more 'you can't centre yourself when you've done wrong, you have to centre whoever has been hurt by your actions'.
But the 'people coming together' part also comes from the fact that, sometimes, some people seem to think that folks from different walks of life can NEVER even try to understand each other. That there's no crossover of experience AT ALL between different people with differing experiences, and that in relating to someone else's struggle in an important way is seen as a bad thing. There's a lot of crossover of experience between all the characters in Divided despite the fact that many of them are from very different walks of life.
For example, You can look at both the male and female witches and, yes, the women get killed more often because witchfinders don't suspect men as often in this story. But what they share in common, is the fact that they both have to hide their true selves to survive, so the good folk try to look after each other. There's a time and a place for 'who has it worse', but sometimes the characters in the story need to overcome that to overcome the antagonists. However, it also covers the darker aspect that such stories often don't like to dip into, and that's the fact that sometimes, people within your 'group' may not necessarily be acting for the benefit of other folks who share their issues. Quite a few of the witches and other magic-folk are more than willing to throw other witches under the bus to save their own skins.
Another big part of most of my writing is that it's never about happiness, really, and is more often about acceptance. It's about the fact that things more often than not are awful, if not for you, then for others around you, and trying to clutch at straws for what comfort you can find amongst the chaos.
And yet another is that not everything needs to be understood. No-one knows the truth about the Watcher or even if the Watcher exists, and magic is beyond many people's understanding, even witches sometimes! Something I kind of wish a lot of readers and fantasy writers would remember is that sometimes there are no definite answers.
As for how I'm trying to make people feel with the story, a lot of it is actually tapping into readers' darker sides. Violeta especially is that sort of character, she's the complete embodiment of the dark feminine. And a lot of the debate that comes up amongst comments is 'how far is too far?' Some folk will call out the pacifists for not acting with violence, but when the more violent characters act upon it, sometimes they find themselves understanding why the pacifists do what they do- and vice-versa.
It is really interesting to read your thoughts. As I understand it, some are very basic..but can almost be called the archetypal theme that is your nerve in your writing. Friendship, evil, superstition, courage and the struggle for survival. Create a life with acceptance of what has become your lot in life.
Feel free to contradict me if I have misunderstood your answer
My response
I think that you often do not choose what you are exposed to in life, but that you have a personal choice with what you do with what you are exposed to. Every loss and crisis creates an opportunity for development. As a well-known person in this country express it. There's a gift in the 🐸🐸🐸🐸 and it's up to you to discover it. I think it is a good philosophy of life that creates hope.
I don't think it's as easy as it sounds and that's probably why it concerns me so much. On a personal level, as well as what applies to my characters in my story. I love happy endings and wish for my characters to experience happiness at some point. I am not very religious, but I still find great life wisdom and benefit in the Serenity Prayer. I hope it can be read in my stories.
Another part of my stories consists of playing and exploiting the game's possibilities.
I want my readers to feel well entertained and perhaps carried away by the characters' sorrows and triumphs, for better or for worse.
Answer to your reply to me:
I think now you mention it, courage is a big one as well, across almost every character. The witches' courage to live as true a life as they can despite everything. One character's courage to be his true self, another's to ditch something he's stood for and been in power for for years to finally do what's right, and another's to stand up to your control-freak of a father and go against years of tradition to do what's right for your country...there's a lot of that.
Answer to your post about your own story:
When I was writing my post, I was actually thinking of Tusnelda and Trix, it was the first of the other forum stories to come to mind because every chapter has its own little message or lesson, whether that's one for your readers or one for your characters, and how every chapter starts with a little introductory summary of sorts. I agree, I'd say T+T was mostly about finding joy in whatever part of life that you can, wheter that is an event, a person, and the biggest joy of all...a cat!
I definitely agree with what you said about happiness and that it's not 'soft-hearted' to seek it out, nor is it soft-hearted to write about it. A lot of people really seem to think that positive or joyful works have less meaning but that couldn't be further from the truth, for multiple reasons. And I think your story capturing elements of everyday life makes it no less powerful, and whilst us Simmers often love slice-of-life I wish people outside of this kind of community could see the value of it.
It is often the case that you, as a reader, are preoccupied with a particular subject at times, and as for Simlit, it is quite common that they take up less space in the summer. It happens to me too.
I love your comment about finding the greatest joy in a cat. It was surprising and so true
Unfortunately, Trix takes up less space in my story as the character gallery has expanded. I still have to remember to give him his rightful place
I was discussing streaming series with a friend yesterday and I said that I quickly lose interest in series where all the main characters are young and beautiful and with a 'perfect' body. Their challenges may be real and relevant, but their perfect exterior puts a distance on me.
I feel great empathy for the imperfect and it is in this connection that I try to create a positive and joy-filled life for my character.
As for readers outside the Simmers community, I unfortunately think that it is precisely the Sims characters that put up a barrier, as they think it is only about games. I have not yet managed to catch a single reader in my circle of friends
Each of my stories is different but there are a few themes that tie them together. Strong, independent women, positive female friendships, and acceptance of yourself and others. I don't like stories where women are portrayed as weak, helpless, and needing men to save them or save the day. In both of my stories women are as capable as the men around them. Even worse than that is always having women competing against one another and stabbing each other in the back, even friends. It is true in life that we feel compelled and conditioned to compete against one another and that irritates me to no end. I like the women in my stories to model a life that I wish we all had, that our girlfriends have our backs through thick and thin. With that said, Schemes and Dreams does go into the catty, b****y trope but I try to balance it out.
With Schemes and Dreams I want readers to be entertained but also to think about topics like acceptance, especially in terms of LGBTQ people. Under The Tartosan Sun I want readers to come away feeling happy and uplifted. I know the characters lead idyllic lives and bad things rarely happen to them, or at all really, and that turns some readers off. I wrote it that way to be different. I feel like some writers are maybe a bit reluctant to go down this path because readers seem to crave action, fighting, betrayal, death and destruction. I'm a hopeless romantic and a bit girly and I set those parts of my personality free in this story.😁
Fun. I want my readers to be entertained. I hope they smile and are in expectation when they reach the end of each chapter. I'm not trying to be so serious and have political or social agendas and I see my writing as entertainment.
Life lessons? I don't want to moralise to my readers. I write from the perspectives of the characters, not imposing my morals on them but, inevitably, my own life lessons will leak into the story but I don't want my characters to be mere mouthpieces for my morals or that of some ideology unless it is appropriate for that character.
Themes? Again, not really. I set out to write a soap opera style story about multiple people's lives in a specific time period and not a story that is structured around a theme.
I can't control how my readers feel and I don't know what they feel when they read it. I don't want to force them to feel anything other than entertained. What I try to do is make Sim 66 immersive so that the readers suspend their disbelief just enough for them to feel like they're close up witnesses to what's going on and that they get swept up in the story. This is one of the reasons I write a lot of to and fro dialogue that's fast paced and spend less time writing long stretches of prose. I'm a believer in showing a character's persona via their speech and actions, not with a lot of internal monologing....although I have one character who breaks that rule. Even in Simlit, I'm a firm believer in the idea that you "show, don't tell".
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
@DaniRose2143 I really like this too, I remember when I was reading the Tartosan Sun one I really loved the way you write female characters. I also liked this when I read a few chapters of @hellohannah2 's story.
@Kellogg_J_Kellogg I think 'life lessons' was a terrible choice of wording on my part actually I was really struggling with how to word my expansion of the question... XD I really wish I could just write something fun, but I struggle to do that.
Like I said to Mona and in a similar case with her story, I don't think everything needs to have any particular meaning. Sometimes just watching folks live their lives has enough meaning in itself, and sometimes those things can mean more because they're more relatable in a sense.
As to characters and viewpoints, a lot of my protagonists don't necessarily share my views. Violeta has some...very strong opinions on men, but I really don't buy her blanket statements that she often makes. And the Peteran outlook of 'turning a dark heart towards the light' doesn't always work IMO, but that's what most of them seem to think.
@MonaSolstraale
'I feel great empathy for the imperfect and it is in this connection that I try to create a positive and joy-filled life for my character.' YES TO THIS! I feel this. My only 2 IRL friends I have left don't have any time to read, but they'll listen to me info-dump even though they have no clue what I'm banging on about.
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
@SnowBnuuy We are twinsies...
But I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to speak about it here < 3 (also I am squeeing that there are other trans writers on the forum who are active in these chat spaces, woop woop! You have no idea how happy that's made me haha.) This was exactly my feeling when I wrote Morgyn Ember as a main character in one of my stories, and it wasn't until they started talking about their gender at times that...that's actually when it sort of clicked XD I was like 'hey, this isn't so difficult to write about, I get- wait- oh! - oh. Ohhhh...'
So far in my more recent stories out of major characters, there's Helen, who's transfem, Leo, who's transmasc, Morgyn is nonbinary, and then there's a genderfluid character in my current one. I feel that actually, it's kind of difficult to explain sometimes when it comes to myself, because a lot of the time people are like 'so are you transmasc or transfem?' but I don't consider myself to be either. And because even 2 years after figuring it out, it's like X_X
In the story, it's only the nobility that take issue with such things. Everyone else just finds it super interesting that it's a possibility.
The below thoughts apply to all of my writing, not just Seventeen & Maldusk. In fact, I've tried to restrict the number of POV characters some in SAM so, it actually may be less evident in that story than in some of the stuff I used to write.
Theme, or message isn't generally foremost on my mind when I write. I'm usually most focused on getting inside the heads of all the characters in the story.
But I've found that no matter how I start out, I always seem to end up wanting readers to see that people aren't always who they seem to be from the outside, that everyone has complicated things going on in their lives, different opinions and different values, and different past experiences that shape the choices they make, and that it is possible to see an issue differently when you look at it from a different angle.
Put succinctly, I think my main themes typically are "It's complicated" and "Everyone is a person. Even if you don't agree with them."
The discussion on gender and character's genders is very interesting too. And very relevant to Seventeen & Maldusk.
I often feel a little weird joining this type of conversation. My upbringing was a little unusual, though it was totally the normal world to me as far as I knew when I was a child. I've only begun to realize how odd it was as an adult. But basically, in my family, my extended family (who were most of my social network as a kid and teen), and my small town rural Alaskan community, I could not see any difference between males and females when I was growing up. Physical body, yes. But nothing else. Everyone wore the same type of clothing (practical outdoorsy stuff), everyone did the same kinds of activities (hiking, camping, skiing, etc.), when there was work to be done, everyone pitched in. Women were just as likely to be seen chopping wood or mowing the lawn as men, while lots of men were good cooks and you'd see them carrying their babies around in baby backpacks. When my family went somewhere in the car, my parents traded back and forth the duty of driving, split 50/50 between them. Responsibilities and privileges in my family were based on age and maturity, never gender. And when large groups would gather we tended to split up and play/socialize by age rather than gender as well.
On top of that, a lot of the women in my family had boisterous, athletic, competitive, outspoken, often very messy personalities. And a lot of the men were thoughtful, quiet, bookish, highly organized types who would think very hard about their actions because they didn't want to upset anyone.
So I thought that gender roles/stereotypes I saw in books and movies were a thing of the past (or maybe even just something made up for dramatic effect), and I also had a concept of male and female behavior that was kind of "backwards" from mainstream notions. And I put a lot more weight on age than gender as a social organization scheme. I had no idea, until I hit adulthood and moved away, that anyone cared at all what sex or gender someone was. I honestly grew up believing that anyone could be anything, because no one in my community tried to tell me differently. Leaving home and entering the wider world, as been serious ongoing culture shock for me. And when I listen to others talk about gender, I feel really weird and excluded because I'm coming from such a different direction as everyone else, it's hard to even talk about basic things. There are aspects of how I feel about my own gender that could be described by words like "gender-fluid", or "non-binary". But those words only make sense in the context of mainstream notions of gender. In the context of how I grew up, they make no sense, because that's just how everyone around me was too. And the term "trans-male" which fits aspects of how I internally see myself, only makes sense in the context of the quiet, bookish men and outspoken competitive women I grew up with. So I feel very uncomfortable using any of those terms for myself when talking with other people. But I also feel like "cisgendered" gives entirely the wrong impression about me, since it comes with the mainstream assumptions of what gender even means.
This theme is definitely part of SAM. Ion's concept of gender from the Sixam homeworld is based on what humans would think of as age, and has nothing at all to do with sex or reproduction, as sixamnian biology is totally different from humans and sixamnian society is structured around the changing life stages (which Ion translates as "genders") rather than what humans think of as gender. Annie is "female" (assigned female at birth as well how she sees herself) but everything about her, from her choices of clothing, to her hobbies, to the career she is headed for is rooted in stuff that often gets attributed to "males", but that for me seems like totally normal "female" stuff because it's all the stuff that I like. Tre and Tristan haven't been explored as thoroughly as other characters yet, but they each have aspects to them that pull from both "masculine" and "feminine" traditions that will show up eventually as the story unfolds. Tre is totally comfortable in his own skin. Tristan has various mixed feelings and hang-ups about it. Some of the side characters (who haven't been developed much in the published chapters yet) also push various sorts of gender boundaries from a mainstream perspective, but for me just seem like "perfectly ordinary people" like the ones that I grew up with. Reuben is the only main character whose sense of his own gender mostly matches traditional gender norms, but his behavior toward other people is often toxic, and he is deeply unhappy with himself in many ways.
EDIT
Kudos to you if you read all that, because wow, I kind of word-vomited there. But I think I wanted to talk about that a lot.
It’s really interesting how your background shaped your outlook like that, and It’s always interesting how different cultures place values on different things, and how these shape people’s outlooks later on. I imagine in that kind of environment it’s on everyone to do whatever they can to get through what I imagine to be horrible winter times and such.
And that’s so great to have another GNC Simmer/writer on the active part of the forum, yipee! And don’t worry if you can’t find a label that fits, it’s fine to not have one at all. I like how your experiences very much fit with Ion’s , entering a whole new environment and being like ‘huh?’ I like that you think about these things with cis characters as well, I think in some corners of the internet, both cis and trans people alike sometimes forget that cis people can be just as broad or subversive with gender expectations, in terms of expression and everything else.
As for the topics instead, I try not to be too paternalistic about it, but I often tend to focus on the POV of characters or groups of people who are marginalised in one way or another. So that I mostly write sci-fi and fantasy, I also see it as a chance to draw a parallel between a fictional groups (like the aliens/sixamians) and real situations (sadly, many foreign people around my place are seen just as bad as the sixamians in my story), which obliges me to think more and go beyond (some of) my biases. Remaining on the Millers, another main topic will emerge starting in gen 7, and that will probably leave quite a lot to think about on my readers.
Finally, I think that another quite common topic is characters trying to find their own way. This is quite evident when I focus a whole story on teens and young adults, but also writing about the whole life of a sim in a legacy it tends to be a quite important topic.
The ongoing discussion about genders description is very interesting as well. I don't have much to say about it, other than about how I manage it within my stories.
Up to now I've never been brave enough to include other gender options in my stories though. To write a meaningful character I need to be able to relate to them, to be in their heads, and this is the kind of situation where I would risk to repeat what I read/saw elsewhere (and fall into stereotypes) because it is something I don't personally know about.
Starting by posting my stories in Italy I also used to be a bit worried in introducing more varied sexual orientations as well. Partially it was because I was worried about the readers reaction, and partially I was unsure on how to write such a POV characters. Around the end of my legacy, however, I started to see that others were starting to post about such characters, and I decided to be braver on this respect. Honestly, I think to be quite bad at writing romance in general, and now I don't think I would make much more of a mess with a queer couple much more than I would do with an het one.
I know every period in history has its ‘people who decide the expectations of them aren’t what they want’ but I think it especially stands out in a time with a drastic amount of social change like the 60s. Which I guess every period of time has its drastic change, but hopefully people get what I’m trying to say XD
@GlacierSnow
I wrote Lucky Girl as purely a selfish project - I just wanted to get it all out of me, honestly, and it didn't really matter who read it. I felt like I'd been left pretty traumatised (a dramatic word, but it feels apt enough) by my school/college years, and looking back now as a woman in her late 20s it was easier to get a more objective perspective on the things that happened. I always felt like there was never enough weight put on the impact that certain 'endings' can have on a person, particularly when you're young and going through it for the first time. Now I would say that that's the main theme, and what I most want to get across.
I feel like nobody talks about how traumatic female friend breakups are and how we have no point of reference in popular culture. Teenage friendships are so often portrayed as being silly and surface level and when the girls fight and stop being friends its, like, totally no big deal or whatever. The truth is, that like Evie and Kelly, the level of intertwinement can be intense. Girls take a lot from each other, they hold so much history, so many secrets, ammo to destroy one another's reputations, even, and that's why it's so hard to end it.
I really wanted readers to feel this, and step into the shoes of this teenage girl to empathise with her. Teenage girls are (or at least were, in my day) by FAR the most mocked demographic. Nobody takes them seriously. The things they enjoy are ridiculed and written off as embarrassing. They're often viewed as hysterical and overly dramatic, and I wanted people to see that things are genuinely hard for them, being caught between a girl and a woman is confusing, societal pressure to behave and appear in the correct and most acceptable way is intense. You get punished for trying too hard, not trying enough, not knowing what's cool, being a 'know it all' and accused of trying to get boys to 'pick you' just by merely existing and having a personality. I think I felt a lot of frustration, as a very emotionally intense teenager with a TERRIBLE self image. We weren't vapid airheads fawning over boy bands (even though sometimes we were doing that - love u, Joe Jonas), we were full human beings, living, breathing, feeling. Imagine that! I wanted justice, haha
Also I wanted readers to feel the pain of losing something they never had. Part 1 spoiler
I suppose all in all that covers it. I also fully agree with what @MonaSolstraale wrote I think that's a beautiful way to put it.
Yeah, I feel that honestly and I'm glad you bought it up. Teenhood was awful, young adulthood not much better. I think from the AFAB perspective as well, there were so many screwed-up things that happened either to us or people we knew, and the fact that we had to navigate it all through trial and error because no-one really spoke about things like we do now...and it's that painful mid-20s realisation of how messed-up things were in both small and big ways, and sometimes wishing that you knew then what you know now, and it's messy.
Though she's in her twenties, my character who's kind of a sum-up of the messy experience of growing up female/AFAB is Clementia. She's the more left-out one in her family, in part because she doesn't have magic like her brother, but also gender does kind of play a part. and the situation she ends up in, trying to rise through the ranks as a woman in an environment where they aren't seen as much importance. And the fact that although she's a strong character, she's prone to breaking down and vulnerable moments. She just wants to try and find a close female companion of some sort.
This is what I liked about what I read of Lucky Girl, it was almost an ode to the lost joys of teenhood (going out with friends, having a full emotional range XD) etc but also the ups-and-downs of teenhood, but not sanitised or watered down in any way. People always act like teenagers are unimportant or stupid or that they aren't an important part of your life and it was good to see a three-dimensional look at that point of life.
I wanted to say this too, but didn't want to take up too much space. So many weird and horrible things happen when you're young that you can't understand until later. I often find myself having conversations with friends where they start telling a story from their teenhood that they always thought was funny, and then watch as their face falls in horror as we all realise together that what happened actually was HORRIBLE and not okay at all. We all square things away when we're young, unable to process the true extent.
Ah, I feel for Clementia and her experiences. I love that you've broached that subject in your story, and even though there are fantastical elements you haven't shied away from real world topics. I appreciate sometimes when stories do write about, for example, a post racial society or a world in which women and men are given equal standing, as it's fun escapism, but I prefer when the realities of our imperfect human society are interwoven with an authors fictional world. I think it adds a whole other level of depth and relatability. From even reading that one sentence about Clementia yearning for a close female companion, I feel instantly empathetic. It's brutal out there for some.
Thank you! I appreciate that. It definitely is an ode to teenhood, the most vivid period of my life so far. I somehow managed to cultivate the kind of experience that you see on TV, house parties and sneaking out and getting up to mischief, but it's really not the same as its portrayed in movies. Those are exactly as you've said - a two dimensional look at something, a glamorization of something that is wholly unglamourous.
Thank you for that kind assessment of Sim 66 and you're spot on...
So all the characters have some kind of hope and something to look forward to. Reality won't pan out quite that way in the future but for a group of people living in 1966 they can see the prospect of humans on the Moon within a few years, all the modern conveniences are affordable, the music, arts and culture are the most vibrant they've ever been in their lifetimes, there's no pining for a better world of the past (only the Sneedleys would disagree with that) and for a young person (under 30), there's opportunities everywhere.
And I've barely scratched the surface of the 1960s so far.
One of the things I've put into Sim 66 is a sense of community. There's the "Foundry Cove" gang that contains most of the characters. All very different people and yet they come together as a group of friends, a community. That expands with other supporting characters...the office colleagues of Jeremy, the people who hang out regularly at The Blue Velvet nightclub, Jamie and his schoolfriends who are trying to start a band, Action's fellow cops, Julia's fellow medical workers. Every time I introduce a new major character, I don't want them to be similar to any of the others that preceded them: I go in a different direction and THEN I put them into a community so they have to rub along with people they wouldn't normally be drawn to if they had a choice. How would a button down square, a trendy fashion journalist and a tough street cop all know each other otherwise?
The last 10 years in the real world has seen the atomisation of society into bubbles of like minded people and those bubbles are often disconnected from other bubbles. Nowadays how could you get all these disparate groups that like to label themselves together in a shared space and working alongside each other?
I'm going to finish by including a clip from a TV programme from 1969 that best illustrates the optimism of a generation. It is from a documentary called "Civilisation" by Sir Kenneth Clark, an art historian from that time. He puts it very well indeed.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7XofkKmPrYA
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 barely ever socialised outside of school. I didn’t really have any ‘typical’ teen experiences such as a teenage romance, or holiday with friends, or just going out and socialising/going to parties etc. I spent the vast majority of time at home, in my room.
My character Erytheia in the Mastersons story is a bit of wish fulfilment on my part: falling in love with your childhood best friend (who also happens to be a cute redhead). But wish fulfilment isn’t a bad thing
It’ll be particularly fun with the royal story. Dealing with growing up, but in a fairly “controlled” lifestyle and with the public and media scrutinising your every move.
Morality and devotion.
For a (hopefully) more in-depth explanation:
Basically, one form is 'doing questionable (if not outright illegal) things for loved ones'.
Something else to note is that their counterpart in this story isn't pure good. They represent 'better things', which, yes, can include a form of evil as well (namely, necessary evil).
Non-Simlit wise, this is also a thing. From a few different stories I've written:
1. "The earth I gave your ancestors has been polluted, so I'm taking it back...by force."
2. "My whole thing is to be a heel, but I'll give my life if it means all of existence will be saved."
3. "I lied to you to shield you from the even more awful truth, and I know you can save these kids."
4. "You made my best friend's wife cry, so now you have to pay with your life."
TL:DR: they did things that would contradict their usual feelings/took back something important to them because something unpleasant happened.
...I think I lost sight of the question.
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)