A small success Saturday, August 8, 2009

Finally! Got a full scene done tonight last night!

I finished the scene where Damen realizes he’d met Brit before, but I hadn’t had so much fun writing any of the scenes this far. It was just full of all kinds of literary awesome. I  just kind of drifted in and out of perspectives and it felt beautiful!

I was hoping for a little more of a release or a little more relaxation after I’d completed the scene, but it was just like “Okay…but now there’s still a million more scenes to do…” I’m actually reached another rocky patch in the novel again. It happens after I finish each major scene, which I suppose will work well in the end since it creates some very concise chapter breaks in the project.

I also had an interesting experience yesterday (and really today as well) regarding what I think the Lord wants from me. In deciding that I wasn’t going to go to chuch for a bit, things fantastically fell apart for a bit. Once I’d made the “right” decision, things fell into place. I even said to myself “Well played, Old Man” once more.

I’ve fallen out of practice with my coding which has been proving rather disastrous with the church website. I forget how to do simple things and troubleshoot like I used to be able to do. Very frustrating…

I’ve been playing four sim families for the last couple of months. I want to create some depth and history as I also inject some new genes into the neighborhood. I don’t really want to just add a bunch of new sims without families or history, but this is a very trying experience. I’d tried to do this before, but it didn’t work very well. I ended up intertwining them with several other families and linking them to the Wests, but this has been going much better.

So, rather than work through my struggles at defining Damen’s reluctance to fully befriend Corey or work on my church website or anything else of any importance, I’ll just waste another night playing the sims.

Coincidentally, I had a mini panic attack about the fact that I’ll one day die and each day of life is rather precious…

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Simmin’ vs. Storytellin’ Tuesday, June 9, 2009

I’m getting into a bad spin. I wrote a little on Saturday and a little on Friday as well. I was definitely in a “I just don’t feel like it” kind of mood today, but I was still able to read loads from The Stand. What I love most about The Stand is that it’s been able a decade since I’d last read it, so it’s like reading it for the first time…only, there are bits and pieces that stand out to me, like a bizarre foreshadowing.

Even though it’s 5AM, I did have a bit of an excuse in writing because I had to take down my braids, but for the most part, I blame my increase in Designing and Simming.

I’m going to take another stab at a rather simple Flash effect and see if I can bring a sketch into a full creation. A lot of my time today, though, had been taken up by taking pictures in the game to fully tell the tale of my favorite sim family, The Wests. I’ve been playing this family since 2004 when I didn’t really know how to take pictures or even how to play the game, so many of the originals I’d taken are small and blurry and just don’t cut it. I won’t be going into the extreme lengths of making sure all my walls are up and etc., especially since I’ve got five years worth of pictures that involve mediocre lighting and view of multiple rooms, ie: they look they way I play the game.

I just want to retake some of the small and blurry pics and add some shots that I’d neglected to take when the sims of the first generation were raised. The best thing about all this was creating a new neighborhood where I could move around sims and divorce and un-age them as I needed to “get the shot.”

My first sim family included Mason and Tara Bramble. I’d made them when I was about 20 and I’ll admit that they were made with Mulder and Scully in mid as I created them. Mason had dark hair and green eyes and Tara had red hair and blue eyes. I let them pass away about year or so ago, maybe two, but I was really, really upset when I did. I just miss them a lot even though they’re just sims. I guess it’s because so much of my neighborhood’s story comes through them and their offspring.

I found a way to replicate them in the game and got to “see” them again, after they’d been gone for so long. I’d also been able to un-age the parents in the West family and view them in all their beauty and splendor once more, which gave me all sorts of chills and happy memories.

There is something so wonderful about The Sims 2 that it’s difficult to describe. The game is intrinsically designed to tell stories; I’ve even attempted to write full short stories revolving a sim and her family drama. I do intend to write my sim Jill’s story in the near future because I just can’t not write a story about a black female raised by her two gay white dads with her other three adopted siblings. With many of my sim households, I just start with a few sims without having any real direction, but allow a story (a good story, too) to develop from there.

I’m also very amused at how my sim neighborhood manages to reflect American life. Most of the black people live “Downtown” (I realized I was doing this while it was happening, but it was when I was attempting to “blacken” my game and I only had one place to put all of them.)  Most of the college graduates are starting families in newer, start-up communities. There is a shortage of “suitable” black men for all my black females and, biracial families are on the rise as are teen pregnancies.

The fact that the game manages to mimic real society gives it that extra edge that not only makes it fun to play, but gives me an everlasting outlet for storytelling. Many sims storytellers go through a lot of trouble in creating something that is visually pleasing, but I’m not one to create a picture book; I focus on the story first and hope that the images match what I’m trying to do.

I’ve some general stories in the works based off of my simming, but I’m not sure what excites me more: the sim stories or the sim-based stories…