So... (Braindump)
Huge sigh of relief that I finally got Chapter 29 out, followed by panic attack of wondering where I'm going to go with everything that was in Chapter 29
Spoiler Alarms will go off if you click the cuts!
Lots of Blather
Firstly in regards to the mystical connection of the Davis family. I can't say how long I've been planning it but I can say that it was not my original intention for them. I could lie and say that as soon as I knew AL was going to include witches that I started planning how to incorporate them, but I won't. It was much, much later than that. Once the connection was made though, everything else fell into place much easier.
Does this mean that the Familiar's are suddenly going to be Harry Potterish and we'll see sims casting spells to whip up dinner ect.. ? NO
The supernatural side of the sims has always interested me and it is a large part of my hood as a whole but it's not my main focus. I've always seen the supernatural sims in my story as just normal people with a little something extra, that won't change. That doesn't mean that there won't at some point be a full blown witch in the family.
As to the prophecy, if taken at first glance it could point towards anyone in the family. All of the Familiars are descended from Chloe a pureblood (alien). Frankie (and Ferdie) are six generations away from that heritage and there are others in the family that are much closer to being purebloods than either of them. However I did toss in a line to cover my ass:
"Only those of the purest blood were unable to pass for humans. Even some of the purest could pass, if they kept their hair long."
The long hair is a nod to the elves being pureblooded as well as the aliens. Therefore Frankie and Ferdie are only two generations away from the pureblood. The family line was already pureblooded before Titania, but with her addition it became stronger. That addition doesn't necessarily count everyone else out, Frankie's half cousins Egeus and Emilia are about as pureblood as sims could get. They have two infusions of alien blood in addition to Puck's elfishness. It'll come down to old blood.
Almeric
In the past I've said that I have difficulty writing villians long term, that even the worst sim can find a way to make me like them. Almeric is no exception. I moved him into the hood after college and he proceeded to walk by everyone's house on a regular basis wanting to be friends. I have some great conversation pictures of him in a hot tub with Erasmus talking about criminal activies. Frankie continually rolled up wants to be his friend and his best friend. As of now he's not yet 'dead' and he won't be until his nephews lose their death of family fears but canon wise he's dead dead.
Almeric's mother is the true villian, Almeric was only her tool and in the end he knows that. During his childhood Lisette Davis spoiled and pampered her son. However, the spoiling was always edged with do what I tell you, be what I want you to be and don't talk back. His father isn't evil but he's not that great either. Richard Davis purposely knocked up the maid because he could . He then fairly much ignored his sons. There are hints that he cared (the baseball) for his sons, but didn't know how to show it or didn't know that he needed to show it. The boys personalities weren't melded by their father nearly as much as they were by Lisette Davis's influence.
I don't have the background to tie in medical definitions of Almeric's personality. I'll just say he was crazy but with good reason. Going as far back as the university chapters there were inconsistances in his personality, I'd love to claim I planned them all but in truth some of it's just poor writing. It makes the possibility of him being controlled by someone easier to believe. I don't se his suicide as being a sacrifice, not to him. It was his way out, maybe the only way out he saw. In my mind suicide is a selfish act, that he did take steps to help his brother's family before the final one makes his death more palatable but it doesn't erase that he killed himself to get out of the situation he was in. He left a mess that other's have to clean up.
He left his nephew stranded in the woods with Bigfoot. His brother is left with even more questions that no one can answer. The legacy family has only a fraction of the information that they may need to deal with what's to come. Additionally, Lisette told him that soon she wouldn't need him, she's getting stronger and doesn't need her tool to do the dirty work, his job was done.
Could Almeric have cleaned everything up, told all he knew and fixed it all? No, but there were options he refused to look at.
Aldric's hesitancy over children is connected more to his parents than to his brother. Aldric and Almeric weren't bitter enemies, they just didn't get along very well. An extreme case of sibling rivalry? The good son versus the bad son? I don't know. Aldric would most likely have tried to help his brother if he could, but he was never asked and he didn't know. Almeric will continue to be a question left unanswered for his brother.
Now for the fun stuff!
Sets - I'm pretty proud of the sets in this chapter and I put a ton of work into them all.
The Davis home was of course originally the bin house Federal Fortress. I decorated the main floor extensively as an expensive elegant home and then burned and grungified it, twice. You can see the inconsistances from when I had to reburn it for later pictures if you look. I used lots of stuff from Cyclonesue in all of the sets, but in this one I mainly used her wall holes, boarded windows, trash piles and weeds. Grungy walls, dead plants, tilted pictures ect.. were primarily from GOS. The safe in Richard's office is a table that I think is from Cashcraft at TSR I shoved it through the wall using snapobjects to grid, it's non working.
But I also really did burn the house. I placed the NL fire jets all over the place and let them run. While it was burning the family was asleep in the locked garage and I kept lowering their energy so they'd stay asleep.
I rarely download lots that I actually use. But in this case I did use three from Cyclonesue. The gas station originated as her Yukton Garage, the Cigma retreat was originally her Ruins of Trihern Abbey, and the Alien base was Beta Hydri. All but the Beta Hydri Base got massive makeovers.
On the garage lot I tore down the actual garage and only kept the shed portion that was on the far right. I moved the gas pumps over to that side and then built a town dump where the orginal garage was. Lots of knocked over furniture and broken down cars were tossed into the dump.
The primary problem I had with this lot was the phone call. Kids can't use cell phones or pay phones. Frankie and Almeric kept walking too far away from the pay phone while they chatted. I had to make the lot residential in order to get the car there and there were tons of walkbys that I kept having to delete as well as keeping Mr. Cooke occupied with bird watching behind the shed.
I didn't do as many structual changes to the Abbey, it's pretty much exactly the same as it was when downloaded except that I used the wall cutouts to knock down quite a few walls. The lot itself is horrible to play, so much stompy feet I won't even get into it. Inside was decorated with a variety of extracted AL items from all over and peppered with objects from Parsimonious's Rizzle Apothocary then I added in things from I have no idea what they are file. Books, casks, crates, barrels ect.. On the back of the lot I built a mine shaft which incurred even more stompy feet.
The primary problem with this set was that I couldn't use most of my best outdoor shots due to the road. Oh and that I really wanted to use Sierra as the vampire (she's criminal at the moment) but she was PREGNANT and I have the mesh replacements that show the babybump.
The scenes with David in three lakes (including Cigam) were shot very recently when I sent he and Titania there with the grandkids. Plantsims are great for doing things at night while everyone else is asleep.
The only other set I want to talk about isn't much of a set but it's Bigfoot's hut. The logistics for this was fairly complicated and again you can catch my inconsistancies. I tried not terribly sucessfully to duplicate the original lot and then placed it in several places. It's both a residential and vacation rental property in my test hood. Everything that was shot on that lot, actually everything shot with Frankie in Three lakes for this chapter was done in the dummy hood. He has been to three lakes and he has met a bigfoot who looks like Squatch in the main hood but it's not the same. Everything shot there was with a dummy version of Aldric acting as Almeric. So really Aldric killed himself while teaching a stray to play dead rather than his brother.
You have no idea what a pain removing wedding rings in tons of shots can be. Uggg that was not well planned on my part. There was also quite a bit of other odd and end photo editing done on this lot in order to make sure that neither the road or the zone lines showed all that often.
Like Orikes I encounted the Bigfoot looks different in the dummy hood issue. Squatch had a makeover in order to be face one in the test hood since he's face one in the main hood. I sent Emma, Aldric and Frankie clones on vacation got them to be friends with Bigfoot moved him home then sent Frankie, Aldric and Bigfoot on vacation to shoot the cabin scenes. Originally there really wasn't a bathroom and even though I had lowered their personalities to the bottom neither Frankie nor Aldric would use the trees. I gave in and put a toliet and shower behind the house along with the fridge. It was a miserable vacation, they really were roughing it.
How did you do that?
Under the heading of how did you? Lisette was controllable as a ghost using the family ghost hack from insim. It allows any character to take on the ghost appearence. I primarily downloaded it to get the scaring done at the Davis house. I wanted there to be several scares but the ghosts weren't cooperating.
Aldric's shopping bag and the glasses that both Almeric and Lisette were holding during their discussion were attached using Jix's Prop Attachment hack from MTS2. Also note the prime example of inconsistent set usage, the wallpaper in the living room is the original nice wallpaper rather than the post grungified one.
Of course I use a wide variety of hack animations when it suits me. One I use way too often is tuck in. What's on the table? I don't know let's tuck in the kids and see.
Fun stuff time! Let's play guess those teens! Debbie Johnson, Almeric's highschool girlfriend was played by non other than Meadow Thayer with dyed hair. Aldric's buddies are Sophie Miguel and Orlando Centrowski. Sophie was supposed to represent a teenaged Sam Thomas (Uni bin student) but I haven't yet and may never make that connection in story. I chose these particular teens because they are who fell out when Almeric wished for friends.
I've always been a aww why'd you make Meadow into a slut? well now I know.
To avoid any potential theories and confusion that may arise in the future before they surface: Debbie's daughter Annie is not Almeric's child. Annie is the genetic child of Orlando Centrowski.
Outtakes from the Soccer Park
Jenn, why are there so many pictures of me making goofy faces?
Because your goofy faces are preferable to Emma's smiles. I don't even try to take pictures of Emma in serious conversation very often, they just don't happen. I've never had a sim that smiled so much. Emma your child was kidnapped don't grin!!!!
This is why there is no free will allowed on the set! Puck get back in uniform! Aww man :(
Of course turning off Puck's free will doesn't help much.
Yay Free Will's back on! Not for long. Allyn you were not invite here please go away.
Spoiler Alarms will go off if you click the cuts!
Lots of Blather
Firstly in regards to the mystical connection of the Davis family. I can't say how long I've been planning it but I can say that it was not my original intention for them. I could lie and say that as soon as I knew AL was going to include witches that I started planning how to incorporate them, but I won't. It was much, much later than that. Once the connection was made though, everything else fell into place much easier.
Does this mean that the Familiar's are suddenly going to be Harry Potterish and we'll see sims casting spells to whip up dinner ect.. ? NO
The supernatural side of the sims has always interested me and it is a large part of my hood as a whole but it's not my main focus. I've always seen the supernatural sims in my story as just normal people with a little something extra, that won't change. That doesn't mean that there won't at some point be a full blown witch in the family.
As to the prophecy, if taken at first glance it could point towards anyone in the family. All of the Familiars are descended from Chloe a pureblood (alien). Frankie (and Ferdie) are six generations away from that heritage and there are others in the family that are much closer to being purebloods than either of them. However I did toss in a line to cover my ass:
"Only those of the purest blood were unable to pass for humans. Even some of the purest could pass, if they kept their hair long."
The long hair is a nod to the elves being pureblooded as well as the aliens. Therefore Frankie and Ferdie are only two generations away from the pureblood. The family line was already pureblooded before Titania, but with her addition it became stronger. That addition doesn't necessarily count everyone else out, Frankie's half cousins Egeus and Emilia are about as pureblood as sims could get. They have two infusions of alien blood in addition to Puck's elfishness. It'll come down to old blood.
Almeric
In the past I've said that I have difficulty writing villians long term, that even the worst sim can find a way to make me like them. Almeric is no exception. I moved him into the hood after college and he proceeded to walk by everyone's house on a regular basis wanting to be friends. I have some great conversation pictures of him in a hot tub with Erasmus talking about criminal activies. Frankie continually rolled up wants to be his friend and his best friend. As of now he's not yet 'dead' and he won't be until his nephews lose their death of family fears but canon wise he's dead dead.
Almeric's mother is the true villian, Almeric was only her tool and in the end he knows that. During his childhood Lisette Davis spoiled and pampered her son. However, the spoiling was always edged with do what I tell you, be what I want you to be and don't talk back. His father isn't evil but he's not that great either. Richard Davis purposely knocked up the maid because he could . He then fairly much ignored his sons. There are hints that he cared (the baseball) for his sons, but didn't know how to show it or didn't know that he needed to show it. The boys personalities weren't melded by their father nearly as much as they were by Lisette Davis's influence.
I don't have the background to tie in medical definitions of Almeric's personality. I'll just say he was crazy but with good reason. Going as far back as the university chapters there were inconsistances in his personality, I'd love to claim I planned them all but in truth some of it's just poor writing. It makes the possibility of him being controlled by someone easier to believe. I don't se his suicide as being a sacrifice, not to him. It was his way out, maybe the only way out he saw. In my mind suicide is a selfish act, that he did take steps to help his brother's family before the final one makes his death more palatable but it doesn't erase that he killed himself to get out of the situation he was in. He left a mess that other's have to clean up.
He left his nephew stranded in the woods with Bigfoot. His brother is left with even more questions that no one can answer. The legacy family has only a fraction of the information that they may need to deal with what's to come. Additionally, Lisette told him that soon she wouldn't need him, she's getting stronger and doesn't need her tool to do the dirty work, his job was done.
Could Almeric have cleaned everything up, told all he knew and fixed it all? No, but there were options he refused to look at.
Aldric's hesitancy over children is connected more to his parents than to his brother. Aldric and Almeric weren't bitter enemies, they just didn't get along very well. An extreme case of sibling rivalry? The good son versus the bad son? I don't know. Aldric would most likely have tried to help his brother if he could, but he was never asked and he didn't know. Almeric will continue to be a question left unanswered for his brother.
Now for the fun stuff!
Sets - I'm pretty proud of the sets in this chapter and I put a ton of work into them all.
The Davis home was of course originally the bin house Federal Fortress. I decorated the main floor extensively as an expensive elegant home and then burned and grungified it, twice. You can see the inconsistances from when I had to reburn it for later pictures if you look. I used lots of stuff from Cyclonesue in all of the sets, but in this one I mainly used her wall holes, boarded windows, trash piles and weeds. Grungy walls, dead plants, tilted pictures ect.. were primarily from GOS. The safe in Richard's office is a table that I think is from Cashcraft at TSR I shoved it through the wall using snapobjects to grid, it's non working.
But I also really did burn the house. I placed the NL fire jets all over the place and let them run. While it was burning the family was asleep in the locked garage and I kept lowering their energy so they'd stay asleep.
I rarely download lots that I actually use. But in this case I did use three from Cyclonesue. The gas station originated as her Yukton Garage, the Cigma retreat was originally her Ruins of Trihern Abbey, and the Alien base was Beta Hydri. All but the Beta Hydri Base got massive makeovers.
On the garage lot I tore down the actual garage and only kept the shed portion that was on the far right. I moved the gas pumps over to that side and then built a town dump where the orginal garage was. Lots of knocked over furniture and broken down cars were tossed into the dump.
The primary problem I had with this lot was the phone call. Kids can't use cell phones or pay phones. Frankie and Almeric kept walking too far away from the pay phone while they chatted. I had to make the lot residential in order to get the car there and there were tons of walkbys that I kept having to delete as well as keeping Mr. Cooke occupied with bird watching behind the shed.
I didn't do as many structual changes to the Abbey, it's pretty much exactly the same as it was when downloaded except that I used the wall cutouts to knock down quite a few walls. The lot itself is horrible to play, so much stompy feet I won't even get into it. Inside was decorated with a variety of extracted AL items from all over and peppered with objects from Parsimonious's Rizzle Apothocary then I added in things from I have no idea what they are file. Books, casks, crates, barrels ect.. On the back of the lot I built a mine shaft which incurred even more stompy feet.
The primary problem with this set was that I couldn't use most of my best outdoor shots due to the road. Oh and that I really wanted to use Sierra as the vampire (she's criminal at the moment) but she was PREGNANT and I have the mesh replacements that show the babybump.
The scenes with David in three lakes (including Cigam) were shot very recently when I sent he and Titania there with the grandkids. Plantsims are great for doing things at night while everyone else is asleep.
The only other set I want to talk about isn't much of a set but it's Bigfoot's hut. The logistics for this was fairly complicated and again you can catch my inconsistancies. I tried not terribly sucessfully to duplicate the original lot and then placed it in several places. It's both a residential and vacation rental property in my test hood. Everything that was shot on that lot, actually everything shot with Frankie in Three lakes for this chapter was done in the dummy hood. He has been to three lakes and he has met a bigfoot who looks like Squatch in the main hood but it's not the same. Everything shot there was with a dummy version of Aldric acting as Almeric. So really Aldric killed himself while teaching a stray to play dead rather than his brother.
You have no idea what a pain removing wedding rings in tons of shots can be. Uggg that was not well planned on my part. There was also quite a bit of other odd and end photo editing done on this lot in order to make sure that neither the road or the zone lines showed all that often.
Like Orikes I encounted the Bigfoot looks different in the dummy hood issue. Squatch had a makeover in order to be face one in the test hood since he's face one in the main hood. I sent Emma, Aldric and Frankie clones on vacation got them to be friends with Bigfoot moved him home then sent Frankie, Aldric and Bigfoot on vacation to shoot the cabin scenes. Originally there really wasn't a bathroom and even though I had lowered their personalities to the bottom neither Frankie nor Aldric would use the trees. I gave in and put a toliet and shower behind the house along with the fridge. It was a miserable vacation, they really were roughing it.
How did you do that?
Under the heading of how did you? Lisette was controllable as a ghost using the family ghost hack from insim. It allows any character to take on the ghost appearence. I primarily downloaded it to get the scaring done at the Davis house. I wanted there to be several scares but the ghosts weren't cooperating.
Aldric's shopping bag and the glasses that both Almeric and Lisette were holding during their discussion were attached using Jix's Prop Attachment hack from MTS2. Also note the prime example of inconsistent set usage, the wallpaper in the living room is the original nice wallpaper rather than the post grungified one.
Of course I use a wide variety of hack animations when it suits me. One I use way too often is tuck in. What's on the table? I don't know let's tuck in the kids and see.
Fun stuff time! Let's play guess those teens! Debbie Johnson, Almeric's highschool girlfriend was played by non other than Meadow Thayer with dyed hair. Aldric's buddies are Sophie Miguel and Orlando Centrowski. Sophie was supposed to represent a teenaged Sam Thomas (Uni bin student) but I haven't yet and may never make that connection in story. I chose these particular teens because they are who fell out when Almeric wished for friends.
I've always been a aww why'd you make Meadow into a slut? well now I know.
To avoid any potential theories and confusion that may arise in the future before they surface: Debbie's daughter Annie is not Almeric's child. Annie is the genetic child of Orlando Centrowski.
Outtakes from the Soccer Park
Jenn, why are there so many pictures of me making goofy faces?
Because your goofy faces are preferable to Emma's smiles. I don't even try to take pictures of Emma in serious conversation very often, they just don't happen. I've never had a sim that smiled so much. Emma your child was kidnapped don't grin!!!!
This is why there is no free will allowed on the set! Puck get back in uniform! Aww man :(
Of course turning off Puck's free will doesn't help much.
Yay Free Will's back on! Not for long. Allyn you were not invite here please go away.