Boolpropian Round Robin Legacy: Generation Nine: Behind the Scenes: Part Three
For Previous Stuff, see Part Two!
Relationships: Roxanna and Marcus
Roxanna and Marcus ended up being the sort of couple that they are mostly due to two people: Stacie and Lark.
Stacie because of the information that she provided me and Annie about how she planned on things going - Roxanna and her babydaddy were never going to be married. He was never going to live with them, he was already going to be a vampire even before he met Roxanna. In her view, Roxanna was kind of going to take him as a lover, possibly somewhat casually, and he'd rejoice in her getting pregnant.
Lark because she was the one I talked to about my plans, trying to figure out what the hell to do with them as a couple. I really couldn’t see Roxanna the same way that Stacie did - she didn't strike me as the type to casually take a lover. I did have Rainelle as a reason to explain them not living together, but...
I didn't really want them to be together at the end, because it would be more painful for Roxanna when everyone left and she was imprisoned if she couldn't see him anymore. In a sense, I was trying to make it easier on her.
I think Lark was the one who suggested that they could break up, and she was definitely the one who reassured me that it was okay for them to break up. In sims stories - partly as a function of the way the game works, partly because sims are wish-fulfillment, sims generally do not break up. Most of the time, a sim will meet their one true love sometime between childhood and college, occasionally into the early stages of adulthood, and they will be with that love for the rest of their lives. I've seen a few times where a teenage romance hasn't worked out, and a few divorces, but not many. (Of course, some Romance Sims never get married at all, but Roxanna wasn't the type to want multiple lovers and fear commitment - she wasn't particularly against marriage, but she didn't particularly feel a need to get married, either. It wasn't the be-all and end-all for her.)
Roxanna and Marcus weren't a divorce, but they were a breakup. They did fall in love, but they ultimately wanted different things, and him being a vampire was a huge stumbling block. If he hadn't become a vampire, I don't know if they'd have worked out, but it was definitely part of the reason why they didn't.
In game, they never did break up. It would have been more trouble than it was worth, making the sims miserable like that, especially since I absolutely would have had to force it - as a pair of Pleasure Sims who were not engaged or married, Roxanna and Marcus didn't even get jealous of each other if ACR had them cheat in front of each other. I'd have had to make a fight happen.
But in story, they were as much characters as sims, and they weren't a couple that worked.
In game, however, they really were adorable.
Even if some of the townies thought they were nuts.
They woohooed quite a bit earlier in game than in story, mostly because a) I wasn't going to show the purple hearts anyway and b) Roxanna's LTW was 50 dream dates, I actually did work on it, and dream dates go much easier if you let your sims woohoo. Also, c) ACR wasn't going to let them go THAT long without woohoo. I did put Roxanna on birth control, though - I didn't want a pregnancy at the wrong time.
I admit I have no words.
Her expression is what makes it.
The fact that Marcus and Roxanna didn't live together did make the issue of how to deal with Rainelle easier. Rainelle simply got the other half of Roxanna's bed most nights. In story, she was a ghost who didn't need to sleep, but in game she was a sim. This was one of the reasons I ended up choosing Rainelle over Fricorith and Gvaudoin - the two of them would have needed two beds, and I simply didn't have places to put them that made sense, at least not once Desdemona was a child - before then, Grey's room or Desdemona's room or the other half of Roxanna's bed would have sufficed; after, it wouldn't have worked.
One thing I can say for Marcus: when he was around, he was a very good father. But he really wasn't always around. By the time any of the kids were born (hell, by the time any of the kids were conceived), he was a vampire. That meant I could only have him at the house at night, and, well, the kids mostly kept to a normal schedule, as they had, you know, school and all. I did invite him over pretty much every night, but it still wasn't actually all that much time.
He did tend to stalk the toddlers after Roxanna went to bed, however, which can be both good and bad.
Other Relationships: What was Actually Happening
Yeah, so the relationships that were happening in story? Generally were not happening in game.
Rainelle, in case you were curious, did have a relationship going - with this dude whose name I forget. I think he was a walkby at some point, and she was like "hey, I like you!" and they jumped into bed...or onto couch, whatever.
I wasn't going to include it in story, of course, as Rainelle was "dead" and unable to interact with people, but I figured it really didn't matter if she had a boyfriend in game, since I put her on birth control, turned off risky woohoo, and turned off unmarried try for baby. As long as she didn't get pregnant, I didn't care what she did behind the scenes.
As for the kids...Fortunata was the only one who DIDN'T jump into bed, probably due to the fact that, as I stated earlier, she had so little time as a teen where she actually had free will.
All three of her siblings, however...
Grey was the first to jump into bed with someone, and it was NOT the sim he was supposedly "dating." In fact, he and Joyce didn't really know each other - I kept having to have them interact once so they'd show up on each other's relationship panels so I could cheat them up to in love.
Instead, he jumped into bed with Eglantine. She rolled Pleasure, she was often there, and I guess they were compatible. I think he and Joyce were compatible - I checked zodiacs to see if Joyce or Ellen (hat girl) would work better with Grey - but I guess not actually, like, knowing each other is a major impediment.
As for why they jumped into bed, well...I forgot to turn off teen woohoo with ACR? So it was a natural progression, I guess.
It did not make sense for Grey to date Eglantine in story, however - she was Lily's age, not his, and I needed the Tricou teens to go after the Doran teens, so Grey got to have a behind the scenes relationship AND a story relationship.
This was right before filming Fortunata's teen birthday party. I'd told Grey to interact with Joyce so they'd fall in love, and, well, Eglantine was Not Happy. As free will was off, however, and everyone was selectable, they could all be forced to just ignore each other during the party itself, and I ended up quitting without saving anyway.
I think Lily was also upset that Grey was "cheating on Eglantine."
Lily was the second to jump into bed with someone, and again, it was not with someone she was supposed to be getting along with. I guess Fricorith was too attractive to her? He was also around all the time, because of me inviting the Tricous over a lot, so there's convenience as well.
Desdemona didn't like Fricorith when I made her flirt with him.
When she chose to...
Luckily, Desdemona and Lily did not get furious at each other over sharing the same boy. Thank God for ACR, even if it's what caused the problem in the first place, right?
Powers...and the Lack of Them
Still on the topic of kids, you may have noticed that none of my kids (unlike Roxanna) had powers this generation.
The truth is, I really couldn't fit them in, not with the plot I had planned, not with the way things were intended to go.
I considered at one point giving them powers, and even half-joked that I should give one of the kids (probably Grey or Desdemona, as the only ones with significant time as teens) the power of constant cologne, attracting various sims, as the cologne turn on is the most useless one ever. I did think about it, but it just didn't work, partly because there was nowhere to put it, partly because it was almost too humorous for the tone of the rest of the story.
Nothing I thought of made sense in the context of my plot - I couldn't give the kids too many powers or things wouldn't pan out the way I wanted them to, the way I needed them to.
I did give Lily her slight intuition, as Annie had implied/stated she had. I couldn't make it too strong; even with the feeling that something was wrong, Lily had to end up in the situation where she died, and if it was too strong, she'd have avoided it altogether.
I also talked about the possibility of powers, especially in regards to Fortunata: Fortunata floated and Roxanna wondered if that was what was happening, because, for her, it was a logical conclusion. But, again, that was a red herring - any time anything floated, it was actually Astraea doing things invisibly.
I like the powers, and it made sense for Roxanna's kids to have them - she was over half-alien, as Stella was a new infusion of supernatural blood, and Roxanna also had some alien and some elf via Maddie. By the time any of her kids were conceived, Marcus was a vampire, which is yet another infusion of supernatural into the bloodline.
And yet, I just couldn't make anything work. I think, to some degree, this was because of the way my chapters were structured. To view the kids with powers...it had to be stuff that happened in front of Roxanna for it to actually appear in the chapters, since it was all first person. But nothing that I thought of worked that way, despite the fact that Roxanna and all three of her siblings had them, and so did two of Lily's kids, despite the fact that Roxanna's powers were so central to the plot. Nothing I could give the kids would have had equal weight, but I didn't want to give them anything completely unimportant, so I got rid of the powers entirely.
I don't really regret tossing the powers, but I do think it would've been nice to be able to include them.
Bloopers/Amusing Pictures/Stuff That Didn't Fit Anywhere Else
So Roxanna went to a lot of community lots. As I stated earlier, I listed every single Downtown lot in my outline, and I made sure she went to all of them, as I really wanted this chapter to cover Downtown.
However, that sometimes meant that I had to shoot around some of the NPCs that were present on the lots. Because, well, the thing is that the game generates three waiters/waitresses - who all ended up having characters when Roxanna worked at Londoste, as Kathy, Anne, and Dan were her coworkers there. But the game uses the same waiters for EVERY SINGLE RESTAURANT, which is fine in a hood where you're playing and you want to have fewer character files, but not so great when you're writing a story that involves a sim spending lots of time at lots of restaurants, which...does not happen in real life and therefore shouldn't in a story.
So I had to be very careful about showing Anne and Dan's faces - Kathy, luckily, was playable, so she stopped working as a waitress.
Roxanna is a Pleasure Sim with ten playful points. In story I don't always cover that, because she's ultimately a sad character - and she's very good at playing sad, as the first two pictures show - I didn't stage those at all, she just looked so sad. But most of the time in game she tended to be a very happy sim, as the last two pictures show. That tub pirating was what she did autonomously.
I just loved this picture.
Of course, when Roxanna got angry, she got angry.
...And then her face would glitch that way, which was annoying when I did want to film her being happy.
My Dorans cannot cook, I swear.
I'm not sure why Mrs. Crumplebottom had it in for Terri (whose real last named was Rhodes, but as Rosalie Rhodes was my villain in Maddie's generation, I didn't want to use the same last name, so she got changed to Rodgers), but I guess she did?
It's SO much fun when hacks act weirdly, isn't it? I forget what exactly I was trying to have the women do in each of these pictures, but my guess is something to do with idle actions, which are on the Aikea Guinea paintings...and which only work properly for adults. Teens and Elders can use them, yes, but half the time they do completely the wrong action, which is really freaking annoying...though also amusing, because they end up doing silly movements instead.
Still not fun when I have to search for something else instead, though.
This is what happens with that novel-writing hack, the one that's a notebook, when you move the sim onto an OMSP on the couch and then cancel the action.
I was amused, I have to admit.
Ah, sims. They move in the weirdest directions.
Gotta love how Lisa managed to read a book while holding a baby.
Vampire actions sometimes make sims move in very weird ways...often including glitching into their significant others.
Gotta love the expression on Roxanna's face in the second picture there, yes?
Roxanna's expression also makes this picture.
Rainelle's ghost decided to show up while I was filming the epilogue. I was amused, even though it obviously wasn't getting shown.
And finally, Sim!Rose. When I was filming the prologue, well, I needed a lightning strike, because it looked good, right?
So I smote my simself.
Hey, I didn't need her for anything else, and I got the picture I needed!
Astraea
So. Let's talk Astraea.
Originally, when Stacie was going to write Generation 9, I had made a "deleted scenes" Powerpoint that showed what really happened - which was basically showing how Susanna switched the urns and then resurrected Astraea, with a little bit of the aftermath - how it took Astraea some time to heal from the gunshot wounds. I ultimately decided it wasn't necessary once I was actually writing Roxanna's chapters - I just included two of the most important pictures in the chapter itself, when Astraea was telling Roxanna what happened to her.
At that point, I also wrote an explanation about why we'd done it. I have since adapted that - with pictures and new stuff - for this BTS, as there really is no point in posting something separate. Also, things have changed. I always knew I'd have to edit that to match Stacie's plot; instead I have to edit it to match mine.
...Also, to match the dates.
It all started March 16th, 2010.
Okay, that's not strictly true. Stacie and I had been talking on and off since the end of February or the beginning of March, when Arianne dropped out of the Round Robin due to personal commitments and Marina told me that the list would simply be moving up, and Stacie would be after me.
We'd discussed a number of things, including names, plots, how we'd connect, and - most importantly to this discussion - powers.
I'd sent her a list of powers I was considering, which included invisibility and turning into animals. Every single power that I was considering connected back to the theme of mirrors in some way, though some were better than others. Invisibility, however, was my only definite, though I didn't figure out exactly how to film it until the time actually came.
I also told Stacie that every single pregnancy I had would be a double pregnancy. All of my kids would have what I was, at the time, calling pseudo-twins.
Stacie was actually the one who suggested communicating with the dead. I liked the idea, but I was still very attached to the idea of mirrors - and actually suggested that maybe she could use it for one of HER kids. However, I slowly came around as I realized that I could make the dead invisible in mirrors - and thus connect back to my theme.
By March 16th, we'd settled on the idea that the heiress would be able to speak to dead people. We hadn't worked out all the details, but I'd started thinking about my dead people and figuring it all out.
And then Jamie posted her finale.
And while we were talking about that and how I'd be continuing, Stacie said to me, something along the lines of "I kind of want to have the invisible kid show up in my last slide - as the twin of the heiress, as though they've been there all along but are just now revealing themselves." (Quotes are not exact because I don't save chats.)
I pointed out that any kid would get a spare story, which would basically be canon - that Stacie wouldn't have control of the invisible kid.
And then she said "what if you pretended to kill the invisible kid?"
I stared at the computer screen in shock. I realized the brilliance of that idea and grinned. And then I said "let's check with Marina, because I'm not willing to kill a kid without talking to a mod." No one had gone there, yet, and, well, I wanted to talk to a mod before I did. Luckily for us, Marina was online.
We pulled her into a small chat, and presented the idea to her - that I'd fake killing a kid, they wouldn't get a spare story at that point (though they might at the end of Stacie's turn), and that Stacie would essentially have dual heirs - which was okay, we knew, because Cait had done it with twins before - and that Stacie would reveal the "dead" kid as invisible at the end of her turn.
Marina, as you may have guessed, loved it. We agreed that this would be the plan, though obviously we hadn't worked out the details. Hell, we didn't know the kid's gender or how many kids I'd be having.
I remember saying "I'm going to be crucified for this." No one had ever killed one of the kids before, and I would be doing so.
But at the end of that night, it was settled. I was going to "kill" the invisible kid, the twin of the heiress (Stacie always wanted a girl), and Stacie would bring him/her back.
The idea sat for a while, while I finished college and got Maddie and Stella married. I played, I plotted, stuff happened. Go look at my (original) Behind the Scenes for more on that. :D
Then they both got pregnant, and I decided to cheesecake them, making my kids actual twins, making it just one group of kids. And when the kids were born, I knew immediately that Stacie was going to choose either Roxanna or Seren. She could have chosen Astraea, yes, but I had a feeling she was going to grab the alien eyes. That meant, then, that Astraea or Ma'or was the kid fated to die. And the idea started growing again.
I started trying to figure out HOW to kill the kid. By this point, I knew Rosalie was going to be the one who did, and that it was going to involve mirrors. I also figured out quickly that the urn would be smashed, but that it would actually be Francis - dead!zombie's - urn.
My first thought was to avoid showing it - to have it happen offstage. In this case, the kid was going to end up trapped in a room with all mirrored walls, and Rosalie was going to shoot at him/her while invisible. However, she would have missed, though the invisible kid would have been seriously injured (because, you know, getting hit by broken glass from a mirror that’s been shot at would have been pretty painful and not so easy to heal). There were two possibilities, which I hadn't decided between at this point. First, Rosalie would have thought the kid was actually dead, but hadn't been able to find the urn quickly enough, so smashed Francis's instead. Second, Rosalie would have known the kid WASN'T dead, but decided to hurt the rest of the family by smashing Francis's urn instead. I'm not sure if I ever would have had to decide - because this wouldn't have shown up in the chapters. Either way, Susanna (who didn't actually exist at this point - she was the last thing I did for Chapter Four, and she was conceived/born/aged to toddler/aged to child in the same day) was going to help the kid escape.
Eventually, due mainly to conversations with Lark, who declared that she wouldn't believe that the kid was dead unless she saw it (I'd told her there would be a death, but not that it wouldn't be permanent), I decided that killing the kid offstage would be too ambiguous. By this point, I'd finished Chapter Four, Stacie had confirmed that Roxanna was heir, and that Astraea was the one who was going to die. She also sent me her prologue (in text version), which I read, then read again, then read a third time...and my jaw dropped. Roxanna was the vampire! The "Dear One" was Astraea! I was quite gleeful.
I realized that I had to make the death VISIBLE and FINAL. The urn smashing was going to be a large part of that, but not all. And so I came up with this plan. Astraea was somehow going to end up at the zombie house (still didn't know those details - though if it had been Ma’or to die, it would have involved him being dared to go instead of sneaking himself), Rosalie was going to catch her, and she was going to actually die, onstage. Later, Susanna would switch the urns and then resurrect her once the zombies were dead. I'd already established that Rosalie had a bone phone (to resurrect the zombies), though I hadn't actually shown it - so I added a scene to Chapter Five where Susanna watched a resurrection. Obviously, I also needed a reason for Astraea not to follow Roxanna immediately, thereby killing Stacie's plot. So I decided that the bone phone only cures the injury that caused death, and that Rosalie injured her before killing her.
I actually wrote and shot the deleted scenes as they fit into the chapter itself, deciding at that point to just show the slide before each scene in order to lead into them. Some of it required a bit of tricky staging, but it went quite well. Let me tell you, though - that last picture in the actual chapter, of Susanna sitting by the bed? I had to take it about four times to avoid a glimpse of Astraea, and you can actually see that the bedspread isn't quite flat if you look closely.
In case you're curious, Astraea WAS dead. Overnight, in fact, and I cried when I wrote her death, shot her death...and resurrected her. However, her urn was never smashed. That was actually Francis's urn, and believe me, after she started annoying me as a ghost, I was quite glad to smash it. I DO have nounlinkondelete in my game, but didn't want to have to depend on it. Actually, I ended up killing another zombie (er…one of the minor ones, don’t ask me her name) and smashing her urn as well, because someone cleaned up the first one before I could shoot the gypsy stuff right before the song at the end.
And after this, it was a matter of sitting back and waiting to be crucified. I was pleasantly surprised when I wasn't.
But then I got to keep this quiet. Stacie, Marina, and I were the only ones who knew exactly what was going on. Annie and Jenn both got sent some plot stuff by Stacie that did include some of the Astraea stuff, but I guess it wasn't very clear, since even Annie was surprised at the very end of my Chapter 5 - she thought Astraea would be a ghost as well, which she wasn't.
This meant I saw a LOT of speculation. Some of it was quite interesting, and even accurate.
Things that various people suggested:
- Susanna should have switched the urns (she did)
- Dave gave Rosalie the wrong urn to smash (he did, but not intentionally - he thought it was actually Astraea's, because it was in the right location)
- Rosalie got confused over the location of the urns and asked Dave for the wrong one (not true)
- Astraea was in the room that Madam Barbara was looking at and commenting on at the very end of the chapter (she was, but I actually meant for that to refer to Susanna - but it ended up working for both of them)
- Astraea was in fact dead, and a ghost, and had gotten stuck invisible (not at all accurate, though I found it the most innovative of the ideas I heard - and also not true because Astraea could be HEARD while invisible, so she’d have been able to talk to Roxanna even if she couldn’t be seen)
- Astraea or her ghost was “Dear One” and with Roxanna (accurate)
Also, funniest comment ever? Stacie saying to me “you’re not going to kill Maddie and Stella, are you?” I couldn’t help but laugh, because she knew my plans with Astraea - but then again, she also knew Astraea wouldn’t be permanently dead. But, no, them dying was never in my plans.
I left Madam Barbara open at that point as something that Stacie could work with if she wanted to. As far as I know, she had no plans to, but I did bring her back myself once I took over Generation 9, and still left her open in case anyone writing a spare story for someone else wants to use her.
At one point, I was considering doing a "spare story" for Susanna - not official, of course, as she wasn't actually a spare. Madam Barbara would almost certainly play a role in that if I do, though I haven't felt the need to in a while. I couldn't until after Stacie finished, because I needed the deleted scenes to be published - Susanna saved Astraea, and it would have picked up after that, not before. There really wasn't a way to avoid discussing the Astraea issue. People asked me, too, if Susanna would be okay, and I basically gave the ambiguous answer of "eventually, yes, but it may take time." After all, bringing Astraea back would heal HER, too, but I couldn’t say that.
So that was three years.
THREE YEARS.
No, seriously, three fucking years that I kept this a secret, from March 16th 2010 to March 31st 2013, with only a few of us knowing the truth. Marina was absolutely my hand-holder throughout all of this, telling me it would be okay, and helping me to deal with it. I still can't believe we managed it, but we did. So...go us?
…So, um, I know some of you may not be happy that Stacie and I DID bring Astraea back. I have a feeling that I’m going to get some comments saying "you couldn’t stick with it?" And the answer is that, if I’d planned from the start to kill a kid, that would be a very valid question to ask.
But that’s not what happened. What happened is that Stacie and I planned to make it LOOK like the kid was dead, and bring him/her back at the end of Stacie’s turn...which later became my turn, but, well, same difference.
So yes, I didn’t actually kill a kid. But I knew that was what was going to happen from the beginning.
And who knows? Maybe in the future, now that I’ve paved the way, someone will actually kill one of the RR teens while they’re children or teens. Obviously, they’d have to discuss this with the person after them, because killing the kid that someone is interested in for heir would be totally rude and uncalled for.
And now some pictures.
Astraea was in the hood from the very beginning.
...I made this secret last year, when we had a secrets week, and was very careful with it. I wanted people to think it was Roxanna - as I intentionally gave them the same hairstyle - but it was actually Astraea.
I was very intentional in how I dressed Astraea. She and Roxanna were mirrors of each other - they had the same hair, hiding the ears, and different clothing...but both intentionally dressed in the other's colors rather than their own. Roxanna started my chapters in pink and black; Astraea first showed up in purple.
Having Astraea in the hood from the beginning meant that I did have to shoot around her, which was a hassle at times, but not a huge one. I wanted her to be related to Roxanna, though, so making them in CAS together, along with the kids, made more sense.
Along with them, I made an invisible sim, who was called "Astraea," who I used when I needed someone invisible. However, while the everyday outfit is invisible, the others aren't, which leads to interesting situations like the first picture. I think in the second one I'd had someone influence "Astraea" to clean.
Astraea makes a gorgeous vampire, doesn't she?
Originally, I'm not sure if Stacie planned on vamping Astraea, but once I thought about it, there really wasn't any other option. I mean, the prologue/epilogue took place about a hundred years after the rest of the chapters - if Astraea wasn't a vampire, how could she still be around? I did have the option of it actually being her ghost, but I didn't want it to be that way, and I had a feeling that not only would Astraea see the fun side of vampirism, much as Marcus eventually did, she'd also want to be around to be with her sister.
I really honestly considered using this picture as the moment Roxanna sees Astraea in the mirror, but I decided I wanted to leave you all in a bit more suspense than that. :P So instead I took it from the other angle, showing the empty doorway rather than Astraea in the mirror.
Myshuno!
Last (but certainly not least), some drabbles that I did for the sim-spiration Myshuno! Challenge.
I wrote about some of the behind the scenes stuff for both generations, including Maddie's love life, some of Maddie's friends, Susanna's life with the zombies, other stuff the pseudo-quads did with their free time, the true level of Rosalie's insanity, Maddie and Stella after Generation 8 ended, and Desdemona's experiments in hair dye.
Some of the ones I wrote for Generation 9 actually made it in to the story (albeit slightly edited), as I wrote them beforehand, including Desdemona convincing her siblings to go to the outing of doom, the confrontation right after Lily's death, Roxanna entering the land of the dead, and the time right after the kids leave. I had to be careful about spoilers when writing these, but I think I managed okay, and I did put warnings up.
But most of all, there were the few where I really couldn't reveal what was happening, to the point that two of them got listed as unnamed universe. These three are Astraea saying goodbye to Susanna before heading off to find Roxanna, Roxanna and Astraea's conversation once they're finally together again (which I switched POVs for for the chapter, but Astraea's made more sense for the quote), and one moment after Roxanna was trapped as a vampire (and yes, Astraea did give her the plant, but I had to use the Rainelle red herring).
So yes...that is everything that was going on behind the scenes during Generation 9 of the Round Robin. I hope you enjoyed this BTS!
(Oh, and Lily would like to, once more, remind you that she has 8 nice points and that she hopes you enjoy her son's chapters, coming up soon.)
Relationships: Roxanna and Marcus
Roxanna and Marcus ended up being the sort of couple that they are mostly due to two people: Stacie and Lark.
Stacie because of the information that she provided me and Annie about how she planned on things going - Roxanna and her babydaddy were never going to be married. He was never going to live with them, he was already going to be a vampire even before he met Roxanna. In her view, Roxanna was kind of going to take him as a lover, possibly somewhat casually, and he'd rejoice in her getting pregnant.
Lark because she was the one I talked to about my plans, trying to figure out what the hell to do with them as a couple. I really couldn’t see Roxanna the same way that Stacie did - she didn't strike me as the type to casually take a lover. I did have Rainelle as a reason to explain them not living together, but...
I didn't really want them to be together at the end, because it would be more painful for Roxanna when everyone left and she was imprisoned if she couldn't see him anymore. In a sense, I was trying to make it easier on her.
I think Lark was the one who suggested that they could break up, and she was definitely the one who reassured me that it was okay for them to break up. In sims stories - partly as a function of the way the game works, partly because sims are wish-fulfillment, sims generally do not break up. Most of the time, a sim will meet their one true love sometime between childhood and college, occasionally into the early stages of adulthood, and they will be with that love for the rest of their lives. I've seen a few times where a teenage romance hasn't worked out, and a few divorces, but not many. (Of course, some Romance Sims never get married at all, but Roxanna wasn't the type to want multiple lovers and fear commitment - she wasn't particularly against marriage, but she didn't particularly feel a need to get married, either. It wasn't the be-all and end-all for her.)
Roxanna and Marcus weren't a divorce, but they were a breakup. They did fall in love, but they ultimately wanted different things, and him being a vampire was a huge stumbling block. If he hadn't become a vampire, I don't know if they'd have worked out, but it was definitely part of the reason why they didn't.
In game, they never did break up. It would have been more trouble than it was worth, making the sims miserable like that, especially since I absolutely would have had to force it - as a pair of Pleasure Sims who were not engaged or married, Roxanna and Marcus didn't even get jealous of each other if ACR had them cheat in front of each other. I'd have had to make a fight happen.
But in story, they were as much characters as sims, and they weren't a couple that worked.
In game, however, they really were adorable.
Even if some of the townies thought they were nuts.
They woohooed quite a bit earlier in game than in story, mostly because a) I wasn't going to show the purple hearts anyway and b) Roxanna's LTW was 50 dream dates, I actually did work on it, and dream dates go much easier if you let your sims woohoo. Also, c) ACR wasn't going to let them go THAT long without woohoo. I did put Roxanna on birth control, though - I didn't want a pregnancy at the wrong time.
I admit I have no words.
Her expression is what makes it.
The fact that Marcus and Roxanna didn't live together did make the issue of how to deal with Rainelle easier. Rainelle simply got the other half of Roxanna's bed most nights. In story, she was a ghost who didn't need to sleep, but in game she was a sim. This was one of the reasons I ended up choosing Rainelle over Fricorith and Gvaudoin - the two of them would have needed two beds, and I simply didn't have places to put them that made sense, at least not once Desdemona was a child - before then, Grey's room or Desdemona's room or the other half of Roxanna's bed would have sufficed; after, it wouldn't have worked.
One thing I can say for Marcus: when he was around, he was a very good father. But he really wasn't always around. By the time any of the kids were born (hell, by the time any of the kids were conceived), he was a vampire. That meant I could only have him at the house at night, and, well, the kids mostly kept to a normal schedule, as they had, you know, school and all. I did invite him over pretty much every night, but it still wasn't actually all that much time.
He did tend to stalk the toddlers after Roxanna went to bed, however, which can be both good and bad.
Other Relationships: What was Actually Happening
Yeah, so the relationships that were happening in story? Generally were not happening in game.
Rainelle, in case you were curious, did have a relationship going - with this dude whose name I forget. I think he was a walkby at some point, and she was like "hey, I like you!" and they jumped into bed...or onto couch, whatever.
I wasn't going to include it in story, of course, as Rainelle was "dead" and unable to interact with people, but I figured it really didn't matter if she had a boyfriend in game, since I put her on birth control, turned off risky woohoo, and turned off unmarried try for baby. As long as she didn't get pregnant, I didn't care what she did behind the scenes.
As for the kids...Fortunata was the only one who DIDN'T jump into bed, probably due to the fact that, as I stated earlier, she had so little time as a teen where she actually had free will.
All three of her siblings, however...
Grey was the first to jump into bed with someone, and it was NOT the sim he was supposedly "dating." In fact, he and Joyce didn't really know each other - I kept having to have them interact once so they'd show up on each other's relationship panels so I could cheat them up to in love.
Instead, he jumped into bed with Eglantine. She rolled Pleasure, she was often there, and I guess they were compatible. I think he and Joyce were compatible - I checked zodiacs to see if Joyce or Ellen (hat girl) would work better with Grey - but I guess not actually, like, knowing each other is a major impediment.
As for why they jumped into bed, well...I forgot to turn off teen woohoo with ACR? So it was a natural progression, I guess.
It did not make sense for Grey to date Eglantine in story, however - she was Lily's age, not his, and I needed the Tricou teens to go after the Doran teens, so Grey got to have a behind the scenes relationship AND a story relationship.
This was right before filming Fortunata's teen birthday party. I'd told Grey to interact with Joyce so they'd fall in love, and, well, Eglantine was Not Happy. As free will was off, however, and everyone was selectable, they could all be forced to just ignore each other during the party itself, and I ended up quitting without saving anyway.
I think Lily was also upset that Grey was "cheating on Eglantine."
Lily was the second to jump into bed with someone, and again, it was not with someone she was supposed to be getting along with. I guess Fricorith was too attractive to her? He was also around all the time, because of me inviting the Tricous over a lot, so there's convenience as well.
Desdemona didn't like Fricorith when I made her flirt with him.
When she chose to...
Luckily, Desdemona and Lily did not get furious at each other over sharing the same boy. Thank God for ACR, even if it's what caused the problem in the first place, right?
Powers...and the Lack of Them
Still on the topic of kids, you may have noticed that none of my kids (unlike Roxanna) had powers this generation.
The truth is, I really couldn't fit them in, not with the plot I had planned, not with the way things were intended to go.
I considered at one point giving them powers, and even half-joked that I should give one of the kids (probably Grey or Desdemona, as the only ones with significant time as teens) the power of constant cologne, attracting various sims, as the cologne turn on is the most useless one ever. I did think about it, but it just didn't work, partly because there was nowhere to put it, partly because it was almost too humorous for the tone of the rest of the story.
Nothing I thought of made sense in the context of my plot - I couldn't give the kids too many powers or things wouldn't pan out the way I wanted them to, the way I needed them to.
I did give Lily her slight intuition, as Annie had implied/stated she had. I couldn't make it too strong; even with the feeling that something was wrong, Lily had to end up in the situation where she died, and if it was too strong, she'd have avoided it altogether.
I also talked about the possibility of powers, especially in regards to Fortunata: Fortunata floated and Roxanna wondered if that was what was happening, because, for her, it was a logical conclusion. But, again, that was a red herring - any time anything floated, it was actually Astraea doing things invisibly.
I like the powers, and it made sense for Roxanna's kids to have them - she was over half-alien, as Stella was a new infusion of supernatural blood, and Roxanna also had some alien and some elf via Maddie. By the time any of her kids were conceived, Marcus was a vampire, which is yet another infusion of supernatural into the bloodline.
And yet, I just couldn't make anything work. I think, to some degree, this was because of the way my chapters were structured. To view the kids with powers...it had to be stuff that happened in front of Roxanna for it to actually appear in the chapters, since it was all first person. But nothing that I thought of worked that way, despite the fact that Roxanna and all three of her siblings had them, and so did two of Lily's kids, despite the fact that Roxanna's powers were so central to the plot. Nothing I could give the kids would have had equal weight, but I didn't want to give them anything completely unimportant, so I got rid of the powers entirely.
I don't really regret tossing the powers, but I do think it would've been nice to be able to include them.
Bloopers/Amusing Pictures/Stuff That Didn't Fit Anywhere Else
So Roxanna went to a lot of community lots. As I stated earlier, I listed every single Downtown lot in my outline, and I made sure she went to all of them, as I really wanted this chapter to cover Downtown.
However, that sometimes meant that I had to shoot around some of the NPCs that were present on the lots. Because, well, the thing is that the game generates three waiters/waitresses - who all ended up having characters when Roxanna worked at Londoste, as Kathy, Anne, and Dan were her coworkers there. But the game uses the same waiters for EVERY SINGLE RESTAURANT, which is fine in a hood where you're playing and you want to have fewer character files, but not so great when you're writing a story that involves a sim spending lots of time at lots of restaurants, which...does not happen in real life and therefore shouldn't in a story.
So I had to be very careful about showing Anne and Dan's faces - Kathy, luckily, was playable, so she stopped working as a waitress.
Roxanna is a Pleasure Sim with ten playful points. In story I don't always cover that, because she's ultimately a sad character - and she's very good at playing sad, as the first two pictures show - I didn't stage those at all, she just looked so sad. But most of the time in game she tended to be a very happy sim, as the last two pictures show. That tub pirating was what she did autonomously.
I just loved this picture.
Of course, when Roxanna got angry, she got angry.
...And then her face would glitch that way, which was annoying when I did want to film her being happy.
My Dorans cannot cook, I swear.
I'm not sure why Mrs. Crumplebottom had it in for Terri (whose real last named was Rhodes, but as Rosalie Rhodes was my villain in Maddie's generation, I didn't want to use the same last name, so she got changed to Rodgers), but I guess she did?
It's SO much fun when hacks act weirdly, isn't it? I forget what exactly I was trying to have the women do in each of these pictures, but my guess is something to do with idle actions, which are on the Aikea Guinea paintings...and which only work properly for adults. Teens and Elders can use them, yes, but half the time they do completely the wrong action, which is really freaking annoying...though also amusing, because they end up doing silly movements instead.
Still not fun when I have to search for something else instead, though.
This is what happens with that novel-writing hack, the one that's a notebook, when you move the sim onto an OMSP on the couch and then cancel the action.
I was amused, I have to admit.
Ah, sims. They move in the weirdest directions.
Gotta love how Lisa managed to read a book while holding a baby.
Vampire actions sometimes make sims move in very weird ways...often including glitching into their significant others.
Gotta love the expression on Roxanna's face in the second picture there, yes?
Roxanna's expression also makes this picture.
Rainelle's ghost decided to show up while I was filming the epilogue. I was amused, even though it obviously wasn't getting shown.
And finally, Sim!Rose. When I was filming the prologue, well, I needed a lightning strike, because it looked good, right?
So I smote my simself.
Hey, I didn't need her for anything else, and I got the picture I needed!
Astraea
So. Let's talk Astraea.
Originally, when Stacie was going to write Generation 9, I had made a "deleted scenes" Powerpoint that showed what really happened - which was basically showing how Susanna switched the urns and then resurrected Astraea, with a little bit of the aftermath - how it took Astraea some time to heal from the gunshot wounds. I ultimately decided it wasn't necessary once I was actually writing Roxanna's chapters - I just included two of the most important pictures in the chapter itself, when Astraea was telling Roxanna what happened to her.
At that point, I also wrote an explanation about why we'd done it. I have since adapted that - with pictures and new stuff - for this BTS, as there really is no point in posting something separate. Also, things have changed. I always knew I'd have to edit that to match Stacie's plot; instead I have to edit it to match mine.
...Also, to match the dates.
It all started March 16th, 2010.
Okay, that's not strictly true. Stacie and I had been talking on and off since the end of February or the beginning of March, when Arianne dropped out of the Round Robin due to personal commitments and Marina told me that the list would simply be moving up, and Stacie would be after me.
We'd discussed a number of things, including names, plots, how we'd connect, and - most importantly to this discussion - powers.
I'd sent her a list of powers I was considering, which included invisibility and turning into animals. Every single power that I was considering connected back to the theme of mirrors in some way, though some were better than others. Invisibility, however, was my only definite, though I didn't figure out exactly how to film it until the time actually came.
I also told Stacie that every single pregnancy I had would be a double pregnancy. All of my kids would have what I was, at the time, calling pseudo-twins.
Stacie was actually the one who suggested communicating with the dead. I liked the idea, but I was still very attached to the idea of mirrors - and actually suggested that maybe she could use it for one of HER kids. However, I slowly came around as I realized that I could make the dead invisible in mirrors - and thus connect back to my theme.
By March 16th, we'd settled on the idea that the heiress would be able to speak to dead people. We hadn't worked out all the details, but I'd started thinking about my dead people and figuring it all out.
And then Jamie posted her finale.
And while we were talking about that and how I'd be continuing, Stacie said to me, something along the lines of "I kind of want to have the invisible kid show up in my last slide - as the twin of the heiress, as though they've been there all along but are just now revealing themselves." (Quotes are not exact because I don't save chats.)
I pointed out that any kid would get a spare story, which would basically be canon - that Stacie wouldn't have control of the invisible kid.
And then she said "what if you pretended to kill the invisible kid?"
I stared at the computer screen in shock. I realized the brilliance of that idea and grinned. And then I said "let's check with Marina, because I'm not willing to kill a kid without talking to a mod." No one had gone there, yet, and, well, I wanted to talk to a mod before I did. Luckily for us, Marina was online.
We pulled her into a small chat, and presented the idea to her - that I'd fake killing a kid, they wouldn't get a spare story at that point (though they might at the end of Stacie's turn), and that Stacie would essentially have dual heirs - which was okay, we knew, because Cait had done it with twins before - and that Stacie would reveal the "dead" kid as invisible at the end of her turn.
Marina, as you may have guessed, loved it. We agreed that this would be the plan, though obviously we hadn't worked out the details. Hell, we didn't know the kid's gender or how many kids I'd be having.
I remember saying "I'm going to be crucified for this." No one had ever killed one of the kids before, and I would be doing so.
But at the end of that night, it was settled. I was going to "kill" the invisible kid, the twin of the heiress (Stacie always wanted a girl), and Stacie would bring him/her back.
The idea sat for a while, while I finished college and got Maddie and Stella married. I played, I plotted, stuff happened. Go look at my (original) Behind the Scenes for more on that. :D
Then they both got pregnant, and I decided to cheesecake them, making my kids actual twins, making it just one group of kids. And when the kids were born, I knew immediately that Stacie was going to choose either Roxanna or Seren. She could have chosen Astraea, yes, but I had a feeling she was going to grab the alien eyes. That meant, then, that Astraea or Ma'or was the kid fated to die. And the idea started growing again.
I started trying to figure out HOW to kill the kid. By this point, I knew Rosalie was going to be the one who did, and that it was going to involve mirrors. I also figured out quickly that the urn would be smashed, but that it would actually be Francis - dead!zombie's - urn.
My first thought was to avoid showing it - to have it happen offstage. In this case, the kid was going to end up trapped in a room with all mirrored walls, and Rosalie was going to shoot at him/her while invisible. However, she would have missed, though the invisible kid would have been seriously injured (because, you know, getting hit by broken glass from a mirror that’s been shot at would have been pretty painful and not so easy to heal). There were two possibilities, which I hadn't decided between at this point. First, Rosalie would have thought the kid was actually dead, but hadn't been able to find the urn quickly enough, so smashed Francis's instead. Second, Rosalie would have known the kid WASN'T dead, but decided to hurt the rest of the family by smashing Francis's urn instead. I'm not sure if I ever would have had to decide - because this wouldn't have shown up in the chapters. Either way, Susanna (who didn't actually exist at this point - she was the last thing I did for Chapter Four, and she was conceived/born/aged to toddler/aged to child in the same day) was going to help the kid escape.
Eventually, due mainly to conversations with Lark, who declared that she wouldn't believe that the kid was dead unless she saw it (I'd told her there would be a death, but not that it wouldn't be permanent), I decided that killing the kid offstage would be too ambiguous. By this point, I'd finished Chapter Four, Stacie had confirmed that Roxanna was heir, and that Astraea was the one who was going to die. She also sent me her prologue (in text version), which I read, then read again, then read a third time...and my jaw dropped. Roxanna was the vampire! The "Dear One" was Astraea! I was quite gleeful.
I realized that I had to make the death VISIBLE and FINAL. The urn smashing was going to be a large part of that, but not all. And so I came up with this plan. Astraea was somehow going to end up at the zombie house (still didn't know those details - though if it had been Ma’or to die, it would have involved him being dared to go instead of sneaking himself), Rosalie was going to catch her, and she was going to actually die, onstage. Later, Susanna would switch the urns and then resurrect her once the zombies were dead. I'd already established that Rosalie had a bone phone (to resurrect the zombies), though I hadn't actually shown it - so I added a scene to Chapter Five where Susanna watched a resurrection. Obviously, I also needed a reason for Astraea not to follow Roxanna immediately, thereby killing Stacie's plot. So I decided that the bone phone only cures the injury that caused death, and that Rosalie injured her before killing her.
I actually wrote and shot the deleted scenes as they fit into the chapter itself, deciding at that point to just show the slide before each scene in order to lead into them. Some of it required a bit of tricky staging, but it went quite well. Let me tell you, though - that last picture in the actual chapter, of Susanna sitting by the bed? I had to take it about four times to avoid a glimpse of Astraea, and you can actually see that the bedspread isn't quite flat if you look closely.
In case you're curious, Astraea WAS dead. Overnight, in fact, and I cried when I wrote her death, shot her death...and resurrected her. However, her urn was never smashed. That was actually Francis's urn, and believe me, after she started annoying me as a ghost, I was quite glad to smash it. I DO have nounlinkondelete in my game, but didn't want to have to depend on it. Actually, I ended up killing another zombie (er…one of the minor ones, don’t ask me her name) and smashing her urn as well, because someone cleaned up the first one before I could shoot the gypsy stuff right before the song at the end.
And after this, it was a matter of sitting back and waiting to be crucified. I was pleasantly surprised when I wasn't.
But then I got to keep this quiet. Stacie, Marina, and I were the only ones who knew exactly what was going on. Annie and Jenn both got sent some plot stuff by Stacie that did include some of the Astraea stuff, but I guess it wasn't very clear, since even Annie was surprised at the very end of my Chapter 5 - she thought Astraea would be a ghost as well, which she wasn't.
This meant I saw a LOT of speculation. Some of it was quite interesting, and even accurate.
Things that various people suggested:
- Susanna should have switched the urns (she did)
- Dave gave Rosalie the wrong urn to smash (he did, but not intentionally - he thought it was actually Astraea's, because it was in the right location)
- Rosalie got confused over the location of the urns and asked Dave for the wrong one (not true)
- Astraea was in the room that Madam Barbara was looking at and commenting on at the very end of the chapter (she was, but I actually meant for that to refer to Susanna - but it ended up working for both of them)
- Astraea was in fact dead, and a ghost, and had gotten stuck invisible (not at all accurate, though I found it the most innovative of the ideas I heard - and also not true because Astraea could be HEARD while invisible, so she’d have been able to talk to Roxanna even if she couldn’t be seen)
- Astraea or her ghost was “Dear One” and with Roxanna (accurate)
Also, funniest comment ever? Stacie saying to me “you’re not going to kill Maddie and Stella, are you?” I couldn’t help but laugh, because she knew my plans with Astraea - but then again, she also knew Astraea wouldn’t be permanently dead. But, no, them dying was never in my plans.
I left Madam Barbara open at that point as something that Stacie could work with if she wanted to. As far as I know, she had no plans to, but I did bring her back myself once I took over Generation 9, and still left her open in case anyone writing a spare story for someone else wants to use her.
At one point, I was considering doing a "spare story" for Susanna - not official, of course, as she wasn't actually a spare. Madam Barbara would almost certainly play a role in that if I do, though I haven't felt the need to in a while. I couldn't until after Stacie finished, because I needed the deleted scenes to be published - Susanna saved Astraea, and it would have picked up after that, not before. There really wasn't a way to avoid discussing the Astraea issue. People asked me, too, if Susanna would be okay, and I basically gave the ambiguous answer of "eventually, yes, but it may take time." After all, bringing Astraea back would heal HER, too, but I couldn’t say that.
So that was three years.
THREE YEARS.
No, seriously, three fucking years that I kept this a secret, from March 16th 2010 to March 31st 2013, with only a few of us knowing the truth. Marina was absolutely my hand-holder throughout all of this, telling me it would be okay, and helping me to deal with it. I still can't believe we managed it, but we did. So...go us?
…So, um, I know some of you may not be happy that Stacie and I DID bring Astraea back. I have a feeling that I’m going to get some comments saying "you couldn’t stick with it?" And the answer is that, if I’d planned from the start to kill a kid, that would be a very valid question to ask.
But that’s not what happened. What happened is that Stacie and I planned to make it LOOK like the kid was dead, and bring him/her back at the end of Stacie’s turn...which later became my turn, but, well, same difference.
So yes, I didn’t actually kill a kid. But I knew that was what was going to happen from the beginning.
And who knows? Maybe in the future, now that I’ve paved the way, someone will actually kill one of the RR teens while they’re children or teens. Obviously, they’d have to discuss this with the person after them, because killing the kid that someone is interested in for heir would be totally rude and uncalled for.
And now some pictures.
Astraea was in the hood from the very beginning.
...I made this secret last year, when we had a secrets week, and was very careful with it. I wanted people to think it was Roxanna - as I intentionally gave them the same hairstyle - but it was actually Astraea.
I was very intentional in how I dressed Astraea. She and Roxanna were mirrors of each other - they had the same hair, hiding the ears, and different clothing...but both intentionally dressed in the other's colors rather than their own. Roxanna started my chapters in pink and black; Astraea first showed up in purple.
Having Astraea in the hood from the beginning meant that I did have to shoot around her, which was a hassle at times, but not a huge one. I wanted her to be related to Roxanna, though, so making them in CAS together, along with the kids, made more sense.
Along with them, I made an invisible sim, who was called "Astraea," who I used when I needed someone invisible. However, while the everyday outfit is invisible, the others aren't, which leads to interesting situations like the first picture. I think in the second one I'd had someone influence "Astraea" to clean.
Astraea makes a gorgeous vampire, doesn't she?
Originally, I'm not sure if Stacie planned on vamping Astraea, but once I thought about it, there really wasn't any other option. I mean, the prologue/epilogue took place about a hundred years after the rest of the chapters - if Astraea wasn't a vampire, how could she still be around? I did have the option of it actually being her ghost, but I didn't want it to be that way, and I had a feeling that not only would Astraea see the fun side of vampirism, much as Marcus eventually did, she'd also want to be around to be with her sister.
I really honestly considered using this picture as the moment Roxanna sees Astraea in the mirror, but I decided I wanted to leave you all in a bit more suspense than that. :P So instead I took it from the other angle, showing the empty doorway rather than Astraea in the mirror.
Myshuno!
Last (but certainly not least), some drabbles that I did for the sim-spiration Myshuno! Challenge.
I wrote about some of the behind the scenes stuff for both generations, including Maddie's love life, some of Maddie's friends, Susanna's life with the zombies, other stuff the pseudo-quads did with their free time, the true level of Rosalie's insanity, Maddie and Stella after Generation 8 ended, and Desdemona's experiments in hair dye.
Some of the ones I wrote for Generation 9 actually made it in to the story (albeit slightly edited), as I wrote them beforehand, including Desdemona convincing her siblings to go to the outing of doom, the confrontation right after Lily's death, Roxanna entering the land of the dead, and the time right after the kids leave. I had to be careful about spoilers when writing these, but I think I managed okay, and I did put warnings up.
But most of all, there were the few where I really couldn't reveal what was happening, to the point that two of them got listed as unnamed universe. These three are Astraea saying goodbye to Susanna before heading off to find Roxanna, Roxanna and Astraea's conversation once they're finally together again (which I switched POVs for for the chapter, but Astraea's made more sense for the quote), and one moment after Roxanna was trapped as a vampire (and yes, Astraea did give her the plant, but I had to use the Rainelle red herring).
So yes...that is everything that was going on behind the scenes during Generation 9 of the Round Robin. I hope you enjoyed this BTS!
(Oh, and Lily would like to, once more, remind you that she has 8 nice points and that she hopes you enjoy her son's chapters, coming up soon.)
