Storyteller Spotlight: Dragancaor
SimStoryteller's Spotlight with Dragancaor,
creator of A Strange Little Desert Town, Pleasantacres Asylum & Synergy...
1. Tell us about yourself. (What you do for a living, your interests, where you live, your non-sim hobbies, etc.)
I live in Western Australia in the capital, Perth.
Perth, Western Australia
Originally I hail from London, with mainly Scotts & Eire in my family, but we moved to Oz when I was little. I’ve lived up & down West Aus; from Derby & Port Hedland in the far north, Denham in the mid north, & have spent ultra long holidays in the southwest of Western Australia in Albany & Bridgetown, as well as Darwin in the Northern Territory.
Bridgetown, Western Australia
I can’t say I have a favourite though; this state is the most varied (possibly from being the biggest). Perth is green, southwest in Albany we get snow occasionally, the beaches & reefs along the coast are to die for & the central region has deserts & the north is the tropics… Mind you, we’re very isolated here too. Even though it’s a capital city, Perth is rather forgotten by the rest of the country. Things take two weeks to get in from Melbourne & when getting Pentax accessories I’m better off importing from Hong Kong.
Scarborough, Western Australia
I’m hoping on a move to Siem Reap, Cambodia in the next few years, but that’s still just work & play at the moment & nothing official. Ultimately, that’s where my heart lies but when it also makes for a great base of operations for photojournalism it’s one of those can’t ignore the idea things. I very nearly didn’t come home from there last year. Truth be told, we only came home for our cats.
Chong Khneas Village, Cambodia
Bueong Tonle Sap, Cambodia
My hobbies have had to totally change since a major car accident all but ruined my back in 2005. I was forced from 10 active to 0 & am slowly working my way back up. Meanwhile, no sport. So my currently possible hobbies include Dungeons & Dragons, photography, reading, languages, writing, drawing… & live music. I write D&D campaigns, anywhere from 2 - 8 player tables. The biggest campaign was an 8 player table that ran for 4 years. I have a series of novels that’s a work in progress sitting around gathering dust in the corner; I’ll explain that later. Occasionally I run or help run LANs. The biggest was 230+ people & is held 4 times per year. I also have a silly little 1 frame webcomic that I update totally randomly too.
I’m a freelance photographer. Most of my work involves live music, festivals & events, though I also enjoy fine art, portraiture, travel, landscapes… actually if I see it with my lens I’ll likely shoot it. [grins]
I’ve been looking at life through a lens for 16 years now; I got my first camera at age 10 so that my parents didn’t need to stress on never having theirs’. We lived in the West Kimberley (just north of Broome) at the time & I spent 2 years totally wrapped up in landscape photography. Now, I’m never without my camera.
A friend described my perfect accessories to a Little Black Gucci Dress to be Demonia Boots & my Lowepro Backpack. He’s sadly right. I went to my partner’s work ball last year in a beautiful, white velvet, flowing medieval gown, & my Lowepro pack.
[waves]
2. Do you have other creative pursuits that affect how you tell your sim stories? (Such as photography, creative writing, etc.)
I wouldn’t say my photography really affects my sims stories… it’s only recently I’ve discovered TAB mode & the Q & E buttons. [headdesk]
But my writing does. I tend towards long paragraphs & dialogue, with chapters around the 11 page mark in 10pt ariel. I aim for my stories to work without the images too, writing them first in MS-Word & then duplicating the document & finding images to work with it afterwards.
Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia
My love of travel, I feel, has rather improved the bank of locations, cultures & personalities I have to draw from for my stories. In some ways though, that hits straight back to my photography - just not in the obvious sense.
Pre Rup Temple, Angkor Region, Cambodia
3. Why did you start creating and posting sim stories?
Before the accident, I was writing a series of sci-fi/fantasy novels that were based upon the main D&D campaign I ran. A whole world, political systems, racial cultures, castes…. 20 pages of notes averages out into roughly 12 chapters and I have 3 rather large (read: overflowing) files of notes. It was a side hobby; I worked 6 days a week full time (8-12 hour days) managing a busy real estate office & the boss used to laugh at me sitting in the board room on my lunch break “scribbling away, lost in the reality of your own warped mind”. She was a really good boss & I sometimes rather miss working there.
But with the accident, came the ‘not allowed to do [enter any suggestion you can come up with here]’ & all the wretched meds. Some of those meds totally nuked my mind. I had the worst writer’s block I’d ever known. Lots of other stuff happened around then that I’ll avoid mentioning & I stopped writing. Totally.
I was looking for custom content I think, or possibly trying to find out hints for getting crops to grow right in Seasons & I stumbled across a sim legacy post on thesims2, written as postcards to a girl’s aunt. Sadly, I have no idea what it was called or who wrote it & never saw a second entry. But it stuck in my mind. Later, I was playing generation 3 of the first family to ever be reinstalled after a harddrive format & suddenly I had an urge to write, grabbed a notebook & penned a letter. That simple letter was to later become the opening piece of chapter 6 of A Strange Little Desert Town.
I ended up back-writing for the generation 1 & 2 characters in that family & so began A Strange Little Desert Town. The idea was to get me back into writing the way I used to, without it being a "serious" project that I would over criticise, so that I could go back to writing R.O.T.D. (the big fantasy project that still has no official name). That’s still in the corner gathering dust though, & my Stripe family now have 11 chapters online & a massive, mapped out story arc spanning 5 generations.
4. Do you use Maxis pre-made sims, original sims, sims based on other sources (TV, movies, books, other games), or some combination of these? Why?
A Strange Little Desert Town is both original & Maxis sims. That said, I’ve scattered most of the Maxis timeline of Strange Town to the wind & just let them enter the story where they seem to fit… leaving me to later tweak their back stories to work.
Synergy is entirely other people’s sims &/or their spawn from other other-people’s sims. I’m writing it as my story for pixel_trade, so all the characters are originally from other members there.
Pleasantacres Asylum is technically all CAS, though Maxian sims visit & feature.
One Horseman & Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse, & Latrodectus (both yet to screen) are one CAS sim as a Founder, then townies & born in game kids. The former is an Apocalypse Challenge & the latter a Black Widow Challenge.
5. How long does it take you to create a new CAS sim for a story? (If you create original sims, that is.)
Not including the time it takes my Bodyshop program to load, on average about 20 mins to create the face. That’s taking into account the ones that involve ‘clone, convert, tweak, tweak, finished’ & the ones that I spend an hour or so on modelling from a photograph.
Hatefueled & her sim counterpart
Hatefueled, from Pleasantacres Asylum, took just over an hour to create though she is modelled after one of my closest friends. Jenny & Marty from Mike Stripe’s laboratory in ASLDT took me just under an hour to make them both.
6. Do you have one sim that frustrates you more than any of the others?
Law Harbinger. He’s one of the G2s of One Horseman & Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse - he never gets the promotion, always drops his queue & constantly cheats at chess.
Kerryc Stripe of A Strange Little Desert Town is a very close second. Funnily enough, he also cheats at chess.
I am known to yell at the dear critters.
7. Do your sims have their own theme songs?
Themes? Nope.
8. Do you like using aliens, vampires, zombies or any other non "normal" sims?
No more, or less, than any others. Each sim has his or her own personal character & merits (& flaws), but it does add a bit extra flavour I suppose. I most enjoy writing from the pets’ perspectives though.
Neurotoxin Latrodectus
9. Do you usually create backstories for your sims?
Yes. Definitely. Every single last one of them has a back story, sometimes up to 5 pages long. They may never feature or even gain more than a fleetingly brief mention, but they are an integral part of what makes that character tick.
In the case of Synergy, there are not only character backstories, but also race histories, governments, planet histories, systems, alliances…. It’s why it’s taking so long to kick it off from the prologue.
10. If it were possible, would you carry out "romantic interactions" with any of your sims?
Only if it was a self sim of my partner, & if I found enough CC to make that even remotely possible, he’d kill me if he ever found out I’d made one =P
11. Have you ever cried when a sim died? How emotionally attached are you to your sims?
I haven’t cried for a sim, no. However, I got really damn upset when Akamaru Stripe died (he was the founder’s dog), because I didn’t know until they got the tombstone memory above their heads & I saw his thumbnail was gone. But the worst part was writing about it. I had to take a break after that section of chapter 9; I had coffee, fragged in Battlefield 2 for a while, then came back.
Akamaru Stripe
I’ve cried when someone else’s character died though. Once. When Ben Long killed Aidan in Uys’s Cutler legacy. But it was her full bodied characters & story writing that caused that, not the sim himself.
12. Do you have a favourite character/family?
Most attached to the Stripes.
No one else had grabbed my attention all that much, & with new hardware came killdisks & reinstalls. April 2007 saw the advent of Miranda Stripe, founder of A Strange Little Desert Town, & my second ever sim death - Nervous Subject, who combusted in the spa while Staying the Night after his son Mike’s toddler transition, courtesy of Seasons. They were the first family to ever cause me to reinstall a backed up neighbourhood after reinstalling my game or building a new system.
Ash Stripe
Six generations of complete insanity & randomness. Carrie, generation 5, & Ash, generation 3 are probably my favourites from that family. They show the most personality & are the most fun to both play & write about.
Carrie Stripe
13. Are there any stories in particular (sim or non-sim) that have inspired your storytelling?
If I ever find myself struggling to write, I go & read the Belgariad series or Redemption of Althalus by David Eddings. I always come out of those books itching to grab a pen.
Terry Pratchett & Douglas Adams probably heavily inspire my writing. I rather enjoy adding bits & pieces of references or quirks that I am sure are from far too much reading of their work.
14. How do you decide on names for your sims?
I have a notebook with pages of names that I keep adding to when I hear ones I like. When a baby is born into the Stripes I pick them from that, based on what I feel the parents would probably lean to.
The Latrodectus family are all Irish. Simsperiment twins are sets of things (June was sci fi television series’, different show per set of twins). Harbinger are all along the lines of Law, Hope, Destiny…
15. Do you use hacks in your game? If so, which ones? How do they affect your stories?
Yep. The vast majority of them fix things or smoothen/balance game play. MATY's Antiredundancy, nopetobsession, nobabyharrassment, noghostelevatorlag, noplayabeshoppers, nowhatsthis, nounlinkondelete, Twojeff's Freetime Crtical Aspiration Fix... things like that. Then there’s the Insim, Christianlov’s ressurectanypet (rescued my disappearing grave markers), Alien eyes, hidden skins, & various model pose boxes (Jaydee, Akea Guinea, Decorgal) which I rather rarely remember I have.
16. Do you have a favourite EP/SP? Which expansion adds the most to storytelling for you?
Pets! Definitely pets.
I adore writing from their point of view & I could never live without my own in real life, so therefore why should my characters be stripped of the opportunity? I have an insane Russian, & my partner has a moody Ragdoll, both cats. Sadly, his Persian passed away in april and is certainly missed about the house - she was Deaf & highly friendly, you would come home to a “REOW!!” that could blow eardrums. My best friend’s cat is an attention seeking tabby & has this terrible habit of taking over the pool table. Since moving out, visiting Evad involves at least an hour of photography of his cat.
Emperess Moppet (16)
Shadow (8)
Mr Marvin (8)
The late Cleopatra (15)
My two dogs live with my mother in a far more dog friendly yard that isn’t on a main highway. One is a Staffy, Pitbull cross, the other is a Cocker Spaniel, Jack Russell cross. Friendliest dogs ever. They both sleep on mum’s bed.
17. Do you make your own custom content?
I have dabbled in painting recolours & a few bloodied & scribbled on walls, though have never uploaded anything other than sims & houses.
I have blender installed, I just never use it anymore. Possibly because I wasn’t very good =P
18. Do you have a favourite sim outfit or hairstyle?
Nouk’s ponytail dreads have to be my favourite, with the maxis mohawke running a close second.
I don’t really have a favourite outfit; though untuckable sets rate among my highest used.
19. What are some things that you wish were included in Sims 2, but aren't? (For example - social interactions, the way sims interact with objects, etc.)
Something special for elders with toddlers/kids that adults/teens don’t get. Let’s face it, grandparents will always have that unique thing that you only get with them.
And better interactions for parents with kids… though it looks as though Apartment Life will cover some of that if the teasers are anything to go by.
& tombstones for birds/womrats! The parrots especially - they live 80-120 years in real life & certainly become part of the family.
20. How long does it usually take you to prepare a story update?
Ugh… writing a chapter can take anywhere from a fortnight to six weeks. I, all too often, discover that I’ve written in characters that never existed & focused on non-gameplay that I have no images that even come close to covering.
Mike Stripe at work
Mike’s Lab in ASLDT is a fine example. Long after he was buried in the backyard cemetery, I wrote about events that might have occurred if Mike was playable while he was off at work as a Mad Scientist. So I backed up my neighbourhood & installed a version from when he was still alive, moved him out & built him a lab, a receptionist, a Second, and two test subjects. Not thinking, I didn’t save any of it & destroyed its existence when I was finished. The following chapter I needed it again. [headdesk]. So I rebuilt it, decidedly better the second time, & covered the continuity issues with an offhand "renovation" comment. When I was finished, I backed up that hood with "Mike’s Lab" added to the folder name.
21. Show and tell: Please show us your workspace (a photograph, if possible, or just describe it), and tell us about the conditions you prefer to work in. Do you have any bizarre habits or rituals?
The top two monitors are linked to the black machine on the right, lower monitor is the silverish machine on the left. Then the laptop sits on my left.
The network in our house currently has about 12 pcs on it, running everything from linux to various versions of windows. My partner built desks into the office specifically to suit LAN gaming, though he plays online from the loungeroom sofa =P
There is always coffee. Beans here get ground as needed & he whips up awesome brews, sometimes grinding hazelnut or cacao & adding them. I'll drink instant though, if he's out.
There’s also always cat fur. The silver case has no sides & is constantly needing vaccuming. Moppy & Shadow are both quite happy to attempt to lie on keyboards. Shadow also has a thing about attacking the cursor.
I have a couple of 320 page A5 notebooks that live beside the computers. If I take the laptop somewhere, the current notebook slips into the front pocket of the bag. Those notebooks have everything in them from doctor/lawyer conversation notes to notes relating to image numbers, shoot ideas, games & random blather.
22. Do you usually have your sims act to a pre-written script, just follow what they do, or some of both? what comes first - the text or the image? Is one of the elements more important than the other to you, or are they about equal?
A Strange Little Desert Town is a vast mishmash of point form notes, barely legible scribble & dialogue written as I play. I’m writing the chapters a few generations behind gameplay & definitely use a mixture of notes & images to get back into their characters. Sure, there’s a plot map… but that’s it. The rest is them as they show themselves to act with a heap of poetic license dumped on top, & sometimes setting up a scene with backup installs after I’ve written. I had intended to go to 10 generations, but then a particular sim was born & was exactly what I had intended to create in G10…. So that sim is now just an early end-game that I was handed on a platter. XD
The text is more important, but doesn’t happen without the images… though some images are after text. Gah. That’s like the chicken/egg isn’t it.
Pleasantacres Asylum is the diary of my controllable me|sim, held against her will in a run down asylum full of uncontrollable sims of people I am friends with. I grab a heap of images from a couple of game play periods, then write the entries to suit.
Antares from "Synergy"
Synergy is entirely prewritten. There’s a plot map for the series already, histories done & each episode has storyboards I am to follow. In this case especially the text importance far outweighs the images. It spreads out across an A3 sketchbook & a couple of notebooks.
I carry a little black spiral notebook with me at all times. It has a mixture of story ideas, photo-shoot diagrams & notes from things I watch occurring. It’s normally out when I’m on the train, though my best (worst?) was hanging my camera on my shoulder, crouching low between speaker stacks & fold backs at the front edge of a mosh pit at a metal gig to write a sudden idea in it. In the images of my PC setup you can sort of see my little black notebook sitting behind the lower monitor.
Remember that Lowepro pack I mentioned earlier? It lives in the front pocket of that.
23. Can you give us any hints about what is coming up in your stories? (Oh, come on...)
A Strange Little Desert Town... Um... there’s a holiday, & a funeral that completely devastates one of the twins... more in Mike’s lab (remember the one that got away? Did he really?)... & we haven’t heard the last from the money grubbing dirt bag that is Gilbert Jacquet.
Marty & the one that got away
Synergy... [cough] starts.
Antares
Pleasantacres Asylum finishes next episode, no spoilers there - you’ll have to wait & see what caused the end =P
24. In your opinion, what makes a good sim story? What do you like to read in other people's stories?
Good writing, humour, and/or some well managed drama. Graphics I couldn’t care less about, & so what if you have speech bubbles and walls down? If someone not only has a grasp of grammar & story spinning but also utilises them then there’s a high chance I will get hooked.
Not having hundreds of images helps. I rather enjoy stories that have a comfortable balance between text & image, not one line per image. But there’s a couple of exceptions to that ‘rule’. I think it’s more related to a lack of spare bandwidth rather than anything else though.
I’m not really genre specific in my published novel reading, & that certainly extends to LJ story reading.
25. How often do you check your flist to see if your favourite authors have updated?
Too often =P
Especially with my current flare up issues having me totally housebound.
26. Storytelling aside, what first drew you to The Sims? What do you like most about playing The Sims?
The accident in early 2005 & its complete destruction of my life & routines at the time, coupled with severe clinical depression, led to a friend bringing over Base game, Nightlife & Uni around November/December of that year. He was met with "Ugh. Sims. Don’t be stupid, I’m not installing that." He showed me MTS2 & CC, & a couple of gothic creators, gave me a copy of his downloads folder & told me to "try & hate it in a couple of days." He was right, & worst of all it ran on my laptop... which made it portable [grins]
It’s a sandbox game. Sure, it’s essentially a god game at a closer in level than most, but the genetics have me hooked just as deeply as the story possibilities. When I’ve had PC issues, & my graphics heavier games like Battlefield 2 & FEAR wont run, the stupid little critters keep me occupied vs insomnia & lack of internet. I set myself challenges & have at least one in every neighbourhood… on 2 laptops & my main desktop/workhorse.
27. How long have you been playing The Sims? Have you been playing since Sims 1?
November or December 2005. I still have not played Sims 1.
28. Do you only play the game with stories in mind, or do you also play just for fun? Do you record everything with photos anyway?
Stories, fun, challenges... & yes, just like I do with real life around me, I record everything in images. Lol. A story or two that I am working on were never intended to be stories, just play that grew too big for its boots.
29. Do you have a self sim? (We'd love to see him/her, if you want to share a pic.)
Here she is. My hair is longer now & I have an asymmetrical fringe, but I haven’t gotten around to updating her yet =P
30. Is there anything else you would like to add?
I love the community that surrounds this game. For a single player game, it has a massive community of close knit people all sharing their experiences & content. It creates another aspect to an already full game & leaves most other sandbox games for dead.
Gozza
Which sim/s do you relate to more or is most based on yourself and in what way...
Um… The one most based on me is the one in the asylum I think, being that she’s supposed to be me. Though perhaps Ash Stripe. Life gave her a few hard turns in the road & she keeps trying. There’s a strength in her character that keeps her going that I based a bit off my own stubbornness to get my life back on track. It might help that she’s also my default avatar sim =P
I know that the strange town er..series? is based in the Kimberley's where you grew up so how similar is it and in what ways to the town and life you based it on?
The desert of A Strange Little Desert Town is loosely based in the West of the Tanami Desert, which is the northernmost desert in Australia. It’s about a day’s drive from where I lived as a kid, but I remember our travel across it from a stint in the Northern Territory.
The Tanami Track was mostly graded gravel, not bitumen back then & you couldn’t cross it on one tank of fuel. It was a fair stretch to go between petrol stations without needing a jerry can, with the most memorable servo being one named ‘Rabbit Flat’. Petrol was $1.20/L there - it was $0.50/L either side of the desert. They knew you had no choice. All that place was, was a service station & campsite with flat nothingness either side.
Saltwater Crocodile, Western Australia
But the Stripes live in place with that Aussie Outback small town feel. Everyone knows everyone, & their business - sometimes before even they do! Lots of play outside, extreme weather & few but very close friendships. One private school, one public school, one highschool.
simsforaranya
How do you keep track of your storyline?
Do you work it into the pics after you take them, or take the pics according to a storyline you’ve already made up?
I have a couple of notebooks & a trigger happy shutter finger for Irfanview. I take images as I play & then use them as a reference for the character when I write. The main plot is already written, though how they get there is established as I go. Sometimes I go back & shoot to suit the chapter, if I can’t get my original images to fit.
That’s basically the case for all of them except Synergy, but that’s explained earlier.
Notu
Would you consider yourself fluent in simlish?
Not fluent - I can’t speak it but I can understand what they are going on about. =P
Can you understand what is happening in the game just by listening?
Sadly, yes. Playing across the room from you with your speakers on for the Apocalypse challenge LANs I know what yours are complaining about. & when they are pillow fighting.
Do you know all the words to any songs from the sims in simlish?
Damn you for asking. Depeche Mode were on the radio a few months back & my partner pulled me up on singing along in Simlish. I went a week without the game after that. Couldn’t bear to play it.
I know the nursery rhyme by heart too.
Have you ever found yourself mentally calculating what the personality points would be of someone you’ve just met as if they were a sim?
Thankfully, no. I think if I ever do I will uninstall the game.
What was your best experience playing the sims?
What was the worst?
I suppose the worst would be when I realise I am playing it without enjoying it & focusing too hard on the storyline. That normally involves a backup, & I don’t play at all for a few weeks/months.
The best would be getting through my writers block. Looking at my first couple of chapters & comparing them to my newest I’m really happy with being able to get my ability to write back.
the_toclafane
Has playing The Sims 2 & writing helped you overcome anything in your real life?
It’s given me an instrument to work though a number of harsh times. It gave me a good creative outlet when I needed one the most. Stuck in the house with medical issues like I was when I first got it, & where I am back to for the moment, it has certainly helped me overcome at the very least of boredom & has probably helped keep my sanity while I wait for my body to heal.
~*~
I think that was it.
Thanks for reading!!