Chapter 35 & 36 BTS/meta
Feb. 13th, 2012 12:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katrisimsOkay, so now that I'm finally done with that huge double update I've been working on for ages, I thought I should maybe do some BTS/meta/outtakes picspam on the double update. There's some stuff I've been sitting on for... I don't even know how long and I'm anxious to get to talk about it. :) The following is veeeeery spoilery for chapters 35 & 36, so clicky on the cut at your own risk if you've not read the double update yet!
The wedding
So let's start with the wedding itself. As you might know, Cyrus and Chris are one of my fave couples this generation, so I've known for a while that they'd end up married, and I wanted their wedding to be big and fancy. And I did also want to make it memorable - which I suppose I did. :) So adding plotzy aspects to it was quite natural. But let's talk about the plot a bit later, and let's first have some pictures of the wedding.
I wanted to give Cyrus and Chris a flashy wedding, partly because I like them, partly because I needed to include the wedding in the plot, and partly because I felt that Chris would want a big wedding with quite literally everyone in it. So that inspired me to download some wedding cc, and decorate their lot with it. I was quite pleased with the result, as although I'm in no way a builder or decorator, it looked somewhat as a wedding scene. Also, Cyrus and Chris ended up earning some cheated money since I needed it to buy all the wedding stuff, but I figured it wouldn't matter in the long run, since they don't have to play by the legacy rules, plus with well-paying jobs they'd soon have more money than they can spend anyway.
One of the first things that became apparent to me when I started to shoot the wedding was that apparently it was no longer feasible to have the whole family & extended family on the lot at once. I actually tried that at first, since I did want to give the impression that really everyone was present at the wedding, and that it was sort of a "event of the year" as well. The result was that when I had just about everyone on the lot and tried to change them into formalwear with the sim blender, my game crashed. I didn't even get a picture of what the house looked like with everyone crammed in, but this later picture with a smaller crew might give some idea. Believe me, it was quite a sight.
So then, I figured that because my game couldn't really handle everyone being there at once, I'd have to do it so that I'd import the family there a group at a time and mix the groups a bit, so that it'd seem that they all were there. And in any case, I wouldn't think they'd all fit into a single picture if I tried. So one important group was naturally the first circle, which includes the main family, the Rileys and the Camerons. The Riley's I figured would come with the Bookacies, and the Camerons I needed to be a little late.
Cho had spent a little too much time outside somewhere, so we had to give her some hot chocolate before shooting.
The next issue was getting everyone outside and dressed wedding-appropriately. And that's when I found out (again) how lousy I am at remembering to change the brides out of their wedding dresses after the wedding. I had to toy around, put Squinge's clothing mod back in, then go into various households and plan outfits, and only then I could get back to shooting the wedding.
Shooting the wedding reception itself was a straightforward thing. I just had various sims sit at various tables, either with food or without, and let them chat. Occasionally, I'd have someone talking or fetching food in the background too, to make the wedding seem more crowded. All I had to do was to make sure I had plenty of pictures, hopefully of just about everyone.
There were some more discussion shots and other interaction shots that I would have wanted to use but had no space. Like this one. I had Claire and Trevor kiss in the backround for some picture, and simultaneously Laura did this on her own. I just moved her to the correct spot. In the end, I didn't need the picture for anything, plus I suppose the creepy smile is a bit too creepy anyway.
In general, I considered adding more random pieces of conversation between the family stories, to make it seem more like a real wedding, but in the end I settled for a small amount, since a) the first part was long enough as it was and b) writing that chit-chat was a bit of a pain and I wasn't sure if I was getting it right at all.
"Hiiiiii! I know how to creepy-smile, too!"
That's nice, Claire.
This one was another one I would have liked to use but had no space or need. I loved posing Carl, Veronica and Audrey as a trio and would have wanted to show them more. Which nicely leads us to our next topic, which is...
Carl/Veronica/Audrey
Carl's life as an adult has been something I've been sitting on for a while and have been excited about. You might or might not remember that Carl is a romancer, and has been basically seeing at least two girls regularly through college.
Veronica GilsCarbo, who's the blonde romancer dormie from SSU...
... and Audrey London, who's the spiky-haired punk-spirited SSU dormie girl, also a romancer.
Now, when Carl was in college, he was a bit tough to figure out romantically. I think the first girl he picked was Veronica, but as he was a romancer, I did want to keep his options open. A little while later, he found Audrey, and I thought he'd probably keep finding other love-interests, and possibly wouldn't be the type to settle down at all.
But I was somewhat surprised. Carl would admittedly have a fling every now and then, but for the most part, he'd stick to Audrey and Veronica. It might be partly because my sims are generally on a leash, and basically second cousins and closer (which is all I have so far, gen. D is the first generation with third cousins) get friends zoned as soon as I get them on a lot together, as do love-interests/spouses of other sims. But, that's how it was.
At some point, I'd try to figure out which girl Carl himself preferred, but it all seemed to pretty much just depend on which one was present. I'd invite one or both of them over, and he'd interract with one or both. On some occasions it might seem that maybe he'd prefer one over the other, but at the next party the roles could be reversed again.
So at that point I started to think about things. Veronica would sort of be the traditional choice: she was there first, and I'll admit it, she's the pretty one. But really, as it seemed that Carl himself didn't have a clear preference, and as I did like Audrey too and would have felt bad for leaving her at college while growing up Veronica for Carl, I started to think that maybe, just maybe Carl in fact wanted to have them both. I'd seen them interact, and I knew that in principle, with ACR and no jealousy for romancers (or at least these romancers), I wouldn't have too much trouble with an official three-person relationship.
So then, my plan started to form. After college, I went for it and moved them both in with Carl...
... and gave them makeovers, just like everyone else. I was especially pleased to find that even though that face template Audrey has is pretty extreme, she can actually look quite nice if you give her some pretty makeup and especially if you get her out of that spiky hair - that seemed to be particularly unflattering.
As I started playing the three of them together, I got more and more pleased with my decision. I really like both Audrey and Veronica, and it would have been sad to leave one of them at college. And then, there was something that had been vaguely forming in my head since their college years...
Babies. I had it in mind that especially since Carl is an only child, I would want him to have him have babies, even though he's a romancer. And since he had two official girlfriends... Well, that was just too good to pass up on, wasn't it?
And actually, they seemed to agree with me pretty much. All I did was turn on unmarried try-for-baby while playing their household, since I didn't want to have my hopes depend on a risky. The next time Carl and Veronica woohooed, they tried, and they succeeded.
And I'd realized that if at all I'd understood the workings of ACR correctly, as long as Veronica's baby hadn't been born, Carl's chances of trying for a baby with Audrey would be high, since ACR would check his kid count and it'd be zero. And regardless of Carl's assigned "one sim", he would eventually woohoo both girls, because they both had him as their "one".
And Carl did indeed eventually try and succeed with Audrey too. Okay, to be entirely fair, I did have them "auto woo" about 12 hours before they otherwise would have, since I realized that if Audrey got pregnant right then, I could get them both be in the third trimester at the same time, which would make a pretty darn good side plot for the chapter. I could not resist. But while I technically did make them woohoo, they did still decide on their own to try for a baby, and they succeeded at that.
This is also, by the way, the real reason why Carla and Kevin Patch got pregnant before they got married: their house is right after Carl's in the rotation, and I forgot to turn unmarried TFB back off before I switched households. (I like to keep it off for the most part, so that freshly grown up sims wouldn't jump at making babies the second they come from college.)
That's pretty much when I made the final decision of moving Beth and Sean in with the trio. Or well... I suppose I was absolutely sure the moment when I saw from the pregnancy scanner that Veronica was actually expecting twins. :D I figured the help would be welcome, plus I wouldn't need to have an elders-only household in the rotation.
And yes, Beth is really growing emergency strawberries in case someone decides to do an autonomous base game interraction and cause drama. So far there's been no drama, and even the kiddies (I'll post pictures in my regular picspam once I get to that) haven't been upset so far. I hope that stays that way, but if there's a problem, at least I have strawberries at the ready.
The plot volcano
"Mwhahahaha, I'm the evil villain and I'm cackling while waiting for my turn to shoot plotsiness!"
So, as I said, giving Chris and Cyrus the memorable wedding they deserved was one aspect of what I wanted to do with the wedding. Another aspect had, naturally, to do with Sal. As I've been saying, I've come to realize that if I want to ever finish this legacy, I need to downscale a bit, and the only way to downscale that I've found so far that I'm happy with, is (temporarily) downplaying plot. Sal's been involved for a long time, and more recently quite heavily involved, via Cyrus' vampirism and Charlie's death. Sal and the inter-generational plot is one thing that has been keeping me interested, but I felt that to get forward with the legacy, I need to get rid of that constant plot. As a recurring villain, one that I've had since the beginning and one that I've come to know and love, he of course couldn't be killed; I don't think anyone will be surprised when I say that Sal will be back, more dangerous than ever. So the most natural solution for this problem was to have him get caught.
So then, once we know that what I needed to do with Sal was to have him get caught, it all starts to click together with what's happened previously. I can't say that I've had it all planned all along, but somehow it's all become an interconnected web of things. You see, one of the reasons why Charlie died was that I needed to get Sal to know about the gypsy magic protection. Since once Charlie had died, Sal would eventually come to notice that the family had, contrary to his assumptions, not resurrected him. And once he'd get to know that, he'd eventually get to know why. His ultimate goal is to resurrect Author, and he's been trying to get there for generations. Now, if he got to know that as long as the family doesn't resurrect anyone, he can't either, he'd deduct that in order to break the protection, he'd have to do something quite difficult: kill an heir. (Yes, as you've probably noticed, Sal's knowledge of the protection is not complete.) And with his knowledge about the other protections around the family, he'd start to get desperate. And desperate was exactly what I needed him to be to get caught.
It did also make sense to get him caught while generation B was still alive. When Aadam had enough and left Sal's lair because he'd used Marsha as a means to and end and nearly killed her at the process, I hinted at several members of the generation being involved at some sort of an "anti-Sal-league" so to say, and Aadam and Marsha being at the center of it. For Marsha, the shock of being used by the man she'd learned to love as the only father she'd ever had had caused the strong will to see him get caught and if possible, be the one who captured him. In a way, I wanted to follow up on that and give those two some kind of a closure and peace of mind, even if they both knew that what they could do would very likely be of only temporary help. And finally, there was count Pao, whom I'd used in the very beginning as the vampire who turned Sal, and I felt the need to prove that he's in fact a good guy now that he's dating George. I'll totally admit I didn't see that one coming at the time. :) So, anyway, that's just about how the operation at the wedding came to be.
So, some bits and pieces on how I did it, and some funny takeouts. For the hedge thing, I believe I had Sal do the climbing animation from the obstacle course, and used OMSPS to move him where I wanted him. It was really by chance that nobody seemed to be looking his way when I was staging that.
Yes, everyone and their brother and sister and cousin and granny thinks that Cho's hot. Sal, you no can has, now concentrate on being villainy and pining over your long lost love!
Veronica, it's cute that you're suddenly aware you're pregnant and are patting the tummy quite autonomously, but it's hardly appropriate when you're facing the legacy villain eye to eye!
For the horrified poses, I used at leas the ghost scare animations (Claire) and the catch someone cheating animations (Audrey). I think I may have also used the firedance animation to get one that looks like the sim is covering themself with their arms, and Veronica (once I got her to stop rubbing the belly) used the shy self-hug animation. For the sims that are only just turning around and not yet realizing it's Sal, the OFB confused customer animations were once again a treasure.
Chris and Cyrus were not needed for the moment, so I hid them behind a corner.
"Nice doggie, come here nice doggie!"
"Chris, that's a wolf."
This one was fun to do. I put the chairs on angled OMSPs, and had Laura do the running animation (high skill, she's a Captain Hero after all) and placed her between them. Weldon is probably roller-skate failing there, although I'm not quite sure. And I think Margaret in the backround is covering her face in the fire animation, although I've sadly forgotten some details.
This might me my own personal favorite in this chapter. It's maybe slightly dark (lightning isn't one of my best sides), but I caught Sal in a fantastic position and I love how Sean's face is hovering over him as if he were leaping on Sal. Sean is running on an OMSP which I placed so it looks like he's leaping over the table, and count Pao is failing at bowling. This is also an example of why I felt this chapter was easy to write. I'd had the plot in my head for a long time and I knew what I wanted to happen. And already when I was shooting the pictures, when I saw them, I basically already heard the dialogue in my head.
I mean, how does this one not scream: "HE'S GOT A WAND!"?
Some more confused customers, a few runners and a ghost scare.
Oh yeah, and yes, Bill is a warlock. That's something I've been sitting on too, basically because I saw this shot in my head months and months ago, and wanted it to come as a surprise. I wanted the nice, not-so-tough-on-the-surface guy to step forward and save the day. In an "everyone did their part" way. And I wanted to show that even a nice guy like Bill can be tough when needed.
That's also why I couldn't share pictures of his and Ira's birthday, as the wizard suit popped back on him when he transitioned. It's a little annoying that that stuff happens, he also sometimes suddenly gets the wizard suit back on when he does magic-related stuff. But otherwise playing a wizard is fun.
I'm glad I didn't end up needing to use this one, as Sean's leg going through the table is a tad too visible. But what I did with Sal there is I believe use the death by sunlight animation, and import the good witch to do the teleportation magic thing and move Sal to the spot where she just left. (That's a very useful thing, not the first time I've used that.) I couldn't use Bill for the magic teleportation thing because I needed him on the background with his wand.
Here you can see how I was doing everything sort of at once, to make the pictures as consistent as I could. And that I did have a bunch of sims selectable there. Groupshots are hard, but kinda fun too. This one I took as a sort of a reference picture, in case I later realized I was missing a picture, so I could try to arrange the sims hopefully similarly.
"Hi, I'm sort of in the middle of something right now, I'll call you later ok?"
I know I used some action clichés in this one, but they were so delicious I had to. I mean that whole standing by a motionless person and going "is he...?" is so done and overdone, but... it fit. Sal there is failing at bowling, stopped at just the right moment, and the onlookers are I think tucking in kids.
And this one... I'd had the story in my head a long time and I knew I'd have to have Marsha do the arresting. And looking at this shot, I just could not have her not read the Miranda rights. This one just so strongly says: "You have the right to remain silent. Everything you do say can and will be used against you in a court of law..."
Btw, I googled the rights thing to check I get it right, and that's when I learned they're called Miranda rights. And I also realized they're always cut in the middle in crime series, I'd never heard the end part. And I'd automatically done the same thing myself, sort of fade out in the middle of them. Cliché I suppose, but I couldn't not do it when I saw this picture.
With this one I totally, totally lucked out. My plan was to have Sal and Aadam meet eye to eye before Marsha took Sal away, and I wasn't sure how I'd force it so that it'd look natural. But the funny thing is, when I had Sal in the cuffed position and placed him and Marsha where I needed them, he and Aadam locked gazes all autonomously, and this was the result. I wanted to hug them both through the screen for making my life easier.
And here, yes, it was my intention to bust a few heartstrings. I have to say that even though Aadam on the whole has a happy life these days, I still feel so sorry for having to do this to him.
But then, onto happier matters. :)
Cho/Nicholas
Carl: "Hi Nicholas, we were wondering when you'd show up."
Nicholas darling. I know you love this part, but your girl is supposed to be laying unconscious on the ground and you're not supposed to know what's happened to her, so could you please stop grinning?
So yeah. All I can really say about this is: "I couldn't not do it, could I?" Ever since they were in college, I've shipped Cho and Nicholas so hard I can't believe it. I liked him a lot, and was pondering on making him the gen. C spouse. But since I play by the old-old rules and get points for NPCs in the bloodline, his being a dormie was a bit of a problem. Also, since he'd always show up on his own and interact with Cho, I got the impression that he was somewhat more interested in her than she was in him. Had I not like him, that might have turned into a crazy stalker storyline, but since I did, I started pondering on one that would result in an NPC-bred kid for Cho and eventually a happy ending for her and Nicholas.
And that's where Eric came along. He was a suitable romance-target for Cho's LTW anyway, and at some point I realized he was also an NPC. So I combined a little bit of after-effect for Charlie's death and a little bit of over-romantizing the heir's position, and a little bit of being blind to Nicholas' feelings, and that's how Cho's mess of a love life came to be.
Just for the record, I have to state that I actually quite like Eric too. When I moved him in so I could shoot the engagement and the eventual wedding fiasco, I did feel bad for what I was going to do to him as well as Cho. In fact, I quite liked them together in a way, and for a brief moment I even considered scrapping the plot I had in mind and keeping Eric as the spouse because I do like him, but in the end, I figured he wouldn't mind if he didn't need to get married after all, plus the plot was so far at that point that reversing it naturally would have required quite some trickery. And of course, I adored Nicholas and didn't want to permanently smash his heart. :)
The getting married
There wasn't really much to the shooting of the actual ceremony. Just making everyone sit at the chairs and wait until I make Cyrus and Chris get married. Of course, they won't quite sit still, but that's still better than what usually happen if I let them decide themselves what to do when someone gets married.
I suppose that, silly fish-face and all, means that Cyrus is quite happy with the spouse he's getting there.
That's another coincidence there. I believe Marylena is autonomously doing the hobby whistle, but the picture looks like she could also be emotional over her son getting married, so the picture was nicely fitting.
This, on the other hand, was not so fitting.
And while this might be the best angle on the newlyweds gazing adoringly at each other, I couldn't bring myself to use this picture in the chapter, thanks to the Riley family hippos. :P
One thing I learned while filming this one - and one thing I was slightly sad about - was that with a custom wedding arch, or at least this one, the spectators won't clap. They just proceeded to stand up, and swoon over the various romancers present.
Yes, Chris really is a cake-shover.
And Bill would like you to know that in reality he's a creepy-smiler, not mr. tough guy at all. Whether the smile is because of his nice warlockness or his nice points, or both, I'm not entirely sure.
Veronica: "Katri stop babbling, you've gone on and on, I need to pee."
Okay okay, I think I'm about done here anyway. So, let's wrap this BTS up and let the pregnant ladies go pee. Next time, I think I'll be returning with some rotational picspam.
The wedding
So let's start with the wedding itself. As you might know, Cyrus and Chris are one of my fave couples this generation, so I've known for a while that they'd end up married, and I wanted their wedding to be big and fancy. And I did also want to make it memorable - which I suppose I did. :) So adding plotzy aspects to it was quite natural. But let's talk about the plot a bit later, and let's first have some pictures of the wedding.
I wanted to give Cyrus and Chris a flashy wedding, partly because I like them, partly because I needed to include the wedding in the plot, and partly because I felt that Chris would want a big wedding with quite literally everyone in it. So that inspired me to download some wedding cc, and decorate their lot with it. I was quite pleased with the result, as although I'm in no way a builder or decorator, it looked somewhat as a wedding scene. Also, Cyrus and Chris ended up earning some cheated money since I needed it to buy all the wedding stuff, but I figured it wouldn't matter in the long run, since they don't have to play by the legacy rules, plus with well-paying jobs they'd soon have more money than they can spend anyway.
One of the first things that became apparent to me when I started to shoot the wedding was that apparently it was no longer feasible to have the whole family & extended family on the lot at once. I actually tried that at first, since I did want to give the impression that really everyone was present at the wedding, and that it was sort of a "event of the year" as well. The result was that when I had just about everyone on the lot and tried to change them into formalwear with the sim blender, my game crashed. I didn't even get a picture of what the house looked like with everyone crammed in, but this later picture with a smaller crew might give some idea. Believe me, it was quite a sight.
So then, I figured that because my game couldn't really handle everyone being there at once, I'd have to do it so that I'd import the family there a group at a time and mix the groups a bit, so that it'd seem that they all were there. And in any case, I wouldn't think they'd all fit into a single picture if I tried. So one important group was naturally the first circle, which includes the main family, the Rileys and the Camerons. The Riley's I figured would come with the Bookacies, and the Camerons I needed to be a little late.
Cho had spent a little too much time outside somewhere, so we had to give her some hot chocolate before shooting.
The next issue was getting everyone outside and dressed wedding-appropriately. And that's when I found out (again) how lousy I am at remembering to change the brides out of their wedding dresses after the wedding. I had to toy around, put Squinge's clothing mod back in, then go into various households and plan outfits, and only then I could get back to shooting the wedding.
Shooting the wedding reception itself was a straightforward thing. I just had various sims sit at various tables, either with food or without, and let them chat. Occasionally, I'd have someone talking or fetching food in the background too, to make the wedding seem more crowded. All I had to do was to make sure I had plenty of pictures, hopefully of just about everyone.
There were some more discussion shots and other interaction shots that I would have wanted to use but had no space. Like this one. I had Claire and Trevor kiss in the backround for some picture, and simultaneously Laura did this on her own. I just moved her to the correct spot. In the end, I didn't need the picture for anything, plus I suppose the creepy smile is a bit too creepy anyway.
In general, I considered adding more random pieces of conversation between the family stories, to make it seem more like a real wedding, but in the end I settled for a small amount, since a) the first part was long enough as it was and b) writing that chit-chat was a bit of a pain and I wasn't sure if I was getting it right at all.
"Hiiiiii! I know how to creepy-smile, too!"
That's nice, Claire.
This one was another one I would have liked to use but had no space or need. I loved posing Carl, Veronica and Audrey as a trio and would have wanted to show them more. Which nicely leads us to our next topic, which is...
Carl/Veronica/Audrey
Carl's life as an adult has been something I've been sitting on for a while and have been excited about. You might or might not remember that Carl is a romancer, and has been basically seeing at least two girls regularly through college.
Veronica GilsCarbo, who's the blonde romancer dormie from SSU...
... and Audrey London, who's the spiky-haired punk-spirited SSU dormie girl, also a romancer.
Now, when Carl was in college, he was a bit tough to figure out romantically. I think the first girl he picked was Veronica, but as he was a romancer, I did want to keep his options open. A little while later, he found Audrey, and I thought he'd probably keep finding other love-interests, and possibly wouldn't be the type to settle down at all.
But I was somewhat surprised. Carl would admittedly have a fling every now and then, but for the most part, he'd stick to Audrey and Veronica. It might be partly because my sims are generally on a leash, and basically second cousins and closer (which is all I have so far, gen. D is the first generation with third cousins) get friends zoned as soon as I get them on a lot together, as do love-interests/spouses of other sims. But, that's how it was.
At some point, I'd try to figure out which girl Carl himself preferred, but it all seemed to pretty much just depend on which one was present. I'd invite one or both of them over, and he'd interract with one or both. On some occasions it might seem that maybe he'd prefer one over the other, but at the next party the roles could be reversed again.
So at that point I started to think about things. Veronica would sort of be the traditional choice: she was there first, and I'll admit it, she's the pretty one. But really, as it seemed that Carl himself didn't have a clear preference, and as I did like Audrey too and would have felt bad for leaving her at college while growing up Veronica for Carl, I started to think that maybe, just maybe Carl in fact wanted to have them both. I'd seen them interact, and I knew that in principle, with ACR and no jealousy for romancers (or at least these romancers), I wouldn't have too much trouble with an official three-person relationship.
So then, my plan started to form. After college, I went for it and moved them both in with Carl...
... and gave them makeovers, just like everyone else. I was especially pleased to find that even though that face template Audrey has is pretty extreme, she can actually look quite nice if you give her some pretty makeup and especially if you get her out of that spiky hair - that seemed to be particularly unflattering.
As I started playing the three of them together, I got more and more pleased with my decision. I really like both Audrey and Veronica, and it would have been sad to leave one of them at college. And then, there was something that had been vaguely forming in my head since their college years...
Babies. I had it in mind that especially since Carl is an only child, I would want him to have him have babies, even though he's a romancer. And since he had two official girlfriends... Well, that was just too good to pass up on, wasn't it?
And actually, they seemed to agree with me pretty much. All I did was turn on unmarried try-for-baby while playing their household, since I didn't want to have my hopes depend on a risky. The next time Carl and Veronica woohooed, they tried, and they succeeded.
And I'd realized that if at all I'd understood the workings of ACR correctly, as long as Veronica's baby hadn't been born, Carl's chances of trying for a baby with Audrey would be high, since ACR would check his kid count and it'd be zero. And regardless of Carl's assigned "one sim", he would eventually woohoo both girls, because they both had him as their "one".
And Carl did indeed eventually try and succeed with Audrey too. Okay, to be entirely fair, I did have them "auto woo" about 12 hours before they otherwise would have, since I realized that if Audrey got pregnant right then, I could get them both be in the third trimester at the same time, which would make a pretty darn good side plot for the chapter. I could not resist. But while I technically did make them woohoo, they did still decide on their own to try for a baby, and they succeeded at that.
This is also, by the way, the real reason why Carla and Kevin Patch got pregnant before they got married: their house is right after Carl's in the rotation, and I forgot to turn unmarried TFB back off before I switched households. (I like to keep it off for the most part, so that freshly grown up sims wouldn't jump at making babies the second they come from college.)
That's pretty much when I made the final decision of moving Beth and Sean in with the trio. Or well... I suppose I was absolutely sure the moment when I saw from the pregnancy scanner that Veronica was actually expecting twins. :D I figured the help would be welcome, plus I wouldn't need to have an elders-only household in the rotation.
And yes, Beth is really growing emergency strawberries in case someone decides to do an autonomous base game interraction and cause drama. So far there's been no drama, and even the kiddies (I'll post pictures in my regular picspam once I get to that) haven't been upset so far. I hope that stays that way, but if there's a problem, at least I have strawberries at the ready.
The plot volcano
"Mwhahahaha, I'm the evil villain and I'm cackling while waiting for my turn to shoot plotsiness!"
So, as I said, giving Chris and Cyrus the memorable wedding they deserved was one aspect of what I wanted to do with the wedding. Another aspect had, naturally, to do with Sal. As I've been saying, I've come to realize that if I want to ever finish this legacy, I need to downscale a bit, and the only way to downscale that I've found so far that I'm happy with, is (temporarily) downplaying plot. Sal's been involved for a long time, and more recently quite heavily involved, via Cyrus' vampirism and Charlie's death. Sal and the inter-generational plot is one thing that has been keeping me interested, but I felt that to get forward with the legacy, I need to get rid of that constant plot. As a recurring villain, one that I've had since the beginning and one that I've come to know and love, he of course couldn't be killed; I don't think anyone will be surprised when I say that Sal will be back, more dangerous than ever. So the most natural solution for this problem was to have him get caught.
So then, once we know that what I needed to do with Sal was to have him get caught, it all starts to click together with what's happened previously. I can't say that I've had it all planned all along, but somehow it's all become an interconnected web of things. You see, one of the reasons why Charlie died was that I needed to get Sal to know about the gypsy magic protection. Since once Charlie had died, Sal would eventually come to notice that the family had, contrary to his assumptions, not resurrected him. And once he'd get to know that, he'd eventually get to know why. His ultimate goal is to resurrect Author, and he's been trying to get there for generations. Now, if he got to know that as long as the family doesn't resurrect anyone, he can't either, he'd deduct that in order to break the protection, he'd have to do something quite difficult: kill an heir. (Yes, as you've probably noticed, Sal's knowledge of the protection is not complete.) And with his knowledge about the other protections around the family, he'd start to get desperate. And desperate was exactly what I needed him to be to get caught.
It did also make sense to get him caught while generation B was still alive. When Aadam had enough and left Sal's lair because he'd used Marsha as a means to and end and nearly killed her at the process, I hinted at several members of the generation being involved at some sort of an "anti-Sal-league" so to say, and Aadam and Marsha being at the center of it. For Marsha, the shock of being used by the man she'd learned to love as the only father she'd ever had had caused the strong will to see him get caught and if possible, be the one who captured him. In a way, I wanted to follow up on that and give those two some kind of a closure and peace of mind, even if they both knew that what they could do would very likely be of only temporary help. And finally, there was count Pao, whom I'd used in the very beginning as the vampire who turned Sal, and I felt the need to prove that he's in fact a good guy now that he's dating George. I'll totally admit I didn't see that one coming at the time. :) So, anyway, that's just about how the operation at the wedding came to be.
So, some bits and pieces on how I did it, and some funny takeouts. For the hedge thing, I believe I had Sal do the climbing animation from the obstacle course, and used OMSPS to move him where I wanted him. It was really by chance that nobody seemed to be looking his way when I was staging that.
Yes, everyone and their brother and sister and cousin and granny thinks that Cho's hot. Sal, you no can has, now concentrate on being villainy and pining over your long lost love!
Veronica, it's cute that you're suddenly aware you're pregnant and are patting the tummy quite autonomously, but it's hardly appropriate when you're facing the legacy villain eye to eye!
For the horrified poses, I used at leas the ghost scare animations (Claire) and the catch someone cheating animations (Audrey). I think I may have also used the firedance animation to get one that looks like the sim is covering themself with their arms, and Veronica (once I got her to stop rubbing the belly) used the shy self-hug animation. For the sims that are only just turning around and not yet realizing it's Sal, the OFB confused customer animations were once again a treasure.
Chris and Cyrus were not needed for the moment, so I hid them behind a corner.
"Nice doggie, come here nice doggie!"
"Chris, that's a wolf."
This one was fun to do. I put the chairs on angled OMSPs, and had Laura do the running animation (high skill, she's a Captain Hero after all) and placed her between them. Weldon is probably roller-skate failing there, although I'm not quite sure. And I think Margaret in the backround is covering her face in the fire animation, although I've sadly forgotten some details.
This might me my own personal favorite in this chapter. It's maybe slightly dark (lightning isn't one of my best sides), but I caught Sal in a fantastic position and I love how Sean's face is hovering over him as if he were leaping on Sal. Sean is running on an OMSP which I placed so it looks like he's leaping over the table, and count Pao is failing at bowling. This is also an example of why I felt this chapter was easy to write. I'd had the plot in my head for a long time and I knew what I wanted to happen. And already when I was shooting the pictures, when I saw them, I basically already heard the dialogue in my head.
I mean, how does this one not scream: "HE'S GOT A WAND!"?
Some more confused customers, a few runners and a ghost scare.
Oh yeah, and yes, Bill is a warlock. That's something I've been sitting on too, basically because I saw this shot in my head months and months ago, and wanted it to come as a surprise. I wanted the nice, not-so-tough-on-the-surface guy to step forward and save the day. In an "everyone did their part" way. And I wanted to show that even a nice guy like Bill can be tough when needed.
That's also why I couldn't share pictures of his and Ira's birthday, as the wizard suit popped back on him when he transitioned. It's a little annoying that that stuff happens, he also sometimes suddenly gets the wizard suit back on when he does magic-related stuff. But otherwise playing a wizard is fun.
I'm glad I didn't end up needing to use this one, as Sean's leg going through the table is a tad too visible. But what I did with Sal there is I believe use the death by sunlight animation, and import the good witch to do the teleportation magic thing and move Sal to the spot where she just left. (That's a very useful thing, not the first time I've used that.) I couldn't use Bill for the magic teleportation thing because I needed him on the background with his wand.
Here you can see how I was doing everything sort of at once, to make the pictures as consistent as I could. And that I did have a bunch of sims selectable there. Groupshots are hard, but kinda fun too. This one I took as a sort of a reference picture, in case I later realized I was missing a picture, so I could try to arrange the sims hopefully similarly.
"Hi, I'm sort of in the middle of something right now, I'll call you later ok?"
I know I used some action clichés in this one, but they were so delicious I had to. I mean that whole standing by a motionless person and going "is he...?" is so done and overdone, but... it fit. Sal there is failing at bowling, stopped at just the right moment, and the onlookers are I think tucking in kids.
And this one... I'd had the story in my head a long time and I knew I'd have to have Marsha do the arresting. And looking at this shot, I just could not have her not read the Miranda rights. This one just so strongly says: "You have the right to remain silent. Everything you do say can and will be used against you in a court of law..."
Btw, I googled the rights thing to check I get it right, and that's when I learned they're called Miranda rights. And I also realized they're always cut in the middle in crime series, I'd never heard the end part. And I'd automatically done the same thing myself, sort of fade out in the middle of them. Cliché I suppose, but I couldn't not do it when I saw this picture.
With this one I totally, totally lucked out. My plan was to have Sal and Aadam meet eye to eye before Marsha took Sal away, and I wasn't sure how I'd force it so that it'd look natural. But the funny thing is, when I had Sal in the cuffed position and placed him and Marsha where I needed them, he and Aadam locked gazes all autonomously, and this was the result. I wanted to hug them both through the screen for making my life easier.
And here, yes, it was my intention to bust a few heartstrings. I have to say that even though Aadam on the whole has a happy life these days, I still feel so sorry for having to do this to him.
But then, onto happier matters. :)
Cho/Nicholas
Carl: "Hi Nicholas, we were wondering when you'd show up."
Nicholas darling. I know you love this part, but your girl is supposed to be laying unconscious on the ground and you're not supposed to know what's happened to her, so could you please stop grinning?
So yeah. All I can really say about this is: "I couldn't not do it, could I?" Ever since they were in college, I've shipped Cho and Nicholas so hard I can't believe it. I liked him a lot, and was pondering on making him the gen. C spouse. But since I play by the old-old rules and get points for NPCs in the bloodline, his being a dormie was a bit of a problem. Also, since he'd always show up on his own and interact with Cho, I got the impression that he was somewhat more interested in her than she was in him. Had I not like him, that might have turned into a crazy stalker storyline, but since I did, I started pondering on one that would result in an NPC-bred kid for Cho and eventually a happy ending for her and Nicholas.
And that's where Eric came along. He was a suitable romance-target for Cho's LTW anyway, and at some point I realized he was also an NPC. So I combined a little bit of after-effect for Charlie's death and a little bit of over-romantizing the heir's position, and a little bit of being blind to Nicholas' feelings, and that's how Cho's mess of a love life came to be.
Just for the record, I have to state that I actually quite like Eric too. When I moved him in so I could shoot the engagement and the eventual wedding fiasco, I did feel bad for what I was going to do to him as well as Cho. In fact, I quite liked them together in a way, and for a brief moment I even considered scrapping the plot I had in mind and keeping Eric as the spouse because I do like him, but in the end, I figured he wouldn't mind if he didn't need to get married after all, plus the plot was so far at that point that reversing it naturally would have required quite some trickery. And of course, I adored Nicholas and didn't want to permanently smash his heart. :)
The getting married
There wasn't really much to the shooting of the actual ceremony. Just making everyone sit at the chairs and wait until I make Cyrus and Chris get married. Of course, they won't quite sit still, but that's still better than what usually happen if I let them decide themselves what to do when someone gets married.
I suppose that, silly fish-face and all, means that Cyrus is quite happy with the spouse he's getting there.
That's another coincidence there. I believe Marylena is autonomously doing the hobby whistle, but the picture looks like she could also be emotional over her son getting married, so the picture was nicely fitting.
This, on the other hand, was not so fitting.
And while this might be the best angle on the newlyweds gazing adoringly at each other, I couldn't bring myself to use this picture in the chapter, thanks to the Riley family hippos. :P
One thing I learned while filming this one - and one thing I was slightly sad about - was that with a custom wedding arch, or at least this one, the spectators won't clap. They just proceeded to stand up, and swoon over the various romancers present.
Yes, Chris really is a cake-shover.
And Bill would like you to know that in reality he's a creepy-smiler, not mr. tough guy at all. Whether the smile is because of his nice warlockness or his nice points, or both, I'm not entirely sure.
Veronica: "Katri stop babbling, you've gone on and on, I need to pee."
Okay okay, I think I'm about done here anyway. So, let's wrap this BTS up and let the pregnant ladies go pee. Next time, I think I'll be returning with some rotational picspam.
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Date: Feb. 13th, 2012 12:36 am (UTC)I totally understand that if the Sal plotline keeps going, the entire story would lose the fact that it's a legacy. I guess it's for the greater good in terms of story progression.
That was a lot of great staging you have there! It really fits into everyone's reaction to Sal's presence. And the part where Bill attacks Sal is well-staged.
Thanks for sharing these!
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Date: Feb. 13th, 2012 04:20 pm (UTC)Yeah, I suppose I could go on and on with Sal, let him try all kinds of tricks and plots to get to his goal, and in the process lose the legacyness of it all, have it get stuck at generation C. I hope that having Sal caught will help me forward the legacy itself some, and then later on, Sal can be back with new plots, when the story is ready for him again. :)
Thank you! Staging is still fairly new to me, so it's a bit of a challenge, but it's also been fun to do.
You're welcome, I'm glad you enjoyed! Posting the BTS after a chapter is nearly as much fun as posting the chapter itself. :)
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Date: Feb. 13th, 2012 01:17 am (UTC)Seriously, though, the pictures came out amazing, and you do a fantastic job. *gives Katri a standing ovation*
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Date: Feb. 13th, 2012 04:29 pm (UTC)Thank you! I'm glad you liked it. *blushes*