Hi, guys! This is my first Behind-the-Scenes post I’m doing! I’ll be doing this each time a part ends, while each post will explain what happened behind the scenes (basically, that’s what it means, right? 😄) and also build up from the chapters of previous parts! This will also take some points and ideas from the TCXDR index and the author’s notes of each chapter. There won’t be any info from the next parts obviously. 😁
And after that, I’ll post a new part with new chapters focusing on newer themes and/or after a drastic change/event! I’ll start working on these posts the moment I publish the first chapter (the prologue) of a part and finally publish the post at the same time I publish the last chapter of the part! Hope this made sense! 🙂
If you want to see this post later, well, you can look at my feed, obviously since I feel pages fit my style better, haha, but it’s also the next one that Chapter 14 points to. The posts will lead to the next chapter’s prologue but the prologue won’t point to this one as the previous one but instead the last chapter of the current part. Look all the way down and to Chapter 14 & Prologue 2 (of course, read them first if you haven’t!) for an example . 🙂 (Reasoning is I want to make sure you read the previous parts first! 😀 )
(Also, please note, since writing chapters and life got in the way of finishing this, this is very late, haha, otherwise normally I’ll post it at the same time as the last chapter.)
Note: Please read through the chapters to make sure you’re all caught up! Otherwise there’ll be lots and lots of spoilers here! 🙂 And the Grim Reaper might catch you too, just so you know! 😉
Idea for the story
I first started The Child: Ximena-Daria Roseline when I had this idea of a lost child by themselves. It was intriguing so I decided to do this. But in which save? I was wondering. I had this save which was the first one I created (in April of 2020) after my friend said I couldn’t share her account anymore (back in September of 2019).
I had the base game, though, so I was playing with two other households (first one I created with the base game, but the second one with three packs), who have been touched by the evil woman that killed Xim’s mom. Their names will be mentioned later, but now, I’m just explaining. Otherwise spoilers. 🙂
I’ve always been interested in lost/runaway/ orphan/survival stories (simlit or not) and felt for the lost character in question a lot. They brought a lot of thrill about the things that go wrong and also the pride of making progress. Those usually were realistic fiction stories or ones with a little fiction sprinkled in. I’ve always been interested in fantasy ideas (after all, I like to run away from reality, haha) so I decided to bring this on a whole new level.
Xim’s a character who I decided to create with a very loving mother who’s never mean to her, even while having to discipline her, and who wasn’t taught much about the real world and its cruelty. She wasn’t taught any survival skills either, and on top of that, she has powers which no other person has, not even her mom (the supernatural part)! And of course, she’s a red-head (the popular color for characters nowadays! 🙂 There is a reason for this, though, mentioned in some later parts)!
Reasons for Synopsis
So, hence why she’s had a pretty rough start. Xim didn’t talk to a lot of people either (since she didn’t know them and didn’t find them interesting enough to talk to) so having to socialize and ask for help wasn’t really successful, since she had no knowledge of different people’s personalities outside Selvadorada or social cues, either. (She constantly got frustrated at each person who had no idea what situation she was in, when in reality, she never told them exactly which situation she was in, which some of you might have already figured out. 🙂 )
So Xim is pretty naive (like some other characters I’ve read about on WordPress! 😉 ) I tried to make her as naive as I could, considering her background and only being ten years old. Shiew was there to give some level of comfort to her that there is at least a good sim. Luckily she appeared again! 😀
As for the knitting part, I wanted Xim to find solace in a hobby she could actually do without having to think about horrific things that had happened to her. And I also liked Nifty Knitting stuff (reminds me of my mom who knows how to sew and I wanted to try out this new pack that I bought as well as retail stores from Get to Work) so this was the creative hobby I decided for her. I also liked it because it gave children something to do. (Besides, can children paint, write or make music like adults can? No, I don’t think they can paint masterpieces, write bestsellers or play Elvis Presley songs, sadly. But what they can do is create clothing and get knitting level 10! 😀 )
And yes, the passerby mentioned on Chapter 11 is Yaritza Nair, the “friend” of Shiew. Chapter 14 was a crazy one because so many people and their personalities started clashing together. Considering this is Xim’s point of view, it might have been skewed, haha! You will learn about everyone’s past in the next part, however!
Lilah Winter was another person who helped out in Xim’s life. Lilah definitely did hear about the rumors, but instead of judging like Shiew’s parents, she helped Xim out by giving her a new hobby to focus on. Her son is another matter, but his son, Millan, was also nice to her and Shiew. It was the good things in life that brought up Xim’s spirits by a lot after her mother’s death. 😄 You’ll obviously see all of these characters in Part 2!
Setting
If you want to know the setting, well, it isn’t much, haha. I mean, without spoilers. 🙂 If we were to use actual years in terms of technological, medical, philosophical advancements, I’d say… 2015. Because I like starting out in the past or the future. The past gives me time to catch up to the present and in the future I get to imagine what kind of technology there’ll be! 😀 Not that far like flying cars, that’s totally out of the question, but maybe around 2025, the near future. But I’m not going to follow real world things in my story, lol.
At the end of Part 1 it would be Thursday, September 26, 2015 if we followed real world time (which isn’t correct, it was actually Saturday) so I’m following my own time instead. 😉 For simplicity, I’m going to call the current sim year 500. 🙂 So Thursday, September 26, 500.
The place would be multiple places, lol, but I can confidently say we’re on Earth. 😊 So far, the places Xim went to were: Selvadorada (Prologue & Chapter 1), Newcrest (ever since the very end of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 11, Chapter 13), Oasis Springs (Chapter 3, Chapter 6, Chapter 7), Willow Creek (Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 14), and last but not least (okay, maybe it is least, what’s with the amount of lots 😆), Magnolia Promenade (Chapter 13). The ones that have been mentioned but ones that Xim didn’t go to are Windenburg (Chapter 1, Chapter 14, it has been mentioned in a previous one, but I’m too lazy to check. 😉 It could be Chapter 6 or 9, since those are also Xim’s first-person chapters), San Myshuno, Sulani, Brindleton Bay, Del Sol Valley (all mentioned in Chapter 1 but a few mentioned in Chapter 14).
Prologue & Chapter 1
Note:
I did not realize almost half of Chapter 1 was deleted for quite a while until I had to get a reference from in just now. And oh my, what! I saw half was deleted somehow! But I easily restored it using the revisions thing, haha, so now it’s back.
Explanation:
So first I was thinking how this should go. How should Lucia die? I was thinking of more horrific ways (horror is intriguing, I’m not fazed by gore or anything like that, more like thrillers and all) but I settled on what can easily be done (what can I say, I’m pretty lazy) and what’s PG in the Sims 4. So basically Andromeda would punch(?) Lucia to death (or what we know so far 😉 ).
I decided to start off peaceful and warm. Classic mother-daughter time. The best mom and best daughter in the world, everything is perfect and absolutely nothing can go wrong. 😀 Because, well, why not? Makes the ending more sadder.
Then Lucia would do the daily checks (you know, so that no one dies of gas leaks or criminals coming into unlocked doors, that’d be bad…) and voila, she sees a dark woman at the door. Based on Chapter 10, you probably thought that they knew who the other woman was, but of course, probably not while reading the prologue.
Then there’s a time skip to where Xim wakes up (it is theoretically from her POV after all) so we don’t know what they talked about or why they were on fist-to-face standards.
The scene of Lucia saying her last words to Xim was supposed to be that heartbreaking scene that’s usually there in every movie, story, or piece of literature in general.
Then Xim comes back to see her mom on the floor without a pulse. I tried to enact the scene in a different way (where Andromeda isn’t there after she kills Lucia) but oh well, would that make much sense. Andromeda mocks her and tries to grab her, but Xim uses her ama-azing teleportation powers (sims probably would be amazed, not the black witch) to get away from the woman.
Okay, there is something weird that happened. When I wanted to do the interaction where Xim is pleading to the Grim Reaper (so I could get a screenshot of the pose, I mean I could have just used the pose player but I didn’t have it downloaded so…), uh… Lucia got revived. I was like, what, Grim? Can’t you do that for other people’s sims who genuinely need to be revived (too many stories I’ve heard where he refused)? So I had to kill her again. 
Then Xim starts her journey at this point. Running and teleporting away must have been draining her energy. Of course, Andromeda has these same powers (and more?) so she tries to catch up. But then she becomes dumb. (Honestly I had no other idea left other than to send Andromeda into the jungle thinking Xim is in there, when in reality she was hiding in the smelliest bathroom a sim can comprehend. So that’s why it might seem… I don’t know, cringey? 😂)
Andromeda leaves and Xim goes to the bar where she meets a nice townie! 😀 Yes, Renata was a game-generated sim, specifically a Selvadoradian Local type townie. But you see, she’s one of those gems that you can possibly find in townies. So I decided her role might be important.
Then Xim goes back to her house, and voila! Everything is gone! Idk, another weird idea of mine. I decided to split this into two chapters because of the length, lol. But the real challenge started in the next chapter.
I added Andromeda to the household when she was first mentioned, just so you know, so that Xim wouldn’t be taken away. That’d be horrible. 😮
Chapter 2: The Hard Start
Random thoughts:
I played this chapter completely by the game’s standards (and few of the subsequent ones as well) because well, after all, I wanted to do a runaway child challenge (this probably exists, but I customized it to my standards) to see how this might work in the game mechanics. Not so well, I realized when I did the Chapter 3 gameplay, since children (and sims in general) can’t do everything they’re supposed to be able to in real life without modding it to the point where it isn’t even vanilla. 😑 I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle that much cc since I recently installed a new hard drive in my dead computer and I don’t want to ruin it. (Some people can run their game fine with 50GB+ of cc and I’m wondering how? 😲 )
Anyway, I’m digressing so basically here’s what happened in my gameplay. I played way ahead so I don’t remember everything that happened in these chapters (up to chapter 9)! Just a warning. 😉
Explanation:
When I moved Xim out of Andromeda’s household, I had to make a new random adult sim, move her into the lot where Xim is supposed to be in, make a basement where no one would see her (and a bed so she can sleep and time will go faster). Then I made it so that her needs would never decay, because I don’t want her to die of hunger or something and have Xim taken away. 😮 Then I cheated the money down to fifty simoleons (which was Xim’s allowance).
I wasn’t really wanting to leave the lot in this chapter, mainly because the loading times were long on my first hard drive, but I also thought perhaps Xim wouldn’t really go anywhere at first because she has never been to Newcrest (or anywhere actually) by herself. So because of fear of what can happen, she stayed on her lot.
I wasn’t really sure what to do since children can’t grill (even if they could, realistically that wouldn’t fit into the story) or actually do much. So I decided to see what exactly I can do with Xim and I can collect frogs (thankfully). I didn’t have the gardening mod active at this time, so yeah.
I decided to have her talk to Mrs. Baughman because why not? 😀 Okay, she was the only adult that I could talk to because the other ones kept walking away before she can talk to them. Some people tried to walk through them which is weird but eh, as long as they were still talking. 😆 I didn’t really achieve anything game-wise in this chapter, just so you know.
I really didn’t have anything else to do for Xim except to sit there until it was nighttime and have her pee herself and sleep… 😦 Depressing indeed.
Chapter 3, 4 & 5
Info:
I merged these three together because not much happened in Chapter 3, lol. I like it to be eventful and dramatic which is why I lean more towards “event chapters” rather than “thought chapters”. 😆
Also, if you were wondering, the full names of Shiew’s parents are Elijah Irizarry and Judy Irizarry, haha. Perhaps you knew Mrs. Irizarry’s name because it has been mentioned a few times but now you know Mr. Irizarry’s full first name! 😉 Here’s a fun fact: Her family were townies! 😄 But considering their traits, I thought, hMMmm… they’re perfect for Xim to meet! It’s rare for a child to spawn with the good trait, haha, especially for them to be at least a little pretty! (Yes, I saw Shiew as a teen xD)
Because Chapter 3 ended up being long enough (not chapter-14 long, though, I could have merged Chapter 3 and 4 like that if I had know Chapter 14 was going to be this long 😂) that I didn’t want to add much more, I decided to split it into three. 🙂
Explanation:
I thought that perhaps the bar (I mean lounge, lol, I can’t differentiate between the two xD) would be a good place for Xim to go (because I’ve seen teen runaways getting chips and all from there) but there was no option for Xim to do so. Why they can’t do that I have no idea but that’s just sad. So I decided to get her other needs up instead, such as energy and fun.
So instead of wasting my time in the lounge, I decided to have Xim go to this house, instead. Because, you know, what I said in the info. 🙂
Of course I had to rationalize it, I can’t say that Xim teleported here because even she cannot do that. 😂 (I didn’t mention what the limits of her powers are in this story yet because they weren’t too relevant in this part, lol. It’ll probably be mentioned in the next part. Or Part 3 or 4 when we start talking about what she actually is, lol.) If I were following game mechanics to the dot, sims would be teleporting everywhere. In the Sims 4, we’ve reached year 3000 when it comes to transportation. Traveling, getting groceries for cooking, mixing, baking etc., buying items from build-buy. But since the technological advancements are in 2015, that would be illogical. 😂 So I had to do the train story.
Once Xim got there I was wondering what to do next but I noticed Shiew was there so I had them talk. I really didn’t plan anything for them in the future so at the moment she was just an acquaintance, just some random sim you’d talk to to get social up (like in the regular sims gameplay), lol. But later on, I figured her household was the perfect household to do certain things in which I won’t tell because spoilers. 😉 Part 2, 3, 4 would be good to wait for. 🙂
When I was enacting this scene (well, not really, I was just playing it normally) I didn’t have any plan in mind, I made Xim just basically talk to them and did whatever the game wanted to do with them. Mrs. Irizarry getting stuck by lightning is a sheer coincidence, lol, I don’t think thunderstorms were great for her. Luckily she left (in Chapter 14) before the thunderstorms started. Yeah, it started thundering at the end of the day, haha.
Xim stayed two days in the house as far as I could count but it wasn’t clear in Chapter 4 & 5 because of the wording and pace of events, xD. But she did spend almost two days there. After a while I forgot about the shower inappropriateness thing (I think, I don’t remember, haha) so Xim went into the shower and voila. I had her run out of the house because anyone like Xim would be scared if someone yelled at them and I ended the chapter a sad way. Actually I tend to end all my chapters sad, dark or subtle ways, happy ways aren’t all that fitting for me unless it’s very big and joyful events like marriages, births, engagements etc., lol. 😁 Chapter 13 is an exception unexpectedly but Chapter 14 was not, also unexpectedly. 😆
In these three chapters not a lot happened so I had to use my imagination (nah, not kiddie stuff or anything like that) and my talent for storytelling and voila! I cooked up a lot of drama between the Irizarry parents and Xim! Which is further continued in Chapter 11 & 14… 😂
Chapter 6: Wandering Child
Reasoning for First-Person POV:
I decided we need to directly see into her thoughts. I can get used to this style all day (I normally like to write stories in first-person) but I decided third person limited was better for the default POV of the story especially since later I decide to start diving into other people’s perspectives (as I introduce more characters; I have a ton already and a lot more to come! 😄) within the same chapter in later parts of the story which makes it omniscient, haha. Third person gives a more mature view of the story, too, while first-person is pretty biased, depending on the person, anyway. (I mean, if I have a potty-mouth character, they’re going to be swearing like crazy! 😆 Actually I think Leigh and Xim will become potty-mouths… 😮😂)
I’ll use this POV for really sensitive things which I feel can only be properly explained in first-person and third-person for a broad view of the focus person/people’s world(s). 🙂 (The first-person chapters are Chapter 6 which explains her thoughts, Chapter 9 showing how she doesn’t like her life at all and Chapter 14 being where she meets new and old people and reflects on them. As for Chapter 12 being Shiew’s POV, this is necessary for me to explain what’s actually happening with her with her own perspective and words. 😉 )
Key points:
Okay, what do I have to explain, Xim went to a house, got berated and cried leaving the- okay, I’ll stop being an — and explain a few missed pointers, lol.
“Nobody wants me. Why would they? To them, I’m just a stupid homeless child who roams about in their homes and steals their stuff” is the introductory and concluding phrase that I chose purposely to define the chapter.
I had Xim go to a random house and do normal gameplay things, get yelled at for showering and ended the chapter with her fishing. Boring! 😆 But I used my storytelling talent and my imagination to make it ten times more interesting. 🙂 There are some hidden clues which have to do with some future lore:
- She opened the door fluidly even though the man claimed he had it locked. Now is he lying or is there something weird going on? HmmMMmm… 😉
- “[My eyes are] Much more brighter and shinier and the hue of it more evident than amber.” This is a clue to what her eyes look like, lol. They’re not that important now, but this is an important clue for Part 3 or 4 (Idk actually 😆) where we discuss what she actually is considering her father isn’t exactly… human, we’ll say. 😉
- The man is an ignorant grownup who’s rich and all and wants to use it to benefit himself as we can tell in this chapter. One of those people with higher status who don’t really think much about the people with very low status. He wants to adopt a boy because he’s picky about his children and wants to have an heir and doesn’t really want to do it just because someone’s in trouble. Just an insight. 😉
I based this chapter on real-life situations of really serious things that happened which is why Xim’s thoughts are pretty negative and this man is well… being an —. It’s mostly explained in the A/N just so you know so I’ll talk about the behind-the-scenes thing. There isn’t a lot to say, but eh. 😉
With the game mechanics, Xim had to knock on the door, lol. Then I did whatever survival things I had to do, Xim finally getting to bust, eat, sleep, and shower a little bit. The shower situation was enacted this time for sure, lol, to show how she thinks everyone hates her. Fishing was a good way for her to relieve her troubles, at least for a little while but it didn’t feel like she was getting anywhere.
Chapter 7 & 8
Why this was split:
In the A/N of Chapter 7, I mentioned that my computer went kaput, lol. In the A/N of Chapter 12 I mentioned it got fixed, but I’m not talking about that yet, lol. I had to finish the chapters 7-11 on either my tablet or my brother’s laptop and even then I didn’t get a lot of time to focus on them. I had to end Chapter 7 where it was because those were all the photos I had uploaded to WordPress so far and I still needed to get the rest out of my computer. Chapter 8 was longer for this reason but I merged these two together in this behind-the-scenes post because they were originally supposed to be one chapter. 🙂
Behind the scenes:
Well, like with the previous chapters, Chapter 7 & 8’s gameplay wasn’t all that fancy. But I added more info using what might be going on with Xim and also what I thought would happen next. And using my talents and imagination, of course. 😉
I continued collecting but this time I made it a goal. Xim teleports only when no one is seeing the spot she’s teleporting from and the spot she’s teleporting to. The info mentioned about her flying and teleporting is again, a hint which is supposed to explain exactly what she is. 🙂
I was looking for another good household, and there was another household which had pretty decent traits. And contrary to the rest of the community who hates children[1] they have the childish trait. Because of this, I sent her there. And guess what, they welcomed her, haha. I only had them talk for a little while because I didn’t think Xim would spend too much time there. I decided to give Xim some hope about being adopted because well, why not. 🙂
After she left the house, I decided to have her go back to her plot of land. You see, the sales table didn’t just fall from nowhere because that’d be weird, lol. It has to do with supernatural forces (also with the bed and bush) which Xim doesn’t know about yet. I won’t tell you about exactly what happened because we’re not at that point yet, haha. 😉 In reality, to place the table, I used build-buy (what I call build mode and a label for cc that can be placed in this mode: doors, windows, objects, walls, floors etc). Obviously. 😄 What I actually wanted to talk about was the simoleon thing with this, haha! Xim didn’t have enough money to buy it (because she only had fifty simoleons) so I had to cheat the simoleons so she had enough and back to fifty. Later on when she had enough I cheated the amount back down (which is supposed to represent the price being paid for the table. No interest, lol. I didn’t mention this back then because she didn’t notice this but it was mentioned with the bed in Chapter 11 because she finally noticed it.)
I had to go with the gameplay so far because I didn’t really think much about a story at that time. I was just taking care of needs and finally tested out the table because I never did so before, haha. At the time I didn’t have GTW so there wasn’t really anything I could do in order to entice the customers to buy something. So I made an excuse, lol. Thank goodness for Jungle Adventure though otherwise I’m pretty sure I would have this function at all. 🙂 I think City Living has this as well because of the flea markets but I didn’t have that at the time, either. 😉
I went to the gym, went back and tried to sell these items she had gotten from collecting as well, lol. But when it came to the lightning… well, oh yeah, this made the gameplay really interesting. 😆😅 I used video software to capture the exact lightning becuz y not. It makes the pictures beautiful, haha. 🙂 A sim being struck by lightning was also pretty funny (and rare especially happening right next to your sim) so I included it. 😆 I forgot the moodlet Xim got from it but it was a tense moodlet.
Chapter 9: Ultimatum
Why this is First-Person POV:
Because I needed to represent her thoughts perfectly since it was going in a downwards spiral. She’s also confused about how the —- she’s still doing well by herself and how no one caught her yet, haha. (This is for supernatural reasons, just a hint. 😉 )
Regular Gameplay:
I had did basic gameplay in this one, the normal kind I mentioned before, so nothing new here. 🙂
But there are a few new things, such as the bush, Barbara Yost and the people at the gym so I’ll talk a little about that. The bush applies with the same explanation above about the table so nothing new but the same thing happened, her simoleons were taken away.
But the people at the gym, Faith Mendez (try not to confuse the Faiths 😉 ) and Stefania, weren’t townies but I purposely placed them in Newcrest. 🙂 Remember, when I give a character a name, they usually reappear. 😉 Well, maybe not every character will appear with a big role, but they will appear somewhat. 😉 So keep in mind of them.
As you can tell, Faith seems to know more than she lets on while Stefania seems to be more clueless of the higher plane but has heard the rumors, still.
Barbara Yost on the other hand is a townie who the game moved into another one of those very big houses. And guess what, she hates children. Not a good recipe for Xim if you ask me. 😮 At least she wasn’t being an — with her so I suppose she’s one of the nicer people who has a good reason for hating children. 🙂
Chapter 10: Dark Premise
Why I made this chapter:
This is not a filler chapter if you were wondering but I was like hmm, the readers might want a little insight on Andromeda and Lucia so why not do this chapter. I already had the screenshots anyway. 🙂
Scene Enactment:
This has a lot of little hints for the future chapters. A lot. Of course I won’t tell what those hints mean because as I said earlier I won’t tell anything about the later chapters and parts because that’d be immense spoiling! 😂 So no, not those if you were wondering. But those hints are there so that you sort of pay attention to when we’ll talk about this. Part 1 was Xim’s hopelessness, it doesn’t really have much background info about her circumstances, it just explains what happens to her. Part 2 will start focusing on everything she never knew and that she has yet to know and then Part 3, 4, 5 etc. so don’t worry! 😊
If you want to see what happened in the gameplay, well, almost nothing happened to be honest. 🙂 So I’ll talk about the background things instead. Andromeda’s lair is a lot in Newcrest that I hastily made to fit her graveyard of victims, haha. And I made a graveyard of tombstones somewhere in the corner (one being Lucia’s 😮 ). I didn’t need any poses as usual, just the teleport cheat and in-game interactions & animations, it was mostly text and barely images, anyway.
I had Andromeda just call Lucia’s ghost forth and they started off with their very hostile argument. Once that ended, I teleported Lucia into an underground room. I summoned the Grim Reaper by having to create some random sims and kill them (the things the game makes us do!) and then added him into the household. He was only in there for a short time so that Andromeda and him could talk. Then once I was finished doing the scene I removed him and did the final screenshot. The easiest chapter of gameplay in my opinion, haha. 😉
Flashback snapshots:
There are three pictures which aren’t the current Chapter 10 gameplay so I’ll explain. The first flashback one is from Prologue 2 which is the next chapter after this! 🙂 The second one is a flashback in the timegap between Lucia seeing Andromeda and Xim waking up and noticing them fighting in Prologue 1. The third one is one from the past which is first seen in Chapter 7. 🙂
Chapter 11: An Autumn Sight
Changes made to Xim:
Well, there weren’t a lot of external changes with Xim, but the hair definitely changed. I decided I want alpha cc hair so I wanted to test it out. I don’t want to hoard my game with cc (I still remember the hard disk problem) but I test out the cc to see if it’ll look good on my sims, especially teen Xim. Ah, yes, I looked at teen Xim and she looks cute, don’t worry, lol. She’s not the classic beauty (doll or princess style) but instead I wanted make her beautiful in a lot of other ways (including a bad girl style). I can write a thousand sentences about her beauty but I think you can wait, lol. I intend for her teenself to be a surprise. 🙂
So I got this one from Tsminhsims (I linked them in the credits) and it was seriously the only child hair I could find that fit Xim perfectly (because not a lot of people make hair for children and toddlers even though there isn’t much work in converting them to child or toddler) so thank you, Tsminhsims! 😀 Well, other than that, I decided to use the bright red swatch because it felt like fire, haha. Her natural hair color is dark red, though.
Reasons for Timeskip:
I timeskipped because I got bored.
Okay, no, lol, that’s not the only reason! 😂 The other real reason why is because I already did ten chapters (Prologue included) without really passing two weeks and Chapter 10 somewhere between August and September so I decided to speed things up in Part 1 itself. Part 2, I think will span around five to eight months after Chapter 15.
So the timeskip was like this, lol. I just played a little ahead to the point where she got a bed! 😀 I might have skipped more if it weren’t for me with other stories wondering what the heck happened those many years etc…. so with this story there was an obligation not to skip too much at once. 🙂 It’ll probably skip days, weeks or a few months at a time for each chapter (or within a chapter, it might get to that point! :o), though.
Actual Gameplay:
Not a lot happened, lol. I did some basic gameplay and then had Xim come back to Parkshore. (Shiew’s home 🙂 ) They did talk for a while, haha, but the cloudgazing thing was glitching for some reason so I had to do that interaction twice. How stupid, lol.
Coincidentally Yaritza waltzed through the neighborhood and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of her, haha. The word count made the chapter long otherwise the gameplay was a tad short.
Chapter 12: The Older Sister
Reasoning for Shiew’s POV:
Because I thought her POV would bring some insight. It’s pretty important info if you ask me. Which makes it the first first-person chapter that isn’t Xim’s POV. 🙂 There’ll be more people’s POVs in the next part and probably even two in the same chapter! 😀 Depends on what type of info I’m conveying in these chapters, though.
Reasoning for the Irizarrys’ situation:
It would make the story more realistic, and bring a new level of depth to Shiew. It explained Shiew’s parents’ behavior as well, especially when it came to Xim and Yaritza, the “friend”. I also thought it’d improve the story, lol. So I’m just using whatever financial knowledge I have. I suppose the reason Shiew’d learn about it was because she was bored? I mean by the way her parents are, I don’t think they buy her any games and most of the free games might just be boring, lol. Sometimes when I was bored when I was twelve I researched some adult things randomly (even the 18+ things 🤐), haha, so it isn’t unrealistic, at least to me. Since I was more mature at Xim or Shiew’s age, naturally I would be more inclined to make them mature as well so I feel more comfortable. Even Millan is somewhat mature, haha. Writing childish children (as they’re supposed to be, xD) at Xim or Shiew’s age is pretty hard for me because I wasn’t like that, haha. When I was ten and twelve I focused on writing and studying but I played with my brothers and played a few games occasionally. So Xim and Shiew are going to know about some adult stuff, lol. (Oh, in my stories, I also usually call the adults by their first names because somehow that makes more sense to me, haha. So writing Mr. and Mrs. Irizarry took a little while to get used to.)
Gameplay:
Well, not a lot happened (obviously). But I did go through one and a quarter days. I had Mrs, Irizarry do a pregnancy test (well, pretend to, anyway, there was no option to since MCCC did the trick. So after the “test” I set her pregnancy from Trimester 1: Not Showing to Showing, lol) and tell her husband (the pictures aren’t shown because it’s strictly Shiew’s POV 😊). Then her parents went to work and she went to school and did whatever, lol. Then she came back and did whatever… 😉 After a while only then she told Shiew about her pregnancy, lol. I cheated angriness in Shiew and have her throw the tantrum and calm down using the shower. I only used one pose, the sitting down pose, lol, and then she went to bed.
Chapter 13: Yarn and Needles
Hobby of Knitting:
I figured it would give Xim a reason to calm down and do something she’d actually like (she is sort of creative, lol. She doesn’t have that trait because children can only have one trait (the one Xim has is depressed, a custom trait) and I doubt it does much other than give an inspired buff from time to time? Haha) and she’d finally get to make something useful! 😀 (Who needs fishing, anyway? 😆 Okay, no, it’s useful to some people but not Xim in this case since she wouldn’t feel like she’s getting anything useful.)
It’s also why I gave the chapter this quirky title. 🙂 Personally I feel the title has a different style than the others (since most of them start with “The” or/and directly describes the chapter while Yarn and Needles hints a subtle clue. Well, with that description I suppose you can say Chapter 3: The New Path follows this style as well since it just hints a subtle clue).
Scene Enactment:
This is the first actual scene I enacted in Part 1 (other than Prologue 1: Lucia and Chapter 10: Dark Premise) so I had a lot of fun. 🙂
I think I described a bit of the scene enactment in the A/N of this chapter but I’ll explain it fully. I moved Xim to the Winter household after she was finished with her plants and had Xim “visit” Lilah’s business (since when you change households of a person they automatically teleport back to the new family’s house which is weird…).
(I forgot to get a picture of the inside of the knitting shop and I didn’t have my game open to do so so it’ll be shown another day. Ugh what’s wrong with me, haha. You can go to the credits and download it for yourself to see (if you have the packs that is).) 🙂
I had Lilah sit in the seat and start knitting. I used some in-game poses to make Xim look shocked. Just so you know, I didn’t really need intense gameplay, she was just doing her routine, knitting and playing in the rain, lol. I did make a small change to the lot, though. 🙂
Bess was being annoying since she tried to talk to Lilah and even sat in the chair Xim was supposed to sit in (which I think I already said in the A/N, lol). Overall not much but still. 🙂
Chapter 14: Willow Creek’s Park
This is going to be a very long section, so just brace yourselves! 😄
Scene Enactment:
How I made this scene is a little complicated for those who don’t usually do this, haha. But I used only three poses, haha, one for Jeffrey to tell Millan to go and two for Xim at the very end! Otherwise the actions & expressions they were doing from talking and emotions did the trick! 😀 As I said in the A/N, it spanned over four days, with probably an hour or two spent on it, because I was writing chapters, working on this post, etc. But I’ll explain some things that I didn’t mention in the A/N: I had some… household and CAS problems, haha. (I also set the game time to be slower because I always found it became night way too quickly for my liking, lol.)
I was Just trying to figure out, which townies can occupy the home once I move them into Xim’s household that I can delete after (because I didn’t want so many useless sims in my save and I didn’t really want to make a random sim in CAS since I wanted to jump into the action immediately), and I settled on an elder. I don’t really have much use for them, haha. What I mean is that I decided to move all the people I needed to into Xim’s household, while putting placeholders in their houses. (I put the elder in the Irizarrys’ house when I moved them into Xim’s household, lol.)
Emilee Winter, I didn’t need to move since she was going to “run the business” and not be at the park, haha. But then the household got “full”, so I had to remove Xim’s placeholder (the adult I placed so she won’t be taken away, haha) and put her in the Winters’ household, haha… So that makes seven sims (Xim, Shiew, Mr. and Mrs. Irizarry, Lilah, Jeffrey, Millan).
The loan manager was an elder townie, haha. But since he was perfect for the job (who can resist a cowboy hat?), I only put him in a black suit (he was in a suit before), haha. When I finally had to move him into the household, there was an error, saying the household was too big. I was pretty confused because I could count only seven sims. I decided to load into the household and add him that way, I couldn’t do that apparently.
That was when I realized Mrs. Irizarry was pregnant, so there needs to be a slot for the baby! When I found out I was cracking up because she’s not going to give birth in this household! 😂 I had to adjust the household size using MCCC, then I added him and had him talk to the Irizarrys. I could still go into CAS without any deletion problems since there’s still only eight sims, one being pregnant and not in labor or anything like that. 🙂
I used the “visit” option and had everyone from the household go to the park, haha. I teleported everyone (except for Xim) to their respective spots. 🙂 When I was doing the scene where Xim and Shiew were talking on the bench, I wanted to put the beanie in her sleep outfit, but then when I changed it and closed CAS, Xim’s eyes were returning to EA eyes! 😮 I had to close the game and edit the eyes so that they weren’t “amber” anymore[2]. When I loaded it up, it actually did work! 😀 It was part of the problem why it took four days, haha.
The plot for this chapter was based on whims, lol, although I did try to represent the characters as they would be or I imagined they would be. Yaritza was a whim as well, since she came to the park by herself. But since she was here, I thought, hmm, why not increase the drama? 😁 The loan manager’s purpose was already done so I added her to the household! 😉 Then I teleported her to the spot where Jeffrey, Millan, Xim and Shiew were having “fun”, xD, and the drama started! 😀
One weird thing is that if a sim is arguing to another sim right next to them, they show not even a little sign of unpleasantness, unless they’re part of that conversation. So I had to cheat tenseness or anger in Jeffrey, Xim and Shiew. For Lilah and Millan, I suppose this is fine since they’re chill, haha. Another weird thing is when Xim was cursing Yaritza, Yaritza wasn’t looking directly at her but instead in another weird direction. I’m not sure if the umbrella had something to do with it (it seems to be a bit buggy with animations since Shiew and Xim wouldn’t stay cloudgazing) but I decided to use the umbrella to cover up her head and pretend she was looking directly at Xim. 😊 Clever photo-taking, am I right? 😀
I wasn’t really sure what to do with the other sims since I turned autonomy off and the main focus was Xim (considering it’s her POV, haha), so I had Jeffrey put Millan on the slide (shown in one of the pics) and Lilah come over to Yaritza to teach her about good things, haha. I also did have Mrs. Irizarry go home (to the Irizarry home, not Xim’s home, xD, I made sure to use MCCC to move her back into the same household as that elder placeholder! 😉 ) because I really didn’t have a purpose for her anymore. I also thought she might go home early because, well, she’s pregnant, haha.
Shiew’s father, I let stay because of course, I needed Shiew and he wouldn’t let Shiew go off on her own.
When they all went into the bathroom area I had to cheat sadness in Shiew and anger in Mr. Irizarry because they weren’t going to feel those emotions if I didn’t do so. Sims 4’s emotions system is so unrealistic, IMHO, anyway[3].
Overall, pretty crazy, haha. Then I used two poses that I made for Xim at the end. Well, the reasoning for this chapter was to wrap things up with things that happened in Part 1 and open a gateway to things in Part 2. 🙂
Chapter Tags
Do you know how I like to organize the weirdest things but the important stuff is disorganized? Well, if you do, you know me very well! 😀 I gave the chapters tags because they’re all special in their own way! 😂 If the pages were posts, I’d mostly definitely add these tags! 😉
- Prologue 1: Lucia – event chapter, happy chapter, dark chapter, gloomy chapter
- Chapter 1: Newcrest – event chapter, thought chapter, happy chapter, gloomy chapter
- Chapter 2: The Hard Start – event chapter, thought chapter, dark chapter, gloomy chapter
- Chapter 3: The New Path – thought chapter, gloomy chapter
- Chapter 4: The Good Child – event chapter, thought chapter, happy chapter, gloomy chapter
- Chapter 5: Sheer Loneliness – thought chapter, gloomy chapter, short chapter
- Chapter 6: Wandering Child – first-person chapter, gloomy chapter, thought chapter, long chapter
- Chapter 7: Collector – event chapter, thought chapter, happy chapter
- Chapter 8: Stable Ground – event chapter, thought chapter, happy chapter, long chapter
- Chapter 9: Ultimatum – first-person chapter, gloomy chapter, happy chapter, event chapter, thought chapter
- Chapter 10: Dark Premise – abstract chapter, dark chapter, thought chapter
- Chapter 11: An Autumn Sight – time-skip chapter, happy chapter, long chapter, event chapter, thought chapter
- Chapter 12: The Older Sister – first-person chapter, abstract chapter, gloomy chapter, thought chapter
- Chapter 13: Yarn and Needles – happy chapter, event chapter, thought chapter
- Chapter 14: Willow Creek’s Park – first-person chapter, event chapter, long chapter, thought chapter, happy chapter, gloomy chapter, dark chapter
Background Info
Also, the reason why there were walls down in the original chapters was because I had played waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead. “A”s for emphasis. 😉 Like way ahead. I played up to the Chapter 9 gameplay before I wrote the story. I was thinking about this for a little while but finally I decided I should do it now when I figured I should use the screenshots from the gameplay, lol, otherwise I was just doing normal gameplay (with a story in mind) with a few tweaks and mods such as Zulf’s Gardening Mod and using the teleport cheat, lol. I did walls down because I wasn’t really thinking about making them look good at the time, lol.
I’m not planning to use any premade sims in my stories more than flat characters, lol, from the infamous Nancy Landgraab to gettin’-all-the-craze Morgyn Ember or even the ones-who-people-probably-never-heard-of Olive Tinker. Pretty sure a ton of people played with the first two and a few might have played with the third. 😉 (Actually now I want to play Olive Tinker… is that just me or is trying new things interesting like playing with Olive, a child? 😂) I want uniqueness in my game so I make new characters, haha. Morgyn appeared in a lot of stories I’ve read one way or another, haha, and so did a few other premades.
I only would want premades if I were playing with them… which I’m not right now, but I probably would if I had time. Don’t worry, if you want the premades to appear, they still will, it’s not like I’m mass-deleting them, haha. If they happen to appear in a scene of their own doing then they will appear in the background or talking to a main sim.
I’m only deleting the random townies that appear that I have no use for. Families are fine but single elder households… not so much. I’ve had some very unsuitable sims for my gameplay spawn but I keep them because they make the world diverse, lol. Not making fun of them, of course, but you see, they aren’t actually useful for anything. I wouldn’t want too many sims to spawn that my saves get laggy so I usually delete these useless sims first to maintain stability. The elders (usually females) aren’t really eligible for dating (because I don’t actually have any sims who date elder sims that aren’t already together, haha) so I delete those and then move onto the ones who serve almost no purpose (and who my sims have never met). Other times I use them as placeholders (for households which entirely I move into one single household to play) and then delete them afterwards.
I play with autonomy off, aging off and story progression off as well. So I can have ultimate control over my gameplay. 😄 Autonomy is off so that Xim doesn’t go off doing weird things, lol, like whipping out a phone to satisfy her fun or social because she doesn’t have one at the moment. I could have autonomy turned off for selected sim but that would mean the other sims I want to be doing something would probably start glitching out when it comes to behavior, I’ve had plenty of autonomy problems in the past (with other saves), haha, so I’m having autonomy off for this story save (saves where I play out stories, including personal ones). 🙂
I have aging off because I don’t want sims to start aging up in this save without my consent, lol. In a way, I consider aging as story progression when it comes to story saves because it can ruin my plans sort of. I also don’t want the important sims to get the “Beauty Curse of the Game” just because they aged up and I didn’t know it. 😆 Oh, you don’t know what the “Beauty Curse of the Game is”? Basically it’s whatever outfit the game gives them when they auto-generate, age up from the younger life stages, etc. Sometimes BCG turns out okay on a sim such as Shiew, Yaritza, Lana, Kelsi & Mrs. Irizarry etc. but in some other cases… ew! Plain mismatched! 😆 Well, anyway, aging off is not only because I don’t want my sims to get the “Beauty Curse of the Game” but also because basically it can ruin my plans and I might not even recognize them (because the child to teen transition is the least smooth of all transitions in my opinion where the sim is almost twice its height, facial features change drastically and so does the body. The BCG is the worst when becoming a teen as well imo…). I could use aging on with long but eh, let’s be on the safe side. 😉
Story progression is off because I don’t want some sims to start having marrying or having kids, lol, especially my played ones. I know I can set who exactly to use story progression on but the thing is… aging is off, which means babies that are born will be, well, babies forever unless I go to their household (which is so useless in my opinion considering I’m not playing them, lol, and it will make time go by) and age them up because I can’t even do so in CAS. If I wanted to give townies kids I’d make toddlers from CAS. 😊 And if I wanted them to get married again CAS. 😊 As for the previous paragraph, if I wanted to age them up… see, ay, es. 😂 If I wanted to dress them up, I might if I hate their BCG, haha. I like matchmaking so this won’t be boring for me unlike loading in, aging up… haha. I have a fear of loading screens because I remember a time when the loading screens were sooooooooooooooooo slow. 😔 Thankfully it’s faster now with the new hard drive, especially when I go into CAS, but still, not my cup of tea to sit through a loading screen. 🙂
There’ll probably be more than fifteen chapters in Part 2 to go through five to eight months (what I’m planning as the average for every part). Because of this I feel like fitting in more information which in turn makes it longer and well, needs more time to work on. Hence Chapter 14’s length. The chapters in Part 2 will probably average around 3000-4000 words, I’m thinking, which is why I’m not able to finish before the deadline, lol. Doing the gameplay at the same time I’m writing the chapter makes it more engaging (and more easier to remember what happened) but it does slow it down.
I want there to be fifteen chapters on average because I don’t want to make it two hundred chapters long or anything, haha… that’d be too long for anyone, even me. But there’ll definitely be more than a hundred at the rate I’m going so I think I’m going to need to get my gear up! 😉 I think the final chapters of each part will be the utmost longest because of all the final info of the part I’ll need to cram into it, lol. So please accept this! 😊
The first eleven chapters (Prologue – Chapter 10) of this part were shorter because there wasn’t really a lot going on. After all, Chapter 3, 4, and 5 all spanned through the same day. But in the later chapters of Part 2 there’ll be a lot of drama! And I can pretty much overdo it with descriptions, dialogue, backstories, etc., haha! 😆 So that’ll increase the word count as well, but hopefully that’s a great excuse! 😀 So I’m going to change the deadline so that it’s finished on Fridays because of the length. 🙂
Footnotes:
[1]
Seriously, if you look at the townie households in my save in Oasis Springs, almost half of them (or more than half?) have a sim that has this trait, even a few with kids (and a small few in Willow Creek such as the woman in Chapter 9)! I was pretty surprised by this because I thought it perfectly signified how the community would feel about Xim. Agh, poor Xim can seriously never find a good place in Willow Creek and Oasis Springs. Kelsi and Lana must be suffering with these child-hating people as neighbors, considering they’re childish. 😆
[2]
What happened was that there’s a bug (where I’m not sure if it’s the game or my eyes because I didn’t try with any other eyecolor because everyone else makes their eyes facepaint, ahaha… I can see why though) where if the sim is wearing glasses in the current outfit they’re being loaded into the game with (or being loaded from the gallery or library) and had cc eyes (like actual eyecolors, not just facepaint, lol) it reset to an EA color for a reason I don’t know yet, lol.
I made a facepaint version, though, but the reason is why I made an eyecolors version is so it can be passed on, be in every outfit and won’t be removed when removing makeup, also if I want to put facepaint on her it won’t override the eyes etc. etc. Basically I thought the facepaint version to be contacts but Xim’s eyes are natural which is the difference. I’m planning to release it sometime later when Xim reveals her eyes when I make all the swatches I plan to make. I do everything in my life on a whim so there isn’t really a secure deadline for anything, lol, so it might take a while for it to be released. 🙂 I thought the Monday-Thursday thing would sort it out but eh, life demands lots and lots of attention. 😊
[3]
How does someone suddenly become very sad when they get a moodlet and then very happy again with another moodlet and then very sad again with another moodlet. The emotions don’t actually represent much, it just prevents you from doing certain interactions, gives you certain interactions and gives you increased skill in some things and basically just changes certain things in gameplay but it doesn’t really help much. Most of the times the negative emotions are just plain annoying, they don’t invoke anything but frustration in the player and the moodlets are a pain in the butt, especially if you need to get focused but you get energized from something stupid. I think the addition of emotions is interesting to new players (like me when I first played the Sims 4) but it becomes boring after a while.
It isn’t represented accurately either, Sadness from something like a relative in the family that you may have never met is the same as someone who wasn’t related to you but you were good friends with. Now once, my cousin died but I never knew him. I was a little sad that he died from a car accident (since that’s an unnatural death) but I doubt I would have gotten a sad +3 moodlet that lasted for two days over his death. Now, to me, emotions just exist to represent emotions as facial expressions and body language.
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