Friday, February 15, 2013

2.21 Rainbows



"Here we are!" Mab announces. "The best view in town."



Reve knows why rainbows appear. Therefore he knows they have no true geographical location, and searching for the end of one is foolish. Still, he hops up to one of the telescopes to search, and to use his imagination. What IF he could find the end?



Junpei is melancholy today, as he tends to be when Finley spends days researching for her articles to explain their world, the weather, the grid. Her mood always affects him. "I look at the rainbow and I think about light going through water. Our ancestors looked at it and thought it was their creator... or a snake that ate children... or a bridge."

"Or the bow of a great archer," Finley says, after some silence.


"Yes, it is a shame Mom lost those giant multicolored arrows to go with it," Junpei pokes fun at his mother's preferred color schemes.


Reve points to indicate a structure in the distance. "That house looks kind of like a castle."



"It does, doesn't it?" Mab isn't even looking.

"You know a story." Reve perks up and glances at her expectantly.

"I know many stories," his grandmother answers.

"Did you catch any ghosts there?" Reve pries.


"I did." She caught Junpei there, and brought him home. Memories bubble to the surface of her mind and are allowed to drift back to sleep without being dwelt upon. Mab has to wonder how successful she is in hiding such jarring thoughts and mental images from her little grandson. Watching him frown, confusion spreading across his face, she suspects she isn't successful at all. "I will tell you the story one day," she promises. "But not today."


12°F outside, and Finley is found doing laundry in her swimwear.

We're left to assume that's all that was clean at the time.



Finley has been promoted to the brand new title of Weather Woman.

"Snow again. What. A. Surprise."


...Days later...

"Okay, seriously, I'd like to report on something else for a change! Please!"


"SPAAAACE CHANNEL FIVE!"



"What the... my job is nothing like that!"



Finley may not fight aliens and save pop stars in space while trying to boost ratings, but Reve still thinks his mom's job is kinda neat.

"I can help you take pictures," he offers.

"That's sweet, Reve, but photography is only a tiny aspect of my job." And usually someone else is taking the pictures.


Undeterred by his mother's response, Reve often 'borrows' her camera to play with, and that gets annoying, so Finley buys him a camera of his own.

"A Hikon QX series!" he shrieks, before he's even unwrapped it. "Just like yours!"

"Wrapping paper is wasted on you, isn't it?" Finley chuckles.

"No, I like the box," Reve assures her. "Thank you!"



Cameras, paints...

Reve's artistic trait manifests in several ways.



When the mayor has a house party, you show up, even if you weren't invited.
(Finley was invited, though.)



Finley and Vanderburg discuss politics while Minzi Cho attacks her adopted brother, Davy, with random criticisms.


Reve escapes from the boring adults and hangs out with Vanderburg's daughter, Thisbe. Her bedroom is very pink.


Thisbe tries to get Reve to go along with a complex game of make-believe.



Reve plays her game for a little while, then breaks continuity and the fourth wall by bringing up all the features on his new camera.


Smalltalk with Rusty Menon.

The cold. It's always about the cold. He's smiling so warmly, making so light of it, but deep down he wonders if the snow will ever stop, if countermeasures will fail, if they'll be buried and freeze to death.



...Wait what. Is Tommy saying something about her?



Finley checks on the children. They've migrated to another part of house.



"Do you see the opposing castle's army?" Thisbe asks.




Newton is much simpler to please than the others. True to Reve's words, they've become friends.



Newton has no siblings, and since his grandparents passed away his household is just him and his mother, so he's happy to come to the Archers' house to have someone to play with.



Though Archer can be a little strange sometimes.

"What do you mean," Reve widens his eyes scarily, "you don't think Nessie would be a horse's natural predator?"

Newton panics. "Uh... uhm..."


"Just kidding." Reve's expression brightens up again.



As for Dexter Abbot...

"Hey, Archer! Your hair is PINK!"

Reve blinks. "Yeah, so? Anyway, my Mom's thinking about traveling for her job again. But she wants to leave me with my Gran-Gran, and that's terrible."

"Why?" Newton only asks because it's the best way to prove they're ignoring Dexter.

"Other cities sound neat. I want to see them."

"Oh," Newton says. Of course. How obvious.







____________________________________________
Etc.: I'd like to point out how EA failed at rainbows.


The colors are upside down.

15 comments:

  1. The rainbows hurt my brain so I try to ignore them.

    Reve is freaking ADORABLE, and I really love the personality you're giving him. He's a lot of fun, and I'm enjoying reading about him.

    The evil glare he gave Newton terrified me. O_O

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    1. Thanks! The random evil glare screenshot was too funny not to use.

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  2. Roy G Biv has been turned on his head! :P

    Reve is a neat kid, I really enjoy reading about him. Photography is one skill I haven't done much with, lol It's cute how Reve offered to help his Mom out by taking pics for her. :)

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  3. Sims world is Bizarro world! Everything opposite!
    This is what your observation on rainbows did to Reinier's brain:
    http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n145/yangthecat/rainbow_zps185a2e25.jpg

    ha ha.
    Anyway, Reve is adorable. And Finley, still the cutest thing ever with the facial expressions.
    Poor Mab, trying to keep her disturbing memories to herself around Reve.

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    1. Ha ha, that is a great pic. Made my night. ^.^

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  4. Yeah, those rainbows are a real downer. There they are, in all their incorrect glory. Thanks for another one EA.
    Good for Reve for not doing what Thisbe wants him to do just because! And I love that after being inside in the cold in her swimthings, just a little later Finley's eating with her gloves on in the house. It made me lol.

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    1. Finley is VERY CONFIDENT she won't get any syrup on her gloves!

      Five seconds before the swimwear pic, Finley was traipsing around like that outside. In the snow. I have absolutely no idea what was up with that. x.x

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  5. Can I ask how you do it? I mean how do you stick to writing the story line for your legacy family? Is there a trick to doing it? I've tried and I really want to write a story to accompany a legacy family but more often then not I get caught up in the game play and I forget. Any tips would be much appreciated.

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    1. There's no trick. A good way to start is just to narrate what happens in your story. Let's say you rolled your founder as a doctor. Now you can say, "Sam moves to Riverview and gets a job as a doctor. Here is his house."

      Now if you're feeling creative, you can tell us why you think Sam wanted to be a doctor, why he is in Riverview, and how he feels about his house. The first two things are unnecessary; maybe you'd like to leave us guessing about Sam. Sam can be mysterious. But the third thing, how he feels about his house, while still optional, will let us know what kind of guy Sam is. We can start to empathize with the character. Maybe he loves the location or hates it, maybe he's enthusiastic about one day furnishing it nicely or maybe he's upset he doesn't have the money to make it look good right away. Look at the traits you gave Sam for inspiration. Is he excitable? Is he grumpy? Is he a bookworm with no cares about the decor of his house, as long as he can sit in peace and quiet to read his medical journals?

      Now after you've written about Sam's daily life for a while, you may start to get ideas about things that happen in his world. You can try to stage scenes. Maybe Sam wants a girlfriend, so you send him to a bar and have him flirt with whatever girl happens to be there. Write about that.

      Or maybe you have a specific character in mind for this girl Sam is to meet. Maybe you've already used MasterController to find a sim of an appropriate age and looks and even traits and backstory (hey, you're on gen1 still, so a lot of the sims around town have backstories from EA you can work with). Maybe you have a great idea for how Sam meets this girl, and it's beyond the scope of what you'd be able to accomplish by meeting her and asking her out. What to do?... Create an alternate save and *literally* stage the scene you want between Sam and, let's say, Lacy. You can control Lacy in this alternate save. Use poses, maybe. Then go back to your real save, have Sam meet Lacy for real and build their relationship to the point it is in your story, or the point it is in your alternate save. And then... well, it's your story. What happens next?

      I love to make up characters and write for what they'd do so this sort of thing keeps my attention very easily. While my sims go through their mundane lives, I take lots of pictures and in my mind there's a story already go on for why they're doing this and that. I guide them towards what I think their character would do next, but I also let the game throw me curveballs. I would never have had Finley and Timmothy together, for example, if they hadn't autonomously started with the romance. =) They were so different (and he was insane), I'd never thought of it until it happened.

      Hope that helps. =)

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    2. Thankyou, it did, and I much appreciate it, love your story and legacy family by the way, you kind of motivated me to start my own and stick with it. :) happy simming and writing in the future

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    3. Thanks! I look forward to reading your blog. :)

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  6. ^That was so helpful, like getting a glimpse into the inner workings of your writing process. Or something like that, lol. I especially enjoyed the part about Sam's house. If you'd asked me which of those three questions were the most important to address in a story about his life, it would not have been the one about his house. I honestly never thought about it that way, but it makes sense, trying to get your readers to empathize with your protagonist person.

    You're making me want to delete my blog now and start over. With a character named Sam and his girlfriend Lacy, haha. No, but seriously. Thanks for typing that out, cause I found it fascinating.

    But, your story! =) I *love* Thisbe's name, but her gray hair kind of scares me. It's just so unnatural, even more so than Reve's hair (which I adore, by the way). Reve is just an all around cute kid. I'm growing really fond of Newton too, and I hope we get to see more of him as they get older. =D

    "So when I realized what I meant, I told him of course we didn't learn about rainbows in Texas kindergarten. Rainbows are gay and we're scared of them."

    ROFL, so true. I also grew up in Texas, and I didn't learn about Roy G Biv until high school. Hah, crazy.

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    1. Thanks! If only I could make a living encouraging people to be creative... I'd love that... ^.^'

      And yes... the Vanderburg line is one of premature gray hair. Poor Thisbe. Maybe as a teen, she won't look so weird?

      We'll be seeing more of all of the named kids, no worries.

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  7. Maybe in Sim World, rainbows are supposed to be upside down? Nah, can't give EA that much credit! :D

    I like Thisbe's name, and I'm glad Reve has a friend in Newton. Although, I suspect Dexter is going to be causing trouble for years to come!

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    1. I tried to think of a plausible explanation for light working differently in this universe, but... yeeeeah.

      I can't wait to get to Reve's later life! I haven't had time to open my game since Sunday, though.

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