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dicreasy2Hi, hi. As anyone who reads my legacy knows, I seem to be unable to put out a chapter without following it with a bts/picspam/out-takes/Imma gonna talk a lot post. The spare story is no exception, so I'm now going to waffle on about it for a bit.
In the Beginning.
So, I think I'm going to start this by reiterating something I've said to quite a few people at different times. When Marina and De first mentioned the idea of a round robin legacy, I was stoked. I loved the idea of taking part in what would eventually be a huge collaborative project between the members of Boolprop some I would be familiar with, others I wouldn't.
Then I read the time limit. Four weeks, five if going to uni, to play and write an entire generation?
No.
No way.
No way on Earth I could do that.
I'm a slow player, and an even slower writer. I know this. It takes me at least a week to write a legacy chapter, and probably about two or three weeks to get all the pictures I need for it. (This isn't including playing the other houses that don’t feature in the update. My rotation takes me about six weeks to play through unless I cheat every house like mad). Even only playing the one house, I still reckon that I would need at least double the time limit to complete my turn.
There's no way I wanted to hold the project up, so I decided not to participate, to just be a supporter. So that's what I did. When the idea of spare stories was mentioned, I decided to keep an eye on the list, but only claim a spare if I had an idea for a story using them, not for the sake of taking part.
For months I didn't really think too much about doing this. I needed a break from my legacy, had two side projects to complete and real life issues to deal with. I really didn't want to take on anything else simswise. However, that didn't stop the seeds of the plot I went with for Lysa and Rosa being implanted in my mind back in September when I resurrected the Tricous.
Those of you who read my legacy, know that my fourth generation heir recently married one of the downtownie teens, who are related to the Tricous. Carmen has a lot of back story to her, which involves them, and I wasn't sure if I would want to shoot flashback pictures for her. With that in mind, I cheated her flatmate a bone phone, and had Carmen resurrect Jon, before moving him out and completing the resurrections. When I was making the family over, I realised that Jennicor has elf ears, and probably the elf-face template. "Hmm," I thought, "if I was taking part in the BRRL, and I had downtown, I could use this."
I then promptly forgot about it, until I was filming the end of Viridian Child in November, and Jennicor walked past the Tegenaria lot. After I stopped giggling at the irony, I looked at her ears and remembered how I had thought I could use that. The next morning, I woke with an idea. Jennicor was an elf who Saw that a Doran was in the area, and about to go to uni. She would pressurise her daughter, Nylissit into getting to know them. Ny wouldn't want to, but felt she had to instead. (She really didn't buy into the while half-breeds must be wiped out thing). She would go to uni with the Doran and fall in love with them. She would then turn her back on her family and the two of them would run away to start a new life together. They would live happily for a time until the Tricous tracked them down, just as all their kids were teenagers.
I thought it had potential, but I couldn't do anything with it, because 1) it sounded more like the beginning idea for a main branch story, than a spare story.
2) If I did want to use it for a spare story, I knew I couldn’t use the Tricous. Spare stories may not officially be cannon, but to my mind they are, and I knew if I did one, I wouldn't use potential mainline characters in case I stepped on someone's toes.
So I tried to push it to the back of my mind, and when Pen seemed to be taking a similar route in her turn, I was glad I wasn’t doing anything with it.
And yet, the idea wouldn't leave me alone.
I moseyed on over to the spare story list to see if anyone was available, and saw Lysa and Rosa were. I admit I was surprised by that. They'd been my two favourites of the generation, and couldn't believe that no one wanted to tell their story. Could I? Would I be able to use some of this idea with them?
I started to give it serious thought, realised I could and asked for them.
I very quickly cemented the story from the two of them arriving in Flinton, to Hayley walking out of the flat. (Yes Hayley is a blonde as a nod to my original idea of using Nylissit). Bits and pieces were in my mind for the finale, but I kept getting stuck with how to get to the showdown, and how to actually end it. I was stuck for weeks.
Then I read part one of Hero's story. As soon as I saw Kendrick walking away in that end shot, I knew that Fire was going in the same direction I had planned. Kendrick may not have been an elf, but he was working for them, or hunting them, but wouldn't turn Hero in or harm her, because he loved her.
There was no way I could go in the same direction, but also no way I could rewrite my entire story: I was too far along, and without a back up plan. What I could do though, was go in the opposite direction when I reached the same point. True, Pen had done something similar too, but if I had the elf be a completely willing participant, that could work.
I started to plot with abandon. True the showdown was still hazy, but everything else slotted together perfectly, and I was so pleased that I was able to multi-layer the themes I wanted to explore, while keeping the main (two pronged) plot, cohesive.
Themes Schemes (or We Finally Start to See Pictures).
One idea I really wanted to explore with this was the idea of having Rosa and Lysa on the road for a little while. The nature of the main line is such, that the heir settles down pretty quickly (even if they do move later), and thus far, we'd seen the same with the spares. I thought it'd be interesting to go in the other direction, to have Rosa and Lys in their mid twenties, still travelling and show the hardships of that life. It also allowed me to put own spin on the wanderlust idea Ori introduced when Lys and Rosa left home, the idea that they travel because nowhere feels like home to them, and that home turns out not to be a place, but a person instead.
The idea of them still travelling, is also why Lysa is so jaded at the beginning, quite different to how he was in Ori's turn, and why Rosa is pretty whiny. I've had this theory, given the apparent ages of the five children, that Hero left them quite soon to go to her alternate universe. Speaking to Ori as I was writing my shooting script, I became convinced of this. Ori, puts their ages as 19, 16 and 14 when they left home, so I really think, given the fact that Hero went to university and looked to still be young when she did, they probably travelled as a group for a maximum of nine, and more like six, months before she left. I think that after that, Lys took on the role of looking after everyone and continued to look after Rosa, once Sebastian and Portia had gone on their ways. He's after all the most pragmatic of them, and that's why he's so jaded. He's been doing it for so long, it's consumed him. It adds to the feeling I wanted, that perhaps this constant travel, isn't that good for them.
As I continued to think about them still travelling, I started to think about money and how they are supporting themselves. It quickly became obvious to me that they would work and move on, work and move on. (Again that added to the feeling that they need to find their home and settle down, and have become jaded). I knew, therefore, that they wouldn't have much when we encountered them, and soon came up with the idea that they are down to the last of their dosh, and having to stay somewhere they would really rather not.
Flinton was born.
This is what Flinton really looks like. I shot this in my Uberhood, and the more gritty part of Belladonna Cove became Flinton after I moved a few things round, and added a few more lots and decorations. You can see how close things really were, but I tried to shoot it in such a way as to convey the feeling of the town being much bigger. I was very pleased with its overall look and how it photographed, and it was so different to the slums I've built for Simdon.
Oh and anther titbit, the name is a nod towards Hardy's Flint-Combe-Ash in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and I pronounce it with the emphasis on Flint (Flint-un).
To the Builders' Merchant.
I actually didn't do too much building for this. The Running Set I built, and I'm very pleased with. It's also the set with the trippy nightclub Rosa and Hayley go to, as well as housing the fast food restaurant, the supermarket where Lys works and Celeste's office.
I do kinda wish I could have framed some of the pictures on the lot so that you could see the full effect of the neon in the nightclub, because I love it. I blame the fact that I have to stick with oil lamps, gaslights and candles normally.
I also altered the outsides of Pepe's Pets, Centre Drip Coffee shop (Col's), Swift and Thrift Mini-mart and a pub I downloaded from MTS to act as the Plough, to make them fit into the look I had for Flinton. Lys and Rosa's flat was a lot I downloaded too. I tweaked it a little to make it easier to film in, and to fit into my world better, but for the most part it, stayed as it was.
The warehouse the elves lived in, was reused from Viridian Child for the simple reason, I knew I wanted a warehouse and had already built one, so didn't want to build another. I expanded it with the lot expander along two sides so I could add a few more buildings and make it fit the space it was now in better. I also knocked a few walls down inside, to convert the prison rooms and corridor the children had been kept in, into one room, but I didn't do much to it at all. Yes I was lazy.
I did however, do some more building for the North Forest. I set up a new neighbourhood, so that I could make over the downtownies (I have an empty template for the townies at the moment) to look like elves, and it had only the two lots in it.
Cait was lovely enough to lend me her beautiful North Forest set (the lot on the right) for my exteriors, but I had specific ideas as to what I needed for the buildings there, so I built the lot on the left to give me my interior shots.
I ended up with a library (with hidden room), Grania's quarters, part of the Council buildings (not the same part we see in Cait's chapter), the Council chamber itself, Grania's Seeing chamber, a hospital ward, and a slightly dodgy herbalist's. The Magi's chamber was the only interior I built on Cait's set, because I ran out of rooms on mine.
Hiding in Plain Sight.
As quite a few of you who follow my legacy know, I'm a bit nuts about details, especially background details and things that seem insignificant. Writing and shooting this, was no exception, and there were a lot of things happening in the background of my shots that proved to be important later, or just amused me.
This is probably the best place to talk about Hayley's look too. I had very specific ideas about how I wanted her to look. I wanted her to look human, so as to not give the game away completely, but I also wanted her to have an elvin look to her, if you looked at her features carefully enough.
I started with the elf template and tweaked away until I had a sim I was happy with. I think she keeps her elfish looks most from the side, so this is why I tended to shoot her from a 3/4s angle a lot of the time. I also used her clothes a lot to try to get over some of her character, and her actions. When we first see her, and when she is telling Rosa about what she has "overheard," she is wearing the same top, as if she thinks it makes her look most trustworthy. Likewise, for their first date, she wears a very frilly cardigan. Again, she thinks this makes her look innocuous and like someone nice and trustworthy. Her clubbing outfit is a bit more her, but also fits in with the fact they're clubbing so isn't noticeable. It all culminates in her wearing the buckled, dark coat for the showdown. I also chose her and Killian's clothes carefully for that, since I wanted their similar clothes to hint at the fact that they are a couple, and once more emphasise how Hayley was using Rosa.
I did use clothes one more time as a plot point: Rosa's Doctor Who, wibbley wobbley timey wimey shirt is a nod to how Grania's visions are likely to be inaccurate, and how she might not See her own death, and instead be convinced of the fact that killing the Dorans would allow her to be accepted back into the Forest.
The Golden Gift that Nature Did Thee Give.
Now would be a good time to talk about gifts and how I used them in this. I, of course, had Rosa and Lysa's gifts already established, thanks to Ori. I wanted them to be both important, but also...not. Their gifts are amazing and powerful, and they both had their part to play in this (Lysa's causes Celeste to trust him, Rosa's causes her to meet Karen, and Spot and friends to come to their rescue), but I didn't want to make them a big deal. I see them as being part of them, just like their eye colour, and that the twins wouldn't draw attention to what they can do, so I shouldn't either.
I did, very subtly introduce a new idea in this, but I tried to do it so subtly that it can easily be ignored. It's the idea of glamour. Glamour has long been associated with elves, and it's partly due to this that Hayley is able to wow Rosa so easily. Celeste also projects glamour, but, unlike Hayley, she's unaware of it. This is one of the reasons why she is constantly being chatted up.
As for other elves with gifts, well I knew that I would be introducing a Seer to the story, but all other elves and half-elves in the story wouldn't have gifts. Not even Celeste's mother has a gift, she can use magic and the learnings to set a ward, but she doesn’t have a gift as such. I also had a very specific idea about Grania from the beginning.
These are the very first images I had in my head of Grania, before I had even finalised how Rosa and Lys was going to get to the showdown, and almost as soon as I had decided to introduce a love interest for Lys. I thought about her some more and about how I was envisioning her seeing only visions, rather than what was physically happening. I liked the idea, but had one small problem to overcome: would the cannon allow me to do it? I re-read Cait's chapters, I re-read Ori's chapters and I re-read the mythology section at the LJ, and I realised I could make it work. I could use the mythology to my advantage and create this character exactly as I wanted to, but I would need to explain it to you all.
Shooting her background turned out to be a lot of fun, and meant I had four Grania's in the family.
I used Adult!Grania for every shot you saw of her with black hair, and Real!Grania for the shots with grey hair. These two are very subtly different: Adult!Grania has a slightly fuller face, since I wanted to show how Grania's cheeks had sunk over time due to her age and madness.
Speaking of her madness, this collage was a lot of fun to do. I came up with the idea after I had finished shooting in the North Forest, but thought it would show what drove her mad, more effectively than just having the picture I put on top of this. I took pictures from everyone's BRRL turns, as well as from their other stories for a reason. I wanted to show how she Saw the future, but that it was all mixed up with other possible futures, the present and the past. This is why there are pictures of Dom in Gin and Lark's turns, as well as him in Marina's apoc. Also why there are two versions of Mercutio and Tybalt (Jamie's Bohemian road trip and Ori's BRRL gen five), and two versions of Marina's Elle Fitzhugh (in her apoc with Tristan, and in my photoshoot hood with Stuart and their ever so sweet daughter Beth playing in the snow). I was really pleased with the finished effect of the collage, and the filters I applied to the pictures..
Man's Best Friend.
SPOT LIVES!
Well, of course she does. Apart from when it looked like I wasn't going to be able to add her to the family, I never considered the possibility she wouldn't be with them. Once Ori had pointed me in the direction of the pet teleporter, and I knew I could get her into the family, all thoughts of her having died from old age fled. I did, however, know that she was going to be old. Lysa's gift may be keeping her alive, but I didn't want her to be a young dog forever: it just didn't feel right to me, given the fact that she is at least 14 years old when this starts. It turned out that keeping her around, became a major plot point, and not just a nice thing to do.
For the longest time I had no idea about how Lys, Rosa and Celeste would win the final showdown. Rose nailed my biggest stumbling block in her comment to me over at Boolprop. Grania had to die, but having one of the twins or Celeste kill her isn't them. I actually didn't know how I was going to resolve it until about ten hours before I sat down to write it. I knew Lysa would fight, but also from Ori's turn, I knew that Rosa would go to pieces, especially when coupled with Hayley's betrayal. I knew Celeste would be scared and would have to somehow overcome that if she were to help out, but also that she had to be backed up against a wall somehow for the Alienesque picture I wanted to get. I considered bringing Thea in somehow, but really didn't like that, since I preferredto keep Celeste in the dark as to who the lady in the painting really was, and felt it was too forced to have her suddenly turn up and save the day. I was completely flummoxed, until I remembered Spot and Trevor. Why not have Spot come to the rescue by calling for help from the dogs she's met while being at the pet shop? I'd introduced Trevor too, and suddenly knew that he would want to be in the thick of things. What if he got behind Grania, and she didn't realise he was there? The more I thought about it, the more I liked it, and I had my ending.
Didn't mean it was easy to shoot though.
There's no way I could have done this without the freezer clock or OMSPs. My simself was on set as dog wrangler, and I was freezing the dogs in various different poses for this. It was challenging because I'd not done anything with animals before, but also fun.
I Know That Face.
I needed quite a few extra sims for this. A few (Hayley, Killian, Sloan, Karen) I made from scratch in body shop, but others I used sims I had either in the sim bin, or in the neighbourhood.
Celeste is Celestia Harrison from my legacy, with S3 skintone and darker eyes. She was chosen for two reasons. 1) She has the ears. 2) She's awesome and I love using her for different things.
I downloaded the Art Nouveau set from the Store for the paintings of the ladies. I wanted to put one in Celeste's bedroom, to tie into her heritage. A week or so later, I decided it would be nice if, unknown to her, the lady in it was her mother, which in turn led to the idea that the painting was the object that was keeping her ward in place. As long as Celeste owns it, the ward holds. Of course that meant I needed to CAS up her mother. Who else could I use but her father in Regalton? I made a few small adjustments to make Thea look even more like Celeste than normal (black hair, darker eyes, smoothed the cheekbones out a bit, and Celeste's mouth), but Thea is a gender reversed Theo.
Grania, is actually P.T. 1 from the multi-poly tech mod I made last year. She had just the right look for what I wanted, once I put her in S2 skin and added the white eyes and hair.
There were a few inhabitants of the Uberhood who became other characters too. Most notably Col was Daniel Pleasant, Chrissie was Chastity Gere, and Trevor's owner was Marisa Cleveland.
A few more became bosses or friends for the wedding, and yet I still needed more guests.
Thus, Petra, Davina, Sue, Ny, Bertina and Stanlina were all invited to the wedding. I was going to put Andrea into the neighbourhood too, but Andrew is basically Theo with SimNerd's brow, and we've already seen how much like Celeste Theo looks like as a female. I thought Andrea would look too much like Celeste for comfort.
Oh, and yes, Marielle reprised her role as Maire. I needed a reason for Grania to be banished, and attacking a senior member of the Council seemed like a good one. I couldn't think of anyone nicer for it to happen to. It also allowed me to once again work in the fact that Grania has little control over what she is seeing, and is seeing into the Multi-verse as a whole, by having her attack Maire, yelling about her life in Regalton, not the North Forest.
Things Don't Always Go to Plan.
It was a lot of fun shooting this, and for the most part things went well. I took round about 2500 pictures, but most were shots of what I used in the story, but from different angles or trying different animations and placements. There were a few things that went didn't go as I wanted them to, didn't work as planned, or made me giggle.
One thing about shooting on community lots, you can’t control who turns up, including dead grandmothers and mortal enemies.
OHAI Ainsley, I see you thar.
I love these windows I've found on MTS, because they look so British (and Victorian), but ouch Malcolm, that looks painful.
Shooting Lys sitting on the coffee table was a pain, since he kept moving. I had to keep freezing him, and hoping that I could get his expression right, and the animations lined up before he moved.
To get the directions that Celeste was looking in right, for a couple of shots, I had to move her into a different chair, and then freeze her. This led to Lys trying to sit on her lap on more than one occasion.
The landlady caused me a small problem. When I was writing the shooting script, I forgot that the Uberhood doesn't have the normal landlords in it, and that a random one would spawn when I played it. I therefore wrote the character with the middle aged landlady and comb-over landlord in mind, thinking I might be able to change it for the Shea Nightmare landlord if needs be. Then this lady spawned. Young, and fairly pretty and not at all like I had in mind. I ended up changing some of her dialogue and the adjectives and adverbs I'd used to describe her. I still don't think her dialogue gels as well with her looks as I would like, but I had a specific role for the landlady to fulfil, and didn't want to deviate from that too much.
In order to get the framing right in Celeste's bedroom, poor Lysander ended up impaled in the bed for most of his shots
There were several dog fights on set too. The worse thing was that one of them caused Grania to self cancel out the Seasons heat collapse interaction she was doing as her death pose and go and watch. I hadn't finished shooting with her lying there, and I had to try to place her back there as close to where she had been as possible for continuity's sake.
In the original script, Killian kept his dagger for much longer. However, because I've not seen a dagger that can be held by a sim that I like, I used a sculpture, that I placed in his hand using OMSPs. It was a pain in the arse to do, especially since I kept picking up one of the OMSPs when I was trying to pick up the dog. Because of that, he lost it quickly.
Borkinated meshes make me sad. Why does Bruno always seem to use borked meshes for pretty dresses?
This was a mistake of my own making. I dressed Lysa in this tux for the bowtie tying bit, but found out when I went to change him into another tux, that the tux with the grey waistcoat and tied bowtie, is white tie, not black. I had to reshoot it with him in another suit.
"Hee, my sister-in-law is hot."
Yeah, I didn't make up the fact that a lot of people fancy Celeste. I think nearly every sim with a preference for females, heartfarted her.
I Love it When a Plan Comes Together.
Sometimes though, things worked brilliantly.
All autonomously.
Song asked me about this, and how I managed to pose Lysa in it. It was actually one of the most straight forward shots in the entire story. I slapped a facial overlay onto Lys, had him tickle Rosa, then moved her round and away from him. The animations lined up like this after a few frames.
You can use the Depression box and have a sim call on a mobile phone at the same time. Yes they sometimes stand back up, but I got all the pictures I needed anyway.
When I was trying to find an animation that looked like Lysa was brushing Celeste's hair away from her ear, I lucked into this shot. I love it. Apart from the fact that the ceilings aren't visible in the buildings behind them. This is something that happens a lot, and most of the time I notice, but not this time.
I also fell in love with facial overlays all over again. Quite a few shots were basic animations, but the facial overlays lifted them to the emotional intensity I wanted. There were even a few that were only done with facial overlays and the look at player mod, including the shots when Lys is looking down at Grania and talking to Celeste until she takes his hand.
Oh, and everyone sat down and stayed sitting down for the wedding.
Happily Ever After.
Of course, I was going to give both Lysander and Rosalind a happy ending, they both deserve it, especially after everything Rosa goes through, and I love them too much not to do it. It also gave me the opportunity to do a musical montage and use a song that I think links with the idea of home being a person not a place: Your Arms Feel Like Home by 3 Doors Down. I love the song, and it fitted perfectly, so have some (ie lots of) extra pics from the final montage.
The End?
Well, officially yes the spare story for Rosa and Lysa is now over. What happens to them in the future is left to the imagination of the reader, whether or not the elves return and they have to keep running, or if they are safe, well, I can't say.
Unofficially? I have three copies of the neighbourhood on my HD and external drive. One a backup from before I started shooting, one with the evil elves in it, and one with Rosa and Karen living together, Lys and Celeste married and the children in it. I doubt I'll be able stay away from them, in some form or another. They won’t have another story, but I'm sure I'll share picspam from them if I do play them.
Until then....goodbye from Flinton and Combe-Acre.
In the Beginning.
So, I think I'm going to start this by reiterating something I've said to quite a few people at different times. When Marina and De first mentioned the idea of a round robin legacy, I was stoked. I loved the idea of taking part in what would eventually be a huge collaborative project between the members of Boolprop some I would be familiar with, others I wouldn't.
Then I read the time limit. Four weeks, five if going to uni, to play and write an entire generation?
No.
No way.
No way on Earth I could do that.
I'm a slow player, and an even slower writer. I know this. It takes me at least a week to write a legacy chapter, and probably about two or three weeks to get all the pictures I need for it. (This isn't including playing the other houses that don’t feature in the update. My rotation takes me about six weeks to play through unless I cheat every house like mad). Even only playing the one house, I still reckon that I would need at least double the time limit to complete my turn.
There's no way I wanted to hold the project up, so I decided not to participate, to just be a supporter. So that's what I did. When the idea of spare stories was mentioned, I decided to keep an eye on the list, but only claim a spare if I had an idea for a story using them, not for the sake of taking part.
For months I didn't really think too much about doing this. I needed a break from my legacy, had two side projects to complete and real life issues to deal with. I really didn't want to take on anything else simswise. However, that didn't stop the seeds of the plot I went with for Lysa and Rosa being implanted in my mind back in September when I resurrected the Tricous.
Those of you who read my legacy, know that my fourth generation heir recently married one of the downtownie teens, who are related to the Tricous. Carmen has a lot of back story to her, which involves them, and I wasn't sure if I would want to shoot flashback pictures for her. With that in mind, I cheated her flatmate a bone phone, and had Carmen resurrect Jon, before moving him out and completing the resurrections. When I was making the family over, I realised that Jennicor has elf ears, and probably the elf-face template. "Hmm," I thought, "if I was taking part in the BRRL, and I had downtown, I could use this."
I then promptly forgot about it, until I was filming the end of Viridian Child in November, and Jennicor walked past the Tegenaria lot. After I stopped giggling at the irony, I looked at her ears and remembered how I had thought I could use that. The next morning, I woke with an idea. Jennicor was an elf who Saw that a Doran was in the area, and about to go to uni. She would pressurise her daughter, Nylissit into getting to know them. Ny wouldn't want to, but felt she had to instead. (She really didn't buy into the while half-breeds must be wiped out thing). She would go to uni with the Doran and fall in love with them. She would then turn her back on her family and the two of them would run away to start a new life together. They would live happily for a time until the Tricous tracked them down, just as all their kids were teenagers.
I thought it had potential, but I couldn't do anything with it, because 1) it sounded more like the beginning idea for a main branch story, than a spare story.
2) If I did want to use it for a spare story, I knew I couldn’t use the Tricous. Spare stories may not officially be cannon, but to my mind they are, and I knew if I did one, I wouldn't use potential mainline characters in case I stepped on someone's toes.
So I tried to push it to the back of my mind, and when Pen seemed to be taking a similar route in her turn, I was glad I wasn’t doing anything with it.
And yet, the idea wouldn't leave me alone.
I moseyed on over to the spare story list to see if anyone was available, and saw Lysa and Rosa were. I admit I was surprised by that. They'd been my two favourites of the generation, and couldn't believe that no one wanted to tell their story. Could I? Would I be able to use some of this idea with them?
I started to give it serious thought, realised I could and asked for them.
I very quickly cemented the story from the two of them arriving in Flinton, to Hayley walking out of the flat. (Yes Hayley is a blonde as a nod to my original idea of using Nylissit). Bits and pieces were in my mind for the finale, but I kept getting stuck with how to get to the showdown, and how to actually end it. I was stuck for weeks.
Then I read part one of Hero's story. As soon as I saw Kendrick walking away in that end shot, I knew that Fire was going in the same direction I had planned. Kendrick may not have been an elf, but he was working for them, or hunting them, but wouldn't turn Hero in or harm her, because he loved her.
There was no way I could go in the same direction, but also no way I could rewrite my entire story: I was too far along, and without a back up plan. What I could do though, was go in the opposite direction when I reached the same point. True, Pen had done something similar too, but if I had the elf be a completely willing participant, that could work.
I started to plot with abandon. True the showdown was still hazy, but everything else slotted together perfectly, and I was so pleased that I was able to multi-layer the themes I wanted to explore, while keeping the main (two pronged) plot, cohesive.
Themes Schemes (or We Finally Start to See Pictures).
One idea I really wanted to explore with this was the idea of having Rosa and Lysa on the road for a little while. The nature of the main line is such, that the heir settles down pretty quickly (even if they do move later), and thus far, we'd seen the same with the spares. I thought it'd be interesting to go in the other direction, to have Rosa and Lys in their mid twenties, still travelling and show the hardships of that life. It also allowed me to put own spin on the wanderlust idea Ori introduced when Lys and Rosa left home, the idea that they travel because nowhere feels like home to them, and that home turns out not to be a place, but a person instead.
The idea of them still travelling, is also why Lysa is so jaded at the beginning, quite different to how he was in Ori's turn, and why Rosa is pretty whiny. I've had this theory, given the apparent ages of the five children, that Hero left them quite soon to go to her alternate universe. Speaking to Ori as I was writing my shooting script, I became convinced of this. Ori, puts their ages as 19, 16 and 14 when they left home, so I really think, given the fact that Hero went to university and looked to still be young when she did, they probably travelled as a group for a maximum of nine, and more like six, months before she left. I think that after that, Lys took on the role of looking after everyone and continued to look after Rosa, once Sebastian and Portia had gone on their ways. He's after all the most pragmatic of them, and that's why he's so jaded. He's been doing it for so long, it's consumed him. It adds to the feeling I wanted, that perhaps this constant travel, isn't that good for them.
As I continued to think about them still travelling, I started to think about money and how they are supporting themselves. It quickly became obvious to me that they would work and move on, work and move on. (Again that added to the feeling that they need to find their home and settle down, and have become jaded). I knew, therefore, that they wouldn't have much when we encountered them, and soon came up with the idea that they are down to the last of their dosh, and having to stay somewhere they would really rather not.
Flinton was born.
This is what Flinton really looks like. I shot this in my Uberhood, and the more gritty part of Belladonna Cove became Flinton after I moved a few things round, and added a few more lots and decorations. You can see how close things really were, but I tried to shoot it in such a way as to convey the feeling of the town being much bigger. I was very pleased with its overall look and how it photographed, and it was so different to the slums I've built for Simdon.
Oh and anther titbit, the name is a nod towards Hardy's Flint-Combe-Ash in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and I pronounce it with the emphasis on Flint (Flint-un).
To the Builders' Merchant.
I actually didn't do too much building for this. The Running Set I built, and I'm very pleased with. It's also the set with the trippy nightclub Rosa and Hayley go to, as well as housing the fast food restaurant, the supermarket where Lys works and Celeste's office.
I do kinda wish I could have framed some of the pictures on the lot so that you could see the full effect of the neon in the nightclub, because I love it. I blame the fact that I have to stick with oil lamps, gaslights and candles normally.
I also altered the outsides of Pepe's Pets, Centre Drip Coffee shop (Col's), Swift and Thrift Mini-mart and a pub I downloaded from MTS to act as the Plough, to make them fit into the look I had for Flinton. Lys and Rosa's flat was a lot I downloaded too. I tweaked it a little to make it easier to film in, and to fit into my world better, but for the most part it, stayed as it was.
The warehouse the elves lived in, was reused from Viridian Child for the simple reason, I knew I wanted a warehouse and had already built one, so didn't want to build another. I expanded it with the lot expander along two sides so I could add a few more buildings and make it fit the space it was now in better. I also knocked a few walls down inside, to convert the prison rooms and corridor the children had been kept in, into one room, but I didn't do much to it at all. Yes I was lazy.
I did however, do some more building for the North Forest. I set up a new neighbourhood, so that I could make over the downtownies (I have an empty template for the townies at the moment) to look like elves, and it had only the two lots in it.
Cait was lovely enough to lend me her beautiful North Forest set (the lot on the right) for my exteriors, but I had specific ideas as to what I needed for the buildings there, so I built the lot on the left to give me my interior shots.
I ended up with a library (with hidden room), Grania's quarters, part of the Council buildings (not the same part we see in Cait's chapter), the Council chamber itself, Grania's Seeing chamber, a hospital ward, and a slightly dodgy herbalist's. The Magi's chamber was the only interior I built on Cait's set, because I ran out of rooms on mine.
Hiding in Plain Sight.
As quite a few of you who follow my legacy know, I'm a bit nuts about details, especially background details and things that seem insignificant. Writing and shooting this, was no exception, and there were a lot of things happening in the background of my shots that proved to be important later, or just amused me.
This is probably the best place to talk about Hayley's look too. I had very specific ideas about how I wanted her to look. I wanted her to look human, so as to not give the game away completely, but I also wanted her to have an elvin look to her, if you looked at her features carefully enough.
I started with the elf template and tweaked away until I had a sim I was happy with. I think she keeps her elfish looks most from the side, so this is why I tended to shoot her from a 3/4s angle a lot of the time. I also used her clothes a lot to try to get over some of her character, and her actions. When we first see her, and when she is telling Rosa about what she has "overheard," she is wearing the same top, as if she thinks it makes her look most trustworthy. Likewise, for their first date, she wears a very frilly cardigan. Again, she thinks this makes her look innocuous and like someone nice and trustworthy. Her clubbing outfit is a bit more her, but also fits in with the fact they're clubbing so isn't noticeable. It all culminates in her wearing the buckled, dark coat for the showdown. I also chose her and Killian's clothes carefully for that, since I wanted their similar clothes to hint at the fact that they are a couple, and once more emphasise how Hayley was using Rosa.
I did use clothes one more time as a plot point: Rosa's Doctor Who, wibbley wobbley timey wimey shirt is a nod to how Grania's visions are likely to be inaccurate, and how she might not See her own death, and instead be convinced of the fact that killing the Dorans would allow her to be accepted back into the Forest.
The Golden Gift that Nature Did Thee Give.
Now would be a good time to talk about gifts and how I used them in this. I, of course, had Rosa and Lysa's gifts already established, thanks to Ori. I wanted them to be both important, but also...not. Their gifts are amazing and powerful, and they both had their part to play in this (Lysa's causes Celeste to trust him, Rosa's causes her to meet Karen, and Spot and friends to come to their rescue), but I didn't want to make them a big deal. I see them as being part of them, just like their eye colour, and that the twins wouldn't draw attention to what they can do, so I shouldn't either.
I did, very subtly introduce a new idea in this, but I tried to do it so subtly that it can easily be ignored. It's the idea of glamour. Glamour has long been associated with elves, and it's partly due to this that Hayley is able to wow Rosa so easily. Celeste also projects glamour, but, unlike Hayley, she's unaware of it. This is one of the reasons why she is constantly being chatted up.
As for other elves with gifts, well I knew that I would be introducing a Seer to the story, but all other elves and half-elves in the story wouldn't have gifts. Not even Celeste's mother has a gift, she can use magic and the learnings to set a ward, but she doesn’t have a gift as such. I also had a very specific idea about Grania from the beginning.
These are the very first images I had in my head of Grania, before I had even finalised how Rosa and Lys was going to get to the showdown, and almost as soon as I had decided to introduce a love interest for Lys. I thought about her some more and about how I was envisioning her seeing only visions, rather than what was physically happening. I liked the idea, but had one small problem to overcome: would the cannon allow me to do it? I re-read Cait's chapters, I re-read Ori's chapters and I re-read the mythology section at the LJ, and I realised I could make it work. I could use the mythology to my advantage and create this character exactly as I wanted to, but I would need to explain it to you all.
Shooting her background turned out to be a lot of fun, and meant I had four Grania's in the family.
I used Adult!Grania for every shot you saw of her with black hair, and Real!Grania for the shots with grey hair. These two are very subtly different: Adult!Grania has a slightly fuller face, since I wanted to show how Grania's cheeks had sunk over time due to her age and madness.
Speaking of her madness, this collage was a lot of fun to do. I came up with the idea after I had finished shooting in the North Forest, but thought it would show what drove her mad, more effectively than just having the picture I put on top of this. I took pictures from everyone's BRRL turns, as well as from their other stories for a reason. I wanted to show how she Saw the future, but that it was all mixed up with other possible futures, the present and the past. This is why there are pictures of Dom in Gin and Lark's turns, as well as him in Marina's apoc. Also why there are two versions of Mercutio and Tybalt (Jamie's Bohemian road trip and Ori's BRRL gen five), and two versions of Marina's Elle Fitzhugh (in her apoc with Tristan, and in my photoshoot hood with Stuart and their ever so sweet daughter Beth playing in the snow). I was really pleased with the finished effect of the collage, and the filters I applied to the pictures..
Man's Best Friend.
SPOT LIVES!
Well, of course she does. Apart from when it looked like I wasn't going to be able to add her to the family, I never considered the possibility she wouldn't be with them. Once Ori had pointed me in the direction of the pet teleporter, and I knew I could get her into the family, all thoughts of her having died from old age fled. I did, however, know that she was going to be old. Lysa's gift may be keeping her alive, but I didn't want her to be a young dog forever: it just didn't feel right to me, given the fact that she is at least 14 years old when this starts. It turned out that keeping her around, became a major plot point, and not just a nice thing to do.
For the longest time I had no idea about how Lys, Rosa and Celeste would win the final showdown. Rose nailed my biggest stumbling block in her comment to me over at Boolprop. Grania had to die, but having one of the twins or Celeste kill her isn't them. I actually didn't know how I was going to resolve it until about ten hours before I sat down to write it. I knew Lysa would fight, but also from Ori's turn, I knew that Rosa would go to pieces, especially when coupled with Hayley's betrayal. I knew Celeste would be scared and would have to somehow overcome that if she were to help out, but also that she had to be backed up against a wall somehow for the Alienesque picture I wanted to get. I considered bringing Thea in somehow, but really didn't like that, since I preferredto keep Celeste in the dark as to who the lady in the painting really was, and felt it was too forced to have her suddenly turn up and save the day. I was completely flummoxed, until I remembered Spot and Trevor. Why not have Spot come to the rescue by calling for help from the dogs she's met while being at the pet shop? I'd introduced Trevor too, and suddenly knew that he would want to be in the thick of things. What if he got behind Grania, and she didn't realise he was there? The more I thought about it, the more I liked it, and I had my ending.
Didn't mean it was easy to shoot though.
There's no way I could have done this without the freezer clock or OMSPs. My simself was on set as dog wrangler, and I was freezing the dogs in various different poses for this. It was challenging because I'd not done anything with animals before, but also fun.
I Know That Face.
I needed quite a few extra sims for this. A few (Hayley, Killian, Sloan, Karen) I made from scratch in body shop, but others I used sims I had either in the sim bin, or in the neighbourhood.
Celeste is Celestia Harrison from my legacy, with S3 skintone and darker eyes. She was chosen for two reasons. 1) She has the ears. 2) She's awesome and I love using her for different things.
I downloaded the Art Nouveau set from the Store for the paintings of the ladies. I wanted to put one in Celeste's bedroom, to tie into her heritage. A week or so later, I decided it would be nice if, unknown to her, the lady in it was her mother, which in turn led to the idea that the painting was the object that was keeping her ward in place. As long as Celeste owns it, the ward holds. Of course that meant I needed to CAS up her mother. Who else could I use but her father in Regalton? I made a few small adjustments to make Thea look even more like Celeste than normal (black hair, darker eyes, smoothed the cheekbones out a bit, and Celeste's mouth), but Thea is a gender reversed Theo.
Grania, is actually P.T. 1 from the multi-poly tech mod I made last year. She had just the right look for what I wanted, once I put her in S2 skin and added the white eyes and hair.
There were a few inhabitants of the Uberhood who became other characters too. Most notably Col was Daniel Pleasant, Chrissie was Chastity Gere, and Trevor's owner was Marisa Cleveland.
A few more became bosses or friends for the wedding, and yet I still needed more guests.
Thus, Petra, Davina, Sue, Ny, Bertina and Stanlina were all invited to the wedding. I was going to put Andrea into the neighbourhood too, but Andrew is basically Theo with SimNerd's brow, and we've already seen how much like Celeste Theo looks like as a female. I thought Andrea would look too much like Celeste for comfort.
Oh, and yes, Marielle reprised her role as Maire. I needed a reason for Grania to be banished, and attacking a senior member of the Council seemed like a good one. I couldn't think of anyone nicer for it to happen to. It also allowed me to once again work in the fact that Grania has little control over what she is seeing, and is seeing into the Multi-verse as a whole, by having her attack Maire, yelling about her life in Regalton, not the North Forest.
Things Don't Always Go to Plan.
It was a lot of fun shooting this, and for the most part things went well. I took round about 2500 pictures, but most were shots of what I used in the story, but from different angles or trying different animations and placements. There were a few things that went didn't go as I wanted them to, didn't work as planned, or made me giggle.
One thing about shooting on community lots, you can’t control who turns up, including dead grandmothers and mortal enemies.
OHAI Ainsley, I see you thar.
I love these windows I've found on MTS, because they look so British (and Victorian), but ouch Malcolm, that looks painful.
Shooting Lys sitting on the coffee table was a pain, since he kept moving. I had to keep freezing him, and hoping that I could get his expression right, and the animations lined up before he moved.
To get the directions that Celeste was looking in right, for a couple of shots, I had to move her into a different chair, and then freeze her. This led to Lys trying to sit on her lap on more than one occasion.
The landlady caused me a small problem. When I was writing the shooting script, I forgot that the Uberhood doesn't have the normal landlords in it, and that a random one would spawn when I played it. I therefore wrote the character with the middle aged landlady and comb-over landlord in mind, thinking I might be able to change it for the Shea Nightmare landlord if needs be. Then this lady spawned. Young, and fairly pretty and not at all like I had in mind. I ended up changing some of her dialogue and the adjectives and adverbs I'd used to describe her. I still don't think her dialogue gels as well with her looks as I would like, but I had a specific role for the landlady to fulfil, and didn't want to deviate from that too much.
In order to get the framing right in Celeste's bedroom, poor Lysander ended up impaled in the bed for most of his shots
There were several dog fights on set too. The worse thing was that one of them caused Grania to self cancel out the Seasons heat collapse interaction she was doing as her death pose and go and watch. I hadn't finished shooting with her lying there, and I had to try to place her back there as close to where she had been as possible for continuity's sake.
In the original script, Killian kept his dagger for much longer. However, because I've not seen a dagger that can be held by a sim that I like, I used a sculpture, that I placed in his hand using OMSPs. It was a pain in the arse to do, especially since I kept picking up one of the OMSPs when I was trying to pick up the dog. Because of that, he lost it quickly.
Borkinated meshes make me sad. Why does Bruno always seem to use borked meshes for pretty dresses?
This was a mistake of my own making. I dressed Lysa in this tux for the bowtie tying bit, but found out when I went to change him into another tux, that the tux with the grey waistcoat and tied bowtie, is white tie, not black. I had to reshoot it with him in another suit.
"Hee, my sister-in-law is hot."
Yeah, I didn't make up the fact that a lot of people fancy Celeste. I think nearly every sim with a preference for females, heartfarted her.
I Love it When a Plan Comes Together.
Sometimes though, things worked brilliantly.
All autonomously.
Song asked me about this, and how I managed to pose Lysa in it. It was actually one of the most straight forward shots in the entire story. I slapped a facial overlay onto Lys, had him tickle Rosa, then moved her round and away from him. The animations lined up like this after a few frames.
You can use the Depression box and have a sim call on a mobile phone at the same time. Yes they sometimes stand back up, but I got all the pictures I needed anyway.
When I was trying to find an animation that looked like Lysa was brushing Celeste's hair away from her ear, I lucked into this shot. I love it. Apart from the fact that the ceilings aren't visible in the buildings behind them. This is something that happens a lot, and most of the time I notice, but not this time.
I also fell in love with facial overlays all over again. Quite a few shots were basic animations, but the facial overlays lifted them to the emotional intensity I wanted. There were even a few that were only done with facial overlays and the look at player mod, including the shots when Lys is looking down at Grania and talking to Celeste until she takes his hand.
Oh, and everyone sat down and stayed sitting down for the wedding.
Happily Ever After.
Of course, I was going to give both Lysander and Rosalind a happy ending, they both deserve it, especially after everything Rosa goes through, and I love them too much not to do it. It also gave me the opportunity to do a musical montage and use a song that I think links with the idea of home being a person not a place: Your Arms Feel Like Home by 3 Doors Down. I love the song, and it fitted perfectly, so have some (ie lots of) extra pics from the final montage.
The End?
Well, officially yes the spare story for Rosa and Lysa is now over. What happens to them in the future is left to the imagination of the reader, whether or not the elves return and they have to keep running, or if they are safe, well, I can't say.
Unofficially? I have three copies of the neighbourhood on my HD and external drive. One a backup from before I started shooting, one with the evil elves in it, and one with Rosa and Karen living together, Lys and Celeste married and the children in it. I doubt I'll be able stay away from them, in some form or another. They won’t have another story, but I'm sure I'll share picspam from them if I do play them.
Until then....goodbye from Flinton and Combe-Acre.
