Tomorrow's Yesterday

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? Getting back into the swing of things here's a few game fandom thoughts I've had for the past few weeks:

Starfield ended up being a disappointment for many due to various issues, and hilariously enough, I was in the middle of a completionist playthrough of Mass Effect: Andromeda when reviews began coming out, and all I could think was that several of the complaints about Starfield mirrored the design and features of MEA (chiefly, loading screens to get off and on planets, stilted NPC animations during interactions, et cetera). MEA also seems to have done better than Starfield in some ways (planetside vehicle for exploration, more handcrafted locations and so on).

Baldur's Gate 3 feels like next-gen Dragon Age: Origins and I love it for that, but it also makes me wonder what is going on with Dreadwolf (and to a lesser extent, the next Mass Effect). I hope it will be at least as good, but development seems to be... slow on both Bioware franchises given the early announcement trailers... (seriously, the one thing EA and Maxis does right with Sims 4 is that there is a short time between announcement trailers and full trailers and releases).

So we now have a full list of items in CAS and BB of TS4: Horse Ranch, and nearly all the hairstyles are very similar to hairs of previous packs (I previously called out the side-braid for being an updated version of a Get Together braid, but the chin-length swept back hair looks a lot like hairs from City Living and Growing Together, the shoulder length with bangs/fringe looks like one I think we got in Snowy Escape, and so on and so forth). We got even more cowboy hats and boots (after base game and Strangerville) and so on...

I guess we also have confirmation of unicorns (or at least the ability to put horns on horses).

On the BB side I’m very disappointed that we’re not getting rocking horses or hobby horses (horse head on a stick) for the toddlers and children. Or a merry-go-round. Or a mechanical bull. Or... Yeah, lots of missed opportunities.

As a simmer and former horse-obsessed girl, I guess I should talk a bit about it.

First, when I heard that they would do a “Horse Ranch” expansion pack, I first thought “welp, that should be a game pack” and secondly that the theme would either be boring American world again (wild west) and reuse plants and other things from Oasis Springs (base game) and possibly even Strangerville (the game pack) or Australian outback (marginally more interesting), since we haven’t any Australian world yet and those two are the only two possible themes with “ranch” in the title. I put my money on the boring option, since it would allow them to reuse assets even though it is an expansion pack (and they did, several of the plants are very familiar in the trailer). Aaand I was right.

Second, I like Native American rep, but I do not believe for a second EAxis cares about any minority rep, given that we have Louisiana and Arizona and American suburbs in the base game with no NA rep, not even added in an SDX patch.

And look at that, I’m a poet!

Welp, got forced off Origin to the buggy EA App that not only fails to detect my installed games (or my entire library) every time I use it for the first time of every day (if it lets me log in), but when I fully quit it (not just minimize it), it leaves a background process running that I must manually quit as well (or any restart of the app to fix the issue wont work).

‘Tis the season for wish lists and all...

With all the new lot types and whatnot that Game Packs and Stuff Packs has added at this point to The Sims 4, wouldn’t it be nice if the devs made a new blank world based on Oasis Springs in the same way that Newcrest is based on Willow Creek?

Additionally, in a hypothetical Get to Work refresh (it really, really needs it IMO, especially when it bugs out due to having a scenario running, and aliens need to be brought up to date with the other supernaturals), to make an Oasis Springs equivalent to Magnolia Promenade?

Also, the next Expansion Pack really should have a Windenburg-sized world (27 lots! Copperdale and Henford-on-Bagley only have 12, so yeah, expansion pack worlds have definitely been shrinking) after all the small worlds we’ve been getting.

But speaking of refreshes and more lots in worlds, San Myshuno needs a refresh quite badly. There should be apartments on more of the floors/storeys (pick your English) than one per building (all the multi-level floors belong to the same apartments, so no dice). There should also be basement apartments IMO.

Really, an EP world should not have less than 20-30 lots in it, and if it is a metropolitan world, bump it up to 40-50 or something, counting special lots such as high schools and chalet gardens, since players cannot add more lots to their games like in TS2 and TS3.

Additionally, Forgotten Hollow needs a refresh. It is too empty and nothing to attract plasma*ahem*sims for the resident vampires, maybe add slides (children need slides in TS4!) and swings (do we even have any base game ones?) and whatnot to a playground in the town square or something, on top of adding more stuff for adults than chess sets (playgrounds add to the creepy vibe). I would also want a chance of ghosts spawning by the graveyard (beside Vlad’s house) at midnight to make the world feel more unique (imagine ghost children playing in the playground at night...).

Vacation worlds (Granite Falls and Selvadorada), now when rentals are all over the place, should have residential neighborhoods added to them. Heck, one of the Refresh promo sims (Kurt Lumberjackson) is said to have grown up in Granite Falls! Amusement park worlds such as Batuu is fine as a vacation only, but Granite Falls and Selvadorada are meant to be tourist destinations with residents in them!

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So, I show up today on this site and the above appears as a pop up over the dashboard with the only button that works is “I Agree” while the rest of the options, which would help me shut off tracking cookies as per GDPR, gets the above text.

So eventually I clicked on “I Agree” thinking that I could fix it in my Privacy settings, only to get the above again.

So the Goth makeover has dropped into The Sims 4, and my hunch that they made that new basegame hair for Bella was right.

Unfortunately, my hunch when I heard that only the Goths had been made over was also proven right: They didn’t bother with Likes/Dislikes, Relationships or Sentiments or whatever. Just the appearances of the Goths, which is very on brand for The Sims 4 (the width and prettiness of an ocean, but the depths of a mud puddle).

First things first: Alexander’s skintone shouldn’t have been changed. Only Bella’s and Cassandra’s should have been darkened. Also, he looks bad when aged up. Cassandra’s outfits are also pretty bad, as is her make up, and then there’s that pink lipgloss on one of the outfits that sticks out like a sore thumb. Mortimer is the best of the lot and he’s pretty bad (I hate his new mustache and he should be mostly dressed in black and have different outfits instead of doing the Vlad copypaste thing and...).

Then we have Bella’s boobs. People are praising Bella’s makeover because she has a thicker waist and smaller boobs, and thus a less cartoonish appearance, though the entire art style of the game is cartoonish.

Here’s the thing: I would praise them for her boob reduction if I believed they did it because Bella in the previous games didn’t have big bazoongas. But they didn’t.

They reduced Bella’s breasts simply because the dress they put her in has a (probably mesh) glitch that causes a jagged corner to poke out beneath the boobs when they are larger.

And yes, they put the most iconic sim in the franchise in that dress and didn’t fix the glitchy dress!

Stop and think about that for a minute before you praise them for making Bella “more realistic”. They literally did it so that they wouldn’t have to fix the effing dress.

And I know that because all my makeovers of Bella has put her in that dress, and every single time I have to reduce her boobs to make the glitch go away.

So, guess who has binged a lot of Mass Effect fan fiction and found a common thread that annoys me a little bit across nearly every fic that mentions it.

Mass Effect canon since the first game: Medical gel, or “medi-gel” is a gel containing anesthetics and promotes clotting and whatnot. It covers wounds and seals them against infections and water by curing into a hard layer that needs ultrasound to open later by medics for real treatment. It was created by humanity and is technically extremely illegal according to Citadel laws on genetic modifications, but it is yet another case of humanity getting special exclusions from the laws (like how they weren’t exiled like the quarians after Revelation and the Luna training facility and every other time they’ve messed with AI).

Mass Effect fanon: Medi-gel is created by [insert alien race here, most probably salarians] and humanity could never. And humanity’s inability to invent medi-gel is proof of how humans are the primitives of the galaxy!

Mass Effect canon: Has humanity invent medi-gel, cure every single illness and ailment in their species, brings a person back to life from being spaced and burnt up in an atmosphere upon entry and hitting the ground. The most advanced hospital on the Citadel is Huerta Memorial, a hospital built by humans named after a human president.

Mass Effect fanon: *ignores all that* Huerta was there before humanity! Humanity has brought nothing to the galactic table and asks for everything! Also, Udina is a meaniehead who should shut up and be grateful for the Council’s scraps, not advocate for the people who elected him to represent them and their interests... A military man chosen because a single soldier likes him as an ambassador would be so much better than a democratically elected diplomat!

Me: Did we play the same games? Am I the alien here and missing something?

Y’know, sitting down and working out all the loyalties of the characters in Skyrim for possible fic reveals a lot of things I haven’t seen online discussions of.

Such as that Thane Bryling of Solitude seems to be one of Ulfric’s sympathetic spies committing treason by relaying info back to the Stormcloaks. My evidence?

One, in the cut quest when Jarl Elisif is assassinated, she is replaced by Thane Erikur for the Imperials and by Thane Bryling if the Stormcloaks take over Solitude.

Two, Bryling’s employee, Sorli the Builder, replaces Jarl Idgrod Ravencrone as Jarl of Morthal if the Stormcloaks take over (really, a random mining forewoman ends up being jarl? Maybe because Bryling vouches for her...).

Three, in addition to being a thane resident of Solitude’s court, she is also the secret lover of the Steward of Solitude, Falk Firebeard, and that gives her access to a lot of info regular thanes wouldn’t get access to. Bryling is also afraid that Erikur (her Imperial counterpart) should find out about them and force Falk to resign as steward, which would cut Bryling off from that useful flow of information.

Four, in her own words: “Many condemn the Stormcloaks, but I refuse. There is honor in fighting for what you believe.” and “This godsforsaken war is dividing our people and destroying our land.” So she already believes the Stormcloaks to be in the right (or at least, honorable, after Ulfric killed her jarl and high king), the same Stormcloaks to started the war, but also wants the war to end because she believes that it is bad. Translated, that means that she wants the Stormcloaks to win ASAP and unite Skyrim under Ulfric’s rule. So she has the motivation to turn traitor against her jarl.

Yeah, while not completely conclusive, she seems to be one of the best candidates of being one of Ulfric’s informants unconnected to the Thalmor (there seems to be a few who had access to privileged information until Tullius showed up with his own commanders).

While General Tullius is a hundred times more competent than 95% of Skyrim’s NPCs or so, there is one glaring mistake he makes as a military governor (though he would have to convince High Queen Elisif to get onboard, which shouldn’t be too difficult):

He does not restore Old Nord Faith to Skyrim (which is not outlawed, and perfectly compatible with being Imperial), and use it as propaganda against Ulfric and his Stormcloaks.

If you are familiar with the Old Nord myths about Shor/Lorkhan’s death, I am just going to summarize it as this:

Torygg=Shor Elisif=Kyne Ulfric/Stormcloaks=Trinimac/Merethic et’Ada

For those less versed in Elder Scrolls mythology: Shor was the God of Men who made sure the mortal world was created, he was later killed by the Elven gods Trinimac and Auri-El atop the Adamantine Tower in the Dawn Era, and Kyne, his widow, became the chief deity of Mankind according to Nord folklore (not Alduin/Akatosh or Ysmir/Talos!).

It’s like the perfect base for pro-Elisif propaganda (Kyne is the beloved mother goddess of the Nords who breathed them to life atop the Throat of the World and bestowed them Voices and made them hardy against the cold), that would also undercut Ulfric’s claims of restoring the TrueNordFaith(TM)... And it would make getting Whiterun on the Imperial side with the Temple of Kynareth, Gildergreen,  Skyforge and windy plains a bit of a Big Deal to prop up the Elisif-Kyne connection...

Yes, this would religiously fracture the Nords a bit away from Imperial Cult (which is an evolved hybrid of Nordic and Ayleidic faiths, though both those faiths recognized the other), but it would be less of a schism than between Hammerfell and the Empire, and not at all unbridgeable.

It also would have given the Old Nord Faith a spotlight in its homeland instead of being tucked away in a shack with an old man...

So... With all the squeeing over the My Wedding Stories trailer, I feel kinda bad that the first reaction I had to the wedding story shown in the trailer was, “well, that’s kinda biphobic, right? It’s iffy at the very least...”

If you haven’t seen the trailer, it’s basically a woman and man getting engaged, the bride makes her friend maid-of-honor (moh) or something (and thus brings her moh to all the wedding planning stuff, if she’s not the moh, this is even more egregious since groom isn’t bringing a mere friend/guest to these things, and apparently has no best man available, so we already have bride and not-moh being emotionally enmeshed in ways that no one else is in the trailer), bride and groom has a few disagreements about cake and flowers, moh comforts bride after an argument, bride clearly falls in love with her right then and there, but instead of immediately breaking her engagement, has her wedding with groom at the altar, and the bisexual bride grabs the moh and kisses her.

And the groom is shown to be a stoked wedding guest at bride and moh’s wedding afterwards.

For those who don’t know: Bi people are stereotyped and assumed to either be homosexual people in the closet (going from male love interest to female, in this case), or to be chronically dissatisfied in monogamous relationships since they “want both” (and thus will cheat, either emotionally or physically, just like the bride in the trailer who did both), and even to be promiscuous with little to regard for their partners (like leaving someone they’ve promised monogamy to on the altar while publicly humiliating them by making out with another sim...). This biphobia is prevalent in BOTH straight and gay dating scenes, and while screwing with relationships is a honored tradition in The Sims franchise, the way they told this story feels a bit iffy to me...

It also perpetuates the myth that betrayed spouses have to be happy for their cheating partners because of the sexual organs/genders of the promoted side pieces because they need to celebrate the cheaters being their authentic selves (even in Sims Nation, where there is no LGBTphobia, apparently), which have been used in real life not to just to shit on betrayed spouses and their relationships (often calling them “not real” because of the hidden identity of the cheater when they were very real to the betrayed spouse), but also to invalidate LGBT orientations as “not a real betrayal” (see any straight guy exclaiming how hot it is when his bisexual girlfriend makes out with other girls in a supposedly monogamous relationship).

Oh well, at least the nail art is sparkly, there are more wedding dresses and possible slow dancing (squee!).

I was ready to squee over the lighter, graying brown hair in one of the photos, but then I remembered the disclaimer in the beginning of the trailer saying that not all images are representative of what we’re getting... I so hoped that the rest of the hair colors would get graying versions (like the medium brown and black we already have) not tied to hairstyles (looking at you, Nifty Knitting), and perhaps some kind of aging thing going on (Sims at halfway point through the Adult stage getting gray hairs, anyone?).

I really should stop looking at Mass Effect meta discussions because they just make me mad because inevitably, there will be people trying to justify the geth’s genocide of the quarians in which less than 1% of quarians survived.

Here’s another statistic for you: On Earth, 1.8%-2% of the human population is less than 1 year old every year. There are 4-5 births in progress every second.