old blog

“During The Sims’s protracted development, the team had debated whether to permit same-sex relationships in the game. If this digital petri dish was to accurately model all aspects of human life, from work to play and love, it was natural that it would facilitate gay relationships. But there was also fear about how such a feature might adversely affect the game. “No other game had facilitated same-sex relationships before—at least, to this extent—and some people figured that maybe we weren’t the ideal ones to be first, as this was a game that E.A. really didn’t want to begin with,” Barret told me. “It felt to me like a fear thing.” After going back and forth for several months, the team finally decided to leave same-sex relationships out of the game code.

When Barrett joined the company, in October, 1998, he was unaware of the decision. A fortnight into his new job, he found himself with nothing to do when his supervisor, the game’s lead programmer, Jamie Doornbos, took a short vacation. Jim Mackraz, Barrett’s boss, needed a task to occupy his new employee, and he handed Barrett a document that outlined how social interactions in the game would work; the underlying rules for the game’s A.I. that would dictate how the characters would dynamically interact with one another. “He didn’t think I could handle it with Jamie off on vacation, but he figured that at least I’d be out of his hair,” Barrett told me. “Neither he nor I realized that he’d given me an old design document to work from.”

That design document predated the decision to exclude gay relationships in the game. Its pages described a web of social interactions, in which every kind of romantic relationship was permitted. That week, Barrett confounded the expectations of his disbelieving boss. He successfully wrote the basic code for social interactions, including same-sex relationships. “In hindsight, I probably should have questioned the design,” Barrett, who is gay, said. “But the design felt right, so I just implemented it. Later, Will Wright stopped by my desk,” Barrett said. “He told me that liked the social interactions, and that he was glad to see that same-sex support was back in the game.” Nobody on the team questioned Barrett’s work. “They just pretty much ignored it,” he said. “After a while, everyone was just used to the design being there. It was widely expected that E.A. would just kill it, anyway.”

In early 1999, before E.A. had a chance to kill the design, Barrett was asked to create a demo of the game to be shown at E3. The demo would consist of three scenes from the game. These were to be so-called on-rails scenes—not a true, live simulation but one that was preplanned, and which would shake out the same way each time it was played, in order to show the game in its best light. One of the scenes was a wedding between two Sims characters. “I had run out of time before E3, and there were so many Sims attending the wedding that I didn’t have time to put them all on rails,” Barrett said.

On the first day of the show, the game’s producers, Kana Ryan and Chris Trottier, watched in disbelief as two of the female Sims attending the virtual wedding leaned in and began to passionately kiss. They had, during the live simulation, fallen in love. Moreover, they had chosen this moment to express their affection, in front of a live audience of assorted press.”

Otto–ocean aesthetic blogger. Has the biggest following out of everyone and all for posting vague images that I guess remind people of the ocean…:/

Georg–video game blog. He reviews lots of games and starts discourse but only because he’ll win. He has all the knowledge and also sometimes post him covering game soundtracks on piano.

Ilse–has a personal blog and an aesthetic blog where she posts poetry and things that make her feel things. On her personal she’ll reblog things from her friends, mostly Wendla.

Wendla–can’t juggle more than one blog so her blog is just one big stew of everything she likes. Most of her followers are just close friends or pornbots she doesn’t know how to get to stop following her

Melchior–NSFW blog, with the most extreme and unorthodox kinks you’ll ever seen. Definitely furry content

Moritz–runs a meme blog, even makes his own memes, everything is ironic and there’s a lot of self-deprecating humor

Anna–positivity blog. She tries to post every day and I’d say she has an average amount of followers but she doesn’t do it for the following; she generally is trynna put good vibes out there

Martha–posts headcanons for all her favorite shows. One of her posts went viral and it’s all just Little House on the Pratie Headcanons :/ she also posts fanfics

Hansen–has a personal blog where he comments witty comments on all of his friends posts and also has a second blog where he literally just posts selfies and for some reason it’s huge and he gets hundreds of notes on each selfie

Ernst–Sonic the Hedgehog Stan. If there is Sonic content out on the internet (minus NSFW stuff) it’s on his blog. He doesn’t know how he got so many followers

Thea–doesn’t get Tumblr at all like an old grandpa. Reblogged like 2 posts and one of them is that post where guys try on fedoras and other hats and it turns them into m'lady douches or whatever

-For starters, Melitta is 100% the director and she got the idea one night when she and Otto accidentally stumbled upon a showing of it, and she just knew that she wanted a go at it.

-Of course fucking Melchior wanted to be Frank N Furter, as he believes himself to be the most sexual, but Hanschen blew away Melitta in auditions and already had his own pair of heels. You already know that Hanschen’s confidence and flair is so fitting for Frank N Furter

-That leaves Melchior begrudgingly playing Brad which can mean there’s only one person who can play Janet: Wendla. And Wendla is in love with the entire musical and super excited to play Janet. You know she’s definitely a Janet–is ignorant and naive but a lot more defensive and feisty than everyone thinks.

-Moritz (especially after DWSA) plays a natural Eddie; he is all about some hot patootie and rock and roll. He doesn’t really like the idea of rehearsing at first, but once everyone knows their lines and there’s nothing to do but have fun with it, he goes so hard. His favorite part is when Hanschen has to kill him, they have so much fun with it.

-Georg, Otto, and Ernst all wanted a minor role, maybe an extra or playing Riff Raff because they were all a little on the shyer side when it came to some of the costumes, so Melitta tried the Riff raff bald cap/wig thing on all of them. All Georg had to do was bend over a little and take off the glasses and he was a dead ringer, leaving the other two boys to await their fate.

-The Role of Rocky Horror still open, Hanschen and Georg rangle Otto and Ernst into shiny gold speedos. As the two most innocent of the guys, no one expects either of them to looks so good or confident as Rocky. Otto looks really nervous but jokingly kisses his biceps and all the girls love it. Ernst, meanwhile, looks straight at Hanschen and signs, You like me like this, don’t you. Everyone is sold and Ernst and Otto take turns being Rocky, both adding their own creative twist on the character.

-That leaves Anna to be Dr. Scott. Anna has no problem taking on the role, but does make Melitta let her mouth/sign the Science Fiction/Double Feature song in the beginning to make up for her predictably playing the guy in the wheelchair.

-OKAY BUT ILSE PLAYS COLUMBIA LIKE A QUEEN. Ilse is the Goddess of being Happy and Bubbly even when she doesn’t feel it so the Columbia role fits like a glove. And the glam of wearing a red wig and all sequins, Ilse revels in it. Plus, I mean, I always thought Columbia was always bitter towards Janet and despite the fact I ship some Ilse x Wendla, I bet Ilse would be somewhat bitter because Wendla was mostly pretty privileged. Anyway, that’s off-subject. No one else can even try for Columbia, they just can’t do it.

-Thea and Martha both try for Magenta, but ultimately Thea feels somewhat uncomfortable with the role. Magenta is melodramatic and somewhat smug-looking and Thea feels it’s too ridiculous. Martha handles it well, especially when put next to Georg. Plus Martha’s hair easily is teased into Magenta’s signature curls.

Melchior: ACTUALLY I read about that in Goethe’s Faust when I was fucking 8 years old. I know everything about sex and I imagined once that I myself was one singular vagina in a dream and now I’ve been blessed with sexual enlightenment.

Someone else: the result of you and Wendla having sex = pregnancy 

Melchior: 

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A collage of text and accompanying images. The header reads, in all caps, "No more fighting." Below it, a list is written in bright red, comic sans text, "No more Gamzee discourse, no more Vriska discourse, no more Dirk discourse, no more post-canon discourse." Next to that list are Gamzee, Vriska, and Dirk's default sprites and an image from the Homestuck Epilogues telling the reader to choose meat or candy. These images are piled on top of each other in varying sizes, with Dirk being the biggest, by far. They are crossed out with a bright red X. Dirk's sprite partially overlaps with the next piece of text, which is in teal, and reads, "You have been repeating the same arguments for the past 13 years." The next header reads, "Start writing your ten page essay on why Tavros Nitram is the main character," with most of it being in black, bold, italicized Arial font, save for "Tavros Nitram," which is fire gif text. The accompanying image is one of Tavros playing Fiduspawn. He is looking at the viewer intensely.

In the corner, there is a final header, which is in a cursive font and reads, "Other acceptable topics include…" followed by a list. All of the text is in varying colors and fonts. The first point reads, "How PM and WQ are the true hidden villains of the comic," the second is in bright purple Impact font and reads, "Hearts Boxcar's impact on the plot (I put it in Impact font because it's impact)," the third reads, "Literally anything about the dancestors," the fourth reads, "The history of S B A H J in Homesuck," and has an image overlayed behind it of Hella Jeff laughing and holding his face, saying, "How high do you even have to be just to do something like that?" The final bullet point is half cut-off, but reads, "What was I gonna say here? Oh yeah, Nepeta Leijon." Followed by a smiling emoticon.