#aetla

it’s hard for me to talk about her before rambling a bit so here i go! her name is audrey cramer which is 1). a reference to my favorite actress ( audrey hepburn ) and 2). a reference to one of my favorite families ( the cramer women ) in my favorite soap opera, one life to live. i love ( love ) soaps; passions, all my children, and one life to live were my biggest favs even though passions was stupid most of the time looking back. the deaths of AMC / OLTL still hurt. but hey, general hospital, days, and the cbs soaps are still kicking even if i don’t watch them. the point of bringing this up is that the mini-story in my head with these characters in the sims is basically kind of a...love letter to soaps and the tropes they have ( the romance, the cheating, scandals, the star crossed lovers, the people who die but never stay dead, etc. ) but with a fantasy twist since the town is occupied by fairies, wizards, werewolves, etc.

anyway, audrey. while soaps are an ensemble, pretty much every single one has that one female character that ‘leads’ the show ( all my children had erica kane, one life to live had victora / vicki lord, general hospital still has laura spencer, days of our lives also still has its female lead, marlena evens, etc, etc. ) audrey is the ‘lead’ of [fictional town i haven’t fully decided the name of].

audrey is well... me. her name was literally my middle name back when i first created her back when my brother got me the sims 1 ( side note: i love my big bro. he’s great ). she’s always been black, she’s aways been a writer, and a hopeless romantic who just so happens to be good at things i’m not ( i hate cooking -> audrey ended up going into the professional chef career lmao ). she was basically built off the things young summer liked and did or either aspired to do or get better at. she is, quite literally, my idealized self i guess. ( i think her love interest may or may not have originally been based off this cute hispanic boy i spent all day at the pool with once one summer. did we dramatically look at each other through the gates when he finally had to go home? maybe. i was in love ya’ll!!! )

i literally had a journal in middle school were i wrote out stories between the characters - although looking back on it now, i would probably cringe since most of it would read like a trashy reality show to me ( for context, stuff like flavor of love / i love new york was at its peak back then ) rather than the well crafted soap that 13 year old me envisioned. however, instead of just...throwing all that away, i recently started to build this storyline in my head ( mostly b/c i’m not very fond of the sims 4 and want to find ways to keep myself invested in it ) and revamp parts i didn’t like. basically i asked: how can i make this interesting to me - even if it is, admittedly, self indulgent to my tastes? the answer was to start building a world which is...something i’ve never done before? and it’s still in like super, super infant phases b/c i haven’t been playing ts4 at all but it is something i want to work for my own enjoyment / challenge to myself.

SO. the beginning of the story has always started with audrey returning home for a funeral - her mother’s funeral to be exact. there’s a lot of baggage here due to the fact that 1). her mom is/was easily the most important in town, 2). the cramers, who are also witches, are seen as the ‘pillars’ of the community and thus someone needs to step up and take her mother’s place (i’m still debating on her mom’s new name  / whether i want it to be a soap character reference or not so that’s why i’m not saying a name), and 3). her mother’s death slowly begins to look more and more like a murder than a natural cause of death.

on top of all of this, audrey hasn’t been back home since graduating high school and leaving her HS sweetheart behind due to conflicting desires ( she wants to escape what she is - a witch / half faye via her father - and wants to leave it behind while he takes pride in his family and what he is - a werewolf. ( we all know they’re going to fall in love again but...slow burn baby ). 

audrey vc: can i catch a break here?

there’s also the fact that well...the cramers like all families are dysfunctional. before i touch on her sisters, however, i also have to mention another trope within soap operas. if a character (doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman) has multiple children then each child is basically guaranteed to have a different mom / dad  ( if a brother and sister on a soap have the same mom and dad, that’s actually a miracle lol ). that’s how it is with audrey and her sisters, serena and alexendra.

serena. the oldest who was originally the baby - although audrey tends to act more like it. literally gives not a single fuck(tm) about having magical powers and constantly leaves the council on read about becoming the new head now that her mother is dead. she’s single, constantly ready to mingle - in bed. basically fulfills the hot / steamy part of the ‘love in the afternoon’ part of soaps + is a person whose life is a mess and is always into something they probably shouldn’t be in.

alexenda. the baby who, at least back during the ts1 and ts2, was actually the oldest but things change!!! her personality has changed a lot because she used to be the oldest that was a nerd - i admittedly wasn’t invested in her back then as much as i am now. is more of a modern day hipster now who is an artist more than anything else. i’m still fleshing her new personality out so there’s not much here yet.

the momma without a name yet ( might just be marlena b/c while i’ve never been super into days of our lives, the character marlena literally got possessed by the devil twice and that should be honored tbh ). anyway, she dead. has had an antagonist relationship with esperanza kane since forever and may or may not have been sleeping around with her husband. oops. ( esperanza is the mother of christian, audrey’s ex. :))) )

anyway, this isn’t like....a deep plot. i’m very self aware about it. it’s messy and drama filled b/c that’s well...soaps lol.

bonus: they also have pets. the dog is named carly after a character from general hospital that’s always yelling and in people’s faces lol. the brownish cat is the mom’s cat, vicki (named after the ever wise victoria lord), who can speak and acts as an ‘advisor’. audrey’s cat is...victor manning who doesn’t think he’s a cat and would probably try to fight you in the street if he could - that’s what you can expect from a cat named that lol. he loves belly rubs though!!!!