It’s been a fun ride, but it’s time to bring the story of Centurion von Thule to a conclusion. Technical difficulties and, oh yeah, my laptop deciding to die on me mean that it’s time to say goodbye to our awkward, uniformed friend. Because I could not conclude this playthrough the way I had originally planned, I’m going to take the time to talk about exactly what went through my head when I did all this.
The original concept was simple: Make a Sim based off of online neo-fascists, and see to it that he rises to power (reaches Level 10 of the Political career). But not just any online neo-fascists, it had to be the weird autistic ones who post their entire manifesto as an introductory post and have usernames like, well, Centurion von Thule. I was part of a forum called Iron March, and I included some of their in-jokes and made references to a few users.
Here’s one of the first screencaps I ever took of him (he looks so innocent! like he has no idea what’s going to happen to him!), so I can talk a little about how I designed his face. His coloring is washed-out, pallid, watery, like he’s nervous and possibly sickly. He does have the Hates the Outdoors trait, after all. His hair color was intended to be a wishy-washy not-quite-blond, not-quite-brown, just light enough so he could claim Nordic heritage. I made his features gracile and delicate, balanced out with a sharp jawline so he doesn’t look too feminine. I imagine he’d brag about his facial measurements on whatever forum he uses, only for another user to point out his slightly Mongolian eyes.
I used makeup to add some extra shading on his cheekbones and to texturize his lips. It makes quite a bit of difference.
And of course I set his weight and muscle size all the way at the low end. I don’t remember what I set his muscle definition to, I probably left it in the middle. He never exercises, but has freakish metabolism. A lot like myself.
His favorite food is hamburgers, his favorite color is white (naturally), and his favorite music is electronica (not my fault EA didn’t include martial-industrial). His star sign is Cancer, same as Slavros.
I didn’t control most of his actions, believing that the game’s natural AI was funny enough as it is. But sometimes I’d tell him to do things that would make for a more interesting write-up, like fighting a bouncer (something that he would never have done on his own), or take care of his personal needs so I could take him to another lot without him grumbling too much. Sometimes I’d direct him to interact with Sims when he was just standing around doing nothing. I wanted to show off as many different aspects of the game as would be fun while letting it fuck itself up as it willed.
Some time around episode 6, I installed Pets. Mostly because I wanted roving gangs of wild horses, but I wanted to see how Centurion would cope with having a pet. Honestly, I didn’t like having the dog that much. Originally I liked being able to watch her while Centurion was away at work, but she constantly needed attention and there was only so much content I could squeeze out of her. I was relieved when she died.
I also installed Seasons because I heard it was the expansion that added the most to gameplay. I kind of liked the holidays, but the whole thing was a little overrated.
I even acquired Showtime. It didn’t do much in this playthrough other than add karaoke.
Much later, I installed World Adventures so I could use the custom towns. I wanted to take Centurion on at least one vacation so we could see him messing around in Egypt or China or France, but it was so late in the game that I mostly just wanted to get the thing done.
I had plans to get Into the Future, because it would have been great to save that for the very end, like Centurion would be going into the future to see the impact he’d make as a ruler. But it’s too late for that.
But one of the things that made these write-ups unexpectedly difficult was, of all things, a Tumblr update. Tumblr changed the way that making new posts works, so instead of loading a new page for your post, there’s just a box that loads right above your dash. This is a major pain in the ass for anyone typing long text posts with a lot of images. It made typing very, very slow once the posts got to a certain length. I got tired of it really quickly. But I pressed on, for a while.
The thing I was the happiest about was the creation of Mom’s Basement. I don’t build my own lots that often. I’m not very good at Build and Buy mode, everything I make looks like a mess. Since Mom’s Basement was supposed to look like a mess, I think I accomplished my goal.
Oh, there’s also the video where he dances to Go-Go Dancer. He’s your midnight answer, baby.
I feel like I should also give credit to the LP that inspired all of this: Beyond Goon and Evil, by Something Awful user 5er. You should check this one out, it’s a lot better than mine.