{"id":845,"date":"2019-07-05T12:27:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T16:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=845"},"modified":"2019-08-03T11:57:14","modified_gmt":"2019-08-03T15:57:14","slug":"forgotten-hollow-my-sims-4-vampire-legacy-that-became-a-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/forgotten-hollow-my-sims-4-vampire-legacy-that-became-a-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten Hollow: My Sims 4 Vampire Legacy that Became a Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

People love asking\u00a0writers \u201cWhere do you get your ideas?\u201d Step one: Recognize\u00a0when you\u2019re having an idea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So back a couple of years ago when I got the Sims 4 vampire pack and had grown tired of recreating \u201cWhat We Do in the Shadows,\u201d I decided to try a vampire legacy. Sims players love their legacies, in which someone plays the same family through several generations. While some legacy players just let the families do their own thing and take screenshots of it, others plot out fairly elaborate stories, and that\u2019s what I wanted to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I wrote out detailed character bios, story notes, and potential plotlines, and at some point I realized I was putting as much effort into creating this legacy as I would into writing an actual novel. And I decided I\u2019d rather write the novel. I never did get very far with the Sims legacy (I basically suck as a legacy player), but I ended up with a book out of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Just for fun, want to see those Sims and some of the storyline screenshots? (For my novel, I changed many of the names and backstories, especially for the characters that came with the game.) Even if you don’t want to see them, here they are anyhow. I went to all that trouble; I might as well use them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Brooke Waters was the founder of my Forgotten Hollow legacy. (Forgotten Hollow was the name of the vampire town that came with the game.) I changed her name to Ashley for the novel because Brooke Waters sounded a little too punny. She was heavily inspired by Brooke Logan from \u201cThe Bold and the Beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Her eyes are up a little higher, Vlad.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vladislaus Straud (a vampire character who comes with Sims 4) was her wealthy vampire husband. Each one was using the other: She wanted to marry into a rich family, and he wanted a human woman to bear his children.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I gave Caleb Vatore (another vampire who came with the game) really long hair before I had him romance Brooke behind Vlad\u2019s back.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Here\u2019s Brooke with baby Leo, her son with Vlad. D\u2019awww.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cUm, hey, honey \u2014 we\u2019re going to have another baby! Isn\u2019t that awesome?\u201d Vlad didn\u2019t look too happy. It\u2019s like he knew that kid wasn\u2019t his.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Karli Lynn was a game-generated nanny. Here she is with little Leo and Kaya.\u00a0Although you can’t tell here, both children are vampires.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Karli\u00a0also became Brooke\u2019s confidante, and she warned Brooke that the affair with Caleb wasn\u2019t going to end well.\u00a0Neither were those vampire bites on Brooke’s neck.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Eventually, Vlad overheard Brooke and Caleb and learned that baby Kaya wasn\u2019t his. Le gasp! Scandalous!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Vlad convinced Brooke to let him turn her into a vampire so she\u2019d be with their family forever. Or at least that\u2019s what he told her\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And here\u2019s Vlad taunting vampire Brooke, who\u2019s locked outside and about to burn to death in the sunlight; I deleted the door to the balcony so she couldn\u2019t get back inside, mua ha ha ha. (Vlad looks different here because he\u2019s wearing his \u201cdark form,\u201d something Sims 4 vampires can do when they\u2019re feeding or generally being evil.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>RIP Brooke, who died in a fatal sunlight accident. (Except it wasn\u2019t an accident.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Grim Reaper was nice enough to stop and have a pleasant little chat with Kaya after he took her mother away. That didn\u2019t make it into the novel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Heh. Since my Sim Vlad didn\u2019t actually know he was part of a soap opera storyline, he was quite distraught when his wife Brooke died. Karli looks like \u201cDo you believe this shit? I mean, he stood there and watched her burn up.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Storyline Vlad told Caleb to take his daughter Kaya and GTFO of the Straud mansion or else.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That giant dust cloud is toddler Kaya throwing a fit at the Vatore house; she really wasn\u2019t happy to move in with them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Child Leo suspected he wasn\u2019t being told everything about his mom\u2019s death and his sister\u2019s sudden disappearance, and he wasn\u2019t happy about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Karli smuggled\u00a0Leo over to the Vatore home so he could see Kaya\u00a0again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Here is child Kaya annoying some very old, very mean vampires in the park.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And here’s Leo getting a nighttime visit from his ghostly mother, who had so much to tell him\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s about it for the screenshots; like I said, I suck at playing legacies. But if you want to know the rest of the story, keep your fingers crossed; maybe someday I\u2019ll actually get an opportunity to publish it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People love asking\u00a0writers \u201cWhere do you get your ideas?\u201d Step one: Recognize\u00a0when you\u2019re having an idea.\u00a0 So back a couple…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,4],"tags":[36,29,24,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}