Some Kind of Foreword

[braxen]

Some time, not too far in the future, the first chapter of a story I call "Another kind of Sunnydale" will be posted here. I don't know if anyone besides myself is going to read it, but since it is based on game play in The Sims 3, I think I'd better explain my idea to those who are not familiar with that game.


Ever since I first watched Buffy (about 7 years ago) I have been trying to make the characters into playable sims and make fun game play of them, first in The Sims 2 and more recently in The Sims 3. They have lived a lot of different lives in a lot of different neighbourhoods (The Sims 2) and worlds (The Sims 3) but this whole time I have longed to tell myself the whole story from the start: how William came to be the vampire Spike and then lived a long and violent life and travelled the world before he ended up in Sunnydale, where his whole existence was turned upside down and went to pieces. Everything he had believed himself to be, was questioned and turned around when he met Buffy Summers, the vampire slayer.

But how to play this? A difference between The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 is, that it is easy to save copies of sims that already are in the game to the family bin and those saved copies will have the experience of the sims that were copied. The originals are not affected by the process, but remain in game. Countless copies of the sims in the family bin can then be added to other worlds. Groups of sims can be saved the same way, with their mutual relations intact. Origins and relations outside this saved group will be lost though. That means that their family tree will be wiped clean - but that still is enough for me to build a game of make-believe on. I will (as mentioned in a previous post) use a couple of different worlds to tell this story, starting with human William in Cladbridge-on-Stowe by doublemedion694. This world will not (contrary to the origins of Spike in the TV-show) have a Victorian setting, but some kind of (weird) amalgam of the first five decades of the 20th century. A world that has cars and phones but clearly is set in the past.

I was already playing a Cladbridge-on-Stowe and had populated it with sims with the right kind of old-timey clothing and so I thought: should I use the world I have already created - or should I start over? The first alternative offered a fully populated world with sims that had already formed relations (lovers, enemies etc.), which sets off chain reactions and adds a sense of realism to the game, thereby making it more fun to play. The problem with the first alternative was, that a "William" was already living there: a very human William, someone with no inclination at all to make the wrong choices, stray away from the right path and end up in the shadow world. This William did not only have both a mother and a father, but also had met a girl and married her and the young couple were in fact just expecting their first child. What to do about that? I decided that in this story, William will have an older brother (promptly re-named James), but since I wanted a touch of grief and pain in the mix from the very start, the father had to go. I confess: I am a stone cold killer... This first William/James also was an earlier version of Spike and I of course wanted the Spike in this story to be the latest version. I have fiddled with this sim since I first started playing The Sims 3, but it took me a couple of years to get his face to look the way I wanted it to. The picture above shows William (to the left), my latest and probably final version of Spike's face. To the right is his predecessor, and now brother, James. There is not an awful amount of changes, only the eyes and the eyebrows, but IMO, James looks a bit more cartoony than William.

My sims are based on the actors who played the characters in the TV-show, but the reason they don't look more like the actors is not only because I lack the skills to depicture them accurately. It also is because I have read so much fanfiction based on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", that my understanding of the characters has become more of a literary experience. The thing with written stories is, that they make it possible for us to use our own imagination. Therefore, my Spike is not really the character from the show, but instead someone who has evolved while reading all those stories, the picture I have made of him inside my head. That my sim is based on the actor James Marsters, should be obvious though, and his interpretation of Spike of course played a big part in forming the character. Also I don't think anyone can imagine a Spike without James's cheek bones. Or his blue eyes. Anyway - Spike is a great character! So great in fact, that he has a tendency to overshadow Buffy which is sad because she is in herself such a wonderful character. Without Buffy though, Spike would be just another sexy bad boy, albeit with layers. The really interesting thing with Spike is, that he has the potential to be so much more than that and that his road to redemption addresses so many questions about right and wrong and choices we make. Food for thought. The stuff of legends. And that he met Buffy, is the very reason he wanted to change.
The Sims 3 is not an "adult" game, but rather good-natured and family friendly even if the vampires in The Sims 3 are a bit darker and much less goofy than the (adorable so) vampires in The Sims 2. I also play a heavily modded game, that allows for a more serious and "grown-up" game play. Recently (as part of my preparations for this story) I added a couple of features regarding vampires, in order to make them a bit more menacing and dangerous. I hope the mods will work as intended, but I haven't played the vampires much before, so I don't know for sure how I will like these changes. Vampires in The Sims 3 get a shiny overlay, that gives them this otherworldly, spooky appearance. I actually like how it looks, but the shiny overlay also effects their eyes whichs means that Spike, alas, will lose his deep blue eyes once he gets turned. I think I have an idea though, about how to give that feature additional meaning later on in this story, but for a long time we will have to make do with a shiny-eyed Spike, as seen in this in earlier post.



I have an overall idea of what I want this story to be about, but the most important thing to decide on before I even began telling it, was to find Williams reasons for letting Drusilla turn him. There is a Cecily in this world, and I intended to let the story play out rather close to canon. The sims themselves took the story in a different direction though, because their actions are decided by the different traits one assigns to them and how those traits work in combination. Furthermore they have effect in their interactions with other sims - who of course have their own sets of traits. What traits William/Spike should have, has been another thing to ponder. I finally decided for the ones above, because I wanted a set of traits that would work for both William and Spike. He is Athletic (which speaks for itself), Brave (because no doubt about that). Brave Sims have a higher chance of winning fights, much like Evil and Mean Spirited Sim. He is also a Hopeless romantic. Those sims passionately seek their soul mate and want romance, true love and surround themselves with cheesy romantic television and novels. Then I decided to give him the Perceptive trait, because that means that he will learn traits of other Sims more quickly through socializing, and that's the way I perceive him. And finally I made him Socially Awkward. That fits human William perfectly, but even if Spike thought himself rather hip and groovy and believed that he had left William far behind, he still had the tendency to put his foot in his mouth.



His voice is darker and deeper than the average. He likes fish and chips (there are hot wings in the game, but sadly enough it cannot be set as a favourite dish), rock and the colour red.
And finally I made him a Leo.





The original plan was to play this story as close to canon as possible, but how fun is it to never be surprised by the things that happen? Setting up this AU with William having an older brother made all the difference. It set off a series of new events and took the whole story in a completely new direction and wildly off canon from start. Let's see where it ends.