Mad Scientist: the Sims character laboratory (with Dawn)
So, Mad Scientist.
After attending a couple of local karate classes at the end of 2018, I’d pictured a nebbish incel fellow- a stand-in for my own position, but someone more locked in his own little world- to characterize the Mad Scientist idea in my novel, Chrysalis of the Butterfly. 
Yet, when it came time this week to try out characters as Sims, he became a She. She, however, did not gain a name, other than, perhaps, Regina, in passing. Her Sim is named first name Mad, last name, Scientist.
I’ve been developing Chrysalis of the Butterfly over five years, now. I thought I could put off working on it until I had reviewed and created an epilogue for I’d Go Anywhere With You, completed a short story called “Faded Einstein,” and written an epilogue, if not further chapters, on the book I’d called Great Job! You Get A Star! I’m thinking a bit of calling it The Five Star Kid. I thought, get music ready to play for people this summer and fall. Get those two previous books prepared. I could even update my Be Chill, Cease ill edition. Preferably, this copy would be loaded with page numbers, not just a table of contents.
Now, I did finish a short story, finally giving the spotlight to Peaches Kane. Peaches is the modern person, in our Integr8d Universe, we first see as the teenager to carry the magical mantle of the Marc Kane, as have others since the version that lived in 1100 AD. In “Trash Talks,” I wrote of her, independent of her place waiting in “Chrysalis of the Butterfly” as though she were dealing with a contemporary election polling place setting. The heavy in her story is the unconventional, soon-to-be unforgettable Garbage Mouth, or, if you prefer, Trash Talk.
It was strongly influenced by political news of 2020. I thought posting it on my blog might hurt its publication chances, but, so does me not opening the file again and looking at my editor Hannah Colbert's notes, which I feel obliged to try before I start sending it around to possible publishers. Building an audience: the one super power I've never manifested! That's probably just as well. I'm more than happy to bring it all to life, now. Dawn has shown me a visual, relatable, fun way to think of story characters, which I have left for her to play 95% of the time, while I have refreshed musing on things Butterfly
https://youtu.be/BTMAgeWFa5M Another of our characters was created rather accidentally, but 'Jynx Valentine' seems to be building her own solo Sim life and NPCs supporting cast, plus, she can interact with the main cast, and will be a roomie to the character I originally intended to make.
Here in the Sims, we’ve generated a simulation of what life is like when Lance Pyle uses the family’s good name down at the bank to lease a home for himself. With many bedrooms, a-romantic Lance asks his friend of five years, Lynda Hammond, to be his roommate. He also opens the house to a friend from his street adventures, Edge Kaye, who seems to have gained a story of being in America as an immigrant granted asylum. He wants to build muscle cars for street racing, the most exciting thing he can imagine. He’s a skilled, if lucky, driver, too, and all that plays into the action finale of Chrysalis, but…
Here, we experience Lance, Lynda, Edge, and his wife, Mira, in a domestic setting, quotidian life. What’s more, Dawn let Edge and Mira try for a baby, and now there’s a generally-happy little girl, dubbed ‘Me Kaye,” a surprise I know I hadn’t planned to include in the first novel, at least. But their lives bring the supporting cast a broader range, to explore some realistic situations, as the bedrock to the novel’s fantastic turns, which, to me, are reminiscent of the Amazing Spider-Man, as realized under co-plotters John Romita and Stan Lee- you know, superheroes, soap opera, romance, a bit of social issues, a Modern Life setting.
But not only is everything, here fifty years later in Chrysalis, modern and the characters, freshly inspired, but, from soap operas to real life experience, it breathes, evolves, and arises from many dimensions of understanding that didn’t exist in the limited space of a comic book from 1970. I did want to capture the suspense and tension, the ebb and flow, of each issue, each episode. Then, I wanted to utilize that pacing in a storyline that hosts many more characters, sprawling with unpredictability.
I have a lot of tech articles to review, frankly, which I must do even while I’m working on the rough draft, because I’m aiming to conjecture a version of the modern world which might still seem relevant in five or six years. Realistically, that’s also the soonest it could conceivably be adapted on a movie level, I imagine, and it’s really odd and funny to imagine, today, my attempt at a futuristic novel from 2015-2022 to yield a product that, one day, if I’m lucky, will be remembered, and be a nostalgic step back into a world as it was before. I want to utilize the motivation of writing this book so it can be someone’s fond memory of previous times, fifty years from today, April 16th.
So we’re using the Sims to let us see the characters first of all as everyday people. The characters we didn’t plan beforehand will prove interesting too, but, we’ll explore soon a post about the extra layer of depth we can accord to our perception of minor characters.
For now, I want to talk about Mad Scientist. Genius. Dastardly. Erratic. Evil!
I was already having fun with seeing a bit of myself along with him. For example, his fear that whatever fantastic vehicle he constructs to commit bizarre, spectacular crimes might be stopped by the superhero of Ocean Crest, Dragonstar, or even that mysterious angel-winged fellow, or some other weirdo, there are a few emerging. And if he’s called to defend himself, he wanted to know karate. This would also help him if he ever had to employ any toughs or shady characters, he reasons. He actually didn’t seem to be part of the criminal underworld, just a strange loner. As an engineer himself, it occurred to me, if he meets Henry in karate class, Henry Douglas might take an offer to share a house, especially if it has an interesting work space. I can hardly believe Mad would share his workspace, but, when he sees how talented Henry is, I could see him scheming to co-opt Henry into his Mad Scientist schemes. (I believe I had picked him a name, but his set of peculiar behaviors is distinct.)
https://youtu.be/oPsXLMNaESU Anyway! I’ll tell you Henry’s secret later. Look for a post about Owl Hawk. Now, female Mad Scientist even has a creepy walk picked for laughs, and her Sim traits are: genius, dastardly, erratic, evil. The Sim may not have the mods to make her fantastic creations, but here, I play with the idea that she also likes to go around starting fights and saying mean things to people- which comes with the parameters of the Sims game. (Another subject will be the many ways characters, randomly, don’t do what the player directly asks. They engage in many behaviors without coercion. Sometimes, a habit like sleeping with the radio on, changes, and now, she can’t sleep that way.) And I admit, I hadn’t really thought of someone with anti-social plans also being petty in day-to-day life. Talk to himself, oh definitely. He really relies on fulfilling his plans. I thought a bit about how he’s previously financed his plans, which involve fun stuff, which would be so great to see at Universal Studios. I am unclear why he’d choose spectacular crimes if he also has access to a means to steal money from plentiful sources. I had some under-developed plot outlines, lots of conjecture but not any scenes with him, yet. I’ve wanted to do a character like him (now her) ever since I was writing Hero Duty with Joe Phillips. He's in the midst nowadays of designing extensions of his previous work creating a Tarot deck. He always comes up with something and catches many eyes. I'm sure he'd like more.
Thinking about Mad Scientist again, in 2021: It’s clear that if you can get people to donate to you legally, you can make rather a bundle. It might be fun to decide she- I think we’ll keep MS ‘she/her’ now- commits some spectacular, quasi-legal feats like the parkour character I’ll mention later, and raises money from people who think her machines of chaos are awesome. She just wants to make whatever money she needs to do her thing.
Now, that twist only evolved here, as I write about her! But it’s safe to say, that’s a delightful one, a menace to society that raises money and gets around the law and capture, without being seen as a menace by a large section of the population. She’s not a star yet, I think, when we meet her, but Fame and that sort of public funding will make an interesting development. The sort of celebrity that arises around the new super-characters who appear at the same time- after years of rare sightings of one called Dragon Star, and even rarer, a public scare created by his enemy, Ebon Veil- segues from the action of the plot. The consequences, the reactions to things that happen, are a big part of the story. There’s big-screen-style superhero action, but there’s probably four times more drama surrounding those scenes. How else would I find out how happy Edge might be if he and Mira have a little girl- or how much joy he takes in punching the person-sized stuffed bear? Nor would I think about their lights being turned off because someone didn't pay a bill.
So, after trying out Henry and Mad Scientist for a while as roommates, I made a change. Mad has a job at a laboratory, which was a bit interesting to figure out. She’s self-sufficient enough. I shook it up when I discovered you can swap a Sim for another one in another house- at least, in the same World. You can probably import characters you made in other ‘worlds.’ For now, while I enjoyed seeing Peaches Kane play baby sitter to Me Kaye, I wondered how she’d get along as Mad Scientist’s roommate. So, Henry came to live at Lance and company’s house (Pyle). Mad Scientist’s roommate now is Cheerful, Muser, Self-Assured. How would those work out? She’s a magic user, so, in the story, now she’s summoned her familiar, an owl I said to name Owlicious. Interestingly, I have been making the point, past couple of days, that activities like jogging or using the toilet might play some role in moving the plot along. I mean, especially in comics, using the john is a highly uncommon depiction, but in a novel written today, you can acknowledge that life-changing events today do sometimes happen while a person is seated on the commode. You might be using your phone for some dramatic purpose, sitting on the toilet. So, it’s likely to happen a couple of times in my fiction. Keep reading for details! Point was, Peaches apparently summoned her familiar, Owlicious, while on the throne. Now, we also had fun listening to Peaches first practice singing. It's a spin-off of the humor Dawn often finds in vocalizing, and sometimes converting into English, Sims speak, which is apparent gibberish syllables with inflection. So, there’s the state of our experiment. She’s been unwinding with video games with a renewed vigor, and what she learned watching Laurenzside’s YouTube channel is an interview I’ve been meaning to sit down and conduct with her. I’ve been very desirous of both writing and socializing with A. Dawn. I think this synergy approach will help me think of my characters in terms of their own lives further, so they come to the superhero elements with vivid biographies, a sense of fictional reality. For example, I’ve been thinking, past few years, about the age the characters in Chrysalis, in 2026, would be, Now. So, these events are formative to them. Most of the cast are young adults, so they are adolescents now, born after 2000. They are a reservoir for my interest in what is contemporary. It’s very interesting to think this as back story for characters, memories that might converge with some fictional conversation, or build some long-standing interest, be some inspiration, to them as young adults in 2026.
To be clear, I see these Sims as contemporaries of the 2026 setting, not as the teens they would be if they were real people now in 2021. Also, I don’t feel beholden to replicate a plot based on what happens to the Sims in gameplay, but it’s been very helpful getting me to conjecture scenes and plot events that ground them in a realistic depiction of modern life.
We haven’t turned every Butterfly character into a Sim, but here’s my post about seven with which she began. There’s an eighth presently bopping around in her own home world, an unexpected character who will probably be the roomie for the character I intended to create when I chose her Valentine package to download. Also, since a Vampire mod was part of the package she purchased, we have events I didn’t plan at all, like, her asking Peaches Kane to sit at the computer and research how not to end up a vampire. (She played a football game instead!). One cool element is, Peaches can still call up her friend and now-former-housemate, Mira, to go for a drive somewhere. I could choose to start the book with Peaches as their house guest, and she might continue contiguous friendships with those house mates after moving out.
But, it’s not meant to be a matching facsimile- just a laboratory, using a 21st Century Dollhouse.
Now, I did finish a short story, finally giving the spotlight to Peaches Kane. Peaches is the modern person, in our Integr8d Universe, we first see as the teenager to carry the magical mantle of the Marc Kane, as have others since the version that lived in 1100 AD. In “Trash Talks,” I wrote of her, independent of her place waiting in “Chrysalis of the Butterfly” as though she were dealing with a contemporary election polling place setting. The heavy in her story is the unconventional, soon-to-be unforgettable Garbage Mouth, or, if you prefer, Trash Talk.
https://youtu.be/BTMAgeWFa5M Another of our characters was created rather accidentally, but 'Jynx Valentine' seems to be building her own solo Sim life and NPCs supporting cast, plus, she can interact with the main cast, and will be a roomie to the character I originally intended to make.
But not only is everything, here fifty years later in Chrysalis, modern and the characters, freshly inspired, but, from soap operas to real life experience, it breathes, evolves, and arises from many dimensions of understanding that didn’t exist in the limited space of a comic book from 1970. I did want to capture the suspense and tension, the ebb and flow, of each issue, each episode. Then, I wanted to utilize that pacing in a storyline that hosts many more characters, sprawling with unpredictability.
I have a lot of tech articles to review, frankly, which I must do even while I’m working on the rough draft, because I’m aiming to conjecture a version of the modern world which might still seem relevant in five or six years. Realistically, that’s also the soonest it could conceivably be adapted on a movie level, I imagine, and it’s really odd and funny to imagine, today, my attempt at a futuristic novel from 2015-2022 to yield a product that, one day, if I’m lucky, will be remembered, and be a nostalgic step back into a world as it was before. I want to utilize the motivation of writing this book so it can be someone’s fond memory of previous times, fifty years from today, April 16th.
So we’re using the Sims to let us see the characters first of all as everyday people. The characters we didn’t plan beforehand will prove interesting too, but, we’ll explore soon a post about the extra layer of depth we can accord to our perception of minor characters.
For now, I want to talk about Mad Scientist. Genius. Dastardly. Erratic. Evil!
I was already having fun with seeing a bit of myself along with him. For example, his fear that whatever fantastic vehicle he constructs to commit bizarre, spectacular crimes might be stopped by the superhero of Ocean Crest, Dragonstar, or even that mysterious angel-winged fellow, or some other weirdo, there are a few emerging. And if he’s called to defend himself, he wanted to know karate. This would also help him if he ever had to employ any toughs or shady characters, he reasons. He actually didn’t seem to be part of the criminal underworld, just a strange loner. As an engineer himself, it occurred to me, if he meets Henry in karate class, Henry Douglas might take an offer to share a house, especially if it has an interesting work space. I can hardly believe Mad would share his workspace, but, when he sees how talented Henry is, I could see him scheming to co-opt Henry into his Mad Scientist schemes. (I believe I had picked him a name, but his set of peculiar behaviors is distinct.)
https://youtu.be/oPsXLMNaESU Anyway! I’ll tell you Henry’s secret later. Look for a post about Owl Hawk. Now, female Mad Scientist even has a creepy walk picked for laughs, and her Sim traits are: genius, dastardly, erratic, evil. The Sim may not have the mods to make her fantastic creations, but here, I play with the idea that she also likes to go around starting fights and saying mean things to people- which comes with the parameters of the Sims game. (Another subject will be the many ways characters, randomly, don’t do what the player directly asks. They engage in many behaviors without coercion. Sometimes, a habit like sleeping with the radio on, changes, and now, she can’t sleep that way.) And I admit, I hadn’t really thought of someone with anti-social plans also being petty in day-to-day life. Talk to himself, oh definitely. He really relies on fulfilling his plans. I thought a bit about how he’s previously financed his plans, which involve fun stuff, which would be so great to see at Universal Studios. I am unclear why he’d choose spectacular crimes if he also has access to a means to steal money from plentiful sources. I had some under-developed plot outlines, lots of conjecture but not any scenes with him, yet. I’ve wanted to do a character like him (now her) ever since I was writing Hero Duty with Joe Phillips. He's in the midst nowadays of designing extensions of his previous work creating a Tarot deck. He always comes up with something and catches many eyes. I'm sure he'd like more.
Thinking about Mad Scientist again, in 2021: It’s clear that if you can get people to donate to you legally, you can make rather a bundle. It might be fun to decide she- I think we’ll keep MS ‘she/her’ now- commits some spectacular, quasi-legal feats like the parkour character I’ll mention later, and raises money from people who think her machines of chaos are awesome. She just wants to make whatever money she needs to do her thing.
Now, that twist only evolved here, as I write about her! But it’s safe to say, that’s a delightful one, a menace to society that raises money and gets around the law and capture, without being seen as a menace by a large section of the population. She’s not a star yet, I think, when we meet her, but Fame and that sort of public funding will make an interesting development. The sort of celebrity that arises around the new super-characters who appear at the same time- after years of rare sightings of one called Dragon Star, and even rarer, a public scare created by his enemy, Ebon Veil- segues from the action of the plot. The consequences, the reactions to things that happen, are a big part of the story. There’s big-screen-style superhero action, but there’s probably four times more drama surrounding those scenes. How else would I find out how happy Edge might be if he and Mira have a little girl- or how much joy he takes in punching the person-sized stuffed bear? Nor would I think about their lights being turned off because someone didn't pay a bill.
So, after trying out Henry and Mad Scientist for a while as roommates, I made a change. Mad has a job at a laboratory, which was a bit interesting to figure out. She’s self-sufficient enough. I shook it up when I discovered you can swap a Sim for another one in another house- at least, in the same World. You can probably import characters you made in other ‘worlds.’ For now, while I enjoyed seeing Peaches Kane play baby sitter to Me Kaye, I wondered how she’d get along as Mad Scientist’s roommate. So, Henry came to live at Lance and company’s house (Pyle). Mad Scientist’s roommate now is Cheerful, Muser, Self-Assured. How would those work out? She’s a magic user, so, in the story, now she’s summoned her familiar, an owl I said to name Owlicious. Interestingly, I have been making the point, past couple of days, that activities like jogging or using the toilet might play some role in moving the plot along. I mean, especially in comics, using the john is a highly uncommon depiction, but in a novel written today, you can acknowledge that life-changing events today do sometimes happen while a person is seated on the commode. You might be using your phone for some dramatic purpose, sitting on the toilet. So, it’s likely to happen a couple of times in my fiction. Keep reading for details! Point was, Peaches apparently summoned her familiar, Owlicious, while on the throne. Now, we also had fun listening to Peaches first practice singing. It's a spin-off of the humor Dawn often finds in vocalizing, and sometimes converting into English, Sims speak, which is apparent gibberish syllables with inflection. So, there’s the state of our experiment. She’s been unwinding with video games with a renewed vigor, and what she learned watching Laurenzside’s YouTube channel is an interview I’ve been meaning to sit down and conduct with her. I’ve been very desirous of both writing and socializing with A. Dawn. I think this synergy approach will help me think of my characters in terms of their own lives further, so they come to the superhero elements with vivid biographies, a sense of fictional reality. For example, I’ve been thinking, past few years, about the age the characters in Chrysalis, in 2026, would be, Now. So, these events are formative to them. Most of the cast are young adults, so they are adolescents now, born after 2000. They are a reservoir for my interest in what is contemporary. It’s very interesting to think this as back story for characters, memories that might converge with some fictional conversation, or build some long-standing interest, be some inspiration, to them as young adults in 2026.
To be clear, I see these Sims as contemporaries of the 2026 setting, not as the teens they would be if they were real people now in 2021. Also, I don’t feel beholden to replicate a plot based on what happens to the Sims in gameplay, but it’s been very helpful getting me to conjecture scenes and plot events that ground them in a realistic depiction of modern life.
We haven’t turned every Butterfly character into a Sim, but here’s my post about seven with which she began. There’s an eighth presently bopping around in her own home world, an unexpected character who will probably be the roomie for the character I intended to create when I chose her Valentine package to download. Also, since a Vampire mod was part of the package she purchased, we have events I didn’t plan at all, like, her asking Peaches Kane to sit at the computer and research how not to end up a vampire. (She played a football game instead!). One cool element is, Peaches can still call up her friend and now-former-housemate, Mira, to go for a drive somewhere. I could choose to start the book with Peaches as their house guest, and she might continue contiguous friendships with those house mates after moving out.
But, it’s not meant to be a matching facsimile- just a laboratory, using a 21st Century Dollhouse.
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