March 26th 2010

Hi FOA fans!

It's been a while! I guess we can agree I have not been very active online this past year. To catch up, let me start by telling you five things about me that you probably don't suspect, but which are very true:

1. Last March, I dropped out of school and got a job.
2. I've been living on my own for the past six months.
3. I'm learning to speak and write Mandarin Chinese.
4. Next September, I'm moving to Canada, to study there.
and
5. FOA is still the most important thing I've got going on in my life.

The latter statement may seem somewhat dubious coming from someone who has not posted a single chapter in over a year, and who has been mostly ignoring his website. It is nonetheless true, and please allow me to explain the situation with FOA, so that you can understand why I've stopped uploading chapters.

The things I put on the list up there are not completely irrelevant. If you've followed me over the years, you may remember that I've had a very hard time finding an agreeable study path. At times, FOA was the only thing keeping me going and it effectively became very important to me. Through this experience in the Sims 2 community, I discovered a love for writing and generally for storytelling and realized that this was the activity I wanted to do. However, France, where I live, is not a place where you can study creative writing, or any form of storytelling for that matter. So, after graduating high-school, which was already enough of an ordeal in itself, I tried studying art, but that did not go over so well, which eventually lead me to drop out.

One year ago, I was actually in a very bad place in my life. I was lost and having a hard time figuring out what I would do, while working a very boring job. I fell into a sort of coma for the following months and it was not pleasant. But I did eventually find my way. I did a lot of soul-searching and one main thing emerged: FOA is my biggest project in life, and it is the most important thing for me.

I realize it may appear weird, if not sad, saying that the story I write with The Sims is my most valued ambition, but actually FOA represents a whole lot more than that. By now, I think it's no big news when I tell you that the story I have planned for it, has grown tremendously since when I started writing FOP back in the winter of 2005. In fact, to tell you the truth, the timeframe of FOA has expanded to include four generations in my head. The story you saw in the first 7 chapters I released was actually the mere beginning and often I actually was not very motivated to write them, because I wanted to work on further parts of the story, where I consider the "main" plot-lines are. So the story of Bella's life in Strangetown was something of an introduction to the main story of FOA for me. Unfortunately for you, I never released anything beyond chapter 7.

Indeed, as I came to understand that my passion for storytelling was too strong for me to do anything else, I decided to take measures to ensure I would be able to concentrate all of my energy on that activity. While I was in high-school, I was always struggling to find time to devote to writing, all the while hating what I was actually studying. Up to then, because of the education system in the country where I live in, I had been formatted to believe that FOA was a nice hobby and all, but that it would always remain on the sidelines. Last year, I decided to change this idea, and to really take it into my own hands to see to it that I would be where I wanted. This is how I ended up looking into Canadian colleges especially in Quebec, which have study programs I find much more interesting, while remaining cheap for me comparatively to other American universities thanks to special agreements between France and Quebec concerning international students. As a result I applied to study at Bishop's University, an English-speaking college, two hours away from Montreal, and north of the US border. I just found out a couple of weeks ago that I've been accepted to study there next year. The program I'm studying is called "Popular Narrative" and focuses on different forms of storytelling in culture, such as writing, film, theater, video games, etc. It's everything I could ever hope to study and I'm very excited to go there in just a few months.

In the meanwhile, I realized some changes needed to be made concerning FOA. Writing with the Sims was interesting for a while, but eventually, several reasons concurred to making it more of a hassle for me.
First and foremost is simply that I began to outgrow the game. I actually have almost not played the game for non-storytelling purposes since 2007. I still enjoyed using it to illustrate FOA, which was based on the TS2 characters anyway, but like I said, the story grew a whole lot bigger. Most of it was actually not directly related to the pre-made game situation, despite involving some pre-made characters. Through my years of writing with the Sims, I became something of a self-taught expert on how the game works, and pretty much brought it to its limits to make the ideas I had for my stories possible on screen. But eventually it was limited, and shooting pictures for a chapter turned into week-long nightmares of extensive graphic work for me, with very little sleep.
You may also remember the issue I was having, figuring out whether I would write the rest of the story with TS2 or TS3. Well, honestly, when I posted Chapter 7, last January, I was practically sure that I would not return to TS2, because it had become too complicated for me to use, as I explained above, but I preferred to leave my options open. I did buy TS3 when it came out, but several things happened that made me decide not to use it as well. First of all, I have to admit that I'm actually not as big a fan of TS3 as I thought I would be. I loved TS2, and it represented a wonderful game for me, as well as the great community that went along with it. However, I eventually outgrew it, like I said above, but I did not realize this for as long as I was still writing FOA. However, after posting Chapter 7, the game felt empty and pointless to me. I don't mean to bash on the Sims. Because of the role it played, it will always retain a strong sentimental value for me, and I still think back of it with nostalgia, but I no longer have interest in playing it.
So, when I got TS3, I did not attach to it very much. I also realized that it was very impractical for storytelling. While the pictures in my chapters may look natural and relatively simple to take, the vast majority of them are actually the result of a lot of work. I used many tools, cheat codes and graphic editing to get each shot to look its best. One feature was the ability to go into build mode and use cheats to move the characters around, for instance. While I can still do this in TS3 on the home lot, I cannot do it on community lots or in the "in-between" spaces of the town. This is fairly limiting, and is just one of a long list of reasons that TS3 turned out to be even more difficult to create illustrations with, despite the enhanced graphics.
For a long while, it was also impossible for me to continue the story, simply because I did not have a desert terrain neighborhood to create the Strangetown scenery on. I understand that the neighborhood creation tool is now available, so perhaps that problem could be remedied, but it is only available on PC. Indeed, over the past year, I have shifted over to Mac, after a number of bad experiences with PCs, several of which you may remember from the time I was posting FOA chapters. On top of not having the neighborhood creation tool available for it, Mac is also impractical for storytelling because, for some reason, it does not fare well with the format of Sim photo albums. It's a stupid, but fairly important problem: I cannot even load Sim story albums on my computer anymore.

So basically, a bunch of reasons made that both TS2 and TS3 were impractical for storytelling. However, if I really wanted to continue the story with the Sims, I would surely find a way. But the truth is I don't want to.
Already, while I loved the pre-made characters and very much enjoyed building a story which answered the different original plot lines, there were also a lot of storylines that I disliked in the game, but had to include in my story anyway, for the sake of being complete. Aliens are one notable example. This may seem surprising seeing the alien abduction is pretty much the basis for the whole story, but actually if you look at the story carefully, you'll notice that there's very little actual information about aliens. A quick explanation of their genetics and how they came in contact with Strangetown is given in the first chapter, but after that they are not much dwelled upon. There is no explanation of how aliens are in their own culture. Writing about an extraterrestrial civilization is not an idea I reject as a whole, but it really did not fit into FOA. But this is just one example among many others of storylines that were imposed on FOA because of the pre-made situation, but which I never wanted to include.
Moreover, I began having something of an identity crisis with the story. I had put a lot of effort into creating it, coming up with ideas, making it all hold together, and it was the project I was most proud of accomplishing. And yet, it revolved around the Sims, someone else's creation, characters and situations. It became difficult for me to accept putting so much creative effort writing about content that was not originally mine.
The most difficult issue of all, however, became the fact that I had to write the whole story linearly, and get a chapter's first draft, to be its final one. FOA is quite a long story and I wrote it over several years. Naturally, along the way, I came up with new and better ideas, and if you were following the story while I was writing it, you'll probably remember me saying I had come up with new ideas, gone in a new direction, reinvented half the plot, etc. every so often. The problem is that I generally posted chapters within a month or two of having written them. Once they were posted online, it was difficult for me to go back and change things without contradicting the previous version. So, as time went on, I started having an increasingly hard time putting chapters up, because I needed to make sure there was nothing in them that would later back me into a corner. There was this huge pressure of getting a chapter right, without being able to consult the later parts of the story. Sure, I knew where I was going with it, but seeing how I constantly came up with better ideas, it was difficult to reorient the story in a new direction, while keeping coherence. This is why it took me over six months to get Chapters 6 and 7 out; seeing how I was entering a complicated part of the story, I had to do a lot of thinking in advance to make sure it all held together.

Over the years of posting chapters in the Sims community, many of you have suggested, at various times that I turn FOA into a "real" book, by changing the name of characters and locations. I eventually decided to take you up on that offer. I do not have the pretension of saying that my story is good enough to be published, but a book doesn't need validation from an editor to exist. I've always treated FOA in the way I would a "real" book, except for the fact that I posted chapters online as soon as they were complete. So, I've now decided to take FOA off the center stage for a while and to work on it by myself.
Of course, making FOA my own requires much more than just "changing names". My long explanation of things that were wrong with the story up above are sufficient enough to show you that. I'm now free to do whatever I want with the story, without being bound by conditions of a pre-existing situation to work from, which I do not care for. For the past year, I have been making a lot of changes to the story, reinventing it in the way I want, and it has been a great experience, with its own set of ups and downs. Along the way, I actually started a third, although short-lived, draft of the story with three chapters. It hasn't all been easy. There were times when all this work was confusing and overwhelming and I did not even know what I wanted anymore. But lately, I've been generating good ideas and I really am pleased where it has all been going. However, I still have a long way to go.
So, all this to explain what has been happening with the story. Writing with the Sims (2 or 3) turned out to no longer be a viable option and I decided to take the great leap of turning FOA into my own story, without the Sims, which I was planning on doing one way or another, eventually. I'm now working on the story on my own, and won't be posting chapters online, until further notice.

So, what can you expect from FOA?
Even though it may seem so, FOA is not over! I've been continuously working on it for the past year. I never gave up on FOA and even though I'm going to take it on a solo journey for now, I do plan on eventually putting it out there again. I do not have the slightest idea how long it will take me to get back there (could be several months as well as several years), but let me guarantee to you here and now that I will eventually make FOA available again. It won't be the same story anymore - it may not even have the same name - but it will be recognizable enough for you to get an ending to the story I started.
I'm not yet sure in what form I'll publish FOA in the future. I highly doubt I'll be using the Sims again, or any form of illustration for that matter, though I'm not totally excluding the option, should I end up changing my mind. While I may not have the pretension of claiming FOA is good enough to be published, it's also an option I'd like to leave open. Let's face it, most people who put in the effort of writing a book, especially over a long period of time, would at least like to hope that it will be worthy of an editor's approval. While I have absolutely no way of knowing if I can get to there, I certainly don't want to close that door for me. Continually posting chapters online as I write the story would make publishing FOA quite redundant.
So I cannot tell you when or how to expect FOA in the future, but I can tell you that one way or another, I will get it out there. Of course, I understand how annoying it is to wait, and though I'm sure most of my former readers aren't concerned about it anymore, if you're reading still this, then I dare presume you do care about FOA to some extent. I hope knowing that I'm still working on it will at least be good news for you. However, given the uncertainty of the situation, you may well wonder how you'll ever find out when and where to read FOA again. So, I'll make you a deal: firstly, while I probably won't be updating this site much anymore, I'll be sure to post relevant information about the story when it comes up. Secondly, if you wish me to do so, I will email you whenever FOA is available again, and tell you how to find it. In order to receive this email update, simply send me an email at the following address: alexi035@hotmail.fr
Tell me you want to join my Story Mailing Group and I'll add you to the list, so you'll be the first to know. In the meantime, I won't send you any other email, so you don't need to worry about junk mail. You can also use this email address to contact me if you have any questions or comments about the story. Feel free to do so, I'm always very pleased to get feedback, and will be sure to reply.

In the meantime, I will not be completely absent from the web. Because I'm going to study in Canada next year, I've recently started up a blog, in which I'll be logging my activities as I transition from one country to another and discover new things. It will contain a reflection on the past ten years of living in Paris, my impressions of Canadian culture in relation to my own and generally my life happenings. FOA being such a central theme in my life, I think it's highly likely you'll also get tidbits of info about it there as well, even though it is not the central topic of the blog. Basically, it's the best way to keep track of where I'm up to, and to read stuff from me, even though it's not the same kind of writing I've posted online in the past. You'll find my blog at the following link: The Wandering Narramist. I'll be glad to see any of you there!

I do want to apologize for not giving you an ending to FOA, because I know how frustrating I found it when a good story was ongoing in the Sims community and never made it to the end. I hope you'll have understood by now why I was not able to complete it in the format I started it in, and that if you are patient enough, I will manage to get you that ending. I look forward to when that time comes, and hope to see you then.

Thank you to all those who supported me during the time I wrote FOA in. Your support was more valuable than you'll know in helping me become the person I am today. Also, thank you if you've read this message all the way up to here. I know I'm quite chatty, but at least I think I'm thorough, and hope that you have a better idea of the situation with FOA.