@SnowBnuuy
Thank you! I guess my literary taste might have changed over time but I hope that I can still reconnect with the book.
Luckily I don't have much problems with reading about serious issues. Movies are a whole different thing though, lol.
Your comments about trigger warnings are interesting... I'm kind of torn regarding their usage. They probably make sense around topics that could trigger harmful actions for people, but maybe not that much if they "just" trigger discomfort. I don't know. I agree that it seems that people nowadays expect them even for the latter.
@Daravi
I never count points for challenges. I'm obsessive enough about a lot of things, I don't have to add to this, haha. And I don't mind to take rules more as an inspiration, after all the story should fit for the Sims that you're playing with. But it's helpful to have some guidelines as to how to make the challenge a challenge and I also think it's nice when multiple people play with a similar set of rules, so you can see how everyone else interprets them.
I would also love to read more stories from different cultures and countries. Wouldn't have to be a decades challenge though. But yeah, the game doesn't make it that easy for many I guess.
Incorporating laws is super interesting! Although that would be a topic that I wouldn't be so concerned about if I made any mistakes. I think I could deal with offending a law historian, haha. I think the same about fashion and architecture. I don't think I will be able to nail these even with a lot of effort, but I don't expect this to cause any harm to anybody (hopefully).
That's interesting that the challenge even made you discuss with your husband. I agree that skipping the worst years would not have been right. About which screenshots did you disagree? The ones with the Batuu banners?
Yes, wars are not just black and white, although I'd say that the German history education tends to depict a more black and white picture of history. I can absolutely understand the reasons why but it leads to interesting thoughts. The story that I have been inspired with would have to be set in East Prussia (which is now a part of Russia, Poland and Lithuania) and of course that means that the characters will have to escape at some point. And then I'm having thoughts like: Am I allowed to empathize with German refugees after WW2? It's weird...
@JAL
I think researching more local history is a good way to make things more personal (and probably also to prevent total overwhelm, lol). I already looked for old newspapers for some cities or read about their universities. If anyone's interested, here's a portal that offers digitized versions of German newspapers: https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/newspaper (unfortunately not for the region I'm interested in, I guess these archives were lost in the war).
I'm thinking about reading some contemporary fiction to get more of a feeling for the time and to better understand how people's daily life was and how they communicated.
I can imagine something like inheritance rules were quite different for different European countries. I think even within the different parts of Germany it wasn't all the same.
And For Rent definitely helps! I hope it gets fixed soon... And it's kinda sad that the decades challenge serves as a motivation to buy Batuu, lol.
And I'd also like to offer my help if you ever need to find anything specific that might only be available in German :)
@Simmingal
I like to do challenges and playing Sims is usually a kind of escapism for me. But of course the decades challenge is the total opposite. I can understand why you wouldn't want to do it. Historical stories can be a means of escapism too, but I guess the 20th century doesn't work that well for that.
