"Sthenastia;c-18115322" wrote:
In general I said a couple of days ago in "unpopular opinions" that I have no longer care about the townies overhaul, but I have expected that EA will add our townies more personalities, small improvements such as nails or new skintone, relations, likes, dislikes ect. but instead od any improvement I see reggression. Goths no longer look like Goths even from the previous games. Everyone have black-red clothes only for every ocasion and weather. There is no personality improvement, no new relation and totally nothing new. Even the skincolour is bad. Have we really been waiting for something like this?
It's something I've noticed, that especially since The Sims 3, the Goths (among others) have been so heavily flanderised.
Flanderisation is when you take a minor aspect of a character and make it their entire personality. It comes from Ned Flanders from the Simpsons who started the series as Homer's friendly, well meaning church going neighbour, but over the years the church going aspect of Ned morphed into a religious zealot who is hugely intolerant of anything that differs from his world viewpoint.
The same has been done with the Goth family. The fact that every one of their outfits is black or dark red seems so limiting.
One area where this is most apparent is their houses. In the Sims 1 and 2, they live in brighter, lighter coloured rooms, with robust craftsman style furniture. The Sims 2 especially leans heavily into the Art Nouveau furniture, which formed part of the arts and crafts movement and was a rejection of Victorian gothic. Mortimer wears purples, yellows and blues, Alexander is dressed like Eddie Munster, and Cassandra is the only outwardly gothic dresser.
In the Sims 3 and 4, they took the whole gothic aesthetic up to eleven and transformed everyone into some cheap horror B movie from the 50s (which to be fair, Bustin Out did first), but in each version, they've become more gothic and ostentatious, with dark wood tones, candelabras, grand pianos and Victorian furniture up the wazoo. Ironically, the Bachelor house in the Sims 3 is probably closer in style and tone than the Goth Manor when you compare them to the earlier games.
If anyone has ever played Resident Evil Village, it is like everyone thinks the Goths live a life like in Castle Dimitrescu when in reality, they are closer to House Beneviento.
I think one area where they get pigeonholed in is the constant comparisons to the Addams family, sure Mortimer looks a bit similar to Gomez, in that they both have moustaches, and both Cassandra and Wednesday have pigtails, but that is pretty much where the similarities end. In what way is Bella anything like Morticia? Or is it a case that since Mortimer and Cassandra sort of fit, Bella must too?
In terms of this makeover, I'm not sure. As mentioned before, there is way too much black and dark red. Bella and Cassandra seem quite dusty in terms of skin colour, and Alexander is completely different to what has been seen before in the franchise.
I think a better choice for Bella's everyday outfit would have been the bustier wraparound top in red with the red pencil skirt (both are base game) which looks close to her dress in style and cut in earlier games, without looking too formal or out of place the party dress they've given her (or the clubbing one she had at the beginning of 4).
