The Art of Sims Storytelling

"CathyTea;14344213" wrote:

"MedleyMisty;14344094" wrote:

It's just...like a lot of the hate that I took during the Bad Times was because people thought I took Sims stories too seriously, that I put too much effort and time into them, that, to quote one of the hate secrets I saw: "a plummy Sims story isn't art".

So when people start talking about how you don't get awards for Sims stories, or how it's not professional writing, or how it's just for fluff and silliness, or how the Sims game as a medium isn't fit for anything but light stories, my antenna goes up and my brain says "Danger, Will Robinson!" Because I've learned that people who talk like that tend to not like me.

Have you read my "Wrimmingfun as an Art Form"? I get so passionate about this! So much of the SimLit I've read is art (including Surreal Darkness).

I've read it now. :)

For me, it's one thing when people who've never even played the game reject Sims stories without trying them. But when people who have been in the community for years and who write their own Sims stories and read others and who have invested years into them start talking about how Sims stories don't have any worth, I'm like "Huh? Why are you spending so much time on something that you don't think has any worth?"

But I've been thinking about stuff like that for years, and lately I've been googling a lot about the whole "literary" vs "genre" issue, and reading conversations I find about why people hate what they consider literature, and I've also found a few essays from published writers talking about these issues, and I think in the end it comes down to how I grew up outside mainstream middle class American culture and so I didn't internalize its ideas about worth and respectability and social status.

I guess Sims story writers who devalue Sims stories have internalized a lot of things about what has worth and value and what can be considered art, and so even though they do obviously subconsciously value Sims stories or else they wouldn't spend so much time on them, they feel like they have to devalue them because of messages they've received through their socialization and education.

Like, yes, there are some guys, but the great majority of the writers and readers of Sim stories are female. One of the essays I found was from a female writer talking about how she'd internalized that only guys wrote Real Literature, and that the things that dudes value are much more important than what women value, and how in her first book she'd written about things that she thought the men who have authority in the literary fiction world would like and approve of. I think she phrased it as "writing towards men". So maybe some people devalue Sims stories because they're seen as a majority female thing.

Also in a very capitalist culture, there are people who think that things only have worth if someone gets paid for them and/or they make a big profit. So that sort of person would devalue Sims stories because it's like omg what, something that is produced and consumed for free?! Must be worthless and a waste of time and effort!

Then there are people who believe very strongly in Authority and gate-keeping, and they just assume that everything written by "the masses" online is awful and not worth anything, and that if your writing had any worth you'd get it approved by professional gatekeepers and published.

There are some Sims writers and readers who've internalized all those messages, sadly. Like, @CitizenErased14 - when I was close to finishing Valley I had the same thoughts you do about D2D, about turning it into a novel. And like you, I knew I'd have to change a lot of things. I posted those thoughts on my LJ, and the next Friday night that entry was posted in a screenshot on Simsecret with the text "Get over yourself, it's not going to be published" scrawled over it.

Which that definitely showed a lack of reading comprehension, as the troll appeared to be laboring under the delusion that I was going to just send the Sims story itself off to publishers despite all I'd written about how much work it would be and how much I would have to change and rewrite. But it also shows how even within the Sims community, people believe in, reinforce, and police others according to those internalized social messages about what forms of expression are considered as having worth.