#but fuck that. i can have a personality without everything immediately being a bpd trait!!!

[electrosquash]

Sometimes i tend to be quite bossy at work. But also i'm right. I have a VERY specific model of how to structure our documentation in my mind and i can't have ANY divergence and i WILL argue for it because i honestly believe it's the best path forward.

[hauntedarbys]

hi! i’m anon from mamoru (asking here cus asks aren’t on on ur sims blog) i’m really interested in your thoughts about incorporating disabilities into the sims, i’m trying to develop my own sims game cus fuck ea lol, and i’d really like to be as incorporating of disability as possible. thanks!

damn, my asks weren’t on? that sucks. i think i fixed it now, but i swear i already had them on...

anyway!!!

i’m looking at this more from a perspective of “how to make the sims 4 better” than like “how to make my own video game” and i don’t know much about coding or game development so idk how helpful some of this will be but hopefully some will?? infodump incoming!!! sorry if it’s not that coherent. i’ve bolded some keywords in case you want to only read sections pertaining to certain disabilities.

starting with canes, bc i use one and i wish my simself did: sims 3 had canes, but for some reason they were coded weird so only elders could use them (iirc modders weren’t even able to fix it?? wtf ea). plus ts4 has custom walkstyles, and your sim can hold things like umbrellas while walking, so it’s almost definitely possible to add canes and crutches.

adding walkers would probably be a very similar process, tho i can imagine there might be some issues w clipping? not that ea has ever given a single fuck about that lmao

i’m a little bit less sure how wheelchairs would work, but the best reference i can think of is the strollers from ts3, or maaaybe some of the smaller vehicles. i have a vague memory of like a bike or a hoverpad or something that you could ride everywhere and not just on the road, but idk. the main issue i can see is that certain animations and interactions would need to be a lot more flexible--eg, sims would need to be able to do things like cook or paint or give hugs while sitting down. i can also see it being a little tricky to animate “transfers” from like, a wheelchair to a desk chair or w/e. honestly i think this would be easier to implement in sims 4 than it would have been in sims 3, because ts4 at least allows you to multitask some things. idk, it would probably be on the harder side, but holy shit it would be so worth it.

and then for some reason when i think about wheelchair users in the sims i start to wonder how feasible it would be to include little people (i hope that’s the right term?). simmers have been wanting height sliders since at least ts3, but any time a modder tries to add one the animations start getting kinda wonky, and i don’t think anyone’s really considered a height slider that goes low enough to make sims with dwarfism. i KNOW there are non-sim games out there that use height sliders, but idk how tf they do it without giving everyone telekinesis.

there was a mod in sims 3 that added sliders for amputated limbs, but it was a purely cosmetic thing, so like, sims would still walk like they had two legs or write with their “missing” hand or w/e. ideally i’d love to see a way to give sims limb differences that actually affected how they went about their lives + gave them the option to use prosthetics. i found a set of running blades in the “shoe” category for sims 4, but like... if you give them to a sim they’ll still magically grow legs in the shower lol.

deafness i think ties into my desire for sims to be able to speak multiple languages. not all deaf people use sign language, of course, but it would be great if sims had the option. i guess languages would function like any other skills, and if two sims don’t have any languages in common, they won’t be able to communicate beyond very basic things. maybe if you wanted a deaf sim to be able to speak, you could hire a speech therapist, or purchase some sort of object for them to practice with. also, dyou remember the earbuds in ts3 that made it so like, you’d only hear the music when you selected the sim using earbuds? i think you could probably make it so that when a deaf sim is active the game volume is either much lower or completely off. then for things like hearing aids, you could equip them and the volume would get a little bit higher.

blindness could use a similar mechanic, but instead of everything being silent, everything would be very dark and low-contrast. maybe objects that were making noise or places your sim had been before would have more detail. blind sims could also use navigation canes that would like... light up the area immediately in front of them.

invisible disabilities, allergies, and neuropsychiatric conditions would probably be a bit easier to add. sims 4 has a “quirk” system for celebrities where certain actions can trigger your famous sims to develop new traits. 

i think the best example of how you could use this to make, for example, mental illnesses is the “emotion bomb” quirk. famous sims develop it after experiencing intense anger or sadness, and it basically makes them experience that emotion much more intensely. that’s already a symptom of a mental illness called bpd! so what if something like repeatedly being mean to a child sim had a 0.1% chance of causing them to develop bpd? or if having a powerful sad or tense moodlet had a 0.1% chance of causing them to develop depression? 

(side note: i can really easily picture something similar to the “dark form” for ts4 vampires being used for dissociative identity disorder. genetics would be consistent across all personality states, but they could have different traits and voices and clothing,)

certain conditions could also be present at birth, like autism or adhd. i actually have custom traits for these; they’re not perfect, but if you want to google them they might be a good reference. one little thing that i think would be neat is if autistic sims had idle “stimming” animations, like flapping their hands or spinning in a circle. the biggest problem, though, is that autism and adhd are highly variable and i’m not sure how to make it so that not all autistic sims have the same behaviors.

allergies i guess would have to have some sort of severity scale, and be triggered by a sim eating a certain food or petting a certain animal. i’d want the likelihood of a sim developing a particular allergy to be pretty low, but that’s just me lol. maybe sims with allergies could keep meds on hand to deal with the worst of their attacks?

actually, the allergies thing reminds me--diabetic sims! depending on which type, a sim could either be born with it or contract it later in life. i’m not totally familiar with how insulin works, but a sim could have a pump equipped to mitigate their symptoms, or take regular injections.

i have a custom trait in my game for chronically ill sims, which basically makes their energy deplete faster and sometimes gives them moodlets with little blurbs about their illness. this seems like a pretty good system for chronic illnesses, but obv it would vary a lot by which illness your sim has--eg, would you actually animate a sim with ehlers-dahnlos popping a joint out of their socket, or would you just give them an uncomfortable moodlet? in particular, though, i think the mechanic that makes elder sims unable to do most exercise would be great for sims with dysautonomia. 

also, i’ve mentioned some assistive devices already, but i think figuring out how treatment works would be a big deal. do sims have single-payer healthcare, or do they have to pay for everything themselves? can sims crowdfund their medicine? what kind of treatments/cures are available? are their side effects? some conditions don’t have cures irl, but maybe a sim can pay like $30k to a witch to make their fibromyalgia go away!

this is almost definitely more info than you wanted and i’m kinda embarrassed i wrote this much, but uh... here you go, a mostly stream-of-consciousness essay on disabilities in the sims! god i hope it’s readable

[super-rainbows]

yutrbvecwc

Ethan: I feel really sick.

Rainbow: that might be psychosomatic, but idk. I’d really recommend against taking caffeine pills, but you can if you want.

Ethan: I really just want to go to sleep.

Rainbow: well, you can. :P oh, congratulations on digimon world arriving!

Ethan: I can’t play it until like, ever. :/ Reading week, at least. At the very least, for now I need to concentrate on doing the morphology thing.

Rainbow: so uh do you wanna talk?

Ethan: I don’t know. If you want.

Rainbow: I do think anger is better than sadness. or like, being angry at other people is better than it being directed at yourself.

Ethan: No, it should be directed at myself, and I’m being bad. I’m not meant to get mad at other people. All it’s doing is making me and BPD in general look bad. They think I’m disgusting and awful. Didn’t you hear them? I’m meant to be good, not bad. If I can’t act nice anymore then I’m nothing and I have no positive traits at all.

Rainbow: no no no! being angry towards other people sometimes doesn’t erase your positive traits.

Ethan: Being mad at someone is the opposite of being nice to someone, therefore if I get mad at people I’m not a nice person anymore. And it doesn’t matter how you explain or justify it; the point is, I don’t want anger, especially not towards other people. And you say it reflects that I’m starting to believe I deserve respect? Why the fuck would I believe that? Why would I want another disgusting and false belief? If I’m going to start being selfish and arrogant then I need to beat it out of myself before it can get worse.

Rainbow: ... me: literally a sub clinical level narcissist, you: that’s fine, I still love you :). you: *feels anger towards any person ever* wow this is UNACCEPTABLE and SELFISH and BAD

Ethan: Well, I do love you. :P And there’s a huge difference between having narcissistic traits and being a terrible person. I’m trying to prevent myself from being a bad person, not from showing traits of other personality disorders.

Rainbow: fair enough

Ethan: Notice that I specifically didn’t say “narcissistic” when I was listing things I don’t want to be, anyway, due to the fact that it could have been interpreted in the clinical sense, when that’s not what I meant. I mean, I don’t want to somehow develop NPD out of nowhere, but that is a completely different issue. I don’t want to develop, say, OCD either, but that doesn’t mean I think people with OCD are bad, and I wouldn’t include “having OCD” on a list of negative traits.

Rainbow: lol

Ethan: Anyway, the point is, I don’t want to get mad at people for being terrible and wrong. Or whatever the problem is. :P

Rainbow: lol. you feel attacked/invalidated/insecure etc by everything. as in, that’s the problem. do you want me to explain how I see the situation?

Ethan: Sure.

Rainbow: someone thought you were wrong because they had access to a different set of facts than you did. that’s it, pretty much.

Ethan: Where did everything else come from?

Rainbow: someone else had access to the same source as that person (presumably) and so had the same information/conclusion as them. (I’m leaving out your perception of all of this)

Ethan: Is that all that happened?

Rainbow: yeah, pretty much. as you (I think) kinda paraphrased it earlier, it was like you: x them: not x, y you: not y, x, here’s sources someone else: no, not x, y you: ? and that’s it since there’s been no other development on that yet.

Ethan: Hmm, it felt different than that.

Rainbow: yeah. you perceived it as something like, idk, everyone hating you.

Ethan: _________________.

Rainbow: is that two things or one thing? either way yeah, that makes sense. well, it makes sense by your logic.

Ethan: Either way, the point is, I need to beat this selfishness and anger out of myself so that nobody can hate me and I won’t be bad.

Rainbow: understandable but you don’t deserve to be hurt.

Ethan: I don’t care. And I do deserve to be hurt, anyway. I’m disgusting. I need to stop being so selfish and stop acting like I’m not worthless.

Rainbow: why don’t you want to have respect for yourself?

Ethan: I can either be mad at and lash out at myself, or at other people. One is bad, one isn’t. I want to be nice and not bad. I don’t want to yell at people or anything like that. And the thing is, I don’t think highly of myself, so it is just incorrect for me to act like I deserve respect or anything. Basically, I can’t react to being insulted or attacked or invalidated. I can’t lash out at other people and hurt them the same way they’re hurting me, because that would be considered bad and unreasonable, and everyone would hate me. My other option is to be mad at myself instead, or internalise my being hurt by what they say, or whatever. I have to blame myself and lash out at myself and hurt myself, not ever others, or else I’m bad. 

Rainbow: right, igy. you already don’t react out loud/externally, though. like this is all what way you think of it.

Ethan: If I let myself think that I am better than other people or anything like that, then I’d probably end up eventually acting on it. If my response to feeling invalidated/attacked/insulted is anger and mentally lashing out then I might end up actually lashing out, and then I’d be bad.

Rainbow: I get it, but it’s weird logic.

Ethan: I’m bitter and resentful towards pretty much everyone for being allowed to say things and have feelings and be right. Why can’t I ever be right? Am I too bad to ever be right about anything?

Jamie: You are right.

Ethan: It doesn’t count if nobody believes I am.

Jamie: The majority do.

Ethan: Then why am I not considered right?

Jamie: I don’t know. You feel invalidated or something, for some reason.

Ethan: Well, this is an example. The circumstance I’m starting with is that I’m apparently always wrong (since other people are considered right and I’m considered wrong, regardless of anyone’s actual correctness). I can either be like “I should get to be right sometimes too!” and be bitter and resentful, or I can accept that I’m inferior to everyone and therefore automatically always wrong (or come up with some other reasonable explanation as to how everything immediately becomes considered wrong as soon as I say it). The first one is bad and selfish and might make me actually argue with people, which would be irredeemably bad and then everyone would hate me and I would deserve to die. It’s better and easier to accept my inherent worthlessness and not be resentful towards others about it.

Jamie: ...

Ethan: Both are “irrational”, but one is respectable and the other is Bad. Like I said, there’s lots of reasons to aim the anger etc at myself instead. It’s what I deserve and I’m inherently worthless, it’s the option that won’t lead to everyone hating me and wanting me to die, it’s the option that won’t make me bad, etc.

Jamie: :/

Ethan: If I wasn’t worthless then I wouldn’t be wrong all the time, anyway, and people wouldn’t hate me and say things that insult/attack/invalidate me.

Jamie: I’m gonna criticise you now and I’m really sorry and you can be upset towards me if you want: People don’t hate you, and aren’t insulting or attacking you. You have a warped and irrational perspective and you see completely innocent statements as personal attacks and feel correspondingly hurt. You definitely feel attacked/insulted/invalidated, but often when you feel like that, the thing that caused it wasn’t actually an attack or insult or anything like that.

Ethan: ???

Jamie: Yeah, I know.

Ethan: I mean I do “”know”” that. I’m able to recite it as if it was true or had any meaning. But like, how am I meant to know if I’m allowed be upset by something or not? Are all my feelings fake and wrong?

Jamie: No no no. I’m not doing it that way. I’m not saying that. I wouldn’t. Your feelings are very much real and you do have them, and they do have a cause, it’s just that sometimes what you think the cause is and what it actually is are different (like you skip some steps). There’s always some reasoning, it’s just different reasoning than what people usually use, and a lot of it is flawed or untrue, and you sometimes don’t seem to notice you’re doing it (that it’s happening). Eg, the thing today. You keep saying that the other person was “right”? But I don’t think that’s the problem. I think you’re taking the original situation, and making some steps or inferences without noticing, and then being upset by the conclusion. And because most of the time what you’re doing is rounding or “x is 300 times y so basically x = y”, it doesn’t register to you that there was any inference involved since to you all the statements equal and/or entail each other. In this case it’s hard to see what exactly you’re inferring, since it’s kinda like “this person disagrees with me, therefore they’re right, therefore everyone agrees with them, therefore everyone disagrees with me, disagree = hate, everyone now thinks I’m the worst person in the world”.

Ethan: *shrugs*

Jamie: Except I really don’t see how you go from “this person disagrees with me” to “therefore they’re right”.

Ethan: “This person disagrees with me. I am inherently worthless, therefore they are inherently better than me, therefore their opinion has more value than mine, therefore their statements take precedence regardless of accuracy or content, therefore they’re automatically right no matter what they say.”

Jamie: Oh.

Ethan: Well, I couldn’t tell you for sure if that’s the reasoning involved, but it seems right.

Jamie: Hmm. So, being bitter and resentful about “not being allowed to be right” is basically being bitter and resentful about the fact that you feel worthless and inferior?

Ethan: Well, I am worthless and inferior. Or at least I feel that way, like I feel like that’s an undeniable fact that can’t be contradicted.

Jamie: Hmm. And I guess that can’t really be simplified or traced back further? That’s just something you got instilled in you for whatever reason?

Ethan: Yeah, I think so.

Jamie: So... Wouldn’t a better solution be to try and see yourself as less worthless etc? :P

Ethan: No, because then I might think that I deserve good things, and then I’d be bitter and resentful, and then I might act on it, and then I’d be bad.

Jamie: Right.

Ethan: Even if that somehow resolved the “feeling attacked/invalidated by statements you or others think I shouldn’t feel that way about” thing, I’d still feel bitter and resentful about the piq thing (and 67 thing and 422 thing), and about not being taken seriously by mental health professionals, etc. Like, undeniable things that I can’t pretend aren’t unfair.

Jamie: @.phrasing: lol. I get what you mean, though. But don’t those things trace back to feeling worthless, too?

Ethan: No. They trace forward to feeling worthless. I feel worthless partly because of being treated badly and not taken seriously, when other people apparently deserve to be treated well and taken seriously. Like, if I deserve to be sexually assaulted and other people don’t, then there must be something bad about me to make me deserve it. If sexual assault doesn’t count or matter when it happens to me but the same thing does count when it happens to other people, it must be something about me. If mental health professionals don’t listen to me or take me seriously but do take other people seriously and help them, then it must be something about me. The idea that a bad thing could happen without me deserving it doesn’t help, because it only explains the sexual assaults and fails to account for everything else. My theory of me being inherently worthless explains everything.

Jamie: Ah, okay. *hugs* <3