Academy Terminology

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Academy of Siminalism

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SIMILE The Valentino Family by Calvin. Earring placement is a simile for lamp turn-on. Note that the violent rose user-donated walls don't violate Academy code because the story is not *about* those walls.

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SIM SWIFTIES Went on the internet and looked up framing for dummies. I decided to make it look like he was having an affair

From The Valentino Family by Calvin

GLOSSARY OF ACADEMY TERMS

BALLOONING Taking the picture in the balloon above the Sims' head and using it as an element of a story, either "straight" or with a metaphor or deconstruction.

BRADY-BUNCHING (AKA GILIGAN ISLANDING) Putting too many frames at the beginning of your family album with sub-titles like "This is Mort, My Obnoxious Neighbor." "This is Bella, Who Clogs My Toilets", IOW, making it look like the opening sequence of the Brady Bunch with the song "This is a story/about a man named Brady". "And the Professor and Mary Ann!" Introduce characters IN ACTION rather than stock-still in Brandy-Bunching and you will be included in the Academy!

CHAOS GENERATOR The chaos generated in the Sims is actually law-conformable. Study it, and if you learn how to run between the raindrops, you will not get wet.

FFU MODE "Furniture fed up" mode is self-explanatory to most Sim players. We don't fully understand it. We move the furniture out of their way. We up the room level with windows and fire places, we give them stuff to do, and those dang Sims still bitch and moan, shaking their little fists and hallucinating about furniture! What IS their problem????

LEGAL ZEBRA Legal Academy-approved use of exotic items like the zebra couch which are in fact in Basic Sims.

MASK N' MITTENS A user-donated skins that turns to head and hands only when the Sim gets into his swimsuit to go swimming, gets into his pajamas, or takes a shower. While exotic skins are not accepted by the academy for narration advancement, if a character gets into MNM mode early enough in the story with some wacky antics, it may be Siminalist-approved. This is fixable by Maxis-Far-Hands file from Uncle George at www.wonderlandsim.com

MOO or MOO'd A character frozen and moved to a new position or activity with the use of "move_objects on" cheat.

RETICULATING SPLINES Will Wright says this word is a joke and a prank. It is not! It is Latin for "developing a support network of friends among people with nothing in common or who don't get along." This is a fundamental Sim activity. Being gay in one house with two lovers; proposing to a hetero woman in another house; working as a housing lawyer by day; secretly playing poker at night with Mort Goth, and using each of these relationships to build up the socials and the comfort and all the rest. It means construction of workable options out of disparate phenomena.

RL Real life. Watch as you can't tell where RL begins and The Sims leaves off.

RW Real World. Not a show on MTV, it is that ineffable thing out there beyond your computer terminal where, shall we say, the chips are supplied readily if you work hard, but not the Unsnacker. Go to the RW from time to time, helps with Sims story ideas!

SIM SWIFTIES Too young to remember Tom Swift? "Where the hell is that dame?" he said ruthlessly. (Ruth's his girlfriend.) "I don't understand art," he said abstractly. "He has no hair," Tom said baldly. You get the idea. Sims tend to do this, too, when they make a glaringly obviously reference to an exigency situation in the game or a balloon over their head.

SIMITIS is when a story album suffers from too many frames with Sims doing what they do, whether it is peeing on the floor or washing their hands endlessly or pointing down at something with their finger because they can't get around it.

SIMLICATION Copying or replicating and deploying an object numerous times in a humorous, odd, or menacing manner to tell a story.

SIMILE A Sim from one context or life who has been put into another situation or activity or one type of action overlaid with narrative indicating another action.

SIMULATION Often mistaken for a term related to The Sims, it refers to getting up in the morning, going to work, getting married, having babies, and attending funerals in the RW, all the while wishing you were at home playing The Sims. It's a life where you go through the motions until...ahhh, yes, there is my heart's desire, a big-ass building on Lot 9 with T-mogged objets! Yes!

STO Stating The Obvious. Generally discouraged at the Academy, unless with a sense of high irony or ennui. "This is my gingerbread house" -- NYET! "A baby is born!" -- only if another flamingo or piece of wicker furniture appears on the lawn.

VOGUING Taking a position a Sim makes in one activity and transposing it to another activity through narration, e.g. Calvin's earring placement juxtaposed over the action of turning on a lamp, or taking a Sim just rubbing his forehead and making the Wireless Clerk in the Titanic stare out to sea.

SUBMIT YOUR TERMINOLOGY! Write siminalist@yahoo.com and note that we never spell anything the same way twice!

Take notes, there'll be a quiz!