Help.
There’s a gym room. Do I need a gym room? Do I want a gym room? I don’t know, but it’s there now.
That’s far from the most pressing issue – the wallpaper. I’ve gone for one that looks like distant mountains in an abstract sense. It works thematically, the idea being this as a room where you’re pushing to the limit, you’re climbing the mountain to having a tummy that looks a bit like it’s made of six cans of beer, but in a good way.
However, that’s just one of the ways it has to work. Does it work colour-wise with the pale planks I’ve chosen as flooring? Do they work practically as a thing that’ll be underfoot in a room which includes a treadmill people might fall off of? Should I have gone with something softer, like a carpet, to try and minimise any damage inflicted? But, then again, there’s also a punching bag in this room. You can’t be shuffling around on carpet in your running trainers, can you?
I think I can at least take solace in the colour I’ve picked for all of this equipment – red – not seeming out of what with the rest of this house that I’d never be able to afford in real life, but that’s been spewed forth from my psyche into The Sims 4 with help from a motherloded fortune.
Hang on a minute, though. I might have problems elsewhere. The living room’s green, because I liked some plant-themed wallpaper. I’ve broken from the red, light gray/white, and black scheme I’ve rigidly stuck with for pretty much the entirety of this ludicrously large for a single sim abode. Have I accidentally made a Christmas themed red and green grotto? Am I an elf?
What I do know is that I’ve put ponds at both the front and back, because I chickened out of the much more fun option of putting a cool pirate ship out there. Look, it’s technically a children’s climbing frame, so surely it can’t be chilling in the garden of a large property inhabited by just one bloke? What if kids are passing by and just start playing on it? What if my young adult sim can’t resist the urge, starts playing on it, falls off because they’re not as limber as they used to be, and hurts their elbow? How will they explain it to the doctors at the sim hospital? What’s Simlish for ‘I swear, I was doing some, er, DIY and fell off some riggi-*cough* a ladder’?
I decided I was fine with having some model trains and cars in the living room. They’re all neatly sat on display tables, though, NOT on the floor having been touched. The manchild test is not going to be failed today, I swear. That’s why I’ve got stuff like potted plants you’ve got to look after or they’ll die, bookshelves filled with pretentious shite, and a whole indoor bar that’s definitely not just there because I couldn’t figure out what else I could do with the space that’d be socially acceptable. I’m mature. I’ve bought a shoe rack to go by the front door.
At the same time, I’ve worked hard not to dip too hard into the other end of the scale. There’s a grandfather clock in the living room, for aesthetic purposes. My sim will not use it to tell the time. There are no old geezers in this house, let me tell you. Seriously. Sure, there might be some kinda rustic choices in terms of decor, and there’s been some time spent on gardening, but this is not a retirement home. There’s a balcony, but there’ll be no staring out from it, in a kind of wistful, ‘I’m a wizened soul who’s acquired a deep appreciation for life because I might not have it for much longer’ kinda way. My sim will not be using their one sun lounger to stare longingly into any sunsets, pondering what could have been.
I’ve got entire rooms and spaces dedicated to playing the guitar and writing on the computer, like great shrines to the person I think I am or believe I should be. But is this who I really am?
I know, I know. I’m overthinking it. It’s just the decor of a video game house that I’ll get bored of actually overseeing life in about ten minutes after I finish putting the finishing touches on it. It’s not a real house, that I’ve spent actual money on building and filling with things designed to say a litany of things about me, most notably that I am a person who owns things.
I sit on the sofa and stare through the back of my own head at the hatch to the basement I’ve built because it felt right, even if my sim will never create the horde of old clutter that still means too much to be thrown out such spaces inevitably host. There’s a DIY table down there too, even though I’ve made it one of my sole resident’s disliked activities.
It’s pretty unhinged, this building a house in The Sims business. You start off feeling like you’re just doing a nice little hobby. Like you’re sitting down at a table to build one of those models my non-manchild has sitting on the opposite side of the room to his telly. Then, next thing you know, you’re interrogating yourself about what your choices might say about your own psyche.
Is my desire to own a house that’s far too big and has entire rooms dedicated to things I don’t even really like doing rooted in something that isn’t genuine? Does growing up white and on the strange borderline between working and middle class inflict these kinds of yearnings on you? Is it society’s fault that I’d seemingly quite like a kitchen with an island, and a fridge that pours little cups of water you could easily get from the tap?
Am I, having just turned 26, already succumbing to the call of the ‘burbs signified by owning a bath and a shower that are two separate things, rather than one thing together, despite constantly professing to be immune to it? Are all of my professed beliefs about wanting a fair and equal society free from the scourge of the upper classes and billionaires hoarding too much of that which could mean life or death for the less fortunate something that could evaporate the second I come into a bit of actual wealth? Do I like the things I like, and want the things I want, or am I just someone who’s decided that it must be the right thing to dream these dreams, to accept the will of the unseen, meddling god that is peer pressure?
Am I my own person, or just a sim, playing out a life as fake as the one that actors portray on a screen? All I know is, I’d probably feel better if the view The Sims 4 offered me of my creations didn’t rip off the roof of each floor, allowing a judgementally serene sky to loom overhead.
There’s no great god of the game up there, they’re all down here. Hopelessly trying to decide if their crappy mountain wallpaper looks too tacky.
They need help.