It’s Asexual Awareness Week! To celebrate, this week I featured four asexual Sims from stories on this blog. Then I started thinking about all of the other asexual Sims that have been in my games and my stories, so I thought today,as my last AAW post, I’d share brief profiles of some of them.
If you’d like to learn more about asexuality, please visit the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, AVEN.
Our Sim games are often mirrors. Through conversations with other Simmers, I’ve noticed that our games tend to generate Sims with traits that resonate with us. I get a lot of Sims with “Loves Outdoors” trait, and quite a few cheerful artists or musicians, too. Other Simmers may get Sims with traits that pick up on themes or personalities relevant to them.
Because my game-play style lets Sims make their own important decisions in life, especially those involving romantic relationships, I started noticing early on, months before I came across the term “asexual” to denote an orientation, that many of my Sims were not sexually attracted to other Sims.
When playing the legacy, I felt a little nervous with asexual Sims who didn’t roll whims to “try for baby” because legacies are somewhat dependent upon procreation! I decided that if the legacy heirs didn’t roll the whim to “try for baby” they could adopt. Luckily for the continuation of Cedar Bough’s genes, each heir, eventually if not sooner, did want to have a baby.
One of the first asexual Sims in the Bough family was Willow, the gen 4 spare.
I loved Willow possibly more than any other Sim. I identified with her. She has a quality of self-containment and wholeness that I admire and aspire to. She had plenty of Sims interested in her, including one musician that I really liked, but she chose to remain single throughout her life. She was one of the happiest, most serene Sims I’ve known.
Willow’s niece Poplar was a different story. While Willow never struggled against who she was, Poplar’s life was forged from struggle. She may have been asexual, but she had a high libido and a mile-wide mean streak. She had really great fashion, too.
Two generations later, onezero’s half-brother, Doug Fir, was also an asexual.
Doug Fir lived his life at Cradle Rock. When he rolled the snob trait to complement his materialistic trait, I planned to move him across the street to Manzanita’s Mansion. But Doug’s third trait was lazy, and he let me know that he was happy to be the bachelor uncle. Like Willow, Doug Fir was happy and whole throughout his life. He was an amazing artist, in addition to being a true Renaissance Sim.
Doug Fir and onezero’s nephew, Alder, carried on the tradition of bachelor uncle. Including Alder, we’d now had asexuals in the family in generations 4, 5, 7, and 8. By this time, I’d come across the term and had begun to think about it and what it means as an individual’s orientation. Alder always chose variety and experience. Unlike his twin sister, he chose not to drink youth potions: he chose to grow old and he kept his appointment with Grim. He carried on the family tradition of artist, expressing his passion and deep understanding of life through the brush.
In addition to the Sims in Goofy Love, Dr. Jasmine from Dr. Jasmine’s CasebookDr. Jasmine’s Casebook, Emma Bennet from Harrington’s Wonder Child and Houseful of Hippies (as well as possibly many others of the hippies), Henrietta Davida Thoreau from Walden Once More and Emerson Institute, and Silduun Siltuunde from Where I’m From are all asexuals. (I’m starting to notice a pattern!) It’s possible that even Jack Bivuoac from Drifter is; though I write him as a Sim who’s attracted to women, he has yet to demonstrate this interest in the game.
I guess in exploring what life and living means to me through playing this game and writing about it, it isn’t surprising that so many asexuals would appear here in these posts. And, given my own romantic nature, perhaps it’s also not surprising that my SimSelf would find herself experiencing epic loves in many of the games I play and stories I write.
I’ve noticed in writing the stories on this blog and playing the games behind them that they’ve all led me to discoveries. I heard someone once refer to The Sims as being like tarot cards, and when I play the game, I sometimes feel that it responds magnetically to my thoughts, interests, and questions. This is how my life themes come to present themselves to me through the game. A less esoteric explanation would be that as I make countless choices through playing the game, the game responds, and in this way, without consciously realizing it, I shape the games, stories, and Sims that are generated. We’re meaning makers, too, all of us people, and especially storytellers, so as I look through the events that happen and the Sims that populate the games, my mind fashions what I see into a story, a story that means something to me.
It’s curious to me that my understanding of myself as an asexual has largely come about through my involvement with the SimLit community and through Simming. In fact, when I think of all the significant growth and discoveries I’ve experienced since September 2014, when The Sims 4 came out, it is all interconnected with, and often generated from, my involvement with The Sims and SimLit. I guess it’s fitting, then, that my public “coming out” has been through sharing my ace Sims with you. Thanks for reading and, in that way, being a part of this!
Cathy Tea's SimLit Anthology 