Lyla was not the first character that I created, but I'd always had a thing for Twi'Leks. I mean, come on. They're so cool. Gotta love that skin, and although I'd miss having hair, the head-tails aren't that bad. My first character was Ann Gella, one of Sebulba's blue-skinned, Rutian Twi'Lek slave girls. I was actually simming that she left Sebulba and followed Darth Maul. Eventually I quit with that, because being a slave really gets you nowhere fast. So I killed off Ann Gella and created Lyla.
Being Lyla is like my ultimate dream. She's beautiful, powerful, and can go from damsel in distress to La Femme Nikita in the blink of an eye. She has an incredible rags-to-riches history and like Amidala (the inspiration for Lyla) she's still young. (18 years old) Not only that, but she lives and rules over a beautiful planet, has a house to die for, and goes around in either strikingly elaborate robes and gowns or skin tight leather outfits. (Think Trinity from The Matrix)
I actually sim with many of the same people that I started with almost a year ago. Lyla's (but then Ann's) first friend, Jaina Mac (daughter of Han and Leia) is still her closest friend. Tauntaun is still around, Rogue is technically still around, though no one has heard much from him lately, and Darth Maul has since become Trunks and is Lyla's fioncee. But wasn't this page supposed to be about me?
As I'm typing this and making various updates to my page, I kind of wonder why people sim. Sure, it's a great break from reality once in a while but I almost wonder if something is wrong in that we NEED this break from reality. Unconsciously do we want to get away from our lives and escape into this made up reality, one with no rules and no boundaries, where everyone is the absolute ultimate in beauty, power, and mystery, where we are perfect in everything we do and only fail that which we can gain from? I think it is how I said, but I didn't say that it was a bad thing. We should be able to escape our world, no matter how cookie-cutter and suburbanized it is. In the simming world we have control of our lives and ages, there is no waiting for anything and there are no tests we have to pass in order to achieve that which our life is heading towards. Simming is a control. My character is a part of me. I respond when people call me Lyla. I have taken on characteristics of the Queen. My confidence in the chatroom has spilled over into the real world and I am happier now than I ever have been. (Not to mention that I can type faster than all my friends.) Simming is not a bad, psychotic, even WEIRD thing. It is a chance to live a life you know you never will, and express parts of your personality you never knew you had. I'd bet money that simming has saved lives by making people feel needed, feel wanted. A character becomes so intertwined in the whole, vast, neverending storyline that occurs in the room that eventually the room and the story can not be imagined without that person. So to the naysayers that call me a weirdo, that make fun of my so-called "Dungeons and Dragons" infatuation, I simply smile, because I know what they never will. I know what it is like to think on different levels, to use my imagination so vividly that eventually ideas for Lyla's storyline come to me at all hours of the day. I know these people will never experience what I have, and to them, I have merely pity.
Click on Lyla's castle to return to the main page.