I'm really enjoying this, Trip! I always love behind-the-scenes posts, and your townie requirement makes yours so much more interesting to me 
. I also really like hearing about your writing process. I totally sympathize with the struggle of how a Sim acts vs. how they're written; I'm always aware how much planning might go into making the characters feel spontaneous and consistent.
As a side note, I'm so glad to hear you and your girlfriend are doing well. About three of my friends have ended long-term relationships lately so I'm getting weirdly paranoid about everyone else that I know, lol. 
Another thing that really affected how a sim acted in-game vs. how I wrote them was simply that I had a lot of time to reflect on them and see their actions in a different light. Especially because I can play a dynasty in a pretty quick period of time, but I can be hung up on one arc for months at a time. So often I looked at screenshots that were anywhere from a few months to over a year old, forgot a lot of the context, and made up something new for it on the spot. Many of Tegan's chapters in the old story were taken wildly out of context, when they weren't new things I wrote in and shot in old saves.
Did it work? Who knows. While I still have all of my old Waverly screenshots and saves (and not just for them; want the complete resources to every dynasty I've attempted? I probably have them somewhere), I really felt limited by writing something that matched my dynasty gameplay. Especially for characters with boring lives, like Annette or Lily.
Of course there are more dynasties I want to play. But I've found myself much happier finishing those fast, and then taking the characters, a couple of the rules, and throwing out the rest to build and shoot and write my own story from scratch. Right now, it's working for the Waverlys. Now I just need to get some motivation to devote my time to other virtual people. Easier said than done.
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Yeah, she's pretty great. We just celebrated a year together yesterday! And there's been no better person to bounce writing ideas off.
