"And then we create a virtual world populated by these creatures who are eternally young and beautiful, accomplished beyond our wildest imaginations, sheltered from the thousand pinpricks we experience daily. And then we kill them."
— Dolly Llama, "Surprise!"
Catastrophe Theory is a The Sims 4 fanfic by Dolly Llama. Depending on how pretentious you want to sound, it can be described as either a black comedy-drama or a work of post-postmodern metafiction. It started in March 2019 and is ongoing.
At the beginning of the story, there is no plot and no characters, just six sims. The author drives the narrative forward by interpreting events in the game world. For example, a sim's tendency to autonomously mix drinks becomes a drinking problem, and a man's tendency to flirt with other men in front of his wife leads to a Late Coming Out story. As the plot and characters deepen, the focus shifts to complicated relationships and deconstructing the unspoken dark implications of the Sims 4 universe.
Chapters roughly alternate between two families, the Jeong-Espinosas and the Lius. The original six main characters are:
- Claudia Espinosa Castillo, Mexican chef and former pro bodybuilder who goes hard on "juice" to cope with her personal life.
- Mike Jeong, Manipulative Bastard astronaut, former businessman, and former comedian.
- Charlie Jeong-Espinosa, Mike and Claudia's son who grows up to be a brilliant but indecisive doctor of medicine.
- Xiyuan Shallot-Liu, formerly Xiyuan Liu, high-strung and totally nuts art dealer.
- Aileen Jensen, briefly Aileen Liu, tech guru and later author who copes with her depression by writing self-help books.
- Shu (Xishu) Liu, Xiyuan and Aileen's artistically gifted son who eschews a traditional career in favor of other interests.
The cast expands as the original six form relationships and have children. At the start of Apotheosis, the story recognized seven additional sims as main characters:
- Bernard Shallot-Liu, formerly Lord Bernard Escargot Shallot IV, resurrected premade ghost whom Xiyuan falls in love with. An accomplished Gentleman Snarker in his own right.
- Kendra Jeong-Espinosa, Mike and Claudia's daughter, mixologist and aspiring horror poet with a love of all things spooky.
- Hector Jeong-Espinosa, Mike and Claudia's teenage son and Claudia's fun-loving protegée.
- Josephine Jeong-Espinosa, Charlie's wife, well-researched parenting expert.
- Chantel Lucas, professional synth player who started as Shu's Stalker with a Crush.
- Genevieve Haskins, pro gamer and another of Shu's romantic interests.
- Jasper Jeong-Espinosa, Charlie and Josephine's meme-obsessed young son.
Because the emergent relationship between the author and characters is part of the story, the style drastically changes between Books I and II. Book I is primarily written from Dolly's perspective as the player. From Book II onward, the characters speak in their own voices and the wallbreaking first-person commentary is restricted to the image captions.
Catastrophe Theory is currently in its third book and is planned as a six-book series ending when the last of the original six characters has died.
Catastrophe Theory:
- Book I: You Can't Hide From Yourself Forever
- Book II: Open Floodgates, Closing Door
- Book III: Apotheosis
Catastrophe Theory provides examples of:
- Anyone Can Die: From the start, the work is clear that it's going to end when everyone dies.
- Author Avatar: Dolly hints at the existence of an in-universe author avatar, but this character is never named and does not show up in the narrative. It's arguable whether she, as the player, is a character in the story.
- Broken Ace: Every one of the original six characters has mastered loads of skills, completed several aspirations, and made dozens of friends. They're also all thoroughly broken inside.
- The Casanova: Shu is a reconstructed Casanova. Rather than dazzling the ladies with his masculine, alpha traits, he's shown to be subservient, sensitive, empathetic, and more than willing to drop everything and clean the sink. And women flock to him because of it.
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: It's rare for a Catastrophe Theory chapter to be lighthearted. It's even rarer for a chapter to have no jokes.
- In the prologue, Kendra plans a ritual suicide to "Let Me Borrow That Top."
- "Sunshine and Laughter" starts with Hector cracking jokes about plastic cheese. Later on in the same chapter, his mother dies. Not only that, the jokes themselves may have contributed to her death.
- Creepy Child: Kendra spent most of her childhood drawing monsters and gore.
- Damaged Soul: Bernard's spirit is still active a century after he died. There's nothing physically wrong with him, but he retains full memory of his excruciating death.
- Death Is Cheap: Deconstructed. Although the characters can exploit game mechanics that allow them to be resurrected or to avoid death entirely, the act of dying itself is treated like a traumatic event. Furthermore, if death is cheap, what's to stop a morbidly curious sim from dying on purpose?
- Die Laughing: In The Sims 4, sims who are too Playful can become Hysterical. This happens to Claudia in "Sunshine and Laughter."
- Dysfunctional Family: The primary driving force of the early story. On the Jeong-Espinosa side, you have a controlling father and an alcoholic mother who aren't subtle about which child is their favorite. On the Liu side, you have a mother who parentifies her child and a father who disapproves of his son's career choices. The resurrected 19th-century manslaughterer who hates children is arguably the least toxic parent of the bunch.
- From Bad to Worse: After Claudia's death, Aileen points out that Claudia has multiple ways to cheat death but may be too broken to use any of them. So, even though Claudia has a chance of finding peace, she may be too broken to even try.
- G-Rated Drug: Along with "juice" and the "bubble blower," this universe treats mood potions as a drug because they're technically "mood-altering substances." It's unclear whether taking mood enhancers is habit-forming, but it's highly discouraged by some sims for being unnatural.
- Immortality Hurts: Even though sims can resurrect from the dead with no observable physical consequences, they still retain memories of dying.
- Late Coming Out: By the time Xiyuan comes out, he's in his early thirties with a wife and child.
- Medium Awareness: The sims have never questioned whether they live in a game, but have some knowledge of the game interface.
- During Book II, both Claudia and Kendra receive info from notifications.
- During Charlie's wedding, Mike and Kendra both dance to a wedding march that is presented as non-diegetic. This is followed by speculation about whether non-diegetic music exists in the sim world at all.
- No Fourth Wall: Between the narrator and audience. The Author Avatar is the author herself, not a fictionalized version, and she narrates as a type of Player and Protagonist Integration. The sims themselves do have a fourth wall.
- Obliviously Evil: Mike is too self-absorbed to see the consequences of his actions, particularly the impact his joking has on Claudia.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: The last full chapter in Book II explores Claudia's death from the perspective of the three sims who watched her die: Mike, Hector, and Aileen. Mike believes her death was an accident, Hector believes Mike murdered Claudia on purpose, and Aileen believes Claudia's death could be viewed as a suicide if she refuses to take advantage of the available methods of resurrection. After hearing each perspective, Kendra talks to Bernard about his experience with death and revival. He explains how he was able to recover from the trauma of being burned alive and live a happy second life. The chapter ends with him reassurring Kendra that Claudia will always remember her death, but it's still possible for her to find peace after all.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Bernard delivers one to Mike at the end of Book II for being too selfish to acknowledge the consequences of his actions. Mike echoes this speech to Hector at the beginning of Book III for needing to blame someone for his problems when Hector could be considered just as responsible using the same reasoning.
- Rotating Protagonist: Officially, there is no protagonist. The character page roughly identifies one protagonist per family per generation: Xiyuan as the first-generation Liu protagonist, Shu as the second-generation Liu protagonist, and Claudia as the first-generation Jeong-Espinosa protagonist. It suggests Charlie might be the second-generation Jeong-Espinosa protagonist, although the prologue and the cover for Apotheosis both feature Kendra.
- Spin-Off: A spin-off webcomic, ''Haunted'', explores the story's early events from Xiyuan's perspective.
- There Are No Therapists: Justified. There are no therapists in the Sims 4 universe. Only basketball.
- Translation Punctuation: Characters speaking in Simlés or Mónǐ Shìmín Yǔ have their dialogue enclosed in less-than and greater-than signs.
- Unproblematic Prostitution: Justified in that the nastier aspects of prostitution can't be portrayed without downloading mods. Shu instead earns money by exploiting a game mechanic: the game gives players a reward object for successfully completing a date, and it's by selling these reward objects that Shu makes a living.
- Unwanted Revival: Bernard didn't want to return as a ghost after accidentally killing himself and his wife in a fire. He did, unfortunately, and his spirit had been tethered to the Von Haunt Estate for over a century by tourists who found his story interesting.
