Ciem: Inferno/List of themes

The time in Candi's life - and prior struggles she'd faced - led to her facing several unique challenges, mostly related to facing the realization of her own wayward desires and need to renounce them, while also protecting other loved ones of hers from an impossible situation.


 * Coming to terms with her "5% centipede" identity.
 * Reconciling expectations
 * Coming to terms with Imaki's expectations of her
 * Deducing God's expectations of her in a time of godlessness running rampant
 * Evaluating her expectations of herself
 * Her poor past sexual decisions complicating her life, and her struggle to make better choices amidst pressure to continue choosing poorly
 * Walking on eggshells regarding being a crimefighter or a criminal, with a treacherous structure over her that could declare her either for any reason or none.
 * Her sister's amoral approaches to problem solving, and how best to deal with it while still letting her sister know she cares.
 * Past and present demons
 * Legal challenges for her and her family
 * Health challenges for her family, and how she is doomed to be affected
 * Fire
 * Dealing with a cult of terrorists that love to start fires
 * The fire of her own lustful desires, and how it betrays her
 * The fire of litigation that she must be willing to face to uphold her own worldview - and protect her loved ones
 * The fires that the new monster Lava Tigre can cause, and how to put his fires out
 * The fires caused by the Pyro Panthers
 * The fires Amirah can start, and why
 * The fiery betrayals that set Amirah down the wrong path
 * The fire of rage for vengeance in the hearts of those who prosecuted Nancy
 * The fire of temptation in Candi to lose control and take her own revenge against her past and present tormentors
 * The fire of pain in Candi's heart over past times she's been victimized / abused
 * The Purge-Flare, who uses fire as a motif, coming to a town that is both literally and metaphorically burning up, and the flaming passion in his heart to punish those responsible - even while blazing a trail to escape accountability for his own past crimes
 * The fiery colors of the leaves in autumn, time of year when this story is set
 * Candi being initially charged with arson (though she was quickly acquitted)

From there, it seemed logical that each sequel would deal with another fire-related theme as Candi's human and centipede natures were put to the test. Inferno implied something small causing a fire that grew quickly; but could still be controlled. Ash Cloud afterward would explore the theme of a volcano going off where it shouldn't; and suggesting that the enemy had raised the stakes dramatically from terrorizing one city to an entire region. Caldera would show these same villains turning their attention to the Yellowstone Caldera, implying a lust for power willing to drive them to destroy the status quo of civilization across the entire planet.

An evil rage straight from the mouth of Hell would seek to envelop Earth in an ever-escalating set of threats; and Candi would have to be tested more each time to protect those she loved - even if she were powerless to do much about the greater global threats.

Thematic recursion outside Dozerfleet
The above themes were worked in March of 2019 into the premise of a film pitch / proposal submitted on DeviantArt (along with a mockup poster image) for a similar project that Sony-Marvel could easily secure the rights to produce. Spider-Gwen: Gratia Ruinam would find a version of Gwen Stacy based on the version of her seen in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in a much darker solo tale, one which would borrow themes heavily from Ciem: Inferno and Ciem: Ash Cloud but which would otherwise mostly be a soft adaptation of Spider-Gwen: The Life of Gwen Stacy issue #33. It was reasoned that at that point in Gwen's narrative, her story begins to have some similarities with Candi's - even though what happens after the two girls get out of their respective prisons is dramatically different. (Namely, one gets to feature immediately in Spider-Geddon, and the other doesn't appear in Percolation Warriors until much later on.) The film pitch also adapts Hydro-Man from his role in the 1994 Spider-Man animated series on Fox Kids, albeit with a different face and hairstyle.

The poster utilized The Sims 4 and ReShade to create a rainy blue night atmosphere of despair against a city backdrop that borrowed lighting and emotion cues heavily from Inferno and Ash Cloud - but with a blue palette contrasting the black, white, and pink on Gwen's costume rather than an orange and green palette to match Candi's Ciem costume colors. The theme of things being "abysmal" was scaled back to merely "depressing," to make it possible for a kid-friendly adaptation. Likewise, the violence was toned way down from a typical Ciem entry, with room for Gwen to make a lot more quips than Candi usually does. The theme of Gwen's guilt has more in common, technically, with Swappernetters season 2 Tabby than with Candi's near the end of Inferno. Candi was more motivated by a desire to protect Imaki from persecution by Darius than over the guilt she felt at SCALLOP mishandling information related to her case in a way that got a good agent killed. Tabby, however, blamed herself for the creation of Bliksemhek - and felt indirectly responsible for the latter's horrendous crimes.

While The Gerosha Chronicles use Sims default neighborhood backdrops for major cities all the time (mostly Cincinnati and Boston), this image needed to feel more authentically like New York. A re-creation of the Rockefeller Center off the Sims 4 Gallery as used as a means to make Gwen feel more like she was actually in New York for the shot. Since Gwen needs to hold off on surrender to the law and Candi surrendered almost immediately, red flashing police lights appear on the left side of Gwen's panel - to indicate she's a hunted fugitive. Her despondent look comes from the fact that - like Candi - both of her identities have been compromised.

Composition of the poster was otherwise carried out like that of a typical concept art poster for a Dozerfleet project, except a Marvel logo was used in the center. George Stacy, Hydro-Man, and Chameleon were generated on-the-fly inside The Sims 3, and then Photoshopped into the top panel. These are the three men that pose the greatest threat to Gwen in the pitch, along with Police Captain Frank Castle (who isn't pictured, but is based on his Earth-65 persona.) Hydro-Man was generated by taking an altered Townie from the Bridgeport neighborhood and making an ice sculpture of him using the Sculpturify option under the Cell Phone Options tab in the NRaas Debug Enabler menu that came with Twallan's mods. Another Townie was altered to create Chameleon, given a crude hockey mask and giving off Nolan Dark Knight Saga vibes mostly to add to his intimidation factor - and reduce reliance on additional custom content downloading.