Ciem (2007 webcomic)

''The following is about the webcomic based on Ciem. For the alternate continuity novel series in the works, see Ciem: Vigilante Centipede instead. For the similarly-named film by Tom Six, see The Human Centipede (First Sequence).''

Ciem is a 2007/2008 superhero-themed, Sims-based DSHW produced by Dozerfleet Productions. Originally to be called Ciem: The Human Centipede, a name change was granted it in 2010 to avoid confusion with Tom Six's Human Centipede series.

Ciem was also going to be the first in a trilogy of Sims webcomics spun off from the initial 2005 epic The Battle for Gerosha and the second Dozerfleet comic ever created in the DSHW format initially. It was originally intended in the 2005 Gerosha Prime continuity to be a parody of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, but went in a very different direction in 2006 with a failed remake in what is now called the Despair Gerosha timeline. Based on that timeline, the story's Classic Gerosha counterpart was assembled in 2007-early 2009.

The story begins in the city of Gerosha, where high school graduate Candi Flippo is torn between a sense of calling to use her mutant centipede abilities to destroy her family's extra-terrestrial enemies; and her desire to decide her own future. When her actions indirectly lead to the death of one of her sisters, she flees to Viron to start her life over. But trouble follows her all the way there, and she must accept her divine vocation and become the superheroine Ciem to help with the overthrow of a massive conspiracy between the local area government and the deadly Meethlite aliens. Along the way, she marries a charming-but-ill-fated Denny Levens and battles the bloodthirsty cyborg villain Musaran along with an embittered Botan the Plant-Man.

The story has been attempted in webcomic form a total of three times, with the third attempt finishing its main production schedule on November 2nd, 2007. On October 11th of 2008, the story was adapted for inclusion on the Mod The Sims Social Storytelling.

It has spawned an alternate continuity novel series in the works as well, one which seeks to divorce much of the story's content from its Sims-based roots and start it off independently of the game, thus allowing it to fix a lot of the problems with storytelling that were made necessary by the game. The reboot will also offer heavy design overhauls for several characters, in keeping with making a more realistic version of the Gerosha universe.

Plot
Main article: Plot synopsis of Ciem

The story begins in the home of Erin Flippo, who is acting as a mother for her orphaned sisters Candi, Miriam, and Marina. Marina is revealed to have left the home after getting married to the delivery boy Matthew Baret, who got her pregnant. Candi is therefore living with her remaining two sisters. One evening, the phone rings; and Candi answers it unaware of the fact that it is really Gunner the Meethlite trying to confirm that he has reached the Flippo residence and confirm his assassination targets. Candi hangs up the phone, scared but ignoring her instincts.

Candi and her sisters begin to share their most intimate secrets with each other, including the origin of Candi's centipede powers. The Meethlites, fueled with zeal by Duke Arfaas and his Hebbleskin Gang, launch a raid on the city of Gerosha and try to kill all of the Flippos and their friends. Miriam is sent to jail for her own protection and Erin is murdered by Gunner and Skellig. Candi herself accidentally kills Don the Psycho.

The McAuley family, friends of Erin's, inform Candi that her boyfriend Donte has been captured by the Meethlites and is presumed dead. A disheartened Candi blames herself for the tragedies inflicted on the city, knowing the Meethlites were really after her the whole time. She flees to the city of Viron to start her life over and assumes the false surname of "Stevens."

Not long after getting settled and dealing with Viron's numerous villains, Candi befriends and eventually marries reformed bootlegger Denny Levens. The couple's marriage soon results in an unplanned pregnancy, which causes Candi to temporarily lose her powers. Arfaas kidnaps Donte's brother-in-law Jeraime Malestrom and puts him in a suit that is programmed to turn Jeraime into the killing machine known as "Musaran." Musaran begins killing targets left and right at Arfaas' discretion. When Arfaas convinces the police chief Merle Hourvitz to join his side, almost the entire Dirbine police force defects. The city of Dirbine and its suburb of Viron are then under Meethlite control. Musaran and Kelsea Linney independently attack the Levens family home in the same evening in their efforts to murder Denny. They also try to kill Candi, but she survives the assaults. Candi goes into labor and is escorted by paramedics to the hospital. After giving birth, she passes out and wakes up greeted by her brother Tom and godfather Imaki Izuki. The two inform Candi that Donte is still alive, and that she has a responsibility to rescue him in order to overthrow Arfaas' loyalists.

Candi then begins using Imaki's technology to turn herself into Ciem officially, and begins her quest to learn how to find Donte and rescue him right when the moment is most critical. Her plan succeeds after she first gets herself arrested and then escapes from jail only to smuggle herself aboard Arfaas' Doomsday ship. There, she dons her Ciem suit again and rescues Donte after a battle with Musaran. Donte breaks a glass tube and gets his powers back to become the superhero Emeraldon once more. Emeraldon then destroys the Doomsday ship while Ciem battles Musaran inside an office complex.

She uses the obsolete computer monitors inside the office complex to her advantage, electrocuting her foe and destroying the AI device that was controlling him. Jeraime awakes, but regrets that he has been blinded for life. Candi and Donte reconcile their lost romance, after burying Denny and Angie in the Gerosha Cemetery. They start working as a superhero team to bring down numerous other villains that are in the Dirbine area as a result of either Phaelite or Meethlite activities.

Chapters
The story is divided into 32 distinct chapters, with the chapter titles frequently invoking forms of literary allusion.

Characters
See also: List of minor characters in Ciem


 * Candi Levens/Ciem: A kindhearted but very insecure high school graduate. Candi is torn between her desire to lead a normal life and raise a family and her desire to protect humanity from the crimes committed against it by the Meethlites in their quest to win a centuries-long war with the Phaelites.  She is frequently persecuted by her peers for numerous petty reasons.  Apart from her family, her love interests and their families, and a few friends she makes at Viron University; Candi remains a social outcast for much of her early life.  Because of an illegal experiment that was performed on her father as an infant, Candi is born with centipede-like abilities.  Her need to protect her secret possession of these powers partially prompts her to remain isolated from many social circles, combined with her moral objection to the activities of some of her peers.  She was portrayed by the file N004_User00244.package in a custom Gerosha neighborhood.  The file was 493 KB in size.


 * Miriam Flippo: One of Candi's two triplet sisters. Miriam is a skilled hacker in spite her young age.  Apart from some emotional and spiritual damage incurred from a failed dating relationship with her suicidal high school lover Phil Couric, Miriam appears to Candi to have significant promise for a bright future.  However, Candi is quick to warn Miriam of several bad habits that Miriam needs to drop if she wishes to stay out of trouble.  Miriam is much more outgoing than Candi, frequently attending parties and dressing in provocative clothing whenever Erin is not around to stop her.  Miriam also frequently defends Candi from inappropriate advances by peers.  When Candi flees to Viron, Miriam flees to Farrenville.  She was portrayed by N004_User00243.package, a 512 KB file.


 * Jeraime Malestrom/Musaran: A mild-mannered man with a loving wife who finds himself captured by the Meethlites and forced to become a bloodthirsty, sadistic, villainous cyborg named Musaran. This cyborg consists of Jeraime trapped inside of a robotic "shrew" suit whose behavior is that of a neural interfacer attached to the back of Jeraime's head and protected by a helmet.  While the AI is originally fully subservient to the Meethlites, battle damage after being defeated by Ciem the first time around causes the AI to force a second personality in Jeraime, one which wishes to go on murder sprees for its own sake and not serve the Meethlites.


 * Donte McArthur/Emeraldon: Candi's lifelong love interest, her second boyfriend after Don Mendoza, and her eventual second husband-to-be. Donte was the protector of the city of Dirbine until the Phaelon-Metheel War.  Afterward, Ciem assumes that responsibility.  He is often just out of her range, due to circumstances regarding his health.  Captured by the Meethlites, he fears it won't be long before he will lose his ability to be Emeraldon forever.  He begins planning for his own retirement from superheroics, assuming he can be rescued.


 * Denny Levens: Candi's third-ever boyfriend and her first husband, whom she settles for after being mislead to believe that Donte was dead. Denny himself proves to have many enemies, and Candi is unable to save him from all of them.  It is because of Denny that Candi finds herself unable to stop Musaran at first, since the two of them never considered what would happen if she got pregnant.


 * Imaki Izuki: Candi's dying Japanese godfather, who creates the Ciem suit and its technology in the hopes that Candi will discover it and will embrace her destiny with it. He has devoted his later life to spying on her, recording as many details as he can in order to design her costume to maximum specifications.  He is remarkably never caught, but reveals himself to her in the hospital before dying of heart failure.


 * Erin Flippo: Candi's oldest sister and her legal guardian. Erin's initially overgrown sense of discipline leads Miriam and Marina to rebel against her authority, while Candi remains reluctantly submissive.  Erin is murdered senselessly by Gunner and Skellig while Candi is saying goodbye to Donte and battling Don.  When Candi learns of Erin's death, she blames herself.  This realization leads a guilt-tormented Candi to exile herself from Gerosha.


 * Tracy McAuley: The wife of Dominick McAuley and a mentor to Candi. Tracy helps Candi get cleaned up after her battle with Don and informs Candi when Donte is captured and presumed dead.  She helps cover up Don's death and aids Candi in her self-exile from Gerosha.  She was once best friends in college with Erin, and is herself expecting a child with Dominick after years of them trying to have one.


 * Ploribus Philippine: Candi's Phaelite half-brother. Ploribus is a military commander who was known in 1990 for being a hero in the Battle for Gerosha.  He and his wife Nancy have been taking potions to extend their youth.  However, after the birth of their son Lex, Nancy ceases to take the formula.  She eventually dies of cancer, which affects Ploribus very adversely.  In spite his desire to be with Nancy again, Ploribus fears what would happen in the world if he died; and continues to extend his unnatural youth.  When Merle's death grip over Dirbine proves too great a threat, Ploribus resumes his campaign against Meethlite expansion on Earth and sends in the National Guard to clean Dirbine of Arfaas loyalists.


 * Gunner Soorfelt: A Meethlite who works for the Hebbleskin Gang. Gunner likes classic mafia clothing, and is a reserved and calculated hit man.  When Candi defeats him in battle, he sacrifices himself to set off a flag grenade that will mark the location of Candi's house.  Candi and Denny move away from that house and into Denny's place in town to get away from the house before the Meethlites can react to it.  The Meethlites arrive to the house too late and discover it unoccupied.


 * Skellig Soorfelt: Gunner's reckless younger brother. Skellig likes to dress in "ghetto" fashions, and prefers to imitate 21st century gangsters.  He accompanies Gunner in the murder of Erin, but they are separated before Gunner fights Candi.  Skellig is eventually killed by Emeraldon.


 * Duke Arfaas: The leader of the Hebbleskin Gang and an aggressive supporter of Meethlite empire expansion on Earth. Arfaas is paranoid that one of the Flippo children will become a prophesied "Gifted One" and overthrow him.  Therefore, he authorizes a decades-long hunt for the Flippo family and puts a price on all their heads.  The Flippos are initially defiant and stay in Gerosha to defend Stan and Shalia's honor.  Following the death of Erin, the Flippos begin moving away and become less and less concerned with standing up to the Meethlites in Gerosha.


 * Harga Hebbleskin: Arfaas' sister. Harga is proud of her deceased uncle Fantisk, who terrorized Gerosha.  Therefore, she dresses just like him.  Harga can usually be seen by her brother's side, helping to defend his actions.


 * Merle Hourvitz: A cruel old man and police chief in Dirbine. Merle becomes a fanatical supporter of Duke Arfaas and his evil causes on Earth, even rigging the Dirbine police station to make it better suited for use as a holocaust chamber for political prisoners.  He is one of many who authorizes Candi's arrest when he realizes that she knows of his involvement with Arfaas and with the conspiracy to kill Denny.  He corrupts as much of the local government as possible into being servants of Arfaas' will.


 * Dolly Malestrom: Jeraime's wife, who goes from gentle and optimistic to paranoid and even violent after the Meethlites have imprisoned her and her sister Lindsay. In the future, she proves to be one of the most important friends that Candi ever makes.


 * Kelsea Linney: A psychotic debit card thief and hairstylist who shares the Meethlites' contempt for Denny Levens and has her own plans to get him fired from work and eventually killed. When she fails to get Denny jailed on trumped-up stalking charges, she takes matters into her own hands to ensure that Denny is out of Dirbine forever.  Her actions, however, lead to the loss of her own life and that of her son.


 * Laurie Pegol: Candi's regular teammate in their Forensic Investigation program at Viron University and one of Candi's few close friends. She often ends up involved in Candi's misadventures and doesn't find out until Ciem 2 that Candi and Ciem are one and the same.  She is based on real-life Liz Pegouskie.


 * Jeral Cormier/Botan the Plant-Man: A man who has lost his wife due to marital problems springing from the fact that the Phaelites have turned him into a plant-man. The secret to making Botan's cure work is Milthuen Prototype blood. But until he can figure that out, he runs around in an insane rage looking to cure his condition and prove to himself that he wasn't so bad as his first wife believed he was. He is extremely bitter about the Phaelites and over his divorce. He ends up remarried later on, and wants to find a cure so he can give his second wife the kind of husband he feels she deserves.


 * Don "the Psycho" Mendoza: Candi's former crush from back in sixth grade. He has since been taken in by the Meethlites and become a drug supplier.  He has been indoctrinated by the Meethlites into anti-Flippo hatred and is obsessed with raping and killing Candi.  When he pushes his luck too far, she accidentally throws him into a pile of burning rubble, killing him almost immediately.


 * Maria Sanmarcos: A small child belonging to parents who are illegal immigrants from Mexico. She lives in the district of Dirbine that is typically of the least interest to the Meethlites, Latin Town.  She speaks very little English, requiring both her captors and rescuer to try their hardest to speak to her in Spanish.  She is kidnapped by Victor Nanale and the last few remnants of the Kerpher Gang.  After being rescued by Ciem, she becomes grateful and convinces the whole neighborhood to declare Ciem their hero.  It is from their shouts of "ciempiés" that Henson's news station gets the idea to name the hero "Ciem."


 * Rev. Wilbur Brocklyn: The minister at Viron Community Church, who lends moral and spiritual support to Candi in times of need. This good-natured minister is one of Candi's closest allies in spite having no clue that she is Ciem.  Wilbur is a parody of Morgan Freeman's "God" role in the movies Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty.


 * Nolle Barret: An old woman at Viron Community Church who is bent on ruining Candi's reputation, believing that Candi is promiscuous simply because she is a college student at Viron University.


 * Pete the Shouter: A man with anger management problems who also attends Viron Community Church and who also hates Candi. He is part of Nolle's scheme to undo Candi in the eyes of the rest of the congregation.


 * Kimiyato Hiriyama: A telepathic ninja sorceress who is bent on seeing Candi's demise. She is also a Milthuen Prototype, having been engineered by the Meethlites to counteract the threat of the Phaelite Centhuen Prototype experiments.  Her link to Candi's head wherein which she does most of her tormenting of Candi is forever severed by the birth and subsequent death of Angie Levens.  Kimi vows revenge and returns in Ciem 3 to finish off Candi personally.  When Lloyd Kolumn interferes with that, Kimi settles for simply turning herself into a monster and destroying the city of Dirbine while threatening the lives of everyone important to Candi.


 * Cladeus Hutchins: The elderly owner of the Hazy Eighties Bowling Alley, who is getting ready to retire and sell ownership of the center to an unnamed buyer.


 * Victor Nanale: The pedophile leader of the Kerpher Gang. He buys the Hazy Eighty's Bowling Alley from Cladeus Hutchins when Cladeus gets ready to retire.  He wastes no time after Cladeus' death firing Candi and tearing down the bowling alley to build a strip club.  His strip club, however, is short-lived due to both Meethlite persecution of the Kerphers and to zoning laws.


 * Harold Harvey Henson: The kindly and slightly senile operator of a TV station in the Dirbine area. It is his station that first christens Candi's alter-ego as "Ciem."  He is a parody of JK Simmons' performance as J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man films, being a character trait reversal and controlling TV news as opposed to a newspaper.  Even more importantly, he remains ambivalent about Ciem.  He doesn't know if she is the best thing for the city, but claims that he sees no harm in her being there either.


 * Hannah P. Henson: H. Harvey Henson's daughter, who is afflicted with Down's syndrome. She suffers a speech impediment, and is the first to suggest that the Latin Town residents' use of ciempiés be considered as a template for coming up with a name for the centipede-dressed lady in town.  This leads to the term "Ciem" being adopted as the heroine's name; and becomes the most popular title for her in the Dirbine area soon afterward.  Hannah is a parody of the Marvel character John Jameson, being a complete trait reversal.

Development
See also: Evolution of story details for Ciem

The story of Ciem began initially in June of 2005. Back then, it was merely a not-too-serious spin-off of The Battle for Gerosha. Gerosha and Gored By Them Things, a Lord of the Rings parody, were hosted on the Cormorant site at FreeServers. That continuity is now referred to as Gerosha Prime.

The site was created to work in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. However, because XHTML and CSS are the primary code languages used for the site, not all features are supported in all browsers. Since Ciem 1 was not made with Flash, odds are that a Flash version would be required to create a universal appearance and operation.

Screen capture
See also: Known browser compatibility issues with Ciem

The very first telling of the story was with only The Sims 2 installed, and all snapshots were taken on an HP Pavilion 8700 desktop PC with an NVidia Riva TNT2 Pro video card with an AMD Athlon II processor that had 805 MHz of ability. The unit had a total of 384 MB of RAM, and all shots were put through Adobe Photoshop Elements 1.0 and were given the necessary level tweaks and special effects. The original resolution for Ciem was 300x225, the same as for The Battle for Gerosha in 2005. The 2006 attempt featured a 400x300 resolution, which was upped to 500x282 for the 2007 version. All versions feature JPEGs, though the 2005 version featured an animated GIF for the closing scene. Principal screen-gathering for the third version of Ciem was officially completed on October 2nd of 2007. Post-production for the screenshots themselves was finished at 10:30 PM, EST, on Saturday, November 10th, 2007.

Effects
Most of the Ciem suit's composition consists of a simple recolor of the white ski outfit from the base Sims 2 game, designated in the Everyday clothing section for Adult females. The ski outfit was wrapped around a bikini mesh, which in turn was wrapped around Zenman's Adult Curvy Default #5 body mesh replacement for adult female Sims. The centileg openings were also not very sophisticated. The mask was a simple two-piece consisting of face paint and a customized hairstyle. The reflective green eyepieces were adjusted in Photoshop to look the way they do. Much of the work with the mask revolved around obscuring the ears and hiding the mouth.

Musaran's suit consisted of a recolor of Brasstex's Mecha Warrior suit from MTS2 to give a "shrew fur" impression. However, the graphics problems that Seasons created with the Dell Inspiron 6000's Intel GML 910 series graphics chip prevented many of the graphics of the recolor from showing up properly. Therefore, the Musaran suit sometimes appears as being a simple brown rather than having any real complex texture. The helmet was a two-piece of a similar "shrew" recolor of Magneto's helmet with a custom face paint.

The diameter and complexity of a centileg varies between shots and essential details. One thing that remains certain is that they are extremely long-but-strong, thin, well-controlled spare appendages that Centhuen Prototypes have. For most instances in Ciem, they are simple brown lines that are added in Photoshop and beveled to look more natural.

Keyframes from several Sim animations are deliberately taken out of context to create the battle scene effects, the most frequently used of which is the "Play on the Couch" animation sequence. To create the illusion of lunging into the air at an enemy or of doing a flip, the character's couch is removed after the footage is paused. The character then horseplays on an "invisible couch," making them look like they are really doing something more serious. The couch animations are used less frequently for Sims whose faces are visible and not obscured under masks, and it would have been more difficult to alter their facial expressions in post.

Several eyes by IcedMango were used as default overrides to help with the realism of the eyes of characters. The skintones that feature in Ciem are those of MissSimGameFan, used to produce a slightly more natural-looking skin for Sims to interact with than the game's default skintones. Scenes of the city from a bird's eye view were actually screen grabs from SimCity 4 rather than The Sims 2.

While most of Dirbine, Viron, and Gerosha are completely fictitious, a few of the buildings are parodies of buildings and locations at Ferris State University. The Hallison Hall is named after the Hallisey Hall. Likewise, the Scarr Building is a parody of the Starr Building. The clock tower is inspired by the Ferris clock tower. Even more loosely, other locations are modeled after their equivalents in real-life.

Typeface
Many of the titles used in Ciem use the Windows system font Copperplate Gothic Bold, as this font closely resembles a centipede in the body structure of the characters. The official Ciem logo is actually a modification of Copperplate with legs added, dubbed "Copperplate Centipede."

This new font only exists currently as raster, and is not a font available for download. The credits page for Ciem features an italicized version of Copperplate Gothic Bold. Thematic font preference for Ciem is inspired by the fact that the Spider-Man film franchise uses a special font for most of its titles.

Special features
The story comes bundled with four "special features," which are one-page documents describing certain aspects of the development of the story. The features are as follows:


 * Dressed to Prowl: The Ciem and Musaran Costumes: This short "documentary" discusses briefly the design concept and evolution of the Ciem and Musaran suits into the forms seen in the 2007 version of the story, and contrasts these forms mildly with the 2005 and 2006 equivalents.


 * Origin of an Idea: Birth of a Centhuen Prototype: This piece addresses how the story got its earliest forms, and what inspired the development of Ciem and its predecessors.


 * What's in a Song?: Behind the Music Choices: This one-page article explains the rationale behind the choosing of the songs that feature in the playlist from Project Playlist that feature on the credits page. The songs are collectively known as Music For and Inspirational to Ciem.


 * Playing Ciem: Downloading Ciem for Your Sims 2 Game: Also known as Playing Ciem: Downloading for Gameplay, this page provides download links so that viewers of the site that would like to have a Ciem costume inside of their copy of The Sims 2 may do so both and their own discretion and in accordance with the download policies. The content is almost verbatim identical to the wording of the download links post for Ciem located thread 2 of the Dozerfleet Sims 2 downloads collection of the Dozerfleet Forum.

Deleted scenes
Originally, one of the special features was going to be a reel of deleted scenes. However, these did not make the final cut. Therefore, the deleted scenes are to be included with Ciem 2, along with any deleted scenes from that story. Among the deleted scenes from Ciem are clips of Candi inside the pharmacy where she purchases a pregnancy test and a scene where a woman who had been turned into a mermaid is murdered by an Arfaas-loyal officer.

Music
Main article: Music For and Inspirational to Ciem

The music that plays on the credits page was inspired by the Sony compilation album Music from and Inspired by Spider-Man. In the compilation of songs, the selections are references to or parodies of either artists or music styles in the Spider-Man film soundtrack mentioned above. The title is a parody on the idea of rock artist compilations for films, which works by reversing the relationship of the music and the production.

Music For is not commercially available, but is accessible as a playlist on Project Playlist's website.

Critical reception
Prior to release, Ciem received mixed reviews from critics. Some found the idea of it "very interesting" while others found it "annoying." According to John DeBruyn of Blue Moon Inn at ProBoards, the plot reads "like a soap opera on LSD," claiming that the extreme situations the characters find themselves in all-too-frequently strains the story's credulity. Members of the His House Ministries group for Ferris State University in 2007 declared that the story was "intense," remarking that the plot was very complicated and that the characters were, to say the least, "interesting." According to Slovakian user HannahSpring of the Sims 2 Community Forums, the story makes "very effective use of custom content." Overall, the story received positive reviews in spite large criticism of its graphics issues.

On Friday, December 12th of 2008, a thread was created on the Dozerfleet Forum to discuss plot holes, anachronisms, and any other issues with continuity that readers wished to have resolved. The first entry explains why there are still CRT computer monitors in Gerosha in the year 2020, in spite the fact that most retailers as of 2008 no longer carry such monitors.

Forum performance
The Mod The Sims Social release of Ciem garnered 71 views from October 11th to October 20th of 2008, in spite not being posted in its entirety. Its performance in its opening weeks lagged behind competition from popular titles such as Ksnyatin Point, Starting a New Life, Noir Arachni, Back to Love, and the persistently ratings-grabbing When Cliques Collide.

While not the top overall story, Ciem did claim the top title of the science-fiction stories for the site. By the time Ciem was moved to the Completed Stories forum on December 11th of 2008, it had garnered over 500 views; a modest amount given the lack of popularity of sci-fi entries on MTS Social. The story later received around 600 views by the 21st of December. It was self-rated as three stars, since the JPG data quality was compromised by hardware compatibility issues.

As of October 4th of 2009, Ciem ranked as the 28th most-viewed completed story in the entire history of MTS Social's archives.

Ratings controversy
Main article: Ratings controversy for Ciem

The story has been the subject of some debate concerning the rating. At 13-UP, the story implies it is in the territory of a PG-13 film. While considered appropriate by HystericalParoxysm of MTS, this claim was disputed briefly by the user BoolPropped of the same community. For release in MTS Social's forum format, the story was edited to remove unnecessary Musaran murder spree scenes ; and to tone down the implied racist and xenophobic attitudes of Andrew the Truck Driver.

Distribution
Ciem was published in DSHW format on a WebCD in February of 2009. Distribution of commercial-free versions of the story on WebCD for sale on the web would require deals between Dozerfleet and Maxis/EA, which have yet to be negotiated.

The story pages for the DSHW were fully converted to HTML at 1:33 AM EST on Friday, January 2nd of 2009. Documentaries were added to the project on January 20th of 2009, around 1:15 AM EST. Therefore, on a trivia note, the project is considered to have been finished in the twilight of George W. Bush's presidency.

On October 10th, 2008, Ciem was submitted to the Mod The Sims Social Forums for approval in the Sims Stories section of that site. Approval arrived on October 13th, and the notice was received around 12:15 AM EDT. Completion of MTS Social syndication occurred at 2:57 AM EST on December 11th, 2008. That same hour, the official story status was changed from "Sci-Fi" to "Completed."

On November 25th, the story was syndicated on The Dozerfleet Forum, mostly through copy-pasting of its syndication at MTS Social. It was listed as complete at 2:55 AM EST on December 11th, 2008, when the End Credits were added as a reply to Chapter 32's thread.