I've been playing a plot that I consider a sort of "prequel" and I'm wondering if there is any reason to move or not move memories to put them in order? That's the technical question.

Here's the context: Right after Dustin and Angela got together, Angela died in childbirth (she really did, accidentally), leaving poor Dustin with a baby daughter. About the time little Angelita got into school, Angela was resurrected (genie lamp). A sim-year or so later, a strange child who looks like Angela (but has genie eyes) followed her daughter home from school. Angela believed that the child might be hers from those lost years when she was "dead" so she took the child in. (The kid is Whitney Rossi who had no family ties when she showed up after school - she was added to household, had an eye transplant, then given family ties with Angela and my Genie Look-alike, Gene Vadoma).

Now the prequel - Lilith Pleasant is actually the mother of that child. As an independent teen, she slept with both Gene, who is just a con-artist really, not a real genie, and Dirk Dreamer on the same day which blended their DNA (because my Sims can do that). All this was played out with relationships and memories formed, but AFTER Angela found the child and met Gene. Gene is marked as kid's father (SimPE) and now has a relationship with his daughter. He and Angela are enemies. He's also had arguments with Angela's current lover, Bruce Rauscher, and Dustin over all this and others in the community have witnessed all the drama.

Would it help the characters develop more individually if I rearrange the memories? Does it make a real difference what order the memories are in? Is it a BAD IDEA to reorder the memories? Could I perhaps just edit to make some memories more significant so that the character retains the effect longer? Do I, possibly, just have too much time on my hands...?

EDIT: One last thing, I never play with natural aging, so the characters might stay at this stage for a very long time with plenty of sim development, which is why I care enough to consider this.

Memories are just a tracker of events - they have little effect on a sim, especially if their weightings have run down which happens quite quickly. Order makes no difference whatsoever. You can edit them at will. They don't affect anything else in the sim files so you could, if you wanted, give both fathers the memory of having produced a kid.

Ok, thanks, in that case, maybe it's good that I did play the events out of order because now that they've found the child, the events that led to her birth are fresh for them. I might just play around with the decay, etc. to make them stronger.