…
[Nightshade]: …We’ve got company, Angelina.
…
…
[Lucine]: Oh, honey, we tried our hardest to stop it.. t-to get it canceled and pulled off the air, but– but nothing worked, nothing could convince them… whatever gives the station money… I-I’m just so glad you’re okay.
…
[Aimée]: Newsboy, whatcha doin’ here? A buncha people died here.
[Newsboy]: Just doing my job, miss.
[Jori]: Oh my god… I was so sure this wasn’t going to happen to you– thought it was something that would happen to someone else, not my baby girl– I’m so sorry. Your father was right all along.
[Jori]: I’m assuming you’re Nightshade Tarantula? My future daughter-in-law?
[Nightshade]: Well, I– normally, it would feel so odd to say that only a few days after getting together, but… it seems BCs bring you to “the one” with an almost perfect track record.
[Jori]: That’s always made very little sense to me, even though I accepted it. You’d think that a reality TV show wouldn’t be the best place to find love… I wonder if there’s some other world where there’s no MMBCs, but hardly any of the couples stay together. The opposite of the world we’re in right now.
[Aimée]: There oughta be somethin’ unnatural about it in this world! Some supernatural force surrounding the shows, makin’ sure the lovers stay lovers!
[Lucine]: That’s quite enough, Aimée.
…
—
[Lucine]: …Have you two thought at all about the other part of the deal?
[Nightshade]: The money and the lot?
[Lucine]: Yes, that.
[Nightshade]: Oh, yes, we’ve decided to accept it.
[Lucine]: Now, before you go off and live with her, you’ve got to know what that means…
[Angelina]: [annoyed lip trill]
[Lucine]: Make sure she showers and wears clean clothes. She can’t cook all that much. Don’t let her become nocturnal–it’s bad for the human brain. Make sure she takes care of herself and doesn’t binge watch shows on Netflix so long she forgets to eat or drink. When the house is built, she might be out of it for a while because it’s different from here–be aware of that. Never give her orange juice with any pulp–it won’t end well. [continuous rambling]
[Angelina]:
[Nightshade]: …You won’t have to worry.
[Lucine]: Oh, and one more thing…
[Angelina]: [softly screeching]
[Jori]: –No, seriously, don’t let her near orange juice with pulp. Feels like tiny snakes in her mouth, she wrote once. The first time we let that happen, she was 6 and it was the only thing on the shelf and we wanted to see if she’d like it. The second time was when she was 15 and the packaging lied to us. Both times, she not only spit it out dramatically, she also threw her cup of offending orange juice on the floor, grabbed the carton it came from, and threw that on the ground.
[Angelina]: [deep sigh]
—
[Aimée]: You know what, DadDad? I skipped work today and it was a statement. A statement against society telling teenagers they need to get summer jobs instead of just having fun over the summer like they did in elementary school. And also against making me wear this orange shirt. Orange is not a part of who I am!
[Jori]: …
[Aimée]: You just don’t get it!
[Angelina]: [sniff]
[Nightshade]: I-I know. … It’s over now. It’ll be okay in time… yeah…
[Aimée]: [muttering]
[Lucine]: Great.
[Lucine]: …I swear, I usually cook better than this. Something happened with the stove.
[Nightshade]: Better than the canned soup at the BC house.
[Jori]: Must’ve been some really bad soup.
…
[Lucine]: Oh, if you’re off to bed, Angelina’s room is to the… if you take a right, and another one, and… uh, just follow Angelina.
[Aimée]: Angelina’s bed is old and due to break apart any day now, so don’t get too rowdy up there!
[Lucine]: AIMÉE.
[Aimée]: I hate washing dishes. It feels so gross.
[Nightshade]: …Gosh, I’m not sure how to feel. There’s a good part of me that’s… excited. Excited to start this new chapter of my life, with you.
[Nightshade]: …But I also… sometimes I think about how this is… only happening because everyone else died. And I wasn’t the murderer, but I can’t help but feel… responsible anyway.
[Nightshade]: …[sigh] I had no idea it’d be this hard.
…
…
[Nightshade]: …I guess standing around worrying about it won’t help. Let’s… let’s go to bed.
[Angelina]: [nodding]
…
—
-the start of summer, the next year-
Claiming to be busy with “other affairs”, it took almost a year for the construction crew to build a home on the lot offered to the resulting couple from the sweepstakes BC. Everyone was frustrated with the wait time, from Angelina and Nightshade themselves to the rest of the Camisade family to everyone Aimée gossiped about it to, but nothing could really be done except complain to pass the time.
At least it was… satisfactory. Everything the two had asked for, with… a little more, actually, but that’s probably better than less.
Due to the limited budget, the living room and dining area had to be merged into one–a room with nothing but a couch, a table with some chairs, and a bookshelf, mostly empty.
The kitchen was equally simple–counter space, fridge, sink, stove, smoke detector. Oh, and trash can.
The bathroom, again, was simple–toilet, shower, sink. Mirror, towels.
It was way too big, but that’s alright.
Again, the bedroom had little more than the bare necessities. A bed. Lighting. A dresser. A mirror.
…Literally the worst type of double bed available, but it should suffice for the time being. Especially since, even after almost a year together, the couple still isn’t using it for much more than sleeping. …What? Everything’s the audience’s business when you’re storytelling.
The one thing they weren’t expecting, though, was an extra room on the opposite side of the house from the bedroom. It was smaller than the bedroom, and it had nothing in it–not even lights.
“Do you think they put that in there because they expect us to have children?” Nightshade had wondered.
Angelina had responded with typing on her phone’s Notepad: “Probably. Its pretty common to check in on bc couples a few years later and find kids with them.”
They’re thinking about it.
…
The former BC house had been opened to the public as a memorial–almost nothing was changed, except the city of Riverview found it necessary to remove the stove and dishwasher from the kitchen for some reason. The low security there has raised concerns of possible theft, but no incidents have occurred. Perhaps the atmosphere is too heavy for even the pettiest thieves to want to attempt to take anything… or maybe it’s the fact that the burglar alarm still stands.
The only ones whose remains… well, remain at that house, however, are Scarlet and Viola Rancune. Angelina insisted that her contestants’ graves–even Caesar’s–would be located on her lot.
—
[Angelina]: [WHINING]
[Nightshade]: Making progress!
[Angelina]: [at peace]
…
…
[Nightshade]: …I’m already feeling a little cooped up. Do you want to go somewhere?
[Angelina]: [head-tilt]
[Nightshade]: …Hm. Maybe the Summer Festival? But let’s stay inside…
[Angelina]: [deep in thought] … [nodding]
—
[Angelina]: [SHRIEKS]
[Nightshade]: Fear not! I’m coming!!
[Nightshade]: –I got you.
…
[Townie]: LESBIAN BERRIES [stumbles]
[Nightshade]: Actually, she prefers the terminology “colorful” over “berry”.
[Angelina]: [GASP]
[Nightshade]: Huh– AAAAA–
10.
victim: Nightshade Tarantula (geezsims/
geezsims)
cause of death: her own FOOLISHNESS
[Nightshade]: –gah…
[Angelina]: [looking down in sorrow]
[Nightshade]: Angelina? …Don’t feel bad. It wasn’t really on either of us alone.
[Announcer]: Attention! Attention! This festival will be closing in ten minutes! Ten minutes! This is your ten minute warning!
—
…
[Nightshade]: The “kaching” handout was only put into use because Republicans thought §50,000 was a ridiculous amount of money to give out to anybody not working to get it themselves. They thought §1,000 was better. They completely failed to actually do anything about limitations on who gets to use the services, which was the original goal.
[Angelina]: [giggling]
…
[Nightshade]: …We should probably be heading home, shouldn’t we?
…
[Nightshade]: Wait? Alright…
[Nightshade]: Wait, Angelina, where were you carrying th–
[Nightshade]: [GASP]
…
[Nightshade]: OH MY GOD YES!! YES!!! … Ahem. Is anybody watching us? I– yes. Absolutely, I’ll marry you, Angelina. … [only tearing up a little. just a little]
…
…
[Nightshade]: Oh my god, I– [sniff] I love you so much…
…
—
Well, that was exciting (in a happy way, not the same exciting Camisade MMBC was). Time for another day, with something a bit calmer–“Cooking with a Detective”! The first of the Cooking with Non-Cooks series. Coming to a Switter Fam Film Fest near you.
If you don’t taste the batter, do you truly know what you’re working with? You can look and see if it looks funny, you can be as sure as you want that you used the right ingredients in the right amounts, but you’re missing the most important part of investigating the culinary scene–the taste of the stuff you’ll eventually be eating.
Germs? Well, that’s not much of a problem when the only people eating the food in question are the chef and somebody who’s surely gotten a taste of the chef’s saliva before.
…I just made this weird.
When investigating a crime scene or mixing ingredients, remember–leave no stone unturned. In the cooking context, that means to keep mixing until everything appears to be one–a homogeneous mixture, if you will.
Of course, that doesn’t apply when the mixed ingredients a) are not supposed to be uniform and/or b) physically cannot become uniform. Like, you shouldn’t keep mixing chocolate chip cookie dough until all the chocolate chips are mixed evenly with the cookie dough. If you do that, it’s not chocolate chip cookies anymore. It’s more along the lines of just chocolate cookies.
But Nightshade isn’t making chocolate chip cookies, is she? She’s making waffles. …Now, chocolate chip waffles would be a different story, and Angelina would like that story…
The next step after getting the batter in the pan is to get the waffles in the oven. Take caution–ovens are potentially hazardous equipment! It’s never a bad idea to quickly check the oven for anything that’s not supposed to be in there, like a firecracker or a stray (no pun intended) dog treat.
…The dog treat thing happened to me once. My mom makes homemade dog treats in the oven, and once I had to cook a frozen pizza in the oven-oven instead of the toaster oven (the pizza was really goddamn large), and we found that the oven started intensely smoking after being turned on. We managed to trace the odd behavior to one of the homemade treats that had been left in the oven.
(The pizza was subpar.)
I can’t even taint waffle faces with a weird caption.
Check ‘em a few times, make sure they’re juuuust right, and… voilà! Waffles, ready for consumption!
Rating: 🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞
“So good, you’d think a chef made 'em!”
See you next time on Cooking with Non-Cooks!
—
…
[Nightshade]: –I’m not sure how this came to mind, but… here, crossing your fingers for somebody means you’re hoping things go well for them, wishing them good luck… but that’s not universal. The German equivalent is pressing your thumbs for somebody–as in, in a fist.
[Angelina]: :0
[Nightshade]: …
…
[Nightshade]: …Frauke taught me that.
—
Story-wise, Nightshade was a PI this whole time, but now she’s officially in the Investigator profession in-game!
The profession requires building the logic skill, so she got a chess set for that purpose.
(Again, story-wise Nightshade probably wasn’t level 0 in logic at the start of the MMBC, but I’m playing fair. Ish.)
Again, Angelina was already a self-employed photographer story-wise, but she’s finally one in-game, too.
(Unlike Nightshade’s logic skill, I must admit I did cheat Angelina’s photography skill up at some point… but that was before the legacy started, so it doesn’t COUNT.)
—
GO TEAM! (Where did those bushes come from?)
While on a stakeout at the community garden, Nightshade ran into Lucine.
[Lucine]: Am I a suspect?
[Nightshade]: No, I just thought I’d say hello. …I’m not even investigating anything in particular right now.
Meanwhile, Angelina was collecting rocks around town in between looking for things to photograph. Maybe for some extra cash, maybe as decor, maybe to summon aliens, maybe to give to her fiancée in bulk. Who knows?
She then went to the junkyard, because I thought maybe something there would be a photo subject. I was mistaken.
She then dug through a junk pile, because I thought maybe she could grab something that could be sold for extra cash. I was mistaken.
She then grabbed the trashed furniture lying around, because I thought maybe she could fix it at home and sell it for extra cash. I was mistaken.
She then headed towards the dumpsters over there, because I thought they were real dumpsters that I could direct her to dumpster dive in and not fucking decor dumpsters. I was mistaken.
Then she took a space rock. Rocks never let anybody down.
Meanwhile…
[Nightshade]: …
[Lucine]: Augh… sorry. [yawn] We have been out here all night…
[Nightshade]: …You’re right. We have. …I lost track of time.
[Nightshade]: Ah, before you go… there’s something I wanted to ask you.
[Nightshade]: This feels so silly and old-fashioned, but… [sigh] Wait, has Angelina already contacted you about–
[Lucine]: –her proposal to you?
[Nightshade]: So she has?
[Lucine]: [nodding]
[Nightshade]: Yes, right, so… this is a little different, because I’m here asking you when it was your daughter proposing to me, but there wasn’t much of a chance of her getting in contact with my parents, and we wanted that… something that comes with this, so…
[Nightshade]: [deep breath] …May we have your blessing?
[Lucine]: Why, of course! You have my husband’s blessing too–we were expecting this.
[Nightshade]: Oh, thank you, thank you!! … [ahem] Thank you.
—
[Nightshade]: … (Probably not right to take somebody else in the community’s watermelons, but I don’t feel like cooking.)
—
…
[Nightshade]: How’s the orange juice?
[Angelina]: [making a face]
[Nightshade]: Sour?
[Angelina]: [nodding]
[Nightshade]: Won’t buy any more of the store brand, then. …It was on sale.
—
[Nightshade]: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH
—
In ~story terms~, those last few scenes were probably separate days, but in-game I kept these two up until some unholy hour in the middle of the day.
—
[Nightshade]: …
[RIIIING]
[Nightshade]: …[sigh]
[Nightshade]: No, you aren’t getting permission to turn our MMBC into a musical, either!
—
…
[Nightshade]: …You know, astrologists believe the full moon is connected to fertility. I don’t believe in all that, but I find myself thinking about… that other room whenever the moon is full.
[Nightshade]: …Not that I’m in a rush to have children. It’s just something that gets on my mind.
[Angelina]: [tapping]
I have something completely unrelated to say.
[Nightshade]: Yeah?
[Angelina]: [tapping]
Well. Ill save you the backstory for now. Maybe later if you really wanna know. But im actually not… entirely female. A little but not entirely. I still dunno exactly… what to call myself.
But could you call me different things? Like… they instead of she sometimes, and… ok. This is super uncreative. I know. But I thought this name sounds better with your last name than the one I already have does (hehe), so… Angel
[Nightshade]: Oh, certainly. [smiling]
—
…
[Nightshade]: (…Strangetown Bella Goth being real would be an interesting spin, but it’s one I don’t think the author is skilled enough to pull off. So… no, you fools, Strangetown Bella is a fake.)
…
[Nightshade]: (A lot of viewers considered the BC to be just a mystery show, didn’t they? There’s people who tried–and are still trying–to get similar BCs stopped, but too many other people act like it’s fiction. Like the deaths are staged, like we were all actors. It doesn’t help that some people think the deaths are staged, especially when the cameras don’t pick up any hauntings.)
[Nightshade]: (…But I’m guilty of the worse type of being a passive viewer. I knew those people were real. I knew I was seeing real people die. But it still felt like entertainment… until it happened to me. Until I saw everyone around me die.)
…
[Nightshade]: (…It’s strange. When I was in the BC house, it felt like… less than it really was. I was almost always vulnerable, I saw so many people dead, I even watched three deaths by gunshot firsthand–)
…
[Nightshade]: (…but it only really started to affect me after it ended. …I keep trying to reassure Angel, to tell them that it’s over now, it’s been over, nothing’s going to hurt either of us now… but why isn’t that much even reassuring me? It’s over now, but I still hear the screams in my dreams. It’s been over, but I still fear I’ll open the fridge one day and find somebody there again. Nothing’s going to hurt either of us now…)
…
[Nightshade]: (…but I can’t help but think… did I deserve to win? Did I deserve to be the one getting out of that house alive?)
[Nightshade]: (…I didn’t, did I? It should’ve been somebody who didn’t come in hoping for this outcome at all. Maybe I should’ve… it’s not fair that I’m still alive, is it? Maybe–)
[Nightshade]: (–!!)
…
[Nightshade]: (…It’s getting light out. I’d better just… get to sleep.)
…
—
Angel and Nightshade opted for a private, small-scale ceremony in their backyard with no company.
[Nightshade]: Heh, I guess you’re always dressed in your best.
[Nightshade]: …Angel, are you ready?
[Angel]: [nodding excitedly]
…
[Nightshade]: Ah, this has to be the happiest I’ve ever been… from this point on, I can call myself your wife…
…
Following the private wedding, both of them got wishes I could only associate with their status as newlyweds. Angel got a wish to go to France–one can conclude she’s talking about a honeymoon, which matches the 10 facts I gave a while ago.
Meanwhile, Nightshade got the “Have First WooHoo with Angel” wish.
