#1992.e04 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nexility-sims · 3 months ago

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𝐍𝐎. 𝟗 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | CANARÍS, OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

In Canarís, something shifted. Arnaut perceived it as subtle, and he struggled to name it when he wondered aloud to Lorraine. He danced around it, grasping for meaning in observations, but there was a simple explanation. In his gut, he felt that people had been happy to see him. Their family arrived at the train station as the work week ended, emerging like generations before them to a crowd of locals eager to greet royalty. German and Abelina were becoming accustomed to the rhythm of life in Uspana. It was cause for optimism that the newborns would grow up without the adjustment pains that the rest of the family faced. Just as well, their birth inspired a deluge of good press. Arnaut quickly learned the public more readily embraced him as a father than as someone capable or even destined to lead them. Yet, at the train station, the tenor of their shouts was different. The questions they asked were different. He embraced them, old women and teenagers and grinning toddlers, and they gazed at him with what struck him as new—changed, even—eyes.

❧ we're back !!!!!!! gonna post the magazine covers separately :^) as a reminder, large text will be below the read-more going forward, for ~readability~

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

Such welcomings happened everywhere, but residents of Canarís understood themselves to be reenacting a kind of ceremony when it was their turn. A century after abandoning Canarís, the House of Tecuani remained seemingly divided on where its capital lay. The seat of government was in Nakawe. The ancestral home was in Yaas. Many members preferred in recent decades to live by the sea in Canarís—or to buy second homes, at least. This was where the Hunter went when he descended from the mountains to build the kingdom of Uspana, joining seafaring families whose names were subsumed into the clan they chose to lead them. It was the capital until revolting Uspanians many generations later burned and razed much of it, including the king’s palace. There were no palaces in Canarís anymore. There were still magnificent estates, but everyone politely called them villas or cottages, speaking as if belief alone could render the enduring resplendence quaint and inoffensive.

It was possible the crowd’s warmth felt so palpable because Arnaut had spent the entire train ride stewing in desperation. This vacation was unearned, he had decided. The Crown positioned holidays as indispensable. Beatriz herself set aside a few days each month to feign relaxation away from the capital; Arnaut held fond memories of those childhood getaways spent in Initizara, surrounded by their ever-expanding family. No one much had the stomach for Initizara these days, but the schedule of vacations remained.

Yet, Arnaut felt anxious. Didn’t it teeter on the dangerous edge of presumptuousness—promising to work hard, to change minds, and then sacrificing time to pleasure instead? He wrote the accusatory headlines in his head. More than just knowing their names, he listened to news commentators enough to conjure up imaginary criticisms in their voices. Should I smile? he wondered. Or would that make it worse, looking sour and ungrateful? They would ask what he had to complain about. They would think, ‘I’d lose my job if I ran off to Canarís for a week!’ Disapproval had a face in his mind. It was an older woman who watched daytime television while her grandchildren played nearby. She was a clan mother. She voted. She used a backstrap loom. She had looked into a television camera and insisted with dismay, ‘People don’t change at forty.’

Still, that was the sense he got as he interacted with the crowd. Some wanted to fawn over him. They said beguiling things about how excited they were to see him, how happy they were he had come to Canarís, how they prayed for him. The mood was distinct. These people were not just eager for photographs and stories to brag about; they hadn’t all joined the crowd amassing at the station for want of afternoon plans. For some of them, enough to matter, Arnaut inspired something positive. He wasn’t an unwanted pretender masquerading as their crown prince. His visit meant something to them because, in an undeniable way, he did.

Later, he would finally blurt out to Lorraine, ‘I think they were proud of me—really, who knows why or if it’s true, but I believe they were.’

It wasn’t implausible. Arnaut had been hard at work for months, single-minded in his pursuit of improvement. Managing a crowd with charisma had never been an issue for him, but they were too often overcast by a cloud of suspicion and disappointment. On some level, he understood that the smiling faces and enthusiastic waving spoke for themselves and, in reality, his own insecurities were to blame for any misgivings. It was the litany of surveys and polls that shaped his reality, however. He obsessively watched the news, and his head swam with a flood of data pinpointing all the ways the nation found him lacking. It represented the millions of people who didn’t turn out in hopes of having their hand held by a prince for one brief, fleeting moment. Of course, those millions didn’t closely follow his real work, either—weren’t regular readers of tabloid rags like the National Exchange or newspapers of record like Relay. They responded instinctively to what was in the water. If the politicians at Nakawe Palace and the reporters who circled it and the royal family’s true fans found him lacking, the distaste became unimpeachable truth. It was truth to the faceless millions, and it was truth to him.

Lately, he had begun to feel like there was less blood in the water.

They were joining Martin in Canarís, and the two families spent the time frolicking on the beach and dining under the stars. When they went out onto the water together, Martin confirmed Arnaut’s hunch. He suggested in his characteristic brusque way that Arnaut wasn’t as much of a laughable embarrassment as he had been that spring. Martin's wife was frail and almost a stranger, but she laughed heartily and smacked Arnaut’s arm after teasing out the admission that, yes, he was finally feeling likable. She was kind and likable herself, and her slow but steady decline was one of two dark spots on the vacation.

One morning, Arnaut found Martin out on the deck with remnants of breakfast and pages of print news splayed on the table. He only glance at them long enough to register what they were and remarked, “I thought we weren’t reading the news here,” as he sank down into an open seat.

Martin’s nose was in a copy of the Fiscal Register. He replied without looking up, “Not really news, is it?”

Examining the pages, a series of similar headlines grabbed Arnaut’s attention. He slid one of the papers, reorienting it in his direction, and absorbed the cover story with wide eyes. It wasn’t unusual to see Leonor on the front page of tabloids. She had become an exciting subject, and the loyal pack of photographers that trailed her around Nakawe ensured a steady supply of intriguing, occasionally outrageous, exploitable pictures. Arnaut remembered those days. Or, he remembered something akin to what her life was now, so limitless and delicious as to be out of control, with the crucial distinction that the press felt less hungry in his memories. His bad stories came from trustworthy leaks given to reputable journalists, not from candid photographs that spoke—screamed, really—for themselves. He had also never found himself in the mess Leonor appeared to have fallen into almost overnight. These covers offered grainy but unmistakable pictures of her, and Arnaut didn’t need to believe the sensational headlines and captions to be troubled by what the images suggested.

“Did you see this?” he demanded of Martin, his tone incredulous. He flipped the paper around and pointed at the picture dominating the page.

Martin lowered his paper. “Obviously. These aren’t here to be decorative.”

Slowly, Arnaut blinked. “Is that it?” he asked. “You don’t—what, really, no thoughts? It’s shocking, isn’t it? Does anyone know—they do, they must, but what are we doing?”

He might have continued with this attempt to process the news aloud, but Martin interrupted him. “We’re not doing anything.”

“Aren’t you concerned?”

Martin shrugged. “It’s a little dramatic, huh?”

“Is it?” Arnaut shuffled the papers together and read from them. “‘Princess L’s Big Plunge—Almost,’ ‘“Wanted to End It All,” Friend Says,’ 'Drug-Induced Psychosis? Our Expert Speaks on Page 3—’” Arnaut huffed. “I mean, look!”

“We’d know if it was that serious,” Martin replied, untroubled. “You see her all the time, don’t you? Either you can’t be that surprised or it’s all nonsense. You tell me.”

At this, Arnaut frowned. It was a stretch to say they saw each other that frequently. Leonor’s preference was to behave like coworkers, not like relatives and certainly not like people who had always been bound together by deep love for the same remarkable person. Her hours were erratic at best, but it was difficult to complain when no one else did. The people on their team knew her; she had been gifted their unshakeable trust at birth, it seemed, and he struggled with envy for that. When she jeopardized the infallibility of that trust, she would do something to shore it up—impeccable contributions on the policy front, experience-informed insight in a meeting, effortlessly leveraging valuable connections that Arnaut still bumbled his way through. She was living a double life of sorts, so was the problem that she did it too well?

“Maybe she’s fine,” he ventured, folding his arms on the table. Martin had set aside the Fiscal Register and was looking at the papers Arnaut had reorganized. As he did, Arnaut continued, “You know, she looks thinner, but she seems better? I suppose it seemed inappropriate to comment on that kind of thing—everyone else does, so why would I? Someone would say, if she wasn’t healthy. And, she’s there, she’s present, except for when she’s literally not there, which, frankly, is often, but—” At this, Martin snickered. “Even if she’s not actually—uh, what would you say?”

“A drug addict?” Martin offered, grinning.

Arnaut groaned. “Right, okay. Even if she's not doing that badly, then ... She's going to get in trouble for this. I haven't talked to Mama lately, but—”

Martin sat back in his chair. “Oh,” he said, making a show of the pause in a way Arnaut found obnoxious. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“What?” Arnaut retorted. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“Well!” Martin exclaimed, raising his hands. “Look, it’s a mistake to think that this isn’t ... part of the plan.”

“Plan?”

Looking solemn, Martin nodded. “You know Mama reads the tabloids every day. She’s worse than anyone. I think she likes getting mad, or maybe she just likes the gossip that much—” Arnaut waved a hand, and Martin sniffed. “Anyway, she knows what’s going on. Absolutely. I guarantee she knew about this story before either of us did.”

Their mother was a voracious consumer of lurid slop, Arnaut knew. It was a hobby of hers in the same way other people read literature or advice columns. Copies were delivered nightly, and she read them alongside her stack of briefs and letters. Broadly, she was part of their target audience. Uspana’s gossip rags, especially those with an emphasis on royalty, targeted women of a certain age who had grown up alongside Beatriz, who felt empowered by her unprecedented reign, and who saw themselves as equivalent matriarchs in their own communities. They were gatekeepers. They dispensed advice. They protected order, tradition, and the future itself. In all gossip, they found tools to aid their missions, whether it was identifying local problems or raising new national specters to be exercised from their communities. On a baser level, one that was just as real for Beatriz, witnessing other people’s private messes spilled in public gave them an enjoyable reprieve from cleaning up those that were their responsibilities.

Arnaut nodded. “But ... This is a problem, Martin. It looks terrible for all of us, and Leonor is—she’s official, not someone on the sidelines.”

To Arnaut’s surprise, this elicited a knowing smirk from Martin. He nodded and said, “That’s right. Think about it, okay? I know this isn’t your strong suit, but there’s a logic here. It’s a simple idea. Give someone enough rope, and they’ll hang themselves, eh?” Martin mimed the tug of a noose, sticking his tongue out. Arnaut winced as he asked, “Does that ring a bell?”

It did, but it wasn’t clarifying. Arnaut frowned. “I don’t ... Why would that be helpful?”

Martin shrugged. “Mama’s from the old way. Competition? Neutralize it.”

“What?” Realization dawned on Arnaut as Martin sat staring at him, pleased with himself, and he struggled to beat it back. It was the kind of awareness he didn’t want to have, that would be a burden on his heart, but Martin was determined he have it.

“What? What!” Martin laughed, mocking, before concluding, “It makes you look better. If our little niece is out ruining herself, less people are going to be daydreaming about the alternate universe where she does a Beatriz and—”

Arnaut held up his hands. “Alright, I get it. That’s horrible.”

“That’s Mama,” Martin quipped. “But, you know—”

Perhaps as no coincidence, Lorraine and German appeared in the doorway behind Martin’s shoulder. She offered a greeting, and Martin waved before picking up his paper again. The conversation was over. Arnaut looked up at her with gratitude in his eyes, and German leapt over on cue with a large kite in his hands.

“Can we go?” he asked, looking briefly at his uncle before tugging Arnaut’s hand. “The wind is perfect, and Julian is saying I don’t have the right ‘energy’ for flying kites. I don’t even know what that means. They’re not alive, are they?”

Arnaut chuckled and stood up. “Let’s go find out, huh?”

TRANSCRIPT:

[Crowd clamoring]

ARNAUT | I thought we weren’t reading the news here. MARTIN | Not really news, is it? ARNAUT | Did you see this? MARTIN | Obviously. These aren't here to be decorative.

ARNAUT | Is that it? You don’t—what, really, no thoughts? It’s shocking, isn’t it? Does anyone know—they do, they must, but what are we doing? MARTIN | We're not doing anything. ARNAUT | Aren't you concerned? MARTIN | It's a little dramatic, huh?

ARNAUT | Is it? "Princess L’s Big Plunge—Almost," "'Wanted to End It All,' Friend Says," "Drug-Induced Psychosis? Our Expert Speaks on Page 3—”

ARNAUT | [huffs] I mean, look! MARTIN | You see her all the time, don't you? Either you can't be that surprised or it's all nonsense. You tell me.

ARNAUT | Maybe she's fine. You know, she looks thinner, but she seems better? I suppose it seemed inappropriate to comment on that kind of thing—everyone else does, so why would I? Someone would say, if she wasn’t healthy. And, she’s there, she’s present, except for when she’s literally not there, which, frankly, is often, but— [Martin snickers]

ARNAUT | Even if she’s not actually—uh, what would you say? MARTIN | A drug addict?

ARNAUT | Right, okay. Even if she's not doing that badly, then … She's going to get in trouble for this. I haven't talked to Mama lately, but—

MARTIN | Oh. You don't get it, do you? ARNAUT | What? Don't be an asshole.

MARTIN | Look, it's a mistake to think that this isn't … part of the plan. ARNAUT | Plan? MARTIN | You know Mama reads the tabloids every day. She’s worse than anyone. I think she likes getting mad, or maybe she just likes the gossip that much—Anyway, she knows what’s going on. Absolutely. I guarantee she knew about this story before either of us did.

ARNAUT | But … This is a problem, Martin. It looks terrible for all of us, and Leonor is—she’s official, not someone on the sidelines.

MARTIN | That’s right. Think about it, okay? I know this isn’t your strong suit, but there’s a logic here. It’s a simple idea. Give someone enough rope, and they’ll hang themselves, eh? Does that ring a bell?

ARNAUT | I don't … Why would that be helpful? MARTIN | Mama's from the old way. Competition? Neutralize it. ARNAUT | What? MARTIN | “What? What!” [laughs] It makes you look better. If our little niece is out ruining herself, less people are going to be daydreaming about the alternate universe where she does a Beatriz and—

ARNAUT | I don't … Alright, I get it. That's horrible.

MARTIN | That's Mama. But, you know—

#ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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sundaymovieclub · 4 months ago

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Copy from Google Doc

Blood Simple (1984)

4/23

West Side Story (2021)

4/16

A Star is Born (2018)

4/9

The Host (2006)

4/2

Blade (1998)

3/26

The Wind Rises (2013)

3/19

Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla (1974)

3/12

Hereditary (2018)

3/5

A Star is Born (1976)

2/26

2/19

Cold Pursuit (2019)

2/12

Non-Stop (2014)

2/5

Pom Poko (1994)

1/29

Regression (2015)

1/22

Porco Rosso (1992) & The Menu (2022)

1/15

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

1/8

Redemption (2013) & Red Son (2020)

1/1/2023

The Devil’s Hour S01E05/E06

11/27

The Devil’s Hour S01E03/E04

11/20

The Devil’s Hour S01E01/E02

11/13

All the Old Knives (2022)

11/6

Beetlejuice (1988)

10/30

Kiss the Girls (1997)

10/23

Along Came a Spider (2001)

10/16

Miami Vice (2006)

10/10

Police Story (1985)

10/2

Funny Girl (1968)

9/18

The Lure (2015)

9/4

In the Mood for Love (2000)

8/28

Dirty Harry (1971)

8/14

Irma Vep S01E01

8/7

The French Dispatch (2021)

7/31

Princess Mononoke (1997)

7/24

War and Peace (1966) Part I

7/17

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972)

7/11

Ponyo (2008)

6/26

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

6/19

Chunking Express (1994)

6/7

Lady Snowblood (1973)

5/22

Nightmare Alley (2021)

5/15

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fuckyeaharthuriana · 5 years ago

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List of Arthurian Tv shows and series by Character

I made a list of arthurian tv shows and webseries that I know about or I have watched, divided by main characters. I’ve been maybe a bit generous with characters in some tv shows where the characters were protagonists only in a part of the series (an episode or a season).

I added a * for shows that I DID NOT watch, so they are in the list because of imdb and which characters were mainly listed there, or because of the plot summary I found.

AGRAVAINE The Legend of King Arthur 1979 (sort of) Robin of Sherwood 1984 s03e04

ARTHUR The Adventures of Sir Lancelot 1956 Arthur! and the Square Knights of the Round Table 1966 Arthur of the Britons 1972 Carry on Laughing 1975 s02e01 and s02e04* The Legend of King Arthur 1979 King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (anime) 1979 King Arthur: Prince on White Horse (anime) 1980* MacGyver 1985 s07e07-e08 Bill & Ted Excellent Adventures (Live Action) 1992 s01e01* Prince Valiant 1993 Blazing Dragons 1996* Merlin 1998 The Mists of Avalon 2001 Sir Gadabout, the Worst Knight in the Land 2002* Kaamelott 2005 King Arthur's Disasters 2005 Fate/Stay Night 2006 Merlin BBC 2008 Fate/Zero 2010 Once Upon a Time 2011 Camelot 2011 Merlin: L’enchanteur désenchanté" and "Le secret de Brocéliande" 2012 Nanatsu no Tazai 2014 Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works 2014* Rex 2015 (webseries) Legend 2017 (webseries) Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

BAN (KING) Nanatsu no Tazai 2014

BEDIVERE Blazing Dragons 1996* The Campaign for Camelot (webseries) 2018

BORS The Legend of King Arthur 1979 Kaamelott 2005

CARADOC Kaamelott 2005

GALAHAD The Adventures of Sir Galahad 1949 The Legend of King Arthur 1979 MacGyver 1985 s07e07-e08 House of Anubis 2011* The Librarians 2014 Fate/Grand Order: First Order episode special 2016* Legend 2017 (webseries)

GAWAIN Prince Valiant 1993 Kaamelott 2005 Merlin BBC 2008 Camelot 2011 The Campaign for Camelot (webseries) 2018 Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

GUINEVERE The Adventures of Sir Lancelot 1956 Arthur! and the Square Knights of the Round Table 1966* Carry on Laughing 1975 s02e01 and s02e04* The Legend of King Arthur 1979 Guiding Light 9 December 1982* Prince Valiant 1993 (sort of) Gwenevere and the Jewel Rider 1995* Blazing Dragons 1996* Merlin 1998 The Mists of Avalon 2001 Guinevere Jones 2002* Kaamelott 2005 King Arthur's Disasters 2005 Once Upon a Time 2011 Camelot 2011 Merlin: L’enchanteur désenchanté" and "Le secret de Brocéliande" 2012 Rex 2015 (webseries) Legend 2017 (webseries) The Campaign for Camelot (webseries) 2018 Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

GUENEVAK The Campaign for Camelot (webseries) 2018

IGRAINE Merlin 1988 (a bit) The Mists of Avalon 2001 Merlin BBC 2008 (a couple of episodes)

KAY Arthur of the Britons 1972 King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (anime) 1979 Blazing Dragons 1996* Kaamelott 2005 Camelot 2011 The Campaign for Camelot (webseries) 2018

LANCELOT The Adventures of Sir Galahad 1949 The Adventures of Sir Lancelot 1956 Carry on Laughing 1975 s02e01 and s02e04* The Legend of King Arthur 1979 King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (anime) 1979 The Twilight Zone 1985 s01e24 Blazing Dragons 1996* Merlin 1998 The Mists of Avalon 2001 Kaamelott 2005 King Arthur's Disasters 2005 Merlin BBC 2008 Once Upon a Time 2011 Rex 2015 (webseries) Legend 2017 (webseries)

MELIODAS Nanatsu no Tazai 2014

MERLIN The Adventures of Sir Galahad 1949 The Adventures of Sir Lancelot 1956 The Time Tunner 1967 s01e27* The Ghostbusters 1975 s01e14* Carry on Laughing 1975 s02e01 and s02e04* The Legend of King Arthur 1979 The Boy Merlin 1979 King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (anime) 1979 Merlin 1980* Mr Merlin 1981* The Twilight Zone 1985 s01e24 MacGyver 1985 s07e07-e08 Doctor Who Classic 1989 s26e01-e04 King Arthur and the Knights of Justice 1994* Hercules 1995 s05e19 The Zack Files 2000 s02e15 Guinevere Jones 2002* Kaamelott 2005 King Arthur's Disasters 2005 Merlin's Apprentice 2006 Merlin BBC 2008 Batman: The Brave and the Bold 2008 s01e05* Once Upon a Time 2011 House of Anubis 2011* Camelot 2011 Sofia the First 2012 Rex 2015 (webseries) Trollhunters 2016 Legend 2017 (webseries) Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018* Fate/Grand Order -Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia 2019*

MORGANA The Twilight Zone 1985 s01e24 The Legend of King Arthur 1979 MacGyver 1985 s07e07-e08 Doctor Who Classic 1989 s26e01-e04 The Legend of Prince Valiant 1993 King Arthur and the Knights of Justice 1994* Hercules 1995 s05e19 Merlin 1998 The Mists of Avalon 2001 Justice League 2002 s02e20-21 and s03e03* Guinevere Jones 2002* Stargate SG1 2005 season 9 Merlin BBC 2008 Batman: The Brave and the Bold 2008 s01e05* Winx season 4 2009 House of Anubis 2011* Camelot 2011 Sofia the First 2012 Merlin: L’enchanteur désenchanté" and "Le secret de Brocéliande" 2012 Ultimate Spider-Man 2012 s03e21* The Librarians 2014 (one episode) Trollhunters 2016 Runaways 2017 Legend 2017 (webseries) Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

MORGAUSE The Mists of Avalon 2001 Merlin BBC 2008

MORDRED The Adventures of Sir Galahad 1949 The Adventures of Sir Lancelot 1956 (one episode) The Legend of King Arthur 1979 Doctor Who Classic 1989 s26e01-e04 Prince Valiant 1993 (first arc, if I am not wrong) Merlin 1998 The Mists of Avalon 2001 Justice League 2002 s02e20-21 and s03e03* Merlin BBC 2008 "Mordred L’Elu" and "Mordred La Revolte" 2013 Rex 2015 (webseries) Legend 2017 (webseries) Fate/Apocrypha 2017 The Campaign for Camelot (webseries) 2018 Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

NIMUE/VIVIAN/LADY OF THE LAKE The Legend of King Arthur 1979 The Boy Merlin 1979 King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (anime) 1979 (one episode) Merlin 1998 The Mists of Avalon 2001 Kaamelott 2005 Merlin BBC 2008 Once Upon a Time 2011 Camelot 2011 Merlin: L’enchanteur désenchanté" and "Le secret de Brocéliande" 2012 Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

OWAIN Kaamelott 2005

PERCIVAL King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (anime) 1979 Kaamelott 2005 Merlin BBC 2008

RAGNELLE The Campaign for Camelot (webseries) 2018

SAGRAMORE Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

TRISTAN and ISOLDE King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (anime) 1979 Merlin BBC 2008 (a couple of episodes) Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

UTHER The Boy Merlin 1979 Merlin 1998 The Mists of Avalon 2001 Merlin BBC 2008 Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde 2018*

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sunnydaleherald · 5 years ago

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The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Thursday, October 17

Drusilla: (runs her fingers over Xander's lips) Your face is a poem. (moans) I can read it. Xander: (terrified) Really? It doesn't say 'spare me' by any chance?

~~Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Shrinks and Memories (Faith & Richard Wilkins, G) by TornThorn

Veritas in Canticis (Angel, Spike, G) by TornThorn

The Big Moments (Connor, G) by jjscm

[Chaptered Fiction]

Go Razorbacks! Chapter 5 (crossover with Red Dawn, T) by steeleye

This Year's Enemies Chapter 8 (Faith/Buffy, T) by AliceLost

Lotus Chapter 71 (Tara/Willow, G) by Counterpunch

You are a part of me Chapter 2 (Giles/OC, G) by There_Once_Was_A_Girl

The one where Band Candy had Consequences Chapter 2 (Buffy&Joyce, Buffy&Giles, T) by There_Once_Was_A_Girl

The Devil's Gift Chapter 2 (Lucifer crossover, Buffy, Spike, not rated) by spikes_heart

Echoes Chapter 14 (Spike/Buffy, E) by HollyDB

A Matter Of Taste Chapter 13, Chapter 14 (Spike/Buffy, not rated) by wolf_shadoe

Eye of Eleos Chapter 49 (Spike/Buffy, T) by pfeifferpack

Ship of The Line – Effect 31 Chapter 2 (crossover with Star Trek and Mass Effect, FR18) by KnifeHand

Star Wars and Buffy are Non-Mixy Chapter 150 (crossover with Star Wars, Andrew, Buffy/Obi Wan, FR18) by Sharie

The Sunnydale Imp Chapter 57 (crossover with Whateley Academy, Scoobies, FR18) by bloodredtiger

Haloed Away Chapter 10 (crossover with Halo and Stargate SG-1, Buffy, FR21) by ShadowMaster

Siniath Faers, Cadu Ad Chapter 2 (crossover with Lord of the Rings and Fate Universe, FR21) by ShadowMaster

The Key to the Zeppo Chapter 7 (crossover with Harry Potter, Xander/Dawn/Multi, FR21) by redjacobson

Where the Forest Meets the Stars Chapter 17 (crossover with Stargate, Buffy, FR18) by Hermionetobe

[Images, Audio & Video]

Ink drawing: Inktober 16: “You’re alive because I saw you change” (Spike/Buffy, worksafe) by a-case-of-the-wiggins

Vid: Lana Del Rey - Kinda Outta Luck (Buffy) by softysugar

Vid: BUFFY TVS - dog days are over (hd) (multiple ships) by DEAN MORIARTY

Vid: Buffy e Angel (Bangel, NSFW) by Paola Recrosio

Vid (alternate opening credits): If Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a 90s Sitcom (ensemble) by Sunnydale Sunset

Artwork process video: Monstober Werewolves: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Oz by Amber Stone

Artwork process video: Drawing Buffy/Angel - Adam The Bio-Mechanical Demonoid by Snake Daemon Art

Digital art: "Nightmares" review card (The Master, Buffy, worksafe) by schrootdinger

[Reviews & Recaps]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) - Deep Dive by FilmJoy

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 1 Episodes 1 and 2 Review - The Sunnydale Review Episode 2 by Wicked Good Podcasts

Lex Chats | Buffy the Vampire Slayer S01 E04 REVIEW by LexChats

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 1x11 Out Of Mind Out Of Sight Review by Cooksters Movie Reviews

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 1x12 Prophecy Girl Review by Cooksters Movie Reviews

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 2x1 When She Was Bad Review by Cooksters Movie Reviews

Spoiler Corner 2.3 School Hard by Booze & Buffy

Hellmouth #1 by Willow from Buffy, Priceless, a thing of evil

BtVS rewatch: SEASON 6 (cont'd) by Stoney, StateOfSiege97

Lie to Me by Lacobus, Beneathyoubuffy

PODCAST: Still Pretty #94. Something Blue (S4.09)

[Recs]

Spuffy fic recs by flow, Priceless

Buffy and Angel Youtube reactions recced by Silver1, Priceless, vampmogs

Meta videos by The Costume Codex recced by Sosa lola, Priceless

[Community Announcements]

Fanfiction Discussion: A Ghost Of A Chance by sabershadowkat 26k starting 18th of October 2019

[Fandom Discussions]

[Re: There’s this quote that made me think of bangel] by we-pay-for-everything

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#btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #angel the series

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nexility-sims · 3 months ago

Text

𝐍𝐎. 𝟏𝟑 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | RENZO'S HOUSE, NAKAWE, OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

Leonor knew she was imposing. Although with permission, she let herself into the most private circle of Renzo’s life, one from which he had barred her for months. There hadn’t been any negotiating it, and she couldn’t say whether that made it better or worse. Rather, she hadn’t tried to go where he didn’t seem to want her. She also hadn’t tried to discover whether it was a matter of wanting at all. He did want her. He had, with clarity and audacity, from the day they met. She’d seen how he treated people that he didn’t want but had yet to experience that kind of terrible disregard from him.

❧ i don't recall when these ideas came to me and melded together but i'm glad they did also hopefully goes without saying but there's time weirdness that'll be addressed subsequently ! also 2x maybe i’m wrong but there aren’t enough bj fantasies given how much some enjoy giving them, idk idk

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

Still, for all they discussed, the red lines and boundaries of their own relationship went without remark—either unspeakable or so self-evident as to require no demarcation. Leonor believed most of the time that it was the latter. She knew that her life had steadily cohered around his. The rhythm of it attracted her, able to fill the grave-silent vacuum where her own had once been. Although it had, important distinctions remained. Now, waking up in his bed, surrounding by what looked to be all of his worldly possessions, knowing he allowed her to be there because she needed him that much, because he cared about her that much, she suspected at least one distinction had blurred irrevocably.

Just as quick as the realization took hold, so too did the understanding that it didn’t bother her. She noted she was alone in the room. That meant something. She took in the sight of everything bathed in daylight, from the careless stacks of books to the rumpled clothes strewn on the floor to the overflowing boxes shoved into the small room’s corners. It had seemed peculiar to her that he lived in the guesthouse instead of the perfectly suitable villa to which it belonged. Looking around, she began to appreciate why he would make such a choice. For anyone else, it would have been silly or, worse, performative. Leonor, rolling over into the pillows that smelled like him, felt she now unlocked some deeper knowledge of everything he had ever told her about himself—like she could feel what he felt when he claimed to be so uncomfortable and discontent in places other people might kill to experience. In that, yet another distinction dissolved.

Renzo hadn’t answered the phone when Leonor called, and his flippant prerecorded message sounded cruel as it played. Her hope had been reassurance—comfort, really—in the clarity he tended to offer. Instead, the sound of his voice disheartened her further. Her mind raced all night without guidance to quiet it. It chased away sleep, banging together gut-wrenching thoughts with insistence and urgency. The idea of her mother’s belongings cast out into the world, ripped away before she could claim them for her own sentimental needs, felt just as discordant as the haphazard crashing of cymbals. She had grasped onto half-formed notions of how to retrieve these mysterious belongings, but a plan refused to cohere. Even after crying as she hadn’t in weeks, the burden of emotional exhaustion didn’t slow down the pace of her thoughts.

She slept much better in Renzo’s bed, even if it was the first time she’d ever been in it.

He was a private person and, anyway, she had eagerly brought him into her house. His opinion mattered to her as soon as he set foot inside; he liked the artwork in her dining room so much that she'd immediately gifted him one of the large pieces, frame and all. It perplexed him, as if he wasn't sure what he would do with it. 'You don't collect it?' she asked him. He shrugged. 'That's what everyone asks. I should smarten up, huh?' Leonor had imagined his home full of art—obscure, iconoclastic finds, too, not the low-hanging fruit. That exchange and several others kept her curious about what his home looked like.

Luckily, she was the nosy kind of curious. She asked around without shame on a couple of occasions, wondering aloud where he lived and what his house was like. She did know his address. He’d given it to her driver, at the end of long nights or when he left her house in the afternoon. All it told her was that he lived in a quiet, star-studded neighborhood that was the new money equivalent of her own. That wasn’t surprising, even if she imagined him in a trendy downtown apartment rather than one of those high-walled coastal villas. His friends offered less-than-colorful descriptions of what was inside. They seemed confused by the question, even. ‘It’s just a house.’ He wasn’t much for decorating. They went over to drink and smoke and and gamble and watch films. She could imagine it well enough, a gaggle of off-duty actors squished together on a big couch. What kind of couch, though? That was the root of it—she could imagine Renzo’s eyes lighting up at the sight of an old, ugly sofa in a dusty secondhand store, but she couldn’t quite picture him bringing it home with any purpose or intent. In the same way she inherited a house designed for someone else, she supposed he simply occupied someone else’s dream home.

As it turned out, that was the case. Imposing fences, dense foliage, and locked gates hid all the houses on the street from view. Leonor had initially noted the averageness of the house itself, but she soon found herself more intrigued by the discovery that he resided in the guesthouse instead. She'd cast a glance back at the main house looming large and empty, then laughed as she turned back to the little doll’s home Renzo preferred. Inside, Leonor flipped on every light she encountered as she wandered around. She had felt a strange, sheepish delight that he wasn’t present to observe the way her eyes lingered on every detail. It was greedy, but she wanted to see everything that was his.

The guesthouse possessed a neutral, modern style that didn’t represent Renzo very well, but he had made it his own. His old shoes piled up in the entryway. The living room, small to her but an open cavern in reality, bore the colorful imprint of his time spent there. VHS tapes clustered around the television set. Evidence of card games past littered the coffee table, along with books, a full ashtray, abandoned bottles of lukewarm beer. Leonor smiled at the little potted cactus. In the music nook, a record collection sat with a couple of guitars. Leonor envisioned him stretched out on the solitary lounge chair, reading the book tossed at its foot, making use of the hard candy or rolling papers on the side table in between chapters. She took one of the candies as she passed by, leaving behind her wrapper with those already discarded.

The staircase led directly to the single bedroom. Leonor had been able to see in the moonlight, and she soon felt a tug of unease. Even more than downstairs, Renzo’s bedroom looked like the sanctuary she had suspected his home must be. It was cluttered and overflowed with belongings, some collecting dust and others arranged as if he would return to them any minute. His very life was here. It fit in a single room. Some of it spoke for itself, and others were inscrutable symbols of stories she had yet to hear. What was it like, she wondered, to both live with such sentimentality and to be so without roots? For a moment, she had wanted to turn around and leave, as if she hadn’t earned the right to such an intimate look at him. Instead, she pulled the door shut and crawled into the unmade bed.

Walking into the house, the nostalgic scent of stale smoke sunk into fabric greeted her. A fleeting recollection of climbing into her mother's personal car sprung to mind in response. The same smell clung to the sheets and pillows, melded with the sweet, earthen scents Renzo wore. She could all but hear her grandmother’s voice ranting about the acerbic stench she loathed, for reasons both hygienic and spiteful, but Leonor found the familiarity comforting. It smelled like her mother’s embrace the morning after a big fight, when she came inside from the balcony with a tired, apologetic smile on her face and last night’s smoke still in her hair. An ocean breeze blew inside from the open doors, and it ruffled Leonor’s hair as she turned to face the view. The water was barely visible through the foliage, but its shimmering in the distance was unmistakable. She listened to the wind, and the quiet city whisperings it carried, and soon felt at home.

As Leonor descended the spiral staircase the next morning, the sound of voices alerted her yet again to the fact that she was imposing. Renzo’s plans for the weekend hadn’t included her. She was supposed to be away and, in any case, he had mentioned meeting a friend. It didn’t occur to her as she’d pulled on her underwear and selected a shirt from the floor to wear—and only that, crucially—that he could be meeting someone at home, right now, while she slept her way from morning to early afternoon. Possibilities flashed through her mind as her steps down the staircase slowed. It could be someone important, like his agent, who sounded dour even on the telephone. Or, it could be a familiar face who would see her bare legs and just laugh. She decided to risk it and managed to pad all the way over to the sunken sitting area before Renzo looked up at her.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked as she regarded his guest, a stranger, with a quizzical look.

“Hard,” she replied. "Knocked out.”

Renzo chuckled, and the man sat across from him piped up, “Hey. I don’t know if you remember me. Jim.”

Leonor stared at his face. He was possibly the most non-Uspanian looking man she had ever seen, and his accent supported that notion. Still, she couldn't remember where she might have seen him. His was a forgettable face, too. “I don’t, sorry. Nice to meet you—again.”

“Jim’s a photographer,” Renzo added.

Leonor nodded. He looked like a photographer, and he looked like the kind of photographer that Renzo would befriend. Nonetheless, she feigned dismay, announcing, “Oh, no, I better go hide, then—!”

“Editorial, mostly,” Jim clarified with a laugh. “Yeah, I dabble in photojournalism, but strictly the kind that’s, you know, real news.”

The conversation lulled while Leonor turned her attention back to Renzo, nudging him with her toes until he reached up to help her climb down onto the couch. Although Jim watched them, he may as well have not been present at all. Leonor wished he wasn’t. Buoyed by the satisfaction of having achieved a new kind of intimacy, Leonor hoped to float down the stairs and right into Renzo’s arms. She wanted a tour of the house, and she wanted to take her time in every part of it. In a sense, the day was halfway over, and it could have progressed like all of the sleepovers before it, making up for lost morning hours with late night ones. Renzo maintained late-rising night owl's hours, and Leonor was happy to follow him into bed and out of it irrespective of where the sun might’ve been sitting in the sky. Today, he was awake early with a friend, and Leonor had to settle for conveying her disappointment through expression alone. He smirked at her while he squeezed her thigh, and she took that as a wordless promise.

Nestled between him and the couch, Leonor turned her attention back to Jim. “Jim, have you done anything I would recognize?”

“Maybe,” he began, “But—”

“And you’re from Simerica, too?”

Jim chuckled, and Leonor felt Renzo react to that with his own amused scoff.

“I met Renzo at the Beverly Hills Hotel,” Jim explained. “He walked into my shot and then told me to go fuck myself. Southern charm, this guy.”

Although there was affection in Jim’s tone, Renzo protested this characterization while Leonor snickered. It was believable, but perhaps that was the problem. “He was being a bitch about it. I wandered by. So what?”

“It was my first Interview job! I can admit I was a teeny bit on edge,” Jim retorted.

Again, they fell quiet while Renzo tended to the cigarette he’d been holding and Leonor observed from where she lay against his chest.

Jim looked on. His expression shifted into one of careful concentration. He asked without any prelude, “Can I photograph you?”

It wasn’t a question she couldn’t have anticipated, but Leonor was still surprised. She wrinkled her brow and cast another glance to Renzo before trying to clarify what Jim wanted. “Me?”

“Both of you. Together.”

“Um … When?”

“Now? Today. I have my camera right here.”

“It’s up to you,” Renzo murmured to her.

Indeed, Jim’s camera sat on the coffee table, perched atop a stack of tapes leftover from whatever difficult movie-watching decision Renzo had last made. Leonor looked at it, imagining the shuttering of its lens as it pointed toward her. What kind of photographs did Jim have in mind? She didn’t know what his work looked like, although his association with Renzo offered clues. He wouldn’t have befriended someone whose art he didn’t respect, and Renzo was just as well-acquainted with posing for cameras as Leonor herself. Had Jim taken photographs of him before, aside from whatever unintentional cameo he’d made when they first met? Polaroid flashes went off constantly during their nights of partying, but that, much like the hounding flashes of paparazzi, differed from what Jim was proposing. He wanted to photograph them in Renzo’s home. He would want a performance of candidity, that elusive desire of everyone in his profession. They would be relaxed, together, his object being their relationship, not either of the two individuals that formed it. It wasn't lost on her that he asked for a photo shoot while they ignored him in favor of each other.

Jim’s question, with Renzo’s gentle and immediate yielding, brought yet another once-sharp distinction into soft focus.

“Well …” Leonor meant to forestall announcing a decision, but her tone gave it away. Jim smiled as she said to Renzo, “We do look good together. Not too many good quality daytime pictures, are there? Hm.”

Jim was eager to seal the deal. “Just a casual offer,” he insisted. “Just for fun. Perk of having interesting friends.”

Leonor nodded. He must have taken pictures of Renzo before. He acted like a bashful schoolboy with a surprising report card whenever she found photos of him to coo over. 'Put it away! It's embarrassing.' Those photographers had success with him, managing to coax out the version that played well with others and didn't resent his blessings. Fancy pictures taken by a friend would be something different. Perhaps Jim's photos had been monochrome closeups that turned his large, green eyes into a soft, warm gray and made even more pronounced the sharp lines of his face. Although she had seen countless photos of herself, she couldn’t fully see how she would fit into that frame—what they would look like together, through Jim’s mechanical eyes.

“No publication? Nowhere?” she asked, forcing herself back to the concrete specifics.

Jim shook his head. “I’ll give you prints to keep, and you can do whatever with them.”

She felt a flutter. It was the kind of ingenuous excitement that always appeared with embarrassment nipping at its heels. What would she do, frame one and put it on her bedside table—stick it to her refrigerator with a cute magnet, tuck it into the sun visor of her car, keep it in her purse alongside her credit cards and notes-to-self? Even if they felt silly, there was nothing ridiculous in those suggestions. Her desire for what Jim offered was sincere. That, coupled with the subtle feeling of Renzo nuzzling his cheek against her hair, confirmed the suspicion she had awoken with less than an hour ago. Somehow, today was different. Every day after would have to be as well.

Surprised by the softness of her own words when she spoke, Leonor affirmed, “Okay, then. Sounds like fun.”

TRANSCRIPT:

[Leonor murmurs]

[Camera shutters, indistinct voices]

RENZO (O.S.) | Open your mouth—

[Birds chirping, Leonor laughs]

RENZO | How’d you sleep? LEONOR | Hard. Knocked out. [Renzo chuckles]

JIM | Hey. I don’t know if you remember me. Jim. LEONOR | I don’t, sorry. Nice to meet you—again.

RENZO | Jim’s a photographer. LEONOR | Oh, no, I better go hide, then— JIM | [laughs] Editorial, mostly. Yeah, I dabble in photojournalism, but strictly the kind that’s, you know, real news.

LEONOR | Jim, have you done anything I would recognize?

JIM | Maybe, but— LEONOR | And you’re from Simerica, too? JIM | I met Renzo at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He walked into my shot and then told me to go fuck myself. Southern charm, this guy. [Leonor snickers]

RENZO | He was being a bitch about it. I wandered by. So what? JIM | It was my first Interview job! I can admit I was a teeny bit on edge. [Laughter]

JIM | Can I photograph you?

JIM | Just a casual offer. Just for fun. Perk of having interesting friends. LEONOR | No publication? Nowhere? JIM | I’ll give you prints to keep, and you can do whatever with them.

LEONOR | Okay, then. Sounds like fun.

#cw nudity #ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 3 months ago

Text

𝐍𝐎. 𝟏𝟒 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | VARIOUS LOCATIONS, OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

Morningstar Cafe was, by day, a drab second-floor shop that offended passersby with its single item menu. You could have a sour corn beverage, potentially with sugar if the woman behind the counter felt like offering it. Most days, she didn’t. ‘Drink what we give you,’ a sign by the register threatened. That warning became a galvanizing motto after dark—once the place transformed into a lively, hip spot flooded with whichever socialites happened to be town that night. A gruff woman with a magazine under her nose manned the door. Her job was ensuring only those with reservations or a spot on the list made it inside. The first time he’d gone, Renzo earned a hard shove in the chest from this woman, who demanded he take off his cap and sunglasses before she consented to allowing him inside. He wasn’t going to get belligerent with her. He’d promised Karolina that he would be on his best behavior—no liquor or uppers before, smile for the cameras, no fighting. ‘What, you think I’m impersonating myself? Really?’ It was hard to imagine, but the door lady had shrugged, ‘You’d be surprised. Lot of desperate pretty boys in town.’

❧ back back back at it again (posting ass, leonor’s) this is one of my sleeper favorites !!!! it looks cool to me, and i have the best time writing renzo pov, i have discovered.

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

Morningstar Cafe was, by day, a drab second-floor shop that offended passersby with its single item menu. You could have a sour corn beverage, potentially with sugar if the woman behind the counter felt like offering it. Most days, she didn’t. ‘Drink what we give you,’ a sign by the register threatened. That warning became a galvanizing motto after dark—once the place transformed into a lively, hip spot flooded with whichever socialites happened to be Canaris that night. A gruff woman with a magazine under her nose manned the door. Her job was ensuring only those with reservations or a spot on the list made it inside. The first time he’d gone, Renzo earned a hard shove in the chest from this woman, who demanded he take off his cap and sunglasses before she consented to allowing him inside. He wasn’t going to get belligerent with her. He’d promised Karolina that he would be on his best behavior—no liquor or uppers before, smile for the cameras, no fighting. ‘What, you think I’m impersonating myself? Really?’ It was hard to imagine, but the door lady had shrugged, ‘You’d be surprised. Lot of desperate pretty boys in town.’

They were on friendlier terms now, and he didn’t need a familiar-faced escort to waltz inside. It was just an enjoyable dining spot beneath the veneer of fame that made it a known place. The grilled fish and delicate desserts weren’t worth a trip down south all by themselves, but they were a welcome consolation prize when work necessitated going to the seaside. Friends from Nakawe were there this week, vacationing or working themselves; meeting at the Morningstar was a no-brainer. They could have sat in the back until morning while the glasses piled up on the table, and they would have if not for an unexpected interruption. Renzo anticipated the waitress who wandered over unprompted would stop by someone else’s shoulder and was caught off-guard when she bent over at his instead. She murmured her message, direct and discreet, and then gestured toward the constantly swinging door the led into the bustling kitchen.

Without an explanation to anyone staring with expectant eyes, he went to take the call that had come through the manager’s telephone and requested him by name. It was a surprise to hear Leonor’s voice on the other end of the line but perhaps less surprising that she sounded close to tears as she hurried to explain herself. The words jumbled together. He listened hard to make out what she was saying. In the end, the details didn’t matter. She paused at length to take a deep, unsteady, therapeutic inhale, then blurted out: ‘Can I see you tonight? I need you. Please.’

She was also supposed to be away, which she’d informed him in a telephone call before she ran off to the airport. Instead of her trip, they talked for a few minutes about the gift he sent her. She promised to watch it when she got home. He suggested they watch it together. She made a joke about needing to stay home for a while anyway. He agreed with her. Had she seen the note? She had. And she forgave him for it? She did. Quiet, the kind that meant they were both smiling and making heart eyes at thin air. That was it. Yet, an obvious question had ballooned in front of him as soon as she mentioned she was invited to spend a couple days with her family—that her father had arranged it and insisted she join, no strings attached. It was distracting, that balloon, but he’d refused to pop it. They both knew “family time” would end poorly somehow, although he could admit after this phone call that he hadn’t anticipated such a spectacular disaster.

She was crying outright by the time she ended the call. It concluded hastily, mid-sob. Maybe she rushed off to gather her things, too relieved to say goodbye. She was taking the jet. The royals, almost to a person, flew private whenever they had to—and when they didn’t. Easy, she could summon a flight and be back in Nakawe in a couple hours’ time. He was going home by train, meanwhile, and it would take more time than that. She explained it to him once with the smuggest look on her face. ‘Our pilots are on call,’ she’d said. He remembered that she was eating some kind of fruit while she talked; she tossed them into her mouth like candy, which was fine because she figured they were mostly water and therefore mostly calorie-free. ‘They’re ready anytime I want. They come when I tell them to.’ To this, he had replied, ‘Oh, yeah? Me too.’

Most likely, she ended the call in a hurry because she was embarrassed to be resuming what she’d been doing before she got desperate enough to pick up the phone.

Leonor didn’t cry a lot, not really. That was a small blessing because Renzo never fully knew what to do when it happened. What he had gathered over the years was that women wanted to be consoled if they bothered to cry in front of you. It was gravely important to say nothing that mattered and wear a shirt that could handle wet mascara, running eyeliner, possibly snot that you absolutely could not comment on. If you weren’t wearing a shirt, they went for the neck. If you joked about the snot, the situation went nuclear. When men cried, it was the same deal, minus the requirement that you play daddy and give them hugs and kisses. The nuclear option was mutual destruction. ‘Crying’s for pussies.’ ‘Are you calling me—’ ‘Well, ain’t you?’ Blows ensue. Everyone feels better—superficially, at least, which was what mattered. For her part, Leonor cried when there were no words to say, for better or worse, or, crucially, when she wasn’t ready to have them coaxed out of her.

He hadn’t intended to be drafted into service as a makeshift counselor, but it just worked out that way, and he had never been one to reject what simply fell into place. By the time the waitress appeared in the office doorway to check on him—or whatever her purpose was, maybe just to eavesdrop—he had run the usual course of reactions. Slinging a grieving princess over his shoulder and carrying her out of her darkest hours wasn’t easy work. It required clarity and consideration that he didn’t often like to possess. It would have been much easier to respond with, ‘Hey, can you shut the fuck up, I’m try to live a bullshit-free life over here.’ That was the problem with caring.

Yet, his theory was that he had taken to acting so well because he had never actually stopped being a introspective, sensitive little boy who moved like grass in the wind with whatever weather he was caught in. He got used to storms early on. Clear skies were welcome, but they left him feeling restless and parched. The storm went inward. The wind was always blowing, harsh, howling, in there. Other people saw that and called it different things, somewhere between “troubled” and “passionate,” adjacent to “intense,” in the neighborhood of “desirable�� and “steer clear.” Whatever it was, Leonor had met him and looked, without knowing, directly at it.

‘Bring her around,’ he had told Kore. It wasn’t his business, that she was friends with someone whose mother had just died and who was so unbearably sad about it that she might just fade away all together and who really just needed a pick-me-up, something to make her smile, but without all of the pressure, you know, that comes with being out and about when you’re someone like that, since you can’t just get drunk and go crazy for a night without scrutiny, or rumors, or—! No, that was not his business. However, the conversation had been unending, and everyone squeezed into the Den’s best corner seating wanted to gossip about her. Interjecting with an obvious solution ended it. Or, it prompted them to start reminiscing about their fun times, and it gave him an opening to get up and wander away. Having made it his business, he had to put more thought into it later. He didn’t read the news, certainly not the kind that would be most informative, but he didn’t have to look far to find smiling pictures of then-twenty year old Leonor with her long, straight hair and round cheeks. She always wore red. She looked like her mother, who was indeed very dead.

The concept of royalty was still perplexing and off-putting, like being somewhere people insisted ghosts and fairies were real, which was also true of Uspana. Still, whatever it meant, she looked like a princess. She looked even more that way up close, and she acted like it, too. He couldn’t resist indulging in a bit of mockery. Surprisingly, she was game enough to allow it—that and the observations he made, that she screamed misplaced and full of despair. It couldn’t have been flattering. ‘You know all about that, huh,’ he joked when she suggested the place sounded pretentious. It wasn’t a joke, but it sunk in that she wasn’t quite what he expected. Although unnameable in the moment, she had been honest in an earnest way. There was a conversation she wanted to have, one they hardly began that night; he recognized belatedly that she chose to have it with him. Only, it couldn’t have had much to do with him specifically. He asked her in time why she’d been so open. Her response struck him the same way: ‘I don’t know. I was drinking for the first time in a while? You wouldn’t let me break eye contact? Approval-seeking?’ She had looked at her hands, then added, ‘You know I’m a believer. So, because I was meant to be that way with you, then and there. That’s why.’

Renzo wasn’t a believer, not the way she was. Still, he couldn’t deny that there was truth in her observation. That’s what she’d been, attractive and intriguing and truthful, in that order. When Pat had fished an admission out of him on a rooftop in California just a couple months ago, that was more truth. Leonor was precious. He did like to be around her, to listen to her, to receive her affection. She was affectionate, which was a relief because that’s what his introspective, sensitive, small self needed. And, anyway, listening to her problems and dispensing advice wasn’t how they spent all of their time.

Leonor was curious in a ravenous way. She wanted to learn everything under the sun, and she was usually too arrogant to go about it without pure, uncut enthusiasm and confidence. Allowing herself to be taught was a favor, a sign of affection unto itself. That became apparent to him quickly. She looked down her nose at store clerks with tentative suggestions, but she peppered him with questions and savored the answers like fine, melt-in-your-mouth morsels. It was hard to not be flattered. When it was time to listen and dispense advice, he found opportunities to pluck bitter fruit of experience from his own life and make it into something sweet, even nourishing, for her. That was rare. Now it was plentiful. He spent a lot of time trying to live outside of himself, yet clarity and consideration weren’t such hard asks when she was doing the asking. Typical of people accustomed to taking, she seemed never afraid to ask for anything.

All of this was a problem that became worse by the day. The consequences were piling up. It wouldn’t be possible to outrun them eventually, and that moment would come without warning. Everything stacked comes crashing down. Life had very few certainties, but the hard hammer of reality falling was one of them. Renzo knew that. He also knew that he had other problems—namely, that he was, like any consummate addict, hard-pressed to stop good feelings no matter how obvious and unavoidable the terrible consequences would be. Setting aside questions of willingness, it was irresponsible and selfish to pull Leonor into this kind of morass. Of course, he counted those tendencies among his problems, too.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Muffled blaring music, Leonor humming]

Tonight? Aren’t you in Intizara?

My bad. I forgot about the jet. I get you. [Renzo sighs]

Hey, hey, hey. Come on. Calm down. I get you. Just … You have my address, right, so how’s that? You can go there, and I’ll see you when I get in. Late, right. What? No, it’s fine. I don’t mind. Someone’ll let you inside. Just go around the back. Sure. Alright. I’ll see you then.

Hey, Nora, it’s okay. Okay? Take a breath. See you soon.

JIM | How do we feel about nude?

LEONOR | You mean—? JIM | You, Leonor. I think it’d look nice, especially since Renzo’s wearing all black, and the backdrops we have are neutral, too. LEONOR | I’m not sure if I’d be comfortable with that …

JIM | Really? You seem—I mean, you know, you seem like you’d be. LEONOR | This is different. I’m … I don’t … RENZO | You can say no, Nora. If you don’t want to do it.

LEONOR | [sighs] No, I actually do, but I feel like I … RENZO | What? LEONOR | You know … [Camera clicks]

RENZO | Jim, please, will you elaborate? Tell her what you see. I have, plenty. No luck yet. Brainwashing’s a fucking nightmare. LEONOR | No, please, it’s— RENZO | Just listen, Nora.

JIM | Ah. It’s endemic. I see it all the time. A gorgeous woman gets in front of a camera, she’s standing in front of a mirror. Only, it’s worse, right, because you can’t actually see yourself. It’s what you imagine —gosh, and you know how mean cameras can be, right? Almost as mean as those damn tabloids. Almost. But, what do I know? I’m just a guy, but I am making art, okay? That’s what I’m seeing with this thing.

JIM | I have been told my camera is very slimming, for what it’s worth. [Leonor scoffs]

LEONOR | [laughs] Fine, okay. It’s just for fun. For us. What do you think, artistic nudity and all, convincing—?

LEONOR | We could do this ourselves, but—oh, when’s your birthday, Jim? Anytime soon? Let’s call it a gift.

[Movie plays quietly on television]

Hi. I hit play.

That’s okay. How is it? Funny. Odd. Exactly what I needed. “I myself am strange and unusual” … I’m gonna go change. Just take your jeans off.

I’m listening. I don’t want to dwell on it.

Alright, but you will, regardless—on the inside. I don’t want that for you. And I know why you came here. Let me help.

It feels silly to be so torn up about things. I don’t know what I’d do with a bunch of dusty old jackets and her least favorite paintings, but those were hers. They smell like her. Have her fingerprints. Meant something to her. They’re all I have left.

You can track them down. Put that princess pull to work. [laughs] Right, of course, serves me so well, all of my power …

What means something to you? Of hers. Yeah, you said you didn’t take anything from the house, but you will someday. I don’t know. I want all of it. Or, none of it. I want her, and I don’t … What does that even mean now? What will make it better, curling up with her bones? I don’t know.

It’s fucked up. You can’t predict what’ll become a signifier—a symbol of your love enduring or whatever. I keep that stupid cube over there because, uh, a buddy was trying to solve it … [sniffs] He was trying to solve it that day, the day he died. I remember that. I was so fucking annoyed. “Give it a rest. Grow the fuck up.” Shit. I can’t solve it either.

Can’t even try without crying like a baby. A damn shame. It’s sweet. Bittersweet, I guess.

There was a glass of water on her desk with a lipstick stain … It felt so important that day. [chuckles] He wouldn’t sell that. Yeah, well, plenty of freaks out there who’d pay good money for it. Better make sure it’s still there when you go back.

Do you want to come with me? See my childhood bedroom? Didn’t you just move out last year? Yeah, and I didn’t take any of my stuffed animals with me. Introduce me to them? Do they have names? Of course. Personalities, titles—Goddamn, even the toys! It is cute. It is.

#cw nudity #yeah he deserves jail for using the p word as an insult #however in the interest of abolitionism—#[i am yanked offstage by a cane]#ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 2 months ago

Text

𝐍𝐎. 𝟏𝟔 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | VARIOUS LOCATIONS, OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

This was the second time Leonor had met Mencia Cipac, but it was the first time that felt like a real introduction. She found Mencia by the buffet laid out primarily for the crew. Mencia appeared to be expending a great deal of concentration as her long fingers hovered over the options, fluttering as she considered each one, pinching together over a choice only to pass over it. ‘Watching your figure?’ Leonor asked once her heels announced her approach. Mencia turned. There was a slimy piece of meat between her fingers, and Leonor wrinkled her nose. ‘Trying to decide if I want to practice vegetarianism today,’ was her response. Leonor regretted her question once a look of recognition clicked on Mencia’s face. That regret, she suspected, might cast long shadow over the rest of this conversation, and the formal one to take place next, too.

❧ another sleeper favorite ?? i didn't realize how profoundly sad this one is to me until i was editing the final screenshots for it. i'm not sure how many there will be, but this is one of those scenes that demonstrates what i love about prequels. you really get to see the shimmering possibility, knowing what happens if not how, and knowing that it is, at the end of the day, bound to tragedy. rip 2 leonor.

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

Mencia misread the thoughts splayed on Leonor’s face. Once she swallowed the meat and rubbed her fingers into a napkin, she sought to reassure her.

“Stakes are low,” she offered. “I have softball questions.”

Leonor nodded. What did that mean? There was a spectrum of possibility and, although she had a hunch where Mencia sat, there were ways to find out for sure. With caution, she asked, “And if you could ask me one question, and I had to answer truthfully, what would it be? Hardball.”

It surprised her that Mencia didn’t take any time to consider it, although she realized that expectation was a mistake, too. More unnerving than anything else was the fact that Leonor had featured prominently in almost all of Mencia’s public writings. Yet, they didn’t know each other at all. She, as a journalist and an author, had devoted untold hours to contemplating Leonor’s life—the influence of her parents and grandmother, the quainter contours of her childhood, how she had come into her role as an heir, what could be gleaned from comparing her coming-of-age experience to that of other royal children. Leonor hadn’t read any of it. However, she did her research before these kinds of obligations, and she knew in a passive way that Mencia’s definitive book on “royal childhood” existed. Being an object of curiosity, of concern, of desire was one thing. Leonor hadn’t ever confronted how she felt about being an object of study. Now, finding herself beneath the microscope in an almost literal sense, she felt detachment—an estrangement from that very reality and the emotions it should engender, as if Mencia Cipac wasn’t a real person who was standing before her.

She wondered if Mencia felt the same way about her.

“I would ask—well.” Mencia cleared her throat and raised a hand, palm upward. She gesticulated with animation as she continued, “You can be anyone and do anything now. So, who is Leonor, if she’s not a princess anymore?”

Without pause, Leonor retorted, “That’s a dumb question. I still have my title.”

“As a symbol, a consolation prize. There are princesses in name only, like your aunts." Quickly, she followed up with a question. It wasn't asked with malice; there was no indictment in her tone. In fact, her tone softened as she spoke the words. "It doesn’t actually mean anything now, does it?”

Mencia's curiosity was gentle, but Leonor could only take it like a strike across the face.

“It does to me." There, abruptly, the emotions lunged forward.

Mencia replied, softer still, “Does it?”

Leonor considered for a moment whether she hated this woman, then she waved a hand to end the conversation. “Forget it," she said finally, turning away. “I hope your ‘softballs’ are better.”

Mencia allowed her walk away, but Leonor felt her eyes even once she was across the room and surrounded by makeup artists and assistants with questions about the lighting, her “good side,” whether she liked her water sparkling or still. Yet, it was easy to slip back into the professional mask that fit so well.

This would be deeply personal—that prelude, or opening volley, as it were, demonstrated as much—but it was exactly what she had told Renzo it was: work. People like Mencia Cipac got to eviscerate her on live television, and it was her job to comment in an aloof yet polite tone, ‘Why, yes, my insides are an interesting color, aren’t they?’ He had been correct that it would hurt. What she told herself then and as someone powdered her nose now was that it always did. Better yet, she couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t know how to handle the hurt inflicted on her—her, her People’s Princess Leonor.

In the back of Leonor's mind, however, Mencia’s question sowed some doubt. She didn’t handle the hurt as well when she was simply Nora. This self, as fragile as a newborn, was much less accustomed to this abuse. It had endured a kind of violence in the last year that she wasn’t wholly able to face. There was an open wound that wouldn’t heal, and she pressed on the tenderness around it as if testing her tolerance for the pain that caring for it would induce. Her tolerance wasn’t very high. More than just the question, Mencia’s insistence that Leonor had been stripped of something essential to her identity worried her. Was the mask cracked? Standing by the buffet with its heavy, nausea-inducing scents, had she looked Princess Leonor in the face and been able to see the unformed girl shrinking away beneath? If so, Leonor didn’t know how to fix it.

So, it couldn’t be.

She sealed off that shadowy area of her mind by the time they sat almost knee-to-knee with cameras trained on their faces. It wouldn’t be a live broadcast, but the announcement that they were rolling had the same effect. Mencia was a professional, too. Whatever she had said to Leonor was folded away, and they began talking as if they hadn’t tested the waters off-camera some fifteen minutes ago.

“My first question is straightforward,” she began. “But I imagine it’s on the mind of anyone who’s kept up with your life: are you okay?”

Leonor’s answer came with the plastic smile and good-natured laugh that such a question demanded. “Of course. We’re all much more ‘okay’ than we were a few months ago, and I’m grateful for that.”

Mencia nodded. “Diplomatic. Let’s get specific. You hadn’t been seen touching even a cigarette until six months ago, and now there’s constant chatter about serious substance abuse. Rumors about a contingency suite waiting at the Bancroft Center, in fact, given recent escapades. So, what is your experience—what’s your truth?”

Again, Leonor was prepared, and she translated the agitation into amusement as she had been taught. “Those rumors are categorically false,” she said, her voice firm. Mencia held her gaze, but Leonor was comfortably walking the line between truth and lies. “I won’t deny that I enjoy partying with my friends—there are photographs, of course—but what I choose to do with my free time isn’t newsworthy as long as it’s responsible and reasonable—which, it is.”

“New friends, right?” Mencia probbed.

Leonor shrugged. “I’m sure it’s relatable to expand your circle of acquaintances as you grow up. I’ve done a lot of growing up these last few years, even without accounting for what happened with my mother.” She added, cracking an honest smile, “You’re the expert on that, aren’t you, Miss Cipac?”

Mencia laughed, and Leonor noted she had a pleasant, almost unexpectedly delicate laugh. “Yes, I am,” she conceded. “There is an expectation that I sit here and grill you about the changes in your life, and I suspect it’s because many people are uncomfortable with change, particularly the kind that accompanies growing up. It’s hard for everyone, even our princesses. I don't think I'm supposed to editorialize here, but it must be said.”

“Yeah, it is,” Leonor agreed. “I’ve tried to be a little adult for as long as I can remember, but maturity isn’t a straight line. And I’m not the same at twenty-one as I was at six, or sixteen, or even nineteen or twenty.”

Mencia raised her note card to her lips, contemplating what to ask next. Then, she asked, “How’s your relationship with your father these days? We don’t see much of him. I won’t get into the speculation—any of it—but I am interested in your experience, including how it varies from, say, that of your brothers."

Leonor realized that the conversation took a turn she wasn’t ready for. It wasn’t the question about her father, for which she had prepared, but rather the fact that Mencia wasn’t actually here to extract damning admissions born of frustration and embarrassment from her. Despite real misgivings, she had asked for Mencia Cipac to replace the journalist originally slated to conduct this anniversary interview.

The switch hadn’t made it any less nerve-wracking, but the way Mencia intervened at the Maypop Resort with what felt like genuine insight and concern had been arresting, once she allowed herself to consider it. She made the call while waiting for her plane back to Nakawe, before she shut off her mind again. Once Renzo gave her permission to go to him, the handful of hours in between felt agonizing. Feigning composure provided one distraction. Yet, as she sat in the back of her chauffeured car, then waiting in the airport's deserted private lounge, her thoughts spiraled. They circled as if down a drain—somewhere dark and narrow, constricting, suffocating.

That's what impending events felt like, at any rate. Soon, it would be the Water Time, and death would be everywhere, but she wouldn't be able to mourn just yet. A year hadn't passed. Rituals mattered. Rules mattered. She had already broken such a crucial one, and she couldn't risk another. So, they would mourn others instead, and she would be mindful. The time for hunters would come next. It gave way to the time of the sun, and that would—in a terrible turn of irony—forever become the darkest time of the year. More than just the calendar's ceremony, Leonor's sense of what was to come hinged on the royal obligations to which she still clung. This interview was among them; it was at the intersection of her twin losses, asking her to play daughter and princess, each versions of herself that did feel dead in their own ways.

Now, she remembered why she had made that call in the first place.

“Well, Mencia, it is strained,” Leonor said, letting the words spool out with control. “Loss does that, I think. When a family loses someone, it affects everyone left behind. It affects your relationships, somehow. For us, it has been hard to ... maintain ties while bereaved. His grief as a husband was different from mine as a daughter, right? Even if we both know what we’ve lost, together, as a family.”

Mencia nodded. “And your brothers? Are you close with them?”

Leonor allowed herself to remember the bright spots of their recent reunion and smiled. “I was on the beach with Mateo recently, and it was almost idyllic. We should be together more often, but life can get in the way. And, of course, with Gil, too. Mateo's grown up a lot as well, so maybe it's easier for us to connect than it used to be. Mama would like that.”

“Gil has a gaggle of cousins his age these days, as I understand it. Alright, on the topic of connections—“ Mencia began, pivoting while Leonor cringed. “Let’s set aside the gossip. Here's my question. A lot of people expected you would be married with children of your own sooner rather than later. That might have been an unfair assumption based on the idea that you were emulating your mother and grandmother in every other respect. Of course, we know that their choices were ultimately not easy or uncriticized. And, you said it yourself: people change. They grow up. Plans that were abstract before become real possibilities. So, right now, do you see that in your future, sooner or later—marrying, becoming a mother yourself? Do you want it to be?”

Perhaps naively, Leonor had a answer for a different question on the tip of her tongue. Mencia’s actual interest went deeper, and it was harder to brush off now that she had opened herself up to honest answers. She smiled like a pageant girl because she didn’t know what else to do. It gave the illusion that she was tickled by the prospect rather than terrified. A dozen answers flashed through her mind, all species of the same kernel of truth: she didn’t know. What she did know, however, was that it wasn’t the answer Uspanians wanted. They expected certainty because that’s what she was trained to give. More than that, they wanted to be able to hang their most romantic life aspirations on her; she was supposed to give them fantasies to bright their own lives, and that included a fairytale future with someone who completed her, plus their children, who would become reliable vessels for The People just like their mother before them.

Even if her job as a royal had shrunk down to its most inalienable parts, chief among them remained motherhood. To suggest that wasn’t a possibility, or that she was going to endanger it for unexplainable reasons, was risky. Indeed, she couldn’t say that marriage was synonymous with violence in her heart—that she knew better but believed a husband was someone who hurt you and loved you in equal measure. She couldn’t suggested that the title of “wife” had been soiled, too, in her heart. It was a small word, and it wasn’t sacred in an old way like “lover” or “mother, but she couldn’t remind the audience of that. Maybe she could begin to imagine herself traveling the world with someone and perhaps, by accident, having children whom other people ensured safety and security. Of course, the comparisons to her aunt Blanca were everywhere already, and they were not considered flattering, positive portents of a life well lived. She should aspire in public to be like Lorraine, or Olalla at worst—respectable, rooted, reliable.

Leonor suspected Mencia would understand if she admitted she didn’t know what she wanted yet, but they weren’t having this conversation for themselves.

As she finally began to answer, she clasped her hands tighter to prevent herself from fidgeting. “I love my mother. I idolized her, but I also love her because she loved me so well. She wasn’t perfect, but her love was. Being loved by her … I knew a lifetime of prayer wouldn’t cover it, how grateful I needed to be for her, but it’s something you don’t fully appreciate until it ends. Like a perfect day. Mama was nurturing, and she really saw my brothers and I as more than just extensions of herself—of the family. When I feel like I can give a child that, it’ll be the right time.”

Mencia smiled, and it was the kind of smile that tugged at the broken seams of Leonor’s heart. ‘She’s proud of me,’ she thought, allowing herself to smile, although not for the cameras.

“And marriage?” Mencia followed-up, apparently still determined to do her job.

“Similar."

In another pause, Leonor considered how significant whatever she said next might be. Perhaps it wouldn't matter at all. Yet, the small taste of torment that possibility aroused only further confirmed that she wanted to speak with care. “When I love someone enough—when I love them like First Mother loved First Father, so much that we ought to become one person but love each other too much to allow it—then it'll be time. They created love and children, not marriage, after all. First things first.”

“Well said, my princess." There was quiet for a moment, but Leonor's gaze remained low, so Mencia quipped, "I suppose they’ll slip an advertisement break in right about here—something unromantic, perhaps detergent or laxatives."

At this, Leonor had no choice but to laugh.

The conversation was easier after that. Mencia wanted to know about her work—how she liked collaborating with her uncle, if she shared her mother’s passion for higher education, what other passions she might pursue when their initiative was done. She wanted to talk about hobbies, which allowed Leonor to indulge in memories of watching her mother create beautiful watercolors and strolling galleries with her, hand in hand, rapt. The purpose of the interview was ultimately in that vein; there was red meat to entice viewers, but it was a memorial broadcast for a beloved woman. Leonor’s job was to speak to one of her many sides, the one that was a good mother. Her brothers were spared the task, and she tried to weave them into the narrative as best she could. When they finished, Leonor felt as if she had done her job.

Much later, she could allow herself to acknowledge that, if her mask had seemed cracked, she managed the crisis to the best of her ability. It was that impending recognition, however, that motivated her to reconsider her assessment of how the interview went. She sat in her chair while Mencia stood up, stretching and talking idly with the media people that stood around watching. Their conversation had last for just under an hour. Leonor wanted to stretch and walk around, too. An antsy sensation was rising up in her, something pacing might blunt. The smile of satisfaction slipped slowly from Leonor’s face as she retraced the conversation in her mind. As if rewinding a tape, it became ugly and unrecognizable.

“We have to do it again,” she declared, standing up. Her voice was loud and clear. Eyes turned to her. “Same questions. Redo.”

Mencia was wrong. Because her title was more than just a symbol or a post-death consolation prize, the room perked up when Leonor spoke. These people were divinely ordained as servants, and they understood that, if not in those exact terms. Leonor understood it in those terms, although she didn't always believe it. Somewhere along the line, that streak of cosmic egomania became uncouth. They dispensed with it. There was a loftier ideal in the family, just as old but better suited to have survived the age of revolutions—that they, the House of Tecuani, were burdened with service to these people, their People. It was true. It was why Leonor sat down to entertain them all with reflections on her dead mother, her poisoned father, the inscrutable future of her womb. Still, they leapt into action as soon as she issued this unreasonable, unilateral command. This grand exchange favored her; it was, more than the particularities of an occupational title, her birthright.

For her part, Mencia looked surprised. She hesitated and then, aided by the dragging weight of resignation, slowly lowered herself back into her chair.

TRANSCRIPT:

MENCIA | I'm sorry, I assumed you had someone lined up already.

??? V.O. | Well, plans change.

MENCIA | You could’ve called me first, but you didn’t.

??? V.O. | You were requested by name last minute. So, is that a yes?

She was the same age as me. I watched her on television as a child. She looked sweet. I would think to myself, “If I met her, if we lived in the same town, if she was my neighbor, we would be friends."

She wouldn’t say mean things. Wouldn’t have made fun of my nose or hair or the way I stuttered. Maybe could have taught me how to be like her. To smile nicely, to talk well, to be so sweet that everyone in the country loved you. If not, she would have been nice to me anyway.

I met her once, as a teenager. Education was her pet project even back then. She’d never been a student herself, not in Uspana’s schools, but they picked a few of us to get a scholarship she was sponsoring. We got to spend an afternoon with her, myself and some other girls.

It wasn’t what I’d imagined when I was younger. Talking to her wasn’t easy. But, I figured out that it was because the other girls were louder and more demanding of her attention, not because she didn’t like me.

I read the papers. I watched the coverage of her wedding. But, you know, life moved on for me, too. I didn’t get married. I went to college. My parents were psychologists, and I decided I’d join them.

My childhood was difficult in ways that had nothing to do with the life they provided for me. I was intrigued by that. I wanted to help other children who weren’t comfortable in their own skin. That was the plan.

Then, you were born.

Not news to you, but a new royal baby was quite the occasion. Sebastian was eight years earlier, which felt like a lifetime—plus, he wasn’t an heir. Funny, isn’t it? So close to your uncle. Anyway, I got a question in my head and wrote an article. Haven’t stopped writing about it since. “What does it mean for a child to be raised as royalty?” A lot, as it turns out.

MENCIA | Anyway, that’s how I “got into this.” People don’t usually ask.

LEONOR | Interview your interviewer. Basic prep work.

MENCIA | Stakes are low. I have softball questions.

LEONOR | And if you could ask me one question, and I had to answer truthfully, what would it be? Hardball.

MENCIA | I would ask—well. You can be anyone and do anything now. So, who is Leonor, if she’s not a princess anymore.

LEONOR | That's a dumb question. I still have my title.

MENCIA | As a symbol, a consolation prize. There are princesses in name only, like your aunts. It doesn’t actually mean anything now, does it?

LEONOR | It does to me.

MENCIA | Does it?

LEONOR | Forget it. I hope your "softballs" are better.

MENCIA | My first question is straightforward. But, I imagine it's on the mind of anyone who's kept up with your life: are you okay?

LEONOR | [laughs] Of course. We're all much more "okay" than we were a few months ago, and I'm grateful for that.

MENCIA | Diplomatic. Let's get specific. You hadn't been seen touching even a cigarette until six months ago, and now there's constant chatter about serious substance abuse. Rumors about a contingency suite waiting at the Bancroft Center, in fact, given recent escapades. So, what is your experience—what's your truth?

LEONOR | Those rumors are categorically false. I won’t deny that I enjoy partying with my friends—there are photographs, of course—but what I choose to do with my free time isn’t newsworthy as long as it’s responsible and reasonable—which, it is.

MENCIA | New friends, right?

LEONOR | I'm sure it's relatable to expand your circle of acquaintances as you grow up. I've done a lot of growing up these last few years, even without accounting for what happened with my mother. You're the expert on that, aren't you, Miss Cipac?

MENCIA | [laughs] Yes, I am.

MENCIA | There is an expectation that I sit here and grill you about the changes in your life, and I suspect it's because many people are uncomfortable with change, particularly the kind that accompanies growing up. It's hard for everyone, even our princesses. I don't think I'm supposed to editorialize here, but it must be said.

LEONOR | Yeah, it is. I've tried to be a little adult for as long as I can remember, but maturity isn't a straight line. And I’m not the same at twenty-one as I was at six, or sixteen, or even nineteen or twenty.

MENCIA | How's your relationship with your father these days? We don't see much of him. I won't get into the speculation—any of it—but I am interested in your experience, including how it varies from, say, that of your brothers."

LEONOR | Well, Mencia, it is strained.

LEONOR | Loss does that, I think. When a family loses someone, it affects everyone left behind. It affects your relationships, somehow. For us, it has been hard to ... maintain ties while bereaved. His grief as a husband was different from mine as a daughter, right? Even if we both know what we've lost, together, as a family.

MENCIA | And your brothers?

LEONOR | I was on the beach with Mateo recently, and it was almost idyllic. We should be together more often, but life can get in the way. And, of course, with Gil, too. Mateo's grown up a lot as well, so maybe it's easier for us to connect than it used to be. Mama would like that.

MENCIA | Gil has a gaggle of cousins his age these days, as I understand it. Alright, on the topic of connections—

MENCIA | Let’s set aside the gossip. Here's my question. A lot of people expected you would be married with children of your own sooner rather than later. That might have been an unfair assumption based on the idea that you were emulating your mother and grandmother in every other respect. Of course, we know that their choices were ultimately not easy or uncriticized. And, you said it yourself: people change. They grow up. Plans that were abstract before become real possibilities. So, right now, do you see that in your future, sooner or later—marrying, becoming a mother yourself? Do you want it to be?

LEONOR | I love my mother. I idolized her, but I also love her because she loved me so well. She wasn’t perfect, but her love was. Being loved by her ... I knew a lifetime of prayer wouldn’t cover it, how grateful I needed to be for her, but it’s something you don’t fully appreciate until it ends. Like a perfect day. Mama was nurturing, and she really saw my brothers and I as more than just extensions of herself—of the family.

LEONOR | When I feel like I can give a child that, it’ll be the right time.

MENCIA | And marriage?

LEONOR | Similar. When I love someone enough—when I love them like First Mother loved First Father, so much that we ought to become one person but love each other too much to allow it—then it'll be time. They created love and children, not marriage, after all. First things first.

MENCIA | Well said, my princess. I suppose they’ll slip an advertisement break in right about here—something unromantic, perhaps detergent or laxatives.

[Leonor chuckles]

#take two bc tumblr hates me :/#ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

60 notes · View notes

nexility-sims · 2 months ago

Text

𝐍𝐎. 𝟏𝟓 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | RENZO'S HOUSE, NAKAWE, OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

Leonor stayed for a few days, treating Renzo’s guesthouse as a hideaway for avoiding the reality waiting outside its walls. Jim was there for only a blip of that time. He was more of an observer than a participant. At first Leonor found the camera blocking his face distracting, but she got used to it the way one might a deformity. It was part of him. He must have been a shy child. Maybe picking up photography gave him a way into the world—a means to navigate it, to notice without truly being seen. It soon made sense to her why he and Renzo had become friends. There was a basic similarity there, although Renzo had much worse luck at being unseeable. But, Jim’s departure was welcome. Renzo intended to go out with him, to introduce him to would-be mutual friends, but Jim ended up alone. Leonor had leaned against the kitchen counter without an ounce of guilt and watched as Renzo scrawled a list of addresses and phone numbers. ‘Pick up a pocket dictionary,’ he’d warned. ‘Your Uspanian is worse than mine, brother.’ So it was. Jim gave them a cheerful salute before he disappeared into the backyard’s foliage, and Leonor decided she admired the pluckiness of braving a foreign city, all alone and clearly out of place.

❧ this concludes a sweet three-part arc, and i think it's a good one ! partial to the bonfire wide shot, personally, but it's all nice and fluffy. (& idk what exactly she’s reading aloud but let’s say it’s faulkner, as i lay dying. rip 2 leonor.)

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

She slept through morning again the next day, waking up occasionally to find herself still alone in the bedroom, eyes squeezed shut while the sun warmed her face, determined to stay in the sheets as long as she could. At one point, she looked around as Renzo ducked into the room. He lingered by the door. That must have a been a wake-up call of sorts, or perhaps his attempt at being polite. The sound of his footsteps going downstairs receded, then the music began. It wasn’t gentle piano or upbeat jazz, as appropriate for lazy mornings, but thrashing drums and electric guitar riffs blaring, if muffled, through the floor. With her face in a pillow, Leonor smiled. ‘It just does something for me,’ he told her once. ‘Loud music. Where it hurts a little. Distracts me.’ She asked from what, and he shrugged, ‘Cravings.’ Lying in his bed with her eyes closed, she imagined him downstairs doing the same thing, perhaps on the rug or with his feet hanging off the edge of the lounge chair. He was as likely to be crouched down chewing his lefthand nails, pacing with a magazine, staring at the vinyl collection with his hands knotted in his hair.

But, she wasn’t ready to go find out what he was up to just yet. When she did get up, it was with a mission. She picked up the Polaroid camera on the bedside table and held it at arms’ length to snap a picture of herself. While it developed, she opened the drawer and rummaged around. This table was the least used of the two—the guest one, in a way. There were hard candies inside, a few pocket knives, and a datebook with nothing inside. She peeked inside the plastic shopping bag shoved behind the table’s lamp: cheap red wine and cough syrup, both unopened.

The rest of the room’s nooks and crannies held the same kind of intriguing, mundane miscellany. In the large wardrobe across from the bed, he kept the clothes he wore most often. There was a dresser elsewhere with socks, underwear, tee shirts, and party favors he didn’t leave out downstairs. His favorite leather jacket was hanging, tucked haphazardly in the center, flanked by plaid flannels and jeans. Feeling around in all of the pockets, she found empty cigarette packs, less loved lighters, spare change, loose pills and matches, and scraps of paper—circled phone numbers, stick men without faces, and titles to what she assumed were books and songs predominated. One nondescript receipt had “Call Nora,” large and underlined, on the back. Tossed on the bottom shelf, some of his beat-up boots and sneakers concealed wads of cash tucked inside them.

His books were filled with marginalia, and Leonor took pride in identifying what belonged to him and what had probably been there when he acquired it. Some were gifts. Some belonged to libraries thousands of miles away. Among some, she saw pages of a script. She scanned the dialogue and concluded she wanted to ask about it later. Was he going to transform himself into “Sam,” whom context clues suggested was very busy running a quirky jewelry emporium and impersonating his possibly deceased landlady? Leonor could imagine it. He would swallow the angst on these pages whole and do something incredible with it. It would be charming, too. Although he refused to watch it with her, she had seen his turn as a rancher with a chronically ill child and wept over it. But, she hoped he didn’t find “Sam” that appealing. It didn’t look like a Uspanian project, after all.

What piqued her interest most was packed away behind his armchair in a box of keepsakes. The binders she flipped through were photo albums. She couldn’t picture him doing any scrap-booking. Were they made for him, then? By who? She didn’t recognize anyone in the photos, except for Renzo himself. He was younger, clean shaven, usually smiling toothy grins that didn’t reach his eyes. There were also worn blankets, souvenirs from places she had never heard of, innocuous trinkets she viewed differently now that she knew the backstory behind the toy cube on top of his television set. Maybe he was what some called a pack rat, but she believed his junk all had stories attached—consequential ones that would feel to her as it from another universe.

Looking through this box, she reflected on the patchwork way his life had come together for her. He knew her biography from start to finish, with the emotional filler that accompanied recounting it. There wasn’t much to tell; it was a couple decades’ long and uneventful for, conservatively, twenty of those twenty-one years. It was less of a book and more of a pamphlet. “Born A Princess? Three Steps To Succeed.” His was longer, and she understood it as nothing but events, one after another, linked with knotted threads that looked like desperation, recklessness, craving. It wasn’t a book. It was the messy, unorganized, impenetrable cabinet of research that could become a collection of books someday, maybe. He had already lived four or five lives before she was old enough to seriously contemplate hers. Even then, she couldn’t conceive the kind of reinvention he alternatively stumbled or dove into without a second thought. Or, at any rate, she hadn’t really tried to.

What grabbed her amid the box’s treasures was a single framed photograph. She extracted it with care and held it in her hands for a long time. Music still thudded through the floor, so loud that she could feel it, but this was a peaceful moment. In the frame, what could only be his child self peeked at her from behind a notebook, and a woman who looked like his mother stared with the same heavy eyes. Only, hers were dark—browner than brown, black even, familiar in a different way.

Leonor stared at the photograph of them together until her vision blurred. She sniffed a few times and dried her eyes with the backs of her hands, letting the frame sit in her lap while she collected herself. Once she had, she stood up without much forethought and went to place it on the bedside table. There was space for it on his side, between the stack of books, alongside his ashtray and remote controller, with room to put it face down when needed. She sank to her knees. With her chin on folded arms, she resumed soaking in this rare glimpse of his first life. She struggled to picture what was beyond the frames of the photograph but tried anyway.

Her eyes drifted from his to his mother’s and back again. She did know what this woman had been like back then—a composite cobbled together from his mentionings, usually in some contrast to Leonor’s own mother, leaking unfathomable realities of his upbringing that made her balk and hold him tighter. ‘She wasn’t a bad mother,’ he claimed. ‘She’s just fucked up. Congenitally. And I am glad I got her variety of it instead of his, to be clear.’ Today, she lived in a place called Little Rock in a house Renzo bought for her. He noted that his father was with her more than ever, but that didn’t make much of a difference to anyone. 'He wants to move to Los Angeles,' Renzo recounted with a scoff. 'We told him, "Great, fuck off then!" No dice.'

As Leonor sat looking at the photograph, she wondered if there were others pictures in that house—whether she looked at them more than Renzo apparently did and whether she would agree with his assessment of their time together. Then, she tried to imagine them in a room together. There were huge windows, drenching the colorful furnishings in sunlight. In this fantasy, Leonor wore white, not because her mother had been dead for less than a year but because Renzo liked when she wore it. His mother liked her, too, and she liked Safya, who promptly breezed into the room, alive and bearing enough vitality to make up for what the three of them lacked.

At first, she suspected Renzo hadn’t noticed the photograph newly on display. That was fine, she decided. The prospect of having to explain herself sent a small chill up her spine. 'Oh, I found it' wouldn't suffice. He came into the room well after she had moved on to another, less invasive occupation. She was flipping through old music magazines on the balcony when he showed up at her shoulder, stripped down to just his white socks and announcing that she needed to come wash his hair. They could both fit in the bathtub without injury, most likely. Plus, he was proud of himself for having bought a hair dryer. It was the same one she had, in fact; that he didn’t know any other kind wasn’t important.

As they left the room so he could show her, he lingered to glance over his shoulder once, then a second time. His expression reflected in the bathroom mirror when he caught up with her was troubled, at least until their eyes met and seemed to distract him again.

[Muffled loud music, Leonor humming]

LEONOR | I’m excited to get the prints. RENZO | From Jim? Yeah. Good man. He misread you, though. LEONOR | You think so? Maybe … The candids were better.

RENZO | He wanted to impress you. Magazine spread treatment. LEONOR | Hm. It started like that, didn’t it? I’m offended, actually. RENZO | [chuckles] Oh, yeah? LEONOR | Like I can’t appreciate something simple.

RENZO | It’s an easy mistake to make, you know. LEONOR | That’s what you thought. RENZO | Big time. You wore pink sequins and a fucking tennis bracelet to a bar hang. Message loud and clear.

LEONOR | I felt ridiculous! It doesn’t come easy. I suppose it never needed to. I do like it, I really do—simplicity. Small things. Normalcy. RENZO | Normal is relative. LEONOR | You know what I mean. Like this. We have people for this. [Renzo laughs]

RENZO | I could tell—after a while, that very first night. Yeah, you started out awkward and uptight—maybe that was discomfort, maybe it was judgment—but I saw it. Genuine interest. Curiosity. Fucking rare.

LEONOR | Really? RENZO | You’re complicated, Nora. So sincere it makes me sad sometimes. Sweet—bittersweet. And surprising. I love that about you.

LEONOR | It would be better if you read it. I can’t do the accent. RENZO | Drawl. It’s a drawl. Anyway, I like listening. Doing this. LEONOR | Being together. RENZO | Being together.

LEONOR | Speaking of … I wanted to ask something. Hear me out?

LEONOR | I want to go to an event with you. Not one of mine; one of yours. Something real. Professional. That you care about. Maybe there’s nothing anytime soon, but when there is … I want to be there.

LEONOR | What? Is that crazy? RENZO | No, it’s not. I just don’t think it’s a good idea. LEONOR | Why? RENZO | You know why.

LEONOR | You don’t want to reconsider. RENZO | Don’t know.

LEONOR | Do you remember Arturo? RENZO | [sighs] Sure. LEONOR | The worst part about … all of that? I ended things where there was no way he’d get any closure—at all. I just kicked him out. He was going to go weep for Mama, with my family. That was certain. Then, I made him nothing with a few words.

LEONOR | Eventually, it occurred to me that it wasn’t actually an impulsive choice. Having him around that morning made me feel awful—I wanted to crawl out of my skin just looking at him; isn’t that terrible?—but … Grief makes it all bigger, doesn’t it? RENZO | It does, yeah. Too big. LEONOR | Five years. Living Mama’s life. I didn’t want to marry him. I don’t want to marry anyone. I told myself, later, that he must’ve known —felt it?—so it was okay. Not explaining or apologizing. Hurting him .

LEONOR | I gave him everything. I didn’t owe him anything else. He could figure that out on his own. RENZO | Alright, a little fucked up. LEONOR | [chuckles] Yeah. Not that I regret anything.

LEONOR | Don’t do that to me. I don’t need a promise, reassurances, whatever. It’s a request, that’s all. When the time comes, do it with your eyes wide open, okay?

LEONOR | —seriously, you could put on a dress shirt but not pants or shoes? I bet it’s a stunt. I think you like the attention. RENZO | Me? You know me better than that.

RENZO | Can’t a man be comfortable in his own yard? [Leonor laughs]

RENZO | I wish you didn’t have to leave. Wish you could stay in bed all day instead of talking to some fucking journalist for television. LEONOR | Me too. But it’s work. I have to go. Reality calls.

RENZO | This one isn’t just work. It’s going to hurt. Not ready, are you? LEONOR | Do you have to ask? RENZO | You didn’t bring it up again. Last opportunity.

LEONOR | [whispers] It’s so close. A year. It didn’t feel like anything—I knew it would happen, that’s all—and now I can feel it. Right here, in my chest. Bigger and bigger. RENZO | I know. LEONOR | Will it always be like this? RENZO | Yes. Sometimes it gets easier. Sometimes it doesn’t.

LEONOR | And if it doesn’t? RENZO | You can handle it. LEONOR | How do you know that? RENZO | Hell if I know. Being beat over the head with life experience. Knowing you. Lucky guess? Gut feelings are truth, usually.

RENZO | No tears. You’ll mess up your eyeliner. LEONOR | It’s okay. They all want to see me cry anyway. RENZO | Yeah, well, fuck that—I don’t.

LEONOR | Maybe later? Ruin my eyeliner, I mean. RENZO | Happy tears, sure. We can arrange that. LEONOR | Good. I need something to look forward to.

#ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 3 months ago

Text

𝐍𝐎. 𝟏𝟐 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | MAYPOP RESORT, INTIZARA, OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Gil offered a sly look as he posed the question, regarding Rodrigo with an expression that left everyone puzzled. His response to their father’s announcement—or the prelude to it, as it was—should have been accusatory. He should have choked out the words with fear. In his eyes, there ought to have been apprehension and an imploring for their father to reject the very idea outright. Instead, Gil might as well have been remarking on the weather outside. What was done was done, he seemed to say. He was only making note of it. Perhaps he desired to rip away the suspense and make Rodrigo’s bad news less threatening. Perhaps he hoped to be wrong and thought an unpleasant suggestion would make good news even better. Yet, his gaze held steady. There was no genuine guile or mischief. He had paused mid-bite because realization struck him. Like any child, he didn’t always think better of speaking aloud whatever came to mind.

❧ i love this post for many reasons :^) i'm also kind of shocked that i managed to fit it all into less than thirty screenshots, but it happened, hooray !

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

Gil offered a sly look as he posed the question, regarding Rodrigo with an expression that left everyone puzzled. His response to their father’s announcement—or the prelude to it, as it was—should have been accusatory. He should have choked out the words with fear. In his eyes, there ought to have been apprehension and an imploring for their father to reject the very idea outright. Instead, Gil might as well have been remarking on the weather outside. What was done was done, he seemed to say. He was only making note of it. Perhaps he desired to rip away the suspense and make Rodrigo’s bad news less threatening. Perhaps he hoped to be wrong and thought an unpleasant suggestion would make good news even better. Yet, his gaze held steady. There was no genuine guile or mischief. He had paused mid-bite because realization struck him. Like any child, he didn’t always think better of speaking aloud whatever came to mind.

“What? How—”

Gil shrugged. “I just guessed.”

Discomfort flooded the room. This exchange confirmed there was nothing but truth to Gil’s lucky guess, one that caught Rodrigo himself flat-footed. He had rehearsed how he would break the news to his children; he had even decided that it was best to wait until dessert had been served. They deserved to enjoy something sweet, to cap off a wonderful evening, their first and last family meal for some time. Leonor’s black coffee and piece of fruit hadn’t been part of the plan, not when he knew how much she enjoyed confections as delicate and artful as the one on tonight’s menu, but he didn’t comment on it. That would sour the mood. Now, Gil did the souring anyway and derailed his plans, too.

“Well, I am, yes,” Rodrigo said finally. “I’m sorry, but—”

“You’re abandoning us?” Mateo cried, interrupting him. “Now?”

Rodrigo winced at the sound of desperation.. How quickly their evening had taken a turn—the wrong one, as if the wheel had been snatched from his hands, sending his children careening beyond reach. Gil picked at his dessert while Leonor’s eyes remained fixed elsewhere. Mateo stared him down with familiar defiance. His eyes were the same color as Rodrigo’s own, but they flashed just like Safya’s had. It was easy to mistake Leonor as the heir to their mother’s temper; she had one, after all, with such similar indignance. Ultimately, Rodrigo believed Mateo was the one who resembled her most. He possessed the same righteousness, one that lacked any pretense because it burst forth from a place of sincerity.

In this case, sincere outrage left Mateo incensed. He was hurt.

“I haven’t been part of your lives since …” Once Rodrigo looked away from his stare and resolved to explain himself, he couldn’t stop the words that came forth. He rarely had the opportunity to explain these days. If he had ever been good at it, it was a skill that withered fast. He trailed off but recovered, continuing with defiance that had little to do with his children’s reaction. He, too, felt desperate. “I’ve tried, but it’s impossible. Between your grandmother and everyone else in the damn country, I might as well just go die, too.”

Rodrigo spat those bitter words and left the room speechless. Mateo shielded his eyes while he struggled against sudden tears. Leonor, scowling, tried to find somewhere to look that wouldn’t put her in the same fight. Gil abandoned his spoon.. He looked from one face to the next as if searching for a clue as to how he should react. His eyes prickled. So did Rodrigo’s. They might have all wept together, but the moment ended as Rodrigo pushed forward.

“I know, that was—” What could he say? It had been a mistake—a grave instance of misspeaking, a moment of weakness, a slip of ugliness they weren’t meant to see? He sighed, hard and angry. Yet, that anger dissipated as he spoke. The mood gripping them all was desperation. They didn’t want to fight. Setting aside any misgivings with the expectation that something had finally healed, they’d all come to this table with relief and gratitude. It was possible the night could be saved. They all wanted to rewind the clock—Rodrigo most of all. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. To allow that was, in a way, defeat.

“It would make all of our lives easier if I left for a while,” he insisted. “I believe that, truly, and it breaks my heart. Not seeing you is one thing. Knowing that everything I do or don’t becomes a reason for people to lie to you and try to hurt our relationships …” He breathed, hoping to let go of the bitterness that clung to his voice. “We can’t live like that. You can’t.”

Mateo spoke again, his tone tortured, “And leaving us will help that?” Even now, he wanted to believe. Leonor looked at her father’s face as her own desire to believe slipped. She needed Rodrigo to say something reassuring—for them, and to spare her the burden of doing that work herself. She hadn’t yet. She wouldn’t.

Rodrigo nodded, concluding, “It’ll relieve the pressure.”

“What does that even mean?” Mateo’s impatience roiled as he continued, “What pressure? The problem is not having her or you. No one asked us if we wanted to be orphans!”

That word all but rocked the table. The emotional tremor it sent through the room should have clattered their plates, spilled their water, flickered the lamp that sat between them all. But, it didn’t. Everything was still. No one moved. Leonor’s gaze, still on Rodrigo’s face as he trained pleading eyes on Mateo, softened.

“He’s right, Teo,” she said.

This was defeat. Everyone heard it, but Mateo struggled on. “No, he—! It’s …”

Gil’s steadiness cut through the floundering. He looked to their father as if offering him a hand and suggested, “It’ll be okay. He’ll still call.”

Rodrigo blinked several times. That was the future, wasn’t it? He would be a disembodied voice on the other end of the line. His children would hear their mother’s voice in their dreams, and they would hear their father’s voice when it was convenient to pick up the phone. They would almost certainly forget hers. He was a gambling man, and he was willing at that moment to wager that his would be lost to them in time, too.

With the same urgency that possessed Mateo, he vowed, “I will. Of course I will.”

“And it won’t be forever?” Mateo prompted.

“I won’t let it be.” Another vow. Rodrigo closed his eyes.

He recognized that his plan had been a poor one as they all fell silent and returned to the final course of their meal. In truth, his plans rarely came to life as intended. He liked to blame that on the surroundings, believing that his capacity for making plans was simply greater than everyone else’s capacity for following along. If accounting for lack of cooperation was essential to good planning, it never occurred to him. Even now, it didn’t. Leonor poked at her fruit, tearing it apart with the tines of a fork but never eating the flesh she tore. Mateo took slow, lingering bites of his dessert. Rodrigo recalled his baby days as he watched, thinking perhaps the spoon was a pacifier of sorts. Gil finished his dessert quickly and scraped metal against porcelain to finish the smears of chocolate left behind. The noise was grating, but no one snapped at him. They repeated their motions until someone appeared in the doorway and, undeterred by the foul mood emanating from inside, politely asked to remove their plates. When finally Rodrigo rose from his seat, his children stopped their rote movements and stood, too.

Mateo kissed Rodrigo’s cheek before they parted ways, and Leonor also flashed back to when he was much younger as she watched. In those days, she would have done it first. Mateo learned from watching her, and they would both crowd around their father, eager for attention, grateful he had two scruffy cheeks for them to pepper with kisses. Perhaps they learned that from their mother first. Either way, she didn’t feel moved to do it even if Mateo did. He still wanted to believe, but she wanted to be as far away from them all as she could be. Mateo squeezed her hand before he turned down the hall toward the room he had apparently been allowed to occupy by himself. Leonor wondered if he would leave a lamp on, just in case there were monsters lurking in the shadows. Had she posed it as a question, it would have been a mean thought. Left in her mind, it was a budding observation: he looked so young, more young than he had a mere hour ago.

Leonor remained in this quiet, reflective state as she trailed after her father into the suite he and Gil were sharing. Rodrigo made sure he got into his pajamas and brushed his teeth. He fussed with the pillows while Gil did an accounting of what had been in his pockets—shells from the beach, coins from the parking lot, his dessert spoon. Leonor leaned heavily against the doorway as the pair embraced. Rodrigo tucked him into bed, whispering things she couldn’t hear. She turned away before they were done and began to leave. They would hear the door, she thought.

Her hand was raised to summon the elevator when her father’s voice startled her.

“Before you go, I need to tell you something.”

Turning around was difficult, and she didn’t conceal the effort it took as she sighed, “Something else?”

He looked uncomfortable. With Gil, Rodrigo had been overtaken with tenderness and paternal concern. Leonor’s heart ached as she had watched them. She left without a word in hopes of avoiding tears. If she had watched him kiss Gil’s forehead and found herself craving the same, she would have been reduced to a puddle on the spot. She couldn’t risk that. Now, she scrutinized his face in hopes that the gentle, fatherly ghost that had possessed him was gone. To her disappointment, it wasn’t.

“I want to be honest with you,” he said. The hard, defensive look on her face fell. “I don’t want you to think I have anything to hide from you, ever.” He said that word with such firmness, and she wanted to believe him. Yet, as sentimentality and longing gripped her, the image of that ugly scar on his hand invaded her mind. Every conversation since that terrible night had been shaped by what her father believed she needed to know. He foisted knowledge on her—and it was that, as if he were burdening her, filling her pockets with stones. Safya had believed her children deserved to know things that didn’t concern them, but Leonor remembered that their father had never been so generous in that way. Why was he now?

He took her silence as permission to continue. Leonor, unable to anticipate what he might say and unwilling to decide whether she wanted to listen, waited.

Rodrigo took a deep breath, and then stumbled through a rushed explanation: “I put some things of your mother’s up for auction,” he breathed. “And I shouldn’t have, and now your grandmother has involved herself in it.” Although he didn’t pause, he might as well have. Leonor let out a deep breath of her own. Her eyes dropped to the floor and, far away from the hallway where they stood, Rodrigo’s voice echoed. “I meant it, that I didn’t want to leave, but it wasn’t ultimately my choice to make. You know how she is. I’m sorry , Nor—”

“You did what?”

She hadn’t breathed again, and that question tumbled forth on the heels of a shaky inhale.

Rodrigo raised his hands and took an uncertain half-step forward. He meant to touch her, but she put her hands together, drawing her shoulders forward, shrinking away. “Nothing she wanted you to have,” he offered, desperation flooding his tone yet again. He needed her to believe him, and she wished she could do just that. “Some jewelry, paintings, old jackets. Back of the closet. Things like that.”

Back of the closet. Leonor hadn’t been in her mother’s closet for months, but it had looked the same when she left the house in March. No one could stand to take anything from her sanctuary rooms, even if Mateo and Gil and her father reclaimed their own belongings and took small things from elsewhere—a hair ribbon from the living room, a half-read book in the breakfast room, gloves purchased and never used in the garden. Leonor had left with a packet of gum and a pen. She gave half of the sticks to Renzo and let him draw pictures she couldn’t see on her bare back with the pen. ‘Harder,’ she’d said. ‘How can I guess what it is if I can’t feel it?’ Perhaps she thought about the closet while he did that, pressing her cheek against the mattress with her eyes squeezed shut.

Safya’s closet had been meticulously organized. She kept things she didn’t wear, but she had a reason for those choices. Like most princesses, her closet was bloated with clothes worn only once, out-of-season sets no longer considered fashionable, favorite pieces treated like museum artifacts. Even if she made a playground out of her closet on countless occasions, Leonor couldn’t pretend that she ever recognized everything her mother had owned. She couldn’t pretend to know what all of those items had meant to her, if they’d meant anything at all. Yet, faced with the revelation that some had been taken, displaced, and sold, that didn’t matter.

“That’s it,” she said, soft and quiet.

Rodrigo nodded. “I promise. Nothing important.”

Her eyes crossed and blurred as they remained fixed on the carpet, and she echoed, “Nothing important.”

Rodrigo watched her, either oblivious or willfully ignorant of the way his daughter deflated in front of him. Or, perhaps, she turned her back before he could conclude this, too, had not gone according to plan. With her back to him and the elevator dinging, he asked, “Are you having breakfast with us?”

His tone was different; in it, there was the promise of a cheerful family breakfast to make up for the ruined dinner. Leonor said nothing.

The elevator closed with her back still to him. Upstairs, she resumed the robotic motions that had overtaken everyone at dinner. She closed the door to her room, left her clothes in a trail as she walked to the bathroom, and collapsed in the corner of the shower. The tile grew warm as hot water rained down onto her, soaking through her thick hair and carrying fresh tears with it down the drain.

She couldn’t recall when she last cried this way, so hard and freely that it hurt. She hadn’t cried much the past week, but there were surely other occasions. Opening her mother’s abandoned desk at Nakawe Palace for the first time would have been one. Being forced to spit out the final flavorless, rubbery piece of gum from that last packet had been another. She never noticed that her mother liked mint gum. It hadn’t been a remarkable fact when she lived, much like the fact that she filled the back of her closet with her least favorite belongings. Those little details were everything now—essential and valuable, reminders, ways to relive losing her all over again. Leonor hadn’t had any more mint gum after that, even if she felt new packs in Renzo’s pockets from time to time. She likely wouldn’t have worn those jackets or put the paintings on her walls. Still, becoming alert to their inconsequential absence consumed her, and she found herself cast back into mourning yet again.

TRANSCRIPT:

REPORTER 1 | My princess! Can you spare a minute? Can you talk to us? I have some questions about— REPORTER 2 | Are you hiding? Did my queen send you here? How do you feel about the photos of— REPORTER 3 | Were you going to jump? Did you want to— REPORTER 4 | How does it feel to be here, where she— [Elevator dings]

[Reporters continue talking] MENCIA | Here, come this way. CONCIERGE (O.S.) | Disperse! I’ve called security, so kindly—

LEONOR | That was … Thank you. I froze. I don’t know why. MENCIA | It’s an overwhelming time for you, I imagine. LEONOR | It wasn’t supposed to be. Everything was fine, finally, and now everyone’s making me seem crazy. I’m not. I just— MENCIA | Believe me, I understand. It’s exploitative. It’s wrong.

MENCIA | There’s a convention across the waterway, for us. LEONOR | Us? MENCIA | Should’ve introduced myself. Mencia Cipac. The Royal Reviewers Association’s annual meeting is here this week. LEONOR | What? I … Actually, no, that makes perfect sense.

MENCIA | For what it’s worth, I suspect these are all growing pains, my princess. Take care.

MATEO | Twelve minutes late is basically fifteen. I win. GIL | No, that’s a technicality and— RODRIGO | I’m glad you’re here, Nora. I wish you could’ve spent the week with us, but we’ll take a couple days.

RODRIGO | I heard you had a costume party. What was the theme? LEONOR | [clears throat] Moon rabbits. RODRIGO | That’s a good one. Do you remember my grandmother’s story about them? I know it’s been a while, but—

MATEO | Go ahead, tell it again, Papa. LEONOR | Yeah, I don’t remember. Something about her garden? RODRIGO | So, she had these seeds, which were notoriously hard to come by, and she planted them during a full moon, as one does—

RODRIGO | So, I have some news. I wanted to tell you all in person, and I’m grateful we could be together so I can.

GIL | You’re leaving, aren’t you? RODRIGO | What? How— GIL | I just guessed.

RODRIGO | Well, I am, yes. I’m sorry, but I—

MATEO | You’re abandoning us? Now? RODRIGO | I haven’t been part of your lives since … I’ve tried, but it’s impossible. Between your grandmother and everyone else in the damn country, I might as well just go die, too.

RODRIGO | I know, that was—[sighs] It would make all of our lives easier if I left for a while. I believe that, truly, and it breaks my heart. Not seeing you is one thing. Knowing that everything I do or don’t do becomes a reason for people to lie to you and try to hurt our relationships … We can’t live like that. You can’t.

MATEO | And leaving us will help that? RODRIGO | It’ll relieve the pressure. MATEO | What does that even mean? What pressure? The problem is not having her or you. No one asked us if we wanted be orphans! LEONOR | [clears throat] He’s right, Teo.

MATEO | No, he—! It’s … GIL | It’ll be okay. He’ll still call.

RODRIGO | I will. Of course I will. MATEO | And it won’t be forever? RODRIGO | I won’t let it be.

RODRIGO | Before you go, I need to tell you something.

LEONOR | Something else? RODRIGO | I want to be honest with you. I don’t want you to think I have anything to hide from you, ever.

RODRIGO | [exhales] I put some things of your mother’s up for auction, and I shouldn’t have, and now your grandmother has involved herself in it. I meant it, that I didn’t want to leave, but it wasn’t ultimately my choice to make. You know how she is. I’m sorry, Nor—

LEONOR | You did what? RODRIGO | Nothing she wanted you to have—some jewelry, paintings, old jackets. Back of the closet. Things like that.

LEONOR | That’s it. RODRIGO | I promise. Nothing important. LEONOR | Nothing important.

RODRIGO | Are you having breakfast with us? [Elevator dings]

RENZO V.O. | Hey. Don’t bother leaving a message. I don’t check them; I just thought the machine was cool. Or do. Whatever, man.

#ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 3 months ago

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𝐍𝐎. 𝟏𝟏 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | MAYPOP RESORT, INTIZARA, OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

It surprised Leonor how little she thought of the trip until she was in the middle of it. The prospect of going where her mother last lived should have inspired despair, rage, at least whimpering fear. There should have been nightmares. Instead, she had simply acknowledged it. She was going. So it went. The trepidation that rose up in her en route was about seeing her living family—her brothers, Mateo especially. After all, more recent events loomed. It was never hard to imagine Mateo’s disapproval, but she would see concern this time, too, etched into his features alongside the scowling, eye-rolling, lip-pursing disappointment. He was a snotty child, and adolescence hadn’t done much to dim it. But, then again, Leonor herself had been the same. There was always something underneath the superiority with him, though—something that made him better, something that had made him her favorite. Unfortunately, his concern would be genuine.

❧ i hadn't quite planned for the tonal contrast between the conversation itself and the surrounding context, but i think it works !!! people do indeed get through hard stuff by being silly together :^) anyway, i thought a bit of sibling fun would be nice to include

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

The invitation to spend time in Intizara with her father and brothers came without precipitation or any hint of warning. She hadn’t known they were together; she hadn’t known they would want to reunite with her anytime soon, not with the anniversary looming as it did. That would snatch them from their new lives and force them, together, back into the one that had passed. It didn’t occur to her that they ought to do that to themselves.

Rodrigo’s initial calls had gone unanswered, but the silence wasn’t just for him. Kore dumped Leonor into her bed after the costume party and stuck around long enough to make sure she woke up the next morning. After that, her house became a tomb again. It was quiet while reporters clamored outside. The curtains remained drawn, and little daylight seeped in from the dramatic, floor-to-ceiling windows Leonor once loved so much. Even the lights remained off throughout the day and into the evening. Shadowed daytime gave way to black night as it crept along the walls and descended from the ceiling. Leonor, growing sore from stillness, would press her face further into her pillow and hope to fall asleep. When she didn’t, she outstretched a hand to grasp around the cluttered bedside table—for something to take, for water to slosh, for a book on whose words she wouldn’t focus.

That was how four days and nights proceeded, blending together into an indistinguishable flow of time. It moved slow and heavy, not swift or certain like a flood. Leonor sunk further into the downy coffin of her bed and waited to be suffocated or crushed, whichever came first. However, the fifth day interrupted that wait. Her aide—patient and willing to obey even the cruel order that she be left alone, “to sleep, or to die, I don’t care”—entered the room after a forceful knock went ignored. Leonor didn’t bother sitting up as she strode over and stepped onto the dais where the bed stood. She waited, perhaps knowing the colorful bundle in her hands might rouse her princess from this state that had befallen her. Like burdened wood, Leonor groaned as she sat up. Her eyes hurt. Her cheek bore the light pattern of wrinkled fabric. Without uttering a word, she took the wrapped gift and ripped it open with clumsy hands.

It was poorly wrapped but bundled tight with layers of paper—first, bright colored tissue, seemingly every shade except blue, then old newspapers. Leonor’s momentary burst of anxiety at the sight of them collapsed quickly into confused relief. Once she had yanked away those layers, a VHS case stared up at her. She smiled despite herself. Inside the case, a scrap of ripped paper folded twice bore a note in familiar scrawl: ‘Take care of yourself, baby.’ She might have flung it all across the room, striking the tape into a mirror with hopes of shattering both, but instead she smiled more.

Once she looked up, the aide passed her another sheet of paper. This was firm and lovely stationary, not a receipt sliver with ragged edges. It had her own signature stamped in the letterhead. This note was in pen, not pencil. The aide explained her father had called once, twice, three times in the last day. He needed his messaged passed onto Leonor. Upon realizing his daughter was not in bed due to any physical illness, he became loud and insistent. Leonor could hear the tone in her head and felt a twinge of pity.

Having read his message, she threw the note aside. She leaned against the headboard and allowed the fatigue in her body to anchor her there. In a bitter exhale, she had scoffed, ‘He thinks this will make me feel better? As if.’

Leonor would never admit that her father was right, but the weight of her emptiness—and it was weight, a feeling so ponderous as to be unignorable—lessened as she departed. By the time Intizara’s coastline became visible through the plane window, her days spent sinking in a morass of anguish were distant. Apprehension danced on her nerves but wasn’t bottomless. It wasn’t intangible, nameless, so unfathomable as to only grow more intense when she tried to grasp it. This was anxiety she could wrap her arms around.

Intizara boasted excellent weather, and she let herself indulge in pleasant memories of holidays past as her car sped from the airport to Maypop Resort. There, her family waited. She didn’t know what to expect. How would they would perceive her, knowing what a mess she had left behind in Nakawe? Yet, her genuine longing for them tempered the uncertainty. She rejected it time and time again, but being together was medicine. Mateo would look at her like she was a child in need of scolding, but he wouldn’t scold her. When they beheld each other for the first time in weeks, relief would overtake everything else.

After all, she knew their emotions ran parallel. It was easier to pretend otherwise, but that was just a convenient lie. The consequences of coming here and looking out at the water where their mother struggled for her last breaths would descend slowly on them all. The feeling would, like the snow out west, drift down and melt away until, all it once, everything was blanketed. When that happened, the only solace would be each other. What better way to face grief yet again than together, on a picturesque resort beach, bathed in sunshine while seagulls squawked and waves crashed and other families filled the air with sounds of life carrying on?

Leonor too often imagined her father to be careless and insensitive. She wanted him to be her protector, but she needed him to be a vessel for all that remained unforgivable. Yet, at the beach, setting her eyes upon Mateo’s figure in the distance, inhaling the scent of saltwater, feeling the sun on her bare skin, that characterization faltered. His note echoed in her mind. He gathered them here with intention and compassion, it appeared. Leonor had experienced innumerable solitary firsts in the aftermath of their shared loss, wandering alone through much of the grief-tinted world into which they had been plunged. She could never predict how hard any given first would hit. Some shocked her. Some she anticipated better than others. Visiting this place that every Reyes had hitherto avoided would, mercifully, not be among those she endured alone.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Waves crashing, indistinct conversation and laughter]

LEONOR | You were here with him? MATEO | For a few days, yeah. LEONOR | Mother Beatriz allowed that?

MATEO | “Mother Beatriz allowed that?” [scoffs] No one asked about it, and she didn’t stop us. Why are you so surprised? LEONOR | It’s—Whatever, no, I’m not.

MATEO | You look good, you know. Skinnier. LEONOR | Thanks.

LEONOR | What about last week? I didn’t see you at all. MATEO | [laughs] Oh, gasp, how unusual—! I was with Aunt Prissy in Canarís. Her friend has a new installation at the—

LEONOR | You can’t spend all of your time with a bunch of fifty year old women, Teo. Please tell me you still have other friends who do more than play cards and go shopping.

MATEO | You’re so judgmental. What’s wrong with that? Not everyone wants to spend their free time getting drunk and doing drugs. LEONOR | Well, there’s an unfair accusation. MATEO | But it’s not untrue. [Leonor huffs]

MATEO | Besides, I have do other friends, but … I don’t know what to say to them anymore, I guess.

LEONOR | You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, Teo. But, you never know who might end up understanding, if you do.

LEONOR | Look, I know plenty of fun, classy clubs in Nakawe—or Canarís, if you plan to continue hanging out with auntie down here. You should go dancing, at least. That’s what I did, when I could.

MATEO | You don’t do that anymore. You should. Maybe you could— LEONOR | [chuckles] I’m not going clubbing with you. That would be so embarrassing.

MATEO | [gasps] Come on! That’s mean. LEONOR | You’re a baby, Teo. MATEO | I’m seventeen. I’m an adult! LEONOR | [sniffs] You smell like womb water.

LEONOR | I’m going to make a call, okay, and arrange a section. There’s a retro night this weekend at a place Kore goes sometimes. You can invite whoever you want, but they definitely have to be under fifty. MATEO | Or what?

LEONOR | I’ll come down there and pull your ears off. MATEO | [laughing] Okay, anything to get you to join us!

MATEO | … What are you doing that night? Do you have plans? LEONOR | Don’t tell anyone, but I joined a showcase at The Den that night. We rehearsed a lot. Can’t miss it.

LEONOR | Well, the after-party is another story, and— MATEO | No, no, no! Cheesy dance recital! Let me have this! LEONOR | [chuckles] You’ll loosen up someday, and then maybe I’ll be seen after dark with you.

#sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 5 months ago

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𝐍𝐎. 𝟖 (𝟏/𝟑) ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | EARLY OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

→ 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐍 Snap. Snap. Snap. Layered, fluttering, the cacophony was a descent of birds. Human voices echoing amid the shutters were less real than the possibility that, just over her shoulder, Leonor would find a menacing flock flapping madly. Some people harbored a deep fear of birds, but she had rarely given them much thought until now. Their talons and beaks never seemed threatening; even the crowds that took flight together and blocked out the sky were no more stirring than the trees where they would roost. She understood them to be stupid creatures with little to offer beyond their flesh—some could talk, but many were not even particularly pleasing to the eye.

❧ FINALLY !!! this took about two weeks longer than it was supposed to, but here we are. i think, in a way, this has become its own little conceptual detour, but it's also chocked full of narrative relevance, so ... enjoy the ride :^) part two is where it really sings, imo, but tbh i’m just relieved to have this first part finished lsdjfsf [the full scene and transcript below are in large text, also ! hopefully that's easier to read for anyone who's been squinting and straining with small text.]

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

Snap. Snap. Snap. Layered, fluttering, the cacophony was a descent of birds. Human voices echoing amid the shutters were less real than the possibility that, just over her shoulder, Leonor would find a menacing flock flapping madly. Some people harbored a deep fear of birds, but she had rarely given them much thought until now. Their talons and beaks never seemed threatening; even the crowds that took flight together and blocked out the sky were no more stirring than the trees where they would roost. She understood them to be stupid creatures with little to offer beyond their flesh—some could talk, but many were not even particularly pleasing to the eye.

In this moment, a sudden case of ornithophobia beset her. Leonor crouched in the alley with her back to the flock, covering her ears to block out the sound of their inevitable approach. Did she expect to be pecked to pieces? That wasn’t it. As she listened to the screeching flutter of wings with its interlaced shouting, what she feared was suffocating in a mass of feathers. Her mind flashed to beach fronts littered with bedraggled plumage left behind by the coastal birds who walked along the shore, who fought over detritus in the foam, who hopped away begrudgingly when approached. Sometimes they congregated on the sand, but they were never so deafening as the flock that had converged now. Across from where she hunkered down, bright lights flickered against a brick wall. Leonor watched it with wide eyes and waited for a flood of feathers to take her breath away.

The flood never came. Instead, Kore’s face set like the sun in front of her, staring with a look of bewilderment reflecting Leonor’s own. Kore yanked her to her feet before she could, with a cautiously raised hand, caress her cheek; she pulled her further away from the flock and toward an open door. Black and magenta amid the flashing white lights, this portal beckoned. Leonor was out of her arms and scrambling toward it while Kore followed close behind. The door closed and cut off the flickering lights. Ambient music, rendered indistinct instrumentals and indistinguishable voices as it pulsed through the walls, replaced the noise of birds. Leonor sighed and leaned against the wall. With her eyes closed, she could see the sound pulsing, rhythmic and thick like smoke. Her shoulder left yellow smudges on the paneling.

“What happened?” Kore was demanding. “Why were you out there? Are you okay? Are you crazy?”

Leonor had no answer for her. She scrunched her features together, thinking hard about the sequences of events that had carried her outside—out of The Den into the alleyway where the birds, the photographers with their shuttering flash lenses, appeared.

“They weren’t supposed to be there,” she finally offered.

Kore grimaced. “Yeah, I know.”

“Do you think it was—” Leonor paused as Kore shook her head in disappointment. She, too, shook her head, then continued, “I bet it was that weasel behind the counter.”

Leonor flashed back to earlier that week, where she could see the department store salesgirl. She suspected she had told someone about the party happening at The Den. Although almost certainly a fool’s errand from the beginning, Leonor truly believed they stood a chance of keeping the whole thing under wraps. Reporters lurked outside like clockwork, knowing when any given night’s activities began and ended. Sometimes new faces followed their favorite subjects there; usually, however, it was a predictable group. Still, they didn’t actually know what went on inside. Occasionally, guests let details slip during interviews—asides, a wink and a nod, divulging, an unearned taste. Renzo did it. Leonor didn’t talk to the press so casually but, if she did, perhaps she would’ve, too.

Dedicated tabloid reporters worked with more grit and creativity than some seasoned criminal investigators; they monitored license plates and store inventories, they prioritized the most unassuming witnesses, they collected evidence from bribable photographers and public garbage cans and service workers on smoke breaks. Leonor put more effort into accounting for those tactics. She purchased the garden of live plants with four degrees of separation, and they arrived in a routine liquor delivery truck borrowed for that purpose. She had even gone to the stores incognito on the day in question, hoping to prevent inquiries into the costume shopping excursion. Renzo did his part in asking the tightly controlled guest list to stay quiet. Everyone seemed more than happy to comply, for their own privacy if not his or hers. The theme was the tale of the moon rabbit but, more exciting still, it was debauchery.

But, she had told the salesgirl why they were there in a few words—discretion was why anyone who mattered shopped there, after all—and she had probably jeopardized their assurance of secrecy when she reacted poorly to the customer service. ‘I said white, not cream,’ came from her lips with condescension. That was easy to confuse with venom. Worse, it hadn’t needed the tacked on, ‘They just hire anyone these days. We shouldn’t even come back,’ but she had said those words, not as a whisper, too. Now, it appeared the chickens—metallic and screeching—may have come home to roost.

“How did you end up out there?” was Kore’s next question, and Leonor followed her big gesture toward the door. Outside, if she strained to listen, the commotion was still audible. Perhaps the flock would circle the place and levitate it, either by force of wings or the oceanic lightness of their feathers. The squat, square buildings would yawn apart and crumble like a slice of cake cut too thick for its spatula.

Leonor gagged, then replied, “So, before—first, I was on the roof.”

“By yourself?”

“Well, no.”

“Okay, then—?”

Just as vivid as the feather-strewing birds on the beach, Leonor recalled the pantomime her parents performed on the roof. It had paralyzed her until, with her mother’s great splash over the edge, it galvanized her into action. She was going to barrel headfirst into the water to save her, but someone intervened. She hadn’t bothered to see who it was. It wasn’t her father. What else mattered, then? She certainly hadn’t bothered to thank them for saving her from, not lapping ocean water, but hard asphalt. She flew down the stairs with such force that she tripped and stumbled into the walls as she went. There was someone on their way up as she descended; they just stepped aside and complained about their drink sloshing. There would be tender spots on her arms tomorrow. For now, the only sensation remaining was the residual adrenaline.

“I was frightened,” she concluded. “I needed to leave, so I did.”

Kore sighed. “Where’s Renzo?”

Someone else standing behind her piped up in a neutral tone, “Unreachable. Dead to the world.”

“Of course.”

Distracted, Leonor asked, “Is he singing again? He really doesn’t sing enough.”

Pushing herself off the wall, she added, “I should apologize to him.”

Leonor bumped into Kore as she tried to pass her, but Kore held her in place. “Hold on,” she said. “I think you might need to tap out for the night, Nora. But, okay, I have to ask: apologize for what?”

Leonor turned fully, placing her hands on Kore’s shoulders. Her expression was grave, so full of abrupt remorse as to be almost mournful. “I said I wasn’t his baby,” she confessed. “He took such good care of me, and that’s what I said. Can you believe it?”

At this, Kore laughed. It didn’t faze Leonor. Her thoughts had gone back to the beginning of the night.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Birds flapping and screeching]

[Cameras flashing, paparazzi shouting]

[Shouting, flashes continue]

KORE | What happened? Why were you out there?

KORE | Are you okay? Are you crazy? LEONOR | They weren't supposed to be there.

KORE | Yeah, I know. LEONOR | Do you think it was—I bet it was the weasel behind the counter.

LEONOR | I said white, not cream. They just hire anyone these days. We shouldn’t even come back.

KORE | How did you end up out there? [Leonor gags]

LEONOR | So, before—first, I was on the roof. KORE | By yourself? LEONOR | Well, no. KORE | Okay, then—?

LEONOR | I was frightened. I needed to leave, so I did.

KORE | Where's Renzo?

SYBIL | Unreachable. Dead to the world.

LEONOR | Is he singing again? He really doesn't sing enough.

LEONOR | I should apologize to him. KORE | Hold on. I think you might need to tap out for the night, Nora. But, okay, I have to ask: apologize for what?

LEONOR | I said I wasn't his baby. He took such good care of me, and that's what I said. Can you believe it?

#cw drugs #ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 5 months ago

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𝐍𝐎. 𝟖 (𝟐/𝟑) ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | EARLY OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

→ 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐍 The performance lineup was long, mixing dilettante regulars with real, true artists. Renzo hadn’t told her in advance what he planned to do; she knew he would be accompanying Fluke at some point, but his turns at the front were rare and unpredictable. Tonight, he used his voice, one that Leonor found impressive if not astonishing, to serenade the room. That was the illusion, anyway. He held her gaze the entire time, which was enough to convey intent. The songs announced were all covers—music from her aunt’s milieu, or quite possibly her discography. While Leonor didn’t recognize the song and rapidly became unable to hear the lyrics as words with a meaning, the unmistakable mood gripped her. It wasn’t a caress so much as a stroke, a fondle, a pinch. It made her skin crawl in the best way.

❧ "venus in furs" won the poll but "time of the season" ended up fitting better (and also the clapping in this performance was compelling dsfsjg) ... anyway, i am SO pleased with this post specifically

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

The performance lineup was long, mixing dilettante regulars with real, true artists. Renzo hadn’t told her in advance what he planned to do; she knew he would be accompanying Fluke at some point, but his turns at the front were rare and unpredictable. Tonight, he used his voice, one that Leonor found impressive if not astonishing, to serenade the room. That was the illusion, anyway. He held her gaze the entire time, which was enough to convey intent. The songs announced were all covers—music from her aunt’s milieu, or quite possibly her discography. While Leonor didn’t recognize the song and rapidly became unable to hear the lyrics as words with a meaning, the unmistakable mood gripped her. It wasn’t a caress so much as a stroke, a fondle, a pinch. It made her skin crawl in the best way.

The Den possessed an unexpected number of quiet backrooms beyond the bustle of its main space. People who were just passing through experienced the stage, the bar, the shadowy corners that ringed them both. Friends got to see the enviable wine cellar and the room where the gambling happened; although less exciting, they might also see the liquor storage or the disorganized mess that barely warranted the title of “office.” Leonor had probably jiggled most of the doorknobs before she went onto the roof. Of course, Renzo’s favorite backroom wasn’t in the basement with the others. It was the small section cordoned off from the main space, drenched in red lighting, with a sectional on which he could sprawl. It was where Leonor had first met him, and it was where they tended to retreat as any given night progressed. Tonight had been no exception. It was a place to fully crawl out of her skin, and the knotted satin of her costume, and the nervous confines of her mind.

With delusional buoyancy setting it, an urgent question had bubbled up unbidden. It force itself out like a hiccup. Renzo caught it, if with surprise, rolling along with her as she wondered aloud. ‘Do you love me?’ A terrible question, this one. Had she not already felt so much, had she not been overflowing with shapeless and blooming euphoria, she would have felt ashamed. He didn’t recoil. Against her fingers, he answered, ‘I love ... the idea of you.’ She didn’t recoil from the honesty either. It wasn’t a wave; it was a rainfall that soaked, heavy, gentle, to the bone. She followed up with the same earnestness, ‘Do I love you?’ He swirled his tongue around her thumb as he considered it. Then, ‘You love who you think I am.’ Did she? ‘Really?’ ‘Really.’ It was settled. She did. Otherwise, it had to be a fleeting concern, one sinking beneath the surface again, that couldn’t really matter.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Music, overlapping conversation, laughter]

RENZO | Come on, don’t be shy. Look, all of this—live plants, the murals, fucking real rabbits to play with��all courtesy of Nora. She’s been busy employing artisans and patronizing florists and shit. Did you know she came up with the theme, too? Can’t forget that. Because she loves this place. She loves all of us. My moon goddess.

[Music, conversation, laughter continues]

[Crowd cheering]

[Music, crowd singing along]

[Discordant, playful strumming]

[Music begins, Renzo singing]

[Rhythmic clapping]

No, no, too much! No? Yes! Fuck. It’s fine. Yeah? Too late now. Oh, baby—

[Laughter, echoing]

[Muffled music, Leonor sighs]

Do you love me? I love ... the idea of you. Do I love you? You love who you think I am. Really? Really.

Is that real? The rabbit? The fur? It’s so ... That’s a lot. Poor rabbits, huh? Yes, but ... It’s soft! Oh, it’s soft. You have to leave the, um, the—[laughs] The chaps? Yes! It’s so important. I love them. If you want. Please! I do.

[Urinating, sink running, door opening and closing]

?1 | —such a cute theme, though. Little bunnies? I look so good. ?2 | Yeah, but can you believe what she did? No one else is yellow. ?1 | Not surprised. Princess has to be the center of attention, duh.

?2 | But, I would be so fucking bored if I were him. ?1 | I only talked to her once, and I’m still bored. [Snickers] ?2 | Blah, blah, my mom is dead, blah, blah, blah, I do government stuff. Where’s the camera, look at me, I’m a Reyes, blah, blah, blah. ?1 | [Laughs] So dumb! That’s it, though.

?1 | Maybe she’s just hot, in a cute way? She’s new. Doesn’t know how to do anything fun. A "yes" girl. Ooh. We’ve been there. ?2 | Yeah, I don’t get it, but, oh, well—Okay! [Smacks lips] Let’s go! [Footsteps, door opens and closes]

[Door closes]

#cw drugs #ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 6 months ago

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𝐍𝐎. 𝟕 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | AUGUST 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

Trish Fitzpatrick wore many hats, but her favorite was “freelance journalist.” Her area of expertise grew directly out of myriad side gigs: what she called portrait pieces of interesting people. Outlets clamored for them—or, they had since she’d buttered up famous, neurotic opera singer-turned-starlet Prudence Boone into revealing she had a glass eye, a secret runaway daughter, and a hair-eating habit. Of course, Prudence was basically a stranger. They had once had a fifteen minute conversation on the deck of a yacht, bonding over the fact that neither actually knew to whom the vessel belonged. Prudence thought Trish’s outlandish suggestions were funny enough to remember her when she called to pitch the piece. It had gone the same way with Renzo. Of course, they had met while fighting over a scarf in a vintage clothing store. Trish considered letting him win to be a debt, one for which she would demand recompense at the ideal time. Opportunities passed, and then August 1991 proved to be the time.

❧ i got the irresistible urge to do renzo backstory, which was meant to be an outtake, but then i was like, "uh, no, this totally works as story proper if i put leonor in it," so here we are ! context and such. given the amount of work, this might be my magnum opus until further notice ... it was also just fun to do :^) checked off the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll boxes ?? where's my prize. in conclusion, i love my white boy of the week or whatever

𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

I grew up in a tiny town—Petunia. Petunia? You say it differently. It’s the country coming out, I guess. Not “pee-tyoon-ee-ah,” it’s “puh-toon-yuh.” Petunia. That’s it. So, how was it? Fond memories? In retrospect, maybe. I wanted to get the hell out of there from day one. What I remember is being very unhappy—dispositionally sullen, not just a pouty kid, but fully down and out. Born that way, probably. And your parents? My parents … Life had the upper hand, man. They were good at losing. I didn’t want that life.

My dad professed to be a traveling salesman—What, he wasn’t? I mean, he didn’t know jack shit about vacuums or whatever the fuck. I don’t know. But, he wasn’t around a lot, it sounds like? Gone for weeks at a time. Just me and my mom. How was she? Not really there either. When I got home from school, she’d pop her pills and be gone until morning. She wasn’t avoiding me; she was avoiding life. She did what she had to do in the mornings—you know, I had what I needed, the bare essentials—but she was checked out. You had a lot of unsupervised time, then. Oh, did I. Too much. I mean, I had books to read, and I got into music early—From her? No. My dad’d blow into town and bring pity gifts. Not kid-appropriate shit, now that I think about it. Heavy, gritty stories. A guitar I was too little to use. Flip lighter. But, you know, I was a kid. I wanted to run and play with everyone else, too. Of course.

Here’s the thing: it was hard to be a scrawny kid named Lorencio in Petunia. Shit, I can imagine. What was that like? … Hard, like I said. Well—Details? I got the shit kicked out of me. Regularly. What do they call it—um—“school of hard knocks”? Yeah. I remember, one time, I limped home on a Saturday. Mom was out of it, but she leapt up when she saw all the blood. Cleaned me up. It’s like I’m there now—in that bathroom with the dirty tile, her burning me with peroxide … She didn’t really talk, you know, not in a serious way? But she did then? She said, in Uspanian, “‘Don’t roll over for anyone.’” Interesting. So, that’s the lesson? Part of it. I realized that summer it didn’t matter if you were scrawny, if you talked funny, if you were poor. What mattered was not being a pussy. [Laughs] Oh, yeah? If you want credibility, if you want respect, sometimes you gotta be able to take a beating. Don’t roll over. That’s right.

I think it also helped when the growth spurt hit. You must’ve still been scrawny. [Laughs] String bean. So it goes. Adolescence . Now, you grew up fast, is what I’ve heard. You could say that. My life changed when Marty got out of lock-up—Sorry, what?—for “teen offenders”; he set his grandparents’ car on fire—oh, I see, regular kid shit—Uh huh. We hit it off. He introduced me to other guys, including Jesse. They’d huff gas together. Oh my God. Not whippits? Sure, but less convenient. That’s—No good, yeah. Fun though. Have you—? I’ve tried everything, Patricia.

Jesus! So, Marty and Jesse…? We got on like a house fire. [Groans] They were into petty crime for the thrill of it—Now, Renzo, is arson petty? He did it one fucking time. Everyone overreacted. They got into trouble for fun, and for you it was—? Money. Not a lot. I was too dumb to consider the risks. But, you did other things for money, too? Don’t say it like that. I wasn’t hooking. [Snorts] I worked a lot. I was cutting school to work, getting paid under the table, all of that. Maybe—hear me out—some of it was thrilling for you, too? I won’t tell anyone. [Chuckles] What can I say? Credibility.

I feel like I’m mischaracterizing … I love Marty and Jesse, to this day. Jesse’s daughter is your godchild, right? Yeah. Marty went back to Petunia in … ‘88? Jesse and I had better luck, or maybe we were just more desperate. Either way, my point is that delinquents get a bad rap—With good reason! Sure, okay. Both of them were deeper and more complicated than that. You’re not an outlier. No. We’re a dime a dozen. No one gives them the chances you got. Uh huh. So, we bonded over that—feeling down and out, like I said, but also the fact that we loved music. Marty’s family had money, so they’d bought him a nice bass guitar. But, Jesse’s mind … He’s so fucking creative. He wasn’t a reader, but I could tell him about something I’d been chewing on, and he’d have a song inspired by it within the hour. He has an incredible voice, too. He does.

I guess it’s not surprising that you guys did what you did. There was nothing for us at home, you know? Packing up and heading out west didn’t feel like a risk. And your mom understood that? Better than anyone. I know people judged her—shit, I judge her, too—but I always knew she was trying. That’s sweet. Is it? I mean, I think so … She met my dad at a bus stop three weeks after she arrived in the country and made the mistake of getting off at his stop. That’s it. That was her crime. Well, I’m sure she’s doing better now, huh? She lives in a nicer house in a nicer city, but that doesn’t cure depression, now does it? I suppose not. There was this woman whose lawn I’d cut all the time … A real bitch, but she was extra nice because she felt bad for me. Hated my mother. I think she was just jealous because my dad was her high school sweetheart. Isn’t that just how it goes? Damn foreigner stealing a real catch from her. [Scoffs] Sticky fingers when she invited me inside for lemonade—cigs and quarters from her purse, Valium from the cabinet, that kind of thing. [Laughs] Casual. It was pretty brazen, honestly. Fucking dumb kid.

Alright, so, you come out here with Marty and Jesse to make music, and now you’re a serious actor with a name and a big career ahead of you. How’d that happen? It was completely accidental. While we waited for a record deal, I did odd jobs, like auto work—you know, in a body shop. It was decent. Had you worked on cars before that? So, I got familiar, uh … [Chuckles] We’ve established I was a rascal. We could get under the hood of a parked car and make a few dollars off parts. I can get you in so much trouble, Renzo! [Laughs]

Don’t tell anyone, come on! I was a kid. Have a heart. I guess it paid off. But, alright, body work? What’s the connection? It’s kind of convoluted. When business was slow, the guy I worked for loaned his employees out to another mechanic. This guy, long story short, brought me along to assist him on a movie set. I guess he was a known quantity? Everyone knows the right guy! That’s everyone’s explanation for where they end up. Me, too. Uh huh. I don’t know why they let me do it, but—Somehow it worked out. Yeah, it did. Right place, right time.

You’re in the spot. How did you get into it, though? This is embarrassing as hell but, fuck it, I’ll be honest. Please. Don’t stop now. [Chuckles] I got a shot because I’d been chatting up this girl who, as it turns out, was the director’s kid—or, in fact, she approached me. I had no idea who she was or why she was there. Of course she did! That’s not surprising, is it? I think I was the most disinterested person there. I don’t know. Anyway, we talked a couple times, then—out of the blue—someone asked me if I wanted to hop into a scene, say a line, ten seconds flat. She did that for you? I don’t know what she did. No one mentioned her. Maybe she thought you looked like a movie star. [Snorts] Fuck. I hope not. Did you want to do it? I wanted to make music. I wanted to finish reading my book. I wanted … I mean, I said yeah. Can’t decline that. Makes a good story, right? What happened with her—? Oh, hell. Sorry! Moving on, for now. [Groans]

I got a call several weeks later about an audition. How did that feel? Bizarre. We’d done a demo for a producer once, but this was different. Were you excited? I was terrified. But, I went. Didn’t get that part, although everyone was perfectly nice to me. How disappointing. You always remember your first … But, hey, you have to look at it this way: I didn’t want to be an actor. I thought it was cool, but it felt like … ? Go ahead, give me a good metaphor. Like when you’ve been craving your favorite food, but then someone offers you a helping of something different, new, appetizing. How’s that? Passable. C-plus. [Laughs] Fuck you, Pat.

Okay, so the road didn’t end there. No, it didn’t. I got another call, and that one went well. This was for … Sugar Sweet? That’s the one. Cornball, but I love that movie. Never seen it. What! How is that possible? You were in it. You went to the premiere screening. There are pictures. Saw my first scene, excused myself to go piss, didn’t come back until the applause had started. Wow. Everyone has opinions about that movie these days—very contentious, whether or not Alicia was in the wrong when she left me and stole my lifelong dream. What do you think? Me, Renzo? Good for her. I thought it was kind of bitchy. It’s peculiar how many women say that. I wonder why … ! Billy’s so dreamy. Please, ask me about something else, Pat. So, this romantic comedy is your launching pad. It leads to the television show. The television show blows up immediately. Walk me through what that felt like?

Also terrifying. I really cannot emphasize enough that I didn’t want attention. I wanted money and time to support my music, and acting seemed like a good way to do that. Just didn’t account for the side effects. Like fame? Uh huh. I was a nobody in Sugar Sweet, and the pay was shit, but it felt like a miraculously good deal at the time. What it did is put me in the running for more serious work. I think, even then, sometimes the casting folks were hesitant to take a risk on someone with no experience whatsoever, even if they had—A spark? Talent? Sure. It was unsettling, the idea that I was some kind of “natural,” and I compensated by working really hard. Well, you’ve established yourself as a hard worker. Sure. I guess they saw that—the improvement, in addition to the fact that I had a resume to speak of by then. Or, eh, they saw that you were pretty. Right, of course, you don’t need talent if you have Teen Mag’s favorite cheekbones. [Snickers] I joined a cast with other people who had very little experience, and we bonded over that. I just didn’t expect to be … What, the center of attention? That, yeah.

You know what’s fucking weird? Huh? Signing your name on a picture of your own face that belongs to someone else. That they’re going to take it home and pin it to their fucking wall or frame it on their bedside table. Someone’s kid treating you like their school crush, blushing and shit while they’re asking for you to do it. That does seem like a strange experience. Over and over again. Teenyboppers, goddamn. You were in the magazines for them. I read a couple interviews. No the fuck I was not. I did not do those. No? What they do is take quotes from actual, consented conversations and stitch them together for their own use. It’s legal. That’s fascinating. Maybe I should try that. Less work. [Laughs] Yeah, alright, flush your “exclusive access” privilege right down the toilet.

But, look, I’m not disparaging the fans wholesale. That’d be unfair. And, ouch, ungrateful? Yeah. The initial couple years were fucking insane, but I was with people I liked, and a lot of the fans we actually met were … Normal? Uh huh. Not a hysterical, handsy, screaming blob. You got grabbed? Groped, Pat. Oh boy. We don’t like grabass, I guess. Well, hold on now, just not like that—You keep sidetracking me. What kind of interviewer are you? I’m having fun with my buddy! Sue me. [Chuckles] You got it, baby. What was I saying? The fans? Yeah. The ones we met one-on-one were cool, usually. They had deep thoughts about the show, you know? Ideas about the characters, the plots—filled in holes in the shitty writing. No offense to Jack and Reuben, I hope! Don’t print that, Pat.

If I’m being honest, having to answer their questions made me think deeply about the role. That’s stayed with me. I don’t like being walked up on in public, but sometimes it’d go fine. The first time someone came up to me in the wild, her mother looked so fucking apologetic that I decided, “Cool it, don’t be a jackass.” She wanted to talk about the book I was buying. Same thing would happen to Frank, Perry, Vicky. How about the show itself? That was a three year commitment.

It was alright. In retrospect, I understand that television isn’t for respectable actors, which made the transition hard. Harder to have been on a show for teenagers. But, you made that switch in Uspana. So, did that play into the calculus at all? I lucked out, in the sense that the show was co-produced, and I got to do the dubbing for the Uspanian version. I wasn’t a total unknown, even if they thought my Uspanian was shitty. Is it? Losing an accent is hard, in my defense.

When my contract ended, I hit the road. You didn’t think about staying on? I thought about it with horror, yes. [Laughs] You’d keep shit-talking the whole production if I let you. Maybe. So, in Uspana? It was like exhaling for the first time in a while. I did nothing for a couple months. All that hard work, being a beloved TV star … Throw me a bone, Pat. But, anyway, I didn’t even see my mom’s family again for a few weeks—You knew them, though? Yeah, we’d met, during the press trips. Beach life by yourself. Luxury.

You know, I needed to reconnect with myself. That’s how I felt. I felt like I had been an imposter, then I felt like I had to be someone I wasn’t, and now … You could go a different way. A fork in the road, for your career. Your life, really. Right, yeah. I went to Canarís like any good tourist. I had more money than I’d ever had in my life. I had no plans. Sounds like a dream. It was.

Crucially, I was out of my mind most of the time. Kite high. So fucking high. I swear I almost drowned twice, at which point it was politely suggested that I stop using the pool. Did you politely agree? Fuck no. [Laughs] Troublemaking aside, I ended up taking phone calls, making plans with people—Industry people? Yeah. There were people I knew already, but meeting the ones I really wanted to work with happened kind of organically—parties, premieres for other films, cafes. At the Morningstar Cafe in Canarís? Right, exactly. Same way I ended up finding The Den. Someone at the cafe had worked with Karolina Teague, and she took me there one evening after we all got tossed out of some poor son of a bitch’s house. Sounds rowdy. Can’t blame him. It was after midnight. And? Well, it was a lunch that’d started at eleven in the morning, so. [Chuckles]

So, I have a question. You’re pretty consistent—in terms of behavior. ��Behavior?” [Snorts] Yeah, okay, I understand. What was that like, with cameras on you? The photographers in Uspana definitely aren’t less aggressive. That’s part of it. I don’t know if I’d call it an epiphany, but I left Canarís for Nakawe with the understanding that I was going to just do what I wanted to do. Oh boy. Within reason, fuck. Reason. Sure, yes. You didn’t feel like a dumb kid anymore. I mean, I guess I have more fun with the camera guys here. They can get away with more, ergo, so can we.

I distinctly recall you got arrested for—I barely touched that guy or his fucking camera. Did him a favor, if I did. Dogshit quality device. [Chuckles] Not sure he saw it that way, but the charges were dropped. I mean, don’t get me wrong, shouldn’t have reacted that way. I kept thinking about my mom seeing those pictures … The one time I got picked up, she backhanded me in the middle of the station, right in front of the cops. Jesus. In the car, she goes, “If you get caught again, I’m going to rip your ears off.” Empty threat, I guess.

The Den—I want to talk about that. Please, let’s. Your first time there? It was with Karolina, like I said, and there was a local band playing that night. They’d wrapped up their set by the time we arrived and were just … jamming on the stage, taking feedback and requests from the people who were still there. Some kind of funky jazz mash-up. I liked it. How did it come to you? It opened in ‘57 as a bar and, at some point, it turned into more of a music venue open to a certain segment of Nakawe. The guy who owned it gave exposure to a lot of people who went on to really do something with their art, and that’s why it ended up being a somewhat exclusive spot. Celebrities already knew it and brought their friends. Uh huh. I could stroll up, and the cameras weren’t with me because they were already there. He got tired of that, I think—He was an older fella, right? Yeah. But, really, he managed other properties, and The Den wasn’t his passion project the way it’s become for me. So, you had the money and took it off his hands.

What goes on in there? [Laughs] Pat, you’ve been inside. Well, not for me! If I’m going to describe it to people who’ll never go inside, what would I say? I mean, it’s a hangout spot. It’s a performance venue. We had, uh, mimes last month. Truly gifted, those people. [Laughs] Really? I don’t come up with all of the ideas myself, but I only agree to the shit I’m interested in. It’s kind of selfish, but I guess I’m lucky to know a lot of people who’ll toss in five dollars to enjoy it. It’s something. Compelling. I mean it. Thanks. That’s not all, though. I mean, you describe it as a “haven.” It’s very private. Some of your regulars are troubled individuals. Damn, Patricia, just say it. I feel like a cop! “Do you condone drug use in your establishment?” nonsense. But, well … I’m not explaining it. Either you—they, whoever the hell—get it or don’t. Come for the music, come to unwind however you like, doesn’t fucking matter to me as long as you’re coming with an invitation. I like to go in the back room, close the door, let the music and noise seep through. Muffled. You don’t really strike me as a partier, frankly. You never have. I wouldn’t argue with that. I like parties, but I don’t need to be at the center. Some do. That’s fine. This place is for us all.

Maybe it works out because of that, that you’re curating this space but not necessarily always in it? What do you mean? Well, you reopened it and then, if memory serves, immediately went off to do a film. The party kept going. You just like to know it’s happening. Alright, sure. That’s true. Knowing it’s there … Yeah. I like it. I was in that back room, thinking about the script, when I decided to do it, actually. Life felt like it was falling into place. It was a good time to take a leap. “’You are going to be a cowboy?’” “’No, I’m going to be a farmer.’” I had that conversation a thousand times. Reporters, man. Hey! Everyone was so surprised. I think they thought the premise was … I don’t know, that it just wasn’t something I would want to do? Or, worse, that the filmmakers wouldn’t want to work with someone like me? Unflattering assumptions, sounds like. Can’t blame them. I had a lot to prove. Still do.

How was six weeks in Texict? Fucking heaven. I loved it. My mother’s from the northwest so, even when I visited family, it wasn’t anywhere close. No reason to visit until we dropped in to do the film. Every day, I woke up happy to be alive. Happy to be doing this job. Gorgeous. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess it wasn’t just the location, was it?

No, you’re right. I felt like I was really acting—for the first time, seriously. Maybe the cast helped? I’d worked with established actors before. The leads in Sugar Sweet were—well, you know who they were. I learned a ton from them. But, yeah, I guess Sasha was the first person I’d worked alongside who had me sweating. Oh? I wanted to impress her so fucking badly. I wanted to keep up, you know? So talented. So raw. She rips every line out of her chest with her bare hands. Bloodbath of emotion. The premise was new, too. Not a lighthearted romance this time. No. We were young parents of a ill child—stressed as fuck, trying to make life work, struggling separately to be together. Can’t lie, I ate that shit up. So did the critics. Hell yeah.

Every nomination felt surreal. The recognition was incredible. Validating. Sasha and some of the others swept up. I was just honored to be up there with them, honestly. Okay, well, let’s talk about Sasha. Do we have to? Yes. Indulge me! [Grumbling] I mean, all I can really say at this point is that I was obsessed, and it wasn’t until it was over that I had the clarity of mind to really wonder, hm, “Was I in love with Sasha, my coworker, or was I in love with Sasha playing Lucy, my wife?” That seems like an occupational hazard. I wouldn’t describe it that way. You take sensitive, delusional, beautiful people, pay them to get vulnerable and intimate with each other … It’s special, even if it’s … Not genuine? No, it is that. It’s not real, but it is genuine. How else can you say, “Well, our schedules don’t line up anymore, but I’ll have this scar of our initials forever?” You do not! No, I don’t. The letter S is really hard to cut without fucking up. Not a sober man’s idea. No.

Since I have you on the topic—hey, no, absolutely not—I’m obligated to ask if there’s anyone in your life right now. How’s that? Women’s magazines can snap this up and stitch it together for themselves. This is a public service. Patricia … Yes, Lorencio?

Look, I know you do your research. I do. I’m very good at it, too. What’s that like, princess pus—Pat. Pat, I’m begging you—Are you obsessed? The letter L is easier, I bet. It is. Would you go with another L or an R?

I’m not talking about this—not for you to print, anyway. Well, talk to me as a friend, then? I’m not just professionally nosy. We’re friends? Who else calls me Pat and gets away with it? You haven’t been Trish in a long time, it’s true … [Sighs] Fuck. Someone can be precious, right? Lovable. You can hold them in your hands and think, “This person matters to me. They’re special. I like to be around them; I like to listen to them; I want their affection.” You can really, genuinely cherish someone.

But? Maybe you find their life to be completely fucking repellent. Unbearable. … Damn.

There’s parallels, though, right? I mean, fame is fame, there’s got to be value in relatability, and—There’s an open mic going on downstairs in the hotel bar right this minute. Let’s take a break, Pat, what do you say? Let’s just go watch some of it. I’ll let you print dick measurements and my deepest, darkest secrets if you say yes. [Laughs] Well, if that’s on the table—

#just gonna toss in a cw #cw drugs #long post #ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 5 months ago

Text

𝐍𝐎. 𝟖 (𝟑/𝟑) ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | EARLY OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

→ 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐍 That performance had been different. It wasn’t a caress either; it had felt like being strangled by familiar, then insistent hands. Fluke’s music always roused emotion, but she had returned from the backroom to the dance floor entirely unprepared for how it would hit her this time. The audience swayed as Ursula crooned the opening lines into her microphone. Increasingly distracted, Leonor watched with anxious eyes when the movement of bodies picked up speed. The crowd soon roiled. Limbs flailed. Ursula’s windmilling guitar strums, drumsticks rising and falling in Adara’s grasp, the beer bottles and cigarettes and open palms held aloft all around—

❧ okay ... it's done ... i feel like i just ran a marathon, creatively sdfkhsf :^) and, as always, you're really not getting the full story if you're not reading below the cut (^:

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

“Was that when he did the song?” Kore asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Leonor licked her lips, then shook her head. “No. Later. Heartbreaker.”

That performance had been different. It wasn’t a caress either; it had felt like being strangled by familiar, then insistent hands. Fluke’s music always roused emotion, but she had returned from the backroom to the dance floor entirely unprepared for how it would hit her this time. The audience swayed as Ursula crooned the opening lines into her microphone. Increasingly distracted, Leonor watched with anxious eyes when the movement of bodies picked up speed. The crowd soon roiled. Limbs flailed. Ursula’s windmilling guitar strums, drumsticks rising and falling in Adara’s grasp, the beer bottles and cigarettes and open palms held aloft all around—

At some point, it was no longer a floor filled with costumed guests enjoying live music. They transmuted, perhaps between her furious blinking, into a nest of monsters. Leonor found the sheer scale and radiance of their collectivity grotesque, so much so that she stood frozen by fright in the center of this undulating mass they formed. She would have remained that way forever—waiting, as it were, to be drenched and digested while mostly unaware of her own shrieking—if they hadn’t spit Renzo out and into her face. Through his sunglasses, she could see concern in his also-green eyes. Taken by that, comforted, she was entirely unprepared to be spun around and pushed further into the tangle of creatures. She yelped, shocked, helpless like any prey, each time a body bumped into her. Still, Renzo’s hands gripped her arms, and she sank back into him as he propelled her forward. Her feet didn’t need to move. If she was going to be eaten, she would have to be fed to it, them, this animated inspissation.

Instead, she survived and returned to the backroom once again. Red light soaked everything like blood. This is being dead? she’d wondered. I thought it’d be blue. The door shut with a hypnotist’s finger snap. Head to toe, doglike, Leonor shook herself while Renzo watched. She sank down onto the sectional, sighing so hard that she momentarily lost her breath. Or, her chest fell still and tense, and he exclaimed, ‘Hey, breathe—!’ That was a command, and it brought something out of her, very much doglike still. She felt kicked.

She climbed onto his lap unbidden once he joined her. The room swam in the periphery, red light filling up to the ceiling and spilling over in a continuous loop. His face was all she saw. It shifted and morphed as they talked. Yet, it wasn’t talking in her recollection. Their voices were shouts, muffled and overlaid, stitched together by frustration. She felt it now with Kore’s face supplanting his. Renzo’s face—she had never seen it that way. Only, he wasn’t angry. She was the one who was maddened, had gone feral, turned from prey on the verge of devourment to an animal out of its mind. All she truly remembered was what she relayed to Kore. ‘I’m not your baby.’ He took it in. ‘I’m not your baby. I’m an adult. I know what I want. I’m not your baby. You’re not my—You don’t have to tell me anything. I know, okay, I know a lot. Everything. I’m not your baby.’

It devolved. She was her mother’s daughter. Desperate and feeble, she shoved him. Her hands were unkind. They aided a tantrum, and he allowed it. Her words—what were they? Did they matter? It was how she said them. Unrestrainable, she had finally stumbled to the door, shouting still, and he drowned her out in response. The frustration seethed. ‘Go ahead, get the fuck out of here!’ This was not Uspanian, but she understood. ‘I’m leaving! I’m over it!’ Yet, meaning was lost on her even as she had uttered this word, “it.” Get out! Have fun!’ he called, this time in her language. She struggled to slam the door. It was very important that it slammed. The knob fell from her hands; the mischievous hinges resisted her. Renzo talked to himself. ‘What the fuck ... Jesus.’ Who was that? Slam. Slam. Slam—there, at last, for good measure.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Kore said, interrupting. As Leonor reached to lift the hands holding her in place, she added, “You can talk about it later—tomorrow, whenever. Better that way, actually. How about I take you home?”

Leonor considered the proposition. Then, she countered, “If I can’t talk to Renzo, then I just need to go back onto the roof for a minute. Okay? Just a minute. I just need to—”

“No, no, no,” Kore replied quickly, pushing Leonor toward the door that would lead them back into the bar’s main space. She struggled against her. Then, perhaps realizing she wouldn’t win that way, Leonor sank down abruptly to the ground. Kore let out a laugh of exasperation. “Really?”

While Kore stood there with her hands on her hips, Leonor scrambled between her legs and leapt to her feet. Kore followed as she rushed toward the stairwell. Thinking it better to shadow than try stopping her again, Kore trailed after as Leonor climbed the stairs with cautious steps. The stairwell was small but dark, and the city’s bright nighttime lights illuminated the passage easily as soon as Leonor threw open the door. There were other people on the roof when they emerged, and Kore waved to them, but Leonor gave no notice. Her face turned upward to the moon; with closed eyes, she stood and let her arms, palms open, extend.

“Moon goddess,” Kore remarked quietly as the party carried on around them.

Leonor said nothing, but she stood, swaying lightly, for some time. Kore imagined that she must be thinking of her mother—perhaps thanking her for showing up to the party.

Below the roof’s edge, visible across the street, birds resumed screeching.

TRANSCRIPT:

KORE | Was that when he did the song?

LEONOR | No. Later. Heartbreaker.

[Music, party noise]

[New song begins, crowd cheering]

[Ursula singing]

[Leonor gasps]

[Commotion, Leonor exclaiming, music continues]

RENZO | Too much—[Leonor yelps] [Sighs] What did I say? Come here …

[Music fades, Leonor whimpering]

RENZO | You’ll be okay. [Shushes] Overstimulated, that’s all. Some quiet—

RENZO | Hey, breathe—!

LEONOR | I’m not your baby. I’m not your baby. I’m an adult. I know what I want. I’m not your baby. You’re not my—You don’t have to tell me anything. I know, okay, I know a lot. Everything. I’m not your baby.

[Shouting]

Go ahead, get the fuck out of here! I’m leaving! I’m over it! Get out! Have fun!

What the fuck … Jesus.

[Door slams]

[Leonor mumbling] KORE | I'm sure it's fine. You can talk about it later—tomorrow, whenever. Better that way, actually. How about I take you home?

LEONOR | If I can't talk to Renzo, then I just need to go back onto the roof for a minute. Okay? Just a minute. I just need to— KORE | No, no, no.

[Carlo and Sybil laughing] KORE | [laughs] Really?

[Music, laughter, conversations] KORE | Moon goddess …

[Paparazzi chattering, cameras flashing]

#cw drugs #ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 7 months ago

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𝐍𝐎. 𝟑 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | NAKAWE, 2023

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

❛ Karolina Teague was hardly famous. Her name carried a certain heft among culture critics whose heyday had passed, but she liked the anonymity that came with being washed up. All of her favorite people were has-beens, after all, and she wasn’t ashamed to spend her time reminiscing about days past with them or anyone else who would listen. Today, she welcomed a whole crew of listeners into her Nakawe home—a film crew to be exact, led by a director-producer duo who had known her name well before a previous interviewee mentioned it to them. She wouldn’t be the star of their documentary, but they believed from its inception that the story wouldn’t be complete without her thoughts.

❧ honestly very proud of the scrapbooking !!!! this is basically just shameless exposition, but i am convinced i picked a creative vehicle for it :^) i watched that 90s docuseries on hulu a year ago and this specific story post was born fjdhjf anyway, canonically, no one would be writing or printing in script like that but i am simply NOT that committed to my worldbuilding sdkjfsf consider this whole thing an english language reimagining (^:

𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞𝐝 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

Karolina took them on a tour of her colorful seaside house, one concluding in a room already set up for their perusal. It was the archive, she explained. This was what they came for; her recollections were valuable, but she had so much more than her own memories. Photographs waited on the tables, and an old television screen teased some scene from exclusive VHS tapes. Karolina plopped down onto a sofa and gestured widely, saying, “Have a look. I’m ready when you are.”

The director, a woman named Ildaria, picked up a photograph.

“Can you tell us about her?”

Karolina beckoned for the photo, and Ildaria walked over to hand it to her. For a moment, she peered at it, keeping everyone in suspense. Finally, she replied, “Sure. What’s she going to do, sue me?”

“Maybe,” a cameraman elsewhere in the room snorted.

“I’ll take the risk,” Karolina laughed. “Look, I don’t know Princess Leonor, but I met her plenty of times. She was at The Den at least half the nights in 1991, for sure. Probably into 1992, but I didn’t really keep track of her comings and goings. Definitely not after 1993.”

The producer, Eilo, held up another photograph. “What’s the story here?” he asked.

Karolina reached for it. Unlike the other photo, this one was a proper candid. There were several people in the frame, but Leonor was at the center, kneeling by a table with her hand draped across Renzo’s thigh as he held her head in his palm and said something beyond the capture of still photography.

“It wasn’t anything formal,” Karolina explained. “Renzo didn’t date anyone in those days, and I don’t think she did either. They liked each other. It was mutual fascination with zero understanding, is how I saw it. They hung out—liked each other’s company. Hot and fast, burned out quick, that’s what it looked like.” She shrugged. “That was Renzo.”

“And Leonor?” Ildaria asked, having sat down nearby.

“Like I said,” Karolina began. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “I didn't know her. Seemed like a cool girl. I’m older, mind you. I think she wanted to get a little wild and try new things—this is off the record—and The Den was for her what it was for everyone. You could kick your shoes off. Scream along to your buddy’s new song, have a movie star tell you his woes while he pours your drink, get high in the dressing room and probably be fine—”

“Did she do that?” Ildaria’s eyes were wide.

Karolina cleared her throat. “No, of course not. Not everyone did! Enough, sure. We all know the quote-unquote horror stories.”

The crew listened, rapt, having stopped flipping through albums and poking around the bookcases, eager to hear something explosive. They had set out to make a documentary about a particular time and place. The Den at the turn of the century was their subject. That glorious decade solidified its place in celebrity culture, to say nothing of its place in music history. The princess was just a footnote in that story. Nonetheless, it was a tantalizing footnote. Most people below a certain age were shocked to hear that she hadn’t been a humorless, buttoned-up bureaucrat her entire life. The idea that someone whose day job involved keeping the country afloat may have once been young and reckless intrigued. That she was adjacent to the salacious stories of sex, drugs, and rock and roll they knew better nearly crossed the line into unbelievable. Yet, people in Uspana also knew their royals had been wrapped up in the glamor of celebrity for decades. Even now, they continued to rub elbows with rock stars, including the one elder princess who was herself a music star.

“She’s a different person now, clearly,” Karolina continued. She spoke tentatively still but nonetheless addressed what everyone wanted to know. “But, for a time, she was at The Den with everyone else, drinking too much and carrying around a pharmacy in whatever cute purse you had that night. You may remember there was a big Reyes death around then. It’s like—when my mother died in 2009, I lost my shit, too.”

Karolina shrugged again. “She was having fun. I was doing worse, alright, so I only feel judgmental about it insofar as she’d probably be embarrassed if you asked her about any of it today. Royals are supposed to do their sniffing in private, right, not in a bathroom Renzo forgot to hire someone to clean. She was snobby, but my sense was that she liked pretending she wasn’t—roleplay, you know, transgressing or whatever.”

Someone coughed. The rifling through materials resumed. Ildaria and Eilo shared a look.

“You haven’t talked to her since ‘92?” Ildaria asked. Eilo, meanwhile, had pulled out his cell phone and was typing with fast fingers.

Karolina shook her head. “So, she knew I’d asked Renzo to let me collect photos and bring along my Zenith. I got a weird email in 2000 inquiring about them from someone who worked for her.” She grinned, then added as an aside, “Only one recording, by the way. The Den had a strict no video policy.”

“We’d like to see them sometime,” Ildaria responded.

Karolina nodded, then shook her head and clarified, “Which—my tapes or the email?”

Eilo answered without looking up, “Both.”

He finished what he was doing after a moment of quiet, then held his phone up for Ildaria and Karolina to see. “Seems like she’s still in touch with people,” he said.

They leaned forward to view the screen while he swiped at it, then Karolina laughed. “Okay, maybe she just didn’t like me!”

While they watched, Eilo moved through a hastily thrown together slideshow of the princess with various people Karolina knew well. Some looked like event photos. Others were captured with long lenses—paparazzi shots that made money but didn’t always generate enough interest if the other person was a comparative nobody. Not everyone had evolved in the last thirty years. Plenty of people who visited the bar during the decade of Renzo’s ownership continued to have flourishing careers. They were, at the time, young and beautiful and painfully unprepared for the lifetime of celebrity ahead of them. That’s what they brought to this place more than anything: their pain, which, being creative types, they eagerly spun into something beautiful and private.

That’s what The Den gave them. These impossibly talented, dedicated stars created fleeting things for each other and no one else. Bands and dance troupes formed. An endless stream of songs and poetry and performance art kept the bar’s little stage occupied nightly for years. Offstage, people with no reason to meet in the real world bonded in this space of both contrived and undeniable intimacy. For some, the reprieve helped them endure the difficulty of becoming that invariably attended a rise in fame. It was detrimental to others. These were the ones who didn’t evolve—people who gave up their relevance to live forever in this meaningless, generative privacy or people who couldn’t make the choice and lost everything in the process.

Karolina hadn’t evolved, but she hadn’t died or wanted to die either. From her perspective, what people like the princess and even Renzo himself had done wasn’t evolution. It was more like a revelation. People don’t change, she would tell Eilo and Ildaria later, over dinner, when the conversation had moved far away from the royal footnote. She believed people just uncover deeper truths about themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, and those became harder to conceal once they were exposed.

Have you felt that way before? she asked them. Exposed, like when you break your leg so hard the bone snaps right through your skin? They had. The conversation detoured to childhood misadventures, but Karolina had a point to make. She pulled them back. Some people get comfortable with that feeling and learn how to live in it. Other people, you know, they deny and lie and call it growth. That’s my opinion. I’ve seen it—artists are the worst for it, I swear. Artists who don’t want to be artists anymore? Worse than that.

Can I say you sound bitter? Ildaria laughed.

Now, Karolina threw her hands up. She exclaimed, joyful, That’s my truth, baby! I took too many bites of the world, and I’ve been disgusted by it ever since. Some people come out of their mamas malcontent.

Later that night, Eilo was exhausted, but Ildaria’s hand hovered over the light switch with uncertainty. She heaved a big, put-upon sigh, then asked, “Is it bad that I want to give Mencia Cipac a call?”

“Give her a call?” Eilo snorted. “Sure, Mencia Cipac, whose number you totally have, definitely won’t ignore your calls because she, for sure, knows who you are and has endless free time to spare.” He sat up straighter, then added, “No more overloading on projects. You promised. Besides, you don’t wanna poke that bear.”

“Not a bear,” Ildaria retorted. “A jaguar. Roar!”

TRANSCRIPT:

KAROLINA | Have a look. I'm ready when you are.

RENZO (O.S.) | Get that thing out of here, Karolina!

ILDARIA | Can you tell us about her?

KAROLINA | Sure. What's she going to do, sue me? CAMERAMAN | Maybe.

KAROLINA | I'll take the risk.

KAROLINA | Look, I don’t know Princess Leonor, but I met her plenty of times. She was at The Den at least half the nights in 1991, for sure. Probably into 1992, but I didn’t really keep track of her comings and goings. Definitely not after 1993

EILO | What's the story here?

KAROLINA | It wasn't anything formal.

KAROLINA | Renzo didn’t date anyone in those days, and I don’t think she did either. They liked each other. It was mutual fascination with zero understanding, is how I saw it. They hung out—liked each other’s company. Hot and fast, burned out quick, that’s what it looked like. That was Renzo.

ILDARIA | And Leonor?

KAROLINA | Like I said, I didn't know her. Seemed like a cool girl. I’m older, mind you. I think she wanted to get a little wild and try new things—this is off the record—and The Den was for her what it was for everyone. You could kick your shoes off. Scream along to your buddy’s new song, have a movie star tell you his woes while he pours your drink, get high in the dressing room and probably be fine—

ILDARIA | Did she do that?

KAROLINA | No, of course not. Not everyone did! Enough, sure. We all know the quote-unquote horror stories.

KAROLINA | She's a different person now, clearly. But, for a time, she was at The Den with everyone else, drinking too much and carrying around a pharmacy in whatever cute purse you had that night. You may remember there was a big Reyes death around then. It’s like—when my mother died in 2009, I lost my shit, too.

KAROLINA | She was having fun. I was doing worse, alright, so I only feel judgmental about it insofar as she’d probably be embarrassed if you asked her about any of it today. Royals are supposed to do their sniffing in private, right, not in a bathroom Renzo forgot to hire someone to clean. She was always a snob, but I my sense was that she liked pretending she wasn’t—roleplay, you know, transgressing or whatever.

ILDARIA | You haven't talked to her since '92?

KAROLINA | So, she knew I’d asked Renzo to let me collect photos and bring along my Zenith. I got a weird email in 2000 inquiring about them from someone who worked for her. Only one recording, by the way. The Den had a strict no video policy.

ILDARIA | We'd like to see them sometime.

KAROLINA | Which—my tapes or the email?

EILO | Both.

EILO | Seems like she's still in touch with people. KAROLINA | Okay, maybe she just didn’t like me!

ILDARIA | Is it bad that I want to give Mencia Cipac a call?

EILO | Give her a call?

EILO | Sure, Mencia Cipac, whose number you totally have, definitely won’t ignore your calls because she, for sure, knows who you are and has endless free time to spare.

EILO | No more overloading on projects. You promised. Besides, you don’t wanna poke that bear.

ILDARIA | Not a bear. A jaguar. Roar!

#ts4 story #sims story #sims 4 story #royal sims #simblr #ts4 legacy #1992.story.post #1992.a1 #1992.e04

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nexility-sims · 3 months ago

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𝐍𝐎. 𝟏𝟎 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | NAKAWE, OCTOBER 1991

❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

The costume party’s aftermath—and it had, finally, been confirmed to have been a costume party, a basic clarification that quieted some of the clamor around the princess’s attire—reinvigorated interest in the last several months of Leonor’s life. A disastrous spectacle had that kind of effect. It made observers ravenous, and they scavenged the bones of past controversy even after the latest scandal was picked clean. Old news received new scrutiny. Yesterday’s gossip, gossip from six months ago, took on a whiff of freshness by association. And, it was impossible to talk about Leonor’s unprecedented behavior without calling the obvious trigger for it all by name. No one actually talked about Safya, however, because they wanted to talk about Renzo instead.

❧ i've had this scene in my head for a long time, and i am just ... i love the domesticity of it ! i love the juxtaposition of beatriz doing serious policy homework while she watches garbage television, mocking matias in one breath and calling him a genuine term of endearment in the next,

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

No one actually talked about Safya, however, because they wanted to talk about Renzo instead.

He was a man in triplicate: the evocative film actor to whom Uspana’s culture critics were warming thanks to an unexpected performance with international acclaim; the subdued, even sedated, interviewee whose quiet remarks revealed his humble upbringing; the tempestuous, aggrieved celebrity whom cameramen provoked in the streets. Popular attention focused on the latter without fail, and this predilection went into overdrive once he acquired an unlikely sidekick. They might have imagined their princess attached to other versions of him, smiling at film premieres and taking a sudden interest in arts patronages. It was astonishing to see her consumed instead by the one they knew best.

How had she so quickly and thoroughly become part of this sensational scene—become comfortable clinging to the worn sleeve of his jacket while he shouted at photographers, offering them vacant and conciliatory smiles as she wobbled on foal’s legs. It was astonishing, and it was thrilling. Very few saw the sight firsthand, but published pictures and televised clips made, for the masses, an introduction. Abbreviated in the tabloid headlines where she now lived, Princess Leonor, their heir’s heir, their queen’s “little shadow,” had become “Princess L.” Respectable outlets still reported on her work alongside her uncle. Yet, Uspanians didn't much care. They were far more likely to see Princess L., illuminated by flashbulbs and inseparable from the man her aides refused to call anything other than “a friend.”

Daytime programming uncorked these discussions and asked the questions neither straight newscasters nor late night hosts could truly entertain. Foresa led that pack for a reason. Her show was entertaining, but she invited Uspana’s midday viewers to join her conversation as if she were an aunt pontificating in their living room instead of a stranger on a screen. Laughing and ribbing her studio audience, she kept the tone light and playful. Her words themselves were flippant and careless and cutting—“a mishandled knife,” one of those culture critics had once said of her. A callous aunt attacking a neighbor might rub her relatives the wrong way, but Foresa’s targets were fair game. Shaming only went so far with the nation’s richest and most powerful, but it did make her humble viewers feel good.

Queen Beatriz was no humble viewer, but she was a faithful one. Her schedule made it impossible to watch Foresa during her recurring daytime slot, but the queen had been one of the first people in the country to acquire home taping devices in the 1970s; she watched VHS recordings of daytime talk shows in the evening, preferring it to dignified evening news and late night comedy hours. Although her family knew well of her interest, the world of daytime television only had vague, unsettling hunches. Beatriz had met Foresa at a party once but pretended to have no idea who she was or what she did. It was plausible. She was still clawing her way out of obscurity at the time, trying to convince her channel executives that 1988 would be her year. At the end of the conversation, Beatriz commented innocuously on a segment in last airing. Foresa stood red-faced and silent as the queen abruptly walked away.

She didn’t share her relatives’ discomfort with the shows, but Beatriz understood it. They all had thick skin. They were not, however, the kind of masochists who enjoyed hearing dozens of voices laugh while a nobody bullied them by name. Or, they had more discipline than that. Whatever curiosity they had, they stamped it out to protect themselves. If it was worth knowing, it would come summarized in a report the next morning. Beatriz didn’t fall into those traps either. What she had was a perverse ability to laugh along with the cruelty. She was shameless. No one said anything she wouldn’t say herself, but their room of writers and impeccable comedic timing ensured it was much funnier. That was what their queen wanted at the end of a long work day. She put her tired, abused feet into comfortable slippers, curled up with briefings for the next day of work, and pushed in a tape. She wanted to be entertained—to have light made of problems that aggravated and vexed, to be given permission to exist outside of her role as matriarch.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Television intro music]

FORESA (O.S.) | The royal experts are saying it’s a “suffocation” method. What an exciting term! And for something so boring. They’re just shutting up and hoping we all forget. The fire metaphor does suit the drama, I must say. I’d like to do my PR with that kind of flair.

FORESA (O.S.) | Anyway, look, I want to talk about them. That’s right. Because there is a “them,” isn’t there? You know it. We love it. Why be so coy—[Audience reacting] That’s what I’m saying! Come on, lovebirds.

FORESA (O.S.) | He’s had a good publicist for the last six months or so—her doing?—and this Sharon Greenwater—she’s Simerican, too, I guess—refuses to say a word. What’s he paying her for? To say “We’re waiting for the right project” or “He wasn’t charged for that, actually,” over and over again? [Audience laughs] Meanwhile, Princess L.’s been mute, too! So, we don’t know. Really, we don’t, but we can spec—

BEATRIZ | Do we know? MATIAS | Know what? About—? Ah. Well, she doesn’t talk about it—not to me. When she answers my calls, oh, it’s exactly what you’d expect. BEATRIZ | No, we don’t speak on the telephone. What does that mean?

MATIAS | Reticent, I suppose. I gather she doesn’t want me to worry, and she doesn’t want to be honest about things that she imagines I would find objectionable. Which, I do find that unfortunate, because I like to think that I’ve always tried to be— BEATRIZ | Uh huh.

FORESA (O.S.) | We always get these fun photos of them out and about. Doesn’t it just make you jealous? If I got hit with a flashbulb at one o’clock in the morning, on the way out of a party, no less, I wouldn’t look that cute! [Audience laughs] Eightieth birthday party, actually! Renzo Ledford is friends with the Josèp Amador. Small world, huh?

BEATRIZ | I like him. MATIAS | [scoffs] Of course you do. BEATRIZ | It makes sense to me. He’s real. Arturo? I did not get that.

FORESA (O.S.) | —thinking that we might get our royal wedding after all! Of course, I’m sure she’ll be wearing some kind of trashy sheer mini dress instead of a princess ball gown—and mini dresses, on a girl with legs like that? Someone break the bad news to her—and he wouldn’t wear nice patent leather shoes if his life depended on it, but still—

BEATRIZ | A man like that is not joining this family. MATIAS | What, now you wouldn’t have him? BEATRIZ | Ah, ah. He wouldn’t have us.

BEATRIZ | There are always contingency plans. A page from the Blanca playbook, I would think: stint at the Bancroft Center, cry for Inti Rivera at six o’clock, out to pasture, a foal or two— MATIAS | Birdie …

BEATRIZ | If you think your “help” is working, fine. Foresa is right. Still, oh, maybe she’s the exact same little girl—not a damaged orphan of a woman, like she seems—and is just waiting for old, gentle, credulous grandfather to make it all better. One more awkward phone call ought to do it. Doubtful but, well, it’s not my time to waste, is it?

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