#casino shenanigans

[ask-mapletea]

Cursed

Maple ran out of cinnamon sticks and had to come to work with a straw-

<— Tallulah Tuesday

[nexility-sims]

i was randomly thinking about this shot while trapped at a stoplight just now … it might just be a masterpiece unto itself—! in any case, this middle post of the trio is one of my absolute favorites. epic highs, crushing lows, everything is fun and sexy …

[esteemed-excellency]

7 and 10 for hiram?

7. What is an aspect of their appearance that you like the most?

The silly little pencil moustache! It's a fundamental part of his design, it's simple, it's fun to draw, and it's very gender to me personally.

10. What is their main character arc in the story? Where do they start and how do they develop? Do they get a happy ending or is their story a tragic one?

(I wrote a bit about his earlier characterisation here, sharing the link to avoid making this post super long)

Hiram's main arc develops through his ambition and his attempts to save London. The ambition began from a need to have more time to figure out the Neath, and it became a gamble to secure the city's future. His curious nature is what plunged him into a corruption arc after the Fall, and what's fuelling his need to always strive for more, have more, achieve more. But none of this is possible if the eldritch powers that be declare his home and his existence illegal, and he's not planning to stick around just to witness everything drown in ammonia and melancholy in an unspecified future.

Currently, he's working with Hell to forge a Law that will raise London to the Surface again (as per the ending of the Season of Skies), indirectly supporting all revolutionary endeavours as a plan B, although he'd rather control the Laws than dismantle them completely. Just in case, he's also fomenting as much chaos as possible on a certain chessboard.

His plans will ultimately fail because he's slowly becoming increasingly obsessed with power and control, not trusting anyone other than himself to see the bigger picture. His goals are good, but his problem solving skills are just like him, too uncaring and self centred to achieve anything useful.

He'll really start to improve and let go of some of his ego after the fall of the 6th city, but not fast enough to prevent the fall of the 7th. He won't ever become a morally good or law abiding person, but he'll tone down the unhingedness, slowly realising that the ends cannot always justify the means. He'll end up finally saving Berlin in the Neon Future, one way on another. The headcanon is always a work in progress, it changes as new developments are introduced in game, and I consider the Neon Future to be an open ending for his arc.

Hiram is a fun oc, and he has a lot of silly moments, but he's fundamentally a tragic character. No matter how much he tries to control his own narrative, he's always in the throes of his desires, and things will have to get even harder for him to understand that he needs to change and improve his attitude in order to change and improve his surroundings. But he'll end up reluctantly dragged in a found family trope in the Neon Future, and the whole narrative genre will shift from tragedy to sitcom so yes, there's definitely a happy ending, albeit bittersweet (it includes Morgan's true death, amongst other things. @thunder-threnodies and me have a lot of future headcanons that we might or might not share sooner or later)

[brazenlystrong]

creative mode on

[perexcri]

will going on his casino run in las vegas: tired, overwrought, expected, hinted at by canon

will going on his casino run in biloxi: refreshing, exciting, unexpected, spits in canon's face, brings up more interesting questions (such as: wtf are you even supposed to do in a place like biloxi), implies that he couldn't afford to enact his fraud in las vegas and had to settle for somewhere else which adds both humor and interesting socioeconomic questions to the matter. oh also if he did it at the right time of year he'd get to go to a crawfish boil lol

[depressedraisin]

can’t believe no one has thought of making a limited series out of tranquility base hotel and casino yet

[wrestlezon]

we were JUST talking about this, like, "gosh who could possibly take the international championship off orange, i cant think of anyone left with international/cross-promotional experience who matches up w/ orange's reputation" and then moxley shows up :O

moxley!!!!!!!!! its perfect. wrestles everywhere and anywhere all the time? check. rules and is awesome? check.

also moxley has never fought orange in a 1v1 so that'll be super exciting to see!! :)c

[ask-mapletea]

Tallulah Tuesday

Happy Tallulah Tuesday- :3

<— Visitor

Cursed —>

[patrice-bergerons]

I sometimes wonder what Villiers (aka the young and dashing Tobias Menzies aka M's assistant in CR) got up to in the rest of his life.

He is replaced by (a similarly much younger Tanner) in QoS so did he just quit when he found out what happened with Le Chiffre, Bond being tortured, Vesper etc? (Was he already interviewing during CR??) I just imagine him sitting on his sofa watching the news, perhaps with a friend or partner, and whenever news coverage gets to some ridiculous international incident he has no doubt was caused by Bond, getting a distant look in his eyes and for a bone deep shudder.

We all have that one job that leaves us thinking fuck never again and I wonder whether that's what MI6 was to poor old Villiers. I wonder what industry he moved to after he left MI6.

[nyalternatehellkitten]

"I should be glad that when we started dating, he didn't decide to poke me there with a stick..."

She was this close to a tease.

[void-botanist]

Wrapped Scenelets No. 84: Marigold

I'm writing scenelets for (most of) my Spotify Wrapped top 100 songs. Here's number 84, Poker Face by Lady Gaga.

━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━

Marigold had one arm draped across the back of Lexie’s chair, acting the protective one but actually giving her an opportunity to silently send a signal: two taps to the waist. Lexie could feel the edible starting to kick in as she turned her eyes to the dealer. “Hit me.”

“If you’re sure,” the dealer said, and put down a three in front of her—just enough to make blackjack.

“Yus,” she said as she accepted her glut of chips. “Deal me another round.”

“Actually,” said someone from behind her, “we’re going to have to ask you to leave, Mx. Semilsstrom.”

She and Marigold turned as one unit with the swivel of the chair. Behind them were two security guards, looking a lot more intimating from here than they did wandering other corners of the floor.

“Why is that?” Marigold asked.

“Card counting.”

“Can I finish my drink first?” Lexie asked, holding up her half-full glass. “Just give me one second.” Without waiting for an answer, she chugged it, then bit into the cherry that was still on top the ice. Really, they shouldn’t throw her out because it was Marigold doing all the card counting, but she slid out of her chair anyway. She also resisted the urge to look back at her beautiful pile of abandoned chips as the security guards escorted them out the front doors.

Once they were out of view of the casino, Marigold reached over, splaying two chips in her fingers, one red, one white.

Lexie pulled back her browspots. “Did you steal those?” she whispered.

Marigold grinned. “A little memento.”

Lexie laughed and took the white one. “We should make them into necklaces.”

━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━

Scenelets wrapped taglist: @kk7-rbs

[fates-theysband]

the plot of canto 3 is also having this effect on me.

[the-autopsy-collective]

Look at all those big shots

[ak4rin]

twitter is such an unserious place like why would anyone draw this 😭

[cryptidofthekeys]

opp

guess who is going to a casino tomorrow

this guyyyy

im taking mr puzzles and Bob with me if i can if not I'll just take Puzzles-

[glow-waltz-alliance]

Another friday night -Cheese

How it started:

Me: Hey do you remember that post from yesterday?

How it is now: