Slaughter or Salvage, or the Kessler Maurer MM BC to give it its categorical title, is one half part of the Murder Mystery Bacheloret Challenges and one half a regular bachelorette challenge. While there are two bachelorettes, one half is safe from death, while the other half is not.
The BC half is run by Lorelei Kessler: a quite-tall biracial autistic girl with a passion for music, especially classical, and issues with social anxiety. The MMBC half is run by Lyra Maurer: a transfemoral amputee (in both senses of the word 'trans') who has walked this walk before and lived to tell the tale. The two have been best friends for months, to the point where they couldn't imagine finding their respective true loves without each other... but despite all the precautions taken, someone still finds a way to spread death through the project, by keeping it contained to Lyra's side. Who is Lethe? Why the laser focus to one side in particular? And how many skeletons can one closet contain?
Run by socialjusticesimblr, it can be read from the beginning here
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Deaths and Survivors (spoilers)
Lorelei Kessler
- Emily Trophy (eliminated conventionally)
- Troy Cranberry (eliminated conventionally)
- Ginerva Ebonywood (eliminated conventionally)
- Toby Hale - hit over the head with a guitar
- Kira Raines (eliminated conventionally)
- Eden Lee Tisdale
- Lavandar Ink, winner
- Scott Barley - drowned post-head-trauma
- Catherine Axiom - stabbed
- Katya Solokovski - poisoning by botched elixir
- Cornelia Faust - frozen in a fountain
- Lilith Matel - throat slit
- Percy Fairbairn
- Felicity Rose, winner... and murderer
This MMBC provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Estelle. Lavandar's parents also fall under this category, though she is even less inclined to talk about it than Lorelei is, and that's saying something. Ginerva and Felicity don't have them to the same intense degree, but they do put their children under a tight regime and the impression that she's not what they want her to be respectively; Percy was also subject to them, but for whatever reason this has been comparatively downplayed.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: averted... except for Lavandar Ink. As the only Berry in the project, her light purple skin and hair stand out.
- Amicable Exes: Parts of Episodes 12 and 13 reveal that the two bachelorettes dated for a couple of months, but they realized they clicked better as friends. Ginerva seems genuinely bewildered by this.
- Arc Words: "I can be good", or variants - Lorelei asking if she is being or doing good.
- Beta Couple: Lilith Matel and Ginerva Ebonywood, potentially. Said potential was lost in Episode 19.
- Book Ends: The challenge begins (in the Pre-Prelude Prelude) and ends (in the Coda) with Lyra appearing as a guest on in-universe talk show SlapSplash.
- Breather Episode: 20. No challenges, no fear of death in a meta sense - just contestants hanging out with their opposite bachelorettes having a good time before eating out.
- Call-Back: A particular scene in the second intermission makes intentional parallels to a similar scene at the end of Episode 7. In both, Lorelei / Melody breaks down emotionally as a result, but the key difference is in how Lyra handles it versus how Estelle, her own mother, handles it.
- Calling Card: The notes that Lethe has left at every death scene, each with varying degrees of usefulness. Noted by Lilith as being an oddity when it comes to projects like this; ordinarily the killer makes no such attempt at communication with their bachelorets.
- Catapult Nightmare: Lyra in the first intermission.
- Character Focus: For Episodes 13 through 15, Lyra is absent in person from the BC house on account of getting her to-her-necessary surgery. This means that Lorelei gets the chance to prove she can run things just as well on her own, even if she doesn't believe it in herself at first.
- Deaf Composer: Literally, Cornelia Faust. Eden Lee Tisdale too, though more at photography and cooking than composing. In a more metaphorical sense, Katya Solokovski is a dancer inhibited by chronic pain, and Lilith a hairdresser limited by cerebral palsy and a tendency for seizures.
- Fairest of Them All: The crux of Episode 16's challenge, by way of a Magic Mirror.
- Fiery Redhead: Lyra.
- Finger in the Mail: Elias's
- Fingore: The person taking the finger off used their teeth. And Felicity had to hear the whole process...
- Halloween Cosplay: The end of Episode 17 features what remains of the cast in this, albeit during an Imagine Spot. Costumes of choice include Lorelei as Princess Tiana, Kira as a Snake Person, and
Felicity as Princess Peach. - Hijacked by Ganon: Or Bowser, so to speak - the Sim behind the Lethe turns out to be Cathy Baines, of the Baines MMBC Trilogy.
- Hollywood Autism: Averted. Different degrees and manifestations of autism crop up across characters: Lorelei herself, Emily Trophy, Lavandar, Lilith, Ginerva to an extent, Jase Wilkerson, and his brothers Deacon and Lauro.
- Many of the autistic characters are also given very specific and particular speech patterns... which, if all put in the same post or episode, can lead to a lot of 'Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic'.
- I Have Your Brother
- Instrument of Murder
- Long-Lost Relative: While not realized until her death, and technically not even then, in meta discourse it's no secret that Catherine Axiom is the forgotten/displaced daughter of Cecil Alexander, human form of the Senses Taker and surrogate parent of Lidon Butler.
- Musical Theme Naming: Meta/meta-ish examples. All episodes are named after musical terms, with their definitions provided; any leftover terms are recycled as names of the hypothetical children each eliminated contestant could have had with Lorelei. Even Lorelei herself is an example, both with her regular name (after a siren) and her old name, Melody.
- Dead Guy Junior: Other maybe babies are given the names of other Sims that are important to the makers... in Ginerva's case, Delano Jr.
- My Nayme Is: Lavandar, not Lavender.
- Mythology Gag: Lorelei's 'old' middle name is Vivian, which was the first name her .sim file was initially saved under.
- Never Suicide: Katya. Despite a history of suicidal thoughts and some worrying things said on the scene to the contrary, Lyra's adamant to Lilith that Katya didn't get herself killed deliberately by Lethe - "suicides don't happen in MMB Cs."
- Later subverted - the meta piece at the end of the finale reveals that Katya used the elixir on herself after Felicity refused to.
- Sadistic Choice: In the finale, Lethe pitches the following choice to each bachelorette - kill their best friend, or kill their winner/love. Naturally, Lyra stalls for time making said choice while they set up their escape, and her decision is never clarified.
- Scars Are Forever: Lavandar has a large burn scar across her face.
- Sequel: To the Angelo MMBC - Lyra is the sole survivor of that project, having been ejected midway through it. She is oddly surprised that Gabriel Angelo himself doesn't seem to be involved...
- Spell My Name With An S: Katya Solokovski, or Katya Sokolovski?
- Wham Line: "How did you find out her old name?!"
- "Kira already left."
