Kiss of Death, or the Limerence MMBC to give it its categorical title, is one of the Murder Mystery Bacheloret Challenges - and one of the few if not only to make the bacheloret have a genuinely evil hand in proceedings. Run by socialjusticesimblr, it can be read from the beginning here
.
Like Max Chambers before them, Amelia Ruth Limerence has fallen into and out of relationships many a time; but they can't honestly say they have ever been in real, true love before. That all changes when a certain Sim walks into the BC house... and when Amelia decides that they must ensure that this Sim is the one who wins the project, at whatever cost.
Deaths and Survivors (spoilers)
- Cecily Medicinski - electrocution
- Sunflower Donovan - drowning
- Poppy Citrus - stuffed in a fridge
- Mercury Lust - hanging
- Rose Quartz Ostkaka - Haunting Curse (sort of)
- Reef Seamount - risin poisoning
- Lidon Butler - strangulation
- Virgo Posset - being beaten with a whack-a-mole hammer
- Pacifica Pines - blown up by a fortune cookie maker
- Clarke Burritt - broken neck in an elevator shaft
- Rosy Cinnamon Twist - public decapitation / execution
- Neon Phosphor - fire
- Laurel Forest, winner - slit throat
- Nora Luck Bloom, murderer - stabbed
- Amelia Ruth Limerence, bacheloret - counter-stabbed
This MMBC provides examples of:
- April Fools Episode: One, in the middle of the final suspicion poll. Turns out the murderer was actually Rosy Cinnamon Twist, Cecily Medicinski, Lidon and Quartz, Bianca Moraine, Narion Oroma Goodland, Lilavati Rebecca Chhabra, Max Chambers, and/or Prax Freitas. Who knew?
- Beta Couple: Lidon Butler and Rose Quartz Ostkaka, who officially became romantically linked as soon as both parties were dead partly due to
popular demand. They later got Character Blogs to flirt with each other more, and got engaged while moonlighting in a separate project.- Virgo Posset and Clarke Burritt also fall into this, though Virgo attempts to defy it, on the grounds that what happened with the former two might have set a precedent. She's right.
- Bus Crash / Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: The murderer from the author's previous project, Chambers MMBC, is announced to have died in prison late into Episode 6. The same newscast also confirms a Relationship Upgrade between the bachelor and the winner of that project.
- The Butler Did It: Averted with Lidon - mind, he is technically a butler in name only; his actual occupation is the Terrible Trivium.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- In Episode 6, Amelia returns from the shops with frozen hotdogs for the contestants to bake and (though they try to gloss over this) castor beans. The murderer later slips the crushed beans into someone's meal in Episode 9 to give them risin poisoning.
- In Episode 8, some of the contestants dig up a fortune cookie machine from a nearby scrap pile, which others read fortunes from. The machine then forms the basis of Episode 18's challenge, and subsequently Episode 19's death.
- Dark Reprise: Amelia sings a refrain from 'The Shoop Shoop Song' in the opening teaser, and sings another part of the song in the same tone in Episode 24 while preparing to secure their love once and for all.
- Dark Secret: Mercury Lust and Sunflower Donovan. The details never do come out.
- Depth of Field: Amelia throwing the camera to a wall causes its lenses to crack and prevents its depth of field from properly adjusting. This remains like that for the rest of the episode and serves to obscure the murderer's identity.
- Disappeared Dad / Missing Mom: Amelia's mom and dad broke up a couple of years after their birth. The dad went on to court and marry another man, Maus, but he disappeared before Amelia's thirteenth birthday, as they explain in Episode 16. They later see him again... in Valhalla.
- Entitled to Have You: Amelia.
- Foreshadowing: Of the unintentional kind. As with all winners, the object of Amelia's obsession was not determined ahead of time - but knowing that that object is Laurel Forest still makes Amelia's earlier gravitation to them and the rapidity with which they climb the ranks seem very... apposite.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every odd episode is named after ways of saying 'I love you' in various languages, while every even episode is named after types of kiss.
- Interactive Narrator: Narrator, who performs the same function as Rep from Chambers.
- Heel–Face Turn: It later turns out that Narrator actually is that same Rep - after almost letting Max die, Narrep realized how cruel its actions were, and attempted to stop the Limerence 'BC' from falling to the same fate, to no avail...
- Meaningful Name: Limerence is another way to describe love or infatuation that has obsessive elements to it.
- Military Brat: Clarke Burritt, through a living father. Nora Luck Bloom, through a dead one. ...ostensibly. Clarke uses his connections with his dad to disprove the latter's claims.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Good lord, Virgo...
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The deaths of all parties involved with the MMBC results in the creation of Valhalla, a separate afterlife from the rest of the underworld where all murder victims are sent from then on. This backbone of an apocalypse challenge sets in motion Amelia's Redemption (both literally and character-wise), and the lack of ghosts being able to come up to the surface affects many MMB Cs going forward.
- Painting the Fourth Wall: when Amelia throws the camera at the wall after realizing their love, there is a large shattered crack across it for the rest of the episode, with broken Depth of Field, to obscure the identity of the murderer as they are talking to them.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Nora takes a work from Sara Teasdale and passes it off as her own in the poetry challenge.
Word of God says this is a reference to a similar event in the fifth St Clare's book. - Shown Their Work: regarding the aforesaid risin poisoning and its effects. Especially regarding the weight loss and jaundice - through Episodes 10 to 12, Reef Seamount is gradually seen getting thinner and more yellow in certain shots.
- Special Effects Failure: the note on the wall in Episode 8. The author had not yet mastered the art of perspective shots...
- Taking You with Me
- Trash the Set: The bulk of the MMBC ends with Amelia and their murderer burning the house in which it took place to the ground, taking Neon with it.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Cecily Medicinski.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Nora pulls this off in Episodes 22 through 23, in a direct nod to Charlie doing it in the previous project... however, she manages to go one better by actually making it look like someone concretely tried to harm her, rather than leaving it vague as to who. It still doesn't work any better for her than it did for him.
- Yandere: Amelia. Of the 'subtle manipulations' variety, though they aren't necessarily above getting their hands dirty.
VALHALLA
FOLKVANGR
NEVER SHOULD
R E P E R C U S S I O N S
