missing fictional characters

First the downstairs hallway. Not much to be said about it: There's a small console to the side for keys and mail and a mat by the door for shoes, plus some plants to make it look a little nicer. Imagine there are family pictures in the frames over the stairs. (I gotta say I do love love the retro vibes of the door though.)

Next up is the den. While half the reason the living room is open concept is the imagined age of the house, this room is the other half. Before I started this, I wasn't sure if there was a difference between a living room and a den, so when Neil heads to the den to sleep at the end of tfc I imagined him heading to some sort of living room space - and then thought it would be nice if there was a direct line of sight to the front door where Andrew was on the porch, keeping an eye on the others, so that Neil isn't fully removing himself from the small family moment they're all having. But since I wanted to be accurate I googled it, and turns out I'm wrong. However, since the den is at the front of the house you kind of have a view on the driveway from the recliners, so the hc is somewhat intact ;)

Also the octagonal shape of the room half killed me because it made the roof all weird and that influenced the upstairs bathroom and it was a whole thing. But I was looking around the game neighborhood for inspiration for the outside and saw this octagonal front room and fell in love, so I had do it. For the furniture it's canon that there are at least two recliners, and I imagined it to be this smaller secondary family room/computer room, hence the small, old TV and desk. The computer is probably a little older than would be realistic, but I couldn't bring myself to give them the imo even more unrealistic tower with a flatscreen monitor, so it is what it is. The Sims 4, despite not being that new, is pretty bad with 2000s era furniture.

Then we have the infamous downstairs bathroom and the probably most detailed description of anything in the house. The window sits between the shower and the sink and is frosted. Unfortunately that isn't an option in the sims, so I put up some shades. But otherwise it's a pretty small and simple room.

The living room was a lot of fun. I tried to make it colorful because I feel like Nicky would try to make it look cheerful, and it's also where we have some of the biggest mixing of aesthetics. On the one hand there's an old cabinet, but then we also have some Billy bookshelves and a very cluttered Lack coffee table (side note why tf do I know all of these Ikea names?) and the most 2000s standing lamp in the back (I swear we had one of these). The armchairs I feel like are something picked up from a yard sale while the couch is more new. The fireplace is original to the house. And then of course there is a hi-fi system in the back. In game that's just a record player, I think, but realistically they would have at the very least a cd and casette player on top of that.

Next is the kitchen, which in my original draft was included in the open living plan, but that felt too open, so I changed it to an archway (in addition to changing the layout some). The cabinets are very old, the fridge and stove very basic and clunky, and I feel like that sort of glass dining table is a very 2000s thing (although I may be wrong about that). Now looking at the screenshots I think the chairs might be a little too contemporary, but I'm not about to go back and change anything. It's a very yellow room, but it fits with the generall blue/green/yellow color scheme I mostly went for with the house. Cheerful but in a pretty inoffensive way. This room is also the only one where I used some CC, because I just had to have a wall phone and the Sims 4 just does not have older technology.

And for the last downstairs room we have Nicky's bedroom. This is one of my favorite rooms in the whole house, and it came together so easily once I had the bed picked out, it was really fun. This is the most color in all of the house, which I felt fits Nicky, and then I went for this sort of hybrid adult/teen aesthetic because he's sort of caught in that transition phase. On the one hand we have a cleaner look, a framed painting, centered bed, nothing too messy despite the loud colors, but then in the corner we just have the pride flag and some posters taped to the wall in a way that looks very leftovers from a teen/young adult phase. Also please imagine there is a picture of Erik in the photo frame in that corner.

Then we're moving upstaris with a very uninspiring first look at the hallway. Nothing really here, a hall closet and a plant but otherwise not much effort put in here. I do wanna say that in reall life the measurements of the house would be a lot different and so this space would probably be smaller (i tried to make it so with the closet, but it still feels a little big)

The upstairs bathroom(s) unfortunately suffered from the roof that sits around it, making it take up more space than I wanted it to. I think realistically it would all be one big room, with the laundry next to the showertub combo and the toilet beside the double sink, but because that would have been too little going on for the size the room would have taken up in game, I split it up into a separate toilet, laundry in the hallway extension, and then the bathroom with the tub and the double sink. I do like the decals in the toilet room, I think either those are leftover from previous owners of the house and Nicky refused to take them down or he put them up in order to make the room look a little less boring and the twins absolutely hate them. I also really like the brown color scheme of the tiles, it looks very old fashioned and I like that.

And lastly the twins' bedrooms. First up, Aaron: I picked green and black for the color scheme and then the very light wood color that all of this very basic Ikea furniture comes in to lighten up the room somewhat. The layout is also very open, so that the black doesn't come across as too oppressive. Here we also again have like on the one hand some framed prints to seem a little more sophisticated mixed with just posters put up over the desk. I went with a gamer theme for those, which given the canon presence of a gaming console (not pictured in the living room) felt right. Like obviously it belongs to all of them, probably, but also if I had to pick who uses it the most that's Aaron. Also making these rooms I developed this hc that the beanbags in the dorm are just taken from the twins' rooms, so I made sure to give each of them one.

And last but not least, probably my favorite room in the house because I'm biased af: Andrew. I legit got a little emotional furnishing this because I love him and it was so fun to imagine what his room would look like. The main color is obviously black, and the basic furniture is all the same as in Aaron's room, just in a black swatch. The whole thing imo teeters between cozy and overwhelming, and the layout certainly adds to that with the Kalax separating the room instead of being shoved to the side. But when I put the furniture down before moving it to its intended places I sort of just had it standing there and it felt right. I'm not sure if in actuality Andrew would dislike not being able to see the door or if he would prefer having an obstacle like that between the bed and door, but I do like the effect it creates. Then we got this punching bag which I also felt he probably would appreciate, and lastly in my head the red wall is because Nicky put his foot down on painting the whole room black and so Andrew picked the most aggressive, terrible red just to be contrarian (but it does match with some of the posters and the punching bag and everything). Also over both of the twins' beds is the closest the game has to glow in the dark stars, which I imagine Nicky put up and while they complain that they're not little kids they actually do love those a lot.

And finally some close ups of some areas/details that I loved putting together:

As for whether or not he deserved to die... I think that's a far more complicated question, and I don't think there's a clear right answer. Was he a victim? Yes. But was he also a violent abuser? Undeniably, yes. Did he deserve someone like Wymack to give him a second chance? Arguably, yes, but he does not seem interested in second chances. By the time he appears in the series, he's already past the point of saving because he does not seem to want to get better. That's the tragedy of his character. Maybe, if help had come in time, when he was younger, he could have been saved.

But help never came, and so he never got the chance before it was too late.

In my opinion, he deserved what he got in the end. He murdered Seth, he orchestrated Andrew's rape twice (once with Drake and again with Proust) and Jean's (at the hands of other Ravens, per what Nora explained in the EC). He also tortured Neil and Jean, he nearly beat Jean to death, and he maimed Kevin's hand. Those are multiple acts of violence and cruelty which are arguably unforgivable.

Some will argue that the Foxes are guilty of similar acts (Andrew's murder of Tilda, Aaron's murder of Drake, The Monsters drugging Neil, Andrew choking Allison, etc) but I think a lot of those arguments are ignoring both the motives and the scale of what was done. Drake and Tilda were killed because the twins wanted to protect each other. The Monsters drugged Neil because they needed to find out if Neil was a threat to Kevin. Andrew choked Allison because he was triggered by her hitting Aaron and wanted to protect his brother. So yes, while their actions were violent and often morally wrong, they were born out of a desire to protect each other.

In Riko's case, his motive was simple: he could not bear being anything less than number one. He took pleasure in the suffering of others and exerting power and control over them. Even if his reasons for doing so are somewhat sympathetic (i.e. the need to be acknowledged by his father and older brother), in my opinion that does not justify anything that he did.