#paris escalus

Benvolio: "WHO SAYS ARRIVED IN THE BEDROOM???"

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Mercuti: "applying cheese to someone's forehead until their skull caves in-"

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Paris: "meow—I think I got scammed."

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Valentine: "me when I notice [name]'s extended family-"

Mercutio: "thats a weird way to say dick"

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Tybalt: "the only real type of bird is a french person"

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"are you surprised??"

"no, im not circumcised"

"when are you gonna fix that problem??"

"never. it's called an uncut gem."

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Romeo + Mercutio: "six sevennn"

Tybalt: "EIGHT."

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Romeo: "it fell on the table floor :("

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Mercutio: "guzzle it with diet coke"

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Romeo: "i guess im a little stupid, then."

Benvoli: "you're a little subaru??"

Mercutio: "YOU'RE A LESBIAN???"

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Tybalt: "whipping it and naenaeing like what are you a horse??

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Juliet: "You remind me of a twink horse."

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Mercutio: "oh my god feminine man you're a FEMBOY"

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Juliet: "if you're a 1920s femboy-"

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along with a few italian lit classics, the story/hood is going to take inspo from commedia dell'arte which is referenced a ton in the monty family tree! i already have an oc in the works who's based on one of the character archetypes from the genre (took a page out of ts2 devs' book and named him Lisandro Innamorati—i think you can guess which shakespeare char he's based on hehe) and plan on adding way more. overall, i really want to lean more into the italian aspects of vv bc i find the art from there very beautiful but i evidently have a loooot of research to do.

since vv obviously has some english influence, i'll deffo be stealing from the canterbury tales so expect some of that too. one of the families i'm brewing up is lit called the Canterbury family hmm

can't drop oc slop without mentioning my escaluses, definitely the most developed of all my oc fams rn… they take a lot of inspiration from the house of della scala (hist) but particularly the theme of fratricide because it's super interesting. prince is based on bartolomeo i della scala with his name technically being Bartholomew "Prince" Escalus. i don't have an exact reasoning for his nickname yet though the escaluses are ofc an old reigning family of veronaville who have tried and failed throughout history to reclaim any political power they once held. going back to the fratricide thing, let's just say he did have a much more successful older brother named Cangrande who mysteriously passed, turning prince from the escalus spare into the escalus heir.

he's really only based on bartolomeo so i could use his wife's name, who i've called Costanza "Stanza" Escalus, née Antiochia! obv her nickname is a reference to shakespeare's poem structure which i thought worked itself out.

i had the idea of prince having been rather emasculated throughout his life, being solely raised by the women in his family while his father focused all his attention on cangrande + being almost married off to the matriarchal family (and also being subjected to teasing, mockery, etc). sure this gave him daddy issues and significant resentment for his brother buuut he also developed a deep connection to his mother's culture whose traditions he continues to preserve within the family. i've brought up a bit about his and paris' heritage before but they have a mix of scottish, venetian, roman, japanese, and…magic in them. teehee.

i'd say i took a…unique…approach to paris. he's a rich, preppy, bisexual nerd, enamored with both juliette and tybalt capp—juliette is his #1 of course! (him and hermia actually dislike each other, i haven't decided why yet.) he's on the shyer/introverted side but will absolutely assert himself if he catches one of your mistakes. or if he wants to win an argument. he's also a realist to an extreme degree—he can't even read most fiction without it causing him migraines (he lacks the ability to suspend disbelief)—but ironically that pragmatism gets thrown out the window when it comes to his affections for the two capp siblings. really, when it comes to love in general…

paris' weird intellectual quirks stem from his magical lineage. similar to tybalt's super strength inherited from caliban, his sharp mind is all thanks to his great grandmother nox. this does mean that, compared to the capp siblings, the escalus magic is more “diluted”. regardless, neither set of kids is aware of the presence of anything supernatural in their respective bloodlines (prince might know, but wouldn't tell paris that).

i feel bad for subjecting you to that anon so here's a bit of my more canon-related hcs

tybalt does exercise every day, but caliban's magic manifested in him as a sort of enhanced strength, hence his 10 body points—without the magic he'd probably have 7; juliette inherited extremely quick reflexes which has helped tremendously in her video game ventures; and hermia gained abilities similar to what i usually give ophelia—a sort of necromancy. in my little mind (and i'd love to make a mod based on this idea), sims can normally only see ghosts when in complete aspiration failure, through the help of a medium, or other extreme conditions i suppose. but sims like hermia can actually see ghosts all the time and even interact with them.

consort hails from a very exuberant noble greek family who accidentally invoked the misfortune of the ancient house of thebes when claiming their name during his grandparents' time. they did this in attempts to seize the theban crown but were promptly run out of the country, seeking refuge in london, england. here, in 1928, consort was born as Lear of Thebe, his odd surname giving him a great deal of shame growing up. most embarrassing, though, were his parents' delusions of grandeur, believing they could still reclaim the throne their predecessors had been “robbed of”. for this, lear disdains his family and moved to verona in his 20s to escape them.

business-minded as he is, lear dedicated a lot of his time and effort into the capp company which contessa noticed and almost appreciated until it had begun to give him a leg up over her. while the capps are matriarchal, the world isn't and people valued his ideas over hers despite his inexperience in comparison. contessa was literally raised to lead, fluent first in the language of business, and yet her associates and employees alike viewed her husband as the one in charge. because of this, she began degrading him with one of the methods to this being referring to him as her Consort. she used this name so much that it eventually stuck; the only person that uses his real name nowadays is, ironically, patrizio monty.

contessa actually chose cordelia as heiress because she was least like her mother, scribonia. sure, both “fraternized” with the monty family to some extent, but cordelia was a genuine advocate for peace between the clans while scribonia merely settled on their unification to get the alto family's target off her back. the monty and alto families were allies back in the 1950s and when valentine relocated his family to verona, she used them as a token of peace, so to say. the plan was that valentine would marry one of his sons (patrizio) to the capps, and the other (pat's oc brother, alessio, who does take inspo from sonny corleone <3) to the altos, forcing a capp-alto alliance by making them in-laws or whatever the familial connection would be. because of her participation in this and her complete willingness to “give up” her daughter for this trade, contessa sees her mother as a fickle woman.