#I like to think Dan is Chief of their police force | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

long-hot-stories · 27 days ago

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Married To A Goddess: Part 7

Dan gets played by Annabelle.

Based on a post by DustinMidnight, in 9 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.

She glanced at the license and asked the usual question,

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

“I was going 40…?” Dan ventured a guess, though he cursed under his breath because he hadn’t paying attention, with the combination of the unfamiliar muscle car and the sexy hitchhiker fantasy that had been occupying his brain. He couldn’t help checking out Annabelle the cop as she looked over the car registration.

The buttons of her uniform shirt looked to be straining against her breasts. That was when he noticed that her badge and the silver insignia on her collar read “HPD.”

He wondered what the “H” stood for. Some random town in the middle of wherever this was supposed to be?

“You were going 50 in a 35,” Annabelle informed him. “I’ll have to write you a ticket. But I need to check something first.” She turned around, revealing that she was wearing a very tight pair of leather pants, and her uniform shirt was short enough that he could see the waistband of a black pair of panties. Her round ass jiggled slightly as he watched her walk back to her squad car. Dan sighed and rubbed his temples.

“Annabelle, whatever you’re planning, he groaned. "Well, this is something.” He closed his eyes and got comfortable, leaning back into the driver’s seat. Within seconds, though, there was a tapping on the side of the car. He looked to see Annabelle standing there, arms crossed, which somehow made her breasts look slightly bigger.

“Please step out of the vehicle, sir.” Her voice was demanding, like she was ready to bust a few heads. As she tipped her sunglasses down, the annoyed look in her eyes told him that she meant business. Dan did as he was told, stepping out. He stood there, still taller than the goddess/cop, though she didn’t seem to care. She grabbed him by the arm, forcing him onto the hood of the car.

“You’re under arrest for being horny!” she declared. She slapped a pair of cuffs onto Dan’s wrists, and. His face twisted into pure confusion.

“Wait, what? What do you mean, I’m under arrest for being horny?” he protested.

“Yes, I saw your erection while you handed me your license. Under the power vested in me by the Horny Police Department, I have the right to bring you in for up to ninety days. You have the right to remain silent, but anything you and your body parts do can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

“Come on, this is ridiculous. Annabelle, is there any way I can get out of this?” Dan tried to move, but his wrists chafed against the cold steel cuffs.

“That’s Officer Allnight. First name Luvin’.” She growled and pointed to her “L. Allnight” name tag, then pushed him back down onto the hood. Her arm reached around and suddenly groped him.

“Hey, what’s the big deal?!” Dan called out as he grunted. She squeezed his balls. The kind of squeezing that hurt, yet at the same time felt really good.

“I’m assessing your hidden weapon, and preparing a statement for the chief,” she growled while continuing to squeeze Dan couldn’t help but moan lightly.

“Come on, there has to be something I can do! Can’t we talk about this?” Dan exclaimed as he felt her moving hand against his jeans, really getting a feel of his cock.

A smirk appeared on the face of Officer Allnight. “You’re willing to do anything, huh? Well, I might have an idea. Get in the back of my cruiser. I think I know what you can do for me, fucker.” Her voice was demanding as she showed pure control. Dan couldn’t help but feel turned on by this. She was being so much different from her usual self; more demanding, more in control. She wasn’t holding back.

“I’ll do anything,” Dan muttered, while biting his lips. Yes, this seemed to be exactly what Annabelle wanted to hear. Her hands reached down and squeezed his ass as she muttered,

“Get in my squad car, unless you want indecent exposure and ‘horny in public’ charges.” She laughed as she grabbed his shoulder, dragging him off. It was clear he didn’t have much of a choice in the first place.

Officer Allnight shoved him in the back seat of the police car, slammed the door, then moved to the front, got in, and made a big show of slowly putting on her seat belt. She had the rear-view mirror at a perfect angle for Dan to see how her breasts jiggled as the strap slid between them. He groaned, realizing her scent had permeated the inside of the car. She smelled so good, like honeydew on a warm summer morning. He felt his cock tighten against his pants. Whatever the goddess wanted from him, she would get it. Dan was truly string around her finger. The Impala would be abandoned on the side of the road, but really, was that a bad thing? Would anyone really notice? Probably not. That was how life went sometimes. The police car siren wailed, the lights flashing, brightly and they were soon off.

Officer Allnight drove them to a neon-accented motel, looking much like the one Dan had fantasized about earlier.

She pulled into a parking space in front of a room door and ordered, “Wait right here. I’ll come and get you,” she said, as if Dan had a choice. She crossed the parking lot to the motel’s front office, eventually coming back brandishing a room key. She opened the door to the police car and dragged Dan out by his shirt collar. He grunted, trying to move, but she held on tight.

“You better be a good boy and not tell anyone about this,” she warned.

“I won’t lose my badge over you being such a horny boy!” She got the motel room door open and pushed him inside. Dan stumbled a few feet across the carpet until he fell onto the bed. The door closed behind him, and he struggled to turn over, finally managing to do it and looking up to see Officer Allnight standing over him.

She growled, “Get your pants off.” She ripped her own uniform top off, buttons flying. It revealed a dark blue bra, her breasts being pushed up invitingly. Dan got his pants off as best he could with the handcuffs on, and the officer leaned over to efficiently finish the job, then ripped open his shirt the same way she’d handled her own. He sat on the bed in only his boxers. Annabelle, or Luvin Allnight, gave a sultry smirk as she took a deep breath, inhaling the musty odor of the air conditioner that was struggling to cool this cheap motel room.

“Hmm, good boy. Now turn around and get comfortable,” she purred. Dan gulped and nodded as he turned around, getting as comfortable as he could on the bed, propping himself on the pillow. He heard her walk over, then felt her getting on the bed behind him. She grabbed his ass, firmly spanking it. Dan grunted as she smacked his ass pretty hard.

That’s gonna leave a mark, he thought as he felt her slap him again. She moved over, her body pressing against him, as she muttered,

“Hmm, such a wonderful ass. And are you going to be a good boy?” Luvin licked the back of his neck as she rubbed her firm breasts against his back.

He croaked, “Yes.”

The Goddess cop moaned and said,

“Hmm, oh, yes, you’ll be fine, you naughty boy. Now I’ll teach you about being so horny.” She moved away, kissing his back. Dan groaned as he felt her under him, squeezing and lick his balls. Her tongue was wet, making tiny circular licks on his right testicle while massaging the other one. Fuck his cock, was feeling even harder. He wanted to buck back and forth, but Luvin had grabbed his hip, holding him in place. Dan was in the palm of her hand with no way of escaping.

Suddenly Dan felt a pressure against his ass, as he looked back as best he could.

“Annabelle!” he called out, realizing that she was pushing her middle finger against his ass.

Her smirk grew wider.

“That’s Officer Allnight to you, naughty boy.” She giggled as she pushed her finger against him. Dan groaned, feeling her finger penetrate him. She moved it back and forth while getting in closer to lick his shaft. Dan grunted harder as he felt his anus being fingered. The teasing way she twirled it and moved around as she sucked on the side of his cock felt like torture.

“Oh, relax, naughty boy. It’s like a prostate exam. I’m just gonna get the feel of your insides.” She winked and began slipping in a second finger.

“Oh, Goddess!” Dan groaned. It hurt like hell, but somehow he liked the feeling. Luvin was arching her finger, really poking against his prostate.

“Yeah, I bet you like that, huh? Don’t you, you naughty boy?” She chuckled, giving his ass cheek a slight kiss and biting it. Dan groaned and pressed his face against the pillow while feeling her biting down on him.

“Garrh,” Dan muttered as she sucked harder. Dan felt his balls and cock aching more, as she was pushing and rubbing his prostate.

That was when he heard her say,

“Now, you’re gonna be such a good boy, and let the good officer do what she needs, and if you do as I ask, I’ll even let that dirty horny cock off with only a warning.” She chuckled more.

Dan suddenly felt himself handcuffed to the headboard his face to the wall as he felt her slapping his ass once more.

“Wait, what are you? Hello!” Suddenly Dan let out a loud scream as he felt something bigger than fingers penetrating his ass. He felt it, long and hard, slide down into him and then begin pulling back. He turned around and saw Officer Allnight wearing what looked to be a long purple strap-on. Her hands were on his hips as she began to thrust, her hips moving back and forth as she let a sadistic smile run across her face and moaned.

“Oh, yes! Who’s the bitch now? Fuck,” She moaned, her hips slammed against his as she began taking him. He groaned hard as he felt his anus spread. His ass tried pushing her out, but it was no use as she kept pounding into him.

Officer Allnight chuckled as she slapped his hips, leaning down as she began humping his ass, her clit rubbing gently as she groaned hard. Her breasts rested on his back as she moved her right arm around, grabbing his cock and squeezing it gently before moving it back and forth.

“Hmm, so, fucking hard. That’s right, take my big fat cock, baby. And as a reward, I’ll let you return the favor,” she growled, pounding harder as she bit her lip.

“Jesus! Fuck, this hurt, but it feels amazing!” He grunted, his eyes closing tightly as he pushed back. Her hand was soft as her thumb started rubbing the head of his dick. Officer Allnight pushed faster as she moved faster. She was beginning to feel good. The bed under them was creaking louder while Dan was fighting off the upcoming orgasm.

“Fuck, Annabelle! I’m; I’m gonna.” He groaned harder, sweat running down his brow as he grasped the headboard that he was handcuffed to.

“Gahh, you like that! I bet you wanna?

It had been over a month later, as Annabelle was cleaning up. The fact was It was quite calming. Nothing had happened especially for a goddess. It seemed as though there would hardly be any deaths. Annabelle hadn’t even needed to deal with them, except for a few in the early hours.

So Annabelle was cleaning some things up. Particularly the tools, Gizzy had left behind a monkey wrench and a few sockets as she placed them in the draw. Rolling her eyes.

"Gizzy I swear if you weren’t so adorable I’d yell at you.” She muttered while moving on. Dan had gone off to work, and here she was cleaning up. Though in a way she was happy. Ruffling her feathers. It was days like this she felt mortal. Not sitting around doing nothing as worshipers did all the work. Oh how she was young, She couldn’t help remembering how she would take a few souls of men that she liked and had them serve her.

In a way she was thankful it was a phase, Those souls were quite boring. Doing this, just cleaning cooking, is just enjoyable. It was different. Hell ever since she married Dan her life had felt more fulfilling.

Yet, something was wrong. She didn’t know what it was– but something just didn’t seem right. It was a bit in the back of her mind that told her that the world wasn’t right. In some ways, she wished she was a goddess of knowledge or secrets. Maybe she would know why she was getting these feelings. But for now, she would have to go with the flow.

She sighed as she remembered the conversation with the other goddess over a month ago

“So, it seems that someone is messing with the natural order. Someone has been stopping people from dying.” Annabelle said while looking towards the other goddess.

“How? I mean isn’t their ways to stop things like that from happening?” Aphrodite said while leaning on the couch, her fingers moving around in hearts.

“I honestly don’t know, but I’m getting weaker, so they’re aiming for me specifically, the souls I’m supposed to collect. But it’s slow, maybe one or two souls, So I can’t find them.”

“Do you think it could be another god? I mean someone who might be challenging you?” Kali said as she watched the younger goddess.

“Not likely if they wanted to challenge me they would’ve come to me personally. Most wouldn’t dare to mess with the natural order, we know what happened with Loki when he overstepped his bounds.” Annabelle shook her head. Not even sure what could’ve been happening.

“Though it could be, But Loki’s not the only Chaos gods, hell it could even be Titans, Aphrodite has you’re Pantheon been having trouble with them?”

“Not lately, plus With the gods in the underworld they would’ve warned us. But still, With them we never understand. But I don’t think it’s them they haven’t stirred for the last ten thousand years. ” Aphrodite sighed while pulling a bag of tea out, and began taking a long drink.

“So nothing. But it’s not right– Do you think it’s him?” The Japanese goddess wondered.

“No– it’s just weird. Thanks for coming over, maybe it’s not what I was hoping to hear. But I’m sure something will pop up. Keep an eye out.” She leaned over while wondering.

“If I knew who it was I would destroy them.” Kali said a ball of flames appearing in her hand.“ It was then Bast snickered.

Though at the end of it Annabelle didn’t get an answer. Though by this point she was feeling much better. Sure she had to spend a few nights stripping, feeling the eyes of other men watching her drooling over her with lustful want. Other times she had to have her husband fuck her like no tomorrow. But she managed to gain her ability. Her body shudders more as she finished sweeping up. There she sat back getting nice and comfortable.

"I should get started on dinner, I might try and make ribs. Does Dan like ribs?” She wondered and was excited as she was about to run into the kitchen and begin cooking something right up. Suddenly there was a knocking on the door. Annabelle slouched her shoulder and headed off towards the door. With a slight wave of her palm, the door began turning transfusive. For a second she saw Dan standing there. Taking a step around waiting for her to answer the door.

Annabelle couldn’t help but feel her heart skip a beat. The way she saw him, in many ways he was just a simple mortal. But in others he was perfect. A goofy weirdo that knew how to make her feel better. Feel almost human, though something was off he should’ve been at work. Yet it was clear he had at least another four hours till he would be getting off.

The goddess reached over and opened the door.

“Dan you’re home early?” she watched him for a second. Her eyes gently glowing as she was making sure he wasn’t a demon in disguise as a shifter.

“Yeah, well they let me off work. You know how it is sometimes they let us off if we don’t have enough work. So, I figured I’d surprise you. Heck, I got you something.” He reached over pulling out a small black box. He opened it. A small necklace with a gold chain, with a small diamond charm on the bottom. It was more stunning. As she reached over covering her mouth in surprise.

“Dan, you didn’t.”

“I could now come on let’s get inside. The night is young.” He gave a slight smirk as he reached over slapping Annabelle right on the ass. It caused her to bounce into the air as she nodded, Giving a light giggle before they would eventually begin heading off inside.

Annabelle couldn’t help squealing in delight. as she felt him pick her up over his shoulder, heading straight towards the bedroom, for what might have been a fun night.

Dan sighed as he began climbing up the stairs, It had been an extremely long day, and was running late. Since it was around two in the morning. Feeling exhausted as he was having a bad day. Some dick head had hit and ran his car, and cause the cameras weren’t working at his work, No There was no evidence so he would have to call the insurance company tomorrow. A report was filled out, though who knows If they would find the bastard. The charger was going to need to repair the passenger side’s rear.

This only added to the annoyance. Then add to the fact he had been running around his part of the factory. Going from inspecting, and even helping on the mainline, cause people decided not to show up. Sure, most people could consider it nothing more, but for him, it was just aggravating. Though Dan was just ready to get home, maybe get into bed and curl up with Annabelle. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day. A light groan, as he walked right inside.

Gizzy laid there snoozing on the couch with a controller in her hand as she had a blanket covering a part of her body. Dan listened to how she snored. And gave a light kick on the blanket. It was rather funny, as Dan moved over and pushed the blanket over her, even covering her breast. She grunted,

“Burn baby burn, he he he!” Gizzy mumbled in her sleep. Dan flat out wasn’t sure what she meant by that and probably didn’t want to know. He sighed and began heading over towards the bedroom. He noticed a bit Bast wasn’t around. Normally she’d sneak up and try to bug him or make a snarky remark. But for the most part. Dan imagined that she might’ve just gone to bed or was having a night in the town. Cat’s are weird, so why wouldn’t a Cat goddess, be just as weird.

“Well as long as she isn’t causing trouble or puking in my shoes.” He sighed and started heading towards the bedroom. He groaned and called out,

“Annabelle I’m home!” He reached over and opened the door. He turned the light on and what he saw shocked him. His heart had practically stopped right there. His eyes turning into a dinner plate, as he almost heard the sounds of something snapping. Annabelle was laying there naked in bed, her arms around someone. Her body holding them closer, as she had a smile. Sure she was asleep. But the person her arms were wrapped around was another man.

Dan didn’t know who he was, as he felt his hand tightening up into a fist, a part of him snapping, as he popped his neck. Anger rising over him, as he wanted to grab the fucker, grab him, and throw him in the wall.

Who the fuck is he!? Why is he in my bed! Dan felt his mind racing as he tried to find the right words something, anything. But when he opened his mouth the only things that came out of that hole he called a mouth were simply.

“What the flying fuck is this!” His voice was a lot higher than it was supposed to be. Though suddenly Annabelle woke up practically jumping out as she looked over towards Dan with a smile, as she was still half asleep.

“Hey honey, ready for another round already?” Though Dan wasn’t paying attention to her.

“Dan what are you doing over there?” Though Dan growled in annoyance as he thought he heard something else. His blood boiling more, though pushing the anger as much as he could as he watched the stranger on the other side of the room.

“What am I doing here Who the hell is that!” He pointed over as Annabelle turned her head. She didn’t recognize the person either. It was a strange man laying there his head on the pillow. Long dirty blonde hair. Slightly tan skin. Heck, he had a few various Tattoos on his back. Though The goddess didn’t recognize her. Her mind went blank as she was realizing what was going on. She turned to overlook towards Dan as she called out.

“Dan this isn’t what it looks like! I Can Explain!” She reached over pulling herself out of bed. Revealing she was completely naked under the bed,

“I’m sure you can explain I’m sure, But what the fuck! Was everything a lie?”

“Dan none of this is a lie. I love you I swear I never would’ve slept with anyone without you!” Annabelle yelled out, but she saw the anger in his eyes– No there was more to it than anger, sadness- Broken.

“Really none of its, a lie. You’re the goddess of Lust and Death, you can do so much I mean, did I even break up with Vanessa, Did you mess with it!” He grunted hard as he watched Annabelle remembering what Liesmith had told him. It was there Annabelle looked hurt, as she looked away. Tears in her eyes.

“I did, I screwed with your previous relationship… a bit on purpose, but I’m so sorry I never told you. I didn’t want to hurt you but Dan I swear I Love you, I wanted to be with you. So, I just made a small suggestion to her. It was wrong but… I wanted you so much.” She sniffed hard as she was getting ready to cry, her face turning red. As she tried pushing the tears away.

Dan’s face was turning even redder, It was as if something else snapped. As he was feeling his blood boiled more. He wanted to scream yell at The very Goddess he called his wife. He felt betrayed felt as though nothing mattered. He was trying to ignore that curious part that forced him to ask the question. Dan wanted to ask more questions but he just turned around and walked out of his bedroom.

Annabelle watched him walk out of the room as she ran to the door, screaming out.

“Dan please don’t go we can talk this over! I’m sorry!” She felt herself crying more– Though soon it turned to rage. Not for Dan but for whoever dared lay in her bed. It was clear they weren’t human, She knew that whoever she slept with was Dan, or at least looked like him. But it was clear now that was a Lie. As she began to engulf herself in flames. Those flames would be blown out by a chilling wind as Annabelle stood there, her black suit on a scythe in the other. As she looked towards her bed,

“Who are you!” she growled in anger ready to strike him down, The natural order be damned if it meant that she could take the soul of the bastard who dared, trick her in bed, and mess with the love of her eternity. She would deal with the trouble later on. Though when she looked for the stranger. The bed was empty and whoever it was, had vanished without a trace. Annabelle screamed in anger as she swung the weapon hitting a dresser draw. The Dresser was cut in half. Before it dissolved into ash.

Dan began driving off, Driving far faster than he should have. But at that moment he needed to let off a lot of steam. Passing random Cars, Dan grunted his head starting hurting though took a deep breath trying to get relaxed

“So, she broke your heart huh.” A male’s voice said causing Dan to swerve to the side, as he felt his heart racing faster.

“What the fuck!”

“Oh don’t be surprised it’s me Liesmith, Now Was I right she broke your heart.” The god said while putting his feet on the dashboard. Not even wearing a seat belt.

“Should you put your seat belt on?” Dan asked gritting his teeth, as he was feeling annoyed. Though Liesmith shook his head,

“Don’t matter I’m a god, as long as I’m here you won’t get hurt or in a wreck.” Liesmith’s smirk widened while snapping his finger and a small drinking glass appeared an umbrella sticking out as he took a drink.

“Hmm Martini, stirred not shaken.” Lindesmith joked while taking a drink.

“So, what do you want? Still trying to fuck with my life.”

“Hey, I didn’t do anything, though about this. There’s a bar over there. I’ll do you a nice favor. Go in there and I’m sure that you’ll feel better, especially after some Jack Daniels.”

“What the hell do you…” Before Dan could finish his sentence Joe Liesmith was gone. Dan only sighed as he decided to head right into the bar. Maybe he did need a drink.

Dan would make a turn towards the bar. A Neon sign that read. Bag of Bones. The light giving a soft glow even flickering. Dan gave a huff as he parked and began going inside.

Annabelle wasn’t sure what she was going to do. As she walked back and forth in the living room.

“What am I going to do? Should I go out there, and find Dan to explain what’s going on… Fuck– Maybe I should call the other gods. What the hell is going on!” Annabelle was freaking out since she wasn’t sure what was even going to happen. She didn’t want to lose Dan. But she was worried she might push him away. It was then she saw Bast strutting on in and bouncing on the couch. She sat there tail swishing before she started transforming into a more humanoid being. As she stretched out.

“What a wonderful night… Annabelle is there something wrong?”

“Yes, something happened, I slept with someone I thought was Dan, and he wasn’t Dan came in and he thinks I cheated on him.”

“Oh boy… That sucks, Though hey give him time, he’ll come back and you guys can talk about it.”

“Maybe, but I worry. Somethings happening. I wasn’t able to tell who it was I slept with. It narrows it down. We’re dealing with a god. But why, what would they get from hurting my marriage to a mortal?” Annabelle sighed as she sat down looking down at her hands simply wondering who it might have been. A part of her wishes she was holding Dan, She was feeling emotional.

“Hey, it’ll be ok,” Bast said her eyes looking wider almost adorable as she turned into a kitten and cuddled up into Annabelle. Annabelle simply responded by petting behind Bast’s ear as she sat there for the time waiting, and hoping that Dan might come back. GIzzy was still asleep on the other side of the couch snoring away. Just not a care in the world.

The bar was quiet, soft music playing. Though whatever they were playing Dan didn’t care– he wouldn’t say anything, as he felt numb. He took a seat at the barstool and ordered a drink. The bartender nodded dropping down a shot of whiskey.

“Yep gonna need one of these maybe more.” Dan, grabbed the shot glass, taking a small drink. While trying to get far more comfortable than he needed to be.

“Dan is that you,” a voice came in. The voice was soft barely registrable from the music. But Dan still turned around to see who it was when he saw her. It was Vanessa. She looked disheveled, hair wild. Not compared to the neat and nice look that she had when they broke up. Dan sighed looking down at his drink for a moment, as he muttered,

“What are you doing here Vanessa, I figured that you’d be off at a fancy wine party or trying to move up in life from little old me.”

“Dan I’m sorry, I never wanted to hurt you, something came over me. I swear.” She moved in sitting by him Though Dan scooted over.

“The fact is you did. The thing is it still hurts, I know it’s been months but seeing you, opens the wounds.”

“It was a mistake, seriously, I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. Here let me order you another drink.” Vanessa raised her hand and bringing another drink for both of them, the bartender nodded while pouring them a drink. Leaving bigger glasses for each of them imagining that they would be having a long conversation. Hell, the Bartender left the bottle.

Vanessa and Dan drank throughout the night pouring drink after drink. Not talking. It was clear they were drinking their problems away with a long sigh, Dan drinking a little more than Vanessa had. Though the young man didn’t care, the numbing feeling buzzed over him.

Dan groaned hard as he looked towards Vanessa, as he looked towards her she was nice looking, even though she looked as if she was going through the wringer. Maybe the drink helped her looking even better. Hell Dan was even feeling himself open up as he moved in closer.

“You are so Perdy.” Dan muttered his speech slurred, Though a part of him. That slim part of his conscious that cared for Annabelle pushed on. He wanted to push it away, but it kept on persisting like a fly buzzing in your ear.

“Thank you, I’m glad you think I’m Pretty.” Vanessa giggled, though it was a nervous one. While she moved in closer, giving a light smile.

“Um, I’m wondering, do you wanna come back to my place?” Vanessa gave a smile, though there was desperation in her eye, Even Dan as drunk as he was could see it. He didn’t like it, even Annabelle was coming back to his mind, how she smiled and giggled. It felt genuine. Then what was that she said before why are you over there, or did she say? Why are you here?

Dan grunted some as he began thinking about Annabelle how she made him feel alive. How he felt like a better person. Though he looked at Vanessa and felt nothing. No desire no need, Just the idea of Annabelle.

I wanna be with Annabelle. He thought as he muttered,

“Nah, I don wanna, I wanna go home to me WIffe.” He slurred out more drunkenly. Though Vanessa looked more offended.

“I mean we could go back, I could even su-”

“Ma'am he said no, We don’t need any trouble here.” The Bartender pointed to the sign,

No, means no– No excuses for anyone.

“Yesh– Now leave, I wanna drink more! Drink till I can go home and see, me wife!” Dan muttered giggling like a goober, as he suddenly began spinning on the chair, Vanessa looked nervous as she was being watched by the bartender. She knew she needed to leave with him. Maybe get him home– Then do what? She couldn’t just sleep with him while he was this drunk. It would be wrong. She would be raping him. It felt as though 20 lbs of lead was falling on her stomach.

“I think you should go home,” Vanessa muttered, damn Liesmith, Damn that God who was more like a monster. She wouldn’t stoop so low. While Dan who giggled more and nodded,

“Ahh right, Ya’ll go and do thats!” He giggled as he was about to jump out of his seat. But when he did he began wobbling as if he was walking around like a newly born horse.

“Sir I don’t think you’ll be well enough to drive, I’ll call you a cab.” The bartender said as he cleaning the counter up.

“Okay doky, artachocky. Ha hah ha!” Dan snickered as he took a seat down. Vanessa giggled some. Dan was a goofy drunk. Almost childish, Though clearly a goofball. She was tempted to get him in bed and tuck him up.

“I know where he is, let me get you the address,” Vanessa said, with a long sigh before she moved back over. The bartender watched her suspiciously though nodded, handing her a piece of paper and pen.

Vanessa would write down his address. In a way, she was tempted to write down her own. But she knew that wouldn’t be right. Her heart ached as she felt like shit– She even had a feeling that the bastard was gonna hurt her for failing. But in a way, this was a good fuck you, to Liesmith. Then the fact it wouldn’t be a burden on her soul.

“Yeah, he better get home, he’s got a wife to see. I think I need to just go, maybe see the world. Maybe do something else.” She muttered under her breath– In a way she was jealous of this Wife of his, she hoped that they were happy together– In a way she hoped Liesmith failed. The fucker was a monster. She only hoped that she would get as far away as she could. Maybe she could visit her sister and her husband.

Dan would eventually get home, the driver taking him up towards the Address given, while they would carry him up the apartment. Still, the last bit of kindness most people would give as they knocked on the door. Before leaving. The Bartender had agreed not to have Dan’s car towed and put it off in the back so it could be picked up the next day. Though for now, it wasn’t on anyone’s mind.

Dan stood there giggling and laughing more, a Red face over him as he knocked on the door more. As before long, it would be opened by none other than Gizzy.

“Danny boy, what are you doing here? We thought you ran off?” The Gremlin said rubbing her eyes as she yawned.

“Gahh Gizmo you, Gremlin you’s so perdy, and adorable.” Dan muttered as without warning he picked the gremlin up and began giving it a great big o;’ bear hug.

“Who are you! What have you done with Goddess Husband!” She screamed practically trying to escape the bear hug, But Dan was holding her down as they walked over. Annabelle laid on the bed still asleep with Bast curled up with her as a Kitten still Sleeping while Dan walked off into the bedroom eventually falling asleep with the Gremlin in his arms like a teddy bear.

Dan grunted. His head hurt. He wasn’t sure what happened or even where he was. He felt as though his head was close to splitting in half. Truly it was a sign that he needed to quit drinking. It never seemed to end well, and it normally ended up in an odd situation. He opened his eyes up and began looking around. The room was much darker, the shades closed, unlike the last time he got drunk. No, this time it was a little better. He looked down and realized that there were teeth marks on his arm, clotted with blood. Dan sat up a little further and soon saw the gremlin lying there snoring away.

“What happened last night?” he muttered. “Fuck, my head – or my arm. Fuck, it still hurts.” He dragged his aching body to the bathroom and grabbed some Advil, pouring a few extra out of the bottle. He also grabbed some peroxide, pouring it on the wound. It stung slightly, though that only lasted a few seconds.

That was when it suddenly hit him – everything that happened last night. His argument with Annabelle, him leaving, him coming back home drunk off his ass. He wasn’t sure how he got home, but he remembered he was at a bar, one not too far from here. He thought he could walk over there or even get an Uber. He shuddered and decided he would get to it at some point during his weekend off. For now, he needed to see someone – he needed to apologize to someone. That’s what mattered.

He walked into the living room where Annabelle was sitting watching a movie. She was watching… well, it didn’t matter what she was watching. Dan just stood there for a second looking exhausted, his head pounding, before he finally found the words he was looking for.

“Annabelle – I – I wanna say –” But before he could finish his sentence, his voice stammering, he felt the goddess slamming into him as she hugged him as tight as she possibly could.

“I’m sorry I got mad at you, Annabelle,” Dan said with a sigh of relief.

“It’s fine. I’m not mad at you.” Annabelle said, her voice sounding as if she were rather depressed as she looked away,

“No – I have to ask, what happened? Who was he?” Dan muttered, rubbing her cheek, wanting to know the truth.

Annabelle sighed as she muttered,

“I don’t know, Dan. I honestly don’t know who that was. But he looked like you. I should’ve known he wasn’t you, but I was excited and wasn’t thinking. He took advantage of me. When you left, I was so close to killing him or beating him to within an inch of his life. But he was gone. I never meant to cheat on you or hurt you.”

Annabelle’s tears rolled down her cheeks. Dan only responded by rubbing them off tenderly, a slight smile on his face.

“It’s all right. It’s not your fault. You’re a victim. I swear, I wish we knew who he was. I’d kick his ass to next Sunday.” Annabelle giggled at that, finding it cute, and nodded as she grinned.

“Sounds nice. Wanna go out, maybe get some breakfast?” She nudged her head slightly, indicating Bast yawning and stretching on the couch with a grunt.

Dan answered, “Sure, though we still have a lot to talk about. Just, please, I want you to promise me you’ll tell the truth. I won’t be angry.” He looked towards her trying to look as sincere as possible. Annabelle watched him, and he noticed her eyes flashing a light gold before she nodded.

“I can do that. I’ve never lied to you, and I won’t start now. That’s what partners are for.” She smiled, her voice calming as she gave off the same relaxed tone. It reminded him of an old friend who he could walk with side by side, truly a person to whom he could be comfortable laying out all his problems. In many ways, she was perfect – perfect for him, that is.

“All right, well, I need to pick up my car from the bar where I left it first.” He turned over to look at the cat goddess.

“Bast, make sure Gizzy doesn’t burn down the house,” he ordered.

“Whatever,” was the response, “though bring me a fish when you get back. Otherwise, I might join her.” Bast jumped down from the couch and started walking off, tail flicking as if she were annoyed and grouchy at Dan. He shrugged, figuring he would never understand her.

He and Annabelle walked the few blocks to the bar where his car had been left, and then they drove to the nearest Waffle House. They both ordered bacon and eggs with a side of waffles, of course. Dan noticed the jukebox standing in the corner on the other side of the place was playing “Don’t Rock the Jukebox.”

Ironic, especially with Alan Jackson singing, “I don’t feel like rocking since my baby’s gone.” Dan shuddered as he listened to the lyrics– he was sure his heart wouldn’t be ready for the Rolling Stones, either.

Annabelle finally said, “Okay, Dan, you said we still have a lot to talk about. I can tell – what do you want to ask me?” She adjusted her glasses, then started idly playing with her wedding band, As If she was tempted to take it off.

“Did you mess with my relationship with Vanessa, and if you did, why?” He leaned into the table looking at her with those sweet eyes. Annabelle shuddered, hardly able to even look him in the eyes, as she took in a deep breath – like she was trying to find the courage to answer this.

Dan suspected she was worried he’d lose his shit again and walk out on her. No, not this time. He wasn’t planning on doing something so cowardly. This time he was going to stay to the bitter end.

“You said you wouldn’t get angry at me. I expect you to keep your promise,” Annabelle said with a sigh. Dan nodded. He planned on keeping that promise, no matter what he heard. He owed her that much.

“I did mess with your relationship,” she admitted and took another deep breath. “I remember the first time I ever saw you – It was five years ago. You were in a fire. I’m sure you remember that, right?”

“Yeah, of course. It was horrible. Honestly, I was lucky to have survived that. Though I never really like talking about it. Kind of a terrible time.” He shuddered as he remembered feeling the heat against his body.

“The thing was, Dan, you weren’t supposed to have survived that. On that day, I was supposed to reap you, take your soul off to the other side. I was about to – you won’t believe how close you were to my embrace on that day. Then something happened.” Annabelle felt a smile spread over her face as she looked down at the cup of coffee in front of her.

“What happened?” Dan simply asked.

“I fell in love,” Annabelle admitted.

“You were so afraid – I know that face. When you mortals are close to death, you have this look that begs me not to reap you. Sometimes you don’t even realize that you have that look. But I’ve seen it so many times, it normally doesn’t affect me. But when I saw you, my heart, well – it skipped a beat. It screamed for you, and I did the only thing I wanted to do – something I’d never done for any mortal in my entire existence in this world… I didn’t reap you. I spared you that night.”

“But didn’t you say that sparing anyone was meant to die was a dangerous thing? it broke the laws of nature or something?” Dan muttered, not sure how to feel about all of this.

“It does – I don’t know why, but you’re different. I’ve heard it’s like once a generation that a person who is spared from death when they were supposed to die won’t cause problems, but not even we know who they are, so we never risk it. But I guess I got lucky with you. Though it has left a mark on your soul.” With that, the waitress appeared with their food. They each ate a few bites.

Dan finally responded, “Well, I guess that isn’t too bad. Though how does it lead to – well, what happened?”

Annabelle giggled. “You know, that’s one of the things I like about you, Danny – always asking questions and wondering about things. Well, to tell you the truth, I was content with letting you live for a long time and take you as my own when you left the mortal world. But I kept watching you, and after five years, I couldn’t take it anymore. But by then, you were with someone.”

“Vanessa…” Dan muttered under his breath.

“Yes, Vanessa. I admitted I was jealous when I discovered you were with her. I wanted to get rid of her. I was even tempted to reap her. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I did something just as bad. But I regret it now. She was scheduled to feel lustful that night. Have a few drinks and sleep with you, practically throw herself on you. But when I realized it was about to happen, I made a suggestion pointing her towards someone else. No idea who it was, but I just threw her towards him.”

“So it was your fault we broke up after she cheated on me.” Dan let a tinge of anger creep into his voice, but he pushed the feeling away.

Annabelle nodded and said, “Yes, It was wrong, and I shouldn’t have done that… I understand if you want to leave me. I don’t deserve your forgiveness… if you want, I can leave you, and you’ll never see me again.” Annabelle felt herself about to cry, but she knew she deserved it. She had royally fucked up. She felt selfish. She was about to get up from the table and walk off when Dan reached over, grabbing her by the arm.

“I don’t want you to go,” he said. “I mean, I’m mad that you did that, but the fact is, it’s over and done with, so we might as well move on from what has happened.”

“So you’re forgiving me for this.”

“Not fully. I think we’ll have to earn each other’s trust again, but I think we should start over. My name’s Dan. Dan Fremont.” He raised his hand as if to greet her, a small smile on his face.

Annabelle watched him for a second and then nodded.

“I’m Annabelle Fremont. I’m your wife.” She giggled as she shook his hand. They got up, and in the middle of that Waffle House, the two pulled each other into a hug and shared a kiss. Neither of them cared who was watching them as they embraced each other for what seemed like the longest time, not a care in the world.

“How about we go somewhere more private, honey?” Dan whispered as he reached over giving her buttocks a slight squeeze. Annabelle giggled in response as she eagerly nodded. Dan quickly paid, leaving a twenty on the table, just enough for the food and a tip before they ran off. Wherever they were running, it didn’t matter – the two had each other, and that was all that mattered.

To be continued.

By DustinMidnight for Literotica.

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fujunfuren · 4 months ago

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I watched all the released episodes! It's saddening though.... It took me days to finish episode 1. I thought with this level of interest, I would slowly watch it and see the end casually. But now, there is no more episode to watch! Haha "everyone is sus". I'm in this mood, too, but I was easily distracted by the story/characters. Although some people were sus, I let them go. Thankfully I'm not as idiot as the ones in the police station (especially that annoying bastard who interrogated Jeong Woo 10 years ago). Do you have any guesses on the actress? The amount of devotion she shows seemed dangerous to me. People don't talk much about Dan Oh. I think her case will be the second half's topic. Do you have any guess about the murders? And lastly, is there anything you specially like in this drama?

im just sooo devastated for jeongwoo the whole village owes him soo muchhhhhh. i started with low hopes (actually waited so long since the announcement of the cast lol but we keep it low to avoid disappointment) and I want more every other week. just caught up to the latest ep 8 and omggggg can they alll just jkddhafdfskajlsa. the people in the police station...gosh where do i start. seriously if sangcheol didnt join the team as new chief, there is really little to no hope of anything. that annoying bastard have a special place in hell, he just wanted to close the case that time.

i am reallyyyyy suspicious of the actress friend and she's soo stalkerish and obsessed with jeongwoo. i'm sorry girlie, the guy had no feelings for you then and now and if you're really his friend, you should have helped him to uncover the truth not force him to forget and move on. you are right, they'll prob find Da-eun's bones sooon.

geon-oh/sun-oh's dad, the doctor (assemblywoman's husband) are still very suspicious. like literally the whole village are some sort of complicit to the case goshhh

1 of the things that I admire is jeongwoo's character. he went through shit but when he reconnected with his "friends", he treats like them like he always did. and i liked how they uncover things, it's not too predictable. giving a tiny bit of beyond evil, so i love it.

#black out #❤️❤️❤️

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the-firebird69 · 2 years ago

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I guess we're not making ourselves clear it looks like we want you to do something some job or hang around bother us on purpose we never said anything like that. We want you out of here you too that's like three of you Terry Trump and Dan that's a listed or it might be him and all this other crap you say but now it's nice we have clarified it here. But we want to clarify it for you to know. It's very strange you never ever get it. We need you to leave that apartment and we don't care this whole thing there it's not you I mean we do and we're going to find out from Tommy f I just kind of an active War right there. And our friend says kind of of course it is. So I'm going to look for things that work on moving you out and we found a few you didn't find more you don't belong there in that house this is not your apartments you don't have an agreement and you never owned of owned it ever and yeah we had the Trinity test done and had Tommy f do it. But you three are out of control and Tommy f is a complete animal. And we don't want you in town if you come around we shoot you if you don't leave the apartment we shoot you and we said that we thought we were clear we'll put it in writing today you are not to enter this town ever it's a several of you and if you don't get it you're going to constantly get dinged. But she was left of your invasion Force. Practically nothing. No it's gone and took a while for it to leave because after you all died and had to be picked up and it's some things going around with big huge vacuums it was disgusting it sucked up giant piles of you in seconds then we have them too but gross. Your arms are starting to fill in again and you should feel at risk and you should feel comfortable and you should feel wrong but you don't feel any of that so you have to come in there and get Intel

Mac daddy

Today Max got up and this a.m. said it doesn't feel right and our son woke up and said what are you doing harassing me about the house you have any other subjects like your army is gone or you need to go to a wake. It's true too he's thinking that. We need to take care of this garbage but we are there's army's fillion at the five points that's like 200 million already that's half of what the force was last night that failed one more push like this they'll be gone. I have to tell you there are several things that are going to happen today they're going to make the idiots I rate and so bring more idiots to their execution areas.

-they have about 4,500 sheriffs on the way here to arrest is very use as they can. There are about 300 cops in town and five of you and today they're going to fire the three that remain and yes are the sheriff they're going to fire 198. Leaving only the sheriff and deputy sheriff and Chief and the deputy chief. There's a lot of other stuff happening how's it going after the people in the police here cuz I push you out of the military and you got to 10% and he's noted it though earlier but they did have a follow-up meeting and stated some different numbers they intend to pull everybody out of Florida law enforcement but we need 10% no it's going to clear it all out and leave a couple headed idiots and see how stupid they are. There is also going to be a change in their approach to these defunct fake police they're going to the headquarters and grabbing them and grabbing their stuff and taking all the data and equipment and vehicles and found them zooming around them 20 minutes later. So what they did was put a roadblocks to pull them out but we're going to do they said is we're going to go in there and throw you in prison if you're back at your dumb building or any building saying that you're these fake police agencies and a lot of them don't get it so that's going to be most of them will die and truthfully they'll be arrested and killed. We are going to find Trump and Dan for this morning's routine and it's going to be very pricey and already we see their weakening finally and so it will be a little kittens and we can get rid of them. And other agencies Florida highway patrol the retaining but emptying out and today they want to empty all of them out and the captain's and so forth will still be there and people won't get it they're stupid at the top. Also they put an order out this morning on Dan and John remillard and Terry cheesman to bring them in any way they can and that went out about 5 minutes ago because I see you sitting here making stupid faces and imitating them and all sorts of weird stuff. Yeah that says you cuz they want to be in the apartment not you s*** for brains you want to know who that was that was Becca take a little crap hola on your head Trump and then she says that's wonderful mutant speak. So we have a lot going on and the agencies from the federal government that's clear you out everybody does leaving the leaders. We're going to hit you pretty good here to shut you down you two idiots and furthermore the agency like NSA CIA DEA FBI ATF secret service and foreign agencies Interpol Mexican secret police KGB pla NATO the United Nations, and so on all of offices in Miami and some in Tampa etc I'm going to be trimmed down of morlock they want to remove a lot of the people who are not Max but they're having trouble so they're going to take the places of the idiots and they're going to push them out. Truth be told that's going to be a lot of assholes running around with an extra grind

-on top of yesterday's 70% total loss to date they're adding about 20% today of private industries in Florida it's just Florida and the rest of the world is probably going to be at 60% at the end of the day a lot of them are gone they were laid off for fired we're asked to leave and a lot of them left in combat so good and bring it up 20% more will affect industries that have been bothering our son and of course his wife forever they are horrendous to him and these particular places just constant nags 100% ridiculous over and over just repeated the same s*** and really he's just sitting there haven't even hit and you people are assholes so you get to look forward to that today getting fired and a lot of you don't want to. A lot you expressed it yesterday I'm doing the job I'm trying, and you didn't get too much help he just said I know and then you would have got to normal and you're all in trouble you said you looking good you doing a good job but Max don't care and I care aunt Lois said our son said I care too, but that's the one who in positions like this in a lie to get real upset irate and you sleep for days and you go through other people's stuff and get real negative then you try to do something we don't want you to. It's going to be a hell of a day tons of you are going to die but there's more to it

-there were 4500 top level jobs last year in Charlotte county and early this year. It started frying you 3 months ago because of insubordination rule behavior and we're not informing your job and almost any level and they fired 500 of you and the rest you started making it look like you're doing stuff and it's disgusting. So they fired like 800 more and then it stopped for a long time and I thought it was that and it turned out to be no. It's really the fact that you are heinous. So today they took some time and they looked at it so these people work for these people. So they have about 2,500 left I decided what to do with you and they said that we can't say don't be a fraction of that number that will be let go

-so you're watching you bother him we strike . We're interested in new and old trump orders and others here rapidly

-there's several other things happening right here in the garden in Port Charlotte and Max got together and decided to stop these people and have a plan. That's also said the kid has his Head on straight and said he. Empire City on big teams and pulled you in and that's where it should be.

-not make tricks with this and we are attacking you now because of what you're doing here mostly

Republic now come back to it it's kind of a low

Thor Freya

There is but they're important things happening and on our side of the coin too

Olympus

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lovelahela · 4 years ago

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𝐢𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤 ↠ 𝖎𝖙 𝖑𝖎𝖛𝖊𝖘 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓 [day six, @it-lives-week]

❛ the power is back, and it’s more powerful than ever. you must band together and defeat it once and for all... or die trying. ❜

n.b. i’m basing this off my ilitw mc taking jane’s place and everyone survived in both ilitw and ilb, so some plot points are interchangeable. plus, ilitw and ilb mcs’ characteristics are obviously interchangeable depending on how you played in your own playthroughs/how you have written them.

significant characters.

↠ (DETERMINANT) mc: it lives within main character [LI: determinant]. possible faces to choose from: caucasian, south asian, middle eastern, latina, african. sexuality is determinant. nerve subject to change.

↠ (F) marisol reyes: it lives in the woods main character [LI: noah marshall]. filipina. bisexual. nerve subject to change.

↠ (F) harper vance: it lives beneath main character [LI: tom sato] african-american. pansexual. nerve is not subject to change if your mc survived ilb.

↠ (NB) jamie mcleod: it lives within side character [LI: mc or andy kang]. singaporean, irish. pansexual, demisexual. nerve subject to change.

↠ (F) sun-hee ‘sunny’ pong: it lives within side character [LI: mc or dan pierce]. south korean. bisexual. nerve subject to change.

↠ (M) okeyo ‘oak’ liao: it lives within side character [LI: mc or jocelyn wu]. kenyan, chinese. bisexual. nerve subject to change.

↠ (F) jocelyn wu. it lives in the woods + it lives within side character [LI: mc or okeyo liao]. pansexual. nerve is not subject to change.

romance.

↠ so i don’t know if this is gonna make sense but like in the game harvest moon, you can choose to/accidentally activate “heart events” that set your LI up with a different character, so i thought it would be a cool change for you to see an LI option end up with someone else if you don’t romance them. would probably be paywalled though, kind of like grace/aleister in endless summer.

↠ jaimie would not have intimate scenes until the second half of the book if mc has established a strong relationship with them.

plot points.

the plot isn’t complete, these are just some ideas i had in mind. i may change some or even all of them when i write my it lives 3 au.

↠ [this piece of information is not revealed until late into the story] noah ends up finding a ritual that allows him to bring marisol back, on the condition that he would have to give his soul up to the power after six months and take her place.

↠ in the midst of arguing with his former westchester friend group after revealing his face to them to propose an alliance in order to put a stop to the power, they are interrupted by marisol entering the room, looking and wearing exactly the same as she had on homecoming night, dazed and confused.

↠ noah, having thought the ritual hadn’t worked, is just as shocked beyond belief as the rest of them. it is then concluded that marisol does not remember a single thing during her three years as jane’s replacement (though memories come back to her in bits and pieces through nightmares and flashbacks throughout the story), and believes it is still homecoming night and the last thing she remembers is speaking to jane. they do their best to ease her into the fact that 3 years have passed.

↠ the main character’s parents were members of the society prior to their death, but they were away for college during the events of it lives beneath. upon hearing of their deaths, they move temporarily to pine springs, and notice that something was off with the quaint town.

↠ they take it upon themselves to investigate further into this and later discover the society by following one of its few remaining members into a forest. they are kidnapped, then immediately recognized as the child of their highly esteemed comrades, so they then decide to go easier on them and explain everything about the cult and their parents’ place in it.

↠ they are interrupted when a group of strangers [it lives beneath main group] bust their operation and the chief of police ends up hauling off what they then believed to be the last remaining members of the society into jail. meanwhile, tom, imogen, danni, and harper reveal what they had left out about josephine vance and the power that once lived in the lake.

↠ the main character, harboring bitter anger towards their parents’ greed for the power and how it got them killed, is immediately motivated to put a stop to it, so they are introduced to connor green, whom tom knew was organizing a group to fight against the supernatural force. together, they move to a town they suspected contained it: northbury, oregon - which was equidistant from westchester and pine springs, both of which were an hour away.

↠ the main character is introduced to the westchester group, including marisol and jocelyn; however, only connor, noah, jocelyn, dan, noah, and andy had decided to move to northbury. the rest decided to remain in their respective towns since they weren’t far away anyway.

↠ in an attempt to blend in with the locals and gain information about the recent disappearances simultaneously, MC makes it their mission to get to know the most significant current residents of northbury that ava cunningham and parker shaw had pulled up information about: jamie mcleod (the younger sibling of one of the missing victims), lawrence khan (northbury’s chief of police), jiao-long liao (occult studies professor at northbury university), and sun-hee pong (a college student who had been caught trespassing on properties including the homes of the missing victims multiple times, and the daughter of one of the missing).

↠ upon their arrival, more people start to go missing, and the gang discover that northbury has had a much darker past than westchester and pine springs combined. disappearances date back decades, and the rates are alarmingly high for a town that appeared to be bustling with residents. a local conspiracy blog/forum exposes numerous reports of dead animals cut in a ritualistic/sacrificial manner, sightings of a dark humanoid figure wandering in the trees at night, and rumors of a secret underground cave full of occult symbols drawn with blood on the walls, dust-coated skeletons, and a myth surrounding an ancient monster that was offered sacrifices by its people unknowingly.

↠ honestly this is all i have planned so far lmao but a few more things i had in mind were: (A) there could be a bad ending where they don’t defeat the power, meaning noah’s soul is claimed and he becomes the new redfield (B) if the power is defeated noah gets to stay alive and ends up with marisol, goes to culinary school, all that good stuff (C) i was thinking that even some characters without nerve could have multiple fates depending on how the story goes and who lives, like connor and jocelyn, and maybe it could be dependent on the nerve of others that way the stakes are higher and you’re more motivated to keep the nerve high. e.g. if MC’s nerve is low and they can’t complete a certain task that could save others, jocelyn ends up doing it instead and dies in the process.

so yeah this is mainly what i have in mind for an it lives 3 book! i hope PB change their mind one day and revisit it because it’s truly their best series.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 6, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) backed down from his obstructionism, agreeing to let the Democrats raise the debt ceiling by a simple majority rather than by the 60 votes they needed when the Republicans kept filibustering their bills.

A quick recap: the issue at stake was whether the United States would default on its debts, which it has never done before. The threat to default was purely a political ploy on the part of the Republicans to try to force the Democrats to abandon their very popular infrastructure measure.

Here’s the backstory: Congress actually originally intended the debt ceiling to enable the government to be flexible in its borrowing. In the era of World War I, when it needed to raise a lot of money fast, Congress stopped passing specific revenue measures and instead set a cap on how much money the government could borrow through all of the different instruments it used.

Now, though, the debt ceiling has become a political cudgel because if it is not raised when Congress spends more than it has the ability to repay, the country will default on its debts. The cap has been raised repeatedly since it was first imposed; indeed, the Republicans raised it three times under former president Donald Trump. Once again, it is too low, and by October 18, the Treasury will be unable to pay our debts.

To meet the nation’s obligations, Congress needs either to raise taxes, which Republicans passionately oppose, or to raise the debt ceiling so the Treasury can borrow more money. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling 32 times in his career, including the three times under Trump, refused to allow Republicans to vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Although the ceiling needed to be lifted because Trump added $7.8 trillion to the debt (which now stands at about $28 trillion), in part with the huge 2017 tax cuts that went overwhelmingly to the wealthy, McConnell tried to tie the need for more money to the Democrats’ infrastructure plan. This was false: the debt ceiling is not an appropriation; it simply permits the government to borrow money it needs to pay debts already incurred.

But McConnell and the Republicans want to dismantle an active government, not to build it. They hope to convince Americans that Democrats are racking up huge debts—even though it is the Republicans on the hook for today’s crisis—and that they should not be permitted to pass a bill that supports children and working parents and addresses climate change.

The Democrats insisted that the Republicans should join them in raising the ceiling, since they had been instrumental in making it necessary, but McConnell and his caucus refused. Finally, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warning that defaulting would crash the economy and with financial services firm Moody’s Analytics warning that a default would cost up to 6 million jobs, create an unemployment rate of nearly 9%, and wipe out $15 trillion in household wealth, the Democrats tried to pass a measure themselves.

Republicans wouldn’t let them. They filibustered it, trying to force the Democrats to save the country by raising the debt ceiling through a bill that can’t be filibustered, a process called reconciliation, which would make it harder for them to use reconciliation for their own infrastructure bill since Congress can pass only one of that type of reconciliation bill per year.

It was a remarkably cynical ploy, risking the financial health of the country and our standing in the world to make sure that a Republican minority could continue to hamstring what the Democratic majority considers a priority. Republicans have played chicken with government shutdowns since the 1980s, refusing to pass measures to fund the daily operations of the government and thereby stopping paychecks and government operations.

But defaulting on our obligations was a whole new game of brinksmanship. The greatest international asset the U.S. has right now is its financial system. To bring that to its knees to score political points would be interpreted, correctly, as a sign our country is so unstable it must be sidelined.

Midday today, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin highlighted this international doubt when he took the unusual step of weighing in on politics. He warned that a default would “undermine the economic strength on which our national security rests.” Paychecks for 1.4 million active duty military personnel and veterans’ benefits for 2.4 million veterans, as well as payments on military contracts, would stop. Equally dangerous, defaulting on loans would devastate the nation’s international reputation "as a reliable and trustworthy economic and national security partner."

Democrats said they could not guarantee the country would not default, and they were clearly starting to consider getting rid of the filibuster, at least for this particular issue, to enable them to pass a debt ceiling bill by a simple majority rather than by 60 votes.

Then McConnell blinked (although he didn’t cave). In a scorching statement that laid all the blame for the crisis on the Democrats, he offered to “allow” Democrats to use normal procedures—that is, the Republicans won’t filibuster them!—to extend the ceiling into December. Democrats indicate they will take that deal.

There is one major takeaway from this manufactured crisis: McConnell was willing to come right to the verge of burning the nation down to get his way. In the end, he stopped just before the sparks became an inferno, but it was much too close for comfort.

Still, he stopped. Trump and his supporters did not. The former president has been pushing Republicans to use the threat of default to get what they want, and he was not happy that McConnell had backed down. He issued a statement blaming McConnell for “folding” and added “He’s got all of the cards with the debt ceiling, it’s time to play the hand.”

Trump’s willingness to burn down the country is ramping up as the January 6 investigation gets closer to him. Tomorrow is the deadline for four of his aides to respond to subpoenas for documents and testimony from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol: former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, adviser Steve Bannon, and Defense Department aide Kash Patel. Meadows worked to overturn the 2020 election results and was in the thick of things on January 6, Scavino had met with Trump to plot to get congresspeople not to count the certified votes on January 6, Bannon strategized with other officials on January 5 to stop the count, and Patel was part of discussions about the strength of the Capitol Police.

The four are expected to defy the subpoenas at Trump’s insistence, a defiance that suggests they think he and his people are going to regain power. According to Glenn Kirschner, a former U.S. Army prosecutor, contempt of Congress earns a year of prison time; obstruction of Congress, five years; and obstruction of justice, 20 years.

The rest of the former president’s statements today were unhinged attacks on the committee.

A final note for October 6: U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman has temporarily blocked enforcement of Texas’s S.B. 8, the so-called “heartbeat” bill prohibiting abortions after six weeks, when most women don’t know they’re pregnant. The Justice Department had sued to stop enforcement of the law. Pitman stopped it on the grounds that it deprived “citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right.”

—

Notes:

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-10-06/pentagon-warns-of-national-security-fallout-from-debt-ceiling-crisis

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/06/trump-aides-capitol-attack-house-select-committee

Glenn Kirschner @glennkirschner2Contempt of Congress - 1 year. If prosecutors bring obstruction of Congress charges - 5 years. Or obstruction of justice charges - 20 years. https://t.co/1UXtetgiMa@glennkirschner2 Glenn, how much jail time can they get for not answering supoenas?

Deeheart4 @Deeheart99

2,055 Retweets5,855 Likes

October 6th 2021

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/gop-sens-ready-to-blow-up-debt-crisis-in-nakedly-political-gambit

https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/show_temp.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-abortion-lawsuit-decision/2021/10/06/ae70d946-22e7-11ec-9309-b743b79abc59_story.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #history #debt ceiling #politics #political #corrupt gop #Criminal GOP

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rvmmm21 · 4 years ago

Text

. saviour .

summary : seungwan's walk to work is a dangerous one, joohyun knows that. she'll always be seungwan's hero. it's only to look out for her favourite secretary, after all.

small note : i was going to make this longer but my brain glitched, so it’s just here as a tentative one-shot.

tw : noncon, harrassment, physical intimidation.

[yandere!joyrene x secretary!wendy]

...

Her boss was her saviour.

…

It’s getting dark and she’s walking home from work, bundled up warm to keep out the winter chill. Her mind is on a nice, hot dinner and a relaxing bath after an incredibly stressful day. Gosh, it’s finally the weekend, and that means she’s taking full advantage of those forty-eight hours of ‘her’ time. Of course, that probably means binge-watching the latest episodes of her favourite drama with a tray of home baked ‘weekend muffins’ – strawberry shortcake! – and perhaps, if she’s feeling particularly tense, a short walk in the park. Playing secretary to the Chief Inspector attached to one of the busiest police stations in the city of Seoul is as hectic and draining as you’d imagine, and it often leaves her with little time to herself. So naturally, the highlight of everyday is the end of it, where she can actually sit and breathe.

Except, it’s a bit hard to even think about breathing now, because she’s ambushed just around the corner of the convenience store a few blocks away from her street.

“My, you are a pretty little thing, aren’t you?”

Seungwan isn’t sure when she started crying, but she’s beginning to curse herself for cracking at the first thing that came out of this stranger’s mouth. She really needs to learn not to look so weak. Especially not when she’s stuck with a woman who’s so tall, she has to look up at her while she’s pressed up against the wall of this perfectly deserted, perfectly claustrophobic alleyway.

No part of her wants to be stuck with any part of this… this villain, gorgeous as she is.

“Aw, don’t cry. What’s wrong, darling? You’re scared, huh...” The woman reaches up momentarily to wipe the tears streaming down her cheeks, leaning in a little too closely to do so. She has one arm against the wall beside Seungwan’s head, and the iniquitous laugh to top it all off.

Seungwan recognises her… vaguely. I mean everybody has eyes, a nose and a mouth, but the way they’re situated on the face in front of her just… she swears she’s seen that face somewhere, if only from hearing her boss rant about - oh no, oh my gosh. The posters, the meetings that were hastily wrapped up as soon as she opened the door to serve her superior her obligatory morning coffee. The woman holding her at knifepoint right now… is the felon Inspector Bae is currently gathering information on, trying to hunt down to keep behind bars.

This woman is top priority at the station. A criminal. Dangerous.

J-Julia?

Jay?

The name comes to her when a gloved hand reaches up to grab her jaw, forcing her chin up so she’s looking straight into glinting eyes.

Joy.

Seungwan tries her best not to make her terror known, but it’s a miserable failure. “Please,” she whispers hoarsely, too terrified to even beg at a normal pitch. “I’m just – I’m an assistant, I just bring the coffee, I don’t have anything important! They don’t tell me anything! I don’t know about the c-cases, Inspector Bae won’t even tell me her address, I have nothing you want, I – ach!”

A forearm across her throat stops her rambling. Hard bone digs into her windpipe, cutting off more than what she had originally wanted to say. Her hands reflexively shoot up to grasp at the appendage choking her, but she’s only shoved further into the stone whenever she tries to pry it away from her neck. “N-No… no i-information…” she weakly gurgles out, desperately trying to hit it home that she really isn’t of any use. “… h-have… nothing, p-please…”

“Shut up.” The woman threatens her before physically doing it, clamping tighter around Seungwan’s jaw and dissolving her verbal pleas into pleading whimpers. The smirk on those crimson lips is so much scarier than anything she’s said so far. “Silly girl, you have everything I want. I want to send a message. That’s what you’re for, isn’t it? What do you think, baby? Do you think your precious Inspector will stop bothering me if I send her cute little toy to work all messed up, hm?”

Seungwan doesn’t answer. She can’t, with how hard she’s sobbing, breathing still painfully restricted, and trying to curl further into herself. Kicking, punching and screaming for help crosses her mind all at once, but those thoughts are fizzled away by the reality of just dropping to her knees and begging this woman to have mercy on her. Tempting as those instincts are, however, she hasn’t time to act on any of them.

As soon as she’s sure she’s not leaving without at least one lovely, permanent scar, Joy is forcefully ripped away and thrown to the side. And as soon as Seungwan can take her first full breath of air, she’s bolting, instinctively getting as far away from that alley as she can. She only realises she’s been dragging her saviour along with her when two arms around her waist abruptly pull her backwards into a warm body. At this point, the poor girl is so confused that she just turns and buries her face into the front of whoever’s just answered her prayers.

A gentle hand comes up and strokes her hair as she shivers from the aftereffects of the ordeal. After a moment of silence, Seungwan dares to slowly glance up at her rescuer. When she meets those kind eyes, the tension almost immediately shreds away and it’s replaced with a small, fond sigh.

“I-Inspector B – ”

And then the voice corrects her with an awkward sternness. “I’m not in uniform, Ms. Son, please don’t address me like that. Joohyun is fine.”

Joohyun, right. The girl wants to correct her too, to tell her she’d much rather she be ‘Seungwan’ instead of ‘Ms. Son’, but she’s too busy being grateful to form any words other than the ‘thank you’ she thinks she’s repeated at least thirty times now.

“Oh dear, what’s this here?” The raven-haired woman brings a finger up to delicately brush Seungwan’s fringe to the side. The smaller girl can only stare at the shiny silver buttons on her black Burberry trench coat as she’s being inspected.

She winces and flinches back when a frigid draft brushes over the cut on her eyebrow, stinging it.

But Joohyun presses her closer. “No, no, it’s okay, let me see it. I can help.”

Obediently, Seungwan stills to allow her to assess the extent of the damage. A sigh of fatigue draws from her lips when Joohyun’s fingers trace over the small wound. The touch is light and comforting. Comforting enough for it to slip her mind that it’s very late at night and the leftovers sitting in her fridge are waiting to be reheated. That, and her direct superior is in front of her, holding her up while she studies her condition.

She shifts slightly to catch the other woman’s attention. “I’m fine… Joohyun, really.” The name sounds funny coming off like that. “We need to report this, I can come in tomorrow. That was – I think that was Joy – and if she’s in the area then you could be in dan – ”

The grip tightening around her waist is more than mildly inappropriate, but it’s successful in cutting her short. “Don’t worry about that, I’ll file the paperwork, you need to rest.”

Yet again, Seungwan tries to insist that reporting the incident sooner rather than later could be vital in capturing Joy, and that Joy’s arrest took precedence over a minor cut. But Joohyun remains resolute. “Come on,” she says, heaving one of Seungwan’s arms over her shoulder and curling the other around her waist, “I’ll walk you home, just tell me where to go. You could still be targeted. It’s not safe.”

The space between them is non-existent, and the room to compromise, even more so. Joohyun reaches over briefly to tuck Seungwan’s scarf back into her coat before they start walking, and the girl drops her gaze. The fright has worn off and it’s just now terribly embarrassing for her to even be in the presence of someone like Joohyun. I mean, she’s Chief Inspector Bae for god’s sake. She didn’t just get that title, all those gleaming medals and framed awards from twiddling her thumbs and sitting pretty at her desk all day.

It almost makes Seungwan feel like a liability.

If she can’t defend herself from one attacker, why is she even working as an assistant to a woman who hunts villains down for a living? How many times does she think Joohyun is going to be there to catch her when she falls?

But that’s just it.

She is so relieved at the fact she’s still alive, that she forgets to ask how her boss knew exactly where to find her.

…

Much later into the night, a familiar figure in a black trench coat re-enters the alleyway. It’s quiet, and empty. Even emptier than it had been when Seungwan was walking back earlier on, save for the dark, hooded silhouette on the far right, and the grating sound of steel against brick.

“Aaand she finally appears.” The hooded figure greets, sheathing her dagger. “Did your little secretary get home alright?”

Black trench coat scoffs, stepping into the darkness and doing her best not to seem offended. “Sooyoung, did you really have to be that rough? You gave our poor angel such a nasty looking cut. And you made her cry.”

This time, it’s Sooyoung’s turn to take a defensive tone, albeit slightly playful. “Hey, I followed the plan! Scare her, threaten a little… you know, all that bad-guy stuff.” She can’t help herself, she’s always like that with Joohyun: relentlessly teasing. The mockery in her voice alone should be enough for Joohyun to cuff her on the spot, but she knows she’ll never do it.

She’s learnt to tolerate every aspect of Sooyoung’s personality; endearingly annoying as they may be. Still, it doesn’t stop the sinister growl from her throat, despite the grin on her face. It gains the other woman’s full attention instantly.

“Aw, what’s the matter, Hyunnie? Afraid you won’t have any eye-candy at work for a while?” She slides over to her, casually poking the shorter woman in the ribs. There’s a beat of silence and then Sooyoung sticks her bottom lip out in a pout when she’s left hanging. “You think I took it too far, don’t you?”

Joohyun’s reply is a smile. The image of Seungwan trembling in her arms, looking up at her through those fluttering, innocent eyelashes after Sooyoung’s ‘ambush’ is reassurance enough that everything happened at the right time and at the right intensity. Seungwan had looked at her like her saviour. Sooyoung hadn’t overdone it.

Sooyoung takes a tentative step forward, even closer now. “Hyun…”

There’s a genuine gratitude in her voice when Joohyun speaks again. “Thank you, Sooyoung. Really, you did so good for me. For us.”

“No problem, unnie,” Sooyoung makes a show of giving her an exaggerated courtesy, the playful lilt surfacing once more. “It’s my duty, as your – ”

And she’s pulled into a kiss. Five fingers firmly twist into the lapels of her jacket and tug her down into a searing, passionate kiss against the same wall Seungwan was pinned to a few hours ago, where she cried her eyes out.

Joohyun pulls away roughly, lips swollen and tingling from the cold. She smirks when Sooyoung looks as glazed-over as she feels. Their heaving breaths create a thin, silvery fog between them, as Joohyun holds the taller woman’s gaze with ease.

“You are the best, Young-ah. I love you.”

#red velvet #red velvet yandere #yandere #wenjoyrene

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blackjack-15 · 4 years ago

Text

The Puzzle is Just the Italian Language — Thoughts on: The Phantom of Venice (VEN)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. Like with all of the Odd Games, there will be a section between The Intro and The Title called The Weird Stuff, where I go into what makes this game stand out as a little strange.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: VEN, RAN.

The Intro:

From the French-inspired streets of New Orleans, Nancy jumps on a plane to Venice and is caught up in international espionage, theft, a mafia ring, and a cast of hostile suspects living in the same house as her.

Sounds a bit like my first semester of college, honestly. Minus the whole “Venice” and “international espionage” parts.

Coming directly after CRY, VEN isn’t quite as thick with atmosphere, doesn’t have any of its philosophy or thematic elements, and is really only famous for being set in Italy and for the fact that they hired four voice actors for our main cast sans regular characters (Colin, voiced by our good ol’ boy Jonah Von Spreecken, counts as a returning VA), but hired 6 distinct VAs for the singing gondoliers, most of whom the average player will never hear.

Yeah, VEN is kind of that type of game.

There’s a lot that makes VEN the trippy experience that it is – more on that immediately below – but nearly none of that makes VEN as confused as it is. Nancy’s hired by a foreign government – sort of – but there’s also a love line – sort of – a roommate story – sort of – and some touristy stuff like overpaying for flowers and gelato.

Taking place overseas, VEN might have been mistaken for a Jetsetting game if it weren’t for the fact that every bit of the game is permeated with the sense that nothing was quite thought out, nothing quite flows together, and there’s no emotional response in anyone – including the player.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing enjoyable about VEN; it’s one of the most highly memed games, in fact, with a catsuit, horrific fashion choices, and little laser roombas all making up the most memorable meme material (and that’s not even touching discount Justin Timberlake and his slides of seduction). It has strongly-painted characters (even if there’s a touch of the caricature about them), the return of recurring characters, the first appearance of a semi-recurring character, poisoned chocolates…it’s almost like someone tried to do STFD, but with a sprinkling of spies and Italy thrown in for good measure.

VEN can be a lot of fun, but it’s also a grind a lot of the time; the required puzzles can be ridiculous, for example, and, in a twist for Nancy Drew games, there’s a puzzle for everyone to hate, no matter if you dislike stealth games, card games, speed-reaction games, or even language puzzles.

Which brings us to the biggest problem with The Phantom of Venice: the common puzzle thread, the thing that keeps recurring, the ‘mission statement puzzle’…it’s just the Italian language. The game hinges on the idea that the player won’t know any Italian (or any Romance language, honestly), and that’s where the majority of the difficulty in the game (barring bad hand-eye coordination) comes from. It’s not a good thing at all, and it brings the entire game down with it.

Well, it has a little help. Let’s talk about the Roomba in the museum, shall we?

The Weird Stuff:

There’s a lot of things that are weird about VEN, no getting around it. But there’s one solid thing that makes it…well, Odd in the way that the other Odd games are qualified, and that’s this one simple fact:

This is a Hardy Boys mystery, with Nancy clumsily inserted in instead of Frank and Joe.

Think about it; called in by a foreign government, espionage, nearly drowning, contacts in the government and police force, an Italian crime ring…these are all things straight out of a Hardy Boys novel, not a Nancy Drew novel. There is a Nancy Drew book titled The Phantom of Venice, true enough, but this game doesn’t bear any resemblance to it besides, well, Venice itself. You could swap out Nancy with the boys and the whole game could go on, minus the whole ‘keepsake necklace from Ned’ thing, and depending on what you ship, even that might fly under the radar.

And no, I didn’t forget the dancing in a catsuit thing. Pure comedy right there.

Nancy’s a homegrown detective; most of her cases are ‘small thing spirals into bigger thing’. It’s not that she doesn’t deal in espionage, at times in foreign places, or stumble upon a crime ring. It’s just that that’s not the type of thing Nancy’s called in for, it’s the type of thing she trips over halfway into a lower-stakes mystery.

The Hardy Boys, however, because of their father’s contacts (in the novels) and their position in ATAC (in the games) are exactly the kind of people that work with police chiefs and security experts and foreign spies and the like. It’s very nearly their bread and butter. Which is why I have a wild but not out-of-the-way wacky sorta-serious theory. Bear with me:

This game was designed as a Hardy Boys game, and Nancy really was clumsily inserted in with a few weeks to spare.

At this point in history – the far-behind time of July 2008, as the Great Recession was descending, the fury of an election year was coming to a head, and you couldn’t go to a supermarket or clothes store in America without hearing OneRepublic tell you that it was just a little too late to apologize – HER wasn’t doing badly, per se, but they certainly weren’t doing as well as they could have been. They weren’t that far from having had to majorly upgrade their engine for a rapidly changing technological world, and there seemed to be no end in sight. HER had plenty of staff change-ups coming because of new sponsors, but weren’t making enough simply with what they had.

Put simply, they needed a carrot. And what better carrot than the fan-favorite Hardy Boys?

There are two Hardy Boys games put out around this time: The Perfect Crime and The Hidden Theft. While neither one was done by Her Interactive, there was a HER Hardy Boys game in the works: the DS masterpiece Treasure on the Tracks. The audience for a Hardy Boys game was meant to be young boys/teenaged boys, but the side audience expected was fans of the Nancy Drew books and games.

So while I know logically that Phantom of Venice was just the latest in a line of ‘adulted-up’ Nancy Drew books (and games), in my head it makes much more sense to say that it was supposed to be a Hardy Boys game meant to promote Treasure on the Tracks and HER got nervous and pulled the plug, stuffing their erstwhile teen detective in instead.

The Title:

As far as a title goes, The Phantom of Venice isn’t a bad one; you can tell it comes from the ‘hotter and sexier’ Nancy Drew books, and as a collection of words, it works rather well. It’s an evocative title, giving us our location, our crime (‘phantom thieves’ are common as a type of thief), and doesn’t say too much else, so as to not spoil the mystery.

As a title for this game, however…well, so little of the actual game deals with the Phantom that it’s rather non-indicative as a title. By the time you’re 16 Scopa games deep and are wearing a sparkly red dress with a cat mask and sneakers around Italy, you’ve pretty much forgotten about the Phantom and are more worried about exactly what happened to the pigeon you used as a messenger and why exactly flowers and gelato cost so much for 2008.

The Phantom of Venice just…deserved a better, more cohesive, more…well, phantom-y game than it got. That’s all.

Now, onto the mystery!

The Mystery:

Nancy’s been called in by the Secret Italian Police because a thief has been stealing art.

No, really, I’m being serious.

Sure, Prudence Rutherford has a hand in getting her called in, but basically Nancy goes from small-time cases, sometimes getting her name in the papers, to called in by the Italian Secret Police.

Caught up at a house where no one likes her (understandable, given that she just Appears one day, forced on the Ca’s owner, Margherita Fauborg, and her residents at the Ca’), Nancy soon becomes embroiled in a mystery most foul when she discovers ties to the art thief – or thieves – right around the Ca’, poisoned sausages and message-laden chocolate boxes, and shades and shades and shades of tiles offered by the Ca’s resident nerd.

Soon, Nancy is juggling police contacts, heists, Scopa games, and the impersonation of a world-class spy just to give the Italian police a hint as to who might be stealing Venice’s greatest artworks. It gets personal, however, when the Phantom Thief himself shows up, stealing Nancy’s locket which she’s just been given by Ned.

Oh, and did I mention that the whole thing is told in media res? Yeah, very, very weird choice right there.

Honestly speaking, the mystery isn’t…bad, per se. It’s got solid bones – art theft, mysterious thieves, romantic location, interesting-seeming suspects, some spy shenanigans. The problem with VEN’s mystery, largely, is that there just isn’t any cartilage to connect those good bones. Without something to hold it all together, it just kind of falls apart – exactly like a skeleton without cartilage.

Simply put, there’s a lot of mystery, but no plot to carry the mystery along.

The Suspects:

Beginning with Margherita Fauborg, the tanning-obsessed matriarch of the Ca’ Nacosta, seems like a good place to start. Dismissive of Nancy, tourists, and Nancy being a ‘tourist’, Margherita prefers to stay on top of her house tanning the day away rather than take part in any shenanigans.

Having Margherita not be a member of the ring was almost as inspired as having Helena lead it; she’s not nice, does suspicious things, is entirely self-centered – but she’s not a villain, nor does the game really pretend that she is for more than a second. I really like characters like this in the Nancy Drew games, who are honestly just People not enamored with the teen detective, but aren’t villains just because of that.

Also, the story of her husband’s death is just incredibly hilarious.

Her half-ward, half-employee Colin Baxter, on the other hand, is anything but dismissive of Nancy. He’s part of the ‘kinda crushing on Nancy’ club, but is Far less beloved than any other member of that club. It comes from his inherent creepiness, criminal record, and love for tile slides, I think.

Colin, as a suspect…well, he’s just there to make the numbers add up. It’s a shame that his largest utility is to show Margherita’s slightly unscrupulous nature, but he should have been kept as perhaps a figure that Nancy could call to get the story, rather than an in-person suspect.

The other person staying at the Ca’ is Helena Berg, fulfilling the HER mandate for having a German villain in their European games. Having Helena be the mastermind of the ring is a pretty good plot point, honestly, as I expected the first time for her to just be part of it, and to have that be the Big Surprise.

She’s also one of the few villains who promises revenge on Nancy and/or is still out there. I know it would have been Way too soon to have Helena be the returning culprit in RAN rather than Dwayne, but honestly she was a better candidate for it. While any hope of a good ND game (and mostly any game, honestly) is pretty far from me, I always hoped one day Helena would return in all her platinum blonde glory.

Enrico Tazza is our most encountered (kind of) and outwardly suspicious suspect, but he’s not exactly…well, scary. He makes Nancy-as-Samantha play a card game with him, then disappears, despite being the Preeminent Villain Face for the first half of the game.

I do love Tazza, however, just for his presence in the game. He’s cartoony, fun, well-acted…he’s just great. And as a potential villain, he’s great too! You’re never meant to doubt that he’s a ‘baddie’, you’re just meant to go along for the ride. Excellent.

Finally, Antonio Fango is the most prominent suspect that you’ll ever completely forget the name of, due to his lack of screen time despite being the Italian Police’s favorite suspect. He has a whole convoluted backstory involving multiple colleges and degrees, but really he’s just the communication go-fer for Helena’s theft ring.

As a villain…well, Fango does his part, but due to being a nigh-unseen suspect, he’s really just not very memorable. He’s like most of the ring – necessary to establish the numbers, but other than that, a non-entity.

The Favorite:

Despite the plot holes wide enough to steer a gondola through, there are a few things that really make VEN stand out.

The first is Samantha Quick; originally a stage name suggestion from Simone in FIN, she shows up as an actual character in VEN, albeit only by phone and shadow. Her pissed-off phone call to Nancy is a highlight of the game, especially as she ends with the vaguely threatening line “say hi to Ned for me”. Her shadow at the end in Colin’s window is the final clinch to make SQ a personal favorite of mine, and her presence (and the feeling of her presence, which is sort of different) is a high point in the game.

The location of the game is another plus; not so much Venice, but the Ca’ Nacosta itself. It’s a wonderful ‘home base’ location for any Nancy Drew game, filled with light, staircases, and pretty impressive stonework given that just a few short games ago, everything looked like it was animated out of melted gummy bears.

My favorite puzzle(s) are the chess puzzles, honestly. I just kind of like chess puzzles to begin with, and it’s a nice respite from forcing pigeons to do your bidding and avoiding various foods.

My favorite moment in the game is honestly the Samantha Quick shadow, but if I had to pick another moment, it’s where Nancy implies that she’s stripping for money, and Ned just replies that he’ll be really glad when she’s back home safe in the States. It’s such a random, hilarious thing to happen, and Ned’s complete underreaction to the idea of Nancy earning money in such a way (as she makes it sound way worse than it actually is) is what really sells it.

The Un-Favorite:

There are some un-favorites as well, however, that drag down the game to the place it currently resides.

The first is…well, the location and the means used to get Nancy there. As much as I have no problem with Venice, this attempt to open up the world makes little sense when you consider that there’s no way the Italian Secret Police would hinge their hopes on a small-time 18 year old American detective, no matter how highly Prudence spoke of her.

The jumbled plot (when there is a plot, at least) is another point against VEN; the writers just didn’t know what to do with Nancy being in Venice, and so just…didn’t do anything with it.

I also dislike that this game happens in media res. There’s no real reason to do it – and it makes any actions that the player takes that’s slightly apart from the ‘main plot’ – gondola rides, ice cream, looking at slide after slide after slide – seem incredibly out of place and borderline inappropriate. At the very least, if the Hardy Boys were part of the game, they could be yelling her name as she began to drown, which would give a sense of urgency that’s missing from the confused opening.

My least favorite puzzle…well, that brings me to a huge problem: every puzzle in this game is based around the fact that it’s in Italian, and they expect no one playing this to even have an idea of Italian (or any romance language). It boils down to this: the puzzle is just the Italian language, and they have nothing else up their sleeves. I don’t have a least favorite puzzle, because apart from a select few, they’re all the same puzzle, wrapped in slightly different clothing.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Phantom of Venice?

Coming off of CRY, we’ve now had two games with two (or three) player characters, so that’s what I’d start with doing. Include the Hardy Boys, who have been called on by the Italian Secret Police because of their work with ATAC. They’re helping the mystified police track down this ring of thieves when Nancy mentions offhand that Prudence Rutherford is recommending a stay at a Ca’ in Venice whose owner owes her a favor (as a treat/vacation). Upon hearing this, the Hardy Boys ring her up and ask her help, as they’ve stalled out. They’re not allowed to come into physical contact with Nancy (to save money on animating them/Nancy), but they want her to investigate from her end, as she won’t be suspected at all.

The real reason the Italian Police let the Hardy Boys get her involved, of course, is that they need someone to impersonate Samantha Quick, and they’re having a rough time with their Joe-in-a-wig tests. They need an American who can convincingly pull off the act, and the brothers mention Nancy’s stints undercover. Desperate enough to grasp at anything, Nancy’s officially in.

That along would help beef up the plot, as suddenly we have an actual police plotline with the Hardy Boys (playing as one or the other, it doesn’t matter, or maybe both with different ‘jobs’ to do as one or the other). Diving the suspects is a good idea too; Nancy would take Helena and Tazza as her primary suspects (of course, only Tazza would be the ‘primary’ at the beginning), while the Hardy Boys handled Fango and his side of the ring.

The final puzzle (with the flashlights and such), especially, makes more sense as a Hardy Boys sort of thing. Nancy can snoop around the market and the Ca’, discovering clues as to Helena’s guilt and such. The Hardy Boys take down the ring, but Nancy takes down Helena.

I would also give Nancy a better reason to be undercover at the dance club. It’s a weird little minigame to be sure, but if it’s gonna exist in the game, there should be a better reason. Even better, take it out and have her solve puzzles – something other than the Italian Language, mind you – in order to get money from the police or something.

(Even better, take out the money thing, as someone helping the Police and pretending to be a spy should not be or appear to be short on funds.)

The last big change I’d do is to take Ned out (sorry, Ned, but there’s really no reason for you to be in this game) and swap him for Carson. Carson really should be in a few more games than he is as it stands, and this is a great way to bring in the fact that…well, Carson can’t be entirely Comfortable with the direction that Nancy’s life is going, even if he is proud of her.

Most of the time, Nancy’s family and friends are just used to say “and she’s ‘normal’ and loved and supported even though she’s never home”, and I think using them to establish her character and the stakes is a far better use of these pre-existing characters.

#nancy drew #clue crew #nancy drew games #VEN #phantom of venice #video games #nancy drew meta #long post #my meta

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optimistic-dinosaur-nacho · 5 years ago

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could you make a call platonic! andy barber imagine? the reader is an officer and is andy’s best friend. the reader is the one to arrest jacob and they get into an argument about it. it would be great if you could do that and you can also change it up a bit if you’d like but that’s just a summary (you can also decide wether you want them to make up or not) -ty 🙂

Platonic!Andy Barber x Fem!Reader

Thanks for dropping in and your request! It really means a lot.

Warnings: Angst, Language

~~~

The morning had just started and you were gonna stop by a friends house before you go into work. You stopped by the cafe to grab a few cups of coffee before driving over in a police car.

You pulled up and saw someone step out. Taking the coffees you walked up and noticed it was Jacob. “Good morning, Jacob,” You spoke. The boy stops and shoves his hands in his pockets and forced a smile.

“Hey,” He says, you looked around, “Is your parents still home?” You asked. He nods his head, “Yeah, they are.”

You smiled at him, “Do you need a ride to the school? If you give me a second I can take you-”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll take the trail. Thank you. See...See ya,” He says. You grinned at him as he walks down the street and you walked up to the porch. Andy and Laurie were good parents. You never doubted them once. Andy was your friend for a long time. You probably knew him more than Laurie did. Which you didn’t brag about.

You reached the red door and knocked on it.

It took a few minutes before someone opened the door. “Y/N,” Laurie sounded surprise, she looked almost frightened. You smiled, “Hey, Laurie. I just wanted to come by, see how you guys are doing. You know...” You shrug.

Andy comes in view over Laurie’s shoulder and his face drops, “Hi,” He said. Laurie smiles, “Do you want to come in?”

“Sure, I can’t stay for long but I just went by the cafe and grabbed you guys coffee?” You showed them the cups and they both grinned. “Thank you, please come in.” You walked in and placed the tray on the counter.

Andy was in his usual suit and tie. You smiled at him, “I’m sorry to hear about Ben. I only saw him once or twice around the school.” Andy nods and hung his head low.

“We barely knew the parents and Ben but... it’s hard,” He says. You nod, “I hope Jacob is doing good, how was he?”

Laurie looks at Andy, her arms were crossed, “He’s doing okay. At least what he said.”

You nod again. “Well... if there’s anything I can do. I’ll do it. I should head back to the station.” Andy nods, “I was gonna go there. Once you get there, I’ll be in a few minutes. I got to drop something off,” Andy looks at Laurie again and you smiled.

“Sure. I guess I’ll see you there. Bye, Laurie.”

“Bye, honey. Thanks for the coffee,” She says. You smiled, “Of course.” You gave Andy one last glance before heading out the house over to your car. Turning on your car, you glanced at the house one last time before driving down the street over to the station.

You stopped in the front and hopped out, meeting Pam Duffy. “Officer L/N,” She says.

“Duffy.”

She grins at you before taking you up the station, “We got a guy, named Leonard Patz. He might be tied to the case, but we’re unsure.”

“Who asked for him?”

“Your friend. Andy,” You look over to mention of his name. Pam opens the door for you, giving her a small thanks as you walked in. You let Pam go first when someone called you over. “I’ll be up there in a minute,” You said, Pam nods and goes up the stars.

“Y/N. You made it,” The man says, you stood by and looked at the cameras with the guy.

“What’s his deal?” You asked.

“He’s assaulted a kid in the library, grabbed his junk and so here we have him here,” He replied, “Grabbed him from his work.” You look up to him and he looked very uncomfortable. Like a dog with its tail between its legs.

You hear someone walk in and Andy comes in, “Morning.” The man in the chair nods, “Hey, morning.” Andy drops his jacket on the chair, “How’s it going?” He asked.

“Well, they got him to admit to being in the park the morning of. And that’s it so far.” Andy glanced at you, “How’s your morning so far?” He asked with a grin.

You sighed, “Long, but we’re getting there.” Andy smiles at you and his eyes dart over to the door causing you to look over.

“L/N, we just got called in for that search in the park. You coming?” The officer asked. You straightened up, “Yeah. I’m coming.”

Andy looks over to you, “You’re on the search?” He asked.

You shrugged, “They’re mostly calling all officers in for it, so you’re going after... this. I’ll be there.” He nods with a grin. “I’ll see you there then.” You smiled as you walked away. Andy watched you disappear from his view.

“Officer L/N, the cop we’ve all been waiting for,” An officer calls, you walked over with a grin. “Anything yet?” You asked, the man looks around to the group of people with bright orange jackets.

“Not much, yet, but we still have time.”

You look out to the forest and saw them kicking and bending over through the leaves looking for weapons or any signs of evidence they could use. You watched them, waiting for someone to blow the whistle.

The K9 also in the search, sniffing through the brush.

“Well, well, well... Look who came,” Someone says, you look over and spotted Andy’s black Audi car. You walked up as he stopped the car and rolled the window down.

He leaned over to see you. “Hey, Andy,” You say. He smiles at you, “Any luck so far?”

You sighed, “Not yet, but we still have daylight left.” He looks around and glances at you, “Okay if I hang out here?” You held your hand up and dropped it, “Wherever you want.”

“I’ll just block your car in,” He jokes grinning at you. You smiled, “You do that, I might have to tow your car, Mr. Barber.” He smiles and rolls his window up, leaving you with a grin as he finds himself a spot in the road.

“You and Barber?” Dave asked, you walked over, “What about us?” You asked.

He grins, “Nothing.” You looked over and scoffed, “Whatever you’re thinking you’re stupid. I think you got the wrong coffee, Dave. Making you see things. Him and I are friends, don’t get any ideas.”

Dave holds his hands up and grinned, “I wasn’t even thinking.” Andy comes up with his hands in his pockets. He grinned up at you, “Morning, guys.”

“Mr. Barber,” Dave says.

Andy stands by you and he looks over, “Anything on Patz?” You asked. He looks out to the forest, “Duff’s saying he may not be the one but they’re just not looking hard enough.”

You tilt your head, “Well, maybe give it a few days. Once we find that knife, we’ll find out who it is.” You felt Andy shuffle next to you and sighed.

You all waited for something to be found or happen.

Andy was leaning on the car as you all waited. You glanced over your shoulder and spotted someone walking up. You leaned off it, “Is that Rifkin’s father?” Andy turns and follows your gaze.

Andy walks over to him and you watched from the distance. Dan Rifkin was Ben’s father, the kid who was murdered. He looked like he was upset, crying. You didn’t like that how tensed him and Andy were.

You could barely hear them but you knew it wasn’t good when Dan walked away and Andy immediately pulled out his phone.

Who was he calling?

You see him put down the phone and you walked over. “Andy? What happened?” You asked, looking over to Dan storming away. “I have to go,” He said.

You followed him, “Andy, tell me what’s going on?”

“Officer L/N!” Another officer calls, you stopped and Andy continued to his car. You watched him drive away and you turned to the officer who called you. “What?”

“We got a dispatch. They found the suspect.”

“Who is it?”

“Jacob Barber.”

You drove to the Barber Residence and you checked the clock. It was 30 minutes after Jacob had just left school. You tried to reach Andy but he never picked up his phone.

What’s his son got to do with Ben Rifkin’s murder? If you were the one to arrest his son. It would not end well. You loved Jacob. You took him to school sometimes. You hung out with him and he liked having you at the house for dinners.

You reached the house to find other police cars. You stepped out and rushed over. The police brought their attention to you, “You know this family, right?”

“Yes, have you found Jacob?”

“No, we waited here for almost an hour. School ended 30 minutes ago,” You closed your eyes and muttered, “Shit.” You rubbed your forehead. “What’s going on now?”

“Duffy is coming with a warrant, we’ll be searching the house. They said they found a fingerprint on the body’s sweatshirt.” You shook your head. Everything was happening at the wrong time for you. This family was too happy to just have it crumble at their feet.

You just have to let it happen. It’s part of the job.

You stayed at the house in case Jacob did come home. You’d be the one to reassure him since he knew you.

Everyone was looking at you because you knew the family more than they did.

You knew the kid. The chief could possibly put you on leave for that reason. You hear a car zoom through and Andy pulled up half way in his driveway. The officers started to follow him.

“Mr. Barber,” The officer calls, Andy ignores him and rushes up. “Sir! You know this house is frozen-” Andy turns and points.

“You got a warrant, yet?” The officer doesn’t speak, “Yeah, I didn’t think so. It’s my house. I have a right to go inside.” You were the one who was gonna talk to him and reassure him but Duffy pulls in. “Andy!”

The man turns to Duffy who got out with the warrant in hand. He sighs and pulls away. You see her speak to him as you stood by the officers. To you it was hard to watch.

Andy opens the front door and he says something to her before she nods at the officers. They all go in and you were the last one to go up his porch.

He looks over to you. “I’m sorry,” You said. He looks over and sighed. “I’m sure you are,” He says. You glanced at him and sighed. Andy never sounded like that. The tone he had wasn’t welcoming.

You took that as a ‘go away’ sign and turned away. Walking back to your car to head back to the station.

“Dispatcher, what units are available for the search of Jacob Barber?” You stopped and looked down at the comm in the center console. You sighed and pulled it up to your mouth.

“10-4,” You say, changing the gear and drove off. Andy watched you go, dropping his head and sighed.

After multiple calls to Jacob personally. You drove around for hours. Your windows rolled down to either call out to Jacob or hear sudden sounds. Andy called you multiple times, but you never picked it up.

It was getting dark and you heard on the radio, they found the knife. You started to feel worried. If that knife has some trail of Jacob’s print, it could end there. You look over to the elementary school and thought to check there.

You got out with a flashlight and walked over to the play structure. You shined the light over the obstacles. “Jake? Buddy. It’s Y/N,” You called, walking further. You hear shuffling and turned the light to the swings.

You turn to Jacob who sat on the swing. You walked forward, “Hey, bud.” You saw the tears fall down his cheeks as he looked up in fear. You took out your cuffs. You hated to do this to him.

“I have to put these on you. Can you do that for me?” He stands up and you smiled at him. “Hands in front,” You cuffed his wrist but kept them a bit loose so it didn’t hurt him.

Taking him to your car, you gently sat him in the back. You grabbed his bag as well and dropped it in the passenger seat.

You turned on the car, “People have been looking for you. I was getting worried, Jake.”

“I didn’t do it,” He said. You look over in the rear view. “Do what?”

“Kill Ben. I... I didn’t do it. I just found him. He was just lying there on the ground and... I thought maybe he was hurt so I went over to pick him up... then I saw the blood and his eyes were open and...” He shifts and the tears stream down his face.

“I got scared and I ran...”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?” You asked, he lowers his head and shakes it. You frowned, “Why not?” He pierces his lips to prevent himself from breaking down in tear, you just nod.

“Okay.”

“I want my dad,” Your hand stops at the ignition as you stared forward. “Please... I want my dad...” He says. You closes your eyes and turned on the car, driving your way to the station.

You walked in the station and the other officers reached for Jacob. “Please, be careful with him?” You asked they nod at you and Jacob looks over to you. “Don’t worry, your parents are coming.” He turns away and followed the officers as you let out a sigh.

Never in your life arrested a best friend’s child. It was hard. It’s like all the trust just crumbles at your feet and you can’t find the ways to pick them up and fix.

You wanted to wait for Andy. If Duffy told him you found him and arrested him, he might not even talk to you.

You hear someone walk in and you turned to face Andy and Laurie. “Can I talk to you?” Andy asked. He sounded pissed. You looked at Laurie who was more worried than angry. He looks over to her, “Wait here, honey.” You followed Andy outside.

He meets the bottom of the stairs and turns to you, “What the hell are you doing?”

“What?” You asked.

“You arrested my son? What kind of friend does that?” He almost shouts. You stared at him in disbelief, “Andy, that was my job! It’s the law.”

“I don’t fucking care about the law, he didn’t do this.”

“I didn’t want to arrest your son. I love Jacob, you know that.”

“But you did it anyway,” He said. You scoffed, “If you have a problem of the arrest of your son, you can talk to the chief. That’s the law. So I suggest you understand them and let me do my job.”

“You’re ruining his life!”

“He ruined it himself if he’s the suspect!” You shout back. You watched Andy’s shoulders drop and he shakes his head. Andy drops his head and walks around you, heading back up the stairs.

He left you in the dark. You shook your head and placed your head in your hands and choked a sob. You walked back to your car and drove back home.

The next day, you didn’t call in for work. They asked you to be at the courthouse with the reporters. You rejected it and stayed at home. There was no reason for you to go to that court for Jacob. You didn’t want to be there and see Andy.

You regret what you said. It was fucked up. If Jacob wasn’t guilty, it would been worse. If you were... You didn’t want to think about that.

The news was showing the Barber family on the screen. You turned it off once you saw their faces and did things around the house. No calls from anyone throughout the day.

Possibly one from your mother. Hearing about Andy and his family. It was nighttime and you were just about to go to bed. The TV was on and you turned it off. The sound of walking was heard outside your yard.

You peaked through the curtains and didn’t see anyone. You hear your backyard light get triggered by the movement outside. You walk over and slid the door open.

You stood out and crossed your arms. “Hello?” You called, you turn back and grabbed your gun. You saw someone walk forward and you sighed.

“Jesus...” You whispered. Andy comes out in the darkness. He saw you with the gun in hand and sighs, “Sorry.” You placed the gun on the counter and crossed your arms.

“What are you here for?” You asked.

He looks down at his feet and walks forward, “I wanted... I wanted to say I’m sorry.” He looks up, his hands in his grey jacket as he steps closer. “I shouldn’t have gotten upset. I was just scared.”

You nod at him, “I’m sorry, too. For what I said, I--I didn’t mean it.” He was close as you thought. He pressed his lips together and formed a grin. You forced a smile on yours and sighed. “Friends?”

He smiles, “Of course.” He watches as you lean forward and wrapped your arms around him. He sighs softly and hugs you back. “I might talk to Duffy about the Patz case.”

“I thought he wasn’t their priority now?”

“He is to me. There has to be some connection to him. I might need your help sometime,” He said. You sighed against his chest. “Just don’t get me fired. They almost put me on leave because I knew your son.”

“They might. But it doesn’t stop us from defending Jacob.”

~~~

Some ending there, could’ve been worse but thank you for that request!

TAGS:

@jtargaryen18 @joannaliceevans-fanficblog @chrisevans-imagines @princess-evans-addict @bucksgoat @sweater-daddiesdumbdork @ifuseekamyevans @rororo06 @patzammit @axen-gers

#chris evans x reader #chris evans #cevans #andy barber x reader #andy barber #platonic!andy barber #defending jacob #steve rogers #steve rogers x reader

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senadimell · 5 years ago

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2, 7, 30?

Ooh, my first request!

2. Favorite underrated historical figure?

Princess Taiping/ 太平公主！ I wrote a paper on her and it was really hard to find sources discussing her in her own right. She’s a Zhou and Tang-dynasty figure, the daughter of the famous Wu Zetian, known as the only female emperor in China (Zhou being the single-generation dynasty established by Wu Zetian) She’s not someone I’d emulate, but man, she lived a wild life.

She instigated two successful coups and played politics like nobody’s business. All the while, she amassed landholdings and wealth. She was her mother’s right-hand woman: Emperor Wu* used one of the Taiping Princess’ plans to get rid of a confidante who’d gone too far by setting fire to a temple. Princess Taiping’s first husband was implicated in a failed rebellion against her mother and executed, but she was able to remarry and stay on the scene. In fact, we’re pretty sure her mother had the wife of her second husband assassinated so she could remarry him. I think it’s fascinating that she was able to stay on top during her mother’s rule, as two of her brothers were executed by her mother and two were ousted from power after being named successors. Later in her mother’s life, Taiping outmaneuvered both her mother and her mother’s head of secret police to coerce her mother into agreeing to oust him.

Eventually, she knew winds were changing in the court and her mother was falling out of favor, so she helped convince her to abdicate the throne in favor of one of her brothers, who I will refer to as Emperor Zhongzong.

It’s kinda complicated to talk about the crazy intrigue that followed her mother’s death, because practically all of her brothers and nephew all have multiple names: birth names, ruling names, and post-humous reign titles, so it can get a little confusing. So Emperor Zhongzong (sounds like jhong-tsong) came into power and his wife, Empress Wei, was also a strong political actor. She did not want Princess Taiping wielding that much political power, and Princess Taiping had lost her most powerful backer when Wu Zetian stepped down. Empress Wei wanted her daughter, the Anle princess, to hold power in the court, and even tried to have her named crown princess and heir, something unprecedented. That didn’t work and her son Li Chongmao/later Emperor Shao was named successor instead. It’s strongly suspected that Empress Wei and the Anle princess (sounds like ahn-leh) conspired to and successfully poisoned Emperor Zhongzong. The Taiping Princess lost no time in launching a coup, and in two weeks time both Empress Wei and the Anle princess were dead.

Li Chongmao didn't stand a chance. He was around 10-12 when this happened, and when people were still talking about who would be the new leader, she said “Everybody turns to the prime minister [princess Taiping’s brother, Li Dan, later Emperor Ruizong], little boy; this is not your seat.”** Emperor Ruizong treated Princess Taiping as a political equal and relied heavily on her advice.

Meanwhile, his son Li Longji grew in political power and prowess. She felt threatened by him, and participated in a smear campaign to limit his power. He tried to placate her appointing her supporters to government, so the government was filled with people loyal to her. Unfortunately for her, Emperor Ruizong’s advisors still managed to convinced him to exile her. Through her connections, she was still able to maintain power in the court.

In 712 ACE, Emperor Ruizong took a comet as a sign he was to step down (rather than eventually getting killed in the struggle between his son and sister) and announced his future abdication to his son Li Longji, temple name Emperor Xuanzong (shu-en tsong) which is how I will refer to him from now on). Aware of what this would mean for her, the Taiping Princess planned her third coup, an armed struggle to upend the soon-to-be Emperor Xuanzong, but was betrayed and discovered. She fled to a monastery, but was found three days later and permitted to commit suicide (seen as more honorable than execution). In the aftermath of the coup, all of the political leaders associated her were implicated by association and were executed or forced to commit suicide. Get this: that was all but one of the chief ministers! It took years for the state to completely appropriate her amassed landholdings and wealth.

*So Empress usually denotes a designated wife of an emperor (皇帝）. Wu Zetian went from a consort to empress regent to empress regnant, essentially. When Wu Zetian ascended the throne, she did some masterful religious and linguistic subversion to establish her legitimacy and came up with a lot of new terms and names to justify what she was doing, since it was unprecedented. Essentially, she was the female version of Emperor, but translating the linguistic titles is complicated.

**Sue Wiles and Lily Xiao Hong Lee “Li, Princess Taiping” Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II: Tang Through Ming 618 - 1644. Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women.

7. Which time period would you like to live in?

Now. The current one. Go back too far even in the past century and I lose rights and privileges that I value, like the ability to dress as weirdly as I please, the ability to discuss issues of mental health and the #me too movement with women’s rights in general, the ability to work where I want, and the ability to openly practice religion. I would also miss conversations and changes within my own faith community about treating people of all races and backgrounds equally, church culture vs. doctrine, and attitudes towards church history.

But if I were a time traveller and could stop in a place for a vacation, I’d love to live in the early 1900s (1900-1920) and visit major urban centers for art, music, and to witness labor conditions and activism. Alternatively, if I were a time traveller I would simply attend live showings of my favorite shows and concerts (lots of musical theatre)

30. Favorite kids/teens history books:

Most of the historical fiction I’ve read takes place in the past 100 years, and a lot of it takes place in the 30s and 40s. I do have a rule for myself that I don’t seek fiction about the Holocaust--the things here are exceptions. I tend to read survivor’s accounts instead, though I couldn’t think of many novels in for this rec.

Between Shades of Grey, by Ruta Sepetys--gorgeous, heart-wrenching book about a girl in Lithuania sent to a Soviet prison camp in Siberia.

Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire, by Elizabeth Wein--both take place during WWII. Rather brutal and play around with alternative narration styles.

The Devil’s Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen. I don’t know how to describe it. During a Passover Seder, Hannah Stern is transported back in time to 1942 Poland, during World War II.

Anything by Gillian Bradshaw (she’s more of a ‘dump you into the history hard and let you figure things out’ kind of author, which I love--I’m trying to get my hands on A Beacon at Alexandria. She also writes historical fiction set in antiquity, which I don’t see as often.)

Flygirl, by Sherri Smith about the WASP (Women’s Airforce Service Pilots). Tackles the racism of the era as well.

The Red Umbrella, by Christina Diaz Gonzalez, about the Cuban exile after the revolution of 1959

Esperanza Rising, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, about a girl who leaves her estate in Mexico and has to live as a migrant worker in California.

Uprising, by Margaret Peterson Haddix. This is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 and is a good introduction to labor issues and unions in US history. This book is almost solely responsible for why I don’t think Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them looks anything like New York at the early 20th century (yes, I know this takes place 10 years earlier, but conditions hadn’t changed all that much).

The Lightning Tree, by Sarah Dunster (not the book of the same name by Patrick Rothfuss). This one’s a bit personal--it’s a coming-of-age story following the story of a girl of Waldensian heritage set in Utah right after the Utah War (1858) and a year after the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It’s character-driven, lyrical and subverted my expectations of what would happen.

The Vanishing Point, by Louise Hawes. A fictionalized biography of Lavinia Fontana, a famous female artist in the Italian Renaissance. Considering how the art world is dominated by male artists, this was really neat to read, and also takes place further in the past than a lot of things I read.

Distant Waves, by Suzanne Weyn: Probably the weirdest book here, but just fabulous. It combines spiritualism, Nikola Tesla, Houdini and Doyle, H.G. Wells and the wealthy crème de la crème of the era with the Titanic.

Non-fiction

Yankee Doodle Gals, by Amy Nathan is about the WASP and is fabulous.

Teens at War, by Allan Zullo. Ten stories of teenagers at war throughout history.

Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials by Marc Aronson. One of the things I realized was just how much of an anomaly the trials were, as previously courts had been denying spectral evidence as a valid source of evidence.

Night, by Elie Wiesel. A personal history of surviving the Holocaust. Here’s the thing--if you can, read both the edition before his wife translated it and compare it to her translation. Her translations soften the hard edges of the book, which isn’t something I usually want if I’m reading about the Holocaust, but have been called more true to his words.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. A moving and disturbing story about race, medical exploitation, the invention of vaccines, and poverty in the U.S. I don’t know if this counts as a teen novel, but I read it as a freshman in high school on my librarian’s recommendation.

Savage Girls and Wild Boys Does this count as children or history? It’s a history about feral children (raised by animals, etc) and other children raised in extraordinary circumstances.

Sort of history? It’s more modern. Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick. It’s kind of a memoir of Arn Chorn-Pond, someone who survived the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979 and was a child soldier. It’s brutal, but I recommend it to everyone.

This isn’t a children’s history book, but I can’t miss an opportunity to recommend it. The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II by Iris Chang is utterly heartbreaking. The Rape of Nanjing has hugely significant to cultural memory, and yet most people I’ve talked to in the states have never hear about it

As for children’s books, I read my copy of The Secret Soldier by Ann McGovern to death. If not for its length, it would probably be falling out of its binding by now.

I also read my mother’s childhood copy of The Story of Helen Keller by Lorena A. Hickok over and over again (first published 1958).

Survivor, by Allan Zullo. Compilation of stories from children who survived the Holocaust.

The Hidden Girl, the story of Lola Rein Kaufman written between her and Lois Metzger. After her mother is killed by the Gestapo, she has to hide in a barn to survive.

OH! ETA:

Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics and Tough Mothers: Amazing Stories of History's Mightiest Matriarchs by Jason Porath are a fun way to get familiar with historical and legendary female historical figures. There is some swearing and description of all the sorts of things you can imagine have happened to historical women, but it’s organized by rating and type.

@brightbeautifulthings I don’t know if asking automatically tags you?

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the-firebird69 · 2 years ago

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There's a four-door Dodge car that goes up and down the road to late model maybe 2000s or even early 90s or late 90s and very fast 60 70 mph in the back road and we want him down and out and several others that we're ordering to go out and you guys are not doing it, we need to meet to see why whatever the reason we need to meet to see why. And today I'm putting it up

Several things happening today and they are different

-they're going for more police Chiefs and I said in phase one they fight like 10%, this is phase two they're fighting 10 more percent and sheriff's sheriff and they are firing 10 more percent on top of the 10% original workers we're being released earlier they would start my releasing races opposite of the sheriff and or chief. And now they're still doing that but when the sheriff or chief is released they will release the race and the other race will be played and of warlock we're moving out and they're doing that today to bring the total up to about 30% of the sheriff's and 30% of the chief of police in Florida.

There are more friends occurred and these people are losers and don't get it I think it's the mass of their infighting and that they run everything and they're going to take care of the new sheriffs and so on when by the time the sheriff is fired or laid off the rest of the department is already replaced and it's a lot more than just them it's going on like that on purpose and they don't seem to care

-along with the sheriff and the chief of police they're laying off select them in councilman again but that department went through about 40% including today of each and it is a nightmare these people are all like Trump and Dan and say very poor things and do extremely bold stuff and say they're way above everyone whether or not. And it's a side note our trucking is a tax tracking attention and buying a suggestion to unionize and that would keep riff Raff out it's kind of necessary there's a few reasons that just about anybody comes down to the docks and every day I might be new truckers and being in the union is one way to tell who it is and the second is if it's in the Union it starts to your night everybody their kids and their friends and neighbors since they're not they don't it's just I'm a trucker so it looks at it and it's also a thing about wages and things we could carry on and there's nothing wrong with Union there's a lot of union labor still in the northern part of the whole world and we are thinking about doing it and it will lead to open the matrix facilities. This is happening today though to another 10% of selecting and counseling and women. And I got to get the bozos off the TV to driving everybody nuts and so damn dumb.

-they're seeking out people who are pretending they're another race they're finding out where they're getting the blood and or other and they're quite horrified and they are taking over hospitals globally and we're there too and taking them down it was another huge lesson and it was given by John remillard it's here in punta Gorda and Port Charlotte is where it started yesterday early and people went in and investigated and they were not turned away. They were allowed in because they came in in force and the military came in mainly to retrieve it but they went after a whole bunch of people who were saying s*** and trying to order stuff to stop them and they said more in and more and they grab the specimens and the blood and there was a ton of this down below a ton okay and a lot of bodies and it's gross so they took all of them out and drove off of them all night long and brought in trucks and these people kept showing up and they would get the s*** kicked out of them firstly what do you think you can walk right up to us for and they're beating to death okay and the others would stand and watch and grin.

-there's a huge gap between us no, you just try dumb things all the time and we have to ignore you or Wade through it and get motivated by it and we do our job a lot because of it we take care of you for what you're saying and right now so you're going to take you out you're not going to like it but that leaves me to the next topic if you're in public can you start telling people stupid things you're going to be arrested and there's a law against what you're saying you're trying to incite riot it is very illegal you'll find out it's a felony. we had people yesterday coming up to us and saying dumb things and the rest of them and we told Mac looks everywhere and it won't stop so it got really big and really fast and we're commended.

-the force assembled last night in the sea and on land at the five points with swas obliterated in about 10 minutes my Max us and some forgieners but mostly Max. The central War but it won't really occur until people get fired and went off and they're going up in ranked a little bit some more numbers might come and he can't believe the numbers will get so big but if you want me to the millions in the last about 10 or 20 days and that'll be it at 1 million and he agrees. huge numbers of clones plan to come this time because the clothing here was wiped out.

-there are other developments here and things happening what is they're talking about our son being a spaz no being under a massive amounts of duress from every single one is jackasses and they're saying it too no way cuz I survive it with what they're saying and doing their bunch of fags did you say why am I supposed to be on your side you're such a f****** loser or f**** you're saying the stupid s*** to me. Now they started to get it this morning they get up and then start pestering you you start telling them to f*** off and then that girl is the same she's nasty does that routine doesn't and you don't care so she goes berserk they just said oh you look like pink we liked it so it was great grandma and and it's continuing but for real they said that they're coming up with a plan because it's ridiculous act like this massive massive juvenile delinquency assholes to him so much so that they can't stand them and they started to say that this guy next door did it and they can see why because it's Tommy f but it's way too much and they agreed he's Way Way beyond inability then he should be because you have to fend them all off it went way up so they're trying to modify that we're going to publish so we don't lose it

Thor Freya

This is gross it keeps going to the bathroom while we were talking it's kind of ignoring him because he has to but now they're being a little bit more cordial which is good

Hera

He means us we want to see it across the board and he's straighten us out about it he said okay I'm just going to go to the bathroom

Olympus

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fuckyeahtx · 5 years ago

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Late in the afternoon on the last Monday in June, 430 Democrats, who had paid up to $100,000 each, clicked into a private, Texas-themed Zoom call organized by Joe Biden’s campaign. They were greeted by former Planned Parenthood chief Cecile Richards, whose mother, Ann, was the state’s last Democratic governor. They heard from Julián Castro and Beto O’Rourke, and they were treated to a performance by Willie Nelson, who sang a song with his son Lukas called “Vote ’Em Out.” It began, “If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out. / That’s what Election Day is all about. / The biggest gun we’ve got is called the ballot box.” And they heard from Biden, who — just four days after a Fox News poll showed him narrowly ahead of Donald Trump in the state no Democratic nominee has carried since Jimmy Carter — told them, “I think we can turn Texas blue.”

From Amarillo to Brownsville to Beaumont to El Paso, you could practically hear the sighs: Here we go again. Texas Democrats hear a version of this overture in every election cycle as outsiders swoop in citing statistics about demographic shifts. The national party has long regarded the Lone Star State’s 38 electoral votes as the just-out-of-reach golden key to perpetual success.

Still, the ex-VP is now basking in a double-digit lead nationwide, and we’re improbably entering month 17 of close polling between Biden and the president in Texas, which Trump won by nine points in 2016. The state’s Republican senators are warning that Texas will be “hotly contested” (Ted Cruz) and “at risk of turning purple” (John Cornyn). And after months of bluster from its GOP leaders — in March, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said seniors like him would be willing to die to restart the economy — Texas is under assault from COVID-19, and frustrations are turning into fury. Governor Greg Abbott has backtracked on plans for reopening as more than 5,000 new coronavirus cases flood in each day, while Houston hospitals are at capacity and millions remain out of work.

Four months into lockdown — about halfway between being left for dead politically early in the primary and Election Day in November — the nominee and his campaign are still adjusting to political fortunes they can hardly believe all around the country, let alone in Texas. As the summer stretches on, party leaders are starting to work out whether Biden’s lead and Trump’s spiral mean Democrats can afford to experiment in conservative states or if it’s worth shining a brighter light on down-ballot races that could hand a President Biden the Senate.

Of course, no national Democratic group has spent a dime on TV advertising in Texas, and they’re unlikely to. Biden doesn’t need Texas to win the White House. Far from it: Carter is the only Democrat to win there since native son Lyndon B. Johnson. Pro-Biden groups, like the Unite the Country super-PAC, that aim to get him to 270 electoral votes have been spending money in top-tier battleground states like Florida and North Carolina, not Texas, where Trump still has a slim lead in some polls. “If we win Texas, it will be the 350th or 370th electoral vote,” says Lily Adams, a senior Unite the Country official (who happens to be Ann Richards’s granddaughter and Cecile Richards’s daughter). “Not the 270th.”

And Democrats are still haunted by their 2016 confidence, especially in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Hillary Clinton’s wasn’t even the party’s only semi-recent collapse; one July 1988 poll showed Michael Dukakis beating George H.W. Bush by 17 points. Trump’s team, meanwhile, insists it hasn’t started fully unloading on its opponent yet. But this year’s race is showing signs of becoming something entirely different: Despite being stuck at home in Delaware because of the virus while Trump soaked up the national attention, Biden held a roughly ten-point lead in national polling averages by the end of June — about four points wider than the margin at this stage of any race in recent history. It would be overly kind to describe Trump as “flailing” as his poll numbers continue to hit new lows amid the pandemic and the protests against police brutality. His answer is to desperately look for a more cutting nickname for Biden, as he’s worried that “Sleepy Joe” isn’t good enough. (The 74-year-old Trump’s allies think their best bet is to portray 77-year-old Biden as frail and deteriorating. When asked by a Fox News producer about “cognitive decline” late last month, Biden replied, “I’m constantly tested … I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I’m running against.”)

Biden’s leads in the crucial swing states are more solid than expected — Trump’s campaign team is already worried he may have too big a mountain to climb in Michigan, the site of perhaps his most shocking 2016 victory — but the leads are still smaller than Biden’s apparent national margin. Biden has only recently begun venturing out for campaign events and rarely travels farther than next-door Pennsylvania. Wary of distancing recommendations, he isn’t planning to hold rallies in the fall, and only now, with four months left, is he building up senior teams in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and the like, while his allies pound digital and TV airwaves in those battlegrounds with a barrage of anti-Trump ads.

A Biden sweep still isn’t certain, which is why he probably won’t go all-in on a state like Texas. “My grandmother used to say, ‘You don’t know the size of Texas until you’ve campaigned in it,’ ” warns Adams. O’Rourke’s race against Cruz was the priciest Senate contest ever — and he still lost. But, Adams continues, “what you may be witnessing is a confluence or perfect storm of events that is making Texas more competitive this cycle than any other in recent history.”

Three Democrats independently used the “perfect storm” metaphor in conversations with me to refer to the pandemic, Trump’s plummeting popularity, and demographic shifts that have increased the state’s number of Latino voters and city dwellers. (A fourth called it a “perfect shitstorm.”) While that combination doesn’t yet have party leaders considering Texas a central swing state, it has forced them to shift it solidly into their expanded conversation about electoral battlegrounds, just behind Georgia.

Those closest to Biden have better things to worry about than these debates — like picking his running mate and designing his coronavirus-recovery proposals. When they do get sucked in, though, the pro-Texas-investment arguments usually start by noting that this ain’t the Bushes’ Texas anymore. O’Rourke, whose presidential campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, now runs Biden’s effort, came within three points of Cruz in 2018. That was just four years after Abbott beat Democrat Wendy Davis by 20 points, and the state’s briskly growing cities and suburbs are sprinting away from Trump’s GOP. Long-term trends have seduced Democrats: The Census Bureau in June reported that Texas’s Hispanic population grew by more than 2 million in the past decade. And the state’s present crisis has only sped things up. It’s the latest stage in a four-month saga during which Trump’s polling has dropped precipitously, but it mirrors similarly dire pictures for Trump in Florida and Arizona. “It’s 24/7, all over the place on TV, on their cell phones, as counties send out emergency texts to every single person in the county,” Castro, the former presidential candidate, tells me. “People are putting two and two together that this is the direct result of a failure by Donald Trump and Greg Abbott.” Whereas Biden has lagged previous Democrats a bit in popularity among Latino voters, Latino communities have been hit especially brutally, causing many to turn hard against Republicans.

The party’s wallet will stay shut for now anywhere but Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, and Florida. Still, before Willie Nelson and his guitar took center stage that Monday afternoon on Zoom, O’Rourke warned that if the vote tally is tight on Election Day, “I believe that the current occupant of the White House — who does not believe in the rule of law, who does not respect the Constitution, who will do anything he can to maintain and increase his purchase on power, will exploit a close outcome to attempt to steal the election.” But, he continued, “the greatest safeguard against that outcome is Texas.”

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contes-de-rheio · 6 years ago

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Creating an army

For the needs of Rising Queens, I had to create an army. Since I'm an accountant and have never served in the military nor lived sometime between 1650 and 1820... I knew nothing about how to do that, so I researched, not a lot, but enough I think to give some tips and directions to anyone planning to do the same crazy thing.

Let's get started. Please note this is for fantasy writers, a number of elements do not apply to modern or futuristic armies. (words with a * are translated in French at the end, because I'm a little chauvinist)

1. How big is your army ?

So, if your army is a professional army, in clear if soldiers are soldiers all year long and paid for it, the size of your army is limited. Mostly because resources are not infinite, and your army depends on the rest of the population to be fed. This rule would also apply for mercenaries, as your nation must still be able to pay them.

In consequence, its size should not be more than 1% of the population. This number was true in the past, and is still true today. And 1% is the upper limit, it assumes your nation is able to collect taxes efficiently!! If it's not, your army must be smaller, or your nation will go bankrupt.

If your army is not professional, then the problem is a little different: your soldiers are no longer working all year long. The question is how big can your army be during x time? The longer the war/conflict lasts, the smaller your army will be, as your resources are limited and you need people to tend to the land. Or you can have a big starving army, your choice (or a starving population... or both...). After some research, it happens that number is 7% of the population for a period of 90 days (which was the length of a campaign season).

2. Support

So, yes, your soldiers are soldiering, or at least a part of them is... the rest is working as support, they are the spine of your army, without them everything could crumble. Without them you don't have supplies, or meals, or doctors, or clothes, or payslips or...

Among the various support departments in military, we will first start with one that probably was the biggest: Supplies (aka Furir*). They originally were in charge of housing and food for men and animals, but over time they came to be in charge of all supplies, including their logistics. In the French Navy, they once were in charge of payslips. Without them, you don’t have food, but you also don’t have uniforms, weapons, or munitions...

While we are here, let's note that most armies, while away from home, survived through plunder of the land around them. Which is great if you're not staying in the same place too long, and if your enemy does not decide to burn everything left behind. Mercenaries, who were not paid by their employer, also plundered the land of their employer as a form of revenge.

The Postal Service* is like a web, they have a presence everywhere in the military organisation (including schools, jails, navy...). Not only do they make sure the letters are sent to the right person, but they also take care of censoring the letters of the soldiers. This is a job that require discretion as you might end up in the confidence of secrets that do not concern you nor the public.

The War Commissaries* are in charge of the administration of the army, which includes: finances, human resources, audit and control, law assistance, accounting. In some cases, Furir and Postal Services are also incorporated under their supervision.

One of the support functions we probably don’t think much about are the surgeons. Doctors, especially, surgeons were a priority on a battlefield. Mostly they acted after the battle, but they also took care of the soldiers all year long in a professional army. Military hospitals were created, some of them were used as medical schools too, and not all of them were situated in a military base. I haven’t been able to find if any ancient military hospital was opened to the public, but I personally don’t see why not. Generally each company (about 100 men) had one surgeon.

I will not discuss soldier being soldier, if you want more information on this, I will leave some links at the end of this article, please refer to it.

3. Army or Not ?

Some people, depending of your organisation, of your country, may be considered part of your army, even though their role is unrelated to the protection of the country against foreign forces, such as: police, spies, customs...

It really depends on how you see your organisation as a whole, and also who pay who, or what Minister these people depend from. For example, the police might be paid directly by the city thanks to local taxes, while customs are under the supervision of the Finance Minister, and spies answer directly to the Crown. Or you can incorporate them in your army.

4. Equipment

The main question in regards to equipment is who provides what. There have been times, when each soldier was expected to procure themselves their own equipment: armor and weapons, horse, sometimes even food. You could tell a soldier's social background with just a look.

In some cases, the obligation to procure one's own equipment was attached to citizenship. Only citizens were required by law to serve in the army, and to be citizen you were required to have a given level of revenues.

At all times, heavier weapons (for siege, and later canons) were provided by the State or the lords.

5. Hierarchy

There are two main type of hierarchies: hierarchical (or traditional) and flat. My partner could tell you all about the advantages and disadvantages of both in details (and how mixed/new models exist), but for our purposes let's keep it simple.

Here is a drawing of both systems:

The bigger your army is, the less likely your hierarchy will be flat, for the very simple reason that your general in chief (or king, or whatever their actual title is) cannot be everywhere at once and has to delegate their power to keep the whole system working. In fact, at some point, the higher men in the hierarchy become strategists and/or administrators. Furthermore, if the official leader of your army is indeed the king, they might still need to delegate as 1) they are running a kingdom, and might need the time for something else, 2) they are very bad at leading an army (not everybody can be Frederic II or Napoleon...).

Next thing to determine is the numbers of levels in your hierarchy. I would advise to keep it as simple as possible. As an example, in Rising Queens, my army has 7 levels of hierarchy (including the soldiers without rank). Each rank correspond to an unity (i.e. company, regiment...). I merely added some nuances to distinguish some Navy ranks: a General and an Admiral have the same rank, but the later serves in the Navy.

If you want to get an idea of what ranking system you can implement, I would suggest you hit Wikipedia, as they have the organisations of a few armies listed. Just never forget reality is always more complex than fiction.

6. Magic

If you have magic in your universe, consider how it changes war strategy and organisation.

And since someone wrote extensively on the subject, allow me to redirect you to @warsofasoiaf post, right here.

Don't hesitate to drop me a message for questions, clarifications or comments :)

Some Useful Links

On Demography

Medieval Demography made easy (French version)

Notes on Medieval Population Geography

Medieval WorldBuilding Mega-Tutorial (includes info about army, and many other details)

On Armies and fighting

@transcriptroopers is a great resource about the life of modern soldiers.

@writenavy for anything related to Navy, both ancient and modern.

@howtofightwrite advices for anything regarding fighting, in nearly any context.

Medieval Warfare

Writing a War

Vocabulary - French translations

Furir - Fourrière (du mot fourrage)

Postal service - Vaguemestre

Commissaries - Commissaires (du mot commission, dans le sens de paie)

#writing #writeblr #worldbuilding #writing tips #writing resources #my writing tips #tip military #cdr writes #fantasy writer #fantasy

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reynoso79-blog · 5 years ago

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The Simpsons - A Commentary on American Culture

No one could have predicted that the grungy drawings of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson on the sketch parody program, "The Tracey Ullman Show" would change into a tremendously worshiped pack hit among watchers everything being proportionate and establishments. As the longest running restored course of action all through the whole closeness of TV, it is in like turnpike one of the most esteemed. "The Simpsons" scenes are routinely themed around advancing new unanticipated turns of events – even imperfect subjects, for instance, gay marriage and religion in state financed schools. There is nothing of the sort as difficult to show up at point on "The Simpsons." Topics on the show are facilitated distraction that is truly spun around all ages, races, sexual course and religions rick simpson oil .

Credits

Producer and authority creator, Matt Groening is attributed with restoring the excess satire to prime time TV with the introduction of "The Simpson's" hypothesis on Fox in 1989. Official creator James L. Streams is an Emmy and Academy award winning producer and creator of films that wire Terms of Endearment and As Good as it Gets. Al Jean is the third official creator other than head producer (Simpsons, 2006). As a stunning little attestation, staff writer, Daniel Chun is the more fiery get-together of a juvenile this author dated in assistant school. Al Jean and Mike Scully are in like manner two fundamental researchers.

Regardless of the conspicuous VIP guest stars who have voiced different sensational characters on the show, it is the voices of the standard characters that are central and key to the show's continued with progress. Everything considered striking for giving out the general filtered through "D'oh!" as Homer Simpson, Dan Castallaneta past Tracey Ullman cast part, is other than Mayor Quimby, Grandpa Simpson and Groundskeeper Willie among others. What's logically a Tracey Ullman alumna, Julie Kavner prompts her voice to Marge Simpson and her two upsetting Homer-disdaining, MacGyver focused, chain smoking sisters Patty and Selma. Nancy Cartwright is the voice of multi year old Bart Simpson, paying little mind to Ralph Wiggum, Nelson Muntz and Todd Flanders. Focus youthful, multi year old Lisa Simpson is outlined by Yeardley Smith. Both Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer offer voices to different Springfield's essential characters (Simpsons, 2006).

The Simpsons' Lucrative Heyday

In its exactly on an ideal opportunity to mid-'90s importance days, "The Simpsons" was less at the height of clear quality and evaluations, at any rate the show was gathering a few millions in referenced thing bargains. Parties couldn't get enough stunning Homers that drooled "Mmmm… doughnuts" or battery worked Barts hollering "Announced carumba!" at the push of his mid-locale, paying little psyche to PC games, dress, home enhancements from this time forward commonly more. Bart's catchphrases which included "Don't have a dairy creatures man!" and "Eat my shorts" were heard everywhere. Near the evaluations, systems of Simpsons referenced things have declined starting late, yet the section scholars' and producers' undertakings to keep the show new and attracting have not gone unnoticed by various watchers who have remained focused on the inhabitants of Springfield, USA.

A Window into Our Nation

How the show is set in a dull state shows an effort concerning the stars to reflect American culture everything considered in each scene. This has related with the show to draw watchers from wherever all through the country. For instance, a show like "Sex and the City" may have an especially beast after of New York watchers, while "The Simpsons" with its unidentified setting can interface all Americans. The two-story Simpson home on Evergreen Terrace energetically shows up additionally as a standard home in an American suburb – short the festival like striking shades.

The Main Characters – the Simpson family

The show is based around the Simpson nuclear family model of two watchmen, 2.5 young people (Maggie could be considered the .5 thinking about her as deficiency to talk) notwithstanding cats, Snowball I, II and III and ensured about greyhound, Santa's Little Helper. The family structure and character characters reflect standard American checks. While the Simpsons are truly broken, (as show by one of the past scenes where the family experienced incapacitated individual treatment with Dr. Marvin Monroe to vanquish their issues), finally, we when in doubt have issues, at any rate toward the day's end, there is an enormous level of warmth and solidarity in different families. This is unmistakably, if you pardon the trustworthy introductions of youth abuse where Homer stiflers Bart until his eyes swell off of his brain and the way that kid Maggie is certainly once in a while wandered out from home alone.

Submitted adornment and mother Marge is a tribute to enduring American moms. She is the heart, soul and glue of the Simpson family. As opposed to her life right hand, Marge doesn't have any mates or time to be social as she is an over the top level of clamoring paying unprecedented cerebrum to her adored one and adolescents. Homer, who has a huge level of irrelevant progression mates, is the pulverizing imbecile of a genuine proximity embellishment and father. What he needs sharp, he makes up in mix use at his kept up watering opening, Moe's Tavern. He isn't for each condition completely gave to his family and is continually fuming and crazy, yet near the fulfillment of most scenes, he picks the best choice – and that is the spot we see the spirit of the American father.

Bart is the artfulness, free vivacious most settled youth who uncovers burden all finished, regardless, like his father, as a last resort finds recuperation and a liberal closeness practice before the accreditation of a scene. Lisa is the totally evident still, little voice of the Simpson family. An especially read, caring youth who follows Buddhism and perpetual new unexpected new turns of events, Lisa can in like course chuckle with Bart at the especially energetic scenes of the cat and mouse enemies, Itchy and Scratchy. Kid Maggie, while the humblest and calmest character, says a great deal with the sucking of her pacifier. Managers have dependably given Maggie a discernible information and care that isolates her young age. She even has a uni-browed baby adolescent pre-grown-up kid foe.

Social Commentary

Notwithstanding the Simpson family central characters, the show features packs and unquestionable Springfield tenants with staggering records and excited characters, all of which address the focal characters an epic bit of us will establishing with the course of our lives. For instance, our country is over-issue with odd government supervisors and Mayor Quimby addresses an absolute vexatious political figure. He is routinely caught in exchanging off positions selling out Springfield and swaying with young people, yet he remains in force and no one in the town seems to shudder an eyelash. Completely when he even addresses the townspeople as "botching hicks" and they are not sifted through by it.

Punching fun of the police structure, The Simpsons features Police Chief Clancy Wiggum, perhaps the second most essential bozo on the hotshot near Homer. He is in peril for Springfield's security and thriving with his two side-kicks who rout Wiggum in information. His stagger factor is wavering and the town would be in a perfect circumstance rushed toward dread based oppressor savages with access to weapons of mass pummeling. Any police chairman who says "Aww, wouldn't anyone have the decision to in this town censure all position?" may not be the most qualified open entries for the turn of events (Simpsons, 2006).

Estimation of the Elderly

The show other than limits the fundamental issue of old dismissal. Homer's father, Grandpa Simpson, lives in the Springfield Retirement Castle. A surrendered war sifted specific, Grandpa was hard for Homer in his pubescence. As perhaps a kind of subconscious response, Homer put Grandpa in a home where his own fulfillment is poor. Doubtlessly Grandpa and various tenants are regulated genuinely. His ill-manners is clear when in one event, Grandpa won't let Homer get the phone with the objective that he can "respect the rings." Yet Grandpa appears in changed scenes as a singing, hypnotizing character who credits his novel, upsetting outlandishness to the show. Potentially the specialists are endeavoring to plot that different old paying little respect to everything have a great deal to contribute and should not be disposed of as aggravations.

Phil Hartman

The late Phil Hartman of Saturday Night Live acknowledgment influenced his voice to two prosaism Simpsons characters: miserable authentic guide Lionel Hutz and lighting up film star, Troy McClure. Troy McClure would normally progress by saying something like "Howdy, I'm Troy McClure! You may review me from such open assistance stories as 'Alloted Drivers, the Lifesaving Nerds' and 'Phony Tornado Alarms Reduce Readiness'" (Troymcclurepage, 2006). Troy was a boggling of a character a broad bit of us found in our giganticness in potentially a couple of state maintained school films that by chance held any illuminating worth.

Certifiable guide Lionel Hutz was a crude, salvage vehicle filtering for after, picked authority who now and again out of the blue appeared in a situation where his confirmed "achievement" may have helped him advantage by somehow. His authentic practice was named "I Can't Believe it's a Law Firm!" and offered clients gleams, for instance, a free pizza if their settlements were not formed in a brief timeframe or less (Lionel Hutz, 2006). Lionel's character unfalteringly exemplified the hypothesis of the unquenchable, money grubbing confirmed help.

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