#historic new york hotels

[bluemoonnyc]

Discover the Best Hotels with Balconies in Downtown NYC: A Blend of Modern Comfort and Historic Charm

New York City is a mesmerizing blend of old-world charm and modern elegance, offering travelers an abundance of experiences. For those seeking accommodations that combine a central location with spectacular views, hotels with balcony NYC are an excellent choice. Whether you’re hoping to glimpse the iconic skyline or enjoy some fresh air while taking in the vibrant energy of the streets below, NYC hotels downtown provide an array of options. Among these, historic New York hotels, such as the renowned Hotel Blue Moon, stand out for their unique character, offering a nostalgic glimpse into the city’s past while providing modern amenities.

[jinxed-sinner]

Alright here's my full (possibly hot) take on redesigning Hazbin Hotel characters and making a video showcasing those redesigns while you criticize the official designs.

First and foremost, you are redesigning someone else's OCs. Hazbin Hotel is, in essence, a passion project for Viv. How she talks about it makes that incredibly clear to me. The only difference between Hazbin Hotel and, for example, the story I'm developing surrounding some of my D&D OCs is that Hazbin Hotel got picked up by a streaming service and is significantly more popular than most passsion projects get.

Personally if someone wanted to redesign my D&D OCs, I wouldn't mind it, in fact I'd probably think it was really cool that someone would want to redesign one of my OCs to be closer to their tastes in terms of what they like to draw. I would, however, be made incredibly uncomfortable if someone made a video redesigning them where they also pointed out everything they thought was wrong with the designs. I didn't design these specific D&D characters to be 1-to-1 accurate to their classes in D&D or to look professionally designed. I designed them how I wanted them to look for the story I'm telling because I don't plan to ever play them in a campaign. The main character Avlan is a paladin, and I can acknowledge that his design might not look exactly like a paladin. One of the tabaxi in the story (Ice) is a bard and the other (Spark) is a ranger, and I acknowledge that their classes might not come across well in their designs. The single tiefling I've designed for this story (Tragedy) is a cleric but might not come off as one in their design. But I specifically designed them to be easy for me to draw because I want to be able to tell this story through my art. Having someone say "oh, Avlan's armor isn't paladin enough!" or "Avlan's fur colors and patterns should be closer to a wild rabbit's because harengon shouldn't be based on domestic rabbit colors!" would fucking hurt (especially because I'm so attached to Avlan, but it would hurt just as much if similar comments were made about Ice, Spark, or Tragedy). I am so passionate about these characters and being told their designs are bad or wrong in some way would be like a stab in the heart, and it would still feel like a stab in the heart if this story ever got a massive fandom behind it. Giving Avlan more complex armor because you think it'd look cool or just want to see what it'd look like? Sure, if I could draw more complex armor I'd give him more complex armor too. Giving him more complex armor but also shitting on the armor I decide to draw him with? My motivation to draw him in his armor, potentially draw him period, would be dead for WEEKS.

Why is it suddenly okay just because someone's passion project was picked up by Amazon Prime? Why is it suddenly okay to be "fixing" someone's character designs just because the project has a much bigger budget than most artists get and is on a popular streaming service? It's not. I don't care if you're a professional character designer, or think a specific character would look better with certain traits, or just don't like the character designs.

Hazbin Hotel is still Vivienne Medrano's passion project, and redesigning her characters and making videos talking about everything you think is "wrong" with them is, honestly, disgusting. You can make videos explaining your choices in your redesigns without putting down the designs that already exist, whether you like them or not. Me thinking Lucifer looks better with his tail not restricted to his full demon form doesn't suddenly mean I don't like his official design, because I fucking love it. If you wouldn't do it to an artist whose passion project is just a webcomic here on Tumblr, don't fucking do it to an artist whose passion project got picked up for a cartoon by a big streaming service (or any company for that matter).

[coffeeandstrawberries]

[awkward-smirks]

love is making your best friend an interactive table/spreadsheet of every single place you want to take her when she comes to your city and then creating a yelp page with the 47 corresponding locations for an easily viewable map + reviews + pics so she can choose. <3

[thehistoricbluemoonhote]

The Historic Blue Moon Hotel

Website: https://www.bluemoon-nyc.com

Address: 100 Orchard Street, New York City, NY 10002, USA

The Historic Blue Moon Hotel in NYC, an award-winning 1879 establishment, offers a unique blend of history and luxury. Nestled in the vibrant Lower East Side, it provides an immersive experience with its artful decor and museum-like ambiance. The hotel features beautifully restored rooms, each with a balcony, offering stunning city views. Guests can enjoy modern amenities like free Wi-Fi, large bathtubs, and handcrafted Italian cuisine at the on-site Trattoria. Ideal for both short and extended stays, the Blue Moon Hotel promises a memorable stay in the heart of New York City.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlueMoonHotelNYC

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bluemoonhotel

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluemoonhistoric/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bluemoonhotel7282

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/randysettenbrino/

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[todieforimages]

Hotel Chelsea-New York, New York

This is my first post in the category of “Not Southern, also known as the “Mostly” part of my blog’s tagline. I shot these photos in 2010, a few months before the Chelsea Hotel was sold and went through a multi-year renovation process. The fireplace is in the room where Madonna filmed her video, “Justify My Love.” The Chelsea Hotel is located in Manhattan in the Chelsea neighborhood. Built on…

[deadmotelsusa]

New York City’s last by-the-hour love motel has closed. If these walls could talk...

They would probably share how this narrow building opened in 1908 as the Strand Hotel. Or how in 1912, due to its close proximity to the pier, The New York Times rented out every room to cover the Titanic sinking. Or how in the 1940s, it catered exclusively to men and rented to sailors who usually had only a few hours to experience what the city had to offer. Or how in the 1970s, it changed its name to the Hideaway Motel and opened a gay club in the basement called The Anvil. Or how celebrities like Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Freddie Mercury and Lou Reed frequented the club until its closure in 1985. Or how when it changed its name to the Liberty Inn, its themed rooms were the site of many affairs through the next three decades.

Or how the motel property was acquired by Hyundai and for the first time in over 100 years, has permanently closed.

The future of the former Liberty Inn is unknown, though I received a message recently from someone stating that it has already been demolished. I wasn’t able to confirm this and in May 2024 (via Google Street View), it was still standing. Per the New York Post, the 6,735 square-foot building can be replaced with one twice as large under zoning rules and because it lies outside the nearby historic district, new construction doesn’t need to be approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 7: Apollo, God Of Music]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 8.7k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

“My uncle, he is a doctor in Zabrze,” Ludwika says, red Yardley lips, Camel cigarette. No one cares if she smokes; she’s not campaigning to be the next first lady. Fosco is puffing on a cigar. Mimi sips drowsily at her Gimlet; you could use a few shots, but you’re making do with a Pink Squirrel, something sweet and feminine and without any bite. “So I go to him and he gives me a bottle of chlordiazepoxide.”

“Oh, Librium,” Mimi says, perking up.

Ludwika waves her hand dismissively; cigarette smoke wafts through the air. “Whatever. The next day I have my audition. A tiny man who thinks he’s God. And I give it a real shot, I try my best, I’m nice, I’m charming, but he doesn’t like me. He says my teeth are too big, like a mouse’s. This is very rude. I did not comment on his fidgety little rat hands. But okay, no problem, I have a plan. No one will stop me from getting out of Poland.”

“You drugged him?” you ask, incredulous, grinning.

“You are a criminal,” Fosco tells Ludwika. “I will call J. Edgar Hoover, you should not be so close to positions of power.”

“Listen, listen,” Ludwika insists. “Here is what I do. I thank him very much for his consideration, and then as I leave I drop my purse and things go everywhere. I filled it before I left my apartment, of course. Anything I could find, empty lipstick tubes and perfume bottles, old makeup compacts with broken mirrors, coins, hair pins, tissues, pens, gum, Krówki candies, it is an avalanche. And when he bends down to help me pick up the mess—I have to encourage him, ‘oh sir won’t you grab that, I am just a stupid girl in a very short dress,’ you understand—I put the pills in his tea.”

“How many pills?” you ask.

“I don’t know. You think I had time to count? Maybe seven.”

“Seven?!” Mimi exclaims, and you take this to mean it was a generous dose.

“What? He did not die,” Ludwika says. “I wait two days and then I go back to his office. And it is so strange, can you believe it, he does not remember my audition! So I remind him that he thought I would be perfect for the ad he is shooting in Paris. He keeps squinting at me and saying ‘are you sure, are you sure?!’ Of course I’m sure! A week later, I am standing under the Eiffel Tower with a bottle of Coca-Cola. And then I book a job in London, and then another in New York City, and one of my new model friends sets me up on a blind date with Otto. Lunch in Astoria at a horrible Greek restaurant. Who wants to eat pie made out of spinach?! Now I am here with you people, and the journalists love when I smile for them with my big mouse teeth.”

All four of you laugh at your table, an elite club, the ones who married in. It’s Alicent’s 60th birthday, and the ballroom of the Texas State Hotel in downtown Houston is raucous with clinking glasses and chatter and music and the shutter clicks of photographers. The DJ is playing Fun, Fun, Fun by the Beach Boys. Alicent is dancing with Helaena and the children, and it’s the happiest you can ever remember seeing her. Otto, Aemond, and Sargent Shriver are deep in conversation by the bar, furrowed brows and Old Fashioneds, today’s newspapers and tomorrow’s itinerary. Criston is standing with the men but watching Alicent, face wistful, silver streaks in his jet black hair, and it occurs to you that they must have grown up together: Alicent a 19-year-old bride and Criston her husband’s fledgling bodyguard, the person closest to her age in the household, near and trusted and forbidden, orbiting adolescent twins like Artemis and Apollo. You keep looking around for Aegon. No one else seems aware that he’s gone.

“Otto thought he died and went to heaven when he found you,” you tell Ludwika. “His Eastern Bloc defector princess.”

“He is going to bring my mother to the States. I would be anything he wanted me to be. I would be a model, or a housewife, or a nurse. I would be Bigfoot! But this…” Ludwika gestures broadly: to the ballroom, the city, the latest stop on the campaign trail. “It is not so bad. I never expected to serve the Polish people so far from home. You know how you stop communism? You show the world that capitalism can do more for them. There must be a path to a better life, wars must be ended, injustices must be dealt with. Aemond will do that.” She grins at you, exhaling smoke through her nostrils. “You will help him.”

You reply a bit wryly: “It’s an honor.”

“We are like four legs of a table,” Fosco observes. He points at Ludwika with his smoldering cigar. “You are a Slav fleeing the Russians. My family has ancient titles in Italy and yet no castles, no land, we are essentially homeless. Mimi’s father is a third-generation oil tycoon from Pennsylvania. And she was supposed to fix Aegon.”

“I don’t think I succeeded,” Mimi confesses.

“And then when it was time for Aemond to get married…” Fosco turns to Mimi. “Do you remember? What an ordeal. The discussions went on and on and on. She must be smart, she must be sinless, she should be from a self-made family, a real rags-to-riches story of the American Dream.”

“Right.” Mimi nods groggily, reminiscing. “And from the South.”

“Yes! But not the Deep South. No, no. Someplace Aemond could actually win. Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina. Or Florida, of course.” Now Fosco notices how you’re looking at him, because you’ve never heard this before. He quickly pivots. “But the weekend Aemond met you, it was settled. Nobody could compare.”

His tone is odd; it suggests backstories, history, mythology. Ludwika appears to be just as intrigued as you are, taking a drag off her Camel, her eyes narrowing until they are thin and catlike. You ask: “Who else was being considered?”

“No one,” Fosco answers—too quickly—and he and Mimi exchange an uneasy glance.

What did Aemond and I talk about the night we met? you think dizzily. In those first hours, minutes, thirty seconds? Where I’m from. What I was studying.

Fosco, a true Italian, then attempts to deflect by flirting. He makes emphatic, passionate motions with his hands. “You were just so captivating, so clever…”

“And young enough that Aemond could easily beat Aegon’s record of five children,” Mimi adds. Fosco clears his throat and glares at her. Mimi realizes what she’s said and gazes forlornly down into her Gimlet, mortified, groaning softly. You’ve had one c-section already, and no living son to show for it. At most, you might be able to give Aemond two or three more children; and you don’t even want them. You want Ari back. You want to touch him, to hold him, even if only for a moment, even if only once.

“It’s fine,” you try to reassure Mimi, but everyone can tell it’s not.

Ludwika breaks the tension. “You do not want twenty kids anyway. Your uterus will fall out onto the floor.” And you’re so caught off-guard that all you can do is smile at her from across the table, knowing, appreciative. It’s a strange thing to be grateful for.

“She’s right,” Mimi says mournfully. “They had to sew mine back in.”

Fosco pleads: “Stop, stop, I will need a lobotomy.”

Mimi slurps on her Gimlet. “It’s sad. I used to love sex.”

“Mimi, please,” Fosco says, wincing, holding up his palms. “You are like my sister. I prefer to think you are the Virgin Mary.”

Ludwika sighs dramatically and looks to where Otto stands on the other side of the ballroom. “I used to love sex too.”

Now you’re all howling again, rocking back in your chairs. The DJ is playing Go Where You Wanna Go by the Mamas and the Papas. Cass Elliot is the real talent in that group and everybody knows it, but of course any mention of her must be dutifully accompanied by: If only she was more beautiful. If only she could lose weight and find a husband.

“I think you like it, yes?” Ludwika says to you like a dare, puffing on a fresh Camel, red lipstick staining the white paper, blood on sheets. She combs her manicured fingernails though her voluminous blonde hair. “I could tell when I met you. You dress like Jackie Kennedy, but you are not such a statue. She belongs in a museum. I can imagine you at the Summer of Love.”

Fosco and Mimi shift uncomfortably. It’s not the sort of thing they would ever ask you. It’s too personal, too easily a segue into criticizing Aemond. It’s a usurpation of the natural order. Mimi guzzles her Gimlet and flags down a waiter to get another. Fosco takes off his glasses and cleans them with his skinny black necktie.

Sex. You think back to before you began to dread it. This is difficult, like trying to remember Greek words or British manners, which fork to use with each course. Memories from another lifetime come back in flashes: tangled up with your first boyfriend in his tiny dorm room bed, Aemond peeling off your still-dripping swimsuit on the floor of your hotel room during your honeymoon in Hawaii. You shrug and give Ludwika a nod, a brisk, ungenerous answer in the affirmative. “I always feel like I could keep going.”

Paradoxically, this does not end the conversation. Ludwika, Fosco, and Mimi study you with the same bewildered, gear-spinning curiosity. After a moment Ludwika says: “Not after you’ve finished, surely. I am half dead by the end if it’s good.”

“Finished?” you ask, puzzled. All three of them gawk at you, then at each other.

Aegon breezes into the ballroom wearing the Gibson guitar he bought in Manhattan, blue like the Caribbean or the Mediterranean or the crystalline waves off the coast of Hawaii, dotted with fish and sea turtles. Your eyes go to him immediately and stay there; you can feel the swirling warmth of blood in your cheeks. As Aegon passes the table, he squeezes your shoulder—brief, familiar, welcome—and Fosco raises his thick eyebrows. Mimi is too busy gulping down her Gimlet to notice. Ludwika chuckles, low and wicked, then slides a makeup compact out of her Prada purse to check her lipstick. Aegon goes to the DJ and yells something over the music. He’s fucked up already, you can tell, pills or booze or both.

Fosco stops a passing waiter. “Signore, did you hear who won the United Nations Handicap?”

The waiter stares blankly back at him. “What?”

“The turf race at Monmouth Park. I have $200 on Dr. Fager.”

The DJ abruptly cuts off the music. Aegon gives his guitar a few practice strums to make sure it’s in tune. He stumbles when he walks, he lurches and sways. His blonde hair sticks to the sweat on his forehead. He is woefully underdressed. His white shirt is half-unbuttoned, his denim shorts tattered; on his feet he wears black moccasins. There is a small gold hoop in each of his ears. Otto keeps telling Aegon to take them out, and every time Aegon ignores him.

“Happy birthday, Mom,” you hear him say to Alicent, and she presses a palm to her heart, her dark eyes wide and shining. “When I first heard this, it made me think of you.”

Otto and Sargent Shriver—the aspiring vice president—are glowering at Aegon. Aemond smirks as he nips at an Old Fashioned, amused; but he makes sharp, intentional eye contact with each of the three journalists. You will tell the right version of this story, he means. You will not print anything we wouldn’t want written, or my family will be your enemies for life.

As soon as Aegon plucks the first few chords, you recognize the song. “Oh, that’s really funny.”

“What?” Fosco asks.

“It’s Mama Tried.” You stand and begin clapping, then motion for the rest of the table to do the same. They obey without protest, though Mimi can’t seem to keep track of the beat. Aegon is beaming as he sings.

“The first thing I remember knowin’

Was a lonesome whistle blowin’

And a youngin’s dream of growin’ up to ride

On a freight train leavin’ town

Not knowin’ where I'm bound

And no one could change my mind but Mama tried.”

Cosmo sprints over from where he had been dancing with Alicent. He grabs your hand and tugs you towards the center of the floor. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouts impatiently.

“Call the FBI, I’m being kidnapped,” you say to Fosco and Ludwika as you let Cosmo drag you away.

“One and only rebel child

From a family meek and mild

My Mama seemed to know what lay in store

Despite all my Sunday learnin’

Towards the bad I kept on turnin’

‘Til Mama couldn’t hold me anymore.”

At the heart of the ballroom, Criston has swooped in to dance with Alicent, slow chaste circling. Helaena has floated off to the bar to chat with Otto, who keeps all his smiles for her. The children—Targaryens and Shrivers alike—are stomping and cheering and alternating between various moves: the Mashed Potato, the Twist, the Swim, the Loco-Motion, the Watusi, the Pony in pairs. Aemond whistles to a photographer and then nods to where you are holding onto one of Cosmo’s tiny hands as he spins around at lawless, breakneck speed. Of course this would make for a good image: you being maternal, you promising the American people that they will one day have not only a first lady but a first family.

“And I turned 21 in prison doin’ life without parole

No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried

Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading I denied

That leaves only me to blame ‘cause Mama tried.”

Cameras flash and the crowd keeps clapping. Cosmo giggles wildly each time he almost falls and you pull him back to his feet. There is a hand skimming around your waist, a listless powder blue dress your husband chose for you. Aemond replaces Cosmo as your dance partner. Aegon’s 10-year-old daughter Violeta spirits Cosmo away; Aemond reels you in close, one palm pressed into the small of your back, his left hand gripping your right. When you steal a glimpse of Aegon—still strumming, still singing—he doesn’t look so triumphant anymore. His grin is frozen and artificial. His drunk muddy eyes go steely.

“I need you to do something for me,” Aemond begins.

Of course, you once would have said. Anything. “What is it?”

“I want you to cut your hair like Jackie.”

You’re so stunned your feet stop moving. Aemond coaxes you back into the steps. “No.”

“Think about how much more versatile it would be. Jackie is an icon, she’s sophisticated, she’s mature.”

“If you wanted a wife in her thirties, you could have easily found one.”

“Honey—”

“I do everything you ask,” you say, barely more than a whisper. “Everything. I wear what you want me to. I go where you want me to. I spend ten hours a week getting my hair fixed. I keep it up, I keep it presentable. But I’m not chopping it off.”

“You’re never going to be able to wear it down anyway,” Aemond counters, so calm, so rational, like your skull is nothing but incendiary feminine mania. “If I win, you’ll be surrounded by staff and journalists for years. You can’t be photographed with it down, you look about eighteen. And like you live on a park bench in Haight-Ashbury.”

“It’s my hair. I’m keeping it.”

Aemond leans in and says, cold and severe: “You’re my wife, and everything that’s yours belongs to me.” Then he kisses your cheek as cameras click and strobe. “Think about it. Now smile.”

You force yourself to. The crowd applauds as Aegon finishes singing and flees the dancefloor. The DJ puts on Light My Fire by The Doors. You and Aemond leave in opposite directions: he goes to talk to Eunice Kennedy, who is hugging her 3-year-old son Anthony to her chest; you return to your table to drain the last of your Pink Squirrel. You need something stronger. You need to be alone so you can collect yourself.

Now Aegon has shed his guitar and is standing with his back to the wall, smoking a Lucky Strike and talking to some campaign staffer—she looks like a girl, but she’s probably your age—who is gazing up at him worshipfully. She says something that makes him laugh, his head thrown back, his eyes sparkling, and you feel like you’re waking up from your c-section all over again, your belly split open and rearranged, aching, stabbing, nauseous.

“Are you okay?” Ludwika asks, scrutinizing you.

“I’m perfect. I’ll be right back.”

You hurry out of the ballroom, the music fading behind you. You slip into one of the elevators in the lobby and hit the button for the top floor, where Aemond’s entourage has booked every suite. As the door is closing—as only a foot of space remains—Aegon shoves his way into the elevator, startling you. The door shuts behind him and you begin the ascent. Aegon slams the red emergency stop button, and the elevator jolts to a halt.

“What the hell are you doing—?!”

“What pissed you off, huh?” Aegon taunts, stepping closer. You back away from him until you run out of room; not because you want the distance, but because you’re afraid of what you’ll do if it’s gone.

“Nothing. I’m so great, I’ve never been better, can’t you tell?”

He’s so close you can feel the heat rising off his flushed skin, you can see the miles-deep murky blue of his irises, open water, shipwrecks and drowning. “You want all this to be over? You want the women with their big, adoring eyes and their short skirts to disappear? Grow up. Stop acting like a kid. Ask for it.”

“Ask for what?”

“You know.”

If you touch him now, you won’t be able to stop. There’s nowhere for us to go. There’s no way out of this family, this year, this world. “I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Aegon barks out a sardonic, cutting laugh. “Yeah, you’re definitely 23.”

“I thought you loved girls young enough to be your daughters. Isn’t that what gets you hard?”

“You’re a fucking coward.”

“You’re sweating on me, you pig.”

“You want it so bad,” Aegon whispers as he presses himself against you, his ribs and thighs and hips, and you clutch for the walls of the elevator so you don’t reach for him instead. His left hand is tearing your hair out of its clips and pins so it falls free like you used to wear it; the right is all over your face, your jaw, your chin, your cheeks, touching you ceaselessly, ravenously, a blind man reading chronicles of braille. You’re trying to turn away from him, but he keeps pulling you back in. You’re breathing his rum and nicotine, you’re gasping in low, starved moans. It might be more intimate than kissing, than sex. He’s already felt your body. What he asks for now is your soul. His words are warm and aching as he murmurs through loosed strands of your hair: “Tell me you want it, please, just tell me, just tell me, tell me and it’s yours.”

Your palms land on his bare, damp chest, and Aegon starts unfastening the last buttons of his shirt. Instead, you push him away. Aegon lets you. He surrenders. “I can’t,” you choke out. You hit the red button, and the elevator resumes its rise to the top floor of the hotel.

“I’m really fucked up right now,” he says with sudden realization, swaying, staring down at his feet like he fears he’ll lose track of them.

“I’m aware.”

“I’m sorry. I think…I think I wanted that to happen differently.”

“I can’t trust you when you’re like this,” you say. I feel like I can’t trust anyone. Aegon looks up at you, his glassy eyes large and wounded. When the elevator door opens, you step out and he stays in, riding it back to the lobby.

In the suite you share with Aemond, you turn on the radio and spin the dial until you find a Loretta Lynn song. You go to the minibar cabinet and down two tiny glass bottles of vodka, something that won’t make you smell like too much of a drunk. You’ll have to fix your hair before you go back to the ballroom; you’ll have to change your dress. You’re painted with Aegon’s sweat and smoke. You can’t risk your husband noticing. You slide open the top drawer of the nightstand on your side of the bed and take out the card you keep there, the one that travels with you to each stop on the campaign trail. Loretta Lynn croons from the radio, wronged and wrathful.

“If you don’t wanna go to Fist City

You’d better detour around my town

‘Cause I’ll grab you by the hair of your head

And I’ll lift you off of the ground

I'm not a-sayin’ my baby is a saint, ‘cause he ain’t

And that he won’t cat around with a kitty

I’m here to tell you, gal, to lay off of my man

If you don’t wanna go to Fist City.”

You lie on the floor and peer up at the card in your hands: jubilant cartoon cow, festive party hat. You know exactly what’s written on the inside; it’s etched into your memory like myths passed down through millennia. Nevertheless, you read it again. The original message is still crossed out, and there’s an addendum below it in hasty black ink: I thought this was blank…congrats on the new calf!

You graze your thumbprint across Aegon’s scrawled signature. It’s smudged now. You do this a lot. One day his name might disappear altogether from the stark white parchment, from memory.

You close the card and hug it to your chest like a mother holds a living child.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What’s going on between you and Aegon?”

Alarmed, you meet Aemond’s gaze, two reflections in the vanity mirror. It’s the next morning, and you’re finishing up your makeup. Your dress and jacket are striped with black and white, your jewelry is silver, chains on your wrists and small tasteful hoops in your ears. “Nothing.” There is a lull you have to fill before it becomes suspicious. “He’s been helpful, he’s been…you know. Ever since Mount Sinai.”

Aemond adjusts his cerulean blue tie, studying himself in the mirror. He’s still wearing his leather eyepatch. Putting in his glass eye is the last thing he does before leaving the suite each day. “He was a comfort to you.”

“Well, he was there.”

“Because I told him to be,” Aemond says, resting his hands on the back of your chair. “Someone had to stay at Asteria to keep tabs on things, to let me know what you were up to. Aegon was the most expendable. Mimi and the kids make for good photos, but Aegon…he’s not especially endearing to the public. Those few years as the mayor of Trenton just about ruined him. I’d love to make him the attorney general if I win, but I don’t think the people would stomach it. Maybe if he behaves himself he can have the job for my second term.”

Eight years, you think, unable to fathom it. Eight years in a fishbowl. Eight years lying under Aemond as he tries to get me pregnant with children neither of us can love.

Aemond leans down to touch his lips to the side of your throat. “I’m glad you’re finally friends,” he says. “Aegon’s not all bad. But don’t let him get you in trouble.”

“I wouldn’t.” What did you and Aemond talk about before Ari died? What was this marriage built on? The senate, the presidency, civil rights, poverty, the Space Race, Vietnam, Greek mythology. Everything but each other. Dreams and ideals that would dwarf any mortal, would render them invisible.

“And watch out for any reporters from the Wall Street Journal. They’d kill for Nixon. If they can twist your words, they will.” He gets something from inside his own nightstand: the bloodstained komboskini from when he was shot in Palm Beach. He places it in your right hand, all 100 knots. “Give this to someone today. You know how to do it, you’ve always understood this part. Pick the right person, the right moment. Make sure there are plenty of cameras around.”

“Where am I going? Lunch with the mayor’s wife, that’s this afternoon, isn’t it?”

Aemond nods. “And a few other stops. Then we’re going to the Alamo in San Antonio tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

He recoils, reaches for the left half of his face, kneads the scar tissue there as nerve pain radiates through his flesh all the way down to the bone. Once you felt such agonizing pity for him; now all you can think about is the matching scar you wear on your belly, hidden and shameful and a badge of your inadequacies: your body too weak to protect Ari, your mind too pliable to resist being ensnared by the crushing gravity of this man, this family, this life.

“How can I help?” you ask Aemond, because it’s the right thing to do. And randomly, you find yourself remembering the statue of Apollo in Helaena’s garden back at Asteria, the god of music, healing, truth, prophesy.

“You can’t.” Aemond goes to the bathroom to force his glass eye into its socket. You depart for the hotel lobby where Ludwika and Mimi, your companions for the day, are already waiting. Ludwika is wearing a rose pink Chanel skirt suit. Mimi—relatively functional, as she hasn’t been awake long enough to ruin herself yet—is dressed in delicate dove grey.

Alicent, Helaena, and the children are scheduled to tour a local high school and library; Criston, unsurprisingly, is going with them. Aemond, accompanied by Otto, has a series of meetings with local business leaders and politicians. Aegon and Fosco are headed to the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center to promise maimed soldiers that Aemond will end the war that carved out bits of them and filled the voids with screaming nightmares. The limousine you share with Ludwika and Mimi ferries you first to the NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center. Mimi is entranced by the reflective surface of the helmets, coated with gold to divert blinding sunbeams; in turn, the astronauts are entranced by Ludwika, who leaves lipstick smudges on their cheeks when she kisses them. Next is a tea party hosted by Iola Faye Cure Welch, the mayoress of Houston since 1964 and the mother of five children. And as you nibble daintily at triangle-shaped sandwiches and trudge through small talk about flowers and furniture, you can’t stop smiling. You can’t stop thinking about how ridiculous Aegon would think this is if he was here.

The driver mentions one last stop, then coasts through midafternoon traffic towards the city center. You spend the ride touching up your hair and makeup. Ludwika offers to let you borrow her seduction-red lipstick; you politely decline. You step out of the limo and shield your eyes from the glare of the Texas sun. It takes your vision a moment to adjust, and then you realize where you are. The sign above the main entranceway reads: Houston Methodist Hospital. The air snags in your throat, your lungs are empty. Your hands tremble violently. The earth rocks beneath your white high heels. Mount Sinai is the last hospital you walked into, and you left with your son in a casket so small it could have been mistaken for a shoebox.

“Alright, let’s go,” Ludwika says, linking an arm through yours. Mimi, badly in need of a drink, is looking deflated and edgy. “We are almost done. And I have been promised a medium-rare steak for dinner! Mushrooms and onions too! The Statue of Liberty did not lie. This country is a golden door.”

“I can’t.”

Ludwika stares at you. “What?”

“I can’t, I can’t go in there.”

“What is she talking about?” Ludwika asks Mimi, who shakes her head, mystified.

“I can’t,” you whimper.

They’ve never seen you like this. They don’t know what to do. They listen to you, that is the hierarchy; but it’s too late to change course now. Journalists are approaching in a swarm. Nurses and doctors are gathering by the front door to welcome you.

He knew, you think, suddenly furious. Aemond knew, and he didn’t tell me.

“It will be okay,” Ludwika says, patting your back awkwardly. “We are here with you. Nothing bad will happen.”

“Oh,” Mimi breathes, understanding. She looks at you with sympathy that shimmers on the surface of the opaque, polluted lake of her mind. Then she catches Ludwika’s eye and skims a hand down her own slim midsection. Ari, she mouths, and Ludwika’s face falls.

The doctors and nurses are whistling and applauding; the journalists are snapping photos and scrounging for quotes. You feel your conditioning over the past two years taking over: straight posture, gentle smile, hands clasped demurely together. But you are locked away somewhere underneath.

“Do not worry,” Ludwika tells you softly. “We will talk, we will make it easier for you.” Then she and Mimi begin boisterously shaking hands and thanking people for coming as you make your way through the crowd of journalists and towards the main entrance of the hospital.

People are saying things to you, but you don’t really hear them. You reply with words you won’t remember afterwards. You nod frequently and go wherever you are led. Doctors are explaining new research into placenta previa and c-sections. Nurses are showing you a state-of-the-art NICU for premature infants. Someone is placing a baby in your arms, and you can’t do anything but accept it numbly. You can’t look down at it, you can’t allow yourself to feel the weight of some other woman’s child. You wear your smile like armor and let the photographers capture their snapshots, painting a frame around you, deciding where you live.

Then you are introduced to the parents, women in hospital beds and men perched in chairs beside them, just like the one where Aegon slept at Mount Sinai. They take your hands when you offer them and tell you about their small children, sick children, dying children. One patient just delivered twins. The first did not survive beyond a few hours, but the second is in an incubator and gaining strength. You recall the komboskini stained with Aemond’s blood and take it out of your purse, give it to the suffering mother, watch faith rise in her face like dawn over the Atlantic. But you won’t remember her. You cannot allow yourself to.

Outside as you, Ludwika, and Mimi are headed back to the limousine, the journalists make one last attempt to poach a headline-worthy quote. “Mrs. Targaryen! Mrs. Targaryen!” a young man shouts, clambering to the front of the horde and jabbing a microphone in your face. “I’m from the Houston Chronicle. Can you tell me how the senator feels about the failure of the most recent phase of the Tet Offensive?”

You are in a fog; you don’t feel real, this moment and this city don’t feel real, and so you cannot remember what Aemond would want you to say. “The Vietnam War has claimed too many lives already. We should have never sent our men there to die. But since that is done, the best thing we can do now is end the draft immediately and then withdrawal from the region as soon as the South Vietnamese are able to defend their own territory, which is their responsibility.” The journalist already considers this effort fruitful and begins to retreat, but you have one last point to make. Ludwika and Mimi watch you anxiously. “I lost someone in Vietnam. I met him when I was in college. He had a good heart, and he joined because he thought it was wrong for poor men to have to fight while rich kids got exemptions, and he was killed in action in October of 1965.”

“This was a friend?” the journalist asks, eyes glowing hungrily. Then he adds as an afterthought: “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

“A boyfriend. Corporal Cameron Marino from Schenectady, New York. People called him Cam.”

A solemn murmur ripples through the crowd. Hats are removed, hands held to chests. “Rest in peace, Cam,” someone says. Maybe they have somebody they care about in Vietnam, a friend or a lover or a brother. You wave goodbye and climb into the limousine. The outpouring swells as you vanish: We love you, Mrs. Targaryen! God bless you, Mrs. Targaryen!

In the lobby of the Texas State Hotel, you tell Ludwika and Mimi not to follow you. They have to listen. After some hesitation, Mimi heads for the bar in the ballroom; Ludwika asks the staff at the front desk if she’ll be able to make a call to Poland with the phone in her room. You take the elevator to the top floor. Fosco is in the hallway, on his way back from one of the vending machines with a Fresca. When he sees your face, his jaw drops.

“Dio mio, what happened?”

“Nothing,” you say, tears biting in your eyes. You pass him, digging your key out of your purse.

“Are you sure—?”

“Fosco, please. I don’t want to talk.”

“Okay,” he says doubtfully. Then he seems to get an idea and strides away with great purpose. You take shelter in your suite, silent and dim; Aemond isn’t back yet. You brace yourself against the locked door and sob into empty, trembling hands, at last hidden away where no one can see you, where no one can be disturbed or disappointed. You know now that none of it was healed—not the loss, not the revelations—but only buried, and now it’s all been unearthed again and the pain shrieks like exposed nerves.

It’s not fair. Ari deserved better, I deserved better.

There’s nothing you can do. Your hands ache to hold someone that no longer exists. You can’t unlearn the truth of what your marriage is.

There are two knocks, quick and rough. “Hey, it’s me.” And there’s such pure intimacy in those words. You know my voice. You know why I’m here. “Open the door.”

“I’m okay, just, just, just leave me alone—”

“Open the door,” Aegon says again. “Or I’ll get security up here to do it for you.”

Swiping the tears from your face, you let him in. He’s dressed in baggy black shorts, nothing on his feet, an unbuttoned stolen green army jacket. You once thought he wore those to play the part of a revolutionary from the comfort of his East Coast seaside mansion. Now you understand it’s because he misses Daeron, because he believes he should have gone to Vietnam instead. There are several dog tags strung around his neck; some of the veterans at the medical center he visited must have gifted them to him.

“What’s wrong?” Aegon’s eyes sweep over you, seeking, horrified. “What did he do?”

You can’t answer, you can’t breathe. You back away from him as more tears spill down your cheeks.

“Hey, hey, hey, let me help you. Please don’t be upset. Did he say something, did he hurt you?” Aegon reaches out, and as soon as he touches you your knees buckle and you’re on the floor, trying not to wail, trying not to scream, and Aegon is pulling you against his chest—bare skin, borrowed metal—and his hands are on your face and in your hair, and his lips are against your forehead as he murmurs: “Shh, shh, don’t cry. It’s okay.”

“No it’s not.”

“Whatever it is, I can help.”

“I had to go to a hospital and hold babies and I, I, I never even got to touch him, not once, not ever, and I can’t now because he’s gone. He’s locked in some fucking vault, he’s just bones, but he was supposed to be a person, and those other babies are going to get to grow up but he isn’t, and it’s not fair.”

“You’re right,” Aegon agrees softly, still holding you.

“No one else knew him.”

“I did. I was there the whole time.”

“Only because Aemond made you stay.”

“No,” Aegon swears. “I was supposed to spy on you. He never told me to do any of the rest of it. I stayed because I wanted to.”

“You did,” you say, very quietly, weakly, conceding.

“And I’m still here now.”

Your lungs aren’t burning quite so much. Your tears are slowing. You unravel yourself from Aegon, averting your eyes. Now you’re ashamed; you aren’t in the habit of revealing to people how much you’re splintering like cracked glass, fresh fractures every time you think to check the damage. “I’m, um, I’m really sorry.”

“Look, I don’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories, but this is definitely not the most embarrassing thing I’ve seen you do.”

You laugh, only for a few seconds, and Aegon smiles as he mops the tears from your face with the sleeve of his army jacket. Then he turns serious again.

“Can I ask you something? It’s very personal. It’s offensive, honestly. But I have to know.”

“You can ask.”

“Do you want more children?”

More children. Because Ari was real. “Not now. Not with Aemond.”

Aegon nods, suspicions confirmed. “Can you do that sponge thing you told me about?”

“No. I think he’d be able to feel it, he’s…” You gesture vaguely. It’s difficult to say. “He’s big.”

Aegon didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to have to think about it. He flinches, just enough that you notice. But as much as he’d like to, he doesn’t change the subject. “What about the pill?”

“No doctor is going to write me a prescription without my husband’s permission. Especially considering who my husband is.”

“I hate this fucking country,” Aegon hisses. “Puritanical goddamn hellscape. Old Testament bullshit.” He drags his fingers through his hair a few times, then pats your cheek like he did before: twice, gently, playfully. “Come on. Let’s go smoke.”

“I can’t do it on the balcony. Someone might get a picture.”

“Okay. No big deal. We’ll go to the roof.”

You stare at him. “The roof?”

“You really think I haven’t already been up there?” He stands and offers you his hand. “You’ll love it. The view is fantastic.”

The view is good, but the grass is better. You know that it makes some people useless, others paranoid, but for you it’s always painted the world a color that is softer, kinder, lighter, more bearable. You and Aegon lie next to each other, smoking and watching twilight fall over Houston like a spell. You’ll have to shower and gulp some Listerine before Aemond gets anywhere near you. It’s interesting; each day you seem to acquire new secrets to keep from him.

Aegon asks: “Where would you be right now if you weren’t Mrs. Targaryen?”

“Probably married to someone worse.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Okay, but let’s say you weren’t. Let’s say you can do whatever you want.” He points up at the lavender sky and acts like he’s moving the emerging glimmers of stars around with his fingertip. “There, I’ve changed your fate. Who would you be?”

You ponder this. “I want to teach math to kids and then spend every summer break getting baked on some beach.”

Aegon cackles. “Hell, sign me up.” He lights a third joint for himself with his tiny chrome Zippo. “Those are the people doing the real work. Teachers, nurses, farmers electricians, plumbers, welders, firemen, therapists, janitors, public defenders. The normal, unglamorous types.”

“You don’t think presidents and senators make a difference?”

“Sure they do. But only like 5% of the job is actually helping people. The rest of it is schmoozing and tea parties and making speeches, because looking and sounding good is better than doing good. They’re addicted to vapid pretenses that make them feel important. You live like that and you forget how to be a human. I mean, look at Nixon. The man was raised as a Quaker, one of the most peaceful religions on earth, and now he’s planning to throw ten or twenty thousand more boys into the great Vietnamese meatgrinder and probably napalm the hell out of Cambodia and Laos while he’s at it to get the communists’ supply lines. The man’s got no idea who he is anymore. I’d feel sorry for him if I wasn’t so terrified he’s gonna start World War III.”

I wonder who Aemond was a few decades ago. “What makes you feel important?”

“Nothing,” Aegon says. “I’m not under any delusions that I matter.”

“I think you matter, old man.”

“Really?”

“A little bit. About this much.” You hold your hand up to show him the infinitesimal space between your thumb and index finger, and Aegon chuckles, his eyes glazed and bloodshot.

“Let’s do it,” he says with sudden, forceful conviction. “If Nixon wins in November, we’ll get out of here. I’ll go back to Yuma to teach on the reservation and you can come with me. You get a math class, I take English, or Music, or both, whatever. We’ll buy a bungalow out in the desert and make s’mores every night and look up at the stars. I’ll show you how to play guitar if you give me algebra lessons.”

You peek over at him, intrigued. “Is that all we’re going to do?”

“Well we’ll fuck, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously.” You giggle; it’s ridiculous, it’s paradisical, it’s insane how good it sounds. But surely that’s only because you’re high. “I don’t know how Mimi would feel about that.”

“She won’t care. She doesn’t want me anymore, hasn’t in years. Sometimes she just forgets that when she’s wasted. Mimi can go to Arizona too. We’ll load up the kids in a van and strap her to the roof.”

Now your voice is somber. “She was supposed to fix you.”

“Yeah,” Aegon says: slow, meditative, guilty. “I think Mimi and I have a few too many of the same demons.”

You roll over, push yourself up on your palms, and crawl to the edge of the rooftop. You prop your elbows on the ledge and gaze out into the city lights, the sky turning from violet to indigo to primordial darkness. Aegon joins you, staring down at the distant aquamarine rectangle of the hotel pool.

He asks: “You think I could make that?”

“No.”

“Should I try?”

“You definitely shouldn’t.”

“A few months ago, you would have pushed me off this roof.”

You shrug. “You’ve proved yourself useful.”

“That’s why you like me now? Because I’m useful?”

“Who said I like you?” you tease, smiling.

“You like me,” Aegon says, grinning and smug, radiant in the silver moonlight and urban incandescence. “You like me so much it scares you. But there’s no need to panic. It’s okay. I know the feeling.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You want to touch him, you want him to touch you, you want to study every arc and angle of him like he’s a marble statue in a garden: too beautiful to be mortal, too fragile to be divine.

~~~~~~~~~~

Three nights later in Nebraska, there is a knock on the door of your hotel suite. The nannies have herded the children off to bed; the adults are unwinding downstairs in the courtyard of the Sheraton Omaha, designed to resemble an Italian garden. There’s a brand new Jacuzzi that you’re looking forward to taking a dip in. You finish pulling on your swimsuit, white and patterned with sunflowers, a one-piece with a flared skirt.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Richard Nixon,” Aegon says through the door. “Naked. Horny. Please love me.”

You laugh and let him in. He’s leaning against the doorframe in Hawaiian swim trunks and nothing else, pink sunburn glowing on his soft chest. He holds up a brown paper bag and shakes it.

“For you.”

“What is it, heroin?” Instead, you open the bag to find small, circular packs of pills. “No way. You did not.”

“That’s enough for six months,” Aegon says, smirking, proud of himself. “I’ll be back again in February. Guess that makes me your dealer, babe. I don’t accept cash, checks, or cards, only sexual favors. You want to get down on your knees, or should I?”

“How did you get these?”

“I told a doctor they’re for one of my whores.”

“Maybe they are.”

You’ve surprised him, you’ve got him thinking about it now. His face flushes a splotchy, charming pink. “So, uh, you coming down to the courtyard?”

“Yeah. Right now. Just let me hide these first. Are there instructions in here…?”

“Mm hmm,” Aegon says, still distracted, studying the entirely unremarkable carpet. You stow the paper bag of birth control pills in the bottom of your bras and panties drawer, then walk with Aegon to take the elevator down to the ground floor. You both notice the bright red emergency stop button and share a glance, smirking, taunting.

In the courtyard, Alicent is struggling to pay attention as Helaena identifies each and every species of plant and explains where in the world it is native to. Fosco is simultaneously teaching Criston how to yo-yo and berating him for not believing the Cubs will end up in the World Series. Fosco has apparently bet $500 on them. Ludwika is stretched out on a lounge chair like a cat and reading a copy of Cosmopolitan. Aemond, wearing his eyepatch and a blue pair of swim trunks, appears to be arguing with Otto over the contents of a newspaper article. Mimi is alone in the Jacuzzi, bubbles rumbling all around her as she slumps against the rim, a frosty Gimlet clutched in one hand.

“Mimi, get out of the Jacuzzi,” you order.

“I’m fine!” she slurs, and you groan, knowing you’re going to have to drag her out.

Aemond is approaching; no, not approaching, raging. “What the hell is wrong with you? What the fuck is this?” He hurls the newspaper at you, the Houston Chronicle. The headline reads: To Mrs. Targaryen, ending the Vietnam War is personal. “Why would you tell somebody that? Other papers are going to start reporting this. You gave them his full name. They’ve found his school, his friends, his gravesite in motherfucking Arlington National Cemetery—”

“You set me up,” you say. “You didn’t tell me about the hospital.”

Aegon takes the newspaper from you and frantically skims the article. “Hey, man,” he tells Aemond as he pieces it together, attempting to deescalate. It’s not a skill you knew he possessed. “She was rattled, she wasn’t thinking clearly. And there’s nothing bad in this article. It makes her sound invested and sympathetic, not…um…whatever you’re thinking.”

“You don’t get it,” Aemond seethes. “Journalists are going to start hounding his friends, his classmates, people who lived in his dorm building. Nixon’s newspapers will publish any gossip they can dig up about what she did when she was in school. Things people saw, things people overheard—”

“What, the fact that she had one boyfriend before she met you? That’s worthy of a nuclear meltdown?! Better prepare for Armageddon, a woman got laid, launch the goddamn warheads!”

“She doesn’t get to have a past! She should understand that, she signed up for this, she knew exactly what was expected of her!”

“And what about your past?” Aegon says, low and searing, and Aemond goes quiet. Their eyes are locked on each other: Aegon defiant, Aemond unnerved. You try to remember if you’ve ever seen that expression on his face before. You don’t think you have. Not even when he was shot and half-blinded. Not even when Ari died.

“What does that mean?” you ask your husband. Still staring at Aegon—tangled in a thorny, silent battle of wills—he doesn’t reply.

There are swift, thudding footsteps. Otto grabs Aegon by his hair, hooks a finger through the small gold hoop in his right ear, and tears it straight through the earlobe. Aegon screams as blood streams down his face, feeling the ravaged fringes of his flesh.

“I told you to take those out,” Otto says. “Now remove the other one before I rip it free, and go get yourself stitched up.”

You do something you’ve never done before, never even thought of. You strike out with both hands and shove Otto so hard he goes staggering backwards, his arms wheeling. The others are yelling and rushing over. Aemond is trying to yank you to him, but he can’t get a grip on your swimsuit. “I will kill you!” you roar at Otto. “I will push you down a staircase, I will slit your fucking throat, don’t you ever touch him!”

Alicent is weeping, appalled, trying to get a look at Aegon’s damaged ear. Criston is helping her, moving Aegon’s bloodied hair out of the way. Fosco links his arms around your waist and drags you out of Aemond’s reach just as he’s getting his fingers beneath a strap of your swimsuit. Helaena is covering her face with her hands and wailing. Ludwika is shrieking at Otto: “What did you do? Don’t give me that, what did you do?!”

You are engulfed with rage, red and irresistible. You’re trying to bolt out of Fosco’s grasp. You want to claw Otto’s eyes out; you want to put a bullet in him. As you struggle, you catch a glimpse of the Jacuzzi. You don’t see Mimi anymore.

“Wait,” you plead, but nobody hears you over the noise. You look desperately at Fosco. “Where’s Mimi?!”

Once he figures out what you’re trying to say, he whirls towards the Jacuzzi. “No!” he bellows, releasing you, and careens across the courtyard. You dash after him. Now the others understand, and they come running too. You see it just before Fosco dives in: there is a shadow at the bottom of the Jacuzzi. When he bursts up though the roiling water, he is carrying Mimi, limp and unconscious and blue.

Everyone is shouting at once. Fosco lays Mimi down on the cobblestones of the courtyard. Criston sends Ludwika to call an ambulance, kneels beside Mimi, checks for a pulse. Then he begins CPR. When he breathes air into her flooded lungs, there is no response, no resurrection.

“No, no, no, she has to be alright!” Aemond says, and everyone knows why. If she’s not, this will consume the headlines for days: no victorious campaigning, no speeches or photos, just a drowned alcoholic with a damning autopsy report.

“Oh my god,” Otto moans, pacing. “This can’t be happening, not this year, not now…”

Alicent seizes your hand and squeezes it until you think it will break. She is reciting prayers in Greek. Helaena is curled up under a butterfly bush, sobbing hysterically. When he realizes this, Otto hurries to comfort her.

“Don’t watch, Helaena. Let’s go inside, I’ll walk with you, there’s nothing more we can do here.”

“Mimi?!” Aegon commands, slapping her hard across the face. “Mimi, come on, wake up! Mimi? Mimi!” She’s still motionless, she’s still blue. Aegon turns to you, blood smeared all over the right side of his face. He’s petrified, he’s in shock. “I think she’s…she’s…”

“She’s gone,” Criston says; and he lifts his palms from her hollow body. The silent sky above is a labyrinth of bad stars.

[justruse]

Blood touched your lips.

One moment you were walking home, and the next you were waking up in a hospital room with a searing pain in your neck and an insatiable hunger lingering in your belly. The events of the previous night were a blurry and chaotic mess of fear, panic, and blood.

Your blood...

ONCE BITTEN is a dark romance interactive fiction game set in a vampire-infested 1990s New York City. Navigate the city as you try to regain your footing and find your place as a recently-turned vampire. Being a vampire isn't as glamorous as the stories make it out to be, especially when you have a group of Hunters that want you dead.

Content Warnings: suggestive themes, violence, gore, blood, body horror, drug use, death, animal cruelty, homophobia, and transphobia

* Note: Content warnings, with the option to disable them, will appear before each chapter.

DEMO ✦ PINTEREST ✦ SPOTIFY

Play as a customizable protagonist, with the ability to choose your name (including nicknames), gender, pronouns, and appearance.

Befriend a cast of characters and pursue one of five romance options.

Explore New York City and its vampiric nightlife as a newly-turned vampire. Experience what it truly means to be a creature of the night.

Adopt a dog, or don’t. Be warned, it will come back to bite you.

A focus on choices, rather than stats, that will alter your relationships with the cast as well as the narrative moving forward. Will you choose to embrace your new existence?

Dr. Joseph Levi (he/him)

A seemingly quiet, albeit quite sarcastic, professor at first glance, Dr. Joseph Levi is more than what meets the eye. In reality, he is a type of vampire hunter known as a Keeper—and he also happens to save your life and doom it too.

Vanya Kreisky (she/her)

Beautiful, cunning, and deceptive, Miss Vanya Kreisky is the queen of the Scarlet Palace, a historic hotel and casino nestled in the heart of Manhattan. She much older, and more powerful, than she first lets on, and seems to have an odd interest in you.

Rana Ayari (she/her)

Rana Ayari is the owner of Lilith's Lounge, a small bar near West Village. She's a welcoming face to strangers with an easy-going attitude. Unless you're stirring up trouble, you'll be welcome at Lilith's.

Addison Reyes (he/him | she/her)

Only turned about fifteen years ago, Addison is probably the youngest vampire you'll meet, and because of that, they have a sense of optimism and adventure many older vampires lack. They like to have fun and they'll share it with you—well, whenever they're not stuck working a shift at Lilith's, of course.

Dr. Michael "Ellie" Elliot (he/they)

Dr. Michael Elliot is a doctor working at the hospital you wake up in after being turned. They're quite zany, in a way you can't quite place, and it's obvious they've seen some things in their centuries long existence that they quite haven't processed yet.

[visit-new-york]

Empire State Building: A Symbol of Ambition and Achievement

Situated in the heart of Midtown Manhattan on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, the Empire State Building stands as an iconic symbol of architectural prowess and historical significance. Erected in 1931, this steel-framed skyscraper, soaring 102 stories high, held the title of the world's tallest building until 1971.

The primary purpose behind the construction of the Empire State Building was to house corporate business offices, marking a hub for commercial activities. Unofficially, it was an ambitious endeavor to claim the title of the tallest building globally, surpassing rivals like the Bank of Manhattan Building and the Chrysler Building during its construction in the competitive environment of 1931.

Named after the enduring nickname for New York state, "the Empire State," the building's nomenclature finds roots in a letter from George Washington in 1785. In this letter, he praised New York's strength during the American Revolution, deeming it "the Seat of the Empire."

Positioned on the site that once housed the original Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Fifth Avenue, the Empire State Building's strategic location adds to its historical charm. Over the years, it has retained its distinction as one of the most famous and recognizable buildings in the United States, exemplifying Modernist Art Deco design.

The dynamic display of lights on the Empire State Building has become a tradition, with colors changing to commemorate major holidays and celebrations. Since the installation of the first lighting system in 1976, the introduction of a new LED system in 2012 has allowed the building to showcase millions of colors, enhancing its visual appeal.

The construction of the Empire State Building was driven by the collaboration of John J. Raskob and Al Smith. Raskob, a self-made business tycoon and former chairman of the General Motors Corporation finance committee, joined forces with Smith, a one-time Democratic governor of New York. Their unlikely partnership was rooted in shared experiences as children born to immigrant Roman Catholic families, facing similar struggles before achieving prominence.

Before embarking on the Empire State Building project, Smith and Raskob's friendship had endured challenges, with Raskob previously serving as the chairman for the Democratic National Committee and campaign manager for Smith's 1928 presidential bid. Despite their efforts, Smith's defeat to Herbert Hoover underscored the public's reluctance to alter the economic prosperity of the 1920s and highlighted the reservations about electing a Roman Catholic who might challenge majority Protestant values.

In the ever-changing skyline of New York City, the Empire State Building stands not only as a testament to architectural achievement but also as a symbol of ambition, competition, and the enduring spirit of progress.

[bluemoonnyc]

Exploring Historic Charm and Modern Comfort in Downtown NYC Hotels

When it comes to experiencing New York City, staying in the heart of downtown Manhattan offers an unbeatable blend of history, culture, and convenience. Hotels in downtown NYC not only place visitors close to iconic landmarks and attractions, but many also provide a rich history that captures the essence of the city’s evolution. Among these, historic New York hotels like the Blue Moon Hotel offer an exceptional stay that combines old-world charm with modern comfort.

[casper-spills]

| Tarot Cards: Places they represent |

✩░▒▓▆▅▃▂▁𝟑𝟎𝟎 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥!▁▂▃▅▆▓▒░✩

Hey guys! Welcome back to another post ♡

We reached 300 followers! And I'm gonna do a special for you guys because I seriously am so grateful for all of your support. My blog has been growing so fast and I literally never expected to be where I am today. Thank you! ♡

This post will be a little different to my usual stuff. I was thinking I might start a series like this where I give some tips on how to read your tarot! I'll also include the sources I use at the end in case you wanted to check those out too.

Anyway, here is a list of places that the cards represent ♡

Sincerely,

Cassy the friendly ghost ♡

✦Masterlist ✦Paid Readings ✦Support me through Kofi

𓆩♡𓆪 𝙎𝙐𝙈𝙈𝙀𝙍 𝘿𝙄𝙎𝘾𝙊𝙐𝙉𝙏 50% 𝙊𝙁𝙁 !! 𓆩♡𓆪

Ends on September 22nd

| KO-FI SHOP |

| MAJOR ARCANA |

1. Magician - Kitchen, labatory, shows, music, magic, performances

2. High Priestess - Secret place, secret society, library, somewhere quiet, reading rooms, theatre, halls

3. Empress - Old/stately homes, old school building, old hospital building, boutique, beauty parlor, restaurants

4. Emperor - Royal palace, business establishments, schools, univerisity

5. Heirophant - Church, univeristy, temple, place of worship, corporate building

6. Lovers - Sweet shop, date locations, love hotel, honeymoon places

7. Chariot - Car ralley, racing fixtures, garages, horse racing, highway

8. Strength - Zoo, petting zoos, gym, fitness studios

9. Hermit - Cave, retreat centres, hill walking

10. Wheel - Ferris wheels, london eye, casino, lottery tickets, shops selling wheels

11. Justice - Court, arbitration offices, counselling institution, police department

12. Hanged Man - Bungee jumping, sky diving, thrilling activities

13. Death - Church yard, funeral parlor, butcher, cemetary

14. Temperance - Cocktail bar, queues, waiting rooms, chemist dispensary

15. Devil - Adult shops, clubs, casinos, brothel, strip clubs

16. Tower - Chop shops, tall buildings, skyscrapers, stormy areas, fire

17. Star - Water, ocean, river, stargazing

18. Moon - Nighttime, stargazing, movie, stage, theatre

19. Sun - Birth centre, midwifery unti, hospital, holidays, tanning booths, abroad

20. Judgement - Rehabilitation centres, church, treament centres, spa

21. World - Airport, flying, dance studios

| MINOR ARCANA |

☁︎ 𝒔𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔 ☁︎

Ace - Editor's room, skyscrapers, office, library, radio tower

Two - Statue of liberty, new york, seashore

Three - Hospital, rainy place, cloudy areas

Four - Bedroom, quiet places, funeral parlor

Five - Debate club, near water, themepark, competitive environments

Six - Boats, river, cruisers

Seven - Archery, secret location, casino, bomb shelter

Eight - Prison, therapy

Nine - Psychiatric hospital, confessional

Ten - Surgery room, accupuncture clinic, dentists

Page - Fraternity, rowdy places, sports arena

Knight - Windy places, windmills

Queen - Fenced off places, great walls, boundaries, spikes fences

King - Lawyers office

🕯 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒔 🕯

Ace - Workshop, construction site

Two - Balcony, overseas, historical travel, boat

Three - Seaside, boat travel

Four - Fastfood, cafe, outdoors, wedding, celebration

Five - Sport centre, pool game

Six - Market, downtown, show, event, someone/something noticable

Seven - Competitive/violent environment

Eight - Road trip, highway

Nine - Competitive environment, barrier, wall, bouncer, high security

Ten - Workplace, labour, sweatshop

Page - Disco, dance, party

Knight - Hot and dry place, bonfire, abroad, holiday

Queen - Social events

King - Active place, fast moving environments

꒦꒷ 𝒄𝒖𝒑𝒔 ꒷꒦

Ace - Lake, pond, birdbath, birds

Two - Luxury, home, common dating places

Three - Bar, pub, party

Four - Under a tree, graveyard

Five - A place of regret, place of bad memories, hospital, flooded areas, bridge, after party cleanup, alone in a bar

Six - Flourists, schoolyard, playground, nostalgic places

Seven - Highup places, views, drug suppliers, spots where people do drugs, drug shops

Eight - Bookstore, library, cave, quiet

Nine - Bar, party, pub, dinner, home

Ten - Family gatherings, park, outdoor, bbq party

Page - Aquariums, fish tanks, sea parks

Knight - Picnics, peaceful/romantic areas

Queen - Bathtub with cancles, home, skinny dipping, swimming

King - Beach, lake

˗ˏˋ 𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒄𝒍𝒆𝒔 ˎˊ˗

Ace - Dispensary, bank, currency exchange centre

Two - Circus, arcade, carnival

Three - Fashion show runway, art gallery, boutique, museum

Four - Uncle scrooge's home, gold reserves, saferoom, secret hideout, vault

Five - The streets, people living in powerty, homeless spots,

Six - Pawn shops, currency exchange shops, trade stores

Seven - Nursery, orchard

Eight - workshop, construction site

Nine - Gardens, green parks

Ten - Market

Page - Field, farm, family business

Knight - Workplace, chores, school

Queen - Home, nursery room

King - Bank manager's office

♥Thank you for your support!♥

Dividers by @cafekitsune, @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

Source

[physalian]

11 Underexplored settings of post-apocalyptic worlds

Inspired once again by my recent binge of abandoned explorations.

The greatest hits of the sprawling city scapes and farmland that feature in everything from post-alien invasions to zombie takeovers to just worlds gone by in a not-so-distant future tend to be:

Generic office buildings

Churches

Schools

Water parks

Suburbs

Famous monuments

Cruise ships

It’s come to my attention though just how many architectural abnormalities there are, in their own current post-apocalyptic states, that would absolutely befuddle archaeologists centuries from now trying to figure out their purposes.

So whether you want to go hard into “this new world has completely forgotten what came before it” or your very own and unique road trip through desolation, here’s some suggestions for cool and/or practical settings!

1. Disney/Iconic Theme Parks

2000 years from now after X disaster strikes, survivors completely removed from historical context stumble upon…. Disney World. They presume Mickey really was a giant mutant mouse, or a mouse-shaped deity worshiped by the local populace (and I mean… are they wrong?). People who might have never left the local area without planes and feasible transport, or knowledge that land across the ocean even exists, might be astounded by the buildings of Epcot’s World Showcase, or any of Disney’s themed resorts.

Water parks are done to death, but not enough emphasis is put onto how bizarre these places would look without context, even to a younger generation that has no idea what it used to be.

Orlando has a hotel with its own rainforest in a massive atrium, with ponds and boats and boardwalks inside. But, you know, I guess strolling through Chicago or New York City is cooler. It may be unfilmable, but it’s not unwritable.

2. The foundations of unfinished construction projects

The remains of an office building that never was, a veritable modern Stonehenge with how little would survive an apocalypse. Inexplicable areas of land with massive pits for unbuilt parking garages, or sprawling swimming pools and lazy rivers.

Or massive, skeletal towers that would have been the monument to a much larger estate that just lost funding. Buildings still surrounded by scaffolding, only half-complete with their windows.

3. Survivor’s encampment landmarked by a monument/hotel/theme park that was never built

In one of those abandoned videos, a company in China was trying to build a discount Disneyland and all that remains is an unfinished Cinderella Castle with steel shells of the gables… behind a modern shopping mall.

Any structure that would have been deeply out of place either in the country it’s built in, or the newer buildings that surround it, immediately looks more creative than just ‘generic strip mall’ or ‘generic high school’. And it’s also realistic, as projects like this fall through constantly, as a unique piece of your worldbuilding. Or, it did have its run as whatever the strange building was part of, and through bankruptcy and selling the land around it, it ends up being the only structure that remains.

4. Hotels that are made up as if the staff vanished instantaneously

Or, many, many Covid victims. Having your characters scrounge for resources through a hotel with beds still made, coffee cups on the breakfast tables, serving spoons and plates ready to go by the buffet. Halloween, Christmas, or Valentine’s decorations still on display.

The schedules for the final week of business still hanging in the offices, unopened mail, packages for guests still in the mail room, pallets of new soaps and supplies still in the delivery bay from the distribution center, linens still in the industrial dryers. I worked in a hotel scheduled for eventual demolition and the disrepair the interior fell into because, what’s the point of managing mold and bed bugs when it’s all getting gutted anyway, makes it super creepy knowing guests are completely clueless on the other side.

Places that have been completely ransacked and destroyed are creepy, sure, but places that are almost frozen in time despite the decay around them are both eerie, and rather dark. Cruise ships/confined spaces like ships tend to be used more for horror, but these, too, as if they’re frozen in time.

5. Cargo ships/shipping yards

An easy-ish one to film in. Looters breaking open shipping containers, or building entire communities and homes out of those containers either on land, or on the barges and ships. A community that can weigh anchor and move once resources and scavenging dries up, or another violent group moves in on the land.

Or, in the case of a viral apocalypse, a community relatively spared from the violence out on the open ocean.

6. IKEA/Furniture Warehouses and DC’s

Warehouses especially have few entries and fewer windows to secure, but as their contents (except the showroom floor) are in mint condition at the time of the world ending and probably stored in plastic and crates, they’d be relatively spared from the elements as a good base camp.

Furniture is also too heavy to loot in a panic and absconding with a brand new mattress probably wouldn’t be at the top of people’s minds as doomsday approaches.

Your little community each having their own lavish living spaces with whatever eclectic furniture they either liked or could now get their hands on for free would just be cool to read about.

7. Penthouse suites

Climbing those stairs would suck and depending on the build quality, the safety of the structure over time would degrade, but maybe your community has manual cranks for the elevators. There might be one way down, but there’s also only one way up, and you can see invaders and catastrophe coming for miles.

These places tend to be dripping in luxury your characters might otherwise have never experienced and they could either make a base there, or have a grand old time trashing the place up because the rich are dead and gone.

8. Historical forts

They lasted this long, why not a few centuries more? The fort that comes to mind is the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida, right on the beach with a built-in defense wall and a huge courtyard for your community of plucky survivors.

Castles, too, though they’d likely be prime real estate for all manner of interested parties. Aging, famous forts are just never in these types of stories, unless it’s a picture of where the military used to be, now overrun or destroyed.

9. Ski resorts

Similar to the made-up hotels and theme parks, this one comes with presumably multiple buildings, potential use of the slopes and ski transports, isolation via elevation and remoteness from major cities, and the threat of bitter winters and blizzards.

Never been to one myself in winter, but remote locations for a post-apocalypse story tends to just be shorthand for “generic farm or small town,” which isn’t super immersive.

10. Luxury malls

Seen in The Last of US, it gives you a microcosm of so many different environments all slapped together and there’s no limit on what kinds of stores you could include, or all the kiosks, all the mini attractions like trampolines, kiddie parks, massage tables, and even VR flight simulators.

Maybe it has a theater tacked onto it, or a double-story book store, one of those rental spaces dedicated to fancy cars or candy stores. Great for the main setting or even just passing through, especially as they’re already a dying breed you can go ham with. ‘Luxury’ and designer items collecting dust right across from the discount store with everything for under &14.99 could strike a powerful message about social constructs.

11. Science museums

Sure you can make some poignant message about priceless artwork being left to rot, or. When I was a kid, I went to a science center with natural disaster simulators like house fires and tornadoes and a whole-ass IMAX theater where I saw Night at the Museum, the only movie I’ve ever seen in a proper IMAX dome.

There was a whole kids section with a ropes course, area for exploring the human body, a NASA-sponsored mock up space module, mock up grocery store, and little exhibits here and there about optical illusions and the physics behind laying on a bed of nails and how it doesn’t kill you. It’s just something unique and fun that your characters can interact with and gives them plenty to play off and give little anecdotes to make them feel more human.

—

Point is, your post-apocalypse doesn’t have to be limited to the usual suspects. We’ve all seen the strip malls and Walmarts and suburban homes and farms. There is no special effects budget or filming restraint in a book and I’d love to read more stories set in unique and descriptive places, or just fresh takes on your standard survival camp that isn’t just “build a wall around a section of neighborhood”.

It’s the apocalypse. All real estate becomes free real estate.

[gyustarzzi]

ateez taking you on vacation

★ hongjoong

- Paris, France - takes you on an expensive date - will beg you to go on a night walk to see the beautiful lights, probably the most beautiful city you've ever seen - way too many photos for you to count - probably took a photo of you without you knowing and has it as his lock screen

" Isn't it beautiful tonight? "

☆ seonghwa

- Bora Bora, French Polynesia - the trip was originally for just the group but when he found out he could bring you along of course he couldn't say no - gets a two-bedroom premier beachfront villa estate (WHICH IS HUGE) - you guys go scuba diving and reef discovery with the other members - will dare you to do parasailing, which you both end up doing and let's just say it didn't end well. you get hit in the face by a bird

" I dare you to do the parasailing, if you do it then I'll do it "

★ yunho

- Rome, Italy - you guys go to a lot of historic tours through Rome (Colosseum, Roman Forum) and art-filled institutions (Vatican Museums, Galleria Borghese) - yunho takes way too many photos of you and him during your trip - you guys almost get lost in one of Roman's catacombs, but don't worry you guys get out soon...somehow - probably will go back next time you go on vacation

" Oh shit..I think we're lost Y/N '

☆ yeosang

- London, England - he probably would go back bc he loved the city so much - takes you everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE (it's his only time to spend time with you all day) - can't stop fangirling over every photo you take of yourself - probably proposed to you at the top of The London Eye, if not then he would just kiss you

" Since you've been around I smile a lot more than I used to, and that's why I love you "

★ san

- Tokyo, Japan - goes to a lot of anime stores and buys way to much stuff - you guys not only go to Tokyo Disneyland but Tokyo Sea Lif Park!! - get to play with cats at Hogoneko Rafu Space and you guys end up adopting a ragdoll named mocha - not only do you get to spend time with San for a whole week, you also get to go home with a sweet kitty!

" She's perfect for us, let's adopt her! "

☆ mingi

- New Zealand - there are so many things to do in New Zealand so of course he would pick to go there - you guys would go to the glow worms cave, which you find so pretty but mingi is afraid they will fall on him (they won't) - you also get to take a tour around the Hobbiton movie set, mingi's treat - you do a lot of more fun stuff during the week you have together (Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in Queenstown, Waitomo Caves & Te Puia in Aucklund)

★ wooyoung

- New York City, United States - the members were on tour in america and one of their stops was new york city - you ended up flyng down there and surprising wooyoung at his hotel - you guys do a lot of sightseeing: the statue of liberty, summit one Vanderbilt, and you went on a cruise - at night you and the members would go out and have fun...maybe get drunk

" This view is amazing, it feels like I'm about to fall "

☆ jongho

- Sydney, Australia - you've always wanted to go to australia, so jongho decided to surprise you on your birthday - you spend a whole week there going shopping, sightseeing, playing in the water with jongho and having the best birthday ever (Darling Harbour, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney Opera House, etc.) - at the end of the week (your birthday) all the members, and your friends surprise you a birthday cake - you end up with the cake smashed into you face. wooyoung definitely didn't do it..

" You got a little something on your face "

[mimi-0007]

Lucy Diggs Slowe (July 4, 1885 – October 21, 1937) was an American educator and athlete, and the first Black woman to serve as Dean of Women at any American university. She was a founder of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the first sorority founded by African-American women.

Slowe was a tennis champion, winning the national title of the American Tennis Association's first tournament in 1917, the first African-American woman to win a major sports title. In 1922, Slowe was appointed the first Dean of Women at Howard University. She continued in that role for 15 years until her death. In addition, Slowe created and led two professional associations to support college administrators.

Lucy Diggs Slowe was born in Berryville, Virginia to Henry Slowe and Fannie Potter Slowe. While various sources put her birth year as 1885,[3][4] others have said 1883. She was one of seven children. Her father's occupation has been reported as a hotel operator, restaurant proprietor and farmer. He died before Lucy turned one and her mother died shortly after. Following her mother's death, Lucy and her sister Charlotte were raised by her aunt Martha Price in Lexington, Virginia. At thirteen, Lucy and her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she attended the Baltimore Colored High and Training School. She graduated second in her class in 1904, receiving one of the two-sponsored scholarships to Howard from the Baltimore City School Board.

Slowe was the first person from her school to attend Howard University, the top historically black college in the nation, at a time when only 1/3 of 1% of African Americans and 5% of whites of eligible age attended any college.

After graduation in 1908, Slowe returned to Baltimore to teach English in high school. During the summers, she started studying at Columbia University in New York, where she earned her Masters of Arts degree in 1915.

[clove-pinks]

In his 1839 travelogue Diary in America, Captain Frederick Marryat described the crowded and rustic hotels that a traveller in the United States could expect at this time, especially in remote areas far from cities and large towns. Rooms might include "three or four other beds," most of them with two people in each bed. Then, he shares an anecdote about an American friend:

A New York friend of mine travelling in an Extra with his family, told me that at a western inn he had particularly requested that he might not have a bed-fellow, and was promised that he should not. On his retiring, he found his bed already occupied, and he went down to the landlady, and expostulated. “Well,” replied she, “it’s only your own driver; I thought you wouldn’t mind him.”

A fascinating look at the attitudes around male bed-sharing in 1830s America, and an underutilized historically accurate take on "there was only one bed"! Imagine your OTP: forced to share a bed by the landlady.