find me at too_many_rooks on ao3 Using my MA in Medieval history to write about gay knights, or else about spies with daddy issues. Novice gif-maker, tag #rook's gifs and #my gifs.
I know somewhere in KCD2 it's mentioned Hans (and therefore Henry) is 20 years old. But, as I'm still playing the first game, the impression I always got was older teenagers. But there were actually contradicting statements in the game regarding their age.
Henry is referred to repeatedly as "lad" and "boy" by various NPCs. His mother also says this early in the game (this is what I got in my playthrough):
Though, she can also say this in the same scene (different dialog option I discovered when writing this post):
"Nearly a grown man" but simultaneously "not a boy anymore but a man". Still, definitely in that older teenager range, especially at the time.
And Hans, who should be Henry's age, is mentioned in Bands of Bastards DLC to not be "of age" yet:
So, I wanted to get to the bottom of this.
This started as me just wanting to know how old Hansry were meant to be in the first game (the intention when it was published, that is), but then I went down a whole rabbit hole about the real Jan Ptáček's age and life in general, tbh, and it got a little out of control (looking through old German law books and Czech charters and land court records from the 15th century) to the point it stopped being about the games at some point. So, under the cut I included some my research and conclusions:
Following on from parts one and two of me getting frustrated at the lack of Dadzig information on his Wikipedia page and doing a deep dive into pointless and obscure information; time for the final boss line of the vague wiki -
‘In the service of King Wenceslaus, Racek helped wage a guerrilla campaign against the Rosenberg family. He acted with other men such as Jan Žižka, Jan Sokol of Lamberk, and Matthew the Leader.’
Or, as @brittnodo puts it, ‘those vague, “oh yeah! He also engaged in an avengers style team up, anywho fifteen years later he gets walloped to death by miners rip to him.” passages.’
In this post, I will wildly speculate about…
What happened during Papa’s rebel era, and just when was it?
What kind of relationship did Racek and Zizka have? As well as some more biographical information on Zizka,
Was Sir Racek a Robber Knight? What did he do to deserve that description, and how should we even define such a term?
What’s the significance of him being Burgrave of Vysehrad?
And some general information about the court of King Wenceclas IV to tantalise you for my upcoming post about Wenceclas where I try and explore more of his historical ‘character’ and his similarities to Hans.
(Heads up, this is… a bit of a long one. Final word count: 4,300+)
An Unreasonable Amount of Information About the Mysterious Racek Kobyla.
Oops, I've tripped and fallen into a total research pit about Dadzig. In my defence, my entire academic career was built on researching mega obscure medieval history and there's nothing like the thrill of chasing down a niche pdf in a language you can't read for a vital bit of intel that only gives you more questions. 😎
(Disclaimers that while I have an MA in medieval history this isn't a time period or place I specialise in, I also don't speak Czech and have relied heavily on language translators, as well as open source texts. Adding to that, information is so scarce we can't really be sure of anything. Such is the joy of studying obscure medieval history!)
In this infodump, I'm gonna ask (and not necessarily answer!) the deeply obscure and conceivably uninteresting questions of...
Which Dvorce was Racek Kobyla, of?
Didhe have kids?
(Massive side tangent about the castle he builds, Veselé)
and, Who's this Niclas of Dvoretz guy? (And, if anyone knows, please tell me!)
Spent my evening trawling through this lovely digitised book recording the coats of arms of donors to the St Cristopher on the Almberg Alms house, where our pal Niclas pops up, looking for the OG Kobyla symbol. (pg 65-66 btw.) Flicked through at least three times zooming in on anything vaguely red or triangular, going; ‘no, no, not that one, oh look, a Leipa! probably not that one…’
BUT! I. FINALLY. FOUND IT!
Now, this *definitely* begins 'Niclas von Dwoygitz’. Not sure about the rest of it, I think it’ll be something about his yearly and posthumous donations, but I’ll get squinting at it.
Update two:
He might be from the Jicin Dvorce that I dismissed as the least likely? Had the brain wave of checking out what his Wikipedia page in different languages says, since he has a Russian, Ukrainian, German, Italian, and a Czech wiki as well as an English one.
Mostly they had the same intel, but the German one pointed me toward the book of crests, and fantastically, the wobbly-translated Czech version included the sentence 'The Kobyla Seagull was one of the lovers of King Wenceclas IV.’ (Racek is the Czech word for Seagull if you’re not aware - Fearsome robber knight Sir Seagull had been popping up in a lot of my translated readings.)
Anyway, back to the matter at hand; The German wiki cites a source I can’t access that claims he’s from a village called Vojice (Now, Podhorní Újezd) 8km from the Ulibice his wife was probably from, 12km from this place labelled Dvorce, and not far from Jicin. This village was part of a region called 'The Kings’ District’. I can’t really say anything more about this point without access to the source Wikipedia is citing here, but this is the first claim with any kind of evidence I’ve seen for which Dvorce Radzig was from. So, interesting!
Also just for funsies here’s the other knock-off crests + the random Leipa
Oops, I’ve tripped and fallen into a total research pit about Dadzig. In my defence, my entire academic career was built on researching mega obscure medieval history and there’s nothing like the thrill of chasing down a niche pdf in a language you can’t read for a vital bit of intel that only gives you more questions. 😎
(Disclaimers that while I have an MA in medieval history this isn’t a time period or place I specialise in, I also don’t speak Czech and have relied heavily on language translators, as well as open source texts. Adding to that, information is so scarce we can’t really be sure of anything. Such is the joy of studying obscure medieval history!)
In this infodump, I’m gonna ask (and not necessarily answer!) the deeply obscure and conceivably uninteresting questions of…
Which Dvorce was Racek Kobyla, of?
Didhe have kids?
(Massive side tangent about the castle he builds, Veselé)
and, Who’s this Niclas of Dvoretz guy? (And, if anyone knows, please tell me!)
Patrice is such an intriguing but enigmatic character in season four the show; I ended the season pretty fascinated by him (and how he fits into a certain type *cough* Yassen *cough*) so flocked to the books for more details. In ‘Spook Street’, he’s one of our POV characters, so we get a much more internal perspective of his thinking, his character, and his history at Les Arbes.
So I’ve collated some quotes from the book that I think shine an interesting light on him, for general information, and as a fic writing resource.(please please write fic about patrice pls pls pls)
Under the cut are some book spoilers from ‘Spook Street’. I’ve not yet read past this book, so there are no further book spoilers, and nothing here spoils major plot points that you won’t already know if you’ve seen season four, though I highly recommend the books!
This is broken down into sections about…
His relationship with his mother and his father (Who is not Frank in the book,)
His attachment to Bertrand, (And how that connects to his interactions with River,)
My least favorite habit of certain (usually female) fans is when they try to find a “woke” reason to dislike a major female character. See for example, the argument that Yennefer of Vengerberg is “there primarily for the male gaze”.
Yennefer of Vengerberg is a woman whose storyline was placed front and center from the second episode and given parallel importance with the titular male character.
Yennefer is a character who is fearless, powerful, ambitious and selfish in equal measures, all of which are traits we rarely see in female characters period, and the narrative (and the lead male character) treat these traits generally as ones to be celebrated rather than decried.
Yennefer is a character who is given so much story beyond her relationship to the male character that when she has a moment where she has to think back to all of the painful and infuriating things that have been said to her, he never crosses her mind.
Yennefer is a character who owns her sexuality both before and after her transformation and her relationship with the lead male character is primarily on her own terms. (And the part that isn’t on her terms: the wish, is something that she gets rightfully angry about. And at no point does the narrative try to say that she made the wrong decision there.)
Yennefer is a character who is dressed according to female power fantasies. Her gowns are wildly designed, with crazy arches and sleeves, and they look fabulous but also very much in line with what a woman would choose as opposed to a man. And while sometimes she is nude, it’s always plot relevant and not presented in an objectifying or dehumanizing way.
Yennefer is a woman of color in a leading role in a fantasy drama that is both helmed and penned by women. (The original books are written by a man, sure, but the teleplay was written by a woman. The showrunner is a woman.)
Yennefer is not going to resonate with every single woman watching the show, sure. But she resonates with quite a lot of them. And she’s crafted with exactly the same “gaze” as every other character in the series. (Including the male ones who are miraculously free of this ridiculous complaint).
lilacsdandelionsandonions
ok but do you mind if elaborate just how far all her nude scenes are from “the male gaze”???
her first love scene with istredd is BEFORE her transformation! i don’t think i’ve ever seen a disabled woman on TV get to express her sexuality like that before! her hunchback isn’t hidden, either, it’s right in the center of the frame. both of their faces and bodies are the focus, as opposed to the camera lingering on her breasts and ass, and ignoring the male actor’s body completely, like so many other shows and movies. it’s equality!
her transformation scene is the FURTHEST from sexy. and sadly they could have made it sexy, so many shows do fetishize scenes of violence against women (having actresses scream prettily, make the “O” face, positioning their bodies provocatively, pointing their toes, etc). but once again, the camera never centers on her breasts, but on her face. her screaming and struggling is ugly and authentic. her nudity only added to the discomfort of the scene, with her feet in stirrups evoking an OBGYN visit or childbirth, not sex.
in the bath scene, all glimpses of her tits and ass are super brief, off center, moving, never posed… as opposed to the long AND very centered shots of geralt titties.
yennefer’s longest tits out scene with the djinn ritual is interesting, because while her chest is occasionally centered in frame… jaskier’s reaction is super telling! he doesn’t acknowledge her nudity at all! (especially as a hypersexual comedic character who in a lesser show would be drooling over her!) instead he reacts purely to her “devilish eyes” and the painted amphora and the knife in her hands. she’s not treated by either the camera or by jaskier as a sexual object, but as a threat.
in the ritual scene proper, she’s allowed to be sweaty and strident and red-eyed (which if you ask me is very sexy, but i’m not a man). it might not be a fertility ritual, exactly, but since it’s her womb she’s trying to regain, having her breasts out could be symbolic of her potential motherhood that she’s vying for, as opposed to just titillation (ha). it’s also a call back to her transformation scene.
in every sex scene with geralt, they’re both clothed. which is weird for the main romance! like, really weird. so no nudity, no male gaze. (i wonder why though? maybe they wanted to visually indicate how closed off geralt and yennefer are with each other at first, not wanting the vulnerability of nakedness. plus i think we’re meant to take that their hookups are extremely rushed and spontaneous.) once they’re finally naked together, she’s turned away/wearing a modesty blanket, while he’s got his chest and thighs out, and they’re just talking.
in short…
male gaze where??
yennefer of vengerberg might be literally the only female character i’ve ever seen that’s been actually empowered while nude. a male-led production could never.
also, she’s dynamite, and if you disagree, please keep it to yourself and out of the tags. thanks for letting me borrow the mic at this ted talk.
I think people are trying to rationalise their discomfort with a woman who asserts herself. People say they want strong female characters, but the second we get one, they start whining that she’s not a perfect woman.
That goes double when the actress is a woman of colour.
i’ve reblogged this before but i just really wanna emphasize one thing, also:
istredhe has sex before her transformation. a disabled woman of color is given her own sexuality to claim and express on the goddamn screen. i don’t give a flying FUCK how you feel about yennefer as a character, A DISABLED WOMAN OF COLOR IS BEING GIVEN HER OWN SEXUALITY. and it’s not treated like a fetish or anything! sure istredd is spying on her but he could have done that without having sex with her, instead we are shown that he thinks she’s hot as fuck before her transformation.
People also like to point out the storyline about her wanting a baby, and while I do see how you could see that as problematic, they adapted it explicitly to mean that she wants the choice. Andwhile she’s definitely a bit short-sighted in the fact that she doesn’t really acknowledge that she gave up that choice herself at the time, that’s okay, because that’s a character flaw. Which is not just something characters are allowed to have, it’s something a well-rounded character should have
Honestly I also think that the way they’ve framed her wanting a child is also really interesting because (to me at least) it doesn’t come off as “she wants a baby because All Women Want That” but more that she’s desperate to be loved and wanted, and it’s an extension of that need. Which, you know, isn’t healthy, but that goes back to her being a flawed character who makes some really stupid decisions, and hello, again, complex, flawed character whose main character trait is not her boobs, thank you show runners 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
(This is thrown in particularly sharp relief to me at the moment, because I’m watching Star Trek Voyager and getting so frustrated by how they cast Jeri Ryan and then used her mostly as eye candy in a tight catsuit. Every time they give her something to do besides glower and stand around looking hot, she nails it, and I’m reminded how much they wasted her as an actress in this role. Makes me extra specially grateful for the complex, flawed, messy women in the Witcher.)
One of the things I love about The Witcher is how they don’t make her always look glamorous and lovely. It reminds me of the interview Elizabeth Olsen did, talking about filming Age of Ultron, and how Joss Whedon told her to do “a calm face” when Wanda was casting spells, because…
Meanwhile, The Witcher doesn’t do that.
Magic takes effort.
Yennefer doesn’t always have to look like a model, she’s allowed to be a person.
And it’s sad that this is how low the bar can be sometimes, but it’s still just something that I noticed and appreciated. They let their actress act and not focus on some dude’s idea of “what’s attractive” in the scene.
Back in the day, I had originally subscribed to the theory
that Bella was abducted by aliens that were set on her by the Caliente’s who
then murdered her when she returned, and so I went in the game to do a walkthrough
as to how I came to that theory. That’s when I found that I WAS WAYYYY OFF,
there is a whole ass rabbit-hole here, and like a total Alice, I fell in it.
And, after 16 years of wondering and imagining different scenarios,
I finally found out the truth. Turns out, we were ALL wrong, and the truth has
been staring at us in the face the whole time.
Just as a warning, this is VERY dark and bleak and
depressing. Bella wasn’t dealt a good hand, guys. What happened to her was all
sorts of MESSED up.
Just for clarity, I do base this off of events that happen
in the official sims storyline, because while the game is ultimately up to us to
live life as we like, go ahead and do whatever with your game, there IS a story
being told here, but in a way that doesn’t conflict with our own free will. It’s
ingenious, really. This goes with the main Sims games released for PC and Mac.
However, the console versions do provide a lot of insight to further details
and situations. Specifically the Sims 2 for PSP, and the Sims 3 for the
Nintendo DS.
So, first off, it has been verified what happened to her: In
2014, Twitter held an AMA for the SimGurus just before the release of the Sims
4. Someone asked the following question, and SimGuru Sarah responded.
It was later confirmed that Bella Goth of Lunar Lakes IS the
Bella Goth of Pleasantview. She does look like the rest of the ghosts there
with pale skin and yellow hair and eyes, and with that in mind, you can see for
yourself…
That’s her, alright.
Okay, if she died on Lunar Lakes, there are still questions that
need answers:
1.
Did she ever go home?
2.
Does her family know what happened to her?
3.
How did she die on Lunar Lakes?
Well, she died of old age, that can be found out easily
enough, but I found the answers to the other two: Kinda and no.
So, just to recap, I’m gonna review Bella’s life as we know
it canonically.
Bella was born to
Simis and Jocasta Bachelor of Sunset Valley. She grew up the road from her
childhood best friend, and later, husband, Mortimer Goth, with her older
brother Michael. She always had a sense of the macabre and dark and was known
as “the best dressed girl in town.” Even then she wore a red dress. A more child
appropriate red dress, but a red dress. She just came from an average suburban
family who had a fascination for the not average. She’s still a child,
and not a Goth yet. She still goes by the surname Bachelor.
Twenty-five years later, she shows up in the Sims 1 with her
childhood best friend and now husband, Mortimer Goth, and they have moved into
their own home, and have a daughter, Cassandra. Her in-laws moved out of their
home in Sunset Valley and moved into what would later become the Goth House of the
Sims 2 in the beginnings of what would be known as Pleasantview. Unless you got
her a job, she was a housewife, and she was known to be athletic, elegant, and
friendly towards her neighbors. I remember her often being the first to come
and say hello to any new Sims I’d move into the neighborhood. Her brother,
Michael, is also in town, however, there is no acknowledgement of them being
siblings. A family tree system didn’t really exist in the Sims 1, and I’m sure
they didn’t even think to make them siblings back then, but the fact remains
that they have no relationship at this point in time. The only reason why it’s
known that Cornelia and Gunther Goth are Mortimer’s parents is because it
straight up says so in the bio. That and their names are the same, but anyway.
So far, things are simple.
That’s because in the 25 years between the Sims 1 and 2, a
series of events occurs that really makes things interesting.
Michael joins the science career track. One can assume the
reason why he settled into domestic living years after Bella had done so was
because he was at grad school. Because he was graduated from grad school, he
gets a jumpstart in the career and climbs the latter a lot faster than Mortimer
does.
1.
Scientist Sims contribute an invention into the
Sims world. Michael’s invention was cloning technology. He cloned himself, and
a test subject: Skip Broke.
a.
Even though he died before it happened,
arrangements were made so Brandi could be the next test subject and the first
female subject, and when you start Pleasantview for the first time, she is
pregnant with her own clone. The baby is always born a boy.
b.
Michael’s clones have a 100% rate of being male,
genetic identicals to those they were cloned from (Brandi’s just being a boy
rather than a girl) and so far, a 100% rate of dying at the same time as the
original. They are genetically identical, but wear different clothes.
2.
Michael and Bella don’t really have a relationship
in their adult lives because Michael leaves Pleasantview early on while
Cassandra is still a child and moves to the city.
3.
Mortimer follows after Michael, and invents the
age reversal serum. Bella is the first test subject, and, the day of her abduction,
she takes the serum until she reverts back to being a brand-new adult. Probably
to allow herself to fit in her red dress as strikingly as she does, I don’t
think an elderly woman could pull that off.
4.
Cassandra enters private school.
5.
Around this time, Gunther Goth dies. Bella,
Mortimer, and Cassandra move out of their home and in with Cornelia to be with
her in her last stages of life.
6.
Michael marries Dina Caliente. It is speculated
that, because of the age gap, they only marry for Michael’s money. But it is
worth noting that Michael was Dina’s first serious relationship and she didn’t
begin to cheat on Michael with Don until years later just before Michael died.
7.
Alexander is born.
8.
Shortly after Alexander’s birth, Cornelia dies
at the same time Michael does.
9.
Dina inherits Michael’s estate and moves in with
Nina. They then move to Pleasantview.
10.
Don follows them and moves the next day.
11.
Bella goes to introduce herself to her new
neighbor, Don. They get along, and Don gets the wrong idea and puts the move on
Bella. Bella rejects him. He then runs off to go be with Kaylynn and is not
there when Bella is abducted by aliens.
12.
Bella is never seen again, but shortly after her
abduction, a UFO crashlands in Strangetown, and reports that Bella is in
Strangetown start rolling in. But, spoiler alert, that’s not the real Bella.
Then, after Bella’s abduction and before you start
Pleasantview for the first time, the following happens:
1.
Mortimer and Dina hit it off rather fast, and
marriage is definitely in the picture when the game first starts.
2.
Cassandra, Mortimer, and Alexander all age up on
the same day 2 days after Bella disappears.
3.
Cassandra goes to Don’s house to find out what
he knows about what happened to Bella (jack squat since he wasn’t there) and
that’s where they meet for the first time. Don tries to seduce her, probably
not knowing who she is, and Cassandra, as much as you gotta love the girl, is naïve
as all hell and thinks she won the jackpot and falls for Don quickly.
4.
Alexander goes to private school
5.
Mortimer retires
6.
Cassandra gets engaged the VERY day the game
starts.
That is an important thing to note because people like to
speculate that Don had something to do with Bella’s disappearance because he
made the moves on her mother and they were engaged and he didn’t want to jeopardize
that by Bella opening her yap. This is NOT the case because Cassandra was still
a teenager when Bella vanished. Don may be a hoe, but he isn’t a pedo. Chris Hansen
doesn’t need to be called for this one.
Another important thing to point out is that it’s not known
if Dina and Nina knew Bella. At least, not well, since it can’t be established
if Michael and Bella had a relationship at all. Despite the fact that they were
friends when they were younger, Mortimer has no memories of Michael, and neither
do Cassandra or Alexander. They never met their uncle.
ALSO, yes Dina and Nina do have alien ancestry. Their father
was a result of an alien abduction pregnancy. But he was born human, so they’re
not part alien. Which means they didn’t order ANY aliens to go and kidnap anybody.
Why would they? They don’t know her. Not even normal alien sims do that, y’all
are just racist.
It’s also worth noting that Mortimer is COMPLETELY fine with
Bella being gone. He’s not heartbroken and he isn’t desperately trying to find
her like the game tries to suggest. He’s strangely cool about it.
Why is Mortimer fine with Bella being gone?
Because they are no longer married and haven’t been since around
the time Alexander was born.
And THAT, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals, is the BIGGEST
part that y’all need to just remember. If you can only take one thing away from
this part, take away the fact that they’re divorced. It’s S U P E R important.
Now, it is possible to bring Bella back with the Tombstone
of Life and Death. She’ll only stick around for a short while because she has a
death token that activates when you save the lot, go into Pleasantview, and
reload the Goth House. She’ll disappear. Interesting to note that if she’s in
the middle of doing something, like talking with a sim or cooking food, she
doesn’t disappear completely until she’s done. She does turn see-through and it
kinda glitches out…it’s really creepy. Give it a try, you’ll see what I mean.
But when she’s done, she’ll disappear, and you’ll get a notification saying she
died somewhere else and her spirit has returned to where she was buried.
However, if she dies this way, you cannot resurrect
her with the resurrect-o-nomitron. It doesn’t matter who tries it, where they
are, or anything. Grim acts like he doesn’t know anything about Bella being
dead and even if the Sim COULD resurrect a sim, Bella is not listed.
Since we know Bella is buried in Lunar Lakes, this means she
died sometime between the week of her abduction and Cassandra’s wedding where the
game starts.
However, while you have Bella in your household, you’ll find
she’s brought back with no personality points. She has no memories besides what
happened to her children after the first load of Pleasantview. So let’s say
that between loading the game and bringing back Bella with the Tombstone,
Cassandra gives birth to twin boys. Bella will come back with memories that
Cassandra had twins, and she will even know who her grandchildren are. (I use
this example because in my most recent Pleasantview playthrough, Cassandra had
twin boys named Hendrick and Caspian with Don Lothario.)
Bella will have NO relationship at all whatsoever with Mortimer.
You can see before you bring her back on the Goth family tree that they are not
married at that point, and Mortimer and Bella start their relationship over as acquaintances.
If you let them progress their relationship naturally with no cheats, they actually
fight a lot and do not get along at all.
Now, any townie and NPC created before Nightlife will have their
turn-on and turn-offs randomized. But it seems to constantly make it so that Bella
is never attracted to Mortimer and Mortimer is RARELY attracted to
Bella. This is a consistent thing. Interesting to take into consideration.
It’s clear to me, at least, that there were some problems
boiling up for some time before Bella vanished.
–they get divorced at around the same time Alexander is born
–they do not get along at all
–Mortimer is completely fine after Bella’s disappearance and
isn’t the frantic husband he’s marketed to be at this point in time.
–Mortimer gets into a relationship with Dina Caliente extremely
soon after Bella vanishes.
–If Bella does come back and Mortimer is still alive, they
naturally do not get along at all.
Which is weird, right? They were always shown to be this desperately
in love couple who couldn’t live without eachother. I remember them having a
good relationship in the Sims 1.
Also worth noting, Bella is a romance aspiration sim. In the
Sims 2, they tend to hoe around a lot. There are a few other adult sims in Pleasantview
who are also romance aspiration sims.
1.
Don Lothario (the epitome of the romance aspiration)
2.
Nina Caliente
3.
Daniel Pleasant
4.
Skip Broke was also a romance aspiration sim
when he was alive.
What is interesting is that while for the most part, romance
aspiration sims like to hoe around, there is one exception to this rule so far:
Nina Caliente. Nina Caliente’s only romantically involved with Don Lothario. Unless
you have another sim start putting the moves on her, then it’s a whole other
story. If it were a thing back then, Nina would have been a soulmate romance
aspiration while the others would have been serial romantic aspirations.
Bella COULD have been the same way, but that wouldn’t
make any sense with the myriad of problems with her relationship with Mortimer.
So, in conclusion, Bella had an affair. Mortimer found out
about it, which caused them to, at the least, separate for a while. Then, Bella
became pregnant with Alexander, which would have brought up an important
question—who is Alexander’s father? Once Alexander was born, and as he got a
little older, it becomes clear that he resembles Cornelia, therefore verifying
that Mortimer is indeed his father. This would have caused them to try their
relationship again, and Bella would have turned down Don in good faith to
Mortimer.
Who did Bella have an affair with?
Don wasn’t in town yet, and they hadn’t met. Neither did she
meet the Caliente’s yet. Which leaves two possible contenders for Bella’s secret
lover: Daniel Pleasant and Skip Broke.
On one hand, Daniel was Bella’s neighbor. She knew the Pleasants,
and was friends with Mary-Sue. Daniel had an affair with Kaylynn going on, so
he definitely could have some action on the side with Bella, too. My only reservation
on that would be that I couldn’t imagine her doing that to her best friend. But
then again, she did have an affair on her husband, so who’s to say what her
morals are.
Then, there’s Skip Broke. This one makes the most sense to
me, personally. While she wasn’t close with Michael, that doesn’t mean she
completely avoided him altogether. She would have heard about Michael’s cloning
experiments and could have met Skip that way, or she came to say hello and that
was how they met. There is a theory going around that Brandi found out Skip was
cheating on her, and that’s why she killed him and took his insurance money.
Maybe I’ll do another thing on that because the Skip Broke
incident happens to be another rabbit hole altogether.
So, we know that Bella had an affair with Mortimer and
things weren’t going so well between them at the time of her disappearance. We
know that the Calientes and Don are completely innocent, at least as far as her
disappearance goes. (And Nina is innocent altogether, she just loves Don and is
completely oblivious to the fact that he’s doing her sister and two
other women. She is ALSO a victim here, you guys. Give some love to Nina
Caliente, she needs it.)
She dies sometime in the week between her abduction and the
first time the Goth household is booted up from old age on Lunar Lakes despite
the fact that she was a brand new adult again thanks to Mortimer’s reverse age
serum.
Then a UFO crashlands in Strangetown and shortly thereafter
reports of Bella Goth being in Strangetown start swarming around.
And yes, this Bella is a clone—there are subtle facial
similarities, she is not in the family tree at all for the Goth house, but
other than that, she’s structured exactly like the Real Bella goes as far as
her outfit, her personality, and her aspiration.
(The Wiki says it’s her despite the fact that it’s been verified she’s not, and it also has MANY discrepencies, saying she’s related to the Curious Family and they appear on her family tree, which is incorrect because Strangetown Bella’s family tree is COMPLETELY EMPTY.)
So, clearly, when Bella was abducted, something went wrong.
But what?
Well, why would the aliens even abduct her in the first
place?
They tend to go after sims who are wealthy, high-skilled,
good-looking, popular, anything like that. Bella was ALL of those things. She
was the epitome of the perfect sim to the aliens. They practically worshipped her
and their queen took her name and appearance. (This is referenced several
times, specifically in the Sims 3.)
So, if something were to go wrong, why would the aliens
worship her unless she had been being watched for some time before her
abduction?
And what went wrong that caused her to lose her memories,
her skills, her personality, her youth, everything?
Aliens also do not abduct children, the elderly, and pregnant
sims because their experimentation could go drastically wrong.
She wasn’t a child, and reversed her age so she wouldn’t be
an elder for quite some time—
So the only thing that’s left is that she was pregnant when
she was abducted and that was why things went wrong.
She wouldn’t have known this, and neither would the aliens—it’s
possible that the baby was conceived that day, which helped Bella in the case
where Don was hitting on her—she wouldn’t go cheating on Mortimer if she were
trying to rekindle their relationship and they had made it to woo-hoo that day.
Also worth noting is that there IS another Goth on Lunar
Lakes who happens to look exactly like Bella.
Anyone recognize her?
This is Mathilde Goth.
She is the long-lost third child of Mortimer and Bella Goth.
No, they don’t appear on eachother’s family tree, but they
wouldn’t if Bella died shortly after giving birth to her and Mathilde was put
in the orphanage.
Mathilde looks almost identical to Bella with the exception
of her blue eyes. She also has a preference for blue where Bella preferred red.
Mathilde has no idea where her mother came from and the fact
that she has a family on Earth who is just as oblivious to her existence as she
is to theirs.
What happens to Cassandra and Alexander after they find out
about Bella’s death?
Remember how I said scientist sims end up inventing something?
Cassandra’s invention is time travel. She makes a time
machine and the first use is to send Don to the future after her, Dina, Nina,
and Kaylynn find out that he was playing all of them. She then goes on to live
her life. We don’t know how that looks yet, but she never finds out what
happened to her mother and that she has a younger sister.
Alexander is greatly affected by his mother’s death. He has
no memories of her being abducted by aliens. Normally toddlers remember things
like that so it’s odd that he doesn’t when the rest of his family does. What he
does remember is her disappearing, Mortimer being okay with it and getting
together with Dina really fast after she vanished, and then finding out that
his mother was dead.
Alexander is a child prodigee. He’s a smart kid. So, he
would go with any other conclusion someone would go with that limited
information: he believed Mortimer killed her.
Well, Cassandra still has her time machine after she uses it
to get rid of Don. And as we all know, Alexander’s name shows up in the Sims 3
a few times despite the fact that he doesn’t exist yet. And, according to the
Goth family tree, it’s not a family name of an ancestor of his, he is the only
Alexander Goth.
Once again, we’re going to reference a console game. This
time is the Sims 3 for the Nintendo DS. Alexander actually makes an appearance,
and this time, he’s not alone: he’s married to a woman named Cecelia. The
family bio says that their gloominess is BECAUSE of Mortimer. Alexander dyed
his hair orange. Probably he was trying to bleach it and didn’t know what toner
was. He doesn’t have that great of a
relationship with Cecelia, as a matter of fact, she has a better relationship
with Don Alto than she does her own husband.
Back in the realm of the PC games, Alexander wrote two books
when he went back in time to the continuity of the Sims 3:
Baron Graff Van Gold, which comes with Supernatural,
And then there’s the one that appears in the base game.
Murder in Pleasantview.
To string it altogether, Alexander remembers her being gone,
then learning she died. He suspects Mortimer was the one to do it but he never actually
talks to his father about it. He doesn’t know anything about the abduction, if
anything thinking it a ridiculous rumor. He grows up, gets married, and decides
at some point in time to go back in time to try and prevent his mother’s death.
So he and his wife go into the time machine and try to go back to when it
happened, but instead get sent back wayyyy too far to when his parents
are still children. What happens to the time machine? It breaks. He’s stuck in
a period of time where Time travel wasn’t a thing and no one really knows how
to help him and he sure as hell doesn’t know himself. Effectively, he’s stuck there.
So, he writes A Murder in Pleasantview to tell the
story of what he thinks happens to his mother. He doesn’t know it’s really all
for nothing, but at the same time, it is because of what ends up happening as a
result. A result he probably didn’t even know would happen.
See, A Murder in Pleasantview is a best-seller. It
blows up the world of 50 years before his time. Every bookshelf has a copy of
this book, standard-load. Sims would have read this, and would be influenced
accordingly. They would have made better decisions, not wanting this tragic
thing to happen to them.
And yes, it does literally take the world by storm. Better
decisions in the past truly make for a better future.
This is where the Sims 4 comes in. It is a different
continuity, but it is different because they are aware of what Alexander
believes to have happened to Bella. This would be why their personalities are
so completely different, why the age gap between Cassandra and Alexander aren’t
so extreme, why the Goths are so much more reclusive.
Alexander did something that inadvertently changed the
future, eliminating himself and his circumstances entirely. He vanished
suddenly, probably in a series of events identical to Back to the Future, where
he is then allowed to live his life as a child with his mother in the picture,
having no idea what he believed happened to her, nor knowing the truth. He erases
his little sister altogether, but he can’t be blamed for that since he didn’t
know she even existed.
What happened to his wife? Did she get erased like Alexander
did?
No, actually she died. She tried repairing the time machine,
failed, and was electrocuted to death as a result. She died young and is buried
in the Goth mansion’s graveyard, confusing future generations because no one
knows where she comes from because she has the surname Goth but they can’t find
her on their family tree.
Lolita Goth was the wife of Alexander Goth.
Yes, it says she’s single, which means one of two things happened:
Either she tried repairing the time machine one last time
after Alexander vanished and died,
OR
Like Alexander’s marriage to Cecelia, they didn’t have the
best relationship and they ended up getting a divorce, then, possibly with
Alexander still around, did the same and died.
She clearly wanted to go back home to her time and wasn’t
happy with Alexander for being stuck there.
And it makes sense that she would have been electrocuted
with the time machine because there are no other objects in the Goth Mansion
that would result in her electrocution.
Which would ALSO explain why the Goths of the Sims 3 can’t
figure out who she is. You can’t list a descendent and their wife on your
family tree if they don’t exist yet, can you?
Tragedy is just par for the course in the Goth Family, it
matches their dark and dreary macabre air. But Bella’s story is just really extra
sad. Imagine trying to repair your failed marriage, going to meet a
new neighbor only for him to put the moves on you without invitation, then get
abducted by aliens where their experiments go wrong, causing you to lose your memories,
your personality, your youth, and then you find out that it went wrong because
you’re pregnant, which you didn’t know about that either, and your
kidnappers take a tissue sample from you, and then drop you on a strange planet
far from home where you have no way to communicate to them that you’re there,
but you don’t remember anyone but your children anyway, leaving you to have a baby
you didn’t even know existed when you were abducted and live just long enough
to name her?
The truth has been staring at us in the face since 2014, but
we all missed it. Me included for the longest time. It’s been 16 years since
Bella went missing, and we all had theories and ideas, but THIS is the truth,
and it’s really. Messed up. Yeah, I found out what happened to Bella, but do I
like it? No, not at all. Bella deserved better, and so do her children. Mathilde
especially. She grew up in an orphanage never knowing she had a family who
would have loved her so very much, only to become a mailcarrier on her home
planet. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a mailcarrier, don’t get me
wrong.
Dina Caliente is innocent, but seriously? Bye.
Nina Caliente is innocent, and really deserves better.
Don Lothario is innocent, but yet he sucks.
Mortimer Goth used to be my favorite out of the Goth family,
yes, even over Bella. But after learning everything about him I have mixed
feelings about the guy. I don’t blame him for not trusting Bella, and I don’t
blame him for wanting to move on, but jeez, at least show a little genuine emotion,
Morty, she was your childhood best friend, and, if nothing else, the mother of
your children.
There was no plot to get rid of her and swipe the Goth
fortune.
It was just poor timing on the alien’s end, and bad luck
altogether.
This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.
Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.
This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.
Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.
I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.
And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.
You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.
So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)
Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.
The Southwest is like this in some ways. You don’t go traveling along the highways at night with an empty car seat. Because an empty car seat is an invitation. You stick your luggage, your laptop bag, whatever you got in that seat. Else something best left undiscussed and unnamed (because to discuss it by name is to go ‘AY WE’RE TALKING BOUT YA WE’RE HERE AND ALSO IGNORANT OF WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF’ at the top of your damn lungs at them) will jump in to the car, after which you’re gonna have a bad time.
If you’re out in the woods, you keep constant, consistent count of your party and make sure you know everyone well enough that you can ID them by face alone, lest something imitating a person get at you. They like to insert themselves in the party and just observe before they strike. It’s a game to them. In general you don’t fuck with the weird, you ignore the lights in the sky (no, this isn’t a god damn night vale reference, yes I’m serious) and the woods, you lock up at night and you don’t answer the door for love or money. Whatever or whoever’s knocking ain’t your buddy.
I live in the south and… you just… don’t go into the woods or fields at night.
Don’t go near big trees in the night
If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night
I have broken all these rules.
I’ve seen some shit.
If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.
One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.
You think it’s the neighbor kids.
It’s not the neighbor kids.
Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.
So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.
If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.
Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.
Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.
Shit’s wild and I sound fucking crazy but I swear to god it’s true.
Every time this post comes around, it’s my favorite to open up the notes and read the stories. Probably shouldn’t have since I’m sleeping alone tonight, but you know, it’s fine. 😂
Austrian girl here who has lived in Ireland for 5+ years. This shit is LEGIT. I’ve seen it with my own two Catholic eyes.
Sure, visit during the day. That’s alright as long as you’re respectful. But you couldn’t PAY ME ENOUGH to go there at night. These are also the last places where you wanna start littering.
I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania which is a weird mixture of American cultures and environments. I was in the heavily forested mountains (northern Appalachia) but had lots and lots of corn fields and cow pastures. Like the Smoky Mountains and fields of Kansas combined. And being so cut off from a lot of the world, we had our fair share of ghost stories.
We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you).
But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.
I was walking to a friend’s house one night. It was about 20 minutes down a dirt road with forest on one side and a cornfield on the other. I’ve walked past it many times and wasn’t really concerned. My main worry was coming across a skunk or porcupine. I didn’t have a flashlight because the moonlight was bright enough and I knew the walk really well. Then I saw the eyes. I immediately averted mine (because for some reason that’s how to not annoy it) but they kept wandering back. They were still there, watching. I heard rustling and saw the eyes come closer and I took off running. I got to my friends without a scratch, but I was terrified. I mentioned it to my friend and that’s when I found out it was A Thing. Her parents agreed and shared their stories. I brought it up more and almost everyone knew what I was talking about. It was a phenomenon a lot of folks around town experienced but never mentioned. To this day, I don’t linger around poorly light cornfields at night.
@thedevilinthealchemy and I are very old friends. I used to live in the same town as her, in Southern California. One night, a few years ago, we were celebrating the end of finals and the start of winter break, and we just hanging out in her car, killing ourselves with late night Taco Bell. Well, we decide we don’t want to go home just yet, so we start driving. We drive up a canyon, near her place. Now, we both had made this trip many, many times, in daylight and dark. A local tourist trap is in that canyon, and there’s a shortcut to a college campus that goes through that canyon. It was a normal winter night in SoCal.
Well, about halfway through I start to get scared. For no reason. Within the span of two heartbeats I grew so terrified that my palms were shaking and my mouth was dry and for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the wood to the driver’s side.
“Turn around.” I say, quickly.
“Dude, already on it.” Kama said, doing a quick three point turn. I look in the mirror as she’s pealing away and see the creature. It was vaguely humanoid, and hairless, with elongated limbs and pitch black eyes, on all four limbs, loping after us. Now, if you’re in the know, you might be thinking “hey that’s like the creatures from Until Dawn, I call bullshit on this.” Well, Until Dawn was four years away, and it wasn’t even in development yet, so shush.
I rip my eyes away from it and hold on tight as she drives. Then, at the same time, both of us get this instinct and we speak.
“Don’t look in the backseat.” Needless to say, neither of us did. She drove damn near 90 on a dark canyon until we saw the lights of her complex at the mouth of it.
I haven’t gone back in there since, and that canyon got shut down about a year ago due to a landslide and it hasn’t opened back up. I’m a history major, and research always has been my first love, so I go digging. I visit the local history society, talk about my tale. Turns out the whole valley used to belong to a people called the Tativam. One day, after the Spanish arrived, they vanished. Without a trace. We have a graveyard of theirs that we know of. One of my professors was trying to stop the houses that were being built on it. Spoiler alert: he didn’t, and the houses are hella haunted, and nobody wants to live there.
Personally I do think the creature is a wendigo. That chain of mountains is park of unbroken chain that leads right up the Serra Nevadas and Donner Pass.
I’m from Northern California myself, state capitol, and while we don’t have much by way of critters (sure, we’ve got Bigfoot up in the redwoods, but those guys are mostly harmless).
Most of what we’ve got is due to the Gold Rush, and not just the hauntings (though there are plenty of those, a great many of them are theatre ghosts, most of whom are harmless, though some are very particular). What we’ve got by way of Things were brought along on the trail from the Old Country to the East Coast and then along thousands of miles of wagon trail.
We’ve got our fair share of phantom hitchhikers and women in white, but mostly what we’ve got are the Things That Survived The Flood. There was a flood in the early 1860s, one that caused the state capitol to actually be relocated for a while, and when it was over and the floodwaters receded, there was enough sediment left behind that what had been the second floor of buildings was now the ground floor.
There are a handful of places in Old Town that you Do Not Go after dark (despite being safe during the day). When I worked in Old Town, giving comedic history tours, we started from and returned to a restaurant that had a club downstairs (in what had been the ground floor before The Flood) and there was a storeroom down there that got locked at sunset and no one questioned it, but the door to that storeroom was pretty much right next to the portable shed we changed clothes in, and I know, more than once, I heard knocking and scratching and one of my very last tours I got a facefull of wet-plant rot smell (not quite mildew, but not stinky like rotting meat gets) so bad I couldn’t breathe. It’s one of the reasons I stopped doing the tours, really, because I was starting to get the feeling I was being singled out, and I didn’t want to find out what by.
When I was like 17, I lived in the woods on the northwest coast of canada.
One day, I decided to go for a walk in a part of the woods I had never been to before.
Because sometimes I see weird things out there, I made sure to bring my grandma’s dog with me, just running free and off-leash.
These are wild woods, too, not parkland, so the only clear areas are deer trails. I stuck along to those because, you know, I don’t want to get lost, and about an hour in I hear this strange whistling.
Just a short call- One long, sharp whistle followed quickly by a short, piping one.
Now, I’m in a good mood and I figure it must be some new kind of bird, so I whistle back: long call, short call.
It whistles again.
I’m amused, so I whistle again. Long call, short call, and then just to be fun, I throw in a little trill at the end.
It whistles back.
It whistles back the exact same pattern.
Now, normally that would freak me out, but I was in a REALLY good mood. A really weirdly good mood. So, I whistled again.
And when it whistled back to me, I giggled.
I… Don’t giggle. Not alone in the woods over basically nothing.
The whistle came again, and there was a rustle in the distance. Seeing a shady outcrop, I ran to hide, feeling like I was playing hide-and-seek with someone. It whistled, I whistled back.
Another rustle. Closer.
I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen the dog in a while. I looked around, and saw him a few feet away, staring point-blank and totally still into the forest.
The whistle came again, closer this time, and suddenly my weirdly bubbly feeling was gone. Instant fear. I got the dog’s attention and we absolutely booked it out of there, all the way back to the eight-foot-high gate that marked the start of the wild land.
I locked it behind me, and we never went back.
I never really had any idea what was whistling with me in the forest. Maybe some kind of mimic bird that had escaped home, or a squatter hiding out there sewhere messing with this kid and their dog.
I only just remembered that when I was a kid, we learned about the Tsonoqua woman.
The Tsonoqua woman is supposed to be an old woman who lives in the woods. She carries a basket on her back and has long, tangled hair. When children wander away from camp, it is said that she snatches them up in her basket and steals them away forever.
But because she has bad sight, she uses her keen ears to hunt, and calls out with a birdlike whistle.
I have lived in southern California for a lifetime. There are things here that even I don’t understand. Things I can’t describe. If you ever take any advice from my blog, please, please, remember this.
Rei is nineteen years old the first time she meets Todoroki Enji.
The weekend prior her mother had called to inform Rei of the possible matchup. At nineteen Rei is studying for her degree in associates nursing in Tokyo. Marriage is, if not the last thing on her mind, then nothing more than a nebulous idea at the fringe of Rei’s priority list. Her mother got married when she was Rei’s age, she knows, but despite their tendency towards tradition, neither of Rei’s parents have ever attempted to push that particular rite onto their children.
The offer is a good one though. That’s why Rei’s mother called.
The Todoroki name is old money, well respected; Todoroki Enji is only one year older than Rei but already an up and coming acclaimed hero. He wants the arranged marriage because of Rei’s quirk, which is not terribly surprising, considering Rei can’t think of any other trait of hers which would have caught his attention. The Yukimura name was held with the same prestige as Todoroki once, but these days Rei’s family is content with their little holdings in agriculture and land ownership.
Rei dwaddles over it for two days and an endocrine unit test. In the end though, well, it’s a good offer. It’s not as if she’s going in to sign an actual contract either, just a first meeting, and truthfully, Rei hasn’t been on a date in months. “Besides,” Himari from ethics class informs her, helping tie the numerous, delicate layers of Rei’s best kimono. “There’ll be free food,”
This is how Rei ends up under the roof of some beautiful, expensive tea house on her next weekend off, dressed from neck to wrist in silk and trying not to think about any errors in her makeup. It is a clear summer day and the heat would be stifling had Rei not been regulating her internal body temperature. Sunlight slants through open rice paper doors. They lead to a meticulous garden: lush greenery, golden koi in a clear pond, the sound of birdsong and the gentle click of a bamboo fountain.
