Saturday, December 6, 2008

Chapter 35: Ermengarde Sees Only Evidence

Sun, November 15, 2074 4:07 am: 88 Wilkins Ave.- Camden, Pleasantview

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"You have the gift of sight, sister to the Ib of Proximus Deus-"

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"Please don't blink."

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"The swamp indissoluble. It's master is the minister of silence and eternity. The blood is the life and it carries earth like the flood..."

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27 comments:

  1. YAY!! Another update!! :) Who's spoiling who?!:P

    Sooo...Ermengarde sees the possible future and the past? Wow, that's a big burden for one so small.

    I loved this update! Screenshots that did all the talking. I kept scrolling back and forth!

    Alright, I have to go to work(early on a Sunday morning!) but I'll come back and look at this when I get off!

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  2. Pen, you have such gorgeous pictures! Heheheh... there was Laurie and Cully :D

    Bah, technical difficulties are a bitch, that goes without saying. I'm not sure which post went up first, this one or the one on Behind Blue Lake, so if they're sorted out, then yay! And if not... damn computers :(

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  3. Whoa, I don't envy your hours! And ordinarily, I would be asleep right now but I've been feeling weirdly on edge all night long. It's probably that 10pm Peppermint Mocha I drank. >8(

    And as for Ermengarde, she doesn't know what she's seeing. But I think she'll be in for a rude awakening when the psycho killer from her nightmare appears on her doorstep.

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  4. Dinuriel! It's 6 in the morning! Go back to bed! (As if I myself were not awake and I knew what time zone you're in.)

    Laurie and Cully indeed! They're connected too.
    I thought to sneak Jorge into this chapter too but got a wee bit lazy.

    I don't know if the problems are sorted or not. I deleted my groups.cache and shot a chapter. The game worked at its usual snail-like pace and did not crash. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but still installing the game on the boyfriend's fancy-schmancy machine.

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  5. Six is a little past my bedtime--I think I read it at maybe... 3 or 4 (Mountain time). I'm kind of an insomniac.

    Well, it's good to hear that the game may be working. But you're right, it definitely would not hurt to install it on your boyfriend's machine.

    From what I can tell, Pleasantview is a fairly tight-knit community in the fact that if anything big happens to someone, almost everyone else, or at least almost everyone in their caste, is more or less directly affected, due to the caste system and all the marriages it results in. Like, if Laurie and Cully get together, then there's drama amidst the higher castes, with their parents, whoever was looking to marry them, those girls' parents, etc.

    With the full/high/mid castes, have they ever had to resort to marriages that were some degree of incestuous? Not like brothers and sisters or anything, but I can see people like Dina not having to think twice about marrying off their kids to full caste cousins as opposed to low caste non-relatives.

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  6. Oh yeah, all of that is definitely true. I think that there are less than 200 residents in Pleasantview so it's definitely a town where everybody knows your name or at least (if you're around Laurie and Cully's ages) they know your parents.

    Hmm incestuous marriages. I don't think so. The closest one that I can think of is Siren and Troy (who aren't related by blood but who were step-siblings). If you're high caste and you're looking to get married but there is no one available within your caste, then the first place you look is within the mid caste. Next, you start expanding your horizons to high and full caste people in other communities. The biggest pond for the upper class is currently Veronaville. There you have several large, very affluent families- The Capps, the Montys, the Torrences (Troy's relatives), the LeCroixs and the royal family (but naturally, they don't tend to marry just anyone).

    Though I wouldn't be surprised if they started marrying their second cousins. First cousins can't marry (by the almighty laws of Maxis) but I believe that the game allows second cousins to marry. Socially, it would be a lot more acceptable than marrying a low caste Resident.

    BUT what I meant when I said that Laurie and Cully are connected is that Laurie and Cully are connected to the fantasy plot. Here are questions to keep in mind about Cully's rescue:

    1) Where did it happen? (This one you know the answer to. It's no secret. But I'm suggesting that there's something about the place.)

    2) How long did it take? (Laurie could have never run there in time, as the two of them discussed.)

    3) What connects the following families:
    the Tricous
    the Lotharios
    the Fiorellos
    the Goths
    and the LeCroixs?


    More clues to come in the next two chapters. :)

    I know that some of the scenes from this chapter were impossible for you to recognize at this point but not to worry- These and much more will be revealed.

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  7. I like that some of the images aren't readily recognizable--gives some things to think about :D

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  8. I wanted it to happen in such a way that anyone reading could look back and go, "OOooooOoooohhh!"

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  9. I probably should have mentioned the Mindelsohns as well on that list. The Mindelsohn kids are getting it from both sides of their family.

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  10. I was already going OoooOooooh! all the way down. Some of those pictures are stop-and-stare gorgeous. Makes me want to play with fire!

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  11. Ah then let me direct you to this download:

    http://www.simwardrobe.com/

    The incendiary bomb! It's located under sims 2/objects/other objects.

    You can select your fire radius and have an instant inferno. Then just extinguish it with insim. That's what I did for these chapters.

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  12. ...
    ... ... ... ... ... ...

    Wow...

    That was amazing, how you set that up. I went through it like 5 or 6 times. And I can almost envision the scenes flashing through her head. That was purdy dern cool.

    Ermengarde has totally just demolished Tara as my favorite. No competition.

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  13. Thanks, Veron!

    Hmm I never thought that Ermengarde would become a favorite with anyone. She's a normal kid with an abnormal ability. But we'll be seeing a lot of her later.

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  14. Okay, correct me if I'm wrong (bear in mind I still think Anson looks like Druze), but doesn't Bella look a lot like an adult Ermengarde?

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  15. That's not too far fetched. Ermengarde is a descendant of Isabella Fiorello and Bella was said to look a lot like her...

    I'll post a comparison pic of Ermengarde as an adult to a pic of Bella on ye olde BBL.

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  16. Wait! What I just wrote was 100% not true! (This is why I shouldn't comment at 5:30 in the morning.)

    The Mindelsohns are not descendants of the Fiorellos! The only living descendants of the Fiorellos are Adelaide and baby Francesca.

    Bella was not thought to look like Isabella Fiorello but instead her daughter Adriana! This is very important, I don't know how I managed to screw that up.

    And lastly, the comparison pics are up on BBL.

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  17. Hiya :)
    I was just reading and enjoing your blog with out comenting,but after this update I just couldn't do that! The pictures are just fantastic! Want to save them on computer .. lol

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  18. Hi Una! Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying the story.

    And if you want to save the pictures, go right ahead. ;)

    I occasionally save Lothere's pictures for use as wallpaper. (Shhhh! Don't tell her.)

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  19. You have no idea how many times I've considered doing that with both your pictures and Lothere's...

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  20. Holy smoke I wasn't expecting your next update for a few more days. And what an update it was! That picture of the Goths, holy crap, that was creepy! In a way, even more so than the bloody ones. I plan to go back over this entry tomorrow while I have my morning coffee, sipping, and admiring/decoding the pictures. Oh, happy time!

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  21. Yeah, I think I ended up doing 2 updates in 24 hours. Right now, I should be working on ch.36 but I've been too distracted by The Hotness:

    http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk283/
    penelopethefox/JarethAlexeiGarrison.png

    Ooo I'm glad to hear that picture of the Goths was effective. That was the one that made my computer cry and I have no idea why!

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  22. Yeah, it was totally creepy. Their eyes look so empty! Gave me the heebie jeebies!

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  23. Interesting!

    So apparently we're getting glimpses of things that have passed (the House of Dead Leaves (is that how it's called?), Goth family picture, Bella and Don by the telescope, Cassandra holding the gun to her head -- a terrifying yet very powerful scene if I might add) and things that haven't (the Laurie + Cully picture, and possibly the Elise + Kvornan (sp?) scenes?). Of course, it's all connected.

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  24. Oh, and I'm forgetting the girl who had the dream herself! Ermengarde, is it? Original name. Medieval French and Spanish, I believe.

    My weird linguophile observations aside, what is Ermengarde's involvement in the plot? Will she play a big part?

    *Looks her up in the family tree*

    Oooh. She's related to the Tricous and the Lotharios!

    And I wonder how the title is connected to it all...

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  25. Yes, we are seeing past events and events that could come to pass. But the Laurie/Cully image was technically meant to be from when Laurie rescued Cully from the pond. I didn't use one of the images from that chapter because by this point, I was a little better at taking images than I was when I began the story. :p

    Ermengarde is a rather uncommon German name that means "whole". This is interesting because I didn't select that name for its etymology and as we later find out, Ermengarde is the exact opposite of "whole".

    Ermengarde is indeed related to the Tricous and the Lotharios but more importantly, she is Elise's little sister, as Bella notes with her, "sister to the Ib of Proximus Deus". This is also to say that Elise is related to the Tricous and the Lotharios. So that was a good catch. :)

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  26. Oooh, so that was Bella there! And I hadn't realized she was Elise's little sister. I was so busy looking at her connections to the Lotharios and the Tricous that I missed her siblings. XD

    German, huh? Then I must have mixed it with Ermesenda. I've seen that name in French and Spanish medieval genealogy, I'm sure... *cough* Anyways.

    I failed to notice that the Cully/Laurie pic was from that chapter, but since you've mentioned that moment is important for the lake's connection the plot (come on, the story's title is Dragging Blue LAKE), I guess it makes more sense.

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  27. A lot of action takes place in the water in this story. But stay tuned- The subject of where the title of the story comes from is explored just a few chapters away. :D

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