#Bootleggers

[cat-cosplay]

The start to the @lackadaisycats series campaign is anything but Rocky.

But wanted to tune up for it and everyone's favorite fluffy runners.

[thatmexisaurusrex]

Winding Roads

This is for @runzu for their birthday! Happy belated birthday present 🤣 This is also for @samsseptember's Samtember 2024 event for the "Free Space" prompt. This is also also a sequel to the fic Moonshine. Enjoy! 🥰

Winding Roads

| Pairing: SamBucky | Rated: M | WC: 4.8K |

Summary: Sam Wilson has been dating one of the getaway drivers his family's moonshine business hires, one Bucky Barnes, for a little over a year now.

Excerpt:

“You know, you’ll probably be out of a job soon too,” said Sam, not helping anything, “I heard as soon as the end of the year, prohibition will be a bust.” Bucky laughed. “Why’d you have to bring that up?” “We’re opening up. I’m just saying. At least I’ve got investments in clubs, but don’t look to me as your sugar daddy if the work isn’t there,” laughed Sam, “You got to diversify your skills now while you can, Buck.” “For your information, I’ll just be out of an under the table job. Could be transporting goods and services with a license,” said Bucky with a wink, “But enough about some loathsome void coupons and some takesy backsies, I’d rather focus on you.” Sam couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “Me, huh?” asked Sam playfully. “I’ve been climbing the walls all week stuck in backs of speakeasies because your brother feels like I can’t do my job,” said Bucky, rolling his eyes, “Stuck with nothing to do with my time as I waited for our weekly appointment. I was practically cutting out paper dolls as I waited for tonight.”

READ THE REST ON AO3!

[mousecry160]

Sketch of Mae singing sober to death by car seat headrest.

Sorry for the wait, was busy from doing commissions

[choiceofgames]

Author Interview

https://www.choiceofgames.com/2024/07/new-author-interview-drew-morrison-bootlegger-moonshine-empire/

I think this is your first time writing interactive fiction, but you’re rather an accomplished playwright, I gather. Tell me a little about your background and what brought you to Choice of Games.

I started writing for theater in middle school, and got my Masters in Playwriting at the University of New Mexico. Dialogue has always been my favorite part of writing, and theater offers such a great way to get together with friends and tell a story. I worked for a devised theater company in Albuquerque for about five years, and I really got attached to the camaraderie that develops around putting up a play, especially when it’s done without a lot of financial resources. It means everybody learns different tasks, and shifts around with each show: sometimes you’re a writer, sometimes an actor, director, technician, or shadow-puppeteer. The whole thing ends up being this wonderful process of collaborative problem solving: How do we make what we want to make with what we have? Those limitations spark more interesting ideas than the ones you’d have if you could just pay problems away.

I was introduced to Choice of Games by a friend who had worked for the company as a cover artist. I’d never written anything like this before, and it was a steep learning curve, but the Choice of Games forum and community is such a vibrant scene of supportive people that it’s been really exciting to work on. As a writer, it’s so easy to get sucked into the lonely process of submitting to distant strangers and contests, rarely getting any feedback on your work. The opportunity to have people engaged and willing to respond to your drafts is an invaluable resource, which was my favorite part of working in theater.

What did you find most challenging about the game design and using ChoiceScript to craft a narrative?

Pretty much everything? I was so proud the day I finally submitted a full draft that you could play through from beginning to end that it’s fueled me through the whole editing process since. Having finished a CoG game now, it’s amazing how many tips and tricks you pick up along the way that would change how you approach writing another game.

There were a lot of really fun challenges purely at the level of the prose. For one, second-person/present tense is such a fun, propulsive voice to write in. As someone who didn’t grow up with tabletop roleplaying games, it’s a relatively new voice for me.

Also, as a playwright, my plays are often structured around reveals and buried secrets. When lights come up on a play, we don’t know the people on stage, and revelations about their pasts, motives, relationships, and shared histories are part of what fuels the drama.

In an interactive fiction novel, the reveal isn’t as useful, because it will only work for the first playthrough. This completely changes the notion of suspense as a storytelling technique–a returning player has already seen behind the curtain. Plus, in the main character’s case, the player needs to know (and decide) all major backstory decisions from the outset, so that they can make informed decisions. This was really fun for me; as a writer I couldn’t rely on old tricks. It feels like I usually write as someone watching from the audience, and this was like going on stage and whispering in the main character’s ear.

Bootlegger is set during such an interesting period in American history. What about the period, and about Prohibition in general do you think modern readers may not know about?

The intersection of coffee and alcohol is really interesting to me. Part of the reason people drank so much pre-Prohibition was because alcohol was one of the only reliably safe ways to drink water. It would be much lower alcohol content than we associate with booze today, but people would drink the entire day. Coffee and tea were new forms of safe ways to drink water, so people went from being mildly drunk all the time to sober and caffeinated. The intellectual and political ramifications of that are massive.

The period is great for anecdotes, and I love all the methods people came up with to get away with drinking. Speakeasies would install levers that, when pulled in the case of a raid, would dump their entire liquor display down a hidden chute, shattering the bottles and draining the booze. Alcohol had been determined to have no health benefits, but during Prohibition that suddenly changed: whiskey could be gotten legally with a prescription for all sorts of maladies.

For me, it’s also a really interesting time of how people respond to a ban. For many, Prohibition was an attempt to stop some truly devastating habits, such as poor workers and farmers blowing their full paychecks on the way home, before even getting to their families. You can see how the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League could see alcohol and the people who sold it as criminal enterprises. At the same time, the complete ban on it meant that many people saw a market, and exploited it ruthlessly. With Bootlegger, I wanted to explore the sudden emergence of a new market that’s illegal, lucrative, and slightly absurd; something that was legal a few short years ago is now a violent, thriving industry.

Do you have a favorite NPC, one you enjoyed writing most?

I’ve never written any kind of gangster story, so writing Capaldi was a lot of fun. Writing a villain in general is a lot of fun, actually, but especially in this case, since Capaldi can be a villain or an ally depending on the play-through. That type of character, alternately frightening and endearing, is so rich and prevalent in gangster movies, and I like that in interactive fiction you might only see someone’s worst side when you’re on their worst side, which is just a terrible place to be. I think one reason we get into stories like The Godfather is because we see two sides of people, while the other characters in the story only see one: loving family member, terrifying murderer. It seems impossible that they can be one person.

If you were transported to the world of Bootlegger, what kind of underground shenanigans would you be best at? Distilling, smuggling, or imbibing?

I think I’d be good at distilling. I know I’d be terrible at being in charge of an operation, I have neither the economic wherewithal or ruthlessness. But I was a barista for a long time, so I think I’d be good at tending a still. I don’t think Prohibition had much of a “craft rotgut” scene, but I imagine I’d be able to get to the point of describing the flavor notes to my customers, which could maybe help me work my way up to get the kind of clients who could afford to care about the quality of their whiskey during Prohibition. But I’m also too trusting, so I’d be very easy to rip off. So, if I could find my way into an operation run by someone like Sam in Bootlegger, who takes care of their own, I’d make a very good worker.

Do you have a favorite tipple or are you a teetotaler?

I do love the occasional bourbon or an old fashioned, but generally I stick with beer.

What else are you working on/working on next, writing-wise?

I’m currently getting my Masters in Political Science, so I’m writing several essays, mainly focusing on the global impact of the film industry. I recently had a staged reading of a new play, Wildlife, which focuses on the illegal wildlife trade, as part of an ongoing project for my classes focusing on climate change. I am also working on an audio drama, called Ambrosia’s Big Break, with the hopes of releasing it in podcast format. Over the process of revising Bootlegger, I’ve had more ideas about things I’d like to do in this medium, so I’ve started to sketch out ideas for another interactive novel. This one would take an interconnected series of science fiction stories I wrote, and adapt them into one big world for the player. It’s one of those narratives that I’ve been attached to for years, but haven’t found the proper form for yet.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Brooklyn's leading rum runner, Vannie Higgins, and 36 of his men were caught by Treasury agents off of Clifton, Staten Island, December 1, 1931, as they were running in through the Verrazano Narrows in a converted British minelayer. But they had missed their supply ship in the night fog, so the U.S. Attorney's office had no option but to let them go.

Photo: Associated Press

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"BOAT ALLEGED TO HAVE TAKEN WINE IS SEIZED," Hamilton Spectator. December 4, 1933. Page 7. --- Said to Have Carried Liquor From Hamilton ---- And Deposited It Near Rochester City --- Impounded By R.C.M.P. at Port Hope ---- A new development in the wine transaction between the H. Robinson corporation and an American bootleg ring came to light over the week-end when Sergeant Frank Samson took two men to Port Hope and seized the Harry H., a 125-foot craft that is alleged by the police to have carried the shipment of wine from Hamilton to a point near Rochester in the latter part of October.

Mounted Police officers stated that they had information in their possession that the craft in question had made the trip from Hamilton to a point near Rochester, where the purchasers of the wine had received it. Late Saturday Constables Crawford and McDuff, from the Toronto R.C.M.P. barracks, were placed on the boat after it was officially impounded by the government.

The boat has been lying in the west harbour at Port Hope for several months, ever since the law was passed prohibiting the export of liquor, but longshoremen at Port Hope said the ship was absent from its berth for three days at the time the police claim it made the trip. At this time the waterfront men said it sailed light and came back. -light and they believe the boat made the trip first to Hamilton and then to the American shore before returning.

Former Sub-Chaser The ship is of sturdy build and was used as a sub-chaser in the Black Sea during the war and is capable of doing about 40 miles an hour. It could make the trip from - its home berth to Rochester in about an hour, the lake sailors stated. It was registered at Toronto and the crew never stayed in Port Hope, residents of that town said. Whenever the ship made a trip the crew was brought down from Toronto.

At present Milton B. Staud is being held at Rochester charged by United States authorities with being in possession of merchandise that entered the country without the taxes being paid, but he will be turned over to the Mounted Police officers after they apply for extradition.

[tc-stark]

Hey all! If you have a moment, please give my recent video a like and a view! I absolutely love RDR2 and made a video about it! It was a lot of fun and includes personal gameplay! Thank you!

[bootlegpals]

Space Time Maze

[isdiaz]

Been a good long while since I touched on my Bootleggers stuff. Vipra is the very first character I made for it back when it was still a college project. This is her latest redesign--I try not to rework my Bootleggers characters as often as my old high school characters, but Vipra's been particularly difficult to settle on a design for. Hopefully this will be the one that sticks.

Anyway, Vipra's gameplay is mostly inspired by Street Fighter's Dhalsim, though instead of stretchy limbs and Yoga fire, it's a long snake tail and molotov cocktails. She also has a shotgun as a mostly defensive tool used at close range to blow her opponent back to long distance, but if she has her opponent cornered then the blast can bounce opponents off the wall for extended combos.

[thatmexisaurusrex]

This is for @samsseptember's Day 3 "Louisiana" prompt. It's a little edit of a historical AU where Sam and Bucky are bootleggers in Louisiana during prohibition. Enjoy! 🥰

[mousecry160]

wip lackadaisy oc

My lackadaisy oc, Dawn "dishsoap" corbins might not able to finish it by tomorrow for their oc event but ill get to finishing it.

[chillydownhere2]

New Shops In Town...

Source Me laf@ilyF ❤

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Prohibition Agent Izzy Einstein, center, with Agents M. W. Smith and Thomas Hughes, raid a liquor storage facility at 110 Bowery, 1920.

Photo: NY Daily News

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"BOOTLEGGER SENTENCED TO FOUR MONTHS," Edmonton Bulletin. March 4, 1913. Page 5. ---- Fine of $490 Imposed on Frank Henri and Prison Term. ==== AFTERMATH OF A SENSATIONAL RAID === Total of $700 Inflicted in Fines - Great Excitement Prevails at Edson. --- Over $700 was collected in fines on Saturday from persons concerned in the recent raid on bootleggers in Edson, which was carried out by R. S. Stafford, of the Alert Detective Agency and Town Constable Tatham. Inspector Raven, of the mounted police of Edmonton, went west to hear the cases. The principal in the case was Frank Henri, proprietor of Cotton's restaurant, who was fined $490 and costs with the alternative of twelve months imprisonment, for selling of liquor without a license. The fine and costs were paid. For running a house of ill fame Henri was sentenced to four months' imprisonment without the option of a fine.

Mildred Howell for selling liquor without a license was fined $150 and costs, and for keeping, a house of ill fame, she was fined $45, and costs. The fines and costs in both cases were paid. Margaret Clark and Mignor Martin, charged with being inmates, were each fined $25 and costs. A similar charge against Grace Bedford or Bredford, was dismissed, there being insufficient evidence.

Stafford Paid On. Detective Stafford, who is charged with shooting a bystander when effecting the arrests, did not appear on Friday when the case came up before Mr. Bradley, justice of the peace, acting on the advice of his solicitor, Mr McCaffray. Application was made by the solicitor for the prosecution, C. J. Roberts, to have the bail of $1,000 estreated, but this was refused and the case adjourned for eight days.

A remarkable situation exists at Edson in connection with the affair. Stafford, who was acting as temporary chief of police on the instructions of Mayor Lawrence, has been paid off, while town constable Tatham; who was dismissed by the council, has been reinstated by the mayor.

There seems to be a continual war between the council and the mayor, each undoing what's done by the other. An effort is on foot to institute proceedings against the mayor. The town is very much excited over the whole affair and it is freely alleged that some citizens are in league with the bootleggers.

[pabdesk]

The Ghost Breaker | Felix The Cat | 1923 | Cartoon, Spooky

[dynamobooks]

Cormac McCarthy: The Orchard Keeper (1965)