#carlo falcone

[mdemn]

WANTING IS A FILTHY THING. BUT I LEARNED GREED BEFOFE I LEARNED SHAME.

red doc - anne carson , first love / late spring - mitski , starvation - maya angelou , let dead dogs lay - silas denver melvin (@sweatermuppet), wishbone - richard siken, a self portrait against red wallpaper - richard siken, truisms - jenny holzer, stop telling me i should’ve died too - tumblr user @tankgotstuckinthecircusgate, many hands - lingua ignota, hungry thread of nerves - fatima aamer bilal

support me on kofi <3

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

maybe my name could also be known that i helped return good to the people and restored greatness to Rome

[itsmeyadayadayada]

carlo falcone begging at the pearly gates to be let in

[swiftcola]

makes me crazy that leo conspired to get moretti killed and put carlo in charge, then turns around and says carlo has no respect for the old ways etc...especially given leo goes on to be prominent on the commission and change things up etc. do you think he saw himself in carlo at some point? the way he does with vito? does leo keep seeing himself in younger men then always being disappointed and regretting it...

hmm first of all i love this ask thank u. secondly i think he saw himself in carlo a little. “carlo falcone’s a lot of things but stupid ain’t one of them.” but i think also it has something to do with the big picture. the game of chess they’re all engaged in. i think it disappoints leo that carlo doesn’t behave how he wants him to. i think it offends leo when his pawns act unpredictably and fuck up his plans, his ideas for how things ought to be done. i think that’s also one of the reasons he put vito with carlo, he knew he could trust vito. he spent years grooming him! in fact i wouldn’t be surprised if he planted vito with the goal of one day supporting his claim to take over from falcone. it’s like he fucked up with falcone and is trying again with vito

[thesixgunkid]

carlo falcone basing his entire personality on looking like humphrey bogart is so funny because i would probably do the same if somebody told me i looked like a hot celebrity

[kitsune-azuyara]

We do not know what happened to Eddie after Vito killed Carlo. He wasn't in the observatory. And did he know that Carlo wanted to kill Vito and made Joe that offer??? I wanna know so bad, it drives me crazy right now.

[clarina04]

As painful as it is to say, Falcone was right when he told Vito that he was just a pawn, because the poor man was being taken advantage of by everyone, except Joe. Vito's only sin was that he was too naive and easily trusted people he shouldn't have, and that was a huge attack surface for people with ulterior motives.

[tommytranselo]

mafia 2’s family structures

back on this again but i really really wish we had more detail on how all the different gangs actually functioned, so i’m going to start extrapolating wildly from what we got in game.  this got long so i will put it under a read more

the falcone family

carlo falcone, despite everything, leaves things pretty relaxed.  he talks to his men personally at points (at least for important missions) and joe & vito are dealing directly with his underboss even before they’re officially taken into the family, which i assume is due to joe’s friendship with eddie, but even in joe’s adventures we see joe talk to rocco.  and honestly it makes sense that with carlo’s modernizing tendencies, he doesn’t really give a shit about maintaining a strict hierarchy (besides keeping himself at the top, obviously) and just lets things be run however turns out to function the best day-to-day.  with eddie both playing the role of underboss and communicating orders directly to joe & vito (and possibly other soldiers & associates–it’s unclear if he’s just playing favorites with these two, but i doubt it given he’s a sociable guy), it’s hard to guess how duties are divided amongst the capos–which eddie used to be not so long ago before rocco’s death.

now, i’m about to suggest a largely unsubstantiated theory about this, but first here are my two major pieces of evidence for it: a) moretti was a traditionalist according to his cigarette card, so i imagine he may have maintained a more traditionally strict hierarchy which carlo likely reorganized after taking over.  b) at the end of joe’s adventures, rocco’s takeover is revealed to be motivated by disagreement over carlo’s rule-breaking drug trade and fears he would subsequently run the family into the ground (allegedly–he could be lying to save his ass).  so combining this with his and carlo’s relative closeness in age, my theory is that he was a capo for moretti who was deeply suspicious of the circumstances of his boss’s death, and carlo gave him the (potentially relatively meaningless) position of underboss to keep him satisfied.  after his death, eddie was promoted to the title, but he’s essentially still a capo with more responsibilities/power (some of which he may already have had by virtue of his closeness to the new boss–motivation for rocco’s bullying of him, perhaps?).  rocco doesn’t matter much, though; the point is that the falcone family seems to be overall quite lax about the chain of communication.

the vinci family

frank vinci, on the other hand, i would expect to maintain a more traditional power structure since he’s so clearly marked as falcone’s foil.  the thing that complicates this is leo.  now, his friendship with vito develops in prison, which changes the dynamic, as there’s much less separation possible; if vito had just worked for the vinci family normally, it’s hard to say whether that relationship could’ve developed.  the fact that it was apparently maintained, at least to some degree, outside of prison suggests leo’s likely to be sociable, as well as the fact that luca and henry spoke to him at his house that time (though the circumstances are unclear).  additionally, official titles aside, leo seems to be a de facto co-ruler with frank and to be actually pulling the strings; consiglieres also weren’t (aren’t) as ubiquitous as mario puzo’s the godfather would have you believe, so i assume there’s some wiggle room here.  i will also point out that vinci confronts vito & joe himself in chapter 14, but quite frankly i don’t think that means too much about his character, because this is a video game and it would be less interesting if he sent a lackey to do it.  overall, we see so little of the chain of command of vinci’s family that it’s hard to make any guesses, but i get the feeling that, given leo’s overall gregariousness and the comment about vinci listening to the young hotheads, the structure may be less strict than one would assume.

the clemente family

surprisingly, the better falcone foil in this sense is alberto clemente.  his gang maintains by far the most segmented chain of communication we see in-game.  associates (joe & vito) talk to the soldiers (henry), soldiers talk to their capo (luca), the capos talk to the don (clemente).  the one time vito & joe actually meet luca officially, it’s to discuss them being taken in as soldiers–which i believe we’re supposed to understand as something henry, specifically, is trying to arrange (luca mentioning that he heard about the jewelry store job–presumably from henry–and so on).  it’s also done quite quickly, which i believe is deliberate on henry’s part given luca’s habit of having people killed for small offenses; it’s not a stretch to assume he wants to give his new recruits protection, as soon as possible, from being whacked for no reason.  the events immediately after this discussion are telling: luca says that henry will fill vito & joe in on the job itself (and funnily enough, we saw henry delegate some of the explaining to joe in chapter 4) and leaves, therefore maintaining a buffer between himself and the rank and file.  then we see luca talk to clemente and discover that the command to have sidney penn killed was given to luca by clemente, and then to henry by luca.  it seems that generally, you only communicate with your direct superior and your direct inferior except in special cases.  (the first part of joe’s adventures, where luca gives joe missions, is an example: it’s urgent with all the arrests/the richie mazzeo rat situation, and also henry is still out of action after getting shot).  i suspect this is a result of clemente’s paranoia, and also potentially an attempt at gaining legitimacy by keeping a more traditional structure and following potentially unnecessary rules, given his family is considered second-rate and is fairly new comparatively (officially established with the blessing of the commission in 1929; whether it was just a large, well-organized street gang before this or clemente worked for someone else is unclear).  i don’t think even henry, despite the family friend connection, has much access to him (though he likely did in the past).

ah, but here’s the complication: luca’s a capo, so where’s the underboss?  i have another wild theory: i don’t think clemente has one.  i imagine he may have at some point, but i think the guy probably kicked the bucket and was never officially replaced.  all the capos report directly to clemente himself, and he likely tries to maintain competition/animosity between them to ensure nobody gets any ideas about replacing him; i have a feeling luca may be the highest ranking and therefore the closest thing to an underboss, which provides motivation for clemente’s relentless mistreatment of him to keep him in his place (especially considering he got the position by killing his own capo).  i also don’t know if what i’m about to say is true in real life, given no backing for it has come up in my (admittedly cursory) research, but puzo’s the godfather mentions vito corleone’s insistence that his capos and their crews remain largely separate and avoid associating much (once again, presumably insurance against an overthrow and also against a rat infecting the whole gang), and i think this is a policy clemente holds as well.  i also don’t think he approves of his men associating with guys from the other families–just look at what he did to well-connected “contact man” silvio palmieri in the frankie potts files, having him (and another guy) killed for supposedly being a spy.  said policy probably did joe barbaro no favors.  of course, i don’t think this actually stops anyone, but it does mean that fraternizing requires a degree of care.

unanswered questions

with all that speculation aside, it’s unclear how exactly territory is split, both between families and between individual crews in a family.  if we go purely off the restaurants that serve as bases of operations, that puts clemente in little itay (freddy’s bar), falcone in midtown (the maltese falcon), and vinci in west side (the mona lisa).  i wonder what this is meant to imply about all three families, if anything, but the question of territory is complicated.  luca & henry send vito & joe to rob the jewelry store in the west side mall over an unpaid debt, which we might assume is vinci’s turf.  the empire arms hotel is in midtown–where falcone is based.  what about the garden of eden cathouse in oyster bay, owned by eddie scarpa but frequented by all three families?  and what about the other neighborhoods?  hell, what about kingston, dipton, and riverside being run by the o’neill gang?  hunter’s point and sand island being the home turf of the bombers?  milville being greaser territory?  chinatown being run by the tongs?  do any of the three families lay claim to those areas despite what their local gangs say?  and this doesn’t even touch the question of different crews in a family managing certain areas–which they really don’t appear to–which opens up the question of how they actually do operate.  i admit this is video game, and a fairly rushed one at that, so i’m not really surprised that things don’t line up.  but it would be interesting to know.

[dropped-the-soap]

Rating “the forties”

SPOILERS FOR MAFIA 2 and MAFIA 3, in a way

Just having fun and dragging some asses.

1) SAMMY ROBINSON: 49 (in 1968)

- oldest of them all but looks the best

2) HENRY TOMASINO: 40 (in 1951)

- dumb of ass but catches up in looks I suppose, I did think he was younger but only like

“I thought you were younger”

“Thank you”

“Because how the FUCK have you survived so long” (*gets shot*)

3) EDDIE SCARPA: 43 (in 1951)

- for someone who presumably lives only on booze (”and pussy”, he would add), he looks kinda good

- still I thought he was in his fifties, if he went somewhere on a beach after the game, hope he got some sunscreen

4) CARLO FALCONE: 46 (in 1951)

- looks older to me but comfortable in his age and his body

- the attitude does it, it’s simply years I can see on him, not the bad sleep, the booze diet or guilty conscience (speaks volumes)

5) JOE BARBARO: 43 (in 1968)

- yes, I think it’s him (LEAVE ME ALONE)

- also I can’t see shit

- he gets minus points for not having his fuckin’ clown suit, this one makes him look older

6) VITO SCALETTA: 43 (in 1968)

- baby, what have they done to you

- The Picture of Dorian Gray. the stress and guilt and loneliness ages him up.

- still looks pretty as hell, still the winner, but my man the years are not kind to you

[mdemn]

these lyrics are so eddie/lauretta post carlo’s death that it makes me physically ill. posting lyrics under the cut so you can only blame yourself if you choose to be subjected to the psychological horrors of Them™️

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

cursed image: skinny carlo falcone

[itsmeyadayadayada]

i know a lot of people want a mafia game set in 70s or 80s vegas but i’d honestly love a prequel that goes more in depth on the empire bay lore of the 30s even though there was already a game set in the 30s. i just feel like there’s so much untapped potential regarding moretti’s death, the beginning of the falcone family and even henry’s early work with clemente

[swiftcola]

thinking abt carlo’s tendency for obsession on a large scale. he likes humphrey bogart so he buys a restaurant, names it the maltese falcon, hangs posters of him all over the walls. he’s interested in astronomy so he builds a fucking observatory. he’s not normal

[vomagari]

what if Vito's father hadn't been drowned, but instead created that cover-up to hide him from going off to build another life on his own. He feels belittled working for these mob guys and deep down, desperately, he wants to switch places. It goes against every ethic and moral piece of integrity he has, that he has raised his son and daughter with, so much so that he would rather them think of him as dead than as a mobster.

So he comes up with this plan and keeps it real secretive. He moves to another state and plans to still take care of his late family, like an eye in the sky. Yet, he is human. He forms a new family, one that he can afford to now keep protected in every sense. He doesn't know where his late family has moved to. He hopes they've forgotten him.

He's pretty high-up, rank-wise, with this new job. It comes with more than money. It comes with respect. It's all he has ever wanted.

I was thinking, based on that Apalachin Meeting in 1957, a national meeting of mob bosses...What if, when Vito is a made man in the Falcone crime family, he is set to travel with Carlo Falcone to New York for this national meeting. Falcone, after all, is the main supplier of marijuana and heroin to New York City and, unfortunately, he trusts Vito. Leo Galante has already talked to Vito about what is set to happen at this meeting though, and how the FBI is already aware. Vito is meant to show, of course, but to leave as soon as possible, undetected.

And the plan Leo gave him was great. And it was going perfectly until he saw a familiar face, one that he has always heard his own match while growing up. His dad is alive and well in New York.

[naomana]

Eddie: I think I'm falling for you.

Carlo: Then get up.