#regan family

[gallusrostromegalus]

Move To A Darker Place

This is a story of Man Vs. Machine.

---

Last March, my father attempted to file his Taxes.

My beloved father is a Boomer. Unlike most Boomers, my father is rather handy with technology because he was one of the people that had a not-insignificant hand in Developing a hell of a lot of it. He was studying Computer Science at Cal Poly before the computer science degree existed. I have many fond childhood memories of skipping through the aisles of various electronic and computer part warehouses while Dad described something that either terrified the staff or made them worship him as a God.  He taught himself how to use his smartphone.  Internationally.

So when he saw the option to file digitally with the IRS through the “ID.me” program, he leapt at the chance to celebrate the Federal Government finally entering the Digital Age.

It was all going swimmingly for about six hours, until he was ready to file and the system told him that it needed to verify his identity. 

“Very Well.” said my father, a man unafraid of talking to himself and getting something out of the conversation. “It wouldn’t do for me to get someone else’s return.”

The System told him that it needed him to take a “Digital Image ID”.

a.k.a: A Selfie.

“A-ha!” Dad beams. Dad is very good at taking selfies. He immediately pulled out his phone, snapped one, and tried to upload it.

Please log into your Id.me Account and use the provided app to submit your Digital Image ID. The System clarified.

“Oh. You should have said so.”  Dad pouted, but used his phone to log onto the ID.me account, do the six security verification steps and double-checked that the filing looked the same as it did on the desktop, gave the IRS like nine permissions on his phone, and held up the camera to take his Federal Privacy Invasion Selfie.

Please align your face to the indicated grid. Said The System, pulling up a futuristic green-web-of-polygons approximation.

“Ooh, very Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry would HATE this!” Dad said cheerfully, aligning his face to the grid.  My father is a bit… cavalier, when it comes to matters of personal information and federal government, because he’s been on FBI watchlists since the late 60’s when he was protesting The Vietnam War and Ronald Regan before he’d broken containment. Alas.

Anyway, there is very little information the federal government does not have on him already, but he’s as good at stalking the FBI as they are at stalking him, and had worked out a solution:  He has something approaching a friendship with the local Federal Agent (Some guy named “Larry”. Allegedly), and got Larry hooked on Alternative Histories and Dad’s collection of carefully-researched “there is very likely buried treasure here” stories, and Larry is loath to bother his favorite Historical Fanfiction author too much.

But I digress.

After thinking for a minute, The System came back with an Error Message. Please remove glasses or other facial obstructions.

And here is where the real trouble began.

See, my father wears glasses that do substantially warp the appearance of his face, because he is so nearsighted that he is legally blind without them. His natural focal point is about 4 inches in front of his nose.  While Dad can still take a selfie because he (approximately) knows where his phone is if it’s in his hand, he cannot see the alignment grid.

He should ask someone to take it for him! I hear the audience say. Yes, that would be the sane and reasonable thing to do, but Dad was attempting to do taxes at his residence in Fort Collins, while his immediate family was respectively in Denver, Texas and Canada.  He tried calling our neighbors, who turned out to be in Uganda.

He looked down at the dog, Arwen, and her little criminal paws that can open doorknobs, but not operate cell phones.

She looked back at him, and farted.

“Well, I’ll give it a try, but if it gives me too much trouble, I’ll call Larry, and Larry can call the IRS about it.” Dad told her. 

She continued to watch him. Arwen is an Australian Kelpie (a type of cattle-herding dog), going on 14 years old, deaf as a post and suffering from canine dementia now, but she still retains her natural instinct to Micromanage. She was also trained as a therapy dog, and even if she can’t hear my dad, still recognizes the body language of a man setting himself up for catastrophe.

So, squinting in the late afternoon light next to the back door, Dad attempted to line his face up with a grid he could only sort-of see, and took A Federal Selfie.

The System thought about it for a few moments.

Image Capture Failed: Insufficient Contrast. The System replied. Please move to a darker place.

“...Huh.” Dad frowned. “Alright.”

He moved to the middle of his office, away from the back door, lit only by the house lighting and indirect sunlight, and tried again.

Image Capture Failed. Please move to a darker place.

“What?” Dad asked the universe in general.

“Whuff.” Arwen warned him against sunk costs.

Dad ignored her and went into the bathroom, the natural habitat of the selfie. Surely, only being lit by a light fixture that hadn’t been changed since Dad was attempting to warn everyone about Regan would be suitably insufficient lighting for The System.  It took some negotiating, because that bathroom is “Standing Room Only” not “Standing And Holding Your Arms Out In Front Of You Room”.  He ended up taking the selfie in the shower stall.

As The System mulled over the latest attempt, Arwen shuffled over and kicked open the door to watch.

Image Capture Failed. Please Move to a Darker Place.

“Do you mean Spiritually?” Dad demanded.

“Whuff.” Arwen cautioned him again.

Determined to succeed, or at least get a different error message that may give him more information, Dad entered The Downstairs Guest Room.  It is the darkest room in the house, as it is in the basement, and only has one legally-mandated-fire-escape window, which has blinds.  Dad drew those blinds, turned off the lights and tried AGAIN.

Image Capture Failed. Please Move To A Darker Place.

“DO YOU WANT ME TO PHOTOGRAPH MYSELF INSIDE OF A CAVE??” Dad howled. 

“WHUFF!” Arwen reprimanded him from under the pull-out bed in the room. It’s where she attempts to herd everyone when it’s thundering outside, so the space is called her ‘Safety Cave’.

Dad frowned at the large blurry shape that was The Safety Cave.

“Why not?” he asked, the prelude to many a Terrible Plan.  With no small amount of spiteful and manic glee, Dad got down onto the floor, and army-crawled under the bed with Arwen to try One Last Time. Now in near-total darkness, he rolled on his side to be able to stretch his arms out, Arwen slobber-panting in his ear, and waited for the vague green blob of the Facial grid to appear.

This time, when he tapped the button, the flash cctivated.

“GOD DAMN IT!” Dad shouted, dropping the phone and rubbing his eyes and cursing to alleviate the pain of accidentally flash-banging himself. Arwen shuffled away from him under the bed, huffing sarcastically at him.

Image Capture Failed. Please move to a darker place.

“MOTHERFU- hang on.” Dad squinted.  The System sounded strange. Distant and slightly muffled.

Dad squinted really hard, and saw the movement of Arwen crawling out from under the bed along the phone’s last known trajectory.

“ARWEN!” Dad shouted, awkwardly reverse-army crawling out from under the bed, using it to get to his feet and searching for his glasses, which had fallen out of his pocket under the bed, so by the time he was sighted again, Arwen had had ample time to remove The Offending Device.

He found her out in the middle of the back yard, the satisfied look of a Job Well Done on her face. She did not have the phone. 

“Arwen.” Dad glared. It’s a very good glare. Dad was a teacher for many years and used it to keep his class in order with sheer telepathically induced embarrassment, and his father once glared a peach tree into fecundity.  

Arwen regarded him with the casual interest a hurricane might regard a sailboat tumbling out of its wake. She is a force of nature unto herself and not about to be intimidated by a half-blind house ape.  She also has cataracts and might not be able to make out the glare.

“I GIVE UP!” Dad shouted, throwing his hands in the air and returning to the office to write to the IRS that their selfie software sucks ass. Pleased that she had gotten her desired result, Arwen followed him in.

To Dad’s immense surprise, the computer cheerfully informed him that his Federally Secure Selfie had been accepted, and that they had received and were now processing his return!

“What the FUCK?” Dad glared. “Oh well. If I’ve screwed it up, Larry can call me.”

---

I bring this up because recently, Dad received an interesting piece of mail.

It was a letter from the IRS, addressed to him, a nerve-wracking thing to recessive at the best of times.  Instead of a complaint about Dad’s Selfie Skills, it was a letter congratulating him on using the new ID.me System.  It thanked him for his help and expressed hopes he would use it again next year, and included the selfie that The System had finally decided to accept.

“You know, my dad used to complain about automation.” Dad sighed, staring at the image. “Incidentals my boy!  My secretary saves the state of California millions of dollars a year catching small errors before they become massive ones! He’d say. Fought the human resources board about her pay every year.  I used to think he was overestimating how bad machines were and underestimating human error, but you know? He was right.”

He handed me the image.

My father was, technically, in the image.  A significant amount of the bottom right corner is taken up by the top of his forehead and silver hair.  Most of the image, the part with the facial-recognition markers on it, was composed of Arwen’s Alarmed and Disgusted Doggy face.

“Oh no!” I cackled. “Crap, does this mean you have to call the IRS and tell them you’re not a dog?”

“Probably.” Dad sighed. “I know who I’m gonna bother first though.” he said, taking out his phone (Dad did find his phone a few hours after Arwen absconded with it when mom called and the early spinach started ringing). 

“Hey Larry!” Dad announced to the local federal agent. “You’re never gonna believe this. My dog filed my taxes!”

Larry considered this for a moment. “Is this the dog that stole my sandwich? Out of my locked  car?” he asked suspiciously.

“The very same.” Dad grinned.

“Hm. Clever Girl.” Federal Agent Larry sighed. “I figured it was only a matter of time before she got into tax fraud.”

---

I'm a disabled artist making my living writing these stories. If you enjoy my stories, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi or Pre-ordering my Family Lore Book on Patreon. Thank you!

[zzztlk]

I'm nonbinary and SEA and every time I remember the existence of Ties That Bind it makes my day 1000x better. Nat my beloved

I'm so pleased... peace and love to all the seasian queers in the crowd

[naarinn]

Untraumatizes your Demetrius

❗❓

[megdoodlestwd]

regan reunion leaked ‼️ (this will never happen)

[specter-dollhouse]

Regan in red 🗝

[soranatus]

All right, you brat. Have it your way.

ONE PIECE (2023) 1.05 “Eat at Baratie!”

[visenyaism]

me watching hotd rhaenyra like "can we pLEASE get this girl a real vice. give her something to make her real weird. like get rhaenyra really really into public executions or SOMETHING offputting for the love of god"

hotd if rhaenyra had been serious about wanting to have her 9 year old freshly de-eyed baby brother flayed and also had vaemond de-tongued and fed to her dragon because she just enjoyed it and was on that shit:

[queen-daya]

Lee and Regan Abbott in A Quiet Place 2 (Part 4)

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

assorted quotes from the introduction of Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters: Essays on Cinema’s Holy Terrors

[cornyregans]

A picture I took of the “Lear” Capps to demonstrate how I interpret their heights.

In descending order of height:

Kent’s the tallest, being about what I consider 6′0″

Regan’s next, as I headcanon her as being 5′11″

Goneril’s third, and she’s around 5′6″

Finally, there’s Cordelia, who’s about 5′2″

BONUS:

Cordelia and Caliban’s height difference, which meant to be about a foot-and-a-half. IDK, I just think it’s neat.

[simosyne]

They both rolled a want for a cat, so meet Teddy!

[bitterrobin]

CHIROPTERA "mentors" (aka random people Damian hangs out with that aren't Bat-related and gets weird life advice from) in order of the current wip so I can keep track of them:

Bette - learning about Kane history as it connects to the Waynes and more about Bette's perspective on being a vigilante, as well as a family as it pertains to the outsider (an adult who knows what you don't)

Tom - learning about legacy heroes in a different context and meeting Ted, getting into personal arguments over what being a son means when you have no father (an adult who knows you too well)

Violet - a woman burning and a child furious, the meaning of violence and what being a cult weapon aimed at strangers will do to you (an adult who won't hold back)

The Creeper - the musings of a being of chaos and the hysterics of a child unraveled, prowling the nightly streets in search of something (an adult untethered by sentiment)

Rory - a man haunted and child who can't see the ghosts, careful release and grief, facing morality and questioning your "goodness", the sunrise but not the conclusion (an adult who has answers)

Calvin - a brief moment in a diner between a man drifting and a child running, getting advice on attachment and when to stay (an adult who you can't become)

[little-dikdik]

Cornwall... knows too much...

[dystopianam]

Since gutosimmer doesn't give any more news of his Early VV (😭) I started making it myself and...damn it, this project is fucking fun.

At the moment I only have the two main families installed in the game (the Capps and the Montys) and I'm using the genetically corrected versions.

Since the children have the vanilla parents' genetics, I used the original Patrizio, Consort, Isabella and Contessa, because it wouldn't have made sense to use the genetically correct ones if the children didn't look like them.

Also because the genetically corrected Patrizio, Consort, Contessa and Isabella were so ugly that I didn't want to have generations of monsters 💀

Tomorrow I will install the Summerdreams, then all the rest of the family trees of all three families and finally I will install the families of the partners 💀

[strangetownpenguin]

On the inheritance rules (and other dynamics) of Veronaville

After watching some of the videos of @letomills regarding the Shakesperean themes of the Veronaville sims, I got inspired and decided to write a wall of text.

Disclaimer. I haven’t read this through properly.

There are three families in Veronaville. Two of them, the Capps and the Summerdreams, appears to be matrilineal, that is, the family name is passed through the females, as opposed to most other families in the game, which are patrilineal, including the third family in Veronaville, the Montys, where the family name is passed through the males.

There’s nothing that suggests that the families follow primogeniture, that is, the oldest child becomes the heir or heiress, but rather the opposite. On The Sims Wiki, they suggest what the heir order of the Capp family would look like if they followed real-life primogeniture through the female line, which I find strange, since that is obviously not how the heirs are chosen in that family.

Even though Goneril, Regan and Cordelia all carry the Capp name and passed it on to their spouses (and children), it is clear to me that Cordelia was the parents’ favourite and crowned the heiress, and that it is her daughters who are supposed to carry the Capp name and bloodline forward. To be clear, I believe the heir rules are as follows: The Capp family heir must be a female, and the Monty heir must be male. The former heir picks the most suitable heir among the available ones. Contessa chose Cordelia. Cordelia never had a chance to choose between Juliette and Hermia, since she died when her children were still very young. Upon Cordelia’s premature death, it was up to Contessa to pick between Juliette and Hermia, and Juliette is said to be the Capp heiress (“Romeo has fallen for the Capp heiress”). This implies that Juliette is the heiress, meaning that Hermia isn’t one. Perhaps this doesn’t exclude Hermia from being an heiress, but I interpretate it as not being the first in line. Exactly why Juliette is the heiress and not Hermia, I’m not sure.

As for the Montys, it was either Antonio or Claudio that was set to become the heir. Based on their personalities, Claudio is the more outgoing of the two, perhaps the more charismatic one, while Antonio strikes me as rather introverted and less outspoken. I will go into more detail regarding Antonio later on. Among the sons of Claudio, that is, Mercutio and Romeo, Romeo strikes me to have been the favourite kid. He is said to be the golden child of the Monty clan and it is safe to say that he has a higher status than Mercutio in the family and is supposed to carry the Monty name forward. I will go into more detail regarding Mercutio later on.

As a disclaimer, I would like to point out that the memories in Veronaville are an utter mess, and that a lot of things are left unclear. The birth order of the children of Contessa and Consort, as well as the birth order of the children of Patrizio and Isabella, are examples of this. My interpretation is as follows: Goneril is the eldest child of Contessa and Consort, Regan is the second, Cordelia the third and Kent is the youngest (or Kent is the third and Cordelia the youngest, I'm not sure), and the age differences between them aren’t that large. With Bianca, Antonio and Claudio, I’m not so sure about the birth order, but I’m leaning towards Bianca being the eldest, based on Patrizio’s memories (Isabella doesn’t have any memories of giving birth to her children). Antonio and Claudio are twins, with Antonio being born first. Again, no large age difference between Bianca and her younger brothers. I know that when Veronaville is first loaded, Antonio is 18 days from becoming an elder and Bianca is 23 days away. Those age inconsistencies don’t really bother me. This game is loaded with them.

The Capps

In King Lear, there are the three sisters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, daughters of King Lear. Goneril is the eldest, Regan the second born and Cordelia the youngest. Here, Cordelia is Lear’s favourite daughter. I think that this fits nicely with The Sims 2 Veronaville characters. Kent is also a character in King Lear. He is Cordelia’s best friend, possibly even more than that. Also, just like in the play, Cornwall and Albany are the respective husbands of Regan and Goneril. In this narrative, I think it is plausible to interpret Contessa as King Lear. In the play, Lear dies (of grief? I don't remember) shortly after Cordelia is executed. Similarly, Contessa died not long after Cordelia.

I admit it’s been a while since I read King Lear, so 1) I might be a bit off the script of the actual play, and 2) I’m not sure from where I’ve got all ideas for Veronaville headcanons, but anyway, here it is – my interpretation of the siblings Goneril, Regan, Cordelia and Kent in relation to each other and to their parents.

Goneril and Regan always envied their sister Cordelia because she was favoured by their parents. Goneril and Regan attempted to make their parents like them like they liked Cordelia, but they just couldn’t succeed. Cordelia was the little princess, her parents’ precious gemstone, and nothing Goneril and Regan said or did could change that fact. Interestingly, both Goneril and Regan are fortune sims, just like their parents, while Cordelia is a family sim. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, Cordelia is portrayed as very kind-hearted, which is what Lear greatly admires about her. So, to me Goneril and Regan became fortune sims, thinking this would make their parents like them more, but somehow, it was still Cordelia, who chose family over fortune, who ended up passing the test – she taught her parents that family and love are more important than fortune and money. The reason Contessa and Consort approved of this could be because they actually thought that she was right in her reasoning, and compassionate for valuing family so much. But it’s also possible that they would have approved of any aspiration, since I imagine that she was already the golden child and presumptive heiress.

Goneril seems to me to be somewhat conflicted. I’m not sure if I believe her marriage to Albany to be an arranged one. Since they both have the memory of falling in love with each other, it seems like they married for some kind of love, which of course isn’t incompatible with their marriage being arranged. However, I think that the marriage to Albany was one of the last straws that made Contessa and Consort disown Goneril. There isn’t really any evidence to this, but I think that Goneril’s parents parents didn’t approve of her love for Albany, which only made her more eager to marry him since she wanted to rebel against her parents. To me, Albany seems to be a sort of scheming kind of family sim, who managed to get Goneril to agree to have four kids. Goneril’s bio reads: “While Goneril wanted children, it certainly wasn't her idea to have this many kids. And why does she feel like Albany perhaps married her more for her money than for her love?” The childbearing has made it hard for Goneril to advance in a career and make money.

(I love the two first sentences of Albany’s bio: “Albany loves his children. Too bad they don't love each other. Can Albany convince them that family is important? And can he convince Goneril as well?” The last question could imply that Albany wants even more kids.)

Regan has clearly given up on trying to make her parents favour her: “Regan's determined to make it in business—and on her own steam instead of just her parents' money. Can she succeed without alienating her family?” Her marriage to Cornwall seems to be based more on convenience than on love, since they have never been in love with each other. They both seem to be career oriented, typical ambitious fortune sims.

Then there’s Kent, who’s just… Kent. “Kent is the black sheep of the Capp family—far more enamoured of learning than of accumulating wealth or fighting with the Montys. Will he pursue his friendship with Bianca Monty despite his family's misgivings about it?” I love Kent. (I think he could totally have an affair with Cornwall.)

Also, Miranda is the eldest grandchild of Consort and Contessa, both according to me and to Consort. (And after all, last time I took that "which sims 2 premade do you belong with?" quiz, I got Consort Capp... as opposed to 1,5 years earlier, when I got Lazlo Curious.) Shortly after Miranda, Tybalt, Juliette and Hermia were all born in a short time span, and not too long after that, Hal and Desdemona and then Ariel. The age gap between Miranda and Hal is seemingly too large if you interpret it this way, since there's only a 6 day age gap between them, but I think that if Cordelia's kids were born really close in time to one another, the age gap between Miranda and Hal shouldn't be as large. Say that Tybalt and Miranda are almost the same age, and Hermia is just slightly older than Hal. Anyway, what would the game be like without age inconsistencies? A game making sense? Hah! I'm having none of that.

The Montys

Looking at Antonio’s memories, we see that he was never in love with Hero. Whether this is an oversight by the developers, it’s impossible to say, but I personally like the theory that he is more attracted to men, something which Patrizio and Isabella might have known. I just imagine that non-heterosexual sims don’t have the easiest time in Veronaville, and that it was impossible for Antonio to openly love a man. To stop the rumours about Antonio being attracted to men, Patrizio and Isabella pressured him into marrying his good friend Hero, who could have been a former (or even current) lover of Claudio. (Thanks to @letomills for this idea, I really like it!)

Mercutio starts the game off with one single positive memory, and that is that of being potty trained by his mother. The rest are two grew up badly memories and three deaths. Romeo, on the other hand, while don’t remembering learning any toddler skills, has seven positive memories, including two grew up well and four concerning Juliette, and three negative memories which are all deaths. Additionally, Mercutio starts off the game with a red aspiration meter, with one of his fears being losing a fight to Tybalt, something that is likely to happen due to the scripted events and Tybalt’s ten points in body compared to Mercutio’s zero. Romeo, I believe, starts off the game with at least a green aspiration meter. This points to Romeo being in a quite good place mentally, unlike the Romeo upon the start of Shakespeare’s play. Another thing about Mercutio not being the heir is that in Shakespeare’s play, he is not even a Montague, although friends with Romeo. Perhaps Claudio didn’t really acknowledge Mercutio as his son, who knows.

[specter-dollhouse]

☾⋆｡🍷⭒⋆｡˚