Romanticizing the World

Mabel’s harried voice piped through your right ear in the earbud you begrudgingly decided to wear to this godforsaken interview with Mayor Jerry Generazzo. You winced at the sudden noise.

The mayor noticed.

“You alright there?”

You cleared your throat, and straightened in your seat, waving off the lapse in your otherwise professional demeanor.

“Sorry, sir. Thought I had a bug in my ear.” Not a lie. “I’m fine.”

Mayor Jerry eyed you suspiciously before shrugging noncommittally and launching back into your interview for the open position as policy advisor on his team.

You exhaled, subtly bringing up a finger to the hidden earpiece once Jerry’s eyes had lowered to his desk, and ended Mabel’s excitable diatribe. You had over a decade on her. You knew how to execute the plan, especially since the two of you went over it ad nauseum days before.

A few years after the Unusual Animal Incident that ravaged news headlines for weeks, Mabel Tanaka graduated from Beaverton University with her undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies, immediately launching herself into a grad school program, gunning for a PhD in Wildlife Ecology. You happened to be the student teacher’s aid in one of her classes that Mabel zeroed in on and latched onto. Her persistence and lack of personal boundaries eventually wore down your walls and you ended up making a friend in Mabel.

She was a firecracker. You found her lack of fear for fighting for what was right endearing and admirable. It made you a better advocate for environmental preservation while you worked on your thesis–Integrating the Human into Nature.

Finding a way for humans and animals to live side by side without endangering the natural wildlife biome was a tightrope conflict, a topic Mabel was intimately familiar with. It helped having her hands-on expertise as a reference point.

When you first asked Mabel how she was so familiar with human/nature integration, she dove into a fantastical story involving transferring her consciousness into a robot beaver (‘So, like Avatar.’ ‘Yeah, kinda.’), convincing a beaver king to return to the glade by her house, inadvertently inciting an animal uprising, which in turn involved a flying shark (that you definitely caught on the news), nearly killing Mayor Jerry Generazzo by said shark, and finally getting the mayor to avoid building a highway directly on that glade.

You didn’t believe her story at first, but poring over the evidence (the shark, the fire, the robot horror show at Mayor Jerry’s re-election rally), you eventually relented to the idea that Mabel was telling you the truth, unbelievable as it all was.

After months of getting to know each other, and learning to trust each other, you and Mabel discovered that you could use each other to further your goals.

While Mabel wanted to be more physically involved when it came to environmental preservation, you wanted to be the one pulling the strings of government so that it made the lives of those working on the ground easier. In order to do that, you needed a legal backbone on top of the ecological expertise to even think about having any sway in government.

That’s right–on top of your growing debt from the Beaverton University Wildlife Ecology PhD program, you also had a law degree under your belt.

Why was qualifying to save the planet so expensive? At least you managed to nab a scholarship this time around, while also working on the side at an environmental law firm as a paralegal. It didn’t pay much, but you managed just fine. Your sleeping schedule was nonexistent, dried ramen noodles stocked your pantry, and you might have had scurvy at some point, but it was all for the greater good of the earth.

When it came to Mabel, she had an unhealthy obsession with the mayor of Beaverton. You thought it was a crush at first. Jerry Generazzo was, for all intents and purposes, a very handsome man and he definitely used that to his advantage. You’re pretty sure if it wasn’t for his incredible hairline (not a hair transplant) and winning smile (not veneers, the bastard), he would have lost re-election. His good looks and charm swayed voters into another term as Beaverton’s mayor, even after The Incident. You would have a crush on him too if his policies weren’t antithetical to the platform he originally campaigned on.

But Mabel’s fixation on the older man was one of self-righteousness than one of attraction. You and Mabel bonded over Mayor Jerry’s disappointing turn as a politician. But Mabel being Mabel, she outdid your ire for him tenfold. She schemed. She plotted. She crafted a plan to upend Mayor Jerry’s final term by using, well, you.

The mayor didn’t know who you were, unlike his bitter familiarity with your younger companion. You could weasel your way into meetings and disrupt his destructive plans for the city from the inside, with help from Mabel of course. In return, Mabel would assist your thesis and live with the satisfaction of causing anarchy within the Beaverton political system.

It was a win-win situation.

How hard could it be, really?

“Well, you certainly are less qualified than our other applicants with no outside experience in politics. Why should I pick you over them?” Mayor Jerry asked you, folding his hands in front of him on his desk, looking at you with intrigue.

You cleared your throat, adjusting in your seat. You’d gone over this bit with Mabel a thousand times. You could do this. Appeal to his sense of duty.

“Because you need me,” you started, the confidence in your voice covering the nervous patter of your heart. “I’m sure those other candidates with experience are great for the job, but you need a fresh voice right now, especially after…the incident.”

Jerry choked, as if the mere mention of it caused war flashbacks in his mind.

In your strategy meeting leading up to your final interview, Mabel said, ‘Make sure you bring up what happened on the day of his re-election rally. He acts like it was the best thing to happen to him, but I think he was traumatized. If you call attention to it, it’ll break his composure and soften him up to listen to you.’

While Mabel was able to tell you what happened from her perspective, you didn’t know how Mayor Jerry felt about the whole thing. Just that he started to change.

But that wasn’t fast enough for Mabel’s tastes. When a window opened, apparently, all the windows needed opening. And the doors. And the windows and doors of the house next door.

Sure, he had the beltway built around the glade and made it a nature preserve, but there were other plans on his desk for energy-sucking data centers, cost-cutting measures for chemical plant waste regulations, and a proposal to integrate solar panels on low-income housing that you were positive he was going to shut down.

“Voters are disappointed with your performance as mayor, despite winning re-election, and I believe you need someone like me to bolster your base. I know it’s your final term, but don’t you want to go out on a high note? Leave a mark on the history of Beaverton?”

The question was rhetorical, but you were appealing to his ego. He straightened in his seat, a prideful grin spreading across his face at the mention of being significant. You internally rolled your eyes. Men were all the same.

“Mr. Generazzo, do you love this city?” you asked pointedly.

He blinked rapidly at the question being asked of him. “Of course I do. I was born and raised here. My mother was born and raised here.”

“Then why are you acting like you don’t care how you leave it when you’re done as mayor?” you posed brusquely. It was a risky move, given that you were trying to get a job, not tell him off, but you hoped that calling him out would give you an edge. You weren’t fawning over him, tripping over yourself to laud the so-called 'good work' he’d done as mayor. You were pointing out the gaps in his leadership and where you could fit yourself in to close those gaps.

“With me as your policy advisor, I can help you incite real, positive change to the city of Beaverton that its citizens will thank you for. You have your devout followers, sure, but your actions matter in the grand scheme of things to the people outside of that base. We as citizens will still be living here when you’re done being mayor and creating a Beaverton that makes lives better for its people instead of worse is going to make a huge difference.

“And, who knows? Maybe your actions here could launch you to governor.” Stroke stroke stroke. Your mind’s hand was beginning to get tired, but you knew what would make his ego come. “Or even president.”

His eyes widened, pupils drifting off as he pictured himself as the executive in power.

Bingo.

“Well, you’re certainly bold, I’ll give you that,” he observed, meeting your eyes once more after your indulgent speech, looking mildly impressed. He sat there a moment, quiet, as he turned your words over in his mind, his thumb rubbing at the edge of his mouth, leaving you to fiddle with your fingers in your lap. Your heart was pounding in your chest. This had to work.

“I have some things to go over, but expect a call from my office in the coming week,” Mayor Jerry said, rising from his seat and buttoning his suit jacket. He extended a hand to you to shake which you took eagerly, rising from your seat yourself.

“Thank you for your time, sir,” you replied with a wide grin, releasing his hand and gathering your bag from the side of your chair. “I look forward to your call.”

“What if I don’t get the job?” you whined on your couch, arm slung dramatically over your eyes. It had been a week since your interview and you were starting to get antsy.

Mabel reclined adjacent to you in your second-hand easy chair, tossing and catching a hacky sack in the air, legs slung over one arm while her head rested on the other.

“Did you stroke his ego?” she asked, never breaking the catch game with herself.

“Of course,” you said. “But I wasn’t exactly…nice about it.”

Mabel caught the hacky sack and righted herself, rising up from the arm of the chair to look at you. “He likes that,” she said, tossing the sack at you, hitting you squarely at the side of your head. You winced, lifting your arm off of your eyes and grabbing the toy. “Men like Jerry love when girls are a little mean to them. You’ll get the job,” Mabel said confidently.

You jerked up, flushing, a little affronted at what your friend just said. “Mabel!”

She shrugged. “It’s true.”

You groaned. “Mayor Jerry doesn’t have any pending sexual assault charges on his roster, does he?”

Mabel shook her head, snorting. “Nah. Ol’ Jerry’s a momma’s boy. He’s too wrapped up in his job and his mother to even think about dating, let alone groping a colleague.” She rolled her tongue in her mouth as she flipped through her mental rolodex of Mayor Jerry facts. “He also has a strange fascination for horses.”

You laughed incredulously, throwing the sack at Mabel's head, which missed her by a mile. “Have I told you lately how scary it is that you know so much about this man?”

Mabel took on a deadly serious demeanor. “You call it scary. I call it knowing your enemy.”

The following week, you got a call from the mayor’s office that you’d gotten the job.

Your first text to Mabel read:

You were right

She replied:

Let’s get to work 💪

Monday arrived faster than you expected. Bureaucracy may move slowly, but a new hire orientation for the mayor’s office ran at a fever pitch. You were shoved from room to room, fingerprinted, photographed, poked, and prodded. You had ink stains in places you couldn’t even imagine having ink stains from the sheer amount of forms you had to sign. You were almost sure you just signed your life away to the devil.

By the end of the day, you were overwhelmed and drowning in paperwork. At least you could find some respite in your own (small) office. You let out a less than dignified sound and thumped your head on your desk, rattling the pathetic cup full of two pencils and singular pen on your desk so hard that it toppled over, one pencil lightly bumping your cheek.

“Don’t tell me you’re already regretting this.” Jerry’s amused voice interrupted your unattractive grumbling, the sound coming from somewhere in front of you.

You jerked your head up to see the mayor smirking at you, casually leaning against your doorframe with his hands in his pockets.

“No! Not at all,” you assured him, shuffling the papers on your desk together to appear as if you were doing something important and not behaving like a petulant child. Wait a minute, didn’t this form have a post-it on–

Mayor Jerry cleared his throat and pointed at his forehead. “You got a little…something…”

Your eyes darted up to see the shadow of the lost post-it just over your brow. You quickly snatched it off of your forehead and chuckled awkwardly, smacking the post-it on the document it belonged to. “This is a lot for a first day,” you admit.

The older man shrugged. “Sure, but this is what you signed up for.”

You nodded. “I did.”

Mayor Jerry pushed himself off of the door frame and took a step into your office. “So, I’ll say again–are you regretting this?”

You straightened in your seat at the clear challenge. “Absolutely not. I’m just getting my footing.” He quirked an eyebrow at that. “I’m ready for this,” you said, assuredly, giving the man what you thought was your best game face.

He slipped his hands from his pockets and raised them palm-out to you in a placating gesture. “I give, I give! I’m just giving you a hard time,” he relented. “That glare is withering. I obviously made the right choice.”

You softened your brow at the observation, blinking. “Well, thanks.”

Jerry grinned and exhaled through his nose. “I’ll let you get back to it. It is a lot to take in, I know, but you’ll get up to speed soon.” He walked backwards a step, turning to exit, but not before stopping in the doorway to turn and say, “By the way, you have ‘ign ere’ marked on your forehead.”

You knitted your brows together, muttering, “Wha–?” to yourself before taking out and opening the compact you kept with you, not noticing Jerry retreating from your office. Unfortunately, in faded blue lettering, a handful of letters were indeed on your forehead in a block, a remnant of the ink from the post-it that read ‘sign here’.

“Damnit.”

we never see the downstairs area that is underneath hank and dean's rooms, nor do we see whats down the hall opposite of brock's room. i placed the panic room according to these following screenshots:

rusty enters the panic room via the hallway by the stairs while dean accessed it via the hallway on the other side of the painting, so even tho we never see two doors on the panic room interior, they're animated as being able to exit from either side. hatred is clearly asking monarch to leave the room from dean's hallway and the bombs copycat sets up on the roof right next to rusty's floor tells me that his floor takes up that whole first hallway above which makes his room simply unreasonable. and concerning dean and hank's area,

there's a whole hallway along that back wall and we can see the floors extend to the right behind, and then by the bedroom doors we see that hallways extends to the left, presumably meeting in the back right corner against the hangar. i think it leads over to the 2nd floor bathroom b/c of the window

now using this very *cough* scientific method

from the downstairs hallway (so not the sunken living room area but where you walk down from) to the ceiling/2nd floor hallway is probably 1o' tall, and then a foot for the beams, 2nd floor hall probably is at 12' from the floor and then to the ceiling 8'-9' tall and then the sunken living room should go down a foot so the fireplace wall is roughly 20-22' tall. and then ofc there's the whole cut for the chandelier

which isnt visible like the skylight is soooooooooo architecture error numero nth. and everybody knows about the pool, the seating areas, the shrubs.

what really irks me, again and to close off, is the area BEHIND THE OutSIDE BAR that we NEVER SEEEEE

and yuh here are some miscellaneous screenshots that arent necessary for the explanation but still show off the house

lmk if you have any additional thoughts and thanks to @turtle-trash for making the original post that sparked this investigation.