Downstairs People Problems

It's based on the Nancy Drew PC games by HER Interactive. They used that silhouette for the classic games, and the book design is also a reference the actual Nancy books and the old design for the main menu ^u^

I did this freehand (no stencil we die like Nancy using a "Second Chance") because I like a good challenge and I'm a crazy person, heheh. I entered this in to HER Interactive's 2025 Pumpkin Contest earlier, so wish me luck!

More behind the scenes:

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

i’m really actually trying to pay attention to all the layers and subplots in this game because I do think it’s really well done. But do we ever get any sort of answer or resolution regarding how the Rutherford and Daddle families acquired the jade carvings and how legitimate it was (the Rutherfords seem pretty sus; I think it was just like her grandfather was at an excavation site or something and snagged it)? Or even the CCCC or the smugglers? Or the one that’s in the packing container at Beech Hill?

At the end there’s -sorta- a come to Jesus moment where Nancy tells Taylor that the documents in the monolith belong in Mexico, so arguably this conveys to the player that Nancy doesn’t agree with everything the Americans are doing in this game. But there’s the portion in the wrap up letter that’s says the Pacal documents were falsified, it’s returned to Mexico, and Mexican officials are so happy that Americans finally did the bare fucking minimum and didn’t literally rob them that it’s starting a new era with Beech Hill and Mexico. And Joanna learned her lesson about doing “shady deals with people like Taylor” as if literally none of this is Joanna’s fault? That just this one deal was sour but the rest were probably fine?

The game is so fascinating to me because it really does feel kind of “woke” considering when it was released (2002 I believe) by introducing young girls to this idea of colonialism and the way that things legitimately being enjoyed in American(not only in this country, but that’s what’s focused on in this game) don’t necessarily help, and usually end up hurting, the country of origin. Alejandro is kind of a dick, or at least when I was younger I thought so, but with further plays and understanding the bigger picture he’s like the only sane person in it? But then HeR doesn’t fully tie it all together with some definitive statement about how messed up the entire chain of possession is with all those other jade pieces and acts almost as if the Pacal is an anomaly, but aren’t we glad we fixed it up? 

CCCC carving - north - part of an exhibit of locally excavated precolombian artifacts. so this one is probably legit, an artifact uncovered in new mexico.

rutherford - south - the article in joanna’s office says prudence’s great-grandfather found it on a dig in ‘the amazon jungle’ in 1898, and that she considers it a 'family heirloom’. sus by modern standards be 19th c archaeological practices are basically always thus, but assuming she can demonstrate it’s been in her family for decades she’s legally in the clear (generally anti-antiquities-trafficking laws only apply to objects removed from their country of origin after the UNESCO convention of 1970).

de landa/museum storage piece - east - henrick’s notes say it was found in cuba in 1652, paper on joanna’s desk says it’s on loan from 'el museo cultural’ in san francisco. so uh… likely looted during the spanish colonial period.

daddle - west - henrik’s notes say it was found in 1753 in costa rica, sold at auction in NYC to shoe polish tycoon H.A. Daddle in 18–.

pacal - king - does not have a documented history pre-1940. also sinclair might have murdered the last owners. i’m not sure how exactly we’re meant to believe that they’re falsified - maybe we’re supposed to understand that lack of pre-1940 documentation as evidence something was hinky? while that’s not exactly true-to-life I can accept that as a basic understanding. (hotchkiss-and-tell points out that the book explicitly said the docs were fake bc they included zip codes that didn’t exist yet, but i don’t think the game ever states this outright. irl art and antiquities with provenance records that begin in the 40s-50s are often sus because of the enormous campaign of looting undertaken by the nazis during wwii, but that usually applies more to pieces that are european in origin).

smugglers - copan fool - found by smugglers on an illegal dig in copan, honduras shortly before the events of the game and then illegally trafficked across borders and into the US. I uh. I kind of really want to know how nancy explains that one. sure, finding the lost scribe’s work might have improved relations with mexico, but nancy might have royally fucked relations with honduras forever?

one thing that the game fails to touch on is that while all collectors are expected to act within the law, private collectors have far less stringent ethical guidelines than museums/institutions do. public collections, by virtue of being, well, public, are exposed to far more scrutiny than those in the hands of private individuals. so prudence can make her carving into a necklace, or poppy can include hers in one of her own works - as the legal owners of the carvings they can do with them as they wish, while museums are required to preserve the artifacts that they house and to make them (and information on them) available to scholars and researchers. i’m surprised that there’s not more scrutiny or denunciation of the ethics of private collections in SSH.

i actually find prudence’s attitude way more odious than poppy’s. prudence’s 'regard’ for the south key is entirely centred on possessing this rare artifact as a status symbol. she brags that it was 'carved by real Maya hands’ but then she ads it to her mother-in-law’s ruby necklace to 'add a piece from [her] own family to balance out the energies and … make it [her] own.’ to prudence the carving is just… a family heirloom, totally removed from it’s real cultural significance.

meanwhile poppy’s point is kind of - entirely critiquing that whole mindset imo. the daddles possessed the west key for about as long as the rutherfords owned the south key, and for that time theirs functioned in the same way - as basically an empty status symbol for wealthy people who hold no connection to it’s history. poppy’s art is entirely about critiquing that ownership/collector mindset - and including the carving in 'deadly midnight snack’ can be read as a furtherance of that critique. she hates when people see art as 'merchandise,’ so she takes the carving, coats it in the shoe polish that allowed her ancestor to purchase it in the first place, and puts it back into the world, now as part of the dialogue about live and dead art and ownership and meaning. we can debate whether poppy is the right person to do this, but the fact is irl artists have done exactly this for at least 100+ years.

           *Warning* I go on a rant after this

What I find really bizarre is the fact that they have a “state of the art Revolve stage” when the museum has only a “tiny pile of money” and most of exhibits are borrowed from other museums. I can only imagine how much money it cost to renovate this old amphitheater and build an entire lift system. You’d think that after spending all this money on building this, they would hire a large crew to handle all the safety checks and make sure the lighting, sound, and other effects are perfect. Do they? Nope. They hire four people- half of which have no acting experience- to be the actors, directors, costume designers, set designers, light crew, set crew, etc. And who exactly is doing what? Xenia is playing the Persephone and directing. Grigor is playing Hermes and doing all the light cues. Niobe is playing Demeter and making all the costumes. Thanos is playing Hades and spending his time lurking around the underworld. I don’t know who made the set and props, but get the feeling it all the work fell to Niobe. On top of all of this, they’re stealing, forging, and smuggling all the artwork. I have no idea how they have the time to do all of this. 

I think HeR wanted to do a game in a museum without making it too much like Secret of the Scarlet Hand. So they thought about Greece. Hmmmm. What’s something very Greek? I know- theater! 

The idea itself isn’t bad, it just conflicts with how these games work. HeR only has enough time and resources to make three to six characters, hence the unrealistically small cast/ crew.  And almost all the games feature secret passage ways and locked off rooms, hence the giant, overly complicated set. 

Nancy: alright dad you got it I’ll try

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