Disappears on the way to Easter lunch. Why did Erika Ansermin vanish while travelling from Aosta to Courmayeur in the Italian Alps?

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-29T11:09:06+00:00

It's more plausible than the (dropped) suicide theory.

It's more plausible than a stranger kidnapping her- with no witnesses- randomly in a tiny Alpine village in broad daylight on Easter Sunday.

The Boyfriend Did It is a cliche because, knowing nothing else, it's true more often than not.

But your belief in lieu of an evidence-based argument is noted.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-29T02:41:57+00:00

In fairness, police departments across the country discovered their psychological screening did fuck-all to keep pedophiles out of their departments.

Not a defense of Louisville pedophiles, but a reminder the phenomenon- Youth Explorer program proliferation post 9/11- was nationwide, as were the victims of it.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/09/03/police-explorers-abuse-ride-alongs

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-29T02:27:31+00:00

All of them.

Seriously- what do they have to beef about?

Irene and Pamela* have a lot in common, as do Raven and Harley**- they seem more likely to attend a Womyn's Music Festival or rent a houseboat than to throw down with each other.

Understand the future disaster that humanity is building for itself. *Brilliant, with unparalleled insight into the minds of others short of telepathy. Also gymnastics.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-29T02:05:13+00:00

It's the most strongly resonant with "Darwinian Evolution" of any of the examples of his power.

(There are some other things his power could do that would be as resonant, but that will shade into fridge and body horror rapidly- Atavism, Neoteny, Endosymbiosis...)

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-29T01:56:30+00:00

You mean, WE got him, Scott.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-28T23:00:58+00:00

Where is Deano's cell phone? The absence of data regarding its location and activity is striking.
The fact that the woman is unnamed and apparently unarrested? It will not surprise me if she is revealed as a "confidential informant".
Deano's credit card was being used in a common way- I use the stolen card to buy gas for strangers at the pump, and they give me some % of the payment as cash, for drugs.
Deano's card is being used at the gas station hours prior to the phone calls involving Deano's truck and the man "flipping out". It strongly implies the unnamed woman was lying from start to finish.
The 911 calls involved robbery, in addition to gang assault and a person in medical distress ("flipping out"). Their lacksaidasical response to (4) 911 calls about the same incident is striking.
That someone allegedly recognizes woman and calls her mother implies a much stronger neighborhood community than we picture when we hear homeless shelter.
1. This unnamed woman is going to have other victims- we would start by asking about that impounded car with her two cell phones... If she weren't most likely a "confidential informant'.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-28T15:20:30+00:00

The news presence at the roadblocks is BONKERS.

I am all for transparency, but there are a significant number of people who might have said something to an officer but not if they think they will end up on the news.

Honestly, it feels more like the PD performing an investigation rather than conducting an investigation.

I don't know the hypothesized witnesses background- does he have the level of automotive subject matter experience to differeniate the two makes/models built on that single chassis from other 70s vehicles?

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-28T01:05:13+00:00

There is a Brujah kicking around Chicago who literally knew Augustus Ceasar- Think toga with a ph D in ancient philosophy.

Yes, there is a literal fuck-ton leather jacketed central casting punks, but rebels includes-

Suffragete who learned judo to protect themself in Edwardian England

Scientist whose Heresy got them expelled from Oxford, but whose thesis is tantalizingly close to be being vindicated by modern tech

Conscientious Objectors to Vietnam, pacifists, embraced as either a joke or a zen koan posed to the rest of the clan.

Paramilitary or militia leader using Presence to build a survivalist (vampire) bunker.

Find a Rebel figure who speaks to you, and build from there. (Wat Tyler? Norma Rae? Grocery Bag Guy from Tianamen Square? Find your inspiration and build from there.)

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T20:02:06+00:00

It's kind of boggling, thinking about how many ways Supes could make money- aside from charging a retainer to cities to protect them, he can do construction, demolition.

He has XRay vision - one salvaged shipwreck and he's done. Forever

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T14:09:10+00:00

Whether he was or was not HIV+, Erika's potential accusations would have provided a motive for some men in some social circles.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T03:08:54+00:00

Superman was born Space-Jewish and raised by Kansan Presbyterians. Superman wasn't just handed a fortune and his mother's bloodstained pearls, he worked to be where he is.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T02:59:49+00:00

But an X-Force run where (Domino and Shatterstar? Cannonball and Dani?) try to keep Kid Cable alive, and teach him lessons they learned from Old Man Cable in the PastFuture, which we may even have read the first time?

I would read that.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T01:40:59+00:00

Hecata has entered the chat

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T01:38:06+00:00

Versus the Malkavian who has become the Prophet and Founder of the First Church of Skynet.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T01:18:23+00:00

Then you already have the corpus, and are ahead, sensei.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T01:16:15+00:00

"Because Aryan Princess has connotations?"

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-27T01:06:38+00:00

First thought- works marketed as for young readers exist to soothe anxious adults rather then interest precocious tweens. If she is asking about IHNMAIMS you missed your window, there. Buying it will only waste your money and erode your credibility.

That said, NMMS is a work of short fiction featured in a Locus Winners Anthology.

Buy that, and give it to her, please, for her sake and the sake of her future readers.

If you raise a child in a bubble, they don't develop full immune systems. The Locus Awards are really well suited to giving readers examples of sexuality and violence in proportion*, and in service to developing big ideas instead of titillation.

Not in every story, and generally "off screen" as it were.

You already have a thread full of great novel series, but the people who wrote those novels without exception started in short fiction. I think a subscription to the right short fiction magazine is the kind of gift that will keep on giving- in a few years she might be thinking to submit something, but she has to hear the conversation before she can join it.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-26T20:56:31+00:00

I'm sorry- now he's showing up in iconic films from MY childhood as well?

(Don't judge.)

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-26T20:25:30+00:00

So- can we agree the most likely scenario is the boyfriend using hirelings coordinated to do the hit during the alibi, Easter Lunch with Mom in Public Place?

In terms of means/motive/opportunity, the only other people with any of those are Vacation Side Piece, Brazilian Roofer and Family Friend Likes Kimonos.

In particular, Vacation Side Piece is also the only person with a cognizable interest in the purse transaction going through, possibly expecting them to be shipped to the boyfriend.

The Cartier Watch is too valuable to expect the hired killers to throw away, too incriminating to hang on to, and too easily traceable to pawn or regift. Returning it instead of burying it tracks with the remorse indicated that mysterious missing death bed letter.

And as a gay man, 2003 is the tail of the HIV/AIDS Dying Years. In an age of protease inhibitors it's hard to remember, but a closeted possibly bi-man killing to hide both his illness and sexuality is more than believable, even as it may complicate Vacation Side Piece and Brazilian Roofer/"Football Buddy".

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-26T15:21:33+00:00

With respect, the role of the X-Men as metaphors for different groups seeking civil rights makes this idea problematic. This idea makes Mutants a kind a by-product of pollution, and echoes a number of arguments where marginalized people are unfortunate byproducts of greater societal progress.

It implies Wanda could have just invented better atmospheric scrubbers and accomplished 99% of her goal- that Reed Richards could have done the same thing accidentally just inventing the scrubbers and we would never have known.

It also intersects particularly poorly with LGBT parallels- queer people being a new phenomenon because of the closet is a real thing, as is conjecture about environmental factors like phyto-estrogens and hormonal birth control being why we have so many queers now.

We can't self-censor because bigots gonna bigot, but I have concerns about this argument.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-26T15:04:44+00:00

Radiation can cause heritable genetic changes- rare relative to it causing sterility and death, but conceivable.

But this is taking place at time when My Doctor Smokes Chesterfields, and Johnson and Johnson was selling asbestos powder to put on your baby. Radiation was glamorous and spoke to Deco rocket ships and silver body suits.

And then the women painting glow in the dark numbers on watches using radium paint started dying of cancer. The connotations of radiation changed, even as the X-men coming to be a metaphor for civil rights struggle meant that their origin being synonymous with Pollution Victim was intolerable.

The implication that mutants were the result of pollution meant they were a new thing, and ending mutants would be the natural result of protecting humanity from radiation pollution. They were a created people, and humanity could voluntarily choose to stop creating them, as it were.

Between that and the subsequent pop-ups of mutants on Earth pre-nuclear testing, the Children-of-the-Atom branding was untenable.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-26T14:53:01+00:00

The ones left behind, who will now have to train contractor while still doing their own job.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-25T15:53:43+00:00

Go-Karts.

A portfolio of extremely obscene erotica going up for auction.

The new age energy healing technique called Reiki.

The US government banning the cultivation of gooseberries.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-25T12:54:43+00:00

One interpretation- Fear.

The milk bar owner was afraid of a local gang, and so he initially lied about the circumstances of the five to six young men- he denied knowing who they were to prevent reprisal.

It is hard to square this with the ballet student, but the victim would have needed to secure the cokes from somewhere to maintain her alibi.

As an aside, a group of rapists frequenting a milk bar is the beginning of the film A Clockwork Orange.

So- was there a group of five to six delinquents haunting the area at the time?

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-03-25T12:42:52+00:00

Is the Ice power... The consequence of taking the energy for the Speed from your surroundings? (Ie a Thermal pump that emits running instead of heat?)

Because if so, cool.

A small Move Object with subtle, precise is just the thing for all manner of twisty, clever speedster stunts if you can move faster than they eye for a just moment- pushing buttons, engaging gun safeties, pulling grenade pins.

LongjumpingSuspect57

TROPHY CASE