Saint James Infirmary 500: No Time Like The Present!

[Daphne]

Oh, my goodness, 500 issues! I want to give personal thanks to PlutonianKnight and Octavia Moon for getting us to this milestone!

[Haight]

I'm wondering if the endgame for Adrian and the girls is for them to be in possession of a strip club... seizing it from unjust hands would certainly be a righteous thing to do 

[jmundt29]

So, here is our epitome of low-rent.  A few questions come to mind.

1. If the proprietor of this "establishment" isn't spending money on décor or drinks or facilities or on compensating the girls but still has gorgeous women up there every night, shouldn't he be Kearsage's secret mogul?  His overhead is as low as it can possibly be and his profit is close to maximized.

2. Dani worked here?  Why?

3. Does it concern anyone else that we've finally met someone who can make Jacqui nervous?  He doesn't look like much so far, but that alone seems to give him considerable cred as a villain?

4. The two of them in the van have been inoculated against PC after the new batch of antidote was whipped up.  Right?  Right?  I mean it would be ridiculously stupid to go through the hassle of making the antidote as a preventative measure and then forgetting to use it before they went up against someone who is almost certainly using PC.

[Werdna]

First off, congratulations on #500 to the author and artists.  Twice a week, every week, you provide a high-quality, engaging (and very hot) story.

The entire story just took an unexpected turn.  Given that Dani worked at the establishment in question, I wonder what the link is between her own (long) history of MC and her arrival in Kearsarge.  Seems like a pretty amazing coincidence that she had just quit the club as Adrian arrives at SJI 500 issues ago, no?

[laguna85]

 Dani worked here?  Why?Huh
maybe paid for school or rent
now work at the airport.

[GodWilling]

It has never been established that Dani worked here.

[laguna85]

It has never been established that Dani worked here.

you are right But did strip dance

[jmundt29]

Way WAY back when Adrian was meeting the girls and they got hammered (either the first or second night so less than 15 eps in) it's established that Dani danced at Van Winkle's but quit because it wasn't a smokefree environment (and there was an outcry from the clientele.  Big surprise).  She even got some merch before she left.  There's a Van Winkle's coffee mug that's in rotational use and I think Erin has a Van Winkle's tee?

So again.  This place is a dump.  He doesn't spend on anything but his surveillance system.  He should be able to hoard money.  And he either intimidates or creeps out Jacqui.  That should be a HUGE red flag.

Definitely not a celebratory as our previous milestone pages, but very interesting.

As for Werdna's question--I don't think employment at Van Winkle's was a sign of MC until very recently.  I think it was desperation or possibly an avenue to act out remnants of leftover programming from Jakob.

For it to be a part of an overall plan, it sounds like there's an allegation that both Dani and Adrian were deliberately manipulated right at the outset (Adrian to go to Wilmot and Dani to "quit" Van Winkle's to wait for the new arrival).  That does sound intriguing, but I think the GPs have established that the months before Adrian's arrival were about her putting mismatched pieces of different personalities back together to form a whole and trying to recover from the trauma of being around Jakob.

[mns_95125]

Way WAY back when Adrian was meeting the girls and they got hammered (either the first or second night so less than 15 eps in) it's established that Dani danced at Van Winkle's but quit because it wasn't a smokefree environment (and there was an outcry from the clientele.  Big surprise).

Strictly speaking, as far as I can tell, it's established (in #3) that Danielle was a stripper and that she quit due to the smoke.  The mouse-over text on #3 is where we learn about the petition drive to go smoke-free.  But Van Winkle's is never mentioned by name.  That it was the club in question is a plausible inference, but still an inference.

[GodWilling]

On the other hand, jmundt can see covers that aren't actually there, so don't bet against that kind of insight.

Although I'm inclined to think that Dani did work at Van Winkle's, it's kind of implied that Sawyer would have been interested in employing her (Jacqui: "I'm totally serious. Both of us. Make me an offer."), and it does appear that most of the staff would jump at the chance to switch to Sawyer's, so why didn't he poach her?

Speaking of which, I guess we can assume that the driver of the van was Vik's accomplice in the plan to take Katie from Sawyer's - and that that was the point of the plan? It seems unlikely that Yves is the driver, although I guess we know he has form as a liar, so who knows?

Is Katie just a valuable dancer or is there more to it than that? 269 does drop a hint that she was Annie in g19.

Whether or not the timing of Dani's decision to quit the job was significant, I can't help thinking that the timing of her decision to start reassembling the watch (if that's what she's doing) must be.

[jmundt29]

The Hell?  Why am I getting guff about commenting on the new cover?  It's AWESOME.  It's a lips and chin to hemline group shot of the Wilmot cheer squad in what looks like dance team uniforms.  Form-hugging tops with a W symbol dominating them, bare midriffs, and short cheer-skirts.  I think Cait is in the center and Hitomi is next to her if that little anime/emogi wristband is hers.  Imani is on Cait's other side and the Captain is...to the audience's far right?  I think?

Also, Erin has that Van Winkle's T and having now seen this place both from the parking lot and inside, I can't believe she'd go in there to purchase it, or for any other reason than to torch the place and magically cleanse the site.

About the sequence where Jacqui sets up a performance date at Sawyer's, I'm still curious what she offered Dani that encouraged her to speed-dial Derek since we later discover that Jacqui has very limited previous experience with women.  Was it her "move" that Dani experienced just recently?

[Werdna]

It has never been established that Dani worked here.

I will trust you on this, but I was sure that we established at some point that it was Van Winkle's that Dani worked at.  (A happy problem of reaching 500 pages is that I'm finding it harder and harder to keep anything straight, and finding any particular plot point can be difficult.)

[GodWilling]

If it was confirmed anywhere, it wasn't in the story or in this forum. The name Van Winkle's appeared in shot a few times but we never saw the place or had confirmation of what it was until the 400s. The first person to conjecture here that it was a strip club and that it was the place Dani quit was I, and that was never confirmed by Daphne.