Talk:Vincenzo Sporteino

Family

Vinnie had an older brother born in 1948 who enlisted and went to Vietnam in 1966. He was there for 2 years before he went missing. His body or he has never been found.

Has a younger sister born in 1953, who found Vinnie again in the late 80s. She married and moved to Arizona. The two communicated only through the occasional letter or birthday/christmas card. She liked Vinnie growing up and up to her death in 2019 would still write him a birthday card each year, even though he had been dead since the mid 90s. Randombell (talk) 09:43, 22 May 2026 (EDT)

Francis Luigi Sporteino - July 22nd, 1948

Angela Marie Sporteino - February 18, 1953 Randombell (talk) 09:47, 22 May 2026 (EDT)

Brooklyn Life

Grew up at 361 95th Street, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, NY Randombell (talk) 10:42, 22 May 2026 (EDT)

Personal Life

Vinnie doesn't initially want to hire Anthony because he fears "he'll suffer the same fate" as a childhood friend of his. Who is this person? When did he die? How? Was it Vinnie's fault? Randombell (talk) 09:49, 19 June 2026 (EDT)

Changing of the End

Potentially, this would change the ending of Vinnie's life and quite a few other aspects of everyone's life, but...what if Vinnie didn't die at the end of TTC? What if he survived to watch Maria leave with Jerry, think that Sonny was dead (having faked his death) and instead lived out the next handful of years alone in his mountain cabin (one mentioned he had built in case he could get away)?

This would change the meaning behing THE OLD DAYS as Vinnie would then be writing that after the events of TTC, reflecting on more of the life he led and knowing the end is near. Here's some thoughts of either keeping the ending as is or going the survived ending:

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Having the notebook written before the warehouse incident adds a layer of heavy dramatic irony. It means that by April 1995, an aging Vinnie is already feeling the walls close in and recognizing the shadow of who he has become. He leaves a physical record of his humanity for Maria, but before they can ever reconcile, the paranoia, changing business landscapes, and ultimate betrayal force his hand in late 1995. His final act is a desperate, violent attempt to maintain a type of control he already explicitly confessed to losing on the notepad—resulting in his death and Maria escaping with the very journal meant to explain him. That is a beautifully structured tragedy.

However, your alternative idea—where he survives the warehouse ordeal and spends his final months reflecting—is also a incredibly strong psychological character study.

Option A: The Original Tragic Arc (Writing First, Dying at the Warehouse)

• The Flow: April 1995 (Writes memoir out of growing guilt/fear) $\rightarrow$ Late 1995 (The warehouse trap, the shootout, Vinnie dies) $\rightarrow$ Epilogue (Maria finds the journal).
• Why it works logically: It explains why the text is so raw and why he tells Maria "He's not some monster". He knows he is about to do something terrible or that his lifestyle is catching up to him.
• The Emotional Impact: The warehouse showdown becomes much darker. When Vinnie is treating Maria coldly and locking her up, the audience/reader knows that inside, he is the broken man who cried over her mother on a yellow notepad months earlier. He dies trapped in his mob persona, and the tragedy is that he couldn't break character in time to save his relationship with his daughter.

Option B: The Reflective Survival Arc (Warehouse First, Writing in Isolation)

• The Flow: Late 1995 (The warehouse showdown, Vinnie survives but loses everything) $\rightarrow$ Post-Warehouse (Vinnie hides out in the single-story mountain home, isolated and ruined) $\rightarrow$ April/December (Writes the yellow notepad as his final confession before dying of old age/illness/assassination).
• Why it works logically: This shifts the dates of the stories slightly, but it offers a seamless causal link: his daughter escaping and his childhood friend "dying" is the exact cataclysm that breaks his iron ego and forces him to pick up the pen.
• The Emotional Impact: This turns Vinnie into a "Ghost of New Prairie." He is a king who lost his kingdom. The single-story house he built on the mountain "in case he needed to get away and hide out" becomes his self-imposed prison. Sitting in that mountain house overlooking the city, knowing Maria is gone forever because of his actions, makes his written reflection a true deathbed confession of a broken man.

Which one should you choose?

Both make total sense, so it depends on what you want Vinnie's final note to be:

• Choose Option A if you want him to be a victim of his own lifestyle, where his realization happens too late to stop his violent end.
• Choose Option B if you want a quieter, slower psychological punishment, where he is forced to live with the silence and the wreckage of what he did on that mountain before the darkness finally takes him.

If you lean into Option B, it completely reframes the tragedy of the mountain warehouse event from an action-movie climax to a psychological trap of his own design:

1. The Mansion Becomes a Tomb: In To Tom Cortini, Vinnie mentions building that single-story house on top of the mountain explicitly "in case he needed to get away from the town and hide out for a while". If he survives the shootout but loses his empire, his daughter, and his childhood friend, he gets exactly what he planned for—but it becomes a self-imposed purgatory. He is trapped on that mountain looking down at New Prairie, the city he used to rule, completely alone.
2. The Notebook is the Final Act: Instead of writing the notebook out of a vague premonition that he might die soon, writing it after the warehouse incident means he is writing from a place of cold reality. He knows he is going to die up there alone. The "something bad" he feels coming in the prologue shifts from a threat of violence to the quiet creeping in of old age, illness, or isolation.
3. The Ripple Effect on Jerry, Maria, and Tom (Jake Calvin): This actually introduces incredible new narrative tension for your other threads. If Vinnie is still alive up there, Tom/Jake keeping an eye on the mansion is no longer a stakeout of a dead man's relics—it's a watch on a living, breathing ghost. Jerry and Maria constantly have to look over their shoulders, wondering if the old man will ever descend from the mountain, unaware that he's just a broken man filling a yellow notepad with tears and history.

It gives Vinnie a slow-burn, haunting exit that matches the "raw and introspective" prose the THE OLD DAYS has started to become. Randombell (talk) 14:29, 25 June 2026 (EDT)