#CRASS 1980 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

therobotmonster · 1 year ago

Text

You can complain about the crassness of 80s advert-toons, but what came before wasn't good just because it didn't have a toy company paying the bills.

In fact, that was part of the problem.

(splitting this into its own post)

Pre-80s, your biggest player in TV animation was Hanna Barbera. Post-Cartoon Network kids won't remember, but before they had a network to fill, HB made low-cost dreck exclusively. Race-to-the-bottom, cheap-as-possible, formula driven dreck.

Some of it was dreck with potential and staying power, because you had guys like Alex Toth trying their best to make good stuff despite being given the budget of a Viewmaster disk.

Kidvid in the 80s was the first time, en-masse, someone cared about the quality of kids' entertainment on TV. Not kids' edutainment, PBS existed for awhile, but actual get down and have fun kidvid. Prior to that you had the distressing puppet shows from Sid and Marty Kroft and everything else was 'what will the kids care?' low-end channel filler.

(Channel filler that was, by the way, still selling toys and candy. Just not themed after what the kids were watching)

Then in the 80s, suddenly a lot of people care about the quality of the show. They care because the show is a very expensive ad campaign, but suddenly the avenue to maximized profits drove through a show that was actually engaging and entertaining to kids.

At the same time, your animation industry was flush with new money and a desire to not see that snatched away by another 1960s parent panic that killed the Sugar Bear cartoon. So the studios did everything they could to not make the shows the advertisements they were assumed to be. The goal of elevating the project to avoid feeling like an ad-writer also slipped in. You get stuff like Real Ghostbusters, Spiral Zone, Bravestarr, some very impressively animated and written shows...

And before that, remember, was Jabberjaw, Huckleberry Hound, and fucking Clutch Cargo.

Yes, that is a pair of human lips projected onto a blank face because they couldn't afford animation.

And everything that wasn't a toy-toon had to have a bigger budget to compete. You don't get Thundarr the Barbarian until HB has He-Man breathing down its neck. There is no Le Mondes Engloitis if they don't have the merch wave washing over France. The Disney Afternoon was only what it was because it was trying to contrast itself from the figure aisle.

There is no BTAS or Gargoyles without the action figures.

New Google makes searching for the quote basically impossible, but one of the leads on G.I.Joe has a quote along the lines of: the fantasy of G.I.Joe was not a war fantasy. The fantasy of G.I.Joe was the idea that when you get in trouble, you have a large group of friends who will be there to help you through it.

And one last dirty little secret. Before they could make cartoons based on toys the toy market was still driven by licensed stuff, it was just stuff based on live action properties:

The 80s are seen as this time in which kids were deeply exploited, and all the money made in the kidvid and toy industries is seen as the evidence of that. The idea that the boom happened, even in part, because kids were actually getting media and toys they wanted never occurs to them.

And what did youtube make into the face of kid's entertainment?

If the YT kidverse had to deal with the regulations and rules of 1980s advertising cartoons none of that would have happened.

No one wants what these guys are selling.

#toyetic #80s nostalgia #toys #cartoons #advertoons #advertising #hanna barbera #retro cartoons #the discourse

637 notes · View notes

sgiandubh · 1 year ago

Text

When clueless, silence is golden

I was just browsing around while looking for something completely different and stumbled upon this quintessential Mordorian POV:

Disclosing a username is crass and I usually never do this, unless really necessary and relevant. So spare me the ad hominem argument you usually fumble around with, Disgruntled Tumblrettes. Yet, for all its intellectual paucity, this is interesting dissection material, since clearly this person hasn't got the slightest idea of what she is so confidently talking about.

First scenario at play: The Tasting Alliance, 'a company no one has ever heard of', booked and paid for the suite.

Not necessarily booked, nor necessarily paid, madam. In the real business world you are so clueless about, these arrangements are seldom - if ever - monetized. It's rather all about barter.

That company no one ever heard about - except, perhaps, #silly and totally irrelevant Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemicallef/2023/04/13/the-tasting-alliance-and-reserve-bar-are-set-to-launch-top-shelf/?sh=b45f7085f6f1) - is the parent company of the San Francisco World Spirits Competition (SFWSC), largely acknowledged as at least one of, if not the world's leading spirits award contest. Google is your friend, you should try it some time:

The operative info here is that this evaluation comes from the Beverage Trade Network, a professional portal for spirit dealers. Having determined this, Tasting Alliance's IG number of followers is completely irrelevant, since we are talking about two very different targets, here. Its real leverage and weight on the global market does not really need the boost of an aggressive social media presence and the kind of events it hosts are not your favorite junior hockey league or elementary school cake and bake sale.

Let's look a bit further. It takes one click to get on the Tasting Alliance's website (https://thetastingalliance.com/). Granted, not all the information you need to understand its business model is right there and I had to go dig a bit (not without some help - merci encore!) to even get a grip on how these wheels are really turning.

The way they sell themselves is sober and confident. And completely disinterested in social media impact, to be honest:

So, in lieu of glitz and sequined bras, we have a success story in its own right, which started in Frisco in 1980, then continued in 2000, with the addition of the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Further expansion followed in 2018, with the New York World Wine & Spirits Competition and 2019, when Dias Blue set a firm foot on the emerging Asian market, with the Singapore World Spirits Competition.

I doubt an explanatory drawing is needed as to the why of this expansion choice: it's all about baijiu, the old/new Chinese sorghum spirit and the everlasting love of the Far East for anything fermented. Lao-lao, the unspeakable Laotian homemade rice whisky, comes immediately to the mind of this blogger: the last bottle I saw, somewhere along the unexploded ordnance ridden Route 13, had a plump snake inside, as a naïve Viagra of sorts. Took a mouthful and thought I was going to die - but when spending the night in a longhouse with the Tai Lü people, you can't afford a faux-pas, can you? /end of travel memories intermezzo

By all my estimations, The Tasting Alliance is very profitable business. Let's unpack ( for current fees, see source: https://callingallcontestants.com/contest/2023-san-francisco-world-spirits-competition/):

Considering the 500 USD fee /entry (550, in 2023) in the competition and the fact that in 2022 there were approximately 5000 entries in the Frisco spirits' competition, we have a very rough turnover estimation of 500x5000= 2.5 million USD. That figure is just for one of the spirits competitions, mind you, and does not take into account what the winners probably pay for the right to mention their medals on their bottles (I am yet to see them on the SS gin bottles, btw), nor the multiple sidekick profit (e-shop sales, consulting and/or other distribution deals, etc). So, at the end of the day, I would comfortably multiply that base by 4, assuming a similar scale for all the other events they organize, which takes the yearly turnover at around 10 million USD and keeping in mind this is very probably a conservative estimation. I also assume costs are negligible, taking into account the discretion with which major players traditionally operate on that particular niche. Real expenses are probably limited to the activity of a handful of offices, sparingly and intelligently staffed. Advertisement is probably bartered and social media, well... you just saw the effort, haven't you?

But then there's the brand's real power on that market and this is the right time to talk about influence and impact. Perhaps this recent (2021) Men's Journal article will help us see better: https://www.mensjournal.com/food-drink/inside-the-san-francisco-world-spirits-competition

With a bit of luck, this could happen:

Sounds familiar? Of course and I bet that was S's strategy. If you imagined him doing the same exhausting booze tour every year (groping on top and seriously cringe on the sides), I think you might want to reconsider. I told you Sassenach Summer was a sandbox for more serious things to come and until now I have no reasons to change my mind. He did it for a reason and, mind you, that reason is not that the booze did or does not sell. It does. Restaurants start to feature it. Podcasts are being produced. The press starts to mention it (that recent New York Times article is evidence enough). This is not Lucky Luciano dealing in bootleg alcohol during the Prohibition and making obscene money over a fortnight. This is a serious business project that was delayed by COVID. That's all. And it takes time and patience and consistence. We know he has all those aplenty.

We also have the totally inane take on production costs for that podcast. It suddenly made me remember again my media expert past. It is with complete and educated confidence that I tell you: a potential 5K USD extra cost for renting that damn suite for the day is peanuts, even for a two-minute clip (let alone, in reality, a podcast interview, and I stand corrected if wrong), if such costs are covered by The Tasting Alliance. But my money is on a barter with The Shutters on the Beach, which would be, again, common business practice.

Second scenario: 'Shutters comped the room for free promo (...) for an actor most people haven't heard of.' You can throw timelines down my throat as many times as you wish and tell me he already stayed there several times and yell and screech, but here is what I think. Shutters didn't comp that suite for S, an actor most people haven't heard of, a decent, hard working start-up entrepreneur. If so (I doubt it), it would be logical to think Shutters comped that suite for The Tasting Alliance, which has a long documented history of partnerships with hotels that host their competitions:

So Shutters might have comped that room for a major player of the alcohol lobby world, happy that S, a returning client, picked them out of several possible options, because it was convenient. I don't believe for a second he stayed there.

This guy knows what he's doing and C's gin success completely depends and I bet will rely on that relentless networking effort. If anything, the Keepers of the Quaich recent development is only confirmation of all the above. But that's another story - very soon on this page.

IYKYK. The rest is uneducated cackle. But Mordor people were never the brightest bulbs in the fandom's chandelier, were they?

#BoozeWars

151 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 5 months ago

Text

Griffin Dunne has just written a book. He had been meaning to do so for ages. It was one of the items on his bucket list: learn a musical instrument, master Spanish and write his damn memoir. “One down, two to go,” he says, beaming in via video link from his home in upstate New York. The actor and film-maker turns 69 this weekend. He reckons that still leaves him time for the music and Spanish.

Dunne imagined his memoir as a family portrait in the style of David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day. He pictured something light on its toes, witty and poignant, a weave of essays and anecdotes. But then the book changed direction, as though it had a will of its own. It went where it wanted and needed to go. He says: “On some level, I knew there was this big subject ahead. And so, as I’m writing the book, I’m thinking: oh, OK, I know where this is going now.” The story leads to the scene of a 40-year-old crime. It revisits the death of Dunne’s younger sister, Dominique, and the grisly murder trial that followed.

I tell Dunne I really like the book, which sounds crass in the circumstances, but is true. While The Friday Afternoon Club is about the death of a loved one, it’s full of light, life and colour. It’s a startling tale of precarious American privilege, spotlighting a family that is blessed and cursed.

Dunne casts himself as the Hollywood prince at its centre, surrounded by famous faces, clamouring to be noticed. He tells how Sean Connery rescued him from the family swimming pool, how Billy Wilder critiqued his childhood pranks and how he roomed with Carrie Fisher before she went off to make Star Wars (“This movie is going to be a fucking disaster,” she said). Dunne was raised among storytellers (his dad and uncle were authors; Joan Didion was his aunt) and he writes with a loose, easy swagger. His memoir is tart, buoyant and playful right up to the moment it’s not.

In the early 1980s, when he was in his 20s, Dunne was hitting his stride as an actor. He had secured his breakout role in 1981’s An American Werewolf in London, playing the undead grad student Jack Goodman, doomed to haunt the adult cinemas of Soho. His 22-year-old sister was also faring well, having co-starred in 1982’s Poltergeist. But, on 30 October 1982, Dominique was strangled by her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, and died in hospital five days later. The trial, says Dunne, was outrageous, a farce. Implicitly, it seemed to put the Dunnes in the dock, framing the bereaved family members as frivolous dandies. Sweeney was convicted of manslaughter, but acquitted of murder. He served just three and a half years in prison.

Four decades on, Dunne’s account of events burns with rage. He is furious with the judge who intervened to block crucial evidence. He is furious with the killer’s employers (the Los Angeles restaurant Ma Maison), who stepped in to pay his legal fees. He is furious with Dominique’s then co-star, David Packer, who remained inside the house while Dominique was being attacked outside. “All the old anger got re-stoked,” he says. “I tapped right back into my vengeful side.”

During the trial, Dunne was approached by a mobster who offered to have Sweeney killed. He discussed the idea with his brother, Alex. “At that time, we would have been diagnosed as crazy people,” he says. “I told my brother that we had an opportunity to have the killer dealt with in the county jail. We decided not to kill him, but to mess him up, to have his hands smashed, like we were ordering pizza and choosing different toppings from the menu. And that was just the beginning of our madness; it carried right through. Even writing it down, I thought: I’ve got to let this go, because you can’t live in hate.”

In the end, they did nothing. Dominique’s killer changed his name after being released from prison and is likely still alive today. “I will neither forgive nor forget,” Dunne says. “But I’m not going to let that be the A-story of my sister’s life.”

Dominique was a victim, but that doesn’t make her life tragic. What is clear from the book is that people adored her. She comes across as whip-smart and droll, grounded and private. “She was a serious, substantial person,” he says. “Serious about her acting, her animals, her family. And, actually, rather intimidating, even though she was the youngest of the family.”

Dominique cared for their mother, Ellen, who had multiple sclerosis. She also cared for their father, Dominick, who was bisexual and closeted and yet confided in her. “So she was somebody we were all a bit in awe of. She was always wise beyond her years.”

She sounds like the family’s moral compass. “Yeah,” he says. “But also a bit bossy. She always knew what she wanted. My brother and I were a little fearful of her. It was like she’d been born already built.”

Dunne, by contrast, was a work in progress. In his memoir, he says that his first word was “taxi” and that he was always in a hurry – always running before he could walk. He was expelled from school for smoking pot. He was “coked to the gills” on the night Dominique was attacked. He was bumptious and entitled. His sister’s death changed him, he says, because how on earth could it not?

“For one thing, I never thought about domestic violence, the abuse of women. I grew up in Los Angeles and when I was in high school, pre-Roman Polanski, it was incredibly common for 13- or 14-year-old girls to be dating guys in their 30s. They’d go to these decadent parties in the hills and then come back and tell us all about it. And that was the culture; it felt exciting. I was unaware of what it meant. But then you have my sister, a 22-year-old girl, who finds herself in a domestic violence relationship with someone who’s twice her weight. So everything looked different to me afterwards.”

Perhaps it affected his career as well. In the mid-1980s, Dunne was on the threshold of stardom. He combined the charm and grace of a leading man with the prickly intelligence of a great character actor. The door kept swinging open, but he seemed to keep shutting it. He turned down The Fly and Sex, Lies, and Videotape in favour of making Who’s That Girl, with Madonna, and a reviled comedy, Me and Him, in which he played a yuppie architect who quarrels with his talking penis.

Dunne’s agent accused him of making “self-destructive choices”. He had always craved fame, only to find that it spooked him. “Too much attention at that time was a little fearsome for me,” he says. “I found it very stressful.” He hesitates. “And also my father,” he adds. “That had a lot to do with it, too.”

Dominick is the third main player in The Friday Afternoon Club, a high-flying producer who came to earth with a crash. He would eventually find his voice as a writer. He became Vanity Fair’s star reporter, first covering the Sweeney case, then the OJ Simpson and Claus von Bülow trials. But the in-between years were hard and humiliating. He suffered a reversal of fortune that took the whole family aback.

“I saw my father fail,” Dunne says. “I watched real failure in action in real time. He was a man who had a big house and a beautiful car and a great job and entertained the most famous actors and directors in the world. And everything was taken away from him, partly through his own actions, but nonetheless. People came out of the woodwork, kicked him when he was down.

“They were like: ‘I always hated you, I always knew you were closeted, you’ll never work again, pack your bags.’ And the effect it had on me, just entering the business as he was being destroyed in that business …” He draws a breath. “Well, it had a lot to do with the choices I made.”

In hindsight, the 1985 black comedy After Hours was his fork in the road. It’s also the picture with which he is most identified. Dunne developed the film as a co-producer and convinced Martin Scorsese to direct. He also took the lead role of repressed Paul Hackett, who embarks on a long, dark night of the soul through the streets of Lower Manhattan.

On set, Scorsese made one big stipulation. He ordered Dunne not to have sex for the duration of the shoot. I am gobsmacked by this, but the actor was unfazed. “It made perfect sense to me,” he says. “I knew what he meant. The character had to be boiling over with this unfulfilled anxiety. You had to see …” He pauses. “Not to be crude, but you had to see the semen build up to where it’s practically coming out of his eyes.”

One Saturday night, though, Dunne cracked and broke the rule. The next day of filming, Scorsese spotted the change and went berserk. “You’ve fucked up the whole picture,” he shouted. “I don’t think I can finish it now.”

Dunne says that he was probably being directed here, too. “Because now I’m afraid. I’m terrified. And it turns out that a certain level of fear is the same as not having sex. So [Scorsese’s] second piece of direction is telling me that I’ve ruined his movie. That’s excellent direction. It brought all the old anxiety back.”

It should have been a tough prospect, sitting down to write his book. Emotionally, because it meant revisiting the worst time of his life. Practically, because the Dunne family had already set the bar high. They are all dead now: his dad in 2009; his journalist-screenwriter uncle, John Gregory Dunne, in 2003; Joan Didion in 2021. But their reputations are daunting. It must have felt as though he were writing in the shadow of Mount Rushmore.

Dunne says it wasn’t that way at all. He had always assumed that writing a book would be a lonely endeavour. In fact, it felt warm, intimate and weirdly convivial. “I didn’t feel daunted, trying to write and being related to all these prominent figures. Quite the opposite. I felt their presence. When I described them, it was like I was seeing them again, living with them again. It was like I was back meeting Joan for the first time. It was as though I was spending time with her and John, my father and my sister,” he says. “They were alive to me. When I finished the book, that was the sad part. It felt like I missed them all over again.”

31 notes · View notes

thesixthplaneteer · 8 months ago

Text

Here is my entry for the Masquerade Breach zine!! I have been hitting that word limit like a brick wall for the past month, and I am too excited to keep it to myself! My piece is titled Hell-O-Ween! A Masquerade Breach Story because we like cheesy horror in this house. Thank you for reading!

It’s the late 1980s in Las Vegas, Nythanel, and Noa are attending a Halloween party being put on by Don Jacob Rothstein. Held in a mansion in the desert far away from the city, so the more illicit activities don't fall under unwanted scrutiny, and only those in the know are supposed to be there. One person slipped past security, an ancient enemy of the Giovanni whose true motives are unknown, but their eyes are set on Noa tonight. What can a neonate necromancer and waterblooded sorcerer do when things really start to go bump in the night?

The green makeup of his Audrey Two costume hid the redness but Nythanel still felt the warmth of embarrassment and anger on his face. Fighting back tears he side stepped between costumed guests, tray toting servers, and did his best to fight the urge to bull them over as he went back to the ballroom. Don Jacob Rothstein's Halloween party was in full swing. The dance floor was lively, the bar was packed, and the live band seemed like they could go all night long.

He wanted to make his problem everyone else’s problem but held onto his senses, making a scene at the head of Clan Giovanni’s party wouldn’t make his night better. Noa’s bright red hooded dress and silver devil mask were easy to spot, but seeing her didn’t bring the ease to his mind he wanted. A tall figure in an elaborate red Venetian masquerade costume with a matching laughing mask loomed over her, holding her wrist.

The party-goers near them shuffled away and gawked. No doubt they thought some crass couple brought their backroom fun to the front. A wall of bodies formed to watch, but over their shoulders Nyth could see another masked person grab Noa from behind. Nythanel shoved over a woman in a peacock dress and jammed his elbows into the sides of two clowns to get through.

Noa struggled to get out of their grasp, but Red Mask jerked her arm the other direction. The snap was audible over the music, a pained scream erupted from Noa, a jagged peak shot up from under the sleeve of her dress. The crowd around them gasped, some retched, some clapped for what they thought was some Halloween entertainment, some quickly fled, others watched on unsure what to make of the display.

Nythanel burst free of the crowd and charged them, seeing that the second assailant's costume was also Venetian - though far less elaborate and the color beige. Red Mask noticed his approach and abandoned Noa with a leap backward as Nythanel slammed into the tussle, bringing them all down to the floor hard. Noa’s silver mask clattered to the ground while Beige’s mask was knocked askew but stayed on their face. The thin fabric of their costume tore as Nythanel gathered a fistful of it and pulled, the other fist delivering a hard blow to the back of their head, forcing them to surrender Noa in order to defend themselves.

The surrounding crowd was now comprised mostly of individuals thinking this was simply a show for the party. Some clapped, some cheered for who they picked as their favorite, while a few pulled their partners away.

Moving with trained agility, Nythanel threw his leg over Beige, pushing them onto their back, gaining control of the situation. Flesh exposed itself, the torn collar of the costume revealing their throat. Nythanel gazed at the sight for a moment. He had no Beast. There was no voice demanding he feed, no inner monster begging to kill. This desire was all his. He opened wide and lurched forward, his fangs breaking skin. Any scream to come was cut short by the crushing of their windpipe beneath teeth. Fresh warm blood cascaded into his mouth. Mortal, musky, the sting of alcohol, and a wine-like sweet finish. Sanguine he thought to himself as it empowered his own weak vitae.

Nythanel didn’t see where the sawed-off shotgun came from, nor notice how Beige was able to pull the concealed weapon, he only heard the deafening bang that brought him back to reality. A shower of blood and bone poured from a bystander’s face. Screams of terror erupted from the crowd, they slammed into each other in their mad scramble, going toward the back of the manor to get away from the no longer entertaining brawl. The band abruptly stopped, the gunshot ending the revelry. Not wanting to risk Noa or himself being the target of the next round he twisted and wrenched, flesh and inner tissue tore until he ripped free the section of throat seized by his vicious teeth.

More yells of fearful confusion came from the guests, the handful of them brave or drunk enough to think they could stop a gunman turned and ran as Nythanel spit the chunk of meat onto the floor. Suddenly, he felt pressure build in his ear drums, his heart became heavy with dread despite the flood of passion from the blood. He'd felt this before, when Noa had shown off her necromantic powers in their rare moments of being able to be alone together since arriving in Las Vegas. Nythanel had thought he’d become accustomed to it, or at least shouldn’t be caught off guard by it. Still it numbed the hot anger and hatred he felt. A curtain of wispy, incorporeal figures began to fall from the ceiling. They manifested into the material world like shadows cast into the air itself as they drank in the light, only allowing a dim glow to illuminate the room. Recognizably human, yet completely otherworldly. One such shadow fell over the victim of the beige thug’s gunshot. The body began to twitch and jerk, a sickening gurgle came out of its throat as the air pushed out of its lungs. Nythanel reeled back from the corpse shambling back to its feet, and turned to see Red Mask holding a black stone.

Noa moved to stand, and for a moment she was awestruck at the blatant display of Oblivion's power. Her already dark eyes turned black like a starless night. She wiped her palm across Nythanel’s chin, wetting her hand with the blood of his victim. Willing forth her vitae through the protruding wound in her arm, she let it drip down and mix with the cooling blood before taking hold of the locket around her neck. The air around her became humid and cold. A shiver went through Nythanel as he felt an icy touch trace his spine. The rose on his lapel wilted, and the few mortals that tried running past them collapsed, their eyes went dull, skin turned pale. Sapped of life. She waved her hand out in front of her and took measured steps forward, like a priest performing a sanctifying prayer, and the wispy shadows began to retreat.

The sound of wet choking reminded Nyth of the reanimated corpse, and as his head turned back, he saw it rush past him. His body at first couldn't move as a deep and primal terror seized him. It was walking death, but not his kind of death. True death, the kind even the undead feared. He didn't want to go near that thing, but as it closed the distance between itself and Noa, he knew he had to act or he would lose her. Grabbing hold of his dying lapel rose, he squeezed hard along its thorny stem to draw blood, calling upon the sanguine power within him. He mumbled the incantation and the rose revived in his hand, more vibrant than ever.

Nythanel willed the rejuvenated plant to grow, attempting to whip it towards the corpse to stop it in its tracks. With perhaps more luck than skill, the branch wrapped around the creature's throat, barbs digging into dead flesh. Nyth pulled hard, managing to stop it mere inches from Noa, yet the body remained upright as it struggled to fulfill its goal of reaching her.

Noa didn’t waver at all, either completely confident Nythanel would help her, or far too focused on taking control of the descending wraiths.The room was a thunderous cacophony of horrified cries and screams of dismay, the shattering of glass on the ground, the panicked stampeding of a mob with no direction to go in. Those who had witnessed Nythanel's attack and the arisen corpse tried to run away, but those who hadn't seen pushed back to try and reach the front exit. Spirits accosted various bystanders, forcing themselves into unwilling bodies to inflict more fear onto those surrounding them. Poltergeists scattered plates and knocked over chairs, some managing to even drop a large chandelier on top of the crowd. In the confusion, they didn't care who was trampled. The guests desperately lashed out at anything impeding their own escapes. Jewelry, costume accessories, blood, and bodies all dropped to the floor and were stomped on without a second thought. The wraiths were erratic, but Noa fought, countering the incantations of Red Mask as the shadows ebbed and flowed around them like a turbulent ocean. To an unknowing observer, the two appeared to be simply standing in place and muttering strangely, but Nythanel knew they both were manipulating the thin fabric separating the land of death from the land of the living.

The rose Nythanel turned into a weapon was also being sapped of its life and desperately it drank from him to stay alive. He shifted his weight and pulled as hard as he could to try and bring the corpse to the ground. There was little hope in killing something that was already dead. He forced his will onto the rose once more, allowing it to drink even more of his vitae. It expanded rapidly in response, sprouting more branches that ensnared the body and sawed into its skin with mutated spikes. Despite it being controlled by a spirit, it was still limited to the strength of the muscles it still possessed, or so Noa had previously explained. The writhing and wriggling vines continued to tear, severing the veins and nerves and rendering the wretched thing immobile for good.

His vision started to blur, his head swimming as his vitae was near exhausted. The rose had taken root in his arm and now it threatened to drink him dry. With nearly all he had left, he willed the passing of seasons on the flower, advancing its life cycle to the point it began to wither and decay until it too became immobile and dead.

The two necromancers were still locked in their strange duel, fighting for control of the spirit current that flooded the manor. Nythanel knew he had to help Noa, something better than running headfirst into a death dealer but his options were limited. His eyes went to the floor for answers, and sure enough there was: shotgun. Hurriedly he picked it up and aimed, hoping it had the promised second shot, though the room spun in his hungry near-delirium. With a squeeze of the trigger the weapon thundered, sending its payload into the shoulder of the Red Mask. Crimson exploded from their wound as they stumbled back, their concentration breaking enough for Noa to gain the upper hand. Her good arm raised higher, and the undulating ceiling seemed to calm as the wraiths obeyed her. The shadow over the ballroom lifted slowly as she brought them to heel.

The Red Mask despite all of the trouble and their fresh injury seemed to have accepted their defeat. With only a glance to Noa and a dramatic throw of their cape, a cold silence surrounded them as they simply walked away. Despite the chaos of the still frightened crowd, they were swallowed within the mob as if they had not even been there. Nythanel at first made a move to follow, but stopped himself as Noa began to buckle. Good riddance, he thought sheepishly as he turned to her, relieved the death dealer decided to just leave. She was more important to him, anyway.

As the full brightness of the lights returned and the pressure lifted from his ears, the distinct sound of Italian leather stomped across the floor towards them from behind. A ham-handed man took hold of his collar and jerked him into the air, the shotgun crashing loudly onto the marble.

"You're gonna wish you were fuckin' dead when I'm through with you, Warlock." Growled Adolfo Puttanesca, right hand of the Don.

#vtm #vampire the maquerade #my writing #world of darkness #nyth #nythanel #noa #noa hidalgo #thinblood #clan giovanni #clan hecata #masquerade breach #vtm oc #harbinger of skulls #wilted roses

38 notes · View notes