#I hc she gets machiavellian with it and I love that for her

[drowningparty]

Anyway. Bellaverse Sketches Be Upon You

[lyrakanefanatic]

Okay so I’ve been seeing @hathorneheiress do tig family hcs and I wanted to try that as well

but with my own!

- Grayson and phone girl (maybe 😜) would have one daughter

- Libby and Nash would have two girls

- Xander and max would have a boy and a girl, exactly the amount max wanted

- Avery and Jameson weren’t gonna have too many kids, but then Avery got pregnant with twins so they just left it at that 💀

- Avery’s daughter and Graysons daughter are 4lifers, and they hang out all the time

- they’re also super close with Xander’s daughter

- Nash and Libby’s daughters are polar opppsites. One’s quiet and shy and the other is popular and loud, but they both are best friends

- Graysons daughter is Rory Gilmore smart, and it’s her dream to go to Harvard like her dad (yes, like Rory and yes, I know Grayson dropped out 💀)

- jameson’s son and Graysons daughter have eternal beef for absolutely no reason, but they’re also very close. Also, Graysons daughter has definitely chased him around the house with a knife before.

- maxs son is super into books like his mom, and practically lives in the Hawthorne house libraries

-jameson’s daughter is super theatric and leads the school plays at her school

- and max’s daughter is smart, and more outgoing and extroverted than her brother

- she also loves board games and puzzles, and loves chess just like her mom

- Graysons daughter is TERRIFIED of sports. Like if she sees a ball coming towards her she will run away screaming, which kind of shocked Grayson since he was so athletic and into those kind of things

-but jameson’s daughter (and son) LOVES sports, and will take any chance she can get to do them

- all of the kids (except Graysons daughter) were terrified of Grayson till the age of 5, when they finally realized he’s nice and wont kill them in their sleep 💀

- Xander’s daughter uses big words even though she doesn’t know what they mean, like machiavellian

- Graysons daughter and Savannah are besties and hang out every chance they get

- all the kids love gigi and hug her every time they see her (🥺💖💖)

- the kids (except graysons daughter) were even more scared of Savannah then they were of Grayson, and Xander’s son would even cry everytime she would try to talk to him till he was like 7

-Nash and libby have a million holes in their backyard because their daughters wanted fish and they all died, and even though the fish kept dying after two days nash would still buy them even more 😭😭

- one time they rented a huge van/trailer and tried to do cute family road trip with all of them, and it did NOT go well

- graysons daughter and Avery’s son were both beefing (again, bc whose surprised) for absolutely no reason

-Xander’s daughter was throwing up on the side of the road because she has motion sickness

- jameson’s daughter was blasting Hamilton songs and was pissing everybody off, especially her brother, because apparently Hamilton songs “make his ears bleed”

- that started another argument

- xanders son kept asking Nash “are we there yet” every 5 minutes

- Nash’s daughter (the eldest and louder one) kept singing along to her music despite having headphones in, and then ANOTHER argument broke out between her and her sister

- Nash had finally had enough and yelled at all of them saying, “stop arguing! Can’t we all have fun as a family for once?”

- all the kids felt guilty but Jameson’s daughter and graysons daughter we’re trying so hard not to laugh

- anyways they finally made it to their place and never went on a road trip again

Okay I’m finally done, sorry it’s so long I have way too many ideas 😭😭

Again, thank you @hathorneheiress for giving me the idea 🫶🫶

[thegreatestjournalistofalltime]

In this post:

About the Muse (Freddie Lounds, NBC Hannibal)

About the Mun (Hi, I’m Casper!)

I’ll Write...

I Won’t Write...

Character Headcanons (HC’s and Canon-Divergent Ideas) 

RP Rules

This is my main RP blog, and Freddie is my main character. However, I also have a blog for Dr. Frederick Chilton, @b1oodandchocolate​ , on which I would also be thrilled to write with you if you’d like! Both are independent and selective.

I have the link to my RP Queue board on my side navigation, but for mobile users, you can click here to see all the stuff I’m working on.

All dividers used below were made by saradika. Please go check out her work. It’s all lovely.

Freddie Lounds is rude, brilliant, and damn-near fearless. She does whatever she has to do in order to get information for her tabloid site, Tattle Crime. Unfortunately, this often means breaking laws, manipulating people, or engaging in otherwise nefarious behavior. However, she has her moments when she shows that she does have a heart, and that she does care about other people... Sometimes. Depends on who it is, really.

Here’s Freddie’s Wiki Bio for more information if you haven’t seen the show ❤️

Hello, there! My name is Casper. I’m transmasc non-binary (my pronouns are they/them/theirs or he/him/his) and I’m over the age of 30. I’m neurodivergent as fuck, and, despite writing for shady characters, I’m a soft boi  😅 

I’m kind of the stereotypical introvert, so I know I can sometimes come across as standoffish (especially online), but I promise that I’m friendly! I just have a super low threshold for socializing, especially with people I don’t know or don’t know very well yet, which sometimes makes it seem like I don’t want to talk to someone, when the reality is that I just can’t at a given time. Especially since it’s super easy for me to hit “burnout mode.”

Anyway, I’m hoping that I can actually do something of substance with this blog this time around and stick around a while longer lol. Please don’t be afraid to say hi! Just please keep in mind that I may not be able to respond right away.

Lastly, this is my Ao3, collecting dust lol: casperlounds on Ao3

Fluffy stuff

Platonic relationships

Consensual NSFW stuff (please see rules below)

Violent or Dark Themes (please see rules below)

Canon-Compliant OR Canon-Divergent Stuff

RP with Non-Hannibal Characters from Other Shows/Movies

RP with OCs in OR Outside of Hannibal

And more...

NonCon/Sexual Violence

Various Kinks (please see rules below)

Varying Degrees of Gore (please see rules below)

And more...

Freddie actually comes from a fairly affluent family and her parents are proud of her (they just kind of overlook a lot of the less savory things she does).

She is an only child.

Her middle name is “Emily.” Her mother initially wanted it to be “Amelie.”

Bisexual in the sense that she doesn’t care about/isn’t repulsed by sleeping with men, as it was implied with Zeller. This is especially true if it means getting what she wants for an article (she’s canonically Machiavellian), but I definitely see her as homoromantic. She may have a fling with a man, but it will never be serious and she won’t grow attached, even if it’s just for fun and not as some means to an end. Though the likelihood of that in itself is low.

Has a crush on Dr. Bloom. 

Please read these rules before requesting to roleplay.

This blog is 18+ ONLY. Therefore, I will also only write with people over the age of 18. Minors, please DNI.

If you want to RP with me, please PM me and let me know what you had in mind. Please do not post a starter without discussing things with me first. That way, we can also decide who will start things off!

I prefer public RPs, reblogging each other with our responses. HOWEVER, if you’d like to RP privately, please tell me so and I will try to work something out with you. Preferably on Discord.

That said, I cannot do RP in PMs. I tried that once and it was a bad struggle for me. Which is why I suggest Discord.

I will only accept random starters from certain people. If I get comfortable enough, I’ll let you know if I’m OK with your doing that. However, please don’t take this personally! As I stated in the About the Mun section, I’m both neurodivergent and have trouble with social spaces.

That said, if I post an Open Starter that reads “(anyone may reply),” I mean anyone, even non-mutuals. Any Open Starters meant solely for mutuals will be clearly marked to avoid confusion. However, for those who do reply (thank you!), please be aware that I may not get to yours or it may or may not turn into a longer RP.

Please understand that I often struggle with burnout and extreme fatigue, as well as other symptoms stemming from ADHD. Therefore, there will be times when I write more and times that I write less. I also might find it easier to work on one thing over another at a given time, but that doesn't mean I don’t value the partner or the RP I’m not working on. If this doesn't work for you, that’s totally understandable, just please don’t start writing with me if this is something you think will be a problem. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

On that same note, please be aware that I will not be writing page-long+ replies. Some of my starters/replies may be longer than others, but I generally write two or three paragraphs. If you’re looking for someone who writes lengthy replies, I’m not your guy. Realistically, I also know I wouldn’t be able to read those lengthy posts, so it wouldn’t be fair to you, either.

Despite not writing ultra lengthy replies, I do put a lot of thought and effort into them. I’ve been made aware that some people have started to use AI generated responses in RP (what a time to be alive). This is a hard no from me. I may take a while to respond, but when I do, I do so to the best of my abilities. I’d hope my partners do the same.

I will only accept “pre-established relationship” OCs (i.e. your character is the romantic interest/mortal enemy/childhood best friend/etc. of my muse) on a case-by-case basis. As with the “romantic chemistry” rule below, if I’m not feeling the connection, or if I don’t think I’ll be a good fit as a partner for it, I will respectfully decline.

If you want to drop or rework/restart a thread or idea that we’re working on together, please let me know!

Please don’t message me asking when I’m going to get to your response. All that does is make me anxious. I’ll likely let you know, myself, when I can get around to it if you’ve been waiting.

Likewise, please don’t spam message me, especially if I haven’t responded. That makes me incredibly anxious and less likely to respond at all.

However, please do message me if you have questions or want to discuss an idea in the RP we’re working on!!!

I will not have exclusive partners for a given character (i.e. a single Hannibal Lecter that I write with and no other Hannibals). There may be people I write with most frequently for a given character, but I won’t exclude other people.

If you aren’t sure if I’ll be comfortable with something, please ask. This includes NSFW themes, dark themes, violence, and gore. I will do the same for you!

As a general rule, I’ll likely not be comfortable with most kinks. You can ask in PMs while we plan our roleplay, but please know that the answer will likely be “no.”

In the event that you want to RP NSFW stuff, please let me know at the start that this is something you'd like to explore. However, also keep in mind that if I’m not feeling the connection, if it it doesn't make sense for our muses after we get into the RP, I won’t force it. Likewise, I’m also aware that sometimes things will gradually, naturally lead to romantic or sexual places, so it’s fine if that happens organically as we go.

Also, please keep in mind, though I don't mind discussing more explicit NSFW stuff regarding characters, I may not want to RP super explicit stuff. Again, case by case and I'd prefer to discuss it first so that we're both comfortable.

This post and all its sections are subject to change or revision. If that happens, I’ll post that I’ve updated it.

[morwensteelsheen]

🍕 for eowyn, faramir 👗 for éomer and 👀 for all three

lmaoo these are so fun, thank you!!!

🍕 Food:

Éowyn — One of those horrendously annoying people who insists that plain fruit is a perfectly reasonable post-dinner dessert, cannot wrap her head around why anyone would disagree. She will have pastries/cakes/etc during the daytime, but is adamant that they are fine in the day, but weird and wrong at night. Everybody around her (rightfully) hates this. Big bonding thing for Faramir and the kids is either a) ganging up on her to demand a normal dessert or b) sneaking to the kitchen at night to pilfer sweets when they inevitably lose the argument.

Faramir — The bona fide king of eating like shit. Everyone expects him to be super picky because he’s hugely pretentious about so many other things, but because he went into the army fairly young (I usually say 17ish), he spent quite a lot of his Growing Up Years on army rations, which means he eats as much as he can get his hands on so long as it’s hot and not 100% grain-based. It genuinely horrifies Éowyn but endears him to everyone else in the Mark who expected him to be a prick about food.

👗 Fashion:

Éomer — LMAO YES THANK YOU this is one of my favourite HCs I never get to put into play because I so rarely write about him. Éomer is fly as fuck. Not only does he look good, he cares very much about looking good and wants everyone to know it. You know that scene in Fleabag season 2 where Hot Priest is talking about how he thinks he only got into it for the clothes? That’s Éomer with absolutely everything. This is part of why he and Imrahil hit it off so quickly, they each take one look at the other and are like… Ah, I see you are also a man of culture.

👀 Personality:

Éowyn — She has a reputation for being something of a stone cold bitch, and certainly lots of that reputation in Gondor post-war is tethered to expectations about what she and Faramir Are Like, but a lot of it is because she tends to be very, very quiet in formal settings. She does a lot of sitting around with perfect posture, staring out at the room, and people assume it’s because she’s doing Machiavellian politics. Actually, she just gets bored really easily and has quite a vivid internal life, but her years and years and years having to live in Meduseld when it was all a bit shit mean she’s learned to do it while looking like she’s active. People assume she’s being very conniving, but more often that not she’s just daydreaming.

Faramir — Big fan of babies. Loves em. Amazed by them. Has full blown conversations with them. S-tier baby whisperer. Is this low-key related to the hearts and minds thing? Yes. Absolutely. Everyone in the extended House of Eorl/Hurin/Dol Amroth family plus the House of Telcontar takes a huge fucking sigh of relief when he shows up because they just pass the fussy babies on and go back to having a normal evening with the adults. Legendary hero of the kids table.

Éomer — He’s not a loud asshole per se, but he and Aragorn sort of get this good cop-bad cop routine going whenever they’re doing anything As A Team, and he’s far more content to lean into expectations of what the Rohirrim are like than Éowyn is. He’s fine playing up the chest-beating, axe-whirling bullshit if it seals the deal, even though in reality he’s fairly mild-mannered (proud, certainly, but after the war he decompresses a huge amount). Éowyn hates this and thinks it’s a disgrace, but it quite often works, and he gets to pull rank on her.

[takoyakitenchou]

virtue and frog brains

the prompt for this one was a Takumi vs Hisako shokugeki based off more of my hcs. background info:

- Souma and Erina date in third year.

- Takumi, Hisako, and Megumi are all sweet little meringues but they have competitive streaks so they occasionally hold friendly shokugekis for each other’s seats with crazyass themes.

“5000 yen on Hisako,” Erina said.

Souma raised an eyebrow. “That’s it? I thought you were a rich brat.”

“You’re the one that fell in love with me. I barely tolerate you. If you insist, one million yen. And snacks during Legislation for the rest of the year.”

Souma’s eyebrows were practically in his hair. “That’s all of my prize money!”

“Only from last month,” Erina pointed out drily. “Didn’t you win bronze at Bocuse d’or?”

“I did!?”

Erina rolled her eyes. Leave it to Yukihira Souma to forget about dipping an entire week of school and breezing into arguably one of the world’s most prestigious culinary competitions as a high schooler. And winning bronze, dammit. Seriously, if she’d competed, she probably would’ve won instantly, but it was alright to let her boy have his moments once in a while. After all, the minute he got back from Lyon, she destroyed him 5-0 in a shokugeki over a dinner date.

They were sitting on the loveseat in Erina’s private booth overlooking Chandra’s Hall, his arm casually draped around her shoulders. The majority of the 92’ers were present for this particular shokugeki — from the Polar Star gang to the inhabitants of Nakiri Mansion and a smattering of their friends that had somehow made it to the tail end of their time at Totsuki. That hell camp from freshman year had only been a sample of all the weird shit the school put them through.

The contestants emerged from their respective greenrooms and the hall burst into cheers for the fifth and sixth seats.

Since the beginning of third year, Takumi, Hisako, and Megumi had taken it upon themselves to occasionally demonstrate the not-so-amiable sides of their personalities, and as with most things at Totsuki, this occurred in the form of shokugekis for each other’s seats. The ridiculous themes they chose and their utter lack of regard for what they were betting on were a testament to how chill the context was, but nobody would be able to tell once they actually started cooking. It was a fucking warzone.

Kawashima Urara was, of course, commentating on the match, all the while seething at Hisako’s massive fan club, which was giving Takumi’s a run for its money.

Erina opened her mouth, probably to mention some sort of 150-page contract needed to even be considered for membership in the Arato FC, but Souma waved her off before she could get a word out. She settled for shooting him a dirty look and relaxed against his shoulder.

The thing about this series of shokugekis was that the non-participant got to choose the theme on the day of. As a result, neither Takumi nor Hisako had any inkling of a clue as to what kind of dish they’d be making until Megumi, who was carrying a lidded bucket of some sort, went to pass the mc a folded piece of lined paper.

“Frog brains!?” Urara squeaked after a beat, more question than announcement. Souma promptly dissolved into laughter and Erina shook her head with a reluctant smile as the rest of the student body in the audience went ballistic.

Megumi laughed. “Frog brains,” she affirmed.

At this point, Takumi looked a little green. 

“They only do frog legs in Italy, right?” Souma asked between coughs.

Erina rolled her eyes. “It was on the Italian Cuisine exam last week. Did you not do the readings?”

“I’m using a Venice tour guide for my textbook. No, I didn’t do the readings.”

“I thought you were using The Prince.”

“You’re the Machiavellian, Nakiri.”

“True.”

Below them, Megumi set her bucket down between Takumi and Hisako. “Here is your primary ingredient,” she said mildly.

She opened the lid and a race to catch the damn jumpy frogs ensued, but before long, the judges — Nakiri Senzaemon and two other Totsuki lecturers — were waiting in anticipation as the contestants began their prep.

Takumi was… praying? He had the frog pinned down on the cutting board, but he looked for all the world like he’d much rather keep it as a pet. Erina could vaguely see him muttering what was probably a Bible verse he’d learned from Nonna Aldini back in Tuscany.

Takumi, tesoro, before you sacrifice an animal for your cooking, you must first send its soul to heaven, so listen closely… something like that, anyways.

The Italian cleanly pierced the frog’s heart. It was a noble maneuver, a painless, instant death. It was the epitome of elegance, of virtue, and he seemed to be locked into a graceful slow dance with his palm-sized blade.

Now, at her own cooking station, Hisako had the frog in one hand, a massive butcher knife that had to be at least three times the size of her victim in the other.

Not batting an eyelash, she slammed the frog and her knife down simultaneously and impassively decapitated the unfortunate amphibian. It was, for lack of a better term, carnage.

Souma managed with an uncharacteristically shocked expression, “Well... shit. Arato is… kinda amazing. Scary, but amazing.”

Erina crossed her arms and gave a smug smile. “That’s Hisako for you. Why do you think she’s my best friend?”

“You’re friends with her because she has a habit of decapitating live animals during shokugekis? That’s cruel, Nakiri.”

“The fuck are you saying?”

“Remember that turtle during the Autumn Elections against Hayama?”

Erina took a moment to process his question, and when the pieces finally clicked she dropped her head in her hands and gave an incredulous huff. “Oh, goodness.”

“Half a million yen on Takumi.”

“Oh, please. Did you not see Hisako just now? She will destroy him.”

“Two million yen and dinner at Shino’s Tokyo tonight.”

“Oh ho. You’re on, Yukihira.”

[adriicnas]

⋆ ◦ ° ☾ nicola peltz + cisfemale + she/her — have you met adriana ellis jameson? they are a twenty three year old known around town as the serpent. they’ve been in the gang life for six years, and currently work for the gang as a soldier. they are a pansexual scorpio, which means they are beguiling + intuitive, as well as machiavellian + apathetic. black combat boots, sharp nails, poison apples.

hii my loves !! i’m sarah, i’m 18, & i’m from est tz. :] i’m a freak for plotting/hcs, secretly a hugee cinemaphile, & totally in love w snl so hmu if you can relate to anything i just mentioned or even if not just b my friend<3 also ik i’m an idiot so let’s ignore my disaster of trying to apply for this rp. annyyways ! please lms if u want me to go ahead and message u to plot (on here OR add me @ byrd#5971 on d*scord) –– my gross plots page is here ! without further ado, let me go ahead and introduce u to my barely-played lil girl adriana under the cut. ( TW: VIOLENCE, ABUSE )

PAST.

adriana ellis jameson was born to lillian & peter jameson on a balmy november night in denver, colorado.

from the day she grew out of cute little onesies and shoes so small they could fit on your finger, adriana’s parents ceased to care about her. it wasn’t that they were bad parents, necessarily –– they provided for the family and only asked adriana to clean up their after-party puke one or two times. it was just that they weren’t ever meant to be parents, not in the real sense of the word. they knew it and adriana knew it, and so it was.

so, adriana found a family at school in her teachers and books, poring over pages under the covers each night and counting down the days til each summer ended. she let herself become the characters, or a nasa engineer solving the last equation necessary to perfect the moon landing, or passenger on a ship from england to india; it was not only her escape, but her way of learning. she needed to be in order to understand.

fast forward to high school and adriana’s biggest (and only) achievements were her grades. she took pride in them, nurturing and caring for her schoolwork like it was her own child.

and then came along a guy. but not just any guy –– a beautiful, dark, mysterious guy with a smile that seemed to shine on just adriana and fingers that felt like electricity when they brushed the side of her arm.

and for a while, her world was bright, maybe even whole. but complete dependency on one person is never healthy, and in this case, it turned ugly.

adriana began falling behind in her schoolwork (not that she minded, if it meant more time with her beau) and emancipated herself from her parents in order to move in with him. she followed him everywhere...not that he gave her much of a choice. the connection they had forged became deeper and darker and all of a sudden adriana couldn’t breathe. it wasn’t long before she ran away, tired of one-sided fights and excuses murmured between sips of hospital juice cups.

and so she found herself in valdez –– alone, scared, without a home or a refuge to return to. what better makeshift home, then, but a lovely gang just down the street?

when adriana first joined the organization, it was more out of necessity than interest. her skills in math landed her a short-lived job in bookkeeping, but after days spent wishing she were out in the action and nights spent fearing she hadn’t run far enough away, she decided upon becoming a soldier.

after so many years of stoic independence, adriana knew how to take care of herself. more than that, she knew how to charm –– how else did one catch a free meal at the local diner or a bus ticket downtown to the dentist’s office on a rainy day? and she was ruthless. it didn’t take long for her to prove her worth.

PERSONALITY.

adriana is the girl who brings a knife to a gun fight and wins. she’s manipulative and calculating, caressing your cheek right before she slits your throat (sometimes literally).

her strongest assets are her charm and determination. she’s a pro at collecting & using blackmail and can pick a lock faster than you could open it with the key. her least favorite job is trafficking and her favorite is “information extraction.”

she’s definitely sadistic, but a lot less so in her personal life. there, she’s more reserved, and 75% ice cold. her sense of humor is caustic.

saying she has a “tough exterior” would be quite the understatement, but she’s not necessarily mean –– just hard to get close to.

she has maybe a few particularly close friends in the gang, some from when she first arrived and some now that she’s this slightly-mad hotshot.

she doesn’t do relationships unless she feels totally in control. but she does do sex, and for that...control is optional.

underneath all of that? it’s really a mystery as to whether the “old” adriana exists anymore. she’s still a quiet book nerd, only now with a whole lot more bark & bite.

she often has nightmares that wake her up in a cold sweat, hyperventilating until she rocks herself back to a dead numbness that doesn’t subside until the morning. the space under her eyes is permanently purple.

if the gang were to go under as a result of caito’s death, she thinks she’d be fine. at this point, she’s got a bit of a god complex. or maybe it’s just a façade to quiet the scared voices in her head.

[rhetoricandlogic]

Gary K. Wolfe Reviews

The Father of Lies by K.J. Parker

March 10, 2018

Gary K. Wolfe

The Father of Lies, K.J. Parker (Subterranean 978-1-59606-852-0, $40.00, 542pp hc) January 2018.

K.J. Parker’s major new collection The Father of Lies doesn’t actually contain a story by that title, but it doesn’t need to: the old trickster’s techniques run like a twisted thread through these 12 equally twisted stories and novellas (three of them published earlier by Subterranean as standalones). All but two take place in Parker’s now-familiar shadow-Europe of knights, armies, and various comically Machiavellian grifters and scoundrels. This world is detailed and consistent enough over many stories that we could prob­ably puzzle out its history and geography, since enough quasi-historical figures, cities, tribes, and institutions recur from story to story (the philosopher Saloninus, the Oxford-like Studium, the calendar which seems to hover around the 7th century “AUC”), but Parker’s world has less in common with fantasies of cartography than it does with P.G. Wodehouse or even Thorne Smith. His first-person narrators are acutely aware of human haplessness and incompetence, including their own, and the digressive, exasperated tone in which they tell their tales fairly begs to be read aloud. But while many of Parker’s previous stories set in this world forgo supernatural or magical trappings altogether, these are loaded with gods, sorcerers, witches, demons, and even a dragon.

Old Scratch himself, or at least a designated lieutenant, even shows up in a couple of tales. “The Devil You Know” (one of the previously published standalones) is an ingenious variation on the Faust legend, with the alchemist-philoso­pher Saloninus (a self-confessed complete fraud in the earlier novella “Blue and Gold”) trying to outsmart a demon bureaucrat by offering to sell his soul on the usual terms – 20 years of youth and health, with the demon as an all-powerful servant during that period, after which Saloninus is to be condemned to hell. Unusually, Parker divides the narrative between two first-person viewpoints, the philosopher himself and the demon trying to figure out what the philosopher is up to. We nearly end up sympathizing with the demon, as Saloninus’s own cynicism and nihilism become more apparent through the story, but the ending is both satisfying and deeply ironic. In “Rules”, a debauched dilettante finds his deal with the devil coming due, and tries to weasel out of his fate by arguing that his own devalued soul is a bad bargain, and offering instead to arrange for the corruption of the great playwright Saturninus, roughly the alt-Europe equivalent of Shakespeare and all the other Elizabethan dramatists rolled into one.

Demons also show up in the only two stories set in a recognizable historical Europe, rather than Parker’s own alternative. Elizabethan drama also figures in one these, “Told By An Idiot”, in which a wealthy theater-owner is sold a bottle containing a demon by a notorious peddler of fake antiquities (who also offers the Book of Job in Job’s own handwriting – in Latin). Its early 17th-century historical context helps make this one of the funniest stories here, as we learn that the theater owner had both turned down Doctor Faustus and discouraged his star playwright from finishing a play “about a man who couldn’t make up his mind.” “The audience aren’t going to be in­terested in someone like that,” he explains in one of many Shakespearian allusions that pepper the story. In the other “real history” tale, “No Peace for the Wicked”, Satan even manages to instill a disastrously corrupt Pope, the real-life Theophy­lact, in order to insure centuries of chaos, though in this story Parker lets his waggish philosophical debates – the main issue here being that evil is good, since it’s part of God’s creation – run on a bit too long for the good of the story.

Of the four major novellas here, the only one not previously published as a standalone is “The Things We Do for Love” (although it did appear in an issue of Subterranean), a wild screwball comedy about a corrupt aristocrat who marries a witch and, with her magical help, amasses such an enormous fortune that he can’t figure out what to do with it. But when he tries to escape the marriage, either by murdering her or even by committing suicide, she manages to resurrect each of them. “The Downfall of the Gods” features Parker’s lone female narrator, a petulant goddess (ironically describing herself as the goddess of charm) who flouts tradition by refusing to absolve a murderous aristocrat because his victim was her favorite singer; the resulting kerfuffle, involv­ing an Orpheus-like journey to the underworld, eventually brings about the downfall of the title. “The Last Witness” is constructed around what’s perhaps the most intriguing fantasy conceit in the collection: the narrator can, for a hefty fee, selec­tively remove memories from others – although those memories then become his own. It’s an idea with all sorts of permutations, and Parker seems so enamored of it that much of the tale involves the narrator recounting his earlier assignments before getting to the main narrative, in which he comes up against a young girl who seems to have similar powers.

Of the remaining short stories, three involve sorcerers: “I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There”, “Safe House”, and “Heaven Thunders the Truth”. The latter is the most substantial, as the youthful narrator is dispatched, along with his magical mind-reading snake, to track down the king’s nephew and thus a potentially threatening heir to the throne – only to learn that the nephew is himself. In “Message in a Bottle”, the narra­tor is faced with the puzzle of whether to open a sealed bottle left behind by a legendary scholar, which may contain a cure for the plague which has been ravaging the land, or possibly a more virulent form of the plague itself. It’s the neatest philosophical puzzle in the book. Finally, “The Dragonslayer of Merebarton” features yet another reluctant hero, an aging knight called forth to slay a dragon threatening a village, even though he’s convinced dragons don’t actually exist. Like most of Parker’s narrators, he’s “a man aware of his obligations, and at least some of his many short­comings.” The motley band he assembles to go fight the dragon results in a delightfully cynical parody of the sort of quest-fantasy procedural that seems so far removed from Parker’s own unique brand of philosophical comedy.