#and the fact vincent narrates makes it so much better

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Tim Burton's Vincent (1982)

[gingerbreadmonsters]

Heeyy Ginger~~ 💕 self-love time! talk about which ones of YOUR creations (edits, artworks, fanfics) you like the most then send to other creators to do the same 💕

warning for 18+ discussion under the cut! minors dni please <3

WAIT THIS IS SO SWEET DON'T 😭😭😭

hmmngmgnhmg it is, of course, impossible to choose a favourite child - but i think if i had to pick just one to talk about then it's got to be blood sugar, baby!

this fic was written in the wake of imperium: cataclysm in late november of 2022, basically because prime universe!william solaire is really really hot already and imperium!william - aside from having literally no screentime, so i can say whatever i like about him - has the potential to be hot AND evil, which for me is like the ultimate combination 🤩🤩

my version of prime!william is very much a man who loves his children more than anything else - he won't let them get away with anything, per se, but he absolutely loves those two to pieces and holds his family very very close to his heart. imperium!william, then, takes that love and (as for everything in the imperium) whacks it up to eleven - so what happens then?

the solaires, for better or worse, really get the short end of the stick during catacylsm, so i really wanted to talk about what alexis and vincent's fates might have meant for william - what it might have done to him, feeling both his progenies die in such quick succession, and what that would have made him do now.

in canon, we also have that first william audio where lovely meets him for the first time - this fic is sort of my answer to that, i guess? it's never clear if they ever met in the imperium before vincent died or not, but i think it's unlikely they ever did. it also felt kind of boring to me, that they get rescued by asher but then we never hear anything about them again, so the idea of william kidnapping lovely and staging this first meeting was born!

the vibe of this fic rests quite heavily on the aesthetics of it all - the room around lovely (and william himself, now that i think about it) gets described in a way that's trying to show the reader that the house is quite old and quite expensive! things like william's gloves and handkerchief, the addition of a mantel clock, a chest of drawers, heavy curtains on the windows... all of those things are meant to suggest that we're dealing with a man who's very wealthy, and combined with lovely's restrained, confused body, there's the implication that he's also very powerful.

(obviously, we get that in the dialogue and the narration as well - william and lovely both mention the fact that he's a vampire king, and although lovely doesn't really know what that means, it's not difficult to infer that it means he's got a lot of money.)

the way that william speaks was actually not as difficult as i thought it would be to write - it's supposed to be slightly stilted, archaic, and a little bit awkward! it's referenced towards the beginning when lovely notices 'letters sticking and sliding where [they] don’t expect them', but that's all meant to get across the point that william a) is speaking with a noticeable french accent, b) is much, much older than lovely (by hundreds of years), and c) is much more formal in his speech than vincent was, and that lovely's used to.

in every iteration of this, lovely was always going to be tied to the bed for the whole time. while that does make for quite a nice (if obvious) reminder of the power dynamic here, there were actually two more significant reasons for having the scene play out with them stuck there: the first is that the idea of being tied to a bed has a whole load of, uh, explicit connotations that i wanted the reader to have in the back of their mind - sex and vampires kind of go together anyway, and i wanted to make william extra extra hot in this one because i think it's what he deserves and also i am an equal-opportunity vampirefucker and everyone deserves the chance to think about getting fucked by the sexy powerful rich vampire king, this is my contribution to society

the second reason is literally no more complicated than i wanted this to echo various conventions of film, specifically with an eye to horror and melodrama - our poor captured protagonist has been caught and is being tied to the railroad tracks, while our villain is busy monologuing up a storm.

(and wow, does william monologue in this one! you can probably tell that i wrote the dialogue first, and then went back in to fill in the rest - he really doesn't shut up at all...)

however, william was never going to be a purely evil character for me - i did my best to make him as sympathetic as possible, while still adhering to the conventions of the imperiumverse and making it clear that this is a world where the boundaries of socially acceptable and morally justifiable behaviour are absolutely not the same as the prime universe.

part of that is tied to that slightly laissez-faire, hand-wavey 'we're in the imperium, anything can happen' mentality that i like, but to me his attitude of 'i have to preserve anything i can of my children, anything at all just to prove that they existed' comes from a place of very deep, very tragic loss. it's an expression of desperation, of bitter regret, and of absolute and screaming grief.

this is a man who loved his children more than anything else in the world and who is not willing to let them go, and is now calmly explaining to lovely why that love justifies keeping them captive indefinitely. it makes sense to him, although he's not keeping them in exactly the same way that vincent kept them. vincent kept lovely as a food source - william is keeping them as a souvenir. he's hoping that lovely remembers vincent as fondly and as lovingly as he does.

lovely... isn't really sure if they do or not, but they're not immune to the imperium either - they were kept by vincent long enough that the stockholm syndrome had time to reasonably set in, enough that they definitely associated vincent with survival, with warmth and food and human contact, but can't quite figure out if what they're feeling is actually love. they're strangely upset that vincent never told them he had a sister, and they're surprisingly fine with the idea of getting revenge on vincent's killer. however, they know that what vincent did was, on some level, wrong - hence their confusion, and their slightly contradictory behaviour.

it's all about survival rather than affection for poor lovely, as shown by them asking william to stay ('if he leaves, there’s no telling when - if ever - he’ll come back for you. Call it personal experience.') but also refusing the water he offers them ('Like hell you’re drinking anything he gives you.'). they don't trust william, but they've learnt that the best way to survive is to obey.

the ending with william trancing lovely is deliberately ambiguous - does he turn them? does he keep them as a human? it's entirely open to interpretation, but my personal version is that he keeps them human for a little bit in a sort of weird, vincent-esque way? they're kept in much better conditions than vincent had them in, but it's william's twisted attempt to emulate his son, and feel closer to him by doing things as vincent did them (hence why he calls them 'my little thrall-to-be'). then, after that, he does turn lovely into a vampire to keep them 'preserved' forever, eternally attached to him and kept in his house.

it's implied that there's some degree of attraction there, at least in a sexual sense ('You shiver slightly, but you’re not sure why. “Oh, is that it? That’s what you want - to be good for me?” A playful smirk. “You spoil me, darling.”'), but the extent of that is also up to the reader's interpretation. all i'm saying is that he's hot on purpose, the long hair and the gloves were absolutely on purpose, and i don't blame you <3

my favourite favourite part of this has got to be that last dreamy bit ('There’s a house in the woods, a very long way away...') - if i remember correctly, i think i wrote that bit quite early on but saved it, because it didn't really fit the tone of the rest. it's designed to read like a closing montage sequence in a film, where the dialogue has finished and the music is coming to a finale, and i think it mostly worked...?? idk i'm just really pleased with how it turned out, especially the sensory description there! the house that lovely mentions is deliberately left unclear - you can decide whether i meant it to be vincent's or william's. i have to keep some secrets, after all 🥰🥰

honourable mentions: get in, loser!, a ring on the carousel, motion capture, resist and elongate, mad or sublime, five more minutes

[moshi-moshi-sunflower]

[Ikemen Vampire Scenario/Imagine] Bedridden (part 1)💊

Imagine: You live in the mansion, and you’re feeling very ill. Your illness keeps you in bed for days, if not weeks. What will the guys do?

Category: Reader insert - forget about little miss snack, you are the MC.

Characters: Napoleon, Arthur, Leonardo, Mozart, Vincent and Theo.

Warnings: Some fluff? | Wrote by a non native speaker, so I apologize in case of spelling/grammar mistakes, etc. |

Part two is here.

A/N: This very self-indulging idea came to my mind one time when I was sick, and it honestly made me feel better... I hope maybe it’ll make feel better to someone else, especially when feeling sick (´･ᴗ･ ` )

Napoleon

He finds your absence unusual… so he goes to look for you in your dorm, and finds you curled up in a ball…

“Dumb girl…” he mutters. “You should have said something before you truly started feeling bad.”

He sits on your bed, by your side, and puts a hand on your back, in a soothing gesture.  

He asks you what he can do, and asks Sebastian for anything else that might be needed.

But in the end he goes back to pretty much his original position, except he is now sitting on a chair by your side.

He starts to narrate tales from his time, to both distract you and calm you.

His stories sound almost like tales straight from a book at times.

Although you guess they technically are straight from a book, at least from the point in time you come from.

If possible, he stays by your side until you fall asleep.    

Arthur

I mean, he is a doctor, so he gives you a general check up, just to make sure there’s not anything more serious going on.

After making sure everything’s ‘fine’ (as fine as can be, or so he says), he gives you a smile, plus his flirty so-called professional advice-- sneakingly making you promise that you’ll follow it.

But you are almost entirely sure you’ve catched more than a few times the concern in his eyes, more noticeable whenever his smile dims.

Of course he teases you, albeit more softly than usual, given your current state; in truth he’s just trying to take your mind off your own sickness.

In case you become teary, be it out of frustration, or out of despair, he wipes your tears away gently with his fingers, or with his own handkerchief.

He offers, too, to stay until you fall asleep. Or you can call for him if you need anything, no matter if it’s in the middle of the night, he assures you.

Leonardo

Leonardo had a feeling you were not doing alright. He had looked for your eyes, trying to find something unusual. Technically, no, nothing. But there was something off, and he was perhaps the first one to send you to bed. You looked tired, he had said.

Turned out he was right. But he had been outside the mansion too long and when he came back everyone knew already you were feeling very ill.

He goes to see you as soon as they tell him the news.

He sits beside your bed, and carefully grabs your hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

He talks softer than usual, and tells you about his day, if you want.

The next time he comes by, he is carrying Lumière in his arms. He doesn’t let go of him, at least at first, in case he would start misbehaving and jumping on top of you or something.

But Lumière understands quickly, and he sniffs you carefully, before pacing around near you, in silence. Lumière licks your face, before Leonardo chides him softly, and the small cat moves away with a mew.

Leonardo also brings, beside his cat, some of his most curious artifacts, in hopes you can take your mind away off your own sickness for a little while.

He visits you as often as he can. You wish so badly to get out of bed, he tells you “I’ll take you on a tour through the whole city. We’ll visit everyone, help everyone, until there’s no one left to help or nothing left to repair. But first, you need to get better, cara mia. So do get better.”

Mozart

Keeps his distance, but… One time, after remaining a while in silence, he asks you “What kind of songs, or musical pieces, did you use to listen to?”

It’s a sudden question, and you don’t know how to answer in a way he can understand; then he asks you, albeit a bit impatiently, “Do you know how to whistle...? Or can you hum?”

You try, and are mildly successful (or mildly unsuccessful, judging by the way he’s scrunching up his nose), but he just nods distantly.

But then, a while later, just when you believe that might have been the end of it, once you are alone in your room, some beautiful harmony starts to reach your ears…

Then, no matter how tough you are, you feel like you want to cry.

Even your not-so-virtuous ears can recognise it:

They are an arrangement of some of the music you love the most.

Vincent

Overly worried, doesn’t leave your side, unless he really has to.

Or until Theo reminds him that he has a life of his own, in which case Vincent apologises to you sadly.

...But he still goes to see you as soon as he has some free time.

He holds your hand, and holds it tight, with resolution. “You’ll get better. I’ll do all I can to help you, I promise.”

His smile is so comforting and warm that you truly feel like you feel better, just by looking at it.

Once, while you’re falling asleep, you feel him kiss your cheek; and you drift away, while listening whispering sweetly “Goodnight...”

Sometimes he tries to watch you sleep, just to make sure you’re okay.

The problem? He tends to fall asleep too.

But you have daily sunflowers on a vase by your bedside, and you do not have to miss the sun that much.

Theo

Mostly, observes Vincent. He is not going to take his place by your side, given that he seems so adamant to keep watch of you.

However, even his lack-of-tact words, manage to convey the fact that he is indeed worried, and uneasy. “I thought mutts were supposed to be more healthy, hondje. You better recover soon, or else. My brother hasn’t cried over a pet in years, and he is not going to begin now.”

He tussles your hair (and Vincent helps you to brush it again).

Every once in a while you find him peeping through the half-open door, while walking in front of the door, as if he were doing nothing but passing by. But you know he is checking up on you.

Although sometimes he does enter your room…

He either seems to go with the sole purpose to annoy you with his comments, or he brings something important to do; like letters to send, and he sits in front of the nearby desk, almost pretending to ignore you (until you pretend to need something, and then his full attention goes back to you, yay).

[maxwell-grant]

AIUI, Burbank is even more a question mark than The Shadow is; we don't know if that's a personal name, surname, or nickname, we no nothing of his past, his personal life, or even (again, AIUI) his personality. Is that something that should be kept in adaptations, or ought he be developed more?

Both.

The thing about developing a mystery is that you still need to have something in place to purposefully obscure or slowly reveal. You still need to give your audience tidbits and information here and there that makes them want to learn more and find out what the answer is, even if they know it's never really happening, even if the answer couldn't possibly live up to the hype.

Twin Peaks was able to delay the mystery of Laura Palmer's murder for an entire season and more partially because Laura Palmer had such an rich, troubled inner life and turmoil, that we could gradually receive snippets of information regarding it every episode and still not know the whole story, so much so that, even after we learned who did it, there were still many, many stories to be told within Laura Palmer's life and the city. This holds true for The Shadow, and it holds true for Burbank.

Gibson successfully created intrigue regarding Burbank because, not only was Burbank a crucially important figure in The Shadow's organization and therefore someone we'd want to know more about, but because everytime Burbank showed up to play a substantial role, you could gleam something new about him. Burbank is a great example of staging in The Shadow pulps because his scenes are often written as if we were watching a movie where the head of our main character keeps being blocked from view, until it's revealed, and it doesn't really help us understand him much better than before, even though we've come to learn more about what he acts and looks like.

In fact, The Shadow even seems to be aware of this, such as in the scene below when the narration goes to great lenghts to obscure Burbank's face, even in a scene when there is literally no one around but Burbank and The Shadow. Why go through this much trouble to obscure Burbank from no one but the reader? Why not just refrain from describing what he looks like instead of making sure we can't even imagine what he looks like in our heads in the scene? What's the mystery over what's ostensibly just an average quiet-faced man? And so Burbank doesn't become just a mystery, but a tantalizing one.

The fellow's back was toward the light; since the elevator was dark, it was impossible to distinguish his features. When he helped The Shadow carry the boxes to an open apartment, the bulky objects came in front of the man's face. Since the apartment was dark, too, the features of this silent companion remained as concealed as The Shadow's own.

The fact pleased The Shadow. The less people who saw Burbank, the better - Voice of Death

For example, we do know where Burbank's name comes from, and potentially his first name. In both “The Shadow Laughs” and “The Case Of Congressman Coyd,” Burbank is referred to as “Mr. Burbank,” which indicates it's a last name. In The Death Giver, Burbank hands Harry a business card

At three fifteen, the stenographer entered and tendered Harry a card. It bore the name:

L. BURBANK MOTION PICTURE OPERATOR

A later story specifically namedrops famous horticulturist Luther Burbank, and according to Will Murray, Walter Gibson did confirm to him personally that Burbank was named after Luther Burbank.

We know Burbank's main feature is that he's "quiet-faced" with a "soft, even-toned voice", and that characters can recognize Burbank by his voice even when his face is obscured, but his look isn't consistent. His sole appearence in a cover comes from The Lone Tiger, where he seems to be past his fifties and being semi-bald, but it's not how he looks in Edd Cartier's illustration where he's got a hairdo. Both seem to be somewhat based on Dr David Burbank, the New Hampshire dentist who founded the city. He's been said to be at least 40 once, and this in itself is at odds with some descriptions that place Burbank as younger than The Shadow and describe him as "a young man with a solemn look", which is more in line with how he tends to be depicted in comics, particularly the blonde man with the eyepiece designed by Michael Kaluta.

We know he was officially introduced after Harry Vincent and Claude Fellows, but that apparently he's known The Shadow for quite a while, as he (as Cranston) refers to Burbank as "an old friend" in his introduction (is he an old friend of Cranston as well?). Robert Sampson speculated that the two met in 1924 at a radio station, where as Rick Lai speculates that Burbank may have been recruited in an unrecorded adventure in Rio de Janeiro, mentioned in Gypsy Vengeance, that took place between the first and second novels.

We know that Burbank is at a rather unique position among the agents because he is maybe the most important figure in The Shadow's network, the main keeper of The Shadow's secrets, the one entrusted to run the organization on The Shadow's absence, the only one who can directly reach The Shadow in the Sanctum, and if anyone knows anything about whatever secrets there are in The Shadow's past, it's definitely him, but he's also the one we know the least about as a person, and contrary to the other agents, Burbank is often described in mechanized terms, which gives him a rather inhuman aura somewhat different than that of The Shadow's.

In a sense, Burbank was the mainspring of the machinery that The Shadow used in his warfare against crime.

As contact man, he kept in touch with all the active agents; there were times when he actually ran things, during The Shadow's absence. Tonight was one of those rare occasions when Burbank was needed on active duty.

Nevertheless, the human cogwheel had connected up a switchboard and had a short−wave radio set handy, so that he could continue his contact duties from this empty apartment - Voice of Death

When emergency demanded, Burbank served as he now was serving. Instead of making calls to the deserted sanctum, he was issuing orders in The Shadow's stead. - The Key

Everytime Burbank gets any sort of spotlight, we learn a little more about him, who he is, what he can't and can do. His methods, what he does to spend the time, some of the things he does for The Shadow outside of communications like planting recording devices in criminal hide-outs and devising or managing electrical devices and The Shadow's advanced technology (even if he doesn't fully understand it).

"Burbank began his own attempt to scale the wall. Ordinarily, his clutches would have been inadequate, and his toe holds were uncertain. But the wire was drawing upward under The Shadow's haul. It gave the needed support whenever Burbank floundered. The Shadow could actually sense his agent's progress by the varying strain upon the wire. At last, Burbank flopped over the roof edge like a landed fish" - Masters of Death

There were remarkable devices here. Burbank understood some of them, but the millionaire alone was familiar with all the equipment - Eyes of The Shadow

“To Burbank, long, lone vigils were nothing. He was not a man of action; he was one of endurance. Prompt, precise and always dependable, Burbank had served The Shadow well.“ - The Key

During his long hours of duty, he resorted to one methodical habit as he bided away the time. He always had a supply of chewing gum.” - The Killer

Burbank leaned back in his chair. His position was one of patient relaxation. While he awaited new telephone calls, his attitude was one of complete passivity. There was nothing excitable in the make-up of this man who sat with his back toward the light. Yet Burbank was a man of amazing endurance. In place of action, he exercised untiring vigilance. It was this quality that made him a most important factor in the affairs of that amazing personage known as The Shadow - The Killer

Burbank is, at once, the barrier between the agents (and by extension, us) and The Shadow, as well as the bridge that allows the agents (and us) to find and reach The Shadow.

And I do like it that Burbank's specifically said to not be cut for action, that he's not really a fighter or a marksman or even a super tech genius, on paper he's really just a guy who sits in a chair all day fiddling with radio equipment. But he is still cool and impressive by the standards of what matters most in The Shadow's world. He's patient and resourceful and vigilant and clever and trustworthy, and he's someone that The Shadow trusts more so than anyone else.

There was no sound of the door closing; no sound, indeed, to indicate that any person had moved in that direction. Yet Burbank knew, from experience, that his master, The Shadow, had departed, after giving him the sign that his vigil was ended.

Such word usually came from The Shadow’s sanctum. Tonight, being in the vicinity of Burbank’s present station, The Shadow had preferred to give his faithful agent fifteen or twenty minutes of extra respite by visiting him in person

Such was the way of The Shadow. Though none of his trusted operatives had ever seen his undisguised face; though his ways and actions were secret and mysterious to them; they received constant signs of The Shadow’s appreciation of their reliable cooperation - Death Triangle

In Suite 808, a figure was seated in front of the writing table. It was The Shadow, in his guise as Arnaud; Burbank was off duty, asleep in the other room.

The telephone buzzed; The Shadow answered it. He spoke in a quiet, methodical tone, a perfect imitation of Burbank's voice. Harry Vincent reported - The Case of Congressman Coyd

On one hand, I don't think the "mystery" of Burbank is ever going to be ruined, or should be ruined. But on the other hand, I definitely think there's a lot of room to explore more regarding what exactly is he as a person, as an agent, what kind of roles he plays, what is his connection to The Shadow or what relationship he has with other agents or other people he's meant to be in more direct contact with. I think it's a matter of balance.

There's a lot of room to work with particularly regarding how you could adapt Burbank into adaptations set in different time periods (not necessarily modern day), because with how communication technology had advanced beyond imagination, there's a lot of ways you could adapt or recontextualize Burbank, The Shadow's social network.

[who-ever-said-i-was-nice]

Heya, could I ask for the ikevamp boys finding mc passed out at the table surrounded by work? Uni's been killing me lately. If all of them is too much then just Leonardo, Jean, Comte, Theo and Mozart? Thanks x

I cried five times while making this.

Dear Anon! Thanks sooo mush for the request. 😘I’m sorry for taking this looooong I also have a shit ton of work but HERE IT IS. I hope things get better for you and good luck!😘❤️❤️ I added a different type of uni to each of the guys just to make it interesting. @nad-zeta your daily dose of Theo. XD. Love you. Hope you enjoy! Ok here we go!

Ikevamp boys x an overworked mc

Leonardo

he just woke up from one of his naps and he decided he’s going to have a snack most probably mc

as he’s walking towards kitchen he spots you sleeping on one of the tables in the library surrounded by a huge pile of books, pens and papers

now he knew that you refused to give up on the uni you where going to when you came here but he’s still a bit surprised

he walks up to you and takes a peek at what you are studying 

architecture

more specifically some designs he came up with

*eyes emoji*

after the initial shock of finding out you where studying his work he smiles and picks you up and caries you to your bed

from that moment on he will always help you with whatever you are studying and always makes sure you take breaks

Comte

he was walking around socializing with the residents when he stumbled upon you snoozing on the dining table buried in a mountain of book

ha was aware of your studies and offered to let you off work completely

but you insisted on dedicating 4 days a week on housework

however this meant you had to study like crazy

when he saw you there he already knew what’s wrong

he panicked internally but calmly walked to your side

he didn’t insist one knowing what exactly you where studying but this was so convenient he just had to take a look

finance studies

well damn

finds it very amazing that you manege to work and study that at the same time

sighs and carefully picks you up and takes you to bed

after that he makes sure you get enough rest in between study sessions

he will spoil you a bit more and offer to help with your studies

Jean

ok so we know poor baby can’t read

he doesn’t get why you are so passionate about your university

what did you call your studies? Linguistics? Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

he has no idea what you are talking about but he loves you and loves that you have a passion

when he sees you passed out in your room in a very uncomfortable position surrounded by books...

...panic

oh wait no panic you probably just fell asleep ‘cause you where tiered

wait tiered?

panic

he will pick you up and take you to your room, makes sure you are tucked it

from that moment on he will make sure you get enough rest

Isaac

precious little bean

on one hand he understands why you are so passionate about your studies on the other he is worried

one time you where working late into the night and he asked you to stop and you brought up the argument that he does the same

so he decided not to stop you

however when he finds you passed out in the gazebo...

nope.

he is panicked and scared and angry at himself for not realizing sooner

he hurries to your side when one of your books catches his eye

you are studying quantum physics?

say what?

ok he now has a whole lot of respect for you

he will gently shake you awake

“ Mmmhmm...I did my essay” “Y/N it’s me, wake up”

you immediately wake up

“ Don’t ever do that again. You scared me.”

Now you guys study together so cute

Napoleon

UMMMMMM boy

if he saw you just hanging off a table passed out he will have a heart attack

then he will realize that you are just sleeping and you are not dead so he will calm down a bit

he can’t resist the urge to take a look at what you are studying either

politics

interesting.

so you want a  politics degree

what you will do with it he has no idea. After all you are in a different time period, but he thinks  it’s good to have a goal

what he doesn’t think is good is over working your self

“nunuche wake up” “noooooooooo I won’t wake up unless you do what I do to wake you up”

so he will kiss you and you agree to wake up how adorable i  think i’m going to cry over my own work damn I’m weird  

If he ever see you looking even a little tiered he will steal you away and you will cuddle

Arthotthur

Heart attack nr.2

oh no wait my bird is just sleeping

he’s not happy

ok let me rephrase that

he’s happy that you are happy but he’s not ok with the fact that you have overworked yourself and on top of that he’s beating himself up for not noticing earlier

he’s debating whether you’d be more pissed if he carried you to your room* or if he woke you up when something catches his attentive eye

you where studying to get a bachelor's degree in English whaaaaaat!

will go through your notes and

when he finds out you want to become a writer.....

Omg fanboy mode: activate

“ I didn’t know I had such an effect on you Luv”

you: say wut? Arthur I became writer because I wanted to

Now you two run around n the corridors smiling like dorks and narrating random events when your free and he writes next to you when you study   ( to keep and eye on you. He loves you so much)

* if that doesn’t apply to you I’m sorry. I try to write from another persons prospective, but a lot of my writing is based of my reactions to a situation or my personality. In this case I’d be pissed if he left my stuff there or went into my room ( it’s my sanctuary ok my disaster). And waking me up oh no bitch run. But on a serious note don’t be mad if it doesn’t fit your description, and if it didn’t and you want me to change something feel free to let me know. Ok next victim:

Theo

to say he’s pissed is an understatement

he’s pissed at you for taking it to far but he’s pissed at himself a lot little more for not noticing sooner

like his bff he’ll also be contemplating taking you to bed rather then yelling you awake like witch one will end up in a bigger slap

then he notices what you are studying

art

when you are done with this you are literally going to get an art degree

Theo ex. has stopped working

he is getting emotional on the inside

 will gently take you to bed and tuck you in

he’ll pat your head “ Creative Hondjie”. He has such a gentle smile on his face god I can picture it I’m crying

from then on when you have a project he will help criticize you and he will help you progress with your art

 will be keeping an eye on you 25/7 yes 25 this guy will create a time loop if it meant that you had more time to do the things you love (ahem Theo) xd  no

all in all he will be just a little softer with you, but only you. And will also deny it if somebody points it out

Vincent

Let’s all just sit down, take a moment and appreciate Vincent

He will see you passed out and he will PANIC

he will rush up to you and make sure you are ok

also waking you up in the process

he will ask what you are studying

“sooo you want to become a chef”

Pffffffff we all know poor baby is parallel with cooking

like he will burn water

is super supportive tho gee who would have thought

this boy is an angel and will help you cook

Jesus I hope Comte has fire insurance

you have a lot of fun with him and he will actually end up learning a few things form you.

will make sure you never overwork yourself again

 Dazai

this dork almost stepped on you

you had passed out under you window , ‘cause you had been studying on the floor

and this guy came waltzing in through the window

“Toshiko-san? Toshikooooo shit”

*cricket sounds* yup

he will squat down next to you and poke your cheek

“ what are you doing on the floor?” you: “what are you doing in my room?”

OOOOH GOT ‘EM

you two of you will laugh about it and he will ask you what you are studying

you proudly shove your text book under his nose

“ well well Toshiko-san want’s to take care of small animals?”

you: Yes, like Isaac

he’s not really fazed by you falling asleep but  will make sure you don’t overwork and if he sees you getting tired he will crack a few terrible jokes to lighten your mood and then he will proceed to steel you away

Mozart

ok now clean freak here is going to be worried

not panicked just worried

uhum Wolf you keep telling yourself that

you where studying in the music room while Wolf was playing

suddenly he heard a thump

he stopped and looked around only to find you passed out on the table

seems like the all-nighter combined with the music led you to fall asleep

he’s frozen for a hot second until he realizes you are just sleeping

he will slowly walk up to you and poke you with a broom ‘cause he doesn’t want to touch you

Jkjk

he will go up to you and gently attempt to shake you awake when he notices what your studying

 you where studying music

“Marry me?”

he will wake you up and question you about it

from that moment on he actually helps you a little when you don’t get something and you study in the music room at all times because” it’s noisy outside”

we know you just care about her Mozart

Sebastian

he flicks your forehead

that’s it. Thant’s the canon

no I’m kidding he knows how much you study and is worried about you even before you pass out

and when you do that’s it

he scoops you up and takes you to your bed

he only flicks your forehead when you wake up

yeah you get an ear full from him

he asks what you are studying and tell him you want a degree in history

ok suddenly he’s not mad at you

from that moment on he always makes sure you are not over working

he actually shows you his notebook and you find it fascinating 

now you both collectively stalk the residents

William

y’all aren’t ready for this

when he sees you passed out in the garden he’s ready to pull out a gun and kill anyone and everyone who dared harm you

then he realizes you’re actually sleeping and he calms down a bit ( he’ll keep the gun tho shhhhh don’t tell Comte)

he will gently pat your hair and just look at you

when you wake up he will ask you what you are studying

you are a complete blushing mess when you tell him you want to become an actress

he’s shooketh and also really happy at the same time

now he takes you with him to the theater and he gives you a role to play and he watches while you practice

he’s also super attentive and will never let you overwork yourself again

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed! Stay safe everyone! 😘😘😘

[brightbeautifulthings]

See You Later by Christopher Pike

"It began with a smile, or at least that's what I thought. But then, I didn't think much when I was eighteen. I just longed for things I didn't have, and reacted when they came to me and I no longer wanted them. But love ... I always wanted to be in love, and to have love, and to pretend they were one and the same thing."

Year Read: before 2006, 2022

Rating: 4/5

About: Mark is a high school video game developer who's just fallen in love for the first time. Unfortunately, Becky already has a boyfriend, and Mark is hesitant to pursue her. When he meets Vincent, a quiet man who asks for help in play-testing his own video game, Vincent's beautiful and enigmatic girlfriend takes an interest in Mark's love life. In fact, Kara seems unusually invested in Mark going out with Becky, even to the point of trying to sabotage her current relationship. What Kara's real motivations are, and where she and Vincent truly come from, is more like one of Mark's science fiction games than he ever could have imagined. Spoilers are under the cut. Trigger warnings: character death (graphic, on-page), nuclear war, car accidents, asphyxiation, severe illness, violence, guns, blood, threats, infidelity.

Thoughts: This has always been one of my favorites of Pike's standalone novels, but for various reasons, it didn't quite hit me the same way this time. I love the story that's being told here, though it edges into science fiction territory, but Pike has always been able to make sci-fi more accessible to me. While things like time travel, cryogenic freezing, and nuclear war are all central to the plot, the truth is that they're all too vague to feel like we're truly in a sci-fi novel or to even be sure what really happens, and I'm okay with that. In instances like this one, I even prefer it, since I'm not sure the story works at all if we look at it too closely. And it's such a sad, lovely story.

As always with Pike, the book is really about people, and the small and large roles we play in the universal balance between good and evil. Every small action matters, and what matters most of all is love. As far as messages go, I'm hard pressed to think of a better one, and it's present throughout so many of his novels. Like most of Pike's narrators, Mark is a nerdy teenager with a crush, and I wasn't terribly invested in his relationship with Becky until Kara and Vincent (my love) arrived on the scene. Kara is a variation of Pike's usual mysterious, headstrong blonde, and I love their relationships with kind, quiet Vincent. While the villains aren't often on the page, the novel interrogates whether or not being a villain is a foregone conclusion. If just one thing changes, can the whole world change?

I still love Vincent's video game and the moral message there, and the whole novel comes over emphatically anti-war. What bothered me about it this time was the ending, particularly in the treatment of one of the characters, but more on that after the spoilers. I often find myself reaching for Pike's novels when I'm going through emotional distress, and whatever my thoughts about them, they never fail to comfort me. I need his worlds and his characters to remind me that there is magic and grace in everything, even (and maybe especially) when it doesn't turn out the way we hoped.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

I always found the ending of this book sad but beautiful, but this is the first time I've been a little angry reading it. Throughout the novel, I felt like Becky was being held at a distance, but Pike's characters often feel a bit distant, and it makes sense since Mark loves her without actually knowing her that well. I dislike the idea that one of our only female characters dies for the redemption of a male villain though, especially when (in her current timeline) she didn't do anything to deserve that. Kara might be far from innocent, but Becky isn't. Yeah, yeah, I get that the whole theme of the ending is forgiveness, but I struggle a little with that concept too. (Ray didn’t make any attempt to stop being an asshole before she died.) I'll always love it, just not quite in the same way as I did before.

[wordofrecall]

character playlists: ori

so. let’s do this. my playlists are long and scattered, but they make me happy, so i might as well share them and the thoughts behind song choices. so. here’s some songs for runaway knights & wannabe witches, and what have you.

something holy - childhood & riches & wonders

pearl diver - mitski - oh hunter, if you didn’t want the beautiful so badly, perhaps you would’ve found it in your spirit singing softly - look. it's on the nose, considering that her title is "the pearl hunter," but also, like, that rules. this is a song for wren, i think; ori in the present reflecting on her mother and the similarities between them.

icicles - the scary jokes - i can only be forgiven if i’m giving myself up to you on a silver serving tray / must i bare myself to the stabbing of your knife & gnashing teeth while our lovely company appears so entertained? - aaand a song for childhood. 99% of ori's socialization came from her parents having important guests over, so. uh. yeah. show off your reclusive child prodigy like a pageant whenever you have the opportunity. she probably won't grow to loathe you.

life: the cruel interlude (on god) - kilo kish - why do i dare believe in me when i bleed? - questioning was. always a big thing for ori. i don't think she ever believed that the mirzha was god, and i known that she never truster her father's patron, but. in her studies, in her passions, there's always this tiny sense of desperation for something to have faith in something. not herself.

bluejays & cardinals - the mountain goats - the stars come out of hiding for you, & i would too - there is. a lot, in ori's relationship with her brother. she was the favorite child, yeah, the one destined for great things in spite of her... troubles. but he never had those troubles! she didn't, doesn't understand how he went through life so unafraid. there's envy there. i also think that the line i quoted is terribly true, like, canonically. because. she sure did do that stupid shit.

be calm - fun. - take it from me, i’ve been there a thousand times--you hate your pulse because it thinks you’re still alive! - sometimes you have intense social phobia. and that's okay!

country death song - violent femmes - kiss your mother goodnight & remember that God saves, kiss your mother goodnight & remember that God saves - i think andrei is a much less pitiable or even sympathetic man than the narrator of this song, but. like. it's a country song about a father killing his daughter while preaching godliness. i had to.

i’m all bloody inside - liam lynch - inside me, well, it’s dark & gross as hell, i’m not a pretty sight - the family business!

the hazards of love 3 (revenge!) - the decemberists - but father, don’t you fear, your children are all here - fantasies. part of the fantasy is imagining a world where she doesn't feel terrible about the thought.

shankill butchers - sarah jarosz - they used to be just like me & you, they used to be sweet little boys - "blood hunters are ghost stories." "and also, they're fucking terrible. violent, cruel, zealous. the worst."

sparrow - st. vincent - & no eyes are on the sparrow, eyes are on the sparrow, how could that be the case? the lark keeps whistling his number, silly little number, as if he isn't prey - pity for the boy. sort of retrospective, but it's a thought that's been there since she was a child.

something burning - rituals & fire & running

starchild - ghost quartet - but i will transcend & vomit this loser out of me; i will become the next big thing, i will light myself on fire - maybe she is some kind of angel? bursting with radiance and terrifying to look upon.

arsonist’s lullabye - hozier - don’t you ever tame your demons, always keep them on a leash / when i was sixteen, my senses fooled me - oooor maybe she is a sixteen year-old who is having a panic attack and setting everything in sight on fire by accident.

blood - my chemical romance - i’m the kind of human wreckage that you love! - so she's broken.

girl anachronism - the dresden dolls - it’s not the way i’m meant to be, it’s just the way the operation made me - so she's failed and she's broken and she's sick, and there's no time to fucking think.

when the chips are down - anais mitchell - cast your eyes to heaven, you’ll get a knife in the back. - so she does what her mother did before her, and she runs from that which she has always known.

body terror song - ajj - i’m so sorry that you have to have a body / one that will hurt you, & be the subject of so much of your fear - feelings on being built Wrong; feelings on your mind's undue control upon your body.

in corolla - the mountain goats - & no one was gonna come & get me, there wasn't anybody gonna know, even though i leave a trail of burnt things in my wake every single place i go - very good as an ori song in general but this is her justification to herself in the water. under the docks, she says this to herself.

the harrowed & the haunted - the decemberists - will i be so brave? - just to get that oceanic vibe up.

luna - the mountain goats - rise through the flames & end again in flames at last - an inexplicable feeling.

unwhere - reeder - a song for leaving what you've always known.

something lonely - years & woods & dreaming

runs in the family - amanda palmer - run from their pity, from responsibility, run from the country & run from the city, i can run from the law, i can run from myself, i can run for my life, i can run into debt, i can run from it all, i can run 'till I'm gone - she is broken and all she can think to do is get as far away as possible

panic attack - liza anne - i hate that i can be seen like this

black eyes - david wirsig - my hammering heart hears the voices of spirits that tempt us, the scorn that they’ve spoken

for the departed - shayfer james - they will bury me alive, but i’m not inclined to care; i am too far gone now

hurt - johnny cash - everyone i know goes away in the end; you can have it all, my empire of dirt

my body’s made of crushed little stars - mitski - i work better under a deadline! i work better under a deadline!

blood in the cut - k. flay - guess i’m contagious; it’d be safest if you ran--fuck, that’s what they all just end up doing in the end

little pistol - mother mother - i think i might be scared of the world & the way it makes you feel afraid & how it gets in the way

villains pt. 1 - emma blackery - built to create, designed to destroy

the beer - kimya dawson - & the christians gave me comic books as if i would be scared of burning in hell while i was already there [...] i tried to scream fuck you but blood was pouring out my mouth

something safe - family & finding it & fighting together

haunted house - sir babygirl - i’m running just to hide & i’m hiding just to breathe & around every corner is the same night on repeat

your heart is a muscle the size of your fist - ramshackle glory - i love you & you make me glad to be alive; i promise that i’m gonna pay you back / you always know how funny everything is, even when i’m so serious that it’s gonna be the death of me

medicines - the taxpayers - o, but our rotting corpses lying there soon began to leak & grow these lesions that all smelled just like a rose / & all the blood & guts inside us germinated into timeless pages stained with lines of lovely prose

autoclave - the mountain goats - i am this great unstable mass of blood & foam

alligator skin boots - mccafferty - i’m cool to the touch, leap to my death, i’ll die for you all, i’ll die for my friends, it goes like this

100 years - florence + the machine - lord, don’t let me break this, let me hold it lightly, give me arms to pray with instead of ones that hold too tightly

tomorrow will be kinder - the secret sisters - but i feel warmth on my skin, the stars have all aligned

armour - rae spoon - you know i placed was to build a life for you

amy aka spent gladiator 1 - the mountain goats - play with matches if you think you need to play with matches; seek out the hidden places where the fire burns hot & bright / find where the heat’s unbearable & stay there if you have to--don’t hurt anybody on your way up to the light, and stay alive

curses - the crane wives - won’t you stay with me, my darling, when my walls start burning down?

something daring - islands & visions & loss

jane’s dream - janelle monáe

beekeeper - keaton henson - hear me, o woman that has gone astray, gone astray

fire - kimya dawson - i’m reading books about how they’re corrupt [...] as long as i’m burning, i’ll keep on yearning to save the world, not sure how, but i’m learning

cosmic hero - car seat headrest - i love you, but i can’t stand the touch, & of course i’m alright with death

turn the lights off - tally hall - everbody likes to get taken for turns to see how bright the fire inside of us burns [...] should be stronger, books abandoned

eat you alive - the oh hellos - child, i’m afraid for your soul; these things that you’re after, they can’t be controlled

cry for judas - the mountain goats - hallucinate a shady grove where judas went to die

o death - monica martin - no wealth, no land, no silver, no gold, nothing satisfies me but your soul

blood of angels - brown bird - and i would wage my soul to bet that there ain’t no one throwing lightning anyhow

the universe is going to catch you - the antlers - the arms of the universe kept you from falling [...] those arms did not come back

a burning hill - mitski - i am the fire & i am the forest & i am the witness watching it / i stand in the valley watching it

something terrifying - conversations & selfhood & divination

the lamb - dessa - but blood is blood, & what’s done is done; blood is blood, & its burden is a beast

going invisible 2 - the mountain goats - i’m gonna burn it all down today & sweep all the ashes away

the lion’s roar - first aid kit - she plays a tune for those who wish to overlook the fact that they’ve been blindly deceived by those who preach & pray & teach, but she falls short & the night explodes in laughter

the villain i appear to be - connor spiotto - even if you can’t see the good inside me, i don’t have the time to tell you why i do the things that i do, just please hold on & soon you’ll seem

up the wolves - the mountain goats - there’s bound to be a ghost at the back of closet, no matter where you live; there’ll be a few things, maybe several things that you’re gonna find really difficult to forgive

thursday girl - mitski - glory, glory, glory to the night that shows me what i am

at the bottom of everything - bright eyes - we must take all of the medicines to expensive now to sel; set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell

everybody does - julien baker - i know i’m a pile of filthy wreckage you will wish you’d never touched, but you’re gonna run when you find out who i am

tongues & teeth - the crane wives - i know that you mean so well, but i am not a vessel for your good intent 

a pearl - mitski - you’re growing tired of me and all the things i don’t talk about / sorry, i don’t want your touch--it’s not that i don’t want you

[yurimother]

LGBTQ Light Novel Review - Bloom Into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka Vol. 1

*Contains minor spoilers for Bloom Into You*

I have always said that Bloom Into You is a little bit too popular and awarded more praise than the typical and trope-filled story deserves. However, fame and success have their benefits, and thanks to the series’ popularity, we are gifted with the phenomenal light novel spin-off Bloom Into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka. This wondrous collaboration between the original creator, Nio Nakatani, and famed Yuri author Iruma Hitoma (Adachi and Shimamura) takes the very best elements of Bloom Into You, namely side character Sayaka and her experiences with LGBT identity and life and puts them front and center. The result is a beautiful and important coming of age story about a young woman discovering her sexuality. A story that not only escapes the common traps of the Yuri genre but utilizes and subverts them with flawless execution.

The first volume in the Regarding Saeki Sayaka light novel trilogy revolves around the titular character before the events of the main series. The entire book is narrated from Sayaka’s first-person perspective and told in the past tense, with Sayaka occasionally giving brief retrospective insights to contextualize her experiences. This presentation excellently frames the story, giving valuable analysis to its events, heck, Sayaka can probably do my job better than I could. The ex post facto storytelling also pairs nicely with the dramatic irony present in the story, provided that the reader has read the manga or seen the anime. On that point, while the light novel effectively stands on its own legs, reading it as a companion piece and prologue to Bloom Into You will significantly increase the book’s impact.

The first of the volume’s two parts, Year 5 Group 3, paints a portrait of childhood Sayaka. She is serious and mature for her age, often pushing herself to be the best in every area, both academic and extracurricular. However, she has apparent social deficiencies, remaining distant at best, and hostile at worst to others. She is surprised, annoyed, and challenged when a student in her swim class attempts to bond with her. The girl displays a strong affinity for Sayaka and, although at their age describing their connection as romantic or sexual feels inaccurate, she clearly yearns for a bond beyond friendship.

Frustrated by the girl’s advances and erratic personality, Sayaka angrily tells her to be more serious. Determined to win Sayaka’s affection, the girl attempts to mimic Sayaka’s mature demeanor. This act subconsciously implants the idea in Sayaka’s head that people must change themselves to suit the ones they desire, a lesson which later proves dangerous for her. Soon after, Sayaka begins experiencing strange feelings for the girl, which further her frustration. The confused Sayaka attempts to explain away her emotions, “I mean, the person next to me was a girl, and so was I.” However, after a sexually charged moment in the pool, the fearful Sayaka runs away and quits her swimming class.

This first chapter effectively lays the foundation for Sayaka’s sexual awakening and foreshadows some of the situations in which she will later find herself. Although Iruma’s prose, and Jan Cash and Vincent Castaneda’s translation’ is expressive and beautiful, capturing Sayaka’s inner voice superbly, there are a few flaws. The service described, including details about the locker room and the girls’ swimsuits, is incredibly awkward, especially considering the elementary school-aged characters. The climactic moment between the two, while appropriately dramatic, is undercut by this exploitation and its inherently ridiculous nature. Thankfully the second half of the book, Class 2-C, Tomosumi Girls’ Academy, lacks the off-putting elements of the first and perfectly sets Sayaka up as the character we know and love from the original series.

As Sayaka enters middle school, she becomes slightly less rigid and strict than she was as an elementary schooler. Instead, she is an excellent reflection of the girl seen in the original series, a serious and driven person but reliably kindhearted. She joins the choir club, where she meets Yuzuki Chie, referred to almost exclusively as “Senpai.” Followers of the original will quickly come to recognize this character as Sayaka’s ex-girlfriend, briefly seen in the manga and anime. Yuzuki confesses her love for Sayaka, leaving the latter to ponder the implications of dating her.

The sequence which follows this confession is nothing short of masterful. A once again conflicted Sayaka struggles to comprehend the possibility of dating Yuzuki. She thinks of the potential relationship as both one between two individuals and as a romance between two people who are both women. In the end, she decides that, although she does not yet love her senpai, she wants to try dating. Their relationship is full of adolescent naivetés and fluttering emotions.

Sayaka lacks a reference to healthy love and relationships, so, just as the girl from her swimming class did, she changes to become a figure that Yuzuki can love, telling her what she wants to hear and doing what will make her happy. For example, although Sayaka does not enjoy novels, she visits a bookstore, which turns out to be the Koito family’s, to buy and read one of Yuzuki’s favorite books. Eventually, their relationship escalates, and Sayaka admits that she has fallen in love with her partner. However, after moving up to high school, Yuzuki begins to pull away from Sayaka.

Their ultimate showdown and break up is reminiscent of Class S literary themes, with Yuzuki claiming the relationship was play, acting out, and mimicking fiction’s prevailing narrative of romance. However, now that they are nearly adults, and as they are both women, the “play” is no longer appropriate. Sayaka, however, does not feel the same way, and herein lies Regarding Saeki Sayaka’s pure brilliance. Iruma subtly and expertly hides small lines and hints to this difference throughout the book. Yuzuki speaks mostly in romantic clichés as if imitating romance movies or books, “Senpai often speaks like she’s in a story.” However, Sayaka shows genuine commitment and devotion to her partner, working (foolishly) to change herself for Yuzuki and occasionally thinking of their future together, once wondering if they would be together when they were old ladies.

Their actions contradict each other’s so much because Sayaka, the girl who strived to be mature and act like an adult from an early age, does not see the relationship between two girls as immature or a game. To her, it was a very genuine experience that helped lead her to her ultimate revelation and the light novel’s amazing final lines, “I accepted it. It wasn’t understanding or resignation, just acceptance. Of myself, and of the fact that I could only love girls.” Here both the author and the character have openly rejected the S era ideas that love between women is fleeting and childish, Sayaka comes to see herself as a gay woman (although she sadly does not employ this specific terminology). Here the book elevates itself past the original series and embraces the more modern and queerer era of Yuri.

Iruma Hitoma has done the impossible, taking a good Yuri story and transforming it into a great one, rewarding readers with a thoughtful and nuanced experience detailing a young woman’s confusion and strife as she discovers her identity. It is by no means perfect, as all the side characters are thin and underdeveloped, yet they do not need to be. This story is exclusively Sayaka’s, and the others exist only to serve the amazing development and growth gracefully communicated in this stunning light novel.

However, as I wrap up this review, I cannot help but think of how much easier Sayaka’s experience would have been, how much clarity she may have had, and the pain she could have avoided, had she learned about LGBTQ identities and experiences before her tribulations. It is so essential for the young to see positive representation of all peoples in both fiction and reality as they grow up, and perhaps ironically, Bloom Into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka Volume 1 has joined the elite ranks of titles which can positively impact the lives of its readers. It contains a wonderful, authentic, and grounded story of coming to terms with one’s sexuality. This light novel is an absolute must-read, even if you are not a fan of the original series, and I cannot wait for its continuation, especially as the upcoming third volume hints at a tale about a happy Sayaka and her girlfriend.

Ratings: Story – 10 Characters – 9 LGBTQ – 9 Sexual Content – 4 Final – 9

Order Bloom Into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka here: https://amzn.to/31QgIaR

Review copy provided by Seven Seas Entertainment @sevenseasentertainment​

[leam1983]

Cyberpunk 2077 Thoughts

Having perused Dark Horse Books’ The World of Cyberpunk 2077 over the past few days, I’ve gotten a better feel for the various basic hooks that structure V’s inception as a protagonist. The short of it is the Polish wizards are on the right path to nailing Pondsmith’s treatment the same way they nailed Sapkowski’s works.

Consider the following as half a brain dump, half a series of prospective spoilers, and also half projection, so either skip this, find some other entry to read, or come back to this come late November.

I know I mentioned three halves, but it’s late and I don’t give a shit.

I’m serious - DO NOT PRESS ON IF YOU’RE THE TYPE TO BLOW A GASKET IF YOU’RE INADVERTANTLY SPOILED. 

The latest Night City Wire as of August exposed three incipient “life paths”, or starting branches of V’s path. I’ll tackle my personal narrative approaches to them in the order of my choosing.

Nomads: CP2077 is set in a world where much of what we understand to define a family has been blown up, tossed around by climate change and nuclear fire and then stitched back together using grit, resourcefulness and the last dying embers of human decency. Nomads are less a group of people defined by blood relations and more a cadre of individuals that share something more significant than mere genes. It might be a common history, a set of shared hardships, a yen for similar automotive and engineering-related projects - whatever it is, that something pulls people together in ways Corpo rats and street kids will never experience.

This seems to define even the average Nomad’s degree of education. Surprisingly, Nomads are the most well-read group in Coronado Bay’s greater area, some caravans reportedly including entire RVs packed with books. Nomads generationally elect teachers and record-keepers and seem to care for those cultural remnants of the old world, before Pondsmith’s paranoid alternate sixties kicked off more than a century’s worth of technological progression and rampant dehumanization. To a Night City native, a Nomad’s speech patterns appear precious and uselessly florid, while they might appear almost normal to us - maybe slightly touched by the fact that Grandpa Joe or whatever really wanted you to have your Greek classics down before you were old enough to repair your first CH00H2 carburetor on your own.

That new, mega-clustered version of family matters immensely to the Nomads. You identify to yours the same way Orcs in Shadow of War might refer to their clan, or the same way a Scottish clan might design specific visual cues identifying its members. In normal circumstances, Nomads live, thrive and die in service to the clan - and the opening segment for V’s Nomad origins suggests that something happened to his clan. They’re gone, or so the narration says, without going into further detail. Is V responsible? We don’t currently know. As it stands, however, he is a lone Nomad in a clan of one, and soon finds himself pushed out of the Californian wastes and into Night City’s neon-drenched streets.

Seeing this, I considered the narration as an admission of guilt on V’s part. He feels responsible, and hopes that grinding his way to success will in some way atone for what he’s done. Consequently, my Nomad V would be as gruff as could be, but as moral and upstanding as the setting allows. He considers himself as having been invested with an example to set, and would intend to set his sights on more than just filthy lucre. Honest filthy lucre is what matters to him, if that concept even is possible: he might deal in unsavory types and illicit activities, but he always does so with a certain moral rectitude - as a tough and gruff, lean and stringy type you can occasionally catch in his battered Thornton pick-up truck with his feet up on the dashboard and a dog-eared copy of Plato’s Republic in hand. Jackie honestly wonders how he can put up with that Greek pendejo’s endless words and the lack of scrolling animations, while V keeps his Kiroshi optics’ News ticker locked onto grassroots Leftist RSS feeds that stoke a bit of an ignored Rockerboy ethos in him. Quoting Marx in Night City might feel like trying to teach lab rats in the finer points of string theory, but it at least feels genuine to him, compared to the predigested sociopolitical pap Militech, Arasaka and their ilk are more than happy to spew on the airwaves. 

There’s a lot to be pissed off about in Richard Night’s failed utopia, a lot of fat cats to gut and buildings to burn. Still, he leaves the glowering act and the churning rage to Johnny Silverhand’s imprinted ghost. Being more of a down-low, gun-toting choomba than a classic Street Samurai, Vincent “V” Carson thinks first and strikes second.

Vinnie isn’t much for electric guitars and anarchy in the UK, much less in the Free State of Southern California; but he does love the occasional Leonard Cohen ballad or the occasional shot of Johnny Cash’s melancholy. Having picked up something of a Northern Texas drawl while cruising, he might feel like Harry Dresden’s Good Ol’ Boy cousin, magic tricks here pushed aside in favor of a measure of dermal plating and a good ol’ fashioned twelve-gauge and revolver combo. Not being much of a techno-fetishist, he considers his optics and his skull jack as being begrudging concessions to an era that looks down on fully “ganic” types. Having grown up with TV serials and the occasional visor-based Braindance all depicting cyberpsychosis as something vile that utterly dehumanizes its sufferers, he’s naturally wary around anyone who seems a little too giddy with the prospect of taking a few scalpels to perfectly decent muscles and bones.

His Thornton is where most of his Eddies go, and yes, he’s named his truck Suzie. Suzie’s done right by him, and he’ll do right by her - unless someone else with a pretty smile and a working moral compass makes him swoon.

Street Kids: if you weren’t taught on the highways or in corporate arcologies, odds are you became a positive blip in an otherwise grim statistic, one of the myriad fucked-up kids raised by other fucked-up kids with more seniority than you. With no roads and paid-for nannies, you survived off of grifts, grit, violence, deceit, smarts and gumption - and that, in its own screwball way, creates its own blood ties. You’re wise by Heywood’s standards - streetwise, that is - and you speak the back-alleys’ lingua franca of threats, insinuation and casual intimidation like no other.

If only Jackie hadn’t fingered that Rayfield, huh? This beaut could’ve been paydirt! Well, at least for a week or so, judging by the fact that hundreds of car thefts are reported across Night City on a daily basis. At least, Dean - who also goes as “V” - got to make a new friend while out in the pokey, and managed to shake a few proverbial trees... They’ve got a short-lease in with Trauma Team’s frequency and could maybe hook themselves up with a sweet finder’s fee for anyone who’s on the verge of death at the hands of the city’s Scavengers...

Little does V know, that’s selling Trauma Team as well as their clients painfully short. Shows of gratitude don’t mean anything if you’re not packing the right social status. He barely remembers his birth parents as it is, and grew up the fifth grubby prospect of one of the Valentinos’ “school clubs” (hence the nickname) - where the points of study refer to the proper observances to be held in Jesus Malaverde’s presence, intensive Chicano and Spanish immersion, as well as the handling of common types of weaponry.

Vincent and Dean would be likely to shoot one another, if placed in the same room. One clings onto nearly-lost value systems, while the other commodifies what can be discarded like so much flesh - only inasmuch as his efforts to pacify his unofficial five or six abuelas force him to forego extensive modifications. His knives and wrist-mounted data port are his main tools of the trade, although Dean keeps his hacking creds along the bare minimum. Why bother, when melting an ATM’s ICE wall and whacking the cops with a baseball bat is all you need? There’s a type of gun for nearly anything else, if someone knows where to look...

Dean has no last name, and is consequently registered as “Dean Smith” in the city’s Census records. That doesn’t suggest, however, that he wouldn’t want to make one for himself. As he’s less focused on the city’s legends than on its kingmakers and pawn-movers, Dexter DeShawn strikes him as someone to emulate, watch and learn from - all with a decent degree of caution.

Being on top matters a little less to him than eventually pulling Heywood’s stings. With a little fear and a lot of persistence, Dean “V.” Smith knows that one day, he won’t go hungry on a weeknight. To that end, he’s certainly a hearty eater, here paired with extensive free-weight training regimens and the use of anabolic stimulants. Oh, sure, he’ll speak of family and blood like the best soldier festooned in Santa Muerte visual codices, but his friend Jackie’s got a mind like a slow and steady steel trap.

Either Dean blows his new fellow Street Samurai out of the pond, or he does. Unlike Jackie, however, Dean isn’t realistic about it. Friendships are a rare gift in Heywood, if not the rest of Night City, and Dean’s convinced that Jackie could conceivably look past his final betrayal.

Corpo: nowadays, we’re mostly familiar with the idea of one-percenters creating a bubble of affluence for themselves. Boarding schools, private villas, prebooked vacations across the globe’s priciest spots, access to the hottest trends on the minute of their inception - what this tends to forego is the level of social disconnect that’s required in order to stay relevant. We’re only just waking up to the consequences of letting an aging, crusty first-generation Yuppie be crowned the ruler of the free world, and even someone who’s behind on their Bret Easton Ellis could tell you that Donald J. Trump is a sociopath and a narcissist.

Take that mindset, and cultivate it into an ethos that’s taught to children from a very early age - children who live, eat, shit and breathe in accordance with their parent corporation’s tenets. The more placid, mid-tier lifers in the genre are called sararimen, in reference to William Gibson’s use of the term to designate low-level company workers in Chiba City. A bit like Shenzhen’s factory workers and execs, everything in a corpo’s life is in service to the corporation.

In Night City, as of 2077, two major players have installed this culture of total obedience in their roster. Their names are Militech and Arasaka. One is a juggernaut in the field of military-grade personal defence, the other has a wider grasp and reach, but is more fragile. Arasaka owes that fragility to the last fifty years having involved its re-establishment and reconstruction. Fifty years ago, Night City’s Corpo Plaza was blasted open by a thermonuclear discharge that sent the Japanese giant packing. The charges had been set by three Edgerunners: Rogue, Morgan Blackhand and Johnny Silverhand - accessorily a well-respected Rockerboy and front-line member of the band SAMURAI. Only Rogue survived that fateful night, or so the street lingo goes, having gone on to start a legitimate consultation business as well as a fruitful career in the hospitality business. Her bar, the Afterlife, is Night City’s hotspot for every techie, script kiddie and accomplished cyber-spelunker.

Our gal Vivian knows this. She knows this, because Vivian “V.” Banks lives two lives.

In one of them, she’s a lean and hungry Junior Executive in Arasaka’s Counter-Intel division. In that line of work, you either fuck someone’s prospects or protect your own, or ensure that no up-and-comer just out of the company’s Law School program manages to push you off the board. She knows full well that in centuries past, corpo-speak was made up of mild euphemisms that at best referred to destroying a rival’s prospects or lifelihood. Taking a life was something that required careful deliberation, especially when tossing a fat severance bonus into an aging CFO’s three-piece pockets and letting your erstwhile rival snort cocaine off of the rolling hips of Tahitian dancers was so much cheaper...

Nowadays, zeroing someone is commonplace.

You’re born for Arasaka, and chances are you’ll die for Arasaka just the same. Viv’s killed, lied, cheated and even stole her way to her position, remorse being this vaguely churning sense of coldness in her gut that keeps one-night stands coming in and out of her bedroom. She only remembers her parents as being credit-chip enablers and personal enhancement drug addicts, cutting ties with them so completely on the day of her official hiring that it felt more like a tacit understanding.

On most days, sex and booze keep the cold at bay. On most days, Vivian Banks is a class-act of a sociopath. The stronger she gets, however, and the more paranoid her targets become - which reinforces her own paranoia. Before long, playing the part of one of Arasaka’s several poisonous flowers won’t work anymore.

Unfortunately, she trusts no-one. No Fixer could put her in contact with any hacker she’d trust, no rando fresh off the street with a retro-tinted National Arms plinker would satisfy her. To climb up the ranks and maybe share tea with Old Man Saburo himself, she needs a spotless performance record. She needs skills.

More importantly, she needs a reputation. That means leaving Arasaka Tower and mingling with the experts in their own field - and it means filling out her back book of successful hits. The drinks at the Afterlife are decent enough, but what she’s after is an official in.

If she can get to Rogue, or maybe even hook up with a ripperdoc not bought and paid for by the company, she might be able to score both new skills and increased performance...

If it were as simple as slitting Janet’s throat in HR and diving her way to an orgiastic performance review quite innocently left on the department’s server, she would’ve done that already. Viv is my obvious Pure Stealth build candidate, my main-line hacker and would-be engineer with a thing for black power skirts and designer offensive augments.

With that said, we’re months ahead of schedule, all the good shit’s already come out, so we’re stuck playing the waiting game...

What are your own character or build ideas for Cyberpunk 2077?

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

The End of Year Awards Are Back... and This Time, It’s Personal!

And so we approach the end of 2020, the year that never really began. On paper, at least, it looked incredibly promising. There were lots of great movies slated to come out; culture seemed slightly less paucity-riddled and pointless than usual; good things were in the air. Then COVID happened, and basically fucked everything. Actually, that’s not quite true: my personal year has been fucking spectacular. I’m in a long-term relationship with a gorgeous woman for the first time in forever- no more abrupt trysts and stolen moments for yer humble narrator: I’ve got a sumptuously plus-size lady-friend who actually wants to spend substantial amounts of time me (and has knockers you could sled down, were you so inclined). I also started a Youtube channel where I upload performances of magic tricks I’ve designed and a few people seem to quite like it. Oh, and I’ve written four novels, with a fifth well on its way to completion. Unfortunately, that’s my life, not the life of our civilisation and culture as a whole. The fact that bugger all happened in that makes this end-of-year round-up a little hard to write. With that in mind, I’m going to hand out the gongs for 2020, but I’m also going to do my usual dodge of giving end-of-year awards to things that I discovered in 2020, even if they came out the year, decade or century before. It’s not like any right-minded person gives a hoot about my opinion anyway. Right then, everyone clear on the rules? Then let’s roll up our sleeves and plunge elbow deep into the fetid trough of our decaying society to ferret out the best and worst of the Things That Humans Have Done Recently.

The ‘I Like It Because It Confused Thick People’ Award for Best High-Concept Sci-Fi Movie... … Goes to the sterling Tenet, a spy film that used entropy inversion and symmetric, opposite-direction timelines within the same physical space the way most spy films use hacking and guns. Christopher Nolan films are always intricately constructed and meticulously-executed, but this one must have had Japanese Master Puzzle-Box Makers crying into their breakfast cereal. Is breakfast cereal a thing in Japan? I honestly I have no idea. For some reason, all I can imagine is a sort of dry kedgeree where all the ingredients that aren’t rice have been removed. But I digress. For all its intricacy, Tenet is actually really easy to follow once you’ve grasped the basic premise that there’s a machine that lets people move backwards through time, and that this makes them appear to move in reverse to the rest of the world while they perceive the rest of the world as moving in reverse. Nolan maintains a mastery of cinematic visual language that makes even the most abstruse concept easy to wrap your head around. Nonetheless, following Tenet’s release, dumb people took to the Internet on mass to complain that the film was confusing and stupid, never once realising that their inability to conceptualise time in non-linear ways was their own failing, not Nolan’s. I find that refreshing. It’s nice to see a sci-fi film that’s actually made for smart-cookie sci-fi fans and doesn’t give a hoot if it alienate thickos.

The Award for Most Inexplicably Compelling Web Comic… … Goes to Questionable Content. I originally started reading Questionable Content because I’d heard that the female lead and love interest was a plus size lassie and that shit’s my jam. However, the art style makes everyone look like a skinny indie-type, regardless of their actual, in-universe size, so it doesn’t do much to titillate my Fat Admiring Titillation Centres. And yet, I’m over five hundred ‘episodes’ in and still reading. The thing is, I couldn’t tell you why for the life of me. Maybe it’s the hope that the art style will evolve to the point where the people look like actual human beings with different body types (but then, why would I care unless I was invested for some other reason). Maybe it’s the fact that when I get one of the many, many obscure band or pop culture references, I feel a little buzz of kinship with the writer. Maybe it’s the fact that it takes place in a universe where robots and superheroes are things that regularly happen, yet most of the strips are just normal people chatting shit in a coffee shop and the slice-of-life narrative/sci-fi setting appeals to my sense of juxtaposition. I don’t know, but I find it really compelling to the extent that I’ve pissed away entire days reading it. I have a horrible feeling that it’s a short step from this to really angsty hentai. If I start singing the praises of that, somebody please shoot me in the crotch.

The ‘Forest Gump Debating Peter Andre’ Award For Most Sustained or Elongated Instance of Stupidity… … Goes to Donald Trump. I was tempted just to award this gong to his entire presidency, but that wasn’t just stupid: it was also venal, corrupt, horrifying and punctuated by terrible moments of low cunning. So, instead, this award goes to his ‘soup’ rant. For those of you who missed it, the former President of the United States spent a really, really long time (in the run-up to the election) wittering on about protestors throwing cans of soup at police. What was dumb and weird about it was that he appeared to be extolling the virtues of soup as a siege weapon, going into really specific detail about how it was better than a brick because it could be thrown with more force, finishing with the utterance that protestors would just argue that “this is just soup for my family” if they were caught with the cans… which is phrased wrong in such a subtle and inhuman way it’s hard to imagine that anyone actually ever said it, at least in those words. I have no idea if protestors in America were throwing soup cans at police (which would be entirely justified considering how many innocent people American police have murdered in cold blood quite recently) or if this was a fantasy dreamed up by the former president in the cloudcuckooland that is his diseased little brain. Either way, the connected rant was balls deep in dumb.

The Most Disturbing Unintentional Impression of Vincent Price Award… … Goes to the narrator from One Step Beyond, a Twilight Zone-esque anthology of weirdness that purports to be based on true events and has to be seen to be believed. The stories are oft-disturbing instances of spooky-inflected human drama and can occasionally be quite disconcerting… until they’re book-ended by a dude who sounds like Vincent Price reading a children’s book in a really earnest voice. It’s weird and no, it didn’t hit our screens in Space Year 2020, it dates back to Ye Olden Times of the 1950s or 60s, when men were men, women were women and technincolour was a distant dream that could get you strung up for witchcraft. Nonetheless, I only encountered it this year, so it’s getting its prize. I warned you I was going to pull this shit, but you foolish fools didn’t listen.

The ‘It’s Not Gay If I Don’t Clench’ Award for Cognitive Dissonance… … Goes to Amazon Prime, the content-making branch of evil, tax-dodging, anti-monopoly-law-breaking megalith Amazon. You see, while Big Daddy Amazon is off being incredibly sinister and worrying, like a shifty vampire hanging off the economy’s throat, the creative people at Amazon Prime are busy making or acquiring some of the flat-out best TV ever committed to a streaming-service, from the extra-weird slice of fun-pie that is The Tick, to the entertainingly horrifying cultural dissection of The Boys to the utterly unique Carnival Row, to the superbly adapted American Gods. It’s a bit like discovering that Geoffrey Dahlmer single-handedly created a body of artistic work to rival Vincent Van Gogh’s when he wasn’t pouring acid onto the brains of emotionally vulnerable young adults. It gives me a headache.

The Clint Eastwood Award for Most Effective Older Gentlemen… … Goes to Joe Biden, for unseating dipshit in chief Donald Trump with the casual badassery of a Wild West gunslinger shooting a baddy (probably played by Leonardo Di Caprio) in the balls. I mean, he’s not the best Prez America could ask for but a) as a Brit I don’t have to care and b) anyone who ousts Trump gets mad props from me.

The ‘It’s a Pity Everything Else is Shit Now’ Award for Best New Ongoing Series… … Goes to my own Youtube series, Victor The Magician, in which I claim to be a reality-hopping, interdimensional wizard on an endless quest to… perform magic, basically. I’ll admit that the quality is super-variable (Youtube algorithms and their constant demand for fresh content be a harsh mistress, etc., etc.). However, when I’m good, I’m really good. If you’re looking for a punch-line other than the fact that this whole bit is a self-promoting plug, it’s this: my Youtube series really was the best thing to come out this year. Not because I’m great or anything, just by default. A promising year really did turn into a cultural wasteland the moment COVIDius Rex reared its scaly head.

The Zombie Ian Curtis Award for Most Crushing Disappointment… … Goes to Rick and Morty Series 4. As I think I’ve said before, it was still good, but it just didn’t reach the dizzy heights of nihilistic lunacy achieved in series 1-3. I think the problem is that the audience is meant to learn something from Rick’s poor choices, even if he doesn’t, because the creators saw the amazing success of Bojack Horseman and decided they wanted a slice of that sweet, tangy deconstructionist pie. It worked up to a point in the climax of Series 3, but having made their point, the showrunners probably should have moved onto a different point. They forgot that the appeal of Rick Sanchez is his combination of ‘entertaining car-crash of a human being’ and ‘unstoppable superbeing’. Push him through an arc and you risk breaking the thing that makes him and the show so endlessly watchable. Rick, unlike Bojack, just wasn’t built for heavy introspection. Also, the team hired on new writers who were less than familiar with the characters, setting and subtext, and that’s always an invitation to disaster.

The Special Sir Mixalot Award for Posteriority… ...Goes to… my girlfriend and glamorous assistant, Mystic Miss Terri, who’s arse is gorgeous and majestic.

The ‘Are They STILL Making That?’ Award for a Show You Forgot Existed And is Now Back… … Goes to Supernatural, which never technically went away and whose final series is apparently being broadcast on one of the 4 channels (though who knows which one, any more), It’s kind of nice to realise it’s still out there and be reminded that there are still people who care deeply about what happens to it. It’s like when you remember ‘oh yeah, [insert cute animal here] actually exists and isn’t just an internet meme. That’s nice’. Also, it’s good to see Jared Padelacki working steadily. It can’t be easy to find acting gigs when most producers just want to shoot you and mount your antlers over a fireplace.

The Irritating Magician Award for Something That Just Won’t Fuck Off… ...Goes to this blog entry, which is three pages long in Word. Good grief. Bye y’all! See you next year, assuming that the last few days of 2020 don’t culminate in a civilisation-destroying attack by giant space-ants. If that seems worryingly specific, let’s just say that- as Leonard Cohen would say “I’ve seen the future and, brother, it is murder”… by giant space-ants.

[kokkuri3]

I think VnC’s treatment of female characters is better than in PH, where most of them were props, tools to further the development of males, *coughLacieyoudeservedbetter*, tools to humanise the males *coughAdayoucan’tfixhimwithlove, endlessly forgiving and impossibly saintly *coughreallyAlyssyou’rejustgonnaforgiveJacklikethatyouarenotangryatall??*, amongst other problematic tropes.

VnC’s treatment of female characters is absolutely better than PH’s-- in fact, I’d say VnC was one of the few shounen manga to consistently treat its female characters with the same passion and respect as its male ones. One thing I say often is that VnC feels as thought it was written with Mochizuki having acknowledged PH’s problems (the complete lack of nonwhite characters, the continual mistreatment of female characters, the at times facetious treatment of issues such as incest or pedophilia which is... Not A Fan) and to that effect, I think she is making a deliberate effort to make multiple female characters with their own arcs which exist outside of men, who have important relationships with other women, who are capable of agency in the same capacity as their male counterparts.

This post isn’t really about VnC though so I’m not gonna sing its praises much anymore. I’ve talked before about how, despite being written by a woman, despite clearly acknowledging misogyny as a chronic problem among violent men PH is... not especially self aware when it comes to the misogyny of its own narrative.

I’ve made my thoughts on Lacie clear before (see here) and particularly how I believe her treatment was one of the times where PH’s treatment of women was particularly remarkable in that it’s good, despite her arc being drenched in misogynistic abuse and violence. I absolutely wish that the atrocities pinned on Lacie being not her fault was made more clear (aside from what I said in the post, and Oz saying that Lacie would never desire for the destruction of the world she loved) but I don’t think her writing itself was misogynistic-- I’d even go as far as to say it was feminist, though, obviously, I’m open to disagreement.

What most certainly does piss me off, however, is the writing of Ada’s arc. Yesterday I joked about Ada being the ‘anti-Lacie,’ and while it was a joke, I still intended some seriousness with it. Unlike Lacie, who was forced to constantly reevaluate her morals and the positions of her and her loved ones as a person whose existence was an inherent sin and who was abused throughout her life, Ada’s arc is built around the fact that she has never had to question anything. Similarly, while Lacie’s arc is about how she sought her own agency despite being surrounded by and allowed only those who were at best complacent in her suffering, Ada’s arc is about how... she continually sought out and apologized for a misogynistic predator despite being surrounded by better options.

The gender of the Core of the Abyss is something which I think warrants a separate post, but the official translation refers to the Core as being female, and for nearly the entire story she takes the form of a girl. Lacie reached out to an entity referred to and most often perceived as female, sought to understand her, and was abused as a specific consequence of this. Ada, meanwhile, made no real attempts at sympathy for her female counterparts. She never sought to question the circumstances of Noise, or Echo, or their relationship with Vincent. She gave forgiveness for crimes she had not been affected by nor did she even understand; her defense of Vincent was done not out of concern for Noise’s psyche but out of unquestioned pity for her abuser.

Ada’s arc bothers me for its utter lack of agency. She was a teenaged girl, expected to fix a predatory, abusive man in his twenties, and throughout her arc she is given no real means of choosing other options nor protecting herself. Her decision to defend a predator was not even an educated one; she simply did not know. Nor did she ever really come to understand anything about Vincent, aside from brief glimpses into his past. Ada is dragged around by the plot, pursuing an abuser she did not know was an abuser yet still felt sure she could heal, being forbidden from choice-- where she was not denied choice in the sense that she lacked the knowledge to make one, she was denied choice via other characters forbidding her. She was not allowed to protect Vincent though she wanted to because Vincent felt it was too dangerous to allow her to, she was not allowed to remain beside her friends and family though she wanted to because they felt it was too dangerous to allow her to, she wasn’t allowed to stay with Vincent because it was too dangerous, she wasn’t allowed to see him again because it was too dangerous... and she’s never given the choice to do anything but go along with it.

Alyss’s forgiveness of Jack is... a more complicated issue. That Ada “forgive” Vincent-- along with many of their other interactions, I might add-- felt utterly meaningless to me. Ada had never really perceived Vincent as performing a slight against her, being perfectly willing to assign any violence he committed against her as either her own fault, or part of his mental illness, thus Not His Fault. That Alyss forgive Jack, who was violent towards her, who she understood as victimizing her and others... I don’t like it, exactly, but at least it’s not the same.

I’m not sure “forgive” is even the correct word for what she did-- she acknowledged him, and she was gentle, but she never told Jack that she forgave him. Vincent’s dialogue during Retrace CIII supplements this in saying he suspects that Alyss’s feelings for Jack are the same as his own.

Vincent feels unable to either forgive Jack nor reject him entirely, feeling that he had done too much good for him to ever really hate him. Alyss, similarly, felt too strong a love for Jack to reject him outright. She never expressed sympathy for his actions, nor did she make any attempts to defend him. There was no misunderstanding on Alyss’s part on whether her love for Jack was unhealthy, but she loved him nonetheless. When she finally “finds” him, she offers no words of kindness. She simply expressed her gratitude in having done so before calling him a hopelessly lonely man, making no further attempts at even acknowledging him.

Of course, there is the inherent misogyny of a character arc about a young girl infatuated with an adult man, to the point of destroying her other relationships in pursuit of it. That Alyss was deliberately isolated and that Jack be the only person aside from the other Alice and the Core of Abyss-- two entities that cannot be meaningfully separated from herself-- is an obvious contributor, but that does not erase the problematic aspects of her arc. Then there’s the matter of Alyss’s wish to die being the only one treated as though it was a necessary evil, as opposed to a reflection of the individual’s personal instability that should be addressed through supporting them as opposed to killing them. It’s sort of an unfair double standard, and that the plot make Alyss’s death a necessary evil is a matter of author choice, not something inherent to the work.

On the topic of other instances of misogynistic writing in PH as a whole, there’s the matter of Alice and Sharon’s arc. While I don’t think either arc is in itself misogynistic, both characters are totally ignored in favor of their male counterparts. Despite Alice being one of the most important characters in the series, she has almost no narration and is frequently characterized as, to quote a friend of mine, a “feral animal.” She’s not given the same emotional or psychological depth as Oz or Gil, despite having around the same number of appearances and being the plot’s catalyst. Sharon has her own arc, theoretically, but we only ever see it within the context of Break or Reim despite being more of a main character than the latter. That Sharon spend entire volumes not appearing a single time is a recurring joke. A major part of her characterization-- that she feel insecure in relationships due to her halted aging-- is not revealed until the last chapter of the comic. Her arc ends with her marrying to a character who... I wouldn’t have been upset if the two of them had had any real interactions outside of Break, but they didn’t. There’s no inherent problem with their relationship except it’s boring and rushed.

Then there’s the matter of the sheer number of female versus male characters whose purpose in the plot is to die violently-- the Flower Girl, Vanessa Nightray, Bernice Nightray, Miranda Barma, Mary, etc. All of these characters did little or nothing to actually progress the plot, and all are murdered by a male character with the exception of the Flower Girl (who is a sex worker in the anime adaptation, and while I don’t know the canonicity of that, I feel it worth mentioning). 

Ultimately, PH suffers a lot for Mochizuki’s internalized misogyny. Her narrative seems over eager to forgive perpetrators of misogynistic violence, and in many ways over eager to characterize sympathetic men as misogynists. A Pandora Hearts without its themes of misogyny seems... nearly incomprehensible, though that’s in large part because of how meticulous the narrative as a whole is. The improvements Mochizuki has made subsequently, though, are noticeable and greatly appreciated.

[whetstonefires]

director's cut top guide? I don't have a section in specific pick your favorite I guess I love the whole thing

Awwwww thank you. 💗😊 For the compliment, the interest, and the guidance.  Additionally thanks because I just discovered I didn’t update this fic in October like I thought I did! It’s still in the status it had in July. So uh. I’ll be getting right on that. ˋ( ° ▽、° )

I think I’m gonna go with a passage back near the start, in the first half of chapter 4, the one where Tifa’s getting Vincent out of his coffin. I like how it came out and it’s pretty important, and if I’ve rambled about it at all, it wasn’t recently.

-

There’s a push-pull effect fundamental to this scene–first physically, with Tifa moving and destroying actual barriers, and Vincent repeatedly attempting to withdraw. But also on the level of Tifa attempting a series of verbal sallies, which Vincent initially rebuffs and then ignores by vampirically pulling the covers over his head and generally putting the passive in passive-aggressive.

But after telling her to go ahead and set the building on fire with him in it, Vincent gets his lid on and settles on being inert, and Tifa gets to do a monologue.

There are a lot of speeches in this fic, honestly, because of the precedent set by canon/the kinds of characters I’m working with, but most of them are nowhere near this long, and even though Tifa’s trying to achieve a specific rhetorical objective here, they’re generally not quite this honest.

“It’s easy to decide to die,” she told him, at length. “It’s easy to stop fighting when there doesn’t seem to be any hope. I know.

“But you’ll always regret it. You know that. If you’d been brave enough to choose Lucrecia over the Turks before Hojo got his grubby claws into her, maybe none of this would ever have happened. If she’d been brave enough to choose you sooner, it might have been okay. Not choosing is almost always a bad choice. If you come out of hiding, more things will happen—things that can’t unhappen. I know that’s frightening. But things happen without you, too. When you’re not there. When you do nothing.”

Tifa rocked back on her heels. “You can’t make the world go back to the way it was before, get back the same happiness or hope from your memories…not even if you could wind back time.”

Here Tifa is combining her intimate knowledge of Vincent’s circumstances with her own situation to create a sort of…weaponized empathy.

She can’t afford for Vincent to not listen to her, because she refuses to either give up on her mission or kill him, so when the normal approach fails she falls back on contingency and proceeds to run absolutely roughshod over all his personal boundaries.

Now, being able to wield future information against people this way is one of the major features of this general genre of time travel story, particularly when (like Tifa here) the traveler had level-ups, but didn’t get to carry them into New Game Plus. Tifa later uses it against Tseng with no artfulness whatsoever.

But that kind of blunt, bludgeoning use of intimate knowledge is a power game; it’s not how you treat a friend. So Tifa spends a lot of this speech, especially the opening, drawing connections between her experience and Vincent’s, exposing herself emotionally as much as can reasonably be managed without going off on any Tifa-centric tangents.

Being displaced in time and separated from everything you cared about is relevant, here. And she’s also able to bring her personal experience with feeling helpless and trapped–not by the sort of clear antagonistic obstacle you can batter down with your fists but by the certainty that every possible course of action is Terrible and Wrong and so you can’t act, because you can’t choose–she specifically frames it in terms of having to decide between binary options, because that’s how we’ve seen her experience it wrt i.e. ‘talking to Cloud about how his brain is weird.’

The experience is similar enough to Vincent’s, especially his not-initiating of important relationship conversations with Lucretia at the beginning, for these terms to work for communication purposes, but it’s very definitely Tifa’s experience being mapped onto Vincent’s here, and proffered to ameliorate the inherent violence of what she’s doing.

Her coping mechanism for that trapped feeling, though, is to distract herself with Doing Something Constructive that allows her to avoid the issue without feeling like she’s stuck.

There’s a certain extent to which allowing time to process or grieve is important, and Tifa is bad at allowing it, largely I think because she’s very aware of the danger of getting mired in paralysis and ruminating on the bad thing until it’s all that exists. Vincent more than anyone else in the cast is defined by his choice to identify with his trauma, and while Aerith is the one most defined by trying not to do that, Tifa’s far enough to that end to create a conflict in viewpoint even when nothing vitally important is at stake.

I also included a dialogue ping to the place where she talks about this in the Advent Children movie, though if you’ve been following my opinions on ffvii any time at all you probably know I have so many problems with thedecisions made with Tifa in that film. Even the parts that areconsonant with her established characterization require her to have rolled back mostof her development from the OG.

The part where she doesn’t come with Cloud on the rescue mission shebullies him into is so utterly backward and the opposite of her establishedbehavior and values and just basic logic that I have to sort of write around it,because I can’t accept that it happened. But if we ignore that bit, and the amount of self-centeredness in the harangue, some elementsof the interaction have potential.

Because if nothing else it’s the most explicit verbal treatment in the Compilation of the recurring theme of people being ‘stuck.’ Not by bars and walls and certain death, but by the prisons inside their heads.

“But…there are still possibilities. Still things you can do to make the world better. Her choices…they weren’t your fault. But whatever you’re blaming yourself for right now…lying here until you die won’t make it better. The biggest sin of all, to me, is not trying to make things better.

“You aren’t a monster, Vincent. Nothing Hojo did to your body, nothing Lucrecia did to bring you back, could make you one. As long as you have your mind, you decide. And it’s what you decide to do that makes the difference between a human and anything else.”

She’s hitting hard, here: call to action, absolution, extremely targeted personal affirmation, clarification that she really does know what’s up with him, new information that Lucrecia was involved with his current status, and finally, optimistic conceptual framework imposed on the situation, since Vincent certainly isn’t capable of that himself.

This treatment of Vincent’s situation vis-a-vis humanity is, of course, also very relevant to the ensuing plot-central question of what Sephiroth is, and whether he has the power to make good life choices. Which Tifa is not nearly as sure of as with Vincent, since while she stands by the principle that it’s a matter of choice she knows for a fact that Vincent can make good ones, but has certainly never seen evidence with Sephiroth.

And then of course there’s Genesis, who would love to get everyone to accept that his sins are a function of what rather than who he is, and drag down with him anyone he can reach, and who by his very effort to sell the idea makes it seem less likely.

I’ve excerpted only Tifa’s dialogue and some of the tags from the rest of the passage, because her narration gets lengthier and isn’t what I’m focusing on for this commentary.

She waited. But the man in the box didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. “Lucrecia is still alive,” she told him. “Preserved in crystal. Hidden away. You two really are a pair, aren’t you? And maybe you’re both right to be concerned—she’s got Jenova in her, and you’ve got those things that replaced your Limit Breaks. But they don’t control you.”

[…]

“They don’t control you,” she repeated. “Hojo doesn’t control you. You can choose to do nothing for the rest of your long life if that’s what you really want. But it’s not your destiny. And it’s not what’s right.”

‘It’s not what’s right’ is an interesting line in retrospect, because Tifa’s saying it within a framework of denying Vincent’s reasoning that there’s something somehow virtuous about closing himself off from the world, so he can’t do any more harm. Specifically in the context of assuring him that he has control over his actions, and his Limit Break things don’t.

But in the overall argument, about how his power of self-determination relates to responsibility to the world, it can also be read as a moral condemnation, the suggestion that there is a specific thing that’s right, and Vincent isn’t doing it.

“Sephiroth is an adult now,” she said [….] “They put him in the Shinra military. Made him a General.”

[…] “If Hojo and Jenova have their way, he’ll become a monster soon,” she confided in the coffin. “Maybe there’s no way to change that. Maybe it’s too late for him. Maybe it’s his destiny. But it’s not too late for the rest of the world, not yet. I know that much. Everyone who has the power to fight him has a responsibility to try.”

That’s where her speech winds up–rather abrupt return to her earlier, blown-off argument about Sephiroth imminently killing everybody and how Vincent should help. He doesn’t do anything. He continues to be a box.

So then she punches her way into the coffin.

“What are you?”

She knew it wasn’t her feat of strength that had impressed him, though he probably appreciated the rhetorical force of it.

I really like this line. Describing ‘punching open the box someone’s hiding in at the climax of an inspirational speech’ as a rhetorical device is the kind of thing I find very funny, and I got characterization of both of them and story advancement into the sentence too.

“Tifa,” she said. “Tifa Lockhart.” She held out her right hand. “Get up, Vincent Valentine. The world isn’t done with you yet.”

He let her pull him up onto his feet.

Some obvious symbolism there, fitted into the very important fact that this worked.

Getting Vincent out of his coffin has been the only thing Tifa’s attempted so far in the story that has turned out more or less exactly as planned. Not entirely easily, and not following a step-by-step plot because that’s not Tifa, but without random factors interceding and requiring her to recalculate wildly, make decisions entirely on the fly, and draw up a new set of plans in the aftermath, either.

In a way, the Vincent recruitment section microcosms the fight Tifa’s having with the universe throughout the fic, in her efforts to make things line up so she can get a better outcome to this nightmare scenario she’s been pitched back into: direct, physical actions are persistently vital and necessary, but her real success must always hinge on her particular knowledge, and ability to apply it.

Apply it specifically, thus far, mostly to getting people to take her seriously and do as she says. Because she’s been placed in a position where as useful and important as her personal power is, it’s not the right tool to rely on for her central task. That has to be tackled via community building, in a context that intensely disinclines her to attempt such overtures.

Which in turn invokes one of the several great dichotomies of Tifa’s in-game characterization–the periodic tension between her social impulses, to bind and soothe and promote bonding, and her…reactive impulses, to seize the world in both hands and find something to fight and do and change, so she doesn’t feel helpless in the face of all that is evil.

The parts of her character arc in the game that aren’t actively about Cloud seem to center around being forced to face that both these behavior patterns (especially in their role as coping mechanisms) are capable of being not only inadequate but actively, harmfully inappropriate to particular situations.

And then coping with this fact, and continuing to inhabit these parts of her identity in ways that turn out constructive. E.g., choose caring for Cloud over leading party to do anti-Shinra things that have only the vaguest prospect of actually averting the apocalypse; successfully retrieve his mind from the Lifestream. Help punch Sephiroth to death and stop him from holding back Holy; world saved.

If you try really hard to get a personal moral for Tifa out of the OG that isn’t pretty sexist, it might come down to something like: realize that you might be acting wrongly; then, act. Stay afraid, but do it anyway.

And, optimistically: perhaps you do not have to choose between your faces. Perhaps they are both allowed. Perhaps all of you is allowed. Perhaps you are enough.

One of the things Tifa and Cloud share is needing so desperately to be enough.

In a way that’s a feeling that unites the entire party, in their various ways, except maybe Aerith, depending on how you interpret her relationship to the obligations of being the Last Ancient. But Tifa and Cloud are about the same age and come from the same context and share a major trauma, so it looks particularly similar in them.

And of course there are also ways it looks especially similar between Tifa and Vincent, because they’re the most hopeless romantics in the party. 😆

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 49.25 - Manchester vs Trinity, Cambridge

The fact that this blog is going to be written entirely in character as the narrator of the novel Ducks, Newburyport, the fact that you’re probably going to have to look that up if you don’t know what it is otherwise you’ll have no idea whats going on, the fact that Manchester and Trinity have seven UC titles between them, the fact that there’s no reason for me doing this other than the fact that I’m reading that book at the moment and its constantly running through my mind, the fact that here’s your first starter for ten, Starter for Ten, James McAvoy, Benedict Cumberbatch, cabbage patch, the fact that Manchester are mascotted by a bee and Trinity are mascotted by some sort of homeknitted Sooty, the fact that I’ve already said here’s your first starter for ten so I should probably start, the fact that Webber wins the first points for Trinity with ‘Capital’, following a list of clues, though I’m not sure which one he got it on, the fact that I never am when there are lists of clues for questions, but I suppose its probably often some combination that sets off a light in the contestants heads, Eureka! Topeka, Toto, lions, the fact that the first set of bonuses are on scientists, Dorothy Hodgkins, the fact that I remember hearing her name in lectures but can never remember what exactly she did, the fact that the first bonus question asked for a specific vitamin, the fact that when a question on University Challenge asks for a specific vitamin its nearly always B12, K12, the fact that no one really knows any other specific vitamin, so its pretty obvious the answers going to be B12, the fact that Rogers negs the next starter, but can’t even guess, even though he knows the answer will be a city, the fact that thats a bit mean of me to say, isn’t it, the fact that its probably really hard to think of something in that situation, the fact that Trinity can’t get it either so Manchester get a reprieve, the fact that Moscow was known as the third Rome, the fact that I’d never heard of the third Rome, let alone heard of it being Moscow, the fact that Crawford buzzes in very quickly when she hears the words ‘potato-eaters’, Vincent Van Gogh, Goch, Go, Goff, the fact that the next bonuses were on EU treaties in the week that Brexit finally happened, the fact that there’s no way they could have known this to schedule it like that, the fact that they’d have had to know ahead of time that Brexit would be postponed in March, October, December, the fact that they couldn’t have known that, the fact that it must have just been pure chance, the fact that Crawford wants Webber to guess a five letter word for a question that asks for a four letter word, the fact that he doesn’t, the fact that what if his spelling had been wrong, the fact that I am 100% sure the answer for the PIcture starter is Bavaria, but its also a guess, the fact that Webber says ‘educatory guess’ not ‘educated guess’, the fact that is that also right?, the fact that Manchester finally get a question right, the fact that they’re already 75 points behind at this point, the fact that Hughes gets the next starter to put a stop to their comeback, the fact that Hughes really does get a lot of starter questions, the fact that Trinity don’t get the author of ‘The Children’s Book’, but I know its AS Byatt, because I have a copy of it in my flat which my grandma gave me but which I’ve not read because it looks unspeakably boring, the fact that I’d probably never have heard of AS Byatt if I didn’t have the book, the fact that there’s loads of authors I’d never have heard of if I didn’t have their books, the fact that most of the time I need to have read about a book to know things about it, but I know stuff about films that I’ve never seen, apparently by osmosis, the fact that I should read more, the fact that I’m trying, but Ducks, Newburyport is just so damn big, the fact that its still really good though, the fact that I’d recommend it to anyone, the fact that this homage probably isn’t painting it in a good light, the fact that I assure you Lucy Ellmann does a better job of this than I do, the fact that Webber also gets a lot of starter questions, the fact that Trinity don’t know a lot about astronomy, astrology, solar flares, sun spots, Griffiths observatory, Palomar observatory, Jodrell Bank, the South Bank, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Glenfinnan Viaduct, Hogwarts Express, the fact that the next question is about trigonometry, the fact that I’d have known that when I was studying trigonometry but its a bit of a pointless question to have here, the fact that Webber gets it anyway, the fact that they get two bonuses on the architect Owen Jones, Chavs, chavs, the fact that that stands for council housed and violent, the fact that its widely regarded that thats actually a backronym, the fact that it apparently derives from the Roman word ‘chavi’, meaning child, the fact that who was using Roman words to coin new terms in the 21st century, the fact  that there are no chavs in Harry Potter, the fact that do you get wizard chavs, the fact that David Bowie is the music starter, the fact that David Bowie was probably a wizard, Ian Dury, the Blockheads, hit me with your rhythm stick, the fact that Trinity don’t recognise Joni Mitchell, the fact that Joni Mitchell is probably the best singer-songwriter ever, the fact that is it just me who thinks that, the fact that Trinity know novels from their opening passages, the fact that I used to know the start of Northern Lights, the fact that I used to know the chapter titles for that too, the Decanter of Tokay, the fact that I also used to have the opening page of Barack Obama’s autobiography memorised, the fact that it was in the bathroom for months, the fact that Paxman says ‘You are on fire tonight!’ after Trinity get the novel questions, the fact that he’s absolutely right, the fact that they are very much on fire, the fact that Manchester haven’t had a look in for ages, the fact that they have a guess on the next starter, but they’re wrong and Crawford picks it up, the fact that Paxman says ‘you can give the scientific or the common name’ for a genus of hoofed mammals, the fact that who knows the scientific name for a genus of hoofed mammals but not the common name, the fact that the answer was goat, the fact that is there anyone on earth who knows the word ‘capra’ but doesn’t know the word ‘goat’, the fact that they just put that in the question to make the show seem more intellectual don’t they, the fact that I hadn’t noticed that before, the fact that they quite often say ‘give the scientific or common name’, the fact that are Manchester ever going to get another question, the fact that the third bonus question on adaptations is ‘the Turn of the Screw’ and I swear I’d been thinking of the Turn of the Screw for the first one even though it had no link to it, the fact that thats just a total coincidence isn’t it, the fact that Manchester have finally got another one, the fact that hopefully they can get up above fifty points, the fact that anything below fifty points seems like a truly dreadful effort, but if you can get just above that it seems almost respectable, the fact that Green gets the next one too, two in a row, hattrick, connect four, the fact that they get all of the picture bonuses too, the fact that this puts them over fifty, the fact that Green gets a hattrick with an excellent early buzz of ‘aubergine’, the fact that Paxman says ‘good buzz’ and it was, the fact that where was this form earlier, the fact that if this had come in a bit earlier then they might have stood a chance, the fact that Green goes for four in a row on the next starter, but gets it wrong, the fact that Hughes gets the next one, the fact that he’d been quiet for a while but you can never count him out, the fact that Booth gets his first of the night, the fact that Manchester nearly have a hundred now, the fact that that really would have been respectable, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Mesozoic, Triassic, the fact that in Trinity’s last episode Hughes guessed Palmerston for a Prime Minister question and if he’d guessed that again they’d have been right again, the fact that Trinity are running away with it again, the fact that they have already got the highest score of the series so far, the fact that will they hit three hundred, the fact that they only need ten more points, the fact that Hughes buzzes in with ‘martlet’ and they’ve got it, the fact that it was his seventh starter of the match, the fact that Trinity scored three hundred, the fact that Manchester scored ninety five, the fact that its the highest combined score we’ve had in two years, the fact that Trinity still have to win another match to reach the semi finals, the fact that Manchester aren’t kncked out yet either, the fact that I don’t know who’s playing next week, the fact that every time I pick up Ducks, Newburyport I think ‘how did she write this’ and having done this now I am even more amazed, the fact that this goes into nowhere near the amount of detail she goes into, but I have no clue how she manages it, the fact that it must have been a pain to edit, the fact that if I really wanted to copy the style I’d have had to put a huge list in at some point, but that might have been too annoying for this blog, the fact that I might go back and add a list anyway, the fact that I don’t know how she ends the book so I might just have to end it here because I don’t know how I’ll get out otherwise

[maxwell-grant]

Odd-ish question. Imagine, if you will, that a new The Shadow film or prestige TV Series is being made. In your head, what's the trailer?

I gotta say, it was rather disheartening to learn in film school that most directors/producers/showrunners don't actually get to have much say in how their work is promoted, because, at least as far as I know, that stuff is outsourced to a separate team. I mean, I get why this happens, it's ultimately for the best, but it's still kind of a bummer to me personally since I do like making trailers and teasers (I do make my living as an editor and all).

I'm not gonna get too into what I imagine said trailer to be like, because it's one of those things I'd rather keep to myself until I get to make something of it, but I will talk a bit about how I think a marketing strategy for a new Shadow film or series could be like.

First and foremost, I think anyone who wants to tackle The Shadow, even just to promote him, has gotta understand what about the character works, what influenced his creation, what's he got that can be promoted, what can grab audiences, what can get them to stay, and so on. "Fandoms" nowadays rule the way media is consumed and sustained, and you see it especially in modern cartoons that live or die on the audience's devotion. That is one of the reasons why I made this blog, because I want the character to thrive again and I want to provide people with a catalogue of information they can dig into.

The Shadow was, for a decade and then some, arguably the biggest crimefighter of American media, figurehead of not just one but TWO mediums, and the only reason he existed at all was because Street & Smith's marketing ploy for a faceless narrator turned out far more successfully than they could have anticipated. That he's survived the total downfall of American pulps and decades of mismanaged adaptations, as still one of the most famous of all pulp heroes, is testament to how strong the original concept still is, the appeal the character held. I made this post partially to highlight that.

And first and foremost, is to build up the character. Take advantage of the fact that the general audiences only have the vaguest idea of what this guy is like, and treat him not like an old character making a comeback, but like he's about to debut for the first time. As I mentioned prior, 1930s radio audiences were enthralled by The Shadow not just because he was the most interesting part of the stories he was promoting, but because he was completely unlike every other narrator in radio at the time, a hissing disembodied voice taunting and cackling malevolently, taunting and daring you.

Think of the marketing strategy for Godzilla 1998, and the waves it made as, instead of just plastering images of the monster front and center, they built up the idea of Godzilla through ads like these, instilling in your head the concept of an unfathomably large monster trodding it's way into the city and wreaking devastation with every footstep, even if you couldn't see what it actually was. It was a particularly genius move because even at this point, most Americans had at least a slight idea of what Godzilla was, or they were at least familiar with the concept through parody or pop culture osmosis. So what the marketing did was break down and fragment the Godzilla concept, and gradually put it back together under the heads of viewers. The movie sucked, mind you, and that reinforces my point: It didn't turn a profit based on it's stellar critical reputation or a prior American following for Godzilla, it turned a profit because the marketing was that good.

Joker is another example of a movie that managed to do well by essentially "re-selling" you it's titular character and through incredible marketing. IIf the idea seemed beyond stupid and unnecessary to most people at first, the Joker trailer did such a fantastic job at selling people on the concept that it immediately turned a lot of heads around. In fact, the trailer was so good, I suspect most people who went into the movie already had made up their minds on it's contents based entirely on the trailer, but I digress.

The film dissassembled the Joker bit by bit, both in marketing as well as it's story, and gave each of it's pieces it's own story. From the laughter as a replacement for tears, to the clown paint starting off as a form of confinement until it replaces the face of the broken man within, to even elements such as the green hair, gaunt physique and fondness for colored suits, all of these got a story, all of these had a "hook", all of these were given significance separate from the history of the character as a franchise supervillain, all of these were made interesting in ways people would be interested in learning more about. Why does The Joker laugh? Why is crying? What's "Arthur" like? What's he gonna do on the show? What the hell is this film going to have to do with Batman?

It got people talking and asking questions, and that's exactly what you want your audience to do. Even for a character as old and overexposed as the Joker, the movie still succeded, at least in marketing, in presenting as if we were going to see him for the first time, to the point all the film needed to secure it's Batman connection was just the name.

And Street & Smith was doing this even back then, when they were in the middle of transitioning The Shadow from radio narrator to pulp crimefighter. They started putting out shows where The Shadow would take a more active role, they started getting him to show up in other programs, they put out this contest where they gave out small lines where The Shadow told a detail about himself, and listeners had to piece it together. The radio show was told as if The Shadow was a real, active person, and this was something carried over to the pulps. This was, mind you, before Walter Gibson got to touch the character, but it shows that right upfront, Street & Smith knew how to market this character effectively, through mystery and build-up. I think there are ways to do that nowadays even besides the usual avenue of teasers and trailers.

And if I was going to make a trailer, if I was in charge of designing a marketing strategy or video and so on for The Shadow, this is what I think needs to be emphasized.

None of the promos show his costume in full. We get glimpses of it, like a slouch hat and red scarf abandoned in the middle of a square as a public ad, intense eyes leering over an urban landscape for a poster. A popular podcast gets hijacked in the middle of an ad break for The Shadow, and they act like nothing happened. An entire teaser goes by, and in it, all you see from him in costume is a hand with a Girasol Ring. We don't know who is the actor who's gonna be playing him, we hear laughs in the ads but never a speaking voice. A different rumor is confirmed every week.

The trailers show us scenes of agents interacting, policemen looking for him, criminals hurting others only to run terrified. All sorts of cryptic remarks, or terrified statements. We get an image of Harry Vincent standing on a bridge with gloved hands holding him, and to people unfamiliar, they think The Shadow's about to throw this guy off a bridge, and the fans know better.

Some people think this is all unnecessary, I mean, they know who The Shadow is, he's a 30s radio vigilante who inspired Batman and who Alec Baldwin played once. He's got a girlfriend named Margo, he shoots people. What's the point of all this?

And then The Shadow starts to show up a bit more, and he does the things that people seem to forget he's capable of, for good and bad. And gradually, the trailers and teasers and ads start to unveil just how little general audiences really know The Shadow. And, hopefully, they start wanting to learn more.

[thetirisfaltheatretroupe]

[Script Archive] The Altruist - A Tale of Kindness Gone Wrong

<< The following is a play that has been performed but not yet retired from the Tirisfal Troupe’s lineup, however, use of it for one’s own production purposes is allowed with proper credit to the Tirisfal Theatre when performing! Please contact us if you plan to use this particular script so that we know, thank you! Trivia will be located at the bottom! >>

SETTING: Lordaeron, circa 400 years ago.

CHARACTERS: Lord Vincent (main character), Lady Helena (Vincen’t wife), Ser Harmun (butler of the manor), Townsperson 1, Townsperson 2, Servant 1, Servant 2, The Stranger (antagonist). Narrator

SUMMARY: A lord known for his acts of kindness and bountiful wealth takes in a man whom he believes to be down on his luck. After taking this man in, he notices strange occurrences around his manor, but denies anything is wrong even when his family and friends confront him about the peculiarities of his new guest.

<ACT 1: Scene opens with narration. The narrator places an Autumn sapling  from stealth, placed behind them, as the spotlight is shone. They take a bow, and speak grimly> NARRATOR: When the first frost falls upon any land, the time for generosity and giving is upon us. Mortals, of all creeds and colors, rely on one another to survive, to thrive.

Yet some are more generous than others. Some strangers would give you the very clothes upon their backs to keep you warm.

Look to the one on your left. Are they a loved one? Someone you know? If they are not, would you give them the contents in your wallet, should they be in need?

Most of you would say ‘no’, I wager. To some, this is selfishness. To others, this is practicality. A defense, a desire for one’s own prosperity over another, and to avoid being taken advantage of.

Acts of kindness are heralded as life’s great boon. It is true, that to give selflessly is admirable, and yet, just as there are those who would give their home to shelter you from the rain…

< A shaman casts Healing Rain on the stage > ...there are those who would use that chance to take over your life.

Tonight, we invite you to behold a story about what happened to a lord who let the wrong. One. In.

< the narrator bows and leaves the stage. Lord Vincent takes to center stage and adjusts his coat. The narrator chimes in once they are out of view and vincent is ready. He is joined on stage by the townsfolk > NARRATOR: In an age long passed, there existed a small, but prosperous village. This village, nestled in the heartland of Lordaeron, was home to a most beloved Lord.

The lord’s name was Vincent, and he was described as selfless and giving. Sitting upon an empire of trade, he cared little for the money in his pocket each day, knowing it would be filled and then some by the time the sun set.

< Vincent is shown throwing bags of money into the crowd of townsfolk around him, who applaud and cheer him as he bows. While this happens, the Stranger walks onto the stage behind them and sits down > He was praised and heralded for his giving nature, and those closest to him in life knew that none loved his fellow villagers more than he. But one day, a cloud came over the village, and an endless rain began to fall.

< shaman actor casts Healing Rain to create a downpour. The townsfolk put on hoods and begin to walk away >

VINCENT: Oh dear, do get home quickly, everyone! You wouldn’t want to catch your death of cold from the rain!

<he begins to walk away, but then turns around and notices the homeless stranger >

You there - you may want to take shelter from the rain!

STRANGER: You who are fortunate knows only optimism. Tell me, how would one who has no home take shelter from the rain?

Do I use the lid of a crate? Do I sleep in the stalls with the pigs and cattle?

All valid solutions, and yet nothing compares to the simple warmth of a fire and a roof and walls to keep the elements away.

Nay, carry about your day, and allow me to drown...

VINCENT: You poor man. I had no idea! Life was not meant to be lived in squalor. Come, I’ve plenty of room at my estate on the hill.

STRANGER: <looks up at him and smiles > Truly you have a heart that bleeds for us all. I accept your offer, good lord. May I stay until a time I can get back on my feet?

VINCENT: Of course, come, come right this way!

< both walk off stage as the narration continues, during which they re-enter from the side they left once Lady Helena and Ser Harmun are on stage. Scene shifts to ‘interior - Vincent’s Manor’, servant 1 and 2 ‘cleaning’ at the wall in the background >

HELENA: My dearest, you’ve returned! And who is this fellow you’ve brought with you? HARMUN: My Lord, if I’d known you were bringing in guests, I’d have set another place at the table. Do give me some time to amend this grievous mistake. < Harmun bows and leaves the room >

VINCENT: Oh, this fellow has no place to stay. This rain looks to be a bit of a long one, so why not allow him to stay here, I thought?

< the stranger walks around the room suddenly, completely ignoring Helena and rummaging around >

HELENA: As always, such kindness from you, love. Erm, good sir, could you please not touch the books on the bookshelf, though? I just rearranged them, I’d like them to stay in the order they are-- VINCENT: Helena, please. Allow him to do as he wishes. Maybe he’d like to read a little before bed?

< the stranger takes some books in hand and turns to Vincent and nods > STRANGER: Oh yes, I… I like to read. Yes, I like to read...a lot. And...and write.

VINCENT: See? One who reads will surely treat our library with respect! Now, let’s all wash up for dinner.

< they all leave the stage as the narration continues. During the narration, Lord Vincent re-enters and walks to the other side of the stage, while Ser Harmun approaches him with two of the servants in tow >

NARRATOR: Days had passed, and their guest seemed normal, if not a little bit...quirky. He did in fact love to read, so much that he’d gone through all the books in the study, as a matter of fact.

HARMUN: My Lord, I pray I do not find you at a terrible time?

VINCENT: < closes the scrolls he is reading > No no, I was just finishing up reading over this financial summary. I something the matter?

HARMUN: Well, m’lord, you see… it is something regarding your recent guest. These servants were the ones who brought it to my attention, perhaps they should be the ones to tell you.

VINCENT: Oh? Nothing dreadful, I hope? < Harmun bows and takes a step back, back facing towards the back wall. Servant 1 steps forth and bows> SERVANT 1: Lord, it is not without hesitation that I come and report this to you, but when we went to clean in your guest’s chambers last evening, there was something quite...unsettling.

SERVANT 2: <blurts out, frantically> Blood! Blood and paper everywhere!

SERVANT 1: Y-yes, lord. You see, his room was riddled in ripped pages and there was blood spattered everywhere. It smelled pungent, like gore.

SERVANT 2: We went to go get the other servants quickly, but could find no one! None! And then by the time we returned, the room was empty!

VINCENT: Wait, I am confused. It is as though you are claiming that my humble guest stole the books from the study and used them to clean up the mess of a murder.

SERVANT 1: If I am to be blunt, lord, we would not be coming to you were this not the belief we held.

SERVANT 2: He is mad, I tell you! You are laying it on far too lightly, this man is deranged! He talks to himself in the hall, all in tongues I tell you! None can understand the language he speaks, but it is a guttural one!

VINCENT: Now, cease this at once! I refuse to believe such a wild claim without proof! Can you or can you not provide me with assurance that this man did the things you claim?

SERVANT 2: Well, uh… I am certain if the premises is checked, we can find the pages he used to soak the blood from whatever it was he killed! HARMUN: <steps forward and bows again > My lord, I am sorry to interrupt, but if need be, I can provide a search of the manor and rally the servants to comb it up and down, discreetly as not to disturb our guest.

VINCENT: < draws a heavy sigh > No, that should be entirely unnecessary. Even if the sight of gore was one that could be hidden, I am certain the room would smell of it as well. Please, just go back to your duties.

SERVANT 1: But, my lord…

VINCENT: Go! He is my esteemed guest, you will treat him as though he is one and not make up wild tales just because you don’t desire to aid him. < both servants take a look at one another and hesitantly bow, then leave > HARMUN: If I may, sir… VINCENT: Harmun, you’ve been my most trusted friend for many years now. If there is one person I trust, it is you. Do you believe there is merrit to their claims?

HARMUN: My lord… if I am to be frank and honest, both those servants are newer to the estate, and it is entirely possible they are being dishonest. But I cannot for the life of me think of a reason they are not.

The room does not smell of a kill, but their claims of the other servants being absent is very much true. I believe it is worth looking into, at the very least. VINCENT: <draws a heavy sigh> Harmun, what is this world to come to if we cannot trust our fellow men? If it will put the minds of our employees at ease, I will speak with him.

They serve us well, it is the least I can do.

HARMUN: Then I will see if I cannot find the missing servants.

VINCENT: See to it that you do. Now, let me go find our friend. <both walk off stage, the Stranger walks on stage. Servant 1 and 2 change costumes to match the stranger with a hood, their names become ‘Uninvited Guest’. They toil in the background like the servants did> VINCENT: <walks on stage and waves at the Stranger> Hail friend! I trust you are enjoying your stay here?

STRANGER: <smiles at Vincent> Oh of course, my Lord. Your generosity has been most helpful. I am feeling much better these days despite the storm. If I had stayed out there, I would have died of illness, no doubt.

VINCENT: Yes, I do agree. Better that a good man found you then, yes? Haha...ahh...I’ve been hearing that some strange occurrences are going on in the manor. <he casts a glance at the pillaging Uninvited Guests>

STRANGER: Strange? Whatever do you mean, my lord? Strange is such a...strange...word to define, why, it could mean most anything that others do not see eye to eye with.

Could it be...oh my, is it… no, if so, I must cease benefiting from your lordship’s kindness at once, then.

VINCENT: What? No no, no, what do you think? That the servants view you as something repulsive?

STRANGER: It is how the world sees me, so yes, I am most certain that is the case. The last thing I wish to do is to draw ire from your staff, o’ humble lord.

VINCENT: I assure you, if you have been given that impression at all, those who made you feel unwelcome will be most assuredly dealt with. STRANGER: It’s just that...there was a servant who came into my room and bothered myself and my colleagues. They insisted we were making the manor messy, untolerable.

They told us to carry our filthy hides out and bathe in the waters of the storm, or they’d throw us out themselves.

I’d hate to hear your good name tarnished should the townsfolk hear how we were treated... VINCENT: I will see that the servants are harshly punished then.

< he pauses a moment > ...wait, colleagues? STRANGER: Why, don’t you recall, my lord? You invited us all to live when we were in the rain. We’ve been ever so grateful. VINCENT: Did I say that? No, I didn’t, I’m almost positive there was… < he pauses and looks around at the Uninvited Guests, who turn to him and wave, then return to what they’re doing > VINCENT: Well… while I don’t remember it, I can’t imagine turning anyone in need away, so I must have. STRANGER: We are being careful not to disrupt your means of life. When at last the storm passes, we will be on our way. VINCENT: Well...if you feel you must stay after, then by all means. But I will see you again in a little while. I’m off to speak to my staff. Good day.

< As Vincent leaves, the Unwanted Guests stand side by side to the stranger > STRANGER: Oh, we won’t forget that kindness… < the Unwatned Guests and the Stranger both leave opposite the direction Vincent did. As the narration starts, Vincent and the servants from the previous scene are speaking, with Harmun standing nearby > NARRATOR: Vincent was convinced that the three men he had taken in were innocent. After all, why would they not be? They were copperless, and would have died in the rain.

Meanwhile, his servants lazed about the manor, day after day, very little asked of them. They lived a cushy lifestyle and were paid quite well.

< Using emotes, Vincent /roars at the servants and then /points off stage, simulating anger and booting them out. Servant 1 /cries, servant 2 /rudes, then both leave the stage. Vincent walks after them in the direction they left in, pauses for a moment, and takes a few steps back, before turning to face his servant >

VINCENT: I did what I had to.

HARMUN: My lord, if I may interject again… if what the stranger says is true, then pragmatism is not a horrid course to go, but what also of the townsfolk who hear you cast your own servants into the cold over the words of a man we barely know?

VINCENT: < he turns around and throws his hands up in the air as he walks away from the ‘door’ > Oh, not you, too! Harmun, you are beginning to sound like my wife. She said something similar to me earlier this morning before I went to speak to them. It matters not that we know little of our guests, what matters is that we do the right thing! We’ve rooms to spare, we’ve food to spoil, so what is the harm? HARMUN: < raises an eyebrow > Pardon my question, lord, but you speak as though there’s more than just a single guest... VINCENT: Three! HARMUN: My lord, are you feeling well? There’s only been the one skulking around the manor at all, and--

VINCENT: Enough! I will have no more questioning of my decisions!

< suddenly, Lady Helena appears on stage > HELENA: Oh, dear husband? Is this how you take my wariness of what you’ve wrought upon our house?

HARMUN: < takes a bow > I can see this is going to become a matter that is most personal, my lord. I will take my leave and prepare the evening meal. < he leaves the stage in the direction Helena came from > VINCENT: Helena, please listen! What sort of man would I be if I cast aside the sick and needy? HELENA: You would STILL be the heart I fell in love with years ago! There is no shame in kindness, love, but there is shame in naivety! Love, have you not noticed the strange occurrences as of the past few days? VINCENT: So some things have turned up missing. We can replace them! If the men I invited into my abode, that I spent my life acquiring, desire to take what they need in order to prosper, then I am glad I could sacrifice something!

HELENA: THEFT is the worst you could think of? Damn the missing books and silverware, damn the gems and jewelry! I am speaking of people!

Faces I’ve seen each day walk these halls, suddenly gone! Our servants have left us since the stranger arrived, not just the ones you cast away! VINCENT: Strangers, and yes, I’ve taken note! I will be posting for their positions to be filled once this storm is over.

HELENA: Is that what a good man would choose to say? Do you think they simply holed up in their quarters, love, there is nothing but darkness in that part of the house now!

The shadows swallow what little light one brings, and the rooms smell of mold and musk. No one is there, I am worried! VINCENT: Then I am right to post for their replacements, as they’ve all been so mortified at having to share their spaces with the poor that they cannot even fathom it and have left for their homes! HELENA: < she scoffs and turns away in anger > I’m going to go look for all of them. As clearly I speak to a man who cares little what becomes of those who worked to serve him. I once believed true selflessness existed when I met you. But in lieu of recent days, I cannot help but believe even your kindness was a means to an end.

VINCENT: Helena, wait! < she leaves >

Helena… < he pauses for a moment and sniffles, then /roars and yells > FINE! Ungrateful witch, I damn you! You know not how lucky you were, I am a living saint among men! Away with you! Chase the cruel hearts I cast from my home!

See if I care!

< Vincent walks off stage for a moment, then returns with Harmun in tow, as the narration begins. The Uninvited guests from before are now in the background, with Helena’s player donning a costume to resemble one as well (along with TRP change)  > NARRATOR: The once lively manor of Lord Vincent had grown stagnant and silent. The air filled with settling dust and the smell of mold, and before long, Vincent found himself quite ill.

The storm had not relented, and many days had passed already. In his employ, only Harmun remained.

VINCENT: < coughing heavily > Tell me, Harmun, what are we eating this eve?

HARMUN: I’ve not had a chance to go into town to procure new ingredients because of this ceaseless storm. I’m afraid it will have to be stew again.

VINCENT: Bleck. Damn the bastard who invented that dull dish. It feeds plenty, but oh it gets old quickly. Why not cook me and my guests up a feast with what we have remaining? The rain could not possibly last another day!

HARMUN: < Harmun takes a deep breath > My lord, we have very little remaining, and more of your...guests...have been showing up day by day. I must speak frankly, for I do not believe we have enough remaining to feed the lot of them AND you. VINCENT: Oh. Oh, well, in that case, just give them my portions, then. It should keep them tided over until tomorr-- HARMUN: LORD! < he speaks harshly for a change > As your sworn caretaker and confidant for many years, I have never seen you act so blatantly oblivious to the truth. You are wasting away for these people, you cannot even care for yourself right now. VINCENT: < gasps > Harmun, you...you’ve never spoken to me in this manner! HARMUN: Nor do I desire to! My lord, you are without a doubt the kindest man of your financial standing, and this cannot be denied. But you are clearly being exploited!

They see your desire to appeal to the masses through kindness unique to your wallet! Look, not a single bit of decor remains in the manor anymore, nor a single book! All of your hard work is decaying rapidly, and you’ve no more who live beneath this roof! Just these people! < he gestures at the Uninvited Guests >

They’ve never done a thing for you, and yet they reap what you have sown for them, leaving you with not a scrap! Lord, please listen to me, you must exile them from this residence!

If it is their numbers you fear, I am certain we can find a way into town safely, I just do not desire to see you get hur-- VINCENT: Harmun. HARMUN: Yes, my lord?! VINCENT: … you have cared for me since a time I was young, and I have never known you to say things like this. And yet… I believe it is I who knows the right thing. Was it not I, whose business saved the Darrowshire Eastern Trade association, and the jobs within? Was it not I who built houses for the urchins and beggars who’d wandered the streets for years? Was it not I who donated an entire year’s income to ensuring famine did not exist in these lands? WAS IT NOT I?! HARMUN: … my lord. I have bit my tongue for too long.

You do not truly care about being kind, or doing what’s right. You care only about being worshiped as a savior, of being a idol of the people.

I have seen it in you for years, but I spoke nothing of it. Because nothing more needed to come of it. It was good to give, no matter the cause, be it selfish or selfless.

You do not need a reason to help people. But you must always be able to help yourself first. And this is the first time in which I truly believe that you will be unable to do so.

They will take everything from you, my lord. And then, they will find a means to take more. While it is my duty to help you, my lord, I cannot convince you to allow me to do so. I am sorry… but I must resign. Good day to you. VINCENT: Not you as well! Harmun, please, I beg of you, don’t do this!

< Harmun walks away and vincent continues to beg > Harmun! Harmun, my friend! You have it all wrong, please! I care immensely about the well being of my fellow men! You must understand, I-- < Harmun is out of sight > I… I know I am doing the right thing. Am I not? Was… was he right? < the Stranger walks on stage behind him, appearing suddenly (use the invisibility potion trick for this) > STRANGER: My gracious lord, you needn’t suffer those who question your golden morality.

Who but you have given nearly all they could to those who had nothing?

VINCENT: But I have lost everything… STRANGER: Oh heavens no, my lord. You still have much to give. Yes, much… why don’t you rest? You look weary. VINCENT: I am… yes...no, you are right. It’s been a trying day. Thank you, friend. I am glad there are still those who appreciate what I give.

< he walks away and the Stranger waves, this time joined by the Unwanted Guests, including the new one in the scene > STRANGER: Sleep well. We will see you one more time when you awaken. < the stranger and guests walk away, and Vincent walks into the center of the room, and /lays down, emoting that he’s tossing and turning > NARRATOR: Upon that evening, the lord tossed and turned, the mat that served as his bed upon a stone cold floor providing him with little sleep.

He blamed anxiety about the people in his life betraying him. He blamed the cold, the dark, the rain. He blamed everyone but himself. And soon, he found himself alone in the pitch black storm. One night, not long after, a visitor came into his room. < the Stranger enters and bows to Vincent > STRANGER: My lord, you have been so giving to us, I believe it is only time we gave something back to you. VINCENT: < stirring from his slumber > Wh-wha? Helena? You’ve returned? Oh…

< he stands up > It’s you, the one who never left! My friend, are you in need of anything more? More food, more wine? Books? Clean sheets and beds? < he /begs the stranger > Please, do not leave me as well! I have nothing left to give, but I would do anything to not be alone! STRANGER: My dear friend, nothing could be further from what I plan to do with you.

You have been a great host these many weeks. The storm has nearly faded, and there is no longer a reason for me to remain here.

But you will go with us, I assure you.

VINCENT: I...I will? You won’t leave me here alone? STRANGER: Not at all. Your friends and your family, they have us pegged all wrong. We are simple folk, nomads of the whispering forests. We have lived off of what we needed, and indulged in what we did not. Was it not you who gave us the clothes upon your back? Was it not you who gave us free reign of your home and all who reside within it? From the day you let me in, I have prayed to those who have eyes in every age, that their guidance on how you are to be rewarded be given. < all actors are now dressed as ‘Uninvited Guests’ - have TRPs and hoods ready to change, back into the original characters of Helena, Harmon, and servants 1 and 2 > And so it was, my lord. Your kindness shall be rewarded this evening…

< the uninvited all remove their hoods and change TRPs to the characters >

We will be having a feast in your honor!

VINCENT: < sniffles > I… I am blessed. Here I stand, stranded in my own home, nothing left to give, and providence smiled upon me, seeing fit to grant me your admiration! Oh, I am overjoyed! < /clap >

Tell me, what is it that we will dine upon tonight? I was under the impression we had no more food! STRANGER: Oh, your impressions were most correct. Since it is a special occasion, we figured you would be more than happy to give yourself in place of a meal. VINCENT: Ah. Well… I… < He stops and turns away, pacing towards the audience >

I… yes, I do suppose there in lies what I would do. I am Lord Vincent, what is mine is yours, after all.

It is, after all, altruism alone that drives my motives. Yes… here I stand, before the thousand eyes of the abyss. I wonder…

< use the ‘stuck’ trick to begin channeling an instant kill > ...will the shadows know what I did? Regardless. Dinner is served. < Vincent’s body is sliced with the knife toy, and the cast stands between him and the audience and begins to /eat > < the scene holds for a few moments, and then the cast leaves when Vincent rezzes. > NARRATOR: Thus ended the life of a man who's good needs did not go unpunished. In the years that followed, the little known village faded to obscurity.  

The manor of Lord Vincent crumbled, the servants and lords who lived there becoming little more than a myth. The town became poor once more. The people began to starve, and had to take residence in more prosperous lands.

The questions upon their minds were not of concern for Vincent’s well being, but of concern for themselves, especially with rumor of a group of hooded individuals in the woods speaking in riddles and caked in blood.

Whispers and rumors traveled with the village’s scattered seeds of what transpired that stormy month, none without their truths and lies.

Yet none remained long after who remembered the kindness and good will of the man known as Lord Vincent.

<< End >>

Trivia: 

This performance was the second entirely original story crafted by the Tirisfal Troupe, the first being Days of our Elves. However, it IS the first original non-comedy we’ve created. (while all our scripts are crafted from original content with a few odd references here and there, the Warcraft setting is typically a heavy influence, or the story references an existing tale or script)

This version of the story was the 5th draft of this script. Originally, there was a lot more buildup to the ending, and tension as well. There were even additional characters. To count for time and our smaller cast, however, this version was used. 

The moral of the story was never explicitly decided upon. While the narration suggests it at the beginning, this is merely a ploy to get the audience to think along the lines they need to in order to get into the right mindset to absorb the story. When running the script by other troupe members, a different moral was gathered by most people, and none of them were technically wrong. We wanted to craft a story that people could make any number of conclusions about and still be right, without making it feel too loose. (Disclaimer: I don’t think we particularly succeeded, but trial and error and whatnot~!). What did you gather from the message of the story?

This play has technically been an idea tossed around for over two years. When the Bash was cancelled in 2017, however, we decided not to perform it. 2018 was our first performance of this show!

[brightbeautifulthings]

Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

"'For the love of God, Montresor!' 'Yes,' I said, 'for the love of God!'"

Year Read: 2020

Rating: 2/5

Context: Starting two years ago, I’ve picked an intimidatingly long classic to read over the course of a year. I have a problem with trying to read books as fast as I possibly can, so if I set myself a thousand page novel, I’ll try to pound it in a week, and it will just be a miserable experience all around. So, a year is a nice compromise. I’ve hit the major Poe horror stories in the past, and I’ve been thinking about rereading them, but I couldn’t decide where to start. Reread my favorites? Read the ones I’ve heard of? What if I’m missing something awesome? As usual, my go-to answer is to read them ALL. For more thoughts on individual stories, see my monthly blog posts. Trigger warnings: character death, torture, live burial, cannibalism, decapitation, animal abuse, injury, severe illness, racism/xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, slurs, mental illness, bitter ranting from the reviewer.

Thoughts: My edition, with an introduction by Wilbur S. Scott, is probably not the edition I would have picked, since I prefer more notes or even essays to help me out with books that are 100+ years old. Context is helpful. Somehow though, my dad and I ended up with the same edition, so we decided to read it together. My dad loves all things horror (I come by it naturally), and we’re both longtime Poe fans, especially if you happen to put Vincent Price in one of his film adaptations. Scott’s introduction is particularly pretentious for a book we probably found in the bargain bin, and he manages to criticize the horror genre for not being “literary enough”. This is an Edgar Allan Poe collection, right? Way to alienate 90% of your audience right from the start. You can’t snub an entire genre and then attempt to explain why people like it. Like a lot of critical writing, it tells us more about Scott than it does about Poe, and I was circling his typos to entertain myself by the end of the introduction.

It did not get better. In short, I actively hated so much of this collection, and it's my most arduous and least enjoyed year-long read to date. To be even shorter, the only stories I found worth reading for pleasure were the horror ones I had already read and loved, and I'm afraid to examine too closely whether that has more to do with nostalgia and pop culture than the stories themselves. Poe has a way of lingering on pointless descriptions and belaboring a point to its absolute death, alongside an aggressively pretentious tone that suggests the narrator (and, by extension, Poe himself), knows everything there is to know about everything and you're an idiot for even asking. His true talent may not be horror, but in turning what might have been a good story into an intellectual soapbox and hammering it the point of absurdity. It would be different if the stories actually were intelligent instead of ridiculous. I’m happy to talk Aristotelian ethics, but the point is never to intellectually engage the reader–-it’s to show how clever the writer is.

On the whole, it seems like Poe struggles with telling a straightforward story, and I can’t tell if it’s because the short story genre has changed so much since then or because he’s so busy trying to show readers how smart he is that he forgets that stories have very specific components like suspense, exposition, or rising action (or endings). Most of them consist of some narrator speaking the entire time (I have all kinds of problems with this, from, “You just ruined the twist of your own story” to “No human talks for thirty uninterrupted minutes unless some idiot gave them a microphone.”), and few of them have anything resembling action, plot/character development, strong themes, or closure. There’s an essay-like quality to some of them (“The Imp of the Perverse”, “The Premature Burial”) where he seems to be trying to tease out a concept on an intellectual level, sometimes for pages and pages, before he remembers that he’s telling a story with characters and what could loosely be called a plot. I could do without all the intellectualizing, verbal grandstanding, and narrative cartwheels; just tell a good story, please.

And he does, sometimes. It's clear why Poe remains an essential part of the horror canon because those are easily the best stories in the collection, and I don't think that's just because I'm a horror fan. Horror seems to age better than some other genres because certain things remain consistently scary over decades or even centuries--being buried alive, for example. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is permeated by a feeling of bleak foreboding, culminating in some truly terrifying images, and “The Tell-tale Heart” is one of the better examples of Poe’s rambling narrator who thinks a lot of his own intelligence and slowly unravels over guilt. Both scared me to death when I was a kid, and I’m happy to see that they still maintain a high creep factor as an adult. (I also had the Great Illustrated Classics Tales of Mystery and Terror as a kid, because all a story about being buried alive needs is an illustration!) “The Cask of Amontillado” has long been one of my favorites (because there is something deeply wrong with me, probably), and “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Masque of the Red Death” are both top-notch horrifying, the latter a classic plague story that's a little *too* relevant to the times just now (but, you know, also one of my favorites). The clock symbolism is some of the best in the entire collection. Why, pray tell, would you be afraid of time?

The tolerable stories are the detective ones and the adventure ones, in that order. I can see why Poe’s detective stories like “The Gold Bug” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” spawned a genre. I was getting clear Sherlock Holmes vibes from his character, Dupin. However, it reaffirms that something is a classic because of its effects on literature as a whole and not because it’s still all that accessible. Just because something is the first of its kind doesn’t mean it’s the best of its kind; in fact, it usually isn’t because that was only a starting place. I can’t help feeling “Murders” would have been more compelling as a horror story than a detective story. Murdering gorillas are cool; listening to someone talk about murdering gorillas, much less cool. I was extremely irritated by his hot air balloon stories ("The Balloon Hoax", "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall"), but apparently Jules Verne loved them, which makes a lot of sense. I was getting a lot of Verne vibes from things like "A Descent Into the Maelstrom" and even the utterly long, boring, and racist "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym." It's clear they had influence on other writers, even if they're not the best examples of their genres.

Which brings us back around to the bad. It's not worth my time or yours to list all the terrible stories in this collection, but I can briefly summarize what I found so terrible about them. First, Poe is tragically, emphatically unfunny. The things he seems to find humorous are either in very poor taste now (his tasteless descriptions of mental patients in “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether”), or they’re outright ridiculous, almost slapstick, like the woman who gets her head stuck in a clock and is subsequently decapitated by it in “A Predicament,” which is an odd sequel to “How to Write a Blackwood Article.” I’m sensing that Poe is making fun of intellectuals or would-be intellectuals here, but with so much time and cultural distance, it’s hard to tell. In any case, it led to a running joke (“I’m going out for groceries!” “Don’t stick your head in any clocks!”). Somehow, I doubt this is the major takeaway Poe was hoping for.

Worst of all, they don't age well on representation either. Poe seems at pains to offend every single minority he possibly can throughout his oeuvre. There are a lot of horribly racist depictions of African Americans, snide comments about Jewish people (or the much more obvious anti-Semitism in “Four Beasts In One” where a mad king has a thousand Jews killed--really?), and blatant ableism (“Hop-Frog”). It's at its worst in "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym," a novella that spans over a hundred pages, that is basically a tedious, xenophobic setup to paint the native population of an island as the most horrific and duplicitous monsters imaginable. (The narrator previously ate one of his shipmates, so can he really afford to throw stones here?) For inexplicable reasons, that story isn't finished, and by that point, I was grateful.

Poe's poetry is a little easier to work through than his prose. I love "The Raven" with its lilting rhymes and dark message, and "Annabel Lee" is very pretty, both ubiquitous in popular culture. I also liked "Dream-Land," "Al Aaraaf" (where Ligeia makes another appearance), and "Alone." Most of the poetry has pretty simple rhyme schemes, the subjects mainly love and loss. There's an excerpt of an unfinished play, "Politian," included as well, but it didn't make much of an impression on me. TL;DR: I stand by my initial opinion, which is to read his horror stories for pleasure and, possibly, his detective and adventure stories for genre purposes, and to skip the rest. I'll probably be looking for a smaller edition of the stories I like. This one is a massive hardcover, more like a book you put on your coffee table to look impressive than a book you actually read (but I don’t have a coffee table, so it’s actually just taking up more room on the shelf than any one book has a right to).