"If music be the food of love, play on:" Mr Wines for Beginners
Main takeaways:
Wines oversees the trade in pleasure, including alcohol and sex workers and music. There's some debate over dreams, and it claims a stake.
It presents itself as regal and approachable yet aloof, but this is a facade
It has a long, storied past and used to be far more than a curator...
The song "Viva La Vida" is the best song to explain who Mr Wines is
Mr Wines oversees trade in all things drinkable (excluding water) and also the sex industry. Almost everything to do with pleasure falls under its domain. It claims a stake in dreams, too. And music, seeing as music can get curators drunk. Wines loves the theater (and some text suggests that lyrical verse is intoxicating just like music). Once, after quoting Twelfth Night, it jests that it should have been called "Mr Poems."
According to the old Twitter accounts which are dubiously canon, Wines likes to wear corsets. Giant furry bat shoved into an undergarment is so funny. Does it need to wear a chemise with its fur? 🤔 I can't imagine it would be comfortable to get fur caught in lacing!
I'd like to think it's able to manipulate things that fall within its domain. I headcanon all masters can. For example, imagine Stones and Iron being able to magically manipulate chains. Veils being able to emotionally motivate the hunter to violence. So, I imagine Wines' presence can convince people to indulge way more than they normally would. It can affect people's dreams and nightmares and maybe even ensnare them in dreams.
It's ridiculously wealthy and shows this off more than other masters. Jewel encrusted chalices. Bottles of wine that cost more than a laborer's yearly wages. If characters in game are an allegory for Victorian era social ills, and Fires represents industry, Wines represents the way the upper class played and indulged in luxury while the lower classes starved.
Wines presents itself as composed, regal, and approachable. It's all a facade. Wines is incredibly quick to anger, and in Fading to a Coda and Totentanz we see it lose control of its image and get big and scary. I just love when a character slips and lets a monstrous side show. :)
Wines is also very aloof, claiming it "does not partake" in emotions. Though it's a massive hypocrite as we see repeated instances of it being vulnerable or angry or sad. It compares a relationship with a human to being like with a dog in The Empress' Shadow yet it's tactile with the player in Fading to a Coda and even says the player would look good in black after getting them drunk on expensive wine (one of the success text variants from meet a master at the carnival). Maybe this is all a game to it. When you get inroads with a master it says the master sees the player as a pet. So who knows what it's thinking, but it's... so much.
Mr Wines, above all else, wants endless revelry surrounding it. Why is this?
Exceptional Story Cricket, Anyone? spoilers under the cut
In the story Cricket, Anyone? we see Mr Wines compelled to confess the truth about its shrouded past. The story all but explicitly says Wines used to be a judgement—a star, one of the rulers of the High Wilderness at the top of the great chain.
It was named The Merchant King and called "a cosmic monarch." It "sat among the stars." A beautiful kingdom that stretched "across the auroras," with a king who had godlike power to command the movement of planets. We know planets orbit stars. Given the fact curators don't have kings and the judgements are almost always called kings... yeah.
The Merchant King would style itself a benevolent leader who granted wishes and elevated courtiers. It would say its subjects begged for riches and status, and it gave them everything. In truth, it was a tyrant. Subjected begged to be freed from enslavement. "We snipped the scarlet tails of comets and bound them around our favorite pets." Nowadays its favorite sex workers wear scarlet stockings. Some things never change.
The reason the Merchant King is no longer a king is because it never kept its word. It broke every promise it made and never intended to keep any of them. "Hordes swindled, deceived [...] The Merchant King who gave a word that meant less than nothing."
Remember how Wines never pays the player for helping with its revels in the early game? "We left our wallet in our other cloak." Yeah. It's never learned or changed.
"This was ours, and this was ours, and ours were the scepter and the crown. And we were toasted. And we drank deep. ...And we fell from king to beggar."
The Merchant King was overthrown and cast down the chain, to "a darkness where love atrophies" and became the master we now know.
The end of the ES gives an item called "a word, broken" that symbolizes the confession. The player will know it even after death. Wines can never get its word back, and this makes it mad.
Mr Wines wants to feel like it's still a king. It wants an endless revel around it with a crowd of admirers so it can play pretend. It drinks to drown the memories. The truth is, that old bat is lonely. At Station VIII you can give it a curatorial cocktail which reminds it of what it used to be, and you hear sounds that might be quiet sobs. It then of course rewards you handsomely. Bat that's composed and aloof, yeah right. It has feelings!
Wines got in trouble for never keeping promises, and it's interesting that during railway, it hangs around the back of the crowd to watch the forging of a new promise with the Creditor. What must it be thinking here?
I can't imagine what it's like to try to shove the massive consciousness of a star into a tiny curator body. So much is lost. Only fragments of memory remain that still cause so much pain. It used to have the power to move entire worlds and could create things from mere thoughts. Its heart was the furnace of a sun's core. Now, I can only think that Wines thinks everything moves so slow. If it wants something, it has to move to get it. It can command humans but not much stronger beings. Despite fur, it's cold in comparison to a sun. Its heart is all fleshy. To go from the top of the chain to a medium fish in a small pond. It styles itself a regal, proud king who is superior to everyone because that used to be true.
To suddenly have a discrete body with animal needs. "Wines' first heat" is a predictable topic for a fic but also my friend brought up "what about the first time Wines had to take a shit" which I think is infinitely funnier to explore ajsgsjdhd
Unjust rulers deserve to be overthrown. I don't have sympathy for Wines and in fact want to see it lose the little power it still has. All that being said, it's just so cool to think about how its life has changed and how that past influences it now. (And okay R is a known starf*cker are you surprised this is what I think about)
(The fact I have these quotes memorized tells you something about me ahsgsjdhdhh)
