#hs week 006

[sesquipunzel]

          same energy?

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (391-393)

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch, you really are a heel You're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel Mr. Grinch — you're a bad banana with a greasy black peel!

Page 391 - JOHN TURN AROUND!!!!!

391.  Who the hell bought this book for John to learn from? Dad? Dave? John himself? Yeesh. It's not even telling us anything John hasn't already learned by accident. 

John really wants to believe that there's no such thing as monsters; Dave told him so and his brain latched on to it even though Dave took it back in, like, the next sentence.

However, more interesting still:  With "you're TRYING to read" — "you" is clearly John (or John as the reader/player's avatar). But... "I thought we already agreed..."  

Who da heck is "I"?  It's not John talking to the voices in his head —  that'd be "You thought you had already agreed," right? Or perhaps "You thought you had come to an agreement." So is it our protective narrator, or what? And exactly what grouping, then, does "we" point to?

[Am I overanalyzing something that might just be an authorial shortcut past the headaches of conjuncting second person, plurals, and various poorly revealed identity levels? Mebbe, mebbe not.]

392.  "you don't see what could possibly be so oh my god it's a monster." Why is this so funny?

Dear, dear John….may you never change so drastically that I can't recognize this ador(k)able part of you.

I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about clinging to norms in response to trauma, the potentially tragic ironies of defending your belief systems rather than your physical well-being, of bargaining with fate that real danger won't come to you until you've read All The Books and you Feel Ready. And none of it would touch on why this is so fucking funny.

393.  [S] ==>==>==>!!!!!!!!!

𝅘𝅥𝅮 "You'd better call the sledgehammer, put your mind at rest..."  Woops!

Oh, John. It's Showtime again, and the advice to "break a leg" (or head) really isn't meant to be taken literally. [Fie, who spake the name Macbeth in this house!?]

Please don't die, you've got a lotta story left to participate in.

So the Tar Baby is a Shale Imp? Not too far wrong, with oil shale and tar sands bein' close cousins. And the Imp stole the bunny, and I'd say perhaps the Jester hat from one of DAD's closets or chests, but where did the rest of the clothes come from? Unless — gasp! — DAD used to dress up little junior John as a pint-sized Pierrot? [John might be more traumatized than I thought!!!]

The Imp doesn't attack John directly, though — it only demands "don't move," holding the Bunny hostage. What does it want? I mean: what is it, where did it come from, is it linked to the KERNEL-/NANNA-SPRITE, does it have a will of its own; all those other questions underneath the first, too, but right this moment? Why did it reveal itself to John, why did it take a defensive/evasive posture using the bunny to prevent attack and ensure its own safety? John was clearly trying to Aggrieve it and it did not counterattack other than brandishing the Bunny over his blacked-out body. So…. what does it want?

And is the Vagabond a Shale Imp too?

The few clues we have about Vagga match up — small stature, black claw-like hands, white eyes in apparently black skin. Certainly not definitive, and certainly too suggestive to rule out a connection. Vagga does seem to regard the imps in John's house as a threat, which could point to the imps being as individual and contradictory as humans. Or, depending on what sort of time-woogying we're actually seeing with Vagga and John, Vagga could be a more evolved/educated future Imp, worrying about what the "wild" ones will do to their hapless plaything. So little to go on so far, but so many possibilities.

John, John, John; I hope you haven't hurt your noggin too badly, because The Show Must Go On.

And WTF, universe — I went hunting for an image from the gloriously strange Queen video for that song, and came up with bassist John Deacon in a hat:

Yeah, me too, John.

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (394-400)

It’s been a long week, and I feel a little chewed, but I’m back at the keyboard, and in a weird mood.

I only wanted to see you Underneath the purple rain

Now that it's raining more than ever Know that we still have each other You can stand under my umbrella

394 - Rose: Exit.

394.  (Firstly, if I lived on top of a river, I would absolutely have an underground generator taking advantage of it.) So the transformer was struck by lightning while Rose was trying to play SBURB….that's almost as suspiciously coincidental as the RAMBUNCTIOUS CROW. Y's'pose the spooky lab next door coulda had anything to do with it? 

And we're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Maus(oleum). 

395-396.  Predicted umbrella fail. Sigh. But gather up the sog (except for the W clinging to the transformer) and keep on trekking.

397.  Quoth the raven(-black vagabond), GET UP JOHN, THIS IS NO TIME FOR SLUMBER. Ooo, a lil game! After speckelating that the Imp wasn't really attacking John, I feel bad for smacking it with the space bar, I mean sledgehammer handle. 

Mean face or no, it still seems reluctant until its health drops low enough...but it finally does counterattack, knocking John on his ass, where he looks like a wailing toddler as the Bunny is brandished in his face some more. John's health does drop but it still looks like "the Bunny gets it" more than he does.

398-399. Okay, that was a quick John interlude; back to Rose draggling toward her goal, come hell or high water. Literally, in this case.

400.  Okay, that was a quick Rose interlude, back to John fighting the Shale Imp.  Or me fighting the Shale Imp. 

I guess John didn't need the Assholes book — he's been practicing the weaponization of his SYLLADEX all along!  Surprisingly competent pew-pewing, my boy, with a little bit of stylish nyoom for good measure! And you managed to hold onto the PDA and your other more-or-less useful items too. Not to mention acquiring a bunch of Build Grist and….Shale? Let's hope that's useful for something in this game when (if?) Rose gets back to you.

All of which is to say...I transitioned damn quick from looking at the Imp as a character in a story (with potentially complex motivations that might belie its frightful features) to looking at it as a generic game opponent (with no motivations at all; just an obstacle to overcome).

I mean, attacking it was the only way forward, for me as reader — I could have pacifically gone on to the next page but then I'd have missed some of the story. So instead I gave up the open mind I try to keep about characters/NPCs I know nothing about, and ended the fight pleased to have acquired more grist, and smiling right along with John.

I'm a monstah!

And now that John and I know there are resources to be gained, which may be important to being able to continue using the game as a tool to escape his predicament and/or save his friends… attacking the next Imp will be even easier.

Yknow, I grinds my grinds with the best of 'em, without overthinking the sillyphosical implications of the mindless killing sprees of all my avatar-babies and murder-hoboes. But occasionally I look at what I'm doing and…

Sorry, Mom!

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (401-404)

“Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!” — John Egbert, channeling Nic Cage.

401-404 - YOU SAID PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX!!!!!!

Yeah! Why couldn't you just do that?

Oh. That’s why.