The Gothic Journals (Comments)

Fiction about Ravenloft or Gothic Earth
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High Priest Mikhal
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The Gothic Journals (Comments)

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Since I've finally been goaded into posting here I guess I should try and keep this one separated into one pure fan fic and the other comments. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
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Post by HuManBing »

WELCOME TO FRATERNITY!

I'm glad you managed to "breach the demiplane" and finally register... weren't you having some problems earlier?

I haven't read all the way through your fanfic yet but I'll do so over the weekend when I need a welcome lift from my studies! Always good to see a new face around here!
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Post by Manofevil »

Yes, welcome indeed! And may I say that your first contribution is Brilliant. I find myself especially flattered that you referenced my article on The Old Brewery. :oops: Thank you very much however I feel the need to point something out: If your character was having a VISION of The Old Brewery then there's no inconsistancy, However if your intention was to have him actually SEE the old halfway house then I feel obliged to tell you that, according to the book "Five Points", a history of the old neighborhood, In the first years of the twentieth cenntury, the southern end of the neighborhood (Where the house would have stood) was completely demolished to make room for the city's new municipal building and by 1920, almost everything between Baxter and Centre streets had been knocked down to make room for courthouses and state offices. It doesn't mention the halfway house by name, but the impression I got was that it's not there anymore. If you know better, please let me know because if it IS there, I would very much like to visit it one day. By 1980, The neighborhood is pretty much all considered Chinatown and is no longer a slum. Ethnic violence between rival asian gangs is still present however, and they control the sex trade and the sweatshops, so there may still be something there for your man. :wink:
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!

So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Gah, you're right. NYC has changed so much in the past century that I can't keep track of all the changes. I'll change it to a shrine in Chinatown and a reference in some old books in one the many libraries about how the qabal cleansed the brewery--and thus left a site worthy of a shrine to benevolent spirits.
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Post by Manofevil »

I hope you won't hate me for this but your story got me thinking about about it so much that I just HAD to go to MAPQUEST and see exactly what's at the address of the Old Brewery today. Here's an aerial photograph:
Map of Pearl St & Centre St New York, NY 10007, US
The hexagonal building next to the red star-I think it's a courthouse-is sitting directly on the land where The Old Brewery, The halfway house, and Paradise Square once were. I think that little park across the street would be the perfect spot for your Shrine. :D
Last edited by Manofevil on Sun Nov 04, 2007 3:54 pm, edited 8 times in total.
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!

So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
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Post by The Giamarga »

Gah! Please edit your likage like i did above
Last edited by The Giamarga on Sun Nov 04, 2007 12:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Manofevil »

Can't figure out how. :x
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!

So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

I'll be sure to change it to reference a courthouse across the street. For future reference, I'm not trying for 100% RL accuracy. After all, in the latest fiction 112 Ocean Ave. will follow the Amityville Horror movies (sans Amityville 2) in terms of how events linked to it play out (whether or not the movies themselves also exist--and how closely they match the real story--is another matter). Come to think of it, I had planned on doing similar things with other movies--NoEM, Ft13th, Halloween, and even the Hellraiser movies. But I can't decide whether to keep the movies as a commercial gimmick and deliberate attempt by the Red Death's minions to obscure the truth, or just say the movies are what happened on GE and they don't exist there?

Edit: Just found my old notes. The plan was that the first movies would be based on something that really happened in the supernatural realm, but the rest would be commercial gimmicks and deliberate attempts to cover up the truth by the Red Death's minions. I like that approach.
Last edited by High Priest Mikhal on Sun Nov 04, 2007 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by The Giamarga »

Manofevil wrote:Can't figure out how. :x
Just hit the quote button on my post with the link and copy paste it into yours.
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Post by Manofevil »

Got it. thanks.
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!

So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
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Post by Manofevil »

Dude , I like where you're going in the latest chapter. I'd like to offer a idea. Some time ago, after the publication of 'The Great War' netbook, I thought of writing a fanfic end to the Red Death. Specificly, when the Second World War ends and the Cold War begins, the Red Death finds itself in a crippling position: the more of its influence it spreads, the closer it brought the world to global nuclear annihilation. It realizes that it will be stranded on a dead planet should it allow this so it is forced to withdraw much of its influence especially from eastern Europe which is now behind the Iron Curtain. The anti-RD qabals, sensing weakness, realise this is the time to strike and manage to cripple the Red Death's servants worldwide and the Red Death is forced into hibernation. The qabals believe this hibernation to be destruction and celebrate their final victory. The Red Death is left buried like some old landmine waiting to be stumbled over someday. I never managed to write the darn thing. It was always one of those things I meant to get back to. I thought it might fit in nicely with what you're writing now, so I thought I'd suggest it.
Last edited by Manofevil on Fri Dec 28, 2007 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!

So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
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Post by Manofevil »

Whoops. Double post. Sorry.
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!

So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

I can see how the Red Death wouldn't like to see nuclear annihilation. But in my fiction the Red Death doesn't "hibernate" so much as it loses power when the sheep stop fearing the darkness and thus it can't work as directly as it did in ages past. This is also an explanation for the increased terrorism in the 90's as it works through deluded, weak-willed humans to create the fear it needs to grow strong again.

The rest of that I do like, though. Just one question. If the Red Death goes dormant, what does that mean for the magical energies it's stunting? Do they begin to creep back up in strength?
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Post by Manofevil »

Truthfully I hadn't thought about it. Now that I do, science was the newest and most influencial field of knowledge and it looked upon magic as superstition and ignorance. In fact, I took a course on the history of the development of science and I learned that one of the things that the Nazis rebelled against was the cultivation of science. They claimed that it was one of the ways that the jews were undermining aryan tradition. It was one of the primary reasons why mysticism enjoyed a significant resurgence during that time period. The creation of things like rockets and atomic weapons, however, were the things which glamorized science and made it the most talked about field of knowledge after WWII. There was a small resurgence of mysticism and magic in the sixties during the hippy generation but when it was coupled with the peace, civil rights, and free love movements, it likely became something antithetical to the Red Death. It wasn't until the very late seventies and most of the eighties, with the advent of punk rock, heavy metal music, and a satanic chic that ran through popular culture at the time, that the Red Death finally had something it might have been able to use. The Red Death needs willing followers who believe in it to do its work, and those are kind of hard to find when it's become nothing more than a forgotten myth to most of the educated population. I'm sure there would be more than a few old leftover horrors like Alexander ran into in this chapter, but the Red Death would have to look long and hard for anything new. It would really have to get used to the idea that it's no longer among the ten most powerful entities on the planet. At least for a while.
Last edited by Manofevil on Mon Dec 31, 2007 10:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!

So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

And thus a fevered rush during the last days of 1999. The whole Y2K scare, fears of the Armageddon of Revelations, and other things were so high it seems almost a forgone conclusion the Red Death would try to cause something to happen--if only to instill the fear of a god into the masses once more. I actually based this on a dream I had, where a lone Vistana woman (the woman I introduced in the earliest fiction; her name escapes me for the moment) is key to a counter-ritual that must be done as the last minutes of the century tick away. To stop her the Red Death expends much of its remaining energy to manipulate the weather, animals, and even humans to stop her. Massive blizzards in DeeCee and other areas, crazed deer, cultists, signs of desperation on the part of the once-mighty Red Death. In the planned fiction the counter-ritual doesn't quite work as expected--it doesn't stop the RD completely--but it does prevent the massive influx of power planned by its followers. A sort of draw where the RD doesn't regain its lost status, but still regains enough power to break even.

Given the events only a year later, the RD is obviously still going. And as for magic, I've noticed many people are searching for new faiths--with Wicca being a particularly popular choice. The potential for a covert Renaissance of magic is ripe. I doubt modern society would accept magic as a whole, but certainly a small number would.

EDIT: Also, as a metal-head myself, I find the blanket statement that heavy metal is pro-Satanic to be quite offensive. Most often the Devil and Hell were representative of the counter-culture in music, a statement of rebellion against established values. Besides there were some so-called "Christian" heavy metal bands, like Stryper. They also brought up issues that no other genre would touch at the time--Queensryche's famous song "Empire" revealed how law enforcement and public education come in dead last in the Federal budget (and to my knowledge, still do). No, the metal bands were the latest incarnation of those who saw the rot and wanted change--just like the hippies. Only with a more cynical tone. They could be anti-RD groups for that matter (I think I'll start doing that in my fiction).

However I can also see your point. "Death" metal in particular has a reputation for being pro-Satan in its messages. And, sadly, there are some who take those messages literally. Then again, remember that Charles Manson thought the Beatles song "Helter Skelter" was a message to start a race war; it's not the music, it's the crazies who can't tell fantasy from reality. That said, most of us aren't so nuts--well, I am nuts but not in that way.
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