I noticed a new detail in I, Strahd that has me screaming.
So I'm doing a critical writing essay on the way that P. N. Elrod uses the first-person perspective in I, Strahd to enhance the narrative, with Strahd himself as, you know, the unreliable narrator of his own life (which just... mmm! It's so good).
And I'm just going back through the book to look for the page number where he says, "That's what I told myself, anyway."
But, I then found this instead:
You would spill my blood, armsman?
HOLD. THE F**K. ON.
armsman???
So I rifle back through the pages, because that is not what he said. That's not the quote. It's Commander. It's "You would spill my blood, Commander?"
And I find it. And I'm right.
OOGH.
Oh, does it hurt.
Strahd is removing himself from Alek in this moment. He's taking him down already in his mind. Trying to make Alek less important, so that it's less of a blow to himself when he kills him, just a moment later.
Commander is a title, and one of respect. It shows that Alek occupies an important position. And even that, I realize now, was a point of distance, because the two of them often do call each other by their given names. When Strahd was in danger of assassination, Alek yelled "Strahd!" multiple times, which is very personal. When they were out on tour, dealing with the local burgomasters, Alek got perhaps a little too excited and Strahd chided him by just quietly saying his name, "Alek."
When he called Alek "Commander", Strahd was hanging over the edge of a cliff to grab his hand, almost ready to die himself if Alek fell. Alek was in danger of death. In that moment, Strahd chose to focus on the fact that he might lose a leader in his ranks, rather than a close personal friend. It was a little bit of distance, so that he could focus on the task in front of him. To keep his head in that unexpected crisis.
When Strahd calls him "armsman", though... Alek is now faceless. He has been stripped of name. He has been stripped of rank. He has been stripped of all personal attachment. Because that is what Strahd needed to do in order to complete the task ahead of him.
Alek has also just stabbed him in the chest, when Strahd inaccurately recalls that moment, and they are both in shock. Given a choice, Alek would never have done this. "Only a drop or two," he had answered, dangling from the cliff, "if it spares the rest, my lord." (Alek follows his lead in this act of distancing. "Didn't have to, my lord," he murmurs this time.) It can't be Alek, so this is just another soldier. This is just another fight. It's just another war.
So, Strahd thinks of him as "armsman" here, to avoid a truly devastating layer of grief.
Neither of us had a choice. That's what I told myself anyway.
The quote I was looking for is on page 137. One page before all that.
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Here's the thing about Jareth from Labyrinth right?
He's made up.
That's not necessarily the same thing as not REAL. But he, just like all her friends who show up in her room before her adventure as toys and figurines, exist in relation to her, in response to what she wanted and needed. She told the story and there he was, there he always had been. But she's a teenage girl who doesn't know what she wants yet, and Jareth kind of pays the price.
"but the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and had given her certain powers." He's an archetypal oxymoron. He's both the dastardly baby stealing villain and the royal love interest trying to relieve the heroine's suffering, Cinderella style. He's fucked either way by being both. She doesn't know if SHE wants to be the villain or the heroine until he shows up and then she decides on the heroine, so he has to sneer and menace and challenge but it's too late for him!! it's too late, The King Of The Goblins Had Fallen In Love With the Girl, he's Cinderella's prince too and he has to try, he gives her a poofy dress and takes her to fucking goblin prom, sweeps her around the room like a music box with perfect posture and room for Jesus.
But it doesn't work buddy, it can't work. You're just a story for a teen girl to grow up in, and as the villain you have to be defeated. He's so complex because his tropes contradict themselves, and he doesn't understand why he has to lose when he was only doing the job he was given. In his last scene he is pale as death with shadows under his eyes, backing away and begging for his happy ending with nonsense mishmash promises that belong to both halves of him.
"I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me." I'm sure you are, Jareth. No wonder.
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Fleshing out the Undead of Barovia:
Over the course of his 400+ year long stay in Barovia, Strahd has killed a lot of adventuring parties, and these fallen heroes are cursed to wander the land as the zombies and vampire spawn that terrorize future parties.
Something I've noticed, both as a DM and Player, is that player characters, even when made to fit within a particular setting, have a degree of "main character energy" in their designs that NPCs lack. There is more evidence of a fully developed character, with relationships and life experiences, in comparison to the NPC I had to name on the spot when the players started asking questions.
As I'm working on my next run of Curse of Strahd, I'm looking to add more personality to the fallen heroes, basing them off real player characters, to make them more relatable to my players, and make death seem like a realistic possibility for them.
I'm in the process of sacrificing collecting player characters, who will get to cameo in my campaign! (: The results will be compiled into a spreadsheet for others to reference and use in their games.
CoS characters are ideal, but BG3 characters and PCs from other campaigns are also welcome! There's no limit on how many submissions one can give, I'm looking to get as many characters as possible. (:
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Well, fuck.
I keep making quizzes, so....
This time it's about pairings from our Curse of Strahd DnD campaign. It includes pairings between NPCs, between PCs and between PCs and NPCs. A couple of them are.... Not good. Problematic. And not really canon??? Depends on what you count as "pairing" and as "canon"
It took me much more time than it should have to write the results' descriptions.....
Also tagging Tumblr people whose characters are in there: @kagoa @the-pale-chancellor
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