The Lords Of The Wing Are Like If Statler And Waldorf Had An Assignment Due In The Morning

The Lords of the Wing are like if Statler and Waldorf had an assignment due in the morning

Now that today's entry closes the book on Renfield, I'm confident saying the chap doesn't deserve the bad rap he gets.

My pop cultural understanding of Renfield was as a simpering minion of the baddie who actively helps seduce or misdirect other people towards evil. The Monster of the Week RPG even has an NPC minion type that it explicitly labels a "Renfield", whose motivation is "to drive others towards the monster".

But your man straight up doesn't do that! Yes, he seems to admire and worship the Count at first, but based on later scenes, my take on that is that it's vampire mesmerism working on a vulnerable subject - vulnerable because the thinking that landed Renfield in the asylum, about consuming life, lines up so neatly with what the Count does and can offer. But unless I missed something, there's no scene where Renfield tries to drive anyone into the Count's clutches, or where he wilfully puts anyone in danger. He's the reason Dracula is able to get into polycule HQ, but it seems pretty clear Drac mesmerised and/or terrorised him into "inviting" him in.

In fact Renfield seems to spend most of his time trying to warn people about Drac, but being either dismissed or unable to get his meaning across coherently. Wherefore this reputation as a slippery quisling? Renfield's as much a victim here as anyone else!

Finale finale finale!

Not that it's over...

Vigil: Quarry, Act 4

In which the Hunt is at bay; a hound bites its master; and a mentor has nothing more to teach.

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COMPERE: Matt Boothman

STARRING:

Christopher Starkey as Cameron Jarvis, the Wronged

Helen Stratton as Melody, the Constructed

Strat as Brier, the Monstrous

Vikki as Renko, the Flake

ROLEPLAYING GAME SYSTEM: Monster of the Week, designed by Michael Sands

MUSIC BY: Alexander Pankhurst

SOUND DESIGN BY: Helen Stratton

EDITED AND PRODUCED BY: Matt Boothman

Wait, so Squak disguises all his letters as responses to book recommendations. ie thanking the person he's writing to for recommending a book to him. And the book in question is always The Green Hunter by Airry Pearry. Which Squak wrote. So he's making out that other people are recommending his own book to him, and that he's writing to thank them - but also sometimes responding with absolutely scathing reviews of it? What a marvellous mess.

I do not have a Write A Coherent Essay brain but today's Dracula just made me feel a little sad about toxic masculinity and the cultural norm that men have to put on a good face in front of other men

Like, we've been watching Arthur mourn, even "I would release Renfield after one coherent conversation" Seward could see he was upset, and even in this tight group of men who are incredibly open about their feelings for the time, he still needed to be alone with a woman to fully break down and receive comfort, and I just feel SAD, you know? Like, it's not fair to women and it's not fair to men, and people are STILL doing this, and I want more for them.

There's a lot to say about how Stoker writes women and probably a woman written by a woman wouldn't be necessarily so blithely accepting of this dynamic as Mina, but looking at how Stoker writes MEN, I just get this feeling of him as someone with A Lot Of Emotions who thinks about them a lot but doesn't have the gender theory to realize that the patriarchy might be the problem.

Featuring everything you never knew you wanted to know about

the origins of the podcast

that bit in Ariadne where everyone accused Alex of stealing four imaginary mugs of Bovril from an NPC

Replay: Ariadne (Backstage)

Let’s go back to where this all started - with the slow-burn spookiness of Ariadne.

Prefer your podcasts audio only? Follow us on your usual podcast app - search Merely Roleplayers or head to www.merelyroleplayers.com

COMPERE: Josh Yard

WITH: Matt Boothman

MUSIC BY: Matt Boothman

EDITED AND PRODUCED BY: Josh Yard and Matt Boothman