DP FICTION #78B: “The Art and Mystery of Thea Wells” by Alexandra Seidel

edited by Ziv Wities and David Steffen

The interest in Thea Wells even outside of the circle of art lovers and connoisseurs remains strong, and conclusions about her work range from the normal, technical approach of art critics to the downright strange explanations of the ardent believers in the paranormal. To give a brief overview of her art, it does not do to linger too much on either end of this spectrum. Instead, a few key paintings of Wells may be seen as markers of her arc as an artist, of where she started, of where she ended. These paintings also show the overlap between the mundane and those who seek the supernatural in Wells’s work. Other pieces, such as Watercolor of an Ash Tree or Sketch of a Cityscape from the Ledge may have sold for five figures, but they never wove that aura of mystery around themselves.

The evolution of Thea Wells’s skill does not just lie in the brushstrokes and her increased mastery of light and shadow, but also in how she approaches her subject. Most art critics agree on this, and they will point to Shadows of Winged Insects Before a Flame or Breath, from the Inside. Her skill is best savored through select prints of her work, viewed in chronological order. The prints, while they allow paintings scattered in museums and hidden away in private collections all over the world to be seen next to one another, do not convey the vibrancy of the originals and the enchanting quality that makes people stand in front of a Wells and examine it, sometimes for hours.

*

Féli in Nightgown

This is the earliest painting that shows Wells’s lover Félicity M in the classic odalisque pose. Even to this day, no one was able to find out what this elusive muse’s real last name was, where she came from, how she and Wells met. She would usually introduce herself without giving any further details about herself, brushing off curiosities in a polite and joking manner.

In the painting, Féli looks away. She reclines on a lavender colored ottoman, and looks at the observer with her green eyes half closed. Her phone is on a cushion on the floor, her left hand just hovering over the screen.

The door to a balcony is open in the background, and light spills in on a gust of wind that stirs the curtains.

Wells took great care to let us know what we can’t see under the nightgown. Féli’s breasts are delicately outlined against the thin, silky fabric, and the strands of dark hair that run over them reveal more than they cover. Her waist lets the nightgown flow like cream, and the long legs, though they are covered, are tensed as if in pleasure.

Notably, this painting was Wells’s breakthrough. Ever since it went on display it has been targeted by thieves—though thankfully none have succeeded.

*

The Masque

The Masque was painted perhaps a year after Féli in Nightgown at a time when Wells had made it big in the art world, when her paintings were fetching five or six figures (though only the works painted after Féli in Nightgown. Her paintings prior to this are a completely different style, and they lack the later works’ pull.)

The Masque not surprisingly shows a masquerade, but Féli is the only guest, repeated nine times in nine different costumes.

She is an emerald-feathered bird with beak mask, a golden shimmering queen, a harlequin in chequered dress that shows her smooth skin generously.

As a ballerina, her legs are elongated by pointe shoes, she captivates with khol-lined eyes as a mystic with a custard pale snake draped over her shoulders and scales held in on hand, and enchants as a fairy princess with a necklace of black beads coiled around her neck.

Dressed in a robe of stars, she is the night, and with a milky sunrise costume that begins to let Wells’s light and dark mastery show, she is the day.

The ninth costume is unusual. It is hidden in the back, near a curtain and the darkness at the edges of the painted room. Féli is wrapped in a dark robe, a dark hood, and a white mask covers her entire face. She holds a book in the crook of her left arm, and we cannot see much of the volume, except that it appears heavy and old. The mask seems to follow the onlooker. It is a haunting shape, and it could be someone else entirely watching the scene unfold and the observer alike but for the pale hand that reaches up as if to pull back the black hood. It is a woman’s hand, and it looks like that of Féli hovering over her phone in Féli in Nightgown.

The Masque was first owned by a museum, but not for long. A private collector acquired it, and some sources have come forward over the years to claim the museum sold the piece because the people handling it, the people working in the museum and walking past it every day, suffered nightmares in which a hooded shape wearing a white mask featured prominently. The veracity of these claims is doubtful, even if Internet forums are full of stories of people who say they saw The Masque on display and also had the dreams.

*

Sunbathing

This is a captivating piece that attracts crowds, so much so that museum authorities decided to keep the painting in its own room and allow visitors in only in groups, each group being allowed just thirty minutes with the painting.

Sunbathing is, at first glance, quaint. It was painted probably less than a month after the completion of The Masque. Féli is the very center of this painting. She sits, cross-legged, on a green and white beach towel, sand and beach grasses around her, the ocean a distant haze of blues in the background. She smiles. It is a very subdued smile and has been likened more than once to that of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Féli is wearing a black bathing suit. The color is harsh against the pastels of the towel and the beach, but her green eyes are sharper still as they look outward, to the observer.

A bag by Féli’s left knee spills over with things people do not normally take to the beach. There are old-fashioned metal scales, beads bound on a string, a mechanical music box. The strangest thing entirely about this painting, however, is the tome that lies open on Féli’s lap, big and old, its pages possibly parchment, bound in leather. It pulls one back immediately to the book the dark figure cradles in her arm in The Masque. Experts have studied the open page. It is covered in the same script that has baffled scholars in the Voynich Manuscript for decades, and just like that enigma, what can be seen of Féli’s book remains untranslated and not understood. The book was not among Wells’s possessions, and it might be entirely a figment of the painter’s imagination.

*

The Diners

This painting is seen as the first sign in Wells’s art that her relationship with Féli was coming undone. It is dated to almost two years after The Masque and Sunbathing, and experts have long speculated that there must have been other paintings of Féli between these two. Whether they remain in private collections, tucked away from the eyes of the world, or whether Wells herself destroyed them is uncertain but a matter of great debate.

In The Diners, Féli is seen having dinner with a stranger. The table is elaborately set, there are glasses one behind the other, and they twist and reflect the room, the table, the food; more than one enthusiast has found hidden symbolism here, like messages glimpsed in a crystal ball.

Red flowers spill their petals on the white tablecloth and the pinkish bloody meat served on a silver platter. Féli’s guest is a man of supreme beauty. He outshines Féli entirely. His hair is dark like hers, as are his eyes, but his lips are flushed with color. Between the two, on the white tablecloth and hidden behind the glasses and the wilting flowers, there is the book again, now closed, and Féli’s guest has his palm flat on the cover, fingers splayed. Neither Féli nor he spare the book any more attention than that; they are focused on each other.

They are leaning in close, caught in conversation. Underneath the table, Féli’s hand is resting high on the stranger’s thigh, and his free hand vanishes under her dress. There is much speculation as to whether this really happened, or whether it was some sort of vengeance, whether Wells put this scene on canvas for all eternity to see Féli as unfaithful. No one knows who the stranger is, and the painting was sold to an unknown buyer at an auction ten years ago.

*

The Chef

This shows Wells’s mastery of light and dark. Féli has her back turned and stands in Wells’s kitchen over pots and pans bubbling on the stove. She is wearing a figure-hugging dress, long and black, and her shadow can be seen on the floor, stretching beyond where the canvas ends.

The light in the kitchen appears ephemeral, there is no source for it, no lamp, and no window. On Féli’s left, ingredients wait to be tossed into the pots, onions and carrots peeled and chopped, chunks of glistening, bloody meat in a dish, the legs and head of a rooster.

Féli has a dark teal vial in her left hand. It could be an oil or spice. She is about to pour it into a pot.

Her hair is coiled and piled on top of her head, and strands spill out like Medusa’s serpents.

After The Chef, Wells’s erstwhile prolific nature changed; she became even more of a recluse and produced only two paintings to sell, though it is speculated these were older works from her private collection. Several dozen unfinished paintings begun after The Chef all show Féli, though they fail to move beyond a mere sketch.

The Chef was loaned to a gala opening at one point, for a single evening. There are reliable sources saying that all the meat dishes served at that opening were spoilt and inedible. Yet, the food had been freshly prepared on that very day. While meat going bad can be more likely attributed to other factors such as temperature and improper handling, some blame the painting for it.

*

The Finale

The Finale is the title given to this painting by curators. Some call it The Last or even The Omega. Wells herself never gave it a name.

This painting was discovered in Wells’s atelier along with her corpse, though the date of its completion is uncertain. The painting is large, ten by seven feet, and it seems to be a riddle inside a riddle inside a riddle.

It shows a circus ring, and many things are happening there at once.

One of the first things that we see is the book, the big tome Wells so often added when she painted Féli. It is once again being held by a figure in black, robed and hooded, wearing a white mask. This time, the hooded figure reminds us of The Masque, but appears decidedly male and is looking toward the center of the ring. In his arms, the book is open. He holds up one finger as if he were reading from it and commanding the listener’s attention. We also see Féli opposite the robed figure. She is dressed like a belly dancer. Most of her skin is visible. Snakes wreathe and slither around her body, her waist, her breasts and ankles, and the expression on her face is one of boundless joy and ecstasy.

A white tablecloth catches the light in the background. It is set on the ground almost as if for a picnic, though plates and silverware and glasses indicate something more elaborate. There is wine in one of the glasses and a pinkish shimmer on one of the plates. The teal vial from The Chef sits on the tablecloth, unstoppered, though whether it is full or empty, we cannot see. Apart from that, there is no food.

Seemingly random items are scattered on the ground. Black beads are spilled like breadcrumbs, and paper has been torn and strewn alongside them, old paper with traces of writing on it that has, unsurprisingly, prompted unsuccessful efforts to reassemble the torn pieces seen in the painting and decipher their meaning. Other things we are shown are the tools of Wells’s trade: brushes, paints, all strewn haphazardly, including one canvas that has fallen face down so that we cannot say what painting it is. Another item that has caused speculation is an envelope. On it there is once more the indecipherable writing from the Voynich Manuscript, and we are left to wonder what message it contains.

In the center of the ring, drawn in shadows, is Wells herself, dressed in red and gold as the ringmaster. She is facedown, and her pale brown hair scatters in the puddle of blood under her. All of the fingers in her right hand stand at odd angles, broken. Her costume bears traces of paint, and it is torn in places. The violence is tangible.

An urban legend surrounds this painting, which is now housed in the Thea Wells Museum after it spent long years in police evidence. The legend says, when you focus your gaze on the figure in black who is reading from the book, you will dream and the dream will have no color at all. You will find yourself in perfect blackness, and there will be music around you as if heard from a distance, carnival music that echoes strangely distant and metallic, as if it echoed from an old music box.

*

That last, untitled painting is disturbing. It becomes even more so when viewed side by side with the photographs taken by the police of the scene they found in Wells’s atelier, or at least those that were leaked following her death. While those crime scene photos say nothing about Wells as a painter, they bear mentioning because they seem to echo The Finale. Wells can be seen facedown in her own blood. In reality, Wells wore a simple red shirt and no costume, but the tears in the fabric, as far as visible in the photographs, match up with the tears we see on the ringmaster’s costume in the painting. Wells’s blood has dried to a dull maroon, not the scarlet seen on the canvas. She was cut and bruised, her right hand—the hand she painted with—revealed to have been broken extensively.

Wells had been attacked. In the police report, leaked shortly after the photographs, one officer said they had only ever seen wounds like that in the mountains, when a bear found a hiker and took them down with claws and teeth. No wild animals were reported in the area of Wells’s residence, and no other signs of them were found in Wells’s atelier.

One thing that is different in reality is the negative of a shape in the dried puddle of Wells’s blood. It appears as if something large and rectangular was there when Wells bled out. When she was found, it had been removed. Some claim it was the tome, that leatherbound strangeness, that kept the floor clean where it lay because it drank all the blood that touched it.

Thea Wells’s murder remains unsolved.

Féli has never been seen again, not even at Wells’s funeral. However, if you look closely at all the photographs taken of that event, you will see a figure among the celebrities and pedigreed royals who have come to say farewell to a genius artist who defined a generation. The figure is in only one or two photos, and they seem to be wearing a long, dark robe. While their face is shadow-wrapped, it appears pale, smooth, mask-like. It could just be one of the mourners, seen from an odd angle with unfavorable lighting. Or not.

The question of the dark man, Féli’s alleged lover, also remains. When The Diners first sold—minutes after it was hung in the gallery—people asked Wells about him. Wells refused to say anything about the painting or its subjects, having become eccentric and like a modern-day hermit by that time already.

To this day, Wells’s paintings attract not just art-lovers and historians but also believers in the supernatural. The police are regularly called to Wells’s grave to break up séances held by self-proclaimed mediums and their congregations.

Féli remains a mystery as well. Yet, one art historian has told this author, in confidence and on the condition that their name not appear in this article, that they have seen Féli, her face, her dark hair and green eyes, her uncannily pale skin and distinctive features. The historian found her on another canvas, which cannot be clearly attributed to an artist. Yet, that canvas was confidently dated to more than 300 years ago. It is the portrait of a seated woman who looks exactly like Wells’s Féli. Far in the background, one can just make out the sinking bulges of a circus tent, a harlequin in their chequered dress walking inside through the flap. This painting’s basis in reality, just like its creator, is not clear. How it managed to capture the woman that appears in Wells’s paintings 300 years later, is unknown.


© 2021 by Alexandra Seidel

2800 words

Alexandra Seidel writes strange little stories while drinking a lot of coffee (too much, some say). Her writing has appeared in Future SF, Cossmass Infinities, and Fireside Magazine among others. You can follow her on Twitter @Alexa_Seidel or like her Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AlexaSeidelWrites/), and find out what she’s up to at alexandraseidel.com. As Alexa Piper, she writes paranormal romance books which have been rumored to make people laugh out loud in public.


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First Reader Applications AND Upcoming Submission Windows

written by David Steffen

Hello! We have a few upcoming things we need to announce, let’s get right to it shall we?

General Submission Window

Diabolical Plots is opening for general submissions for the first two weeks of August 2021. Read the guidelines for more information!

First Reader Applications

Diabolical Plots is looking for new First Readers! You may also know them as “slushreaders”, they help read submissions of stories that come in to help us consider them for publication. We are taking applications from BIPOC applicants until June 30th, and after that from everyone until July 10th. For more detailed information and the actual application form please follow this link.

Themed Submission Window

Diabolical Plots is pleased to announce our first themed issue ⁠— stories of food, dining, and cookery, which we couldn’t resist titling “Diabolical Pots”! (Actual pots optional.)

We’ll be accepting submissions for this special issue from October 7th – 21st, 2021. In addition to being centered around food, stories must have a speculative element. Pay rate, format, and submission restrictions (no reprints, no resubmits, etc.) will follow our general submission guidelines.

So, how can food be integrated into your story? Any way you want! Maybe a crew of space pirates is about to score big on some outer-planet delicacies. Or a tense family dinner gets tenser when the youngest child insists they hear scratching sounds in the wall. Or two witches both reach for the last bundle of herbs and their eyes meet and…

For this themed issue, our assistant editor, Kel Coleman, will be taking the wheel and making final selections. Of course, your story should still be a good fit for Diabolical Plots—check out our general guidelines for an idea of what that means—but what might win you extra points with Kel?

Well, Kel would love to see:

  • Lush descriptions of food
  • Immersive worldbuilding—food is never just food. Food is love, food is culture, food is survival
  • Science fiction that’s high on emotional resonance, low on unexamined imperialism
  • Any kind of prose—it can be ornate, experimental in structure or tone, or punchy and simple, as long as it is intentional and serves the story

“Open House On Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell Wins the Nebula Award For Best Short Story!

written by David Steffen

On Saturday June 5th, SFWA held the Nebula Award ceremony. The finalists and winners of the Nebula Awards are determined by votes from members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). “Open House On Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell is this year’s winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story!

We are very happy for John for the win! This was his first major award finalist and win in his writing career. If you didn’t watch the award ceremony, you might want to check out his acceptance speech as well, which has a lot of encouragement for writers.

And of course we are very excited for ourselves as well! This is the first time any work originally published by Diabolical Plots has been finalist or winner of a major award as well! We have gotten a lot of new visitors to read the story in the last few days, and hopefully this is not the last.

The same story is finalist in two other science fiction awards that haven’t determined their winners yet: The Locus Awards, and the Hugo Awards.

“Open House On Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell is a Hugo Award Finalist!

written by David Steffen

The news came out yesterday that, for the first time, a story first published by Diabolical Plots is a Hugo Award finalist: “Open House on Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell, about a haunted house that just wants a nice family to come live in it.

A lot of people really love this story, for it was also nominated for a Stabby Award, a Locus Award, and a Nebula Award: all which are the first times that John Wiswell has been nominated for those awards, as well as the first time that works published in Diabolical Plots have been nominated for those awards. Well done, John!

We look forward eagerly to results–though it will be a while for this one, the Hugo Award ceremony won’t be until December this year so they can attempt to have an in-person convention instead of entirely online.

Welcome Kel Coleman to the Diabolical Plots Team!

written by David Steffen

About a year ago, we made the announcement of an assistant editor for the first time for Diabolical Plots when Ziv Wities joined the team. Don’t worry, Ziv Wities isn’t going anywhere! We are welcoming a a second assistant editor–Kel Coleman, who you might recognize from their story “A Study of Sage” that was published in Diabolical Plots this year.

Kel started as a first reader for the January submission window and has been helping out with line edits for the stories after the final selections, and we are looking forward with working with them more in the future!

The Diabolical Plots Year Seven Lineup

written by David Steffen

For the past several years, Diabolical Plots has opened for submissions for an annual submission window during the month of July. This gives enough time to fully resolve the submission window before things start getting busy in August for The Long List Anthology production. In 2020, the pandemic threw us off our usual cadence and the submission window was postponed, to finally be held in January 2021. Since we are running on a bit of a tight schedule, we solicited a few to make sure that we would have some ready to fit in the schedule without gaps (we haven’t usually solicited any, so this is something new for us). For the submission window itself, 1938 stories were submitted by 1397 different writers. 120 of those stories were held for a final round, which resulted in 20 acceptances from the submission window, plus 4 solicited works that were accepted for a total of 24 for the year.

This submission window marked the first submission window since Ziv Wities became assistant editor! Thank you Ziv for helping to manage the submission queue and for your help with editing stories since the last window’s selections!

There are some familiar names, and at least some authors for whom this is their first professional short fiction publication! All of these stories will be published regularly on the Diabolical Plots site between April 2021 and March 2022, with each month being sent out to newsletter subscribers the month before.

This is the lineup order for the website.

April 2021
“The Day Fair For Guys Becoming Middle Managers” by Rachael K. Jones
“For Lack of a Bed” by John Wiswell

May 2021
“The PILGRIM’s Guide to Mars” by Monique Cuillerier
“Three Riddles and a Mid-Sized Sedan” by Lauren Ring

June 2021
“One More Angel” by Monica Joyce Evans
‘We Will Weather One Another Somehow” by Kristina Ten

July 2021
“Along Our Perforated Creases” by K.W. Colyard
“Kudzu” by Elizabeth Kestrel Rogers

August 2021
“Fermata” by Sarah Fannon
“The Art and Mystery of Thea Wells” by Alexandra Seidel

September 2021
“Rebuttal to Reviewers’ Comments on Edits for ‘Demonstration of a Novel Draconification Protocol on a Human Subject'” by Andrea Kriz
“A Guide to Snack Foods After the Apocalypse” by Rachael K. Jones

October 2021
“Audio Recording Left by the CEO of the Ranvannian Colony to Her Daughter, on the Survival Imperative of Maximising Market Profits” by Cassandra Khaw and Matt Dovey
“It’s Real Meat!™” by Kurt Pankau

November 2021
“Forced Fields” by Adam Gaylord
“Lies I Never Told You” by Jaxton Kimble

December 2021
“There’s An Art to It” by Brian Hugenbruch
“There Are Angels and They Are Utilitarians” by Jamie Wahls

January 2022
“Tides That Bind” by Cislyn Smith
“Delivery for 3C at Song View” by Marie Croke

February 2022
“The Galactic Induction Handbook” by Mark Vandersluis
“Coffee, Doughnuts, and Timeline Reverberations” by Cory Swanson

March 2022
“The House Diminished” by Devan Barlow
“The Assembly of Graves” by Rob E. Boley

DP FICTION #72A: “Energy Power Gets What She Wants” by Matt Dovey

edited by David Steffen and Ziv Wities

I keep my head low as I sprint towards the floating Kakardemon, dodging left-and-right across the dusty ground of Io. A ball of lightning crackles overhead, a near-miss, and the Kakardemon’s single green eye twists in fury, its red leather skin sparking in the twilight as it builds another attack. But I’m Energy Power, Queen of New Hell, I’m too damn fast and I get what I want: I leap forward with the Knife of Taertus held high and stab it into the Kakardemon’s brow. I’m nearly thrown off as the floating ball of hate starts bucking beneath me, but I grab one of its curved horns and hold on tight.

The Kakardemon sinks to the rocky canyon floor with a hiss. I step away, leaving the knife buried up to its carved-ivory hilt and grabbing the pump-action shotgun from my back. I cock it, and the sound echoes from sulfurous walls stretching half a mile high.

No other threats on my wristscreen minimap, players or monsters. Clear for now.

The demon’s huge eye, half as big as the round body it’s set in, focuses on me. Its fanged mouth opens, acid drooling out and fizzing where it lands. A deep rumble echoes up from unknowable dimensions and coalesces into a voice reverberating with the screams of a thousand swallowed victims. It speaks unto me:

“Knife of Taertus has restored Kakardemon’s soul. Kakardemon can now talk, and will ally with⁠—”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up, you’re not my first. Look: there’s this boy.”

“Give Kakardemon a player name to access performance statistics and—”

“I already wipe the floor with him every which way from Sunday, I don’t need help there. That’s kind of the problem, to be honest.” Tick tock, time to move, before someone zeroes in on my location. I sprint out of the canyon and towards the Security Tower. The tower is a needle in the heart of New Hell, a white plasteel obelisk stretching from the plains of Io towards Jupiter above; that great planet looms like a baleful orange eye in the ink-black night, its great storm a malignant red pupil. Demonic sigils blaze crimson round the tower’s crown, and my skull thrums with the subsonic resonance of their magic.

The Kakardemon bobs along behind me like a puppy. Sort of. An eight-foot-floating-demonic-ball-of-hate-and-blood-with-one-eye-and-spiky-horns puppy.

“If Energy Power can be specific with her problem, Kakardemon can offer many techniques refined in combat pits on the shores of hell.”

“My boyfriend won’t talk to me anymore.”

Demonboy Ballsack stops at this. Not the usual request, I’ll grant him. “Kakardemon has no context for romantic guidance.”

“Don’t worry, Johnny One-Eye, I don’t need your dating advice.” I kick the door of the Security Tower open: a six-foot demon’s standing just inside, and its face splits vertically in a drool-laden screech. I cut it off with a shotgun blast in the mouth, jumping over the corpse as it hits the floor with a gratuitous surge of blood. “We—Edge94 and me—we’ve been going out for a few months now. Just online, y’know—in-game chat and emails and kicking eight shades of ass in co-op tournaments—but we were going to meet in meatspace next month. He was all set to drive down for a day, but I went past him on the leaderboard last week and he’s been in a sulk since.”

“Kakardemon remains uncertain how to offer support for Energy Power’s love life.”

“What is it they promise in the adverts? ‘AI powered by an advanced neural network for analysis of player thought patterns’, something like that right? So I need you to tell me how to lose to him without it looking obvious. Show me how other people end up losing to him so I can copy that convincingly. If he’s above me in the rankings again maybe he’ll stop being such an asshole about this.”

We’re coming up on the temple room, a huge open square of sandstone pillars and lava pits, so I switch to the chaingun. The Kakardemon falls into a brooding silence as I mow down the advancing hordes of demons that pour from portals to flood this cursed moon. I’m bouncing between raised carbon-steel platforms, not even looking where I’m landing, flying by instinct with my chaingun spitting fury. The walls reverberate with screams and gunfire, and my whole world is concentrated down to the spinning geometry of circle-strafing.

“Kakardemon’s analysis of Energy Power’s player profile suggests this is not a stable long-term solution to your problem.”

“You what?” I switch to the rocket launcher and fire at my feet as I jump, surfing the shockwave to fly across the room and escape a group of demons, their claws clattering as they reach for my legs and grasp only air. I twist in mid-air and fire again, simultaneously accelerating myself towards the far platform and exploding the tightly-clustered demons into a glorious shower of chunky kibbles.

“Energy Power does not hold back,” says the Kakardemon. “Energy Power is most satisfied when giving her all. Attempts to gain happiness by self-limiting achievements are doomed to failure in Kakardemon’s opinion.”

“How’s any of this helping me, la Papa Diabla?” I punch a secret panel in the wall and grab the armour upgrade from the hidden alcove, juicing my power armour beyond its normal limits. It glows a deep shade of blood red I’ve always been fond of.

“Purpose of Kakardemon’s intelligence is to maximise player’s happiness. Kakardemon anticipates Energy Power will grow steadily resentful of the necessity to perform sub-optimally in order to soothe Edge94’s ego, leading to the inevitable breakdown of the relationship and greater hurt to both parties. Kakardemon does not want this. Kakardemon wants Energy Power to be happy.”

“But I want Edge94 to be happy. He’s the first… look, my parents are never really about, and VR nerds aren’t exactly the most popular ticket in town. Edge94 is the only real friend I’ve got, as well as everything else. I miss talking to him, and I miss him being happy, and I wish I knew why he cared so much about the fucking leaderboard.”

“Analysis of Edge94’s playtime pattern and ranking history suggests his skill at the game forms a large part of his self-identity. Kakardemon also notes that high levels of in-game communication between Energy Power and Edge94 began after Edge94 had achieved the top ranking. Kakardemon therefore deduces Edge94 believes Energy Power only likes him for his skill, and that Energy Power’s higher rank will inevitably lead to a decline in her desire for him.”

It takes a moment to work through all that in my head. I’ve never heard a Kakardemon talk so in-depth. But shit, this is all because his ego means more to him than I do? “That stupid S.O.B.! Why won’t he just talk to me about it?”

“Kakardemon has noted male players often interpret the need to communicate as a weakness, and that in order to solve their problems they should instead ‘git gud’. Kakardemon has also noted the ineffectiveness of this tactic, and has frequently exploited it.”

“Ugh! You’re giving me problems without solutions, Kakarmama. Just tell me what I gotta do.”

“Kakardemon suggests signalling your desire to talk.”

“Tried that. He starts shooting before I can get a word in.” The last of the invading demons drops dead, smoke rising from a dozen holes in its torso. The temple altar in the central lava pit cracks open, and a column rises through it from underground: there’s a Kyberdevil perched on top, an ugly-ass nine-foot goat-legged little bitch with most of its torso carved away to attach a rocket launcher. I say hello with a cluster of precisely timed frag grenades.

“Kakardemon concludes Energy Power needs a delay. Tactical resource banks suggest that surprise is the best way to force this.”

The Kyberdevil’s already on its knees, stunned by the frags. I hop over and finish it with a boot to the head, crunching through its skull to the squishy grey stuff beneath. “A surprise like what?”

“Kakardemon sometimes rolls around on floor singing classic pop song ‘Independent Woman’ while other demons flank the player.”

That brings me up short. “Huh. No shit. Didn’t know you could get down like that. Don’t reckon it’ll work for me, though, I’m not round enough to roll. I need something else.”

“Kakardemon suggests Energy Power think quick. Edge94 is closing on this position.”

Shiiiit. I check the minimap and spot him below me. He must’ve already blazed through the armoury on sub-level one. He’ll be kitted out now, definitely a plasma rifle, maybe a BMF gun if he got lucky. He could oneshot me. I’ll have no time to line up a shoulder shot to disarm him, no time to throw down my guns, no time to get a “Hey” out on local chat. He’ll kill me and—and shit, if I’m honest, Old Red Testicle here is right. I won’t be happy losing. Edge’ll kill me and I’ll get pissed at him and come back hard, and then he’ll come back harder at me and—well, then I’ll kill him again cos I’m better, and he’ll get in an even bigger sulk and we’ll never get anywhere. I need to get him to talk to me.

So I need a surprise. Something he’s not expecting. Something where he can’t hit me before I’m done.

I look at the Kakardemon. At the knife still sticking out its head, the ivory hilt contrasted against the red leather skin.

“Well, buddy,” I say. “It’s been good chatting. Good luck out there.” I yank the knife from its head and stamp down on the central platform switch. I drop out of sight beneath the closing altar just as the Kakardemon snarls, its electronic facsimile of a soul vanished and gone.

I’m running before the column’s finished its drop into the catacombs. It’s thick with darkness down here, but I know Edge94 is close and I can’t be caught standing still. I could beat him to the quick-draw easy, circle-strafe round him in my sleep, but this? This shit’s gonna be hard.

My wristscreen vibrates with a silent proximity alarm. I back up against a stone wall, facing a staircase lit with flickering candles. Edge’ll expect me to run up there, get to the mezzanine floor above, where I could drop grenades on his head. He’ll be facing it already, waiting to shoot me in the back.

But he won’t expect me to spin like this, whirl the other way and crouch-jump through the window here, come at him from the other side with the Knife of Taertus in my hand, zig-zagging through the dark and headed straight for him. I’m Energy Power, the too-damn-fast Queen of New Hell, and I—get—what—I—want. A huge ball of green plasma flies past me to one side and then I’m on him, bearing him down to the ground, and the knife’s in his chest and he’s staring in shock.

“What the hell?” he says, pinned beneath me as I straddle his torso.

“Gotcha.” I flick the knife hilt with one finger.

“You know the knife only works on AI, right, not humans? It can’t make me talk.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Well, I mean, I know I’m talking now, but… well. Shit. Alright.”

“Alright yourself. We need to talk.”

He looks at the knife in his chest, and he looks up at me, and he sighs in defeat.

I’m Energy Power, and I get what I want.


© 2021 by Matt Dovey

1900 words

Author’s Note: I grew up on my PC. Well, first I grew up on my Amiga 500, but by the time I was hitting adolescence I was knee deep in Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Monkey Island, Red Alert, Grand Theft Auto (in 2D!) and so on. This story is, therefore, the purest expression of my id I have yet written. It is full of stupid little references for no other reason than it amuses me, probably more than I even realise–and the entire thing is a reference to the British magazine Edge, who in 1994 famously concluded their review of the original Doom with “If only you could talk to these creatures…”That it grew from a stupid videogames in-joke into a commentary on toxic masculinity and the self-defeating futility of female-presenting people limiting themselves to be acceptable to society and the weak men in their life was, perhaps, inevitable.

Matt Dovey is very tall, very English, and most likely drinking a cup of tea right now. He has a scar on his arm he claims is from fighting Kyberdemons, though in truth he just walked into a tree with a VR helmet on. He now lives in a quiet market town in rural England with his wife & three children, and despite being a writer he still hasn’t found the right words to fully express the delight he finds in this wonderful arrangement. His surname rhymes with “Dopey” but any other similarities to the dwarf are purely coincidental. He’s an associate editor at PodCastle, a member of Codex and Villa Diodati, and has fiction out and forthcoming all over the place, including all four Escape Artists podcasts, Analog and Daily SF. You can keep up with it all at mattdovey.com, or find him timewasting on Twitter as @mattdoveywriter.


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DP FICTION #71A: “Everyone You Know is a Raven” by Phil Dyer

edited by David Steffen and Ziv Wities

I’m not saying that there aren’t any real people in the world. The ravens are very real, and indisputably people. I’m not saying you’re the only human, either. There are definitely a few of you about. How many, I couldn’t say. More than fifty? Less than a thousand, that’s for sure. 

Ravens are accomplished mimics. If you’ve ever seen one, well, that’s basically accurate, except the real thing is a little smaller and plainer and generally one metre to the left, just as a precaution. If you’ve never seen a raven, you’re wrong.  

Everyone you know and love is definitely a raven. A gathering of humans is an unkindness. We space them out, for everyone’s safety. I haven’t asked your ravens where you think you are, but this was Siberian taiga. Aren’t these good trees? They’re recovering well.

There’s not another of you for weeks in any direction. The nearest I know of is in what used to be China. She thinks she’s a scientist in Wales. Her ravens love to make the sounds of rain.  

Don’t look at me like that. She’s quite happy. Ravens are very social creatures. 

Everyone thinks acoustic mimicry is basically a party trick, fun and a little bit creepy but when you get down to it, what’s the most you can do with that? Give someone the shivers, maybe. Your alarm goes off in the morning and you find your phone but it’s not turning off and you’re fumbling around in the dark and you hit the lights and there’s this huge black bird on top of your wardrobe going beep beep beep. That sort of thing happened a lot in the early days.  Hilarious, but not the stuff of revolution. And heaven knows we needed one.

The apes thought it would be them, because of their hands. Poor apes. The dolphins were less hopeful, but at least assumed they would survive. Poor dolphins.

A lot of humans actually thought it would be them, some of them, someday, somehow, but it wasn’t.

Talons aren’t what you want for touch-typing, but ninety percent of hacking is calling about forgotten passwords. Major General Human Man, a word about the missiles, sir. Boy, did you lot fall for that one. How’s that for a party trick?

We got better at it, too. A lot better.

No-one spins a story like a raven. They live for drama. They can’t help it. Even when they’re doing their thing, even when they’re playing themselves as big dumb birds who cuss for crumbs, they still can’t stop. You’ll see them sitting on a fence, head cocked, a little bit glossier, a little bit fancier than any raven ever was. 

“Hello” says the human watching them. “Hello! Aren’t you a pretty boy then? Aren’t you a clever one? Hello? Hello!” 

“Hello”, obliges the raven. “Hello. Hello! Hi. Hi. Hi.” And then some funny throat-clearing noises, water splashing, maybe some rude words. The human laughs and looks around for someone to hold their camera. 

“You should kiss him, you know.” says the raven. The human spins back.

“Hello?” says the raven. “Hi! Hello…”  

And the real raven, sitting one metre to the left, makes the exact note-perfect soundscape of wind in the trees, and clouds across a summer sky, and a friend coming to look at the funny bird and throwing a warm, welcome arm around the poor bewildered human, a mimicry so profound and absolute that the eyes no longer have a say in reality. The good friend’s eyes are beady, unless the raven is really concentrating. Their hair is black and glossy.

And all around, if the story is any good, more unseen birds come whirling down. . 

Main characters are jealously guarded, a privilege for the proven virtuoso. The dark-haired boss, the dark-haired wife, the dark-haired dark-eyed long-nosed stranger on the train. Ravens are vain. Newcomers take up the song as scenery; the moon in winter, maybe, or bees. Remember bees? They were kind of a last straw for us, actually. There are none now; only the ones you hear. Lucky you.  

But ravens need a lot of stimulation, and sometimes they get bored. Here you are, you poor brave soul. Have you been lost for long? 

This world is not the one for you. Your world is a place of plastic and glass, a nest of fans and pizza and signposted roads and easy friendships with lovely people who sometimes flap when startled. This is a hard world, a green world. A world where forests grow from craters, and flowers spring from skulls. Don’t look at those.

The life you remember is here, just over the nearest hill. Let me tell you about it. Your friends are there, do you remember your friends? Tell me about them. I will fly ahead and help you look.  

Listen. This is where you belong. This is a story for you. 


© 2021 by Phil Dyer

900 words

Author’s Note: I think most people know that ravens are mimics, but talking parrots and budgies have them completely eclipsed in the public consciousness. My theory is that this is because parrots are funny, and therefore safe. A talking parrot sounds like a friendly little goblin. A talking raven sounds like YOU. If they feel like it. 

Phil Dyer does science and writes spec fic in Liverpool. His stories have lately appeared in BFS Horizons, 101 Fiction and Black Hare Press. He has recently begun to study for a PhD, against a lot of good advice. Retweets animal gifs @ez_ozel.


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Diabolical Plots 2020 Award Eligibility

written by David Steffen

Hello! This is one of those posts where I declare what is eligible for speculative fiction awards (such as the Hugo and Nebula and Locus) and in what category from Diabolical Plots offerings.

Semiprozine

Diabolical Plots itself is eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

Editor (Short Form)

David Steffen is eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Editor (Short Form), for both Diabolical Plots as well as The Long List Anthology Volume 6.

Publisher

Locus Awards have a category for Publisher, which would be Diabolical Plots, L.L.C. for Diabolical Plots, Long List Anthology Volume 6, as well as being the entity responsible for The Submission Grinder.

Best Reprint Anthology

For the Locus Award!

Related Work and Fan Writer

Websites that relate somehow to science fiction and fantasy are eligible for related work. So I believe Diabolical Plots as a whole is eligible, and I am eligible as “Fan Writer” for my work here.

Individual works of nonfiction are definitely eligible so individual pieces on Diabolical Plots, whether reviews or otherwise, are eligible.

This year marked the start of a series of articles I’m quite fond of: Music Video Drilldown, in which I analyze a professional music video as though it were meant to be a regular film instead of a music video–trying to understand the plot. Many of these end up being quite speculative.

And very recently I started a new series on Universal Transitive Headcanon–a metafictional framework of my own devising. In a nutshell, it is based around the idea that every character played by a particular actor is all part of the same character continuity, and every actor who plays a particular character (i.e. often rebooted ones like James Bond or Batman) are also part of the same character continuity. The concept is explained in more detail in this foundational post, and the first of the actual articles was posted very recently: The Story of Gandalf and Magneto.

And The Submission Grinder may be eligible as well! People ask me every year what they can nominate it for. (I think it would be very unlikely to win since that is a tool for writers and Hugos are voted by broader group than just writers but it is probably eligible anyway.)

Also, this may be a little bit odd of a suggestion, but the cross-stitch on the Diabolical Plots Twitter feed could be a related work. In 2020, in particular, I finished The Mighty Samurai, a project that took me FOUR YEARS to complete and which I chronicled step by step on the Twitter feed. There are also other cross-stitch projects completed in that time, including a Stormtrooper helmet, but The Mighty Samurai is certainly the most notable of this content.

Professional Artist

Diabolical Plots commissioned one artwork this year, for the cover of The Long List Anthology Volume 6, which was produced by Jorge Jacinto. I believe his work would fall under the Professional Artist category by Hugo Award definitions. Check out his website.

Short Stories

This year only one of my own stories is eligible:

“Love From Goldie” by David Steffen, at Zooscape
We used to be so close. What happened between us, Gloria? Is it because I died? I would never have thought our marriage was so superficial. For Christ’s sake, we’d been married for eighteen years! And now you won’t even talk to me, won’t even look at me. I’d never even believed in reincarnation, but here I am. I guess reincarnation believed in me.

All of the original fiction published by Diabolical Plots falls into the “Short Story” category as defined by both the Hugo and Nebula and Locus awards (meaning that each is under 7500 words apiece). The eligible stories are listed here with the announcement of Year Six fiction–but only those with 2020 dates, the ones with 2021 dates are eligible next year instead. Note that if you’ve been following along from previous years that this is a change from previous years–the last couple of years had had an anthology published early in the year that contained all of the story from April of the year to March of the next year–when that happened those stories were all first published in the anthology, and so the first 3 months of stories published on the site the year after were actually eligible the year before because of the anthology. These anthologies have been discontinued and so now “date on the site” is the only publication date to be considered. This means that even though Diabolical Plots has continued to publish two original stories every month, this year only 9 months of those stories are eligible (April through December). You can find all Diabolical Plots fiction here.

For the sake of convenience, here is a list of the eligible short stories with links and brief excerpts:

“A Promise of Dying Embers” by Jordan Kurella
It is a long way down to the sea. A long way down, and treacherous. But I must make this journey today from my uncle’s castle, carrying his bones. I must make this journey, both for my uncle’s bargain, and for my own.

“On You and Your Husband’s Appointment at the Reverse-Crematorium” by Bill Ferris
You place the urn carefully onto the examination table. The doctor opens the lid, takes a peek inside, sniffs a little. He nods, like he’s evaluating a new blend of coffee, then dumps half of your husband’s cremains into a big metal mixing bowl, the kind they had in the restaurant kitchen you used to work at. He uses a large copper whisk to mix in a bottle of purified water.

“Everything Important in One Cardboard Box” by Jason Kimble
Max found the box that fit absolutely everything when he was clearing space for Roderick to move in. They had agreed he’d pare down to a single bookshelf, so he drove by the local rental place and bought a half dozen boxes.

“Synner and the Rise of the Rebel Queen” by Phoebe Wagner
The Greyhood Gang created the boards to escape the guards. The Gallows Hand Gang modified the design with runes, potion washes, and badass art. The last gang, the Blacksmith Bitches, put the boards to their true purpose: rooftop raids on the rich.

“Open House on Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell
133 Poisonwood Avenue would be stronger if it was a killer house. There is an estate at 35 Silver Street that annihilated a family back in the 1800s and its roof has never sprung a leak since. In 2007 it still had the power to trap a bickering couple in an endless hedge maze that was physically only three hundred square feet. 35 Silver Street is a show-off.

“The Automatic Ballerina” by Michael Milne
Cassia works leg-like appendages below its central chassis, tossing a frilly grey tutu out in a jellyfish whorl. It has a choice now: it could approximate anthropomorphic performance, occasionally wobbling, rotating its abdominal segment in concert with its lower half. It could fix its gaze on a sculpted sconce in the middle distance; it could mime fending off an impossible nausea. It chooses not to.

“Minutes Past Midnight” by Mark Rivett
Ruth slammed through a metal security hatch. Solid steel met Ruth’s super strength and speed, and it shredded like tinfoil. From Ruth’s perspective, the world was frozen in time. Soldiers were posed in action – walking through halls, manning their posts, and otherwise going about the daily business of staffing a nuclear missile silo. None of them would be aware of the super hero in their midst. Only later – instantaneous in their perception, but many long seconds in Ruth’s – would they experience her intrusion: ruined passageways and an obliterated weapon.

“Bring the Bones That Sing” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor
The bird bones arrived on Grandma’s porch every day at dusk with no warning. There were all kinds of skeletons, each distinct: finches, crows, goldfinches, tiny barn owls, starlings, and once, a blue heron that had covered nearly the entire stoop.

“Finding the Center” by Andrew K Hoe
I brought Annie to my math-racist’s because I’d stolen a laptop from the Syndicate. I’d stirred the vipers’ nest. Their reach was long, and I didn’t have anywhere to take her. Last year, they’d killed Annie’s mother—a trained policewoman—using crooked cops from our own precinct. So Annie went where I went—even to Sanger’s beat-down porch.

“For Want of Human Parts” by Casey Lucas
The woman cuts down the street in her high-heeled shoes and descends to St. Patrick Station with her blood-red lipstick and victory rolls. The flare of her skirts and the streak of her eyeliner remind Bone Pile of a bygone era, not that it knows what a bygone era is. But something about her feels like home. Like a place Bone Pile can still remember.

“The Last Great Rumpus” by Brian Winfrey
Except for me, he goes unseen and untouched by the world. But animals can still sense him somehow. So, as he drifts among them, dogs tense and huff and growl. Finally, the boldest of them, a pug, lets out a high-pitched squeal of a war-cry and charges.

“That Good Old Country Living” by Vanessa Montalban
Phase Two consists of a trip outside Sector 684. It’ll take us two days to reach the human-curated farm fields. We’ll have the chance to see how our creators lived before the dark decline. How they coexisted with their animals in vast, clear-skied land.

“A Complete Transcript of [REDACTED]’s Video Channel, In Order of Upload” by Rhiannon Rasmussen
Dark kitchen, grainy. Camera, low resolution, is pointed at a cooking range with dented skillet resting on it. Both are crusted with food and what appears to be rust. The stovetop paint is flaking off in layers. Over the side of the skillet, a lump which appears to have hair in it is visible. A black sheet has been draped across the counter behind the cooking range. After a moment of rustling, it becomes apparent that hands in black gloves have been in view.

“Are You Being Severed?” by Rhys Hughes
He was lost in the guillotine section of the big department store. He could never have guessed there was such a thing, or he might have taken more care when the doors of the elevator opened and let him out. He was on the wrong floor. The lighting here was dim and bloody, the lamps shaded to deliberately cast a gory glow over the items that were on sale. It was crude and unfair. By the time he realised his error he had already wandered too far into the enormous room and his sense of direction was confused. He had no idea how to get back to the elevator.

“Many-Faced Monsters in the Backlands” by Lee Chamney
On the third day, while using the washbasin, I saw my face had become asymmetrical. As I watched, the left side fattened. I put a hand to it and felt the bones below shift. The left side soon contaminated the right, and my face became someone else’s. It looked at me with eyes not my own.

“Mama’s Hand of Glory” by Douglas Ford
Mama’s hand normally stayed inside the dining room cabinet, the kind that most families used for nice china. With it just me now, I used ours for other stuff, like interesting bones and rocks I came across. Naturally, Mama’s hand was the centerpiece. I picked it off the floor—fortunately, far enough from the vomit that it didn’t need cleaning—and placed it back on its display rack. I judged that it looked ok, despite one finger, the one that would’ve held a ring if Mama had ever gotten married, hanging off kind of funny. The pinky, along with most of the dried flesh under it, was gone completely. It didn’t look how Mama intended. But the tattooed planchette on the back didn’t suffer much damage, so I suspected it would still work.

“‘My Legs Can Fell Trees’ and Other Songs For a Hungry Raptor” by Matthew Schickele
The junction of tunnels here had a rich sound, and the soft buzz of her bagpipes echoed in every direction. Just like yesterday, and the day before, she relaxed on a pile of stones, lost in the music, sifting her memory for favorite tunes from the timeworn canon. The bellows for the pipes was a ballooned mammal-skin bag on the floor, massaged by her large clawed feet; her small front claws tickled melodies on the chanter. Leathered intestines connected all the parts, snaking along her feathers from the bag up to her massive jaw.

“Tony Roomba’s Last Day On Earth” by Maria Haskins
It’s Tony Roomba’s last day on Earth. After two years of working undercover as a vacuum cleaner bot on this boondock planet, he is finally heading home to the Gamma Sector, but his final day is full of challenges. He has to get out of the apartment undetected; has to reach the extraction point in time for teleportation; and he has to submit his intel-report to the Galactic Robotic Alliance (not that they’ll like it much). However, his most immediate and hairiest problem, is that he can’t get Hortense off his back.

UTH #1: The Story of Gandalf and Magneto

written by David Steffen

This article is based in the idea of UTH (Universal Transitive Headcanon); if you are not familiar with the concept you can read more detail about it here.

From our perspective, most people in our world and time view Gandalf the Grey (and his second persona as Gandalf the White) as one of the greatest heroes of Middle Earth (i.e. The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, etc), in part because of the incredible portrayal of the legendary character by Sir Ian McKellen. Time and again Gandalf learns of a great threat to peace and life as people know it and he races ahead to forewarn those in danger to give them time to prepare a defense. Yet, Gandalf is known by another name by many people of that time and place that gives us a sense of the skewed perspective of those very same people he has saved: Storm Crow. Because, wherever Gandalf visits, a wave of chaos and death is surely following closely behind. And, while this is certainly true, many people confuse Gandalf’s role in the proceedings; Gandalf is not the cause of the chaos and death. With no Gandalf, entire kingdoms and their residents would have been wiped off the map in quick succession without forewarning to defend themselves. Gandalf has certainly saved many thousands of lives many times over, yet he is often blamed for those who didn’t survive despite his best efforts.

It is no wonder, then, that even after saving most of the then-known world from the evil power of Sauron yet again, that Gandalf would become embittered and, not only take on an entirely new persona of Eric Lensherr/Magneto (X-Men, X2: X-Men United, etc), but turn his back on his prior methods and many of the people he had fought to protect. No longer would he spend his efforts protecting a populace that as a whole despises and blames him. He may have been emboldened to change tactics by the modern rise of more people like him–in the times of The Lord of the Rings he was a rarity, only a handful of superpowered people like him, but by the time of the X-Men timeline there are multiple organized teams with their own agendas and with more superpowered people revealing themselves every day. As we saw in X2: X-Men United when Professor X uses Cerebro to target all mutants on the planet, there are multitudes more that are hidden in the population who perhaps do not even know that they have powers, or perhaps have just managed to keep it a secret from most. Perhaps in the time of The Lord of the Rings, a similar number of people have powers, but have not had the opportunity to develop it, or they manifest in ways that are taken for granted by those around them, but in any case the number of evident superpowered people has greatly increased from one film to the next.

Where Gandalf once depended on the support of the Fellowship of the Ring, Magneto now depends on the support of the Brotherhood of Mutants. Having revived from death at the hands of the Balrog and saving the entire population of the world from the evils of Sauron, and finding the world just as unwelcoming to him and to people like him as ever, he is back and is determined to establish a world where people like him can thrive without the blame and persecution of those who view them as different: “We are the future, Charles. They no longer matter”.

Gandalf/Magneto, among his more flashy talents, has a keen eye for new recruits, as we see in X2: X-Men United as he snipes Pyro from the X-Men team using Pyro’s insecurities and animosity toward Ice Man as a wedge. We see the start of his yearning for brotherhood with others of his kind with his befriending of Bilbo in The Hobbit, and then Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring. At the beginning of each of their stories, Bilbo and Frodo seem fairly quiet and unspectacular people among a local population full of quiet and unspectacular people. But, especially in Frodo his skill at recruiting is never stronger. Without the Hobbits in general, and perhaps Frodo specifically, the battle against Sauron would surely have been lost. Frodo’s pleasant and calm demeanor is but an aspect of his supernatural resilience and resistance to the forces of outside corruption. Gandalf himself is susceptible to the mind control of Sauron: “Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself.” But Frodo carries the One Ring to the brink of its destruction, farther than any other individual may have carried it, even if in those final moments his resolve finally crumbled (though thankfully the deed was still carried out!). Of course, Boromir’s betrayal shows that Gandalf is not infallible in his recruiting skill–his recruiting is a high-stakes gamble–the world would have been lost if he had not found a mutant with an appropriate power to counteract the Dark Lord Sauron’s powers, but the flip side is that when this gamble went wrong it tore apart the Fellowship of Nine.

Before we see Gandalf in the guise of Magneto rising to notoriety at the head of The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, he has found a way to use technology to conquer his greatest fear: the fear of mind control, using a specially crafted helmet that shields him from telepathic influence. If he were to face Sauron again, he would be more prepared. He has also focused on some of his abilities to the loss of many others–can you imagine how much simpler most of the battles of Middle Earth could have been with the powers that Magneto has developed over metal? Every orc’s blade turned against them, a battle could be over in seconds with no survivors to tell of it! It’s no wonder that he focused so much of his power in more recent years on honing that skill to perfection.

As we see the resurrection of Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White, it is explicit that Gandalf is not bound by the same laws of mortality as the rest of us. One component of this great character’s life that is a matter of fierce debate is the debate of the other chapter of his life involving a quest for resurrection as Asparagus, aka Gus the Theater Cat (Cats) who joins with the others at the Jellicle Ball to determine which one of them will be reborn.

My personal interpretation of the Gus/Gandalf ordering is that his time as Gus the Theater Cat tells of the later years of his long and storied life. It’s only natural for him to take on a role in the theater, considering how skilled he had shown himself to be by then to take on different roles. And in his role of Gus we finally see spelled out how his earlier resurrection may have worked, although it seems that significant details must have been left out in the telling in both the books and the movies.

Although strong rules dictates certain parameters around a Jellicle Ball, it turns out that these rules are more customs than laws. Gandalf defeated the Balrog and earned his own resurrection by calling an impromptu Jellicle Ball as they fell from the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Gandalf the Grey and the Balrog took their turns pleading their case for why each of them deserved resurrection in musical form. Of course with only the two of them, they could not fairly judge themselves in this case, so a higher power had to step in to make the choice. It turns out that Gandalf wishing to return to the surface and save everyone from the Dark Lord was more convincing an argument than whatever the Balrog could come up with in the heat of the moment when it had been expecting this confrontation to be a literal song and dance. Or perhaps it was Gandalf’s performance that made the difference rather than the contents of the argument itself, and thus inspired his later life in theater, as theater had saved his life and allowed him to finish his greatest work. One can imagine that the Balrog’s performance probably had a great deal of shaky rhymes and trailed-off sentences and circular logic, and the Balrog died for its failure.

It’s unclear why Tolkien skipped the musical nature of this sequence, considering The Lord of The Rings books are basically musicals anyway (count the number of songs in their pages and tell me I’m wrong). But why skip the most striking musical number? Perhaps Peter Jackson also skipped this musical sequence as a nod of deference to Tolkien, but the continued lack of a musical adaptation of the Gandalf/Balrog Jellicle Ball sequence is simply a travesty that I hope will some day be rectified! (preferably soon enough that Sir Ian McKellen may reprise his role!)

Gandalf’s breaking of custom may also have something to do with why Gus failed to secure resurrection at the later Jellicle Ball. He had already earned his chance at another life, and under a Jellicle Ball whose legitimacy could be called into question, and here he is at another one making the case for yet another life? So, this last chapter of his life was a quieter one, where others elsewhere wee fighting the battles that save the world.