Ooooh I wrote that comment on the first chapter just before realising there was more. and started writing this comment just before realising this was for my carnivale prompt !!! I feel like tiny tim in embarrassingly sentimental joy.... And also, wow, this is fantastic and I love it and everything about it. I'm going to go on a bit about that but tl;dr this is awesome and you executed this whole thing so astonishingly well, from concept to characterisation to style. Ah!!
I read a christmas carol on the train back home for christmas with the faint notion of mining it for terror au ideas but it really quickly devolved into taking screenshots of the funny bits. I came out of it, I must admit, thinking that the mismatch between the two stories was so great, with Dickens' sometimes preachy Victorian sentimentality especially, that it couldn't really be resolved without compromising the original spirit of one or the other of the sources. This is a thoroughly delightful way to find out how wrong I was. I really love how this doesn't compromise on the Dickens theme of reasonably heartwarming spiritual and moral improvement while staying true to the less black-and-white Terror universe and characterisation (and ambiguous ending). And your choices for Ghosts past, present and to come are inspired - McDonald! - I can see Franklin saying his lines here exactly, the intonation is really clear - I didn't know how very badly I needed that meeting between Stanley and future-Goodsir - Stanley is a character I always want to see more of but never know exactly how to ask for it because I don't want to see him Magically Make Good Decisions, and this really does him justice - I will stop but thank you again for writing this! I'll definitely reread it.
lol, well I'm glad it met your prompt enough that you could recognize it even not knowing! Thanks so much for your comment, I'm tickled pink that you liked it. Yeah, the original Christmas Carol is definitely heavy on the kitsch at points (Tiny Tim *eye roll*)- but I really like some of the spookier imagery in it, especially the whole bit with Ignorance and Want. I tried to work that in there in the McDonald chapter with Heather and Collins as the two personifications but I couldn't quite make it work.
I'm glad you liked my picks for the ghosts- Goodsir was always Future but I toyed with McDonald as Past and Blanky or Bridgens as Present for a while, but ultimately it just felt like McDonald was the closest thing to a real exemplar for the kind of man Stanley should be at the time of Carnivale. And I like exploring Franklin's past of fucking up and not fucking up and how it made him the person he was at the end. You're right that Stanley will probably never have a Scrooge-like 180 where he wakes up filled with love for his fellow man, but your prompt really got me thinking about what would make him question his views and actions. Thanks for the prompt, its fun exploring the B-level characters more.
Comment on Flurried: A Dr. Stanley Christmas Carol
camber on Chapter 4 Wed 26 Dec 2018 11:14PM UTC
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Tiberius_Tibia on Chapter 4 Thu 27 Dec 2018 04:54PM UTC
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