Sometimes I write things

A tiny, tiny apartment, crowded with gothic regalia and weird collages on the wall and laundry. The gaming clerk is bent over, filling the frame. She straightens up and the camera pulls back to reveal what she’s working on: Andrew. Andrew is barely recognizable under the punk hair, black lipstick, et cetera. He’s got plastic fangs in his mouth, which the clerk (whose name we still don’t know) tells him not to remove. The clerk waxes rhapsodic about the experience of the game, of stepping outside yourself and into another identity. In the real world, people aren’t free, they’re chained down by society and rules and nobody likes a stalker. But in the game, in the game everything’s different…

They’re interrupted by the arrival of Morgan, a skinny goth, and Luculus, a big slab of a goth. Morgan greets the clerk as Angelina (pronounced Anne-GEL-ina), his sister in darkness, and they tongue a bit, to Andrew’s disgust. Luculus stands in the doorway and breathes through his mouth. Angelina introduces Andrew as Lord Darcy Darkthrone, and explains he’s from Des Moines. Morgan asks about Des Moines, calls Andrew a newbie when he can’t answer Morgan’s questions. Before the game, Morgan and Luculus prepare to ingest some kind of drug, coarse yellow crystals, allegedly horse tranquilizer. Andrew vehemently refuses to join in, spouting D.A.R.E. slogans. Morgan becomes hostile and challenges Andrew to a Blood Duel.
He and Luculus snort tranquilizer and collapse on Angelina’s sofa. Angelina turns to Andrew and tells him he has twelve minutes to make out with her.
What? says Andrew.
Angelina explains that Morgan is insanely jealous, but he won’t regain consciousness for at least twelve minutes, so make with the lip and tongue action. In the game, do as you will shall be the whole of the law.
Andrew steels himself (he takes out his Wizard’s Cap and puts it on) but loses his opportunity when Luculus rolls off the sofa and smashes Angelina’s glass coffee table.

The garden party is in the process of slowly trundling forward; guests have started to arrive, the bar is open. The ice sculpture of the planned Axis War Memorial has already begun to melt. Ferdinand and his father are drinking gin and tonics in the corner. In the lower right corner of the shot, unobtrusively superimposed, the ten-dot track with nine dots filled in.

“Dad, I have a problem.”

“Mm-hm?”

“I, well, imagine I have a project that I’ve been working on a long time, and it’s taken a lot of my time and energy and I’ve committed many resources to it, but it’s looking less and less viable.”

“Oh?”

“I need to quit and cut my losses.”

“What’s the problem, exactly?”

“But there’s, like, a bunny.”

“A bunny?”

“Or two bunnies. One and a half? There’s an indeterminate number of bunnies, 1d6 bunnies.”

“One dee six?”

“A random number between one and six, like if you roll a d6. I mean, a six-sided die.”

“Okay. Three point five bunnies, on average.”

“If I quit the project, the bunnies will get their brains bashed in and die awfully.”

“Hmm.”

“So, what do I do?”

“You know, this reminds me of when you were six and had a pet bunny, remember?”

“A pet bunny? I never had a bunny.”

“She was named Daffodil, and she got pregnant, remember, and had six or seven little baby bunnies and died.”
“Are you sure this actually happened? I don’t remember it at all.”

“And we got a blanket and an electric heater and an alarm clock and we fed them with an eyedropper, and you tried hard, oh, we all did our best, you and your mother and me, but one by one the babies died. It was very sad.”

“You’re not very good at this, are you Dad?”

The Malloys arrive, slightly underdressed, and Ferdinand beckons to Mike. After getting Mike a gin and tonic, repeats the hypothetical scenario to him. This time substitutes a sackful of kittens for 1d6 bunnies. Mike responds that he didn’t care for Aphids, Ferdinand gets defensive, then stomps off.

Alvin arrives, and Ferdinand asks him point blank: he doesn’t think it’s working out, but he doesn’t want to hurt her. Alvin speaks gently but pointedly: let Datur down gently.
There’s a pause, a roll of the dice, and then the tenth dot on the track is filled in. The track pulses red, then as the frame freezes expands to fill the screen. Pull back from the track to the entire character sheet (most of which is still blurred/illegible), then zoom in on a section at the top:

LIFE GOALS:
1) Make Fabulous Movies Without Compromising Integrity
2) Win Three Consecutive Best Director Oscars
3) Love and Be Loved, Cultivate Friendships
4) Stay Physically Fit, Read More, Develop Well-Rounded Lifestyle
5) Remake the Thin Man

becomes

LIFE GOALS:
1) Make Fabulous Movies Without Compromising Integrity
2) Let Datur Down Gently
3) Win Three Consecutive Best Director Oscars
4) Love and Be Loved, Cultivate Friendships
5) Stay Physically Fit, Read More, Develop Well-Rounded Lifestyle
6) Remake the Thin Man

Ferdinand looks for Datur, who is unaccountably absent.

En route to the LARP and Mobius’s court, Morgan and Andrew are getting along considerably better. Morgan’s spirits are lighter, possibly because he’s buzzed. Morgan asks about Andrew’s character’s family; does he have any brothers or sisters in darkness? No, “Lord Darcy Darkthrone” is an only vaempyre. Morgan often wishes he, too, were an only vaempyre; sometimes his sister in darkness Angelina drives him mad, mad I say with jealousy. Their bond is close, but her mind is closed to his Auspex; he does not know where she is at all times or what she’s thinking. He suspects that someone in his cabal is consorting with Mobius, some dark traitor — could it be her?
Andrew, slurring slightly because he’s still wearing those plastic fangs, claps Morgan on the back. See, you’ve got to relax, he says. You’re coming on too strong, with the big flashy entrance and the theatrics. Girls don’t respond to that, they want something real, something genuine and honest and calm. Nobody likes a stalker.
Morgan’s clearly warming to Andrew, and regrets having challenged him to a blood duel.

At the garden party, Jack Nelson and Alvin come face to face. Hello, Alan, says Jack. Hello, Josh, says Alvin. Jack casts aspersions on Donnie, whom he assumes will be Alvin’s candidate. Alvin says he thinks Donnie has a lot to show people, but tells Jack he’s barking up the wrong tree: Donnie won’t be his candidate. Jack scoffs; he knows that Donnie is going to be the Democratic candidate for the seat. Alvin admits that’s true… but Alvin isn’t going to be running the Democratic candidate. He’s running a third-party, independent candidate, all alone outside the Big Tent. Who, Jack wonders.
You’re looking at him, says Alvin. So whatever little pipsqueak of a partisan hack you’re running as the GOP candidate, you’d better run him hard.

Andrew and Morgan, no longer feuding, make a deal. Morgan’s real enemy is Mobius, the new ruler of the court. The pretense of the blood duel will allow Andrew and Morgan to get right up to the throne — they can fake the fight, then when Mobius’s guard is down storm the dais and assume control of the court. Together!

All right, Morgan says. Let’s look alive. Undead. He pulls two katanas out from under his trench coat.

As Morgan, Angelina, Luculus, and Andrew enter the warehouse, pan past them across a sea of LARPers in varying degrees of made-up. Some have trench coats, some have ankhs, some have piercings, some have teddy bears. At the center of the crowd is the Vaempyre Court. Mobius, the head of the court, is seated on a painted plywood throne and dais. She’s a woman, which hadn’t been established previously from the dialogue about her. More specifically, under the leather and the straps and the corset and makeup, she’s Datur.