Tag: Season 1

First off, blame Tony Amato for all of these anthology vignettes.

I’ve been attending Tony’s writer’s workshops since 2000, aside from a brief hiatus between 2013-2023. Each workshop has two prompt-based sessions – Tony provides a prompt to encourage you to write something based on whatever the prompt is about, or, as I do, completely ignore the prompt and write about something silly. For the past couple years, I’ve been using the writer’s workshops to explore the characters in my shows, or more recently, to explore scenes in future episodes of Blood Doll. I’ll figure out a setting for the character to be in before I start writing, and then I write to explore how the character would respond to that environment and what they end up doing.

I find out a lot about my characters in this way and often, bits of these vignettes end up back in the show. Amanda and Penelope’s spat was conceived in the vignette (Episode 3 in the Anthology), as was Aaralyn’s early days as a chemist/alchemist (Episode 5 in the Anthology). I highly recommend doing this for your own writing. (Also reading terrible books as inspiration.)

As a sneak peak behind the curtain, I actually began investigating the Blood Doll project with this piece, prior to planning anything else about the show, that included these paragraphs:

I am under no delusions about my life. Each day you allow me to return home is unexpected. I do think if I die, I will find solace and comfort in dying for you. To die for someone, a god one can talk with and be honest with, anyone can find peace there. Imagine a cop dying in the line of duty. Or a serviceperson in the Armed Forces. Who do they know for whom they would die? I plan to die for you someday. Do I want to? No. Will I work to the best of my abilities to prevent it from happening? That depends on whether you want me to die or not. I’m under no delusions about what life under you would be. I’m agnostic, but I think of Jacob in the Old Testament wrestling with the angel. I wrestle with you, to understand my place and abilities under you. And like Jacob, I start with knowing a god exists and I have a place under them.

They say the Torah is not in heaven, assuming that Abraham’s God is. I know nothing about Heaven. I know my own two feet are planted on this earthen ground. And your feet are planted near mine. I feel your holy call over me. There are scriptures to be written. There are hymns to be sung of my body, of sex, of blood, of corruption, of glory. There is so much we can do to define each other, to know our places, to celebrate the dance of death and flesh around us. Halleluia. Halleluia. Halleluia.

So I probably freaked the rest of the workshop the fuck off with that.

I only recorded fifteen of the vignettes, but trust me, there are [goes to count] thirty-four in total for Season 1. Not all of them are winners. There’s like three for Cassandra that do nothing for her characterization. Stephanie has two and neither of them are indicative of how she eventually came out. In them, you’ll learn that Vanishing Girl’s real name is Blaise and Silver lives in a run-down house in Rainier that only has electricity from a solar panel out back.

The fence and the front porch have partially collapsed, as the wood grew soft and cracks in the paint let in the rain. The windows, mostly cracked and a few broken, are sealed with Styrofoam and newspaper. The front yard regularly blows weed seeds onto every other yard in the neighborhood. The newer neighbors have complained to the city, who repeats that it’s their issue, not the city’s. So those neighbors stroll up to the still-solid Wall of a door, strewn with ancient locks, and bang on the knocker that threats to break off with every impact. Typically, no one answers. Maybe today, after dark, Silver will come and open the great entryway and the neighbor will see the mess inside; giant wood spools for tables, mattresses of varying grunge-levels everywhere, and books scattered with a few laptops on extension cords snaking out the back of the house.

Stuff like that. Nothing that really matters in the course of the show.

I got the idea to record these vignettes from the previous, uncompleted show Victory Asterisk, as I had written a ton of vignettes for the characters in that show. I thought it might be fun for the actors to read these bits of their characters, and the audience might enjoy hearing more about the world these people live in. I actually wrote a lot more of the Hermanubis Anthology, as I called it (the town in Victory Asterisk is called Hermanubis, or Hubris for short), than of the Blood Doll Anthology. I think it was easier to summon my Prairie Home Companion roots in stories about a small town in the middle of nowhere. Blood Doll is so much more show than backstory for me though. I worry about contradicting something about the Blood Doll characters that I’ve written somewhere else.

We actually did record quite a few of the Hermanubis Anthology vignettes, and I may release them someday, who knows. I’m not sure any of my actors are ready to go back to that project after the whirlwind of Blood Doll.

I suppose I should add some trivia about the Blood Doll Anthology vignettes in order to pad this post out more. Here it goes.

Samael (1) is one of the later vignettes I wrote, but I thought it was fun so I started off the Anthology with it. I read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in high school too. I thought it would be amusing to see Samael at the gas station.

Cassandra is the only Cassandra vignette I wrote that actually deals with her as a character and not a person walking through a scene. The whole boat/fishing thing was from my childhood, when my dad would take me out fishing around Bassett’s Island in Pocasset. I liked it enough to be social time with him but not enough to do it myself. The whole “friends fall off from attending birthdays” was me too. Wheeeeeeeeee.

Amanda and Penelope are cartoon characters of old dykes in this vignette.

I have no idea where Lorea, as a character, came from. I was just thinking about having a competent, wealthy woman who was still blue-collar at heart, happy being among of a group of anarchists.

Aaralyn looks like someone I knew back in the 1990s fetish scene and I can’t fucking remember her name. Tall, cropped black hair, once talked about how she was “all sorts of randy.” Well, the Aaralyn version of her was more conceited, set to run an organized crime ring. Anyway, I watched enough BBC to be able to picture her in the late 1700s/early 1800s at a dinner party she had no desire to be at.

I didn’t originally want to record this vignette from Judith, but Dee was so excited by the fact that Judith was a Swiftie that she convinced me to. Dee also decided at the last minute to switch the narrative from third-person to first-person and she absolutely rocked it. The fact that Judith doesn’t like The Cars is from a story that another trans friend of mine told me, about being in a punk rock scene in the late 70s, seeing The Cars, and nopeing out. FYI – Judith’s name is meant to evoke the Biblical Ruth as well as be a reference to my cousin Aunt Judy.

Samael (2) is the first piece I wrote about Samael when I was feeling their history out. Again, I’ve watched a lot of BBC.

Jotham was a piece I was particularly proud of. It really gives the full history of a man who’s been through a lot.

Rachel was invoked from kids I knew growing up on the edges of wealthy families, and the copious Cursed Zillow streams from Geop that I’ve seen over the years.

Naval Liaison was based on a former boss of mine, who also lived in a very demanding HOA.

Leviathan was a neat imagined history project.

Samael and Elijio came from me imagining the conflicted times they were experiencing, paying the price to their souls to be together. They had to steal moments between their terrible obligations, which is why their minds are always half-doing dirty work and half-being in love together. I wanted to convey this conflict within them, jumping backwards and forwards between scenes to explain their headstates throughout the centuries.

Lorea and Siobhan came from a discussion with someone else in my writer’s workshop, who told me that my anarchists didn’t feel like the anarchists they knew. I then wrote this piece and they changed their mind. I was proud of that. Not that I would know anything about anarchists or Georgetown bars.

Judith (2) was yet another instance of me making a silly story for Judith. Someday I may make a serious one for her. I dunno. Spoilers: I actually don’t like coffee. I never got the taste in my 20s.

I love William‘s story so much, even more so because I had no idea where I was going when I started writing it. I can’t believe my brain took me to such a good twist and ending. Tony was like, he couldn’t believe I let Joshua survive in that story.

That’s all for now. See you in Season 2! Josephine, Mara, and Justine say hi.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - William
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William is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.

Transcript:

Joshua did whatever his clients asked of him – refurbish existing properties or rebuild them from scratch. He was trying to be better known among the Mercer Island crowd. The islanders were always looking to expand or rebuild their domiciles, which could cost hundreds of thousands of 1960s dollars for the level of modern they wanted. His company, Farrington builders, had a good crew who had worked together for a decade, starting with Northside homes and moving into the big leagues as soon as they had the credentials. Joshua never visited the clients outside of a job site though. Not in their clubs or their bars or their social venues. He knew what they wanted him for, but with the cash he was pulling in, he was planning to visit these places someday as a paying customer.

Which is why he found it extremely odd when a new client asked for two very strange things. One was a mansion on an existing property in Queen Anne. And the second was that all its windows were to be facades. And done in a very old style, long out of fashion. The client, William, was very insistent though, “as modern as he would allow it,” explained George, the manager of William’s companies. William also wanted a strict timetable for the work so he would know the exact night he could move in. William and George already had lavish properties on Mercer Island, and it made little sense they’d also want Queen Anne housing on properties that did not even have a view of Puget Sound. Every businessman was grabbing waterfront property but Joshua knew better than to question old money.

After a week of finagling with the architect, Joshua began demolition at the site of the new mansion. The teardown was witnessed by the neighbors who brought their children to watch the old church stripped to the bones and toppled. It had undergone some hard times, and been rewarded for its perseverance with enough cash to be rebuilt elsewhere, miles away to the north. Seattle was near impossible to travel around without a car, but the old church had been there for citizens without cars. Joshua expected to find paint on his own car for doing this job but fortunately enough, he never did. It had been hard to retain the church after the parish minister had died that summer, and now dealing with this horrid, windowless mansion was quite another.

On the night after the final paint job had been completed, with the mansion assembled a few weeks past its scheduled date, Joshua took a walk inside its ornate, fabulous rooms. As he purveyed the great halls within, he stopped to make sure he was hearing correctly. The walls seemed to be breathing. He put out his hand on one to confirm it was slowly moving in and out. And yet the drywall remained unbroken. He thought he must have been experiencing delusions from the paint fumes, and turned to head out, when he found William standing right behind him, in all his regal splendor.

“You shouldn’t be here,” William said. “But now that you are, you have seen my work. I’m imbuing the house with life.”

“That’s fantastic,” Joshua said. “I really have to be going now.”

“You would like to go,” William said. “But new life needs to be fed. And the house is very hungry.”

“Okay, you’re drunk or something,” Joshua said. “Let me by.”

“Of course,” William said, and stepped aside.

Joshua turned down the hall he had spent months building, reinforcing, and painting. But around the next corner, he found himself in an entirely different room. One he had not built. A vast space with an amber globe in the center made from glass in the style of Modernism from the 1920s. He hurried through to a different hallway, with floral print on the walls that he had not put up, lined with doors made from wood that did not grow in the States. Joshua began to run, finding himself in one strange room after the next, lost in a labyrinth he thought he knew, terrified that the house had become something other than his creation. That nothing of his remained within it, and that he would never find his way out. And no windows. No windows anywhere. Just as William had requested. There was simply. No. Way. Out.

And then he felt a strong, clawed hand on his shoulder, reaching out seemingly from the void, holding him in place.

He looked back. It was George, William’s businessman.

“Good heavens,” George said. “The house is not that large. Just, get out. Get out before he notices.”

And Joshua once more saw the house as it was, as he had built it. And while he could, he fled.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Judith (2)
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Judith (2) is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Dee Arbacauskas.

Transcript:

Judith began her evening wondering why she never got coffee anymore. First off was the obvious. Her face. But with the invention of the modern phone, and its many, many delivery apps, she no longer had an excuse. Of course, using a phone was dangerous for someone as paranoid as her job made her be. But Aaralyn had left the phone on her nightstand to be used. As was a bit of cash someone had sent her Venmo account six months ago. Yes, Judith thought to herself. This night, I will get a coffee.

Of course, none of the coffee shops were open except for Denny’s. At this time of night when her blood was pumping and she hadn’t yet looked at all the jobs Aaralyn had waiting for her, her world was her oyster. It was time to re-engage with the bean, as she once had at the turn of the century. (No, the turn before that one.) Coffee had been the rage with all strata of classes. Light diluted coffees by the news stands, thick African coffees with a purposeful amount of sludge at the bottom, or exciting gourmet coffees of dubious origins, each with a story about how they were brewed in the ritzier parts of town. They were nothing like the moderate, temperate coffees from dried grounds or fresh crushed beans of today. Coffee had been with Judith every night, back when she knew a gal who didn’t mind her face and was exceedingly proud of her house blends.

That night, Judith opened the delivery app and confirmed that the only thing that served coffee was the Denny’s and, if she was feeling brave, the dumpsters behind every Starbucks in the city. With trepidation, she ordered a very large cup and a plate of fries to push the delivery price over the minimum fifteen dollars. The fries would, of course, go straight to the can for the rats and crows to fight over…. to share! Share together. Judith was a bitch whose cynical nature would make even Sylvia Plath’s nose wrinkle, but something inside her wanted the creatures of the night and gutter to support one another as clearly no one else was.

Bing-bong. The delivery driver had read the obnoxiously long list of directions that Judith had left to help them find her place, a Mother-in-Law sublet which did not want to be found. Judith opened her door and there, among the rosemary, sage, and other herbs in her garden, lay the oily paper bag and cardboard cup holder, capable of securing four cups but only containing one. Judith lifted the cup of ancient coffee, brewed who knows how long ago and left to sit for the entire night, and put it to her lips. She drank it down, warm and bitter, and reminded herself once more why she never got coffee, before chucking the bag and cup into the neighbor’s trash, and then preparing herself for the grim tasks of her day.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Lorea and Siobhan
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Lorea and Siobhan is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Katherine Cross.

Transcript:

Today is not Lorea’s day and so help whatever gods she believes in, it won’t improve tomorrow either. Vespa and Helios were the cutest couple when Helios first moved to town. Folks would find them together on Rainier rooftops and South Seattle street corners, wearing doggy ears and paw gloves. But Vespa needed a lot of emotional support. It’s why she began dating someone out of state in the first place. She brought them here and then Helios didn’t like to be used like that, and started telling anyone who would hear xer that the Sodo Anarch collective were abusive trash.

This was only mildly Lorea’s problem until she saw her name of the job board for forming the restorative justice crew to aid Vespa and Helios. Lorea wouldn’t actually have to be on the crew. But she’d have to interview Vespa and, somehow, Helios, and then ask around who would be the best people to intervene in this affair.

Lorea waited at the Georgetown bar where members of the collective routinely gathered to discuss collaborative duties, and ambushed Siobhan when she came in. “Siobhan, please,” Lorea begged. Lorea, who owned a warehouse and the trucks who filled it from the docks. Lorea, the physically strongest of the collective. Lorea, almost on bended knee before Siobhan.

“Please,” Lorea said. “Let me handle the mutual aid food purchase and prep this week. I know you don’t want to do it. I’m sure you can handle Vespa and Helios. You know them. They know you.”

“No,” Siobhan said. “We don’t fucking trade roles, especially in organizing a restorative justice crew. Vespa and Helios will fucking notice you didn’t want to help them and there’ll be no point in making the crew in the first place.”

Lorea’s watch beeped with a reminder that she needed to be at the waterfront in half an hour.

“What do you want?” Lorea said. “I don’t have the time or the spoons to handle everything going into forming a crew. I am fucking up to my ears in handling shit for half the collective already? I don’t want to start calling in favors. I know I am the last person to call in favors from the collective. But. Forget it. I have to go. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I’m sorry.”

Siobhan watched a very frazzled Lorea leave the bar for her enormous black truck that looked like every other enormous black truck cosplaying a police car. She wondered what it would take; when would be the final straw to get Lorea to leave the collective. Or at least take some extended time off leaving Arturo in the lurch, if he ever wanted to keep working at the warehouse.

Siobhan gathered with the others around two tables pressed together, every side packed with chairs, and prepared to spend the night itemizing funds gathered for the Rainier members’ rent. Among the list of people needing help was Vespa. Someone at the table would have to ask the collective-shattering question; should they help out Helios as well? Is Helios still part of the collective, despite speaking ill of it, watching it abandon xer, and now possibly even leaving xer destitute? Would Helios even take the cash? What if it went into xer’s GoFundMe anonymously? Which of them would be the ones to ask Vespa if she was even comfortable with any of this?

Lorea. It had to start with Lorea. They just needed a volunteer to tell Lorea what she already knew. The wheels of justice were bound to a track, reliant on steps and stages in order, and for want of a Lorea, the cause would be lost.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Samael and Elijio
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Samael and Elijio is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.

Transcript:

George solemnly regards the numbers in William’s ledger, line by line, until they find one that does not match the expected figure. They put the book down and pick up their coat and hat, calling for their carriage and driver. They step outside into the clouded night. They give directions and set off, hours on end, stuck in a rattling carriage without light. George brings the latest serial of Mr. Dickens’ to try to make the time pass on the way

And they are under a balcony of an ornate home owned by a family Elijio trusts. Elijio slides into the shadow under the full moon with George and they wrap their fingers together, staring into the wells of each others’ pupils. Then they kiss, tasting each others’ lips and tongues, greedily stealing what precious liquid exists in each others’ maws. Their hands unlock, fighting against buttons, collars, digging until they reach bare skin, flicking nipples, clawing bosoms, demanding every ounce of heat from the other. They are careful not to leave marks, but it would be so easy and a lovely reminder about this secret tryst

And George’s carriage stops outside the house of Mr. and Mrs. Monday, who were given charge by William to manage the finances of trade in this seaside village. George steps down the carriage’s side and enjoys a bit of steadiness before ascending to the Monday’s door. They rap once, twice, thrice, until a servant, half-asleep and pale, answers. George does not wait for permission to enter. They saunter by while the servant nips at their heels as a puppy. “M’lord, you cannot go in. The sir and madam are sleeping!”

“I assure you,” George gives all the response they intend to. “That is the last thing they are doing.”

George walks upstairs to the Monday’s bedroom and without hesitation, breaks down the door where

Elijio’s hands are the first to plunge into George’s trousers. George’s cock bears a deep hunger. “If you’re going to be base about it,” they say and run their fingers down Elijio’s chest until they’ve grasped their prize. But Elijio is the stronger of the two and forces George against the wall, kissing them for good measure, ears open for anyone who might have heard them like

Mrs. Monday screams a full second before George slaps their clawed hand over her mouth. Mr. Monday charges at George and breaks a chair over their back. George is undeterred. “Mr. Monday,” they say. “Six hundred, twenty-three pounds, and four shillings or I make one of you a widower. And I haven’t decided which yet.”

“You can’t ask that of us,” Mr. Monday begs. “Our family has debts. There is no money to give.”

“You behave as if I care,” George says, feeling William’s stare burning their own back. Feeling

Elijio’s own mouth consuming their cock, in and out, in and out with that nasty, incomparable tongue. George wants to enjoy it. Elijio wants to enjoy it. They have about fifteen minutes left before they need to stop and return to work.

How do you live in the moment when the past and future beat on you like George on Mr. Monday for a paltry sum of cash, like Elijio on George to feel something in their small, savage lives, or like William on the two of them if he ever catches them together again in anything but a professional capacity?

George extracts several teeth from Mr. Monday while exploring Elijio’s fine, sharp maw and there is no escape for any of them, and it feels like there never, ever will be.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Leviathan
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Leviathan is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Trunk Slamchest.

Content warning: Animal harm.

Transcript:

In the 1970s, the inlet by Whidby Island in Puget Sound was used to trap an orca pod whose members were netted and separated, calves torn screaming from their mothers. The orca were shipped across the United States to various sea parks to begin lives of servitude and rebellion. But not many know this was the second attempt at acquiring orca to mold and control.

The Leviathan project began in the early 1920s with a proposal from a young scientist who wondered why no one had tried such a thing before. The scientist’s coterie kidnapped and slew various ne’er do wells and ruffians who possessed the required blood type, drained them, and injected the blood into fresh salmon carcasses. Naturally, the orca avoided that bait like the plague. Despite a decade of experimentation with other mediums, including whale, seal, and even moose, the Leviathan project was eventually forced to be abandoned.

Thirty years later, after a second World War, a second scientist dusted off the Leviathan proposal with the understanding that the orca needed additional motivation to consume blood they innately feared. This would require the capture of an orca, costing a not insignificant amount for a crew who would provide the needed discretion. The orca they chose was W285, a transient orca not of any local pod, but who still regularly visited the area. Unfortunately, they found her to be a fierce loner, and required a full whaling vessel in the 1950s when popular opinion was turning against hunting cetaceans. It took several attempts over the years as W285 grew wily and harder to track. But that’s how it is with hunting. Eventually, someone’s luck runs out.

In the early 1960s, W285 was harpooned, netted, captured, and then brought to a facility off the coast of Aberdeen, Washington. She was locked in a reinforced concrete tank with one end open to the sea. The scientists understood she was an intelligent creature. They were counting on it. More blood-filled salmon was dropped into a small cage in her tank, onto a platform with ropes that led to the gate barring W285’s passage to the ocean. The message was clear. Eat and you go free.

Eventually, she did eat.

The Seattle coterie continued feeding her over the coming decades as Leviathan grew larger, faster, and stronger. She began to hunt them too, anywhere she could get more of their precious blood. The project, once scoffed at, became an outstanding, but unrepeatable, success.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Naval Liaison
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Naval Liaison is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Katherine Cross.

Transcript:

Shelly is exactly what the Navy wants out of a career woman. She bought a white picket house in East Bremerton with her husband who cares for her two dogs, Shiloh and Midnight. She has a home office where she reviews the latest technology journals when she isn’t on base. When she is, she teaches an occasional class at the academy about her work as a liaison; accompanying people important to the Armed Forces on the base, and discussing the base’s history and any work that might be interesting to them. She develops portfolios and presentations, and her favorite thing is to go stand under the aircraft carrier at the dock and be humbled and overtaken by its majesty.

Shelly is attractive but professional, and doesn’t want kids. Even the generals have stories about her going beyond the call of duty to bring a client a particular vintage they adore, or arranging for a high level demonstration of the base’s more confidential projects. Like the Army brats they keep sending over, who have their own area of the base that few have the clearance to enter. Of course, she knows what goes on there, and dislikes all of it.

Shelly enjoys a vodka tonic on her days off at home, sitting on a porch in a neighborhood the HOA keeps pristine. The neighborhood cat, Lemonade, stops by with a present for her – a small finch, unmoving, with one wing broken. Shelly shoos Lemonade away and goes inside to fetch an old newspaper for the body. Her husband still enjoys the paper in the mornings, even it is mostly conspiracy fluff and outright lies at this point. Shelly scoops up the bird, its beautiful spindly feathers rustling in the breeze, its dainty beak resting shut on the printed word.

She saw one of the Army brats once, during the day, cheeks sallow, mouth hung open, eyes shut, and once again had to swallow her fear and go home for another drink.

She tosses the bird’s corpse in the compost bin, where it will become mulch for a garden somewhere; laden with banana stickers, shredded paper plates, and also one beak where the remainder of the bird has been chewed up and rotted away. Good things grow from mulch. Berries and fruit and all sorts of lovely flowers from the garden. But at work, only one thing grows from those Army kids, who know no better, and spend the daylight hours in stupor. They shouldn’t exist. It’s a mockery of life, a travesty of an institution that should know better, that used to instill pride in servicemembers. But now? Now they just chew them up, spit them out, and send them out again, barely themselves, barely anything.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Rachel
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Rachel is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Amber Ashe.

Transcript:

“Have you ever thought of presenting yourself as an exhibit?” Aaralyn asks Rachel, with a dash of mischievousness in her eyes. Rachel knows it is important to placate the client. The client keeps the gallery in business. The gallery’s purpose is to find art worth displaying that speaks to people with upscale tastes. Something that has a certain expression, haunting, exciting, alluring, enrapturing. It can’t be strange. Strange doesn’t move product.

Rachel understands how much she knows of her clients’ tastes; born and raised in Connecticut on the edge of a fancy neighborhood, she ate with these people’s children, played with them, listened to their families’ expectations, and even visited their homes, provided she followed their extensive rules. The parents loved to pretend their children’s friends were deserving of being shown around what was, to them, an ordinary house. Certainly not as nice as the Drummond’s or the Vanderville’s houses. But acceptable.

Still, to this strange child, it must be seem like Oz, which briefly makes their parents feel better. Rachel noticed the cultural signifiers that filled these homes; their lamps’ shape and light temperature needed to coordinate with the room. The tables and chairs could clash if they clashed nicely. Rachel asks her clients at the gallery for photos of their spaces, and makes recommendations like she is a child visiting this glamorous, petty world. She has a sense of what these people endure, and how they surround themselves with feelings and ambiance; great sand bags filled with primal urges heaving down the stresses of eighty to one hundred hour work weeks. And being better than someone, anyone, they take seriously.

Rachel bought this gallery out as a favor from one of her parents’ friends, who felt Rachel would do well if she had a leg to stand on. On her first day in the gallery, she tossed everything away; the clay wash basin that folded up on one edge like a reclining woman, the mirror shaped as an owl’s nest, and the painting of the view looking down from the Seattle Space Needle. Everything was sold to other galleries at a discount so she could start again, fresh, like her parents’ friends could have and chose not to. She visited universities, dredged up artists on Craig’s List, attended showings in basements and tunnels under the city. She asked artists for the sorts of things she remembered her friends’ parents having. Maybe with a twist. She wants her clients to remember their own childhoods, the things that made them feel comfortable, the rustic fifty-thousand dollar chairs, the chandeliers that eschewed crystal and bronze.

Her art does not challenge. It is not whimsical. It is familiar. It is comforting. It is almost a dream made form. And thus, it is exactly what her clients want.

Until Aaralyn stopped by. Her tastes were nothing Rachel had experienced before. She had refused to take this old school, muscle-toned flapper of a woman on as a client. But Aaralyn did make the effort to explain what pieces she was looking for. Aaralyn took her out to dinner, brought her home, and explained what each piece of the walls and tables meant to Aaralyn. Rachel was spellbound and did her best to find one thing Aaralyn wanted. And then.

“Have you ever thought of presenting yourself as an exhibit?”

“No,” Rachel replies. She hasn’t.

And Aaralyn smiles.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Jotham
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Jotham is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.

Transcript:

The thing about slander is that it only lasts a couple decades in leftist orgs. It matters forever. Nobody forgets a betrayal for a break-up or a threat made to the wrong person under duress. But the shockwaves only last a couple decades at most, by Jotham’s estimate.

They say Jotham sold out, screwed over his friends to go off and play with the big boys and girls in the aristocracy. Jotham used to be a superstar on the ground, in bars and clubs, talking about mutual aid, the rights of people in poverty, and the ramifications of racism, fascism, ableism, and transphobia. He was so good at it, laying down rhyme and rhythm. Ginsberg even gave him a hug in 50’s New York City, and probably more after the club was closed.

Jotham was a great organizer, getting bodies down to the civil rights marches and migrant workers’ rights protests. But in the midst of it all, something changed in Jotham. His club material grew more about modern life, less hard-edged, more encompassing, more directed away from the words that needed saying. Soon, Jotham was sharing tables at VIP rooms in the city, flashing pricey watches, and even secretly performing for Boeing executives at private parties. His friends wondered how a change like this could happen.

They didn’t know Jotham. Jotham had always been playing them. As a child, he worked the 19th century mills, joining gangs as soon as he was old enough to stop adults from pushing him around. Jotham joined the trade unions when few others had his back. He knew good whiskey when he drank it and wanted a life where he was free to enjoy it. Jotham was a good fighter and a better talker because of the nights he spent looking down the barrel of guns. He learned rhyme and rhythm from his fellow unionists. He learned organizing from his girlfriends. His days at the mill were packed as much as his evenings and you do not spend as little time for yourself as Jotham did without being scorched inside. He never had a day off. He dreamed about getting beat so hard he wouldn’t have to work. Like the women he worked beside on the line who dreamed of working the secretary’s chair where they could sit all day.

Then Jotham’s life became only nights. Sleep was off the table; only organizing. Only standing up to the Pinkertons. Only protecting his friends. Damn, he loved escaping all that on stage. Up under the lights with a hundred drunken eyes on him, where he repeated awful poetry he’d scribbled in the wee morning hours. “What does the night get me?” he wrote. “Drunker. Harder. Rustier. And maybe, if I’m in luck, one new friend.” People liked that one.

The decades passed. He moved to Seattle and, what else, joined the local Anarchists to do everything he’d done in Chicago. This was what Jotham knew, on stage and off. Here, however, he was noticed. In the streets, in the clubs. New, fresh blood. In the late 60s, he got the offer to move up in the world. To relax, to rest, for the first time. To work behind a desk in a small room laden with hardwood. To wear fancy wool coats in the winter and fine suits in the summer. His friends said he’d sold out but he was still there for them. He still spoke well for them in the halls he had made his new home. His bruising days were over and after two decades, it didn’t matter who he had left behind. Now, he was the mediator to the rich, the facilitator of all manner of acts. Jotham is at peace with this, after a lifetime of toil and labor. Everyone, even Jotham, deserves a break.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Samael (2)
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Samael (2) is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.

Transcript:

George Gataker spent two days on the road from London to Norwich where he had been sent to work. Night passengers might find a carriage and driver comfortable enough to risk attacks, pot-holes, and wheel-damage under the moon-sky with miles between villages and farmers unlikely to help a stranger of even George’s standing. He was hardly a noble or a captain of industry; the son of a moderately successful storekeep and tanner in a wool suit too fine for him, sent to Norfolk county for purposes that seemed even unclear to him. William, his employer, wished for him to “maintain a presence in Norfolk, watch for newcomers, and especially those landing in seaside towns without announcement or papers.”

George clutched a bound ledger of the contacts he was to meet. They were scattered throughout the coast, far enough apart that it was impossible to see more than two a day. Exhausted, buttocks numb from the coach’s rocking, he was relieved to see the spire of Norwich Cathedral piercing up through the darkened city that was to become his home.

(“His.” They never liked “his.” There was something demoralizing about it, a host of duties for which they were not prepared nor interested in serving.)

The coach pulled to a stop by the short town estate coated in stones pressed into concrete. It wouldn’t keep warm, but nothing did, even in London; not that George needed heat anymore. Still, he looked forward to spreading the contents of his suitcase around rooms ten times the size of his former flat. He stepped from the carriage and was promptly handed his bag.

“I’ve got to get to my cousin’s for the night,” the driver said, and waited on the coins George had ready to press into his palm.

George almost broke off the heavy iron key in the ancient door’s lock. Inside, the place smelled foul, of mildew and mice, obviously kept in William’s family from long before the Restoration and only now opened in the past hundred years. George checked room after room, guest quarters, servant quarters, kitchen, for a space where there would be no guests but he, no servants but he, for a man who did not eat from kitchens. In the basement, a mouse-eaten straw bed lay in stupor, collapsing into dust when George sat on it. He groaned. For all of William’s pretty promises, George had been dumped to the coast of England where he would have to make the best of it. Certainly no one here would help. The nearest address in George’s ledger was a three hour carriage ride away. And George was hungry.

He bundled himself up to disguise his tall proportions and took to the streets. The cathedral was a short walk away; a stone wonder to the glory of man and god. But no, the town vicar would be easily missed and the driver would have announced George’s arrival to someone.

George wandered the streets, alone, a house cat taken far away and abandoned in the woods, unfamiliar with scent or space, unsure how he would make a new life here. George rested on a small wooden staircase, put his head in his hands, and if he could have, he would have wept.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.