By the blood of a Vampanese! It's time for Twilight Junior with Cirque du Freak: The Darren Shan Saga

I was in a nice, big-sized Borders today, which is a novelty because there aren't any bookstores for a good ninety miles in any direction around me. I was walking around, admiring how it had grown since I'd last been in, happily noticing that they were selling hardcore yaoi straight off the shelf now, and was suddenly hit in the kidneys by a blast from the past. It had been years since I picked up a young adult novel from the series Cirque du Freak from the library and laughed myself sick for all the wrong reasons, so I was surprised to see the name again--and not on the YA shelves, either, but on the manga rack, freshly adapted. I leafed through it briefly, and everything came flooding back, including the thought I first had about ten pages into the original novel: I need to snark this.

Why?

Well...YOU figure it out.

What? That cacophony of eighth-grade Flash art and promise of VAMPIRE HIJINKS didn't grab you? Maybe this will:

The Other Wiki wrote:

Darren O'Shaughnessy; born 2 July 1972 in London, England, who commonly writes under the pen name Darren Shan, is an Irish writer and author of The Saga of Darren Shan...

Yup, the entire series is self-insertion. Not flimsy avatar self-insertion, like most books of its ilk, but honest-to-God, writer-descended-from-the-heavens-into-the-guise-of-an-eleven-year-old-boy self-insertion.

"Oh, Del!" you say, scoffing and adjusting your monocle, "surely it isn't as bad as all that! Surely he realizes what thin ice he's treading on and will do everything in his power to keep away the terrible twin demons Wish Fulfillment and Ego Stroking!"

Quote :

I'm our best forward. There are better defenders and midfielders, and Tommy Jones is the best goalkeeper in the whole school. But I'm the only one who can stand up front and score four or five times
a day without fail.

"Okay," I said, standing. "I'll save you. I've scored a hat trick every day this week. It would be a pity to stop now."

<snip>

"Never fear, Hotshot Shan is here!" I shouted as I ran onto the field. A lot of players laughed or
groaned, but I could see my teammates picking up and our opponents growing worried.

I made a great start and scored two goals inside a minute. It looked like we might come back to draw or
win. But time ran out. If I'd arrived earlier we'd have been okay, but the bell rang just as I was hitting my stride, so we lost nine-seven.

There is a silence, as the monocle trembles, then slides off your nose, betrayed by your quivering lower lip.

But wait! There's more! Stay tuned for...
--Creepy homoerotic content!
--Creepy pedobear content!
--Creepy homoerotic pedobear content! (I am really, seriously not kidding about this. There are X-rated doujinshi on eBay.)
--Creepy sexual content in general!
--"I Took A Writing Class in Middle School" prose!
--Foreshadowing applied with a mop and bucket!
--Characters fighting over who gets to carry the Idiot Ball next!
--The word "vampanese"!
--AND MUCH MUCH MORE!!!!!

Saddle up, kids. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

NOTES: Will I do all of these? You be the judge. I'll go as long as people as interested. Theoretically, this may be the only update. I managed to find a scanlation of the first volume of the manga, which corresponds to the first book, so I'll periodically be using it to illustrate scenes. I'm also playing librarian--"borrow" the book to follow along in here.


The book starts out with our protagonist relating how he likes spiders. That's well and good, I like spiders too. I like their intricate biology and cute little mandibles, and their webs are so pretty--

Quote :

Going to sleep, I used to imagine the spider creeping down, crawling into my mouth,
sliding down my throat, and laying loads of eggs in my belly. The baby spiders would hatch after a while
and eat me alive, from the inside out.

...oh, I'm sorry, folks, I must've copied that bit from /d/ instead of the .pdf file. Let me just double-check my notes, here.

*flip*

*flip*

...*flip*

...no, that's right.

...this is a fun novel.

So our hero relates how when he was nine, his parents got him the best gift ever: A tarantula of his very own! Because, y'know, nothing says "We love you and still want you around because you're not suffocating our lifestyle or anything" like giving your kid a pet with necrotizing love nips. Unfortunately, Darren makes a preemptive strike:

Quote :

Then, one day, I did something stupid. I'd been watching a cartoon in which one of the characters was
sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. No harm came to him. He squeezed out of the bag, dusty and dirty and
mad as hell. It was very funny.

So funny, I tried it myself. With the tarantula.

Ladies and gentlemen, our hero. Y'know, when I was nine, my stupidity ran more to the tune of writing horrible self-insertion stories, not emulating what I saw on the tee-vee. I haven't the heart to make the double burn, though.

Okay, the tarantula dies, we learn a valuable lesson about Rule 1: Respect the Machine. What's the point? The point is, this book is a true story. In italics. It has to be true if it's in italics.

Quote :

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books, the heroes
can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in
the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.

In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a
car. If you fall out of a tree, you break some bones.

Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be.
In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.

Also, in real life, vampires don't exist and kids who put their pets through vacuum cleaners go to the special class. Kind of puts a damper on the sentiment.

Darren goes on to tell him that Darren Shan isn't his real name (yeah, it's Darren o'Shnausages, we saw, great smokescreen there) and that all of the other names have been changed as well. I'm mystified as to why, as no one is innocent. He relates that unlike a made-up story, it doesn't begin at night with owls hooting and a storm rattling the windows, but in a bathroom. Funny, that's three out of four Silent Hill stories staOH MY GOD SILENT HILL IS FACT I KNEW IT ALL ALONG.

There's no particular reason why it starts in a bathroom stall, except to earn a titter from the target audience. He's just randomly sick at school and gets better when a friend asks him to play soccer.

Quote :

"Did you puke?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Do you think you're gonna?"

"Maybe," I said. Then I leaned forward all of a sudden and made a sick noise. Bluurgh! But Steve
Leopard knew me too well to be fooled.

"Give my boots a polish while you're down there," he said, and laughed when I pretended to spit on his shoes and rub them with a sheet of toilet paper.

...did they just make a blowjob joke on Page 5 of a YA book about vampires or am I reading too much into that polish line?

Darren's awe-inspiring soccer skillz may blind us with their radiance if I quote them twice in the same review, so I'll let you scroll back up for the honor of re-reading about them. After the game, one of the boys Darren has a platonic relationship with and will disappear halfway thru this book finds a soggy piece of paper and waves it around excitedly.

Quote :

But Mr. Dalton has a soft spot for Steve, because he's special. Sometimes he's brilliant in class and gets
everything right, while other times he can't even spell his own name. Mr. Dalton says he's somewhat of an
idiot savant , which mean he's a stupid genius!

Anyway, even though he's Mr. Dalton's pet, not even Steve can get away with showing up late for class.
So whatever Alan had, it would have to wait. We trudged back to class, sweaty and tired after the game,
and began our next lesson.

Little did I know that Alan's mysterious piece of paper was to change my life forever. For the worse!

This would all be normal, of course, except that it's not actually a page ripped out of a jerk rag. Also, did I mention this series likes exclamation points?! Boy howdy, it sure likes exclamation points!!!

Later in the day, they take history class, which Steve enjoys because they're studying WWII, and he "loves everything to do with killing and war" and wants to be "a soldier of fortune one who fights for money when he grows up" (did I also mention the typos?). Ten pages in and we're hinting that the protagonist's best friend is a Nazi? Well, I guess we only have 102 pages to work with, gotta spackle the foreshadowing on as much wall as we've been given. Meanwhile, all of the other teachers are mysteriously sick. I do mean mysteriously, mind, it's never explained. Perhaps Shan couldn't be arsed to think up names for the rest of the faculty.

Eventually the piece of paper gets passed around the class...or, well, around Darren's three friends, because no other classmates are acknowledged during the scene. It's a flyer! An EEEEVIL flyer! oh God the exclamation points are catching.

Quote :

It was a flyer, an advertising pamphlet for some sort of traveling circus. There was a picture of a wolf's
head at the top. The wolf had its mouth open and saliva was dripping from its teeth. At the bottom were
pictures of a spider and a snake, and they looked vicious, too.
Just beneath the wolf, in big red capital letters, were the words:

CIRQUE DU FREAK

Underneath that, in smaller writing:

FOR ONE WEEK ONLY CIRQUE DU FREAK!!
SEE:
SIVE AND SEERSA THE TWISTING TWINS!
THE SNAKE-BOY! THE WOLF-MAN! GERTHA TEETH!
LARTEN CREPSLEY AND HIS PERFORMING SPIDER
MADAM OCTA! ALEXANDER RIBS! THE BEARDED LADY!
HANS HANDS! RHAMUS TWOBELLIES WORLD'S FATTEST MAN!

Beneath all that was an address where you could buy tickets and find out where the show was playing.
And right at the bottom, just above the pictures of the snake and spider:

NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED! SOME RESTRICTIONS APPLY!

Now, I'm not gonna lie to you. This is why I picked up the book. Creepy circuses are cotton candy to my nightmare fuel-addled mind. Creepy circuses with freak shows? Rainbow cotton candy. I really don't have a problem with the initial premise of the series, and separated from the shitty writing, the manga almost manages to tell a compelling story. For...an entire two chapters, almost.

Anyway, Mr. I Have A Name Screw You Other Teachers takes the flier and loses his shit over it, explaining how freakshows are cruel "cesspits of evil" and that he doesn't believe it's real, but hopes that no one in his class would dream of going to one. Presumably he's secretly being paid commission on tickets, because of course everyone immediately wants to go. The only way he could be more obvious is if he handed out freak-pokin' sticks at the door.

(continued)

The next two chapters tool around aimlessly, filling space. Oh no, the kids don't have enough money to go! Oh wait, they do. We're introduced to Darren's family: Annie, the mildly annoying little sister, his stamp collector mother, and his size-twelve-foot-ed father. Oh, I feel so close to these people with their random one or two quirks each! Darren reads comics in bed, reveals he likes Spawn because "he used to be a demon in Hell", gets nagged because he's up too late, rolls over into Chapter Five, goes to Geography, daydreams about "a nasty guy whipping everybody" (so did I at that age, but I think it was for different reasons), dicks around with his friends and OH HEY THERE PLOT I THOUGHT YOU HAD BAILED ON ME.

Quote :

"I got the money," he said, "and sneaked out at seven o'clock, when Mom was on the phone. I hurried
across town to the ticket booth, but do you know who was there when I arrived?"

"Who?" we asked.

"Mr. Dalton!" he said. "He was there with a couple of policemen. They were dragging a small guy out of
the booth it was only a small shed, really when suddenly there was this huge bang and a big cloud of
smoke covered them all. When it cleared, the small guy had disappeared."

Like I said, I don't have a problem with the initial premise of the series: An illegal magician midget gay prostitution ring. Gumption and gillyflowers, was I ever disappointed when I worked out what the series was REALLY about.

Steve reveals that the gay magician midget came back to sell him tickets, but the aforementioned "restrictions" refer to the fact that each flyer is good for two tickets only. Presumably the author is as bored of the two bland friends as we are at this point. They decide Steve should get one since he put his ass on the line for them, and to decide who gets the other, they hold a contest: Steve tears a bunch of pieces of paper the size of the ticket out of his notebook, mixes them up, and throws them straight up for the other three to grab at.

Quote :

I was about to start grabbing, when all of a sudden I got an urge to do something strange. It sounds
crazy, but I've always believed in following an urge or a hunch.

So what I did was, I shut my eyes, stuck out my hands like a blind man, and waited for something
magical to happen.

As I'm sure you know, usually when you try something you've seen in a movie, it doesn't work. Like if
you try doing a wheelie with your bike, or making your skateboard jump up in the air. But every once in
a while, when you least expect it, something clicks.

For a second I felt paper blowing by my hands. I was going to grab at it but something told me it wasn't
time. Then, a second later, a voice inside me yelled, "NOW!"

I closed my hands really fast.

And, naturally, he grasps a blank, the ticket already having been grabbed by one of the friends who spotted the only piece of paper with writing on it. He's mocked ruthlessly by the others, and he goes home in shame, reason having triumphed over superstition once more, and the book ends with a compelling moral of oh of course he gets the fucking ticket. The manga makes it vaguely plot-related and mystic by saying a spider made him do it, but in the book, the plot just realizes it blew two and a half chapters doing absolutely nothing and decides to shove the next point through. If you listen carefully, you can hear it tapping its foot and checking its watch as the author deigns to put in some false suspense.

Quote :

There was a piece of green paper smack-dab in the middle of my hand, but it was lying facedown, and
since there was nothing on its back, I had to turn it over, just to be sure. And there it was, in red and blue
letters, the magical name:

CIRQUE DU FREAK.

I had it. The ticket was mine. I was going to the freak show with Steve.

"YEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!" I screamed, and punched the air with my fist. I'd won!

I...I only wish I had embellished that piece of dialogue, my friends. At least we can take cold comfort in the fact that there are only four exclamation points, one short of the sure sign of an unstable mind.

The day of the freak show, Darren waits impatiently for time to get on with it, much like the reader. As his father drops him off, he warns him not to watch horror movies, although "one of the less scary Dracula ones might be okay", fulfilling the foreshadowing quota for the chapter. You know, in my experience, the less scary an adapatation of Dracula is, the more sex there is in it. Looks like he's trying to get his son away from his creepy spider vore fantasies with some nice, wholesome bodice-ripping.

The boys play war games as they wait to leave, and we learn that Steve doesn't like his mom and his parents are divorced, but it's not manly to talk about shit like that:

Quote :

Steve doesn't get along with his mom. He lives alone with her his dad left when Steve was very young
and they're always arguing and shouting. I don't know why. I've never asked him. There are certain things
you don't discuss with your friends if you're boys. Girls can talk about stuff like that, but if you're a boy
you have to talk about computers, soccer, war, and so on. Parents aren't cool.

"How will we sneak out tonight?" I asked in a whisper as Steve's mom went back into the living room.

"It's okay," Steve said. "She's going out." He often called her she instead of Mom. "She'll think we're in
bed when she gets back."

"What if she checks?"

Steve laughed nastily. "Enter my room without being asked? She wouldn't dare."

Steve: Not after that time she walked in on the Potato Incident, anyway.
Darren: I remember that! The ambulance people sure were nice.

After a few games of Soccer Holocaust IV: Jewblast Brazil, they decide to read comics. Steve has a great collection of comic books "only meant for adults", the kind that Darren's parents would hit the roof if they knew he was reading. I'm assuming they mean violent stuff here, but all I can think of is Allan Moore's Lost Girls and Ono's Take Me to Ariake!. I think about Take Me to Ariake! a lot lately, though. PTDD (Post-Traumatic Dickgirl Disorder) is a terrible thing. Steve's other specialty is old horror comics, and they're soon having a rousing conversation about how to kill vampires, over-fulfilling the foreshadowing quota for the chapter.

Quote :

"Does a stake have to be made out of wood?" I asked when I'd finished reading a Dracula comic.

"No," he said. "It can be metal or ivory, even plastic, as long as it's hard enough to go right through the
heart."

"And that will kill a vampire?" I asked.

"Every time," he said.

I frowned. "But you told me you have to cut off their heads and stuff them with garlic and throw them in
a river."

"Some books say you have to," he agreed. "But that's to make sure you kill the vampire's spirit as well
as its body, so it can't come back as a ghost."

"Can a vampire come back as a ghost?" I asked, eyes wide.

ooooOOOOoooo, it's the cannibal ghost! He'll scare you to death and then eat your ghost! Also, two eleven-year-old boys alone in a room reading comic books and talking about hard stakes, and no one makes a boner joke? What crazy Twilight Zone universe is this?

Finally, it's time to go, and the boys follow a rule that will become well-known to the reader: If it's creepy, it's okay to do, even if it's arse-bleedingly stupid.

Quote :

The freak show was being held at a place near the other side of town. We had to leave shortly after nine
o'clock, to make sure we got there in time. We could have got a cab, except we'd used most of our
allowance to replace the cash Steve took from his mom. Besides, it was more fun walking. It was
spookier!

Aaaand they cross the tracks and the mugging and raping begins in earnest. Seriously, fuck vampires, the scariest things these kids have to contend with is their own brains.

Quote :

We told ghost stories as we walked. Steve did most of the talking, because he knows way more than
me. He was in rare form. Sometimes he forgets the ends of stories, or gets names mixed up, but not
tonight. It was better than being with Stephen King!

Stephen King: Shall I tell you again how the Dark Tower ends?
Darren: oh God why do you have to hurt me so bad
Stephen King: You have been camping on my lawn for the past four days.
Darren: BUT I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

Finally, they reach the venue, an old movie theatre that Steve claims is haunted by a boy that fell from the balcony. The place is deserted and the boys are briefly afraid to go in--not because they realize that going to isolated locations because a man on the street said there would be clowns is a bad idea, but because the place is ZOMFG SPOOKY.

Quote :

Then I gazed up at the scary building and gulped. It looked like the sort of
place you saw in a horror movie, where lots of people go in but don't come out. "Are you scared?" I
asked Steve.

"No," he said, but I could hear his teeth chattering and knew he was lying. "Are you?'" he asked.

"Course not," I said. We looked at each other and grinned. We knew we were both terrified, but at least
we were together. It's not so bad being scared if you're not alone.

"Shall we enter?" Steve asked, trying to sound cheerful.

"Might as well," I said.

We took a deep breath, crossed our fingers, then started up the steps (there were nine stone steps
leading up to the door, each one cracked and covered with moss) and went in.

The next day, the parts of their body that haven't been molested, eaten, or turned into delightful home-made belts are discovered on a curb eight blocks away. It looks like this show wasn't of freaks...it was for freaks


Next time: Steve pets teh woofie, the only character I'm honestly fond of appears, and we finally get a gorram vampire.

EDIT: Because I wrote "Neil Gaiman" while I was thinking "Alan Moore" for some reason. I am sorry Mr. Gaiman, that was not a nice thing I did.

Delcat.

Why aren't we married yet?

Because she's mine, back off. :|

<3

Wonderful snark Delcat. I nearly laughed myself sick from it (you also owe me a new cup of tea).

I'd actually entirely forgot about these books until seeing this thread. Still, a nice snark. Hopefully I'll be able to make some of my own before too long, heh.

Kitbug wrote:

Because she's mine, back off. :|

<3

Yeah, about that....we didn't want you to find out this way...but the thing is, I totally stole your chick and there's not a thing you can do about it because I could kick your ass on a bad day.

By the way Delcat, you're running away into the sunset with me.

What, no epic showdown?

No, it's clear that Delcat has already chosen me! Even though I gave her the PTDD thing and all.

I think Alan Moore wrote Lost Girls btw

I propose that Delcat follow Grumbles lead and start herself a harem of admirers. As long as none of you have any problems with polygamy, it seems the safest choice.

It's either that, or a no-holds-barred cage match between Inky, Lapin and Kitbug. Last person standing gets Del for their very own.

Bravo Delcat, Bravo.
This snark is made of Fairy Dust and Win.

oh god, for some reason when you said he tried that with his tarantula, I thought HE played vacuum, as in, he ate the tarantula, basically. Because of the very first thing he says.

A spider made him do it....... FEEL YOUR STRINGS..... SPIN YOUR STRINGS, DARREN ..... WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

Well "YES!" would just be too short, you know. You should also know that you must write how you sound when you're acting out the novel of how cool you WISH you and your life were you're writing, so it's GOT to be "YEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!"

Soccer Holocaust IV: Jewblast Brazil. I love you for this. It was nearly spit-take enducing.

seriously. do teeth REALLY chatter when you're afraid? I mean REALLY. I don't think I've ever seen that as a reaction from fear. being absolutely fucking freezing, yes. UNLESS THIS IS ALL A CLEVER PLOY BY THE PEOPLE AT FOX TO GET US TO WATCH HOUSE. BECAUSE TEETH CHATTERING IS LUPUS DON'T YOU KNOW.

Do more of these. Please. They are amazing and wonderful and I think I must have more.

I tried reading one of these books once. I'm not sure how far I got. Maybe the recap of the first book.
What if a boy doesn't like soccer? Is he not allowed to talk, then?

The fanart section of the site is hilarious. Lots of animu and some pictures are just bizarre.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Superboy, what are you doing here? You are supposed to be with Youngjustice!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

OMG Edward, purple is not your color.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I don't know.

STOP MOANING

YOU ARE HURTING ME!!













I would win that cage match.

Really? You really think you could beat me?

The Darren Shan saga makes "Chocobo Nights" sound like Pulitzer Prize material.

Oh my. I had no idea this series was THAT bad. I mean, I read a summary and thought it was pretty weak, but this...

Del, you deserve cookies for warning me properly. <3

I suggest all those who are fighting over Delcat engage in kal-if-fee!

You all are just...way too nice to me. Seriously. Please don't fight, I love you all the same! Well...except for the resident trolls. You know. Although I did already have all that lesbian sex with Inky so--*cough*, I mean, it's nice to have such good friends. (Zeiss, thanks for pointing out that error, I wasn't looking where I typed.)

Thanks for picking up those creepy and hilarious little hints of things to come, Quadratus. God, it looks like a teacher took those. I...I don't even want to consider the idea of educators encouraging this. Let's just move on, shall we?

When we last saw our heroes, they were about to enter the theatre and...actually, that's about it, really. Hasn't been exactly action-packed so far. WILL THAT CHANGE???

Quote :

We started to walk. There was a light down by the other end, so the farther in we got, the brighter it
became. I was glad for that. I don't think I could have made it otherwise: it would have been too scary!

The walls were scratched and scribbled on, and bits of the ceiling were flaky. It was a creepy place. It
would have been bad enough in the middle of the day, but this was ten o'clock, only two hours away
from midnight!

"There's a door here," Steve said and stopped. He pushed it ajar and it creaked loudly. I almost turned
and ran. It sounded like the lid of a coffin being tugged open!

No, they're just going to end every paragraph with an exclamation point to create that illusion. Great.

Quote :

"Can I help you boys?" somebody said behind us, and we nearly jumped out of our skins!

We turned around quickly and the tallest man in the world was standing there, glaring down on us as if
we were a couple of rats. He was so tall, his head almost touched the ceiling. He had huge bony hands
and eyes that were so dark, they looked like two black coals stuck in the middle of his face.

Ah, youth. I remember the days when I would read a paragraph like that, and instead of thinking, "Jeez, that's bad biology, he must have terrible heart problems if he's as big as all that," I'd just think, "Really, book? The tallest man in the world? Eyes like two black coals? I bet you were coolest dude at the Weebalos bonfire with prose like that."

...yeah, I never really had days when I would read a paragraph like that and think, "OH MY GOD THAT'S THE CREEPIEST THING EVER". It was kind of telling of my future here.

Turns out that Mr. Tall (no, really, that's actually his name) is the ringleader (no, really, that's actually his job) of this little operation. He also--omfg!--knows Darren's name. Because we've NEVER seen that ominous plot device before. In reality, he's not psychic, he was just informed beforehand that the protagonist was going to be dropping by and to take what chances he could to mess with the little bastard.

Finally, the promised freak show gets underway.

Quote :

Somewhere high up in the theater, someone switched on a green light and the stage lit up. It looked
eerie! For about a minute nothing else happened. Then two men came out, pulling a cage. It was on
wheels and covered with what looked like a huge bearskin rug. When they got to the middle of the stage
they stopped, dropped the ropes, and ran back into the wings.

For a few seconds more silence. Then the trumpets blew again, three short blasts. The rug came flying
off the cage and the first freak was revealed.

That was when the screaming began.

Mr. Tall: Ladies and gentlemen, David Gonterman...NAKED!
Darren: OH SWEET BABY JEEBUS MAKE IT STOP
Gonterman: C...Clinton jobs? :<

Actually, the first freak is just a wolf-man in a cage, undoubtedly caught on his way to Anthrocon '09. Mr. Tall tells the crowd that screaming is how bitches get stitches around freaks and to cut that shit out, yo, then gives a rousing introduction. If introducing the acts in a whisper because they're frightening enough without yelling seems kind of cool, it is. It's also entirely not in the book. Japan, you are trying so hard to redeem this and you are going to be nothing but hurt in the end.

The wolf is walked around the theatre by a pair of hypnotists who again warn that loud noises could have dire consequences, because we haven't had any foreshadowing in at least two pages. Darren shows a rare bit of intelligence by not wanting to get near the befanged, muscular, and terminally unstable monster, but Steve can't resist the urge to pet teh woofie:

Quote :

The ladies stayed by his side and warned people to be quiet. They let you stroke him if you wanted, but
you had to do it gently. Steve rubbed him when he went by but I was afraid he might wake up and bite
me, so I didn't.

"What did it feel like?" I asked, as quietly as I could.

"It was spiky," Steve replied, "like a hedgehog." He lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed. "It smells
strange, too, like burning rubber."

Oh, fuck me, it really is a furry. A furry left on the stove too long.

Of course, someone inevitably fucks it up--I mean, uh, shockingly, someone violates the rules and dire consequences occur!

Quote :

The wolf-man and ladies were about halfway down the rows of seats when there was a big BANG! I
don't know what made the noise, but suddenly the wolf-man began roaring and he shoved the ladies
away from him.

People screamed and those nearest him leaped from their seats and ran. One woman wasn't quick
enough, and the wolf-man leaped on her and dragged her to the ground. She was screaming at the top of
her lungs, but nobody tried to help her. He rolled her over onto her back and bared his teeth. She stuck a
hand up to push him away, but he got his teeth on it and bit it off[i]!

Wolf-Man: RAAAARGH, WOLF-MAN CREATIONIST! THEORY OF SPONTANEOUS CREATION OF UNIVERSE BAAAAAAD!
Miss Stumpy: Gawd, you just cannot reason with these people.

Naturally, the manga amps up the violence a bit, although I can't help but wish they had commissioned the mangaka from [i]Gantz or Battle Royale for maximum dismemberment potential. You know, for kids! Mr. Tall goes and ruins the fun, though, having his midget troupe magically stitch the limb back on as good as new. I realize the entire thing was probably a set-up for teh lulz, but really, this is what we're teaching our kids? It's okay to disobey rules that'll get your limbs hacked off, because adults will fix everything once you've learned your lesson? This series seems hell-bent on raising the next generation of Darwin Award winners. And when the lady's husband protests, he's reprimanded for showing survival instincts:

Quote :

"You will be okay," Mr. Tall told her. "The stitches will fall out after a couple of days. It will be fine after
that."

"Maybe that's not good enough!" someone shouted, and a big red-faced man stepped forward. "I'm her
husband," he said, "and I say we should go to a doctor and then the police! You can't let a wild animal like that out into a crowd! What if he'd bitten her head off?"

"Then she would be dead," Mr. Tall said calmly.

"Listen, buster," the husband began, but Mr. Tall interrupted.

"Tell me, sir," Mr. Tall said, "where were you when the wolf-man was attacking?"

"Me?" the man asked.

"Yes," Mr. Tall said. "You are her husband. You were sitting beside her when the beast escaped. Why
did you not leap to her rescue?"

"Well, I … There was no time … I couldn't … I wasn't …"

No matter what he said, the husband couldn't win, because there was only one true answer: he had been
running away, looking after himself.

Because, y'know, it's the husband's job to look after the weak, mewling womenfolk, and because trying to attack an insane furry thing three times his size wouldn't have potentially made things worse.

Mr. Tall yells at everyone to keep quiet again, reiterating that he can't guarantee anyone's safety and that this is why they have to perform in abandoned theatres in the middle of the night. Poor guy, toured without a problem for five hundred years and then the lawsuit was invented. Meanwhile, Steve is rolling around in the blood and pleasuring himself furiously, screaming rhapsodious hymns to his dark lord Satan...okay, maybe not, but cripes, he might as well be.

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"Do you want to go?" I asked Steve, half-hoping he'd say yes. I was excited but scared as well.

"Are you crazy?" he said. "This is great!You don't want to go, do you?"

"No way," I lied, and slapped on a shaky little smile.

If only I hadn't been so scared of looking like a coward! I could have left and everything would have
been fine. But no, I had to act like a big man and sit it out to the end. If you only knew how many times
I've wished since then that I'd fled with all the speed in my body and never looked back…

As a side note, I'd like you to note down all these little asides that suggest the shit that's going to happen to Darren happens by chance and fate and all that fun stuff. Don't ask why, just do it, mmkay? Thanks.

The freaks begin their parade, and the midgets hand out Vicodin to diligent worldbuilders in the crowd to soothe their aching biologies. There's a skeleton man/contortionist with "bones like rubber that can bend every which way" and twist his body around itself five times "like a curly-wurly straw!", which is nice because you'd think someone with rubber bones would be unable to stand upright, much less do tricks, especially given the likelihood of their sustaining terminal head injuries without a solid skull. There's a fat man/geek named Rhamus Twobellies who was born with two stomachs, which allow him to eat two full carts of food in five minutes and eat glass instead of dangerously compressing his other internal organs and causing severe complications to the rest of his digestive system, which is odd because not even the cows he cites as being like him can do that. Look, I'm honestly sorry, I know it's supposed to be whimsical, but you could at least pretend to give a tin shit about how your story actually works.

There's a break for the midgets to hawk candy and toys, and Steve tries to figure out if they're human, probably as confused as the rest of us are as to whether the author is playing the freak schtick straight or crying A Wizard Did It. Darren buys some wolf hair and notices it smells like Cheetos, yiff, dark basements, and shame (protip: yiff and shame smell exactly alike). Once they've milked the crowd enough, the show resumes with a bearded lady with a gimmick--instead of starting with a beard, she can grow a beard at will.

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The beard continued growing as she walked, until finally it reached down to her feet! When she arrived
at the rear of the theater, she turned and walked back to the stage. Even though there was no breeze, her
hair blew about wildly, tickling people's faces as she passed.

When she was back on the stage, Mr. Tall asked if anybody had a pair of scissors. Lots of women did.
Mr. Tall invited a few up.

"The Cirque Du Freak will give one solid bar of gold to anyone who can slice off Truska's beard," he
said, and held up a small yellow piece of metal to show he wasn't joking.

That got a lot of people excited and for ten minutes nearly everybody in the theater tried cutting off her
beard. But they couldn't! Nothing could cut through the bearded lady's hair, not even a pair of garden
shears that Mr. Tall handed out. The funny thing was, it still felt soft, just like ordinary hair!

*sigh* I give up. I give up to the whimsy. OH THAT IS SO COOL AND MAGICAL DUDE, AWESOMESAUCE. Also, why the hell do "lots" of women have pairs of scissors? I've never heard of a woman randomly carrying around scissors in my life. I guess maybe he's talking about those crappy little flimsy pairs they have in miniature sewing kits, but maybe one woman in fifty carries those, and that's old women at that. I know I'm about as ungirly as you can get, so maybe I'm missing something, but THIS IS BUGGING THE SHIT OUT OF ME. Ladies of WGW, can you confirm?

(continued)

The next act is Hans Hands, who can move faster walking on his hands than his feet (finally, an act I have no qualms with), and then, with a sigh and a quick fumble for the ashtray, the plot returns from its smoke break.

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When it was quiet enough, Mr. Tall walked off the stage. He shouted out the name of the next freak as
he went, but it was a soft shout: "Mr. Crepsley and Madam Octa!"

The lights went down low and a creepy-looking man walked onto the stage. He was tall and thin, with
very white skin and only a small crop of orange hair on the top of his head. He had a large scar running
down his left cheek. It reached to his lips and made it look like his mouth was stretching up the side of his
face.

He was dressed in dark-red clothes and carried a small wooden cage, which he put on a table. When he
was set, he turned and faced us. He bowed and smiled. He looked even scarier when he smiled, like a
crazy clown in a horror movie I once saw! Then he started to explain about the act.

Y'know, in the last update, I said there was only one character I liked, and it's not him, but I'll admit I'm kind of fond of Crepsley. This is because he is an absolute douche to Darren. Also, the manga bishing him up doesn't hurt. And "Crepsley" is a fun word to say. But my desperate grasping-at-straws enjoyment more or less ends there. Oh, and Steve is freaking out in the book as well as in that picture, with Darren noting that "He looks like he's seen a ghost!" because we're running out of cliches for the chapters to end on. In reality, he probably just owes him money.

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"IT IS NOT TRUE that all tarantulas are poisonous," Mr. Crepsley said. He had a deep voice. I managed
to tear my eyes away from Steve and trained them on the stage. "Most are as harmless as the spiders you
find anywhere in the world. And those which are poisonous normally only have enough poison in them to
kill very small creatures.

"But some are deadly!" he went on. "Some can kill a man with one bite. They are rare, and only found in
extremely remote areas, but they do exist.

"I have one such spider," he said and opened the door of the cage. For a few seconds nothing
happened, but then the largest spider I had ever seen crawled out. It was green and purple and red, with
long hairy legs and a big fat body. I wasn't afraid of spiders, but this one looked terrifying.

Actually, all tarantulas are poisonous, as well as all spiders. Without poison, they would have no way to digest their food and quickly die out. Presumably he means poisonous to humans, which is true of almost all spiders--even brown recluse bites are only deadly over the course of several days and if untreated, although black widow bites are decidedly more dire. Moreover, these renowned one-bite killers are generally found in populated areas, which is what earns them their reputation as killers, as deadly spiders in remote areas are more likely to live peaceful, undiscovered lives except for a few brief and exciting moments with the odd explorer. And tarantulas in particular aren't that dangerous, having less potent venom than their smaller cousins such as the brown recluse and black widow; they're simply very large, which means they're scarier, but can get the job done just as efficiently with a large dose of less deadly poison. Of course, presumably this is an as-of-yet undiscovered spider, and given that she's covered in bright warning colors, I'm willing to cede that she may be a new strain of extremely evolved and efficient spider, a spider ubermensch, if you will.

...at which point everyone else in the audience is staring at me and the gay magician midgets are hinting that the wolf-man particularly likes the arms of overly helpful biologists.

Oh yeah, I did say "she". This is that character I was talking about. Madam Octa rules all of your asses on virtue of being a crawly-bug. Arachnid. Thing. Bey-otch. She's also more competently drawn than most of the people in the manga. Aw, look, she's smiling!

Anyway, a goat is brought out and, at a few notes from Crepsley's flute, Madam Octa does do the voodoo that she do so well on it.

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The goat froze and its eyes went wide. It stopped bleating and, a few seconds later, toppled over. I
thought it was dead, but then realized it was still breathing.

"This flute is how I control Madam Octa," Mr. Crepsley said, and I looked away from the fallen goat.
He waved the flute slowly above his head. "Though we have been together such a long time, she is not a
pet, and would surely kill me if I ever lost it.

"The goat is paralyzed," he said. "I have trained Madam Octa not to kill outright with her first bite. The
goat would die in the end, if we left it there is no cure for Madam Octa's bite but we shall finish it
quickly." He blew on the flute and Madam Octa moved up the goat's neck until she was standing on its
ear. She bared her fangs again and bit. The goat shivered, then went totally still.

Crepsley: Excuse, me, sir?
Plot: Yeah, whaddyawant?
Crepsley: We have an order of foreshadowing here. Shall we put it in the back?
Plot: Yeah, back up the truck, we've got a troupe of midgets with pitchforks to unload.
Midget: But it smells so bad!

The act goes on, with some lovely arachnid acrobatics.

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Then, as she made an upward swing, Mr. Crepsley threw his head back and she went flying straight up
into the air. The thread snapped and she tumbled around and around. I watched her go up, then come
down. I thought she'd land on the floor or the table, but she didn't. Instead, she landed in Mr. Crepsley's
mouth!

I nearly got sick when I thought of Madam Octa sliding down his throat and into his belly. I was sure
she'd bite him and kill him. But the spider was a lot smarter than I knew. As she was falling, she'd stuck
her legs out and they had caught on his lips.

He brought his head forward, so we could see his face. His mouth was wide open and Madam Octa
was hanging between his lips. Her body throbbed in and out of his mouth and she looked like a balloon
that he was blowing up and letting the air out of.

I wondered where the flute was and how he was going to control the spider now. Then Mr. Tall
appeared with another flute. He couldn't play as well as Mr. Crepsley, but he was good enough to make
Madam Octa take notice. She listened, then moved from one side of Mr. Crepsley's mouth to the other.
I didn't know what she was doing at first, so I craned my neck to see. When I saw the bits of white on
Mr. Crepsley's lips I understood: she was spinning a web!

When she was finished, she lowered herself from his chin, like she had before. There was a large web
spun across Mr. Crepsley's mouth. He began chewing and licking the web! He ate the whole thing, then
rubbed his belly (being careful not to hit Madam Octa) and said, "Delicious. Nothing tastier than fresh
spiderwebs. They are a treat where I come from."

I try to avoid overly long quotes, but dang. The manga is slightly less fetishistic, and given Japan, that's saying something.

Creepy subtext aside, Darren decides Madam Octa is the ultimate pet and wishes he could have her for his very own, and Steve catches on fire or something. But it's not Crepsley's act getting his obvious evil in a bunch, it's Crepsley himself.

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"You don't understand," Steve said angrily. "You don't know who he really is."

"And you do?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "as a matter of fact I do." He rubbed his chin and started looking worried again. "I just
hope he doesn't know I know. If he does, we might never make it out of here alive…"

I may have been exaggerating about running out of ellipsis-ridden chapter-enders.

The manga wisely ends the freakshow here, sensing a natural place to move the plot along, but the author decides it would be a good idea to keep dragging along. Next is Gertha Teeth who has indestructible, you guessed it, toenails. Darren notes that she shouts and every sentence ends in "an exclamation mark(!)." Because, y'know, if kids are reading this, they're old enough for the violence, but punctuation is a more adult issue and must be carefully explained via parentheses (which is kind of odd because they're also punctuation (see what I did here?).). Then comes another pair of contortionists, then Mr. Tall announces the show is over, because freakshows routinely end on a dull note. SURPRISE THERE'S A SNAKEBOY IN THE RAFTERS. A thirteen-year-old snake-scaled boy "wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else" with a giant snake and...oy, here we go again.

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When he was close enough he reached out and tickled the
snake beneath its chin with his weird webbed fingers. Then he bent forward and kissed it on the nose!

The snake wrapped itself around the boy's neck. It coiled about him a couple of times, leaving its tail draped over his shoulder and down his back like a scarf.

The boy stroked the snake and smiled. I thought he was going to walk through the crowd, letting the rest
of us rub it, but he didn't. Instead he walked over to the side of the theater, away from the path to the
door. He unwrapped the snake and put it down on the floor, then tickled it under its chin once more.
The mouth opened wide this time, and I saw its fangs. The snake-boy lay down on his back a short
distance away from the snake, then began wriggling toward it!

"No," I said softly to myself. "Surely he's not going to …"

But yes, he stuck his head in the snake's wide-open mouth!

Look, I...can we just stop with the venomous things in people's mouths already? I wasn't comfortable with it the first time and I'm not comfortable with it now. And the stroking and kissing and wrapping and rubbing and half-naked...and...just stop it. I swear to God. There are kids reading this.

After the vore encore, the show really is over, but Steve doesn't want to go back. Instead, he tells Darren to go home and runs backstage. Darren notes that he sounded like "he'd go crazy if I didn't obey him", that he's seen Steve "get into fierce rages" and that he isn't "someone you want to mess with when he's angry". So, of course, he goes running after him. That's our Hoovering hero! He climbs into the balcony and watches Steve confront Crepsley onstage.

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"I saw you watching me," Mr. Crepsley said. "You gasped aloud when you first saw me. Why?"

"B-b-b-because I kn-kn-know who you a-are," Steve stuttered, finding his voice.

"I am Larten Crepsley," the creepy-looking man said.

"No," Steve replied. "I know who you really are."

"Oh?" Mr. Crepsley smiled, but there was no humor in it. "Tell me, little boy," he sneered, "who am I,
really ?"

"Your real name is Vur Horston," Steve said, and Mr. Crepsley's jaw dropped in astonishment. And
then Steve said something else, and my jaw dropped, too.

"You're a vampire," he said, and the silence that followed was as long as it was terrifying.

So...like, two milliseconds, then?


Next time: Steve makes an ultimatum, Crepsley fails to care, and Darren steals the Idiot Ball and runs for the goal.

As a side note, there's a wolf spider the size of a fifty-cent piece on the floor as I'm posting this. Considering swallowing it. I read it in a book, it's GOT to be a good idea, right?

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As a side note, there's a wolf spider the
size of a fifty-cent piece on the floor as I'm posting this.
Considering swallowing it. I read it in a book, it's GOT to be a good
idea, right?

No. It will lay eggs in your stomach, and when the babies hatch, they'll eat their way out from the inside, and it will all end in tears.

Also, my mother used to carry a full-sized pair of scissors in her purse at all time (though what she called a 'purse' normal people would've called a beach bag). She also never left the house with a small sewing kit, a wet washcloth in a plastic bag, several chocolate bars, some sort of fruit (generally an orange), a package of cheese and snack crackers, several children's puzzles, a paperback book (usually a nurse romance), and a pacifier. She continued to carry all these items long after her children were adults and no longer living at home.

Martha believed in being prepared for anything. Also, raising five kids apread out over 18 years tends to leave scars that never quit heal.

/d/ would love the female spider/vore/hypno fetishes going on in this book.
And this review is sexcellent.

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As a side note, there's a wolf spider the size of a fifty-cent piece on the floor as I'm posting this. Considering swallowing it. I read it in a book, it's GOT to be a good idea, right?

No.
It will lay eggs in your stomach, and when the babies hatch, they'll
eat their way out from the inside, and it will all end in tears.

Our tears, that is, because we'll all be missing our dear Delcat. DON'T DO IT IT'S NOT WORTH IT

I think I read this book once, years ago. All I remember are the EXCLAMATION POINTS!!

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Darren notes that she shouts and every sentence ends in "an exclamation mark(!)."

Until the wolfman eats her, that is.

I'm not very good at fighting, can't you all just submit to my unending adorableness?