What world are we living in?
All right, luvvies? This is the last Foggy Outline newsletter of 2023. I'm taking January off so that I don't have to write one in the busy month of December, so you'll hear from me next in February 2024, which is so far in the future that everything could have changed!
running order
prologue: at last, a title
feature presentation: considering possible worlds
asides: what's new with Merely Roleplayers, what I'm making and enjoying, #pinspiration
fin: what job would you get if you were invisible?
prologue
This story I've been telling you since July finally has a title! It still might change again, but I'm making a page for it on the website, so I needed to commit to calling it something. The page isn't up yet, but by next issue, you'll be able to find it there under the name:
A Net Too Wide To Break His Fall
feature presentation: possible worlds
Callum haunted a 24-hour cafe in stolen shoes and considered who might want him snared or dead.
Out of the window, behind two rows of two-storey shopping street roofs, rose the stepped silhouette of the Horizon Hotel, unevenly gridded with light. From here, Callum could pinpoint the bright windows of his own suite on the tenth floor, overlooking the mezzanine roof terrace on the next step down. Vivian Hithercombe had chosen that suite, before she knew Callum existed, for its view of the terrace out of the bedroom window. The suite next door, whose windows all looked out over the city, was considerably cheaper, and therefore not good enough for Vivian Hithercombe. If Callum had been staying in that suite instead, either he would now be unconscious on the carpet at the mercy of some dangerous and determined people, or in pieces on the pavement outside reception, beyond any mercy at all.
In that world, would passers-by register his remains? Or would they walk straight through what was left of him, leaving footprints on the pavement and in the hotel reception carpet that no one outside his small circle of contacts could see?
aside the first: see—be seen
Interactive Soup is back this Tuesday 12 December! I'll be there doing a bit of announcing, a bit of timing people's pitches, and a bit of talking to people in the bar about their cool interactive performance projects. You can still get tickets if you haven't already.
Part 1 of my Heart: The City Beneath 2-parter for Actual Play UK did not stream on 10 November as planned; EE broadband let the channel's producer down. Instead we're now playing part 1 on 21 December. I'm not 100% sure whether we're streaming live that evening, or pre-recording the game to be streamed later. Keep an eye on my socials and Actual Play UK's for updates on that.
I'm now tentatively on Bluesky. If you're there, you can follow me at merelymatt@bluesky.social. I was quite enjoying only needing to tend to two social networks (Instagram and Tumblr) so I don't know if I'll have the energy to keep it up – it'll depend how many cool people I find to talk to there! I don't have any invitations to give out yet, but if you're looking for one, reply to this email to let me know – I'll send you one when I have one.
feature presentation continues
Two streets away from the hotel probably wasn’t far enough, but that was a thought Callum was only capable of having now that he’d stopped moving and his heartbeat had started to subside. It was too cold a night to be wandering in a state of shock, and the cafe was the closest shelter. The staff knew him, even if the couple of other late night customers didn’t, so he didn’t have to freak anyone out by jumping behind the counter and starting the espresso machine himself, unseen. The day he’d moved into the Horizon, Vivian Hithercombe had shown him around the neighbourhood, and introduced him to the barista on shift at the cafe that day with exactly the same attitude as she’d pointed out the local coin laundry. Just setting him up with a necessary local amenity. Ever since, he’d made sure to visit often, and to make enough friendly small talk with the staff he knew that it didn’t seem too strange to ask them for introductions to each new starter. In this one small corner of a city where Callum mostly might as well not exist, they knew him as an unusually sociable, curious and outgoing patron.
He really hoped none of them had been involved in gassing his home and trying to kidnap or kill him. Maybe there was a world where one of the cafe staff harboured some secret grudge. But in that world, there would have been no gas grenades, no silent foiling of the electronic lock on the suite’s main door. Certainly no grenade coming through the lounge window; whoever had chucked that one had to have been rappelling from the roof. The people hunting Callum were professionals.
aside the second: the world's a stage—& we're all Merely Roleplayers
We performed Fan Fic Mish Mash live at Dragonmeet at the weekend! It was cosy, and silly, and we all laughed a lot, and I made the audience do live foley. At some point I'll receive the recording, and at some point after that it'll go up on the Merely Roleplayers feed for everyone who couldn't be there on the day. Watch this space for more specific dates.
The Office Party also wrapped this week. Go throw the cast a 💐 or three on this Insta post if you enjoyed this production!
Opening soon in the Main House: Vigil: Fear Itself, with Alexander Pankhurst as Graham, Ellen Gould as Jess Butterworth, and Chris Starkey as Cameron Jarvis. Look out for Act 1 on the first Tuesday of 2024.
feature presentation continues
Vivian Hithercombe knew professionals. There was military in her family, for a start. And the business dealings that kept her accounts topped up, insulating the untouched hoard of capital she was born with, sometimes pulled private ex-military contractors into her orbit.
But in the world where Vivian Hithercombe had turned on Callum, she would have sent people she’d introduced him to, who could see and hear him. People he had no advantage against. They would have approached him as friends or colleagues and struck from inside his guard, subduing him with trust instead of gas.
She was capable of turning on him, no doubt of that. Which was why he’d been careful never to give her a reason to. He did good work for her. He was useful. Worth keeping around.
At least, as long as he stayed a secret.
And at least some part of that secret had to be out.
One year ago, the day after the party at the house on Bronze Street, Callum had agreed to become the invisible harbinger of Vivian Hithercombe’s influence. Her lieutenants, suppliers and business partners began to discover that there was nothing they could hide from her. They could take every precaution against being followed or overheard, but Vivian Hithercombe somehow always seemed to know where they’d been and what they’d said there. And her competitors had all had a year of terror and ruin: farewell gifts from Vivian turning up in supposedly secret storehouses and meeting places, vital equipment sabotaged under guards’ noses, shipments stolen, diverted or destroyed.
aside the third: create—consume
Writing: Dead Weight. This month I finally cracked a scene I was really struggling with! I am desperate to make faster progress with this, but this is a busy old time of year.
Reading: Hel's Eight by Stark Holborn, Notes for a Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner
Listening: Escape from Wheyface Radio! An Arden Actual Play mini-series (Wheyface Radio), Neon Inkwell (Rusty Quill), Muon (Keito)
feature presentation concludes
So there was a world where the attack was a faction within Vivian’s organisation, looking to usurp the boss or just sick of being surveilled and implicitly threatened, eliminating her trump card before making their play.
And there was a world where it was one of her rivals, retaliating.
Whichever of those worlds he was living in, someone knew things about Callum they shouldn’t know. Whoever planned the attack knew that suite at the Horizon was where Vivian kept her useful ghost. And the gas tactics suggested they knew he couldn’t be seen. Either they knew about Callum, or they’d made some very well informed guesses.
Whichever of those worlds he was living in, his safest bet now was to go to Vivian Hithercombe. She had the resources and the motivation to keep him safe.
But he’d spent a year making her reliant on him. Building up to the point where he could make the case for the introductions he’d hoped for from the start, for a bigger and more resilient network of contacts. In the world where he ran to her at the first sign of danger, she’d see how reliant he still was on her. His secret was at least partly compromised. That would shift the scales, maybe enough for her to see him as more of a burden than an asset.
There was a question that was never far from Callum’s mind: Am I just invisible to most people, or am I non-existent? And if everyone who has met me, who can see me, who does acknowledge my existence – if every one of them cuts off contact, will I just be alone, unseen, unheard? Or would I stop existing altogether?
There was a world where he found out. He never wanted to end up in that world.
Better to show Vivian Hithercombe he could take care of his own problems.
Callum left the cafe to go make his problems someone else’s.
To be continued on 9 February 2024
aside the last: accessorise—advertise
fin: readers—writers
That's enough from me for the year! If you made it to the end, thank you; now you get a turn. What job would you get if you were invisible? Would you find something a bit more fulfilling than being a scary rich person's pet poltergeist? Tell me in an email (just hit reply) or tag your answer on the socials with #FoggyOutline.