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La Susurra


She wanders the earth now, a sad shade, discarded by all her lovers. To the living she no longer exists, to the undead she no longer matters, and to the dead… well, they have departed, gone onward as she is unable, trapped now by her choice and betrayal, betrayed in turn. She seeks him, her savior, crossing oceans of time to find that lone dark flame.

"Save me," she whispers, and he looks up, the breeze sliding past his ear like the far-distant song of a wild thing. The twilight is crisp and cold as he kneels next to the fire, stirring it up anew with a dry branch. After a long moment, he turns back to the fire's crackling and pulls the metal pot off the flame, pours a cup of bitter coffee. Again the whisper, felt more than heard, and he whips his head around, trying to catch it.

Save me.

The feel of it like something soft breathing on the skin at his collar, and a scent he cannot catch tries to set off a memory he cannot allow. Whatever it was is long gone, faded back into the darkness of the past, down paths he will not tread no matter who calls him. His sin consumed everything decades ago, only silence now, and the desert.

Darkness descends even as he stares into the distance, straining to see. In the last moment between day and night, when everything is invisible but the air itself, a ripple of woven dampness flutters the air like a curtain or a shroud, and for just a moment he can feel the gaze on him, a sense of emptiness more real than presence between him and the unseen mountains.

The whisper again and a silent wail, longing spirals the air around him, and he shuts his eyes. His temples harden as he sets his jaw, and with one movement he thrusts his hand into the fire, picks up a live branch and clutches it, the pain ripping through his arm. Burn-smell roils his nostrils and he grits his teeth another three heartbeats, then lets the ember go, gasping between his teeth as he clutches his wrist with his good hand. He bows his head, trembling, the tears dripping from his clenched eyes, fighting to keep his mind on the pain and away from the breeze moving gently around him, a vanished embrace, a sigh from a love long past saving.

The moon is a thin crescent. He lets the coffee go cold and then pours it over the burn before binding it up. That night, he dreams of thunderstorms.


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( SPOILERS )

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This makes less sense to me the more I think about it. Ethan really seems to think everything's over. Has it slipped his mind that in about two weeks, he's due to rip a lot of people's throats out? I would have thought the last place he'd want to go is a city teeming with thousands of people. Why isn't he loading up on supplies and taking off into the hills? Going off in search of that lonely death he said he was bound for? Is his lycanthropy somehow tied to his war with his father? If it is, why hasn't anything been said about that? If it isn't, what the fuck, Ethan?



Seriously, this left turn in motivation feels very strange. It's out of character for Ethan. How has he suddenly forgotten his own evil? Yes, yes, Vanessa baby, but come on! He's exposing her to his demon as well. Is his lovesickness that much more important to him? Or is this some kind of mad flush, a murder version of afterglow? Does he just Not Fucking Care?

Come to think of it, this whole season throws his attitude about himself into a new light. I had assumed that Ethan's tortured nature, his self-loathing, came from being a werewolf. But seeing what actually went down in his family, and looking at him now, makes me wonder whether the fact that he's been ripping his way through humanity even bothers him particularly. (And he already hated himself before he knew he was a werewolf. Hm.) I still think he sees himself as a Murder Demon, but he may have had a completely different kind of demon in mind, with the wolf more as and on top of all that, I got this shit here...

I really hope they deal with this before the end of the season. Not necessarily to resolve anything, but at the least to acknowledge the issue, because it's kind of huge. Ethan is the only character whose central identity hasn't been explained, and what we've seen so far this year has only dealt with part of him, but not the part that's been presented as foremost in the story. He fucking massacres people, unavoidably, like clockwork. No matter what else is going on in his story, that's major, and it's hard to see how it's something he can just blow off.

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Here's a neat little snippet of Josh talking Ethan and his Daddy issues...

And here's another, about filming Ethan's story in Spain.

And a half hour interview with Josh about Season 3.


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Yum... Enjoy!


P.S. Is anyone else as amused by that hat as I am? I keep thinking for Father Guido Sarducci...

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( SPOILERS SPOILERS PENNY DREADFUL SPOILERS SPOILERS )


I LOVE THIS SHOW SO MUCH.

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...darn.



Oh well, looks like they're gonna make up for it next week.


*pout*

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Okay, been mulling some over the latest episode of Penny Dreadful, and here are some thoughts.

( SPOILERS if you haven't seen all the eps so far... )

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Penny Dreadful action figures


You're welcome.

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Haven't seen this posted yet, so...

The cast of Penny Dreadful talk about Season 3


Damn, how'd that plate of sliced tomatoes get under my ass all of a sudden?

I do miss Ethan's mane, though. *sigh*

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The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe, read by Sir Christopher Lee


The glorious tones of Lee's dark, commanding voice. Has anyone ever had such a richly deep voice, so wondrously evocative of a world half-seen, feared and desired? *sigh*


I went looking for this because I was thinking that the Raven is really the only figure I can think of from American dark literature of the right period for Penny Dreadful, and that would be recognizable in the same way that Frankenstein and Dracula are. Sadly, the number of people who would get it would be fewer. (Though arguably, they're already watching it.) I was and still am gently amused by the fact that, in order to bring an American character into the series, Logan had to turn to the world of cinema, the true storytelling of the US, for good or ill. I just find that delicious.

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