DrChristianTroy
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2013
This got cray and amazing all at the same time.
حلال Connor Bible - Everyone's Favorite Molly Ringwald loving, adoption hating, aspiring writer and bellybutton fucker
- Thread starter Null
- Start date
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2015
I was referencing this:
https://kiwifarms.net/attachments/molayringwood-png.13399/
I have perfect faith in our Molly.
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2013
Oh wow.
Assuming that is really Molly Ringwald, I am just... wow.
This forum is amazing.
Assuming that is really Molly Ringwald, I am just... wow.
This forum is amazing.
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2014
So I returned to this thread after like a week and Molly Ringwald actually showed up to tell Connor how much he sucked.
This is the best day ever.
This is the best day ever.
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2014
Just when I thought this thread had no more life in it...
I love this place.
I love this place.
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2014
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2013
I know this quote is old but yeah, I volunteered at a food bank and it was a major reason I was able to get the job I have right now.
So yeah, volunteer someplace if you can. It can help pave the way towards finding a job.
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2014
I can't wait for Ms. Ringwald to come back~ This week has been downright surreal.
This week has been downright surreal.
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2013
Gird your loins, kids. This is a long one.
I’m just going to say it. This chapter and the next have large sections borrowed heavily from Chapters 3 and 4 of Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs. In some cases, there have been only minimal alterations to the text; in others, scenes have been paraphrased but convey the same essential information. These chapters alone assure that this book will never be published. I have tried to tell this to Connor in private. This was his response:
I am of the opinion that no story is one hundred percent original. The trick is to put your own unique, and sometimes unusual, spin on the tropes present in the works that inspired you. I think the story could work with a plot in the vein of Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs, but just not in an obvious manner.
Not in an obvious manner, huh? Let’s find out.
Quotes from the screenplay and novel will be in red bolded text beneath the RE text I believe they are plagiarizing, with apologies to Null for the colored font.
I’m just going to say it. This chapter and the next have large sections borrowed heavily from Chapters 3 and 4 of Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs. In some cases, there have been only minimal alterations to the text; in others, scenes have been paraphrased but convey the same essential information. These chapters alone assure that this book will never be published. I have tried to tell this to Connor in private. This was his response:
I am of the opinion that no story is one hundred percent original. The trick is to put your own unique, and sometimes unusual, spin on the tropes present in the works that inspired you. I think the story could work with a plot in the vein of Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs, but just not in an obvious manner.
Not in an obvious manner, huh? Let’s find out.
Quotes from the screenplay and novel will be in red bolded text beneath the RE text I believe they are plagiarizing, with apologies to Null for the colored font.
DOWN INTO THE ABYSS
“He’s an animal,” Prometheus Corporation executive Jonathan Jordache said. “A pure psychopath. At least that’s what the therapists call him. He’s a tough nut to crack.”
CHILTON (V.O.)
Oh, he's a monster. A pure psychopath... It's so rare to capture one alive.
(Note: in the original version of RE, the word animal was “monster.”)
Jordache, to Eva, had a curious look about him. He was sharp-dressed,
Should be “He was sharply dressed.” You see, TJ, when you hyphenated two words in this way, it turns them into an adjective, and adjectives need nouns, and the only noun here is “he.” You are describing his manner of dress, not the man himself.
handsome for middle-aged guy,
Should be “for a middle-aged guy,” but skipping determiners is such a common typographical error that I’m not too terribly concerned.
with hair that was obviously fixed up to hide the gray and straight pearly whites that flashed a flashy public relations smile.
Should be hyphenated—“a public-relations smile”—for the reasons above: it’s being used here as an adjective describing “smile.” Also “flashed a flashy smile” is just silly. Change one of those flashes to something else.
“What makes you say that, Mr. Jordache?” Eva asked. She had only been in his company for about a couple of minutes, and already there was something about him that was… well, off.
Which something, the fact that the story is using the trope of coding male vanity as evil and insecure, the fact that he’s named after blue jeans, or the fact that he’s as gay as Paree in the springtime?
Klaus Krieger had garnered a reputation in the scientific community akin to Keyser Soze,
Thank goodness I looked that up the last time the story made that reference, or I wouldn’t know who that was!
and Jordache spoke of him as though he were a sideshow attraction.
“It’s his intelligence,” Holden said. “He always finds a way to outsmart us. He knows how we play.”
"A pure sociopath, that's obviously what he is. But he's impenetrable, much too sophisticated for the standard tests.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Jordache said, still smiling. “Personally, I think he’s too brainy for his own good.” His tone of voice had an air of pompous superiority through the too-white teeth. I’m really beginning to dislike this guy, Eva thought.
Eva couldn’t tell who she disliked more: her father for bringing her here, this snake-oil prick in front of her, or the certified sicko she came to meet.
Oh Eva. Your hypocrisy is so direct, it’s refreshing. “How dare he treat this esteemed member of the scientific community like a circus freak? And anyway, when are we going to see the sick fuck?”
She clung to the folder under her right arm, which held the secrets of her mind and was protected by a rubber band.
Perhaps unintentional funny there.
She had made sure that the band’s grip was tight. Foreigner’s “I’ve Been Waiting” softly played from the speakers throughout the room.
That’s pure coincidence, Eva.
Unless it’s not. Unless the book’s implying that earlier today, down in his cage, Krieger left specific instructions to Jordache: “And make sure you’re playing Track 3 when my nine o’clock shows up. It will really freak her shit.”
It made her want to gulp.
“There’s something I don’t get,” Eva asked. “If this Krieger kid has killed ten people, how come he’s the head honcho for the project?
I would still like that question answered myself.
You just said he was too brainy for his own good.”
I do not understand how these two sentences go together. Is Eva meant to be answering her own question?
“I admit it,” Jordache chuckled, raising his hands like he had nothing to hide. “Krieger has a beef with me. Thinks I’m out to screw him over.”
“And, my, does he hate us. He thinks I'm his nemesis.”
Still, it doesn’t hurt to have someone notorious backing up Catharsis. There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” He then added, “Sometimes.”
“I read his article on shared psychosis last night,” Eva said, adjusting her bifocals.
"The medical journals still publish him, but it's just for the freak value of his byline."
"He did a good piece on surgical addiction in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, I thought," Starling said.
Jordache, you are a public company! You have shareholders who would deeply care that a serial killer was working on a project they paid for! There is a whole laundry list of celebrities that destroyed their careers by doing far less monstrous things than actually killing people.
Bifocal drink!
“I’m sure the good doctor would love to hear your thoughts,” Jordache said with ooze.
“I think we have an appointment to get to,” Holden pressured.
“Yes, right,” Jordache mumbled as he rose from his chair. Eva and Holden followed suit, and Jordache made sure to turn off Foreigner. “We keep him underneath the building, among the freaks.”
"I keep him in here," Chilton said, and pushed a button beside heavy double doors of security glass.
Eva hated his usage of the word “freak”. It implied a lack of concern for those who didn’t share their name with a clothing label.
As opposed to Eva’s oh-so-delicate use of “certified sicko.”
“Usage” should be “use.” They’re not synonymous. End period should be inside the quotation marks with the “freak” quote, the way mine was in the certified sicko line.
“Do you really have to call them that?” Eva asked.
“He has his reasons,” Holden said.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Jordache said as he opened the door, which led to a sterile white hallway that stretched to God knows where.
Does the writer know where, by any chance?
When they reached the elevator, Eva moved ahead to call it up. Jordache brushed her aside, muttering “allow me” under his breath. Fuckhead, Eva thought.
Eva’s final thought should be its own paragraph.
###
As the elevator began to creep down into the abyss,
I…I don’t understand this story’s continued weird use of scene breaks. You literally put a scene break between the elevator arriving and them stepping into it. Could you not spend the effort to write the five words that would bridge the gap between one action and another? “They stepped into the elevator.” BOOM. DONE.
YOU ARE BUILDING TENSION. You don’t want to rush ahead or skip a scene while building tension. This is the big moment! We’re anticipating the introduction of our big baddie, and every moment that delays us seeing him should be agony. This is one moment where you can reasonably put in every last step of the journey and not risk your reader wandering off or getting bored by mundane details like elevator rides.
Eva was overcome with an aura of dread. She understood that her father’s work was strange, but she wasn’t expecting one of his colleagues to be both a convicted murderer and a child prodigy.
Since when? You seemed pretty well-informed before.
Reading Krieger’s article, one would be hypothesize
Should be “one would hypothesize.” This one would hypothesize that the stray “be” is a leftover from a previous version of this story.
that he was an affable, if eccentric, wunderkind.
This is why I wonder if Connor has ever read an academic article. I mean, I write kind of dry, convoluted jokes into mine; I have co-workers whose voice and subject matter gives them away, but typically, one does not glean much about a writer’s personality from an academic article. Part of the reason they’re written as they are is to discourage reader bias.
How the author could maintain that normality, that friendliness, with the reality of his crimes was a concept that was both alien and morbid to her. A part of Eva wanted to lock hands with her father, but she was both willing to take the plunge, and was a big girl now.
These two sentences are pure grammatical and stylistic nightmare fodder.
Sometimes, fire has to be fought with fire. To face sadness, one must face what one hates.
None of these sentences have anything to do with each other. They might as well be twenty random words.
Krieger might be a psycho, but I haven’t really met the guy, have I?
You know he killed ten people. You’re allowed to let that color your judgment. “Hm, this guy on OkCupid says he’s a serial rapist…but it would be unfair of me not to get his side of things.”
She literally just said “to face sadness, one must face what one hates.” One would assume that in this context, Eva hates Krieger. At the very least, she hates what he represents to her—evil, destruction, madness. Yet in the very next sentence, she’s thinking that maybe he’s not so bad. It’s like the narrative’s not even paying attention to itself anymore.
Eva held her bifocals
DRINK!
up to the light in the elevator, and noticed a minute crack in the bottom half of the right lens. Perhaps her nearsightedness had its benefits.
If nearsightedness turns out to be her superpower, so help me…
The elevator came to a stop at sublevel six, as indicated by the LED display.
Sub-level should be hyphenated, and my god, it’s the lunch bell all over again. “In my country, some elevators have LED screens which display the floor numbers as the elevator passes them.”
“Sub-six, security,” a voice said over the intercom in the elevator. “Good morning, Mr. Jordache, Dr. Elliot,” the voice greeted. “Purpose of visit?”
“Catharsis,” Eva said.
No it’s not! You’re just here to see if you want to be part of the project…or if you’re eligible; the story’s still vague on that point. And why would Security clear Eva alone? Why not give Holden or Jordache that line? They’re the ones with security clearance. Eva could be the cleaning lady, for all they know—or the grieving widow of one of Krieger’s victims, with a handgun in her purse.
“Hang on,” the voice replied. There was a silence in the elevator. Holden and Jordache gave Eva their respective glances. Holden’s was one of amusement, while Jordache’s held a look of annoyance. “Ah, yes,” the voice returned. “Here to see Dr. Krieger?”
“Yes, sir,” Holden replied.
The elevator doors slid open, revealing a concrete wall that suited an ancient prison rather than the hi-tech piece of work that the public saw. The lighting was dim, but decent.
They had passed through two more gates and left the natural light behind. Now they were beyond the wards where inmates can mix together, down in the region where there can be no windows and no mixing. The hallway lights are covered with heavy grids, like the lights in the engine rooms of ships.
“Watch out for those puddles,” Jordache said as he began to lead Eva and Holden through the corridor.
“This place is a dump.” Eva said under her breath. She wasn’t particularly happy with the scenery.
So we gathered.
It made L.A. Central High
Drink!
look like a resort for tax evaders. Jordache scoffed at her. He had keen ears to go with his silver tongue and charming personality.
The steel door at the end of the corridor slid open, and as Eva stepped in after Holden and Jordache, it dawned upon her that this was a security office.
“Hello there,” a deep voice went.
Eva turned, and saw that it came from a silverback gorilla in white orderly outfit. What the hell? She was both startled and unnerved. Talking animals were something that normally belonged in old Hanna-Barbera shows.
This is the point at which I lost it.
The orderly in Silence of the Lambs, who also appeared in the other Hannibal novels, was a very large black man named Barney. He was kind of a still-waters-run-deep character: while on the surface he didn’t appear highly educated (a point was made of him being only a licensed practical nurse rather than an RN), he was the only orderly Lecter responded to due to Barney’s thoughtfulness, practicality, and understanding of Lecter’s nature.
And Connor turned him into a fucking talking gorilla. Connor, you racist shit.
“I’m Abraham, but please, call me Abe.” He extended his long furry arm in an amicable gesture.
“Eva,” she introduced herself, awkwardly shaking his hand. “I didn’t know the Corporation had animals that could speak.”
“The miracles modern science can do,” Holden said. “We’re here to see Doctor Krieger, Abe, as you might know.”
Again, I fucking hate these kinds of conversations in novels: “As you know, my dear, we’ve been seeing each other for two years and our wedding day is tomorrow.” People do not feel the need to tell each other well-established facts!
Also, to paraphrase Mauv, are we going to ignore the fact that there’s a fucking talking gorilla apparently just chilling the basement? That is cooler than anything else that has happened thus far in this story! When you introduce an element like this, that instantly becomes your entire story and you will proceed no further until this point has been thoroughly and satisfactorily explained. I no longer give a shit about any other idea this story has given me. I want to know how this gorilla happened.
That gorilla is your goddamn public relations masterstroke, Jordache. Not Krieger and his notoriety. Not Catharsis. The gorilla. Let the world in on that and you won’t be able to walk down the street without being hit by bags of money.
“Yuh-huh. I got two chairs already set up. He’s looked like he’s expectin’ you.” Abe knuckle-walked to the nearest console, and began pecking away at the keyboard with his webbed fingers. “I think I should let you in on some ground rules before I let cha’ll in. One, don’t approach the glass or touch the glass. When you give stuff to him through the food tray, make sure it ain’t anything sharp. That means paper clips or pens. If he’s got anything to be signing, he has felt-tip markers. If he starts acting up, there’s a door inside his cell so biguns like me can get in. Clear ‘nuff?”
“Crystal,” Eva said.
"Then you should be able to remember the rules: Do not reach through the bars, do not touch the bars. You pass him nothing but soft paper. No pens, no pencils. He has his own felt-tipped pens some of the time. The paper you pass him must be free of staples, paper clips, or pins. Items are only passed to him through the sliding food carrier. Items come back out through the sliding food carrier. No exceptions. Do not accept anything he attempts to hold out to you through the barrier. Do you understand me?"
"Understood."
So we’re letting the talking gorilla—who must be scientifically invaluable and cost hundreds of millions of dollars and countless years of research to engineer and train—walk into the cell with a diabolical genius who kills and maims for fun. You would risk that investment on a whim. Yes, it's a gorilla against one guy, but do you really want to risk Krieger getting in the one lucky shot that puts out his eye?
“One more thing before I let you go. Abraham, bring it up,” Jordache demanded.
"Lecter is never outside his cell without wearing full restraints and a mouthpiece," Chilton said. "I'm going to show you why.”
“If you say so,” Abraham complied. Punching more keys, he brought up surveillance camera footage. The time code showed it was from two years ago.
“In his early days down here, security was lax, and Krieger was a model inmate. On August 12, 2012, he was bitching about migraines, so we had this poor schmuck, Dr. Getz, start up an EEG on him upstairs. As soon as the monitors went on…”
“He was a model of cooperation for the first year after he was committed. Security around him was slightly relaxed--- this was under the previous administration, you understand. On the afternoon of July 8, 1976, he complained of chest pain and he was taken to the dispensary. His restraints were removed to make it easier to give him an electrocardiogram. When the nurse bent over him, he did this to her." Chilton handed Clarice Starling a dog-eared photograph.
There was a pause from Jordache as, onscreen, Klaus Krieger lunged towards Dr. Getz, who let out a silent scream as the boy wrestled him to the ground. Krieger had stuck his fingers in Getz’s mouth, pressing down on his lower jaw. The video closed, and then Abraham brought up a photo of Dr. Getz after the assault.
“The docs were able to reattach the jaw, but it didn’t do Getz any good. He flatlined twenty minutes later,” Jordache said. He added, “What’s interesting about all of this is the readings from the EEG. Krieger’s line was stable. Even when he ripped out Getz’s throat.”
"The doctors managed to save one of her eyes. Lecter was hooked up to the monitors the entire time. He broke her jaw to get at her tongue. His pulse never got over eighty-five, even when he swallowed it."
Eva gulped, winced, and scratched her shoulder with her right cheek. Inside her mouth, teeth were grinding.
Where else would they be grinding?
Also, this brief sentence shows you why passive voice isn’t always a good thing. In this case it makes the subject so vague that it sounds like she’s got someone else’s random loose teeth in her mouth.
“Can we just move along with the appointment?”
“Seconded,” Holden said.
Thirded.
“Very well,” Jordache replied. “I’ll stay back here and keep watch.”
Abraham punched the keyboard once more, and the barred entrance to the cell block opened. Eva could hear, very faintly, the sounds of insanity. “Good luck, Ms. Elliot,” Abraham said.
“Hey, Eva,” Jordache blurted as Eva began to walk to the entrance. “Enjoy the show.”
“I hope you do too,” Eva replied.
###
The barred entrance closed behind them, and now, they were on their own. Turning left and staying close to her father, Eva noted there were glass barriers, some wider than the others, on both walls. On some spots, there were simply steel doors with a closed rectangular slit, behind which was nothing pleasant.
Eva kept her eyes forward. Don’t look at them. Don’t. What am I doing here? This is insane, just like the people in here…
The corridor was about thirty yards long, with cells on both sides. Some were padded cells with an observation window, long and narrow like an archery slit; in the center of the door. Others were standard prison cells, with a wall of bars opening on the corridor. Clarice Starling was aware of figures in the cells, but she tried not to look at them.
Eventually, they came to where the two chairs rested in the corridor, facing the widest glass barrier in the block. Eva and Holden both took a seat.
KLAUS THE KILLER
The fact that the best sobriquet he can come up with for his Hannibal the Cannibal stand-in is “Klaus the Killer” proves why the plagiarism is even sadder than normal. Instead of stealing from the original book to spice up his own story, he tweaked every line he stole in just such a way as to make it lame.
The cell of Dr. Klaus Krieger was fairly large, and its interior was more polished and clean in comparison to the other tenants. At the far left of the room was a well-made bed. Ahead of it was a bookcase. Through her bifocals,
Drink!
Eva noted that the good doctor, who sat with his back facing them at a desk at the center of the room, was an avid reader. The shelf was predominantly philosophy, Darwin, and psychology. Smart fellow, she thought. There was also a small restroom that he could walk into, and a closet, possibly containing a wardrobe. Eva noted the door inside the cell. The rectangular slit was open, allowing any guards beyond it to peer in. Security cameras, possibly relics from a bygone age, were frozen and scattered about the corridor.
Dr. Lecter's cell is well beyond the others, facing only a closet across the corridor, and it is unique in other ways. The front is a wall of bars, but within the bars, at a distance greater than the human reach, is a second barrier, a stout nylon net stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Behind the net, Starling could see a table bolted to the floor and piled high with softcover books and papers, and a straight chair, also fastened down.
In the film, Lecter's cell was of Plexiglas, since it would have been difficult to film him through the netting and bars described in the novel. So Connor's still ripping off the story; he's just switched the screenplay.
Connor simply could not bear the indignity of having his elegant, sophisticated killer take a shit in public, so he's taken the precaution of giving him a private bathroom. Nice of him.
The boy beyond the glass took a deep breath, inhaled and exhaled slowly.
“You’ve been drinking again, Dr. Elliot,” Krieger said.
Only because someone mentioned bifocals.
“Yeah, well, shit happens. Doesn’t it?” Holden’s wit was there, but with it came a hint of caution.
If by "wit" you mean "snark." And if by "snark" you mean "stunning flippancy with a co-worker/serial killer who will later be performing surgery on your daughter's brain."
“Indeed.” Krieger’s accent was subtle, a far cry from the cast of Hogan’s Heroes.
Hogan’s Heroes is a title and should be underlined or italicized. However, I’m going to let it go given the fact that MS Word has a habit of removing special fonts when copy-pasting. However, I will congratulate Connor for referencing a show that roughly 60% of his audience has never seen and does not remember, while also comparing his darkety-dark evil genius to a ridiculous, stereotypical comic villain because Lord knows, that is exactly the image you need to put in a reader’s head when you want to be taken seriously.
It had a mechanical rasp to it, possibly due to a combination of the glass barrier and something more alien.
"Good morning," [Lecter] said, as though he had answered the door. His cultured voice has a slight metallic rasp beneath it, possibly from disuse.
Something darker. Krieger spun around in his chair, and was now facing Eva and Holden. To Eva, Klaus Krieger was a rare creature. He had boyish blonde hair, akin to that Bieber kid who was surely in rehab by now.
Someone’s jelly.
He was thin and delicate, but he nonetheless seemed to possess strength, as indicated by his sleek muscle tone.
She could see that he was small, sleek; in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own.
He was wearing, much to her surprise, a buttoned-down white shirt, and tan slacks.
She was surprised by his wholly unremarkable attire!
His feet, sans socks, were enveloped in slippers. Most of all, the face was the part of his body that caught the most attention. Underneath the blonde bangs were a pair of bifocals.
Drink!
On the other side of the right lens was an eyepatch, and through the left was a narrow gray eye that was looking at her. “You must be Evangeline.”
“Call me Eva,” she said, adjusting her own bifocals.
Drink!
“There is a crack in one of those lenses.”
“How could you--?” Eva was stunned. Despite having no depth perception, Krieger seemed to have really good eyesight. He smiled with closed lips.
"Did you hurt yourself?"
"No, I---"
"You have on a fresh Band-Aid, Clarice."
Then she remembered. "I got a scrape on the side of the pool, swimming today." The Band-Aid was out of sight, on her calf beneath her trousers. He must smell it.
This is what I meant by taking everything and making it lamer. Instead of a freakish preternatural sense of smell, we get “oh, you must have really good eyesight!” for a man who spotted a cracked pair of glasses from twenty feet away.
She put the glasses in her pocket. “You don’t mind if I take these off, do you? I’m nearsighted.”
“Of course not. You are close enough, aren’t you?”
“I guess,” Eva replied. “What are you reading?”
“An old favorite, Shaw’s Pygmalion. I haven’t read it in ages, so I felt I should do myself a favor and reintroduce myself to its contents. I’m currently on the first act,” Krieger said.
SMART PEOPLE READ SHAW, RIGHT? WATCH ME NAME DROP THIS REALLY SMART THING I READ!
Bitch, please. Don’t even talk to me about Shaw. You see this?
That is my own personal bookshelf. That’s not even a complete Shaw collection. That’s not even all the Shaw I’ve read. You wanna impress me with your Shaw references? Step up your game.
(Incidentally, he’s reading Pygmalion--which should be in italics--because it’s about a manipulative jerk-ass who takes an ordinary girl and upgrades her so she can pass as an upper-class lady as part of a social experiment, then ditches her because he doesn’t understand the human implications of what he’s done. FORESHADOWING.)
Eva said, “I never could get into plays, especially ones over at my high school.”
“High school, yes… Los Angeles Central, I presume.”
And I presume we DRINK!
“It’s the best place she can go, with the money I make,” Holden said.
Wait, hold the phone. I had assumed that Eva went to a public high school, as evidenced by the general decay. You don’t pay to go to public school; you’re zoned for it. Now Holden’s acting like he pays for her schooling, like a private school. Maybe he’s implying that if he made more money, they could afford to live in a better neighborhood with better schools, but Jesus, Holden, if this is best private school you can send her to, maybe you’d better save her money and let her attend public school, where at least there’s some hope of the state taking over.
“Adaptation is key to survival, as you know.”
That is not only dumb, it's barely applicable, considering that it sounds like Eva would be better off staying at home than "surviving" in the Blackboard Jungle you've described her school to be. Sometimes this book just likes to say things that sound profound to make itself seems smarter.
“My father here showed me your article on shared psychosis last night,” Eva said.
“Annnnnd…?” Krieger inquired, fingers locked. His head was tilted slightly downward, his lone gray eye peeking over the top of his glasses.
“I was just bringing it up,” Eva responded.
Now even the characters are acknowledging that it's all JUST RANDOM WORDS
“What is your opinion of it?”
“I thought it was very insightful. You’re definitely wise beyond your years.”
"Speaking of publications, I read your pieces on surgical addiction and left-side, right-side facial displays."
"Yes, they were first-rate," Dr. Lecter said.
"I thought so, and so did Jack Crawford. He pointed them out to me."
Can I say that I fucking love that Connor took the character of Jack Crawford, Starling's mentor and father-figure for whom it is heavily implied she's got a kind of Electra thing, and turned him into Eva's actual, literal father? Without seeming to grasp the implications at all? It's so great.
“Believe me, Ms. Elliot, when I say that I receive a lot of commendations. They are mostly from pretentious lads looking for a means of vindication in their studies. Speaking of pretentiousness, what is your impression of Jonathan Jordache? That smirk of his is pestilential, isn’t it?” His gray eye was wide open now, and his lips opened to reveal perfectly straight white teeth.
Eva looked at Holden, and then surveyed her surroundings. Jordache was almost certainly watching all of this unfold. “Just between the three of us,” Eva said, “I think he’s an asshole.” She had put her hand over her mouth to prevent any savvy lip-reader from catching her in the act. Holden chuckled at her choice of words.
I don’t know what the gorilla's doing right now, but I bet it’s something awesome.
“To be frank, I agree with you, Ms. Elliot.”
“You understand why I’m here, right, Doctor Krieger?”
“Yes. Catharsis.” Krieger slid a finger underneath his eyepatch, rubbing whatever was underneath. “Tell me, Ms. Elliot… what do you know about my little science project? Consider this a pop quiz. I assume you have done your homework.”
“Well,” Eva said, “it’s a combination of genetic and psychological therapy, in layman’s terms. After a solid profile of the subject is made, they’re given a retrovirus somehow that alters their biology to their specifications. It’s kind of slow, so they’re usually placed in a chamber of liquid, maybe something rich with nutrients. While inside, the liquid is charged with a non-lethal electric current, just enough for the cell membranes to accept the new characteristics.”
I'm not sure just where Connor ripped off his wonky science but I know several big Hollywood blockbusters have worked off the premise that virus alter DNA and then it all goes Horribly Wrong. Gene therapy is the farthest thing from my field, but I know enough to know that this fails science forever.
However, I am happy to have at least one work of science fiction acknowledge that this level of massive bodily overhaul would require some level of psychotherapy to help its patients get over the trauma and adjust to their new lives, so good on you, Connor, for including a psychological element to Catharsis!
Krieger made an impressed hum sound. “Go on.”
Eva continued. “After that, the subject moves on to the final stage. That’s where you come in. Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately? How so?”
“You’re a psychopath.”
“That’s a rather cynical perspective towards the situation, Eva.”
“I have my reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“The things you’ve done,” Eva said.
“Does that folder contain what I need?” Krieger asked, changing the subject.
“More than enough,” Eva replied. “Psychiatric history, evaluations, you name it. There are some sketches of myself in there, too, if you’re interested.”
“Artistic, aren’t you?”
“Sort of.”
“So am I, on occasion. I have gotten used to utilizing Sharpies during my internment here. Like your father said, adaptation is key. My art consists predominantly of recreations of historical events. Very recently, the staff did not particularly warm to my interpretation of Harris and Klebold walking about that Columbine cafeteria, ready for war. For up to a month, I’ve been desperate for a means of creativity. Without a means to create, there is nothingness, which is quite an ugly thing. Wouldn’t you agree, Eva?”
“Wholeheartedly,” Eva said calmly.
"Did you do the drawings on your walls, Doctor?"
"Do you think I called in a decorator?"
"The one over the sink is a European city?"
"It's Florence. That's the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo, seen from the Belvedere."
"Did you do it from memory, all the detail?"
"Memory, Officer Starling, is what I have instead of a view."
"The other one is a crucifixion? The middle cross is empty.”
"It's Golgotha after the Deposition. Crayon and Magic Marker on butcher paper. It's what the thief who had been promised Paradise really got, when they took the paschal lamb away."
"And what was that?"
"His legs broken of course, just like his companion who mocked Christ. Are you entirely innocent of the Gospel of St. John? Look at Duccio, then--- he paints accurate crucifixions…”
Hannibal draws subtly ironic interpretations of the Christian mysteries. Darkety-dark Krieger draws darkety-dark pictures of darkety-dark school shootings.
“Go on, Eva. Send it through.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Klaus,” Holden said. He began to rise from his seat.
“Oh, n-n-n-n-n-noooooo… let the young lady do the honors, Dr. Elliot.” Rising from his chair, Krieger walked over to the tray, and gave it a quick tap, sending it shooting through to the other side. He crouched and smiled in anticipation.
Reluctant, but not afraid, Eva rose from her seat, placing the dossier within the tray. The tray suddenly snapped back inside, startling Eva. She’d managed to get her hand out before it slammed.
This scene drawn directly from the film version.
Eva noticed that Krieger’s face had spontaneously shifted in demeanor; he abandoned any trace of joviality, and it was replaced with a robotic stare. As he undid the rubber bands protecting the folder, she looked at her father, still sitting in the chair next to hers. His arms were crossed, his eyes focused on the freak of nature behind the glass. Holden had this look on his face that Eva liked to describe as his “magnifying glass stare”. It was a mixture of coldness, interest, and subdued curiosity.
I believe these last two sentences are also based on a description of Jack Crawford in SOTL, but could not find the quote I wanted before completing this section. If anyone else can produce the quote, let me know and I’ll add it.
Eva sat back down, and saw that Krieger was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cell, flipping through the dossier as though it were part of his collection. He dampened the tips of his index and pointer fingers to provide for easier page-turning, and held the ones he had already glanced over down with his left thumb.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself reclined on his bunk, perusing the Italian edition of Vogue. He held the loose pages in his right hand and put them beside him one by one with his left.
Eva leaned to her right, towards Holden. “How can he take in all of that material in such a short amount of time?” Eva’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. She did not want to disturb Krieger’s reading. He seems courteous enough, she thought.
“This isn’t anything new. When he was six, he memorized Othello, word for word. No joke,” Holden said. “It took him one reading.”
SHAKESPEARE. THAT’S WHAT SMART PEOPLE READ, RIGHT?
One reading? The guy’s a goddamn machine...
###
Moments passed, and eventually, Klaus Krieger came to the end of the dossier, where the sketches were. His eye immediately widened. “Oh, my, my, my…” He slid the three sheets out, holding them like playing cards. He turned them to Eva and Holden, and the former’s cheeks reddened when she found herself looking at a much better girl.
Whenever Holden wasn’t looking, Eva had a habit of looking at herself in the bathroom mirror. On occasion, she would undress and do nothing but stare at the thing looking at her.
For those of you who thought the “drawing herself like one of her French girls” line was a throwaway gag, Exhibit A!
That’s right, Eva. Show your hand-drawn nude selfies to the murderous adolescent boy who’s spent his prime hormone-production years locked in a glass-walled cell and who will shortly be managing your extremely experimental psychotherapy. I can’t imagine how that could go wrong.
It was a bad caricature of a girl that used to be better.
Rather like this whole chapter is a bad caricature of a book that--you know what? I'll stop. It's too easy.
She wasn’t the greatest artist, but something about the portraits appealed to Krieger, as evidenced by his satisfaction.
Oh, whatever. We're going to find out that she's a brilliant artist whose talent rivals Krieger's own. They always are. It's right up there with "she was beautiful all along."
“Satisfaction” should be “erection.”
She doubted it was the nude form of her ideal self. Krieger is a weirdo, but he isn’t that low, she thought.
“Do you like the portraits?” Eva asked.
“Definitely,” Krieger replied. He placed the sketches back into the folder. “From what I have accumulated from the documents, you appear to be a valid candidate. How I’d love to see you in that chair again and again.”
I bet you would.
“Nice of you to say,” Holden said. He hadn’t said much during the entire visit.
No, really? We hadn't noticed. We are literally incapable of noticing whether or not characters are speaking in a scene. If only there was some sort of standardized way of indicating speech within prose!
Sarcasm aside, this is a pretty common flaw in young writers. They get too many characters in a scene and can't figure out what to do with them all.
“There’s some bonuses to all of this, Dr. Krieger,” Eva said. “I thought you’d enjoy the challenge. You strike me as a very intellectual young man. Also, I’m interested in Catharsis on its own merits.”
“You walk over to my posh little cell here, giving me your sweeping saga of misfortune through that tray, and then you awkwardly segue into your cheap ‘bonuses’. I find that very tacky, Eva.”
“I’m terribly sorry! I…” Eva began.
Beats of silence and she plunged.
"Better than that, we could touch up a few old cuts here. I brought---"
"No. No, that's stupid and wrong. Never use wit in a segue. Listen, understanding a witticism and replying to it makes your subject perform a fast, detached scan that is inimical to mood. It is on the plank of mood that we proceed. You were doing fine, you'd been courteous and receptive to courtesy, you'd established trust by telling the embarrassing truth about Miggs, and then you come in with a ham-handed segue into your questionnaire. It won't do."
"Dr. Lecter, you're an experienced clinical psychiatrist. Do you think I'm dumb enough to try to run some kind of mood scam on you? Give me some credit.”
Note the specific use of the word “tacky” in Connor’s original text; it’s about to come back to haunt us.
“You’re very pale and thin, Eva. Your eyes are quite large. Your mask of normality, like your bifocals, has cracks. Your truly appalling fashion sense, reminiscent of a fifties school yet to ripen, indicates that you consider yourself distinct from your peers at L.A. Central, and yet, at the same time, you wish to blend in with the crowds; an old, broken vinyl record amongst MP3 players and social media addicts who spends her days mentally masturbating to delusions of a fairy godmother coming into your life and improving it. That fairy godmother, that opportunity, has now come, but with a catch: it is your choice, and still, you are hesitant to seize the moment. Hedgehog’s dilemma: to come out or not to come out. You are a hedgehog if I ever saw one, Eva. What a tragedy.” Krieger’s mouth bared its small, edgy white teeth when he finished, his left eye at its widest.
Eva let out a nervous chuckle. “I’m impressed, Doctor. You possess a lot of insight. Reading psychology has done you good.”
"You'd like to quantify me, Officer Starling. You're so ambitious, aren't you? Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. You're a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Your eyes are like cheap birthstones--- all surface shine when you stalk some little answer. And you're bright behind them, aren't you? Desperate not to be like your mother. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation out of the mines, Officer Starling. Is it the West Virginia Starlings or the Okie Starlings, Officer? It was a toss-up between college and the opportunities in the Women's Army Corps, wasn't it? Let me tell you something specific about yourself, Student Starling. Back in your room, you have a string of gold add-a-beads and you feel an ugly little thump when you look at how tacky they are now, isn't that so? All those tedious thank-yous, permitting all that sincere fumbling, getting all sticky once for every bead. Tedious. Tedious. Bo-o-o-o-r-i-ing. Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it? And, taste isn't kind. When you think about this conversation, you'll remember the dumb animal hurt in his face when you got rid of him.
"If the add-a-beads got tacky, what else will as you go along? You wonder don't you, at night?" Dr. Lecter asked in the kindest of tones.
Starling raised her head to face him. "You see a lot, Dr. Lecter. I won't deny anything you've said. But here's the question you're answering for me right now, whether you mean to or not: Are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? It's hard to face. I've found that out in the last few minutes. How about it? Look at yourself and write down the truth. What more fit or complex subject could you find? Or maybe you're afraid of yourself."
Sorry, but there’s so much I want to talk about here.
Connor has given us his own take on what is arguably the most famous monologue in Silence of the Lambs. As always, what I find most interesting is not what he chose to steal, but what he chose to change. He’s altered nearly every instance of Starling standing up to Lecter into Eva fawning over Krieger. Where Starling asks Lecter if he thinks she’s stupid after he scolds her for her segue, Eva stammers out an apology. Where Starling challenges Lecter to turn his insight on himself, Eva simply admires him for it. Harris wants to show Starling as an equal to Lecter, but equality with Krieger, even with the ham-handed remarks about how alike they are, would blur the picture of beautiful, broken, damaged Eva. If she doesn’t need fixing, the story doesn’t need her. And certainly, the story can’t afford anyone to show up Krieger.
But the word "tacky" keeps plucking at me. Lecter calls Starling “tacky” because it’s a very specific fear of hers, one that will come back to haunt her later in the novel when she investigates some of the poorer victims whose limited lives remind her a little too much of what she escaped. However, identifying with the victims in that sense—their tackiness, their realization of it, and their desperation to escape it (which led at least one victim to the man who killed her)—ultimately leads Starling to solving the case. If Lecter hadn’t made her so self-conscious of this fear of tackiness, she would have continued to suppress it and possibly missed important clues. Note also that Lecter doesn’t actually judge Starling for her tackiness, or even call her tacky; he only points out that she felt tacky as a way to highlight her fear of it. I could go on for a couple of pages about how this one word informs both Silence of the Lambs and the novel that follows it.
Here, Connor uses the word as a mere echo of the text, without understanding its connotations or connections, and it’s very much used to belittle Eva. Krieger says he finds her behavior tacky, and Eva immediately confirms the correctness of his opinion by apologizing.
The Hedgehog’s Dilemma, by the way, is an old philosophical example about intimacy. It’s also the title of an episode of Neon Genesis Evangeleon, which is no doubt where Connor learned it because I know damn well he’s never read Schopenhauer.
And finally, two drinks for L.A. Central and bifocals!
Eva had noticed that throughout the conversation, she had gradually begun to mimic the speech patterns of Krieger.
Really? Because you haven’t demonstrated it. Like, at all.
This reminds me of all the times in Twilight that we’re told that Edward Cullen speaks as if he came from an earlier time when his dialogue on the page reads exactly like every other character’s. Informed character traits—fear them.
Holy shit, it’s like looking in a mirror, Eva thought. “I’ll tell you what, Dr. Krieger. I’ll, uhm, take some time to consider the offer, and I’ll, uhm, let you know what I think.”
Without a word, Krieger placed the folder inside the tray, and shoved it out. “You are a very resilient girl, Eva. I like that in a young woman.”
"You're tough, aren't you, Officer Starling?"
"Reasonably so, yes."
“I do have one question that I am dreadfully tempted to ask.”
“And that is?” Eva asked.
Krieger tilted forward. “What does it feel like to be alone?”
“…And Clarice?"
"Yes."
"Next time you'll tell me two things. What happened with the horse is one. The other thing I wonder is... how do you manage your rage?"
###
Eva and Holden stepped out of an elevator and into the parking garage of Babel Tower. The Oldsmobile
Drink!
was close by. She felt violated, used. She felt as though the password to her sense of security had been cracked, and the information within was now downloaded into Krieger’s brain. It wasn’t a spectacularly comforting concept.
Starling felt suddenly empty, as though she had given blood. She took longer than necessary to put the papers back in her briefcase because she didn't immediately trust her legs. Starling was soaked with the failure she detested…. For a few seconds she had felt an alien consciousness loose in her head, slapping things off the shelves like a bear in a camper.
“Dad, I feel sick.”
“Krieger’s the kind of lad you don’t want to get in your head. Just to hold a conversation with him, you have to play his games.”
CRAWFORD
Be very careful with Hannibal Lecter…You tell him nothing personal, Starling. Believe me, you don't want Hannibal Lecter inside your head...
“If that’s the case, I fail to see the point in volunteering for this project.”
The two reached the Oldsmobile,
Drink!
and got in.
“You want me to be happy, don’t you?” Eva asked.
Holden sighed. “Yes, Eve. I really do, and I mean that. I’m not fucking with you at all.”
Eva made no response to her father’s sudden use of the f-bomb.
Are we in fifth grade?
“Sorry,” Holden said. He turned the key to the ignition, and the Oldsmobile
Drink!
left the parking garage.
That’s a lot of red text, there.
It’s pretty clear what’s happening: Eva’s Starling, Krieger’s Lecter, Jordache is Chilton, and Holden is Crawford (who Starling sees as a father figure). And—ugh—Barney the Orderly is a goddamn gorilla. There is no Multiple Miggs, partly because I don’t think Connor can handle any more characters, and partially because he doesn’t want his beloved Molly/Eva splattered with anyone’s semen but his own. I’m not being entirely glib; I honestly believe that Connor cannot bear to see anything gross happen to her—even in a later chapter when she fountains blood out of her mouth, it’s described in suspiciously graceful, tidy terms. Nothing must mar her perfect beauty
I think it’s safe to assume that Connor thinks his Krieger is a genius and that he is a genius for being able to write such a character. Everything about this character is a list of whatever highbrow literature Connor thinks will impress the reader. It’s like he took everything that was actually highbrow about Lecter—his knowledge of art, his contributions to psychology—and turned it into the fanciest, artsy-fartiest thing Connor personally was aware of. Like Shakespeare! And George Bernard Shaw! Smart people read those guys, right? MY PRETENSIONS, LET ME SHOW YOU THEM. Unfortunately, Connor’s pretensions to intellectualism are laughably low-brow. It’s not his fault entirely; he’s very young. But it also means he’s far too young to write the sort of character he envisions without sounding incredibly juvenile.
Which is, of course, why he stole it. He’s aware of his limitations but instead of working to correct them, he chose a very lazy, obvious way of concealing them. He plagiarized an extremely famous popular work and expected no one to call him out on it. Normally when I complain about an author treating me as if I’m an idiot, I’m not talking about actual fucking plagiarism, but that is what this boils down to: Connor thought his readers were too dumb to notice.
Suggestion: Unless these sections are removed, and the character of Klaus Krieger either deleted or altered radically, this book is not publishable. You are a stealing stealer who steals and you should be ashamed of yourself.
“He’s an animal,” Prometheus Corporation executive Jonathan Jordache said. “A pure psychopath. At least that’s what the therapists call him. He’s a tough nut to crack.”
CHILTON (V.O.)
Oh, he's a monster. A pure psychopath... It's so rare to capture one alive.
(Note: in the original version of RE, the word animal was “monster.”)
Jordache, to Eva, had a curious look about him. He was sharp-dressed,
Should be “He was sharply dressed.” You see, TJ, when you hyphenated two words in this way, it turns them into an adjective, and adjectives need nouns, and the only noun here is “he.” You are describing his manner of dress, not the man himself.
handsome for middle-aged guy,
Should be “for a middle-aged guy,” but skipping determiners is such a common typographical error that I’m not too terribly concerned.
with hair that was obviously fixed up to hide the gray and straight pearly whites that flashed a flashy public relations smile.
Should be hyphenated—“a public-relations smile”—for the reasons above: it’s being used here as an adjective describing “smile.” Also “flashed a flashy smile” is just silly. Change one of those flashes to something else.
“What makes you say that, Mr. Jordache?” Eva asked. She had only been in his company for about a couple of minutes, and already there was something about him that was… well, off.
Which something, the fact that the story is using the trope of coding male vanity as evil and insecure, the fact that he’s named after blue jeans, or the fact that he’s as gay as Paree in the springtime?
Klaus Krieger had garnered a reputation in the scientific community akin to Keyser Soze,
Thank goodness I looked that up the last time the story made that reference, or I wouldn’t know who that was!
and Jordache spoke of him as though he were a sideshow attraction.
“It’s his intelligence,” Holden said. “He always finds a way to outsmart us. He knows how we play.”
"A pure sociopath, that's obviously what he is. But he's impenetrable, much too sophisticated for the standard tests.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Jordache said, still smiling. “Personally, I think he’s too brainy for his own good.” His tone of voice had an air of pompous superiority through the too-white teeth. I’m really beginning to dislike this guy, Eva thought.
Eva couldn’t tell who she disliked more: her father for bringing her here, this snake-oil prick in front of her, or the certified sicko she came to meet.
Oh Eva. Your hypocrisy is so direct, it’s refreshing. “How dare he treat this esteemed member of the scientific community like a circus freak? And anyway, when are we going to see the sick fuck?”
She clung to the folder under her right arm, which held the secrets of her mind and was protected by a rubber band.
Perhaps unintentional funny there.
She had made sure that the band’s grip was tight. Foreigner’s “I’ve Been Waiting” softly played from the speakers throughout the room.
That’s pure coincidence, Eva.
Unless it’s not. Unless the book’s implying that earlier today, down in his cage, Krieger left specific instructions to Jordache: “And make sure you’re playing Track 3 when my nine o’clock shows up. It will really freak her shit.”
It made her want to gulp.
“There’s something I don’t get,” Eva asked. “If this Krieger kid has killed ten people, how come he’s the head honcho for the project?
I would still like that question answered myself.
You just said he was too brainy for his own good.”
I do not understand how these two sentences go together. Is Eva meant to be answering her own question?
“I admit it,” Jordache chuckled, raising his hands like he had nothing to hide. “Krieger has a beef with me. Thinks I’m out to screw him over.”
“And, my, does he hate us. He thinks I'm his nemesis.”
Still, it doesn’t hurt to have someone notorious backing up Catharsis. There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” He then added, “Sometimes.”
“I read his article on shared psychosis last night,” Eva said, adjusting her bifocals.
"The medical journals still publish him, but it's just for the freak value of his byline."
"He did a good piece on surgical addiction in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, I thought," Starling said.
Jordache, you are a public company! You have shareholders who would deeply care that a serial killer was working on a project they paid for! There is a whole laundry list of celebrities that destroyed their careers by doing far less monstrous things than actually killing people.
Bifocal drink!
“I’m sure the good doctor would love to hear your thoughts,” Jordache said with ooze.
“I think we have an appointment to get to,” Holden pressured.
“Yes, right,” Jordache mumbled as he rose from his chair. Eva and Holden followed suit, and Jordache made sure to turn off Foreigner. “We keep him underneath the building, among the freaks.”
"I keep him in here," Chilton said, and pushed a button beside heavy double doors of security glass.
Eva hated his usage of the word “freak”. It implied a lack of concern for those who didn’t share their name with a clothing label.
As opposed to Eva’s oh-so-delicate use of “certified sicko.”
“Usage” should be “use.” They’re not synonymous. End period should be inside the quotation marks with the “freak” quote, the way mine was in the certified sicko line.
“Do you really have to call them that?” Eva asked.
“He has his reasons,” Holden said.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Jordache said as he opened the door, which led to a sterile white hallway that stretched to God knows where.
Does the writer know where, by any chance?
When they reached the elevator, Eva moved ahead to call it up. Jordache brushed her aside, muttering “allow me” under his breath. Fuckhead, Eva thought.
Eva’s final thought should be its own paragraph.
###
As the elevator began to creep down into the abyss,
I…I don’t understand this story’s continued weird use of scene breaks. You literally put a scene break between the elevator arriving and them stepping into it. Could you not spend the effort to write the five words that would bridge the gap between one action and another? “They stepped into the elevator.” BOOM. DONE.
YOU ARE BUILDING TENSION. You don’t want to rush ahead or skip a scene while building tension. This is the big moment! We’re anticipating the introduction of our big baddie, and every moment that delays us seeing him should be agony. This is one moment where you can reasonably put in every last step of the journey and not risk your reader wandering off or getting bored by mundane details like elevator rides.
Eva was overcome with an aura of dread. She understood that her father’s work was strange, but she wasn’t expecting one of his colleagues to be both a convicted murderer and a child prodigy.
Since when? You seemed pretty well-informed before.
Reading Krieger’s article, one would be hypothesize
Should be “one would hypothesize.” This one would hypothesize that the stray “be” is a leftover from a previous version of this story.
that he was an affable, if eccentric, wunderkind.
This is why I wonder if Connor has ever read an academic article. I mean, I write kind of dry, convoluted jokes into mine; I have co-workers whose voice and subject matter gives them away, but typically, one does not glean much about a writer’s personality from an academic article. Part of the reason they’re written as they are is to discourage reader bias.
How the author could maintain that normality, that friendliness, with the reality of his crimes was a concept that was both alien and morbid to her. A part of Eva wanted to lock hands with her father, but she was both willing to take the plunge, and was a big girl now.
These two sentences are pure grammatical and stylistic nightmare fodder.
Sometimes, fire has to be fought with fire. To face sadness, one must face what one hates.
None of these sentences have anything to do with each other. They might as well be twenty random words.
Krieger might be a psycho, but I haven’t really met the guy, have I?
You know he killed ten people. You’re allowed to let that color your judgment. “Hm, this guy on OkCupid says he’s a serial rapist…but it would be unfair of me not to get his side of things.”
She literally just said “to face sadness, one must face what one hates.” One would assume that in this context, Eva hates Krieger. At the very least, she hates what he represents to her—evil, destruction, madness. Yet in the very next sentence, she’s thinking that maybe he’s not so bad. It’s like the narrative’s not even paying attention to itself anymore.
Eva held her bifocals
DRINK!
up to the light in the elevator, and noticed a minute crack in the bottom half of the right lens. Perhaps her nearsightedness had its benefits.
If nearsightedness turns out to be her superpower, so help me…
The elevator came to a stop at sublevel six, as indicated by the LED display.
Sub-level should be hyphenated, and my god, it’s the lunch bell all over again. “In my country, some elevators have LED screens which display the floor numbers as the elevator passes them.”
“Sub-six, security,” a voice said over the intercom in the elevator. “Good morning, Mr. Jordache, Dr. Elliot,” the voice greeted. “Purpose of visit?”
“Catharsis,” Eva said.
No it’s not! You’re just here to see if you want to be part of the project…or if you’re eligible; the story’s still vague on that point. And why would Security clear Eva alone? Why not give Holden or Jordache that line? They’re the ones with security clearance. Eva could be the cleaning lady, for all they know—or the grieving widow of one of Krieger’s victims, with a handgun in her purse.
“Hang on,” the voice replied. There was a silence in the elevator. Holden and Jordache gave Eva their respective glances. Holden’s was one of amusement, while Jordache’s held a look of annoyance. “Ah, yes,” the voice returned. “Here to see Dr. Krieger?”
“Yes, sir,” Holden replied.
The elevator doors slid open, revealing a concrete wall that suited an ancient prison rather than the hi-tech piece of work that the public saw. The lighting was dim, but decent.
They had passed through two more gates and left the natural light behind. Now they were beyond the wards where inmates can mix together, down in the region where there can be no windows and no mixing. The hallway lights are covered with heavy grids, like the lights in the engine rooms of ships.
“Watch out for those puddles,” Jordache said as he began to lead Eva and Holden through the corridor.
“This place is a dump.” Eva said under her breath. She wasn’t particularly happy with the scenery.
So we gathered.
It made L.A. Central High
Drink!
look like a resort for tax evaders. Jordache scoffed at her. He had keen ears to go with his silver tongue and charming personality.
The steel door at the end of the corridor slid open, and as Eva stepped in after Holden and Jordache, it dawned upon her that this was a security office.
“Hello there,” a deep voice went.
Eva turned, and saw that it came from a silverback gorilla in white orderly outfit. What the hell? She was both startled and unnerved. Talking animals were something that normally belonged in old Hanna-Barbera shows.
This is the point at which I lost it.
The orderly in Silence of the Lambs, who also appeared in the other Hannibal novels, was a very large black man named Barney. He was kind of a still-waters-run-deep character: while on the surface he didn’t appear highly educated (a point was made of him being only a licensed practical nurse rather than an RN), he was the only orderly Lecter responded to due to Barney’s thoughtfulness, practicality, and understanding of Lecter’s nature.
And Connor turned him into a fucking talking gorilla. Connor, you racist shit.
“I’m Abraham, but please, call me Abe.” He extended his long furry arm in an amicable gesture.
“Eva,” she introduced herself, awkwardly shaking his hand. “I didn’t know the Corporation had animals that could speak.”
“The miracles modern science can do,” Holden said. “We’re here to see Doctor Krieger, Abe, as you might know.”
Again, I fucking hate these kinds of conversations in novels: “As you know, my dear, we’ve been seeing each other for two years and our wedding day is tomorrow.” People do not feel the need to tell each other well-established facts!
Also, to paraphrase Mauv, are we going to ignore the fact that there’s a fucking talking gorilla apparently just chilling the basement? That is cooler than anything else that has happened thus far in this story! When you introduce an element like this, that instantly becomes your entire story and you will proceed no further until this point has been thoroughly and satisfactorily explained. I no longer give a shit about any other idea this story has given me. I want to know how this gorilla happened.
That gorilla is your goddamn public relations masterstroke, Jordache. Not Krieger and his notoriety. Not Catharsis. The gorilla. Let the world in on that and you won’t be able to walk down the street without being hit by bags of money.
“Yuh-huh. I got two chairs already set up. He’s looked like he’s expectin’ you.” Abe knuckle-walked to the nearest console, and began pecking away at the keyboard with his webbed fingers. “I think I should let you in on some ground rules before I let cha’ll in. One, don’t approach the glass or touch the glass. When you give stuff to him through the food tray, make sure it ain’t anything sharp. That means paper clips or pens. If he’s got anything to be signing, he has felt-tip markers. If he starts acting up, there’s a door inside his cell so biguns like me can get in. Clear ‘nuff?”
“Crystal,” Eva said.
"Then you should be able to remember the rules: Do not reach through the bars, do not touch the bars. You pass him nothing but soft paper. No pens, no pencils. He has his own felt-tipped pens some of the time. The paper you pass him must be free of staples, paper clips, or pins. Items are only passed to him through the sliding food carrier. Items come back out through the sliding food carrier. No exceptions. Do not accept anything he attempts to hold out to you through the barrier. Do you understand me?"
"Understood."
So we’re letting the talking gorilla—who must be scientifically invaluable and cost hundreds of millions of dollars and countless years of research to engineer and train—walk into the cell with a diabolical genius who kills and maims for fun. You would risk that investment on a whim. Yes, it's a gorilla against one guy, but do you really want to risk Krieger getting in the one lucky shot that puts out his eye?
“One more thing before I let you go. Abraham, bring it up,” Jordache demanded.
"Lecter is never outside his cell without wearing full restraints and a mouthpiece," Chilton said. "I'm going to show you why.”
“If you say so,” Abraham complied. Punching more keys, he brought up surveillance camera footage. The time code showed it was from two years ago.
“In his early days down here, security was lax, and Krieger was a model inmate. On August 12, 2012, he was bitching about migraines, so we had this poor schmuck, Dr. Getz, start up an EEG on him upstairs. As soon as the monitors went on…”
“He was a model of cooperation for the first year after he was committed. Security around him was slightly relaxed--- this was under the previous administration, you understand. On the afternoon of July 8, 1976, he complained of chest pain and he was taken to the dispensary. His restraints were removed to make it easier to give him an electrocardiogram. When the nurse bent over him, he did this to her." Chilton handed Clarice Starling a dog-eared photograph.
There was a pause from Jordache as, onscreen, Klaus Krieger lunged towards Dr. Getz, who let out a silent scream as the boy wrestled him to the ground. Krieger had stuck his fingers in Getz’s mouth, pressing down on his lower jaw. The video closed, and then Abraham brought up a photo of Dr. Getz after the assault.
“The docs were able to reattach the jaw, but it didn’t do Getz any good. He flatlined twenty minutes later,” Jordache said. He added, “What’s interesting about all of this is the readings from the EEG. Krieger’s line was stable. Even when he ripped out Getz’s throat.”
"The doctors managed to save one of her eyes. Lecter was hooked up to the monitors the entire time. He broke her jaw to get at her tongue. His pulse never got over eighty-five, even when he swallowed it."
Eva gulped, winced, and scratched her shoulder with her right cheek. Inside her mouth, teeth were grinding.
Where else would they be grinding?
Also, this brief sentence shows you why passive voice isn’t always a good thing. In this case it makes the subject so vague that it sounds like she’s got someone else’s random loose teeth in her mouth.
“Can we just move along with the appointment?”
“Seconded,” Holden said.
Thirded.
“Very well,” Jordache replied. “I’ll stay back here and keep watch.”
Abraham punched the keyboard once more, and the barred entrance to the cell block opened. Eva could hear, very faintly, the sounds of insanity. “Good luck, Ms. Elliot,” Abraham said.
“Hey, Eva,” Jordache blurted as Eva began to walk to the entrance. “Enjoy the show.”
“I hope you do too,” Eva replied.
###
The barred entrance closed behind them, and now, they were on their own. Turning left and staying close to her father, Eva noted there were glass barriers, some wider than the others, on both walls. On some spots, there were simply steel doors with a closed rectangular slit, behind which was nothing pleasant.
Eva kept her eyes forward. Don’t look at them. Don’t. What am I doing here? This is insane, just like the people in here…
The corridor was about thirty yards long, with cells on both sides. Some were padded cells with an observation window, long and narrow like an archery slit; in the center of the door. Others were standard prison cells, with a wall of bars opening on the corridor. Clarice Starling was aware of figures in the cells, but she tried not to look at them.
Eventually, they came to where the two chairs rested in the corridor, facing the widest glass barrier in the block. Eva and Holden both took a seat.
KLAUS THE KILLER
The fact that the best sobriquet he can come up with for his Hannibal the Cannibal stand-in is “Klaus the Killer” proves why the plagiarism is even sadder than normal. Instead of stealing from the original book to spice up his own story, he tweaked every line he stole in just such a way as to make it lame.
The cell of Dr. Klaus Krieger was fairly large, and its interior was more polished and clean in comparison to the other tenants. At the far left of the room was a well-made bed. Ahead of it was a bookcase. Through her bifocals,
Drink!
Eva noted that the good doctor, who sat with his back facing them at a desk at the center of the room, was an avid reader. The shelf was predominantly philosophy, Darwin, and psychology. Smart fellow, she thought. There was also a small restroom that he could walk into, and a closet, possibly containing a wardrobe. Eva noted the door inside the cell. The rectangular slit was open, allowing any guards beyond it to peer in. Security cameras, possibly relics from a bygone age, were frozen and scattered about the corridor.
Dr. Lecter's cell is well beyond the others, facing only a closet across the corridor, and it is unique in other ways. The front is a wall of bars, but within the bars, at a distance greater than the human reach, is a second barrier, a stout nylon net stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Behind the net, Starling could see a table bolted to the floor and piled high with softcover books and papers, and a straight chair, also fastened down.
In the film, Lecter's cell was of Plexiglas, since it would have been difficult to film him through the netting and bars described in the novel. So Connor's still ripping off the story; he's just switched the screenplay.
Connor simply could not bear the indignity of having his elegant, sophisticated killer take a shit in public, so he's taken the precaution of giving him a private bathroom. Nice of him.
The boy beyond the glass took a deep breath, inhaled and exhaled slowly.
“You’ve been drinking again, Dr. Elliot,” Krieger said.
Only because someone mentioned bifocals.
“Yeah, well, shit happens. Doesn’t it?” Holden’s wit was there, but with it came a hint of caution.
If by "wit" you mean "snark." And if by "snark" you mean "stunning flippancy with a co-worker/serial killer who will later be performing surgery on your daughter's brain."
“Indeed.” Krieger’s accent was subtle, a far cry from the cast of Hogan’s Heroes.
Hogan’s Heroes is a title and should be underlined or italicized. However, I’m going to let it go given the fact that MS Word has a habit of removing special fonts when copy-pasting. However, I will congratulate Connor for referencing a show that roughly 60% of his audience has never seen and does not remember, while also comparing his darkety-dark evil genius to a ridiculous, stereotypical comic villain because Lord knows, that is exactly the image you need to put in a reader’s head when you want to be taken seriously.
It had a mechanical rasp to it, possibly due to a combination of the glass barrier and something more alien.
"Good morning," [Lecter] said, as though he had answered the door. His cultured voice has a slight metallic rasp beneath it, possibly from disuse.
Something darker. Krieger spun around in his chair, and was now facing Eva and Holden. To Eva, Klaus Krieger was a rare creature. He had boyish blonde hair, akin to that Bieber kid who was surely in rehab by now.
Someone’s jelly.
He was thin and delicate, but he nonetheless seemed to possess strength, as indicated by his sleek muscle tone.
She could see that he was small, sleek; in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own.
He was wearing, much to her surprise, a buttoned-down white shirt, and tan slacks.
She was surprised by his wholly unremarkable attire!
His feet, sans socks, were enveloped in slippers. Most of all, the face was the part of his body that caught the most attention. Underneath the blonde bangs were a pair of bifocals.
Drink!
On the other side of the right lens was an eyepatch, and through the left was a narrow gray eye that was looking at her. “You must be Evangeline.”
“Call me Eva,” she said, adjusting her own bifocals.
Drink!
“There is a crack in one of those lenses.”
“How could you--?” Eva was stunned. Despite having no depth perception, Krieger seemed to have really good eyesight. He smiled with closed lips.
"Did you hurt yourself?"
"No, I---"
"You have on a fresh Band-Aid, Clarice."
Then she remembered. "I got a scrape on the side of the pool, swimming today." The Band-Aid was out of sight, on her calf beneath her trousers. He must smell it.
This is what I meant by taking everything and making it lamer. Instead of a freakish preternatural sense of smell, we get “oh, you must have really good eyesight!” for a man who spotted a cracked pair of glasses from twenty feet away.
She put the glasses in her pocket. “You don’t mind if I take these off, do you? I’m nearsighted.”
“Of course not. You are close enough, aren’t you?”
“I guess,” Eva replied. “What are you reading?”
“An old favorite, Shaw’s Pygmalion. I haven’t read it in ages, so I felt I should do myself a favor and reintroduce myself to its contents. I’m currently on the first act,” Krieger said.
SMART PEOPLE READ SHAW, RIGHT? WATCH ME NAME DROP THIS REALLY SMART THING I READ!
Bitch, please. Don’t even talk to me about Shaw. You see this?
That is my own personal bookshelf. That’s not even a complete Shaw collection. That’s not even all the Shaw I’ve read. You wanna impress me with your Shaw references? Step up your game.
(Incidentally, he’s reading Pygmalion--which should be in italics--because it’s about a manipulative jerk-ass who takes an ordinary girl and upgrades her so she can pass as an upper-class lady as part of a social experiment, then ditches her because he doesn’t understand the human implications of what he’s done. FORESHADOWING.)
Eva said, “I never could get into plays, especially ones over at my high school.”
“High school, yes… Los Angeles Central, I presume.”
And I presume we DRINK!
“It’s the best place she can go, with the money I make,” Holden said.
Wait, hold the phone. I had assumed that Eva went to a public high school, as evidenced by the general decay. You don’t pay to go to public school; you’re zoned for it. Now Holden’s acting like he pays for her schooling, like a private school. Maybe he’s implying that if he made more money, they could afford to live in a better neighborhood with better schools, but Jesus, Holden, if this is best private school you can send her to, maybe you’d better save her money and let her attend public school, where at least there’s some hope of the state taking over.
“Adaptation is key to survival, as you know.”
That is not only dumb, it's barely applicable, considering that it sounds like Eva would be better off staying at home than "surviving" in the Blackboard Jungle you've described her school to be. Sometimes this book just likes to say things that sound profound to make itself seems smarter.
“My father here showed me your article on shared psychosis last night,” Eva said.
“Annnnnd…?” Krieger inquired, fingers locked. His head was tilted slightly downward, his lone gray eye peeking over the top of his glasses.
“I was just bringing it up,” Eva responded.
Now even the characters are acknowledging that it's all JUST RANDOM WORDS
“What is your opinion of it?”
“I thought it was very insightful. You’re definitely wise beyond your years.”
"Speaking of publications, I read your pieces on surgical addiction and left-side, right-side facial displays."
"Yes, they were first-rate," Dr. Lecter said.
"I thought so, and so did Jack Crawford. He pointed them out to me."
Can I say that I fucking love that Connor took the character of Jack Crawford, Starling's mentor and father-figure for whom it is heavily implied she's got a kind of Electra thing, and turned him into Eva's actual, literal father? Without seeming to grasp the implications at all? It's so great.
“Believe me, Ms. Elliot, when I say that I receive a lot of commendations. They are mostly from pretentious lads looking for a means of vindication in their studies. Speaking of pretentiousness, what is your impression of Jonathan Jordache? That smirk of his is pestilential, isn’t it?” His gray eye was wide open now, and his lips opened to reveal perfectly straight white teeth.
Eva looked at Holden, and then surveyed her surroundings. Jordache was almost certainly watching all of this unfold. “Just between the three of us,” Eva said, “I think he’s an asshole.” She had put her hand over her mouth to prevent any savvy lip-reader from catching her in the act. Holden chuckled at her choice of words.
I don’t know what the gorilla's doing right now, but I bet it’s something awesome.
“To be frank, I agree with you, Ms. Elliot.”
“You understand why I’m here, right, Doctor Krieger?”
“Yes. Catharsis.” Krieger slid a finger underneath his eyepatch, rubbing whatever was underneath. “Tell me, Ms. Elliot… what do you know about my little science project? Consider this a pop quiz. I assume you have done your homework.”
“Well,” Eva said, “it’s a combination of genetic and psychological therapy, in layman’s terms. After a solid profile of the subject is made, they’re given a retrovirus somehow that alters their biology to their specifications. It’s kind of slow, so they’re usually placed in a chamber of liquid, maybe something rich with nutrients. While inside, the liquid is charged with a non-lethal electric current, just enough for the cell membranes to accept the new characteristics.”
I'm not sure just where Connor ripped off his wonky science but I know several big Hollywood blockbusters have worked off the premise that virus alter DNA and then it all goes Horribly Wrong. Gene therapy is the farthest thing from my field, but I know enough to know that this fails science forever.
However, I am happy to have at least one work of science fiction acknowledge that this level of massive bodily overhaul would require some level of psychotherapy to help its patients get over the trauma and adjust to their new lives, so good on you, Connor, for including a psychological element to Catharsis!
Krieger made an impressed hum sound. “Go on.”
Eva continued. “After that, the subject moves on to the final stage. That’s where you come in. Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately? How so?”
“You’re a psychopath.”
“That’s a rather cynical perspective towards the situation, Eva.”
“I have my reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“The things you’ve done,” Eva said.
“Does that folder contain what I need?” Krieger asked, changing the subject.
“More than enough,” Eva replied. “Psychiatric history, evaluations, you name it. There are some sketches of myself in there, too, if you’re interested.”
“Artistic, aren’t you?”
“Sort of.”
“So am I, on occasion. I have gotten used to utilizing Sharpies during my internment here. Like your father said, adaptation is key. My art consists predominantly of recreations of historical events. Very recently, the staff did not particularly warm to my interpretation of Harris and Klebold walking about that Columbine cafeteria, ready for war. For up to a month, I’ve been desperate for a means of creativity. Without a means to create, there is nothingness, which is quite an ugly thing. Wouldn’t you agree, Eva?”
“Wholeheartedly,” Eva said calmly.
"Did you do the drawings on your walls, Doctor?"
"Do you think I called in a decorator?"
"The one over the sink is a European city?"
"It's Florence. That's the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo, seen from the Belvedere."
"Did you do it from memory, all the detail?"
"Memory, Officer Starling, is what I have instead of a view."
"The other one is a crucifixion? The middle cross is empty.”
"It's Golgotha after the Deposition. Crayon and Magic Marker on butcher paper. It's what the thief who had been promised Paradise really got, when they took the paschal lamb away."
"And what was that?"
"His legs broken of course, just like his companion who mocked Christ. Are you entirely innocent of the Gospel of St. John? Look at Duccio, then--- he paints accurate crucifixions…”
Hannibal draws subtly ironic interpretations of the Christian mysteries. Darkety-dark Krieger draws darkety-dark pictures of darkety-dark school shootings.
“Go on, Eva. Send it through.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Klaus,” Holden said. He began to rise from his seat.
“Oh, n-n-n-n-n-noooooo… let the young lady do the honors, Dr. Elliot.” Rising from his chair, Krieger walked over to the tray, and gave it a quick tap, sending it shooting through to the other side. He crouched and smiled in anticipation.
Reluctant, but not afraid, Eva rose from her seat, placing the dossier within the tray. The tray suddenly snapped back inside, startling Eva. She’d managed to get her hand out before it slammed.
This scene drawn directly from the film version.
Eva noticed that Krieger’s face had spontaneously shifted in demeanor; he abandoned any trace of joviality, and it was replaced with a robotic stare. As he undid the rubber bands protecting the folder, she looked at her father, still sitting in the chair next to hers. His arms were crossed, his eyes focused on the freak of nature behind the glass. Holden had this look on his face that Eva liked to describe as his “magnifying glass stare”. It was a mixture of coldness, interest, and subdued curiosity.
I believe these last two sentences are also based on a description of Jack Crawford in SOTL, but could not find the quote I wanted before completing this section. If anyone else can produce the quote, let me know and I’ll add it.
Eva sat back down, and saw that Krieger was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cell, flipping through the dossier as though it were part of his collection. He dampened the tips of his index and pointer fingers to provide for easier page-turning, and held the ones he had already glanced over down with his left thumb.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself reclined on his bunk, perusing the Italian edition of Vogue. He held the loose pages in his right hand and put them beside him one by one with his left.
Eva leaned to her right, towards Holden. “How can he take in all of that material in such a short amount of time?” Eva’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. She did not want to disturb Krieger’s reading. He seems courteous enough, she thought.
“This isn’t anything new. When he was six, he memorized Othello, word for word. No joke,” Holden said. “It took him one reading.”
SHAKESPEARE. THAT’S WHAT SMART PEOPLE READ, RIGHT?
One reading? The guy’s a goddamn machine...
###
Moments passed, and eventually, Klaus Krieger came to the end of the dossier, where the sketches were. His eye immediately widened. “Oh, my, my, my…” He slid the three sheets out, holding them like playing cards. He turned them to Eva and Holden, and the former’s cheeks reddened when she found herself looking at a much better girl.
Whenever Holden wasn’t looking, Eva had a habit of looking at herself in the bathroom mirror. On occasion, she would undress and do nothing but stare at the thing looking at her.
For those of you who thought the “drawing herself like one of her French girls” line was a throwaway gag, Exhibit A!
That’s right, Eva. Show your hand-drawn nude selfies to the murderous adolescent boy who’s spent his prime hormone-production years locked in a glass-walled cell and who will shortly be managing your extremely experimental psychotherapy. I can’t imagine how that could go wrong.
It was a bad caricature of a girl that used to be better.
Rather like this whole chapter is a bad caricature of a book that--you know what? I'll stop. It's too easy.
She wasn’t the greatest artist, but something about the portraits appealed to Krieger, as evidenced by his satisfaction.
Oh, whatever. We're going to find out that she's a brilliant artist whose talent rivals Krieger's own. They always are. It's right up there with "she was beautiful all along."
“Satisfaction” should be “erection.”
She doubted it was the nude form of her ideal self. Krieger is a weirdo, but he isn’t that low, she thought.
“Do you like the portraits?” Eva asked.
“Definitely,” Krieger replied. He placed the sketches back into the folder. “From what I have accumulated from the documents, you appear to be a valid candidate. How I’d love to see you in that chair again and again.”
I bet you would.
“Nice of you to say,” Holden said. He hadn’t said much during the entire visit.
No, really? We hadn't noticed. We are literally incapable of noticing whether or not characters are speaking in a scene. If only there was some sort of standardized way of indicating speech within prose!
Sarcasm aside, this is a pretty common flaw in young writers. They get too many characters in a scene and can't figure out what to do with them all.
“There’s some bonuses to all of this, Dr. Krieger,” Eva said. “I thought you’d enjoy the challenge. You strike me as a very intellectual young man. Also, I’m interested in Catharsis on its own merits.”
“You walk over to my posh little cell here, giving me your sweeping saga of misfortune through that tray, and then you awkwardly segue into your cheap ‘bonuses’. I find that very tacky, Eva.”
“I’m terribly sorry! I…” Eva began.
Beats of silence and she plunged.
"Better than that, we could touch up a few old cuts here. I brought---"
"No. No, that's stupid and wrong. Never use wit in a segue. Listen, understanding a witticism and replying to it makes your subject perform a fast, detached scan that is inimical to mood. It is on the plank of mood that we proceed. You were doing fine, you'd been courteous and receptive to courtesy, you'd established trust by telling the embarrassing truth about Miggs, and then you come in with a ham-handed segue into your questionnaire. It won't do."
"Dr. Lecter, you're an experienced clinical psychiatrist. Do you think I'm dumb enough to try to run some kind of mood scam on you? Give me some credit.”
Note the specific use of the word “tacky” in Connor’s original text; it’s about to come back to haunt us.
“You’re very pale and thin, Eva. Your eyes are quite large. Your mask of normality, like your bifocals, has cracks. Your truly appalling fashion sense, reminiscent of a fifties school yet to ripen, indicates that you consider yourself distinct from your peers at L.A. Central, and yet, at the same time, you wish to blend in with the crowds; an old, broken vinyl record amongst MP3 players and social media addicts who spends her days mentally masturbating to delusions of a fairy godmother coming into your life and improving it. That fairy godmother, that opportunity, has now come, but with a catch: it is your choice, and still, you are hesitant to seize the moment. Hedgehog’s dilemma: to come out or not to come out. You are a hedgehog if I ever saw one, Eva. What a tragedy.” Krieger’s mouth bared its small, edgy white teeth when he finished, his left eye at its widest.
Eva let out a nervous chuckle. “I’m impressed, Doctor. You possess a lot of insight. Reading psychology has done you good.”
"You'd like to quantify me, Officer Starling. You're so ambitious, aren't you? Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. You're a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Your eyes are like cheap birthstones--- all surface shine when you stalk some little answer. And you're bright behind them, aren't you? Desperate not to be like your mother. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation out of the mines, Officer Starling. Is it the West Virginia Starlings or the Okie Starlings, Officer? It was a toss-up between college and the opportunities in the Women's Army Corps, wasn't it? Let me tell you something specific about yourself, Student Starling. Back in your room, you have a string of gold add-a-beads and you feel an ugly little thump when you look at how tacky they are now, isn't that so? All those tedious thank-yous, permitting all that sincere fumbling, getting all sticky once for every bead. Tedious. Tedious. Bo-o-o-o-r-i-ing. Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it? And, taste isn't kind. When you think about this conversation, you'll remember the dumb animal hurt in his face when you got rid of him.
"If the add-a-beads got tacky, what else will as you go along? You wonder don't you, at night?" Dr. Lecter asked in the kindest of tones.
Starling raised her head to face him. "You see a lot, Dr. Lecter. I won't deny anything you've said. But here's the question you're answering for me right now, whether you mean to or not: Are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? It's hard to face. I've found that out in the last few minutes. How about it? Look at yourself and write down the truth. What more fit or complex subject could you find? Or maybe you're afraid of yourself."
Sorry, but there’s so much I want to talk about here.
Connor has given us his own take on what is arguably the most famous monologue in Silence of the Lambs. As always, what I find most interesting is not what he chose to steal, but what he chose to change. He’s altered nearly every instance of Starling standing up to Lecter into Eva fawning over Krieger. Where Starling asks Lecter if he thinks she’s stupid after he scolds her for her segue, Eva stammers out an apology. Where Starling challenges Lecter to turn his insight on himself, Eva simply admires him for it. Harris wants to show Starling as an equal to Lecter, but equality with Krieger, even with the ham-handed remarks about how alike they are, would blur the picture of beautiful, broken, damaged Eva. If she doesn’t need fixing, the story doesn’t need her. And certainly, the story can’t afford anyone to show up Krieger.
But the word "tacky" keeps plucking at me. Lecter calls Starling “tacky” because it’s a very specific fear of hers, one that will come back to haunt her later in the novel when she investigates some of the poorer victims whose limited lives remind her a little too much of what she escaped. However, identifying with the victims in that sense—their tackiness, their realization of it, and their desperation to escape it (which led at least one victim to the man who killed her)—ultimately leads Starling to solving the case. If Lecter hadn’t made her so self-conscious of this fear of tackiness, she would have continued to suppress it and possibly missed important clues. Note also that Lecter doesn’t actually judge Starling for her tackiness, or even call her tacky; he only points out that she felt tacky as a way to highlight her fear of it. I could go on for a couple of pages about how this one word informs both Silence of the Lambs and the novel that follows it.
Here, Connor uses the word as a mere echo of the text, without understanding its connotations or connections, and it’s very much used to belittle Eva. Krieger says he finds her behavior tacky, and Eva immediately confirms the correctness of his opinion by apologizing.
The Hedgehog’s Dilemma, by the way, is an old philosophical example about intimacy. It’s also the title of an episode of Neon Genesis Evangeleon, which is no doubt where Connor learned it because I know damn well he’s never read Schopenhauer.
And finally, two drinks for L.A. Central and bifocals!
Eva had noticed that throughout the conversation, she had gradually begun to mimic the speech patterns of Krieger.
Really? Because you haven’t demonstrated it. Like, at all.
This reminds me of all the times in Twilight that we’re told that Edward Cullen speaks as if he came from an earlier time when his dialogue on the page reads exactly like every other character’s. Informed character traits—fear them.
Holy shit, it’s like looking in a mirror, Eva thought. “I’ll tell you what, Dr. Krieger. I’ll, uhm, take some time to consider the offer, and I’ll, uhm, let you know what I think.”
Without a word, Krieger placed the folder inside the tray, and shoved it out. “You are a very resilient girl, Eva. I like that in a young woman.”
"You're tough, aren't you, Officer Starling?"
"Reasonably so, yes."
“I do have one question that I am dreadfully tempted to ask.”
“And that is?” Eva asked.
Krieger tilted forward. “What does it feel like to be alone?”
“…And Clarice?"
"Yes."
"Next time you'll tell me two things. What happened with the horse is one. The other thing I wonder is... how do you manage your rage?"
###
Eva and Holden stepped out of an elevator and into the parking garage of Babel Tower. The Oldsmobile
Drink!
was close by. She felt violated, used. She felt as though the password to her sense of security had been cracked, and the information within was now downloaded into Krieger’s brain. It wasn’t a spectacularly comforting concept.
Starling felt suddenly empty, as though she had given blood. She took longer than necessary to put the papers back in her briefcase because she didn't immediately trust her legs. Starling was soaked with the failure she detested…. For a few seconds she had felt an alien consciousness loose in her head, slapping things off the shelves like a bear in a camper.
“Dad, I feel sick.”
“Krieger’s the kind of lad you don’t want to get in your head. Just to hold a conversation with him, you have to play his games.”
CRAWFORD
Be very careful with Hannibal Lecter…You tell him nothing personal, Starling. Believe me, you don't want Hannibal Lecter inside your head...
“If that’s the case, I fail to see the point in volunteering for this project.”
The two reached the Oldsmobile,
Drink!
and got in.
“You want me to be happy, don’t you?” Eva asked.
Holden sighed. “Yes, Eve. I really do, and I mean that. I’m not fucking with you at all.”
Eva made no response to her father’s sudden use of the f-bomb.
Are we in fifth grade?
“Sorry,” Holden said. He turned the key to the ignition, and the Oldsmobile
Drink!
left the parking garage.
That’s a lot of red text, there.
It’s pretty clear what’s happening: Eva’s Starling, Krieger’s Lecter, Jordache is Chilton, and Holden is Crawford (who Starling sees as a father figure). And—ugh—Barney the Orderly is a goddamn gorilla. There is no Multiple Miggs, partly because I don’t think Connor can handle any more characters, and partially because he doesn’t want his beloved Molly/Eva splattered with anyone’s semen but his own. I’m not being entirely glib; I honestly believe that Connor cannot bear to see anything gross happen to her—even in a later chapter when she fountains blood out of her mouth, it’s described in suspiciously graceful, tidy terms. Nothing must mar her perfect beauty
I think it’s safe to assume that Connor thinks his Krieger is a genius and that he is a genius for being able to write such a character. Everything about this character is a list of whatever highbrow literature Connor thinks will impress the reader. It’s like he took everything that was actually highbrow about Lecter—his knowledge of art, his contributions to psychology—and turned it into the fanciest, artsy-fartiest thing Connor personally was aware of. Like Shakespeare! And George Bernard Shaw! Smart people read those guys, right? MY PRETENSIONS, LET ME SHOW YOU THEM. Unfortunately, Connor’s pretensions to intellectualism are laughably low-brow. It’s not his fault entirely; he’s very young. But it also means he’s far too young to write the sort of character he envisions without sounding incredibly juvenile.
Which is, of course, why he stole it. He’s aware of his limitations but instead of working to correct them, he chose a very lazy, obvious way of concealing them. He plagiarized an extremely famous popular work and expected no one to call him out on it. Normally when I complain about an author treating me as if I’m an idiot, I’m not talking about actual fucking plagiarism, but that is what this boils down to: Connor thought his readers were too dumb to notice.
Suggestion: Unless these sections are removed, and the character of Klaus Krieger either deleted or altered radically, this book is not publishable. You are a stealing stealer who steals and you should be ashamed of yourself.
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2013
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2015
I'm back and I appreciated the story idea you sent me earlier.I can't wait for Ms. Ringwald to come back~
You should just work on writing and ignore what other people say. If you're serious about writing then you should ignore naysayers.
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2013
Part 10 of Wrong Planet. What interesting things do we have in store tonight?
Connor is basically Movie Bob, an autistic pretending to be an intellectual who finds "hidden meaning" within works that ultimately have no true, singular meaning.
Connor knows a thing or two about unlikable characters
Yet another school assignment Connor has a fucking meltdown about. There isn't the standard "everything went better than excrement!" statement but I'm going to infer it went just splendidly once he stopped having a tard meltdown in front of his parents.
Another thread hijack involving self-admitted lies
Why doesn't Connor make movies? He has a gift, a real gift, and should be given a chance. @Joe_Cracker, can you team up with a fellow South Carolinian to produce a badass action movie?
"Hey guys, let me cheer you up with a torturefic of Molly Ringwald"
Remember how we've talked about impulse control in the past?
Connor, without any shred of irony, discusses how he believes in nurture over nature while still holding, years later, awful views on adoption
More Random Access Humor
Let's leave this off with a real gem. Connor posts an "I already died during the suicide attempt" thread, and instantly becomes belligerant at well-wishers and advice-givers. CLASSIC CONNOR! *trigger laugh track* (warning, huge image dump since it's the 5 page thread in it's entirety) (also, why have you repeatedly yelled at Jonsi? He seems like a good dude)
Connor is basically Movie Bob, an autistic pretending to be an intellectual who finds "hidden meaning" within works that ultimately have no true, singular meaning.
Connor knows a thing or two about unlikable characters
Yet another school assignment Connor has a fucking meltdown about. There isn't the standard "everything went better than excrement!" statement but I'm going to infer it went just splendidly once he stopped having a tard meltdown in front of his parents.
Another thread hijack involving self-admitted lies
Why doesn't Connor make movies? He has a gift, a real gift, and should be given a chance. @Joe_Cracker, can you team up with a fellow South Carolinian to produce a badass action movie?
"Hey guys, let me cheer you up with a torturefic of Molly Ringwald"
Remember how we've talked about impulse control in the past?
Connor, without any shred of irony, discusses how he believes in nurture over nature while still holding, years later, awful views on adoption
More Random Access Humor
Let's leave this off with a real gem. Connor posts an "I already died during the suicide attempt" thread, and instantly becomes belligerant at well-wishers and advice-givers. CLASSIC CONNOR! *trigger laugh track* (warning, huge image dump since it's the 5 page thread in it's entirety) (also, why have you repeatedly yelled at Jonsi? He seems like a good dude)
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- Joined
- Sep 27, 2014
"I certainly didn't inherit my writing skills from my parents"
I take it his parents are extremely accomplished writers, then.
I take it his parents are extremely accomplished writers, then.
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2014
Heeeey, @Connor, you like applying tropes to your life, right? So this should be easy for you to understand, being written in your native tongue and all:
Silly Rabbit, Cynicism is for Losers!
Read that second paragraph closely. Sound familiar, Connie?
Silly Rabbit, Cynicism is for Losers!
Connor's Trope Bible said:
Read that second paragraph closely. Sound familiar, Connie?
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2013
IP confirmed for true and honest Molly Ringwald.
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2014
Connor, do you know how public schools, zoning, and funding works? Like, at all? Somehow this seems less real than heroin-promoting school nurses, public masturbation, and cigarettes.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2014
@Connor, you are one ungrateful son of a bitch.
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2013
I wonder if anyone called him out on that insensetive gesture.
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2013
Holy shit, the really real genuine Molly effing Ringwald is here, and she's actually super chill! And to think, at one point I thought Mylarballoonfan being here was exciting.
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2014
Wow ~ welcome Ms Ringwald. Congrats on your run at the Café Carlyle. Keep the American Songbook going!
Connor, you mock the dedication and sacrifice of so many? Shame on you!