Amanda Frederickson's Blog: Musings - Posts Tagged "vashta-nerada"
Everybody Dies
"You need a good death. Without death there'd only be comedies." - The Doctor, Silence in the Library
Just shy of fourteen years of friendship, my best friend declared that she wasn’t speaking to me anymore. Granted, it didn’t last very long, but for a while she communicated in fuming text messages. My crime?
She discovered I was planning to kill a character she likes. Two, in fact.
Unlike real life, readers know exactly who to blame for every tragedy that befalls their beloveds. Joss Whedon, J.K. Rowling, Steven Moffat, and George R.R. Martin walk into a bar and all your favorite characters die. Feel free to add as many author names to that list as you please.
All too often, it feels like those deaths or heart-wrenching dramas were painfully pointless. But when an author is actually doing their job right, the tragedy is inevitable.
Establishing the threat means that at first the villain needs to win.
(Spoilers!)
In Silence in the Library and its second half, Forest of the Dead, the Doctor and his companion Donna visit the universe’s largest library, but find when they arrive that it has been infested by Vashta Nerada; essentially meat eating shadows, concentrated in the library because their trees were cut down to make the books. The library is their forest now.
The episodes begin with six archaeologists plus the doctor and companion, but their number is cut down one by one. The Vashta Nerada strip the flesh from their victims, leaving only skeletons and space suits behind, then attach themselves to their next victim like an extra shadow. Throughout the episodes, each death becomes a countdown. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.
Funny story related to these episodes.
My college campus had a lake with a bridge, and one night I was crossing it on the way to my dorm when I looked down and noticed that I had an extra shadow. There were lampposts spaced along the bridge, and logically each shadow should have belonged to a separate lamp.
I stopped and looked. There were only two lamps. There was no light source for the shadow in the middle, the third. There was no moon that night and no way a passing headlamp could cast a shadow on me in the middle of the lake. I looked down. Checked the angles again. Looked back at the shadow.
It was gone.
I had just finished my evening shift at the library.
Would you feel a chill if the Vashta Nerada hadn’t eaten their way through four archaeologists?
Hey, who turned out the lights?
Just shy of fourteen years of friendship, my best friend declared that she wasn’t speaking to me anymore. Granted, it didn’t last very long, but for a while she communicated in fuming text messages. My crime?
She discovered I was planning to kill a character she likes. Two, in fact.
Unlike real life, readers know exactly who to blame for every tragedy that befalls their beloveds. Joss Whedon, J.K. Rowling, Steven Moffat, and George R.R. Martin walk into a bar and all your favorite characters die. Feel free to add as many author names to that list as you please.
All too often, it feels like those deaths or heart-wrenching dramas were painfully pointless. But when an author is actually doing their job right, the tragedy is inevitable.
Establishing the threat means that at first the villain needs to win.
(Spoilers!)
In Silence in the Library and its second half, Forest of the Dead, the Doctor and his companion Donna visit the universe’s largest library, but find when they arrive that it has been infested by Vashta Nerada; essentially meat eating shadows, concentrated in the library because their trees were cut down to make the books. The library is their forest now.
The episodes begin with six archaeologists plus the doctor and companion, but their number is cut down one by one. The Vashta Nerada strip the flesh from their victims, leaving only skeletons and space suits behind, then attach themselves to their next victim like an extra shadow. Throughout the episodes, each death becomes a countdown. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.
Funny story related to these episodes.
My college campus had a lake with a bridge, and one night I was crossing it on the way to my dorm when I looked down and noticed that I had an extra shadow. There were lampposts spaced along the bridge, and logically each shadow should have belonged to a separate lamp.
I stopped and looked. There were only two lamps. There was no light source for the shadow in the middle, the third. There was no moon that night and no way a passing headlamp could cast a shadow on me in the middle of the lake. I looked down. Checked the angles again. Looked back at the shadow.
It was gone.
I had just finished my evening shift at the library.
Would you feel a chill if the Vashta Nerada hadn’t eaten their way through four archaeologists?
Hey, who turned out the lights?
