You know everyone calls it Lames, right ?

but, fool that i am, i never stopped to wonder what they sound like

it turns out they sound actually how you’d expect

George Orwell, whom I’ve dragged forward in time with my arcane powers because I’m lonely and want someone to talk to: You have a telephone in your pocket?  It listens to you all the time?

Me: Never mind about that, the point is, young people now mock each other by sending the wheelchair emoji - that’s a type of electronic heiroglyph - to suggest mental deficiency and shout SPESHUL!!!! while doing offensive imitations of disabled facial expressions and posture.  So any attempt to lexographically make crimethink impossible is pretty much doomed because the meaning of words in everyday conversation can’t be controlled by a dictionary entry, no matter how many Ministry of Truth employees-

don’t show up on camera

can fly/scale walls

immune to bullets

can break into any safe by turning into fog or some bullshit

could probably hypnotize security guards as needed

they enter the museum while it’s open to the public (and the Welcome sign is on display). they turn into bats and hide in the rafters until the museum closes. the only hiccup is when the overhead announcement comes on and politely requests all visitors leave for closing. the vampire are forced to flee, but come back the next day with tiny bat-sized earplugs.

downside: this requires going out in daylight, leading most of the team members to show up in long black victorian formalwear, complete with lacy parasols, which they insist on carrying with them throughout the entire heist (much to the frustration of the team leader, who just wore sunscreen and a raincoat).

depending on how invitations work, it is possible any random human can invite them in. one of the vampires gets their Ultimate Frisbee buddy Oakley to tag along and invite them in after closing.

downside: the gang spends the rest of the heist gently mocking the idea of a vampire playing association ultimate frisbee (“so what, you turn into a bat and catch it with your fangs? do they make you crawl up the wall when it gets stuck on a roof? if you turn into a cat to get it down from a tree, do you end up stuck in the tree?”) this ends in a Climactic Twist Ending when Oakley reveals they don’t play ultimate frisbee, just dog park frisbee. In the sense that they met when the vampire transformed into a wolf to gatecrashed a game at the local dog park.

(Bonus points if Oakley is a werewolf. extra bonus points if this is revealed in a post-credits epilogue where, on the next full moon, the entire gang transforms into creatures of the night and joins Oakley at the park for a frisbee game of Bats vs Wolves)

Final option: to gain legitimate entry, an invitation is needed from a museum employee. this presents two possibilities:

the vampires pretend to be incredibly rich eccentric patrons who want a private nighttime tour of the museum. (this is convincing due to the fact they are rich and incredibly eccentric.) the vampires get inside, planning to hypnotize the Curator supervising their tour.

downside: they immediately discover the Curator has been left immune to hypnosis by years of post-grad exposure to droning history lecturers. the vampires leave their least competent member to distract her while they carry out the heist–in the ensuing 90 minutes, the vampire and the curator accidentally Fall In Love after bonding over their shared fury about british archeological theft.

(In the sequel they get married and spend their honeymoon robbing the British Museum in order to return sacred objects to the cultures from which they were stolen. this is made more complicated comical by the fact vampires are unable to interact with holy objects. also, they are lesbians.)

alternatively: the gang simply bribes a security guard into letting them in after closing. the security guard then tags along, offering helpful advice for disabling alarms and transporting antiques. it turns out Security Officer Greer only applied for the job bc they too were planning an Elaborate Acrobatic Burglary, but then their partners quit to join Cirque du Soleil and “I can’t exactly perform a Double Cartwheel Birdie Flying Trapeze Boomerang Special without a partner.”

downside: the gang becomes too attached to ask Greer to leave. They carry out the heist as intended, but this time pretending to be circus performers to explain their vampire powers. Turning into a cloud of smoke to bypass locks? Magicians never explain a trick. Spider walking across ceilings to bypass alarms? Contortionist. When it comes time to fly from roof to roof, they decide turning into bats would give away their secret, so instead they help Greer, in a sparkling moment of triumph, execute the perfect Double Cartwheel Birdie Flying Trapeze Boomerang Special!

Greer and the gang escape (by tightrope walking) into the night with all the plunder they can carry. Tearfully, the gang begins to say goodbye (bc they can’t keep up the pretense of being circus performers forever) when Greer casually asks how a bunch of vampire ended up working in a circus.

(Greer assumed from the beginning they were vampires, because of “how you dress, how you talk, and mostly because none of you showed up on camera back in the CCTV control room. Why did you think it took me so long to let yall in?”)

I cannot for the lives of me decide which synopsis I like best

mwpp circa 1977

on haunting

Z the rat (Zeïnab) (Ivoirienne, b. 1999)

How many faces can one upkeep?, 2021