#classicscraft

the fact that scott convinced multiple other people to wear the skull masks just to torment avid—and make no mistake, scott was upfront about admitting that his intention was to torment avid!—is genuinely really fascinating, in a horrible kinda way. on the surface scott’s technique for when he gets accused of something (talk over the accuser really loudly and forcefully and say No YOU did whatever you’re accusing ME of doing) is quite straightforward, but it works, it’s extremely effective. part of this is the lack of genre awareness—the characters don’t know they’re in a horror story; most of them don’t even really believe in vampires, despite the warning signs—but part of it is that scott has a keen eye for victims. his targets are people it’s easy to blame, to dislike, to accuse. obviously jimmy’s bad at the game so it’s okay to make fun of him. obviously pearl’s crazy so it’s okay to treat her poorly. obviously avid’s lost his mind so he should be institutionalised, exiled, or even killed—for the safety of the rest of us normal people, of course! the term ‘impostor’ works perfectly because it doesn’t necessarily mean someone who’s trying to stand out—avid’s mostly just trying to save people from themselves—but it applies to someone who doesn’t fit in, someone who’s been assigned the role of scapegoat, someone who’s not one of us. scott can excuse his own bizarre behaviour (wearing the skull to cover up the fact that his eyes were vampiric red; sneaking into the woods alone at night; etc.) by turning the conversation towards avid. the deflection works beautifully. you can be as weird and suspicious and awful as you want as long as it’s in the direction of the acceptable target.

anyway. if I may: