The Neon Casket: Charlie's Last Dance

-by Fragile Faithe

Fancy meeting you here. Welcome to the Neon Casket, a repository for unexplained video, lost media, mystery and intrigue, and arguing in the comments over whether the Patterson film is real or not. I'm your host and sysadmin Faithe, and I thought we'd start off the new, revamped servers with a classic: Charlie's Last Dance. This is a pretty popular request, so I'm getting ahead of this one to save my poor, poor inbox. 

While it was still active, Fuchi developed a line of flatscreen recordings intended to offer positive, calming visuals and sounds for people who live deep in the inner city. Fuchi advertised more than a dozen similar product lines as a substitute for a real window, since each recording lasts sixteen hours before looping. 

>>>>>[Fuchi was already on its last legs at this point. Their film division's future was left uncertain, and they likely used this as a last-ditch effort to massage their profit margins before the merger hit.]<<<<<

- Dr. Gatter

>>>>>[It makes sense: bizarrely cheap recordings done with extremely expensive technology.]<<<<<

- Mr. Director

>>>>>[When a content creator is completely out of ideas, they do ASMR. Even Megacorps, apparently.]<<<<<

- Lazarus

Officially, the track in question is titled "Seascape Adventures Track #29: Santa Monica Nights". The recording features a static shot of a beach in Santa Monica with view of the distant pier. The beach is closed despite being in-season, so the view is peaceful, serene, and completely absent of people. The soundscape is filled with surf, seagulls, and the distant hustle and bustle of the pier.

Nothing happens for the first seven hours of the recording. At 7:05:05, the sun begins to set and the lights of the pier start to come alive. Shortly after, a man in a neutral gray suit wanders onto the beach from Camera Right, the footpath. He's disheveled, and removing his tie as he walks. He's carrying a bottle in his other hand. The man wanders the beach dejectedly until answering a phone call at 7:48:46. The audible portions of the call are as follows. 

Charlie Nelson, senior risk analysist. Yes sir, I know. I know, sir. Tomorrow I'll- (Charlie is silent for approximately four minutes) I get it. No, just mail my stuff to my house.

>>>>>[Aww. Hey Charlie, how's corpo life treating you? Lol. ]<<<<<

- Lazarus

>>>>>[Is anyone able to pick up the other half of the conversation here?]<<<<<
- Placeholder Jones

>>>>>[I've got nothing. Fuchi used bleeding-edge microphones for these, but they're omni-directional and too far away. Whatever he got fired for, it's being drowned out by seagulls.]<<<<<

- Mr. Director

At this point, Charlie sits down in the sand, pinching the bridge of his nose. He begins to drink from his bottle, presumed to be whisky or rum.

>>>>>[It's ARES Revelry Black Label. Expensive whisky, not the kind of thing you find in a stuffer shack.]<<<<<

- &T885K90M1

 He takes his jacket off at 8:10:56 and discards it in the sand next to him. He wanders around the beach, drinking, until 9:15:40 when he makes a phone call of his own to leave a voice-mail message, judging by the sharp beep his pocket secretary makes. A transcript is as follows. 

Hey, Barb. I-I just wanted to say I'm sorry for all the fighting lately. Work's been stressful, but I talked to Mr. Collin and I think everything's gonna be okay. I'm working late tonight, but tomorrow we can talk about those papers. If you still want to. Tell Angie I love her.

At this point, Charlie's bottle is 1/4th full. He drops his pocket secretary onto the sand and starts to dance. 

>>>>>[So someone RECOVERED the POCKET SECRETARY, Right?]<<<<<

- Clank

>>>>>[Renraku seized all Fuchi property after the merger. If the recording team picked it up, it's sitting in some Renraku storehouse somewhere, collecting dust.]<<<<<

- Dr. Gatter

>>>>>[That's usually a crowded beach. Someone, somewhere had to have grabbed it. Whether it was a Fuchi employee or some beach bum the next day, someone's got it.]<<<<<

- Vacancy

He performs a slow, ballroom-style dance by himself, arms held out for an invisible partner, for several minutes. At 9:31:05, Charlie drinks the remainder of the bottle in one motion, drops it onto the beach, and walks into the ocean to the camera's left. Nothing unusual happens for the remainder of the recording's sixteen hour runtime. 

>>>>>[What are the chances our boy Charlie just wandered off and passed out off-camera?]<<<<<

- Andrew Jackson

>>>>>[There's nothing but ocean in the direction he walked. Even if he just felt like taking a swim? With a whole bottle of The Good Stuff in him, he's fish food.]<<<<<

- Grinder

"Seascape Adventures Track #29: Santa Monica Nights" was available for sale for eighteen hours before it was pulled down due to "video corruption errors" and replaced with six-hour recordings of "Santa Monica Mornings" and "Santa Monica: After Dark". The Fuchi Home Services application also attempted to auto-delete the file from Fuchi branded telecoms.

>>>>>[If you haven't jailbroken your home telecom by now, you only have yourself to blame.]<<<<<

- Ingress

>>>>>[Seascape Adventures and the billion other 'virtual window' recordings they did are bottom-barrel drek, I'm surprised they scrambled to fix it so quickly.]<<<<<

- Mr. Director

>>>>>[Remember the one from that carnival in Miami that has two women making out in full view of the camera for like thirty minutes?]<<<<<

- Lazarus

>>>>>[It's still up in the Renraku App Store. #4 Best Seller.]<<<<<

- Fuse

The video still exists, notably a version cut solely to Charlie's portion. It's frequently traded and analyzed by "Lost Media" enthusiasts and experts, who usually find their way to our site sooner or later. Even cursory research into the event raises several questions. First, Fuchi's recording team uses a high-powered drone which notes any suspicious heat signatures present in the video, which would have made it obvious that Charlie had ruined their recording. 

>>>>>[Assuming the editor even bothered to look at the error list. Fuchi's recorder drones were touchy, and those lists usually filled up with trash and false positives. When you have a dozen other sixteen hour recordings to edit and five pages of bullshit each, you learn not to bother.]<<<<<

- Mr. Director

>>>>>[The theory that Charlie was a spirit or ghost is pretty popular.]<<<<<

- Placeholder Jones

>>>>>[Lots of things are popular with idiots.]<<<<<

- Mr. Director

Second, Fuchi uses armed guards to ensure their recording sessions go smoothly. It's unknown how Charlie got past them, especially since he enters the beach from a well-used and paved footpath.

>>>>>[Charlie shows up at 7:05. Minimum wage, bored, and seven hours into your shift? Charlie probably strolled right by.]<<<<<

- Vacancy

Third and most concerning: No death was reported, and no body was found.

>>>>>[This is where it gets interesting: Charlie doesn't exist. There's no record anywhere of a Charlie Nelson that fits the description. Barbara Nelson and Angela Nelson turn up too many hits to be useful, even restricting the search to Cali. ]<<<<<

- Ingress

>>>>>[Corps don't hire the sinless for jobs like risk analysis. It's possible Charlie was a runner. He calls his 'boss' Sir and mentions a job title, but plenty of top-tier teams talk in code. He tells his wife 'work' sucks, but it could've been a cover story.]<<<<<

- Shredder

>>>>>[Or his history was erased after the fact to cover something up.]<<<<<

- Ingress

>>>>>[Oh Oh, me next: OR he BECAME a runner BECAUSE he was fired. He narrowly survived killing himself and turned to a life of crime the next morning.]<<<<<

- Lazarus

>>>>>[Missed opportunity to claim he had a secret underwater supervillain base just off the coast.]<<<<<

- &T885K90M1

Until next time, all you ghouls, ghosts and exhausted archivists of lost media. As always, if you come across any information about the video, don't be a stranger. And Charlie, if you're still out there? Sorry about your job. Life's rough, eh?

Character Theme Music

 I solve this puzzle, but tumble through Hell

These words are fractions when I needed primes

Curses, these verses are my prison cell

I try to pick a theme song for every character. A lot of people do this, apparently, some even putting together entire playlists.  It isn't always easy. Music conveys emotion, tone and feel in a way nothing else can. I don't consider this a vital part of creating a character, but you can get a ton of information across in a very short amount of time with music. It's not as though you're making a permanent choice, either: If the song no longer fits...just pick a new one. Do a new theme for every era of your character. That's the beauty of a purely aesthetic choice. 

There's something to be said of picking a direct analogy in lyrics or song meaning. Being blunt is especially fun for characters who are supposed to be direct, blunt, or easy to read. You can choose a song for a lot of other reasons, though. Maybe you want the song to hint at their true nature, something they hide from everyone else. Maybe you have a feel for the genre of the character and want to pick the best candidate for conveying that. 

Really, the only solid advice I can give you is that this is a powerful tool. You can use this to convey your character's tone, or some kind of aesthetic. Or, you can reverse this and just pick off vibes then think about the exact reasons of why you think it fits. Maybe you'll learn something about your character. I know it's helped me. 

This whole post was probably just a preface to going over my own characters and talking about their themes. It's fine, it's my blog and I really wanted to do that. I should note that some of these characters have had different themes in the past, and that's okay. Characters change over time, just like people do. 

Oh, and in the spirit of keeping this post from being a dead link nightmare, I'm relying on you to just search the songs I'm talking about. It can't be that hard. 

Inkless

They Might be Giants - Road Movie to Berlin

Time won't find the lost, it'll sweep up our skeleton bones

Inkless had an entire soundtrack at one point, full of 80s pop and punk music. That music still definitely fits her: it's in her nature to be anti-establishment, even rowdy. Since the soundtrack is gone, I thought I'd be extra unhelpful and choose a song that wasn't even on it to convey something a bit different about her. 

So this song is explicitly about the Berlin wall, written during a time that it was "obvious" that the wall would be there forever. It's also sort of about the cold war and the looming threat of nuclear destruction, at least in feel. That's not how I always saw the song, though. 

It's a bar song that never really starts or ends. It's always felt to me like yet another stop on an endless road trip: a long, solemn drive home that never really ends. In a way, that matches Inkless's life. Never literally alone, but neither having anyone she can relate to. Leaving "home", but not feeling like she found a new one yet. Spiritually (and sometimes literally), always on the road.

Pink Annis

The Crane Wives - Tongues and Teeth

I've grown a mouth so sharp and cruel, it's all that I can give to you, my dear

Tongues and Teeth is a song about resenting your partner for staying with you and wanting to help(or 'fix') you. It has themes of feeling that you're is too toxic, mean or even broken to help. They're telling their lover to quit before it escalates: because it will escalate. For Pink, the song is about her and humanity: the unshakeable notion that she's too strange and monstrous to fit in, even if she has no problem looking the part. She doesn't think human society is something meant for her, or even something she could fit into if she tried. 

Pink would probably tell you she's a punk. However, the Crane Wives playing with acoustic instruments and even a banjo on this track probably fits her better than she'd admit. She's not (exactly) an anachronism, but definitely something older than she appears, or even older than she thinks she is. The song's mixture of anger and passion with smooth, acoustic music fits her well.

Shivani Sedana

Ghost - Spillways

You keep a casket, deep within

You try to mask it, but fall back in sin

Spillways is about bottling up your pain ultimately just making your problems worse. The song presents the idea that the only way you're going to feel(or be) better is pulling your darkness up to the surface and embracing it. 

A gothic sound that isn't especially sad or gloomy is perfect for Shivani, so Ghost's cool, smooth goth metal fits particularly well. In addition to that, the song's message about true nature might be something she needs to hear. In a lot of ways, Shivani is hanging on to the past and even an identity that no longer fits her. She'll probably always struggle with cyberpsychosis, but pushing her feelings aside and trying to ignore the problem is never going to help.

Aikiyo the Mockery

Wagakki Band - Ikusa

I never lost a beat

since that windswept day

Wagakki Band mixes traditional Japanese instruments with modern ones, so immediately I knew that's what I wanted for Aikiyo. What stands out to me is the music combining the sounds of electric guitar and heavy metal drums with shakuhashi (bamboo flute) and koto (plucked zither). This perfectly describes Aikiyo, because she's a mechanical martial artist, a construct who studies swordplay exclusively. She lives in two different worlds simply by existing.

I'm not gonna go on and on about the lyrics or the meaning, because I could be pretty far off from what it actually means. Real Japanese to English lyric translations are very hard to find. I will say the lyrics I did find reminded me strongly of a duel, of two people meeting on a battlefield. They remind me of the kind of battlefield honor that Aikiyo feels is important, but tries to hide. 

[~=~=~]

I could be wrong on what all these songs mean, so cut me some slack. Of course, it doesn't even matter that much if I am. We're doing this to convey vibes, ultimately. I'm sure I've made it inside the ballpark, and nitpicking specific meanings or themes would probably be disingenuous. I might do another one of these where I pick themes for characters who never had them, or even themes for other people's characters. That might be nice, and even slightly less indulgent than this was.