GCOT

This will be an explanation of sorts of Gothic Constellation of Thanatos. I'm just getting some ideas down.


The main premise behind Gothic Constellation of Thanatos is a down on his luck retail worker who dies in a car accident and is essentially reincarnated as a young girl on a distant planet in another galaxy.

He (now she) meets his kindly scientist father who has been watching his young daughter through her coma. The man now awakens as the young girl and lives out her life.

Young Vanessa learns about her new home through the computer immersion program that her father provides. Vanessa eventually meets the chatty Susanna who lives in a nearby cottage close to the large laboratory that her father lives in.

The lab is in a secluded spot in the middle of the woods, as is Susanna's cottage.

Susanna is a seamstress and makes clothes that she sells to vendors from the closest city. Vanessa is taken on as an apprentice seamstress and learns to manipulate fabric and design clothing.

Vanessa eventually meets Susanna's son Ethan who is a law enforcement organization in the city.

GCOT

I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but this is another segment from Gothic Constellation of Thanatos.

One day at Susanna’s, she has another visitor. When this large man enters the house, she gets very excited.

“Ethan!” she screams, “Why, come in!”

“I am in, mother,” the large man says quietly. He is tall and almost as wide as the door, but not plump like his mother. Ethan looks like an athlete. He’s wearing a blue and red outfit with a badge and insignia. I quickly learn that he’s a policeman of sorts from the city.

“Oh, tell me how you’ve been! You’ve been safe haven’t you? No dangerous raids or fights? I always worry about you, but I know you can take care of yourself, but you know how I worry.” Susanna is even more talkative than usual with her son.

“Nothing much to talk about, Mom.” Ethan is quiet compared to his mother, but then almost anyone is quiet compared to her. He barely says anything to all of her many questions.

Susanna eventually runs out of questions and goes in the kitchen to prepare dinner and also to prepare Ethan a place to sleep. I’m eventually left alone with him. I take the opportunity to talk with someone who’s actually been to the nearby city I’ve heard so much about.

“What’s it like in the city?” I ask casually.

“What does a little girl like you care for the city?” He seems unusually cruel compared to the way he was acting around his mother. “It’s dangerous,” he continues, “Criminals own the streets and little girls like you are prey for monsters. The stores and houses are locked tight at night and no one goes out after dark if they don’t have to.” He must see the fear in my eyes, because he adds an explanation to his warning. “I hide the truth from mother, but there’s no sense in lying to you. The city is not a place you want to go to.”

            Of course, after this conversation, I want to go the city even more. It’s a forbidden place now that I had been warned against it. Ethan visits every once in a while after our first meeting. I’m hanging clothes outside one day and he approaches quietly. I’m startled as he starts talking. “What are they teaching you? You’ll be a matron in the woods like my mother. Can you even take care of yourself at all?” His cruelty seems out of place. As far as I knew, he hardly knew me at all. I’ve stopped what I’m doing and he is standing in front of me now.

            “Just try to hit me,” he commands. “Go ahead.” I hesitate, thinking him to be a bit of a bully at this point, but then I do as he asks and try to hit him. He easily dodges the blow and simultaneously trips me to the ground.

“Pathetic,” he says. “And you think you would survive in the city. You have to strike with speed and force, like this!” He hits me in the stomach before I can move. I fall over out of breath and near tears. I’m a third his size, but he doesn’t seem to be holding back.

            “Stand up, now!” he says. He seems to soften for a second. “Don’t be afraid, but get up and try again.” After I catch my breath, I get up and try to hit him again, but he simply moves out of the way again. “Ha! That was better, though. Maybe there is fight in you.”

            “Ethan, what are you doing?!?” Susanna screams as she discovers us sparring. “Stop roughhousing with Vanessa and let her work.” Ethan turns to go inside, but whispers to me as he leaves.

“You’re soft now, but there is hope. If you really do want to go the city, you’ll need a lot more lessons in taking care of yourself.”

            At home in my room, I practice trying to punch quickly like I had seen Ethan doing. I really did want to go into the city and maybe I was soft like he said. I imagine his cruel, quiet voice as I fall to sleep.

. . .

When I see Ethan a few days later, I had not forgotten our talk. “Hey, little domestic girl,” he says walking up to me.

            “I’m not a little girl!” I object. I try to hit him again right where he’s standing, but I still couldn’t touch him as he trips me again.

“Ha ha!” he laughs at me. “You have to plant your feet.” This time I get right back up, though, and manage to hit him in the stomach, though he barely reacts.

            “Better!” he admits, “but try hitting a little harder than that if you can.” Before I can manage to celebrate this small victory, he trips me again and I’m on the ground. I’m almost crying again, but more from frustration than pain.

            “Oh, don’t cry! Who’s not a little girl now? If you really want to learn, I will teach you.”

            After our first few brief meetings, I start taking fighting lessons from him. We always tell his mother we’re going into the woods on a hike. Apparently, Ethan’s a hunter and naturalist, too, so this is a good cover story.

            As for the lessons themselves, I’m falling down more than I’m not. Ethan’s not very patient either, really.

            “Get up!” he yells. “That’s not going to cut it!” He usually only raises his voice when he’s away from his mother. It’s as if her constant chatter replaced his voice when he was around her. Maybe he was used to not being able to get a word in growing up with her.

            “I’m trying,” I say, “but you keep knocking me down!”

            “Then evade me,” he says, as if it’s as simple as breathing. For him I guess it is. I finally manage to dodge one of his blows and even manage a weak counterstrike.

            “You’ll have to do better than that, little girl.”

            I get mad at that and punch him on his hip as hard as I can.

            “Huh. Not bad.” I can tell he really is surprised and I’m happy for some small progress.

Sit down, old friend

I know what you're going to say before you say it.
You may be right this time as you have been before.
I don't want to listen to you, though.

Then a weird thing happens:
I split into two sides of myself and start giving myself advice.
It's often easier to give advice than follow it
Or so I try to tell myself.

He sits me down, myself does,
"Sit down," he says...
"You might not be ready to hear this," he begins,
"But you're going about it all wrong."

I give him a frowning look like he doesn't know what he's talking about.
"Don't look at me like that," he says.
"You've got to give this up, son. It's just not good.
All this poetry you're writing, all these thoughts you're having, all this time you're spending
And what's going to happen of it. Give it up."

Son? But you're the same age as me, I tell him.
"No, not really. I'm smarter so I figure that makes me older.
I'm your sensible side it seems and someone needs to talk some sense into you.
These thoughts you're having, trying to be hopeful, trying to see the positive.
Some times you do just have to accept that the world's not all candy and summer storms."

Well, I don't really like candy all that much, but I don't see your point, I say.
"Look you're not getting the point: All these optimistic thoughts you have, they're just not healthy. It's just not going to happen the way you imagine. I know. Trust me, I know."
I give him an odd look: Are you from the future? I venture to ask.

"No, no, no, you idiot. Not really. But trust me, I know. You'll be better if you just accept reality."
He grabs some pages and roughly taps them on his other hand.
"Look at this: It's just bad, really. What were you thinking?
Fire and burning and plays, computer programs that no one wants to read about."

Well, I was going to rewrite some of it, yes. The story, though, not the poetry.
I think it might be romantic if it was books and not a computer, yes?
"Romantic," he scoffs. "You and your romance. You make me sick."
I stand up at this.

Now listen here, I start, my romance that you make so much fun of has got me where I am in life.
You know I used to be like you, cynical and hopeless, thinking the worst,
And sometimes I still am, but I don't want to be like that all the time.
Being insecure doesn't feel too good, even though I am sometimes.

"You're insecure all the time," he says laughing. "You think I'm not in there with you, chum?
You second guess everything and think the worst as your first choice of possibility."
I'm silent at that and try to come up with a response.
Yeah, maybe that's my natural tendency, but I compensate with this optimism and romance that you seem to think is so useless.

Yes, I'm insecure, but I control my thoughts, buster.
I decide if I want to let something bother me, I decide to see the glass half full, and I decide when I'm going to give up on something, got it?

"Yeah, yeah," he says, "Don't get bent outta shape about it. Man, you worked yourself up. See, there is anger in you."
He had me at that, but I knew I was right, too.

I took the pages from his hand.
I can fix it, I said. I can make it better.

"Maybe you can, kid. Maybe you can."

I knew you were right in a way, and that he was trying to help just like you were, but I couldn't do the things I was being advised to.
I wanted to burn a little longer.
Or a lot longer, really.
I don't know why I keep choosing that metaphor, or word or whatever, but it seems right.
That month of poems seems like a blur and I was honest in a way that I hadn't been in a while.
Poetry is a way to write exactly what you're feeling without coming out and saying it.

I burn=I can't stop thinking about you.
You're a star=I like you
You think this poem is about you=This poem is about you.

There are times when all a poet really wishes he could do is give the poem he wrote to the person he wrote it about and let her read it.

There are other times he wants to lock them up in a casket and let them collect dust for a few decades.

But you see, this poem really isn't about you, and though I burn from the star that got a little too close
I think perhaps I'll remain a hopeless romantic 'til my dying day.
"Dawn died a tiny thousand deaths for you and she's till alive
So the least you can do is keep going.
Things only have the power you give them: a broken sword or a broken heart..."