The Saddest Octopus

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there had been Shenanigans up in the Northern Domicile.  This is because the apartment I had been living in got infested with bed bugs and we all had to evacuate and the menagerie was quarantined and it was all really messy and I ended up slightly homeless and spent a few months occupying the couch of the incredibly generous WMPT and EHC.  Magick, Seal, Gilly, Plouie, and Ilari came with me.  I am still amazed that they were willing to look after us for so long.  It's a good thing Hrithik went into quarantine with the others or they might not have been.

Anyway, so while I was there, WMPT went to the Museum of Natural History and rescued an octopus.  He and EHC seem to have a penchant for taking in distressed stray creatures, I guess.  The poor octopus was pretty distressed; it didn't even talk when he first brought it in.  It would just look at you with these huge tragic eyes.  WMPT asked me to take it in, because he knows I have a menagerie and hoped it would feel at home.  He and EHC have a menagerie too, but theirs is full of eldritch creatures (whereas I have only one eldritch creature in mine) and he was concerned that they'd be too much for the poor traumatised octopus to handle.  I concurred.  I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so distressed as this poor octopus.  I started thinking of him as the Saddest Octopus because he wouldn't tell us his name or anything.  He'd just look at us with these huge doleful eyes.

The Saddest Octopus -- not the best picture, but look at those tragic eyes

The Saddest Octopus is at something of a disadvantage in my menagerie because he's the only invertebrate, so I carefully put him with other sea creatures in hopes that he'd be able to find some common ground to talk about.  He doesn't really talk much, though.  Whatever has happened to him shook him up pretty bad.

Fortunately for him, we happen to have a world-class psychotherapist among us.  Ilari is really good with trauma victims, it turns out, so he's been working with the Saddest Octopus, and I am pleased to report that after several months we've managed to get the Saddest Octopus to talk to us a little bit.  Only a little bit, but that much constitutes considerable progress, so we are quite hopeful that he might end up okay.

We don't know much about what happened to him yet, and Ilari, who knows more, isn't telling because of confidentiality and all.  But we've learned the Saddest Octopus's real name, and once you hear the story of his name, you'll have some idea as to why he's so very sad.  I mean, even the poor thing's name is traumatic.

The Saddest Octopus is named Tollemache-Tollemache Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh.... or possibly Tollemache-Tollemache Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh.  That is the tragedy: he really doesn't know which.  His mother was a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh, and his father was a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh, and when they went to hyphenate their names, they really could not agree which of them should come first.  Should their son be a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh or a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh?

Although he hasn't directly talked about it, it's pretty clear that the Saddest Octopus was very deeply affected by this debate.  His parents fought over his surname fiercely for a couple of years and then went through a very bitter divorce over it; he clearly blames himself, and now he can't even give his name to people because he doesn't want to have to take sides in the matter and therefore the poor guy doesn't even know what his name is!  Can you imagine?

Now, it's pretty clear that the name wasn't really the problem for the Saddest Octopus's parents.  It was symbolic of much larger issues in their relationships.  His mother's family, the Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaughs, is working class, while his father's family, the Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaughs, is very wealthy, so his mother got a lot of slurs from his father's family and she never thought he supported her enough; he, in turn, eventually started trying to make her feel inferior.  She wasn't a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh for nothing -- her family is known for being pretty tough -- so she fought back.  Apparently she won a pretty decent chunk of her ex-husband's assets in the divorce proceedings.  But the poor Saddest Octopus still blames himself.  Children are like that: they blame themselves for their parents' issues and demons.  It's really hard to work through all of that.

So that's the very beginning of the story of the Saddest Octopus.  Hopefully, as he gets more comfortable with all us freaky vertebrates, he'll tell us more about himself, and maybe even become a little less sad.

Mimsy Pulls the Cord

Mimsy's behaviour is sometimes rather difficult to suss out, because he's a bit mad.  So let me present to you a puzzle: what is he thinking in this picture?

We think he was trying to turn it on (which clearly was not going to end well), but what made him choose this particular misguided approach?  Is it his own idea?  Did someone else put him up to it?  Is it a prank or part of a larger scheme?  If the latter, what was the overall plan, and has the scheme been abandoned or not?  Or are we on the wrong track entirely, and Mimsy was trying to do something completely different?  He was singularly unforthcoming when we asked him; his exact words were, 'I have no comment,' which is something he's picked up from Magick or Murchison or someone. 

When Murchison Met Magick

Although we're understanding the institutional details of the Wild Republic more and more all the time, there are still a number of aspects of it that AJD and I don't really understand.  The arrival of the new delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy has only highlighted some of these deficiencies in our understanding.

Near the top of our list is Murchison.

Murchison is an arctic fox and a secret agent of some sort; apparently most arctic foxes go into espionage.  When you think about it, this doesn't make all that much sense: how can your secret agents possibly be effective if everyone knows about them?  Murchison isn't undercover here, but surely he can't truly be undercover anywhere, right?  And what exactly is he doing, anyway?  We know he's up to something, something beyond merely being highly suspicious of Sir Tristan, but we haven't a clue as to what it is.

Now that the new delegation is here, we're even more intrigued, because the new delegation includes Magick, and Murchison is very clearly interested in Magick.

To be fair, everyone is interested in Magick.  Magick is an interesting character.  We're not certain, for instance, what exactly his role in this delegation is supposed to be.  He's a peer's heir and not precisely expendable, yet he's clearly known more than his fair share of danger; Pedro is apparently always having to patch up unusual and unexplained wounds for him.  Some of these are probably from duels (Magick's been in so many duels he's lost count) or from escaping from ladies' bedrooms (Magick's taste in women often runs towards the inappropriate), but he's definitely up to something and neither of us is certain what that is.  We suspect, from what Angel Joe has let slip, that Magick was given this assignment after a particularly ill-advised liaison with a married noblewoman necessitated sending him somewhere out of trouble (though Sir Tristan probably had a hand in that too), but that doesn't help to elucidate what his assignment actually is.  From his general attitude, one would be forgiven for thinking him primarily a bodyguard for Sir Theo and Lady Faraday, except that his rank precludes his accepting such a menial station.

We suspected that the meeting between Murchison and Magick would be epic.  Murchison, we know, has been rather bored here for some time; Magick is probably the answer to any number of his prayers.  Naturally he'd have heard of someone of Magick's storied reputation.  Nor were we disappointed, either; they met and promptly made it clear that they're going to be keeping an eye on each other.  Conceivably, this is evidence in favour of a theory making Magick Murchison's WPM equivalent.

Here they are, staring each other down.  They both wanted to make it clear that they are in no way intimidated by the other, and that even though Magick is here on a diplomatic mission, neither of them is letting down his guard.

I'm particularly fond of this picture for two reasons: I have always appreciated the aesthetic quality of a good black-and-white contrast; and this is the only picture we have of Magick that really shows him off, since photographing someone that black turns out to be hard.  Look at that gorgeous silhouette.

Here's the thing, though: we have reason to suspect that there's more to the relationship between Murchison and Magick than meets the eye.  We suspect, for instance, that this was not their first meeting, although it's difficult to articulate where this notion comes from.  We also wonder if they're less adversaries than they appear to be.  Consider this picture of the two of them in an unguarded moment:

Murchison appears to be whispering in Magick's ear.  Is he issuing a threat, or are the two of them in collusion over something?  Do they meet up in Bombay for friendly chess matches with lots of witty banter and then get back to being nemeses?  Are they secretly allies?  We'll have to keep an eye on them.