Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2009-02-09 12:03 am
ptahrrific) wrote2009-02-09 12:03 am
Synopsis - Fake News: Stewart's Inferno
Four Fake News Stories Erin Will Never Write, And One That Accidentally Got Written While Doing This (2)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Hellfire'n'damnation, oodles of character death.
Disclaimers: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
Summary: What it says on the tin, continued.
One-line summary: Oscar Wilde takes Jon on a Dante-esque tour of Hell.
Title: Stewart's Inferno
Characters: Jon, "Stephen", Wilde, families, ensemble
It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.
Virgil
A takeoff on the Divine Comedy. This time it's Jon who finds himself lost in a dark wood, until master witticist Oscar Wilde shows up and declares that he's about to get a grand tour of the circles of Hell.
(The whole thing is written in terza rima—or at least, an approximation thereof, because it's several orders of magnitude harder to pull off in English than Italian. Early on, after Wilde has given some exposition and stops to take questions, Jon finishes his response with "...and how come we're both speaking in verse?")
Here's the catch: the recently deceased Stephen is in one of these circles, and it's up to Jon to get him out.
The beginning of the tour proceeds largely the way the original does, but riffing on contemporary figures rather than those known in 14th-century Italy. The First Circle (Limbo, including the unbaptized and virtuous pagans) includes Deists like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Bill O'Reilly ends up in the Fifth Circle (the Stygian Lake) with the wrathful. And so on.
At first, Jon is surprised to find that Stephen is not among the wrathful. Wilde explains that people are placed according to their greatest sin (i.e., they are put in the closest possible circle to the center), and Stephen is in the Seventh. They move on.
The Seventh Circle, housing the violent, is divided into three rings. The outermost ring houses the violent against people and things. The middle ring is the Wood of Suicides (i.e., the violent against the self). Jon has a moment of panic over whether Stephen might be here, but is reassured.
The innermost ring of the Seventh Circle is a desert of burning sand, with firey flakes raining down onto the inhabitants. There's a stream (probably an offshoot of Phlegethon) leading from one side to the other; its bed and banks are made of stone, and the fire doesn't land there, so this is where it's safe to walk. Here reside the violent against God (blasphemers), the violent against order (usurers; Dante was stretching a little for categories here, I think), and the violent against nature—"which they used to refer to as 'sodomites'."
Of course, this is a bit of a WTF moment for Jon; but at that moment he spots Stephen, and breaks from the stream to run across the sand towards him.
Stephen is pretty badly burned by this point, but more importantly, he's given up all hope. At first he assumes that Jon has ended up in this circle too; but no, Jon is shielding him, and leading him out of range of the flames, and wrapping a toga around him (of course they have toga to spare), and generally putting the "comfort" in "hurt/comfort".
Back at the river, Jon demands to know whether homosexuality is seriously a mortal sin, and, if so, why isn't Wilde himself in this circle? Now that he has the time, Wilde explains more fully. The sin is "violence against nature". Stephen's nature was to desire men. The reason he's in this circle of Hell is the sex he had with women.
Stephen's world is rocked, let me tell you.
The three of them descend through the Malebolge and the frozen lake Cocytus (the Eighth and Ninth Circles), and come out the other side. The inverse image of Hell, Purgatory is a mountain; rather than descending through circles, you climb to higher and higher terraces, getting various sins revealed and purged along the way.
This setup is particularly hard for Stephen because he has directed several of the sins in question towards Jon: namely, wrath, envy, and lust. To his great shock, Jon forgives all of them.
When they reach the top of the mountain and find a beautiful woman approaching, Stephen, remembering the corresponding scene in the Divine Comedy, exclaims, "Beatrice?"
"Not at all," she answers. "Be a Tracey."
As it turns out, she, Wilde, and a handful of others have been working on a plan to get everyone out of Hell, one person at a time. Jon and Stephen were the test case. Sooner or later they'll be sent back in to pick up others.
But right now, they've earned a chance to rest and recuperate. Next stop: Heaven!
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Hellfire'n'damnation, oodles of character death.
Disclaimers: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
Summary: What it says on the tin, continued.
One-line summary: Oscar Wilde takes Jon on a Dante-esque tour of Hell.
Title: Stewart's Inferno
Characters: Jon, "Stephen", Wilde, families, ensemble
It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.
Virgil
A takeoff on the Divine Comedy. This time it's Jon who finds himself lost in a dark wood, until master witticist Oscar Wilde shows up and declares that he's about to get a grand tour of the circles of Hell.
(The whole thing is written in terza rima—or at least, an approximation thereof, because it's several orders of magnitude harder to pull off in English than Italian. Early on, after Wilde has given some exposition and stops to take questions, Jon finishes his response with "...and how come we're both speaking in verse?")
Here's the catch: the recently deceased Stephen is in one of these circles, and it's up to Jon to get him out.
The beginning of the tour proceeds largely the way the original does, but riffing on contemporary figures rather than those known in 14th-century Italy. The First Circle (Limbo, including the unbaptized and virtuous pagans) includes Deists like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Bill O'Reilly ends up in the Fifth Circle (the Stygian Lake) with the wrathful. And so on.
At first, Jon is surprised to find that Stephen is not among the wrathful. Wilde explains that people are placed according to their greatest sin (i.e., they are put in the closest possible circle to the center), and Stephen is in the Seventh. They move on.
The Seventh Circle, housing the violent, is divided into three rings. The outermost ring houses the violent against people and things. The middle ring is the Wood of Suicides (i.e., the violent against the self). Jon has a moment of panic over whether Stephen might be here, but is reassured.
The innermost ring of the Seventh Circle is a desert of burning sand, with firey flakes raining down onto the inhabitants. There's a stream (probably an offshoot of Phlegethon) leading from one side to the other; its bed and banks are made of stone, and the fire doesn't land there, so this is where it's safe to walk. Here reside the violent against God (blasphemers), the violent against order (usurers; Dante was stretching a little for categories here, I think), and the violent against nature—"which they used to refer to as 'sodomites'."
Of course, this is a bit of a WTF moment for Jon; but at that moment he spots Stephen, and breaks from the stream to run across the sand towards him.
Stephen is pretty badly burned by this point, but more importantly, he's given up all hope. At first he assumes that Jon has ended up in this circle too; but no, Jon is shielding him, and leading him out of range of the flames, and wrapping a toga around him (of course they have toga to spare), and generally putting the "comfort" in "hurt/comfort".
Back at the river, Jon demands to know whether homosexuality is seriously a mortal sin, and, if so, why isn't Wilde himself in this circle? Now that he has the time, Wilde explains more fully. The sin is "violence against nature". Stephen's nature was to desire men. The reason he's in this circle of Hell is the sex he had with women.
Stephen's world is rocked, let me tell you.
The three of them descend through the Malebolge and the frozen lake Cocytus (the Eighth and Ninth Circles), and come out the other side. The inverse image of Hell, Purgatory is a mountain; rather than descending through circles, you climb to higher and higher terraces, getting various sins revealed and purged along the way.
This setup is particularly hard for Stephen because he has directed several of the sins in question towards Jon: namely, wrath, envy, and lust. To his great shock, Jon forgives all of them.
When they reach the top of the mountain and find a beautiful woman approaching, Stephen, remembering the corresponding scene in the Divine Comedy, exclaims, "Beatrice?"
"Not at all," she answers. "Be a Tracey."
As it turns out, she, Wilde, and a handful of others have been working on a plan to get everyone out of Hell, one person at a time. Jon and Stephen were the test case. Sooner or later they'll be sent back in to pick up others.
But right now, they've earned a chance to rest and recuperate. Next stop: Heaven!
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I'll play with all these tropes in other fics, though, so don't be too worried. (And thanks!)
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Nah, I'm just being difficult. ;) I definitely look forward to seeing those tropes!
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I...I would pay to read that. You're making me sad...
:P
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And thanks for the thought!
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Still, nice to read the summaries, at least. You have some crazy awesome ideas, you know?
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Ideas are easy, though; execution is the tricky bit ^_^;
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The sin is "violence against nature". Stephen's nature was to desire men. The reason he's in this circle of Hell is the sex he had with women.
Well, that just blew my mind.
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I do love some irony in my Hells.
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(Un)holy irony, Batman! I too am saddened that this will not be written, but I am thoroughly enjoying these summaries.