A Literary Reflection upon the Habits and Disposition of Certain Felines
Here in the headquarters of the Constitutional Monarchy of Koningen der Nacht we are very much enjoying a new web-based game called Echo Bazaar, set in a version of London that has fallen through the earth and into Hell.
Not much different from the real version, you may think, or at least any routine trip on the Cthonic Railway London Underground. But the faintly Victorian ambience of this one has seen it labelled as steampunk, which it isn’t actually, not really. Well, there are some brass goggles and a dirigible, but these are bolt-on features rather than key story planks.
Anyway. Echo Bazaar is a work of art, and people have flocked to it. It is crack cocaine as far as effective time management is concerned, and anyone needing something more interesting than the work they are paid to do to occupy their time is encouraged to hurry right along.
The game works through Twitter (hashtag #ebz) and one method of getting more playing time when you have used up your allotted daily dose of server traffic is to send out a Tweet about the game. Some of the most popular involve a mythical creature called The Starveling Cat.
The kind of animal that disobedient children are promised a meeting with in the shadows that follow bedtime if they do not behave like little angels fresh from Heaven’s door.
So much so that a competition was organised for the best rhyming couplets about its activities with the winners added to the available Tweets.
Sadly I began playing too late to partake of this. But, ever one for a pointless literary challenge, I developed a rule of my own. If I should need to Tweet for actions, I would have to contribute to the general commonweal an original Starveling Cat couplet. Here are my best attempts:
“The starveling cat! The starveling cat! Has shat in your hat with amazing eclat!”
“The starveling cat! The starveling cat! Shreds your cravat and then demands a pat!”
“The starveling cat! The starveling cat! Got into a spat with a bloody great rat!”
“The starveling cat! The starveling cat! Distrait from its spat, it could not give a drat!”
“The starveling cat! The starveling cat! It scrit and it scrat but found nothing but scat!”
Think of them as the LOLCats of Fallen London…
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OMG I have just been sucked into the void that is Fallen London and am addicted totally 🙂
And loving the Starveling Cat snippets, yours should be in the mix 🙂