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Monday Mashup #13: Silence of the Lambs

It’s an early morning Monday Mashup today, since I’m going to be non-bloggy most of the day. This week’s source material is the Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs. Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, what’s not to love? Other than the rumors about a prequel focusing on Lecter, of course.

I’m going to use Buffy for the RPG component. I’m also going to cheat a little and broaden the influence out to the entire Lecter/Starling series. The hook is fairly obvious; we’ll nudge the game into slightly darker territory. This Slayer survived high school and college and is now an FBI agent — reclusive, solitary, reluctant to trust. And why shouldn’t she be? People die around her.

The White Hats are her fellow agents. Maybe one’s a werewolf. There’s room for a techie, for a combat specialist — lots of possibilities. God knows what her Watcher thinks of all this, but he’s there too.

The Lecter figure is the initial Big Bad, unsurprisingly. But there’s a twist. He’s a vampire, sure, but he doesn’t do any of the vampire things. He’s evil in a very human way; he doesn’t do anything a human couldn’t do. And, in fact, as he plays hide and go seek with the Slayer, the clues he drops are references back to human killers — Manson, Bundy, and so on.

Season two is Silence of the Lambs, when the Watchers have ordered the Slayer to keep our Lecter-figure captured. He doesn’t seem to need blood, you see, and it’s worth studying that. He’s a prize. We now swing into the full-scale Lecter manipulation, with him helping our Slayer figure out who the current Big Bad is… and of course he’s a human. “I suppose there are some things worse than I, eh, Clarice?”

9 Comments

  1. t.rev t.rev

    Lecter’s motivations were alienation and aesthetics; he only killed the most stupid, annoying, and distasteful, after all. And he never expected anyone else to understand; what intellect was capable of apprehending his reasoning? No, Lecter was alone.

    But by the end of Hannibal, Lecter seemed to have decided that Clarice Starling was at least capable of being a true peer–suitably re-educated, of course. Perhaps she was unique. Perhaps not.

    Perhaps, instead, he had discovered that he was only the first of a new species of humanity. Perhaps he took on the responsibility of educating the new generation of Homo Superior, and protecting them from a world that hated and feared what it did not understand. `Professor’ isn’t that different from `Lecter’, is it?

  2. I haven’t been playing these lately due to having other things on my mind, but I decided to do this one today. Today’s Monday Mashup is Silence of the Lambs, courtesy of Lovely Bryant. My feeling on this is that…

  3. Bryant’s latest Monday Mashup is none other than the Oscar winning Silence of the Lambs……

  4. This week, Bryant’s half of the Mashup is Silence of the Lambs. This is another one of those movies I’ve…

  5. Every week, the Monday Mashup challenges us to mix a given bit of pop culture with a roleplaying game of our choice. This week’s Monday Mashup is Silence of the Lambs. Since we just played the first session of our…

  6. My trackback doesn’t want to work, but you can find my reply here, on my new gaming blog!

  7. Chris Chris

    Although I love SotL, it could use some actioning-up. That’s why I’d use Adventure! Have Clarice pursuing the Nazi butcher Buffalo Bill (“It putz zee lotion on itz zkin or it getz zee hose again!”) through the jungles of South America in the Lost Temple of Tzichitlan and through the underground kingdom of the Albino Ant-Riders. Cast Lecter as a mentalist of some regard who has come unhinged due to horrors unimaginable he saw in the trenches of the Great War. The image of Lecter hissing wisdom at Clarice from the back-seat of a bi-plane (he in his leather aviator cap, flight goggles, and no-bitey mask and she with a long flowing scarf and cheap shoes…) is for some reason now burnt into my brain.

  8. ….and it shows up right after I comment. 🙂

  9. I’ve got some catching up to do… Monday Mashup #13: Silence of the Lambs I’m combining this with Nobilis. Lecter…

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