#TOTA script book

[princeloww]

Stuff We Know About Campbell Bain (From Both the Show and the Play)

Since the play has some things that clash/contradict with the show, things I've taken from the SHOW will be marked (S) and the PLAY (P).

- (P) Campbell comes from a small place (Hector calls it "dead wee") called Invergellen, which is in the middle of nowhere. There are not a lot of job options, but there does seem to be some kind of tourism industry - the only job options Campbell can list are "sheep", "fish" and "tourists".

- (P) Campbell's dad lies about where Campbell is, telling people that he's off doing a youth volunteer placement in Africa. He even makes Campbell lie to his friends about it, too. Campbell says it's because he doesn't want anybody in Invergellen finding out. He also says his dad is reluctant to visit too often, out of fear that people will grow suspicious of his trips to Glasgow.

- (P) Campbell has siblings: an older brother and an older sister. His brother owns his own building company, and his sister works in Forestry - possibly for the government? Regardless, Campbell views his siblings as very successful and compares himself to them. He also believes that his dad compares him to them, and calls himself a "loser" who's "never gonnae amount to anything".

- (S) Despite having many past jobs and dreams he was seemingly dead set on achieving, Campbell states that he's never been good at anything other than the radio. He includes flirting with/getting girls in the things he's bad at. He also only learnt guitar to impress said girls, but must have failed pretty miserably based on his comment.

- (S) Before Campbell came to St. Judes, things must have been hard at home/school. Campbell's dad says that his mother is so worked up about the whole thing that she's had to take medicine, and (P) Campbell says that his dad says he "doesn't want to put (Campbell's aunt) through what (Campbell) put (Campbell's dad) through".

- (P) Campbell is excited when his dad is coming, and he is disappointed with him constantly letting him down/not showing up. I believe that Campbell's parents do love him and do TRY to understand him, but simply don't, and end up thinking/acting selfishly instead. They want to help but do not understand their son, and therefore do not give him the support he needs. Whatever Campbell "put them through" was likely due to them not understanding him or knowing how to react to his condition, or the education system and teachers also struggling to understand and accommodate for his needs.

I assume worry was also a big part of what he "put them through", but the line about Campbell's auntie still rubs me the wrong way.

- (S/P) Campbell's dad believes the radio is just another one of Campbell's "loony ideas" and thinks he is manic. Campbell (P) seems disappointed by this, and says he thought he'd be proud of him. Which is just kind of heartbreaking.

- (P) Campbell has to be wrestled by Stuart as he screams at his dad, the doctor and then eventually Stuart, too, to "fuck off". Which is very sad but also kind of funny because Stuart deserves that. This is after he finds out he has to go back to Invergellen (before he then fakes the manic episode).

- (P) Campbell believed he was the greatest comedian in Britain at one point and even went to the BBC in Glasgow to tell them. They were less eager to give him a chance and ended up calling the police on him. He says it's "kind of how" he "ended up" in St. Judes, which adds a bit of an extra layer onto (S) the police being called on him, Fergus and Rosalie when they snuck out.

There's probably, definitely more that I've forgotten to mention, but there's what I've got. There's obviously also the big difference between the show and the play with Perth/Invergellen, which makes some things canon only in the play and others only canon in the show. I'm totally choosing to take Campbell's siblings from the play and accept them as canon all around though,,, and the extra family details we get too.

OK thats all, stay proud loonies

(Sources - Takin' Over the Asylum (TV), Takin' Over the Asylum (official stage play script book))

[mamamittens]

Piece by Piece, You'll Come Back to Me

Part 9/13 of Spooktober 2023

@sunken-diver

Zoro X Reader (GN pronouns but Masc, so they are called brother)

Warnings: Kidnapping, yandere/possessive behavior, offscreen murder, and talk of corpses. Also this is inspired by the 1999 The Mummy movie, but it's pretty chopped up and loose at best. I was not writing a scene for scene rewrite lol

Word Count: 2,024

Luffy often dragged you into trouble. It seemed to be his job as an older brother. But he’d never managed to drag you all the way to a previously undiscovered section of ruins in the Egyptian desert alongside a book rumored to bring the dead back to life.

No, that was not something he’d ever managed before. Which is a little impressive if you were being honest. You’d lived in Egypt as an archeologist for several years now, Luffy naturally following and making fast friends on his own, so you feel this scenario was a tad inevitable. Robin thought so, at least, judging by her amused expression as she helped you climb onto a camel for travel to the sight. The last leg of the journey after a frankly disastrous accident on the river.

One that almost led to you being kidnapped but that was something to consider later. When you weren’t suffering under the scorching hot sun and intimately reminded that the library you were working at was perfectly climate controlled to preserve the many ancient works housed there.

Luffy laughed, punching Sanji’s arm as he saddled up.

“Ahah! Welp! That was an interesting ride, wasn’t it brother?” Luffy addressed you and you couldn’t help but smile.

“To be honest, Luffy, I really hope that’s the most exciting part of this trip.”

It was not the most exciting part of the trip.

In your defense, you’ve never liked alcohol. Let alone cheap wine. Couldn’t carry it if you had a bucket with instructions on the ergonomic handle.

Flush with the discovery of a sealed tomb belonging to a deliberately forgotten priest, you gleefully cracked open the Black Book of the Dead to see if your top-notch skills in ancient Egyptian glyphs was up to snuff. Pushing up your glasses before they fell off your nose as you did so. The heavy book almost winded you when you lifted it up to your chest, unlocking it with the puzzle box medallion to rest more comfortably on your lap.

Now, you’d read cursed scripts before. Usually promising an afterlife of discomfort and darkness or a life of having your ass bitten by fleas. Most unpleasant stuff. And you sort of expected this book to be no exception. Maybe some lines about being haunted by the inhabitants of the tomb that the book was resting in previously. Or the gods themselves cursing you.

What you instead found was a passage about the disavowed priest.

“—and he, o’ deceitful priest of the pharaoh, will be cursed to walk the earth for his greed. Banned from true rest, that foul, lustful man. Roronoa Zoro. Imprisoned forever more.”

Even more than a little tipsy you couldn’t help but frown. Luffy looking at you with his nose wrinkled.

“The hell did he do to deserve that?” Luffy muttered. You shrugged.

“Maybe he tried to sleep with the pharaoh’s wife?” You offered, personally a little doubtful you’d get a clear answer without scouring the entire complex maze buried under the earth. And maybe not even then.

That was when you heard it. Thundering hooves on the sand towards you campsite. Luffy jumped to his feet in alarm, the people further out firing at the intruders.

“Go! Hide in the tomb—I’ll come find you!” Luffy ordered, clenching his fists. “And take the book—they must be after it if they followed us all this way.”

Remarkably less tipsy than a moment ago, you closed the book and held it to your chest, running into the underground maze. Torches lighting your path as you instinctively ran towards the sealed sarcophagus of the priest. It was the furthest room you could think of and any locals so terribly interested in the Black Book would be wary of going in that far.

Only to find it empty. Totally and completely empty. Heavy stone lid on the floor and corpses of scarabs crushed at the bottom.

Obviously, someone stole the corpse but why?! Why now?! It had only been found hours ago! And it would have taken considerable strength to remove the lid—

There was a shuffle behind you and you whirled around in fright.

In the flickering torchlight, there stood a corpse. Withered and sickly gray, soiled bandages dragging as it stepped cautiously towards you. The smell of death thick in the stale air.

When you had turned around, it froze. Almost taken as taken aback as you were.

Something whispered in the air, a mumbled, breathless call.

And then the room was awash in golden light. Your clothes, modest pants and open shirt, traded for flowing silk draped over your shoulders and waist. The weight of a wig on your head with gold clicking at the end of the locks.

And before you?

A man. Tall and broad with golden skin. Green hair clipped short with modest robes bundled around his waist. Dark eyes fixed on you with a longing that made you breathless.

“After all this time… You find your way back to me. That foolish man could never hope to keep us apart.” He declared, his voice deep and resonating in the air with an almost doubled quality. English and ancient Egyptian laced together. He stepped forward as though you would bolt at the first chance. “Do you recognize me as I do you?”

You shook your head as he stepped closer still. The heat from his body washing over you as he reached out. Lifting up your face to look at him.

“I-I know your name… I think. But we’ve never met.” You confessed softly. He smiled indulgently. “Priest Roronoa Zoro… I think you may have me mistaken for someone else.” You informed him, flushed at the intimate caress of his calloused hands on your face.

He chuckled, the sound rushing over your face pleasantly.

“There is no mistake. It is not just your body that I know intimately well… but your soul. It calls to me still.” Zoro remarked, breathing against your lips like he’d die again if he had to pull away. Almost kissing you with every word. “And with my power we can finally be one. Memories can come later… for now, I just want you—”

“GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THEM!” Sanji screamed and the illusion shattered.

Cold, withered hands held your face gently. Rot and decay filling your nose as the corpse of a man thousands of years dead nearly kissed you. He whipped around with a snarl only to receive a boot to his face. Sending him to the ground as Sanji grabbed your arm and pulled you out of the room.

“W-What the hell…?” You gasped, glancing behind you to see Zoro standing defiantly in front of his sarcophagus. Black Book in his arms.

For very obvious reasons, you could not stay there. Choosing instead to run back to the capital city.

Chopper was nowhere to be found, but Sanji assumed he made it out alright.

“He’s pretty good at finding his own way out of things, to be honest. After all, we were both in the same place but I was the only one that got arrested.” Sanji offered with a smile. “Now rest up. We’re going to have a full day tomorrow trying to figure out how to put that bastard back in the dirt.”

Ah right. The end of the world by the hands of a vengeful, resurrected priest.

Sweet dreams?

If only. Though it certainly seemed so at first once you’d settled into bed. A long few days of running across the desert with rumors of plagues and mysterious deaths in your wake left you feeling exhausted. You set your glasses on the bedside table and sighed, glad for the modern convenience of a proper bed again.

It started with the sound of falling sand. A gentle, sort of grinding sound. Too far gone to move but not enough to block out the sound with deep sleep, you huffed, burying your face in the pillow. The sound growing louder until you could almost feel the heavy weight of sleep lift off of you.

And then it stopped. And it was just you and the sound of rustling sheets in the dark room. And you drifted back to sleep.

Your name sighed into the still night air with a warm touch on your bare shoulder.

You weren’t sure what you dreamed of. A confusing, tumbled mess of sensations.

There was screaming. Firm, warm arms holding you close.

Harsh, sneered Egyptian curses.

Furious buzzing of locusts that nearly woke you. Your mumbled protests hushed with a soft kiss to your ear.

“Sleep. You’re safe here.”

Daybreak cast long curtains of warmth over you from an open window.

You shakily rose out of a criminally nice bed, bleary and half awake feeling like you’d slept for a week. Overly large shirt draped over one shoulder, the other bared. Definitely not yours, or Luffy’s for that matter. You fumbled around for your glasses carefully, not wanting to send them flying and need to search for them first thing in the morning.

“Ah!” There was a soft click of hooves. “Here. He’ll be glad to know you’re awake!” You accepted your glasses, recognizing the brown and pink smear as Chopper. His earnest expression looking up at you nervously.

“Chopper? Where am I? Where’s the others?” You asked, looking around the startlingly traditional Egyptian architecture. Smooth white walls and open windows with silk curtains billowing. Not any room you’d ever been in before, that’s for sure.

Chopper laughed nervously.

“W-Well, they’re somewhere, I’m sure. S-Safe! They are safe! I know that much. Z-Zoro wanted to ask before doing anything drastic. He’s been waiting for you for a long time, you know.” You frowned.

“Zoro? T-The mummified priest?” You grimaced.

“Well, to be fair, he’s not mummified anymore! Took some sacrifices but he looks much better now, I swear!” Chopper defended.

“Look, Chopper, I know he thinks I’m… well, someone, but he’s got to be mistaken!” You protested but Chopper just shrugged.

“He’s a pretty real priest, you know. If he says your soul is one he knows, I believe it.”

“It is. Though I don’t blame you for not remembering. Souls are meant to leave their past behind.” A deep voice called out. You whirled around and saw him standing there, just like the illusion.

Though he wore simple cotton pants now, his bared chest was that familiar golden tan. A deep scar ripping across his chest. Gold dangling from his ear as he smiled, striding towards you.

“W-What do you want?” You stammered, nearly falling back on the bed as Chopper scurried out of the room.

“This. This is all I ever wanted… you don’t remember, but in the past, we knew each other. You, the cherished son of the pharaoh. I… I was too eager to have you. If I had just waited a little longer, we could have been lovers without interference. But I was brash and the pharaoh was not pleased.” Zoro smiled helplessly. “Trying to kill him probably didn’t help my case, either. He already couldn’t stand the thought of you having suitors. Ah, but now? Now he’s long gone. And we’re free to be together.”

“…Is that really all you want? What about the plagues and the curses?!” You asked, still freaking out a little as Zoro pulled you close to him.

“I intend to rule, obviously. And who could stop me now? But above all else, I wish to have you by my side for eternity. As we were meant to be.”

You swallowed hard.

“And… if I said no? That I didn’t want that?” Zoro smiled, almost indulgently.

“Eternity is a long time to say ���no’.” Zoro pressed his lips to yours and your heart fluttered despite itself. His eyes still staring deep into yours. “I’ve waited for thousands of years just to see you again. I can wait thousands more for you to want me.”

He wrapped his arms around you, pressing your face to his shoulder as he sighed into your ear.

“One day, you’ll wonder why you ever thought to say no.”

[timespakistan]

Sarmad Sehbai’s: The accidental playwright | Art & Culture | thenews.com.pk The short introduction that Sarmad Sehbai wrote at the beginning of his book Aarhay Terchay Aainay revealed that it was out of accident that he became a playwright. Actually, he had held only poetry to be the expression of high seriousness. However, he was forced into writing a play for television because the original playwright had failed to meet the deadline. The producer, Yawar Hayat, asked him to fill in the slot. It was a ‘do or die’ situation because transmission then used to be live and it was inconceivable to think of leaving a slot vacant. Otherwise, they all would have lost jobs. So, it was in great urgency that he wrote the play Lamp Post that was televised live under the direction of Yawar Hayat. The teleplay was generally liked and discussed more because of the unfamiliar treatment and the script being not the stereotypical realism made for television or radio. The teleplays and broadcasts had become used to fitting the mould that was understandable and easy to gulp down. Being state-run, the do’s and don’ts of what was to be aired had to be kept foremost in the mind. If certain things had to be said they were to be said not in the face but indirectly. The writers and artists working under censorship and oppressive regimes found their outlets. At times, they got caught, but at times they succeeded in escaping the brutally scrutinising gaze of the omniscient censorship. The accidental exposure opened new doors for Sarmad Sehbai as he got down to studying the form of drama. After a rigorous study tour, the realisation dawned on him that drama was no more or less than poetry – that the most overwhelming questions could be addressed and the most sophisticated feelings expressed through it. This emboldened him to venture forth into this medium which was seen to be less important in the literary and artistic tradition of the subcontinent. For a number of reasons, drama was looked down upon: Iqbal called it contrary to the integrating view as propounded through khudi, and others linked it more to entertainment and frivolity than high art or literature. The bias which the Muslim civilisation had against the performing arts also bit into the sour bread of the hierarchical structure on how society views its achievements. However, being exposed to English and European tradition, Sarmad Sehbai pushed the boundaries and in the process discovered in himself the value of expression through a number of voices. The point of the multiplicity of meaning or views appeared to be greater than the desire to express a resolved single narrative. The greatness of Shakespeare as the ultimate thespian started to sink in, liberating him as well from being a poet only. He was fortunate to find his teachers Professors Rafiq Mehmood and Aziz Butt holding his hand and his junior contemporaries Usman Peerzada, Imran Aslam and Salman Shahid rushing in with passionate commitment and talent to escape yet another spectacle of a failed venture. This enthusiasm generated enough energy to provide fuel for the requisite momentum to place Sehbai as the foremost playwright of the age. The first success at television reinforced Sehbai’s idea of what a modern play was supposed to be. Being increasingly familiar with the various experiments to do away with the well-made play, Sehbai departed from the realistic form of theatre and wrote more in the avant garde manner. However, with the passage of time, he settled down to a mid-way mark where the plays were neither too realistic nor so experimental as to challenge the viewers or audience into believing what they had viewed and understood. The audience did not have to rack their brains to find out what the play was about, perhaps necessitated by the fragmented experience that had started to characterise the life patterns and the way it was being felt in the post- WW II world. However, at the same time, he was also exposed to various playwrights who were influenced by Marxism, and who sought redemption in reorganising society and looked beyond the absurdist point of view. It was actually the belief in society’s finding its own level by creating an order that was not inequitable that Sehbai was able to bring back the familiarity between the audience and the playwright. Dark Room was obviously an experimental play that did away with the conventional plot. So, when it was directed by Shoaib Hashmi in the manner of its sensibility, it carried off many of an award. The unconventional pattern continued but with more rounded edges in Phanday where the young heroine was seen fighting off the conventional roles assigned to women. The young generation was seeing little worth in the routinised life, seeking an escape from the conventions that they were supposed to follow. But the first play that put Sarmad on the map of Pakistani playwrights was Tau Kaun – a Punjabi play that also challenged the conventional belief system and made people condition their life’s responses accordingly. The plays lifted the thick curtain from exploitation and the inequity embedded in the system itself perpetrated in the name of religion sanctioned ibham – ambiguity. That made Sehbai resort to his own tradition and discover the symbolic layers embedded in our classical literature. The quasi-mythological style was a means to escape definiteness of realism and to seek deeper layers of experience that only lent itself to one dimension of reality and understanding. The multilayered experiential reality appealed to the sensibility that Sehbai aspired to express. Sehbai’s belief in the society redeeming itself by seeking to explore answers has kept him relevant to the debate and the forms of contemporary times. In an age that has seen so many ups and downs, Sehbai’s quest has been steady and unflinching. He has remained faithful to his form of expression and has shown rare commitment to his craft as a playwright. The plays in the volume under review include: Hash, Ashraful Makhlooqaat, Phanday, Aik Muazzaz Shehri Ki Namaze Janaza, Dark Room, Auss Gali Na Jaween, Tota Rama, Tau Kaun and Panjwan Chiragh. Aarhay Terchay Aainay Author: Sarmad Sehbai Publisher: Gurmani Cenrtre for Languages and Literature Price: Rs 1,500 Pages: 532 The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore https://timespakistan.com/sarmad-sehbais-the-accidental-playwright-art-culture-thenews-com-pk/9654/