[I thought it would be fun to have a place to share [url=https://twitter.com/EchoBazaar/status/878288456140689408]in-character writing, rhetoric, or propaganda, as well as any fan art[/url], relating to the 1895 Fallen London election. Post as your character, someone new, or take up the mantle of the mysterious force of civic unrest known as The Self-Appointed Laureate!]
In just two short weeks London’s first Mayor, Sinning Jenny, is stepping down, and the city is abuzz with argument, speculation, and, in the odd dark corner or firelit salon, intelligent discourse. The three candidates – The Dauntless Temperance Campaigner, Feducci and the Implacable Detective – are just about to launch their campaigns. Discerning citizens will soon busy themselves digging up the candidates’ sordid pasts and closet-bound skeletons, each vociferously campaigning for their chosen representative.
Some agendas, however, are not so transparent. Earlier this morning, tacked to doors and slid through letterboxes, a number of poems found purchase in the streets. All are doggerel attacks on the Mayoral candidates. All are signed “The Self-Appointed Laureate”, although the handwriting seems different on each document. The meter is off, the rhymes are dubious, and the poet(s?) doesn’t seem to offer any solutions, but still…
Vote For Bandages 'Cos You’re Gonna Need 'Em
“Away with such fictions as laws and restrictions!”
Shouts the old bandaged man’s campaign.
“Out with the old, bring the daring and bold,
And fly up the links of the chain!”
Which is dandy and fine so long as one declines
To consider Feducci’s intentions;
Wreathed in ribbons of black and poised to attack,
This foreigner-mayor’s interventions
Will end in spilt blood staining the mud
Of our already-mucky home streets.
Because, you see, his “meritocracy”
Is nothing but a more discreet
Way of saying “I will be preying
On the poor and the weak and the lame.”
This Presbyter spy’s got his half-rotten eye
On our city – Fair Play, Fair Game?
Temperance and Other Vices
Dauntless, she taunts us, and threatens our gin-
Well if gin has no virtue then leave me in sin.
Teatime for London? Don’t patronise me;
There’s rum in that teacup, taste it and see
That the Lady’s more shady than she’s letting on.
First she comes for the drink, and then for the fun
‘till we’re locked in our homes in the name of propriety
As the zealots and prudes disembowel society.
“Dearie,” she leers, but do not be fooled
It’s not Office she wants, but Londoners schooled
To politely decline, to correctly oppose
All former joys. Besides, everyone knows
It’s the campaign that sustains her, she knows nothing else
And when the gin and the honey is cleaned off our shelves
You can be sure she’ll find something else that’s a sin;
She’s the Temperance Campaigner, she likes to fight, not to win.
And so Justice, as promised, sits in office, straight-laced,
Elected by voters with socks pulled to the waist.
“Teatime for London!” is yelled from the roofs
But see the agenda? Soon tea’s a sin too.
The Dame is Afoot (And Will Crush You Under Her Toes)
A final invective
For the Detective
Rounds out this Laureate’s verse.
Her all-seeing eye
Does nowt but pry
Into your homes and your purse-
A shill to the cops,
That eyeglass Cyclops
Will bring down the hammer of Law
On the petty crimes
And underhand dime
That pave over society’s myriad flaws.
Nowt but confusion
‘waits the “Log’cal Conclusion”
Should she win in her short-sightedness-
The Constables’ rule
Will cause London to fall
Once again; a Just, but non-functional, mess.
(At the bottom of this last piece of doggerel someone has scribbled, in different handwriting again, “Vote Squidley!”)
edited by Barse on 6/26/2017
