[color=#0066ff]With the 1897 election closing today, it’s never too soon to speculate on who you’d like to see in the running next year. How did you find this year’s candidates? What kind of competition would whet your appetites in future?[/color]
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[color=#0066ff](As ever, we delight in these discussions, and often take nuggets of inspiration from them, but this is not a formal request thread, and next year’s candidates will be selected by FBG. Pls have fun.)[/color]
Sadly, I found all candidates a bit unappealing and none of them offered me a real desire to vote with them. Thought I will pick Mrs Plenty, her campaign wasn’t impressive at all, but ended up supporting her because of the Rubbery lumps. No other incentive!
But speaking of Rubbery lumps, I just want to case my desire for a Rubbery man as a candidate! No one will understand what it will say, but most of us will agree! :D
EDIT: I want to mention that I was very busy in the past few weeks. Maybe the lack of time to debate, read theories or any lore about our candidates was the reason none of them convinced me enough.
edited by Skinnyman on 7/29/2019
If there’s one thing this year’s election proved, it’s that candidates don’t have to have an established stake in government, society or business to throw their hat in the ring. Next year, anyone could run.
[quote=Diptych]Next year, anyone could run.[/quote]And that’s what I’m counting on! :)
I would love to see candidates such as
-The Soft Hearted Widow (A bone to pick with the Dawn machine? A signature FL character given more substance, for those who haven’t played the ES?)
-His Amused Lordship (More about the Dilmun club - seeking lore - our friend the Sardonic Singer)
-Mr Huffam. (Spite, the press, the blackmail, oh the glorious blackmail).
[quote=Jolanda Swan]I would love to see candidates such as
-The Soft Hearted Widow (A bone to pick with the Dawn machine? A signature FL character given more substance, for those who haven’t played the ES?)
-His Amused Lordship (More about the Dilmun club - seeking lore - our friend the Sardonic Singer)
-Mr Huffam. (Spite, the press, the blackmail, oh the glorious blackmail).[/quote]I wholeheartedly support all of these. I’d love to see them as candidates.
To list a few more I’d suggest:
The Barbed Wit: Her invective would be unparalleled; her rhetoric a key threat in the Election. She also offers a chance to bring palace intrigue into the story, someone within high society but nevertheless appealing outside of it.
The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem: A candidate linked to dreams - to revolution - to the past. The lore opportunities are boundless.
The Dark-Spectacled Admiral: He may not be a common face in Fallen London, but with the focus on the Skies, a call-back to the zee would be an interesting topic.
Hannah, dear, did you have to use this particular phrasing in the year Mrs. Plenty was running? (You did, didn’t you?)
I thought this year’s candidates were, in one sense, very inventive and interesting, with takes on the race that we’ve never really had before. On the other hand, it was also markedly difficult to nail any of them down. There was considerable obfuscation about ends and means in all three campaigns, and that left me feeling lukewarm toward all of them. Two years ago, I backed the DTC because I really believed in her (though I would’ve been happy backing the Detective if the DTC hadn’t been running). Last year I backed the Contrarian because the other two campaigns were embodied disaster. This year, I sat on the fence between Mrs. Plenty and Mme Shoshana until the last day of the election, not because they were both so brilliant that I couldn’t choose, but because neither of them were compelling enough to sell me.
The biggest challenge with the election is to make it a real race. We’ve talked for years about the races feeling like a foregone conclusion, though we may strive and struggle to lift up our own candidate just in case. The pattern, as I see it, is this:
Most years we have ended up with a strongly polarizing candidate. While individuals may change position from year to year, London as a whole breaks down into supporters and opponents of a dangerous candidate. In a three-man race, one of these camps is always split. In 1895 it was the opposition, and Feducci sailed on to an easy victory. In 1896 there were two dangerous, polarizing candidates, and the Contrarian won by playing the straight man. (If this pattern holds, Virginia will be the winner for 1897. I am entirely happy for it to break down.) As long we have two even-ish groups split three ways, the victory of the undivided camp will seem (if not be) foregone.
So what does one do about it? We could have two candidates, one a loose cannon, one straight-laced. (This isn’t too far-fetched; our England was in 1898 a two-party country.) We could make all three candidates strongly polarizing, or none. Each solution comes with its own entailments; none are perfect. Perhaps the best solution is to simply switch between them, so that each year has its own pattern.
The Rubbery Entrepreneur would be interesting. He’s just a normal chap, trying to venally exploit the role and at the same time give his cephalopodian brethren the vote…
The Contrarian in A Wig. Of course it isn’t him. He doesn’t wear a wig!
The Boatman. Fair play. Penance. Regular working hours…
[quote=Azothi][quote=Jolanda Swan]I would love to see candidates such as
-The Soft Hearted Widow (A bone to pick with the Dawn machine? A signature FL character given more substance, for those who haven’t played the ES?)
-His Amused Lordship (More about the Dilmun club - seeking lore - our friend the Sardonic Singer)
-Mr Huffam. (Spite, the press, the blackmail, oh the glorious blackmail).[/quote]I wholeheartedly support all of these. I’d love to see them as candidates.
To list a few more I’d suggest:
The Barbed Wit: Her invective would be unparalleled; her rhetoric a key threat in the Election. She also offers a chance to bring palace intrigue into the story, someone within high society but nevertheless appealing outside of it.
The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem: A candidate linked to dreams - to revolution - to the past. The lore opportunities are boundless.
The Dark-Spectacled Admiral: He may not be a common face in Fallen London, but with the focus on the Skies, a call-back to the zee would be an interesting topic.[/quote]
I would very much appreciate all of the above. Specifically it would be hilariously amusing to see Mr Huffam try to impartially cover in his newspapers an election… in which he is simultaneously running for the office!
As for His Amused Lordship - whom I’d support without any hesitation against anyone else - hopefully some continuation of the Dilmun Club’s expedition might be in the books regardless of mayoral candidacy? (And considering he was openly supporting Mrs. Plenty this year, I wouldn’t expect him to run for the office himself quite so early ).
Finally, to suggest some other interesting possibilities:
- the Duchess and/or the Gracious Widow, as both are widely known and interesting characters, and come with both rich historical/cultural background and long-term plans they pursue
- the Tiger Keeper, as another interesting agent of a foreign power to broaden the set, not to mention the tigers’ penchant for incendiary mysteries
- and how about the Bishop of st. Fiacre? Considering his ties to many of the Neath’s deeper secrets, and the quite sincerely good-guy persona he’s always demonstrated, he might appeal to a lot of the more well-meaning voters
edited by Aardvark on 7/29/2019
I would like to see His Amused Lordship run. Or the Bishop of St. Fiacre. The Bishop has dangerous overtones that FBG likes to see in one of the candidates in every race.
That’s very true. I still don’t know why Virginia bothered to run if her motivations and intentions were what Azothi theorized that they were.
[quote=Catherine Raymond]That’s very true. I still don’t know why Virginia bothered to run if her motivations and intentions were what Azothi theorized that they were.[/quote]I could very well be wrong! At the very least, Shoshana’s concession did essentially confirm the (I must note, much more concretely supported) theory that her backup plan was escaping into Parabola; we’ll hopefully be seeing more of Virginia as her term progresses.
I’m not sure anything is concretely confirmed here except that we’ll be hearing more about the Arbor emissary plotline this coming year–something we already knew.
Candidates I’d like to see (one of whom I might even support):[li]
- Sophia, the monster-hunting academic[/li][li]Dr Schlomo, the interpreter of dreams[/li][li]the Pirate-Poet
I want a tiger lord mayor. Do you want a tiger lord mayor?
The office of mayor demands many things. Respectability, composure and a certain focused fierceness in every good leader. We need candidates who can be trusted to be the progress we deserve without changing anything we don’t need, candidates who can broaden our horizens and candidates who already have tremendous experience in statesmanship.
I am of course suggesting, in complete sincerity, that the Dawn Machine, Stone and Salt run for the office of mayor next year.
How about the former governor of Port Carnelian? This person has experience.
“You call failure experience?”
“I call experience experience.”
By “former governor of Port Carnelian”, I am referring to whomever had office before you arrived initially.
The obvious choice for Lord Mayor is the great Doctor Carrywell, chief researcher of Venderbight’s Grand Sanatorium. She’s brilliant, charismatic, cunning, ambitious, and absolutely chockablock with secrets. What London needs is someone willing and able to plumb its mysteries in the name of scientific curiosity and the public good, and Carrywell would be a perfect choice. Not to mention, she has some… political experience already.
Gul, why do you keep encouraging mayoral candidates that I need to kill?
Because a ruthless megalomaniac caring for people’s souls isn’t enough, let’s invite a homicidally insane sociopath to follow up on that by bodily vivisectioning people left and right!
Having Dr. Schlomo candidate would be a great way to find out more about him, and considering the secrets he holds about his innumberable patients, he would actually make a lot of sense.
But in the end, yes, I actually do want a tiger lord mayor ;)