Vincent: When You Don't See Me

Yes, I went in costume today, but who would have known?

I would like to spend some time discussing a very important figure in Cedric’s life.

For those that are familiar with my work on FPMC, you are certainly familiar with the mysterious Vincent Marscapone. Vincent is introduced in the prologue of the work, making an appearance as the reserved and self-assured husband of Myrtle Marscapone. In this piece, he discusses a New York tradition that has since fallen to the annals of time. The version of Vincent that appears here is quite different from the Vincent that appears in Act I, which details an event from which the Marscapones never fully recover. In this chronicle, I write from Vincent’s perspective as he must rise from complacency, and, arguably, the very real affliction of depression. In the most focused of the nine acts, Vincent acts the protagonist who rescues his teenaged son from the laboratory of the wicked Doctor Trelaine. Though he is successful, the entire course of the Marscapone family is irrevocably changed.

Vincent was created not truly as Vincent at all. In that ancient Sims 4 save, now all-but abandoned on the Playstation, I created his image in 2020, without any grand idea in mind, and certainly without foresight of how deeply these characters would affect me. In two subsequent play sessions, I created two families, having freshly downloaded the Vampires and Realm of Magic DLCs. In Newcrest I created them, first Cedric, a vampire, flanked by his classmates from a wizard’s academy. I took that which was familiar and gave it my own twist. But it was their neighbors that I would say were my first real creation, given life from my own blood.

Myrtle Marscapone was an old woman, “older than sin.” Thin, tall, joy evaporated from her form, she had lines worn deep into her face, creases carved from years of looking down upon her students: some promising, most middling, and none of them living up to their full potential. She wore her grey hair in a tight bun high over her skull, always careful not to let loose a single strand.

In those days, in some kind of prophetic trance, I imagined Myrtle as a widow. Her school had since become her life, and what was left of her days as a young woman was a strange man with pale skin and wide shoulders. Kevin Marscapone, with the brown hair and narrowed eyes, was her son: a Vampire in a witch’s school. He did not leave the house often in those days, and between the digital sketchpad and the entry-level deskblock computer, he brought in the funds needed to maintain anonymity in the world of the commonplace. But his status as the primary breadwinner was never enough for him to earn esteem from his mother. What little time they spent together (Kevin rose when his mother retired) was often punctuated with bickering and disagreements. Kevin’s apparently lackadaisical, whimsical approach to life stood in stark contrast to his mother’s: serious to a fault. Myrtle, for her part, found family in the young Tzu Prano, a teenage girl who represented the old hag’s last hope in the fading years of her life. But, in Myrtle’s blindness, she could not realize how much her family was bonded, with or without her presence. Tzu, a “goofball” by nature, shared Kevin’s zeal for life and fanciful approach to the supernatural, and the two were fast friends. As the household struggled to keep up with leaky pipes and kitchen fires, Tzu got a job as a barista to supplement the house in ways her magical studies could not. And, of course, there was a fourth member of the household, but, well – we don’t talk about Bruno.

Kevin would eventually leave his childhood home and move east. Free from the scaffolding of his upbringing, benign or malignant, he eventually pursued a career as a scientist and created a number of inventions the likes of which no Sim had ever before seen. I cannot in truth remember so clearly anymore, but I believe Vincent was a creation of my own in Dream long before he ever made it into the Sim-world. Kevin had, at this point, shed much of the affectations under which he had been created. He now had auburn hair creeping toward his temples, colorful clothing, and blood ran underneath his pinkish skin – yes, Kevin had been cured of Vampirism. But in Vincent, his un-Earthly father, I found a home for the dark and unholy man I had long ago seen in the shadow. In this bizarre and disordered recollection, it was Vincent who was cloned from Kevin, but the truth had been obscured: it was the son who had been given the dark gift from his progenitor.

I have placed a number of elements in FPMC that draw homage to the otherworldly link between father and son. Shortly after Vincent’s departure from the corporeal world, Kevin found himself victim to disturbing visions of his deceased father, visions he initially rejected and attributed to schizophrenia. It was Cedric, ever the linchpin between the world of the ordinary and extra-natural, who urged him to trust his gut and not be so hasty to dismiss an uncomfortable revelation as mere feverdream.

As I begin to bring my ideas to fruition in TCE, I have pondered over what concepts to keep and which to prune. Make no doubt about it – Vincent will prove an even more key character than he was in FPMC. I think for a while I was quite afraid to put voice to Vincent, anxious that I could not portray him with accuracy. Looking back on the pieces in which he plays a major role, selecting with apprehension the part he plays with introducing Cedric to his life as a vampire, I am not always so satisfied with the aura he projects. The situation became infinitely more complicated when Davian unexpectedly rebound Vincent’s soul to its flesh in the mortal realm. Knowing how, given a second chance, he would not fade again into mist, I tried to integrate him into the coterie, letting him provide fatherly advice and prepare plasma janes in the final scenes of FPMC. And yet, I knew in my heart of hearts that something here was not as it should be. I was trying to tell a story that was not of my own making. I needed to go back to the beginning, to share things as they actually, really, happened.

Kevin and Vincent do not appear in the first book of TCE, and yet their quiet presence in the dusty corners of the Magicademy casts an irrepressible haze over all that transpires during Cedric’s induction into the world of the unknown. Each and every action taken by the elderly headmistress of the foundling home is done within the shackles of her secrets. What the reader will realize upon Cedric’s resurrection is that they were always there: Myrtle was bringing food to Kevin’s room in his imprisonment, and Vincent was walking the hallways in silence, educating his son as his eventual protege. And Cedric is incensed when he realizes what he did not know – furious – when he realizes he cannot have faith in what he thinks he knows. Yes, he, like the reader, must begrudgingly admit that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

There are many aspects of Vincent that will remain unchanged in the new retelling. He is still the adoptive mentor to Cedric, and he, contrasted against his son, Kevin, introduces Cedric to the world of the Vampire. Vincent is headstrong and confident, inspiring those around him to live full lives, to make each moment count, knowing even the immortal die someday. He is a bit of a puzzle, each word uttered seeming to have several more meanings underneath the first. Sometimes, after a while, one realizes that there may be more to find in what is not said, an eye for the negative space, each piece of English just a distraction from the weight of the interstellar medium.

I believe each of my characters is fully realized as I see them – it is I, the artist, that sometimes fails with my brushstroke. There are some details I have hinted at in various skits that I will highlight and give new voice to in TCE. One of these is that Vincent walks with a cane. In the cosmos of FPMC, it is a detail included in his first appearance in the 1920s that disappears by the time he does battle with Trelaine in the 90s. I will bring it forward and incorporate this detail of his being when he trains Cedric shortly before the turn of the millennium. I do not want to make light of his disability, and it is a particular detail that his difficulty in getting around in the world of the mundane does not affect him in shape-shift – certainly true disability is not something we can shed by pure and simple volition – but it is important for me to make the statement that the man titled by some the “Prince of Elysion” is more than just the odd man out. He does not belong here, and yet, perhaps none are so human as he. In spite of a subtle mournfulness, he is a beacon to those around him. Dutifully, for years enduring isolation, he instilled in his son the importance of the hidden lore, knowing that there is no greater possession than knowledge. Just his mere presence inspires his followers to question and think and wonder why the man who is never in want of a joke so rarely breaks into laughter.

Of course, like all aspects of the universe, Vincent is more than he seems. He too has his flaws, and his love of the law keeps him in the dark about the chaos he cannot control. Myrtle is not alone in her suspicions of his aspirations, knowing him too well to be placated by the image of him contented with anything less than absolute majesty. She married him for love, long before she had any idea of his Vampiric nature. And yet, the more time she has spent with him, the clearer the picture has become – Vincent never settles for anything less than the best.

Cedric’s time training as a new Vampire under Vincent is abbreviated but intense. Perhaps, still wounded from an uncertain youth, Cedric bonds in dangerous haste to the Marscapones, each of them fitting like a keystone into the chasms left by what has been taken from him. When Vincent invariably becomes yet another thing estranged, both Kevin and Cedric must cope with life in the shadow of the deceased. It will be up to them to decide how to shield their eyes and step into the light.