Leave me alone, it's nothing serious.
April 9th, 2020
October 18th, 2011
London's Market has returned. That cramped and crowded bazaar of horrors is back, at once deftly hidden and sprawled out amidst the city's crumbling arteries. And Wagner, as ever, is there. He doesn't announce his presence; that's not Vaughn's way, to stand straight and raise up his voice. Instead he slips across Market boundaries, a dark and quiet scarecrow of a man with hands clenched tight in his pockets 'til he's done threading through a press of magician-people, all of them dreaming of power and success (and fewer infirmities -- all the more reason to keep his hands to himself). Haven's healer is wound tense and tight until he's found some out of the way corner in which he can breathe, somewhere he can skulk, can watch the foot traffic of greedy occultism coming in like the tide.
Only then does a Library journal make its appearance. But this is Vaughn Wagner, and he's no quippy conversationalist. No words, then, but instead a drawing. Vendors' tents, those short-lived structures rendered exact and precise in their lines and angles. They're haunted by the merest wisps of people -- he is not like that other artist who frequents the journals; warm bodies hold precious little interest for him. Further back is London, sharp as unrequited longing, looming large behind it all, and Vaughn's pen captures details which he shouldn't be able to throw into such stark relief, not from his far-off vantage point. But he knows the city and he knows the buildings, and this strange outside-in/inside-out view of two different worlds slammed atop one another are how he tries his unhappy damnedest to reconcile a constant state of in-between.
So he is silent, because this is the only raw way a half-healed man knows how to communicate.
Only then does a Library journal make its appearance. But this is Vaughn Wagner, and he's no quippy conversationalist. No words, then, but instead a drawing. Vendors' tents, those short-lived structures rendered exact and precise in their lines and angles. They're haunted by the merest wisps of people -- he is not like that other artist who frequents the journals; warm bodies hold precious little interest for him. Further back is London, sharp as unrequited longing, looming large behind it all, and Vaughn's pen captures details which he shouldn't be able to throw into such stark relief, not from his far-off vantage point. But he knows the city and he knows the buildings, and this strange outside-in/inside-out view of two different worlds slammed atop one another are how he tries his unhappy damnedest to reconcile a constant state of in-between.
So he is silent, because this is the only raw way a half-healed man knows how to communicate.
July 26th, 2011
He doesn't like it. (So what else is new?) Doesn't like Haven, exactly, but it's safe sanctuary when the rest of the world is just out of fingertips' reach. Doesn't like this whole 'the wards are down' business -- what does that mean? What nasty things will come creeping in the night? Most of all, Vaughn doesn't like being booted from the one place which he can hunker down in and not expect major ramifications for or from. When he and the others are bundled up and ferried elsewhere until the wards are put right again, he bares his teeth like a feral dog and all but offers warning growl.
And then they're taken -- 'they', he and Ophelia, of all fucking people -- to stay at a woman's house. A warm house (which, he'll only grudgingly admit, he does like), a warm house for a warm woman, with numerous adopted animals (and he's not so thick-headed as to not see meaning there, thanks ever so fucking much) and the constant smell of good things coming from the kitchen. Out of his element, surrounded by cats and women and a shivery dog, Vaughn doesn't know what to do. He takes himself, his cigarettes, his journal and the one bottle of booze he could grab before they were uprooted from Haven, and he lurks in the garden. His sketch isn't the usual precise architectural display, but a series of dark angry lines carved into the page: a church in disrepair, abandoned and past the point of recovery or salvation.
And then they're taken -- 'they', he and Ophelia, of all fucking people -- to stay at a woman's house. A warm house (which, he'll only grudgingly admit, he does like), a warm house for a warm woman, with numerous adopted animals (and he's not so thick-headed as to not see meaning there, thanks ever so fucking much) and the constant smell of good things coming from the kitchen. Out of his element, surrounded by cats and women and a shivery dog, Vaughn doesn't know what to do. He takes himself, his cigarettes, his journal and the one bottle of booze he could grab before they were uprooted from Haven, and he lurks in the garden. His sketch isn't the usual precise architectural display, but a series of dark angry lines carved into the page: a church in disrepair, abandoned and past the point of recovery or salvation.
May 12th, 2011
Haven's healer rarely communicates across magical journal network; he is not the sort of man who enjoys idle conversation. Truth be told, there isn't much conversation he enjoys at all -- Vaughn Wagner is too stubborn, too hellbent-determined on his own displeasure to allow real interaction or human connection... or at least not in conventional ways. When Vaughn reaches out -- and sometimes he does, cynical and anticipating burned fingers, but the reach happens regardless -- it is anonymously. If Vaughn is indeed doomed to live a life entrenched in magic, then when he raises his voice it is under convenient cover.
On Library journals, he is artist incognito. Not like the man who draws life and animates it so pages seem to breathe of their own accord; that is not Vaughn, he is not that sort of talented or capable. No, his pen skims and skids across magic-imbued paper, and though it is with a determined sort of surety, it is sans voice, sans anything but mundane lines made lovely, straight and winding in equal measure. Vaughn clears out the cobwebs in his head, and what he shares is structure made sound, the world the way it ought to be: sensible, long-lasting, damnably hard to wear down if proper precautions are taken.
On Library journals, he is artist incognito. Not like the man who draws life and animates it so pages seem to breathe of their own accord; that is not Vaughn, he is not that sort of talented or capable. No, his pen skims and skids across magic-imbued paper, and though it is with a determined sort of surety, it is sans voice, sans anything but mundane lines made lovely, straight and winding in equal measure. Vaughn clears out the cobwebs in his head, and what he shares is structure made sound, the world the way it ought to be: sensible, long-lasting, damnably hard to wear down if proper precautions are taken.