THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK - Q Org & T G Enterprises

Quote:

Originally Posted by beakripped";p=&quot (Post 5948)

(I'm not saying that the stories were written to be read this way, but...)

The Q Org. and the Teatro are the same organisation- rather I think the Q Org mutated from the Teattro, or was one of several creations of Teatro artists.

The Shadow, The Darkness reads, to me, like a job interview for would-be excecutives of a soon-to-be major corporation. Our Temporary Supervisor, The Town Manager, My Case for Retributive Action... these are examples of their creations. Art has become work - life-draining work. Artists have long suffered at the hands of an ignorant public audience and agents who often take more money than they're worth... "No more." It's time to cut teh middle man out and become The Man.

I was more than a little surprised at how easily, for me, the stories fit together, hinting at something much greater. I'll post more thoughts after my second reading of the collection.

To go out even futher...

From what it appears to be, the artists of the Teatro Grottesco (which had probably had by itself existed for decades) formed an alliance with an ancient gnostic, pantheistic sect, one which appears in one form or another or is hinted at in "The Last Feast of Harlequin", "Nethescurial", "Sect of the Idiot", "The Prodigy of Dreams", and "The Order of Illusion". This entity is less one unified thing, than many small orders of various sizes, idols, and levels of secrecy. However, the primary ideal of these varied cults is that of an all-transcending deity of immense power and vaguely malign - and highly alien - nature, somewhat on par with Lovecraft's Azathoth and its "courtiers". The sectarians gained the partial service and network of the Teatro, while the Teatro gained access to the sects mysteries. They eventually fused andtransformed into another entity entirely, which gained control of a small corporation in Detroit known as the Blaine Corporation and an even smaller one in a large, politically unstable country known as the Quine Organisation. These businesses grew, Q Org eventually buying out Blaine and provoking, through specially altered or withdrawn medication, rash and bizarre action by unstable employees. Case in example one Frank Dominio. Without such behaviour, they would never be able to push the move towards the project dubbed "Oneiricon" several decades later. Ironically, the remnants of the original Teatro and the cult itself would splinter away from this, organising a sort of psychological terrorist front known as the "Nightmare Network"...