Howdy {{firstname_title | Valthakai}}, Julia Roberts fans, pizza spinners, and pasta boilers…

Given that you’re reading this, I have safely made it to Italy, where I can’t decide what’s tastier: the food or the people. If you ever want to point out the benefits of walkable cities, may I direct you to a people whose diet is 95% carbs and they’re all in shape?

Don’t worry, I’ll be dedicating a lot of time to my travels here.

In the meantime, I want to invite our supporters once again to submit their names for our Gratitude Wall. You’re the lifeblood of this community, and you deserve your accolades!

If you need some advice, hit up the Crone, and if you’d prefer to get roasted, apply here.

You've voted, and our next preview is the deep dive into the children of the House of Usher, based on my favorite TV show, The Fall of the House of Usher.

As always, if you’re looking to support The Times, consider joining the Valthakan Literary Universe or donating through Ko-Fi!

Thank you to everyone who wrote in this week.

Enjoy!

Love,

The Crone and Daniel

Frankly, there are few TV shows that rise to the level of hyperfixation for me.

Through a blend of metaphoric imagery, incredible acting, and supernatural suspense, The Fall of the House of Usher has easily become one of my favorite TV shows.

Follow the story of Roderick Usher, the corrupt CEO of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, following the deaths of each and every one of his children.

What was initially seen as a tragedy backlit by the legal action against his company instead becomes the focal point of his meteoric rise to power and the cost of his dealings with the mysterious Verna.

As he regales the story of his ascension from the illegitimate son of his company’s CEO all the way to his murderous takeover of the company that left him, his sister, and his mother to rot, Roderick Usher is plagued by visions of his deceased children.

C. Auguste Dupin has been prosecuting Fortunato Pharmaceuticals for decades, seeking to entrap the drug company as it continued to slip through the legal cracks. Naturally, he is stunned to be invited back to the childhood home of Roderick Usher and his sister, Madeline.

He is even more surprised when the titan before him confesses everything. Murder, espionage, and falsifying data reports to present his company's drug, Ligadone, as a safe, nonaddictive pain medication.

As the night goes on, Dupin becomes more and more aware of the supernatural entity that is haunting— and reaping— the Usher family, learning that every aspect of Fortunato’s success stems from a deal made among Roderick, Madeline, and Verna on New Year’s Eve 1980.

While Dupin himself is unable to see the ghosts of the Usher children, we, the viewers, are treated to the gruesome aftermath of each child’s death— a preview of the inevitable fall of the house of Usher itself.

In today’s Deep Dive, we are going to be reviewing each of the Usher children and noting the motifs behind their color scheme, sexuality, and, finally, their deaths.

Furthermore, the way they are introduced as Roderick’s visions and the death cameos, as I have referred to them, reveal more of their internal motivations and final moments.

Let’s get into it!

Episode: The Masque of the Red Death

Sexuality: Polyamorous, pansexual

Death Cameo: A horrifically chemically burned Prospero walks up to Roderick and crouches to look him in the eye

Color: Red

Manner of Death: Making it rain

All the Usher children go through a rite of passage: they are to present a business idea to Roderick and their aunt Madeline, some way of “improving” the world, and if it meets the Usher standards, they are gifted $250,000 to make it happen.

Naturally, giving this kind of money to anyone, much less people barely into their twenties, alters something in a person’s psyche.

Prospero is no exception to this.

While desperately seeking his father's and aunt’s approval, he is introduced as a young, aggressive rake. The money he has access to gives him control over his partners— providing drugs, alcohol, and orgies—just as the Usher rite of passage has power over him.

Initially, his idea was the Prospero Nightclub chain: elite, invite-only, sex-on-site venues for the upper crust.

Naturally, his elders are less than impressed. They try to encourage him to take a bigger stake in the current Fortunato company proceedings and get him more invested in the work that gave his family their fortune.

It was a lost cause.

Prospero is sent alongside his older brother, Frederick, to deal with environmental disputes between the city and some Fortunato properties.

While Frederick speaks according to the statements set out by the family lawyer, Pym, Prospero is instead drawn to one of the properties in question, seeing it as the perfect place to launch his first nightclub experience.

After an altercation with Frederick, representing Roderick’s legitimate children, who put down Prospero and the rest of “the bastards,” the stage is set.

Our young Usher heads to the property site, a decommissioned research institute that has already been gutted. It has a disconnected water system that can be hooked up to the tanks on the roof.

The invites go out, and hundreds of the politically savvy, socially connected, and wealthy receive $10,000/person tickets to a masquerade orgy. But Prospero needs one more person: Frederick’s wife, Morella.

Arriving at his older brother’s house, he flirts with his sister-in-law, aware of her frustrations with her husband, and invites her to attend his nightclub, making his interest clear.

The tanks are hooked up, and Prospero’s vision of a wet and wild orgy slowly comes to fruition as he cuts corners to make sure everything is ready in time.

At the start of the night, it’s a resounding success; the dancefloor, private rooms, and bar are wildly active as people drink, dance, and fuck.

To everyone’s surprise, Morella shows up, and Prospero is ecstatic at the chance to cuck his asshole brother.

After a brief chat, he disappears into a back room with his partners, revealing the cameras he has set up throughout the building and his plan to utilize the explicit content he is filming as leverage in future dealings.

Suddenly, a woman arrives, unknown to Prospero and bearing a red skull mask.

After finding her in a private room, it is revealed to be Verna, Roderick’s mysterious patron from 1980, unchanged and unknown to his youngest son.

After a sexually charged discussion about consequences, she vanishes, and Prospero puts it to the back of his mind.

Morella is visited by Verna, a voice in her ear telling her to leave, but she ignores it even as the wait staff exits.

The doors lock, the people are led to the dance floor, and the sprinklers come on.

For a brief moment, there is the pleasure of expectation, followed by the screams of the damned as caustic waste— a research by-product that Roderick had stored in the tanks to avoid regulations— pours onto the crowd, trapped as the flesh sloughs off their bones.

Verna reappears, kissing Prospero and leaving him with her mask.

Morella is the only survivor.

Throughout the series, we slowly learn that Verna is set to claim every member of the Usher family, but how she does this depends on how much she likes the character in question.

At first glance, Prospero’s death seems unnaturally gruesome. But the youngest Usher represents practically every flaw in Fortunato Pharmaceuticals: the cutting corners, the disregard for safety, and the self-service in the name of profit.

Prospero is described by his siblings as “trying to fill the void with anything,” something especially apparent given his sexual tendencies. His single-minded focus on pleasure over the well-being of others directly led to the deaths of almost 80 people.

He prioritized drugs, sex, and blackmail over the consequences of such decisions— when he could have simply checked the contents of the water tanks on the condemned properties, had his event literally anywhere else, OR chosen a different money-making route.

He was always going to die, but how he did was a unique consequence of his own identity. The pleasures of the flesh were turned to torment, and his flesh was melted from him in a Divine Comedy-style reckoning.

To be a bit on the nose, Prospero, a man whose name undoubtedly means “prosperity," sought to make it rain, but instead of money or life-giving water, he summoned hellfire.

He is depicted as the first step towards the Usher-istic decline of morality, as he successfully drags down those near him.

Morella was simply the latest target of his hedonistic desires and had yet to be fully corrupted despite marrying into the family. Her relative innocence is proven by Verna taking the time to warn her to leave, and it is only in ignoring that warning that she suffers from Prospero’s fate.

Everyone else was a part of Prospero's lifestyle, people who had given up the fear of consequence for the sake of pleasure.

Finally, Prospero is constantly surrounded by the color red, which is most often associated with aggression—such as when he threatens his partner with a fork to their neck over his breakfast—and power, which he lacks as the youngest in his family.

He is only truly able to look his father in the eye after his death, his fleshless corpse interrupting Rodrick’s confession so he can gaze at him face-to-face.

In the end, Prospero was not prosperous; he had nothing of real meaning in his life and died how he lived—with little thought given to others.

I’m currently sitting on a train to Bari, rain pouring across the window and the vibrant green landscape outside. As I write this, I wanted to reflect on my time spent in Rome and share some observations and tips with you for any future trips you may take to the Eternal City.

Look, it’s just polite to know the basics if you’re going to someone’s country.

Buongiorno — Good morning

Bona sera — Good Evening

Ciao — Hello

Activo o passivo? — Are we going to get along?

Y’know, just the basics.

“Rome is like a lasagna,” one of my tour guides stated.

“Don’t let anyone tell you Rome is like a lasagna,” the other one argued. “You don’t need to dig into Rome to walk among its history; it’s all around you.”

Both Barbara and John were correct from their respective perspectives. Rome is ancient, and most restaurants, shops, and hotels are built directly into historic sites, with strict rules in place to preserve their external facades.

Buildings in central Rome cannot be taller than St. Peter’s Basilica, and the subway project is interrupted every few feet of digging as they find new historical objects. A casual walk will take you into the shadows of 1,500+ year old cathedrals, 500 year old ghettos, and temples that were built in four years and have stood for over a thousand.

There are a thousand different tour options and various accommodations for those who want to walk, drive, or hop-on/hop-off. I recommend you just pick something, because you can’t get to it all in any reasonable amount of time.

I greatly enjoyed the Vatican City, the Jewish ghetto, and simply wandering around a city that was the heart of civilization, and stands proudly to this day. History lovers rejoice!

The rules regarding gelato are quite simple, and the main one is thus: a gelateria should sell exclusively gelato.

None of this combination gelato and pizzeria bullshit. Tourist trap gas station equivalents, if my tour guide is to be believed.

Furthermore, gelato should be as locally sourced as possible. All ingredients that can be grown within the region should be sourced from there, and the rest should be of the highest quality possible.

The rule of thumb here is that gelato should be the color of the inside of its ingredients, not a vibrant replica of the external flesh of whatever went inside it.

There is fresh water throughout Rome, and I delighted myself in stopping by as many of the endlessly flowing fountains as possible.

They’re quite noticeable once you think to look for them: small stone pillars with a metal spout constantly spilling water. Useful for filling any bottle you’re bringing, but if you look closer, you’ll see a small hole cut into the tops of the metal.

Press your finger against the large opening, and you’ll force the water into a higher arc that you can drink directly.

Be careful, the pressure is quite strong, and you can easily spray anyone standing next to you!

Literally everyone in this country coughs without covering their mouth.

Don’t believe me?

Book your ticket.

Ancient Rome was quite in-the-know regarding hygiene and the benefits of washing.

Modern Rome is similarly aware, but I’m guessing the access to so much clean water meant they’re less worried about always having clean hands.

Let’s hope the rats don’t come back.

It was my first time seeing nuns in my life. Many of them were so young! Many of them looked like the Golden Girls.

I’ll be honest, my first thought was it was a themed bar crawl or an early Halloween party of some kind.

Just be polite around them.

Guys… the priests were hot.

It’s merely a fact.

“Oh, Daniel. Surely it’s simply the uniform that’s appealing.”

No, it’s the hot twenty-something who’s appealing.

I didn’t see a single priest older than 30, and they were all good-looking.

Just… be prepared.

Fleabag was absolutely in the right.

Continuing with the above analysis.

Everyone in this city is hot.

I didn’t see a single gym, nor did I witness anyone eat something other than carbs, and the people were foine.

Remember, despite their looks, Italian men are still European and male, so either play the game back even harder or cry into your gelato.

Next stop: Bari!

The vampires of the Dark Brotherhood loom larger than life, and our book club is only too happy to read about them.

With our group caught up through chapter 10, we’ve learned:

Oh boy, do our readers have thoughts. It’s all fangs and bangs so far, and I can’t say I’m disappointed.

We got you, dearie