Monday 9 March 2020 · Cannibal

On Being Called a Copycat

In short: The Undertaker complains that the Butcher, his villain in Cannibal, is described in the room’s story as a copycat. Cannibal is fiction from Escape This, its Butcher an invented character based on no real person.

9 March 2020

Monday. I have read the word copycat four times today and broken two pencils.

Yes, the story says the city whispered about a copycat. Yes, the Butcher borrows a little flair from the famous cannibals of the cinema, the ones with the good posture and the classical music. But every artist borrows. Did anyone call the second violinist a copycat? I suspect they did not.

What the whisperers fail to appreciate is that the only villain I have ever copied is myself, and I had not even been invented properly yet. I was workshopping. The apron was a rehearsal for the hat.

I have drafted a letter to the editor. I have also drafted a letter to the gamesmasters, asking them to stop describing my dinner parties as “a bit of fun”. A bit of fun! There are place cards.

Resolved: next time, something entirely original. Something with a lid.

— U.

The Undertaker’s mulberry wax seal, stamped with a U

Out of character

Questions this entry raises

Do any diary entries draw on real crimes or real killers?

None of them. The Undertaker, his alter egos and every situation in the diary are invented, and the entries describe no real crime, criminal, victim or crime scene. Where a real place appears, such as an Escape This venue on Lake Street or Collins Street, it is only where the escape rooms are played.

How can the Northbridge Butcher be a copycat and The Undertaker at once?

Cannibal’s story calls the Northbridge Butcher a copycat because he borrows from the famous cannibal killers of fiction. The Undertaker’s diary keeps that label and adds a joke: the Butcher is The Undertaker in an apron, furious at being called unoriginal. Both versions are fiction by Escape This.

Every question about The Undertaker →