Afterword

I always wanted to write a story where the bad guy wins.

I'd like to take this moment to thank everyone who's read this far. It always improves my day to know that someone's read and enjoyed something I've written. If you enjoyed my story at all – even if you hated it – please leave a review, or even send me a personal message if you'd like to discuss anything in detail. Even if it's been five years, and it's 2021, send it along anyway – I always appreciate feedback.

In particular, I'd like to give special thanks to both of the people who sent me messages about how much they enjoyed the story, and encouraged me to finish it. You know who you are, and you kept me going when I was thinking of giving up. Thank you.

If you've gotten this far, then you also probably want to know a little bit of the behind-the-scenes information about the story. So, as long as you're here, I'll give you some of my thoughts.

LANGUAGE

Writing for an illiterate and uneducated character was an interesting challenge, since I had to avoid using any complicated words or literary allusions (since he can't read, he can't refer to books), and to deliberately introduce bad grammar. Admittedly, the bandits' accents ended up sounding somewhat more American than anything else (ironically enough, given that nearly all of them have French-sounding names), although I tried to develop my own sort of cant for the bandits' speech. Still, I think I pulled it off.

I use the word "fuck" (and its various cognates) 106 times in the story, not counting the afterword. For comparison, I use "bitch" 20 times, "damn" 16 times, "shit" 21 times, "bastard" 14 times, and "cunt" 6 times.

The chapter with the most swearing is "The Treasure", in which I use the word "fuck" 23 times, "bitch" 3 times, "bastard" twice, and "damn", "cunt", and "asshole" once.

I deliberately avoided using any religious language other than the words "hell" and "devil" – for example, phrases like "god damn" or "for Christ's sake" do not appear at any point in the story. Check if you like. I decided to avoid it because the main depicted religion of Darkest Dungeon is "the Light", and saying "Light damn it" just sounds ridiculous. I think that's also part of why I had to use the word "fuck" so often – phrases like "for Christ's sake" had to become "for fuck's sake", for example.

I also mostly avoided homophobic slurs, until "The Pact" where Séverin refers to the Hellion as a dyke. Although I didn't write him as a homophobe (I actually wrote but had to cut a scene where he reflects to himself that he doesn't particularly care who his allies prefer to sleep with "as long as they got my back in a fight"), I figured that his contempt for the Hellion would lead him to use the most hateful insults he could think of.

I really enjoyed writing the hostility between Séverin and the Hellion. Most stories of this kind tend to take the route of sexual tension between the protagonist and antagonist, and I wanted to avoid that. So instead, I went with outright, utter, unadulterated loathing. Some people will, of course, still ship it. They always do. But in my view, the only scenario in which the two would have sex would involve rape. And I can't say I know which one would be on the receiving end.

The fact that I named a character "Guy" also restricted my language on a couple of occasions – since it would look weird to say "Guy and the other guys went into the Weald", I had to use phrases like "the boys" instead. Similarly, the fact that I don't reveal Séverin's name until the end of the story meant that I had to avoid sentence constructions which would require addressing him by name. And speaking of names…

NAMES

Most – although not all – of the names of the characters in the story are actually taken from the works of the Marquis de Sade, a man who specialized in writing stories even more bleak and cynical than this one. I only took names, however – characters in A Bandit's Tale aren't intended to line up with their Sadean counterparts.

Justine, Florent, Dubourg, Rodin, Bressac, and Séverin are all named after characters in Sade's 1791 novel Justine (although in a few cases with modifications – the novel's "Saint-Florent" simply became "Florent", and "Dom Severino" became Séverin).

Clairwil is named for a character in Sade's 1797 novel Juliette. After I posted the first five chapters of the story, I belatedly remembered that Sade's Clairwil is actually a woman, and that Clairwil is a feminine name. It's as if I called him "Jessica" or something. I considered referencing my mistake by including a scene where Rodin mocks Clairwil for having "a girl's name", but didn't find a way to fit it in.

Guy is named after Guy of Gisborne, Robin Hood's rival.

Philippe and Jean's names weren't intended as a reference to anything – I just needed French-sounding names for characters who'd end up dead by the end of the chapters in which they appear.

The Hellion, Dismas and Vvulf, of course, come from Darkest Dungeon itself.

STORYTELLING

Some readers may be angry that I killed Dismas in the story for seemingly no reason. If you've ever played the game, though, you're probably aware that bullshit, unfair deaths are more or less par for the course. Being unceremoniously gunned down by a brigand fusilier is exactly how Dismas died in my game. So it goes.

I tried to include a number of repeated turns of phrase throughout the story. This, again, is quite deliberate: Séverin has a very formulaic mode of speaking, like most oral (as opposed to written) storytellers. I also included a number of callbacks throughout the story, some more subtle than others. One of the most obvious is Séverin's "Career as a bandit…" one-liner, which he uses several times throughout the story. Another is how he uses the phrase "desperate times" when persuading both Justine ("Blondie") and the Hellion to make a temporary alliance with him. There are others, of course, but I leave the finding of them as an exercise to the reader.

Another challenge I faced when writing A Bandit's Tale was striking a balancing act between faithfully depicting its protagonist's amorality – and the sheer violence of the life he leads – and not including something so sickeningly violent or cruel it would put the reader off. As such, I tried to avoid showing any scenes of truly graphic torture or rape – the most violent part of the story is probably the eye-gouging at the end of "The Voice" (although the dismemberment of Rodin's "man in town" is probably a close second).

Likewise, I couldn't have Séverin kill the Hellion, since having the bad guy win that hard would probably have put people off. As a matter of fact, the scene in "The Treasure" where he fantasizes about having led the Hellion into a trap is actually the original ending I had in mind for the story: it was only after writing "The Weald" that I realized that I couldn't have it end that way. So I simply included it as his fantasy of "what should have been" and went for the current ending – which is, in my opinion, better and more nuanced anyway.

I did try to give Séverin a bit more nuance, actually, as the story went on – he's a vicious, cunning brute, but he also has hopes and dreams he wants to achieve one day. Florent, too – I mentioned his dream of owning a winery as a way of reminding the reader that even evil, sadistic rapists have their shreds of humanity, and hopes they too want to achieve. Likewise, I introduced the Hellion's dead husband and her feelings about him as a way of showing that she has a personality and history beyond "killer with bad attitude". We mostly see her worst side in the story…but consider the kind of person she's talking to!

One last tidbit: the song the woman is singing at the end of "The Dead" is Star of the County Down.

LAST WORDS

If you enjoyed reading A Bandit's Tale and want to read other things I've written, you should consider following my writing blog! This website does not allow me to post a URL here, but if you Google "Falk's Labyrinth", it should be the first hit. I post original short stories there every week or two.

Thank you again for reading my story. I hope you've enjoyed it – even if it's bleak as all hell. Career as a bandit, you see some shit. And now you've seen some shit, dear reader.

You've seen some fucking shit.

Oh, and last of all, I'd like to dedicate this story to S.A.H., for her kindness.