Line #7 Literature/CarrionComfort


1	[[quoteright:291:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/carrion_comfort.jpg]]
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3	''Carrion Comfort'' is a fantasy/horror novel written by Creator/DanSimmons about psychic vampires that secretly control the world (or at least, as much of it as they want to).
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5	!! This book provides examples of:
6	* AdaptationExpansion: The novel started life as a novelette of the same title, [[https://www.williamflew.com/omni60d.html published]] in ''Omni'' magazine in 1983. The novelette focuses on Melanie, Willi and Nina, and is a small-scale ThereCanBeOnlyOne battle.
7	* AffablyEvil: Some of the [[OurVampiresAreDifferent mind vampires]], particularly C. Arnold Barent.
8	** FauxAffablyEvil: With few exceptions, there is not a shred of actual pleasantness or goodwill behind this behavior.
9	* AncientConspiracy: Averted. Though the mind vampires are able to mind control virtually anyone, they don't use governments or try to change the world. [[spoiler:The Öberst wants that to change.]]
10	* BreakTheCutie: Shayla was a good Christian girl with high hopes and strong values before Harod [[MindRape psychically manipulated her performing sex acts on him and spreading the footage around Hollywood]]. She becomes a laughingstock and a scandal, and finally [[spoiler: takes her revenge with five shots to Harod's chest]].
11	* TheBrute: Vincent is a silent, murderous hulk of a teenage boy who serves as Melanie's hatchet man. This is because Melanie's [[MindRape conditioning]] left him with [[EmptyShell essentially no consciousness other than a set of violent instincts]].
12	* BullyingADragon: Occurs whenever a normal human crosses someone with the ability, such as the young gang disrespecting Melanie or Willi's ex picking a fight with Harod- though in the latter case he doesn't even ''use'' his ability.
13	* TheChessmaster: Barent and the Oberst, both literally and figuratively.
14	* ChekhovsGunman: Shayla Barrington, a teenage actress raped by Tony Harod near the beginning of the book, is barely ever mentioned again [[spoiler: until she reappears at the very end and [[RapeAndRevenge shoots Harod dead in revenge]].]]
15	** The nuclear submarine captain Melanie makes chance contact with at the very beginning of the book comes back in the epilogue [[spoiler: as someone she's been quietly grooming all this time for a feeding of unrivaled scale]].
16	* DeathOfAChild: Melanie and Nina's psychic battle ends with a ten-year-old girl among the numerous people they killed.
17	* DeliberateValuesDissonance: People with the ability tend to view the rest of humanity as cattle, resulting in plenty of murder and rape, not to mention destroying the human brain through their contact and control. More mundanely, William was a Nazi officer, and while his fervor for the party was more based around his general love of war and control than ideology, he does subscribe to notions of racial superiority and inferiority. Melanie in particular has some ''distressingly'' backwards views in a number of topics, not least of all race, due to her upbringing in an old money southern family that held fast to antebellum tradition.
18	* DisproportionateRetribution: In Philadelphia, Melanie runs into a group of local gang members, who cuss her out and make fun of her but never actually try to harm her. She responds to this by having Vincent systematically hunt them down and massacre them, killing them two to four at a time and gruesomely mutilating the bodies afterward. [[VillainBall These murders alert her enemies to her location and lead the protagonists to ally with the gang]].
19	* DoNotTauntCthulhu: Melanie may not be as aggressive or predatory as the other vampires but you know that Vincent the hitchhiker and the street gang threatening and cursing her will get a terrible comeuppance.
20	* EmptyShell: Prolonged control by an Ability user can reduce someone to this. The resulting "cat's paw" is essentially an automaton under the control of the mind vampire, with only basic instincts left. In the worst-case scenario, only the brainstem operates independently, and the rest of the brain only runs when the mind vampire is actively Using it. People in this state are basically appendages of the mind vampire and [[DeathOfPersonality are otherwise dead]].
21	* EvilVersusEvil: Whenever the vampires fight each other.
22	* FateWorseThanDeath: The Pawns, people under the permanent control of an Ability user. They have hardly any personality left except for what is needed to serve their master.
23	* FreudianExcuse: When Harod is controlling Natalie, her glimpse into his mind shows that the loss of his abusive father and a toxic relationship with his mother are what caused him to become a homophobic, misogynistic serial rapist. Averted, as it does nothing to make the heroes or readers sympathize with him
24	* HeelFaceDoorSlam: [[spoiler:Tony Harod.]]
25	* HumanChess: To the death. Eliminated pieces are either shot by a sniper in the rafters or strangled by the piece that eliminated them.
26	* ILoveYouBecauseICantControlYou: Tony Harod with Maria Chen.
27	* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Melanie Fuller.]]
28	* KickTheDog: Harod could have been the TropeNamer. The first chapter he is introduced in has him raping a 17 year old model and actress and not too long after does the same with an air stewardess. He does have a PetTheDog moment with Maria Chen when he helped her go cold turkey.
29	* LaserGuidedKarma: Harod saving Saul, escaping the Island alive and refusing to use his power again do nothing to save him from his just desserts.
30	* LoveRedeems: Subverted. Harod gradually becomes a slightly better person (by psychic monster standards, anyway) after he and Maria fall in love. When the chips are down, however, he has mo trouble throwing her under the bus and she, heart-wrenchingly, accepts the sacrifice even when presented with the option to decline.
31	* MindRape: Plenty of those. And in Tony Harod's case, literally. In fact, Saul actually uses the word "mindrape" to describe what the Oberst did to him.
32	* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: And ''how''. William was a ''literal'' Nazi in his younger days, Melanie laments the suffrage and desegregation of African Americans as the collapse of American values, Harod is a misogynist and chauvinist of the highest order, raping women when he feels they don't pay him proper attention and circulating career-ending explicit footage of a ''minor'' to punish her rejection, and most members of the Island Club make various negative comments about homosexuals, Jews and women.
33	* PowerPerversionPotential: Exaggerated with Tony Herod. While not the only mind vampire to use the Ability to commit rape, he does virtually nothing else with his powers, and in fact finds it difficult to Use people for any other purpose. He associates the Ability with sex so strongly that he is functionally unable to use it on men.
34	* PsychicAssistedSuicide: All. The. Time.
35	* SerialRapist: Tony Harod uses his Ability pretty much solely to rape women.
36	* SinisterScythe: Vincent often wields a scythe as a weapon, although he sometimes uses a knife or a gun.
37	* TheSociopath: A seemingly universal trait of the mind vampires. While only the Oberst seems to be a true {{Sadist}}, the rest all have zero regard for the well-being of others and do whatever they want to whoever they want based solely on their own needs and wants.
38	* TongueTrauma: Melanie's first step in "training" Vincent is to force him to cut out most of his own tongue.
39	* UnderestimatingBadassery: The Island Club spends the book treating Melanie as an unstable outsider of little consequence beyond her liability. They have no inkling of the extent of her power or cunning.
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Context Literature / CarrionComfort