So. I would like to bring to your remembrance that theatre began as religious ritual. Medieval Passion Plays, and Greek high theatre, and the Sagas, and Wayang, and more I'm sure. Stories from the plentiful oral stockpile used to explain the spiritual nature of the current culture to the people living it. And which also, as needed, twisted the old stories to serve the new direction of the culture.
I am following two threads in this entry because I can't seem to think about them separately. (1) The facts of Luigi's actions as much as I know them, and (2) the narrativium obviously trying to break free from the facts that don't fit.
I have, from the start, been surprised at the blend of intelligence and self-destructiveness of The Shooter. I saw this point beautifully made on Bluesky, but I cannot find it again, so you are stuck with my precis. He came to New York ahead by at least a week, maybe longer, before acting, and he prepared by having a number of fake IDs and similar. Then on the morning of the day he acted, he showed his face to a fast food employee who flirted with him. So, this sort of points to him being the Tarot Fool - luckily smart but still reckless. The first stirrings of myth.
It was shocking to me just how many cameras there were in downtown New York, and how they weren't all uselessly fuzzy with poor resolution. And it was interesting to learn how the police then traced his actions backward very quickly. It felt almost like The Shooter has been set up as a trial run to give someone else an idea of what types of surveillance/obstacles there are/would be for something more shocking than the murder/assassination of a single non-limelight CEO. This makes me think of Pratchett's Blind Io - a head god in a pantheon similar to ancient Greece. He has multiple eyes, which fly around him, seeing everything. He is not evil - nor actually much interested in humans. The information noted by the "eyeballs" is neutral until collated.
The mythology of The Shooter seemed to get a big boost with him fleeing into Central Park on an ebike - and *getting away.*
Then there was the posting of the video of New York's finest performing the most pathetically bumbalicious search of Central Park - or at least the edges near the sidewalk. Later I wondered whether, since it was recorded easily and played on social media, it might have been a wild goose chase to lead reporters away from the real search.
After The Shooter's successful escape, I noticed a number of talking heads, whose studios are in New York, getting very strident in their condemnation of a single gunman killing one person instead of a schoolful of children, and I didn't realize until later that the graffiti in New York was getting quite angry and very explicitly anti-CEO, with a generous sprinkle of anti-any-rich. Anybody with money was feeling the tingle of the crosshairs on their body.
And that raised an important question - although it hasn't been addressed in media I have consumed. Why this particular CEO? There was a broad case for The Shooter having a vendetta against the USA health insurance industry, because of the gun casings with words on them. The words were similar, but not identical, to the title of a book about the villainy of the health insurance industry. But that's not linked directly to this CEO.
And then The Shooter was identified by another fast food employee and we learned his name: Luigi. There was a little media disappointment because it was not a Herculean name, but The Shooter redeemed himself by having a really buff body and an attractive smile.
And then other fast food outlets started posting that *their* employees would never have given him away, and indeed, they would have helped him deal with the gun still in his possession and other trivial issues.
So the narrative is starting to coalesce. Once upon a time, when tigers still smoked, and the ice giants roamed the land, a Prince was born and his name was Luigi. He lived with his wealthy family until he was afflicted with medical misery, and his health insurance did not help him as they promised they would when he paid them money - again and again. The prince gave up his titles, and put aside his family, prepared for a quest that he did not expect to return from, and travelled incognito to New York City, The Big Poisoned Apple. He lived quietly and frugally and unremarkably in New York City for a time, until he was ready.
And again the question is raised: why that day and why that CEO?
So Luigi was caught after escaping New York and travelling by Greyhound to Pennsylvania, a distance of at least 200 miles.
Prince Luigi and the betrayal of the two maidens. In the Big Poisoned Apple, Luigi was seduced by a pretty maiden into revealing himself on his day of action. His face was shown to one of the Eyes of Blind Io, who saw, and recorded, and held his image. When Luigi had escaped to The Quaker's Woods, and paused to refresh himself at a small inn, another maiden challenged him and said she has seen his image as recorded by an Eye of Blind Io, and she would now betray him for the reward. Luigi was taken by the CEO Protectors and placed in confinement, and Prince Luigi's name became known to the world.
So. Luigi is discovered to have a very serious, very painful medical condition - and no media report I have seen links Luigi to the particular CEO he killed. It doesn't appear that this CEO had any say that directly affected Luigi - so why this CEO? I suspect: lucky dip. Luigi was watching for an opportunity and took it when he saw it. It could have simply been the sign a hotel puts up showing which groups are using which rooms. It could have been a conference brochure dropped in the street. I think it has to have been something that showed the CEO's likeness, so that The Shooter would recognize his target. Although I think you need to know your target pretty well to recognize them from the back. Or maybe there were enough targets that the particular one didn't matter. I don't know.
This is when the narrative begins to tighten. Luigi is shown being moved to a new prison, and the CEO Protectors walk him into a wall. A meme shows up showing a picture of Luigi as Jesus the Sacred Heart hanging in a pizza parlour of Luigi's home town. Pure fantasy, I'm sure, but the accelerating narrative doesn't care.
A couple of TV reporters hold an interview outside the prison where Luigi is being held because other prisoners are shouting out about how bad his conditions are in the prison. The shouting prisoners have TV, so they hear the questions through the TV, and then shout their answers out the windows. Luigi can probably hear the shouting, but he has no TV.
Then Luigi is extradited to New York, and physically transferred. I suppose it is not customary for police officers to think about the optics of their movements, but Luigi's transfer shows him wearing orange in sunlight, followed by people wearing faded blue. He is tall and young and physically fit, with a very mild expression on his face, his hands clasped in front of him. No one is in front of him, so he appears to be leading the way. All of the figures with him are shorter, older, and more fleshy. They appear to be walking through a thin cloud of fine dust stirred up by their own passage. All have variations of the standard stern expression, but they seem to appear petty. People directing films have probably *yearned* to create such an evocative scene.
The dominant meme theme is currently Christ, but I am not sure it will settle there. Maybe saint, maybe prophet. I am assuming the CEO will be cast as a demon, but until we know why he was chosen, it is hard to say.
And then Prince Luigi allowed himself to be returned to the city of his quest.
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