The Breathing Shadow story

[karpsmom]

I have read the lyrics again and again and think the story is wonderful, but some parts confuse me. I would like to see some people here write out their thoughts on the story, and give a little summary of what they think happens, who the characters are etc. Just curious what everyone else thinks, this is certainly something that deserves to be discussed!

 

[Cerebus]

Someone here summed it up quite nicely some year agao:

In chronological order, I is the first album, which tells the story of the man/boy running from his family to a forest where he finds a friend. They start playing games, the last one being a hanging game, during which the main characters new friend dies.
The guy grieves for him a while, tries to kill himself, but fails and then returns back home to his shitty life.

The Breathing Shadow happens after a pretty long time, seventeen years if I can remember right, after I. In that one the character is well used to his life again but then this guy he killed starts making kind of a connection with him in his sleep, and then it's alleged that he falls into coma or something like that and this gypsy woman saves him, but a little later after he leaves her place, the shadow (the guy who he kind of killed
seventeen years ago in I) takes over his body and hangs him with the same rope in the same forest.

The Closing Chronicles is where the main character who got hanged in the end of The Breathing Shadow is in this void, a limbo of some sort, and the guy who he killed in the first place has taken over his body and is alive in his body.
So the gypsy woman seduces the guy who has taken over her friend's body and becomes pregnant, in hope of giving life to her friend who is in the limbo. At the end of the album (in Alive Again (the song)) the gypsy woman is giving birth to her son, and her friend's soul is reincarnated in him. The guy who is in the main character's old body realizes this and leaves the hell away.

 

[FUBAR]

wow, awesome story, never knew it was that good!

 

[karpsmom]

Whoa, thanks for tying up the loose ends! What about the fourth chapter though, Alive Again (the album)

 

[Weizenkeim]

Here's how I understood "Alive Again", don't take any of this for granted:

The dead friend strikes a deal with a supernatural being called the Shadowman, trading his own life for the death of the infant protagonist and the gypsy woman. He thus dies and is later being reincarnated. The Shadowman attacks and almost kills the gypsy woman, but she is saved by the breaking of dawn and finds that the protagonist has been saved by benign spirits. The following night, the Shadowman attacks again. The gypsy woman battles him and is killed. The spirits manage to hide the protagonist from the Shadowman and leave him in the care of another woman. Fifteen years later, the protagonist is being told about his being adopted and the surrounding circumstances. He leaves his new home to find out about his past. Now no longer safe from the Shadowman, he is being sought out by the spirits, who tell him to stay awake. He eventually falls asleep and finds himself in Shadowland, the Shadowman's kingdom. The spirits lead him to a safe haven within Shadowland, but as he enters it through a gateway, he finds that he can no longer return to the waking world. Content with living forever in this illusory world, he leaves the real world behind him. We then cut to reality and find out the whole story has only been happening in the imagination of the protagonist, who had fallen into a coma at some point (Dan says it was right after Scarred for Life, but it's much more elegant to assume it was after he tried to drown himself ) The story ends with the protagonist dying.

 

[Cerebus]

And then in Still Alive he defies death and fuck things up even more... or? I can't recall the lyrics to it that good at this moment..