Blackbird


 * Note: If you feel like your character would know more than average about Blackbird - say, if they were a particular fan or had studied it at school - then give me a shout and I'll send you a more detailed synopsis.

Blackbird is an anonymously-written romantic tragedy novel that gained popularity in Lupaia for its highly emotive writing and its graphic and deeply personal depiction of the Newton College shooting. It is told from the perspective of "Joe", a Lupaian man in his twenties, detailing the events of his past. The tone is casual and fatalistic throughout, with the narrator taking frequent pauses to explain his current thoughts on the events he is retelling.

Synopsis
Blackbird is told in three acts, each following Joe and his on-off girlfriend Alice through a different phase in their relationship. The first covers its beginning, culminating in Alice attempting suicide and Joe realising his feelings for her. The second follows a tumultuous period two years later as a manipulative mutual friend attempts to "fix" their relationship and succeeds only in breaking it further. The final act follows their final reconciliation, before its infamous depiction of the shooting where both Alice and Joe are grievously injured. In its epilogue, Joe wakes in hospital with no knowledge of Alice's fate.

Impact
Blackbird is the subject of some theory, and almost every reader has their own interpretation of events. Whilst it's generaly accepted that the writer was present at the shooting and the story is at least in part autobiographical, it is often debated quite how much of it is actually true. Alice's death, while heavily foreshadowed throughout, is also never explicitly confirmed. Some readers have even suggested that the novel is an elaborate suicide note, or that the episode of deep depression the narrator describes experiencing at the start of the third act in reality culminated in him participating in the attack as a second shooter.

Currently only four people know who Blackbird's real author is; three of them are Devin Phillips, Ava Morrigan and Alexa Arthur, who are represented as the main three characters; and the other is Ava Morrigan's half-sister Olivia Downes, who quickly recognised Ava and her boyfriend when studying the novel at university.