>>6305758>nursing a punkThis recall me the Little Punker movie. On the surface it’s about a ragtag collective of juvenile miscreants with dyed hair and safety pins, but really you can just as easily read it as an RPG party composition screen. Each archetype falls into place: the moody front-liner with a guitar = Fighter, the graffiti kid = Rogue, the girl who actually remembers homework = Cleric. Together they form that classic adventuring fellowship, except their dungeon is the decaying East German streetscape, and the treasure chest contains only state ration coupons and the faintest whiff of autonomy.
The so-called “enemy” is the Vampire — not Nosferatu, not Christopher Lee, but the collective suffocation of society itself, sucking vitality with bureaucracy fangs and Party-line monotone. And here’s the kicker: the cop, the eternal antagonist in the plot, isn’t fully vampire, he’s the Dhampir — half human, half system. He carries the power of repression but is still vulnerable to the kids’ chaotic charisma checks, his bat wings stunted, compelled to enforce while also yearning to pogo at the edge of the dancefloor.
The cryptic nonsense emerges in that Brechtian staging: a DIY cabaret within a police procedural within a fairy tale. It’s almost like The Little Punker is less a film and more a ritualized TTRPG session in which the Game Master is the state censor, desperately trying to railroad the party back onto the approved questline, while the adventurers gleefully meta-game, improvising new spells from zines and spray cans.
And yes, as always: the vampire is not killed, only banished. The society feeds forever, bureaucratic Dracula still rising from his file cabinet coffin. But in their brief chorus line, the kids achieve what Gildas would call the “whelps of the lioness” moment: betraying the king by inviting in the dangerous joy of their own chaos.
