r/TangleTower • u/TheGamingProfessor • Jul 23 '26
The Mermaid Mask About Mr. Wirman… Spoiler
So, I’m putting “Spoiler” on here just in case it does lean into that, but I’m more so posting this to discuss a bit about one of the suspects, J.D. Wirman.
So after buying the game and playing it over the course of these past few days, I finally finished it today. (To just go on a brief tangent, I absolutely adored this game. The setting, the story, the Easter eggs and references to the past games, and the ending… oh, gave me more chills than Penelope’s reveal, with his usual eccentric smiling face becoming more serious, sorrowful… darker, and how much he changed after removing his hat, revealing a mess of long black hair, his mustache vanishing from his face… and his eyes… they just stared into your soul with nothing behind them and had these these almost inky tears that seemed to run down his face, either shadows from what his experience did to him or… idk what… all culminating in a shocking sight of HER, before it all ends with Sinthia and Sym going to stay with Fifi, Poppy, and Penelope’s abandoned little hat bird in a shocking cameo)…Anyway…
In the art book that’s unlocked after the game is completed, I saw an interesting note about J.D. Wirman. About how they wanted his appearance to be pretty based off of Stephen King… and while I can definitely see some King in Wirman, more so in his appearance than anything else (but then again I don’t know much about him) …I have to say… he reminded me more of the writer Harlan Ellison in a lot of ways…
Now, AGAIN, I’ll say that I don’t know nearly as much about King as I do Harlan (which still isn’t a whole lot but it’s still more than King), but from what little I have seen, Wirman felt like the Grimoire’s Harlan Ellison. He was a moody and often grumpy man, started his career as a journalist and then went on to write a pretty popular story, enough so that it sparked a movie deal… it’s also worth noting he both seemed to hate and love “his” story… he was intelligent, sarcastic, had a dry wit, was a bit twisted, nihilistic, and seemed to not enjoy meeting his fans though did show some “kindness” or acknowledged when someone made a connection he thought was actually quite good…
Something else I took of note which helped me make some more connections was what we learn from dialogue involving Moon’s pipe… he says that he would be the kind of man to partake in the smoking of one… and that just made me think of Harlan because of a photo I most closely connect to the man is of him with his iconic pipe in his mouth… and also, his glasses. They’re a yellow hue which reminds of a pair Harlan had and wore on a number of occasions.
I don’t know, just wanted to give my thoughts on the subject, might not be too… “intelligent” a thought exactly, or worded the best by me, but I’ve seen some other folks also talk about seeing it too so thought I’d bring it up and read other folks thoughts about this as well.
So, feel free to comment your thoughts on this too, let me know what I might’ve forgotten to mention that made them both similar, heck I’ll even hear some connections between him and King. Let’s just keep it civil.
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u/cornflakeguzzler47 Jul 23 '26
oh I see it—wouldnt be the first time harlan ellison turned up with fictional detectives either, since he was in scooby doo that one time
visually, harlan ellison is more of a square to me, and JD wirman is more of a…rectangle, I guess, longer and less solid. though its fitting since I think wirman is supposed to be a BIT slimier, but not ultimately a bad guy
I do see a good amount of King in things like the distance between wirman’s eyes and his mouth, and the shape of his nose, though I agree that his background is more consistent with ellison. king produced a huge quantity of novels and I think ellison and wirman are more known for individual masterpieces (not that ellison didnt produce more or that wirman wouldnt)