#I mean I still suspect it's bullshit if it's el pais. it's kinda one of those stories you WANT to be true because it's fun but eh

[batsplat]

hello dr. batsplat! in your gossip post you listed the post-aragón 2015 rumor that vale went on to interrogate dani about why he raced him so hard, and how that is at the same time wildly unlikely but also would be fascinating from the character standpoint. i watched aragón a couple of times for my own purposes, but there were some bits along the way that made me think of it

first, it's the pre-race comment made by jorge's team manager wilko zeelenberg: "one: one never writes off valentino rossi, and two: we'll need some help from dani pedrosa". the british comms then milked it for all its worth. and after the race, in parc fermé, vale says in his interview, "i needed those five points more!" which is like. not a particularly outrageous thing to say, especially combined with vale's joking/self-deprecating tone, but, as you rightfully pointed out, marca is not a reliable source (don't trust them farther than you can throw their print copy...) you also said there was a second story they combined with the first one, about vale crashing a honda party in phillip island - so did the article come out after the australian race - or even after sepang? because then marca's implication would be that vale counted dani into the spanish conspiracy even if he didn't verbalize it

which overall tells us nothing in terms of like. Did It Actually Happen, HOWEVER. i, personally, think it would be fun and juicy if it DID and kind of marked the start of vale's descent. because, as you've also said, vale excels in one-on-ones, and always had dani covered... but not in aragón. is that the point where doubt starts creeping into his mind, that it's not the same as it was before, that he's not the same as he was? (i may be wildly misreading and dramatizing everything). and a LOT of people commented on how hard dani raced there, which is- first of all, why wouldn't he. but this, combined with his interactions with jorge (that podium is a pedrenzo shipper's paradise), maybe seemed... a touch suspicious.

yeah the story was published after sepang! but... uh, I'm gonna be honest, I wrote that gossip post quite quickly, did not check any of my sources and, well, I'm very sorry to the writers at el pais because I accidentally got my spanish papers mixed up. so, um, my sincere apologies to el pais for calling you marca, it will NOT happen again. here's the article which I'd copy pasted into my actual, y'know, notes (it was behind a paywall):

even though the dani rumour to the best of my knowledge originated here, I've seen only that one spread elsewhere - not the marc one. which isn't really surprising. getting mad at dani feels kinda newsworthy, kinda quirky, who gets mad at dani right. plus, the marc story really isn't all that believable. look, we won't ever know for sure.... but valentino interrupting a honda party to interrogate marc fits in with quite literally nothing we've heard from any involved parties, ever? marc has repeatedly said the sepang thing took him by surprise, that valentino had his phone number and didn't use it and all that, valentino has never made reference to this conversation, nobody at honda has ever mentioned anything like this... you watch the sepang presser and you just don't buy marc went into that with forewarning, right? how would his emotional reaction work in this hypothetical scenario? 'wow, valentino already complained to me directly about the stuff he's now accusing me of during a party a few days ago, but I guess I'm still surprised because I didn't think he'd talk about it in a presser'? like... it just doesn't feel right, does it

and, yeah, if you're reading an article and most of the paragraph you're on kinda sounds like bullshit, then you're going to treat the first two sentences with some scepticism too. the dani one is more plausible in that it hasn't been repeatedly directly contradicted by both major parties, but it does also feel. odd. this isn't how valentino handles his conflicts. if you want to know how valentino handles his conflicts, it's quite literally sepang 2015 - that weekend feels completely in-keeping with his conflict management (and escalation) in a way this aragon story just..... doesn't? he actively evades a private conversation with biaggi, he conducts his warfare with sete completely in the open (cf sepang 2004), same with casey, with jorge, with marc... I think what I wrote in the gossip post is that it'd be interesting because it would feel out of character, in a way that I don't really think anything else in 2015 is really does for valentino? again, I don't want to dismiss the article out of hand, but it does read more like an op-ed than actual reporting. and just to clarify, the piece isn't exactly trying to argue that valentino thought dani was involved with any conspiracy. it's more a general argument that valentino that year was unravelling, that he was demanding some distance from fans, that he'd manage to silence iannone (?) and so on. which, there's some truth to that - but even if everything in the piece is factually correct, the whole thing is pretty shoddy journalism. the aragon story has never to my knowledge been corroborated by another source - and the outlets I usually treat as reputable for motogp news didn't even report on it. could be true, might not be true, but it is very much a rumour spread around by a source with skin in the game

that being said! I do completely buy valentino was more frustrated by that race than he let on in public - and yes, his joking about how he would have really needed those points does encourage that impression. and yes, it is also pretty noteworthy as basically the only time dani bests him in extended combat. it's some very sturdy defending by dani's standards, a bit of a one-off performance in his career. by that point in the championship, every race felt extremely significant... you could say that race bears some surface level similarity to estoril 2006, where valentino lost a very close race to toni elias who really wasn't getting the better off him all that much (well, I suppose that one time he shoved valentino off-track at turkey 2007 lol). maybe also a little phillip island 2009, come to think of it, just a different championship picture. though those two are a little different - and in both estoril and phillip island I reckon it's fair to say valnetino was motivated to be more cautious than he was at aragon. I think it's... hm. I don't hate the interpretation it's the beginning of the end - honestly it is fun for narrative reasons! it's fun to look at turning points! but the way I personally read the 2015 season, I kinda think once you pass assen, pretty much every race contributes to that downfall? in one way or another

let's quickly go through them. *takes deep breath* in sachsenring, you've got a version of marc who is still clearly hung up about assen and shows as much in his presser answers. he does more or less manage to get over it during the summer break, which is the chance for a bit of a reset for everyone, but by that point the damage has already been done. from then on, there's several moments in these pressers where marc is getting asked about the title fight, is saying that 'well valentino is slower but he's been very consistent!!' again and again, is being constantly asked about his potential role as kingmaker and it's all very sword of damocles given valentino is sitting Right There... indy and brno work as this duo of races that make the title feel like it's slipping away from valentino, and at brno valentino relinquishes the championship lead for the first time (if only on countback). at brno, marc also decides to kinda harass him during qualifying (he'd already done his last flying lap so wasn't just catching a tow) - and they're asked about it in press, they joke about it, but it's just another moment where once again.... if that's one of the things valentino remembers from that weekend? not ideal. silverstone is just stress, and yes it massively helps valentino in the championship, the rain was a gift from god... but also you've got this niggling sensation of 'wow marc really is harassing valentino around that track, he kinda wasn't in control of that bike', and then marc crashes - and you end that weekend with a sense that jorge actually got a lucky break of his own to limit the points damage. misano is again helpful for valentino's championship, again is heightened stress due to the flag-to-flag conditions, again there's a sliding doors moment or two where you feel valentino should have gotten more of a points buffer out it, it's also the heightened stress of his home race and how the fans Just Will Not Leave Him Alone... plus silverstone and misano are on-track confrontations with marc that valentino has explicitly referred back to as moments where his suspicions were aroused. aragon, never been one of his favourite tracks where he was already in damage limitation mode but then would have expected to get past dani in direct combat... not the easiest of tracks for making overtakes stick and gets repeatedly cut back and frustrated (just ask marc about that kind of aragon experience lol). the fact that motegi/phillip island/sepang is a flyaway triple header, exhausting and away from home and already so very late into the season... everything about motegi was extremely stressful - that moment in the race when it looked like valentino might be proper fucked when dani got past until it became clear he actually could follow dani past jorge on his slightly healthier tyres in that kinda odd race. after the race, reporters commented that this was as physically exhausted as they'd ever seen valentino - who had worked so hard on his fitness for this season but, y'know, age comes for us all... this was taking so much more out of him than it ever had. and then you get to phillip island!! a mere week later! where he never quite looked like he had the pace for the victory, but kept himself in that lead fight through sheer intransigence and could take advantage of the other riders getting in each others' ways - before ultimately coming away with a disappointing result. and then sepang is a mere week after that, but I've heard that one at least was a quiet one

the point here is that it's a cumulative effect. I think aragon does stand out a little bit in that it's arguably the first of only two times that season valentino actually gets bested in wheel-to-wheel combat. but... I mean, his issue that year definitely wasn't the w2w stuff and all in all he would've LOVED to Actually Fight Jorge. it's a lot harder to fuck with a rival when they're always ten seconds up or down the road. I also don't think he really needed a moment of realisation that season about his waning abilities as a rider. he'd had four years worth of realisation that he wasn't the rider he was in his prime any more! stuff like aragon may have served as a brutal reminder, but at the end of the day 2015 was quite explicitly a campaign of relentless maximisation, a title charge built on podium rather than victories (see here). 2015 is such a defensive title campaign that his prevailing mode isn't cockiness... it's creeping desperation. he was also constantly being reminded by literally everyone that jorge was faster than him (including by marc, repeatedly), which he never complained about but like... how could that not piss you off? or maybe not even piss you off as much as it just... makes your resolve even greater, makes the stakes even higher to you. nobody thought you could do this after valencia 2013, everyone thought it was over for you, now they still won't trust in your abilities and you have to prove them wrong... the worst thing about aragon imo was that it comes just... as a reminder, as a way of twisting in the knife a little further. one more frustration in a season that felt full of them

the fun thing about 2015 narratively is that it's like,, custom-built to gradually chip away at valentino's sanity, at a time when he'd mostly ditched all his old tricks. he's reserved in his race-by-race celebrations (watch catalunya 2009/assen 2015 side by side and this might as well be a different person), he's not massively attempting to fuck with jorge in the press, he shows uncharacteristic restraint every time marc gets a wee bit weird towards him... he's just keeping his head down, working to get his tenth. but, well, in an odd way I do think that probably... didn't help? like, the reason why sepang is so fucked is because valentino didn't just have a normal fight with marc after assen. this entire season was a pressure cooker, and valentino just didn't use any of his usual outlets to blow off some steam. which is dramatically fun and juicy in itself - if valentino had just been kinda normal 2009 levels of bitchy towards jorge throughout the course of the season, if he'd had a go at marc after assen, hell, even if he'd insinuated dani was pursuing a pro-jorge agenda during aragon... I'm not saying bickering with your rivals is a healthy way of dealing with stress, but kinda a little bit? if that's how you've been doing your title fights historically, minus 2006 (which does in itself maybe go to show a little bit of feuding did help him), then if you're just going cold turkey... suddenly you get a sepang 2015 coming out of nowhere. because you have all this stuff festering inside valentino and he didn't just have a go at a rival to clear his head a bit

here's my 'pro aragon 2015 as a turning point' case: I was mentally going through his title-winning years and trying to think of him actually losing this type of duel and... well, he doesn't really do a lot of it? nothing in 2001 I don't think, then you have those two barros wins in 2002 (the streets won't forget) but the title is already extremely wrapped up by then, maybe ukawa at welkom, 2003... okay, that one's the outlier - arguably welkom and catalunya, definitely le mans and sachsenring - but crucially the sachsenring defeat pissed him off so bad it sent him into a bit of an existential crisis... which does go to show that repeated w2w defeats can and will get to him. 2004... I mean, maybe le mans at a stretch. 2005 there isn't really anything. (2006 has estoril and 2007 has qatar + catalunya.) 2008 has... well, depends on whether you count estoril has a prolonged duel, same with what you call 2009 phillip island. but especially like,, this second half of the season 'ooh gotta be sensible with the title fight' type duel he only very, very rarely lost. when you consider that plus his direct w2w record against dani... from that pov, I think you can say that aragon 2015 certainly didn't HELP his flagging confidence levels - and neither did having to perceive his teammate throwing himself onto dani in parc fermé right in front of his salad. that season is death by a thousand cuts, but some cuts will always sting particularly badly. aragon was right before the triple header... perhaps you can call it a tipping point for the ruin to come

[wyrdautumn]

The Apothetry Ithnomik

So, now that me and Jacqueline were officially a team, I wanted her help with something that’d been bothering me for a while. Given that I am a hacker of dubious moral character, I like to make a habit of breaking into any encrypted linkservs I happen to find myself in range of, just for funsies, and on the off chance I might learn something interesting, or have a chance to quietly beef up some nice person’s network so they’ll be safer from unscrupulous actors such as myself. A few months before everything started I ran into some nodes around the city that had some weird stuff floating around them, and I mean weird, at least by my standards at the time. For a while I was convinced I was looking at some kind of dog fighting ring, but, the stuff I was seeing didn’t seem much like dogs, if you follow my meaning. I had kind of decided to let it go, wrote it off as some hoax, or at least above my pay grade. None of it was cropping up near my neighborhood--and you’d best believe I was checking--so I could let it be somebody else's problem and hope I would find out it was just some kind of ARG someday.

But once I had Jacqueline on my side, I thought it would be worth another look. I took her to the last place I had picked up some suspect LMs and asked her to look around a bit, do her arcana check thing. I was kind of hoping she'd put my mind at ease, tell me I hadn’t stumbled onto some dangerous magical shenanigans, but if I had that kind of luck I wouldn’t be telling you about it. No, once we started digging, we pretty much found what you’d expect--somebody in the city was summoning monsters from demonworld and making them fight each other for sport. Even putting aside the ethical concerns--Jacqueline had a whole thing trying to explain the nature of all this, all I really got out of it was that people expect the monsters to feel pain so they do, which seems like a shitty deal if you ask me--this whole thing was obviously obscenely dangerous and was only going to end with a lot of people dead, and we were gonna have to make it our problem before it became everybody’s.

Once you knew what you were looking for, these guys weren’t too hard to track down. They were setting up this whole big arena, converting an old warehouse into a more permanent establishment for their bloodsport. Aethersport? Hard to say if those things bleed.

Anyway, we knew where they were going to be, so all we needed was a plan. Jacqueline really didn’t like the idea of going somewhere with, like, people. She was wary, didn’t want anybody seeing her, being able to track her down. Fair enough, right? Easy fix: she lives in shadows, she can hitch a ride in mine. She keeps hidden and when she does her thing we just pretend it’s my thing. All we had to do was arrange a meeting with the boss, talk him down or scare him straight, and send anything he already summoned back where it came from. So, I tracked down the ringleader on the underweb, hacked into his deck, and wrote us an invitation in the form of some malware.

It was a harmless little thing, just locked up his deck for a bit, played some spooky music, showed him this magicky sigil Jacqueline helped me design like something he might have seen before, then deleted itself and left him a spoofed “let’s talk” message with no sender. Pretty basic trickery, easy stuff once you have access to the deck, but all the effort went into presentation. Everything we had on this guy told us he didn’t really know what he was doing, and if we made it look like this was a supernatural attack and not just some copy-paste warrior level bullshit hacking he’d probably buy it. If it worked--which, of course, it did--all we'd have to do was show up for the next fight and he’d have to bring us right to him.

They built their arena out where the factories used to be, did up the interior nice and classy like some upscale nightclub from the 20s. They kept the place admirably discrete for how much they put into it, but even if we hadn't stepped in, there was no way they were gonna keep their secret for long. Maybe they thought they could pass it off as a regular speakeasy and buy their way out of prosecution when the time came. But then they probably woulda left a bunch of angry fuck off monsters rampaging through the city before it got to that point, so maybe foresight just wasn’t their thing.

I wanted to look the part, so I borrowed a few fashion pointers from Jacqueline and ran with them. I got this flowy gothy dress and witchy black jewelry, and then I threw on combat boots and a studded jacket to add a little punk touch for me. It was a sick look, honestly, and it did the trick, ‘cause I was barely there two minutes before a few burly-ass toughs dressed up like they thought they were Secret Service came around and brought me to their boss.

They called him Cowboy, on account of his whole affectation. Wide brimmed hat, southern twang, low-key aggro with a genteel frontier greed. We’re talking a guy who missed the point of a lot of spaghetti westerns. He didn’t waste any time once his goons deposited me at his table overlooking the pit. “You’re the one who sent me that message,” he said.

Obviously I was going to play it a little coy. “Maybe. I haven’t seen your messages.” That was a lie. “How should I know which one you mean?”

“The one that damn near broke my deck, of course.” It hadn’t done anything of the sort, but I put a lot of work into making him think otherwise. “You know, I figured this’d happen eventually.” He was sitting almost sideways on his booth chair, holding the neck of his whiskey with the tips of the fingers, and all I could think about was how he would seem even less cool once he inevitably dropped the thing. “Gotta be other folks in on this shit. Somebody had to write the book, after all. I knew I’d wind up catching y’all’s eye eventually.”

“Is that what this is?” I asked him in my best husky witch voice. “A cry for attention?”

“Please, darlin’, I’m not so pathetic as that. This here is just good old fashioned capitalism. Man takin’ his advantages and turnin’ them to cash, like nature intended.”

I couldn’t resist. “So you’re using the powers of the arcane to get rich quick. I suppose it’s less pathetic.”

“Heh. Had a feeling you folks’d be like that.” Cowboy grinned like a jackal. A really smug jackal you wanna punch in the face. “Cuz I’m a businessman, and I knew if y’all were businessmen--or ladies, ‘course”--yes he did say that--”and you had the kind of power I got at my hands now, let alone whatever other crazy shit I can only imagine, the world’d be run by folks like us.”

What a fucking idiot. But I needed to keep him talking. “So you’re going to offer me your business acumen.”

“Don’t get ahead of me now,” he said. He sat up for once and leaned in. He really thought he was a viper. “I still don’t know who you are. Or why you wanted to meet me in the first place. I got my ideas, but I know you have your own agenda. So tell me what you’re here for and let’s see what deal we can cut.”

The thing about knowing you’ve got all the cards is there’s not much point in lying. So I was straight with him, which, believe me, that’s not something I can say often. “I’m sure you realize I’m here to stop this.”

He just shrugged. “I figured it might be something like that.” Then he leaned back with that same punchable look. “So what will it take to change your mind? I know I can. Otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered talking to me.”

This guy thought he was so clever, and he was just ludicrously wrong about absolutely everything. I needed to make him see it. “Think about this,” I told him. “That book of yours, do you even know how old it is? How many hundreds of years, do you think?”

“19th century,” he said. “Had a dealer date it for me, before I figured out what it was.”

“19th century,” I repeated. Jacqueline whispered in my ear. I followed her lead. “Been around a while, then. And you’re right, that’s just the tip of it. Knowledge you can’t fathom, back to the dawn of civilization. Old, old, old secrets. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Not especially. Everybody knows magic’s out there now, it only stands to reason there’s people who always did.”

“That’s the point. Some people did always know. And all that time, the entire history of the human race, not one person ever had the bright idea to use that knowledge for personal gain. Nobody ever thought they could take that power and run the world with it. That’s what you believe, right?”

“Well, no, when you put it that way, I’m sure somebody tried. Maybe they just weren’t any good at it.”

He really didn’t get it. “Listen to me.” I looked him dead in the eyes. “It's not gonna work. Whatever you think is different about you, you’re wrong. What you’re meddling with here is dangerous, ‘Cowboy.’” I added the sneer. Couldn’t help it. “You’re playing with fire and when you lose control it’s going to burn a lot more than just you.”

Cowboy almost seemed like he was listening, which surprised me. “Let me show you something,” he said, and he waved his hand to pull up two screens for me, one for each of the monsters he had locked up in the pit that night. There was a mean-looking two-legged coyote thing--I figured it was supposed to be El Chupacabra--and some sort of freaky lion bear snake chimera creature that, I’m gonna be honest, looked a lot grosser in real life than it would have on an album cover.

But the weird thing about them was, they were just kinda… standing there. They were moving back and forth a little bit, but their motions were repetitive, like they were stuck in some sort of idle loop. “That’s always what they do,” Cowboy said, “least til we open their cage and let ‘em at each other. They’re dumb sons of bitches, ma’am, ain’t inclined to go huntin’ for nothin’ that ain’t directly in front of their face. We let ‘em kill each other, then we shut the winner in for a few days ‘til he fades away an’ goes back wherever he came from. Any poor bastard you put in front of ‘em is gonna get ripped to shreds, sure, but it ain’t a problem so long as you don’t let any poor bastard put himself in front of ‘em.”

I’m not kidding you, that was his grand fuckin’ scheme. That was his defense! ‘This is totally safe because everything about it is the exact opposite of safe!’ It really threw me for a god damn loop. I had no clue how to respond to that. So I looked back at the screens, and I almost forgot about all the bullshit I just heard, cuz El Chupacabra was looking back at me.

I guess Cowboy saw it on my face, cuz he glanced at the screen too. “Oh, huh,” he said. “Yeah they do that sometimes. Nothin’ ever comes of it though, it’s just kinda creepy. They forget all about the camera once they catch sight of each other.”

A jingle played over the building’s speakers and an announcer told us bets were closing in 60 seconds. The lights dimmed around the room and a spotlight came on over the pit. At this point I was genuinely pretty spooked, and I looked at Cowboy and told him, “you have to call this off.”

“Relax, darlin’,” he said, and he took a big swig of whiskey. “Why don’t you just enjoy the show?”

It was hard to keep my cool, but I thought freaking out then would ruin all that effort I put into building the facade. We always thought we were gonna have to drop in on the fight and let Jacquline take care of the monsters anyway, so I figured, okay, I guess we can just stick to the plan, why not?

But it didn’t feel right. Somehow I knew we had miscalculated. I looked back at the screens, and El Chupacabra was staring back at me, I swear looking right into my eyes. Like, right into them. Almost like--well. I guess I had a hunch. So I got up. I moved away from my seat. And its eyes followed me.

“Shit,” I said.

Cowboy turned to see what I was looking at. After a few seconds, it clicked. “Shit,” he said, and I didn’t hear what he said next, because the announcer came on again and said there were ten seconds left. Cowboy held a hand up to his ear, looking concerned, and started talking to his staff, but it was too late for them to do anything I guess, because the countdown kept ticking, down to 3 seconds, to 2, to 1…

There was a loud siren. I saw the cell doors open on the monitor and both monsters charged out of the gates. I whipped around, leaned over the balcony Cowboy was using as his perch, and watched with what I would say was an appropriate amount of terror as the monsters leaped straight out of the pit onto the floor below us.

So right away there’s pandemonium, people screaming and yelling and running, tables getting bowled over by the people and by the monsters, Cowboy spilling his whiskey all over the floor. About half of the guards ran for their lives, the other half drew their guns and started firing like that was gonna fuckin’ do anything, but luckily for them El Chupacabra and his buddy weren’t interested in the bystanders. They were coming for me. Or, more likely, for Jacqueline.

Less intelligent demons don’t really know how to deal with Jackie, is the thing. Most of the time they know she’s a threat to them, and some of ‘em try to run away or give her the slip, but you’d be surprised how often they just pick the biggest threat in the room and run straight for it. Normally that suits us just fine, but Cowboy picked the exact wrong time to show some common sense. He jumped right into action, to his credit, running off to help evacuate his customers and barking orders to the staff, and the first thing he did was make sure they threw on the lights. And they had gone all out with them, like full on covering the room with floodlights, I guess for specifically this kind of situation, which is almost an admirable precaution except for how utterly futile it is. But more importantly it just really fucked us over, because a room that bright ain’t got no shadows.

Jacqueline was wavering beneath me, the faint shadow I was casting barely enough to hold her. The monsters were skidding up the stairs, El Chupacabra leaped forward and smashed the seat Cowboy had been using, everything was going wrong and I realized I was going to die. I didn’t have very many options. And I wound up doing the thing I always do when things go sideways, like seriously you’d be surprised how much this comes up--I threw myself off the balcony and hoped for the best.

Bad plan. It’s always a bad plan. I took a hard fall and smashed into the ground. I was lucky I hadn’t broken anything, but I was bruised and hurting and winded. I could feel Jacqueline’s weight shifting around in my shadow. She didn’t have much to work with, to fight the monsters or to keep me safe. I felt paralyzed. I think she did too. And I didn’t… I didn’t like what I was doing to her. I didn’t want her to have to watch me…

Well, I didn’t want to die either. And the monsters had already leaped down. They were closing in on me, cautious, afraid of whatever scent they had picked up from Jacqueline. So I spun up my deck and beamed the worm I prepared to every device I could reach. I’d hoped to do it properly, have time to slip it by anything using more than basic security, leave my fingerprints off of it, but I didn’t have much choice. All I could do was brute force it and hope it got where it needed to.

I crawled backwards as best I could, my deck vibrating madly in my pocket, worried that if I tried to scramble to my feet one of them would take the chance to pounce. The ominous tone I cooked up started playing from somewhere in the distance, then it spread across the room, one device at a time. Then I heard it coming loud, from the monitors above the pit, and the house lights blinked out all at once. I felt a lurch in my stomach and I was gone.

Before I knew it I was back on my feet, somewhere else, still in the building but I couldn’t tell where. I was disoriented, the lights were all off save for a few bright floodlights casting long dark shadows all over the room, and the red glow from the monitors I hacked gave everything this super menacing vibe. Before I could get my bearings I heard a roar and felt something coming up behind me, and I dropped to the ground.

The chimera barreled past me and tried to swerve back around. It skidded into the wall, but that didn’t slow it down. It came crashing back toward me, but I saw the shadows swirling around me and I knew I didn’t have to be afraid of it. We had already won. So I charged right back at it. It swung its paw at my head but I ducked below it, sliding beneath its underside, and I gave it a hard uppercut in its soft underbelly that did absolutely jack shit. But then a thick lance of shadow shot out from beneath me, piercing the thing straight through its middle. It writhed and roared in pain, or whatever living aether feels, and the pillar of shadow lanced out again, stabbing it from the inside with a bunch of big nasty fuck-off shadow spikes, and then the thing just… wasn’t, anymore, and the shadows receded, and the chimera was gone.

Before I knew what was happening, I felt something swinging at my head, and then I was gone too. My stomach lurched and I was somewhere else again, but El Chupacabra must have been catching on, because I barely had time to register it barreling towards me, claws ready to rip my stomach out of my gut, before I was nowhere once more.

You have to understand, Jacqueline does the shadow thing easy. It’s second nature to her, like she knows the dance so well she doesn’t even realize she’s dancing anymore. She’ll shift and shape and reform however she wants and it doesn’t phase her in the slightest. But I can’t do any of that, and I definitely couldn’t do it back then, and being shoved in and out of your entire reality like that really fucks you up when you’re not used to it. So when I tell you I was doubled over on the ground sick to my stomach in just the grossest most pathetic seasick haze, I just want to make sure you know, for the record, that I’d like to see you take it any better, all right?

But, so, okay, yes, I spent the next minute or so shaking on my knees trying not to retch, so I kind of missed the next little bit after that. But I imagine a bystander would have just seen me grappling with my super anime inner demons and exploding in a big jaggy ball of shadow rage that eradicated El Chupacabra before it could try to get another hit off, so that’s the reality I’m gonna choose to live in.

Once I managed to gather my bearings, I took off to track down our friend Cowboy and finally finish the job. Luckily I didn’t have to go far. He was very courteously waiting for me by the bar, surveying his mostly-destroyed club. As far as I could tell everybody else made a break for it. But I guess he realized we still had business.

He tried to keep himself together, but he was fidgeting nervously and avoiding my eyes. “Well. It’s fair to say a lot went wrong here. But, I will point out, those things only had eyes for you, and clearly you had ‘em licked, so frankly I don’t know who you have to blame ‘cept yourself.” I think he could tell I was stabbing his head in my mind. “But I’m not a fool, no, and you’ve made your point, so, maybe it’d be best if we worked something out. I’m not adverse to bringing in an expert when the situation calls, and havin’ somebody who can keep the beasts in check is only a fair precaution, I would think. Obviously you can’t be in the room with ‘em, but--”

“Stop talking,” I told him. I stepped forward. He flinched. He was scared of me. That was Jackie’s cue. The shadows started swirling around me again, and Jacqueline rose from my shadow, half-formed in shadowstuff, shaping herself as a demonic figure towering behind me. We advanced on Cowboy. He staggered back, swearing under his breath.

Jacqueline took over from there. “You don’t understand anything.” She made her voice raspy and deep, a slight echo of Harvey’s cocky drawl underneath it. “This, all of this, this is the misguided workings of a neophyte, dog-paddling in water deeper than the deepest ocean, arrogant and ignorant of how small he is, how dark the waves below.” Cowboy had his back against the wall. “I could unmake you with a thought, and I am a shadow of the beasts you fail to see rising up to swallow you whole.” The shadows swirled and formed into a great scythe that she held in her towering shadowy hands, perched above Cowboy’s head, ready to strike. “This is a mercy.”

The scythe came down and passed through Cowboy. He gasped and shuddered and almost fell over, but I grabbed him by the neck and stared into his eyes. “You won’t be summoning anything again. You can try, but it won’t work. It never will. Let it go and live your life, Cowboy.”

I let him drop to the ground. I’m pretty sure he passed out. So we just left him there, and hoped he learned his lesson. If not, well, at least his next scam couldn’t be any more dangerous.

...

Nah. It doesn’t work that way. But what Jacqueline keeps telling me is magic shit’s all about, like, faith. And then she walks that back because that makes it sound like she means religious faith, and it’s not that, or like it can be, but it doesn’t have to, or something. I’m not gonna pretend I get it. But I think what it’s really about is, like… the belief that things should work the way you expect them to? You gotta have confidence in what you’re doing, and that’s what she took from him. Lot of work to make a white guy feel insecure, but I guess you can’t argue with results.

[thugnan]

Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake (PC 2002)

Story: 8/10

Characters: 8/10

Puzzles: 7/10

Chores: 7/10

Final Rating:  7/10

Fortunately Her Interactive was able to redeem themselves in my eyes after Secret of the Scarlet Hand. Toning down the book trivia heavy plot, but still presenting history in an engaging and interesting way. They also expanded the world they built for this game compared to the previous games by having bigger map. I might be slightly biased because of the ties to the mob and mob culture.  Like Message in a Haunted Mansion, it tried to be spooky, but just enough that it wasn’t annoying. I’ve also played this one like 5 times and have never run into any sort of glitches. The story/plot was easy to flow through despite the expanded universe.  This had less character involvement and it strangely worked for it. The chores were tedious but not as bad as Secret of the Scarlet Hand, and they created a more linear storyline. 

Plot (spoilers obviously):

Thug Nan is visiting her friend um.. Sarah? I honestly don’t remember and I was playing this last night. I’m going to call her Scaredy McScaredy pants. Because by the time you get there b i t c h is G O N E. Some ghost dogs apparently scared her off, what a wuss. 

After you arrive, a tree falls behind your car, so you’re technically “stuck” until you can find someone to remove the tree. Which is fine, you’re not a coward, but boy is this house falling apart. I can’t imagine why anyone would make such a poor investment. But okay I guess the same could be said about the mansion in Message in a Haunted Mansion. 

When you call McScaredy she tells you that while you’re stuck there, you should do her chores for her, which is bullshit. Whatever Thug Nan wants to get a load of these “ghost dogs” that sound like a bunch of baloney.

Whatever, shortly after that phone call the house is “attacked” by “ghost dogs”, I’m sorry but I’m a skeptic. Even if I saw their glowing eyes with my own two non-glowing eyes, I will get to the bottom of this.

You immediately run into Red Knott, who is obvs your first suspect. He watches birds but only at night?(tempted to spongebob meme) And he hates everyone. If it were up to him the park would be axed and he would live among the birds as one of their own. Very suspicious, but we’ve got other suspects to meet. 

He tells you to bug off and then morning you try to get on McScaredy pant’s boat only to find out that you need to borrow a spark plug from that same dood that told you to bug off. G R E A T. But because this is a Nancy Drew game, we already know that it’s going to come with a catch.

Red “Ivan Vanko” Knott wants pictures of birds. And even tho he’s perfectly fine doing this during the night, I gotta wait till the morning to do this, peachy. 

In the morning I can boat places so I go meet:

Emily: Lady who runs Em’s Emporium, her store is filled with things that she stole found in the lake. She’s convinced there’s treasure in there, and hates that the lake is on park land because that means that she can’t be hustling. 

Jeff Ackers: Park Ranger, that wants to make the park BIGGER, something something about being power hungry. He’s kind of a goody two shoes. He doesn’t like that your friend’s property was sold to her because that means he can’t be promoted or something. 

RIGHT, I forgot to mention that the property used to be owned by Post Malone’s grandpa (tru fact), Mickey Malone, a tru american gangster who got convicted for tax evasion (remind u of anyone?). He had four dogs that he loved, and it’s allegedly them who are haunting the property. 

Looking for the birds, you find his grave, and the grave of his 4 doggos. But for some reason two of the birdos hate you, and after talking to Ivan Vanko, he tells you that you gotta get some of that camo and be a nerd. Thug Nan only does it for the sake of the ghost doggos. 

Except the bank of Thug Nan is running kinda low, you don’t actually have money. Emily makes you go bug hunting to pay for the camo. When you are finally able to snap a picture of the last bird, you discover that someone installed speakers on the house? Suspicious. But unfortunately you get knocked the eff out before you can investigate 

When you wake up, someone has tied you up in the shed and SET U ON FIRE. W T F. I literally have zero leads but okay sure. When you look for the speakers, they’re gone, so we’re back to square one. 

 The convoluted puzzle in the living room finds you a super secret passageway into the basement. There’s nothing much down there except rats and a journal that reveals that Jeff Acker’s great great grandaddy was best friends forever with Mickey Malone. 

When you confront him, he’s like what? Naa I ain’t got ties to the mob that would go against my goody two shoes vibe I’m trying to instill. Which reminds me, this  b i t c h ticketed ME when I almost died, something about a fire hazard. Eventually he fesses up, and admits that his g-pa was in cahoots with Mickey Malone. Which is great because you need to get in contact with MM’s ex gf. 

MM’s ex gf tells you about the speakeasy in Malone’s basement and how to get into it. You trade the picture you found of her for the key. You go a lurking… and find the said speakeasy, it’s smaller than we expected but I bet Malone gets that a lot (joking, don’t kill me). 

After pulling a bunch of levers, you find another secret passage, all these puzzles are dog related and ngl I’m not hating it. MM’s ex gf hated these pouches, but shiiii girl I’ll take them all. You solve more dog puzzles and you find the doggos, you best know that Thug Nan gonna take every single one of these home with her. You find magic dog toothpaste that glows in the dark (they never explain the glowing eyes????) 

Thug Nan is gonna unleash hell on whoever is keeping these precious babies in such a sketch place. You discover their journal, and it sounds like they’re looking for treasure. Which only Jeff and Em know about… Who are the only two real suspects let's be real. 

One you’re in the vault, you find the gold, the moula, i soldi, el dinero, if you catch my drift. That’s when Em shows up all like “homie das MY gold” and is about to yeet Thug Nan down a ladder if you don’t get out of there. Fortunately you manage to trap her in there till the po-po can take care of her. 

Once again the day is saved, thanks to Thug Nan legit carrying the entire investigation. 

I think Jeff is promoted, and Sarah Scardy Pants gets to keep the doggos. THE END.