#also this isn't important to read i just want to give myself lore events because etsu deserves a little ( nasty ) treat

[woolspun]

     you’re now the soon-to-be legal guardian of your ( much ) younger half-sibling. imagine that.

     except-- except this isn’t her imagination for once. no, oh no. this is REAL. as real as the way her limbs feel as if they’re filled with static from a television, the sensation of her nails biting into the skin of her ( cold, clammy ) palms just barely grounding her.      ‘ there’s been an incident-- we’re certain you’re aware of the recent villain attack. ‘ ah. of course. the commission would break it to her, and of COURSE, they’d have suits do it. the one who was seemingly apathetic to everything. to everyone.      a cop would be better at this. or maybe even a different handler.       fuck the commission fuck the commission fuck the commission fuck the c--      calm down. take a deep breath. in. out. in. out. repeat. lather, rinse, repeat, like you’re doing the dishes at home.      the heroine’s limbs are already tired enough from the aforementioned event, overuse of her quirk bringing forth the familiar sensation of her body refusing to listen to commands. bend your left arm, but instead of an immediate action, it happens in slow-motion. that, and there’s stinging scrapes with debris still sitting within them.      ‘ tough fluff-- give me a verbal answer. ’      huh ? verbal answer to what ? the flashing lights of the nearby emergency vehicles are so DISTRACTING...      ‘ anzu matsukawa. you’re the next of kin. the commission is willing to aid with the paperwork to streamline the process, perhaps.. skip a few legalities. ‘      ah. right.       mom. her quilt shop. anzu.      ❝ j-just, can you give me a damn minute ?! ❞      an uncharacteristic lash-out, the stress finally seeming to crush her beneath its weight. another loss. a fresh wound that will likely fester for some time, infecting etsu with more sour moods and other behaviors that’re unlike her. people will notice. maybe she should just tell suits to stuff it and quit ?      no, no, you’re being irrational.       ❝ yes, just-- dammit, dammit !      i know you can spare someone to pick her up. you people know every little thing about me, so send someone to get her and i’ll be there once i’ve finished this paperwork and given a statement. ❞      for someone falling into the pit of despair, her voice is surprisingly strong, held even as if the news of her mother and step-father’s deaths meant nothing.      far from the truth.      she gets an affirmation and the line goes dead, the hand clutching her phone immediately going limp, fingers nearly dropping the device to the concrete.       ‘ heroes don’t cry. heroes don’t cry. heroes don’t cry. ‘      oh, but they DO, because despite the constant mantra of ‘ don’t do it ‘ playing over and over, there’s wetness streaking through the dirt and dust caked to her cheeks. the dam has broken. to make matters worse, an officer finally approaches for her statement and to collect the paperwork that’s been messily filled out.       there’s awkward silence for several long seconds, a tired-sounding sigh shattering it.      ‘ ... come to the station tomorrow morning, we’ll finish things then. ‘      that can only mean she looks as bad as she feels. how fun. how fan-fucking-tastic.      a murmured thanks is offered, the paperwork is handed over, and then she’s tucked in the back of a squad car and being delivered to the commission. the ride is silent, but not in a comforting way. tough fluff uses it as a way to inventory her injuries, a throbbing above her eyebrow along with a quick touch of her fingers confirming there’s a deeper cut there. there’s the obvious signs of quirk overuse, hunger pangs starting to settle in while her joints ache due to being robbed of nutrients. stolen away for the sake of others. she’s lucky that they weren’t any worse, though the dull ache within her chest along with the discomfort twisting her gut...       those wounds will be the worst.

[lily-moon-art]

Venti is Jesus?????

***Disclaimer: I don't think Hoyoverse put this much effort into this, I just went to a Christian school and want to overanalyze something. Also I'm not trying to convert people or anything. I'm figuring my beliefs myself, and simply am applying the religion I grew up with to some media I enjoy. Don't read too much into this***

So with the latest addition to the Archon quest, I realized that all of the Archons have some theme that also relates to the Christian God. With some more thought, the Archons not only parallel many aspects of God in both the new and old testaments but also that they fall short in these aspects. Venti seemed like an outlier, but after reading more into it, he actually fits the best and he is my favorite so I'll be talking the most about him.

Freedom is not the first thing to come to mind when you think of Christianity, but for many sects and denominations, the freedom to choose to love him is the most important, because you cannot truly love something if you cannot choose to. Venti gives Mondstadt the freedom to do what they want and govern themselves. However, this does not work out because Venti is weakened by his lack of control and he even mentions that he didn't give his people the freedom to choose to be ruled by him.

With the Ballads and Brews event, we learn that Venti is somewhat of a parental figure for the people of Mondstadt, even if they do not know it. It is a running joke in the fandom that Anemo visions are given to people who have lost loved ones, and from what we can see, very few if any playable Mondstat characters have present, living parents that they have a good relationship with. As we see with Razor, Venti leads him to find the truth for himself of his parents, but also helps the people at the festival, even if only as a bard.

Another similarity is how Venti reveals himself to people, but they still do not believe. He is merely a bard and while he isn't too afraid to tell people he is Barbatos, no one other than the traveller believes him. He does miracles and easily could appear in his archon form, but still no one believes him, similarly to how people denied the miracles that Jesus did.

Looking at the lore of Venti, he also delivers Mondstat to freedom from Decambrian, who kept them imprisoned, similarly to Moses saving the Israelites from Egypt or Jesus saving people from sin.

Zhongli is more straightforward: he makes contracts, and God made covenants. Zhongli saved his people from the other gods and is known as the warrior god. There are many biblical references to putting on the armor of God. Zhongli can take on many different forms and is genderless, as evidenced by the line in the archon quest in Liyue where Paimon says the perfume for Rex Lapis's funeral is the kind an old woman would use, and Zhongli said that Rex Lapis could also have appeared as a woman at one point. Despite what many may say today, the Christian God is not exclusively male and has no gender. In fact, there are references in the old testament to a motherly aspect.

Ei is also quite simple, she wants to build an eternal nation and rules from a different realm using the puppet to enact her will, however the puppet does horrible things like the vision hunt decree in the name of eternity.

Nahida is all knowing and quite powerful, but her people instead worship dead gods and do not acknowledge her. She also reveals herself mysteriously to let the traveller find out for themself and she seems weak in the form of a child, like Jesus.

[mwolf0epsilon]

First off, before everyone comes after my butt with their "No Fun Allowed" and "Cringe" signs, this is in no way something to be taken as gospel or insightful. It's not a prophetic enforcement of canon. It's literally a theory done for fun, and to try to piece the Bendy Crack up Comics into the general and messy lore of the BatIM franchise. 

Most of you get this and don't need a big wordy warning about fanon interpretation, but a lot of peculiar people tend to show up in my ask box hoping to start a fuss over my headcanons and AU ideas, so I thought to be nice and leave a polite and diplomatic "Kindly Fuck Off" sign at the door for them.

With that said, there will be mild spoilers, carry on of your own volition, down below under the cut that will definitely show up because Tumblr mobile is a functional app that's never given me trouble!!!

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[[MORE]]

The Bendy Franchise has an established issue with cohesion in its lore. We all know what I'm talking about, we all have reservations about canonical character discrepancies (game vs novel vs guidebook) and we all have been racking our brains with a few holes in the timeline, as well as how BatDR (which is neither prequel nor sequel) will fit into this, since it's connected to BatDS and that's an established prequel to BatIM.

Granted I myself am missing a lot of pieces, having to scrounge around for info since I can't really get any of the reading material myself and rely heavily on @british-hero (who owns the novel plus got her copy of the comics yesterday), a very incomplete wikie, and analysis and theories from SuperHorrorBro's Bendy videos.

Heck, I also rely on a lot of gameplay footage, because BatIM has a bit of subtle storytelling through visual design of its levels, and hints of how certain characters work through a few game mechanics.

Through this mishmash of collecting puzzle pieces for the greater picture I even have a few notes on my phone to piece together certain events in established dates, something which comes very in handy for this theory since it talks about two particular characters, the Projectionist and Brute Boris (and I guess Twisted Alice to some extent but it's more of a note on some interesting thoughts I have of her).

Without further ado, here's what this theory is all about: Why did Norman become the Projectionist, and why did Twisted Alice turn Buddy Boris into Brute Boris?

If you think about it, there's only two creatures in the studio that really seem out of place in the world of BatIM, and that's Prophet Sammy and the Projectionist. Neither are inherently similar to any of the cartoon characters, nor are they considered to be Lost Ones. They're certainly not Searchers, but while we know Sammy is unique because his method of transformation was different, we never got an explanation for Norman's. It could be that it's a process similar to BatDR's new enemy type that's larger and seems to have bits and bobs stuck to it, but then those big guys seem like the equivalent to Swollen Searchers for the Lost Ones. The Projectionist doesn't really fit the puzzle.

Or at least he didn't.

With the introduction of the Crack up Comics collection, we get three new characters that were definitely designed in the same manner that the Butcher Gang was. Beginning with a corrupt monster forms and then giving way to perfect and pristine rubberhose toon forms.

I'm talking about Miss Twisted, the Brute, and Cameraman.

The villainous trio from the Souper Boris comic strip.

To us it's obvious the artists created them in parallel to Twisted Alice, Brute Boris and the Projectionist, but to the actual canon this actually has a bit of an impact on the Projectionist's existence.

Why, you ask? Because those characters were introduced between 1936 and 1940.

Bendy Crack up Comics table of contents, showcasing the publishing dates of the strips.

For anyone who doesn't know (either from not paying attention to the Joey Drew Studios channel audio logs, or from not owning the books) the Ink Machine wasn't conceptualized or installed until 1942/1943. Putting that into perspective, the only other thing that happened in Joey Drew Studios in 1940, was the conceptualization of Bendyland (which is likely the origin of the idea for the Ink Machine itself).

This means that Cameraman existed well before the Projectionist ever came to be, and that made me think about another thing: The Ink's apparent sentience.

I'll be frank, the Ink is very hard nut to crack. I consider it a form of alchemized entity, others consider it pure black magic, and I'm pretty sure Joey Drew himself had no idea what he was dealing with when he began using it. The fact of the matter is that the Ink is alive and that it has its own agenda. One that coincides with Joey's, out of mutual interest.

In the novels it seems to want to be free, but it can't exactly do that as a formless liquid, so it tries to body-snatch people (ex: Sammy and Buddy's grandpa).

When Joey tries to use it to give life to Bendy through nothing more than using the Ink and a template (likely a character model sheet) the Ink tries to follow the model but immediately becomes a distorted humanoid version of it (which honestly rings so many fucking alarm bells on its own). Things… Escalate there on out, with Joey trying to perfect the method and only managing to succeed through Daniel Lewek (and many other nameless Boris Clones), Allison Pendle and Thomas Connor.

An important thing to take from this, however, is that by trying to perfect this method Joey not only taught the Ink to reshape things into viable referenced material, but that he had to have lost control of just how many souls were being pumped through the Ink Machine for him to monitor and keep up.

Sammy started killing people when he completely turned, and it didn't seem to take long for him to cut down people in likely both the music and art departments. At this point he had no self-restraint and was completely wrapped around inky fingers and Joey's lies. 

Norman is one such potential victim, and Dot and Buddy even passed by his ink-wrapped body while fleeing.

Now, the thing about trying to follow a specific guide and not having the actual means to make it exactly the same thing, is an easy enough notion to get (as shows like "Nailed It", and years of trying to perfect visual style mimicry, have taught me).

The Ink likely had the template it needed (maybe a printed copy of Souper Boris that got thrown around in the chaos), the insight of what Norman's role in the studio was, the amount of mass it needed to consume and transform his dead body, but not exactly the right sort of… Centerpiece for it...

Cameraman using his lens to light up his path.

But what's a projector besides a bigger fancier camera? Both blink, both take film, same thing right? The ink doesn't see the difference and just stitches together this humanoid bootleg cameraman with the pieces it finds that are similar enough.

Mechanical blinky head? Check.

Strange round disc near the belly? There's a speaker. That's round! Check.

Film? There we go, a nice big round reel full of film in it, let's put it near the head, that's how it works right? Check.

Lastly, no Joey to actually direct this artistic recreation of a one-off character. The Ink did it all by itself while he was off getting his hand broken by a rightfully upset Buddy Boris.

If you look at it objectively it makes sense that being the projectionist tasked with not only recording and maintaining the projectors themselves, that the entity in the Ink would pick Cameraman as a template for Norman's transformed self.

It also makes sense that the Projectionist is so off-putting in the studio. He's almost perfect, but not quite because there just weren't the right materials. He's stuck in between Twisted Alice and the Butcher Gang clones as another failed recreation.

Moving on to the next question on why Twisted Alice turn Buddy Boris into Brute Boris, when she hadn't done the same to any of the other Boris Clones.

It's hard to say really, but I think it all comes down to who Twisted Alice really is. It's very likely that, as Susie Campbell, she would have knowledge of the comic strips. A few were most likely made into cartoon shorts even (which isn't an unusual assumption to make), and maybe Susie voiced a few background characters for said shorts.

Susie may have lost her role as Alice, but before Joey came to her with his proposition for the "special project" it's very likely that she remained in the studio, forced to do the voices of characters that weren't noteworthy or that she felt completely disconnected from (talking chairs and singing hens really don't become beloved fan-favourites) . Maybe if the Souper Boris story was made into a short, she might have voiced Miss Twisted (which honestly would be personally insulting considering she once had the role of the main heroine).

Point is, Susie knows her lore, and that translates to Twisted Alice's repertoire of insightful knowledge on the abominations lurking around the studio.

She never did turn other Boris clones into brutish lackeys because at the time she didn't need to. But it doesn't mean she hadn't considered it. Henry's disruptive behaviour is just what she needed to put that plan into motion.

There was already a "Cameraman" walking about, one that could easily rip apart anything it came across, so acquiring the means to recreate the "Brute" would have been benefiting from her point of view. The Projectionist doesn't take orders and can't be reasoned with, so if she could make something just as strong that took her orders she could, theoretically, be safe from most terrors in the studio. If that didn't work, she would still likely send others to their death by simply sending them down to Level 14, or maybe lure the Projectionist to them herself (just because he doesn't take orders doesn't mean she can't use him to achieve her end goals).

Miss Twisted, the Brute and Cameraman in their evil swamp lair.

But why Buddy Boris specifically? Why couldn't she have used any of the bodies laying around? Freshness most likely. Rigor mortis is probably still a thing, even for living cartoons. Easier to work a fresh dead body than a bunch of stiff wolves.

That's at least why I think Brute Boris is a thing. Susie's knowledge of most Bendy cartoon/comic strip characters, taking inspiration from the Projectionist's presence, and honestly a very twisted sense of humor and irony. In her quest to become a Perfect Alice, the heroine of the show, she ended up becoming just as antagonistic (although more sadistic) as Miss Twisted, a Bendy comic strip villainess.