#but Will kinda IS Henry and im just kinda over here playing with copies of his action figures

[kineticallyanywhere]

Monkey’s Paw pages 148-151 ( START HERE || ao3 || previous || next ) AU after episode 62. The Omega Dads try a more desperate gambit, but   careful what you wish for. Our dads find alternate versions of themselves in a strange dreamscape.Ifyou die in the dream,doyou die in real life?

heeeeeyyyyy I've been through like 3 major life shifts since the last update lol

ANYWAY this Henry and Hen conversation is literally like a thousand words long total. i actually made it longer on purpose. I was like 'hm. this is a lot of talking... but is it enough talking?' and I thought back to the transcriptions of Will's characters' major scenes and said a definitive 'No.'

[hiraethhh-h]

throwing a weighted blanket at the om! bros + undateables (and a bonus)

warning(s): some swearing, threats of torture, implied nsfw, spoilers. 

note: no supernatural beings or humans were hurt in the making of this- also this was inspired bc my mom bought a weighted blanket and its heavy af 

the demon brothers

lucifer:

“MCCCCCC..!!!”

i- chile do you have a death wish???

momentary shock at how cute your laughter sounds (but he would never say it out loud unless you two were alone)

prepare to be chased and in demon form once he gets himself together

this man can ZOOM (i mean he does chase after mammon)

when you get caught, oH boY 

you’ll be lectured for hours on end 

“what made you think that was a good idea, mc?”

“and delete that recording of me. immediately.”

don’t worry levi is sure to save a secret file :)

anyone you were in cahoots with will be lectured and punished too

but your punishment ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

mammon:

“ADKSDHFKSJHFGKSJFH- HeY!!!”

is completely caught off-guard

crooked glasses and messy hair once he removes the blanket off of him

“why’d ya do that mc!!!”

if you tease mammon about being unable to handle the weight of the blanket-

*mammon rant activated*

“the great mammon can totally handle weight!!! i used to lift more than beel ya know!!!”

“hey! quit laughing at me mc!!!”

gets all flustered when you admit you were just teasing him to see his cute reaction

awe bby boy

probably forgives you if you promise to spend quality time with him for a few days

dont be surprised if he holds a grudge tho 

prepare to smother him with snuggles and cuddles to make him forgive you :)))

leviathan:

oh boy, you’d best be ready to deal with the consequences if you throw a weighted blanket onto him

especially if he’s doing a game run-through or grinding through a game 

“okay... just a little more and- ACK!”

like mammon, totally caught off guard since he was so focused on his game

*game over flashes on his screen*

“NOoOOo!!! My ScoRE!!!”

oh shit...

chile- you best hope you can run from levi 

pissed off at you like that one time during the TSL tournament

one of the other demon bros has to interfere and stop levi

“that stupid normie made me mess up my perfect score!!!”

mad at you for a few days 

and he will hold a grudge

but decides to forgive you if you stay with him as he plays through the game again

“i only forgave you because you’re the only one who’d love a yucky otaku like me...”

“and because you’re my henry.”

satan:

ok now you really have a death wish but i would probably do it too tbh 

ah... nothing but a normal day for satan

a cup of his favorite piping hot tea, a book, and the fire place next to him...

nothing could be better :)

until...

“what the fuck-”

tea spilled all over him and his book with the weight of the blanket = enraged satan

prepare to feel his WRatH

“so you thought this would be a great idea..?” 

turns into his demon form

threatens to try all kinds of torture methods on you and whoever was in cahoots with you for ruining his reading time >:(

satan will probably apologize to you for that and maybe to the other person depending on who it was

after that

satan will come back with his own little pranks for weeks on end

and when he finds out that you kept a recording of the little incident

:)

he’ll keep his pranks up until you finally yield

“alright. i’ll forgive you just this once, and you owe me a new copy of that book.”

“you also better delete that video if you know what’s good for you, mc.”

asmodeus:

“mc, no my hair and makeup!!!”

practically yeets the blanket off of him to protect himself

i would probably be surprised someone could yeet a heavy ass blanket off themselves but asmo is a demon so he has inhumane strength

*asmo pissed off 3000*

“mc! if you messed up a single hair on my head or ruined my makeup

*dark chuckle*

“i would’ve made sure i ruined you in more ways than one”

hHhhhH- be my guest asmo 

“oh well, i guess i’ll forgive you just this once.”

yay! forgiveness never felt so good-

“if you promise to spend quality time with just me~.”

he will literally take you out shopping the whole entire day

dresses you up in god knows how many outfits

but at the end of the day, when you both return back to the house of lamentation, he’ll take very very good care of you~

tries to bathe with you but lucifer catches wind of it :(

sore feet? asmo to the rescue!

“ne, you will delete that video right?”

beelzebub:

tbh the blanket would just feel like a normal blanket to thicc man :)

it also probably falls to the ground awkwardly

 *looks at the blanket then to mc*

“i think you dropped this”

*picks it up like it weighs nothing and hands it back then continues to eat whatever he was munching on*

whoever you’re in cahoots with either expected that to happen or is in shock with you lmao

while you’re reviewing the footage you can see beel’s muscles flex as he picks up the blanket :))))

later, beel will probably confront you about what happened 

“oh... that was supposed to be a prank..?”

seeing how kinda bummed you looked made beel kinda sad since your prank didn’t go as planned :(

what better than to make it up to you with food! :D

brings you all sorts of snacks and takes you to hell’s kitchen to make you feel better

“next time you prank me, i’ll definitely be caught off guard.”

belphegor:

is napping when you decide to try your sneak attack

as we all know, he kinda sleeps like a brick around mc so he’ll probably be indifferent to your giggles unless he gets curious

when you throw the blanket onto him

he snuggles into it

“...”

“...”

“this is really warm mc... is this what the humans call a weighted blanket..?”

belphie moves the blanket to make room for you

“why don’t you come nap with me since you’re already here..?”

snuggles and cuddles with belphie + warm weighted blanket = your heart melting :)

it’ll probably be hard to get up tho since you’re in belphie’s arms and underneath the heavy ass blanket rip

i ain’t complaining tho 

undateables

diavolo

is probably confused for a moment

until he feels the weight of the blanket

“this reminds me of some sort of torture device...”

picks it up out of curiosity until you tell him what it is

“oh! i see, you were trying to see what would happen when you threw this onto me!”

would probably ask if he could throw it at you too

but he realizes that you’d get hurt

“why dont we start a prank war?”

 but like i feel like it would be fun to have a prank war with Dia :D

plus he gets a break from all of his princely duties and you get to spend some quality time after with him ;)

poor barbatos has to clean up after most of the pranks tho :(

barbatos:

he’s doing some chores around the castle as per usual

until you sneak up on him 

or so you thought ;)

when you throw the blanket at him, barbatos catches it like it weighs nothing

he’s in a little momentary shock for a split second then comes back to reality since he was so focused on his chores

i wouldn’t be surprised bc he does do a helluva lot of things

“i hope you didn’t forget that i can see the future and different timelines.”

also knows that you recorded the little prank and decides to indulge you and let you keep it

“perhaps you can try again next time?”

cooks you up some food to make it up to you

simeon:

blinks in shock as the blanket is thrown over him

just laughs and removes the blanket

“If you were trying to surprise me, it worked.” 

he’d gently drape it over you and pull you into his arms

aklsdhjlaksdfjlk i want it too-

“i’ll have to leave soon though… Diavolo asked me to join him for tea at his castle today.”

simeon lets you go and smiles at you

“i would say don’t plan anything while im gone, but I can’t stop you.”

solomon: 

probably practicing spells or sum when you decide to strike

like some of them, he’d be shocked momentarily

“what’s this? Trying to sneak attack me?”

*queue the solomon smirk*

definitely would try to get back at you

be prepared bc this is one sneaky sorcerer

getting food at hell’s kitchen and need some ketchup?

solomon is there for you

but it isn’t ketchup ;)

its hot sauce ;)))

at the end of the day, solomon means well and laughs off all his pranks with you

bonus character!

luke:

i- why would you wanna throw a blanket at the smol child???

if you do which i hope you dont… pls do it gently

luke would probably pout and sulk at you and get rather upset

simeon would be like >:o

“how could you hurt my child?”

to make it up to luke, simeon would make sure that you bake with him

luke is down for it too, nothing’s better than a baking buddy! :D

long story short, pls PLS do not throw a weighted blanket at luke unless you want to evoke the wrath of everyone :)

[mikeshanlon]

iwwv anon and PHEW OK. I def did not expect that essay and now I feel bad cause I KNOW my thots r not gonna be articulate or right. nonetheless! i think Oliver does qualify as an unreliable narrator cause hes. very oblivious but not like... Richard papen (who is a whole ass clown don't get me started on tsh) but not like addy from dare me(I will support till the day I die that dare me is da like I WILL die on this hill) who sees what she wants to see. 1/?

i think he just... thinks that his friends r diff ppl than they actually r? that doesnt rly make sense but yea. what I mean is that everything the characters do is coated in that empathetic view Oliver has which is usually wrong? so we don't get an objective look into the characters. meredith is my girl like I love the hot popular girl trope deconstruction but at the end of the book she's not at a great place like she's w someone that doesn't love her like she needs to be loved... 2/

I guess the most probable ending is that James never meets Oliver again and that everyone is kinda stuck on what happened but that's soo sad and I really don't want to think abt it. ngl iwwv wasn't like my fave book ever and I really don't understand why people are so obsessed with dark academia sometimes but what i rly liked abt the book is that despite how fucked up everyone is and how toxic they r to each other they do at heart care abt one another...3/

like I rly liked that esp cause at that point the only other da book (other than dare me!) that I had read was tsh and godd every character is so fuckinh annoying and they all hate each other. i was super confused by it till I saw someone saying that it's satire and I felt my mind explode. I feel like this is so long but I didnt rly properly answer all you wrote sorry! I think its a pretty good book tho it has some crazy quotes like hold awn Im gonna look at the highlighted stuff on my copy.. 4/

Were you in love with him?” “Yes,” [...]Yes, I was.” It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still. LIKEEE PHEWW OK OK OK. WE OUT HERE. that line literally made me go crazy. I'm so sorry for any spelling mistakes or like general mistakes I made here English isn't my first language, it's 1am and I wrote this in the notes app w/o looking it over. so like.. NOT a professional review lemme tell you. 5/5

 Ahh im so sorry I did not see this before I yeeted for a month!!!

Oooh okay first of all dare me as a DA… I’ve only watched the show but like yeah I see the Elements for sure.

Also yeah I can understand what you mean abt Oliver being an unreliable narrator now… Ig my view of unreliable was more like they are purposefully twisting the truth or omitting facts or just literally don’t know shit but I get how personal bias can make the narrator unreliable. I do think the assertion that Oliver thinks his friends are different than they actually are makes sense. He sees James in a very positive light and though I like James a lot and think he is better than, like, Richard, he definitely has darker moments and manipulates Oliver at times (again I’d like to think it’s not the most nefarious thing in the world but like him just being shitty bc he’s in a dark place and he one, wants to do anything he can so Oliver doesn’t figure out he fought Richard so Oliver still thinks of him the same way/bc he knows Oliver would do something stupid like get himself arrested for James; and two, is very jealous that Oliver is with Meredith after Richard dies and has sort of a somewhat positive outcome from Richard’s death versus James being riddled with guilt and anger). And yeah, the probable ending is they never meet but I refuse to acknowledge that so LGNRG. Also that line makes me go CRAZZZZZZZZZZY!!! There are so many great lines, both using Shakespeare and on their own and its like okay give me a moment im going bonkers…

Personally, I haven’t read that many dark academia novels yet (bc for some reason i can barely finish a book rn sigh) but the concept interests me. I think what’s compelling is the setting/atmosphere of like ~mysterious college vibes~, and the idea of a sort of niche, obsessive bond and pursuit of knowledge with a tight knit group of friends (and the like inherent homoeroticism in every single DA elrngenrg). Like Dead Poet’s Society (the film I haven’t read the book) isn’t Dark in the same way most other dark academia is by like, obsession and death and manipulation (though of course there are dark elements with Neil’s storyline), but I think the other building blocks of academia are present there in a more wholesome way and you can see why people are drawn to that idea. As for the more Dark aspects I think it’s interesting to analyze things like group psyche, obsession, manipulation, etc, like what went wrong for everything to take such a dark turn???

 But, like everything else, it really has to be done well or else its just like okay….… I’ve tried to read TSH twice and I may try again but from the 100+ ish pages I read I totally get what you mean. IWWV is so interesting to me bc the characters are all very compelling and multifaceted and I like that they are a close friendship, we come in after 4 years of them spending all the time together and to me that is apparent. Like you said, we can see fissures and problems especially as the novel continues but there is care there between them. That also makes the decision to let Richard die much more interesting and sinister imo, as well as how all of them interact with each other after he dies, and how the roles of the group change without their “leader” so to speak. Also, maybe it’s just bc I like Shakespeare, but I think the academia part of IWWV is so much more accessible compared to TSH. Like I don’t know every Shakespeare play or anything so I didn’t understand every nuance or was like immediately like oh this is from Cymbeline or whatever the fuck, but you could understand the gist of things and it made sense that they spoke in Shakespeare lines bc that’s all they’ve been doing for four years and also theatre kids are Like That. Their pretention also provided any Layers to the story, like the parallels between the characters they play and their own arcs, how some of the lines echoed their own thots, foreshadowed, or they were able to say things through Shakespeare (I’m thinking of like, Oliver realized he loved James during Romeo and Juliet, the foreshadowing that James was going to ruin Richard’s life and that he dislikes Meredith/Richard when he quotes Mercutio at the start “A plague o’ both your houses”, the exchange Oliver and James had onstage and had that kiss during King Lear before Oliver was arrested,etc.) (Also I think the structure of some of the dialogue being formatted like a play really helped make it feel more realistic and immersive). Versus TSH which is just so pedantic and dense and hard to follow at times im like I get they are smart but what??? And maybe that’s part of the satire aspect (or maybe im dumb) but like donna I read TGF I know you are pretentious and info dump abt random obscure shit anyways so erglknerg. Like to me there was a Point to all of the academic Shakespeare stuff in IWWV and it was the soul of the book, and M.L. Rio made it very interesting—like the way that the directors reimagined the plays and had Julius Caesar be like a modern political play, the cool mirror shit in King Lear, the Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet performances where they did them at events and interacted with their environments (which were one of my favorite parts of the books bc I just think that concept is so interesting), etc. For TSH the shit they did literally just felt like “okay look at them they’re smart see you can’t even keep up!” like okay… I felt lost a lot and only like snapped into reality whenever Henry (?) was like oh… murder….. and even then I was like idk what this dude is saying but like he’s being darksided LMAO. And I also agree that it’s just like… Richard being thrown in the middle of this group could lend itself to some cool ideas but its hard to believe that he fits into the friendship group and hes just like hell yeah I love Greek so much and lets go kill this guy other than like okay ur gay and stupid and just want to impress Henry or whatever his name was (which he was but I digress). It’s just not as impactful to me as this close friend group falling apart. Ik TSH fans might be angry if they see this (and of course I haven’t finished the book so my perception may be warped but I also kno many ppl felt that way u did) bc I’ve seen ppl say IWWV is just like TSH but “lackluster” or whatever and while I can see some parallels (mostly b/w Richard and Henry and Alexander and Francis), I really think M.L. Rio expanded upon common DA tropes and the interesting parts of TSH but made it her own and interesting and oh yeah there are actually multiple compelling female characters and LGBT characters (and no incest)!!!

[fundeadasylum]

okay well now that im not buzzed and depressed, i have some thoughts about batim chapter 3 that im putting under the cut

just me thinking out loud, does contain spoilers

everyone seems genuinely surprised that alice turned out to be “”evil”” but i mean this is a horror game, what did you expect

also i got kinda major bioshock vibes from this whole part of the game, which leads to my next point

alice seems to have gone mad, just like sammy and just like how it sounds like joey drew did at some point something is corrupting these people and i’m betting it’s that ink flowing from the Ink Machine

it kind of sounds like people were fused with the ink joey mentioned in one of the audio recordings something about immortality and you can’t kill toons so why not just make everyone a toon only it looks like it didn’t go quite right?

alice said towards the end of the chapter that the boris henry was with was “perfect” and we know there were dozens if not hundreds of other boris’ and butcher boys all over the place but there’s clearly something wrong with those butcher boys that we run into what makes this boris perfect? was he fused correctly? why are there so many boris copies? is joey or the ink machine itself trying to create perfect replicas of the cartoon characters?

im saying all this because i have a strong suspicion that alice is actually susie campbell

or what’s left of her anyway

just based on alice’s dialogue and the audio dairy where susie mentions she liked it when joey drew called her alice joey sounds like he went a llliiitttllleee bit insane to me, by the way

the other thing is the Projectionist i see a lot of people saying it’s norman polk but did we actually get confirmation of that?? anyway, like sammy, it seems the Projectionist was also corrupted by the ink (in the play through i watched, the player avoided him so i didn’t see what happened when you got caught in his light) im actually really curious about him

alice also seems wary of The Ink Demon and given the post credits image, i’m willing to bet that that’s our lanky demonic friend who i suspect might actually be what’s left of joey drew himself alice doesn’t seem to like joey OR bendy and seems pretty keen to keep the ink demon away from her (also she seems to HATE henry, maybe because he’s still human? maybe because she associates him with joey?)

i don’t think joey just wanted to bring his cartoons to life i think he was aging and didn’t want to be, i think he wanted to be immortal and what better way than to become his beloved cartoons the guy already sounded like he was half nutso in the first place so it’s no great leap in logic to assume he did some demonic bullshit and fucked up the studio and everyone still in it

so who’s the antagonist here? can’t be alice, she’s in the same position as sammy and the projectionist, half mad and corrupted, warped by the ink maybe it’s joey? right now all signs seem to be pointing to joey but who knows for sure

on a separate note let me say something about THE GAME PLAY

GOOD GOLLY COULD YOU GET ANYMORE TEDIOUS

the layout of chapter three was a maze which, if used right, could have brought some really epic scares and kept up a really dramatic tension and fear as it was, the entire thing was monotonous and got old really, really quick

i understand that this is a very small team working very hard to get this game out and man alive do i appreciate their effort the game is gorgeous and im in love with the story, obviously

but it IS a game and it has to play like one repetitive hunts through the same area are...boring going into the projectionist’s part of the level was the most interesting and had the most dramatic tension, i think it could have been done just a little bit better but it was still really, really good and is probably my favorite level design of chapter three that being said, the rest was boring as fuck i get that you have this sepia toned, old black and white cartoon thing going on but it all looks so uniform after a while, you can push those shadows to slow the player down and create tension, add more blind corners, more ambiance besides the ticking clocks and chugging pipes

one of the things that always frightened me about bioshock was that i would HEAR the splicers before i ever saw them it made me tense up, it spiked my fear because i was then expecting them to attack and that made me wary of every single little thing, and the longer i went without being attacked the more nervous i got or i let my guard down completely and got the ever loving piss scared out of me

like i said, i know this is a very small team and the work they’ve done so far is AMAZING and the game is awesome and i really love it, i really do

but the gameplay for chapter 3 was disappointing and boring yes, we got a nice chunk of story, but there was really no reason to send henry running all over the the same damn area four or five times instead of building up the tension for something we never got to see (alice actually making use of the shit we brought her), it totally killed any tension that might have been there in the first place the initial appearance of the butcher boys was frightening but after a while, they stopped being scary too, there was no threat from them or the other ink monsters running around, i never felt that threat, i didn’t have a reason to be scared of them when they were so easily defeated

also there was all this talk of the ink demon showing up if you were noisy and stuff at the beginning of the chapter but????? he never did???? alice kepy talking about finding a place to hide but???? there was never a reason to???? there was absolutely no threat?????? the lack of ink demon/bendy was really sad tbh

anyway, i carried on with this long enough

i loved the atmosphere for some of chapter three and i am so very happy we got a nice, big, juicy chunk of story with it congrats to themeatly and the development team on another excellent installment of bendy and the ink machine! i can’t wait to see what you guys do next!