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bunnys-beetlejuice-blog · 4 years ago

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But What If, Instead

Decided to give a go to posting my horribly named but hopefully very fun Beetlejuice fic to tumblr as well. This is an au where BJ is adopted by the Deetz family at a young age.

He’s twelve when he’s left on his own in the upperworld.

He doesn’t know he’s twelve, because he’s never celebrated a birthday, but that timeline seems to fit, later, when he thinks back on it. So he’s twelve. His mother has promised him a special treat that day, and though he’s skeptical to trust her, he follows her quietly through the door she’s drawn, the bone white stick of chalk a blaring contrast to the dark hallways of the netherworld reception office. She’d knocked, and the drawing was more than a drawing, suddenly, with white light and noise spilling through into his little corner of hell as it opened, and when he steps through, Betelgeuse sees blue skies and green grass for the first time in his unlife. He’d turned back to look at Juno, confused, curious, his big orange snake eyes watching her, waiting for the catch, for her to yank him back and punish him for being naive, and trusting her, but all the demoness had done was billow smoke from her slit throat, and nod encouragingly to him. He takes another step, and another and another, and suddenly he’s running and laughing and jumping and the air up here is different, but good, and he takes breaths he doesn't need because it feels nice, and he turns to her again to try and entice her to play with him- And the door is gone. He stands there, staring at the nothingness where she and it had been, and realization hits him hard, because he’s twelve, and he’s been left on his own.

He doesn't cry, both because he can’t, and because he knows it won’t change anything. It doesn’t take him long to find them. Pre ghosts. Breathers. Humans. The place is lousy with them, and the smell of them irritates his sensitive nose. He’s a dumb kid, sure, but he’s got some survival instincts, so he hides from them as they go about their lives, strolling around this place, completely oblivious to the little demon now crashing their dimension. Breathers look so weird, all flushed with blood and bright eyed and hearts beating, no signs of death or rot or decay on them. It’s a lot to ask a kid to get used to. The ghosts back home, the ones workin in Ma’s office, tell him stories about the world up here, sometimes, usually in exchange for him going away, and leaving them the hell alone. (Their words) If there was one thing he learned from them, it was that humans, living or dead, didn’t like things that were strange or unusual. He wanders the wilds of wherever he is for an hour before he finds a body of water, and stooping to peer into it, takes a look at himself.

His skin is pale, but not pink. The undercolor is purple, maybe, which he would have thought would be close enough, but compared to the living, breathing people walking around this place, he knows is too different. There’s not much he can do about that. His hair is a bushy mess, sticking up all over the place, but at least the color is currently green. It’s the eyes, teeth, and ears that really stand out. Yellow snake-like slits stare back at him, long pointed ears flick in the direction of distant sounds, and when he tries to smile down at his reflection, those too many too sharp teeth are all he can see. He’s not the best at magic, yet, mostly using it to play pranks around the office (and hey, maybe that’s why Ma left him here in the first place?) but he does what he can. He throws a glamour over himself, and it’s far from perfect, but the three big problems are taken care of. He looks more human than he did a minute ago, at least, and that’s something.

He’s less afraid to take the main paths, after that, and with that worry out of the way, he finds himself enjoying the afternoon again. So, ma left him here. So what? She’s done him a favor, probably the first she’s ever done anybody, because now he doesn't have to be around her just as much as she doesn’t have to be around him. It’s a win-win, Betelgeuse thinks stubbornly, trotting along the winding pathways lined with benches and garbage cans and other silly human things. He’s starting to get a bit tired of all the green when he reaches, quite unexpectedly, the end of it. There’s a big arched sign, and he can’t understand the language written over head, even though he’s squinting and tilting his head. Someone at some point had sat him down and tried to teach him letters, and he’d gotten far enough to read through the first page of the Handbook, but then that person had been reassigned, and was gone, and no one had cared to keep teaching him.

He’s holding his hands up at his sides, rubbing his red tipped claws against the palms of his hands, top teeth biting over his bottom lip, head tilted to one side in an extreme, when he hears a snort and then a soft giggle.

There’s a woman standing in front of him. Her hair is a sunny yellow color, but her clothing is dark and dramatic, and there are roosting bats dangling from her ears. She’s laughing at him. They stare at each other for a long moment, her hand raised in front of her mouth, her eyes crinkled pleasantly at the corners, and he finally breaks the silence by pointing at the sign, and speaking. “Wazzat say?” She blinks in surprise at his grating little voice, and then glances back at the sign. “Krap Lartnec,” she tells him. “Which is flipped around and backwards for “Central Park.” He’s been staring at the sign the wrong way. Of course. He feels his cheeks heat up with embarrassment. “Oh. Got it. Park. Right, yeah.” She lets out another laugh, and it’s so different from the sounds his mother makes when she’s guffawing at him, shaming him, that it almost doesn’t register as a laugh at first. There’s no cruelty to it, just amusement, and maybe curiosity. “Are you here alone?” she asks him, and he shrugs easily. “I guess.” She moves closer to him, cautiously, like he’s going to bite her, or bolt, but he doesn’t really feel the need to be worried over one breather. He knows he could rip out her throat if he needs to. The glamour only hides his demonic features, not takes them away. He’s still plenty capable of taking care of himself. “Where are your parents?” She's crouched down next to him now, one knee on the pavement, big brown eyes all sweet and worried, and he shrugs again. “Don’t have a dad. Mom’s downstairs.” She squints at that, and he gestures down with a pointed red claw tip. “Ya know. Downstairs.” The way he emphasizes it is meaningful, and when her eyes show understanding, he assumes she gets it. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” “Don’t be. I’m havin’ a good time.”

That doesn’t seem to be what she expects, but she just nods thoughtfully. “Are you staying someplace?” He can’t, for the undeath of him, figure out why she’s asking, and why she cares. He shrugs again, because things feel better in threes, and says vaguely, “I guess I’m stayin’ here.” That also doesn’t seem to be a good answer. “You can’t stay in the park overnight. There’s creeps around here.” He bites back the urge to explain that he’s the creepiest thing here, because suddenly she’s taking his hand, and she feels cool to the touch. “Good god, kiddo, you’re burning up!” she puts her other hand on his forehead, all the play gone from her voice, clearly concerned. “You might have a fever. Listen…” she worries her bottom lip with her teeth, smudging the dark color there, before she makes a decision. “Why don’t you come home with me? I’ll give you something to eat, make sure you’re alright, and we’ll figure out what to do from there, okay?” He isn’t sick, and he’s pretty sure he can’t get sick. It’s the hellfire in his veins that makes him hot, because he’s not like her, not even close, but the idea of following her seems like a fine one to him, so he just nods. “Kay. You got bugs where you live?” She snorts again, and stands, brushing off her dark, rose patterned tights. “Sure, what New York apartment doesn’t have a few roaches lurking around. You like bugs?” “Yeah, I like em. They’re crunchy an’ they skitter around an’ stuff.” “Yeah,” she agrees, nodding thoughtfully. “Bugs kick ass.” It’s his turn to snort, and then laugh, because she’d sounded so serious that it strikes him as funny. His hand is still in her’s, and she gives it a squeeze. “What’s your name, little buddy?” “Betelguese.” He expects a pause, or a comment, because no newly dead has ever heard his name without wrinkling their nose and looking vaguely sick, but her smile just grows wider. “Far out. I’m Emily.” And hand in hand, they leave the park.

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Beetlejuice decides quickly Emily might be the nicest breather who ever breathed. It’s a decision he makes only moments after they’ve left the park. Normally he’d be talking, and talking a lot, and his ma might throw something at him, a curse or a bottle, to try and shut him up. So he’s giving silence a try, here, even though it feels like it hangs like a weight around his neck. But Emily is the one instead filling the silence with sound, and he’s never had such unfiltered attention from an adult before. She’s talking about the park, then his hair, then his name, and everything she says is just… sunshine. She likes his hair. She likes his name. She even likes the loose fitting and filthy black and white striped shirt he’s got on, she says it’s deadlyvoo, whatever the hell that means, but it must be good, because Emily said it.

They’re walking down the street, his little hand still in her’s, when a smell hits his sensitive nose. It’s unlike anything he’s ever smelled before and if he wasn't tethered to her, he would have floated after it. As it is, he does feel his feet lift off the ground briefly, and he has to remind his body to obey gravity, before someone notices. Luckily, Emily only sees part of his reaction, namely the way he’s sniffing the air like a dog and drooling. “Hotdogs!” she grins, and she leads him over towards the smell before he can even ask what that word means.

There’s a little cart set up, and a short, fat woman is fussing over a fire. He quickly finds the source of the smell, those little weird shapes of meat she’s turning over, and he goes to reach for one, only stopped by Emily’s other hand over his. “Not so fast, little bug. To unlock lunch, you need the power of capitalism.” She nods gravely. He nods back, clueless, but after a moment he has the source of the smell in his hands, and he wastes no time in scarfing it down. It’s good. He wants more, instantly, and tugs at her sleeve. Emily has hardly put her wallet away before it’s back out again, and she’s bought two more hotdogs. He eats them just as quickly, but before he can ask for more he realizes she’s led him away from the woman and her meats and her fire. Clever breather.

The walk to her home isn’t so bad, and it gives him time to take in his surroundings. The park had been jarring enough- what little plants grow in the netherworld are perpetually gray and withered, sad little scraggly weeds that struggle and choke each other out for the privilege of what miniscule sunshine permeates through the perpetual overcast. But there’s enough sunlight and water and everything to go around here, and it all grows green and vibrant. The city feels the same way, sort of. Like there’s plenty of space to stretch out and grow, and so they did. In the netherworld, everything is short and cramped, but bigger on the inside, with long, winding hallways meant to confuse and trap the dead. The buildings here are so tall looking up at them makes him dizzy, but he hardly has time to admire them before Emily is guiding him this way and that, and finally, to another door. She presses a button and they’re let inside, and he experiences another first as they ride the elevator up a few floors.

They ride the first few floors up in relative silence, until - “Get ready to jump!” Emily says suddenly, crouching, and he follows her lead, and jumps when she does. There’s a brief moment of weightlessness before gravity catches up with them, and their feet hit the elevator floor again, in time for the doors to open. “Good job, Beetlejuice!” she praises, pushing that long sun colored hair out of her face, and he beams up at her. “Feels like flyin, kinda!” “Right?” she enthuses loudly, and he’s about to ask her how a breather knows what flying feels like, but a door down the hall opens, and the biggest man Betelguese has ever seen steps out. “Thought I heard you rattling the elevator,” he’s chiding Emily, who only gives her snort and smile in return. “Lydia isn’t even with you, do you really play that game when you’re-” his eyes fall on Betelgeuse. “Alone?”

“Charles, I made a new friend!” Emily tells him simply, leading the little demon into their apartment. The interior is dim, but he can see fine. He knows his amber eyes are glowing a little in the gloom, and he closes them, just for a moment, as Emily leads him down the hall and into a sunny, well lit kitchen. The big man, Charles, is tailing behind, looking mystified. “Where on earth did you find him?” a hint of nerves creeps into the breather’s voice. “You didn’t… steal him.. Right?” “Charles!” Emily laughs, like it’s an absurd question. Betelgeuse can’t tell if it is or not. Emily doesn’t seem like a child snatching witch, but he doesn’t know enough about such things to be sure. “I didn’t steal him,” she clarifies, busying herself with getting the boy a cup of ice water, and stopping by for a moment to touch the back of her hand to his forehead again. “I found him wandering around Central Park. He said he doesn’t have any folks, and he was all alone, and he feels feverish. I’m being responsible! I’m a responsible adult!” “A responsible adult who still plays the elevator game, despite being told by maintenance you might throw the whole elevator out of whack?” Charles askes, but he doesn’t look angry, more amused.

“I was teaching Beetlejuice how to play.” The pause he was expecting with Emily finds its home with Charles. Charles glances at the boy. Betelguese stares back with big amber eyes, sipping quietly at his ice water. Charles looks to Emily, who seems to be waiting expectantly. The silence stretches for another beat before Charles asks, baffled, “Is that… his name?”

Emily throws her hands up like he’s asked if the sky is really blue. “Of course it’s his name! Or at least, that’s the name he gave me. I’m respecting it. Respectful and responsible, that’s me.” She turns and winks at Betelgeuse. He returns the strange breather gesture because he likes Emily more than he’s ever liked anyone before.

The water cup is empty, and he simply lets it go, no longer interested in holding it. It bounces and rolls across the floor, and Charles wrinkles his brow at the boy. “Wh-” Before he can say much more, Betelgeuse is sniffing at the air, and he crouches on all fours, nose to the ground, like a dog in a cartoon. He’s caught the scent of some kind of upperworld bug, and despite all the hotted dogs, he’s still hungry. He’s on the prowl around the kitchen, weaving under the little dining table and three chairs, and then back down the hall, into the living room. Charles and Emily poke their heads out of the kitchen to watch him.

“I think you brought a feral child into the house, Em.”

She makes a psshaw sound and rolls her eyes, smacking gently at his lapels. “He’s a kid. Kids are weird. I was doing weird kid stuff when I was his age, too.” “And you never stopped,” comes the dry response. “Charles, I know you worry, but he’s a little kid, lost in New York. I mean, my god, it’s like a movie! I couldn’t just leave him, and I wasn’t just going to give him to some cop, he’s probably an undocumented runaway or something-” and the rest of her rambling is drown out by Charles gasping and grabbing her, and her own muffled gasps of shock, because Betelgeuse has caught the bug. And also, he’s on the ceiling. He may have been trying to blend in, but the second he caught the scent of that delicious crunchy upperworld bug meat, everything else was out of mind. He’d spotted it on the ceiling, and had followed it up there, ignoring gravity to get what he wanted, and right as he pounced on it, nearly catlike, Charles and Emily had gasped. Their breather noises distract him long enough for the bug to skitter away, and he loses his concentration, and drops to the living room floor with a sickening crunch. Emily shrieks, and Charles panics, sprinting for the boy, certain he’ll find a dead child with a broken neck. Instead Betelguise sits up, his glamour disturbed from the fall, and the breathers get an eyeful of what he really looks like. There’s a beat. They’re all staring at each other for a long moment. “I… I might have brought a feral child into the house,” Emily admits sheepishly. You can read the entire thing, right now, over here

#beetlejuice #beetlejuice broadway #beetlejuice fic #emily deetz #charles deetz #lydia deetz #beetlejuice fanfiction #beetlejuice found family

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mhdiaries · 4 years ago

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SDCC 2015 Kieran Valentine Diary

May 1st

When I left Monster High after Draculaura’s Sweet 1,600 birthday party, I was angry, humiliated and stinky from falling into that pit of eternal body odor. I stank so bad, Mom wouldn’t even let me in the house: I had to sleep in the guest room above the garage. Looking back, I can see it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Even my considerable powers to charm were no match for the power of the stench that surrounded me. My powers slowly weakened as I was deprived of what sustained them: the love I selfishly took from others. I was in a stench-induced imprisonment - rarely leaving the garage - but it allowed me time to do some serious thinking, and I realized I wasn’t being true to myself. Then one day there was a knock at my door, and I opened it to see a little old goblin woman with a cane staring up at me through thick glasses. “I’m Mrs. Goblin, but you can call me “Mrs. Goblin.” I’m a friend of your mother’s.” She said, “you need to get out of that room, and I need some help, so let’s go.” She turned and walked off, and, with nothing left to lose, I followed. It turned out that she ran an unwanted-creature shelter and couldn’t keep up with all the cleaning, feeding and daily upkeep. It also turned out that she had no sense of smell. “Lost it back in ‘72,” she told me. Mrs. G. ran me through the daily routines and gave me the tour. “You can start today,” she said as she handed me a mop and a bucket. It’s hard to believe I agreed, but I didn’t have any other options. The shelter was home to an unusual collection of exotic creatures: gremlins, flying monkeys, lap dragons, miniature manticores, and many others that had been picked up as strays or turned in by monsters who didn’t want them. Even though the work was hard, and not always pleasant, I began to look forward to it. In fact, I usually felt more energized after I finished a day than when I started. I felt my powers returning and every day I got stronger. Eventually, I mentioned it to Mrs. Goblin who snickered, “You emotional vampires never get it - stolen love is just empty calories. I’ll never sustain you for long.” She could tell I still didn’t get it. “Love that’s freely given is the most powerful source of energy in the monster universe. You’ve been coming here every day, taking care of these critters, showing them kindness, and the only thing they have to give you is their love - and believe me, they have a lot to give.” I couldn’t believe what she was telling me. I must have been standing there looking stupid because she said, “Close your mouth before the the flies get in and go clean the flying monkey cage. They’ve been throwing stuff again.” I was in a daze. Why had no one ever explained this to me? Rather than dwelling on it, I was just happy I finally knew.

May 3rd

I now know that I did it - stealing love - because I thought that’s want an emotional vampire was supposed to do. But it never felt quite right. I thought if I kept doing it, it would eventually feel right. But it only made me angry and frustrated. Then when Draculaura called me - well, Toralei, really - I thought that if I could get the heart that got away, it would change me and everything would be fine. But I was just a real pain in the fang to everyone and made a fool of myself. So I’ve come to a conclusion: being myself has to be easier than not being myself, right? Back then, I hated the thought of who I really was, and that conflict made me become someone who wasn’t me. It’s time to be true to myself, but it’s scary.

July 1st

Today was my one-year anniversary at the shelter. As I left the garage, I ran into Mom. She sniffed. “You don’t stink anymore.” It was true - the stench was gone. I gave Mom a hug and told her it must be due to what I’d learned from working for Mrs. Goblin. I thanked Mom for telling her I needed help. Mom looked at me strangely, “What are you going on about? I don’t know a Mrs. Goblin.�� What? I ran to the shelter but when I got there it was boarded up and empty. How could this be? I crawled through a broken out window. A thick layer of dust covered everything and it looked like no one had been there in years. Then I noticed a piece of paper on the table where Mrs. G. used to sit and drink her tea. It was a not addressed to me:

There’s nothing more I can teach you. The rest will come when you put what you’ve learned into practice. Know that you are loved for what, and who you are.

Sincerely,

“Mrs. Goblin”

P.S. Do the right thing or I’ll come back and make you clean out flying monkey cages again.

July 2nd

I decided that I would try and “do the right thing” by heading back to MH to try and make up for my mistakes. I thought if I hid in the shadows and helped the couples of MH, you know be a Cupid to what was my destruction of love, I could make a difference and they would see that I was a changed monster. Well, my intentions were good, but things did not go as I had planned. I kinda, no, did, mess things up. Luckily, it all seemed to work out in the end, I guess, just not as I had hoped. I don’t think any of Draculaura and her friends will ever really trust me. And while I hope one day they can see I have changed, I know it will take time, too. I guess I can’t expect them to just forgive me right away. I will say one good thing hopefully came out of it. While attempting to hide in the shadows I bumped into a student I didn’t recognize. He said his name was Spelldon Cauldronello, he had only been at MH a couple weeks as he had been traveling with his older sister. Meeting him totally made me space and forget to send a text that was supposed to help Clawd. He asked if I went to MH and I said I was just visiting, but I would love to go to MH one day if I can. He said he’d keep me up on the groanings on around the halls if I wanted, so I gave him my number. At least the trip wasn’t a total stake. I do wish I could figure out how to make it up to Draculaura and her friends though. I know now that real friends help each other with their problems, not try to solve them for them.

July 7th

I was tempted to stay in my room today and treat myself to a monstrous blue funk, but, instead, I walked aimlessly outside until I found myself sitting on the beach watching the sun go down. That’s when I noticed something unusual partially buried in the sand. I pulled it out and die-scovered it was an ornate lantern caked with seaweed. I brushed it off... and got the shock of my unlife! The lantern began vibrating and glowing, like I had awakened something inside and it was not trying to get out. I dropped it like it was hot and fell back as smoke swirled up and out of this thing. When the smoke cleared away there was a ghoul floating above me. “I am the djinni of the lantern. What is your wish?”

July 10th

The djinni’s name is Whisp and we have something in common: the direction of our unlives changed because of Monster High. We shared our stories and struggles; neither of us has made the beast decisions, but we both want to be better monsters. We talked so much that Whisp had to remind me I had three wishes. I asked her I should wish for and she said, “I cannot tell you what to wish for, nor can I tell you what not to wish for, but I can say be scareful what you wish for.” I laughed and told her that sounded ominous. She didn’t see the humor in her statement. “Wishes are tricky things,” she replied, “They often have a mind of their own and don’t always come true in the way you expected.” I thought for a moment, and wish I could go back to Monster High and fix the things I had broken. Whisp rose into the air, her eyes glowing, and said, “As you wish.” Instantly, I was back at Draculaura’s Sweet 1600 party, only I was dressed like a repairman - tool belt and all. Headless Headmistress Bloodgood stood in front of me with her hands on her hips. “You need to repair the barrier around the pit of eternal body odor before another monster falls into it!” This wasn’t what I meant by “fixing what I had broken,” and there was no way I was getting close to that pit again. That’s when the other students saw me. A very large minotaur pointed his finger at me, “There he is again! Throw him back into the pit!” I wished myself out of MH and back in my room just in time to avoid another dunking. Two wishes down, one to go.

July 12th

Whisp has been very apologetic but she needn’t be. I wished for something so general that it could have been granted in numerous ways. What I really wanted was a chance to do something unselfish for the monsters I hurt - to give and not take. When I started working for Mrs. G., there were times I wished what someone else would do the dirty work so I could just play with the creatures. Now I know I just wished it to be easy. Whenever I was in the middle of something particularly loathsome, Mrs. G. would cackle, “Sometimes work stinks, doesn’t it?” The first few times she said it, I wanted to drop everything and go home. But I stuck it out, and, although I still have a long way to go, I’m a better monster for it. Unlife is a lot of work and I guess some problems aren’t meant to be solved by wishing them so. Speaking of wishes, I need to think of something non-ambiguous for the last one...

August 1st

I summoned Whisp today to grant my final wish. I admit I put it off because I was being selfish. I’ve never had a friend like her, and once my last wish is granted, the lantern will move on and I will probably never see her again. I considered freeing her from the lantern, but I don’t think she wants that: she loves being a djinni, appearing in new places and granting wishes. But I know she gets lonely at times, so this was my wish: “Whisp, I wish we could always be friends.” Whisp rose up, her eyes glowing: “As you wish!” I could see her smiling as she turned to smoke and returned to the lantern, which shot up and disappeared. I thought for a second that my wish wasn’t granted, but then my iCoffin lit up and I noticed a new app icon that looked like a little mirror. I tapped it and there was Whisp! Now, not matter where in the monster universe she is, we can talk to each other! “Yes, Mother, I’m talking to myself down here.”

#monster high #monster high diary #kieran valentine #sdcc 2015

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wolfofwinchester · 4 years ago

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💘 / I'm getting to ours but I'd like to see what you have in mind uvu!

send me 💘 + A SHIP and i’ll tell you—

where they first met and how

When Lord Phantomhive brought home his bastard, a few key villainous nobles were present to meet her a few days after her arrival. The Undertaker was among them, although he was hidden away and out of her eyesight so she never really seen him outside of flashes of silver and a flow of black. Inevitably, it turned into The Hunt of her trying to find out who this mysterious “Aristocrat” was.

how long their ‘flirting’ phase was before feelings got involved

I could see playful flirtations being part of their aesthetic. It fits, I think! Never serious before and they knew it, they were just messing around with winks and flirtatious comments, sometimes getting a rise out of the other, other times pretending to be one another’s significant other for reasons of their own (let it be getting a free meal for Valentine’s Day or for a cover-up where they’re both in disguise). As such, I think the playfulness went on for a gooooood while, some years of cozy play before things got r e a l.

who fell for who first ( if applicable )

To even their writers, I feel this is meant to be ambiguous. 🙊 They’re That Kind of Couple.

where their first date was and what it was like

I think they both thought it more comfortable if it was a private affair; nothing so public as a dinner at a restaurant, and nothing so closed-in as the manor. I think their first date was something of a very elegant and rich picnic somewhere in the countryisde, lost from civilzation and farm buildings. A little peace of solitude where they got to enjoy one another’s company while Lilac chased the hounds around the rolling fields of green.

A picnic and just wiling away the hours talking, huddled up side-by-side and safe from blinding light beneath an enormous willow tree. After that, I think they went back to Azrael’s Funeral Parlor and spent the rest of the evening there just having laughs and wine. Just a really long, and really good day that ended with both of them snoozing in Azrael’s coffin. It’s not made for two people, so Claudia slept on top of him and he held her the whole night through. They woke to find Lilac sleeping on top of her and a floor flooded with hound dogs + Gelert.

who asks who out and how ( with a sign? spelled out on a cake? just a simple ‘will you go out with me’? )

Azrael steals first proclamation of love and kiss, but Claudia steals these moments. She made the first step after their confessions, asking with a sly grin if he’d like to have dinner with her. It was done very smoothly while they were still in the afterglow of requited feelings, when they were both basking and feeling that glowing mirth. An hour or so after that, I believe.

who proposes first

Claudia, absolutely. Marriage is never a concern of Azrael’s, he’s fine with things as they are! It’s never a required step in his mind. He goes with his lover’s flow.

if they keep / kept their relationship secret or let everyone know right away

Claudia’s rebellion in the Watchdog role succeeded into her relationship. Azrael’s vigilant and he wants them to stay a secret for Claudia’s own good in her public image, but Claudia’s ambitious nature to not let this life control her gently tussles with that. As such, the public sees them as a very odd pair, not there’s no confirmation of their relationship. They’re a forbidden romance waltzing in plain sight who have rumors spark up that end up hushed immediately.

“We’ll be discovered,” He whispers into her lips, earning a sharp-toothed grin that nips his bottom lip. “And so what? I’m already goin’ down in history as the most notorious Bastard of Phantomhive. ♪”

where the proposal happens and how ( kiss cam at a baseball game? on a hillside surrounded by ducks? at a disney park? )

It wasn’t precisely the ideal or dreamy, romantic proposal Claudia wanted it to be. For over a year, she’d been secretly working on the perfect ring for Azrael in her workshop, and it’s led to many rejects she felt were never perfect. The frustration of an artist led to art block, and that clashed direly with her desire to propose to the man! Lots of ring rejects! Despite them all being quite lovely, she never felt they were correct. There were strings of rings around her workshop at this point that she turned to for inspiration.

Finally, she had the perfect ring. Polished, and just right. The hyper glory of having perfected the ring after this long led the very tired, frazzled and disheveled woodworker zipping on horseback into London to that old Funeral Parlor, throwing open the door, finding a VERY befuddled Azrael who hadn’t seen her in days, and proceeding to capture his wedding hand.

For a solid minute, Azrael swore he seen his unlife flash before his eyes with how fast she approached him! He thought he did something wrong, or was falsely accused! You’d never seen a more bewildered man be proposed to by a very exhausted but very passionate woman. From an outsider’s point of view, it was hilarious before it became very tender and quiet. ???? WHAT’D I D- oooh?

It wasn’t scenic, but it was full of heart. Claudia apologized for storming in, but she had to do this right away because she couldn’t hold herself back another minute. She told him how important he was to her, and how important he’s been to her. He’s been her sole companion who didn’t need to be by her side, but he chose to be, despite how dangerous her life is and how loony of a woman she is. He’s been her trusted companion, and in this life, he’d come to be her best friend over so many years of them knowing each other.

It went from flighty to quiet and emotional. She asked him to marry her, and whattaya know, he accepted.

if they adopt any pets together

They’re pretty happy with their fuzzy family already, but I think Azrael’s tendency to take in strays leads to them having a few kits down the road. Any cat of his at this point is extended to being auto-adopted by Claudia.

who’s more dominant

They’re.. both dominant. Unless Claudia’s having a low energy day where she gives Azrael the full reins (which he loves), she’s right there tussling for control and they’re both playfully wrestling and nipping! They both get their time on top before someone gets coherent enough to flip, and the cycle continues.

where their first kiss was and what it was like

It was very cute. Like the rascals they are, they were chasing one another in the forest behind Phantomhive Manor, a fox chasing a wolf. It was Autumn, and the sun was creeping across the sky. There was a chill in the air enough to see one’s breath. Azrael caught up to Claudia and towered over her after she’d hid behind a tree, and they shared a laugh.

The Fall light was hitting her so sweetly, though. The way the orange light danced across her sapphire eyes and skin as she beamed up to him so slyly. He had to kiss her, and it stunned her entirely in the best way.

if they have any matching couples stuff ( mugs? sweaters? pillowcases? )

“If lost, return to [x]” shirts for the modern age, definitely. For a more time appropriate thing, they have matching hand mirrors that they’ve poured their hearts and soul into enchanting. It’s an imperfect enchantment, but it lets them see the other so they can check on one another throughout the day.

They’re mirrors bound with their love. When Claudia died, all other hand mirrors they’ve ever used to communicate their secret messages through shattered, but Azrael’s enchanted hand mirror, and Claudia’s, survived.

On a more casual level, they both have matching sleep shirts. Black poet styled shirts that are very big and drape on their persons so they can effortlessly wear one another’s without issue!

how into pda they are

They’ve always been a connected duo, so it’s not out of the park to see the with joined arms or holding hands. They’re constantly cuddled up, although Azrael becomes very aware of how affectionate they’re being time-to-time, only to be consoled back into comfort by Claudia.

They’re very PDA, but Azrael is sometimes wary when things like kissing begins. They oft hide behind Claudia’s fan for things like that. He’s a lot more eased into the intimate affections when Claudia’s under a glamour or heavily disguised.

who holds the umbrella when it rains

Azrael’s taller. He tends to ask for Claudia’s parasol and holds it for them both, which leads to her ribbing him gently and grinning. “Such a gent!”

where their usual ‘date spot’ is ( if applicable )

In one of their old threads, Claudia brought up an inconspicuous B&B that was in the more rural setting outside of London. Way out of the way of city limits and seeing only light traffic. I think this would be a neat “date spot” for them, as well as a safe location for exchanging information. No one can peep on them, and they both know the owners well enough to know they keep to themselves and give their guests privacy. There’s no reason for either to be nosy about Claudia&Azrael either, they’re just friendly faces who return for a spot of breakfast, lunch or dinner before heading out.

who’s more protective

You’d expect the Immortal to be more protective, but the fact of the matter is, it’s equal. Azrael is protective over Claudia, and she is the same over him. They’re both very heavily laden with grief and know great loss, something that’s a deep level of understanding with them; grief is part of their character, and that’s made them both very guarding individuals who protect the other with everything they got and a fierceness that will, and has, spilled blood.

how long it is before they sleep together ( can be as in ‘had sex’ or as in ‘shared a bed’ )

Sharing a bed is nothing unusual; platonically, they’ve taken many naps together before and one has flopped on the other when finding them in a moment of rest. They’re not stiff and awkward about it, and it flows pretty easily when they enter an intimate relationship. They are THE HUMAN KNOT.

Intimacy, however, is not something they immediately leapt into, especially when Claudia mentioned she’d never been with a man before. Although there’s certainly tension, it’s a good while before they actually do anything outside of kisses and frisky touches, which is fine with both of them. When Claudia’s ready, Azrael makes a very comfortable and romantic scene in the upstairs bedroom she’s fixed up so well for him over the years. It’s a very slow and tender first time.

if they argue about anything

They don’t argue, they have disagreements, even when those disagreements happen to be about something they’re both very passionate about and clashes with their moralities. They don’t escalate into something so careless and uncontrollable as screaming and yelling, accusations and blame. They don’t do that. Claudia’s upbringing and Azrael’s calm stance come into agreement here, and they’ve agreed-to-disagree before, and both agreed to air out the tension by spending a little time away from the other to let the feelings subside.

They’re very mature about this, which is more than can be said for a lot of relationships. Wild individuals them both, but very conscious and thoughtful ones. They’d never seek to hurt or jab at the other.

who leaves more marks ( lipstick, hickeys, scratchmarks etc. )

Claudia. Without a doubt, it’s Claudia. She loves to mark him up with hickeys and scratch marks, but seldom does anyone see anything due to his cassock riding high in collar. Sometimes, someone might see a mark, or a purple lip stain, peeking from above the white though, if they’re perceptive enough.

Also, she just loves to pelt him with kissy marks. That man oft has to clean his face from mulberry lipstick when he leaves her!

who steals whose clothes and how often

Claudia’s more curvy than Azrael (lanky boy) so his clothes don’t exactly fit proper, but that doesn’t stop her from slipping on his shirts and leaving a few buttons undone. Azzy, on the other hand, enjoys stealing a plethora of her shirts because they fit him without issue - baggy on him, if anything! They’re very cozy and he enjoys the fabric, from cotton to silk! He has more of her shirts in his dresser than she does of his.

However, they do tend to swap their coats whenever Claudia’s on Watchdog duty and wears her leather duster. His is more flowy and baggy, hers is more protective and thick, but no less stylish with a popped collar. They look really good when they swap.

how they cuddle ( spooning? facing each other? )

Absolutely mushed and tangled together, preferably laying down because Claudia can throw a spanner into the height gap that way. They’re usually face-to-face, noses nuzzled and forehead crowned together. It’s easier to smooch (and bite) this way!

what their favourite nonsexual activity is

The world can burn and fall to ruin, and they’ll be sweeping through the flames with their transcendental waltz undeterred. Dancing is, and will always remain, these two’s thing. They’ll dance through Death and they’ll dance through Spring, making Persephone & Hades proud.

If you can get them to stop for two seconds, they also enjoy traveling and seeing what the world has to offer two wicked goblins like them. Wanderlust is something they both share, or perhaps it’s something Claudia’s infected Azrael with! But they do like getting out of the country.

how long they stay mad at each other

Not long at all. They’ve had their moments of clashing before, but the anger doesn’t really last that long at all. They step away from one another to let the other have their space as I said before, to let the feelings subside since they’re both passionate individuals who do not budge at all, but.. they just don’t stay mad at one another. They’ve gone to bed before without meeting up right away due to their lives preoccupying their time, and every morning afterwards they’ve found one another’s company.

I just. cannot see them as a couple who stay mad at one another for a long time, or carry anger. Individually, they don’t strike me as the personalities that do that with loved ones, and they certainly don’t do it together. Distance makes the heart grow fonder? It makes them a little anxious, to be honest. Just a little. They get a little jittery when life circumstances keep them from coming back together after a disagreement.

Very attached couple. But of course, I could be wrong about this for Azrael! I don’t want to assume. Claudia definitely gets a little jittery for sure.

what their usual coffee / tea orders are

They’re an order you’d prefer not to mix up on the general. Claudia likes three spoonfuls of sugar with a hint of rosemary and no cream in her pine-needle tea, Azrael likes two drops of cream and no sugar. They will notice immediately and kind of swivel their heads like, “Whoa!”. One’s too sweet, and the other’s not nearly sweet or pine-y enough!

if they ever have any children together

They are a happy conjoined family with furbabies, thank you very much!

if they have any special pet names for each other

Claudia is notorious for pet names. “Mr. Callows” always remains the first affectionate term of endearment that has evolved through the years from platonic to romantic, and she never drops it when addressing him. For Azrael, it’s always a sweet french pet name woven with “wolf”. She thinks that is absolutely precious, by the way. Loves it.

However, for fun, a list of pet names she’s made for him so far

Bonekeeper

Loveweaver

Coffinweaver

Sugarpuss

Lover

if they ever split up and / or get back together

Nope.avi

what their shared living space is like ( messy? clean? what kind of decor? )

Azrael’s cottage out and away from everyone is pretty much the perfect insight to how their living style is mashed together; it’s incredibly rustic and you’d swear you walked straight into a witch’s cabin, which is only half true! Dried herbs hang around the place, acting as passive aromatics mixed with the lovely scent of pine incense, but it’s all very light as they keep the windows open to allow for a nice breeze. There’s wicker baskets filled with mushrooms, berries and other foraging goods, there’s dried & salted meat hung up in the kitchen area, and a cauldron that always seems to be bubbling with something delicious.

There’s chairs Claudia’s made for them both around the Hearth, covered with knitted blankets they’ve made with forest embroidery - foxes and wolves, cats and hounds. Baked apples or some sort of fruit lay beside the fireplace on sticks. Azrael has Lilac’s area primmed and proper here, her own cozy corner with little feather toys the couple made.

It’s clean, and it’s a cozy clutter of goods. They’re not suffocated, but it’s obvious they have treasures here and lots of stuffed shelves. Outside they have a hammock they both made from scratch. :’)

what their first christmas / hanukkah / etc as a couple was like

Azrael never really knew how to celebrate the Holiday, and never really had reason to in earlier years until Claudia pulled him along for the ride of Yule, and this was long before they were ever an item. She taught him tradition, she’s taken him hunting for the perfect Yule log, they’ve sat side-by-side making wreathes and making feasts with their own two hands in the manor, and they’ve both kept the log burning while hanging bits of evergreen around. Not to mention, the fun of decorating a pine and the tales of how they’d hang treats and food on the branches for spirits to nibble on in good favor.

However, their first Yule as a couple allowed Claudia to sneak in the cheekier tradition of Kissing Boughs. For the first time, they made little doll versions of Claudia & Azrael to hang in the middle of these boughs, and entwined mistletoe at the bottom as is tradition for making. Every berry on the mistletoe is a kiss promised, and one plucks off a berry for each kiss given. They both had to do their damnedest to not pluck off every berry right away, and it’s become one of their favorite parts of Yule. The purposefully look for mistletoe with the most berries because of this!

what their names are in each other’s phones

On Claudia’s phone: “Mr. Callows ⚰️ 🖤” / “Big Spook 👻” / “Love Goblin 1 🖤″ On Azrael’s phone: “Ma louve 🐺 💚” / “Little Spook 👻” / “Love Goblin 2 💚“

if they have any ‘couple traditions’ ( buying a new mug for their collection every year? baking every friday evening? )

The escape to Azrael’s cottage is absolutely tradition, and prized at that. Come Hell or High Water, they will have their time where they escape the life as Countess and Informant to be domestic - to live a slice of a normal life together, no matter how short-lived. That time is so precious to the both of them. Normalcy, peace, togetherness, and no one else around to tarnish their Elysium. It’s good for their critters, too. <3

who falls asleep first and who wakes up first

Claudia falls asleep first, but she’s always the first to always wake up, too. Azrael tends to sleep in and has his small wife peppering him awake with kisses and bites, leading to a grouchygami who tries to trap her in bed and snuggle. He can never win against her wake-up calls. v_v

who’s the big spoon / little spoon

It depends! They both are fans of switching. Sometimes Claudia will be found with Azrael curled up as small as can be, tucked away in her frame with his face in her neck, hugging her waist and humming delightfully as she nuzzles into the top of his crown and covers it in kisses, holding him very tight and very protectively (as she loves to do). Other times, you’ll just see Azrael curled up around something because she straight up vanishes beneath all that hair and the long overcoat LMAO. He hides his smol spook very, very well, and she does like that.

who hogs the bathroom

Claudia has to spend quite a while when it comes to fixing her hair in the morning; straightening it and then putting it in a braided bun with all those pearls takes time! Meanwhile, Azrael has a lot of hair maintenance of his own. I think they just make it work in the bathroom, no matter how crammed it is LMAO? Even if the mirror is itty bitty they just. make it work! It’s chaotic when they’re using the tiny bathroom at Azrael’s place, but they do it! With playful nudges and hip bumps, of course. Outta the way, you’re hoggin’ the mirror!

And with showers / baths, I still stick with an old way I answered this question; Without warning, Claudia hops in and joins, especially if she’s in a rush. Azrael’ll be minding his own business when OH HELLO NAKED WIFE FANCY MEETING YOU HERE.

There’s not as much hogging as there is Invasion.

who kills the spiders / takes them outside

It’s a fucking race to who gets it first. Will Azrael eat it first, or will Claudia swipe up the little eight-legged nightmare and whisk it away outside? IT ALL DEPENDS, especially when they both spot it!

#(( these are just my ideas of course! nothing is solid unless you want it to be. :'> I definitely don't want to be #dishonest with Azrael's character #but ye! here's what I got! <3 I had a blast filling this out for them #lemme know what you think! these are just my ideas. :D #sorry it took a hot minute - I like to go into super detail with these memes lol.#and it's way too easy to write about these two.. for hours kdfgk.#which I did #I love them tick. :c #I hope you like it!! ))#casketdweller #【 &ship. 】 ¦ ní féidir le haon uaigh mo chorp a choinneáil síos; fillfidh mé dó.#【 games. 】 ¦ you might even win.#【 asks. 】 ¦ what all that howlin’s for.#long post

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egosarelife · 5 years ago

Text

Heist Breakdown

So, I dedicated my day to this because as a fan I felt like it was the LEAST I could do given how much effort and love and dedication and creative majesty that Mark and everybody else involved has put into this magnificent project. Click the Read More for my breakdown - First off, let's break down the 31 endings into basic summaries:

1) Ending 1 of 31 - Clever Girl, wherein we die by boulder. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Car - Try To Fix - I Don't Trust Strangers.

2) Ending 2 of 31 - Monkey See, Monkey Kill, wherein we are possessed/hypnotised by a cursed monkey artefact causing us to attack the Explorer Mark. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Try To Fix - An Adventure Sounds Lovely - Don't Give The Statue.

3) Ending 3 of 31 - A Heavenly Adventure, wherein we travel to monkey heaven an end up with a golden banana and a nice jewel. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Car - Try To Fix - An Adventure Sounds Lovely - Give The Statue.

4) Ending 4 of 31 - Friends 4 Unlife, wherein we end up parting from Mark, becoming a zombie, and having a happy undead existence with all our new zombie friends. Process: Start - Guns Blazin - Car - Walk To Base - Tell The Truth.

5) Ending 5 of 31 - The Coward's Way Out, wherein the scientist's (we stan Rosanna Pansino being a badass in this by the way) gun explodes, we become a zombie and kill Mark. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Car - Walk To Base - I'm Fine - The Scientist - ABSOLUTELY NOT!!

6) Ending 6 of 31 - The End, wherein the scientist destroys the artefact ruining the timelines and we revert back to before the robbery with Mark with no memory or intention of even doing the robbery. This segment has all the credits and some snippets of behind the scenes/bloopers. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Car - Walk To Base - I'm Fine - The Scientist - For The Greater Good.

7) Ending 7 of 31 - What Did You expect?, wherein we reveal to Mark and the soldier that we have been bitten by a zombie, and the soldier shoots us and kills us. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Car - Walk To Base - I'm Fine - The Soldier - I'm Hiding Something.

8) Ending 8 of 31 - The Cure, wherein upon eating a 2000 year old tuna sandwich, we our cured of zombification due to the state of the sandwich's mayonnaise and eventually fix the zombie apocalypse and live a good, happy life. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Car - Walk To Base - I'm Fine - The Soldier - Ed's Hiding Something - Tuna.

9) Ending 9 of 31 - Friends Of The Dead, wherein upon eating a 2000 year old PB & J sandwich makes us a benign zombie, we exhibit a peaceful trusting aura to both zombies and humans which allows a peaceful community to form for the rest of our existence along with Mark. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Car - Walk To Base - I'm Fine - The Soldier - Ed's Hiding Something - PB&J.

10) Ending 10 of 31 - Life Sentence, wherein we elect to spend the rest of our life in prison with our new inmate community, doing anything and everything to stay in prison. Process: Start - Guns Blazin'- Helicopter - Rally Prisoners - Prison Life For Me.

11) Ending 11 of 31 - Dance To The Death, wherein the tattooed inmate Mark literally dances us to death. Process: Start - Guns Blazin'- Helicopter - Rally Prisoners - I Want To Be Free - Thanks But No Thanks

12) Ending 12 of 31 - I Want To Be Free, wherein the tattooed inmate Mark helps us escape from Happy Trails Penitentiary, and we open our stolen artefact to see it contains a skeleton key. Process: Start - Guns Blazin'- Helicopter - Rally Prisoners - I Want To Be Free - Thanks and also Yes Please.

13) Ending 13 of 31 - Shut Up, wherein us and Mark choose NOT to explore our cell for more escape options and chose simply to dig, we retrieve the artefact, open it to reveal a trapped, loud blue fairy who alerts the guards; we end up in an isolated cell but with no other restraints. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Helicopter - Charm The Guards - Dig Dig Dig - What's In The Box?

14) Ending 14 of 31 - Be Quiet, wherein after disregarding another possible escape route because we find a skeleton in it, us and Mark dig through our cell, retrieve our artefact, open it to reveal a trapped, loud pink fairy who alerts the guards; we end up in a straightjacket in an isolated cell. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Helicopter - Charm The Guards - What's That? - HELL No! - What's In The Box?

15) Ending 15 of 31 - Time Is On Our Side, wherein us and Mark are facing off Bob who has betrayed us amidst our prison escape, and we open the artefact which ends up taking us back in time before the robbery where we meet Mark in front of the museum and decide to steal anther artefact. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Helicopter - Charm The Guards - Dig Dig Dig - Stick To The Plan - Open The Box.

16) Ending 16 of 31 - The Interview, wherein us and Mark are facing off against Wade who has betrayed us amidst our prison escape, and we open the artefact which seemingly starts taking us back in time, showing clips from videos not part of the Heist, before we end up being part of an interview with a very happy, enthusiastic Wilford Warfstache...who Katherine ends up reprimanding him because he almost tries to rid our face of a mosquito by shooting it. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Helicopter - Charm The Guards - What's That? Oh HELL No! - Stick To The Plan - Open The Box.

17) Ending 17 of 31 - It Was ME The Whole Time, wherein us and Mark are facing off Bob who has betrayed us amidst our prison escape, and we shoot Bob, who turns out to be Wade, and then the real Bob shoots Mark, and we're also apparently Wade. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Helicopter - Charm The Guards - Dig Dig Dig - Stick To The Plan - Shoot Bob.

18) Ending 18 of 31 -It Was MY Joke, wherein us and Mark are facing off Wade who has betrayed us amidst our prison escape, and we shoot Wade, who turns out to be Bob, and then the real Wade shoots Mark, and we're also apparently Bob. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Helicopter - Charm The Guards - What's That? - Oh HELL No! - Stick To The Plan - Shoot Wade.

19) Ending 19 of 31 - The Enigma of Happy Trails Penitentiary, wherein us and Mark find a secret exit out of our cell with a skeleton in it; we hear voices that indicate people can sense us coming through but we never see them or what's at the end of the exit. Process: Start - Guns Blazin' - Helicopter - Charm The Guards - What's That? - Seems Safe.

20) Ending 20 of 31 - I Believe I Can Fly, wherein we're picked up by pirates who fire us out of a cannon when we say we know everything about the map that's discovered in the artefact. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Light Tunnel - Wait For Rescue - I Know Everything.

21) Ending 21 of 31 - In The Soulstone, wherein a pirate captain sacrifices us to a chasm because he jumped to the conclusion that that's what he needed to do to get his treasure. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Light Tunnel - Wait For Rescue - I Know Nothing - Island Of Golden Treasure.

22) Ending 22 of 31 - A Pirate's Life For Me, wherein after finding treasure with the pirate captain we become his first mate and spend a happy life of the seas with him and our new crew community. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Light Tunnel - Wait For Rescue - I Know Nothing - Island Of Treasured Gold.

23) Ending 23 of 31 - Not Again..., wherein us and Mark are abducted by aliens and have our memories wiped because they wrongly assume we want to return the artefact which contains all the secrets of the universe, thus keeping humanity ignorant to it all. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Light Tunnel - Row Home - Build A Sign.

24) Ending 24 of 31 - IMMA FIRIN' MAH LAZARRR!, wherein we use the artefact to bring down a laser that destroys us, Mark, and feral caveman Matpat. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Light Tunnel - Row Home - Find Shelter - Enter The Cave - You First.

25) Ending 25 of 31 - Don't Judge A Book By Its Human Skin Cover, wherein us and Mark live happily with feral caveman Matpat never questioning how or where he gets all the food he manages to provide. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Light Tunnel - Row Home - Find Shelter - Enter The Cave - Me First.

26) Ending 26 of 31 - Fresh Meat, wherein us and Mark attempt to run away from feral caveman Matpat, but we end up jumping into the sea and being eaten by a shark. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Light Tunnel - Row Home - Find Shelter - RUN AWAY!

27) Ending 27 of 31 - When Will You Learn?, wherein after splitting up at the first opportunity, Mark gets eaten by a crocodile. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Dark Tunnel - Split Up.

28) Ending 28 of 31 - Are You Serious?, wherein after splitting up at the second opportunity, both Mark and us get eaten by a giant worm...thing. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Dark Tunnel - Don't Split Up - Split Up (At the red and black corridors).

29) Ending 29 of 31 - One Last Split Up, wherein after separating from the handcuffs, Mark falls to his death and causes an explosion to explode us out into a field of flowers with a path; it's serene with the light noise of sirens on the background. Process: Start - Sneaky Like - Dark Tunnel - Don't Split Up - Don't Split Up (At the red and black corridors) - Don't Split Up - Split Up (From the handcuffs).

30) Ending 30 of 31 - Once More, With Feeling, wherein us and Mark use the time travel device in the artefact to avoid death and end up back at the museum, where Mark leaves us and is done with the whole venture. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Dark Tunnel - Don't Split Up - Don't Split Up (At the red and black corridors) - Don't Split Up - Don't Split Up (From the handcuffs).

31) Ending 31 of 31 - Ignorance Is Bliss, wherein we encounter Darkiplier in a white suit talking cryptically, potentially about the Actor, as well as alluding to clues that he has hidden throughout the Heist. Process: Start - All Sneaky Like - Dark Tunnel - Don't Split Up - Don't Split Up (At the red and black corridors) - Split Up.

.....whEW THAT WAS A LOT JEEZ MARK DO YOU NOT SLEEP?!?!?!

Anyway, so now with that broken down with can sort of split them up into how any good and bad endings we have. In terms of ''bad'' I count about 18 which result in either our death, Mark's death, Mark leaving, or memory wiping. In terms of ''good'' endings I count about 8 wherein we either become part of a new community, travel back in time or get treasure. There are a few obscure ones though:

Ending 6 of 31 - The End - This is nice outside of the story's perspective since it contains the series' credits, and some BTS and blooper content, but within the story our memories of the Heist scheme are completely gone. It's an ambiguous ending.

Ending 10 of 31 - Life Sentence - We have a new, apparently happy and loving community in the prison, but it's very clear that to keep that life you have to keep committing crime after crime after crime, including murder, so it's rather mixed.

Ending 19 of 31 - The Enigma of Happy Trails Penitentiary - It seems that we're on the verge of escape, but then we literally have no clue what the outcome is, whether it's good or bad, which presents a mystery of its own.

Ending 25 of 31 - Don't Judge A Book By Its Human Skin Cover - We seem to have a happy life with feral caveman Matpat who provides us with gorgeous food...but where does he get it from? Does he have a human farm in his cavey basement? We may never know.

Ending 31 of 31 - Ignorance Is Bliss - This is one that is clearly out of the linear of the whole thing. Part of me feels that Darkiplier is very much on OUR side, and implying that the Actor is the manipulator of the story we're a part of and that we can't get out of it. Dark seems to want to break in and give us something tangible amidst the storyline of the Heist and so says he's going to seed in messages for us to find - My primary theory on this is that he'd either influenced some of the messages that come at the end of each video, or the little messages in the descriptions of the videos.

HOWEVER

AND HERE'S THE BIG THINGAMAJIG

IF we believe Dark and IF he's alluding to SOMEONE having an enjoyable influence over the way Heist is told....WHO is it? We need to think about whether it's the Actor Asshole Mark we're familiar with that is the manipulator, or is OUR Mark the manipulator? We also need to ask ourselves if our Mark and Actor Mark are two different entities in the fiction, or if Actor suddenly got good at acting and has been pretending to be our nice ''Markiplier' this whole time.

So many questions. When it comes to the video messages themselves though, clearly not al of them are relevant. Here are a few that could be significant though (this is only my personal interpretation, others may be able to read more into the other video messages):

Clever Girl, What Did You Expect?, Time Is On Our Side, It was ME The Whole Time, Not Again..., When Will You Learn, Are You Serious? One More Split Up, Once More, With Feeling and Ignorance Is Bliss.

Clever Girl interests me, because what does it refer to? Does it refer to the boulder? Or are we the viewer, being gendered? Or, is it a homage of respect to Celine in Dark who maybe the Actor realises is intelligent because he knows Dark is infiltrating the Heist? I know that's a long shot, but because that phrase doesn't allude to anything in the video, it very clearly stands out.

With What Did You Expect?, it is a very direct address to the viewer. It may not have much more depth than that but it is a clear indication that there is an outside observer who KNEW the outcome of that part of the story before we did. Only the creator can know that.

Time Is On Our Side is a similarly interesting one because of how it can really bring a link between the timeline issues, fluctuations, and manipulations during the multiple stories in Heist...and the timeline issues across the ENTIRE storyboard that is all these series that Mark has created. ADWM, Markiplier TV, WKM, DAMIEN, now this. That is the order in which they've been presented to us, but the timeline of the stories does not follow that order. We know time is broken, take this story, every individual will have gone through different paths in different orders in different times, a linear timeline doesn't exist here.

What's also intriguing is that time is on someone's side. Who's side? ''Our'' implies a plural, a team, which the Actor is not since as far as we know he's an individual. So maybe the ''Our'' is from Dark to us, saying that we have a common enemy and as long as we keep together and keep perspective and understand the timeline and the LACK of linear time....then it keeps it more in our favour rather than the Actor's.

It was ME The Whole Time is very interesting...because we, the viewer, had a mask on and we were changed into either Bob or Wade in whichever version of the video it was; this title seems more significant. It was ME. Who is me? It's not us the viewer because we've had no control over the creation of the narrative, or is it simply a message saying that there are masks upon masks upon masks on everyone? Is it the Actor? Is it Dark? Is it another? This one is more difficult to interpret.

When it comes to Not Again..., we come back to the timeline of everything. This refers to being abducted by aliens, which we know occurred in ADWM and if Heist is set after, then this makes linear sense and also infers that this is the same Mark from that series coming into this one. However...at ending 6 of 31, The End, before the credits roll...Mark inquires about going on a date with us, which begs the question of whether he's referring to a follow up different date, or whether the timeline is more messed up than we thought.

Now, with When Will You Learn, Are You Serious? One More Split Up and Once More, With Feeling, they are interconnected because they all referencing the series of videos wherein you split up with Mark, of which there are many. Clearly these messages come from someone with an opinion and feeling about our decisions...but the last message particularly brings this all together. It is a phrase that's more like an idiom by this point, because we immediately associate it with actors or acting coaches. Does this mean that the Actor is attempting to coach us as a character of his so that we get his desired story exactly right? That's what it very much looks like, and maybe that's why there are an almost comedic amount of opportunities to split, the Actor was trying to force bad decisions onto us so he could have an excuse to interfere with us an our thinking.

Then there's the big one: Ignorance Is Bliss. This is wholly Dark, and in a way it's him telling us that in fact ignorance is NOT bliss and that we have to be very hyper aware of everything that's going on amidst all of this. Not only does he use a line from one of the video descriptions (from the ''I Know Nothing'' video), but he changes the context of the line. That ''I Know Nothing'' video very much promotes a lack of knowledge as the very best outcome, but Dark contradicts this, and it could be argued that this is Dark directly delivering a counter-attack against the Actor.

Now, titles aside, then there are video descriptions to delve into. I'm not delving into them all or going in gargantuan detail, but I'm going to group a few together and just say what I feel they could be alluding too. Again, these are just more theories and thoughts.

First, description comments that allude to there being an omniscient observer/creator to Heist that ISN'T the viewer or Darkiplier:

Wow...that was WAY sadder than I thought it'd be (Handcuff Split Up vid), I would like to point out for the record that that man is NOT an engineer (Try To Fix video), Aw...but it could have been FUN! Oh wait no...no it couldn't have (Don't Split Up video first occasion), I feel like I've seen this somewhere before... (Split Up video first occasion), Now I'm DEFINATELY sure I've seen this somewhere before!

All of these in some manner allude to there being someone watching who must have been involved in the story creation, because they seemingly are familiar with aspects of the plot before they happen, and even when the first instance of something is happening in the linear story...somehow, they are familiar with it. Also...Mark is referenced as a DIFFERENT person. It's not our Mark whose perspective this is from.

Then, we have some that allude to us the viewer quite personally:

This might be the biggest lapse in judgement I've ever seen from you. And that's saying something! (Dark Tunnel video), Wow...that's uncharacteristically noble of you! (For The Greater Good video), Oh so NOW you decide to be noble! (I'm Hiding Something video), Wow! That's so noble of you! For the record, I would NOT have done the same... (Tell The Truth video).

The speaker is talking like they know us, REALLY know us, and that makes me wonder exactly what or who we are in Heist. Give what happened in WKM, what state are we as the viewer currently in? Do we have a new body? Are we somebody new? Our name is never given so there is that continuation, but the fact that this entity (Actor or Dark, or both) knows us begs the question of our identity at this point in the timeline.

Then, there are some that are just plain suspicious:

Knowledge is power (I Know Everything video), Ignorance is bliss (I Know Nothing video), Never second guess yourself! Even in the face of OVERHWELMING evidence! (Me First video), Hurray! But I can't help feel like we're forgetting something... (Thanks And Also Yes Please video), Never a bad idea to stick to the back up plan (Stick To The Plan video pre-Bob), Always best to have a couple extra back-up plans to the back-up plan (Stick To The Plan video pre-Wade), I'm beginning to think this guy's somewhat of a masochist, eh? (Don't Split up video, at the red and black corridors)

Differentiating Mark from this omniscient narrator, talk or knowledge, ignorance, plans upon plans, second-guessing yourself and evidence...it's all alluding to conspiracy and secrecy which is definitely underlying in this whole story arc, whatever it is. Either way, it's magnificent. The story, feral Matpat, badass Rosanna Pansino, Tyler, Ethan, Amy, Katherine, FRIGGIN @markiplier FRIGGIN EVERYONE WHO WORKED ON THIS it's just...it's so amazing.

Also....we stan Wilford Warfstache's new rainbow suspenders. And that is all, remember that these are just fun ideas inspire by this beautiful project...now I need a nap :D

#a heist with markiplier #heist #markiplier #markiplier project #heist with markiplier #the heist #heist breakdown #darkiplier #dark #actor mark #asshole mark #wilford warfstache #wilford #warfstache

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lechevaliermalfet · 5 years ago

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Vae Victis! – A Look Back at Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

It was the mid-1990s. We were in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and gaming as a medium was eager to prove that it had grown up.

This had been going on before the fifth generation, of course. The Sega Genesis sold itself on its contrast to the status quo. “Sega does what Nintendon’t,” and all that. Sega’s whole image was bound up in being the cool kid, the one who’d outgrown all those pokey “kiddie” games like Super Mario Bros. or Kid Icarus or Mega Man. Sega fans played games like Mortal Kombat and Eternal Champions. Even a mascot game like Sonic the Hedgehog had a kind of snide adolescent streak to it; leaner, meaner, and less patient. Nintendo themselves had to butch up a little, even. When their bloodless version of the first Mortal Kombat got outsold by Sega’s, which kept all the gore – despite otherwise being technically superior in every measurable way – they relaxed their standards and left all the blood and fatalities intact for the second and third games, and saw a jump in sales accordingly.

The 90s were in part a decade of cynicism and ironic detachment. Sincerity tended to be frowned upon as being kind of silly and naive, or else a cover for motives less savory. Strong skepticism was the default mode, and in fiction, anti-heroes were all the rage.

Which brings us to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, described by its developers as a Legend of Zelda “for adults”.

Of course, any self-described adult who can’t bear to play a Legend of Zelda game because they feel it’s not grown-up enough needs to sit down and re-assess their idea of adulthood, and how secure they are in it. If a tolerance for violence (if not a craving) is all it takes, then I was an adult at about eleven, when I was single-handedly mowing down whole armies of Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D.

But those were the times, and that’s how Blood Omen got pushed. Which is unfortunate, because it misses the more thoughtful parts of the game’s story that actually did make it material mostly for adults.

“...the first act in my theatre of Grand Guignol!”

We begin in the world of Nosgoth, and if there’s a made-up fantasy word that screams “dark supernatural fantasy” more than that, I haven’t heard it. Our main character is Kain, a nobleman caught out at night in a town where he can’t find an inn or tavern to stay for the night. He is cornered by assassins and murdered, whereupon he goes to hell. Or at least, we can assume it’s hell; I don’t think even a death metal band’s idea of heaven involves being cuffed to twin posts overlooking a literal lake of fire with a sword stuck through you. Anyway, that’s where Kain is, cursing the fact that he can’t get revenge. Which seems a little warped, on the surface of things. You’d think if you were stuck in hell, then getting out, however impossible, might seem more important than getting back at the people who killed you. But if you’re the kind of person who winds up in hell after being murdered, I suppose it stands to reason that your priorities may not be in order.

While Kain is in hell, lamenting his impotent rage and generally ignoring all the fine mid-90s CG scenery, he is approached by a necromancer named Mortanius.

The necromancer offers him a way back to the world of the living, and thus a chance at revenge. Eager to oblige his overdeveloped sense of wrath, Kain takes him up on the offer, and fails to consider that there are only a few different ways, traditionally, that a dead person can cross back through the veil. And none of them really involve returning to life exactly as you were.

Kain rises from his grave as a vampire, stronger than he ever was in life, and only too happy to hack up his assassins when he encounters them not far from the site of his crypt. However, as he comes down from his vengeance-high, he hears a voice in the back of his mind – Mortanius’s voice, in fact – suggesting that his assassins were “the instruments of your murder, not the cause”. Mortanius then urges him to seek out the Pillars to find the real reason for his murder, and its true culprits.

We need to rewind a bit.

IN THE BEGINNING, there were the Pillars of Nosgoth (in fact, “Pillars of Nosgoth” was the game’s working title for a while). Rooted who knows how deep in the earth below, and reaching up to the clouds, the Pillars are a structure that should be physically impossible. They are somehow both integral to the natural order of the world, and also the embodiment of certain elemental principles. There are nine of them, embodying – in no particular order – conflict, energy, states (of being, not political), dimensions, death, nature, time, the mind, and balance. Each Pillar has its guardian, a human endowed with powers according to the Pillar’s defining principle, and tasked with overseeing that Pillar’s particular province.

A good while back in the past (how long is not detailed in this game, but probably centuries) there was a genocidal crusade of sorts against vampires, who were evidently a serious scourge of some kind. In fact, the game opens on a view of a field – practically a forest – of stakes, with a vampire impaled on each. Vlad Tepes would be proud. This crusade was ordered by the Circle of Nine (the collective group of Pillar guardians), and carried out by the fanatical religious order known as the Sarafan Brotherhood.

Monsters that they are, the vampires did not take this well. One of their number, an elder vampire named Vorador, decided to strike back. Vorador was by this point in his unlife no longer quite human looking, with mottled grey skin (later series installments would make this varying shades of green), odd three-clawed hands, and giant bat-like ears. Blood Omen never elaborates on the reason for this difference. At any rate, he singlehandedly stormed the citadel of the Pillar guardians while most of the Sarafan brotherhood were away (presumably looking for more vampires to stake), and wound up killing several of them (one of the sequels gives the number as six). In the process, he even managed to beat down Malek on his way out, perhaps the greatest warrior among the Sarafan, and the one specifically tasked with safeguarding the Circle.

For screwing up his one job, Malek was punished by being made to do that job for eternity. It might seem inadvisable to take the guy who failed to guard you and then make him your guard forever, but it helps if you rip his soul out of his body and bind it to his armor, thus making him a sleepless, tireless, unfeeling, and ever vigilant warrior fueled by pure wrath. Which is what they (or rather, Mortanius) ultimately did. At some point between this time and the present day of Blood Omen, Malek became the guardian of the Pillar of Conflict, so evidently he was fit for his role in the end.

Now we fast-forward a bit, to a point just moments before Kain’s birth. In fact, later games place this at the exact moment of that birth.

Somewhere around thirty years before Kain’s murder outside a nameless tavern in a random town, Ariel, the guardian of the Pillar of Balance, is murdered. This is bad news for all the usual reasons, and also one or two unusual ones. It turns out that her lover is the guardian of the Pillar of the Mind, the mentalist Nupraptor. Her murder drives him insane, and being a telepath (among other things), his insanity infects the guardians of the other Pillars as well. This turns them from their usual purpose of upholding the natural balance, and instead sets them to destroying it. This in turn corrupts the Pillars, symbiotically connected to their guardians, turning them from pristine white to a pitted and cracking grey. With both the Pillars and their guardians respectively corrupted and insane, the natural order of things begins to fall apart. Bad news all around.

Blood Omen is somewhat unusual in that it’s one of the few probably rare instances in fiction where a woman is stuffed into the fridge at the beginning of the story, and in order to drive the villain to extremes of behavior.

So.

Now we have Kain, in the present of our story, given to understand that his death was in some way connected with the Pillars and their corruption. He makes his way to the Pillars, where he meets Ariel’s restless spirit. She’s the one who lays out for him part of the business about her murder and Nupraptor’s madness, and the threat posed to the world by it all. Kain is only interested in a cure for his vampirism (now that he’s had his vengeance, he wants no part of this undeath business), but Ariel persuades him that his best bet is to deal with the corruption of the Pillars. So Kain storms off to go take care of Nupraptor, and ultimately to cleanse the Pillars by severing their connection to their now-insane guardians, solving the problem of their corruption by reference to his sword. Go with what you know.

It’s at this point that Kain’s personal arc begins to unfold, as he becomes increasingly alienated from humanity, both the species and the concept. While initially at odds with his vampirism, Kain spends the story coming to grips with the hypocrisy and corruption of human civilization, all the while becoming more and more comfortable with the seeming monstrosity of his new existence. This is a matter of some necessity. He has things he needs to do, he has to stay alive to do them, and so a certain amount of blood-drinking and slaughter seems inevitable.

In his travels, he comes across Vorador’s manor, situated deep in a swamp teeming with monsters. Kain seeks his help to destroy Malek. Vorador, for his part, spends the encounter being lordly and largely dismissive of Kain’s quest. He advises the fledgling vampire that meddling in mortal affairs is nothing but bad news. Better to sit back and sate one’s hunger – or thirst, in this case – and let the mortal world turn as it will. Humans are to be preyed on, not helped or manipulated or otherwise gotten involved with. Best to stay above such passing concerns. Nevertheless, he takes a liking to Kain, and gives him his ring to summon him at need.

Say a word often enough, and it starts to lose its sense of meaning. Actions likewise lose significance with repetition. They become rote. And as time wears on, Kain seems to begin making a turn. There’s a certain honesty in being a monster. You always know what you are, and you always know how other people see you. Kain may sneer at Vorador’s decadence when they meet, but at least the elder vampire is never less than one hundred percent honest about what he is.

And as Kain goes on, it begins to seem that Vorador was right. So much of Kain’s and the world’s difficulties seem to stem from the selfishness, greed, shortsightedness, self-absorption, and general malice of the people he runs up against. Eventually, he winds up accidentally sparking a second genocidal crusade against his own kind. This has mostly to do with him traveling back in time to kill a man in the past who would grow to become a tyrant in his current era. This mistake no doubt has its roots in his not having not grown up in a world with a whole sub-genre of fiction concerned with the merits or otherwise of traveling back in time to kill Hitler.

We will have such fun with time travel as the series goes on, let me tell you.

The game ends by offering the player a choice. Kain’s efforts to cleanse the Pillars and restore balance to the world have made him the new guardian of the Pillar of Balance. Yet, like all other Pillar Guardians slain at his hand, he himself is corrupt, and must die to complete the task. So the player is asked: Will Kain willingly sacrifice himself for the greater good of Nosgoth, or will he refuse the sacrifice and choose to live in an increasingly broken and corrupt world.

The sequels take the second ending as canon, and honestly, it’s hard to argue. This isn’t a story about hope springing eternal, after all. The few people in it who are unambiguously good are either killed (Ariel) or largely ineffectual (King Ottmar, who comes to prominence briefly toward the end of the story). The player may feel differently, but there’s little reason to believe that Kain would. Proud, haughty, vindictive, wrathful, and growing ever more cynical and mistrustful of the motives of those around him, tired of being used as a tool for other’s schemes... Why would he choose to sacrifice himself?

And so, canonically, we close on a shot of Kain sitting on a throne at the base of the Pillar of Balance, with it and all the other Pillars lying in a broken ruin around him. He drinks from a goblet, and muses that Vorador was right after all: “Vampires are gods – dark gods – and it is our duty to thin the herd.”

The End.

“Nothing is free. Not even revenge.”

So that’s Blood Omen as a story. What about as a game?

On the balance it’s kind of uneven.

On a technical level, it’s fairly impressive. In its time, it stood as a testament to the potential quality of two-dimensional graphics in gaming, even as the entire medium was leaping into the third dimension, ready to ditch and decry anything made in 2D as inferior. The result from a technical standpoint is that Blood Omen has in some ways aged better than a lot of other games of its vintage, including its first sequel.

But then you actually play the thing, and see where it sort of falls apart.

Let’s get the easy part over with, shall we? The load times in Blood Omen are godawful, just the worst possible combination of long and frequent. It seems almost like a joke at times: “Really? We’re loading again? It was one fucking room!” Were it not for the fact that it began development as a totally unrelated game, I would strongly suspect that the sequel, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, used its data-streaming technology to avoid loading times altogether purely as a response to this criticism. I still think that may be the case.

Once we dig past the issue of loading times, though, the game reveals other issues.

There are good ideas on display here. Let’s start with that. The game has a day-and-night cycle, and while you can walk around during the day, you deal less damage (and take more) while the sun is up. Water is like the touch of acid to a vampire, and any time you’re in it, you’ll take constant damage. Rain and snow will likewise damage you, and while there are power-ups that are supposed to eliminate this problem, I’m not sure they actually work. At least, not on the PC version of the game, which is what I’ve mostly played.

The game also requires that Kain drink blood periodically. His health naturally drains very slowly, but constantly, so you always have to be on the lookout for a way to top yourself off. There are some more abstract health restoration items, as well as a consumable item you can use, called the Heart of Darkness (this item will become obscenely important in later installments). However, the game is structured such that most of Kain’s health restoration will have to come from either enemies or, more often, helpless innocents. This ties nicely into the game’s theme of alienation from humanity, though the way the game often presents these situations –random strangers chained to walls all over the world, for no apparent reason – seems a little odd at times. And it has interesting ideas about different creatures having blood that might actually be harmful to Kain, or inflict him with a long-term poison.

In addition to the graphics looking nice (the CG cutscenes are definitely of their time, but the in-game sprite work and lighting effects are quite nice), the game has a great soundtrack, dark and moody and ominous. And the voice work is superb. All character interactions are handled with voiceover rather than on-screen text, and the cast knocks it out of the park. Not just “good for the mid-90s video game voice acting”, but great, period.

The puzzle-solving is a little lackluster, though. For something pitched as a “grown-up Legend of Zelda”, its puzzles largely consist of pulling levers and pushing buttons, and navigating mazes. Which is fine, but again, any game that’s going to self-consciously compare itself to The Legend of Zelda needs to bring its A game, especially with its puzzle-solving.

The game does offer you a lot of tools to use, in the form of different weapons, spells, and magical items. But a lot of these boil down to more inventive yet questionably practical ways to kill enemies. And considering that setting up a selection of these items for immediate access involves going back and forth to the inventory menu (requiring a load time both ways), it’s easier to just stick with your weapon and a handful of the most commonly used spells and items and call it a day.

Weapons themselves are another problem. You’ll find that your iron sword from the very beginning of the game is the most generally useful. The mace will let you stun human enemies to drink their blood after just two hits, but it lacks the crowd-control effect of the sword, and also lacks the stunning effect on the non-human enemies that make up the bulk of your later-game foes. It’s also useful for knocking down certain stone barriers, but these are few and far between, and necessary for progress only very rarely. The twin axes let Kain cut down trees barring his path, and also let him cut down enemies by spinning like a saw blade… but this means you’ll frequently kill enemies before you have a chance to drain them. The flaming sword burns enemies alive and leaves only ashes, preventing you from drinking blood that way. And then the final weapon, the Soul Reaver (also an item of incalculable importance later in the series), deals massive damage as long as you have magic power to fuel it. But while thus empowered, it detonates the enemies it kills, making them impossible to drain. And when not empowered, it’s only as damaging as the iron sword, but slower and more awkward.

Combat in general gets frustrating at times, thanks to the iffy hit detection. One enemy might walk right through your sword swing, while another you could swear was out of range will register a hit. It never becomes a total deal-breaker, but it’s a point of frequent irritation as you go.

Let’s have another positive: Kain also gains the ability to transform into various other states as the game goes by. In his wolf form, he can leap over certain obstacles, but his attack in this form has no combo ability and a long wind-up, making him vulnerable. He can use his bat form to fast-travel between beacons and certain landmark locations, while his mist form allows him to walk on water without taking damage, as well as cross certain barriers without opening the door. There are also two disguises he can use. One transforms him into a peasant, while the other turns him into a human-looking version of himself so that he can pass as a nobleman. The use of both of these is largely situational, required in a very small number of situations and then mostly pointless outside of them.

But perhaps the thing that stands out the most is its linearity.

This is to some extent mandated by the story. Unlike The Legend of Zelda, to which this game invites much comparison, Blood Omen’s story is very much at all times front and center. A Zelda game will leave you with bits of story here and there, and largely leave you to explore or puzzle your way forward or dick around in town or otherwise do your own thing for long stretches of time. The story in one of those games is the starting point of the experience, a backdrop against which you play out the adventure. Hyrule is to some extent defined by that openness, with its plains and deserts and vast forests and so on.

Blood Omen lacks this. Its story is the entire point and purpose of the game. The path forward is always clear and rarely has room for deviation or discovery. There may be things hidden off to the side, but these tend ultimately to be cul-de-sacs, connecting to nothing else. This is even subtly expressed in the game’s environments: lots of indoor areas, caves, narrow trails, canyons, and so on. There’s little opportunity to go off the beaten path. Blood Omen’s pathways not only discourage exploration, they often disable it. This is not your experience to own; it is Kain’s story for you to be told.

I feel like in story terms, that’s ultimately the difference. Legend of Zelda’s story always exists to serve the game that Nintendo crafts. Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain’s game exists to serve the story.

And just to be clear, none of this is bad at all. It’s every bit as valid in terms of game design and mechanics as any given Zelda. But if you’re going to compare your game to The Legend of Zelda and then fail to do the most essentially Zelda things in it – not just do them poorly, but not do them at all, missing the point entirely of what a Zelda game is about – then it’s worth commenting on. I like Blood Omen, but I had to get used to thinking of it on its own terms. The Zelda comparisons are easy to make. Even without the developers making them, the look and structure of the game seems to invite them.

Like a good book, Blood Omen is a (mostly) straight shot from start to finish. Its linearity is what allows it to control the story, to unfold its plot and explore its themes at a pace of its choosing. The game to some extent revels in its edginess, but to be honest, it was perfect for me at the time. I was sixteen when I first played the game. Sixteen, and a bit of a loner with an odd and private (but intense) interest in vampires. It was probably the perfect game for me at the time. And it’s still ultimately enjoyable today, if you take it as what it is. Not as a Legend of Zelda game for adults, but as a decent action-adventure game with a good story and top-notch presentation. If you don’t mind the linearity and the relentlessly dark and sometimes disturbing story, it’s just about perfect.

Post-script the First: Likelihood of Re-release, and Current Availability

Eeeehhhhhhhhhh...

Here’s the problem: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain was originally dreamed up and created by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics (who also had a hand in the development, late in the process), with distribution to be handled by Activision. Crystal Dynamics eventually got full ownership of the Legacy of Kain brand, and used it to make the first sequel to Blood Omen, titled Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Silicon Knights was against this, but had less deep pockets than Crystal Dynamics, so they were ultimately the losers of the resulting court battle over the affair. The lone bone thrown to them was that Crystal Dynamics had to acknowledge in the game that Soul Reaver was based on characters and ideas created by Silicon Knights.

By the time Soul Reaver rolled around, Crystal Dynamics belonged to Eidos. Then, in 2005 (not long after the last Legacy of Kain game was published), Eidos was completely bought out by Square Enix, and was mostly refocused on creating western-style games under the Square Enix umbrella. Crystal Dynamics still exists as a division within Square, where they’ve been making various Tomb Raider games almost exclusively ever since the acquisition.

The problem with any hypothetical remaster or re-release of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is that, for several years, it would have required some three-way legal wrangling to determine who really owned the thing, and what they could do with it (if anything), and under what conditions.

As of about 2014, Silicon Knights ceased to exist (about which more later, because it’s a fun story), but that still leaves the rights an open issue. Square Enix seems to own the larger Legacy of Kain intellectual property, but there’s the question of ownership regarding Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain specifically, and I’m not sure that question has ever been answered. Silicon Knights doesn’t exist, but many of its personnel are still around in some capacity, and would presumably have something to say about anything involving it.

Venues like Steam and Good Old Games have released the every other installment in the series digitally (even Blood Omen 2), but nobody’s touched the original game. Probably CD Projekt Red and Valve don’t have much desire to try unsnarling the ownership and licensing issues themselves, and none of the owners seem all that keen on it, either.

And it will probably stay that way. The Legacy of Kain series in general has always been pretty solidly in the B tier of video games, from back when there still even was much of a B tier in the first place. The fanbase for that kind of deliberately overwrought gothic supernatural fantasy was loyal, but never very big, and I’m not sure how much that’s changed. Moreover, I’m not sure either Square is willing to bank on it having grown in the interim enough to do anything about this first game in the series. The more time goes by, the less inclination any party has to make anything of the series, especially an early entry whose ownership may be contested. An indirect sequel, and also some kind of MMO, were both in the works at various points. The MMO vanished after not very long at all on the market, and the indirect sequel never made it out of development.

Legal options for playing Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain are limited. You can play the original PlayStation version on the PlayStation 1, 2, or 3. It’s also digitally available on the PS3, although not for the PSP or Vita. Infuriatingly, it’s one of a small handful of games that can’t even be side-loaded (a process that involves downloading a digital PS1 game onto your PS3, then copying it uninstalled to the Vita). The PC version, meanwhile, can still be played, though there’s a special program custom-made for it that you’ll have to get in order to install it and run it on modern systems. And this tends to run a little slow. Music and sound are fine, it’s just the game actually moves slower than normal. Or you could install a virtual desktop and play it that way.

Post-script the Second: The Death of Chivalry

So whatever happened with Silicon Knights?

Well, the story is… not complicated, exactly, but not entirely straightforward, either.

Development of Blood Omen was troubled. As we would later learn, this was not an especially novel situation for Silicon Knights to be in. Two of their other big projects later on underwent some turbulence in production. Blood Omen was originally to be created by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics. Later on, after Crystal Dynamics became part of British publisher Eidos, they were able to somehow leverage this connection to strongarm their way into ownership of the overall Legacy of Kain intellectual property. They used it to make the first sequel to Blood Omen, titled Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. This had begun life as a brand-new IP (originally titled Shifter), which helps explain some of the tremendous thematic, aesthetic, and design differences between the two games.

Silicon Knights later maintained that they’d had their own ideas for a potential Blood Omen sequel, but never got around to it, and after Crystal Dynamics started making their own sequels, Silicon Knights lost interst. I’m not sure how much of that is real and how much is just so much sour grapes. Anyway, they went off and did their own thing for a while. They published the survival horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the GameCube, after having signed an exclusivity deal with Nintendo around that time. It had originally been in development for the N64, but was ultimately moved up to the newer hardware after development delays. For anyone who’s wondering, Eternal Darkness an excellent game, on the shortlist of must-own GameCube titles, even if you’re not necessarily a fan of survival horror. It’s not perfect (among other things, you have to beat the game three times to see the true ending), but it does a lot of interesting things.

They also developed the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid (likely under heavy scrutiny and supervision form Konami), dubbed Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Much as I tend to prefer the original version of the game for its restraint (Twin Snakes has a lot of ridiculous high-flying wire-fu maneuvering in its action cutscenes), the remake is worth any Metal Gear fan’s time. Among other things, series creator Hideo Kojima has apparently declared it the canon version of events. It also saw a re-dubbing of the entire script, since apparently when the original audio was played back at a higher sampling rate, you could hear the traffic in the background, which the ramshackle soundproofing used in the original hadn’t been able to entirely shut out. The re-dubbed script also has the benefit of having allowing Jennifer Hale and Kim Mai Guest to ditch their put-on accents – Guest’s being particularly irritating, and borderline racist (maybe actually racist; I’m a white dude, and not totally clear on these things).

After this, they moved on to the Xbox 360 with their passion project Too Human, which had been troubled from the beginning. Its on-again, off-again development cycle spanned a decade and three console generations. It began development for the original PlayStation, then shifted to the GameCube when the developer did in the early 2000s. It went quiet for a few years, then resurfaced as an Xbox 360 project that was ultimately delivered in 2008, two years after its projected release on that console.

Too Human was a notorious, news-making flop, and Silicon Knights responded to this failure not simply by pinning the blame on someone else, but by doing that and then actually suing them. Specifically, they sued Epic Games, from whom they had licensed the Unreal Engine 3 to make the final version of Too Human. The accusation was that Epic deliberately sabotaged developers who licensed their engine by providing an incomplete product, and that the difficulties stemming from this had caused development delays. These delays, and the compromises they brought about, were supposedly ultimately responsible for the failure and the financial losses of Too Human.

Epic responded by then counter-suing, which was the beginning of the end for Silicon Knights.

Epic’s counter-suit stated that Unreal Engine 3 was a work in progress, and that they were making it essentially on the fly as they developed the first Gears of War. The counter-suit further stated that it was readily and openly acknowledged that the engine was unfinished, and that when it was done, it might ultimately not turn out to be useful for the licensees. Epic’s suit further indicated that these facts were all known and laid out in the licensing contract, and so like all licensees, Silicon Knights knew this when they signed for it.

But it gets better (which is to say, worse, at least for Silicon Knights). Epic’s counter-suit also included the allegation that Silicon Knights had knowingly and wrongfully copied code wholesale from Unreal Engine 3 and incorporated it into their own engine without permission from Epic. They had then gone on to use this hybrid engine on other internal projects without the permission of the people they’d cannibalized it from.

Now, I’m not one to root for a big corporation, even (especially) a game developer. But Silicon Knights had the misfortune of being run by Denis Dyack, a known con-man, grifter, shady bullshitter, and general ambulatory phallus. He maybe wasn’t in the same category as a Randy Pitchford or a Bobby Kotick, but that’s less a matter of capacity and more a matter of opportunity. Given the chance to operate on their scale, I don’t doubt he’d have fit right in with that crowd.

As far as the court case went, the evidence was overwhelmingly in Epic’s favor. In addition to their own court costs and damages awarded to Epic, Silicon Knights was forced to recall all unsold copies of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny (another game they’d developed with their Unreal Engine 3 hybrid), as well as scrap all projects using the engine, which seems to have been literally everything they had in the works at that point.

So what happened, essentially, is that Silicon Knights sued Epic Games in an effort to offset their losses by making money out of the Too Human debacle somehow, and it backfired so comically that they broke themselves against their opponent.

But their end, one way or another, was probably inevitable in that console generation. Looking at their release history, there’s really nothing that stands out as a hit or an absolute classic. Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes were both fine games, this much is true. But Eternal Darkness was a GameCube exclusive, and the GameCube didn’t sell the way Nintendo hoped. Meanwhile, The Twin Snakes is certainly nice, but as a remake of a different developer’s game, it has little in the way of originality, and very little of the material can really be said to “belong” to Silicon Knights, since it was someone else’s brainchild right from the start.

They were never a hugely prolific publisher, with eight games published before they folded, and according to Wikipedia, seven known titles cancelled at various points during their existence. These cancelled projects included two sequels to Too Human (which had always been planned as a trilogy). Given the cold reception received by the original, both from critics and consumers alike, that seems questionable. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. But however you look at it, they didn’t have what you’d call a good ratio of finished to unfinished projects. And while it’s worth mentioning that many of those unfinished projects were upcoming games they were forced to cancel because they’d been made (or begun) with their illegal Unreal Engine 3 hybrid, the fact is that when your business plan hinges on stealing another developer’s game engine to make your own games, you’re already in a bad place.

Silicon Knights pretty firmly slotted into the middle tier of video games. For my money, the middle tier is in some ways the sweet spot. It’s more high-tech and technically involved than the indie set, yet not so high-budget that developers in it can’t feel free to experiment. But that middle tier has all but vanished these days. It’s questionable whether Silicon Knights would have hung on long enough to find a spot in it today, even if they hadn’t destroyed themselves going after Epic, just based on the iffy reception of their games. That’s without considering the general skullduggery it took to keep them going in the first place. And I also tend to think of X-Men: Destiny as a bad sign. There’s no shame in work-for-hire; it’s how a lot of major development studios (like Blizzard) started out. But that’s the key: you start out doing work-for-hire projects to make the money to strike out on your own. Silicon Knights was moving in the opposite direction, and that’s a bad sign.

Vae Victis, indeed.

#legacy of kain #blood omen #blood omen legacy of kain #kain #video games #video gaming #games #gaming #silicon knights #vae victis #halloween

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cuthie · 5 years ago

Text

Omru: Fabled City of Gold?

A mild cyclone of sand and wind ran across the entrance of a small rocky burrow, masking the sounds of a dozen people chatting, bartering and playing games within. A trio of black furred vulpera were making the most noise, a middle aged woman squeezing a young man hard enough to make his eyes bulge. This, naturally, was followed by ten to fifteen squishy mushy loud wet kisses, “Mwua mwua mwuah!”

Omru gasped for air, “Leggo, leggo!”

Finally, his mother released him from their embrace, “It’s been too long, Omru. I’m just glad you came to see us before going off on this grand adventure to Django or wherever.”

“It’s Durotar. Lush tropical paradise home of the Orcs.”

A snarky teenage girl’s voice cut in, “More like Uratard. Cause you’d have to be some kind of stupid to follow those brutes home. They probably spend all day smashing their heads with rocks- Actually Om, you’ll fit right in.

Om rolled his eyes at his younger sister. This had been his reception for the last hour or so. They’d chat, catch up on things, say hi to nosy vulpera who continuously interrupted their reunion, then his mother would grab him and start kissing and hugging. To be fair, he hadn’t seen her in a few years. In fact, he hadn’t recognized his sister initially. It was almost like looking into a gender bending mirror. Before he always had a height advantage, but now she had finally caught up to him. “Yeeeah. Of course I had to come visit. Oh, where did you say Pops was again?”

Om’s sister, Elni, pitched in again, “Oh, he went out to get some candles for my birthday cake mom made.”

Om winced, “Oh. Uh, happy birthday El!”

Elni’s face dropped, “Are you serious? That was seven months ago.”

Mom placed a hand on either side of Om’s face, squishing it, “I’m so glad you came. I was worried that those awful Faithless might have got you. You know there’s a curse on this family, so I never know when we’ll see one another again.”

“A curse on the -men- in this family.” El stuck her tongue out before giving a cheeky grin. “Us women don’t get lost when we get up from bed to pee. Only the boys.”

Om scratched at the back of his head. He had every intention of reaching Dazar’alor when he had last left Keni and the ‘babes’. Yet somehow he had found himself here, surrounded by family and friends. Heh, there definitely was a family curse; it was the only thing that made sense. It all went back to his no good, dirty, rotten pig stealing great great grandfather. And if his mother found out that the Faithless actually -had- captured him, he’d never hear the end of it. “Yeah, well, curse or no curse, I’ve got a life debt to a goblin that I need to repay.”

“A life debt?” Mom raised a single brow.

“Yeah, I uh, I got trapped in a chasm. And, uh, you know, if it wasn’t for him, I would have died of dehydration.”

El leaned in closer, her eyes squinting with suspicion, “Are you suure that’s what happened?”

“Yes, I’m sure!”

El pulled her left eyelid down, sticking out her tongue as Omru made the same expression right back at her, “Nyah!” Their mother wasn’t even annoyed by the childishness. It was an expression of fondness for one another, so far as she was concerned. As the pair continued poking at one another, she took the opportunity to host a rare family dinner. It really was a shame their father was out there in the dunes, lost, but it really had been a recurring theme for several generations now.

Om and El had long quit squabbling by the time food was roasting over the fire pit. The scent of the buzzard meat had the whole cavernous hideaway bringing out their plates and utensils. People would offer their seasonings, wines, desserts, you name it. That was one beautiful aspect of caravan life. People always seemed to come together at the end of the day. One didn’t just have a mother and father. They had a host of ‘aunts’, ‘uncles’ and ‘cousins’, a whole network of friends and family who bonded over the trials and tribulations of the sands.

For Omru, it was the last such caravan night he would experience in Vol’dun.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

Omru pressed his back against the cold stone wall, shivers coursing down his spine. His breath rose in a fog before him as he tried to quiet his breathing, his large ears twitching, listening. For a moment there was nothing, only silence. Then came the jagged clattering steps of the skeletal troll, searching for the little fox that had dared defile the resting place of kings and queens with his presence.

Not that Omru had disturbed the tombs intentionally. At long last he had made it out of the desert, had climbed literal mountains of vivid green moss and vines, and made it to a Zandalari city of gold. It was beautiful, but it was also kind of a shithole. A city made of pure gold, with the bodies of trolls, dinosaurs and oozing puddles of shadow, decay and vomit. Exploded spiders clung to steps with their still attached legs twitching, and as Om descended golden step after step, not a single sign of life stirred.

That should have been a wake up call, but how many golden cities could there be in the jungle, right? And so the vulpera had explored, poked and prodded. Some of these corpses weren’t native to Zandalar. Large horned bipedal beast men with hooves, slack jawed soldiers that had been dead for ten years at least, and the odd orc or goblin were scattered throughout the streets. Eventually Om found himself deeper and deeper within the city, the temperatures dropping despite lit fires in each room. Cobwebs hung from ceilings and spilled ink blacker than any darkness Omru had ever seen threatened to swallow the entire floor.

The pacing of the long dead Zandalari echoed through the corridors like the slow rattled ticking of an old clock. Somewhere behind the rotted creature, Omru’s pack lay on the floor ripe for the taking. It mattered only slightly less than his own life did, but what meaning would his life hold if all his stuff was gone, left behind for any passing grave robber to collect?

A shimmer caught his attention, light dancing atop something long, flat and sharpened, risen and resting atop a stone pedestal. A steel sword with emerald baked into its center. Two feet long, a peculiar shape curving in four different slices, two on the top, two on the bottom. The blade seemed to emit a purple aura around it’s sharpened edges, and like any good Trader slash Explorer, Omru knew exactly what that meant. Magic. Enchanted or cursed? Did it really matter? Would it really make sense to store a cursed sword in a tomb of emperors though?

The clunky clinking steps seemed to grow louder and louder, perhaps only a few feet away from Omru as he debated. He knew that his stealth magic was no good here. This thing had spotted him an hour ago and he had barely gotten away with his life. What had happened to this city that had risen the dead to unlife? What were those shadowy pools, what was that dark ink? Om shook the questions from his mind as the towering skeleton stepped in front of him, dwarfing him three times over.

A rusted blade clanged, biting into stone as Omru disappeared from his hiding spot. Somewhere in a realm between worlds, voices called out, shrieking in eternal torment. Those voices were muted and forgotten in the nano seconds between the fox’s disappearing reappearing trick. In a little poof, Omru was behind the skeleton, kicking at the back of it’s kneecap with a furry foot. The skeleton did not even buckle.

“Shit!”

A trio of small throwing knives were sent into the rib cage of Omru’s enemy. Literally, slipping right through the bones, bouncing within the sloshing interior of bones and guts. Wait, guts? No, this thing was too dead to have any guts. Why would- Omru barely ducked out of the way of another sword slash. No time for thinking here, only doing.

Running as fast as his paws would take him, Omru ran to the shining enchanted-or-cursed sword, gripping it by the hilt with two hands and pulling it free.

‘You wield de dagger of Isgi, daughter of de Assassin Queen o’Zandalar. Continue my work an slice de troats of de unworthy.’

Omru’s eyes widened. Continue the work of, wait, dagger? This thing was almost as big as him, how was it a dagger? Still, it was light enough to be held in a single hand comfortably. As the skeletal troll rushed forward, Omru squinted his eyes at his enemy and concentrated. His legs bent at the knee, then shot him up forward with the slight aid of supernatural force. The skeleton attempted to parry, only for Omru to disappear, reappearing behind the creature, airborne.

In a series of attacks, Om would strike the skeleton with his new glowing weapon, then disappear, four, five, six times in a row. Each attack hit harder than the last, emphasized by vulgarity, “Fuck.”

“You,”

“You”

“Piece”

“Of”

“Shit!”

The last strike sent the skeleton sprawling onto the ground, falling apart. Literally, with no muscles, ligaments or fibers connecting anything, all the bones just kind of clattered to the ground, the skull landing upside down with broken tusks digging into the dusty stone floor.

Omru rotated his right shoulder backwards, making a popping sound, as he caught his breath. For good measure he kicked at the skull with his foot, half expecting it to levitate or explode or something. Nope, nothing. Bright orange eyes fixated on his new enchanted weapon. There was something here, alright. He didn’t know what, but he could feel it in his gut. He hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary during the fight. He was, after all, an experienced scavenger of Vol’dun. Staying alive was an art form there, and he had picked up a dozen tricks. Perhaps the magic was just in how light the blade seemed to be. Sometimes magick was just that obvious and simple. Purple glowing aura? Makes the blade a quarter of its original weight. Boom, easy. To be certain, he would have to call on an expert. Before he could do that, he had to grab his stuff and find the -REAL- city of Dazar’alor.

#wra rp #wra #Wyrmrest roleplay #Warcraft Roleplay #vulpera

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princeofdoomrps-archive · 5 years ago

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Good end- Viktor

I’ve been thinking about this all day and honestly? Like full on Vik’s Wish Fulfillment Ending?

He’s with Cheran, Aki is gone (preferably due to reasons not connected to him actually, but if it would just never come back on him, he’d be fine with taking Aki out of the picture himself). He builds up enough money that he and Cheran are easily comfortable, and Cheran can have a safer life. Anyone troubling either of them is already gone. Cheran eventually passes on, but somehow comes back not as a mindless zombie but some kind of undead that keeps their thoughts and memories, and he can finally reveal what he is without Cheran viewing him with suspicion.

From a writing POV though

Viktor learns to understand his emotions better and how to communicate them. He has a serious talk with Cheran. As much as can be cleared up between them is, and they remain friends. He eventually patches things up with Aki at least to the point they can be around each other for Cheran’s sake. Whether Cheran decides to date Vik or not, he continues his self-improvement and when Cheran does pass eventually, Vik is able to move on with his unlife relatively peacefully.

#Viktor Serren #these are both good ends in their own ways #Anonymous

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wizardsnwookies · 6 years ago

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POTA 111518 - Below

“Looks like you were right.” Miv blinked at the empty coffin with disinterest, turning away to the other stone sarcophagus within the room. “How much you want to bet the rest are occupied?”

“I don’t gamble, but I believe we should take great care in investigating the others.” Banshae was deadly serious, seemingly unaware of the casual turn of phrase.

“I’m sorry?” Dion turned suddenly.

“It’s a rather unfortunate necessity. This appears to be the most likely source of the Ghouls we encountered on our way here. The laboratory upstairs, now this tomb.”

“No, of course you’re right.” The priest glanced at the great stone vessels with a twinge of reluctance. To desecrate a place of rest, even with justification, was not at all something he relished. His duty was to bring peace to the dead, not disrupt it. Banshae could see the distress in his features and placed a solid hand upon his shoulder.

“If their rest has been disturbed-”

“Yes, I know. Proceed.”

She offered only a single curt nod. Flea needed no prompting and was already standing at the head of the next stone coffin, this one far more mundane than that of Samular Paradoon. Unlike his however, this sarcophagus was indeed occupied.

Sliding away to the floor, the stone lid first revealed a pair of milky white eyes open to all the world. No life lived within them, but something else lurked beneath. An unlife, like a slumbering bear within its cave, filled the room with foreboding. Flea readied himself, gripping his axe firmly, waiting for an attack that would not come. Instead it simply sat there, staring through Flea, past him, towards some unseen oblivion.

“Strange, never known an undead to miss out on a meal.” He waved a meaty paw over its eyes, trying to break its trance. Either his flesh was not as appetizing as he thought it to be, or something else was going on here.

“It may still be under the command of its master. These poor creatures are little more than slaves. Please Flea, grant it mercy and release it from bondage.”

“You’re the boss.” A single swing was enough to cave in its brittle skull, exploding into dust and fragments of bone. He casually jumped off the dais and moved to the next coffin, giving Dion room for his rituals.

It continued in such a manner for what felt like ages. One by one tombs were opened, each one either empty or containing a motionless undead awake to the world around it but powerless to act. One by one Flea sent them back to whatever awaited them on the other side, one by one Dion guided them on their way, bringing them to one final coffin.

Flea stood at the head, axe held aloft at the ready. When Banshae slid the slab aside it’s occupant proved to be far more fresh than the others. His skin was immaculate, intact, almost glowing with life still. Across his chest both arms clasped the hilt of his sword, he was dressed in full regalia, the banner of his station neatly folded and placed upon his lap.

“Hold.” Dion nearly threw himself upon the body, ready to block any blow that might come from an overzealous Flea. He could feel a tingle in the air around the body, a ripple in reality indicating the presence of magic.

“Is that who I think it is?” Elora joined the others, leaning in to catch a better glimpse at the young man inside the stone sarcophagus.

“I believe it may be. Sir Ord Nynn, our missing knight.”

“Is it just me or does he look a bit too...fresh?” That was about as delicately as Miv could think to put it. Ord Nynn had died some time before the Caravan left Mirabar, which had been more than a few weeks ago by now.

“A simple spell, ‘Gentle Repose.’“ Dion gently brushed his fingers against the cold steel of the knights burial armor. It was chilled to the touch, but not nearly as cold as the rest of the room. He had been placed here recently.

“How long does a spell like that typically last?”

“Not this long. Someone had to have recast it since the Caravan ambush.”

“Why?” Banshae leaned back to stare at the ceiling. Curious-er and curious-er. The further they uncovered the more complex the motives seemed to be.

“Why bother taking care of the body? It could not have been the the target of the ambush.” The latter was more a question than a statement. Thinking aloud. A question no one seemed to have the answer to.

---

“I don’t think this is part of the original complex.” Elora lead the group out onto the stone landing. Before them a great chasm opened up into the earth bridged by a perfectly hewn stone bridge. Upon the other side, through the darkness, her sensitive elven eyes glimpsed unnatural shapes. Perfect edges and delicate moldings did not occur with any underwater riverways she knew of and furthermore, no monastery she was familiar with needed this much square-footage. Between that and the subtle shift in craftsmanship of the masonry told her they were emerging into a different world entirely.

“Let’s take it carefully from here. Elora, you lead us and keep your senses sharp. Miv, be ready to extinguish the globe on her word.” None argued with Banshae’s orders, the silence of the massive chamber was pregnant with a strange sense of anxiety. As if something horrible awaited them within even though they had received no resistance up until this point.

Stealthy steps guided them along the expanse of the chasm, the stone beneath their feet covered in disturbed dirt and dust. As with everywhere else so far, this place had been marked by battle. Halfway across they paused over a pair of slain figures, an odd pair that did not seem to match with the rest of bodies they had uncovered. The Teifling had one of the strange serrated swords in her death grip and a collection of trophies tied to each horn. Her companion, a strange creature none were familiar with, was extremely pale with hair as white as a winter snow. Each were covered in wounds, the most grievous being a horrific crushing blow that had caved in their torsos, shattering ribs and exploding the heart.

“So, this is where their assault ended.” Banshae offered the brave warriors a moments pause out of respect. A brief sonnet passed her lips, a sonnet she did not know she even knew. A memory from a previous life, a ritual to honor fallen brothers and sisters.

“The two of them did all this damage?” Flea bobbed his head, impressed.

“If these are our predecessors, there should be one more according to Lady Stormbanner. A Kenku. Perhaps they made it further in?”

“Either way, my guess is this is where we can start expecting company.” Flea readied his axe. Casting his eyes across the bridge he peered into the darkness, and thought he saw the briefest of movements.

“Elora?” Banshae turned to the head of the group, the High elf crouched low, body tense. Listening. Watching.

Her fine tuned ears pricked at a faint rustling. A faint disturbance she could just barely hear over the sounds of the party around her. Whispering. Deep guttural voices in a hushed tone, and the clattering of iron.

“I think we’re blown.”

An arrow shot into the darkness, punctuating her statement. The group scattered, ducked, searching the black void at the other end of the bridge. They knew to stay in such an exposed area would be suicide, so each sprinted forward, unbidden into the unknown.

A great stone plaza met them with finely crafted pillars rising up to the raw ceiling. Flagstones faded in and out of piles of earth and loose pebbles. Several hobgoblins stood at the ready by a modest fire built next a pair of shattered stone doors. The archer was already nocking another arrow, while his companion slammed a fist against a wooden door to the west. But there was something else with them, something far more imposing, menacing.

“What in the hells is that?” Banshae drew her sword and hefted up her shield about two meters from the beast that was just now rising to its feet. A rider clad in stone swung burly legs across its back, this thing that looked like a cross between a bulldog and the predators that swam the depths of the ocean. It’s hide looked to be about as thick as her shield, its pointed snout as sharp as her sword.

“Does it matter? Kill it!” From behind Flea leaped clean over her shoulders landing in the dirt to the creature’s left side. With a single swing his axe blade drove itself between two of the sturdy plates of its back, filling the room with a painful, animalistic bellow.

Light filled the room from Miv’s driftglobe. At this point, he figured, the jig was up and all subterfuge was out the window. Light, would only be an aid to their efforts now. He sent it high into ceiling, illuminating as much of the room as he could before moving in to close the distance between himself and the archer.

Elora and Dion pressed up against one of the pillars for cover, peeking out with precise strikes of arrow and magic. The cries of goblinoid anguish as they died were drowned out from a deep roar from within the broken portal. Although she knew not where or when she recognized it, Banshae had no doubt as to its origins. The horn had been sounded for battle. More would be coming, they needed to end this quickly and steel themselves for the second wave. Lest they meet the fate of those that came before them.

-- Buy Me a Coffee -- Support my work by visiting Ko-Fi dot com/H2H6CCBE

#Dungeons and Dragons #campaign diary #princes of the apocalypse #role playing games

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wolveswithhats · 7 years ago

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For WIP Week

Abandoned idea from a few years ago, a melding of two of my favorite things, Buffy and Portal! Of the idea that the Initiative ships off some of its demons to Aperture. Because....reasons. Spike-centric (or, well, Spike-exclusive ). Very sloppy. Outline-quality, lots of meandering, unfinished, unpolished concepts. Riddled with editing notes. I didn’t even bother with capitalization. Still, there’s some fun stuff in here.

(I don’t care if anyone reblogs, just don’t put it on any of the aggregators, please. This is too rough drafty and embarrassing to be filed away as Content Worth Looking At.)

(captured by initiative again. s4 – s5. initiative shutting down, cementing off. exterminate all demons. riley pulls some strings to have spike shipped off instead of staked. the smallest of favors. i'm still on team riley-isn't-a-total-douchebag. he's aight.)

an hour later, spike and three of his ugliest friends are caged and carted into the back of a semi for a cross country drive across america's finest bypasses. through a hole in the wall watches steel and mortar slowly give off to rolling green-gold fields. teeny tiny farmsteads, clarkston and robin glen and with some disgust, notes the turnoff for a lake angelus, some thirty miles north of detroit.

(his initiative vamp neighbor, 90s grunge clothes, grunge name – trevor – fledge too young to drop game face.)

“christ, i heard about this place. some science lab in a salt mine underground. they say this place does weird experiments.”

met with deadpan, disbelieving stares, and a disgusted tsk from the blond lady-vamp, what's-her-face, something with calendars. april or may or half-past-eleven, day day day, sunday, right, that was it.

“they took my appendix, trevor.” sunday lifts her shirt, revealing a line of stitches, “for their mix-and-match potato head monster. what the hell is a frankenzombie going to do with a shriveled, century old organ? it doesn't even do anything. how is that not weird.”

“no man, I mean really, really weird. cross-dimensional travel, like stargate. bug people. turning your blood into gasoline.”

spike snorts. “I drive a '59 fireflite. gorgeous piece of machinery, but bollocks for mileage. single digits. could due for some petrol on tap.” sad, longing, separation anxiety. his desoto was 2200 miles away baking in the california sun. once he made his way back to the west coast, he'd find those military wankers for a dechipping, kill the whole lot of them, and piss on their corpses for good measure. then he'd book it to south america, away from scalpel-wielding lab jockeys, bouncy-haired slayers and the root of every major humiliation of his unlife over the past three years. bon-fucking-voyage.

ugly demon: “that's why you should switch to a hybrid. my prius gets great fuel economy.” how does a demon that big fit into a mid-size?

(ugly demon = horned, beastly. “your primitive human anatomy lacks the necessary mouthparts to vocalize my true name. what sort of creature only has one tongue? you may call me henrietta.”)

trevor is oblivious. “they were some respected science lab back in the sixties. now? when they're not making you test out their weird experimental products, they make you run through test courses, solve puzzles. and it's all orchestrated by this giant murderous robot. like HAL from space odyssey. once people go in, they're never heard from again. it's true. my cousin knew a guy who was there, he told me all about it.”

“if no one ever gets out, how the hell does your cousin know a guy, you stupid sod.”

trevor's fangs close with an audible click, and he sits sullen for the rest of the commute.

as it turns out, stupid sod and cousin-of-sod actually did know what they were talking about.

housed on the outskirts of a wheatfield, through a gated parking lot, innocuous brick building. on the loading dock, a hispanic man in blue work coveralls wheels a dolly into the back of the mac truck. looks at his living cargo with what spike considers to be an appalling lack of concern, considering the very blatant human trafficking unfolding before him.

“you're not the parts I ordered.” gruff texan drawl. yells to the front, “where are my chamber parts?”

driver swings around front, clutching a clipboard, hands it off. “friday, likely. this is your wednesday shipment.”

“these are people.” texas squints at array of annoyed, tired faces, takes in the gnarled brows, the shackles, and the powder blue scrubs, eyes finally settling on the barbed, hulking form of henrietta. “theoretically. why do I have a shipment of mangled faces, billy idol--”

“hey!”

“--and one-fifth of gwar? are we making a music video?”

the driver shrugs. “i just deliver. sign the thing.”

texas reads off the clipboard: “subject donation from sunnydale university. volunteers?”

“experimental lab rats,” trevor offers.

“prisoners,” spike corrects, growling. “this has got to be in violation of the...what's it? geneva convention. I feel unduly treated. I want an attorney. actual, not one of those 800-number infomercial suits. due my civil rights.”

texas blinks owlishly. “what civil rights? you're not even american.”

“i'm sorry, I didn't realize I needed to shit red, white and blue to not be accosted against my will.”

ignores bitching. “are you even human?” points at henrietta. “i don't think that's human.”

(“what multiverse are you lot from?”

“california.”

“huh. always had my suspicions.”)

he was hoping for an upgrade to trousers, denim, in a dark blue or black. maybe a pale wash if it had a grunge-enough look to it. what they gave him was a pair of coveralls in sunshiny bright incarceration orange, with lines of white piping tracing the seams and a stitching of black lettering across the breast pocket labeling him as HST0017. for fuck's sake.

“i'm not wearing this.”

“as soon as you pass through that emancipation grill, any unapproved paraphernalia is forfeit.”

“meaning what?”

“your current clothes will be emancipated. pffft! you could go naked, wouldn't be the first test streaker, but I gotta warn you, there's the acid pits, the gun turrets, and oh, the lasers. burns like a bitch, and that's not even touching the potential crotch-rotting radiation--”

“just give me the fucking jumpsuit.”

they surgically grafted a band of white metal to the back of his shins, where a long curved spring of steel could be notched, lifting his feet into a painful arch, weight balanced on his toes. he was suddenly that much more impressed with the slayer and her preference for fighting evil in teetering heels, which did wonders for making her teeny weeny hobbit legs look elegant but offered only a promise of scuffed heels and snapping ankles in grave dirt. angelus-grade torture, he decided, hobbling awkward and bird-like from one side of his little glass prison to the other.

he found the entire affair ludicrous, demeaning, and oh, stupid, until he witnessed another test subject slip on a slick of orange goo and nosedive off a platform, pancaking wetly across the tile in a display of hilarious cartoon physics. it was admittedly very, very funny, and funnier still watching jaded custodians squeegee up the red smear that used to be a person, but not something he was looking to experience himself first hand.

“you know, I can see the upside of not doing my best wile e. coyote impression,” he groused, “but you should really have these things in boot form.” shifting uncomfortably as the screws in his knees creaked, puckered and itched.

rick looks at him, surprised. “that's.....that's an idea. we'll take that into consideration.”

(aaaaaaand a jump to the P2 section. slightly better quality, a little less outline-ish. tho very stream-of-consciousness)

waking up with a dry mouth, mouth full of cotton, mouth full of fluffy biker beard, and where had that image come from? like all the moisture had been sucked from the room, stale recycled air like new car smell and musk. where is here? bed, desk, dinged up dresser, ceiling-mounted tv, blacked out and coated in dust. walls decorated with murals of snowy mountains and ski lodges, tacky thrift store oil paintings. the bed he's laying on has a threadbare blue hospital blanket, and a man-shaped crater pressed into the mattress, like a police chalk outline with serious gravity. motel room? UGLY motel room. there's no windows in the room, just slated blinds stretching the length of one wall.

can't move, groggy, wet limp noodle muscles, the dead waking. stares down the length of his body. dressed like a petrol station attendant, orange jumpsuit rolled mid-shin, legs bony and corpse-white. wow, seriously overdue for a date with mr. sunshine.

figure out the who the what and the why after he quenched this sahara on his tongue. room to the left of the bed, loo, good, yes. force himself to move, up and over, muscles clenching in rebellion, stumble over with white white legs buckling like a newborn deer. sink, yes, water churned and choked god why is it taking so long finally sputters out, drinks and drinks tinny tap water until he feels like he's going to burst. sates the fire in his mouth but not the thirst, the hunger, god what is that?

looks up in the dark of the bathroom into the mirror, and sees nothing, just dingy white tile where his face should be. huh. well that's just... different. it's unnatural, he knows, because hello, does still remember how a mirror works, even if he can't remember much of anything else. experiments, lifts the crusty dry slab of soap and watches its reflection bob phantom-like in mid-air. right, so, the mirror isn't broken, just him. but it doesn't feel wrong, like somehow he's just used to staring at empty space in the mirror.

what the hell is he?

sits back on the bed, hands clenching knees.

beyond the doorway, he expects a hallway, maybe, decked out in the same mottled 70s look his room is themed, or a carpark dotted with out of state license plates and neglected marquee signage. but there's no cars, no buildings, no outside. just a massive storehouse, stretching up and out beyond what he can see, dimly lit by flickering yellow halogen. snaking lines of track above his head following the catwalk he's standing on, weaving between towers of grafted metal and grey-green storage units stacked like legos. huge. massive. his own room was in a storage box, labeled next to the door.

test subject packed on 11/17/1999 EXP: indefinite ADT SLM M SHRT

short? was he short? well sure maybe by comparison of the super humongous warehouse he was stored in. not a very helpful selection of information, most of which he had already established. a picture would be helpful. a name. a passport. a blockbuster rewards card. literally any brand of identity.

goes back in, shuffling about, looking for something he's not aware of yet. there's a pad of paper in the desk and a cheap ballpoint pen. picks up the pen, but it feels awkward and childish gripped in his hand. moment of panic that he's illiterate, until he swaps the pen to his left. it feels much more natural.

--mirror challenged. am a ghost? --left-handed. evil ghost? --posh penmanship though --orange is not my color --i could do for a tan

pauses thoughtfully.

--who the fuck am i

sound of screeching metal and cracking drywall, urban destruction at its finest. implied shortness a sudden and unexpected gift as something ghosts over his head, ruffling his hair, clipped english accent as a storage crate cranes above him: “--ten thousand flippin' vegetables--” carves a winding trail of destruction as it tears through crates and cables and catwalks before finally coming to an explosive stop, half buried in the far wall.

his own crate tips, agonizingly slow with groaning whale song of careening metal, before momentum and gravity takes it for its own. crash bang boom, gaudy motel mountain ski lodge avalanches into another stack of crates, creating a domino effect. check-out achieved, in more ways than one. leaves him stranded on a creaking catwalk with no more than an ugly jumpsuit, a pad of paper, and more questions then before. he left the pen on the bed. bugger.

picks a direction and walks. periodically checks crates. like his own, all decked out like vintage motels, oil crusted murals and tacky faux-wood paneling. and on every bed is a person. all coated in a fine layer of dust, gray-skin, perfectly preserved but very, very dead. room after room. men, women, children. old young tall short fat skinny. a varied collection of corpses lined up like sleeping porcelain dolls. flippin' vegetables, indeed.

turns a corner and comes face-to-cornea with a massive metal eyeball. yells in surprise. the eyeball screams, then rears back on the rail suspending it. in its backwards attempt at escape, cracks into a closed door where the rail vanishes, and stirs woozily on its axis.

“what's that then. you alright?” he asks, cringing even as he speaks. it feels more obligate social politeness than actual concern; he honestly could not give one flying fuck about its condition. beyond that, asking a metal eyeball of its well-being seems ridiculous, even in light of this entire weird situation, but it—he—chuckles nervously, looking all at once embarrassed and grateful for the inquiry. an impressive emotive feat, considering he's lacking the other 95% of his face.

“sorry, sorry! you startled me! wasn't expecting a human to come waltzing out of nowhere, considering all of them are dead. corpses usually aren't so ambulatory.” the glowing iris slits to a suspicious blue line. “though in your particular case--”

“you're bristonian,” he says, realization dawning.

“no,” the eyeball chided slowly, with a patronizing squint, “i'm a robot.”

“your accent. you talk like you're from bristol. bristonian.” stubbornly. not getting into an argument with a fucking metal orb. “i heard you speak before, back in that warehouse. you're the one who almost ran me down with a crane. who taught you to drive, mr. magoo?”

“hey now! how about some leeway? bit of a limb deficiency here.” the robot waggles its handlebars in demonstration. “i haven't exactly mastered the art of ten-and-two.” sudden realization: “say, you talk like me! i'd say we came from the same development wing, but that's unlikely, you being organic and all that.”

did he now? that hadn't even occurred to him.

he weighs the language on his tongue, the thoughts in his head, parsing through words, foods, spellings, culture. carparks and car boots, wheatabix, man-u, european craft beers, and a strange smug superiority over chirpy, obnoxious californian twang. and of course, a beautiful array of curse words rolling fluid off his tongue. “bloody hell, sodding, blimey, shagging, knickers, bollocks – oh god, you're right, i'm english too.”

he was a londoner, his accent said as much, though with a sort of languid, unpolished quality that came from excessive travel and extended exile from the mother country. he hadn't been home for a long time. expat? study abroad? he didn't feel like a student, well past adolescence, but he didn't feel like much at all, beyond hopelessly confused.

#lmao this is really bad #so so sloppy #it was fun though #not gonna tag it because god no #and yeah that's a cameo by my headcanon rick #LOVE YOU BRO #tuesday night frights #in defiance of progress #wolves writes #or in this case: wolves outlines #long post

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mhdiaries · 4 years ago

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Diary of Kieran Valentine

You’ll steal my heart if you read my diary.

May 1st

May 3rd

July 1st

Today was my one-year anniversary at the shelter. As I left the garage, I ran into Mom. She sniffed. “You don’t stink anymore.” It was true - the stench was gone. I gave Mom a hug and told her it must be due to what I’d learned from working for Mrs. Goblin. I thanked Mom for telling her I needed help. Mom looked at me strangely, “What are you going on about? I don’t know a Mrs. Goblin.” What? I ran to the shelter but when I got there it was boarded up and empty. How could this be? I crawled through a broken out window. A thick layer of dust covered everything and it looked like no one had been there in years. Then I noticed a piece of paper on the table where Mrs. G. used to sit and drink her tea. It was a not addressed to me:

There’s nothing more I can teach you. The rest will come when you put what you’ve learned into practice. Know that you are loved for what, and who you are.

Sincerely,

“Mrs. Goblin”

P.S. Do the right thing or I’ll come back and make you clean out flying monkey cages again.

July 2nd

July 7th

July 10th

July 12th

August 1st

#monster high #monster high diary #kieran valentine #alright alright alright #text post #sdcc 2015

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ultimat-e · 4 years ago

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(✨) ———— THE PROMISED DAY FATE HAD SO WHISPERED IN HIS EAR WOULD COME AT LAST. He awoke from yet another restless sleep, neither aware of the time nor day that it was. Such measurements were of no concern to the dead nor the damned either way. With the promise of unlife eternal bestowed upon them, what use would time be for those who would exist beyond time?

It was by no choice of his that the magician remained confined. The Underwhere was much more crafty than any mortal plane of existence. Just as he had suspected, his own magic had no use here. Shifting dimensions, creating new ones, altering the very fabric of space was no problem for him. Usually. However, the strange powers that existed within this plane seemed to nullify his own magic whenever he tried to conjure it. There was simply nothing he could do ( yet again to none of his surprise all things considered. Death was nothing to sniff at, after all. ) So he waited, drifting ever closer to the ennui that would spell his physical demise but stubbornly refusing to let it settle in. Yes, that mask of his never did stop smiling all the while...

When the day arrived, it gave him no signs, nor clear indication that the end of his promised eternity had come. What it presented itself as instead, was a small tear in the paper that made up his cell. Moving over to inspect it, he could feel some sort of draft coming in from the small hole that had formed in the wall against his fingers. It was beyond a mere chill, imbued with an energy that was quite telling of the true nature of the darkness he could see beyond it, much more than a mere hollow in the wall. He took hold of the tag of paper which had come away from the wall, giving it a tug &&. managing to tear off a sizable piece before the strip thinned out &&. detached from the wall entirely.

Anyone less skilled in dimensional manipulation might have been disheartened to find nothing but a black void staring back through the tear. But the draft persisted. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. Controlled dimensional manipulation took advantage of the weak spots in the fabric of reality, but it never left such obvious marks as this. It was almost as if something had worn down the very fibers that made up their world, so much so to the point that they simply collapsed into this delightful little opportunity.

It was almost too good to be true. Yet, even if his mind were not deceiving him, this dimensional hole could lead just about anywhere &&. there was no way to ascertain just where he might end up. Not to mention, something as serious as this probably wouldn’t go unnoticed for very long. If he were to do anything with it he was better off being quick about it.

Waving his hand over the hole he could feel a pleasantly familiar energy emanate from it, a type of power he had been deprived of this whole time. Assessing his situation, he supposed it didn’t matter what happened to him if he were to accept this fate. If it were actually but a simple hollow in the wall he could wriggle right out with nothing but his pride harmed in the process ( though it wouldn’t be the first time he’s made a fool of himself. ) If it were to lead somewhere deadly...well, it wasn’t as if his current situation could be called living at all.

All in all, he had nothing to lose. So, deciding to take back control over his own fate, he made up his mind, &&. entered the void.

#✨) 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐧 ( ic. )#✨) 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐆𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐎𝐧 ( main. )#✨) 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐎𝐟 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 ( status. )#( prologue. )

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miraculouslyminty-blog · 7 years ago

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Bionn Halthcharon’s School’s Out Journal

This. This is best journal so far. This is when i finally nailed down his character. yes he is a rude boy but there’s way more to him than most people think. and he writes like he talks, natch for MH doll logs. Also the lil journal taglines gonna be above the read more

Readin' this without my permission just shorts my circuits!

September 16th

My motherboard's gonna kill me. I'm serious. How am I gonna explain to her that the slip I'm bringin' home is because I panicked and weaponed up 'cause someone tapped me on the shoulder. I didn't know who it was at first and honestly it's a reflex. Ya see, back when I lived and protected Motor City, you didn't know who was gonna ambush ya. And yeah, I apologized and we're totally cool now, I guess, but Momboard's not gonna care about that. She's just gonna dwell on the fact that I came home with a warnin' slip and no matter how many times I tell her that it's under the rug now, she won't listen. She'll just yell at me until I storm off or if she gets tired of shoutin' at me (which I doubt she will. Momboard's scary.).

I can just imagine it now. I don't wanna put up with that today. Maybe I'll just throw the slip away during lunch or hide it. But then again, it needs to be brought back with her signature. This is a problem.

September 23rd

Man, I can't wait until the last day of school gets here. It means I'll (hopefully) be seeing less of Heath Burns. Don't get me wrong, he's okay I guess... but he's just not the type of manster I'd normally hang out with. He's just got somethin' about him that always seems to irritate me. Seriously. He doesn't even have to speak to do it. All he has to do is walk next to me and suddenly I get this look on my face. Like somethin' smells bad. And he's always trying to invite me to go with him and his friends for some "bro time", whatever that is. I haven't exactly grasped slang yet. Well slang that normal teens use.

Sure his friends are nice and all even if I've only talked to 'em a couple times but it's Heath I can't stand. I don't know why. And I bet on the walk to the lockers after Home Ick he's gonna ask me to hang out with him. This is gonna be a long day.

September 25th

Dad wasn't home when I woke up. I guess he went to the die-ner. He's been goin' to that die-ner every Saturday morning since we've moved here. And I had to know what kind of secrets that place was holdin' because why would my dad go there every Saturday? So I left a note on the table and went down to the die-ner. It was pretty early in the morning, so there weren't a lot of monsters out. I made my way down to the die-ner and I was feeling pretty tense. I'm not sure why. But instead of findin' some weird secret, I found Dad and a bunch of mad scientists talkin' and eatin'...pancakes?

I know my Dad's kind of well.... kind of a nerd but I really wasn't expectin' this. So I turned to leave before one of his friends (I think) said "Hey Grave, isn't that your kid?". Boy, did that make me stop in my tracks. I never felt so mortalfied. I was pretty sure I was rustin' where I stood. And Dad noticed it. Ooh boy did I wanna go offline so badly. But he invited me over and had me sit with him and his friends. Dad's friends are actually pretty nice and super funny.But it's still super weird since I didn't even know Dad could act like a regular monster. And I say that because well... he's Dad. Normal ain't somethin' that runs in the family.

And we ate somethin' called "banana scary pancakes". That's the first time I've had them and I've gotta say, they ain't half bad. And someone from school was there. What was her name again? Frankie? Anyways, she must've been with her dad too. I didn't talk to her much but she seems like a decent ghoul. Dad seems to respect her dad. And they were talkin' about the plans they drew up when it came to buildin' us, which was super embarrassin'. But ya know...

It's strangely comfortin' to know that I'm not the only person that was built in a lab.

October 1st

Jeez, I'm starting to come down with a bad rustin' problem. You forget to oil your joints and it comes back and kicks you in the behind. I really hope no one notices... Shelley's been trailin' behind me in between classes. I know it's her anxiety and that's fine, but I know she's concerned about me. It's a really bad problem right now since I'm movin' soooo sloowly... no offense to zombies, they're nice monsters, and now I know how they feel when they go from place to place. I can't count how many times I got shoved around in the hallway on the way to Biteology. Oh wait, yes I can. 22. 22 times! I mean, it took a while to get get there but at least Heath kept a seat warm for me. Oh great... his fire puns are startin' to rub off on me...

He spent pretty much all of class talkin' to me and I just muttered responses. I wasn't in the best mood and I'm pretty sure he caught onto that. I mean I don't mean to be a jerk to the guy, it's just that you'd be in a bad mood too if you were rustin' over. And after a very long time (or it felt like that) Biteology always drains my battery and havin' to slowly walk to my locker wasn't helpin' things. I would have teleported there but that module rusted over. Shelley was still in class and I was just gonna hafta grin and bear it. But then I just heard someone say "Need help?". So I turned around as fast as I could (which wasn't very fast, again rust. Ugh.) and there's the ghoul from the die-ner.

Normally I'd turn that down because I'm super prideful but in this case, I needed the help. "Hey I saw you at the die-ner the other day! Your dad's friends with mine?". I would've shrugged. "Yeah I guess.". "You're Bionn right?", she asked. I nodded. "And you're Frankie? ...Uhhh... did I get that right?", I asked. She nodded. Things were quiet for a while before she spoke up. "Uh so, how do you like Monster High? Since it's your first year here and all.". "Oh uh... it's great here! Yeah." I ain't the best at talkin' to other monsters. It kinda sucks, pun unintended. She smiled and said it was good. We continued to walk until I saw Heath, putting his book away.. "Hey, there's my locker!". We stopped. Frankie waved. "Hey Heath!". He turned around and well, he flamed up. I rolled my eyes. Honestly, it's kinda sad. I can't tell ya how many times he's done that whenever a ghoul walked past us. And all the times he's set my books and homework on fire.

So while he was chattin' up a storm with her, I just grabbed what I needed to grab out of my locker and go. Though I did let him know he was gettin' out of hand on the way out. Good thing my elbow joints hadn't rusted yet. Can't really claim I elbowed him gently though.

October 7th

There's been this talk goin' around school about a huge fight between a couple of monsters named Clawd and Spectra. From what I can figure out there was somethin' about a rumor about this Cleo ghoul breakin' up with her boyfriend and Clawd gettin' together with her. I dunno, it sounds kinda stupid, ya know? Maybe it's because I don't get it. Shelley thinks it's dumb too. And people have been talkin' about it all day, not to mention it got super bad during lunch. Like I couldn't eat anything because that's all they could talk about and it was hard-drivin' me up the wall. I wish I could turn my hearin' off at times like this. Don't ruin lunch like that y'all. Just don't.

And ‘sides, why would you believe somethin’ ya read on the Internet?! It's called a rumor for a reason! It ain't that hard to analyze the story! Oh riiiigghhttt, I forgot, the whole teenager thing. Heh heh... whoops. But ya know, he more I think about, the more I can't help but be I dunno the word here... curious? Yeah. Oh, what am I sayin'?! I shouldn’t be focusin’ on this! But at the same time, I just wanna know what's goin' on, ya know?

October 13th

Eeugh, there's nothin' I hate more than bumpin' into Circutroy. Well, that's ain’t true. I hate a lot of other things but runnin' into my cousin is really high up there. It's pretty much the same thing with him. "You're outdated.", "Did you stop to recharge on the way here? You know how faulty batteries get get when they start to age.". “Blah blah perfect blah blah.” I swear, with how much of a jerk he is, he could give that Tora-somethin' ghoul a run for her money. Or milk I guess 'cause she a werecat 'n all. Though I ain’t much better myself. But at least I don't go around insultin' other monsters for not some stupid standard tripe.

I don't wanna talk to that lousy battery muncher ever again.

October 16th

Oh man, I can't tell if this is one of the best days I've had or the worst. Okay so lemme start off by sayin' Mad Science was cancelled today. All thanks to Heath. Basically we got some lab tech that was gift of a former student who's now a famous mad scientist. It was huge and kinda box-shaped and painted black except for a really shiny metal button about half way up on one of its sides. And just when the showcase was gonna start, ol' Hackington got called to the office. Why? Dunno, wish I could tell ya. Anyways before he left, he said “All right me little Pandoras – nobody touch the box while I’m gone.” And of course, the second he was gone, you-know-who had already blazed a trail to the box thing. At the time I just facepalmed because Heath + ANYTHING = disaster. I was waitin' for that snake-headed guy to turn him to stone or somethin'. (I think his name's Deuce. Or was it Domino? I don't know.) Or for someone to stop Heath before he made a fool outta himself.

Yeah, turns out no one wanted to do anything. We were just gonna let him fool around with a fancy box thing. What- what even is unlife? "Uh hey, you shouldn't be messin' with that.", I said, even though it wasn't gonna stop him at all. "Relax! I'm just checking it out!", he responded. And I facepalmed. Again. Anyways, the hothead was insistin' nothin' was gonna happen and he pushed the button. The box thing made like this whistle noise. It was high-pitched and annoyin'. Still, it caught him off guard and he stopped fiddlin' with the thing. I'm pretty sure everyone stopped holdin' their breath too. Er, anyone who could breathe anyway. Heath thought it must've been funny or somethin'. 'Course he'd find that funny. And then, HE WALKED BACK OVER TO THE BOX AND LEANED AGAINST IT. I just- I just... I'm pretty sure my processor stopped functionin' at that point in time. I'm also pretty sure I went through like, 5 stages of disbelief even though only one stage exists. That's how bad it was.

"See? I told you nothing was going to hap-" and that's all he could say before the box thing sprouted tentacles and ate him. At least, I think it ate him. I wasn't payin' that much attention. And there were like, the sounds of splashin' and somethin' bangin' against the box and Heath was yellin' for help. A second after, Hackington had come back and figured out what went down when he was outta the room. Thank goth that thing came with a remote because the second that thing was pointed at the box, Heath came flyin' outta it covered in gunk. I'm not gonna lie, I was havin' a really hard time tryin' not to laugh the entire time. Yeah I know, it's mean. But my family kinda spreads chaos and probably like it. It's not like I can help it, it's kinda in my codin'. Anyways we had to leave after that. Headless Honcho Bloodgood let us know that, yeah, he's fine. He's just gonna need a few days off. I mean, I kinda feel bad for him, but not that much.

I'm just glad me and my locker can get some goth-danged peace for once!

October 23rd

Man this day started off bad and ended up worse. Like this day was just bad. And not normal bad, Friday the 13th bad.

It all started earlier this morning when Pat-ick was havin' a fit over somethin', erggh. And thanks to his wailin' fit, he ended up turnin' one of Dad's projects into a fish creature.... thing... A fish creature that ended up eatin' my brand new gamin' console. So I now I gotta scrape up the money for it again. And the fish thing ended up latched onto my head somehow. I was so angry this mornin' I didn't even notice I had it on my head until I got to school, where a few monsters pointed it out. And laughed at me. And made fun of me for the entire day even when I got the thing off my head. Ugh...

Just to get away from the mockin' I hid out in the Gym. Should I have done that? No. No I shouldn't've. But I was gettin' really annoyed and I didn't wanna come home with another paper from the Headless Honcho cause I got into a fight. And I guess I must've zoned out or somethin' because the next thing I knew, the casketball team was in the Gym practicin' for somethin' comin' up. I dunno what for nor do I care all that much. Anyways, I go to leave the Gym and it turns out I was stressed out enough to get the bleachers on the ceilin'. Thank goth I teleported 'em back to the right spot before they hit the ground. I start to leave again and somethin' hits my foot. It's the casketball thing. I grab it and turn around to see the team's just starin' at me, waitin'.

"Hey dude, could you pass me that?", the werewolf asks. I think his name's Clawd. I've never really talked to him and the only times I've seen him is around lunch in the halls. Still, my heart component jumps for joy when he calls me dude. It feels like I'm bein' recognized as a manster and not just some weird ghoul. I nodded and threw it back to him. A little too hard. Whoops. Still he catches it without tumblin' over (must be that werewolf strength I’ve heard ‘bout) and tells me I've got one heck of a pass. Whatever that means. I think it's a sports thing. Anyways, the werewolf tells me that I should try out for the casketball team and that tryouts are gonna happen soon. Sports ain't really my thing. I've never played any but watchin' 'em just bores me, ya know? But I decide to be nice to him and tell him I might tryout sometime that before turnin' to leave. "Hey, you should grab lunch with us sometime! We can show you the ropes and stuff.", he suggests. "You know, just hanging with the guys?" I smile and tell him I might just take him up on that. The werewolf guy smiles back and says "Alright man, catch you later!" before they start practicin' again.

The day wasn't too bad after all, I guess. How could it be one I'm startin' to become one of the mansters?

#this was fun to write tbh #mintydiaries #Bionn Halthcharon #monster high

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