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arvale-artist · 28 days ago

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ARVALE: Beylord 🧛‍♂️

A character who haunts the series in the background. Some characters and their ancestors/descendants make reappearances throughout the series, Rufus being a prime example.

But this one stands out.

You like Vampires? Ghosts? Friendships that end in Tragedy? RPGs? Lost Media?

If so, this Tale might interest you...

ARVALE: Journey of Illusion [🌿🗡️]

First game of the series.

You arrive at the Kytar continent, Blue Harbor.

After dispatching a group of thieves, you walk around town talking to the people. Most conversations are about the ongoing plague of thieves giving you a pretty good hint what your next main quest will be about, but there is one more NPC that speaks about a different topic...

[Man] »I’ve heard stories about a vampire somewhere on this continent! Can you believe that?« [Duncan] »Yeah, I’ve seen some pretty unbelievable stuff myself… a vampire doesn’t seem too odd after seeing Dragons.«

Exploring Kytar north-west, you come across a giant old ruin. Entering, you find yourself in »Beylord Castle«. It has seen better days.

It seems to be an optional monster camp, full of hostile creatures for Duncan to slay everywhere.

There is a staircase leading deeper into the castle. Following it, Duncan enters a giant cellar. Walls decorated with torches and lots of bookshelves with probably Arvale’s dustiest literature.

These monster camps always have a boss somewhere, and judging by the surplus amount of skulls littered across the floor, Duncan seems to have found where the boss resides.

At the very end of the room, Duncan finds a coffin.

Duncan being Duncan, proceeds to open it and interrogate the person inside.

[Beylord] »Who disturbs Beylord, master of this castle?« [Duncan] »Hello, my name is Duncan. I couldn’t help but notice you are sleeping inside a coffin… isn’t that midly uncomfortable?« [Beylord] »It is customary for someone with my affliction to sleep in one. But, it is true, it does sort of cramp my back. How can I help you?« [Duncan] »Affliction? Are you sick?« [Beylord] »That is one way to put it. I am a vampire.« [Duncan] »A vampire?! You mean… sucking blood and all that?« [Beylord] »Yes.«

You have two dialogue options. Hear him out, or skip straight to the fight.

[Duncan] »Does that mean I have to fight you now? / How did that happen?«

[Duncan] »How did that happen?« [Beylord] »You’re a very curious person, you know that? I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who would dare open a coffin in a deserted castle and then interrogate the owner. *sigh* A long while back, Sorcynth was still a relatively small company. Many of their potions were still untested and they needed test subjects. I was one of them. Knowing the danger that was present, testers were paid extremely well.« [Duncan] »Danger?« [Beylord] »There were many, many deaths of testers from trying the potions. I was one of the lucky few who survived working for Sorcynth for about 100 years.« [Duncan] »100 years? How is that possible?« [Beylord] »Sorcynth Youth Potions. Many of them. Very effective for keeping people alive… however...« [Duncan] »It turns you into a vampire?« [Beylord] »No. Sorcynth Youth Potions have a terrible side effect of making people go insane. Especially weak-minded… or stupid people.« [Duncan] »Then how DID you turn into a vampire?« [Beylord] »I’m getting to that. I accumulated quite a bit of wealth and bought this castle, servants, the whole package, and lived quite well, as you can imagine.« [Duncan] »And?« [Beylord] »You’re curious, yet impatient… that’s funny. Sorcynth had been working on a potion for curing undead, zombies, etc. And… well, they never perfected it, and I am the result.« [Duncan] That’s a pretty boring story… I was hoping for some adventure, or mythological creatures, and battles with passion and lust… [Beylord] »Sorry to disappoint. I must say that I made all of my servants leave, and mostly feed on monsters… I do not wish to take a human life… even if the hunger for human blood burns in my veins more than anything else. And now that you know the story… and you are apparently a Hero of some sorts… Do you wish to fight me?«

You have two dialogue options. Spare him, or fight him. No matter what you choose, a battle is inevitable, as his hunger overcomes him.

[Duncan] »No, thanks, you seem like a nice vampire, I’ll leave you alone. / Yes, it is my duty to fight you, I am the hero type… and you seem like the monster type… as you said… it is customary.« [Duncan] »No, thanks, you seem like a nice vampire, I’ll leave you alone.« [Beylord] »As you wish. Take care, Duncan.«

Duncan starts to walk away.

[Beylord] »However….. It has been some time …. Since a human has visited the castle. And… I … am… hungry!«

If you proceed to go with the other dialogue option, he’ll say »It has been eons since I have had human blood…. And I am hungry! As you wish, human!«

Exploring south-east of Kytar, you come across another monster camp: Maestyl.

It seemed to have been a town eons ago… all that’s left are destroyed, overgrown ruins of houses overrun with monsters. There is not a lot left of what once was, nature reclaiming what remains. Everything is eerily quiet. It’s not like this usually. Even in spooky areas, music is playing.

Not here.

Clearing out the monsters, Duncan makes his way inside a house up north. A skeleton in armor with two glowing orbs inside the eye sockets resembling pupils stands inside. He does not attack Duncan. Instead, he speaks.

[Warrior Spirit] »Have you come to remove the curse?« [Duncan] »What curse?« [Warrior Spirit] »A curse was placed upon this town eons ago. I was a brave and powerful warrior in my time… undefeated in battle, unparalleled in skill… One day, I was tricked into defeating a witch, whom in return, placed a curse upon me and the entire town. Since then, all the townspeople, including myself, have their souls trapped here… none of us are free to go to the next world, until the curse has been lifted« [Duncan] »That’ rough. So… how can I break this curse for you?« [Warrior Spirit] You must defeat me in combat, if you are brave enough. Will you break the curse for us?

You can fight the Warrior Spirit, or come back later. Once defeated, you get a Maestyl Liquid (which boosts your defence when used) and this message is displayed:

»Ahhhh, thank you, brave warrior. The curse has finally been lifted…. After all of these years. Now we can finally rest. As a token of gratitude, please take what is in the chest, it is now unlocked. Take care, brave warrior« (there’s just a regular magic combat item in the chest, a Tide Scepter)

Now, why did I just tell you about Maestyl? It seems to have no connection to Beylord whatsoever. And during this time in development for the Arvale Series, it probably had none. Yet.

ARVALE 2 : Ocean of Time [🏹⏳]

Second game of the series.

OOT takes place 1000 years prior JOI. When you use the ship in OOT, you are actually able to steer it across the oceans of Arvale. If you steer near the part of Kytar where Maestyl is, you see the small town and how it has not been destroyed yet. Unfortunately, you cannot visit it in OOT.

Arriving in Kytar City, there’s lots of NPCs to talk to. One stands out…

Sadly I cannot show you the entire conversation, I don’t have it saved anywhere.

But I do recall two things about The Occult Woman, she makes money by dabbling both in fake magic (scamming people) and real magic… having foresight abilities, being able to see the future to some extent. Like a Fortune Teller. Knowing who DeMenchev is before he steps into her home, and able to tell him where he has to go next on his quest to get an artifact he’s after.

And where he has to go next at this point in the game is Dividion Castle. Deep below, there is a temple with the artifact, guarded by a boss of course.

You solve the puzzle to be able to enter the final room of the temple with the artifact and boss inside. So far, everytime DeMenchev does this, it goes like this:

Go inside the final temple room, pick up the artifact, boss spawns, defeat boss.

What you don’t expect is entering the final room of the temple, and suddenly, dialogue appears on your screen.

The entity speaking has custom sprites, not one assembled out of the various assets of the game they usually build NPC out of. Meaning this one’s special. Imagine my massive surprise when the first word I read was a familiar name. And imagine my even BIGGER surprise finding out these two used to know eachother, were friends, even...

Here’s a video of The Beylord Encounter in OOT.

Context regarding the dialogue: At this point in the game, DeMenchev is currently in a messed up alternate timeline where Arvale is war ridden and a lot of people lived completely different lives. They never met in this timeline, hence why Beylord doesn’t recognize him.

The Beylord Encounter in OOT is very different and special compared to all the other bosses. Not just because of it’s introduction, but also during the battle and what happens afterward.

Beylord is a really tough boss if you are not prepared well or have some ultra rare overpowered weapon in your arsenal. First time I encountered him I had to use the Silver Sword, which is ironic, since vampires are weak against silver… anyway, as you can see, aside from having a ton of health, Beylord has no weaknesses and is the only boss in Arvale to have that quality.

I am glad they made a custom sprite for him even for the battle instead of re-using the normal fighter enemy sprite like in JOI.

I want to applaud the person who did the combat sprite work for Beylord, because you can tell this one was specifically made for DeMenchev.

When Beylord attacks, their sprites fit together like puzzle pieces. Beylord grabbing his shoulders and plunging his fangs into his neck while DeMenchev winces in pain, no matter what weapon DeMenchev is equipped with. I’m sure those neck bites come with extra emotional damage, man…

I was mildly surprised to see Beylord speak after battle. Because ususally, an enemy and most bosses are elimated after battle and are just… gone. Maybe followed by some commentary from DeMenchev. Major bosses do remain for a bit to give their dying speech, but what really caught me by surprise is that Beylord… actually survives. And is the only enemy to do so.

Because DeMenchev spares him.

This isn’t a case like in JOI where the final boss chickens out during the first battle with Duncan, and Duncan then has to chase him down, no, DeMenchev does not chase after him when Beylord escapes.

He let’s him go.

He couldn’t bring himself to kill him, even if Beylord just tried to do that to him. He pities him instead »Poor Beylord… «

How sweet! Surely, DeMenchev’s mercy for Beylord will never backfire in the future...

Other than pointing DeMenchev in the right direction to get the artifact, and subsequently Beylord, The Occult Woman seems to have no connection to anyone else… but I have a theory who exactly she could be. A character we will meet in the next installment of the Arvale series. Or at least, what character she inspired, probably.

Now, you might have noticed some pretty striking irregularties story-wise with Beylord. A bit of a change in character, that there is no way he could have been a potion tester for longer than a human lifetime, that he works for Dividion (evil royal family/king in Kytar)… You can just write these irregularities off because the Beylord in OOT is one from an alternate timeline.

But here I want to inform you it is actually the case that a lot of the information we get from Beylord and possibly Maestyl in JOI might actually no longer be canon and have been retconned. Unless Beylord is straight up lying to Duncan, but he has no reason to do so. 🤖Jaybot7 took Beylord into a VERY different direction in the third installment of the series, the one with the most recent portrayal of Beylord.

ARVALE: Short Tales [☀️🌙]

Third game of the series.

Where Beylord finally becomes a playable character. There are some steps that have to be done first to unlock him, though. Sadly, ST is only playable on Pocket PC, having become abandonware. … So uh… unless you are... insane… and... buy an ancient Pocket PC from some random guy on the web… and download the game from some shady place… you’re not going to be able to play this one. Which is a gigantic shame, it really is…

Anyway, let me tell you about ARVALE: Short Tales! SO…

ST takes place years after OOT, but still approximately 1000 years prior JOI, within DeMenchev's lifetime. When you first start playing ST after completing the other two Arvale games, you might encounter many »WAIT A MOMENT, HOLD UP-« moments throughout the game. (At least for me).

You start in the beautiful and thriving town of… Maestyl. Amazing really, playing through this game I felt awarded for having paid close attention in the previous Arvale games and knowing all the lore, understanding easily how everything is connected and all the references, recognizing names… but also that no matter how the intro to the first 4 playable characters starts, ultimately, I knew this story will end in tragedy. ST takes place around 1000 years before Arvale JOI, where Maestyl is a cursed monster camp with only ruins remaining of what once was…

It becomes very apparent very quickly that Beylord plays a big role in this game. His presence haunts this game, his character is referenced multiple times, even before ever seeing him. And the game is not being subtle about this. Near Maestyl is a region literally called Beylord Lake. There’s an NPC relaxing, and she has this to say:

»I like this place… It’s so relaxing. I mean, aside from the big, dark, foreboding haunted castle right there.« I think we both can guess who this castle belongs to…

But the lady is right about Beylord Lake being a relaxing place. It is one of the very few placed in ST that is safe during day AND night, even offering a neverending healing opportunity for the characters to heal up after battle. (Healing water).

There’s a simple tune playing in the background. It sounds peaceful. I will talk more about this particular tune later, but let me quickly talk about music in ST a bit because 🤖Jaybot7 went CRAZY with it.

ST has many regions/biomes you can visit and each of these has their unique music and battle music! And it even changes during the nighttime, turning more into ambience. Did I mention this game has a Day and Night cycle? Pretty cool. (Being able to switch between light theme (which resembles OOT’s title screen colors) and dark theme (JOI title screen colors) on my blog (at least on PC) is a reference to ST’s day and night cycle hehe).

Maestyl has SO much music in it! It has its own theme, and when you enter character’s houses, their theme starts to seamlessly flow into Maestyl’s theme… and it makes the silence when you enter the eons old ruins of the town in JOI feel all the more eerie and wrong.

Something that becomes more obvious over time is that no one seems to know who Beylord is… or remember him… I got this from a promotional post about ST on the defunct PDAmill website:

4 characters are available to play when starting ST. The 5th one with a bat symbol is locked, that one being Beylord himself.

While paying the other 4 characters, there is one optional side quest for each where you end up with a strange item as a reward.

Beylord Ring, Beylord Rib, Beylord Eyes, and Beylord Heart.

On a small island on Beylord Lake, there’s a … small temple. It looks like a ritualistic place. A coffin, surrounded by 4 vases. »One who wishes to unleash the seal, must place the 4 lost objects within the vases during the night.« Once one of the 4 objects is placed into a vase, it catches on fire. On the vase is written: Replace the ancient Ring in here. / Replace the broken Rib in here / Replace the wandering Eye in here / Replace the cold Heart in here. Once placed: A glowing Ring/Rib/Eye/Heart rets inside the flaming vase.

If you place all 4 ones into their respective vases, you’ve unlocked Beylord as a playable character.

In case it wasn’t obvious enough from all the ominous hints we collected about Beylord before unlocking him, he’s a certified villain.

I must admit. It wasn’t obvious to me… I still had that outdated version of Beylord from JOI in mind where he’s a humane and nice vampire, and it was once I started playing the guy himself did I notice that. Oh. That can no longer be canon. At all.

Let me introduce to you… bastard with Arvale’s BIGGEST anger issues imaginable.

[Narrator] »You have completed the tales of the four main characters… However, there is one more story that must be told… Beylord, The cursed Vampire. Beylord became a vampire by some strange circumstances during his years as a Sorcynth Potion Tester many years ago. After becoming a vampire, Beylord lost control with his immense powers and began terrorizing all the areas on the continent. Until one day, an adventurer only remembered by the of name John gathered the strongest men in Meastyl to attack his castle and scatter pieces of Beylord to put him in an eternal slumber. He was supposed to stay in this slumber until a proven way to dispose of The Vampire was found. Then the pieces of Beylord would be put back together to reawaken him and destroy his condition forever. However, Beylord’s powers were strong enough to influence other people’s actions, even while he slept. As the years passed, people seemed to forget about the incidents with Beylord entirely. And eventually, four adventureres brought his pieces back together, unbeknownst to them the terror they were unlocking.«

Alright, so let’s dissect this.

He became a vampire during his years as a Sorcynth Potion Tester. This explains where he got some, if not all his powers.

The character you are most likely to pick to play first is Varju, the Druid. The antagonists of Varju’s story is Sorcynth. Varju, as a Druid, is able to morph into animals and also talk with them. The final boss in Varju’s story is a high ranking Sorcynth officer who uses Highly Experimental Potions to morph into different creatures. On top of that, the officer becomes ultra fast as well. Just like Beylord. (During combat, Beylord can be observed moving so fast he becomes a blur before slashing the enemy with his claws and has a really low attack cooldown). The first creature the officer transforms into is a zombie, the rest are animals.

»A Druid, indeed? Well, I can easily match that with the power of Sorcynth! Highly Experimental Potions only available to high ranking officers, such as myself! And you are about to see why! Come and get me, Mister druid, hee. Hee, hee! Pit your powers against the superhuman strength of a Sorcynth Zombie! Hahahahah!«

Superhuman strength is another quality The Vampire Beylord possesses… additionally, when the officer turns into a zombie, the game uses a modified version of Beylord’s talking sprite for him. A connection can be made... Sorcynth specializes in bottling various kinds of magic and other magic items and then selling it. Potions that let you heal or boost some of your stats like strength, defence, magic, magical resistance, dexterity or offensive magic like Fire, Earth and Water magic. Beylord has insane regenerative abilities and is able to preform Fire, Water and possibly Earth magic. Excelling in the other stats like magical resistance and defense might explain his lack of weaknesses in OOT. It seems we have a pretty good idea now where most of his ‘vampire‘ powers come from. He seems like the perfect Sorcynth Mutant, which is an actual enemy you encounter in JOI. They have red glowing eyes... and zombies have pale blue skin in Arvale… Visual characteristics The Vampire Beylord also posseses. So he might actually be an Undead Sorcynth Mutant. Also, the sprite they use for the Sorcynth Mutants is the Leech sprite, and vampires are also kinda leeches... but this might be stretching it a bit.

And perhaps those potions didn’t only give him powers, but weaknesses too. Drinking Highly Experimental Potions probably leads to some… odd side effects. Like maybe developing an allergy to garlic or silver, or not being able to completely morph back into a human and being stuck with more animalistic features like pointy ears, claws and fangs. Maybe.

An adventurer only remembered by the name of John, huh? Hehe, I got so giddy when I read the name, because I knew immediately who this was referring too. You can actually encounter John DeMenchev briefly while playing the other 4 characters, wearing Arvale’s silliest disguise.

Come on man… At least his disguises have gotten better in Treasure of Memories.

After The Narrator ends their little speech, Beylord explodes out of the coffin, flames, burning vases, and debris surrounding him, while Boss music starts playing. Wow.

[Beylord] »Ah… So good to be awake again! Now... what was I doing? Ah yes! Revenge! The cretins who put me into that slumber must pay! Let’s visit my Manor first… it should be just across the lake. It’s been a few decades… but I can already feel my power returning! Indeed, let’s give morphing a try!«

Here we are introduced to one of his first abilities: Morphing, like into a bat. Later he’ll be able to transform into a rat as well… we don’t know just how many animals he can transform into.

Now… as dark as Beylord’s storyline can get, Arvale was always advertised in being humorous, and the Beylord’s storyline is not spared from that.

In front of Beylord’s Castle:

[Beylord] »Urgh! The door appears to be repelling me! There is some sort of Magical Seal on the door!« [Narrator] »A picture of the magical Seal is painted on the door? Like, the aquatic animal?« [Beylord] »Not a magic *seal*, my idiot narrator, a Magic seal! Those who defeated me, must have placed a curse upon my manor! I must get… revenge! Off to Maestyl!«

Beylord will continuously have beef with The Narrator throughout his story. Lmao.

Arriving in Maestyl, the first house Beylord wishes to enter is that of a really powerful Mage… The Fortune Teller Lankha.

The only town you are able to visit in ST is Maestyl. So each of the Town’s NPCs is given a lot more depth than what you are usually used to. All of them have their own little intricate stories, and you are able to learn more about them through the individual characters you are able to play over the many hours you spent time in this game.

Such as Fortune Teller Lankha, or Mistress Lankha, who is so much more than a simple Fortune Teller. But, true to her title, she does have very impressive foresight abilities. Often knowing who the person entering her home for the first time is, and what they need.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? I wonder of she could be the Occult Woman from OOT… Both seem to have an affinity with cats too, heh. The Occult Woman owning a cat and Lankha being the one to teach Varju the Cat Morph.

When Beylord enters her house, this conversation takes place:

[Lankha] »Master Beylord. What a surprise. Do you wish to fight me?«

Do not say yes. If you do, you are completely and utterly screwed. All lights go out, it starts thundering and raining, and she transforms into a undefeatable giant beast boss monster with a ridiculous amount of HP and kills you in one bite.

[Beylord] »No.« [Lankha] »A wise decision. And what is it that you would need from me?« [Beylord] »My manor is locked. I am simply requesting information on how one would solve this problem.« [Lankha] »I see. Certainly a dilemma. The lock is so strong, that even someone with your powers cannot force themselves in?« [Beylord] »I’ve tried all of my powers. There appears to be some strong magic sealing the door. And since you are the strongest magic user in the area…« [Lankha] »I had nothing to do with the attack on your manor, your burial, nor the scattering of your powers. If you remember correctly, the attack was led by a man named John. The strongest men from Maestyl also accompanied him. If I can recall correctly, they were Armorer Jinn, Captain Flint, Ermes, and someone else, I cannot recall precisely, it’s been such a long time… Perhaps they possess some artifacts related to the seal on your manor.« [Beylord] »I see. And what of this man named John? Where can I find that cretin?« [Lankha] »I do not know his whereabouts. He basically disappeared after he defeated you. But I believe… you may find the answers in your manor. Is there anything else I can help you with?« [Beylord] »I’m going to destroy the town, you know…« [Lankha] »Yes, I have foreseen that. But thank you for the warning. I believe I may have to move my business to a new location. I would wish you luck on your quest, but I don’t think you’ll need it. Goodbye, Beylord.«

When you play the other 4 characters, you usually head to the item shop or armory to upgrade your gear. With Beylord, you acquire any upgrades through Lankha putting spells on him.

[Beylord] »Well, it has been a few decades… do you have any Items of interest for me?« [Lankha] »Perhaps. If you have gold of interest for me. What did you have in mind?« [Beylord] »An armor upgrade would be nice« [Lankha] »With your vampire regeneration abilities, I can’t see why, but… I suppose I could add some protective spells to your cloak. But it will cost you…« [Beylord] »A weapon upgrade would be nice.« [Lankha] »For you? Don’t joke! Your powers and teeth are strong enough! Hahaha! Well, I can cast an attack boosting spell on your ‘weapon‘. But it will cost you…«

Here are the different items descriptions for the upgraded armor/weapons:

Dirty Cloak: Sitting in a state of suspended animation will make your cloak all dirty. Clean Cloak: Ahh, much better. Now it’s clean, but full of holes! Patched Cloak: It’s clean, it’s patched up, and it’s starting to look sexy again! Pressed Cloak: Now that we’ve gotten rid of all those wrinkles, I’m starting to look like a real vampire! Sleek Cloak: My cloak is shiny and glittery again, looking good Beylord! Ultiven Cloak: Now we’re talking, my cloak is almost as powerful as I am! Dirty nails: My nails haven’t been cleaned in several decades. Clean Nails: Cleaner nails, but still a little too dull to do some real damage. Sharp Nails: Ah, there we go, much sharper, and cleaner. Almost like old times! Vampire Nails: Sharp, clean, hardened, and neatly trimmed. Just as a true vampire’s nails should be! Bloody Nails: Just a little bit of blood goes a long way toward strengthening my nails! Ultiven Nails: It could just be me, but it feels like my nails are just as strong as an Ultiven weapon now!

The people Lankha spoke of earlier are Armorer Jinn, Captain Flint, Shop Owner Ermes, and Charles the Innkeep. Those names mean nothing to you, but they mean a lot to someone who played through ST. Any of the names of the townspeople of Maestyl would. At this point, I spent around 30 hours getting to know every NPC in that town…

And Beylord is about to destroy them all.

With the exception of Lankha, of course.

What an emotional gut punch! But in a really good way. This game really made me feel things… auugh…

Even though I knew from the very beginning of the game, the moment I read the name Maestyl, that this story no matter what, will end in tragedy… oh, it still manged to really catch me by surprise.

There are 11 houses in Maestyl, Lankha’s included. It does not matter in which order Beylord will ‘visit‘ these houses, but we will start with the ones he’ll straight up destroy without even entering first. Here we see Beylord’s next abilities: Elemental Magic. Fire, Water and... Earth(?) Maybe?

Beylord approaches a small red house. It belongs to the single mother Kiva and her child Garion. [Beylord] »Hmm, no one is home. Too bad, they won’t feel the flames!« Beylord sets the house ablaze.

Beylord approaches Captain Flint’s home. He’s not home. Beylord sets it ablaze without a thought.

Beylord approaches a small brown house. It belongs to the merchant Demetrius. [Beylord] »Anyone who has no windows on their house is hiding something.« [Narrator] »But you don’t even know him!« [Beylord] »Hold on, let me check if I care…« Beylord sets the house ablaze. [Beylord] »Nope.«

Beylord approaches a big blue house. It belongs to the couple Azar and Laphid with their kids Kift and Walf. [Beylord] »Hmm, I smell lots of fresh blood in there.« [Narrator] »You wouldn’t!« [Beylord] »Tell you what…« Beylord ultra freezes the entire house, it’s covered in snow and ice. [Beylord] »If they can survive that, I’ll leave them alone.« [Narrator] »You monster!«

Beylord approaches a small red house with a garden next to it. It is the home of the scholar Fekre. [Beylord] »Such a cute little house. I almost feel bad for destroying it. Almost.« [Narrator] »But that place is home to a Scholar! It’s full of ancient artifacts and books, rare objects and information that are extremely hard to find!« [Beylord] »And now, they will be even more rare!« Beylord destroys the house and turns it into rubble, and sets the garden left to it ablaze. This might be a mixture of both Earth and Fire magic. Or he’s just using superhuman strength and Fire magic.

Beylord approaches a brown, run down house standing on top of a hill. It belongs to Koden the Warrior, one of the playable characters. [Beylord] »Looks like this house is about to fall apart anyway.« Beylord destroys the home, lots of rubble and debris everywhere with a bit of fire. Might be Earth magic, or superhuman strength. I cannot tell for sure.

Beylord approaches Rekatys’s Wheelbarrow Shop, because of course, of course there’s a wheelbarrow shop. This is Arvale we’re talking about here, there will always be wheelbarrow nonsense. [Beylord] »A shop dedicated to selling Wheelbarrows? How gauche! This place deserves to burn! [Narrator] »No arguments there.« Beylord sets the house and wheelbarrows ablaze.

Beylord enters Jinn’s Armory. He does not attack Beylord. He stands there by the anvil, diligently doing his work. Despite his intimidating profession, forging weapons and armor, Jinn is by far the most friendly and optimistic character in town. Only when Beylord’s sprite touches Jinn does the battle start. Beylord behaves a bit like your typical monster enemy in Arvale here in a way… approaching and immediately instigating a battle. Jinn is defending himself with a sword. Beylord kills him. After battle, a wet, ugly noise can be heard. All that’s left of him are giant puddles of blood splattered across the floor. [Beylord] »It’s only fair of course. And what’s this?« You took Jinn’s Seal: One of the four magic seals that unlock Beylord Manor. When Beylord leaves the house, he turns around and sets it ablaze.

Beylord enters Ermes’ Item Shop. His Items Clerk, Quip, cannot be found. He either does not live in Maestyl or has his room in the back of the shop. But Ermes is there. Ermes is quite a friendly guy too. But while playing the character Tabys the Assassin, we learn they used to know eachother. Probably back during their days living alongside the Konjia, Ermes maybe even being a Konjia himself. A race so stealthy (and quite militaristic thanks to their horrible emperors), that the rest of Arvale think them to be extinct. He settled for a quiet and peaceful life in Maestyl, leaving his old life behind and running a »mostly respectable« business now. »Mostly« because he secretly supplies more dubious customers in the night, like assassins. He knows things, he has tricks up his sleeve… and when Beylord enters his items Shop, Ermes immediately sprints at him at full speed. Clocking him instantly as danger. Maybe he remembers now who and what Beylord is after seeing him. Ermes fights like a magician. Again, after battle, a wet, ugly noise can be heard. All that’s left of him are giant puddles of blood splattered across the floor. [Beylord] »Uhhu. And I can only assume that this is…« You took Ermes Seal: One of the four magic seals that unlock Beylord Manor. When Beylord leaves the house, he turns around and sets it ablaze.

Beylord stands in front of the door of the Inn/Pub. [Beylord] »Heheheheheh. Fish in a barrel!« [Narrator] »No, don’t!« [Beylord] »I’ve had enough of you! If I hear one more complaint, you’re NEXT!« [Narrator] »*gulp*« Beylord enters the Inn/Pub. Every NPC, no matter how far away, has turned towards him and stands completely frozen in place. When you play any other character, they’re moving, doing their thing, ... Right now everyone is frozen while looking at Beylord. Maybe they remember now. The Pub’s music keeps playing like normal. No one expected this. They all run away from Beylord when he approaches them. When he catches up to them, they scream, there’s this ugly wet noise again and all that’s left of the person is puddles of blood splattered across the floor.

Captain Flint can be found here. He does not run away but he also does not approach Beylord. Beylord has to actively attack him. Captain Flint attacks with a spear. All that’s left after battle is a giant pile of blood splattered across the floor. It makes an ugly wet noise. Like a wet bite. [Beylord] »Aha… What’s this?« You took Flint’s Seal: One of the four magic seals that unlock Beylord Manor. Innkeep Charles cannot be seen, so Beylord enters the Pub’s/Inn’s basement, where he can be found. Charles rushes him when he is near, maybe he remembers who he is, maybe he heard the screams from upstairs, and attacks with a spear. Once again, ugly wet noise after battle and puddles of blood across the floor. [Beylord] »Mmmhmm, and I’ll take this, thank you very much!« You took Charles Seal: One of the four magic seals that unlock Beylord Manor. When Beylord leaves the Inn/Pub, he turns around and sets it ablaze.

BTW, there’s a few human NPCs outside Maestyl. Beylord just kills them as well without a thought. They scream, wet noise, and there’s blood. Like always. Another detail I like is that Beylord only enters the houses that are open to the public, shops, pubs… In some stories vampires need to be invited in order to physically enter a house, but since these are public houses everyone is already kinda invited… I don't think Beylord has to abide be these rules, but it’s a neat detail/reference.

Once all seals are collected, he has this to say:

[Beylord] »These seals should break the uhm, seal on my castle. Let’s head to Beylord Lake and go inside!«

You head to Beylord Lake, where Beylord’s castle is.

Now… As said earlier, Beylord Lake is a complete safe zone, during day and night, for all playable characters. Except Beylord.

There’s a final boss in Beylord’s storyline, but there’s also a secret, much more powerful boss. When you walk around Beylord Lake as The Vampire Beylord, there’s a really low chance that this secret boss spawns. It does not attack anyone else, only The Vampire.

The Beylord Spirit.

By far the toughest boss in the entire game (We’re going to ignore Lankha here).

Once defeated, he drops … the objects of power?? (That’s how DeMenchev refers to them anyway) The Ring, Rib, Eye and Heart… Did The Beylord Spirit use these objects to boost his strength? Did The Beylord Spirit take them away, so The Vampire could no longer be resurrected once defeated? We don’t know. But he is antagonistic towards The Vampire and no one else, making him seem like a force of good...

But once defeated, The Beylord Spirit will just. Keep. Coming. Back.

Defeating The Beylord Spirit once does not make the lake a safe zone. He will just keep reappearing for another battle if The Vampire continuous to wander around the lake. But it make sense, right? You can’t kill a ghost.

Aside from carrying body parts, The Beylord Spirit also carries some pretty huge implications for The Vampire. We know from the Warrior Spirit (which I think is supposed to be Koden or the inspiration for Koden… a lot of the things the Warrior Spirit says don’t make sense anymore after playing through Koden’s tale, and probably also have been retconned) in JOI that Spirits and Souls are the same thing.

You know how vampires don’t have shadows? Or reflections? I’m not a vampire expert (even though my friends would digress) but from what I know it’s because traditionally they are soulless.

And, at least to me, the fact that The Vampire has to battle his own Soul, indicates that Beylord The Vampire, is soulless. Which might explain the really terrible behaviour and lack of ethics.

If we continue with my theory that The Vampire is soulless, it implies that we are not even… playing the true Beylord. Because that would be the soul, right? That would be the actual person he was in life, the one that DeMenchev called a friend. And we, as the player, are just piloting a … body, corpse, monster... thing.

Now, back to the storyline. You make your way in front of the castle’s door.

[Narrator] »The magic seal disappears.« [Beylord] »It’s about time! Home sweet home! Now I can restore all of my powers, if I can just find my coffin… it should be near the end of my manor.«

Entering the manor, you hear a familiar tune. It’s the music that plays at Beylord Lake during the daytime, but now a lot slower, spookier and a bit sadder. Maybe these notes could be Beylord’s theme?

Here’s what it sounds like:

I must say that Beylord Manor is quite a pretty place, a big glowup to what we see in JOI. What I really like is how prominent the colors dark blue and red are, the ones that are the most striking in The Vampire’s design himself.

Some things are intractable in the manor. Sometimes for humor’s sake, sometimes to show just how much of a bastard The Vampire is. You know, if him destroying an entire town wasn’t enough.

The Vampire stands in front of a pile of rubble. [Beylord] »When I get all my strength back, I should really think about getting this place cleaned up.« [Narrator] »Vampires do housework?« [Beylord] »Of course not! Don’t be vulgar! I will hire a young, virgin, Klumetian Maid to do the job of course. She will, heheh, do the housework, and prepare the dinner!« [Narrator] »Prepare?« [Beylord] »If by prepare, I mean, be a fine meal! Heheheh.«

The Vampire stands before a book. [Beylord] »A list of all the previous reservations and guest names for those whom have checked into my hotel.« [Narrator] »Hotel?« [Beylord] »Indeed, I used to run a very respectable business here… Staying a few nights in a vampire’s manor and living to tell about it was very popular. And everyone adored the baroque ambience of the manor.«

The Vampire stands before two red coffins. [Beylord] »Ahh… my old coffins. Memories, good times…«

The Vampire stands before a book, again. [Beylord] »A list of previous applicants for maidens who wanted to be seduced and sacrificed by a vampire.« [Narrator] »Wanted to?« [Beylord] »Sure! There are many women who would gladly give their lives for one night with a vampire, you have no idea! I had to literally start an application and interviewing process, just to keep the numbers down, and the traffic away from my hotel.« (What the hell, this guy has Presence as an ability or something...)

The Vampire stands before a painting. [Beylord] »That was an old picture of me anyway… I never liked the flesh colored skin look.«

The Vampire stands before two chains hanging on the wall. One of them has a boney arm in it. [Beylord] »Ahh, memories…«

While The Vampire didn’t manage to make his way into his manor at first, lots of other creatures have. Undeads (like zombies), wolves, giant bats, multiple cerebuses, skeletons named »Vengeance« (maybe his rage was so enormous that it ended up reanimating dead bodies in his manor or something??) and… no wait, that’s so out of place… Robots?!

Oh… they’re called »DM Bots«. It seems our dear John DeMenchev build and placed them here as an extra measure. To keep The Vampire away from reaching that room at the end of the manor, probably.

I read the name of this enemy and it was just further confirmation for me what, or rather who, was coming... Hehhehheh

There are lots of things blocking The Vampire’s way to reach that room. From a gameplay perspective, I totally understand turning The Vampire’s manor into a dungeon. It keeps it consistent with the other characters having to visit various dungeons and solving puzzles as well, but it also makes you think… did someone else place these obstacles here to keep The Vampire from reaching that room, or does he just have Arvale’s craziest floorplan to keep people from reaching that room? Both?

While inside the manor, The Vampire showcases multiple abilities: Fire Magic, Ice magic, superhuman strength, morphing into a bat, morphing into a rat, and being able to turn into smoke. That’s new! But it’s also a somewhat common power associated with vampires, like being able to shapeshift into animals. He becomes invincible while turning into smoke but is also unable to interact with anything. Aside from making commentary, of course.

You reach his terrible, terrible room. The skulls you found in JOI are nothing compared to this.🤖Jaybot7 really wanted to hammer in that he’s a villain, alright.

The Vampire approaches the throne. What a nice callback to the one you could find in JOI …

[Beylord] Finally! »And now… to restore all my powers!«

The Great DeMenchev enters the room. But he looks a bit different than the version we got to know in OOT... it looks like he went through a really rough time. He looks pissed, he has a beard now (which reminds me of the time he got hounded by the Konjia and had bigger worries than shaving, anyway) and… wears an eye patch now. (which reminds me of the time he got hounded by the Konjia again, with a scar across his eye. But that situation was in an alternate timeline that got erased so, uh, this didn’t happen to this version of DeMenchev)

Here's my interpretation of him:

[DeMenchev] »Hold it right there, Beylord!« [Beylord] »De-- DeMenchev?!« [DeMenchev] »I don’t know how you awoke from the state we put you in, but I will not allow you to do any more harm! To others, OR to yourself!»« [Beylord] »It was YOU then! You destroyed me and placed me in that box… separating all of my--- this cannot be forgiven!« [DeMenchev] »I did it for you own good! I have no idea how you came to be what you are, but I am searching for a way to cure it! And I was fairly close…!« [Beylord] »I’d believe you, if you weren’t lying. I’m inclined to think that you are just jealous of my powers.« [DeMenchev] »You don’t have to believe me. We used to go on adventures together, back when you were human! After we parted, you disappeared for some years, and from what I gather, you started working for Sorcynth. Years later, I hear that a Vampire has been terrorizing everybody on the continent!« [Beylord] »Terrorizing is such a harsh word. I prefer human resources life allocation.« [DeMenchev] »Grrr… And then I come to investigate and find it’s my old friend, Beylord! I had to put a stop to it, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill my old friend!« [Beylord] »Or more likely, you don’t know *how* to kill a Vampire, as it is impossible.« [DeMenchev] »On the contrary, I have several solutions to ending a vampire's existence in my pocket. But I will only use them as a last resort. Because you are my friend. Some brave men from Maestyl helped me put you in a state where I could methodically remove your objects of power… Until the day I found a permanent cure for your condition!« [Beylord] »But you underestimated how powerful I am, and how far apart you should have scattered the pieces!« [DeMenchev] »Apparently! A mistake, I do not wish to repeat. Now, if you’d be so kind, I believe we must battle now. En garde!«

I tried to recreate their fight with the game art.

This is it, the final boss of The Vampire’s Tale and also the final boss of ARVALE: Short Tales. And he is pathetically easy. And I think that is on purpose. You can very quickly feel just how powerful The Vampire is when you start playing him. He levels up a lot quicker than any of the other playable characters, and his speed allows him to strike superfast and super often. DeMenchev’s sword does pitiful damage, and he is defeated with a few slashes of The Vampire’s talons. But he does not turn into a puddle of blood after battle.

His expression changes into something sadder.

[DeMenchev] »Ugh…« [Beylord] »That is what you get for playing with fire, my friend.« [DeMenchev] »Beylord…« [Beylord] »And now… for a taste!« [DeMenchev] »………«

Looks like this is the end for him. Except of course not! He’s The Great DeMenchev after all.

A few very recognizable notes of his theme start playing on a flute, there’s a smack sound, and The Vampire turned into his smoke form somehow. DeMenchev looks angry/determined again.

[DeMenchev] »HaH!« [Beylord] »My body?! Urgh!« [DeMenchev] »See you around Beylord! This won’t be our last meeting, I guarantee it!« DeMenchev escapes through the door. [Beylord] »Agh, I can’t move!«

The Vampire shifts quickly through his various forms before turning into his humanoid form again.

[Beylord] »Ah! Finally! DeMenchev will PAY for that!«

We cut to outside the Manor. The Vampire can be seen searching for DeMenchev.

[Beylord] »Where in Arvale did he go?! That geezer is fast!«

He turns into a bat.

[Beylord] »But he will get tired eventually! And I WILL find him! After all, he is… only human!«

He flies off.

A painting of his manor appears on screen, and text starts to slowly scroll up. It’s probably The Narrator speaking:

»Beylord was so enraged from his encounter with DeMenchev, that he completely forgot about his lust for regaining all of his vampire powers and continued his vengeful pursuit of DeMenchev for years. Every time Beylord caught up with him, DeMenchev was barely able to escape with his life. During their final encounter on a remote island, DeMenchev was cornered by Beylord with no exit in sight. At the last moment, just as Beylord was about to finish him off, DeMenchev warned him that he could still travel somewhere that even Beylord could not follow. Beylord scoffed at the preposterous remark and asked him where. »Through Time!« DeMenchev replied, and in an instant, DeMenchev disappeared in a bright flash. Beylord wouldn't believe the old fool at first, and continued searching for several decades. When it was apparent that DeMenchev should have been dead from old age and Beylord was not able to find any traces of his body, Beylord conceded that perhaps DeMenchev was telling the truth. And so, still bent only on revenge, Beylord returned to his manor to wait until the day he felt DeMenchev's presence again. Until then, he slept... For centuries.«

The End.

This guy has no chill. Here's a funny and chaotic doodle page I made of him.

Now… let’s dissect this and then start theorizing for a bit.

We now know how he probably ends up in Treasure of Memories / time travelling again. He uses time travel to escape from The Vampire, which shouldn't be possible... Because DeMenchev destroyed all the time pieces at the end of OOT. But he has canonically crazy smarts, he might have figured out a way to make his own. But perhaps they're not perfect, or became faulty, and thus can't control where he is sent to anymore like he says in Treasure of Memories. »I don't have control over when I am sent to anymore«.

And this might be how he becomes aware of The Cedar, 'God' of The Future, (main big bad guy in OOT) and that he’s planning something once again. When you time travel without a Stabilizer Idol at least, The Time 'Gods' become aware of you messing with time, and you might end up in their vortex. Which is kinda like their own pocket dimension. And DeMenchev might have not used a Stabilizer Idol because, why would he need to? He defeated the gods in OOT, except uh oh. The Cedar is still around after all. Anyway...

DeMenchev is by no means a stranger when it comes to making friends. Alex, Topf, Talynn, Tarsche, The Diver in Soneros, and probably many more people we don’t know of.

DeMenchev is a very busy person. If he’s not on a research adventure, he’s probably at home writing books about the topic he was researching. And if he’s not writing books at home, he’s probably spending time with the people in Queous like Anna and Alex. Probably only visiting friends during his travels.

But Beylord was special, in the same way Petya was special. They actually travelled together, significantly spending a lot more time with eachother.

A lot of things imply that this was a friend DeMenchev held very dear. In OOT, we start to get hints.

The way DeMenchev is immediately able to recognise him despite the newfound nonhuman visual qualities and having not seen him for a long time.

The way he talks to him: »Beylord! It is you. Of course, you know me… we used to travel together and go on expeditions...« The way he exclaims his name, the way he confirms it’s him, the way he trails of when he recalls their past…

The way he thinks about him »Poor Beylord… looks like his destiny is even worse than mine in this reality. What ever that means.« Pitying this someone that just tried to kill him without any negative feelings towards him. The fact he spared him, refusing to kill him. Something he’ll always do, no matter what. (»looks like his destiny is even worse than mine in this reality.« Augh aghk auogh you have no idea what’s coming, DeMenchev)

No matter what… Not even when The Vampire is terrorizing an entire continent, not even when The Vampire is about to kill him.

»l have several solutions to ending a vampire’s existence in my pocket. But I will only use them as a last resort. Because you are my friend.« I don’t think DeMenchev is lying. Yet, despite having several solutions in his pocket, he did not do it after Maestyl was destroyed, he did not do it after his life has been repeatedly threatened and barely escapes with his life. He rather dooms himself to time travel again, than kill The Vampire. He never uses it as a last resort. He couldn’t do it.

»I had to put a stop to it, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill my old friend!« This line is interesting, because it implies he knew how to kill The Vampire even before putting The Vampire in that slumber.

If you think about it… ironically, DeMenchev refusing to kill his 'friend'… ends up with him having blood on his hands. (Indirectly).

Letting The Vampire live puts a lot of people’s lives at risk. The most recent example being Maestyl. But even before that, The Vampire was terrorizing all of Kytar. That’s a whole continent!

And none of Kytar’s major powers were able to do anything about it. The Vampire we play in ST is a weakened version. Who knows what The Vampire was capable of at full power.

DeMenchev rather goes through with some really elaborate plan, where he methodically removes parts of The Vampire to put him into a slumber, so he can research a cure for him to turn human again (which might not be possible, I’ll get to that later) than kill him.

Which is admirable, but… in the end it was the wrong thing to do. Many people died, and DeMenchev never finds a cure.

On top of that, this path DeMenchev takes ends up being selfdestructive. He gets hunted viciously across the ENTIRE PLANET for years, has many close calls with death, and ends up having to time travel again. And according to what we learn in Treasure of Memories, he wants to return home, but does not control when he is sent to anymore. That sucks. A lot. He could have ended the nightmare and killed The Vampire at any time, return home, before doing time travelling again, but he didn’t.

And who knows what trail of blood The Vampire left behind while hunting him! In ST The Vampire does not think twice when killing the NPCs. And a vampire has to eat too... the blood of the people... RIP to anyone who crosses paths with that thing.

I can’t blame DeMenchev for trying to find a cure though. If I managed to save a loved one AND the world once through time travelling and defeating false gods, trying to find a cure for vampirism doesn’t seem so impossible now.

That, and he might also be motivated by grief, not wanting to loose someone again, possibly. We know Anna will die a death too soon, unless people got their history facts wrong in Treasure of Memories about DeMenchev. The good ending in OOT 'only' makes her live longer. And I know what you might be thinking. Did The Vampire kill Anna? I don't think so. Because if he did, I'm 99% sure that DeMenchev wouldn't hesitate anymore and he'd kill him. And then there's his friendship with Petya that got erased after The Time 'Gods' reset time and thus overwriting/ changing the timeline, with only strange dreams remaining as memories of the long time they spent together.

According to Cyper from Treasure of Memories: »DeMenchev... If I recall, he, I mean, *you* disappeared after the loss of his, sorry, *your* wife passed away... And was never found again!«

From OOT: [Petya] »Hello sir DeMenchev. I don't recall ever properly meeting you. But I feel as though I have known you for a long time. It is an honor to meet you. Now I know where those visions come from«. [DeMenchev] »Yes. Thank you, Petya. Thank you again for all of your help, even if neither of us remember it all. Take care«. [Petya] »Goodbye and good luck on your journeys DeMenchev.«

But I have theories about how turning The Vampire human again is impossible.

»I have no idea how you came to be what you are, but I am searching for a way to cure it! And I was fairly close…!« this bit is interesting, because it confirms that DeMenchev has no idea how The Vampire came to be, and it could maybe imply, that there was something that halted his progress, something that he couldn’t figure out. Something he didn't know. I have multiple theories what this could be.

Back in JOI, there’s this guy named Rinald in Nikal. He has this to say: »I am so close to figuring out the secret to the Sorcynth recipe for a heal potion! There seems to be one ingredient I just cannot put my finger on… I just need a little more research!« We later learn in JOI that this secret ingredient is dragon magic. DeMenchev does not know this. And when he does learn, he is already stuck time travelling again. Sorcynth's sins are exposed after it's collapse in the future as we can see in Treasure of Memories, which takes place not too long after JOI.

It could also be that DeMenchev does not know that The Vampire might (heavily implied but not confirmed) be soulless. And you can’t cure a lack of soul without the soul.

The fact that The Vampire might be soulless kinda makes the entire exchange in the manor and the whole situation a lot more tragic.

»I don’t know how you awoke from the state we put you in, but I will not allow you to do any more harm! To others, OR to yourself!« »I did it for you own good!« »We used to go on adventures together, back when you were human!« Trying to get through to someone, trying to remind someone, trying to reason with someone, who might not even be the person you think you are talking to. Which might not even be a person. Just a monstrous husk wearing your friend’s face. Metaphorical or possibly literal.

A small detail in the exchange after the battle I really like is the fact that DeMenchev falls completely silent. To a normal person, this is just there for normal dramatic effect and nothing else. If you are a detail freak like me, this silence might feel familiar. The only time we see DeMenchev fall into long silence like this is when he gets his heart broken by messed up versions of his girlfriend from alternate timelines after she says something really upsetting to him. And this situation is really similar. A messed up version of someone he held dear saying something really upsetting. »And now… for a taste!« The Vampire, his ‘friend‘, just told DeMenchev he's going to eat him... Or drink his blood at least. That’s gotta hurt, especially after everything.

Now… there’s the mystery of The Beylord Spirit. How did he lose his body? How does one end up soulless? Or rather, how does one separate the soul from the body? Well, I know one way! Dying. And vampires in a lot of stories tend to do that a lot before becoming vampires.

While a lot of the things we learn about Beylord in JOI are probably not canon anymore, some things do remain the same throughout all his iterations. Like the fact that he was a Sorcynth Potion Tester.

So let’s take the information we learn from the JOI Beylord encounter that don’t cause any inconsistencies, add my own theories into the mix, and speculate a narrative!~ ✎﹏

Long ago, a young researcher whose name will be remembered throughout Arvale history went on many adventures and expeditions with his friend Beylord by his side.

Until one day, Beylord had a terrible accident. We don’t know what this accident was, but Beylord stopped accompanying his friend afterwards. Maybe it happened during an expedition, which deterred him to continue travelling with his friend? Who knows.

Or perhaps the riches promised by Sorcynth were too tempting? Maybe both?

»During this time Sorcynth was still a relatively small company. Many of their potions were still untested, and they needed test subjects.« »Knowing the danger that was present, testers were paid extremely well.« Beylord accepted the offer and became one of them, leaving his friend behind. His friend will not hear from him for a long time...

Beylord »accumulated quite a bit of wealth and bought this castle, servants, the whole package«. »There were many, many deaths of testers from trying the potions.« He »was one of the lucky few who survived working for Sorcynth« for quite a while.

While he worked for Sorcynth, the Highly Experimental Potions started to change him in odd ways. They gave him powers. Like superhuman strength, speed, fire magic, water magic, being able to morph into animals. But the potions were not perfect yet so they came with odd side effects. Not being able to fully morph back into a human after turning into an animal, and getting stuck with some animalistic features like pointy ears, fangs, claws and turning nocturnal, perhaps. Developing odd weakneses like an allergy to garlic, silver, specific types of wood, wolfsbane, salt. You know, typical vampire weaknesses.

But maybe, one day, he didn’t get so lucky.

There are 2 ways I can think of how turning in a vampire one day working for Sorcynth could have occurred. (That's the gameover screen BTW.)

1). He turned into something like a Sorcynth Zombie like That Sorcynth Officer from Varju’s tale. »Sorcynth had been working on a potion for curing undead, zombies, etc. And… well, they never perfected it.« And The Vampire is the result. Somehow, his soul got separated from his body during that process, which could explain the change in character from good to ultra evil, and »after becoming a vampire, Beylord lost control with his immense powers and began terrorizing all the areas on the continent.« At least we can assume that during his human days Beylord used to be nice, DeMenchev would otherwise not have been his friend. Problem: That Sorcynth Officer does not show any hints of loosing his soul upon turning into a zombie. Maybe he just uses a different version of the potion though that doesn’t cause soullessness as a side effect though. That Sorcynth Officer does show a critical lack of ethics like The Vampire, but that’s just being a high ranking Sorcynth Officer. The Beylord Spirit cannot rest and move on to the next world because his body is currently terrorizing all of Kytar, or still 'alive', maybe both, hence why he’s still around.

2). »There were many, many deaths of testers from trying the potions.« What if one day he just straight up… died. Sorcynth proceeded to further experiment on his dead body, maybe trying to cure death itself, and The Vampire being the result, which proceeded to go turbo crazy on Kytar. Now… I don’t have anything to base this of. This is just speculation. But. If I was in the afterlife after I died and hoards of fellow souls blame me for their deaths and a bunch of terrible things back in the mortal world that I know I didn’t do… because I’m dead… Dude, you could not stop me with 10 inches of reinforced concrete, I would somehow find my way back to the mortal world to find out what the hell is going on and try to stop it.

No matter which of the 2 explanation we use here, the result is the same. We have an ultraviolent vampire on the loose in Kytar with The Beylord Spirit being present.

Also, unbeknownst to DeMenchev, he is trying to cure (un)death. Just like Sorcynth, which is kinda one those things that are impossible for mortals to do. Attempting this usually results in, well, undead creatures. Like… zombies… or vampires.

The Vampire reigns over Kytar, possibly with Mistress Lankha by his side. Since they seemed to know eachother judging by the exchange between them in ST. She calls him »Master Beylord« So maybe she worked for him. If it wasn't just part of The Vampire's powers/doing himself, maybe she is the one responsible for making everyone »forget about the incidents with Beylord entirely.« She seems powerful enough when it comes to magic to do so. And it would benefit her, she can open up her Fortune Telling business, without people associating her with Kytar’s Peril himself and shunning her.

As one would expect, the news of this vampire terrorizing the entire continent of Kytar spread to other places in Arvale. Eventually reaching DeMenchev.

»Years later, I hear that a vampire has been terrorizing everybody on the continent!«

DeMenchev hears of these news and decides to investigate. At this point, it seems our researcher has started become quite known. Being now recognizable and having to travel in disguise. Or perhaps he starts to wear a disguise later once he finds out who this monster is and wants The Vampire to not recognize him.

»And then I come to investigate and find it’s my old friend, Beylord! I had to put a stop to it, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill my old friend!«

That must have been quite a terrible revelation, to see that infamous monster wear such a familiar face... It seems DeMenchev has found a way, or multiple ways to end The Vampire’s existence. He might be the only person in Arvale with that knowledge. But he just couldn’t go through with it. So, he comes up with a new plan. Somehow put The Vampire into some sort of torpor so he may not hurt others and DeMenchev can work on a way to cure Beylord and turn him human again.

Which might not be possible, but hey, can’t blame the guy who defeated gods and saved the world and a loved one once for trying, right? If he managed to do that, surely he can find a way to cure vampirism, right…? Plus, he might not want to loose someone he holds dear, again.

DeMenchev figures out that in order to put The Vampire into that slumber, he needs to somehow remove his objects of power. Ring, Rib, Eyes and Heart. And he can’t do it alone.

So he assembles 4 brave men from Maestyl to help him, while he stays in disguise and only goes by his first name, John. Those being Captain Flint, Shopkeeper Ermes, Armorer Jinn, and Innkeep Charles.

With John as the leader, the resistance of Maestyl proceed to attack the beasts’ lair, the manor, and lure him out. Somehow, they manage to take The Vampire apart and proceed with the burial, but perhaps not unscathed.

Charles has a scar across his right eye, Flint might too (although it could just be part of his face tattoo, if that is a tattoo), Jinn has a scar on his left eye, only Ermes seems to not carry any lingering scars. Not that surprising, with his Konjian background he might have picked up some stealthy skills to avoid damage.

But DeMenchev seemed to have lost a whole eye. Claws could very well be capable of creating cuts like that, and DeMenchev as the leader could have gotten the worst from it.

When you play The Vampire in ST, he attacks with a really nasty uppercut with his claws, and when you fight DeMenchev in ST, you see how the claws strike his face and blood starts to spill around the area of his head. So… maybe that’s how he lost his eye. He got it clawed out The Vampire.

With The Vampire put into a slumber, DeMenchev begins searching for a way to cure him. He gets close, maybe almost finding ways to reverse a Sorcynth Potion’s effect but… there’s something he can’t figure out. Something that keeps him from finding a cure. Perhaps not being able to find out Sorcynth's secret usage of dragon magic, or the possible soullessness of The Vampire. But he keeps searching for years. For extra measure, a seal is put on the manor’s door, so The Vampire can’t enter, and robots built by DeMenchev hostile to The Vampire roam the halls in case something goes wrong when The Vampire is supposed to be awakened again and tries to enter the manor. The Vampire stays in this slumber until DeMenchev finds a cure. A cure for (un)death itself.. doesn’t sound exactly possible.

»Then the pieces of Beylord would be put back together to reawaken him and destroy his condition forever. However, Beylord’s powers were strong enough to influence other people’s actions, even while he slept. As the years passed, people seemed to forget about the incidents with Beylord entirely. And eventually, four adventurers brought his pieces back together, unbeknownst to them the terror they were unlocking.« Varju the Druid, Tabys the Assassin, Koden the Warrior and Lotus the Mage.

And a terror they did unlock. Unable to enter his manor at first, The Vampire makes his way to Maestyl, destroys all houses and kills everyone in it, except for Lankha and her home. He collects the seals from Jinn, Ermes, Flint and Charles to break the seal on his manor and enters. On a side note, while playing as Tabys the Assassin, you will get a quest where you have to retrieve an object for Fekre, the scholar.

[Fekre] »Well, you look like one of the more well traveled citizens around here, and I need someone who can find access to cross Beylord Lake. You see, I’m studying the origins of Beylord Lake and I’m looking for a certain artifact that is supposed to be near the temple across the lake. If my information is correct, there should be a Khonsti Spear nearby the temple. If you find a Spear in that area, please bring it to me, and I will make it worth your while.« (Next to the temple where Beylord is burried) [Narrator] »You catch a hint of metal glinting behind the rubble. Upon further examination…« You took Khonsti Spear: A deadly looking spear, suposedly used by the famous General Khonsti. (back in Maestyl) [Fekre] »This is… yes! This is exactly it! General Khonsti’s Spear! If this is true, then the rumors about him and Beylord might prove to be true as well! Thank you very much for this!«

We don't get any more information about this General and what he has to do with The Vampire, but... it gives us a clue how DeMenchev managed to find a way to not end up forgetting about The Peril of Kytar as well, like everyone else except Lankha. The reason Fekre seems to at least know something about The Vampire/Beylord despite probably having his memories decayed as well, is because he still has texts about him to read. And what does our dear researcher DeMenchev do? Diligently write in his journal... It should not be too difficult at all for DeMenchev to piece together what happened and maybe even find a way to get his memories back completely.

Remember The Warrior Spirit from JOI?

He tells us he »was tricked into defeating a witch, whom in return, placed a curse upon me and the entire town.«

The Warrior Spirit tells us he was a skilled warrior in his time. Sounds a lot like the Ex-General, Koden the Warrior to me. Except.. It can’t be him because a lot of the things he says just couldn’t have happened. Ex-General Koden is busy being king of the continent of Lanthys, he has no reason to be in Kytar. I do believe the Warrior Spirit probably served as the inspiration for Koden, but again, a lot of the things we learn in JOI are probably retconned.

A witch placing a curse on the entire town… would explain how the once dead townspeople roam the ruins of Maestyl as monsters in the future. And I can only think of one character who would be powerful enough and present at this moment in time to place this curse upon Maestyl: Lankha.

But why would she do that? Does she believe this a better fate for the people than being dead?

Well, Lankha is … a morally dubious character. She has capabilities for kindness, tutoring Lotus and teaching Varju the cat morph, but she also does things that are very selfish. Like tasking an assassin to steal a magical item from someone for her, or not warning the people that The Vampire has come to destroy them and the town. »I’m going to destroy the town, you know…« »Yes, I have foreseen that. But thank you for the warning. I believe I may have to move my business to a new location.«

She even allies with The Vampire, like she may have done in the past. Right now mostly for gold and probably for not wanting to get on his bad side. Even though she is capable of destroying The Vampire by turning into a giant undefeatable beast, she chooses not to. Perhaps there are consequences for turning into that form, and that’s why she’d rather not do it if given a choice.

Eventually, The Vampire heads to his manor.

We know DeMenchev is somewhere in the region, since he can be found while you play the other 4 characters during daytime. Most of the houses in Maestyl have been set ablaze. I wonder if he saw the glow of the fire and the smoke rising and decided to investigate, only to stumble upon the destruction of Maestyl. Aside from the raging fire, there would be no sound. No one would answer if he called out, and searching through the burning rubble he’d find no one left alive. He’d notice the one house left untouched. Heading inside he finds Lankha. Who probably foresaw his arrival, and similar to that one messed up timeline in OOT with The Occult Woman (who might be Lankha), directs him where The Vampire is. Or at least tells him it was The Vampire and not her who destroyed the town. And that’s how he figures where he has to head next, quickly.

I imagine, whatever interaction they had, it probably wasn’t pretty. Perhaps resulting with the town getting cursed by Lankha. Lankha foresaw what would happen, and did nothing to prevent it, as if the future is pre-determined. Which it isn't, anymore, thanks to DeMenchev literally defeating the entity in OOT who enforced determinism on the world. Maybe he begged her, maybe he demanded from her, maybe he threatened her, maybe he forced her to do something. Anything, to help the people of Maestyl. And she obliged. In her own way.

DeMenchev quickly makes is way through the manor, to that one room, busting in like the legend he is and interrupts The Vampire just before he tried to regain all of his powers.

They battle, DeMenchev looses, pulls a trick to escape and is now hunted across all of Arvale for years.

Disappearing like that instead of killing The Vampire, you know, »last resort« and all, is a… incredibly dangerous move for everyone else. With DeMenchev disappearing like that, he might no longer be in The Vampire’s focus and nothing is now stopping The Vampire from regaining all of his powers and terrorize people again.

When the most selfish and self destructive thing you’ve ever done is refusing to kill your ‘friend‘… That is so rough.

Thankfully, due to the sheer astronomical levels of rage and pettiness radiating from The Vampire, he does not end up doing that.

Instead, »Beylord wouldn't believe the old fool at first, and continued searching for several decades. When it was apparent that DeMenchev should have been dead from old age and Beylord was not able to find any traces of his body, Beylord conceded that perhaps DeMenchev was telling the truth. And so, still bent only on revenge, Beylord returned to his manor to wait until the day he felt DeMenchev's presence again. Until then, he slept... For centuries. «

This ending implies DeMenchev never makes it home, since The Vampire for centuries is not able to feel his presence (and subsequently The Beylord Spirit can never rest. Not until the day The Vampire is destroyed).

However… While playing Treasure of Memories, which takes place roughly 1000 years in the future from DeMenchev’s perspective, there’s this NPC who tells the tale of a once Great Library in Queous, DeMenchev’s hometown. I don’t remember DeMenchev’s exact reaction to this tale, but I recall him being very intrigued…

And it made me think, if anyone, it would be him, Arvale’s most famous researcher, trying to create this library, or play some role in its creation.

I know for a fact at the end of Treasure of Memories, he tries to head back home, somehow. Maybe he succeeds without getting The Vampire’s attention. Maybe.

I can't say for certain what will happen to The Vampire or The Beylord Spirit. Maybe Duncan still stumbles upon The Vampire in the future and destroys him for good, and The Beylord Spirit can finally rest. I can merely speculate. Remember those thieves from the very beginning? They're invisible to everyone, except Duncan, thanks to a certain Dragon infusing him with magic. Maybe that's why he can see certain spirits as well. Maybe The Beylord Spirit tasked him with destroying The Vampire.

Who knows for certain…

Except 🤖Jaybot7.

#arvale #arvale short tales #arvale 2 ocean of time #arvale journey of illusion #John DeMenchev #Beylord #vampire #art #duncan forsythe #rpg #retro rpg #lost media #For some reason the small font sometimes doesn't want to stay small. I don't know what's causing it #also sometimes the coloured text doesn't want to colour right ...#Beylord has such a fascinating implied narrative and I got obsessed. whoops.#I love DM. I love Beylord. They're both really fun and interesting characters to me. And you are telling me their stories intertwine?#you got me hooked

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absolutebl · 2 years ago

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This Week in BL - I’m Bored & Conflicted

Dec 2022 Wk 2

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying the most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

My School President (Fri YT) 3 of 10 - Honestly Tinn acts and talks like the voice inside of Sarawat’s head (from 2gether), I’ve never seen a bigger simp. The private tutoring was a good idea (Tiew is another one up for best wingman of the year). The way Tinn keeps getting accidentally defeated in his attempts at flirting is fun, and I love how they keep teasing us with tropes and then flipping or subverting them. GMMTV is being clever with audience expectations around the history of Thai BL and I love that. Also finally Gun is starting to feel something back... we enter phase two of a HSBL - moot pining but they both idiots. YES!

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) 1 of 12 - GMMTV’s answer to KinnPorsche this is (mafia lite?) spoiled prince + attack dog (whipping boy + bodyguard) suspense BL that’s actually a lot more like Golden Blood. It’s a pleasure to see PondPhuwin in something that’s not FUTS. Jojo (3 Will Be Free) is directing and daddy got himself a bouncing baby drone! We got a very dramatic opening with Paa shot on 18th bday. Puwin’s English is v good. Who knew? And Pond is v good at portraying insta-crush on poor little rich boy and I am not mad about any of it. IT’S GREAT.

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) 6 of 12 - I still like WinTeam but I’m beginning to get annoyed by how many couples there are (5!) and how many of them were (DeanPharm) or are (BeePrince) in an entirely different show tonally. I understand they needed to pad-out this story, but they shouldn’t have, they should have just given us a shorter show. WATCH ALONG HERE.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) 4 of 11 - We are finally getting Dew’s side of the story! And… its kinda dull.

Remember Me (Sun Gaga) 10 of 12 - So Name is talking now? And they put Ja in a wig too? Did UWMA teach us nothing? Now I’m just annoyed with this show. Some more marriage equality schilling, because Thai BL has an axe to grind these days. Good luck boys!

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) 5 of 12 - Honestly, the costumes in this show are insane and I also kind of like them in an odd way. There’s a Grease thing going on, and thus I keep expecting them to break into song (and being grateful that they don’t). The wardrobe is like the plot and the acting: loud and obvious and not very good but weirdly entertaining. Do I like it? Not really. Am I still watching it? Apparently.

Ai Long Nhai (Mon iQIYI) 12fin - Yes, Ai did use particles to claim Nhai again. Jealous boy. Honestly, this was kind of an epically boring final ep.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

My Tooth Your Love (Taiwan Fri Viki) 11 of 12 - They are so stinking cute together. They also now have all the matching jewelry (not taken by MarkKit). This was a quintessentially them episode 11 of doom, in that they were parted because of communication issues and a maturing relationship occupied by immature characters. Still the leads were apart for most of the episode and that made it a lot less interesting as an episode.

Oh! My Assistant (Korea Thurs Viki) 5-6 of 8 - Kisses and separation! As drama llama episodes go, the reasoning is typically flawed and manufactured, but after watching Why R U? anything goes in an ep 11 (or its equivalent). So I’m still enjoying this show a lot. I don’t need my panicking gay boys and confused bisexuals to behave logically, certainly not in a KBL.

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) 1 of 8 - A stakeout throws reporter Onoe together with photographer Kaburagi. Kaburagi's haphazard work style and player personality go against Onoe’s ethics. Yet, in joint pursuit of a scandal, these opposites attract move from enemies to lovers. Adapted from manga Ameiro Paradox by Natsume Isaku. Oh no! Our reporter is an unbelievably adorable pouty baby. Also big-ish cast and high production values in a BL, even for Japan. Even though it’s only been a little while since the last JBL, it’s such a pleasure to have one on my watchlist again! And the love interest is a big time flirty player. Very cliché (I still hold that the actor playing him looks like First of JaFirst). This is a lot more serious and a lot less slapstick than I was expecting, and I’m enjoying it because of that. But because it is serious, and this is Japan, we now cannot expect it to end happily. If you or someone who can wait, or likes to binge, and is very invested in an HEA you might want to consider holding off on this one.

The Director Who Buys Me Dinner (Korea Thurs iQIYI) 1-2 of 10 - A new employee whose director claims to have lived 300 years and insists that they have to date (eat, hug & kiss) if baby doesn't want to die. Office, fated mates, and that’s kinda my jam. I’m always annoyed when I really like a show that’s on iQIYI or WeTV. Sigh. But I really like this show, it has a lot of Japanese elements to it not the least of which is the office setting, but also the personality of the uke character. Hilarious to watch Korea deal with a plot that requires physical contact. It’s weird, but I like it, it’s also extremely short. Like shorter than most KBLs even. Each app is so padded there ultimately less than 10 minutes long (which is why is is 10 esp rather than the usually KBL 8, it’s gonna end up the same length in the end).

Choco Milk Shake (Korea Strongberry Tues YT) 11fin - airs Dec 20th

Happy Ending Romance (Korea Thurs Gaga & Viki) 7-8fin - I actually LOVED the ending, very hinting at poly, and mature. But this show ended up not really being a BL, no tropes and not really a romance either.

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching It

War of Y (Thai Gaga) 20 eps - it’s just all too much for me.

2 Moons 3 (Thai) 10 eps - Possibly a future binge watch. Rumor is it’s banal.

Love Bill (Vietnam Sat YT) - Bah Vinh is back but I’m too distracted. Also there’s a lot of fund raising stuff going on. I’ll wait and binge.

The Star Always Follow You (Vietnam YT) - same Team RL peeps we have seen before (Sunshine, Stupid)

Till the World Ends (Thai YT) 10 eps - ?

Why You... Y Me? (Thai Weds YT) 10 eps - It's not primarily a BL, but another meta show about BL shipping, with side BLs. @heretherebedork is watching it, ask them about it.

Ended This Week

Happy Ending Romance

In this series, all the gay boys romantically behave like lesbians and professionally like straight dudes. It’s... odd. As a BL it kinda isn’t (sorry to say), there’s no tropes dropped and no real romance beats. This is about ego and dishonesty and pride and there is an elegance to the plot. Which is essentially the idea that possession is not love, and therefore, both men who love the Writer have to prove their love by letting him go. Honestly, I’m not sure how to rate this show. This is a blog about BL and this wasn’t it. 8/10 RECOMMENDED (but not if BL is what you’re after). Full review.

Ai Long Nhai

Look this show was just a typical Thai BL university pulp about a confident gay and a clueless manic pixie dream boy. It had potential, chemistry, and earnestness going for it, but no plot and not enough side dishes. In the end, it was boring and you know I always rate boring lower than hot messes (because at least the hot mess TRIED). Still, Ai Long Nhai is better than your average Thai BL pulp, nothing happens but at least the nothing mostly shirtless, the gay dads are the BEST, which is about all I can say for it. 6/10 WORTH WATCHING BUT FLAWED

In Case You Missed It

With the help of @isisanna-blog, here’s a cobbled together a Domundi line up (peeps behind Cutie Pie) for 2023 Thai BL. Lots of established pairs and it looks good if they can actually make them all, includes beautiful historicals, paranormal, other high concepts, and a royalty bodyguard romance (knight/prince) with ZeeNew!

Next Week Looks Like This:

Still coming:

Dec 21 - The New Employee AKA The New Recruit AKA Shinib Sawo from Korea, (prob Gaga or Viki) - From WATCHA (Semantic Error) virginal Seung Hyun scores the office internship of his dreams but on his first day at work he gets into it with his cool reserved boss. As you do. Stars Moon Ji Yong (Once Again). Based on Moscareto's web novel of the same name, directed by openly gay & queer activist Kim Jho Gwang Soo (Just Friends?).

Dec 28 - H5: Love in the Future from Taiwan (prob Gaga or Viki) - A cheerful and energetic student from 2000 travels to the future (2022), works as a deliveryman, and meets his first customer, an heir with a domineering personality. Directed by Nancy Chen (HIStory 4, Papa & Daddy).

I’m working on my end of year wrap ups, trends lists, and BL stats reported. Let me know in a comment if there is any specifically you want to know of have deep feels about.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Beautiful pining work you’re doing there, Palm. Yearn, baby, yearn. (Never Let Me Go)

Fated mates, always a favorite of mine. (The Director who Buys Me Dinner)

GMMTV got itself a drone. Not sure how I feel about this.

Games is my spirit animal (609 Bedtime Story)

(last week)

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commander-snacks · 2 months ago

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Okay i'm genuinely curious What do you like about that boss from Elden Ring? No offence of course! It's just that i do not understand the appeal myself, and am trying to comprehend it (but maybe i am too weak /lighthearted) Btw your OC's are cute and your games are good

First of all THANK YOUUU for liking my OCs and games theyre my greatest joy<3

now for my other greatest joy Godskin noble :3 I’ll put under a readmore so this doesn’t wall up anybody’s dash

I get that hes probably an odd choice in most peoples eyes (or not probably, definitely. I’ve been roasted abt it very hard lol) but I genuinely think he is the perfect man. Perfection isn’t even real but he’s as close to it as possible I think. He is so unbelievably handsome and aesthetically pleasing that I seriously can’t name a single thing I would change about him. I love monster boys and his psudo-human appearance is so cool when you really take in his odd proportions and reptilian features (ie: tail) and oh my god his face has like every feature I love in a man. Tired baggy eyes, cute pouty expression, strong brow, visible age lines, and this isn’t something I like in all characters but GOD his gorgeous piercing golden eyes 🫣 i wanna just run my finger over every little part of his face like I’m admiring a marble sculpture. I love that even as he’s fighting you he almost looks bored, keeping an elegant air to him at all times. Speaking of elegant I don’t know if you seen a video of his boss fight but I really reccomend you do because his movements are beautiful. He uses his sword so skillfully it’s like a dance. I could watch him for hours. Especially his tail!! They animated it beautifully.

I also love his voice, we don’t hear much of it but it’s such a deep, gruff voice that I just adore❤️❤️😭❤️💕 i would pay a million dollars for him to have just one proper line of dialog but I’m happy listening to what we have~

His lore is also insanely cool. Being an elden ring character with no dialog, what we know about him and the others like him is pretty limited to location and item descriptions. Basically he is one of the few left of a race known as godskins that served a “gloam eyed queen”, and their main thing is killing the gods and wearing their flesh. If you have an hour to kill this video is great https://youtu.be/lKqR4WXMa7Y?si=xQGTQnYbAZ_r1rWA

youtube

There’s also this one which is a bit shorter but older, it’s a bit more digestible

youtube

There are indeed many godskin nobles in the game, so he’s not even really a singular character, but I have particular fondness for the one in volcano manor and tend to ship my tarnished with that one most of the time~ I headcanon him as a mute, incredibly somber man that puts his duties above all else and has little time for nonsense. Though of course my tarnished is 100% nonsense all the time. Opposites attract ❤️

Oh and in case you were wondering “how far into this post before sawney mentions he likes fat guys” it’s right here. love me a fat guy.

I’d post pics and videos in this ask to better illustrate my points but I’m on my phone so I’ll just reblog relevant stuff after posting

#husband #Godskin noble

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 2 years ago

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what's up kids it's that time again already

because I am extremely ready to be done with season 4 !!!

Gotham 4x17

something wild I've just realized is that at this point there are only 18 episodes left of the entire show, since season 5 was retooled into a half season that only got 12 eps and had to cut several ideas and characters including, among other things, the presence of Man-Bat. that's odd partly because I've spent something like nine months chipping away at Gotham at this point, and it's very strange to imagine my life now without any more Gotham to liveblog. it's also strange because this is no way feels like a story that's nearing any kind of conclusion, and I have to assume that when it inevitably comes the end will be as abrupt, brutal, and messy as every other aspect of Gotham up until that point.

anyway let's see what fresh hell is in store for us this time

god we've really abandoned all pretenses here Bruce is Batmanning on every level except for actually wearing a bat cowl

Oswald looking UNBELIEVABLY cunty atm I'm OBSESSED

bitch!!!

it would have been so cool if Bridgit had literally any kind of consistent personality or motivation but alas it is not that kind of show

a cool thing about the show never technically letting Cameron Monaghan's character be referred to as the Joker is that I don't technically have to like the Joker! and that's a huge relief because I do in fact like Jerome very much

oh my god they stumbled into an interesting Riddler moment again. this rules. like realistically this is about as good as guy whose whole gimmick is riddles could probably do for himself.

Lee got rid of her shitty bangs AND has acquired some sparkly fingerless fishnet gloves I love this for her

oh boy Jerome in a dog cage better not be a writer's poorly disguised fetish

I am once again asking what the point of making him Solomon Grundy was it lasted like ??? six episodes ??? people come back from the dead on this show all the time it didn't have to be a Thing

the thing is that if I didn't already know what the reveal is going to be (there's a second Valeska and Cameron Monaghan is going to play his own twin) I would simply have to assume they were going an incredibly bold gay Joker route and having Jerome hunt down his ex boyfriend

hey this is unhinged. like there have been a Lot of stupid storylines in this show but this genuinely so dumb and SO unnecessary

they want me to believe he stapled a live barracuda to someone's face as if the Riddler could possibly control a noble barracuda

there are just so many men in this city that Lee should be permitted to dismember with her bare hands

oooh baby Orphan Black this is not they are STRAINING to keep from having to show two Cameron Monaghan's at the same time. this is so disjointed

Hatter and Scarecrow getting sent to kill Jim and Harvey but immediately giving up because Harvey uuuuh screamed and ran right at them is ??? lmao??? you are so bad at your jobs hit him with some fear toxin or something?

also exactly no one on this show seems willing to actually run like their life is on the line which is really creating a very weird ambience. Mad Hatter and Scarecrow are doing the white person half-jog across the intersection while being chased with a gun

anyway Jerome just gave his brother a little smooch on the head but I don't think I'm insane for saying it seems like he wants to put his entire tongue in his twin's mouth. and that is hands down like the most normal thing going on in this episode.

RESPECT FOR LEE THOMPKINS: LOST !!!!!!!!!

#gotham time

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icespyders · 1 year ago

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i finished disco elysium today!!! & as someone who plays a lot of choice-based rpgs, the way the game acknowledged the way i played was particularly fun and rewarding (readmore for spoilers)

so obv at the end you're confronted by the cops from harry's precinct and kim can defend you (i assume if he hates you, he does not defend you, but i literally unlocked that Goodest Of The Good Cops achievement at the end of day 1, because i've been trained on bioware games to make every companion in every video game love me), and i got a real kick out of some of the dialogue i got during that finale sequence. particularly: one thing kim said to defend me was that i was unbelievably stubborn and thorough chasing down leads, no matter how vague or unrelated to the actual case they seemed to be, and that's 100% how i play rpgs lmao, i chase down every dumb random sidequest no matter how far it diverts me from the main plot. and in this game, some of my most joyful/interesting/thought-provoking/just plain nice moments were in these random sidequest diversions, so i loved how the game basically gives you a thumbs-up for that. and i was really unsure how to play it with evrart & joyce, who i give information to and why/when, and felt like i fucked up, and the game acknowledged that too, kim had some dialogue like, ok, yeah, maybe it wasn't a smart move, he ran his mouth a bit too much to the wrong people, but it was an ethical move and it maybe helped the whole situation, somehow, slightly. and i did okay in the tribunal sequence so kim noted that too, how i got in between the mercenaries and the union guys and put myself in harm's way and minimized the bloodshed. and! i didn't even realize the game would track my drinking/smoking, but the fact that i stayed sober and only smoked once (to light that graffiti on fire, lol, i did it for ART ONLY) was verbally mentioned by a couple characters and seemingly improved their opinion of me. OH OH and i was a very Sorry Cop and characters noted that in particular, kim was like ok yeah he apologizes for everything and it's kind of weird, but still, he's a good guy. and my actual partner is like YEAH YEAH i know you're sorry, you're always sorry, you fucking sad sack. & obviously my insane political views were noted (kim like "i know he's a communist, and also somehow a centrist, idk how he reconciles these things in his mind, but he's a good cop, i promise") (i never got to go back to my communist book club :(((( i read all the literature, i just didn't have time to go back, i ran directly into the plot too fast :(((((((( tragique)

and i was SO EXCITED to meet the phasmid...that was so nice...what a weird and lovely and odd game. it's just very rewarding, because like...i never felt like i was playing Perfectly, yknow? i started the game and was really intrigued by it, but felt a little overwhelmed as my Need To Play Perfectly habit crept in. so i put the game aside for like 9 months, worried i'd never get back to it or finish it, picked it up again 2 weeks ago and felt kinda stuck...and then i got to day 3 and i just cruised through to the end. i played pretty much blind, just looking up a sidequest or two when i was stuck, progression-wise, but i always have this bad habit in rpgs where i want to do things Right and get way too invested deep-diving on wikis trying to orchestrate the most perfect outcomes possible. i tried to kind of free myself of that habit for this game and play looser (though i am grievously guilty of save-scumming ahead of checks and doing dice rolls over and over again, but save-scumming is a sacred art to me, who the fuck doesn't do that in rpgs, if save-scumming is wrong i don't want to be right!!), so i wandered through the game, flailing around and fucking up and failing skill checks, always wondering if i could be Playing Better, but all of that second-guessing is worth it, because in the end i felt really rewarded by this sensation of acknowledgment i got from the game. this feeling that my failures and my successes were noted and catalogued and referenced directly as my companion character sticks up for me at the end. i'm always seeking that in rpgs, that acknowledgment, the sense that my choices mattered and were noted and made both subtle and obvious impacts. and disco elysium has so many variables that i REALLY didn't expect it to be as specific at the finale as it was! like, seriously, i can't get over it, the game scripted shit to acknowledge "you pursued so many fucking sidequests with a maddening and almost obsessive determination, good job," i feel so SEEN. and i got to hold hands with a big bug. what a game

#maggie plays disco elysium #rambling!!! i had fun :')#the tribunal scene was so tense i don't think i moved except to click my mouse the whole time...oh man. so many great moments in this game

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nonsensical-ramblings · 1 year ago

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Hello OP! Oh my god. I swear on my mother I am not here to ask your opinions or thoughts on anything because I am oh so familiar with the post-hyperfixation coma, and if I ask anything of you, it will be a very gentle request for you to go eat some eccles cakes and soak your brain in a warm lavender-scented bath.

What I am here to do is say that you are right!! You're right!! You're right, you're right, you're right, and I know this with frighteningly rock-solid certainty because the way you described your experience watching GO2 is, word-for-word, exactly how I felt. From the moment you said something odd was going on, and you assured us that you loved returning to the world of Good Omens and thoroughly enjoyed the new season, but at the same time you couldn't reconcile with yourself that creeping sense of strangeness. The strangeness which built and built and built, like a sound so low you couldn't hear it but you could feel it in your bones, and it was just getting LOUDER and delight turned to puzzlement turned to bewilderment turned to incredulousness and you were going INSANE, and why? What was Neil doing? You came away from it wanting to love it, but... "I felt like there was something I didn't understand about it, and so I couldn't yet understand how I felt about it either." Wow. Yeah. Are you inside my brain?

Your theory (and your theorizing, writing, organizing, and formatting skills to be honest) are just unbelievable. Genuinely. And I'm so relieved that you know that about yourself and you say it, because you deserve it. When you introduced the idea that Metatron could be going back, editing history, and manipulating Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship, I cried a little. Just a couple tears, but you actually made me cry with that revelation, because it was just so jarring how obviously true it was.

Enough gushing and rambling though, I have a point!! I'm keeping my promise and I am not going to ask you to tell me things. You've told me 16k words worth of things, and I feel like a new person now, so to give your think-machine the break it deserves, I want to tell you things! And, okay, hear me out- I am begging you to not take this next sentence the wrong way, because nearly everything about your analysis was perfect and astonishingly comprehensive and obviously it doesn't need this detail to function, but Neil came to our houses and personally handed us a big shiny ribbon cut-to-size that perfectly wraps all of this up and by god am I not going to tie it into a bow.

HOW DID YOU GLOSS OVER THE GIANT FUCKING OTHER ELEPHANT IN THIS ROOM THAT IS THE PARALLEL BETWEEN HOW AZIRAPHALE AND CROWLEY ARE MANIPULATING NINA AND MAGGIE'S RELATIONSHIP AGAINST THEIR WILL, AND HOW THE METATRON IS MANIPULATING AZIRAPHALE AND CROWLEY'S RELATIONSHIP AGAINST THEIR WILL OH MY GOD

*pant* *pant*

Okay. Okay okay okay. I'm sorry I'm just SO excited about this. because this is what tipped me off!!!! I fucking thought to myself "wow, this whole business with them trying to get Nina and Maggie together kind of feels... wrong? It's making me a tad uncomfortable. It started off cute but now it's just getting more and more complicated and it's not really working and I don't think either of them are exactly... benefitting from this? And C & A are kind of bad at creating these little scenarios to make them fall in love, Crowley is oversimplifying things into clichés like sheltering together in the rain and Aziraphale is- wait is he... okay, a ball, interesting choice, is he forcing everyone to play along with this weird little themed party? Is he literally getting into their heads and changing their thoughts and making them happy against their will, making them dance, making them speak and dress like they're in Pride & Prejudice? What the actual fuck, Aziraphale??? Man, I... y'know, he's been acting really weird for a while, I feel like I don't even know him anymore, I wonder if... Aziraphale and Crowley are being manipulated the same way they've been... trying to manipulate Nina and Maggie...?"

"NAAAH" I fucking said to myself, OP. "NAH there's no way, that's just too out there, it would be weird and wouldn't make any sense. It would be a dumb way to deus ex machina this."

LIKE I??? I SAW IT TOO! I know you're right because I saw it too, I just wasn't enough of a mad genius to actually follow through and see the light. And now that you probably have gone and figured it all out, we have the tools to make this parallel thing an open-and-shut case.

The Metatron and Aziraphale & Crowley both:

Meddle in the relationship of two people for their own personal gain

Do a pretty bad job of it

Use old and tired clichés to craft different scenarios to influence these people

Literally manipulate their minds and the minds of people around them in order to pull off their end goal, making people act out-of-character

Make everything Really Fucking Weird in the process

So yeah. The whole coffeeshop AU thing was all foreshadowing. It was a smaller-scale, more digestible dynamic to prime us for how that same situation will work between Crowley, Aziraphale, and the Metatron, and it was SO LUDICROUSLY OBVIOUS. To say I'm flabbergasted with Neil's writing is not even beginning to scratch the surface of the emotions I'm feeling right now.

Thank you, OP. Thank you and your spectacular mind for making sense out of this delightful, but supremely confusing and jumbled season. I'm going to rewatch it again tomorrow night and I cannot wait to see everything in a new light with my third eye wide fucking open. I don't know what else to say other than just... thank you. You've put my head back on my shoulders and knocked a good helping of sense into it.

P.s. A couple other things I noticed:

Not only does Crowley ignore and talk over Aziraphale when he says he has a suggestion for dealing with the demons, I found it even more egregious that Aziraphale CONTINUOUSLY ignored and dismissed Crowley's warnings about said demons as they were arriving at the bookshop. Talk about Mr. "Who Cares About Tiramisu?" Fell. It was genuinely hard to watch as he pulled Crowley onto the dance floor instead of listening to him speak, because that's not how the two of them work! Like you said. The poor angel's mind has been scrambled like an egg.

You also mention how a couple people express confusion about what's going on in the story. I'd like to add to your list: remember when the Metatron showed up to take a walk with Aziraphale, and Crowley waved them off saying something along the lines of "go ahead, this day can't get any weirder"? That line just struck me when I first heard it because I was practically shouting at the screen "YES!!! I KNOW!! Why is this all SO FUCKING WEIRD!!"

And finally I can't help but notice this season has an uncanny fixation on three things. Magic and sleight of hand of course, with the magic show, lies ("I'm a demon, I lie, It's what I do", and Aziraphale lying to the other angels in Job), and mysteries and clues (Jane Austen, and also Aziraphale and Muriel and Furfur and his zombies doing investigative work). It's like this show is hitting us over the head telling us "HEY!!! Come take a closer look!!! Please! This story is chock full of magic and mystery and clues and you need to look into that! Not everything is as it seems!!!"

The Magic Trick You Didn’t See: Being An Analysis of Good Omens Season 2

(or: Neil Gaiman, Your Brain is Gorgeous But I Have Cracked Your Sneaky Little Code And Have You Dead To Rights*) (*Maybe)

***

Soooooo I just spent the last 48 hours having a BREATHTAKING GALAXY BRAIN EPIPHANY about Good Omens Season 2 and feverishly writing a fuckin16,000 word essay about the incredible magic trick that @neil-gaiman pulled off.

Yes, it’s long, but I PROMISE your brains will explode. Do you want to know how magic works? Do you want to know what Metatron’s deal is (I’m like 99% sure of this and it’s EXTREMELY FUCKING GOOD)? Do you want to know about the Mystery of the Vanishing Eccles Cakes and the big fat beautiful clue I found in the opening credits? Do you go through the whole inventory of Chekov’s Firearm & Heavy Artillery Discount Warehouse?

Here is the essay, go read it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/193IXS11XN46lziHRb6eUpM17yK0BQkRqke1Wh64A_e0/ When ur done u can tell me I’m an insane crackpot, and u know what, i won’t even be offended

In case you don’t know whether you want to bother reading the whole enormous thing on google docs, I’ve put the first couple sections of it under the cut. JUST TRUST ME OKAY, HEAR ME OUT, THIS IS VERY EXTREMELY COOL, NEIL IS GOOD AT HIS JOB–

Keep reading

#good omens #the magic trick theory #the meta theory #the magic trick you didn't see #good omens spoilers #good omens 2 #good omens season 2

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jodilin65 · 9 months ago

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Well, the Tingo adventure ended almost as fast as it began because their site is unbelievably glitchy as hell. Never seen anything like it. I guess they’re just seriously understaffed what with how expensive it is to run AI stuff. Unless you’re a huge company like Bing, it’s very hard to afford from what Tom explained to me.

It explains why I was surprised to see so many pitifully old, ugly characters. Some people might find that appealing but that many?

It will no longer let me create characters I want but it will sometimes create randomly generated ones and sometimes I get these old, fat, ugly bitches. So the others I’m seeing on the Discover page probably didn’t intend to create them either but the users didn’t bother to delete them.

Tom signed up using a disposable email since verifications weren’t going to real email addresses for some reason, so I could get 20 coins but then I realized that he didn’t need to sign up. I could have done this myself with a disposable email address.

Anyway, I tried contacting them on their social media accounts and through email but have been ignored. I don’t see how they can expect anyone to want to pay for something so insanely glitchy.

Ray just got in. I like it when he’s out at night because that’s one less chance for him to decide to blast his TV. He’s still been pretty good for the most part, though. Still, I’ll like it better when he and the other snowbirds get the hell out. Two more months!

The planes are back to being annoying in the evening but I’m hoping that’s just because of the heavy cloud coverage due to the rain we’ve had in the last couple of days.

Jessie asked me if I knew any French and I told her that I can read some but never studied it as much as other languages because I don’t like it. She said she and David were thinking of celebrating their 30th anniversary in St Lucia so she thought it would be nice to know some French. I recommended Duolingo to her. I can’t imagine her learning much French, though, because it’s not only a tough language but languages just aren’t her thing any more than their Tom’s thing. She can barely write in her own language. She’s definitely a numbers girl.

Looked on the map and saw that it’s close to Martinique and remembered what my nieces said if you can believe the little bitches. They said it was the worst vacation they were ever on because they hate Americans and were very rude.

Either way, I’m happy for her but a little frustrated for us. I know it’s supposed to be “bad thinking” but hey, sometimes we can’t help how we feel and it’s okay to have our feelings, whatever they are. Our own 30th anniversary is a few months away and I’m going to be bogged down with heavy fatigue after my second shingles shot and even if I wasn’t, we’re too poor to ever vacation anywhere again. I honestly believe that the flight here was our last. I always believed that but at least I got to go to different places and it’s not like I’ve never been anywhere. But they’re still working and we’re retired and you’re usually pretty damn low income when you’re retired. I would still rather have him home and not have money than have money and have him working all the time which I know he would hate. Money is nice but it isn’t everything and it’s not always worth it if you’re just going to be miserable. We’ve got enough to pay our bills but we’re still in debt and I don’t even know if we’ll even be able to do Red Lobster or get some Chinese food. He’s not a fan of either of these, though, so it’s no big deal. We’ll celebrate at home while I deal with vax side effects.

That’s the shitty thing about getting old like I said in my last entry, is that there aren’t many opportunities or surprises in your future. Sure, I may win a trip somewhere or a ton of money but what are the odds of that? Not that life was perfect when we were younger but the door was definitely open to more possibilities in our 20s and 30s and even our 40s and 50s as opposed to me getting close to my 60s and him getting close to his 70s.

I really like using my secondary Facebook account for all kinds of things from journals to pics to random thoughts that I would normally tweet. Maybe I won’t use Twitter much anymore. I decided to hold off on sharing current journals over there until I catch up with copying old stuff over there. I think it would be a bit confusing to go back and forth between old and new stuff.

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httpiastri · 7 months ago

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hi again (kind of)!!! i think this is the longest it’s ever taken me to draft out a reply but trust me this one is so worth it because you’ve now touched upon two of the topics i never ever ever shut up about so now there are two very very long asks in your inbox (including this one, but you just can’t post that because my username’s shown 😭🙏)

note: i realise i really did spiral with this one and this is almost no pepe at all but still important-ish?? i think 😭😭

spirituality and synchronicities… i think you’ve probably seen my vv long ask by now? and that’s literally just synchronicities with one person. i could draft out all the weird invisible string moments ive had with people and it would honestly span pages (especially in my new course, where literally everyone is connected, some in the weirdest and most unnatural ways ever) and like this might be a little weird but you posted about your friend angelica/angie and like omg its so weird mentioning someone i have no connection to whatsoever but i used to know a girl named jacquelyne (spelt differently from your name, but still) and her middle name was angelica so like ?? even that is something vv notable i think and like… the thing about thoughts coming true? i completely get what you mean. i think ive always had more spiritual experiences as a child but during my school transition break i worked part time at this retail place where i would experiment with manifestation for fun and it would always happen?? like id manifest compliments for very specific things, or very specific free food items, or even customers pushing to give me money for specific reasons (i couldnt accept it but i did it just because i could) and that’s just like… the tip of the iceberg…

anyway i realised that we all manifest in completely different ways and i realised mine is most prominent with words or speech or thoughts so ive become so unbelievably mindful of the things i say and do so i completely understand and relate to your cases of unintentional manifestation!! like thats the way mine used to always play out before i started becoming super intentional with what i did (and maybe this is very extreme but manifesting is instant and like once you really build your faith in it you’ll realise things can happen instantly or overnight… i won’t say anything too specific but you could literally wake up with changes to basically anything and everything you desire so 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️)

but i also did intentionally manifest that pepe only vid from the barcelona race weekend last year simply because… he won and i wanted a pepe exclusive video (can you blame me? i’m a girl with desires)

BUT IM SO LIKE INSANELY (?? happy?? excited?? shocked/surprised but happy by it both??) with regards to your lotus stories? LIKE THATS SO CRAZY because what are the odds omg😭😭 i chose the lotus because im super spiritual and i have like certain things in my life linked to the lotus and like if you know about the lotus, the most prominent thing about it is that it grows from the very bottom of muddy waters, but always makes it out to the top, still beautiful and pure and seemingly untouched by the dirtiness around it but most importantly, it is so so strong and like i think everything else is self explanatory but to have that in your name is so cute like omg ❤️❤️ id never stop bringing it up if i were you (on a completely unrelated note… lotus biscoff biscuits also exist and they are so good so that is another reason to be proud of your name)

but like music especially?? LIKE WITH ☄️ anons playlist and all, i think it’s actually like (okay ik i keep using the word insane but i really don’t have any other options) insane magical how everything and everyone is so perfectly connected with each other?? you had your baby i song and i was connected to the halsey song they used in their edit 😵‍💫😵‍💫 and it’s still so unbelievable to me how everything just falls into place so neatly and the fact that id never know this if you never shared?? but even if you never shared it’s still something existing and it wouldn’t have changed the fact that everything is interconnected, only that i would’ve never known about any of it at all

- 🪷

hi sweets !!!! thank u sm for the asks, i loved reading all of them 😚 i will be answering your other asks privately hehe

omg jacquelyne and angelica ?!?! that's so 😦 and like it's not surprising that someone somewhere has those two names but the fact that u knew her!!! alsoooo the more i think about it, im like... remembering and realizing more stuff..... i had this thing where after school when i was like ages 11-13, i would always go straight home and put on nickelodeon because starting from 16:35, they always showed one ep of victorious, big time rush, and icarly (idk what order but u get me). and i had this thing where i could sense what episode of the shows that would play..... either i had a dream about it, or i just felt "hm i would love if this specific episode came on today", or i would be blasting "worldwide" by big time rush in my headphones all day because my crush was transferring to another school and then which ep came on?? the ep with worldwide 😶 (yes 11-year-old jack learned about heartbreak early) idk if any of that made any sense to you LMAO but the point is i used to know what episodes would be on and i got it right several times every week... and no one in my life has believed this when ive told them but its true 😭 and it used to just be a thing i joked about but im realizing that like......... it's kinda odd (in a cool way)

but wowww thats so cool !!!! i'll have to learn from you i think because i wanna get more into it 🥺 and you manifesting pepe vid !! y e s !!!!!!!!! as you should 😚 (also just gonna put it here that if manifesting is what ive been doing so far with the like lando win and f3 wins then i have been unintentionally manifesting that paul will win the feature this weekend since FEBRUARY because ive written that in my story 🤭 so if that actually happens.............................)

i agree!!! it's such a weird coincidence that's not rlly a coincidence.... i didn't fully realize it all before i answered your last ask when i was like "!!!! wait a damn minute!!!!!" 😭 the lotus is such a pretty flower but also the meaning of it 💗💗💗 in like middle school i actually changed my name so that everyone in school called me by lotus instead of jack (but then i switched back lol) but now it feels kinda icky when ppl call me it ?? idk :(( but omfg lotus biscoff biscuits are SO GOOD it's unfair 🫠🫠 wish i was named after them tbh

insane is a good word bcs thats how it feels 🥰 but yes omg music especially, it's so..... in that playlist they also have ONE kpop song and guess which group ??? the one i used to obsess over for like seven years, of course 🫠🫠 it's actually so so cool that it can all be connected like this 🥺 and im so thankful that you've shared all of this because it really made my thoughts get going and otherwise i would've probs never come to these conclusions aaaaa

#im so...... idk what to say #it's all crazy #so cool #asks!#anon!#lotus anon!#🪷!

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turnyourgays · 1 year ago

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The Usher Foundation 1: Route 66

Hey, this is a fanfiction centered on the Magnus Institute's American counterpart, the Usher Foundation. It takes place in another universe - neither the one we know and love from the Magnus Archives series nor [spoilers] where they sent the fears, but a third one, that also has the fears. I know that feels confusing but I've got my canonical reason for that planned out, so if this first installment does well then you'll get plenty of that intricate lore.

[Smartphone recorder chimes]

[ARCHIVIST clears his throat]

If you're a researcher doing a paper on spookies, congratulations, you've found the very first Usher Foundation audio statement. I'm Donovan Ellis...[sigh]...'Chief Experience Organizer' of the Usher Foundation, Washington D.C. The boss just did a pretty substantial reorganization of the place - "..needs a hip coat of paint!" he told us, which includes me dusting off the statements and putting them on the cloud. In audio form; for reasons he danced around until I gave up. On the subject...

Statement of Nicholas Sill, regarding the highway between Amarillo and Albuquerque. Originally given November 17th, 2009. Audio recorded July 4th, 2022. Statement begins.

I learned to drive at 16, and I haven't stopped since. I'm from New York - upstate, not the city - and every year when the weather gets nippy I hop in the car and drive south down to Savannah, Georgia, then west (and north) all the way to San Francisco, stopping in my favorite cities and landmarks along the way. People think I'm insane to go all that way every year, but I never felt more free than on the road.

Until this year's trip. It was going great at first. I had a great kebab in Atlanta, saw some live music in Nashville, and after hanging out with a girl in Amarillo I was feeling on top of the world as I slid back onto the highway. The first odd thing came just before that, though. I was at an intersection, and a man dressed in a noticeably badly fitting suit was on the side of the road next to a stall that read 'DIRT OF GOD $1 / jar'. I thrive on weird social interactions, personally. Gives me stories to tell when I get home. So I rolled down my window and caught his attention, asking him what 'dirt of god' was. He shuffled awkwardly over to my car; he had very stiff legs. He was bald on the top of his head, but the hair growing on the sides was shoulder-length. He was very, very sunburned. He offered his hand, and I shook it with a smile. Up close, I noticed that his suit wasn't just too large, it was sagging. All his pockets were bulging, filled to the brim with something. He told me: 'God blessed that dirt much as he blessed this whole country'. He said it so earnestly. It felt folksy and quaint. Cozy. So I bought a jar and went on my way. I was excited for a good souvenir, but I regretted it barely a half hour later. It stunk. Like hell. I cracked the windows to help it waft out, but it barely made a dent in the, just, thickness of it. It was the smell of dirt after rain without the nostalgia. Without the fresh plants to accompany it. Just the desert. I opened my window, all the way this time, and chucked the jar.

It wasn't long before the haze started. At first, I assumed a gust of wind had blown up some dust. And then I thought a dust storm must be forming. But that wasn't it. It was a dust devil, a little tornado of sand and dirt, following alongside my car even as I accelerated faster and faster. But it span slow. Very slow, grains of it tickling the paint off my car. It then expanded gradually, not just twisting beside but twisting around. It covered my windshield, so I couldn't keep driving. I pulled over and lay down in my backseat, waiting for it to pass.

But I couldn't rest. What had once been a gentle spinning became a terrifying whirlwind. It whipped against the windows, against the roof and doors, clanging unbelievably loud. Worse, it started to blow through the air conditioner, bringing with it the smell. It wasn't just harassing me from the outside, it was choking me from the inside. The car groaned as it became gorged with dry dust, and even through my shallow breathing I realized that the car was now actively sinking. The sunlight could barely be seen through the windshield, and I watched in horror as the brown darkness rose from the bottom all the way to the top, eating the little remaining light as my car buckled and dented inwards. The windows shattered, and dirt flooded my car, my gasp of shock becoming my last clear breath for a long, long while. I crawled wildly through the ground. Every time I thought I'd gotten through a window I felt another piece of the interior, somehow turning myself around back into my flooded car over and over again, still sinking.

I barely remember what happened next. I was in a stupor of...starvation. And there was no air. But the next thing I knew I was being pulled from the ground and back into the open air. The guy who saved me called himself 'Watchman Kohr', and he gave me a ride to the airport. I meant to fly back to New York, but I decided to come here. I'm not ready for my yearly vacation to be over, even if I can't even think about getting into a car without hyperventilating. I think I'll catch a train back to New York.

Statement ends. The enigmatic 'Watchmen' make an appearance here, the completely un-researchable organization due to their shared name with a popular graphic novel. What we know is that they operate all over North America in apparently equal frequency, and that several people who've encountered them - Mr. Sill excluded - note their eyes as their most well-defined feature.

I'll be honest, I would be tempted to file Mr. Sill's experience under 'sudden psychotic break paired with odd weather', but the presence of a Watchman gives it more weight. I had Yvonne and Logan follow up on Mr. Sill, who - according to his Facebook - seems to have moved to New York City, and hasn't left since he got there in early 2010.

Recording ends.

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #tma #tma fanfic #tma fic

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jakeyuni · 3 years ago

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ready? set…touchdown! tutor? | s. jaeyun

“he smiled at you as if you were the only person in the world. unknowingly to you, it’s because you were, in fact, the only person for jake.”

SYNOPSIS › you’d always known jake sim as the unbelievably handsome and smart jock/student that sat next to you in your advanced psychology class. similar to you, jake had always pined over you silently. so what happens when jake becomes your assigned tutor for the very class he’s your seat partner in and when a yearbook editorial feature causes [forces] you to get to know the boy better? complete, and utter, chaos—as the both of you deal through your growing feelings for one another.

PAIRINGS › tutor+football jock!jake x fem!yearbook photographer/editor reader

TROPE › mutual pining, friends + tutor & his tutee —> lovers

GENRES › fluff, slight crack, pretty heavy angst at times !!

WARNINGS › profanity, reader has slight anxiety/self-doubt/insecurity issues, jake is conflicted with his feelings, jake & reader high key suck at communicating which leads to issues, lots of cheesy lines, slow-burn tbh, reader & jake are very smart—y/n is just struggling, most importantly: heartthrob football jake who also doubles as a hot nerd ;)

EXTRAS › i suggest you read because it includes a steamy kiss at the end (pretend to be surprised) + but with a twist ;), oh also because it involves the high school football game experience [like the scene from the hilary duff cinderella movie!].

WORD COUNT › 10.2k+

PLAYLIST › hold on — flor, tek it — cafuné, sunsetz — c.a.s, car crash — eaJ, pluto projector — rex orange county

AUTHOR’S NOTE › goshh i really do hope this fic lives up to your expectations because i’m in love w the final product! enjoy :)

AT 8 AM SHARP EVERYTHING MORNING, JAKE SIM WOULD STARE AT THE DOOR, AWAITING YOUR ARRIVAL.

he’d observe the entrance of your psychology class every day and hope you weren’t absent. thankfully for him, you didn’t dare miss school unless you were actually sick. which to his delight, was rare. school had always been one of your top priorities, and jake had always admired you for your ambition.

every morning when you walked in, the gust of the wind from the windows open from the opposite side of the classroom would cause your hair to blow as you walked to your seat. a million fireworks would go off in jake’s head, as well as in his heart while he watched you slide into the seat beside him, giving you a nod. you smiled in response every time, even if you weren’t feeling like it that day.

every now and then, if jake was lucky, he’d smoothly slide close enough to you so that his elbow could touch yours. though you never moved upon the contact, you’d take note of how often he’d do it.

likewise, you wished he would never stop. because you were so attracted to jake sim, it sometimes gave you a stomach ache when you stayed up at night, daydreaming about what could maybe one day be.

if only he wasn’t the star quarterback of your school, along with being an insanely smart and sociable person. then you’d maybe think that you’d have a chance with him.

but with all the girls and cheerleaders that flocked around him, seeing him as a mere piece of prey for them to fiend on, you never bothered considering the odds.

oh, but if only you knew that jake wanted you just as much as you did him. perhaps then, you’d be together by now. but that’s not the way this story goes, now does it?

you swore you were about to throw up or at least faint. you paced the small space of the bathroom stall as you rehearsed your lines over and over again for your interview for the yearbook photo editor position. why did you think it was a good idea to apply for the photo editor position again? oh right, college applications.

you took in deep breaths just as fast as you let them out in an attempt to calm your nerves. feeling content with your less heated state, you pull out your phone to check the time. shit, it’s almost 4. i better head over to the yearbook room.

your walk to the room consists of self pep talk and fixing your blouse to make yourself look presentable. you had to have this position sealed on your transcript. you definitely knew you were capable, but this position was competitive and there were lots of candidates, making you less hopeful.

you walk into the yearbook staff office with your head held high and some of your practice photo shots placed between your torso and arm that you’d taken to show your work and potential to the interviewer—a senior whose position you’d be taking since she decided she had too much on her plate for her last year. this news made for an excessive amount of buzz for the underclassman, considering they all wanted her spot and would give anything for it.

you come face to face with the senior outside of the door, shin ryujin, who recognized you for your promptness almost immediately. ryujin wasted no time in getting down to business while you followed suit, taking a seat in front of the desk.

“alright, ms.y/l/n. tell me a bit about yourself. what made you want this position in yearbook out of all the organizations?”

you took in a sharp breath and smiled wide. “well, for one, i’ve been looking forward to becoming a part of the program for a while now and am thankful for being given a chance to book an interview with you. as you can see my grades are quite high and i’ve been trying to maintain my GPA. i thought trying something new would make me a better communicator and become more known to the school as a whole,” your breath wavers as the senior makes no effort to communicate any sort of note that she was listening to you—you just hoped that she was.

“i see. well, it’s nice to know that you’re smart and you seem to be quite productive. also, i like the perspective you add to your photos. the editing is pleasing to look at, too,” ryujin explains as she shuffles and switches between your transcript and photo shots simultaneously. “consider yourself to be near the top of my list. i’ll keep you in mind, y/n.”

that’s it? you thought. no further questions were asked as you bid your goodbyes and thanked ryujin for her time, which seemed to be none at all. 10 minutes was the amount of time your interview had occupied. and it was 10 minutes later when ryujin called you while you were walking dreadfully on your way home.

you remember freezing on the spot as ryujin told you that you were her last applicant interview and you by far, had made the best impression on her; meaning that you were actually a part of yearbook. this was real, this was happening, and you fought the urge to squeal improperly loud on the sidewalk for all your neighbors to hear.

to ryujin, it was simple. but now that you had the actual job of being the photo editor, your head began spinning. fuck, i didn’t actually think i’d get the position. nonetheless, you were full of glee. or, well, that was until you came home to multiple emails from ryujin bombarding you with your yearbook schedule and duties as well as events to attend to for the month. it was then that you realized how busy the next few months were going to be; you were in for one hell of a ride—to say the least.

“your grades are declining. what’s going on with you?” you felt like you were being scolded by your mother. you honestly didn’t know how it could happen, especially with your work ethic. how hard could balancing work, homework, clubs, and yearbook be? it sounded easy enough, right?

absolutely not, as it turned out. now you were sitting at the very desk you’d sat in for your interview two weeks earlier. except this time, you were experiencing different kinds of nerves, the type that made your heart sink into your chest, making you want to curl into a ball and disappear. ryujin’s death stare wasn’t helping either.

was it shame? no. guilt? perhaps. truthfully, you’d never had a ‘D’ in a class, ever. you’d never come to such a low point and swore you never would.

considering the end of the first semester was near, you couldn’t lock in your first senior year grade for advanced psychology with a ‘D’ permanently taunting you on your transcript. absolutely not. you knew things had to change—as did ryujin. you could tell by the way she leaned her elbows further down the desk, slightly frustrated. “i asked you a question, y/n.”

“yeah, no, i’m fine. it’s just that trying to find the time and balance between everything with yearbook was harder than i expected,” you don’t meet ryujin’s eyes that you’re sure are shooting daggers at you.

she scoffs. “you knew exactly what you were getting into the moment you walked in this room. don’t give me that ‘it’s too much for me to handle b.s.’ do you know how lucky you were to be selected? out of all the people that applied? it’s a shame that your grades are what they’ve become at the moment. you know that yours were the best out of all the applicants; though—your pictures need work, still. you can’t excuse your laziness, y/n.”

now, you were just angry. bitterness swept your tongue and seeped through your veins as you finally looked at ryujin. how dare she call you ‘lazy.’ you were everything but that—obviously because you wouldn’t have been chosen if you were so. you just needed help. and there was nothing wrong with receiving some when you actually needed it.

why was ryujin acting all high and mighty when she withdrawled from her position because she was tired? hypocrisy at its finest. sure, you’re one to be stubborn and prefer working independently, but you supposed things would have to change.

“i’m sorry. i know. i’m doing my best to make my grades and habits better. i’ll stay up later to study extra hard. i swear i’m doing the most i can, i’m just struggling,” you swipe your tongue over your lip in hopes to calm yourself down.

ryujin hums in response and goes to pull a file out of her desk drawer, slapping it onto the desk abruptly. you slightly jump as you scan the salmon-colored file; a familiar boy’s picture—laminated with his name in bold, is pasted on the flimsy yet heavy folder.

“this, is jake sim’s file. he’s at the top of your advanced psychology class and he’s going to be tutoring you from now on. i already asked your teacher for permission. ms.jung informed me that he’s your seat partner too, so i assume you’ll have no trouble getting along. jake said yes to tutoring you already. you have no exceptions, this is mandatory if you want to keep your position.”

you don’t answer ryujin, lost in your own thoughts. call it bad karmic luck or the universe doing you a possible favor. jake sim tutoring you? no way. not real. nothing’s real. what the fu-

“y/n. i’m serious about this. if you want to hold your position as photo editor and photographer, this is important. we can’t have someone with a D in any class on the yearbook staff, it puts no good to our name or brand.” a mocking laugh escapes her mouth. “if we allowed such mediocrity, then everyone would think they have a chance at making the team.”

okay, now that stung a little. “i’m completely aware. yes, i’m okay with jake tutoring me. do you know the details of it all?” you ask, now playing with the metal of your rings in an attempt to distract the images that were captivating your brain of you dragging ryujin by her perfectly poised hair.

“you mean the meet-up dates and everything?”

“yes, as in the timings and whether or not our schedules line up.”

you can practically hear the way ryujin rolls her eyes at you. “that’s for you and jake to figure out amongst yourselves, not my job. i’m doing enough as it is. this meeting is longer than i anticipated it to be, too.” she stands up and raises her eyebrows at you, wordlessly motioning for you to follow suit.

you measly get up and greet her goodbye while fighting the urge to get mouthy. there was no use in defying the help you very much needed. why were you so upset about jake tutoring you, anyway? wasn’t this all you’ve ever wanted, some one-on-one time with your year-long crush? you shrugged off the wavering nerves that weighed down your shoulders thanks to ryujin’s sternness and went to your locker. just as you were about to slam your locker shut, you hear the footsteps of someone approaching you.

“hey, y/n,” you feel a hand touch your shoulder and tense up; the voice, however, is one you could single out in a crowd of people in an instant. it was jake’s.

you slam your locker shut and turn around, instantly being met with the very boy you knew it would be. his hair was slightly tousled and wet, it was obvious he’d just finished football practice and showered. he carried a book that read ‘AP PSYCHOLOGY’ on the front. and god, his smile. he smiled at you as if you were the only person in the world. unknowingly to you, it’s because you were, in fact, the only person for jake.

you mirror his toothy smile, “hey jake.”

“so..” he starts off hesitantly as you tilt your head. “you know i’m your tutor for psych, yeah?”

you exhale through your nose and raise your eyebrows, “yeah, i’m fully aware of that. but when did ms.jung ask you to tutor me?”

“just this morning before class, actually.” he pauses as he motions for you to start walking with him. you follow regardless of where he’s taking you. “sorry i didn’t tell you this morning. i would’ve but we were taking notes all period.”

“it’s fine, really. i’m just embarrassed i need tutoring to begin with. i’ve never struggled so much and well…ryujin said i can’t be on yearbook anymore if i don’t get my grade up asap.”

“there’s nothing wrong with needing help, y/n. i’m also your seat partner and friend, not just your newly-assigned tutor.” you slightly nudge at his side with your elbow and he chuckles. “are you okay to be tutored right now or do you have somewhere to be?” the two of you come to a halt at the front steps of the library.

you sigh and jake looks at you questionably, his hand barely grazing the door handle of the school library. you look at him and see that his eyebrows are risen, anticipating your response. “i don’t see why not?”

“you don’t seem so sure of yourself.”

“no, i am. i’m just tired is all,” you lie straight through your teeth. tired wasn’t the right word to describe the tingly sensation you felt both in your heart and stomach—at all. you were actually very much awake now; about to be tutored by the jake sim is a fantasy only so many girls have most likely envisioned in their heads every night. the same could be said for you, and that’s exactly why it was taking everything in you to not run in the opposite direction. you were nervous, but jake didn’t have to know that.

“mkay then, shall we?” jake swings open the door and you clutch onto the straps of your backpack, hoping that jake would pinch you so you’d wake up from this dream.

***

two hours later and you were on the edge and perhaps on the brink of exploding. at one point, jake had to physically grab your hand to stop you from breaking your pencil (which gave you such grand butterflies you had to put your head down)—jake assumed it was because you needed a mental break, when in reality, you were dying of embarrassment. you couldn’t even hold eye contact with him properly.

frustrated, was an understatement. “i’m not getting this. i seriously don’t know why they’re so many variations of the same word and why i have to memorize the singular definitions of them all. this is so…pointless,” you whine.

“hey, hey, it’s alright. we can come back to this later. maybe you need to take a break.” jake was so patient with you it only made your heart beat faster than it already was. or maybe it was the energy drink jake gave you from the vending machine during your first break so you could power through the rest of the tutoring session. albeit, you’d never know which.

“no! i can do this. i just need to take a breather.” you stare down at the myriad of words on the slightly crumbled paper and groan, putting your head down for the second time that evening.

jake gets up and sits in the chair beside you, you lift your head at the sound of the movement only to have your head roughly meet his shoulder. “ow, that kinda hurt.”

“sorry,” he chuckles before rubbing the top of your head mindfully as you fix the stray strands of hair, your fingers touching his ever so slightly, “just thought i could help you better if i were closer to you,” he shrugs. oh no, your heart was beating fast again. but it’s just the energy drink, you tell yourself. sure, yeah, that’s all it was.

“i agree.” you snatch the paper out of jake’s hand, determined to finish studying the vocab list you were assigned to study this morning; you had a quiz on the words tomorrow. jake huffs at your action and smiles while he watches you rewrite and reread the words over and over again. he props his chin into his hand and idly admired you as you glance at him every now and then to ensure your work is correct, and every time the brown-haired boy acknowledged your silent yet needy look of reassurance, he would bob his head in your direction, humming in compliance.

each time jake fueled your brewing feelings that you’d shoved deep inside the depths of your brain—and heart with his small gestures and slight touches, you grew more fond of him, and you wanted to make the boy proud. and if proud meant that he’d smile at you every time you whined or recalled a story of something dumb that happened in class out of elation, you’d take any given opportunity to study with jake.

okay, so maybe you didn’t study hard enough. the big fat ‘C’ written in red ink at the top of your vocab quiz was taunting you, and the way ms.jung had shaken her head at you before handing the paper with an ‘A’ written at the top—to jake, only made you feel worse about yourself.

jake reassuringly rubbed your shoulder and threw you a small smile, mouthing an ‘it’s okay, tutoring later today, hm?’ to which you simply nodded before slumping in your seat for the remainder of the period, tuning out every word that came out of ms.jung’s mouth.

“i studied for three hours with you yesterday, then went home and studied for another one hour by myself. this can’t be possible,” you groan, now sat at your signature tutor-session seat at the library, jake by your side as he bounces his leg up and down out of habit.

“i know but maybe we need to find the most effective method for you to remember information. clearly what we practiced yesterday wasn’t very useful, and that’s alright. progress takes time,” jake beams, motioning with his hands to emphasize that it was normal for there to be academic obstacles—though it didn’t feel that way for you, especially considering your history of continuous high grades and accomplishments.

his positive attitude was in stark contrast to your own and it would annoy you if it weren’t for the fact that he was the one saying all the words.

“mkay, you’re right jake. thank you.” you drag a small smile before pulling out your supplies and thinking of a new study method to use for your next vocab quiz—which was also tomorrow.

jake sits next to you, giving you hums of approval and squeezing your shoulders everytime you repeat a definition to him correctly. the way you slightly flinch and become stiff whenever jake touches you is quite embarrassing and you silently pray that he doesn’t say anything about your body language. oh, but he does.

“is everything good?”

“yup,” you emphasize by popping the last letter, “everything’s just fine.” desperate to ease the weird tension, you needed to change the subject. you figured that now was the perfect time to ask jake about yearbook.

“hey jake, i have to do this photo spread for the school sports section, and was wondering if you’d want to be featured in it? i’d have to interview first, though.” you turn your body so it’s facing jake directly, your knees now touching—jake doesn’t budge an inch, to your surprise. but then again, he never did when your elbows touched during class. yet maybe you needed to backtrack a bit, you’re aware jake’s normally this touchy with all his friends. but if that was the case, then why do the touches feel so different and so much more intimate?

jake’s eyes turn into tiny crescents as he grips your wrists out of joy, “really y/n? you’d do that for me?” he looks like a puppy about to be given a treat and you can’t help but giggle at the sight.

“of course, jake. people like you…like a lot, anyways. plus, consider your feature as a way of me saying ‘thank you’ for tutoring me. it’s a small gesture to begin with and you deserve this.” jake didn’t have to know that the yearbook journalist of the team tore her acl and was on temporary leave—(perks of being a soccer athlete and yearbook writer), meaning that now you had the duty of writing for the athletics’ feature page on top of your tremendous workload and tutoring sessions. how fun! choosing to feature jake specifically, however, was your doing.

the boy lowers his head at the kindness of your words and looks up at you, biting his lip. it’s only when you feel your body heating up that you realize that jake hasn’t loosened his grip on your wrists, causing you to look down at the source of contact. “oh, i’m so sorry,” he begins to panic a little. embarrassed, he starts to retreat his fingers, but you had other plans in mind.

you shake your head to let him know you didn’t want him to pull away, at least not yet, letting out a taut laugh and pulling his hands back. only this time, he holds your hands inside his own, bringing them to rest in his lap. “you have soft hands, jake,” you blurt out. the undeniable tension was deafening and you had to say something.

jake’s throat goes numb and he knows he’s a goner. he never knew why any ounce of game he had vanished whenever he was around you. you blew all the air out of him every time you would: chew on the end of your pencil, play with your hair when you were bored or confused, make intense eye contact with him—showing him you were paying complete attention to his notions. or just in general, whatever you did made his heart rate pick up. you were utterly breathtaking, he just wished he could say it to you without feeling like the world would topple over every time he tried to do so.

“thanks…i moisturize.” jake wanted to dash out the building. i moisturize? really jake? could you be any more awkward?

you laugh again, lightheartedly, and pull your hands away; jake thinks he’s lost every shred of a chance he had with you because of how idiotically vague his answer was. he honestly had no idea where his flirty demeanor went whenever he was with you as of late. given the situation though, you knew he was nervous by the redness of his cheeks and ears and so were you—you were just better at hiding it.

with that, you continued your session. the entire time you wondered if jake would ever hold your hands again. you hoped he would, but you were torn. his response irked you a bit. it was unlike him: dry and awkward. you knew you’d be thinking about this for the rest of the week.

you know what else you’d be thinking about the rest of the week? jake sim inviting you to do the interview for his yearbook feature…in his own room…which is in his house.

fuck, fuck, fuck, no i can’t do this. you didn’t think jake would go as far to invite you to his house.

you were trying your best to not get attached to the star quarterback of the football team—but jake was making not catching feelings increasingly difficult for you. especially considering he was known to not be a player, despite every person to exist throwing themselves at him, jake had morals and priorities that didn’t concern being in a relationship; plus, you recall the time he’d casually told you during class that he was looking for something real, something raw, something long-term. back then, you’d brushed off the tmi that he’d nonchalantly said as if it didn’t matter. if only you knew how much that minuscule piece of information mattered to you now.

that’s when you knew why jake was unlike all the other jocks. not just because he was one of the most dorkiest nerds you’d ever met, but because he had a heart made of gold and a smile that could rid of all the evil in the world.

regardless, you didn’t want to feel the way you did—and it pained you that were unable to stop jake from occupying every corner of your brain. what pained you most, however, was the fact that you doubted he’d actually want to be in a relationship with you due to his commitment to school, football, and extracurriculars. thinking about the boy, most days, was a chore.

as of now, you were sitting cross-legged on jake’s bed with him beside you: notebook in hand and voice recording app open while jake clears his throat to prepare for his interview.

“this is y/n y/l/n recording, photo editor and newly assigned temporary writer for the school’s yearbook, and i am here today with jake sim—star quarterback of the football team and one of the star students of our school, to interview him regarding his educational and athletic dynamics.”

jake’s eyes bore into yours and you can tell he’s nervous—his lips are redder than before, courtesy of all the biting he was doing to them while you were talking.

when he began speaking, the way the words rolled off his tongue made you swoon. you felt sort of culpable about it, the time and place was most inappropriate for you to be ogling jake. you couldn’t help it, though. but really, could you even be blamed? the way his white tee hung loosely over his broad shoulders, his glasses perked up on the bridge of his nose, and the way his eyes would narrow every time he spoke about a narrative that he was especially passionate or knowledgeable about, caused you to internally groan.

“…i suppose balancing my academic schedule with my athletic schedule can be a bit difficult at times, but it’s all about the mindset i keep to help myself pave my way to success. yet, of course, balance is everything to me and i wouldn’t be capable without my friends, family, and peers by my side. thank you.” jake smiles at you and rolls back onto the bed as he finishes off the interview, kicking his legs up in excitement and satisfaction like a little kid.

“woah, that was…amazing jake. thank you for saying so much and opening up to me, i have so much to use from this interview,” you let out a heavy sigh, “—i hope i won’t disappoint.”

jake scoffs, “y/n don’t say stuff like that, you could never disappoint me.” he stands up from the bed and sticks out his hand, “down to go eat something? you should have dinner here.”

you sucked in a breath. what happened to the shy and awkward jake that could barely maintain eye contact with you at the library when you held hands? “sure, i would absolutely love to.”

***

dinner with jake was beyond amazing. he even went as far as to pull out the dining chair for you before the two of you began eating the sandwiches jake whipped up. the both of you would alternate between cracking terrible jokes, talking about school, and simply chewing in silence while stealing fleeting glances at each other. the tension was occupying every vessel in your bodies; both of you could feel it.

it’s when you stood behind jake as he washed the dishes, and when he turned back to cheekily smile at you, that you knew you loved jake sim. it may have seemed crazy and too rushed to anyone else, but you knew your heart better than anyone else; you knew the moment you laid eyes on jake on the first day of class, he wasn’t just some boy, he was special. you loved him for more than just his looks or his social status, you loved him because there was never a moment where anything felt unauthentic, nor a moment where you regretted being with him.

similarly, jake had been infatuated with you ever since he saw you walk into class, sitting beside him—out of all the other seats you could’ve chosen. that day, he promised to himself that he’d wait for you every day, even if it meant waiting an eternity.

the day ms.jung asked him to tutor you, he vowed to himself that he’d do anything to get to know you better, to build a relationship with you. because jake sim had one thing in his mind: you.

it would’ve killed him to not make something more from what had already begun brewing; he was determined to ask you about what had been spiraling in his mind. later tonight, i’ll do it later.

***

jake had offered to walk you home after dinner and he knew it was the perfect opportunity to talk about his feelings with you. you’d conversed with him for a good hour before you received a phone call from your mother: asking you to come home since it was dark out now and she was worried about how you’d get home. you opened up to him about your life, and he allayed you as if he knew you like the back of his hand.

your way home was mainly silent, with jake clearing his throat every now and then—while you stared at the ground, chewing on the inside of your cheek, your shoulder touching his as you strolled through the dimly lit streets.

“hey y/n, can we talk about…us?” jake inquired as he slowed down his pace, stopping in front of one of the lamp posts.

“us?” you didn’t know what he meant by that. was it good? was it bad? jake gives you a faint smile and your shoulders become less tense. “sure, you can talk to me about anything jake, you know that.”

“i just, don’t know what we are, and it’s confusing me.” his voice hitches and you step closer towards him.

“well, what do you want us to be?”

“that’s the thing, i don’t know. i’ve never felt this way about anyone before. i’ve always been so focused on being the leader, the quarterback, keeping up with clubs and school in general, to please my parents and to make sure i don’t let my team down—“ he looks at the ground, defeated. “—that i don’t know how to distinguish between if what i’m doing is for myself or if it’s really just to satisfy other people. i’m…torn.” he quirks his head to the side at the last word as if he’s asking himself a question.

you sigh and motion for jake to continue walking. he’d never been this vulnerable; always the golden boy that never lets anyone see him at the lowest of moments. you didn’t know he felt so strongly about all this. that he felt so strongly about…you. “i’m sorry you feel so much pressure on yourself, jake. you know there’s no harm in putting yourself first. i’m here for you, and, we can figure out whatever we are as we go. none of it has to be sudden.”

“yeah, i’m still figuring myself out, i think i need to know what i want before i go into something completely confused. i don’t want to risk what we have by messing things up for us just because of how many priorities i have.”

“oh, i see,” you murmur.

you didn’t realize when you reached your home, but jake’s words were incessantly echoing in your head with every step taken. you assumed he meant that you weren’t one of, nor his—priority, at least that’s what it felt like at the moment.

one thing was for sure, jake felt even more defeated than before. this was new territory for him, and he was overwhelmed. as for you? you merely spared him a smile and a wee ‘thank you’ before you dragged yourself inside. did i just get rejected?

your lack of words as jake dropped you off was daunting, he wanted nothing more than to be with you. he realized as he walked himself home, that he was in fact, having an epiphany: he was a confused idiot that needed to figure himself and his feelings out, quick—before he lost you for good.

“if you know you really like her, you need to stop leading her on. it’s shitty of you to do that, jake. you know that,” sunghoon, jake’s best friend, sternly tells him.

the two boys were sitting at the library: jake sitting across from sunghoon, and sunghoon sitting in the seat that you usually occupied during your tutoring sessions.

“i know, i know. i just,” jake lifts his head up in frustration, staring up at the ceiling before he lets out a soft groan, “i like her so much and we talked about our feelings like i told you, but i couldn’t just tell her that i’m not ready to get into something serious yet because football season isn’t over. i would’ve sounded like such a douche!”

sunghoon lets out a wheezy laugh. “you’re fucking with me, right? that’s the reason why you’re not ready to be with her just yet?”

“no…well, partially? our tutoring sessions have been going well and she’s so smart, obviously—she’s just struggling with this particular unit. it’s not even that-“

the other cuts him off, raising an eyebrow at the boy, “get to the point. then what is it?”

“it’s my dad. he’s been on my ass about football because the next game is a big one and it’s also the last one of the season, we made the championships which means there are going to be scouts there. all my dad does is talk about football—and my mom is focused on my grades so much it’s suffocating—the both of them are absolutely insufferable most of the time,” jake mewls.

“jake,” the former starts off softly, “you know how fucking capable you are. you’re the smartest guy i know. don’t let your parents and their nagging get in the way of something you for once in your life—know for a fact you 100% want.”

it was as if jake had been struck with a bolt of lightning. a bolt that—in the very split second of sunghoon’s words turning into a mere echo, all the doubts he had about pursuing you, had vanished and turned into nothing but absolute dust.

jake got up from his seat with an urge to run to you, to tell you he loves you and wants nothing more than to be with you—but he knew he couldn’t. so instead, he settled on waiting for you to attend your last tutoring session while sunghoon talked with him to ease his mind of all thoughts in his brain that transpired of you.

in truth, you and jake had been conversing normally. well, aside from the fact that the normality of your conversations only regarded the bases of your tutoring sessions. there was still tension, yes. but none of the lingering stares or fleeting touches remained. the both of you stayed holding back from the brink of destruction—the brink of you specifically being brought to your breaking point.

you wanted nothing more than to grab jake by his shirt and slap him silly—or possibly also grab him by his shirt and kiss him. you truly weren’t sure which you craved more. because, sure, jake did partly break your heart when he left you hanging and feeling sour the night he walked you home, but that didn’t mean your mind halted all thoughts about him entirely. if anything, the lack of communication made you want him more than you’d ever wanted him before. and you weren’t quite sure that this was the way you were supposed to be feeling—given the situation at hand.

funny, right? the way space between two individuals is supposed to make them think about their relationship, let them think about themselves, and grow. but in your case, as well as jake’s, the prolonged space only made the two of you crave each other more—ignited the fire between your bodies even more.

the unspeakable tension never eased, even if you weren’t making mindless conversation with the other or making eye contact that made you both embarrassing heat up the way you once did.

as you sat with jake for your last tutoring session with him, you caught him glancing at you, feeling a pair of eyes boring into your skull, and you suddenly felt tense, insecure. all the feelings and doubts of even liking him were resurfacing in that very moment, making you feel ill.

you swallow thickly. “can i help you?”

“yeah—no, sorry. just thinking,” jake shakes his head at the stumbling of his own words.

“about?”

“us.”

“oh,” your eyes drop down to the pencil you’re holding.

“i feel like the way i left you hanging the other night wasn’t the way i intended our conversation to go,” he breathes out.

you dryly laugh. “yeah, well what happened..is in the past now.” you clear your throat, unsure of whether or not you should say what’s on your mind. “you don’t have to entertain me with an apology, jake. you made it clear that you’re not ready, and at this point, i’m not sure if you’ll ever be.”

jake’s eyes widen in remorse and you can’t help but look away from his guilty pupils. “but you see—that’s the thing. i do want you, y/n. i want you so bad. you’re all i ever think about.”

your heart drops, and you feel all tingly inside, but you’re quick to remind yourself that jake’s flattery doesn’t make up for how he’s made you feel in the past. they’re just words, you think.

“i’m not just saying all of this to play with you or lead you on,” he continues.

“if you want me so badly, then why don’t you show me that you truly want me?” your voice breaks, and jake can’t help but usher himself over to you, kneeling down and turning your chair so that you were facing him.

a single tear drops from your eyes and jake’s quick to wipe it away with his hand before cradling your cheek with the same hand, ever so slightly rubbing the flesh using his thumb.

“give me some time, y/n. i’m incredibly preoccupied right now—i know that isn’t an excuse, but i want nothing more than to be with you and make us official. i’ll make this all up to you soon enough. just let the final football game of the season be over, and i’ll show you how much i want you. i promise.”

you let out a weak laugh at the sincerity of his words because you never meant for your last tutoring session with him to be so vulnerable. it was only your last because you now had an A in the class, meaning you didn’t have to rely on jake to tutor you, it’d be a waste of time on both ends. yet, it was ironic, the way you wanted nothing more than to waste away endless hours with jake, talking about absolutely everything and anything. that’s why the thought of this being your last possible chance to communicate with the boy effectively, mattered to you.

that’s also why you were significantly grateful that jake had spoken up first, because though you felt absolute embarrassment from the way the other kids in the library were staring at you and jake, all that mattered to you was that this, in fact, would not be that last time you spoke to jake sim.

you let out a chuckle and crinkle your nose, going to wipe the remainder of your tears with your sleeve, prompting jake to pinch your cheeks as he goes back to sit down in his own seat across from you.

“i understand. i’ll wait for you, jake. as long as it takes, and until you’re ready to give me your undivided attention, i’ll wait.”

“you won’t have to wait long, y/n. and when you think you do, remember my words, mm?” he bites his lip out of curiosity for your answer.

“i will,” you respond before gathering your things and putting them into your bag, “oh, and before i forget, i still have to take pictures of you for yearbook, i wanna be there for you, plus those pictures are going to be the final touch of your editorial feature,” you remind him.

“can’t wait to see your face tomorrow at the game then,” jake teases as he walks with you out of the library.

“you’re seeing my face right now—too, though?”

“what can i say? i can never get enough of you,” he says admirably.

you pretend to gag at his words but the butterflies erupting from your stomach say otherwise. “gross, sim,” you lightly punch his shoulder. “oh, and jake?”

“yeah?”

“thank you for tutoring me, i appreciate you.”

“anything for you, y/n. anything.”

you tsk at his cheesiness but smugly smile as he contemplates his next action before taking your hand in his, insisting to walk you home for the night.

during your chat with the boy on your way home, you feel nothing but absolute content wash over your limbs. staring idly at his shining eyes under the light of the iridescent moon, wondering positively about what the future for the two of you holds; thankful that the bad note you two left on, was now restored.

it was game day, and you were nervous, to put it lightly. you’d messaged jake earlier, hyping him up and wishing him luck before he went to prepare himself for the big, the last, and by far the most important football game of the season—at least for jake. this game would determine if any scholarships were guaranteed within his near future.

though you were excited about jake and seeing him all passionate with his game face on, you were torn, bittersweet sensations swept through your body as you walked to your school. you put on some slight makeup, your tote bag was filled with your usual items, and your camera was hanging around your neck, secured by the camera strap.

you weren’t quite sure why you were so nervous. perhaps it was the way the conversation in the library you had with jake a couple of days prior went unusually well. you had hope—for you and him. since he’d promised you that he would, at last, make things official and show you how much he truly wants you the moment the game/season ends, you figured that was the source of your panging heart.

nonetheless, you were ready. ready to take the perfect shots of jake as he [hopefully] scores a touchdown, wowing the crowd, the myriad of girls who flaunt themselves at him, and the scouts that were exhilarated to finally see him in action.

you turn the corner of the vastly wide and freshly green field of grass with huge drawn on markers (for the players) using white paint, and find jake throwing the football amongst his teammates. one of them, park jongseong—or jay, as many referred to him, noticed you first, motioning with a dip of his head to jake that you were walking towards them.

jake throws the ball to jay and the former pats him on the back rather playfully, giving him a quick wink, causing the other to shake his head at him before he jogs to meet you. “hey,” he greets with a sparkling grin, “you’re early!”

“yeah i wanted to scope out the scene a bit y’know? plus i figured i’d take some extra candid shots of you and the others practicing before the game starts—so ryujin can get off my back about ‘upping my photography skills,’ or whatever,” you explain.

the boy‘s mouth opens and closes, then opens again before he speaks, as if he were finding just the right words to say to you. you found it quite amusing, and cute. “that’s very studious of you, y/l/n.”

you snicker at his foolishly flirtatious tone, “you know me, the most studious girl ever known to man-kind,” you retort.

jake swings his hands' side to side before interlocking them with yours, “so you’re saying you didn’t come early just because you wanted to wish me good luck on my last game of the season, correct?” he pouts sarcastically.

you roll your eyes in a ridiculing manner, “hmm, i don’t know?” you pretend to contemplate, tapping at your chin playfully. “maybe i am, maybe i’m not…guess you’ll never find out, sim.”

he exhales sassily before tearing the distance between your hands. “guess that means you have some duties to attend to, hm?”

“no, no! i can stay for a bit…for you—too, before you have to go,” you mumble.

the boy holds one of your hands once again, reaching for your head and tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear that was blocking your face due to the wind. your mouth went agape and curved into a line, unable to form coherent words due to jake’s intents, causing you to stare at the sky out of sudden false curiosity; the clouds looked particularly stormy and mundane, unlike earlier. the seemingly windy weather wasn’t expected, which is why you made a discerning sound.

jake follows your movements, similarly staring at the grey sky. “looks like it might rain,” he huffs, slightly agitated. “i’m hoping it doesn’t—as much as i love the rain, it could ruin my chances for tonight.”

“yeah, it could. don’t worry though,” you beam. “you’ll crush it no matter what. you always do.”

a distant call of jake’s name is heard a couple of meters away, both you and the boy turn to make out that jay and sunghoon stand beckoning for jake to join them in the lockeroom and get into his uniform.

jake ruffles your hair in a childish manner at the disappointment that protrudes your features. “i gotta go, but i’ll see you out in the bleachers, mkay? make sure you get a good seat! i want you to be the first person i see when i score that touchdown,” he winks at you as he jogs backward for a bit until he disappears into the field to meet with the guys.

you were left a blushing mess, jake always managed to leave you in disarray. you couldn’t say you didn’t like the way he made you feel, though. you’d give your all to feel the way you do when you’re with jake every day, if you could.

you prompted on visiting your locker and taking pictures with your camera of the posters that showcased the football team players, advertising for everyone to attend the final game of the season. you smiled to yourself when your eyes settled upon jake, yet kept moving around the school tentatively before you realized that you’d better head back to the bleachers and get a good seat. you wanted to see jake from one of the higher levels of the bleachers, just as he wanted you to be, directly in his line of sight, too.

***

a crowd of bustling and noisy students surround you as you stay seated on the perfect spot in the bleachers. the thrumming music and thumping drums of your school’s band is echoing throughout the stadium as they play the school’s arrangement of any football game, and you can’t help but feel giddy inside. high school football games were always an event of their own, an event that everyone constantly spoke about and fancied getting extravagantly ready for. tonight, was no different.

girls wore shimmering eyeshadow sparkling on their eyelids that reflected brightly every time the colored lights hit them, and colored variations of paint neatly striped over their cheeks to show school spirit. you, too, wore sparkly eyeshadow and had a bandanna that displayed your school’s official colors securely wrapped around your thigh. it was preppy, the entire vibe of the scene that unfolded in front of your eyes.

your nerves were jolting with glee as soon as the band’s music crescendoed with the football team that came running from the side of the field from the locker room and tore through the banner that was made for them, with jake in front—as he was their star quarterback.

you grin to yourself when eavesdropping on the endless chatter of girls talking about how hot jake looked and how they’d give anything to be with him. you didn’t bother to be jealous, not just because he wasn’t quite yours yet, but because you knew you had something especially intimate with jake that they did not; you were sure of it.

you tune out the excess voices and focus on jake, watching his every move as he and his teammates huddle in the middle of the field and perform their usual group chant before parting ways to their designated places on the field.

your eyes rake over jake’s form as you watch him assemble to his position, the timer still has a bit of time left until the buzzer sounds to commence the start of the game, and you watch jake rise out of his position a little as he notably wanders his eyes through the crowd in the bleachers—until he finally finds your figure. you make eye contact with the boy and cheekily nod your head at him so he’s aware you’ve noticed him. in response, the boy does the same and bites his lip coyly before getting on his knees so that he’s properly in position.

you overhear some people murmur your name and you’re sure they’ve noticed the silent interaction between you and jake, yet you remain unbothered and keenly prideful, nonchalantly cracking your neck side to side to give them all a little show.

“[TEN]-HUT,” shouts the coach right as the buzzer sounds and that’s when you know, the game has begun.

you truly don’t know much about football, just that it revolves around a bunch of guys tackling each other—or something of the sort (?). nonetheless, you remind yourself that you’re here to take pictures of jake for his feature, and get some close-up shots of your school’s dance team, as well as cheer during the halftime performance.

your estimate is that you could get some high-quality shots of jake as he paces around his spot in the field, jutting around not as fast as he’d be when he’s running, and your mind lives up to its words.

you manage to snap some ethereal shots of jake with his sweat glistening and hair that’s adorned to his forehead and sticking out a bit despite the heavy helmet that covers his countenance.

halftime rolls around and you jump down from your seat in the bleachers to take some up-close shots of the dancers with their bedazzled uniforms and of the band playing, before returning to your seat, anticipating jake to make his touchdown sometime soon; you could see the scouts discussing amongst themselves a couple of meters below you, and an unsettling feeling made home in your stomach. you couldn’t imagine how jake might’ve been feeling.

right as halftime ends and you get a glimpse of jake and his teammates rolling into the field for the second half of the game after replenishing their bodies. the boys on defense are doing especially well and you feel elated for what’s to come.

it’s been a bit, however, and the game is nearing its end, you snap one last shot of jake right before he goes to snatch the ball out of the opposing teams’ player’s reach and makes a beeline for the marker checkpoint he needs to get to before he can score a touchdown—he looked absolutely breathtaking with his mouth agape and face slightly scrunched up in focus.

you lift off of your seat in preparation for jake’s victory, and he makes it—jake leads his team to triumph.

screams erupt from the crowd of students around you as they all jump onto their feet, moments after jake kicks the ball. your eyes locate downward towards the scouts and you see them talking abruptly with joy written all over their faces; a huge smile of your own breaks out on your face, and you’re relieved. what you don’t expect with all the commotion that surrounds you, is the rain that starts abruptly pouring.

sounds of groans fill the air as a good amount of students clatter amongst themselves to find immediate shelter from the rain, but you couldn’t care less, all you cared about was your boy.

you, too, jump out of your seat after the shock of what’s happening washes over your body a bit, but it only heightens as you watch jake throw off his helmet onto the grass and run to you with all the energy that his body has left to give.

he’s sweaty, he’s tired, he’s drenched with rainwater, and his mind is in a whirl of how he truly just made a touchdown, but all he can think about is you.

you don’t have time to process the way jake ignores the ridiculously loud remarks of congratulations the scouts throw at jake as he speeds past them, nor can you see straight when you realize that jake has run up the stairs of the bleachers and is now standing right in the tight space in front of you.

jake doesn’t care that the majority of students are watching him—and now you, nor does he focus on the fact that the both of you are soaked. his eyes flicker once to your lips then twice, yours alternate between his eyes and his lips, smiling when he wraps an arm around your waist and tilts your head up to look at him directly with the other.

you lightly pant and begin to match the rising of his chest, your mouth opens and you’re left speechless. “jake?”

you say his name as if it’s the last time you’d speak of it again, and he takes his chance, he takes it as confirmation for all that he’s ever witnessed between the both of you.

the moment jake’s lips meet yours, you swear your heart stops, all background noise becomes a blur as jake’s lips feverishly chase your own. his grip on your waist tightens and your chests collide as his hand travels further up your face, cupping your jaw. you’re left in awe as he quickly slides his tongue into your mouth when you gasp at the intensity of the kiss and the atmosphere, bodies hot with passion, the rain adding to the aura of fictionality as the droplets stick to your hair and drop down to the space where your lips connect.

your noses constantly brush over each other as jake slightly bites down on your bottom lip and holds your jaw in place so he can feel you like he’s been dying to do ever since he'd laid eyes on you. you stay there, kissing him back softly when he halts the sinking of his teeth from your lips and gives you a few soft pecks. you’re stunned and breathless, gasping after he parts from you.

as soon as he separates, you break out into one of the widest smiles known to your muscles. jake reciprocates your same smile and grabs a hold of your waist with both hands, yours balancing your body on his shoulders as you rest your forehead against jake’s. his smile never fades, and neither does yours.

“wow,” you drag out. “that was…insane, and definitely one way of showing me that you want me.”

the boy laughs breathily, “my touchdown or the kiss?” he sarcastically inquires.

“both,” you spit out, still smiling.

“well, i told you i’d live up to my word, didn’t i? i promised you.”

your vision threatens to be blocked by forming tears, ironically not by the copious amount of rain plunging from the sky, but before you’re able to do so, jake isolates your bodies and wraps an arm around you, sensing your emotions, and you sniffle. “yeah, you did. i never should have doubted you, sim.”

“i’m here now, that’s all that matters.” the quarterback pecks your cheek and gives you a soft look before he heads down to the field once again, physically dodging victory punches and flirtatious but supportive winks from his teammates as a testament to what they all witnessed and what you had just experienced.

the team does their victory chant one last time and you wait for the boy right beside the bleachers where there's a built roof as you watch him split from his team and go to discuss with the scouts and his parents that give you some sly smiles. thankfully, it’s only a couple of minutes before the boy comes running to you, you didn’t know how much longer you could have lasted without the warmth of his touch.

jake takes your hand and spins you around as if you were his princess, the only girl that lived to exist. because to him, that’s exactly what you were. he kisses you once again and doesn’t seem to want to stop until you remind him that you’re still in public and very much visible to any bystanders.

he groans in annoyance but indulges your figure by securing his arm around your shoulders as you walk into the school’s locker room to let jake shower and clean himself up.

he insists on you changing into the spare sweats and jersey he keeps in case of emergencies to keep you warm and dry while he freshens himself up.

the school is empty and quiet. after his shower, jake meets you waiting on the bench outside of the locker room, sitting down beside you, flooding you with compliments about how beautiful you looked in his jersey and as a whole, then kissing you ever so delicately. “you’re wearing my jersey and the entire school saw us kiss, you know that means you’re mine now, right?”

“jake sim, i’ve been yours ever since you offered me that piece of candy the first day of jung’s psychology class,” you laugh out, resting your head on his shoulder.

“you’re mine, forever now, though. i made a promise, and i don’t intend on ever breaking it.”

“neither do i,” you vocalize along with a kiss to his cheek.

you were his, as he was yours, and that’s all there was to it.

jake sim will forever be your hot, nerdy-jock boyfriend, along with you, his precious, most enticing, most amusing, and most perfect girlfriend.

this story may not have been like all the others, with the cheerleader ending up with the star quarterback of the football team. but that’s what mattered most, your story had character and realness; not every path to romance is smooth and easily obtained. but i suppose that’s what makes your narrative most interesting.

jake didn’t want a facade of a relationship, he didn't want any pages left blank or unturned, he wanted fair play, he wanted—you.

now that he finally had you, and you had him, it’s rather plausible to say that jake sim scored more than just one touchdown in his lifetime, is it not?

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eldritch-spouse · 2 years ago

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How would the others react to having a Yandere S/O? I've already seen Patches with one, so I'm curious 🤔

Fasma would either just be freaked out or be oddly flattered that anyone would go to such lengths for him. I think Gallon would internally swoon as his lover quietly, calmly talks about what they did to that drunk monster who tried to hit on him. And from what I understand, Ludwig would very much like it if their S/O started bringing back the skulls and organs of their enemies for him.

I think the vast majority would enjoy it. After all, there's nothing better than having your delusional feelings not only validated but returned.

A yandere s/o is the ideal obsession, for a variety of reasons- Ranging from the ability to provide each other with maximum happiness to the very appealing low odds of, you know, dying. :') That's always good.

Fasma might just be the only one who ever expresses concern here, though it's short-lived, because you can honestly handle yourself. And Hell, if he dies, then so be it- He's happy to perish at the hands of a hot piece of ass like you.

Grimbly fangirls over you so hard, it's unbelievable. The two of you are intolerable together.

Sybastian thinks you're the only sane person around. It's only natural that you should behave this way towards him, you're normal and the perfect mate!

Mervin is delighted that you have the correct, fawning attitude over his fantastic self and will commend you endlessly.

Obie and Ludwig know you're very clearly fucking insane, but they're both living for it. Especially Lud, who naturally froths at the mouth with arousal watching you break someone's legs.

Gallon will get himself into trouble just so you'll be riled up. Bait people into flirting with him or touching him at any capacity just so he can see you seethe from afar. Oh please, tell him everything you did.

Both Belo and Breg have little relationship experience, and they haven't been exposed to the most healthy of sources, so they truly believe this is how things are done and they're very enthused by your mutual treatment.

Morell and Vinnel will want to rope you into their shenanigans asap and will die waxing poetic about how you're the best thing to ever exist after sliced bread.

Patches and Santi, in spite of being able to recognize you're clearly not well, both have chronic horny mutt disease and will be so into this that "normal" relationships will never be enough ever again.

Nebul thinks of you like the perfect specimen. A top tier pet with a flawless attitude and connection to its master. You're his magnum opus, his goal, the ideal in the flesh.

Krulu genuinely expects nothing less from you and would feel deeply insulted if you didn't return his intensity.

#general tce #Bregory #Fasma oc #Nebul oc #Patches oc #Santi oc #Grimbly oc #Sybastian oc #Belo oc #Morell oc #Gallon oc #Obie oc #Ludwig oc #Mervin oc

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not-a-space-alien · 2 years ago

Text

All Creatures Great and Small Chapter 2: Doxxed

There's a good reason why you're not supposed to feed the trolls...

As always thanks to my collaborator @static-stars and my beta/sensitivity reader @appelsiinilight! <3 And special thanks to @ratcatcher0325 for some beta reading as well!!

Story masterpost

AO3 link

P.S. To stave off the inevitable tidal wave of references to this I'm sure is coming: Yes, Mr. Crocker from Fairly Odd Parents exists, hahahaha hilarious

Thistle’s phone sat in the center of the table, with Marcy, Teddy, and Colin sitting at the chairs on three sides. Thistle sat at the fourth place, sitting on the table with his wings folded close to his body, shoulders hunched. His leg bounced nervously.

Marcy had a stormy look on her face, hands clasped in front of her.

“Okay, so he doesn’t know exactly where we live,” said Colin. “Right?”

“I don’t think so,” said Marcy. “But the incident at the electronics store was so nearby, it’s–”

“I’m sorry,” said Thistle, for the millionth time.

Marcy held her hand out. He shut his mouth.

“What were you thinking?” said Teddy.

Thistle found his shoes very interesting. “I–I don’t know. I’m sorry. I guess–It just made me nervous to see–that he was telling everyone, and–and I guess I thought I could get him to take it down–”

“All right,” said Colin. “It’s already happened, so now we just have to deal with it.”

Marcy said, “We deleted all his comments, and we combed through everything on all his profiles on every site for identifying information.”

“We deleted a lot,” said Thistle shame-facedly. “I never posted anything about my location though. I swear.”

“I’m sure you didn’t, but who knows what those computer people can do these days.” He stroked his chin as though he’d said something particularly insightful.

“Who is this guy?” said Teddy. “You said the employee who saw Thistle was being interviewed?”

“He’s a conspiracy theorist of some kind,” said Marcy. She’d watched a few of his videos, but had to stop because it felt like her brain was melting. She picked Thistle's phone up, scrolling. “It’s all bullshit, but there’s no way this is satire or a joke. He’s too committed to it. But I don’t know how anyone believes it. I mean, look at this stuff.”

“Oh god,” said Teddy, “he has multiple videos about how Trump won the 2020 election.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Colin, “What was that about–stem cells from abortions being used in–”

“That’s antisemitism,” said Teddy, pointing to a video Marcy nearly scrolled past. “That’s a dog whistle in the title.”

“That’s what most of it is like,” said Marcy, taking the phone back. “But he has a few videos about the ‘truth’ being hidden from the public on supernatural creatures. Mostly it’s about demons, but there’s some other stuff too. This is his first video about fairies. Or more specifically, 'tiny people in the walls.'"

“What was that?” said Colin. “The thumbnail was a snake skeleton.”

Marcy rolled her eyes. “He claims to have a naga skeleton.” She brought up the clip and paused it, zooming in. “How are there so many people eating this dumb shit up? This is clearly some sort of monkey skeleton put onto a ball python. There was a fake mermaid in the Barnum museum made the same way.”

“Actually,” said Thistle, very quietly, “Those are real.”

All three giants looked down at him incredulously.

“Once when I was young, a snake monster found our nest and ate two of my older siblings. We were able to drive it off, but we had to just up and move to a new tree miles away to get away from it. That’s what it looked like. Torso like ours. Snake instead of legs. They’re about that size, too.”

Teddy burst into nervous laughter. “Oh great. Great. Some batshit insane conspiracy theorist happens to be right about our particular slice of the unbelievable.”

“We don’t know that he’s going to come here,” said Marcy hopefully.

“He was here,” said Teddy, almost hysterical. “Look, he’s in the shopping center in this video.”

Colin put an arm around her. “It’s all right, Teddy bear, don’t freak out. We can deal with this.”

“There’s no way he could get our address,” said Marcy. “Right? Unless…”

“It’s on your mobile account,” said Teddy. “The one you added Thistle to, right? Does the employee he interviewed have access to it?”

“He–he’s surely not supposed to give that information out,” said Marcy.

“That doesn’t mean he won’t.”

They all grimaced.

“Well… his branding is good, I’ll give him that,” said Teddy.

His logo was a cartoon alligator with a magnifying glass, with the word InvestiGator underneath of it. It was so ridiculous that Marcy couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

“This is fucking stupid,” she said. “I can’t believe this.”

“Aaaaand of course he’s into cryptocurrency,” said Teddy with a scowl.

“It’s–it’s called fucking—” Marcy was having trouble getting words out between peals of overwhelmed laughter. “Fucking–TruthCoin, and–and he’s selling alligator NFTs.”

“How did someone so wrong about everything else get this one specific thing so exactly right?” said Teddy.

“I don’t like this one bit,” said Colin. “This guy is nothing but trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” said Thistle, voice wobbly.

The laughter stopped at his serious tone, and all three giants looked down at him again.

“If–if–if–if it’ll fix this, I’ll leave if–if you want me to.”

Marcy's looming hand reached over to Thistle. He shrunk back a little. She picked him up by the back of his shirt and plopped him into her outstretched hand. “I think you're a little too eager to sacrifice yourself at every opportunity.”

“But I made–but I put everyone in danger.”

Colin rolled his eyes. He got up and walked over to the front door, pulling it open. “Well, go on, then. Leave.”

Thistle's face crumpled.

“I'm kicking you out. We hate you now, and we think you deserve to get eaten by the neighbor's annoying dog.”

Thistle stared at him, baffled, eyes glazed over. “You–are you being serious?”

“Of course not!” He slammed the door shut. “Does that sound like something any of us would say? No? So stop treating us like we're heartless monsters. You’re our little buddy. We’re not going to kick you out.”

Thistle wiped his eyes and looked down.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” said Teddy gently. “...Even if it’s a stupid mistake, it doesn’t mean you deserve to be abandoned.”

Marcy brought her other hand over and folded it over him, giving him a reassuring squeeze. “It isn’t the end of the world, Ardo. We’ll deal with whatever happens together, okay?”

He grabbed her pointer finger, giving it a squeeze back.

***

“Shut up! Shut up!”

Marcy tried to ignore Colin’s increasingly annoyed shouts from upstairs as the neighbor’s dog continued to bark intermittently. “I get one day off to sleep in with my girlfriend and you wake me up! Shut up!!”

Marcy laced her shoes up, looking down at Thistle, parked by her ankle.

“Okay,” she said. “Teddy and Colin are both home today, so if anything happens they can deal with it. Okay?”

He nodded. “Right. I…I think I’m going to go upstairs to their bedroom until they get up for the day.”

“Good thinking.” She brushed his jaw delicately with one finger. “There might not even be anything to worry about, okay?”

He nodded.

Marcy reached over and held Thistle’s phone up. “Now do you want me to leave this here today?”

He wrung his hands. “Uh…No, I think–I think you take it with you again.”

“Okay.” She slipped it into her bag. “Have Colin and Teddy text me occasionally to check in, then.”

“I will.”

There came a holler from upstairs: “Marcy, when you go out, drag that stupid dog back to Kristi’s house.”

“Okay, Colin!” She leaned over and plucked Thistle off her pant leg, where he’d started to climb up. She gave him a kiss on the top of his head. “Have a good day.”

“You too!”

She set him on the bannister, and he scrabbled up it into Teddy and Colin’s bedroom. She watched him go, then turned and opened the front door.

There was a man with a white van parked nearby their driveway–just enough that he was still technically on public property. The neighbor’s dog was standing in front of him, tail wagging, occasionally barking.

Marcy stood frozen in the doorway. Oh God. The beard. The stupid beard. It’s–

“Hey!” said the man, giving a friendly wave. “Is this your dog?”

Marcy stepped out onto the porch and slammed the door behind her, locking it. She saw that the adjacent window was open, so she quickly stepped over and shut it, too.

“He’s cute!” said the newcomer as the dog stood with paws on his thighs, jumping up on him.

Feeling numb, Marcy drew near. “Uh–No–No, he’s–he belongs to the neighbor.”

“What’s his name?”

“B…Buster…”

“Cute. He’s cute.” The man lifted the dog gently and plopped him onto the ground. “Ahem, ah, are you Marcella Lester?”

“Uh…” Marcy broke into a cold sweat. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

He put a hand to his chest, smirking. “Not formally. My name is Robert, I host a show on YouTube where I go on fact-finding missions. Can I ask you some questions?”

Marcy decided that the distance she’d already walked was close enough, and stopped. “What–What kinds of questions?”

“What’s the stuff in this truck bed? This yours?” He tapped Colin’s truck with his foot, nodding towards the grass-stained equipment in the back.

“That’s–That’s Colin’s, he works in landscaping.”

“Really? That’s cool. A likely story. It’s interesting that you’re both at home and not at work at 9AM on a Monday. Courtesy of the taxpayers, I’m sure. Will you tell me about your work?”

Marcy’s heart started to pound. “Uh, mine?”

“Yeah! Unless you have something to hide about it?” He leaned in. “Do you?”

Marcy’s voice squeaked despite her best attempts to not be intimidated. “Excuse me for one moment I need to go to go I’llberightbackstayrightthere.”

She sprinted back to the porch, jamming her key into the door and whirling back inside. She did up the deadbolt, then walked over and locked the window and pulled the curtain shut. “Colin!” she yelled, moving to the living room and locking the windows there. “Colin! Teddy! Help!”

Colin appeared on the stairs in a flash. Marcy turned back around when she saw he was only in his boxers, hairy chest fully out. “Woah!” she said, covering her eyes.

“Dammit Marcy, don’t yell like that unless someone is actively attacking you.” Colin darted back upstairs. “I’ll be right there.”

Thistle’s face appeared at the top of the stairs, peering over the top step.

“Go hide in the sock drawer,” said Marcy. “Don’t come out until I come get you. Don’t look outside. Don’t come out. Don’t make a sound.”

He darted away, zigzagging to avoid Teddy’s feet as she came out next. “What is it?” she said, drawing her robe around herself.

“He’s here,” said Marcy. “YouTube guy. Crocodile guy. Fucking guy.”

Teddy’s eyes boggled. “Well, tell him to leave!”

“But how?”

“Just go outside and say ‘Please leave!’”

“But what if he gets mad?”

Colin reappeared on the stairs, this time in pants. “What did he do so far?”

Marcy started to drape the blanket from the couch onto Thistle’s little house and his craft station in the living room, to hide them. “He just kinda asked me to talk.”

“Well, why don’t you go talk to him?”

“Are you crazy?” said Teddy. “No, nope. Talking with those kinds of people always backfires. Just politely tell him to leave. Ah!”

This last exclamation was prompted by the appearance of the newcomer’s face in the little window at the top of the front door. Marcy whipped around, suddenly worrying if she’d shouted at Thistle to go hide loudly enough that he could hear.

“Just tell him whatever it takes to get him to go away,” said Colin. “Go on.”

Marcy bit her lip. “Uh. Okay.”

Drawn by the commotion, Mochi was stretching in the entryway when Marcy walked back over. She picked Mochi up to stop her from darting out, then opened the door a crack.

“Woah, cute cat!” said Robert. He extended a finger and rubbed Mochi’s head. Mochi leaned into it, eyes squinting. Traitor.

“All right,” said Marcy. “Look, I’m sorry but I’m really busy, I was just on my way to work–”

“It won’t take long.” Robert put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen any of my videos?”

“Uh…”

“Well, I’m just putting together a follow-up to an interview I had recently in this area. It was pretty closeby to where I live, so I figured it could pop over for some fact-finding.”

“I don’t think I can–”

“Sure you can!”

“But-”

“What exactly do you study at your job? You work for the government, don’t you?”

Marcy rubbed the back of her head. “Look, I’m not really comfortable answering that.”

Robert nodded, tongue in his cheek. “Mm-hmm. You have an NDA?”

“A–A what? An ND–No, I don’t have one. Look, can you, can you please leave?”

“Sure, I’ll be out of your hair fast enough. Have you seen anything unusual in this area recently? Have you ever seen–”

“For God’s sake!” Colin’s shout echoed distantly. Marcy felt him before she saw him, shoving past Marcy to lean into the doorframe. “Get off my porch!”

Robert’s hand came from out of his pocket where it had been resting, holding a phone that was already recording.

Oh of course. Of course. Now he starts recording.

“Sir, I’m just asking questions,” said Robert. “What’s wrong with that? You don’t think freedom of speech should be–”

“Go speak freely on someone else’s porch,” Marcy snapped. “Leave me alone.”

“Aha!” said Robert. “You seeing this? This government scientist refusing to answer my questions, avoiding the issue, harassing me, threatening me, covering up the truth. I’m getting this all on film. You’re being filmed.”

“This is private property,” said Marcy. “Please leave. I’m not saying you can’t ask questions, but–”

“I am,” said Colin. “Get off my property.”

“Call the police then,” said Robert. “We’ll have a nice discussion with them, I’m sure.”

“If you don’t get off my fucking porch soon you’ll wish I’d called the police instead of what I’m about to do to you,” Colin hissed with shocking venom, getting right up into Robert’s face.

“I got this all on video, you see this? Threatening me over just looking for the truth.” He said this with the same amount of bravado, but he’d begun to slowly back down the front steps off the porch.

Colin grabbed Marcy’s arm and pulled her inside, slamming the door and locking it. “Jesus Christ,” he said, rubbing his temples. “What part of ‘tell him to go away’ didn’t you understand?”

“I did! He didn’t listen!”

“Whatever.” In the ensuing pause, Robert could be heard talking to his camera, but his voice was gradually getting further away as he presumably moved back towards his van. That was a relief, at least.

“Sorry,” said Marcy awkwardly.

Colin sighed. “Okay. Whatever. Teddy?”

“Yeah?” She was still standing at the top of the stairs. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“You’re right as always, dear. Is T okay?”

“He hasn’t come out.”

“I’ll go get him,” said Marcy.

Teddy padded down the stairs to stand next to Colin, who was watching out the window through parted blinds. Marcy paused to peek out the upstairs window; the interloper was sitting in his parked van, still talking to the camera. Overwhelming, irrationally intense hatred boiled over inside her immediately. She walked forward and closed that curtain.

She made double sure that her bedroom blinds were closed and closed her door before doing anything. “Thistle, it’s me, it’s safe to come out.”

When she got no response, she extended a hand and gently rolled her sock drawer open. Thistle was hard to spot, but there was one particular pile of socks that quivered slightly. She reached down and touched it gently, and it jumped. “Are you okay?”

Thistle rose up from under the pile. His face was splotchy, his cheeks streaked with tears, ugly-crying with snot running down from his nose. “N-no.”

Marcy gave a tsk and scooped him up. He balled up in her hand, shaking. “It’s okay,” she said. “We got him to leave.”

“Please don’t kick me out,” said Thistle. He was in the throes of a panic attack like he hadn’t had in a long time, imagining how much easier it would be for Marcy to just open the door and toss him out to face the consequences of his own actions than it would be to try and untangle the mess he’d made. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry–”

“Hey, hey, hey, relax.” She wiped his cheek with the pad of her thumb. “I’m not going to kick you out.”

“But-but I–I f–I led a predator back to the nest.”

It suddenly snapped into place for Marcy–Thistle’s seemingly overeager offer to sacrifice himself by leaving, the paranoid hysteria over being kicked out. It was the same reason he staunchly refused to let any human, even one he trusted, near his family. Leading a predator back to the nest was one of the worst offenses possible in his mind. Putting others in danger by being careless was a fatal mistake. He expected to suffer new consequences on par with not being able to go back to his original home, the exile he’d been enduring, and was waiting for the hammer to drop.

Marcy sat down on the bed with him cupped to her chest. She did something that she’d discovered often calmed him down once they’d established the requisite level of trust: being careful of his wings, she squished him between her hands, pressing down carefully with enough force to act like a weighted blanket, but not enough to hurt him. His lithe frame trembled, warm and vibrating against her skin.

She lifted her hand, to see him splayed limply out in her palm, facedown. She felt a slick spot where his face met her skin. “Better?”

“I’m sorry,” said his muffled voice.

“We already went over this. You made a mistake, but we’re not going to let anything bad happen to you because of it. We’ll deal with this together, okay?”

“Okay.”

She rubbed his shoulder blades with her finger. “You think we’d kick you out? Is that what your family would have done? I know you love your family, but….they sound so cruel. They would just kick you out of the nest for making a mistake like that?”

Thistle pushed himself up to kneeling. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t. That’s what I’m saying. Would they really abandon you? They wouldn’t want you to return?”

Thistle wiped his face. “Of course they would want me to come back if it was safe. They love me. You make them sound so mean.”

“I’m not trying to, I just…”

“It’s different. It’s different for us. We have so much we need to be careful of. It’s not a matter of what you deserve, or what you want…it’s a matter of what you have to do to make sure your family survives. The world is so much more dangerous for me than it is for you.”

Marcy put him down on her lap. “Is it really that hard out there for you guys?”

“Marcy,” said Thistle, voice breaking, “do you not remember what I said about the snake monster that ate some of my family?”

“Well, yeah but…”

“If the entire group risked itself for the sake of one individual every time we were in danger, our nest would have been wiped out a long time ago. We are not humans. We have a different way of thinking. We all understand that it is not cruelty. It is being careful, and if you fail to be careful, you have to put the family’s best interest first at whatever cost to yourself.”

“You make yourself sound so disposable,” said Marcy coldly.

“They would do anything for me, and I would do anything for them. If any of them were in the same situation, I know they would do the same to keep me safe. That is what family means for a pixie.”

“And yet you started this by begging me to not do what you think is best for the group.”

Thistle raised himself up to all fours, still facedown. His arms trembled, and tears rolled down his cheeks. “I–I–I know it’s selfish, but, but, but, I just can’t–”

Thistle looked up and was shocked to see that Marcy was crying too. “Well, you’re not with a family of pixies anymore,” Marcy said. “You’re with a family of humans now, and we don’t need you to do that. Please be selfish. Please. Please.”

Selfish. It was one of the worst things a pixie could be. A selfish pixie was what caused hives to be destroyed in one fell swoop. He still had the image embedded in his mind, of his older brother wrapped in the coils of a snake monster, fighting it with all his might as the rest of the family escaped. How could a hive even function if its members were selfish? Thistle had been struggling ever since he got here to have a sense of self outside his hive, his identity as an individual and not part of a group.

Marcy wordlessly tilted his head up to make eye contact. “I promise we can handle it.”

But that’s right. He was part of a group. He wasn’t alone.

“Thank you,” Thistle wept. “Thank you. Thank you, Marcy. I do think I want to go back in the sock drawer now, though.”

She smiled at him sadly. “Okay. Whatever will make you feel better before I leave.”

***

Despite Marcy’s reassurances that the guy in the van was gone, Thistle stayed hidden in the sock drawer for the rest of the day, until she came home from work and discovered him there with a sad gasp. He mostly just wallowed.

He had people in his corner, he had a group, it was true. But everything was still such a struggle. All it took was little mistakes here and there to bring on such terror. He was operating completely in Marcy’s world, one he still didn’t fully understand and had few ways to interact safely with.

He didn’t even miss his phone or talking to Sierra. He’d been staving off loneliness by supplementing his friendship with Marcy and Teddy and Colin with online socialization, but that had all just turned sour in his mouth. All he could think of was how disastrous it would be if he ever actually met any of the people he’d been talking to online. None of them could ever know the simple truth of what kinds of microscopic fingers typed those messages, or just how close he had to stand to the mic when he voice chatted to sound normal-sized.

He thought of Sierra’s pictures of her holding kittens and cats and small bugs, and the way she would certainly gasp with delight upon seeing his real person, and imagined her enormous fist closing around him. They talked as though they were equals, but if they actually met, she could do whatever she wanted to him and he couldn’t do anything to stop her except ask Marcy for help.

He would never be a person to any of the humans. It had taken ages to establish any sort of rapport with the three humans that were on his side now, after a period of terrifying uncertainty and danger, and he’d only done that was because he was forced to. It seemed like an impossible task imagining all the effort it would take to meet anyone else new. He was just some particularly interesting animal to them, to the other 7,999,997 billion humans he shared the planet with.

And maybe he was just some animal. Humans didn’t spend all their time worrying about being eaten. They didn’t hide in a sock drawer all day, powerless to defend themselves. They didn’t have anxiety about being stepped on or squished or grabbed or avoid meeting new people because they were afraid of being put in a jar. They didn’t revolve every waking decision around the risk that it would expose them to predators. They didn’t skitter away reflexively at loud noises or sudden movements. They didn’t worry about coming home to find that their entire family had been eaten. They didn’t conduct themselves like a neurotic prey animal, safe from all manner of garden-variety monsters by virtue of their sheer size. They didn’t have nightmares nearly every night about being tortured and gutted by their friends.

They didn’t have nightmares about being eaten by a snake, which was a nightmare Thistle hadn’t suffered since childhood, but which had resurfaced to come torment him that night.

It was a snake with a human face, which made it even more disturbing when it unhinged its jaw to swallow Thistle. Thistle scrambled backwards to try and escape, but it felt like he was moving through molasses, his limbs sluggish. By the time the muscular coils encircled him, squeezing him, his pleas for mercy had already been exhausted.

He woke up crying, relieved that the horrible situation disappeared into the blackness of Marcy’s bedroom. The feeling of skin pressing in on him remained though, but after a moment he realized it was because Marcy’s hand was on top of him, pinning him to the pillow where he’d fallen when she rolled over.

Even with Thistle having to occasionally wake up and shift positions to avoid being squished as Marcy moved restlessly in her sleep, he still consistently slept better in bed with her than he did alone. It was the swarming instinct. He’d never slept alone in the hive, not once since he was born. They were safe in a group, the more the better.

But he was alone now. A lone pixie was basically a dead man walking. They rarely survived for very long after getting separated from their hive. Despite Marcy’s presence, he still had nightmares.

Thistle shifted under Marcy’s hand, pathetically trying to imagine the warmth radiating from her was coming from fellow pixies sleeping peacefully next to him. He buried his face in the pillow, squeezing taut fistfulls of the fabric beneath him.

Wait a minute. He’d just gone over this. Thistle wasn’t a lone pixie… He was alone as a pixie, but he wasn’t alone.

For the first time out of all the times he’d had nightmares, it occurred to Thistle that he should wake Marcy up.

He scooted out from under Marcy’s hand, which plopped limply down behind him. Marcy let out a snoring breath. Hugging his arms around himself, Thistle wiped his face on the back of his hand, sniffling, and leaned over, shaking her hand. “Marcy.”

No response. He raised his voice and shook a bit harder. “Marcy?”

She jerked slightly, eyes just barely cracking open, voice heavy with sleep. “Hm? Mhmmmmwha? What is it?”

He suddenly felt very silly and self-conscious. What did he really expect her to do? “I, um…”

She blinked sleep out of her eyes. “Is everything okay?”

“I…I had a bad dream.”

She made a sympathetic sound and curled her hand around him. “I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”

Thistle leaned into her hand, hiding his face. “I got eaten by a predator.”

“Oh, sweetheart…” Marcy gathered him up, curling her fingers around him to form a protective wall. “That’s not going to happen.”

He hugged his arms around himself and gave a little tremble.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

“I–” His voice cracked. “I don’t think so… It’s just…”

“Are you scared of that guy?”

“I’m scared–I’m scared of every guy. Every human. They’re–” He broke eye contact, looking down. “It’s–it’s stupid.”

“It isn’t stupid.”

“I…I’ll never be able to–to just meet new people like you do.” That was definitely wholly inadequate to describe his entire train of thought, but it was what he managed to choke out.

Marcy rubbed his hand with her pointer finger. “Do you want your phone back now?”

He shook his head. “No. I…I don’t think I want it back.”

Marcy frowned. Thistle wiped his eyes again.

Marcy reached over and retrieved Thistle’s device from where it sat charging on the end table. She held it up to him. “Unlock it, please.”

He swiped in the passcode unenthusiastically. Marcy lifted it up and away from him, scrolling and pressing buttons.

She looked at him, then held the phone up. He sniffled and examined what she was showing him.

It was his DM with Sierra.

Is everything okay?

When you get the chance, can you let me know you’re okay? I’m starting to get a bit worried about you.

Please don’t ghost me. I really like talking to you. I know you’re busy. I’d just like to know you’re okay.

Do you want to voice call?

Thistle looked down, lip wobbling. “Marcy, you know I can’t actually be friends with someone like her for real.”

“Why not? You’re friends with me.”

Thistle squeezed his eyes shut, wrapping his hands around his knees. “You know why!”

Marcy removed the phone. “Have you ever voice chatted with her?”

“Once or twice.”

Marcy pressed some buttons, then set the phone down. To his horror, he saw the phone was ringing. “You can’t call her!”

But after a few shuffling noises, a woman’s voice crackled out through his phone speaker. “Hello? Hey, Thistle? Can you hear me?”

“Hey, this is Marcy.”

Sierra’s voice ratcheted up with excitement. “Marcy! Hi! Oh my gosh, the famed Marcy!”

Privately, Marcy thought Sierra had the voice of a particular kind of young adult who was very, very annoying, and would leave her out of inside jokes in college. She tactfully set the thought aside. “Sierra?”

“Yes! Thistle’s told me about you! I’m so happy to finally meet you!”

Thistle had folded himself up on Marcy’s thigh, hiding his face, wings vibrating. Marcy said, “All good things, I hope.”

“Yes! Is–is he there? Is everything okay?”

Marcy slid the phone over to Thistle, putting the mic right next to his head. He looked up at her with watery eyes, face stretched taut with anguish.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” Thistle choked out.

“Hey! You sound so upset! You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“There’s…Everything isn’t okay.”

“Oh no!”

“But Marcy is helping me.”

“I wish I could help.”

“Sierra,” said Marcy, sliding the phone back over.

“Woah,” she said, “for some reason you’re so much louder than he is, can you lean away or something? Sorry!”

Marcy gave a small smirk and pushed the phone back towards Thistle. “Sierra, Thistle is upset thinking he has no friends.”

Thistle hid his face, going red, ears pinned to his head. “M-Marcy.”

“What!” said Sierra. “I don’t count?”

Thistle started to sob, shoulders wracking.

“So, so Sierra. Thistle hasn’t sent you any pictures of himself because he thinks you’d treat him differently if you knew what he looked like.”

Thistle let out a choked gasp, absolutely mortified.

“What?!” said Sierra. “No, of course not! I–Why would I? I’m not shallow like that! You’re my friend!”

Thistle slammed his whole hand down on the end call button. He looked at Marcy with angry tears in his eyes. “Marcy, you know she thinks you mean I’m ugly or something! You know what’s going on here! It’s pathetic! I’m pathetic!”

“You aren’t pathetic.”

“I can’t ever actually meet her,” said Thistle. “What’s the point? I have to hide behind a phone and a screen, no one can ever get more than just my voice, and even then I have to stand right next to the mic to make sure they don’t hear that I’m five inches tall!” Tears streaked down his cheeks.

The call icon lit up again, indicating Sierra was calling again, but he ignored it. “I can’t ever meet anyone else! The whole process of meeting you, and Colin and Teddy, it nearly killed me! I can’t do anything! I can’t go back to my family, I can’t meet new humans, there aren’t any other pixies around… I can’t–I can’t go outside and explore–and I’m not the kind of guy who always wants to be leaving the nest–I–I’m okay with staying inside most of the time, but I–it feels so so bad to–to know that no one will ever see me as a person–because even you didn’t at first, and…”

He trailed off as Marcy’s hand made comforting circles on his back. “Thistle, listen. Listen to me.”

His ears twitched.

“The way we met, and the way you and Teddy and Colin met. First of all, that was my fault completely.”

“But–but that’s probably what everyone else would do, too!”

“Listen, let me finish. I promise you–I promise–you will never have to go through that awful experience again. You’re braver than when we first met. You learned how to shout. You know how to tell others what you need. You can introduce yourself now. And you have me to help you. You can do anything you want to.”

Thistle sniffled. Marcy had used her fingers to hold his hands, so they were trapped.

“You’ve powered through some extremely scary stuff way, way better than I could have.”

“But–But, but you’re not afraid of anything.”

Thistle was jostled slightly as Marcy laughed. “Thistle, you haven’t seen me be scared of anything you’re scared of because that stuff isn’t scary for me. If I were your size, I would be terrified of everything you’ve been dealing with. I wouldn’t last five minutes.”

“...really?”

“Really. I did a study abroad in Germany in undergrad, and I didn’t speak a word of German. On my first day I got lost on the way home, took the wrong bus, and ended up on the other side of the city. I had to call my host family to come rescue me at like 10PM. It was one of the scariest things in my life. And everyone else was the same size as me! There weren’t monsters prowling around that wanted to eat me! You’ve gone way further out of your comfort zone than I have.”

Thistle flittered his wings. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“I know you can handle anything this big wide world can throw at you.”

Thistle blushed, squirming.

The call icon lit up on the phone again. Marcy gave him a reassuring pat. “Now…Do you want to try this again?”

He gave a tearful smile and answered the call.

———————————–

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vampireonastick · 3 years ago

Note

You have given me a severe brainrot with your theories about traitor/final boss!ango (I mean it in a good way haha--again this was all I was thinking about at work so that's not good ig lol); I rambled in the tags, on your posts and now I popped into your askbox so sorry very much (please feel free to ignore this if you don't feel like answering no worries :) I can't stop vibrating with excitement so I am here hehehe)

1] I always thought there was something odd with the timing of the sprinkler activation (I decided not to nitpick the narration so thanks for reminding me this /is/ bsd) and Pushkin's escape from Mersault but the idea that Mersault could be created from the Page/Book and the Sky Casino is its cover is seriously GENIUS (yes, yes, I am totally in love with your theory bc not only is there no one except these two in the infinity prison but we don't hear any sound from the normal cells during Dazai/Sigma ballroom dance either)

2] Talking of preferential treatment, can it be taken the same for Fyodor being the one getting books to read while Dazai has none? Or, are the books some way for him to communicate with Ango? What are your thoughts?

3] Something else I noticed, and now that I too feel Ango is THE traitor, is that Mushitarou left with Ango from Anne's Room after revealing the DoA plans and has never appeared in the story again iirc? What do you think? I am kinda worried about him; they keep using him and throwing him away/locking him up (and he is easy to manipulate too. He is soft for true friendships and that's what Ango used--)(1/2)

Hello!! Don’t worry I love getting asks so you can send me more anytime you like! And I know how you feel, I thought of a lot of the evidence I used in my theories at work because it’s all I’ve been able to think about the past two weeks lol.

Alright I've written a lot so everything is under the cut. I know you sent me another ask but since I want to keep everything in one place and all cohesive I copy and pasted the points from your other ask into here (I hope that's alright!)

BSD Theory: Expansions/Additions (Mastermind Ango Saga)

Spoilers up until chapter 99 of the manga!!!

Thank you! And yes, lately I’ve been taking every small detail that doesn’t add up or any inconsistency and I’ve been putting it under a microscope. Of course, these may just be small little plot holes, (which wouldn’t be a bad thing, Bungo is full of insanity and unbelievable stretches in logic, that’s why it’s my favourite), but it makes it so much fun for theorizing when you put all these little inconsistencies together and explain them all with some wild theory haha.

2] Fyodor's Books in Prison as Communication to Ango

I completely forgot that Fyodor had books in his cell, that's such a good point!! I think it could absolutely be used as another example of Fyodor’s special treatment while in prison.

As for it being a way to communicate with Ango that would be really interesting. It would make sense since if Ango can read memories held in any object, maybe he can read any of Fyodor’s thoughts he had while holding the book. The only thing is that Meursault is supposed to be in Europe, which is pretty far, and if Ango needs to hold the actual physical book for his powers to work then this method of communication may be unlikely. But it’s Bungo so who knows??

3] Mushitarou; Is He In Danger?

Ohhhhh now this is so so so interesting, I’ve been thinking about this for a couple days now and I am hyped!!!

So firstly, I’m not too worried about Mushitarou right now. He’s with Poe so I think he’s in safe hands. Personally, I think Mushitarou’s purpose in the DoA’s master plan was just to move the agency in the direction Fyodor wanted them to go.

Overall, I feel like Mushitarou was a very important pawn in Fyodor’s plan, I think Fyodor intended for him to meet up with the agency members. If you think about it, Fyodor had no real reason to release Mushitarou from his prison at the beginning of the arc in the first place. If he wanted Mushitarou to release his ability that was hiding Dazai’s crimes in order for Dazai to get arrested, I feel he could have easily threatened him into doing so. Fyodor’s ability is terrifying and I don’t feel like Mushitarou is the type of person to hold up well against his life being threatened like that. But Fyodor let him go. Why?

Well the only reason I can think of is that Fyodor needed someone to leak information to the ADA in order to push them in the right direction to fall further into his trap.

Mushitarou is the one who tells Atsushi that the DoA plans to destroy the country using the last page of the book. Atsushi had no idea the page could be used again. If it wasn’t for Mushitarou, Atsushi would have never even considered hunting down the page. Which means he wouldn’t have gone to the Sky Casino (a place Fyodor NEEDED the ADA to go in order to connect them to the coin bomb terrorism they intended to do from there), and he never would have fought Fukuchi, which led to Akutagawa’s death and the start of the vampire outbreak (something else that needed to happen in Fyodor’s master plan).

And this is where Ango comes in. Ango is the one who bullies Mushitarou into giving up all that he knows about the DoA. This panel in particular is very telling:

(I won’t even talk about how manipulative that line “Dostoyevsky wanted to hide behind lies” is in this post, but WOW)

The way I see it, Mushitarou was fed information by Fyodor (without Mushitarou's knowledge he was being used in this way) that had always been intended to reach the ADA in order to move along the plot of Fyodor’s plan. And that’s why Ango met up with Atsushi as soon as he rescued Mushitarou, because he had to ensure Mushitarou gave this information to the ADA. That’s why he was so pushy and manipulative when talking to Mushitarou.

So why Mushitarou? Why couldn’t Ango have come in with all this same information and steer Atsushi to the sky casino? Well, it would be a lot more suspicious coming from Ango. Why would he, a government agent and Dazai’s ally, know so many specific details about the DoA and their plans? But coming from Mushitarou, a scared criminal who was used and left for dead by the DoA, this information is much more believable.

I think now that Mushitarou has passed on all the information to Atsushi that Fyodor and Ango wanted him to, he’s not needed in their plan anymore. Killing him would be a hassle now that he’s safe with Poe, and since all the information he had on the DoA was hand fed to him by Fyodor, he’s not a liability to their master plan, since all he knew was what Fyodor wanted the ADA to know. He also doesn’t seem to have much drive to fight back against Fyodor, he just wants to live a peaceful life away from conflict, which also makes him less of a threat to the DoA. So I think (and desperately hope) that he’ll be safe.

And yes absolutely!! That entire chapter where Mushitarou and Ango first meet is suspicious as hell!! I was reading back through it and the amount that Ango casually manipulates Mushitarou throughout those conversations is insane!! I’m actually working on another post analyzing that chapter and Ango and Mushitarou’s interactions because it’s freaking wild.

4] I guessed it has to be someone on the ADA side who is leaking info to Fyodor coz there are only limited players in the Sky Casino arc; I kinda eliminated the Agency members bc Fukuzawa would have known if they are working for someone else (same as he'd know if one of them died) so I narrowed it down to two. Ango, I assumed since was already the traitor in the Dark Era, it won't be repeated but after reading your theories, I am quite satisfied. The story seems to be filled with points against him. Even then, what do you think about Lucy? I hope she isn't anything more than what she says she is and she is only helping them out of her good heart. (Ango being the one to bring her and Fyodor's "But Montgomery-san is your Queen, right?" feels ominous or maybe, I am just overthinking lol) - fivekrystalpetals (copy pasted from other ask)

I think Lucy is trustworthy. She seems to really care for Atsushi. The two of them have connected very deeply through their shared experiences with similar childhood trauma. She hasn’t really shown any desire for anything other than a place to belong and to be treated like she matters as a human being. She seemed to only be with the guild because she had nowhere better to go. But now that she has met Atsushi and has made some genuine personal connections (like the cafe owner who covers for her when the Hunting Dogs come asking about her - I don’t think he’d do this if he didn’t care for her, even if he did end up giving in at the end), I really don’t see her as a threat or a traitor to the ADA.

Though I am afraid she is being used by Ango and Fyodor. But I think anything bad that happens with Lucy will have to do with her ability and possibly losing Anne’s room then her betraying Atsushi and the others.

5] Similarly, Tsujimura? I haven't read the gaiden so I don't know much about her. But do you think she is with Ango or she doesn't know of his true intentions, simply an overworked subordinate? - fivekrystalpetals (copy pasted from other ask)

Unfortunately I haven’t read Gaiden either so I don’t know much about her either haha. (it’s on my list though, probably after the light novels)

Though even without that context I’m fairly certain at this point Ango is working alone (besides Fyodor of course). He just doesn’t seem like the type to drag others into his bullshit. If he has a master goal I think he’d try to have as few allies as possible. This comes from the idea that those who are untrustworthy are not easily trustful of others. That’s a large part of the reason I think he created Fyodor from the book. If he crafted Fyodor to mirror his own ideals and goals, as well as wrote in Fyodor’s loyalty to him, then he could let Fyodor run wild and do his thing without worrying he’d be betrayed.

6] Oh, and I completely agree with your Dead Apple observation. If Fyodor assumed Dazai was dead and Ango sent Chuuya to fight the Dragon assuming he too would die? They must have wanted to eliminate Soukoku in one swoop; unfortunately for them, Chuuya is quite tenacious haha - fivekrystalpetals (copy pasted from other ask)

Yes that would have been a great way to eliminate Sokouku if it wasn’t for Dazai screwing up their plan with that antidote pill haha.

But also, sending Chuuya after Dazai in Dead Apple might have been a way for Ango and Fyodor to test Chuuya and Dazai’s loyalty and trust to one another. Which could be why Chuuya was chosen to be sent to Meursault to help Fyodor in the prison fight. They may have figured it would shake Dazai up to see the one person he has always been able to rely on to be changed into a mindless creature. And would also eliminate the possibility of Chuuya coming to save Dazai if he hadn’t been turned into a vampire.

(There is more ig but I forget atm. Can I send you another ask if I remember? You might already be overwhelmed with this lol sorry! Thanks for all your theories; I really love your thinking :))) (2/2) //fivekrystalpetals (copy pasted from other ask)

Yes you can absolutely send more asks!! I love how much this theory is growing from everyone adding on to it and pointing more things out I’ve overlooked.

Also I went back and read through the tags you left on the reblogs of my posts. (sorry for not responding to them earlier, i read all the tags i get on reblogs the second i get them XD which also means if i was busy before checking i forget what was said in them which is a problem lol. Anything I find interesting I also tend to set aside because i feel like i could expand on them more into a full theory so i want to save them till i have time to write them up properly. But it might actually be easier and more efficient to expand on these points as I go and then write up a master theory later than trying to start at the finished product XD. So Yeah, basically thank you for the tags!! They were super fun to read through!) I really wanted to talk about some of the things you brought up because they are super interesting, so I figured I’d reply to them here if that’s alright!!

Sigma’s Ability

Alright so I have two theories as to why Sigma’s ability seems like such an equal trade off when it could have been more powerful.

It needs a drawback in order to work. With how the book works (in my understanding, I may be wrong), things can not just be taken from it, the people who write in it need to put in personal effort in order for the events to be carried out. So maybe, Sigma’s ability can’t just take information, he needs to give information in order to keep things equal and balanced.

It doesn’t have a drawback, we just don’t know how it really works. Instead of Sigma’s ability being “an exchange of information; gaining the information you most want to know in exchange for the information your enemy most want to know”, it could actually be “an exchange of information; gaining the information you most want to know in exchange for the information you most want your enemy to know”. So essentially, getting the information you want and giving the information you want (with whatever information your enemy wants being irrelevant)

To further expand on this second point. When Atsushi wakes up after being given the information from Sigma’s ability, he says “I have figured out the page's location.” But when he touched Sigma, and the ability was activated, he had believed that Sigma had the page. So why would the information he most wants to know be the location of the page if he already thought he knew where it was? (also if they thought Sigma had the page on him why didn’t they go and collect it from Sigma’s body from where he would’ve hit the ground?? Random thought I had. Kinda odd). Anyway, the information he got from Sigma sent him off to hunt Fukuchi, which as we know, didn’t end well (RIP Aku). So yeah, maybe we were lied to about Sigma’s ability and it’s just another way to spread false info to the ADA.

Ango and the Seventh Agency

YES YES YES OMG I totally believe this too!! It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if the entire ‘seventh agency’ is literally just Ango.

#ahhh thank you for sending this!!#i was thinking about all the points you brought up all day at work today #i literally came home - sat down - and wrote this #so if anything is wrong or the grammar sucks that's why lol #but i just wanted to post this so bad because omg #insert kronk 'oh yeah. it's all coming together' meme because that's literally how i feel about this theory #bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd theories #ango bsd #bsd manga spoilers #bungo stray dogs manga spoilers #@fivekrystalpetals #did... did that @ work?#is that how i tag people in posts?#I'm really not too familiar with that so if im being dumb correct me please lamo

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