#u know. not thinking about how it was a multi million dollar mansion. and how our little stick was older than my brothers. maybe even me

[muddlemore]

shout out to the window repairmen who stole our fucking hurricane shutter crank that apparently is not cheap wtf man

[sam-i-am-27]

The Haunting and Killings of Iplier Manor

Summary: Mark Iplier Manor has always been a subject of great mystery and a possible investigation for Ryan and Shane. So when they finally go, thinking it’ll just be another ‘haunted’ home, they are in for a real surprise...

Word Count: 3,854

Thank you to my amazing editor, Jay, aka @pastel-and-gore​. They are an amazing human bean who deserves the world! I can’t believe they can put up with my multiple doc bullshit and continue to edit but I am so grateful for them doing this. I literally cannot say thank you enough, my dude.

A/N: This is not a script. This is how I believe the experience Ryan and Shane would have in the manor would go if they visited. The reason not everything Also, everything in bold would be where the visuals would be and is the ‘script’ that Ryan wrote.

“I don’t like this, Shane. Like really don't like this,” Ryan said, looking up at the Manor they'd be covering in this new video. The sense of death hung in the air, something Ryan had felt at almost every single place they've filmed, but it never got easier to experience. It was even worse here, the air was so heavy that it was almost tangible.

“You say that everywhere we go,” Shane argued, glancing at the door and patio.

“Yeah, but none of the places has so many sales and ownership transfers for the same reason!” he sighed. “Let's just get some daytime, outdoor shots and then get inside. We’re doing this alone, remember? The landlords didn’t want to ‘risk’ more than two people at a time. And that’s something that’s already a horrible thought.”

“Whatever dude. His loss,” Shane said, turning on his camera and walking to the left. 

As Ryan walked around the house, the mere sight of it gave him chills. Not because it was creepy, but because it wasn't. While weeds and grass were overgrown in the nearby gardens, the house remained very intact, only the occasional chipped brick or vine. Other than that, it was in perfect condition. The mansion itself was confusing and he felt like he was walking in circles. Was that chessboard always there? How many times had he passed by the pond-sized pool?

When he finally caught up with Shane, he felt thoroughly dizzy.

“Dude there’s a golf course and a giant chessboard!” his friend said, holding a few of their lights.

“Yeah, I saw it. Multiple times,” Ryan muttered, glancing at the setting sun. “Let's get inside before it gets too dark.”

Opening the door and walking inside was just as unnerving as walking outside. The door hinges barely creaked and the wood floor was completely unmarked, except to the right of the entrance.

“Murderers! We’re here for a murder!”

“Shut up, let’s just go inside,” Ryan said, rushing in behind Shane.

“Hey check out this mirror,” Shane said, pointing his camera at a broken mirror on the other side of the foyer.

“Yeah, there was a bit of shooting in the house during the time it was occupied. A bullet must have hit it,” Ryan snapped. “Let's just find a place to set up.”

Twenty minutes later, they had situated their equipment, Ryan's heart was still pounding in fear. Where had that very obvious and close lightning come from on such a clear night?

“Ryan, come on. Do it for the folks at home!” Shane said, patting him on the back. Ryan sighed and nodded.

“Yeah, let's do this shit and get out of here.”

They sat down in front of the rolling cameras and Ryan held up three fingers. Then two. One.

“This week on a special episode of Buzzfeed: Unsolved, we cover the mysterious hauntings and deaths within the Northern California home, Markiplier Manor,” he narrated. “Not only is this house reportedly haunted by dozens of real estate agents who have tried to sell it to new owners, but apparently, it is the sight of one of the cruelest, most motivated and quite frankly, one of the strangest killings we’ve ever covered.”

“Well I don’t know if this is true or not, so I’m holding back all judgement,” Shane said. 

“Well other than you don’t believe that it’s haunted.” 

“Obviously.”

Ryan laughed and sat back up straight. “Anyways, we’re investigating the hauntings and killings…” No lightning. “The killings of Mark Iplier Manor. For the sake of video length, the fact that this video will be part of the Supernatural season, and for my own sanity, we won’t be going much into the mystery of the killings itself and focusing more on the ghosts that haunt this place. Also, I’m not going to use the word M-U-D-E-R because according to reports, the word seemed to be a trigger word of sorts for whatever spirits haunt this place.”

“Murrrd...ock,” Shane taunted.

“L- let's just get into this… Before we begin, there are two things that need to be noted. One, for reasons unknown, many of the people in this story have no recorded history, last names or legal records. So all information I am giving has holes and is from news released to the public or from reports of one of our characters that were found abandoned in different locations. Second, there is background information that needs be covered before we can go over the deaths that occurred here.” He pulled out the script. “Mark Iplier Manor was built and owned by the parents of their son, Mark Iplier, who they named the house after.”

“Already I know he’s a fuckboy.”

“What do you mean by that?”

"Come on, you name a multi-storied manor in the middle of Northern California after your son, the kid’s going to be spoiled rotten!” Shane said, making Ryan laugh.

“Well he was, but we’ll get back to that a little while later,” Ryan agreed. “As a child, Mark spent a majority of his time with his three friends, William Jackson Barnum and siblings Damien and Celine, no surname recorded. When they were older, Mark and Celine fell in love and eventually got married, living in this Manor with a hired a butler named Benjamin, no last name given, and a Chef who only went by the name Chef.”

“Benjamin the Butler and Chef Chef?!” Shane chuckled. “Where there any other names like… William the Ward?”

“Shut up and let me do this quickly. Damien remained unmarried and moved on to run for mayor. William, unmarried but publically jealous of Celine and Mark's relationship, became a Private in the military, working as the employer of Chef for a time, and eventually a Colonel. After he was done with the military, he reconciled with Mark and managed to convince his friend to fund millions into expeditions.”

“Millions for a guy who wanted to fuck his wife!” Shane laughed. “’Oh hey dude, I wanna go do some Jumanji shit with your WIFE. Can I have a few million dollars?’”

Ryan laughed uncontrollably for a second. “He had money to spare and at the time, I think he was in a state of shock that rendered him a little incapable of processing how fucked up this situation was.”

“Yeah because no one realizes when their wife has gone missing with their best friend.”

Ryan chuckled and shuffled his papers, shivering as a draft blew through the room but ignoring it to continue the explanation. “By the time that William had returned, he hadn't made nearly enough to pay off his debts to Mark. This led to the two friends growing farther and farther apart, leaving William financially crippled. But Celine, who was still studying the mystic arts, was growing closer to William. The two didn't keep their relationship very secret and one day, William ran off with Celine, leaving Mark alone and broken in a reportedly haunted house.”

“Okay, so obviously the Colonel dude and Mark had some rough patches,” Shane said.

“Oh you think?!” Ryan asked, unable to hold back a small laugh.

“So what about Damien?” Shane asked. “Was he like ‘Oh my sister’s fucking my two best friends who want to kill each other. Better run for mayor!’”

“Actually yes. He won mayor with the help of one of his other friends, who we will cover later,” Ryan said and continued to read the script. “Almost a year later, on October 10, Mark called all his friends -excluding Celine and including a detective friend Mark had made, Abraham, and Damien’s District Attorney, who strangely, had no background information, not even a gender- back to the manor for a night of poker with no explanation as to why other than to, quote, ‘Get the old gang back together’. The events that occurred over the next two days ended with the disappearance of William, Mark, Celine, and the District Attorney.”

He took a breath but before he continued, the draft picked up, bringing a haunting voice with it. 

“I’m here.”

Ryan yelped and turned around, looking for the source of the voice, and was surprised to see that Shane was looking too. “You heard that?”

His friend nodded, looking a tad bit paler than usual. “Yup… that was definitely words of some sort.”

“‘I’m here’ or something like that.”

“I heard something ‘Da deer’,” Shane reasoned, but Ryan knew he was just convincing himself.

“Uh… let's just start our investigations.” He began to pull out his Spirit Box. “In the manor, there are reportedly three areas in the house that are the most haunted: the Foyer, the Seance room, and the room we are in now, the Living Room. There are reports of whispers, random cold spots, disappearing and reappearing objects and rooms. Many of the guests who visit here say that they will black out randomly and appear somewhere else”

“Who haunts this place, Ryan?” Shane asked in mock curiosity.

“If you’d let me talk, I could tell you.”

“Alright, go ahead!” 

“The night of the Poker Party, everyone had gotten very drunk over the course of seven hours. When the Attorney woke up, spoke with Benjamin and Damien before coming down here. Immediately, they were met with a crack of lightning and saw Mark's body on the floor.”

“So they walk in, BOOM WAKE THE FUCK UP and then splat. body?”

“Yeah, just like that,” Ryan confirmed. “The remaining people ran into the room and Abraham took over the scene with the Attorney as his new partner.”

“What happened his last one?”

“Well according to what little I could find on Abraham, every single one of his partners died or went missing in increasingly painful and violent ways.”

“Oh. So like one got shot and he’s like ‘Oh no, can’t get any worse’ and then the next one gets impaled by a bull?”

Ryan laughed and shook his head. “I mean I guess! Can I get through this?!”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“So also according to Abraham, who examined the body personally, Mark had been stabbed 37 times, poisoned, beaten, strangled, drowned, and shot in that order.”

“WHOA! Someone wanted him dead.”

“Yup. Out of curiosity, who do you think it was?” Ryan asked.

“William. Come on. In debt, with this guys wife. It's got to be him,” Shane said.

“We’ll just see,” Ryan said. “Anyways, about an hour later, while Abraham was out of the room talking with his partner, the body vanished without trace, explanation or evidence that one of the guests had stolen it. It was never found and is still missing to this day. But it’s rumored that his ghost still haunts this room.”

“So it could be under our feet? Or in the roof? Or in the room we're sleeping in?!”

“I don’t want to think about where it is. Besides, a lot of theories say that it was either a faked death, buried in the yard or became a zombie.”

“No.” 

“Yeah, that’s another reason we’re not discussing the mystery itself: you’d hate every bit of it. Now shut up and let's just talk to the ghost…” Ryan groaned and held up the Spirit Box. “Uh, Mark Iplier, I'm Ryan. This is my friend, Shane. This is a Spirit Box and it will help you talk to us if you want to. I'm turning it on… now.”

The high pitch whine the machine made made him groan but he held the box tight.

“Mark Iplier, are you here right now?”

The channels changed without a word spoken.

“Mark, if you can here is, I heard you had a pretty violent death and a pretty bad life… uh… are you-”

“H-He-ll-lo?”

“Oh fuck…”

“Hi,” Shane said cheerfully.

“Are you Mark Iplier?” Ryan asked, his voice shaky.

“N-o-oo.”

“New? Are you a new ghost?” Shane asked.

“Shut up dude. It just said that it’s not Mark, so it’s probably someone else,” Ryan said. “Can you tell us what color shirt are our shirts?”

There was silence for a second.

“I-I c-c-an-n-t-t s-s-s-ee. I-I-t-t-s d-a-a-a-r-k.”

“Okay dude these are clear sentences,” Ryan said. “Clear words that are forming functional sentences.”

“Sure. I'm just hearing huh-guh-cuuhhh-"

“Whatever dude. Let's just wrap this up so we can move to the next room and next story,” Ryan said. “Well, Mark or whoever you are, we’re going to go now and check out the rest of the house. Bye.”

“W-W-a-a-i-”

But it was too late and Ryan was putting the Spirit Box away. He really didn’t want to put it away, seeing as to how he was getting some of the most definite proof they had ever gotten, but he wanted to move on as quickly as possible and get to sleeping and besides, if it was this haunted here, hopefully it’d be just as in the other rooms.

“Okay, on to the second room, the Seance Room, which is upstairs,” Ryan said, getting up and grabbing the hand-held camera.

“Oh we’re moving?”

“Yeah, it’s upstairs. We’re not just going to tele-”

The world turned upside-down. Ryan everything inside of him float for half a second before crashing down. He stumbled and retched, not realizing he was standing in the foyer, sweating and cold. He could feel the cold leather seat but it wasn’t there. He had been moved into the foyer by an unknown force and he felt fear worse than he’d ever felt before. As he realized where he was and wiped his mouth of the bile, he whispered, “What the hell?”

Shane came running out of the living room and looked at his friend with a fear he hadn’t ever seen on his face. He saw the vomit and pulled out some water for Ryan to use.

“What just happened?” Ryan asked, taking the bottle gratefully.

“You disappeared dude,” Shane said. “One moment you were there in the living room. The next you’re out here.”

“Fuck, dude, I hate this… I hate this,” Ryan said, sitting down in the middle of the room, taking deep steadying breaths as he tried to rationalize what was happening. “Okay, so we can either keep going or we can stop… I really want to stop but if we can keep going…”

“Ryan, your camera was still going,” Shane said, pointing to the GoPro strapped to his chest. “We can check that-”

“Shane I just teleported!” Ryan said. “Do we really want to keep going for the sake of a video?!”

“It’s money, Ryan. I know we’re both scared, and yes, I’ll admit that I’m scared out of my fucking mind, but we are getting footage that could boost our careers exponentially! If you’re too uncomfortable and want to leave, we can do the Jerome investigation instead, but… nothing else. It’s up to you.”

Every single part of his being was telling him to run, to get out of this place this instant. However his curiosity part was telling him that this manor, The Eastern State Penitentiary, and the Sally House was the closest thing to a true haunting. But now… did he really want to keep going with this for a job and some money?

“We can… just do the recordings… and not spend the night. I cannot spend a night in this place… but let’s just get through this place as quick as possible,” Ryan whispered. “Let’s just do the foyer right now.”

“Okay,” Shane said, sitting right next to Ryan and placing the camera in front of them.

“So the Foyer… according to Abraham’s reports, there had been building tension between him and William for some time. On the final day of these events, William found something out that caused him to pull his gun. In an act of anger, on that balcony up there,” Ryan pointed above them to the railing, “William shot Abraham in the side, just below the ribs, and it was not fatal but it did knock him unconscious for a long while. The Attorney rushed forward to tear the gun away from William and after only a second of struggling, was also shot and fell over the railing down here. When Abraham awoke, he found the house abandoned by everyone and the Attorney’s body missing.”

“Well then. That was a quick and sudden ending,” Shane said.

“I mean Abraham did spend an unknown amount of years chasing down William, who escaped the country under many different names before both of them disappeared from the books completely. But yeah, a sudden ending here,” Ryan said sarcastically.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So the rumor about this room is that the Attorney’s spirit resides not only throughout the entire room, but mainly within that mirror you were looking at earlier. Apparently, they like to pound on it, press their hands up against it. Sometimes you can hear a gunshot at approximately 4:30 every day whether it be day or night, or calls to Abraham, William, Damien and Celine.”

“Oh yeah, what happened to the two of them?” Shane asked.

“That we’ll get to later,” Ryan said as he pulled out the Spirit Box again. “Okay, uh, Attorney, my name is Ryan, this is my friend Shane… we’re going to use this thing called a Spirit Box. You can speak to us through it.”

He turned on the box and before the high pitch whine cut through his ears, there was a voice, clear as day.

“P-Pleas-s-e. I-I a-m-m s-s-so al-l-on-ne.”

Ryan screamed and dropped the box. He and Shane backed away from the box as it sat on the floor, continuing to hiss and screech.

“What the hell…”

“I-I-I tried-d to t-t-alk-k… I n-n-e-e-d to-o get-t-t out-t-t…”

“Okay, Ryan, I take it back,” Shane said. “This might not be worth the money if our lives are in danger… but the cameras are rolling so that’s something... ”

Ryan was too terrified to respond. He was pretty sure that if he moved another inch, he’d continue moving right out the door and into Father Thomas’ home until he died. This was happening… an actual ghost was talking to them so clearly that anything that Shane was scared. He couldn’t reason his way out of this situation.

“T-Th-h-h-e hous-s-e is-s the-e-e enem-m-my… g-g-e-t-t out-t-t… H-H-el-l-p-p m-m-me-e…” the voice said.

“Are you the Attorney?” Ryan asked, his voice wavering on the brink of tears. They were interacting with a paranormal entity and from the sound of it, it wasn’t alone.

There was no response from the box. For a second, the white noise was barely muffling Ryan and Shane’s heavy breathing. He was going to cry… he was sure he was going to cry…

Something shook the entire room and Ryan screamed as the broken mirror across the foyer fogged up and a bloody hand pressed up against it. A fuzzy reflection of a person pressed up against the glass, smearing blood everywhere. A high pitch whine filled the air, making the two humans grab their pleading, “Save me! Please! I can’t do this! Please! Find Damien and Celine! They did this! LET ME OUT!”

There was a crack of lightning louder than any they had heard already. The room was suddenly filled with a bright red light and Ryan looked up at the balcony to see a red entity of some sort standing there, glaring down at them. Ryan felt a wave of fear, anger, and need sweep through him, making him want to go to the light… but at the same time, he knew he had to get out of here if he wanted to survive.

“GO! GO!” 

The two of them sprinted to the door, every thought of money, viewers, and the equipment left behind in the house. Ryan barely made it through the door as it slammed closed. The back of his shirt snagged between the crack and he yelped as this small bit of fabric began to get dragged back into the home.

“SHANE!” he screamed, holding out a hand to his friend. Shane grabbed his arm and pulled, his strength barely matching that of whatever was dragging him back inside. Light was pouring out the windows, starting to blind him and light up the night sky. Ryan scrambled to rip his shirt off and with a rip, the end of his shirt being sucked into the house, but he didn’t have time to care. He needed to leave now.

As the two sprinted through the grounds, Ryan noticed how the world seemed to be splitting in three, reflecting on two levels of red and blue and white. He couldn’t tell what was real and what was the illusion. He felt like he was running in circles again, but the gate was barely getting closer and the pull from the house was getting stronger. But he plunged forward with a scream, bursting through the gates and hopping into the car as quick as he could, Shane following right behind him. The house literally howled with rage, shaking the world and making Ryan certain that the ringing noise would take days to go away.

Without looking back, he drove the car as fast and as quickly as he could away from that house.

It wouldn’t be until nearly an hour of driving later that Ryan would be able to breathe somewhat normally. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking for days and anytime he would be able to catch a wink of sleep, they’d be plagued with that light, with that broken mirror…

He couldn’t go back to work… he could barely go around corners without a mirror. It had only been a few seconds of downright encounter but the time spent in that house had been hours upon hours of fear. As if the past two years worth of investigating hadn’t left him scarred enough. Now he jumped at shadows, which were cast by the Light. His own reflection became the Attorney’s bloody hands and image, pleading with him to save them.

Shane wasn’t doing any better. For the first time in the years that Ryan had known him, he didn’t have a snarky quip or a smile or anything. His girlfriend worried about him and tried to get him to smile, but it just wasn’t working. She and Ryan’s girlfriend both worried so much but neither could tell them what had happened…

It could only be believed if they saw it.

“Ryan… we need to look at that footage,” Shane said almost two weeks later, his voice scratchy from lack of speaking and the occasional screaming nightmare.

“I know… we need to for everyone’s sake…” Ryan said, his voice aching for the same reasons. “But… I don’t want to remember anything more than I need to.”

“We’ll look at it and we’ll see what we can do with it… If we can’t do anything, we take a long break. We won’t ever do any hauntings or ghosts again. Just mysteries and stuff, okay?” Shane said, holding out the three cameras that had been recording every second of their encounter. Ryan looked at them and then at Shane, with his baggy, bloodshot eyes and nodded.

“Let’s fucking do this.”

So uh yeah! THE BOYS ARE MENTALLY SCARRED. 

I had a ton of fun writing this. Like way too much fun writing it, but I am so glad that I did because it’s been building up in my head for a while. And I am in love with the result.

Uh... yeah! I don’t think I have a general taglist (if I do, I’m sorry I’m an idiot and I lost the names) but it is open!

Reblogs are awesome. 

Have a good day!

[adultdaughter-deactivated]

I’m so bored bc ppl will be like “capitalism bad and why the world sucks” when in reality materialism is 110% more contributing to the world sucking and like peoples personal life sucking. Like the amount of girls in my personal life who bought that Dyson wrap set whatever and like with fucking after pay too. It’s like can we not see how we’re buying right into the trap. Or like how normal it is for me to see a teenager wearing like clothing that costs hundreds of dollars or like you go on Instagram and there’s some baby that is wearing depressing all beige designer clothesCapitalism sucks yes but like a part of me is like omg were the boomers right??

Like bc yeah it’s kinda crazy how like having stuff that makes you look rich is more important than actually being rich and like kids are reinforce that all the fucking time like you have these influencers who have the multi million dollar mansions but like they have like the bare minimum amount of furniture and it’s like 10 people splitting the rent and it’s like so many influencers in general literally do not have close to the amount of money they want us to think they have and I swear they always get exposed too and their fans just don’t care bc they’ll see them driving a nice car.

And like idk it’s so creepy it’s like everyone is such a phoney. That’s why with the Anna Sorokin thing is boring to me. Like she’s not fucking Robin Hood. Like I don’t know it’s kind of just funny how people project is fantasy that she ate the rich and she got back to those no good people. When in reality she wanted desperately to be those people hence why she scammed and probably has been scamming people way before getting access to rich people. Do you really think she’s standing with us poor folk and rooting for us?? Like how do people get that from her story. Like how is she any different from the hordes of influencers who lie about being rich all the fucking time and scam their fans for money literally just so they can keep pretending they’re rich it’s like a weird fucking cycle where you’re literally scamming to be rich and than spend all ur money to prove ur rich and than have to scam again. And like Anna Sorokin is fucking broke now and being deported so like did she really win in the end??? Like how is that not absolutely retaredness to be living off bounces cheques and shit like the point of scamming is to improve your life no? But like u steal $275,000 and rather than just going away in the night and putting that money in a German account somewhere and renting a nice but not opulent apartment somewhere you fucking blow it all on shit so you can post to social media.

And it’s like people think she’s badass because that’s what they would fucking do. Like that’s a problem

[saintanism-archive]

daaaamn aj, back at it again with the long as fuc headcanons !! anyway hi everyone it’s me this is saint he’s a pretentious fuck & my ( really long, sorry, feel free 2 skip them, there’s a tl;dr summary in my bulletpoints so u can just scroll past it ) headcanons and intro stuff is under the cut !

first headcanon. while most houghton parents are doctors, lawyers, and business executives, saint’s always been something of a horse of a different color. his family certainly isn’t unwealthy—he does, after all, live in one of those multi-million-dollar brownstones in beacon hill auctioned by freaking sotheby’s—but they’re certainly neo riche, which can be sort of hit or miss, depending on who you’re asking. saint is not unlike his parents in that they surround themselves with a kind of off-kilter opulence ( sure, that kind of cash value would have bought them a newly constructed sleek mansion in the suburbs, but why go for something new and modern when you could live in a brownstone with over three hundred years of history that, supposedly, one of the founding fathers lived in? besides, you just can’t beat that location—never mind that the brownstone’s been totally gutted and replaced with sleek, modern interior anyway, and definitely not anything that ben franklin or whoever would have touched ) while pretending to eschew materialism and vanity. why else would they live in boston instead of new york or la, right? anyway. saint is the only son of the one and only cordelia st. mercy ( pronounced, unlike saint’s name, the french way—san merci, which sounds hilariously close to ‘sans merci,’ meaning ‘without mercy,’ a joke that is not lost on saint ), a renowned fashion photographer and portrait artist ( think in the vein of annie liebovitz  and arthur elgort ) with a marked celebrity and high art clientele, and also the one and only son of the less elegantly named garrett wallace ( a pen name; his real name is garrett wallerstedt, but his editor and agent agreed that last names that are difficult to pronounce are harder to sell ), whose grisly but artful novels earned him a national book award in 1997, a film deal in 2001 ( the film was a critical and box office success but, in garrett’s opinion, too reductive of his book; ‘pure snuff’ ), and a professorship in the creative writing program at MIT. yes, that MIT, which yes, does have a creative writing program, and yes, it’s a very good one. SO—that’s the pedigree saint mercy-wallace was born into, and it probably explains a whole lot about him. his parents are not and were never married, so he can’t quite say he’s a child of divorce. instead, he spends the school year with his father while his mother travels all over the world, doing her work, though she comes home for holidays and saint’s birthday, and the summers he spends with his mother, dipping his feet into the world of the new york art scene. it was an unusual arrangement, but not a bad one; it was a long time before saint even understood that his family situation was out of the ordinary, but, like, at least he knew both his parents loved him or whatever. they are both pretty emotionally distant and prone to getting caught up in their own work—his father is always focused on teaching or poring over his latest book or invited to give a talk somewhere, for example—but it’s not a bad situation. they’re just more like friends than parents. as a result, saint grew up with a lot of freedom ( more than most of his houghton peers, whose helicopter parents put the weight of the world on their shoulders ) and little discipline, often left to his own devices and trusted with the ability to take care of himself.

second headcanon: ah, yes. the houghton food chain. it’s easy to say saint sits at the dead bottom. like, he’s not even the bugs that get eaten by the birds or whatever. he’s the plant that gets eaten by the bugs. or the soil nutrients that get consumed by the plants—something like that. but the easy answer isn’t necessarily the correct one, and you see, once upon a time, saint sat somewhere near the top. he was never number one, of course, but he was up there, in that little crew of self-proclaimed high school princes and princesses ( quite literally, what with calling themselves windsors and all ). and he fit quite well, all things considered. what, with his pseudo-celebrity family background and his instagram roll full of selfies with models and musicians and actors and that specifically youthful brand of devil-may-care attitude that bordered at times on cruelty—he was a perfect fit for the windsors, his five-story, oft-empty brownstone the perfect venue for their parties and his unconscious need to belong to some kind of family the perfect host for going along with anything that dante and his ilk said. that’s not to make it sound like he was manipulated into it or anything of the sort—he wasn’t. he and dante were good friends—they were all good friends—and like anyone would, saint relished in the perks that came with sitting at the king’s left hand instead of dancing for his entertainment. he was ( and still is ) always the kind of person who gave off an air of not really caring about anything at all, but that’s especially easy when you want for nothing. his life was impossibly easy. too easy, perhaps—exactly what went down that infamous day when saint fell from his high school pedestal remains a mystery. all anyone really knows is this: it was your typical rager at chateau mercy-wallace. the party was going as saint’s parties typically did, so, pretty well, until saint cut the music and ( red-rimmed and wild-eyed, or stinking of about a hundred cigarettes, or with a bloody nose from too many lines of coke, depending on who’s telling the story—it’s morphed a bit over time ) threw everyone out of his house with no explanation. just a party’s over, fuckwads, get outta my house, and some monologue about the bullshit superficiality of high school, of all of them, about how they were all talking in circles and repeating the same lines over and over, but not even their own lines, lines they’d inherited from generations and generations past. it’s equally up for debate whether saint left the windsors or was kicked out, but there’s something of a general consensus that it was in the muddy lines of both. that went down somewhere towards the middle of the end of his junior year. since then? total social pariah. he left behind the lacrosse and soccer teams, opting instead for chain-smoking under the bleachers and cutting class. he’s a mystery, that saint mercy-wallace.

third headcanon: they were friends until they weren’t. they met in middle school and hit it off pretty easily, these two sons of daedalus who feared not the dangers of flying too close to the sun. they were handsome and charming and confident and gifted and the world opened for them—it made it easy to get along. eleven-year-olds didn’t need much by way of substance to start friendships. if you were to ask saint, looking back on it, after that they remained friends out of habit—because they were in the same place at the same time, because they had similar privilege, because they both felt they could do anything and get away with it, because they had similar luxurious sensibilities. it was ( if you ask saint ) what really bonded all of the windsors together more than any other kind of commonality. but, you know. when you wake up—as saint describes it, a waking up—and you look around and you see all this shit you’ve been brainwashed into thinking matters about anything, and you call out the only flimsy common ground you’ve got. well. you’re not going to be friends anymore, are you? after that, saint didn’t harbor any particular resentment towards dante, but he made no attempts to be friendly, often making snide remarks about the absurdity that was the whole premise of the “windsors” and how maybe they all needed to get outside and look at something other than their phones once in a while. he was still fairly shocked and upset by his death—nobody wants anyone to die, old friend slash new enemy or otherwise—but not enough to make a big thing out of it. saint’s had a pretty hard time feeling much of anything these days.

OK THE TL;DR VERSION:

son of a big hotshot fashion/art/celeb photographer ( cordelia aka cordy st. mercy ) and an acclaimed writer, essayist, novelist, thinker, etc ( garrett wallace, who teaches creative writing at MIT )

lives in a big ol brownstone in boston proper, often left to his own devices

his parents are not married to each other so he usually spends the school year w dad and the summer w mom - pls advise if u want some kind of step sibling or “our parents are dating this is terrible!” connection

used to be a windsor ! he was once (in)famously a member of the elite Inner Circle(TM) until he even more infamously had a giant burnout , threw everyone out of his house during a Classic Saint Rager ( he used to be known for throwing parties ), stopped hanging out w the windsors and has been kinda.....weird ever since

i mean don’t get me wrong he was always a pretentious fuck but he used to be better at keeping it inside and like having fun and talking about silly things now he hates talking about basic high school bullshit

his instagram is full of selfies w models and artists and musicians and actors and he only listens to bands you’ve probably never heard of who are “on the up and up”

and also house music and gregorian chants and weird af shit he’s into, like, industrial noise. anyway..........

prides himself on being very fashion forward and forward thinking in general

BIG MESS

literally never says things that aren’t . ridiculous

examples:

“can’t today my existential dread is acting up”

“i only eat squid ink pasta it’s the most melancholy of pasta”

“i can barely navigate the hellish vortex between breakfast and dinner, let alone the labyrinth of the soccer field” ( said when he quit the soccer & lacrosse teams, which he used to play )

does not give a single fuck about anything ever

chainsmokes like u wouldn’t believe catch him on the bleachers during football practice wearing all black and smoking three cigarettes at once it’s disgusting ( lowkey he thinks it looks cool lol what a loser )

reads pretentious af shit like jd salinger and allen ginsburg and the other beats and thinks he’s so edgy. kill him

skips class.....all the time . . . . but has really good grades ? wild

hates everyone and everything that isn’t Elegant

acts like he’s so above all this high school hierarchy nonsense & too cool for it & blah blah but uh

he’s probably just depressed

maybe still gets invited to parties if people forget for a second that he’s a giant fucking weirdo now? but maybe not

i would Love a ferris bueller to his cameron frye but we’ll see

anyway he’s super hard to plot with but you should plot with me anyway

this has been an intro by aj thanks for coming to my ted talk