#very VERY paranoid. it's half superstition and fear for his life but i

[satisaranea]

okay so based off of haymitch ripping his house phone out of the wall, i think he's had several incidents where he's broken certain important things in the house and. did not fix them. the clock's too loud? there's now a knife splintering the middle. looking in the mirror is too much? they're all covered minus the bust-level ones. some are broken! he doesn't own a microwave because the beeping is god awful! the washing machine is in a designated room because if he hears the sound it WILL set him off! like yes he is rich but lavish living doesn't concern him because he is in his own personal hell and money cannot fix what the mentality is tormented by. no, he's not going to see a shrink unless he's forcefully tortured. and all of that is painfully old school.

[ennui-gt]

Here it is. A Piece Of Borrower Content Written Entirely In Stream Of Consciousness:

AN: so this is incomplete and very…needs revisions to the timeline to incorporate some things I added later! It’s the original universe that Mira’s from! I edited it like Slightly to just change Ross’s name to Ross (if u see Max anywhere that’s his old one I just felt like changing it so that’s just him but different. Anyway) Everything's under the readmore tab, cheers!

The Library Fairy:

-

Basic Plot (Chrono, comic starts from human perspective abt the ‘legend of the library fairy’ ig maybe. Nothing here is permanent cept the characterization)

Part A

1- Mira is borrower currently chillin in a college library

2- She lives off of the cafe on the second floor nd reads lots and lots of stuff about everything when the upper floors close (lower floor open 24/7 but upper floors r vacant p much after 12:00 AM)

3- she starts getting increasingly curious about human stuff cos she’s literate nd books r pry neat

4- it starts one night when she spots an unattended notebook and a half eaten blueberry muffin, nd it’s 12:30 so nobody’s coming back in atm (it’s the 80s so no laptops for the plebians quite yet)

5- so she goes ‘welp’ nd takes part of the muffin, then sees the work on the page and goes ‘hmmmm this is incorrect’ so she helps our and leaves notes here n there to point the kid in the right direction and puts down some book refs for further study bcos at this point she’s been there for 2 years and she knows where most things are

6- she stays behind to see if the human comes back for it, hidden in a hidey hole near the desk

7- human comes in, sees notebook, practically melts w relief nd stuffs it in his bag

8- next day human comes back nd leaves nother notebook and a cookie, along w a hidden camera

9- Mira goes ‘o boy, this a trap, innit’

10- Mira then decides ‘eh whatever I haven’t had contact w anyone in years now so I might as well’

11- she steals the camera film nd leaves a lil scrap of paper saying ‘nice try ;)’ on it

12- student comes back, sees paper, goes ‘dammit’, then leaves note addressed to the ‘library fairy’ and another cookie, as well as more of their work for her to help with

13- bout a decade goes by and now the “Library Fairy” is an urban myth, it’s currently 2003 so she’s also wound up on the school’s unofficial Wikipedia page under ‘local cryptids’

14- most library employees know of her but they don’t go looking out of fear stemming from superstitions bout her, somehow the legend grew from ‘can’t be photographed’ to ‘a student once saw her and died that day’

15- there’s now a small shrine devoted to her where ppl bring offerings hoping to get good grades in return, sometimes they will leave papers for her to proofread nd stuff

16- new prof (named Alexei) finds online article thinks he Knows What’s Up bcos he had a borrower friend as a kid, but they left when borrower’s fam found out about them knowing each other

17- he leaves note wedged in one of her secret entrances behind outlet, asking if she can meet w him at some point

18- Mira, already In it, goes ‘Okay. Alright. This has gone on for long enough. Time to go and never return’ but ofc she’s curious as all hell and like she decides she will at least honor the guy’s request for a convo b4 she goes, but on her terms and w/o speaking face 2 face

19- they Talk in the library after hours, bcos he paid off the janitor to let him stay after hours nd most of the student employees recognize him as a prof nd leave him alone

20- they talk again for every subsequent night

21- she uhhhh finally decides to reveal herself nd prays that her hunch was right nd he won’t try to grab her or anything

22- he doesn’t but she’s nervous so she winds up gettin caught in her own climbing rope like idiot, is now dangling from ceiling in tangled mess

23- he stifles chuckle nd she says smthn sarcastic

24- he moves closer and offers to untangle her

25- she’s like ‘please’

26- so he do, but her grip on the rope slips nd he has to catch her

26- so now she’s in his hand and he just sets her down and now he’s a bumbling embarrassed mess bcos he said he wasn’t going to hold her and he just did and o dear pls forgib him

28- nd she’s like ‘dude u just saved my life it’s fine ur fine chill’

29- internally she’s going HOLY FUCK AAAAAAA but externally, her human’s already worked up enough as it is so she’s gotta b the level headed one

29.5- after a while they both kinda get used to each other more, he gets tenure, they celebrate, some more stuff happens, Aleksei got married (not to Mira, Mira hasn’t actually rly thought about being in a relationship w anyone cos she’s laser focused on gaining as much knowledge as possible)

30- eventually Alexei’s like ‘hey so I’m dean of faculty for the biotech branch now uhhhh would u like actual job teaching students? Cos, uh, you can do it remotely thru online lectures n stuff, no in person interaction, and I uh was just kinda wondering—‘

31- she’s like ‘yes. Yes!!! LET ME HELP PEOPLE OFFICIALLY KINDA’

32- so now she’s a professor, and has revealed her Secret a few times here n there to a number of the faculty, nd she has recorded her own findings in a personal journal

33- ‘humans will treat u like a human if they think ur human first. The kids call it ‘catfishing’’

34- enter Ross, an mall goth who accidentally tripped headfirst into a premed program

35- Mira’s favorite field of study is bio so naturally she’s his prof for a majority of his classes

36- being the good boy that he is, he now knows Mira’s secret. There is an Entire Chapter on him finding out and legit just continuing their conversation as if everything was normal bcos he thought that was how he was supposed to handle the situation

37- then she says ‘u can ask questions, u know’ he’s like OH THANK FUCK CAUSE I HAVE SEVEN HUNDRED OF THOSE

38- and now he kinda knows what to look for in terms of ‘do borrowers live here check yes or no’

39-in his apartment, the answer is yes and he mistakenly kinda stumbles upon the mom one night when he wakes up in the middle of the night for Snack and opts to pretend like its not happening. Unfortunately the thing she was trying 2 borrow (piece of crumb cake for Son Boy’s birthday) is the thing he wants 2 eat so he’s like “uh. ‘Scuse me, ma’am.” and he peels back the saran wrap on the other side of the plate, takes piece, nd then leaves some there for her

40-so now the woman is like ‘welp guess it time 2 Leave’

.1- she and husband Talk

.2-they decide it best 2 go

.3-theyre Packing

.4-lil bab Ellie confused

.5-hawk attacke

.6-cut to Ross

41- Ross also happens to work at a bar and he goes outside for a break

43- he finds smal child—smol smal—on the sidewalk and said child is missing an arm, nd has lost a lot of blood, so he’s uhhhhh Losing It highkey

43.5-parents r nowhere 2 b seen, but the hawk is nearby and circling. Ross gets an idea of what just happened

44- he up and leaves work, thankfully his apartment is above the shop so he jumps up the fire escape w the child and

45- he make tourniquet

46- he calls Mira nd asks her 2 come over to ASAP. he’s A Mess at this point

47- it is Very touch and go, kid needs blood, Mira is the only viable donor so she’s just gotta pray that the blood type is fine and won’t kill him

48- and then eventually they manage 2 stave infection thru antibiotics properly dosed to his size, Mira does Math and Prays basically

49- ‘bout a month in, kid wakes up

50- kid doesn’t rember much since he’s only 3

51- hes v scared of Ross at first but over time he gets used 2 the human

52- kid (elliot) starts 2 call Ross ‘dad’ after a while

53- Ross: *internal screaming but in a good way*

54- the end kinda for now

Part 2

A- New Borrowers In The Building

—three of em. paranoid dad, mom, nd daughter that’s Elliot’s age so he’s pumped

B- Elliot offers them a place 2 stay briefly

C- he knows by now bout like, how borrowers don’t typically interact w humans and Auntie Mira’s a bit of a weird case so he just doesn’t tell em bout his dad being the human

D- the kid finds out first nd doesn’t tell the parents, but they figure it out later kinda and think that it’s a ‘o god he’s being kept as a pet’ sitch so they’re >:| abt it

E- they move out and try to take Elliot w them (by force bcos they think he’s brainwashed) but he escapes and makes it to Ross, who’s like “uhhhhhh”

F- and the mom come out the hole near the counter n starts yelling at Ross, who is…kinda used to it since Mira brings in ppl who need help from time 2 time and they typically don’t react well when they’re lucid enough to understand what’s going on. He’s just not used to being questioned about his own kid

G- so they’re like “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING WITH HIM”

H- and he’s like “r…raising him???”

I- and Ellie steps up and he’s like “this is my dad. I decided he was my dad when I was three. He’s being a good parent”

J- and Ross is like “yeah what he said. I’m a good parent.”

K- Ross is riding that high til the end of fucking time but like back to the story at hand

L- this is when the husband comes out nd is like “lissen. wifey. ily but that is a very big human and he hasn’t grabbed us yet so let’s count our blessings and gtfo”

M- but she’s like “uh no we stay until I’m sure Elliot is Safe and fucking Sound”

N- so they stay for dinner nd stick around a little longer.

O- Val (the kid) gets closer 2 Elliot and also Ross a bit

P- Mira shows once or twice, first time she shows up they’re like “oh god it’s the crazy doctor lady this all makes sense now” (bcos Mira does check up on as many borrower families as possible in her free time so word has got around by now Of her, and the number by which to contact her in case her services r needed)

Q- After a month or so, then they decide to leave bcos they’re like “look we get that ur son is ur son and he only has one arm and in our profession that is kind of a death sentence but we can’t have our kid getting used to dealing w humans who know about our existence” so they go and leave on a kind of sour note bcos Ellie can do anything he wants to do just as well as any other borrower Thank You Very Much and Ross is ready to fite anyone who thinks otherwise

R- Elliot starts trying 2 b more independent, basically from now on he’s like ‘I can do everything my Damn Self Thanks’

S- but uh he does it to a point where he’s going out of the way to endanger himself

T- so they get into a fite about it and ross Yells and Elliot is like ‘kthxbye’

U- and the boi just. Fuckin bolts. Runs Away. Ross is a Mess, he starts smoking again (he quit cold turkey the day he took Elliot in) to curb the depression, he’s jus. Not doin good, worried that his son is dead and the last time they talked it’d ended badly

V- FREEDOM!!!1! Except Ellie doesn’t kno how to take care of himself so it’s a rough month or so and then he runs into some other borrowers livin in their own town in the wild ig, chillin, being hella independent, and he’s like “uh yes ofc I will join u, I was w my dad for a while but.........” he neither confirms nor denies that his dad’s dead but everyone kinda just assumes.

Part 3

W-anyway a year goes by and then the borrower group gets hit hard w some kind of sickness ig. Elliot gets it too he’s basically incapacitated n drifting in and out of lucidity. So. They contact the weird crazy doctor lady who hangs around humans, a.k.a. Mira, and she’s like “oh. fuck. I know this kid.” bcos she does, u kno, and she jus treats em all for their ailment and shows them how to make antibiotic poultice thing in case smthn like it happens again. Mold. Penicillin is basically what it is

X-she and Elliot hav a Chat (Mira basically yells at him a lot) once he’s fixed up and he decides he’s gonna visit his dad but he makes it very clear that he is a Grown Up (he’s not, he’s literally sixteen), and he is living on his own now

Y- he agrees to stay for a week tho since he misses his home a lot tbh and Ross is just. Over the fucking moon to know he’s ALIVE, he’s not gonna fuck up their relationship by insisting that he stay. Or like, by keeping him ofc he would never

Z- unfortunately the borrower community put two and two together and figured out his dad’s human so they have his stuff packed up when he gets back w mira, who’s ready to go the fuck off on them

End 1:

-Ellie is living at Ross’s place atm and hopeful about the future basically. He eventually will go off on his own but he’ll keep in contact w his dad and stuff

Part C.5

55- few yrs later

56- elliot is Adult now he does adult borrower stuff

57- he moves out

58- finds nice borrower gf (her name’s Tess)

59- doesn’t tell her about his dad being human but talks about his dad a LOT

60- so when she asks to meet said father he’s just like “uh. Maybe we don’t do that actually”

61- and she’s like “y tho”

62- and he’s like “bcos”

63- anyway she decides to look into it cos she knows he goes to see his dad nd keep in touch but his dad is allegedly “a recluse who lives in the big scary human’s walls to avoid other ppl”

64- which is. Not true in the slightest tbqh he’s def not an introvert he’s just a workaholic and he Is the big scary human

65- anywho they run into Val and her wife and she’s like “how’s Ross been?” And Elliot is acting Very Suspish so she, being Smart, calls it immediately and is like “oh shit u haven’t told her yet have u”

66- Tess: “told me what”

67- Val: “El’s dad is a human, bro.”

68- Tess: “I’m sorry?”

69- this results in a Big Fight and they separate for like, a month. Elliot blames Val bcos he’s being irrational and doesn’t wanna admit to the fact that lying to his girlfriend for over a year was Real Bad Actually, but over time he’s like ‘yeah it’s my fault sry for snapping at u’ cos he works thru his emotions n stuff

70- Eventually gf comes back cos she’s like “ok so. I understand why you lied to me about your dad. It was a dick move but I do get it and I still care about you a lot. I would like. To meet him.”

80- this is a lie she does not want to meet him she is doing this bcos she does not want to lose Elliot and that outweighs the fear of his dad

81- so they go to meet him but she’s just kinda. Behind the wall at first like “that’s a crazy big human this is crazy ur crazy it’s time to gO”

82- Val is also there bcos she hasn’t seen Ross in a while

83- they eventually coax her out of hiding

84- and by that I mean Val picks her up and drags her out into the open by force bcos she basically freezes up the second she catches sight of Ross and Val’s like “u didn’t come all this way for nothing, bich”

85- they have a Painfully Awkward First Meeting, Tess is trying her best but oh god he’s just too fucking. Larg. Ellie ur dad too big

86- tbh tho the ice kinda breaks after Ellie and Ross get into a fight over smthn stupid (im thinking Elliot grumbles bout Ross’s hair being unruly and he’s worried that mira’s using it like a personal storage system again and Ross is like “I’ve been keeping better track of that actually” and then like a little line of paper clips and a few hand-bound notebooks tied together w some string fall out of his fucking mane and he’s like “I can explain”

87- “dad you can’t keep letting her use your hair like a fucking NEST”

88- Tess is laughing now cos god damn this was not what she was expecting

89- that’s it the end it ends w Tess laughing at them being idiots good times r had by all

Uhhhh that’s it so far. I have More but it’s kinda jumbled rn and I need to fit stuff in places. Anyway.

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 1: They Made a Tonic (Transcript) - 18th March 2015

tw: horror, bodily mutilation, blood, disease, death, vampires, pseudo-cannibalism

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Hollywood is… obsessed. Sure, we often think of obsessions like sex, violence, gigantic robots and of course, epic battles between good and evil. But another obsession of Hollywood is vampires. You have to admit though, that there’s a lot to love about vampires. Immortality, wealth, power, and superhuman abilities such as flight and strength. Yes, they come with trade-offs, such as incredibly bad sunburns, but every movie I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot, believe me, tends to show vampires that are fairly happy with their lot in life. My exposure to the world of vampires happened in the late 1990s, when I was in college. A friend of mine recommended the Anne Rice novel, Interview with a Vampire. I devoured that and many of the sequels. They’re fun reads! And they certainly set the tone for a decade or more of vampire-centred entertainment. I won’t touch on the vampires of the Twilight books, mostly because I haven’t read them. But I will say this: those books, however lambasted they have been by critics, have shown that popular culture’s love of all things vampire is as undying as the creatures themselves. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

When most people think of vampires, they envision something that is a purely European creature: a foreign accent, Victorian Era dress, and dark manor homes and castles. It’s a common visual language for most of the western world, so I don’t blame bad movies and books for portraying that image, but it’s one small facet of a legend that has hundreds of expressions. The single most prominent historical figure attached to the modern notion of vampires is of course Vlad III of Wallachia, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler. Vlad was the ruler of a small Eastern European kingdom known as Wallachia. He ruled from 1456 to 1462. He was known as Vlad the Impaler, because he preferred to execute his enemies by impaling them on stakes. The Ottomons called him “Lord Impaler” after entering his kingdom to find forests of impaled victims. Vlad was a violent guy, you see, rather bloodthirsty, you might say. Now he, like his father before him, belonged to something known as the Order of the Dragon, a group established to protect Christian Europe from the invading Ottoman army. Vlad’s father, Vlad II, was known as Vlad Dracul, which meant Vlad the Dragon, from the Order of the Dragon. When Vlad III rose to power he took the hereditary title and was known as Vlad Dracula, the son of the dragon. That name might sound very similar to the most famous vampire story in the world, and that’s because Bram Stoker, when creating his famous creature of the night, used Vlad III as his inspiration. Well, part of it, but we’ll get to that more later.

The roots of most vampire stories can be traced back to superstitions rooted in ancient cultures all across the world. Western Europe played host to countless stories of reanimated dead known as “revenants”. These were animated corpses which climbed out of the grave to torment the living. The word “revenant” comes from Latin, which means “to come back”. And come back to do what, you might ask? Well, I’m glad you did. At first it was just to terrorise the living, but as the centuries passed the legend became more specific. Revenants were said to return from the grave to torment their living relatives and neighbours. What was key though, was that revenants were specific people, not anonymous zombies of our modern horror genre. These things had a past, and a purpose. Now, in Norse Mythology, we can find stories of creatures known as draugr, “again-walkers”, who would return from the grave and wreak havoc on the living. These creatures possessed superhuman strength, they smelled of decay, and they were reported to be pretty ugly in appearance. They could enter the dreams of the living and while they were doing that, it was said that they left tangible objects near the sleeping victims, so that when they woke up, they would know that their dreams were more real than they feared.

Let’s go back earlier than the Middles Ages though. The legends of some ancient cultures spoke of creatures that, while not immediately similar to the vampires we know today, nonetheless share many core characteristics. First we have the Greek myth of Empusa, who was the daughter of Hekate. Empusa was said to lure young men, at night, and then feast on their blood, before moving on to the main course, their flesh. Another Greek tale involves Lamia, a mistress of Zeus, who becomes cursed by Zeus’ wife Hera, and is doomed to hunt children, devouring them. Stories of undead creatures, or creatures that feed on the blood of the living, seem nearly as common as written language itself. I mean, even on the small, isolated island of Madagascar, there are legends of a creature known as the Ramanga, which was known to attack nobles, drinking their blood and eating their nail clippings. Yeah, I said nail clippings. Deal with it.

Are vampires real? I’ll let you make the final decision on that, but what is clear, is that most of these stories find their genesis in the human need to explain the unexplainable. For instance, early Europeans used the myth as a way of explaining why a corpse wasn’t decomposing at the normal rate that they expected. You can see evidence of this in Bulgaria, where graves dating back over 800 years, have been opened, to reveal iron rods that have been driven through the chest of the skeletons. And in a time when it was very common to bury someone that was thought to be dead, only to find out that they weren’t really dead, you can imagine that stories would quickly circulate that the dead were coming back to life. As a result, Taphophobia, the fear of being buried alive, swept Europe and the United States. Now, of course, when medical science caught up, people got more practical. They built alert systems into graves, just in case the person woke up and, you know, wanted out. Now, I realise that being buried alive sounds like a rare occurrence, but it happened frequently enough that many people were sufficiently paranoid about it to actually spend time looking for a solution.

One of these people happened to be a medical doctor, a man named Adolf Gutsmuth. Now, in 1822, and driven by the fear of being buried alive, he invented a “safety coffin” for his own interment, and then he tested it out himself. Tested it out? You bet! Doctor Gutsmuth allowed himself to be buried underground in his new “safety coffin” for several hours, during which he had meals delivered to him through a feeding tube. He enjoyed a wonderful meal of soup, sausages, and a lovely local beer. Sounds like a great date night destination, doesn’t it? Now, Doctor Timothy Smith of New Haven, Vermont, was another paranoid inventor. He created a grave that can be visited still to this day, if you happen to be passing by Evergreen Cemetery, in Vermont. It was a crypt, buried in the usual manner, but it had a cement tube positioned over the face of the body, and a glass plate was affixed to the top of the tube at ground level. Doctor Smith died a real, natural death, and was buried in his fancy coffin with a view. He never woke up, but early visitors to his grave reported that they had a clear view of his decomposing head, until condensation obscured the glass decades later. Side note: vampires no longer scare me. Waking up inside of a small box buried six feet under the surface of the earth is what true fright looks like to me.

Now, another culprit in humanity’s use of the vampire label, was porphyria. It was a rare blood disorder, but modern science has pretty much closed the case on that one, saying that it’s too far of a stretch to connect the two topics. Rabies, of all conditions, has also been used as an explanation for the rise of the vampire mythology. Surprisingly there are a lot of commonalities between them, such as a sensitivity to light and garlic, as well as altered sleep patterns. But the most recent medical condition with a strong connection to vampire mythology was actually Tuberculosis. Those who suffer from TB had no vampire-like symptoms though, and that’s what makes this one a harder connection to explain. It’s also, incidentally, where one of my favourite New England legends comes into the picture. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Mercy Brown.

Lena Mercy Brown was a young woman who lived in the latter half of the 19thcentury, in the rural town of Exeter, Rhode Island, and she was a major player in what is now known as the “Great New England Vampire Panic”. Stories like hers can be found repeated all across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, echoed in the lives of others in similar situations. And the results have surprising connections to both the modern idea of vampires, as well as the ancient stories, as we will see. The first person to die in Exeter was Mercy’s mother, Mary Eliza. That was December of 1882, and she fell victim to what was then called “consumption”. Consumption, because, as the disease of Tuberculosis ravaged the body, the person would appear to waste away; consumed, if you will, by the illness. She, of course, was buried, because, well, that’s what you do with a loved one who passes away. The next year though, Mercy’s sister Mary Olive died, at the young age of 20. Same illness, same symptoms, same process. I’m not sure when exactly the people of Exeter, Rhode Island started to wonder if the deaths were connected , but it might have been then, or it might have been a few years later when Mercy’ brother Edwin took ill. Edwin, though, was smart. He packed up and moved across the country to Colorado Springs, which had a great reputation for the healing properties of its dry climate. When he finally returned from the resorts out west, some years later, he was alive, but not doing so well, and in December of 1891, he took a turn for the worst. That was the month that Mercy herself became ill. Her Tuberculosis moved fast. They called it the galloping kind, and it moved through her body quickly, like wildfire. By January, 1892, she was dead, and the people of Exeter were more worried than ever. You see, they suspected something… supernatural.

Now, this was surprising, considering how close Exeter is to Newport. That’s the seaside city known for the summer cottages of the wealthy, folks like the Vanderbilts, the Asters, the Wideners, the Wetmores. It was the pinnacle of educated society, yet just a handful of miles away, one small town that should have known better, was about to do something very, very creepy.

Edwin was still alive, you see, and someone got it in their mind that one of the women who died before him, either his mother or one of his sisters, was somehow draining him of his life from beyond the grave. They were so convinced of this, you see, that they wanted to dig them all up. Yes, all of them. Once they received the father’s permission to do this horrible thing, a group of men gathered in the cemetery on the morning of March 17th, and began to dig up the bodies. Now, what they were looking for was any evidence at all of an unnatural state. So, blood in the heart, blood around the mouth, or other similar signs. The first body, of Mary Eliza, the mother, was satisfactorily decomposed so they ruled her out. But of course she was, you might say, I mean, she had been dead and buried for a decade. Mary Olive was also in a normal state of decomposition. Again, being dead for ten years usually helps convince people that you’re really dead. But when they examined Mercy’s body, a body that had not been buried because she died in the middle of winter, and so had been put inside of a stone building inside the cemetery that was essentially a walk-in freezer, they discovered a remarkable state of preservation. Shocking, I know. So what did they do? Well, these superstitious folk did what they learnt from their ancestors. They cut out Mercy’s heart and liver, within which they found red, clotted blood, they burned them on a nearby stone, which, by the way, is still there if you ever visit the cemetery, and then, mixed the ashes with a tonic. That tonic was then given to Edwin, to drink. Yeah, Edwin drank his own sister’s liver and heart. Did it work? No, of course it didn’t work. Edwin died less than two months later. What it did do, however, was set up Mercy Brown to be known as the first American vampire.

As unusual as an event like this must sound, you might be surprised to learn that it happened quite frequently. In 1817, almost a century before Mercy Brown’s exhumation, a Dartmouth college student named Frederick Ransom died of Tuberculosis. His father was so worried that the young man would leave the grave and attack the family, that he asked that he be dug up. Ransom’s heart was cut out, and burnt on a blacksmith’s forge. Even Henry David Thoreau heard tales of these types of events, and he mentioned one in his personal journal. In September 26th, 1859, he wrote: “The savage in man is never quite eradicated. I have just read of a family in Vermont who, several of its members having died of consumption, just burnt the lungs, heart and liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it.” So of course, word spread about what happened to Mercy Brown, as it usually did when a body was dug up and carved into to pieces like that. Mercy’s case, though, actually made it into a newspaper called The New York World, and it made quite an impression on the people who read it. How do we know? Because a clipping from that article was found in the personal papers of a London stage manager after his death. You see, his theatre company had been touring America in 1892. He evidently read the story, found it inspiring, and saved it. Inspiring so much so, that he sat down a few years later, and wrote a book. Who was this man? His name was Bram Stoker. And the book? Oh, I’m sure you’ve already guessed it by now. It was Dracula, published in 1897.

Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. You can find a transcript of the show, as well as a bibliography of the source material, at our website, lorepodcast.com. If you enjoy scary stories, I happen to write them. You can find a full list of my supernatural thrillers, available in both paperback and ebook formats, at aaronmahnke.com/novels. Thanks for listening.

Transcriber’s Notes:

(These notes a purely from me, the transcriber, and have nothing to do with the official podcast or Aaron Mahnke).

1)     The word draugr does not in fact mean “after-walker” as the podcast seems to state, and actually derives from a Proto-Indo European word meaning “deceive”. There is, however, a related term aptrgangr, which does mean “again-walker”, and is thought to be pretty much synonymous with draugr.

[beneathmyboughs]

Yuji Final 30 Facts!

[TW for mentions of child murder/Slenderman, PTSD, animal death, emotional manipulation and endgame spoilerish stuff! Wanted to get this out while we still had time, read at your own risk!]

All of Yuji’s Part 1 Endgame posts are lyrics from his character theme, Sakura Nagashi. 

The symbol on his jacket is obvious, but the red symbol on his pants is very reminiscent of the slenderman symbol--a figure notable for taking it’s preferred victim, children, and pinning them to trees.

Piney was stated to be a Japanese Black Pine. Black Pines tend to have their weaker sibling, the white pine, grafted onto them for ensured survival. No guesses about who the white pine is to Piney’s black pine.

Yuji Matsumoto never had a fear of thunder. What he DID have was a crippling fear of loud noises, specifically explosions. He also had claustrophobia and aversion to heat like smoke or steam.

Murders or deaths of Parelthon classmates were all extra hard for him, but specifically Yuka Kagome’s death struck VERY close to home and at times threatened to render him immobile in fear or flashback.

During Yuji and Chou’s times getting to know each other she made a point of establishing her dominance from the very start, including eating whole unskinned pineapples while making eye contact to scare him. It worked.

Yes, they did use DDR to learn how to drift with each other a la Evangelion. Yes, they wore the matching 80′s dance leotards for it. Yes, with the neon spandex tights.

Yuji’s Paranoia (Including rigging his room with indicators in case anyone got in and messed with stuff, his mini traps any time he went into a new room, his general paranoia) predate his Mastermind status. He’s been toting that around since before Hope’s Peak even, having become Piney only due to said paranoia.

The reason Piney even exists in the first place is due to Yuji trying to outrun Yakuza enforcers, thus his immediate fear of anyone related to Yakuza business that he knew of, like Yuka.

Piney lived so lightly, from hotel to hotel with no discernible home address, because he was consistently on the run from both home (so no place to go) and Yakuza (despite them probably having long given up chase). Yep. THAT paranoid.

Yuji took in and cared for Mimi, Ryouji’s cat, after the class’ deaths. She passed away peacefully at a ripe old age while Yuji was grunt soldiering for the Collective. She was a well known and liked fixture of the barracks, with soldiers often feeding her when she came around.

Many of the stranger editions in the second half (The Overwatch statues, the updates to the student logs, ect) were a result of Yuji actively committing to portraying the character of the Collective’s ‘mascot’ as viciously as possible, and keeping the programmers busy coding in new and useless resource drains as opposed to active framing. Making him look like he was actively trying not to be caught was just a bonus.

Yuji genuinely did not know any of the codes aside from his own notebook’s code, nor did he himself have access to the monitoring system Topside had. Figuring out the MM room code was a genuine effort both ooc and ic, though he felt like shit getting congratulated for it.  

Yuji’s habit of rubbing at his face with his hand when stressed is in fact him covering up what he reflexively knows is a giant scar over his eye, as if to conceal or massage it. 

The tiny scar on the left side of his face where Ryouji’s shot grazed him in-game matches his real life scar on that exact same spot where a fellow soldier was shot and killed trying to drag him off the field when he had a flashback and couldn’t move. It further enforce’s Yuji’s belief that ‘These are not Accidents, it’s Fate.’

The giant v scar across his eye and nose, along with the smaller scar on his left cheek, are meant to look like the roman numeral 6 for a DA6 easter egg!

Yuji’s strong rose-tinted nostalgia mixed with the reality of seeing their actions in the murder game after 6 years split his opinion right down the middle. He used Piney to portray his fondness, and his class logs to vent his simmering disappointment. By the time he was shedding the suit the opinions had balanced out, portrayed by Yuji himself, though he still laid it on thick in the logs for the sake of the ‘character’ he was trying to portray.

While circumstances made it so that the room was not used as much, the sim in the steak house had Charmayne as a preset but included everyone on the Parelthon roster with applicable data. Yuji’s spent his steak-night ‘evenings’ pre-death game with hologrpahic Tomokas, Hanakos, Ryoujis, Tadashis, Ryans and more, all with a friendlier tint to them than reality to honey trap Yuji into continuing his resolve to start the killing game.

Should just note this: no account of Yuji speaking to having a crush, in his self narration or otherwise was real in this game. At most he may have had a crush on them back in the day, but Yuji’s level of affection would have been seen as odd for someone without an express reason (like the fact they’d all been his cherished classmates for a year). Crush was used as a stand in, but Yuji’s only nostalgic and not interested in anyone in this class. As he’d say “I’m a Mastermind, not a creep.”

Many of Yuji’s likes and dislikes from his 30 facts are direct references to military superstitions that he started to hold in his 6 years as a Collective soldier.(Numbers 8 and 9)

 The exceptions are disliking Elvis (Club Elvis was the Yakuza run bar he went to to make his payments), hair (he just thinks it’s neat that people can have natural beauty like that despite income), and bugs (he lived with em fine being poor, and grew to like them with Chou’s influence)

Piney starting to act weirdly just before merge was a result of Chou having started communicating with him after getting out of her side of the sim, and making him laugh with their communications that he checked out inside his suit to avoid being seen. Father and daughter bonding time! 

Yuji will continue to insist Piney had nothing to do with the Mastermind business. Often times, AS Piney, he’d flat out forget he was the Mastermind for bits at a time. Yuji didn’t have as much of a luxury once he got out of the suit, since that was by that point the turning point in him believing in the system.

Yuji’s ‘friend fiction’ was a direct continuation of his self-therapy he was using before the killing game went live, where he wrote down either memories or edited daydream versions of said memories to record  his time spent with his classmates.

Yuji’s ‘ulterior motive’ for the game, sans getting his classmates back for admittedly his own sake of mind, was tied in/hinted at with his shrine to the dead in his room. Yuji’s spiritualism is heavily balance and karma based, a give or take, and while usually it’s only supplemental to his way of living the deaths of all his classmates kicked it into overdrive. He considered such a farce as himself surviving an event that had killed everyone else he’d ever grown close to some act of destructive ‘fate’ he’d have to be selfish to attribute to only himself. While he knew the belief would never be accepted as solid science by any of the project team, he was deathly fearful that not addressing the matter would only result in the kids getting revived just to die off again should the matter not be addressed. Therefor, trying to find out what made each of the kids tick and from there pinpoint what element may have played into their deaths wound up being Yuji’s OWN experiment while the death game was being planned. This quickly fell to the wayside as the true intentions of the game became clear, but it has been addressed at least once by Morishige in her videos as she herself utilized the belief he revealed during their therapy sessions to further spur Yuji into accepting the full blame for the murder game.

Yuji’s original name was Yuiji Hatsumoto, but when it was checked with my IRL Japanese friends it was vetoed as ‘just plain not a real name.’ Yuji Matsumoto, however, is so utterly common it’s almost laughably plain. Just the way I wanted it.

Azura sent me over half of the music I have on Yuji’s playlists. My music taste is trash, guys. I’m sorry I never returned the favor Azura, you probably knew all the songs since middle school already.

There were lots of hints thrown in about Yuji being MM, subtle things about how when he panicked he’d start to feel choked and too hot, or the phrasing on the very first post. Going back and reading it all over is an ADVENTURE and what I’m currently mid doing, my dudes.

The FULL list of Yuji’s inspirations are Vincent from Catherine, Shaggy from Scooby Doo (down to the theory of him being a veteran) and Adachi from Persona 4. The last was too much of a spoiler to say, but ‘Lanky and questionable loser’ pretty much chalks it up. His Mastermind/Collective Mascot persona, specifically, was Adachi based.

I only made it this far and did this well thanks to the wonderful mods, back up mods, mini mods and unknowing support of fellow players. I’d  been looking your stuff up and admiring like a fan researching a movie franchise for a year before all this, and it was an unbelievable honor to both enter your world and get to be your guys’ Mastermind. I hope you guys had as fun of a game as I did! You guys rock, and I’m so glad I met you all. Take a breather everybody!