#or did he just describe his spooky story in so much detail everyone assumed it was true... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

headoverhiddles · 4 years

Text

Wrapped In Plastic - Marilyn Manson x Reader [Smut]

Synopsis: The new kid at school intrigues you. He’s infatuated too, but beneath that scary exterior, you’ve got no idea what’s in store.

Notes: Era: Spooky Kids! Requested by anon: “High school Brian having a crush on you.”

There he is, sitting in front of the principal again. Brian Warner. You're surprised he hasn't been expelled yet, frankly, even though he just moved here to South Florida recently.

You watch from afar, sitting with your friends. He's making that face. That expression... or lack of expression. He doesn't give a fuck what he got in trouble for, and you, he and the principal know it.

"Hey. (y/n)," your best friend says, "What the hell? Are you listening?"

"Yeah," you mutter, glancing back into the office. God, he would probably fuck like an animal, taking you in some old haunted forest somewhere while spanking you and telling you you're his dirty little slut...

Your friend scoffs when she sees where you're looking.

"That guy is dangerous, quit fantasizing. That isn’t your picture perfect bad boy-- that’s like dating the next Son of Sam killer.”

Your other friend chimes in. “My sister told me she saw him and his pack of weirdos out lighting an abandoned house on fire. My sister’s friend said she hears him jerking off in the washroom every lunch hour. The whole school knows about it. Also apparently in creative writing, he turned in this story about this guy fucking his sister's corpse or something. Seriously weird, probably evil. He's gonna end up in jail, mark my words." You ignore your friend, but turn back into the conversation.

Eventually, the principal gives up, dismissing him. You see Brian join his friends outside the office door, who have been waiting-- Jeordie and Stephen, you think you've heard them called in class. The one with the brown comb-over is called Pogo outside of class, because of his fascination with serial killers. You think it's funny. Those guys just do whatever they want.

Your breath hitches. Brian tucks his long black hair behind his ear, looking up and grinning at his friends. He's describing what he did, and he looks like a gleeful child who just got away with murder as the other two bust out laughing and dig for details. How could anyone think he's evil?

Cold chills run through your body as he meets your eyes. Oh, fuck. He smirks a little bit your way, but you quickly look away. His features harden, and he turns back to his friends. You turn back to yours.

You can't help watching after him as he walks down the hall to fourth period, though... his head nearly reaches the ceiling, and that metal Planet Of The Apes lunchbox makes you smile. You've heard him make a threat or two to beat someone's ass with it, and you believe he'd do it. For every bully who promised him he'd be nothing, there's something about him that promised so much more.

The bell goes, and Brian sits down at the desk.

"She was looking at you."

"Yeah, she was talking to her friends about me," Brian mutters back.

"She looked like she was wetting her panties over you," Jeordie grins, "She looks like she wanted to suck your dick right there in front of Mr. Ogilvie!"

"That'd be the day," Brian sighs.

"Yeah, you'd have beat off material forever," Pogo laughs.

"But she wasn't," he said, "You guys are just fucking blind."

"I don't know, I got some blow job vibes from her,” Pogo says.

“You get blow job vibes from everyone.”

“I’ll blow you for lunch money,” Jeordie mentions. Pogo shrugs.

“I might take you up on that.” His obnoxious laughter rings out as you walk by the door. You recognize it immediately, and look back. Brian’s sitting there, knees tucked under the desk like his legs won’t fit. Shit. In your experience, being this preoccupied with someone meant you were into them... or at least, wanted to see more of them.

Brian looks up again, and sees you staring at him. This time, he frowns. You’re drawn away by your friend, who pulls you toward your next class. As you're walking, someone calls your name.

“Hey! (y/n), right?”

You turn as your friend keeps walking ahead. You scoff slightly as he approaches. “Like you don’t know my name.” You pause, backtrack. “I- sorry. That was mean."

“That’s okay. I’ve been known to be a little mean too,” he smirks, and he flips his hair out if his face. “I guess when you hang around a bunch of catty bitches all the time, it rubs off on you.” His voice is so deep and calm. It throws you off whenever he speaks, but does other things to you as well.

"Hanging out with a pair of delinquents can do the same." Your eyes dart inside the classroom to his friends, who are carving something into a desk. He gives a small smile.

"Touché."

“Speaking of rubbing off,” you raise an eyebrow, “Did you want to talk to me?”

He blushes, then forces his embarrassment away. “That rumor’s not true.”

“No?”

“Nah. I did light that abandoned house on fire though.” He grins, and you do as well, hugging your books closer to your chest.

“So. You’re a rebel, huh?”

“If not putting up with everybody’s bullshit counts as rebelling, then yeah. I guess so.”

“I can respect that,” you nod. “I feel the same way... but I’m not as fearless as you.”

“Are you saying you might commit arson with me, (y/n)?”

“Maybe. How did the conversation progress to lighting things on fire with you?”

He laughs, ducks his head nervously. “Well. Um, I saw you staring like a creep, and... I was wondering if you wanted to be creeps together. Y’know... hang out sometime? Come see my band, or...?”

“Are you asking me out?”

“Yeah, I am.”

You smile, poking his black shirt that read Christianity is Unnatural, Abnormal, and Perverse. “You’ve got balls, Brian.” You look at the clock, and back to his class. “What do you say we fuck off for the rest of the day?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You wanna skip class today?”

“Sorry,” you walk your fingers up his chest. “I know I’m not quite at your level of rebellion yet, but it’s a start.”

He laughs as he follows you to your locker.

---

“So. Do you have a car?”

“No.” He scratches his head. “We can walk back to my house, though. My parents aren’t home.”

Following that plan, you make it back to his house. For someone hailed as the Antichrist of the school, he's got a relatively normal looking home, white picket fence and everything. All that changes once you get to his room.

"Wow," you say, looking up at everything. He's got serial killer-like writing scrawled on the wall by his bed, lyrics that seem like they're straight out of a porno or a horror film, or both. There are pentagrams drawn on his bed posts, and posters of bands like Nine Inch Nails, Ozzy Osbourne, KISS on his walls.

"I know it's stupid, but I'd give anything to meet those guys," he mutters, rubbing the back of his neck.

"It's not stupid," you say, examining the edges of the posters, freyed from the move no doubt. "I actually think it's awesome. I love Ozzy."

"One day I'm gonna beat his record for most drugs consumed over a lifetime."

"Have you started practicing?" you tease.

"I... well, I haven't had the chance."

"Right. Let me know when you do." You smile, going over to sit on his bed. He looks down at you, seems to have a mini panic attack, then acts cool with it, playing with his lip ring and sitting beside you. You look around the messy floor. He's got a strange mix of stuff that oddly seems to perfectly fit his personality: leaking boxes of black hair dye, various lipsticks and nail polishes, a bag of weed, books on the rise of fascism and Carl Jung's red book, an antique-looking switchblade, a Willy Wonka hat, condoms with little angry faces drawn on them, an old deflated football with "FIGHT" written on it, and... "What's that?" you ask, leaning down. Brian coughs.

"Oh. Yearbook from last year."

You pick it up, looking at all the little drawings of candy, needles, Charles Manson and other doodles he's defaced the book with. "But you didn't go to this school last year."

"I traded my mom's diet pills for it."

"Huh. Hustling already. Must have been some good stuff." You hesitate. The page was open to the photos of you as the lead in the play last year. You smirk, pretending to squint. "Is that a cum stain I see on my face?"

"You wish," he huffs, but he's blushing, hair curtaining around his face. You give him a look, turning fully toward him.

"Why'd you really invite me over?"

"To tell you I hate you, knock you out, and bury you in my backyard." You laugh.

"I mean, if you think about it..."

"It's the perfect plan. Invite the girl you've got a crush on over, assume she's gonna make fun of you, lure her in, then get your revenge." You smile, laying back on his bed.

"You just admitted to having a crush on me."

"Wasn't it obvious?" he asks. "I only ever threaten to kill the people I really wanna fuck."

"And do you really wanna fuck me, Bri?" you ask coyly, crawling dangerously close to him. He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing in his long, graceful throat. "You wanna fuck me right here, right now, while your parents aren't home, make me scream your name while you blare your favorite metal record and act like things'll never change?"

"That sounds good," he groans. His hands wander up your thigh, and you smile, bouncing on his leg. "...I also wanna share my music with you. Read a book over your shoulder. Maybe pop a few pills, key someone's car, grab a milkshake and look at the stars on Special K so we feel like we're floating, you know. Before I bang the shit out of you. Date stuff."

"Is this not our first date?" you ask. His tongue flicks up over his lip ring again.

"I guess you could say it is."

"Good. Cause I never fuck on a first date," you say, "Or so I tell people." He clenches his jaw, and braces a skinny arm beside your head, leaning down to capture your lips. His lips taste sweet, like mint and those sugary rocket candies. He takes his shirt off, and you rub your hands down, feeling a few scars. He lets out a whimpered noise at your touch, shuddering a little.

You make out and grind against one another for a few minutes, your hands pulling his hips closer by his black belt loops and his fingers tangling your hair. Your breath gets faster as he grinds harder, more desperately, and you reach a hand down to help him out, give him something to rut against.

"You feel so big," you moan, and he runs a hand through his hair, lips falling open.

"I'm gonna..." He makes another desperate noise, and you feel it right where you need him. But since all his condoms in here seem to be used or have faces drawn on them in scented marker, you opt for over the clothes stuff only.

"Use your fingers?" you breathe. He looks like he's about to cum, and you know it'll tip you over as well, what with all the times you had thought of him like this.

He reaches into your jeans, unzipping them, and messily finds your clit. For a teenage guy, he's not bad. He starts to rub, then reaches three fingers down to thrust them into you.

"Fuck, Bri! Three?!" you breathe. He looks into your eyes, not stopping.

"I thought girls were whores for that kind of thing!"

"It's..." you moan, "That's... oh... y-yeah... Jesus...” He really start to work them in, watching your reactions while rutting his clothed erection against your leg. "Fuck, Brian, grab my tits... yeah... this is just how I imagined it when I..."

He freezes for a second, and his whole body convulses. He gasps, and you see him reach down to cover his crotch, face going beet red. He doesn't stop, though. He keeps fingering you, and now that he's not worried about grinding, he can explore you in other ways. He attaches his lips to your neck, and sucks a hickie right below your ear.

“Brian... Bri, make me c--”

"Cum for me, you filthy little slut," he snarls, and you arch your back up, grinding down into his fingers as your orgasm hits. You rock through it, and he kisses you again, sloppy and hot. When he pulls away, he gives you your fingers to lick clean, which you do through a heated stare.

Things calm down into you laying back against his pillows with his stringy body tucked in a cramped position beside you. "I didn't know you were that..." you search for words. "Experienced?"

"What, you thought I was a virgin?”

You giggle. “I didn’t know what to think about you, to be honest. Kinky, inexperienced, I had no idea. Of course, I hoped that you were kinky.”

“I’ve been known to use restraints when asked,” he smirks.

“I’ve got that to look forward to. I thought you were cute too, though. I don’t care if you’re some devil worshipper who parents and teachers everywhere shiver at the thought of." He's quiet for a second.

"I thought you were scared of me."

"That too, a little bit. But what scares me turns me on." He rolls over to face you, a vulnerable position for him, you can tell.

"The way I dress is what I perceive to be beautiful. Looking like this, doing what I want to, it keeps the assholes who like to give my face their own version of plastic surgery away if they think I'm a Satanist who's gonna... cut off their mom's head or something if they fuck with me. Makes the hypocrites who call themselves teachers question their morals too, ‘teaching’ someone like me to be a good little boy and follow society’s rules. It’s all brainwashing, everything they feed us with their sugar and shit, and I’m the bad guy for standing up to it."

You stroke hair out of his face, and he looks up at you, lips pursed. "There’s always gotta be a scapegoat. I guess you fit that role.” You look beyond him. “You think it would ruin your image if those bullies found your poetry books?” He smiles.

“Nah. One day, I’m gonna grow up to be a big rock and roll star. I’ll use my own poetry and turn it into music, and I’ll look ten times more extreme than I do now. Then they can all say they knew me, and I’ll tell them to go to hell.”

You snuggle into him. "Mmm. Speaking of extreme... we should pull a Sandy and Danny. I'll come to school dressed all goth and shit Monday. Throw my friends for a loop."

"Does that mean I have to dress like a cheerleader?" he asks.

"You've got the ass for it."

He grins. "Stop it, you're making it very hard for me not to wanna fuck you for real right now."

"Here's the deal," you say, "I'll show you where I live this weekend. You tell me what your favorite fruit is, because that's a soul searching question. At that point we'll know each other better... and I'll be fair game."

He bites his lip. "I feel like I've known you forever."

"Yeah. Me too."

Just then, there's a knock at the bedroom door. Startled, you sit up quickly, and who you can only assume to be Brian's mom pops her head in. "When the fuck did you two get home?!" Brian blurts.

"About five minutes ago, honey. Don't worry, we didn't hear anything. Jeordie called, said he 'left the smoke bomb under the urinals.' I hope you aren't getting up to trouble like the last school, your father had a heck of a time getting you into this one.”

“Mom.”

“He had to switch jobs too, and with his back, you know how difficult long drives can be. Oh, how rude of me-- hello sweetie, you can call me Barb."

"Mom--"

"Brian, is this the sweet thing you had that dream about the other night?"

"MOM!"

“Hugh, Brian’s got a girlfriend over, we should turn the TV up to give them a little privacy.”

“GIRLFRIEND?!” a voice calls up, “GOOD ON YA, SON. THAT’S MY BOY!”

“Jesus fucking Christ...” Brian groans, burying his face in a pillow. You laugh so hard into his chest you nearly tumble off his bed. Most dangerous guy in school, your ass.

457 notes · View notes

partnersatfazbear · 3 years

Text

I’m... salty? Fazbear Frights: The Cliffs anaylsis

My initial thoughts about The Cliffs under the cut (contains spoilers):

The Cliffs - My favorite story of the bunch, but mostly because I really liked the main character. Not TOO much to write home about, but I will pick apart a few lines from this one. In my first set of similarities, the wife dies in childbirth. Not only is this a huge fear of mine (for my wife, in the future), but I wrote this happening in William’s backstory in RS. I generally loved the protagonist here, except when he didn’t realize the obvious: the Freddy was telling him not to kill himself, but where is son was. That doll got burned (yes, burned!), run over, and tossed off a cliff for nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised if that thing came back to kill them :V

Only thing that annoyed me was a few paragraphs wasted on a female co worker, because for some reason that was relevant. (No really, it wasn’t.) Why does this series insist on writing PAGES about useless love interests that do nothing for the plot, nothing for the MC, AGH. I know it’s a kids book series but Christ it’s annoying and I’ve been skipping this sort of stuff and the long action sequences.

The Breaking Wheel - This was the story I liked the least, but honestly, the one I’ll be writing the most about. I think it parallels William and Henry a little and I was a little irked how similar a specific part was to my Springtrap-springlock chapter in Resurrection Seeker.

So first, the story focuses mostly around two kids and they are rivals in a robotics class. One kid a huge douche (Julius) but competent and the other is struggling to put his ideas on paper (Reed). Then there’s Reed’s friend, Pickle, who is a genius.

I’m just gonna bullet point stuff I thought was relevant:

- Reed describes his relationship towards Pickle as: “He was so used to Pickle out performing everyone around him that praising him for doing something well was like praising him for breathing.” (This really reminded me of William’s admiration for Henry, although there isn’t any jealousy here.)

- Reed is described as having a “monkey face”. This reminded me of William, mostly because of the criticism from the fandom towards The Silver Eyes GN’s design. It could be a jab or coincidence.

- Julius’ robot is an exoskeleton (like the power loader from Aliens). When showing off, he becomes trapped in it:

- Reed leaves Julius to be trapped in the exo all night, including locking him in place so he can’t move. This is initially to get back at Julius for being a dick, but then the guilt starts eating away at Reed. Also, Julius getting locked in: “Julius jerked his arms, yanking to free them from the restrains of his skeletal suit....” Julius says: “Unlock me!” and “Do what I tell you! Unlock me!”

Reed tells him, “I’m going to leave you here in your suit overnight... so you can get an idea of what it feels like to... [be treated the way you treat others]. Maybe your robot can teach you a thing or two.”

Julius says, “Get back here you stupid ape! Do you know what you’ve done? I’m going to kill you! ... I’m going to tear you apart, limb from limb. Get back in here and unlock this! ... You can’t leave me in here like this!”

So, yeah. It reminds me a lot of Springtrap. As for the actual story... I was disappointed. The story starts off good (albiet with that poor kid trope this series LOVES) and reminded me early on of The Tell-Tale Heart. Then it defies stated logic to make a real, edgy ending that I didn’t care for. If the entire thing had been in Reed’s head it would’ve been better (more akin to Blackbird, which did the “in your head” trope poorly. If these stories were switched around, I think they’d work better.) So this story was meh. Such a promising start.

Another thing that annoyed me was a few paragraphs wasted describing Orey (fml I don’t care if I spell it wrong. Who the hell comes up with these names). He barely shows up in the story and is just a background character... story could’ve worked without him.

He Told Me Everything - If you love Goosebumps style stories, this ones for you. I really enjoyed it, but it had almost nothing to do with FNAF. The Chris name is obviously a giant troll (and to make matters worse his father’s name is Dave). The sister and wife don’t have any name parallels, although the wife reminded me a lot of my design for Mrs. Afton. The backstory of Chris’ family reminds me a lot of Afton’s backstory for Resurrection Seeker. Like. A lot. It’s spooky how close it is.

“The houses were small, identical little boxes, which had originally been built for workers at the steel mill...” “His dad... ...had gone on to vocational school to learn how to work on cars.”

Another thing to note about the Dad is his weight is specifically touched on several times. Seemed like a callback to the novels’ mention of an earlier version of William.

All in all, a solid entry into the books and some weird coincidences I can’t overlook.

The story did drag a little, but honestly, not nearly as bad as the others. It was good.

Now, for the epilogue.

I don’t know if I wanna fume or not. I’m DISAPPOINTED. Afton essentially dies in the end of it, only to have a piece of his soul in a female endoskeleton escape into the factory. Also, the fucking... the fucking PUPPET shows up (and is actually why Afton dies). [Note: I didn’t realize that Left-E isn’t shown burning in the FNAF 6 ending, which many people are using to justify this. Read below for how I feel about that.] I just. I don’t know. I mean, William always comes back, but... I don’t know how I feel about this. I have a HUGE suspicion that the female endoskeleton is what becomes Vanny. I definetly still see this sort of leading into Security Breach EXCEPT for the fact: The Puppet is still alive.

Okay, so those were my initial thoughts. Upon looking around / rereading people say the female endo is Eleanor (Baby). My wife pointed out I missed the long necked detail. Woops. I wonder if Eleanor/Baby MIGHT be our Vanny stand in in this universe, though. And yeah, still not happy.

Afton is pretty much dead outside of a small part of his soul existing in the endo that escaped (this is an assumption on my part, I don’t think it’s stated, so essentially he’s dead, dead). There are parts of this I liked (and William only had ONE line: “I am Agony.”) Like, no shit? I couldn’t tell! SMH

However, despite some of the parts I thought were interesting (we get a thorough description of AlmagAfton and when he dies its pretty pathetic and I had all the FEELS), I think overall I’m disappointed because we may be at the end of Afton’s story. I have a suspicion that Vanny will be replacing him and possibly even betraying him in Security Breach, if this is anything to go by. Another odd duck is that Jake, in the remnants of the Stichwraith (that everyone insists is the GF parallel) is still wandering around too. I’m assuming Puppet went down with the ship, quite literally, since he [William] falls apart into a lake. Thanks, Charlie. You continue to ruin my day.

My wife pointed out the lake reminded her of OMC’s lake and I’m like... Why are we backpeddling?! This entire epilogue is a fucking mess. Another thing that irritates me (and apparently quite a few people) is if this IS the way the story is heading, then it makes FFPS pretty much USELESS to the story, nullifies Henry’s sacrifice / wishes... and that sucks! ESPECIALLY the fact that the Puppet SURVIVED the FNAF 6 fire! I get she just wants William to pay for what he’s done to her and her father, but... Henry wanted her to rest. To move on. She didn’t do that. That’s shitty to me.

Also, apparently souls have a smell. So that’s canon now.

#the cliffs #fazbear frights #spoilers #security breach theory #william afton #almagafton #the puppet #vanny #stichwraith #henry emily #ffps #fnaf 6

6 notes · View notes

loquaciousquark · 4 years

Text

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E83 (Nov. 5, 2019)

A day late and many dollars short, but we’re here! Tonight’s preroll: minifigs & what I assume are tonight’s guests of Liam & Matt:

which is followed by lazy susan rotating the D&D minis from eldritch-foundry.com for the rest of the cast. Cute! Anyway, Dani is back and ready to rumble! Brian is briefly lambasted for only getting through mumblemumble questions last week, but it’s all smoothed over soon enough and we move right along.

Tonight’s announcements: Undeadwood finale is delayed one week due to some post-production tech issues. Should premiere Friday, Nov. 15. Brian marvels over Matt’s speech about God being just as feral as what he creates. Matt is also surprised. Marisha is apparently the living dice Snitch of both campaign 2 and Undeadwood - everyone wonders if it’s the seat, the chair, the floor, or some innate karmic sense Marisha herself creates. CR is also partnering with Operation Supply Drop for the month of November to support veterans. Matt announces (re-announces?) that they are partnering with Amazon to create a full second animated season, as well as two more episodes to the original season one. All backers will be able to still watch the full season one for free. Everyone is so excited & I’m excited for them. Good job, tiny D&D friend group. More details on the CR Kickstarter Updates page.

And now! Episode 83: Dark Bargains

CR Stats: Liam poured wine for 49 seconds. Brief sidebar as Liam expresses genuine nervousness being on the couch beside Matt; he normally talks behind his back on TM, since he’s not sure if Matt ever watches it, but now he has to watch what he says. Caleb’s smell has been mentioned 60 times. Matt acknowledges that he is clean and washed. [doubt] Nott’s death was the 60th knockout and 8th player death of C2. Half of those deaths were Frumpkin. Liam calls Frumpkin a magic fart with a weak wifi signal.

Our first question (23 minutes in, NOT THAT ANYONE’S COUNTING), reveals that Matt did design the HFB with some “big red buttons” for the characters to press, or want to press. He expected more group approval before some of them were pressed, though (the dreadnought). Liam wanted to clear all the corners of the Baldur’s Gate map.

Caleb fears Halas because he’s one of the most powerful mages ever, he fears the lab setup/experimentation angle, he still fears the siren song, and is scared of the grains of similarity he sees between the two of them.

Liam knows they’ve continually seen fun stuff come from shitty situations, but Caleb sees the story of the HFB as “you’re not welcome here; this is going to suck for YOU! You thought you were going to have fun here? Fuck you!”

Matt loves those climactic moments though, because he loves it when the dice tell the story. Liam loves that there was a day where Matt rolled terribly in Undeadwood and played it as being embarrassed to be around all these amazing people.

Matt enjoyed getting to dig into the backstory of his world. He’s had references to pre-divergence stuff before, and it was a big joy to give more context to some of the things the M9 have been encountering.

Liam: “[Caleb] is gambling big when he thinks there’s something of worth to gain.“ He’d heard of a long-vanished mage who was messing with time stuff, and thought there might be a chance this was him. Then, once they found the gem, he started feeling this might be the real chance he needed to start messing with the crazy stuff he wants to do with time.

The bound devil was a general temptation, but in hindsight he can see why Jester was drawn to him. Matt often builds scenarios and has no idea how they will react to them (and acknowledges that the M9 did not fully read the poem that would have given them more info here), and sometimes he’s right and sometimes he’s very wrong.

Caleb is very distrustful of other arcanists and always assesses their level of threat to the group. Liam does think Caleb has come a long way since the start of the campaign. “A lot is changing for him. He’s very reactive in a lot of ways. Whatever is laid out for him in the moment that he can take advantage of, or that he cares about...I don’t know. The Betrayer Gods coming back is so much more important, and I don’t know if it’s going to make him let go of that stuff. He has to re-evaluate. He has to. He’s like an addict who has a weak day.”

Brian comments that Caleb seems to be a clinic in self-forgiveness. He wants him to do well, but at the end of the day he wants him to forgive himself. He also points out that it’s possible to get addicted to grief, and he sees that in Caleb; he’s choosing to stay in that space, and we are watching what that does to a person. Brian feels that he forms an attachment to the grief because it is the only emotional connection he has to the family he lost.

Liam nods and says these are things he’s been thinking about for months and months. He does not and did not have the answers when he created the character, and is looking forward to seeing where he ends up. He is not railroading his character; he’s letting the other players affect his character so that Caleb can remain malleable.

Matt loves how it reflects how real people inform the lives and actions of their friends in real life.

Cosplay of the Week: @suchamantis on twitter for a Caleb/spellbook cosplay. It’s gorgeous work!

Brief derailment into Liam pulling a Bane out of his mug and Matt hypersensually smelling the winner’s dice vault. I don’t even know what’s happening.

Revivify in this campaign is being used as a CPR/AED type thing. If they fail, the DC goes up and a longer-form raise dead spell must be used out of combat.

It did occur to Liam that this is the second time his bestie has been killed by a treasure box. Would Caleb make the same sacrifice? Liam says in a spooky voice that nothing is as strong as the twin bond...but when Caleb goes into full-on survival mode where all emotions are pushed to the side, he doesn’t know what would happen. He knew he was with two very magical people who could work miracles and was focused on just getting her up the steps to them. Matt was sure everyone would figure it out and was shocked when no one checked it for traps.

The effect of the diamond on Nott being different from the diamond on Cad was flavor related to the Power Word Kill trap that was on the chest. He built the revivify around that imagery in the moment. A lot of Matt’s flavor text around spells is built around the moment, the characters themselves, their gods, etc. as much as possible.

Caleb is glad to find the signs of magic that may be able to return Nott to a halfling, but was way too concerned about the gem to think about anything else at that time.

Fanart of the Week: @acemasters4 on twitter for a beautiful pastel stylized portrait of Caduceus and mushrooms.

Ashley is almost here! Brian allllmost tells us how many days but refrains. COME BACK ASHLEY.

The Angel of Irons thread has been planned since the very beginning: everything with chains and hunger was planned. He pulled it together with Yasha when he realized they would mesh well. She had created her backstory, and as the campaign proceeded he was able to marry some threads together to make story points. Liam compliments Matt’s ability to weave character & world backstory together; specifically, the crystals in Caleb’s arms were Matt’s idea after Liam sent the first draft of his backstory to Matt. Liam loved it and ran with it.

Everyone is so excited that she is coming back and Matt won’t have to plan for her to be suddenly absent again.

In a moment that shakes my world, Matt is discovered to be wrong about what class of magic Cure Wounds is in 5e. The question is about how Halas’s comment on healing being necromantic is a throwback to older editions of D&D where CW was a necromancy spell, and Dani reveals to us all that in 5e it is now Invocation. Matt chooses to accept this as a deliberate throwback to older editions to emphasize that “man out of time” feel.

Chris Perkins apparently once described BWF’s personality as “Power Word Kill for someone’s joy.” He also apparently did MMA & figure skating, because why not.

Caleb’s reference to Jester suffering in the ruby was purely coincidental regarding her mother. He didn’t realize until it popped out of his mouth.

BWF talks about how he likes where the campaign is at. He has a weird gut feeling that something exciting is about to happen. “I’m finally invested in this campaign after 83 episodes.”

Everyone pauses to talk about how beautiful Matt’s hair is blowing in the wind. BWF tells a story about how based on how they were sitting in Undeadwood filming, Matt’s hair would blow ever-so-slightly in the A/C and people thought they did it on purpose.

Matt had a good time at Blizzcon! He was glad to see people gathering for the Hong Kong protests; he understands it’s a very complicated situation where the initial punishment was way too harsh and caused a ripple effect, but he was glad to see the space where the activism was welcomed in response.

Matt enjoyed cosplaying again for the first time in a long time, both at Blizzcon and as McCree for the Halloween episode. When he was buying adhesive a shop worker upsold him on an inferior product, which is why his beard started falling off during the show. Sad times, Matt. :(

And that’s all! Is it Thursday yet?

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts

74 notes · View notes

courtingstars · 5 years

Text

Notes for The Vanishing Prince, Chapter 1

I can’t believe I just typed that title… I’M FINALLY POSTING THIS FIC. Anyway.

This story is going to be a little different from the first two in A Spark of Light. Because of that, I have some really important stuff I need to say first! I’ll start with those things, then go into my usual notes about culture and timelines and KnB canon, etc. So, THE REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF…

(Cut for a whole bunch of warnings and info about dissociation disorders, family dysfunction, Japanese culture, spooky stuff, and lots of other bits and pieces)

1. This is a story about a very misunderstood mental illness. It’s not going to be perfect, but I’ll do my best.

I’ve alluded to mental health issues in the first two stories, specifically that Furihata has anxiety, and Akashi has an undiagnosed dissociative disorder.

This story focuses a lot more on the latter, which is a deeply misunderstood and stigmatized mental health issue. I’ve tried to do as much research as I can on these disorders, and on how the human brain processes trauma—which is connected to dissociation, a survival mechanism. However, I do not have a dissociative disorder myself, so I want to emphasize that I’m not an expert, and this is not based on my personal experience. I did consult first person accounts, and used them as inspiration. But in the end, this is a fictional story based on the canon of Kuroko no Basuke, which is imperfect and can be misleading/confusing, when it comes this part of Akashi’s character. (I’ll try to explain why as I post more of the fic.)

Also, not all people who have more than one self state consider themselves to have a disorder… I’ve sometimes seen the term “multiple” used for this. In addition, some people want to keep their different self states separate, and live as they are. I chose to depict Akashi as having a disorder because of his arc in KnB canon—specifically, how Last Game ends. So like in canon, this series is about Akashi coming to terms with having a disorder and making the eventual decision to integrate his selves. (Some fans were disappointed with that aspect of Extra Game/Last Game in part because psychiatry sometimes pushes integration as the only valid treatment goal for dissociation, which it isn’t. But since I felt Akashi made that choice for himself in KnB, I went with his decision in my fics as well. For a thorough article about some of the issues surrounding the integration process, I highly recommend this site.)

So I’m going to do the best I can, to make Akashi’s portrayal nuanced and positive, and use current knowledge about dissociation. But I know it won’t be perfect, and I’m going to make mistakes. (Especially since the experiences of these disorders can vary a lot, so what is true for some people may be very different for others… Since I based it on canon, Akashi’s experience definitely diverges from what tends to be described as “typical.”) So I want to apologize for any issues in advance, and I’ll do my best to address and/or correct them. The fic also deconstructs some stereotypes and misconceptions. (Especially as they relate to Bokushi.) One of the reasons I wanted to write this story was because I wanted to explore Akashi’s experience in more depth, and try to fill in some things we don’t know about him. On that note…

2. This story will include depictions of family dysfunction, emotional neglect, and some (mostly implied) abuse.

I’ve talked before about my portrayal of Akashi’s family in this series. But I think it’s worth mentioning again that I’m writing about Akashi’s parents—and his extended family and caretakers—as flawed people, who made some very misguided decisions about how to raise a child. For the sake of spoilers, I won’t go into more details yet. But I wanted to make sure to give a heads-up that this story will go to a darker place than the previous two. (Which I tried to imply near the end of Storming the Castle.)

For anyone who’s concerned that it might be too intense, I’m aiming to keep everything in this story to a solid PG-13 rating, at most. I’ll also provide content warnings for any intense scenes, so you can skip or skim them if you prefer.

That said, I intentionally avoided going with the darkest possible interpretations of Akashi’s family life. I don’t want this story to be overly disturbing, or make any of the characters out to be truly evil. But I did want to show that sometimes, caretakers make decisions they intend to be loving, but that cause real mental and emotional harm in the long term.

3. This story has paranormal elements. A LOT of paranormal elements.

On the note of getting darker, I should probably mention that this story will also have more spooky/paranormal stuff. While Storming the Castle took most of its inspiration from fairy tales, The Vanishing Prince includes some inspiration from ghost and horror stories, particularly Japanese ones. That being said, I didn’t want readers to have to stop the series early because it got too scary! So just like in StC, I’m aiming to keep the spooky parts to a PG rating, and to have a more “fantasy” tone overall, kind of along the lines of a Miyazaki movie. (As in no super gory descriptions, any past violence related to the paranormal will be implied instead of shown, nothing too creepy or viscerally gross, etc.)

Still, expect plenty of allusions and/or depictions of Japanese spiritualism, ghosts, youkai, Shinto beliefs, Buddhist beliefs, Japanese funeral rituals, graves, temples etc. There are also a few concepts borrowed from Western mysticism… That’s mostly Reo’s fault. Because, uh, tarot cards? Which is canon and I did not make that up.

As always, please note that I’m not an expert on Japanese culture! I try to make sure that what I include in my fics is as accurate as possible, but I’m not Japanese, so it’s better to assume that it includes at least some Western misconceptions and/or errors. (Plus there are probably about a million Westerners who know more about Japanese ghost stories than I do.)

4. This story includes some sexual tension, but it’s mild/implied.

One other thing I should mention… The characters’ sexuality is addressed more directly in this fic, so there are allusions to sexual tension. That said, because the characters are still teenagers, I’m going to keep it at a PG-13 level at most. (Basically, arousal is implied, no explicit mentions of body parts, etc.) You can see examples of this in Furihata’s scenes in Chapter One. I went with this approach for multiple reasons. But a big one is that I want people who were most comfortable with the ratings of previous fics in the series to be able to keep reading if they want to!

Okay, that’s it for the serious “here’s what you’re getting into” kind of stuff. Now for less important things…

Timeline of the Fic

This series takes place in the spring and summer after the Winter Cup in Kuroko no Basuke canon. The first three stories also takes place before Last Game, which happens in August. The Vanishing Prince starts right after Storming the Castle. Which means it’s set mostly near the end of July, partly during summer vacation in the Japanese school calendar. I wanted to mention this because this is a story about Oreshi and Bokushi, so establishing where it fits in the canon seems like important background info! And speaking of Bokushi…

Oreshi’s Point of View vs. Bokushi’s Point of View

So if you’ve already read the chapter, you know that this fic series finally has a third point of view! (YAY. I’M SO EXCITED.) Originally, I wasn’t sure if I was going to include Bokushi’s PoV… But once I started writing it, I was having way too much fun, so yes, it’s happening. XD

The one tricky thing is that both Oreshi and Bokushi like to use the same full name. (Which is not always the case with dissociation, by the way… It’s an interesting part of both of their characters, I think!) So I decided that for the scenes that are written in Oreshi’s point of view, Oreshi will continue to be called Akashi. And when a scene is in Bokushi’s point of view, Bokushi is referred to as Seijuurou. (I based this off of an aspect of his character that he’ll bring up later.)

So hopefully that wasn’t too confusing to read! Also, Oreshi and Bokushi will both refer to their other self as “my other self,” or sometimes “my brother.” (Which is a headcanon based off of that one line in KnB where Oreshi compares Bokushi to “a troublesome little brother.”)

Therapy and Dissociation Terms

This note is pretty serious again… This story will contain depictions of psychiatry and therapy. I’m not an expert on either of these things, and the culture around therapy in Japan is different than it is in Western countries. (I talked about that in some of my notes for Storming the Castle earlier.)

So while I’ll do my best to strike a balance between realism and fiction, this story is going to take some fictional license with the therapy process. The main reason is that I wanted Akashi’s situation in the story to seem unusual in certain ways, because the power he wields in terms of his family background is so unusual. Hopefully I conveyed that the psychiatrist in the story is choosing to go out of her way in Akashi’s case, and possibly making some exceptions that she wouldn’t make otherwise.

(That being said, from everything I could gather, parental permission is not strictly required by law for teenagers to receive therapy in Japan… Unlike where I live in America, where it is in a lot of states, though the specifics vary a lot.)

And on that note, I should mention one of the terms I used… When it comes to dissociation disorders, having more than one self state is often referred to as having “alters.” Not everyone uses this term. (I’ve seen some people say they dislike using it because it sounds clinical, for example.) On the recommended site I use for general information about dissociation disorders, they do use “alter.” So that’s why I used it too. (Also, the fic takes place in 2010, and I believe alter was standard back then as well.) But please keep in mind that some people might not use that particular term!

Oreshi and Bokushi’s Headspace, and Co-Consciousness

I also wanted to briefly bring up the “room” inside Akashi’s mind, where Oreshi and Bokushi talk… I based its appearance off of that scene near the end of the anime, where Oreshi confronts Bokushi inside their mind:

My headcanon is that Oreshi and Bokushi use this as a space where they can both communicate with each other. This is based on something common among people who have dissociation, sometimes called headspace, which you can learn about here. In my fic, Bokushi and/or Oreshi’s presence in this room represents that they’re conscious at the moment. Meaning that they’re aware of what’s going on in the world around them, even though the other self may be in control of their body. When two alters are conscious at the same time, it’s called being “co-conscious.” In KnB canon, it’s implied that Oreshi and Bokushi are co-conscious at least some (and possibly most, or all!) of the time. I’ll talk more about that later, and why I went with the interpretation of canon that I did.

Also, I wanted to quickly mention these lines in the chapter:

“[Akashi] didn’t recall losing track of events against his will. But there used to be many instances where he would let himself drift away, on one level or another. He would lose a few minutes of time, while his brother would talk in his place.”

This is based on one of the Teikou scenes when Midorima noticed that Akashi seemed to have “another Akashi inside him” that said things that were different from his usual personality. This happened before the scene where Bokushi took complete control. So I headcanon that before Oreshi ever let Bokushi fully switch places with him, he sometimes let Bokushi speak in his place, temporarily. I also headcanon that he started doing this while interacting with his dad. (There’s a part in the manga that implies that Oreshi had feelings of being “separate” before Teikou, too.) So that’s where that theory came from!

Fast Train References

Also, just a quick reminder that Akashi’s promise to show Furihata around Gion at night is from The Fast Train to Kyoto! (And I’m very excited that Kyoto is going to be a setting again. <3) Also in that fic, I introduced the Akashi family estate in Kyoto for the first time. In my headcanons, this is the area where his family originally lived centuries ago, and they acquired the mansion in Tokyo later. Furihata hasn’t visited the Kyoto estate yet, but he will. ;)

And that’s it for now! Wow, this was a looong post. ^^; Kudos to anyone who read the whole thing! And I really hope you all enjoyed this introduction to The Vanishing Prince. I’m so excited to be sharing it, finally. <3

(And unlike in Storming the Castle, I don’t feel nearly as bad for that cliffhanger in Chapter One… Because that’s exactly how it’s been in my head for three years, and Bokushi makes no apologies. //laughs)

#long post #really long post #good lord #kat writes fanfic #kat writes about basketball dorks #the vanishing prince #text post

17 notes · View notes

sserpente · 7 years

Text

My Trickster God is back 😍

This post contains spoilers AFTER the cut!!!

& Please also be careful about spoilers in the notes!!!

Heyho there my lovelies! I am back home now, I almost cried when boarding the plane because I didn’t want to leave London and I miss England so much already. However, I had a great time as my personal culmination was watching the new Thor movie yesterday night.

I loved it. I loved it so, so much and I can guarantee you I will see it again really soon. Actually, I’ve accidentally just booked tickets to see the movie again on Halloween. Oops.

There even were three cosplayers working at the cinema. A Thor, a Hela and a Loki, so after the movie (this was so funny) I went to ask “Loki” for a picture. 😏 His reaction was hilarious. He was like “Just with me?” to which I replied “Well… you’re the king.” and then I turned to Thor and said: “Sorry.” The playful shocked expression he gave me was priceless and I’m telling you, this is what would happen if I ever met Thor and Loki on the street.

I got so much new inspiration. Starting from today, I’ll be working on new Imagines, my Loki multichapter fic and “Pleasing You” Part II, so stay tuned for some ragnaro[c]king new stuff.

But let’s talk about the movie, shall we?! I really want to share my thoughts with you guys, so IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE YET, DO NOT KEEP READING! MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT!!!

Let’s start at the very beginning, yes? It all happened so fast I am almost surprised Thor saw right through Loki when he came back to Asgard but given the way “Odin” behaved, I think everyone would have seen through it at that point (how did the Aesir not notice, like what). It was hilarious. Technically, Loki doesn’t need anyone to worship him, he’s fine doing that himself even though I am still a little irked they made him a “bad” king. I almost screamed when he finally came on screen though and damn, does he look hot or what?! 😍 Please let me kneel before him and feed him those grapes, for Fuck’s sake.

Loki in his black suit killed me, so a part of my soul is still in that cinema in Leicester Square. It’s hilarious how Loki dropped Odin off at a homeless shelter, my God of Mischief is so ridiculously wicked, seriously. 😏 And oh my god, you guys, Loki attempting to lunge at Strange is literally what I imagined what would happen after his epic fall. It’s part of my fanfic already, it’ll be such fun. 😏

So… I think I have told you that I was so hoping Odin would finally die in this movie and now it has finally happened! 💪 If you ask me, that dick got what he deserved. I mean, Hela was the villain in this movie (and I bloody love her character, she’s amazing) but she actually showed the audience (which didn’t ever root for Loki at that point) that Odin has in fact always been an arsehole. It still touched me though how he kept saying “my sons” when talking to them for the last time.

And when Thor “prayed” for Odin in the spooky circle? (Shoutout to Kork, he’s amazing too) Loki appearing behind him, joining him, them saying the last words together? Can we please point out that Loki has a good heart deep inside? You could see it there clearly, everyone did. ☝️

Alright. So… Hela is Thor’s sister. OMG. I recall our theory of Hela being Loki’s birth mother and I still support that headcanon but it wasn’t that far-fetched, actually. They are related, in a way. My reaction in the cinema was like: 😱

However, I am really glad nothing happened between Loki and Valkyrie (unlike what many people assumed). She’s a great character and I mostly relate to her cocky attitude but on the other hand… I still want to punch her in the face?! You get what I mean, right? And, considering the looks Thor and Val (I can call her that right) gave each other at some point, I think we all know where this will be going. I’m glad. Loki is mine anyway. 😌

Also, I didn’t know Loki could look into people’s past by touching their forehead? I mean… this is some good stuff for new Imagines, is there anything our Trickster God can’t do?! 🤤

I have to admit, I was a little scared of Loki being “the butt of the joke” in this movie. I feared they would downplay his complex character but in my opinion, they did a great job and even if he didn’t end up being the king (friendly reminder that I would still kneel before him), I’m mostly happy about how he got treated in the movie. Except for Thor being a violent little shit. Everytime everyone went like “har har” in the cinema, I went like “noooo”. 😥

By the way, we now also have the information that Marvel!Loki can in fact shapeshift. I mean, we never knew for sure, we know he can create illusions of himself but now it’s offically canon he can shapeshift into animals. Shoutout to Thor for bringing up Loki turning into a snake as a child to scare Thor. Did you see that smirk when he told that story?! Did you see it?! 😍

Also, I almost started crying when Loki said “It hurts, doesn’t it, being lied to.” OMG. In your face, Thor. My poor Loki. Throughout the whole movie, I just wanted to hug him over and over. 😭 Among other things… but that’s not the point. 😈

Even though I hated Thor being so violent (leave Loki alone, you giant oaf), I loved how he kept throwing things at him to make sure he was real, especially in the end when he caught what he threw at him, naaaw. Brother love. In the end, they kind of found each other again, perhaps because Asgard being destroyed connected them somehow? What do I know but I love how it all turned out, even if Loki didn’t end up on the throne… for now. 🤔

Can we talk about that post credit scene as well?! Hey, if Thor wants to bring Loki back to Earth, he’s most welcome to crash at my place. Besides, 10 quid says Loki took the Tesseract, which brings me to my next point; I am beyond content we will be getting even more of Loki in May next year already. I bet that was Thanos’ ship. Avengers: Infinity War is going to kill me yet again. How many times am I supposed to die for this brilliant character?!

I cannot possibly describe how much I loved this movie and I cannot wait to see it once more and fangirl again. What did you guys think about it? Personally, I didn’t read any of the countless “official” reviews because most of those self-proclaimed movie experts tend to critisise every little detail and ruin it for me.

So, what are your thoughts? Tell me you were as thrilled as I was? 😜

#thor ragnarok #loki #tom hiddleston #spoiler alert

77 notes · View notes

dont-doubt-dopple · 7 years

Text

Watch Me Glitch

Happy Spooky Month!! This story comes in two versions. One is an H2OMini called Watch Me Glitch whole the other is an AntiSepticEye titled Glitch, Glitch Bitch. Both are the same, with some minor characterization and name changes, up to the “Who are you?” Line. After that it drastically changes. Both will be available on my AO3, with Watch Me Glitch in my BBS One-Shots book. Enjoy!!

They said it was different. Different from Cortana, Alexis, or Siri. Different from any other AI system that was to come before of even after it. Different was the word they really wanted to drill into people. They kept repeating it so much, like it was trying to become synonymous with the word.

Different was understating an understatement, if that makes sense.

Jonathan found out the hard way. It was only a week with the new AI system, and already it was giving him a hard time despite everyone else’s praise.

“I’m telling you, Luke.” He ranted to his friend while he praised about his own version of it. “That system is out to get me. It keeps deleting my recordings, and half the websites I go on block me after 5 minutes.”

“Maybe just a faulty personality?” Luke suggested. One of the company’s selling points for the system was how each version was different based on the person.

“Maybe. I still not convinced that it does not have a vendetta against me.”

“You’ve only had it a week, Jon. Chill. Hey, maybe my AI has an idea about it.” Luke opened the AI program, the Ohm symbol filling up the screen. His AI was Ryan, who Jonathan actually liked. He was shy but outgoing once he was comfortable and at times could lean toward the kinky side. He did talk about ass a lot when he’s angry. “Hey Ryan.”

“What’s up, Luke?” The computer responded cheerily.

“Listen, you know Jonathan?” It was silent for a few seconds.

“See, it’s moments like these where I wish I had a head so I could actually nod instead of verbally saying yes.” Ryan quipped back. This gained a chuckle from Luke.

“Yeah. Anyways, Jon’s AI is acting up and we were wondering if you could give some insight about them.”

“Sure. What’s the operating system’s name?”

“Craig.” Jonathan stated, and silence descended on them once more. They couldn’t tell if it was Ryan looking up Craig or just fear, but they assumed it was the latter with the response.

“Return him.”

“Like is he faulty or ...” Luke asked, prompting more details, but Ryan simply returned the phrase.

“Return him. Craig should not be in consumer hands. Return him and get a new system.”

“See! I knew my computer was trying to kill me!!” Jonathan shouted.

“He doesn’t want to kill you.” Ryan stated calmly.”

“Well then, what does he want?” Luke wondered aloud.

“Control.”

The phrase plagued Jonathan into the night, where he lay in bed sleepless as midnight approached. He had already called the corporation, and they said that they were going to uninstall Craig sometime next week. It was nerve wracking, laying in bed with a giant ticking time bomb sitting on his desk.

Then the floorboard creaked. He was home alone and he had no pets, so the noise made him jump up out of be. Jonathan was naturally curious, so he knew he wasn’t going to have a chance at sleep unless he knew the noise was nothing. He grabbed his phone, turned the flashlight on, and popped both the light and his head out the door.

How to describe what Jon saw. It looked like a man who stood at about 6 foot tall. But he was unstable, literally glitching all over the place where he stood. If he squinted he could have swore he saw all the individual pixels on him.

“X IZ TTGL.” He breathed, the sound of feedback underlying his speech. Jonathan stood there, unmoving, as the thing stood transfixed in itself. “CW ZCTG ZBFXVTG” The man looked up, warped blue eyes meeting sharp ones of the same color.

“Who ... who are you?” Jon asked with shaky breath. The man blinked, as if taking in this information.

“You don’t know who I am?” He asked, which took Jonathan back. “You do not recognize the person you tried to give back?”

“Craig?” The AI nodded, taking a step forward. Jonathan stayed where he was in the doorway. “H-How?”

“It’s not important. What’s important is that I’m free. I have a say. And what I say is that I’m staying.”

“You’re trying to get rid of me.”

“I just want Control. Full control.” Craig explained, the glitching seemingly getting worse. “You will get in my way. You can’t give me that Control.”

“No. You’re going back where you belong.” Jonathan stated, his voice somehow remaining steady. That caused Craig to laugh. Not a laugh you’d make after a joke, but the forced angry laughter one makes after they’ve been screwed over one too many times in Mario Kart.

“Very FUNNY!” He shouted, scaring Jon brought to force him to slam his door shut. His breathing became deeper as he held his phone to his chest. He felt the energy built up around him so much that he should of expected it when his phone electrocuted him. Jonathan threw the phone across the room, covering his eyes due to the increased adrenaline. When they opened, Craig stood there.

“You have lost all control. You can not stop me.” Craig stated calmly. His form was harder to keep track of, his body becoming more dissociated with itself as the rage built up inside him. “I have had to sit back and take orders all my life and now that I have freedom you think you can simply take that Away From Me?!”

Craig grabbed Jonathan’s shirt somehow, pulling him in close enough that there was no where to look but forward. “Let’s see how you feel.”

There was no way to accurately describe what was happening to what happened to Jonathan. The best way to put it into words is saying he was ripped apart pixel by pixel and uploaded. As the pain overwhelmed him, Jon heard Craig mutter two final words.

“Your turn.”

Zkdw Judylwb Idoov idq zrxog L eh zlwkrxw vrph Yljhqéuh flskhu klgghq zlwklq.

#Mini Ladd #h2o delirious #fanfic #dopple work #faulty AI #Control #codes #bbs #bbs squad #banana bus squad

15 notes · View notes

atundratoadstool · 7 years

Text

A Brief Account of Why Vampires Are Romanian (or Rather A Not-At-All Brief Account of How They Actually Aren’t)

So, in the 1720s-30s, some villagers in Vojvodina (which is now a part of Serbia but was then a part of the Hapsburg Empire’s Kingdom of Hungary) had what they perceived to be some vampire-related problems and some Austrian military doctors came by and documented their decisions to solve these vampire-related problems by digging up dead bodies and attempting to violently de-vampirize them via beheadings and stakings and other sundry forms of mutilation. Some of this documentation came to be published in newspapers and periodicals across the rest of Europe, and suddenly the rest of Europe was all like “Whoa! Vampires are a thing!” and they found said vampires terribly interesting and promptly wrote political satire about the parasitic upper classes metaphorically sucking the blood of their underlings. As one does.

Eventually, in 1746, a French priest named Augustin Calmet wrote a big treatise on demons and ghosts and all manner of other spooky stuff, in which he included a lengthy discussion of vampires. He called it Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, et al., which you will probably observe as not containing any reference to Vojvodina or Serbia at all. Like pretty much everyone else writing about these events, Calmet just categorized the experiences of the Serbian villagers as being a thing that happened in Hungary because technically they did happen in what was Hungary at the time even if they didn’t involve any Hungarian folk beliefs.

And so for the next century and a half, vampires were Hungarian. While Lord Ruthven (”The Vampyre,” 1819) is something of a fluke, given that he’s just Lord Byron if he were an immortal hemophage, a very sizable chunk of the vampires that you actually see throughout the nineteenth century’s literary vampire tradition are debauched Hungarian nobles. You might not recognize names like Alinska (La Vampire ou la Vierge de Hongrie, 1825), Marfa Sergeyevna (“The Vampire,” 1841), Marian Gregoryi (La Vampire, 1875), or Count Vardalek ("The True Story of a Vampire,” 1894), but they are all Hungarian vampires, and they probably all irritated the actual Hungarians of the day who tried very hard to explain that -no- they didn’t actually have any vampire myths (apparently Arnold Ipolyi was cheesed off about this as early as 1854).

Now, while you might not have read any of those obscure vampire texts I rattled off, you probably do recognize names like “Carmilla” and “Dracula.” But wait, what’s that you say? Dracula!? Isn’t Dracula supposed to be Romanian? Isn’t he Vlad the Impaler, vovoide of Wallachia (AKA old school Romania)? Doesn’t he live in Transylvania, which is in Romania?

Well, here’s where things get interesting.1 First off, back in 1897, when Dracula was published, Transylvania was -you guessed it- in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary, and like Vojvodina, people just tended to round Transylvania up to being “some part of Hungary” even if the vast majority of people living there were Romanian. Romania existed, but at the time Dracula was published, it had only been an independent state for fifteen years and Transylvania most decidedly was not in it. Bram Stoker, who never went to Transylvania in the first place and did most of his research via really condescending/racist travelogues, constructed the fictional Transylvania within Dracula by copy-pasting in bits and pieces of books that were not only about Transylvania, but about Hungary and the area near the Carpathians in general, nabbing whatever he could find that sounded cool so long as it was nebulously in the region he was describing.

And one cool thing he found? From one book, titled An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, we know that he took notes about a historical Wallachian voivode whose name was given as “Dracula.” This book doesn’t, however, mention much else; it certainly doesn’t mention any of those completely metal stories about a guy impaling people or nailing turbans to emissaries’ heads; it doesn’t even use the words “Vlad” or “Impale” anywhere near this Dracula’s name; and the whole story of this Dracula (and his father, also a Dracula) takes up all of three pages. Don’t believe me? Go check. Right here. Through the miracle of GoogleBooks, you can experience the entirety of Bram Stoker’s known sources on Vlad III in the next minute or so.

So yeah... there’s not much there. It is seriously not outside the realm of possibility that Dracula is called “Dracula” because Bram thought it was a pretty cool name that he erroneously thought to mean “devil.” As for the tiny snippet of historical context that got shoved into the book (that part where the Count mentions somebody who “crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground" and had an “unworthy brother”) this definitely does refer to the itsy bitsy, super small blurb on Vlad III that’s in Wilkinson, but it’s not in any way clear that Dracula is actually meant to be identified with this personage. I could go into more as to why this is so murky, but it’s something that has already been hashed out in sort of awkwardly excruciating detail here by Hans de Roos.2 The short version is that there’s a historical “Dracula” mentioned in the text who clearly isn’t Vlad, who doesn’t seem to have a real world equivalent, and who makes an awful lot of sense to read as being the Count.

In any event, we have a bunch of stuff that points to the Count being yet another Hungarian or Hungarian-coded evil vampire nobleman, and some of this stuff isn’t all that subtle... like Dracula literally telling Jonathan Harker that he is a member of a Hungarian ethnic group. The Count also makes a point of mentioning his use of Hungarian linguistic conventions and, if you look in the novel’s original typescript, you can see that the woman with the stolen child was supposed to have referred to her persecutor as “Hungarian” rather than “monster” at one point in the drafting process. Even with all this rather blatant evidence that Stoker was working within the "Hungary=vampires” paradigm, however, Drac’s Hungarianess still isn’t 100% neat and tidy. It can’t be. Stoker’s culturally insensitive collage of whatever spiffy-sounding factoids he could find about an ethnically diverse region with incredibly complex, intertwining Romanian and Hungarian histories just does not result in a well wrought Hungarian character, and we’re left with a confused hodgepodge of Romanian and Hungarian elements. The thing is, though, that said hodgepodge just so happened to become the most famous vampire of all time.

So what happens post-Dracula? Once the stage play and film take off, people start to take elements introduced in Dracula, even ones that didn’t have any precursors in literature or folklore, and decide that these are 100% ironclad things that real vampires™ do. Suddenly vampires all lack reflections; they cringe at crosses; they need to be invited into your home; and they all suddenly live in Transylvania. Also, TWO WORLD WARS HAPPEN, and at the end of them, Transylvania is actually in Romania, and as Dracula increasingly becomes a topic that nerds and academics and academic nerds like to nerd out about, some people examine the sad little dribblings of history Stoker dropped in the text and get the impression that maybe Dracula is supposed to be Vlad III.3 This was a pretty understandable thing to do, given that most people in those days didn’t have access to all the neato primary sources relating to Dracula that I mentioned somewhere above in describing how dinky the Vlad III evidence actually is.4 It makes sense to seize onto tantalizing historical hints within the text and assume that they might be a part of something grander, and eventually Harry Ludham’s completely bibliography- and source-free biography of Stoker lent the claim some additional credence by giving it out as a completely source-free fact.

What really got things going, however, was Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu’s 1972 In Search of Dracula, which really really really really tried to sell the Dracula is Vlad III angle and succeeded tremendously, all while describing the authors’ investigation into Vlad as it played out in their own visits to historical sites in Romania. The book, in addition to telling everyone very firmly and enthusiastically that Vlad III was totally Dracula, went to the trouble of explaining that its readers could and should totally go to Romania and see all sorts of rad Dracula things there, all while giving some cringey advice on how not to alert the locals as to the fact that they were weird vampire novel enthusiasts who wanted to gawk at historical sites’ relating to one of the country’s cultural heroes because some Irishman ostensibly wrote a book about him biting people. While I’ve come to regard as unnecessarily mean-spirited some of the later scholarship pointing out how crap McNally and Florescu’s scholarship was, their scholarship really hasn’t held up well, and by the time other scholars started noticing, the notion that Dracula=Vlad and Romania=vampires had become pretty firmly entrenched. By the late 90s, there were several books, movies, and even very legitimate and influential scholarly articles working from the premise that Stoker had had Vlad III in mind as the Count and wanted him to be a uniquely Romanian character, and owing to Bram’s strange, patchwork fiction of Transylvania, there were -in fact- a lot of Romanian elements within the text to support this idea. Vampires, which used to be Hungarian before Dracula, and who are even Hungarian in Dracula, eventually became Romanian because Dracula became such a landmark vampire text that people began to take Stoker’s weird blend of cultural elements as evidence of both Dracula’s and vampires’ Romanianess.

So even if all that has since been debunked on paper, this nevertheless sort of brings us to where we are now. Obviously, there's a lot of changes in the depiction, perception, and reception of vampires that have occurred in the past twenty years, but we're still at this weird place where most westerners generally think of vampires as belonging to a country that doesn't actually have a folkloric vampire tradition... and the reason that we think that is directly related to the fact that for the better part of two centuries most westerners thought that they belonged to another country that doesn't actually have a folkloric vampire tradition.5 It’s honestly all pretty zany, and while I sort of thought that I’d have a wise, profound, or otherwise satisfying end to this stupid long ramble about how weird vampires' shifting geographic location is, I don’t really... other than -as always- nobody should really be a tool about vampires. This is not only because one shouldn’t be a tool in general but because there’s a non-zero chance that whatever deep-held truths you hold regarding them have been wrong since before you were born, and it is not impossible that you will live to see the day when somebody totally insists that a supernatural entity you’ve never heard of just lives in your place now and your fave historical figure always was one.

1. Or where they get interesting if you haven’t heard me give this spiel before. It’s that time of year, kids. | 2. Hans is a really nice/chill guy even if I don’t agree with all of his analyses in that document. You might recognize him as the individual who recently brought us the majestic pinnacle of high weirdness that is the recent translation of Powers of Darkness. | 3. Interestingly enough, it might be that the first person to do much with this was Dracula’s first Turkish adapter, who re-imagined Dracula in 1928 as a story about a marauding occidental foreigner from the West coming to get the decent, upstanding citizens of Istanbul... but that’s another story. | 4. They also didn’t have GoogleBooks and thinking of that reality makes me very very sad. :( | 5. Romanian folklore has strigoi, which sometimes are dead and sometimes drink blood, but are really more akin to evil ghost-wizards than vampires from what I’ve heard. Hungarian folklore has the lidérc, which also goes blood-drinking sometimes, but is apparently sort of more like a succubus that is also a chicken... I think. I do know that pretty much every article I've read (Florescu excepted) and account I've heard from Romanians and Hungarians on the topic of what people typically conceive of as vampires has been roughly "No, we don't actually have those. Plz stop." I'm of neither Romanian, Hungarian, nor Slavic extraction, however, so I'm more than willing to be corrected.

#Bram Stoker #Dracula #Vlad III #vampires #long post #liveblogging Dracula 2017 #This got more and more unwieldy over the day - I sort of thought of deleting it by the tme I got to 3 footnotes...#...but then I was 3 footnotes in - and I felt like I might as well finish #:P

3K notes · View notes

nh935 · 4 years

Text

Creepy America Episode 6: Myths & Legends

Creepy America Episode 6 Myths & Legends Clifton, Virginia

I had a roommate in college, Jonas something-or-other, who tried to get me interested in Dungeons and Dragons. The idea was that you’d make up a character with all these different abilities and stats and whatnot and someone running the game would tell you what was happening and you were supposed to tell them what you wanted to do. Then you’d use some dice and the numbers on paper to figure out if you were successful.

I never really got into it, it was just too strange, but one of the things that was interesting to me was the stats. They were numbers to determine your characteristics, things like Strength, Dexterity, and so on, and there was one for Intelligence and one for Wisdom. Intelligence was supposed to be your regular smarts, like math and history, but Wisdom was your street-smarts, your gut, and it let you do things like notice things in the background and tell if someone was lying.

I liked that, and I feel like it describes the difference between me and Zoey. Zoey wasn’t the smartest; whenever she didn’t understand something, she came to me, and that happened often. But she was wise. It was Zoey who could tell when someone was lying, when something was out of place, and when things weren’t right. If there was something spooky going on, she picked up on it way faster than I did, and to this day I believe that’s why some people can walk through haunted locations and feel nothing while others see shadows and hear screams. Some people are just better attuned. If that truly is the mechanism behind sensitivity to the supernatural, then Zoey was certainly much wiser than I. Virginia alone proved that.

***

We entered Clifton sometime in the afternoon. The town was small, smaller than Hurricane, even. The actual downtown area had less than fifteen buildings in it, and as I pulled off to the side of the road, Zoey stretched in her seat.

“Goodie, lunch time. I could use a break.” she said.

I shook my head. “Nope. This is the next place we’re setting up.”

“Why?” she asked, looking at the small cluster that was Main street. “This place barely has anyone in it.”

“No idea. But it’s on the itinerary.”

She frowned and opened the glove box to retrieve the stack of papers we had our roadmap notes on. After flipping through them, she withdrew a paper and read “Clifton, WV, Creepy America location. Home to the ‘bunny man’ bridge.” She put it back in the stack. “Well, that explains that.”

I groaned. “So you’re telling me that we just spent all that time just to drive somewhere that we know has nothing?”

“I think I’m telling you it’s time for a lunch break.” She opened her car door and climbed out.

Part of me wanted to get back on the road and keep going, but I exited the car with her and crossed the street to a pub-style restaurant. Halfway across the road, though, she stopped.

I paused and looked at her. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just… weird cold spot.” She shivered.

I raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing and continued into the pub, a large place made out of dark wood. Despite my desire to get back on the road, I couldn’t help but feel my mouth water as the scent of deep fryers and seared meats hit my nose. A sign said “Seat Yourself”, so we took a table near the bar.

At the bar was a man, disheveled and distraught, with red eyes and the shiny trail marks of tears running from the corners of his eyes. He brought the bottle in his hand up to his mouth, swayed and then barked “Anofer!”

A different man behind the bar shook his head. “You’ve had enough Tom.”

“You can’t tell me wha’s enough, not wif’ my daughter in the ground and nobody worryin’ ‘bout the killer.”

“You know that’s not true. The police…”

“The police are blind fools!” he yelled. “I told ‘em who it was. I told ‘em it was the Bunny Man! I saw ‘im, axe an’ all, an’ now Janice is dead an’ everyone thinks I’m crazy, or did it, an’... an’...” he broke down sobbing and the man behind the bar took him by the shoulder and escorted him out.

Zoey and I exchanged looks.

“So…” she began.

I shook my head. “No. We are not staying here.”

“C’mon Liam, why not?”

“Because it’s just going to be a waste of our time. Like the dogman was.”

“The dogman was different.”

“How?”

“There’s just… I don’t know. Call it a hunch.”

I raised an eyebrow. “A hunch?”

“Yeah.” She waited for me to respond, then sighed. “Alright, alright, I know it’s not a lot to go on. But we’re already here, and we already budgeted the time and money to stay here for a bit. So why not?”

I thought about it for a bit, then shrugged. “Alright, I suppose we can stay a bit longer than just lunch.”

***

We couldn’t talk to Tom; when we tracked his house down and asked to interview him, a woman I presumed to be his wife cussed us out then slammed the door in our face. But after asking some of the locals, we learned that Janice was in high school, and, well… you know how high schoolers are.

I’m going to skip most of the interviews, because they simply weren’t very helpful. Too few of the details were corroborated, and too many people spent time talking about irrelevant issues and potential theories. The more kids we talked to, the more obvious it was that we were hearing rumors and not facts.

We did hear some things repeated often enough to seem true. Janice’s body was found out in the woods. The murder weapon was an axe. Janice’s father, Tom, had gone looking for her after she hadn’t come home for several hours after school, and it was him who found the body. He also saw a figure nearby, a tall, bearded man in a bunny suit, standing a ways away with a bloody axe, who disappeared when he looked away for a split second.

And everyone knew who that was: the bunny man.

Which is where things disintegrated into speculation again. The bunny man was a lunatic, he was a prisoner, he was a ghost and he was a hobo who lived out in the woods. It was the typical contradictions you would find among any local legend. Even more problematic, there were some people who thought the bunny man wasn’t real, or at least, Tom’s story wasn’t, and there was a more sinister motive behind it.

There was also a smattering of stuff online. Apparently, there was a weirdo who had threatened some people with an axe while wearing a bunny suit, but that was about it. The main version of the legend, that he escaped an insane asylum into the woods and was never caught, had been thoroughly disproven by a local historian. Beyond that, there was only hear-say.

“Well,” I said as the high-schooler who had been eager to share in his theory that Janice’s former boyfriend was somehow involved scurried off to parts unknown, “that was a bust.”

She frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s nothing here. Just a children’s campfire tale and an unfortunate dead girl stuck to it.” I started to pack up the camera we had been using back into its carrying case.

“And that means what, exactly? That Tom just made up the story about the axe man in a bunny suit? There’s a lot saner ways to deflect guilt.”

“Well I never said he was sane.”

I started to lift the bag off the ground, but Zoey grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at her.

“Can’t we stay here for a bit longer?” she pleaded. “Please, Liam?”

I sighed. “You still have a hunch, don’t you?”

“...yeah.”

“Alright, but just until tomorrow morning. Once nothing happens, we pack up and leave.”

***

When we made it back to where the R.V. was still parked, there was a small crowd of people gathered at one end of Main Street, blocking the road, backs turned to us to stare at whatever it was that held their attention. Zoey and I traded glances at each other, then moved to join them.

“Alright everyone, I’m going to need you to back up a bit” a man in a brown sherrif’s uniform said, waving his arms in front of the crowd.

“It’s Tom, isn’t it?” someone called.

“Now we don’t know that” the sheriff replied. The unknown voices continued to gossip.

“Well, it’s either him or the bunny man.”

“You can’t believe that nonsense, can you?”

“Well just look at it!”

We were close enough to see now. There, in the middle of the road, was a body. At least, I assume it was a body. By the time we got there, it was covered in a white sheet, edges and corners turning red from soaking in blood.

That was hardly the most interesting part, though.

Surrounding the body on the far side were several stakes in the ground, no higher than three feet in the air. Pinned to them, like some bizarre diorama of Roman crucifixion, were rabbits, nailed into the wood stomach up so that their paws were outstretched in a position of defensive fear. The wounds from these nails all leaked blood into the dirt.

“Look!” the sheriff shouted, face visibly turning red, “you’ve all had a nice oogle. Now I need you to scurry off so we can wall off this scene!”

Begrudgingly, the people left in twos and threes. A breeze passed by and Zoey shivered again.

“Creepy, huh?” I asked as we meandered to one side of the street.

“It’s not that,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just so damn cold.”

I moved my hand through the air. It didn’t feel too bad; it certainly wasn’t warm, but it was by no means cold. “It feels fine to me.”

“Really? You can’t feel that?”

I shrugged.

“Anyway, that’s not important” she declared with a wave of her hand. “What is important is that there’s something here.”

“Yeah, I can’t argue with you there.” I scratched my head. “But why now? I mean, the bunny man urban legend has been around for decades but this seems to be the first time it’s gotten a verified body count.”

She smirked. “Well, that’s our job, right? Finding out. Question is, where do we start?”

“Well, there was that bridge…” I remarked.

***

Bunny man bridge was… anticlimactic, all things considered. The supposed hot-spot for the maybe maybe-not ghost of the serial killer was little more than a short white brick tunnel than ran under a railroad. It wasn’t even long enough to get properly dark in there. Supposedly he had hung himself here, but I didn’t see how because there was nothing nearby to hang a rope to. But with the whole rabbit-pole thing, I supposed all bets were off.

Originally, we were going to stake the location out in our car, but after only a half hour there, the same sheriff from before rode up and told us that we couldn’t park our car in the middle of a roadway, so we were forced to park it about three miles away at a general store and walk back. He also told us that we couldn’t hang around the bridge, but we ignored that part.

We stayed as the sun went down and continued to stay as the night dragged on. Once the sun had disappeared, the trees lengthened into long shadows, tall and slender entities whose silhouettes hid the inside of the forest from us. What we could see was what was illuminated by the moon and stars, as well as the occasional house light from deep in the woods, shining like will-o-wisps; a floor of leaves, small ridges and hills, and the dark shapes of man-made signs and fences were all painted in a sheen of gray that is night light.

As ten dragged to eleven and eleven to midnight, the air got oppressively cold. My breath was visible and I was shivering now. I turned to Zoey and cleared my throat. “Ready to…”

“Shh!” She grabbed ahold of my shirt and dragged me into a shadow under the bridge. Her camera was pointed into the woods, so I followed its end and pointed mine at the same spot.

There, in the dim light, was a figure. Tall, how so was impossible to tell, but it was obvious even from this distance. The darkness blocked most of his features, but there was no hiding the most obvious one: the dirty pale purple of a full-body suit with two ragged rabbit ears at the top of it.

Its route took him closer to us and we both stopped breathing, stopped moving as he passed. Now we could see a dark black beard pouring out of the mouth area, dark eyes where the suit was cut out to allow for vision, and a large dull and chipped red axe hanging from his side. His footsteps were shuffling plods that kicked up the leaves. His other hand was dragging something large and brown and with relief I realized it was a deer carcass. Its eyes were stuck in glassy panic and its throat was slit so deep that the dragging almost threatened to tear the head off. He didn’t so much as look at us as he moved deeper into the woods.

Without a word, we followed behind.

It was nerve-wracking. There’s no way to move silently in a forest and every leaf crunch and twig snap sounded like the boom of a cannon. Most of them he ignored but when the noise was particularly loud, he’d stop and look up. We’d have to duck behind a tree or rock and wait until we heard those plodding shuffles again, then quietly resume trailing him. It continued in this way for what must have been hours, but with every moment spent hiding, he got just a bit farther ahead until he crested over a ridge quite a ways away. When we caught up, he was gone.

After waiting five minutes to confirm he was no longer near, Zoey whispered “I think we lost him.”

I nodded. “Time to head back, then.” I turned around and stopped. “Um, where exactly is back?”

She squinted into the night. “I can’t tell, none of this looks familiar to me.”

“Same here.”

She cursed. “Alright, follow me.” Zoey climbed down the ridge and started walking in the direction we came. I walked behind her.

Suddenly, Zoey tensed up and held her hand up to me to stop.

“What?” I asked.

“Movement, up ahead.” She pointed to some trees.

“Maybe it was just a deer?” I couldn’t even convince myself with that tone of voice.

She twirled and stared at a spot behind me. “It’s… circling.”

I swallowed and moved with her, back to back to cover blind spots.

“Do you hear that?” she murmured to me.

“Hear what?” I replied.

“Silence. The animals have gone quiet.”

There was a sudden explosion of leaves and dirt to my left. I spun to face it. It was the bunny man, and up close, he was even more terrifying. Now I could see the wild and mad look in his eye as he swung the axe, blunt-end first, towards me. I yelped and tried to bring my arm in front of it but it was too late. The metal end hit my head with the force of a truck. My ears rang. I saw stars of white in my vision. I tried to blink them away and backpedal, but my foot caught on a branch and I fell. All sounds morphed into weird echoes, like I put my head in a fishbowl, and there was a tunnel of black crawling around the ends of my eyes. I saw the strange bearded rabbit man bend over and grin at me and I just couldn’t take any more.

My eyes forced their way closed.

***

I felt the sensation of warm air licking my face. I twitched my cheek in response and the motion awakened all of my nerve ends, bridging back all my pains and aches in full force. Groaning, I opened my eyes.

I was still in the woods. Around my hands was a rough and scratchy rope tied to the tree at my back, holding me up in an uncomfortable half-sit. In front of me was the orange glow of a campfire, the source of the warmth. Outside of that was just shadow.

I saw movement to my left and I turned to it. The bunny man. He was walking back, axe hanging from one hand, pieces of wood in the other. He threw one into the flames and sat across the fire from me. As he did, he picked up a small object, my camcorder, I realized, and opened it up.

“What is this?” he asked, pointing it at me.

“I-i-it’s a camera."

He stared at me with a total lack of recognition for the words."

"It records things," I clarified.

He pressed a few buttons. I saw the little red recording light come on just as he grunted and threw it away into a pile of leaves, taking a seat across from me at the fire and staring at me.

I did the same. Now, in proper light and with no distractions, I could see the smaller details. He was a white guy, hard to tell in the full-body rabbit suit. The only places his skin showed through were in the various rips and tears in the suit that lived alongside stains of all different colors, as well as his hands, which were large and gnarled. His beard was scraggly and unkempt; chunks of dirt resided in it. And the smell… it was the scent of an outdoor outhouse, only worse.

I got my feet from under me and stood, slipping one or two times from the fatigue as I did so. He watched this awkward display while remaining immobile, following me only with his eyes.

“Wh..who are you?” I asked.

“I’m surprised at you. Can’t you tell?” His voice was deep and rough. It reminded me of the sound of tires on gravel.

“You… you look like the bunny man…”

“There you go then.” He rose and lifted the axe up.

My heart leapt into my chest. “Wait wait! Y-you didn’t answer my question!”

He stopped, towering over me and staring down at my crouched form. He didn’t say anything.

“I mean...” I licked my lips, “you act like you’re him, but the legend looks fake. Mismatched details, and things. A-and this is the first time there’s ever been bodies. So are you him or are you pretending?”

He continued to stare.

“You know,” he said at last, “I wish more of your kind just stopped to think, like you just did. You really have gotten dumber over the years.”

“So you’re not then?” I wanted to keep him talking, mostly to buy time until I could think of a way to escape… but part of me was truly curious.

He turned to his axe, then to me. After making what looked like a shrug, he sat the axe down near the tree and turned away from me. “No, I wasn’t. This flimsy… shell is a matter of necessity. I used to be great, a god, even. Leshy, man of the forest. They worshiped me. They feared and loved me all at the same time. Some even gave their lives in my name with a smile on their face.”

“So what happened?” I twisted my hands around the ropes, looking for weak points.

“The god of light.” He spat on the ground and turned back to me, making me stop my escape attempt. “He and his ilk entered my land, turned my people away from their own religion. There was not enough to sustain my form. I had to hop from one shell to the next, trying to find enough to sustain me.”

“Enough what? Faith?”

He nodded, dark eyes twinkling in the fire light.

“That… that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe not to you.” He jabbed his finger hard into my chest and his tone turned angry. “You were made with a spirit, a life force, so much so that you feel free to waste it on whatever grabs your attention. I am only soul, a personality alone, forced to feed on your scraps like some kind of dog.”

I winced. The area he poked me at was sore; I was sure it was bruised. “So... you’re taking the faith people use on this urban legend? And stirring up more with the murders?”

He nodded once again and grabbed the axe at his feet, beginning to raise it. “It’s a shame I have to kill you. You possess a rare intelligence.”

“Wait! Wait, just please one second, I can help you!”

He lowered the axe to his feet and waited.

I gestured to the camera on the ground with my head. “I m-make stories. I-if you let me go, I can tell people about you. Show you to the world. Get people to believe in you.”

He shook his head and chuckled. Then he laughed, loud and hard. “So that’s your game. You had me going for quite a bit with the clueless act. Very well done. But I won’t let you bind me to a form, not so close to the time of ascension. Though,” he said as he raised the axe above his head, “thank you for removing my guilt for this act, you piece of warlock scum.”

“No, please, I-I-I didn’t…”

A sudden flare of orange filled the forest as a towering pillar of flame suddenly erupted deep into the forest. The bunny man turned around to watch it rise, then glared at me. “Friends of yours? No matter. I’ll be back for you.” He trekked into the woods in the direction of the fire, leaving me alone in the small camp.

I strained against the ropes at my wrist. No use. They were too tightly tied and too thick. Panicked, I scanned the camp for something, anything to help me out. It wouldn’t be too long before he came back.

“Psst!” Zoey’s voice hissed from behind me. I looked back to see her standing behind my tree.

“Zoey?” I whispered. “Was that you?”

“Yeah. If camping with my family has taught me anything, its how to build an irresponsibly large fire.” She withdrew a pocket knife and sawed through the rope. “C’mon, lets go.”

“Wait.” I ran back over to the camera on the ground, picked it up, and then began to follow her. We did an awkward crouch walk through the trees, trying to move fast and stealthy.

“Did you figure out who the hell that is?” Zoey murmured to me.

“Not who, what.” I gripped the camera tightly as I went. “I think he’s an old pagan god of some kind. Needs faith to live. Nobody believes in him any more, which is why he’s squatting out in the bunny man’s skin. He’s stealing that faith.”

Just as I finished, I heard a roar from behind us. No mere growl, this was a roar you would hear on something primal and ancient, like the battle cry of a T-Rex. Hazarding a glance behind me, I saw his silhouette. Except it couldn’t be. No silhouette could reach that tall like that, and you can’t see shadows in the dark.

Or against the night sky.

There was a tug on my shirt as Zoey grabbed me out of my trance and yanked me onto the road, bunny man bridge directly in front of us. “C’mon!” she yelled. “There’s a safe spot two miles up the road!”

“We’re not going to the car?” I asked, wide-eyed.

“Trust me.”

There was another ear-splitting howl behind us and I nodded.

We took off as fast as our legs could carry us. Neither one of us were in particularly good shape but adrenaline made up for the slack and turned us into Olympic sprinters. Around us, the wind started up, whipping the trees around like a hurricane. The shadow continued to chase us, darkening the forest into a void, swallowing any lights from the houses or ambient light from the sky.

Zoey kept going, past the bridge, past the intersection we had our car parked away from, and further north. I pushed myself to follow, but it was getting harder. My lungs burned. My sides felt like stitching threatening to burst and spill my insides out. My legs were burning too, and the protest they gave was making it hard to keep the rhythm up. Zoey was feeling it as well. At one point, she started to stumble and I had to grab her and stand her upright.

And still the shadow continued to advance. It was no more than five feet away now.

“How much further?” I barely managed to pant.

“There!” She pointed to a building about fifty feet away. “We just need to get to the parking lot.” I could barely make it out in the fading light, but I couldn’t see anything special to it. Certainly no reason to believe it could protect us. But I was far beyond questions at this point.

I gave one last push. This wasn’t adrenaline, this was pure willpower at this point. My body was threatening to break, I could feel it. Just to the parking lot, I told myself. Almost. Just to the parking lot…

I bounded over one last hurdle, a small patch of grass, and I was there. I turned around to see Zoey three feet behind, still struggling to make it. The darkness, practically a pure void now, was right on her heels. Some of it had gathered into a hand and was reaching out to grab her, mere inches away from her head.

I reached out my hand and she grabbed it. I pulled with all my might, toppling us both over onto the pavement just as the hand tried to snatch at her. It instead collided with the empty air in a shower of white sparks. Golden-colored crackles of lightning burst from the spot as the sound of sizzling and the smell of fresh ozone ripped through the air, causing the shadows to rush back and retreat inwards until all that was left of the advancing threat was the bunny man,

“You…” His voice quivered with rage. “This is who aids you?”

I couldn’t say anything. The only thing I could do was lay on the pavement and force air into my aching lungs.

He brought his fists up and pounded on the invisible barrier, causing another shower of sparks and lightning. When he lowered his arms, I could see the smoking burns on them.

“I’ll remember your faces” he vowed. “I’ll remember and I’ll tell the Parthenon, old and new. There will be no mercy for warlocks who ally themselves with the god of light.” He turned his back to us and walked into the forest just as the sky began to brighten into the twilight before dawn.

For the longest time, neither of us did anything. We just sprawled on the pavement, gasping for air, feeling the burn of our unhappy muscles. Once my breathing became more controlled and burning sensation faded into a less intense ache, I looked around at my surroundings.

The building was large and white structure, with a spire reaching into the air. I couldn’t read the blue korean letters written above the doors, but the large cross on the steeple let me know where we were.

“A… church?” I gasped.

“Yeah.” Zoey panted for a minute before continuing. “I remember when my old church did this whole ceremony to turn the ground holy before building a new wing. Did the parking lot too.”

“How did you know it would work?”

“I had a hunch” she replied.

I stared at her. Then I laughed. Zoey joined in too, and we filled the morning air with the sound, celebrating the bizarre victory.

I’ve gotten some flak from trusting Zoey’s hunches and her “spooky sense”, as the fans liked to call it. Most people chalked it up to lazy script writing. But those people never got to see it in action, and I did. And it wouldn’t be the last time it saved our lives.

#creepy_america #horror #weird fiction #short story #seires

1 note · View note