Scaramouche, Scaramouche

[A BUNCH OF WEIRD.

BLOODBORNE SPOILERS AND CRACK-STLEVANIA AND SHIZ. CLICK THROUGH AT OWN RISK.]

( water, and also rock )

LORE: THE DREAM OF THE SCION OF CHAOS

[or: Yukie just stuck Bloodborne in Castlevania in Kupopolis, and made a Goth Sandwich. WTF Yukie.]

"The lie of dichotomy's done more to wound the mortal races than most other tainted doctrines. Emotion and reason, body and mind, subconscious and conscious--all are one, really, but misunderstandings of old and cultivated falsehoods sowed in the name of conquering have made this truth obscure at best and a heresy at worst. Only recently have we put aside these misconceptions and sought what's true...well, most of us. Some would rather cling to old lies--and inevitably be crushed to death when the weight of truth comes crashing down."

**

This dreaming-realm is, in a word, weird. No surprise there, given the dreamer. It manifests as a sprawling Gothic city, all spires and wrought-iron and cobblestone and beauty in decay. Something terrible has happened here; it's up to the visiting dreamer to sound the depths of the mystery and hopefully emerge unscathed.

We don't know where he got the name "Yharnam" from. Or "Yahar'gul" or "Ihyll Phthumeru" or anything else. Probably the language of Void and Chaos. Maybe it means something? The syllables put some linguists in mind of extremely old fae and youma Hierachoral--the sung language of magic.

Many of the denizens of this dream are humans, all tainted by the calamity that's befallen the city. They don't like outsiders; they want your blood. This is the dreamer's experience of how humans simply are. Don't be too offended by it, no one said he was a reliable narrator.

Certain prominent denizens are echoes of the Dreamer's past. Not all, of course, but some. Eileen, Djura, Arianna, and Maria (among others) have a certain gravity to them that other dream-peoples lack. Conversely, Gehrman feels curiously hollow. He may be a facet of the Dreamer.

In the deepest fathoms of the Dream, the natural denizens of the realm have free reign and influence The Dreamer has no fear of them, but visitors who fancy themselves innately "rational" may be stunned or traumatised by facing such things. They're inclined to think too hard about things, and try to apply human reason to beings that have no use for such.

Those with a deeper sense of whimsy can make contact with these denizens, and even commune with them, gaining powerful allies. This has the effect of making the Dream even weirder, and the Dreamer more inclined to consciously pit himself against the visitor. Think of it like a game of chess, but in four dimensions and upside-down.

The Son of Dragons is weird.

If yo should make your way to the end of the Dream and see the story to its end, he will grant you his boon as the Scion of Chaos.

Few have managed this.

OH LOOK, FIC

Benighted+Kupopoverse sandwich of ALMIGHTY DOOM!
WARNINGS: Animal death CW, sad things, and catharsis for an author.

***

Vicky's bike was by the roadside when Perry and Nick pulled over. Gil was stood next to it (in his stupid red hoodie, Perry thought, though not nastily) and he handed Vicky's phone over to Nick as soon as Nick got within arm's reach.

"I don't want to break the screen again," he said, about as sheepish as a guy like him could ever be.

Nick chuckled. "Understandable. So--she's back in the woods there?"

"Yes. She said she didn't need company, necessarily, but I was suspicious of the veracity of the statement. I know she can't lie, but...she can speak and try to make herself believe what she says."

Perry quirked a brow. "You're speedier on the uptake than you first came off, Gigglemoose."

Gil quirked back. "I'm a man of many talents."

Nick swatted at both their arms. "Come on. Smarmbrow wars later."

( this looks familiar, vaguely familiar... )

(author’s note: this isn’t exactly canonical as such; this is more of a character piece, with me getting a feel for cassian and letting him talk to people.)

Cassian's dreams tended toward “vague as fuck” or “vivid miserable flashback”, so when he started to dream about following a big scruffy skinny black tomcat through an empty city, he kept following the cat even through dawning lucidity just for the sake of it being something new.

It wasn't a blur, and it wasn't charred ruins and the scent of something beyond ordinary death.

It was rainy foggy streets, the scent of wet asphalt, and a twinge in his left knee.

“Waow,” demanded the cat. He had a funny rough kind of voice, like he'd been yowling his little head off on a fence all night. “Wwwuuu...aow?”

“I'm coming,” Cassian griped.

“WAOW.” The cat shook water off his feet, and stared at Cassian.

“Okay, I--”

“WAOW!”

“I'm coming! You--”

“WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW.”

“Holy fuck, OKAY! You have four legs, you little shit. I only have two. Give an old guy a break.”

“Waow.” The cat gave him a smuggish slow blink and then bounced off into the drizzly rain, tail an inverted J, the tiny bell on his collar jingling.

“Little shit,” Cassian sighed again, and followed.

Down the road, out of town, out beyond the usual boundaries of the cities of his dreams.

( ... )

SO LIKE WTF IS T.I.B.C.: A band comprised of six people--Aaron Virtue Park (vocals, theremin, violin, weirdness), Benjamin "Beejay" Jafri (vocals, keyboards, esoteric percussion), Sidonie Dumont (vocals, guitar), Zoe Daine (vocals, drummage), Victoria "Vicky" Greene (vocals, bass), Jeremiah "Jer" Greene (vocals, rhythm guitar), and occasionally too many bags of Haribo.

THAT IS A LOT OF PEOPLE: Yes it is, which is why we can't really play venues with tiny stages.

SO WHAT KIND OF MUSIC ARE WE TALKING HERE: Oldschool J-Rock meets Gothabilly meets Folkrock meets Nerdy ProgLOL meets IDKWTF. It's eclectic. The fans seem to like it, though. Even when the old-ass amp decides to temporarily die, and Asher raps nerdily.

WHO DO YOU LIKE TO PLAY WITH: Moonchild, Oceanic Megalith, The Darkest of Knights, Ars Arcana Drakonis, Piper, Release the Chiroptera You Fools, Eldritch Beyond, and Ghost Model T are all fabulous people and we love them yes we do.

HAVE YOU GOT A LABEL/PRODUCER/ETC: Thanks to the amazing people of Moonchild, yes we do.

WHO DOES ALL YOUR MIXING: Aaron and Jer, on their respective rigs. They also do VGM remixes. If you see anything by Ehifu Gravitywell that's them.

SO WHO COVERS THE FINANCES: For the most part, our fans! We livestream for album costs and charity donations, do pay-as-you-wish for b-sides and remixes and silliness, and so on--and we're massively grateful to all our donors, which is why our webpage has an ever-growing donor list. And yes, everybody is on there. Anonymous donors get included by date. We are lucky and our fans are generous and faboo.

ANY SWAG: Yes! T-shirts, hoodies, pendants, buttons, nifty bags, LED flashlights (with a red setting so as not to obliterate the night-vision), et cetera, all made and designed by us because whenever we have too much time on our hands we get crafty. Once we get rights and suchlike worked out, we might begin taking fan-submitted swag. Right now, we are not able to do so, but we're flattered and ecstatic that people love us enough to make swag for us!

...SO...WHAT DO YOU LIVESTREAM: Oh, almost everything. Jer likes to broadcast his fail at Shinobi Monogatari, Beejay and Aaron have this masochistic love of badly-coded games, Sidonie is our hardcore badass and all of our Belmondo Chronicle vids are hers (which you should know already, silly people), and most of all we really like running old Arcana Mundi dungeon raids and failing all over the floor. Sometimes we team up with Moonchild and then even more of us fail all over the floor, and sometimes we team up with Vicky and Jer's dad, Owain Eadland (a key member of the Verdant Sanctuary Foundation who work for better awareness of psionic and empathic disorders and better treatments for such--if we stream with him, the cash goes to V.S.F.), in which case we fail much less because he's really good at it.

ANYTHING ELSE BEFORE WE GO: We have a new album pending, so look for previews soon on yonder website. We love you all, and goodnight!

((some of this applies just as much to Benighted of course. XD))

TITLE: Aril
FANDOM: Kupop
PEOPLE: Some deities, and some proto-fae
PAIRING: implied Bunny/Bard/Pally
RATING: PG-ish.
WARNINGS: Gratuitous grandiose classical-myth-book language, oh jeez. XD
NOTES: Chrystalis descends into the Underworld for one last hug and finds an odd fruit. For my girlfriend.

***

( some produce is hard to open sometimes. )