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TEST DRIVE MEME 002
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:
Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, spiders, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, spiders, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE
The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the frost-covered mosses and ferns, the frozen soil cold and just a little damp on your bare skin. Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.
You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards emerging from a temporary retreat from the wintry weather. With your feet under you, and you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, is running actively again as the weather warms back up from the recent snowstorm.
As you explore, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike, and the weather isn't quite amenable to your lack of.
Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.
This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street — a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer — while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. At the far end of the main street, visible about a mile to the north now that the trees and the enormous wall is out of the way, sits a castle with three towers.
When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available — the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.
breaking and entering
If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.
Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings — bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Anyone who's already appeared in the village just as you did today lives here. Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, and some scorch marks still linger from a recent fire, and some furniture is still lying around in splinters.
Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions.
finding roommates
Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.
Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!
OFFERINGS FOR ULANTI
The festival starts in the middle of the night, when the sun and the children are safely tucked into bed. The streets come alive with dancing locals, their faces painted red and purple and black and yellow. They all wear revealing clothing that, to your sensibilities, may seem sexually suggestive. Some individuals openly expose their breasts and nipples, while some others may incidentally reveal when they turn around to tend to their errands that their dress is backless — entirely! market stands and kind neighbors will gladly provide clothing befitting the occasion to anyone who asks.Notably, the locals' choice of clothes reveal a mark on their bodies. An astute person will notice that there are four varieties — and a very astute (
In addition to dancing and the lighting of any number of candles, you may stumble upon fighting rings inspired by Terry Silver's basement club, where the locals brawl until they're bloody and unable to move. Elsewhere, amongst the performance of a number of erotic dancers, you might come upon a face you recognize — naked and collared and caged, tongue pressed to the bars to taste anyone who'll stop and give them a little attention.
Temporary night market food stands offer various forms of alcoholic beverages and sweet and savory street food in suggestive shapes — sausages, popsicles, flowering cupcakes. many of them represent hedonistic indulgences and displays of wealth that the town usually does not seem to possess. This bounty, they attribute to the Duchess' patronage — and much of it is dosed with herbs and additives that enhance the sexual appetites and aggression in any who consume them.
Another kind of temporary stand has been erected — while new arrivals may at first mistake these for some kind of bathroom, it becomes apparent upon entry that they are partitioned stalls with gloryholes drilled between them. Some stalls are closed with an anonymous stranger waiting inside for someone to push a part of themselves through the hole to be lavished with mystery touches; others are fully unoccupied, should your character wish to lock themselves in and wait on the small wooden stool for a partner to offer themselves.
Anyone native to Rubilykskoye will take the time to answer questions about the festival of Ulanti, which functions as a way to purge their bad energy ("zadza") and sate their inner beasts ("duchozweirz"). They encourage characters to join the festivities — which range from staged sexual performances to sadism and masochism designed to feed the desire for violence. all appetites are welcome here, and there are only two rules: (1) stay away from the unmarked, which refers to the locals' prepubescent children; (2) hold nothing back.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try entering the fighting rings, watching or joining a live sex performance, or eating some aphro food (deliberately or otherwise)!
the fathomless dark of pajak wood
At the outer edges of the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day — eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches. In the void, the air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.
Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.
In addition to the spiders, you may come across the sharp-toothed furred yetis that emerged during the snowstorm, still looking for a meal. Each one hunts alone, a fifteen-foot-tall shambling creature that drips black ooze and super-chills the air around it until your skin feels tight and icy. If it gets the drop on you, you're likely to be its dinner. It has emerged from a long summer hibernation to enjoy the colder weather, and it's starving.
Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body — what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?
In the fog, you may also hear the voices of those familiar to you — people you know from the town, or people whom you know with almost perfect certainty aren't here. these figments may recreate unhappy memories or force trespassers to hallucinate their worst nightmares. Nothing is as it seems in the void, and when you swing at these figments, desperate to silence them, it might not be a figment at all, but a friend in the flesh trying to help you. By the time you see their true face, it could be too late to stop yourself.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger!
HIDING INSIDE EACH OF US
Uh oh spaghetti-os.
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
The baker, Nile Yoren, is a likable, middle-aged woman who can fill any request — wheat, rye, even nut breads. She boasts that her sourdough starter belonged to her grandmother. Today, when you enter her shop — to help out or to get a muffin or a bag of rolls — something is off. Her smiling face isn't behind the counter.
Around the back wall, you hear the crackling of the oven. But when you call, she doesn't come out. You have to go back and look for her. What you find is not just the oven crackling, but nile herself — twisted into an incandescent monster of human flame, the flickers of dark orange light like a face howling in agony amidst the yellows and reds and whites. Before you can scramble away, the creature lunges at you. Defend yourself or flee, or her inner beast will be feeding itself on you.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
someone else transforms
The baker, Nile Yoren, is a likable, middle-aged woman who can fill any request — wheat, rye, even nut breads. She boasts that her sourdough starter belonged to her grandmother. Today, when you enter her shop — to help out or to get a muffin or a bag of rolls — something is off. Her smiling face isn't behind the counter. Around the back wall, you hear the crackling of the oven. But when you call, she doesn't come out. You have to go back and look for her. What you find is not just the oven crackling, but nile herself — twisted into an incandescent monster of human flame, the flickers of dark orange light like a face howling in agony amidst the yellows and reds and whites. Before you can scramble away, the creature lunges at you. Defend yourself or flee, or her inner beast will be feeding itself on you.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
you waited too long
At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
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It's a testament to how much he doesn't want to go back outside that he doesn't try to see himself out again. Watching somebody's skin literally change color right in front of him seems a lot more manageable in this moment than all that out there.
So it takes him a moment to stop staring and wind his jaw shut again. Another moment for his brain to actually process the words he heard. ]
It's just a lot. Out there.
[ He pauses ever so briefly, the courage to ask the real burning question slowly ramping up. ]
Sorry if this is rude, but... did you just... change color?
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Yes, I did. My type of elf can be in a state of bloom, so I was making myself into that. I'm sure I look more presentable now, don't I? [he does a little gesture towards his own face with his hand, being a bit whimsical about it. He's handsome in bloom, he wouldn't deny that much about himself, it's the whole point of putting up the effort it takes to upkeep the state of bloom. His hair seems to be a shinier corn yellow and the antlers on his head are not so slack and wilted down]
Since we're asking such direct questions; what might you be? Human?
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It's pretty amazing to meet an elf, he thinks to himself and does his best to look casual despite feeling anything but that. There's something that digs in a little deeper at the elf's first question - 'I'm sure I look more presentable now, don't I?'. He wants to promise that's not what he meant but already the conversation has moved on. ]
Uhm. Yeah, human. I'm from a... world? That's just... humans and animals.
[ This conversation is wild. Crazy enough that it starts to genuinely distract him from their surroundings. ]
I'm Tyler.
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Still remaining seated, Ankari will offer the other man a cordial handshake, his fingers long and elegant, with well manicured nails. Definitely not the hand of someone who worked any hard labor,]
A pleasure, Tyler. I am Ankari. [a beat] If you've heard anything of elves, I promise you, the rumors that say we devour humans are greatly exaggerated.
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Where to even start? ]
I have so many questions.
[ Ones that he's actually feeling okay about asking since nothing he's asked yet has gotten him kicked out. ]
All the stories I heard of elves were definitely not like that. Elves are usually described like... haughty? Kind of aloof. Probably vegetarian, I don't know.
You seemed surprised my world has clearly separated animals and humans? Yours doesn't?
[ This is where Tyler's expression seems to break free of anxiety and brightens considerably. ]
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What was he asked about? Something about elves being haughty, which makes Ankari give an amused chuckle, that is about right. Right, humans and animals.]
We have races of men who are also animals, the worg. They're... a sort of wolfman. I haven't seen any here, yet. Thank the gods...
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Had anybody else been regaling him like this, maybe he wouldn't have believed it. But he's talking to an elf. So he does believe what he's being told, imagination exploding merrily with this new information. ]
Actual wolfmen? You wouldn't want to bump into one?
Are they intelligent in the same way people are?
[ A pause, and then: ]
Uh, sorry. You said one question.
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They're smart as men and brutal as animals. The line between is quite blurry. My people had a bad habit of underestimating their capacity for conquest. That is, until they broke through our capital walls. [he shouldn't be talking about this sloshed half out of his mind-]
Apologies, sire. Such drama is better suited to stage play or sung ballad than I can do justice toward in this state.
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[ He could explain that hearing stories like this transports him back to being a kid. The times that were better, that he wants to remember in some capacity. There were so many memories he and Alyson had upturned from the cobwebby corners they'd been getting dusty in.
Mary-ann's stories had all been true in some way, if not in the fantastical detail then the overarching themes; a way for his mom to cope with her reality. And so Tyler had spent his first decade being told stories about crafty goblins. About creatures in the forest helping a princess. ]
I'd really like to hear more. But... not if you don't wanna tell it.
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Haah, such stories make a fine enough distraction, I do suppose. Here is something of high intrigue and scandal; I was just about to attend my own wedding. A desperately arranged marriage to an invading worg prince. [another, more hollow laugh and his voice changes almost completely, seemingly without his notice. The bright and whimsical charm drops to something darker and more heavily accented, close to Czech if not precisely that,]
I drank away his name! I cannot recall it now... [he looks to Tyler with curiosity of his own]
What of you-? What cruel fate did you dodge by arriving here?
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Does your voice change like that a lot? Howcome it does that? Is that because of the... what did you call it? The thing that makes you look different too?
[ He has the good grace to look apologetic, knows very well he just jammed four questions at the elf. He's also well aware he hasn't answered any of the questions volleyed back at him either. ]
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Too many questions. And you neglected to answer mine, didn't you?
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He flashes Ankari a touché sort of smile, the curve of his mouth attractive enough that he's not above relying on it. ]
Right, sorry. Sorry.
I didn't get other dimensioned [ he really has no idea if that's what this is ] from my wedding. I was... actually just at home.
[ Weird to say 'home' like that, but it's getting there. Closest to a home he's had for a long time. ]
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I see... nothing dramatic going on? H, h, here I was... thinking maybe this place drags people away under intense stress. I don't know... just an idea that came to mind. [his mind is desperate for common ground, maybe, something to relate to others who arrived. He's somewhere so new, so far from how he's lived before, why consign himself to being an outsider? Ankari has never really known comradery. It would be nice to feel that, here.]
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[ If this place selects people based on their stress level, it missed him by about a decade. Not that this seems like the kind of place suitable for a 10-year old. Though apparently the people here don't have the same concern.
It might not be the whole truth either, but as into being told a story as Tyler is, he doesn't really want to tell his. ]
I guess moving house is stressful?
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[Now that's a true cultural difference, Ankari has no idea what that could mean. He's lived in a single castle his whole life and elves don't really "move" unless they're married into a new family. Something Ankari narrowly dodged, but even he probably wouldn't have been going anywhere, his place would have still been in that same castle.]
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[ It's such a weird question for him that Tyler's expression falters from charming to puzzled. He's never had to explain the concept of moving house to somebody before. ]
I mean... stop living in one place and go live in another? That's not what you do where you're from?
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Most elves will live and die where they are born. If my sort travel, it is... usually for trade or war, but elves always return home one day. If they are fortunate enough too, that is. [oh, wait, he's heard of this in books and stories of humans in far off lands-]
Are your people nomads?
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You know, you definitely have a way of telling stories.
Some people are nomads, I guess. Most people move a couple times in their life, probably. Not always that far from where they started, but sometimes.
There's a bunch of reasons somebody might move house.
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Do I now..? Give most of the credit to the alcohol... [Ankari matches with with a soft smile, in part a response to the light flattery given to him. A way of telling stories isn't necessarily a compliment, but it makes Ankari huff out a laugh]
Back to your own tale, you had just done this... moving house. Which is not especially uncommon for your people, if a bit stressful. You cannot think of anything that would inspire a foreign god to spirit you away here? [Ankari has some knowledge of old gods, having a blessing from a particularly powerful and rare one, but this place... it seems to hold very different influence than his world has. He can still feel an echo of Hyveska, his love and creation goddess, as her influence is always present where people do... what is happening in some of these other stalls, lets say. Yet, Ankari can tell she is not a dominant force in the slightest, there is something else holding sway here, something he cannot know]
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The idea of spilling his life story, now or in the near future, feels like a tall order. Ankari seems nice enough. A nice drunk, even. But there's just some things Tyler's definitely not worked up the emotional energy to retell. Even if the somebody he's telling it to might not even remember it in the morning.
And so he's faced with the choice of saying exactly that, or - a far more stupid idea - making something up. ]
If I tell you... I need to know I can trust you. Can I trust you not to tell anybody, Ankari?
[ Looks like the stupid idea gets the green light. ]
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I could grant you a true promise, but it would frighten you deeply. Is that what you're asking for?
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How bad could it really be? ]
Uhm, just your word is fine.
But... what is a true promise? Why would it scare me?
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If you do not wish to trust me, but to know I am being truthful, I can give that kind of a promise. It is a power blessed of me. Trouble being... all truth is deeply terrifying, as truth and terror are the same thing at their core.
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[ Which isn't a judgement at all, just Tyler trying to lighten the mood because clearly he's starting to regret choosing the idiot path. ]
I'm not afraid of the truth. I welcome it, actually.
[ Which is as true as Tyler can contemplate truth objectively. He tries hard but is just as fallible as the next human. ]
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cw: murder D:
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'rather become a monster than be that' XD *chefs kiss*
ffff would be better if I proofread that line first RIP "he's"
I appreciated the sentiment all the same pahaha
I WILL rewrite this joke if you don't think it's funny lmao
LMFAO the timing is spot on, bravo
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