#archer writes

TW: Death mention, illness, emotional breakdown.

1. The numb, bewildered feeling of “but I was just talking to them xyz time ago….” if your character gets the bad news via phone.

2. The change in breathing, what is called the ‘death rattle’/agonal breathing.

3. A long, slow slide into illness, for both the sick character and the caretaker. The sick character losing who they used to be, maybe even memories of their caretaker.

4. The last time their eyes close. Worse if character dies with eyes open, and caretaker is the one to gently close their eyes one last time.

5. The warmth of life leaching out, leaving cold, cruel death instead. Holding a loved one’s hands in their last moments.

6. “Am I dying?” “What? No! You’re gonna get out of this…” knowing there is no way out.

7. Reminders of them. A wedding ring they gave, a song that plays, a book series, anything.

8. Calling out to them on instinct, because they were just always there. Until they aren’t.

9. Holding back tears because “no, they would not want me to cry. If I cry, they’d be hurt.” “They’re not here anymore, buddy.”

This is a tweet from the author of the Bendy novels (Dreams Come to Life, The Lost Ones, Fade to Black, Illusion of Living.) Note the year is 2019.

Halfusek also directly confirmed this via DM's.

Just posted Chapter 3 of my RadioBelle/Charlastor fanfic, Evil Ways.

Alastor Doucet’s ambition drives him to summon an infernal fiend, ready to enter a binding pact in exchange for arcane powers. But the Devil he summons isn’t very interested in his soul. She is determined to find an alternative to the brutal mass extermination of her people. In a desperate bid to prove that redemption is both possible and worthwhile, she journeys to the mortal realm to redeem sinners straight from the source. This tale features dark magic, jazz, the economic crash of 1929, Louisiana, a cannibalistic, serial-killing radio host, and the blossoming trust between two very unlikely allies during desperate times.

Rich folks and Violence

Word count: 1327

Can also read on Ao3

Ok, so I just saw you put masquerade ball right after I finsijed writing this because I didn't notice it when I first read the ask, so I'm sorry about that BUT THERE ARE MASKS IN THIS JIST NOT HOW YOU THINK IT IS. ANYWAYS IM SORRY ABOUR THAT SOMETIMES I READ THINFS AND MY BRAIM TAKES OUT SOWM WORDS BUT EVERYTHIGN ELSE YOU AKSED FOR SHOULD STILL BE HERE OK BYE PLEASE ENJOY

Yes, the plot is everywhere, Chapters 2-3 are slower than the DMV, and I'm aware that it is a "Poppy Playtime Clone," but I think that broadly generalized reputation does it a disservice.

As the series has progressed, there is one thing I continue to enjoy about it generally. The childlike imagination behind it.

When I say childlike, I don't mean unintelligent. I mean the plot of the story progresses in a way a child might tell it- there's a lot of cool shit happening (monsters fighting, sheriffs capturing bad guys, racing on giant birds, fighting a t-rex cat, etc), but the transitions between each "cool thing" aren't always the most thought out.

Are the awkward transitional points in the story a valid source of criticism? Yes. But at this point, they're central to the way the story is getting told- in simpler terms, we better be used to the quirks by now if we've stuck around for this long.

Also, Garten is starting to improve on a lot of its weak points (voice acting, environments feeling too empty, introducing a damn CAMERA onto the drone, etc), and I feel like Chapter 7 helped showcase this.

And speaking of Chapter 7, the one thing that really stood out to me was this- there were a lot of characters (all Syringeon's experiments) that spoke entirely different languages.

To me, not only does this raise story questions (namely if Syringeon was trying to create a race superior to humans by emulating and improving on human traits, one being differing languages), but it also shows that the developers do care to some extent about what they're putting into their new installments. It would be easy to make Syringeon's creations all speak a nonsense language, or be otherwise monolingual. This specifically helps the town feel more lived in, and not like a bunch of NPC's walking around aimlessly. There are a couple other things too, like the bar serving only lollipops (and the fact that they're all...kind of racist to humans!) that makes this society of weird green creatures stick out in my mind.

Maybe I'm just Mascot-Horror-Pilled but dammit if I don't have opinions

Follow up to this post.

1. The time it takes to accept that they’re gone.

2. Either deleting their contact info, or holding it close to you. (This especially if it is someone particularly significant, like an emergency contact)

3. For an elder family member, the legal formalities. Death certification, deleting them from social security records. How that feels like an act of disservice at best, betrayal at worst.

4. The stages of grief. How that varies person to person.

5. Different ways to cope. Some people dissolve into tears, some are the ‘strong one’ aka the person who is the shoulder to cry on, some try to act like nothing is wrong, but every one of them is trying.

6. Keeping a reminder close to you. A photograph, a letter, as the wound heals and you want to remember the good times.

7. If they passed after a long battle with illness, the struggle to remember the good times. How it feels like a betrayal of who they were that you can only remember what the illness did to them at first.

8. The transition between tenses. (He is-I mean, he was…) the hesitation.

9. The bittersweet pride of associating yourself with them (I am his/her son/She was my wife, that kind of thing).

This is a vague question, but what are your thoughts on BATIM vs BATDR story wise? Is either of them truly better? Or are they just flawed in different ways?

Sorry, this is long, but so are BATIM and BATDR :')

I think you hit the nail on the head in the sense that yes- BATDR has better gameplay and mechanics than BATIM, but BATIM by far has a much more compelling story that was able to capture and keep attention over the course of five chapter releases. And yes, BATIM is not without its flaws, for example it's mainly a walking simulator in terms of actual gameplay- the only thing saving it being the unique ability to suck the player in through the rich, stylistic environments.

In terms of story, here's my take for both of them-

BATIM is more solid overall, there are more connected plot points and there's a thread there to be followed from start to finish. It does suffer from some WTF plothole moments, the biggest one being Alice's 180 degree turn with suddenly using Boris as a killing machine rather than...what I can only assume was a plan to use his ink/body as some kind of reparative agent for the hole in her face (like thicc ink premium idk), or...some kind of spell...? It's honestly not very clear HOW she was going to use him, but bottom line she decided to entirely change her plan off-screen, which could have been remedied with something like a cutscene's worth of explanation, and more of a buildup to Brute Boris. The "reveal" in the haunted house didn't hold that much weight (at least to me,) just because we didn't even get a cookie crumb of a hint that Alice was going to mutilate him and use him as a drone instead of just axe him.

There are other nonsense details like Allison's ominous "I'm no Angel" line, which didn't make sense when Tom was the one to want to leave Henry. It was never explained WHY the Ink Demon walks around with a limp when he can shapeshift into a bigger and faster Beast version of himself (and apparently he was ALSO the hand in the ink river??? I guess???) And can we talk about how the cult Joey started was just never brought up again? Wally talks about how workers were encouraged (or mandated, idk) to put offerings in the break room to "appease the gods." What gods? Was Joey worshiping Bendy like a god? NONE OF THIS IS EXPLAINED EVER and honestly I think Micheal D. and Meatstick just Forgot that Joey was a cult leader in favor of Sammy's cult storyline.

But despite all of the plot holes, we still get a tale of a deteriorating studio, humans being used as literal skeletons for lifelike versions of cartoon characters, themes of life, death, cults, art, and more. Honestly, going deep into the plot of Bendy would take its own post to really do it justice.

I guess the main plot is this: Ex-co-founder of Joey Drew Studios, Henry, is trying to get the fuck home to his wife, learning along the way that through the power of a mysterious ink machine, his ex-business partner decided to coerce and persuade people to Literally Die so he could have the necessary materials to create living versions of his cartoons, thus making "his" characters (and more importantly, Bendy,) a reality. Once Henry does escape, he learns that Joey has sent him through this same hell before, still filled with hatred and spite, just in time for Joey to assumedly "reset" him and send him on a different version of the same journey, as we can guess from the storyboards on display in Joey's apartment. THAT on its own is an intriguing and layered tale, and that's not even including the other details, voices, and faces we run into in BATIM, AND the new info we learn in BATDR.

Now, BATDR...is something I've come to view as a mixed bag.

Story-wise, it weirdly wants to have its cake and eat it to. Henry's story is elaborated on, and part of Audrey's origins are also brought to light. This is helpful information concerning the plot of BATIM...but then we get assblasted with a ton of new characters and lore for a completely new Cycle under the reign of a completely new Random Old Man. I know he's Nathan's son, and he was mentioned in both Illusion and Fade to Black...but those were de-canonized, so it almost doesn't help context-wise...???? So...????

In a lot of ways, BATDR almost acts like it wants to be an AU branching from BATIM rather than a direct sequel, which it was marketed/confirmed as.

I think my biggest problem with BATDR is that some of the main characters are bafflingly like. Mishandled.

I'm gonna have the mildest take on earth and say I didn't like the new Ink Demon. Old design was better and more uncanny by far, the new design looks like Generic Satan or something straight out of Baldur's Gate. He was given a deep, guttural growling voice because....tumblr sexyman I guess. Even if they needed him to talk, it could've been something more breathy and raspy, true to the heavy breathing of the original Ink Demon. Also, his alternate form was made very childlike, and I'm just weirded out by the fact that you have this oddly "sexified" version of the Ink Demon on the flipside of Bendy the Child. I don't think any ill intent was meant by this, but it's more confusing than anything thematically. I'm also not sure why Bendy's abuse was brought up and then never touched on....? Like wasn't this guy locked up and called a monster his whole life? Are we going to...say something especially considering the moral of this story......?

Memory Joey is completely fine, but I just can't shake the feeling that the narrative is trying to paint IRL Joey as "UWU fixed now" when that's not the case. The most sympathy I can extend to IRL Joey is that he was a gay man who desired to have a family at a time when that was not only frowned upon but dangerous, not just socially speaking but in terms of his physical safety. But beyond that, this was a dude who locked people in a building to keep them working, coerced and possibly forced the deaths of many people to get what he wanted (the ink machine was a scientific advancement that could've had AMAZING implications for society but he Did Not Give a Shit about that), and was abusive towards Henry. If we trust the Bendy books, he also gaslit and killed his teenage staff. This motherfucker isn't a patron saint of anything, and even if Memory Joey can learn from IRL Joey's mistakes, IRL Joey was still a shitbag who just happened to raise a daughter.

Which leads me to Audrey. Some of Audrey's tale is explained- she was raised by Joey, forgot Joey was her father, and came to work at Archgate as an animator. Got to know Wilson, who works as a janitor at Archgate, and then he drags her into ink hell because....idk, she's his version of "A Perfect Boris" I guess. Fair enough. However, it's NEVER EXPLAINED how Audrey doesn't remember her father, or WHERE she went to live after his passing, or WHO she lived with. Remember, Joey was as old as a cave painting, so he clearly passed when she was very young. While you could argue she doesn't remember his name because she was little, SURELY she remembers his face or voice, or the fact that she HAD A FATHER??? Like, was there some huge trauma there? (Other than the fact that Joey was her dad?) It makes little sense to me that she would forget so easily. If I had to make a guess (and granted I'm no Mark Twain), I'd wager that Allison probably found Joey dead. Remember that Nathan hadn't talked to Joey in years, and Allison was the one who went out of her way in the first place to visit. At this point, Allison's gonna find a little girl running around by herself, and assumedly her and Thomas would've taken her in. If that's not the case, someone else found Joey dead, at which point Audrey would've possibly lived with Nathan and Tessa, considering how much Nathan cared about Joey. Either party has ties to Archgate. But all of that is just speculation, not confirmed, and even if any of that were true, Audrey makes no mention of it. And I'm sorry, Audrey's backstory makes me want to cry, because it's just NOT THERE and she has the personality of a depressed bucket.

Alice was alright...but she was kind of stupid? Which is like....the antithesis of everything cool about her? Instead of using traps and luring the main character from a distance, she knocks out Audrey (via unspecified drink), plays Diet Jigsaw with Audrey, and then gets pushed off a balcony. She was also a lot more...idk, suave and sultry in speech mannerisms in BATDR, which isn't bad, but her unhinged and clever nature seemed a bit watered down.

I don't really have notes on the rest of the main cast. Sammy was brought back to die immediately, which honestly was fine considering his death track record. We get some mentions of BATIM characters. Wilson and Betty were fine, and even some of the lore explaining how the timelines work made sense.

HOWEVER,

I've already said it a hundred times, but the old cast was shoved to the side for a bunch of new characters we had no time to connect with. A new butcher gang member was added when we still have Miss Twisted as a potential female-role filler (keep in mind the Projectionist is based on Camera Man and Brute Boris was based on The Brute.) The whole "Amok" thing was a REALLY roundabout way to get the Lost Ones to stop attacking Audrey.

Wilson's motivations are mostly consistent and I'd argue somewhat compelling, but I don't understand why he didn't do more to protect Audrey if he was going to need her for the endgame for Shipahoy Dudley? Like what's all this about letting her run around and get killed? Was he just aware that she'd revive?

The main message of BATDR was fine, but it didn't work super well for Audrey's character. She'd already forgotten Joey was her father, and was living in blissful ignorance of that fact until Memory Joey decided to infodump on her right away. Sure, the "just because you were born of darkness doesn't mean you have to be darkness" thing applies to her AFTER she learns Joey was her father, but...Audrey was never threatening to Become Evil, so it almost didn't need to be said and was kind of a flat message...? I would argue Memory Joey would benefit more from that message- as he's a literal copy of a Very Bad Dude. My guy was projecting this whole time.