#ccs.text

come and read my play it's finally done :+)

An experimental piece of antitheater meant to supplement the Cold Case Simulacrum narrative, which is currently not too finished. Visit the CCSimulacrum website to find out more.

This play follows tangential stream-of-consciousness storylines examining characters in ways marginally foreign to their presentation in the main storyline. It was written to exercise the setting and the people of the story, though it stands on its own as a current of fragmented scenes dealing with roughly 20 people dealing with existence far away from all other forms of life.

YESSS FREYASWEEP

she loves reading about magic programming and whatnot famed interest of hers blah blah but she also has a covert interest in aquatic wildlife. not many people know this

she has a marble collection and theyre like her favorite thing to mess around with. generally shes usually doing weird stuff with her hands whether cracking her knuckles or doing steeples with them

as a kid she memorised various riddles. literally that one post thats like 'when i was a kid i thought id get sent to a labyrinth and have to answer a sphynx's riddle so i tried to remember the answers to as many as i could just in case'. and still remembers like a fucking Lot of them and tries to come up with fun new ones whenever she can smile

shes a drummer :+) formerly part of a local band and post-story shes starts one with isel and olzhas her #besties. enjoy freya drums.png

she loves metal and prog and thats inherited from me ❤️

i just think the below revelation is funny

RIGHT SO. for about an entire year now i’ve had this inside joke with my boyfriend about summoning isel into our dreams. which i think started off because it had a dream about isel and like the only thing it retained from that was having the very strong thought of ‘i wish isel was my dad’ and we both thought that was funny as fuck. so we go on to propose the isel dream challenge and it like became a thing for a couple of weeks that like. at the end of every call we’d wish one another a beautiful isel dream full of hot handsome men

for context. this was before i got on prozac and before that i didn’t have particularly vivid dreams and i didn’t remember most of them. additionally a lot of my dreams do not feature me or people i know. and so for a few nights i was genuinely like Alright i have to train my mind for this i’m gonna think about isel before i go to bed and i’m gonna look at pics of him before i go to bed.

so eventually miraculously one night i have this dream where i find myself in a fantasy tavern. like dnd ass dimly lit room orcs with beer old man barkeep daggers being thrown type shit. and i’m walking around trying to just like get a feel for the area when i see a poster of isel that is simply his face with the word ISEL written out in impact font below, and it’s like just printer paper taped to a wooden wall, very anachronistic. so i look at that for a little bit and then i start hearing isel’s voice taunting me and like offering me a mysterious challenge? i think part of it was like. oh yeah he was encouraging me to listen to his offers and if i completed them he would actually appear before me. and at this point the room changes and it’s just a little attic sized place with the isel poster crowding my vision but it’s not like cool or anything he’s not moving it’s literally just a piece of paper sending out an isel monologue in my mind. i don’t remember the exact details unfortunately. i wish i did. i remember it just being very pompous and meaningless though. and i woke up before i got the chance to reply

now. this dream is funny both because of the visual it conjures. as observed in the classic mockup i made.

and because it is actually a part of like. a reoccurring torment i have of only being able to interface with people and characters as posters in a scene? like as if that is the full extent of my lucid dreaming capability like i have had my boyfriend my boyfriend’s characters and my own characters show up in dreams but only as like. pictures on a poster. that i see briefly while i’m like running through a castle dungeon’s hallways or whatever. and the isel dream is notable for happening after like weeks of trying to will him into my dreams for the sole bit of it and also for being the closest thing to actually being able to talk to one of my characters in my dreams. i think like a couple of months later o had a dream where i saw olzhas on a poster in a similar fashion but i didn’t even get to talk to em or anything. and since then i have not had any train dreams whatsoever

25. Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

GODDAMN DID I! came up with most of the ghosts in ccs this year and it was fun but i think i’m gonna soapbox a bit about the facsimiles because i haven’t really anywhere else….

these guys have technically existed in the narrative since last summer but i hadn’t really developed them nor designed them until like. literally this summer so about an entire year later. their whole deals just being sentient bits of code derived from the memories of two other existing characters. person who made them (marjolaine) has been experimenting with evolving human consciousness from raw code and the facsimiles endeavour was basically just another expression of that with the addendum of an animate human origin point

in the past i’ve like described these two as “new shoots of a plant growing from the same root of an established organism” because they both arise from younger incarnations of their bases and have like. basically fully split apart in ego despite maintaining the memories and foundation of them.

these two guys also just basically exist in the computer. which is also the sky of the entire world. don’t worry about it. but they don’t exist corporeally and can only really commune through a computer interface

frances on the right is a younger copy of marjolaine…. for context marjolaine used to be a prestigious opera singer who ended up straining her voice so heavily she retained permanent vocal strain that completely killed her career and also weakened her ability to consistently speak at all. frances was built from memories PRIOR to that as a way for marjolaine to relive her glory days but frances themself became like. very unimpressed with that responsibility and was much more interested in manipulating their own existence and partial omniscience (as a result of being expanded on with code) to just become a major gossip basically hehe. they love peoplewatching the living and coming up with absurd ‘theories’ and assumptions about their behaviours, making bets on things that will happen, peeking into potential ‘timelines’ for fun….

eventually though marjolaine grew extremely ornery with their waywardness, and started to pressure and berate them into fulfilling that desired snapshot of her own life. this placed a lot of stress on frances and they basically just shattered into code under it which. although not a permanent affliction is something that requires a prolonged period of recovery. and prior to ‘dying’ they basically vowed to never commune with marjolaine again so. that bridge is burnt. fucked up your clone real bad!

(also yes they’re named after that One Album. for no reason really)

sezim on the left derives from another guy (olzhas, who has many problems, such as being friends with marjolaine) who basically ‘donated’ eir own memories for this experiment only to like. very quickly regret it once it turned out sezim developed into kind of just. an embarrassing immature bratty version of emself from like 5 years back. he’s much more vexed about setting himself apart as a distinct individual than frances was, to the point that it’s what occupies his mind most…. his main pastime WAS hanging out with frances and testing the precise vastness of their knowledge, together, but once frances exploded and shit, seething about his general existence kind of took priority lol. he’s basically just got an entire thing of “i’m a terrifying being of great wisdom and power but i have to be tied to this random motherfucker that i hate and i wish i could shed all that influence off. and also i’m confined to a computer.” he sort of just ‘fled’ once frances exploded (which he’s EXTREMELY bitter about btw) and has formed an undying grudge against marjolaine, thus never contacting her again afterward….

these two have a weird role in the story where they’re kind of just setpieces for their bases’ story arcs. funnily enough. but they’ve got a bit of meta to them that i think is interesting…. mostly just embodying the idea of “here’s ‘people’ who both literally and figuratively sit ‘above’ the narrative and the traditional idea of being developed characters” by design they’re kind of just witnesses or, more aptly, critics of the main conflict of the story which is all about really convoluted and annoying interpersonal drama radiating out into more serious conflict. they kind of think it’s all stupid and avoidable and they are 100% right. but who’s going to listen to them! nobody’s really casting an ear to them since they’re so above it all to begin with….

or something like that. i like these two catty fucks

GOD where do i begin. i think there’s more like divorce than actual maintained relationships throughout the whole thing LOL might as well run through all of them

the fucking. one that’s ruled my mind and heart for the past few months nonstop has been isel and olzhas specifically because their whole dynamic revolves around how much these two care about each other even in spite of like. the loose conceit of a breakup haunting them. they both have this thing about, despite mutually deciding on separation, making exceptions for one another in terms of aiding and even being outright affectionate with one another… they’re still being very tightknit whilst also refusing to let other people pry into these ‘transgressive’ acts that contradict the broadcasted external image of their relationship. they’ve got a very private kind of love between them and their whole divorce is basically just a charade built off a misunderstanding but it’s still this constraining force that just. guilts the both of them out of genuineness. it’s fucked up. it’s my favorite thing in the world. i’m glad everyone else just finds the whole ordeal gormless and i’m glad people like freya and dalisay exist to make fun of these guys for being soooo unbearably facetious

beatrix and marjolaine are also complicated…. with them it’s less a thing of them like. tugging at my heartstrings and more just being like the most twisted fascinating puzzle of codependency LOL. like the two of them met each other whilst they were very young and they were both kind of just like. superficially enthralled with one another. very artistically pretentious pair of wayward fiction writer/famous opera singer which like. slowly lost its spark over the years and like two decades later they’re basically both just tugging on one another. utterly refusing to break things off despite then both obviously only being captivated by the past veneer of their old young love. with beatrix in particular it’s fun because he’s got like. this whole complex about seeming well-put together and accomplished and classy and whatever and he’s basically holding onto marjolaine as a status symbol like “hah look at me i’m an accomplished woman who is MARRIED” and he basically views outright divorce as like. admitting to making a mistake in choosing to marry marjolaine. and him admitting to a mistake would basically like kill him so eh. in the dull relationship he must stay. like something i adore about the whole situation is that beatrix basically DID divorce him and quickly walked back on that for aforementioned prideful reasons which is like. yeah. he’s a bit of a disaster it’s fine. similarly i’m fond of the way marjolaine latches on to beatrix for a similar reason of like. “i already started this marriage and ever since my life’s gone down the drain (especially socially) so i need to keep this flame alive if nothing else” whilst also. only really being half-hearted in her interest of beatrix as an individual. they’re both just very devoted to. not really one another. but the period of time that their inversion represents.

cas and lanuola are like a complete nightmare to explain i’ll do it separately if anyone wants it but like MANNNN they’ve got a mixture of things that kick my ass which is like. a) born arose from very heavy performance-based careers and both never really had profound connections with other people nor managed to really effectively evade the public eye. got to do the latter on the train quite plainly and also got attached to one another quite quickly due to shared experiences. they’re both each other’s “first person to really understand me”. b) they both died trying to protect each other it’s all in vain and it fucked!!!! they turn into weird abstract ghosts and you think it’d be fine BUT c) divorce happens due to a convoluted domino fall of events basically boiling down to “cas is extremely bent on revenge for her early death and exerts it on someone completely unrelated by sending them vague scary visions meant to warn the living of the person who killed her and lanuola finds this completely uncouth and breaks things off for moral purposes. however cas is also conflicted about her actions and is incapable of admitting it. lanuola also misses cas but maintains his morality steadfastly. ahhhhhhhh!” to harken to an old sketch made by my good friend stanley:

there’s like some smaller divorces that don’t quite matter that much. like faris and volkan. latter of whom is literally an absolute speck of dust of a character he literally just exists to be faris’ ex boyfriend who barely even comes up. this dude’s job is to simply get a divorce. it’s not even that dramatic they just cut things off because faris wants to leave for the scary train that’s rumoured to probably just kill people once they get on there and it’s like. amicable enough. faris hardly ever gives him much thought afterward LOL

mazin’s divorce also like vaguely matters but it’s another more metaphorical thing. dude literally just disappears without a word to his wife because he’s just THAT ravenous to leave for the train and sabotage it from within. only ever brings her up to get pity from other people and was never really that attentive to her or anything. he sure is a really lovely guy

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

canonically their favorite food is just a good slice of mango, which is a fruit they are allergic to. based on my own foolish experiences

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

HMM they were very loosely inspired by raz from psy.chonauts both designwise and in terms of like. the protagonist niche they fill. very much wanted them to be a very responsive very opinionated surveyor of the different people they’re talking to, something lightly lifted from raz’s own funny occasional snide child comments. funnily enough though the first drafts of their design occurred before i even got into psychonauts and just knew of his design but me interfacing with the game coincided with the early days of working on ccs so the inspiration ended up being quite relevant anyway :+)

i think i also just got the vague idea of a character design where a characters hair looked like rainclouds and so i branched off from there….

i’m sure they have a lot more inspirations but that’s the most vibrant ones in my mind….

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?