#like a good counterpart to Kaysen and Willie

[francis-york-morgan]

Also finding it intriguing with how harshly York is criticizing civilization overtaking nature when in the first game he kept on insulting Greenvale for being primitive and stuff

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Lovecraft Jazz, Meet Deadly Premonition

All right -- I brought this up twice last week, both in a regular AU Thursday post and as part of a discussion of Hope's role in the Lovecraft Jazz AU (Hope, for those not in the know, is the Queen Wins!Victor's Pomeranian. He first appeared in an ask on my first Secundus!Victor RP account (I'd started Queen Wins as a separate universe there) as the Annoying Dog from Undertale, crashing through the window of Richard's shop; QW!Victor promptly adopted the pup, and he's stuck around doing weird things in anon asks ever since. I made him a Pom when I recreated the Valice pets in Sims 4 since that seemed to best mimic what the Annoying Dog looked like), so let's have some expansion on this crossover idea already.

First, for context: Deadly Premonition is a video game where you play as FBI agent Francis York Morgan (call him York, that's what everyone calls him), who goes to small town Greenvale to investigate the murder of a young waitress, and how it ties into some other murders he's been investigating, all linked by red seeds. Simple enough premise, right?

Trust me, this game is so much more. It's a flawed classic along the lines of Vampire: the Masquerade -- Bloodlines -- the game itself is janky and glitchy as all hell, but the story and characters are absolutely fantastic. My main LPer Helloween4545 did a LP of it recently, and you can watch it here if you want the experience without having to fight with the controls/deal with the game crashing on you. If you like the show Twin Peaks, or just really quirky and dramatic stuff with super inappropriate music at times, you'll probably enjoy it!

As for the crossover -- well, basically, beyond shifting the time period to the late 1920s, I'd be using my gang to fix some of the more depressing parts of the narrative. The details are going under a cut, because MAJOR SPOILERS. Seriously, huge ones. Tweaked for the time period a bit, but still. Read on only if you don't mind that. (Or watch the LP and save this post for later.)

-->The group first meets York as part of the Innsmouth mess -- he's one of the BoI agents investigating the "smuggling operation" going on there. They get along pretty well, since York is considered kind of a weirdo by his other agents, and he's the only one not particularly phased by Siren. (He's a little surprised, but gets over it quickly.)

-->Later on, while exploring the Dreamlands, Alice stumbles across one of York's dreams and says hello. York tells her he's on his way to Greenvale to investigate the murder of a young girl named Anna Graham -- Alice, upon realizing Greenvale isn't too far from where they are currently, says they'll meet up with him there and they can do a bit of reconnecting when he isn't busy with his case.

-->And then the group gets pulled into said case, thanks to a few key events:

A) Emily meeting the local policewoman, Emily Wyatt, and the two bonding a bit over having the same first name

B) Victor meeting Forrest Kaysen, and his dog Willie hating Victor's dog Hope on sight -- the feeling is mutual, and the two men just barely avoid a dog fight. Victor is baffled, as Hope seemed to like everybody before now

C) Lizzie visiting the club of Carol Maclaine, the sister of local policeman Thomas, and stumbling upon the weird sex dungeon downstairs -- and then being hidden in a closet by Thomas (dressed in a wig and red dress) before she can escape, letting her see that Thomas and the local sheriff, George Woodman, have kind of a -- fucked-up sexual relationship. Thomas apologizes after George leaves, and Lizzie, feeling really bad for him, says he can talk if he needs to and that "Thomas, just remember -- you really CAN do better"

D) Victor starting to have strange dreams of following Hope through a bright white forest -- and then, suddenly, coming across the murder victim! Anna tells him she's become a Goddess of the Forest and to pass along to her mother that she's okay now and she's sorry for getting involved with George.

-->That, plus a little more encouragement on Lizzie's part, gets Thomas to confess the truth -- GEORGE killed Anna as the first part of a ritual to make him into a "god," inspired by the legend of an old serial killer in the town, The Red Cape Killer. He also says local girl Becky was part of their little group and she's likely to be the next victim -- there's a race to her house, and they manage to catch George in the act of cutting her open. Some hasty field medicine from Bonejangles keeps her alive long enough to get her to the local hospital, and George is taken into custody.

-->However, while everyone's relieved that they've caught the killer, York isn't so sure his case is over. He reveals that the reason he's in Greenvale is because Anna's death is only the latest in dozens of murders he's investigating, all linked by the same strange upside-down symbol and red seeds. While he's willing to accept George committed the Greenvale murder, there's obviously more to this story. The gang do some digging, and eventually get help from Harry Stewart, the richest and most powerful man in town, who informs them of a dark incident in the town's past where someone covered Greenvale in a sinister purple fog that drove the local inhabitants to attack and kill each other. The Red Cape Killer was one of the affected (Harry's own father, in fact), and simply the most successful. The incident was buried in town memory, and the Red Cape Killer lived on as an urban legend.

-->While all this is going on, they also learn more about York's friend Zach -- a mysterious invisible figure who apparently came to York shortly after York's father murdered his mother, then himself. Alice wonders if Zach is like her Wonderland friends and offers to help him traverse the Dreamlands if he wants to get out more -- this leads to a rather interesting situation where they end up in one of Thomas's dreams, and Zach proves that, while York's into Emily W, he quite likes Thomas. Thomas, still a little raw from the situation with George, is thrilled by this turn of events, even if he's not sure how the heck any relationship between them would work.

-->And then Kaysen tries to kidnap the two Emilys, Victoria, Alice, and Lizzie. They manage to fight him off (though poor Emily W gets a mouthful of red seeds in the process and has to be taken to the hospital). Turns out he's the one behind the red seed killings, murdering innocent women by literally planting trees in them -- all for fun too! He's also the one behind the purple fog incident -- oh, and turns out he's the one who actually killed York's, or rather Zach's, mother, and his father killed himself out of grief. Yes, Zach is actually the original owner of the body, and York the Dreamland presence who came along to help him. Everyone's rather stunned by this revelation, as you might expect.

-->Oh, also, Kaysen's not human. He's in fact a minor eldritch creature from the Red Forest, an evil realm in the Dreamlands. Willie is his partner and handler, relaying orders from the Red Tree that "rules" the forest. When they're confronted, they warp into more horrific forms -- in Willie's case, a demonic Doberman-like creature.

And then Hope becomes a frigging wolf.

Yup, turns out in this world, Hope is a representative of the White Forest, the good counterpart to the Red Forest (and the place Victor's been ending up in his dreams lately) -- and he is eager to kick Willie's ass. Zach takes care of Kaysen while Hope defeats Willie, with some help from the other members of the group.

-->Afterwards, Hope brings everyone to the White Forest, where they receive some information on how to cleanse the town of the Red Tree's taint -- and, ideally, as a boon, Zach and York each get their own body so they don't have to work out some sort of weird timeshare arrangement for their respective relationships.

-->York reunites with Emily W, Zach and Thomas get together, and the group helps the townsfolk clean the soil and uproot every red tree they can find before planting some white trees in their place and taking their leave to help the next unfortunate place beseiged by abominations.

-->Basically, the whole point of this is to stop every main character besides Zach dying (although I guess York doesn't so much die as ascend to the same plane as the Goddesses), and to get my police boyfriends because damn it I shipped Thomas and York so freaking hard before the revelation that Thomas had been so broken by the murders and George's abuse he was willing to kill Emily W.

...Anybody else find it weird I'm resorting to a Lovecraft-inspired universe to get happy endings?