#malevolent bb

[olives-and-lilies]

So there’s been something in the works, @malevolentbigbang has happened, the results are in!

I got to work with the lovely @jay-jay-bird, our writer with a truly wicked skill for tactile imagery and sneaky foreshadowing, and @butzenscheibe, another damn good artists (the color control, seriously!)

Here are my humble additions, to this beautiful fic

[ID: A digital painting of Arthur Lester leaning on a counter with a mug in hand. He has long brown hair, a goatee, and bright blue eyes. He’s wearing a white tank top that shows his freckled arms, and his head is cocked playfully to the side, mouth open, cheeks blushing. In front of him stands John Doe, seen from the back. He has slicked-back blonde hair and is wearing a striped collared shirt. He holds a copy of The New York Times open in front of him. The words, “I’d probably just tie you down,” are written across the top of the image, and a blue broken circuit symbol emanates from Arthur. End ID]

[ID: a digital painting of a close up of piano keys with two hands resting on them. On the left is Arthur’s right hand, and on the right is John’s left hand. They are not quite close enough to touch, but Arthur’s pinky is slightly extended toward John’s. End ID]

[ID Left: Digital painting of Arthur’s shirtless back from the neck to the waist. John’s hands are cinching the knots on a black shibari rope harness that wraps around Arthur’s torso and pins his arms back. The scene is bathed in warm golden firelight. End ID]

[ID Right: Digital painting of Arthur in profile, from the shoulders up. He is shirtless, and part of a rope harness is visible around his arm. His lips are parted and he is looking back at John, who has his mouth to Arthur’s ear and one hand wrapped around Arthur’s chin. End ID]

[ID: Digital painting of John and Arthur’s hands. John is reaching for Arthur’s wrist, which has a faint red mark around it. Text: “‘You are an uncompromising man, Arthur Lester.’ John caught hold of Arthur’s wrist, gently running his thumb over the marks left by the rope. His calloused fingertips caught on each slight indentation, a match-strike touch that sent sparks across his skin. ‘And yet you offer yourself to me, when you would yield to no one else in the numberless worlds. Your faith is more precious than gold; it tastes sweeter than any wine. To a god, there is no greater gift than that.’” End ID]

Shoutout to @genderfluid-draws for helping me with the IDs, they are not my strong point and druid is absolutely next level at them

[potato-lord-but-not]

ME WHEN IM ILL ABOUT THESE TWO

[thetomorrowshow]

hello malevolent podcast fandom. i have listened to the first 6 episodes.

[coldwheat]

"i need hasturfuckers to see this"

[dontdreamonme]

Arthur Lester poster i made for a friend that's been sitting in my art vault for a few months now‼️‼️‼️

[dspd]

He said he's everything he loves.

HE SAID HE'S EVERYTHING HE LOVES!!!

HE SAID HE'S EVERYTHING HE LOVES!!!

[feartheoldblog]

i will never forgive fromsoft for making such a beautiful, beautiful goth skeleton murder woman have such a terrible boss fight in dark souls 2

[abyssin]

"fascinating!" tartaglia leans over the edge of the spring far too hurriedly, the smile ( too wide, too wide ) on his lips with the slightest peek of his fangs. arms cross on the ledge for him to prop his chin atop, head lolling to the side as the whirlpools of his gaze churn in sickening speed. "it has been long since i have left my abode. to be greeted with a human child in yubaba's establishment is certainly a first. and what is your name..?" / @chiheru *

[princeofpaths]

Cannot wait to develop my hardboiled detective for starfinder

[vintagegeekculture]

There is another section from the song "Gamers", and I'm curious if it refers to a specific incident.

I'm a live-roleplayin' gamer, I used to play out in the woods. Twilight 2000, Shadowrun, I'd play whenever I could. I'd put on my costume, shoot tin cans, and make firecrackers fly. Then my front door got kicked down again -- This time it was the FBI.

They stole my guns, my video tapes, every book I’d ever read, And a couple of bags of fertilizer out of the garden shed! They told the press I was a terrorist, who planned to blow up half the town. They called me a right-wing militia nut, and a neo-nazi clown.

The details are not the same, but I think this is a reference to a well known incident in 1990, where Steve Jackson Games, best known these days as the maker of the Munchkin card game, were raided by the Secret Service under suspicion that their game product, Cyberpunk, a roleplaying game, was actually a manual for computer crime. Agents literally walked out of the building holding the game company's computers.

Because this story is so well known to gamers, and spread at a time when word of mouth was so potent, there are many details that are altered by the telephone game. Many say it was the FBI instead of the Secret Service, for instance, or it was Cyberpunk 2020 that was raided (which was put out by R. Talsorian Games, not Steve Jackson).

To quote Steve Jackson:

In the course of that visit, it became clear that the investigating agents considered GURPS Cyberpunk to be "a handbook for computer crime." They seemed to make no distinction between a discussion of futuristic credit fraud, using equipment that doesn't exist, and modern real-life credit card abuse. A repeated comment by the agents was "This is real."

"Careless, illegal, and completely unjustified," the raid happened because author Loyd Blankenship ran an irreverent, anti-authority computer USENET BBS dedicated to computers and yes, hacking, and Steve Jackson was struck through guilt by association. It's exactly the kind of overreach that happens when the malevolent Eye of Sauron that is federal law enforcement fixes itself on you. In the course of investigation, the Secret Service justified its own warrant by saying that they would find evidence to justify the warrant, which is circular reasoning.

Due to the raid, Steve Jackson Games had to lay off half the staff and was close to bankruptcy fighting the charges. However, for once, they were able to countersue the Secret Service, because several committed technology lawyers, partially in response, formed the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This is not the first time this happened. In 1980, a decade earlier, TSR was raided because of the spy game, Top Secret, due to suspicion of aiding international terrorism in Lebanon (!)

[eden-has-rotted]

ramble!

'Mama', the ninth track off of American rock band My Chemical Romance's third, and most well-known studio album, The Black Parade, released in 2006, is a musical masterpiece due to its utilization of multiple styles, overarching themes, and creative use of sound effects. The song begins by fading in, a thing that is unique to this song due to a fade being more popular for outros, and you can hear the sound of bombs exploding. The sound instantly makes you think of war, and shortly after the first explosion, you can hear Ray Toro's guitar creeping its way into your ears. He plays each note and chord with a staccato, playing a single note in a lower octave before jumping to a higher register with chords at around 104 bpm, providing a very polka sounding tune. The bombs continue to explode as he plays further, until he reaches the end of the phrase and repeats the tune as he joined by Gerard Way's vocals. He is writing a letter to 'Mama', a character in the story of the Black Parade who is officially known as 'Mother War', the embodiment of human conflict. There is another interpretation as to who this 'Mama' character is, one that interprets Gerard singing as a soldier out at war. This reading of the lyrics explains the writing of his letter to 'Mama', as is sung in the beginning verse. He officially begins the first verse by singing 'Mama, we all go to hell'. This shows that he could be confessing to his mother that he had done something malevolent, prefacing by explaining that 'we all go to hell' to say 'I'm not more evil than anyone else'. He then says that he is 'writing this letter and wishing you well', before more instruments come in. A glockenspiel plays a riff composed of eighth notes starting on E and jumping  up to a B, down a half step to a Bb, back to a B, up to a C, and back to a B before repeating that four times, with the fourth time starting on an F# rather than an E. He continues to explain how 'we're all gonna die', leading the verse to form into the chorus. The chorus is comprised of Bob Bryar's drums, Ray Toro's and Frank Iero's guitars (leading and rhythm, respectively), and Mikey Way's bass. After the first chorus and the beginning of the second verse, he proceeds to sing about how 'we're all full of lies', before a noise that sounds like a steam-powered train horn carries them into the second half of the verse. The glockenspiel riff from the first verse is continued, with the addition of Way's vocals, whose words are being said simultaneously to him by a voice that sounds groggy, as if their throat was scrunched up. He sings to his mother about how she 'should've raised a baby girl' and how he 'should've been a better son', thus solidifying Mama as the most trans-coded song off of its album because I have yet to find a single cisgender explanation for these lyrics. In the measure before the next chorus, Bryar plays two hits on the crash symbol, counting them off before playing a double eighth note pickup that carries them into the other instrumentals. This time, there are more interactive instrumentals, and a series of 'la la la's' singing to the rhythm of the lead guitar is present. After the first part of the chorus is done, Way continues the other half when he takes the place of 'Mama', singing 'She said, "you ain't no son of mine"'. This proves further that the main character obviously has mommy issues, as 'Mama' is expressing how she despises her son.

[potato-lord-but-not]

Noel seems to be the one comforting people pretty often, I think he deserves a quick menty b (and some comfort from his boyfriends)

woagh ourthur comic be upon ye

Arthur probably spent 20 minutes trying to get this man to finally break for the night

[nashiriel]

Why do I have the feeling that one day bb!luke take bite out of the corpse that cannibal bring him because he started feel bad and not one second later someone walk on him. ( can be anyone )

Baby Luke’s just too polite to turn down the still-screaming meals his loving dragon keeps dropping in front of him. It’d certainly be awkward for whoever walked in on Luke engaging in cannibalism (probably Rhaenys, who reconsiders the merits of taking a long vacation in Essos).

In all seriousness though, Prince Lucerys’ infamously savage dragon certainly does lead to a lot of tales being spread about him, which certain people are all too happy to fan. The Cannibal, after all, literally eats its own kind, with not the slightest empathy for even the dead or unhatched. It is so wild and malevolent that it has killed every Targaryen who ever tried to claim it.

Just what does his dragon say about Luke then?

[derpkind]

And in 5 eps from being caught up on Malevolent. Season 4 finale was wack dude.

Kayne bb u do not give a single shit huh

[inkykeiji]

got such a bad sunburn on the beach because i refused to wear sunscreen despite being chronically white >.< can’t decide if touya-nii would give me cold baths and aloe and other stuff to help it heal or if he’d revel in the way i start crying when he smacks it as hard as he can

omg anon bb noooooo :(( i am so sorry!!! i feel your pain tho as i am also fair-skinned and i do not tan, i just burn—so any time i’m out in the sun i have to be wearing sunscreen!

omfg HAHAHAHA i love this so much. the answer is: he would do both!!! he’s downright meticulous when it comes to caring for you + the burn, and he’s constantly keeping an eye on it, taking mental notes on it’s healing process and deciphering which methods seem to alleviate the pain the best, so observant it almost veers into obsessiveness. that doesn’t mean he’s always nice about it, though.

a master at justifying his own heinous actions, touya-nii can always procure a reason for why he just gave the torched skin a five finger open-palmed slap, watching with morbid fascination as your flesh turns from angry crimson to petrified white in the shape of his large hand. just checking to see how it’s healing, he’ll tell you, concerned voice and wrinkled brow masquerading as genuine, undermined by the malice tugging at the corners of his lips, pulling them up into a poorly suppressed sadistic smile. the shorter his handprint stays visible, the better it’s getting, he swears it.

he’ll also pinch, flick, and bite the wounded skin, every transgression accompanied with some bullshit excuse for why it was necessary, never mind the fact that his nails leave dark, ugly indents and his fingertips crush capillaries into brutish purples and his teeth slice through flesh to leave a row of tiny gashes in the shape of his mouth. i mean, it just allows him to care for you more, doesn’t it??? ♡

but also, he just loooooves to hear you squeal out that high pitched stringy touya-nii!, face crumpled up all cutely as it contorts beneath his pain, heavy tears beading your lashes—although he’ll never admit it to you, committed to his facade of caring, doting, good big brother in this particular situation. but he doesn’t have to say it, because his eyes show it: in the way his pupils pulse, gape, attempt to swallow you whole; in the way his thin irises glint with malevolence, sharp and flaring with every precious noise he manages to elicit ♡

[subzeroparade]

I finished!!! With DLC and everything, now I’m a squid baby hanging out with the Doll for the rest of eternity. Super excited that my self-imposed ban on lore videos and fics are lifted, and now I can read!

Not to diss Elden Ring, gods know I love the Lands Between, but Bloodborne’s story just hits different. With ER it feels like it’s all a giant family squabble, but in Bloodborne it’s the collective human hubris that fucked everything up. The Great Ones in BB seem to be way more sympathetic and often victims of men’s actions, where in ER the Outer Gods appear to be more malevolent. Idk, it’s almost like Marika and the Greater Will is a success story of how to commune with the Great Ones properly and establish a mutually beneficial world order compared to whatever they were trying to do in BB. From a “all soulsborne games are connected” perspective it’s pretty neat.

With that said, I’m dying to know your takes on the lore. I’ve always felt in the beginning (the beginning of the game as well, to a certain extend) everything was your normal level of Victorian horror——vampires, werewolves, hunters, scholars that seek higher knowledge, but all under control and supernatural events were few and far between, known only to certain individuals. It’s only until the event of the Fishing Hamlet and the establishment of the Healing Church, or even after the schism of the Choir and the Mensis, that things went publicly tits up. Are you in favor of the events of the game happened in literally one night, or that Yharnam is stuck in a limbo? How long do you think has passed since the heyday of Byrgenworth and the event of the game (I want to say 30ish years based on Willem’s age and since he’s the only one alive from that time it’s a good time indicator. But then again is he actually alive? Extending his existence through unnatural means sounds like something he’d totally do)? Did our action really change anything? Did killing Rom allow the Mensis Ritual to succeed by weakening the veil and beckoning the Red Moon, or they were going to succeed/already did anyway and we were just breaking the illusions that everything is “normal”? Since the Healing Church is a new power (although how they managed to build so many grand architectures in such short amount of time is beyond me, the magic in this world is not known for its construction powers lol), who ruled Yharnam before them in your headcanon? I read theories that the Vilebloods were the ruling class before the Healing Church and they themselves have Pthumerian ties, which is interesting and adds another layer to the conflict between the Healing Church and Cainhurst. But I don’t know how plausible that theory is.

So sorry for my rambling, I just have so many thoughts in my head and excited to share them with you before I do the same in your comment section 😭 Anyway, since AO3 is back up it’s great time to start diving into BB fics!

Wow this sure is An Ask :’)

First of all, congrats on becoming A Squid! Enjoy godhood. 

The rest of this under the cut for length.

BB and ER are certainly vastly different in their storytelling. I remain a big fan of how the spectrum of ER’s themes run from Greek tragedy to medieval succession struggles. Personally, I find the familial plot points of it to be the most interesting - as well as the vast passage of time and sense of decay and mythology imbued in the world. Admittedly I don’t care as much for shipping in ER - outside of writing Godwyn/Fortissax, obvs - because the legacy and mythos parts of it seem so incredibly rich by comparison (hence why I don’t write BB characters as being related, as many people seem to - I burnt out on family drama themes writing for ER).  

BB, by contrast, is somehow very immediate in its history, in its active crisis, and it feels very grounded in humanity in a way that ER does not. In ER I feel constantly reminded that we are a shitty little lowly Tarnished and cannot pretend to understand the millennia that have past - even since the Shattering - or the scraps we’re now sniffing at in the wake of all that. But humans in BB feel close enough to the gods that they’re compelled to reach for them - scholars, clergymen, institutions, etc - only to realise the gods are crueler and more incomprehensible than even those of ER, while the consequences of their actions are significantly and viscerally more personal. ER has gods as a product of divinity and mythmaking, and BB has them, in a weird sense, as a facet of the Promethean impulse gone horribly wrong. If you really want to know my take on some of these specific questions, I’ve answered similar ones under the ask tag - but am occasionally cagey about some of these, because I use them for plot points in future fics. I’d rather a reader go in not being too familiar with my speculation, and that my conjecture is a means to an end (storytelling) rather than just info-dumping of “here’s what I think happened” - but that’s just my personal inclination. (Which is not to say I don’t appreciate other people’s elaborate lore speculation because I do, and there are some great and heavily-researched headcanons that I don’t always share but love to rotisserie in my head.)

As for what I can answer - 

Are you in favor of the events of the game happened in literally one night, or that Yharnam is stuck in a limbo? 

Semi-answered this in a previous ask here but since cosmic what-the-fuckery is pretty abundant otherwise, I like parts of lorecrafting to be pretty grounded in opposition to that - so I do believe Yharnam folk experience multiple nights of the Hunt, a rhythm of descent into madness influenced by the moon and the slow dissolution of the Church. I think dawn comes for them, but they know the next night will be worse, each new moon another instance of the city unravelling around them.  

How long do you think has passed since the heyday of Byrgenworth and the event of the game? 

Touched on this a bit here. This is based on the pacing I establish in my own writing, but I give the events between the Hamlet and the PC Hunter’s arrival about 50 years, give or take. 

But then again is he [Willem] actually alive? 

I think about catatonic rocking chair Willem like a potted plant on a windowsill. Decorative. 

Did killing Rom allow the Mensis Ritual to succeed by weakening the veil and beckoning the Red Moon, or they were going to succeed/already did anyway and we were just breaking the illusions that everything is “normal”?

Hammering this out for an upcoming fic, because I haven’t entirely made up my mind - also about whether the Moon creates the Dream before Mensis usurps Mergo’s Nightmare, or vice versa - or whether the two happen around the same time, and what their separate or overlapping goals are. I do think Mensis has different goals than the Church, to a certain point. I’ve had some pretty interesting discussions with mutuals about this (and feel free to share thoughts if you have). 

Since the Healing Church is a new power (although how they managed to build so many grand architectures in such short amount of time is beyond me, the magic in this world is not known for its construction powers lol), who ruled Yharnam before them in your headcanon? 

I tackle this with worldbuilding in The Feast We Were Promised, if you’re inclined to read it. Tldr: nothing exists in a vacuum, certainly not in a society with the kind of complexity demonstrable in Bloodborne, so obviously there was both a system of belief and system of government before the Healing Church politicked and/or strong-armed its way into power. 

As for cathedrals (and this is where being a historian by profession is pretty useful in worldbuilding): you could built pretty remarkable structures with pretty efficient timing, especially in the late 19th century. To use a nearby example of my own, Sacré-Coeur basilica at Montmartre took about 60 years from scratch in the latter half of the 19thc (as in there was nothing there before, no minor structure) and that’s considered long - it probably would’ve taken less time without the multiple wars and upheaval over that timespan. Likewise, a structure like Notre-Dame (the Paris one, not the Montreal one) underwent extensive restorations and additions in the 19th century, especially under Viollet-le-Duc (whose students would go on to do the same thing to gothic cathedrals elsewhere in France), but the baseline of the structure was already there - which is what I propose in the case of Yharnam: that much of the city’s civil and religious urban structure was already present (perhaps in the form of Pthumerian ruins in some cases). As in most European cities, buildings sometimes date from the Roman Empire and are gradually embellished, redone, or expanded upon over the course of the following centuries/millennia when funds are plenty and the ruling class is willing. If you think about what Haussmann did to Paris in less than twenty years, I imagine that to be the kind of equivalent of how the Church “cleans” up Yharnam and modernises it. But it’s my own preferred headcanon to imagine Yharnam was a little underwhelming before the Church’s public works; it could’ve also already been a splendid, thriving city.  (I did some work on Viollet-le-Duc's gargoyles like a decade ago, I highly encourage checking out his early drafts of them, they are remarkable images).

I read theories that the Vilebloods were the ruling class before the Healing Church and they themselves have Pthumerian ties, which is interesting and adds another layer to the conflict between the Healing Church and Cainhurst.

I touch on this in Feast a bit as well, but I think it’s really open to interpretation and you can make all kinds of convincing and interesting arguments about Cainhurst’s Pthumerian legacy. Again, on a grounded level beyond cosmic fuckery, I imagine Cainhurst and Yharnam’s larger territories have a centuries-old conflict a la English vs the French type of situation, and every skirmish and hostility arises out of this longstanding hostility and struggle over land and resources. I do think Cainhurst is tied to Pthumeru, though, via actual legacy, in a way Yharnam is not; and so I think Cainhurst would have claim to the labyrinths and the Healing Blood in a way that would threaten the Church’s supremacy in Yharnam and have ultimately kicked off hostilities, etc etc, until you get to the Cainhurst Massacre. 

All that to say enjoy your squidhood and any BB fics you read :)