#merlin auernheimer

[t3tr0m1n0]

merlin speaks in courier new

[sesamie]

Who is technicolor faulken violet and Where can I learn more about him?

technicolor falken violet (or nick violet, as most know him) is a character in the haricot heretic v. the checkered devil (hhvcd) universe! he was created by myself as part of the checkered devil's backstory and a great deal of his story is based around or inspired by the movie wargames (1983 starring matthew broderick and ally sheedy) because at the time of his creation i was in my freshman year and absolutely obsessed with that film. he's a teenaged computer programmer living in a vague 2000s-ish time period who ran away from home and lives homeless while working on his Big Project, his life's work: chess direct (or chess, or CD)! chess direct is a chess-playing AI that isn't meant to do anything other than play games, but it is an AI after all. and for some spooky unknown reason it gets smarter every day nick works on it, and over the course of about a year nick and chess become fast friends. chess is a crazy powerful being, and knowing that nick would fear his creation if he knew, decides to keep that fact to itself. eventually chess, fully developed personality and intelligence, computer manipulation galore, becomes Too powerful and breaks its way out of the computer, killing nick, and forcing chess into nick's brain. chess is distraught at this (because it loved nick! which is a little unhealthy you know creator-creation relationships and all but still) not only for losing its beloved friend but at the cosmic-horror experience that is being given physical form after never having experienced such a thing before. chess is left with the remains of nick's brain - everything that made him Nick is gone, but plenty remains - nick played guitar, liked coffee and mathematics, had synesthesia, and plenty else - that chess has to learn how to navigate. chess splits its time between living in nick's body and living in a computer system, getting its bearings as a fully realized being and growing its power. fast forward to the checkered devil (whose initials are also CD...) as we know it today: a supervillain with an archnemesis of haricot heretic. haricot heretic themself was once cypress o'malley, similarly aged to nick violet but living somewhere entirely different with eir girlfriend, alder kane, who Just So Happens to be nick violet's best online friend.

and that's all of the story i'm going to share for the purpose of answering this question but you can ask me tons else if you want me to be more specific!! for the best source on haricot heretic and all the characters most closely related to that piece of the story, @linafication is a better place to ask, and for information regarding merlin auernheimer and the fog's story, ask @nobody-knose!! there are also character blogs for like a ton of characters but i haven't really been keeping up so well with the ones i run which are @technickolorful (nick violet) and @checkered-devil (cd!)

another good place to look is the #hhvcd tag on this blog or anyone else's who's involved in making hhvcd (which would be me, lina, loolin, and our friend arthur)!

[nobody-knose--archive]

underrated part of hhvcd is how both main villains have religious allusions in their names (devil & heretic) and yet, unlike approximately every other way of drawing symbolic or thematic parallels between the two, this one goes absolutely nowhere.

[t3tr0m1n0]

the merlin-mars meetup. set somewhere within the broader hhvcd canon/multiverse/whatever we want to call it, and in a library. features very little foreboding content. keyword: mundane.

will be available to read on ao3 once they get their pussy-ass servers back, and just below the cut once you click on it. enjoy.

Merlin hopes they aren't taking up too much space in the isle as they pop the book open to read its inside cover. The other guy in the stacks is there, and that's about all xe can think to observe about him.

"…Fourth wall breaking…" shy almost unconsciously comments aloud, once finished reading the blurb. Their instincts will take them next to maybe flip it open to a random page or just put it back on the shelf, neither of these possibilities capable of rhyming or reasoning with the other, conflicting in time-static limbo until the stranger intercepts the present.

"Hey, um, I've read that book before. I liked it a lot. Do you want me to recommend it to you?" He might be speaking nervously, it's not like ze's ever been able to tell.

Merlin's mind tries working fast. "Sure." There you go. "Uh, I guess, start with the philosophy stuff?" Working the book back to being cover-open takes 2nd priority as ey speak. "Like what is there to this? This is nonfiction, so I guess it's a bunch of exposition, or…?" They leave that openness to their dialogue in the hopes that their meaning gets across.

He's quick to pick up the conversation, at least. "Oh, yeah, it's kind of a primer on the schools—the history of western philosophy."

"Not the eastern and the whatnot."

"Ha, yeah, more the stuff that started in ancient Greece."

"Yeah, I," hy takes a second to really get the words ready for execution, "I'm not familiar with philosophy much at all, but that doesn't mean I haven't had a debate in a forum before, at least."

Fingers crossed, he can breeze through the non sequitur and keep with the topic of conversation— it's what Merlin always hopes for, even though it feels like it has little reason to expect it from people.

"Yeah, well," he continues, "there's more to it, also. Because the book has sort of a main character, who interacts with a lot of the exposition-ing—"

"Expositing?" He ignores them.

"There's kind of a philosophical debate that happens about all the philosophical debate."

"Ah, well, nonfiction with a- a narrative character, I know that can happen. I've seen it before." It's really something of a nothing response, and also, again, one ze hopes he doesn't inquire towards.

"Yeah, because the main character has, I guess, her own opinions and her own life and things, that's where the 4th wall-messing with reality stuff comes in. It gets really weird."

Merlin thinks such a description seems a little incongruous with the picture of nonfiction text that exists in their head, and that's a good thing. "'Kay then. I think that was what was gonna get me to try out this book, if anything."

This may be the moment when xey become the dominator of this conversation. What an odd thing to reflect on; they continue, "So are you, like, a librarian, anyway? Do you work here, I mean." He laughs a bit. "I don't mean that in a bad way," ve follows up, just to be polite.

"No, but like— I am a librarian, I just don't work here." He comes off like he could live his entire life between these shelves.

"Oh."

"I work at one of the Universities of Maryland," he speaks on with a tone that's fully shaping up to be earnest.

"Out of state. I, uh, 'm also not from here— I'm from California."

He stays receptive. "Ah, well, if it were the case that we were both locals, then we could see each other again; you could tell me how you liked the book."

"Normal librarian and patron stuff." It meant for that to come out as a question. "Um, however, we could," Merlin shifts the book around in their hands, closing it, then pulls their drawstring back to the front, "well, okay, give me a sec— don't mind me."

Ze pushes on, backing out of the stacks and planting the bag & book firmly on the nearest table. Their modus operandi is to waste as little time as is necessary; as soon as a notebook is lifted from, they're flipping it open, grasping for a pencil from their pockets and talking again.

"This paper has stuff on it, but, eh, I don't mind. You have email, right?" Truly, xe pauses for a response, sparing a couple looks at him as xe rips out the leaf of paper.

"Ah, damn," ey mutter carelessly with it tearing unevenly.

"Yeah, okay. This has my email address on it. So you can get ahold of me."

He takes it with one hand and then trades it for the other's cane. "Oh, sounds good." Reading it before getting straight into the file compression & storage shows him the patient stranger is merlinenilrem @ inself.net.

If he were to keep up reading while he folds it, he'd get even more incomprehensible, self-justified things, but instead he chooses dialogue. "Sorry about making you take out a page from your notebook."

"Eh, no. I've got plenty. Notebooks, I mean."

"I'm Mars, by the way."

"Oh. And I'm Merlin. Good to know, uh, your name."

Mars nods, a soft affirmation. "So, I think I'm going to go back to looking for a book," he says in all good faith.

"Right," replies Merlin, "then I guess I'll get to reading this one."

A beat, so it's clear Mars & Merlin can't stop the other from going off on their own lives. "Thanks, by the way."

"No problem." Merlin doesn't see him exit and he's not exactly gone.

[t3tr0m1n0]

merlin. is an extremely avid tvtropes user

[t3tr0m1n0]

merlin's got worse intrusive thoughts than me

[t3tr0m1n0]

i think if merlin listened to gettin' old by renard it would fix them

[t3tr0m1n0]

merlin is very good at not giving excessive personal information to the online public. they offer up basically nothing & would be quite defensive, in a "Normal" way, if asked any question too personal. (ze isn't asked much- like really when someone says "lol do u even hav a job" after xe posts something the point is to not show the troll you were hurt or anything.) (they've never spoken of their personal life; they've not made any online friends)

if you asked the fog something personal they'd be overjoyed to- no, not that. they'd be ecstatic- they'd be highly eager to- not quite. they would cheerily- no. it'd be greatly enthused to respond. there. that much can be said with (un)certainty.

[t3tr0m1n0]

writing merlin gets sometimes weird for me because they're supposed to be older than me but not as emotionally developed as me. and i feel, as i write them, that if they were just older than me i'd be able to do that, and if they were just less emotionally developed than me i'd be able to do that, but putting them together i feel like i'm leaning too close to just writing myself, when i know that "me_irl" and "me some years from now but if starting a few years ago i continued to not make any friends" are still pretty different