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just what kind of creature is a thing like me?

mirror mirror...💐

By popular request, Matt Murdock in solo😈

fever dream

Bo Sinclair x AFAB!Reader

7.6k words. dubcon ofc. reader is absolutely mentally bankrupt. stockholm is where we live, it's where we are, it's where we'll die. sporadic smut, pnv, fingering, and oral (fem!rec). blood and sweat everywhere. Bo calls reader a bitch a couple times but like, it's out of love or some shit. somno. alcohol use. nightmares. ghosts. swamp things. the ever-looming threat of death and depersonalization.

welcome back to my youtube channel. I have been. working on this fic. since May of last year. and it's finally done(?) it is long and weird and maybe bad and meant for you to get lost in. a journey with no destination. a haunted house only you are the haunted and the haunt and the house. tbqh I'm rewatching HoW today for the first time in months and months and I had to get this out of my drafts so I can check back into the sanitarium with minimal baggage, y'know?? I hope it makes you feel some type of way.

The summer heat is in your blood and the swamp is in your lungs and he is under your skin. 

You’ve never known an August like this, like a blister. You go to bed sticky and wake up drenched in sweat. The ceiling fan is a hurricane agent that offers no respite, just blows the humidity in vicious cycles. There’s no air conditioning in the house; it’s too old. Instead you wrap ice cubes in dish towels and press them to the back of your neck. 

A storm’s been hanging on the horizon for days. Thunder rolls out of a wall of iron gray, an idle threat. The air is soupy and super-charged. No rain comes. 

The nights are delirium. You go to bed on opposite sides of the mattress, oil and water. He sleeps naked, sprawled out like a water skeeter. The quilt sits scrunched at the foot of the bed for the season and he kicks the sheets off around midnight like something forcing its way out of a soft-shelled egg. 

You lie awake, listening to the cicadas and waiting. Just when you’ve started to cool down and drift off he reaches over and fumbles at your leg, grabs your arm. He pulls you on top of him, hands on your body beneath his old t-shirt. You ride him with your eyes closed and your breath hot on your lips. It’s a fever, the sweating, the shaking. 

You wake every morning suffocating under his arm in the center of the mattress with honey between your thighs. 

.

He drinks his coffee hot even though the steam can barely rise above the rim of the mug in the humidity. You pour yours over ice and savor the feeling as it seeps down your throat and into your stomach. You curl your toes on the linoleum and almost smile at him across the table. He’s golden from all his time in the sun. You can trace the lines of his wifebeater over his shoulders, across his chest. You stare at him across the table and think about the taste of his skin. You want to run your tongue along that tan line. 

He catches you staring. “What?” he says flatly. 

You redirect your gaze to your hands. Shake your head. Wait for him to move on so you can resume your perusal of his body.

When he looks away, out the window, the sun catches those eyes and turns them to sea glass. He needs a haircut; walnut curls crest over his ears like kudzu. When you get up to clear the table your skin peels from the vinyl seat cushion with a sting that makes you wrinkle your nose. 

“Be good,” he tells you before he leaves. You wonder what he means, what he thinks you might get up to in this house full of dust and guns and ghosts. You know better than to ask, and you nod and kiss him goodbye and feel his lips on your lips for hours afterwards. 

The day languishes. They all do. You kill a thousand flies. You mop the floor and track your own footprints across it before it dries. You hang his shirts on the clothesline in the side yard and feel like an insect trapped in the sap of time. You shave your legs in a cold bath and examine your skin:  sunburn, bug bites, bite marks. 

When he pulls into the driveway you’re on the front step eating a popsicle and counting the minutes. He saunters across the gravel like John Wayne, shoulders exposed, hair plastered to his neck. You meet his eyes and wrap your lips around the cherry-flavored mess dripping onto your fingers. He spits into the weeds and eyes you through his lashes. 

“What’s for supper?” 

You suck on your sticky thumb. There’s a full spread on the dining room table, ready and waiting. “Whatever you want.” 

He licks his lips. 

Supper gets cold. 

.

He brings home a bag of saltwater taffy, all raspberry. 

“Thought of you,” he says when he hands it to you. To your recollection, you have never mentioned taffy or raspberries or anything of the sort. You wonder who he thinks you are, whether he has you confused with someone else. 

You sit on the porch steps and amass a pile of wax paper wrappers beside you. It’s soft and melty, peels out of the wrapper with a sticky crackling sound. It’s salty and sour and tastes like cheap sugar. Like a memory of summer that may be real, or maybe not. Could be yours, or could be someone else’s.

You eat more than you want, until your teeth hurt and you can feel the hot spot on your tongue where a canker sore will form. You rake that spot back and forth across your incisors. You can’t help it. Sometimes it feels like things have to have a hurt to them. 

“You ever been to the fair?” you ask him over your shoulder.

He grunts from the porch swing. “Used to go when Vince ‘n me were little. Took Les a couple times when he was old enough.”

“You ever take a girl?”

“Nah.” His boot thumps on the porch, an offhand punctuation mark. “Couldn’t find one to go with me.”

You doubt that; you’ve seen his yearbook photos. But then again, maybe he was off-putting as a teenager. Spooky. Hadn’t quite learned how to camouflage yet. Came on too strong, wore too much cologne, used too many teeth.

You survey the vast swath of woods that surrounds Ambrose and try to imagine a ferris wheel, red and blue and blinking, rising from the green like the hump of a whale.  “I’d go with you.”

He snorts. “Yeah?”

You look down at the piece of taffy in your fingers. You don’t really want it. You unwrap it anyway. “Yeah.” You gnaw on the candy like a dog savoring a scrap. “Be like a date,” you say thickly.

“What, you wanna skip down the midway holdin’ hands? Makin’ out in the Tunnel of Love?”

You can picture it, sunset and a sundress. He’s laughing. You’re laughing. The crowd is made of wax. “You could win me a stuffed animal.”

He scoffs again, but then he asks you, “What kinda stuffed animal you want?”

You think for a second, unstick the taffy from your molars and push it around your mouth with your tongue. “A Louisiana crocodile.” A souvenir from your time in the South. Maybe it’ll be wearing a little trucker hat and a smile that doesn’t reach its eyes.

“Ain’t got crocodiles here, sugar. ‘S all alligators.”

“Fine, an alligator then.”

You run your hands over your shins, sticky with the humidity. The chains of the porch swing creak rhythmically behind you. The sea of trees is dark and still and endless.

“Fair don’t come ‘round here anymore,” he says finally.

You force the taffy down your throat, swallow hard, and reach for another one.

“Figures.”

.

You’re buzzed and reckless, sucked down a pair of beers too fast just because they were frosty. The shears snick like some needy, nipping thing. You found them upstairs under the bathroom sink once upon a time and you always put them back when you’re done. They’ve been there longer than you’ve been alive. You comb your fingers across his scalp and loose locks drift onto your clean floor. 

“Don’t take it too short,” he admonishes into the mouth of his beer bottle. “You butcher me, I butcher you.” 

You roll your eyes behind his back. “Have I ever?” 

He grunts in acquiescence. That’s as close to a win as you’ll get. 

The windows are open; the thunder presses against the frayed screens. A gigantic moth flings its feathery body repeatedly at the ceiling light. You run your hand through his hair slow just to feel it between your fingers, thick and soft. Your thumb glances off the scar on the left side of his skull and comes back for another pass. 

He jerks his head, puts a stop to that. “You done?” 

“Almost.” 

You’re particularly fond of the curls at the nape of his neck, always save them for last. You coil one around your finger. You want to ask him if you can keep it, but you’re afraid he’ll say no or worse, that he’ll say yes. He’ll ask for something in return. You’ll give it to him, no matter what it is. You give him anything he wants, everything he wants. It’s the least you can do, the most you can do. 

You snip them one by one, bittersweet. 

“Done.” 

He leans over in the chair to examine his reflection in the window. “Good enough.” 

He stands up and drains the dregs of his beer. His hand finds your waist and he pulls you in and you bend like a reed, peering up at him, inspecting your work. He smells like sweat and sun. You grip his shirt in your fists and move with him as he sways lazily side-to-side. 

He gives you the gift of a smile, half-cocked and handsome. “You wanna dance, mama?”

Your fingers spider-creep up the shield of his chest and lock behind his neck. His skin is hot and sticky against your wrists, clipped hairs poking and itching. Your hips bump against his like a car on a back road, lost, no cell service. You wish there was music playing. 

He tilts his head towards you and you get caught in the trap of his mouth. The thunder moans. You can feel the sweat beading on your upper lip, in the pit of your elbows. His hands are heavy on your bones. 

His jaw scrapes along your temple like a razor blade and a fever chill rolls over your skin, hot-cold. “G’on upstairs, get those clothes off.” 

Have you always been such a good listener? 

.

He comes home drunk and fucks you on the table, in the midst of supper left cold and waiting for him. You knew he’d be hungry. You are right about some things and wrong about others.

You wince every time a dish topples off the table and shatters on the faded linoleum. He doesn't look at you, not once.

Afterwards, he disappears for a while and leaves you to clean up the kitchen. You are dazed, legs unsteady, leaning on the counter like an old friend. It’s been a bad day. Dinner has soaked through the back of your shirt and so you take it off, hang it over the back of a chair for later, and set to work on the mess.

You cannot puzzle out how he managed to get blood on every dish you are trying to wash until finally you realize it is yours, seeping quietly from a slice on your palm. When he comes up behind you your spine stiffens, arching like a snake making a final stand. He puts his hands on your bare waist and his lips against the back of your head like a sweetheart, like a husband, like a different person.

“Leave it, darlin’. Come sit on the porch with me.”

You bite your lip, lift your palm so he can see it, watch the world blur with saline. “I cut myself,” you say, and only then does the sting set in, so sharp you can feel it in your teeth.

He makes a sympathetic noise and cups your hand in his. “Now why’d y’go and do that?”

You open your mouth to answer but only a moan comes out as he lifts your arm and seals his lips over the cut. He sucks, gently at first and then harder, hard enough you feel the seam of skin separate and your fingers jerk like puppets to the pain. He lets you go and you cradle your hand to your chest as he laps your blood off his lip.

“You’ll be fine,” he says, takes your arm, tugs you from the sink. “C’mon. I need a smoke.”

You follow him onto the porch, curl up in his lap with a dishrag pressed to your palm and watch smoke and moths float around the light.

Your blood dries on the dishes with the gravy.

.

The clouds boom a reminder that they are still hanging above the house, but you are already awake in the split second beforehand. You are cocooned in the sheets and panic for a moment, arms pinned to your chest, bedroom black as a coffin. When you claw free, gasping, the air is like moss draped spongey and damp across your face. 

You worm out of the bed, out of the room, stagger into the hallway and down the stairs in the dark. You are mere steps ahead of some emaciated beast, its breath muggy on your cheeks and the back of your neck. You twist your shirt off and throw it on the floor of the den before it can strangle you, wrench the front door open and slam through the screen with both hands. 

The night is wet in your nose. One hundred million insects scream to God. In the back of your mind you think about joining them. Your toes scuff to a stop on the precipice of the porch and you peer into the darkness with round eyes, bare chest heaving for more air than you can hold. You are drowning here, surrounded by trees, surrounded by more green than you ever knew existed in the world. 

Somewhere out there, someone is mourning you. You can feel it tonight, crackling in the ozone like the storm that won’t break. 

You wrap your arms around yourself and sink to the ground, sit perched on the top stair in your panties and sweat-drenched skin. The nail of your index finger rips apart the cuticle of your thumb. Mosquitos float open-armed to your legs like swamp angels. It’s too hot to cry. 

The yellow porchlight struggles to life. The screen door bangs flatly behind you. He can’t ever pick up his feet, scuffing through the dust you haven’t swept. 

His fingers brush the bone of your shoulder. You don’t flinch nowadays, usually. “Y’alright?”

You don’t have to answer that. Let him wrap his hand around your throat and fishhook his fingers into your mouth to pull your jaw open, you don’t have to answer that. You grit your teeth and dig crescent moons into your thighs with all ten fingernails.

Your silence doesn’t bother him. He leans on the railing to your left, curling his toes on the concrete, looking out into the night. Sleep has mussed his hair to one side and left imprints of the sheet fanning across his chest. There’s a hickey in the shape of your mouth in the curve of his neck. Lightning flutters shy among the clouds and the thunder reprimands it. There’s something stuck in your throat, something you can’t swallow down no matter how hard you try. Moths flock to the porchlight. If anyone was alive in the town to look up the hill, they’d see you haloed, and him too. 

“‘S late. Come back to bed.”

You can’t remember your home address. You can picture the house, the sidewalk in front of it, cracks in the driveway. The rest is like a dream. The house behind you doesn’t have an address. No number, no mailbox. You can feel it sucking at the base of your spine like a leech, coaxing you in, tipping you backwards all wrong like a gravity hill. You feel eyes on you, all the time, no matter what room you’re in. 

“You listenin’ to me? Let’s go.”

You can’t go back inside. You can’t go back inside. Something in you doesn’t line up right. Someone is holding a pillow over your face.

“No,” you think you say out loud. The word flutters off into the night. You watch a mosquito drift beyond the reach of the porchlight and disappear. The stars bow gracefully into the arms of the clouds. 

After a beat, he shuffles out of your periphery. The screen door slams. Maybe this time. When you least expect it. Maybe he's sick of you at last. You pick at a scab on your knee until it comes loose and flakes off, and then you pinch the skin around the wound and squeeze until a bead of blood, scarlet-black, mounds and breaks and gets all over your fingers. You raise them to your mouth and suck them clean and it tastes familiar. Safe. 

He doesn’t come back with a knife, or a gun. He comes back with the quilt and sheet from the bed, a pillow stuffed under his arm. He unfurls the quilt on the porch. The pillow flops to the ground like something hunted to extinction. He follows suit. 

“C’mere.” He wrestles with the sheet, props himself up on an elbow and punches the pillow into place. “C’mon.” 

You breathe, just for a minute, watching him. You want to hate him so bad it hurts. You want him to hit you so you’d have a reason to hit back. You want to fight for your life because you can feel it slipping away, waning, evaporating in the heat. Already you’ve found shreds of yourself under the couch, covered in dust. You are drowning. You are thirsty. He is water, cold and brackish. 

You rise from the stairs and come to him because you need him, because he is all you have. 

“Get the light,” he says. 

You go and come back and his hand finds your calf in the dark, slides up the back of your knee, guides you to the ground. The quilt is a mockery of softness, the porch unyielding beneath. You curl up with him at your back and he folds his arm around you, thumb worrying aimlessly at your nipple. His breath is hot on the nape of your neck. 

The air roils in your lungs. The night surges in. You are alone, so alone, aching with loneliness, now and always. You close your fingers around his wrist and guide his hand between your legs. He rubs the cotton of your panties with something like pity and you let a moan seep from your throat. 

Your face lolls into the pillow and it smells like fever dreams and cold-sweat nightmares. The fabric of your underwear catches on your clit and you gasp, arching against his chest.

“Easy,” he murmurs as his fingers drag back and forth. He hooks his foot around your ankle, forces your legs open. You asked for this. You’ll take it and thank him. 

Lightning silhouettes the world beyond the porch in black and purple. When you close your eyes, you see the rooftops of the town in the colors of heaven. You rock against his hand and pretend you’re someone else somewhere else. You feel the thunder in your teeth and wish with all your heart the rain would fall. 

He puts an abrupt end to the friction and cups you in his palm, wide and warm. You make a plaintive sound and wiggle your hips, push your ass against him. You need to feel something. You need him to help you. Otherwise, you might disappear beneath the horrible blanket of the night. 

“Please,” you moan. 

He presses his lips to the back of your neck, whispers into the shell of your ear like a lover. “You love me?” 

You squeeze your eyes shut. “Yes.” 

His teeth graze your skin as he slips his fingers past the waistband of your panties. 

“Good.” 

You wonder if he knows he keeps saving your life. 

.

The house is a midden of family misery. There’s barely space for you between heaps of clothing and glassware and mass market paperbacks. You live sideways amid the boxes and bottles and beer cans. He refuses to let you throw anything away. No matter how much you sweep and dust and tidy, the clutter seems to crawl right back across the carpet like morning glory. 

Late morning finds you in the master bedroom. It’s sweltering up here. The air sticks to your face like tattered gauze. The junk in here is of a particular breed, more meaningful—photo albums, baby clothes. Much of it has been stacked high just inside the door like a battlement. A fortification between this room and the rest of the house. You’re not allowed in here. 

Neither is he. 

Beyond the wall, everything sits untouched. A layer of dust rests primly on the bedside tables, the vanity, the yellow quilt still neatly made up on the bed. The art on the wall is sun-bleached in evenly spaced lines from the half-open blinds. The silence crowds your ears. It feels like standing in a tomb, the family crypt. 

With courage paper-thin, you've decided you'd like to confront the heart of the horror. Like shoving your fingers down the throat of the beast trying to bite you. Like making a home in its mouth, a bed in its bed. You want to eat me so bad, you’ll have to savor every scrap. 

It’s eerie in here. This room is brighter than the rest of the house by far. You can feel that parasitic presence all around you, cajoling you with hands that are soft and dry. There is a faint, floating smell of faded flowers. You breathe slowly to keep yourself from sprinting back downstairs.

You gaze at yourself in the vanity mirror. The dust almost erases you from sight, almost. You reach a finger out and draw a single streak across the silvery surface. You’re in there, somewhere. Sometimes you forget. 

The front of the vanity holds a trio of slim drawers with tiny gold handles. You catch one with the tips of your fingers and tug, just slightly. It creeps open without resistance. The inside is lined with green velvet. You pull it open all the way and search through the contents with your eyes. Blush, lipstick. Eyeshadow in seven shades of blue. You slide the drawer closed and move on to the next one, the widest one in the middle. 

This one holds a treasure trove of golden baubles:  a jumble of earrings, half a dozen hairpins, a long, thin cigarette holder. A string of pearls that look too chipped and dull to be real. And a locket, oval-shaped and decorated with a halo of tiny vines. You pick it up and the chain slips over your fingers like a thin, shining snake. 

You dig your nail into the seam and pop it open. To your muted disappointment, it is empty. No husband. No children. 

It’s yours, you decide suddenly. You want it. You've earned it. A prize, a consolation for the hell you’ve been through. For the fact that you have survived him, and she has not. You wonder if he’ll recognize it. Part of you hopes that he does. You imagine the look on his face and his hands on you afterwards. Your mouth is wet. 

This might be her house, will always be her house. But you do not belong to her. You have been spoken for again and again, and perhaps you should thank him for that. 

In the daylight you remember that you aren’t scared of ghosts, and that you have nothing left to give. Plenty of dead women have laid claim to you already. This one cannot have you, and for that matter, she can’t have him either. 

You hear the rumble of his truck out front and the thrill of fear that shoots down your spine is so cold it’s almost welcome in the stuffy room. You shove the locket into the pocket of your shorts and fling the drawer shut. It closes with a soft, complicit thunk. 

You pick your way back through the boxes and slip through the door like a reptile into water; smooth, silent. You make sure it latches behind you before you hurry to the top of the stairs. 

Out of the corner of your eye, just before you dip out of sight below the banister, you see something bend the light that reaches through the crack beneath the door. You freeze, turn your head only slightly. You see nothing. Only sunlight. Certainly no feet, dainty and bare, padding across the carpet with red-lacquered toenails. 

Panic, delayed, breaks loose. You gallop down the stairs so quickly you forget to skip the ones that creak. 

By the time he comes inside, slamming the door fit to shake the frame of the house, you are hunched over the dishes in the sink like you’ve been there all morning. If you are unduly quiet, he doesn’t seem to notice, and if he notices, he doesn’t seem to care. 

.

“I think I love you.”

You say it half-casual, half-pronouncement, the way you might tell your mom you’re dropping out of college. Tell your boyfriend you’re over him. Tell your boss you’re moving to Louisiana. “I mean it this time.”

Bo snorts, lifts his beer to his lips. “That so?”

You shoo a bee from the rim of your glass and suck down the last of your drink. You just might be drunk. “Yup.”

“Think that’s the bourbon talkin’.”

You roll your eyes, shimmy a little in an effort to make the busted lawn chair more comfortable. You thought he’d be more excited. “Why don’t you ever believe me?”

He smacks his lips like he’s considering his answer. The sunlight shifts through the trees and you close your eyes, blissful. “Lemme ask you this. You ever set a snare, baby?”

You can feel it in your blood:  the sun, the breeze, the brook bubbling over your toes. It’s not so bad, you think. Sometimes. It’s not so bad.

“Hey.” He leans over in his chair and snaps his fingers, splintering your peace. “I asked you a question.”

“Nah. Never set a snare. Some of us were normal kids.”

He ignores this and you feel like you’ve gotten away with something. “Well, sometimes you catch a critter, but it don’t strangle to death like it’s s’posed to.” 

You frown. 

“So you gotta do somethin’ about it, right? But you gotta be real careful. Can’t get caught up by the sufferin’. Gotta keep your head about you, y’know?” He’s not looking at you, but you can picture his lips, twisted in something like a smile. “‘Cause it don’t matter what it is…raccoon, possum, bunny rabbit…that sucker’ll take your hand off if y’let it.”

Your throat is sensitive all of the sudden, feels closed off. Maybe you swallowed a bee. “What are you even talking about?”

His head lolls lazy to the left and he stares at you for a second in a way that makes your hair stand on end. Then he chuckles, winks at you, turns away and leans back in his chair. 

“Nothin’, sugar. You’re awful cute.”

.

The heat wreaks havoc on the lifeless inhabitants of the town. You trail behind him like a listless kite as he makes the rounds, checking for damage, hauling the worst afflicted home to Vincent. It baffles you how much he seems to care about them. How much investment he has in keeping the rot contained beneath a pristine cosmetic veneer. For what? For who?

You don’t tell him it’s all rot, all of it, the people, the buildings. The trees. The air. Him. You. 

Some days, most days, you can’t quite look them in their faces. It’s guilt, you suppose. Guilt and acknowledgement of a fear so pervasive you no longer notice the way it clings like a second skin. You’ve convinced yourself if you meet their eyes you’ll find them glaring at you, envious and accusatory. Or worse–you’ll see the future, suspended in the flat, glass pupils of a dead game animal.

Occasionally you punish yourself by looking too closely. You note the receding hairlines, where the skin beneath the wax has dried and pulled taut and shifted the scalp along with it. You observe the way the light shines through plump round fingertips that are only hollow shells of wax, all that soft flesh desiccated and shriveled to a skeletal wedge underneath. You wonder, sometimes, whether Vincent smoothed over any flaws–scars, moles, asymmetrical lips. You touch your face subconsciously and think about the things he might fix for you.

It makes you feel like you are tiptoeing on the precipice of sanity, arms wide, just waiting to topple.

You take a particular interest in their clothing, wonder whether it belonged to them or to someone from the town. You never ask Bo, although you know he could tell you. You ignore the obvious parallels like a badly stitched seam. None of the clothes you wear belong to you either.

There are more residents than you ever imagined, half the houses not as empty as you assumed. Ten years, three brothers, three hundred and forty-nine holes to fill. You were decent at math in a past life, but nowadays, you try your hardest not to solve problems, no matter how they howl and scratch at the door. You’ve become adept at avoidance of the obvious in favor of learning how to assimilate into the cobwebs and shadows. No one can kill you if you’re already dead. You believe that so hard sometimes you can’t see your own reflection.

You believe it so hard that when you find it, on a girl in a house on a street you’ve only been down once or twice, you can’t make sense of it for several long seconds, staring dumbstruck and stupid while the static subsumes your brain.

“Let’s go,” he barks from the sitting room. The couches are pink and floral and faded.

You cannot move. You are made of wax.

“You deaf? Come on.”

She’s wearing cutoff jeans and the t-shirt you bought on a trip two years ago, or maybe three. There’s blood, brown and faded from half-hearted washing, streaking the collar and left sleeve.

Her hair is lighter than yours, and shorter. Her feet are smaller. Her nose is bigger. But the shirt is yours, and so is the blood, and for a second, you know you are a ghost.

“Hey.” He grabs your arm and turns you around. You think maybe she’ll move, now that you’re not looking. “You got a problem?”

You cannot answer him, because you do not have a voice. Because your lips have been glued together and painted the perfect pink. His gaze flicks from you to the girl and back and you wonder if he kissed her the way he kisses you. You hope he can see it, the way you are withering under the wax. You hope he will pick you up, cradle you in his arms, take you home and take care of you, make you whole, make you human.

Isn’t that all you’ve ever asked for?

He snaps his fingers in front of your face and you flinch, because you are real after all.

“Let’s go.”

You let him push you towards the door, hear him close it behind you, feel the floorboards shiver as he follows you down the hall. He puts his hand on the small of your back and ushers you out of the house, down the sidewalk cracked and stuffed with weeds keeling over in the heat. You can feel your feet melting to the concrete, skin crawling, sagging. You try not to stumble. You don’t want him to leave you behind.

“She ain’t you,” he mutters at the end of the street, so low you barely hear him over the buzz of the cicadas.

You aren’t sure if he’s lying, now or ever. You don’t ask him where her clothes are and he doesn’t offer. She might not be you, but you might be her. And you both might be someone else.

Either way, the shape of her is burned into your vision in blue and green, and she shakes her head at you when you close your eyes.

.

You wake to the sound of rain on the roof and it pulls you immediately from bed, stumbling sightless over your feet to get to the window. You yank on the mangled cord to raise the blinds and sure enough, the dust of summer is melting down the window in waves.

“Bo,” you say hoarsely. “Bo, look.”

It is then that the silence of the room seeps into your brain, the conspicuous lack of snoring. Your heart sinks into your wringing stomach. 

In a perfect world, he’d be taking a leak. He’d stumble back to bed and wrap you in his arms, press a kiss to your temple, and you’d drift back to sleep in the bliss of air conditioning. 

Your world is a few dirt road miles south of perfect.

You have to go find him. Find him and haul him out of whatever dark place he’s waded into, before he comes back worse than he went in.

The hall is a throat you have to fight against to get to the stairs, black and humid with walls that breathe. You feel cobwebs on your face and slap them away only to realize it’s your own hair caught on your lashes. The glow of the TV laps at the bottom step like floodwater, makes the carpet undulate like something just sank below the surface. You hesitate, for just a second, before you step down and feel solid ground beneath your feet.

He sits slouched on the couch in front of a screen full of static, deadeyed, jaw clenched. He doesn’t seem to notice you, quiet, creeping thing that you are. The static sounds like rushing water. Mangroves rise from the shadows in the corner of your eye. Lilypads part around your feet. If you turn your head just right, his eyes flash red in the light.

You stop halfway between the stairs and the couch, unsure what kind of animal you’re approaching. Your hands float up like a shield, like a bridge. “Bo,” you say softly, and it echoes in the night. “Are you okay?” 

He blinks, like a person. You notice a bite mark, a purple half moon in the meat of his forearm. Your skin is well acquainted with the shape of his teeth. 

“Bo,” you whisper. You don’t want to get closer. “Come back to bed.”

You hear a splash in the kitchen. The carpet squishes between your toes. Something brushes your ankle and wriggles away. You need to get out of here. You can’t leave without him. 

“Baby…please.” You step towards him and freeze as he lurches forward, sits up straight. His hands dangle between his knees, his gaze still locked on the fuzz of the television. 

“I killed my mama, y’know.” 

His voice is pitched, low and dull. A sheen of sweat glistens on his upper lip and cheekbones. The color is gone from his face and here, in this place, he looks almost green.

You fight to form breath into words. “I…I know.”

He’s speaking again as though he didn’t hear you. You can see in his eyes he is far, far away. “I watched her die. Took a real long time. But I stayed…waited. Had to make sure.”

The water is rising, cold and slick, over your ankles and up your calves. Panic rises with it, packs into your throat like silt. “You were real brave, baby. You did it. You made sure.” Your voice is thin as a reed. 

A terrible, empty grin cracks his face and then vanishes without a ripple, and now he looks at you for the first time and his eyes are hollow and blue as marbles and he whispers, “Then why ain’t she dead?”

The water surges to your knees like it’s been displaced by something large, something prowling. You teeter forward, heart hammering, splashing as you regain your balance. Too loud, too loud. Do alligators eat each other?

“She’s dead, Bo. She is.”

“Don’t lie to me, bitch!” He rises to his feet so fast you lose your balance again, flinching back from him. “She ain’t and you know it. You’ve seen her, she’s here! In this fuckin’ house!”

You shake your head quickly and in your periphery something ducks beneath the surface of the water. “No. She’s not.” Convince him, convince yourself, make it true.

His chest is heaving, his gaze darting around the room, searching. You can picture a shadow in shadow, curled up and waiting in the corner of the ceiling like a fat black spider, fingers splayed wide and tipped sharp and red. 

Bo grips the back of his head and moans and it echoes off the trees, too loud, too loud. “Fuckin’...everywhere.”

Faded flowers. Blush, lipstick. A trick of the light. A locket wrapped in vines. Something hunting, just below the surface. If you let it rip him apart, would it come for you next?

“She’s everywhere…in my goddamn head….” He sways on his feet like he might fall and if he does, if the swamp swallows him, you’ll die here in this place.

“Hey.” You close the distance, push through the muck, brush his elbow. “Hey!”

He smacks you away, snaps his jaws closed. “Don’t touch me!”

You cringe and the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Something groans in the dark. Something moves near the ceiling. 

His eyes on you are predatory, cold and empty, and his brow furrows. “Who are you?” he demands.

Wide-eyed, you open your mouth to answer him, but there is nothing on your tongue but moss. “I don’t…I don’t know.”

He leans toward you. “Who the fuck are you?”

You hold your hands up in front of you, backing away, mud between your toes. Your fingers are skeletal. Your nails are painted red. “I don’t know!”

A terribly low, vibrating sound is rising from the water, sending ripples in all directions, freezing your heart in your chest. He moves towards you and the swamp parts around him, allows him to pass like he is a part of it.

“You ain’t leavin’, baby.”

His teeth are sharp.

He lunges.

You scream.

The sound gets caught in your throat like a wad of feathers and bones and you choke, twisting, coming to in your bed. In his bed. Disoriented, you gasp for breath and release the death grip you have on the sheet. Your brow is so sweat-soaked your eyes are beginning to sting. The air is dry on your skin; the blanket is gone. The lower half of your body is tingling.

His head lifts from between your thighs and he looks at you with eyebrows raised. “Easy, sugar. Ain’t done with you yet.”

“Wh…what?” You rub at your eyes, trying to shake the sensation of water closing over your face. Somewhere, some version of you is bleeding in the silt.

His tongue makes another pass and you whimper, arms shaking with the effort of holding yourself up, of treading water, of fighting the maw of a monster. “Relax, baby. Go back to sleep.”

It’s all so insurmountable, the weight of it on your chest, and you sink back into the mattress without a ripple. His mouth is wet and warm. His dark hair is disheveled and you wonder absently if he misses it, that lock you stole. The room is silent save for the sound of your drowning.

“Is it raining?” you whisper, and hate yourself for the hope behind it.

He pauses, meets your gaze over the watery surface of your body. All you can see are his eyes and you could swear, for a second, they reflect neon red. “No.”

You let your head drop back onto the pillow, let him devour you, feel a tear slip over the brim of your lashes and disappear into your hair.

.

The storm breaks on a Wednesday. 

At first, you don’t register the rain on the roof. You don’t even take note of the thunder anymore, after weeks of torment. It’s become a fixture like the dust, like the pervasive smell of decay.

It starts slow, cautious, rolling into town like a tourist with a busted GPS. You mistake the patter for the familiar buzz of TV static even though that makes no sense, even though you’re the only one in the house, even though the TV is off in the next room. All you can hear is the rough swish of the scrub brush on the hardwood floor, coaxing flecks of blood from the gaps between the boards. It’s already beginning to reek in the heat.

You wanted to clean it up last night when it was fresh but he wouldn’t let you, strongarmed you up the stairs and pinned you to the mattress. You’d never admit it to him, to God, or to yourself—and really, is there a difference in Ambrose—but he fucks so good when he’s riled up like that, when it feels like he can’t get enough of the killing so he’s going to take it out on you, take everything you have to offer him plus a little bit more.

The cut on your palm is half-healed and hurts when you put your weight on it. There’s something about that—familiar, comfortable, not grounding, not really, but like static. Stable. Buoyant. Like the bruises on your knees. A constant that cradles you and takes you up and out of here, not too high, just above the trees.

A stair creaks behind you and you freeze like a hare in the shadow of a hawk. It could be Vincent, but he’s busy with last night’s batch. It’s not Bo.

You ease yourself up onto your knees, rock back, stand up, and creep to the foot of the stairs. They are empty. You are alone with the sense that someone has just disappeared out of sight, retreating up into the aching cranium of the house, skirt swishing.

You are never alone, not really.

It’s only then that the sound of the rain seeps into your brain, soothes the hair standing up on the back of your neck. A weight you have been holding on your shoulders since the end of July dissolves like sugar and your spine lengthens by inches. You drop the brush, forget the ghost, walk barefoot through the bloodstain on your way to fling open the front door.

It rains.

It rains even though the clouds are thin, the sun forcing its way through in places like it just can’t bear to admit defeat. It rains and pools in the potholes of the driveway that have been waiting open-mouthed to be filled. It rains and the grass and weeds release a sigh of bliss, stop begging for mercy.

You step down from the porch in a trance, palms up and open, trailing pink-tinged footprints that melt across the concrete like raspberry taffy. You walk across the lawn, scuff your feet in the grass, wonder if maybe you’re dreaming and decide you don’t care.

You sink to the ground, sprawl on your back, feel the damp soak into your clothes and your skin and it makes you whole, makes you new, makes its apologies for taking so long. You are floating, only eyes above the water, surrounded by salvinia and duckweed.

You hear his footsteps just before he calls to you. “The fuck you doin’, girl?” he shouts, but when you open your eyes, he’s losing a fight with a grin, picking his way up the slippery hill.

You sit up halfway. “It’s raining.”

“Y’don’t say.” He drops to his knees beside you, slumped with relief.

His wifebeater is splattered with blood and water but you grab it with both fists and pull him to you, catch his mouth and coax him to the ground.

“Crazy bitch,” he mutters, but he guides your hands to his belt and grips your ass with both hands as you fuss with the buckle, even rolls onto his back to ease your way and lifts his hips so you can tug down his jeans. “Right here, huh?”

“Yes.”

“In the front goddamn yard.”

“Yes!”

“It’s fuckin’ rainin’!”

“I know!”

He laughs and the heavens giftwrap it with a roll of thunder. You're giddy, beaming at him, and he traces your smile with the pad of his finger and something akin to admiration.

You're brand-new, him too, and both of you together. Like it's the first time, a better first, another universe. His hands are on your thighs and his shirt rides up above his stomach. Water drips off your nose and onto his lips and he licks it off like it might save him and maybe it just might. Maybe it’ll save you both.

Exhausted, exalted, you wash the sweat and grime off each other with filthy hands and thirsty mouths. You wrap your fingers around his bare shoulders and ride him with your eyes open and your breath hot on your lips. It’s a fever breaking, the panting, the shaking.

The locket taps against your chest, the lock of his hair tucked inside it. He cups your face, slips his thumb in your mouth, and there’s blood beneath his fingernail. You suck it clean with greed and obedience, savor it, turn your face to the sky and let the crocodile tears run down your cheeks.

“That’s my girl,” he growls, and you bask in the rare and wondrous glow of his approval.

You come apart in splashes like raindrops, small, staccato swells in your core while he kisses the rain off your skin. His hands find the bruises they’ve left on your hips and squeeze and it’s all you could ever ask for, to be held. To be hurt. To be his.

Maybe it’s not so bad, you think. Sometimes. It’s not so bad.

“Y'know, girl, maybe you're right,” he says. "Just this once."

You’re confused until you realize you’ve spoken out loud. You look down at him, cold skin, wet curls, a smudge on his jaw that could be mud or blood, his or yours or someone else’s. He looks back like he sees you.

“You love me?” you ask him before you can think better of it. Before the rain stops.

The corner of his mouth twitches. His gaze slides past you, goes somewhere else, above the sea of trees. The sky is in his eyes. “Sometimes.”

You don’t smile, don’t sigh, just push the hair off his brow and sink slow and gentle beneath the surface and into the green, not a ripple made in your wake.

“Good.”

firstborn son

Cutting loose

---

season 2 kristen applebees the icon that you are (were?) !!!

i don’t post my art very often but i love this scene, honestly might do one for each bad kid if i can choose iconic scenes for the rest of them :)

Holy shit do I miss these two.. I really need to start drawing more of em aye? Ah well.. enjoy (ihatecoloring)

Lmfao hey. This is a reupload of a ‘do you love the color of the sky post’ (the philza version) because my first art account got yoted. Very sorry about this (not really). Also is ‘long post’ still banned. Can y’all see this?

Do you love the color of the sky, Mr Minecraft?

Hello, you’re here now.

This took a month - I am sloww. From July 23rd to August 23rd 2021

Edit after reupload: a cut up version is on Twitter lol

The rest of this will be a copy a paste (with edits) from the previous blog. All the rambles and explanation for each part and each person (as in why Tubbo is being held by his leg/ my thought process for them)

Before I start rambling, I want to mention the fact that Phil is never looking at the sky around him, but at the faces and expressions of his friends.

There are two more people in addition to the sbi and Kristin from the last one (The first version of this post). Tubbo and Ranboo, whom I just consider sbi++ tbh.

First one is none other than Miss Kristin herself. I actually used a picture from their Instagram as reference for their clothes. I actually straight up imagine this was from their wedding day(?). I hope I drew Ms Kristin okay. I’m still figuring out how to draw her tbh.

Second is Wilbur. So when I was drawing all of them, I was thinking of what expressions they all would be making. Like Kristin and Phil would be all happy and stuff. And the idea of Wilbur just fucking grappling with the idea that if Phil drops him, it’s fucking over. He’d be done for. Dead (maybe). That idea was funny to me for some reason. So I imagine he just has a look of acceptance/fear while Phil is trying to figure out if he’s okay.

Third is Tommy. He probably gets dropped. L. Because you probably don’t carry someone like that while flying. (Probably because how am I supposed to know.) Tommy is just fucking screaming his lungs out btw.

Tubbo! He actually fucking fell. I asked my friend, “Help me make a decision. Tubbo and Phil. Cute. or Chaos.” “chaos” “CHAOS IT IS” So the idea, in my head, is that Tubbo was originally given a piggy back ride. Tubbo, chaotic, just sort of climbs Phil like a jungle gym or smt and sits on his shoulders. It was great for like five seconds and then he fell. You fucking bet he’s grappling with the idea of death.

Ranboo. The one picture I had in my head the whole time I was drawing them was just. “L o n g c a t.” Cause Ranboo was drawn in such a way that I was thinking of cats being picked up.

Techno. Again, that’s not the way you hold someone while flying but yeah. Techno is probably the only other person to not feel fear in this whole thing. The first being Miss Kristin

(It seemed fitting for Ranboo and Techno to have the aurora scene)

And the last one. Idk man I just wanted to draw a god.

This is the Angel of Death, between storm and chatters.

(The feathers mean nothing, they’re just a nice transition)

(If you made it here, please, please, please, consider reblogging. Thoughts in tags or not, I will appreciate you so much)

mmmph i have zero chill 

The Plurality of... Bill Cipher (The Book of Bill)

Spoiler Warning for Gravity Falls, The Book of Bill, and the nature of reality as you know it

Hello dear reader.

I recently found in my possession a strange book with no explanation as to how it got there. A bizarre tome known only as The Book of Bill.

I recognized the name and imagery from someone else's memories. Bill Cipher, a character from Alex Hirsch's hit series Gravity Falls.

It honestly seemed too perfect. I've been doing this "Plurality of..." series where I look at plurality in media. And an important part of Bill's shtick was possession.

It seemed simple enough. I can read the book, learn a bit about Bill and his possession, and then write an article about his plurality. But the reality was anything by simple, with far more than I bargained for.

And by the end of this post, this book will have driven me to break a fundamental rule I've held sacred through my "Plurality Of..." series.

What is Plurality?

Before we begin, I should explain what plurality is for anyone new here. Plurality is a term for being multiple in one body in some way.

We call the body's occupants "headmates". These can be anything from alters in dissociative disorders to spirit guides bound to a mortal, to... yes... even literal demonic possession.

Yeah, even being possessed by a demonic triangle from a 2-dimensional universe is a type of plurality. If there are multiple self-conscious agents of some kind there, it's plural!

Time To Get Weird!

(Art by magentasnail)

Let's catch you up on the basics real quick. Again, there will be huge Gravity Falls spoilers.

In Gravity Falls, Bill Cipher is a yellow a 2-dimensional triangle demon bent on causing chaos.

Through the series, Bill makes deals with multiple characters to possess their bodies. This includes both gaining full control over the body of protagonist Dipper Pines for an episode, and more interestingly, sharing control over the body of Stanford Pines for an extended period of time.

Bill's possession of Dipper left Dipper outside his body like a ghost. But his deal with Stanford is much more plural in nature, where they shared control, with Bill only controlling the body in his sleep.

Obviously real plural systems don't have headmates controlling their body while they sleep like this, but the experience can be seen as analogous to dissociative identity disorder, where it's common to experience blackouts and "wake up" in situations unsure how you got there.

That's all you really need to know about Bill for the time being.

With that out of the way, it's time get weird and dive straight into the Book of Bill!

The Book of Bills

As I begin reading the Book of Bill, I'm given a warning from Stanford Pines that the book will rewrite itself based on the mind of the reader. This seems silly, and I of course dismiss the idea out of hand. Surely there's no way a book could change itself based on who's reading it.

As I venture further into this tome, I find the occasional point of interest. References to Bill living in people's brain, him being an idea, etc.

I stop briefly to ponder that. Why does Bill refer to himself as an idea? Isn't he canonically a being from a physical 2-dimensional world? Him being described as an idea is peculiar, but something I tuck away for the future.

The first thing I find that really piques my interest in regards to plurality is the multiple times that it's just referenced that there are multiple Bills in Bill's head. Such as when Bill refers to "the voices in his head" teaming up.

In the plural community, there's a concept known as median system.

A median system is typically a system which has separate parts that are less distinct from each other. There's a pretty solid case that Bill, having a bunch of Bills in his head, could be considered a median system on his own.

In fact, the book itself actually depicts communication between multiple Bills, in the form of an interview.

And throughout the interview, there are times where the Prime Bill seemingly gets annoyed at the interviewer's questions. As if they are actually different people. While this could be Bill simply duplicating himself and pretending for comedic effect, it could just as easily be that both Bills are headmates in Bill's system.

Bill being a median system is a pretty interesting direction.

As I read on though, the book dragged me down yet another rabbit hole, and raised an important question.

Does Bill Have A Dissociative Disorder???

Let's talk about dissociative identity disorder. There are two main criteria for DID. Criterion A is the presence of two or more distinct personality states. You know, like those Bills in Bill's head.

The second is memory loss.

Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events.

This is what was on my mind when Bill was describing how he was uniquely gifted with the ability to see into the third dimension, and wanted to teach others this same skill.

But when he tries to recount it... this happened...

To me, this sounds exactly what was described in criterion B. This is also called dissociative amnesia.

And it's not just this one-off example. Bill actually references later that he dissociates (his words) and "wakes up" later after a conquest.

With everything we know, it seems incredibly likely that Bill has DID, or at least a related disorder.

Bill is what he eats

Okay... wait...

So Bill can ALSO imprison the souls of those he eats inside himself, and they can apparently take over Bill's body too???

What actually is going on here? Is this one of Bill's powers? He can just eat entire universes and then whatever he consumes becomes a part of him? Or maybe it's something else...

Maybe if we looked at this less literally and consider the previous hints of Bill having a dissociative disorder then perhaps what is going on is that Bill is introjecting these people.

Maybe whenever he enters somebody's mind, some piece of them remains...

I would love to speculate more on this... But this is the only mention of it in the entire book!

At this point, I begin to reflect on the words at the beginning. Maybe it was true that the book was changing itself to give me what I wanted. Little hints of plurality to keep me reading, to ensnare me in its vicious trap and ultimately drive me to madness.

And the worst part was, I was falling into it anyway. Because I had to know, even if this was a trap, I was in it to the very end. My thirst for knowledge and understanding unquenchable.

Even if I knew I should stop here, there was no going back.

Stanford Pines, Bill's Perfect Host

At last, beyond all of the misdirects that were put in my way, I arrived at the reason that I started on this journey.

Stanford Pines.

I need to say that when I started this journey, planning to delve into what the plurality of Bill and Ford might be like, I never imagined that it would be handled so... Beautifully.

I mean that genuinely!

I love the relationship of these two characters in the book!

They are both very out of place in their own ways. Both are aware of things in their world that are denied by others, leaving them ridiculed and ostracized for it. They manage to form a genuine friendship. Even if Bill was using Stanford the whole time to achieve his Weirdmageddon.

The two compliment each other surprisingly well. Bill provides Stanford with a friend who can get him out of his comfort zone, which is something that I think Stanford really needed.

There's a really fun part of the book where Bill just gets Stanford mind-drunk, which is apparently something he can do.

Bill fills a role in Stanford's life that nobody had since he lost contact with his brother. While Stanford had friend in with Fiddleford, his lab partner, and we do get to see parts of that friendship in the book, they are more like work acquaintances.

Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Because in the end, Bill is still an evil demon who was bent on bringing about the Weirdmageddon and was manipulating Ford the whole time.

And when Stanford found out, he tried to shut Bill out. This led to Bill trying to communicate through sticky notes to get Ford to stop ignoring him. He would front in the body at night while Ford slept, and they carried on a conversation through these sticky notes.

Wait... Sticky notes?

This is such an interesting choice for the character! Especially after so many hints of Bill Cipher having some sort of dissociative disorder.

Why?

Because sticky notes are an actual method that real DID systems use to communicate with their alters, as seen in this post from the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) website.

It's fascinating how, if you were to try to depict how headmates with strong dissociative barriers might communicate, this is one of the ways you would want to do that!

Is this coincidental? Maybe. But the talk of dissociation earlier suggests the author also has at least some basic knowledge of dissociation and how it works. And, perhaps, plurality as well?

Overall, this whole section with Bill and Ford was fantastic, and it was well-worth the read for that on its own.

The End?

I suppose this is the end. I found what I wanted. I got the content I was after. A cool plural story of a guy and his headmate from another dimension who wants to take over the world.

Through all the strange distractions and hints of Bill himself having headmates that seemingly went nowhere, I got more plurality in the book than I expected.

And yet, as I turn the final page of the book, I feel unsatisfied. Unsettled.

"Is that it?" I think to myself.

This is Gravity Falls, a show built on mysteries, and looking deeper than the surface. Surely there has to be more. Right?

What if... all the plurality in this book, is obscuring something deeper? Or maybe hinting at something deeper...

And then... I see it!

After the final page, I come to the About the Author section.

Which means it's time to talk about...

The Plurality of... Bill Cipher Alex Hirsch

Yes, I am going there!

In the beginning, I promised that this post will require me to break a rule I've held sacred through these posts.

That rule... is to never speculate on the plurality of the author.

But, Alex Hirsch, at least in a fictional sense, hasn't exactly shied away from the idea of being "possessed" by Bill. This dates back at least a decade, with him making Tweets like this one.

"Bill Cipher" even did an AMA on Reddit through Alex, playing it off as Bill possessing Hirsch while he slept.

It's a pretty open secret in the Gravity Falls community that Alex Hirsch is "possessed" by Bill. At least in some meta-fiction way that may not be canon to Gravity Falls but isn't quite real either.

And were my analysis to stop here, I wouldn't really be saying anything new or valuable. A lot of this was covered by MatPat on Film Theory.

But there's something I want to go back to that confuses me in this book.

That Bill Cipher... is an idea?

Let's bring this full circle, back to the beginning of the book where Bill mentions that he's imaginary and describes himself as an idea.

These are such weird lines because Bill didn't seem to have originated from people's minds within the narrative of Gravity Falls.

His story is of being a being from a literal flat world. So why then, does he describe himself as an idea? Why does he describe himself as imaginary???

Bill Cipher as Alex Hirsch's Tulpa

While Bill being an idea doesn't make sense if he's speaking as a being from a 2-dimensional world that's real to him, it does make sense if we consider that the Bill talking to us, who wrote the Book of Bill, is a tulpa sharing the body of its creator.

Before going on though, we need to answer an important question. What is a tulpa? The r/tulpas subreddit gives its own answer to this in its FAQ.

The simplest way to describe a tulpa is simply another person who was created intentionally/unintentionally through repeated interaction and shares a body and mind with their creator. A more complicated definition can go as follows: A tulpa is believed to be an autonomous consciousness coinhabiting a brain with their creator, often with a form of their creator's initial choice and design. A tulpa is entirely sentient and in control of their opinions, feelings, form and movement. They are willingly created via a number of techniques to act as companions, muses, and advisers. Tulpa forms can either be visualized in the mind's eye, or, with practice, seen as a hallucinatory figure using a technique called imposition.

And let's stop there on the line about being created as muses, because this is something that's found repeated throughout both The Book of Bill and Journal 3, with Stanford referring to Bill as his "muse."

It's a curious term that doesn't appear in the show, but was added to the lore in these two supplemental books.

The FAQ goes on to explain that while tulpas are often considered to be intentionally created, there are also accidental tulpas that can arise through imaginary friends or from writing characters.

Is it possible to accidentally make a tulpa? Yes - many people join the community after realizing they have had tulpas all their lives, but without knowing what they were called. These "accidental" tulpas often arise from imaginary friends and writing/roleplay characters.

On the point of roleplay characters, something I also haven't mentioned yet is that Alex Hirsch didn't just write the character of Bill Cipher. He WAS Bill Cipher. In the show, Bill is one of the characters Hirsch voices along with Grunkle Stan and Soos.

Writing tulpas and how they come about are discussed a bit more below:

Is this a new phenomena? No, it's a practice that goes back in recorded history at least as far as the Greek philosophers. The present name of the phenomenon is derived from the word used by Tibetan monks in the early 20th century. There's also evidence to suggest dedicated prayer can lead to the development of 'religious tulpas' in the minds of the particularly devout, and on the secular end, writing techniques similar to tulpa development techniques can and have resulted in writers creating accidental tulpas from their characters. Having a tulpa is nothing new, although it's gone by many names throughout the course of history and does so even today. However, we believe we are one of the first groups to address this practice as a psychological phenomena rather than a magical, occult or divine experience.

Tulpamancy and Attention

There was another passage from the book that I found noteworthy.

At the end, Stanford describes what truly sustains Bill isn't power, but attention, which Stanford describes as Bill's "lifeblood."

It's even underlined for emphasis.

Why is this important? Well first, this line goes back to the weird lines earlier suggesting Bill is an idea.

But more importantly, feeding on attention is something which is actually a pretty popular philosophy in tulpamancy. That tulpas feed on and are sustained by the attention of their hosts.

How do I give my tulpa energy? Tulpas are sustained by attention, and energy is a convenient metaphor for this. So, you can give your tulpa energy by interacting with them. It is also possible, through no shortage of work and time on the part of host and tulpa alike, for a tulpa to grow beyond this need and to learn how to sustain themselves.

How much attention/energy/interaction does my tulpa need? During the creation process you should aim to interact with your tulpa daily, anywhere from a few minutes up to a few hours, and narrating to them as and when you can. After they're fully vocal and active, the bare minimum is just acknowledging their existence, but spending time talking to them and interacting with them is very much the point of bringing them into existence. Just don't ignore them, and you'll both be fine.

On Parallels in Writing

Adding another layer, it's likely that Stanford Pines is at least partially based on Alex Hirsch himself.

One point of trivia is that Alex Hirsch has a twin sister, and Gravity Falls was inspired by vacations they would take as children. Dipper and Mabel being based on Alex and his sister is pretty well-known. But towards the end of season 2, it's revealed that their Grunkle Stan is a twin himself, with his brother being Stanford Pines, the author of the journals.

During this part of the story, it starts creating a parallel between the relationships of the younger and older twins, with Dipper (who is based on Alex) bonding with Stanford over how much they have in common. Both are nerds who are into writing and science and uncovering the mysteries of the world. Both are a bit socially awkward as well.

And while not much attention is drawn to this particular connection, both had experiences of making deals with Bill that let Bill takeover their bodies at different points.

Based on the parallels between Dipper and Stanford, one might speculate that Alex based Dipper on his younger self, while Stanford was loosely based on himself as an adult.

The personalities of these two characters are also the most likely to create a tulpa based on the psychological profiles of most tulpamancers.

In 2016, Dr. Samuel Veissiere, a psychiatry professor at McGill University, found the following in his study of tulpamancers:

From coding of qualitative interviews collected in large surveys, the most common tulpamancer profile to emerge is one of a highly cerebral, imaginative, highly articulate, upper-middle class, formally educated person with many consistently pursued interests, talents, and hobbies, but limited channels of physical social interaction. Typical tulpamancers are confident about their talents, but are quite modest and socially shy. They possess – or have cultivated – a high propensity for concentration, absorption, hypnotisability, and non-psychotic sensory hallucinations.

The psychological profile of tulpamancers fits both Dipper and Stanford to a t. And many of these same traits could just as easily be true for Alex Hirsch if these characters were meant to be stand-ins for himself.

Is Alex Hirsch trying to tell us that he's plural?

In the end, this is just a theory. And it's one that I feel nervous making because plurality is so deep and personal. That's why I've avoided speculating on the plurality authors in the past. Even when the writing feels so true to the plural experience that it's hard to imagine that someone who isn't plural wrote it.

So why am I making an exception with this one?

Well, in this particular case, I think that the breadcrumbs are being left intentionally, and if he is plural, then he expects somebody to follow them. I'm not worried that I would be outing somebody who didn't want others to find out.

With Alex Hirsch's love of codes and clues and mysteries, if he were plural, I have to imagine that the hints weren't accidental and he would be wondering if anybody would follow them.

And if I am completely off base and he's not plural, I think that he would still appreciate the theorizing anyway. 🤷‍♀️

But if these are intentional clues that were left behind to hint at a real life plurality, one might ask why.

Why would he want people to know about it, and hint at it in this way?

Well, I think the Book of Bill might have an answer to that too.

Shame is a powerful emotion. But it grows in the dark. The more I've tried to hide my past with Bill, the more hold it's had over me.

Perhaps this line is meant to reflect Alex Hirsch's own feelings. Because many plural systems have felt this same way about their plurality, having hide their relationships to their headmates.

The actual end now

Finally, we come to the real ending of this.

This is, again, just a theory. I don't want anyone taking it as fact. I admit that I could be completely wrong about everything that I've said here.

But if nothing else, it's at least fun to imagine that Alex Hirsch does have a Bill Cipher tulpa in his head that has been acting as his muse this whole time. And it would give a new meaning to the gag of the Weirdmageddon intro saying Gravity Falls was "created by Bill Cipher" all those years ago.

Thanks for reading, and if you have your own muse that you think might be more than a simple muse, be sure to read my guide on how to know if your imaginary friend is sentient.

And if you like this post and want to see more like it, you may want to check out The Plurality of… Avatar: The Last Airbender or The Plurality of… IF

The queen wore a high-collared black silk gown, with a hundred dark red rubies sewn into her bodice, covering her from neck to bosom. They were cut in the shape of teardrops, as if the queen were weeping blood.

Superbia - Part 2 - A Blooming Identity ~ @khoc-week

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