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Post by beastly on Nov 27, 2022 21:32:36 GMT -6
Charlotte shrugged, looking upwards as well. It was a dorky thought, but not completely impossible. Actually, the more Charlotte thought about it, the more likely it became. Julean was popular, and although he hadn't ever shown something real, someone was probably watching...
"The aliens have a deal with the government so they can monitor us. They might, but I wouldn't say that's a good thing. They're not good."
She gestured at the night sky, squinting at the moon.
"I didn't just see them, I was abducted as a kid. They did tests and things. Nobody believed me, I started digging, and I found more than I ever thought possible."
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Post by hadopelagic on Nov 28, 2022 22:34:35 GMT -6
For a moment, Julean wrestled with his response. Being kidnapped and treated like a guinea pig was a heavy experience, and he should say something to acknowledge that, right? Otherwise, Charlotte would feel embarrassed and upset, which might lead her to call off their collaboration. Also, shockingly, he didn't want her to be sad. However, Julean had no framework to fall back on. In the olden days, when his (ex) fake girlfriend or (ex) friends confided in him, hoping for comfort, he'd think, "What would make me feel better if I was in their shoes?" and then say it.
He'd never been abducted by aliens. But ...
But he could relate to Charlotte's sense of powerlessness. It hurt when the world invalidated your truth.
"I'm sorry that happened," Julean said. "I believe you."
Julean watched Charlotte's expression, hoping he'd said the right thing. Maybe he should emphasize his value, too.
"I'll help get the truth out there. Just point me in the right direction."
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Post by beastly on Nov 29, 2022 22:27:19 GMT -6
Charlotte seemed to have one of those faces where her default was a slight frown and an intense stare, however, her expression grew a bit softer at Julean's words. She smiled a little. People she met in real life usually didn't get it. Julean seemed like he wanted to know more about the world too, for real. Time would tell how well this all would work out, but for the moment she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Thanks," she nodded seriously, " I wanted to try and show you something tonight. Something real."
Charlotte cracked her knuckles. Anyone could talk.
"I've been in the woods lately, and I've found bigfoot tracks. Are you up to meet bigfoot, Julean?"
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Post by hadopelagic on Nov 30, 2022 2:55:13 GMT -6
He did it! He said the right thing, and now they were about to track down the GOAT cryptid? For a second, Julean couldn't help but actually smile.
"Am I up to meet bigfoot?"
Resolutely, Julean put away his Vape.
"Does this answer your question?"
Then, without another word, he launched upright and did a front-flip off the rickety porch. The impromptu move started well, with him catching enough air to do a full 360. Unfortunately, he completely flubbed the landing (probably 'cause Julean did most of his flips into swimming pools and lakes, where landings didn't matter). With a thump, he hit the ground ass-first, but managed to recover his dignity by jumping up and shouting, "Let's GET HIM! Oh, and what do we have here?" He reached into his jacket pocket and then whipped out a vlogging camera. "I just happened to bring my low-light compact Sony. Won't be any blurry bigfoots tonight, Charlotte. We're getting his hairy face in 4k."
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Post by beastly on Dec 1, 2022 21:43:55 GMT -6
Charlotte watched Julean, watched the man do a full flip off the porch... and land on his ass. She winced, but apparently it didn't hurt him very much because he was up and yelling right away, holding up a camera. There really was a strange charm about him. Dork-ish, but there was a charm.
"Uh huh..."
Charlotte stepped down after the streamer, not doing a flip, and squinted to see what exactly he was holding up. She gave an approving nod once she got a look at it. A good camera was certainly not something she'd scoff at. Especially because Julean didn't have some kind of shadow sense.
"That'll do it. We'll get some good evidence tonight, I think," She nodded, " I've found the prints on the edge of town, going into the forest."
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Post by hadopelagic on Dec 3, 2022 2:17:42 GMT -6
"I'm all in, but if we follow those tracks, and they lead us to a den full of grizzly bears, will you be okay?"
As Julean asked that question, he stared at his smartphone, which was now on again. He'd gone a full two minutes without it, probably a record. But new investigations meant new viewer surveys.
Quickly, Julean posted the following survey for his followers:
BIGFOOT REAL? YES NO
Then, he created an open-ended question.
IF/WHEN I INTERVIEW BIGFOOT, WHAT SHOULD I ASK HIM?
Then, one last question.
DOES THE US CONSTITUTION APPLY TO BIGFOOT? YES NO
Lowering the phone, he turned on his video camera, pressed record, and pointed it towards the old house.
"They say the forest is full of danger. We could be unknowingly filming our own Found Footage horror movie scenario."
Not a bad thing, necessarily. Julean always thought he'd make an ideal Final Boy in a scary movie. Maybe he should play up the Blair Witch angle and shoot more footage pointing at his nose.
"That said, you good with being filmed? I didn't expect a bigfoot hunt, so left the paperwork at home, but your boy splits collab revenue fifty-fifty."
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Post by beastly on Dec 7, 2022 0:35:40 GMT -6
"I know the difference between a bear and bigfoot, Julean," Charlotte crossed her arms.
She was highly confident in her bigfoot hunting skills. She'd been hanging around with Kail in the woods often enough, and had read countless books on the creature. She wouldn't have brought it up as a first dip into the real supernatural world if she wasn't sure.
She watched him mess around on his phone, and made a shooing motion as he addressed her.
"I don't want my face out there."
She bit her lip for a second before deciding to be truthful.
"If we post real evidence, they'll take it down as soon as they catch wind of it, you know."
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Post by hadopelagic on Dec 8, 2022 21:57:53 GMT -6
When Charlotte declined to be filmed, Julean lowered the camera and put it on standby mode. Not everyone was cut out for the limelight, or even wanted to be known, which Julean respected (if not understood). But the second comment, the one about "them" removing evidence, raised his hackles. No wonder he'd struggled to find legitimate leads online. All that wasted time! All those useless investigations into frauds and fantasies. It was the Men in Black's fault that he got punched in the face and robbed during a fruitless search for answers. The Men in Black owed him seven thousand dollars! That white-gold diamond-eyed tiger ring had been expensive.
He could think of no better revenge than finding a way around their censorship.
"Heh. I'll keep that in mind. Don't want my streams to be shut down. I was once banned from Twitch for twenty-four hours--just one day!--and my subs dropped. Something more permanent would be apocalyptic, you know what I mean?"
Plans were already forming.
"It'll take more than a few videos to convince people, anyway. But we'll think of something. With your brains and my additional brains, the truth will get out there."
This did make Julean wonder: how did his sister learn about Spider aka Charlotte? Marceline must have lots of friends in weird places. Made sense. She'd always been into the paranormal. Was she jealous now that he'd made paranormal investigation his New Thing? Probably. Must be hard to have a star as a brother. It wasn't like he could stop shining brightly, though. Such thoughts occupied the mind of Julean as he followed Charlotte to find a bigfoot.
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Post by beastly on Dec 15, 2022 22:50:20 GMT -6
Charlotte listened to Julean carefully. Ultimately, it was his choice what he posted, and he probably knew how to navigate this type of thing better than she did. The censors and YouTube/twitch thing. Not bigfoot. She was hesitantly going to trust him to help him guide her through the influencer portion of things.
"That sounds bad. From your numbers, I think I can trust your judgment to make sure things stay online, or at least get eyes. We will do a... brain team up."
Charlotte nodded seriously, then began to lead Julean down the street, towards where the woods started encroaching upon civilization. She was a fast little thing, nimble and navigating quickly in the dark even sans flashlight thanks to the shadow sense. When they got to the woods, she looked at Julean intensely.
"Follow my lead. The tracks were over this way."
With that, she walked confidently into the darkness.
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Post by hadopelagic on Dec 19, 2022 3:00:01 GMT -6
As Julean followed Charlotte into the forest, he struggled to keep pace. She was deceptively quick, that one, and the rough terrain did little to slow her steps. If anything, she seemed comfortable in the wild.
Not his element, tbh. He'd never lived outside of a city, and might've gone hiking a grand total of one time as a boy. Camping never. You couldn't pay Julean to sleep in a tent without his memory foam mattress and rainfall showerhead.
Well. That wasn't completely true. He'd do it for clout. And he'd be miserable the whole time, which the viewers would reeeally love, since they thrived on drama. Huh. Maybe Julean could launch a survivalist-style cryptid series; even if he didn't find actual bigfoot tracks, the engagement would be off the roof.
"I have to buy a sleeping bag ..." Julean gasped, and in his excitement, he walked straight into a sneaky tree branch. "Ah, shi ..."
With a hiss of displeasure, he smacked the branch aside.
"I should have been filming that. What's the point of suffering, otherwise?" He turned on his camera and trained it to the ground. "Damn, Charlotte, you're like a gazelle. Do you spend a lot of time in the forest?"
At that, his eyes widened slightly.
"Of course. How many weird things have you found out here? And why aren't you legitimately scared right now?"
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Post by beastly on Dec 23, 2022 14:25:25 GMT -6
Charlotte walked deeper into the woods, slowing when she saw her bigfoot hunting partner was having a little bit of a hassle keeping up with her. She leaned against a tree , watching as he got smacked in the face.
"Are you okay?"
And then on came the camera. Charlotte considered her answers to Julean's questions carefully, starting to walk again once the guy caught up. She didn't necessarily want to lay all the cards on the table at once, although she was giving Julean quite a bit of her trust.
"I spend a lot of time in the forest, taking pictures and looking for cryptids. I've found some of them."
She gestured dramatically around them, waving a hand in the general direction of a massive pine.
"You can't be afraid of what you're hoping to find, Julean. You have to go all in, and if it kills you, at least you found it."
She gave a serious nod, then casually called over her shoulder.
"Death isnt the end, anyway."
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Post by hadopelagic on Dec 29, 2022 15:19:10 GMT -6
Well, damn, that's what scared him the most sometimes.
After eyeing the pine tree with suspicion (given his recent spate of bad luck, it might spontaneously fall on his head), Julean hurried to catch up with Charlotte.
"Even if it's not the end," he said, "there's still a reason to be scared of death. Well. Maybe not for you. But for me, definitely. Like, I told you that my friend met a devil. That means there's a hell. And some of us might go there."
He didn't want to unpack that particular subject with an acquaintance. Quick, Julean! Deflect!
"Plus, what about ghosts?" he added. "Stuck in a house or old train station, bored for all eternity. That would suuuuck."
Ghosts had to exist. Half the world believed in them.
"When my grandma was a girl," he continued, "her family lost their house in a flood, so they had to live in a van, right? One of those retro sixties vans, the kind Scooby Doo drove around in, except old and rusty. And they'd spend the night parked along the cemetery, 'cause the gangs and other dangerous people wouldn't cause trouble near a sacred place. Well. Sometimes, they would. But it was still safer than parking at a random place. But my grandma was scared anyway. Because every night, she heard men talking outside, and they always said the same thing. They'd tap on the back window, right over her head, and ask for a ride to Chicago. She says they had to be ghosts. Can you imagine? Existing like that? Confused and stuck on repeat?"
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Post by beastly on Jan 6, 2023 23:06:38 GMT -6
Charlotte paused, distracted by Julean's ghost stories, although before that she had seemed like she'd been about to say something. She looked at him with a glint in her eye, eager to talk about ghosts.
" Facinating, isn't it? Ghosts, the whole concept... There are several kinds, the repeating sort, a sentient sort, the tape recording sort, and the kind that do the same thing over and over but are still sentient," her voice grew more excited," I don't know a lot about the afterlife, but I don't think people are supposed to turn into ghosts, like it's a glitch. Same thing with that hell thing. I think that the tape recorder ghosts are just an energy imprint, like if something important happens it's burned into the fabric of the world. And ghosts that interact and do a bunch of other stuff, the kind that you can talk to, those I think are a glitch too, unable to move over proper because of something holding them back."
Charlotte inspected the ground for a moment, grinning at a large footprint.
"Then, I guess the middle ground sucks the most, like you were saying, a semi-aware state where you do things over and over. It must be awful. I know some people say you can try and help ghosts move on."
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Post by hadopelagic on Jan 8, 2023 1:21:08 GMT -6
Although "fascinating" wasn't the first word Julean would choose to describe ghosts ("disturbing" and "existential nightmare" were his picks), Charlotte's theory made him feel a little better. Glitches were uncommon, so he didn't have to worry about his loved ones or enemies returning as ghosts. Well. It could happen. But it was way more likely to happen to strangers. So. Shrug.
That said, the ghost conversation gave him an idea.
"Hmmmm." He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Every time there's a glitch in a game, my chat gets spammed with comments. People notice. I think I know how to get the truth out there without directly saying ... uh, what are you looking at?"
He turned his camera toward the ground; its low-light vision highlighted a footprint.
"Bruh." No way a bear made that. It was big. A really big foot. "You better not be pranking me right now."
Was that an option? Was Charlotte just a reeeallly dedicated, talented faker who'd planted footprints earlier that day? If so, he respected her hustle, not gonna lie.
Excitedly, Julean kept the camera trained to the ground and searched for more prints, eager to follow the trail, wherever it led.
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Post by beastly on Jan 9, 2023 0:58:20 GMT -6
"Ghosts are one of the things it's more socially acceptable to believe in," Charlotte tapped her foot, " I would like to hear your ideas, Julean."
She grinned up at her investigative buddy, nodding as she gestured at the footprint.
"Absolutely not. It's all real. And we're going to find it."
The thin woman started to follow the trail as Julean recorded, for indeed there were more prints. They were large, bigger than any man's, and bare. Toes could be seen and counted. If Julean had any sort of training, he could recognize them as fresh. Whatever had made them, it had been huge, and on a mission. Deeper, deeper into the woods they went, and as they traveled... they began to hear things ahead of them.
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