a-whump-muffin

[a-whump-muffin]

bad apple!! (2)

the start of a manhunt...

CW: box boy universe, no whump just a seedy megacorporation stalking its (former) employees

---

Roy Himmel isn’t a real person, and disappears from this world just as quickly and quietly as he entered it. 

Karl almost doesn't believe his own eyes when he takes a proper look at Himmel's file. He was hired from a career fair at Syracuse University, a university he definitely did attend and graduated from with a degree in linguistics. It has all been stored alongside his resume and onboarding paperwork. After he was hired, those files were basically forgotten and left to collect dust.

When Karl is asked to unearth Himmel's file for the first time in five years, he initially finds nothing remarkable about it. It's not until he reviews the man's emergency contact list to report if he has any relatives or significant others to worry about his sudden disappearance that Karl runs into a dead end.

The phone number listed under his emergency contact is out of service. The person he listed as his emergency contact is the owner of a bookstore in a city halfway across the country, who once communicated with Himmel over the acquisition of a rare book in Romanian and nothing more.

Karl's job is almost entirely based around facts. There is little room for speculation where he is concerned. He runs background checks and investigates potential acquisitions all day long, and he knows an anomaly when he sees one. People lie, but the records don't.

He is determined to make Roy Himmel's life make sense, but the deeper he looks, the more it begins to defy all logic.

Although he doesn’t normally leave his department, he finally accepts that he isn’t going to learn any more about the man from his personnel file. He decides to head straight to the staff room to find out what Himmel’s file can’t tell him. Himmel was apparently friendly and well-liked by his colleagues. Karl hasn’t met many people who can resist talking about themselves to their colleagues at least a little bit.

He turns to the most normal of the day shift handlers - Petersen, who isn't likely to string him along for the fun of it.

"Hannah," he starts, plastering a smile on his face. She notices him entering the room, but doesn't lift her head until he approaches the table where her lunch sits, mostly untouched. "Can I ask you a few questions?"

"Is this about Roy?" she asks, amused. A hint of derision colors her words. The handlers always make such a big production of it when one of their own "leaves" the job. Karl suspects it's out of necessity. They're a decently close-knit bunch. No one wants to be associated with the dropouts or failures.

"Yeah." Karl slides into the chair across from her, takes out a notepad. "Did he ever talk to you about his life outside work, what he did on the weekends? Any family, friends, anything?"

Hannah hums in a teasing, speculative sort of way that's entirely intentional, but her eyes wander off to the side in thought and she takes a second too long answering.

"...Well, come to think of it," she says, her brow furrowed slightly. “No. When you were talking to him, you weren’t talking at him, if that makes sense.  If you told him about your girlfriend’s stupid sister getting in your face about what we do here, he’d actually listen, not just nod like he had better things to do. But, now that I think of it, he never really talked about himself.”

“Can you think of anything?” Karl presses. “He had to have mentioned something.”

Hannah picks at her nails as she thinks back to all of her previous interactions with the man. She was hired only a few months after him. Karl doesn’t believe that Himmel managed to avoid talking about himself in the five years since he started working at WRU.

“I don’t think he was very close to his family,” she says, but she doesn’t sound too confident. “He always said he didn’t have any particular plans for the holidays.”

It’s purely speculation, not a fact, and that grates on Karl’s nerves to no end.  

“He wasn’t going out with anyone,” she adds. 

She can’t remember him ever mentioning any hobbies, either, and he has no social media accounts. Nothing. A few stories from his college days, but Karl already knows he attended Syracuse University. That’s nothing groundbreaking. 

Karl has a diploma and the tax documents to prove Roy Himmel is a person who really exists, but he’s beginning to have doubts despite the proof. 

He receives more or less the same answers from the handler who mentored him when he first joined the company. 

“I kinda figured he didn’t want to talk about it for a reason,” Cruz tells him with a shrug.

Karl is grasping for straws when he suggests, “Was he an internal hire?”

An internal hire is someone who was initially in the pet program, who for one reason or another makes a better handler than a trainee. They’re rare, but it happens occasionally, and some of them have already had their memories wiped by the time they transfer roles. It could explain why he never spoke about himself — he might not have remembered anything at all.

“Nah,” Cruz says. “Not as far as I know, though he’s definitely got the looks for it.”

Karl shoves his discomfort with the statement to the back of his mind. Handlers are known for being flippant and crude — it doesn’t matter that this was once a colleague. 

“But he never once said anything about his past? Nothing?”

“Nope. I kind of figured he came from the Midwest, but he’s real good at languages. Can imitate any accent you name, so who really knows? If you asked him where he’s from, he’d just say ‘nowhere interesting’ and turn the question right back at you.”

Great. Nothing but more speculation. For the first time since he started working here, Karl goes home with more questions than answers. 

—

Karl opens a much deeper investigation the next day. He worked for a private investigator for a short time before WRU hired him, so he already knows all the tips and tricks of the trade. WRU holds the certifications and licensing needed to run as thorough a check as anyone can ask for, so all he needs to do is run the queries. 

When he uncovers — or, rather, what he doesn’t uncover — is at once astonishing and completely predictable based on his current progress. 

Roy Himmel didn't exist prior to his enrollment in college. The high school transcripts he used to apply to the school must be fake, and needless to say, no birth certificate exists either.

Any pets that enter the system are erased as people from that point onward, but no one is denying that they once existed and had rights and a life like any other citizen. This situation with Himmel is impossible. People’s pasts don’t just disappear like this — wholly and completely. 

The only reasonable conclusion is that Roy Himmel was a lie all along. 

“In short…who the hell is this guy?” Karl says, flicking the file with a snort. He glances at his manager, Collier, but he seems just as perplexed. “As far as I can tell, Roy Himmel doesn’t exist. Whoever doctored his identity did a pretty good job, but they didn’t go that far back.”

“The question is why he bothered at all,” Collier says, which is a perfectly valid point. As long as there’s nothing egregious about the applicant’s history, WRU’s handler program will hire just about anyone who suits the job. According to the things his coworkers said about him, Himmel never gave off any red flags. If his past was so unsavory he had to hide behind a false identity, Karl doubts he would have been able to come across as so normal and unassuming. 

There’s only one lead Karl has left, which he didn’t think to investigate initially because no one would steal company property, then proceed to hide somewhere as predictable as his home address.

“Wait…where did he live before he moved into company housing?” Karl says with a sense of urgency.

“How am I supposed to know?” Collier replies, vaguely amused as he watches Karl flip through the printouts he compiled. “That’s your job.”

“Right, right,” Karl murmurs, distracted. He pulls out the onboarding documents and searches for Himmel’s permanent address. He had to list one when he was hired. They wouldn’t have accepted a temporary address. And if he has a home address, he can track down everything. 

There. 

“Here. Chicago!” Karl circles the address in triumph. Collier leans forward and whistles as Karl searches the location on the internet. “What is it?”

“That’s on Lincoln Avenue,” Collier points out. “How and why did he end up working here? If he’s from that sort of neighborhood, he should have been a client, not an employee.”

It’s a simple matter to look into the residence’s purchase history, but revealing the name on the deed to the house doesn’t tell him much at first. He already knows Roy Himmel isn’t real. He has no way of knowing if he has any relation to Morgan Seidel, the owner of the house at that address. 

“Okay, not the same guy,” Karl says under his breath. He ran a quick search for one Morgan Seidel, and the results brought up the photo of a tall young man with auburn hair. Apparently, he’s the art director of an art museum in the area. Most importantly, he bears absolutely no resemblance to Himmel. Karl exhales harshly. 

It seems this is a mystery that will take longer than a single afternoon to uncover. As aggravated as it makes him, it’s been so long since a challenge like this one has presented itself at his fingertips.

#box boy universe #bbu #i like exploring the wru side #and the casual evil of the whole business #in which roy is a cryptid

[a-whump-muffin]

go to settings > to the right, under "Blogs," pick the blog you want to change the settings of > scroll down to visibility settings > turn on "Prevent third-party sharing for [blog url]" > do this for each individual blog you have

#oh joy

[a-whump-muffin]

bad apple!! (1)

I’ve finally finished enough of this new bbu story to show the world!

bad apple!! is the story of a former trainee and former handler, both on the run from WRU for the last eight years. This piece focuses on their unconventional relationship, and the very real concern the people around them have regarding it…

CW: box boy universe, condescending and unhelpful caretaking, references to violence, murder, and self-harm

---

“You couldn’t have possibly chosen him of your own free will.”

Nate despises those words.

“No,” he says each time, barely able to stop himself from snapping. If he’s too defensive, they’ll dismiss him without a second thought. He suffocates the anger stirring in his chest before it crawls up his throat, each and every time. “I know exactly who I fell in love with.”

He can never find the words to convince them. In their eyes, they only see a broken man who had been a boy when his entire life was stolen from him. In their eyes, Nate will never be fully in control of his own fate. The memories that were stolen from him will never return and the pain he suffered while collared like an animal will always cloud his decisions.

It’s the most infuriating part of the pet liberation movement. No matter the pretty words they use, they clearly don’t see him as their equal. The rescues don’t always understand, either.

However, Nate can understand their concerns. He has grown used to deflecting them. He is used to having to prove his own competence. What he hates, and can’t forgive as easily, is when people like Stefan say those words where Roy can hear them.

“I don’t need people telling me who to love,” Nate says with a hint of scorn.

“That’s the point,” Stefan tries to convince him. “The handlers do it on purpose. They make themselves the center of your world, make you willing to do anything and everything to please them. You know how this works. Just think about it for a second!”

Nate shakes his head. If he had anything in his hands, he would have thrown it across the room in frustration. It’s not fair that he has to swallow his anger until it burns. 

He doesn’t know how to explain that he fell in love with Roy at his worst, long before he ever saw a glimpse of his gentle and considerate side. He fell in love with the man who didn’t so much as flinch when his colleague bled out in front of him, who is willing to dirty his hands again and again to earn their freedom.

Roy, who was supposed to destroy every last part of him but reminded him of the man he killed long after his name and memories were wiped from his head. He didn’t remind him as a form of punishment.

“Remember you killed someone,” he’d whispered at least once a day, out of sight of the surveillance cameras and too soft for his voice to be picked up. “Hold onto that feeling. And, one day, when you need it most…

“Don’t hesitate.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Nate says, finally irritated enough by the baseless accusations. He tries to keep his voice level. “You don’t know Roy. Yes, Roy, not ‘the handler’. He has a name, too.”

“You-”

“No, you listen to me.” Nate’s voice turns cold enough to startle, and Stefan has the sense to be wary.

He is reminded of something else Roy once told him, before they ran, before running was even a possibility.

“You and I, we’re not so different.” Roy was always quiet when he said those words. A distant, troubled look would cloud his eyes. He would never elaborate. Later, Nate knew what he meant without being told.

“Roy has risked more than you know to keep everyone safe.” Nate takes a deep breath. He is sick to his stomach with the knowledge that Roy can hear everything they’re saying. “He’s done some awful things in the past, and what he does now can’t make up for it. But he’s not asking for your, or anyone else’s, forgiveness. Who I choose to love, and choose to forgive, is my own business.”

Nate doesn’t let Stefan have the last word. He stalks away before the man can respond, effectively ending the conversation. He probably hasn’t convinced him in the slightest, but Nate feels better for having said it

He heads straight for the room he has been sharing with Roy, who treats it like solitary confinement. No one is forcing him to stay, but it’s also unbearably awkward for everyone involved when he shows his face around the common areas.

Nate finds him sitting against the wall next to the door.

“You heard all that,” Nate says apologetically, leaning down to tug Roy to his feet and off the floor. He follows without protest. Nate avoids his hands, which might still be sensitive from the night before when he scrubbed so hard he made himself bleed.

“He’s not entirely wrong.” Roy’s voice is soft but not uncertain, just a little tired. Nate makes him sit on the edge of the futon and stares until they meet each other’s eyes.

“Don’t say that,” Nate says, heart heavy with regret and affection towards this man who has probably defied all of his expectations for a life partner. He is sure that the boy he was would never have imagined himself with a guy like Roy. “Like I said, no one has a right to tell me who to love. Not even you.”

Roy’s eyes flicker with a bit of warmth. His lips twitch upwards in a half smile. He winds his fingers between Nate’s, and he sees now that Roy has been picking at the bandages. It’s a nervous habit, but Nate is relieved to see that Roy is comfortable enough to let him see it.

“Alright,” Roy says mildly. “I won’t argue with you.”

Nate rolls his eyes.

“I love you of my own free will,” he insists, careful not to squeeze his hands too hard. “I don’t appreciate people telling me that what we have isn’t real.”

He knows it’s real, not only because of his own feelings on the matter or the way Roy leans in to capture his lips in a kiss filled with just enough heat to steal his breath away.

The bandages are rough under his fingers. He traces the frayed edges gently with his thumbs.

If Roy didn’t love him, he wouldn’t tear himself apart doing all these jobs he hates. Roy became a handler to escape the family business. He had wanted a “normal” life - or as close to one as he could get.

Nate took that away from him. 

“They’re your family,” he’d said, once, when he’d had enough of seeing Roy’s hands tremble long after he came back from one of those jobs. Like every other time, he refused to explain why it left him so shaken. “Won’t they understand if you need a break? Or want to do something else?”

“Everything has a price,” Roy had said, as if it was an unshakable truth. “It’s just a matter of how much you’re willing to pay for what you want.”

Roy isn’t a good person. His family is probably way worse. 

Still, Nate doesn’t believe that they’re as uncaring and cruel to their own as Roy makes them out to be. He has overheard Roy’s conversations with his older brother and the light banter between them doesn’t sound like they don’t care about each other. His brother knows about Nate, and even asks about him sometimes. 

Roy reads into every remark and question his brother makes as a threat. Nate doesn’t know if it’s true or if Roy is just being paranoid.

The other pet lib members think he’s a ticking time bomb. That might very well be the case, but Nate knows he is more of a threat to himself than anyone else. 

“Don’t listen to them,” Nate reiterates. “I know what I want.”

#box boy universe #bbu #box boy au #implied self harm #bad caretaking #my writing #bad apple -- bbu #age difference #it's not obvious from this piece alone tho #they're a problematic couple #in more ways than one

[a-whump-muffin]

#the middle one except it’s all in various word documents #each called untitled….. #so finding them again becomes impossible #world building is one of my favorite parts of writing #anyways I just dug up this EXTENSIVE fic featuring a made up sport #that didn’t get too much elaboration in the actual book #so I filled in the gaps with everything I knew about soccer #which isn’t a whole lot but damn #I did a LOT of research for this thing lol

[a-whump-muffin]

Ooh definitely let me know when you get further!!

I’m binging it now surprisingly and it’s super interesting the changes they made to the original. I like the direction they took overall!

I haven’t seen the anime in yeaaars but still remember all the iconic parts. YYH was my childhood and I’m thrilled they did it so well for this live action. There are a few things I have an issue with my doesn’t take away from the overall enjoyment of the show

Hey! Started watching Yu Yu Hakusho live action bc of your reblog and it’s actually really good overall! Btw the guy in the screenshots you reblogged is a fox! I won’t say more since spoilers :3

!!!! WOOH

Im super slow in watching, but Im liking it so far! I ended up getting the first manga from the library

Fox!!!

[a-whump-muffin]

I'm finally...finally almost ready to come out with one of the fifty million whump stories I've written....

I've always wanted to write a bbu story set in modern times as is the usual setting. I've finally written one that satisfies me (somewhat...the brain is never truly satisfied...but it's going to have to deal this time). It's kinda dramatic and unrealistic but more grounded than the modern fantasy/supernatural aus i keep coming up with.

anyways, soon I'll roll out the first installment, about a boy who escaped wru's clutches and the handler (now his globe-trotting partner) who helped him do it.

#whump writing #box boy universe

[a-whump-muffin]

sometimes I go wild and try a new writing style, and sometimes I actually like it (even if just for that one story), but problems arise when I take a break and go back to it, then can't get back into the mindset to write that style again because it's not my normal one lol

(me when I write in first person...i thought a bbu story in first person would be fun, the not so fun part is taking a million years to get back to it and trying to pick up where I left off)

[a-whump-muffin]

you ever dig up something you wrote a while ago and think huh...that was actually pretty good...

then, sometimes, I actually forget I wrote the thing I dug up lol.

[a-whump-muffin]

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

#writing stuff

[a-whump-muffin]

I used xkit to make the overall site font size smaller and somehow it’s made this new stupid layout a lot more bearable for me to use.

still hate it, but everything was too large and in my face before. 

also restored the old blue theme bc the neon colors hurt my eyes. used a different extension, Palettes for Tumblr, for that. they also have dark mode and other themes for people who like those better. personally, dark mode actually gives me a headache and the text always looks blurry, especially if it’s a pure white/black and not a more grey/off-white and black. that might be my astigmatism, though. most people I’ve met irl and online don’t seem bothered by dark mode colors at all, even the ones who don’t prefer it.

anyways, eternally grateful to the ones who develop these neat little extensions.

[a-whump-muffin]

Also reminder to new Tumblr users, if you are on desktop (it might be available on mobile? Idk how it would work with the app), you can download an add-on called Xkit Rewritten, a new new version of the old Tumblr supplement, Xkit, which lets you make tweaks to the website. It's kind of similar to RES on Reddit if you ever used that.

Here are the ones I have turned on:

I also just noticed it lets you hide Tumblr Live as well, if that annoys you.

The one I find most useful is Quick Reblog which includes the ability to add tags, where you just separate them by a comma:

and of course if you even want to hide your follower count from yourself, you can do that, too.

Have fun.

#literally cannot survive the hellsite without it!

[a-whump-muffin]

I might just...post all the weird shit I’ve written over the past few years. I just want to get it off my back and out of the black hole that is my google docs folders. Just in that sort of mood lol.

I have a lot of stuff I actually kind of liked, but I’m really bad at continuing stories, so most of it has a cool premise or the beginning written before I ran out of steam.

Ahem, my problem may also just be that I cannot find anything and therefore can’t work on it if it’s buried under 10 layers of ‘untitled document’ files...

My entire google docs looks like this...

#writing woes

[a-whump-muffin]

I was looking over some of the other stuff I’ve written but never posted, and found the one time I was trying to imitate the writing style of Dogra Magra...Actually, it’s quite fitting for a bbu setting. Think one flew over the cuckoo's nest but with more mind-fuckery.

One really interesting element from Dogra Magra that you also see in other Japanese works today is the idea of generational or ancestral memories. Like Jung’s idea of archetypes being part of a collective unconscious.

#writing stuff

[a-whump-muffin]

I have written the beginning of a dozen different stories, but I inevitably get “bored” with one idea and start a different story that holds my attention for a few days, and then occasionally we cycle back around to an old idea and I’m like oh, I liked that one, let’s make some more progress on it, but then I write like two paragraphs and dip again.

It’s so annoying. Part of it might just be me not plotting things out and being bad at writing transitions (I’ve usually got the beginning and key middle scenes in mind when I start). Other part might be me not being able to focus on one thing at a time. I also tend to like to work on things in a linear way, but I was probably the most prolific on this blog when I didn’t write things in order.

I even have a few decently whump-y works in the works (and a few bbu ideas I actually like), but not enough progress that I’d feel they’re ready to see the light of day.

I’ve also got this long genshin fic in progress, which is actually the first time in years that I’ve written canon characters...? I think? Really surprised myself with that one.

#writing woes

[a-whump-muffin]

I may have finally clobbered my nano project into a few coherent stories and snippets I’d actually be okay sharing. It was so bizarre how much I wrote when I first started this blog, but ever since it’s been nothing but writers block lol.

Well, not exactly, as I’ve probably written tens of thousands of words at this point, but none of them ever quite meet my standards to be posted.

Part of my problem is that I also jump between projects incredibly quickly, then never get back to them. And the perfectionist in me keeps going over and deciding I don’t like what I wrote after all. It’s such a vicious cycle lol.

[a-whump-muffin]

[Image description: The words, "Do Not Give Up Writing | There Will Be A Story," displayed in a red serif font, overlaid on a sepia-toned section of writing.]

---

another text graphic inspired by a popular post of mine

#i definitely need that encouragement

[a-whump-muffin]

I have once again reached the point where I get the itch to delete everything I wrote and start over. I am going to try and ignore that urge but it is so annoying.