A blog, maybe? With some optimised keywords? That does sound promising, actually, especially if he can get good traffic. Except that, under the hypothesis that he is (currently) the only one, he'd need do some SEO with this strange audience in mind, and he doesn't know what would make a blog popular for them.

Beyond money, that is; he can always buy some ad space and boost his searchability, but he's a university student without a family or a source of income so he should figure that out before he starts spending his money on long-shot ideas like that. 

He could just start one without worrying about SEO for now, actually, and get to writing. Simblr ought to be good enough for that, it's very easy to get a Simblr up and running and the format encourages easy writing of a sort he thinks he'd be able to sustain for a long time.

It is, in fact, very easy to get a Simblr up and running.

He does that at his computer, after he's done eating, because small screen small brain, his phone is not good enough for this. Once that's done, he starts thinking about his first post.

What does it say about him that the very first idea he had was "nudes"? Well, it probably says more about who or whatever instantiated him into the world yesterday than it does about him, but to the extent it says anything about him, it says that he's an exhibitionist hoe. Which he already knew. Tarleton this is not the time for that. You can create a porn sideblr or something later.

Cara texts him back—she was in class—and gives him the contact info of another sister whom she says is "into all that occult shit".

Cool! Thank you, Cara! So now he'll... how does he even cold text someone about this kinda stuff. He supposes someone who is "into all that occult shit" might be alright being messaged directly about that? He'll add her as a friend on Social Bunny (oh, look, a company name that doesn't have anything to do with "Sim") then message her.

hi!

I'm Peter, I'm a Chi Beta gamma brother

met your sister Cara last night at the welcoming party here

she mentioned you're interested in the occult?

i'm finding myself interested too, recently

ghosts, in particular

The "read" markers appear immediately, and she sends him an event invite to something called a "Thinned Festiveil" tomorrow between 2:45PM and 10:45PM.

be there or be dead, yo

...???????

Okay?

I will!

thanks!

She adds a thumbs-up react to his last message.

That was either enthusiasm or "get out of my hair and go talk to someone who's more willing to entertain you" but either way he is genuinely thankful.

What is this "Thinned Festiveil"?

It is a festival in Ravenwood that takes place when the veil between this world and the next is thinnest. Someone claiming to be the Grim Reaper himself is on the invite list marked as a "maybe".

...the. Grim Reaper. Is. On the.

Is.

Is that the real Grim Reaper?? Is the Grim Reaper real??? He doesn't seem to have come with pre-installed certainty about that one.

His Social Bunny profile is extremely sparse. In fact, its only contents are confirmations that he did or did not go to individual Thinned Festiveils, which seem to happen at very irregular intervals. This week apparently has two of them scheduled beyond tomorrow's, one on Thursday and one on Saturday, but next week only has the one on Wednesday.

Peter does not know what he was expecting.

Anyway, he'll click Nanda's profile out of curiosity.

Her posts are all kind of macabre, in a "teenage goth" way. Lots of poetry about the sweet release of death. Pictures of creepy things like graves and skulls and a murder of crows all perched on the same tree staring at the camera.

Plus, of course, some pictures of her with some ghosts, and one picture with a skeleton in a hooded cloak carrying a scythe and doing a peace sign for the camera.

wℏæt the fuĸč

Okay, you know what, he thinks he kind of agrees that ghosts are creepy and that this is fucking insane.

What do you MEAN there's a literal fucking skeleton in a literal fucking hood with a literal fucking scythe

doing

a

peace

sign

for a picture. What do you MEAN the fucking GRIM REAPER is REAL and TAKES PICTURES WITH UNIVERSITY SORORITY SISTERS.

What's going ooooooonnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!

No. Chill. Chill, Tarleton. You already knew ghosts were real. Presumably they got there somehow, right? They could've just, you know, gotten up from their bodies, like, oh, I'm dead, now I guess I'm back up, nice, cool, good. But the fact that there's a guy whose job it is to do that? That's cool, too. That's not a problem. It's normal, evne. Probably. If it's true. If it's true it's normal. Definitionally. There's this guy, who is a skeleton, who goes around reaping souls and turning them into ghosts.

But what if he gets mad at Peter and decides that Peter doesn't get to be a ghost and instead will be reaped that is presumably not going to happen. It is almost certainly not going to happen. It's, like, super unlikely to happen? Right? Right. It must be. Because everyone knows about ghosts. They wouldn't if the Grim Reaper were in the habit of just reaping people with his very sharp, very deadly-looking, presumably-magical scythe that can almost certainly slice you in half regardless of whether you are or are not a ghost.

What happens if you die as a ghost? Does super Grim Reaper turn you into a super ghost? Or do you just vanish forever, the way Peter had been subconsciously expecting you would before he was filled with the mysterious certainty that ghosts were real?

Tarleton the thing you are doing right now is not "chilling". It is "freaking out". It is the opposite of "chilling".

Okay but like objectively speaking it is kind of terrifying that there is a specific guy whose job it is to make him a ghost. The safety and certainty he just acquired an hour ago is gone again, because that guy could make him not become a ghost! Now his survival hinges on not pissing off that one guy!! And it's not that Peter particularly expects to piss that one guy off but that is a lot to stake on it!!!

But that means that he probably should go to the Festiveil, right? That way he can scope the place out, figure out whether he needs to become buddies with the Reaper? It'd be good to have that one down before it was time for him to become a ghost only to find out that, haha, you're silly, you thought you could be a ghost? You need good ol' Grimbo's personal permission to do that and he doesn't give that away to just about anyway. Oh, you missed that memo? Bummer, that. Anyway, moving on to wherever it is souls move on to, if anywhere.

He's gonna start writing on his new blog, how about. A first, introductory longpost explaining who he is, how he woke up to life yesterday, his experiences so far.

He writes it with a little bit of flourish, a little bit of flair. The story ought to be entertaining, not just factual. He doesn't know if this will engage his Sim audience—he should find other blogs to compare—but even if it doesn't, he thinks it'll probably reach other people like him, if they're there to be reached. Who knows, maybe there's a secret society of them and they'll message him to be like you gotta take that post down for this and that reason, and it'll be a good reason, too.

He'll even take a bad reason over their not existing.

Doyoon walks into their little office soon after Peter is done with his blog post. "Yo."