I was searching around on Ian Foster's conlang channel when I realized I had watched all of his videos. I refreshed the page to see if any new videos or series popped up. When I did, there was a new conlang series on the channel. I was so excited I almost shit myself clicking on it furiously. The name of the video was: Conlang | Buvak | E1 | Alphabet and Diphthongs. The video started off with a phone camera pointed and recording at his computer screen. The screen displayed the new alphabet of Buvak. It had a lot of nasal accents and was similar looking to Portuguese. There were 34 letters and 5 diphthongs. One letter seemed to stick out; it's IPA equivalent was nothing I've seen before. I tried looking up on the IPA consonant table to see if it really existed, but I found nothing. Also, on the screen of the computer I could make out the reflection of Ian's face, but Ian had never shown his face on his channel before. Not only did he never show his face on his channel before, but the face he was making was very disturbing. His eyes with gouged out and replaced with large, red marbles. The flesh was strung and wrapped around his sharp, inhuman, monster-like teeth. His cheeks were burnt and scorched, giving them a two-faced feature. The burns were oozing and bubbling. The audio was disturbing as well. He was breathing heavy, occasionally letting out a grumble or low growling noise. I could make out each time he was growling that he was not speaking English. Instead, it sounded like maybe Buvak. I could sort of hear the distinct and unrecognizable phonemes that were in Buvak. The letters on the screen then faded to the next slide, which had all the diphthongs. Like I said earlier, there were five diphthongs. And all of them had unrecognizable IPA equivalents. I was starting to get really freaked out and was tempted to click off, but I was so curious to see where this video was going. About a minute in the video started to glitch. Ian's face changed back to a more human, normal looking face each time if buffered, and switched back to the monster, creepy face the next time it buffered. Ian's voice even switched back and forth as well. When it was creepy, you could hear him screaming in Buvak and wailing about whatever the fuck is going on with his face. When it was normal, you could hear him normally, in his usual voice, talking about the phonemes and how he wanted to design a European based language with inhuman phonemes. He explained how no human would be able to speak the sounds but he was able to do it. He said it might be a gift or something. I was really getting worried because the audio of the video got more intense and I started to hear the falling of objects from Ian's conlang desk. On the screen, Ian's papers and empty soda cans were falling off and hitting the floor. A glass tipped over and got the keyboard wet with Mtn Dew. All the chaos seems to stop for a moment. The video's phone camera pans over to Ian's normal looking face. He says he was also interested in trying out a face reveal on his channel for the very first time. He said he wanted to "get closer to his fans". I started to calm down because all seem normal and chill. Ian was just going on about how he wanted to speak this conlang and several others fluently, and then he started speaking in Buvak like he was already fluent. I sat back and watched the camera pan over slowly to the computer screen.
But Boy, did I let my guard down.
The screaming came back, and it was the loudest it ever had been in the video. The phone camera shook with rage and Ian's monster voice moaned and yelled in agony. He was yelling at the top of his lungs in Buvak. I clicked off of the video and ran out of my room, down the stairs and into the living room of my house, bumping into my mom and then pushing the opened door more open. My mom called me, saying, "What are you doing? Come back here and help me with the groceries!" But I did not listen, I just kept running and running down the street. Fortunately, I lived in Buda, Texas and also went to the same school as Ian. Hayes High School. I got my phone out and went on google maps and put in his address which I had previously learned when I used to go to his house. From there I started to run again towards his house, which wasn't far at all since we were in the same neighborhood.
