Mark My Words

A Final AN

Welp, this was the scariest thing I've ever done.

And I'm really happy I did it.

Seriously, I had way too much fun writing this, and I'm just shocked that people actually read it. I remember doing a happy dance when this story got 6 reads back in May, and now we're at 2.3 thousand. That's insane!

I've said thank you a million and one times throughout the million and one author's notes in this story, but I need to say it again. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you all so much. I had such a good time reading all the comments and seeing everyone's reaction, and every single read, vote and comment means so much to me. I know you're all so used to hearing that from so many people by now, but that doesn't make it any less sincere, because I really and truly mean it.

And yes, I've had the ending planned since the very beginning. Throughout this entire story I put a lot of foreshadowing leading up to it. Most of it wasn't all that obvious, but I made sure to include it. For example: that time when Seth called Mark for a private conversation that I never built upon again, "what you don't know could kill you, or worse, those you care about," "I know what you really plan to do with that gun," the repeated mentions of Mark's overwhelming guilt, the repeated mentions of Seth's expression growing solemn at the mention of the plan/when he was thinking about the plan, the knowing look Mark and Seth shared across the table (no Izzy, they were not having eye sex XD) etc.

There were scenes throughout the story that were added, changed or removed all together, but Mark dying was always endgame.

Also, isn't it ironic that I posted the chapter where Mark dies on the same day he came back from hiatus?

I know there's probably some confusion around certain events, especially since I killed off Seth and rendered him unable to explain everything (did that for a reason btw), so I'm going to give a brief explanation of some of the major plot points. The rest I'm going to leave up to your imagination.

1. Mark's death. Originally I had an entire flashback chapter devoted to explaining exactly why Mark needed to die, but I ended up making that explanation so long and convoluted that it made even less sense than if I had left it unexplained (I had this whole metaphor with dominos that literally made no sense whatsoever). Instead of creating further confusion with a long-winded description, I'm going to give a short and quick one instead.

Dark and The Author formed a blood pact shortly after the events in the prologue, binding their two souls. But Dark also formed a blood pact with Mark, binding their two souls as well. Mark and Dark's souls are bound, Dark and The Author's souls are bound. But Mark and The Author's souls weren't bound. Not directly at least. Instead they were bound through Dark's soul, which created a very weak binding. Because the binding of Mark's and The Author's souls wasn't very strong, it was unknown if killing Mark with a normal weapon would kill The Author, and vice versa. It might severely disable them, but their death would be undecided.

So in order to kill both The Author and Dark, Seth invented a weapon that was strong enough to still be able to use that weak connection between Mark and The Author to kill the latter. Hence the supernatural alien gun thing.

They couldn't go and just kill The Author because he was impossible to find, and Seth was originally just going to flat out shoot Mark with the weapon, but then Anti's introduction into the group messed up that plan.

I hope that at least made some sense.

2. Anti, and why he's still alive.

Basically, The Author tried something new and decided to create life inside of life (which is why he was talking about creating a new character from scratch). He made another aura inside of Jack's body and trapped it there, fusing the new aura with Jack's. This is different from when Dark possessed Mark, because while their auras were connected with the blood pact, they weren't fused into a horrible amalgamation. Dark wasn't confined to Mark's body, but Anti is confined to Jack's, because his aura is literally intertwined with Jack's.

Now there's another being inside of Jack, fighting for control every once and awhile. Since Anti's existence isn't supposed to be possible, he's fairly weak most of the time and doesn't have the strength to take over Jack's body. But he'll bide his time and gather strength, and then wait for the moment where he's finally strong enough to overpower Jack's aura so h can take over his body.

That's also the reason why he glitches. He isn't a stable life form, and he's never able to gain proper control of Jack's body because of that.

What he does with Jack's body now, well... I think you all know what he wants to do.

(Edit: I did not think these sentences through when I wrote them, and they ended up sounding dirty. I did not mean it like that at all, but I'm gonna leave it in, because myself and others found my blunder funny :p)

And there you have it. There are other things I left unexplained, but I'm going to leave them that way. I want there to be some open ended aspects to this story, and explaining absolutely everything kind of takes the fun out of reading it.

So for the final time (in this book anyways), thank you. Thank you for creating the best demonic gay cult, for creating about fifteen alternate endings within the comment section, for making some fantastic puns, for supporting me until the end.

And thank you for reading.

-skittenninja

(PS: Going to be writing some new stories soon!)