revamping an old story, "the test" [shoutout AATR6]

how the original came to be

i don't know how it began, but these past few months i've begun thinking a whole lot about old stories i wrote in my childhood, one in particular taking the spotlight in my mind. there exists a 14-page story i created in middle school for a creative writing assignment that i called, "the test," and it has retained inside-joke status in my friend group for years. no matter what godawful story you make, it will never be as bad as the test: that harem anime in prose form which ripped plotpoints directly from nisekoi, yandere simulator, and yume nikki, this story that i turned in for a grade btw 🥀

i hadn't read it in almost a decade and had a really warped perspective of it. and for the longest time i treated it as if it were an awful embarrassment; the first completed story of mine ever and also a stain on my future works. then one day, a friend and i randomly decided to sit down and read a bunch of our old stories, including the test, and to my utter astonishment, the takeway from this reading session was... THAT NONE OF UR ART IS EVER AS BAD AS U MAKE IT IN UR HEAD. my own friend's "the test" equivalent was NOT NEARLY as awful as they made it out to be, and MY "the test" was not nearly as bad to them. the actual "the test" was actually... so endearing and unintentionally funny??? the main character, malcolm is a COMPLETE MORON, awkward as SHIT, and the story which featured a gritty murder plot was so nonchalant and TONE DEAF, leading to quaint lines like THIS???

o-oh geez scoob... a dead body...

break a window and escape? ionno man.... what if they catch me breaking the rules.......

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTT.

also not murder-related but this line is kinda funny to me

(aka the stalker).

for a grade btw.

get him out of here he doesnt want to be in a harem

like it's so endearing. i thought i'd cringe into my skin reading it but all i felt was like.... genuine joy and warmth. these dorks of characters, this mess of a storyline... it had PASSION it had POTENTIAL. and potential is the keyword here.

so, the actual plot of the test goes as follows: there's infighting in the upper world and the gods are gearing up for civil war. one of the few demigods, malcolm, wants to help so bad but is deemed not strong enough and is cast to earth for his own safety by his mother who gives him a vague "test" w/o instructions that he has to complete in order to find his keep. but his time on earth is even more alienating as in the upperworld. he doesn't know his mission and all he wants to do is get back home and save the people he cares about. his final fight is against khemtes (aka the stalker) - a god who wants to escape her arranged marriage in the upperworld and latched onto malcolm as a way to fix it. she follows him to earth and fucks up his relationships, kills 5 people, and malcolm stops her, completing "the test." can we be so fr. it's a decent plot RIGHT. it's messy, weird, but DECENT. and now that i had healed my perception of this story, i had the intense and burning desire to revamp it. and i had a (albeit short-term) boost of motivation because...

AATR

AATR? OCT? what's AATR? well it was the kick-start to my revamping this story, but ultimately not necessary to understand its new plot. it is a major inspiration thou, so read about it in the collapsibles if you enjoy supplemental knowledge :]

meta OC tournament THREATENS poor unassuming artist to question their relationship with their OC

I PROMISE THIS IS RELEVANT I PROMISE. ok so there was an era of deviantart where OCTs (original character tournaments) were rly popular, its premise being a storytelling tournament where artists are pit against each other and make their OCs fight. whoever has the better comic/story/anim/whatever goes to the next round, and so on. i didn't know it at the time, but AATR was a cultural staple in the OCT community and had multiple seasons over (i believe???) two decades. the idea of AATR is that YOU as the artist will be a character in your own comic alongside your character, and you two have to work together and fight other artists and their ocs. when i was around, i only knew of 2 seasons and for some reason thought s2 discontinued and they never picked it up again. tell me why not shortly after i began thinking about AATR again, the SIXTH SEASON WAS ANNOUNCED ON TWITTER DOT COM??????? SIXTH???????????? THERE WERE SIX OF THEM!??!?!??!?!??!??! count me in dude???????

my new fondness for the test had fused with my sudden interest in AATR and with a sudden clarity, i knew i wanted to revamp malcolm, who would have been the character i chose to fight with me. keyword is REVAMP. im fighting with a REVAMPED counterpart i am NAWT having MALCOLM from THE TEST with me, as funny as that would be.

the premise of AATR is really meta, there's a lot you can do when you write yourself and an OC together. out of all OCs, why did you bring them to life to fight with you? why were they special to you? what does the OC think of their own story? will they even want to fight against other peoples' OCs? do THEY trust YOU? how will your relationship with your OC compare against other artists' relationships with their OCs? YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN? if you participate, a lot can be explored about your own relationship with your character, both in-character and metaphorically as an artist. which is why when i heard about AATR6 opening auditions, i IMMEDIATELY knew i wanted to pick malcolm, a character with history and whose story i JUST had a perspective pivot for, and whose future i was uncertain for. what IS my relationship with this character? especially if the revamped version is separate from the old, and the story itself is different. what would he think of his original story? what about me changing it?

that being said, let's see when the deadline is!

oh my fucking god bruh

tell me why, when i JUST found out AATR was still kicking, THE DEADLINE FOR AUDITIONS WAS A MERE WEEK AWAY WITH 3 GRADE-DEFINING ASSIGNMENTS DUE ON THE SAME DAY. mmmmotherFUCKeRrr this ALWAYS happens with ANY cool OCT i wanna join - i always discover it on the CUSP of the deadline and cant make anything cool 😭😭😭 i was so sad i was actually so sad.

with the deadline a week away, i knew i reasonably couldn't bust out a comic that i was proud of. i managed to throw in a spectator entry which is like,... youre not in the official bracket but u can make comics if u want lol. i got busy afterwards and didn't manage to talk to anyone/get any unofficial comic fights going like i would have liked, but at least i got smthn in and gave me the motivation to even envision a "the test" retelling in the first place.

malcolm in my hypothetical AATR6 storyline

not really related to the test rewrite in any way, just a self-indulgent ramble on what i would have done with the AATR premise had i gotten in.

ok so i would have followed a storyline where i summoned him unconsciously to the tourney. like i normally would have chosen another character, but for some reason he was subconsciously on my mind, and so became the character who came to life and is forced to tag along with me. after being summoned, malcolm is suddenly aware of his existence as a fictional character, knows i am his creator, knows his universe had a revamp, and knows exactly how his new story ends: it isn't pretty. meanwhile, i don't know anything about his story. not the good parts about the old version, not anything about the new version, NOTHING. the meta dynamics would have been reversed so that the creator is learning more about her own creation meanwhile the CHARACTER is the fully realized person who knows how it all ends. and while this is all happening, malcolm doesn't let my self-insert know about his self-awareness at all, not trusting her and wanting to siphon information about her intentions with the tourney. meanwhile, i am freaking tf out and merely trying to survive. but rather predictably, the further their journey goes along, the more they learn to trust each other. but malcolm would have died in round 4 if i made it that far. my personal interpretation of AATR's setting (called "The Real") was that, you can bring any creation to life, but if they die, you forget they ever existed. after this death, i would have needed to summon another character the main theme of the storyline would have been something like, "no matter how miniscule it may be now, these artistic milestones were important to you once, everything you've learned will come back around to aid you later." quite literally in AATR's case.

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these were their reference sheets which also shed some light on their dynamic clearer. the text is small asf, so click the images to enlarge them.

oh yeah, and i guess spoilers for what i'll be talking about later in this blogpost but: the test revamp malcolm has a name change (maël) and is now bird inspired 👍 the reasoning behind this will be elaborated on but just know that much of what i made in AATR is still canon to his revamp.

this is old art and..... is rly rough around the edges bcs they were rushed. 4000px something canvas size, im never doing a refsheet like this ever again.

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......heres me lol, girlfail extraordinaire. irl i think i already look alot like my current sona so i just scrubbed off the fantastical bits.

it's always so awkward trying to describe yourself, even more so for the case of making yourself into a caricature that not only YOU have to write but other people as well. the balance between leaving things vague for future development but still interpretable to others is tough. the desire to neither self-deprecate or glaze was strong, and i STILL felt like i glazed 😭 aghk oh well

some extra doodles !

anyhow, that's the end to all of my AATR ramble. once again, his meta-related plot isn't canon to the revamp, however, much of his personality, design, and name from the ref sheet ARE still accurate to the revamp. now i can dive into WHY these decisions were made and how they carry over in the ACTUAL storyline.

new name

atp my intent is NOT to "fix" the test, that'll never be my intent. i'm taking the premise and asking "what if i had made this story today?" it's not a better version, it's an alternate one personalized to the present day, just like how the original test was based on what i liked at the time! yknow, like nisekoi and yandere sim and... fml. anyhow, i want to honor the old test, not overwrite it, and to do this, i wanna take small steps to distinguish the new from the old. change the MC's name and redesign the characters. at first, i used AATR as an excuse to do this, but was now time to start thinking about the revamp itself FR.

the first thing i did was change malcolm's name. i felt like his name felt too modern and didn't fit at all for the story's setting. sure, most of it did take place in an earth highschool, but keep in mind that malcolm himself had spent his entire life in the upperworld living like a god. a character who had also grown up there, khemtes, had a fantasy-like name and so did his mom, so why doesn't malcolm? so yea, i chose the new name "maël" for his revamp counterpart. in the OG test, his mom was high up in the godly hierarchy, a regal-sounding name fit him. maël literally means "prince," but in some translations can be "servant" or "devoted," which. is really juicy considering his new personality is more meek and pensive.

OG test's malcolm was really bubbly but socially awkward and made a fool of himself constantly, but for the new tone i'm aiming for, i feel like a more laid-back and grounded personality is more befitting considering how OUT THERE his circumstances are. don't get me wrong, he's still as awkward and quirky as his older self but just in a different way. fun fact, the name malcolm actually originates from máel coluim, so in a way it goes back full circle LOL. fun fact x2 maël is pronounced like my-L that's so funny. he's truly my L, that's how it all started

thought process of a redesign

i already showed off maël's design in the AATR collapsible but i wanna elaborate more on my design decisions here and also provide a better refsheet.

i remember vaguely what malcolm's original design looked like, because after the test was turned in, i reused his design for another character, peck, from another story in the works at the time. peck looks like this:

so we at least have a face to work with, although no outfit.

i don't have any old art of malcolm himself and the original text doesn't describe what he wears either so ig it's up to me to come up w something. he's a demigod, so i wanna distinguish him from a human while also having him be humanlike, and since kemonomimi are my favorite trope ever, u know im making him one. his god mom was depicted as a bird in the original, so why don't we give his revamp bird features too?

as for what species of bird i based him off, i went with an aplomado falcon, hence the stripe below his eyes. this inspo is SOOO loose btw. any bird fanatics reading this... pls don't kill me i'm aware their feet are not black and their wings are patterned 🙏🙏🙏 this was done for simplicity & outfit coherency bcs i'd assumed i'd be making comics when i first redesigned him LOL. this is obviously not the case anymore and i DO want to tweak the fit a little, so anything goes.

speaking of his new fit... why the outfit decisions? WELL I DON'T KNOW I THINK NUN COLLARS ARE CUTE AND THOUGHT HE'D LOOK CUTE WITH A COLLAR AND A LIL BOW OKAY. OKAAAY. my intent was for him to look a little aloof but humble. kind of scrappy yet still quaint and regal somehow. the long hair was a big factor of this, i knewwwww the moment i started this revamp that he would have long hair. what's with the antennae though? i was also inspired by qualia automata, where a character believed their antennae could pick up signals from the gods and thought that was SO COOL. and in the test, a story about being outcasted from those very gods, i thought it'd be nice to like... steal that little function LOL. you're born with the ability to constantly hear instructions from the gods but one day you're exiled can't hear them anymore. YIKES that adds so much more ANGST i LOVE IT. canonically in the test revamp, all gods have the ability to communicate telepathically with each other, but with the demigods' physical form, this is represented by 2 antennae-like feathers sticking out their head.

oh and what's with the corset? well we got. two possible explanations for that.

1. additional back support for those huge wings
2. i thought it would be cute

pick one or perhaps consider both

new themes and plot diversions

in the original plot, we KNOW what malcom's test is - malcolm's mother sent him to earth specifically to put him through a test of diplomacy. the test was completed when he solved the mystery behind the murders at his school and peacefully got the assailant, khemtes, to undo the damage she'd done. (literally, those guys came back to life.) malcolm wanted to FIGHT when he got news of impending civil war, but his mom's lesson onto him was that peaceful diplomacy was equally as valuable. malcolm didn't know that THIS was specifically his task, but it was assumed that malcolm's omnipotent god mother had planned all of this for him and was guiding him down that path the whole time. however... that's a bit cruel, isn't it? you put him on earth where he's never lived before, tell him he has a mission, gives him no instructions, and then stop talking to him at all until he's done the task? all while you know he's desperate to help quell the danger at home? that's your son, not a random mortal, can you really play with his life and emotions THAT much? that's something about the original test that i found SUPER unnerving but super interesting: the disconnect between how gods think and mortals think. because malcolm was never in any real danger, but he's part HUMAN, he doesn't KNOW that. how can he not still feel betrayed from this? even the original the test acknowledges this thinking gap to some extent.

you can perform godhood imperfectly?? "imperfect" - how do you reach that standard of perfection if something about you is just so inherently antithetical to it?

like his mom is able to KNOW malcolm would succeed, but remember that malcolm himself is COMPLETELY in the dark. like it's rly unrealistic to put 100% blind trust in the safety and validity of this "test" and his mom's words when he has no metrics for it.

so, how did malcolm react to his circumstances in the actual story? ....it was more like he didn't react at all. he gets acclimated to earth life so flawlessly, if not with the occasional awkward quirkiness. the ticking timebomb that is the civil war doesn't bother him much, he just... goes to school and reacts to the news of the murders with nonchalance until the plot needs him to solve them. this is mostly a side-effect of the original the test's genre being a harem with comedic elements, so yeah, the story's not gonna focus on the existentialism much. but i feel like in the revamped version, i want to explore this godliness vs humanness idea WAYY more. maël and malcolm are both DEMIGODS after all, what happens when the complete calm omnipotence of godhood is forced to exist in the same body with the ever-complicated aspects of humanity? we already know how the gods feel about it, so what about when he's on his own? it's such a unique hook, "a mission with no instruction or clear end," told by a demigod metaphorically wanting to reach to full godhood while among the human world. i wanna do MORE with it! ...and keep the harem. YEAH IM GONNA KEEP THE HAREM. anyhow, the most crucial changes i will make go as follows:

wheras in the original, malcolm's mother is trustworthy and honest with her intentions for the test, in the revamp, there is a huge possibility that his mother's test has no end. there is a possibility that, instead of telling him outright that the uppperworld doesn't want him, they choose to lighten the blow with "the test" to indirectly get him out of their hair. to give him hope there is a chance he belongs, when the decision had already been made long ago. i can't believe this was not a concern in the original, i can't believe that malcolm does not once wonder if his mom abandoned him for good. i'm emphasizing the looming possibility that there is no answer to the test - we still don't know whether this is REALLY the case (it probably isn't), it just haunts maël's thoughts a ton. i'm keeping the final message of the original the same: diplomacy, and enhancing it with the godly vs humanly theme.

"imperfect" - how do you reach that standard of perfection if something about you is just so inherently antithetical to it? - you don't. malcolm's unique strength was found in his humanity, in his peacekeeping. the same is for maël, the standard of perfection is something for the gods, and as much as he wants to be one, he isn't, not fully. and although maël is a much more patient character than malcolm, i'm also keeping his original eagerness to fight and fixation on vague "strength" as a part of his character struggle.

related to the previous point, i also want to give this god vs mortal dichotomy some physicality to it. it's a relevant piece of worldbuilding but i'm kinda iffy on its role in the story atm so i'm putting it in a collapsible instead. optional read 🤷

crucial change #1.5: physicality

you've already seen it in the AATR collapsible, but i've chosen to depict the gods as big balls of light in the revamp - pure energy, no physical. so maël, being a demigod, has to literally balance these aspects of himself in his physical form as well as mentally.

Maël doesn't bleed or have any internal organs, instead, his human body is a "shell" for what contains his divinity. If his human shell is damaged, what exists of his godly form spills through. This form: an overpowering, formless ball of energy. His human shell, his tether to any sentience or humanity, cannot heal. His wounds can be concealed with clothing or bandages, but never close.

This clash between physical and non-sentient energy would not exist for other gods, but because Maël is a demigod, he struggles with this balance. In the heavens, this perceived weakness is why he wasn't allowed to fight.

- AATR6 Maël reference sheet

he can technically discard his humanity altogether by "killing" the human shell, but there's also the fact that they're not two separate entities but two forms with one mind - if one's discarded, how much of him is left? both sides HAVE be balanced and contended with.

additionally, this tidbit also serves as explanation to how him and khemtes can summon cool weapons. it's a must for every OC i make lol.

so tldr; overly complicated blood-bending.

for AATR specifically, this was done to nerf him so that we couldn't get into fights with no consequence. but in the actual revamp, it serves as a nice visual and physical embodiment for the duality of "master the godly, protect the humanly." this specific balance struggle is actually why demigods are looked down upon, and the "weakness" that led maël to be exiled when he asked to fight. it also lets us take a peek at HOW the gods would normally fight and the loopholes that demigods have to go through to even match it. there are not many demigods for a reason IG.

i think that's all i gotta say on new story themes. while we're here, i might as well say that i'm aging up the revamp's cast. 22 y/o at the YOUNGEST. i feel like a lot of these questions about abandonment, balancing yourself, and your place in the world hit harder if the characters are young adults and in the age you're on your own for the first time. the original highschool location has potential, but i'm less interested in exploring it. actually, while thinking of new settings, i became really attached to the idea of a community theatre. since maël can't hide his wings or talons, it'd be way easier for him to blend into a place where everyone's in costume. i think it's a super fun setpiece, and also creates a much more compelling reason for the cast to know each other, that being the fact most of the revamped side-characters are stagehands. speaking of other characters... before we move onto them, lemme get this outta the way:

clarifications on maël's personality

i realized that through all of this discussion, i talk a lot about maël's circumstances but i never got a space to talk about his actual personality haha. so before i elaborate on the other characters, i wanna make sure we know maël clearly. some of this is reiterated from his AATR reference sheet but here's some bullet points abt him to make this brief:

cast introductions and their roles in the story

OK REMEMBER WHEN I SAID I'D KEEP THE HAREM? YEAH.

while i believe the harem was the LEAST interesting thing about the test, i do have a soft spot for the character dynamics that can come out of it, no matter how ridiculous the concept is to me. so i present to you, the secondary characters of the test. and all of them have a place in the harem, whether it be as a serious love interest or as random one-off gags. specifically christi is a red herring lol

unlike malcolm whose appearance was actually never described, his secondary cast actually DID have physical descriptions in the original text, so i have something to work with. also i don't know jack about theatre productions. all of these roles described r probably inaccurate as hell pleaaase don't kill me 🙏🙏🙏

brief character summaries

i tried to keep their personalities pretty similar to the originals, except for khemtes, who was never a boisterous character but a silent schemer who gave people the creeps. i don't really like that archetype paired with her role in the story thou. so, to both better contrast maël and to give myself a more fun time, i changed her personality to the type of schemer i'd have a blast writing in the present day. that is, a cocky loudmouth who lets you underestimate her.

khemtes rant and further story diversions

speaking of khemtes. as far as revamp changes go... listen... listennnnn....... i love it when a character gets a little unhinged. but khemtes isn't going to kill anyone this time. IM SORRY IM SORRY. her reasons for killing those 5 people was really interesting, it's just that they were not taken seriously at all, so much so that i don't even know how i could rewrite it today with gravity. basically, the killings were a sacrifice to a god in a hierarchy above her to ensure she gets married to malcolm and NOT her arranged marriage back in the upperworld. similarly to malcolm, her own fate had been taken out of her hands by people above her, and unlike malcolm whose arc was learning to choose peace, she chose to try and sway fate through manipulation and violence. the people she killed were specific targets - mortals at the school who were close to him. but considering i was twelve when i wrote allthat, you can imagine how this parallel between them was nOT MADE CLEAR AT ALL. hence i am REACHING with these parallels and her dilemma because this murder plot made her so one-dimensional and did her SO DIRTY. this old version of her that kills is NAWT better that the revamp who doesn't, i ASSURE YOU. hence why i made khemtes into a deuteragonist in this revamp instead of just a simple side-character turned twist villain. i see this infinite potential in how khemtes and maël oppose each other thematically and i want her to share the space with him instead of just being someone who's in his way.

so here comes the question. khemtes was a yandere, but if we take out her murders in the revamp, then what IS she? because the original test didn't give her any depth aside from her obsession over malcolm, and those murders were the climax of the original story. does she even have the same oomph if she doesn't kill anyone? YES. HARD STOP. i'll rearrange a few parts of her dilemma while keeping it as close to the OG as possible, and i'll do this via ONE simple change. she still wants to escape her arranged marriage and the 5 murders DO happen, except now khemtes has been framed, the arranged marriage thing being the assumed motive. but she didn't do it.

changes to her story:

1. i think that having her be framed allows us to explore peoples' perception of her without having to commit to her also being a full-out antagonist. mostly, do others easily believe that she's capable of murder? and how does she feel about it all? she's spent her whole life committing to the ideals of godhood to the point everyone fears her strength. but she wanted connection, not fear. and after all of this perfecting of herself, she's been repaid by getting framed for a heinous crime by someone who... what DID the killer want to do? did they wanna ruin her relations with the mortals so she'll forever have to stay in the upperworld? or was it the opposite - did someone want her out of the upperworld and is trying to make her look bad so she'll be exiled? or were they trying to get maël's attention instead? is the theatre safe or is it perhaps the next target? who is this person and what did they want with them all?? so many good questions which test ALL of the cast if khemtes isn't the killer.
2. the reason for her obsession - in the original, khemtes is a full god, but do you know what's WAY more appealing to me? making her into a demigod like maël is. if she and maël are the only two demigods in the world, her fixation on him makes WAY more sense doesn't it. maybe because of this loneliness, they were adamant that they stuck together in childhood and this was like... a big important promise between the two of them but it's not really as potent now that they're both grown up. dude it's gone back full circle to being nisekoi again get me out of here.

ok but... if the murders were the climax of the original story, and khemtes didn't do it. then,

then what IS the climax?

THE STORY'S SO VERY RECENT. I DON'T HAVE ANY IDEA I'M NGL 💀💀💀 LET ME FIGURE IT OUT AND I'LL GET BACK TO U. i KNOWWW that's so anti-climactic but I DUNNO WHAT TO TELL U I HAVEN'T GOTTEN THAT FAR.

i have lingering ideas, including desiging a full-god side-character who obsesses over humanity to contrast with khemtes' worldview and feed maël new ideas abt himself. and i also gotta figure out who actually killed those people, whether it's that full-god or something else. yk, the further down this page we get, the less of what i say is set in stone. speaking of...

final plot synopsis

background

the order of things is uncomplicated: firstly gods, second mortals. it's for the safety of them all that nothing exists in between these two. the mystical and the physical should never intertwine, because there will never be a way to balance both in one body - if a demigod offspring doesn't shatter due to its own inability to maintain both forms, then it will never find a place in the order of things. a demigod is too fragile to interfere in the conflicts of gods, but too otherworldly to live among mortals. in the logic of the gods, there should be no reason for demigods to be created. however, when a powerful god became engaged with a mortal, it brought about the first demigod offspring in a millennia. the gods were for once uncertain. tensions were not eased when not soon after, another demigod made from a separate god and mortal pair had been created.

these two demigods and their creators were mercifully allowed to exist in the upperworld, but it was very obvious to the offspring that this was no place for them. gods' abstract non-physical bodies and omnipotent thinking fostered this upperworld which was not prepared to house those with physical mortal bodies and emotional minds. these demigods were smaller, fragile, and unable to thrive, though they tried their hardest to conform. these two demigods, an older boy, maël, and a younger girl, khemtes, found comfort in each other whilst navigating the world in uniquely opposite ways. maël, son of the higher-ranking god was often conflicted, wanting to adopt all strengths befitting of a full-god yet always falling short when he tried. he'd learned to fear the godly side of himself which he could never control enough to master, while simultaneously being completely in the dark about his humanity. he'd often fluctuate between curiosity and resentment for both sides. khemtes was different, using her godly interior was like second-nature to her, she mastering every strength, especially her godly interior. thought it all, the two demigod children made a promise, to always be at each others' side.

the beginning

a decade later, not much had changed about their situation, yet too much around them had. the other conflicts of the upper world had reached a boiling point, and the gods were gearing up for civil war. all those who were able lined up, prepared to fight, god eager to take arms against god in violent frenzy. in the crossfire, the ever-eager maël is deemed unworthy of his weapon and exiled to earth for his own safety by his own mother. for one chance to earn his keep, she assigns him a "test." one with no direction or instruction. sent to earth where he doesn't truly belong either, he chases a riddle that by design may have no end.

meanwhile, khemtes is among the ranks of the fighters, her dedication to the upperworld in her youth having gained her this position. but she isn't satisfied. when she heard news of maël being exiled, she follows him to earth, initially to mock him for his predicament, but inserts himself into his "test" to help him indirectly. she becomes his link to the upperworld, able to travel between there and earth to relay news. even then, her involvement with maël's test is questioned by maël himself. their friendship had more than dwindled by the time maël was exiled; their personalities clashed too much, having fought more than they got ever along for their promise in childhood to mean anything now. there was no reason for khemtes to stay by his side other than the fact they were both demigods - but why should it matter since she'd gotten the acceptance from the upperworld she'd wanted her whole life? why should she stoop down so low as to aid an exile?

earth

as maël struggles to integrate into earth while trying to decipher his goals, he spends most of his time away from humans and living in quiet places, unsure how much of the divine he should even let mortals see. and in the rare off-chance a human finds him he'd use the excuse of "it's for a movie" to explain his wings and talons. however, when a woman named alan stumbles upon him, his usual excuse ends up sparking a conversation between them, in which he lets it slip that his wings are, in fact, real, and also, that he's without a place to stay. alan out of the kindness of her heart doesn't pry, but offers her new friend to stay at the theater that she manages. but, on the condition that he'll also work there. maël accepts. while working at the theatre, he meets and befriends some of the other stagehands, jace and christi. while maël tries and fails to keep his circumstances of being a demigod in exile a secret, these two figure it out themselves, and surprisingly enough, are open enough to want to help him with his "test."

now with mortal companions and a stable place to stay, maël finally feels a place of belonging and safety, to explore humanity without fear. confidently, he is able to figure out the "test's" mystery full-time. however, there's sudden news of a serial killer in the area. several bodies have been found around the city all following similar means of death. the scary news is doubled even more so, when khemtes approaches maël, explaining to him that the whole of the upperworld believes she'd killed these people, and to trust her that she did not.

....TBC!

concluding thoughts

sometimes i think abt what the teacher must have thought of the original the test but i'm so ngl he probably didn't even read allthat. the maximum page count was 6 and i turned in 14 NOBODY'S READING ALLTHAT. just like how nobody's reading allTHIS. ARE U STILL HERE MAN ?? HI LOL !!! the test and its revamp counterpart have taken over my brain these past few months, and while this blogpost was just for me to release the pent-up oc brainrot energy, i'm happy that my long-winded ramble has got some extra eyes. esp since it's about something i adore. i will for sure be developing this story further on this website, although not as a full-blown story/comic/whatever, there will definitely be a world and lore. enjoy these misc doodles as the encore!