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There once was a mighty squid called Fennec (his parents liked exotic names that were appropriated from other species). Fennec was Head Squid of a mighty empire where the citizens had to dress up in costumes if he wanted them to and had to perform for him and were only allowed to speak words in public that were pre-approved by him.
One fateful day, another squid came strolling into the empire. His name was Murphy Ryan (he was named after Murphy's Law because he was cursed to cause bad things to happen). He had a habit of wearing a yellow hat for reasons he never explained but it certainly made him stand out in any squid gathering. The new squid carried with it a book full of new lines that could be said by dressed-up citizens. And the old squid very much wanted that book because he was by now getting bored by his own ideas. So they made a deal. Murphy Ryan would bring new lines to Fennec every week, and Fennec would pay for new costumes for his citizens that Murphy Ryan would choose (and also for a humble palace for Murphy Ryan and his husband Davyd). They drank together and laughed merrily and rubbed their tentacles because this was a good deal all around. From that day on, they made everyone address them as Super Squids.
***
In the squid empire there also lived two talented squid boys called Darryn and Chrys. One day they were chosen to speak certain lines and wear certain costumes and also sing a song for the mighty Super Squids. Because they were also very pretty and kindhearted, Chrys and Darryn immediately fell in love with each other, as young squid boys are wont to do. All they ever wanted to do from that day on was hold each other's tentacles and sing lovely duets together and gaze lovingly into each other's eyes and fuck each other until all of their sixteen arms fell off.
But, alas! The Super Squids did not want that! They told our love-struck (and horny) squid boys that they could not be seen together unless it was pre-written in the Book of Lines for the week. Which of course it nearly never was. Because the yellow-hatted Super Squid Murphy Ryan was also very jealous and wanted the two boys for himself, in addition to his fine husband (he was greedy that way). So he hired two squid squads to watch over Chrys and Darryn. He called them their "PR teams" and explained that "PR" meant "public relations" and that they were to help the two boys look especially good to as many people as possible (and also that it would be to the boys' advantage if they didn't question his motives or authority because otherwise he might just stop giving them ANY lines. Or costumes. Or permissions to be photographed with him while he wore his yellow hat.). What he didn't tell them in his evil jealousy was that "PR" actually meant "Prevent Romance"! OMG! Clearly, this could not end well for our starfish-struck lovers!
So Darryn and Chrys suddenly found it very hard to do anything without the insistent company of one or more members of their squid squads. And while they certainly got lines and costumes and even were called on to sing songs for the Super Squids, a certain melancholy settled into their lives that not even the adorable bowties that were often part of Darryn's costumes could lift off them. Their tentacles started dragging, their six hearts (three each) grew heavy, and they began to live for nothing but the few moments they had together when they were assigned lines. Once or twice they were able to steal away from a big get-together for a few precious moments and escaped into a rusty old oil barrel on the bottom of the ocean to whisper sweet nothings into each other's ears and nibble tenderly at each other's beaks and feverishly fuck until they thought their copulatory pads would explode. But even those moments of glorious sixteen-armed embraces couldn't vanquish the longing in their hearts.
***
There also was another noteworthy group of mostly young citizens in this empire. Coincidentally, they all had overdeveloped fins, of which they were very proud (even though these fins served no practical purpose in a squid's life). For reasons of vanity they began referring to their fins as "fans" because they thought that sounded bigger and more special. And henceforth they became known as The Fans. In addition to their vanity, The Fans quickly earned a reputation for being sensitive romantics who would do anything to defend True Love. Even kill.
One day, a small group of these Fans saw our squid boys sing together and they became irresistibly enamored with them. Perhaps it was the way the light filtered through the water that day and cast a silvery turquoise glow onto the squid boys. We will never know for sure. At first The Fans only swooned over their pretty voices and handsome faces and muscular arms and seductively shaped suckers. So The Fans started paying attention to what Darryn and Chrys did. They paid such close attention that they could soon name the exact Crayola shade of each of the suckers on each arm of each squid boy. They even set up a database full of pictures and quotes and sound recordings of the two squid boys to share with each other. They called it a Tumbeler because it actually wasn't very organized but the extra "e" made it look just so much cooler.
The Fans bonded with each other over their excitement about the two squid boys, and they gushed about their portrayal of True Love in their cute costumes and lyrical lines and sentimental songs. They wrote many letters to the Super Squids, expressing their squee and always demanding more time for the two squid boys to gaze upon each other's squishy faces in front of the whole squid empire. They imagined how the squid boys would attach their suckers to a boat and let it carry them away to a Happily Ever After future. This dream, which was very popular among The Fans, became more and more elaborate, and the boat got bigger and bigger, and eventually the dream became known as "The Squid Boy Ship." And the Fans who dreamed it became known as The Shippers, even though none of them actually wanted to ship off the squid boys to any other place. But squid language was not known for its deep logic, so nobody complained. All was well.
***
One day, something happened. Perhaps it was the unorganized randomness of the Tumbeler combined with a collective flash of mad genius that allowed The Fans to suddenly connect the dots. Or perhaps The Fans with their many romantic hearts were just particularly sensitive to the tender undercurrents of True Love. At any rate, one day The Fans realized what was really going on between Chrys and Darryn! They recognized that the boys were not just putting on an act at the direction of the Super Squids, but that their love was True Love that transcended every costume, pre-approved line, or carefully arranged song! They also quickly deduced that this True Love could not be expressed freely, which was a Great Injustice.
So they began collecting ever more evidence for the secret love of Darryn and Chrys and entered it into the Tumbeler. They also wrote many encouraging letters to the two squid boys, urging them to stay strong under the reign of yellow-hatted terror and to please just kiss the next time they were near a camera.
***
Meanwhile, the more letters he got from The Fans about the squid boys and their adorable acts, the more malicious Murphy Ryan had grown to be. How dare these Fans think they could demand to see more of the squid boys when he was the one who had made them look so good in their costumes and got them out in front of people's eyes in the first place?! Where was the gratitude to HIM for doing that?! He very nearly wanted to snatch Darryn and Chrys up and hide them away from The Fans' prying eyes and their obsessive natures altogether. But then he thought of an even fouler plan to show them all who was Super Squid. You see, Murphy Ryan had gotten so evil in his jealousy that he decided to write into his Book of Lines that one squid boy had betrayed the other, and forced Chrys and Darryn to enact the resulting and heartbreaking break-up for his own sick amusement. The tears our boys shed in this dramatic display were all real! Our squid boys were devastated! Super Squid Fennec never had even pretended to be on their side (he mostly saw his job in reminding Murphy Ryan not to spend too much money on the fancy costumes), and now Super Squid Murphy Ryan had taken away their only chance at showing their True Love to the world, even if it was in the disguise of their costumes! Because while they still each had lines and songs and costumes, they were not allowed to perform together anymore.
The melancholy in the hearts of our squid boys turned to utter dejection and their voices nearly faltered the next time they were meant to sing a song for the Super Squids. Their squishy bodies lost their sheen, their suckers lost their delicious shade of violet, and their tentacle tips lost their perky little curls.
However, not all hope was lost. On an otherwise entirely forgettable day, Chrys happened to stumble across a part of the Tumbeler. It hit him like a flash of lightning: these Fans could be their saviors! In an act of desperate resistance, Darryn and Chrys cleverly escaped their PR team squid squads for a few precious moments and squeezed into the rusty oil barrel again for a secret talk and some kinky multi-armed scissoring. They valiantly tried to avoid giving each other visible bruises from the intensity of their suckers' grips (the PR teams, Murphy Ryan and Fennec could NOT find out about their undying passion and the fact that they had found a way to get away from the surveillance of the squid squads!) and swore each other everlasting love. They also made a pact to send each other secret messages of True Love and Passionate Passion whenever they could to ensure each other of their continuing devotedness. They furthermore made a pact to send secret messages to The Fans to assure them that their love for each other was still strong, even if they were not allowed to display it in the open anymore. They were strong. They could endure this. For the sake of the ongoing goodwill of the Super Squids. And for The Fans, who obviously had seen The Truth and were burning with their desire to see True Love triumph along with the two of them.
This was a plan of considerable genius, and, strengthened by their vows of undying love and the devotion of The Fans, they set it into action at once. The would flaunt their True Love under the eyes of the Super Squids, and they would be so clever about this that neither Fennec nor Murphy Ryan would ever notice. The squid boys and their truly epic True Love would prevail!
***
With the help of their Tumbeler database and the unerring knowing of their romantic hearts, The Fans were quick to recognize and decipher the secret messages of Chrys and Darryn. They understood that the squid boys were talking to them as well as to each other, and that they needed the support of The Fans to survive this ordeal, especially now that Murphy Ryan had written this entirely unearned break-up into his Book of Lines for his own sadistic pleasure. And that our squid boys suffered terribly from that enforced separation. And from the impossibility of proving their True Love once and for all in an intimate yet festive tentacle-fasting ceremony amongst their five hundred closest friends, followed by a night full of pornographic passion, images of which would certainly end up in the database somehow.
Of course The Fans instantly resolved to go on A Mission. A Mission to free the squid boys from the evil grasp of Murphy Ryan and Fennec's many arms! A Mission to free True Love! So they began another campaign of letter writing to vehemently protest the entirely unfair and frankly implausible break-up and to petition for the reinstatement of the squid boys as a deliriously happy couple in the Book of Lines. Because that would send a Message to the entire squid world, the Message that True Love was meant to be.
***
All these letters annoyed Murphy Ryan very much (partly because even eight arms didn't seem enough to open all the envelopes without him getting harsh callouses on his tender tentacles which would scratch his husband Davyd's mantle when they embraced, which did absolutely nothing to bring happiness into their palatial home).
Murphy Ryan also was not a stupid squid, no matter how silly his yellow hat looked in reality (which of course no one dared to tell him), and he suspected that Darryn and Chrys somehow had not quite transferred their love for each other over to him. So, in an act of ruthless revenge, he decided to torture their poor souls some more to weaken them and make them pliable to his evil will, and to show The Fans that they were powerless in the face of his evil power.
He hired Mya and Wyll, two other young squids in desperate need of new clothes and with a lust for fame that was stronger than any scruples they might have had. Coincidentally, the two of them both happened to have some extra fur-like tendrils growing around their beaks, an anatomical oddity which was called a "beard" by the squid community, which is how the two later became known as The Beards. Murphy Ryan assigned Mya to Darryn and Wyll to Chrys and told Darryn and Chrys to make it look as if they were actually in love with Mya and Wyll, or else. That added another pound of sunken anchor metal to the many gentle hearts of our squid boys! Not only were they prevented from announcing their True Love to the world, they now also were forced to make it look as if their Fake Loves were their True Loves! And then there were these beards that really felt strange whenever Wyll and Mya squeezed up close to them for yet another photo opportunity. They nearly despaired.
***
But the Fans were still there, fighting for the freedom of Chrys and Darryn's True Love. They began sending letters to Mya and Wyll, begging them to give up the charade, and they sent letters to Murphy Ryan, pleading with him to fire the squid squad PR teams and set the squid boys free so they could openly live their True Love, and they sent letters to Darryn and Chrys, urging them to stay strong and to not give up the hope.
Chrys and Darryn arranged for yet another secret meeting in their rusty oil barrel (they really had to be careful with those, especially because they always spent so much time fucking until their beaks were sore and they could barely lift their arms anymore, let alone swish their tentacles, that they barely got around to actually talk about what they needed to talk about, and their squid squad PR teams were slowly getting suspicious over their extended and badly explained absences). They agreed to lay low and play along with The Beards and Murphy Ryan's evil plan. Perhaps this would decrease the attention of the PR teams and thus create an opportunity for them to escape and finally shout their True Love from the reeftops. This was to be their Secret Pact of Seeming Compliance. And so it was done.
***
Weeks passed. Darryn and Chrys eagerly used every opportunity to show up in public with The Beards and posed for many a picture with them. They perfected their "loving gazes" at Mya and Wyll, respectively, and the two Beards became famous as the squidfriends of Darryn and Chrys. The Beards were pleased with them. The PR teams were pleased with them. Murphy Ryan was pleased with them. And Fennec was pleased with Murphy Ryan. During this period of trial, a few of the weaker-hearted Fans began to doubt the True Love of Chrys and Darryn because they were fooled by their skillful displays of pretend affection for Wyll and Mya, but most of them recognized their clever act of make-believe for what it was.
One day, an amazing opportunity came upon the squid boys. Chrys was scheduled to sit in front of a camera and reply to a lot of questions about a book he had written to distract himself from the sadness that his separation from Darryn brought to his three tender hearts. On the same day, Darryn was meant to host a show for teenage squids, a gig he had only gotten because he was so nonthreateningly involved with Mya in the public eye of the squid world. It seemed a day like any other, where they would be smiling in the spotlight, wearing costumes and speaking pre-approved lines.
That day, however, should change their lives forever. Because they had been so well-behaved in the last few months, the PR teams granted each of them a wish. In a flurry of clandestine communication, Chrys and Darryn agreed on an ingenious plan...
When he was asked about his wish by his PR team, Chrys wished for his tabby cat Bryan to be there with him in front of the camera. And Darryn wished to wear a silly tiger costume at the end of his show. Those requests seemed strange but innocent enough, so the Super Squids approved and the wishes were granted.
***
Here's what happened on that fateful day. As he was trained to do, Chrys politely and humorously replied to all the questions in the pre-approved ways, smiled into the camera and then held up his tabby cat who wore a green bowtie around its neck. He cooed to the cat and petted it and showed it off to the viewers. It was all very cute. And Darryn politely and humorously hosted his show in the pre-approved way, smiled into his own set of cameras, and then he came on stage in a yellow tiger suit and did a little dance. It was also very cute, even though people were not entirely sure what the point of that suit had been. Each of them left their performance with their PR team's praise and full approval.
The Fans however were the only ones to quickly combine the truth: The green bowtie on Chrys' cat was his signal that pointed clearly to Darryn and the adorable bowties he used to wear when they were still allowed to sing together. Its green color expressed Chrys' hope for the truth to come out. And Darryn's tiger suit was his signal that the tabby cat on Chrys' lap, the cat that Chrys had petted so tenderly and affectionately in front of the entire squid world, actually was a stand-in for himself. And The Fans put the truth onto their Tumbeler and they cheered and fainted from the adorableness of this courageous rebellion against the evil Super Squids.
And just like that, a nasty shark came by on his way through the squid's part of the ocean, and he attempted to eat Murphy Ryan, who happened to hang out in front of his palace at that exact moment. But the shark missed him by a fraction of an inch and only snatched the yellow hat off Murphy Ryan's head and ripped it apart and swallowed it and then swam away very fast to a place very far away, never to return.
***
With that coincidental act of divine intervention, the curse to always make bad things happen was finally lifted off Murphy Ryan. And when word of the tabby cat in the bowtie and the tiger suit got to Murphy Ryan, he suddenly and finally saw the error of his ways and quickly wrote into his Book of Lines a very romantic reunion of the squid boys, and he bought them new costumes that flattered their bodies and had the right number of fashionably cut sleeves, and he even let them sing "In An Octopus's Garden" together.
And so everyone was happy. The Fans had completed their Mission and now were able to bask in the glory of their success and could return to collecting flattering pictures of the attractive squid boys. Mya and Wyll finally could stop pretending to be in love with the squid boys and they became good friends who eventually opened the first beard care facility together, which made them rich and famous in their own right. The PR teams were retrained to open letters from The Fans for Murphy Ryan, so his tentacles went back to their original smoothness, which pleased his husband Davyd very much. Murphy Ryan realized that he actually just wanted to watch the squid boys make out with each other while fondling his husband's funnel instead of having a sexy affair with either of them. And he was so inspired by his sudden change of hearts that he went forth to write many adorable stories with lots of passionate kisses for the two squid boys to enact in front of the whole empire. Chrys and Darryn finally got to show their True Love to the entire squid world and went on to buy a brand new extra-large oil barrel to live in together. Fennec was granted the exclusive rights to their first interview as an official couple and he caved in to the immense success of that and supported them henceforth. And every squid in the empire was allowed to wear what they wanted and sing what they wanted and say what they wanted, and the pre-approval process for lines was limited to the production of actual shows because everyone agreed that it made sense there.
And that is how The Fans (and a random shark) changed the world and freed the True Love of Darryn and Chrys.