#1. he's insane and 2. bioweapons and 3. both of these things make him want to inject himself that virus ngl sdkflsdjf

[paramounticebound]

|| @urobouris​ / verse roulette SC.

He has been named a king, for kings, by kings, from the deserts of  his motherland, from the architect of his greatness and destruction in one swelling tide. Khan was a pragmatic master of his designed realm, beneath the shadows of the underworld and atop of the clouds lacerated from towering skyscrapers. Ever searching to fill that cavernous void, that ravenous monster that craved chaos, control, corruption. A king without a crown lest it attach to his skull with corroded nails, vertebrae and blades. 

And yet, every king has his reign, and then he dies.

     “I’d thought it more difficult to procure a meeting with a man like yourself.” Distinct absence of niceties, of insincere greetings. To the point as he suspected his counterpart, fellow in regality, yet further from death than he, might prefer. In any case, it was not in Khan’s wiring to flatter. “We finally meet, Dr. Wesker.”

[syzygyclock]

12 Fics I Never Wrote

In observance of the remaster, these are the fics I didn’t write. Some are file names with nothing more than an elevator pitch, some have little snippets of scenes. Some of them I don’t think I’ll ever pursue, some I’d still like to but probably won’t. I couldn’t sleep last night and started thinking about these, so I will put them out into the world. I’ve generally just given these whatever file name they already have on my drive.

1. Bioterror. This is just a scene with Rinoa examining a gross plant (my notes make it sound like a small, potted welwitschia). I think the plant was some sort of bioweapon that targetred Sorceresses. I don’t remember much about this story, except that I also wanted to examine SeeD getting stuck with a mission for which it is wildly ill-equipped. I think that was containing an outbreak of a biological weapon -- trying to maintain order over a civilian populous, basically a situation that they CAN’T solve with guerrillas hopped up on para-magic.

2. Crazy dream. This is either an actual dream or one of those brilliant ideas that hits you just before you fall asleep but that you can never quite recapture. The only note that I think bears mentioning reads:

“Time Compression as the world's 'debug' mode.  Everything is paused.  All dimensions can be accessed with the same ease.  Ultimecia needed Adel's power to absorb enough Sorceresses to force TC so she could debug the world.”

Then there’s some stuff about God, Satan, and Eden, Hyne is Satan or the snake (or both). 

3. Dancing Lessons. This is an orphanage story, about the kids playing war and swordfighting with sticks. Seifer humiliates Selphie in her first battle (”let’s dance”) and so she asks Irvine to help her get better (hence the title). I actually wrote more than 3000 words of this one, don’t know why it lost momentum.

4. Esthar. Looks like I started this for NaNo ‘08. This was going to be my national epic for Esthar. The central action of the story was Adel’s rise to power from impoverished beginnings. (I think the elevator pitch was something like “Les Miserables, except Cosette takes a right turn into Wicked and eventually becomes a dictator.”) Memory suggests that Adel wasn’t actually born Adel, that was the identity of the rich aristocrat Sorceress she stole after draining that woman’s powers.

 I was also adding some Ultimecia stuff in there. I think the thesis was that after Time Compression, not only is she stuck in the time loop from the game, she’s stuck in a time loop that encompasses ALL OF TIME ITSELF. Because why wouldn’t I want to complicate an already vaguely-defined time travel plot with EVEN MORE TIME TRAVEL?

5.Hourglass. Time Compression was different for everyone. What we saw in the game was Squall’s version of it -- a fairly straightforward fight with Ultimecia. Quistis wound up outside of reality, playing chess with Ultimecia (because I never met a chess metaphor I didn’t attempt to batter into submission). Ultimecia would try to persuade Quistis to join, Quistis would resist, etc. More an exercise in “what would their interaction look like?” than “what would happen?” 

(Related: I always wondered what would happen if Ultimecia recruited Quistis instead of Seifer. Quistis had equal reason to be bitter at SeeD, but you’d need a very different line of persuasion to get her to turn.)

6. Inn Between the Worlds. Canterbury Tales during Time Compression. Concept shamelessly appropriated from the World’s End collection of Sandman.

7. Knight. Looks like this was about Quistis becoming Rinoa’s knight after things fall apart with Squall. I think I wanted to dig into the role of a knight in terms of protecting a Sorceress from herself.

8. R for Rinoa. This is just V for Vendetta, but in Galbadia, with Rinoa using her Sorceress powers to SMASH THE SYSTEM. She tries doing it in secret for a while, but then... probably Quistis and Xu figure out what she’s doing. And they’re like “Hey, let’s do this RIGHT” and SeeD starts backing Rinoa as a vigilante agent to topple the regime.

9. Sailor Rinoa. Exactly what you think. After Time Compression, Rinoa finds herself on a misty plain. There’s a green-haired girl with a giant key, guarding a door with the phases of the moon on it. Pluto points Rinoa towards home.

Rinoa is a student at Garden. It’s not going well! (Spoiler alert: Rinoa is NOT GREAT at respecting authority.) Then Angelo starts talking? Rinoa becomes a magical girl! Angel Wing Illusion Wave! 

As Rinoa’s powers grow, the other magical girls start awakening. Quistis is obviously the Mercury of the group. Selphie is more a Sailor Venus but she is 100% UP FOR THIS SHIT. (Selphie: “Under the cover of darkness, we wear cute skirts and fight monsters!” Quistis: “That is LITERALLY our day job.”)

Did you see that mysterious lion-themed hero who distracted the monsters and told us to believe in ourselves? WHO CAN IT BE?

Then the “Outers” get involved. They don’t play by the same set of rules, they take this shit seriously. (Selphie: “You have to shout the name of your attack.” Xu: “I’m not doing that. Also, I brought guns.”) Also that one girl’s attacks are super-scary. “PERISH.”

10. SeeDie Hawkins day. A disastrous dance idea that is almost certainly Selphie’s fault. It combines a game of assassin/killer with high-stakes romantic expectations. You ask your chosen to the dance by “assassinating” them. And since basically everyone at the school is a trained assassin, things get intense.The little bit I wrote of this has Squall getting ambushed in the training center by NPCs (he is, naturally, clueless about the dance and Not Playing once he realizes what is happening). Quistis saves him and offers to get him out of all this insanity. PLOT TWIST: she has ulterior motives.

11. Summer vacation. Vignettes covering what the major characters did on their summer vacation. (I wrote Irvine’s and started Seifer’s.)

Irvine: Wound up as sheriff in a dusty one-chocobo town. Broke some hearts, jaws.

Seifer: Hires himself as bodyguard to two rival crime families, lures them into wiping each other out. (Yes, Yojimbo.)

Squall and Rinoa: theoretically, tourist travel. Actually, just Rinoa SMASHING THE SYSTEM wherever they go and Squall having to bail her out of jail constantly. Imagine a photo montage: odd-numbered photos are Squall looking miserable at some national monument, even-numbered photos are mugshots/newspaper pictures of Rinoa getting hauled off in handcuffs

Selphie: I think this was going to be a museum heist, but I couldn’t find a logical motivation for that to be her story. So instead I decided she booked a luxury train trip when... MURDER HAPPENS. If only we had a brilliant consulting detective on hand to crack the case!

Zell: Just an itinerary from one day in the life of Zell Dincht, local hero. (5:00 a.m., training. 5:42 a,m, rescue kitten from tree. 6:00 a.m., teach tai chi at the rec center. 7:00 a.m., pancake breakfast for scouts.)

Quistis: I don’t think I ever really cracked this one. I think it was just going to be the punchline that she’s reading everyone else’s essays and is like “must be nice.”

12. Ultimecia was right. At some point after Time Compression, Quistis realizes that they screwed up by killing Ultimecia. Quistis has realized what Ultimecia knew all along -- the world is deeply broken and, for everyone’s sake, it needs to STOP. “My name is Quistis Trepe, and I am going to end the world.”