Out of Context Stuff for a Danyal Al Ghul au i haven't posted - Pit Beast Danyal
Damian, 13: Look, Danyal, -- I am so sorry for everything that happened between us in the League, I hope you can forgive me.
Danny, 10 (allegedly): (has been secretly plotting to murder Damian this whole time, is still gonna do it obvs, but is going to make it significantly less painful now)
Danny: I-- of course, older brother. :]
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Bruce: what do you have there, Damian?
Damian:
Danny: (a hulking 10ft pit beast standing beside him, growling idly with ram horns gouging out his eyes and a second set of horns jutting into the air, spines down his back, and a long, spiked tail with an animalistic, skull-like face)
Damian, who smuggled him in (they've made amends): a smoothie, father
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Damian: this is my little brother Danyal, i murdered him when he was five. He festered in rage for the last half-a decade, took over a League mountain base in Switzerland, murdered everyone inside and then tried to murder me when I went to investigate with Drake.
Danny: hello!
Damian: we're cool now
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Damian: thoughts on resurrection
Danny, (a full ghost): i will succeed in murdering you if you try it
Damian: we'll put a pin in it then
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Danny (still instilled with League values): why don't we just murder him??
Damian, on patrol (Danny followed him): we don't murder people, Danyal
Danyal:,,,,are you sick, Dami?? Have you been possessed? Why not!?
(There is raucous laughing through the comms)
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Danny, five, pre-death: Dami! :D
Danny, dead, vengeful: Older brother (:
Danny, post-forgiveness: Dami! :]
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For some actual context: Danny is fully dead in this au, its a result of the classic DPxDC Demon Twins "death duel" trope but instead of Danny getting revived, he stays fully dead. Danny was five, Damian was seven. His ghost lingered though, and due to the proximity of the pits his ghost steadily absorbed the ambient energy it was letting off. The pits are not corrupted ectoplasm in this au, it's just liquid ecto.
Which means Danny's corruption from an angry and hurt little ghost boy to an unrecognizable monster is from his own doing. It's a result of him stewing in his hurt and anger for years, it physically warped him. He's very powerful. Danny can travel between League Bases but chose a small, out-of-the-way base in the Swiss mountains to fester in and then just. Never Left.
His influence steeped into the very foundations of the building, allowing him to transform and warp the rooms and hallways for his own bidding, Meaning he could turn it into a seemingly unending labyrinth if he so wished to, and block the entrance.
Eventually, blinded (both metaphorically and physically) by his own rage, Danny grew powerful enough to appear physically in the living realm and attacked everyone in the base, slaughtering them all and leaving the base abandoned. He attacks anyone who dares enter -- whether that be other league members, or the unfortunate hiker who stumbled across the base. His conscious is steeped into every nook and cranny of the building, there is nowhere you can hide where he can't find. Nobody leaves without his explicit say so. Nobody ever does.
Him appearing as ten years old before Damian in the skits above is his own physical doing. First it was to prevent Damian from being suspicious of him. Damian initially thought Danny was revived with the pits, he was too busy with his own training afterwards to notice that Danny never showed up again, and when he did notice, he assumed it was because Danny was too ashamed of his loss to face him. He'd always forget to ask about him.
Then it becomes a personal choice to appear as ten. It's how old he would've been had he been alive.
danny forgiving Damian is kinda for an offshoot branch of the main au. Whereas the main au takes the form of a ps4 first person horror game where Damian and Tim are investigating the Base for Plot Reasons. There's no sign of the rumored "monster" living inside until the end, where Danny, who was found inside the Base and has been happily "helping" them look around, manages to persuade Damian into splitting off from Tim in order to "show him something."
This something turns out to be Danny revealing that he never really forgave Damian for that fight, and he reveals through a horrifying transformation, that he was the monster the whole time. Which the game subtly hints at throughout as Danny's strange behavior becomes harder to ignore.
First from his insistence to only refer to Damian as "older brother" (when before the duel he always called him Damian or Dami), to him right off the bat denying the existence of a monster when questioned. ("There's no monster here, older brother. It's just me.") To other various things, like his knowledge of the outside world not matching up to modern times or things going on with the league outside of the base, or what happened to the other league members.
This whole idea was inspired by the song "Scylla" from Epic the Musical, with Danyal being the voice of Scylla as well as Odysseus, while Damian stands as Eurylochus. The instrumentals after Scylla says "hello" is him turning into the pit beast, and Scylla's "drown in your sorrow and fears" part is danny, as the pit beast, snarling at Damian while he attacks him.
There's a Good Ending, a Bad Ending, and a True Ending. The Bad Ending results in Damian being killed by Danny, it happens when Damian decides not to question or suspect Danny and treats him kindly. The Bad Ending is a cutscene, where Danny kills Damian quick and painlessly.
Meanwhile the Good Ending is Damian killing Danny. This is a boss fight, and it happens when Damian treats Danny coldly and suspiciously the whole time. Danny as a result, decides to make Damian's death painful as he had planned to, which is why it's a boss fight because it only causes him to double down on his anger.
The True Ending is Damian escapes with Tim. It happens when you treat Danny warmly up until the last minute, where when Danny proposes to Damian that he wants to show him something, Damian goes to talk to Tim and finally, reluctantly agrees that something is off with Danny, and that he'll be careful going in. It starts off with the boss fight until a third through, where it then changes to a cutscene where Tim manages to get the door open and Damian escapes out. It's then a chase scene down a never-ending hallway as the building actively works to keep you trapped inside. But you eventually make it to the exit so long as you avoid all the projectiles and doors.
Remember when I mentioned that Danny only lets people leave when he wants them to? That's where the treating Danny kindly throughout the game comes into play. It causes him to second guess himself and, eventually, reawaken and strengthen the love and admiration he had for Damian prior to his murder. It's why in the Bad Ending he kills Damian quickly -- because by then, he loves him enough that he doesn't want him to suffer, but is still so consumed by his rage and need for vengeance that he kills him anyways. That quiet part is what allows Damian (and Tim) to find the exit, because some part of Danny still loves Damian enough that he wants him to live.
The True Ending ends with a cutscene of Damian and Tim tumbling out into the snow/grass outside of the base. Damian looks up back to the entrance to see Danny standing there. But rather than a ten year old boy, there's a little five year old Danyal Al Ghul instead. He stares at Damian emotionlessly, blood seeping from his chest, staining his clothes, and little, bloody sword in his hands and tearstains on his cheeks, before he turns away and disappears back into the building.
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you know i used to think it was weird how sora and roxas have such different personalities for supposedly being 'the same person' but after playing a few games i sort of realized that they do have similar personalities, because roxas acts how sora does when he's under extreme stress.
compare roxas to sora in, say, kh1. that's where a lot of peoples idea of sora's personality comes from. sora is generally very upbeat and optimistic in that game. not very similar to roxas, right?
but let's switch the game and talk about a game where sora is ABSOLUTELY GOING THROUGH IT. chain of memories.
sora's resting state is melancholy in com. he only ever cheers up in short bursts, usually when he's joking around with friends. just like roxas.
he's quick to anger, and tends to lash out at the organization members. best example of this is when larxene makes him 'remember' namine, and he swings at her repeatedly, even after she's gone. he only stops when jiminy is able to snap him out of it.
you know what scene that resembles?
sora, while a bit more on the angry side and less sad, continues to act like this in kh2 when he's in stressful situations. (he also has a tendancy to insult people which, while it's not very related to the point, is very funny and sora saying 'gonna cry?' to xigbar is great.) i cant comment any further than that about kh2 off the top of my head.
so, roxas acts like sora does when he's stressed, right? but why is roxas always acting like that? to which i say, he isnt!
he only ever acts like that when he's also in fucked up and stressful situations, which happens to be a CONSTANT in his life. but when he's hanging out with axel and xion, a decidedly NOT stressful situation, he's a lot more like sora. he's teasing his friends and insulting his coworkers and joking around and acting like a normal kid. not really important, but unless i misremembered some sora lines which is VERY possible, both roxas and sora respond to friendly insults with "oh thanks!" a lot. just a funny little detail that felt relevant.
the biggest differences between roxas and sora boil down to environment and... i dont know how to put it besides volume? roxas is very quiet and tends to keep most of his thoughts to himself, while sora is very loud and expressive in comparison.
there is one other huge difference i noticed, which is less character based and more story. sora wanted to get off destiny islands and explore with his friends, but roxas just wanted routine. sora wants adventure, and roxas wants things to stay the same, for days where he gets off work and eats ice cream with his friends to last forever, to keep having conversations about nothing and watching the sunset. roxas wants normalcy, sora wants excitement. it's just interesting seeing their contrast.
not sure if this is very well said or anything i just wanted to talk about my boys
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mermay idea
mers keep their faces covered as a way to indicate social status and familiarity. warriors have intricate masks, handcrafted when they win their first battle and the more detailed a mask is, the more accomplished the wearer is. they're rarely shed and are only taken off for their closest kin and mates
warrior bull shark mer!soap seeing human!ghost, seeing his skull mask and immediately knowing he's a high ranking warrior; one to be feared going off the numerous scars covering his body
an ideal and worthy mate, so long as he can prove his prowess
so he follows him as he's deployed on a mission near the ocean and is smitten when he sees how ruthless and capable he is; bathing himself in his enemies blood. he keeps his distance, not wanting to tempt fate but ghost spies the tip of his fin cutting through the water
and he's nothing if not an opportunist; kicking the bodies off the pier to the waiting jaws below
but soap? all he sees is the first step in a courting ritual
and he has to come up with something truly brilliant to match such a glorious offering
on ghost's part, it's been difficult getting people to understand the depths of his dependence on his mask. price thinks it's something to overcome, gaz and other soldiers just think it's an accessory to help with intimidation
the few partners he's tried to have thought he was someone to "fix"; nothing more than an object, a notch on their belt to prove how "good" of a partner they were to put in so much work to make him better. it always leaves him feeling violated, more so than if they'd just taken his mask off outright. one night stands were hardly worth it either; scratching a physical itch but falling so short of the intimacy and connection he craves that he feels worse off than he'd started
when he finally meets the mer that's been hunting him across the country, sees the bright red mask so artfully hewn and attached to his face?
it's like looking at a reflection of himself
he might have finally found the understanding he's been searching for
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