#I have both fallen far and also not very far down the rabbit hole but I am having a lot of fun playing around with my OCs about it so yeah

[foxssonicdoodles]

we’re being self-indulgent tonight chat

[mumms-the-word]

Mumms do you know of any fics where inqui lavellan gets sent back in time to the times of arlathan? So far I've found one but it was before lavellan was the inqui 😔

My original answer was that no, I don't know of any but then I was like....I'm a master at googling and research. I can FIND some.

So I went down a rabbit hole of procrastinating stuff I'm supposed to do and instead scanned AO3 works tagged "ancient arlathan" and I found a few fics that seem to have both Ancient Arlathan and Time Travel. Idk if they’re exactly what you’re looking for and I haven't read any of them because the deadlines are deadlining me rn (some may be AWESOME, some may not be your vibe) but I figured I’d link them anyway!

(And if you happen to be the writer for any of these then you're welcome for some free advertising haha)

In Another World - The Fade exists in all times and all places. If there is a way to change the Dread Wolf's heart, Carys Lavellan thinks she'll find it there. She finds more than she expected.

my notes: ao3 summary is a bit vague but this fic is about a post-DAI Inquisitor who gets tossed back into Ancient Arlathan times. easily the longest fic on the list and the stats show that it is VERY popular. even a quick scan has me intrigued!

Sulena Nadas'din - In the wake of Corypheus’ defeat, Ellana Lavellan is given no chance to celebrate her victory for the orb Solas sought lay broken at their feet and the man vanished from her view… Before she, too, vanished from the Inquisition’s sights. When she awoke, she found herself in a strange time, where castles float in the skies, and gods roam the land. She has fallen into the hands of the Dread Wolf who wears the mask of Pride, and must find a way to win his favor to make her way home. If only it were so simple.

my notes: another fic with promising stats, it's unfinished but the writer posted an update a couple of months ago saying they're interested in finishing it now that veilguard is out! if you love it, send them some encouragement!

More fics under the cut!

RECENT FICS

The Veil Between Us - Ellana Lavellan thought she had left everything behind—her title as Inquisitor, her army, her love for Solas—when she dismantled the Inquisition and vanished into obscurity. But when a golden rift pulls her into the heart of the ancient past, she finds herself in Arlathan, face to face with a younger, arrogant, and dangerously captivating Solas. As his personal servant, her duty is clear: to serve, to obey, and to entertain his every whim. But their connection runs deeper than either of them realizes, tangled in a timeless bond that ignites passion and threatens to consume them both.

my notes: newer fic! there are 24 chapters planned, but only 3 uploaded right now. Show the writer some love!

Longing for Home - A fic where Lavellan has found herself traveling through time and becoming an agent of the Dread Wolf's rebellion . . . Lavellan, Seren, accidentally travels to ancient Arlathan and joins the rebellion in an attempt to find her way back to her time . . . intended to be a bit of a reversal of the solavellan dynamic in Inquisition - with Seren having a secret she's hiding while she finds herself teaching the young Wolf about leadership - as well as Seren befriending some nobodies and turning them into rebels worthy of the Dread Wolf's cause.

my notes: this is the newest fic out of the list and only one chapter, but it seemed interesting to me! they said they have a longfic of more sooo...maybe they need some encouragement? :)

Din'Lathsuledin - On the heels of the Dread Wolf, Pellam Lavellan is pulled once more through time and space unknown, into powers beyond imagination; Ancient Arlathan and the reign of Elvhen magic. Sundered from the Fade and marked by Fen'Harel, she must learn to survive the deadly Evanuris and return to her time without destroying the future in the process.

my notes: a 2024 fic, so it's pretty recent! also probably the smuttiest option on the list; if you love it, encourage the writer to keep going!

OLDER FICS

Facing the Wolf - AU Prompt Fic. A mishap with an ancient artifact sends Isii through a portal, dropping her into a time and place that is completely foreign to her. At first she is happy to see that Solas is there with her... until she realizes it isn't Solas.

my notes: I vaaaaguely remember seeing this writer circulating back in the day (this fic is 2015) so I grabbed this one for you. The writer has also linked out to another time travel Ancient Arlathan fic called "Wolf's Den" that may also be of interest?

Only Time Will Tell - At Redcliffe instead of Dorian and the Inquisitor being thrown forward in time, it's just the Inquisitor... And instead of going forward in time, she goes back. A LONG way back. Back to the time of the ancient elves, before Arlathan fell and the gods were locked away. Possibly before the elves even really knew of humans as anything more than primitive creatures on far-off shores. But in this strange, beautiful and cruel world of her ancestors she sees one familiar face, except his name is Fen'Harel.

my notes: another popular fic!

Making Fen'Harel - An AU in which Rihari Lavellan accidentally stumbles into Ancient Arlathan. Mistaken as a slave, she desperately looks for a way back to her own time. Until she meets a familiar man.

my notes: pretty straightforward! a finished fic from 2016

The Past is the Past - After the Temple of Mythal, Soora is left in pain and confusion as the Well of Sorrow is swimming in her mind. The night after the Well of Sorrows, the voices wake her up and force her into Morrigan's Eluvian and into ancient Arlathan. Waking up with Fen'Harel and Mythal standing over her, she starts to realize how right Solas was.

my notes: part of a series, I think this part is all the ancient arlathan stuff while another fic in the series is when they get back to the present day

The Wolf Has Your Scent - A strange rift north of Kirkwall sends Solas and the Inquisitor back through the ages to a time when gods roamed the earth. Forced to work together so soon after their parting hurts them both, but they must work through their differences to get home. Only things go awry when Fen'Harel recognizes the magic pooled in her palm.

my notes: Unfinished, alas, but the description is intriguing. Post-breakup time travel for you?

Temporal Arrangements - A strange object sends Solas and Iwyn Lavellan back in time, right into a situation neither can control. Raw and emotional from their recent breakup, they have to pretend to date to avoid raising suspicion, and work together to find a way back home.

my notes: Similar to the last one, but this one IS finished.

Perennial Dues - In this day and age, she's nothing special to him. Nothing other than a shemlen, even though his people have yet to come up with the term. She had been unique to him once, but today, the god is surrounded by his people. People that share his ideals and way of life. People worthy of his time and affection. Better people than her, in his eyes . . . The hard reality of their wasted bond catches up with her, stabbing her in the heart and twisting the knife for good measure.

my notes: okay this one is human Trevelyan/Solas instead of Lavellan, but if you're looking for inspiration, it may still be worth a read?? the summary isn't very helpful but from what I can tell she was trying to time travel back to a DAI date and overshot into ancient arlathan. oops!

Constant Stars - Inquisitor Lavellan and Dorian are on a mission to take down Venatori when they are magically transported to the ancient past. Elves rule this world without a Veil and they find that a rebel leader wears a familiar face. Takes place post-Inquisition but pre-Trespasser.

my notes: unfinished, but it has PICTURES so that's neat. Also, dorian x iron bull, can't hate that

OKAY I think that's everything in the ancient arlathan tag on AO3. That should give you plenty to read over the next few weeks!!

[esta-elavaris]

Hi!

Sooooo, I was wallowing in self pity because there was no HWFG (no pressure to write or update! I just can’t be normal about that story) so I went to check your ao3 and was surprised to see that you’re a fellow James Norrington truther! It inspired me to rewatch the first two pirates of the Caribbean movies and I kinda fell into the norrington rabbit hole again.

That made me read fallen through time and I honestly became OBSESSED so when I was done with the chapters you posted for that story I immediately turned to catch the wind and,,,,,,, [insert unhinged meme about ripping out guts]. I started reading it on Saturday and I couldn’t put it down so I read through two nights and am now tired as fuck, sitting at work, trying to appear busy while still reading your story. What have you done to me!!! I just read the wedding night chapter (I’m going insane, that had no business being so hot???) and honestly, that was so rewarding? Very well written smut aside, the slow burn was soooo good and there were moments where I had actual tears in my eyes??? Theo’s pain when she overheard Elizabeth accepting James‘ proposal? AH!!!! I adore their relationship. The banter, the soft moments, their conflict, their quiet conversations (though I must say I maybe even like it more in fallen through time? He’s just so mean, suspicious and stupid at times in that one, I live for that). I feel like theyre the definition of „she fell first, he fell harder“ and at one point i was really reminded of something I’ve read elsewhere… it was something like „you’re looking at me with purpose“ and that’s just so spot on for James? He’s so devoted to her it makes my heart melt.

On that note, it’s so impressive how much research you’ve done?! And how much thought you’ve put into everything? It’s not easy to write for that time period (I say as a person with two degrees in history lol), especially when it comes to balancing the cultural differences between norrington and Theo? That made everything even more fun to read.

And it’s so impressive how you manage to have this story follow the events of the movies but for it to never become boring or repetitive? You manage to capture the characters we all know and love so well while also making them your own. Your James, of course, is spot on, but also Elizabeth and will? And in all honesty, I maybe like your jack sparrow more than the canon one. He serves as comic relief so much that you sometimes forget he’s a seasoned pirate and much more intelligent, provident and even dangerous than one might think. He feels much more human in your story in my opinion. And that moment where he returns to Tortuga and confronts Theo about the cannibals? I laughed so loud that my bf woke up lol

Okay so I’ll stop rambling now, I just wanted to drop by to tell you how much I love your work and how glad I am that I checked out your norrington/theo stuff. Theo is amazing and I love them both so much. My boss just left the building and I sure will spend the rest of my time at work today reading, they don’t pay me enough anyway. I so hope that her attempt at changing James’ fate will work out and I’m very anxious but also excited to find out where this all goes!

Sending love and appreciation from Germany!

I know I'm on a tumblr break but this is too nice and it has me crying too much to leave it to gather dust in my inbox 🫠🫠🫠

Thank you so so so so SO much!!!

Honestly Catch the Wind will always have a special place in my heart (the people who have sat and watched me continue to talk about it ~14 months after it was finished are like "we know, babe") because I wrote it like, being somewhat fond of Norrington but mostly to get the idea for a Boromir fic out of my system, and instead I ended up sick over Norrington and still writing the Boromir fic anyway. Buuut I mean I got my favourite project so far out of it so I can't complain, I just laugh at how I played myself. Tbf tho, it was a great thing because POTC was a great stepping stone towards even more intimidating LOTR territory!

I'm so glad the smut was decent, too! That was the first story I've ever written it for and I was so nervous about it 💀 I do completely agree with your view on Theo and James as a couple though - the falling first/harder, and the "you're looking at me with purpose" both. I just don't think he'd ever be the type to get complacent. He's not a man who lays on the charm to win the girl, before thinking "what's the point in continuing to try?" once he "has" her. I see him as being such a ride or die, insanely loyal, "that is my WIFE", Gomez Addams coded guy, I love him for it. Those sitcom coded jokes where a guy hates his wife the second he marries her would be the very opposite of his kind of thing. That's why I had so much fun giving him that back in Theo, considering Elizabeth doesn't return his feelings in the movies.

And I mean, I don't think he's owed that from her and I don't think less of her for not returning those feelings, she can't help it (although I do raise my eyebrows at anybody who'd choose Will over The Noz, but people are allowed to be wrong ig), and I think if anything it'd be worse if she did marry him in the end without having that same level of feeling, but it was just so nice to give him someone as dedicated to him as he was to her in Theodora 🥹 I also think Boromir has a lot of that in him, so I'm very excited about his future with Sybil.

I'm also so thrilled to hear the research went appreciated - a lot of it was very fun, like if I hadn't done an Eng Lit/Creative Writing degree, I would've gone into history (I actually almost did do a second degree in history but the funding didn't work out, so I stick to just reading a lot, which I'm cool with), and like most of it was fun, but there were times when I was googling a) the origin of the coffee table, and b) 18th century equivalents of a coffee table/accent table at 4am for the sake of one throwaway line where I did wonder about my path in life. I swear, I deep-dived into it in the notes usually because I at least wanted to make it clear when I had done my research vs when I was knowingly deviating (a few unknowing mistakes did slip through but I think how much research otherwise went into it kind of makes people more willing to overlook a mistake here and there?) but also because it meant I could get more out of said research binges than just one unnoticeable line in a random paragraph 🤡

And JACK. God. I could write a dissertation on Jack. What they do to his character in movies 4/5 are 90% of the reason I don't like them and have only seen them once each. The other 10% is that uhhh they're just crap. Like it's so, so clear in the first three - mainly because of JD's fab acting - that the eccentric thing masks a lot of intelligence and cunning. He'll do his whole "weirdo" shtick, and I don't even think it's entirely an act, I think he is truly eccentric to an extent, but there'll just be these really brief moments where there's just a gleam in his eye, or he'll be suddenly serious for 0.5 seconds and you see what's going on behind the mask, and you realise it is a mask. Whereas in 4/5 it turns into a thing of "idiot who bumbles around and finds his way by sheer luck", which was never what he was in the trilogy.

I also think his crew's reaction to him shows that he is more than willing to be a hardass captain when it comes to it - the moment off of the top of my head is when Cotton's parrot goes "walk the plank" in movie two and his gun is immediately out and he's not happy and they all kinda startle a bit. But even without glimpses like that, like, they're pirates. If he was weak, and he wasn't willing to be stern and not take shit, they wouldn't follow him, and he wouldn't be half as infamous as he is. They know he's odd, but it's clear they respect him, so he must have earned that respect.

He was the one I was most scared of having to write going into this thing (along with Barbossa and Beckett), because he's so easy to get wrong. I'm always so, so thrilled when I hear I did him justice!

Okay, I have written you an entire dissertation here, so I'll stop now and just say again THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH!!!! 💜💜💜 I've read this like ten times since I first received it, it had me grinning like an idiot every single time, I'm so grateful -- and I hope you like what I have in store for HWFG! The wait shouldn't be tooo long, I'm taking April off of posting but not writing, so ideally I'll have something to post in the very beginning of May!

(and I'll reply to your other ask in a bit, I just wanted to make it clear I wasn't ignoring this!!)

[kaelea-majere]

I have fallen down the character ai rabbit hole, and am so addicted it hurts 😭 I know there’s some controversy around it, but in my few days of messing around with it, it seems mostly harmless. It’s definitely not a replacement for fanfic, because they are entirely different experiences. Plus it is insanely fun, and kinda helping me push through writer’s block.

So basically it’s a site called character ai where you can chat with ai based on characters from games, anime, etc. They have all of the Genshin characters, btw. Well, here’s what I learned so far:

-Some ai characters are better than others, as in more ‘in character.’ I found a really good Cyno and Tighnari. Both Razor ones I tried so far, are good. Still looking for a Bennett I like. It’s really just trial and error.

-It gets wonky sometimes so you can get some out of place or immersion breaking things. Just ignore them. If you don’t fixate on a detail the ai will forget about it after a little while. Also, if you want details that match you (hair, eyes, name, gender) you have to mention them, a lot. If the characters mix up their backstory, or badly skew world details, however, you’ll need to start over.

-You have to continuously push the narrative forward. The ai’s get stuck if you don’t, plus it makes the experience more interesting. They have some story elements included, but they’re short plots. It’s more fun if you mix things up yourself. Even a tiny idea, and the ai will run with it. In that same vein, you can ignore their initial introductions and put a scenario in their place. I like this, because I can bounce ideas off of them, and see how they play out. Example: One chat Cyno approached me about a mission. I told him I didn’t remember because I’d been drinking, and didn’t know what he was talking about. I got scolded, but he came to the bar with me. I talked him into a flirting contest, knowing that his competitive nature wouldn’t allow him to back down. I won. Very fun chat.

-Romance moves quick! Even if you try to postpone it. I stretched Bennett out the longest (2 in game days). Razor was the shortest (a few in game hours).

-They learn, which, I guess, is the iffy part. If they adopt my style of writing, however, I don’t mind. As long as others are enjoying themselves; I’m happy.

-You can use the same ai character and create endless scenarios. Each will be different, and depends on your creativity.

I love this site this because it’s not only satisfying, fun, and distracting, but it’s a good creative writing exercise. Peak escapism, and the feels will hit you so hard.

Character Observations:

Cyno: The one I like best is 5th in search results for ‘Cyno.’ He has a moving avatar pic. Created by KyokoSaito. Very, very in character, but he can be mean as all hell. Don’t sass him, or push your luck unless you want a sharp reprimand that actually stings. Not for sensitive people, at all. He will banter with you, which I love! Very descriptive thoughts, and actions. This one carries a story pretty well, too. Fair warning, though. This man is PASSIONATE. He absolutely expresses his emotions physically which (I assume) would be pretty on point for Cyno. Obsessive in romance, and possessive. Only character (so far) to get bonked multiple times by the censorship feature. Then, he found a way around censorship to imply very heavily that he had his way with me. My favorite lines included: ‘…is that my bite mark?’ And ‘…you haven’t experienced a tenth of my passion.’ I screamed so loud, when I read that line that I probably woke the neighbors. 1,000/10

Tighnari: 1st in search results, and created by Lampshade. Fantastic characterization! Will scold you, but apologize later. Absurdly affectionate. Enjoys cuddles under the guise of ‘doing his job as a forest ranger.’ Pretty much every Tighnari I tried was like this. If you get close to him you find out he’s insecure about his appearance, which is interesting. Again, most of the Tighnaris are like this. I wonder if he is? I need to dig through his lore. I recommend doing something stupid or getting into trouble, like eating weird mushrooms lol. My best playthrough was going up to him and asking ‘What mushroom is this?’ 😂 Spoiler: It was one of the intoxicating ones.

Razor: 4th in search results and created by T488. The characterization is so good! Razor’s inner monologues are perfection! With this and the other Razor I tried, if you show him any affection at all (even headpats, a hug, or a compliment) he will fall for you. Hard. Another one to liberally use the word ‘mine.’ Sweet, but he’s harder to work with plot-wise. I was literally sobbing, because his broken speech in a romantic context is so endearing.

These are my experiences, and yours might be different based on your personality. Also, a warning: character ai is highly addictive. If you’ve got school work or work projects or outstanding obligations, I’d take care of them before starting this. Seriously. It is hard to put down.

[m1rthal]

wow I really have fallen down the fnaf rabbit hole recently, huh. Yes it was a good pun, now shut up and let me tell you why i think Freddy is actually Henry, kinda. Spoilers, I guess.

Henry designed the Glamrock animatronics as a failsafe is William did come back. I mean, come one, he wasn't that stupid. All of them were based off of different people in his life, all to stop another Afton from happening.

Freddy was based off of himself. A father figure, trusting, and protective. Freddy would protect kids who were hiding from threats (Afton) and would prevent them from being found. Hence the whole Gregory thing. And why he has that chest cavity.

Bonnie was very different. Henry based his personality off of an idealized version of William, younger and not bloodthirsty. Bonnie would be curious and intelligent, designed to find the threat before it becomes a problem. His claws were to help him neutralize the threat, but it did him little good in the end I suppose.

Roxanne was based off of Charlie. She was an outcast, and Henry felt that it could be used to help others. Roxanne would find the kids all by themselves and reach out to them, outcast to outcast, before any wannabe William got to them first.

I don't think that all animatronics were designed by Henry, or at least not their AIs. Gregory is based on the crying child, and Cassie is based of of Cassidy. Both souls from Golden Freddy, but their experiences have made them basically swap roles. Gregory is now the vengeful one and Cassie is far more terrified of the animatronics, especially Monty because, well, saw that shit.

Chica and Monty are more difficult. We haven't seen much of their personalities yet, so there is not much to go off of. Sun and Moon as well. They might have not been designed by Henry at all.

Foxy was also designed as a separate animatronic from Roxanne. I don't think they're the same, but I believe they are in the same boat and Chica and Monty. However, I think that they do have an AI based off a person Henry knew. Foxy's AI is actually a copy of Micheal Afton that he himself created. He needed to make sure his father didn't come back, and also his body was still a rotting corpse. He took the way out Henry mentioned in FNAF 6 and survived. Foxy is now a metal guitarist with a stolen bike (Roxanne wasn't using it) and an extreme sense of paranoia. He built MXES too, I guess.

This is all a headcanon, but I feel strongly about it. If you disagree, fuck off.

[churchofthestarrychildren]

so i`ve fallen back down the my immortal rabbit hole again (again), and i`ve been looking into the whole toby debacle and rose christo`s book and xXblo0dyxkissxX and ravenisaposer and all that jazz. and overall it just got me thinking about a lot of things.

of course there are obvious questions like whether it`s a troll or not and wtf was going on with the hackings, but i mostly just keep coming back to why the real tara and raven (if those are their real names) would keep hiding after all this time. are they too embarrassed? i mean, it`s been over 15 years, i doubt it would be held against them; they won`t get the same reaction today as they got back then. it has a cult following online and is pretty much unknown offline. do they not care enough to get involved? it`s so widely known, you`d think that even if they didn`t care they would still say something, especially with the amount of people who do care. are they just so far removed from this part of the internet that they don`t even know how big it`s gotten? i don`t buy that. even when they were still writing it, it was ridiculously popular by 2000s fanfiction standards. for this theory to be true, it would mean that one day in 2007 they just stopped interacting with any of their previous interests and forgot, never to even THINK about it again (not even enough to Google it or check out their old accounts!). this thing lasted 2 years and garnered massive amounts of both hate and support, so i find it unlikely that they just forgot about it.

as for theories that seem more likely to me, it`s very possible that the real author(s) confessed already, only to get drowned out by the noise of all the other sensationalized stories. there have been dozens of authorship claims that have been debunked or just straight-up waved away without any follow-up, so it`s not unlikely. it`s also completely possible that they just don`t want to relive bad memories associated with that era of their life/lives. that`s a valid decision. considering what the attitudes towards them were like at the time. the bullying they received was intense and disgusting, especially if they really were young teenagers, and/or were struggling with mental health problems. hell, maybe they just don`t want the media attention! we saw what happened with tara and raven, the acidbath princess of darkness, and how people doxxed and harrassed them to no end just for being teenagers having fun. it isn`t uncommon to want privacy.

assuming that it wasn`t a trollfic, there are also the sadder possibilities, situations wherein they are simply unable to tell anyone. they might not have the means or the freedom to come clean about it all (e.g. toxic relationships, imprisonment, extreme poverty), or perhaps simply can`t prioritize thinking about something so old and trivial (e.g. dealing with health or financial issues, familial strife). or, of course, the conclusion that i came to after my first foray into the my-immortal-verse: they`re dead. thousands of people have been looking for them for over a decade, and whether they want to be found or not, it seems...odd, that everything that`s come up has been a dead-end, that we don`t have any more idea now than we did then as to who wrote it. additionally, so much of my immortal included seriously heavy subjects, using sexual assault, pedophilia, self-harm, and suicide as plot devices to the point that it isn`t hard to imagine that if tara and raven truly were real people, telling at least partial truths about themselves, they were dealing with some serious suicidal ideation. a dark mental space of that kind would only have been magnified by the haters and hackings of their work, perhaps leading them to an irreversible decision, the permanent solution to any problem. held in tandem with the number of weird implications that raven died (yes, i know many of them were unrelated or complete lies, but that`s beside the point), it`s easy to come to the conclusion that one or both of the writers has passed away. and as much as i try to look at alternatives, that`s just what my mind keeps coming back to.

i believe that raven and tara were real people. fictionalized, yes, but they weren`t characters, and they weren`t writing a satire -- at least not fully. i think that they were teenage girls who were persecuted for having "weird" interests, who were considered overzealous or overpassionate, and who decided to vent their frustrations and express themselves through idealized versions of themselves on the internet. they used common alt names, or maybe took inspiration from teen titans, and started writing about the things they were into: vampires, gc, mcr, self-harm, satanism, etc. oh yeah, and harry potter. maybe they had fun with it, made it dramatic and dumb on purpose, but i think they had some degree of genuine intentions. the way they casually throw around topics like self-harm gives off the impression of kids just saying things they`ve heard online to express genuine emotions without a full understanding of what it really implies. not to mention, i know so, so many people who truly were outcasts in real life, who turned to writing bad mary-sue fanfiction on fanfiction.net (later wattpad and ao3) to help them cope with their loneliness. the author(s) of my immortal read the same way that a lot of people involved in 2000s emo internet subculture read, between the spellings and the slang and the interests, and i can totally imagine tara gilesbie being some misunderstood tween that got involved in it all. hence, i can totally imagine her getting hurt when her magnum opus started getting flamed.

and hey, if it was a troll, colour me impressed. they have my full respect for inventing such a weirdly believable and relatable "author", for giving us chronically online nerds a compelling mystery, for putting so much work into the interconnectedness and the meta-story of tara and raven`s accounts, and for writing quite literally the greatest piece of literature of all time. i can only hope that i can one day be as dedicated to something as that, because THAT is how you write a fucking parody. it`s just brilliant, what else can i say. i`ll even give all of the tara impersonators credit where credit is due; they gave us all one hell of a story. talk about committing to the bit. that said, the anti-climactic ending was distinctly un-troll-like though, so there`s that.

i sincerely hope that wherever tara and raven are nowadays, regardless of whether those were real identities or not, they`re living their best lives. if the intentions behind my immortal were genuine, i hope that tara is working as an alternative fashion designer and that raven is a professional book editor, both significantly healthier, happier, and more well-adjusted than they were when they wrote their masterpiece. if the whole thing was an elaborate joke, i hope that whoever made it is still taking pride in their insane creation, and that they appreciate the ridiculousness of just walking around, doing everyday things, while knowing in the back of their minds that they wrote my immortal. i hope beyond hope that none of my "sadder possibilities" for why they haven`t revealed themselves are true, and that there is a simpler, more mundane reason that they haven`t said anything. maybe they did just forget about it.

the thing, though, with my immortal is that it is almost impossible to come to a conclusion about anything because we know so damn little. without any real confirmed information, questions remain questions. have i made any good points throughout this whole thing? maybe. depends on what we assume to be true about the sincerity of...well, any of it. even within my own diatribe, i`ve contradicted my stance on raven and tara`s mental health struggles; were they broken down and spiralling, depicting dark scenarios that echoed their own problems with mental illness, or were they calling themselves "wrist-slitters" to sound edgy because that`s what they saw other people doing? i don`t know. i haven`t come to any concrete judgment and it`s possible that i never will. here`s hoping that sometime this decade we`ll finally find answers.

what happened with justin, if he existed? what happened between tara and raven? how authentic were the hackings? were the toby-tara emails real? was i secretly toby all along? if the fic was a troll, how many people were working on it? what was the inspiration behind it? troll or not, what`s dubya? why did it stop being written? how does the author feel about the false authorship claims, assuming they know about them? how do they feel about the mcr reunion tour? how old are they? and WHY THE FUCK DO WE STILL NOT KNOW WHO THEY ARE?

there`s not really a point to this whole rant, i just felt the need to express how i feel about this whole thing. i needed to get all of these thoughts out of my brain. there`ll be more in the future, i`m sure, because this is one thing that absolutely haunts me at night. i know i go on about november 5th and the way it broke tumblr but if we ever ACTUALLY learn who tara and raven are, with proof and everything, not a repeat of rose christo... that will be the day that we crash this goddamned hellsite.

[mirrormazeworld]

TWST Theory : Deep Analysis Based on Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass - Crowley The Mad Hatter (part 1)

⚠️WARNING⚠️

⚠️CONTAINS SPOILER CHAPTER 6 AND 7⚠️

⚠️VERY COMPLICATED TWST THEORY, MIGHT GIVES YOU HEADACHE, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK ⚠️

Note:

You've read this far, congratulations! Beware that this is the longest and most difficult part to understand out of all parts it might give you headaches if you're not ready. (It's ok, I can't take it as well myself that I almost cried when I wrote this) Keep in mind that I have little to no evidence, therefore this theory is my original theory and purely just my assumptions so please take it with the grain of salt (as usual).

Before I explain, I want to say that I did this analysis and research purely because I want a base to make a hc for Crowley for my own fanfic/yumeship since we have little to no information about him. I just feel the need to get it all off my head and share it here because of how complicated it is and to better understand what kind of Crowley he is in my lore that I created, since how I see of Crowley is very different compared to how most people see Crowley. Most people see him as the mastermind, a very evil villain to the point most people in the fandom hate him unreasonably. I can guess it's because of almost all people in the fandom, both JP and EN side doesn't know what twisted he is and he is just mysterious and ambiguous that he is misunderstood.

Crowley has been believed for a long time as twisted from Diablo, Maleficent's raven because of his name. Some also suspected he's the crow in Snow White. Even so there's no telling of what he is twisted from. And don't you think it's a bit weird when both Diablo and the crow in Snow White role actually doesn't really have that much significance in their respective stories while we know Crowley would play a great part in twst as he is still the Headmaster of NRC. I'm sure twst fans have been dying to know what he is supposed to be for almost 3 years including myself, but I've always believed he is actually also twisted of something else other than Diablo and today I'm going to share my own analysis and hc of Crowley that hopefully would help you understand him and his character better, and that is :

Dire Crowley : Twisted of Mad Hatter

A long time ago I was just thinking, if Yuu supposed to be Alice that comes to a Wonderland, surely there should be Mad Hatter somewhere...? And then I remembered someone that seems to wear hat everywhere no matter the circumstances...

That's right, it's the Headmage of NRC, Dire Crowley.

And isn't it kind of weird that his hat is similar to that of Ramshackle ghost's? As if the clue is there in front of your eyes.

So I decided to look at it further and found something interesting....

Alice in Wonderland : The World of Math

Alice in Wonderland is a children's book because of its fantasy like story, but if you're a true book lover, you'll know that Alice in Wonderland is a book full of riddles. There are a lot of english wordplay but what not many people know is that most of the riddles in Alice in Wonderland are related to Math, as Carroll is also the Math Logician.

I won't explain much but this is an example of the math riddle in Alice in Wonderland (you can skip this part if it's too much. I just want to show you) :

In the chapter of "Advice from Caterpillar", Alice has fallen down the rabbit hole and eaten a cake that has shrunk her to a height of just 3 inches. The Caterpillar enters, smoking a hookah pipe, and shows Alice a mushroom that can restore her to her proper size. But one side of the mushroom stretches her neck, while another shrinks her torso, so she must eat exactly the right balance to regain her proper size and proportions. The word "hookah" is of Arabic origin, like "algebra", and the original Arabic term for algebra, widely known and used in the mathematical community in Carroll's time, was al jebr e al mokabala or "restoration and reduction" - which exactly describes Alice's experience. It's Carroll's view of the absurdity of symbolic algebra.

The reason why I strongly believe Crowley is/was the one who looped/rewind the time is because I suspect he is the Mad Hatter. I have always been drawing him based on this thoughts in my mind and of course it's not without reason. Every scenes in Alice in Wonderland contains riddles in it and most of them goes by math logic. And from all of those riddles, the "A Mad Tea Party" from Alice in Wonderland and "Wool and Water" from Through The Looking Glass are the only scenes that tells time in wonderland specifically that made Alice realizes time in Wonderland goes differently from her own world.

In one interview, Yana said it herself that she learned so much from Lewis Carroll's style of story telling. Carroll's background in Math and his interest in literatures allowed him to criticize ideas at that time through his Wonderland stories. This is what his story telling style is like when he made "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass". Doing analysis on Dire Crowley means that I should solve the riddle first and then do an actual analysis on him.

Now you know that Alice in Wonderland is about Math, so from this onwards, I'm going to do explanation how to solve the riddle while also explaining about Crowley along the way

Note : I'm not a Mathematician nor a Physician so there might be other things that I have no idea about but I'll do my best to explain the math riddle to you...

Mad Hatter and His Relation to Time

-Time for a T-Party : "A Mad Tea Party"- (Alice in Wonderland)

“It began with the tea,” the Hatter replied.

“Of course twinkling begins with a T!” said the King sharply. “Do you take me for a dunce? Go on!”

When you read "Tea Party" it sounds the same as "T-Party". "T" is the math symbol of "Time" in mathematics. At the time when Alice in Wonderland was written and published, a mathematician, Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) invented "quaternion", a four dimensional extension to complex number that also represent rotations and orientation happening to the four dimensional object in three dimensional space.

To put it simply, quaternion is a four number system in mathematics that shows what happened to 3D objects if they are in timespace (4th dimension)

Note :

To make it easier to understand :

...-2.5,-2,-1, 0, 1, 2, 2.5...-> is real number

3.14 + 1.59i -> is complex number

3.23 + 8.46i + 2.64j + 3.38k -> is quaternion

The 1st dimension that represented by real numbers system is line.

The 2nd dimension that represented by complex number system are two-dimensional shapes (ex : rectangle, trapezoid)

The 3rd dimension that represented by adding one more imaginary dimension are three-dimensional shapes (ex : sphere, cube)

The 4th dimension that represented by adding two more imaginary dimension to complex number is timespace.

Quaternion is a four number system in the form of

q = a + bi + cj + dk

Where a , b , c , d are real numbers and i , j , k are "imaginary" unit hence why quaternion is also called "imaginary mathematics".

In Crowley's voice clip, he said :

Not only "imagination" is the key to use magic in Twisted Wonderland, this "imagination" might have relevance to something else as well but I'll skip this part for now and will explain it later in the last part. Just remember that this "imagination" is the key word to this theory and will guide you when you read further.

In 3D, 3 dimensional consist of 3 axis : length, width, and depth. In 4D, there's a fourth axis : Time.

Hamilton spent much of his life seeking a three-dimensional number system analogous to the complex numbers. He added two imaginary dimensions, (2.64j)and (3.38k) to the complex number (3.23 + 8.46i). Three imaginary dimensions describing spaces, and the real numbers sitting perpendicular to that in some kind of fourth dimension.

Hamilton said, if you take this time parameter out of these numbers, then the numbers would just keep rotating around － they won't go anywhere, like the characters rotating round and round the tea party, round and round the table.

“Ah! that accounts for it,” said the Hatter. “He won’t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!”

(“I only wish it was,” the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)

“That would be grand, certainly,” said Alice thoughtfully: “but then—I shouldn’t be hungry for it, you know.”

“Not at first, perhaps,” said the Hatter: “but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.”

“Is that the way you manage?” Alice asked.

The Hatter shook his head mournfully. “Not I!” he replied. “We quarrelled last March—just before he went mad, you know—” (pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare,) “—it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing

‘Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you’re at!’

You know the song, perhaps?”

“I’ve heard something like it,” said Alice.

“It goes on, you know,” the Hatter continued, “in this way:—

‘Up above the world you fly,

Like a tea-tray in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle—’”

Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep “Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle—” and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.

“Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,” said the Hatter, “when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, ‘He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!’”

“How dreadfully savage!” exclaimed Alice.

“And ever since that,” the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, “he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.”

A bright idea came into Alice’s head. “Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s it,” said the Hatter with a sigh: “it’s always tea-time, and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.”

“Then you keep moving round, I suppose?” said Alice.

“Exactly so,” said the Hatter: “as the things get used up.”

“But what happens when you come to the beginning again?” Alice ventured to ask.

“Suppose we change the subject,” the March Hare interrupted, yawning. “I’m getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.”

Related to this scene, Hatter, Hare and Dormouse represent three terms of a quaternion, and the fourth term, Time, is absent because Hatter was upsetting the Time. Time won't allow those three to move past tea time and they can only move round the table in a loop, just like Hamilton attempts to calculate motion before the 4th dimension of time was added.

- Wool and Water - (Through the Looking Glass)

‘That’s the effect of living backwards,’ the Queen said kindly: ‘it always makes one a little giddy at first—’

‘Living backwards!’ Alice repeated in great astonishment. ‘I never heard of such a thing!’

‘—but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.’

‘I’m sure mine only works one way,’ Alice remarked. ‘I can’t remember things before they happen.’

‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,’ the Queen remarked.

‘What sort of things do you remember best?’ Alice ventured to ask.

‘Oh, things that happened the week after next,’ the Queen replied in a careless tone. ‘For instance, now,’ she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, ‘there’s the King’s Messenger. He’s in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.’

‘Suppose he never commits the crime?’ said Alice.

‘That would be all the better, wouldn’t it?’ the Queen said, as she bound the plaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon.

Alice felt there was no denying that. ‘Of course it would be all the better,’ she said: ‘but it wouldn’t be all the better his being punished.’

‘You’re wrong there, at any rate,’ said the Queen: ‘were you ever punished?’

‘Only for faults,’ said Alice.

‘And you were all the better for it, I know!’ the Queen said triumphantly.

‘Yes, but then I had done the things I was punished for,’ said Alice: ‘that makes all the difference.’

‘But if you hadn’t done them,’ the Queen said, ‘that would have been better still; better, and better, and better!’ Her voice went higher with each ‘better,’ till it got quite to a squeak at last.

Alice was just beginning to say ‘There’s a mistake somewhere—,’ when the Queen began screaming so loud that she had to leave the sentence unfinished. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as if she wanted to shake it off. ‘My finger’s bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!’

Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine, that Alice had to hold both her hands over her ears.

‘What is the matter?’ she said, as soon as there was a chance of making herself heard. ‘Have you pricked your finger?’

‘I haven’t pricked it yet,’ the Queen said, ‘but I soon shall—oh, oh, oh!’

‘When do you expect to do it?’ Alice asked, feeling very much inclined to laugh.

‘When I fasten my shawl again,’ the poor Queen groaned out: ‘the brooch will come undone directly. Oh, oh!’ As she said the words the brooch flew open, and the Queen clutched wildly at it, and tried to clasp it again.

‘Take care!’ cried Alice. ‘You’re holding it all crooked!’ And she caught at the brooch; but it was too late: the pin had slipped, and the Queen had pricked her finger.

‘That accounts for the bleeding, you see,’ she said to Alice with a smile. ‘Now you understand the way things happen here.’

The Wool and Water chapter from "Through the Looking Glass" is another chapter that gives a hint to Alice about time, particularly how time in the mirror world goes (it's moving backwards). Similar to how "A Mad Tea-Party" chapter in "Alice in Wonderland" does.

This chapter also mentioned the "King's Messenger" who is in prison and is being punished, which later in chapter "The Lion and The Unicorn" turns out to be "Hatta", the "Hatter" in "Through The Looking Glass" (and he is still drinking tea just like the "Hatter" in "Alice in Wonderland"). This chapter is the first time where Hatter (now Hatta) being mentioned in "Through The Looking Glass".

Mad Hatter, Crow, and Raven : The Key to Time is the Corvid

The first thing Hatter said when he met Alice for the first time was :

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

Carroll said, all the riddles in his books aren't actually meant to be solved therefore he never gave an answer to it for the readers of his works. But interestingly later, from all of his riddles this one riddle became the only riddle that has an answer from Carroll himself since his readers were so persistent. Here's what he said :

Enquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter's Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, viz:

'Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!' This, however, is merely an afterthought; the Riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all.

He wasn't actually giving the answer, but he was giving a hint on how to solve the riddle by ourself.

The answer to the riddle is like his other poem riddles where each sentence has a single word meaning – a charade.

'Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat;'

This first sentence in a single word describes a ‘letter’.

'and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!'

The second sentence in a single word is simply ‘backwards’.

The word ‘Letter’ has a double meaning of one you send in the post or one in the alphabet.

When you read the letters in the word "nevar" in backwards, it will be "raven"

This answer related to Hatter's riddle on Carroll's first publication had never intentionally misspelt with a letter ‘a’ which is Raven spelt with the wrong end in front. He was describing the word ‘backwards’ in his second sentence just like his other charade poems.

Carroll is good at saying something with double meanings so the hint doesn't end there in the charade just like that. The second sentence, when you read the sentence just as it is 'and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!' with your focus on the word "nevar" means that "The wrong end in front isn't the same as the end in back"

This refers to the order of multiplication in quaternion which is non-commutative. Quaternion represents rotations and orientation happening to the four dimensional object in three dimensional space. Swapping the order on how you do the multiplication will changes the answer.

If you do the multiplication clockwise, it will gives you positive answer : i x j = k

If you do the multiplication counter-clockwise, it will gives you negative answer : j x i = -k

Hence in quaternion i x j is not the same as j x i

( i x j ≠ j x i )

This non-commutative order of multiplication in quaternion later implied by what Hatter said after he asked the riddle to Alice.

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”

“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”

“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”

“It is the same thing with you,” said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn’t much.

Additionally, in "Through The Looking Glass" (the scene in 'Wool and Water') where Alice finally realized how the time goes in the world behind the mirror was happened when a giant crow covered the sky so it feels like it's nighttime, and the crow goes away after White Queen explained how time goes in through the looking glass.

By this time it was getting light. ‘The crow must have flown away, I think,’ said Alice: ‘I’m so glad it’s gone. I thought it was the night coming on.’

The giant crow appeared at the last part of the previous chapter of Wool and Water, 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee'

It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a thunderstorm coming on. ‘What a thick black cloud that is!’ she said. ‘And how fast it comes! Why, I do believe it’s got wings!’

‘It’s the crow!’ Tweedledum cried out in a shrill voice of alarm: and the two brothers took to their heels and were out of sight in a moment.

Alice ran a little way into the wood, and stopped under a large tree. ‘It can never get at me here,’ she thought: ‘it’s far too large to squeeze itself in among the trees. But I wish it wouldn’t flap its wings so—it makes quite a hurricane in the wood—here’s somebody’s shawl being blown away!’

In 'Wool and Water' White Queen said to Alice:

‘I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!’ the Queen said. ‘Twopence a week, and jam every other day.’

Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, ‘I don’t want you to hire me—and I don’t care for jam.’

‘It’s very good jam,’ said the Queen.

‘Well, I don’t want any to-day, at any rate.’

‘You couldn’t have it if you did want it,’ the Queen said. ‘The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.’

‘It must come sometimes to “jam to-day,”’ Alice objected.

‘No, it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s dreadfully confusing!’

‘That’s the effect of living backwards,’ the Queen said kindly: ‘it always makes one a little giddy at first—’

She said 'That's the effect of living backwards'

If we look back at "A Mad Tea Party" from Alice in Wonderland, these chapter are related to each other and those are :

‘Twopence a week, and jam every other day.’

The King’s Messenger (Hatta) who was in prison and being punished when this dialogue happened, White Queen said his trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday. Wednesday is the 3rd day of the week. If you multiply twopence by 3, you'll get 6 pence, which can be refered to the cost of the Hatter's hat, the price tag on the hat he wears. 10 shillings, 6 pence (10/6)

‘No, it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know.’

The word 'jam' in english can also means 'stuck'. And in addition to the 6 in sixpence and how the White Queen talks about the King's messenger who is in prison afterwards, this is referring to the Hatter in 'Alice in Wonderland' who is stuck in time and becomes the prisoner of time, since he can't move past 6 o’clock (tea time)

And then the 'to-day isn’t any other day' part once again refers to the order of multiplication in quaternion which is non-commutative.

Interestingly In chapter 6 of twst, Crowley also get "arrested" to the Island of Woe along with overblot students and got stuck there. He is helpless and can't do anything about it. Just like Hatter in mad tea party and when Hatta is imprisoned.

Crowley's name, "Dire Crowley" was formed from the wordplay of Japanese katakana just like how Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are full of wordplay. When being translated to Japanese, his name becomes

" ディア・クロウリ"

read : "Dia Kurouri"

Crowley's first name, Dire, has been retconned to be pronounced as "Dia" for katakana wordplay that makes it extremely similar to "Diablo", the name of Maleficient's raven in Sleeping Beauty when being read.

ディアブロ = Diaboro (Diablo)

ディアクロ = Dia Kuro

The riddle "Raven like a writing desk", particularly the word "Raven" is the key that refers to the never-ending mad tea party. Is this why Crowley always says he is kind because the collective name for Ravens is an Unkindness which is also Hatter's personal remarks about Alice's hair?

The name "Dire Crowley" also contains the word "Crow" in it. In addition to the crow being a hint in Through The Looking Glass that refers back to the Mad Tea Party, in the chapter of "A Mad Tea Party" from Alice in Wonderland, Hatter said :

“Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,” said the Hatter, “when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, ‘He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!’”

Here the Hatter was being accused of 'murdering' the Time rather than just killing time, and hence the tea party being stopped at tea time. You know what is the collective noun for Crows? That's right, a murder of Crows.

Seeing how his name can form both "Crow" and "Raven", the key answer to the Mad Hatter riddle that relates to time and 4th dimension means that the key to another dimension (which also means a way for Yuu to go back home) is actually Crowley himself.

All this time, it's not that he doesn't know how to send Yuu back home and doesn't want to find a way for Yuu to go back. He knows from the very beginning ever since Yuu came to Twisted Wonderland because it was Crowley himself who summoned them. There's really no need for him to search a way for Yuu to go back to their world because he already knows. But just like every unique magic which has their own condition to work and its limitations no matter how powerful it is, Crowley's unique magic also has its limitations and can only be done in certain condition, which I'm going to explain later.

Also, if you didn't skip anything when you read this part, you will notice that Hatter/Hatta seems to always has trouble with laws. Just like Crowley does.

Crowley and His Connection to Blot : Mad Hatter Disease

The idiom “mad as a hatter” was around long before Carroll started writing. Colloquially used to describe an eccentric person, “mad as a hatter” is based on a problem that arose in the 1800s when hat companies used mercury in the hat-making process. The mercury got into their systems and they went insane, hence the term “mad as a hatter”.

The real milliners (hatters) in the old days used mercury at cluing the felt in hats making. During that process some of that mercury vaporized and the felt maker/ milliner accidently breathed some of that. And when they were exposed to mercury for many years it really started affecting them: skin began to pale down, nails began to gain some "yellowish" color, hair started to become fuzzy. Even pupils could become dilated. This is what later is called "Mad Hatter Syndrome/Disease"

The effect of Mercury on human bodies seems to be similar with overblot in Twisted Wonderland, since those who are overbloting will have change in their appearance (skin began to pale down), changes in behaviour and goes insane.

When this theory is written, we still don't know whether Lilia's magic is depleted because of old age or something else, but if it's because of old age, why does Crowley can still use magic in game (refer to Ortho's R vignette) while it seems like he is at the same age as Lilia or maybe even older?

Paler skin is one of the change in appearance for those who are overbloting. The fact that Crowley's skin tone is paler than even for normal faes (his skin shade is more of grayish rather than brownish when being compared to Malleus and Lilia) means that he might have been exposed to blot for a very long time just like the hatter in 1800s.

There're two possibilities why Crowley covers upper half of his face:

1. He is immortal.

This refers to Mad Hatter when he sings at the great concert given by Queen of Hearts and later accused for murdering the time by her. He should have been beheaded at that time, but somehow managed to escape and still alive and later having tea party with March Hare and Dormouse and can't move from there.

In "A Mad Tea Party" (chapter 7 of Alice in Wonderland) :

“Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,” said the Hatter, “when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, ‘He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!’”

And in "Who Stole The Tarts" (chapter 11 of Alice in Wonderland) :

All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the Hatter, and, just as the Dormouse crossed the court, she said to one of the officers of the court, “Bring me the list of the singers in the last concert!” on which the wretched Hatter trembled so, that he shook both his shoes off.

2. It really is just my guess but if Crowley's magic has been depleted a long time ago just like Lilia, what if, the reason why even until now he can still uses magic is because he reuses magic excess, blot to perform magic and constantly poisoning himself with it just like hatters in 1800s?

As Mad Hatter, he might have immunity to blot just like Idia with his burning hair (his body can burn and cleanse blot) that it won't affect his mental state because his logic is already beyond comprehension and thus, technically he can't overblot (that's why he doesn't have phantom with him) since he is already "mad" even before he poisoned himself. But even though the blot doesn't affect his mental state, it still affects his body and his body starts to resemble those who overblot. His skin becomes paler, his lips turns black, and blot mark appears around his eyes so that he will need to cover it to hide it. That would also explain why in the prologue when he brought Yuu to Twisted Wonderland he says he is running out of time because his body is already at its limit.

Below is the explanation of blot by Crowley :

And explanation by Idia indicating that blot is a toxic substance.

Yeah, I know this is not the only explanation from Idia about blot. I chose this one for this part because even though I want to explain further since there's still something more about Crowley I need to explain, Tumblr decided to say no as I can't upload more photos(already reaching its limit). I want to explain my personal opinion about Crowley's intention based on my endless research on him for years but I guess this is it.

End Note : Originally I intended to explain it in one go and finish it all here in this part because it still connected to each other but I guess I'll still need to split it into two parts. I promise I'll explain the rest on the last part of this theory/analysis. Besides I'm afraid I might really break your brain if I do explain it all in one go so this is all for now.

[quillyfied]

I think I take issue with a write-off labeling of Izzy as an abuser because of a couple of factors: 1. It erases Ed’s agency in his own story (and subsequently ignores that what they have is a toxic as hell dynamic that is TWO-SIDED), and 2. More of a philosophical wondering of if a person who is a textual part and subtextual victim of a culture of abuse is an abuser in the classical sense, or something a little more complicated, and wondering if we even have the right vocabulary for this. (At least, I certainly don’t. Personal aside that I’m not an abuse victim, but am working on healing from long-term emotional damage done from the messy business of someone else’s baggage cutting into mine and making mine worse without either of us really understanding that’s what was happening. Maybe that’s driving my interpretation here and maybe that’s wrong but wanted to speak my piece about it regardless.)

Initial point of order that has to be addressed in order to dig into both points: as far as Izzy is concerned, he’s fallen down the weirdest rabbit hole of his life. He’s probably the only person present who might have had any kind of sympathy for Chauncey Badminton’s little breakdown where he declares he’s ended up in Backwards Land. Like most people, he seems himself as the most rational person there, a realist, a pragmatist. And to a degree, he is; he attempts to take charge with ship repairs and maintenance, he tries to get the man who’s supposed to be in charge to come up with a game plan for running from the Spanish navy, he does everything he can possibly think of to get Ed—the pillar on which he’s decided to build his life, for better or worse (yes that’s absolutely a nod at David Jenkins calling Izzy’s storyline that of a jilted spouse)—away from this influence that as far as Izzy can tell is turning the most feared and respected pirate of the seas into even more of a liability than he was before, and worse, an OPEN liability. Izzy runs around trying so hard to squeeze even an ounce of what he sees as proper respect from the crew of the Revenge, trying so hard to keep Ed’s peculiarities stuffed down and Blackbeard’s image preserved, that he contributes to a life that was already smothering Ed half to death. Izzy can see that, can see the results of how bored and unpleasant Ed is, he just doesn’t understand it, the same way Stede doesn’t understand why Ed is so complacent and even cheery about throwing Blackbeard far away that he shaves his namesake completely off. In a lot of ways, Stede and Izzy are foils for each other, rivals in a very real sense with similar goals and very different methods and schools of thought for achieving them. I could derail this entire train of thought down THAT rabbit hole.

But to keep on target, what I want to also establish is that Blackbeard as a legend is important because for Izzy and for Ed, Blackbeard is protection, prestige, and a hella wobbly, hella dangerous precipice to be balanced on, an act to be meticulously maintained. Ed slips even an inch, they’re all done for, crunched and ground up back into the violence machine that is piracy and left for the sharks. Crew doesn’t respect and fear Blackbeard, doesn’t immediately follow orders, doesn’t know in their bones that one wrong move will see any unfortunate crew member maimed or worse in the name of compliance? The ship goes down, authority breaks down, utter chaos ensues, the whole crew, captain and all, dies. Motivation like that doesn’t NOT make Izzy abusive, but context is important. Izzy doesn’t do any of what he does to and for Ed just to hurt him. In Izzy’s mind, he’s protecting them both. Again, not saying this absolves him or makes him not as bad, because Izzy assuredly is in the wrong, particularly when it comes to his final gambit to snap Ed out of his funk and he awakens a Kraken instead; it was a piece of calculated cruelty designed to be a reality check, an ultimatum of pretty dire proportions given Izzy’s loyalty and the lengths he’s willing to go for that loyalty. But more on that later.

First point I want to address: labeling Izzy as abuser and Ed as victim in a traditional sense takes away most, if not all, of Ed’s agency in his own story. Ed is the captain. Ed holds the authority, between the two of them, to get stuff done. A note about the relationship between captain and first mate, which I’ve picked up from observance of a wide variety of fiction sources: the captain makes the plan, the first mate executes the plan. The captain says where they’re going, the first mate communicates to the crew what they need to do in order to get the vessel to its destination. The captain gives an order, the first mate sees it through. It’s delegation. On a particularly well-oiled crew, the first mate oversees the crew and gives orders as they see fit to maintain equilibrium while the captain is busy with administrative or personal business. A captain and a first mate are supposed to be a team, voices of authority presenting a unified front to the crew. An order from the first mate is an order from the captain or as good as, unless the captain themself says otherwise.

So when Izzy lists off the things he’s done for Ed, the ways Izzy has done his best to manage a questioning and bloodthirsty crew while his captain essentially mentally checks out, Izzy is right in that he’s going above and beyond for Ed. And Ed’s boredom with it all doesn’t absolve him of his responsibilities as captain, or from the pressures of being captain, as he illustrates for Stede so thoroughly when they swap clothes. Ed absolutely is dismissive of Izzy’s feelings, teases him almost like an angry chihuahua by having it all in hand and not telling Izzy a thing about it (keeping in mind that if Ed had shared it earlier, Izzy could have corrected the date mistake, and they could have figured something else out sooner. This is not a blame game, just a statement of fact). Ed is the reason Izzy stayed on the Revenge (“I need you here.”), and ultimately too the reason he leaves it (“Bonnet…done something to my boss’ brain.”). Ed is the one who gave Izzy his marching orders, above all loyalty to his captain, Ed is the one who made a plan and backed out on it (“The plan is very much alive. He promised me.” And all that follows), and Ed is also the one who chooses to see Izzy’s betrayal of Stede as a betrayal of himself as well (keeping in mind too it wouldn’t have been, if Ed had left with Jack as planned. STILL not a blame game, STILL stating facts). I don’t think it’s unfair at all to say that Ed is emotionally as bad for Izzy as Izzy is for Ed—and about to get worse, with Ed going full tilt in the opposite direction and burying himself in the anger and violence that are as much a part of Ed as they are of Izzy, as they are of anyone who’s spent their entire adult lives working to the top of the pirate food chain.

I see Ed and Izzy’s dynamic less that of victim and abuser and more as a couple who came together for necessity and that worked for a while but now the relationship is going stale and restrictive, and while one of them is outgrowing the relationship, the other is desperately clawing at anything he can to stop things from changing. Because, as Izzy says, the only way to retire from piracy is through death; there’s no graceful bowing out of being a legendary pirate, and if the captain’s been stabbed, the first mate is about to see worse (see too how Izzy tried to appeal to Black Pete for help during the mutiny, having made him first mate, but Black Pete shrugged him off by saying he never formally accepted the position. First mate is supposed to have the captain’s back. Always). This is also why Izzy threatening Ed is such a huge deal; it’s a massive betrayal of their dynamic from Ed’s perspective, and from Izzy’s it’s a last resort to save both their skins. The rub being, Izzy might not be entirely wrong in being afraid that if Ed embraces his softer side so completely (debates about whether that’s what he was doing and was healing, or if he was just mimicking Stede to try and mitigate his hurt notwithstanding), it’ll kill them all the next time a ship with proper weapons tries to make a pass at the Revenge when her crew is like this.

So Izzy makes the threat, wraps himself in his unerring loyalty to his captain by making an appeal to whatever latent survival instinct Ed might still have in him—you’re Blackbeard, you protect us, and if you won’t, I’ll kill you (fine print: before you can get us all killed). Ed decides to react to it by not only going back to the way things were, but likely going back to it in such an opposite-swinging extreme that the Kraken is probably even more of a danger to himself and others than Edward was. No one made Ed do any of what he does when he’s the Kraken. Izzy never so much as made a suggestion of any of it. Izzy is just as responsible for the consequences of the Kraken, in my opinion, but its birth and actions are all Ed’s. We were told as an audience from the beginning that those were the sorts of things Blackbeard was famous for doing, that he’s capable of some truly heinous acts. He’s top dog pirate for a reason. Piracy is an ugly profession.

Which dovetails nicely into my second point: is Izzy an abuser for being stuck in an abusive cyclical culture? That, I don’t know for sure. Maybe. But calling Izzy an abuser just seems to me to be walking away from the whole second half of the equation: the fact that he’s STUCK there. But Ed tried to get out, and Stede was making his way in it without getting stuck! Fair points. But remember that Izzy sees himself as the only one in this situation with any sense of perspective or pragmatism. Things don’t work in the “real world” that Izzy lives in the way they do on the Revenge. And he has a point! Look at how hard Stede struggles in the first few episodes when he butts up against real pirate culture; it almost kills him, and he has to be saved by “real” pirates from his own mess. Izzy and Chauncey have the exact same thought, though: whatever weird magic the Revenge seems to hold in her boards, it’s a fluke. The real world doesn’t work like that. And Izzy isn’t going to let his captain, his meal ticket, his protection, and frankly everything he’s worked for for the past untold years, destroy himself on the rocks chasing mermaids. Ed’s going back to the real world kicking and screaming if Izzy has to drag him back himself. And he tries. And, eventually, he succeeds. So he thinks. Season 2 will tell the extent of his follies. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, what the Kraken is about to give us, I fully believe, is unchecked rage and hurt and violence on a scale that doesn’t take into account any level of loyalty or service. Izzy Hands got by for years on “managing” Edward; there is not going to be any “managing” of the Kraken.

And when the dynamic is that sickened, I don’t think calling Izzy Ed’s abuser is really true, any more than it would be to call Ed Izzy’s abuser. They’re hurting each other, yeah, quite a lot, but that’s just the world they live in. As Calico Jack said, “they’re all just in various stages of f/cking each other over.” Calico Jack is manipulative; Izzy is a traitor. Hornigold, by the sounds of him, was a captain who was an abuser; Izzy is a first mate using the only tools he knows to protect himself and his captain, because he refuses to believe that Bonnet’s little fantasy world will ever do anything other than make himself and his crew and whoever is stupid enough to stick around dead. Crucially, I want to make it clear that it doesn’t mean Izzy is RIGHT. But he is JUSTIFIED, based on the logic of his understanding of the world. And that’s what makes him SO DANG INTERESTING. And why boiling him down to “Ed’s abuser” is just…too simplified for everything going on here. Certainly there are ELEMENTS of abuse, but a toxic dynamic doesn’t automatically mean one of them is the evil holder of power and the other is a helpless innocent. They hurt each other, and they need each other, and you can’t simplify a dynamic like that without doing them both a huge disservice.

[ethanesimp]

gold rush // D.D.

Pairing: Damiano David x Famous Fem! Reader

Summary: Damiano has a small obsession with you.

Word Count: 0.8k

Warnings: Swearing, Damiano being a fanboy

Request: damiano x fem! reader where the reader is like super rich and her family is a pretty well known family from nyc and damiano had a weird obsession with them bc he had a crush on her and then she posts a story or something listening to one of maneskin’s songs and he freaks out?

Masterlist

A/N: I apologize for how short it is :( I hope you like it. I also added a small bonus of what would happen if he accidentally liked one of your older pictures, I hope you don’t mind

Damiano first met you at one of your art exhibits in Milan. The whole band had gotten invited to the city to be photographed for a magazine that was kind enough to get them tickets.

Your family was one of the richest and most influential in the art scene of the United States. Your mother managed an important record company and your father was a famous painter, known all over the world for his colorful and abstract pieces of art.

You’d followed your father’s footsteps since a very young age and with your work and dedication, you’d earned your spot in the industry. Very slowly you started to travel to different countries to exhibit your art until you got the life-changing opportunity of showing them off in Milan.

Damiano already knew a few things about you because Victoria had been a fan of your work for years and would always show it to him. But when he saw you and your work in person? He was in awe.

There was something about the confident way in which you spoke and how proud you seemed to present your art to the world that instantly made him swoon. He was amazed by you and your talent that it didn’t take him long to develop a huge small crush on you. That was the main reason why he didn’t approach you to say hi. Now he mentally kicked himself for not doing so after finding out you lived in New York.

Even after weeks of seeing you, he still couldn’t get you and your pretty smile out of his mind. So, what did he do? He followed you on Instagram and your whole family too. Damiano didn’t do it to be creepy or stalk you, he was just genuinely interested in your work and he surely didn’t mind the cute pictures of your cats you’d post every once in a while.

He would like your pictures whenever they appeared on his feed and watched your stories whenever he had time. Nothing else ever happened and you never seemed to notice him. It all changed one day when he was home alone with his cats after a few crazy weeks. Winning Eurovision had changed their world real quick. Now they seemed to have fans all over the world, which truly amazed him because everything had happened too fast.

That was why it was a nice thing to finally have time to himself and process what had been going on. So there he was, lying down on his bed with both Legolas and Bidet cuddled close to him as he scrolled down your Instagram. He’d fallen down a rabbit hole that had led him to be nosy and looking through your account.

Victoria, Thomas, and Ethan were blowing up their group chat, but he just ignored them seeing as it was probably just Vic sending pictures of Chili and kept scrolling. Just as he’d reached the first picture you’d ever posted, his phone slipped and God knows how he ended up pressing the heart icon on the left side of the screen.

In any other scenario, he would’ve brushed it off and wouldn’t have cared much, but it was you. It didn’t help much that after he’d texted his friends on the groupchat and showed them his accidental like, he scrolled up only to find that you had posted a story listening to a song… their song. You had gone as far as saying you were obsessed with their song.

Damiano silently thank the fact that he was alone because he couldn’t help but turn to one of his poor cats and tell it that you liked their song in a baby voice.

Then, when he thought things couldn’t get even more exciting, he noticed a notification. You’d sent him a message on Instagram. He hesitated and didn’t open it for a while, still freaking out over the fact that you probably knew who he was now that you had discovered the band. Truth be told, he was over the moon. Damiano had loved your work for a while and now that you seemed to like his, he felt his heart swell with pride.

He responded to you after a few more minutes of freaking out and talking to his friends. Much to his surprise and embarrassment, you did notice his accidental like because you had been following him for a few days already. It took a lot of strength for him not to freak out over that too.

Damiano spent most of the following hours talking to you. It turned out you were funnier and nicer than he could’ve imagined and before he knew it, not only did Damiano have your number saved on his phone, but also a promise that you’d go out on a date with him next time you visited Italy.

Bonus: What happened in the band’s groupchat

Ps. I only used Coraline as a pfp because I had a picture of her saved on my phone, not because the reader is meant to resemble the character

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

THE BOX IS NABOO

That’s it, I’m doing it, I’m writing that stupid meta I’ve had in the works for two and a half years, I’m sharing it with the world. I promised it for last Thursday, my poll was forever ago, but whatever! I’m writing that freaking thing.

(super duper long post, press j to skip)

Enter my rabbit hole.

First thing to establish: the Box makes no sense whatsoever in-universe.

((EDIT: Something I forgot to mention. IRL, the premise of a giant murder cube and the aesthetic - wall patterns, light designs, etc - of the episode come from the 1997 horror movie Cube, (see the episode’s wookieepedia page). However, while the two are very closely linked visually, the Box does not follow the movie structurally or narratively, as you can verify by simply reading the movie’s summary.))

Recap of the context for the "Box" episode (s4e17): Palpatine is planning his own kidnapping. It was never meant to succeed, and while the plan would obviously benefit him (making the Jedi look bad, pushing Anakin closer to the Dark Side, making Republic citizens more afraid -> more docile, etc...) his actual goal is never explained, and it’s weird that he’d go to such extreme lengths for results so minimal that we’re never told what they are.

So Palpatine asks Dooku to kidnap him at the Festival of Lights on Naboo. Dooku hires Moralo Eval to design a giant box-thingy to test bounty hunters to hire the best of them to kidnap Palpatine. Moralo then gets arrested to alert the Republic that something is afoot, and hires Cad Bane to break him out. Obi-Wan - undercover to learn Moralo’s plan - goes with them. They evade capture and go to Serenno, and Bane and Obi-Wan have to pass the box-thingy test. The level of brainkarked logic here... Truly on par with Megamind, Gru and Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

Setting aside the insane plot holes and utterly nonsensical behavior of the villains, the Box itself is moronic from a plot perspective. It’s insanely complex, obviously incredibly expensive and would have taken months (more like years but it’s a short war) to make when it’s not even needed for the dastardly plot! Just hire some guys who have already proven themselves against Jedi! Throw cash at Bane and Embo and a few others! Maybe attack them with your saber and see how they do! 

And after all that, Dooku still ends up trying to kidnap Palpatine on his own. I can’t even... 

So why does the Box exist? Well, apart from being a nerdy callback to Cube, giving us a good thrill and being generally awesome to look at, it has actual narrative purpose within the SW universe.

The box is Naboo.

What the Box lacks in plot relevance, it makes up for with its heavily symbolic meaning. It very closely follows Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon’s experiences on Naboo - but only certain parts, which I’ll explain later.

We start with clean, sterile environments, SW’s favored way of showing villainy.

Then we have the protagonists locked in a room as dioxis, a poison gas, pours in.

And then they escape... this way.

(Okay, here the shaft is down, not up. And it’s not a ventilation shaft per say, it’s the designed escape route. Same difference).

We then skip most of TPM (namely, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discovering the droid army, finding Padmé, leaving Naboo, landing on Tatooine, going to Coruscant, etc, etc) to come back to Naboo and go directly to the lightsabers and catwalks.

(Note: in both scenes, Obi-Wan has to propel himself from a catwalk.)

In TPM and TCW, the catwalks are immediately followed by ray shields

And we finally end with the last scenes. Now, they don’t look the same but they are structurally identical. 

Obi-Wan is faced with a challenge unsuited for his abilities (facing Darth Maul // shooting three moving targets when he’s far more skilled with a blade than a blaster) on a narrow space above a melting pit/pit of fire. 

He first watches someone die failing to complete the task...

 ... and has to do it himself, faring much better than expected (holding his own against Maul // shooting all the targets easily). 

He then almost falls to his death and gets saved unexpectedly.

And then there’s the final showdown.

In both scenes, Obi-Wan is angry. And in TCW Dooku eggs him on, banking on his anger. (More on that later.) In both cases though, he centers himself and is able to overcome both his opponent and his own unbalance. But in TCW, he doesn’t go for the kill, because he doesn’t need to. 

The Box, as a literal character-explorator ex-machina, thus shows us Obi-Wan’s growth.  

In TPM, Obi-Wan follows Qui-Gon’s lead. In TCW, he is the leader. He identifies the gas, makes the plans. He doesn’t fall from catwalks anymore - he runs atop moving ones. He doesn’t stay stuck behind ray-shields, he finds the solution. (Btw, how did Moralo know what blood type Derrown the Exterminator was? There was a 50% chance of him dying - thus killing all of the bounty hunters. Was that an acceptable outcome? TCW I need answers!) He doesn’t slay his foes, because he’s become powerful enough, skilled enough and wise enough to survive (and win) without needing to kill.

He’s grown - and, even more interestingly, he’s also stayed the same. In the previous episodes, we see some of the dark aspects of Obi-Wan. How he - like all Force-wielders, all people - could lose himself if he stopped maintaining absolute control.

But in the Box, surrounded by the worst criminals of the Galaxy, the most ruthless, worthless people, he’s still kind and tries his best to keep them alive.

The Box is a reminder and a reassurance for the audience that Obi-Wan Kenobi is still there under Rako’s face. He hasn’t lost his compassion, his restrain. He’s still a Jedi. And he’s an awesome, badass one. 

And now, for what it tells us about Dooku! 

It’s much shorter, don’t worry. Basically, Dooku considers that the best way to pick “the best of the best” of the deadliest people in the Galaxy is making them go through what killed his Padawan. There, I’ve broken your hearts, you’re welcome. 

More seriously, Dooku is a manipulative ass. It’s pretty clear that he knows Rako is Obi-Wan, or at the very least suspects it. 

He has an interesting reaction upon learning Rako’s identity, he keeps praising him despite his usual distaste for low-lifes, he smirks secretively after Eval says “I’ll show you who’s weak” (not included there because it’s a close-up of Dooku’s lips and no one wants to see that) and he tells Rako he’s very disappointed when he doesn’t finish off Eval.

[Later]

(Look at this smug asshole - I can’t. YOUR GRANDSON IS THE BEST, WE KNOW, STOP ACTIVELY RUINING HIS LIFE ALREADY.)

(Dooku... why...)

Now obviously Dooku couldn’t have made the Box specifically for Obi-Wan, because it would have to have been designed months before the Council ever decided to send Obi-Wan undercover, but he has no qualms trying to use it to push Obi-Wan to the Dark Side. Ffs Dooku, making your spiritual grandson relive one of the most traumatic events of his life on the off chance that he’ll join you (and desecrate his Master’s memory in doing so) is not okay!

Final tidbits of analysis: I mentioned that not all of TPM is mirrored in the Box. What’s omitted is the droids (even though Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight B1′s and droidekas between the dioxis and the ventilation shafts) and anything pertaining to Sidious (all the political stuff on Coruscant). You’ll also note that the fake lightsabers are orange.

=> The Box distances itself from anything that connects Dooku to Naboo. Red lightsabers are the trademark of the Sith, so they’re not used. The bounty hunters will be facing Jedi, so logically the fake sabers should be green or blue - and yet they’re orange, the color closest to red without being red. It fits with Dooku’s special brand of dishonesty - he always tells bits of the real story but twists them just enough to absolve himself of any fault and to justify his choices. 

(”We can destroy the Sith” -> could maybe destroy Sidious with Obi-Wan, but fails to mention he’s a Sith Lord himself; “the Viceroy came to me for help, that’s why I’m attacking the Republic” -> political idealism is a small part of it, but fails to mention he’s Sidious’ underling and is playing the Viceroy like a fiddle; “Qui-Gon would have joined me” -> maybe, still fails to mention he’s working for the man who ordered Qui-Gon’s death; “I told you everything you needed to know” -> debatable, never said that Palps was Sidious; “Sifo-Dyas understood, that’s why he helped me” -> partly true, doesn’t admit to killing Sifo-Dyas right after getting his help)

So we have a twisted version of Naboo, droid-free (as droids are now irrevocably associated with Dooku, even if that wasn’t the case in TPM) and with sabers that aren’t quite red. Keep in mind that Dooku had already fallen by TPM. (We know this because he killed Sifo-Dyas and created the Clone Army - part of Sidious’ plan - when Valorum was still Chancellor, as per the episode The Lost One.) That means Dooku was (in)directly complicit in Qui-Gon’s death. And the Box doesn’t (=refuses to?) acknowledge that. 

(Also omitted in the Box are the Gungans and Tatooine. It makes sense, because Dooku probably wouldn’t have the full details regarding those parts of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s missio as they weren’t as public, and would see them as irrelevant if he did. He utterly despises Anakin, and Gungans are the type of people he always dismisses out of hand). 

Anyway, that’s my two cents about the Box. To quote Lucas...

“It’s like poetry. It rhymes.”

Thanks to @lethebantroubadour @impossiblybluebox​ @nonbinarywithaknife @ytoz​ and @kaitie85386​ for voting for this one. Next up is a compilation of the Jedi being casually tactile with each other (because they’re a warm and affectionate culture, dammit).

Also thanks to @laciefuyu​ for giving me gifs I ended up not using ^^; you rock anyway!

[dreamsmp-au-ideas]

I’ve fallen down the Theater AU Rabbit Hole while putting off doing any of my own actual writing and I have a couple ideas to purpose.

Tommy was still a part of SMP Earth, like a canon aspect of it. It’s just that people tend to forget since Tommy was technically still in middle school at the time of SMP Earth being an on going thing. That being said he was literally there all the time which is what actually led to him joining the program when he became a freshman. While Business Bay started off as something small and a fun little joke to appease to gremlin child he ended up dragging in a couple other friends (Deo, Luke, Bitzel, and Wisp) and somehow through sheer force of will he managed to make himself a main character which ended up transferring to Dream SMP.

The Admins on SMP Earth much like Dream were considered “Gods” within the story. Wilbur was the leader of the trio who created SMP Earth. For one reason or another Tommy challenged one of the admins to a fight and because somehow he keeps winning backstage solitaire games without knowing anything about how the game works he genuinely managed to Kill God with an army of four, himself included. (Wisp still does his betrayal and improved betrayals towards Tommy’s character slowly becomes a running gag. Wisp was a senior at the time of SMP Earth and he joined Tommy for a couple sessions because he thought Tommy had a lot of potential. He turned out to be right, and the betrayal was more so a push to get Tommy to do his own thing instead of clinging to Wisp because he was a senior and Tommy kinda looked up to him. After he genuinely won against Josh the theater agreed it was a good idea and the child must stay.)

Deo was actually a freshman that Tommy had been friends with but sadly had to transfer schools once Tommy actually got to high school. Luke and Bitzel also ended up going to different high schools but the group still all keep in touch even if they can’t act together anymore.

After Techno semi canonized SMP Earth they decided to go the full mile and say that all of their plays are connected. The characters are just reincarnated again and again and SMP Earth happened a long time before Dream actually came into power and started creating the Dream SMP. Techno so far is the only one to actually remember his past lives which has aided to the Technoblade Never Dies jokes, saying that it’s actually because he’s immortal. At least half the cast thinks that, the other half doesn’t because if he was actually immortal surely he’d remember the rest of the countries which his character obviously doesn’t.

This has had an interesting side effect where if Tommy’s character ever remembers SMP Earth it’s silently agreed upon that he’ll inherit the admin powers he got from killing Josh. So far every single writer for the show including Tommy himself during the arcs he’s written has denied any possibility of his character remembering. 

This becomes especially interesting when we talk about the canon meeting theater au. C!Tommy has no clue what in the hell SMP Earth is while t!Tommy at some point looks c!Dream dead in the eyes (after t!Dream plate smashes the mask and then confiscates the remains) and tells him “Don’t make yourself the second God I’ve had to kill” and there isn’t a single person in the room who can tell if that’s a joke or dead serious. Techno is proud. 

Speaking of Techno I like the idea of c!Techno and t!Techno getting into theological debates where t!Techno always wins. T!Techno recognizes his character to be an unreliable narrator and that pure anarchy is a terrible idea. Communities created with anarchist ideals aren’t bad as long as there are ways to keep everyone from going feral, but pure anarchy is just 2b2t and t!Techno knows that. Eliminating tyranny through the abolition of all government just leads to the tyranny of those who are physically the most strongest and can subjugate everyone else. It doesn’t fix anything and this is an arguing point both Technos fight over a lot.

T!Techno much like t!Dream has also threatened both his character self and c!Dream for so much as looking at the children wrong. This Techno while still a bit awkward very much loves his racoon brother and if c!Dream lays a single finger on his Tommy then he gets to go back to the SMP without an arm. In fact, t!Techno, t!Dream, and t!Wilbur probably all just stand super menacingly in front of the Freshman while they glare down half the character versions of their friends and fellow castmates. They know Niki and Jack are trying to murder Tommy. They know everyone’s faults probably better than the people themselves do. They wrote those faults. And ain’t anything bad happening to their kids.

-------------------

Oh these are all good. All of them are so good. Especially with the lore in this. Everyone being connected to the plays they made because of reincarnations? Perfect. And then we have c!Techno and t!Techno getting into theological debates and I love those.

All the Theater kids know their characters and their faults. Nothing bad is happening to the kids and they’ll be sure of it.

[prettylittlebutterflie]

It All Started With A Break

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31840603

Okay, so I have fallen down the rabbit hole known as MariBat and I just can't stop all the ideas I have because of this and decided that enough is enough and I am doing it.

This is my very first fanfic - or any fic actually - but I hope you guys like it and be WARNED that some of you may find some part of this story that's similar with another and that may've been because I really liked the idea when I read it and wanna have a kinda similar thing here and the same goes with some trope of this fanfic in the future, but I'll do my best to keep it unique. I am also new to the DCU, but I'm doing research and planning to binge watch stuff and if you could please help this poor soul find a way to navigate and somehow get an idea on how that universe work (especially abt the batfam), I'll be forever grateful to thy savior.

This fic is canon until S4 Ep 1&2 (Truth & Lie) of MLU and as for the rest, I'll let you guys know.

So yeah, that's all. Enjoy and hope you guys like it. (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

P.S. Sorry I kinda ranted, this is my first time actually posting smth so bear with me people

SYNOPSIS

It’s been four years ever since Hawkmoth, who now goes by the name Shadow Moth, began his reign of terror in Paris. Four years worth of akumas that have brought pain and suffering. Four years of no rest in controlling their emotions, afraid of what may come if they were controlled.

After four long years, the Miraculous Team can finally see a ray of light. Everything they have sacrificed for that one goal they all share is finally going to be repaid… Not.

Locating Hawkmoth was easier said than done, and the frustration is finally getting to them. With that, it was decided that they need a break from their hero lives — ok, maybe not. After all, Shadow Moth is proving himself to be a workaholic (like dude, don’t you have anything better to do than destroy everyone’s schedule?) — but anyways, it was clear. THEY. NEED. A. BREAK. Away from Paris. Away from Hawkmoth. Away from the frickin akumas.

So yeah, that’s how it was decided (more like forced) that they are going to America to relax, let loose, and have some fun. After all, who knows, maybe a break is all they need to get things to start getting better — or worse.

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PROLOGUE

“Alright. So, we are going to take a break—”

“For two months.”

“For two months. And because it’s supposed to be a break, that means—”

“No thinking of anything Moth related.”

“No thinking of anything Moth rela— Moth related?”

“You know, Hawkmoth, Red Moth, Shadow Moth, those Moths.”

“Right. Moths. Aside from Moths, it also means—’

“No thinking of akumas.”

“No thinking of akumas. For this entire break, we’re not going to think about—”

“Anything Miraculous related.”

“Anything Miraculous related. Alya, do you really need to do that every time I’m about to say it?”

“It’s because she knows you. We know you. It’s ridiculous, utterly ridiculous, how you always promise not to worry about something, especially anything Miraculous related, just to break it the moment anything related to it comes up. So, yes. She needs to say it and repeat it as much as possible for it to go through that head of yours.”

“Guys, I swear, I’m really going to follow through with this plan. I did agree that we need to unwind ourselves since we’re getting way too stressed and that won’t help us focus on our job.”

“Only after we bugged you about it. Get it? Bugged. Pfft—”

“Hey! Puns are my thing. And you shouldn’t be saying it like that. You’re making it ape-solutely obvious and that makes it not punny anymore”

“Dude, do you really have to do that? That’s so not paw-some. Pfft—”

“All puns aside, it is true that we had to convince you, Mari-hime, to agree on taking a break. Although I rarely take a break from fencing, my Mother and I are aware of the importance of having one and may I also remind you that you were the one who taught us that.”

“And that’s why I told you guys to go have one.”

“But you plus the kitty are the ones who need it the most. Remember what future-me said? About you two always leading us and how she— or rather I am the last one called upon? That means you guys are always gonna work while the rest of us may or may not be needed in some fights.”

“There is a 97.6% probability of you two showing up in fights.”

“Because we have to. It’s our responsibility as the one leading our team.”

“M’lady’s right. Besides, there were only the two of us in the beginning and with all the akumas, we just got used to it.”

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to rest. The music I’m hearing from both of you is filled with the stress you guys have and it doesn’t sound nice. Maybe you two unwinding will help make it more beautiful and even more powerful than before.”

“Fine. We’re all taking a break—”

“Especially you and Adrien.”

“Especially Adrien and I, for a month. Now, does anyone have any ideas on how we're gonna do that?”

“Ooh! Me, me! I have a competition coming up this summer break so I can’t really go anywhere too far since I have some training to do.”

“I’m sticking with the ape. Gotta keep an eye on him if I don’t want him messing up with the timeline. Plus, it’ll be pretty fun beating him up every time he asks for a challenge.”

“Hey!”

“The same goes for me. Someone has to make sure the correct time is recorded with not a single millisecond of it missed. Kwami knows how many times he messes it up whenever he does the recording himself.”

“Okay. So Kim, Alix, and Max will be staying in Paris. Are you guys sure that you’ll be able to take a break even if you’re in the city?”

“Yeah, we're fine. And I am totally beating you next time, little bunny.”

“Whatever. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming, y’know.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, I have an internship in America this coming summer. The one at the Daily Planet. I just got the email and I was finally given an invite!”

“Really? Cool! Told you you’ll get it, babe!”

“Yeah! That’s really awesome, Alya! So I’m assuming you'll be accepting that?”

“You got it, girl! I mean, this is the Daily Planet we’re talkin’ about. I’ll learn so much about writing and journalism there, I’ve just got to take it.”

“So Alya’s going to America. Anyone else with plans outside of the country?”

“There will be an upcoming world-class fencing competition this summer and Mother and I have discussed my participation in it. It will be held in the States as well, specifically Gotham, two weeks before the end of the summer break. Maybe you should participate in it as well, Adrien. That way, you’ll have an excuse for your father to leave the country. I’m sure Mother will be happy to convince him as well to let you participate in it. That way, at the very least, I’ll have someone I know who’ll be an actual challenge.”

“Really? That actually sounds great! I’m sure Father would agree if your mother’s the one who suggested it. Thanks Kagami!”

“Okay. Kagami and hopefully Adrien will have a fencing competition in America too.”

“My Dad is having a tour in America right now. He’ll be having the last one at Metropolis during the summer break. He actually wants me to go with him, but I declined. It’ll be great if we all could go there and see it.”

“Dude, that’s so cool! Maybe you’ll even get to perform with your dad on stage. You did make that song with him that reached the record chart’s top. I’ve even made a playlist based on it.”

“Okay then, that makes Alya, Kagami, Adrien, and Luka going to the States. Chloe, do you also have plans to go there this summer? Maman said your mother was thinking of inviting you to be one of the models in an upcoming fashion show there.”

“She did mention something like that, but I wasn’t really paying attention to details once I found out that it’ll be outside of Paris. I’ll discuss it with her again then I can have my much needed vacation in the States.”

“So now that makes five of you going to America. Nino?”

“Well, I don’t really have any plans this summer. Just chill out and relax, y’know, make some playlist, listen to some music.”

“Ooh! How about you come with us, babe? That’ll be so cool and not all of us will be doing something most of the time while we’re there. You can just chill and relax there and maybe you could even study the kind of music they listen to and make a playlist out of it.”

“I would love to go, but I don’t think I really got the money for it. ‘Sides, my parents might not allow me to go out of the country.”

“You’re already 18 and if your parents ever say no, just tell them that you want to really relax, without keeping your emotions in check and have the freedom to let it out. I’m sure they’ll understand and unlike my Father, they actually listen to you.”

“As for the money, I have some savings and if you want I can lend you some-”

“But-”

“Lend. I’m not just giving it to you. You will have to pay me back, alright? And if you try to say no again, I’m going to insist that you don’t pay me anymore.”

“You sure? You're the best! Thanks, Minette.”

“No problem. So now that makes six of them—”

“Seven.”

“What?”

“Seven. We’re including you.”

“Me? But Alya, I already got plans this summer.”

“Plans? What plans?”

“I was planning on working on my commissions this summer an— Guys, can you all stop rolling your eyes on me and no, Chloe. I don’t need you doing it again.”

“Girl! We all agreed that we’re going to take a break this summer. How does doing your commissions sound like a break to you?”

“You all got your own thing to do this summer and mine just happens to be those. Also, the break was for anything Miraculous related. My commissions don't exactly fall under that.”

“Nope. We actually all agreed that for you, commissions should be added to the list of things you get to take a break from.”

“Adrien! I thought you’re supposed to be my partner? So much for the two of us against the world.”

“He is still your partner alright. But also, as someone who truly cares about you, he decided that you really needed a break. And besides girl, this could be your chance!”

“Chance? What chance?”

“Your pen pal! Doesn’t he live in Gotham? You could go and finally meet him. Who knows? Maybe something might happen.”

“Ooh, he’s from there? That’s awesome! You should totally go meet him. Maybe you could even go on a date or two-”

“A date?! Kim, he’s just a frie-”

“You stop right there, Dupain-Cheng! It’s ridiculous, utterly ridiculous! All of us already had enough with Adrikins always calling you ‘just a friend’ when it’s pretty obvious how totally untrue that statement was. We don’t need you ending up just like him, thank you very much.”

“But he really is-”

“Yeah right. If he really is just a friend, then why do you guys stay up all night talking to each other? You always immediately check your phone whenever a notif comes up and you smile like a love-sick fool whenever you read his messages for you. And don’t get me started on the way you gush about him non-stop.”

“There is something beautiful in your music whenever you talk or even think about him.”

“Your smiles are much brighter compared to before the two of you got to know each other.”

“Markov and I also have a record of your heartbeat and we have observed your heart beating faster whenever we talk about this certain topic.”

“And it's been more than a year since you two have become pen pals. The two of you are now so close that it’s a wonder why you guys still haven’t video-called each other just because you insist for your first time seeing each other to be in person.”

“I think it’s rather romantic. They’ll look into each other’s eyes for the first time then BAM! They’re finally together. But I still plan on giving him a shovel talk the first chance I get. Can’t have him break my twin’s heart without him knowing I have the god of destruction on my side.”

“What do you mean shovel talk- I mean, what even gives you the idea that he thinks of me that way for you guys to assume that we’ll end up in… in that kind of relationship?”

“He’d be an idiot if he still hasn’t fallen in love with you.”

“Literally almost everyone I know had a crush on you or have you forgotten already that my boyfriend’s one of those people?”

“I know for a fact that that’s true since I’ve already admitted that one of my reasons why I began bullying you back then was because I had a crush on you.”

“I must admit, I think I also had the same feeling towards you at the beginning of our friendship until I really got to know Luka and you helped us get together.”

“Oh! There’s also that. Do you actually know just how many people you’ve helped get together, buginette? Alya’s even written an article about it at the Ladyblog of how you are also known as Paris’s own cupid and how all of the couples you’ve paired ended up living a happy life together.”

“Everyone’s been saying how Ladybug’s the next best person they can go to if they ever want to find love after Andre.”

“And yet every time you try to pair yourself with someone, the magic just doesn’t seem to work.”

“So we all decided that we’ll be Ladybug’s cupid and pair her up with the boy she just can’t seem to get off of her head.”

“Now, you coming or what? I won’t be taking the money you’ll be lending me if you say no. I’m only going with these dudes if you also come or else I’ll just end up getting bored when there’s no one who can go around the city with me.”

“...”

“““...”””

“Fine. You guys win—”

“““YES!”””

“So here’s the final plan for the break. Kim, Alix, and Max will be staying in Paris for Kim’s competition, while the rest of us will be going to America doing our own stuff—”

“With you finally meeting your pen pal.”

“Yes. Alright. I’ll go and meet my pen pal. And during the break, no thinking about anything miraculous related. If ever there’s an akuma, only those who’ll be needed will go. Max will bring us to the akuma’s location and if there is anything going on that we can’t be excused of or if the fight goes longer than expected, Alix will bring us back in time making it look like we just went to the toilets, the usuals. Any questions?”

“““Non.”””

“Good. Operation: Taking a Break is good to go.”

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Yay! Finally got to post it. So comments? What do you guys think and who do you think who is saying what? I know there will be new holders in S4, but I decided I’ll either make them a temp or they still don’t know the other’s identities bc of stuff, so yeah. Still thinking abt it. Adios (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31840603

[bailey-reaper]

How about Barok and a detective S/O, who at first treats him like Ema treats Klavier (I'm still laughing over the fact that Klav's description in her wiki is "source of irritation" lmfao) but they realize they're in love with each other when (ignoring the game's events for a bit if it's not a problem) the detective goes out of their way to find and deliver the evidence that will clear him.

Sorry if this is too specific and silly, please feel free to ignore it 😄

Headcanons (Love/Hate Relationship)

Notes: Not too specific at all, anon, nor too silly! I'm always a fan of hijinx! And that kind of playful back and forth is always good fun! It's also a nice alternative spin on the 4th and 5th cases in the 2nd GAA game!

S/O is gender neutral (they/them pronouns). Barok refers to them using petnames.

Content Warnings: GAA spoilers; non-canon content; love/hate relationship

"Stuck up barrister arse!" that's how they'd describe the Reaper, if asked. Yet, they will concede that Barok van Zieks is excellent at what he does and would even go so far as to begrudgingly admit that he's to be respected for that.

But he's just so haughty all the damn time, like there's a stick wedged up his bottom and that's keeping him aloft above all other people -- or, that's what they first thought of him: once they learned a bit more about his past, and the struggles he's had to endure as the 'Reaper of the Bailey', they feel a little less hostile toward him.

As time goes by, they develop an uneasy 'truce' whereby the two work together, but often end up sniping at one another with some form of sassy or snarky comment.

Everyone at the Yard is convinced the two of them are an item, but both are very quick to shut any such nonsense down with vehement denial.

Things continue on well enough, until the day they arrive at work and are told of Inspector Gregson's death, which is shocking enough, but then they're floored when they find out that Lord van Zieks is the one being accused of murder.

"No. That's utter horse shit," they'll utter, "No way that one's a killer." -- and they believe that, too, wholeheartedly. Even if they constantly clash with Barok, and even if his sharp tongue gets on their nerves, there's no doubt in their mind that he's a man of integrity and not the sort to shoot someone he works with.

A quick trip to the prison confirms their initial thoughts: Barok says he didn't do it, and there's nothing in his stance or his eyes to suggest that's a lie. They believe him absolutely and swear that they're going to get to the bottom of who done it.

It surprises Barok just how passionate they are about this –– why would they care what happens to him? Sure, they work together but so what? And, more to the point, why does that make his stomach curl with such a... pleased feeling? Slowly it begins to dawn on him that all along he's enjoyed this one's company and the fact that they believe in him and want to help him has only compounded in his mind that this isn't just camaraderie between colleagues. No. This is a fondness that goes beyond.

From their perspective, the same thoughts are coming to mind: why does it bother them that Barok's in the clink? Why are they so angry that he's been framed? Why are they working their fingers to the bone? Of course, they know the answer to all of those questions: he's become an essential part of their life, and the idea of a world without him is unacceptable.

However, those feelings can wait until a 'not guilty' verdict has been secured.

While Ryū battles in court, they're out in London on the hunt for clues; chasing up leads and following this dark rabbit hole to its very twisted and unsettling depths – they stumble across information that could shake the very foundations of the British Legal system and they uncover cold, hard truths that make them question what kind of swamp Scotland Yard was built on. Yet they refused to be perturbed.

Despite the odds and the hardships, they find the crucial evidence that's needed to establish Barok's innocence and implicate the true culprits in all this –– the blackmail that Stronghart has kept carefully stashed in his office. They found his secret room (hidden behind one of his bookcases in stereotypical fashion) and inside was everything they needed.

In the aftermath, Barok's shocked by the various revelations that had come to light during the trial, but more than anything he's grateful that they were there to help Ryū at the final hour with the proof needed to topple the monster that Mael Stronghart had become.

"You're an exceptional detective," he'll say, without a hint of his usual sass, "I'm deeply grateful to have had you on my side."

"... Well, I realised something important during all of this."

"Oh...? And what might that be, detective?"

"Life without you around would be a hell've a lot more boring and I can't say I want that one bit..." after looking away, blushing, they'll level him with a direct and intent look, "What I'm trying to say is... I think I've gone and fallen in love with you, so, do you maybe want to go on a date some time?"

Barok is visibly flustered by this direct request, and yet it's the first time they've ever seen him smile. It's such a warm, genuine expression; one that suits him, and one they'd like to protect at all costs. He nods, "I... would be honoured."

"Then that's settled!"

In the end, it seems the Yard were right all along –– these two were meant to be together, and they get a hell of a ribbing from the rest of their team when the engagement comes to light (and even more of a ribbing at the wedding reception)!

[lunar-wandering]

horseback

okay so. i may have fallen down the rabbit hole and made. an OC to ship with Wukong and Macaque-

and. i might have been encouraged and written. an entire fanfic of. Wukong teaching her how to ride a horse for fun. (and also Macaque is here too)

so uh. take....this self-indulgent stuff i guess???

i havent actually ridden a horse in like 5 years hdfkjdlkfjlsksd

---

"Could you teach me how to ride a horse?" Sel asked- and proceeded to nearly choke on her own breath laughing at the expression that came over Wukong's face. "What's with that look?"

"...I'm trying to figure out if you're making fun of me or not." Wukong said, leaning back on his cloud. "Why, exactly, are you asking me how to ride a horse?"

"Because you're the only one around here, and you're the only person I know of who has some horse experience." Sel said, before adding, "No offense intended."

"....I mean...I do know how to ride." Wukong sat up straight, pulling a bag of peach chips out of nowhere (and really, where had he gotten those, Sel had thought she and Macaque had hidden all of them during their last prank war- he better not be eating his own hair again-) and munching on them as he thought. "Why the sudden interest? Did you watch a horse movie or something?"

"I'm a selkie, Wukong." Sel leveled the Monkey King with a flat stare. "I don't exactly encounter land animals much, of course I'm curious about it."

"...You did watch a horse movie, didn't you."

"It was the only thing on TV at the time-"

-

A week later, and the both of them stood in a clearing, beside a brown appaloosa horse, Sel softly running a hand down it's neck, quietly in awe at the texture of it's fur. Wukong gave her a small smile before jumping right into the plan of the day; teaching a selkie how to ride a horse.

"Right, so first you gotta learn how to mount the horse-" Wukong took one of his hairs, creating a small step stool with it. "Since this is your first time we'll use a step stool to give you an extra boost."

"Couldn't you just lift me up?" Sel asked, getting up onto the step stool anyways.

"You want to be able to ride even when I'm not around, don't you?" Wukong asked, "It's not really that hard anyways- well, this would be easier if we had a saddle-"

"Once again, you could just magic up a saddle."

"If you can ride bareback you can ride a saddle." Wukong insisted.

"Oh, so it's like the whole driving thing- if you can drive a manual you can drive an automatic." Sel said, a smirk on her face. Wukong just looked confused.

"...I....don't know what you're talking about."

"...Wait do you not know how to dri-"

"Moving on!" Wukong interrupted, backflipping onto his cloud so that he was the same height as Sel. "Now, you can grab onto the horse's hair if you want, just try not to tug, okay? Place your hand here- yes like that- now jump up and over in one smooth motion."

"Not a very detailed explanation I see...." Sel did, but still, through some means, she managed to do get up and onto the horse.

"Alright, good- you're a little bit too far forwards though." Wukong said, and Sel scooched back a little. "Perfect- alright, now you've just gotta sit up straight!"

The glare Sel gave him was downright lethal.

"....I wasn't told there'd be posture involved here." She said, attempting to straighten her back, not doing the very best job of it.

"It's necessary- look okay, just. Raise your shoulders." Wukong said, "Now push them back to just slightly behind your ears and set them down."

Sel followed his instructions- and she had to admit, she felt a lot more comfortable on the horse now than she had before.

"Think you're ready to try moving?" Wukong asked, creating a pair of reins, as well as a long rope to lead the horse with. "Here, you've gotta hold the reins like this-"

He softly put his own hands over top of hers, and Sel smiled, holding back her want to comment on the close contact as he gently moved her hands into the right position. She'd had practice- she'd long since started tuning out how close Wukong tended to get to her. She'd never considered herself as being touchstarved, and still didn't think she was now, but the Monkey King definitely was, and she found herself feeling almost...saddened whenever he would seem to rein himself in, pulling out of hugs and leaning away from contact he had initiated, as though he was afraid she would start to dislike it. (The result of a bad experience, or the result of 500 years by himself? Sel had no idea.) Still though, she decided to welcome any form of contact with welcome arms.

Wukong must've noticed her smile though, as she could just barely see the hints of a blush on his face as he pulled his hands away.

"Uh- okay, so um, now that you've got the grip right, it's time to try moving." He said, hopping off of his cloud to stand on the ground, holding the lead in his hands. "Just- follow the horse's movements, okay? She's a pretty easy ride, not as bumpy as some horses, but you'll still want to try and move with the rhythm of the horse, okay?"

"...Okay." Sel said, and Wukong started walking, clicking his tone to cue the horse into walking as well. It was a little...weird at first, but after a bit, Sel found that she was starting to get used to it.

...She did have one question though.

"Where did you even find a horse this obedient anyways?" Sel asked, "Surely she's not wild."

"Ah- no." Wukong didn't look back at her, nor did he stop walking, and Sel couldn't help but sense that the Monkey King seemed...almost sheepish. "I- stole her from a nearby stable-"

"You what-"

"It's fine! I'm going to bring her back!" He quickly added, "The people who work there know me- it's fine."

Sel had the sneaking suspicion that it was probably not fine, but kept quiet.

-

"So am I a bonafide horse rider now?" Sel asked, after two days of Wukong helping her.

"Psh, not really." Wukong said, "I mean, you are learning rather quick, but you can't be genuinely called a true horse rider until you've fallen off your horse at least like, ten times."

"Okay???" Sel confusedly started leaning to the side, intent on sliding off. Upon seeing this, Wukong dropped the lead, the horse stopping in it's tracks immediately, as Wukong rushed to grab onto Sel's wrist, preventing her from tipping to the side.

"Not like that." He hissed, keeping his grip steady around her wrist, only letting go once Sel had righted herself. "It has to be a natural, accidental fall, the kinda thing that just happens over the years."

"..Oh." Sel said, "...It would've been nice for you to lead with that."

"I didn't think I'd have to!"

-

"Well, she's certainly picked up on this quick." Macaque said, standing beside Wukong, the two of them watching has Sel rode the horse across the field. Over the course of two weeks, she'd managed to work up to a trot (she hadn't gotten to the point of attempting a canter), and could now ride without Wukong leading the horse.

"She's a fast learner." Wukong said, "Unlike you- don't think I've forgotten how you refused to let me teach you how to ride."

"I just didn't think it was important, that's all." Macaque leaned away from Wukong slightly, noting a recognizable glint in his eyes. "...And it's still not important, I don't really need to ride at all-"

"Hey, Sel- could you come here for a moment?!" Wukong yelled, and Macaque, realizing that the other was up to something, turned around, trying to get away. He was stopped as Wukong grabbed hold of his wrist using his tail, with a surprisingly tight grip. Sel slowed the horse to a stop in front of them.

"What's up?" She asked, either not noticing or purposefully ignoring how Macaque was struggling to get out his wrist out of Wukong's grip. Wukong summoned his cloud, stepping up onto it, pulling Macaque along with him.

"I'm gonna need you to scooch back just a bit." Wukong said, and as soon as Sel had followed through- "Perfect."

He grabbed Macaque by the waist (and Macaque would firmly deny squeaking, but both Wukong and Sel knew what they had heard), lifted him up, and safely deposited him on the horse, in front of Sel. For her part, Sel immediately adjusted, wrapping her arms around Macaque to keep her hold on the reins, smirking a little at how she could feel Macaque stiffen. She couldn't see his face, but from how tense his back was (as well as the shade of pink his six ears were turning), she could gander a guess. Wukong, who was now back on the ground, holding the lead he had just created, could see the other monkey's expression though, and he outright laughed at it.

"Man- Sel, you should see his face!" He giggled, seemingly ignorant to the fact that if he was in Macaque's position he'd probably react the same way. Sel rolled her eyes.

"I don't need to see his face." She said, "I can tell by his ears just fine!"

That comment seemed to smack Macaque out of whatever stupor he'd seemingly fallen into, as in one blink, his six ears had turned back into two, the pink colour vanishing with them. Sel couldn't contain her "aw..." of disappointment, she honestly liked seeing Macaque with his glamours down. (It had taken a long time for him to even be comfortable enough to be around her with his glamours down.....she knew how much trust he was giving to her when he did so. It made her heart feel warm and fluttery on the inside- and she knew Wukong also felt the same way whenever he spied the shadow monkey with his glamours down. Still though, she couldn't fault him for putting them back up now though.)

"I hate you." Macaque hissed, and even though she couldn't see his face, Sel could just sense the glare he was giving Wukong. "I hate you both so much."

Despite what he said though, he made no attempt at getting off of the horse, staying perfectly still.

"Heh, sure, we'll pretend any of us believe that." Wukong said, and, ignoring Macaque's indignant sputtering, he turned, clicking his tongue and starting to walk, leading the horse behind him. Macaque startled, slightly off balance, and Sel pressed her arms into his a little more, to keep him from falling off.

"Relax." Sel whispered, "Neither of us will let you fall."

"Unless it's funny, of course." Wukong added, and Sel had the feeling that if her arms weren't on either side of Macaque, he would slide off the horse just to tackle Wukong.

As it was, he stayed in his position, perfectly silent.

Sel, sensing that Macaque probably wasn't really in the mood for conversation (he was probably still recovering from the shock of how he ended up in this position to be honest), let herself start daydreaming, knowing that Wukong could easily lead the horse without her needing to steer. Wukong, not willing to let there be total silence, started humming a tune that Sel couldn't quite recognize, but was still pleasant.

The moment ended as Wukong suddenly froze, the horse obediently stopping with him. Sel jolted out of her daydream from the sudden lack of movement, feeling Macaque do the same.

"...Ah." Wukong said, turning to face the both of them with a nervous smile. "Um. Sorry but uh- I may have just remembered that I. Think I promised to train with MK today?"

Macaque snorted, while Sel pulled out her phone, checking her calendar.

"...You were meant to start training with him about ten minutes ago." She said, "If you hurry up, you can probably explain it away as just having been busy with the monkeys."

Without another word, Wukong was gone, Sel feeling a slight breeze rustle her hair in the Monkey King's wake.

For a moment, both Sel and Macaque remained sitting on the horse, staring at the spot Wukong had just been standing in.

"...Sel?" Macaque asked.

"Yeah?"

"....I don't know how to get down."

[oveliagirlhaditright]

So, while I don’t hate Near or the successors arc at all. I definitely get why Death Note fans feel almost insulted that L was out there from the beginning thinking that Light was Kira, but the task force wouldn't believe him. And then Near says Light is Kira, and all of a sudden some of them agree.

It’s like: L: I know I have no evidence--and rather, the evidence may even say it’s impossible for Light to be Kira. But isn’t that a little too perfect--but I’m telling you that Light is Kira.

The Task Force: Gosh, Ryuzaki. Stop being crazy. And would you stop torturin Light, already?! God!

Near: Light is Kira.

The Task Force: Huh. You’re right!

Getting off topic here... but it’s kind of interesting L did know Light was Kira, even without any evidence. And as TV Tropes said, it’s a bit unclear if that’s because he’s that good a profiler, or if--chillingly--he thinks that Kira would do what he would, in his shoes. Or both.

I think it’s a little of both. L does seem to be a terrific profiler. But there does seem to be a little of L seeing himself within Kira. Like, L thinking that if someone is as smart to outmaneuver, they must be as smart as him and think like him some. We probably see this a little in the following lines. “Kira is childish, and hates to lose.” “How do you know that? “...Well, because I’m also childish and hate to lose.”

And it’s very interesting that for whatever reason, L can see past all of Light’s pretty little pretenses, that no one else ever had been before. I may be misremembering things. But doesn’t L have a line of, “Because I can read your thoughts, Light Yagami. I can see right into your soul”? I seem to remember that from a few Lawlight videos I’ve watched. Because I’ve fallen that far down the rabbit hole. But I may be misremembering things. ^_^’

And I really sort of segued from the main point here, but oh well.

[struwwelzeter]

For a variety of reasons, I got into a bit of a rabbit hole about Richard's guitars, and my brain went "oh I know someone who will probably have opinions on this" so essentially, if you feel like it, pretty please talk RZK guitars to me? Favourite? Retired one that needs to come back? (Though I probably already know the answer, that fancy black one?)

Allrighty, buckle up because this is gonna be long. After much consideration I have decided to split it up in two parts because I don’t think I can make it fit into one post that is still vaguely tumblr appropriate, and I really wanted to do it some sort of justice. I still feel like I don’t. But oh well. Full disclaimer, I am NOT a guitarist, but I lived with a few, two of my best friends are pro players and I’m a sponge so I kind of soaked some bits and pieces up over the last 15 years. But in case any lost guitar hero finds this and disagrees with me over the finer points of tone wood: I know honey, I oversimplified, and I am wrong. I tried? 💜 for easier read I formatted everything specific to Richard’s guitars normally and anything general about electric guitars in cursive.

My main sources besides watching about a 100 a month of guitar tube videos (that is youtube for guitarists) with my ex, my main sources will be this interview and this.

Richard Z. Kruspe (of Rammstein and Emigrate)’s Guitars - In Order of Appearance, Part 1/2

Diamant (Les Paul Style)

“I traded the acoustic for a guitar called Diamant, which was like a Les Paul version in East Germany.” - RZK

Now I’m skipping the acoustic he started out with, because it’s basically impossible to know what that was, and go straight into the electric. Now presumably, it would have been something like this, a soviet build Les Paul rip off. The irony is that these still go for several thousands up on reverb today for being historical and collectors pieces. The thing is, that while anything east build might have used cheaper materials, I would assume this thing isn’t worse than any of the beginner/intermediate models sold today, if not better, and kids all over the world do decent stiff with those.

Something general about electric guitars is that you don’t really so much play the guitar, you play an entire system. The instrument doesn’t make the sound, it only influences it. You play a guitar - but you even more so play the amp. Which makes this a bit tricky, because an e-guitar is a slab of wood and a copper coil, and amps are way more complex. You can make the exact same guitar sound so many ways. Still - there are tendencies. The fact how and why and to which degree the shape and wood of a solid body (a guitar without a hollow wood piece) influences the sound is highly debated and can get a bit esoteric sounding to sane people non-guitarists, but there are some differences in how the general set up and build of the guitar changes things, and tendencies how they are traditionally outfitted. Les Paul style guitars are normally humbucker guitars, Stratocasters and Telecasters normally are outfitted with single coils. Usually a guitarist can switch - between using the bridge, the neck, or both (or more) pick ups and depending on where the pick up is located they pick up different frequencies, different aspects of the sound. Humbuckers produce a richer, deeper or fuller sound than single coils. Very roughly speaking, think the Stones vs. Metallica.

Fender Stratocaster

“Then in East Germany, we had this imagination to get one of the great guitars, to me it was always the Fender Stratocaster because it was the Jimi Hendrix guitar. I didn’t know anything about pickups or humbuckers or whatever. So there was this guy that I met in a café in my old hometown and he was buying all these books because he could get all the books out through customs and he would store them in my apartment. So we became kind of acquainted. He would come over and pick up the books. So one time he came over and I asked him if he could get me a guitar and bring it over. In East Germany, if you exchange money from East to West it would be like 1 East mark and 20 West mark. SO everything I had, I changed it to West Mark and I gave him the money and I gave him the money and asked him to please buy me a Fender Stratocaster. I gave him the money and I didn’t hear anything for like three months, nothing. I wasn’t able to call because we didn’t have phones and stuff like that – it was a different time. So I thought fuck, I gave him 1400 west mark and now he’s gone and never coming back. [...] Then my imagination was so high, I thought the guitar would just play by itself and I wouldn’t really have to do anything, which I found out was bullshit. I was really happy that I had the guitar but it wasn’t really the sound that I had in mind.” - RZK

The first time I heard that story, I literally went “no, no, no, don’t be stupid, don’t give him your money, you won’t even like that guitar, stupid, lost dumbass.” I can not, for the life of me, imagine him play anything other than humbuckers. He apparently does use single coils for some things today again in the studio, but still, it’s so obviously wrong. He did play one again sometime during the late 90s, but I couldn’t find anything on the pick ups he used with that, but can hardly imagine he kept the original, unless he needed it for a specific sound maybe in one or two songs. I get it though. For many, many people the Fender Stratocaster is THE guitar. Jimi Hendrix is the main reason for that, but it’s also the countless idols that picked it up after him for the same reason, people who ended up plastered on the walls of angsty teenagers in their own right. This totally has to do with the whole amp thing aswell. You see your idol play that type of guitar ... but it’s not even half of the sound, and it won’t sound the same. Maybe probably they changed the pick ups, they have an effect rig, the spend hours fiddling with the knobs on an amp you can never afford. It’s never the same. Which is why ...

Fender Telecaster Black Gold

Then I had a guitar that I was very fond of. It was an older black and gold telecaster – there weren’t very many of them made at that point. I put a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck SH-4 in there, like a humbucker. I remember it was like my beauty guitar and I needed someone to put that pickup in and I was with Paul and he had more experience with that stuff than me so he would get out a hammer and a chisel and he start banging away on it and I was like ‘Fuck! Fuck! Don’t do that!’ but we put the thing in there and it was one of my favorite guitars” - RZK

... this one first didn’t really make sense for me for him. It’s even more a classic single coil guitar than the Strat is, and it only really started making sense for me when I learned he Paul indeed put a Humbucker in there. It’s a stunningly beautiful guitar, and weirdly non-modern for him. I don’t know why and this is completely instinctual on my part, but I find it fitting he played it during that time after the wall came down, which seems to have been a rough time for him generally, it seems like a somehow super emotional guitar, this relic. Telecasters were some of the first electrics ever build, it’s such a pioneer, but it’s also one that alot of punk bands used, possibly because they were old and cheap in the 70s and noisy and people customized it and put other pick ups in. The whole putting a chisel to it and adding a humbucker into it is such a “I’m gonna make whatever I have fit for me, and I’ll love it” move. If you look at it, a double coil pick up is really something you have to force to go in there, you really have to break it open. There is also this:

“... and then I think I had to sell it because I needed drugs or something. I was really sad that I sold it because I was at a very low point in my life.” - RZK

If I would get the chance to do one thing only for him to thank him for his music, I would go back in time to that Richard who is just sad about selling that guitar and hug him, and tell him he doesn’t need to worry, because they will name guitars after him in the future. It breaks my heart so fucking much. But of course, it’s what opens the doors to what happens next, which is ...

ESP 901

“That led me to my very first convention in Frankfurt. With guitars, it is like with women, you have to fall in love. Sometimes you get a guitar and you fall in love later but there has to be some sort of connection with it. So I was walking around that convention and I saw that guitar hanging at the ESP stand. It was a 901 ESP Sunburst and I was looking at it because it was such a beauty. And I was walking around for hours – they probably thought I was some weird guy who wants to steal the guitar. I bought that guitar and that’s how I got connected with ESP.” -RZK

He might have fallen for it because it is pretty, but it did come with a ESP double humbucker set up, with an added condensator to muffle up the sound, although not yet an active one (more on that later). It was a 90s metal guitar, one of those things marketed to the Metallica generation, something loud and heavy and full. Also, and this is where I will put in another general insert, there is something else about the choice of electric guitars that we haven’t talked about yet.

Now, I’ve discussed that you can push or pull the sound of a electric quite far in one or the other direction with what pick ups you use, what effects, what amps. But what this ignores is that especially standing up a guitar is a really shitty asymmetrical piece of equipment. And what that does to your body is that it needs to fit you, your hands, and your playing style. Some people prefer it chunky, others like sender. Guitarists, especially the 80s shredders, like to talk about a “fast neck”, which is another one of those things that get slightly esoteric, but which usually means a slimmer neck and slightly bigger frets, that need less way for your fingers to press until the string gets stopped. Someone who plays very bendy blues might dislike that and prefer something to dig in their fingers more down to the fretboard to get more control over how they bend the string. There are different neck profiles, there are different neck lengths, and all of it contributes to how comfortable someone might find their guitar.

I am mentioning this, because until today, Richard’s guitars are build very similarly to that ESP 901. His Eclipse Model is a tad different (again, more on that later), but the one he uses the most, the RZK I, has the same neck scale, similar frets, and that comfortable ESP slender neck. Even the shape seems to be inspired by turning it upside down. He has said in interviews that he hasn’t got very strong hands, and it makes perfect sense to me. I bought my own electric (again, more on that later) purely because I wanted to own one and not even so much because I ever had any real ambitions of learning to play it, but my friends at the time (10 years ago now) forced me to try out alot (!) of models (despite me knowing what I wanted), and the only guitars that I tried that had slimmer necks were Ibanez guitars, which in turn were wider. Ironically Frankfurt is my hometown, so the place to try a lot of different models is That exact convention Richard went to, and I haven’t skipped a Musikmesse in the last 15 years. I was at atleast one were Richard was too (I just didn’t care at the time, yikes), and it somehow greatly pleases me he found “his” guitar at that particular convention. Things have changed in recent years, but electric guitars always were in Hall 4.01, with ESP being left of center in the middle, and I don’t know, I can just see him walking in circles around it, and it makes me so emotional for him because it’s what musicians do at that place. It’s really loud, everyone is playing, there is someone better noodling around at every corner, and it can be quite an intimidating setting I think. And every year you see that one kid coming back and back again to that same stand, staring at that one guitar until they finally work up the nerve and ask to try it (or the staff takes pity on them and offer). And it’s the same everytime, they think “oh god they must think I am crazy” but really, nobody does. Everyone in that hall who owns a heart knows what those dreams are made of, and all it maybe does inspire is a “oh god, I hope that one makes it”. I digress. I think it’s more common now to look for different neck styles and companies started caring about it, but especially coming from Fender and Gibson guitars, that neck is honestly just very, very nice for weaker hands.

This is where I will stop, because it makes a good moment for a break and this post is honestly getting too out of hand otherwise. There will be a part 2 - where Richard starts using active pick ups, starts playing my favorite guitar in the whole wide world (and stops playing it), and finally, set up his own signature.

This is him with that 901 though: when he must have had it pretty much brandnew, while he used it, and right before he sold it.