#I’ve been giving out so much lore hahaa-

[chaosduckies]

What was Liam's first experience with a sizeshifter?

Ooo I wouldn’t like to give too much away (for angst reasons later one ehehe-)

Liam did not have a good first experience at all. (very bad childhood) His dad and mom are shifters (she can shrink but never does, and his dad can grow) and his dad used his abilities to abuse Liam and his mom a lot. He basically became an alcoholic :/

Shifters in this world can’t pass their abilities to their children, it just kind of happens at almost any age, which is why Liam isn’t a shifter like his parents and why he didn’t just run away when he could Again, I don’t really want to say too much for plot reasons (I am still writing it!) but Liam will eventually talk about it.

Thank you for the ask anon! :D

[dualityaskredfield]

What Could/Would Have Been

So like I said, I’ve been looking over my Duality stuff a lot lately and it’s amazing what a couple of years of perspective can give you.  While I still feel my story was really strong, good lord did I cringe several times at my panels.  If I had no time limit and I could feasibly turn out 70 pages per chapter, maybe they wouldn’t have been so bad, but oh well.

I’m going to write under the cut some things I would have changed and where I had planned to take Sean’s story.  Long post to follow.

So. Woo. Round 5.  What a mess that was.  If I could change things, thing first thing I would have done would have been to completely redone Round 5.  I still wanted to bring the other Nords in but I rushed it too much (because I had no idea how many rounds we were going to have in total) and it made no sense for the timing.  Sean should never have broken out of jail and that’s one of the hahaa cringe things I see looking back.

I should have taken the time in the round to explore Sean’s insecurities that were brought up in earlier rounds.  One of which I mentioned a couple of times but never in plain writing was that Sean was afraid he was becoming less and less of a Nord the longer he stayed in Unova.  In drabble writing, Sean would always mention how “Nords never got cold,” but the truth was that Sean would get cold. And that scared him. A lot.

He also made a good number of friends with the Warrior Bros (Eric, Gaen, and Feliks) so he felt very conflicted after Round 4/start of Round 5 when his same friends seemed to have betrayed him and locked him up under Einarr’s order.  Granted, Sean was not in a good place after the death of Claymore.  It would have been better if Sean had limited contact with the other Warrior Bros while he was locked up to try and figure out where he stood with them.  Originally I wanted Sean to believe that the world was against him at this point, and that he had nothing left but the North, which is why he was so ecstatic to meet the other Nords.

Flea also would have been captured during the aftermath of Round 4 and would have tried to get Sean to talk about why he was there, etc. More forcing Sean to try and figure out or at least bring to light some of the many insecurities he had.  Eventually, the time would come where both he and Flea would have to be dealt with, but the thieves guild would already be ready to help Flea escape.  In the chaos that takes place, Sean would have had to decide between keeping Flea from escaping too, thus handicapping Reinhardt still (who was the big threat still in his eyes) or escaping himself.  Eventually Sean would have managed to get away, perhaps with some help from his friends, which only raised more confused feelings with him.  I feel like that would have been a better way to get Sean away from Castelia and out on his own than what I did.

So after that, what do we have? I can’t remember the theme for Round 6, but Sean meeting the Nords would have went about the same as I posted; with Sean also befriending Saber the Absol on the way.  Sean would warn them about Reinhardt wanting to summon one of the dragons and that would bring their travels West to where Team Black was hanging out.  Saber, however, wasn’t interested in any of this at all.  She was aware that Something Bad was coming up and Sean was the only one who was remotely listening to her.  In escaping the Black forces, Saber leads Sean away to where she was trying to bring him this whole time: to where Kyurem was starting to awaken.

Meanwhile, the brothers would have continued on their course to awaken their respective dragons and the two forces would clash; but still with equal power to each other.  Their fight could have been seen all over Unova and there was no ignoring it.  While the two dragons struggled against one another, the Princes’ forces would be rallying for one final attack against the other; however with the White forest haven been burned, and the Mage’s scattered after the Driftveil bridge incident, both sides were considerably weakened.

During what was to be the final fight, Sean would return, and he wouldn’t be alone.  This time, he brought Kyurem.  Upon meeting Kyurem (who was awake enough to speak at this point) he offered the dragon a deal: help him stop this conflict and it could take his soul and the soul of one of the princes (as was required for the dragon’s help; according to my lore, an ancient king of Unova have his soul to Kyurem to freeze Nordbor and put an end to their war; The king took up the dragon as his banner but if he wanted its help again, its price would double.) Kyurem agreed, as both Reshiram and Zekrom being awake had awoken it anyways, and the husk of a dragon entered the battlefield.

Kyurem would then attack Reshiram and absorb it, forming White Kyurem, and with its powers, release the eternal winter on the North.  Zekrom tries, and fails, to stop Kyurem and in the end either flees or is beaten so badly it is returned back to stone.  Kyurem then comes to collect the second soul he is promised and it’s not leaving until it gets what it wants. Everyone is pretty mortified by Sean’s actions but he says this is the only way he could see the war ending for good.  With Nordbor no longer struggling in the winter, they could become a more stable country and reunite together without having to invade Unova.  Faced a dragon of increasingly loss of patience, the brothers are forced to decide who is to be sacrificed, which, in turns, makes them realize that they really don’t want to lose the other - despite all the fighting the two have undergone.

Einarr eventually takes the bargain, stating that he would use his time to try and fix what was broken with the war, and Reinhardt will take his place when the time comes, with William keeping a very close (advisory) eye on him after that. Satisfied, Kyurem takes what was owed and leaves to places unknown.  I never really decided the effects of soul loss, but I figured it would be a gradual (but somewhat fast; a few years) decrease in life.  

After settling up some stuff in Unova, Sean would head back to the north with Micha and other fellow Northerns.  At last, Sean has to decide where he should belong for what life he has left.  He feels he has to return to Nordbor to help reclaim and rebuild what was lost... but he wouldn’t stray too far from the border, so that he could visit someone important to him (cough Micha cough) when he can. If Sarine allowed it.

SO THAT’S ABOUT IT.