how goes the next chapter of KMKY? i am super keen for more, but obvs take your time!
hi bud! I am 43 pages into the next chapter and it's going well! Here is a tiny sneak peak of the D&D scene!
Having set up a rudimentary game with the graph paper lying around in the lab, Stanford was having an excellent time.
Dipper had brought the board game downstairs, with the rule book, and several key decision cards scattered around the gridded board on the dirt floor of the lab. Having just completed their character sheets, the adventure was about to begin.
“Okay, so my character is a human wizard slash artificer - battlesmith and order of scribes respectively - with an archivist background and I’ve juuust finished my ability scores.” Dipper scribbled on his character sheet, before throwing the sheet down between them. “Boosh!”
“Is that what the kids are saying these days? Boosh?” Ford queried idly, picking up Dipper’s character sheet to read through it.
“Oh, uh, Wendy – I mean, someone really cool said it once and I guess I just kind of picked it up. It’s not like everyone’s saying it.” Dipper rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, trying to play it off.
“It was hard enough keeping track of the popular slang back in the 80s.” Ford rubbed his chin, impressed by Dipper’s clever allocation of his ability points. “I guess a lot can change in 30 years. I like that you chose artificer for your class. My old friend Fiddleford used to choose artificer too, but he was always more of an alchemist than a battlesmith.”
“Huh. I guess that makes sense.” Dipper frowned, looking down at his notepad. “You two were really close then.”
“As thick as thieves.” Ford confirmed with a nod, filling out his own character sheet. “Before everything with the portal came to a head of course. And – there, that’s my character sheet done.”
Reaching over to read through it, all thoughts of McGucket set aside in favour of the game, Dipper blinked at Ford’s character sheet, surprised.
“Warlock/Fighter multiclass? Really?” He looked between Ford’s ready grin, and the character sheet, squinting at the details. “Shouldn’t your charisma stats be higher than intelligence if you’re playing a warlock. Charisma is the spell modifier.”
“I’ve never really understood why it’s not an intelligence class myself, but given the scope for multi-classing, I can leverage both classes and become an eldritch knight. There’s not a lot a good eldritch blast can’t take care of, in my experience. It’s just like a laser gun!”
“Fair enough.” Dipper shrugged, moving his character piece around on the board. “Great Uncle Ford, how did you get other people to play this game with you? I keep thinking Mabel would love to play this, but I just can’t convince her. I get the feeling she would be a bard, if she gave it a shot. And Wendy could totally be a Ranger!”
“Stanley mentioned Mabel is musically inclined.” Ford rubbed his chin, considering his past attempts to get others to play with him. Stanley never did, choosing instead to mock him, and the only other person he successfully coerced to play was Bill, but he never truly committed to the experience. “You could always try bribery, that sometimes works.”
“And bribe her with what?” Dipper shook his head, before sighing. “Never mind. At least I get to play with you.”
“Are you ready?” Ford questioned, bringing Dipper’s focus back to the board, picking up the 38-sided die and rolling it between his knuckles.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Dipper said gamely, crossing his legs more comfortably beneath him.
“Alright.” Ford waved his hand across the board, sitting behind the cardboard cut out of Probabilitor the Annoying, setting the scene. “The reigning monarch of the land of Mathematica has put out a call for mercenaries across the land to take up a quest to rescue his daughter, Princess Unattainabelle from the devious clutches of the King’s arch enemy, Probabilitor the Annoying, the worst wizard in all of the land. Your task, should you prove worthy, is to gather your party and venture forth into the Algebraic Swamplands, to Probabilitor’s castle deep within his dominion, and brave his radius of evil to find the Princess and rescue her from his sweaty clutches. Your quest’s probability of success is –“
Ford paused to roll the 38 sided die, the die landing on 21.
“Not bad. Could definitely be worse.” Dipper remarked.
“You’re telling me. Once Fiddleford rolled a two.” Ford barked a laugh, remembering the campaign fondly.
“Now that’s playing on hard mode.” Dipper grinned. “21 should be a walk in the park, comparatively.”
“I like those odds.” Ford shared a grin with his great nephew, delighted at their shared conspiratorial joy with the game. “So, you’re in the tavern on the edge of the Swamplands, your character has accepted the quest. What do you do now?”
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I do wanna say re: Silver Backstory and my rec list and my tendency to poke and prod and explore where he may have come from--
That's not me saying that the way his character is presented in the canon *needs* that, at ALL.
First off, the speech on the cliffs, the Solomon Little stories, the complete inability to share?
It's perfect for the character, as well as an absolutely jaw-dropping ballsy as hell decision to make a prequel/adaptation about the most famous pirate figure in Western media and simply... refuse to define him in those terms the way we've seen the other main characters. It's such a ballsy and brilliant move that sometimes I stare at the wall thinking about what they have done and just, god I hope one day I can write something that great. I could go on about that but it's not my main point.
Second off, many ppl have said that the point is that the story of Black Sails itself *becomes* his origin, and in many ways that is absolutely true and I agree.
However, I also wanna point out that the acting and the writing reflect all the information we would ever need to know about John Silver even if he cannot bear to speak it in specifics.
in 4.9, Silver says:
“I have no story to tell. It all might seem as though I’m trying to conceal something from you, but… truth is, there is no story to tell.
...
Not unremarkable, just…without relevance. A long time ago, I absolved myself from the obligation of finding any. No need to account for all my life’s events in the context of a story that somehow…defines me. Events, some of which, no one could divine any meaning from…other than that the world is a place of unending horrors.
I’ve come to peace with the knowledge…that there is no storyteller imposing any coherence, nor sense, nor grace upon those events. Therefore, there’s no duty on my part to search for it.
You know of me all I can bear to be known. All that is relevant to be known."
"Other Than That The World Is A Place Of Unending Horrors."
Now, coming at this as someone with my own fucked up trauma, that one sentence coupled with the performance from Luke really tells us everything we need to know.
So yeah, in a way it both does and doesn't matter that we don't get his history wrapped up in a pretty package, both bc it's NEVER THAT SIMPLE, and bc his REACTIONS to events/ppl are... so VERY clearly the reactions of someone who has been deeply traumatized. We don't NEED to know for the story and character to work EXACTLY as intended.
We can see him, we the audience. If you pay attention, he is not some mystery at all. We may not know exactly what happened to him, but also, we do... don't we?
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