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eurydicees · 4 years ago

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top 10 ouran manga-only arcs

this is going to be such a long post i apologize in advance. the ranking system has absolutely no criteria other than "does this pass my vibe check.” bonus points were awarded if i could think about tamakyo while reading it; points were also awarded every time tamaki did something cool. this was a delight to make. anyways, without further ado, here are my personal top ten favorites, and no i will not be taking criticism.

1. THE TAMAKI EXTRAVAGANZA

(vol 16 chp 73 - vol 18 chp 80)

PLOT:

So much happens here that I couldn’t think of an actual name, and uh does it count as a single arc? Probably not, but I’m counting it as one because it has a single thread: Tamaki. My beloved. So. First, Tamaki finally, finally, finally moves into Suoh mansion #1, but when he gets there, he gets told that he’s only allowed to study the Suoh business and go to school and nothing else— meaning he has to quit the host club. Shizue threatens to out Haruhi as a girl and ruin her reputation— possibly losing her the scholarship— if Tamaki doesn’t break off all ties with her.

The Host Club disbands. Kyoya begins an Investigation™ into Tamaki’s mother— she had been incredibly weak and unhealthy when Tamaki was a child, but when Kyoya met her, she was pretty healthy. After some sleuthing, the hosts minus Tamaki discover that she probably had Bisco Hatori’s fictional version of lupus, which was cured by a mysterious foundation— which they discover was run by the Grantaine family, funded by the Suoh corporation, and actually researched by the Ootori conglomerate. Literally everyone is in on it. It’s fucking wild. Like. Huge “holy fucking shit I need to stop and take a breath” moment.

This information is suddenly released to the public, and then the Suoh corporation all vote Shizue out of her position, saying that she’s no longer fit for the job. She locks herself in her room and refuses to speak to anyone, breaking Tamaki’s heart. But now that she’s no longer top dog, Anne-Sophie can come to Japan— Yuzuru is super hyped and expects Tamaki to be as well, not understanding that Tamaki’s family fantasy includes his grandmother. Tamaki stops going to school and plays piano every day in order to cheer up the house, eventually luring Shizue out to listen to him play their shared favorite songs from J-dramas.

They begin to bond and Shizue sees that he’s not a failure because of his parentage, but it’s too late because Anne-Sophie is about to fly back to France. All is hopeless.

EXCEPT THEN. All of the hosts and all of the clients realize what’s happening and rush to help him get to his mother. They all adore him so much, and give their all into getting Tamaki to the airport. Shizue finally encourages him to go, realizing— with the help of Haruhi— that she has been bitter and selfish and Tamaki deserves better. They rush to the airport, and through a series of shenanigans that are no match for the combined power of the hosts and every single girl at Ouran, Tamaki makes it to the airport. They make it there JUST in time, and Tamaki gets a five minute reunion with his mother. Haruhi finally confesses to Tamaki that she loves him.

WHY I LOVE IT:

oh my God oh my God oh my GOD. Like. This is just. So much. So Much. We all know that I’m like. The #1 Fan of Tamaki Suoh. Like. President, vice president, treasurer, and secretary of the fan club, all at once. I love him so much, and this just gives him so much development. There is so much opportunity for him to grow and you not only really see who he is as a character, but you also see how much he’s grown as a person from his first introduction. You also get more of a glimpse into the world of Rich People, and the way that all of their families interact with each other, and then also with the way that they interact within their families. It’s just such an intense arc and it’s so beautiful and I love it so much.

2. THE SPORTS COMPETITION

(vol 10 chp 46 - vol 11 chp 49)

PLOT:

This one is HARD to rank, because I love it, but it also Hurts. Like. I genuinely cried over this one, though that’s not actually saying much because I cry at everything. So. Here’s what’s up. Tamaki gets into this idea of a sports festival, and then Kuze wanders in to fight Kyoya again, so Tamaki suggests a competition between the two of them. This is a very Tamaki thing to do, but Kyoya gets fed up with it and refuses to participate— until Kuze accuses him of being “Suoh’s pet” and that he’ll always let Tamaki win, and then Kyoya gets fired the fuck up.

But he’s still bitter at Tamaki for starting this, so the two of them stop talking and my heart breaks. This does not stop Tamaki from having heart eyes for Kyoya 24/7. Hikaru and Kaoru are assigned to competing teams, and begin their Very Long Journey into not being so codependent— Hikaru is on the red team with Tamaki, Haruhi, and Kuze; Kaoru is on the white team with Kyoya and Honey.

Essentially, each team goes through rounds of races in different areas that are like. Complete bullshit games, but whatever. It’s Rich People World. The white team gets ahead; the red team performs a scene from a Shakespeare show to rally their losing team together and begins to win, until they’re on even footing. The final race is between Kyoya and Tamaki.

There’s a heartbreaking series of panels of Tamaki just… thinking about Kyoya. I cannot get enough of it. Then there’s an even more heartbreaking series of panels of Kyoya just… thinking about Tamaki. You realize, alongside the other hosts, that Tamaki pushed for this race not really for benefit or fun, but to give Kyoya a chance to compete in something for real, without having to set it up so that Tamaki wins (as we see in the race for the central salon). It’s a chance for him to win and not put his family first. Tamaki still tried his best, because Kyoya would hate him if he threw the race, but he lost because Kyoya fought with the intention of winning for HIMSELF, and not just playing support to Tamaki or impressing his father.

Finally, in the last panel, it’s revealed that the class trip will be to France.

WHY I LOVE IT:

God it burns so good. So Good. The Tamakyo, the Hikaru & Kaoru character growth, the Kyoya development, the Tamaki being so so so good, the Kyoya being so brilliant, everything oh my lord. This is really one of the biggest points of Kyoya’s character development, and it’s the first place I’m going to point to when thinking accurately about who he is as a person. It shows who he is, and who he believes he is, and who he wants to be, and who other people see him as. It’s also just a Tamakyo goldmine, even though they don’t ever actually talk. It’s so beautiful and it makes me cry.

3. THE ORIENTEERING RACE

(vol 14 chp 66 - vol 15 chp 68)

PLOT:

In an attempt to make Tamaki realize that the hosts all love him just as much as he loves them, the hosts sans Tamaki put together an orienteering race. There are six checkpoints, each one with a task to be completed in order to get an ingredient that will make the best meal at the end of the race.

Hikaru and Kaoru play the return of the “Which one is Hikaru?” game, knowing that Tamaki has been able to tell them apart for a while by now; Nekozawa’s checkpoint is a quiz on cursed items, knowing that Tamaki is familiar with Beelzenef; Honey’s checkpoint is a game of whack-a-mole with little mini Usa-chans, knowing that Tamaki isn’t afraid of making him upset over a game, though all the girls are; Mori’s is a sword slicing thing to show that Tamaki will never give up on something; Haruhi’s is a “tell the truth or never pass” kind of thing; and Kyoya’s is a crossword puzzle of all the answers made up of things from previous club themes.

Tamaki pairs up with Konoya— who is in love with him and is the “perfect Haruhi” trope— and realizes that she’s incredibly different from Haruhi, and that he loves Haruhi for who she is and not who he thought he wanted her to be. He also realizes that— because the hosts have gone through all of this for him— they do love him for who he is, no matter what, no matter the bad parts of his personality, and they’re never leaving him.

WHY I LOVE IT:

Look. We know that anything about Tamaki is gonna make me happy. I am a simple woman and so easy to please. This is literally just three chapters about how much all of the hosts love Tamaki and want him to be happy. I cannot express in words how rewarding it is to watch Tamaki realize how important he is and how much he’s loved— because he is loved, he’s so loved, he’s so so so loved. This is also the arc with the building block / building a home metaphor, and it destroyed me both physically and emotionally (vol 14 chp 66). This is where the found family is really solidified, and we all love a good dosage of found family.

4. RACE FOR THE CENTRAL SALON / THE SCHOOL FAIR

(vol 6 chp 22 - vol 6 chp 26)

PLOT:

This is where the anime diverges from the manga, and I have to say that this version of the school fair is just so much better than the anime version. Like. Just So Much Better. Basically, the club is setting up for the school fair, and the best spot to set up— essentially, the spot that will get the most foot traffic form the parents— is in the central salon. To figure out which club is going to get the spot, they all compete in a literal race, both mind games and physical games and it just slaps overall.

The b-plot is that the Host Club is getting threatening letters telling them to drop out of the race, alongside blank papers that are sent with the notes; the hosts have to figure out who is sending the notes and confront it. This is the arc that introduces both Kuze and Yuzuru Suoh for the first time. Kuze is captain of the football team and Kyoya’s rival and also definitely his secret ex-boyfriend. Chairman Suoh is… just. A lot. Just. That’s it. A Lot. He’s A Lot.

Anyways, part of the winning race is capturing this crown that’s hidden on campus, which turns out to be at a swimming pool. The football team gets there at the same time as Haruhi, and Kuze pushes her into the pool and goes for the crown. Kyoya and Tamaki reach her at the same time�� Tamaki’s instinct is to go for Haruhi, but Kyoya tells him to get the crown and thus the glory of winning, while Kyoya rescues Haruhi.

Later, it turns out that Yuzuru was sending the blank papers with harmless messages written in invisible ink as a prank to emphasize the literal hate mail that the hosts were getting. The follow up to the race is the actual school fair, where we meet Yoshio and Shizue. Fuck Shizue, not even going to get into that right now because I WILL cry, but just know that it’s even worse than it is in the anime. Yoshio, though, is eons better in the manga than in the anime— he is genuinely proud of Kyoya and says that he actually wouldn’t mind appointing Kyoya as heir.

WHY I LOVE IT:

Volume 6 does SO MUCH for Kyoya and Tamaki and we all know that I’m ride or die for the two of them. Kyoya finally gets a chance to shine as team leader and it’s what he deserves! Tamaki takes a little more of a backseat, which I don’t even mind, because Kyoya does such a good job of pulling attention here. The scene at the swimming pool is just so good— it really shows the huge amount of trust between Tamaki and Kyoya, and does a good job of setting up the relationship they need to have as Rich People, outside of their friendship, which is something that we don’t see a lot of. Overall, it’s a very Kyoya-centric arc, and it does amazing things for the development of his character and personality. It’s one of the biggest insights into how he functions as a kind of mastermind for the club. We also finally get Tamaki’s full-ish backstory, which genuinely makes me cry every time.

5. THE HITACHIIN FAMILY

(vol 10 chp 45 / vol 11 chp 51 - vol 12 chp 53)

PLOT:

So this is technically two plot lines, but I’m going to count it as one because it’s all about the twins, my loves. In vol 10 chp 45, we get a little insight into the life of the Hitachiin family and why the twins are as fucked up as they are. Quick rundown— their parents can tell them apart but pretend not to for whatever godforsaken reason; Kaoru admits he’s in love with Haruhi for the first time and Hikaru remains oblivious; Kaoru begins to realize how unhealthy he and Hikaru’s relationship is and how, one day, they aren’t going to be able to have all of the same things; there’s a cookie metaphor; Tamaki gets lost in the Hitachiin manion; it’s all a good time.

In volumes 11 and 12, we begin the actual split between the twins, where they realize that they can’t stay the way that they are forever. They can’t be one person forever. They realize this in a fight over Haruhi, where Hikaru suggests they “share” her as a sister, and Kaoru rightfully thinks this is bullshit. They get in their first— and only— genuinely real argument. Hikaru breaks down in Mori’s house, Kaoru breaks down at Honey’s place, literally no one is happy and I am crying.

Kaoru asks Haruhi out on a date, and then ends the date by explaining that he could never date her knowing that it would be hurting Hikaru. Haruhi is, understandably, very confused by this whole thing, and no one is telling her anything.

Kaoru then makes up with Hikaru, saying that he’ll give up on trying to pursue Haruhi, but tells him that they actually do need to live separate lives at some point— and that point might as well be now. He wants to break apart entirely, but Hikaru explains that while they need to break apart in a lot of ways and find their own identities, they can never fully forget each other. They agree that they can influence and love each other without depending on each other for a personality.

They keep up the incest ACT at the club, though. Bisco Hatori couldn’t manage to write her way out of that one.

WHY I LOVE IT:

So this one just. Really hits home for me. It’s a genuinely heart wrenching arc, and the progression of the whole thing was just so slow and so steady and it was so well done. The twins are two of my favorite characters in the show/manga, and their relationship is something that I can analyze for days, and this arc is a huge part of why it’s so interesting. It does amazing things for both of them as developing characters, but it does even more amazing things for their character growth as people. It also provides a nice catalyst for the Hikaru/Tamaki/Haruhi love triangle. Anyways, it made me cry and apparently that’s my only criteria.

6. THE FRANCE ARC

(vol 10 chp 46 - vol 12 chp 56)

PLOT:

On the Ouran 2nd year school trip to France, Kyoya decides he’s going to spend the trip searching for Tamaki’s mother, rather than spending it with the other students. He works himself to death trying to find her— he ends up literally falling asleep on the ground because he’s so exhausted from searching and taking literally no breaks. Kyoya finds her eventually, and has a really nice conversation with her— she has a bunch of photos of Tamaki, and clearly is constantly thinking about him. When he gets back to Japan, he tells Tamaki about her— about how beautiful she is, about how she smiles, about how she thinks of her son every day.

We get more of Tamaki’s backstory, and his close relationship from his mother and how his mantra— living life in Japan to the fullest and being as happy as he can be every day— all comes from his mother. She told him that she’s happiest when he’s smiling, and so when he leaves her behind in France, he decides to be smiling every day and make everyone around him smile as well.

While Kyoya is in France, Tamaki stays behind in Japan— he gets closer to his father, who offers to begin to train him to take over the Suoh business. He visits Haruhi, and tells her a little bit about his life in France, and Haruhi’s love for Tamaki begins to make an appearance for the first time.

WHY I LOVE IT:

So I went into this list thinking that this would be my favorite plot, so it’s wild to me that it didn’t even make the top five. It’s kind of weird and I didn’t expect it, but I’m still satisfied with this list. Anyways, I really love this one, even if it’s not the top five. It’s like. The ultimate Tamakyo story, and there’s just. There’s just so much to unpack there. Like. We don’t have time for me to go through the whole thing and analyze every part of it because there’s just so much of it. It’s so good, and it makes my heart grow three sizes. It’s another brilliant development piece for Kyoya, and shows his softer side, as well as just how much he loves Tamaki.

7. MORI AND HONEY GRADUATE

(vol 15 chp 71 - vol 16 chp 72)

PLOT:

Honey and Mori announce that, after graduation, they’ll be splitting up and going to different universities. This proceeds to emotionally destroy literally everyone except for them. Mori is challenged to a series of duels at the Kendo club in which he has to fight every underclassman who wants the honor of fighting him before he graduates. He’s exhausted and worn down, and he loses to a second year, which is bad for like. Honor reasons. RIP. Anyways. He reveals that he’s just been really worried about something but before he can tell anyone, he has to duel Honey. It hurts.

They start preparing for the fight— which Kyoya is capitalizing off of via movie rights and betting rings— and scare everyone that they’re going to never speak again. When the fight comes, they fight on the Windswept Hill™ at Ouran (the same place that Chika and Honey fight on way back when). They go for it and pull no punches, until Honey tries to do a flying kick and Mori catches him and gently places him outside of the boundaries of the fighting ring, thus winning the duel.

Because he won, he pulls out a sheet of paper in which he’s written down all of the things that Honey needs to do in university because Mori isn’t going to be there to take care of him: brush his teeth, cut down the cake by 90%, and stop bringing Usa-chan to classes. Mori felt that he didn’t have the right to tell him these things until they were on equal level because he had won the duel.

They make up and everything is okay— they graduate, everyone cries, including me. Kasanoda gives Mori flowers, it’s all very cute. Haruhi makes cookies, and when Tamaki goes running down the hallway to find her, they bump into each other and drop all of the cookies. While they’re picking them up, they share the classic ~accidental kiss~.

WHY I LOVE IT:

This is one of the only Honey & Mori-centric plotlines that gets fully fleshed out and like. More than a chapter. It really does lovely things for their relationship, and it’s the end of an era. Even though it’s the end of an era, though, the resolution is incredibly satisfying— Honey and Mori’s stories are wrapping up, but it’s really well done. It’s sad, but it’s a really rewarding ending. They’re such sweet boys. Also, it’s not like they’re gone forever, so it’s all okay.

8. REIKO x HONEY

(vol 10 chp 41)

PLOT:

Reiko is part of the Black Magic Club, and falls in love with Honey when he gives her a hand in getting up after she trips over Usa-chan. However, she believes that falling in love with Honey is equivalent to him “stealing her soul,” and so she uses “curses” to steal his soul back. These curses are basically just love spells.

In the end, Honey tells her to just, like, be herself. Talk about her interests. Get to know him. Be honest. Then she won’t need love spells to make him like her. Even if she messes up or is awkward or says something weird, he’ll still like her because she’s being true to herself. This is one of the only Honey-centric chapters, and Reiko is one of my favorite side characters.

WHY I LOVE IT:

They’re the OG goth x pastel couple. The blueprint for all other couples. Icons. I love them so much. This makes it on the list just because I love their relationships. I also love the whole Moral Of The Story, in that it’s important to be true to yourself. It’s so sweet it hurts.

9. HARUHI AND TAMAKI’S FIRST DATE

(vol 18 chp 81 - vol 18 chp 82)

PLOT:

So. Right after the two of them confess their love to each other, everyone expects them to get together and be a couple right away, but Haruhi is just kinda chilling. She’s not super stressed about dating, it’s just a relief to have said it out loud. Meanwhile, Tamaki is kind of a mess, stressing out over their first date and trying to make it as perfect as he possibly can. Seeing him so stressed, all of the hosts band together to help him out in planning a date. When Tamaki finally gets up the nerve to ask her out, he falls in the fountain and Haruhi has to fish him out. She’s then the one to ask him out to the amusement park.

In true Tamaki fashion, he gets incredibly stressed out again. He gets fashion advice from a series of unfashionable people. The hosts sneak around the amusement park and follow them around, finding out that it’s actually going really well, as long as they’re not interfering. After the Lobelia girls show up and try to sabotage the date, Tamaki and Haruhi run away— while Kyoya Handles™ the situation— and they go to her mother’s grave. There, it’s revealed that Haruhi will be going on an exchange program to America.

WHY I LOVE IT:

It’s just. So cute. Like. I’m Tamakyo for life, but I do adore them so much. It’s lower on the list because of the sheer amount of second hand embarrassment, but overall, I loved reading this one. Tamaki is just so genuine and earnest about everything he does, and I think these chapters do a lot to show why the two of them work as a couple. It also does lovely characterization points for Haruhi, and begins to wrap up the ending. Bonus points for a jealous and heartbroken Kyoya.

10. PRINCESS MICHELLE

(vol 9 chp 38 - vol 9 chp 39)

PLOT:

Princess Michelle comes to Ouran to do a week of school in Japan. After meeting her, Tamaki essentially puts him and the Host Club at her beck and call, doing anything that he can to make her happy, no matter how insanely extravagant her demands are. Everyone else finds this infuriating, until Kyoya points out that Michelle looks similar to Tamaki’s mother, saying that the last time Tamaki saw his mother, she was crying— and if he sees Michelle smile for real, it might help him picture his mother smiling again.

Overall, it’s just a very soft arc that begins to unfold Tamaki’s family-related trauma. It also kickstarts Tamaki’s realization that he’s in love with Haruhi and doesn’t actually have paternal feelings for her (that’s the whole next chapter, but make it funny rather than introspective); and it’s one of the moments that Haruhi realizes that Tamaki is genuinely just a good person.

WHY I LOVE IT:

I wasn’t sure that this one would make the list at all, but I do really love this story. It’s pretty short, just two chapters, but it’s overall really sweet. I like Michelle as a character a lot— she seems a bit like a bitch at the beginning, but she gets fleshed out and given an actual personality as the chapter goes on. It’s a really good example of Bisco Hatori’s writing.

HONORARY MENTIONS:

Mei (character): probably the most significant character in the manga that doesn’t appear at all in the anime, which is pretty tragic, but I think that the anime really wanted to emphasize that Haruhi doesn’t really have any female friends / friends outside of the hosts. But anyways, she’s Misuzu’s daughter and Haruhi’s friend; she’s lowkey transphobic but she’s getting better! Had a brief crush on Tamaki but she ends with being the #1 Tamaharu stan. Great friend to Haruhi.

The masquerade ball: Haruhi's going away party, and the reveal that she's a girl.

Haruhi gets kidnapped: Haruhi is kidnapped and held for ransom, the hosts find her and break down doors to get there.

#ohshc #ouran manga #ouran koukou host club #ouran high school host club #ouran liveblog #ouran #ouran high school host club manga #please rb this i worked SO HARD on it #also please add your opinions #there are a few different lists that are valid. and many that are not.#i will vibe check your lists if you post them

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yashashveeroy · 4 years ago

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Hi, I’m a new follower and I love how you describe every sign combination. Can you do mine?🤍 Sagittarius rising, Scorpio sun, and Sagittarius moon.😘

Hello!!🥰 @scorpiobabe555 Here’s my interpretation of your placements!! 💖

Please read the newly added Rules regarding “Asks” here before reading this interpretation.

Scorpio Sun:

Right off the bat, I got a feeling that you must relate with your Scorpio sun a lot and omg even your blog name has “Scorpio” in it. Confirms it I guess! Tell me, do you have a Scorpio stellium? (Stellium: having three or more planets in one sign) When a person has a Scorpio sun, they have the power to either build or destroy the life around them. To embrace the Scorpionic energy is to discover the hidden gifts that lay within you. Remember, a Scorpio placement will never show it’s gifts to you unless you show it a lot of love and compassion. Scorpio will always make you dig into yourself in order to find the hidden talents and gifts. It’ll be a bumpy ride but the end result will be something so beautiful and unexpected. Now, according to what I’m getting, I think you have a very pure yet destructive (in a protective and positive way of course) aura to you. You’re all sunshine until someone crosses the line. You’re defensive and not afraid of intensity, even if it means that you may have to forget about the jolly and sunny part to you. Definitely someone who can hold secrets even though people may say otherwise. Unbothered by what people say, you live in your own world and you don’t really care about the others. Helpful. You are often the one who holds a mirror in front of the other and makes them feel comfortable with their dark side. When I say dark, I don’t mean evil. It’s the pain, the transformation, the depression and the guilt. You must’ve realised that anything deemed bad or evil and rejected by society is simply what runs the the human race itself. Humans often reject their own emotions and behaviours that they see in others. Funny, isn’t it? You’re very fun loving and you must love different light shades of blue, green, purple or even aquamarine🥰.

Sagittarius Moon:

You’re probably known to be one of the optimists in your circle! Regardless of what that Scorpio sun must bring to you. A combination of Scorpio sun and Sagittarius moon tells me that you have difficulty growing roots in relationships of any kind. You are quite frank with this issue but you have to work on it. When the Moon meets Sagittarius it makes someone enthusiastic and restless. There’s this need of fulfilment through having everything done your way. You also seem like the person who cheers up their loved ones when they’re low. You are soft and hard hearted together. While the moon lets you express your emotions, Sagittarius comes in and gives you the adrenaline rush to do it. Your blood boils at the sight of the people you hate or who’ve hurt your loved ones. The type of person who’d go to an open field at night to feel the moonlight on their skin. You don’t believe in black or white, they’re too good to be true. Grey is where you lay. Flexible unless your energy and style of doing things is messed with. Quality time is your love language 💜.

Sagittarius Rising:

Sagittarius’s Mutable nature is what brings everything together and brings variety along with it. When Scorpio sun comes in contact with Sagittarius rising, it makes a person knowledge hungry, mystery solving, exploring and talented in many ways! If you sit and count how many different talents or hobbies you have, you’d be quite surprised! Tell me, do you suddenly come up with analogies about hard life situations? You are quite philosophical to me. Your rigidity is something people will remember about you. But at the same you’ve learned to accommodate as well. You may not like things to change, but you know it needs to happen. With you, many ideas come together to create a book, a body of knowledge. You know your facts and are ready to debate. Are you a good story teller? My Sagittarius rising friend of over nine years has put me to sleep with his wonderful, fictional and original stories many times🥺. It’s the one thing that makes me really love him. Sagittarius risings roam the world in their head way before actually, physically doing it🥰. It’s what makes them so imaginative. You are loyal to the ones you love and have pack mentality. Anyone would want to be your friend. With your mastery and an archer like focus, you’re at it. Wherever you plan to make your arrow land, it’ll be successful regardless. And remember, since Sagittarius ruling Jupiter is an expansive planet, the hunger for more and more comes with a passion. Don’t let it get too toxic, learn to balance.

I really hope this interpretation resonated with you🥺🥺!! Don’t forget to leave your feedback in the comments of this post!!🥰💜

Love, Roy.

#roysbigthreeinterpretations #sagittarius #scorpio #scorpio sun #sagittarius sun #sagittarius rising #big three #astrology #astrology asks #astro asks #astro tumblr #astro world

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awrestlinggirlwholoves80sbands · 4 years ago

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Guns N’Roses when they discover that their girlfriend is bisexual:

A/N: Requested by this anon, and I couldn’t do anything but write it because y’all know my bi ass loves some bi-positivity. Also today is bisexual awareness day, so this is a gift to all the wonferdul bi girls/ bi female presenting people ( don’t worry bi nb/ bi boys, soon I’ll do the second part for you)

TW: Mentions of sex, curse words, mentions of internalized biphobia

Axl Rose:

You were constantly afraid that your boyfriend Axl could discover your secret.

You never told him that you were bisexual, too afraid of being rejected or laughed at. Everybody knew what Axl had said on people of the community like you, in the past, and even if he was growing and changing, you were still too scared to come out.

But a part of you knew it had to be done, if there was something Axl hated was liars, many people in his life destructed his trust, also everyday you were finding more difficult keeping the real you hidden, and you were afraid it could make you two break up.

You two were cuddling on the couch, not so invested in the random movie on the TV, he looked so calm and happy, smiling every time he looked at you, kissing gently your hand. You hated to burst his bubble of happiness, but you knew it has to be done, so you decided to gather the courage, and talk to him.

“Axl, I need to tell you something.” You wanted to sound chill, but your voice was trembling a bit.

“Did something happen? Is it bad?” Axl was getting scared, even if he was trying to hide it.

“I kept a secret from you, and I’m sorry. I’m…. I’m bisexual. I’ve never told you because I was afraid you would have found me disgusting, like all the others, I was scared that you thought I could cheat on you just like your exes, but even more just because of my sexuality. But I’m not more likely to cheat and I’m not confused. I-” You broke down, salty tears streaming down your cheeks.

You waited for screams, for insults, or any bad reaction. Would he left? Would he be angry with you because you kept a secret? Would he throw you out of the house?

He did neither of those things, instead he took you into his arms, kissing your forehead.

“Shhh, baby it’s okay. I’m not angry or disappointed, I know what I’ve said in the past and I’m sorry, I’m trying to change, and I could never hate my girlfriend, I could never be angry at you for who you are. I’m proud of you! And I hope to learn more and be a better boyfriend with you at my side!”

“So is it not a problem for you?” You asked, still unsure.

He shook his head, and kissed you softly, first on your lips, then all over your face.

Slash

You and Slash were slumped on a couch, pretty drunk, in the Hell House. All the other members were too busy or passed out to give a fuck about you two, so you were talking about random shit, like you usually do when you are not sober.

You were on your boyfriend’s lap, his arms around you and you were talking about his first time having sex. You were not shy to talk about past relationships, even the sex parts.

“Wait, you were really only 14? Fuck, that’s impressive! “You said with a giggle.

“How was your first time?” He asked you, taking a long sip from his Jack bottle.

Well, your first time was actually with a girl, they one that made you realize you had feelings for other girls too, rather than just boys. But you could have just lied and tell him your first time with a boy, right? I mean you were not out to him so it was the logical thing to do.

Wrong! Your inebriated brain didn’t want to collaborate, so you just started telling him the real story.

“I was older than you, like 17 or 18. I knew her for quite some months, she was my friend, and we did it at their parents’ house. It was great, until they come back earlier than we thought and I had to jump out of the window!” You laughed hysterically, but the look of confusion on Slash’s face made you stop.

Oh, fuck! You were so screwed!

“So it was a girl?” Your boyfriend questioned, completely chill.

“Yeah, I’m bi, so I like girls too. Are you disgusted with me?” You were usually never scared, but then your heart was jumping out of your chest.

“I could never be disgusted with you, baby. I’m just surprised that my girl likes girls too, but that doesn’t mean I don’t agree with that or I don’t support you. I’ll keep loving you, no matter what.” You kiss him on the lips, too happy to say anything.

“Plus I could use that as an excuse to have threesomes with some groupies!” He added, and you punched him on the shoulder with a smile.

Duff Mckagan

You were sitting at the bar counter, when you felt Duff’s long arms around you.

“Babe, something weird happened earlier, you can’t believe that!”

You were starting to get a little worried, but Duff seemed mainly amused, so it wasn’t something too bad.

“Okay so a groupie approached me backstage…” Well know you started to get worried and a little jealous.

“And?”

“Well she looked me in the eyes and told me that she thought my girlfriend was into girls too. I was like What the hell? And she said you totally have like this energy, I don’t know she was weird, but I want to show you to her so she could prove me her point!”

Okay, now you were super scared. Because, you were bisexual, but Duff didn’t know that. So did you had to pretend that you are straight or be honest? But what if they already knew and it was all a test?

You decided to nod and follow him, just to not raise any suspect on you. However, once you had the groupie right in front of you, you stopped dead in your tracks.

Oh, no she was hot!

Of course, you loved Duff and didn’t feel any desire to date the girl, but hell if you were not in love him, you would have hit on her tonight. She totally made your bisexual heart skip a beat.

“Oh wow, she was right then!” Duff said surprised, looking at your open mouth. The girl just smiled, happy to have proven her point and left you two.

Those words brought you back to reality, and you started to feel a sense of dread inside you, while your eyes started to get wet. Fuck, you felt horrible, Duff would have left you and you couldn’t live without him.

“Hey baby girl, hey look at me!” Duff’s smooth voice said, cupping your face.

“P-please don’t leave me. I-I swear I love you!” You were so scared and desperate, while the void inside you kept growing.

“I’d never do that sweetheart! I love you so much, and this doesn’t change anything between us!” He hugged you closer, rubbing your back.

“I’m sorry if I didn’t tell you that I was bi sooner!” You said between the sobs.

“It’s totally okay, I’m proud of you for doing it now.” The blond answered with a smile.

“By the way, you have a great taste in women, if I was not your boy, I’d be your wingman!” He joked, kissing your forehead and your lips.

Izzy Stradlin

Today was not a good day for you.

For years, you had struggled with your feelings, you tried to keep them down, to convince yourself that there was no way in hell that you could also like girls, but they never went away. You just couldn’t understand, that was not normal, you were supposed to like either girl or boys, you had to choose.

But then, thanks to a friend, you realized that what you were feeling had a name : bisexuality. You never felt brave enough to come out, and you still felt like you were “wrong”, but things seemed to be easier.

However, since Izzy became your boyfriend, you felt bad keeping this thing from him, and also to feel in that way. You were not sure if he would ever accept you or not.

“What are you thinking? You have been pretty distant today, and I’m saying that!” Your boyfriend asks, with his usual calm.

You were bad and you clearly needed to take this thing off his chest, so maybe you could have talked about it with him? Izzy was a very smart and kind man, never the judging type, but still that’s different when it is about your girlfriend.

“I’m bisexual. I think I’ve known this since I was a teenager, but I’m admitting it with myself just now. I’m so fucking scared that you could hate me, or that I could hate myself, everything is so confusing and scary. But yeah, I’m sure I’m bisexual!” You bit your lips, nervously.

“Okay.” He simply answered, getting back to play his guitar.

“Just okay? No screams, or disgusted faces? No I’m proud of you?” You were happy that he didn’t seem angry, but still disappointed with his nonchalance.

“I love my girlfriend and this won’t change anything. I’m glad you realized who you are, but I won’t treat you any different. I loved you before and I still love you now!” He was serious, but then a smiled softly.

“Well I’m so glad you feel like this, I was so scared to lose you!” You admitted.

“Nah, I would never leave you. Oh, I’m proud of you!” He said at the end, gently kissing your lips.

Steven Adler

Your boyfriend Steven was on tour, and you spent much time thinking about whatever you should come out to him as bisexual. Sometimes you felt super confident while others you just kept stop imagine the worst, you loved him so much and the thought of him leaving you would break your heart, but also keeping this secret was eating you alive.

In the end you realize that you had to do it, but in a fun way, doing something that Steven would have loved and maybe that could have helped you being accepted, and what better way to do it that with a lovely chocolate cake, your boyfriend’s favorite.

So you started to bake, picking up all the ingredients and swaying to some random music, hoping that it would have calmed you down a bit. Once the cake was in the oven, you prepared the frosting and also decided what to write on it : a simple “I’m bisexual” with two little hearts.

The doorbell rang right when you finished decorating, so you quickly put the cake in the fridge, and opened the door. Steven picked you up with force, hugged you tightly and made you spinning, all with a huge smile on his face.

“Babe I missed you so much! This tour was awesome, but without you there was something missing, like I needed my girl to be there!” He explained, getting inside.

“Well I’m here Stevie and you can spend as much time as you want with me.” You answered, kissing his nose.

“I’ll stay with you all the time. Oh, is it chocolate cake the smell I sniff?” He asked excited.

“Ehrm… yeah but it is a surprise, so sit and close your eyes.” You tried to hide your trembling voice and with shaky hands you put the cake on the table.

The blond drummer smiled, then he frowned, looking quite confuse. You felt like every bit of air left your lungs.

“Honey, what’s this?”

“I’m bisexual, I like girls too. I wanted to tell you, but I was too scared that you could have taken it the wrong way, so I keep it a secret. However, it was too much and I felt the need to tell you, please don’t go away from me!” You pleaded scared, just to be in Steven’s arms the next moment.

“ Hey I love you, you’re my girl, and I’m very happy that you decided to tell me this very important thing! I’ll always love you, no way I stop doing that. So please don’t be scared or cry now, okay?”

You were in tears, but they were happy ones. Your boyfriend held you even closer, keeping telling you how proud he was of you.

“10 points for creativity, that cake looks amazing, can we eat it now?” You cut a slice and gave to him, his smile priceless as he realized it was a two flavor one.

A bi cake though and through.

#guns n roses #axl rose #slash #duff mckagan #izzy stradlin #steven adler #bisexual reader #fanfic #axl rose x reader #slash x reader #duff mckagan x reader #izzy stradlin x reader #steven adler x reader #80srock #guns n roses fanfic #fanfiction

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blackjack-15 · 3 years ago

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The Weight of Living — Thoughts on: The Deadly Device (DED)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. For this meta, like TMB, there will be an extra section entitled “The Theme” between The Mystery and The Suspects.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: DED, TMB; brief mentions of FIN, SSH, and ICE; brief mention of Iron Man (2008).

The Intro:

First off, this meta was supposed to be uploaded well over a week ago, and I apologize; life and health kind of got in the way, but it should be more constant for these last 3 metas.

I hope.

Like I mentioned with the last meta, this will be kind of a companion/two-piece meta with TMB. Where TMB focused on the effects of the dead on the living, DED instead focuses on the living’s effects on the dead — the dead in this case being Niko Jovic, of course. Let’s dive into that, shall we?

Just like how everything in TMB was dead, everything (other than Niko, rest in peace) in the lab is alive. The lab is full of people, of research — “living knowledge” in other words — of live wires and electricity, and is constantly growing and changing, just like a living organism does. With all this life present, the game is mostly concerned with how the living affect Niko.

What’s left of Niko after his death is his legacy — his work, his personality, his relationships (or lack thereof) with others, and it’s fascinating to see how our characters deal with and affect that. Grey is dedicating to curating Niko’s legacy (at Niko’s request, it should be noted), Ryan lives in awe of it, and Mason and Ellie are more pragmatic, wanting to use his legacy and work to improve their own lives. Victor, on the other hand, wants Niko’s legacy all to himself — to effectively erase it, in other words, which is another marker of him being our out-and-out villain.

Niko was divisive in life, and is even more so in death — no one can quite say exactly who he was. A jerk, a total scientist, someone who needed caring for, naïve, a useful tool — all of these were how people thought of him, and all of these were a part of who he was. In the end, it’s the efforts of the living that kill Niko — Ryan’s engineering, Ellie and Mason’s lack of concern, Grey’s reticence to get involved, and Victor’s machinations – along with his own secrecy and feeling of being apart from the world — or dead to it, more appropriately.

Stepping back from our characters and the weight of the living for a bit, let’s talk about the other thing that really makes DED stand out not only as a game but specifically as a Nancy Drew game — that is, its design in being a game that subverts the Nancy Drew formula at every turn.

There are a few obvious ones, like a phone character turning to a real-life suspect (rather than the other way around, like in TMB and ICE, or in any other game, where phone characters are Above Suspicion), the person hiring Nancy actually being the baddie, and Nancy having her safe places removed throughout the game, rather than crossing off locations where Bad Things can happen, but the more interesting ones are a little more subtle.

Our suspects provide a few more subversions — for example, our ‘meanest’ characters (Mason and Gray) are neither our explicit Good Guys or our definite Bad Guys, as often tends to be the case in Nancy Drew games. We also have suspects who hate each other openly revealed to be working together towards a common goal, which is a nice twist on the Warring Suspects trope that we see in quite a few games (ICE, FIN, SSH, etc.).

Finally, the structure of the mystery gives us our last two subversions. Instead of our normal Nancy Drew status quo where the characters are simple but their motivations end up being surprising/hidden/secret, we here have a straightforward motive — remove Niko to get his stuff — and our characters are the part that’s not straightforward, with each of them having warring traits within themselves that contribute to the fog surrounding the mystery.

Our villain also fails in this game through the cover-up, not through the crime. Normally, there’s a mistake that the culprit makes during the committing of a crime that Nancy finds evidence of later — a dropped business card, etc. — but in this case, it’s really only the cover up that implicates Victor at all, and he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for, well, himself.

These subversions wouldn’t have been possible 10 or 15 games ago, and it’s a mark of how far the games have come that a game can be dedicated to subverting the usual formula and do it with such panache — and make a great game out of it, besides.

The Title:

As a title, The Deadly Device is pretty solid, if lacking a bit of flash. It gives us our method of murder and the academic ‘scope’ (i.e., science/engineering) that we’re playing in for this game, and tells us our crime — can’t be a deadly device without someone ending up, you know, dead — but doesn’t do a lot outside of that and hinting that the dead as a thematic element will have some role to play.

The reason the title is solid, however, rather than lacking, is that there’s not much else to call it that’s quite as well-fit to the game. It pulls (in a matter of speaking) from two Nancy Drew stories, The Crime Lab Case — which, as a title, yawn — and In and Out of Love, a story from the Nancy-at-college era that tried to be Hotter and Sexier than the previous books, but just ended up being a bit ridiculous. Neither one of those titles would have been any better — they would have been significantly worse, honestly, so The Deadly Device will stand as a good, solid effort for a great game.

The Mystery:

Disaster has struck at Technology of Tomorrow Today, a research lab in snowy Colorado: the lead scientist, a man named Niko Jovic, has been discovered dead in the Tesla Coil lab of electrocution. Months later, the case has gone cold, so owner Victor Losset decides to take matters into his own hands and hires Nancy to find his employee’s killer — not that there’s any doubt in his mind that Ryan Kilpatrick, the engineer who built the coil that killed Niko, is responsible.

When Nancy arrives on-scene and undercover, however, things aren’t quite as cut and dry as Victor would have her believe. It seems that everyone at the lab has means, motive, and opportunity — and whoever killed Niko doesn’t have any qualms about killing a nosy detective to cover up their crime…

Like with TMB, DED isn’t that interested in obscuring its bad guy to a “gotcha!” moment at the very end of the game. Instead, it’s largely concerned with putting disparate personalities under a huge amount of pressure and seeing what results. No one at the lab is super fond of anyone else who works there, nor of their superiors or employer(s), and all have the equipment and the intelligence to make use of the equipment to deadly ends.

Also like TMB, the crime has already been committed or begun, and it’s not Nancy’s job to prevent it — nothing is going to bring Niko back, after all — but to put together the post-mortem pieces and discover what really happened in the past, and the effect that the living have on the dead. It’s a thematic sort of conflict, and it really helps to elevate the game past “fun science mystery”. And speaking of thematic resonance in this game…

The Theme:

As we discussed last time, TMB was a game about fear — fear of death, of responsibility, of ignominy, of failure, etc. Being its sister game, DED is focused on the opposite of fear: acceptance. Instead of failure, responsibility, and other ever-present fears, DED is about the acceptance of the good, the bad, of yourself, and what others will do with your work and legacy once you’re gone.

In other words, DED is a game most concerned, thematically speaking, with certainty and resolve, rather than fear.

One of the biggest thematic elements in the game that proves this point is the presence of Niko’s recorded diaries. Not only does this feature some excellent voice acting by Josh Crandall, but it also gives a dead character the chance to discuss his motivations, his considerations, and — importantly — his sense of his impending death.

At no point does Niko dissolve into hysterics or even palpable fear; he simply accepts that there are consequences for both his and others’ actions, and that there are people in the world who believe the opposite of what he believes in — and are willing to kill for it.

Niko was a man who personified resolve and acceptance to a fault — had he informed others that his life was in danger, Victor would have had a much harder time killing him — but was also jealous of those who didn’t have to or have the capacity to have that kind of acceptance:

“I see why Tesla liked his pigeons. They fly only where they’re directed, and never question the effect the beating of their wings will have on the skies and the world below.”

The lack of acceptance in our villain is actually what leads to his downfall. The case has gone cold, and Victor is, legally speaking, off the hook — but he can’t accept that he’s gotten away with it, and instead decides to push it one step too far by hiring a detective. Had he not hired anyone, he would have been free and clear for the rest of his life — if the police weren’t able to find anything, the chances of them reopening the cold case are extremely slim — but instead Victor couldn’t accept it, and so hired the instrument of his own demise.

Every suspect has their own resolve in this game, and it’s that facet of their personalities that gives Nancy such a hard time at first, because none of that resolve includes answering the questions of a pesky investigator.

The Suspects:

First off is Obadiah Stane Victor Lossett, Nancy’s boss, owner of Technology of Tomorrow Today, and super evil killer of scientists who piss him off and prevent him from making oodles of money.

Like I mentioned above in “The Mystery”, the game isn’t so much concerned with obscuring Victor’s role as the bad guy. It’s a lovely moment when he shows up, changing from phone to real-life character (and suspect) — it’s in fact one of my favorite moments in the series, and I’ve spoken about it before in my list of the top 5 twists/surprising moments in the series — but it’s not a surprise that he’s involved in Niko’s death.

Victor fulfills the subversion of the formula that DED plays with a while also telling the correct story and theme for the game: he’s a man who took advantage of others for his own personal gain, and so everything he has is taken from him — including his notoriety — because of his lack of acceptance of the world.

“The world fondly remembers those who always give, and soon forgets those who only take.”

Next on the list is Ryan Kilpatrick, Victor’s favored patsy suspect and technical engineer at TTT. Energetic and quirky to (in my opinion) a fault, Ryan warned Niko several times that the Tesla coil would kill him, and then did exactly what he wanted her to do anyway.

To be fair to the girl, she was definitely in love with him, albeit a love more based on pity than on straight-out affection. “He had no one else in the world looking after him”, anyone?

Ryan only makes sense in a world where Niko was killed in the way that it appears first: by a simple malfunction in the Tesla Coil. Because Ryan built it, she would be legally responsible for his death, even though he was her boss when he told her to build it that way. It would be a simple, easy answer, and one that would have been totally thematically opposite of the story the game was telling, which makes her the perfect “preferred” suspect for Victor’s ruse.

Our two research assistants are next for consideration, so let’s start with Ellie York, our night-shift assistant who switched in order to avoid her coworker. A Good Southern Girl, Ellie is not above talking smack with a pretense of politeness and has a rather sinister motive up her sleeve.

Despite the fact that all research done at a lab is property of the lab, she (and Mason) decides that Isn’t Fair and tries to shop around their research to the highest bidder in an attempt to make enough money to pay off her debts.

The fact that she’s selling research that isn’t wholly done by her or Mason when she’s mad that her research is being (contractually and legally) used by someone else does rather put a damper on her ‘righteous anger’, doesn’t it.

As a villain, Ellie would have had to be a pair with Mason, which would have been interesting and a parallel to TMB, but just wouldn’t have told the story that DED wanted to tell. It would have been a story about backbiting and jealousy within a workplace, and thus would have lost its resonance with the historical backstory and with who Niko was as a person. As the victim makes the murder, Ellie (or Mason, or and Mason) would have been a poor choice.

Mason Quinto works the day shift and is far more neurotic than his night-shift companion, though just as guilty of attempting to sell research. He prefers his space neat and orderly, and gets quite steamed when Ellie messes it up to piss him off.

Yeah, there’s no way those two don’t end up in bed when they’re drunk. Honestly.

While the more ‘scientist’-like and nerdy of the two assistants, Mason is, in a refreshing change from normal tropes, also the more maverick of the two, running away with Niko’s work after the murder is solved and is only found at an expo by Gray a bit later, where a fight erupts until Mason comes back to work with Gray and Ellie.

He can also turn into a supervillain in a second chance, which is awesome.

Like I said above with Ellie, the only way Mason makes sense as the villain is to be a pair with Ellie, but it just isn’t the right story, thematically speaking. Mason (and Ellie) are a great example of how everyone in DED is guilty of something, whether they think they’re justified or not, and how putting these kind of people in a pressure cooker and turning it on only leads to disaster, sooner or later.

The last still-living member of our cast is Gray Cortright, security guard and ex-theoretical physicist, along with being probably Niko’s only friend — for a certain value of ‘friend’, it should be noted. Gray used to be the “smart one” until he went through what is basically a nervous breakdown due to his knowledge of theoretical physics and never quite recovered.

I’ll note that Gray would have been a more obvious choice for the early Nancy Drew games; a friendship gone wrong, a slightly “crazy” villain — the pieces are there. But because DED subverts the Classic Formula, Gray is instead probably the only person fully on Niko’s side — no tricks, no ulterior motives, no nothing. He’s exactly what he presents himself to be: gruff, grumpy, unkind, and not even close to a murderer (except, perhaps, where Mason is involved).

Let’s finish off our roll call with Niko Jovic, our murder victim and one of two foils for Nancy in this game. Niko was “100% a scientist”, interested most in the free use and free sharing of technological and scientific advancement, and less interested in developing technology to harm others.

This didn’t make him very popular with those who wanted to harm others, funnily enough.

It’s important that our victim in this case foils Nancy, because this is a game about (as we’ve discussed) acceptance and consequences. The consequence of Niko not paying attention to the fact that other people in the world are not like him was that there was an opening for a bad man to kill him. It’s not Niko’s fault that he was killed, but neither was he unaware that it was coming. He’s described as a ‘dead brilliant jerk madman’, and there’s a lot of truth in that; those who ultimately do good things and work hard are not always good or kind or nice themselves.

And yes, this is how he relates to Nancy. Nancy, like Niko, is a person who rather thinks what most of us would call “people skills” or “kindness” get in the way of the most important thing: solving puzzles and figuring things out. Both of them make the world better through their work, but honestly speaking, that’s not their ultimate aim. They’re not working directly to improve the world, they’re working for knowledge and to solve the puzzle.

In other words, they’re investigators, not philanthropists. And often (ultimately, for Niko), that’s what puts them in danger.

Over on Team Nancy, we have some familiar faces, beginning with our most unfamiliar familiar face, Nancy herself.

Hired as a professional detective undercover, Nancy Drew arrives at the lab to ferret out the murderer — and the truth behind Niko’s death — before anyone figures out that she’s not actually there on behalf of a new owner.

We learn a lot about Nancy in this game, not the least of which because she’s in what we can cheerfully call the opposite of her element (contrasting with TMB). Closely observed, surrounded by a subject that’s not quite in her normal wheelhouse, and where everyone around her is hell-bent on hiding everything they can from her — it’s a recipe for a frustrated detective, and that’s part of the reason that we see the return of not one but two (three? technically) detective (or detective-adjacent) phone friends, rather than Bess/George/Ned.

(Side Note: George, for all her specialty with science and technology, wouldn’t have been a good phone friend for this game, as she would have focused on the science, which isn’t really the point of Nancy’s investigation, and not enough on the case. Just putting that out there.)

This game features Nancy as a sort of patsy, rather than an unexpected observer or the target of revenge, and it should be no surprise that she outgrows that role fairly quickly. Her reluctance to search for evidence against someone, rather than evidence for the crime, clears the hurdle of Ryan’s Suspected Involvement pretty quickly while being the opposite of what Victor wanted out of her assistance.

On display here is Nancy’s fairness and her ability to ignore what others say about a case if it doesn’t suit her. Sure, she’s been told to watch Ryan and find her guilty, but Nancy’s pretty uninterested in that, instead centering her search around Niko rather than Ryan. Ellie makes a comment about Mason being about 60% scientist (and Niko being 100%), and it’s fair to say that Nancy’s about 60% a detective; she has other interests and motivations, but when she’s ‘at work’, she’s focused on doing her job to the greatest extent that she can — which is what makes her such a problem for Victor in the long run. And speaking of problems for Victor…

Returning from her role as the gloriously catty mean girl in ASH is Deirdre Shannon, criminology student and absolute sass master. Busted for hiring someone to write an essay for her in college, Deirdre’s clever enough to suggest making up the credit by assisting in a real-life murder investigation — albeit with a heavy dose of sarcasm for her frenemy.

Besides having the best lines in the game (her “did you forget that I don’t like you?” and voicemail message are incredible, along with her assertion that Nancy should get her head checked out due to her repeated hits on the head), Deirdre is there to help Nancy see things from a different perspective and to clue her in on information that she has no way to get — backing up alibis, old publications, and the like. She’s less concerned with the background of the case — the Hardy Boys (!!) have that covered — and is more here to figure out exactly who can be taken off of Nancy’s suspect list and why.

She also, in a rather glorious twist of fate, is the reason that Nancy is hired, having told Victor that Nancy suffers from “chronic wrongness”, among other things. I can just imagine how pissed Victor must have been in jail with her — more than with Nancy, certainly — and can easily see a future where, upon his release/escape, Victor goes after Deirdre — it was after all Deirdre, not Nancy, who cleared Ryan.

But enough about games that would have been better than MID. That’s a nigh-unquenchable topic.

Deirdre’s there as the more prominent foil to Nancy within the game — and the game isn’t shy about foiling the two women. Both are bright, both come from River Heights, both are interested in/involved with the same boy, both are involved in crimes/criminology to some extent…the list goes on.

The thing that Deirdre-as-foil shows us about Nancy is that Nancy isn’t unique in what she does. Sure, the way she got into the mystery business and her credentials are unusual, but she’s far from the only girl in her late teens that’s interested in crime and mysteries, and far from the only one who can solve these types of mysteries.

Deirdre is often referred to as “the girl who could have been Nancy Drew” had things worked out differently for her — different parents, different friends, different connections, etc. — and we see that play out here. She’s not lacking for smarts, intuitive thinking, or creative problem solving — just in opportunity.

The Hardy Boys are here for their only appearance in the Nancy Games, and boy do they do The Most.

When last we saw him, Frank Hardy was helping Nancy out with a ‘relationship talk’, but here he’s interested in two things: talking to Nancy and researching to help Nancy. He’s quite proud of Nancy and her reputation, and is more than willing to help her on the case — though his first priority is her safety, as demonstrated by the voicemail.

That really should be capitalized, huh. “The Voicemail”.

I first wanna say kudos to DED for actually making progress in Frank’s character arc and relationship with Nancy, and giving context to his sulking in the next game. So often in games like the Nancy Drew games — and indeed, in the earlier games in this series — there’s an addiction to the status quo that doesn’t really allow for anyone to learn anything permanent, much less something that changes their behavior, so I’m pretty thrilled with this development even outside of shipping.

Second, I love that this is a topic that both boys are interested in, albeit for different reasons. Too often we have either Frank or Joe being enthusiastic about the context of Nancy’s investigation, and it’s nice here to see that the boys can agree on something — even if their answers are different as to why.

Speaking of different reasons for interest, Joe Hardy is back (we haven’t seen him for quite a few games!) and is better than ever. I’ve said it before (and I’ll say it again), but really Rob Jones does a phenomenal job with Joe, especially as the games progress, and DED is a perfect example. Joe’s dialogue is pitch-perfect and his excitement about Tesla is adorable.

I’m also going to point out that Joe’s identity as a very proficient tactician is in play in this game, as he is the one to point out how very strange it is that a man of means and importance would hire Nancy — not that, as Frank points out, Nancy doesn’t have a great reputation, but just that Victor should be able to hire a world-class detective rather than a girl in her late teens to investigate this murder.

The thing that the Hardy Boys are here to represent is Nancy’s fledgling footing into the professional world. Sure, she’s been a detective for hire for a while now, and TOT sort of ushered her into that world for good, but the Boys have been doing this for much, much longer, and have the sort of resources that make a huge difference when investigating crimes like murder versus circumstances like “my daughter is unhappy go help her”.

For all of Nancy’s natural inclinations, talents, and drive that make her a good detective, the Hardy Boys (along with Deirdre) show the downside of being an autodidact: the breadth of your resources isn’t anywhere near what others’ might be. The things she needs to solve this mystery are privy to those with better resources — colleges and agencies — and she has to rely on them to get the job done.

The Favorite:

DED is a game that I didn’t expect to like, but ended up really loving, so there’s quite a few things in this section that stand out.

The first thing I want to mention is I love Ellie and Mason’s interactions. In a lot of Nancy Drew games, we get the characters interacting with Nancy, but not so much interacting with each other, so it’s always a pleasure for me when it happens.

Deirdre holds her title as one of my favorite characters in this series, so of course she’s going to get a mention here. The “TDPD” segment has me rolling on the floor, her comment about Nancy volunteering for a neurological study sounds exactly like what a lot of fans joke about, and her voice acting (major props to Meaghan Halverson) is equal parts snide and earnest, all without ever losing her edge or likability.

As anyone who’s been in the vicinity of these metas knows, I’m a huge fan of the Hardy Boys, and I love their inclusion here. The geeking out over Tesla, the brotherly camaraderie, the hints at Frank’s feelings, Joe teasing Frank about said feelings — it’s all here, and it’s all wonderful.

My favorite puzzle would probably have to be the whole fingerprint-melting-gummy-bear puzzle, just because — I mean, at the end of the day, that’s just cool. I did a forensic-science-style unit in my elementary years where we printed fingerprints and distinguished between whorls and such and this made me exactly as excited as I had been all those years ago. It’s fun, fitting with the story, and involves gummy candies — what’s not to like?

My favorite moment — and I’ve mentioned this once already in this meta, and in a different meta — is the moment that Victor shows up. Savvy players of this series would know that there’s no way HER would include a model of Victor just for a video call, so it’s not exactly a surprise, but it’s such a wonderfully scary moment without being a jump scare or a startle.

Victor’s appearance closes down Nancy’s snooping spots, removes a safe place for her, turns the last bit of the game into a sort of mix of detective and stealth game, and is a huge subversion of the usual “phone-client” formula, and I absolutely love it.

My last favorite thing about this game is when you realize that Victor hired Nancy due to her supposed incompetence, rather than her being, in Frank’s words, one of the best that there is. It chills you down to the bone and makes the whole game feel more antagonistic as a result, and is just a really nice writing moment.

The Un-Favorite:

There are, however, a few things that maybe aren’t so grand in this game, even with all its good points.

My least favorite puzzle is probably the chemical puzzle — with the beakers and the exploding water and such — just because it’s quite finicky, and it takes up time that I’d rather be doing other things with. I thought about the printing puzzle, but honestly even though it takes time within the game to do it, there’s plenty of other things to do with Nancy’s time that makes the time spent there not so big a deal.

My least favorite moment in the game is, quite frankly, the time spent talking to Ryan. I find all the characters interesting as characters, but Ryan is exactly the kind of Quirk that I don’t handle well, in real life and in video games.

Honestly, her remark of “I less-than-three them!” was enough to get me to stand up and walk away from the game for a minute the first time I played through it.

Had this game come out a few decades earlier, she would have referred to Niko as “totally tubular” and stuff like that, and it’s…it’s just a lot to handle for me personally.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Deadly Device?

Honestly speaking, this is a game where there’s not a lot to do. I’d probably tweak Ryan to be a little less annoying and smooth out the chemicals puzzle, but those are more personal grievances than they are actual issues with the plot and writing.

Probably the only substantial thing I’d do is tie in the robotic cat plotline a little more. As it is, it’s easy to ignore and doesn’t have a lot of plot or thematic resonance, so I’d make it a little more important and noteworthy. And less scary looking.

DED is a game that sets out to tell a good story while subverting the usual Nancy Drew formula in big and small ways, and honestly it succeeds at both of those things with flying colors. It really feels like a setting where life went on before and will go on after Nancy leaves it, which is Valuable to me all by itself, and features some of the more colorful moments in the series — all while solving an actual murder for the first time since a Florida high school in the 90s.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #the deadly device #clue crew #nancy drew meta #DED #video games #my meta

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s1utspeare · 3 years ago

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Fic Writer Interview Meme

I was tagged by my beloved @hils79, whose answers to this were so??? nice???? and good??? i was like HILLLSSSSS MY LOOOOVVVEEEE esp. with their spicy opinion like. it was very good.

name: Brigid! But slutspeare on ao3!

fandoms: hoo doggy. uhhhhh I wrote fic for Percy Jackson, Sherlock, the Avengers, and Doctor Who in Ye Olden Days on FF.net, but now I mostly write DMBJ fic, which, tbh, is really the only fandom that I like writing fic for at this point?? I think it’s because of the people lmao. And also the extremely versatile ways I can use the characters

two-shot: I don’t think I have a two-shot? I have some two-parter series, either finished or in the works, but for me it’s either one-shot or many-shots. I like two-shots though! They’re always very good bc More Content but with the neat formatting of a one-shot

most popular multi-chapter fic: A Swiftly Tilting Planet yooooooo! I mean to be fair it’s also my only multi-chapter fic but

actual worst part of writing: SUMMARIES i’m literally so bad at summaries. they’re all either short or don’t actually make sense bc I’m literally terrible at writing them. I also hate the feeling where the fic is all inside you and wants to come out but you don’t have enough time/energy/typing speed to get it out there quick enough

how you choose your titles: they’re usually song lyrics or lines from poems lmao. I’m also not great at titles. the FoBa Psychic Detective AU is gonna be called You Don’t Recognize the Bodies in the Water, which is from a weird-ass TikTok I saw the other day so uhhhhh take my titling ability as being Non-Existant

do you outline: YES ok so i was adamantly against outlining for like. my entire writing career bc i was like “it’s a waste of time, idk what’s going to happen, i find it out as i write” and then i outlined Swiftly Tilting and banged that one out SO fucking quick. Like, even just having a basic idea of where you want to go before you start makes writing SO much easier. how did i not discover this hack earlier. Also, you don’t even have to stick with it! You can change it as you discover things! Like! Ah!

ideas you probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice: hmmmm i don’t know! There’s like! so many! and most of them I could conceivably get around to, but it might be awhile. I have a vague idea for a Swiftly Tilting prequel about the m9 ship crew, and also a Vincenzo fic about vinnie and luca being IN LOVE because they ARE but i don’t know if I have enough passion in me to write for that show. other than that, though, is just like. a veritable cascade of ideas waiting (ooohh like the Jia Kezi/Li Jiale ghost roommate oneshot based on the hit BL drama He’s Coming to Me? i would LOVE to write that one but idk if it will happen). aslighalkdsfjladkjf @vishcount I also had a SOTUS-dream last night where Arthit discovers a secret plot at the college that involves a gun full of bees that Kongpob’s mother developed and he has to keep it hidden from the Bad Guys who want to use it to create like, fuckin, superpowered swimmers?? also there was a lot of angst involved bc Arthit was a swimmer in high school for some reason and then something happened oh wait oh shit I realize why that was, it’s because Krist was in that one show where he played a swimmer in high school and it was very angsty. Ok my brain makes sense now. Also BTS was there.

callouts @ me: i love u. slow down u maniac.

best writing traits: oh gosh uhhhhhhh ok I don’t want this to sound like i’m bragging or full of myself but like. I’m fucking good at writing. There’s definitely stuff that I need to work on, and maybe i should edit things a little more but like??? bitch!!!! you’re good at this!!! this is your job!!! idk I spent so much time being like “aw shit what if I’m actually not that good what if everyone who reads my stuff is just being nice and saying that they like it and it actually sucks” but i’ve looked back on some of the things i’ve done recently and I’m like, actually a good writer. I mean I’ve been practicing for a long time, so it stands to reason that I would be decent by now. But SHIT like. I’m doing ok! and I’m still a baby! I can only get better!

spicy tangential opinion: I don’t know if I really have any writing Hot Takes? oh wait i guess i do have one sort of. I think the “fake it until you make it” saying is also super applicable to writing, bc in college I was like “ok what if I just make this as Pretentious Sounding As Possible” and everyone was like “omgggg ur so goooodddd this proseee” and i was like “oh damn i didn’t realize that would work.” and now my ace ass writes straight p*rn romance novels for a living. like I genuinely don’t know what I’m doing half the time, but if you put your work out there with confidence and the knowledge that someone will want to read it, someone is going to read it. also u don’t have to know what a penis looks like to write Sex Involving Penises. You’ve just gotta be good at metaphors.

this was so fun! I love answering questions! I’m gonna tag @vishcount, @lacommunarde, @gaiahenshin, @merinnan, @bookjoyworm, @humanlighthouse, and @undyingsunshine for this one, if you haven’t already been tagged (but as always, no pressure)! also, anyone else who would like to do it, pls tag steal from me!!! love u bbs, hope you’re having a great day!

#tag game #about me #my writing #fic

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silence-burns · 4 years ago

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Please Hate Me //part 33

Fandom: Marvel

Summary: Based on “Imagine having a love/hate relationship with Loki.” by @thefandomimagine

[Somewhere in a universe far, far away…]

There was a soft brush of fabric on the polished floor that accompanied the approaching steps of leather shoes. Frigga stopped a little to Heimdall's left.

"What do your golden eyes see, my friend?"

"They see many things, my queen."

Bifrost glimmered in the million colors under their feet. Lines and flashes passed faster than the human eye could see. The sword that was the key to every way, waited in Heimdall's hands.

"What do you see of my troubled sons?"

"They are both learning through new experiences."

Frigga sighed. "Which usually means they’ve gotten in even more trouble. Tell me, what is it this time?"

Heimdall stood tall on the dais, the armor forged in ancient times by the hands of legends half forgotten by time still impeccable. The worlds moved before his eyes, with no secrets hidden from the gaze of the All-Watcher.

"They are faring well, my queen. Even Loki."

"I had hoped that banishment to Earth would be a better choice than the dungeons." Frigga's hand clutched the gown over her heart. "What did he do this time?"

A smile ghosted on the lips of the All-Watcher. "It appears that he's made friends. Quite close ones, I dare say."

"Oh, dear," Freya repeated in a completely different tone. A wicked light played in her eyes. "Do tell, my friend."

[The same universe, a little closer]

Life in big cities bears a certain strain on everyone's minds. Despite what the newspapers, thirsty for anything and everything worthy and unworthy of filling the pages with, would like you to believe, life had always been difficult.

Time is always lacking, and money is never enough, and no matter how much you strain your brain, it just sometimes happens that you might not remember about the things stored at the very back of your tiny shop, tucked cozily into the corner of a very calm street.

"Well," the man said. "I had no idea that I still had those in the freezers. I could've sworn that I have cleaned them before the winter and left nothing except for the packed broccoli. It must be your lucky day, my boy."

The boy indeed felt very lucky. It was not everyday that one could be sent out to fetch ice cream for a living god in the middle of winter.

"Have a nice day, sir!" he called on his way out.

The chilly breeze bit into his cheeks, warmed up in the comforting interior of the grocery. Snow shined on the few surfaces not yet stamped on. The sidewalk Peter chose was a slippery trap that only his spider senses got him through unscathed.

Loki sensed his coming, and looked over his shoulder at the approaching boy. His other arm was currently wrapped around your shoulders, tucking you closer into him. Peter tried his best not to stare too openly, but couldn't stop the grin from splitting his face. He sat on the other side of the god, the bench icy cold.

"Thank you, my boy." The god took the ice cream with obvious delight. It had been your idea to spend the few hours before Peter's totally-not-a-date trying out the goods New York had to offer. At first, Loki had snickered at the suggestion of trying out whatever ice cream was available in the middle of winter, but after a few interesting flavors were discovered, Loki apologized. There was an almost disturbing variety of flavors Loki couldn't even imagine existing.

"You're welcome, Mr. Mischief. I'm sure there would be a bigger choice if it was summer. I always go to that one vendor two streets away from my house, because he has this special recipe that absolutely blows my taste buds away every time."

"Sounds intriguing." Loki's mind conjured the last time his taste buds had been blown away. If he recalled that unfortunate event correctly, it had something to do with pizza and a bet. "But I think I'll pass for now."

The look of pure adoration in the boy's eyes hadn’t perished.

"I still can't believe you won't get sick after having so many," you said, and watched Loki devour the caramel.

"It must be nice to be a god," Peter sighed. "You have awesome superpowers, get to do what you want and they even make action figures of you…"

Loki frowned. "The what?"

Peter blanched. He started fumbling with his jacket and 'accidentally' looked at his watch. "Oh, I think I’ve gotta go, it's getting so late and I don't want to make MJ wait—"

Loki reached out and fixed the hair Peter had been nervously fighting with for the past few hours they'd all spent outside. "Don't forget the ring, boy."

"Thank you!"

The boy was beaming on his way out of the park.

"I'm never washing my hair again."

The totally-not-a-date that was steadily approaching was something Peter wasn't sure he was ready for. So many things could go wrong—and he had already imagined most of them. It wasn't as if he couldn't sleep all night thinking about it, he just… Was busy. Thinking.

Peter straightened the jacket that was in absolutely no need of straightening. His hand moved to his hair, but he stopped it halfway with a smile. It'd been touched by the hand of god, so it was as good as it could ever get.

On his way out of the park the three of you had been resting in for a while, Peter's mind was in a strange disarray of thoughts. However, he was still capable of noticing the interesting new graffiti decorating the Avengers' statues set up in the middle of the park. Whoever decided to redecorate them this time, certainly had a pair of skillful hands. The wild mustache covering half of Iron Man's face looked almost lifelike.

Loki and you watched the boy leave, nervousness apparent in his every too-stiff step.

"They grow up so fast," you sighed, leaning further into Loki.

He nodded. His finger circled lazily around your shoulder, drawing spiralling patterns. Loki turned his head toward the memorial statues raised in the central part of the park. People took pictures in front of them, posing and smiling as they milled around. Those were the heroes, after all. Saviors of the day.

Loki added a mustache to another statue.

You noticed and eased a giggle. "They're going to be so pissed."

"My very soul aches at that thought. What a terrible crime."

The patterns changed as you shifted slightly. The presence on his shoulder was warm and softened by the fabric of clothes that kept the winter frost from you.

"I thought using magic in this world was difficult."

"It is.There's a lot more focus required to make it work than I'm used to. It's nothing dramatic, though. I've heard of worlds where the trickle of magic is even more strained, to the point where it barely exists at all."

"Do you miss them? The other worlds, I mean. Like Asgard."

The patterns changed again. They slowed down, became more deliberate.

"Sometimes," was the honest answer and the one he gave after careful consideration.

"Will you leave, then?"

Loki looked down at his wrist, where a thin band of metal used to reside, blocking every and all effort he might take against leaving Earth or using magic in any form. It was no longer there, which meant, although it would be extremely difficult to conduct, Loki could technically leave.

The only obstacle was that it was no longer his priority.

"I've never been one to sit aimlessly on my ass for too long, and especially not when and where I had been forced to do so. I think I could name more than a few places I'd like to pay a visit," he admitted, putting his cheek on the top of your head. His throat bobbed slightly. "The only problem is that I just recently found out how terribly boring touring alone might be. It's a real wonder why anyone bothers to do so anymore, and," he swallowed, "I think I could use some company."

Loki cursed himself for putting his head on top of yours, and blocking the view of your face. Especially as he still didn't get any answer. His heart jumped into his throat, making it difficult to breathe.

"...I mean, I know it's still so early, and that's okay if you feel overwhelmed or unsure and I won't force you into anything more than you're willing to do—”

Loki's rumbles were cut short when you finally moved to look up at him. The wild gleam in your eyes and a wicked smile so similar to his struck him dumb.

"You'd never be able to leave this planet without me."

A choked breath, so similar to a whispered name ghosted over his lips. "Of course I wouldn't. What would be the fun in that?"

[The galaxy, elsewhere]

"Oh, dear," the queen broke the biscuit in half with perfect manners. Barely any crumbs dared to ruin the fragile dessert. "I guess he really is experiencing something new."

Heimdall sipped the tea. Servants at the queen's quarters left them with a small table full of goods of the highest sort. The warm breeze played with the curtains with the subtle shimmer of gold. The trees rustled on the wind, losing old leaves to it.

"He's also plotting an escape," Heimdall added. His helmet laid on his knee.

Frigga waved the biscuit in a gesture that had very little to do with manners. "That sounds more like him."

The softest hint of a smile graced her features.

"I wonder what will become of him. Maybe it's in my nature as a mother, but no matter how much I try, I can't help but continue to worry about him, even after all these years."

"I swore to keep an eye on him, and I will." Heimdall put a hand to his heart. There was no smile on his face, only seriousness as he recalled an oath he'd never break.

"Thank you, my friend."

#Please Hate Me #loki x reader #loki x you #loki laufeyson x reader #loki laufeyson x you #loki #loki laufeyson #i love loki #marvel #loki marvel #loki mcu #loki fanfiction #loki imagine #loki laufeyson imagine

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yelena-bellova · 4 years ago

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Don’t Be Afraid: Poe Dameron x Solo!Reader - Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Midnight Flight

Series Masterlist

Plot: Reader can’t sleep after the day she had, she finds her way to the hanger where she finds Poe. He decides to take her mind off of things.

Warnings: Literally two suggestive lines, a healthy dose of angst in the beginning and a whole lot of fluff.

Word Count: 3.6k

A/N: This one took a while, I’m trying to build the Reeader and Poe’s relationship with only so much time to do it. I semi hate what I wrote and I also semi like it, life of a writer lol. We’re going to jump into TFA in the next chapter so this is the last chill chapter for a while, enjoy!

——————-

Leia and Han fell in love with y/n the moment they met her. They decided to raise her as their own, no one was more ecstatic about the decision than Ben. He’d been asking his parents about a sibling for a while. He doted on y/n and stayed by her side constantly trying to help her adjust to her new life.

Y/n adjusted quickly, she became just as attached to Ben and the two became inseparable. She loved Han and Leia, though she didn’t start addressing them as ‘mom’ nd ‘dad’ until about a year after Ben found her. She still had memories of her birth parents, though very few, and she struggled with shifting those roles to other people. One random night as Leia and Han said goodnight to their children, she said it without even thinking,

“Goodnight, Mom. Goodnight, Dad.”

Once they were out of the room, Han and Leia blinked, looked at each other and headed to bed.

Ben and Y/n were each other’s best friend all throughout childhood. They became even closer once they both realized Y/n could use the Force. When they’d discovered it, it was a typical day on the Falcon. They were on Coruscant so Leia could attend a Senate hearing and Han was outside with Chewie doing minor repairs. Y/n and Ben had gotten into a fight (they may have been best friends, but they were still siblings) and at one point, Ben used the Force on Y/n to shove her into a wall. He’d never used his abilities on her like that, she’d felt anger towards her brother before but this was pure rage. As if she’d done it all her life, she threw her hand out towards Ben and he went backwards straight into the cockpit and fell onto the dashboard. Unfortunately, he fell on the button that powered up the ship and it roared to life. The siblings looked at each other in horror, partially at what Y/n had just done and partially at what their father was going to do to them. Ben slammed his hand down on the button and powered the ship down quickly as he heard Han and Chewie coming inside.

“What the hell are you two doing in here?!” Han yelled through the ship as he approached the cockpit.

“How many times have I told you to NEVER touch ANYTHING in this room unless I say so?” Han asked with a raised tone, Chewie roaring in support behind him. “Well?”

Y/n opened her mouth to speak and beg for her father’s forgiveness, when she was cut off by her brother.

“We were running around and I slipped and hit the button. I promise it was an accident, Dad, I’m really sorry.” Ben explained, Han looking over at him before turning to Y/n.

“But I was the one that was chasing him, so it’s really my fault.” Y/n interjected, “I’m sorry, Dad, we should have been more careful.”

Han ran a hand through his hair and grumbled something. “Alright, alright. I’ll let your mother deal with the two of you when she gets back. Now Chewie and I are gonna finish up out there,” he pointed a finger at them both, “No more running.” With that, Chewie and him left.

Y/n wrapped her arms around him and cried into his shirt, “I’m so sorry, I’m so so sorry. I swear I didn’t mean to do that!”

“Y/n, I’m not even mad anymore. How long have you known you could use the Force?” Ben asked as he pulled her away so he could see her face.

She sniffled, “I didn’t! I swear I never knew about it, I would have told you if I’d known!”

Ben let out an astonished laugh, “This is so cool! Mom’s gonna be ao excited when you show her! Dad probably won’t like it but-“  ”Whoa, whoa, whoa, Ben.” Y/n took a step back and dried her eyes, “They can’t ever know about this. EVER.”  ”Why would you not tell them?”

Y/n motioned to the dashboard, “Do you not remember what just happened? I hurt you! I’m not ever doing that again.”

Ben rolled his eyes, “Okay, yeah, and I’ll get you back for it at some point but Y/n, you can’t just keep this to yourself.”  ”Yes, I can and yes, I am. Ben,” Y/n walked towards him and held his hand, “The feeling that went through me when I pushed you, it was...scary. I felt like I didn’t have control and that’s how you ended up hurt. I don’t want to risk hurting you or anybody else.”

Ben sighed and pulled her into his arms, he didn’t agree with her at all but he couldn’t force her into using her abilities. He also didn’t understand what it was like to discover that power. He’d grown up using the Force, it was second nature to him.

Y/n pulled back after a moment, “Promise me this stays between us. Mom and Dad can’t ever find out UNLESS I decide to tell them.”

Ben nodded sadly, “I promise.”  ”I’m serious, nothing to anyone. And that includes Uncle Chewie.”  He scoffed, “Y/n, I would never betray you. I promise.”

—————-

I couldn’t sleep.

I’d hidden in my room all day, too shaken to do anything else after my training session. I’d skipped dinner, I’d ignored knocks at my door, I’d shut everyone and everything out. Come 10 o’ clock, I changed into pajamas and climbed into bed ready to put an end to the day.

Ha. Right.

I tossed and turned for two hours before I gave up and threw the covers off. I was tired, but clearly not enough to sleep. I went to my desk, grabbed the robe that hung off the chair and tied it around my body. I opened my door and left my room, pressing the lock on the datapad and watching the door close.

It was late so there were hardly any people moving through the residential part of the base. There was one pilot coming back from a mission, a tech worker who’d clearly been working all evening...

The general’s daughter who was wandering around base in her pajamas thinking about the lightsaber sitting in her room.

There were reasons for my conflicting feelings towards using the Force. The first time I’d ever used it was out of anger to hurt someone I loved. That was reason enough to be worried about it happening again one day. But over the years of secret training sessions, I’d gained better control of my emotions. I’d grown up seeing my Force-sensitive mother use it only for good, but I’d also witnessed the dark side of it in it’s purest form.

And I’d witnessed it in the person I loved the most in the galaxy.

At the thought of my brother, I leaned my head against the nearest wall and stopped walking. It didn’t matter how many years it had been, losing him still felt like a fresh wound. Maybe the wound had never closed because I was fighting a war and it wasn’t with him at my side. The rest of the galaxy saw the war as the Resistance vs. the First Order, but for me it was brother vs. sister in a fight they never should have been in.

I pushed off the wall and continued down the hallway, passing the empty cafeteria and a few offices. Reading the names of my peers on the plaques next to their doors, I felt envious. All these people knew who they were and exactly what they were doing their lives. I was Leia’s daughter, I was expected to know exactly what I was doing at all times when privately, I was a complete mess. I was fighting a war against my brother, my family had been torn apart, and there was a lightsaber sitting in my room that I simultaneously loved and hated. I wanted so badly to be as stable and steady as my fellow commamnders, the people that answered to me deserved that from me. I wanted to do my part in this war and make sure the First Order’s reign of terror across the galaxy ended.

I just wished things weren’t so complicated.

Somehow, I’d ended up on the opposite end of base outside the hanger. It made sense that my feet naturally carried me there, it’s where I spent most of my free time. Whether it was bringing Jess lunch when she was too busy to leave, watching potential recruits run test flights or helping Poe with repairs on his ship...

Speak of the devil, there he was doing just that. Only the bottom half of his body was visible as his top half was buried in the cockpit of his X-Wing. Intrigued as to his reason for not being in the cantina drinking his squad under the table, I made my way over to him.

“Someone looks surprisingly sober.”

His head popped up at the sound of my voice, turning on the ladder he was standing on to face me,

“The parts came in to fix the guidance system,” he said, wiping his hands on a dirty rag, “Shots with Snap and Jess can wait.”

I hummed in acknowledgement and came to stand below his ladder. Poe turned back around and continued working, “Why are you up so late?”  I put a hand on the ladder, “Can’t sleep, my brain and I aren’t getting along.”  Poe chuckled, “How so?”  ”Well, I wanted to sleep but my head thinks that I should evaluate every regret, problem and emotional trauma I’ve ever had.”

He stood to his full height and took a few steps down the ladder, “Well, forget the cantina, you’re having all the fun tonight.”

I laughed and pressed my forehead against the ladder, Poe took a seat on a step so we were face to face. He was dressed in his orange jumpsuit, but it was tied at his waist, and a tight grey tee shirt. He looked surprisingly awake for the time, whereas I looked like a Corellian freighter had hit me.

“You wanna talk about it?”

I shook my head gently against the cool steel of the ladder. Poe was no stranger to my family history, I’d talked to him before about my brother but I could only say so much. Poe naturally looked at Kylo Ren as pure evil, I saw my brother who’d been misled and manipulated by a dark force.

He sighed, “Well, how about we take your mind off of all these deep dark secrets you’re keeping from me?”  I had to stop mself from laughing, if only he knew...

“What’re you thinking, Dameron?”  Mischief came over his face immediately, he gestured up to the massive ship we were standing below. I connected the dots, quickly realizing his ingenious idea,

“No,” I said firmly, causing Poe to smile.

“Yes.” He replied.

“You already almost killed me once today and I’m pretty sure I said I was never flying with you again.”  Poe started zipping up his flight suit, “Yeah, and you’ve said that a hundred times yet you always get back in a ship with me.”

He had me there, Poe was reckless and impulsive yet for some reason, I still trusted him with my life.

He was already climbing the ladder and awaiting my reply expectantly. I looked to him, rolled my eyes and followed him up. Once I was at the top, he was already seated and I realized where I’d be sitting,

“How the hell are you going to fly safely with me sitting on your lap?” 

A coy smile appeared on his face, “Guess you’ll have to find out.”  Rolling my eyes, I awkwardly stepped in between Poe’s legs and looked behind to see where I was going to land. Why did this feel like it was crossing some sort of line in our friendship? One part of my mind was protesting and the other part was practically shoving my body down happily. Splitting the difference, I cautiously sunk down onto my friend’s lap. Poe placed his hands on my hips without warning to situate the both of us. The warmth of his touch sept through my thin robe and pajamas, simultaneously making me nervous and at ease.

Poe flipped a switch that turned on his beloved ship, I leaned back to look at him. He looked like he did earlier in the day; happy, content, relaxed.

“Ready?”

I smiled softly, “Let’s fly, Dameron.”

Without me realizing, he’d grabbed hold of the controls and lifted us up in the air. I’d flown all my life, but never in an X-Wing, and it moved much differently than the ships I’d piloted. Poe guided us out of the hanger and before I knew it, we were flying above D’Qar’s lush landscapes.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”  “We’re not going anywhere, just for a fly.” Poe replied as he made a slow left turn to get us further from base. “I’m also going to teach you how to fly an X-Wing.”

“Seriously?” I asked with a little too much excitement in my voice.

He smiled at my eagerness, “Well, you’re gonna learn how to steer at least. Okay, the joystick’s pretty sensitive so you’ve got to be careful. And make sure not to press any of the buttons, especally the red one or we’re going to eject right out of the ship.”

I blew out a breath, “Right, no pressure.”

“Pfft, if you’ve flown the Millenium Falcon, you can handle this.”

“I never said I flew it, you just seemed to assume that I had.” I pointed out quickly, turning my head to face him.

“Yeah, and you’ve never once denied it.” Poe said smugly as if he’d trapped me.

“Are we going to argue or are we going to fly?” I asked loudly.

“I’m sure we’ll find a way to do both,” Poe replied, while making a small turn, “Alright, grab the joystick.”  He let go with one hand and I took hold of it, once I had a grip he let go with his other. I was officially flying an X-Wing on my own.

I laughed, “This is so cool!”

Poe seemed to enjoy how enthusiastic I was, “If this is how excited you get just going straight, I can’t imagine what you’ll be like when you do something complex.”

A smirk appeared on my face, “What, you mean like this?”  Without warning, I pulled up on the joystick sending us straight up in the air. Poe let out a yelp and his arms flew to my waist, I maneuvered the stick so we’d do a loop. Once we’d straightened out, I started laughing, partially from adrenaline and partially from Poe’s reaction.

“What the hell, Y/n?!”

“Now you know what it’s like to fly with you!” I replied, stlll laughing. His arms were wrapped tightly around my waist still as if he was afraid I was going to do it again. He’d started laughing with me and had his forehead pressed between my shoulder blades. This was another one of those warm, relaxed moments that I wished we could share more often. But somehow tonight felt like...different.

“Alright, daredevil, I’m taking us back to base.” Poe said, reaching around me to take control of the ship. I found myself missing his arms as soon as they were gone from my waist.

Within a few minutes, we were landing in the hanger. Poe pressed the button that extended the ladder to the ground and I climbed down first, him following suit.

“That was pretty fun, I’ll hand it to you.” I said as we leisurely strolled out of the hanger into the halls.

“Glad I could help get your mind off of things,” Poe replied, “And, of course, I just brought up whatever you’re trying to avoid.”

He sounded dejected in his last sentence, ”It’s okay,” I put my hand on his arm, “Tonight was great but my problems were going to be waiting for me as soon as I got back to my room.”

“Then don’t go back to your room tonight.” Poe stated nonchalantly.

“So your solution is me going and snuggling with my mommy?”

He chuckled, “No, you can stay with me.”

There it was, that feeling that I’d gotten several times tonight. When I’d sat down in his lap, praying that he didn’t sense how awkward I felt. When he’d wrapped his arms around me and lingered for a few minutes. What had suddenly changed between us where Poe and I put in more intimate situations and I felt nervous?

I tried not to let the tone of my thoughts come out in my words, “Stay with you?”  “Well, yeah,” Poe said, shrugging his shoulders and stopping in our path, “You need sleep and I know you well enough to know you’re going to stay up all night worrying if you’re alone.”

I let out a small laugh, sometimes I forgot how well he knew me. That’s exactly what was going to happen. With Poe there, I’d be forced to try and get some sleep. Against my better judgement, listening to the part of my mind that loved being wrapped in his arms moments ago, I caved...

“Alright, it’s worth a shot.”

Looking victorious, we continued down the hall making a different turn towards Poe’s quarters. He wasn’t too far from my own, we were both commanders, but I was closer to my mother’s room. We arrived at his door and he entered his code into the datapad, letting me in first.

Poe’s quarters were fairly minimalistic. A few knickknacks he’d picked up during his travels stood on his desk. A picture of him and his father, Kes, was pinned to the wall while one of him and Black Squadron hung next to it. BB-8’s charging station laid in a corner, the lovable droid himself plugged in alraedy and turned off. A few jackets and clothes were strewn on chairs, and his bed that stood close to the door. I’d been here dozens of times, yet this time I felt like I was paying more attention to my surroundings.

“I’m gonna do us both a favor and wash up real quick, go ahead and make yourself comfortable.” Poe said, grabbing some clothes from his dresser amd disappearing into his bathroom.

I sat down on the edge of his bed and put my head in my hands, chuckling at my situation. I could think of a dozen girls on base who would renounce their families to spend a night with the legendary Poe Dameron. Here I was trying to slow my suddenly rapid heartbeat at the thought of sleeping next to him, my best friend. When the hell did this happen? I stood up, untied my robe and hung it off of Poe’s desk chair. Walking back to the bed, I flipped over the covers on one side and crawled under.

After a few minutes, Poe exited the bathroom and I peeked over at him. He’d changed into a pair of grey sweatpants and a black tank top that clung tightly to his torso. His eyes fell on me and he gave a soft smile, as if the sight of me in his bed made him happy. He switched off the light to the room and walked over to his side of the bed. I wasn’t sure how to position myself, standard issue beds were fairly small and we’d definitely be somewhat up against each other. He turned on his side and I did the same,

“Thank you for this...It’s just been a stressful day.” I said quietly, I didn’t have to speak very loud considering our faces were only a few inches apart.

“I get it, or maybe I don’t, we won’t know till you talk to me,” he said, his last words spoken in a singsong tone.

I laughed, “Not tonight, remember? Tonight’s about distracting me.”  Even in the dark, I could see that familiar eyebrow going up, “I can think of several things we haven’t tried yet.”

I hoped the darkness concealed my suddenly red cheeks. Usually I could dish it back out to him without a second thought, but tonight I found myself trying not to let my mind drift to the ideas Poe was alluding to.

“Yeah,” I spoke up, “Like going to sleep.”

 Poe comically rolled his eyes, “Fine, if you want to go the boring route.”

I reached over and placed a hand on his bicep, “Thanks for always being there for me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Hey, that goes both ways, sweetheart.” Poe replied, reaching up to gently run his hand up and down my arm. His touch created goosebumps I hoped he wouldn’t feel, but knew he could. For just a second as we looked into each other’s eyes, I thought I saw his flicker to my lips. But it was too quick a movement to confirm.

“C’mere,” he mumbled, opening his arms to me.

My body went into autopilot mode and I moved into his arms before giving it a second thought. I placed one of my hands on his chest and wrapped the other around his torso. I could feel his mother’s ring that hung from his neck under his tank top. One of his hands cradled my head and the other was splayed out on my back, anchoring me to him. This was the most comfortable and at ease I thought I’d ever been in my life. Poe’s skin smelled fresh from the shower, his firm grip on my back was comforting and his body was the type of warmth you could lose yourself in.

Well, if we hadn’t crossed a line already tonight, I was pretty sure we had now...

“Get some sleep, Y/n.” Poe whispered, resting his chin on top of my head. I softly hummed in agreement as I felt myself already beginning to drift off...

————

A/N: Well, that’s all she wrote. Actually, she wrote many scenes that didn’t make it in but whatever...We’re slowly starting to piece together the Reader and Ben’s history, honestly that’s one of my favorite parts to write. Next week, we jump into TFA. In the words of Anakin Skywalker, this is where the fun begins 😏 Hope you enjoy!!

Taglist: @m1rkw00dpr1ncess @springfox04 @constantdisgrace @holybatflapexpert @seninjakitey @tammythompson-singslikea-muppet @leilei-draws @eternal-fandoms

#poe dameron #poe dameron fanfiction #poe dameron fanfic #poe dameron imagine #poe dameron x reader #star wars #poe dameron x solo!reader

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undyingembers · 3 years ago

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Phantom of the Opera - Lenarius/Daeran AU?

Ask me about my AU's!

Ooh, this is a fun one! Where to start.

In this universe, magic exists, but it is way, way toned down compared to the Pathfinder universe. There are people who can use magic, but they are very rare (iirc, Len and Galfrey are the only named characters who ever use magic). You still have the standard fantasy races, but they are not very common.

Len is still a tiefling. In this universe, instead of horns and a tail, tieflings are born with horrible deformities that others see as a mark of fiendish ancestry. Tieflings are horrifically discriminated against. In fact, up until the story takes place, it was perfectly legal to clear out places where tieflings live and kill them on sight. Len got it particularly bad bc now his face is all fucked up (thus he gets to be the “Phantom” whohoo!).

When Len was a child, his parents kept him locked away. However, the kid showed himself to be an absolute genius, particularly when it came to music. One day, while his family was hosting a gala, he thought he would be able to overcome the prejudice and make something of himself with his singing. So, he donned a veil and sang for everyone at the gala. At first, all the guests were completely enchanted by this child prodigy. However, he was soon discovered and all the horrified nobles ran him out with the intent to kill him.

He was only saved by Woljif, who just happened to be out that night. Woljif is also a tiefling, but unlike Len, his deformity is in a spot that can easily be hidden under his clothes. He hides Len in the secret passages of a prestigious boarding school. However, when Len asks for more help, Woljif rebukes him, repeating the words his own grandmother said to him: “if you don’t work, you don’t eat”.

Meanwhile, Daeran Arendae, the son of the world-famous opera legend Silaena Arendae is left an orphan when his mother dies from an uncurable disease. His closest of kin is Galfrey. I haven’t really decided what (if any) noble titles she has, but she is not the queen. Unfortunately, Galfrey is often busy fighting in the Crusades, so she completely neglects the boy and sends him off to a boarding school.

Daeran’s time in the boarding school is a complete nightmare. He was bullied horrendously and was given no comfort while he was grieving for his mother. The neglect caused him to lash out, which in turn earned the ire of the teachers and staff. He hated everything and everyone there.

The only saving grace is an “angel” who would visit him in secret and teach him how to sing. Lenarius had been squatting in the secret areas of the boarding school until one day he was drawn in to the school’s chapel by Daeran’s singing. He followed that voice until he saw that other kid sitting by himself. After Daeran had been done with his song, Daeran started crying for his dead mother and let it slip that his mother had promised to send down an angel. Feeling sorry for the boy, Lenarius presented himself as the angel Silaena had sent down and kept him company throughout his school years (it should be noted that Lenarius pretending to be an angel is somewhat plausible; angels do exist in this universe; Daeran is still an aasimar and Galfrey works with angels all the time while crusading). In addition to that, Lenarius haunted the school as a sort of poltergeist and frightened Daeran’s bullies.

Eventually, Daeran and Len grow up so that they need to leave the boarding school. Daeran gets a job at the opera house as a chorus member, and Lenarius follows him there. Lenarius sets up a lair in the secret catacombs of the opera house and gets back in touch with Woljif. Since Woljif can “pass” as a human, the two of them set up a scheme where Lenarius would pose himself as a ghost haunting the opera and the two of them would run a con where they would extort money from the opera house. However, Lenarius also has a plan to progress Daeran’s career as an opera singer and has been putting that in motion.

From there, things play similarly as the play. The old opera owner sells the opera house to two new owners (Irabeth and Anevia). Woljif informs them of the “ghost” that lives in the opera and to pay him money, keep box five empty, blah, blah, blah. Galfrey comes back from the crusades and decides to patronize the opera house (much to Daeran’s annoyance). Lenarius causes an “accident” to happen to the lead male performer (Iacobin, my cavalier protag for the eventual WotR DLC), causing the guy to walk out in a panic (btw Sabine is the Prima Donna, however I don’t think it would quite work for the lead female to be replaced by a man, so Sabine is the “Piangi”). Daeran gets the lead role and is promptly adored by the crowd.

After the show, Galfrey (who has decided she wants to patch things up with Daeran) visits Daeran in his changing room with her bodyguard, Hulrun. At first Daeran rebukes her, but when she starts bringing up his childhood memories, he softens up to her a bit. As soon as she leaves, Lenarius comes to Daeran in the dressing room and takes him through the secret passages and into his lair. Because Lenarius is a genius, everything looks perfectly awesome and enchanting (and not gross and dank at all), and Daeran is completely taken in by all the artworks and contraptions Lenarius has built. Lenarius is working on a masterpiece, but he cannot quite finish, as he feels there is a piece missing.

After Daeran spends the night in Lenarius’s lair, he finds Lenarius asleep working on the opera. Curious as to what is under the veil, Daeran removes the veil, revealing a creature deformed, cursed, and worst of all, mortal. Lenarius is horrified that Daeran saw his face. At this point, Lenarius had fallen in love with Daeran and is now despairing over the fact that Daeran will never return his feelings now. Meanwhile, Daeran is pissed off that Lenarius lied about being an angel and demands to be taken back to the opera, which Lenarius agrees to do.

The next scene happens at a tavern. Hulrun is preaching how tieflings are evil and he laments how recent laws have made it illegal to purge them out of cities. Ember (who hangs out at the opera house and kind of knows Lenarius’s secret; she also sits with Lenarius in box five whenever he’s viewing an opera) is there and recognized Hulrun as the knight who burned her and her father at the stake. Horrified, Hulrun immediately rebukes and insults her. The scene pans away to Lenarius listening in on the whole conversation.

Again, the next events play out like they do in the show. As soon as Daeran returns to the opera house, a new play is in production. Lenarius sends Irabeth and Anevia threatening notes demanding that Daeran be cast as the lead male in that opera. They refuse and cast Iacobin instead. Meanwhile, they give box five to Galfrey instead of reserving it for “the opera ghost”. Lenarius sabotages the show, using his magical gifts (he has magic powers surrounding certain tricks he can do with his voice). Again, Iacobin (and everyone else) gets freaked out. Irabeth and Anevia almost give into Lenarius’s demands to cast Daeran in the lead, but Galfrey steps up and tells them that they will not obey the orders of a criminal and sends Hulrun backstage to find the saboteur. Because of what he had heard Hulrun say at the tavern, Lenarius kills him and drops him onto the stage. This causes everyone to freak out.

Galfrey goes to find Daeran to bring him to safety, and they both end up on the roof. Daeran tells her that the “opera ghost” is just a mortal man, but he has no idea what that man wants. Daeran is still angry at Len for lying to him, and now he finds out that Len killed someone, and basically his whole life has been upended. He and Galfrey manage to patch things up when she offers him comfort. Lenarius, who has been listening to the whole conversation, falls into despair as he thinks this means he has lost Daeran forever. However, before he parts ways with Daeran for good, he decides he wants to finish his masterpiece and have Daeran sing it one last time.

Six months pass, and no one hears from Lenarius. Even Woljif is starting to get antsy as he hasn’t had contact from his partner in crime in that time. At the masquerade ball, it is revealed that Lenarius has spent that time finishing his opera and appears to everyone demanding that his work be performed.

While rehearsal is going on, someone (either Galfrey or Anevia) find out that Woljif if Lenarius’s accomplice and interrogate him. Woljif tells them all the background info that he knows (Len being a tiefling, squatting at Daeran’s boarding school, the scheme they were pulling). Galfrey decides to use this as an opportunity to capture Lenarius. Daeran, however, has reservations about betraying the only friend he had growing up and runs off to the cemetery.

Lenarius catches up to Daeran at the cemetery, at Silaena’s grave. Lenarius begs Daeran to sing his masterpiece for him once last time. He promises Daeran that if Daeran does this for him, Lenarius will leave him alone forever. Daeran demands to know Lenarius’s name, which Lenarius gives. They have a little bit of bonding over old memories before Daeran warns him that the opera is a trap. Lenarius says he already knows. Galfrey rides in, causing Lenarius to flee the scene. As Galfrey checks to make sure Daeran is alright, Daeran angrily agrees to sing in the opera.

Come the night of the opera, Daeran and Sabine are cast as the leads. Before the climax of the opera, Lenarius incapacitates Sabine and takes her place in the grand duet she and Daeran were supposed to sing together. Lenarius dons a mask and crown and a magnificent dress as he and Daeran sing together for supposedly the last time. Like in the original play/book, Lenarius as the Phantom has a compelling/hypnotic voice. It is obvious that something had happened to Sabine, but everyone, including Galfrey’s guards are too captivated to do anything about it.

After their duet, Lenarius starts to sing an amazing solo. Daeran realized that once Lenarius is done singing, it will be over. The spell will be broken, and he will never see Lenarius again. Not wanting this to happen, Daeran rushes over and removes Lenarius’s mask in the middle of the song. The audience screams in terror at this hideous monster. Lenarius is absolutely mortified. He manages to cast a mass confusion spell on the audience before making a getaway. Daeran runs after him.

As Galfrey can’t rally her men, she grabs Woljif, who she had kept restrained, and demands that he take her to where Lenarius took Daeran. Woljif agrees and leads her down the catacombs. However, he betrays Galfrey and instead leads her into one of the death traps Lenarius had built.

Meanwhile, Daeran follows Lenarius back to his lair. Lenarius is hurt and furious (and also suffering mild PTSD flashbacks from his parents’ gala) that Daeran would ruin his grand moment. He says some really hurtful things to Daeran and demands Daeran leave him alone. At first his words seem to drive Daeran away, but Daeran realized that Lenarius is just lashing out and he goes back to comfort him. Daeran tells him that he didn’t mean to hurt Lenarius. He only did what he did because he didn’t want to lose Lenarius forever. He also tells Lenarius that he wishes things could go back to the way things were before that fateful audition where Lenarius was just the friend who comforted him when he was lonely and grieving.

They almost kiss, but Galfrey (who escaped the death trap) runs in, sword drawn. She demands Lenarius let go of Daeran. Daeran tries to get her to back down, but Galfrey will have none of it. She draws strength from Iomadae and starts attacking Lenarius. Lenarius tries to use his magic on her, but she is protected by her goddess. As she chases Lenarius around the lair, she starts destroying all of Lenarius’s beautiful artworks. All the while, Daeran begs her to stop, but he can only watch in horror as all the wonderful masterpieces get destroyed.

Just as Galfrey is about to land a blow on Lenarius, Woljif sneaks in and does a sneak attack on her. This gravely injures Galfrey, and she falls, incapacitated.

Woljif, who had been scouting the area before coming down here, tells Lenarius that the guards are surrounding the opera house and that they need to get out of there fast. Daeran wants to go with them, but Galfrey is so severely wounded that she might actually die if they leave her there. Daeran decides to get her to a healer, even if it means that he and Len must part ways. The two of them kiss before Lenarius and Woljif head off into the night.

The story ends with Ember wandering into the lair and finding the passage Len and Woljif used to escape. She uses that passage to follow them. (There is a sequel. I am ashamed to say that I also did Love Never Dies, but I’d like to think that my version is slightly less stupid).

So yeah, Len is a more sympathetic phantom (he doesn’t kill Sabine). It was completely self-indulgent on my end, but I enjoyed this one a lot.

#forestdragoncat #thanks for the ask!#pathfinder wrath of the righteous #commander lenarius #lenarius #lenariusxdaeran #my writing

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swiftlymoniquesblog · 4 years ago

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Sam Girl- Sam Winchester x Reader

Pairings: Sam x Reader, Dean, Castiel

Warnings: FLUFFY FLUFF, mentions of the last half of the final season of SPN and the emotional rollercoaster we’re all currently on (I know, I’m sorry!) lying, secrets, insecurities.

Word Count: 2,407

A/N: This imagine kind of plays off my series Crossing Parallel Lines but it’s totally separate! I came up with this imagine from this locket that I bought from Hot Topic. The Winchesters are always so uncomfortable with the idea of “the other world with the actors who play them on TV” and I love Changing Channels; one of my top favorite Supernatural episodes!

*Italics are flashbacks*

“What?! No! What?! Oh, my Chuck, what the actual hell!” You yell at your phone and throw it across the room.

You huff in annoyance but you feel your heartbreak; you just watched the trailer for the last half of the final season of Supernatural.

“Y/N? Are you okay, I heard you yelling? What happened?” Sam asks, slowly stalking into your slightly ajar door. He knew you could get pretty expressive about your interests and sometimes, the best thing to do is to give you space.

You had been living at the Bunker for a few years since you had connections to the Winchester family. Not that you ever asked for it, but you grew up in the life as well, thanks to your Dad, who ended up getting killed during a hunt when you were sixteen. You had run on your own, doing your hunts, until you got in over your head, and ended up in front of the Bunker, needing the help of the Winchesters to defeat God. Yeah, he was after you too. Your family had more to do with him and had pissed him off, more times than not. It was your Dad who had discovered the lies Chuck had instilled into almost every hunter since the dawn of time, and that wasn’t okay. So, you had to pick up essentially where he left off.

You let out a heavy sigh, running your hands over your face. “Yeah, Sam, I’m okay. I just uh, watched something pretty, well I don’t know how I feel,” you look to him.

“What did you see?” He asks, coming to sit next to you on your bed, after getting the okay from you.

“Um, some animal got hurt and no one could save it,” you say as nonchalantly as possible, hoping Sam would still buy it.

“Oh no, yeah that would upset me too. I’m sorry you saw that baby; are you good now?” He asks as he wraps you up in his arm, pulling you into his side, and kissing your head. You hold onto the opposite side of him, nuzzling your head into his side and showing him the same affection as he was showing you, but also feeling guilty about your lie.

“Yeah, I am. I’m good now, thanks,” you kiss him quickly before you left the room. You hated lying to him but he could never know that side of you. He would dismiss you for sure.

Sam and you had been dating for roughly six months after he heard your discussion with Dean about a current crush you had. Names were never given but it wasn’t hard to figure out who you were referring to. The idea of being close to someone on that level of intimacy again scared him. He knew what the inevitable was for someone like him and it was unfair to the other and it hurt him with a pain he never felt with anything else. When he took interest in a woman, she becomes the center of his world the longer he is with her. Most of the time, however, they never stay too long. It could be a day or a night, or a few days if he was lucky, but the last long-term relationship he had, crushed his soul. Time went by and healed those wounds, but he couldn’t let anyone get too close, no matter how much he wanted to be invested. But when you came into his life, something shifted. He immediately took a liking to you but he wasn’t sure how far he could go. As time went on, and he knew you were sticking around, he allowed himself to go there. He allowed those feelings he knew too well, to flourish within his heart, and it was strange to him, but he liked it. When he found out the feelings were mutual, it did something in him he wasn’t used to; it made him happy. Sure, he’s been happy before, but he had a lot riding on a possibility and if he played his cards right, it could be extraordinary. And it has been. It all started slow, a snail’s pace really, but you couldn’t blame him. If you had been hurt and uncertain as often as he was, you would take everything slow too. That’s why lying to him now, was killing you on the inside. He didn’t deserve it but you knew what kind of man he was and you knew how he felt about certain things.

The library was quiet, so you could be alone with the screaming in your head. You fought with yourself constantly whether, to be honest, or not. Your biggest secret was a huge part of who you were. Adoration for the TV show, Supernatural, was an understatement; you LOVED it! But, hearing the stories from Sam and Dean about when they were stuck in another universe where there were people who act like them, you knew it was unmentionable. Social media was your avenue to let out all your thoughts and ideas with people who shared the same love. No one knew that you lived with the Winchesters, or that they were even real, but that made it more alluring to you. Sitting at the table with your laptop open, you scroll through different comments left by other fans of the show. They were seeing what you were living and that was the most rewarding secret you kept. Pulling the new locket out of your shirt, the words Sam Girl, engraved on the top. Opening it, the anti-possession symbol sat on one side, and a picture of Sam on the other. You run your thumb over the picture, knowing that he was yours, but kept it hidden from him. You owned a plethora of shirts, hats, jewelry, notebooks, and so many other merchandises, that you were quite proud of. You even had a successful blog that was dedicated to the show and the characters, and your imagination with fanfiction. All things you knew Sam would disapprove of. You began writing out your reactions to different videos or events that happened in, not just the Supernatural world, but other fandoms as well.

“Hey, there’s my girl. I was wondering what happened to you,” says Sam. He smiles his small, one-sided grin at you, and sits in a chair to your left.

“Hi, sorry, I got busy writing and I guess I lost track of time,” you admit, closing out your Internet tab and leaving your screen on the cute photo of you and him on your wallpaper.

“You always do,” he chuckles and takes one of your hands. Sam knew about your love of writing and only a few of the topics you wrote about. You laugh along with him, blushing at the fact he knew you so well.

“The life of a writer, baby!” You say, confident in your work, but seeing the look on Sam’s face, quickly changed the mood.

“Where did that come from?” He asks, looking at the chain that hung from your neck. Looking down, you noticed the locket had made its way out of your shirt.

“Oh, that’s nothing!” Grabbing at it and tucking it back in your shirt, you try to advert Sam’s curiosity but that fails.

“Oh, come on, Y/N, let me see it. It looked beautiful.” He comments but you deny him.

“Sorry, but it’s fallen into my bra now,” you say, hoping that would end the conversation but the Winchester Brothers were both very stubborn.

“Don’t think I’m afraid to go in there.” Slight darkness fogged over the normal brightness of his eyes, but it left just as fast as it showed.

“Honestly Sam, it’s nothing. Trust me, you don’t want to know what it is.”

“Trust me y/n, I do want to know. My girlfriend suddenly has a locket I’ve never seen before and won’t show me? I have to wonder if her other boyfriend gave it to her.

You deadpan to him, giving your best bitch face, and he just laughs.

“I’m kidding, but seriously, I want to see it.”

“You didn’t move at first, so he stood up and leaned over to reach in your shirt, but you backed away before he could get there.

“Fine,” you grumble, unclasping the necklace from the back and hand it over.

He seems satisfied that he won this battle, flipping the locket around in his larger than average hands. His eyebrows knitted together, in the cutest look of wonder, like he was a child with a new toy. He opened it, stared down at it for a minute, then handed it back to you.

“You have a locket with a picture of me, which I guess is normal in relationships, but why does it say Sam Girl on the top?” He looked at you quizzically, wanting to know more.

This was it, the time you were dreading the most, but you couldn’t do it anymore; you couldn’t keep lying to him. You prepared yourself for a long discussion and a lot of disgust from him, so you sat back in your chair.

“Sam, I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

“Oh, okay,” he sits back in his seat, eyes glossed with worry and locked on you.

“I’m a Sam girl. I watch that TV show about you and Dean and your lives; I’m a big fan of it. We have, the fans, what are called someone’s girl. Like me, I’m a Sam girl, so I tell other people how I feel about you , what you say and do, and I talk about my romantic feelings towards you. Well, you on this show; it’s a little different.”

Sam had kept quiet the whole time you explained your secret and he held no emotions. You didn’t know what was going through his head, but it couldn’t be good.

“You like that show about our lives from that other universe?” He asks, suddenly breaking the silence.

“Yes,” you answer, hoping he wouldn’t explode at any given point.

“And you didn’t want to tell me about it?” He then looks to you with his infamous puppy dog eyes, wondering why you kept something like this from him.

Taken aback by his calmness, you continue to explain. “Well, I heard the stories of when you went to that other world and how much it freaked you and Dean out, so I thought you would disown me or something if I was into it.”

“Why would I do that?” Sam asks, sadness now forming across his features.

“Because I like something you make fun of! I thought you would make fun of me for what I do. I’m in the whole fandom, Sam! The show, the merchandise, the fanfiction, the blogs; everything!”

That sparked his interest again. “You write fanfiction?” His tone got more questioningly, but you took it as he was going to lay on the mockery.

“Yes, but I swear it’s nothing like some of the stories people write about! It’s actually all clean and sweet. I write about our dates and my feelings, but play it off as fiction.”

Then, his face melted into a smile (GIF), that childlike wonder again. “You write about us?”

“Yeah, I do. And people like it.”

“They do?” He’s surprised now, telling by how high his eyebrows are raised on his face.

“Everyone thinks you’re romantic and that you’re the best boyfriend, but the best part about it, it’s all true,” you smile, but hide it from wandering eyes.

“That’s… sweet,” he comments, stunning you.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I love that you write about us. I think it’s great that you are proud of our relationship and it makes me proud of it too, especially considering other people think I’m pretty great.” He has a little smirk playing on his lips; he’s going to brag about this to Dean later.

“So, you’re okay with all this?” You start to creep a little further into his level of positivity from this topic.

“Surprisingly I am, and I love that you’re showing off that you’re mine,” he pecks your lips before asking another question.

“Wait, are there more of these lockets?”

“Yes, and there’s some that say Dean girl. The same concept,” you comment like it’s nothing but it’s a big deal to Sam.

“There are Dean girls, too?!”

“And there are Castiel girls too, and even some of the other people you guys have met in life, but mainly you three.”

“Oh my God, wait until Dean and Cas hear about this!” Sam was set on telling his brother and his friend; the worst thing you could think of.

“No, please don’t!” Panic set inside you. Telling Sam was one thing but Dean was another.

“Why not?”

“Because Dean won’t be so nice about this. He will mock and ridicule me so much for this. He’s way more opinionated and harsher than you are.”

He thought about it for a minute but knew you were right. Sometimes, his older brother would take things too far, to the point of hurting those he cared about, and Sam couldn’t let that happen to you.

“You’re right, he definitely will freak out over this. He’s way more headstrong about what he doesn’t like. Alright, I won’t tell him and Cas? Well, he’s gotten a lot better with human interactions but, we wouldn’t want to throw him for a loop again,” Sam laughed at confusing the angel with more human things, like when he first came to earth.

“Thank you, Sam,” You say, going to hug him.

“Of course, no one is going to hurt my girl, not even me. But uh, y/n, we need to get you another locket,” he says taking the locket in his fingers again.

“Why? I like it and I paid good money for it,” you take it back and drop it in your shirt.

“Well, there are more of these lockets out there so that means other girls are walking around with a picture of me around their necks. It’s not okay that yours is like everyone else’s, so I’m going to make a special one that I will have engraved with a message from me that’s just to you; my girl,” he whispers the last part right in your ear, electrifying chills through you.

“O-okay.” You stutter out as Sam goes fishing for your locket from the bottom up.

Second A/N: When I was looking for that GIF of Sam, ‘Sexy Back’ started playing; it was perfect!

Tag list: @fandom-princess-forevermore @tloveswriting @forever-trapped-in-my-dreams @simpleb00x @67-chevy-baby @grace15ella @marvelfansworld @austin-winchester67 @pecu-1-iar-lester @irn-dad @trippin-over-my-fandoms @randomwriter23 @cuddyclothes @meilynnotmailyn @lilulo-12 @lillysilverus @mereka18 @jackofalltrades1937 @samfcknwin @thegirlwidabook @cutesymrsinuyashagamer @emowolf227 @littlesunshinesammy

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seeneverything · 4 years ago

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today i decided to replay nick’s dlc! not only to catch back up and remain canon, but to look into his journals and the notes / environment around a little deeper to see if i can discover anything more about him, the game’s story, and the timeline of the game.

i have to say it somewhat surprised me that nick has handwriting that’s legible. i figured it would be similar to sally’s -- very here and there with hardly any grammar, punctuation, and horrendous spelling. yet nick’s journals though brief, are quite linguistic. a pleasant surprise.

but without further ado, my metas are under the cut! a very long read so i hope you enjoy it. i tried my best to divide it into some sort of organization as i could. <3

GENERAL LORE :

ever wondered what an original joy bottle looks like? well, nick has one.

it’s tucked in the far back in his kitchen, behind a light on his shelf. initially i thought it was some random drug and it was more proof of the dlc being pre-game. but if you look closer, the words underneath wellington wells’ emblem say “EVERY DAY, JOIN THE FUN” which is a clear indication of what it actually was. and beside the emblem, just to the right, if you really squint, it says “FLAVOR:” but it’s hidden and you can’t sneak around to the other side. however, considering how old it is, especially from the wear and tear on the sticker, one could probably imagine it being haworth’s own vanilla.

which intrigues me. i wouldn’t doubt that nick was one of the very first people who got the initial batches. virgil dainty found him when he was still a young poet in his teenage years. meaning he probably snatched him when he was around 16. if we play it out like he was 16 when the train came and took all 13 and under, nick would be around 32 during the base game. but i honestly doubt that since the make believes released more singles than albums, and they released the album around the time of strawberry’s release, as inferred by the cover of the album. so for now and to me, nick is somewhere between mid-late 30s.

speaking of joy though, does anyone remember the whole debate about the type of joy nick was taking in the dlc? it wasn’t any type at all. in fact, it was something sally made herself.

“Vibing my guitar always helps me remember things. Like where I put my Sally Specials.”

Those reds and yellows are just another one of the many street drugs that Sally sells to her clients. Probably something like rainbow and the like, but much, much weaker and not as long-lasting. After all, Nick has to take five at one time to black out. Probably at least three of them to feel any sort of a buzz at all. ( as a side note, it personally makes me wonder if sally had anything to do with the production phlash. i’d love to see if there were any notes of it anywhere. )

I had a headcanon a while back that the woman using the power cell was using a sex toy. After all, she has a suitcase that’s cleverly hidden under her bed. If Nick believes it’s this, it makes sense that he’s aware of the “fun part of town,” unlike Arthur and Ollie once in the Parade. Yes, he goes there for sex and relief, but also because he makes deals with the owners to sell adult-themed merch. Wouldn’t be surprised if there were dildos, lube, even lingerie like Nick’s threads -- very, very plausible if there are full sex dolls.

With the Sally Specials and the Joy Bottle being so old, it could still be proof that it’s pre-game as well. After all, if Nick is still around Sally ONLY to obtain to drugs from her, then it could be easily inferred. After all, Sally remembers her time with Nick in the past together, not in the present. And that is pre-1964.

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT NICKY :

it’s absolutely no secret that nick hates himself. from the scratches on the mirror that hide his face and spell “USELESS,” to the inferred suicidal attempts from downing entire bottles of joy with alcohol. the puke is always so rancid in the sink. but there’s also this, too.

it’s funny how nick tends to keep scratching at his head and his eyes. the persona is who he’s trying to cover up i imagine, considering that there are multiple voicelines in the game that says he never meant to cause any harm. and he never meant to commit all the unpleasantries that come with being a rockstar. one of them being infidelity and adultery, and another being a general asshole to the public. overtime i believed that nick gained celebrity syndrome. which is essentially just being a karen on steroids. nick believes he doesn’t need to pay for anything, and he also has the innate ability to give orders to people. just because, in his mind, he’s the best in the world. the avalon’s manager wants to get back at him once and for all for his bossy attitude. but he’s not the only one who feels that, either.

petunia does as well.

nick’s love-life is an extremely complicated one. aside from the the various forms of substance abuse and exposure to said substances, nick has always had his rockstardom become the center of his universe. see, this is all headcanon but, i personally believe that nick was coddled as a child by his overbearing mother. mama told him the world would love him. and mama told him that the world would never hurt him, and that it would be perfect and easy to get through. but then he saw just how hurtful people could be, and just how much hate the world had to offer. and to him, at that. it was extremely difficult to find love in anything and anyone. especially himself. so finding petunia was very, very reassuring. after all, she did promise him, as nick said during the boss fight, to be the lighthouse on all his rocky shores. indicating that she would be the one to lead him back home, and make him stable. and i’m sure for a while, it did.

canonically, until nick lightbearer overtook norbert pickles. he found so many more people who loved him that way. and thus, he let the life of his own stardom take over everything else. including his love life. even more so when the birds threatened hatred and slander to his name if they couldn’t shag him. and if they didn’t manipulate him, nick was so afraid of losing another fan that he wouldn’t care. it felt good anyway, why not fuck people? he keeps a fan, doesn’t worry about being hated, and keeps the life of love toward him going.

not even thinking about petunia in the process. and instead of showing him that he didn’t need all the fans, instead of showing him that he needed to remain faithful and loyal, she lashed out and belittled him from every other corner. though he did deserve it for encouraging her into polygamy and bigamy and definitely by his demanding attitude(later in the note it mentions how he was a henpicker), she did not help his mental state in any capacity. petunia, the moment she didn’t help him anymore and show him the love he thought she promised him, became nothing more than someone who belittled him. truthfully nick never meant to hurt her, but it’s seen through his celebrity ideology that he truly believes in quantity over quality. a sad shame. nick’s mental state is so fucked he doesn’t even really know what true love is by this point. meaning he could potentially be easily manipulated without realization.

despite all this though, i found this to be especially intriguing:

a little hard to read, but this is during the scene before he fights the fans at the contest. his journal reads:

“They think I’m an IMPERSONATOR? Have I lost the Lightbearer aura? How much lower can I sink?”

this heavily implies that nick sets his own idolism over his chances of being a murderer. meaning that somewhere, deep in the crevasse of his subconscious, nick is so desperate for some true love and still can’t grasp hatred that he is clinging onto his persona for as much love as he can. even if it’s fake. thrice as intriguing when one learns that, during his breakdowns, he always explains how he wants his fans to know who he really is:

“i wonder if i remember how to sound polite,” “things are sure to look up once i’m not soaked in hemoglobin.”

an intelligent, young man who was so wrongly brought up into the world by an attached mother who never taught him what punishment really was. nick has been using his celebrity name as a clutch for so long that he’s having difficulty remembering who he really was, or if he can ever be norbert pickles again. he cannot handle being a celebrity, and he never could because of what his mother taught him and grew him to be. yet somewhere deep down, he knows his true self is there. but what nick doesn’t know how to do is accept the hatred of the world enough, especially to him, in order to ever take norbert pickles out.

it’s a constant mish-mash. he can hardly handle the hatred from being a celebrity, but what he does handle from stardom is what keeps him going with it. a war between nick lightbearer and norbert pickles. but neither side has proper ammo because the battlefield is strife with a lack of vegetation.

nick lightbearer in himself is an irony. he shines so bright for everyone around him but yet truly, the light is most needed for himself.

#; 🎸 | META DRABBLES .#tw: suicide mention #suicide mention tw #( SECOND ATTEMPT HERE WE GO )#( SODFBJFDSFBNGF )#( I AM SO PROUD OF ALL THIS!! )#( it took me a few hours to compile this all together so <3 )#( i'm v confident in it )#( no wonder why it's sympathy for the lightbearer gbogfdnsrk )

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booklovingturtle · 5 years ago

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Cardan finds out how Balekin tortured Jude

This turned out to be longer than planned. As soon as I submitted my last final assignment for the semester, I opened up Tumblr and wrote this for @duarteegreenbriar bc of this post. You can def expect another fic where he finds about Locke *wink wink*

I hope you enjoy it! This is kinda like hc/fic based in QON while Jude is still exiled. Also its unedited because I wanted to get this out before I went on Christmas break.

“We have news for you,” was the Bomb’s way of greeting Cardan one earlier morning. Yellow and pinks drops of sunrise had just barely started to fall over Elfhame when he received the Roach’s message, asking to meet.

Not too far into Jude’s exile and a few months since the old Court of Shadows had been demolished meant that the High King and his Queen’s band of spies were meeting in an old cellar long since forgotten in the palace. The only way to even enter it was through an opening Cardan had used his new-found magic to make. The opening was hidden in a fake armoire of one of their guests rooms. The room itself was perpetual damp, insufficiently furnished, and lacking any of fun memories the old court held. But it was well protected from prying ears and hard to access so it would due.

“How are my favorite pair of mischievous friends?” Cardan smirked reflexively at the serious look on their faces. His tail twitched uncomfortably beneath his clothes.

Mouth in a thin line. Back straight. Eyes narrowed. Hand on nearest weapon. Yes, everything about the way they stood told him whatever he was going to hear would not be pleasant.

“We have news,” the Roach mimicked his companion’s no-nonsense tone.

“So I’ve heard,” Cardan rolled his eyes. He retied the thick red cape he’d thrown on himself to fight of the chill of the cellar. It gave his hands something to do other than twitch at his sides. “Jude?”

“Yes and no.” The Bomb started. “She’s fine. Safe as usually doing some odd jobs for a faerie in the mortal world.”

“This about what happened before her exile.” Roach continued. His beady eyes were unreadable as usual. “We looked into Balekin’s connections with the Sea as you asked us to. We found out what Orlagh had been doing with Jude while she was imprisoned.”

A lump sat in his throat. No matter where she was Jude always felt like the center of his world. He couldn’t go longer than an hour awake or asleep without thinking about her. Her time in the Undersea had only intensified the problem for him.

“Out with it. What did you discover?”

“You already know that Balekin thought he could glamour her. I-” the Bomb looked anxiously at the Roach. They shared a glance and she pulled a weathered envelope from inside her coat. “We think it might be best if you just read this. It’s a collection of court documents detailing what the Undersea would do to her.”

“I don’t understand. Why would they keep records of that? What use do they have of collecting memories of Jude’s torture? I thought those events were mostly private for Orlagh’s own pleasure.”

“We can only assume that there were more people attending them than Jude was led to believe. Perhaps as secret spectators. One can only guess what Undersea’s Queen was plotting.”

“There’s more. Some came from Balekin’s personal journals, uncovered despite Orlagh’s attempt to destroy any evidence of her alliance with him.”

Cardan couldn’t stand their cautious looks. He turned to face the wall behind him. He wasn’t sure if it was possible to feel such a heady mix hate and fear and sorrow and freedom all at one time. Every mention of Balekin’s name was like a blow to the stomach.

“Just tell me what happened.”

“We think it might be best if you read it. You don’t have to. There’s nothing really useful to us if you’d prefer to not know exactly what they did.” The Bomb said I’m a voice usually soft for her.

“She’s right. But I think it’s important that you know regardless. Take the papers. Read them if you want to. When you’re ready.” The Roach said in a way that suggested that it shouldn’t have even been an option to not read what was contained inside the envelope.

Cardan faced them again. The Bomb handed him the collection of papers and left. The Roach stayed back long enough to warn the High King.

“It won’t be easy. What you find in there.”

Cardan looked him in the eyes, trying to find some comfort or understanding that he could lean on. Instead he just found pity.

“Thank you. Tell the Bomb that I appreciate it. No matter what I find.”

Roach nodded and walked out of the cellar. Within seconds it was just Cardan standing in a damp cellar by himself. He stared at the weighted envelop. It felt like it was full of explosive lead, not weathered folded leaves of paper.

Cardan tucked it into his belt and trekked back up to his room. The guards lined outside of his chambers looked curiously at the sight of their High King. He closed the door behind him and stripped off the heavy cloak. Cardan sat at the bench at the foot of his large bed. He wasn’t sure if it was his right to know what happened to her during her imprisonment. If Jude had wanted to share those details with him then she would have.

Cardan stared at an empty corner of his room. A spiraling curl of vines snaked up the walls. White dahlia’s sprung up amidst the green leaves. He’d been practicing how to control his pull of the land for a few months now but it still felt odd to be able to sway nature this way and that.

He thought about the dizzying display of power he’d used when he was face to face with Orlagh. It had felt as if the very land he stood on bowed beneath his fists. He knew she’d never admit it but he remembered the look on Jude’s face when she’d first realized what was happening. She was impressed by all that he’d learned to do while she was gone.

Not gone. Captured. Held prisoner.

Cardan didn’t let himself second guess his decision. He yanked the envelop open and scanned the first few documents.

The mortal is starting to loose it’s sanity. It’s clear even the glamour can’t help it hold on much longer. It is much thinner than it had been when Orlagh first brought it. There are also a considerable number of marks left along its body. Rumor has it the princess herself may be responsible fo them.

Cardan felt like throwing up. He remembered how Jude had looked like a ghost when she'd first returned. All bones and angles when she’d been hard muscle and soft skin.

He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the images of her skin touching his. Of his fingers touching her. The papers in this hands made him sick to his stomach. They called her an it. And said she had marks. Not one but many.

The dahlia’s crumbled up and withered to dust. Hot pink heart-shaped buds bloomed in their place.

He flipped to the next page, recognizing the handwriting of the thick stationary paper. His hand was shaking by the time he go to the end of the torn journal entry.

Jude has been an interesting toy. A fun toy. Her attachment to my brother has been a mystery. I though perhaps she had some sort of secret or piece of black mail to hold over him. Even with the glamor, she hasn’t revealed anything if she does. Though the nature of their relationship is still unknown, I believe I have a way of figuring it out.

Cardan stood abruptly. His body hummed with nervous. His tail wriggled uncomfortably until it came loose. It swung behind him and Cardan had to step away from the bench to keep it from slamming against it. The next journal entry had him regretting he’d stood up.

Any suspicions I’d had of their relationship have been answered. I used a glamour to force her to kiss me as she would kiss my brother. It worked perfectly. It was horrendous. I hate myself for even asking her to do it. For degrading myself enough to touch a creature like her but it worked. She kissed me with all of the fires that mortal are described to feel when they love something. Their bright and easily extinguished fires. She looked at me as though I was the only man she’d ever seen and ever wanted to touch. I almost withdrew the demand but I’m glad that I didn’t. Had I gone back on my command, I never would have understood how deep her affection for him went. She truly cares for him.

The next question is how much does Cardan care for her? It’s clear he’s fascinated by her. Curious about her. But cats are curious of mice when they first chase after them. It’s after they’ve caught them beneath their claws that they bare their fangs. Perhaps that’s what Cardan has been doing. Though knowing the naive nature of my brother’s heart, I highly doubt it. I’ll find out soon enough. for the girl’s sake, I hope it’s later rather than sooner. Should Orlagh let her live long enough to ever see Cardan again, I’d love to watch him destroy that mortal love of hers.

Cardan’s knees gave out from under him. He stared at the letters for what felt like centuries. They didn’t feel real. Balekin had forced Jude to kiss him. He knew she wasn’t glamoured as he thought she had been. That meant Jude had to kiss him completely aware of her actions. She had to force herself for kiss Balekin in a way that would convince him of her love for his brother. Cardan reread it a forth time, praying that somehow the letters would rearrange themselves to tell him a different story.

Distantly he realized why the Bomb and the Roach had opted out of telling him themselves. How did you tell the High King of Elfhame that his abusive older brother forced the woman he loved to kiss him.

The paper crinkled in his hands. Cardan released an angry growl. His blood boiled as he read it for a sixth time. She never mentioned it. Not that they had much time before her banishment to talk through all the details. Nor was it likely that Jude, with her affinity for secrets and lies, would tell him the truth about the situation.

Cardan paced back and forth in the room. If she would just answer his damned letters. If he could just get her to come back to Elfhame and talk to her. To see her. To apologize for what happened between them. Between her and Balekin. He was never more grateful than he was in that moment that she killed him.

After reading the letter Cardan almost wished he’d come back to life just so he could drive the blade through his older brother himself. Cardan heard the crackling fire of the hearth. He threw the stack of papers into the fire. A thick puff of smoke fizzled out of the flames as they blackened into ash.

The ugly words disappeared from existence but the High King would never forget the torturous curves. He’d never forget what the Undersea did to her. What Balekin did to her.

Cardan rushed to his desk, brashly scribbling out a missive to send to Jude.

Jude, he started the letter. Jude. He couldn’t think of anything else to write to her. Jude. Please come back. Just come back. Jude. I’m sorry. I’ll be better. I promise. Jude. Jude. Jude. Jude. Jude. Jude .Jude. Jude.

He’d filled the paper with her name. If he couldn’t see her then maybe the letters of her name would be enough to erase the sickness he felt after opening the envelope.

Author’s Note: I couldn’t figure out how long she was exiled bc I’m still on campus and my books are at home so excuse the ambiguous timeline. If anyone knows the answer to how long she was imprisoned/exiled/when the letters were written please let me know.

#booklovingturtle writes #holly black #Folk of the Air #The Folk of the Air #the cruel prince #the wicked king #queen of nothing #queen of nothing spoilers #tcp #twk #qon #qon spoilers #prince cardan #king cardan #cardan greenbriar #jurdan #jude duarte #cardan x jude #jurdan angst

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secret-kkh-fics · 4 years ago

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Light Casts a Shadow - Chapter 2

Due to this not being posted anywhere else yet, please like but DON’T REBLOG my fics.

Chapter Index | First Chapter | << Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >>

Chapter Summary:

The Darkling returns to his room to find Alina lying asleep on his bed, much to his surprise. Even more surprising is what she reveals to him when she wakes up. That she knows who he is. Cautiously, the two begin to talk.

Author Note:

And now the fun begins! Much of this was the first thing that came to mind when I was plotting this out, and I really enjoyed writing these scenes. I hope you enjoy part one of their little chat.

A Hesitant Truth

As the Darkling stormed back to his rooms, everyone avoided him as if his shadows were literally swarming around him. Instead, it was his mere presence and mood that drove the few people in the halls this late at night scuttling away.

Tonight had not gone to plan at all. It had started so well, and it had just gotten worse and worse. First with the assassination attempt, and another unknown party killing Pavel - one of his Inferni, then he’d returned to his suit to find Alina missing, discovered the kidnapping plot, and had an infuriating conversation with his mother where he found out that Alina’s tracker was dead, and Alina might have left of her own volition. He hated to think what that vile woman had told her. And now he wasn’t sure if she was running off into danger on her own or if she’d been kidnapped.

His heart clenched painfully, and he actually paused mid-step, surprised at the sensation. That was slightly unexpected…

He knew he needed her back. He had to, for his plans to work. She was invaluable. She was his only hope… But recently, he’d felt like she was something a little more. Her light had been a beacon for him from the start. But now, he found her smile just as bright, and even stranger, he’d found it bringing a smile to his own face. She glowed more every moment. And since she’d learnt to use her power on command, he’d watched as she flourished and her beauty grew. How much healthier she looked now that she was nourishing her gift instead of suppressing it. It baffled him that she’d even survived suppressing it so long.

He only hoped she continued to survive. It worried him to know she was out there. Either alone or at the hands of three petty criminals. And, as she always would be whenever she left the walls of the palace, hunted by those who would want her dead. And those people grew in number every day. From the fucking Fjerdans, to the Shu Han, even to that sham of a general who was supposed to be their ally.

A man who had sent an assassin after his Alina. And a poor assassin at that. It was good – no, it was satisfying to know that otkazat'sya filth was dead. He had seen what that man had done to Marie… such a sweet girl. Another innocent Grisha he’d failed. Genya had been distraught. He’d seen how he’d sliced her throat open and left her to die in a pool of her own blood. And with the duplicate kefta on, he could all too easily see Alina’s face instead. He could see Alina lying dead on the floor before him, and his heart clenched coldly. The mere thought made him need to focus to keep the shadows from surging up around him.

But it was done now. He had the information he wanted from him, and now he was gone. The man had shown no mercy, and he had shown none in return.

He’d sent Ivan and the rest of his Oprichniki away, wanting to be alone, and needing their services elsewhere. Namely, beginning the search for Alina. He was more than used to people trying to kill him and could handle himself easily. So, he had no fear…

Even when he entered his darkened outer chamber, and noticed something horribly out of place. The secret door that led to the storage rooms and escape passages was wide open as if someone had found a way in but hadn’t known how to close it from the inside. He knew that it had not been open when he’d found Alina gone.

Cautiously, he made his way into his room. There was a high chance that whoever came through that door was still here. And he wasn’t taking any chances, his hands at the ready to call the shadows to him. He crept silently to the door and gently pushed it closed before checking the candelabra on the attached desk that worked as a lever. It hadn’t been touched recently, which means that no one had used the door from the inside.

He guessed that whoever used it didn’t know that the door could simply be pushed closed or couldn’t find the secret lever. And he was certain that they were still here. Why else come out directly into his chambers? He also knew that they likely knew he was in the room since his entrance had not been the quietest, practically throwing his doors open in his fury. It’s likely they were lying in wait. Somewhere easy to ambush him.

His eyes darted to his bedroom door – a likely spot. Still, he made sure he had swept the room thoroughly before proceeding there, just in case they’d hidden somewhere, expecting to sneak up on him from behind.

He didn’t dare light up the room to see better, choosing to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. And, as they did, he instantly noticed the figure on the bed. They were lying there, asleep or unconscious from what he could see. And as he took another cautious step forward, he saw who it was.

“Alina!” he gasped, rushing forward.

It was a stupid move, and he knew it. This could be a trap. And since Alina was here, it was likely orchestrated by the three criminals from Ketterdam who had tried to kidnap her.

Of the little they knew about them, it was clear that one was an expert knife-wielder, judging by her skill in taking out Pavel. One was unknown, other than the fact he had a limp. And from the little intel they’d managed to gather so far, the third that had not been identified was an expert sharpshooter.

Belatedly, he wished he’d asked Arken Visser more about his companions before his rage had consumed him and driven him to end the pathetic man then and there.

Now she was bait for him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Relief washed over him, and he had to know if she was okay.

He rushed to her side, grabbing her shoulders and gently shaking her to see if she was alive. She began stirring from the moment he’d touched her, having been roused by his call of her name. Relief flooded through him once more, and he let out a sigh. As she blinked open her eyes, he pushed her hair gently away from her face and tucked it behind her ears, checking for injury as he did. He could barely wait for her to push herself up into a sitting position, pressing desperate kisses to her forehead and cheeks before placing one more to her lips and leaning his head against hers.

“Thank the Saints, you’re safe!” he whispered hoarsely. “Alina, are you okay?”

“Aleks?” she murmured sleepily. Then, suddenly she was much more alert, pushing herself up, so she was fully sitting and staring at him in shock.

Since no one had attempted to attack him yet, he assumed that they were either ridiculously slow on the draw, which was contrary to what they knew, or no one was trying to ambush him here. So, he quickly leant over and lit the lantern beside his bed, illuminating Alina’s pale, scared face.

He took this chance to look her over again in more detail. She was still in her black silk kefta, and her hair was still up with the hair ornament in place, if not a little mussed and askew from sleeping. Genya’s tailoring still held, making her eyes a beautiful, smoky gold that glowed warmly in the warm light. From what he could see, she had not been injured.

He closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath. Bringing up a hand, he gently cupped the side of her face and gratefully took in every detail of her face. He found he was exceedingly happy just to have her here, to feel her skin under his and know she wasn’t in danger.

“You’re safe…” he repeated.

“O-of course I’m safe,” she said hesitantly. She looked uncomfortable, which made him worried.

“Where were you, Alina?” he pressed. “I looked in here; you weren’t sleeping when I came back. You weren’t even in the suite. I told you to stay here under guard! Of all the nights for you to be stubborn and ignore me!” He noticed her flinch back as his voice rose, and regret bubbled up, making him pause and take a breath to make sure he kept his tone low when he next spoke.

“I wasn’t gone for long, but-”

“Any amount of time was too long, Alina!” he told her, still trying to keep his voice level. “You have no idea the amount of danger you were in. I didn’t leave you here alone because of some minor issue. Ivan came to get me because there had been an attempt on your life.”

“What?” she gasped, taken aback.

“As well as a kidnapping attempt. The assassin was captured, but the kidnappers got away. When I couldn’t find you, I thought they’d taken you.” He couldn’t help but press another desperate kiss to her brow, his hand gripping hers tightly.

“I-I didn’t know.” Her eyes were wide with a muted panic. “I… Your mother came and grabbed me and, I…”

At first, he was all too relieved to hear that she had been with Baghra at the time, but then her words registered in his mind. She hadn’t called her Baghra.

‘Your mother…’

His heart stuttered in his chest and a chill swept through him. He pulled back to look at her, his expression blank and his entire body stilled as he tried to shut down any reaction.

So, she knew.

Alina noticed. Of course, she did. She hadn’t realised what she’d said until he suddenly stilled under her touch, and she looked up to see him looking down at her with that impassive mask. But beneath it, she could see a hint of panic in his eyes. And that was when she realised what she’d let slip in her drowsy state.

“And what did she tell you?” he asked. His voice was quiet, but it was back to that detached tone with an air of authority that he used to speak with her back when they’d first met. Hearing him use that voice with her made her heart ache. He was retreating from her. And despite the fact that he may be lying and manipulating her, it hurt.

“Everything.”

“I doubt that very much,” he told her with a dark, huffed laugh that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Well, a lot of things,” she whispered. “That she’s your mother, obviously.” She cleared her throat nervously under his intense gaze. “And she said�� She said that you’re the Black Heretic, that you created the Fold. And that you want to use it as a weapon…”

“And?” he said, sensing there was something else she wasn’t saying.

“That you wanted to keep me as a slave.” She paused a moment, looking into his eyes and hoping for any sign that Baghra had been lying. But all she was met with was his impassive expression. She could practically feel the emotions she couldn’t see raging under the surface in the tension of the one hand that still grasped her shoulder. “She told me to run,” she continued. “To leave while you were distracted.”

“And yet you’re still here,” he said, still cold but slightly mystified. She wasn’t sure if she imagined the glimmer of relief and hope in his eyes. She nodded silently, and he stared at her, puzzled for a long time before finally murmuring, “Why?”

“I… don’t know,” she admitted. “Not really. I just… I didn’t completely trust what Baghra was saying. Not all of it. I wanted to talk to you first. I want to know the truth.”

A sardonic smile quirked at the edge of his lips, finally breaking the indifferent mask. “Not the smartest move, coming back if you think I’m going to enslave you.”

“I never said I was smart,” she countered.

His grin grew wide and more genuine. “I disagree entirely.” The compliment was automatic and made something in her chest flutter.

“Flatterer,” she accused cheekily.

“Come, let’s go somewhere a little more comfortable than this to talk,” he said softly, standing up and holding his hand out to her.

“More comfortable than here?” she asked.

His brows rose. “Do you find my bed comfortable, Miss Starkov?” he said, his voice low and smooth. She could hear the teasing in his voice… but also the hunger. She suddenly found herself glad of the dim light that hopefully hid the blush she could feel rising in her cheeks.

Without a word, she accepted his hand, and he pulled her to her feet. They were still a little sore, having spent all night on them and walked halfway through the castle and back in heeled shoes. But with only a slight wince, she ignored it and followed him. He led her out of the bedroom and to another small chamber off from the war room. It was a small parlour, clearly intended for eating meals or having conversations with someone. The room was small and cosy, with two plush chairs set up facing each other and a low table between them. The chairs were angled close enough that whoever was sitting in them could touch each other if they wished. There was a fireplace against the far wall, though it was unlit.

Aleksander led her to one of the chairs, then went about the room turning on more lanterns so that they had enough soft light to see by before he came and sat down in the seat opposite to her. She was glad that Ivan wasn’t here because she was certain he’d notice how fast her heart was racing. He was staring at her from across the room, an intense look on his face. One that she was well used to. But everything had changed. This was no longer just the mysterious general who had swept her out of the barracks of the First Army and into the grandeur of the Little Palace, telling her with awe in his voice that she would change the world. This was also the legendary monster who had become so power-hungry the king had sent an army to kill him. The Darkling who had created the Shadow Fold that caused so much chaos and grief and loss in Ravka. She couldn’t bring herself to meet those intense, grey-black eyes.

There was silence for a long while, and she heard him shift on the couch. “You’re afraid of me,” he said in soft realisation. She thought maybe she imagined the note of hurt in his voice, and she couldn’t help flicking her eyes up to him before letting them skitter away the moment she saw his impassive expression.

“N-no, I-” She was cut off as Aleksander let out a rather loud, low growl, his fists clenched.

“That treacherous, manipulative bitch!” he hissed. Her mouth fell open in surprise, and she looked up in time to see his expression morph from furious to pleading as he looked at her. “Please, Alina. Tell me exactly what Baghra said. That woman is a master manipulator. She weaves lies out of fragments of the truth.”

“Funny, she said the same thing about you.”

“Did she now?” He arched an eyebrow, his face falling back into that calm, cold expression once more.

Alina nodded. “She said that you’d had centuries to practice manipulating naïve girls.”

Though his face gave nothing away, she watched as his knuckles turned white as they gripped the arms of the chair and his jaw clenched as he breathed in heavily through the nose. “And you think I’m manipulating you?”

“Are you?” she asked boldly.

He stared down at her, his dark eyes piercing her before his stance relaxed ever so slightly, but his guard was still up. “Not entirely,” he admitted. “Some things. Necessary things. But not everything.” He leaned forward in his seat, his hand raised to touch her face, but he hesitated, his hand drawing back. “Not the past day,” he assured her.

Her heart stuttered in her chest almost painfully, hope and heartbreak warring out within her.

Not the past day… Not the kisses, or the smiles, or the way she’d surprised him, not the flowers, or the compliments, or giddily dragging her to his rooms away from the crowds for some privacy…

But then…

“How do I know that you’re not just saying that?” she whispered.

His hand fell back to the arm of the chair limply, defeat and hurt clear on his face. “I suppose you can’t,” he replied softly. “All I can do is hope you trust my words that I do care for you, Alina. I never meant to… I tried to stop myself even… but hope is a hard thing to kill.” He looked down away from her, and she did the same, looking at her hands twisting in her lap. She didn’t know what to say to that, and the silence stretched on between them for a while.

They were supposed to be talking. She was supposed to be finding out the truth so she could figure out what she was supposed to do from here.

“Do you promise to tell me the truth?” she asked eventually.

“Every word,” he promised, his voice quiet. “Or as much of it as I can.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked again. She didn’t know why. She expected the same answer in return that she’d have to just trust his words. But Alexander was quiet for a moment before he responded.

“I actually don’t like lying if I can help it, though I’ve had to do far too much over the last few centuries, it’s now almost second nature,” he admitted. Then, after a pause. “I can get a Heartrender if you wish.”

Alina shook her head. “I don’t trust Ivan not to cover for you.”

He laughed a warm chuckle. “No, I don’t imagine he’d give me away. But, he is one of the few people I trust.” She pursed her lips in displeasure, and his brows rose, noting the expression. “Is there anyone that you trust?”

After a moment’s pause where she thought about who she trusted here, she gave a slight nod. “Fedyor.”

“A good choice. Fedyor is loyal and kind. I do not trust him fully, but I trust him enough… I’ll have him summoned after we’ve talked.” He stood from his chair suddenly and went to a nearby cabinet. He looked back and forth at his options of a full decanter of kvass or a tray with a tea set before ultimately choosing the decanter and two glasses.

“After?” Her brow furrowed. She didn’t understand how bringing him in after the fact would help confirm the truth to her. Didn’t he need to hear his heart as he spoke to know?

“I do not wish for him to hear the answers to what you’ll likely ask. But I trust him to be honest and discreet. I can answer all your questions, and then he can confirm to you that I’ve spoken the truth.” He poured out two drinks as he spoke before throwing one back in one go and refilling it. He placed the other on the table in front of her and sat back down with his own, leaving the decanter on the table. She was never a fan of kvass, much more preferring the champagne she’d been sipping at most of the night. But this one was infused with a nice fruity smell, and she agreed with his sentiment of needing something a little stronger right now and picked up the glass.

Alina hesitated, swirling the kvass around in the crystal glass as she thought the deal over. It was a good compromise, and if she was going to have to negotiate some things she may not like, she wanted to keep this kind of faith going. “Okay,” she agreed. “Fedyor can come after.”

Satisfied with this answer, he sat further back in his chair as if bracing himself. “Alright… What do you want to know?”

Fifty questions all sprung to her mind at once, all clamouring to be heard first, and she had to close her eyes and take a deep breath to try and order her thoughts. She looked up nervously to see that Aleksander was still sitting there, perfectly still, just as he had been before.

“I… I suppose I should start with the obvious,” she said eventually. “I saw the picture down there, under the castle. You are the Black Heretic, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said simply. The fact that he was remaining emotionless made her uncomfortable, and she shifted in her chair, trying her hardest not to avoid his eye contact.

“Why did you say it was one of your ancestors?”

“Many reasons, but mostly for protection. If everyone knew I was the one to create the monstrosity tearing Ravka apart, what do you think they’d do to me? Also habit. I’ve lived a very long life. Changing my identity, lying about my age… these were things instilled in me since childhood.” When he saw her questioning look, he quickly clarified. “I was born in a time where nowhere was safe for Grisha, and keeping who we were secret was necessary for survival.”

“Baghra did say you’ve had many names and faked many deaths,” she remembered. Then she realised something. “Does… does that mean that Aleksander Kirigan isn’t your real name?”

“No,” he told her, his expression relaxing slightly. “Kirigan isn’t… But my name is Aleksander. I didn’t lie to you about that.”

“Why not?” she said curiously.

Aleksander’s mouth opened as if to speak, but nothing came out for a moment. His eyes softened as he looked at her. “I wanted you to know my name. It was impulsive, but… I didn’t want you calling me by a name that wasn’t mine.”

Alina blinked in surprise, her chest warming. Considering all of her fears and worries, along with the realisation of who he was, it was an oddly sweet gesture. She hadn’t expected that he’d want her to know his real name. To know the real him. And as she thought back, she couldn’t recall anyone other than Baghra calling him Aleksander. Everyone else called him General Kirigan or the Darkling. In fact… she’d never heard anyone else ever call him by a first name. So, she had always assumed she knew the same name as everyone else because why shouldn’t she. But what if someone else knew him by another name. A false one. And she was the one he had told the truth to.

“Oh.” The word came out in a rushed breath. She could hardly hide the small, delighted smile that played on her lips. He noticed, and she thought she saw the flicker of a smile of his own before it disappeared.

“What else did my mother say?” he prompted.

“She said-” She paused, stopping before the first thing she remembered slipped from her lips. She didn’t know if she was ready to hear that particular truth just yet. Instead, she moved on to the easier issue. “She said that you don’t want to tear down the Fold. That you want to expand it and use it as a weapon.”

Aleksander was quiet for so long, his knuckles so tight on the arm of the chair that she began to worry, already knowing what his answer would be before he even spoke the words.

“Yes, that is my plan.”

Alina’s mouth popped open in disbelief. “What? Why?!” she demanded.

“Because I’m tired, Alina,” he told her, his voice weary yet still bearing an edge of steel. “I’m so tired of our people being hunted and slaughtered. The Fjerdans rove in groups across the continent, butchering us or taking us back to Fjerda to undergo their trials. Trials no one is ever found innocent of because the crime is existing. They burn us at the stake. The Shu Han cut us open, looking for some source of power they’ll never find. In the Wandering Isles, our blood is seen as a cure-all, and Grisha are strung up and drained of blood. Our people are captured and taken to Kirtch to be indentured in brothels. And if not for the changes I’ve made in Ravka over the last few hundred years, the otkazat'sya would still be doing the same. Even now, there is no love for us.” He rubbed at his face tiredly. “I have lost so, so¸many people over the years. Good people, innocent people. All I’ve ever wanted is to make this world safer for our people. And I am so tired of failing.”

Her heart ached in sympathy. Though she didn’t like what he was trying to do, she understood his reasoning. She herself had seen so many people die since she discovered what she was. And she’d heard of the Druskelle attacks and the Shu Han experiments. She’d even once seen a smouldering pile with a charred body amongst the coal and ash. It horrified her every time. She could only imagine how he felt about it after hundreds of years.

“But isn’t it better if we took down the Fold?” she asked uncertainly. “Ravka would be united. We lose so many people to it, both Grisha and otkazat'sya. The people I saw die on our skiff…”

“And without the Fold, what use would Grisha have in this world? What would be so important that the King thinks he needs us? I never intended the Fold to become the blight that it has, but it gave me a purpose to make us strong. Without the Second Army, what do you think would become of our people?”

Alina shook her head. “It’s been hundreds of years since Grisha were hunted in Ravka. People are different now. Fedyor once said to me that since a Grisha made the Fold, if one takes it down, maybe we won’t be hunted.”

Aleksander sneered. “A naïve sentiment. As I said, he is loyal and kind. Far too kind. Grisha have always been hunted long before I put up that damn thing. Nothing has changed. I hear how people talk about us behind our backs. My mother taught me to kill as a child, so I could protect my life. I have watched my friends cut down, burnt at the stake, and cut open and prodded to see what makes us tick for far too long. Hundreds of years of it. I used the skills my mother taught me to protect our people. To try and stop this all happening. That’s why I made sure I rose to power. I made myself useful. I made the King notice me. I made him need me. And I helped him win wars with the blood of the people he would slaughter without a second thought in the naïve hope that he would see us as useful. That he would stop persecuting us. That’s all I ever asked for,” he snarled. “I didn’t ask for more power. I didn’t try and take it. Power was never what I wanted. I wanted my people safe. That is what I asked of the King. And he saw that as a grab for power because we are more powerful than them! And merely being alive was too much. The way he saw it, I was trying to make an army to overthrow him. Because how could one trust the Darkling?”

As he’d spoken, fury enveloping his features, the shadows in the room grew, curling around them into a suffocating darkness. Without thinking, Alina reached out for his hand. It was wrapped so tightly around the arm of the chair that it felt like iron in her grasp. She didn’t call the light to her like last time she’d done this, but she did draw soothing circles into his skin with her thumb. His eyes flashed to hers, and she watched as he began to relax, his eyes softening and the shadows retreating.

“I want them to pay,” he told her, his voice a low whisper. “I want them to leave us alone. I want them to fear us enough that they will never try to attack us again. Even if I have to leave another permanent scar on the world to do it.”

Her heart raced at those words, but if it was in fear or because of the intensity of his words, she didn’t know. She didn’t even know what to say, rendered mute. All she could do was continue to rub circles onto his hand, finding the motion just as soothing for her as she hoped it was for him.

“Baghra said that I almost gave you the stag,” she said quietly. “What did she mean? I haven’t given you anything…”

“Oh, now I don’t know about that,” he said with a slight smirk. It was clear that he wasn’t talking about the stag, and she dipped her head to hide the slight blush. “Though, she may not have realised that you didn’t intentionally lead me to it. I’ve been looking for an amplifier for you. You’re progressing quickly, and I know that you are incredibly powerful. I can feel it in you, Alina.” He reached up with his other hand and trailed his knuckles down the side of her face. “You’re going to have a very long life.” For a moment, he stared down at her, his eyes focused on her lips. His gaze as intense as ever, his eyes so dark they were almost black. Then, with a gentle breath, he retreated. Her heart gave a pang of disappointment, and she scolded herself for wanting him to lean in and kiss her instead. “But you’re still not ready, and we need to act soon.”

“A-aren’t you an amplifier?” It took a moment for her to remember what they were talking about, and her reply was rather breathless.

“Yes, but it’s not enough. I wanted to find you the perfect amplifier. Something more powerful than a common one, like Ivan’s bear claws. I wanted to try and find one of the legendary ones.”

“Morozova’s Stag,” she realised. He nodded. “Are you sure it’s real? I just thought it was a myth. A child’s fairy-tale.”

“Very,” he said resolutely. “I’ve known they’re all very real most of my life, despite my mother’s attempts to convince me otherwise. I sent out requests for hunting missions to try and find it. One party returned, having successfully spotted it.” His face twisted angrily. “Unfortunately, my mother dealt with them before they could give me the exact location.”

He took a sip of his kvass, and she could see a range of emotions cross his face. She knew that he would be upset by the loss.

“I dream of the stag,” she said eventually, taking a sip of her own drink and staring down into the lightly effervescent liquid. “I used to dream about it all the time as a kid. So much that Mal used to call it ‘Alina’s Stag’. But I always called it the Sun Stag because of how the sun would shine through its antlers. I drew it everywhere. Eventually, I stopped dreaming about it. But since I’ve been here… I keep seeing it.”

Aleksander sat up in his chair, a look of curiosity on his face. “Really?” She nodded, only glancing at him briefly. “How intriguing.” He rested back once more. “Perhaps the stag was the perfect choice for you, then. It explains why it was in your sketchbook. I simply thought you’d read the stories.”

Alina looked up at him in shock. “You looked through my sketchbooks?!” she cried. “When? Why? Those are personal, you know!”

She had always been hesitant to show her drawings to anyone. Not trusting the kids at the orphanage not to jeer or ruin them. And the habit followed her as she got older, hesitant to show anyone her works of art. Mal had been the only one she would gleefully and proudly show. The fact that someone looked at her books without asking…

“It’s mandatory for everything to be checked upon entrance to the Little Palace, Alina. Normally to check for weapons or dangerous information. It’s a precaution only, but one we can’t afford to risk. What if someone had found out you were the Sun Summoner and put something dangerous in your bag? When your belongings arrived from Kribirsk, I oversaw the check, and I saw the sketch in one of your books. It was one of your drawings that I had copied to be sent out for distribution. It’s probably the best sketches I’ve seen of it.”

“Now I’m glad I don’t keep a diary,” she grumbled. He huffed out a laugh, the lightness of it cracking through his aloof countenance. She found she liked being able to break the indifferent mask he wore. That no matter how hard he was trying to put on a certain face, she could make the real emotion peek through.

“Yet you still leave your papers lying around your room,” he teased. “Genya saw your recent drawings. They’re the ones I used.”

Her brow furrowed. “Why would Genya tell you about my drawings?”

“I mentioned the stag during one of her reports, and she mentioned it.” At her confused look, he shot her a rueful smile. “Genya is one of my many spies.”

Alina’s mouth fell open. “You had Genya spying on me?!” she spluttered. Betrayal burned through her, thinking of the person here she considered her closest friend.

“Perhaps. Her main job is keeping me informed on secrets from the royal family, hence why I placed her with the Queen. But I asked her to keep an eye on you. To see how you were adjusting.”

She frowned, still not liking this. “That can’t be all. Anyone could have told you that!”

“And to inform me of any escape attempts since you seemed so eager to do so when you first arrived. Now, at best, I ask about your wellbeing alone.”

The teasing reminder of her many questions about leaving the Little Palace made her begin to smile, and his last comment warmed her heart. Trust this stone-faced idiot not to ask her how she was doing straight to her face. And it made her feel much better knowing that Genya was only really there to make sure that she was okay, that she was happy at the palace. Something she’d come to realise recently that she very much was…

But the smile that was beginning to creep on her face fell as she once more remembered what they were doing and what needed to be asked. There were still several things she wanted to ask, but she tried to push them down. They were just curiosities. Things she wanted to know the full details of now that she knew who he really was. But they weren’t important.

They weren’t the one question she’d been putting off. The one question that could break her. The Darkling could sense her shift in mood, and any semblance of levity left the room. He knew what it was she was going to ask.

“Ask me,” he told her.

Still, Alina hesitated, drawing in a deep breath before bringing up the issue that would hurt the most. “Baghra said that you wanted to enslave me.”

“I don’t want to,” he said automatically.

“But you’re still going to,” she said, understanding what he wasn’t saying.

“I would prefer not to.” It still wasn’t a no. He was once again tense as if he didn’t like where this conversation was going any better than she was.

“Then… why would you?” she asked quietly.

He looked down into his glass of kvass, swirling the golden liquid. “Because I have plans. And I don’t know if you’re able or willing to go along with them.” He drained the rest of the glass and finally looked up at her. “I don’t trust easily, Alina. I’ve been alive long enough to know better than that. And I know from experience, it’s always better to plan for the most extreme case and work backwards from there. I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to do. I have watched you grow, and learn, and accept who you are since you came here. If you could have seen yourself during the demonstration… But I will not let anything get in the way of what must be done.” As he’d spoken, he’d gone from a look of seriousness to wonder as he spoke of her. But on the last line, his voice had lowered darkly once more, a horrible determination in his eyes.

“H-how…” Her voice didn’t want to work. Her heart was beating so fast, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to run or cling to him and beg him to please trust her. That she’d do anything he wanted… because it just wasn’t true. She cleared her throat and tried again. “How are you going to…”

“A collar,” he admitted quietly, anticipating what she was trying to say. The impassive expression was back once more, regarding her indifferently, so he gave nothing away. “I have been working with David, trying to see if there is a way we can attune the bones of the stag to the both of us so I could use your power if needed. We have worked out that if I kill the stag and you wear its bones, I should be able to access and control your light. I had no idea how fast you would catch on and learn to control your gifts, so the option of having someone more experienced able to control it could be useful.”

“And if I refuse to do what you ask, you’ll use me to do it anyway,” she realised. He nodded, his face still emotionless. Her heart clenched in her chest, and her breathing hitched as it sped up. “Please don’t put it on me,” she whispered desperately.

Though his expression didn’t change, she saw something in his eyes. Sorrow and pain. As if he did not like that, he was making her react so fearfully, making her plead for her freedom.

“Will you help me with my plans?” he asked her.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know what they are. Or who will be hurt because of them.” She stared back at him, trying to stop the tears that were welling in her eyes. “Would you be willing to compromise? To change your plans as long as they reach the same result?”

He regarded her silently for a moment before giving the slightest nod. “Perhaps.”

She let out a shuddering breath. “Then perhaps I will.”

The slightest of smiles finally tugged his lips, hope alight in his eyes. “I would very much like that, Alina.”

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” she blurted out.

He just shook his head slowly. “That was never an option. The death of many is inevitable.”

Alina swallowed heavily. She didn’t want to be responsible for the deaths of many. “C-can’t we… is there anything we can do so that less people are hurt? Innocent people… Baghra said that you didn’t give any thought to the people that lived along the Fold when you created it; men, women and children became the Volcra. I don’t- I don’t want that happening to…”

The Darkling shook his head. “I never meant for all those people to be hurt,” he admitted. “Many of them were Grisha I was trying to protect, hurt women and children trying to flee the massacre of the King’s army. I was only trying to turn the army that had come to kill us, but I lost control of the merzost I was using.” He sighed heavily. “I will see what we can do. I would rather have you working at my side willingly than forcing you to. I can wait patiently for a very long time for you to stop hating me… but I’d much rather prefer you never did.”

“I don’t want to hate you,” she whispered. Not when she was sure she was beginning to fall for him, despite what she now knew. His eyes closed at her words as if they were a balm to his soul. “I want to help you make this world a better place for Grisha.”

“So, you will help me?”

“I… Yes.” Her answer was barely a breath. “I will help. But only on my terms,” she clarified, her voice becoming much stronger. Aleksander nodded, accepting this, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Her next question came out much more hesitant. “Y-your plans are to use the Shadow Fold as a weapon, right?”

He nodded again. “That’s one intention, yes.”

This made her look up in surprise. Only one? “And what’s the other?” she asked cautiously.

The Darkling looked at her, his dark eyes boring intensely into her soul. And when he spoke, his voice was low and far too calm. “To kill the king.”

Author Note:

Ben’s characterisation of Aleksander humanised him SO much, and I’m having so much fun with that. I love it a lot more than the book version. So, rather than his indifference being born of just being too old to give a shit, I played into the emotional side and made it a mask he wears to hide behind. Trying to find the balance of how they’d act and where they’d change between familiarity and tension was fun too.

Chapter Index | First Chapter | << Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >>

#light casts a shadow

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blackjack-15 · 4 years ago

Text

The Puzzle is Just the Italian Language — Thoughts on: The Phantom of Venice (VEN)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. Like with all of the Odd Games, there will be a section between The Intro and The Title called The Weird Stuff, where I go into what makes this game stand out as a little strange.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: VEN, RAN.

The Intro:

From the French-inspired streets of New Orleans, Nancy jumps on a plane to Venice and is caught up in international espionage, theft, a mafia ring, and a cast of hostile suspects living in the same house as her.

Sounds a bit like my first semester of college, honestly. Minus the whole “Venice” and “international espionage” parts.

Coming directly after CRY, VEN isn’t quite as thick with atmosphere, doesn’t have any of its philosophy or thematic elements, and is really only famous for being set in Italy and for the fact that they hired four voice actors for our main cast sans regular characters (Colin, voiced by our good ol’ boy Jonah Von Spreecken, counts as a returning VA), but hired 6 distinct VAs for the singing gondoliers, most of whom the average player will never hear.

Yeah, VEN is kind of that type of game.

There’s a lot that makes VEN the trippy experience that it is – more on that immediately below – but nearly none of that makes VEN as confused as it is. Nancy’s hired by a foreign government – sort of – but there’s also a love line – sort of – a roommate story – sort of – and some touristy stuff like overpaying for flowers and gelato.

Taking place overseas, VEN might have been mistaken for a Jetsetting game if it weren’t for the fact that every bit of the game is permeated with the sense that nothing was quite thought out, nothing quite flows together, and there’s no emotional response in anyone – including the player.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing enjoyable about VEN; it’s one of the most highly memed games, in fact, with a catsuit, horrific fashion choices, and little laser roombas all making up the most memorable meme material (and that’s not even touching discount Justin Timberlake and his slides of seduction). It has strongly-painted characters (even if there’s a touch of the caricature about them), the return of recurring characters, the first appearance of a semi-recurring character, poisoned chocolates…it’s almost like someone tried to do STFD, but with a sprinkling of spies and Italy thrown in for good measure.

VEN can be a lot of fun, but it’s also a grind a lot of the time; the required puzzles can be ridiculous, for example, and, in a twist for Nancy Drew games, there’s a puzzle for everyone to hate, no matter if you dislike stealth games, card games, speed-reaction games, or even language puzzles.

Which brings us to the biggest problem with The Phantom of Venice: the common puzzle thread, the thing that keeps recurring, the ‘mission statement puzzle’…it’s just the Italian language. The game hinges on the idea that the player won’t know any Italian (or any Romance language, honestly), and that’s where the majority of the difficulty in the game (barring bad hand-eye coordination) comes from. It’s not a good thing at all, and it brings the entire game down with it.

Well, it has a little help. Let’s talk about the Roomba in the museum, shall we?

The Weird Stuff:

There’s a lot of things that are weird about VEN, no getting around it. But there’s one solid thing that makes it…well, Odd in the way that the other Odd games are qualified, and that’s this one simple fact:

This is a Hardy Boys mystery, with Nancy clumsily inserted in instead of Frank and Joe.

Think about it; called in by a foreign government, espionage, nearly drowning, contacts in the government and police force, an Italian crime ring…these are all things straight out of a Hardy Boys novel, not a Nancy Drew novel. There is a Nancy Drew book titled The Phantom of Venice, true enough, but this game doesn’t bear any resemblance to it besides, well, Venice itself. You could swap out Nancy with the boys and the whole game could go on, minus the whole ‘keepsake necklace from Ned’ thing, and depending on what you ship, even that might fly under the radar.

And no, I didn’t forget the dancing in a catsuit thing. Pure comedy right there.

Nancy’s a homegrown detective; most of her cases are ‘small thing spirals into bigger thing’. It’s not that she doesn’t deal in espionage, at times in foreign places, or stumble upon a crime ring. It’s just that that’s not the type of thing Nancy’s called in for, it’s the type of thing she trips over halfway into a lower-stakes mystery.

The Hardy Boys, however, because of their father’s contacts (in the novels) and their position in ATAC (in the games) are exactly the kind of people that work with police chiefs and security experts and foreign spies and the like. It’s very nearly their bread and butter. Which is why I have a wild but not out-of-the-way wacky sorta-serious theory. Bear with me:

This game was designed as a Hardy Boys game, and Nancy really was clumsily inserted in with a few weeks to spare.

At this point in history – the far-behind time of July 2008, as the Great Recession was descending, the fury of an election year was coming to a head, and you couldn’t go to a supermarket or clothes store in America without hearing OneRepublic tell you that it was just a little too late to apologize – HER wasn’t doing badly, per se, but they certainly weren’t doing as well as they could have been. They weren’t that far from having had to majorly upgrade their engine for a rapidly changing technological world, and there seemed to be no end in sight. HER had plenty of staff change-ups coming because of new sponsors, but weren’t making enough simply with what they had.

Put simply, they needed a carrot. And what better carrot than the fan-favorite Hardy Boys?

There are two Hardy Boys games put out around this time: The Perfect Crime and The Hidden Theft. While neither one was done by Her Interactive, there was a HER Hardy Boys game in the works: the DS masterpiece Treasure on the Tracks. The audience for a Hardy Boys game was meant to be young boys/teenaged boys, but the side audience expected was fans of the Nancy Drew books and games.

So while I know logically that Phantom of Venice was just the latest in a line of ‘adulted-up’ Nancy Drew books (and games), in my head it makes much more sense to say that it was supposed to be a Hardy Boys game meant to promote Treasure on the Tracks and HER got nervous and pulled the plug, stuffing their erstwhile teen detective in instead.

The Title:

As far as a title goes, The Phantom of Venice isn’t a bad one; you can tell it comes from the ‘hotter and sexier’ Nancy Drew books, and as a collection of words, it works rather well. It’s an evocative title, giving us our location, our crime (‘phantom thieves’ are common as a type of thief), and doesn’t say too much else, so as to not spoil the mystery.

As a title for this game, however…well, so little of the actual game deals with the Phantom that it’s rather non-indicative as a title. By the time you’re 16 Scopa games deep and are wearing a sparkly red dress with a cat mask and sneakers around Italy, you’ve pretty much forgotten about the Phantom and are more worried about exactly what happened to the pigeon you used as a messenger and why exactly flowers and gelato cost so much for 2008.

The Phantom of Venice just…deserved a better, more cohesive, more…well, phantom-y game than it got. That’s all.

Now, onto the mystery!

The Mystery:

Nancy’s been called in by the Secret Italian Police because a thief has been stealing art.

No, really, I’m being serious.

Sure, Prudence Rutherford has a hand in getting her called in, but basically Nancy goes from small-time cases, sometimes getting her name in the papers, to called in by the Italian Secret Police.

Caught up at a house where no one likes her (understandable, given that she just Appears one day, forced on the Ca’s owner, Margherita Fauborg, and her residents at the Ca’), Nancy soon becomes embroiled in a mystery most foul when she discovers ties to the art thief – or thieves – right around the Ca’, poisoned sausages and message-laden chocolate boxes, and shades and shades and shades of tiles offered by the Ca’s resident nerd.

Soon, Nancy is juggling police contacts, heists, Scopa games, and the impersonation of a world-class spy just to give the Italian police a hint as to who might be stealing Venice’s greatest artworks. It gets personal, however, when the Phantom Thief himself shows up, stealing Nancy’s locket which she’s just been given by Ned.

Oh, and did I mention that the whole thing is told in media res? Yeah, very, very weird choice right there.

Honestly speaking, the mystery isn’t…bad, per se. It’s got solid bones – art theft, mysterious thieves, romantic location, interesting-seeming suspects, some spy shenanigans. The problem with VEN’s mystery, largely, is that there just isn’t any cartilage to connect those good bones. Without something to hold it all together, it just kind of falls apart – exactly like a skeleton without cartilage.

Simply put, there’s a lot of mystery, but no plot to carry the mystery along.

The Suspects:

Beginning with Margherita Fauborg, the tanning-obsessed matriarch of the Ca’ Nacosta, seems like a good place to start. Dismissive of Nancy, tourists, and Nancy being a ‘tourist’, Margherita prefers to stay on top of her house tanning the day away rather than take part in any shenanigans.

Having Margherita not be a member of the ring was almost as inspired as having Helena lead it; she’s not nice, does suspicious things, is entirely self-centered – but she’s not a villain, nor does the game really pretend that she is for more than a second. I really like characters like this in the Nancy Drew games, who are honestly just People not enamored with the teen detective, but aren’t villains just because of that.

Also, the story of her husband’s death is just incredibly hilarious.

Her half-ward, half-employee Colin Baxter, on the other hand, is anything but dismissive of Nancy. He’s part of the ‘kinda crushing on Nancy’ club, but is Far less beloved than any other member of that club. It comes from his inherent creepiness, criminal record, and love for tile slides, I think.

Colin, as a suspect…well, he’s just there to make the numbers add up. It’s a shame that his largest utility is to show Margherita’s slightly unscrupulous nature, but he should have been kept as perhaps a figure that Nancy could call to get the story, rather than an in-person suspect.

The other person staying at the Ca’ is Helena Berg, fulfilling the HER mandate for having a German villain in their European games. Having Helena be the mastermind of the ring is a pretty good plot point, honestly, as I expected the first time for her to just be part of it, and to have that be the Big Surprise.

She’s also one of the few villains who promises revenge on Nancy and/or is still out there. I know it would have been Way too soon to have Helena be the returning culprit in RAN rather than Dwayne, but honestly she was a better candidate for it. While any hope of a good ND game (and mostly any game, honestly) is pretty far from me, I always hoped one day Helena would return in all her platinum blonde glory.

Enrico Tazza is our most encountered (kind of) and outwardly suspicious suspect, but he’s not exactly…well, scary. He makes Nancy-as-Samantha play a card game with him, then disappears, despite being the Preeminent Villain Face for the first half of the game.

I do love Tazza, however, just for his presence in the game. He’s cartoony, fun, well-acted…he’s just great. And as a potential villain, he’s great too! You’re never meant to doubt that he’s a ‘baddie’, you’re just meant to go along for the ride. Excellent.

Finally, Antonio Fango is the most prominent suspect that you’ll ever completely forget the name of, due to his lack of screen time despite being the Italian Police’s favorite suspect. He has a whole convoluted backstory involving multiple colleges and degrees, but really he’s just the communication go-fer for Helena’s theft ring.

As a villain…well, Fango does his part, but due to being a nigh-unseen suspect, he’s really just not very memorable. He’s like most of the ring – necessary to establish the numbers, but other than that, a non-entity.

The Favorite:

Despite the plot holes wide enough to steer a gondola through, there are a few things that really make VEN stand out.

The first is Samantha Quick; originally a stage name suggestion from Simone in FIN, she shows up as an actual character in VEN, albeit only by phone and shadow. Her pissed-off phone call to Nancy is a highlight of the game, especially as she ends with the vaguely threatening line “say hi to Ned for me”. Her shadow at the end in Colin’s window is the final clinch to make SQ a personal favorite of mine, and her presence (and the feeling of her presence, which is sort of different) is a high point in the game.

The location of the game is another plus; not so much Venice, but the Ca’ Nacosta itself. It’s a wonderful ‘home base’ location for any Nancy Drew game, filled with light, staircases, and pretty impressive stonework given that just a few short games ago, everything looked like it was animated out of melted gummy bears.

My favorite puzzle(s) are the chess puzzles, honestly. I just kind of like chess puzzles to begin with, and it’s a nice respite from forcing pigeons to do your bidding and avoiding various foods.

My favorite moment in the game is honestly the Samantha Quick shadow, but if I had to pick another moment, it’s where Nancy implies that she’s stripping for money, and Ned just replies that he’ll be really glad when she’s back home safe in the States. It’s such a random, hilarious thing to happen, and Ned’s complete underreaction to the idea of Nancy earning money in such a way (as she makes it sound way worse than it actually is) is what really sells it.

The Un-Favorite:

There are some un-favorites as well, however, that drag down the game to the place it currently resides.

The first is…well, the location and the means used to get Nancy there. As much as I have no problem with Venice, this attempt to open up the world makes little sense when you consider that there’s no way the Italian Secret Police would hinge their hopes on a small-time 18 year old American detective, no matter how highly Prudence spoke of her.

The jumbled plot (when there is a plot, at least) is another point against VEN; the writers just didn’t know what to do with Nancy being in Venice, and so just…didn’t do anything with it.

I also dislike that this game happens in media res. There’s no real reason to do it – and it makes any actions that the player takes that’s slightly apart from the ‘main plot’ – gondola rides, ice cream, looking at slide after slide after slide – seem incredibly out of place and borderline inappropriate. At the very least, if the Hardy Boys were part of the game, they could be yelling her name as she began to drown, which would give a sense of urgency that’s missing from the confused opening.

My least favorite puzzle…well, that brings me to a huge problem: every puzzle in this game is based around the fact that it’s in Italian, and they expect no one playing this to even have an idea of Italian (or any romance language). It boils down to this: the puzzle is just the Italian language, and they have nothing else up their sleeves. I don’t have a least favorite puzzle, because apart from a select few, they’re all the same puzzle, wrapped in slightly different clothing.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Phantom of Venice?

Coming off of CRY, we’ve now had two games with two (or three) player characters, so that’s what I’d start with doing. Include the Hardy Boys, who have been called on by the Italian Secret Police because of their work with ATAC. They’re helping the mystified police track down this ring of thieves when Nancy mentions offhand that Prudence Rutherford is recommending a stay at a Ca’ in Venice whose owner owes her a favor (as a treat/vacation). Upon hearing this, the Hardy Boys ring her up and ask her help, as they’ve stalled out. They’re not allowed to come into physical contact with Nancy (to save money on animating them/Nancy), but they want her to investigate from her end, as she won’t be suspected at all.

The real reason the Italian Police let the Hardy Boys get her involved, of course, is that they need someone to impersonate Samantha Quick, and they’re having a rough time with their Joe-in-a-wig tests. They need an American who can convincingly pull off the act, and the brothers mention Nancy’s stints undercover. Desperate enough to grasp at anything, Nancy’s officially in.

That along would help beef up the plot, as suddenly we have an actual police plotline with the Hardy Boys (playing as one or the other, it doesn’t matter, or maybe both with different ‘jobs’ to do as one or the other). Diving the suspects is a good idea too; Nancy would take Helena and Tazza as her primary suspects (of course, only Tazza would be the ‘primary’ at the beginning), while the Hardy Boys handled Fango and his side of the ring.

The final puzzle (with the flashlights and such), especially, makes more sense as a Hardy Boys sort of thing. Nancy can snoop around the market and the Ca’, discovering clues as to Helena’s guilt and such. The Hardy Boys take down the ring, but Nancy takes down Helena.

I would also give Nancy a better reason to be undercover at the dance club. It’s a weird little minigame to be sure, but if it’s gonna exist in the game, there should be a better reason. Even better, take it out and have her solve puzzles – something other than the Italian Language, mind you – in order to get money from the police or something.

(Even better, take out the money thing, as someone helping the Police and pretending to be a spy should not be or appear to be short on funds.)

The last big change I’d do is to take Ned out (sorry, Ned, but there’s really no reason for you to be in this game) and swap him for Carson. Carson really should be in a few more games than he is as it stands, and this is a great way to bring in the fact that…well, Carson can’t be entirely Comfortable with the direction that Nancy’s life is going, even if he is proud of her.

Most of the time, Nancy’s family and friends are just used to say “and she’s ‘normal’ and loved and supported even though she’s never home”, and I think using them to establish her character and the stakes is a far better use of these pre-existing characters.

#nancy drew #clue crew #nancy drew games #VEN #phantom of venice #video games #nancy drew meta #long post #my meta

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encyclopika · 4 years ago

Note

18 & 20 For the ask game!!!!!!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH KAT!!! <3 God this is long.

From this writer’s ask game...feel free to send me some asks!!! :D

Gonna link the stories here for reference and for anyone interested in reading!

The Missing Series // Fire and Brimstone

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

Yes, ma’am! First I’m going to say that most do not, but the Missing series, particularly all that concerning Asuka and Ai, does in a big way...particularly the completely altered timeline that follows them if she doesn’t go away. You’ve seen the comic, where Ai doesn’t lose her nerve that snowy day and makes it obvious to him she also has stock in a deeper relationship. Yeah, that one. I’m currently working on more short comics from that timeline. Not necessarily a whole story, but snippets from that fluffier timeline. But that also means a few things happen differently - for one, Krow doesn’t join the Ryukyu offices, mostly because, in that timeline, he’s allowed to fulfill his own heroic story faster than he can in Missing. He’s not actually a rescue hero, but he doesn’t have Ai around in the main series to come into that as quickly.

I also almost went harder on Ochako’s duality in Missing, almost making Uravity a separate entity that was starting to hate Ochako’s bullshit. I honestly hated that and clearly didn’t do that. Instead, the duality is more “in her head” than anything. This idea kinda comes out in Krow and Asuka instead.

Additionally, there was, once upon a time, an alternative “Missing”, in which Deku chooses not to return to Tokyo for the Pyromancer case, and Ochako faces him alone. It gets obnoxiously dark and gritty, to the point where I’ve taken that OnO fuel and split it between Escape Artists and my little-known horror project Downpour I’ve been working on in not-secret. But, yeah, that’s definitely an abandoned plotline...*shudders*.

There are small details here and there that I changed in both Missing and Missing Out that created alts, mostly concerning Deku and how he fights baddies/figures things out, name changes for OCs, The Ring’s and Pyromancer’s whole identities changed, and Irina’s characterization has really gone through the ringer (from being another lovable asshole bird like Krow that simply gets on his nerves, to being a dangerous, but important antagonist). I also had Deku introduce the idea that people’s quirks can kill them in Missing because I intended to explore it more, and I’m not sure if that’s totally abandoned...

Thanks for asking this one. <3

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Yes.

All of that. I don’t wanna toot my own horn, but I live for hidden messages, references, callbacks, foreshadowing and symbolism. The Missing series (and to a lesser extent, Fire and Brimstone) is simply overflowing with these things...there’s so much that even with all of the people who have read it, there are still gems and Easter Eggs left to be discovered. And, before I get into it and make this post obscenely long, my reasoning for doing this is simple - I want you to read my fics again...I want to have reread value.

I’m going to put it under a cut in case anyone wants to discover them for themselves and also general spoils. Here are the ones I’m MOST proud of or that make me laugh or, dare I say it, make me feel smart. This is not an exhaustive list, and of course, I’m not pointing out any future Missing series meta for sake of spoilers.

Titling

Titles, titles, titles, girl you know I love titles. I’m a title SNOB. And I do A LOT of fun things with titles, such as:

1. Using the title of the fic as a buzz word and callback to the theme.

I get real obnoxious with this in the Missing series. The overarching theme of Missing is, well, missing people, particularly in the vain of heartache, loss, and longing. And I put it everywhere:

From Missed Chance:

Despite keeping steadfast to her goals and to her future, she knew that for a long time, she'd be missing him.

From Missing:

Today, there would be an update. As much as she wished it weren't so, the only time she saw Deku was when it had to do with Pyromancer or for a brief moment before leaving the police station in the mornings. Any other time, she was missing him.

“I miss you.”

...

“I'm always missing you.”

That's probably how he wanted it - being Asuka, the one still missing Ai, was too painful.

It couldn't ever be the same again, and Ochako was happy for it, feeling like her life was now so full.

And not a thing was missing.

From Missing Out:

“Miss me?”

“Only a little.”

But even when she was being annoying as hell, I craved her, like I knew I'd miss her.

Still, after all that time in the cold, her lips seemed like a warm reprieve...if I could have ever gotten there...

I miss her.

I'm always missing her.

^This one’s a double whammy, for obvious reasons.

2. Using chapter titles to run with a theme, too.

This only happens in Missing and Missing Out, but, look:

Chapter titles for Missing are the life of a fire and also follow the level of stress in the fic, as well as Ochako’s feelings: Hot Coals, Rekindling, Reignited, On Fire, Blazing, Inferno, Burn Out, Backdraft

Those words are used in their respective chapters too AND we run through them when Ochako is considering confessing or not in the last chapter.

I pull the same kind of crap in Missing Out, except all the chapter titles are things Ai gave to Asuka. If it’s an object, the object is in the chapter, otherwise, it’s stated in the chapter, too.: A Desperate Lie, Lunch, Skills, Home, No Conditions, Second Chances, Worry, Agony. It’s also in reference to this, because kill me, I guess.

Bonus: Since the story is told from within the theatre of Asuka’s memories, the titles for chapters 7 and 8, “Worry” and “Agony”, are spoiled in Chapter 6 here:

I didn't know I'd missed my last shot at telling her...I didn't know that I really would be missing out on a life with her.

Because everything after this is worry and agony.

BONUS BONUS - THE TITLE OF THE FIC APPEARS HERE TOO BECAUSE I’M OBNOXIOUS.

3. Title allusions and character.

Particularly for “Fire and Brimstone”, the title sounds like it’s just about the main boys, Katsuki = Fire, and Kirishima = Brimstone. BUT BUT BUT it’s also referencing biblical shit, which is appropriate, given it’s an Angel/Demon AU. It refers to God’s wrath when people use it loosely, but it is also the torment in hell for the deadly sin lust. *hint hint nudge nudge*

Okay that’s enough about titles. How about the fact that

Krow is a Crow

So many little crow quirks, lore, and bullshit is put into this character, like wow.

1. The entire concept of his quirk is all about crow lore, in that they are often connected with death in a number of cultures. This is why, although he doesn’t like to explain it, his quirk isn’t literally a sense of smell, but a little more mystical than that. It’s a sense. His quirk also references the Carrion Crow, Corvus corone, for which he’s based, which is a scavenger and is heavily associated with carrion and is native to Japan.

2. The green and purple iridescence of his wings are also referred from the Carrion Crow in particular.

3. What’s not overly obvious is that crows and ravens have positive lore too - in a number of cultures they are guides and messengers, sometimes to people, sometimes to Gods, which Krow fulfills to both Ochako and Ai (with Ai’s quirk, she could be compared to a goddess, for which he acts as the messenger - this was how she figured their partnership would work). Krow kind of puts this and the negative lore together when he explains his quirk for real in Missing Out:

As a teenager, I ignored them. Death is everywhere and it usually isn't important. Whatever messages they need sending, I'm not the crow they're looking for.

He also actually has a messenger bag in Missing Out.

4. It’s referenced in Missing and outright admitted in Missing Out that he’s inexplicably attracted to shiny things, which is more or less also crow lore, rather than fact, but still.

5. Krow’s name “Asuka” is a unisex name that refers to scents, but also birds and flight. There are a bunch of different refs that say differently, but I’m sticking with that. “Dakuro” is Engrish for “Dark”, which, if you really wanna meta, is actually his last name, considering his father is British. “Dakuro” is just how the Japanese people around him pronounce it. XD

6. He admits to collecting random shit he finds aesthetic, in reference to hoarding and collecting as crows do.

7. Asuka and Ai’s “lunch for quirk fodder” exchange, as well as his giving her the necklace and the box of quirk fodder, is in direct reference to this adorable true story.

8. Asuka speaks more than one language and is capable of mimicry during his “feral response” while fighting the Bear Trap Villain. This is in reference to the fact that crows and ravens are capable of mimicking human speech like parrots.

9. Asuka likes to sit in high places and watch people, and squats in tree for the majority of Missing Out and often bitches about walking anywhere, unless it’s to protect Ai. He has the mentality of a bird. He’s also built like a bird, with hollow bones and air sacs to assist his properly sized wings during flight.

10. He’s actually incredibly intelligent, and uses it to finagle out of tough situations and generally be a trickster, as is crow/raven lore, but crows/ravens are considered the smartest group of birds besides parrots. Unfortunately, this gets balanced out by the fact he’s a teenage human boy, which makes him lazy and capable of dumbass moments.

11. The murder investigations - there’s a number of instances where Krow can’t help but be drawn to death from his death sense in both Missing and Missing Out. He can’t stop himself from investigating the building Pyro is hiding in, the murder warehouse, and when Ai dies. Crows and ravens will gather around fallen comrades in a mix of mourning and also in an effort to try and figure out what happened and if that threat still pertains to them.

:3 Birb <3

Secret Messages and Tells and Foreshadowing and Symbolism

-In Missed Chance, the duality split of Ochako and Uravity is referenced as happening at a particular moment. Throughout Missing, Uravity is treated as apart from Ochako until the end of Missing where they “agree” on letting Deku help. It’s a duality of self representation.

-At the end of Missing, I’m hoping its clear everyone but Iida was in on leaving the two of them alone. Aoyama initiates it by leaving first.

-There are at least two instances where there’s heavy foreshadowing of the end of chapter 7, once with Aoyama:

“Then where in this overcrowded city?”

“I see. Among the clouds, then.*”

And again with Deku:

“That's a relief. Now, I just need to make sure I don't float myself into the stratosphere and you'll be right!”

-There is SO MUCH symbolism related to flying and birds, I can’t really put it all here, but it’s there. Also so much symbolism to fire in Missing, not only with Pyro’s quirk, but Ochako’s feelings..

-Krow reacts to a memory of Ai before we know she exists (since he’s hiding it) while they are interrogating Necromancer: “That’s not bringing them back. That’s nothing like bringing them back.” He also lets it slip a bit that he’d speaking from experience when ragging on Ochako about Deku. Deku also introduces the idea that people’s quirks can kill them in the same chapter, which is in reference to Ai, but also what ends up happening to Ochako, more or less.

-If you replace Ai’s name with the literal meaning of her name in some sentences of Missing and Missing Out, the UwU angst goes up to an 11. Here’s the one that’s particularly the gut punch:

Ai saved me in every way someone could be saved.

[Love] saved me in every way someone could be saved.

-End of chapter 5 of Missing Out, No Conditions, it should be obvious as hell that if Ai wasn’t in love with Asuka before, she certainly is now. Particularly in the gift box scene, he gives her...butterflies...right?

-Ai is compared to the winter throughout Missing Out. This is more in reference to what she means to Asuka than anything else. Winter, as a season, is the great equalizer and although things die in the winter, it is also necessary to the bloom in spring. This refers to the shift in Asuka’s life because of her - his villain life ends and his hero life begins.

-In fact, that whole scene in the snow is based off this gif, particularly the alt comic. It’s of two crows sitting in the snow kissing UwU.

-In both Fire and Brimstone and Missing Out, it should be getting pretty obvious I like to have my winged beasties flutter their wings when they’re in love.

Referencing Literature & Real Life & Pop Culture/Memes

-Pyromancer’s first crime in Alaska is based off the McCarthy, Alaska massacre where a lone gunman gunned down 6 of the 22 residents and injured more. Guy almost killed the entire town. Pyromancer actually did.

-I’ve referred to “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe a number of times, particularly in Krow’s famous line

“Nevermore, bitch!”

But I also referenced the Telltale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, and fanfiction in general.

-There’s a pop culture reference in Fire and Brimstone from Bioshock where Shinso says:

“Would you kindly go repent at the alter? Ashido is waiting.”

And I love it a lot, because in Bioshock SPOILERS, “would you kindly” is the trigger phrase that’s supposedly controlling the player, Jack, to do things for Atlas and in canon, Shinso’s quirk is brainwashing. Mineta upon hearing it just goes “okay” and promptly does what Shinso tells him. Shinso’s brainwashing is also referred to by Mineta just before that:

“Or get brainwashed into believing fairy tales,” Mineta said flatly from beside the Angel.

-There is indeed a motherfucking JoJo’s reference in Missing. And there’s more memes where that came from.

-Krow’s use of “my guy”, “lit” etc etc. is self explanatory. He is a whole ass meme chicken.

-In fact, I call Krow and the other birds of the Missing series “chickens” because of the meme of the girl pointing to a bunch of geese saying “look at all these chickens!” In fact, Irina calls and will call Krow a “cock” in Missing Out and Escape Artists, and it’s kind of a more sinister play on this. Transplant and Keeper, during their convo in Missing Out refer to the women captive under Keeper part of her “henhouse” and that she’d need a “rooster” to go through with her plans. Krow also refers to his fight with Irina as a “cockfight”.

-I’m not religious, but the lore is fun to allude to. The religious references should be clear in Fire & Brimstone, and a lot of the words I use relate to the topic, even casually in the narration, but also when the characters say “like hell!” Also in F&B, the real Angelic hierarchy shapes much of the worldbuilding, as do the references to real life racism, police brutality, and other shit like that.

In Missed Chance, the sun coming through the window puts a “halo” around Deku.

In Missing Out, Krow refers to demons on a number of occasions, sometimes towards himself, his family (which in comes the irony, since they look like Angels), but towards the end, it’s used to explain Ai’s mental illness. There are also these choice lines that entertain the notion of heaven and hell:

Below us was hell – mothers with agendas, school, dipshits, murderous villains, oh my! But up there? It was just us...

I was under no illusions about a heaven...hell certainly exists back down on the ground but I've been high enough now to rule the other place out. Unless this cold, quiet nothingness is supposed to be the intuitive opposite to the chaotic, unfair bullshit below.

-There’s a lot of references and characters with mental illnesses - psychosis, sociopathy, anxiety, depression and PTSD are all explored. In fact, Krow’s tendency to laugh at everything and get triggered by certain events (all of Missing Out is the result of him triggering himself in order to make Ochako realize her mistake) is a tell-tale sign he suffers greatly from PTSD, and Ai’s mental breakdowns are indicative of the anxiety I myself suffer from. Honestly, I just wanted some fics that look into it.

-In the same strain, all of the characters in Missing present different coping mechanisms towards what first-responders actively go through irl. Much of that was taken from my own life as someone with police in the family and being married to a firefighter/EMT.

Okay, that’s enough. Hope you enjoyed...I certainly had fun outlining all of it XD

#izuocha #my hero academia #uraraka ochako #my hero fanfiction #Missing Out #Fire and Brimstone #Missing #kiribaku #oc: Krow #writers ask games #encyclopika talk #THANK YOUUUUU

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