#anyways i like warriors rewrites that give the characters actual friends and have nice moments between them

[perenlop]

im reading this tallstar’s revenge rewrite and in it, palebird and brackenwing have a really nice friendship where bracken defends pale from sandgorse’s pushiness, and since i hadn’t read the original in so long i decided to check their wiki pages out of curiosity, and in the original brackenwing fucking shames palebird for mourning her dead daughter bc “she only knew her for two seconds” and scoffs at the fact that she named her at all? why do the girls in this series hate each other so goddamn much

[kendrixtermina]

Further reactions to "The book of lost tales":

I appreciate that Idril canonically wears armor and does swordfighting.

I feel like I can actually imagine adult!Idril much better now like in armor and with open hair, distraught but ready to fight while babby Earendil does not yet realize the danger...

My first thought is that Earendil was probably cute in that baby chainmail. My second thought is OUCH, Idril and Tuor always made sure their growing baby had fitting chainmail cause they felt the apocalypse might get them at any moment. Imagine that, imagine them having the baby armor fitted every year or so :(

Its fun how much of the basic structure already exists but most of what you'd consider the main characters doesn't exist or is scattered across various minor roles The only Prince anywhere in sight is Turgon - Except for Team Doriath, theyre all accounted for. I suppose Maeglin is kinda there in name only with vaguely the same role & motivation, but looks personality and background all did a 180 since. Luthien is still pretty much "princesd classic" at this point, not quite the fearless go-getter from the final version - markedly this version tells Beren that she doesnt want to wander in the wilderness with him whereas the final one says she doesnt care and its Beren still wants to get the shiny so as not to ask this of her and also for his honor.

I mean in the finished version Id consider the 3rd and 4th gen royals to be the main characters (well, alobgside Team Doriath and the varioud human heroes) and theyre hardly here. Imagine the silm with no Finrod!

Feanor had no affiliation with the royal family whatsoever, and is also generally less super. He's just the guy who won the jewelsmithing competition, not the inventor of the whole discipline. Still seems to have been envisionad as a respected member of the community who gets called to the palace for crisis meetings and is listened to when he stsrts giving speeches. From the first he already has the backstory of going off the deep end (or at least growing disillusioned with Valinor) after a family member is killed by Melkor and theyre still the first to die, but its just some other rando unrelated to the royals

The situation regarding the humans is different - instead of Melkor leaking their existence, its Manwe who explains that the other continents were supposed to be for them eventually. So Feanor goes off on a tirade about weak puny mortals comes off as a more of a jerk unlike in the final version where Melkor barely knew about the humans and described them to the Noldor as a threat. On the other hand in this one, also very much unlike in the finished product, Melkor dupes even Manwe into being unfair to the elves as a whole. In this the final version is a definite improvement, both Feanor and the Valar come off as a lot more sympathetic and though still deceived he's partially right in some things at least, so you have more of a genuine tragedy rather than a simple feud

There is something to the idea of Commoner!Feanor tho. I guess some of this survived in his nomadic explorer lifestyle and how both his wife and mother (who arent mentioned here) eventually were the ones to get that background of being not especially pretty ladies who are not from the nobility but got renown, respect and acclaim for their unique talent and contribution to society, with each having invented things and Nerdanel also being renowed for her wisdom. Hes sort of an odysseus-like Figure in that sense. I suppose later developements necesitated that Maedhros & co. have an army not just a band of thieves, which means they needed to be nobles/lords. That said this being a society where artisans are very respected and half the lords have scholarly/artistic pursuits going, the gap was probably not as big to begin with as it might have been in say, medieval England. Esoecially since Nerdanel's father had been given special honor by one of the local deities and that the social order might have been a very recent thing in Miriel's time. One might speculate that the first generation of Lords started out as warriors during the great journey, or perhaps just Finwe's friend group.

Also found that bit intetesting where the Valar have to deal with the remaining political tensions and effects of Melkor's lies on the remaining population in Valinor... - i guess with the change of framing device it was less likely for news of something like this to reach Beleriand. That, or the existence of Finarfin and his repentance made this go smoother this over in later cannon

Turgon's go-down-with-the-ship moment reaaly got to me. Im half tempted to write a fic where his wife, siblings and dad glomp him on arrival in Mandos. I dont care that none of them exists yet in this continuity i want Turgon to get hugs

I love all the additional Detail that got compressed out in the shift from fairytale-ish to pseudohistoric style especially all the various Valinor magic insofofar as it is compatible with the final version - particularly love the idea of the connection between the lamps and the trees that is now integrated into my headcanon forever

Its actually explained what the doors of night are

If I had not already read unfinished tales or volumes X to XII where this is also apparent, this is where I would say: Ah so the Valar were supposed to be flawed characters. Manwe has an actual arc; by the time he sends Gandalf he finally "got" it. I think in the published silm the little arcs of Ulmo and Manwe are mostly just lost in compression/ less apparent when only some of the relevant scenes got in but not all

It occurred to me way too late that the "BG" chars are the most consistent because theyre at the start and most stories are written from beginning to end. Finwe doesnt get a dedicated paragraph of explicit description until HoME X but my takeaway was that he's described pretty much like I always imagined him anyways/ same vibe I always got from him... charismatic, thoughtful, enthusiastic, sanguine temperament, brave in a pinch but at times lets his judgement be clouded by personal sentiment (though that last bit is more apparent/salient as a character flaw once he became the father of a certain Problem Child) ...i guess this would be a result of jrrt having had a consistent idea of him in his head for a long time.

This means Finwe's still alive at the time of the exodus which is just fun to see/interesting to know... Interestingly he sort of gets what later would be Finarfin's part of ineffectually telling everxone to please chill and think it over first while Feanor simply shouts louder (which is consistent with his actions before the sword incident in later canon where he initially spoke out against the suspiciozs regarding the Valar) - but its not exactly the same, he's more active than Finarfin later in that when "chillax" availed nothing he said that then at least they should talk with the other Kings and Manwe to leave with their blessing and get help leaving (This seems like it would have been the clusterfuck preventing million dollar suggestion in the universe where Feanor is related to him and values him) but when even that falls on death ears he decides that he "would not be parted from his people" and went to run the preparations. I find it interesting that the motivation is sentiment/attachment (even phrased as "he would not be parted from [his people]" same words/ expression as is later used for the formenos situation), not explicitly obligation as it later is for Fingolfin (who had promised to follow Feanor and didnt want to leave his subjects at the mercy of Feanor's recklessness )

Speaking of problem children. It seems the sons of Feanor were the Kaworu Nagisa of the Silmarillion in that originally all they do is show up at some point and kill Dior as an episodic villain-of-the-week. And then, it seems their role got bigger in each continuity/rewrite... probably has something to do with the Silmarils ending up in the title later making it in the sense their story that ends and begins with them. They have zero characterization beyond "fierce and wild" at this point, though in what teetsy bits there is we already have the idea that Maedhros is the leader and Curufin is the smart one/shemer/sweet-talker, though not the bit where Maedhros (or Maglor, or anyone really) is "the nice one". Which I guess explains why "Maglor" sounds like such a stereotypical villain name.

"The Ruin of Doriath" was purportedly the patchworkiest bit of the finished product, but I never noticed and it actually left quite an impression of me upon first reading, the visual of Melian sitting there with Thingol's corpse in her arms contemplating everything thinking back to how they met... she had the knowledge to warn him not to doom himself but couldnt get him to understand it because he doesnt see the world as she does.... After reading this though I wish there was a 'dynamic' rendition that combined all the best bits like, youd have to adapt it to the later canon's rendition of the dwarves, have Nargothrond exist etc. But i mean that just makes Finrod another dead/doomed relative of Thingol's whom bling cannot truly replace, like Luthien and Turin. In the Silmarillion you could easily read it as just an "honoured guest treatment" but here and in unfinished tales I get the impression that Thingol actually did see Turin as a son.

Already you see the idea of trying to make the stories all interconnected but there is less than there will be (the human heroes aren't related yet and there is basically no Nargothrond, which is later a common thread for many of the stories - a prototype shows up in the 'Tale of Turambar' tho complete with half baked prototypes of Orodreth and Finduillas

O boi im not even through yet

[jinjojess]

Gold “Jigsaw” Starz wants me to play a game

Okay, so I saw the “which 2 would you revive in the DR games?” question and I think the opposite is pretty interesting, but to maximize the thought of the question, I came up with some rules:

1) You can’t just kill off your least faves, there needs to be some thematic meaning behind the deaths (even if the meaning is the inherent lack of meaning, like Ishimaru)

2) You have to explain the contexts of their deaths in your scenario (how did they die and why?)

3) You can move around deaths so an establish killer or victim kills or is killed by your chosen characters. They do not have to be the same role (killers can be victimized and vice versa)

3a) If you do this, you also have to explain how the revised murders played out (but not how they are thematically involved)

Bonus rule for V3) You can’t just have everyone die in the final Execution like they should have. For this scenario, you can choose everyone who was alive by the start of Trial 6 (Saihara, HaruMaki, Yumeno, Shirogane, and Kiibo)

I hope this isn’t too much lol, I just wanted to come up with a cool game.

Okay, here we go!

DR1

I’d have had Naegi actually die in the 5th trial, and then switch to Kirigiri as the player character, and her choosing to adopt his optimistic outlook in the critical moment against Junko at the end. I understand that the reason this didn’t happen was because a) Kodaka wanted to hammer home that normal people are important too, and b) he doesn’t know how to write from the perspective of a really smart, observant detective without ruining the experience of discovery for the player, but from a narrative standpoint, I think that would have been a legitimately shocking development in a game full of shocking developments and then maybe DR3 wouldn’t have turned out as shit as it did because we wouldn’t have Naegi “literal Jesus” Makoto taking over the series like a fucking cancer. 

As for the girl, surprise! I’d actually have had Kirigiri die at the end of the game, perhaps to let the others go free. She’d feel like she’d be paying back both Naegi and Samidare that way, and it would mean that in later installments the more neglected characters could get more screentime. 

SDR2

I kind of like the idea of Owari and Souda staying behind in the Shinsekai Program to try and help revive the others from the inside, knowing full well that they may be stuck there forever. Not necessarily a “death” scenario, but pretty close. (We’re assuming that Sparkle Hinakura doesn’t exist in this version of canon.) Neither Owari nor Souda really had much impact on the story, and I think reconciling their naturally selfish/self-absorbed natures by having them make a sacrifice like that would put a nice cap on an actual character arc for the two of them.

DR:AE

I love them all to death, but the three boys in the Warriors of Hope should’ve died. Nagisa was crushed by a robot, like?? Having all the important characters live at the end was just so unsatisfying and unrealistic. (I don’t care enough about Haiji to want him dead.)

Girl is a little more complicated–originally the scenario I wanted at the end of the game was for Komaru to fall into despair and become Nu Junko, with Fukawa going to rescue her and bring her back to her senses (there’d be a Chapter 6 where you’d play as Fukawa by herself) before the Mirai Kikan arrived to “handle” the situation. At the end, Fukawa manages to bring Komaru back, but she gets gunned down by Future Foundation goons anyway. This sets the stage for DR3 where both Naegi and Fukawa have their mettle tested.

Alternatively, Fukawa could also die to protect Komaru, which would then trigger her to try and find an alternate path from the one the Mirai Kikan is taking.

DR3

Both boy and girl should have come out of the remaining survivors. Kirigiri and one of the guys. Naegi giving up his life to keep another friend from dying = good. Hagakure making a last minute sacrifice = he finally gets a moment to be the hero in a big way. Togami dies doing the right thing rather than the smart thing = nice cap off to his character.

DR Zero

Not enough people survived to really answer this question.

DR Kirigiri

This one is going to be answered in future tense, as I don’t know what’s coming up yet.

I want Yadorigi to be consumed with the desire to avenge Uosumi and die as a result of getting too up in the Committee’s face. Seeing him become a culprit in some special Duel Noir against Shinsen would be cool.

Connected to that, I want Mizuiyama to sacrifice herself to show she trusts the others, since she’s so wary of everyone else.

(Samidare is too obvious a choice and I’m 95% sure she will die.)

DR Togami

I don’t want Shinobu to die necessarily, but it would be interesting to see Togami react to it. Preferably, she dies in such a way that she takes Suzuhiko and Kazuya out with her–she gets revenge on both her brothers, ending things on her own terms.

Killer Killer

A subtle one, but the series ends on an older Dougami investigating a murder-suicide implied to be Hijirihara and Asano.

V3

Not totally clear on the rules for this one, since it sounds like I have to choose how the final trial ends?

Uh, if I can’t kill everyone, I guess Saihara and the others make good on their word, leaving only Shirogane and Kiibo behind. Kiibo obviously doesn’t blow up to destroy the school in this one–rather he just shoots Mother Monokuma who explodes and blows a hole through the sky. Shirogane has snapped and refuses to leave the grounds of Saishuu Gakuen despite the Team DR clean up crew coming in. Kiibo, meanwhile, has regained his own personality, but now that he doesn’t have any inner voice to follow, he seems confused for a few moments, but then quietly leaves the premises. 

The final scene I guess would be a shadowy cabal of Team DR producers, discussing how Shirogane will have to be sacked and how they can do damage control. Someone mentions using their last ditch resort, and then the camera is facing a door head-on. The door swings open and inside is a CG of Komatsuzaki-style Kodaka sitting on the floor in dirty clothes with shackles around his ankles.

~END~

So that’s it! Sorry I didn’t go mega in-depth on moving around existing parts of canon–if I started that, I’d have to rewrite the entire thing and I really don’t have time to do that. Still, it was fun, so that’s for the game, Starz!