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mahpotatoequeen · 1 year ago

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tdp - anastasia au

Thinking about a Dragon Prince Anastasia AU.

I don’t think I would change the universe very much- we would still have Katolis and Xadia, that long war and all those endless cycles of violence and grief within it. Moonshadow Assassins are still coming from the Silvergrove to enact their Dragon Queen’s vengeance.

Here’s the difference: King Harrow and his sons aren’t home in Katolis. They’ve been travelling, visiting other dignitaries at a conference in some other human kingdom. It was presented as a way of family bonding, but there was something tight and drawn in Harrow’s eyes when he suggested it.

They go anyway. They meet other monarchs. They feast on fine food. Successful conferences are often followed by parties, and this one is no different. The music is lively and the moon is full.

Then the elven assassins come. It is chaos. People are screaming everywhere, Callum and Ezran get separated from their Dad, and well…. You know the rest is history.

FEATURING:

Callum: playing the amnesiac prince who only really has some thread-worn clothes and a small little chain with the symbol of Katolis embedded in what can’t possibly be real gold. He feels like he’s missing something, something important, and really wants to get the Kingdom of Katolis in hopes of figuring out his past. He’s sort of surprised when an elf shows up and claims he might be the missing prince though. It’s ridiculous. Preposterous. Straight up impossible. Even if it is a little weird that he can remember that the King’s favourite jelly tarts are the persimmon ones….

(Also, moonshadow elves with brilliant purple eyes are suddenly appearing a lot in his ragtag sketchbook??? No idea why. Really. It’s not like she’s pretty. It’s just. She’s very aesthetically pleasing. For art purposes. Ahem.)

Ezran: playing the child king who lost his brother and father in one fell swoop when he was nine years old. He’s twelve, and he’s exhausted, but he has managed to work together with the other kingdoms to broker something like a very, very tentative peace treaty with Xadia. Lord Viren is his advisor, but it seems more like he’s there to undermine and trip him up at every possible opportunity. Ezran’s trying to find a reason to fire him, but one of the constituents of his young rule was that Viren would be there to…guide him. So just straight up telling him to leave without reason won’t work.

The last Ezran saw of his brother, he was alive. They had been running, and Callum had helped him up onto a horse and sent it cantering. He was supposed to have followed right behind him, but for some reason never did. He’s convinced that Callum must still be alive, though, even if that hope is dwindling. He’s offering a very high reward indeed for his sibling’s return.

(Ezran is tired. He’s tired, and he’s very, very lonely.)

Rayla: playing a moonshadow assassin who is desperately trying to redeem herself in the eyes of her people after letting the two princes get away through a hidden passage that fatal night. She’s been on her own for the last couple of years, ghosted from her home and more determined than ever to get this right. The protections around the palace have grown extensively since the attack, and If she has to use this nobody as a fake ‘brother’ in order to get close enough to King Ezran and finish the job, then so be it.

(Rayla doesn’t plan on falling in love. Stupid humans.)

Bait: Has gone on a miniature quest to find Big Brother Human himself, cause his Human is SAD and HAS BEEN SAD for SO LONG and it’s Not Good. He’s surprised, then, after a while of mindless wandering, to actually find Big Brother Human, smelling and looking a little worse for wear and definitely older, but. He’s got charcoal on his fingers. He scratches under Bait’s chin the same. His Human is gonna be so happy.

Bait forgot how annoying it was, though, that Big Brother Human does not understand him. If the Two Idiots would listen to him, they would not encounter HALF the problems they did.

(When all this is over, Bait’s gonna have some tales to tell.)

Viren: playing a royal advisor who is more than a little bitter that the crown has gone to an inexperienced child over him. He had been there, the night King Harrow had died, and he had made… sacrifices for his cause. This was not supposed to be the result.

Still, he is making leeway in winning the council over. The ridiculous treaty Ezran has made with the elves is shaky, and he can use this to his advantage. You can imagine his frustration, however, when he hears rumours about that overprivileged mongrel surviving. Callum had seen something, that night, that could ruin everything Viren has worked for. Something he could not be allowed to remember, or to live and tell the tale.

(The mirror in his basement has its own magics, its own way of reaching through miles upon miles and placing danger in an elf and a supposed prince’s path.)

Claudia and Soren: Working under their father’s orders, they’ve been given commands to make sure that the elf and a magical fake Callum never reach the palace, because they’re an endangerment to the crown and the kingdom’s safety. A trick from Xadia, according to Viren. A plot against the king.

(Soren asks what they do if it is the real Callum. I bet you know the answer.)

Amaya: Has moved closer to home with the withdrawing military presence after the peace treaty, as an extra measure of security and out of guilt of leaving her only family left alone for so long. She started conducting initial interviews of potential ‘Prince Callum’s’ the fifth time Ezran had come to her room, frustrated tears in his eyes, shakily signing about how he doesn’t understand why people would lie about being his brother like that, don’t they get how cruel that is? To give him hope and wrench it away?

Does she believe that her nephew is actually alive? No. Not really. Is the experience of interviewing people claiming to be Callum its own twisted brand of grief? Yeah. Sort of. But she’s willing to do it so that Ezran doesn’t have to, in hopes of making it some of those missing years for him. She’s shoring herself up for when he’s ready to hold a funeral, to stumble her way through helping him with this grief. She wishes Sarai was here.

(She also thinks that Viren is a piece of shit, but that is its own thing.)

#tdp #tdp ezran #tdp callum #tdp rayla #the dragon prince #anastasia au #my writing #is the first chapter of this already half written?#yes yes it is #i'm having fun :)

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ignitification · 4 years ago

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All for Outsourcing

Alright so, this post is going to be a long mess. I was just thinking and asking myself why does this panel trigger something in me.

What we see clearly explained is that a. AfO wants to hijack Shigaraki’s body after All Might has destroyed his; b. AfO wants OfA; c. AfO has incentivised Shigaraki’s hate and rage for all his life in order for Shigaraki to actually be able to undergo his transformation into AfO and to overwrite the will of OfA souls in order to take possess of OfA; d. AfO has understood that he, in his body, could never actually take possession of OfA on his own (because he likely missing in his soul); e. Emotions play a big factor in the Quirk activation/strength.

I talked about AfO and his mask, and shallowly about his character right at the beginning here. But Hawks's remark about him not stopping smiling even for a second, and the hypothesis that maybe AfO does not feel hate (or anything for that matter) spiked my attention even more, because this is the sort of further proof that AfO, in the end, has worn his mask in so long - that he likely dissociated from his persona as a Shigaraki. In particular, this paragraph (taken from the linked post) writes:

[...] However, there are some clues here and there which tell us that as powerful and atrocious AFO may have been in the past (even more than now), he is not only a big mastermind but he is obsessed by certain ideas and values and he has warped them so much that behind that mask of villain, of AfO, there is nothing left of human in him. That he is unredeemable and that the loss (or lack) of his facial features [potato face] might be an externalisation not only of the experimentation and the salvaging that the Doc has done on him, but as well of the blurred line between his human part (older brother who wanted, even with the abuse and the abominable things he has done, to ‘save’ his little brother) and the part that defines him as AfO.

Indeed, it does not make sense that AfO, with his 'dream' being becoming the next Demon Lord, would need a piece in order to accomplish his goals. It does not fit the thematic of AfO being selfish and caring only about his own interests (argument which I am afraid can be debunked by his life long partnership with Ujiko and the fact that despite he inhuman treatment he subjected Yoichi to, he still gave him a stockpiling Quirk, however weak and controversial they might be).

AfO is like a circle: he begins and ends with himself. It is abundantly made clear how he does not care, not really, about what is on his path: he didn't care about mistreating his brother, he didn't care about saving Shigaraki, he didn't care about All Might surviving their encounter - because it all defies his personal view of the world as his playground.

Of course, this reasoning comes back to Hawks argument: that he does not feel anything (nor hate, nor love - he does not have any morals) and that's exactly why his Quirk is the only thing he relies on. AfO knows perfectly how other than that, there is nothing else to him: he just wants, he just needs and it is others' responsibility to satisfy his needs (if he cannot strive for it alone, as in the case of OfA).

The fact that it took AfO so long to realise that he had to use a vessel to accomplish his mission, might have to do also with the fact that the ones holding onto the power the longest were Shinomori (who held it for 18 years, hiding) and Toshinori, before passing it to Izuku. Which means that the power had been transferred to individuals in rapid succession, and AfO had little time (or will) to investigate on how to obtain the power (without forcing it through his Quirk) and rather focused on eliminating the threat OfA as an embodied power represented. In this case, it is highly likely that it is after or during Nana's period that AfO realised how important emotions were, and how family could be such a perfect emotional ploy (and this was likely due only to the fact that Nana tried so hard to hide her family). After all, he, as himself, as a Shigaraki, did not feel anything in the first place - and he likely thought that what he was doing steamed out of brotherly love, or concern - while in reality AfO has been weaving the threads of his egoism since the beginning. An egoism born out of the only possible concern that he might had experienced: the one for himself. We see it in the simple statements he makes throughout the manga; he is never shown angry, pissed or disappointed - but instead he has a serene, mysterious aura around himself reeking of devil intent.

What is worse in this scenario, however, is that AfO throughout identifies with his quirk.

And on a personal level, I think that point e, has all to do with this identification. The thing is, AfO's Quirk presupposes (but does not limit) him to be selfish. After all, even the name is just a short story on how AfO's like might have been since the beginning and how he adjusted to the pace of wanting to have it, and then having it - having power over someone else, and have nothing to account for/to.

As AfO is not a man anymore, and does not feel anything unless it is related to the quirk, he becomes his figure and shadow. It has no limits and bounds when it comes to darkness: a lost figure in his own ideals and principles (maybe dreams) that have nothing to appeal to but his villain side, because there is nothing left. And as Horikoshi is a man that lives for the sake of a (questionably) good parallel, it is not far-fetched to see how since the beginning Izuku should have served a foil, and also as a contrast breaker with AfO. More than AM, Izuku embodies the unselfish desire to save others, to give (contrasting to take) and to trust. AfO is the epitome of taking for himself, and to destroy for a personal reason - being trusted and revered. Furthermore, Izuku is himself a vessel for OfA, and his other Quirks open him the world of heroics, where on the other hand - we see AfO being the one taking other Quirks for the selfish reason to take, and that's all there is to it.

Another parallel - which comes across as fitting, even if for a mere split second, is the one with Muscular. Muscular - or Gotou Imasuji - has nothing else but his bloodlust, his will to live at his prime and the will to express his aggressive vein in the most destructive way possible. But even on this account, Muscular appears way too emotional for AfO (and maybe this could be one of the reason AfO does not have any need for him? Because he does not have a higher goal, and there is nothing which AfO might offer him, which he couldn't obtain by himself or through his quirk?).

Coming onto the main point of this post: if AfO needs Shigaraki for the only reason to steal OfA, because he himself cannot possibly accomplish it and the conversation among the Top 3 hints at the fact that this might have to do with something missing in his soul (or in my guess, emotions - on which Quirks highly depend) which prejudices his possibility of hijacking OfA, thing that he hadn't realised until OfA stabilised itself in Yagi - (and here my best guess is that AfO entirely lacks the emotions of empathy, compassion and love, passing through the possibility of Alexithymia, which would be interesting to explore, in regard to how Quirks affect mental health of every individual) - and taking into consideration how unaffected AfO is by the external conditions that he experiences, and the fact that hate is one of the strongest emotions which can be felt, as raw as it is (and we know how AfO groomed Tomura into festering the negative emotions because he needed them to be strong enough to overwrite the positive feelings on eight people at the least) - it is safe to assume that AfO's downfall will be tied to his soul-missing piece and to his former identity as a Shigaraki? Is this a very complicated foreshadowing to tell us that, contrary to other villains and especially Tomura, AfO is bound to go down exactly because he has never experienced negative feelings, (hate, pain, despair, rage) and has never touched his hand (sorry, I did not intend the pun) how there is something desperately wrong with the world he lives in?

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moonlightreal · 3 years ago

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This is the “author’s note” I found on the amazon pages for the pretty hardcover Night World books. My memory is that it was just there, the book-blurb at the top by the cover picture, was this.

Like a bonehead I just copied the text without grabbing a screencap or noting the date. The amazon page now has the publication date is December 2016 so this bit of optimism was just before Ms. Smith vanished. Of course we don’t know when it was written or whose idea it was. Was Strange Fate really finished or was someone just feeling hopeful?

NIGHT WORLD Dear Readers, It’s hard to tell you how much the re-release of the Night World books means to me. It has allowed me to come full circle, to complete a cycle that began with Secret Vampire. It has allowed me to finish Strange Fate, which grew into an epic that included roles for almost every Night World character. And Strange Fate allowed me to show the origins of the Night World, the apocalypse that threatens to destroy it, and even a possible future in which the evil side of the Night World prevails. I am often asked how I conceived the idea for the Night World series. It began when I wanted to write stand-alone novels that would combine horror and romance. But I wanted more: I wanted to do a series in which this Night World—a vast, secret world that exists within the everyday world—would slowly reveal itself to readers. That’s why the first book is called Secret Vampire: the inhabitants of the Night World, composed of vampires, shapeshifters, witches, and other supernatural creatures I wanted to invent, are hidden from humans. A vampire is necessarily a secret vampire … because of the laws. I also wanted to write about a new kind of forbidden love. That’s not easy—most good forbidden love topics were old by Shakespeare’s time. But with this series, I could create the possibility of forbidden love simply by saying that the laws of the Night World prohibit a Night Person from falling in love with a human. But I still needed one more ingredient. I needed the rise of the soulmate principle to actively force Night People to fall in love with humans, no matter how hard they fought against it. Voilà! Then it was just a matter of making up interesting characters and setting them loose in my head to see what they would do. I often begin like that: sitting in a quiet room and searching for a sparkle in my mind that could become my new heroine. Sometimes it’s easy and a whole character shimmers before me. Sometimes I only get the faintest firefly glimmer of a new girl, and I have to hold my breath and see if that glimmer will materialize into a three-dimensional person. Heroes and anti-heroes are easier. It’s just a matter of picking one that will be a true soulmate for my heroine. I have a whole collection of these characters in my mind, all trying to crash the party. And they’re usually bad boys. The settings and in-depth plot development are another layer of work. But often the characters just run off and do what they want, and I have trouble keeping up with their antics on my keyboard. One thing I always do is look carefully at my characters and plot from all angles to make sure I’m not plagiarizing a book or series that I may have read before. That’s just normal procedure for ethical authors: we make sure our stories aren’t too much like another story we might have read. Of course, there are many ideas that have been around since the Babylonian myths, and many characters that are archetypal. But, really, it’s almost impossible to take many things from the body of another author’s work—say, someone else’s character(s) or plot or story device—without actually intending to do so. I can’t imagine wanting to do that. I wish I could say every author felt the same. Poppy North is a character I examined very carefully. I wanted to make sure she wasn’t too much like Bonnie McCullough, another petite character of mine from The Vampire Diaries. I didn’t even want to plagiarize myself ! But Poppy convinced me that she was a tough little squirt who by high school had already planned out her future, which is very unlike Bonnie. Poppy was going to marry her mysterious friend James—she just hadn’t informed him yet. Also, unlike Bonnie, she had a fatal flaw in her small body. In Secret Vampire, I knew I was dealing with a serious issue: terminal cancer in a high school girl. So I did a lot of research before deciding on a type of cancer that would be truly inoperable and give Poppy only a month or two to live. I went to several hospitals to talk to nurses in oncology wards. I always brought toys for the hospitalized children, but the whole subject was so heartbreaking I was almost afraid to tackle it. Once I did, though, I found that Poppy was even stronger than I had imagined. In the book, she makes the only choice she can to go on living, and she never looks back. Poppy is one of my favorite girls, and she ushers in Ash Redfern, who quickly became one of my favorite bad boys. Ash has a murky past of womanizing and … well, more womanizing. Ash returns in Daughters of Darkness because he has been ordered by the leader of all vampires, Hunter Redfern, to bring his three runaway sisters back to their cloistered vampire island. But when Ash locates his sisters, he runs straight into the human stargazer Mary-Lynnette, and the sparks begin flying—literally. Mary-Lynnette is a character I made up when I was a kid, and I’m always surprised by how many people like her and Ash together. Mary-Lynnette spends most of the time expressing her feelings for Ash by kicking him in the shins, but their dialogues are some of my favorite passages in the whole series. Ash, in turn, escorts Quinn into the series. And Quinn (who does have a first name, though he rarely uses it) is one really scary guy. A vampire since 1639 A.D., Quinn is sharp, cold, humorless, and heartless. Unlike Ash, who is mainly guilty of an incredibly long series of one-night stands, Quinn enters the series as a human slave trader. That is, he provides vampires with young girls, and he doesn’t ask questions about what happens to the girls afterward. This led to a problem: How on earth was I going to redeem this villain enough to make him someone’s soulmate in The Chosen? I really sweated over that. My first task was to make Quinn more sympathetic. The best way to do it seemed to be by telling a bit of Quinn’s own tragic story: how he falls in love with sweet Dove Redfern, and how her vampire father decides to make Quinn his heir. Dove’s father is Hunter Redfern, one of the most important vampire leaders in Night World history. This is the same Hunter Redfern who, nearly half a millennium later, sends Ash to drag his sisters back home. The same Hunter Redfern who sends his daughter, Lily, after Jez in Huntress. The same Hunter Redfern who tries to turn Delos into a merciless killer in Black Dawn. But, as a boy, Quinn doesn’t know anything about the Night World, and he is deeply in love with gentle Dove. When Hunter makes him a vampire by force and then when Quinn can’t save Dove from being killed, Quinn’s heart freezes over. For four hundred years it accumulates ice—until he meets Rashel. That’s another favorite scene of mine: when Rashel, a dedicated vampire hunter since (guess who?) Hunter Redfern killed her mother, encounters Quinn. A group of Rashel’s fellow vampire slayers have captured Quinn and plan to torture him, and Rashel is left alone to guard him. Quinn, feeling old and tired despite his youthful appearance and great power, gives himself up for dead—and is a little glad to do so. Rashel, however, can’t stomach the idea of torture. When Rashel talks to this most-hated vampire and hears his story, she deliberately sets him free. And that astonishes him. But it’s the soulmate principle working its magic. I loved making two such strong-willed enemies succumb to the silver cord that connects them. I especially loved hearing Quinn warning Rashel not to let him go—and then protecting her when her comrades arrive back in time to see that she’s let him loose. I really loved writing about Quinn and Rashel’s soulmate sequences. As Rashel enters Quinn’s mind, she sees “thorny scary parts” but also “rainbow places that were aching to grow” and “other parts that seemed to quiver with light, desperate to be awakened.” She begins to think that people ask so little of themselves. If the mind of a slave trader can look like this, an ordinary person must have the power to become a saint. It is with this revelation (and much penance on Quinn’s part) that Quinn is redeemed. That’s the thread that binds all the novels together: redemption. The possibility of a second chance. Everyone has choices to make, but even the most evil of vampires can choose to atone and be redeemed. It may not necessarily stave off punishment in this world or the next, but redemption is possible. I’ve been asked who my favorite characters are, and the answer always changes because it depends on the book I’m writing. Right now my favorites are three characters from Strange Fate. As for my favorite couples in the published books? Morgead and Jez—I suppose. Who would find themselves at greater odds than a vampire gang leader and his onetime superior, a vampire who finds out she is half human? I learned some cool martial arts moves as a bonus for writing about them. Then there is Keller, one of my all-time favorite heroines, and Iliana, the beautiful Witch Child, and Galen, ruler of the shapeshifters: the love triangle in Witchlight. Keller starts out seeming brusque and businesslike, but the love of Galen and of the unselfish Iliana help to heal her inner wounds. And I can’t forget Thierry and Hannah, and Circle Daybreak. I created Circle Daybreak because the Night World witches had only two clans: Circle Twilight and Circle Midnight. Those, like Thea in Spellbinder, who belong to Circle Twilight are not-so-wicked witches (that is, they don’t want to exterminate all humans like the darkest witches, those who belong to Circle Midnight), but they are still wicked enough. So what was to be done with all these new soulmates, when Night World law said that they must be put to death? Someone had to make a place for them where they would be safe, and I decided it was Thierry, one of the oldest vampires, and Hannah, his Old Soul soulmate, who has lived hundreds of lifetimes without ever reaching the age of seventeen. They are the ones who revive Circle Daybreak, where humans and Night People can forget about past tragedies and concentrate on a brighter future together. Although Thierry is an old vampire, he isn’t the oldest vampire. There is one older, the one who Changed him. She provides another thread that binds the series: the pitiless Maya. Maya is the first vampire, the witch who finds the secret of eternal life—and chooses to use it for evil. But there will be plenty more about her, including a look at the young Maya, her sister Hellewise, and their mother, Hecate Witch-Queen, in the upcoming Strange Fate. And so now I’ve come full circle, back to Strange Fate. But I can’t finish until I add the other joy that the re-release of Night World has brought me. It’s brought me into contact with you by e-mail. Night World fans write so many intelligent, articulate, courteous, exciting e-mails! I love to get messages from “old” fans, who say my works “got them through high school.” Thank you for them! And messages from new fans, who say they have just read all my reissued books—and are impatient for more. Thank you! And the messages that simply demand: “When is Strange Fate coming out?” Thank you, too! With a full heart, all I can say is thank you, thank you, and thank you again! I never thought I would have a chance to write an open letter to all Night World fans, and I can only wish that you knew how grateful I am … for this second chance. Sincerely, (LJ Smith signature image) P.S. I love to get e-mail, letters, and messages. Visit me at ljanesmith.net!

#nightworld #ljsmith strangefate #strange fate #LJ Smith

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justlovej2 · 4 years ago

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My J2 au fic recs

I thought it was time to make a list of some of my favorite j2 fics. This is au only. Not au coming next. Enjoy.

Absence from those we love

by mournthewicked

Word Count: 41,000

Link: https://users.livejournal.com/-mournthewicked/354607.html

Summary: Jensen Ackles led a great life. It just wasn’t the one he planned on. Now he’s newly single, stuck at a job he hates, and sharing an apartment with his lovably psychotic best friend. When he’s given the chance to go back and do it all over again, he leaps at it. Only he soon comes to realize that no matter what’s in front of him, it’s impossible to leave the past behind. Considering what he’d be giving up, he might not even want to. (17 again j2 style)

Like a music that holds my hands down

by saltandbyrne

Word Count: 22,891

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15310197

Summary: Perpetually-single pediatric dentist Jared lets his best friend Misha talk him into going to an anonymous BDSM party. Jared hooks up with a gorgeous stranger, but panics after their encounter and leaves before he can learn more about him. A year later, Jared is stunned to recognize Jensen Ackles as the father of one of his new patients and the guy from the best one-night stand of Jared’s life. With some encouragement from Jensen’s co-parent Danneel and Jared’s plucky office manager Genevieve, Jared realizes that he and Jensen might be perfect for each other after all.

Inked Verse

by non_timebo_mala

Word Count: 43,593

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/344780

Summary: Jared's been dying to get tattooed by renowned tattoo artist Jensen Ackles for ages. When he finally walks into the shop, he discovers he wants a lot more than just ink.

Gently play upon your heartstrings

by Cleflink

Word Count: 11,576

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032133

Summary: Jensen is the superstar lead singer of the world's hottest rock band and, as such, is totally not bitter about getting turned down by Jared fucking Padalecki. Too bad the guy manages the hotel that Jensen lives in and is incredibly difficult to ignore.

Superheroes suck, or, the unfortunately extraordinary life of Jensen Ackles

by Cleflink

Word Count: 33,055

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468711

Summary: Jensen hates superheroes. Having grown up with not one, but two of them in the family, he's more than aware of just how much having a spandex-clad alter ego can cock up the rest of your life. Luckily, his own powers tend towards the more passive, hippie florist side of things which - while embarrassing - means that all that superhero crap is someone else's problem. Or it would, if not for the frequent interference of superhero-obsessed friends, hostage situations, hotshot new superheroes and irritating relatives. Not to mention a boyfriend who has the uncanny ability to go missing whenever bad things are going down somewhere else in the city. Sometimes, Jensen's life is kind of bullshit.

The beat of our noisy hearts

by Cleflink

Word Count: 47,890

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909642

Summary: In a world where heartbreak is a literal condition, it's Jared's job to sew, fill and patch the physical wounds left in people's hearts by lost loves, misunderstandings and betrayals. Jared's own love life is more than a little dire, largely because Jensen doesn't date and Jared doesn't do one-night stands, but he's got good friends and a job he loves, so he figures that he can't complain too much. When a killer attacks Jensen, Jared discovers that a needle and thread, desperation and a sharp scalpel are enough to save Jensen's life, but at a cost that is going to change Jared's life forever and tie them both together in a way that goes far deeper than flesh.

And the rest, as they say, is history

by Raina_at

Word Count: 17,728

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012887

Summary: Struggling actor Jensen takes a job as big-shot movie star Jared Padalecki’s dogsitter. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A different kind of team building

by ashtraythief

Word Count: 8,924

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24683401

Summary: Jensen is a facts and graphs kind of guy; he never should have started working at a hipster California startup. His boss is insane, everybody’s wearing beanies, and Jared, the tall and cute head creative designer, thinks Jensen is too stuck up to work at One Tree Solutions. And now they’re going on a company retreat. But when the sleeping arrangements don’t work out as planned, Jensen realizes that maybe he didn’t have all the facts after all.

Hustle & Heart

by righteousbros

Word Count: 16,819

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143701

Summary: Jensen is the star quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers and he lives and breathes the game of football. Then at a charity signing event he runs into Jared, his former teammate and his former flame. It's been years since they've spoken, but Jensen hasn't been able to let the feelings he has for Jared go. To complicate matters, Jared is on the brink of a major decision that will change his life and the history of the sport forever. Now Jensen has to decide if he has the courage to speak up and claim his chance at happiness too.

Cuffs

by TwoBoys2Love

Word Count: 87,156

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1283929

Summary: Detective Ackles gets a new partner who may be a bit of a challenge. They have different views about everything. Ackles picks up some work on a new case that reveals his partner's secret and dredges up the past.

The American Bachelor

by dugindeep (hotsauce)

Word Count: 21,415

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1774633

Summary: Jensen Ackles is the first openly gay president, but that's the least of his worries. He's battling the press on his continued international trips to keep the peace, he has a 12-year-old to raise on his own, and he's trying to make something happen with the hot florist he just met. Jared Padalecki, on the other hand, is trying to not go insane at the prospect that the country's most eligible bachelor, and the world's most powerful man, is trying to woo him.

Splintering in slow motion

by cyndrarae

Word Count: 30,881

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7526416

Summary: Jared has been fighting the ‘darkness’ for as long as he can remember, until he can’t, or doesn’t want to anymore. He decides to treat himself to one final weekend of fun before laying down his arms, so to speak. The last thing he expects is a gatecrasher, someone who might derail his best-laid plans for good.

Apocalypse: Cancelled

by jeyhawk

Word Count: 28,000

Link: https://jeyhawk-fic.livejournal.com/62095.html

Summary: July 7, 2008 at 2 a.m. in the morning a comet will hit Earth, destroying all human life. Humanity gets 54 hours to prepare and chaos ensues. A chance encounter has straight architect Jared Padalecki saving the life of deeply closeted movie star Jensen Ackles. The unlikely couple cling to each other during what they think will be their last days on earth, but what happens to the relationship they built when the world doesn't end after all?

Slowly, with each touch and each kiss

by whisperedstory

Word Count: 24,136

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21607546

Summary: When Jensen starts coming to JD's, the cocktail bar where Jared works, Jared is instantly interested in him. What starts out as a one-night stand quickly becomes a casual arrangement that Jared could easily see turning into more. But Jensen isn't looking for something serious and Jared would rather settle for being friends with benefits than not having Jensen in his life at all.

Baby, it’s cold outside

by Merenwen76

Word Count: 35,245

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22177129

Summary: Christmas is the best time of the year for Jared. But this time he's caught in a blizzard. With his boss, of all people. - Jensen Ackles This one not only hates Christmas but is also extremely hot.

A song in the stars

by strive2bhappy

Word Count: 39,813

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11224314

Summary: Jared Padalecki has dreamed of taking to the skies since he was five-years-old. When he becomes an adult and builds a spaceship of his own, he gets to do just that, looking for adventure -- little did he know the adventure waiting for him. Jensen Ackles is born part human, part Terryn and his life as an outcast is difficult -- music is his only real escape. When he's captured by the Dominion, an organization hell-bent on taking over every galaxy in every way they can, he's used as a lab experiment to see how his special, combined heritage can be advantageous for them. Fleeing Dominion control, he vows to himself, they will never find him again. A chance meeting between Jared and Jensen helps both of them get what they're looking for -- and the way things end up, it may have been more than just chance. From various planets throughout different galaxies, to nights under the stars in space, Jared and Jensen find in each other something worth fighting -- and possibly dying -- for.

#j2 fics #j2 au fic recs #j2 fic rec #au only

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joneswuzhere · 3 years ago

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hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality

5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:

- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on

- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable

- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there

- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat

- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol

- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift

- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.

- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?

- i have arrived at the point

- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky

- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’

- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth

- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner

- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note

- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there

- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward

- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?

- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out

- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself

- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)

- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent

- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king

- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon

- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’

- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train

- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment

- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump

- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time. and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.

- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??

- however,,,

- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)

- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.

- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show

- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go

#accompanying image has no meaningful organization it's just there to make me look insane. enjoy #riverdale speculation #filmref #but books #adhd has me like. this is Not the post i've been trying to write for weeks but my brain gave me no choice

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oh-my-may · 4 years ago

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Tsukishima, Sugawara and Kuroo getting prank ignored for a day

requested: hii, i really like it the getting prank ignored for a day, can u make this again but w/ tsukki, suga and kuroo

Hiii! I’m finally back??? This took forever lmao and I have to say I’m not this satisfied with it but I wanted to post something again? So I’lllet your guys’ feedback decide :)

Hopefully I’ll be able to work on some more requests until uni starts again, but we’ll see. Enjoy this until then! xx

Tsukishima Kei:

Sometimes Kei was... just Kei. In the months of your relationship he had grown a lot more used to you and you noticed how he softened with every day you spent together. That was... Until exams approached and the volleyball matches got more intense, too.

He forgot lunch dates and meetups, study sessions and he even texted you less. Of course you could understand him, he was very busy, but you felt like air to him. You didn’t even see him in school anymore. You were the one keeping the contact up, he only ever responded to your messages with an emoji or a simple sentence.

It got so frustrating to the point where you thought you might as well cut off all ends for a day. Not trying to get your mind occupied with him, just concentrating on school, your friends and yourself for a day.

However when you woke up, you were surprised to see that he had actually send you a message. Karasuno had a practice match this afternoon and he invited you to come and watch them because he knew you enjoyed watching them all play. You felt a wave of euphoria washing through your body, but then you remembered your little “game” and put your phone away.

by the time you’ve reached lunch you received a few more messages from him, mostly a bunch of question marks because you haven’t answered yet, questions whether you were still asleep or sick at home. You weren’t, you sat in the same places as usual in school.

You yourself grew impatient as the end of school was nearing and you were considering actually showing up in order to see him. You couldn’t even focus on class anymore and that’s when you knew your plan had failed. Instead of being able to focus more on other things, even now your mind was filed with thoughts of Tsukishima.

You sighed and gave up when you left the school building after your last class and saw his tall body towering over the rest of the students. His body language may not be obvious to many other people, but it is to you and you knew that he was searching for something. Looking for you.

You figured there was no way out of this for you anymore, so you just walked your usual way towards the exit, your way crossing him. He almost didn’t notice you right away, but his long arms stops you right in your tracks. “What, were you just gonna walk right past me? You seem a bit distracted today Y/N.”

You can just stare back at him. He doesn’t exactly looks worried, but something in his tone tells you he knows that something is going on. So he wasn’t quite that onblivious, but he still didn’t get what exactly was urking you. “Tsukki, really...” You sigh and move your wrist out of his hand which he wasn’t holding that tight anyway, he was just trying to stop you. “I just thought I could try and ignore you for some time, since I’ve basically been air to you lately with all your exams and volleyball stuff.” You try not to, because you know he hates it when you do, but you can’t help but huff a bit and sound kind of bitter with a slight pout on your lips that forms naturally.

There’s some silence spreading between you and you just look into the distance as you await a reaction from him. He also hates it when you don’t look at him when you talk to him like that, when it’s about something serious. So naturally, you expect a harsh reaction from him, but you’re surprised when his fingertips softly brush the top of your head, his fingers threading through some strands of your hair. When you look up you can actually clearly see the bitter regret in his eyes and face, a deep thoughtful fold on his forehead. “Kei?” you mumble a bit regretful, seeing as he’s really deep in his thoughts over your words.

“I didn’t even notice.” he just answers and puts his hand down, just to take your hand in his and intertwining your fingers. “I’m still not used to this, please excuse my behaviour.” You can just smile and coo at this, squeezing his hand and surprising him when you practically jump up to place a kiss on his cheek. “Just talk to me next time, yeah?”

Sugawara Koushi:

It wouldn’t naturally occur to you to just ignore your boyfriend for a day. Not Suga, since he was practically the sweetest and most considerate human being you ever encountered on this planet and he was cherishing you with every inch of his being. Alone the thought of him made you smile.

But your friends could be evil sometimes. You loved them, they were your friends for a reason after all, but they could do very “cruel” things sometimes, like daring you to ignore your boyfriend for a whole day. You felt like not doing it, but maybe you could proof to yourself that not everything in your life is dependent on him. You are your own being, after all. A day has 24 hours, 8 of which you normally spend in bed and around another 7 in class without him, so that leaves only about 9 hours without him. Shouldn’t be that hard, right?

But your heart already aches when you don’t allow yourself to answer his goodnight messages. That doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal to him though “You’re probably already asleep, huh? Sleep well! I hope you dream of me <3″. You smile to yourself but put your phone away, trying not to think too much about the next day.

In the morning there are already more messages from him waiting for you. “Good morning! I hope you slept well! Can’t wait to see you today <3 You’re always welcome to watch practice if you don’t have anything else to do!” There’s a sting in your heart as you swipe them away and prepare everything for the day. Your lucky it’s a wednesday, that means today your boyfriend doesn’t walk you to school, but you meet your friends halfway to school. You try not to let the teasing get to you and just make your way to and through school as quickly as you can, not even noticing that you rush right past Suga. He tries to stop you in surprise, but he fails because you’re too fast and he’s left wondering. Maybe you just didn’t see him in the crowd of people?

Luckily during your first classes that day you don’t receive any messages, as Sugawara is a responsible pupil that doesn’t like using his phone in class (be like Suga!!) But when you try your best to avoid him during lunch, he gets very suspicious and asks to go to the restroom in class just so he can text you. On the way there he walks past your classroom and can’t help but spend a minute watching you, hoping that maybe through some telepathic power you look his way. Of course you don’t though. Instead you’re surprised how easy it is to focus on class as you try to push the thoughts about your boyfriend away and distract yourself with something else.

As the school bell rings Suga is the first one out of his classroom, surprising all his classmates. He ignores Daichi’s calls saying that he shouldn’t forget about practice today. Instead Koushi runs through the hallway to your classroom to catch you right as you walk out.

You almost scream when you feel someone grabbing you and pulling you aside, until you realize its your birthday. You’re relieved for a second until you remember your bet and then give up with a sigh as you watch your freinds walking by behind Suga, dragging their fingers over their throats and acting as though they’re crying. You drag your eyes back to Suga who looks you up and down more worried than you’ve ever seen him.

“Y/N! What’s wrong? You didn’t reply to any of my messages and ignored me completely during the breaks!” He lloks frustrated and desperate for an explanation and you can’t help but smile a little at his words, raising on of your hands up to caress his cheek. “I’m sorry.” is all you can bring over your lips before you press your face against his chest and wrap your arms tightly around his torso.

You spend a while in this position until you can get yourself to explain everything to him and your voice is so filled with regret he just can’t be mad at you. He couldn’t ever be mad at you. He just tells you to never to something like that again, because he really felt like he did something horribly wrong, and then you walk to his practice hand in hand. Like that, you can even bear you friends teasing. You wouldn’t ever go without a single day without Suga, that’s what you learned.

Kuroo Tetsurou:

It was a dumb idea, really. You would have never agreed to this. But you can be stubborn sometimes, and you also would not loose a bet to Kenma, Yaku and Lev. Ignoring Kuroo for 24 hours - it couoldn’t be that hard, right? “It’s what I’m trying to do for as many hours as possible, Y/N. I would be glad if someone asked me to do that.” Kenma said in an unimpressed manner while not looking up from his game. You sighed and just left them standing there without a word, as Yaku and Lev kept on shouting things they want if you loose the bet. Which was not gonna happen. You hoped.

In the morning it was usually you that texted him first, asking about his sleep and what his day was gonna be like. It was easy not to that, though, because he never answered over text and instead just read them and answered them when you saw him in school.

Getting out of Kuroos way in school was a bit tricky, though, as he normally greeted you in front of your classroom. Sometimes he was already waiting in the door frame. You cringed a bit when you saw him standing there, but maybe the best way to go was just acting as though he wasn’t there. Just dodging under his arm and walking right to your seat and then striking a conversation with one of your classmates as soon as possible so he wouldn’t get the chance to talk to you. And it was even easier to do in practice. Kuroo was caught off guard when you just walked right past him and he could just observe your figure in the room with a surprised look. “Okay.” he said to himself quietly and left and you were almost relieved thaht when you turned around he wasn’t there. Of course it hurt you to just ignore him like that. You could just blame the others if it went wrong, right?

During lunch you literally sprinted out of the room into the restroom and waited a good 15 minuted there. Just so you could be sure he wasn’t in the cafeteria anymore, because he liked being the first one there. You could just imagine him sitting there with a free space next to him, looking around and waiting for you. Your heart clenched and you felt miserable. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. You were just hurting yourself at this point.

With your head hanging down you left the toilets behind and waited in front of his classroom. Slowly all his classmates came and went inside, but Kuroo didn’t show up until 1 minute before the bell. You looked up in relief and then ran right into his arms, almost causing him to fall. “Woah, all of a sudden, Y/N?” He laughs into your ear and you can’t hold back a dry sob. “Yaku, Lev and Kenma mde me do it I’m sorry I’m such an idiot.”

Kuroo just giggles even more as he works his hands over your hair to soothe you. “No one can resist me for long I guess.” he sighs and makes you look up to him by placing a hand under your chin. “Yaku, Lev and Kenma you say? I’ll make sure they’ll practice some extra serves and run more laps today.” His thumb travels over the soft skin of your lips as he considers: “Or for the rest of the week, or the whole month, or until the next match.” His hand wanders along your neck until he plays with the hair at the top of your head again. “Just don’t do something like that to me ever again sweetheart.” Then he places a soft kiss on your jaw and vanishes inside of his classroom.

For as long as they have to do extra practice, you don’t get anything else from Yaku and Lev other than evil glances. They still make you buy them their favorite snack, though.

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chikkou · 4 years ago

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okay i was scrolling through your blog, im not a follower or anything, but i see youre passionate about the lisa series. i want your opinion on something, dingaling said that the worst character in the series is lisa, and that his least favorite is buddy. fair enough for buddy, but i think its really cruel and unfair to say lisa is worse than her father, who literally made her commit suicide. even if she treated people bad, it was marty that made her act that way. thoughts?

oh anon, i am so fucking sorry but u just awakened the fucking beast and u dont even know it LMAO

i agree that calling lisa the worst character in the series is extremely unfair given all the terrible people we encounter, and of course that she only acted the way she did because of her OWN abuser, but this is the reasoning dingaling gave when people obviously commented on this:

and i can actually understand what he was trying to say here. calling her the “worst” is a poor choice of words and that title definitely belongs to someone like marty or bolo, but in terms of impact, lisas death is absolutely the biggest driving force behind the entire olathe universe, and almost exclusively in bad ways. to wit:

- the most obvious example is the thread of the armstrong family (specifically marty, brad, lisa, and buddy. ill get into rando separately). because of lisas suicide, brad began abusing painkillers and alcohol and became an addict. his addiction made him a terrible father to buddy, and his constant regret over lisa meant that he never really saw buddy as an entity separate from lisa. buddy doesnt even know any of this, but she knows that brad doesnt see the real her, and is probably aware to a certain extent that she is living in the shadow of a ghost.

- lisas suicide is also what drives brad to keep buddy instead of giving her to rando as a baby, as he considers her his best chance at atonement. if lisa had not died, brad would likely not have been so obsessive, and wouldve seen the benefit of giving buddy to someone who had the resources to keep her well-protected. by extension, lisas suicide is what makes him so desperate to get buddy back before the unthinkable happens, and its why he doesnt really give a second thought to mowing down innocent people just because they happen to be in his path

- speaking of rando, theres a direct correlation between lisas death and most of what happened to him. while the timeline isnt exactly clear on when things happened, it seems the most likely that brad adopted him not long before her suicide, as buzzo mutilating his face seems to have been in response to it. if lisa had not died, buzzo would have had no reason to literally scar rando for life, and brad would not have disowned/estranged him (as this was implied to be due to extreme guilt after seeing what buzzo did to him)

- and of course, the person who was impacted by lisa the most - bernard, aka “buzzo” - wouldnt even EXIST if lisa hadnt died. now, granted, the worst things lisa actively did herself all involve buzzo: she convinced him to mutilate animals to practice amputation, then did the same with herself even though buzzo told her he didnt want to, and may or may not have been manipulating him the whole time instead of genuinely caring for him (that last point is heavily debatable, and personally i think she DID really love and trust him, but its worth mentioning nonetheless). but in my personal opinion, given what she was experiencing every single day, its really hard for me to blame her for thinking that she had no other alternative.

all that said, having buzzo mutilate her was a clear last resort to get marty to stop abusing her, and theres a strong implication that lisas suicide came very shortly after that plan failed. even though buzzo was already pretty messed up from the previously mentioned mutilations, lisas death was absolutely the catalyst that flipped him into murder/revenge mode. he blamed brad wholeheartedly for not “saving” her, and punishes him repeatedly throughout the games (by cutting randos face off, by force-feeding him joy to ensure hed mutate, by forcing him to either kill his friends or be amputated, so on and so forth). you can argue that perhaps he wouldve still “become” buzzo if he still mutilated her and she didnt kill herself, but i absolutely think that he would not have harbored nearly as much ill will toward brad if lisa had lived. that leads me to my final point, pretty much the biggest reason why i see what austin is saying, but it still pales in comparison to this:

- olathe itself probably wouldnt even exist if lisa hadnt died. her suicide was one of the major driving forces behind buzzo deciding to work with yado, and it was only because of their joint cooperation that olathe became what it is. we still dont know the exact nature of the flash, but its strongly implied that the creation and distribution of joy was a key part of the process, and that wouldnt have happened without buzzo. if lisa hadnt died, buzzo wouldnt have had any reason to work with yado at all. this means that, as an indirect cause of lisas death, all of humanity was doomed to go extinct.

and thats what i think austin really meant, especially with that comment that “she wont ever die.” lisa is in everything, every part of olathe and every person who exists there, and they dont even know it. because of lisas trauma, and all the horrible things she had to withstand at the hands of a man, her memory becomes something of a vengeful ghost. she sticks with brad and convinces him to adopt a child he has no means of caring for and repeating the cycle of abuse. she sticks with buzzo and convinces him to punish brad for her death because he has to blame somebody, anybody for what happened to her. she sticks with buddy, who doesnt even know her name, and convinces her to take back her autonomy and her life, even if that means killing everyone in her path. i also think thats why buzzo says that lisa would have loved olathe had she lived to see it; its basically a world made to punish the same kinds of people as the person who caused her untimely death in the first place.

now, again, it can easily be debated that MARTY is actually the one with the biggest (negative) impact, since it is because of his abuse that lisa dies and that brad is severely traumatized, violent, and dealing with concurrent addictions. but hes not the direct catalyst for anything that came after the flash. he didnt kill lisa. in fact, her death is probably the last thing he wanted, fucking monster that he is - lisas suicide was one of the few things lisa got to choose for herself. and i think the fact that marty is delegated to one fairly short conversation and battle in the game proper is what clinches it for me; even though he is definitely a disgusting monster and drove a good portion of the plot, its lisa herself that has the most direct impact. so i would never call lisa the worst at fucking all, but in terms of the most widespread impact on the world as a whole? yeah, thats gotta go to lisa. theres a reason the games still bear her name, after all.

i also have some thoughts about his opinions on buddy but this is already too fucking long so im just gonna stop it here LMAO

tl;dr lisa is not the worst character at all, but has the most widespread negative impact on the world out of every character in the game

#anya's anons #lisa the painful #lisa the joyful #lisa the first #long post #lisa #this poor anon really did not know what they were getting into sdnfdsjk

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nitewrighter · 4 years ago

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Heya, Mun!! :Dc

I absolutely adored the Thing fic with the fankids!!! And I was wondering if there would be a continuation/part 2/sequel to that fic? Or was the gang's leaving through the elevator them leaving to safety? I was just imagining them just unwittingly sinking deeper into the bowels of that lab for more terrifying encounters! I hope you're doing well!!! :DDD

(Referring back to this fic)

The elevator was supposed to be them going up to safety, but I think followup would be interesting...

----

Winston, Jack, Mei, and Mercy were all seated at the conference table, opposite of Marti, Aedan, Jaime, and Samir. A part of Aedan was relieved that the people looking at their debrief was mostly scientists, but it still made his stomach turn as Jack frowned at his tablet.

“...a blob,” said Jack Morrison, glancing up from the tablet that held the team’s debrief, “...you went into the Talon lab, and you were attacked by a blob.”

“A mass of nanites and human tissue, yes,” said Samir.

“A blob,” said Jaime.

“It’s unclear if it was attacking or attempting to communicate,” said Marti, not fully making eye contact with him. Jack’s wrinkled brow furrowed wincingly at her own words, lending further reality to the events described to him. Jaime had bullshitted him before, and Aedan and Samir both had a habit of launching off into multiple tangents that suggested muddled observation, but Marti had eyes on a mission that he could count on as his own--probably better than his own, with his age.

“Was--was this like back at Urdr, or--?” said Jack.

“You have to understand, this wasn’t a nanite amalgam,” said Aedan, “It had human DNA. In all likelihood, it had your DNA.”

“And Reyes’s,” Samir added in as Jack paled.

“So, what, this was a failed attempt before they made the woman that attacked you back in Japan?” said Jack.

“Andrea,” said Aedan.

Jack gave him an odd look, mulling over the name.

“Her name is Andrea,” said Aedan.

“From the Greek ‘Andros,’ ‘of man,’” Winston chimed in, “Quite a clever name considering her--” Jack shot a look at Winston and Winston cleared his throat.

“Yes--We’re pretty sure the lab was the site, or a site, where they were attempting to clone you and Reyes,” said Marti.

“And you said you sealed the lab behind you?” said Winston, looking at Marti.

“We could open it again, with decryption,” said Marti.

“Don’t really want to do that anytime soon though...” said Jaime.

“And you said it apparently ‘fed’ on biotics and... biomass?” said Mercy, looking at her own tablet.

“Our working theory is that it must have consumed several scientists, forcing Talon to abandon the site,” said Samir.

“If it made it out, it could spell ecological disaster for the surrounding area,” murmured Mei.

“Well, that might be dependent on how... resilient it is,” said Aedan, “I mean, just outside that lab is unforgiving snowy peaks and glacial ocean. If it has human DNA, it might be subject to similar limitations.”

“So it can be killed,” said Jack.

Aedan paled.

“If it’s sealed in the lab, it could just... starve to death on its own, right?” said Jaime.

“With the artificial aging on clones and biotics basically shutting down decomposition on the clones that were still in their amnio-tanks, it’s not actually clear how long its been down there,” said Aedan. His gaze had become fixed on the wood of the table, “But based on how it reacted to our presence...”

“I think it was hungry,” said Jaime.

Aedan could feel Mercy’s eyes on him, studious, discerning, and he wanted to shrink into his chair and disappear.

“If the lab is sealed, I think we can assume it doesn’t currently present a threat to the surrounding area,” said Winston.

“So, we just stick a pin in the secret lab in Cordillera Darwin that has a cannibalistic human-nanite blob lurking around in it?” said Jack.

“Well, we could call in Interpol,” said Winston.

Aedan tensed in his seat at the mental image of a wall of armed agents of some unknown country fixing their sights on the blob.

“We still don’t know the extent of how much Talon may have infiltrated the UN or different governments,” said Jack.

Mercy shuddered, “Just as well, if the existence of such an organism becomes mainstream knowledge, it could kick off a biological arms race. Even governments who abhor Talon’s biological experiments may see the need to create their own... projects... to try and counter it.”

“Keeping secrets never went particularly well for us, either,” said Jack.

“Mei and I could test the waters with other scientists in our correspondence,” said Mercy, “Get a gauge on how desperate other countries might be with regards to Talon’s research...”

“We could have Athena re-direct one of our satellites to send us more regular updates of imagery of the area if anything changes,” suggested Mei, “I could set up cryo-mines to stop it without too much damage to the lab...”

“If it could be frozen...” said Winston.

“if I had some samples of it... just to get a better idea of what we’re up against...” Mercy started.

“Why are we against it?” said Aedan, his voice came out as a flinch. “It didn’t ask to be made, but now we’re talking about killing it like it’s--it’s-- some sort of infection!”

“We didn’t say we would kill it,” said Winston.

“Only that it could be killed--” Aedan argued.

“It’s not an infection--” Mei started calmly.

“You said it was an ecological threat!”

“It consumes biomass---” Mei started.

“It has human DNA---” Aedan’s voice was overlapping with hers, “What, because it’s ugly? Because it’s a blob?”

“Even if it has intelligence, it’s highly likely that intelligence was also shaped by Talon’s brainwashing. If it’s smart, it could be as hell-bent on destroying us as that other cl--Andrea,” said Jack.

“But LaCroix came back from it!” said Aedan, “What, it comes into the world with no context except what Talon pumped into it and we just decide it’s a monster!? Let it be locked away in that lab or--?”

Aedan felt a hand on his shoulder and he glanced sharply over at Marti. “What?!” he snapped.

“...it tried to eat us,” said Marti.

“I--” Aedan inhaled and found his breath was short. Aedan wasn’t sure what he was arguing. He could remember the sheer terror of that thing pursuing him, the sheer horror that it came from an amnio-tank like he did. For a few mad flailing seconds he wondered if this was some instinct his mother implanted in him--an unconscious kinship with the monstrous, some mental building block for the world she wanted to build--no, no, too much speculation, too much spiraling. “I’m emotionally compromised,” Aedan said, standing up, “If you require further details on the debrief, you can call me but--I--I need some air.”

“Aedan--” Samir started as he stood up but Aedan was already out the door.

“...so... putting a pin in it?” said Winston, after a long pause.

----

David Bowie’s ‘Quicksand’ warbled through Aedan’s earbuds as he listened to the song on his comm and sat on the small bench in the Watchpoint garden. Aedan closed his eyes and took in the smell of upturned earth and orange blossoms on the ocean air. The sunlight glowed red through his eyelids, but he opened his eyes as he felt a shadow pass over him and startled slightly to see Mercy blocking the sun. He tensed a bit. “...is... there something you need, Doctor Ziegler?” he said warily.

“May I sit?” said Mercy.

Aedan scooted over and she took a seat next to him on the garden bench. A long silence passed between them.

“You know, we planted that olive tree over there when Rei was born,” Mercy said, pushing brightness into her voice and pointing at an olive tree with some canvas spread beneath it to catch the falling olives.

“Yes, she, um... told me when she gave me the tour,” said Aedan.

“Oh,” said Mercy. And they sat in silence a while longer. Aedan couldn’t recall a time when Mercy had ever actively sought him out, and she seemed too awkward to have any malice in her actions--not that it was really in character for her to go out of her way to be malicious to him, but he knew his presence in general made her uncomfortable, especially with regards to Rei. Mercy clasped her hands together in her lap.

“Aedan--” she started.

“Look--” Aedan started speaking at the same time but he caught himself and glanced down, “Sorry. You go first.”

“I... wanted to apologize for that debriefing,” said Mercy, “Of course it was standard procedure that those on the mission be present, and given the nature of the mission, it was important that you were there, but we should have taken more care.”

“I know... time sensitive,” said Aedan, slouching his elbows onto his knees.

“And... I apologize for the precedent I’ve set in how I’ve treated you,” said Mercy.

Aedan blinked. “What?”

“You threw all security and your entire future with Talon away to save Rei, but I still viewed you as a potential threat to us for months,” said Mercy.

“Well... that’s fair,” Aedan said a little helplessly, not really sure what to say, “I mean, given the history with LaCroix---”

“And we all rationalized it as that for all that time when it must have been incredibly lonely to you,” said Mercy.

“I was scared of it, too,” Aedan blurted out.

“What?” said Mercy.

“I--I was scared Mum put something in me. Something in my head. Some unconscious set of automatic orders that I would follow just when we’d all let our guard down,” his breath shook a little, “I even looked for it--Master Zenyatta helped me search for it in my head--some Shambali hypnosis thing--but it wasn’t there. But a part of me’s still scared of it,” Aedan threaded his thin fingers into his red hair, “Zenyatta said, maybe this fear is some... manifestation of having this-this consciousness just... propped up within me all at once. Like... I don’t have... the physical chronology so my brain keeps thinking there has to be something more and then jumping to the worst conclusion---” he curled his knuckles against his forehead, “Seeing that thing in that lab--Mum made me to prove that nanite organisms can survive infancy--and once Talon knew they could do that, they just started making....” His other hand unconsciously went over the point on his solarplexus where Andrea’s fist had torn out of him, “They just... started making...” He drew a steadying breath before letting his hand drop from his solarplexus.

He felt a gentle hand on his back and his head jerked over to look at Mercy. She was looking at him gently.

“I don’t know what I could say that could comfort you,” Mercy said quietly, “I wish I did.”

“Honestly I’m still kind of processing the fact that you’re even listening to me right now,” said Aedan.

Mercy snorted. “Fair,” she said with a slight nod before looking over at him, “Have you... mentioned any of this to Rei?”

“I’ve heaped enough clone hangups on her,” muttered Aedan, “And she’s scared enough about Mnemosyne nearly being used on her back in Urdr without me adding my anxieties to the list.”

“You shouldn’t think like that,” said Mercy.

“Like what?”

“Making yourself smaller and living with a problem rather than working through it,” said Mercy, “But... you could talk to me, or Genji, or Zenyatta about it. There was a time when Genji had a lot of anxieties about how human he was, as well.”

“Oh--Uh, thank you,” said Aedan, honestly more than a little intimidated at the prospect of talking to Rei’s father.

“You’re a part of this team, and you’ve proven that plenty of times,” Mercy went on, “And... we wanted you in that debriefing not just because you were on the mission, but I think... we thought you might know better than anyone how to deal with..”

“A giant cannibalistic human tissue nanite blob that we’re not even sure is sentient?” said Aedan.

“Yes,” Mercy caught herself, “But I don’t mean ‘deal with’ like--”

“I understand,” said Aedan. He paused, “I--I don’t want to kill it. Or hurt it. Not unless we have to, and not until we understand it more.”

“I agree,” said Mercy.

“Maybe it could even help you find that cure for Reyes,” Aedan mentioned offhandedly.

Mercy gave him a slightly shrewd look.

“I knew it crossed your mind,” said Aedan, he caught himself, “But--it can’t be a lab rat, either...” his voice trailed off a little, “I wonder if it’s in pain right now...Maybe it had been down there so long, the nanites in it couldn’t distinguish between loneliness and hunger...”

A softness filled Mercy’s eyes and she tilted her head at him slightly.

“What?” said Aedan.

“You know... your mother was always trying to push humanity to something... beyond human. I just think it’s very special that you try to see humanity in what we don’t understand.”

Aedan scratched at his temple blankly, weighing her words for a few long seconds. “Uh... thank you.”

Another pause passed between them, not uncomfortable, but both ruminating on passing over a threshold of mutual discomfort into a sort of cautious familiarity.

“Does loneliness sometimes feel like hunger to you?” said Mercy, her brow crinkling slightly with some amused curiosity, “With your nanites?”

“Well, I don’t know if the connection is that direct, but sometimes I feel them... perking up when I’m with Rei, and I wonder if they’re responding to the biotics her body naturally--” Aedan realized he said the words ‘perking up’ and ‘her body’ regarding Rei to Rei’s mother, instantly caught himself, and noted that Mercy’s face had shifted from gentle curiosity to maternal alarm. He cleared his throat. “Er--I mean... it’s probably psychosomatic---It’s not like I feel the same around a biotic rifle---That is---nanites are--You know what? I’m going to stop talking.”

“Mm,” Mercy forced a nod, “Yes. I think this is a good point to stop.”

“Good talk?” said Aedan.

“Good talk,” Mercy huffed before standing up.

“And--Doctor Ziegler?” Aedan said as Mercy started to walk away. She glanced over her shoulder at him.

“Thank you,” said Aedan, “Really.”

Mercy smiled a little.

#moiraspawn #spiderbyte kid #mchanzo kid #symmarah kids #reidan

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tempportal · 4 years ago

Text

repost with the rules, answer the 11 random questions left for you, and leave 11 more for the people you tag

Were you an Egyptology kid or a Greek mythology kid? (AKA, what was your Weirdly Specific Phase as a kid?) Bold of you to assume I only ever had one (1) Weirdly Specific Phase as a kid!! I had many more than that - Egyptology and Greek mythology are both definitely somewhere on the list, but Norse mythology, Celtic mythology, medieval Europe, ancient Greece, and the Aztec Empire were also my shit. i had so many weird, obscure interests from kindergarten to seventh grade and i personally think that was very sexy of me ✨

Describe your favorite accessory! a perfect replica of the one ring from LotR!! I wear it everywhere

If you could have one mythical creature as a pet, what would it be and why? The very existence of this question implies that the answer isn’t always inevitably “a dragon” and honestly how fucking dare you

Tell me about one of your favorite threads! all of them 🥺 this blog will be one (1) year old in April and i STILL cannot believe actual human beings deadass want to write with my talentless ass

Do you believe in ghosts? (Bonus if you can talk about any ghostly encounters!) okay, first off, my house is straight-up haunted, so jot that down!! but when I was a little kid, I stayed out in the country with my dad sometimes - like in the deep DEEP country, where it was all farmland and forests as far as the eye can see, with the occasional church thrown in for Spice - and the farm my dad always used to take me out to had this big old barn where a very old man lived, and he told me that he was the farmhand for the last family who lived in the farmhouse. he was a lonely old man, quiet, bad leg, mostly just kept to himself, but every now and then I’d stay out too long in the woods and it would get dark and the old man would come out to find me and bring me back home. i can literally still describe his face, his voice, his clothes, in absolutely perfect detail. fast-forward MANY years, i’m seventeen or eighteen at that point, don’t see my dad at all anymore (because he’s an asshole, but whose dad isnt) and i casually mention the old man in the barn to my sister, and she deadass asked me, “what old man in the barn???” i describe the man for my sister. she does not remember him at all. now that i think back about it, i realize my sisters and my dad never mentioned the old man even once. i never mentioned the old man because i thought we were all just politely ignoring the fact that he continued to live on property that wasn’t his, and little six year old me ain’t no snitch. nope. old man in the barn was a ghost or some shit. i have never been back there since i was a kid and i am DESPERATELY curious to know if the old man is still there.

What would your muse’s TUA fight song be? What would your TUA fight song be? i would very much like to see Five murder people to Holding Out For A Hero!! and Take On Me. and Manic Monday. and Have You Ever Seen The Rain. but for a more modern flavor, GJan’s Now You and Fleurie’s Soldier would be VERY sexy choices for a Five murder scene. and for me, i think Ruelle’s Game of Survival would be a fun and badass song to fight people to!!

Who’s the first artist/band you want to see in concert whenever it’s safe? No concerts for me, thanks! Too much noise 😬

What’s one quote that lives in your head rent free? “we (forgive us) lived happily during the war” from the Ilya Kaminsky poem and “when all is said and done, you’ll believe god is a woman” from the Ariana Grande song

What’s your favorite meal to cook? casseroles and stir-frys!! it’s all about cutting and sautéing vegetables which is the sexiest kitchen task

If you could only wear one outfit for the rest of your life, what would it be? I literally wear jeans and a T-shirt (or a sweater in the autumn/winter months) every single day of my life so jeans and a T-shirt and/or sweater lmao

What would be the title of your autobiography? The Scary Mysterious Creature In The Bog Who Writes One (1) Reply Every 2 Months 😂

MY QUESTIONS:

What’s the closest thing to real magic you’ve ever seen?

What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever gotten away with?

What’s a quote that describes your muse really well?

How do you cheer yourself up after a hard day?

Tell me a skill you had to work really hard to get good at! How long did it take to master it?

Is there a piece of media (book, film, television show, etc.) that will always stick with you/that you just can’t forget? Why?

What’s your favorite outdoor activity?

If you could spend the day with your muse, what would you do?

What’s your favorite family and/or holiday tradition?

What’s your desktop and phone background?

Pick a city that fits your muse’s Aesthetique ~

tagged by: @theseancekid

tagging: @rumorsabound @immortalled @nvmbcrtwo @shestrong @conjuredead @mstinteresting @nirgama @tragicend and anyone else who wants to do it!!

#tag game

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motherstone · 4 years ago

Note

When you have the time could you share the bad au?

Anon, I am deeply grateful that you asked, but I must warn you that this is LONG (16+ arcs long and that’s because I havent conceptualized the others yet) and i am only sending you pt.1 Be warned.

More under the cut:

Deviation from canon:

· Anything involving the aliens is dropped

· Algos island won’t be a gas station, but an actual fucking island

· The Voice is spiritual in nature.

· The Old is New scene occurs around Book 5

· Trellis eventually gets some fractions of his memories, but I dunno how yet

· The Resistance at Frontera won’t be THE Resistance but the Elven resistance – they refused contact with the human resistance because they’re very discriminatory and hostile. The ER is composed of the researchers/engineers/etc and their kids that the Elf King failed to purge when they revolted once they fully realized that they are actually creating weapons of mass destruction

· Emily gets trapped in the Void

· There’s a whole lot more, but I can’t recall all of them

Note: Do take that these are not yet properly developed. Many of these are ideas I just enjoy playing around with. It WOULD not put much attention to most characters because a.) I haven’t nuanced their roles nor what part they should play in the story and b.) the narrative focuses on Trellis because I’m biased and ngl the potential of the story he could create is a LOT. He has sooo many potential conflicts, be it in self, society, and nature I couldn’t help myself. Also, do take note that this story is meant to be a tragedy – it’s going to explore Trellis and his reign, and the burden and subsequent consequences from it. The narrative doesn’t seek to “punish him” because 90% of the problems he encountered are out of his control and there is barely a perfect solution to anything, so he is bound to create ruthless and even questionable decisions as a result of his inexperience and young age despite his intelligence; all of these I am intrigued to explore about because all of it I just made up lmao.

In addition, my head blurred between what is canon, what I want canon to be, and what you know about the “canon” in my head (which is likely, not a lot because I never post abt it), so I may suddenly spout things that may seem out of context because you guys lack the background behind it. So if you have questions, pls feel free to send them my way. These arcs are INCREDIBLY condensed because if I spout too many details, I’d forget the details in other arcs. So. Yeah.

ARCS

STONEKEEPER TRIALS

- Guardian Council arrives at Algos Island which contains the knowledge to purify the Voice from the Elf King (which should weaken him and thus easier to kill him)

- Stonekeepers of past made sure to put security measure to prove the worthiness of the person seeking said knowledge and using it responsibly for the right reasons by subjecting them to a Trial (they will experience their deepest greatest desires and greatest fears as well)

- Technically, the knowledge isn’t a concrete thing – it only works once per keeper, but it modifies itself to fill in the gaps of the knowledge they lack but seek (so like if youre seeking how to heal, the Temple will give you that knowledge and THAT knowledge only)

- Lacking time, all three decided to take the Trials separately but at the same time.

- This is supposed to be the fic on ao3 is about, even had an outline n all but its too long so I’ll post it later

- tl;dr: Tellis finished first and is the one who gained the knowledge, and Vigo finished second, but Emily isn’t waking up at all. Eventually they all got attacked by the shadows

- Trellis sends Vigo up to get the airship to them as he stays behind to protect Emily from the shadows

- He’s getting super desperate as the enemies increase but Emily isn’t waking up until she suddenly transforms and tries to kill him

- He barely survives but the Firebird gets away. The rest of the crew retrieved him, but when he retells them what happened…

- They didn’t believe him. They think he sabotaged Emily.

BURNING OF IPPO

- It more or less goes the same in Supernova, except the memory thing doesn’t happen and none of the Amulet trusts him except Riva and Vigo. Leon Miskit and Karen are still on Cielis while Navin n Aly are on Frontera but they don’t know that yet.

- So the firebird attacks as usual, but instead of taken out early in the game, he is pushed to the limit protecting the city and its citizens as he’s the only one who can create a barrier while Vigo distracts FB and Riva evacuates the people

- Trellis also bothers to release the elf soldiers in prison when it burns so they would be able to evacuate (will be important)

- He nearly dies from exhausting himself, but manages to repel the FB to leave Ippo alone after much of it is burned. He is devastated by the aftermath because most of the people burned right in front of his eyes (will be important)

- Worried at FB’s destructive power, they argue between pursuing it or ending the war. Riva argues trellis can’t go around protecting every city as its too fast for them, so it leaves only one viable option; end the war as quickly as possible to focus on Emily before she burns everything and kill everyone

- They eventually reunite with the Cielis army, but eventually gets abandoned again alongside the human resistance because they refuse to serve under Trellis, who was going to command the assault

- Lacking an army, the elven, Luciean, and Ippoei soldiers then offers to help

- They reconvene with the ER on Frontera, finally reuniting with Navin, Aly and Pil, who were all horrified by the news. Navin has mixed feelings but ultimately agrees it was his fault and is optimistic Em will be ok. Aly on the other hand is apprehensive but continues to trust him.

- Meanwhile, Vigo departs to convince the CA to change their minds and get more allies, while Trellis, Luger, and the rest forms a plan…

BATTLE OF VALCOR

- Trellis pretends to be captured by Elf Army to get close enough to the Elf King to kill him – avoiding as much bloodshed as possible. Unfortunately, he was decided to be executed before he could confront him so all hell breaks lose as the disguised soldiers ditches their disguises and fights the remaining EA on the king’s side

- Note: Trellis is waaay more powerful and skilled here although his destructive powers are nowhere near Emily’s

- He tries to make his fights as curt and decisive as possible to avoid wasting precious energy for the confrontation (I swear to god the fight sequence is more elaborate in my head but hnng I’m busy rn). Eventually he does make it at the temple of kings – where his father was waiting

- Trellis was nowhere weak, but he barely holds ANY dice against his father’s power and was very close to nearly dying

FALL OF THE KING

- He was saved by the timely intervention of Vigo and Riva – who has finally arrived with the CA (who got threatened into cooperating)

- They barely get the upperhand, but they manage to get Trellis close enough to enact the Scission but, got uphold by the fact that the man they were trying to kill wasn’t dead in the first place but ALIVE

- The Elf King begs Trellis to end it all, the mercy of release, for death, and it horrified him into freezing into place – MISTAKE

- He gets a fatal wound being stabbed because the EK was tricking him (he is alive, but he was not really manipulated by the Voice – He was always evil all along), sneering at his softness that was never quite wrung out by the abuse

- But that also gave Trellis the perfect opportunity to cast the Scission, which he then does at nearly the cost of his own life

- The Voice gets cut off from the EK and retreated to the Void, and the EK dies from his wounds, and Trellis was about to meet the same fate

- All three of them are barely held together by threads, but Vigo uses the last of his power so trellis could survive. At this, Trellis just has a mental breakdown and he doesn’t want to go any further, being so close to his breaking point because of all the horror he has to endure (ohh boii and it doesn get better from here)

- But Riva was pleading for him to get up, get the mask and get to the other side, to show the mask, the soldiers that he WON and Gulfen surrenders and end the war. These two stumble slowly, but steadfastly, Riva practically the only thing supporting Trellis as they try to get to the fighting

- They eventually manage to reach it, but trellis has to stand alone, composed, undefeated, because if it were anything less, people would challenge him. He declares a surrender.

- The battlefield silences. One by one, the weapons drop.

#ask #asks #amulet bad ending au

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cadcnce-archived · 4 years ago

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BIG ASS CHARACTER SHEET FOR FANTASY VERSE WYLAN

I found an image while going through my files for cursed pics to send @spiritmaiden, they had the audacity to take it and fill it out for the fantasy verse of their sky-zel, so I of course have to match the effort for Wylan because I’m not about to be shown up. It’s hella involved, nobody’s getting tagged but damn if you want an exercise in hitting your character then give it a shot. Most is under the cut because of length.

Character’s Name: Zachary Reis (Born) Wylan Rechtur (Used) Character’s nicknames: Ze (by his sister) Wy (by his friends and preferred) Zephyr (mercenary name, also what you’d see on any wanted posters) Gender: Male Righty or Lefty: Righty Age: 25-26 Height: 6′-0″ Weight: ~180 lbs Eye Color: Emerald green, bright and wide filled with a mix of confidence and playfulness. Hair color: Dark brown, messy and falling to his ears. Unkempt may be a good descriptor, but he generally keeps it down flatter at the least. Distinguishing marks: His body is pocked with marks and scars from fights and other disagreements, but the ones most easily discerned are knife scars on his hands, and a short arc above his left brow. Describe physical traits in one passage: A good way to view him is concealed strength and agility. He’s toned and in good shape but doesn’t often dress or carry himself in ways that would flaunt this. His posture and pose are loose, and his expressions can be lazy and playful. So the moment he flips that switch and uses the full brunt of his power? It’s a surprise. He’s also a bit on the lanky side, his body size doesn’t fully compliment the size of his limbs.

FAMILY/ RELIGION

Parents: Mother and father were disappeared/dead when he was just a bit over 6 years old and his sister was an infant. They were involved with the church but not royalty themselves. Wylan never spent much time figuring out what. They had a life left for him and his sister that he threw away as well. His father was a gentle soul while his mother was razor sharp and firm. Siblings: Younger sister, Katelynn Reis, but goes by Lyn with her friends. Wylan calls her Kat. She’s ~5 years younger than he, and remains with the church training and working as a healer. Whereas Wylan ran away from being a Paladin, she stayed strong to become a Cleric. Significant Other: Verse dependent, Wylan typically is averse to romance and prefers casual encounters. Children: None, nor is he open to them initially in his canon. Other relatives: None remain living that he is aware of. He and his sister were raised by his grandmother on his father’s side, but she passed away shortly after he left the knight’s academy, when Wylan was roughly 16-17. Pets: None. But he does enjoy talking to cats. Friends: Wylan is the type who ‘knows a guy’, he’s close with many tavernkeeps and makes nice with the adventurer’s guilds and their members as well. His work as an informant necessitates things like this. Wylan is also the type to consider most anyone he encounters and converses with a friend, whether they like it or not. His best friend though would easily be a wandering adherent by the name of Emke. I don’t care what the thread is about in some way she’s involved in his life. They’re platonic soulmates. Enemies: As a mercenary and hunter, some others in his craft would consider Wylan to be their rival, and in many cases he would view them just the same. It’s hard to say he has any enemies outside of pointedly evil factions however! Relationships (other): His relationship with his sister is an odd one. They’re still in touch via letters and the occasional visit, and he does what he can to support her with his money, but they’re not close like conventional siblings. There’s a strange codependence between them. Wylan depends on Lyn as a ‘rock’, and she depends on him as the ‘sea’. Ethnicity: Human! His origins are mostly a mix of Germanic/Portuguese if you wanted a comparison to Earth races/ethnicities. Religion: He recognizes the existence of higher powers but his relationship with them isn’t the best. As if being rebellious to his parents wasn’t bad enough he has to be tsundere towards The Light. This is noted when he uses holy magic such as wards and smiting spells and getting rebound into his own body upon use. Superstitions: He’s incredibly wary around the undead and spirits. So catch him spreading salt when he has to camp somewhere less than lively. Also give him a moment to sharpen his silver weaponry... Diction, Accent, ETC.: His dialect is pretty clean, though this depends on who he’s speaking to, being the travelling sort he is he’s capable of lightly ‘faking’ various accents, or just being lazy with his own manner of speech. Traces back to proper speaking that was drilled into him as a child and then his own rebelliousness. SCHOOL/ WORK / HOME Education (Highest): He was well learned with the academy work that he actually accomplished. While he never finished and never put his all into his studies, it was clear to his teachers that he had a gift for learning but a problem with conviction. Degrees: None! But just so I still have something here, one of his informal titles is ‘The Gale’s Fang’. Vocation/Occupation: Jack of several trades, wrapped up best as a mercenary informant, and a monster hunter. He’s good at tracking both people and monsters and taking them down- lethally or not so much. Employment History: Wylan was fully involved with the knight’s academy from the age of 6 to 16, so for those 10 years he had his hands full dealing with that and trying to figure out himself (poorly). Upon leaving the academy after the accident, he took up arms and was given tutelage by the thieves’ guild which taught him how to use his senses and move quietly through the shadows. Wylan didn’t make a good pickpocket, but he was good at reading other people and exceptional at duels. It wasn’t long before he took the advice of the guildmaster and made better uses of his talents. Not necessarily for good, but for more profit. By the age of 22 he was an accomplished and well connected informant, bartering information as well as putting his swordwork to use headhunting and slaying monsters that made issue outside the cities in which he frequented. This continues to current/canon start of interactions. Salary: He’s affluent enough not to worry too much about his state of living, but he can be prone to splurge spending that puts him in a bind for a few weeks at a time, at least until the next job puts money back on the table. Status and money: Continuing off the above, he’s decent enough with his funds (after sending money back to help out his sister) but wouldn’t be well off enough to be considered rich compared to his modern verse. Fortunately he has enough renown that jobs aren’t too hard to come by for him. And many barkeeps and friends are willing to open a tab for him. So he’s not too desperate. Own or Rent: Wylan typically rents inn rooms when he stays in the cities, and camps when he’s out in the woods. Technically he also owns if you count helping his sister keep her own place running (thought it’s really about 30-70, with his sister funding most of it) Living Space: Wylan never stays long at the room. It’s a place to go back to and sleep. Personal belongings? Very few. Most things he owns that he wouldn’t want to lose stay back with his sister kept in a basement or separate room that he uses on the rare times he’s back in the capital/holy city from which he originally hailed. As you can imagine, this isn’t very often. Work Space: N/A! He doesn’t have one! Given his work is almost entirely in the field. Main Mode of Transportation: CATCH A RIIIIIDE. Though he’s apt to have a horse around for transport if he isn’t going too far. Long voyages for when he changes locales would probably be hitching a ride with a caravan. He also doesn’t mind voyages on foot too much. PSYCHOLOGY Fears: Externally he has an aversion to ghosts and spirits. The concept of the dead coming back to haunt you isn’t something he much cares for. Having access to light magic should mostly assuage this, and yet it can give him goosebumps anyhow. Ironically he has a fear of large mammals in his modern verse but that shit doesn’t apply here given he’s a monster hunter! Internally he fears being forgotten, not making a name for himself, and dying before he can truly feel alive. Secrets: His birth name, Zachary Reis, isn’t something he will bring up with anyone. It’s not necessarily a ‘dead name’ for him, but it’s one he threw away the same time he decided he was going to toss away his ‘fate’ as a paladin. Taking the name of Wylan was another way he took his life for himself in his mind. Despite this being a path of self destruction. His sister is also something he doesn’t often bring up unless he very much trusts that person. IQ: Surprisingly high. He picks up a lot of information doing the work he does, but you wouldn’t be blamed for not believing this. Eating Habits: They could be a lot better. He eats enough to get by, but his diet isn’t as varied as it could be. Wylan hunts small game when he can, but he isn’t an exciting cook so ALAS. This boy prefers hitting up taverns and getting basic meals like stews, jerky, sandwiches, etc etc. Sleeping Habits: Wylan is a very light sleeper. Typically if you so much as step into the room he’s sleeping in he’ll snap into awareness. It takes a loooong day of exertion to keep him sleeping deep otherwise. Frustrating is how he ‘fakes’ being asleep. So someone could come in and start rummaging and he would still breathe and move as if he were still sleeping. Up until he sits up and stares or cracks a joke. Dare you to kiss him when you think he’s asleep. Book Preferences: History tomes every now and then. Wylan doesn’t read much fiction and prefers any time he spends reading to be somewhat productive! Make up for other education he missed as part a result of running on the academy. He also reads up on magic and sorcery to work on the wind affinity he also has. Music Preferences: Wylan doesn’t play any instruments but he DOES love love love to dance and sing. He’s an entertainer at heart and loves to rally people however he may. Suffice to say he’s amusing to go drinking with. And not just because he starts bar fights to amuse himself. Groups or Alone: He’s primarily a lone fighter. Some hunts he will of course work with a team of other hunters, he’s not stupid enough to take on the larger beasts by himself, but there’s a preference for doing things on his own terms. He’s self aware enough to know that his ways and methods can be grating, but ah... how all of that clashes with his desire to show off and have an audience. Being Wylan is suffering. Leader or Follower: He’s both, but prefers to be a follower if he can help it. Let other people make the plans then nudge them this way and that to better fit your own methods. He’s a prankster and a good compliment to most parties after all, so you’d be wise to utilize him! Lest he utilize himself... but that said, he’s an anti-hero, so there’s possibility in there for him to be a leader as well and take charge. It just isn’t his default nature and he’d rather not. Planned Out or Spontaneous: Wylan is chaos incarnate. Most everything he does outside of necessity/work is spontaneous. All his mischief and plans are cobbled together and thrown out there. Sometimes he’ll do a bunch of things at once, like throwing a bundle of darts at the wall to see which ones stick. And oh my fucking god don’t get me started on being romantic he can’t plan for shit in that department. Journal Entries (Do they keep one?) Nope. Not a daily journal at least. He’ll keep notebooks and the like for jotting down intel and what have you for jobs he takes up. But most of the time he’ll just have little notes in his pocket, and not really chronicle his life. He may also make ‘fake’ entries to tease people or trick them. See what he did to Zelda the one time. Be careful what you believe... Hobbies, Recreation: Tricks!! Sleight of hand!! Cards and dice!! Part of growing up and learning with a thieves’ guild is getting involved in lots of things that make use of your hands and dexterity. He likes playing random games with folks and oh! People watching. Stalking. Not the cutest thing but Wylan makes a hobby out of ‘testing himself’ and exercising his talents. His hobby is unfortunately annoying people, to summarize. How Do They Relax: His hobbies help him to relax! Also, if you can believe it, sitting back in a group conversation and watching the conversation happen and move forward. Learning about other people is something he likes doing, which is hypocritical since he can make himself so difficult to learn by contrast. BUT THE REAL THING HE DOES.. is practice sword fighting. Slow rhythmic swings of his blade, almost like a dance. He focuses his thoughts and calms his soul when he practices. It’s like a mix of swordfighting, dancing, and yoga. Controlling himself. Feeling himself. It’s multiple things. What Excites Them?: PEOPLE. Things! Happenings! The unknown and pushing himself to new limits. Honestly one of Wy’s biggest drives is doing something or becoming something that will make him ‘Feel Alive’. Because for all of his antics and frivolity he’s very much fighting an encroaching darkness in his soul. So he’ll search out bizarre things to get involved in. It’s one of the reasons he’s bugging Zelda, because her involvement in witchcraft and his own suspicions have him interested huehue. Pet Peeves: Being ignored. Like perfectly disregarding his existence and whatever he’s getting up to. If you’re not reacting to him being him then that means he’s not being effective and he’s losing. It’s his only real weakness... Prejudices: None. He’s not the most respectful person so most everyone, royalty or important or otherwise gets subjected to similar treatment. If anything, the more important you are the more likely you are to get annoyed! Attitudes: He’s usually with a front, a mask if you will. His general attitude is curious and nosy, but that’s fronted with a playfulness and proclivity for being annoying. Don’t be fooled, he’s usually something more pensive and calculating underneath that exterior. Wylan actually quiets a fair bit once that mask is taken away, his mood swings down and his tone is a touch deeper. Stressors: Things going awry and his friends being put in danger. He absolutely does not do well with people he cares about being hurt. One of the worst things that can happen to him is his sister dying for example, and has lead to one of his most self destructive plots I’ve written, in this verse especially. Lovers? Don’t hurt them. Don’t endanger them. The idea of rivals or enemies going after people he cares about.. hoo. MAN. None of that please. He can be SO damn possessive. In relationships he’s very self conscious as well of fulfilling their needs. So if his partner remarks, regardless of how offhandedly, they’d like more of something he will TRY TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN. Obsessions: Being an absolute pain in the ass. And in cases where someone has wronged him or someone close to him? Tracking them down and getting closure/revenge. That shit takes him to the brink of killing himself. Addictions: None to the point of being problematic, but he does love eating pickles. Ambitions: To make a name for himself, to be renowned and respected. To feel alive and accomplished as a person. He’d also like to take down a dragon someday. Get some armor from its scales and a sword out of that shit. As Seen by Others: Capable and dangerous, but impossible to work with for long periods. Keep a tight lip around him lest he use that information against you and learn things you’d rather keep secret. A lecherous womanizer. As Seen by Self: A body of broken glass, encased in a shell, covered in masks. Who are you? What are you? Where are you even going? You’re lost. You’re aimless. You’re swimming and swimming and eventually you’re going to be tired, aren’t you? ASTROLOGY/PHISIOLOGY Birth Date: October 10. Time of Birth: Evening. Western Astrological Sign: Libra Traits Associated with Western Sign: Social, Clever, Unreliable, Diplomatic Traits Associated with Chinese Zodiac: N/A, seeing as I don’t age Wylan with the years this doesn’t really apply. Handwriting: Clean when he needs it to be, but otherwise a quick script with lots of pen strikes. He’s capable with drawing diagrams and the like as well! This boy can throw out monster diagrams with weak points and other ecological notes oh yes yes. Sexual History: Wylan was already exploring that sort of thing before he left the academy, so yes... as early as 16 he’d already lost the v-card. He doesn’t really do relationships and enjoys casual encounters. Many a maiden at the bar or elsewhere has taken him for a spin. Typically partners aren’t reoccurring in fantasy verse, however. He’s... well, very good in the performance category. General Health: A+ healthy aside from the sleep and subpar diet bits. Strong and good stamina. Medical History: He’s nearly died one times too many. Been stabbed, cut, poisoned, bitten, but hey he’s still alive! And that’s what he’d argue matters with this business. Allergies: SHELLFISH. Chronic Illnesses: None to speak of. Handicaps: He’s somewhat of a type B tsundere. It’s awful. OBJECTS Purse / Bag: He’s got a coin purse that he’ll carry spare gold around in for spending on what have you. Supposedly food but he’s weak to splurge purchases. Most everything else he keeps on him in his pockets and his belt. Wallet: Uhhh see above, coin purse!!! He’s got enough for the week or so!! Don’t try and pickpocket him because he will catch you and you will feel stupid. Fridge: He doesn’t keep food around. He more or less has to scavenge for everything he eats either through buying or hunting. That’s kind of the life for the vagrant he is, isn’t it? Medicine Cabinet: N/A, but he does keep bandages and salves at his room. Glove Compartment: N/A!! Junk Drawer: NNNNNN/AAAAAAA Kitchen Cabinets: Wylan get a house so I can fill this out challenge. Bedroom Hiding Place: Behind a wall panel or somesuch if he can manage. Otherwise in the floor or outside the window. Closets: His wardrobe typically includes tunics, coats, leather armor and harnesses for his weaponry! He’s got a couple swords in fantasy verse, and he’s got throwing knives and a grappling hook!! Backback: Yeah uh see above, what a question. Locker: None Desk: WYLAN KEEP ITEMS AROUND CHALLEEEEENGE. Clothes pocket: Daggers, notes, maybe a writing implement and paper so he can jot things down. He’s also got little knick knacks like a gem or a monster tooth to show off. Isn’t it cool??? Also lint.

OTHER Halloween Costumes: Werewolf!!! Get him in either just a lazy one with gloves and ears or deck him out in the whole garb. Love that idea on him. In one verse Big Bad Wolf is his nickname, and in another he flat out IS a werewolf! So yeAH. Tricks: He’s very skilled at sleight of hand!! Card flourishes and dice rolls. Cup games. Illusions and dexterity... he’s a slippery one! He’s also likely to catch you in words, using things you say against you. He gets really meta and oh how annoying that can get... Talents: SWORDPLAY- He learned from a very early age at an esteemed academy where only the best knights get trained. He mixes that style with a more ‘street’ type that he picked up with the thieves’ guild and even further as a monster hunter and mercenary. Suffice to say that all mixes together into multiple stances he can switch between depending on what he’s up against. Strong sweeping strikes, vicious stabbing and leaping, poised dueling and parrying... he’s a TOUGH fight. MAGIC: Wylan is at odds with his use of holy magic that utilizes the light to bless and heal. Until he comes to terms with himself and the power he wants to channel it’ll have ‘blowbacks’ on himself. Fingers will burn, head will ache, and his stomach will flip. But it’s still undeniably effective for where it is! Aside from that he knows some wind magic to supplement himself. He’s not known as ‘Zephyr’ for nothing after all! Gusting steps, slashing winds, REALLY BIG JUMPS!!! If you throw him he’s a fantastic projectile! And lets see- DANCING! He learned it first as part of his etiquette as a knight, but it’s something that’s evolved with him and oh does he enjoy festivals for that reason. Ballroom styles are what he’s most familiar with. Dance with him. Please dance with him. Politics: Indifferent! Doesn’t care for authority figures to begin with so in any case or kingdom with a monarchy he’s very buh about it. He’s very self-accomplished and his beliefs would push him towards meritocracy over anythign else if you ask me! Flaws: Suspicious, possessive, and very persistent. This could be a strength too but for the most part can be seen as a detriment because of how it ends up being applied. Which is in self-destructive tendencies WOO. He’s also very lustful, and can be distracted by a fine woman and let himself be swayed by his desires over time. Have I mentioned he isn’t the most reliable? He’s apt to lie to people and give intentionally wrong impressions just to make it easier for him to slip away. You gotta go up a few levels to unlock that... So yeah, sins are WRATH, LUST, and ENVY. Strengths: NONE. Okay if you earn a solid place as his friend there is almost NO limit to what he’ll do to protect you. Wylan has a ridiculous amount of determination and mental fortitude and he can and will strike down a GOD to keep those things that are precious to him. He’s also an amusing character to have around, if you are feeling bummed he is almost guaranteed to find a way to cheer you up and support you if only so he can not feel as guilty teasing as he usually does HUE. He’s got a very up beat personality! Sure, a lot of it is a mask but he WANTS it to be real and that’s what really matters if you ask me. His reckless optimism can be endearing. There’s a lot of other surprising mental qualities such as how clever and quick witted he can be. Part of that mental fortitude lets him think and fight on his feet regardless of how much pressure he’s under. It takes a LOT to dampen his thought processes. Drugs/Alcohol: He drinks frequently, but he wouldn’t be counted as a drunkard. Wylan rarely drinks to excess, and prefers to do so among friends and good company. Passwords: Uh, do ritual prayers count? Magical spells? Heh. Email Address, Home Page, Blogs, etc.: Oh if only this were for modern verse... Time and place: Medieval fantasy! Magic and creatures! I also love throwing Monster Hunter vibes in for the big monsters he goes up against. Special Places: For him? Cliffs overlooking the ocean. Abandoned temples he can just chill at. For all he enjoys being around people now and then he really appreciates quiet isolation. Special Memories: Lots of memories with his sister before they more or less split ways. There’s one in particular where he was trying to teach her swordplay when she was just a little girl, and she about stubbed his toe when the wooden practice sword fell right on it. Her panicked attempts to try and heal him were something that really stuck with him.

#musings :: about #verse :: fantasy #dash :: games hc #THIS TOOK FOREVER #but was so satisfying to write and get out there #hell fuckin yes #if you actually read this? props tbh

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ganymedesclock · 5 years ago

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Dead Cells and the weight of small lives pt.2 (NPCs, the dead and alive)

Continuing from part 1, now that I’m refreshed, rested, and ready to continue this monster post. I finished off last post talking a bit about the way Prisoner acts onto NPCs and interact-able bodies, so this chunk is picking up with that in earnest.

Here is the thing. If you punt the corpse of an executed prisoner, that’s generally a dick move, so this is another place I feel like I can understand why people might get the takeaway Prisoner is kind of a jerk. But I feel like it’s worth examining, in detail, the kind of interactions he has.

The mechanics of Dead Cells are very focused on scavenging, looting, and a limited amount of buying your way forwards- and, spoken as someone starting to dip my toesies in the higher Stem Cell counts- thus, more difficult runs- any random encounter you can get items from is a godsend.

It’s also where you get a lot of the lore of the game, in random events- some of which will show up in multiple areas, others unique- that tell you about the world.

It’s in these interactions, mainly, that I see Prisoner characterized as a fairly compassionate guy with a morbid sense of humor, and I struggle to see him as a total uncaring asshole. To gloss over a large number of interactions, here’s some common threads:

Prisoner is fairly flippant about death / used to seeing corpses. He will also sometimes kick the bodies with his bare feet to make them drop items, which, as a fairly tactile sensitive person, the thought makes my soul depart my body. Kicked bodies are seldom visibly disturbed from their position by this, though they do drop items.

He is not opposed to looting said corpses / prying useful items out of their hands, though he may comment on riffling through someone’s stuff being a social no-no while doing so.

At the same time, he far more often uses “personlike” language rather than “objectlike” language to describe the bodies (“this guy” “her” “him” “population”) with the main exception being interacting with a bloated, waterlogged corpse.

You can virtually always examine a lot more than what has money or weapons and Prisoner will have salient thoughts about it suggesting he is proving keenly observant and not specifically looking for loot and ignoring all else.

From here, I’ll go into several incidents I think are pretty noteworthy.

A fair warning that these are quite morbid and discuss/depict the kinds of things people do when everything is falling apart and people are dying all around them, so, not exactly gentle reading.

1. The Flower Loving Prisoner

This is a fairly common encounter you can find in the Prisoners’ Quarters and Promenade, possibly other places. It is a small cell, with several points of interest, mostly being the large number of potted flowers and the small window. Poking around will have Prisoner note that the flowers “have been a bit underwatered recently” and that the fabric of the mattress was torn up and used elsewhere.

Specifically, for a noose- the person occupying this cell hung himself, and his corpse is holding a single flower in its hands.

For the room, Prisoner remarks “looks like this guy loved flowers.” For the body itself,

“Guess he wanted to choose the time of his death. He’s holding a faded flower between his fingers. A moment of silence… NAH! I’ve got better things to do!”

The “nah” is punctuated by him kicking the body, causing it to drop a necklace- but not the flower it’s holding.

So here’s the thing. This is a flippant action. At surface pass, Prisoner is disrespecting this person who is characterized by growing flowers in a prison- and holding onto this small thing of beauty, even in death.

The thing is though, someone who doesn’t care at all wouldn’t, of their own accord, independently air the idea they should have a “moment of silence” for this person, even to veto it a second later. Nobody is here to see or care what Prisoner is doing.

Also to someone who doesn’t care at all, the entire rest of the room would be of no interest; it would be trivial that flowers were important to a dead person.

So this creates an interesting duality. On one hand: Prisoner very clearly doesn’t care much about bodies. This is a repeated pattern. The main time he’s particularly shocked by corpses is when they were someone who was alive the last time he checked (as is the case of the Tutorial Knight). He has a calculated angle and he’s interested in what he can get from them and how it can prevent him from dying, again.

On the other hand... Prisoner equally clearly cares about people. He thinks a lot about what people wanted, felt, what choices they made. He shows a lot of interpersonal intelligence and even to people who he has every reason to not listen to, his responses tend thoughtful and he socks this information away as important in a context where he is, by necessity, otherwise rigidly focused on survival. He hates the King, but will also talk thoughtfully about the way the royals of the island lived.

And of the two elements in this juxtaposition, while survivalism and gallows humor are clearly strong threads in him... it’s clear the caring part is the larger factor of the two. It persists, while his cheerful morbidity sometimes just utterly fails.

2. The Stilt Village family

In the fishing hamlet, you can find a small house featuring a hanged woman. A letter by her feet, that the Prisoner notes are probably her last words, reads:

“The Malaise won’t get us. I’ll protect you… I’ll protect you.”

The Prisoner, our usually quite chatty protagonist, has almost nothing to say here. The closest he gets is, on examining the woman’s body, notes she “opted for the fast method” and aforementioned observation that the note is her last words.

There is also a bed in the room. Two sets of small feet poke out from under the blankets. If you examine it, Prisoner only says “throats slit.” and nothing more.

There is nothing in the room to loot, no jokes made, and the overall attitude is deeply, crushingly somber. There are closed drawers, but there’s no prompt to go through them.

If Prisoner didn’t care, this would just be more of the same, what’s three more bodies, right? But it’s clear that he isn’t just idly curious about the way people live and what they thought and felt- he has a certain amount of compassion, so that faintly nauseous feeling we get as we creep through this room is probably simpatico with our protagonist.

These people are strangers. He never knew them. They’re villagers of a fishing hamlet that was a hotbed of rebellion, and disrespectful of the king; they are small lives. They are “irrelevant people”. Mechanically, you have no gameplay incentive to stand here and look around.

But it’s clear this encounter affects Prisoner a lot emotionally. He doesn’t know who these people were, never met these kids or their presumed mother- but it’s clear he didn’t want this to have happened to them.

In particular Prisoner seems to be disquieted by young corpses any time he finds them; the closest he comes to joking is finding the executed body that he notes is “either a dwarf, or... no more than seven or eight years old. ...Let’s... say she’s a dwarf.”

Another half-joke, also in the Stilt Village, is he finds a desperate letter to the Alchemist, written by villagers pledging their bodies to his research and begging him to save them. Prisoner notes that it’s partially damaged by water and hard to read, and then frankly follows with “I don’t think I want to understand what I read.”

This is worth noting, in particular, because we find a lot of the Alchemist’s grimoires, and he mentions his “volunteers” often- the kind of things that happen to them in particular tend to be fatal. One setup in High Peak Castle notes that those exposed to the experimental cure became twisted half-plant beings, and then as a near afterthought, notes “the subject failed to survive.”

So Prisoner- who’s just trying to save his own hide at best- is pretty strongly depicted as more upset at what happened to the villagers than the Alchemist who was trying to work on a cure. This is significant, when we happen to know said Alchemist becomes the Collector, who basically spends the entire game using Prisoner to harvest resources from corpses (the titular Cells) in exchange for better equipment. The Collector also makes it quite clear from the start he knows who Prisoner is, but is not interested in disclosing this information.

(And, if you, like me, don’t think Prisoner is the same person as the King given the wild discrepancy of personality and other evidence- when he finally does “fess up” it’s in the form of lying to Prisoner’s face)

3. Moments of anger

This is actually not one moment but several. Part of what Dead Cells does with its dialogue is convey tone and intensity by changing colors. Most text comes in blue boxes- when it’s lit in red, it’s almost always for emphasis. Especially if the textbox shakes slightly and the text scrolls faster than usual, giving it a sense of slamming into place on the screen.

In several areas- the Promenade or the Ramparts- you can find a setup of “live target training” in which a human prisoner was chained to a post, and then shot at by archers. This is at first perhaps a bit morbidly funny, given the wall behind the prisoner is littered with arrows- but, overall, it’s just dark.

In particular, a single arrow has struck the shackled prisoner. When Prisoner observes this, he notes “Only one arrow hit the target.”

Then, in shaking red text, “Right in the head.”

He then turns and faces the empty stand where the guard stood, and flashes a thumbs-up that I struggle to read as not rather scathing in its condemnation. Again- to someone who doesn’t care or thinks of this as funny, that kind of emphasis doesn’t make sense.

But even some things he says calmly seem to suggest Prisoner’s pretty angry about the whole situation- sometimes, upon finding a large gallows section, it will have an order pinned to it:

By order of the King, all persons presenting behavioural disorders or noticeable deteriorations in their appearance... shall be imprisoned, and hanged by the neck until dead. ...(If the prison doctor confirms the diagnosis of infection.)

There is a distinct beat before the last line is read, and then Prisoner’s commentary ensues:

“Glad they added that. For a second there I really thought we were talking about genocide.”

He also at one point responds to a desecrated statue of the King, defaced with “We’ll skin you alive!” by calling it a “brave and courageous statement,” and seems mildly impressed that someone peed on a royal order in the Stilt Village relatively high up. Besides that, a lot of the area flavor text talks about the abuses of the guards, and in particular in High Peak Castle, it’s noted the royal guard were pulled back into the castle when the rest of the island needed them.

In a way, the way that Prisoner uses humor often trivializes his own anger, which again, ties back to what I said in part 1: everything the game says about small lives- about the “irrelevant little people” that suffered in the wake of the plague emphasizes that Prisoner’s perspective is that he is one of those little people. In the sewers, examining a strange cocoon, Prisoner seems to have a full-on crisis about what he is and why he’s here before interrupting himself with a joke.

Someone who thinks they are important and is used to demanding others’ attention and validation doesn’t treat their own genuine anger and revulsion like it’s something to shrug off.

#Dead Cells #The weight of small lives #readmore #death mention

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unwiltingblossom · 4 years ago

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Code: Realize Route Review - Victor Frankenstein

to be fair to everyone else, this doesn’t include his Future Blessings content, but mmm MMMMMMM that’s such good content that I will 100% be making reviews of all of them, especially Victor’s.

MY HEART. MY BOY. MY SWEET PRECIOUS CINNABUN.

I’d save him for last because he’s transparently my favorite, but I’m trying to do this in the play order I’ve worked out should be done. Victor was my first route, though, because aaaa he’s so perfect - this was a bad choice both because it meant I saw him in all other routes and couldn’t romance him and because he spoils everything except Germain and Lupin’s routes. (He doesn’t spoil a plot twist in Impey per se, but information Impey gives you is redundant if you play Victor, and you’re definitely supposed to have Van and Impey’s routes done to make the ‘surprise’ in Fran’s route work. It’s not a surprise if you go directly into Victor’s from Common Route)

Anyway, Victor should be done third. It spoils Van Helsing’s route and negatively impacts Impey’s route. Germain’s route spoils Victor’s so even though Van’s teases Germain’s, you should do Victor before San-chan.

Victor Frankenstein

THE BOY’S PERFECT.

Anyway, Victor has an unfair advantage over all the other guys, even Lupin. He shows up the most in the common route and is super important to Cardia. He’s technically the third introduced, but Impey’s solo scene with Cardia is shorter and mostly focused on bullying Impey, and Lupin suffers from what he’ll always suffer from: plot is way more important than him whenever it’s ‘his’ time. If you don’t believe me, trust me anyway. I will make a whole separate post to PROVE to you that Victor gets an unfair advantage in the common route compared to literally everyone else.

But it’s no joke to say that Victor Frankenstein’s route feels the most ‘natural’ of them all, because the common route does such a good job of setting it up (especially if you’re going for his route) that by the time you’re on his route you can’t imagine her ending up on anyone else’s route. It’s so effective that Victor being my first route made me think that the whole common route adapted and gave special scenes to whatever the highest affection boy was, so that you naturally fall into their arms like ‘well of course they fell in love’.

It’s so significant I can’t even review his route without talking about his common route parts.

So let me stop rambling and get on with it.

Victor, like Impey, has a really obvious role in the story that you know basically immediately. He’s the cute nerd who’s also the only doctor for Cardia, dedicated to improving her life because he feels responsible for her creation and is suffering from crippling guilt over the Vampire War. He makes her clothes, he identifies the gem in her chest, he explains where it came from and what it’s meant to be, and he teaches her how to handle chemicals. Which she takes to REALLY well, because Isaac is her dad.

Victor’s route further explores the fact that the Vampire War was all just a staged play and more of a pointless genocide than an actual ‘war’, and that’s part of why Helsing’s route should be played first, but also Alistair is outright villainous in Victor’s route, so it’s impossible to be fooled in Van’s route if you’ve done Fran’s first.

You may not know immediately if you don’t also guess/know that Cardia is a homunculus, but Fran is one of...I think just two? who know immediately that Cardia is a homunculus. Most of the men find out when she does, after they’ve already fallen for her, but not Victor. He knows from the beginning, and despite that, all he ever sees her as is a human girl like anyone else. He loves her knowing full well what she is, because to him she’s always just been an innocent girl he caused harm to.

Fran’s one of my favorite routes on a purely technical level, because Cardia learns chemicals and uses them alongside Victor. He doesn’t let her use the deadly explosive kinds because he’s super protective, but his is one of the routes where her training actually comes in to play, rather than expecting her to step back and let Fran protect her. In fact, his route requires you to treat him as an equal and trust him implicitly.

Victor’s route was super easy to get into for me because I was a simpering fool for Fran anyway. You’ve got to go with him to help protect him in the train during the tag team mission, and ideally you’re supposed to trust him to be able to handle himself against the Twilight soldiers even when it looks like he’s backed into a corner and helpless, because he wants to protect Cardia so much he’d rather be put in danger than let her endanger herself.

Cardia’s route is probably the roughest encounter with Finis, as he succeeds in activating the Horologium before Victor can show up to save her, turning her into a ticking time bomb that can’t be turned off.

Victor is actually so attentive to Cardia. When Cardia tries to sneak out of the mansion at the very end of the common route because she thinks she’s a monster, she looks back to the mansion because her heart aches at the thought of never seeing Victor anymore...but there he is. He noticed she was trying to sneak away and followed after her, because Victor would rather banish himself than allow her to feel alone. Imagine my surprise when I found out like half the other routes Cardia just escapes because no one notices her trying to sneak away.

So, Victor doesn’t just reject that she’s a monster, he rejects it with the authority of having always known her true nature not out of some spat of denial. He accepts her completely, and loves her even in her darkest moment. Then he promises he will do anything to save her, and runs off into the night.

It’s just about the next morning that Cardia realizes this strange feeling in her heart might actually be love, but oh my gosh. This girl has it bad. She’s always dedicated to her routemate, but with Victor, she is laser focused on him and only him, and will blindly rush into danger if it means seeing him.

to be fair, though, Victor is basically the same thing. Honestly, you wouldn’t expect the scientist of all things to have maybe the most action packed route but dang, he is just IN THE THICK OF IT. He jumps off a bridge with Cardia while a bunch of Twilight soldiers are shooting at them and that’s at the beginning of his route.

Especially if you’ve played through Impey’s route where Cardia can’t stop taking back her confessions and Van’s route where he pretends he isn’t in love to ‘protect’ her, the fact that Victor and Cardia admit they’re deeply in love and will say it just over and over again, without ever doubting each other or questioning each other about it, it’s really nice. Maybe a tad mushy, but the angst on the route helps balance that.

For me, Victor’s route was the easiest route to play. I didn’t hit any bad ends for Saint Germain, either, but I was more uncertain about some of the choices. Victor’s are so easy you kind of have to choose them on purpose to fail.

Victor doesn’t trust himself, Cardia and Victor both believe they don’t really deserve to live. The fact that the choices and overarching plot of the route is basically “Trust Victor because he’ll do literally anything to protect you, even controvert the laws of the universe, so don’t you dare give up, but also protect him from his own stupid choices motivated by survivor’s guilt” is pretty wholesome.

Victor’s route is, I would say, the most wholesome, and I’m sure I’m not biased or anything.

All the boys have things that allow them to sympathize with Cardia, but I feel like Victor and Cardia have the most similar backstory. Victor sees himself as a monster because his work massacred the innocent vampires, and Cardia sees herself as a monster because her poison killed the only person who ever loved her aside from her father who abandoned her and told her she wasn’t allowed to ever love anyone.

Granted, there’s no revenge or closure or anything on the villagers for what they did in Victor’s route, but there is acceptance, understanding, and healing, because both of them have ugly, horrible tragedy in their history that they can’t go back and change or make better, but they have someone who loves and understands them and doesn’t blame them for it anyway.

Victor is at once plagued with the guilt and self-loathing that tells him he doesn’t deserve to be happy and just so desperate to make up for what he’s done and find a way for someone to forgive him so he can forgive himself.

But man.

Cardia is transforming into the Philosopher’s Stone in Victor’s route, which means this person he loves, the only person who knows everything about him and loves him anyway, is a ticking time bomb who is going to explode and wipe out an entire city full of innocent people again, and it’ll be his fault for not doing anything.

Because the queen isn’t pretending to be a good person in this route, she gets the most development out of all the routes. (she has a really weak and shallow epiphany in Lupin’s route that matches Victor’s, but that’s the ‘must resolve all plot threads whether it makes sense or not’ thing) It’s also the one that most clearly shows she’s romantically interested in her knight.

Victor’s route climax has him caught between two horrible fates: allow Queen Victoria to release the Zicterium and massacre her own people to plunge the world into a massive war so that Cardia will survive and be allowed to live as a normal human girl, dying beside her in the process, or...allow Cardia to be the one who kills all of Steel London when she explodes, killing her as well. No third option, no ‘save all of London’.

This is just. so cruel to Victor. He has a big flashing button on his chest that says ‘traumatized by the fact that Zicterium killed a bunch of people after he accidentally invented it’, and then his route climax is him stuck in a dilemma where the only answer is ‘everyone dies by Zicterium’.

Despite that, Victor thinks just incredibly fast on his feet, and he’s so dedicated to his ideals and pacifism that he’s able to finally sway Leonhard into defying the queen’s commands and defending her from herself. I don’t particularly find Victoria sympathetic regardless of her motivations, because she’s a ruthless killer who massacred the vampires and tried her literal hardest to do the same to her own people in a misguided attempt to protect Britain, but the route tries to make her sympathetic anyway.

Victor and Cardia both get BDH moments, including Cardia rescuing herself from being a hostage and showing up at the showdown to allow the heroes to fight to their fullest without fear of her being killed as a hostage.

And they’re always like ‘I’d rather die for you’ ‘no, I can’t live in a world without you, I’ll die first’. Honestly, they’re just...so adorable.

Cardia’s poison goes away late in the route because she’s mid-transformation, which gives Victor the ability to kiss and touch her without fear.

and rather than try to explain how cute it is, I show a picture and save probably literally 1,000 words

aaa

so perfect and cute.

...

I think I’ve gotten lost in the weeds again.

anyway.

so.

Honestly, you won’t be surprised by the queen AT ALL if you just go by what happens in the route. It relies on you being tricked by Impey and Helsing’s routes where she comes off as good-natured and reliable, so that you’ll fall for her tricks in Victor’s route. Aleister’s role in the route is pretty much superfluous, though, he’s there to be annoying and hold Cardia captive so that Victor can be scared for her, and then flounce off into the night in style because you just saw him star back in Van’s route.

The other boys also don’t contribute that much to Victor’s route, other than being there in the big showdown while they fight off the Twilight troops and helping Victor try to sneak into the castle again. Saint-Germain briefly features to tell Cardia what she’s feeling is love, but even though the routes usually have the ‘next in line’ feature in the route to tease you, there’s just so much going on with Victor that there’s no time for Germain to do much but look absolutely fabulous and murder Finis so hard he doesn’t come back.

Both of Victor’s endings are so good!

His normal/bad ending is one of the more tragic and painful of the endings, and while it’s not as completely different as Impey’s, it still feels unique and based off of the choice you make, not just collected affection points deciding if the story cuts off too soon or not.

It just works. Cardia deciding to take away the responsibility from Victor and save his life by killing herself is well within her personality, and it plays out so painfully tragic - as she didn’t know he was only moments away from finding the solution to save her.

It’s also interesting, because Fran’s is the only ‘normal’ ending in the original game where Cardia dies instead of the love interest. Her dedication to making sure that Victor survives, and her determination not to live a life without Victor is just that strong.

Poor Victor.

BUT ANYWAY ONTO THE GOOD END.

Victor being willing to put Zicterium in his mouth so that he can feed it to her, conveniently in the form of a kiss! Granted, he does point out it’s much less volatile and immediately deadly in liquid form, but it’s still extremely dangerous, since leaving anything behind or swallowing any of it could be terrible.

Victor gets to kiss Cardia more than the other boys, but, look. he

earned it

It kind of cracks me up, honestly, that while Victor is always looking for a cure for Cardia, it’s only on his route that he immediately figures out a fix. Most people have to either wait for Future Blessings before he’s done or complete her transformation into the philosopher’s stone, but Victor is like ‘well it’s a prototype but it’s one I’m willing to trust my lips and other things to’

To be fair, the version he gives Cardia in his route requires her to constantly take it, and never neutralizes it completely while the others are one-and-done, but still.

ANYWAY

The fact that Victor refuses to see her as anything but a beautiful, lovely, human young girl and that Cardia refuses to blame Victor for the atrocities that the queen perpetrated, that she gently holds him when he cries and he removes his gloves to touch her face when she thinks she’s becoming a horrible monster....they’re just so sweet.

They’re so adorable.

in conclusion:

VICTOR IS THE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also, how can I not love the ship when it is “Victor Frankenstein and his monster”

...anyway now that I’m done gushing about Victor (for now, wait for the coda and the future blessings review) I guess it’s time to move on and cry about Saint Germain, the second most perfect man.

#code realize #victor frankenstein #victor x cardia #code realize review #code: realize #victor frankenstein route #otome game #spoilers #ooc #i decided to make it prettier with pictures #should I go back and do the same for impey and van?

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bard-llama · 4 years ago

Text

Know Thine Enemy (Iorveth/Roche) Part 2

Summary: Iorveth spends far too much time thinking about Roche's proposition and comes to a decision.

Read on AO3 | Read Part 1 on Tumblr

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Notes: Warning that this chapter includes a bit of a dubcon/noncon fantasy for a few paragraphs. It starts near the end of the chapter with "What if...what if Roche hadn’t let him go?" and ends at "Before he could think more about that..."

Elder Speech:

Dh’oine = Elder Speech for Human

Bloede = expletive along the lines of stupid/silly/fucking i.e. Bloede Dh’oine = Fucking Human

Aindeoin = taken from the Scottish Gaelic word for spite, a dh ’aindeoin, according to Google.

When Iorveth awoke from his little bender, his mouth tasted like feet, his head was pounding, and attempting to open his eye just led to sharp spikes of sunlight drilling into it.

Suddenly it was very easy to remember why he usually didn’t drink these days. Aside from his responsibility to his men, of course. But it had been a long time since he’d imbibed regularly and his tolerance reflected that. In other words, it was nonexistent. And he vaguely remembered drinking a lot.

Iorveth groaned piteously, and someone cleared their throat next to him and pressed a waterskin to his mouth. He drank greedily, not even bothering to open his eye. There were two people likely to take care of him, and Imadia would have said something scathing by now. That meant that the gentle hand that stroked over his hair belonged to Ciaran. He wasn’t wearing his bandana, which likely also meant that Ciaran had put him to bed and watched over him.

“Thank you,” he rasped after Ciaran took the waterskin away.

“What happened to set you off?”

“Ah.” Iorveth flushed, remembering exactly what had set him off. Or rather, who. But he couldn’t tell Ciaran that. “I was careless, got caught in a hunter’s trap,” he said instead, shame coloring his words as he thought back on the humiliating encounter.

“Oh.” Ciaran was silent for a long moment and Iorveth squinted his eye open. His friend had his lips pressed tightly together, clearly holding back laughter.

“Ugh,” Iorveth covered his face with his hands. “If you’re going to laugh, you owe me another drink. Maybe it’ll make this headache bearable.”

“You’re in luck,” Ciaran chuckled. “Imadia left you a tonic.” He uncorked something noxious smelling and helped Iorveth struggle upright. Iorveth braced himself – knowing Imadia, the tonic would work miracles, but likely taste like death. She liked to teach him lessons by doing things like that.

He was right. Swallowing the tonic down as quickly as possible did not stop him from wishing he could claw out his tongue. But, after a few minutes had passed, he did have to admit that he felt better. Well enough to venture out of bed, anyway.

“What did I do, anyway?” Iorveth asked, not truly sure he wanted to know. If he’d actually said something incriminating about Roche, Ciaran would have already brought it up.

“You told a lot of stories about what an amazing debater you are,” Ciaran said, threads of laughter still in his voice. “Apparently it was very important that we all know that you once defeated Filavandrel.”

“And I was right,” Iorveth couldn’t help pointing out. Filavandrel may be respected as a leader of elves in Dol Blathanna, but he was equally well known for his eloquence. Defeating him was a point of personal pride.

Not that those sorts of victories mattered anymore. But it was a good memory, one that brought a smile to his face.

“When you’re ready,” Ciaran said, rolling his eyes, “Sylvar had an idea he wants to run by you.”

“Oh?”

Ciaran nodded. “I’ll let him share the details, but I think it has merit, if we plan well. Striking outside of our usual territory will throw off those damn Blue Stripes, too.” He stepped over to the door and opened it for the young elf.

“Sir,” he nodded, a smirk curling the corner of his lips. Iorveth sighed. He should have know Kythaela’s insistence on calling him sir would spread.

“Tell me about your idea.”

Sylvar eagerly stepped forward, unrolling a map over his table. “I think we should hit the supply caravan to Ellander.”

Iorveth cocked his eyebrow. Ellander lay a short distance from the western edge of the Scoia’tael’s forest. The small city was home to a Temeria army base, three taverns, two whorehouses, and the Temple of Melitele, where priestesses tended to the wounded and weary. “Their supplies come overland, from Vizima.” Which was further to the west and would require them to circle around Ellander without the cover of the forest.

“Usually, yes sir. But apparently there was a recent landslide on the road from Vizima, so they’re sending supplies by ship, across the Yaruga. That means they have to come ashore not too far from our borders. We can hit them before they ever realize there’s anything to fear.”

“Hmm,” Iorveth hummed, thinking it over. They did need new supplies badly. And this time, he hoped the army sent their men better tasting rations. “When?”

“Our spies report that the ship should arrive in three days,” Ciaran answered. “That gives us three days to plan this carefully.”

Of course, it also meant three days for someone to leak their plans. Not that Iorveth thought any of his men were traitors, but Roche had his ways of getting information. Even if no one sold them out, they would probably encounter the Blue Stripes.

That was fine. He could plan for the Blue Stripes. He just wished he could plan for Roche outside of anticipating his attacks.

––

Iorveth spent the days leading up to their raid thinking about Roche. More specifically, thinking about how to defeat Roche. Except that naturally turned into thinking about how Roche could have killed him and didn’t, and that led to thinking about the way that Roche had talked about his ears and how his body had gotten...confused. He knew it was confusion because there was no way he could be feeling interest in the dh’oine.

He just – wanted to understand Roche, that was all. It had been a long time since he’d found a worthy debate opponent and Roche showed signs of having a not-disappointing intellect. His body had just confused his interest in knowing Roche for, well, for knowing Roche.

It didn’t help that Roche had propositioned him. He never would have even thought of Roche in that context if the other hadn’t started it. But now that his brain had gone there, he started thinking about it. And thinking about it meant that he desperately, desperately wanted to go on another bender until he could stop thinking.

But he had a responsibility to the Scoia’tael and he would not fail them. Even if it meant being stuck with thoughts of what a dh’oine – what Roche – might be like in bed.

If he accepted. Which of course, he never would. Their prior encounter had clearly been a fluke, a strange event that would never be replicated. The next time the met, Roche would probably pretend the whole thing had never happened.

Except to humiliate Iorveth, if he wanted to. After all, he didn’t know that Iorveth’s body had only been confused. But Roche couldn’t possible actually want him. Roche hunted nonhumans; his proposition had clearly been a mistake.

Which was what Iorveth wanted. Of course it was. There was no part of him that felt a little pleased to be the subject of desire for someone again. Not that he was without company when he craved it, but Aen Seidhe valued beauty and his was ruined.

The most common response he’d heard after he lost his eye was, “what a shame.” Iorveth had been considered quite beautiful once, but elves valued aesthetics, and even if Iorveth’s scar weren’t horrific and grotesque, the asymmetry of it would always be considered unpleasant to the eye.

It wasn’t so bad these days, around the Scoia’tael. They were all warriors, they understood scars. They were shameful necessities of the life they fought for.

Still, there was a reason very few people ever saw Iorveth without his bandana on. Even that couldn’t cover everything, but it hid the worst of it, the parts that made faces contort in disgust before people regained control of themselves. Ciaran and Imadia were the only two he trusted enough to see the true horror he was, and even they hadn’t been able to help reacting. He didn’t blame them – he couldn’t stand to look himself in the mirror either – but it was an important reminder. No one could ever want him, not truly.

But gods, it would be nice to actually be wanted, to be someone considered worthy of wooing or courting. Not that he had time for romance, nor would he ever want it with Roche of all people. But it would be nice.

“Almost time.” Ciaran’s voice startled him and again, Iorveth cursed himself for getting lost in thought.

“Wait for my signal,” he ordered. Ciaran handed him a spyglass and Iorveth did a quick check that his people were where they were supposed to be. Then he turned to small caravan below that was slowly loading supplies from the ship. They would wait until the caravan was fully loaded – all the easier to get away with the highest quantity of supplies – and their attack strategy was two-pronged. First, they had to lure out the Blue Stripes. Roche would likely have supplemented his crew with men from Ellander’s army base, so all of Iorveth’s people were here for this operation. If they failed, it would be a massacre.

But they wouldn’t fail. Because Iorveth knew Roche would be coming, knew Roche would attack them. Which meant he’d just needed to figure out how to outmaneuver one man instead of unpredictable guards.

It would almost be fun, if it weren’t for the stakes.

Iorveth signaled Maeral to take her five man squad to attack the boat, as if the supplies hadn’t already been unloaded. Their job was the most dangerous – bait for the Blue Stripes. It was likely more than one of them wouldn’t return, but he trusted Maeral with this command, trusted her to fight with everything she had to return home. She was one of his youngest commanders, but Iorveth hadn’t managed to win a chess match against her in half a decade. She understood tactics and strategy and she looked at the whole field in a way Iorveth had never been able to.

Maeral attacked, her squad engaging the guards around the makeshift dock. It took only a few long heartbeats of waiting before Roche did the expected – surrounded Maerel’s squad and announced his presence.

Now It was Iorveth’s turn. He had thirty soldiers surrounding the Blue Stripes and each had orders to keep the fighting as contained to the makeshift dock as possible. Then, while everyone was busy, Ciaran would take over the caravan with his squad and deliver it to Aindeoin. It was a good plan, and the butterflies in Iorveth’s stomach felt more like anticipation than nerves.

Nonetheless, he could admit that he was just a little bit worried about how his first meeting with Roche would go. What if the dh’oine brought up their last meeting? Iorveth clenched his fists and took a deep breath, pulling his mind back on task.

Then he gave the signal to attack and he leapt out of the tree, landing on a soldier and riding him to the ground. He jumped towards Roche, who caught his blade at the last minute, falling to one knee from the impact.

Iorveth licked his lips, already feeling the adrenaline coursing through his veins in the way his heartbeat was thudding rapidly, the way all of his focus seemed to narrow down to Roche.

“How?” Roche demanded, “how did you know we would be lying in wait!?”

Iorveth smirked. “It’s you. Of course you’d be here.” Roche actually seemed taken aback by that. Iorveth should have used the opening to attack, but he felt like gloating. “Expected me to underestimate you?”

Roche’s mouth slowly twisted into a grin. “I should have known better.” He pushed forward off of his knee, thrusting his sword towards Iorveth’s face.

It was easy enough to bat the blade aside, and now they were truly fighting and Iorveth’s grin was probably just as feral as Roche’s.

“Guess those pointy ears are sharper than I thought,” Roche said and Iorveth almost stumbled on his next step. “And here I thought we’d managed to get intel past you.”

Nearby, Sylvar cut down his opponent and rounded on Roche. “You dare speak to our leader in such vulgar terms!?”

Iorveth could feel his ears growing hot as he flushed. Oh gods, could this get any worse?

Roche’s second in command, Ves, dove to intercept Sylvar while Roche just looked baffled.

“I didn’t even use a good insult,” he frowned, and the weight of his sword against Iorveth’s own shifted. Iorveth was ready to block, but Roche just seemed to be adjusting his grip. Iorveth’s men closed in around them, pushing the Blue Stripes back, away from where Ciaran was already making off with their haul.

Roche didn’t seem to recognize that, though, instead looking at Iorveth through narrowed eyes. “Didn’t know your ears could turn that red,” he said casually, as if such a statement weren’t wildly out of place on a battlefield.

Iorveth made a small noise, eyes wide and something unfamiliar coiling in his gut. Horror and humiliation, certainly, but there was also a part of him that was pleased that Roche apparently intended his proposition, that Roche wanted him.

All the elves in earshot let out near-simultaneous scandalized gasps that almost got them killed and Iorveth could feel his face flushing bright red. This was a disaster that he had not signed up to deal with today.

And even though his men had the advantage, even though they’d pushed the Blue Stripes back, nearly cornered them, Iorveth found himself giving the signal to fall back. He wasn’t running away – it was simply strategic to call for a retreat at this point.

The last thing he heard before he left the battlefield behind was Roche grumbling about pointy ears and confusing strategies.

Despite leaving the battle earlier than planned, they had managed to keep the Blue Stripes distracted for long enough for Ciaran and the caravan to make it into the forest.

Thank the gods for that, because Iorveth never would have forgiven himself otherwise. Though, he wasn’t sure it mattered whether he forgave himself, because he was already contemplating burying himself in the forest somewhere to never be seen again.

“The nerve of that whoreson!” Sylvar ranted far too loudly, exposing Iorveth’s humiliation to even more elves.

Rinn, his favorite little spy, smacked Sylvar over the head and held a finger up to her lips.

“She’s telling you to shut up,” Kythaela pointed out helpfully.

Actually, if Rinn chose to spoke, it would probably be a lot more impolite than that. But Iorveth was the only one she felt comfortable enough to speak around, except for Imadia on rare occasion.

Still, she was right. The last thing he wanted was for word to spread about Roche’s crude words. Iorveth could feel himself blushing just at the thought.

Sylvar grumbled the rest of the way back to Aindeoin, but he didn’t immediately start shouting about Iorveth’s humiliation, so that was something.

“Let’s get a drink,” Kythaela slipped her arm through Sylvar’s and bodily dragged him away. Iorveth smiled at the apologetic look she sent him and followed behind at a more sedate pace.

A short time later, as his Scoia’tael sat around the campfires – built in special stone pits to prevent the trees from catching alight – feasting and drinking, Iorveth found himself strangely unable to adjust to the mood. They had plentiful supplies now and had achieved a victory against the Blue Stripes with minimal losses. He should be as lighthearted and jovial as his brethren who chattered and laughed around him. But he couldn’t stop thinking about earlier’s humiliation, about the way he’d been propositioned in front of his men and the way he’d visibly reacted, bright red for anyone to see.

Instead of drowning himself in drink the way he had a few days before, Iorveth found himself slowly sipping wine as he stood on the outskirts of the feast, leaning against the tree trunk their dining hall was built into. He spotted Rinn sitting on a branch above the feast and smiled to himself. She always did prefer her own company over that of others.

He had been the one to find her, all those years ago. Iorveth had killed a group of dh’oine standing over the bodies of elves and only after the fact had he realized that one of the elves still lived.

Rinn had been completely mute at that point. She was strong willed and bounced back from tragedy fairly quickly, but her speech had not returned for years. And even now, she preferred silence, though he wasn’t sure how much of that was trouble speaking versus not wanting to bother. He wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it was the latter, but then, he sometimes wished he could avoid speaking.

Rinn noticed him watching and waved at him. Then, even though he was staring right at her, he wasn’t quite sure how she managed to disappear. It was a special talent of hers, to go unnoticed.

Originally, he hadn’t wanted her to join the Scoia’tael. She had been young when he found her, about a decade under the age of majority for an elf, and while Iorveth had trouble understanding how some people could choose not to fight, he did believe that their people deserved to grow up in peace. So he’d sent her to Vergen, the Dwarven city in Upper Aedirn where they sent all refugees who came to the Scoia’tael for help. It wasn’t a paradise, and dwarves and elves had longstanding differences, but it was still a better city than one run by humans.

Rinn had gone to Vergen. He’d sent her multiple times, in fact. But somehow, she kept popping back up in Aindeoin and Iorveth had never been able to figure out how. After the fourth time, he’d decided that if she was determined to be here, he would put those skills to use.

Of course, with her not speaking to anyone – including him, at the time, as she had still been learning hand signs, though she managed to get her will across quite well without using words at all – they’d had to get inventive on how she could communicate the intel that she picked up hanging around where no sensible person would.

He still didn’t know how she’d gotten inside Ellander’s army barracks, and admittedly, he didn’t know what he would do with the detailed sketch of the Blue Stripes’ cots, but hey, intel was intel. And there were times that a picture of the situation was much more useful than a verbal report. Such as when you realized that your enemies weren’t just comrades, but family.

It was in the way Rinn drew them sitting around the campfire together or sleeping in a huddle in the cold, never aware of their silent observer determinedly putting their likeness to paper. The Blue Stripes were so clearly more than just people who fought side by side. They cared about each other.

A realization like that one was valuable. It meant that the team had a weakness that could be exploited. If they cared about each other, then they could be used as leverage against each other.

Only Iorveth had immediately known it wouldn’t work. Because he knew Roche, even if he didn’t know the dh’oine, and Roche was like him. Roche was a man who would do what he had to, even if it destroyed him.

If Iorveth had shared what he’d seen in Rinn’s drawings with Ciaran, his second in command would want them to kidnap one of the commandos, to use them as a hostage.

But Roche would not let himself be controlled like that. If Iorveth tried, Roche would shoot him through his dh’oine comrade if he had to. Because Roche wasn’t a good man, just like Iorveth wasn’t. Both of them would sacrifice everything for their cause. It was just a shame their two causes were opposed.

So Iorveth had filed Rinn’s sketches of the Blue Stripes away without ever sharing what he’d seen. It wasn’t a realization anyone else was likely to make. Aside from Rinn and a few other choice spies, Iorveth’s men only ever saw the Blue Stripes in the midst of battle. And while the Blue Stripes watched each other’s backs, they were professionals.

But Iorveth had spies for a reason. It was his job to learn everything he could about his enemies. It was also his job to use that intel, but the truth was, he was scared of what might happen if he did. He didn’t want his fight with Roche to turn into a fight of whose morals could sink lower.

Iorveth was scared because he knew he would do it. When backed into a corner, there was very little he wouldn’t do for the Scoia’tael, for the cause of a free elven state. He wasn’t sure there was a limit to the depths he would sink to. He already knew that he would sacrifice his people if he had to – that’s what it meant to order his men to play bait – and he had once believed that he would never kill another elf.

Iorveth laughed bitterly to himself. Once upon a time, he’d genuinely thought he’d never resort to violence.

How the mighty have fallen, those he once knew might have said. But he was still alive while they lay dead, their ideals small defense in the face of human hatred, so he rather thought his position spoke for itself.

That was how most recruits came to the Scoia’tael – because someone they knew had finally been beaten beyond what they could take, and they were tired and scared of the dh’oine mobs that came with their pitchforks and swords and left the land running red with blood.

Iorveth glanced around the dining hall, noting the scars and injuries on his comrades, all caused by dh’oine. There wasn’t a Scoia’tael without a scar, wasn’t a one of them who hadn’t been damaged by the dh’oine and their hatred.

Some more so than others. That had been how he’d first heard of Sylvar – the entire camp had been gossiping about how someone actually had worse scars than Iorveth. Not to his face, of course. But near enough that Iorveth had easily heard.

Few elves had even seen how bad his scars truly were, but Iorveth had to admit that they were still right – Sylvar’s were worse. There was scarcely any skin that wasn’t distorted from the burn scars that covered most of his body.

Dh’oine had been responsible, of course. Sylvar and his mother had lived peacefully in Ellander, more or less avoiding trouble with dh’oine. Until the day a mob broke into their house, beat Sylvar half to death, and burned the building to the ground.

Sylvar had been lucky. He’d escaped. Barely.

His mother hadn’t been so fortunate. But then, Iorveth reflected, most of the younger elves had joined the Scoia’tael because they wanted vengeance against the dh’oine who had killed their parents.

Or used them. Taredd’s parents had been better off living under human rule than most. As affluent traders, money opened what doors their race barred. But dh’oine greed was a constant, and eventually, they decided they didn’t want elves to be prosperous. And if they got rid of the elves, well, then there was all that coin, just for the taking.

Iorveth always thought his hatred of humanity couldn’t get any deeper, but every time a new child – because they were children, not yet even a century of life! – joined the Scoia’tael, it burned that much brighter.

He tried to remind himself that there were good dh’oine out there. Supposedly.

The problem was, the only example he could think of was Vernon Roche, and he could hardly be called good when he had so much blood on his hands.

But then, so did Iorveth.

Perhaps that was why he wished he could have a conversation with Roche. They were, in many ways, very similar, and yet so very, very different. Such contrast practically guaranteed an interesting debate.

If it were possible to just – not set aside, because the racism elves faced could never just be set aside, but if they could meet without trying to kill each other. To just talk. Well, probably fight, but verbal fighting, the kind Iorveth used to have mastered, the kind that had once been the only kind of fighting he’d done.

That had been a long time ago now.

He didn’t regret doing what he had to. But he was just so tired. Iorveth wished there were somewhere he could go where he could leave the fighting at the door. Somewhere where he could talk to Roche and receive an answer rather than an attack.

Except Roche hadn’t attacked him that day in the forest. The dh’oine had threatened him, certainly, but even after Iorveth had been released, Roche had made no move towards his sword. Iorveth himself had been the one to attack, even if it had been a pathetic attempt. His embarrassment had been too overwhelming at the time, but now, now he wondered if Roche choosing not to attack was as much of an offer as his crass remarks.

Maybe...maybe it would be worth taking him up on it? Just for a conversation, not for sex. Iorveth had no interest in sex with a dh’oine.

So why had being helpless in Roche’s grasp made him hot and squirmy that day in the forest? Why had his ears flushed so red and why had his cock reacted when Roche had dragged his dagger ever so delicately over his throat?

Iorveth shivered and cleared his throat. He really shouldn’t be thinking about the way his confused body had reacted. Was reacting.

He shifted uncomfortably, dearly grateful that his gambeson and mail hid the exact way his body was reacting. His body was obviously still confused, because there was nothing that he should find appealing about being helpless under Roche’s blade.

Iorveth swallowed and bit his lip. Perhaps he should take this line of thinking somewhere more private, just in case his body continued to get the wrong idea.

Or, part of his mind whispered, he could stay here. There was no need to draw attention to himself by leaving early and that little curl of humiliation in his belly at the idea that someone could find out made him shift and clench around nothing. It was uncomfortably good, the way the shame and lust and general confusion Roche inspired fizzled together in his stomach and made him sensitive.

Iorveth focused on breathing evenly even as every shift of his weight and every squeeze of his thighs sent shivers of pleasure through his body. His hose was soaked with wetness from his cunt and Iorveth bit his lip, feeling his cock twitch at the twinge of pain.

What would sex with a dh’oine like Roche even be like? Iorveth couldn’t see it being gentle, but he liked a little bit of roughness himself. And thinking back on their encounter in the woods when Iorveth had been caught – Roche had been pretty good at taking charge, too. Iorveth hadn’t been aware that he was interested in that, but something about Roche standing over him, holding Iorveth’s own knife to his throat…

Iorveth shuddered, then cleared his throat and looked around wildly to make sure no one noticed.

What if...what if Roche hadn’t let him go? What if the Blue Stripes commander had kept that knife pressed against the hollow of Iorveth’s collarbone? Iorveth licked his lips, imagining what might have happened if Vernon Roche were an entirely different kind of man. The kind of man who would force Iorveth’s mouth open and slide his cock inside.

What would he taste like? Humans were warmer than elves in general, and their cocks looked so strange in comparison. What would it feel like on his tongue? In the back of his throat? Inside him?

Before it could escape his lips, Iorveth swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth just from the thought of being filled with a cock and chased it down with a gulp of wine for good measure.

Roche could have done anything to him with Iorveth tied up and hanging like that, and Iorveth found himself wishing that Roche had, that he’d cupped Iorveth through his hose, maybe ripped it open to slip fingers inside his cunt while Iorveth sucked desperately. The smell of Roche would overwhelm him like that and for the first time, Iorveth wanted that, wanted a dh’oine’s scent to cover him.

Before he could think more about that, Ciaran broke away from a group of young elves and approached him. Iorveth hastily swallowed more wine, trying to pull himself together.

“Iorveth,” Ciaran called, reaching out to clap Iorveth on the shoulder. There was no part of Iorveth that wondered how differently Roche’s hand would feel. “Are you okay? Sylvar mentioned that that bloede dh’oine was crude and vile, as dh’oine so often are.”

Iorveth barely noticed the disgust pulling at Ciaran’s face, instead thinking about exactly how crude and vile Roche had been, talking about his ears in front of his men. Roche had seemed quite fixated on his ears, actually, and he wondered what the dh’oine’s rough hands would feel like against him. What would it feel like to have the dh’oine hot and solid on his tongue while Roche stroked his ears? Gods, Iorveth wouldn’t even need to be touched further; he could come just like that.

He was coming just like that, Iorveth realized with a stifled gasp, biting down hard on his tongue to hold back any noises and focusing all his being on not showing it. As he utterly ruined his hose, Iorveth was forced to lean his weight into the tree behind him lest his trembling legs collapse under him.

It shouldn’t have felt as good as it did.

Ciaran frowned at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to embarrass you. I just wanted to check and make sure you were okay. The dh’oine didn’t try anything, did he?”

It took all of Iorveth’s concentration to form words. “No,” he rasped. More’s the pity.

Gods, his face and ears must be terribly red from the way Ciaran was looking at him and a curl of shame twisted through his pleasure. Instead of detracting from the his enjoyment, it made the sensation more, and Iorveth could feel the way his shoulders loosened, the slight headache that he hadn’t even noticed dissipating.

“Good,” Ciaran said. “And I’m sorry that happened. I hope you know it’s not a reflection on you – we all know dh’oine are horny for anything that moves.”

“Mmm,” Iorveth managed a small reassuring smile and Ciaran seemed to accept it, raising his glass in a quick salute and then heading back into the thick of the festivities.

Iorveth chewed on Ciaran’s comment for a moment, wondering why it bothered him. It was true, dh’oine would fuck literally anything.

But Roche didn’t want anything. He’d propositioned Iorveth. Roche hadn’t commented on anyone else’s ears or dragged a knife slowly down anyone else’s throat or – well, really, Roche hadn’t paid much attention to anyone else at all, had he?

Iorveth bit his lip as something warm swelled in his chest. Maybe...maybe he should accept Roche’s offer.

What was the worst that could happen?

Coda: Iorveth and the Dragon

Here, Rinn signed as she stepped into Iorveth’s office. She dropped a sketch on his desk, but unlike her usual reports, this scene was clearly not from reality. In fact, it appeared to be–

“A dragon?” A smile pulled at Iorveth’s lips. Unlike dh’oine, elves saw dragons as the beautiful creatures they were. There had never been elven dragon hunters.

It’s you, Rinn grinned. See, he’s wearing your bandana!

Indeed, the detailed charcoal dragon did appear to be wearing a bandana. Looking closer, Iorveth could even see the edge of a scar going down the dragon’s snout. The dragon’s wings were spread in a silhouette that reminded Iorveth of his compound bow.

“It’s amazing,” Iorveth whispered, eyes roving across the sketch to take in all the details. “Why a dragon?”

Rinn shrugged. Dragons are cool.

Well, he couldn’t argue with that.

“Thank you,” he smiled widely at her. “I will treasure it.”

Rinn beamed at him before turning and jumping out the window. Considering his office was the highest point in Aindeoin, the way she easily jumped from branch to branch until vanishing from sight was quite impressive.

But not as impressive as Dragon Iorveth. He wondered if he could get it framed.

––

Years later, after Iorveth discovered Saskia’s true form, he showed her the picture Rinn had drawn him. She was impressed by how detailed the dragon was and praised Rinn’s skill.

That had been the moment Iorveth had decided to follow her.

#iorveth/roche #iorveth #vernon roche #the witcher #the witcher 2 #my fics #fic #writing #enemies to lovers #iorveth vernon roche

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