#capsize deathloop au

[coolcattime]

AU Snippet December: Day Eleven!

Capsize Deathloop AU!

The cutlass that stabbed through her gut was a devastating comedown that robbed Capsize of all the joy that she had gained this time around.

The shock and devastation of her original death once again flowed through her as the weapon was pulled from her and she fell backwards. She tried to fight it, to stay upright. But she was unceremoniously shoved to the ground.

The yelling began immediately, surrounding her. She was too busy staring in shock to pay attention to any of the words. 

It was her crew. She’d been stabbed by a member of her crew. By one of the men she’d spent every speck of energy to keep alive.

Mutinous bastards.

Sparklez was with them. Of course the idiot was. Seems him running his mouth had had far worse consequences for her than usual.

Tom was yelling for the other champions to come, telling them that Jordan and most of the pirates had gone crazy. Hopefully he and Mianite's two would save the three crew members actually loyal to her.

That hope was dashed as soon as she held it.

Redbeard fell next to her, a deep wound hacked into his face.

For the first time in these loops, she found herself watching the light leave her brother’s eyes. A new hellish grief that she had thought impossible to experience. One that she knew from how everything was fading, she was not going to have any time to process.

The only thing that stopped her from staring at his face, at the wound and his quickly fading life, was a purple light that completely covered everything. Bright, and blinding, and just a little too late.

The noise stopped all at once. No more yelling. An eerie silence.

“My Lady?!”

Ianite ignored her champion as she walked through the remains of traitorous men turned to ash. The cold anger of a deity mixed with the grief that one should never feel mixed into one, as she had unleashed all the power she had at once.

She walked to her messenger, and lifted her into her arms.

Next time, she reassured herself, she would not need to grieve.

[coolcattime]

hellooo! I’ve seen to be playing games lately where time looping is either a core aspect of the narrative and or the game mechanic, and now I’m just thinking about a capsize who keeps getting sent back to the beginning of her journey every time she dies. She just can’t seem to see her mission to it’s end and it just invigorates her to try again, try something else. She just can’t seem to get it right though.

A loop I think would be interesting is in one she manages to get the majority of her crew safely to the island. However, while she pursues a friendship with Tom, Jordan gets closer to the rest of her crew and actively bad mouths her mentioning that her closeness to Tom makes her a bad captain and unfit for the role (he makes it seem like they’re dating and she’s going to betray Ianite for Tom). This leads to Jordan accidentally leading a mutiny against her and those most loyal to her (Red & Rupert & Earl).

The loop almost directly after has her getting to the island early and ‘joining’ team dianite. The issue she finds herself here is that the heart of Ianite she wanted to steal back early has yet to appear in the nether, so she’s mostly bidding her time on the enemy team until then. She’d shown up at the same time as Sonja, so they have a slightly stronger connection towards each other cause of that. Especially because, technically from Sonja’s perspective, both of them don’t get paid much mind from their respective god. Sonja joins the shadows for real this time (they play a much more important role this loop than they do in any other). This is the foxsize loop, because them being ‘enemies’ even though they do not have it out for each other at all and them both pretending to be loyal to gods they aren’t loyal to is a funny dynamic. Unfortunately, the minute Capsize starts to help team Ianite is the minute she gets smited by Dianite, because pretending to have amnesia when you are the worlds shittiest lier is stupid actually. (He kept her on the team because she’s good at the whole chaos destruction violence thing, altho the needing to be hit first to hit back annoyed him to no end)

There’s like I think a bunch of loops until Capsize is hit with the realization that she’s probably never going to save Ianite, because to her she never got saved. There definitely could be a happy ending somewhere here, but eternally stuck looping such an interestingly awful fate that she did not deserve but got anyway.

Hi hi hi!

Oh my god, I love this idea so so so much!!!

Time loops are such a great concept for character journeys, especially because regardless of if it’s intentional or not they have an underlying feeling of horror.

Capsize being stuck in a time loop of being unable to save Ianite is just so good. Especially because I do think it would take a long long time for Capsize to get broken down enough to not try to save Ianite.

The mutiny idea is so good. I can fully see Jordan inciting one by complete accident with his attitude about Capsize and Tom’s friendship.

I see this as quite an early loop. Maybe one or two after the original (which I’m picturing as canon season one). Capsize believes that she’s genuinely figured something out, she’s got through the impossible ocean with the majority of her crew and feels this sense of relief that for once she doesn’t have the guilt of their deaths on her shoulders. And I imagine that relief almost makes it easier to fall into the familiar (to her) friendship with Tom, to ignore Jordan’s comments.

In my head, I think Ianite doesn’t physically show up in this version like she does in canon. She is still taking telepathically to Capsize, sometimes giving her messages to relay to the rest of her followers. This ends up making Jordan’s comments worse, as he’s confused as to why Ianite trusts her when she’s so close to Tom.

When Ianite does show it, it’s moments after it’s too late. The crew launch their ambush. Capsize watches as those most loyal to her are run through moments before a sword enters her own gut. She is barely clinging on as Ianite appears and uses every piece of strength she has to turn every mutinous soul to ash so only the champions and the dying Capsize are left in the room. Someone ends up holding her as she dies, but she’s too far gone to know who it is.

Capsize arriving early is the direct next loop. She wakes back home, back on Ianerea. Immediately she grabs her sword and all the potions she’s meant to save for something important. She heads to the tavern where she knows her crew drink and launches her own ambush.

There are screams and panic and everyone thinks she’s gone mad or broken under the pressure or that she’s just possessed somehow. But every ounce of relief she had in the previous loop for saving them burned into betrayal and turned to rage as she feels a terrible pleasure as she gets vengeance for something that hasn’t happened yet.

When she’s done, those who were still loyal to her looking at her in horror (there’s still concern somehow, but mostly horror). She ignores their shouts and calls and begging to listen to them as walks blood covered to the docks and just starts swimming. It’s illogical, but she’s come back from the dead enough times that she doesn’t even worry about not making it to the island. She wakes up on the beach, being welcomed by Tom, who upon seeing the bloodstains on her clothes knows exactly whose team she’s got to join.

And I think Capsize does have fun in this loop, despite having to lie about not remembering Ianite (something she’d be bad at even without her goddess half screaming at her in her head making the task harder) and the burning feeling in her throat everytime she has to call Dianite her Lord. She can actually let go and just have fun with Tom. She’s never presented as another Ianitee so Jordan is a lot less weird towards her and she can take out her rage at him without anyone batting an eye or saying to give him a chance because she’s on Team Dianite, obviously she would kill him.

And yes so much to this being the Foxxsize loop, she gets to spend so much more time with Sonja. And yes they’re “enemies” but both can tell that neither is actually loyal to the god that they’re following. But Sonja is a genuinely comforting presence, especially when somehow the three loyal members of her crew still turn up (she doesn’t understand how. She was always given the directions and there shouldn’t be enough of a crew left to sail the ship, but turn it they did) and she’s now lying to her own brother’s face that she doesn’t have any idea who he or their goddess is. Sonja’s easy to talk to, and they get a lot closer during all of this.

I think at some point, Sonja does try to subtly persuade Capsize over to the Shadows since she can tell that she’s unhappy following Dianite. Capsize doesn’t go for it, which unfortunately makes Sonja’s reaction to her getting smited all the worse. Admittedly Capsize doesn’t see much of it, but the gathering of shadows around her as she declares war on all the gods doesn’t seem great.

It takes a few more loops for her to realise that she is not going to save Ianite. She’s been chasing a futile mission that was never hers. And this hits her so hard. She wonders if she’s being punished for something, an idea that just leaves her feeling even more broken.

In my head, her realisation happens. And then she attempts to just recreate the first loop. She thinks that maybe if she just dies the way she was meant to, this will all end. And she dies once again by Furia’s hand. And she wakes up again.

The next loop, she just doesn’t leave Ianerea. She gives up on trying to save Ianite and instead decides to die alongside her home and maybe help some of the others escape. But during the attack, something strange happens.

She’s held at sword point by Furia and the guardian teleports her to the champion’s realm. They kill her in front of the champions. It’s nonsensical. It should've made no difference where she died, so why take her to the champions' realm to die in front of four people who are strangers to her in this reality?

And suddenly she has something new to figure out. If she’s actually going to be stuck looping forever, she might as well try to figure out the rules. And she finds that two things always seem to hold true:

She can’t save Ianite and will die before she is saved

She will always die on the champions’ island, even if that makes no sense

No matter what she does, those facts hold true as if the loop is controlled by those two facts. And while those facts are harrowing to her, in a way she takes meaning in them. Because maybe if she can figure out the actual why behind all of this, she can finally rest.