#dm if you want to plot

[mountaindmned]

Who were they? That taught you that? About ghosts, about… saving other people.

Jack almost considered not answering. He stirred the coals in the fire. The answer to that question was hours worth of storytelling. Right now, the focus was on Beth, on her upcoming choice. He wasn't one to sway her one way or the other.

Her life was her own to follow, and he was rebuilding the old traditions in his own way now.

But Jack had spoken the truth in those last two lines:

i sure could use the help,

&&

your brother needs you still.

Could remember Gramps, all spitting over the flames as he came across the pyre they'd built for Skye's ex. The way Hawk had set her shoulders, stared him dead in the eye, Jack and Bluebird holding onto either of Gramp's arms--

Skye missed. It was a tragedy. It happens. I saw it.

With a shotgun, Skye is only a hair less than you. Gramps snarling with his face all etched in orange from the pyre.

Jack swallowed a knot in his throat, looked away from the flames. Up towards the snow drifting in from the stone. They should move towards the cabin soon, he'd unchain the fence and unlock the door and tell her all about his family, at some point. At some point.

It was easier, for now, to focus on the new round of stupid kids about to invade the mountain. There's no room for history.

"Oh. Hawk was my little sister. Skye was too." Not in a way Beth would understand but, it was easier to just use that word. "Gramps was big on saving everyone. No matter what. It was out duty." He held out his wrist, the brand on his forearm visible. "It's what this means. It's... An old tradition. You don't have one--" he hesitated, unsure if he should add the last bit stuck on his tongue. Finally says it anyway.

"You don't have it yet. Y'dont need one, not unless you want. We're, I'm... I'm starting from scratch now, there's... What's that phrase you used? There's wiggle room. But, uh. Once upon a time, this mark meant we saved everyone. Even if they were... Horrible. There's this woman, Sarah, she lived on the mountain awhile back and she ran off after... Well. Skye and Sarah both tested the rules of the brand. I think after Sarah, Gramps went a bit softer on Skye. Numbers were dwindling and he knew he'd lose Hawk too." He ran a hand through his hair. "Anyway. Anyway..." He thinned his lips. It felt so strange, talking about it. Opening up old wounds like this. "A-ny-way."

"I'm not going to make you a Fiddler if you don't want it. I'm perfectly fine with Beth Washington, so long as... so long as someone is helping, I guess." Hates the desperation, some sort of way Gramps must have felt. Bending the rules to keep the numbers. Needing people, sacrificing tradition. Where had that gotten them!?

Jack was the last Fiddler left. God what a spiral.

"Anyway. Uh. Sorry."

"But, I guess it was a compromise. Skye and Hawk twisting Gramps into changing the rules. If you're going to be haunted by a ghost, make sure it's one you want around."

Always just, hollowing out themselves for the sake of staying alive. Give an inch, another inch, another...

am I already that?

Jack hummed. "If you spend your whole life just angry, looking for vengeance... you might be. That's part of why Gramps had the rules.

"You're part of something bigger. Or, Fiddlers anyway. Mad Dogs. There's the spark that ignites the fire, sure. But the fire has different tongues of flame all destroying as a whole. There's a unity in that. You're not a person, you're part of a pack, a collective -- it-- I guess it doesn't apply much now. Just you and me. But..."

He leaned forward over the fire, a storytellers air. "The reason we're called Mad Dogs. There's a painting in the library of the night we first defeated the Damned. Mind you, this was my grandpa Joseph, not me. It's a bunch of teenagers, all gripping each other tight as they can. you can see their knuckles white. They're all so happy they survived, mostly. They all started dancing in the streets, laughing like mad dogs barking. A wildfire blazed in the background, their eyes and toothy smiles all painted orange.

"They'd lived. So they clung to the survivors. Gramps, he, he carried that. Taught it to our parents and to us. In numbers, we survive.

"The way you don't become like that.... You have other people around you. At least you're going mad together, I guess is what I'm saying.

"The girl in your book, she pushed everyone away, didn't she? She got obsessed because no one could distract her, pull her out of it. That's why you see me playing fiddle or, or fixing the truck or cooking. You have to have a life outside of the pain. You have to. I'm damn sorry I don't have a pack anymore, I think it would do you good.

"You've still got your brother. He needs saving, doesn't he?"

Maybe, he'll take her down to see Sarah or Kira, maybe that would help. Kira is about her age.

"There were times when we didn't see eye to eye. Me and Gramps or Skye or, hell even Hawk. But we still have a history. We've been through shit no one understands. It's a pack mentally, the.... Outside and those inside. These kids.... They hurt you, I get that. Trust me. But you all know each other. You can't replace that. It means something, even if it means something terrible."

He threw the last orange peel into the fire with a scowl. "But, I'm just a crazy old kook who lives on a mountain. I don't have answers."

One. He could hear Hawk whistle at him, in those moments when he woke with his sleeping bag cold with terror-sweat. The meaning as clear as the ice on Hannah's eyelids. You saved at least one. Trying to comfort him from beyond the stars.

Jesus. Jack listened, bit back the rants about technology and cruelty. No. He just listened, he'd asked, it was only right to help carry the grief pouring out.

He took the orange peel in his hands and twisted it, ripping it restlessly. Monsters came in all shapes and sizes. Remembered how Hawk had first introduced Skye to the mountain. A car almost out of gas, a shiner and a split lip. She needs help, she needs to heal. Hawk had argued. Gramps simply asked if she could throw a few logs on the fire. Hawk buzzed around her the entire night, hands on shoulders and a glare at anyone who came too close.

Prank. Skye had taught him that word, wasn't used much on the mountain. He still didn't understand it. There were a lot of words he didn't understand but it didn't exactly bother him. Dumping a bucket of water on someone, spooking them by jumping out somewhere. No. Things worked different on the mountain. Water couldn't be wasted like that, spooking someone might get you punched. Worst was some scary stories around the campfire. Their lives were filled enough with panic and fear. Fear was a sacred tool. Not something fun. The life up here was so sharply divided into joy and terror. It wasn't welcome to taint one with the other.

"Doesn't sound like a prank to me." Sounded like the kind of thing you'd shoot someone over.

He wondered, sure maybe a little bitter: what kind of cushy, sheltered lives had these kids had, to think that sort of thing was funny? He worked his jaw, threw a few bits of orange peel into the fire.

He looked up. Looked Beth in the eye as her voice grew darker. Could see Hawk in the way she held her anger, saw Skye in the chase for injustice. In the flickering fire, saw both sitting next to her, hands on Beth's shoulders.

"I can't say I disagree." He looked off at Hawk, saw her nod. He stirred the fire. "They don't sound like they deserve saving. I'm not going to kick you out because you don't want to save them." She doesn't have her mark yet anyway. But, it's not as if Gramps is around to care much even if she did have it. Life up here is too thin and haggard for any sort of hard rules anymore.

And no one had cared much when Skye had 'missed' that shot. They'd burned the body, left no questions asked.

"But I'm going anyway. The way I grew up-- I'm not saying you gotta agree with it-- we save everyone. It's not some high ground, it's just easier to sleep at night. If you're going to have ghosts haunting you, might as well be people you want sticking around.

"Besides. You've got to keep your brother safe, right?"

[dojunie]

dojun wip update with snippets...!

→ swimming for dummies; ljn

current wc: 30k

est finished wc: possibly 40k… and… and i’m already working on a part 2…

info update: in my top 3 as far as writing priority goes, stuck in a mental block with the last scene before the ‘ending’ (also possible retitle incoming lol)

snippet ↓

→ misdial; ljn

current wc: 58k

est finished wc: 70k-75k

info update: again, very big writers block, i’m realizing that i don’t actually like the current trajectory of this plot so im struggling between rewriting it completely or trying to fandangle what i DO like about it into a something that makes more realistic sense

snippet ↓

→ misdial, the lake house; njm

current wc: 24k

est finished wc: 35K

info update: high prio! i’m having fun writing this so it’s coming to me easier. no current writers block, just a little hard to sit down and concentrate…

snippet ↓

→ courtside; ljn or njm (itwd retitle/rewrite)

current wc: 61k

est finished wc: 80k-90k

info update: still my pride and joy. this is not coming any time soon LOL, but i am actually having a lot of fun with this one too… struggling between maybe posting the first chapter and seeing how it does (but worrying about people getting bored waiting between updates…) or sucking it up and waiting to post it only until its completely finished (which will be in 2026 by this rate…)

snippet ↓

and, secretly, a new contender to the board…

→ overnight gamer; ldh

current wc: 31k

est finished wc: girl idk. rough ballpark, 50k, but that sounds like wishful thinking even to me

info update: not really an update bc i’ve never posted about this on here before but here is half the reason i’ve been so slow with working on everything else… hello, gamer haechan brainrot!

snippet ↓

authors note: so! hello my friends :D i've been mia for a little bit because every time i go away for a while i get nervous to come back LOL but... i've been writing! so i thought it might be nice to post a little update so you all don't think i've died or anything

[louissatturi]

Do you guys know those modern bingyuan au's where shen yuan sees modern lbh and just stalks him because he looks identical to his blobo luo binghe from PIDW?

Sooo imagine a cumplane au where shen yuan see Airplane in a convention running to do some odd job there and sy is just dumbfounded how almost identical that random is to luo binghe (at least how he imagines him)

Now that random ofc has alot of diferences to how lbh is mostly depicted, first of all the random is fully human so no demon features, the guy instead of being tall and lean with some muscle he is a shorty (he is not short he is 172/5'8 he is avarege) that is kinda chubby and his hair is not abyss black but a shitty dyed brown hair and him being a normal human he has very prominent eye bags and some acne scars but besides those diferences he was basicly identical to how lbh was depicted in his fanarts even having some of his headcannons that ware extremely unpopular on the fandom! (Frackles) he wasn't as scary as the beloved cruel demon emperor but he had hit all the boxes to be the perfect luo binghe in his white lotus era! And like any normal pidw fan he just really wanted to protect and take care of him

And like any normal person he really tried to find him but it was really hard to stalk someone when you didn't even got the name of the person, frustrated he decided to do the next best thing and just decided to take care of airplane, it's the best next thing right?

Airplane after getting the weirdest and shadiest dm from one of his haters, perless cucumber, to be his roommate and in exchange he would have to write "actually good chapters" and since if he died he wouldn't have to pay any bills, he accepted this offer

After they decided to meet at a random Café shen yuan has a closet gay crises over airplane being the white lotus binghe clone and airplane has a gay crises over his biggest hater being almost his type (especially cucumber-bro being a tsundere and airplane being a big masochist) and then they settle being weird roommates together!

This au would basicly be shen yuan trying to be a good bro and being a bunch of red flags but luckily for him Airplane bro favorite color since he is lbh og source and the au is a comedy so it's okay to be creepy lol

Also footnote, airplanes name in this fic wouldn’t be shang qinghua (because I enjoy the idea of sqh being very diferent then irl Airplane in appearance and name) his name would be

洛冬快 Aka: Luo DongKuai because I wanted to mix shang qinghua's name logic with Luo binghe's lol (with 冬 dong meaning winter, and 快 kuai meaning speed, this is what my limited Chinese could come up with lol)

Also other footnote because I noticed a weird trend of country's with low fertility rates just decide to just put babies in brazilian woman and because I am brazilian, Airplane bro is part brazilian by his mom's side! I just think it's neat!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Screaming from the crypt (or how the past haunts the present on Midnights)

I know it's been discussed so much since Midnights came out but just.

I love how there is such a clear narrative throughout the album (and perhaps especially on the 3am/Vault tracks). About questioning and regret and choices and coming to terms with all of it. It is one long story about how we're all a mosaic of the choices we make, each one taking something from us and leaving something else in its place.

(And now a disclaimer: I'm looking at this mostly through a narrator/subject lens, and trying not to dive too deeply into real-life events or speculation except for in a general sense. For this purpose I like to look at the body of work as art, like literature, because I find it makes it easier to see the common threads in the different songs and cohesion in the narrative.)

In looking at the 3am+ tracks in particular, it's fascinating how some turns of phrases or themes repeat themselves in different songs, in different contexts. (I'm only focusing on the non-standard tracks because there are too many songs and I'd be here all day but I bet I could do a part two lol.) I know many people have pointed out the parallels throughout her discography already and I’m not saying anything groundbreaking by writing this, but I love how these parallels run through in the same album, because it makes it seem like it's one long story, or at least, one long rumination on many different stories that are coalescing into a single narrative.

Battle (let’s go)

For instance, the one that jumped out at me when I started writing this post the other week was, "Tore your banners down, took the battle underground," in The Great War and "If clarity's in death, then why won't this die? Years of tearing down our banners, you and I," in Would've, Could've Should've. It's a story about staying stuck in the same cycle of reliving trauma and coping mechanisms and bad habits over and over again and fantasizing about how taking the “antagonist” out and gaining the upper hand for good would bring closure (WCS), but the truth is that nothing ever will. All that cycle does, though, is repeat itself in other situations, and in this case pushes someone away the narrator cares for (TGW). The difference is that the imagined battle in WCS is a two-way street in her mind (that is ultimately unwinnable because it was never a fair fight), but in TGW it's one-sided -- she's the one fighting dirty, taking shots, the way she'd been doing in her imagination (or nightmares) all these years. But the person in front of her isn't fighting back the way the person in her mind in WCS would, because their intentions are honourable instead of exploitative.

And that's paralleled in another pair of lyrics from the two songs, "And maybe it's the past talking, screaming from the crypt, telling me to punish you for things you never did," (in TGW) and "The tomb won't close, I fight with you in my sleep," (in WCS). In both cases, the funeral imagery makes it seem like this past event should be dead and buried in WCS, but it keeps rising from the dead, haunting her no matter what she does and in TGW, another (or perhaps the same?) tomb that won't close keeps unleashing new ways to hurt her and in turn the new person in her life. In other words, the trauma from the past continues to bleed into the present.

(Again from a literary point of view, I'm not saying the events of the two songs are linked IRL, but they're fascinating textual parallels on the album as a string of chapters, which is why Dear Reader is so compelling, but that's a whole other essay.)

To keep the battle motif going, there’s yet another parallel, this time between TGW’s "[You were a] soldier down on that icy ground, looked up at me with honor and truth," and You’re Losing Me’s "All I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, fighting in only your army.” In the former, the subject is laying down his armour in the war she’s projecting onto him, waving the white flag, and she realizes that she’s about to destroy something if she doesn’t put her sword down too. By the time we get to YLM, the roles are almost reversed; at the very least they’re supposed to be on the same team, but in this case she’s doing all the heavy lifting, fighting for their relationship in contrast to his apathy killing it. It’s also pretty interesting (if not outright intentional) that one of the 3am+ editions of the albums starts with The Great War, where they find themselves in conflict (even if it’s in her head) that ends in a truce, and ends with You’re Losing Me signalling the end of the relationship, evidence that the resolution in the first song wasn’t an ending but merely a ceasefire before the last battle.

Putting the rest under a cut because this is waaaaay too long now ⤵️

(There’s also another metaphor there in The Great War with its battle imagery: World War I, aka The Great War, was supposed to be the war to end all wars, because loss on its scale was never seen before and when it ended, most thought never again would the world embroil itself in such battle, the horrors and implications were so devastating. Two decades later, the world found itself in WWII, with an even larger scope and more horrific consequences, the intervening time between the two a period of festering conflicts and resentment leading to some of the worst acts the world would see. Bringing real life into it for a second, there’s something a little poetic, though sad, about The Great War the song being about a fight that could have ended the relationship that they ultimately resolved and was meant to be evidence of the strength of their love, but so too did it end up being a period of détente, the greater battle coming for them years later. But that is not the point of this post.)

If one thing had been different

Another major theme in these editions is pondering the "what ifs?" of life, but I think it takes on even more significance in the broader context of the album in the lyrics of "I'm never gonna meet what could've been, would've been, should've been you," in Bigger than the Whole Sky and the repetition of would've/could've in Would've, Could've, Should've (I would've looked away at the first glance, I would've stayed on my knees, I would've gone along with the righteous, I could've gone on as I was, would've could've should've if I'd only played it safe, etc.) In both songs, the narrator is mourning an alternate course their life could have taken* and questioning what they could have done differently, in the aftermath of trauma and loss, and the regret that comes with that loss, and with the loss of agency in the situation because ultimately it was never in their hands. In an album full of questions, wondering about the path not taken, or the forks in the road that have led to a different version of your life, it's digging deeper into the contrast of choice vs. fate, action vs. reaction, dwelling on the past vs. moving on. When you're supposed to let go of the past, what do you do when it is holding your future hostage?

(*I know there are different interpretations/speculation about BTTWS which I am not getting into on main. I'm just saying that whatever the song is about, it's grieving something that never came to be. The literal origin of the song is less important to the album than the sense of loss it portrays. Whatever the inspiration is, it's crafted to tell part of the story of Midnights of ruminating over how, to borrow from her previous work, if one thing had been different, would everything be different?)

(Also I was today years old when I realized that the words are inverted in the two songs. Apparently I've been hearing BTTWS wrong this whole time.)

There's also an interesting tangent in the role of faith in both songs: in WCS, the events of the story cause her to lose her faith (e.g. "All I used to do was pray," "you're a crisis of my faith,") and question all the things she felt had been unquestionable until that point in her life (e.g. "I could have gone along with the righteous"), whereas in BTTWS, she questions whether that very lack of faith is to blame for the loss in that song ("did some force take you because I didn't pray? [...] It's not meant to be, so I'll say words I don't believe"). It's like pinpointing the moment her life changed and upended her beliefs (WCS), but as a result then leaving her unmoored in times of crisis because ultimately there's no explanation or comfort to be taken from what she used to hold true before that (BTTWS). The words she once relied upon to guide her have long since lost their meaning, but in times of trouble it leaves her wondering if that faith she once held then lost could have prevented this pain.

(Shoutout to WCS for being Catholic guilt personified lol.)

To keep on with the vaguely faith-y notions, an obvious parallel is the line in Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve about, “I damn sure never would've danced with the devil at nineteen,” and, "When you aim at the devil, make sure you don't miss," in Dear Reader. All of WCS is about her fighting with an antagonist who haunts her, with whom she wholly regrets ever becoming involved. DR could be seen as a reflection on that fall from grace, warning the audience that if you choose to go after the person (or thing) haunting you, make sure you do so clearheaded enough to be decisive. Again, these “devils” may not be related in real life: the IRL devil in DR could be speaking about her naysayers, or Kim*ye, or Scott & Scooter B, etc., meaning not to cross your enemies until you know you can win. But taking real life out of it and looking at it textually, I am intrigued by the link between WCS and DR, so that’s what I’m going with here. And perhaps that’s even the point in a wider sense; there will be multiple “devils” in your life, or threats to your well-being. If you’re going to commit to taking them down — whether it’s an actual person, or the demons inside you that refuse to let you go — make sure you have the right ammo so that they can no longer hurt you. (Of course, one lesson from these experiences is that sometimes you can’t win, and you have to live with the fallout.)

(Sidebar: I know that “dancing with the devil” is a turn of phrase that means being led into temptation and engaging in risky behaviour, as opposed to describing the actual person. Given the religious metaphors in the song, that could very well be/is the intention, particularly when it’s preceded by, “I would have stayed on my knees” as in she would have continued to follow her faith — in whatever sense that means — had she never met this person, which could also be a more eloquent way of saying she would have continued to be live her life in a way that was righteous (even naive) and seen the world in black and white. Either way, it’s a force she wholly rejects. Like I said, multiple devils, same fight.)

Regret comes up too: in WCS, she says, "I regret you all the time," obviously directed at the person who manipulated her and led to her perceived downfall, citing him as the one impulse she wished she'd never followed, because it won't leave her no matter how hard she’s tried. In High Infidelity, she tells the person to, "put on your records and regret me," and on the surface, it’s like she’s turning the tables, painting herself as the one now causing the regret in someone else, the one inflicting the pain this time. Yet the verse preceding it and the lines following it in the chorus depict a partner who is also emotionally manipulative and vindictive like in WCS (“you said I was freeloading, I didn’t know you were keeping count,” “put on your headphones and burn my city,”). It’s not so much that she’s intentionally harming the person (the way the person in WCS does to her), but rather that the venom in the subject’s feelings towards her seeps through; she’s imagining the way he’s going to feel about her when she leaves, hating her just for by being who she is. (There could be another tangent about how in both songs she’s there to be a “token” in a game for both of the men, who play her for their own purposes.) The regret is dripping with disdain. It’s as though she’s picturing how the person is going to hate her for doing what she’s thinking of doing the way she hates the person who first hurt her.

Sadness, unsurprisingly, shows up in a few lyrics. In BTTWS, “Everything I touch becomes sick with sadness,” sets the scene of a person so overcome with grief that it permeates everything around them; they cannot see their way out of it and feel like the fog will never lift. In Hits Different, it’s, “My sadness is contagious,” the result of a breakup where the person’s grief again touches everything and everyone around them, pushing them further in their despair and loneliness. The reason behind the grief in either case may vary, but regardless of the source, the feeling is overpowering and isolating. They may be different chapters in the story, but the devastation is hauntingly familiar. (As is a recurring theme in Midnights as a whole: there are situations and feelings that present themselves at different points in her journey and colour in the lines in different ways along the road. Like revisiting an old vice and realizing the hit isn’t quite the same as it was in the past.)

Death by a thousand cuts

She also writes about wounds on this album, which isn't surprising I suppose given that the whole conceit is that these are things that have kept her up at night over the years. WCS is perhaps the driving narrative on this never ending hurt when she sings, “The wound won't close, I keep on waiting for a sign, I regret you all the time,” suggesting that no matter what she does, the pain of this experience has permeated everything she’s done afterwards. (Not unlike the overwhelming grief in BTTWS, for instance.) Elsewhere, in High Infidelity she sings, "Lock broken, slur spoken, wound open, game token," and in Hits Different, "Make it make some sense why the wound is still bleeding.” Again I'm not suggesting they're about the same events; the line in HI is about a situation where a partner crosses a boundary, hits below the belt, picks at an insecurity (or creates a new one) and treats the relationship like it's transactional, opening the floodgates in turn. In HD, the wound seems to be more self-inflicted, where she's pushed the person away. (Over a situation real or imagined she feels she needs distance from.) But again, something has picked at her like a raw nerve, and just like in the past, she's hurting, even in a different time and place and person. Almost like the wounds of the past break open over and over again to create new scars. If one were to extrapolate further, it wouldn’t be the biggest leap to wonder if the wound open in WCS, then torn apart in HI makes the one in HD hurt even more.

(I once wrote a post about how I think as time goes on, WCS is going to turn into one of those songs that will be found to drive so much of her work, because it’s just… kind of the unsaid thesis statement of so much of her songwriting.)

Another repeated theme is that of the empty home and loneliness. In High Infidelity, she sings, "At the house lonely, good money I'd pay if you just know me, seemed like the right thing at the time," painting a picture of someone who may have everything they'd want to the outside world, but in reality feels metaphorically trapped in their home (or at least alone amidst abundance), a symbol of a relationship gone sour and a failure to build connection. She just wants someone to understand her, want her for her, but as she's written earlier in the song, she's just a pawn in the game, a trophy from the hunt. Home, in this case, is lonely, isolated, an emblem of her fears. In Dear Reader, she continues this thread, then singing, "You wouldn't take my word for it if you knew who was talking, if you knew where I was walking, to a house not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there, where I pace in my pen and my friends found friends who care, no one sees you lose when you're playing solitaire." It's the same idea, admitting to listeners that the gilded cage she lived in kept her distanced from her loved ones and real connection, keeping her struggles close to the vest but feeling desperately lonely amidst her crowning success. She's pushed people away and it may have felt like the right thing at the time, but in the end maybe felt like she was trapped. And when you push people away, eventually they take you at your word and stop pushing back; you’re a victim of your own success at isolating yourself. What starts out of self-preservation then further perpetuates the underlying problems.

(There's another interesting link about "home" also feeling unsafe with HI's "Your picket fence is sharp as knives," which further leads into the theme of marriage/domesticity feeling dangerous, which is a whole other thing I won't get into here because it's another discussion and may derail this already gargantuan word salad.)

In a slightly similar vein, we have the metaphor of bad weather for a rocky road or unstable relationship, in High Infidelity again with, "Storm coming, good husband, bad omen, dragged my feet right down the aisle" and You’re Losing Me’s "every morning I glared at you with storms in my eyes.” They aren’t speaking of the same situation or even same kind of breakdown, but it is pretty interesting how the idea of clouds/storms/floods/etc. play such a role in Taylor’s music to signal depression, apprehension, fear, uncertainty, etc. In HI, I think the “storm” coming is the looming threat of commitment to a partner who makes the narrator uneasy (if not fearful). In this case, the idea of making a life with this person is not one that incites joy or comfort, but instead makes the narrator feel that dark times are ahead if she continues down this path. Perhaps in some way, the “storms” in YLM have made good on the threat in HI in a different way; it’s a different home, a different relationship, but the clouds have settled in regardless, and some of her fears have come to fruition in ways she did not expect. The person she once trusted no longer sees her or her struggles (or worse, doesn’t care), and the resentment and pain build with each passing day.

Coming back to heartbreak, one of the obvious "full circle" moments is the beginning of a relationship in Paris, where she says that, "I'm so in love that I might stop breathing," clearly enthralled in a new love that allows her to shut the world out and grow in private, capturing the all-encompassing nature of the relationship. This infatuation has consumed her in the most wonderful way (in contrast to the sorrow of some of the previous songs), and it feels like a life-altering (or even life-sustaining?) force that is so strong she may forget what it’s like to breathe. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) By the end of the album, though, in You're Losing Me, that heart-stopping love has become a threat: "my heart won't start anymore for you." In the former, her racing heart is full of excitement, but by the latter, her heart has given out completely under the weight of the pain she bears. (YLM is full of death/illness imagery which I already wrote about awhile ago so I won't hear, but needless to say that song deserves its own essay for so many reasons.) She's gone from the unbridled joy of the beginnings of a relationship to the unrelenting sorrow of its end, two sides of the same coin.

Love as death appears elsewhere in the music too, for instance, in High Infidelity’s, “You know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love, the slowest way is never loving them enough" and You’re Losing Me’s “How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dying? […] My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick.” Though not completely analogous situations, they both tell the tale of one partner’s apathy (or at least denial) destroying the other. In the former, the partner’s actions (or inaction) are more insidious, if not sinister; in the latter, the lack of momentum (or admission of a problem) is passive. In both cases, the end result is the narrator’s demise; it’s a drawn out affair that chips away at her morale and her health and her sense of self. (Breaking my own rule about bringing in alleged actual events into the discussion, but the idea that the relationship in High Infidelity, which was obviously fraught with unease and even fear, ended in a similarly excruciatingly slow and hurtful death by a thousand cuts as the relationship in You’re Losing Me almost did at that time must have been so painful. It almost feels like YLM is wondering why what used to be a source of light in her life was mirroring a situation that caused her such pain in the past.)

From the same little breaks in your soul

I said early on that part of what is so compelling about Midnights is that it feels like an album about ruminating — on choices, on events, on people — and the two final “bonus” tracks of the album depict that as well. In Hits Different, she sings that, “they say if it’s right, you know,” an ode to the confusion of a breakup and struggling with the aftermath of calling it quits. It’s a line that has always intrigued me, because the typical use of the phrase is in the sense of, “you’ll know when you meet the one,” but here it seems to have a double meaning, a reassurance perhaps from the friends (who later on tell her that "love is a lie") that she’ll know if she’s made the right decision in calling it off, but could also be her wondering if the relationship is right, she’ll know, and want to reconcile. In the final bonus track, You’re Losing Me, she sings, “now I just sit in the dark and wonder if it’s time,” this time leaving no doubt about the dilemma she faces, though it’s no less fraught. She’s wondering, perhaps for the last time, if now is finally the moment to end the relationship for good. They say that if it’s right she’ll know, and now she’s wondering if that feeling inside her (that once told her her partner was the one, which is why it hit differently), is telling her that it’s time to go for good. Wait Alexa play “It’s Time To Go.” These are not only the things that keep her up at night, but the things that play over in her mind like a film reel in her waking hours.

Midnights as a whole is a deeply personal album, as is most of Taylor's work, but the 3am+ edition tracks seem to dig even deeper to a lot of the issues raised on the standard album. Almost like the standard tracks are the things she wonders about on sleepless nights, but the bonus tracks are the things that haunt her in the aftermath. The regret, anger, sadness, grief, relief, even joy— they’re the price she pays for the memories she keeps reliving. Midnights might be the most cohesive narrative of all her albums, and really does feel like we’re watching someone work through her journal over time, stopping short of outright naming those giant fears and intrusive thoughts (except for when she does) but making them plain as day when you connect the songs together, and perhaps never more clearly than in the expanded album. It’s incredible how the songs stand on their own to relay a specific moment in time, but that they are also self-referential to each other (whether thematically or overtly) to weave a larger web over the entire work. We’re so lucky as fans to have these stories and to keep peeling back these layers as time passes. (And my literature-analysis-loving ass loves her even more for it.)

This is obviously by no means an exhaustive list, and I know there are more parallels and probably even stronger links (particularly when you add the standard version into the mix), but these were the ones that particularly struck me and I’m just glad I’ve had a chance to sit with this and think it through. ❤️

[waitineedaname]

feeling completely insane about The Author And His Protagonist™️ this morning and now I'm thinking about bingqiu too, and like. Airplane of course wrote Luo Binghe to be everything he wasn't, this cool and powerful stallion protagonist. And he also wrote him to be what the readers wanted, especially as time went on. But there's bit of himself embedded in Binghe -- his insecurities, his fear of abandonment, his loneliness, his hunger for love. Those vulnerabilities are hidden away under layers of strength and stallion badassery in PIDW, but for Bingmei, they're laid bare and ratcheted up to eleven

And then Shen Yuan. He of course loved Luo Binghe The Protagonist™️ but he fell in love with Luo Binghe, the real person with insecurities and fears and strange ugly edges to his personality. He saw this carnival mirror reflection of Airplane's flaws, and he wanted nothing more than to wrap Binghe up and love him and care for him and soothe those insecurities

If I was Airplane, bingqiu would be like therapy for me

[vaperarmand]

what is Your take on the show possibly doing past dm in its entirety like how do you think it could be carried out cause i feel like everyone's main gripes are that it'll somehow fuck w the show's integrity/daniel couldn't possibly have forgotten Everything/it doesn't make sense with the storyline we currently have. i'm v curious as someone who loves the direction the show is taking but also wants to see assad and lbf devil their minions

first of all it's a little crazy to me that it could fuck with the show's integrity when the show in question is literally the "memory is a monster" show. like. regardless how you feel about the fact that the show did this they literally spent the last episode going "yeah the guy you think is the villain actually isn't, and everybody just fucking forgot or didn't know to begin with. which is how he got away with it." and keep in mind the villain in question is the guy who has been consistently erasing everybody's memories for fun and his own personal gain. so like. i think the show will survive if they introduce a romance b-plot and do so by saying "yup! daniel forgot before because armand made him!" anyway.

the one thing i'm curious about is the fact that in the books devil's minion era is intrinsically linked with lestat's show and akasha and so on and so forth. which it won't be in the show to the same degree because lestat isn't a rockstar in 1985. and by the time he is daniel is already a vampire. so it'll be interesting to see if that somehow is the defining factor of if/how they do it.

in terms of daniel and armand's relationship though i think it works really well? like i think it's very easy to say that in 1985 armand wiped daniel's memories instead of made him a vampire. i love the idea that night island happens, then daniel starts running away, and there's some overlap with his relationship with alice and armand. very easy for armand to see daniel in a near-death OD type situation and say yeah, nope, this is not happening again, we're breaking up and you can't remember me. (the breakup could happen a bunch of different ways also which maybe they'll go with! but i'm just sticking as close to book canon as i can rn) i think the trajectory of the relationship could stay just about the same. i think the one potential difference is like. well what happens after 1985? which is why i've really come to like the idea that in show verse there's the possibility of armand visiting daniel throughout the years until dubai happens. this potentially is where things get goofy, like. armand just restoring and deleting daniel's memories over and over again kind of like a cartoon villain. but iiiii like it for the fact that it implies armand can't stay away from him. and they'll be in love forever. i could probably talk about this forever but to sum it up like yeah. i think it could very realistically work. i think whatever they do will be compelling to me but i do feel just a little bit you can pry 70s-80s devil's minion out of my cold dead hands

[minamill]

hopefully i'm not jinxing it, but at some point in this story/gp thing i'm going to need three members of a queer punk band for a brief apperance and maybe some mutuals would be open to making them? 👀

[crossbackpoke-check]

tagged by ko @tofumilanesa for wip wednesday! big shout out to writevember for making me feel like i can actually call any of these works in progress… your guide to my emoji code under the cut

wip!

🪻🐈‍⬛ - the doc title is still just. YOWLING but i am like 7/8 of the way done with omega yamo fic and hopefully salem isn’t reading this so i can just drop it over a year later with no warning <3

🫃2️⃣ - DEWEY^2 P2!!!! she is almost done (i am lying) but she is so close i can almost taste it. sorry to my pwp that grew its own feelings baby

😇🤭 (🕒 -> 🕜) - rip i’m not telling you about this one until it’s posted but it IS complete aside from being ao3 formatted and the eight billion edits i inevitably do right before full-sending it

☁️💧 - cloud petey fic, which exists mostly as an embarrassingly large tag on a different blog and is condensing into a narrative about as well as water at 30° N/S. the time loop fic also falls under this description

eternally in progress (short list)

🌑🐕 - tyler borzoituzzi exists… there is an index of scenes/plot points… it plays like a movie in my head…

💯❕- fantastic! ‘verse

���️👻 - stevie brandon seeing ghosts au, which has eight different (now nine i guess but you haven't seen the mustache adam post yet) plots. sorry

just. rotating like a microwave

🍎 - because they didn’t have a pomegranate emoji, this is what i used for the fic that feels like it should be a 50k connor bedard character study hanif abdurraqib/cathal kelly thesis about legends and mythmaking in sports and eating your young. yes i know pomegranates aren’t actually pomes and apples are but it’s fine

🦈 - the one cat da fuck they doing over there meme but about the sharks just like. in general. more on this at five

tagging @colap1nto, @songsandswords, @whitenikes, @gordiemeow, @acheronist, and anybody else who wants to share!!

[nursewashing]

so many thoughts and feelings about anya's ptsd that i need to delve into... 👉👈

[brokendreamscreation]

@lettherebemonsters for a Lil Lucid Verse thread)

Anxious hands pick up the wailing cherub from the cradle, the angel shushing him. As one of the staff members that serves the high council and archangels, she is tasked to take on any request from her superiors. But to babysit a baby angel is not something she imagined ever doing. It’s not like they’re a common sight in Heaven, let alone with any instruction. And to her shock, the superiors appear to be equally as clueless.

“Please stop crying, little one. You’re giving me quite the headache.” The angels plea goes answered with another hiccup and wail, shimmering starry tears rolling down his apple mark cheeks. Even with the doors closed, the babies cries can be heard in the hall of the citadel.

[cielsmuses]

hey y'all, i'm still alive just in the middle of moving lol I'll be active again soon, prommy <3

[keepswingin]

Skz Minho + Paranoia by Kang Daniel, 1500 words or less

The rain wakes him, pounding against the covered window beside his bed. 

He turns his head and stares at the wooden planks that cover it for a long moment, waiting for thunder to follow. Lightning flashes through the lingering cracks between the planks that he never bothered to cover, and he sits up, shivers shooting down his spine, eyes fixated.

He waits, and waits longer, heartbeat growing loud in his ears, nearly drowning out the storm. There's a loud crash of thunder that feels as though it shakes the house, lightning, and then he sees it again, through the tiny gaps in the planks, trying to push through. 

He jumps up and runs to the kitchen, blindly searching for something, anything, stumbling over his feet, pricking his fingers, before he finds a knife and bolts back into the bedroom, brandishing it at the rotted fingers that try to claw their way through the boarded window. 

His chest feels tight, and it's hard to breathe, hard to think, but he needs to go to it, he needs to kill it, kill it before it gets inside and kills him - 

"Jagiya?" 

Han calls from his right, voice muffled by the blanket he has tucked up to his chin. When there's no answer, the sheets shuffle with his groggy movement. "Minho?" 

The knife trembles in Minho's grip. When he looks back at the window and waits for the lightning to flash again, the fingers are gone. It's just them. Nothing is trying to get in. "I'm - I'm here," Minho whispers, willing his voice not to shake. "I'm here." 

Han makes a soft noise that's meant to be a confirmation. 

"Come back to bed," he mumbles, and Minho exhales, hand lowering to his side. He slides the knife under his pillow as he climbs back into bed, and tries to pretend that he doesn't feel something else watching his back as he curls around Han once more. 

x

It's always hard to bring himself to unlock the door, his hands shaking as he reaches for the final bolt just beneath the doorknob. Han is already hidden away in the basement, something he does now without being asked, Minho locking the door behind him.

Han hadn't understood it at first, why Minho had asked such a thing of him, but then the older had explained, breathless and trembling behind a hot cup of tea. 

The air outside wasn't safe for someone like Han, someone with skin untouched by a toxic sun. It isn't safe to breathe, to look, to be near, and Minho's skin was used to the ashes, to the radiation and ruin and rejection of a planet that never recovered. His skin wouldn't bubble or bruise or seep, but Han's would, and he needed to go down into the basement to be safe whenever Minho went to open the door. 

Han always needed to be safe. 

Minho couldn't protect him from the world ending, but he could protect him from this. 

The door sticks to the molding when he tries to tug it open - the Earth was too hot now, too cold later, too inhabitable for anyone but them - he gives it a shove of his shoulder, heart stuck in his throat, and staggers outside. 

He looks around, takes it all in, and nearly chokes on the acid taste of the air. The troves of rumble and rock and remains. He tumbles backwards, slamming the door shut behind him less than a second later, breathing heavily, tears in his eyes. 

There was no outside anymore, no matter how many times he checks. There is nowhere for them to go. They need to stay here. They need to keep staying here. 

He needs to keep Han safe.

x

"Minho," Han calls, thumbing through an old book that predicts a world of gentle ocean waves and lush, endless forests. Minho hums from across the room, counting their rations, trying to make them last. He doesn't want to go back out, not ever. He's done looking. They could just stay here, and if they lowered their intake...if he ate just barely anything and gave Han what remained...they could make it. 

They could do it. 

Han flicks through a few more pages before he stops on one filled to the brim with jumbled bits of writing. "Is it safe?" Minho pauses his count. Turns towards Han and watches as he traches over someone else's writing, like it means something. The thought nearly sours his stomach. 

Han had him. Why would he need anyone else? 

"No," he says, watching as Han's shoulders hunch inward and his entire body seems to deflate. "I don't think it's ever going to be safe outside." The silence stretches long after his answer. It makes Minho uncomfortable in a way, that Han could ever sit in silence with him like this when there are so many other things they could be doing instead. 

Han's finger traces over the writing again. It's not Minho's writing. 

Minho's stomach turns and twists itself inside out. He stands when he can't take it anymore, crossing the short distance between them and taking a seat on the floor behind Han, tucking himself against the younger's back. His chin presses hard into the curve of his neck, and he wraps his arms around him, holding him close. 

He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to, when Han hesitantly slides his hand into his own a few moments later.

x

Minho feels pathetic today, standing at the kitchen counter and staring at the remains of an empty can. The remnants of sleep are crusted at the corners of his eyes, and exhaustion tugs at his body, weighing him down. His legs feel like lead, and his feet like cement blocks, meant to keep him below the surface, unable to catch a breath. 

There's blood on the counter. There's a knife beside it. 

He thinks it's his blood. 

He doesn't remember whose blood it really is, when a million eyes had turned and stared and asked him why. He doesn't remember taking the knife and running it across his wrist until his wrist had turned the color they had wanted it to be. He doesn't remember the smile they had given him as they had asked for more. 

Minho feels pathetic today, unable to finish the job they ask of him, unable to look Han in the eye and pretend that what they do is right when it all just feels wrong. Han was never supposed to be here, and Minho was never supposed to invite him in. Minho was never supposed to get lost - steal a glance at Han and never want to let him go, greedy in the way he grabs at his wrists, hungry in the way he presses close and doesn't turn away. 

Selfish. So selfish that he deserves being told to end his life so that another can start. 

Gentle fingers curl around his shoulder. Minho doesn't react. If they've come to take him, he won't fight. He's sick of them looking at him like this, sick of the torment, sick of all the images they paint for him on the backs of his eyelids.

"Hyung," Han whispers, gently tugging him back. "What'd you do?" 

Minho feels a shaky exhale rattle through his body, and doesn't know what to say. Does he say the truth, and let Han discover everything he's been trying to hide? Does he lift his arm and allow the blood to run freely onto the kitchen tile? Does he take the knife and slit his own throat before - 

"I thought we were eating dinner together." 

Han's cheek presses against his shirt. His careful fingers travel down and play with a loose string at the hem. The tone of his voice sounds...playful, not absolutely horrified, like Minho had thought it would've been. Something isn't right about this. He should say something, ask if the other is seeing what Minho's seeing, what Minho is, at the core of all of this, a twisted being with a disgustingly twisted mind. 

But then Minho blinks, and the world is brought back into sharpened focus. 

The counter isn't stained with blood, it's stained with what was supposed to be their dinner. Beets fresh from an old tin can, smeared against the counter, against the side of the sink, painting the side of the knife's blade. He dares to glance down at his arm, so sure it had been dripping blood, only to see more red. But it's the red of a vegetable, and not the inside of his arm. 

He hears laughter. Han's not laughing.  

Minho feels sick, and then he feels nothing at all.

x

He wants to say he doesn't remember how the fight started, but the truth is that he does, and there's glass shattering two inches from his head before he can stop it. He looks up and it's impossible to miss the glare Han shoots him, or the tears slipping down his cheeks. He's upset, and angry, and every other emotion close to it as he reaches for another picture frame. 

There's a part of Minho that tells him to stand there and not move, to stand there and let the glass puncture his body, his arms, his face, to let it stab him in however which way so that he can actually feel something that isn't the stare of a million eyes or the feeling of rotting hands pulling at his feet or Han's red cheeks and running nose. 

Han yells and tosses the frame, choking out another sob. Minho's body moves against his mind's wishes, allowing the picture frame to hit the hardwood floor behind him, glass fracturing into tiny pieces. 

Minho turns and looks back at the picture, half out of the frame and crumpled around the edges. It's one of him from what feels like another life; he was seven and had won his first sports contest, trophy clutched tightly between two tiny hands. His mother's finger is in the picture, taking up one corner of the frame. 

His father was gone by then, and it didn't take long for his mother to follow. 

"Don't you have anything to say?" Han screams, jolting Minho back to the present as he turns just in time for the other to launch himself forwards, fists pounding on his chest. Minho's back hits the wall with a thump as Han cries and hits him, over and over again. "Why aren't you saying anything?" 

Minho swallows, and avoids looking at the boarded windows, the duct-taped vents, the busted doorknobs. It's never enough, not when there's millions of eyes and only one of him. He can't keep them both safe anymore, not like this. Not when he's broken, and Han is ripping out the rest of his pieces. 

There's nothing left to say. 

Minho tries to grab his wrists, but Han jerks away from his touch, and one of his fists knocks into Minho's shoulder hard enough for it to sting. It stuns him, that the one person he's done everything to protect doesn't want his protection anymore. It echoes in his mind until it's the only thing he can hear, and he reaches a hand up to the side of his head, tugging at his hair. Han hates him. He hates him. Minho can't protect him anymore. It's all over. Everything's over. 

He should've known it would end this way. Nothing ever lasts, and he was foolish to think that this would. 

Han shouts again, and Minho blinks, tilting his head up. His heart aches. His head screams. Han cries into his hands until his tears spill onto the floor, one after another. Minho wants to reach out for him, hold him until he quiets, just like he used to when he first found him. He would cry for hours and hours, and all Minho could provide was the warm comfort of his own jagged body until Han had finally realized this was exactly where he belonged. 

He still belonged here, even if he didn't think so. 

"Han," he whispers, the letters bitter against his throat.

"That's not my name," Han says, sniffling, red-rimmed eyes locking with his. "Do you even remember?"

Minho's mouth opens, and then closes. They laugh at him from the shadows, cruel and callous, but Minho was cruel and callous, wasn't he? When he took Han in, and called him by a different name until it was all he could remember. Because his real name came from the outside, and they were no longer apart of the outside, not now, not after all of this. Minho never was, but Han used to be. 

He used to be.

"Let me out," Han says, already moving towards the door that sits on the other side of the room. 

Minho's heart jumps, beating hard against his ribcage as he stumbles over his own two feet. No. No, anything but that. He can't leave, he'll die if he leaves, his skin will burn, his breath will get caught his throat and Minho will be left all alone and he can't do this if he's alone, not anymore, not after being with someone else for so long -

"No!" Minho yells, throwing himself forwards, fingers slipping around Han's elbow just as he reaches for the knob. Han stills, still sniffling, chest heaving. Minho grips him tighter. Anything but this. Anything but losing the one thing he has left. "Please," he says, fighting against the sound of his own choked tone. "Please don't." He pauses, unsure of what to say. Would anything make him stay now that the truth has come out? "I can't lose you." 

Han huffs, the sound strangely twisted. "You already have," he mumbles, defeated, and before Minho can stop him, he's pulling out of his grip and reaching for the door. It's easy for him to unlock even though he's never touched the bolts before, something that itches at Minho's skin, because how would he know when he's down in the basement every time Minho tries to glimpse the outside? Unless...

The door is thrown open. Minho flinches, stumbling back.

Han opens the door, expecting ruin. What is revealed to him on the other side is anything but.

[cozylittleartblog]

As someone who is a fan of old Hollywood musicals from the 1930s and 1940s, I love your James and Clara pieces. This adorable OC couple gives off major Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vibes.

I was wondering, will we ever get to see some full fledged web comics with these two? With the backstory you described, I can kind of picture a 42nd Street-style story that shows how James and Clara met and ended up starring together in their movie musical “Swingin��� Sweetheart”.

Also, if you were to draw Clara in one of the dresses that Ginger Rogers wore on screen, which one would you pick?

(On a related note, I think James would totally look great in a white tie and tailcoat.)

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! :D fred and ginger were a huge inspiration for them, I saw the famous scene from swing time where they dance together in the school and instantly fell in love with them both, i've seen all the movies they made together. the characters had already existed, but i had to incorporate more of their charm and dynamic after that. the more old musicals i watched, the more i wanted to tell a story like them!

I'd like to do more short comics with them! though ideally if i magically stumbled into some $50 million dollars, I'd want to make a 2D animated film in the styles of singin' in the rain and cats dont dance. i have a rough plot in mind, it's just a matter of ironing it all out and making the thing, which... will not be for a long time, if ever. i refuse to sell them off to some studio that will make too many changes in the name of appeasing demographics and algorithms, and probably use it as a tax write-off right before release anyway, so it'd be indie or bust. i feel like with as integral as song and dance is to the story, doing it fully in comic form wouldn't do it justice, but there are shorter little moments and scenes i want to do with them in the meantime. maybe in ten years i can reblog this post with a trailer, if i am very lucky :') you're right though that that's what the movie would be about! and if i ever feel like a film absolutely wont happen then i'd find a way to make it work as a comic instead.

as for your last two comments... ginger has a lot of really good outfits, and i've drawn clara in a couple of them, but i suggest you look at my newest post :)c thank you for the inspiration hehehe

[worldneeds]

INBOX CALL ! hello wrestler rpers (and everyone else i've just had an influx of wrestlers). please like this for me to go through your memes tag and send some asks! please specify muses on at least one end if we both have multis :) the wrestling muses i for sure have are under the cut since i'm too lazy to fix my muses page rn, but you're also welcome to anyone else on my muse page

dominik m.ysterio

jimmy u.so

l.ash legend

ch.elsea green <3

[strixcattus]

if you wouldn’t mind, could you share the class system and magic workings of your stp dnd au?

There's a worldbuilding side to this and a game mechanics side to this. I'll start with the game mechanics, since that part's quicker.

I've made the general decision that the game the characters are playing is something that on the surface looks pretty much like D&D (same d20+ability score+skill system, for one, and pretty much all the terminology is the same), but if you poke into the mechanics of character creation it's not like D&D at all. Which is to say that classes in-game aren't quite the same as classes in D&D.

It's like college, you know? Eventually you have to declare your major (class), and you'll have to take a certain number of courses (skills) in the major (class), but that doesn't stop you from exploring courses outside of it (taking other classes' skills) as long as you can still meet the requirements for what you're trying to do.

(I imagine there are a few skills that are locked to specific classes, and others to specific patronages—a divine cleric and warlock both get to dip into a list associated with celestial magic, while their demonic counterparts have access to an assortment of more infernal abilities.)

This is how the party can have three bards who each have an entirely different relationship with magic. Contrarian is (ironically) the only one playing a normal bard, while Smitten has been almost exclusively taking non-magical bard skills, and Opportunist poured half his points into taking progressively higher ranks in a single non-bard skill.

(Most of the party is playing a single-class character. Skeptic and Broken are the primary exceptions, with neither of them having a class yet—Skeptic has a single, very expensive sorcerer skill and everything else isn't attached to a class [think extra proficiencies], while Broken has been using a level 0 character sheet the entire time, with his real sheet being held by the Narrator until the party reaches the point where all his level-locked skills become available.)

On to the worldbuilding/magic system side of things. I'll break this down by spellcasting class.

ARTIFICER: The line between artifice and wizardry is extremely blurred, and generally it's just a matter of identification, with casters on both sides being extremely uppity about their personal definitions. Generally speaking, artificers create magical effects primarily through mundane tinkering imbued with magic. They can't really take spell slots through their class, but they can create reusable magic items.

BARD: In this world, music is inherently magical, but there are some who put genuine effort into increasing the magical output of their music. Their magical repertoire is mainly limited to healing and support spells—even focused magical training can't summon fireballs by the power of music alone. There are a few bards who can manipulate other's actions or even take over their minds entirely, though...

CLERIC: Clerics can gain their magic either through actively being granted a higher status from the god they worship, or passively absorbing some of the powers of the Sleeping Gods through faith and luck. Either way, it's a pretty lax contract—their power is drawn from their god, so they'll lose them if they taper off in worship or start going against their god's morals, but all a deity ever really asks from a cleric is their faith.

DRUID: Druids draw their power from the interconnected network of living things called the Networked Wild, tapping into it momentarily to summon storms or communicate with plants. Their powers are, of course, stronger when there are a lot of living things nearby, but it's hard to cut them off from the Wild entirely. Druidic magic usually uses a one-way connection with the Wild—giving it a command to produce a spell—but some more powerful druids take the risk of opening their mind to the Wild entirely, gaining immense awareness with the danger of losing their individuality.

(Paladins and rangers exist in this system, but they don't have their own systems of magic. Paladins are essentially martial classes who tap into clerical magic, while rangers are martial classes who tap into druidic magic. They do have some class-specific skills, but most of what they can do comes from a combination of other classes.)

SORCERER: Sorcerers' magic is innate—less powerful, but more readily available and often more customizable. Some sorcerers can trace their magic back through their bloodline to a demonic, divine, or otherwise magical ancestor, but just as many gain their powers seemingly at random. Generally speaking, sorcerers have their potential from birth—it's not unheard of for someone to be struck by lightning and walk away with powers, but anything granted by an outside force with any measure of awareness will probably come with a clerical or warlock pact.

WARLOCK: Warlocks are similar to clerics, and can actually have any patron a cleric might (though they can also have patrons a cleric could never dream of). The difference lies in the terms of their agreement. While all a cleric's benefactor wishes for is some form of worship, a warlock is expected to provide some sort of service to their patron. For most, it does pay off in the benefits—innate abilities that don't drain from a finite pool of spellcasting energy.

WITCH: Witches deal in curses—similar to spells, but more permanent, sometimes more powerful, and more difficult to resist. The catch is that every curse has a condition that breaks it, usually tailored to the target—and the more powerful the curse, the easier it has to be to break. The condition generally falls into one of three categories: personal growth, giving up something of value, and a fetch quest. Witches can also control nature spirits, with each having their own specialty—local lakes or animal species, or even (if they're ambitious) a section of the Networked Wild.

WIZARD: The academics of the magical world, wizards gain their powers through study. They have the potential to be a jack-of-all trades (more so than any other single casting class) or to narrow in on a single field of magic and attain incredible magical abilities. There's some overlap with artificers, but generally wizards are considered to rely more on magical power than mechanical contraptions, and they have more ready access to spells.

(Making magical items, especially potions, is within the domain of both wizards and artificers, but the skills involved all technically belong to the Artificer class. Likewise, if an artificer wants to fill out their spellbook, they'll have to buy spells from another class's list—usually Wizard's.)

[bluerosesburnblue]

@oveliagirlhaditright I'm putting my Missing Link thoughts in another post because it would be too long, and honestly I have SO MANY thoughts about why the basic premise of KHML was a bad idea (completely separate from my own distaste for the "Ephemer is Xehanort's ancestor" stuff that might be in it)

Because you're right to mention Pokemon Go and it really, REALLY feels to me like it's just trying to ride the hype from the mobile ARG boom that started with Pokemon Go a whole eight years ago. Because KHML as a concept doesn't even seem to be utilizing any of the unique features of an ARG that make them appealing

There's two real franchise-based mobile ARGs that I ever remember hearing about: Pokemon Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite*. These two projects do make sense to me, as opposed to KHML because of the way that both franchises make use of the central concept of the augmented reality feature. They're additions to reality, which both series already played around with. HP takes place in our reality, but with a "what if magic was real and just hidden" premise, so it's insanely easy to make an ARG that's just "yeah, you're one of the people in on the secret magical society that always existed in the real world." Pokemon takes place in an alternate version of our world; every location in Pokemon is based on a real-world location. So that's also a natural progression for it, and it's easy to pretend that the "reality" you see in the ARG is just the Pokemon world. Other than location names and the presence of Pokemon, the Pokemon world is practically identical to reality

That is literally the central concept of an ARG. To make the game part of reality. And that just doesn't work with KH, a game about flying through space to reach Disney worlds. Sure, some of us might have wanted to pretend to be Keyblade wielders as kids, but did we want to be wielders in our small backyards? Not even imagining that they were another location, but the yards as they were? No! We wanted to be in the Disney worlds! Or Traverse Town! The central facet of ARG gameplay doesn't mesh with the functionality of a story-based canonical title. And so what do they do to force it to work? Complicate the lore with the Astral Planes, which completely take the "reality" out of Augmented Reality aside from... a map? Like, it might have worked with Quadratum depending on how much of "our reality" that ends up being, but that's not at all what they're doing

Additionally, ARGs are not conducive to story-heavy games! You're supposed to play them while walking around town, maybe stopping for a few minutes to take a break. Or you play them on work/school breaks. You need to be able to pick them up, play a bit for 10 minutes, and put them down. The typical gameplay cycle for most ARG players does not include 20 minutes just to watch cutscenes to get the Exclusive Lore before being able to do anything, and the people who like KH for the story aren't going to want to wait all the time for their mobile game energy to recharge before they can get their cutscenes (a thing that even KHUx did away with for story chapters after some time!)

The entire decision to make KHML an ARG, to me, feels like corporate checking off a box of "style of game that got popular in recent memory" and trying to copy it rather than thinking of the gameplay as a medium in and of itself to tell a story. Nothing about the ARG concept works with what KH is at its core, and I honestly feel like they unintentionally admitted that when it was announced that you'd be able to play it without leaving home. What is the point of making it an ARG at all if you're going to remove literally the only benefit that it has as a medium, as opposed to something that could benefit the story you're trying to tell? We are a long way from the days of TWEWY making revolutionary use of the DS technology to have its gameplay tell a significant part of its story

In an ideal world, I think that KHML should have been an MMO like we thought KHx was going to be back when it was announced. They wouldn't have to mess with the lore to make it work, other players running around would help to "populate" Scala ad Caelum in a natural way, people could form "families" with their friends to further the bloodlines narrative, and MMOs can function on the drip-fed narrative style that they wanted. It doesn't even have to be a big-budget MMO like FF14, because I actually do like KH3's artstyle and KHML's simpler usage of it (it manages to be distinctive and colorful, working in hallmarks of Nomura's hand-drawn style while still being more detailed than the PS2-era). It could just be... basically what it is now, but they add in new Disney worlds every couple of months to keep the story going

And now here we are, with a game that was supposed to be out by the end of 2023 still missing (lol) and only having had two betas by the near-midpoint of 2024 because they're having developmental issues that I would personally guess have to do with the game's self-defeating nature. I find it very frustrating

*Adding in, Wizards Unite literally ran for less than three years (June 2019 - Jan 2022) before shutting down so even being tied to a big-name franchise couldn't save it. I have a strong hunch that the Covid-19 lockdowns played a huge part in killing the ARG boom so it's doubly insane to me why Square Enix thought trying to bring it back was a good idea