#if i erased all knowledge of the adventure zone from my head using the voidfish

[yardsards]

we need to make the voidfish real so i can experience listening to taz balance for the first time all over again

[667-darkavenue]

Lucretia.........

I relistened to everything while getting hyped for the finale and I have a lot of things to say about Lucretia. Lucretia’s character arc is my absolute favorite on this show because she winds up so far from how she started, but everything fits perfectly with the person she already was. I took note of some of my favorite parts of her development, mainly her parallels to Magnus and the way her experiences shape her decisions. Most of all I’m just so fascinated with how she began as a character who simply chronicled events without any agency in them, but her choices wind up becoming the driving force of the entire plot.

Like, at the press conference that the Stolen Century starts with, the chronological beginning of everyone’s story, the moment she introduces herself made me laugh.

I fucking LAUGHED. I realized the reason why I found it strangely funny is because Lucretia has more influence on the plot than any other character. The story is almost entirely driven by her. Lucretia’s decisions are why The Adventure Zone happens and she has her hand on every single plot point in the show. TAZ, from beginning to end, is the story of her failing redemption arc. Her character development as a friend and an antagonist is so complex and slow-burning and so deeply satisfying.

I love Lucretia more than my own life and I would have died if she didn’t get a happy ending with her family. But still, I don’t overlook the wrongs she has done. She didn’t begin as a bad person nor did she end as one, but she has been an antihero in the story. I actually think her character arc is written to directly parallel Magnus as a hero. Their actions mirror each other’s almost constantly. They both gained the voidfish’s trust; Lucretia used it to take away knowledge and Magnus used it to give it back to everyone in Story and Song. Even Magnus’ lessons in strength that Griffin kept flashing back to at the climax directly apply to Lucretia (more on that in a bit). They both want to be protectors and they want to shoulder pain so that their friends don’t have to.

Another thing from Lucretia’s first appearance in the Stolen Century that I like is when she introduces herself as a ghostwriter for other people’s biographies.

It’s a brilliant backstory for Griffin to give her, because it explains perfectly how easily she could erase everyone’s life and write a new story for them. She had been rewriting and editing people’s lives for a living once, without anyone knowing it was her. It’s interesting the way Griffin describes her plan to void their memories exactly like what her previous life’s work had been.

It’s just a wildly good twist on the aspect of her character that kept Lucretia as a passive observer at the beginning of the story! In the Stolen Century, Merle suggested to her that she had leadership qualities and Lucretia laughed it off; she told merle she was happy to sit and watch. This gets turned on its head and she uses that skill against her loved ones and the entire world, now she is making them passive characters in the narrative she is driving.

Lucretia used to rely entirely on others to the point where she didn’t want to take action, or didn’t think she needed to. The turning point for this, obviously, is the year she faced alone. She stopped observing her friends save the world and started participating in it with them.

The motive for her character’s turning point in the Stolen Century mirrors Magnus’ motives. She wants to be a protector, but she doesn’t know how. Like Magnus, she needed to learn to ask for help. But she learned the wrong lesson.

The year when the judges and their officers pursued her, the one that carved her into the person she is now—It taught her that she didn’t need help to protect her friends. She could struggle through it alone, without anyone’s support, and come out of it stronger. Lucretia fixed everyone’s mistake and none of them suffered for it.

And this year explains why she thought erasing her friends’ memories could be redeemable. She carries with her a trauma and a complex that shaped her into believing she has to suffer alone for the good of her friends to save them—She did it once, she could do it again. Lucretia learning to be a protector was a case where no one was there to help her and she had to take on everything by herself, so she thinks she can keep her friends safe by cutting them off. From her, from each other, from their past. She wanted everyone to just wake up and find that everything was okay now because of Lucretia, again.

Contrast it with Magnus, whose only flaw is that he’s totally willing to sacrifice his life for his friends. He doesn’t think his friends are strong enough, so he must be the one to “take the big hit” for them.

I’m pretty sure Lucretia shadows this. Her first priority is preservation, whereas Magnus’ is sacrifice, but they’re both too ambitious and think they can take on more than they should. In her mind taking the big hit = shouldering the knowledge of what they’d done to this word and responsibility of repairing their mistakes on her own. She thought it was allowing everyone to live safely and free of guilt while she went through the hardship of absolving them. I think maybe it’s why Magnus forgives her without thinking. He understands this.

That’s why I referred to TAZ earlier as secretly being the story of her failing redemption arc. She betrayed everyone she loved with certainty that recovering the relics and locking out the hunger would vindicate her in their eyes. And it didn’t work. She didn’t mean to draw her plan out as long as she did, but she was afraid to back out or else she’s just left with the consequences of a horrible thing she did and no end to justify the means.

But she didn’t need to. Like Magnus didn’t think to ask for help because it was just too simple, Lucretia didn’t think she could just ask for forgiveness and it would come.

[fully-realized-creation]

I was (and still am) full of so many emotions about The Adventure Zone finale tomorrow that I wrote my first ever fanfic for it. So that’s a thing, and here it is.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11826000

And below the cut, if you prefer to read it that way:

It’s almost like poetry.

The blue and green lights are dancing above your head to a melody that everyone (/everyone/, gods, on every plane, in every existence, it’s something your mind can still barely comprehend), /everyone/ can hear. Fisher and his child are radiant. They glow proudly as the story–/your/ story–is shared with the universe.

And suddenly no one is alone.

You feel this sharply and keenly. You have been alone, especially when Julia died, when Raven’s Roost was lost, though you don’t know what caused the two events (it leaves a sour taste in your mouth regardless). Then there was Taako and Merle and Angus and the Bureau and Lucretia and yet. And yet you felt the loss every day. In every moment you rushed in you knew that if it went bad, well, then you wouldn’t be so alone anymore.

But in this moment, watching the lights above and before you, as everyone in existence shares in the knowledge that the world is ending, shares in the fear of the Hunger descending, you are connected to people in a way that you haven’t truly felt since Lucretia erased your memory of those fateful hundred years.

As the realization hits you, you swear you can see the world around you glow white. But it’s not from the eyes of the agents of the Hunger. It’s from the bonds created between you and the IPRE crew and the /world/.

And you feel complete. Like the period at the end of a sentence, this moment of connection is both something ending and something beginning. It’s a new stanza, a continuation, because–and it’s almost enough to knock you off your feet, this realization– /no one is ready to stand down/. You take a deep breath, and somewhere, deep within your heart, you feel everyone take the same breath, and look deep into the face of the apocalypse, and as one, say, “No.”

So you stand up straight and tall, and think about your crew–your family–and the rest of the world. All of those people that you need to /protect/.

The story and the song fly above your head and through your heart, and mind, and soul. You feel the universe balance precariously between destruction and survival. You know what you need to do, and it fees so right, like the perfect rhyme.

You take one last look at the two voidfish, at the lights, and simply /feel/ everything for one more moment.

It’s so beautiful. It’s almost like poetry.

——————————————————————————————-

It’s almost like poetry.

Each line in a couplet must have a mate, something so similar and yet different enough to distinguish between the two, and allow the meaning to come across.

You had lost your meaning, though you didn’t remember it ever existing in the first place. The other rhyme was gone, and so yours barely made sense, for so long. It explained a lot.

Then she was back and gone again in a flash, and the world was ending and all you wanted to do was make sure everyone felt this double loss that you had. Who cares if the world was ending? Without the next line in your story, it made no logical sense to keep going.

You feel fire in your veins, and imagine your body is hers, imagine that this is how she must have felt all the time, so powerful, so /resplendent/. You imagine the umbra-staff in your hand vibrates, your last connection to her reaching toward the anger and the loss and the hurt, and clutch it to your chest.

There’s a break in your line of thought when the Hunger attacks. You ready for battle and someone appears at your side and your heart soars, thinking, hoping–and it’s not, of course, it’s Angus, but damn if that isn’t just as good, and the realization of that almost knocks you down.

You fight with Magnus and Merle, because /that’s/ what you know now, that’s who you know how to work with, and you wonder if maybe your rhyme scheme has changed in the years that you’ve had together to unknowingly relearn their ways.

There was once a time when your couplet was part of a larger verse, two lines within seven and they all somehow made sense. Through the bonds you created, your hearts beat almost as one, keeping time with the rhythm and the flow of your lives. There was chaos, and there was destruction, but there was also balance and love. And you and her were a part of that.

When you and Magnus and Merle had (re)connected, without realizing it, you (re)connected three out of the seven parts of the original story. Not enough to make sense, but enough to begin your epic once more. You hadn’t changed, you had simply found your rhythm again, those slants that you could fit your rhyme against, not perfectly, but just enough.

And you think that’s maybe okay.

Until a fireball too big for a young boy to conjure up emerges from your umbra-staff, and your heart and mind and soul /reach/ for the magical instrument and you know what to do, break it in half and /there she is/, and you truly remember what it’s like to be a fully realized creation, now that you and her are whole, together, balanced once more.

She shines before you, the grin on her face matching yours exactly.

It’s so beautiful. It’s almost like poetry.

——————————————————————————————-

It’s almost like poetry.

There’s a beginning, and an end, and in the middle is love and plants and dancing and praying. And through it all, a constant thread, a reminder that you’re never alone, keeping everything together.

Until one day, it’s gone.

And you fall apart.

Pan was your constant. He was the rhythm you followed (whether you wanted to or not) because He was always just /there/. Your doubts and your complaining could not dissuade Him. He was the one thing in your life that stuck by you. Perhaps you were just fated to lose everything you cared about.

But you look up, and you see Magnus and Taako, and despite their jokes about how you “never used your healing powers anyway,” you know that they are worried and afraid. And you consider what you know about constants.

It’s not a lot, you realize very quickly. You’ve never known much about regularity, about rhythm. Your life is a disjointed stream of consciousness, of starting and giving up and restarting and running away. But with you, the whole time, was Pan. And with you, most of the time, were Taako and Magnus.

The way you three fit together was proof, your were sure, that the gods had a sense of humor. Two capable adventurers in their own rights, and you. You spent your entire quest waiting for the day they realized that even a kid like that annoying Agnes was a better and more capable companion than you.

They never did though, and that’s what’s getting you, as you stand here disconnected from everything that once grounded you to the universe. This whole time, you thought it was just you and Pan against the world, but Taako and Magnus were there too. And they’re still here, as you deal with the loss of your god.

And you realize that, at some point, you found your rhythm, that place where you fit into the story, where you make sense. You thought Taako and Magnus had their own arcs, beginnings that didnt include you and middles and ends that didnt need you. Your own story was separate, smaller, /lesser/. In reality, it all blended together to make something so perfect and balanced that nothing could destroy it, not even the apocalypse itself.

So when the memories hit you, when the century that was stolen from you by Lucretia returns, and the initial shock of the flood of so much information wears off, you can’t help but smile. The connections you made, those bonds, return in full force and it almost feels like Pan has returned. It brings the same comfort, the same sense of familiarity, of /home/.

It’s so beautiful. It’s almost like poetry.