#im not okay about characters excluded from the narrative yet forced to witness it

[enlighten3d]

More thoughts on r!au, because you brought it up again:

There are 3 eras of wifies and his person, both of whom have similar skill sets. First comes evilfies and masked wato, who create escape rooms. Then comes clonefies and ken, who escape them. Finally comes lastfies and parrot who kill to survive. (Hearts at least are technically craftable)

Ken managed to rescue clonefies by outsmarting their predecessors. By proving that clonefies was more than a clone, through a game rigged in their favor.

Parrot managed to rescue lastfies by killing their predecessors. By proving that lastfies was just a clone, through mistaking one for the other.

There are so many stars in the bright sky, all of them basically identical. It takes knowing them and how they relate to the others around them to identify them. Who could blame you if just after sunset, when only a few are visible, you mistook one star for another? (And the sun is still a star, even as it burns you. It's your fault for mistaking distance for peace, and still inviting it closer)

And then, because the spyglass reminded me, you can't look directly at the sun- it'll blind you. Parrot can't look directly at his own actions, can't look clearly at lastfies, can't process what happened. Is it because of how bright his mistakes shine? Or is it because his spyglass is stained with blood?

(and yes, in my opinion, lastfies and parrot can share being represented by the sun. Clonefies needs something specific to contrast and parrot deserves every parallel he gets)

Finally, does wato eventually stop putting hanging roots in their escape rooms? I doubt lastfies would know enough about escape rooms to confidently declare them as the most useless item, and why bother sneaking in a signature when you have to show up to help them out of softlocks you could have sworn they would never get into.

Just what do you do when you don't have any of your friends. Wifies is different, and parrot won't meet your eye and ken is trapped in a prison that blocks messages. (except no one off-server has heard from him and the prison seems abandoned when you try to arrange a visit and you're pretty sure that ken wouldn't have let his stasis despawn and this is apparently the only prison that parrot won't try to break someone out of)

What do you do when you have no proof, but your server feels like a graveyard.

(post in which i brought up rau again, and heres the post explaining rau. yay for having context! context is great.)

forewarning that i wrote this over the course of like, a day, sorry if its disjointed lol. but then again, what else does one expect from a long lime post but incoherency.

HI HELL YEAHHH RAU THOUGHTS!!! REPLACEMENT AU!!!!!!!!!!! i love rau did you know that <- fucking insane about this au. nonnie i love you thank you. this is going to be as incoherent + probably hard to read as usual! sorry gonna yap a lot about rau!wato here because you made the mistake of mentioning rau!wato. replacement au may be about wifies clones stuff but OUGH DOES RAU!WATO HAUNT ME. that will be the latter portion of this post tho

SO!

OOOHHH OKAY GOOD POINT. about. fuck okay thats insane? have NOT thought about the eras of wifies each having their own person and the 'transitions' reflecting their relationships... actually fucking insane. dont have anything to add just know that im staring at you w wide eyes /pos

its your fault for mistaking distance for peace, and still inviting it closer- actually wild line im- okay. okay.

YEAH THE. the. yeah. you get it perfectly, i have no notes.the spyglass and the sun thing- fuck. he tries to look at the sun, his actions, and doesnt see, doesnt understand, but still he does it via the spyglass, via that same frame of mine of clonefies that hes unwilling to abandon. look at lastfies, understand him through the lense of parrots relationship with clonefies, understand him only as clonefies. hes still the same person! parrot didnt do anything! nothing happened! youre fine! look at lastfies, look at his own actions/mistakes through the lense of a spyglass. frame of mind of his relationship with clonefies. actuallly insane.

lastfies and parrot can share the sun/daytime. wild thought actually, i do agree. because. the sun is a star - clonefies is the stars and lastfies is just similar enough but also not really; part of a larger category but different, so different. and parrot always denies how much of himself he sees in lastfies, its a whole thing. theyre similar in so many ways but- no! this is still the same wifies! and wifies would never be like parrot. never!

OKAY. SO. NONNIE. NONNIE. ABOUT WATO. ABOUT RAU!WATO. THERES A LOT. that never got mentioned on tumblr i dont think. theyre so theatre metaphor (coughs long poem coughs). genuinely like. okay. we (milo and i) have thought abt all of what youve mentioned here. sorry the rest of the post is going to be about rau!wato i am actually fucking insane about rau!wato holy shit

the escape rooms stop having those personal touches. no hanging roots, no little injokes, hints at familiarity. theyre easier, because they know that what theyd normally make is for clonefies, who they know would figure it out. so the escape rooms are easier, and he still watches, and he still has to interfere where he shouldnt have to (why doesnt parrot pick up on these things either? (hes in denial, wato. deeeeep denial.)). its wrong on every level. because- rau!wato is so interesting. she knows that lastfies isnt clonefies. hes in WAYYY less denial than parrot (its actually impossible to out-denial rau!parrot), AND he... he was the one that found lastfies in the first place, right? so she knows about lastfies existence, she knows that something is wrong. still theres a little bit of hope (parrot wouldnt kill wifies afterall, right?) that gets held out. maybe theyve got the story wrong! but still they pull away. this wifies is wrong, theyve never been close with parrot, ken is trapped in a prison unable to escape (somethings so off about that, right? why isnt parrot helping? why is he 'respecting kens wishes' when those wishes go entirely against what he stands for? why does parrot look that way whenever ken gets mentioned? something is so wrong about this.)

what defines rau!wato is the inaction. theyre trapped in the audience, and the one time they forced their way onstage, tried to help, to do something for once, it goes wrong. and clonefies dies. now she just doesnt do anything. shes fucked everything up once already (this is all her fault, right? right?). shes got the most information out of anyone other than lastfies and parrot, shes the only one who can do anything. but he doesnt. hes messed it up already, and he doesnt know enough to get people to believe him. what do you mean, wato? what do you mean this wifies isnt the same wifies? no, hes always been this way? this violent, this quiet, this loyal- yeah sure hes a bit different from when he joined, but maybe getting chunkbanned messed him up just that much, you know? youre making things up. you have no evidence. and so wato doesnt say anything. theyre trapped in the audience, watching this play set to music that they wrote themselves, and they cant do anything about it. and everywhere he looks, theres death.

parrot and lastfies canonically die, in rau. not sure if i ever mentioned this on tumblr but whatever, am (re?)explaining it. eventually someone gets suspicious about the weirdness at proton, and maybe wato slips a piece of information or two, but they go and investigate, and theres no one there. its abandoned, more than just the lack of guards whom to ask to visit the supposed sole prisoner. theres no one there. breaking in is easy, figuring out that kenadian is not there is easier. naturally, one goes to parrot, the very person who said that ken was trapped in the first place. question him. parrot runs. lastfies follows. but parrot cant run forever, not from a bunch of people who considered ken a friend/ally, not a manhunt

this all started on a cliff, didnt it? parrot and clonefies watched the sunset from a cliff right before the lastfies thing. it ends on a cliff, too. a cliff, above the ocean. he jumps, doesnt fly, and lastfies, of course, follows willingly (theres a lot to say about lastfies). and then theyre dead, the both of them

the next day, theres an eclipse.

wato is the only person who really visits that cliff. theres this really pretty scene in the animatic milo is (was? idk) making about rau, where wato stands at that cliff during the eclipse, holding hydrangeas, and the petals fly off

onto the shore wash an earring, a spyglass, and a headband. (nothing else. parrots lost himself.)

and so, rau!wato is the last one left. out of everyone, hes the last one left. what now? pick up the pieces? sure, but theres no pieces to pick up. things remain obscured; its not like parrot or lastfies (the only ones who really knew everything, and even then their perceptions were warped in their own ways) ever wrote anything down or talked to anyone- and ken is dead, too. all she can do is piece together what she already has, and shes already done all that she could, and assumptions are dangerous, and-

its just this really really deep-seated feeling of unresolution. there will never be any resolution. watos just the last one left, left to grieve everything that happened and everyone thats died, and he cant even really talk to anyone about this, he never could, and he doesnt even know everything thats happened. hes just left to deal with the consequences of everything. and nothing is ever quite the same. whats she to do now? (they dont know.)

a server the feels like a graveyard, indeed

(pspspspspsps @milo-the-mage... i summon thee.....)