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linklethehistorian · 2 months ago

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Linkle’s Fazbear Frights & Lore Insights #2: To Be Beautiful

[Read the general disclaimer and important notes for this series of articles here.]

[View the Masterlist of all completed articles here.]

Some To Be Beautiful specific notes:

I will be discussing the graphic novel version of this story to a limited degree, which as per ‘Frights Fiction’, would be a graphic novel in the in-universe canon, based on the book by the same title, just as it is in our world. If you don’t want spoilers, stop here.

I will also be discussing, to an even more limited degree, the Silver Eyes trilogy, but the things I will be talking about are major spoilers, so this is also your spoiler warning for that.

I will be briefly talking about one of the mini-games in the game version of Into the Pit which revolves around To Be Beautiful, and in general, discussions about the book version and my thoughts on it in my previous article are quite likely to come up during one particular part of my lore relevancy section, so if you want to completely avoid Into the Pit spoilers, maybe hold off on this one for now.

Apart from where I feel it relevant, I won’t be doing a deep-dive into the changes between the book and the graphic novel, since they are both fictional media within the FNAF universe, and thus the retcons and changes mostly have no value in the discussion of the lore or canon. If someone else wants to scream about how they got so much wrong because they feel the book was done dirty or something, I absolutely encourage you to go write your own article! But this isn’t about that.

My takes on William as a father, in regards to the games, may ruffle more than a few feathers of people who still insist on holding onto some of the old fanon stuff/do not believe in Frights Fiction. I will be briefly discussing why, but seriously if you don’t like it and won’t go into it with an open mind, please just don’t read it; I’m not really in the mental state to go through a thousand comments trying to convince me of a notion that I simply don’t personally feel has any logical evidence behind it.

Now with that out of the way, let’s get below the cut and get talking! This is your last spoiler warning for all forms of To Be Beautiful, so if you want to turn back, do so now.

Has everyone who wanted to leave yet left? Yeah? Good. Okay, let’s get going, then.

Overall Impressions

The Book:

I know that in my last post regarding Into the Pit, I said that some of the writing style choices made definitely weren’t for me, and that’s still true, but honestly, as I’m listening to this story a third time to make sure I haven’t missed anything I want to cover (and have read several other stories in between doing so), I have to admit I’ve gotten very used to the formatting by now, and it really isn’t as much of a pet peeve as it used to be — which is undoubtedly good, since I have a good many more volumes to go through in order to catch up to date in covering them all.

As for To Be Beautiful’s plot, as much as it pains me to say this, I honestly like this one a little bit better than Into The Pit, and I’m not even completely sure I can put into words why, except perhaps that, while I was very glad Into the Pit did have its surprisingly happy ending with both Oswald and his Dad’s survival, the original book version also felt very anticlimactic in terms of anything actually happening after the initial glimpse of the Yellow Thing’s murders, all the way up until the abrupt point where Oswald’s Dad was immediately pulled out of the pit as soon as Oswald arrived back at Jeff’s Pizza, and the Yellow Thing attacked and was hanged.

With To Be Beautiful, the slow buildup of suspense and horror, to me, is much more compelling and ultimately pays off much better when Sarah’s decisions have finally their tragic and irrevocable consequences. I think that if Into the Pit had had that same kind of buildup or at least a longer and more suspenseful struggle at the end before the payoff, I might have actually preferred that one more, as the backdrop of that one is much more up my usual alley, but it didn’t, and so To Be Beautiful has to rank higher on the list.

I do find it odd that, even with how strong the seemingly implied message is that you shouldn’t waste time trying to appeal to people who will only like you if you meet superficial criteria, Mason Blair is strangely given a complete pass for never noticing Sarah until she was hotter, as the story never gives any indication of him being shallow in any way after that initial bit of shallowness and presents him as a good and wonderful person through and through in all other scenes that we see him (unlike the Beautifuls), but I suppose maybe that isn’t a flaw in the writing so much as a realistic acknowledgement that sometimes people who are good overall can just make bad judgements and be a bit petty — I just wanted to mention it nonetheless.

That observation aside, the characters seem to suit the roles they are meant to fulfill well enough; they’re definitely far from my favorite characters in the FNAF series as a whole, but they’re serviceable enough, and I’m sure there are many people in the world who can empathize with Sarah’s struggles with loving or even liking her body.

The Graphic Novel:

Well, first of all, I will say right out the gate that between this and the book, I definitely by far prefer the original book; for as much credit as I tried to give this adaption of the story whilst reading it, I really couldn’t see more than a single upside to viewing this version of the story instead of the book, and that single upside — the ability to see a possible glimpse at what the characters looked like — did not in any way make up for all that was lost in translation enough to warrant viewing it as a viable alternative, or even all that much worth seeing as a supplemental piece to the book, since it contradicts it so much and lacks such an incredible amount of the punch that its source material had.

To name just a few of the changes I caught onto while reading it:

The characterization of Abby, Sarah’s best friend, is slightly different here, as while during the conversation of what Abby used to do to her Barbies when she and Sarah used to play with them felt slightly more like a testament to Abby’s unique fashion sense and tastes in the book, in the graphic novel, Sarah outright states that Abby tortured her Barbies instead of describing the unconventional ways she styled them that didn’t adhere to normal beauty standards. Maybe it’s just me, but that felt like a swing and a miss, when we consider the overall implied message of the story.

Several events were skipped, like Sarah’s ice cream date with Mason, completely re-ordered or just completely altered, like Eleanor waking up immediately by accident when Sarah first takes her home and looks at her, Sarah not tipping her hand that she knew who Mason Blair was when he introduced himself to her, or just being honest with the Beautifuls about what her Mom does and getting disapproving looks.

Perhaps the worst change of all, though, in my opinion, was the change at the very end of the story where, as Sarah is falling apart into a pile of junk, instead of just the narration of her regretful thought, she laments openly that “Abby was right”, and Eleanor turns to her and agrees, “Abby was right about a lot of things”; to me, this unanimous commentary happening between both characters is far too on-the-nose about the ultimate moral of the story, and that lack of subtlety in a story that is already quite clear enough about its message without needing to have both its main characters say it aloud is actually rather detrimental to its overall integrity and enjoyability.

A good story should not have to slap you in the face with its message completely verbatim in order to be able to get that message across; the story should not feel like it stops and makes every character on-screen break the fourth wall to stare you in the face and tell you directly and heavy-handedly what you are supposed to take away from it, and that is what this version of the ending feels like: an open bout of preaching — and, whether they agree with the message wholeheartedly or not, almost no one particularly likes being bluntly preached to by a piece of fiction.

And, on top of all of that, the fact of the matter is that the one upside this medium had wasn’t even really taken advantage of in the way that it should have been:

Despite all the muss and fuss about how ugly and obnoxious of a green Sarah’s hair was when she dyed it, it doesn’t even really look that way except for in the panel(s) at the hair salon — mostly looking a very pale and hardly noticeable slightly greenish yellow in the majority of panels after her escapade.

Sarah’s chest, for all her complaints of it being completely flat, doesn’t really come across so in the artwork of her before her transformation into being more shapely, and instead just makes it look like she wanted it bigger than it already was rather than wanting it just noticeable at all.

The colors and designs of many things, too, seem quite different than how they are described in the novel, with the most noticeable example being that the necklace Eleanor gives Sarah is now gold instead of silver, and that, for whatever strange reason, Eleanor’s eyes don’t seem to be green at all and rather mostly look a plain empty grey until the fifth day, instead of starting out as such as they did in the book.

All in all, although the artwork itself is certainly serviceable and cute enough, there are just a lot of strange choices I don’t really appreciate being made here, and losing Sarah’s inner monologue, when the book is practically written from her point of view (albeit in third person), is such a detriment in combination with all of these things that it really wasn’t worth the trade-off.

Lore Relevancy

Well, having long since read the entire book, I quite expect this to be the longest entry I have in this particular volume of Fazbear Frights, so let’s not waste any time mincing words and just jump straight into it, shall we?

The Lies and Half-truths

As always, before we can get into what the book is trying to say, we should start by trying to rule out what it definitely or at least almost certainly isn’t; now, unlike Into the Pit, which was so closely tied to the actual main game series’ canon that we could easily rule out what could or couldn’t be true, To Be Beautiful, unfortunately, does not have any overt one-to-one tie to any canon mainline game continuity events, so this process is naturally going to be a little bit harder and take a lot more guesswork, but still, I do feel that we can make at least a few fairly educated assessments.

Firstly, unlike with Into the Pit, the game version of which gives me pause to consider that Oswald and his Dad might to some extent actually be based on real people that exist within the FNAF universe, even if what happened to them was entirely or mostly made-up — what with the Freddy Mask implying Oswald’s Dad might be “Freddy Bully”, one of Michael’s childhood friends — I am fairly confident, at least at the time of writing this, that Sarah and everyone within her story do not actually exist beyond potentially being a metaphor and/or stand-in for someone else already well-established within the main games’ canon (more on this later).

My reasoning for this is mostly that, well, not only is it unlikely and way overcomplicating things to say that every single character in every Fazbear Frights story must have a separate counterpart in the real world of FNAF, even when they don’t seem to have anything particularly hinting at it, but also…I simply don’t believe that Eleanor truly exists, either, and I know that may be a hot take for some but, hey, there it is.

At the time of writing this — and granted, that could change at some point in the future, since I know she’s going to return several times — I believe that Eleanor is nothing more than a) a stand-in for Circus Baby/Scrap Baby/post-death Elizabeth in general, b) a convenient method by which to further explore the concept of the Power of Wills and Wishes™️ (there is a better name for this in the future, but this is just my placeholder name for it until we get to talking about Fetch), and c) the main antagonist this in-universe fictional series focuses on instead of William/Springtrap (+ variants).

Now, did the method by which Eleanor kills Sarah actually claim someone’s life somewhere in the mainline canon? Does her seeming “magic” actually exist in some form? …Well, sort of, yes; it’s a half-truth, really, with enough details changed to distance itself from the actual happenings while still being able to use some of the most horrific and mystifying parts about them — exactly as you’d expect from a company trying to discredit and make light of real-world events.

But, seeing as those very things tie so heavily into the things I want to discuss regarding what I think the book is trying to say, we’ll get to the nitty-gritty of that later in the next section.

For now, I think we’ve covered everything that can be covered here, so let’s move on.

The Truths and the Likely-Truths

So…from now on, though obviously this section will continue to be where I discuss all things that I think were borrowed in-universe from the real life events of the main canon and/or which could have some relevance there, I will be more properly splitting this up into two sub-sections: The things that I know are true — which are themes and topics that I feel, without doubt, are definitely and most obviously what the story was created to establish and/or bring up relating to the lore, from an out-of-universe perspective — and then the things that I think are true, which are what I personally believe the book could be trying to establish and probably believe with a fairly high level of confidence, but which may not be as obvious at a first glance and do have more leeway for other interpretations.

It should be noted, however — and this is probably something I will retroactively add to the “Disclaimer and Important Notes” page, as I feel it’s quite important to all of the books — that, as Scott has confirmed in a decently recent interview with Dawko that he just writes down the basic plot of his stories and all the important points he wants to cover and then lets the other author flesh it out more fully, we have no way of knowing outside of the main plot exactly what details were his ideas and which aren’t; therefore, there’s a good chance that a few or even multiple of the things I bring up are just massive coincidence and have no meaning whatsoever in reality. Nevertheless, I do think there’s value in discussing it, but that fact is also why I will often try to provide far more than just one detail to back up most of my more elaborate interpretations and ideas — because we can’t be sure that any one single tiny detail within the books has value, unless of course it’s something Scott has specifically said is important.

Now! With that in mind, let’s take a look at what we can glean from this tale.

The things I KNOW are True

So, approaching this from the angle that, according to Frights Fiction, every Fazbear Frights story must contain some measure of truth hidden within the lies — some event Fazbear Entertainment is attempting to discredit (or further discredit, if it’s something that’s come up before) and monetize — what do I believe are the things To Be Beautiful is definitely riffing off of?

Well, there are four things here I am absolutely sure of:

1: Eleanor is absolutely derived from and supposed to be the Fazbear Frights version of Circus Baby — but more specifically and very importantly, she is Circus Baby after killing and being possessed by Elizabeth.

How do I know this? Well, there are a number of indicators throughout the book which tell us this:

It is stated very clearly in the book that Eleanor has green eyes — the color we know to be Elizabeth’s eye color, which Baby absorbed after killing and being possessed by her, according to Sister Location — not Circus Baby’s original blue.

In general, appearance wise, Eleanor looks very much like the version of Baby we see in The Silver Eyes trilogy, and said Baby was also possessed by Elizabeth and had the same duality in thoughts and nature that Circus Baby did during the main events of Sister Location, rather than being just an AI.

Her name is Eleanor — a name that is not only strikingly more human than Circus Baby, but also begins with the same two letters as Elizabeth.

She is stated in the books to have “a young girl’s voice”; now, what precisely this means, I suppose, is up for interpretation, but usually, if you refer to someone as a “young girl”, it means they are a child. In other words, she sounds younger than she looks; she sounds like a child. If I had to guess, she most probably sounds like Elizabeth — like Ennard sounds in the secret ending on Night Five, after Baby’s AI has been removed and all that remains of Baby is Elizabeth. Now, we could say that she has Circus Baby’s voice, as that could also be considered one of a young girl, but I feel the intentional draw to the fact that her voice sounds like a young girl, when Eleanor is described to be more of a proper woman, has to be an intentional dissonance, and using it just to say “oh, she sounds like Circus Baby” seems a bit pointless and redundant when it is already so clear that she is a stand-in for Circus Baby and practically no one is going to try to dispute this. In my eyes, this was done to draw attention to the fact that she is more than just an A.I. She is, just like in The Silver Eyes, both a girl and an AI who wants to obtain a more perfect and human-like body to inhabit. Something real.

The reason why I feel that this distinction is important is several-fold, and we’ll get to some of the reasons later, but for now let’s focus on the most important one, which is:

2: The events that happen in To Be Beautiful because of Eleanor are largely (with only a few caveats) meant to mirror and appear drawn from Sister Location.

Feeling skeptical? Here’s some evidence to back it up:

Throughout a vast majority of the story, ever since their initial meeting, Eleanor is largely portrayed as a kind and caring individual who longs to be good and only wants to help Sarah and keep her safe; this is a point that is brought up many, many times throughout the book — sometimes from Sarah, and sometimes even from Eleanor, herself. (To give one choice line from the book among the many examples: “Somehow, Eleanor being there made Sarah feel safe, as if Eleanor were standing guard.”) This is also true in Sister Location, as Circus Baby takes the role of protector and guide for Michael throughout many nights, keeping him safe and ensuring that nothing can hurt him, to the point where Michael (in the true, regular ending) steadily grows to trust her nearly completely and put his life in her hands, as Sarah does the same with Eleanor.

However, just like in Sister Location for Michael regarding Circus Baby, there are brief moments here and there as time progresses where Sarah gets the slightest hint of something just being “off” about the situation, or even times when Eleanor does something outright creepy, like leaning over and staring at Sarah while she sleeps, but she gives an innocent explanation for it, and Sarah, while upset, still seems to shrug it off in the end and forgive, excusing it by some means and telling herself it’s nothing to worry about (AKA just like when Circus Baby kidnaps Michael after Funtime Foxy attacks him, and stuffs him inside a Springlock Suit, claiming she did it to save him, but at the same time demanding he be quiet until the workers leave the room and wait until morning to be rescued), shortly before she inevitably seals her own fate the next day.

Eleanor really only awakens at night (“mostly nocturnal”, as the book puts it) in most cases, putting an emphasis on Sarah’s visits with her always happening at these times, much like with the night segments in Sister Location being the time that Michael interacts with Baby, and it also being the usual time that the animatronics go into free-roaming mode, and seem to start actively “coming to life” in their supernatural way in the mainline games’ canon, in general.

Sarah and Eleanor ended up meeting when Sarah found her in an old scrap yard and took pity on her condition, deciding to save her and fix her up. Michael met Baby because he had gone to Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental specifically to find Elizabeth and fix her, saving and freeing her from the AI that allegedly controlled her and made her do bad things, and “putting her back together.”

Eleanor’s ‘helping’ of Sarah — or rather, slowly working towards taking her entire body and getting Sarah to willingly, though albeit unknowingly, help her do it — takes place over the course of four nights, with the fifth day being the time that the transformation is finally complete; this much probably doesn’t even need saying, but this is a direct parallel to the four nights of Baby helping Michael along the way and ensuring his body would be preserved until he finally came around again on the fifth, when Baby and her fellow animatronics’ preparations were finally complete.

Both Eleanor’s and Circus Baby’s ultimate goal in helping the person they’ve met and keeping them safe for a period of time was for the explicit purpose of stealing their body and identity to use as a disguise and escape where they were being kept, so they could freely roam the world and go where they pleased.

There is actually a lot of clear symbolism and parallels for Ennard inhabiting and at times even controlling Michael’s body post-scoop, especially during the scene where Sarah loses her necklace and begins to lose her seemingly soft and human outside appearance to transform into a literal mass of tangled parts that she was underneath, detailing how people around her slowly went from expressing joy or amusement to absolute horror and fear, describing her struggling to walk down the street to her house and considering what people must think seeing her, describing the odd feeling and sound when the necklace first fell off, the clanking and clunking inside her, the slow horrific realization of what had happened, how she struggled to move and her body no longer was under her control, and lastly, how, “She was falling apart. Collapsing into a hideous trash heap. She didn’t resemble a human of any kind.” (Quite similarly to how Michael was falling apart in spite of the remnant in his body trying to repair him and barely resembled a human by the time Ennard finally left him.)

A little detail, maybe, but as Sarah is searching for Eleanor, she eventually begins to lose control over her ability to speak well, and calls out to her as “Ena”…which is quite similar in sound to Ennard.

These are definitely much smaller things by comparison, but I also feel that both Sarah notably staring into the mirror a lot and the mention of her eating spaghetti dinner at one point in the story are also meant to be small little symbols and metaphors for Sister Location, as Michael notably is seen staring into his mirror at the end of Sister Location, and Sarah consuming spaghetti — whose noodles are like Ennard’s many long tangled wires he is comprised of, and whose traditionally red marinara sauce resembles blood — could be seen as a metaphor for Ennard entering into Michael through his stomach after he is scooped.

Not only that, but there are also a few things in the story that only make sense if you think about them from the perspective of it being a fictional story in-universe that is meant to be borrowing a lot of events from and using symbolism for Sister Location; for example, and perhaps most notably, an ‘issue’ which GiBi’s Horror Homestead brought up in his video analysis of To Be Beautiful: the fact that instead of having Eleanor directly wear Sarah’s old body parts, she instead transforms her appearance using some sort of technology (more on this in a moment), and Sarah winds up finding the body parts just uselessly lying in bags which fall onto the floor.

It may seem counterintuitive, at first, to have Eleanor not wear the body parts when Ennard quite literally wore Michael’s body as a skinsuit, but I actually feel that this was very intentional; having Eleanor not do this not only allowed for the body parts — arms, legs, noses, and torsos — to be splayed out on the floor in front of Sarah when the sickening realization hits her, reminiscent of all the body parts of the animatronics in the Scooping Room when Michael arrives there, but it also leaves room for the book to specifically mention her entrails and organs slopping out onto the floor as well — giving the image of what would have happened to Michael when the scooper finally got him.

We could also say that Eleanor singing was meant to be reminiscent of Ballora, though I’m not quite as certain of that much, just a thought I wanted to put forward as, otherwise, I admit, I’m unclear on the purpose of it existing — unless, of course, it has some sort of hypnotizing and/or calming effect that basically worked as the anesthetic before Sarah’s surgery, and we’re for some reason supposed to draw absurd parallels between the Puppet being soothed by the music box and this in order to come to that conclusion, but I highly doubt that for a multitude of reasons.

3: Sarah’s necklace and Eleanor’s matching button are, without doubt, meant to be another play on and reminder of illusion disc technology, making this the second time within this book that it’s brought up.

Now, why Sarah’s body fails when her necklace falls off, even though there is no such mechanic involved in illusion discs, is another matter entirely, and while yes, we could easily say that perhaps the necklace was also connected to her new body in some way and kept the parts “running” (acting like a key to an engine), I also honestly really don’t think that it matters one way or another — not if we believe in Frights Fiction, at least.

Occam’s Razor dictates that the simplest answer is usually the most correct one, and saying that things in the books don’t entirely follow or fit the logic of FNAF’s known main canon because they’re sensationalized fiction and that the shock and horror elements of the story (and the ability to use, alter, and discredit various real world events) are always going to come before any real world logic is definitely the simplest answer here.

Sure, we can come up with complex potential explanations like this on why something is the way it is in these stories when it doesn’t make sense, but why waste that time and effort when we know that they’re fictional to begin with, and doing so might lead to missing the actual in-universe reason why the in-universe creators of Fazbear Frights would want to include certain story elements?

4: And lastly, once again, we circle back to the (at least as much as I’ve read thus far) ever-ongoing theme of the Power of Wills and Wishes™️ — the constant and seemingly very emphasized implication that within the FNAF universe, the mind/spirit is a very powerful thing that can — to at least some degree — control, cause, and/or contribute to the shape of reality and what happens within it.

Now, as I believe I said earlier in this post, I do want to hold off on discussing this on a grander scale until I reach the article where I talk about Fetch, but I will say that this theme is even stronger and more front and center in To Be Beautiful than it was in Into the Pit, with this time not only Sarah longing to be the conventional standard of beautiful and then ultimately getting her wish, but also getting to do so through Eleanor, who explicitly talks about and promises wish-granting.

Again, just something to bear in mind for the future for now, but it absolutely needed mentioning.

—

So, we have a whole list of things that I invariably believe are key parts of the book from an in-universe perspective, but what out of all of this, if anything, do I think that, out-of-universe, was undeniably something Scott would have wanted to communicate with this book?

Well, maybe this is a bit of a boring answer, but to be honest with you, unlike with Into the Pit, where I would have at least said that I think getting the year of the MCI — 1985 — out there was definitely a goal in the book, and that the game version also added a most likely game-canon design for Henry and William and a heavily implied connection between Oswald’s Dad and Freddy Bully, I don’t think that there’s actually any one thing that To Be Beautiful exists specifically to fully, uniquely, and unquestionably establish — at least not that isn’t mentioned elsewhere in other stories to some degree as well.

Rather, I think that To Be Beautiful — both in terms of the things that I think are utterly undeniable, and the things in the next section that I just believe in very strongly and think are backed quite well by various evidence, but aren’t as easily confirmed — just exists to further expand and place further emphasis upon certain points that have already been, and will continue to be, brought up in other Fazbear Frights books.

And in the case of the things that I feel are utterly undeniable, those points that I think emphasis is being placed on are illusion disc technology, and the very intriguing concept that is genuine willpower within the FNAF universe.

“But why the illusion discs?” I can hear some of you asking even now, “I know you said the other thing comes up again, and you have a theory on that to share later, but what’s so important about these?”

Well, like I said in my Into the Pit article, I think that Scott wants to remind people that technology like this is a thing in the FNAF universes, and that we shouldn’t rule it out of existing in the main canon, too — and not just because of FNAF 4, either; we’ve actually seen something akin to illusion disc technology not just hinted at, but actually shown to us in the main universe already, within Ruin, when we’re not using the Vanny mask. There are many things that Cassie can see and feel right in front of her so realistically that she is utterly convinced she can’t pass through until she wears the mask to take the illusion away, or removes it by some other source, like finding and removing ‘anomalies’ on the camera in a certain order (AKA using a hidden passcode to deactivate the illusion).

I’m not sure just yet how important this technology is going to become, but I do wholeheartedly believe that even if you are still utterly intent on just believing that FNAF 4 was a bunch of nightmares and nothing more, illusion discs are nevertheless clearly an integral part of the series either way, and a relevant thing that is intentionally being discussed and going to continue to be important to understanding how certain things in the mainline FNAF universe work.

The things I FEEL are True

…Well, putting all of that absolute certainty and undeniable truth behind us, let’s now wade a bit deeper into the pool of analysis, well-backed theories, and plausible personal interpretations, and finally ask the burning question:

What do I think To Be Beautiful could be trying to say about the main lore and/or its characters, on a deeper level?

Well, to start with, one thing is for sure: it’s certainly carrying on this entire book’s clear but unstated secondary theme of its main characters feeling unlovable, unwanted, utterly invisible in any possible positive context, and like life is meaningless in its current state.

But…why is it like that? It’s not as if this is the running theme which is mentioned on the back of the volume itself — with said theme being identified as the fulfillment of wishes and their unfortunate consequences — and yet, it is still undeniably there.

Oswald feels like his Dad doesn’t really care about him, feels invisible to him, and is generally unhappy and bored with the way his monotonous, unpleasant life is in their dying town. Sarah, as we’ll further discuss soon, hates her own body and feels ugly, undesirable, and utterly invisible because of it, thinking that there’s no happiness to be found in life unless she fundamentally changes herself to be more in line with what’s considered conventionally pretty. And lastly, Millie — well, Millie’s plight we’ll get around to later, when we discuss Count the Ways, but trust me when I say that she is absolutely not the exception to this rule, and if anything, is actually even more extreme than the others in a lot of ways.

I know some people might say that it probably just lined up that way because the characters being unhappy was the necessary motivator for them to even have wishes in the first place, but that isn’t necessarily true; yes, they would need to be unhappy in some way with their current life, but that discontent didn’t have to stem from those precise, very specific troubles.

As a matter of fact, Oswald’s wish itself — the one that was “granted” to him through his discovery of the ballpit — had absolutely nothing in particular to do with his struggle of feeling ignored and not cared about; rather, it stemmed mostly just from the fact that he was feeling bored, and while yes, that boredom was technically because of these issues, he could very easily have just been bored without meeting any of the criteria here, so it seems very intentional that he was nevertheless written so that he did meet them — just as it does with every other main character in the book.

The fact that they all met every single one of these points has to mean something, it’s just a matter of what…and, honestly, if you’ve read my previous article, then I think you probably already know where I’m going with this.

But, for now, let’s reel it back in and just focus on Sarah’s story and who I think she and her struggles represent individually, since I think it’s easier to build a case up for something like this if you first take it one step at a time.

I’m sure you’re well aware where I stand on it, but I’ll go ahead and say it plainly anyway: I think that the character of Sarah is a stand-in for Michael, potentially in more ways than just as far as it relates to fulfilling his role in the story’s intentional bastardization of Sister Location.

Yes, I realize that there are probably plenty of people who are going to disagree with me on this, and I can understand why; at a cursory glance, Sarah and Michael don’t really seem very alike beyond what happened to them, and, if anything, I’m sure Elizabeth is probably the first canon character to come to mind when people see a story involving a girl and Circus Baby-like robot — especially one she looks up to and views as extraordinarily beautiful and perfect.

Combine that with the fact that a great many people borrow from the explicitly alternate universe Silver Eyes trilogy in their headcanons for how William was to her as a father (as well as other, equally dubious sources of information), and I’m sure that a fair number would be quite convinced that the Afton girl just meets every criteria on the board necessary to be an obvious parallel to Sarah and all of her troubles and concerns.

…She’s really not, though — not in hardly any sense of the word.

Let’s review the smaller bits of evidence that could be used to support this theory, and see how they hold up to scrutiny:

1: “Sarah is explicitly mentioned to have an older brother in college who is majoring in computer science and might know about [the concept of something like Eleanor] — a clear reference to Elizabeth having an older brother, Michael.” …Not…really. Sure, Sarah and Elizabeth both have older brothers, and with Sarah being 14 and college having the potential to accept students well into their 20s or even older, you could really stretch it to say that they have a similar age gap, but there’s honestly no proof of this whatsoever; talking in terms of statistics and probabilities, the gap they have is much more likely to be closer to what Elizabeth would’ve had with Garret than what she had with Michael.

As for the brother’s profession, this…actually has no connection to Michael whatsoever; yes, he’s familiar with the animatronics, but that’s because his father makes them for a living, and later on — long after Elizabeth’s death, I might add — he works around and perpetually deals with them as a night security guard at Freddy’s, too.

A lot of people have brothers. A lot of people in this franchise have people who in some way know something about technology or animatronics; this is not a smoking gun in any way, shape, or form. The details just don’t match up enough to make for a compelling piece of evidence. They don’t even mention a name.

2: “The story makes mention of frozen yogurt/ice cream a few times, and has Sarah eat it; this is meant to be a reference to Circus Baby, and the fact that a vanilla ice cream cone was what she used to lure Elizabeth to her death. That makes Sarah Elizabeth.” This is an even bigger reach than the mention of Sarah having a brother.

Yes, ice cream/frozen yogurt is mentioned in the book a few times, very passingly, but the purpose of its mention is less about the treat itself and more a means by which to discuss the fact that the Beautifuls seem to be able to eat whatever they want without gaining an ounce, and Sarah feels like she can’t (as well as potential symbolism for the fact that the Beautifuls are cold and self-indulgent). At no point is Sarah mentioning how much she loves ice cream — and she does talk at decent length about foods she is actually partial to, like pizza — or even picking a flavor that would have a hint of significance towards that tragic canon event, explicitly choosing swirl over the option for vanilla. At no point is the ice cream relevant to the plot, or in any form connected to her death at the end of the book, which it absolutely should be if this was truly meant to be a parallel between those events.

The graphic novel does feel like it puts a little bit more emphasis on the inclusion of the food, but this is ironically only because it does a poor job at explaining the reason it was brought up in its source material in the first place, and it entirely skips over Sarah having a date at an ice cream shop, too — oddly making it stand out even more, simply because it feels like an almost pointless inclusion, whereas in the book it makes perfect sense. It’s not a deliberate choice, it’s just another meaningless point of contention that says nothing other than that the graphic novel is really bad at conveying, even with the help of visuals, what the book easily conveys with just words alone.

3: “Sarah wants to have blonde hair; Elizabeth is (strawberry) blonde.” Yes, correct…but an emphasis should be placed on wants; Sarah is not blonde, nor does she become blonde even when all her wishes are otherwise granted. Sarah is a brunette. If Scott wanted to make Sarah a parallel to Elizabeth, having her share her hair color — or at least succeed in obtaining her hair color later, when her wishes were granted — would have been an easy way to help nudge readers in the direction of viewing her as a metaphor for Elizabeth despite a great scarcity of other solid evidence, but he deliberately chose instead to give her the brown hair and blue eyes of Elizabeth’s brother Michael, instead of the near instantly recognizable (strawberry) blonde and green eyes of the one some allege that he meant to portray.

Yes, in the To Be Beautiful-inspired mini-game of the Into the Pit video game adaption, Eleanor does make Sarah blonde, but this was clearly done because if it wasn’t, it would be unrecognizable in an 8-bit artstyle that Eleanor had changed her head much at all. I don’t particularly like the change exactly because I feel it muddies the waters in this way and has the potential for causing confusion, but I do understand why it was done, and it wasn’t because Scott wanted to retcon how Sarah looked; it was because it was the only simple way to convey the change in that part of her appearance — the same as changing her clothes was one of the easiest ways to convey a lot of the change in her body.

4: “Sarah likes soft pink, as evidenced by her nails and lipstick post-transformation; Elizabeth’s room in FNAF 4 was decorated all in pink.” …Well, for one thing, we don’t know for sure that that room belonged to Elizabeth; I certainly agree that it is Elizabeth’s room, I 100% believe that that is the intended interpretation, but it should be said that it’s not actually been confirmed, and there are people out there who choose to believe it’s Michael’s.

For reasons that should be obvious if you know my semi-controversial stance on FNAF 4, I pretty strongly disagree with the interpretation that that room is Michael’s, unless we’re assuming a change of houses (and decor tastes) happened by the time the night sections of FNAF 4 rolled around, but it is an interpretation that exists, and so it does bear mentioning.

Even if it is Elizabeth’s room, though — and again, I agree that it is — a girl liking pink isn’t really some groundbreaking thing, given that at this current point in time, that is the well-known stereotype (and many girls do, in fact, like pink, though it has little to do with gender). Saying, “this girl likes pink, so she must be this other girl who likes pink” is just….not really the best argument I’ve seen, if we’re being honest — especially when one of the main plot points of the story is that Sarah wants to adhere to the conventional beauty standards for her gender.

—

Well, even if we don’t have any of that, we at least still have the fact that Elizabeth clearly felt pretty much everything Sarah did about herself, right? In the Silver Eyes trilogy, Elizabeth was constantly neglected by her Dad in favor of his inventions — with that universe’s equivalent of Circus Baby being his main focus at the time when she was alive — longing to be loved and wanted like Baby was, to be perfect like Baby was, and even after dying and possessing Baby, neither she nor Baby were ever happy or content with themselves because he immediately moved on to just trying to use her to get something better, leaving her to feel like she wasn’t enough and grow jealous of the current object of his interest. That’s a perfect fit for the secondary theme I keep mentioning in this volume, and not a bad comparison to Sarah by any means, isn’t it?

I mean, yeah, it’s not too far off the mark, but…we’re not talking about The Silver Eyes’ Elizabeth here; there would be no point in Sarah being a parallel for an alternate universe version of Elizabeth, just to tell us what we already know about her — and despite fairly popular opinion, the Elizabeth from the main games’ canon, whom this would be about if it was about any Elizabeth, isn’t canonically like the one in the Silver Eyes. Neither is William, in regards to the way he largely treats his kids.

Look, I know that people can have their different interpretations of characters wherever the blanks aren’t filled in, and that’s perfectly fine, but there comes a point where you have to be able to look at canon and distinguish whether what you choose to believe about a character is a headcanon (something that doesn’t conflict with official canon, but also doesn’t necessarily have anything backing it), or an alternate universe interpretation (which is something that conflicts with canonical information in a way that renders it impossible to reconcile with official canon, no matter how cool or fun the idea may be).

It’s perfectly fine if some of you like the idea of a William Afton who is abusive and/or neglectful of all of his kids, and I 100% encourage you to play around with that in your creations, if that’s what makes you happy, but canonically, in terms of the mainline games, it needs to be recognized that as far as any 100% confirmable canon is concerned, that is not what William is; William did not neglect or abuse Elizabeth. William did not neglect or abuse Garret. There is nothing confirmable in main canon which suggests this, and everything that suggests otherwise.

If William did not care about Garret or Elizabeth, he would not be on a mission to “put them back together”, to the point of temporarily enlisting the only child whom he does canonically resent to help him do it.

If William did not care about Garret, he would not have sat at his child’s bedside and begged him to wake up. If William did not care about Elizabeth, he would not have tried to protect her from Baby. The entire point of mainline FNAF — and what makes it so compelling — is that William is shown to just have originally been a father who lost himself when he lost his child and went progressively more and more mad in his grief as his refusal to let go just kept causing him to lose more, until he had truly become a monster (in more than one sense of the word) practically beyond all recognition. It is the contrast between him, Henry, and Michael in how they deal with their grief that makes them all such good characters.

There is no point in confirmable canon in which Elizabeth says or implies that her father mistreated her prior to her death, and she even goes so far as to say in the end of Pizzeria Simulator that she believes that the entire pizzeria and Michael taking the job was all a gift for them (his children) from their father, which I can’t imagine her saying if she thought he didn’t care about her or them. By all accounts, she speaks very lovingly of him.

So no, as far as we know, the actual main canon Elizabeth does not fit the bill for the running secondary theme of this volume, which means that she does not really fit Sarah.

And as for the Silver Eyes’ interpretation of Elizabeth, I do feel it’s very important to just draw attention to one thing: in that alternate universe, William did not have multiple children; there was not a Garret or a Michael through whose fates we could mark his complex descent into madness through grief. This was intentional; there was no Garret in William’s life because in the Silver Eyes, if William had a Garret to mourn and to obsess over returning to life at all costs, he would not have been the antithesis to Henry, who instead took his role with his grief over his late daughter, Charlie. If William had had an Elizabeth he loved, he would not have been the contrast to the loving father that Henry was, and Elizabeth/Baby would not have had a reason to be jealous of Charlie, who had a father who loved her so dearly, and that was very clearly what they were going for.

As a result, the Silver Eyes Elizabeth was not just Elizabeth — she was a unique-to-that-universe creation who fulfilled a role that was a mix between her mainline canon counterpart and the mainline canon Michael — a little girl born of William Afton to die tragically to Baby, but also a child for William to neglect and then act cruel/cold/disdainful towards and make suffer in the name of his endeavors.

Trying to compare anyone in the Silver Eyes in a straightforward way to their main canon namesakes and expecting everything (or even most things) to transfer over is a fruitless endeavor, because no one there is entirely themselves; they’re what the narrative needs them to be in order to work the way it wants. That’s why it’s an alternate universe.

And finally, as we’ve discussed in the previous section, Elizabeth already has a main character counterpart in Eleanor, when it comes to To Be Beautiful; Eleanor very clearly represents Circus Baby after she’s been possessed by Elizabeth, and the overall plot is meant to mirror the events of Sister Location, so why would she need to also be represented by the character who happens to be the stand-in for Michael in every other instance?

It’s much more sensible to assume that Elizabeth is represented by the main character who parallels — well, Elizabeth, and that Michael is represented by the main character who is an obvious stand-in for him.

Besides, Michael has so much more in common with Sarah, to begin with. Think about it:

1: We already know that in terms of the main plot and how it relates to Sister Location, Sarah is meant to be filling Michael’s space, so it would hardly be a leap of logic to say that it would make the most sense if the person she is meant to parallel in other ways is also Michael, rather than some random other character whom we aren’t already thinking about.

2: Sarah and Michael both share the same mousy brown hair and blue eyes, making for a compelling argument to an intentional physical resemblance despite the difference in gender.

3: Furthermore, going by both the descriptions in the book and the artwork of the graphic novel, apart from characteristics brought on by age, Sarah bares a strong, almost uncanny likeness to her Mom — perfectly paralleling how Michael and his father, William, are canonically near identical in appearance, as well.

4: Given that there is a certain passage in the story, during the point where Sarah is having her first ‘interview’ with the Beautifuls, where it is explicitly stated, “Sarah tried not to bristle at the word ‘Dad’.”, I think it is safe to say that both she and Michael have issues and/or an overall adversary — or at least strained — relationship with their fathers, as well. We know from the mainline canon that Michael definitely does, for as much as there might have been a part of him that once wanted to win his love and attention when he was young.

5: Throughout the book, Sarah has a best friend named Abby, whom she has been so close to for most of her life that she basically grew up with her; Abby can occasionally be used as a nickname for ‘Elizabeth’, and in the alternate universe FNAF movie, Michael’s sister — who is very clearly meant to be Elizabeth — is called Abby, as well.

I don’t think that Abby is necessarily meant to be Elizabeth in the story, by any means, for reasons that should already be clear, but I do think that this is supposed to be yet another attempt at making parts of Sarah’s life mirror Michael’s in a way.

6: In one part of the tale, Sarah remarks how Eleanor is definitely “more alive than the stuffed Freddy Fazbear she’d had on her bed since she was six”, and again makes reference to said Freddy plush later on, when she picks it up to hug it, while telling Eleanor about her day.

If you happen to subscribe to the same belief that I do that the night sections of FNAF 4 take place in Michael’s bedroom, and that Michael is the one being terrorized by animatronics fitted with illusion discs by his father, then you’d know that Michael very notably has a stuffed Freddy Fazbear on his bed that this could be a reference to, as could the vague suggestion that Sarah’s stuffed Freddy hadn’t “come to life”, as appeared to happen in a sense to young Michael during this time.

7. Not exactly a smoking gun by any means, but Sarah and Abby both very openly love pizza in this, even if Sarah stopped eating it for quite a while out of a desire to avoid carbs, and Sarah even seems to be something of a connoisseur in the way she narrates the fact that the pizza at the cafeteria isn’t that bad for what it was, making an implication she’s had better, more fresh pizza.

Michael is also quite familiar with pizza, given that it’s his family’s business, as would his sister Elizabeth be, and in the Security Logbook, one of the perks of the job of working at Freddy’s that Michael mentions is “employees get free pizza”, implying that he does quite enjoy it — even enough that it could be considered a perk of an otherwise extremely dangerous and largely unpleasant, generally low-paying job.

8: Despite knowing full well how they can be, Sarah seems to nevertheless idolize and greatly want to be a part of The Beautifuls, who are ultimately just a glorified group of spoiled, wealthy bullies. This is, truthfully, not very different at all from the fact that Michael used to hang out with what appeared to be a group of bullies when he was a young teen, also around Sarah’s stated age.

9: A lot of Sarah’s specific complaints about herself and her life have a lot of potential subtle symbolism relating to Foxy, and the various versions of the character that have been made over the years — and I don’t think I have to explain how important Foxy symbolism generally is, when we’re talking about Michael.

Here’s just a few of the notable examples I’ve picked up on:

Sarah’s obsessions with the faults of her physical appearance are, and I quote, a “bulbous nose”, “prominent ears,” and the fact that “all her parts seem stuck onto her body at random” — over which she then compares herself to “Mrs. Mix-n-match”. Both the bulbous nose and prominent ears are some of the very defining features of Foxy in nearly every iteration, and, of course, although I know Mrs. Mix-n-Match was meant to be a parallel to our world’s Mrs. Potato Head, I can’t help but feel that the way Sarah describes herself and even the name of the toy itself strongly bring to mind the image of Mangle, too.

Although this game came out a year later, I also find it important to note that Roxy — an obviously related character and later a replacement for Foxy during Security Breach’s era — shares many of Sarah’s self-worth and self-image issues, which can often lead her to act like something of a bully to compensate. She also mentions that “nobody likes a loser”, and Sarah in this book plainly states that she doesn’t like to sit at the “loser table” and refuses to do so anymore. This may not be an intentional parallel on the book’s part, as Security Breach obviously did not much exist at that time (if at all) even in the development stage, but it is certainly possible that it could be the other way around, and Roxy could be designed the way she is exactly because of Sarah/Michael, and the fact that she is technically an iteration of Foxy. Just food for thought, I guess.

—

Above all, though, as I began to explore in my previous article, Michael and Sarah’s very biggest common-ground that they share is that secondary underlying theme that pervades this entire book and all three of its full stories — that same feeling of being unlovable, unwanted, invisible when it comes to anything good, and feeling that life in its current state is empty and meaningless.

And if there’s still any doubt of that — still some lingering question of if that could really be an accurate reading of Michael — let us put that to rest immediately, because out of all the iterations of Michael that exist thus far, there is no iteration in which the canon of that universe does not at least show it to be perfectly fitting to his personality — if not blatantly showing and stating it.

In the alternate universe FNAF movie, while avoiding as many spoilers as possible, Michael very clearly carries the weight of guilt over his past mistakes, feels unwanted and invisible to the person he cares about most — not to mention undeserving of being in that person’s life, and later, even shows signs of not particularly caring what happens to him anymore and that life isn’t worth living if he can’t change how it is.

In the mainline canon, through both the games and the Security Logbook, we can see that Michael is deeply regretful of what he did to Garret and, after doing all he could to help his sister who technically died because of that action, as well, states, himself, that the only thing left for him is to continue to live on long enough to right all the harm that he inadvertently caused through a domino effect resulting out of Garret’s death, and find and stop his father. It is very clear, especially through both the Security Logbook and heavily suggested in Pizzeria Simulator, that he feels life beyond this is meaningless and longs to die once it’s all over.

And for the final nail in the coffin of every clear and undeniable Michael interpretation strongly lending to all of the aforementioned themes applying to and being true of Michael in the mainline canon of the games, there is even also a story that comes later in Fazbear Frights — called Lonely Freddy — which is much more undeniably directly about Michael as a person, in which his very obvious stand-in has almost this exact mindset (though that will have to wait, as I don’t want to give out spoilers for future books and tales here).

…But what can we really learn about Michael from To Be Beautiful? Even if what I say here is true, then what could this tale possibly have to contribute that the rest of this volume and that aforementioned later book don’t? If anything, wouldn’t this just be echoing that same general theme and sentiment?

…Well, yes, it would — but that doesn’t mean that examining the specific ways that theme manifests in this story and Sarah’s unique attributes can’t contribute anything new to the conversation. I absolutely think it can.

So, without further ado — as I think this article is getting incredibly long already — here are some things that I personally find to be quite interesting and potentially very revealing when applied to Michael’s character, and why:

1: First of all, to start this off strong with my most robust dissection of Michael's character, there's the parallel between the bullies he used to hang out with as a teen and Sarah's Beautifuls.

In To Be Beautiful, Sarah very clearly has an issue with idolizing bullies and bullying behavior, using her own self-hatred and body image issues to justify the behavior of those she deemed better than herself in some way. It's a sad but interesting thought process to examine — the way that she felt that those who possessed what she herself wanted had the right to look down on her and others simply for not having it, and that she should be honored to even be in their presence for a moment, if they happened to entertain her.

She kept pictures of models on her wall, but not as inspiration in any positive sense of the word; rather, she ended up allowing it to be yet another way to make her feel worse about herself, and even imagined these "goddesses of beauty" mocking her and telling her she had no hope of ever being as pretty as they were.

In Sarah's mind, the supreme, inherent beauty of people like this — especially the Beautifuls — magically shielded them from all of life's pain and embarrassment, and to be accepted by them meant to be covered by that same forcefield, and given status, meaning, worth.

They had high status not because they were rich or had influential parents who could afford to give them anything they wanted and remove any obstacles placed in their way, but because they were beautiful — or at least, that was how she viewed it.

And she wanted that more than anything else. She wanted that, and she wanted to feel valued, and if the Beautifuls — who judged practically everyone but the ‘best’ — valued her and let her run with them, then she had the undeniable proof and reassurance she desperately sought and needed, even once she was already ‘beautiful’, that she had ‘true’ worth.

Applying this philosophy to Michael has an…interesting effect and implication.

While we’ll get into discussion of whether or not there’s anything potentially to be said about Michael and how he feels about his own appearance later, I think it’s very safe to say that, regardless of the answer, that’s obviously not what motivated him when it came to him joining the bully group he was a part of in his teens.

Still, it doesn’t have to be about beauty to tie back to Sarah and her philosophy; if we look at it logically, then like with Sarah, Michael’s reason for looking up to and joining the bullies must have been based off of three things: his own lack of self-worth and a need for that to be validated, the ability to gain status that helped him feel above life’s pain and embarrassment, and them having something he doesn’t, but wishes he had.

The second reason is very simple to work out and requires no pondering at all, as we know for a fact that obviously, being a bully in any capacity does grant you freedom from a lot of life’s inconveniences, as many people will be intimidated enough by you that you gain a certain level of status and free pass to do whatever you want without consequence. Despite Sarah’s (and hence, Michael’s) initial beliefs, it obviously does not truly protect you from all pain or humiliation, no, but it does grant you a significant edge, even if through rather unfortunate means.

As for the first reason, that is also very much tied to the third, so to answer one is to inevitably answer the other, but if not beauty, what was Michael’s greatest insecurity and desire?

Did he want to be wealthy, as the Beautifuls were? Obviously, the answer is no; looking at what little we can observe of Michael’s bully cohorts in his teens and what we can gather of some of them in their present lives, they didn’t particularly appear to be wealthy, and more than likely, given how successful Fredbear’s Family Diner was, Michael’s family would’ve been the richest out of all of them, even if they did appear to choose to live fairly humbly.

The only possible choice, then, is — as I posited in my previous article, and as is backed up by a later story — Michael’s greatest insecurity was in feeling that he was invisible to and largely unloved by his father and/or family in general, compared to his siblings, and, whether or not he originally particularly liked the power the bullies had and flaunted (something of which we cannot easily say one way or another at this point in time), he nevertheless looked up to them for how unaffected they were in life and potentially how their parents spoiled and loved them, and he simultaneously satisfied his loneliness and further fed the beast by choosing to be around them so that he could feel wanted and accepted by at least someone, feel power over at least something when he felt powerless elsewhere, and (as posited previously) act out more and more in an attempt to get the acknowledgement from his father or family that he craved so desperately.

And yet, this also raises a question; if, like Sarah, Michael perhaps believed that the bullies had the right to do what they wanted because they’d earned it through what they had (even if, in their case, it was mostly just power over their lives and the support of the parents), why didn’t he feel the same way about — as we know happened, both according to UCN and the later Lonely Freddy story I keep speaking of — Garret pranking him or otherwise (usually unintentionally) making his life harder? Wouldn’t he feel like he deserved it?

Actually, no, because Sarah was equally a hypocrite about it, when it came to those closer to her, for, despite expressing several times in both narration and dialogue that she believed Abby was beautiful and just didn’t flaunt it (and thus, should have gotten the same level of excusing as the Beautifuls did ), the moment that she felt judged by Abby, Sarah became angry and lashed out at her, because “friends were supposed to be the people who didn’t judge you”. — even though the Beautifuls were, in fact, allowed to judge her and set a standard for her even after they were supposedly friends.

I suppose, in their minds, it’s fine when it’s people who are consistently judgy or cruel to others from the moment you’ve met them, but not fine when it’s someone you grew up with and who is usually supposed to have your back.

2: And now, for probably the most burning question, does Sarah’s emphasis on body image issues have any potential to carry over to Michael, based on what we know of the mainline canon?

Well, going into this, I was fairly certain the resounding answer was just going to be ‘no’, but…after thinking it over and reviewing what we know is canon, I actually think there might be something to it, in a more mild sense.

I obviously don’t think that Michael feels he’s ugly; with the game version of Into the Pit giving us a new and unique, likely canon photograph of William and Henry, and with Sister Location blatantly confirming that Michael looks almost just like his father, I think it’s pretty safe to safe that Michael Afton is likely very conventionally attractive by most standards.

Now, that’s not to say it’s impossible that Michael could think he isn’t, regardless — it very clearly is, since Sarah hates her own appearance and thinks she’s ugly despite her looking just like her Mom, who she clearly thinks is pretty — but given canon, I think it makes more sense to say that if Michael does hate his appearance, it’s less because he isn’t attractive, and more because he looks just like his serial killer, child murdering father.

It would not surprise me in the least if, like Sarah, the mirror we see Michael staring into in Sister Location is indeed his worst enemy, because every time he looks into it, he’s reminded of his Dad, and what he himself did that caused all of this bloodshed in the first place.

It may have even sent him into an existential crisis now and again, as both he and his dad are technically both murderers in their own right. Did it perhaps make him spend hours wondering if, like their physical appearances, they really weren’t as different as he would want to believe?

And if there was a point in time pre- or during Sister Location when he wished to distance himself from that, then I’m sure that just like Sarah, there was eventually a moment of regret for that wish, when he finally looked into the mirror some time after being scooped and could barely recognize the mangled and failing (even if attempting to mend through remnant in spite of Ennard’s intrusion) body in front of him.

There’s clearly no way to know at this point in time, but I do find the implication rather interesting.

3: Going back to the Beautifuls and the bully symbolism for a moment, I do think there is a certain point of interest in some of the symbolism surrounding them and Sarah’s desire to join them.

The way that Abby compares the Beautifuls to a type of animal (penguins) because they are not varied or unique enough in appearance to truly be distinguishable from one another and the fact that Sarah had to get an entirely new face — more or less putting on a non-removable mask — to be acceptable among them, brings to mind, for me, the bullies that Michael associated with and joined around her age, and the concept of both having to wear a both figurative and semi-literal mask to be a part of them, and the comparison to animals in their lack of recognizable features definitely brings to mind the way that those bullies all wore masks of the Fazbear animatronic animal gang.

That could just be me, though.

4: I do think the fact that Sarah deciding to try to improve her life circumstances by buying the hair dye and just ending up more literally green (with envy) in the process has symbolism for something about Michael that is later revealed in Lonely Freddy, but as that would require spoilers for that story in order to explain it, I’ll just list this here for now as something to remember, and we’ll get back to it in that post.

5: Although, I don’t believe Abby is actually meant to be a stand-in for Elizabeth in any meaningful or lasting capacity beyond adding another similarity between Sarah and Michael in who they have a sibling-like dynamic with, there is at least one or two bits in the story that may have some relevance to either Elizabeth or Garret’s relationship with Michael.

In the book, it’s explained that Abby and Sarah grew up together and used to have a very close, sibling-like dynamic where they played together, but that Sarah eventually changed as she grew older and that she more or less had taken the attitude that she had “outgrown” Abby’s world and was now too focused on “fixing” her situation and obsessing over the Beautifuls (despite them being bullies) to hang out with her as she once did — feeling that Abby just didn’t understand her plight because she isn’t mature enough to get it.

For reasons that will become clear in Lonely Freddy, I’m not completely convinced this can apply to Garret, so I’m going to say that it’s Elizabeth this is mirroring, as not only is the character’s name a nickname for Elizabeth, but the dialogue from Scrap Baby in Pizzeria Simulator seems to hint that she and Michael may have had a slightly closer and more innocently playful relationship, but it’s open to interpretation.

Either way, the point is still the same: if applicable to Michael, this information would imply that once Michael began feeling invisible, the distance between him and his sibling(s) grew greatly, as he isolated himself from them more and more, feeling that they didn’t understand or care about the situation he was in and the fact they contributed to it. (Which is, intriguingly, information that UCN seems to partially back, at least in regards to Garret — minus, as far as I can recall, the implication that they were ever extremely close.)

Not really a big revelation, but still worth bringing up, I think.

6: In general, I think that Sarah getting to feel better about herself each of the four days of the transformation and getting closer to her ideal self while (unintentionally, in her case) helping Eleanor out could easily be very symbolic of the fact that helping Elizabeth — in the form of Circus Baby — was clearly Michael’s very first major act of self-redemption, and most likely did help him to feel at least a little less of the self-hatred he would’ve still felt over his other sibling’s tragic death, and gradually brought him one step closer to what he believed at the time would be making up for his mistakes.

7: While not really big or deeply significant enough to warrant their own separate little points in this list, there are just a few little lines from the book that I’d like to highlight as particularly capturing my attention when thinking about the subject of how Sarah relates to Michael:

“She might as well get used to being alone. She was always going to be alone.” Just more potential symbolism for how Michael felt in his day to day life growing up (and potentially even after, when it became clear that his father had only chosen him to help Baby because he knew he would agree). Nothing mind-blowing — the line just stood out to me.

“She felt sad, then she felt scared, and then she felt nothing at all.” Probably one of the saddest lines in the book, and even sadder when you realize that this is likely how Michael felt in the moment of being scooped, before his body was taken over. Sadness over being betrayed by his own sister and even his father, fear over what was clearly about to happen, and then nothing, once the scooper had done its job, until he eventually regained some form of consciousness to find his body being used.

There are a few other smaller things we could potentially examine in this way, but given there’s no major evidence towards those at this present moment other than that they’re true of Sarah, and Sarah is a stand-in for Michael, I think it’s better to leave it here for now.

Instead, as one last small topic that I don’t put half as much heavy stock in, but would still like to highlight anyway, for those of you in search of the elusive Mrs. Afton’s name (it almost certainly isn’t Clara, since the Security Logbook confirms that Michael in particular is the one who relates to Clara and her plight, and makes no mention of it being his Mom’s name), there may be something worth examining here — at least if you believe that Ballora could have been made to represent Mrs. Afton.

If you’d like to hear a more in-depth explanation of this, you can (and should!) check out this little video here by another smaller FNAF creator, but the basics are that the name Eleanor has ties back to the name “Lora”, which Ballora’s name could very easily be a combination of the word “Ballerina” and the name “Lora”. Meaning that it is possible that Mrs. Afton’s name is actually Eleanor, and because this story’s version of Circus Baby is more like an adult woman, she is using her mother’s name instead of Elizabeth, as a cover name.

…And with that, I believe we are actually, finally done here with this analysis of To Be Beautiful; it certainly ended up much, much longer than I expected it to be, despite my having already expected that it would be one of the longest I would write, but I hope that it was worth it to read.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one, when we’ll talk about Count the Ways!

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thepowerisyouth · 10 months ago

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Thanks for this reminder about something Id been mulling over. New definition time again:

"Conspiracy Theory" = a wide ranging class of ideals, which, when broken down are at their core-- unproven theorums. As in, we dont have enough evidence to support our conclusion with high enough confidence, but we do believe it is PROBABLY true, as in greater than 50% chance

When you really start to dig into which "Conspiracies" are regarded as such, and dig into WHY some "Conspiracies" are brought into the normal science discourse and called "real" and whitewashed of the previous "Conspiracy" label, it actually starts making sense that some of the ORIGINAL CONSPIRACIES were actually well supported public beliefs. For a while.

I'm looking at you, 1960s political assassinations

When we look at these incidents from a framework that we have today, which is to say that big-money controls public information, especially BEFORE THE INTERNET

I really want to hear from people that lived through that time. I didnt obviously.

But the development of public sentiment around things called "Conspiracy" makes sense, if I add one extra "Conspiracy" in here. Funny cause thats actually how science proofs are written but yeah, I'm totally just a Conspiracy theorist and nothing else

I believe, until proven otherwise, that big-money interest groups manipulated certain Conspiracy theorists with slowly devolving theories which made the public lose all trust that ANY conspiracy could be right.

Since I'm not a proponent of intelligent design, I would say my argument still makes sense as a self-reinforcing cycle which was nudged along with extra craziness by the corporations who were avoiding the actual truth. As in, IT WAS IN EVERY CORPORATIONS PROFIT INCENTIVES TO MAKE AMERICANS DISTRUST EACH OTHER

Wow. Lot said here. Lets just finish with a quick reminder that all of these beliefs are officially labeled as "Conspiracy theory"

-The simple belief that JFK took more than 1 bullet when he died. The official report afterwards claimed that a "Single Bullet Theory"-- which confirmed Lee Harvey Oswald as definitely just a nutter acting alone-- as the officially correct theory. As in, all the government and businesses just acted like this was definitely true and just moved on. Calling everyone else "nutters". Fucking gaslighting

-The belief that MLK & Malcom X were killed by right-wing extremists in the American military branches (police state branches)

-The belief that Trump did not do anything ever in the interest of Russian businesses without being honest with America

That last one should be read again. Yep. Because the impeachment failed to convict Trump, the official stance of the government was that Trump committed zero crimes in regards to Foreign Interest transparency. If this happened 60 years ago, it would be considered a nutter theory too in todays discourse.

So let me say this for all my fellow altruistic mfers that have avoided scary conspiracies. They arent all scary. Just the ones tainted by right wing extremists in a self-reinforcing cycle to make all conspiracies less appealing to the general public.

Again, I don't believe in intelligent design, so I believe a lot of these theories can be better understood as a probably self-reinforcing cycle with some very bad actors making very bad moves to help it not stop.

Kinda like my argument about this all being a financial bubble? No one person causes it. Hive mind does

Trump should be forced to identify these men. They are Russian spies. Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Kislyak.

Trump should be forced to explain why they were in the Oval Office and why US media was forbidden and Russian media was allowed.

Trump is loyal to Russia. It's obvious.

Pictured: three Russian spies

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spicywatson · 5 years ago

Photo

based on @mydumbassenergy‘s post [x]

[please don’t repost, reblog instead]

#oswald cobblepot #gotham #gothamedit #gotham gifs #my stuff #my gifs #it's true that oswald is better than everyone else #he's just perfect

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 4 years ago

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Gabriel Agreste: Interesting Villain, Horrible Character (400 Follower Special)

I'm honestly surprised more people didn't want me to talk about Gabriel, especially with how often I rag on how horrible of a person he is. But, three character analysis posts later, and we're going to talk about why the main villain of Miraculous Ladybug is a real letdown.

Gabriel Needs to give the Whining a Rest

The interesting thing is one of the few things I actually liked in Season 3 was Hawkmoth. His plans actually made sense (for the most part), and by playing the long game, he managed to turn Chloe against Ladybug and deprived her of several key allies. Granted, Season 4 immediately undid the latter, but I was still impressed by his strategy.

Generally, one of the better aspects of Gabriel as a character was just how over the top he was as Hawkmoth. Keith Silverstein is clearly giving it his all with his performance, and he is just so enjoyable to watch as a cartoonish supervillain.

And therein lies the first major problem with Gabriel as a character. While he is fun to watch as a simple supervillain, the show tries to give him more depth and unintentionally makes him worse.

In Season 2, when it was revealed that Gabriel was Hawkmoth, many fans speculated on what he needed the Miraculous for, until the Queen Bee Trilogy showed it was to save his possibly dead wife, Emilie. The idea of that is so the show can give more depth to its main villain, and I think it's an interesting idea in concept. After all, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

The problem is just how radically different Gabriel is normally compared to how he is as Hawkmoth. He always goes on about how he's “doing this for Emilie”, but it's hard to really sympathize with him when you consider he constantly gives evil monologues and evil laughs, really getting into the supervillain role. And let's not forget all of the “I'm going to wear Ladybug's skin as a suit” faces he loves to make.

Clearly this man is the picture of mental stability.

Gabriel's motivation for being Hawkmoth when compared to what he actually does as Hawkmoth is shady enough, but the thing is that the writers clearly want the audience to at least feel a little bad for him. They want to make the audience sympathize with him despite the way he acts with or without the mask. Without Miraculous Ladybug, he is routinely putting innocent lives in danger and never once shows regret for his actions. All he talks about is how “he's doing this for Emilie”, or that “he'll get their Miraculous soon”. There's no real reason to feel bad for him other than “because the script says so”.

Let's compare Gabriel to Malcolm Merlyn from Arrow. His big plan in the first season of the show is to create a machine that will cause an earthquake to destroy a crime-infested portion of Starling City, claiming to be trying to help everyone, but it's clear he is only doing it out of revenge for his wife getting killed by a criminal from that part of the city. In addition, throughout that season and future seasons, he always makes sure his plans lead to him benefiting in some way, showing he isn't just some noble man trying to achieve his goals with a less than noble method.

If we got some moments that showed that what Gabriel was doing was selfish, it would make him a more complex villain. But we don't get anything like that. What do we get instead? Well...

I Could Really Care Less About Emilie Agreste

We have known Gabriel's motivation has been to save his wife for a little over two years at this point, but at the same time, it's hard to believe that motivation because of how underdeveloped Emilie is as a character.

There have been a total of two lines in the entirety of the show that explain what happened to Emilie, and they're both vague as hell. One of them was from “Feast” that implied Emilie used the broken Peacock Miraculous.

Adrien: My mom used to have dizzy spells… just like Nathalie.

And the other that outright tells the audience what's happening to her in a clip show that most people will skip.

Nathalie: As I've watched Emilie falling deeper into an endless sleep, my sadness for her has deepened, too

That is literally all we get for an explanation, and nothing else. We have no idea of what she's like as a person or what her relationship with her family was like other than Gabriel and Adrien saying they miss her. Other than the way the narrative says she's important to Gabriel and Adrien, we don't really have a reason to care about her as a character. There have also been some lines that imply she went along with Gabriel's questionable parenting techniques, like how he was apparently only homeschooled as a kid (Origins) and never had a birthday party growing up (The Bubbler), so how do we even know if she's a good person? In fact, why not set up this question as a mystery to make the audience wonder if Gabriel has another reason to bring Emilie back?

It ultimately turns Emilie into a plot device and not a character that Gabriel and Adrien only bring up to make the audience feel bad for them, and meant to justify Gabriel's actions by saying that he's “doing this for his family”.

But hey, if he's doing this all for his family, surely Gabriel's redeeming traits come from his relationship with Adrien, right? Right?

As a Parent, Gabriel is Far From the Best

I've talked about this briefly before, but parenting in Miraculous Ladybug is written in such a black and white way, even by the standards of this show. Parents are portrayed in one of two ways. They're either amazing people who love and support their children unconditionally, or they're awful people who treat their own children like trash. And much like a lot of things in this show, there are times where the latter is treated like the former.

There are so many times where the narrative insists on making you see Gabriel as a troubled, but wellmeaning person who tries his best to be a good parent to Adrien, but it is far from the truth.

I'm not going to beat around the bush. Gabriel is a terrible parent. Like, he is awful at being a parent in so many ways, even before you find out he's Hawkmoth. In his first appearance, “The Bubbler”, he delegates getting Adrien a birthday present to Nathalie, his assistant. He literally can't be bothered to take time out of his schedule to get his own son a present for his birthday. And as the show goes on, he becomes more controlling and forbids Adrien from going out with his friends in other episodes (Captain Hardrock, Silencer). While this could be used to show Gabriel getting worse, it's never acknowledged in-universe, with Adrien continually defending his father essentially keeping him on house arrest.

“But IOTA!” You might say. “Gabriel has made efforts to bond with his son in some episodes.” While that might be true, most of those come right after his Akumas have almost gotten Adrien killed. He only hugged Adrien and made an attempt to learn more about him after Simon Says invaded their home, he only decided to watch that movie Emilie was in with Adrien after Gorizilla nearly dropped him off a building, and he only hugged Adrien again in public after he was turned into a gold statue by Style Queen.

In fact, let's talk about how Gabriel acts in the Queen Bee Trilogy. He actually decides to quit being Hawkmoth, but it's not because he realizes all the damage he's caused. Instead, he gave up because his “magnum opus”, a stronger than usual Akuma that only got the advantage on Ladybug ironically because of dumb luck, failed. Sure, he says he can't keep putting his son in danger, but he rarely ever acknowledges that he does so in the first place. When Riposte wanted to fight Adrien, Hawkmoth did nothing to stop her other than giving her a stern warning earlier on and nothing else. Where was this attitude earlier?

Hell, even then, he immediately goes back to being Hawkmoth as soon as he sees an opportunity, not even a day after his “mAgNuM oPuS” blew up in his face (because I guess Scarletmoth was just Plan B). If he made such a big deal about caring for his son, why didn't he try harder to spend time with him? Has he ever had doubts about what he's doing before? If Chloe didn't show up as Queen Bee, was he going to follow through on his promise and try to be a better father to Adrien instead of trying to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous?

And yeah, the whole irony is that Gabriel is doing this for his family when he is unknowingly fighting his own son, which could lead to some interesting drama if done right. The idea of how Gabriel would react to his son being Cat Noir could really lead to some internal struggles for him to go through. But then we got “Cat Blanc”, which shows just how terrible of a character Gabriel is.

In an alternate timeline where he found out his son was Cat Noir, what does Gabriel do? Does he try to steal Adrien's Miraculous while he's sleeping? Does he reconsider his actions or realize he was endangering Adrien's life?

NOPE! He just decides to akumatize him all while emotionally tormenting him, before causing the end of the world.

This is honestly one of the most appalling things I've ever seen in any TV show, because it's basically an abusive father ordering his son to listen to him all while referencing his (kind of) dead mother to back up his point. And rather than use this to show how despicable Gabriel is, the episode decides to blame Marinette for this happening. Yes, according to the show, her present to Adrien caused several events to happen which caused Cat Blanc, but this logic makes no sense. It's like blaming the JFK assassination on the man who sold a gun to Lee Harvey Oswald, instead of, you know, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Not only was this episode yet another excuse to blame Marinette for something that wasn't her fault, it leads into the biggest problem I have with Gabriel as a character.

Sympathize with Gabriel? Surely, You Jest

After everything I've gone over regarding Gabriel as a character, after all the awful things I've talked about, are you really surprised that I don't feel bad for him at all?

Gabriel is just an awful character and a despicable human being, but the show just keeps wanting me to feel bad for him. It's just so hard to when you consider everything he's done has made him anything but sympathetic. I'm just saying, it's kind of hard to feel bad for someone who tries to start World War III with the only justification being “i'M dOiNg It FoR mY fAmIlY”, especially when he treats his family like crap.

The writers go out of their way to show how horrible Gabriel is as Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth, but they think because they throw in a few moments where he looks conflicted, we'll immediately feel bad for him. What makes so many people interested in seeing Chloe become a better person is that they can tell she's the victim of a troubled upbringing, and know that because she's only a teenager, she still has room to grow as a person, represented by having more honest moments of vulnerability. Gabriel is a grown man who once caused the apocalypse because of how terrible of a parent he is, and has even fewer sympathetic moments than Chloe does. Which one of these two is supposedly irredeemable? The answer may surprise you.

But the frustrating thing is that this kind of villain could have worked. Instead of making him this mustache-twirling psychopath, show how much Gabriel regrets what he has to do, but keeps pushing onward despite all the lives he's risking if it means that he can save his wife. Instead of making Gabriel like Lex Luthor, make him like Mr. Freeze, who is basic a better written version of him.

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But as it stands, there's a good reason why Gabriel gets little to no respect as a character in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom, as a villain, or as a father.

#immaturity of thomas astruc #iota #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug salt #gabriel agreste #hawkmoth #hawk moth #shadowmoth #shadow moth #emilie agreste #adrien agreste #cat noir #chat noir #cat blanc #chat blanc #nathalie sancoeur #mayura #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug

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clean-bands-dirty-stories · 4 years ago

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Trouble ~ J.V.

A/n: I see my Jerome peeps are HERE and I’m LOVING IT! Prompt list here so y’all don’t have to scroll ;) Feel free to request as many as you want for commission or when requests are open again. I LOVE using prompts!!

Request: “...6, 8 with Jerome Valeska” by anon

6: “You are actually Satan, oh my god.”

8: “Wow, I am so in love with you… just wow.”

MASTERLIST

You know how you see someone, and it’s so obvious where they’ll end up that it’s like a scene in your head? It’s never good when this happens, so usually it’s a sad story and you kind of just frown and shake your head and pity the person, but you know that saying anything won’t do you any good so you just sit back and keep your mouth shut and wait for the inevitable end.

That’s how everyone saw Jerome Valeska.

People had never cared about Jerome, though. If they ever had, it was wiped away pretty quickly. Brutally murdering people with no care for who was on what side, who had helped or hurt, or without even a little remorse or pity or hesitation or regret... it was one of those things that most people found to be a bit of a turn off. Those who didn’t were seen to be just as unhinged as Jerome was, so they were dismissed as well.

The thing was, people HAD cared about Y/n. She was one of the most intellectually promising in her entire high school, maybe in all of Gotham. She was the kind of teenager that seemed so very adult. She was respectful and poised and very well controlled. She was pleasant to be around, and even much older people didn’t mind talking to her if they happened to be in the same place. She’d even made some pleasant relationships.

Like the friendship she had with Bruce Wayne.

Through him, she had come to learn about and meet and even get along with everyone Bruce knew. She could get along with anybody she wanted to, without threats or intimidation or groveling. She simply existed, and she had a sort of comforting, approachable presence about her. She wasn’t the least bit threatening, but she was... nice, I guess. Even dangerous people liked her, because she was the only person who didn’t seem to care about power or advantageous interactions or anything like that.

She was just nice to talk to.

This showed most prominently when she talked to people like Edward Nigma, or Oswald Cobblepott, or Silena Kyle. She’d even found herself in situations to talk to Barbara Gordan. Victor Zsasz.

People usually chalked it up to her being quite unlucky.

Because she was so unsuspecting and unproblematic and calm, she turned out to be a really good hostage. She didn’t talk back or lash out, she just sat and behaved and looked at you with a very calm, calculated expression.

Zsasz had run into her when he’d worked for Penguin and had been guarding her so that Oswald could make a deal without worrying about his bargaining chip being compromised. After a while, Y/n had asked how Zsasz’s day was going. They’d had a short, pleasant conversation, leaving the assassin intrigued by the girl when she’d been let go.

Barbara had a similar experience, except it had been when she was in Arkham of all places. Everyone had a weird thing, and very few if any people knew Y/n’s, but even she had one too. Her weird thing was visiting Arkham Asylum every once in a while visiting random people inside it, and then talking to them with the most easy normality. Like they’d been life long friends, or the person she was talking to was completely sane. She never judged or snapped, she just had a neutral expression with a sort of interest in her eyes. She was polite enough that Barbara had entertained the visit, and found herself not totally regretting it afterward.

Oswald had met her when he was mayor. She had dropped by as an errand for Jim Gordon, and had started a casual conversation when Oswald had expected her to leave when thing were handled. At first he’d been suspicious, and he still was if he was honest, but she hadn’t asked any prying questions or tried to get at him from any angle. If he drew a line, she respected it immediately and moved onto something else without missing a beat. When he got uncomfortable, she apologized and wished him a good day before excusing herself. After she’d show up several more times, sometimes sent by Jim, sometimes just to say hello, Oswald eventually relaxed. He didn’t trust her, and she didn’t expect him to, but when she stopped by to say hello he’d have someone bring them tea and they’d have a little chat. He was a little surprised when she didn’t visit him in Arkham, but when they ran into each other a little later, she nodded to him with a little smile and he got the impression she wasn’t angry with him.

As time passed, more and more people who were considered to be Gotham’s worst were coming up with more and more stories of Y/n. The girl who didn’t scream when she walked into a store and saw a dead body, but who’s neutrality wasn’t unsettling as much as it was kind of calming. She had all the makings of a twisted, demented villain, and yet she was the most normal person ever. It was confusing and intriguing, but never distinctly a bad thing. She was well known, and no one had anything bad to say about her.

It was only a matter of time before Jerome found her.

Not long after he did, he was as taken with her as everyone else. She wasn’t annoying, or unnerved by him. She was in fact endlessly interesting. He thought eventually he would get bored of her complete lack of response to even the most terrible things he told her in an effort to get her going, but found instead that the sort of sparks of interest in her gaze and the small smile that sometimes almost touched her lips was enough to keep him engaged.

She was the exact opposite of him, but in a way that didn’t drive him to want her to be gone. He didn’t WANT to kill her. It was weird, and he was living for it.

Slowly, Y/n stopped showing up in public. She stopped visiting Arkham, and the police department. She stopped running into dangerous people who never seemed to mind seeing her around, even if they weren’t supposed to be seen by anyone. She graduated high school but never talked about college. She just... slowly started to disappear.

It wasn’t as suspicious as it was disappointing. No one could tell where she was going or why all the accidental bump ins were being so carefully removed, but it was leaving the idea in everyone’s head that they might not have been accidents to begin with. Not most of them at least. That was the only thing that it could be, after years and years of her being so very unlucky, only for her to quite suddenly not run into a single soul ever. Even when people sought her out, they couldn’t find her unless she wanted to be found.

She appeared rather suddenly at Jerome’s side one day out of the blue.

No one noticed her behind the line of people in chairs. They were distracted by Jerome talking about his terribly sad past, and the people with explosive collars locked around their necks. Most importantly noted: Bruce Wayne and Jerome’s twin brother, Jeremiah.

It wasn’t until Jerome drew attention to her that anyone even registered her at all. She was so still and quiet that behind all the chaos, she might as well have been invisible.

Jerome was only too enthused to rub it in everyone’s faces.

“You know you don’t like me, and that’s fair. I’m not like any of you, am I? I don’t smile right, and I act weird. Then there’s the whole killing people thing.” He giggled, but the crowd in front of him only looked disgusted. “But is that why you really hate me, Gotham? Because I’m a big ol mean bad guy? Do you hate me because I’m a little unhinged? Because I’m a little loud and hysterical and I scare you? Or do I scare you because I have no problem being very honest and very open with all of the things you people LOVE to push under the rug and hide away and pretend no one can see.” He shook his head. “Because I’ve come to realize there is someone who’s exactly like me, but so much better at playing all of you. So much better at playing innocent and harmless and friendly, and with no real intentions other than to prove how easy you all are. How transparent.” His eyes drifted toward Y/n, and he motioned her forward. Without hesitating, she did take a few steps forward, into the light and right behind Bruce Wayne.

Gasps echoed in the crowd. To everyone’s stunned silence, Y/n stood there with the same calm and reservation she always did. She seemed perfectly unbothered by the dead body inches from her, or the people she had always seemed so close to being in danger. She didn’t look around, trying to gauge a way out, and nothing held her in forced obedience. She just looked at Jerome, that same nice, almost-smile and curiosity dancing in her eyes.

“What-” Bruce looked around, mouth dropping open when he saw who was behind him. “Y/n?”

“Ah yes,” Jerome purred. “Gotham’s little angel. Friend to all. Unassuming and nice and calm and wonderful. Aren’t you just a pillar of perfection, Y/n?” He giggled again, and Y/n tilted her head, her smile growing a little,

For the first time ever, Y/n was unnerving. Seeing her of all people look dangerous was so upsetting that the crowd started to step down from their anger towards Jerome and were edging toward true fear. If she could end up being bad, who else could? If even the bets of them could be corrupted, and even the most deranged mind could act completely normal, how could anyone ever tell when people were dangerous anymore?

It could be anyone. Anyone they trusted. Anyone they knew. Anyone they’d talked to long enough to decide they were safe. Because Bruce Wayne had known Y/n best of anyone in Gotham, and even he looked as stunned as everyone felt. He had spent copious amounts of time with her, including for hours straight during school hours, and even he had not on any level or in any way seen anything like this coming.

“Y/n?” Bruce whispered.

Y/n met his gaze. “Yes?”

He wasn’t sure what to ask her. “What’s going on?” is what he settled on.

She shrugged, as if they were catching up after school. During tea time maybe, after having not seen each other recently. “Nothing much. I’m observing and learning. People are so intriguing Bruce, have you ever noticed? I’ve learned so much. All I ever had to do was be polite, and everyone would let me sit there as long as I wanted and observe them. You learn so much by watching people, but even more from talking to them. And they always let me. All I had to do was let them talk. I never lied. I never pushed. I was respectful and curious, and they responded so well. I’ve come to learn that even the most suspicious people feel the loneliness of humanity. They crave to be wanted. To looked at. All I had to do was show interest, and they thrived under that attention. You really have to do so little for people to like you. It’s so interesting.”

Bruce’s eyes had been widening as she spoke. She said it all like she was observing humanity in a way that she wasn’t apart of it. “You’re like us, aren’t you?”

“Oh of course,” she agreed. “That’s the thing. I wanted to understand myself, so I looked at those like me. And those unlike me. To see what was and wasn’t me. To see what was similar and what was so very completely different.” She chuckled softly and Bruce felt sick to his stomach. “I never expected to find someone so very similar to me to be someone seen the eyes of everyone else as exactly opposite. Jerome and I? Very much the same, except I’d rather learn than act. I never really cared about people’s opinions or if they didn’t like me or if they were mean. I was too unassuming for bullying or abuse. I didn’t care if people looked over me like Jerome does, and that’s really the only difference. I just wanted to learn, and people were always willing to let me.” She shrugged. “But people are so simple. So easy to understand. MUCH more straight forward than any of them would like to admit. I think I’m going to be staying with Jerome from now on. He’s interesting. He understands.”

Jeremiah knew who she was only by association, and even he was surprised, despite having known Jerome very close up for so long. He supposed it wasn’t fault, but watching Bruce, he wondered if he’d even been able to tell her true nature. Even now she looked completely normal and safe. Her eyes were full of life, and she was fairly attractive. The way she stood was relaxed and the way she talked was completely normal. What was upsetting about her was not that she was obviously messed up. It was that she was so painfully normal in even a situation that should have been quite upsetting.

“You’re a sociopath,” Jeremiah offered in a sort of leveled voice. Her eyes turned to him and he realized that her calmness was contagious. She had the look of someone you could just... fall into. So easy to trust. Even now he found himself a little lured by her. She was honest about who she was. She didn’t hide anything. She was just quiet, and people forgot to ask. That wasn’t her fault. Maybe she could still be saved from his deranged brother.

“Yes,” Y/n agreed, and her complete acceptance of that didn’t sit well with Jeremiah. “Would you like me to show you? I have come to learn that everyone wants some sort of proof of it. They have a hard time believing me.”

“No that’s okay,” Jeremiah rushed to reassure just as Jerome squealed, “Yes please!”

Between the two opposite reactions from the two very opposite twins, Bruce got the idea of what her kind of proof might mean. “Don’t worry Y/n, we believe you.”

She nodded, and the two boys thought that’d be the end of it. But then she pulled an actual gun out of seemingly nowhere, pointed it at the crowd, and shot without even hesitating. There went up a scream as people scattered, revealing the body of a woman bleeding out on the ground. The bullet had hit someone around her neck and no one could do anything other than give her and themselves plenty of room away from her.

Jerome squealed with excitement.

Bruce looked at Y/n with horror. “I said we believed you! You didn’t have to kill her!”

“But I did,” Y/n decided. “Because they didn’t believe me.” Her lips turned up into a stronger smile. There was no regret or hesitation in her eyes, and Bruce felt dread slowly settle throughout his body. She WAS exactly like Jerome and the only reason this was her first kill is because she’d decided to wait until now to kill someone. They’d all been at her mercy this entire time, like a mouse held down by a mouse trap. Except they’d been perfectly fine just sitting in her trap and letting her watch with mild interest as they died.

She was just like Jerome.

One of the other people in line spat, “You’re actually Satan, oh my god.” His eyes were wide and Bruce got the idea that if he hadn’t been held by the explosive collar, he might have bolted. “You let all of us trust you and welcome you and be around you. You gained our trust, and you don’t even care about us?”

Very calmly, Y/n simply shook her head. “We’re all just meat. Do you care about the animals scientists test on to give you your makeup products and medicine? Do you care about the pig killed for its meat, or the dogs that rip each other apart in the streets for entertainment and money? We’re just animals. You guys have just gotten the idea stuck in your head for some reason that we’re special animals. You won’t admit those animals will eat you just as quickly as you will them. Pigs have high intelligence. You think you’re gods because you have the highest intelligence and then ignore how you so easily ignore what you know and do what you want instead. You give into nature just like any predator. I have simply stopped being either. I’m not villain. I’m not a hero. And you think the people who watch the villain are a different category, but they’re not. They do nothing, and bad thing happen, and that’s it. A woman died, and people didn’t do anything to stop it. There’s a whole crowd of people not held here by anything other than a secret, sick fascination with the terrible things happening here. You are just as bad as Jerome. Just as bad as me. You just refuse to admit it. I don’t. That’s all.”

Grinning, Jerome sat forward in his chair. “Wow I am so in love with you.” He giggled and everyone in the area cringed. The idea of Jerome Valeska being involved like that with Y/n... And the way she seemed to not mind it either. On top of everything else that had happened here, it was so viscerally upsetting. Jerome stood, moving behind the people in chairs to gently grab Y/n’s face, pulling her lips against his. When he pulled away, everyone’s face had gone scaringly pale. “Just, wow,” the red head whispered.

Y/n seemed to consider that. “You know, I think I have some sort of care for you. Like... like how someone explained a pet to me. Is that how affection feels?” She still looked only curious. It made sense that in a world who didn’t care to learn about people like her, and after a lifetime of holding back her questions and lack of understanding, even after all this time she still would be confused about the different way she experienced relationships with other people.

Jerome shrugged. “I think not, but I can be your pet if you want.”

Y/n smiled. “I think I do want that.”

A victorious smile adorned Jerome’s face. “That’s all I needed!” He turned to face his brother and Bruce Wayne again. “See, I was so stuck on you two. I died wanting to kill Brucie, and I’ve lived my entire life wanting to kill my dear brother, so I lived for nothing else. I thought of nothing else. I existed to end you two. But now, I have a different purpose. There is nothing like looking at someone you find so very interesting and them returning that back to you.” He giggled. “Mom always said I’d never find love. Aren’t you proud of me for proving her wrong?”

“This isn’t love,” Bruce snapped. “It’s demented. You can’t feel love. Neither of you can.”

“Maybe not,” Y/n agreed. “But it will be fun testing that.” She turned and walked off the stage, heading back and disappearing.

Jerome sighed. “And that’s my cue.” There was a gun shot and a sharp pain in his hand as the detonator fell out of his hands. He could no longer explode the necklaces. He made an ‘oopsie’ sort of expression before ducking away as another gunshot run out. “See you around, you two!” His laughter echoed as he disappeared after Y/n, fading away too quickly.

By the time Jim Gordon chased after Jerome, it was far passed too late. Whatever Y/n had done to ensure their escape, it had left no traces. They were gone.

Behind them, they left death and the lingering feeling in the air like this was only the beginning to a very, very terrible love story.

#jerome velaska imagine #jerome valeska x reader #jerome valeska #gotham #gotham x reader #gotham imagine #cameron monaghan x reader #cameron monaghan imagine #cameron monaghan #joker #joker imagine #joker x reader

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mar64ds · 4 years ago

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How would you write Dennis in DT17?

Thank you so much for asking me this because this is the coolest idea ever and it’s a lot of fun to think about, I hope you’re ready for a long post

Okay so I imagine the plot of the episode being focused on old cartoons, like maybe old tv toons become real in the outside world for some reason either supernatural or science because literally anything can happen in ducktales. I feel like the old toons would play a morally grey role in the episode, like maybe they are an inconvenience and the main problem of the episode at first but later on they have to help them

While this is an episode where Dennis would appear I feel like he would be in the b plot of the episode, while the main plot should be about... you guessed it, Oswald the lucky rabbit himself :)

Maybe the true villain of the episode could be the phantom blot because... well, epic mickey reference

I’m not sure what the direction of the plot would be like but I’m not here to talk about that, I’m here to talk about Dennis the duck!

So I imagine Dennis would be very similar to how he is in House of Mouse, except he doesn’t have an admiration for Donald (yet) because Donald is not really a toon star, he’s just a regular dude

In the b plot we focus on Donald, and you can see that he feels a bit separated from the rest of the family, so this episode actually talks and explores the fact that donald gets a bit left behind in the majority of the show, because that’s one of my biggest criticisms about the show and in this fanmade episode I’m going to talk about this

Donald gets separated from the group while everyone else is dealing with the whole toons problem, that only makes him more upset because it’s just proving his insecurities right, that his family doesn’t really need him anymore

Suddenly he finds a toon, or more like, a toon finds HIM. It’s Dennis the Duck! He’s the only toon that was roaming around the area where Donald was, so he decides to start using his regular jokes with him! It’s not just that Donald doesn’t find him funny but he’s also really really annoying, however DT Donald is more patient than House of Mouse Donald, so he doesn’t really say anything mean to him other than to leave him alone. However Dennis starts finding Donald really funny, not because ‘oh he has a funny voice’ but because he likes his attitude and personality.

Dennis stops being an inconvenience to Donald once he realizes he’s pretty cool, however Donald still needs to find his family and help as much as he can with this whole problem, so he needs to continue with his adventure. But Dennis starts following him around, and even if Donald really doesn’t want that he just sighs and tries to ignore him

A couple of bad guys get in their way and Donald shows how capable he is and he is able to defend himself and defeat them. Dennis is SUPER impressed by this, not only is this guy funny but he’s also strong and cool!!!

Later on, Donald starts venting about how he feels useless and that his family doesn’t really need him. That’s when Dennis starts to talk about how awesome Donald is, even if he has only known him for a couple of hours!

In House of Mouse even if Dennis is Donald’s biggest fan he doesn’t really act like a fanboy and treats Donald like an old friend, I feel like it would be similar here. He lets Donald know that he thinks he’s super cool, but not to the point of a fanboy, more like a friend appreciating him. Donald feels better after that, and more motivated to find his family and hopefully talk about how he’s feeling with them. He also starts thinking Dennis is not that bad, and actually a pretty nice person. It’s also nice to be appreciated in a day where you feel like no one is there for you

But then Dennis also starts venting a little bit, he tells Donald that he does understand how he feels. He used to be a very popular cartoon and everyone thought he was pretty funny. But now no one remembers him and if they do, they don’t think he’s funny. He feels left behind and useless, that no one really needs him anymore. But he also says that hanging out with Donald has made him pretty happy, more than he has been in a while, and that if there is someone as awesome as he is, who has the same insecurities as him, that makes him feel less lonely and that maybe his insecurities are just that, insecurities, not a true fact

That makes Donald feel better too

The both of them find the family at the end and join them in the final battle. Later on, Donald talks about how he feels and they let him know that he’s important to all of them and they all need him. Donald appreciation :)

When the toons have to leave, Donald and Dennis’s goodbye is pretty wholesome and emotional, and Dennis tells him that he��ll always be his biggest fan even if no one else is, and that will always cheer him up even in bad days

At the end of the episode you can see Donald has bought a couple of old VHS of Dennis’s show and he sits down to watch them with the rest the family, all of them appreciating Dennis :)

A few more details about the episode before ending this post:

-Oswald wouldn’t be a toon like Dennis is, he would be a normal person and he should definitely mention Mickey (who is also a regular person)

-Dennis and the rest of old toons are real people even if they are from TV, they are from another dimension like they do in the Let’s get Dangerous episode

That’s all my infodumping I’m sorry but also thanks a lot!!!! :D

#dennis the duck #long post

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slashingdisneypasta · 4 years ago

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Hello! Can I request a headcanon where the queen of hearts (1951), Maleficent, Cruella, Shang yu and Yzma (separated) take care of a lost (orphaned) little girl (like 5-6) and adopted her as their own. Thank!

These were sooooo fun to think of, omg XD I feel all warm inside, thanks for the request! I hope you like it as much as I do ^^

~~~

Cruella DeVille (You can imagine either animated, OUAT or live action Cruella, but I liked this gif ^^):

· Cruella, is more of a… fun, rich aunt. You know, when you can post the child back to its parents any time you like with a sugar high and new Xbox?

· But, as the capable entrepreneur and businesswoman that she is, she rises to the challenge of ‘parenting’, when the stinky orphaned girl living on the streets (You, obviously) show potential in the fashion industry.

· She takes you right to the adoption agency, picks you up and plops you on the counter like a pair of shoes and asks how much you cost. You just smile sweetly, like the most adorable munchkin ever despite the off way your new caregiver handles you, and the agent has some reservations, of course, but Cruella’s able to speed up the adoption process with her connections and her money.

· Your relationship at first is similar to Oswald Cobblepot and Martin’s. And if you haven’t watched Gotham, I’ll explain; Sort of distant, but the adult is trying at least. They’re just not used to having a pre-teen around. And, somehow, they’re making the child feel more understood and taken care of then anyone else ever has, despite both parties’ reservations.

· Slowly you bond (Over fashion, obviously) and Cruella turns into, honestly, a pretty good mum (For a villain who wants to kidnap puppies from her friend and make a coat for herself out of them, anyway). She learns to not gag when your shows are on the telly, she takes more time off work to take care of you and turn up to your school things (Like parent-teacher interviews, concerts, art exhibitions, and assemblies if you’re going to get an award- she even makes artful collages out of your work on the fridge), and you two even learn how to cook some easy dinners together.

· (Cruella can cook, I think, but I can imagine they’re more fancy stuff that a kid really isn’t interested in)

· You’re a two-person team kind of family.

· She doesn’t like you to be around Jasper and Horace because their stupidity and lack of fashion sense could be contagious.

· For the longest time, you just call her Cruella… until one day she says she loves you (Which is visibly difficult for her. Not because the words aren’t true, but because she’s not sentimental) and you finally call her ‘Mum’.

Maleficent:

· You start following her around, lost and having decide the scary green lady with a cute bird pet is the one to go to for help. She tries to scare you off, but of course you’re already scared anyway! But not of her- of being left alone.

· So you keep following her through the forest, until you reach her castle and Diablo has become attached to you and is sitting on your shoulder instead of hers, nuzzling your little face.

· She leaves out some food for you for dinner and lays a clean blanket down on an abandoned bed in a random room down a dark hallway. It’s a spooky night, in that creepy castle… but the blanket smells like grass and you find that if you close your eyes and smoosh your face into it, you don’t think about the things that could be hidden in the dark. Also, Diablo comes in and keeps you company.

· Mal is sure that you’ll be gone the next day. That’s why she was so kind. She was sure you were just a determined straggler and if she offered you a home for a night, then you would be the fickle little child that you are leave without so much as a thank you the next day.

· But you don’t leave.

· And you do say thank you, and even make her a mud pie outside the castle.

· She gives you a bit of a smile (Not soft, because Mal is still an evil fairy, but it’s a refreshing look on a face that had been pinched the whole time), resigning to you. You’re all alone like her. Maybe it won’t hurt so much to let you stay.

· Okay, as a parent, Mal isn’t so bad. She settles into the pace easier than Cruella or Yzma, at least, and her lifestyle allows for a far stabler childhood for you then Shan Yu’s. Plus, she’s outwardly very calm, which is a huge improvement from if you were living under the Red Queens roof.

· Distracts you with magic when she’s busy or just when she wants to watch the awe in your face as you watch sparkles dance around the room like real life stars.

· Keeps you away from all her villainy- you don’t need to be messed up in all that. Basically no one except her crow knows you exist and she’d like to keep it that way.

Shan Yu:

· Shan Yu finds you after he pillages your village (And you’re the only survivor) and you followed along behind his men for a while until they noticed you. Which didn’t take long, of course, they’re a group of highly skilled Huns in the ways of hunting and warfare.

· He uses his noggin (A very good noggin. Much cleverness) and identifies the favourable factors to having a little girl with them. You’re unassuming, for one, and can be trained (And moulded) to be used as a diversion for them in the kind of situations in which brute force do not apply and wouldn’t be helpful.

· He also acknowledges the need to train the next generation into their image to continue the Huns control over China even after he passes away. So, off on the quest to take over China you go, with them.

· He is so big, that you can perch on his wide shoulder and he’ll be fine still marching along.

· He gets a bit soft when interacting with you. At least, he certainly doesn’t treat you like an adult because you of course aren’t one. He encourages your childish wonder and your playing around. He’ll even play eye spy with you as you travel, or play a little tug of war if you get a piece of fabric or rope (Yes, like a puppy) and he’s just sitting down chilling somewhere on a rest break or at camp, pretending that the game is actually a contest until he smirks and tugs just a tiny bit harder and you fall forward onto your face XD (He only uses one hand the entire time)

· He’s a really chill dad, really, despite the whole… killing everyone in your village… First impressions, amiright? XD

· The rest of his men either hate you with every fibre of their huge beings or love you even more, and that’s the tea. One of them once rolled you up in a blanket and strapped you to a horse so you would stop annoying them by running around in front of the mules. You decide whether this was one who hated you or loved you. (Another came along and put a roll of bread in your mouth so you could eat, but didn’t release you)

· You’ve also been tied (Safely and comfortably, yes but still tied with your feet off the ground) to a tree as a time out and dropped in lakes (Once they knew you could swim) to calm your shit when you got hyper.

· You sleep in Shan Yu’s tent until you’re like 14 and declares that you’re able to defend yourself and can kill a man, so he can keep you safe.

Queen of Hearts:

· Goodness, who let this woman adopt? (Well, I mean, no-one could stop her) Even Hades would be better, and he tried to have a baby assassinated.

· This woman would be unintentionally manipulative towards this child (Like Norma and Norman Bates. Jesus christ). Whenever the kid doesn’t do anything that she wants them to, she’ll get p i s s e d, and that might legitimately mess with the kids psyche. She won’t behead the lil girl, of course, which I guess is bit of a saving grace (she isn’t that cruel) here? But it’s definitely a good thing the gentle King of Hearts is around, to settle the flames and calm down his wife and new daughter when games go awry.

· (And ya’ll play lots of games. Some of the time, living with her and her husband as your parental figures is a dream for a little girl like you)

· She does try her very hardest to be kind and not to lose her temper, and it is made so much easier by the fact that you’re an innocent little girl (Younger than Alice was), and she’s very fond of you. So, in a way, adopting you is helping her with her issues, and by extension, helping the rest of Wonderland.

· You get a big fancy throne-like highchair at the royal dinner table.

· Your little family is a bit or very messy, but you are never not loved. You always know that you’re loved.

Yzma:

· When Yzma takes you in, its because Kronk discovered your little form sleeping in an alleyway and ran with you in his hands back to her, and BEGGED her. This sweetheart (Kronk, not Yzma) could not handle the knowledge that a little baby girl was abandoned and all alone on the streets. And Yzma’s the most well-off, influential person he knows! Of course he’s going to go to her for help.

· When she finally gives in, its because you called her pretty. She’s just like… pause… “Seems like an intelligent enough… eugh… child... Kronk come! We have to disinfect it.”

· Kronk rushes after Yzma, still holding you and clarifies for you: “She means a bath.”

· So, now, you have your protective, psycho, affection-challenged mother and your sweet, dumb, beloved… uncle. Yeah, uncle. We’ll go with uncle.

· Yzma takes a while to get used to you, and she’s very defiant against getting called ‘Mum’ or ‘Mother’ (Mama or Mummy have a more youthful feel, according to Yzma.), but she’s pretty immature due to her psychosis so she tends to blend well with your child personality.

· You laugh so much, with her. Most of the things she says are hilarious, especially when she’s exasperated and mutters about Kronk.

· She doesn’t want you to grow up without a brain like him (Or to mix with other children- she will not be dealing with chicken pox or nits. If you did get either of those things, she would be living in a full-on hazmat suit and spray everything you touch, and you. Kronk would end up getting the sickness because he gives you lots of hugs and takes care of you while you’re sick or you have the nits) so she gets you a home school teacher.

· On your birthday (They do the day Kronk found you if you don’t know it), Kronk wakes Yzma up at the buttcrack of dawn drags her along to set up the day for you. Including a treasure hunt, where its clear that Yzma wrote the clues because its very translucent through the sentences she wrote that she didn’t have coffee before writing them. Very bitter.

· She does want to make you happy though and buys you literally the best present for a child of that time. I don’t know what it is, but it’s the equivalent for them of a little car or coloured TV (Like the Barbie or Hot Wheel ones) for us. She’s so smug about it, too, like ‘Shove that up your 4 layer cake with different flavours, Kronk.’.

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thedreammweaver · 4 years ago

Text

Far From Over (Burton-schumacherverse riddlebird)

(A/N: @esperata helped me out with this fic which has been sitting for months because of my trouble writing one scene. I’m putting the part she wrote in purple since I want to give credit where it’s very much due💜💚.)

Warnings: insecurities, insecurities about weight, embarrassment, health issues, medical fat phobia

Ed knocked on the doorway to Oswald’s study before coming in, Oswald knew he was coming for a visit but it didn’t hurt to be polite.

“Come in.” He heard Oswald say.

As Ed neared the desk he spotted a half empty box of eclairs and donuts, of both the standard and jelly filled variety. “What’s the occasion?” Ed asked, flicking the cardboard lid so it would bounce. “Trying to spite my doctor.” Oswald answered, his mouth half full of one of the pastries.

“Oh?”

Oswald nodded as he reached for one of the donuts “I thought that black shit that comes out of my mouth would stop after I moved out of the sewer, but it’s been a year and it hasn’t so Selina said I should see a doctor about it,” he stuffed the donut into his mouth before continuing “and he said that it would probably clear up with exercise.” The passive aggressive fury was apparent in Oswald’s voice even with his mouth full “The cure for everything, apparently. The son of a bitch won’t even see me properly until I try losing weight.”

“What exactly did he suggest you do?”

“Get more exercise...stop eating so much in single sittings..” Oswald swallowed what was in his mouth and looked at the box of pastries thoughtfully “Do you think I could fit two of these in my mouth at once?”

“I wouldn’t dare venture a guess.” Ed cleared his throat “Well, if you did want to try the whole exercising thing...I do teach jazzercise on the side in case you’re interested..”

“What?”

“You know, jazzercise, I host a thing-“

“No, I get all that! Why are you telling me? I would never do something like that.”

Ed frowned “I figured I’d give you the opportunity but nevermind.” He huffed as he got up “Bye, Ozzie..” he sounded disappointed as he left.

Never in a million years did Oswald think Ed’s pouting was powerful enough to get him to agree to something like this. Certainly not wrapped in skin tight lycra. Yet here he was. He averted his gaze self consciously from the other slimmer attendees and twiddled his flippers in front of his stomach. He was just thinking about leaving when Ed bounced to the front of the class.

"Right everyone." Ed grinned right at Oz. "Let's go!"

Oswald wouldn't have stood a chance of keeping up even if he had been focused on it. As it was he kept being distracted by Eddie's long limbs. He'd always liked Ed and admired his physique but usually he had better control of his ogling.

It was both too soon and far too long before the class ended.

"Great job everyone!"

Oswald was very aware he had not done well at all. He felt his shortcomings very keenly having seen all the other lithe students. He was sure Ed too must have been horrified. As Edward approached him he therefore prepared to make his excuses and flee.

"I'm so glad you came Ozzie!"

Oswald stared at his bright smile and flushed cheeks and forgot everything else. "I'm glad I came too. Same time next week?"

Oswald was fuming as he sunk down into the bath, trying to nurse sore muscles. The heat of the water felt nice but was agitating his body enough to make the black green bile start running from his mouth a bit more than it usually did. He huffed, usually he was quick to clean himself up but in the bath he supposed it didn’t matter.

The next class came and went, suddenly Oswald was on his third. He had been told exercising was supposed to get easier but his muscles were still screaming and he felt like his lungs were on fire. Things weren’t so great on the outside either, some of the participants had left because of his presence and others were making fun of him behind his back. Usually he felt quite powerful but here among these youthful thin bodies he felt like nothing. Once the class was over Oswald went up to Ed who was packing up his stuff.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Is there any chance we could do...this but just the two of us?” Oswald asked.

“Ed paused, wondering why Oswald would ask to do such a thing.” Ed joked, putting on an overdramatized narrator voice.

Oswald rolled his eyes before continuing “I....feel like I’m bothering people.”

Ed wished he could say that wasn’t true but he’d gotten a number of complaints since Oswald joined. He nodded “I can do that..I’d have time tomorrow if you’re up for it.”

Oswald wanted to collapse at the thought of doing this two days in a row “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

Oswald wanted to be alone with Ed but this didn’t seem worth it. Without the loud music and other people Oswald’s wheezing was loud and clear. Ed gave him some concerned looks but Oswald assured him he was alright..until he wasn’t. Before Oswald could process what was happening the room started spinning and he felt himself falling over.

“Ozzie??”

Oswald groaned as he woke up to Ed’s voice.

“Are you okay???”

Oswald went to get up but Ed stopped him, putting a hand on his chest. His eyes widened “Jesus Christ..” there was a worrying amount of heat coming off of Oswald’s body.

“Oswald-“

“That’s normal, ignore it.” Oswald slurred a bit as he was still waking up.

“That is not normal!”

“It is for me! I don’t really sweat so it just gets trapped inside I guess.”

Ed backed away and stood up “And you didn’t think to tell me that?!”

“What’s the big deal?”

“What’s- Oswald! You’re essentially giving yourself heat stroke, I never would’ve asked you to come if I knew about this!”

Oswald, with some effort, got to his feet. His head was still swirling.

“I mean why would you even come if you knew you’re not built for this kind of thing??”

The implication that Oswald was too weak for something made him angry “I wanted to impress you!” Oswald snapped. He deflated as he realized what he’d said. “Goodbye, Edward..” Oswald said curtly before stomping out.

Sneaking into Oswald’s house was harder than Ed expected but he’d managed it. As he followed the penguins he found Oswald in the kitchen poutily eating a chocolate cake having demolished a good bit of it already. “What do you want?” Oswald growled.

“I wanted to make sure you’re okay.. About what you said.. did you really put yourself through all of that for me?”

“..no.”

“But you said-“

“Will you just fuck off so I can eat my weight in sugar and wallow?”

Ed went over and grabbed Oswald’s arm to pull him up and star leading him to the front door. “What the hell do you think you’re doing??” Oswald didn’t struggle as much as he could, letting himself remain in Ed’s grasp.

“What’s your doctor’s name?” Ed asked.

After a lot of threatening Oswald’s doctor agreed to run some tests which took a few hours. Ed stayed with Oswald the entire time. When the doctor came back with the results Oswald was feeling more than impatient to hear. The doctor sighed “There’s things in your body our machines don’t even recognize. Besides asthma and hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia I don’t know exactly what is wrong with you.”

Oswald thought for a moment, processing the new information, he turned to the doctor snidely “That wasn’t so hard was it?” He got closer to him which caused the other man the back into a wall.

“So..do you want to start treatment or-“

“I’ll be seeing someone else for that.” Oswald said coldly, grabbing Ed’s hand and walking out with him.

Oswald and Ed sat in comfortable silence in the backseat as Oswald’s driver took them back to his house. Oswald felt better than he had in a few weeks. “Thanks for doing that, Ed..” Oswald said, turning to the other man. Ed looked at Oswald for a moment before suddenly kissing him. He looked surprised at himself as he pulled away “I’m sorry, I-“

Oswald pulled Ed close by his tie and started making out with him, unbuckling himself to get closer. Things were certainly starting to look up in Oswald’s life.

#oswald cobblepot #edward nygma #the penguin #the riddler #riddlebird

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hysterialevi · 4 years ago

Text

Eitr | Chapter 10

Fanfic summary: In an alternate universe where the Raven Clan is wiped out, Sigurd ends up being rescued by the son of a Saxon ealdorman, and is tasked with being the boy’s new bodyguard. Upon meeting the boy’s father however, Sigurd soon realizes that the ealdorman is responsible for his clan’s destruction, and secretly plans for revenge while hiding behind the guise of a Norse pagan turned Christian.

Point of view: third-person

Pairing: Sigurd Styrbjornson x Male OC

Author’s note: Thanks for being patient with me guys. I know I’ve been sucking ass in terms of getting these chapters out at a frequent rate, but I really appreciate you all being so understanding with me. Hope you enjoy this part, and thanks again for the support.

This story is also on AO3 | Previous chapter | Next chapter

ONE WEEK LATER

ELMENHAM, THE LONGHOUSE

Oswald threw an incredulous stare at Eivor upon hearing the news, unable to deny the doubt that was settling into his mind.

“The ealdorman of Wedenscire did this?” He asked. “Are you certain?”

Eivor shrugged, fidgeting with his axe as he relaxed in a chair.

“That’s what Gjuki tells me. There is still much information to be uncovered when it comes to the nature of this ambush, but based on what he has brought to me so far, I think it’s safe to assume that Aegenwulf was involved with the attack at the very least.”

The king placed his hands on his hips and began to pace around the room. “I just... I find it difficult to believe that he would act so brazenly -- especially in the middle of a war, no less. Aegenwulf has never been fond of the Danes, that is true, but he is a man of honor; a man of God. If he truly is behind the attack on Ravensthorpe, why would he do such a thing? What reason could he have to treat your people in such a way?”

Eivor sighed, tracing the edge of his blade. “I do not yet know, but his crimes go beyond what happened at Ravensthorpe. He also has my brother.”

That caught Oswald’s attention. “Aegenwulf has Sigurd? Is he holding him prisoner?”

“Not officially, but he may as well be. I have only heard fragments of the entire situation in Forangal, but Gjuki tells me Sigurd is slowly being brainwashed. He bears their sigil, and raises a blade in the ealdorman’s name. He obeys Aegenwulf’s every word, and apparently, has expressed some hesitation in terms of going along with my plans to assault the fortress. There are even whispers that he might convert to Christianity soon. They are turning him into a thrall.”

The Saxon king shook his head in sympathy, gazing blankly at the floor. “I’m... so sorry, Eivor. You’ve made it quite clear how much Sigurd means to you. I can’t imagine what it’s like watching a loved one lose sense of who they are. I wish I could make all this go away with a snap of my fingers, but we’ll need more men if we are to breach the walls of Forangal Castle.”

Eivor rose from his seat, sliding his axe back into its sheathe. “Have no fear, Oswald. We will have the forces we need soon enough. I have just finished securing an alliance in Eurvicscire. A couple more, and we should be ready to get Sigurd back.”

“Good. In the meantime, I will do all I can to prepare. A fragile peace hangs over East Anglia, but if there’s any chance we can save your brother, I’ll be there when you call for me. So will Valdis.”

“Thank you, Oswald.” Eivor said sincerely. “I know I’m asking a lot, but if we don’t rescue Sigurd from Forangal, he could end up dead. Or worse.”

“I understand. This is not something we can simply let go. If Aegenwulf really is at the heart of all this, we must bring him to justice. He has the blood of many innocents on his hands, and that cannot go unpunished.”

Oswald strolled back to his throne, finally having a seat after a long day of work.

“Carry on with your plans, Eivor. I will inform Valdis of what is to come. In the meantime, do your best to keep your head high. I know these are trying times, but Sigurd is going to need your strength if his situation is truly as bad as Gjuki reports.”

Eivor gave him a nod, making his way out of the longhouse. “I know, Oswald. And I will. I’m not giving up on him yet.”

~~~~~~~~~~

THAT NIGHT

FORANGAL CASTLE, SIGURD’S CHAMBERS

Dragging a small stone along the edge of his sword, Sigurd sharpened the blade underneath the pale moonlight as he sat by the window, continuously checking to see if Gjuki had lit the brazier yet.

It had been about a week or so ever since he began searching for Algar’s hidden crypt, and with no further updates to inform Sigurd of what was going on, the man couldn’t deny that he was starting to grow anxious.

What if something had happened to Gjuki? What if he had been caught? What if all this was for nothing? What would he do?

The last thing Sigurd wanted was to think about the possible outcomes that could arise if their plan was foiled, but the thoughts continued to creep into his mind regardless. There were so many risks at hand and so many lives to consider, that he was beginning to wonder if all their effort was doomed to end in futility.

After all, they were heavily outnumbered in this part of England. Aside from Gjuki and his men, Sigurd really had no one else to rely on in Wedenscire. Of course, he had the support of Aegenwulf’s children to back him up, but in the face of true monarchy, he doubted that their approval of him would mean much to the ealdorman in the end.

Still, he supposed there was no use in worrying until he had a solid reason to believe something was amiss. Gjuki had already proven himself to be a skilled warrior in the past, and with Eivor waiting just beyond the horizon to bring Aegenwulf to justice, Sigurd remained confident in the fact that they would reunite someday.

Though, of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t frightened.

“...Sigurd?” A man suddenly said from behind the door, their gruff voice muffled by its material. “Are you in there?”

The viking placed his sword down and walked over to the entrance, straightening his tunic along the way.

“One moment.”

Swinging the door open with a firm pull, Sigurd paused in surprise when he saw an unexpected face greeting him from the other side, admittedly confused about their presence here.

“Thegn Raedan?” He said. “Is there something you need?”

The nobleman took a moment to observe the Norse in front of him, flicking his eyes up and down.

“So...” Raedan replied quietly, not wanting to wake Forangal’s people, “you’re Sigurd the Lone-Wolf. I apologize for the abrupt visit -- especially at such a late hour -- but I wanted to speak with you face-to-face. After all, I don’t think you and I have had the chance to sit down and have a proper conversation yet, have we?”

“No, we haven’t.”

The Saxon quirked a brow at him. “...May I come in?”

Sigurd stepped to the side, allowing him entry. “Of course, my lord.”

Walking into the dimly-lit chamber, Raedan strolled towards the window and leaned against the wall beside it, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword as Sigurd closed the door behind him.

“So,” the viking said, “what did you wish to speak about?”

Raedan was quiet for a second. “...Well, a few things. But mainly, my wife. Moira. You’ve met her a handful of times by now, haven’t you? I know she’s been giving you some trouble since we first arrived, and I’m sorry about that. She is a good woman, but she’s also very protective. And I fear that the history between our people and yours has been anything but peaceful.”

The viking crossed his arms. “I assume her distrust towards me isn’t without reason.”

The Saxon nodded. “And you’d be correct. I’ll spare you the details, but... just know that she lost her own mother to the vikings. Many years ago. It’s the main reason her father arranged a marriage between the two of us. He wanted to secure an alliance with my family in order to drive the Danes out of their lands. It worked in the end... but at a great cost.”

Sigurd’s tone softened with empathy. “...I’m sorry to hear that. I know how it feels.”

“I imagine we all do, nowadays. Unfortunately. It’s rare to find someone who has evaded the tragedy of this war, and even rarer to find someone who hasn’t been changed by it. But I digress...”

Raedan approached Sigurd, lowering his voice so that it was barely above a whisper.

“May I ask you something, Lone Wolf?”

The Norseman nodded. “Certainly.”

“...From what I understand, you’re quite close to Aegenwulf, aren’t you?”

Sigurd shook his head. “Not particularly, no. In fact, I hardly know anything about him.”

“Is that so? Well, I must admit, that’s somewhat of a surprise. I simply assumed you were friends since he’s allowed you to stay here. Most Danes that cross paths with Aegenwulf end up with a severed head.”

“It was mostly his children who influenced his decision to spare me,” Sigurd explained. “Initially, Aegenwulf was going to have me executed.”

Raedan chuckled softly. “Ah, yes. That’s more what I expected. Still, it doesn’t sound like the Aegenwulf I knew all those years ago. He’s always been a stern bastard, mind you, but... I feel as if he’s changed lately. And not for the better.”

Sigurd recalled what Edric told him. “Well, he did lose one of his sons.”

“Aye. Gareth. I heard about that. Such a horrible death, and one that I fear has left Aegenwulf in a perpetual state of despair. He always puts on a smile when he’s around me, but I can’t help but feel as if it’s no more than a facade.”

The viking picked up on his tone. “You’re worried about him?”

“I am. That’s why I came to you. I hate to talk about a man behind his back, but I thought you might know something that could help. Seems he’s keeping secrets from everyone these days, though.”

Sigurd couldn’t hide the sharpness in his voice. “Not everyone.”

“Oh? You have someone in mind?”

The Norseman sighed out of hesitance, somewhat reluctant to answer the question. Part of him trusted Raedan to handle information like this with an objective mind -- he seemed quite rational, after all -- but the other part regretted saying anything in the first place.

Still, he wondered if it’d be best if someone from outside of Forangal knew the reality of the situation. Sigurd wasn’t willing to open up to Raedan about everything just yet, but... maybe it could’ve helped if one of Aegenwulf’s oldest allies had the gist of what was going on.

He only prayed he wasn’t wrong.

“...It’s Algar.” Sigurd finally confessed.

Raedan furrowed his brow. “Algar? You mean Aegenwulf’s housecarl? What about him? Have you noticed anything strange?”

“Nothing specific,” he lied, “but it doesn’t take much to see that he’s influencing Aegenwulf’s way of thinking -- and not in a good way.”

Strangely enough, the other man didn’t seem too shocked. “Yes... I’ve heard the folks in this castle whispering about him. Edric’s mentioned him a few times as well. I get the impression that no one here is really fond of him, and now I’m starting to suspect there’s more to it than mere speculation.”

“Indeed. Everyone I’ve met so far has called him a snake. Perhaps it’d be worth keeping an eye on him--”

Sigurd came to an abrupt pause, suddenly noticing a lone flame glowing in the distance. It appeared to be coming from the pier just as Gjuki said it would, and he could’ve sworn he saw someone moving around in the shadows.

It must’ve been him.

“Sigurd?” Raedan said, pulling the viking from his thoughts. “Is... everything alright?”

The bodyguard brought his gaze back to the nobleman, quickly conjuring up an excuse.

“Erm, f-forgive me, my lord. I hate to cut our conversation short, but I just remembered I have an important matter to take care of. I’m afraid it can’t wait. If you’ll excuse me...”

Raedan nodded, giving him a casual wave. “Of course, Sigurd. Do what you must, and thank you for lending your ear to this old dog. I’ll keep in mind what you said about Algar, and I think we’d both do best to observe his every move. In the meantime, keep Aegenwulf’s children safe, understand? I don’t know what’s going on with his housecarl, but those little rascals don’t deserve any harm.”

“Understood. You have my word.”

The Saxon began heading for the exit, satisfied with the information he gathered. “Very good. I’ll see myself off, then. Take care of yourself, Lone Wolf. This place is far from safe, and I fear it’ll stay that way for quite some time.” He gave him one last glance.

“Until we meet again.”

~~~~~~~~~~

A FEW MINUTES LATER

THE PIER

Tugging his hood further down his face, Sigurd stuck to the path as he navigated his way through the darkness, doing his best to stay concealed in the overwhelming blackness of the night.

So far, he had yet to notice anyone tailing him through the wilderness, and the foliage around him remained calm with inactivity, but he couldn’t seem to fight off the sense of dread that was crawling underneath his skin.

It just felt... ominous out here. There was too much silence; too much stillness. The world was devoid of any life during this time of day, and it didn’t reflect the same atmosphere Sigurd experienced when he went hunting with Edric at all.

Perhaps it was just nerves, he thought. The night always seemed to draw out a certain type of fear from people’s hearts, and the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be out here in the first place certainly didn’t help.

His mind may have been racing with about a thousand different thoughts at the moment, what with all the anxiety that was building up in his chest, but he had to remind himself to stay calm.

Panicking would only make him stand out more after all, and he couldn’t afford to be caught.

“...Gjuki?” Sigurd whispered cautiously, quietly approaching the pier as he stepped into the brazier’s circle of light. “Gjuki, are you there?”

There was no response.

“Gjuki,” He repeated a bit louder, starting to grow concerned. “It’s me, Sigurd. You can come out.”

Still, he received no answer.

Where was that damned bard? He wondered. Had Gjuki been forced to flee prematurely due to some sort of threat? Or had Sigurd simply mistaken this flame as his signal?

He assumed the fire had been lit by Gjuki, considering that this pier was abandoned. No one else had any reason to make use of this place, and the timing of its appearance had to be more than just a coincidence.

Though, in spite of all that, the bard remained nowhere to be seen. There was no trace of Gjuki lying around the vicinity, and if Sigurd looked closely enough at the wooden floor of the pier, he could’ve sworn he saw some type of red liquid staining its surface.

Wait a minute.

Was that...?

“Hello, Lone Wolf.”

Whirling around at the sudden voice, Sigurd barely had any time to react before he felt the sharp sting of an armored fist bashing him in the face, causing him to fall to the ground.

He heard a group of footsteps swarming him as soon as he hit the floor, and within the blink of an eye, a pair of men had grabbed him by the arms, restraining him in their grasp.

“Hold him down!” A familiar voice bellowed over the commotion.

Sigurd struggled violently in their grip and desperately attempted to break free, only to receive a firm kick to the stomach. His head was still spinning from the initial punch, and now, his organs felt as if they were about to climb up his throat too.

“Stay still!” One of the men barked, shoving Sigurd’s face into the ground as he bent the man’s arms behind his back. But the viking wasn’t done fighting yet.

Despite being somewhat dazed from the attack, Sigurd wrestled even harder with the guards and let out an aggressive grunt, trying to weaken their grasp.

Before he could resist their seizure any further however, a metallic scrape suddenly reached his ears, forcing him to bring his attention to the dagger that was now kissing the flesh on his throat.

“Move one more muscle,” his captor hissed, “and I’ll plant this little beauty straight through your eye.”

Sigurd glared at the man on the other side of the blade, instantly recognizing their face.

“...Algar.”

The housecarl grinned widely, leaning in closer to him as he pulled his hood back. “Well, well. If it isn’t the blue-eyed demon. I had a feeling you would turn up sooner or later, Sigurd. I’m so glad to see you again.”

Sigurd ignored the man’s taunts, focused entirely on the absence of his friend. “Where’s Gjuki? What have you done with him?”

Algar raised a brow. “Oh, you mean the bard? There’s no need to worry about him, mate. I assure you, he’s receiving the exact treatment he deserves.”

The viking glowered at the malevolence in his tone, horrified to imagine what Gjuki could’ve been going through at the moment.

“I’ll kill you for this, you dog...!” Sigurd growled through clenched teeth.

The Saxon offered nothing but a chuckle in response. “You’ve certainly got a fire in you, Lone Wolf. There’s no denying that. I almost... respect it in a way. But unfortunately, I doubt you’ll be doing anything in your position.”

Algar grabbed Sigurd by the hair, yanking his head upwards from the ground with a hard tug.

“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t figure out what you and your friend were doing? How blind do you think I am? I warned you what would happen if you defied me, Sigurd, but it seems my threats fell on deaf ears. A shame, really, seeing as how you would’ve made a great warrior. All you had to do was follow our fucking orders. Now though, I’m afraid your fate rests in Aegenwulf’s hands.”

Algar let go of the viking’s hair and stood up from the ground, giving his men a series of commands.

“Tie him up, and bring him back to the castle. I’ll inform the ealdorman of what has transpired here. In the meantime, make sure this one stays put in the dungeons. I don’t want him to see even a sliver of sunlight until Aegenwulf permits it.”

“Right away, sir.” They answered in unison.

“Good. Then our business here is concluded. Oh, and Sigurd?” Algar shot a smirk at him. “Have no fear. I’ll personally see to it that your friend Edric hears of this. Can’t wait to see what he thinks.”

Sheathing his weapon, Algar swiftly walked over to his horse and prepared to return to the castle, dousing the brazier’s fire with a splash of water from the river.

Meanwhile, his men wrapped a cloth around Sigurd’s mouth and secured him with an abundance of ropes, ensuring that the man couldn’t move. Afterwards, they hauled him up from the ground and threw him over the back of one of their mounts, rendering him completely defenseless.

Sigurd was terrified right now. He had no idea what Algar intended to do with him, nor if Aegenwulf would spare him a second time -- and considering the fact that Gjuki could’ve been dead, he assumed he had lost his only chance to discover what the housecarl was doing behind closed doors.

Everything was going to hell.

Not only would he be a prisoner of Algar’s now, his identity would also be exposed to everyone in Forangal. They would learn his real name, and finally hear the truth of his cryptic background. Edric would believe that his clan was responsible for the death of his brother, and the trust that they had built thus far would crumble into ash.

Blood of Tyr, Sigurd thought to himself. What on earth had done? Would he even survive this next week?

How was he going to contact Eivor now? Were Gjuki’s people aware of what was happening? Surely, Eivor would realize something was amiss with the bard’s disappearance.

Or perhaps... he would just assume they were dead. Hope was in short supply nowadays due to everything going on in the war, and it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe that Sigurd had been killed whilst in the hands of Saxon enemies. Eivor probably had many other things to worry about at the moment, and the viking could only pray that his brother would be vigilant enough to notice that something had gone wrong.

Otherwise... Sigurd didn’t know what else he would do. There weren’t many chances to escape in a situation like this, and the odds were heavily stacked against him.

Right now, his only option seemed to be compliance. He imagined his stay with Algar would simply worsen if he fought back, and any defiance would’ve surely swayed Aegenwulf towards a less forgiving approach.

Edric was the one person who had any hope of changing the ealdorman’s mind, and just like before, Sigurd had no choice but to rely on the young man’s help.

He was the only one who could’ve saved him now, and unless his view of the viking changed after hearing Algar’s report, Sigurd hoped he would be able to see reason.

There was something deeper connecting the two of them, and now, after all this time, he would finally see for himself if it ever actually meant anything.

#assassin's creed valhalla #ac valhalla #sigurd styrbjornson #male oc #sigurd x male oc #ac valhalla fanfic #eitr

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unproduciblesmackdown · 4 years ago

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watched the end of some guy’s amnesia: rebirth playthrough and i have some boring thoughts @halloweenhavoc have u finished the game i feel like you have more of a grasp on all this stuff than i do lmfao what with having actually played it and also probably remembering machine for pigs better

i really did not like fully piece together either the lore of the Main Story of the game nor the broader Amnesia Universe Lore lmfao but i was interested in the latter especially, but re: the former, i did like having all these other Known People associated with the protag whose fates we could all find out and shit

i’m like, sort of underwhelmed, but that’s b/c even though i was like “okay so just b/c this is a frictional-produced amnesia sequel a decade later doesn’t mean you need to hype it up like it’s gonna blow your mind just coz atdd was That big a deal” doesn’t mean i still wasn’t partially like oh but what if it is like mindblowing horror game tho......it felt a lot more like soma than atdd which isn’t in itself bad b/c soma rules but when i’m expecting it to be more like atdd it just makes things kinda bemusing and hard to recalibrate.....it was a good game though lol just like the whole time trying to figure out what the experience is gonna be i guess

anyways so like in the direction frictional’s games have gone it def feels like they’re more into Game Environments (those ruled in this game....) and being very like Thematic Story-Centric.....atdd was very stripped down and they sure got creative with that and it was as effective as it was but yeah it feels like now that they have the clout from that and the game production experience and presumably more resources and stuff that they’re progressing in This Direction which is not as atdd-esque lmao like good for them if this is the creative vision, follow those dreams and stuff

did not feel at all invested in any of this baby lore lmfaooo like it was very abstract and also i don’t care. but 10/10 for breastfeeding gameplay

i did like the Other World lore like. this is where alexander is from, Maybe?? i remember he’s mentioned as an apostate from [somewhere else] but like, is that somewhere else in another dimension or just another Region in this world lmao i don’t know. out here Inventing the amnesia potion vitae harvesting strategy, and then it’s Something Else he does that is considered heinous and they just banish him to earth lmfaooo like our problem now......and who is alexander’s wife lmfao. in atdd bad ending, when alexander portals back, does he get to come back to the shitty place where nothing’s going on but eternal vitae harvest i guess? sucks. in atdd sorta-neutral-ending, when you toss agrippa’s head through the portal and then agrippa asks [someone, i forget who....the student? weyer? or whoever??] to Help Daniel, does everyone get to go to this crappy world or are there other better dimensions lmao....also i forget how this The Other World got so shitty in the first place. something something they flew too close to the sun with their technology and it got fucked up, i forget what The Gate even is........i do like this origin story for what the fuck is up with the shadow lmfao. that like, it’s just some other alchemical Invention expressly to fuck up the vitae system?? which is sort of counter to the idea that it’s simply a Guardian of any orbs.....but then also, there was some sort of note or memory that seemed to imply that having fucked up whatever Gate they fucked up created something that sounded like maybe it was the shadow?? or was it just something Else fucked up and b/c it was like “uh oh something shitty is happening here now” i just Assumed it was the shadow.....idfk. but idk maybe since Orbs are Other World Tech For Portals the shadow is just like, Other World Tech Ruiner and if you handle one improperly the shadow will like, sense orb-jostling Lol and be On It....i don’t knowwww

i gotta admit i did love the lore tying to atdd lmfao like maybe this game would’ve been better off not really being tied to atdd but i’m still like oh yep i’m a sucker for cameos / lore about these atdd people places and things.....herbert, alexander, daniel, brennenburg, and someone else i forget who was like “i’m the first human to get to this place but i don’t have A Traveller’s Whatever so i have to die here,” rip to him.....kinda funny that vitae-harvesting is like, so Industrialized in the other world with this factory and mass-produced as it were, which is Fucked Up, and alexander got shot to earth for some mysterious terrible thing and had to invite some rando with an orb to his castle and then get his help torturing other randos with medieval instruments like. banging rocks together over there. also i don’t get what the harvesters job was? they were sure Harvesting but if the vitae is just getting Sucked thru tubes why are these guys going around breathing it in also. just like, stray air-vitae filtering system?? idk

also what was going on time-wise with this weird accelerated pregnancy. i don’t think i get Why tasi got amnesia in the first place. coincidence i guess??? and why...did she end up back in the plane wreckage. was that just where she got dropped off after they were all like. taken from Our World into the Other World and then....back into our world?? i guess??? i’m just not clear on the Timeline Of Events and how everyone got split up with some people dying and shit....was everyone getting attacked by ghuls i guess. there was a crapload of them in that one place, wasn’t there.....i also forget Where things happened lmfaooo like shit was this in Earth or The Other World.....i guess the latter it was always like, “high tech” with that art deco design shit and green light and stuff.....god i don’t know. like i already forget why richard was like, held captive and tortured. just on evil principle??? augh lmfao

also it was certainly Interesting that people turn into monsters around here with some like, magic + corruption deal going on......felt like the Lore in atdd was sort of vague but that it could Maybe tie into that sort of idea....frictional games sure will like, Metaphorically have the Self and the Non-Self But Which Is Tied To Your Self in all its stories, atdd, soma, rebirth......daniel having this past self he’s now detached from but re-learning of his past exploits.......soma copy/pasting consciousnesses.......uhhh also when it was talking about the ideal Vitae Collecting Cycle being fear, amnesia, and then Hope, and about who was the best candidates for that, i was really thinking that like, we’d learn tasi was being put through a [Hope] sequence, basically

also (rachel if ur reading this lmfao) i remember this pre-release Audio Tape that wasn’t in the gameplay that i think was like, the doctor doing an experiment on a Monster to confirm it had regenerative properties?? i thought we were gonna get a whole fucked up subplot dealing with that guy lmfao but nah just at the end......i guess soma’s promotional stuff was similar, they had all these Files and Videos and stuff which was relevant to the Lore / story but which wasn’t like, flatout in the game......i guess at some point the doctor must’ve been like, experimenting on a crew member who was sort of in the process of Turning or w/e. hank or someone i guess.....UHHH i did like “talking” to so many monsters lmfaooo like leon and crap. wild, tragic, etc.......

RIGHT and i think frictional is really creative in its like, Game Mechanics, like how relatively recently we learned that that whole thing about being told that Low Sanity makes you easier to detect in atdd, but that wasn’t true and was just put in the game to put the player more on edge? i mean, daniel keeling over for a moment if sanity gets too low is probably unhelpful in a chase but. and like, here the “sanity” thing was neat, i liked the Sound lol, i liked the flashing images and how that was like, Relevant, but also it seems like you can’t ever die in this game?? basically, ish?? which i think is neat. like, you don’t really Need to.....said it last time how it feels like the player just is still going to react as Urgently if they’re being chased by the monster lmfaooo

idk there was something other neat / creative element i think i wanted to point out as Cool but i forget (HAHA...manesima.....) i dunno the 0.0001% chance any of you are Coincidentally into amnesia at all and know what all is being talked about here and have thoughts....feel free to send me an ask or whatever.......would be inchrested in hearing other takes on it etc

OH and it didn’t feel like machine for pigs was involved at all lmfao which makes sense since it wasn’t actually produced by frictional but now i’m really struggling to remember the Lore there and if it could Conceivably tie in with descent/rebirth-verse.......oswald’s soul got actually split with Evil Orb-Corrupted Self (which!!!! i forgot there’s even the implication that maybe orb-proximity fucks you up. didn’t seem that relevant here. here magic empress fountain water fucks you up) and Amnesia’d Good (Normal-er) Self and there’s the giant machine which is gonna.....consume the world to protect it from self-destructing in another way......or, that was the reason given to oswald anyways, i remember he like sacrifices his kids to it to save them from [his visions of ww1 being an impending thing] and he doesn’t find that out till the end......his evil self tricked his good self into firing up the machine......i forget where the pig men come from or what their point is, and the machine is like, another Factory Line Vitae Harvesting thing, right?? what’s the vitae For in this case....i sure don’t fuckin know. i forget what oswald does at the end as well to like, fix things, i remember feeling sad about it even though he was a horny weirdo.....i really forget what the full picture was there or what the Orb Involvement was. anyways. idk

would be fun to see more frictional games but it seems like they’re not too interested in doing something as atdd-esque again lol, soma seems more like What Frictional Really Wants To Do, which isn’t a bad thing cuz soma rules and like. objectively i guess soma is the better game, i’m not at all mad at anyone arguing soma is better lmfao, i just sure cherish atdd and it sure is the one that made the whole [subsequent horror game defining] splash lmfao. OH YEAH and i liked they threw in another moment where someone’s been alive for ages and you unplug them and it’s like what the fuck. and i guess you do that but even Harder in the one Rebirth ending where you shadow-infect everything and all the people in the vitae-pods die......which like, it Was def creepy having all those vitae pods lmfao. conceptually fucked up.....uh yeah that’s it i guess. was a sucker for the atdd-lore-fanservice stuff lol. thought it was good but wasn’t like atdd 2.0 which is both Totally Fine and also A Bit Disappointing Of Course lol. now i’m thinking about soma some more though which is Worthy cuz that game rules and i love its story / concepts so much. and i love that you keep fisting sphincters to Save until you have to fist your forearm off. we’ve all been there. and i love the “we have the better view. :)” audio log from someone on the surface. and how the gradual reveal of the [lady you talk to throughout the game who guides you along]’s story. and the Ending. and the gradual reveal of Just What Is Going On Around Here

anyways yeah atdd rules soma rules i thought this game was good too but def is like okay you’d rather make soma than atdd and that is valid

thots????????????????

#amnesia

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ofcastora · 4 years ago

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SHAKESPEARE’S REGAN + DIVERONA’S REGINA

happy birthday hayley! @reginadalys

INSP.

FULL PASSAGES UNDER THE CUT

SHAKESPEARE:

LEAR: Of all these bounds, even from this line to this, With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd, With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, We make thee lady. To thine and Albany's issue Be this perpetual.- What says our second daughter, Our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall? Speak.

REGAN: Sir, I am made Of the selfsame metal that my sister is, And prize me at her worth. In my true heart I find she names my very deed of love; Only she comes too short, that I profess Myself an enemy to all other joys Which the most precious square of sense possesses, And find I am alone felicitate In your dear Highness' love.

CORDELIA: [aside] Then poor Cordelia! And yet not so; since I am sure my love's More richer than my tongue.

LEAR: To thee and thine hereditary ever Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom, No less in space, validity, and pleasure Than that conferr'd on Goneril.- Now, our joy, Although the last, not least; to whose young love85 The vines of France and milk of Burgundy Strive to be interest; what can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

REGINA: [in a starter]

She watches the priest baptize the children, as if this water could truly purify their souls, like a casing of holy armor around the intangible thing. Regina believed that everyone was born a blank slate, neither filled with light nor darkness, that these things sought you out later in life. Darkness had found her, a willing and empty vessel. No holy water could chase it away, for no water had magical properties. It only served to purify the mind’s conscience, not the soul, for the mind, like these babies below, is an easily manipulated thing, poised to be shaped however one commands, so long as they believe hard enough. You can trick the mind into thinking almost anything, including that this stuff works. The only thing purified is one’s folly. It’s pathetic, if you ask her.

SHAKESPEARE:

REGAN: What might import my sister's letter to him?

OSWALD: I know not, lady.

REGAN: Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter. It was great ignorance, Gloucester's eyes being out, To let him live. Where he arrives he moves All hearts against us. Edmund, I think, is gone, In pity of his misery, to dispatch His nighted life; moreover, to descry The strength o' th' enemy.

OSWALD: I must needs after him, madam, with my letter.

REGAN: Our troops set forth to-morrow. Stay with us. The ways are dangerous.

REGINA: [in conversation with Vivianne Sloane]

“I was at the bar the target was expected to visit, which he did. However, he was unexpectedly with a Montague — the one called Perdita, to be specific. I wasn’t sure what she wanted with him, but I thought completing the assignment was more important.” Regina spoke of murder so clinically, as if it were another thing on their laundry list. “However, somehow, they’d anticipated my presence — or the presence of some obstacle, if they did not know specifically that I was assigned to this target.” It was all speculation, of course, but the thought had surprisingly stayed itching in Regina’s mind since that day: someone had gotten word that this man had too much knowledge. Someone had gotten word that the Capulets wanted him gone. Someone may have even gotten word that it was Regina who was assigned to take him out. The question was: how?

“They had Celia waiting to attack. Because of this, I was unable to get to the mark, and he left with Perdita. It was an organized ordeal from them.” While their expression remained neutral when they said that, there was a flash of something more underneath, something rare. Regina might not have even had the words to describe it, but it was almost angry in nature, perhaps more hungry than anything else. It was thus: the Montagues had stolen the pleasure of the kill from Regina, and they craved it still. They had some sort of organized front, something new, something to keep an eye on — something to destroy. The beginnings of something that looked opposite of apathy simmered. The transparent steam rose in green curls of jealousy

SHAKESPEARE:

SERVANT 1: Hold your hand, my lord! I have serv'd you ever since I was a child; But better service have I never done you Than now to bid you hold.

REGAN: How now, you dog?

SERVANT 1: If you did wear a beard upon your chin, I'ld shake it on this quarrel.

REGAN: What do you mean?

DUKE OF CORNWALL: My villain! Draw and fight.

SERVANT 1: Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.

REGAN: Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus? [She takes a sword and runs at him behind]

SERVANT 1: O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left To see some mischief on him. O! [He dies.]

REGINA: [in conversation with Boris Kovrov]

Wait, he now says. Regina had heard plenty of others beg for their lives; the sound was nothing new. And yet, he does not beg. He does not say a word beyond that, and she takes a step closer, still shadowed, to get a better look. He is not special for being before her gun. But his expression is amusing, and so, she entertains it for a moment.

“For what, exactly, am I supposed to wait for? I am not here to waste my time.” That much was apparent by the swiftness she took in shooting the woman who now lie in a sea of her own blood (and perhaps piss, she couldn’t be certain from this distance). Regina once thought she had plenty of time to spare, and now, Verona had made her worry that she may have been mistaken. But she would not hesitate. She would not allow opportunity to slip through her fingers again. If she must make up for it with another body, she would. Her gun remained pointed in Boris’s direction as she took another step closer, out of the shadows.

#diveronatalk #reginadalys #&. my graphics | look i made a thing #happy birthday dadley!!!!

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antiquechampagne · 4 years ago

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Antique Champagne - Ch44 - Child’s Play

The smell of sizzling meat coaxed a drowsy Payne to search out the Fizztop’s kitchen. She found Hancock standing in front of a sizzling frying pan bare chested, his white ruffled shirt slung over a nearby chair. She gently wrapped her arms around his waist.

“What’s cooking, Sunshine? It’s smelling good.”

“Who knew the power a scrambled eggs and Cram would have on you? You slept in quite a bit.”

“What time is it?”

“About 3.”

Payne let go of him and made her way to a metal stool in the corner. She did a few quick calculations in her head. “We still have plenty of time. It’s not like we have to get everything done in Nuka-World in one day.”

“True.” Hancock shoveled breakfast onto a pair of waiting plates. “Bon apple tea.”

Payne chuckled as she accepted the dish. “It’s ‘bon appetite’!”

Hancock answered with a nonchalant shrug. “Meh. Eat up!”

They moved to the prewar dining room, sliding into a booth away from the windows.

After swallowing a huge bite, Hancock poked his fork at her. “So, what’s your plan?”

“My plan? Why do I have to pick?”

Hancock leaned back against the back of the booth. “Cause I’m taking a holiday from being in charge while we’re here. And man, it feels nice!”

Payne chuckled and started to ruminate on her options. “Why don’t we start out in Kiddie Kingdom? There probably isn’t too much to see in there. Then we can spend more time in other parks.”

“Sounds good, boss.”

Soon enough, they found themselves walking up to a garish archway framed by giant rusting lollipops, the sun just beginning to throw golden silhouettes across the park.

A man in a cartoonish elephant gas mask held up a hand, barring their path. “Hold on a sec. Gotta make sure the sprayers are off.” He curtly stomped off.

Hancock leaned causally against a barricade. He lit a cigarette to pass the time. Looking up he pointed to something rising above the tall wall that surrounded the park. “Do you think that works?”

Payne looked up, shading her eyes to stare at the giant red Ferris wheel. Before she could manage, a gruff voice answered for her.

“Unfortunately, no. Not enough power to get the old girl running anymore.” A glowing green ghoul greeted the pair. His less than pristine tuxedo stuck out among the neon clad raiders.

“That’s a shame.” Hancock shook his hand. “The name’s Hancock. That’s Payne.” Payne offered her hand in kind. “Nice hat.”

“Uh, thanks.” The ghoul seemed a bit taken back for a moment before shaking her hand back. He extended his other arm, guiding them inside. “The Overboss mentioned you might be by sometime. I’m Oswald the Outrageous. If you hadn’t guessed it, Kiddie Kingdom is my home and sanctuary. It’s a safe space for ghouls, feral or otherwise. Everyone here is family.” He faltered a bit. “Friends of ghouls are welcome as well, of course.”

Payne smiled behind the helmet’s visor and nodded.

As they continued their introductions, the group walked past a stooped feral. He quickly scuttled out of sight behind a garbage can. Oswald stopped, crouched and calmly addressed the ghoul.

“Hey, Jerry. It’s alright. They’re friends,” he coaxed.

The ghoul poked his head out and sniffed the air. The feral wore a curly red wig, their face crudely painted with bright colorful splotches. Suddenly the stains that covered Oswald’s clothes made more sense to her. Payne barely choked back a chuckle. Oswald looked back at her.

“Sorry. I’ve never seen a ghoul with makeup on before.”

With a slight frown, he turned back to the spooked feral, continuing to cajole him out. Larry inched forward, cautiously, eventually planting himself squarely behind Oswald, shielding himself from the new interlopers. Oswald stood, his hand resting on Larry’s shoulder.

“Larry was one of the entertainers here, hired by Bradberton to amuse the kids who came to the park. He was one hell of a juggling clown, always making the kids laugh. He would even catch stuff they threw at him, adding it to whatever he was juggling at the time.”

“That would have been something to see.” Payne said.

Something fast rumbled noisily past them. Payne reflexively stiffened, ready to defend Hancock if necessary.

“What’s that?” Hancock asked.

“That was just the Nuka-Racers… um, a fast rail car ride. They make a hell-of-a-racket. Watch out if you cross the track. They pack a bit of a wallop if they hit you.”

Hancock took a quick puff of his cigarette. “Can I ride’em?”

Oswald thought for a moment. “I don’t see why not.” He lead the them through the wrought iron fences that served as the ride’s queue, Larry tailing them at a distance. “Give me a moment to stop them.”

Hancock chose a bright red car and plopped down into the seat. He barely fit. He waved to Payne. “You gonna join me?”

Payne shook her head. “First, there is no way in hell I’m fitting in there with you. Second… no thanks. Those things were nearly a death trap before the war. God knows what 200 years of wear and tear has done to them… no offense.” She gave a slight bow to Oswald.

Hancock tried to win her over. “When are you going to have this chance again?” Payne shook her head.

“Well, now that that is settled, there are a few things you need to know. Once these things start going, they just keep going until I stop them. So, when you’re done, give us a signal. Also, keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle. They run close to some of the buildings.”

Hancock nodded and gripped the fake steering wheel. Payne wasn’t sure if he was actually listening.

“Seems simple enough.” He beamed. “Let’er rip!”

With the press of a button, Hancock shot off, whizzing around the park at breakneck speed. His hoots of joy echoed off the walls. Payne just watched and chuckled to herself. She had a feeling, after the big breakfast they had just had, she knew exactly how this was going to end.

Catching some movement out of the corner of her eye, she peeked down to see Larry creeping closer to her. Slowly, she unlatched her helmet. The sun had dropped low enough in the sky that she was in little danger of it’s rays now. She crouched, setting in on the paved path next to her. Under Oswald’s watchful gaze, she sat and let the painted ghoul sniff the air around her.

“I hear your name is Larry. Mine is Payne. Nice to meet you.” She wasn’t sure that it would work, but she put out her hand.

Larry ignored it, instead something on her wrist caught his attention. Grabbing her wrist, he turned it over. Immediately, Payne wrenched her arm away as the feral began to dig at the bottle cap embedded in her leather bracelet.

“Hey!” she protested, standing up and covering the glowing star with her other hand. “That’s not for you!” The sudden movement and shouting sent Larry skittering away like a kicked puppy.

Oswald moved to intervene. He quickly scanned her wrist, checking for damage. “Sorry about that.” He scowled. “He’s normally not like that.”

“It’s okay. He didn’t break it. I would have been hard pressed to replace it if he had.”

Oswald squinted. “Is that a bottle cap?”

“Yeah. One from out west. It has a lot of personal meaning to me.”

“Sorry,” He apologized again.

Hancock made his second round, still giddy with the rush of the ride.

“I have a question for you. Are all the ghouls here from Nuka-World?”

Oswald nodded. “Yes. Most of us took shelter here when the bombs fell. After, we had nowhere else to go. Here we had shelter, food, water… we really became like a big family and we protected one another.” He looked down at the ground. “Over time, though, we started to change. We didn’t know about the radioactive waste stored in the base of the castle that was slowly poisoning us. One by one I watched all my friends grow sick with the Affliction, then even more slowly lose their humanity. Now I watch over all of them that are left until we can find a cure.”

“We?” Payne’s heart sank.

“Rachel and I. We were the only ones to keep our minds intact.” Oswald offered a tired smiled. “Rachel left to find a cure. When she comes back, we’ll make everyone well again.”

“That’s… something, I guess. When do you think she’ll be back?”

Oswald’s smile faded. “I don’t know. She’s been gone for over a year now. I’m sure she’ll be back any time now.”

Payne looked up to see Hancock start his third trip around the track… only this time he wasn’t yipping with excitement.

“You better stop the ride.”

“What?” Oswald blinked and looked after Hancock. “He’s not waving at us.”

“I know that face. Stop it now.” Payne sprinted off down the track.

Oswald jumped to action, quickly bringing the cars to a clanking halt. Payne got to Hancock in enough time to help him out of the car to where his breakfast quickly exited his system all over the grass. Oswald trotted up next, luckily avoiding the pile of vomit.

“I knew that was going to happen.” Payne scolded.

Hancock plunked down in the grass. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Would you have listened if I did?”

“No.”

All Payne could do was shrug and shake her head.

“Maybe this will help to calm your stomach?” Oswald produced a Nuka-Cola.

Hancock accepted his offer. “Couldn’t hurt at this point.” He took a few wary sips.

As Hancock regained his composure, Payne turned to their guide. “What did you do here, before?”

“My name doesn’t give it away? Oswald the Outrageous! I was the headlining act for the park. Over the centuries, my magic act has only gotten better!”

“I suppose you would have more time to practice.”

“Practice has nothing to do with it! No doubt, my body has changed, but it has also given me magical powers to spare!”

Payne looked at Hancock, who was undoubtedly having similar thoughts.

“Really?” Hancock put a hand on his knee to help himself up. “This, I gotta see.”

Oswald’s eyes sparkled as he tipped his top hat. “Right this way, then! Step into the great King Cola’s Castle and see for yourself the wondrous acts of Oswald the Outrageous with your own eyes!” And with that, Oswald bent himself in a deep bow before his form disappeared in a great plume of smoke.

#antique champagne #fallout #fan fiction #fanfic #fan fic #hancock #oswald the outrageous #nuka world #ao3 #payne #fluff

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sheliesshattered · 4 years ago

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This Isn’t A Ghost Story - Chapter 7: The Museum

Whouffaldi non-canon AU. 8 chapters, will be about 32,000 words when complete. Rated Mature for heavier themes in earlier chapters, please contact me privately if you’re worried about triggering topics. Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor. Mystery, pining and angst with a happy ending. Available on AO3 under the same username and title. Updates every Friday.

This Isn’t A Ghost Story

Chapter 7: The Museum

13 May 2021, Cairo

“I suppose it’s too much to ask that the museum stay open late for us, today of all days,” Clara said quietly, as they strolled side by side through the nearly empty Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. Even after so many years travelling the world together, she was still cautious about attracting any undue attention from curious strangers, aware as always that no one but her could see or hear her ghost.

“We’re lucky enough as it is that they’re open until nine p.m. on Thursdays,” the Doctor replied. “If the thirteenth had fallen on a Monday this year, we would have been stuck visiting before sunset, they close so early. In 1921, the museum was only open that late because of the party celebrating the new exhibit.”

“You know, until we started planning this anniversary trip, it hadn’t occurred to me that the thirteenth of May that year was a Friday,” she said. “So much for the unluckiness of Friday the thirteenth.”

“Actually, the ancient Egyptians considered thirteen to be a lucky number. To them it symbolised immortality, resurrection, and rebirth.”

“Well, there you go,” Clara said, laughing softly. “Or rather: here we are, a hundred years later. And you’re sure we met at nine?”

He nodded. “The lecture on the exhibit ended just before nine, and we met a few minutes later, as everyone started to disperse into the surrounding rooms. It was half past ten before my colleagues from the dig site were able to pull me away. Unfortunately the museum won’t let us stay that late tonight, but at least we can mark nine p.m. in the right place.”

“One hundred years,” she said, directing a quick smile his way. “Things have changed a bit since then, I suppose,” she added, looking around at the few remaining tourists, half of them reading information about the exhibits on their smartphones. She self-consciously adjusted the small bluetooth headset she wore for show, but no one seemed to be paying her any attention, thankfully.

“They have and they haven’t,” the Doctor shrugged. “The building itself hasn’t changed significantly since I first arrived in Egypt, and the public remains fascinated with the archaeology and the history of the region. Obviously the exhibits have been rearranged over the years, newly discovered artefacts added, but honestly it still looks quite like it did then.”

“I meant more the people than the place. I seem to remember the party in ‘21 being a bit more of a formal affair.”

“They still host black-tie parties here, now and then. We could come back for one someday, if you’re feeling nostalgic.”

“Might be worth another trip to Cairo, if we can figure out a way to get an invite,” she said. “Do you remember what I wore that night?”

The Doctor kept his gaze focused ahead of them and his face carefully blank, but Clara swore he would have blushed if he could. “Yes,” he said shortly.

She laughed fondly and leaned into his shoulder briefly, charmed by his awkwardness even after six and a half years of living as a married couple again. “You’ll have to describe it for me sometime. In a more private location.”

He hesitated then said, “We won’t be able to stay here long tonight, anyway. Play your cards right and I’ll describe it for you in detail once we get back to the hotel.”

“I’m going to hold you to that, mister,” she said, grinning.

They lapsed into comfortable silence as the Doctor led her confidently through the halls of the museum, ending in a smaller room tucked away from the main flow of the central corridor. They had the room to themselves, and Clara let herself relax, shedding her perpetual wariness of someone seeing her interact with her ghost.

“Oh, this wasn’t here before,” the Doctor said as they entered, sounding surprised and pleased. “This is lovely.”

“What is it?” she asked, bemused by his obvious interest.

“It’s a reproduction of the burial chamber of Thutmose the Third, which is in the Valley of the Kings, near Thebes,” he said, looking around at the illustrated walls and the stars painted on the low ceiling, his expression like a kid in a candy shop. “That’s the mummified pharaoh himself, just there,” he added, nodding to a glass-enclosed display case in the middle of the room. “And I imagine the other artefacts are from his tomb, as well.”

“The ceiling is just like my ring,” she noted, glancing up at the spindly stars against the dark blue and fiddling with her wedding ring, its stone opaque now in the diffuse artificial light.

“It was a popular artistic element in the Eighteenth Dynasty,” the Doctor said absently, as he leaned in to examine an intricately carved scarab figurine on display. “Thutmose the Third was the step-son of Hatshepsut, after all, whose temple I took you to see after you found me in Thebes.”

“I forget, sometimes,” Clara said affectionately, “that this is what you spent your life working on. Your true academic passion, above all your other many interests.”

He shot her a quick smile. “It’s why I was in Egypt in the first place, that night in 1921.”

“And you’re sure this is the right place?” she asked, looking around. “The room where we met?” Like the rest of the museum and Cairo in general, it felt vaguely familiar, but nothing specific jumped out at her.

“Quite sure,” he said, meandering around the edge of the room to join her again. “A friend of mine stood in that archway just there, off and on for the better part of an hour, trying to get my attention while I studiously ignored him.”

“Naturally,” she said lightly, “being that you were otherwise occupied with an intriguing stranger.”

“Luckily for me,” he said, smiling down at her.

“So, what are we looking at here?” she asked, gesturing to the complex mural of stylised stick figures that adorned every inch of the walls of the room. “Put that doctorate of archaeology to good use and tell me about this, as we count down to nine p.m.”

The Doctor stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her, and Clara leaned into him, glad for the relative privacy of the enclosed space and the rare chance to touch him while they were in public.

“It’s the Amduat,” he told her, his voice soft near her ear. “Which translates to ‘The Book Of What Is In The Underworld.’ It’s a funerary text that details the sun god Ra’s journey through the land of the dead each night, from sunset to sunrise, on a river that flows from west to east. It’s found painted in the tombs of several pharaohs and on various papyri fragments. The text is divided into the twelve hours of the night, the different gates that Ra — and the recently deceased, who travel with him — must pass through to reach rebirth with the sun at dawn.”

“The twelve hours of the night?” she said, glancing up at him. At his nod, she recited the last eight lines of the poem from memory:

He whispered, “And a river lies Between the dusk and dawning skies, And hours are distance, measured wide Along that transnocturnal tide— Too doomed to fear, lost to all need, These voyagers blackward fast recede Where darkness shines like dazzling light Throughout the Twelve Hours of the Night.”

“...Seriously?” the Doctor asked when she finished, his voice sour. “We’re standing in the middle of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities and you’re subjecting me to Ashbless of all people?”

Clara laughed. “You say ‘The Twelve Hours of the Night’ and my mind spits out that poem. I studied English literature at university, it’s a reflex, I can’t help it.”

“You know, I’m not convinced he actually knew the first thing about Egypt, much less the Amduat. Most of the rest of that poem is complete gibberish.”

“He did live here in Cairo for a time,” she said reasonably.

The Doctor sighed in exasperation. “It’s two minutes ‘til nine,” he said. “Are we going to stand here and debate nineteenth century poets of questionable literary value, or can we enjoy the moment?”

Laughing again, she turned her head and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “Yes, let’s just enjoy the moment. Who else gets to celebrate their hundredth anniversary, after all?”

“Technically that’s not for another two years yet. And we’d have to go to Glasgow,” he added, and Clara knew without looking at him that he was making a face at the thought.

“Our wedding anniversary, sure. But I meant the anniversary of when I fell in love with you.”

The Doctor was quiet for a moment. “You think it was that night?” he asked softly.

“I know it was,” she answered in a similar tone, squeezing his hands where they were clasped low on her stomach. “I wouldn’t have followed you to Thebes otherwise. It just took me a while to put the word to the feeling.”

“You were — what was the phrase you used? — an intriguing stranger for me that night. But when you showed up at the dig site, that’s when I knew.” He took a deep breath and sighed it out, stirring strands of her hair. “I also knew you were less than half my age, far too beautiful for the likes of me even if you hadn’t been, and extremely unlikely to return my feelings.”

“And how’d that work out for you?” she asked playfully.

“Quite well, as fate would have it,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his tone.

Before she could reply, she felt him go rigid behind her, then sway in an alarming way. “Are you alright?” she asked, concerned.

“Bit lightheaded all of a sudden,” he said. “I think I ought to sit.”

She helped him to a bench at the back of the room, grateful that his hand remained solid in hers. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Possible explanations crowded her mind for why a ghost might feel lightheaded, none of them good.

“What is it?” she asked him, worry twisting her gut.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice distant. “I feel strange...”

Clara knelt in front of him looking up at his face, so familiar and beloved, now alarmingly pale and drawn. Somewhere in the distance she could hear an announcement, repeated in multiple languages, that it was nine p.m. and the museum was closing. She ignored it and focused on the Doctor, and on her fear that something had just gone terribly wrong. There was a sudden knot in her stomach, a growing dread that this happy semblance of a life they’d managed to build together the last six and a half years couldn’t possibly last.

“Is this it?” she said, and she could hear the panic colouring her voice. “Have we run out of time? A hundred years exactly and I’ll have to lose you all over again?”

“My Clara,” the Doctor murmured, his low voice cutting through her frantic rambling. “All I ever wanted was more time with you...”

“No, you’re saying goodbye, don’t say goodbye!” she cried, cupping his face with one hand. The pain of that possibility rippled through her, the unimaginable thought of facing a future without him. “Don’t go. Stay with me,” she said desperately. “You promised. You promised you would stay.”

He found her gaze, his eyes red-rimmed as tears began to form. “Clara.”

“Everything you’re about to say, I already know,” she told him before he could say anything else, afraid that at any second, he would fade out of existence right in front of her. “I’ve always known. If this is it, if this is all the time we get—” Her voice cracked, her tears overwhelming her, and she shook her head. “Until the stars all burn from the sky, that’s how long you’re stuck with me. That’s how long I’ll love you. I will find you again someday. I promise.”

The Doctor took her hand from his face and kissed her knuckles tenderly, and she clung to the solidness of him, trying to commit it to memory one final time, in case this was the last moment of this life she had left with him. He had been abruptly stolen from her once before, on that horrible night in 1927, and suddenly the agony of that was fresh and new all over again, threatening to swallow her whole.

“I love you, my Clara,” he said despite her assurances that she already knew. He squeezed her fingers, and raised his other hand to wipe a tear from her face. “I’ll love you ‘til the end of the universe.” His gaze held hers, blue eyes flecked with green that she would never, ever forget. “And I know how much you like to be right,” he went on, his voice gentle. “But just this once... Do you think you could bear it if you were totally and completely wrong?”

She blinked up at him, tears catching in her lashes. “What?” she asked, uncomprehending, as he moved her hand to press flat against the left side of his chest. It took her a moment to understand, to register the strong and steady heartbeat under her palm, utterly strange and unexpected after so many years grown accustomed to the lack of it. She stared at her hand in disbelief, then raised her eyes to his face, realising that he no longer looked nearly so pale. “How?” she demanded.

He shrugged, smiling softly at her. “Honestly? I’ve no idea. Lucky thirteen, perhaps?” he suggested. “I can’t claim to understand it. But it feels so distinctly different from the last ninety-three years, I can’t really question it, either.”

“We get more time,” Clara breathed.

“We get more life,” he corrected. “A real second chance. Somehow, we’ve passed through the twelve hours of the night, and now the sun is rising again.”

She stared at him for a moment, her heart still stuttering in shock at the sudden reversal of their fortunes, then leaned up on her knees and kissed him soundly, reveling in the living warmth rolling off of him. Her living, breathing, very much not dead husband. The reality of it was better than anything she could have wished for, and she clung to him, hardly believing what had just happened.

“Sir, ma’am?” called an unfamiliar voice as they broke apart. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s after nine p.m. and the museum is closing.”

“Quite alright,” the Doctor replied, his gaze never leaving Clara’s face. “It’s time we were getting home, anyway.”

Chapter 8: The Temple

#Whouffaldi #Twelve/Clara #Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor #Clara and the Doctor #Doctor Who #Doctor Who fanfic #This Isn't A Ghost Story #This Isn't A Ghost Story chapters #available on AO3 under the same title and username #please comment and reblog!

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crackspinewornpages · 4 years ago

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King Lear- William Shakespeare

A1S1

(I would like to apologize to the Stratford Lear actors during the 2014 Season of Madness after waking up at 6A.M. with a cold a day long bus ride getting settled in a hotel getting lost in an unfamiliar city I was asleep through most of the play)

In a room Kent, Gloucester and Edmund come in and Kent and Gloucester are discussing how Lear is going to divide his kingdom. Gloucester then introduces him to Edmund his bastard, he does love him but he also has a son by law. (still treating him different is going to leave room for resentment to grow) King. Lear, Cornwall, Albany and Lear’s three daughters enter as Gloucester and Edmund leave.

Lear is given a map, he wants to retire and visit his children in his old age, (kings back then didn’t retire so again going against the natural order bad things are going to happen) then divides his kingdom by asking his daughter by how much they love him. (and not oh how well they can politic or something) Goneril and Regan play lip service then Cordelia, “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your majesty according to my bod; nor more nor less.”p.1051 She won’t even marry if she has to cut her love in two and to Kent’s protest Lear disowns her and divides the last portion to the other two daughters.

Kent says he served him for may years but disagrees with his actions as the other two spoke empty words. Lear banishes him too (yuo let people manipulate you and banish people who give you good council how were you not overthrown or used as a puppet by now) and Kent has final words with the daughters, for the gods to take Cordelia and for Goneril and Regan, maybe good things will come from their declarations. Gloucester comes back with France (king of France) and Burgundy who want to marry Cordelia but Lear tells them she’s been disowned. France finds it strange that the daughter who loved Lear most would fall out of favor and Cordelia explains she’s not glib but honest. “Better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleas’d me better.” (you don’t deserve Cordelia) France will have her then anyway, Lear doesn’t care for her as a daughter and doesn’t want to see her. Everyone leaves and Cordelia tells her sisters goodbye. Regan and Goneril then scheme that now they have power and land to reduce their father’s authority.

A1S2

In Gloucester’s castle Edmund has a letter then he soliloquys how unfair it is for the treatment of bastards. “When my dimensions are as well compact, my mind generous, and my shape as true, as honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us with base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base?”p.1054 (back then bastards were seen as just evil Shakespeare could’ve subverted expectations but we’ll see how he didn’t) He has this letter to disgrace his legitimate brother Edgar in the plot of their father’s murder. “I grow, I proper; now, gods, stand up for bastards!”p.1054 When Gloucester enters Edmund makes a show of hiding the letter of course Gloucester notices and wants to know what it is and reads it and Edmund lies that he found it in his closet. He’s never heard of this before but has heard him speak that at a certain age sons should replace fathers and Gloucester orders Edgar to be brought to him.

Edmund tells him to wait on judgement until he can hear his side, Gloucester can hardly believe Edgar could be such a monster. Edmund agrees to find him and find out the truth Gloucester talks of how things have changed. “Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies;”-“This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there’s son against father; the king falls from bias of nature; there’s father against child.”p.1055 (I feel like this can be applied to a lot of things) After Gloucester is gone Edgar enters and Edmund lies to his brother that he has somehow offended their father and it’s best he go abroad armed until he clams down. Edgar goes and Edmund celebrates being able to turn them against each other and he’ll now inherit.

A1S3

In Albany’s palace Goneril is complaining to her steward Oswald that she is tired of her father in her house he is a horrible guest.

A1S4

In the house Kent is in disguise calling himself Caius and puts himself in Lear’s way and tells him he is an honest man and Lear takes him into his service. (why would you want to go back in this guy’s service) Lear then asks for his daughter and his fool and a knight tells him his daughter is sick and won’t see him and they’ve both noticed her servants won’t obey him anymore. Oswald goads Lear into hitting him until K/Cauis stops him then the fool arrives and with clever words tells Lear he made a mistake in dividing his kingdom. “Dost thou call me a fool, boy?” “All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with,”-“thou hadst little wit on thy bald crown when thou gave it thy golden one away.”p.1058 (takes some balls to call the king a dumbass to his face) Turned his daughters into his mothers they’ll whip him for truth and him for lying.

Goneril comes to speak to Lear and tells him his retinue is so rude he has to send some away. Lear is shocked by her and wonders what he’s become and is regretful of giving Goneril power and plans to visit Regan. Albany comes and Lear complains to him and Albany claims ignorance and Lear calls for Goneril to become sterile and be old and miserable. “that she may feel how sharper than a serpant’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”p.1059 (sometimes children don’t have anything to be thankful for) After he leaves Albany is upset by Lear’s treatment then Lear come back to curse her before he goes to Regan. Goneril then calls Oswald and sends off the fool, she already wrote to Regan how horrible Lear and his hundred knights are so she won’t house them.

A1S5

Lear sends K/Cauis away with letters to Gloucester and the fool needles Lear (can a pair of twins play Lear and his fool) that Regan will treat him no better and Lear prays not to be mad.

A2S1

In Gloucester’s court Edmund and Curon are meeting and Curon tells him Regan and her husband Cornwall are visiting tonight, Cornwall and Albany don’t like each other. Edmund thinks he can use the visit to get rid of Edgar and tells his brother that their father is angry at him for being on Albany’s side. Edgar doesn’t know what he’s talking about and Edmund tells him to flee and when he’s gone Edmund injures his arm and calls for their father. Edmund lies to him that Edgar wanted him to join the murder plot but when he wouldn’t tried to kill him and fled, Gloucester swears to find him. Cornwall and Regan then arrive and believe Edmund’s lies of Edgar’s plots and that he’s one of Lear’s knights. (all these people jump to believe this with little proof how are any of them in power when they’re this gullible) Regan thinks the knights put Edgar up to it to take Gloucester’s wealth then asks Edmund to advise her in correspondence to her sister.

A2S2

Outside Gloucester’s house K/Cauis meets Oswald who doesn’t recognize him and after insulting Oswald and calling him a coward who has letters against the king he starts beating him. Edmund hears this and breaks them up Cornwall, Regan and Gloucester then come and K/Cauis won’t give a good reason for why he beat up Oswald. (didn’t like his stupid face isn’t a good enough excuse) Cornwall wants him punished in the stocks, as they’re brought out Gloucester sys they shouldn’t as Lear will take offence to his messenger being treated like this but everyone else ignores him. When they’re gone K/Cauis recites a letter from Cordelia that promises she’ll find a way to help, then he falls asleep. (must be uncomfortable)

A2S3

Edgar is on a heath and soliloquys on what happened to him and makes himself look like a dirty beggar and calls himself Tom.

A2S4

Lear and his fool are before Gloucester’s castle and Lear sees K/Cauis, shocked that someone would treat his servant badly. K/Cauis tells him Regan and Cornwall did it, Lear won’t believe it at first and wants to talk to them and K/Cauis tells him they refused his letters. Lear is having trouble controlling his emotions and goes to get Gloucester and K/Cauis and the fool talk about foolish things. (so Lear then) Lear comes back with Gloucester demanding an explanation and admits sickness can make people act strange. “infirmity doth still neglect all office where our health his bound; we are not ourselves when nature, being oppress’d, commands the mind to suffer with the body.”p.1066 He looks at K/Cauis and demands to speak with Cornwall and Regan, and Gloucester goes to get them.

Regan believes she had a reason for it and she won’t be treated the same. He’s growing old and unreasonable (we figured that in the first act) and should beg her for forgiveness, Lear gets on his knees to beg her and Regan tells him to go back to Goneril. He says he can’t and complains more about her and asks who put K/Cauis in the stocks. Regan tells him Goneril is on her way and Lear is still hoping Regan knew nothing about K/Cauis.

Goneril arrives and allies with Regan and Cornwall admits to putting K/Cauis in the stocks as he deserved. Regan tells Lear to dismiss half his men if he wants to stay with them, Lear would rather stay outside and beg his youngest to be kept afoot, Goneril tells him it’s his choice. Lear begs Goneril not to make him mad, he won’t see or trouble her, he’ll stay with Regan but the sisters cut his servants from fifty to twenty to none. Lear then curses his daughters and leaves with K/Cauis and his fool in the storm, Regan and Goneril blame him for his situation, “tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest, and most needs taste his folly.”p.1068 (give away your power act and like fool of course people will lose respect for you) Gloucester and Cornwall watch him ride out in the storm as Regan orders the doors shut and locked. “Sir, to willful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”p.1068 (some people just have to learn the hard way)

A3S1

On the heath in the storm K/Cauis is looking for Lear and a gentleman tells him he is with his fool. K/Cauis tells him of the unrest between Cornwall and Albany and French spies in the courts take this right to Cordelia and she’ll send him to friends. (thank you for the audience exposition)

A3S2

Somewhere else in the storm Lear challenges the weather to do its worst (you’re not Zuko sit down) and his thoughts still run back to his two cruel daughters. K/Cauis finds him and begs Lear to take shelter in a hovel Lear comes to his senses enough to follow. The fool speaks a prophecy that’s confusing. (it really makes no sense to me)

A3S3

In Gloucester’s castle Gloucester is talking to Edmund, he doesn’t like Lear’s treatment and wants to bring him in his house. He tells Edmund to say nothing of it as there are worse matters brewing and locks the letters in his room. “There injuries the king now bears will be revenged home; there’s a part of a power already footed; we must incline to the king.”p.1070 He tells Edmund to distract Cornwall of his absence to help Lear or he might be executed. Edmund plans to betray his father and revel the letter he deserves it. “and must draw me that which my father loses; no less than all: the younger rises when the old doth fall.”p.1070 (really hate your father don’t you)

A3S4

Before a hovel K/Cauis is trying to get Lear inside who says his own misery hardly make him feel the storm. The fool goes in, then runs back out because there’s a spirit inside called Tom. K/Cauis calls him out and E/Tom emerges acting like a crazy man saying devils are chasing him. Lear asks if he did the same thing he did to deserve his state E/Tom rambles for a bit then says he was a wealthy, lecherous, decadent. Lear pities his ragged state and rips his own clothes off, the fool tells him not to since they are in a storm. (once more the fool is the wisest person) Gloucester then finds them despite Lear’s daughter’s orders and after a while convinces Lear to go with him.

A3S5

In the castle Cornwall swears revenge on Gloucester and makes Edmund an Earl for betraying his father and Edmund says he’ll find his father hiding Lear as proof of treason.

A3S6

In a farmhouse near the castle Gloucester hides Lear, K/Cauis, E/Tom and the fool as he goes to find supplies. After a while Lear who’s going crazy holds a mock trial for his daughters and as the fool and E/Tom talk nonsense. (suffice to say the trial is a circus) Gloucester comes back that he overheard a plot to kill Lear and everyone goes to hide Lear except E/Tom. E/Tom speaks clearly how his troubles seem little next to Lear’s. “When we our betters see bearing our woes, we scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers most: the mind, leaving free things and happy shows behind:”p.1074

A3S7

In the castle Cornwall, Regan, Edmund and Goneril are meeting, the French army has already landed. Regan and Goneril want Gloucester to be blinded and hung, Cornwall tells Edmund to go with Goneril to Albany, he shouldn’t see this. Oswald comes and informs them Gloucester helped Lear escape to Dover but Gloucester was captured. Cornwall orders all others to leave as he’s brought to them.

Cornwall and Regan have him tied up and they torment and interrogate him and Cornwall has one of his eyes gouged out. A servant can’t stand it and wounds Cornwall to stop it, Regan kills the servant and Cornwall gouges out Gloucester’s other eye. Gloucester calls for Edmund for help, “Thou call’st on him that hates thee; it was he that made the overture of thy treasons to us, who is too good to pity thee.”p.1075 (you’re mistrust and folly lead to your downfall) Gloucester realizes Edgar was innocent and prays to the gods to help him. Regan orders Gloucester thrown out as she tends to her husband the two horrified servants help Gloucester.

A4S1

E/Tom is back on the heath deciding his situation isn’t so bad (you’re the local crazy wild man) then sees Gloucester led by an old man. The old man was their servant and recognizes E/Tom and Gloucester is feeling sorry for himself. “Ah! Dear son Edgar. The food of thy abused father’s wrath; might I but live to see in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again.”p.1076 E/Tom won’t reveal himself to his father and Gloucester has the old man leave him with the crazy man, he wants to be lead to Dover specifically a very high cliff.

A4S2

Before Albany’s palace Oswald informs Goneril Albany’s upset with her and Regan’s actions and is glad the French army landed. Goneril calls Albany a coward and she says Edmund will return to Cornwall where he will command the troops as she takes over here. When Edmund is gone Albany enters outraged at Goneril’s treatment of Lear, if the heavens don’t send retribution it will come, “humanity must perforce prey on itself. Like monsters of the deep.”p.1077 Goneril accuses him of being a coward for not fighting France, Albany calls her a monster. A messenger enters with news that Cornwall died from his wounds and Albany is horrified to hear what they did to Gloucester and calls it justice. When he asks where Edmund was is told he left so his father could be tortured, Albany vows revenge. Meanwhile Goneril has mixed feelings on Cornwall’s death, Regan is less powerful but she could now pursue Edmund. (as we’ve seen with Gloucester adultery will only end badly)

A4S3

In the French camp near Dover K/Cauis talks to a gentleman that the French king had to leave because of trouble at home, but the marshal is here. The letters Cordelia was sent made her cry because of what happened to her father. K/Cauis tells the gentleman Lear is teetering on madness and won’t see Cordelia because he’s ashamed of his actions. (as he should be) As the armies march K/Cauis will take him to Lear.

A4S4

Cordelia is in a tent and sends her soldiers to find her father who’s covered himself in weeds and running around the cornfields singing to himself. (I think it’s time to look into retirement homes) The doctor tells her what he needs most is sleep and a messenger informs her the armies are advancing and she orders hers to prepare.

A4S5

In Gloucester’s castle Oswald tells Regan Goneril is better than Albany at leading armies but won’t show her the letter to Edmund. Regan wonders what purpose would Goneril write to Edmund and suspects a love affair. She tells Oswald she wants Edmund, she’s a widow, she tells Oswald to deliver a letter to Edmund and find Gloucester and kill him.

A4S6

Near Dover E/Tom is leading Gloucester and lies to him that they are at the top of a cliff and Gloucester jumps off and falls to the ground. E/Tom wakes him up pretending to be another man and lies that he watched him fall, a miracle that he’s still alive. Also, the person that lead him looked like a devil, that gods don’t want him to die yet and Gloucester accepts to keep living in his suffering. Lear finds them as he’s draped in flowers speaking nonsense but there’s some truth, he recognizes Gloucester and his state is from his adultery. Then he tirades against women. (you raised your daughters like this) Cordelia’s men are relieved to find him but when they say they’ll bring him to Cordelia he runs off and they chase after. “Thou hast one daughter, who redeems nature from the general curse which twain have brought her to.”p.1082 (take your second chance) One warns that the armies are marching Gloucester wants to die already and E/Tom leads him away.

Oswald runs into them he doesn’t recognize E/Tom but is about to kill Gloucester. E/Tom pretends to be a peasant and mortality wounds Oswald, dying Oswald gives him the letters to Edmund and to bury his body. E/Tom reads them, they’re of Goneril wanting an affair with Edmund and for him to kill Albany. E./Tom is outraged and keeps them to show Albany but hears to drums and leads Gloucester off.

A4S7

In the French tent Cordelia talks to K/Cauis, she knows his real identity and will keep it secret. The doctor wakes Lear up as she wants, she talks kindly to him wanting him to be better. He is crazy but does partially recognize her calling her a spirit asking when she died. (foreshadowing) He knows he’s gone senile and he’s foolish, (we’ve known that from the beginning) “Me thinks I should know you and know this man; yet I am doubtful;”-“Do not laugh at me: for as I am a man, I think this lady to be my child Cordelia.”p.1084 He thinks she wants to kill him like her sisters but she has cause and begs forgiveness. He leaves with Cordelia and K/Cauis and a gentleman talk of how Edmund is leading Goneril’s troops and the battle is approaching. (can it arrive already also where is the fool did he die)

A5S1

In the British camp Regan asks Edmund if he loves Goneril, Edmund says no, Regan is still jealous and tells him not to be familiar with her. Albany and Goneril come in, Albany says that Lear joined Cordelia and others have allied and states he’ll fight against the French. They go but E/Tom stops Albany and gives him the letter and for him to read it. As E/Tom leaves Edmund returns to warn the enemy is close so Albany goes. Then Edmund states he wooed both sisters and they’ll be angry which should he choose (sounds like this was just a bad move all around) he’ll decide after the battle and if Albany survives Goneril will kill him.

A5S2

In the field between camps E/Tom is still pretending to be a peasant has Gloucester take shelter by a tree as he fights. The French loose the battle and he returns for Gloucester as Cordelia and Lear are captured.

A5S3

In the British camp Edmund has Cordelia and Lear as prisoners, Cordelia wants to confront her sisters but Lear doesn’t want to. He envisions them like birds in a cage and he’ll beg for forgiveness to live. Edmund sends them away with a guard with a note on what to do with them. Goneril, Regan and Albany come in Albany praises him for his fighting and wants to see Lear and Cordelia, Edmund lies that he sent them away in fear of mutiny. Regan declares she’ll make him her husband, but her sister says it won’t be and Regan starts to feel sick. (I think I was awake for this part) Albany then arrests Edmund for treason because of his plot with Goneril to kill him and orders trial by combat as Regan is lead out.

Edgar appears armed and will be Albany’s champion and accuses Edmund of treason. Edmund accepts the challenge, and they fight and Edmund loses and is dying, Albany calls for him to be saved and Goneril starts to help but Albany stops her with her letter and she runs off. Edmund doesn’t want to answer and Albany sends after Goneril so Edmund confesses to it and much more. Edgar reveals himself and tells his story and how he revealed himself to their father and he died from joy (not like we the audience wanted to see that emotional and tragic scene) also the banished Kent is Lear’s servant. Then a gentleman rushes in with a bloody knife saying Goneril killed herself (strong female character?) she also poisoned Regan. “I was contracted to them both: all three now marry in an instant.”p.1089 The two sister’s bodies are brought in.

Kent is looking for Cordelia and Lear, Albany completely forgot they were imprisoned and Edmund explains how the two sister died. “some good I mean to do despite of mine own nature.”p.1089 Edmund warns Edgar to rush that he ordered Lear and Cordelia’s executions, Cordelia will be hanged then Edmund is carried off.

Lear returns carrying Cordelia’s body (awake during this part too) as Edgar follows in grief Lear’s sanity is slipping, he doesn’t recognize Kent and thinks Cauis is dead. Kent tells him his other daughters are dead a messenger informs Albany Edmund is died (finally) Albany says it’s little comfort. (at this point yeah) Lear is grieving, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all?”p.1090 He thinks he sees her breathe then he dies. Albany gives Kent and Edgar their rights back Kent feels like he’s about to follow Lear but Edgar accepts to rule with him. “The weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young, shall never see so much, nor live so long.”p.1090 (translation we should never forget this time we should say what we feel and not what others want the young won’t have to live through what the last generation did at least that’s my interpretation)

(so I read eight Shakespeare plays and one thing I can say I hated them while I was reading but appreciated it when I was done and really they are plays you understand them better when they are acted they have few directions and descriptions so everything relies on the actor’s delivery and the production)

#king lear #william shakespeare #books #book summaries #play #tragedy #morality play

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