#next time I'll edit more

[kuwdora]

I always have thoughts about book-to-media adaptations running in the back of my mind these days since it’s part and parcel of our fannish landscape. There’s just so much that goes into translating something from book to a visual medium. And then the adaptation fails in some small and/or large way and it ends up being a disappointment. (I think there’s also a lot to be said about adaptations that are more Successful than not and what success means in an adaptation…but I think that deserves its own post.)

I’m often considering a person’s entry point to adaptations, whether it’s through the media or the original source, and how that plays into people’s reactions about failures of adaptations or—like, what each person is wanting to get out of the adaptation if they know the original source material. And what they’re happy with when they’ve just discovered it through the adaptation.

Just gonna ramble a little bit about my own experience with being a book-to-adaptation person. I think even when writing and production circumstances are the most ideal, it’s still fucking hard as hell to adapt complicated narratives to the screen. Still. I’m not immune to heartbreak about seeing something play out badly because I had been so attached to the original book material.

When I was a little girl I picked up a fantasy book featuring a little girl protagonist. This main character was living in a foster situation, had dead parents, and a wishy-washy background she didn’t know much about. She was a little bit of a ruffian and kind of defied everybody and everything because she had a very strong sense of self and moral code. She is, of course, a child of prophecy and has a lot in store for her.

Over the course of the first book she ends up embroiled in some social and political intrigue and ends up going on a grand adventure. She meets an outcast who is is hated by humans but they use his services anyway because he’s good at his job. He ends up becoming her protector and guardian and would do anything for her.

She eventually crossed paths with a world-traveling misfit with who brought levity and a heart of gold to every scene. She also ended up meeting a very old, very beautiful witch also fell in love with this child and would move heaven and earth to protect her and help her survive and thrive.

The whole series deals with a lot of complex issues of the moral and social variety, and there’s a running theme about how men and institutions headed by men wield their power and try to impose their vision of the world on everyone. Particularly on women.

The little girl also eventually found out that her dad isn’t actually dead like she was told. The dad is alive and well and he’s asshole, also a bad guy. But he has the MOST CHARISMA EVER, holy fuck.

I ate these books up as a kid and reread them over and over and my brain and heart totally grew around them. I admired the protagonist and her sharp wit and mouthiness and determination. Her resiliency and perseverance to do what she knew would be right and just. As I got older and I reread the books and absorbed the more complex issues about personhood and agency. I thought more about how you can resist a bad situation or person when the world/person is trying to change you to fit their ideal. (That part was particularly important to me when I was young). But also the themes of good and evil, etc. I started seeing the politics and then understanding it more with every reread over the years when I started reading more history, more politics. It had always been there in the books but I could finally SEE it. It felt like a revelation.

A dozen or so years later it turns out someone was going to going to adapt these books! It was much discussed and heavily anticipated. These were well-known, beloved fantasy books from the 90s. Amazing characters and great scenes! Fascinating themes.

God I remember being so excited when I heard about the adaptation. And then I got to see it. It was the most confusing and disappointing experiences of my life. What I ended up seeing was pretty. Great costumes, CGI. Amazing actors! But everything that made the books interesting and magical and profound had been watered down, elided over the moral complexities. Or it outright changed things that would have fundamentally shifted the events of the rest of the books and make the adaptation even MORE incomprehensible.

I’m talking about the 2007 film adaptation of The Golden Compass from Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials. A lot of this probably sounds familiar to my Witcher mutuals, right?

Anyway.

The film had so many boycotts by the Catholic Church and other churchy groups in the United States for its depiction of institutionalized religion in Lyra’s world. So on the studio-side they made so many changes and demands that fucked the movie. So much doesn’t make sense or is just pales in comparison to what was actually originally intended.

After the film’s flop even more articles and reviews came out talking about Tom Stoppard’s original draft of the film and the director’s first take on the screenplay. Vulture read both versions and it's really illuminating what they discovered. The film was indeed supposed to be significantly longer but the studio wasn’t having it because they wanted kids to go and see this film and 2+ film wasn’t gonna be it.

Like. The studio was really hoping for another Harry Potter franchise and were treating this book-to-film more like a YA fantasy type of thing. When in reality someone wrote a sanded down version of the story for the screenplay that left me and a whole bunch of other people fucking jaded as hell. Because damn. Way to miss the fucking mark on an amazing fantasy series. 10000% missed it. I’ve blacked out most of the actual film from memory because I just could not believe it. The disappointment. The heartache of not doing the story justice.

But yeah…just… someone really thought The Golden Compass was gonna be a huge fantasy action/adventure hit because there were really cool talking animals.

It’s so fucking hilarious to me in retrospect. When you realize these books are Phillip Pullman’s AU fanfic/fix-it of Paradise Lost where Lucifer gets to have his revenge on the kingdom of heaven, there was noooo way that original film was going to even begin to set up a 3 or 4 film franchise. Nooo way.

The first book ends with an absolutely heartbreaking and horrific scene that is the catalyst for Lyra and what motivates her for the next 1500 pages of the series. I was there opening weekend in that theater for The Golden Compass. I have never been more confused in my LIFE while watching a film because they ended the film like 5 chapters before the end of the book. They lopped it off and made the first film a very strange Cliffhanger for a sequel that would absolutely never get made. I was flabbergasted.

The disappointment. The confusion. The despair. I was fucking depressed about it for a good long time. I had been so excited and been brimming with anticipation because I loved the books so much and I wanted it to be good and then what I got was….absolute garbage. To me. I mean maybe if I had been a little girl watching the film for the first time it would have been better. But as an adult who had spent the better part of my life immersed in Lyra’s character arc… I just. Could not feel more betrayed.

I can’t even be that upset anymore because I’ve had enough time to grieve and leave it behind. Then somehow the universe came together and HBO let Jack Thorne and company re-do the books as a series. It is a much more faithful adaptation. I’m too close to the book source to know if people who don’t read the books will get the same kind of experience out of seeing the show play through Lyra and Will’s experiences in the show.

The final season of His Dark Materials was also probably the most philosophical and abstract season of fantasy television I’ve seen. I fucking loved it. I don’t think it was perfect, but it was really enjoyable and did more to soothe my soul than I thought possible. It’s not a show for everyone—and I’m still not sure how it got made because HBO the last few years had been going through some changes. Maybe I’m very sentimental and forgiving, I don’t know. The narrative pacing was a bit weird to me in places and some of the dialogue was hit or miss but overall, I could not have gotten a better time from it.

That experience with the film a has made me much more intentional about managing my expectations of how I approach media adaptations.

Where am I starting with an adaptation? What am I hoping to get out of this? Who is making it and what are the production constraints working against it? How do I manage my expectations if I know the original source and what do I want from the visual media and acting? Etc etc. Do I want to go and read the original if I don’t know it already because I want to see what changes they made?

I keep thinking about everything with The Witcher Netflix. It’s so fucking difficult to get anything made through studios and networks (especially now, but even then in the late 2000s)… And when you’re trying to appeal to the widest audience possible, you’re only going to get so far when you’ve left the rest of the source inspiration on the table. And didn’t bother to make up for the difference in what you left there.

We all know how depressing it is. The streaming model has fucked television over completely. The depreciation of writers rooms… we had 20 and 22 episodes, and then 15 and 12 episodes. Filler episodes with great character moments. Space to flesh out complex narratives with nuance. And now 8 episodes as a standard runtime. The lack decent amount of time for production (including pre and post) to actually set things up in a way that serves the media narrative.

It’s so hard to cater to everyone when you’re drawing from a book/comic book. Also harder to cater to your specific audience. But when you’re trying cater to enough people so you don’t get cancelled and keep going to try and tell the story you’re trying to tell, that’s fucking hard and shitty and I don’t begrudge them for that. Even though it sucks.

Even though I can hate it as much has I can understand it. Wish it was different. Even though it can be a fucking travesty of epic proportions because these writers/showrunners/directors don’t get the space to actually flesh out what they’re trying to do.

Even if people are writing a very different iteration of the story that I don’t like/want/agree with/understand/etc.

That doesn’t even go into the issue of when showrunners and directors don’t understand the characters they’re working with or make fundamental changes because of their own vision, production constraints, and everything else. You might see a lot of this going around again with Red, White, and Royal Blue and what the director had changed in his film adaptation. People are worked up into a froth for very valid reasons. It’s all exhausting but this is all nothing new. Still demoralizing when people so attached to the original material.

Anyway. That’s….just some thoughts that have been sitting with me for awhile. Could probably ramble more if I can get the brain cells together.

Fun fact: George RR Martin looked at the 2007 The Golden Compass film and said (paraphrasing here): “I am never, ever fucking EVER letting anyone make my books into a film. A television show is the way to go.”

Fun fact #2: James SA Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank) worked with GRRM extensively over the years and I think others have written more extensively about GRRM’s influence the way they wrote sprawling narratives with multiple POV characters. Anyway they developed a tabletop RPG that they eventually turned into novels that became The Expanse.

Which eventually got adapted to television. SyFy network was in a bidding war with Netflix for the show and out-bid Netflix. This was a show adaptation that did not hold your hand whatsoever. Fascinating, new, interesting. Faithful adaptation. Still got cancelled after two seasons. Even though both authors had become producers on the show and were learning more about production and writing teleplays from experienced sci-fi showrunners/producers/television writers.

Show was later picked up by Amazon to finish out the last few seasons. But I would bet my bottom dollar that both these authors watched how the Game of Thrones adaptations went and probably went “we’re not gonna let this happen to us.” And I think that’s reflected in the way they and their team were able to adapt the story faithfully with multiple huge and small changes specifically so it would work with the television medium.

[daily-odile]

AUGH I’d love to see more time looping odile if possible,,,,, how do you think she’d like; “devolve” over each of the acts as compared to Siffrin over time :O

ok im gonna be honest i did like portrait edits months ago and just never finished them. so here you go

act 3:

act 5:

[royalarchivist]

Pac: I can't keep doing this, I can't do this– [Laughs] I can't do this anymore— What is this, man?!

If you didn't see Pac suffering in Sims earlier today, here's a (translated & subtitled) compilation of some silly Sims Hideduo moments that made poor Pac look like he was questioning all his life choices.

[khaotunq]

One Year of Only Friends ○ Ray Pakorn Edition Episode Four ○ original air date September 2nd, 2023

[elderwisp]

𝔩'𝔞𝔪𝔬𝔲𝔯 𝔢𝔱 𝔩𝔞 𝔪𝔬𝔯𝔱

[hrokkall]

HOW TO PIN YOUR INSECTS:

Position limbs into desired arrangement and pin in place

Maintain eye contact

Pin should pass through the center of the thorax

Move slowly; lest the divine light leak out along with the ichor

Wait for the embers to die.

Wait for the embers to reignite.

[kirk-goes-to-gallifrey]

🤍 the cure to all my ailments 🤍

[pathetichoney]

[Image ID: A drawing of a selfie taken by Sam Manson with Damian Wayne. They are both dressed up in formal attire, Damian in a black/dark grey suit with a red tie, and Sam in a purple topped off the shoulder dress with black straps. She is wearing a variety of jewelry, a necklace with a bat pendant, a black choker with a star of david in a circle pendant and cartoonish spider shaped earrings. Her hair is reminiscent in her half-up hairstyle, but with two ponytails rather than one. The background is a dark wall, a white collumn and white tile flooring. There is a window in the back, with green curtains, and outside the window is a cityscape of Gotham at night. There is a watermark of the artist’s username in the top left corner @pathetichoney​. End ID.]

i am back on my bullshit this time with a v special new way that i’m drawing bc i got a new phone that i am paying out the wazoo for, however i can draw on it so my art has gotten significantly better. though of course i had to test myself and do both 1. a full background 2. a character who wears lipstick which i always struggle with unless their mouth is in a particular position and 3. a character that i have never ever tried to draw.

so like. rip me lol.

anyways i am back on my bullshit bc this is fanart of fanfic!!!! i always feel exactly in my element when i do this, it’s just always so good??? and fun?? and when i first read this fic, i mean oh god i just fell for it so hard. i ended up rereading it again like barely 48 hours after i’d finished reading it the first time lol

the fic in question is a damian and danny are twins au! it’s called Leap Before You Think by TourettesDog and i just-- the characterisations are just so well done it all feels incredibly natural especially with the merging of the two different universes into one cohesively and seamlessly it’s wonderful. there are a few faults with this pic i think, however i am still incredibly proud of it. as a bonus, here’s a better view of the window scene because i’m still really proud of that one:

[valenfield-inspo]

Chris Redfield & Jill Valentine - BSAA Era Moodboard

[yume-fanfare]

the worst partner ever ❤

[thetomorrowshow]

Whumptober 4 - Hallucinations

title: marked

fandom: empires smp

this is an alt pov of my fic hubris killed the god! i recommend reading it first

cw: blood, hallucinations, implied/referenced character death

~

Jimmy doesn't say a word when he feels something almost fuzzy brush against his wrist.

He just finishes drawing his chalk arrow and keeps going.

Pix isn't here. He's still clinging to a little shred of hope, the only thing that's stopping him from pulling the entire group out right now, the only thing keeping him from telling them he was touched.

If Pix was here, it all would have been worth it.

But Pix isn't here.

And the further they get, the clearer it is.

But there are plenty of those varmints around, and one of them appears out of nowhere to scare them, so Jimmy turns and makes a break for it, calling for them all to follow him.

He can't bear to let another one of them fall.

But he's too late.

When Shelby climbs onto the airship, the first thing she does is run to the staircase that leads to the stern, wedging herself in the little corner between the stairs and the captain’s cabin.

"I'm dying," she sobs, when Jimmy approaches her, hands out. "I'm going to die!"

"I know," he calls back, over the sound of the ship.

He doesn't know what else to say.

"I don't want to die," Shelby cries. Her hands tear at her face, at the place where a little red mark is already forming on her cheek.

Gently, Jimmy pulls her hands down, holding them in his own. She shakes, bends over just a bit, as if her body is trying to curl up without her input.

"We're here," he shouts, the wind whipping away his words. "We're not gonna leave. It's okay, we're right here with you."

"I didn't do anything wrong," she chokes out, tears running down her blotchy face.

Jimmy's heart twists.

She didn't. She only tried to survive.

He pulls her into a hug, sets his chin on her shoulder. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what to do.

He just lets Shelby cry into his chest and stares at the wooden deck behind her.

-

Jimmy hugs all of them.

Quickly. Just a pat on the back, really.

But he hugs them. He hugs Shelby again, then Scott (Scott is close to tears, standing on his own by the railing), then Katherine (who stops in her pacing to acquiesce to an embrace). He takes the five steps up to the stern two at a time, hugs False briefly (she leans just slightly toward him), then heads belowdecks, to the little makeshift bed of False's.

That's when he checks for critters.

There aren't any. Of course there aren't.

But on his wrist is a tiny pink mark, an innocuous sign of the end. If he looks at it for long enough, it could just be a mark from pinching himself, a bruise about to form from bumping against a door jamb.

It isn’t that, though.

Jimmy has known for weeks that he's been living on borrowed time.

He started this. There was never any real hope that he would survive.

He's felt marked, almost.

Marked, ever since he stood over Joel's body, hands shaking and legs weak, covered from head to toe in the blood of a god.

He pushed his bloodsoaked hair out of his eyes, unable to look away from the tear down the god’s body from the enchanted axe that Jimmy had dragged from his collarbone to his waist.

Blood leaked from the bullet hole between Joel's eyes.

That had been the wound to take him out. He could have survived just the cleaving.

He was a god, after all.

Jimmy stared, even as dark clouds rolled in.

Even as the blood dried on his body.

Even as bile rose to his throat.

He stared, and with the first drops of rain, Joel's body began to go fuzzy around the edges of the wounds. Fuzzy and black, and Jimmy thought for a moment of mold before falling to his knees and vomiting.

And there he kneeled, trembling and ill, stained with blood and vomit, and screamed.

He screamed his apologies.

He begged the rumbling sky for restitution.

He buried his fists into the dry grass of the savannah, as his words dwindled hoarsely into nothing, and sobbed.

When nothing came, nothing but thunder and pouring rain, Jimmy hefted the crown off Joel's unmoving head and dragged it home.

Then he scrubbed the gore off his body, changed clothes, and replaced his hat on his head.

Despite the terrible storm, despite his people, Jimmy strapped the crown onto Bullseye and headed for Dawn.

Maybe Gem's god would pardon him.

But there had never been any pardon, had there?

It had all been a waiting game. It always had been.

Joel's blood marked him the first day.

And now, just like then, Jimmy can only stare.

He deserves this.

He deserves this, and he relishes in that.

He isn't stuck in that awful waiting phase, death looming over him like a dust storm over the horizon.

This can finally be over.

He can finally just be gone.

-

If there was anyone left to rescue, Jimmy would go do it now.

He's as invulnerable as he ever will be. It doesn't matter if they touch him. He could be in and out quicker than ever, able to defend without needing to worry about the vermin touching him.

But the only person to rescue is Shelby, and there's nothing he can do to help her.

All Jimmy knows to do is patrol. There isn’t anything else he can do, and everyone else is so busy with Shelby that they haven't been able to pick up their patrol shifts.

So Jimmy patrols, making sure nobody steps outside of the steadily shrinking border, keeping an eye on where the mites are piling up as a better reference point than their stakes in the ground.

He sees Scott, sometimes. Scott paces the border, marks precisely where it's changed, sometimes staring a long time out over the land beyond Sanctuary, as if he longs to leave from this place, as if he can see it as something of its former glory.

Jimmy does the same. He often finds himself wandering to his favorite place in all of Sanctuary, the flat boulder in the woods that looks out over the plains that remind him so much of the land where he grew up, before he was ever a sheriff in the beautiful mesa.

He can pretend that everything is normal, looking out there.

Sometimes, he can't see the darkness that runs through the grass.

Sometimes, he can see other things.

It's two days after the trip to the catacombs that Jimmy's forced to admit that the hallucinations are in full force.

He'd wondered morbidly, for some time now, what it was like. How long would it take to succumb to the illness? How gradual is the appearance of the hallucinations? How long until the fever starts?

He knows, now, that the hallucinations aren't gradual. He'd simply woken up by the campfire to find Lizzie standing before him.

"I can't believe you," she says disgustedly, arms crossed. "Sleeping on the job?"

"I'm dying, I think I deserve a bit of slack," he mutters. She scoffs.

"Why would you deserve slack? You caused this. You killed all those thousands of people."

 Jimmy goes to say something—he isn't sure what—but Lizzie is gone.

After that, the hallucinations are frequent. He sees long-gone friends—Lizzie, Norman, Pix—and abandoned buildings, forgotten memories and lost messages, and . . . dark creatures of shadow.

It’s unsettling and deeply disturbing, but not even the most bone-chilling hallucinations can keep him from sleeping.

He's so tired. He's been digging himself deeper and deeper into sleep debt every night for weeks, and now he can't find the strength to push through it.

Jimmy sleeps. All the time, everywhere. By the campfire, slumped in a chair in the inn, at the table in the planning room of the church.

So often he wakes up on that boulder overlooking the plains, the rock warm under his back and the sun pleasantly shining through the leaves of the tree behind him.

His body starts to ache.

His bones start to weigh down with exhaustion.

His hands start to shake.

His body is fighting, he can tell. Trying to put off being sick as long as possible. Trying to conserve his strength for healing.

There isn't any healing to come.

-

The others are going into the Rift.

Well, Jimmy's meant to be going, too.

He'd proposed himself going (he had spoken to them, laid out the plan in exactly the way he thinks he would have, but it's hard to remember how to act like himself when there's gaping black maws where everyone's eyes should be), even though he isn't planning on it at all.

Scott is going.

He doesn't know it yet, but he's going through the Rift. The spark in his eyes hasn’t died yet, and despite every doubt he has and the mistakes he’s made, Jimmy knows that the others look up to him. They’ll follow him, more willingly than they had ever followed Jimmy.

Jimmy isn't sure how to change the plans right after he presents them, though, so he just leaves, back to lie on his boulder to watch the wind ruffle the grass.

The sun is gently warm on his face.

His hat slips back, flopping off his head.

He closes his eyes, just for a moment. It isn't sleeping.

His body's just so tired.

Time passes.

It must pass.

Because the next thing Jimmy knows, the sun is not on his face and there's a scratching noise from beside him.

He blinks his eyes open, casts his gaze around.

fWhip is sitting beside him, writing in a journal of some sort. That's the source of the scratching noise—his tiny pencil going back and forth on the page, scurrying like a little mouse.

"Sorry," Jimmy mumbles, biting back a groan as he sits up.

It's so hard just to sit up.

fWhip chuckles a little. "It's cool. Just glad you're getting some sleep."

Jimmy doesn't respond to that.

"You know, you've been running yourself into the ground. You deserve a second to rest."

Definitely not a hallucination, then. Seeing as his hallucinations tend to hate him.

"What are you writing?" Jimmy asks, in lieu of arguing about his sleep habits.

fWhip shrugs self-consciously. "Nothing much. Just journaling." He gestures around at the plains. "Describing Sanctuary, us, the things we're doing. Just in case."

"In case of what?"

"In case . . . well, I dunno," fWhip says. "I keep imagining this scenario where we go through the Rift, and we end up in a different world, and we forget all of our history just two or three generations down. So I'm writing down all of this."

"Don't forget to mention Tumble Town," Jimmy says. "The most . . . uh, the best land for miles around."

fWhip shoots him a toothy smile. "Want to write something? I have pages for everyone."

Jimmy stares at his proffered pencil, then carefully takes it in his left hand, before transferring it to his right. He doesn't want his cuff to pull up even the slightest bit, revealing the mark on his wrist.

fWhip flips through his journal—a repurposed sketchbook, actually—until he finds the blank page he's looking for. He sets it in Jimmy's left hand.

"Just write anything. I'm planning on filling it in later with a bunch of biography type-stuff, but I can work around whatever you want to put."

Jimmy sets the pencil to the paper, willing his hand not to shake.

The Sheriff, he writes, in his quick, sharp cursive. Then, just below:

Jimmy.

It's not his best. It definitely doesn't look quite like it normally does, when he signs warrants of arrest or bank notes. Not as careful, the lines not as straight.

The J has a little divot in the line. The second h falters just the slightest bit.

He doesn't want to write anymore.

Or, rather, he doesn't have any more that he wants to write.

He slides the book back into fWhip's lap. "There," he says. "Now you can sell it for lots of money, it has my signature."

He can tell that fWhip's laugh is more to humor him than anything else.

"If I ever get Katherine's hands on this, absolutely," fWhip says. "I want her to draw everyone—have you seen her sketches? Like, in her workshop?"

Jimmy shrugs.

"She's actually really good. Scott, too. I just . . . don't know if I'll see Scott again, so. . . ."

He trails off with a bit of a cough.

Jimmy looks back over the fields.

He can't stay here.

He can't stay here, sleeping and aching and hiding until he dies.

He can't convince them to let him stay here. fWhip, at least, would insist on staying with him, and if Jimmy’s learned anything, it's that he wants his friends to survive.

He's going to have to leave.

"Actually, Katherine is what I came here for, I totally forgot!" fWhip snaps his journal shut. "She was wanting to talk to you. Do you wanna come back with me?"

-

"I'm sorry," Katherine says after a long moment.

Jimmy blinks. "Sorry? About what?"

She shrugs. "Pushing us to go look for Pix. If we hadn't gone for him. . . ."

For a foolish, hopeful second, Jimmy thinks she's referring to the death mark on his wrist.

Then he remembers that she doesn't know it exists.

She's talking about Shelby's condition.

"Don't worry about it," he tells her. "It was my fault."

"No—you didn't want to go, you—"

"But I let it happen," Jimmy cuts her off. "It was my fault, okay?"

He can take the blame.

What's another sin on top of ending the world?

Katherine frowns. "Are you sure? Because I know Scott's beating himself up over this, too. And if you really thought that it was your fault over his, you would go tell him."

Her face has gone from open, apologetic, to practically glaring at him.

And, really?

Jimmy absolutely deserves it.

"Sure," he says, trying not to let show the exhaustion dragging on his bones. "I'll talk to him."

Katherine nods.

She looks like she's sparkling.

She looks like she has wings.

-

It's long past midnight when Jimmy slips into the chapel.

Scott is there, he notices immediately—curled up and asleep on a pew near the entrance. Scott hasn't ever slept in his own bedroom, as far as Jimmy's aware. Every night when Jimmy checks on everyone, he finds Scott here, wrapped up in a blanket.

He ought to tell Scott that he's leaving. That he wants Scott to be in charge. That it was his fault.

But he can't bring himself to wake him.

The candlelight is low, and at the front of the chapel, muttering under his breath and holding his hands to a sleeping Shelby's head, is Sausage.

Even from afar, he looks exhausted. His hair falls limply into his face, his shoulders are slumped and his clothing is rumpled. He doesn't even look up until Jimmy is right beside him, spurs clicking all the way down the long aisle.

"You should rest."

"So should you."

"I'll wake Shelby, all right? She can hold down the fort for an hour or so."

"I feel close."

"You feel tired."

"And you don't?"

"This ain't about me."

"I can't. I can't go to sleep. I can't fail them."

"I reckon I understand. But this won't get fixed lest you take a rest. Just an hour."

". . . Okay. Pero, necesitas dormir también, okay?"

"I don't speak whatever that was."

"Stay here and rest a little. Just pretend like I'm giving a sermon, then it'll be easy to fall asleep!"

"Right. I'll wake Shelby."

-

fWhip never locks his room.

So it isn't hard for Jimmy to sneak in and tuck the Deputy Norman badge into his packed backpack.

-

Dawn breaks early the next morning, and Jimmy feels surprisingly lucid.

He feels like—no, he knows, somewhere deep within—his body is giving him a brief respite before it starts fighting the next stage of the illness.

Jimmy lingers outside the chapel, absently twisting his hat between his hands.

The others still have a day to prepare.

But Jimmy had packed his satchel with a bit of food, his waterskin, and a couple of papers with a pencil.

He's ready to leave.

He just has one person left to speak to.

As expected, Scott heads out from the inn to the church soon after dawn, likely having grabbed something quick to eat before returning to his self-imposed work of watching Sausage and Shelby.

Jimmy catches him by the shoulder.

His sleeve rides up just slightly. He hopes Scott doesn't notice the pink mark.

"Could you walk with me?" he asks quietly.

Scott glances uncertainly toward the church.

Then he nods.

Jimmy leads the way, and perhaps he can sense how unwell he truly is by the way his boots land a bit heavily against the dirt path and his legs feel almost too tired to pick his feet back up.

He probably has . . . a week, at most. Maybe a bit longer, if he takes it easy.

Right. Take it easy.

He doesn't want to leave.

He can't stay.

"Nice out," Scott comments, and Jimmy jumps.

He'd forgotten that Scott was there, or maybe assumed that he'd imagined him.

"Yeah, I guess," he says, looking around. "Bit warm for this early, but I ain't complaining."

It is a bit warm.

Sanctuary has had fairly warm temperatures the whole time they've been here, but the morning is usually more moderate.

Maybe there's a heatwave building up—one last hurrah of summer, before autumn properly takes over.

Sanctuary has been looking rather fall-like of late. Orange and yellow leaves making up the majority of the trees. It's quite pretty, really. Jimmy's never been to Sanctuary in the fall.

They pass under the trees, down the winding dirt footpath that Jimmy's trodden into the ground almost on his own (although there were remnants of it that he followed those first times), so many days and nights out patrolling the same line. He goes just beyond the trees, right to his favorite spot.

The boulder is almost wavering in the weak morning light.

Jimmy pauses beside it, looks out over the plains.

His view is framed by red leaves, and out beyond is rolling green-and-yellow grass, long and waving, the sky still such a young blue behind it. It looks like it hasn’t been devastated by the apocalypse. It looks calm, welcoming, lovely.

It looks so much like home.

"This is the most beautiful part of Sanctuary, I think," he murmurs.

Scott shifts beside him.

Right.

Time to delegate.

That's all he's doing. Delegating. Adjusting a former command.

Jimmy takes in a deep breath, then turns, looks Scott in his mismatched eyes. "I want you to go through the Rift," he says, willing his voice not to falter.

Scott blinks. "Sorry, what?"

Jimmy sighs, then sits on his boulder, tugging one knee up to his chest. How can he present this? "I'm not going," he says, and prays that Scott won't ask why. "I want you to take my place."

"Wh-why?"

Shoot.

Jimmy doesn't want to speak.

So he doesn't.

He looks out over the plains.

It isn't just his childhood that he misses, he supposes.

He's a cowboy. A traveler. He isn't meant to stay in one place for too long.

He's meant to feel the grass underfoot, and the wind through his hair, the dirt on his face and the sun on his back, fresh air in his lungs and a horse at his side.

Jimmy has a chronic case of wanderlust, and Sanctuary only grows smaller by the day.

"I can't do that," Scott says suddenly. "I—you're the leader, I can't—I don't—"

"Scott," says Jimmy, and it comes out smaller, softer than intended.

Jimmy can see, out of the corner of his eye, that Scott freezes.

"I'm not going. And they'll follow you. Even False will follow you, if you can convince her." False doesn't trust easily, if at all. 

Jimmy doesn't think he ever really got her trust. Just her approval.

"But I can't go through the Rift."

"Why not?" Scott asks, nothing stubborn in his tone, nothing angry.

Jimmy can say he wants to find a way to protect everyone left.

He can say that he's going to go looking for Pix.

He can say that he left something important in Tumble Town, and he needs to go get it.

But Scott is a lover of truth. He’ll see through any lie that Jimmy tries to give him, so distrusting after everything he’s already put him through.

And honestly, he deserves the truth.

It's not going to be easy to say.

But Jimmy fixes his eyes determinedly on the horizon, and twists the loose button on his vest, and makes his choice.

"It was in the catacombs," he says, and he can't make his voice any louder than a near-whisper for some reason. "I was marking our path with chalk. And. . . ."

He can't say it.

Luckily, he doesn't need to.

Jimmy shakes back his right sleeve, just enough that death's mark shows.

Scott stares.

"I didn't know what to say," Jimmy says simply.

That's the most truthful of it all, isn't it?

"Not when we couldn't stop moving while we were down there. Not when Shelby needed comfort. Not when we needed to focus everything on her."

Jimmy supposes he ought to feel something about that—sadness that this is the end, that he'll never see his friends again. Or relief, that he can finally stop running. Or maybe even despair, knowing that there is nothing he can do to protect his friends anymore.

He doesn't feel any of that, though.

He mostly feels tired.

"We might be able to heal you," Scott suggests, and he sounds as tired as Jimmy feels. "If it works with Shelby, we can do it with you, right? We can just put off the Rift thing until you're both better."

Jimmy isn't going to get better.

He isn't going to give himself that chance.

"And if Shelby doesn't get better?" he asks.

Scott looks away.

He's about to say something placating. Something kind and fluffy, to make Scott feel better about not trying.

The truth. Jimmy needs to tell the truth, not soften the blows.

"I want to stay," admits Jimmy. The words tear from deep within, yet pull free almost easily—like tugging a barely-formed scab off a wound. "I do. But I can't. And maybe it's selfish, Scott, but I don't want them to know that . . . that I've been hiding this from them."

He doesn't want to face their anger, possibly their grief. He doesn't want them to force him to stay.

Because if they find out, and he's already gone, he'll be just another rescue mission.

Someone else could die.

And . . . he's kind of been lying to them this whole time.

People don't like being lied to.

"Like you hid the stuff about Joel from me," Scott's saying, and Jimmy grimaces.

"Yeah. I'm not really good with confrontations like that. You saw what happened. But I couldn't just leave without telling someone, you know?"

"So . . . you're leaving."

He is.

He has to.

"To—what, become like Oli? Instead of staying here, where we can help you . . . go peacefully, I guess?"

Jimmy shakes his head practically before Scott's done speaking. "I don't care much for the idea of staying in bed, all still and sick 'til it's over. I figure I'll just head out quietly, yeah? I already packed my bag. Just wanted to make sure someone could be in charge."

"I'm not a leader," Scott says, sounding a little bit panicked. "What about fWhip?"

Jimmy almost laughs. "fWhip's a follower. He gets too stressed to actually lead."

"Katherine?"

"I don't think she'll want to go through the Rift," Jimmy says thoughtfully. She'll want to stay with Shelby, he's sure of it. "She said she'd come, but I bet my bootstraps she'll back out last minute."

Scott opens his mouth, clearly about to suggest the next person in line.

"And not Gem, either," Jimmy cuts him off. "Scott, I chose you because you're the one who fought back when you thought I'd made a wrong choice. You spoke up. And not just then—you suggest your own plans all the time. You're a leader, even if you don't know it."

Scott doesn't respond to that.

Jimmy looks out over the plains. He can imagine that Scott is biting his lip, trying to think up some argument.

He can imagine that Scott has a lot of things he wants to say.

Somehow, Scott rarely ends up saying them.

After a moment, with a scraping of fabric against stone, Scott sits down beside him, quite gently leaning against him.

It's an invitation.

And he's so tired.

After a long moment, Jimmy lets his head fall onto Scott's shoulder.

It's peaceful, all quiet-like this early in the morning. The world feels almost sleepy, the sun rising but not blinding. 

Gem worships the sun, to some extent. Her kingdom of Dawn revered its rising, held festivals and services in its honor. Jimmy understands why every time he watches it rise, every time he sees the orange glow that slowly spills across the darkened world, softly letting more and more light into the day to gradually pull the lands into consciousness.

The sun isn't going to be able to pull him with it.

He's going to die.

He's going to die before he ever feels fully awake again.

He's never going to be entirely conscious before he sleeps forever.

“You should go.”

The voice belongs to Lizzie, he thinks. Or Pix. Or Oli.

“It’s time to go.”

That one belongs to Joel.

Jimmy swallows, gathers every bit of consciousness and strength that he can find, then pulls away from Scott, stretching.

“I should probably head out before the town wakes up,” he tells Scott, and he can see his eyes, mismatched and conflicted, through the shadow that tries to darken them. “Get away before anyone can stop me.”

“Sure. What do you want me to tell them?”

He wants Scott to tell them goodbye. He wants them to know that he loves them, that if he deserved any better he would stay.

But he won’t put that on them.

He tells Scott to convince them that he deserted them. He tells Scott he’s leaving without any sense of direction, that he’s going to go out there and hope for the best.

He doesn’t tell Scott goodbye, either.

He deserves better than that.

[whenthegoldrays]

Twinkling Watermelon + text posts (part 3/?)

[shopwitchvamp]

if u made a gold and white version of the dark cathedral midi (light cathedral perhaps?) id be ALL OVER IT

That's a guest artist design so it'd be up to them! And let's maybe get through this first set first before I can even begin to free up brain space to think about variants 😅

[bonestrouslingbones]

btw one of the things i want to do when i really rap up atbb for real is spontaneously get the energy at will to do actual updated fullbodies of the main 4 since now i actually have the ability to draw them the way they look in my head & have the skills to put some more variety in their shapes. basically i wanna

[e-adlirez]

Treasure Seekers 3 Review/Ramble

Welcome to the third and last entry of the Treasure Seekers trilogy :D

"Wait what?" I probably hear you ask. "What about the other four treasures they said the girls would find?"

And to that I say

yeah it do be a bit sad that they never made a book 4

But make no mistake, Legend of the Maze is a doozy of a third book, and I'd say it's almost on-par with book 1 if not surpassing it. Unfortunately there is no free digital copy of the book, so uh if you're down to spend a bit on a digital copy on the E-book site of your choosing or on a physical copy in a bookstore, I salute you for your determination.

As for the rest of you, you're just gonna have to trust me bro :] /j

Ready? Let's go :D (also this is being written by a sleep-deprived E running on hyperfixation juice so if you find any grammar issues feel free to let me know so I can fix them)

The story begins with the Thea Sisters touring the Capelletti House in Verona with their Italian friend/tour guide Sebastiano. Yes, this Verona.

So yeah Colette is fantasizing about Romeo and Juliet as a romantic ship, Vi is trying to kill her Santa by telling her that Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters (which Colette responds to with "oh hush I can dream"), and oop-- loose floorboard-- what's this package under the flo-- LE GAAASSSPPPP LANE LOOORRREEEEE

The girls fangirl about the ABL jumpscare a lil' too loudly and Sebastiano is a lil' confusion, soooooooo the squad goes out for some snacks outside the Capelletti house to explain stuff to Sebastiano

buckle up Sebastiano you're about to get two 300-page books worth of Lane Lore™

While listening to the story, it turns out that Sebastiano may or may not have heard a peep about a legend about a treasure called the Treasure of Eternal Love (adapted Scholastic name is "Treasure of True Love" which ew, snatches the original Italian name instead), which was said to have been owned by Juliet and tho a lotta people are trying to find it, they dunno where it is now. Sounds very Seven Treasures of the World to me :]

How does Sebastiano know a peep about this very obscure legend? Turns out he learned about it from a letter written by his great-grandpappy Jacopo, who was an archaeologist like Aurora :3

So Sebastiano invites the girls to dinner at his place so the girls can look for the letter. Vi don't get too comfy with the house library I know it looks very cool and antique but we got a goal and that is sifting through a lil' box of Jacopo's kept things and find some-- HOLY CRAP LANE LORE™

-

"Hi Jacopo, tysm for helping me with my research on the Treasure of Eternal Love, you're a real g my guy, regards from me and my sister Linda, also tysm for the tour of Verona."

-- ABL

-

The girls tell Sebastiano their findings over a dinner of bigoli al pomodoro, give some extra Lane Lore™ about Jan von Klawitz and Aurora's six sisters, and mention the possibility that Linda knows where the treasure is, which means that Luke is probably after it too, but also Linda might know where the treasure is, which means a lead >:3

First stop: Verona's city hall, where Sebastiano's friend Guido works and is able to help them with finding information about a Linda Lane who may or may not have lived in Verona approximately a century ago. They find a document that says yes, Linda did in fact live in Verona once, and also her address is listed there because legalities, y'know how it is.

So the girls head on over to the address, knock at the door, and are greeted by an old lady, and :0 turns out this old lady (her name is Mia) knew Linda personally.

-

Linda and Mia met when Linda was in her older years and Mia was a smol child. Mia would read for Linda since her eyesight deteriorated in her old age, and they hung out a lot together. When Linda left to return to England, she left the house to Mia, as well as a good chunk of the stuff she had in said house as mementos for Mia to remember her by.

-

Hey guys you wanna see a trick, it's called "the Lane Lore™ %", aka how fast can we get this old lady up to speed with the ABL drama-- /j

Unfortunately Mia doesn't really know anything about the treasures, but she does have this wack painting of a scenery in Japan that just won't align correctly no matter how much finagling you do to it-- oh there was an envelope inside-- LANE LORE™?

So the letter inside the envelope is a letter from Aurora to Linda basically Aurora telling Linda she found the Treasure of Eternal Love, but because Jan is on her tail, she left the treasure in the "House of the Sun" for now. Now, if you tried looking up "house of the sun", you'd get a hotel in Florida, a manga, a former Incan temple that's now a monastery-- you get the picture, it do be a weird detail and probably not it bro, besides Aurora's too much of a gremlin to be that obvious with her riddles.

At least if you're not a Shakespeare nerd like Colette is (the kind that never read past Romeo and Juliet's wedding), because if you were, you'd know that at one point Romeo equates Juliet to the sun rising in the east. Romeo is simping for Juliet, Juliet is the sun, ergo, the Capelletti house.

But uh, thing is we already went to the house and we already know that Aurora came back for the treasure and took it somewhere else. Sooooo might as well see what the last letter says--

"Hi so I'm on the run rn I can't chat for long because Jan is pissed and he wants to find me and force me to reveal the treasure, and I don't think I wanna know how not-kid-friendly this is gonna get if he does find me. Thanks for introducing me to your friend tho :D she's cool and thanks to her help, the treasure is safe and sound in the shade of the cherry trees! I'll come back for it one day, hopefully that day comes soon. Anyway, hugs and kisses, Linda." - ABL

Spoiler alert, despite having a beeg cherry tree on the painting, there was in fact nothing else hiding behind the painting.

LUKE TRANSITION

So Luke is doing Luke things, not touching grass as per usual. Cassidy comes by to give him a lil' souvenir from great-grandpappy Jan von Klawitz's house in London: Jan's old notes. Luke immediately dismisses Cassidy without even so much as a thank you -- Cassidy girlypop you're not scoring that man no matter what you do, he's the Adrien to your Marinette girlie we're only at book 3, you might as well accept your fate -- and Luke takes a lil' peek into Jan's notebook (he also calls his great-grandpappy "Jan", like just "Jan". I dunno maybe I'm just finding it weird because I'm Asian . .) for the goods.

And goods Luke does find, which he proceeds to consume like a goblin. Bit of Klawitz lore here:

-

"Grrr grrr stupid Aurora and her smartass tricks grrrrr who does she think she is grrrrr she beat me to the Treasure of Eternal Love in Verona grrrrrrrrrrrr well at least now I know how she works, I managed to find this friend of hers Jacopo, who definitely knows about the treasure even though he keeps playing stupid like I don't know that he knows Aurora. Something something cherry trees, I ransacked every single cherry tree in Verona and there was literally nothing, wth, Aurora why are you like this" - Jan von Klawitz

-

Luke responds to this seedy lore from his great-grandpappy with "hehehHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHH JAN YOU IDIOT, YOU COULDN'T SEE WHAT WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU BECAUSE YOU UNDERESTIMATED THE LITTLE PILOT GIRL, I ALREADY KNOW WHERE TO LOOK"

Cut back to the girls, and they know where to look next, too

It's Japan, i-it's Japan, y'know Japan's relationship with their sakura/cherry blossoms

Turns out Linda has a friend named Kyoko Bianchi, a Japanese-Italian botanist who was raised in Japan. Since Aurora mentions in her letter that Linda's friend came in clutch, she was obviously referring to Kyoko and now the treasure is in Japan.

So Japan transition :D (based on my personal experience in Japan and also a bit of canon continuity consistency, I headcanon that despite being written in English, this segment of the story mostly had the girls speaking in Japanese, a language they would know how to speak a bit of at least (and apparently Vi is conversational in Japanese so c'mooonnnn).)

The girls land at Narita Airport and take a train to central Tokyo (damn Kumi from Cherry Blossom Adventure you came in clutch possibly teaching the girls how to Japanese subway offscreen because they actually didn't get lost using it on their own :D). Kyoko's hometown was Tokyo, so might as well start searching for her descendants/relatives there. First stop: Shibuya.

Colette is playfully ribbed a bit for having a big-ass bag while everyone else only brought smol backpacks around with them, the luck of the girls not getting lost using the Japanese subway must be balanced out so Paulina's GPS decides now is the right time to be a dick, Shibuya Crossing, and finally they make it to the hotel where Amrita Bianchi, their first Kyoko descendant candidate, is at.

And this is the first time the girls come across the concept of cosplaying, I genuinely don't know how they managed to sidestep it for so long especially since they've been to Japan before for a student exchange, all I can really justify it with is that university has been kicking their a-- RATSUNE MIKU??

Gahd even in 2018 Italy there was no escape from her /j

Anyway so Amrita didn't know Kyoko, so their second candidate is Shinobu Bianchi, a guy living in Shinjuku. They find him-- or more accurately run into him (literally) on his way to work, try to explain things to him but this man is running late, so he invites the girls to follow him to his workplace. They find themselves in a cafe on opening time, customers start filing in before the girls can even tell Shinobu what the whole deal is, soooooo karaoke break :D

Vi c'mon it's not like there's much else to do while waiting for Shinobu-- what're you gonna do, sit there and wait? A-actually y'know what that sounds like something Vi would happily do but c'mooonnn Vi where's your sense-a humor :D

Thirty minutes of singing later, they finally get five minutes to explain to Shinobu what they're looking for and Shinobu says "sorry I dunno Kyoko, I am half-Italian on my dad's side, but my mom has a different Japanese surname"

So the girls Peter William a bit emotionally, Pam goes to what Scholastic is telling me is a kiosk but might as well be a 7/11 based on the banger food Pam got from said kiosk, the girls take a taxi to a Capsule Hotel (judging from the illustration it looks like the Shinjuku Kuyakusho-mae Capsule Hotel), and after a bit of dinner, Peter William into their capsule rooms physically.

The next morning, Nicky goes out for a morning jog as usual (she prolly slept with her capsule open so she wouldn't get claustrophobic), and she finds a gardener tending to a Kyoko Bianchi flower :0 like no joke that's the name, it's a K. bianchi, named after a botanist who founded the Fairy Garden (Disclaimer: neither the K. bianchi nor the Fairy Garden Foundation in Japan exist, they're fictional bits for this fictional story and that's fine :3). Nicky gets the address for the Fairy Garden, runs back to the girls who are having breakfast, and they head on over to the venue.

At the Fairy Garden, the girls meet a gardener named Toshio who happily shows them around, and despite not knowing all the Lane Lore™ (yet), he knows enough to lead them to Kyoko's perfectly preserved office, where the late Bianchi has displayed some pictures from Verona, as well as her furniture and encyclopedia collection.

After a search, they find what was presumably a haiku alluding to Jomon Sugi and the writer's voice being hidden in there, and one jaunt to the record of Jomon Sugi in Kyoko's encyclopedia collection and uhp-- a hidden cassette tape inside the volume!

On one hand, victory, the girls have found a VHS tape that is implied to have a personal recording from Kyoko Bianchi herself, so they're super-close to the treasure now :D

But on the other hand, they found a VHS tape in the year of our lord 2018.

Good news, Toshio knows a buddy who's super tech-savvy, and that's including tech things. Bad news, he's in Kyoto, which is about 445 km/283 miles away from Tokyo.

So the girls quickly take a shinkansen and some bento boxes to Kyoto :D (their wallets are probably sobbing in an 86-USD ticket per person)

At Kyoto, meet Ren, are lowkey surprised that his house is a traditional Japanese house as opposed to a modern flat but hey it's a pleasant surprise, and Ren is able to play the tape for them.

In the tape, Kyoko explains the Treasure of Eternal Love, how it ended up in her hands at the ripe age of 20 through Linda and Aurora, and some Treasure of Eternal Love lore, or rather Ring of Eternal Love lore:

-

Yeah sure Romeo and Juliet were fictional characters, but reality, so it goes, isn't that much different. The Ring of Eternal Love was a courting gift from a suitor to a bachelorette of the Cappelletti household. The suitor and the girl's families had hate boners for each other for a while now, but instead of spiraling into a destructive mess of family feuding and death like in Shakespeare's play, they decided to call off the feud so the two lovers could be happy together. And now the ring, as Kyoko puts it, has been passed down from her to "one who shows love every day, in every way, towards everything that grows from the earth."

-

The girls are happy they got to see the tape and its contents, but they Peter William emotionally once more because well, they're back to square one now-- literally the only clue they have is the thing Kyoko said, and what is the thing Kyoko said? It's cryptic and weird and h a h ? Ren offers to accommodate them for the night, the girls get to sleep on futons for the first time since Secret of the Snow, and the next day they decide to have some downtime vacay-ing in Nijo Castle. A vacay that results in Vi having an epiphany about the riddle and thus who has the ring.

Meanwhile with Luke, he's planning something. Something that's got Cassidy in Japan and putting her master's degrees in Engineering, Chemistry and Computer Sciences to use by assembling a drone (I'm wondering how Cassidy has so little braincells out on the field despite having THREE MASTER'S DEGREES like holy crap--)

Cassidy tries complimenting Luke on the motherboard he sent in from Alaska and-- ew Omar why are you here I thought Luke fired you-- ooh what's that package thing-- oi don't diss on Japanese people being polite, once you see the ruder options you're gonna be pining for that shnit-- wait what how's this drone gonna find the Ring of Eternal Love--

Anyway the girls plus Toshio and Ren take the train back to Tokyo (istg if they took the shinkansen--) and back to the Fairy Garden Foundation, where they talk to the current head gardener: Mr. Murakami.

Mr. Murakami does in fact know Kyoko personally, and after a bit of persuading (it involves a bord like many good things in this world), he decides to bring them to his hometown Nara (which involves a train to Kyoto and then a train from Kyoto to Nara which on the Kodama plus the cheapest option from Kyoto to Nara is-- CHEESUS CRUST 91 USD PER PERSON AND THEY HAVE TO GO BACK TO TOKYO AFTER THIS???)

ANYWAY Mr. Murakami takes them to Nara Park, where he hid the treasure. He brings the girls to it, he checks the hiding place and

It's empty?

Wait, the hiding place is empty?

WAIT WHAT THE HIDING PLACE IS EM--

Off in Alaska, Luke is cackling in his fancy custom-made not-gamer chair.

Mr. Murakami is distraught, most of the girls stay to comfort him while Nicky and Ren scout out the area. In their search, Nicky and Ren find a big broken drone that seems to have crash-landed in the garden, and oop-- LVK logo. It was probably used to spy on Mr. Murakami to snatch the treasure. "DAAAMMMNNNN YOOOUUUU LUUUKKEEEE" Nicky probably would've shrieked at the top of her lungs if she weren't A. in Japan (it's very quiet generally), and B. within earshot of poor Mr. Murakami, who's still recovering from the horrible shock. The girls, Toshio and Ren take the drone to Kyoto while Mr. Murakami stays in Nara with the fam to recover because man, he deserves the break :(

In Ren's house in Kyoto, Paulina and Ren get to work hacking into the drone to snatch its data, and they find that the drone's memory goes as far back as to being in Alaska for some reason. Why would an LVK drone be in Alaska? Unless-- :OOOOO SECRET BASE??

With that lead, the girls depart for Anchorage, Alaska (if I plugged it into Google correctly the price for the flight totals out at a 567-USD one-way flight holy crap girlies have mercy on your wallets-- not including the mini shopping spree for winter clothes Colette was more than happy to drag the girls on). Ren gives Paulina a little flash drive with some written code that could come in clutch in whatever shenanigans they end up in in that secret base of Luke's. Yes Violet as much as I think you're the only person in the group who seems to be concerned for your wallet, ya'll are nawt surviving Alaska with those summer clothes ya'll are wearing.

Behold, a long rest/14-hour timeskip in the form of the last two letters the girls have yet to read from Aurora to Linda. (Well the girls besides Vi, God's sleepiest soldier over here is eeping in the back before the flight's even taken off--)

-

(These are the real letters this time around lmao, if you're confused, Aurora addresses Linda in these letters via her middle name Amaryllis.)

Dear Amaryllis,

I'm very sorry that, because of my job, you are taking on a responsibility that is perhaps too great, and that puts you at risk.

It's all because of the greed of my former professor, a mouse who is incapable of recognizing that beauty should be shared. My dear sister, I have thought about it for a long time, and I have come to the conclusion that the best solution is to take the Treasure of Eternal Love from Verona, where it is not safe... and put you at risk. I am sending you a copy of one of the photos I hold the most dear, in memory of the love that binds us. I hope it will help you make the best decision...

Yours, Aurora

-

Dear Amaryllis,

You wrote me that you are making a decision about the treasure. I agree that the mouse you're planning to entrust it to is worthy of that trust, and I will wait for more news. But you must be careful, even when you write to me, to not mention names or places. We need to watch out, because my former professor is more alert than ever.

It seems that he's building an underground shelter for his riches, designed as a kind of maze to test anyone who manages to enter it...

Professor Jan is clever, and he's always loved riddles, puzzles, and mysteries. I wouldn't wish for any mouse to find themselves in his maze!

Now I must say good-bye, my dear. Sending a big hug.

Yours, Aurora

-

Once the girls land in Anchorage, Alaska, they rent an SUV, pull out Google Maps, read some of the brochures Ren printed out for them just in case, fangirl over a moose (Nicky that's not something to fangirl about have you seen what they're capable of--), and accidental secret tunnel discovery?

Well, accidental secret garbage chute discovery, anyway, since the one thing that allows the girls to not break their ankles when landing is some garbage bags. Food waste garbage bags no less :D Ew :D

Some old aircraft bits are found too which is nice but it's never elaborated on whose old aircraft bits those were so we're moving on to the girls entering Luke's secret headquarters and Nicky trying not to die from claustrophobia :D

CCTVs pose an initial problem, but Ren's flash drive comes in clutch and allows Paulina to freeze the cameras so they can go in undetected (Ren how do you know how to program that is there something you wanna share to the class--). One lengthy labyrinth later, the girls manage to get out of the "we're walking in circles" loop-dee-loop they wound up in and find this little room with a little lit fire pit and an ominous riddle involving the "elements of nature". Pam has the idea of extinguishing the fire pit, and sure enough, inside the fire pit is a key that fits perfectly into the door across the room.

And right after Pam turns the lock on the door, a trapdoor opens up beneath her and she falls into the pit below. It's padded, it's kinda cozy, but it's way too deep for the girls to reach Pam from above without a rope or attempting to risk falling in and getting trapped as well. The girls are very reluctant to leave Pam, but Pam unfortunately only metaphorically slaps some sense into the girls and tells them to go on because they've gone too far to back out now so COMMIT TO THE BIT GODDAMMIT

(you guys like the rhyme-y bits? They're kinda fun to write I do like the rhyme-y bits a bit <:])

And thus the girls minus Pam go through the door to the next room, where there's this swimming pool with a key inside it, which Nicky swims down for, assuming that the trap in the room will only activate once they get the key into the door leading to the next room. Obviously she winds up being very incorrect, as the moment she takes the key from the bottom of the pool, the water starts to drain away until all you got left is a sopping wet Nicky in an empty pool and the key to the next room, which Nicky tosses over to Paulina while asking for her shoes and her dry clothes that they packed. Colette is devastated, devastated I tell you at the idea of leaving Nicky behind, on top of having to leave Pam behind, but Nicky's got faith that the girls will pull through and come back for her; so Colette, Paulina and Violet move on to the next room.

A LOT of walking down a twisting hallway later, the trio make it to the next room (which they use Nicky's key for), and we got four pots with something or other in them, lighting too dim to discern properly what's in the pots, a button sequence puzzle with no margin for error, and a wack riddle. Oh and Paulina's tablet's finally died after possibly uh, 18-ish hours of not charging it. RIP Paulina's tablet, that's gonna be set aside in the corner for the time being.

The pots turn out to have different types of sediment in them, and the wack riddle turns out to be the clue to the correct sequence to input, so the three figure that out fairly quickly and slide down the chute leading to the next room. Except for Paulina, who had to get her tablet from that corner she set it aside in, and wasn't able to make it to the trapdoor-chute in time before it closed on her face, leaving her trapped "forever", as the wack riddle states. The one time you're told to stop holding it, man, unbelievable. I'm never letting go of my tablet again /j

Now Vi and Colette find themselves in an empty room, and they only realize when they get down that Paulina wasn't able to make it out in time. Now this entire time, Colette has been going through it. Of the girls, Colette's been taking the whole leaving-my-friends-behind-for-the-greater-good thing not well at all, and it culminates in an emotional breakdown. Violet comforts her and reassures her that they'll get the ring, they'll pick up the other girls and they'll get outa here soon, but they gotta be brave now for the other girls. (Kinda hard to capture in short and sweet words what the emotion of the scene was but oh well). After a bit of calming down, Colette and Violet look around to find themselves in a... surprisingly simple room? There's a door on the other side of the room from them, and besides that there's literally nothing but thin air.

The two go to the door and move to open it. Yeah this one's surprisingly simple. Just walk on over, pull the door open, walk o-- a gust of wind slammed the door shut . .

Yeah that's right. You ever leave a window in your room open on a windy day and leave your door also open, and the wind going into the room slams the door shut? Yeah, it's that multiplied by uhhhh how much is a vent opposite the door opening up just to blow f%#ken WIMDY-level winds just to slam that metal door shut? However that much multiplies that. The two find themselves in a situation where had all five of them been there to do this puzzle, it would've been far easier; but it is doable with only two people. The plan is one of them wedges themself between the door and the frame and prop it open, while the other crawls under the first person's leg. Transitioning to the second person propping the door open for the first person is gonna be a bit dodgy, but it is doable kinda.

Now Colette has been going through the ringer emotionally, and if you've seen this trope before, you'd know that it'd be a real damn shame if they lost their emotional pillar and had to carry the entire plan on their own, riiiiggghhttt? She's been the handling this situation the worst (emotionally), and it would bring her a belly of the beast to trump all bellies of all beasts and force her to do a The Next Right Thing (hot take: Anna's arc in Frozen 2 was really good), presumably after a lot of sobbing in the corner! It's perfect for angst, and it's perfect for empowerment to see Colette pick herself up and be strong for the girls and save the day!

Which is why Colette doesn't end up being the last one standing :D

Colette was the one who propped the door open for Violet, who crawled through to the other side. The plan was to have Vi switch with Colette so Colette can get through, but one thing they didn't take into account was the fact that the vent would slowly create stronger and stronger winds the longer the door is held open for, so Colette winds up allowing herself to be trapped in the air room so Violet can do the thing. (Oh and the plan was Colette's idea too.)

Heeyyyy Viiiiiiii~ Do you have some cash left over in your wallet? Because I think it's time for you to put your money where your mouth is :DDD

So yeah Violet continues on alone.

Also if you're wondering where Luke is this entire time, he is in fact in his base, still not touching grass and none the wiser about the whole five lil' rat girls sneaking into his base because of the whole frozen cams situation. He does technically notice something's off, but he thinks that the clock in one of the cameras is broken and he ends up complaining about it to Cassidy, haha L. It is also at this point where we learn that the girls have been in Luke's base for a little over three hours at this point :D

Meanwhile, Violet goes down the narrow metal staircase in the hallway outside of the last room and finds herself reminding herself to stay calm but also inside Luke's treasure room, where treasures of all shapes and sizes reside. From whole dinosaur skeletons to ancient Egyptian statues to paintings to suits of armor and-- holy shnit Luke has the Ark of the Covenant in there too o o yeah this guy means business holy crap--

The Ring of Eternal Love is in there too, the lone treasure in the set of seven empty pedestals that Luke was prolly intending for the Seven Treasures of the World. So Vi, clearly not having watched Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark, attempts to lift the glass case protecting the ring, which sets off the alarms in the treasure rooms, and whoa holy crap there's a robot voice speaking through the alarms? WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN FIFTEEN MINUTES TO SELF-DESTRUCTION

Luke, having the shock of his life, comes down to the treasure room to see what's up, and of course it's one of the five brats who's been getting in the way of his endeavors. Hardly a surprise, really, those five have been a pain in the ass from minute one of Luke looking into the Seven Treasures-- from stopping him getting the Alabaster Garden (he didn't even get to see what it was smh), to duping him with the most audacious of gottems to exist only partially due to his goon's stupidity, and now sneaking into the heart of his base without him, his cameras, or his sensors noticing. Strange how there's only one of them, though.

Just like Aurora Beatrix Lane almost a hundred years prior, this young lady is naive, morally stubborn, and idealistic. She is preaching out about sharing these treasures to all, even when the worth of these treasures comes partly in the luxury of not everyone being able to enjoy them. There is value in that sense of rarity, and it's not like any of the uncaring, ignorant whelps working in the museums look at the pieces that sit before them and realize the true value that they have the privilege of looking at everyday. They wouldn't care about them-- they would do the bare minimum to these unique masterpieces and leave it at that. And this naive brat thinks that they are more loving, more caring to these pieces than Luke is?

But as naive and morally pretentious and... ignorant of time and place this woman is (did she really not hear the self-destruct alarm and is thus willing to babble to her grave?)... she is clearly very intelligent. She was able to affect the base's security system such that she could come in undetected. She was able to get past all four traps without getting trapped herself. It is strange how she is alone here, though. She is usually with four other girls-- ah, that's it. They got trapped, and she left them, so she could get to the treasures on her own. What a show of common sense, that is! She must've seen that the traps were designed such that risking oneself to rescue a trapped person is just not worth it, and that first point already makes her far more intelligent than Cassidy or her buffoons could ever be. It could even be on-par with Luke himself. What if... perhaps....

What if they worked together?

Luke, after a bit of back and forth with Violet, gives Violet an offer to ditch her friends and become his partner. If she accepts they can divide everything between each other in the vault, and together, they'll be able to uncover the treasures of the world and enjoy them all to themselves.

I mean of course Vi turns down the offer in favor of sticking with her friends but y'know what it was worth a shot, Luke, kudos to you for spotting a gemstone instead of covering it with mud and pretending it's not there.

Heavily disappointed by Vi turning him down for the sake of "the power of friendship" (I wish I was kidding)(Scholastic!Vi's (?) words not mine)(I would be incredibly disappointed too), he turns to leave her in the treasure room, and it's only then that Vi realizes she kinda effed up. Luke is the only guy here who knows the base inside-out, and thus would know a way to get the girls out so they can Not Die. And to add insult to injury, Luke made a bomb shelter out of his treasure room, so the entire base may explode and the girls might die, but the treasures are gonna be completely fine. Intact, even. Luke leaves, and the robot voice announces ten minutes before self-destruction.

As soon as she's able to, Vi calls the elevator, juggling anxiety and being able to think under pressure. She figures out that Luke oh so helpfully uses pictograms for his elevator buttons instead of numbers, and presses the button for the control room (the heliport floor is locked by a key). She arrives in the control room, eight minutes before self-destruction.

Just as Vi enters the control room, the cameras get kicked back into action, oh so conveniently showing to Violet a timer ticking down to the big kaboom in real time, and footage of Nicky waiting anxiously in the pool room (and Luke leaving), for extra stakes. One Perception check said "yeah, this is a LOT of buttons, TOO MANY BUTTONS", and the tablet sitting on the desk required a password, so oh god what do

Six minutes before self-destruction and one panic attack later, Vi manages to psyche herself up enough to roll for Investigation. She finds a button for disarming the traps, and that allows the girls to get outa the traps and meet up again in the treasure room. Happy reunions aside tho, four minutes to self-destruction

Turns out the girls (thankfully) didn't know about the self-destruct situation. No need to explain tho because Vi is deadlifting the group braincell like she's never done before. She drags them down to the base's... basement, where a train that was probably used to carry the treasures into the base sits unused and ready for the girls to figure out how to work. Three minutes before self-destruction, no pressure :D

Pam sits at the train's controls, Paulina tries to help but immediately brain crashes at the old-timey controls, thus deciding she'd rather help Nicky get the bars off the rails up ahead. Two minutes left, and Pam figures it out and is ready to-- wait they need electricity-- okay cool Nicky and Paulina are taking care of that, cool

Pam gets the train to start up, Nicky and Paulina manage to hop back into the train, and escape the base's explosion range with about ten seconds to spare :D

After stopping the train in a spot where their braincells could afford to deflate, the girls take a minute or two to breathe y'know, just take a minute to breathe, nibble on some wild raspberries growing in Denali National Park, before figuring out what the hell their next move is.

Vi suggests they tell the authorities about the whole secret-base-under-the-park situation and the treasure room and the stuff inside it (since Luke oh so foolishly gloated to Vi about the treasures being perfectly safe), on top of removing the train so it's not getting up in nature's business. They head back to the car talking about their adventure, get a bit sad that they weren't able to find the Ring of Eternal Love-- and oop just kidding, Vi pocketed it in the treasure room right after Luke dipped :D

So on top of the girls escaping with their lives, not only is Luke gonna lose the Ring of Eternal Love as quickly as he got it, he's also losing his entire treasure vault. Can I get a ripperooni

And that's Legend of the Maze :D

I would say that the hyperfixation-that-consumed-these-girls'-lives-for-a-whole-week energy is very strong in this one in the best way, and the girls' personalities are at their most showcased here. The banter is bantering, the girls' dynamics with each other is very believable here, Vi is carrying the group's braincell the entire time and she looks like she's a bit tired from carrying it but y'know wut she's still willing to carry it because it's honest work and she knows how important it is to have it :3 also her trying to kill Colette's "Romeo and Juliet are so romantic" Santa but failing miserably because Colette unashamedly likes believing in the power of love is hilarious

The main thing I wasn't sure about was.... all the infodumpy bits? The infodump goes a significant bit harder in this book than the previous ones (even more than Compass of the Stars, which is an achievement), and it's Scholastic-style infodumping, so you get the girls calling Luke an "evil mouse" or "selfish mouse" and I'm sitting here like "just call him sewer rat please ya'll had no problems calling him that before please for the love of god use that instead it sounds better--"

Don't even get me started with Amrita Bianchi explaining to the girls what cosplay is like she's the damn Merriam Webster dictionary--

Also the Japan segment with y'know Japanese culture and stuff had the terms localized for some reason??? Like haori became "dark jacket", kimono became "long, elegant Japanese dress", they didn't even mention Ren's hakama (he was wearing a very traditional Japanese look), they felt the need to explain bento boxes as "typical Japanese portable lunch boxes" even though "Japanese lunch box" probably would've gotten the point across just fine and also there was an illustration of the bento boxes, Japanese characters became "logograms" for some reason, and dango became "rice dumplings" which became infinitely more confusing for me because the illustration made it look like takoyaki--

I could go on and on but yeah, there are a lot of these and it felt very infodump-y to me. I'm hoping it's just a translation thing, because the story overall feels pretty solid. Scholastic, what happened to the asterisks? Were they just too much for one page? I feel like you would've been able to squeeze them in just fine to make the reading experience a little smoother,,, just like, so it's an optional thing for the reader to read the mini-infodump of the term if they dunno what it means,,,

Other than that tho I don't think I have much to complain ab--

COUGHS GAGS SCREAMS CRIES WRITHES ON THE FLOOR

(I have the magic-of-friendship-invocation tolerance of an angsty teen I'm sorry :'3)

Scholastic, buddy chum pal buddy chum buddy chum pal,,,,

You could've had Vi say "the only way I got here was thanks to my friends", and it would've been fine and infinitely better-sounding and probably more in-character,,, o<-<

Gahd I hate it when Vi's used as the power of friendship prophet -m-

There's a more minor one as the girls are going back to the car and Vi is telling the girls about the deal Luke offered her, and the girls ask her what she said, and she says "I told him I already had the greatest treasure in the world... true friendship!"

Meanwhile I'm sitting there like "MMMMMGGGGGGHHHHHH 'friends like you' or 'sisters like you' or 'my friendship with you' would've sounded better -m-"

(Also the girls call each other like "friends", so like "you were in fact right, friends", which is like, what happened to "sisters" or "girls" those work perfectly fine and get the girls' close relationship across significantly better than "just friends")

Most of what I'm saying here tho are just nitpicks and probably (hopefully) are just stuff with the English translation-- in all seriousness, the book is pretty good.

Aurora's trail here makes sense and is rather logical, and the interesting thing I find about it is that it feels different from the previous two books' worth of shenanigans. Aurora in this one had far less veers and nation hopping shenanigans, and I feel that it was perhaps intentional. Perhaps to give off finale vibes-- Aurora works far more closely with her sister in this one, and the main thing the girls had to work with was not Aurora's diaries, but the letter she wrote to Linda when they were discussing the Ring of Eternal Love. Something about it feels closer, more intimate, more tragic than the previous ones. I felt the need to put her last to letters in the book verbatim because they were emotional dammit -m- Damn you British Amelia Earhart you've done it again /lhj

Luke's character I think is the strongest here. He gives off in a way the most... normal? Vibes here? He's still not touching grass and muttering to himself ominously a whole lot, but his mindset is nice and easy to wrap your head around here. He literally doesn't care about his goons unless he needs something from them, he is more than happy to overanalyze the crap out of a piece of text if he feels Cassidy didn't look through it thoroughly enough, and he wants what he wants right away, and that includes the things he needs to get the thing he actually wants. He as a character literally observes everything happen from his base in Alaska and backseat gamers the crap out of his goons if he sees something they didn't, or if they fumbled the bag and it was perfectly avoidable had it not been for SM being SM--

Also his blatant disrespect for his great-grandpappy Jan is holy crap haha-- it might just be my cultural background, but when I saw Luke call his great-grandpa "Jan" and then say "you disappoint me, Jan", I was flabbergasted haha, not a criticism I just wanted to mention it because I thought it was funny

I really like the fact that Stan and Max (aka SM) didn't show up at all in this book. It would've been easy to have them show up for regularly scheduled hijinks, but in Luke's mind, none of SM's operations have ever been... up to Luke's standards. Especially with how much of a ruckus they tended to make with their presence, they were more of a liability to Luke than an asset; therefore Luke changing up his strategy to be as hands-off and clean and non-intrusive as possible feels like something he'd do, what with how laser-focused he is on min-maxing efficiency to get what he wants as soon as possible.

Omar still being there despite being "fired" might just be a Scholastic oopsie so I can forgive it, Cassidy is still simping for Luke and trying to impress this man and trying to prove she's at an equal level to him, but every time nah. Just nah. Girlie you think you're on the same level as him, which can't possibly be further than the truth. I haven't seen Miraculous Ladybug, but I'd bet Cassidy has even less of a chance of impressing Luke, than Marinette had a chance at getting Adrien to see her as more than "just a friend" before they finally got together.

Now here's something I've been wanting to ramble about for a while: Violet being left alone instead of Colette. It's actually pretty clever when you think about it: Colette is the closest the girls have to a heart (tho she plays hot potato with Paulina when it comes to that role imo), so she's been the most emotional and the most sentimental of the group this entire time. From daydreaming about Romeo, to wanting to believe in love, to happily picking up a microphone to sing karaoke with the girls, to her strong reactions to having to leave the girls behind one by one for the sake of their mission, Colette was being set up for a moment where she is the one who is left alone. You see it a lot in media: the main character is the most sentimental one and as their friend squad make their way to the Big Bad Evil Guy, the supporting characters are forced to get left behind one by one to either hold the evil minions back or because there's no way for the character to move forward with the MC; so the MC is forced to go through the five stages of grief knowing that their friends trust them to get the job they'd set out to do done. It literally happened in Geronimo's third Kingdom of Fantasy book Amazing Voyage, and in that one Geronimo was the one who desperately didn't want to be alone, but he wound up carrying on alone anyway. You see this kinda thing everywhere.

However, in this bit, it makes total sense that Violet is the one who ends up carrying the last leg of the journey alone instead of Colette. Compared to Colette (and honestly the rest of the girls), Violet is the most level-headed. She's the girls' braincell keeper (in this trilogy), the babysitter holding the leash tied to the four gremlins, the one keeping everyone on track and also making sure that the group's collective ADHD doesn't spiral down as badly as it could possibly be. Whenever the girls make a big move that could affect the whole group, Vi is the one asking if it's a good idea or if it's worth doing, and she's the one thinking ahead enough to say "if x happens instead of y, what then?" You get the idea-- Vi is the most capable of keeping herself level-headed even when she's under all this pressure, and she's good at analyzing and planning on account of her often taking the position of the quiet observer.

With this context, it sort've makes you wonder what was going through Colette's head when she offered to help Violet get out of the air room. Violet and Colette in particular get paired together fairly often, and it's probably because of how well they're able to understand each other-- so with the plan, was Colette volunteering herself to prop the door open out of "it was my idea" courtesy, or was she thinking that maybe Violet would be able to figure things out better and thus needed to get to the other side? She probably was expecting to get to the other side with Vi, but would she have thought far enough ahead to a what-if where that wasn't possible? :3c

And Scholastic and power-of-friendship funkiness aside, Violet did handle the situation well, all things considered. The one bit where she only realized Luke was hers and the girls' only ticket out of there was a bit weird, but it can be chalked up to her not being able to take that into account in the moment because of a mix of stress, sheer bafflement from Luke's deal, and the fact that when put on the spot, observers don't exactly handle taking the driver's seat that well :'D (speaking as an observer myself here)

It makes me wonder a bit if Violet and Luke were meant to be foils of each other, what with how similar they are to each other (both of them being observers and planners who delegate more often than they do the work themselves), yet different enough that the contrast between the two is striking. Said difference being

Violet touches grass. Luke does not :)

Anyway so yeah, that's Treasure Seekers 3, and while it is kinda sad that this is where Treasure Seekers ends, y'know what? It gave a solid show as the last installment in the trilogy. I liked it, I liked the canon compliant blorbo angst, I liked the characters character-ing when the dialogue was letting them breathe :]

And of course, we can't forget

God's sleepiest soldier <3

She deserves that nap after what she went through and you know it--

[raiiny-bay]

my favorite edits - 2023 edition 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9