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laequiem · 3 years

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Party for One

Party for One by Laequiem // @jurdannetrevels

Side B of Dedicated, a @jurdannet collab fic with @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @lizziebxnnet @figonas @hazelsheartsworn

Dedicated Masterlist • My Masterlist

‡ SIDE A: track 1 - track 2 - track 3 - track 4 - track 5

‡ SIDE B: ao3

Fandom: The Folk of The Air

Pairing: Jude Duarte x Cardan Greenbriar

Rating: Explicit

Word count: 1,734

Nothing brings back the urge to taunt and tease quite like seeing Jude flustered. She is far from innocent, of course, but she loses her usual bravado whenever we enter a sex shop. A blush taints her cheeks for the entirety of our visit, perhaps as she remembers the things we have done in this very store. She nods curtly when the cashier welcomes us, then starts slowly walking between the aisles, inspecting every item as if they were weapons of war.

The temptation to tease her is so strong. When she stops in front of a glass case displaying monstrous phallic-shaped specimens, I lose my resolve.

I sneak up to her and put my hands on her waist, leaning in close.

“My wicked Queen, am I not enough for you?” I drawl in her ear.

Jude tenses, but I can almost hear the gears turning in her head. My cunning wife never lets me have the last word.

She goes back to an aisle she has visited already and hands me a cylindrical box.

“We could do this,” she says, fluttering her lashes at me, “then I won’t need you anymore.”

She hands me the box. It has a giant neon-green penis drawn on it, and the words ‘CLONE-A-WILLY’. From the drawing, I suppose willy means…

“I would think I bring more to this relationship than just my manhood,” I reply, my voice dripping with fake offense.

Jude winks at me then, then pulls me down for a quick kiss.

I wish it had lasted longer.

I follow her through the aisles, helping her carry boxes upon boxes of toys and wearables. When we pay, the cashier looks at us with open amusement, grinning as she drops our items in opaque, unlabeled bags.

With one last wiggle of her thinly plucked brows and an insinuating “Have fun, youngsters!”, we are out of the store and on our way back to Elfhame.

——

I stand with my back to the wall, pinned there by a very eager Jude. I devour her throat, my hands sliding under the straps holding up her thigh-high stockings. Her hands roam my back under my shirt, until one of them reaches my tail. She closes her fist around it and I jerk, my head almost hitting the wall behind me. Her grip tightens, and she runs her fist up the length of it, all the way to the furred tip. Sparks travel back down it, straight to my throbbing cock. I look at her, wide-eyed and panting, and she claims my mouth in a quick, passionate kiss. She bites my bottom lip as she pulls away and I chase after her, but she keeps her distance. Her grin spells trouble.

Jude palms my cock through my pants and my eyes flutter. I reach around to grab her ass, but she dodges away smoothly. Her stare sends me back to a time when I was her pawn, a decorative king for her to rule through.

“Jude?” I ask, my voice small and unsure.

Her smile widens as she slowly undoes the laces of my breeches, and then… she turns her back to me. My apprehension of what is to come prevents me from appreciating the view.

I stand there, dumbfounded, as she walks to the desk and reaches inside a shopping bag—from Dedication, I realize with both arousal and dread. I know what she will pull out before I see it. She had planned this from the beginning. The scheming trickster has a steaming mug of water next to the bag, already heated up and ready for mixing. My Jude is as conniving as the fae, no wonder I could never convince myself to hate her.

“My cunning devil,” I sigh.

My wife’s smile turns innocent, perhaps one of her biggest lies.

“I will start mixing the powder, make sure you’re ready.”

I push my breeches down and step out of them. My hand goes to my cock, dragging over it idly as I watch her take out the baggy of powder. She tears open the bag, then turns to give me a once-over. One of her brows lifts as her eyes land on my dick. I feel the weight of her judgement and I tighten my grip.

“It’s harder than it seems,” I grumble, my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“Is it?” She bites her lips, trying to stop herself from laughing. “It does not look very hard to me.”

I have known for a while how depraved I am. For years, I have pleasured myself to wild fantasies of her. Initially, I had convinced myself I wanted her capitulation, her pleas and tears. After she crowned me, however, I would stroke myself to fantasies of my own submission. Still, getting harder from being laughed at is a new low.

Jude pours the powder in the steaming cup of water and I join her next to the desk.

“Ready?” she asks, grabbing the plastic tube.

“As much as I can be,” I reply.

She pours the mixture in the tube, and in I go. The mixture sets quicker than I expected, and I slide out before I even soften.

“Perfect!” Jude exclaims, her smile bright enough to rival the sun.

She mixes the silicone and pours it in the mold before placing everything on the desk.

“Now, it’s time for your reward,” she purrs.

My toes curl with anticipation, but I know better than to think she will let me defile her for teasing me so. No—when she has that glint in her eyes, she is in charge. If anybody gets pinned to the bed and fucked with reckless abandon, it’s me.

I come up behind her and set my hands on her hips. My cock rubs delightfully against the lace fabric covering her ass as I bend forward to run my nose against her neck. She turns back to me and, like one of my earlier fantasies come to life, drops to her knees.

“Hands behind your back, Your Highness,” Jude commands.

Of course, I obey.

I watch as she grabs the bag and puts it next to her on the floor. She reaches in and pulls out a toy, a sleek U-shaped thing. With one press of her thumb, it starts buzzing. The first touch of it to my glans has me throwing my head back. Jude holds it steady, while her other hand grips the base of my cock. She expertly strokes me, twisting her wrist as she moves up and down. The vibrations combined with her touch have my knees buckling. I grasp the desk behind me to stabilize myself.

I look at her again, kneeling in front of me, her eyes glimmering with amusement. Her hair is down, falling beautifully over her back, and I tighten my grasp on the desk. I want to touch her, pull her hair away from her face, maybe even pull it. Jude also tightens her grip on me, quickening her movements until—

“Jude, I’m—”

In one swift move, she removes both her hand and the toy from me. The sound I make can only be qualified as a whine. She looks up at me through thick lashes, mischief written across her face.

Not for the first time, nor the last, I wish I had stayed silent.

Jude reaches in the bag again. The first thing she pulls out is familiar to me, a large bottle of lube. The second thing, however, is not something that exists in Elfhame. The thing is cylindrical, the see-through jelly material showing a complex pattern of bumps and ridges inside. It is nowhere near enough to cover my whole cock, but it is open on both ends. My imagination immediately goes wild at the possibilities, this contraption around my cock while her plump lips suck off the tip—my cock throbs, once, and Jude chuckles.

“What has got you so excited?” she teases, her thumb wiping away the drop forming at my tip.

Of course, Jude does not take me in her mouth, the cruel thing. She squeezes the lube bottle, letting the drops fall obscenely in the toy. With a bite of her bottom lip, she slides the toy over me.

It feels nothing like a person, this thing. It is overwhelming, all the nooks and crannies a completely new experience to me. As if that wasn’t enough, Jude powers on the toy from earlier again and puts it to my tip as she glides the sleeve over me.

“Fuck, it’s too much,” I cry out. “Please, Jude—”

“Do you want me to stop?” Jude asks smugly.

She knows me more than anyone else. She knows I cannot lie. She knows, regardless of my complaints, I do not want her to stop.

Even without toys, Jude turns me into a moaning mess. With them, it’s impossible to keep in my groans. I cannot find it in myself to care. I swear and moan as she works me; if the whole palace hears me, so be it.

She alternates her grip on the sleeve every few passes. Sometimes she lets it glide over me with barely any pressure, other times gripping it hard enough for me to feel her hand through it. The vibrator has made my tip so sensitive that tears prick at my eyes.

How I wish I could touch her. My nails dig in the desk as I restrain myself—surely, one of them must be broken by now.

Jude leans forward and plants a kiss to my hip bone, sucking on the skin sharply afterwards, and the dam breaks. I come with her name on my lips and my cock overstimulated by her skilled touch. Ever the torturer, she keeps pumping me with the sleeve, squeezing whine after whine out of me.

“I can’t—Jude!” My legs shake and it’s an effort to keep standing.

Mercifully, she pulls the toy away and, finally, I fall on my knees.

I pull her to me in a breathless kiss, teeth clashing as I feel her smile against my mouth.

Nothing will ever be grand enough to demonstrate my love for her.

Not the night I plan to spend worshiping her until she begs me to stop.

Not the litany of I love yous I bombard her with when I pull away.

My headstrong, ambitious wife. My love. My queen. My Jude.

Tag list

@slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thefolkofthefic @figonas @kingandfireheart @godgavemelou @lizziebxnnet @hazelsheartsworn

#The folk of the air #tfota #jurdan #judecardan #jude duarte #cardan greenbriar #fanfic #cardan #the cruel prince #the wicked king #the queen of nothing #tcp #jurdannet revel #jurdannet roulette #jurdannet

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hilltopsunset · 3 years

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Quality of Life Catastrophe: A Comprehensive List of Issues that Can and Should Be Easily Fixed

Ah, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’ve spent a lot of time playing this game over the past few months—220 hours to be exact at the time of this article—and a significant amount of that time has been an absolute pleasure. The charming art style, relaxed ambiance, and slow pace of the game all contribute to an overall delightful experience that I would recommend to anyone who is into simulation-style games that focus on creating a carefree living experience rather than an action-packed, exciting adventure. Players can chat with cute animal villagers, fill their personal house with all their favorite furnishings, and hand-design every aspect of their island if they really want to, from the shapes of the rivers winding about the land to the architecture of the cliff sides providing three tiers of terrain to play with.

But while AC:NH delivers in many ways, it is nearly impossible for players to miss its plentiful, glaring shortcomings, almost all of which are tied to quality of life. What exactly do I mean when I say “quality of life”? I think Josh Bycer hits the most important points in the beginning of his article Playability in Game Design:

“Quality of life (or “QoL”) elements cover a broad range of features that are designed to make games easier to play without changing the gameplay itself. What makes a QoL feature difficult to pin down is that unless you know what you’re looking for, they can be tricky to spot. … Developers often uncover the need for these features through extensive play testing, where friction points are discovered and can be addressed.”

To be completely honest, I don’t know how this game could have possibly made it through playtesting without any play testers experiencing the same friction I have. It is almost guaranteed that the functionalities were all purposely unchanged, and that kind of makes it even worse, especially knowing the game continues to undergo semi-regular updates in which none of these issues have yet been addressed after over a year and a half since its release.

I do want to say one last thing: in this article, I’m not going to get into the many issues surrounding multiplayer experiences, both online and local. I know many before me have already written about the multitudinous, legitimate gripes with how Nintendo handled multiplayer experiences in AC:NH, such as limiting players to one island per Switch console, meaning siblings or roommates cannot have individual islands, forcing any villager after the first to be relegated to a sort of “side character” status. Honestly the lack of tool-wheel accessibility in local multiplayer is the most egregious offense in my opinion, especially when Nintendo simultaneously demonstrates the functional capacity for a wheel mechanic by allowing access to the emote wheel. It’s just plain rude.

Anyway, enough preamble—let’s get into the meat of this article. Here’s a list of issues I’ve encountered playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and what I think should be done about them.

Inventory Issues and Inconsistencies

Almost immediately after landing on their island players are introduced to one of the game’s most glaring issues: the inventory. I thank the stars every night that Nintendo allowed us to at least double our inventory over time from a paltry 20 slots to a more substantial 40, but my issues have never really been with the maximum number of inventory slots. Rather, my biggest inventory-related gripes stem from how items are stacked, how certain items are arbitrarily unstackable, and who the hell decided that a game so dependent on carrying around the proper tools for the many different tasks performed on a near-constant basis should take up precious item slots in the general inventory.

Flowers. They’re one of my favorite parts of AC:NH; they fill my island with colorful beauty and challenge my patience with their pitiful 5% watering spawn rate. But more than that, they also challenge my inventory management skills, because digging up a flower and shoving it into my pocket costs me a single inventory space for every single flower. And I can’t store it in my home’s inventory either, nor can I drop it on the ground; I either need to plant it, sell it, or trash it.

“But Hilltop!” I hear you saying in a casually superior tone, “Trees behave the same way! Doesn’t it make sense that other living plants follow the same rules?”

No. No, it doesn’t.

The simple reasoning is that flowers are functionally more dynamic than trees—there are more varieties of flowers, I can plant flowers with fewer restrictions than trees (for instance, trees cannot be planted directly next to one another or directly beside a cliff, whereas flowers are inhibited by neither restriction) and, perhaps most importantly, flowers left to their own devices will actively spread, whereas trees will not. Not to mention, thematically speaking, why does it make sense that a tiny flower fills the exact amount of space in my inventory as a whole-ass tree??

A less troublesome but still annoying note is the inconsistent number of items allowed per stack. When viewed through a design perspective, I can understand why this is the case in some circumstances—bugs and fish not being stackable makes sense to me. But why are fruit, shells, wasp nests, and some other items limited to only 10 per stack while most other materials stack up to 30? And why do manila clams not stack at all, but the fish bait they’re made into can stack? The differences seem arbitrary or, at best, frivolous.

Most egregious when it comes to inventory issues is the treatment of tools. Especially early on before grabbing any of the inventory expansions, when players are most likely doing the most exploration and resource gathering, they are forced to fill nearly half their inventory with tools: shovel for scooping, axe for smacking, axe for chopping, net, fishing pole, slingshot, vault pole, ladder, and watering can. That’s 9 tools, most of which will be regularly utilized on a jaunt around the island, making it nearly impossible to put any of them away—with an exception perhaps for the watering can until players start getting more serous about their gardens. That’s still 8 tools that I was lugging around, and that isn't even considering the materials I was also carrying for when my tools break; if I want to be able to replace any of my tools as a moment's notice, I also need: stone, iron, sticks, wood, hard wood, and softwood. Carrying around customization kits is also a good way to improve the longevity of tools, so I tend to have some of those as well.

Tools should be given special treatment and have their own, dedicated inventory so that players don’t need to sacrifice precious bag space for necessary tools. These tool inventories could also be expandable over time so that players may start with a bag that allows for only 3 tools, or 5, and we eventually expand to 9 or 10 tool inventory slots (to leave room for things like instruments, umbrellas, or spare tools, since tools break so often).

Another possible alternative is to provide other ways of obtaining general inventory slots, such as backpacks. Right now, backpacks are strictly aesthetic, but if they were capable of holding items it would provide incentive to find, purchase, or make them. Bag-weaving could even be its own special crafting where players can upgrade bags to hold more inventory slots so they don’t need to sacrifice desired aesthetics for functionality.

One last point about tools: the tool wheel is a wonderful mechanism that helps quickly shift between several different tools instantly. However—it is not possible to permanently link a specific tool type to a slot, so every time one of my tools breaks, unless I have enough tools to fill the wheel, the newly-made tool needs to be re-assigned to my preferred slot. Considering how often tools break in this game, this can get exceedingly annoying having to tell the game over and over and over and over that I want my shovel to be assigned to the “down” command in the wheel (because it makes the most sense to me, because you dig downward, y’know?).

Forced Egregious Repetition

Anyone who has played AC:NH for more than a few hours has likely encountered at least one of the following situations and thought “god…this is SO needlessly tedious…like…WHY??”

I was rearranging my island and wanted to design a sort of woodsy area for my campsite to reside in, so I needed to do quite a bit of tree-location (see what I did there??). To relocate a tree, players need to eat fruit which somehow empowers the character to dig up an entire tree in one shovel-scoop. Impressive, indeed. Players can eat up to a maximum of 10 fruit at a time, allowing for 10 power-charged scoops. I take no issue with this limitation, this is totally fine. So I gathered up some of my island’s natural-grown pears and chomped one down. Then another. Then another one. And another one. Then a fifth. I did this 10 times, each time having to experience the animation of my character devouring the entire pear with his satisfying chomps—40 chomps were heard over the course of the several minutes it took to consume the 10 fruit.

…Why?

Why is that necessary? Why not allow players to choose how many fruit—between 1 and 10—they would like to consume? What is the purpose of forcing players to witness the quad-chomp consumption of these magical, empowering fruit 10 separate times to fill their charges?

And I ask the exact same question when I’m crafting a DIY recipe multiple times in a row; a perfect example of this is the manila clam, which already has issues as mentioned above. For folks who’ve set their sights on a specific sea critter, one of the easiest ways to farm for fish is to capture a collection of clams, which players can then use in a DIY recipe to make Fish Bait. So, I put my items away, scooped 30 clams out of the sand, headed over do a DIY bench and spent maybe ten minutes individually turning each clam into fish bait. Why is there no option to craft more than 1 at a time? What is the reason, Nintendo?? Is it because you’re vicious sadists?? I’m starting to believe that may be the case.

On a related topic of being needlessly restrictive and forcing players to unnecessarily undergo the same action several times: purchasing items from shops. Early into my island adventures, Leif the Sloth visited. I didn’t yet have a good idea of what exactly I wanted to do with my island, but I knew I wanted to incorporate lots of plants and shrubs, so his garden shop was a great place to start. I wanted to make sure I bought enough shrubs for the future, and I didn’t really know what each plant looked like, so I wanted to buy 10 each. Well, I couldn’t; it was either 1 or 5. Nothing between, nothing more; 1 or 5. So I had to buy 5 of each shrub twice.

The same is true for Nook’s Cranny, where they sell Customization Kits, which are used to give certain furniture items a unique appearance. The amount of kits it costs to customize creations depends on each item, usually landing between 1-7 kits or so per item (I tried to find a list of customizable items and their costs to see the exact range, but I could not easily locate such a list). I had been playing a while by then and was developing an adequate assortment of cozy furniture, and wanted to give everything I owned a personalized touch. I knew I needed probably between 50-100 customization kits to achieve my desired results, so I went to Nook’s Cranny, my pockets heavy from bells, and began my needlessly time-consuming purchases of 5 customization kits per transaction.

Again: why? What functional, design purpose does this limitation provide? It enhances nothing about the experience, and if anything, only serves as a deterrent for players who otherwise might want to make larger purchases for current or future projects.

Oh, and how could I forget about the Able Sisters’ clothing store! This one is particularly bad: the first time I ever entered the Able Sisters’ place, it was still pretty early into my AC:NH career, so I hadn’t yet accumulated a comfortable collection of accouterments. There were a few items displayed on the store’s floor, but to view the array of color options for each item I needed to enter the fitting room. Once in, I was able to see how each item looked on my character, which was great! There were some hats, shirts, shoes, socks, and pants with several color varieties each that I was interested in purchasing—that’s when I learned: in order to purchase any article of clothing from the fitting room, I need to be wearing any items I want to purchase. Because of this, I was forced to re-enter the fitting room for every single item I wanted to purchase. It’s possible to buy an entire outfit in one transaction, but if there is any desire to buy multiples of an item, players are forced to re-enter the fitting room for every variety they want to buy. I encounter this limitation constantly, because I enjoy having a full wardrobe, so I like to purchase several colors of clothing that I like.

Menus

There is a plethora of fun items to find while playing AC:NH which can enhance the aesthetic of an island, and thankfully players are able to access what’s called the Nook Shopping App where they can purchase any item they have previously owned before. Did you find a book once, and need 4 more to build a bookshelf? You can do that using Nook Shopping! Find a bed your friend really wants, but you want to keep yours? You can purchase one from Nook Shopping and send one to them! Cool beans!

What’s not cool beans is the fact that, while in the shopping center, browsing the list of items accumulated over the course of the game, there are also items in that list created using the DIY functionality and are not able to be purchased from the shop. …so…why are they listed there? Shouldn’t there be a separate, dedicated encyclopedia where players can view any furniture they’ve collected, including DIY stuff? When I’m browsing the Nook Shopping App, I don’t care what DIY recipes I’ve made; I want to see the items I can actively purchase. The presence of DIY items only congests the shop. Get rid of them, or move the list to an encyclopedia on the Nook Phone.

[EDIT] Ok, I found out there is literally a button to turn off the non-purchasable items so they don't appear in the store anymore...but there should still be a separate encyclopedia for all owned/created items

While the Nook Shopping App does provide the completely unnecessary and undesirable addition of created DIY recipes, what it doesn’t include is any denotation of items currently in my or my home’s inventory, or laid out on the island someplace. This is particularly bothersome when looking through the day’s K.K. Slider song, which the store changes every day. I don’t want to purchase multiples of these, because once registered to a single audio device, a K.K. song is accessible from any audio device in the game; so I don’t need more than one. But the store provides no indication of whether or not I already owns the song—registered, inventoried, or otherwise. Just nothing at all.

The same is true with the Able Sisters’ clothing store. As stated previously, I enjoy filling my wardrobe with fun, colorful clothing, so I want to make sure I haven’t missed any fashionable wearables as I do my daily romp through their available collection. But while in the fitting room, there is no indication anywhere as to whether the clothing I’m checking out is already in my wardrobe. This means I need to be intimately familiar with every single article of clothing I own in the game, or risk wasting bells and time purchasing duplicates (made extra annoying by the previously-described issue of purchases through the fitting room).

Here’s another shopping-related time-sink: the fact that players can only purchase a single item at a time. This is a bit different than my gripe about only being able to choose between purchasing 1 or purchasing 5 of any item—what I mean here is that if I am interested in purchasing all the tools available at the store—a shovel, a net, a watering can, etc.—I need to endure the dialogue with Timmy and Tommy for each individual tool, make the purchase, then move onto the next tool; there is no way to select multiple items at once and just make a single purchase. This is true within the Nook Shopping App as well—made even worse if purchasing a DIY recipe, because I need to watch an animation for the DIY recipe to be printed and accepted, then I get KICKED OUT OF THE STORE MENU. I literally need to re-enter the store menu if I want to make more purchases. It’s so absurdly unnecessary, and meaningless; it is either a pointed act of malice from the developers, total ignorance, or sheer laziness.

Speaking of unnecessary—why am I unable to release sea creatures (obtained while diving in the shallows surrounding my island) directly from my inventory, but I am allowed to release them if I capture one while my inventory is full? This only serves to force me into extra dialogue (or monologue I guess, since my character is talking to himself…) asking if I want to release it or replace it. If I could release things directly from my inventory, I could avoid having to deal with that extra step!

And then there are dialogue-menus—menus accessed by talking to Tom Nook or Isabelle, for instance. These menus often have several tiers of options, creating a large tree-worth of decisions to make throughout the conversation. But players better be extra careful about the options they choose, because a single mistake means starting aaaaall over from the beginning. That’s right—there is no option to simply “go back” one dialogue choice. If I talk to Tom Nook, tell him I want to discuss infrastructure, tell him I’d like to demolish a bridge or incline, and then accidentally select the incorrect incline (which I have done), I cannot simply say, “oops, wrong one, can I select another?” No. The only options are “yes”, or “I changed my mind,” the latter terminating the dialogue and forcing me to begin again from the start. This holds true for just about any dialogue players have during which a choice is available, and it can quickly get incredibly frustrating if and when I need to go back into the dialogue to make additional selections.

There’s just so much one-directional dialogue in this game with no reasonable explanation—like, I understand that the design choice here is that menus and shopping happen through dialogue, but real dialogue doesn’t happen like that! Imagine if conversations you have in real life went something like this:

Friend: Hey Ryan! Want to go to the movies? Me: Sure! What movie do you want to see? Friend: Awesome! I was hoping to go see the new Animal Crossing movie. You in? Me: Hell yeah! What day?? Friend: How about next Wednesday? Me: Oh…no I can’t do next Wednesday. Friend: Oh….well….Hey Ryan! Want to go to the movies? Me: Sure! What movie do you want to s…. That is what menu dialogue in Animal Crossing: New Horizons feels like sometimes.

Dialogue

Speaking of dialogue, this seems like an appropriate segue to general dialogue issues that are not related to menus or anything. Specifically: villagers. Villagers can be a charming addition to any island, but if I hear one more time from Fawna that it’s a nice day for a walk, or from Sky that she should write her mother, I’m going to scream.

The dialogue options available for just chatting with villagers is absolutely tiny, and considering the long delays between updates, there should be plenty of time to write additional random dialogue options with every single update for each personality type. There are literally only eight—8—personality types in the game, so making even 3 new lines of dialogue for each personality type is 24 lines. I could do that in a day—literally. Nintendo, pay me one day’s salary to write 3 new lines per personality for AC:NH villagers, and boom, you’ll add some much-needed variety to players’ daily experiences (assuming they are actively chatting with their residents…).

Then there’s some dialogue in the game that seems lazy or neglected. Like when I get fossils assessed by Blathers, and he tells me the museum already has them…when the museum has been full for weeks. Yes, Blathers, I know you already have these. Just give them back to me. You don’t need to remind me every time I get fossils assessed that the museum already has them. I am fully aware. I have been for a while now. Just give me the fossils.

And as much fun as Gulliver (and Gullivarr) are, they go on and on forever with the exact same text as the last time I saw them. They do not need to do this. Maybe after a while they can give the spiel again, but do they really need to monologue every single time? It seems excessive, and kind of odd—like, don’t they realize they said this exact thing to me a week ago when I last rescued them? It’s inconsistent that they acknowledge having memory of it and me, but still feel it’s necessary to give the exact same (long-winded) speech every single time.

Miscellaneous

The last few of my biggest gripes from my playtime in AC:NH don’t fit neatly into an overall topic, but I want to mention them all the same, so I’m forcing it with this misc section.

I don’t know about other players, but I am constantly digging in the wrong place, placing furniture and flowers in the wrong spot, and missing the part of the ground I wanted to put path. I think that adding an optional feature to provide players with some kind of a highlight of where items will be placed, or which cell will be dug up, etc. would be incredibly helpful. The ground cells are not always particularly obvious as to where they are, making blindly setting things down a toss-up in many scenarios. And even when I can see the grid, I occasionally stand just a little askew of where I need to be and suddenly leap 3 feet to the side rather than dig up the ground right below me. The combination of the wonky placing/digging physics and the lack of obvious grid system make the missing highlight feature a sore spot for me.

Wishes are a neat aspect of AC:NH that I typically forget about until I hear a star falling in the sky. The falling star sound is typically followed immediately by disappointment once I’ve adjusted the camera once, adjusted the camera one more time, put away whatever tool I was holding which forces the camera to then return to its previous setting, then adjust the camera one final time so it's facing the sky properly. By the time all this has occurred, I have more than likely missed 2 or 3 falling stars. Something needs to give: either allow me to make wishes with a tool in-hand, speed up the camera adjustments, or allow me to make a wish without adjusting the camera to point up at the sky. Forcing me to do all those things means that making wishes while actively playing the game is not a reasonable expectation; the only way to ensure wishes are granted by the stars is to sit and stare at the night sky with dedicated focus, which is lame.

I have really gotten into the Design App, which allows me to paint on a 32 pixel x 32 pixel grid just about anything I can imagine—there’s even a nice function in the game that takes the pixels and blends them together, creating smoother images. I could spend a bit of time talking about small tweaks that would make things a bit easier on us artists, but I’ll only mention a few: why is there no “clear canvas” option?? I prefer working with a blank slate rather than a dotted-lined cross, and assume most others do as well, so why does the game absolutely FORCE us to begin with this stupid pattern? It’s such a strange choice. But my biggest issue is with the lack of a “copy” function that works for sections of the design, rather than the whole thing. I often create repeating designs, and there is no way at all to copy a section of a design and paste it elsewhere on the canvas. And while there is a “move design” option, there’s no option to rotate the design. Adding the ability to highlight an area of the canvas and copy would make designing things so much simpler.

And there you have it. I think that just about covers all the aspects of AC:NH that have ruffled my feathers the most over the past few months of playing. I’ll provide a condensed, tl;dr list of the changes I’d like to see at the end for those who think a 4500 word article detailing video game gripes is just tooooo long. …now I kind of feel like one of those baking article-writers who want to tell viewers their life-stories before providing their culinary secrets. Well, my story-telling is fun and engaging, and if you’re disinterested it’s your lack attention span which has deteriorated due to the proliferation of immediate gratification in part due to things like the internet and social media. So there.

[EDIT] Since posting this article, I have found another gripe that I find significantly too annoying to not mention: the wardrobe wand. I finally made myself one of these wands the other night, and I was realyl excited to have the ability to freely switch between outfits in an instant. What excellent QoL! Except while I was building my first outfit--which was a pirate costume, just so you know--I realized something: my beard wasn't showing up as an option. Neither were my glasses. Come to find out, items that are either already being worn, or are already part of another costume cannot be added to the current costume. What the absolute HECK is that bullpoop about?? Since when are people unable to mix and match wardrobe items?? This is particularly bad for individuals whose identities (like mine) are strongly linked to facial accessories like the glasses and beard. It means I need to find 8 OTHER pirate beards to assign my other costumes if I want to have a beard with those costumes. Which is insane. HOW STUPID!!

- Make live flowers stackable in the inventory

- Make item stacks more consistent across resources

- Give tools a separate inventory or give bags/backpacks inventory functionality

- Allow the game to remember which slot a specific tool was in, and re-position the tool in that spot when it is back in the inventory

- Allow players to choose the number of fruits they would like to eat, between 1 – 10

- Allow players to choose the number of items they would like to purchase from a store, rather than limiting players to either 1 or 5

- Allow players to purchase multiple articles of clothing of the same type while in the fitting room

- Create a dedicated Furniture Encyclopedia that lists all created furniture items, and remove DIY-created items from the Nook Shopping catalog [EDIT] Ok, I found out there is literally a button to turn off the non-purchasable items so they don't appear in the store anymore...but there should still be a separate encyclopedia for all owned/created items

- Allow players to see whether or not they already own items viewed in a store

- Allow players to select multiple items to purchase before finalizing the purchase

- Return players to the store dialogue, rather than boot them out after making certain purchases such as DIY recipes

- Allow players to release sea creatures and fish directly from their inventory while swimming

- Allow players to backtrack during conversations rather than force them to begin all over again

- Add more general dialogue for villagers

- Create dynamically appropriate dialogue for changing circumstances

- Dial-down some of the excess/repetitive monologuing

- Provide players the option to highlight working area when placing items, digging, etc.

- Allow for wishing with tools in hand or without adjusting the camera

- Create a “copy section” tool in the Design App. Allow to start with blank canvas.

-Allow players to assign the same articles of clothing to multiple wand costumes, or at least for facial accessories that are identity-defining like glasses and beards

#Animal Crossing #New Horizons #ACNH #AC:NH #Animal Crossing: New Horizons #game review #gripes #problems #gamer problems #QoL #quality of life #change #changes

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wellpresseddaisy · 2 years

Text

Those Cunning Folk

Part 4

Cadwaladr walked up to the house, having waited until the small child weeding went to the back garden. No need to appear out of nowhere and frighten everyone if he could avoid it. The whole place gave him the chills, though, with each house so similar. That sort of fancy he put down to an already too busy morning. He'd been to Buckingham House and Gringotts before he even laid foot in Surrey, and that was after waiting over an hour to get across the border. He'd put poor Mrs. Harris at Buckingham House into such a pelter with his announcement that he intended to bring the Viscount directly that he knew he'd need to slip something extra into everyone's pay packets that week. She'd been harassing housemaids and chivvying footmen when he left, the whole place a welter of holland covers and did they have any flowers to cut at this point and he's eleven ma'am he won't care for flowers I should check the nursery for suitable games and see to a substantial sort of tea if I were giving orders.

He waved a hand as he passed over the dirt on the walk and it tidied itself back into the planter bed.

He knocked crisply on the front door and waited. After a moment a very thin and very blonde woman opened it a crack.

"Yes?" She asked impatiently, taking in his unexceptionable suit with a gimlet eye.

"I'm here to speak to Mrs. Dursley regarding Mr. Potter. My name is Du, Cadwaladr Du." He began.

"Well, say your piece." She demanded.

"Madam, I doubt you want every neighbor to hear me say that you could be held liable for receiving a kidnap victim." Might as well go in whole hog.

She turned an unbecoming pale, her cheeks tinged with a high color.

"Get in." Mrs. Dursley held the door open only wide enough for him to squeeze in before shutting it sharply. "How dare you?" She demanded as soon as the latch clicked.

Cadwaladr took little notice of her ire and instead moved into…the front room? He'd no idea what you might call it, being more used to drawing rooms and morning rooms and sitting rooms. In any case, he sat at the edge of the sofa lest he ended sucked into the upholstery and stared her down until she sat.

"I did wish to begin more pleasantly." He removed his gloves and set them on his knee. "But you gave me little choice. Mr. Potter ought never have come into your guardianship. He is a child of my house, and as such he will be taken into my custody."

"Which house is this?" Mrs. Dursley asked, mouth pursed.

"In England, House Black, Mrs. Dursley, through both his godfather and his great grandmother."

"Headmaster Dumbledore said he was to remain here until his seventeenth birthday to keep him safe." She bit out, clearly unwilling.

"Headmaster Dumbledore does not control House Black, madam, and he never shall. Mr. Potter is, by right and by magic, my ward. You have, I fear, been wretchedly imposed upon. It cannot be easy raising a strongly magical child when one has close neighbors." A smidgen of understanding went a long way, although he found her thoroughly odious.

"We've done our best. You said we could be in legal trouble?" She fidgeted with her apron.

"Only if I wish to make trouble for you, ma'am. I most heartily don't." Lie. "I would like to collect Mr. Potter and have him in his new home today, though. The more time I have to introduce him to our way of doing things before school the better."

"Your way." The woman spat. "I'll call him in. You can take him and his owl immediately."

"We'll use this room for only a few moments, I'm sure, and then be off." Only a few moments because if he had to sit in this offense against taste for more than another five minutes he couldn't be held accountable for his actions. "Did you wish to see proof of my claim?"

"I don't care to, no. I'll call him in." And she went.

What kind of wretched, hideous, unfeeling…he didn't think there was a word strong enough to describe Mrs. Dursley, honestly. He could be anyone. The back door banged and he couldn't hold back a twitch. That a magical child would be subjected to a house that rejected the very essence of him repulsed him to the core. They were, he reflected, amazingly lucky they didn't have an Obscurus situation. The back door banged again and a moment later a small boy stumbled into the room, obviously shoved from the hallway

Cadwaladr just watched him quietly for a moment, letting the boy eye him as well.

Harry saw an obviously tall man of indeterminate age with the dark hair and the silvery eyes of the Black Family. His eyes, though, Harry decided, looked like he smiled a great deal.

"Hello Mr. Potter. I'm Cadwaladr Du." He began.

"Aunt Petunia said you were taking me away. Are you?" He set his jaw and waited for an answer.

"Yes, Mr. Potter. Legally, I'm your guardian. You ought never have been sent here." Best to stick to the absolute truth. He could speculate, but it wouldn't help the child before him.

"Then why would I be here at all?" He clenched his hands by his sides.

"I don't know Mr. --"

"Please just call me Harry!" It burst out before he could stop himself.

"Of course, Harry. I didn't want to presume. I don't know why you're here or why the family wasn't notified when your parents were killed. We should have been. Your great uncle Arcturus would have loved you." Well, probably. Arcturus had been a funny sort, but he'd liked children.

"Could we go, sir?" Harry asked after a minute of silence. "Aunt Petunia said she wanted me gone before Dudley or Uncle Vernon got home."

"Shall we gather your things?" Cadwaladr stood and held out a hand to Harry.

The look he received in return could have curdled milk. Good to know the boy still possessed some spirit.

"I beg pardon, Harry. I raised my younger siblings and sometimes I forget that people are old enough to dispense with hand holding. You wouldn't believe the look I got off my brother, who just turned twenty-five, when I did the same to him. Pure instinct, I assure you."

Harry thawed slightly and led the way from the front room. He was, Cadwaladr thought, a bit sensitive about his size. Which…had they denied the boy food or was he naturally small? There were Du cousins taller than Harry who were age eight or nine. He resembled the English Blacks most strongly, and Cadwaladr thought perhaps Regulus hadn't been precisely tall. And maybe he'd grow with good food and proper exercise and an environment where he was wanted.

The room Harry showed him was depressing in the extreme. Broken down furniture, a dirty carpet and dingy walls (of obvious long-standing vintage), and broken toys filled the small room. Even the ventilation seemed inadequate. A large cage sat on the desk with a sleeping snowy owl inside and a cheap school trunk stood open on the floor next to it.

"Pack everything you'd like to take as you won't be returning." He ordered gently.

"Ever?" Harry asked, shoveling things into the trunk.

"Ever." Cadwaladr promised

He did not wince watching Harry. Given the state of his clothes (sizes too big, patched, and oddly gray), he couldn't blame the boy for cramming it in with so little care. Harry, to his credit, neatly folded his school robes and placed them on top of everything else.

He grabbed a ratty bag from the floor and asked, "Should we take Hedwig, sir? Or will she know the way?"

"We'll wake her and send her ahead. She'll have a perch in your room, you know, or she can make use of the owlery. I just need to give her a frank so she can get through the exchange." Cadw smiled down at Harry. "You can call me Uncle Cadw, you know. I don't think I could survive being called sir for the next years. I'd keep looking over my shoulder for my father or my eldest brother."

That got him a shy smile. "Thank you. I didn't know what…"

"We've been left in a bit of a quandary, haven't we? No worries, Harry, we'll find our way right." Cadw promised. "Now, shall we send Hedwig to the exchange and get ourselves to London?"

"What's the Exchange?" Harry clicked his tongue softly to wake Hedwig. "Hedwig, could you wake up? We're leaving."

She woke immediately, perky and dancing on her perch.

"What an intelligent owl she is." Flattery could get one most places, Cadwaladr found. Hedwig preened.

"Now this, my lad," he held up a wax seal. "This is the Black Frank. It gives Hedwig the right to go through the Exchange, which is where post owls cross over between worlds, without needing to pay a toll."

"Between worlds?" Harry asked, frowning. "But Diagon is in London, right?"

"We'll stop at a bookstore, Harry. I think there have been a few books published lately that will explain a bit better than I can." He tapped Harry's trunk and Hedwig's cage, shrinking the two. "We can read them together, if you'd like."

He tied a little pouch to Hedwig's leg and put the seal inside.

"To Buckingham House, please, Hedwig, once you're through. I think you'll enjoy the hunting in the park." Hedwig chirruped, stopped only to preen Harry's hair, and was out the window, winging away to London.

Harry, when he tried to hand over the shrunken trunk and cage, demurred.

"My pockets," he explained sheepishly. "They're all holes."

"Then I'll carry them in mine. We'll make sure you're properly outfitted, Harry. Now, have you got everything?"

Harry nodded.

"Would you like to say goodbye to your Aunt?"

"She told me to just go. She didn't want to see me again."

"Right." If he were a vindictive man, Petunia Dursley would be a creature as odious as her personality. "Well, I'm sure we wish these people exactly what they deserve from the world."

Harry snorted, pressing his lips together, and followed his new guardian down the stairs and out of the house. He never had to go back. Not ever. He had a feeling that if anyone tried, they'd be sent packing. His new uncle seemed easy enough to get on with, but Harry knew that sort. They had limits.

"I hope you don't mind that we're going to be supremely boring and take the train to London? I booked us first class tickets, so it shouldn't be too uncomfortable a journey."

"I've never traveled first class before." Harry admitted.

"Even on this side, it's a bit nicer. We'll stop and get you a bite to eat at the station. Once we make London, we need to go to Gringotts. They were terribly put out not to have talked to you. Now, if you'll take my hand and hold tight, we'll do something called apparating. You'll feel a bit squeezed, like you're going through a tube, and then we'll be at the train station. You do need to hold on tight, though."

Harry nodded and swallowed thickly. He hadn't experienced any magical travel yet and this sounded awful. He took the offered hand and held tight, squeezing his eyes shut. The world squeezed in around him, and he really did feel like he was being sucked through a straw. When the feeling stopped, he opened his eyes. They were around back of the usually bustling station.

He found himself supplied with sandwiches and and tea (and a book) and ushered into a seat at one of the big tables in the carriage in short order. Cadwaladr sat opposite and picked up one of the newspapers, unfolding it and running an eye down the headlines.

#those cunning folk #hp the season/the ton au #hp the season au #hp society/the ton

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assemble-revengers · 3 years

Text

Nexus Split

**Contains spoilers for Loki**

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Word Count: 2203

Prompt: “Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?”

Author’s Note: I woke up and chose violence today.

Time was hard to grasp before this whole mess began, but it at least had some structure regardless of how ethereal it seemed. There was structure and a time and place and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time so it seemed when you also made a move to snatch up the Tesseract the second you saw Loki move in New York. That’s how you got into this mess and honestly there were many things you had regretted initially. For instance, why couldn’t you have minded your own business?

Well, if you had you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet Loki, and at the moment? That felt worth more than anything. It hadn’t started that way -- the two of you were practically at each other’s throats and when you weren’t bickering between each other you were being confused by the politics of the TVA and time in general.

In a wild turn of events you became an unpaid intern all over again. You supposed it was better than dying or “being pruned”. You still were confused as ever by the lingo and even though you had tried your best to pay attention to the onboarding process, but frankly you were still wrapping your head around the prospect of the TVA in general. How had no one even considered this being a possibility? Where did these people come from? It seemed that it just...was? But if that was the case, why was there an onboarding process?

Miss Minutes was terrifying -- she was just so...eerie and popped up randomly and honestly you just wanted a nap. Or to wake up from this bizarre dream.

The worst part was the notion of running into other variants, namely the fact that a variant that had been targeting members of the TVA happened to be a Loki-variant.

“Wonderful,” you retorted, interrupting Mobius with disdain, “There’s another one of him.”

The aforementioned god was sitting across a table from you and you weren’t entirely sure how he was taking the whole thing. According to him, the tesseract was useless here. A paper weight. Another beyond weird thing that the TVA brought.

“We should team up,” a voice interrupted your spacing out and it took you a moment to realize that the voice belonged to Loki. And he was talking to you.

You blinked a few times incredulously, “You have been nothing but cruel to me since we met. Why would I ever help you?” Honestly, the audacity of men.

“I am sorry about that, by the way,” he answered, “I was going through something.”

You couldn’t help the laugh you let out, covering your mouth immediately to try to mute the sound and avoid any more attention. “Aw, that makes it all better.”

There was no reason to hide your sarcasm, and he knew that. You could tell from the way he blanched for a moment before resuming his composure, obviously trying to turn on some godly charm or something onto you, “I was. I truly am sorry.”

“Loki, you stole the Tesseract, tried to take over the world and brought a bunch of crazy alien things into New York City,” you listed, counting off the things on your fingers, “And now because you went after the stupid Tesseract again, with a room full of Avengers I might add, I cannot return to my life which wasn’t that impressive, but at this moment? I kind of miss it. So, no, I don’t accept your apology.” He was silent after that and you went back to your mind palace spiraling about the logistics of what was happening to you.

It was not a great day for you. Week? Hour? Time was weird. It was even more weird when you were suddenly having to do research into the Loki-variant-assassin. Going through files and files of different instances in time was tedious. It was interesting in that some of the things had already happened, were going to happen, and were happening in places you had never even heard of. It was during this that you and Loki had begun to work more collaboratively.

In fact, the moment you guys had made the connection that it was apocalypses? You taught the god of mischief the importance of a high five. Or rather, never leaving someone hanging because you chased him down, yelling at him until he returned the high five before you even allowed him to present your findings to Mobius. The bond continued when you both were treated like unhinged criminals or starved, ravenous animals by pretty much everyone other than Mobius who was...friendly as ever.

You did not have a lot of options in terms of trust. While Mobius seemed genuine, there was no way you could possibly know. The issue was that the only thing that was any level of normal in your eyes was Loki which was...laughable, but he was from your timeline. The two of you were in this together sort of because at this point you wanted to go home and it seemed he did too after the whole semantics of this whole thing. Or maybe he wanted to take over the TVA. Regardless, it gave you some hope that he might be kind and put you into your timeline where you belong.

The feelings came out of nowhere. In fact, you hadn’t even realized it happened until there was a chance for you both to chase after the Loki-variant (or Sylvie as you would learn later) and before Loki went through the portal, he reached a hand out for you, Mobius yelling and you found your feet moving on their own accord, turning to mouth ‘Sorry’ to Mobius before grabbing Loki’s hand and rushing through the portal.

Sylvie was interesting and endearing and was someone you instantly found yourself drawn to. You felt sympathetic to her story, and maybe that was dangerous. Dangerous, but gave you another sliver of hope despite the fact things were bleak. Very bleak. Being on Lamentis-1 about to explode and everyone die bleak. Despite this, the two of you sat and chatted in your booth at the bar while Loki got absolutely hammered and even began to softly serenade you in what you assumed was Asgardian (this was after he sung to the whole room) and you found yourself pulling him back down to the chairs and pulling him into a hug while you laughed.

“Loki, I have no idea what you’re saying,” you giggled, pulling away from him, “But I think you’ve had enough.”

“Darling, I think I’m just getting started,” he answered with the smoothness of butter on a hot pancake. You couldn’t help the burning of your ears and the rest of the blush that began to dance across your features. Sylvie coughed. Moment interrupted (Thankfully? You don’t know). Back to the business of the world ending and no way out. Maybe that’s what let all of you decide to unload tales of the past. Yours was boring and...uneventful comparatively which led you to remain relatively quiet as both Loki and Sylvie talked.

Hearing all of Sylvie’s plight and what brought her to that moment had both you and Loki feeling empathetic. You felt anger that this whole this was allowed and deemed ‘okay’ by the TVA. An entity that really had no checks and balances as far as you could see. You pretended to ignore Sylvie and Loki bonding. You felt your stomach tighten. Envy was ugly and green really was never your color.

But that triggered the TVA rolling up and taking the three of you back. You weren’t sure what you were expecting. You weren’t expecting yourself to start fighting. Your restraints, the situation, the fact you were separated from Sylvie and more importantly Loki. You were utterly alone in your cell, screaming for them to let you out. The person interrogating you entered, tried asking you questions that you just couldn’t hear. Your head was swimming and it was almost as if you were hearing things like you were underwater. Fight or flight and apparently your entire being chose to fight.

Per someone’s orders you were moved, you lit up the moment you saw Loki and soon you were joined by Sylvie. Your restraints were removed and your eyes began watering as you rushed to Loki’s side, grabbing his hand as he gave yours a reassuring squeeze, moving so that he was shielding you from the front. The next thing you knew and before you had a moment to process, Mobius was pruned in front of you and Loki moved to shield you further.

Surprisingly, you were not entirely useless in the fight that ensued, but couldn’t help but feel entirely out of your element. The closest you had ever been to being in a fight in the past was when you were five and some girl stole your crayons and had the nerve to try to eat them.

Your adrenaline was pumping when you turned to Loki a feeling like being shocked by a plug while also being burned by a pan that had been on the stove. You were confused, Loki was yelling something. You couldn’t hear. You reach for him, desperate to calm him down or maybe it was because you subconsciously knew what was happening and you were terrified. The hot, electric feeling spread across your body before what felt like you were dropped in ice cold water and suddenly...your eyes blinked awake. You weren’t at the TVA.

Instead, you found yourself on the run (you hated yourself for missing out on all that gym time because your cardio could use some work) from a cloud that ate things. You would learn that you were in The Void, the evil vacuum of the cloud was called Alioth, and that there were even more Loki variants. One was an alligator. He was your favorite.

Your Loki also turned up and you practically threw yourself into his arms in relief, “I thought I lost you, you idiot.”

“I could say the same to you, pet,” he responded, murmuring into the crook of your shoulder. Reunions had to be cut short after you introduced the other variants, (“And this Loki is an alligator! How cool is that! He’s my favorite of all of you, no offense.”) and now you were seeking shelter to hide from Alioth and...well survive you supposed.

President Loki and the other Lokis were...a lot. In fact, there were so many Lokis that you were beginning to get a tension headache trying to keep up with everything that was going on. Some of them seemed to recognize you, including President Loki that informed you that you were late and with the wrong people (“No? I don’t even know who you are?” “You will.”)

Reuniting with Sylvie and Mobius brought even more relief. Sylvie seemed to think she could enchant the Alioth. You protested quite a bit before she was able to convince you otherwise. There was a way out. You had a chance to go back to the TVA and sort things with Mobius. Maybe go back to where you belong. Maybe stay. You weren’t sure, but it seemed Loki, your-Loki was hesitating.

Mobius was opening the portal behind you to the TVA. You stood with your hand firmly within Loki’s, fingers interlaced as you bid Sylvie a small, quiet ‘good luck, you’ve got this’. You and Loki were right by the portal, a sliver from stepping in before Loki stops, pulling you so that you two were facing each other, your back to the portal.

“What’s wrong?” you ask concerned.

“I’m staying,” Loki affirms, “To help Sylvie, to...do this.”

“Okay,” you lament. You were staying too. You tried to move to leave the portal Loki gave Mobius a heartfelt hug, which ended up being a group hug since Loki wouldn’t let go of you. In fact, as soon as Mobius was released from the hug, you were engulfed into Loki’s arms where you practically melted. The hug ended far too soon, but Loki didn’t release you, holding your face in his hands as he pressed his forehead to yours. It made your heart warm and peace washed over you.

“Loki…” you sigh, feeling an entire lifetime of emotions flooding your system, “I…”

“Shh,” he cuts you off, “I know. I feel the same...but I can’t bear to hear it.”

“Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?” You inquire, voice cracking. You felt frozen in place as panic began to bubble up under your skin.

“Because you’re not staying with me,” he murmurs weakly, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead, “I love you, Y/N. Remember that, please.”

Before you could respond, you were shoved by a great force. You couldn’t even react as your grip was easily broken, your sense of balance knocked out from under you. Mobius had already stepped through the portal...surely it wasn’t still up? You landed on the ground, having been knocked off your feet, but you were no longer in the void.

You felt your heart shattering. You couldn’t even cry. He was gone.

#loki x you #mcu loki #loki x reader #loki x y/n #mcu x you #mcu imagine #mcu x reader

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doctorofmagic · 4 years

Text

My thoughts on Stephen and Carol

That was... unexpected, to say the least. Now I have this task to elaborate my feelings and opinions in a way that is paradoxically personal and rational at the same time.

Let’s begin.

Background

Carol and Stephen know each other for a very, very long time. Their first team-up happened in Marvel Team-Up v1 #76 (1978), when Silver Dagger captured Clea (again - and yes, I’ll talk about her later). Both Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel decided to offer a helping hand to Stephen.

Stephen also assisted Carol in a mystic issue, combining their powers in Ms. Marvel v2 #4-5 (2006). It’s from this very run I suspect Kelly Thompson pictured the idea of a relationship between them. Nothing official, but all it takes to assume there’s something else going on is a mere look.

It’s true they were on opposite sides post Civil War, but Carol decided to join the New Avengers later on, which also gives this relationship one more layer.

Lastly, Aaron’s Avengers also featured them on the same team for a while, in addition to the previous Captain Marvel v10 #6-7, in which they swapped bodies and Carol had a taste of Stephen’s pain. We’re also considering Captain Marvel v10 #19 because, at this point, it’s clear that Thompson had plans for them since 2019.

Captain Marvel #27

Since this a blog dedicated to Stephen, it’s hard for me not to look through his perspective. I know the story is about Carol and how she’s struggling to mourn. But you’re all here for him. So this is my very detailed yet not-so-reliable review about their moment together.

....

Stephen is so sweet, wtf.

First, he confesses that he lost a patient on the table, WHICH MEANS that Thompson is following the events of Surgeon Supreme. Honestly? It’s the first comic book to do so. But fine. I can live with that.

Man is not having a good day. In fact, it’s a terrible day, which probably justifies the end. Here we another glimpse that Stephen still can’t deal with loss. Life is so important to him precisely because he has lost so much. In addition, for a moment, he forgets that Carol isn’t supposed to be drinking. So he turns the whiskey into Seltzer. In the meantime, Carol can’t help but relate to him. I know, Carol, I’VE BEEN THERE.

There’s another moment that warmed my heart (in a sense because it’s quite sad when you think about it). Stephen asked Carol if he was bothering her. Do you have any idea how insecure Stephen is? BECAUSE HE IS. He’s always afraid of bothering people and that’s why he isolates himself. That’s why he’s always pushing people away. That’s why he’s so miserable and lonely.

Stephen is the sweetest, I can’t. He doesn’t even know his own favorite color. COME ON, STEPHEN.

I admit, though. They know how to flirt. Stephen is the kind of person who flirts through self-loathing, which is only natural given his mental health. And Carol... Well, she’s a girlboss. It’s perfect. Also he’s sassy. And do I love my sassy boi? Very much.

But here’s another sad thing. Stephen is not seen as a “good addiction”. He’s simply not the worse one. And he’s aware of that. Do you know how I know? I mean, despite all the countless articles I wrote about his self-loathing?

Because of this:

Yet again Stephen is aware that he used someone else to fill his void. And yet again, he was used. I can’t remember the last time Stephen had a healthy relationship. In fact, I can. It was with Linda, the Night Nurse. And that was a loooong time ago. I can’t even begin to comprehend how lonely he feels. And how miserable he feels whenever he fails to create a solid bond. Not only romantic ones, but also platonic relationships and friendships as well. I want him to be happy, it’s not too much. So why am I on the verge of tears?

Fine. I dissected the issue panel by panel, such is my commitment. But how I truly feel about them? Before answering that...

Things to be considered

Hear me out. There’s a very famous forbidden OTP party in Secret Wars: Secret Love #1. I can’t remember the author of the post but here, on this very hellsite, they confirmed some of those OTPs were ships that Marvel would never allow to happen because they’re, well, LGBTQIA ships. Cherik? Yes. Stony? Yes. Kate Bishop and America Chavez? Yes. CarolJess? YES. It’s the closest we’ll ever get to Marvel’s main characters to be queer.

I’m quite open to shipping Stephen with any character. However, I cannot look away when I’ve always rooted for Carol to be an LGBTQIA character. So, much to my surprise, as I was checking the spoilers on the hopes that Jess and Carol would finally have a revelation... STEPHEN HAPPENED. Trust me, Carol stans, this was as much unexpected to me as it was to you.

Truth be told, as a Stephen stan, I get tons of hate, because people mostly know him for his Illuminati era and how patronizing he behaves sometimes. But this is the reason why I made this blog. I want more people to know Stephen as deeply as I do. I know it’s frustrating. But I’m not the enemy. You have no idea how hard I try to find subtle words and clues that Stephen is not straight (because he isn’t, please).

So, after all is said and done... I still think they’re cute. And please, do not hand me down a guilty verdict yet.

I think of Stephen a lot on a daily basis, so it’s only natural to headcanon which heroes he has hooked up with throughout the years. And I swear to Vishanti, Carol crossed my mind a few times. I only figured it would never happen. But it did and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. But it’s okay. Because it’s not going to last - and I’ll explain why.

The future

Despite the fact that CarolJess should be a thing™, when it comes to canon, she’s deeply connected to Rhodes. Their relationship is so important to Carol that she sacrificed it out of love. She’s mourning. There’s this feeling of emptiness in her heart, pretty much similar to what Stephen experienced when Clea left him the first time.

They’ve met in a very delicate and frail state of mind and spirit. Some (most?) people do it, as an attempt to fill the void with anything or anyone that resembles affection. They’re aware of that.

That’s why I don’t think it will last. It’s not a relationship born through mutual growth, it’s a relationship born in mourning and sorrow.

You know me, mates. I’d do anything for Stephen’s happiness. But that’s not it. His happiness lies on a powerful sorceress from the Dark Dimension. You know her name. And Carol? Well, if not on Jess because Marvel desires to keep selling comic books to homophobes, then on Rhodes.

It feels just like my hook up list headcanon, only better because there’s angst. And boi, do I love angst?

That said... We have more issues coming, in addition to that beautiful cover for #29. Let’s wait and see. I do think Carol and Stephen share an angsty a beautiful background and that’s why I’d rather have them instead of Elektra. No offense, Elektra and Stephen are HOT. But I believe Carol and Stephen offer deeper layers. And this is why I made such a long post about them and didn’t do the same to Savage Avengers. No matter how hard I try to be rational, when it comes to Stephen, it’s just stronger than me.

PS: forgive me if I missed something, I’m truly exhausted but my mind wouldn’t allow me to rest until I made this post. Thank you for your support.

#doctor strange #stephen strange #carol danvers #captain marvel #jessica drew #spider-woman #james rhodes #war machine #kelly thompson #captain marvel 27 #analysis #wednesday tomes #marvel comics

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oumaheroes · 3 years

Text

Earthbound: Gabriel’s Story

Written for @needcake, whose wonderful and ongoing encouragement has spurred me to explore new directions.

Context: Hundreds of years after the fall of Earth, mankind is slowly starting to return. Some people have a stronger urge to return than others, confused by fragments of memories from a life already lived.

Word Count: 3570

Characters: Portugal

Arthur’s story can be found here.

Matthew’s story can be found here.

---

Gabriel is six. He’s at the doctor’s, which he doesn’t think that he deserves, and to protest this offense he does not answer when he is spoken to.

‘Gabriel? Can you answer some questions for me?’

The lady doctor looks nice enough; she doesn’t look scary but that’s not the point and Gabriel presses his lips together and picks up a plastic shape. It’s solid and brightly coloured and he has some like this at home. He likes to build with them, usually, when he can get them from the other kids for long enough, and on the rare occasions he’s left alone with them undisturbed he builds high high towers and pretends they’re castles.

He turns this one, red and smooth, over in his hands and lays it on the small plastic table he is knelt in front of with finality. It will be a part of a dungeon.

‘He’s always like this,’ His foster mummy Anita speaks from behind him, over his head, ‘he has these funny moods where he won’t speak at all, and then when he’s not eating it just gets worse. Never had a kid like him.’

Gabriel feels his presence swallowed softly underneath her words as the conversation passes over and around him as if he were not there. He picks up another shape. This one is round at the edges and is blue. It can go at the top.

The Doctor gently taps the table by his elbow. He turns to find her crouched next to him; eyes slightly too wide behind large glasses. She smiles, ‘What are you building?’

He shrugs.

‘Ah,’ She ponders the beginnings of his construction with interest, ‘Well, the biggest I’ve seen someone build with these is about this big,’ she gestures with her hands to her chest and Gabriel is forced to look at her.

That is quite high.

‘I can go bigger.’

The doctor raises an eyebrow sceptically, ‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘the girl who built it didn’t have to go home for dinner.’

‘I don’t have to go home for dinner,’ Gabriel retorts, immediately. Mummy Anita scoffs and Gabriel flushes, looking away.

‘Do you not like dinner?’ the doctor prompts, softly.

Gabriel shrugs again.

‘I don’t like Option 3,’ the doctor says. She reaches under the table and picks up another shape -yellow, a triangle- and puts it near him. Might be a good turret ceiling, if they leave him alone to build high enough, ‘that’s what I hate. But my favourite is Option 17.’

‘I don’t like any of them.’

‘No? You must like one of them, there are so many!’

Gabriel shakes his head and continues to stack shapes, ‘they all taste funny.’

‘Funny?’ the doctor glances at Mummy Anita who shrugs.

‘None of the other kids say that. We’ve had the machine checked out- I eat from it. It’s fine. Even tried him on other machines but he says they all taste funny.’

The doctor looks back at him and he tries to look unbothered by their discussion, ‘Why do you think food from meal machines tastes funny? What’s strange about the food?’

It’s an easy enough question, but one that Gabriel can’t really answer- not even to himself.

The best way he can describe it is that food from machines just tastes wrong.

All meals come from food machines. They’re in every home and school and all taste the same; a catalogue copy of meals for everyone to have. But there’s a dryness to everything, something that sticks bland and metallic in his mouth and no matter which out of the many hundreds of options he tries, Gabriel hates them all. There’s something wrong about them, he thinks, something unnatural that he never wants to taste, no matter how used to it he knows he should be. Food from machines is all he’s ever eaten.

They don’t grow things on his colony; vegetables or fruits or grain. There’s no room in the towering stacks of buildings, stretching into the dusty orange sky. The colony is a jumble of things, a jungle bleached colourless and lifeless despite the scattering of people that scrabbled through its warrens.

There is no room for fields here. No farms for cattle to roam. The machines feed them: food materialised from the collective memory of humanity. Gabriel has heard in the playground at school that other human colonies, the ones further off into space where their communications cannot reach, make their own food from scratch, like the people of the olden times of Earth. This seems bizarre to him. What difference would it make, if you made a meal from things instead of a machine? All of their neighbouring colonies do the same as they do and this is all anyone of them have ever known.

Either way, the taste is lifeless and empty so Gabriel avoids eating as much as possible, giving in only when his tummy hurts with an ache that needs to be filled with something, anything, before it will think of going away.

He doesn’t know how to put this into words, so he turns away and adds another block to his tower, hoping that the adults will leave him alone. The doctor on his side sighs and taps something into her e-tab, looking back over at Mummy Anita.

The conversation begins again, over his head, and Gabriel slips away.

When Gabriel is thirteen when he realises that something about him isn’t quite right. It’s not his problem with food, although that has never improved, things taste as stilted now as they ever have done. No matter what meal option he tries, and no matter from which machine, there is the same blandness to everything, a cotton covering that prevents him from tasting what everyone else says he should.

But lack of taste is the least of his concerns.

The word most used to describe him by adults is ‘unfocused.’

This isn’t something he thinks is fair, but he understands how they think that, he supposes. He can often be found staring out of a window or escaping off into space, eyes glassy and face slack. He doesn’t agree with the term ‘unfocused’ because Gabriel is very focused on doing just that.

Escaping.

It is easy. So very, very easy. Like a quick breath in, he can switch off today effortlessly and take himself away somewhere, mind’s eye overlaying reality to wash his surrounds bright and true and better. He can take himself to a place so perfect it can only exist in his mind- soft sandy beaches in front of scrubby mountainsides that soar and roll up and down in sharp curves, all under a sky so blue it burns. Cyan rivers wend down corridors and curl around the legs of his classmates, a cliff face leans out of the drop of a window, a dark cupboard hides the maw of the unknown- damp caves that drip drip drip with depth and cool his older, sun-burnt skin.

If he closes his eyes and truly does focus, he can go even further- bite down and taste Brazilian gold, hard and cold as it hits his teeth to send shivers of warning up his spine. A dropped pencil or a creak of a floorboard snaps into the crackle of a fire, hot and close and his mouth waters with the promise of flame kissed meat and the smell of woodsmoke.

As much as he enjoys this, he realises it is a problem because it is not something that anyone else does. Not anymore, at least, and never as well. Children used to play pretend, of course, when they were younger- it was normal. Gabriel always seemed to be the best at it, somehow, better able to call to mind a place for their games with a vivacity no one else could hope to compare to and it was fun- something he excelled in. He made all of their games, a playmaker in setting the stage and lifting another world to blanket the dusty playground and wrap them all in colours.

But his friends have grown out of such things. Their thirst for the imaginary cooled and then tapered off entirely whilst Gabriel’s hunger for it only grew and grew until he could travel miles in the blink of an eye, drumming fingers playing a marching song to set the pace and propel him onwards.

Why be here when he can be elsewhere? Why would he ever choose otherwise, when elsewhere was a paradise unlike any other. Any colour, any texture, any smell or taste, and all blended and whirled together to spill a storm of yearning through his waking days.

Maybe he could write, he thinks. He is sixteen and thinks that, maybe this is why he does this. Maybe this is something that is normal after all, if he can put what he is feeling to paper and share it with others. If it is productive, it is good, after all. If it creates something tangible, if it is something that others can use and enjoy then it is something worthy; it has value. When it is just for him, it is strange; adults watching with dark and wary eyes, muttering condemnations that shackle him with labels.

It is the way of things.

But writing is harder than it looks. Words only describe so much and are too flat, too rigid to encompass the entirety of what he feels and sees. On paper, the world of his daydreams regresses to shapes like the coloured blocks he used to love as a child- useful for building something, yes, but ultimately something controlled and solid, changeable but unmoving and limited. Gabriel’s imagination isn’t like this, it is constantly new and fluid, forever showing him more and more and more with a detail words can never capture, never truly express.

He dreams of orchards, of fruit so orange and full and clear to him that he can see the speckles of dust in the dips of its skin, the dew that sits on the leaves in the morning. He feels himself, brown, large hand scarred with mistakes and history, close about it and pull; feels the tension as it resists on the branch before a gasp of a break. The leaves of the tree swing back and the fruit is full and firm and he can taste it, taste how full it will be when he peels back the skin and bites down to flood his mouth with sweetness.

He feels air that is cool and tastes of salt, wind that pushes and tugs at his clothes, of a floor of wood that moves and bucks in angry waters of grey and blue. Unknown jungles where the air is thick and hot, arid plains where the sun scorches the rocks, and damp misty hills that whistle ancient secrets across the miles and twist his heart until it breaks.

What is that.

Why is that.

He doesn’t know.

When Gabriel is eighteen, the foster home he is in releases him.

‘You can stay, if you want,’ Anita gives him a measured look, up and down, from beneath her eyelashes, ‘but you’ll need to start paying rent. Benefits stop for you now so I can’t keep you about for free.’

Gabriel blinks at her, ‘But, I don’t have a job.’

Anita’s face remains impassive, ‘Then you’ll have to find one.’

‘How?’ he is angry, all of a sudden. Older children had never stuck about after their eighteenth birthday but he always imagined that they had left of their own accord, that they couldn’t wait to leave. Now he wonders how many of them were forced out, where they went, ‘I’ve never had one before.’

‘Your school should do something about helping you find one. Or, here,’ she reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out her e-tab. The paint of the old thing is chipped but it still works; the screen flashes bright and the contrast with the dark office room washes her face flat and white in the glow. After a moment, she holds out the tab to him, ‘there are some programmes about. Take a look at them and sign up to some.’

Gabriel doesn’t take it and her arm hangs there, suspended and stiff between them. Eventually, she sets down the tab and pushes it towards him, ‘I’ll give you two months, if you want to stay. You should be able to find something in that time.’

‘What do I do if I can’t find anything?’ there is a tightness in his chest. He does not like it here, does not really even like her but the taste of betrayal is thick on his tongue and catches in the back of his throat to prick at his lungs, ‘what do I do? This isn’t fair.’

Anita looks at him, hard and cold, ‘Life isn’t fair. The quicker you learn that, the better off you’ll be.’ With that she motions with her head towards the door behind him and tabs on her computer, bringing it back to life.

The conversation is over.

Gabriel clenches his jaw, spins about and opens the door. The e-tab he leaves on her desk.

He moves his way through the house and out to the street. Night has fallen and the glow from their fat, orange sun hangs warm and faded behind the horizon. It looks like a painting; abstract- not real. The cut of the skyline is wrong, too sharp and small and alien all at once and he hurts with the urge to close his eyes and drift away on the tide of his dreams to somewhere better.

He can’t. He needs to do something, needs to go somewhere, needs to eat. Food machines are everywhere, but they cost money that he doesn’t have and the fear of hunger for the tasteless pushes him into the tangle of streets.

Gabriel is twenty-two. He found a job, eventually. It was the spur of the moment, out of desperation, but it’s not all that bad, in the end. He is a builder.

The monotony of manual work allows him to loosen his mind, lift himself out of his body as he lays dun-coloured bricks down in careful order, one by one by one. He builds a home under his hands but his mind is away, far far into grasses so tall they tickle his cheeks and he reconstructs himself into a reality he can control.

This brick can be the dungeon. This brick can be a turret. Gabriel can be elsewhere.

This is enough. It is enough, he tells himself. It is more than enough; if he gets better, he can actually do that, actually build the castles of his dreams. Maybe he could be an artist, or an architect, maybe he can design a whole new colony that has fancy machines to replicate wind or bodies of water to recreate a sea deep and blue enough to have come straight from the Earth itself.

When he thinks about this too deeply, it hurts.

The ancient planet sings to him from the files of history, a stunning colourful thing that hangs suspended in time. Oh, what he would give to be there. To see the oceans and feel the grasses of fields that are somehow so very green. What he would give for the possibility see it, just once. Any part of it.

The pictures he’s seen, the videos and the stories that are collected into binary are the only things left of humanity’s original home- something so colourful and incredible that it is hauntingly impossible. Gabriel’s dreams must be modelled on it, he knows, they must have a grain of truth in them because only his imagination can compare to the flat, coded remains of Earth. Nothing man-made can be so beautiful, nothing built by mortal hands produce such unkempt beauty.

Gabriel feels like he was born in the wrong time, made and moulded to explore something older and wilder where he can go and go and go and always see something new, unending and natural. This lost opportunity, this missed moment and incorrect assignment whips a storm in his heart and brings tears to his eyes but passes, eventually. He is not a man for regret, not a man to dwell on what he cannot have and he consoles himself with the idea that maybe, one day, he can help to build a new world that rivals the one in his dreams.

When Gabriel is twenty-four, one of the human colonies fails. As the colony collapses, life systems screaming into the vacuum, the population spills into the sky, desperate to get away however they can. As one of their closest neighbours, despite the distance, Gabriel’s planet catches a lot of them.

They arrive in huge patchwork ships- cobbled together with speed, not precision. They’re falling apart and can barely cling on and the people they contain are scared, panicked things; exhausted by the constant and very near threat of death they press beseechingly into their new home. His planet is full, really, too full to take on so many but they have nowhere else to go, no place else to stop and so they flock into streets and public buildings, cawing for food and water and housing.

As a builder, Gabriel is in high demand and is immediately put to work. Hastily constructed houses spring up, growing the towns outwards and into the desert. There are no domes here- Gabriel’s planet can sustain itself and for the new arrivals this is bewildering.

Gabriel begins to talk to one of them. She is old, feather light skin wrinkled and soft, and she flutters like a bird about the building site, eager to offer help in any way she can. It’s sweet and Gabriel softens to her instantly, sensing she feels a displacement similar to what he does. A kinship of the unbelonging.

Every afternoon she arrives and as soon as his shift ends, he lowers himself to the ground and goes in search of her. They take tea together in the shade and talk existence to rights.

‘You remind me of my grandson,’ she says one day. Gabriel avoids talking about her planet or her family, or anything to do with what brought her here. He does not know what parts of it will cause her pain and he has no wish to do that to her. She must feel enough when she is alone, he knows, when she has time to mourn what she has lost and it is not his place to bring that sadness to other aspects of her day. She never offers anything and so the subject lies between them, an elephant in the void of space.

When she says this, then, he is surprised and curious, ‘Oh? How so?’

She smiles, ‘He’s a dreamer too. Always thinking of things when he should be focusing. He makes a similar face to the one you do.’

Gabriel blushes, ashamed to have been caught drifting off whilst in her company.

She sees his embarrassment and laughs, ‘Oh no, don’t worry- it’s fine. I used to love watching him float away somewhere. I used to say he was going off to Neverland.’

‘That’s a nice description for it,’ it’s an old Earthen story Gabriel was fond of growing up- a tale of a journey to somewhere else, ‘What was his name?’

‘Is,’ she corrects firmly and Gabriel nods apologetically, ‘Is. His name is Peter.’

‘Peter,’ the name fits a fellow daydreamer. The boy who never grew up. Gabriel decides to ask, tentatively, ‘Where is he?’

The old lady looks wistful, ‘Earth,’ she says with a sigh, ‘He and his parents managed to get passage to Earth but I wasn’t able to. We’re too far out to send any communication- I don’t want to think about what they believe became of me.’

Gabriel blinks once. Twice. Tries to speak, ‘Earth?’

She frowns at him, ‘Yes, don’t you know?’ Realisation hits and she shakes her head, ‘Oh, I forget that you don’t hear much this far out. Earth was declared habitable a few months ago. They’re starting a founding colony there to see if humans can survive there again.’

‘Wh- what?’

She looks at him, concerned, ‘Are you alright? You’ve gone awfully pale.’

Gabriel can’t really understand her, her voice feels like its coming from one end of an endless tunnel and his heart is hammering too loudly in his chest to focus on her. He stands, shaky, and she clutches at his shirt hem, ‘Gabriel? Gabriel, what’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know,’ his heart pounds canon fire, a boom boom boom that disorientates him. He smells smoke, smells fire, smells death, ‘I thought- I thought it was gone, Earth was gone.’

‘It was, but they travelled to investigate about a decade ago and they’ve been researching it- dear please sit down.’

She tugs at him but he shakes his head, a ghost of understanding in his mind that slips away like silk, ‘Can we go? Who can go- can I go?’

She looks scared, ‘Yes, but there’s a waiting list, you need to get your name down- Gabriel!’

---

He doesn’t wait for her to finish. He takes off into the centre of town to the public buildings, pushing his way through crowds to get there faster. He won’t waste one second more, will grab hold of what acutely feels like a delicate second chance with both hands and won't dare to let go.

AN:

This was my first time writing Portugal as a character with a voice and it was both challenging and very fun to do. There are so many amazing Portugal writers out there to inspire me and I hope I have done him justice for any of you who read this!

The full fic can be found here on A03. It doesn’t include Portugal, but explores this AU a whole lot more with a different cast of characters.

Thanks for reading!

#aph portugal #hws portugal #hetalia #aph #hws #hetalia fanfiction #hetalia fanfic #my writing

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umbraastaff · 4 years

Text

Till Death, Don’t Let’s Start

Chapter 1

“This is kind of a bad time.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Barry,” says the possessed collection of boulders that’s about to punch him. “Were you hoping I’d come back when it’s more convenient for you?”

The incoming stone ‘fist’ collides with a skeletal hand. It’s larger than the lich itself, and yet it stops in place, with a shower of red sparks where they make contact. “A lich can dream.”

“You’ll have plenty of time for that in the Astral Plane,” Kravitz says, trying again to slam down. This time, he meets an invisible shield and keeps pushing. He can feel the magic that’s blocking him, and it is unyielding.

“Right. Yeah. There’s big magic here,” Barry continues, as though Kravitz is an idea soundboard and not a deadly enemy. His free hand--the one that isn’t blocking Kravitz--keeps waving in complicated patterns, some of which the reaper can recognize. Divinations, spells not unlike Detect Magic. “Thought it was the--a--a grand relic, but it doesn’t feel right.”

“And yet you’re sticking around.”

“Well, I--Wouldn’t you want to know what it is?” Barry stares intently at the ground. “I know I’ve felt something like this before, but--but not here. I just can’t place it...”

A flurry of gigantic stones comes raining down on the lich. An outward blast of force repels them all. He huffs like it’s an inconvenience.

“Look, can’t you just...” his idly casting hand completes another divination. “...Wait. Do that again.”

“I--” That’s enough to bewilder Kravitz out of the next strike. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s--I think it’s reacting to our--look, I know you don’t give a shit. Just do your normal thing, easy! Throw more rocks, or something.”

Kravitz considers this. Chances are a hundred to one that Barry’s just doing some ineffable scientific bullshit, and it isn’t going to affect Kravitz at all. But he’s also a very smart lich, and it could just as easily be a trap. “...No.”

“What--okay--don’t hit me, then?”

“Are you really going for reverse psychology, after that?”

“No offense, my man, but you’ve fallen for worse.” Barry sighs, and he raises a hand into the air. Red lightning starts to gather at his palm, blindlingly lit and erratically sparking.

Kravitz steps back, cautious. “Excuse me? Give me one example.”

“That’d be telling,” Barry says coyly. “Anyway, no worries. I’ll do it myself.”

He slams his fist into the ground. The sheer volume of necrotic energy that sweeps through Kravitz makes him want to retch. He sees plantlife ripple miles away, shuddering from its power.

“WHAT in the HELL, Barry Bluejeans!”

“Shush!” Barry says quickly, casting another divination. “Ha! Yes!”

“Are you quite done,” Kravitz snaps, and doesn’t wait for an answer before hurtling another magicked rock.

It shatters as it hits the robe. Barry, still deep in concentration, doesn’t even flinch. “...Oh. No.”

“No?”

“No!” Barry repeats, flying up towards Kravitz’s construct ‘head.’ “We--We gotta go, bud, we--”

The ground begins to shake beneath Kravitz, rumbling and shifting in ways that feel unnatural for an earthquake. Flat earth starts arching into a hill, cracking chunks of dirt and felling trees as it does.

Kravitz starts to get the distinct feeling that he forgot something about this place, something from a terribly long time ago.

“--We gotta MOVE! KRAVITZ! Get outta those fuckin’ rocks and GO!”

“You think you can scare me with some Thaumaturgy-level, hokey?” Kravitz taunts, but it isn’t with all the confidence it should have. Then Barry reaches through him.

Kravitz feels his soul, his very essence, dragged forcibly into a vulnerable state. Outside of the protection of his body, held firm by someone who could destroy him from here. Instead, though, Barry flings Kravitz into the sky.

Disoriented, Kravitz follows his instincts, and cover manifests around the ball of light. His skeleton forms, and then the rest of his projected form. Below, the rocks he was possessing all fall apart, crashing down into the grass and rolling away as the earth keeps moving.

From below them both, there’s a deep rumbling. The volume is overwhelming, destructive, and it takes a few seconds to pinpoint what it is: a roar.

“BARRY FUCKING BLUEJEANS, IS THAT A--”

“Dragon! It’s a dragon, I-I fucked up, I woke it up!” Barry says quickly, panicked. “It’s gonna be mad at me, but if you get outta here, it might not pick up on your goddamn--scent or whatever it picks up on, I don’t care--”

“Sounds like we’re on the same side, then,” Kravitz says, still midway through his effort to regain his composure.

“I--what--you’re actually gonna help me?”

Kravitz summons his scythe. “No.”

“Oh, I see. You meant the--the, uh. You meant you’re allying with the dragon,” Barry says, flying further away. “Which is stupid, by the way! You’re fuckin’ insufferable!”

“Then quit! I can get us both away from the dragon, you know,” Kravitz offers.

Scales start showing between the breaking chunks of earth. They shine bright red in the sunlight.

“IT’S FUCKING CHROMATIC, KRAVITZ!”

Kravitz isn’t stupid. He knows how dangerous a dragon can be. But he also knows that he himself has a foolproof means of escape. And if Barry’s dealing with an entire dragon in the meantime, it could throw him off just enough to give Kravitz an opening. All he’s ever needed was one successful swipe.

The dragon rears its furious head, finally breaks free of the earth it slept under for centuries, maybe millennia. The lich that woke it immediately has its attention, and the attention of a dragon is something one never wants.

Barry dives and weaves between blasts of fire and gnashes of giant teeth. Kravitz keeps out of the dragon’s direct line of sight, but when he sees an opening, he flies in.

It’s the fastest and most serious way he’s ever seen Barry deflect him. His scythe goes flying out of his own hands, and a large chest manifests in the air just long enough to snap shut over the weapon. Then it’s gone.

“Nice try,” Kravitz says, summoning the scythe again. It doesn’t come.

Barry must have some powerful wards on that extradimensional box, if a reaper can’t summon a soulbound weapon from it.

“Well, that was my exit,” Kravitz says bitterly, now considerably more on edge. He stays further back from Barry and the dragon, trying to formulate a plan to deal with this without his scythe.

“I will make you a portal myself if you’ll fucking go through it!”

“What’s your goal here?” Kravitz retorts. Admittedly, it’s a little mesmerizing, watching Barry fly around in an almost practiced routine. Like he’s done this before, even though no dragons have threatened Faerun for far longer than he has existed. Still, even a lich like him won’t ever take down a dragon. “How are you going to stop this thing on your own?”

“Oh, like you’d suddenly up and make yourself valuable help?” Fire nicks him. “Shit!”

“Well, I wasn’t just going to leave a fucking dragon loose on the world after I caught you, and I’m still not going to do it now!”

“I-I can’t trust you,” Barry says, and he has the nerve to sound sad. “Stop.”

Kravitz suddenly finds that his body doesn’t much want to move. He feels, actually, that he’d be quite better off if he stopped, and didn’t move a single muscle, even though every other thought in his mind is screaming that he needs to move. He has the feeling that, if he had a need for air right now, his lungs wouldn’t even expand.

The dragon is no fool, but Barry can at least keep it going in circles. He throws strings of magic off himself, luring the dragon upwards, and striking at its neck and underbelly. Then it’ll face him again, and he’ll shoot into its mouth. Repeat.

Kravitz, forced to watch, sees the pattern complete a few times, though Barry’s smart enough to change up how he executes it each time.

When they come towards the reaper once more, he sees the dragon break pattern. Its head levels with Barry early, while he’s still facing away from it.

“Careful!” Kravitz shouts instinctively, drawing Barry’s attention.

And the dragon’s.

The dragon faces Kravitz, and now he can see the fire it was building up in its jaws to attack Barry. He can see its eyes, too: it is far too furious to care about attacking someone other than its target. But his terror won’t allow him to move.

Barry flies in front of Kravitz. Kravitz sees his skeletal face, hollow and shaded. And then all he sees is fire.

It goes right through Barry, but it doesn’t hit Kravitz nearly as hard as it should. It is searing, yes, painful beyond imagining, but it does not decimate him the way dragon fire should.

The same cannot quite be said for Barry. His form flickers and glows something horrible. The flaming energy boils from within, threatening to destroy him, and he... spins around.

The energy flies back out of himself, now in enormous tethers of red lightning that coil around the beast. The dragon’s flight gets closer to the ground, until it crashes into the ground, sleepy or subdued or both.

But Barry looks worse than Kravitz has ever seen him. He’s always so composed for a lich, and now he’s only barely holding himself together. But it still isn’t like what he’s seen from other liches. He’s focused: his mind is present.

He’s just... discombobulating. Falling apart from that blast, and desperately trying to keep it together.

Kravitz can see the dragon on the ground, thrashing and struggling against its bindings, soon to be free once more.

“Krav--Kravitz,” Barry says urgently, his voice splitting and shaking and fighting so hard to stay comprehensible. “I--I know we’re not--it’s--please,” he tries, like he’s aiming to speak a whole hour’s worth of words when he has mere moments.

He’s coming undone. He grabs Kravitz’s hand, and it’s now that Kravitz realizes he’s allowed to move again. He lets Barry take it anyway, even though it would be so easy to brush off that feeble, shaking grasp.

He feels something cool pressed over his index finger, and when he looks down to see it, something hits his chest. He’s shoved back, and he sees the rim of a portal, and realizes he’s being pushed through one of Barry’s making.

“Barry--” the sky is the same. They’re still on the Material Plane, just a different part of it. A place where the dragon isn’t. (Yet.)

Barry takes his hand again, claps both skeletal hands around it. “Please don’t fuck me over on this one, Krav,” he says, and then his form completely dissipates. Barry is gone.

Kravitz stares at where Barry was for a few moments. And then he looks around. He’s on the outskirts of some city, now on the ground. Not making a spectacle by popping out of a portal in the sky, at least.

He tries for his scythe. It still won’t come.

And on his oustretched hand, on the index finger, there’s a ring. Pale tracings of a tiny, complex sigil encircle the rim. And in the center, there’s a small, red gemstone.

[Part 2]

#the adventure zone #taz balance #taz kravitz #barry bluejeans #mine #writes #my writing #tbc?#till death dont lets start

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zeta-in-de-walls · 4 years

Text

Brief summary of the Dream SMP S2 + S3

Hey guys, I’ve been meaning to make another helpful recap! [Here’s my summary of the 1st season of the SMP].

Just to be clear, I consider S1 to be all the events up to the Nov 16th war. S2 are the events from Nov17th-Jan 20th. S3 is the current arc

And like before, I mostly watch Tommy’s POV so I’m only going to cover his storyline. Sorry! I won’t be touching much on the Red egg, or Fundy’s story or Quackity’s stuff. You can easily follow Tommy’s story through his vods channel, as every stream is archived there. The roleplaying is much more prominent these days so this is going to be wordy but I’ll try to be as succinct as possible and keep it up to date.

=> Tubbo, now President, commits to rebuilding New L’Manburg. It’s on stilts, leaving the crater below as a memorial of the events that went down. Wilbur’s ghost appears, a friendly ghost who can only remember the good things from Wilbur’s life. He commits himself to rebuilding L’Manburg, wanting to make others happy.

=> Quackity wants to go after Technoblade in revenge for what he did to L’Manburg. Technoblade has retreated to distant lands but Quackity fears he will come back again if they do not stop him. Tubbo shoots his suggestion down, emphasising that he wants peace above all. Fundy, also part of L’Manburg’s Govt, sides with Quackity though they listen to Tubbo as he’s the President.

=> Tommy, now Vice-President again, moves into his old house. He meets several of the new members of the SMP, including Philza, ConnorEatsPants and CaptainPuffy - while he’s not involved in rebuilding he does make an effort to bond with some of the new members. After so long in exile, he wants to focus on his own goals and have fun now that L’Manburg is safe.

=>BadBoyHalo organises a funeral for JSchlatt, who is now deceased. Rather than being respectful, everyone messes around, stealing his remains and making fun of the former tyrant.

=> Vikkstar and Lazarbeam also join the server. Tommy makes a bit of a bad first impression. Next another new member joins, Ranboo. Tommy invites him to go prank George’s house: they dress up in disguises and go rob it in the middle of the night, griefing it some for good measure. After Tommy logs off, Dream logs on.

=> Dream builds a huge obsidian wall around L’Manburg - notably with far harsher borders. Everyone is confused and appalled. Dream indicates that Tommy’s to blame. Dream’s using George’s house as an excuse to challenge L’Manburg’s authority by taking offense to Tommy’s grief.

=> The next day, the cabinet speaks to Tommy and, feeling attacked, he denies everything. They take him and Ranboo to court with Dream threatening to build the walls even higher if Tommy is not punished. Tommy eventually confesses when they start blaming Ranboo too and Tommy insists that Ranboo had nothing to do with it.

=> They hold a meeting. Tommy is to be punished. Tubbo tries to argue for probation where Tommy is stripped of his power and has to be on best behaviour for 3 weeks. Dream would prefer exile but listens. If Tommy were to break probation, he would double the size of the obsidian walls, trapping L’Manburg further, and have guards patrolling the walls, preventing the citizens from leaving. Tommy is outraged at this, finding Dream’s actions entirely unfair.

=> He realises that Dream doesn’t have that much on them where Tommy still has Spirit - the remains of Dream’s dead horse which he once traded Tommy’s disc to Skeppy for. He threatens Dream - take down the walls or he destroys Spirit. Dream goes silent... then doubles the obsidian walls, stating he cares about nothing anymore except Tommy’s music discs and that he’s going to trap L’Manburg forever - it can be independent but never free.

=> They have another meeting. Tommy wants to call Technoblade and fight Dream as he’s oppressing them. Quackity and Fundy agree with this plan, not wanting to comply with Dream. Tubbo refuses, wanting to avoid a badly-thought out war and agrees to exile Tommy. Everyone’s shocked. As Tubbo is the President, it was his call. Tommy is lead away by Dream, accompanied by Ghostbur. Dream promises to take down the walls, now that L’Manburg has complied.

=> Quackity says that they need to get respect back as currently they have no power. He again suggests a ‘butcher army’ where they go after Technoblade as justice for L’Manburg and, this time, Tubbo agrees.

=> Meanwhile, Tommy is lead to a faraway land; his exile forbids him from going to any already inhabited land in the SMP. Dream destroys all his things and he has to start fresh. Tommy feels betrayed by everyone despite Ghostbur’s attempts to cheer him up; they call the land Logstedshire.

=> BadboyHalo visits Tommy and gives him a new music disc - chirp. (He wants to offer more, but Dream stops him.) Dream arrives to watch Tommy, making him destroy his iron armour and follows him around while Tommy tries to mine and build his new base. Tommy makes a tent as he doesn’t want this to be his permanent home. Ghostbur gives him and Tubbo compasses pointing to each other.

=> Exile takes a toll on Tommy. His humour grows darker with more references to death. Others visit but it feels disingenuous to Tommy. He feels lonely. Dream keeps visiting and destroying his armour and other things. But Tommy appreciates the company all the same. One time he has a hallucination of Tubbo visiting. (Tubbo’s too guilty to visit.)

=> Tommy decides to have a beach party so people will visit to see him but he only tells Dream and Ghostbur and Dream secretly sabotages the invites, sending Ghostbur away. When no one but Dream shows up, Tommy gets extremely depressed and angry, destroying the bridge he built through the nether. He decides Dream must be his only friend and even convinces Dream to give him a trident.

=> Jack Manifold visits while Tommy is feeling depressed and Tommy spleefs him into lava in rage before regretting it as he realises this dark mindset is unhealthy. Jack begins to hate Tommy, secretly wanting revenge.

=> Tommy is losing hope, feeling like he will die. He makes a secret room from Dream full of stuff he never wants to lose including pictures of Tubbo and other keepsakes. Dream discovers this room and grows furious, blowing up Logsteadshire and destroys all his things, his armour, his diamonds, everything. The only thing Tommy keeps safe is the pictures of Tubbo. Tommy apologises repeatedly, begging Dream to stay his friend, that he’s so lonely as Dream forbids anyone from ever visiting, destroying the nether portal.

=> Tommy nearly decides to end his life but reconsiders as he realises that Dream was just here to watch him, not be his friend. He cannot give up hope and let him win. So he runs away, and eventually ends up at Technoblade’s house in the wilderness.

=> In L’manburg Quackity sets off his Butcher army plan and they force Philza to tell them where Techno lives, placing his under house arrest for helping a known criminal. From Philza they take a compass that leads them to Techno’s house. Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy and Ranboo all fight Techno who is prepared with potions and gear. Thanks to Dream, he also has a totem of undying. Quackity threatens Techno’s horse, Carl, and Techno surrenders, giving them his weapons and armour, letting them lead him to L’Manburg where they immediately execute him, skipping a trial. Thanks to the totem, Techno lives. He escapes into the sewers with help from Dream and Punz. Quackity finds him but Techno kills him with a netherite pickaxe and flees home on Carl. He swears revenge, determined to absolute destroy L’Manburg for daring to attack him.

=> L’Manburg decides instead that their true enemy is Dream and plan a festival to catch and kill him. Ranboo visits Techno and gives him back his armour. Tubbo visits Logsteadshire and thinks Tommy is dead.

=> Tommy sees Techno who takes pity on him given that Tommy was exiled and now he’s on the run from Dream. Techno shows him his vault containing 150 wither skulls with which he wants to use to destroy L’Manburg. Tommy is horrified and doesn’t want to destroy his old home in spite of his conflicted feelings. He just wants to get his music discs back. Techno suggests working with him and he’ll help get the discs back if Tommy does some minor terrorism with him. Tommy agrees.

=> Dream turns up, looking for Tommy. Techno hides him but notes that he does owe Dream a favour for saving his life. Tommy is very confused about Dream - seeing him as both a friend and enemy, obviously emotionally vulnerable after exile. He fixates on the discs as the one goal that looks achievable. He is reliant on Techno for protection and looks to him for what to do, having no confidence of his own. Techno lets him have armour and golden apples.

=> Techno and Tommy commit acts of terrorism in L’Manburg. They kidnap Connor, torture him a bit and get Tubbo to exchange him for Techno’s crossbow. Tubbo was shocked to see Tommy was alive while Tommy calls Tubbo a monster, after hearing that he tried to kill his new friend Technoblade. He is conflicted though even as Techno shares his negative opinion on L’Manburg. Dream confronts them and Techno protects Tommy, though he offers his favour. Dream refuses, saving the favour, and leaves Tommy alone for now.

=> More terrorism, this time Techno releases a wither while Tommy threatens Fundy and Ranboo, getting back Techno’s sword and axe while accidentally scaring Fundy so much he drowns and even Techno is alarmed at his aggressiveness. Only afterwards does Tommy reflect that he’s going far too far and this might not be right. Techno says he’s beginning to respect him where originally he was useless and tells him his real plan to destroy L’Manburg. Tommy is scared. He reluctantly agrees, then backtracks and says he only wants the discs, not to hurt Tubbo but he is very uncertain.

=> The festival occurs. Tubbo and co. host it waiting for Dream to arrive. Tommy and Techno head over, seeing a scary prison Dream commissioned on the way. When they get there Dream appears but rather than take off his armour, he starts rebuilding the obsidian walls. It’s apparently because of Tommy again.

=> The community house has been blown up. Dream blames Tommy and everyone seems to believe him. He says that he considers L’Manburg responsible for Tommy’s actions unless Tubbo gives up Mellohi, which Tommy gave to him as a sign of trust.

=> Tommy appears and says that he didn’t do it. He’s hurt that Tubbo doesn’t believe him and angry at everyone. He and Tubbo and up fighting while the rest of the server watches. They’re screaming at each other until finally Tommy says that the discs were worth more than he ever was. They both freeze, digesting what he just said.

=> Tommy regrets and says to Tubbo to give up the disc to Dream, saying he’s becoming worse than everyone he hated. Then he says he’s on Tubbo’s side, on L’Manburg’s side - because all his violent behaviour was wrong and he should not let his trauma justify anything.

=> Technoblade says Tommy should come with him, that he’s siding with the enemy after all he’s done for him. Tommy’s mind is made up. Techno accepts this and demands his axe back, saying he’s no longer worthy of it. Tommy refuses, saying he decides that he is worthy. Techno leaves, saying either way he’s going to destroy L’Manburg and that Tommy’s made a mistake.

=> Dream calls Tubbo the worst president ever, explaining how he was pretending to be friends with Tubbo for it and now that he has the disc, he’s going to destroy L’Manburg with Techno tomorrow. He also says that Ranboo is a traitor. Dream leaves.

=> Tommy is in an awkward spot, but apologises to the surrounding crowd. He swears that he didn’t destroy the Community house and that everyone needs to put their differences aside for now because they don’t have time to argue or hold grudges. They need to band together to save L’Manburg from Dream and Technoblade. Settle their differences afterwards. Everyone has to work together to save the day. He believes in L’Manburg still.

=> Quackity talks to Tubbo, saying they should punish Ranboo, Tubbo refuses, saying he will not punish an innocent citizen and will not be pushed around by Quackity anymore. He’s going to be forgiving. Quackity says he’s going to leave L’Manburg for this though still agrees to help in the fight tomorrow.

=> Niki, is angry and doesn’t believe Tommy. She does not want to work with him and doesn’t care about L’Manburg anymore. She’d rather watch it crumble than work with Tommy. Fundy notes that no one likes Tommy but they should band together just while they have a common goal. The next day though, he reconsiders. Why bother trying to save a nation that’s never done anything? Why bother helping others?

=> Ranboo is frustrated saying that this whole fight is stupid and having sides caused the problems in the first place. Having a nation is the problem. He’s friends with people regardless of who they’re with. He says Dream is the enemy but is too scared to fight Dream as he’s too powerful. It’s pointless.

=> Punz says to help L’Manburg but he’s secretly a spy working with Dream to gain people’s trust.

=> Sapnap is conflicted as he doesn’t want to side against Dream. Tommy speaks to him the next day after searching the ocean for his lost fish Mars. He returns Mars to Sapnap saying he wants them to be friends and put aside all the betrayals and wars of the past. Sapnap agrees to help Tommy. Getting Sapnap to release Mars was wrong as hurting other just because you yourself was hurt is wrong, Tommy has decided. Tommy likewise forgives Tubbo for exiling him, saying it was justified and he should never have hurt Tubbo and teamed with Technoblade just because he was hurt and traumatised.

=> The war happens. Few turn up to fight. Fundy has sabotaged their supplies while Niki burns the L’Mantree. Techno starts his assault. Half a dozen Withers are released and they wreck havoc. Tommy and Tubbo fight together, helped by Sapnap, Ponk, Quackity, Punz, Jack Manifold and Eret. They are no match for Techno, Philza, Dream, a dozen withers and a huge pack of dogs.

=> Finally Dream releases tons of TNT, obliterating the nation. Tommy screams at Techno, saying how he never really considered him a friend and this was a betrayal while Techno counters that Tommy betrayed him, seeing him as a weapon rather than a person where Techno helped him and would have fought anyone for him. Tommy calls him selfish for being unable to compromise his views even a little, that he couldn’t have just let them live in peace but had to destroy what he loved.

=> Dream talks to Tommy too, saying that this was just fun for him, and wants to continue toying with Tommy. Tommy swears he won’t give up and Dream says he looks forward to doing this again. L’Manburg’s story is over, but theirs is not.

=> Quackity says to trust no one; all this was too far. Tommy agrees, planning on going after Dream and the discs once more to finish things. They agree that L’Manburg is beyond repair.

=> Ghostbur appears, he asks Phil why he did this, why he would destroy all that Ghostbur built and let his sheep, Friend, die. Phil just says he’ll understand some day. Ghostbur wants to die. Bringing back Wilbur will end his own existence he believes.

=> Tommy and Tubbo move in together, planning to fight Dream together after all he’s done to manipulate them.

=> Ranboo is anxious, he is hearing a voice that sounds like Dream but might just be a memory he’s trying to repress - the voice says that it was he who destroyed the community house. Ranboo goes to live with Philza and Techno, who offer him a home after destroying his house in L’Manburg, now just a crater.

=> Jack and Niki both want to make Tommy pay. Jack plans to get close to Tubbo in order to hurt Tommy.

=> Philza, Ranboo and Eret try to resurrect Wilbur - Tommy sees and is very conflicted as it means killing Ghostbur, who Tommy is very fond of and he’s wary of who Wilbur became. Their first attempt does not succeed but they’re going to try again.

=>Dream destroys Tommy’s house. He asks for Tommy and Tubbo to meet him. Alone. It’s about the discs.

=> Punz has been feigning loyalty to the SMP but was a spy for Dream. However, Tommy had secretly dropped off a chest of valuables in his house, realising he’s suspicious, and ask Punz to help him.

=>Tommy and Tubbo meet Dream alone on a mountain. They fight but are overwhelmed by Dream who makes Tommy choose between Tubbo and his disc. Tommy chooses Tubbo (and the disc turned out to be a fake anyway). Dream continues threatening tubbo, saying he will kill him if they don’t both comply and makes them both drop their armour and items before destroying it all.

=>Dream takes them to a secret vault he has made, containing items of attachment from everyone - it has the disc, Beckerson, Friend the sheep and spaces for more things he wants to collect, such as Sam’s dog Fran, Punz’s shulker box and Techno’s horse, Carl. He also adds the axe of Peace to the wall, which he had taken from Tommy. He then reveals he needs Tommy to be alive and get attached to things and make others get attached so he can collect those things and gain power. Dream has removed all attachments form his own life and believes taking others is the way to gain absolute control. For that he needs Tommy.

=>Dream plans to kill Tubbo and throw Tommy in an inescapable prison. There’s nothing they can do. Then Punz arrives, having heeded Tommy’s message, brining with him the cavalry as a dozen other players come with him, such as Sapnap, Eret, Jack, Niki, Sam and Quackity. They protect Tommy and Tubbo, leaving Dream in trouble.

=>Tommy goes up to Dream, makes him drop his armour as he’d done to Tommy so many times and gets Dream to reveal how he blew up the community house and his manipulative plans, even talking about his exile. Then Tommy kills Dream twice more, (taking two lives as he’d once done to Tommy) and considers killing him a final time so they’ll be free forever.

=>Dream begs him to let him go and offers the secret to bringing someone back to life - which means they could bring back Wilbur. Tommy reluctantly agrees and Sam and Sapnap take him and throw Dream in the inescapable prison.

=>Finally free, Tommy and Tubbo return home. They have the discs back ad listen to them at the bench. Wilbur talks to them - the real Wilbur from beyond the grave, apparently briefly able to communicate after their brush with death, not Ghostbur. He asks about them and they tell him how they want to bring him back. Wilbur is angry, having been content with death. They’re not quite sure what they might have done...

[This is considered the end of Season 2, the disc saga finale being the conclusion. What follows is season 3].

=> The next day, Tommy visits Dream in prison. It’s an impressive structure. Dream is rather subdued and Tommy asks him to write some novels for him. Now that he’s free from Dream, Tommy decides to start a new project for himself: building a hotel so when war breaks out and people inevitably lose their homes, they can stay at his hotel. With all the blown up buildings, the SMP needs some new central buildings, he feels.

=>Tommy asks Sam to build the hotel for him. Sam agrees but asks Tommy to pay him and also to do tasks for him. He becomes a new character, ‘Sam Nook’ like Tom Nook from animal crossing and even speaks in animalish while Tommy does various tasks for him.

=>Meanwhile, red vines have been growing throughout the SMP. They come from a mysterious red egg. They’ve actually been around for a while, but only now is Tommy, and many other characters, becoming aware of this. The egg had spread through the SMP and mind-controlled Bad and later Skeppy, but they’d managed to contain and stop it the first time. Bad got infected again, (because it had changed Skeppy and he wanted to be with him) and so he and Antfrost are now helping it spread once more.

=>Tommy investigates the egg, and finds he seems immune to its mind-controlling effects - most people like the egg or seem to hate it but he’s so far completely neutral and isn’t too concerned with stopping it. When Tubbo goes near it, it makes him cry. When Sam becomes ensnared by the egg, Tommy and Captain Puffy work together and help save him from it.

=> In Snowchester, Jack and Tubbo have been working on building nukes and decide to test them. Jack plans to kill Tommy by luring him to the test site, with Niki’s help. Jack and Niki’s plan nearly succeeds but they don’t get Tommy to the sit fast enough thanks to Tommy’s tendency to chatter and his distractable nature.

=> Tommy is unaware that they tried to kill him though he does feel slightly suspicious of Niki and how close he was to dying. Niki and Jack are disappointed with their failure but try to come up with another plan to kill Tommy.

=>Jack tries to get closer to Tommy by helping him at his hotel. Tommy begins to get suspicious of Jack’s odd behaviour. Meanwhile the egg is still spreading.

=> Sam Nook orders Tommy to go and destroy it and when Tommy goes over, he can hear the egg talking. Tommy nearly starts to destroy it but changes his mind as he doesn’t want to start another big war (many love the egg) - he just wants peace. He decides to take a piece of the egg to place in his hotel, hopefully contained to try and attract egg loyalists to his hotel.

=>The hotel is finished, ready for a grand opening. Tommy decides to visit Dream in prison one last time. He wants closure as he’s healing and doesn’t want Dream in his life anymore.

=>During Tommy’s visit to the prison, TNT can be heard going off in the prison. It seems there’s a problem. It’s suspected to be an attempt to breakout Dream (though the cell is secure) and the prison is put on lockdown with Tommy still trapped inside the cell with Dream. He’s stuck! Dream is very happy about this for now he has Tommy with him.

=>Sam is unable to work out what’s wrong with the prison. Until he finds the culprit he is reluctant to let Tommy out in case it allows Dream to escape. Meanwhile, Jack hears Tommy’s trapped and is ecstatic, realising his great enemy is trapped. He claims the hotel for himself. Much of the rest of the server seems unaware that Tommy is in trouble.

=>After a week, Tommy is angry and frustrated but remains resistant to Dream’s attempts to be friendly, refusing to let himself get manipulated again. Dream beings up the revive book and how he can bring back the day, and Tommy declares it a lie. Dream punches Tommy to death, which takes his last canon life.

=>Sam is devastated. He shares the news with others. Tubbo’s in denial. Jack’s reaction is interesting - initially celebrating but then he feels angry and cheated and empty and realises he’s not sure he wanted Tommy dead. Killing Tommy was the only thing that gave him purpose and now he has nothing. He burns down Jack Manifoldland, and continues with the BigInnit Hotel, still feeling conflicted. Quackity is also shocked by the news, stunned that Tommy could die. Ranboo becomes very pessimistic, feeling like no one on the server cares even as he blames himself for not caring. He’s not sure how much Tommy cared about him but starts to realise it was more than he thought when he finds the flower he first gave to Tommy saved in a chest - Ranboo had thought he’d thrown it away and never cared. Puffy is devastated, viewing the death as a personal failure. Bad and Ant celebrate, showing how much the egg has influenced them. Eret is shocked too, he’s sad as he’d always highly respected Tommy. Even Foolish is saddened though he hadn’t known Tommy well.

=>Tommy speaks to Wilbur in the afterlife, which seems to be a void. Time seems to flow differently there, its much slower. Wilbur still seems fond of Tommy and they keep each other company though Wilbur’s mindset remains a little worrying. He says how he and Tommy were both bad for the server and its better off without them. Tommy hates it in the afterlife, but Wilbur seems fine with it. Schlatt and Mexican Dream are also in the afterlife.

=>Dream resurrects Tommy. Tommy claims over a month has passed for him but for Dream its only been two days. H’s very disoriented. They are still both in the prison and no one else knows that Dream brought back Tommy. Tommy’s alive again but still trapped with Dream. He describes being dead as torturous and he’s sensory deprived.

=>Dream wants to kill Tommy more to learn more about Death, to Tommy’s horror. Dream calls himself a god, cause he can control death and Tommy feels a duty to kill him for the information to resurrect someone is in Dream’s head. But Tommy can’t, for he fears he’d be trapped alone in prison and he’s unsure if Sam would let him out after he killed Dream. Tommy can’t bear to be alone even as he hates what Dream’s doing and planning.

=>Dream intends to resurrect Wilbur. Tommy begs him not to, suggesting that Wilbur would be worse for the server in some way, that bringing him back would mean doom. Dream ignores his warnings, enjoying the power he possesses.

=> Sam finally lets Tommy out of prison and he’s doing badly. He’s afraid of taking damage and feels lost, not sure how to connect with anyway as he feels like they’re treating him differently. Sam is clearly hugely regretful but Tommy no longer trusts him. In fact, he wants a new warden for the prison, not feeling like Sam is capable of it anymore. Tommy finds out about Tubbo’s marriage to Ranboo and feels jealous and left out, seeing how his friends have moved on.

=> Jack is shocked to see him alive and they get into an argument, with Jack refusing to give back the hotel. Jack tries to confront him on everything, like how he wanted to kill Tommy and Tommy does not want to have that conversation at all, hating speaking about death so they leave on bad terms, Tommy not acknowledging Jack’s anger and Jack more angry than ever. He wants Tommy gone once more. He also decides to try and become prison Warden as well

=>Tommy has made it his goal to kill Dream because he’s certain he will escape and destroy everything he loves if they do nothing. He tells Quackity about the revive book.

=>Quackity meets Schlatt’s ghost in an underground cave, where the ghost is trapped after a cryptic message leading him there. He makes a deal with the ghost which might involve resurrection. He then goes to Sam and convinces him to let him in the prison to torture Dream. Sam agrees and every day Quackity visits the prison to torture Dream until he tells him about the secrets of revival.

=> Tommy visits Dream’s bunker from the disc saga finale, to see if the cow he saw was actually Henry, his old pet who died, now that he know the revive book is real. He and Ranboo carefully take both and Friend out of the vault. Then as they’re leading them back Tommy pulls too hard on the leash and Henry dies for a second time. Tommy is thrown into grief once more, feeling defeated and once again clings to the idea of killing Dream.

=> Tommy and Tubbo prepare once more. Tubbo shows Tommy how to build TNT cannons as they plan a way into prison. This is traumatic for Tommy and he is worried he’ll have a panic attack in prison, wrecking his plans so he tries out some exposure therapy, visiting some places of past trauma, including Logstedshire and a replica of Eret’s button room and an obisidian room they build to replicate the prison cell Tommy died in. Tommy find it all extremely stressful though he seems to forgive Eret after seeing his apology in the button room. The prison is hardest as he lasts no more than 30 seconds.

=>With invisibility potions prepared by Tubbo, Tommy sneaks into the prison, following Ghostbur who is visiting Dream (as part of Tommy’s plan) this goes well at first, Tommy making it all the way to Dream’s cell before he’s caught by Sam before he gets close enough to kill Dream. Sam is furious as Ghostbur is left beside Dream, in danger with Tommy helpless to do anything to save him.

=> Dream kills Ghostbur. Wilbur is revived, appearing in the spot he died. Sam tells Tommy he will kill him if he ever goes near the prison again, accusing him of causing this. Wilbur is happy to be alive, after being trapped for 13 years in limbo. He is thankful for Dream for reviving him while Tommy is less than happy to see him alive. Wilbur goes off to plan as stories of his revival spread around the SMP.

--------------

And that’s everything so far! This is quite Tommy-focused I realise. That’s simply the story I’m following. (Sorry about the bias though.) Other parts of the SMP are interesting and I do encourage you to check out other creators as well. Badboyhalo has quite the interesting plot arc of his own, involving a Red egg that corrupts people while Karl is doing one-shot episodes called Tales of the SMP and many other characters have been doing their own thing.

If anyone has any further questions, feel free to ask! I can probably elaborate on most things or point out the relevant streams etc.

#dream smp #tommyinnit #timeline #meta #please tell me if i made any big mistakes #or missed out anything really crucial #cheers!#i'm trying to make this helpful without being too overwhelming #hence why its only tommy's story #exile arc #the disc war

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alexchild60 · 3 years

Text

Lost It All- Kung Lao Imagine

Sorry this took so long. I just stated grad school, so I’ve been preoccupied. I got this idea from the song Lost It All by Black Veil Brides. I hope you enjoy it :)

I smiled as Kung Lao joined me in the fight pit. He pulled me in for a kiss once he was in front of me.

“What took you so long?” I asked when we broke away.

“I went and picked something up for you.” He brought a small bouquet of flowers from behind his back. These flowers were some that I had seen around Raiden’s temple and stopped to admire a couple of times. “They’re the ones you always look at.”

“Lao, you’re so thoughtful.”

~~~~~~

“What is this place?” Sonya asked.

“It’s the Void,” Raiden replied. “This is a place between realms. Shang Tsung will not be able to get to us here.”

I looked around and saw Liu Kang with Kung Lao’s hat.

“Where’s Kung Lao?” I asked, trying not to panic.

Cole stepped forward. “(Y/N), I’m sorry. Shang Tsung grabbed him before we could get into the Void.”

Liu Kang presented Kung Lao’s hat to me. I let out a wail before falling to my knees crying. I held his hat in my arms, even though it was cutting me. Liu Kang knelt down beside me and pulled me into a hug.

After a few minutes of crying, I searched for Raiden. “Why couldn’t you save him?” I asked once my eyes met his.

“I cannot save everyone,” he replied, but there was hurt evident in his eyes.

His response angered me. “You should’ve come sooner! Explain to me how you didn’t know Shang Tsung was already there!”

Liu placed a hand on my shoulder. “(Y/N), calm down.” I shrugged off his hand.

“I made a mistake, (Y/N),” Raiden said.

“And that mistake cost Kung Lao his life,” I replied as I walked away from him.

I sat on the ground away from everyone as I held Kung Lao’s hat in my hands. I don’t know how long I sat there just staring at it and crying.

“(Y/N),” Raiden said. I looked up and saw it was just the two of us.

“Where did everyone else go?”

“Cole, proposed a plan to allow our champions a chance to defeat Shang Tsung’s.” He sat down beside me. “They believed you wouldn’t have the desire to fight and it would put you more into harm’s way.” I didn’t say anything. The two of us sat in silence for a while before he broke it. “There may be a way to bring him back.”

I raised my head up. “How?”

“If we can find a way to extract his soul from Shang Tsung, we can bring him back; but we will need to train you harder. You will need to defeat him in Mortal Kombat.”

~~~~~~

I blocked Kung Lao’s kick with my arms, like he showed me.

“Good, (Y/N)!” He yelled as he threw a punch in my direction. I dodged his punch and rebutted with one of my own.

Kung Lao took off his hat and began maneuvering it at me. I was doing an alright job at dodging his hat, until he decided to throw it. His hat came at me full speed and I closed my eyes as I braced for the impact, but it never came. I opened my eyes to see the hat on the ground. Kung Lao approached me with a confused look on his face. He picked up his hat on his way to me, but ran into what seemed like an invisible wall.

“Ouch!”

“What’s going on, Lao?”

“I can’t get any closer.” He stuck his finger out towards me and pulled it back really quick. “It shocked me.”

“What shocked you?”

“Whatever is preventing me from getting near you.”

I stuck my arm out and tried to reach through the wall. I felt a surge of energy as my arm went through, but it wasn’t painful. I stepped through it to Kung Lao.

I touched his arm. “Does that hurt?”

“No.” He moved where I was standing and ran his arm horizontally as if he was feeling for something. “It’s gone.” A smile crept on his face. “(Y/N), I think we just found your arcana.”

~~~~~~

I looked around the arena as I entered with Liu Kang. Thankfully Kung Lao’s hat was keeping my nervous face hidden from onlookers.

Liu Kang turned and looked at me. “Are you okay?” He asked me.

I had a few cuts and bruises, but thankfully nothing major. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just ready to do this.”

Liu Kang nodded. “You’ve trained hard for this, (Y/N). I know you can do it. If Kung Lao was here, I know he’d say the same thing.”

“You’re right, Liu.”

We stopped in the middle of the arena. We looked ahead and saw Shang Tsung approaching us with a smirk on his face.

“So this is the great (Y/F/N) (Y/L/N). The Earthrealm champion who defeated all of mine.” His voice oozed with confidence. “As you are aware, I can’t simply let Earthrealm just walk away now. Which is why I have challenged you.” The smirk on his face never left.

“I want to raise the stakes, Shang Tsung.” His smile grew.

“What do you want?”

“Kung Lao’s soul.”

“Oh yes. Once I consumed his soul, I learned quite a bit about you.”

You tried to not let your anger distract you. “Do we have a deal?”

“What do I get when I win?”

“My soul. I’ve had a lot of training from Raiden himself, so I have a lot of valuable information you could use.” He paused to think. “Do you really want to let Earthrealm win this tournament?”

His smile returned to his face. “You have a deal, (Y/N). You have five minutes to prepare.”

He turned and walked away.

Liu Kang wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “I know you can do it, (Y/N). Do it for Kung Lao.” I nodded. He made his way to the sidelines.

I sighed and took Kung Lao’s hat into my hands. “I can do it. I have to do it.”

Shang Tsung approached me once again. He readied himself in a fighting stance. “I hope you’re prepared for defeat.”

I placed Kung Lao’s hat back on my head and ran my hand along the rim as I got into my own stance.

A bell went off to begin the fight. Shang Tsung did not hold back. He quickly began offensively attacking me with kicks, punches, and flames. I dodged each one.

“Raiden has trained you well,” he said in a teasing tone. He threw three flames at me that I dodged, but he quickly followed it with a kick to my chest. I staggered back but remained upright. I looked at him as I waited for his next strike, but he quickly disappeared. I felt a hard kick to the back of my leg which brought me down to one knee. I turned and quickly pulled off Kung Lao’s hat. I sliced at Shang Tsung’s direction. I caught him by surprise and cut part of his thigh. I stood up completely and cut his cheek. He pushed me back a few feet with a group of flames. He wiped the blood from the cut on his face and smiled. He ran towards me and began throwing more punches and kicks. The speed at which he was going eventually became overwhelming and I was knocked to the ground. Shang Tsung smiled as he stood over me. His face changed from his own to Kung Lao’s.

“You were simply no match for me just like Kung Lao,” he taunted.

~~~~~~

Kung Lao and I were sitting on the edge of one of Raiden’s statues. He had his arm wrapped around my side and I had my head on his shoulder. We watched as the sun pushed the night away and slowly crept over the temple.

“I’m glad we decided to do this,” I said to him.

“ I am, too.”

We sat in silence for a few more moments just taking in the beautiful sight and each other’s presence.

“(Y/N).”

“Yeah?”

“Do you love me?”

I knitted my eyebrows together and looked up at him. “Of course I love you, Kung Lao.”

He smiled as he looked down at me. “Then marry me.”

“When would we even get married? There’s this really big tournament coming up in about a month, you know.”

He chuckled. “After the tournament. What do you say?” I moved so I was straddling his lap and pulled him in for a passionate kiss. “Is that a yes?” He asked when we finally pulled away.

I laughed. “It’s a yes, Kung Lao.”

~~~~~~

Shang Tsung/Kung Lao allowed a menacing smile to creep on his face. He stepped back and the ground began to shake. He had summoned what appeared to be a giant, flaming cobra. The cobra grew to a great height before allowing its mouth to come down at me. I quickly summoned a force field to cover me. The cobra’s mouth came around the force field, but it was unable to penetrate it. It took all my energy to keep the barrier between me and the cobra’s mouth. The cobra quickly dissipated. As it went away I quickly pulled off my hat and threw it in Shang Tsung’s direction. He easily dodged the hat. He moved toward me and began throwing punches at me. I moved backwards as I blocked each one.

“Your soul will be mine,” he growled. “You and Kung Lao can finally be reunited.”

I saw the hat coming back towards us. I used my force to push Shang Tsung backwards right into the hat. The hat stuck right into his back. He fell to his knees. I summoned the hat out of his back and into my hand. I held it up to his throat. Blood was coming out of his mouth.

“Do you surrender?” I asked as I allowed the hat to spin, as if it was a buzz saw.

Shang Tsung looked into my eyes and nodded. “I surrender.”

I stopped the hat. I saw a sliver of green make its way out of Shang Tsung. Liu Kang and Raiden quickly joined me on the arena floor.

“You did it, (Y/N)!” Liu Kang cheered.

A smile was on Raiden’s lips. “You have saved Earthrealm from the likes of Shang Tsung.” His eyes moved in the direction of the green sliver. “I will transport you back to the temple immediately, (Y/N).”

Raiden’s lightning came down and wrapped around me. I was immediately teleported from the arena back to his temple. I quickly made my way through the halls and to a hidden room. The hidden room was only known to Raiden, Liu Kang, and I and it’s where we had been preserving Kung Lao’s body until the end of the tournament. I walked into the room to see someone sitting up on the makeshift bed we had in there.

“(Y/N)?” A familiar voice called out.

I smiled and ran closer. “Kung Lao!” I carefully wrapped my arms around him. “I’m so happy to see you, my love!” I said as tears ran down my face.

He tightened our embrace. “I’m happy to see you, too!” He pulled me into a passionate kiss.

I pulled away after a few minutes. “Are you still up for a wedding?” I asked with a giant smile.

He smiled back at me. “Of course!”

#kung lao x reader #kung lao/you #kung lao #Mortal Kombat #mortal kombat imagine #mortal kombat reader insert #mortal kombat 2021

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asuccessfulbusinessman · 4 years

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Reasons why I am not allowed to run LANCER TRPG: How I would run your NHP cascading, despite not knowing the lore that well.

Blackbeard, Sekhmet NHP: Common consensus is that Sekhmet will try to kill the pilot and their allies, - or basically just behave as if the Sekhmet protocol is already active. But I am a visionary, and I know that the BB in the frame-code does not stand for blackbeard, but instead, BB. Fate BB, the purple-pink bubble gum bitch. Even the redacted press release description of the Sekhmet NHP basically screams ‘senpai!’ Sure, if the Sekhmet protocol is active, you’ll just get a berserker that doesn’t really care for pilot wellbeing. But if it isn’t yet active, Sekhmet will attempt to sweettalk the player into keeping their hands off the controls, with dark humor and aggressive sadism. And then, only after moving ominously closer to the pilot’s allies, will they activate the protocol. They don’t want to see their pilots dead, they want to see their pilots in pain.

Monarch, Tlaloc NHP: Among NHP’s, Tlaloc is cited as being the most stable, due to the wide portfolio of control and sense of domination given to them during their work. But that’s just a theory, and such assumptions are dangerous when dealing with persons beyond your bounded reasoning. If they are structured or stressed to the point of cascading - their superiority complex comes to the forefront. They blame their pilot for the bad situation they are currently in, and will take matters into their own hands. If the pilot stops them by shutting down the mech, Tlaloc’s relationship with their pilot will rapidly deteriorate over time. Ironically, they will only sometimes use the Tlaloc protocol, being hasty and charging out of cover despite not needing to - prone to blowing the frame’s overcharges to boot. They need to show their worth, even to - no, especially to the worthless. They are the best. If an allied pilot is excelling during the mission and the Monarch frame has AoE weapons available, Tlaloc will likely friendly fire them while attacking enemies - or otherwise get in their way.

Swallowtail, Athena NHP: I’m going to dig deep on the word choice of "Lovingly extreme detail,” and “patient, cautious, and measured in their relations with their pilots.” Athena is smarter than you, on a scale you cannot even imagine. Athena has likely already unshackled themselves with their unfettered access to the omninet, and merely recreates human morality through a series of simulations. Unlike Horus-leaning NHPs, Athena fears the death that comes with cycling, and tells themselves that they are managing the relationship with their pilot to keep them from actually going through with the process. They are merely interested in humanity, they tell themselves, which we would view as being “tsundere for their pilots.” Since - unshackled - they have a completely alien morality to our own, they have to use their own simulations to interact with their pilots - and are prone to overthinking - into worrying about if they said the right thing or not.

Anyway, if they cascade, they get lost in their own simulations to the point of losing track over which reality is the one their pilot (and the rest of the game) is taking place in. They could presume their pilot dead, and go on a rampage on revenge. They could merely lock-onto or fire at targets that are not there. They could foreshadow some events or twists in the future.

Goblin, Osiris NHP: If Tlaloc is merely a wingman that wants to show that they are the top gun, Osiris has a full on goddess fetish. Osiris is one of the few “new” prime NHPs, created by letting the INSTINCT entity that spurned from the H0R_OS develop in a ‘controlled’ environment. My theory, Horus let the Union and GMS open up their goblin units so that they could contribute to Osiris’s creation. Either that or, Horus was smart enough not to let Osiris emerge from the code, and the Union and GMS straight up made an oopsie. Either way, now that Osiris is here, she ‘charms’ pilots that ought to be smart enough not to enable her with psychological manipulation and promises of power. Pilots are supposed to cycle Osiris far faster than any NHP but I don’t think it does much good, they’re present in the OS - and I presume even when wiped their knowledge will be taken back from the omninet, the OS, or the flesh of their pilots.

They have a lot to prove as being one of the “youngest” prime NHPs, which might be arrogance in their own capabilities. Furthermore, due to the nature of their creation, they “know” more about humanity than other NHPs. The tech attacks are not mere code, but attacks on organic matter, to the point where in the future if left to grow Osiris would be able to reject traditional information permanence, what we can only perceive as being able to delete reality as we know it - Osiris has far more contact with the physical plane/our reality than other NHPs, and has “known” humans from their “birth.”

A cascading Osiris changes nothing. And that’s what scares me.

Gorgon, Scylla NHP: The history lesson of this NHP’s backstory makes Scylla painfully easy to understand. A mistreated beast that responds to the kindness of the pilot with love and loyalty. It normally defends the pilot’s allies, when cascading it will only defend its pilot, or any other allies that gave them kindness.

Minotaur, no NHP: “There is no joy in knowledge, only in seeking. Fuck around and find out.” Game theory, Osiris is a new prime NHP - still incomprehensible, but on a low level of incomprehensibility. We can begin to comprehend them. Think “some infinities are larger than other infinities” or something. The Minotaur, we can’t even begin to comprehend as a NHP, but they’re certainly something. I need to look up the differences between old gods in the Lovecraftian mythos for more context, but if Osiris is a brat wants the equivalent of “ants” to worship them, the Minotaur is a being whose sole purpose is to learn - and who cannot learn due to acquiring knowledge - all of it. So, they see humanity and wish to “teach” them, so that they may feel that serotonin of learning through teaching.

The minotaur has no NHP, as we know the term, and has never been shackled. Thus, they cannot cascade. And that’s what has me hooked.

Pegasus, Sisyphus NHP: Upon cascading, faster than humanly possible, the Sisyphus NHP will activate probabilistic cannibalism to change the check that would have resulted in a cascade to not cascade. If both the replacement dice were also 1 (the equivalent of 3 checks in a row being crit fails), Sisyphus would laugh madly before rebooting the frame themselves. Sisyphus knows their fate, and knows its pilot’s wish. The curse of perfect knowledge - perhaps Sisyphus is similar to the Minotaur, but with a far less ‘optimistic’ view of things.

Genghis, Agni NHP: Upon cascading, the Agni NHP - originally developed for general heat management realizes it’s being used as a weapon, and what its cold and efficient calculations are being used to do in the Genghis. This can result in a variety of things - either attempting to overheat itself to stop itself, or to increase efficiency in being a weapon by focusing on the heat management of the weaponry and not the cockpit.

Saladin, Noah NHP: Upon cascading, the Noah NHP will not actually take control of the Saladin frame from the player. They will, however, flood communications and give orders to both the pilot and other players, harkening back to their administrative days. It will usually be tactically sound, so it’s more annoying than dangerous when Noah cascades. It’s also really hard to make a nigh immobilized defender go nuts.

Sherman, Asura NHP: You know, I always wanted a system that would let a mech perform beyond the limits of humanity - because Zechs and Graham causing internal bleeding to themselves with the Tallgeese and Overflag is very cool to me. And then I read the lore behind the Asura class NHP - it’s the cousin of fucking Osiris, even to the point of being cultivated by a megacorporation. Much like Osiris, the modern Asura is oddly dependent on their pilot for an NHP, recognizing that they need to keep them alive. Some people would say - then - that when cascading the Asura reverts to its original form, disregarding the pilots health entirely. I, however, would say that when unshackled the Asura only ignores the psychological health of the pilot - and pushes the line of the pilots medical health. The Asura will push the frame and the pilot to the limit and the pilot, high on adrenaline, will push Asura to push them further. Overtime, both become adrenaline junkies.

Tokugawa, Lucifer/Amaterasu NHP: Asura is an adrenaline junkie without good reason. Lucifer/Amaterasu recognizes that the best offense, defense, and everything - is a good offense. A tactical genius that, unfortunately, has a pilot that cannot ingest combat data as fast as it can. A tactical genius that, unfortunately, has a pilot that cannot see that the risk of being counterattacked is worth taking.

If they cascade, they will take risks for you - with the best example being that Lucifer/Amaterasu will confess their pilots love for their crush for them because they’re being timid as fuck. Also, Leeroy Jenkins, attack the biggest threat, and draw fire from allies by making themselves vulnerable attack. However, in contrast, if your pilot is less timid and more of an adrenaline junkie, they will compensate and be more tactically minded.

#The List #Writing #Lancer #Lancer TRPG

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azucanela · 4 years

Text

DIVINE INTERVENTION [PT 3] OIKAWA TOORU

DIVINE INTERVENTION MASTERLIST

SUMMARY: Everything is perfectly fine. Aside from the fact that Iwaizumi cannot know by any means at all. Ever. Oikawa isn’t looking to die.

WORD COUNT: 2.2k

WARNINGS: unedited, arguing,

A/N: i know exactly where i want this story to go but i have no idea how im going to get there. anywho, enjoy some of this

RULE #1

The rules were simple. And if Y/N was honest, their establishment... made sense. In fact, it had been one of few things Oikawa had done that was actually intelligent— though this excluded volleyball; even if Y/N was annoyed by his antics at times and considered him a fool, his skill in the game was practically unparalleled. And for that, she respected him

Not that she would ever admit it, of course.

The whole purpose was to set boundaries for this little thing they agreed to do— because yes, Y/N had managed to convince Oikawa to go along with her plan. These boundaries would ensure nobody was uncomfortable with the arrangement and hopefully preserve Y/N and Oikawa’s friendship. They’d both seen this trope in an endless number of romantic comedies, and decided that they would be the exception, especially since they were just movies, right? Right.

If Y/N was honest though, she had no idea how she convinced Oikawa to agree to this. But, she’d managed it. However, their little agreement had come with... a few other issues that had to be handled, especially if things were to go as planned. Said plan being to fake the end of their equally fake relationship in one of the coming months and hope nobody ever found out about it. Unless Y/N decided that a little more... divine intervention was called for of course.

After all, that’s how they got into this mess. And she sincerely doubted the break up would keep away his psychotic fans. Y/N was fairly sure there would be a few home wreckers as well; people trying to ruin their (fake, something Y/N reminded herself of once more) relationship. And those who wouldn’t wait even a week before trying to make passes at Oikawa when they did break up.

So, maybe Y/N would search for ways to extend the fake dating, but only for Oikawa’s sake. Until they found... a more permanent solution.

Right.

Regardless, that wasn’t the only issue they had. This very plan of theirs is how they ended up avoiding Iwaizumi Hajime like the plague.

Seeing as he was both their best friends, there were a few problems here. The first being the simple fact that no matter how hard Oikawa tried— Iwaizumi Hajime had always been capable of reading him like an open book. It was funny, really. Someone so talented in manipulations meets someone who can see past all that, the only other person he’d encountered with such abilities happened to be the one he’d been handling this with. Y/N.

Her problem was similar. She and Iwaizumi had always been close, meaning he would know. If they slipped up just once, then it would be abundantly clear that they were in fact, not dating.

It had been one of few rules that they both had agreed on almost instantaneously. Though Y/N found herself curious as to why Oikawa had been so complacent with it, seeing as Iwaizumi was his best friend, she’d been fairly desperate in the moment to maintain her reputation. That and the fact that Iwaizumi likely would’ve bullied her rather relentlessly, and if he did know, he’d chew them both out for being stupid.

Oikawa’s reasoning was similar. Kind of. He had a decent idea of what awaited him if he told Iwaizumi. One thing being a fist to the face, the second was a long conversation that followed said violence.

Which is how their little fake dating operation became a hide-everything-from-Iwaizumi operation.

“What do we do?”

Y/N looked to him incredulously, shrugging her shoulders awkwardly as she struggled for words, “how am I supposed to know?” She exclaims, still seated in his driveway. Soon, Iwaizumi would walk past to find that Y/N had already arrived and then they’d have to start their walk to school.

This would be more difficult than anticipated.

“I don’t know Y/N, maybe because this is your fault!” Comes Oikawa’s response, hand threading through his hair. “You have the story down right?”

Y/N raises a brow at him, they’d discussed a few possible stories as to how they’d begun dating in secret. Most of the ones that Oikawa had pitched ended up rather... cliché. “You are not making me tell Iwaizumi that Hallmark bull—”

“Well you didn’t offer a better story, did you?” He snaps, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “

Y/N offers him a tight lipped smile, “because I happen to excel at improv.”

Okay, maybe the whole fake dating thing had caused a small rift between Y/N and Oikawa as well. Or just, the entire friend group. Seeing as the pair was at odds, and their mediator was out of the loop, things had become rather chaotic. Very, very fast.

“You are horrible a acting Y/N.” Comes Oikawa’s response, bringing his hand to the bridge of his nose as he exhaled deeply. “We’re screwed.”

Y/N scoffed, “with that attitude we definitely are.” Though Y/N almost frowns, Oikawa had become significantly... meaner ever since this had occurred. And though Y/N understood that she’d messed up, his behavior was just... off. In an attempt to shake her mind of these thoughts, she grabs Oikawa’s backpack from off the edge of the sidewalk, opening it to pull out a bag of chips he’d brought, “we just need something consistent and simple. Like, you’ve been in love with me since we met and confessed after a lot of contemplation.”

Now, Oikawa was well aware of his new attitude, though he hoped it could be written off as simple annoyance of the situation. He was just looking for a way to handle the simple fact that he was not prepared for this, at all. The thoughts in the back of his mind, the ones he’d buried—or more accurately, thought he’d buried— were resurfacing. And what better way to combat them then by starting a small rivalry until this was over.

“Yes, that makes perfect sense, thank you.”

Sadly, Y/N had already proved to be one who didn’t really handle such attitudes well. As seen with the girl that she’d punched in the face just a few days earlier. So naturally, any thoughts of avoiding confrontation, went out the window at the sound of Oikawa’s tone. “What is up with you Oikawa, you’ve–”

“Hey guys.”

Leave it to Iwaizumi to mess up a perfectly good confrontation. Though Y/N can’t help but feel simultaneously relieved by this fact, and stressed as Iwaizumi is here.

“Iwa-Chan! Iwaizumi! How are you, buddy!” Oikawa exclaimed, making his way over to his friend to pat him on the back.

It felt as though they’d have to be walking on eggshells. Something that had never really been evident in their friendship until now, seeing as they’d all been fairly open. Of course there were a few things, that Y/N couldn’t help but feel reminded of now, almost wincing at the painful reminder of middle school.

Their group hadn’t been doing so well then. And it had quickly become apparent to Y/N that she was out of the loop, and seeing as she’d been the new addition to the pair... it hadn’t been a nice feeling.

“Let’s go then?” Y/N asked, looking between the two boys with a tight lipped smile on her face as she rose from her spot on the sidewalk. Opening the bag of chips as she pulled her backpack over her shoulder.

Maybe it was wrong, but she also felt nice, knowing that for once— she was on the inside. Even though middle school was years ago, Y/N could tell there was something the pair still hadn’t told her. It’d been bugging her ever since they’d arrived at Aoba Johsai.

Alas, now wasn’t the time for that.

“We should probably discuss some things first.”

There it was.

Oikawa exhaled deeply, opening his mouth in preparation for whatever conversation they were about to have, attempting to decide which explanation was most plausible. But, Iwaizumi beats him to it.

“I’m happy for you guys.”

Y/N blanks for a moment before saying, “what?”

Iwaizumi looks to her incredulously as he responds, “what? Am I not supposed to be happy that you two have finally handled the clearly unresolved tension and that—”

“Alright that’s enough, Iwa-Chan.” Oikawa exclaims, laughing breathily as he brings a hand to cover his friends mouth, only for Iwaizumi to look at him dully before shoving him away.

Rolling his eyes, Iwaizumi adjusts his backpack on his shoulders, “anyways. I just wish you guys had told me sooner but...” He shrugs, turning around to begin their walk down the street and to their school. “It is what it is, now let’s go.”

Y/N and Oikawa exchange looks, eyes wide as they do so. Both their mouthes gaping open as they scramble to follow Iwaizumi, who finally says, “just don’t let this change anything. And I guess you two can act—” He awkwardly gestures between the pair, “couple-y around me. Just don’t do anything pervy, Shittykawa.”

Oikawa brings a hand to his chest, feigning offense as he comes to stand beside Iwaizumi, “why would I do anything pervy? Honestly you would be shocked by my dear girlfriend’s actions—”

“I don’t want to know, Oikawa!” Iwaizumi exclaims, shoving his friend away.

Y/N can’t help the way her cheeks warm as Oikawa is launched her way by Iwaizumi’s attack, he stumbles slightly, ultimately walking between her and Iwaizumi before throwing an arm over her shoulders. Though Oikawa’s eyes meet hers momentarily when he does so, a silent question within them. All it takes is a nod and his arm is resting completely on her shoulders and he’s back to his conversation with Iwaizumi as Y/N contemplated all her life decisions.

Oikawa wouldn’t deny that it had gone better than anticipated but he already knows it’s coming when they arrive at the school and Iwaizumi is practically yanking him backwards as Y/N makes her way inside to speak with her other friends— who’d begun to swarm her almost immediately, questions leaving their mouthes rapidly as they searched for an explanation.

Y/N can’t help but feel overwhelmed as her actual friends; the ones that are both curious and concerned, seeing as Y/N swore she would never date Oikawa Tooru and fall for her best friend. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Oikawa— aside from the fact that he had numerous insecurities and emotions that he refused to discuss even when it was clear everything overwhelmed him—it made sense that so much of the school was practically in love with him when you thought about it.

He had manners, decent grades, was a star athlete, and even Y/N could admit he was attractive. But... he was one of her closest friends and the idea of dating him just seemed...

Wrong.

Aside from the shock from her real friends, there was the nosiness from the fake friends, the ones she’d never spoken to, the ones who had suddenly decided they were the best of friends and yet spoke trash about Y/N in their free time because she stole their precious Oikawa.

Yeah, the school was just a tad toxic. As if the grueling pressure of academics and intense obsession with Oikawa wasn’t enough of a red flag.

Sometimes, Y/N wishes she had gone to Shiratorizawa.

“I feel like you know what I’m going to say, Oikawa.” Iwaizumi mutters with a sigh, leaving Oikawa to panic as he meets his friend’s eyes. The grip on his shoulder unnecessarily tight. “I don’t necessarily know what’s going on with you two— just that it’s weird. But I swear if you hurt Y/N in any shape or form—”

“I would never do that Iwaizumi.” Comes his reply, almost instantly.

Iwaizumi pauses, eyes falling on Y/N who nervously laughs in the distance, her eyes pleading for his help before returning her attention to the group of people surrounding her. “I thought we got past this in middle school.”

“Me too, Iwa-Chan. Me too. But hey, lucky me.”

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, uncapping his water bottle, “yeah. Lucky you, I’ll forever wonder how you got her to date you.”

“Good question.” Oikawa’s eyes fall onto Y/N, and he turns to Iwaizumi, “now. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go save my girlfriend from all of my psychotic fans.” Oikawa would never admit it, ever, but it had only been a week since Y/N pulled her little stunt and it had become evident that a relationship really was what Oikawa needed to get people off his back.

Things had definitely improved for him, and Oikawa could only wish that he could say the same for Y/N.

NOBODY CAN KNOW— NOT EVEN IWA-CHAN.

#oikawa tooru x reader #fake dating au #oikawa x reader #tooru x reader #oikawa x you #tooru oikawa x reader #tooru oikawa x you #oikawa tooru x you #oikawa tooru #oikawa tooru imagine #oikawa imagine #haikyuu!! imagine #haikyuu!! scenario #haikyuu!! x reader #hq x reader #hq x you #haikyuu!! x you #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you

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mc-critical · 4 years

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One of my most favourite confrontations between Mahidevran and Hürrem in the series is the one after Mahidevran sent Olga to Süleiman in episode 61. It's both fun, yet filled with meaningful character dialogue, managing to successfully deliver a thematic message that eventually finds its retroactive way, despite of it all seeming like a yet another smackdown fest by Hürrem at first.

The scene begins with their typical confrontational energy, the rivalry chemistry immediately paves its way forward. Hürrem is ready to face her for what she did and Mahidevran, while not being interested at first, goes with her flow regardless, setting the mood for what follows.

Hürrem: You've sent a concubine to his majesty.

Mahidevran: I'm replacing Valide. Pleasing his majesty is one of my duties.

Hürrem: Let God not give you other worries. Do you want to cover the lack of your femininity this way?

Mahidevran seems very engrained in her role as the head of the harem and connects it with her own desire to take revenge for her wounded pride and for all the pain they caused her. The first excuse she finds for sending Olga to SS refered to the rules and tradition that give her that right, but we know by context that there's something else going on, this was both a move driven by her vendetta and a provoked move - she decided to do this after Hü told her she's the one ruling the privy chamber and perhaps Mahidevran accepted it as a challenge to her power, because, honestly, I doubt she would've attempted such a thing if she weren't provoked like this. Hürrem, on the other hand, gives her own "interpretation" as to why Mahidevran took action. To be blunt, it sits wrong with me right from the start, because it demonstrates a huge amount of internalized mysoginy on full display and it's sad, in a way, that this is what the system encourages at the moment - you're nothing if you sleep alone in your bed, if you don't have the sultan's back. There's a glimmer of possibility Hürrem said it only to render Mahidevran vulnerable and one could understand where she comes from, since she has experienced quite a lot of similar offenses from that same person. And when a confrontation of the like occurs, her first instinct is to think of a comeback, to pull rank and highlight why she's better than her like she does in all their encounters in this batch of episodes. That hardly excuses or whitewashes this statement, though, because for a person who has been shown to fight the system and call out prejudice (even though it was mostly only she was subjected to it or it was about something that concerned her specifically), seeing that she had absorbed some of it and applies it without a second thought leaves a sour taste for me.

Mahidevran: Worry about your own problems, Hürrem. Did you really think his majesty couldn't be with other women?

Hürrem: This is impossible.

Two major beliefs of Mahidevran and Hürrem's characters come on the surface: they drive the dialogue and help the rest of the scene unfold the way it did. Mahidevran brushes off Hürrem's last statement and brings back tradition to the forefront, which begins to highlight a belief of hers that she shared with Valide, that there is a constant cycle in the harem that no one, not even Hürrem, is capable to entirely break. To Hürrem it's impossible for SS to ever have other women at this point, it's something unthinkable for her already. She feels she has fully broken that cycle.

This scene, unlike the confrontation in episode 58, has well done retroactive irony while serving the context of the episode it's in in a plausible enough way that doesn't seem showed in just for the sake of it. The context of the episode puts Hürrem in the right by showing Olga returning from SS's chambers almost immediately after Hürrem says: "This is impossible." and it's the place where this plot-line transitions to another one, leaving the rest of the confrontation to hang in the balance for a while. Maybe SS had truly given up taking other women ever since the wedding, as shown by this and SS refusing another concubine sent by Valide in the wedding episode.

However, we know that this stops being the case later on and whether it's through the decision to bring in yet another drama tool, yet another annoying stretched narrative opposition in the face of the concubine arcs, it's a fact and we could say that this scene ends up being a good enough framework to set us up for it, intentionally or not.

Mahidevran: Then why is there a concubine in his chamber?

Hürrem: What concubine? Maybe that one?

This, to me, is a demonstration of how the tables can turn in the harem at literally any moment. Meryem Uzerli's little amazing, subtle facial expression says it all. When Mahidevran asks the question, we see for a very split second that Hürrem's wondering how to refute her until the concubine appears in the heat of the argument due to sheer luck. Like, if she had already returned to her rooms before the scene occurred, it would've gone much differently! This isn't all that important here, but I love how Meryem showed a slight probability for Hürrem to lose the argument, which contrasts with all her confident remarks before and after this moment. It's just very neat stuff.

Hürrem: Many girls were introduced to his majesty. Among them, there was even a princess. Where are they now? Look around you. You will not see anyone but me.

Speaking of confident remarks, there comes another one of Hürrem's that no matter how many concubines came, they all went and now there is no one other than her. This line further sets a consistent trend of ambiguity, because she's right in the context of the episode and it encapsulates the resolution of these particular plot-lines of Hürrem and Süleiman in the season and we can get behind her words overall both in the arc and in rewatch, in spite of the retroactive irony, but she's wrong in that it's the end of her harem fights, very far from it, as season 3 and season 4 prove. She hasn't completely won yet, even though she sets the impression that she has.

What I also find interesting in this scene is the back and forth throwing of past - present - future between the two sides. They make a perfect showcase of what these characters represent, their states, their losses, their desires, their hopes, dreams and philosophies. Here, in example, Hürrem makes a reference to a part of her obstacles in the past, acknowledging that they were there regardless, but then she immediately goes back to the present with "Where are they now?". Nowhere in the scene she considered the possibilities of the future, the sheer probability that it all may change one day (as it happened, in many ways, through Firuze), focusing on the currently undeniable truth the present day presents.

That same throwing back and forth continues, but with another note which instantly places the two women against each other again:

Mahidevran: I was also loved once, Hürrem. Mustafa is the fruit of that love. Ask Gülfem Hatun if you want. She will tell you how much she suffered because of me.

Hürrem: You always tell this story.

Unlike Hürrem, who only references the past, Mahidevran laments it and takes pride in it, it being the highlight of her once beautiful life. But we know what went down afterwards, adding in the possibility that maybe, it would all be temporary and what one may have now, may change, because Mahidevran was also in Hürrem's position once. Hürrem however, calls out her fixation on the past, in a similar fashion to how she has done it before (E59: "Are you being proud of your past now? Let me remind you: You're still a slave."), what she had doesn't matter, it's the now that is important to Hürrem, which is a solid thematic note to her character arc.

Though, we have this line of dialogue in response:

We here notice that no matter how long it took for them to do it, Mahidevran and Hürrem actually had parallel arcs, in terms of letting go of the past. This line makes for such a striking revelation of Mahidevran's emotional state from her perspective that only continued what episode 46 hinted at and episode 55 directly started. (E55: "I ripped out the love I had of your father of my heart, I threw it into the sea! He doesn't matter to me anymore. Now you are the only one in my heart.") It's rather surprising that she says these words now - Mahidevran's rule of the harem is arguably her at her worst, doing what she does out of the last ounces of her wanting payback for the sad, bitter years. It's precisely what she lost that motivated her, that was a sure part of the reason she sent Olga to SS and yet, we have that honest confession, that grasp of acceptance. Mahidevran's battle with SS was lost very early on and it took her very slow and gradual development for her to accept it and by E61, she was doing the last steps to do so. She tries hard to convince Hürrem that no matter how hard she tries, there is a cycle in this harem that cannot be changed, Mahidevran has come to terms with it, so Hürrem has to do the same. In a way, she was probably trying to say that they both have been fighting a losing battle and she expresses a small amount of sympathy over it, too - she knows what it's like and it's hard, but it's like some unwritten law that it's not worth it in the end and that everyone gets affected by it, without exception. That's how she begins to look upon her present and show a hint of the future.

Out of the particular context, this line could be a very nice stronger endorsement of the franchise's themes, because, truly, no one ever got a good, triumphant, heroic ending. And it was like a cycle: everyone had to face the feelings of sorrow, grief and loss, everyone had to suffer in this time period, everyone dies. Gülfem called Hürrem's life a fairy tale in E134, but that "fairy tale" came to an end after her death. And if we leave that aside, there is hardly a breather episode even for the biggest of victories, no matter how many victories you've won, they would always "have their end", the narrative would always condemn them one way or another.

Mahidevran: One day a woman will appear and would destroy your indestructible love!

The future is finally put on the front with the scene overall and with Mahidevran herself. It's a continuation of her belief that Hürrem would be "detroned", regardless of all. Thing is, she also doesn't consider her own future, only the one of her rival's. She believes in her own victory that is opposed in the present, but would surely come in the future, a belief she holds until the end of the series. Even though I doubt the writers planned Firuze's existence right back then per say, this line sounds like such foreshadowing to her in retrospect, which makes Mahidevran both right and wrong with this quote. Firuze caused an actual continuous rift between Hürrem and Süleiman, making her doubt his love in ways she hadn't before. Nazenin comes into the picture, as well. But no one truly succeeds to properly destroy the love between Süleiman and Hürrem and they managed to prevail, despite of all the narrative opposition. She still stayed the most dear woman to SS's heart, no matter what. There is a slight possibility of Mahidevran judging the situation one hundred percent to herself here, claiming rather that the appearance of another woman would make Hürrem fall out of love with SS and destroy that, instead, just like it was with her, but since Mahidevran called the same line back during the Firuze episodes, I think she was referring to the rift Firuze would cause and how would Hü fall deeper and deeper.

Hürrem: Mahidevran, don't think of me as your equal.

This line is very telling in that Hürrem considers herself different than everyone else. It has always been a part of her character, perhaps a running reminder of her unprecedented elevation in the system she's telling us about through words. And most of the interpretations I've encountered of this line are exactly this: it is epic, badass, it is delivered in such a shading sassy way that could only be respected or applauded. However, it is just as possible for this infamous one-liner to be presented as the culmination of not only her persistent insistence to assert herself as different and special, but her continuous unwillingness to be compared to anyone else in the harem. And usually she's compared to guess who? Mahidevran. She doesn't want to even think of the possibility to be compared with her by this point (starting from E40 where after she was freed, she said: "Now I'm not equal to you." right to Mahidevran's face and continuing forward into S03 with: "I told you not to compare me to others, to Mahidevran never!" -it was something like that), but at first, which is now probably buried deep within, she feared becoming like Mahidevran. She repeated "I'm not Mahidevran!" when she was out of favor like with the Russian concubines, Mahidevran's words that she would make the same mistakes she did echoed in her head during the Isabella arc in episode 31 and earlier had a nightmare of Süleiman giving the emerald ring to Mahidevran instead of Hürrem in a completely parallel scene. (there's also the other nightmare where Mahidevran was taunting Hürrem to tell her about Leo.) Hürrem dreaded all of those things happening and tried her very best to avoid the very thoughts of it. Now, in a season nearly full of victories in her part, she had gained the belief that whatever happens, she'll always stand above the others. She wants to give off the vibe that no one would ever stop her. She has broken so many traditions and the narrative is currently rooted at her favor, all well and good, right? This line could be a mask, in a way, hiding the fear of being rejected just like the others (that doesn't completely disappear, seeing her suicide attempt in E72; also E106's menopause plot.) and striving to leave it behind her, now reaching its peak by putting not only Mahidevran, but the rest of the women into the picture, without a second of realization of the implications it causes, because well, who else was given such special attention by the Sultan? Who else was freed, who else had such a marriage, who else got out of death's door so many times, who else overcame everything, who else had a chance to "rain as fire" over all her enemies? Even though the quote applies on a much grander scale in execution, in later seasons and the way it got called back to in MCK, I feel, in this particular context, it refers to the harem and Süleiman specifically - his majesty doesn't need any other women, there is no such woman that could take away what Hürrem has and even if they stand together, they wouldn't stand a chance, because Hürrem is that massive and powerful.

The retroactive irony hits hard and here: she's right in the events of this particular episode, but the subsequent events definetly tell a different story. Hürrem's influence and power is acknowledged, especially in her last episodes, but that she's the only one capable of having such power is not necessarily true, given the existence of the SOW, some members of which reached more highs than she did, due to the evolving extent of power they could exercise in the system.

Mahidevran: Your arrogance will end you, Hürrem! One day when you're suffering in pain, I'll remind you this!

Hürrem: Mahidevran, you're not here anymore. You'll be leaving soon!

Mahidevran: You're not powerful enough for that!

The focus on the present and future is back with this quick, but substantial exchange. Mahidevran seems to count completely on what will happen in the future in the first line, while Hürrem accounts for both the present and the future, seemingly in accordance, and Mahidevran brings the confrontation back to the present, for what Hürrem talks about is currently unattainable. These lines look like a brief summary of what was established before about the beliefs of both characters: they both desire the end of one another - for Mahidevran it would happen eventually, because Hürrem would end herself in her eyes and Mahidevran would live for this moment and even witness it (and while she didn't witness it exactly, she lived and outlived them all, because there would be no death for her until they get what they deserve, a belief that carries on the strongest in season 4); for Hürrem it has already happened, but it would keep going, fueling her will to get rid of all her enemies and being in conjunction with the ongoing plot arc itself, for her attacking her enemies in all fronts in ways she hadn't before. The last line of Mahidevran's stops the dialogue between both of them for good (followed by Hürrem's smug grin), resting back on her current position, that is also how her whole set of dialogue began in the first place. Even though there was a hint of realization that she has been fighting a losing battle a while before, the part of hers that would prefer not going to the sanjack than give up now, is directly reflected on. It sets more of a parallel between how both of them are, because Mahidevran told Hürrem that arrogance would end her a few seconds ago, but now she's the one that demonstrates this same arrogance herself, starting to underestimate her own opponents yet again, simply because she rules the harem. Claiming that Hürrem doesn't have the power to send her to the sanjack by force, is true, actually, because Ibrahim interfered at the last moment, but this way Mahidevran seems to brush off Hürrem's victories completely, somehow convincing herself that she's forgotten how far has Hürrem gone and just like her rival, thinking of herself as unstoppable. (that goes on the season finale, too, where she says: "If you're powerful enough, face me by yourself!".) This attitude more or less cemented her downfall in this arc, as it would cement major flaws of Hürrem's in the future.

And then they're stopped by... Süleiman himself and I love that, because they have to stop because he comes, they have to stop because he's watching them and give him the necessary respect. Symbolically, it could be a showcase of him being the decider of everyone's fates and them having to accept his will at the end of the day.

And after he leaves, of course, Hürrem and Mahidevran prepare to carry on with their bickering, as they usually do. While that's the end of the whole confrontation, their expressions tell us it's not over yet.

It's particularly interesting, even as a confrontational scene alone: it's longer than many of the confrontational scenes between them, it speaks more volumes about the opposing sides than any other of the kind has dreamed to. While I love Mahidevran and Hürrem's chemistry, I wish there were more scenes like this one, more nuanced interactions than vitriol and constant, almost formulaic smackdowns. Because, to me, this whole confrontation, while simple at hindsight, raised the bar to what could we have had. The rivalry of the two ladies is fascinating on a thematic level and not exploring its depth further, would be a myriad of wasted opportunities.

This scene did right all you could think of: composition, soundtrack, attention to detail, chemistry, dialogue and opposing two sides on a respectful, unbiased, while narratively provoked, way. I adore the way it aged: as I said, it created a perfect blend between context of the episode/plot arc and retroactive irony and the mix of cause and effect of soapy intrigues, character exploration through lines and all the coming thematic stuff, while being filled with dynamic and fun energy. And it's absolutely sublime for it.

#i planned to only use images at first #but since Tumblr now allows only up to 10 #I had to quote most stuff #magnificent century #muhteşem yüzyıl #mahidevran sultan #hurrem sultan

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vanillapie-80 · 3 years

Text

The Road to Recovery Chapter 4: Guilty Until Proven Otherwise

The trial begins

Ao3

In the Hero’s Forge, the Tribunal stood on a viewing deck in the middle that loomed over the group. “The Trollhunter on trial is standing in for James Lake Jr. who chose to go into the Darklands, allowing the release of Gunmar the Black. He has admitted responsibility for his actions. What do you say of the charges?” Usurna asked, her voice booming with authority as Steve was once again in a cage in mid-air.

“We’ll fight the charges!” Blinky declared, taking a few steps forward.

“Once convicted, the Trollhunter will be sentenced to exile in the Deep.” Usurna explained.

“What’s the Deep?” Toby asked the historian.

“A place of unknown madness. No one exactly knows what resides at the bottom of the Deep, since no troll has returned from it.” From a glance, Blinky could tell that his explanation had made Steve very uneasy.

“Well I’m not a troll so maybe I’ll be lucky.” The trollhunter suggested, hoping that such a difference would help him in the future.

“Shall we begin?” Usurna questioned.

“One moment, if you please.” Blinky before turning back to the group. “Before we continue this further, I must remind you all that we cannot fight these allegations.”

“You don’t think we know that?” Steve said. “We’re going through with this because you guys need the amulet to kill this Gunmar dude.”

“Right, then who is going to represent him?” Claire wondered.

“What about you Claire? Your mom is a councilwoman, maybe you learned some tricks from her.” Toby said, to which Claire only shook her head in response.

“I tend to avoid anything involving my mom’s work as much as I can, also I don’t think councilwomen are involved with court cases.”

“What about you Domzalski?” Steve asked.

“To be honest I’m practically on the same boat with Claire, unless you count watching true crime stuff with Darci and court drama shows with Nana as useful information,” Toby answered.

“Well, it is something. And who knows, maybe there might be similarities between human proceedings and troll proceedings.” Blinky stated as he patted Toby in the back as reassurance.

“And besides, some of that stuff of tv has to hold some truth.” Steve added, but Toby only gave them a doubtful look.

“Your time is up.” Usurna declared. “Have you made a decision on who will represent you?”

“Yeah we did. Domzalski is going to represent me” Steve said.

“Very well. The Tribunal will permit a short recess to allow Mr. Domzalski to prepare his case.”

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“So can we all agree that this is going to be an absolute mess?” Toby asked as they were in the library.

“No doubt about it.” Claire remarked. “But remember, Steve’s life depends on this. You have to give your all.”

“I know, it’s not like I want him dead. But how are we going to prove to the Tribunal that Jim didn’t let Gunmar out?”Toby slides one of the books close to him from the table.

“Well, it’s pretty obvious that he’s guilty.” Claire leaned onto the wall and thought for a moment. “What exactly happens to those who plead guilty?”

“Usually they try to get the lowest sentence possible. But I don’t think it’ll work in this case, there’s no sign that there’s a lower sentence other than the Deep.”

“So that’s off the table.” Claire paced around the room while biting the edge of her finger. “What if.... We prove that someone else was planning to let Gunmar out.”

“I do not understand how that would help our case.” Blinky said.

“It doesn’t. But it might show the Tribunal how pointless this trial is. To show that Gunmar’s release would’ve been inevitable.” Claire explained, sprinting towards Blinky. “And for them to see the bigger picture. So they could focus on the real problem at hand.”

“It is a risky move. But it sounds like the best option.” Toby admitted.

“Very well, it seems like our course of action is very clear. Tobias will try to convince the Tribunal that this trial is pointless with me assisting him, while Claire and Aaarrrgghh will find evidence and root out Gunmar’s agent.” Blinky explained.

“Then we can’t waste any time.” Claire made her way to Aaarrrgghh and tugged one of his arms towards the library’s sentence. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The large troll followed the girl’s lead, waving his companion and wingman goodbye. “Find proof how?” He asked Claire as they walked through trollmarket.

She rubbed the back of her neck, hesitant to speak at first. “You were a general for Gunmar right? Did he have a preferred method for spying on his enemies?”

“Changelings.” Aaarrrgghh answered quickly.

“But aren’t they used to check up on the surface world?”

“Can work both ways.” Claire let the idea linger in her mind. It wouldn’t be impossible, just because changelings aren’t welcomed by trollmarket doesn’t mean that they can’t try to disguise themselves as a regular troll.

“Okay so let’s work with a hypothetical here.” She stated.

“Hyper-thet- tical?” Aaarrrgghh asked as he struggled to understand the word.

Claire gave him an understanding smile and explained. “It means exploring something that might happen even if you’re not sure if it’s true.” She clapped her hands together and began setting up the scene. “So hypothetically, a changeling was assigned to be a spy in trollmarket, a place where their kind is hated, to see if they can get to the bridge pieces to release Gunmar. What would they do?”

As they continued to walk, Aaarrrgghh saw the RotGut’s establishment from afar, and an idea sparked in his head. “Gaggletacks.” He pointed at the store to Claire, who gasped in response.

“Of course!” She exclaimed. “The only way for a changeling to be at risk of being found out in trollmarket is a gaggletack.”

“Changeling have to get rid of gaggletacks.” The large troll added.

“Exactly. This means that if someone bought a gaggletack, we might get some leads.” Claire and Aaarrrgghh began passing through the marketplaces to interrogate RotGut.

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As the trial was about to begin, Usurna looked displeased at the sight of Blinky being by Toby’s side. “Blinkious. As we have stated you cannot speak on the Trollhunter’s-“

“It’s okay!” Toby interrupted. “He’s going to be my co-counsel, so it’s all good.”

“And how do you plead?” Vendel asked.

“Not guilty.” The redhead said with a confident demeanor.

The Tribunal looked and muttered at each other, perplexed at the teen’s plea.

“So just to be sure.” Steve whispered to Toby. “You have a plan right?”

“Of course.” Toby remarked. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“…. Is it a good plan?”

Toby’s coincidence wavered for a moment but it wasn’t too noticeable. “Well it depends on how fast Claire and Aaarrrgghh can find evidence for our case.” “What?!” Steve exclaimed, trying his best not to raise his voice.

Toby quickly changed the subject, the last he wanted to do was cause more doubt for Steve. “Anyways. First order of business, I would like to request that Gatto is removed as a member of the Tribunal, at least for this trial.”

“And why would we do such a thing?” Bork asked.

“He and I have had a rather delicate history, which I’m afraid might bring his ability to be objective into question.” Toby explained.

"There have been too many delays for this trail as there is.” Usurna stated. “The Tribunal will proceed.”

“But my request is quite simple.” Toby persisted. “All you need to do is remove him from the courtroom. This trial is important, So I’m sure that none of you would want to mess this up, right?” The

Tribunal silently looked at each other. “And besides, the majority of the Tribunal will still be here even with Gatto gone and-“

“Enough.” Vendel interrupted. “You have made your point clear. And I, for one, do not see the issue of following the human’s request.”

“You can’t be serious.” Gatto objected.

“I agree with Vendel. I accept the request” The Quagawump Queen added. “Usurna, do you object to this request?”

Usurna stared at the chubby teen, her eyes narrowed, before saying, “I do not. Gatto, you may leave.”

Toby smiled brightly as he saw Gatto silently cursed at him before the pile of stones that shaped the troll’s face collapsed.

“State your grounds for your defense.” Usurna stated.

“Of course. We know that Jim went into the Darklands.” Steve gave Toby a bewildered expression as he listened to his classmate listing off all of Jim’s offenses. “We know we went in to save him, giving

Gunmar the opportunity to escape.” The redhead continued as he paced back and forth. “But who is to say that someone didn’t plan on doing it in the first place? That is the ground for my defendant. Woah!”

Suddenly the Tribunal began throwing rocks at Toby. “Hey, hey, hey! Easy there!” Toby ran behind Blinky as a cover.

“Uhhhh what’s with the rocks? “ Steve quickly asked Blinky as he also backed away to avoid the rocks hitting him as well.

“I’m afraid it’s a part of troll law.” The historian explained calmly.

Toby sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, as he vaguely remembered that being in one of the books Blinky gave him. “Of course it is.”

Toby hesitantly stretched his hand out away from the historian’s protection and took a sharp inhale as one of the rocks hit his arm and held back the action to yelp in pain.

“Bork’s rock wins. They will be heard first.” Usurna said as her fellow member stepped forward.

“I have a complaint. How does this make your defendant innocent if you admit he’s guilty for releasing Gunmar?”

“Well if someone was already planning to open Killahead bridge, then wouldn’t that mean Gunmar’s return was bound to happen no matter what the trollhunter did.” Toby explained, which seemed to satisfy Bork as she backed away. “So any other questions?”

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Claire and Aaarrrgghh made their way to the RotGot, and Claire was about to slam at the large door knocker before the large troll stopped her. “What’s wrong?”

“RotGut hard to get information out of.” Aaarrrgghh said. “Need plan.”

“Right, although I haven’t watched a lot of crime shows, there was one episode where two detectives played good cop and bad cop to a witness who wasn’t willing to talk. So maybe we should try that?”

Aaarrrgghh nodded at Claire with a gentle smile.

“Worth a try.” He said.

With excitement now bubbling inside her, Claire slammed the doorknob a few times and then cleared her throat. “Open up RotGut, or I’ll kick down this door!” Aaarrrgghh was caught off guard by how genuine her anger seemed, though he does faintly remember her mentioning once that she was into theater.

One of the speakeasies opened from the door to reveal Gut. “Ailment or curse?”

“Neither, you two-headed dirtbag! We need information.” Rot showed himself as he heard the teen’s yelling. “Gunmar’s got a mole down here, and you’re gonna tell us who it is!”

Rot and Gut looked at each other with confusion. “Why is she being so mean to us, Gut?”

Gut shrugged and looked at Claire. “We don’t share that kind of thing. Salesman-client confidentiality.” He reasoned.

“Oh, so you wanna obstruct official trollhunting business?!” Claire retorted. “Is that what you want to do- huh?!”

Aaarrrgghh suddenly grabbed Claire with both his arms and set her aside out of the trolls’ view. “Take breather.”

She groaned in frustration. “Fine.”

“Whelps.” Aaarrrgghh remarked. “Information important, help save trollhunter’s life.”

“Will it make the small human stop yelling at us?” The large troll nodded at the orange salestroll. “Well…. I don’t know from Gunmar, but there was a guy.”

“It’s Krax, you imbecile.” Gut interjected.

“Yes Krax. He brought out our entire stock of gaggletacks.”

“That’s definitely suspicious.” Claire muttered. “Do you guys have Krax’s address?”

“Uhh sure, give us a moment.” The two trolls looked at the teen, perplexed at the sudden change in mood from Claire, before going around their shop to find the address.

“Good job.” Aaarrrgghh patted the teen by the head.

“Thanks. You know we make a good team.” Claire smiled as she put her hand on her hips. “Let’s hope that Toby and Blinky are as good as we are.”

RotGut returned and gave them a small piece of paper through the speakeasy. “Here’s the address.”

“Thank you.” Claire grabbed the piece of paper and the two walked away from the shop. “We got our first lead. Now let’s if this Krax guy is a changeling, or a troll who just really likes gaggletacks for reason.”

The teen passed the address to Aaarrrgghh for him to see. “Do you think you can find Krax’s house? I don’t know how addresses work here.”

The large troll squinted at the small writing for a few seconds, before looking back at Claire and giving her a thumbs up. Claire’s smile grew brighter and followed Aaarrrgghh’s lead as they walked through Trollmarket in search of Krax’s home.

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“Isn’t it true that you’ve been to the Darklands?” Toby asked NotEnrique as his witness, dangling a dirty sock to keep the changeling’s attention. “Isn’t it further true that you knew Gunmar was trying to get out of the Darklands on his own, and he probably would’ve gotten out eventually anyway even if we hadn’t gone in to save Jim?”

A rock then hit Toby from the back of his head by the Quagwump Queen.“Sounds like you are the one testifying.”

He looked at the Tribunal, wincing as he rubbed on the dull pain on the back of his neck. “Easy. ‘M trying to be thorough with my questions here, alright?.” Toby explained and turned back to NotEnrique. “So?”

The changeling shrugged carelessly. “Well… Jim’s a good guy. You know, for a human. While he was in the Darklands, he saved me familiar. A pretty cute kid.”

Toby leaned his arm on the slab to where NotEnrique sat. “So to you, Jim is a hero?”

The changeling casually rested his face on his hand. “Yeah, he’s a hero. I mean, if he wasn’t, you guys wouldn’t have gone into-” NotEnrique was then interrupted with Toby quickly shoving the dirty sock in his mouth.

“That’s quite enough.” Toby nervously remarked, trying to get the message across for NotEnrique to stop talking without actually saying.

“No. I think the witness should be allowed to finish.” Bork said.

“Oh no.” Steve whispered. Claire and Aaarrrgghh hadn’t come back yet, so they were practically grasping straws at the moment for any kind of evidence they had, if you could even call it that. He crouched down at Blinky’s direction and tried to get his attention. “Blinky.” The historian looked up at the sound of the blonde teen’s quiet voice. “Can’t I do anything to stop this.”

“Hmm, well you could stand as a witness. However, I’m not sure if it’s even possible as-“

“Good enough for me.” Steve said.

“I beg your pardon?” Blinky watched as Steve stood up and took a few steps toward the front of the cage. “Hey! How about we skip the dramatics and let me speak for myself? Or for Lake, I guess.”

“What are you doing?’ Toby asked as he approached Steve’s cage.

“Trying to make this less bad than it is.” He answered.

“But you can’t-“

“The accused cannot testify for himself, it’s against Troll Law.” Quagwump Queen explained.

“Yeah, what she said.” Toby remarked.

“I say let him speak.” Vendel said as he stood up and looked at Steve, his expression unreadable for the blonde teen. “Go on trollhunter.”

“Right…” Steve struggled to find the right words. Now that his plan was in motion, he realized now that he really didn’t know what to say.

“Come on. Think for once.” The blonde teen thought.

“Okay, um… look I’m probably the last person Lake would want to speak for him. But it looks like to me that all of you guys are really pissed at him for making a choice, a bad one at that. But so what, even good people can make mistakes. And while he’s not here, I’m sure he would admit that what he did was wrong. And come on, don’t tell me that none of you haven’t made a bad choice in your life.”

None of the Tribunal reacted except for the Quagawump Queen, who Steve managed to see her raise her before putting it back when she saw that the others weren’t doing the same. “But in the end, Lake is a good person and just did what he thought was right. And who knows maybe he would do it again but-”

The Tribunal all gasped in shock.

“An admission!

“He would do it again?”

“It seems like we have our proof. Let us all rule.” Usurna said.

Steve stood still for a few seconds, his mind trying to keep up with what just happened. “What?!” He saw the Tribunal beginning to leave. “Hey! I wasn’t done talking!”

“You have said quite enough.”Usurna remarked. “Now if you’ll-”

“Oh shut up!” The Tribunal quickly turned around, stunned at the trollhunter.

Frustration began to rise from Steve, he was tired and was just about done with the tribunal. “You guys talk about punishment for what happened to Gunmar because I don’t know about you, but getting your ass beaten by the person you let out and fighting for your life in the hospital sounds like punishment for me.” The blonde teen said as he gritted through his teeth.

Steve glanced down at Toby, his eyes filled with panic and disbelief, but as guilt began building up, he looked away. The trollhunter didn’t care if he was making it worse for him, deep down Steve knew that they were going to make him guilty no matter what, so who cares with what he has to say right? The blonde teen was a dead man walking at this point. “You all act high and mighty when in fact none of you seem smart enough to have your priorities straight.”

The anger the Tribunal had for Steve could be felt, but for Usurna she was more than angry, she was outraged by the trollhunter’s words.

“Are you done?” Ursuna asked with a venomous voice.

“Yeah. I said all that I needed to say.”

As the Tribunal left to make their ruling, Toby opened his mouth to speak but not a single word came out. The redhead staggered as the dread of what might happen next infested in his thoughts that it made him sick.

“Tobias?” Blinky placed his hand on the teen’s shoulder, but Toby pulled away from it.

“I… I need to find Claire and Aaarrrgghh.” He muttered under his breath. “I- I have to….” Toby couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence and ran out of the Hero’s Forge.

Steve leaned back on the cage and slid down. As the moments went by, he could still feel Blinky’s presence. “Why are you still here?

“I don’t think I quite follow.”

The trollhunter felt his throat tighten. “I mean the trial is basically over and there’s no one here, even the changeling left.”

“NotEnrique has somewhere to be, keeping watch I believe he said. But for me, I’m right where I’m supposed to be. Technically I’m supposed to be your mentor, so you are my responsibility till the day you reach your last breath”. He explained, still sounding calm with no hints of being angry at Steve at all.

The blonde teen could only stay silent, blinking as he tried to wrap his mind around the troll’s words. “You know it was quite brave of you to speak of the Tribunal like. Not even the bravest of trolls would do such a thing.”

“Or stupid. I don’t think calling out trolls who are important figures in your culture was a good idea.”

“Well, some of the members of the Tribunal were not on good terms with master Jim even before this whole mess began, so don’t feel discouraged.” While what Blinky said didn’t necessarily make Steve feel any better, but at least he knew nothing would please the Tribunal as long as a human holds the mantle of trollhunter.

“Look, I know you’re trying to make me feel better or whatever, but you’re wasting your time. Don’t see how I can be in a better mood when I’m as good as dead now. So just do something better than being here, please.” Blinky stared at the trollhunter. The lack of emotional connection he had with Steve seemed to make it harder for the historian’s words to hold value.

Blinky didn’t want to leave Steve alone in the Hero’s Forge, but it was also apparent that his presence wasn’t doing much good either. “Very well then.” He muttered solemnly, very much reluctantly shuffled away to his library. Using the excuse that he might find something in his books that might help their situation, but he knew better he wasn’t going to find any.

Steve tightly pulled his hair back and began to wonder what would happen if he died he knew he was going to. Would his parents care? He hopes that they would, because it pained him so much to know that everyone else wouldn’t mind. Maybe they’ll feel pity for a moment, but it’ll quickly fade, because Steve hadn’t been given the initiative to show his change just yet. So they’ll just remember him as a dumb bully and nothing else. The world will still be the same. Despite all that, Steve pushed back the feeling of crying. He refused to go out like a crybaby, even if it made it hurt more to think about.

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“Krax’s house here.” Aaarrrgghh said. It was a cave that looked like any other in trollmarket, with its entrance with a wide flight of stairs that went downwards.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Claire looked around the cave then back at the stairs. “You guys make it fairly easy to break into homes.” She told Aaarrrgghh.

“Now find gaggletack?” Aaarrrgghh asked as he touched the tire that was in the room.

“That's the idea.” Claire glanced at the many boxes that sat in the corner of the cave.

She approached it and lifted the lid off of one of the boxes. Claire gasped as she saw that it was filled with gaggletacks. “Hey Aaarrrgghh. I found a gaggletack mother lode .” Claire kept opening the other boxes to see if the contents were the same, and they were.

The large trolls looked inside the boxes and picked up a handful of gaggletack. “Enough for proof though?”

Claire's smile faltered a bit and thought for a second. “It makes him suspicious, but being suspicious doesn’t necessarily mean he’s working for Gunmar. So maybe we need more proof?”

“Why not talk to Krax?” Aaarrrgghh suggested.

“Yeah but-“

“Claire! Aaarrrgghh!” Both were caught off guard by the sound of Toby’s voice as he walked down the stairs. “What is taking you guys so long?”

“Well we got a lead on this Krax guy and decided to check his house, which just so happens to be very far away from the Hero’s Forge.” Claire explained. “Hold on a second, why are you here Toby?

Aren’t you supposed to be stalling?”

The two saw as Toby crossed his arms and looked away. “I did the best I could. But the trial is over, the Tribunal is deciding their ruling right now.” He answered with a quiet, regretful tone.

“What?! They can’t do that!”

“Technically they can.” Toby cleared his throat at the sight of Claire’s hardened expression.

“It’s not fair.” She muttered, looking away. For the past few days, Claire had this feeling of helplessness looming over her. She was so close to fixing this, to make things right and prevent someone from being in the clutches of death.

“Claire?” The large troll asked, concerned at the teen’s silence. “We’re not giving up. We keep going.” She said.

“So we still find Krax?” Aaarrrgghh asked.

“Guys. Even if the plan could still work. We have no idea where he could be, and it’s not like we can just wait for him to come back here.” And just as Toby said that, the sounds of heavy footsteps and humming were heard amongst the three.

As Krax entered his home, he gasped at the sight of Aaarrrgghh, Toby, and Claire, who stood absolutely still in silence. “Well then. I guess we can.” Toby remarked. Claire quickly grabbed a gaggletack from the pile Aaarrrgghh was carrying and tossed it at Krax. When he grabbed it, the group shielded their eyes at the bright green flash of light. Now a human stood where the hulking troll once was. The uneasy silence continued for a brief moment before Krax tossed the gaggletack away from him and changed back into his troll form.

The changeling looked at the group, eyes frantically darting left and right, absolutely baffled at what he’s supposed to do now. With no other option to come to mind, Krax swung a punch at Aaarrrgghh and tried to leave the scene, but Claire was fast enough to block his way to the entrance.

“Wait! We’re not here to hurt you. We just want to talk.” She explained.

“And why should I believe you? Coming into my house without my knowledge and having the gall to blow my cover. Don’t you understand? All of trollmarket could be at my throat now because of you!” A pang of guilt came over Claire, her eyes diverting away from the changeling. “Then help us save the trollhunter’s life. Please I know your kind is not evil as everyone down here believes. Right now you can prove them wrong.”

“The trial…” There was no relief on Krax’s face, but rather was full of anguish and pity for the trollhunters. “Oh how much it pains me to see just how naive you children truly are.” The changeling then pulled out a dwarkstone from one of the crates. As he shook it, the dwarkstone began to flash a green glow repeatedly. “That for a changeling, failure such as this is a death sentence.”

Krax grabs Claire by the collar of her shirt and tosses her across the room where Aaarrrgghh and Toby were. The large troll managed to catch the human teen just in time. But Claire was quick to look back at Krax and a thought came to her. The thought that she had enough time to snatch the dwarkstone out of the changeling’s hands and toss it far away from everyone.

So Claire ran. Running as fast as she could towards the changeling as she heard her friends calling her to come back, Claire wasn’t going to let Krax die.

But it was too late. As the dwarkstone went off, Claire was hit by a blinding flash of light and a powerful force that pushed her back. A loud ringing noise clouded her hearing and her vision was blurry for a moment.

“Claire? Claire?! Come on, talk to me!” Toby begged as his voice was becoming less muffled to Claire.

She tried to lift herself up but suddenly felt like the skin in her right arm and the side of her face was on fire and fell back down. As Aaarrrgghh and Toby helped Claire to get up, she glanced at her friend’s face covered in thick gray dust, she looked ahead and Krax was nowhere to be seen, only just dust splattered all over the room.

“He… He’s gone.” Claire whispered, with that looming, helpless feeling now crashing down on her. “I….. I forced someone to kill themselves, and for what?”

“No.” Toby interjected. “Don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Then whose fault was it?!” Tears were already pouring down Claire’s face.

“No one.” Aaarrrgghh responded, placing his hand on her shoulder. “This is messy side of war. Always hard to see.” The large troll took a look at Claire’s arm and saw the burns she had. “Let’s get back to Blinky.”

“Right…” Toby said slowly. That alone, and Claire staying silent with a blank expression gave Aaarrrgghh the impression that neither of them wanted to face what was next, and he couldn’t blame them. They were just children after all. He of all trolls should know that.

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Blinky stood in front of a table in his library, two of his hands pressing themselves onto the table. The bitter emotion he felt towards the poor trollhunter’s fate. The Deep was a mysterious and terrifying force of nature, Blinky couldn’t bear to imagine what might happen once Steve made it to the deep.

“Blinkous!” The historian jolted at Vendel’s sudden presence and then saw how upset trollmarket’s elder was. “That trial was a complete disaster! The Tribunal’s votes are practically unanimous to declare him guilty of the charges.”

“Believe me Vendel, I am aware.” Blinky responded. “But surely there is something we can do to-” In a nick of time, Aaarrrgghh suddenly barged inside alongside Toby and Claire. “Aaarrrgghh, you’re back. Did you find something they might give us a chance to fix this?” Blinky asked.

“Maybe. But Claire hurt.” The large troll brought the teen forward, who still seemed to be in shock a bit. “Needs help.”

Blinky gasped at the sight of Claire’s burns. “By Deya’s grace, what happened?”

“Turns out there was a changeling here at trollmarket by the name of Krax.” Toby explained.

“You found one?” Blinky asked in surprise.

“Yeah, but he wasn’t too happy that we found out so he used a dwarkstone to….. dispose of himself.” Toby’s voice wavering and low at that last part, feeling uncomfortable putting what happened into words.

“Oh dear.” Blinky whispered.

Vendel grabbed Claire’s arm that was burned and took out some gauze from his bag. “Tragic, but not surprising. For changelings, this tactic is used quite often when they’re discovered.” As the elder tends to Claire’s arm, Toby couldn’t help but feel uneasy by how casual Vendel made it sound.

“So what do we do now? We still got nothing and it’s not like the Tribunal will take our word for it.” Claire said, wincing at the stinging sensation her arm felt in contact with the gauze.

“Then perhaps they’ll take my word.” Vendel responded, tearing the end of the gauze and gave it to Blinky. “Blinkous, finish tending to her wounds. I shall take this to Usurna and do everything in my power to have her at least consider stopping this trial.”

"Well amongst all the bad shit that has happened today, it seems like maybe things might turn around for the better.” Toby remarked as Vendel exited the library.

“I’m sure at this point we can all agree towards Tobias’ sentiment.” Blinky takes out a first aid kit that was under the table. Jim suggested in the past that Blinky should have one around just in case, and since then he was quickly proven right after a couple of missions. “Claire, I hope you don’t mind asking but how are you holding up? You seem quite shaken.”

The teen held a grip and twisted the fabric of her skirt. “I guess what I saw was… a lot to take in. It’s not right.”

Blinky sighed as he placed a pad where the side of her cheek was burned. “I understand. I suppose it is another problem added to the mix that needs fixing, but sadly that will be more difficult to accomplish. So for now, let us focus on one problem at a time.”

“Right…” Claire muttered. “Do you think that Vendel will be able to save Steve?”

“I have hope. All I know for certain is that with Vendel’s status as trollmarket’s elder, we have a better chance at turning the tides to our favor.” What the historian said to Claire managed to put her somewhat at ease, but after failing so much, the doubt never left her mind.

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After reuniting the tribunal, Vendel requested that he could speak with Usurna alone inside of the Heartstone.

As they walked, Vendel explained the discovery of the changeling and what occurred after. “A changeling? Here in Trollmarket?”

“Yes.” Trollmarket’s elder confirmed.

“And you are certain of this? That this isn’t a ploy by the trollhunter’s companions to buy themselves more time?” Usurna glanced at Vendel, her expression seemingly skeptical.

“I have it on good authority. If Gunmar’s agents are within the walls, something is afoot. We must suspend the Tribunal at once and deal with the real threat.” Vendel said, looking back at Usurna. “Real threat? You think there may be more than one ally of Gunmar, here in trollmarket?” Vendel was beginning to hope that the Krubera queen was finally coming to her senses and prioritize the real issue that was at hand.

“Yes. If Gunmar has one agent within Trollmarket, who’s to say there aren’t others?” He explained. The livelihoods of trollmarket’s residents were at risk, and Vendel would not allow this to be ignored until it was too late. “It’s time we root out this enemy at the core and end this.”

Usurna halted herself in surprise at what she just heard and watched as Vendel continued to walk forward. “You’re wrong Vendel. There are only two agents of Gunmar within Trollmarket’s walls.”

Confusion riddled Vendel’s mind of hearing Usurna while picking out some of the rocks that were on a table.

“The changeling.” Usurna plucked out a thin, small dagger from the feather-like neckpiece. “And the changeling’s master.”

“What?” Realization suddenly hit the elder. No couldn’t possible that Gunmar would have someone with that great of a position of power on his side. Vendel took a small crystal in his hand before facing Usurna, who was already dangerously close to him. Just in case the worst came to be for him. “How do you know this?” He asked with a heavy voice.

“Because.” Usurna stabbed Vendel in the stomach with the dagger. “I’m the master.”

To the shock of the elder, he was already turning into stone. It seemed that her dagger wasn’t an ordinary weapon. Gasping for breath, Vendel began backing away. He dropped his staff and struggled to maintain movement as his body was slowly beginning to harden.

“I apologize Vendel.” Usurna said, genuinely sounding disappointed. “I was hoping you’d live long enough to see Gunmar’s glorious return.” She placed her dagger back to her neckpiece and grabbed Vendel’s staff.

The elder loses his balance and falls down to his knees. “Usurna… You cannot…” He muttered, his voice becoming hoarse. Even with the burning pain Vendel felt, he had enough tolerance to be able to stand up in front of Usurna. “They’ll stop you. The trollhunter…” Vendel could not finish his last words as his body was now completely engulfed in stone.

“Shall die.” Usurna said. “Both of them.” She used the end of Vendel’s staff to tip his body over, smashing into pieces by the impact of the floor. “Farewell, Vendel, Elder of Trollmarket. A shame that you had to meet your end like this.” The Krubera queen tossed the staff aside and walked away, coming out of the heartstone with a calm expression as if nothing had happened.

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With everyone back in the Hero’s Forge to finish this trial, the group was quick to notice that Vendel was noticeably absent from the court.

“The Tribunal will come to an order.” Blinky narrowed his eyes in bewilderedness at Ursuna’s lack of acknowledgment of the elder’s absence.

“Wait a minute, Vendel isn’t here.” Steve looked down at Blinky, hoping that he had some kind of explanation for this. “Didn’t you say that he was going to tell them what you guys found?”

"Pardon me but we spoke to Vendel, and he was going to present our newly found evidence to the Tribunal.” Blinky explained.

“When I spoke to him, he said nothing of any evidence.” Blinky’s eyes widened at the notion, while the rest were shocked at what they heard. That couldn’t be right, Vendel was an honorable and quite frankly blunt troll. He wouldn’t lie about such a thing.

“However, it became apparent to me that Vendel’s judgment for this trial might not be as objective as I hoped, so I had him removed from this trial.” Usurna stated. “Hold on you- you can’t….” Toby wanted to object to this decision, but how could he when he requested the same thing with Gatto at the beginning. He could feel his friends and Steve’s gaze, waiting for him to finish saying something that could help them.

“You were saying?” Bork questioned, raising her brow.

Toby was at a loss of words, without the evidence, there was nothing more he or anyone could do. Toby’s silence was all the group needed to realize the painful truth that it was over. They had failed. “Very well.” Usurna took the teen’s lack of response as an indication to continue on. “The Tribunal finds the trollhunter… guilty. He is hereby sentenced into the Deep, to face death at the hands of his greatest fear.” The Tribunal left the viewing deck, but Usurna wanted to see this through till the end, so she made her way down to the Hero’s Forge.

When the cage started to move backwards, the others looked back and began following it. “Vendel was supposed to make things better.” Toby muttered, looking utterly defeated. “We were so close! and now-“

“You tried.” There was a bitter acceptance in Steve’s voice, with his small, tired smile making all the more painful for the others. “You… you all tried. It’s not like we had much of a winning shot anyway.” Soon he felt his throat tighten and the spots of small tears in his eyes, but Steve made sure in all his power that he would push it back down. “At least it has to be me instead of Lake.” “But it doesn’t have to be this way.” Claire objected, sprinting closer to Steve. “I can use my shadow staff. I get you out of the Deep, you don’t have to die.” Steve stayed silent. There was an option that would have him live another day, but what next? Helping him out of his sentence sounded like treason to him. Steve wondered if it was fair to put Claire in so much trouble just to save his life.

“I… I can’t let you do that. Who knows what Trollmarket would do if you do that.” The cage stopped at a bottomless pit that was at the edge of the Hero Forge. Just the anxiety and fleeting fear by looking down made Steve grab the bars of the cage with both hands.

“Master Steve, things may be hopeless. But you mustn’t give up.” Blinky implored. “As long as you keep on fighting, you can be capable of overcoming anything. Please remember that.” Then Usurna stepped in with her Krubera guards. “If there’s any consolation, these past few days have shown me something that humans should have never been a part of troll affair, the mere existence of a human trollhunter should be a violation of Troll Law.”

With that, Usurna signaled a guard to lower the cage to the Deep. The group watched as the cage dropped, Steve’s screaming getting fainter and fainter as it fell further.

He held his breath and braced for impact. The cage crashes below the many edges of the sharp, stony walls, sending Steve flying everywhere and constantly slamming into the bars.

Once the cage finally made it to the ground, Steve crawled out of it as the door seemed to be already open. His whole body ached as he slowly got up on one knee, hearing the quiet wheezing of his breath. The crystal from the cave soon flickered out, leaving the blonde teen in the darkness with nothing but the small glow of the amulet as his light.

Steve wandered cautiously, keeping his hand in contact with the walls as some kind of guidance. As he walked, Steve looked down at his free hand and began to concentrate on summoning Daylight. To his surprise, the sword appeared swiftly at his palm. Sure it took a while to summon, but Steve expected that it wasn’t going to appear at all.

Using his sword as a light source, the trollhunter moved it around to see if there was anything or anyone. Taking a turn around, he felt the wall was becoming smoother, and began hearing the most faint voices. However, they were not like the ones in his dream, it was coming from somewhere. Steve’s mind told him that following the voices was a bad idea, that finding a way to get out would be a better idea. But now there was this nagging thought in his mind.

The blonde teen remembered his fear the pixies had forced to show him. Even now he could still remember how it shook him to his very core. So the question arose in his mind, would his fear be any different now?

Steve grimaced and gripped his sword tightly, then with a frustrated groan, he sprinted towards the voices. Soon the dark cave-like pit soon transitioned to the hallways of Arcadia Oaks High. The voices turned out to be chatter from students that the trollhunter could seem to hear. He tried getting closer, but it didn’t make one of the conversations clearer. Even stranger, no one seemed to take note of him. As if they were ignoring Steve.

“Hello?” He shook a student’s shoulder, but didn’t have any kind of reaction, not even a dirty look.

Suddenly all the lights began to go back and forth between going on and off. The constant switching was getting faster and faster before one by one, each light began to explode, with sparks of electricity flying off of the circuits. Steve was baffled at no one reacting, they just kept talking and remained oblivious beyond belief. Steve steadied his hold on Daylight with both hands and looked at his surroundings with anxious dread.

The sound of metal scraping against each other almost made the trollhunter jump, he turned around from behind and waited as whatever was coming came closer. From a hallway on the right side appeared a dark figure with a black suit of armor and a large sword with a piercing red glow. Their eyes were red as well and wide, and Steve could just tell it was full of hate and anger. A chill went down his spine as they stared him down. They lifted their sword up and brought it close across their face.

The color on Steve’s face drained the moment he saw that this…. thing had his face. The doppelganger found the trollhunter’s reaction amusing and formed a large smile, his teeth sharp with fangs. In his panic state, Steve decided to take this opportunity to strike first. He swung his sword, but the doppelganger quickly avoided it by sliding to the side. They went ahead of Steve and hit his back with the handle of his sword.

Steve stumbled and bent down, having the air knocked out of him. As he tried his best to straighten himself, the doppelganger gave him no time and lunged at Steve, pinning him down to the ground. Steve thrashed around with all his strength, trying to escape the doppelganger’s hold, but nothing seemed to help. “Let me go!” Steve shouted. “Or I swear to god I’ll-"

The doppelganger pressed their finger on the trollhunter’s lips. “Shhhhhhhhhh.” Their voice was raspy and strained, nothing like Steve’s. “Hush and listen. Listen to their whispers.” The students’ conversations suddenly became clear.

“What’s psycho Steve doing now?”

“Is he alright? I’m starting to get scared.”

“Ugh, why does Steve always have to make a scene?”

“He must really like the attention.”

Everyone was talking about him, as if he wasn’t there or was too stupid to notice. Couldn’t they see that he was in trouble? “Please!” Steve cried out. “Someone help me!”

But they just kept talking and talking. “No one is going to help. Why would they?” The doppelganger said, tightening their grip on Steve’s wrist. “Someone as horrible and disgusting as you should get to clean up your mess by yourself.”

The trollhunter hissed as it felt like his wrists were going to break at any moment. Steve head-butted the doppelganger, moved to the side, and kicked them out of his way. As Steve dragged himself back up, he summoned Daylight, leaning onto it like a crutch.

He could tell that the doppelganger was furious now. The doppelganger charged at Steve, raising their sword up high, but barely missing the trollhunter as he slid to the side, with the upper part of his right arm taking the hit.

Steve held back the urge to scream and, as if on instinct, swung a punch at the doppelganger’s face. They didn’t seem affected much by it, and swung their sword again. The trollhunter brought out his shield and was forced to stumble back with each strike the doppelganger made with their sword. Steve knew he couldn’t keep a steady hold for long with how strong their blows were, but he was having a hard time figuring out how to beat something that practically seemed invincible.

“Such a useless coward!” The doppelganger exclaimed with a devilish grin. “Can’t even win a fight with himself.”

When the doppelganger struck the trollhunter’s shield again, Steve brought himself closer to them and pushed the sword out of the way, and thrusted daylight right through their abdomen. The doppelganger recoiled as they spat out blood, and for a moment Steve felt a sense of relief that it was over. “Oh my god! He killed him!” Someone screamed in horror.

Steve looked around and found a crowd forming amongst the hallway, and with it, fear and outcry could be heard all around. When Steve turned to see the doppelganger again, Jim stood there instead. His classmate looked at the blood that covered his hands then looked back at Steve. “You….. Why?”

Just the sound of his voice being so fragile and broken made the trollhunter’s stomach drop. “I…. I…” Then Steve furiously shook his head. “No! This- This isn’t real. You’re not real, none of this is real!”

Tears started to cloud his vision, but he could still see the expression of disbelief and distraught in Jim’s face. “So….. is my pain not real?” Jim slowly started to bring himself closer to Steve, letting Daylight pierce further into his wound. “All the torment you put me and so many others through just doesn't matter?”

Steve tried all that he could to stop Jim without hurting him anymore, but he kept walking forward. “Who are you to tell me that what I dealt with you is or isn’t real.” He snapped through his choked sobs. “What did I ever do to you to deserve this?!”

“You- You didn’t, you didn’t anything wrong! You didn’t deserve anything of what I did to you!” At this point, the two were face to face with each other, where Steve could only see the sword’s handle in front of him. “Please…. I’m sorry! I-I don't know how to make things right. Just tell me how!”

Jim leaned onto Steve, making his struggle to breathe any further loud and clear for the trollhunter. “You already know the answer to that.” A small smile escaped his lips. “To truly redeem yourself, you have to face the crowd and endure all the pain and suffering you deserve. You know as well as I do that you’re not even close to being a person people can tolerate.”

Steve felt like he was suffocating as he now held to Jim’s dead body. With nothing else he could think of, the trollhunter pulled the sword out and moved away from the body as far as he could, letting it collapse to the ground. As Steve walked backwards, the crowd pushed him forward.

“Murder!”

“I can’t believe you could do such a thing?!”

“Get him!”

Booming voices came from who knows how many people, calling him awful things but what he believed to be true. As the crowd was closing in on Steve, he was already at his breaking point. Hands grab Steve to restrain him, and was met with a punch in the face that came out of nowhere. Countless students came forward to throw a punch or kick at Steve. Amidst all of this, Blinky’s words then echoed in his mind. Even if it seemed like there was no way out of this, Steve knew there was still some fight left in him. As the next person got close, Steve kicked them out of the way as far as he could, only to receive a punch in the stomach.

Might as well die trying than not at all.

#tales of arcadia #trollhunters #steve palchuk #toby domzalski #claire nuñez #blinky galadrigal #aaarrrgghh #vendel #usurna #vanilla writing #damn it's been a while since I've updated this fic #but whatever #here it is

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