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thevalicemultiverse · 9 months ago

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((And the usual contingent of not-incorrect quotes, because I do love those XD))

The "Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur's Gate III" Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection

(Don't worry too much about spoilers -- most of this is early-game stuff, with just a couple of things relating to stuff in Act II)

Alice: [having just met Lae'zel on the Nautiloid and been informed of the situation with the parasites] And who are you, exactly?

Lae'zel: Who am I? Your only chance of survival.

[later, after the imps have been fought, and everyone's met back up and freed Shadowheart:]

Victor: [introducing himself as they get back on the move] I'm Victor.

Alice: I'm Alice. [pointing to Lae'zel] And this is Only.

Lae'zel: ?

Alice: Well, you've given me nothing else to call you.

Shadowheart: [after being informed the trio live in a world without a sun and that's why they're being so weird about the sky being blue] I -- are you Shar's Chosen? Is this some sort of test? Am I not supposed to believe you when you say you like sunlight? I can totally not believe you if that's the case!

Alice: ...I feel like we've missed something.

Smiler: [lying down and sunbathing] Yeah, it's in the sky above us.

Withers: What is the worth of a single mortal's life?

Victor: I -- I would say priceless. You can't put a value on life itself.

Alice: I say it's worth whatever you're willing to pay to defend it. Only the owner of said life can set the value.

Smiler: I'm pretty sure the standard rate of assassins in Duskwall is four Coin minimum -- not sure how that translates to your money.

Victor & Alice: [look at Smiler]

Smiler: What? It's a legitimate answer!

Withers: I shall be here, in thy camp, for whenever thou has need of my services.

Alice: Oh? What kind of services do you offer?

Withers: A mending of the threads between life and death. Should thou or any of thy compatriots perish, I will cleave soul to body once more.

Victor: Cleave soul to -- wait a minute, isn't that how you get vampires?

Astarion: [rearranging his tent, pauses and gives them a really weird look]

Alice: [during one of the meetings with Raphael] You do seem like a very powerful devil.

Raphael: [preening] I consider myself no slouch, yes.

Smiler: [cheerfully] I bet your blood could power an entire city block for a month!

Raphael: [blink blink] ...thank...you?

Strange Ox: Ah, you're addressing me. A humble ox. How...quaint.

Smiler: [tilting their head] What are you?

Strange Ox: As I said, a humble ox. I don't know why you're --

Smiler: No, I mean, what's an ox?

Strange Ox: ...

Smiler: [standing behind a table lined with eight samples of the same Potion Of Glorious Vaulting, with Victor, Alice, and the companions all gathered around the front of it] Thank you all for coming to this blind taste test, where we will be disproving the idiotic notion that you only need one specific ingredient per potion to create something that does what you want it to. In front of you are eight individual Potions of Glorious Vaulting, each made with a different type of Ashes -- I would like you each to drink one, test the effects, then rate it based on how strong the effects were, how long they lasted, and how tasty it was.

Wyll: You care about the taste?

Smiler: Of course! If we're going to be making potions, the least we could do is make them pleasant to consume! We're working toward maximum happiness here! Now everybody pick one and let's get jumping!

Gale: [realizing the trio isn't with them as they move through the mind flayer colony under Moonrise] Hold -- where's Victor, Alice, and Smiler?

Karlach: I think I saw them looking at a cage in the last room.

Lae'zel: Chk -- they should know by now that we cannot pause and look at every little thing that --

Smiler: [rejoining the group carrying a certain intellect devourer, beaming, as Victor and Alice come up behind them] Hey everyone!

Lae'zel: [stares at the brain] ...

Astarion: Why are you carrying an intellect --

Lae'zel: THAT. THING. SURVIVED?!

Us: Hello Angry Friend!

Lae'zel: I'M NOT YOUR FRIEND

Aylin: [after everyone's agreed to meet up with her and Isobel again later at the camp] Now -- you will leave us. We must take succour in one another's bodies and words.

Isobel: Aylin. We'll see you later.

Victor: [hiding a smile] Of course.

Alice: [biting back a chuckle] Later.

Smiler: [big beaming grin and a double thumbs up] Enjoy the hot lesbian sex!

Victor: Smiler!

Aylin: I intend to.

Isobel: AYLIN.

#~M: meanwhile in our reality (OOC)#~F: fresh off the Illustrated News (quotes)#~F: if i ever see that van dort boy (victor)#~F: is she the chosen one (alice)#~F: smile always! (smiler)#~V: Valicer In The Dark #((had probably more fun with these than I should have #the last two made me laugh SO MUCH XD #and Smiler's reacting to the in-game alchemy system requiring just one specific ingredient for a potion #and then another ingredient that's of a certain type #for example the Potion of Glorious Vaulting they're testing #it's made of Sublimate of Wispweed #and any 'Ashes'#Smiler was like 'wait what no that is NOT how things work'#'do you know how precise I have to be when making Joy Serum'#so yes they are determined to do science about this #and yes vampires in Blades In The Dark are created when a ghost inhabits an otherwise-empty body #they're generally more energy vampires than blood-drinkers #Astarion would be seen as VERY weird there #on the other hand he'd be able to walk around freely because no sun soooo))#~M: with this hand I will lift your queue

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thevalicemultiverse · 1 year ago

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OOC: Valicer In The Dark Verse Officially Open!

Here's the pertinent details, copied from my official Verse Google Doc:

~V: Valicer In The Dark (VITD)

It is a world of darkness — literally, in this case, because the sun exploded eight and a half centuries ago. In this land of eternal night, the city of Duskwall has established itself as both the premiere port of the Imperium of the Immortal Emperor, with hunters bringing in the gallons of living leviathan blood that powers the lightning barriers that keep the horrors of the deathlands around at bay...and as a vicious hub of crime and violence, fueled by the vast inequality between rich and poor. Within said city, Alice Liddell was dealing with the demons of her past as she battled hallucinations both beautiful and grim; Victor Van Dort was preparing for an arranged marriage that would elevate his nouveau riche family to the status they felt they’d deserved; and Smiler Alton was just trying to sell happiness in a syringe in the name of the cult of the Advocates and their god Mar-Mal. But then, one foggy “day,” a chance meeting between the three changed everything...

Premise: You can blame the folks over at OXBox and OXtra for this one. Specifically, you can blame their two seasons of “Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark.” Even MORE specifically, you can blame their “funny moments” pages for Oxventure and other RPG campaigns on TV Tropes, which happened to mention “Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark” and provided a link to the page for BITD for me to read through and decide “well, I want to know more about this.” And after perusing the official website, purchasing and reading the PDF of the official book, and watching both seasons of the Oxventure series — yeah, it was kind of inevitable that I’d end up making my own AU set in the city of Duskwall for my new OT3 of Victor, Alice, and Smiler. I highly recommend going to John Harper’s official BITD site for more information about how the actual RPG itself works, and the book is a real fun read, but here’s the basics to keep in mind regarding the world:

As stated in the blurb, the world is pretty much always dark — there was a cataclysm AGES ago that shattered the continents and blew up the sun, leaving only weak embers that flare up a tiny bit at dawn and dusk (I imagine the sky turns vaguely purple for a little bit, then that’s it). Hand lanterns are a popular accessory in the city!

That same cataclysm also made it so the dead no longer pass onto the afterlife, so the entire world is EXTREMELY HAUNTED, with feral ghosts trying to possess people and feast on their life essence being both a feared fate and a fact of life for the people of this world. The mysterious and anonymous Spirit Wardens collect the bodies of the dead to burn them in special fires to prevent ghosts from escaping (if they can get to them in time), and every city is surrounded by a powerful lightning barrier to hold off the hordes of ghosts, demons, and other unknowable horrors in the lands beyond (aka the mentioned “deathlands”).

The basic aesthetic of the world is dark, grungy steampunk — except instead of steam, the power source of choice is “electroplasm,” the raw essence of life most often harvested from the blood of leviathans — vast demonic creatures in the ink-black seas around Duskwall. Electroplasm, as the name suggests, is what fuels anything electric in the city, from humble street lamps to the giant lightning barriers. It also allows them to grow food without sunlight, as certain creatures (mainly sea life held in giant aquariums) and plants can be infused with the stuff to turn them into “radiant energy” generators, which glow brightly and allow the plants around them to grow faster and better. Every noble family in the city has a leviathan hunter ship, and fortunes turn on the amount of blood they bring back. John Harper himself said it best at the end of the book (Blades In The Dark, page 308): “This was once a storybook fantasy world of magic and wonders, which was destroyed and an industrial civilization was built on top of the ruins. Don’t expect scientific realism here.”

As for our main characters and their places in this world. . .

Alice was the daughter of Dean Arthur Liddell of the prestigious Doskvol Academy (located in Whitecrown, THE fancy bit of Duskwall – the Lord Governor lives there, away from the riffraff) and his wife Lorina, and the younger sister of Lizzie. The family had a happy life living in Brightstone (the next-fanciest district) – up until one Angus Bumby entered Doskvol Academy and became obsessed with Lizzie. When she rebuffed his advances, he broke into the house, had his way with her, and set the place on fire to both cover his crime and try to destroy the bodies so they couldn’t let out ghosts. Alice was the sole survivor, and after a year in hospital spent convalescing from her burns, got sent to Rutledge Asylum, here situated right next to Ironhook – Duskwall’s freaking PRISON. This Alice is probably the only one who had a WORSE time in there than in canon, as psychiatry is basically an unknown art in Duskwall, and most everyone with some sort of mental trauma is just locked up to rot or has their soul ripped out so they can become an empty Hollow zombie to be used as cheap slave labor – a fate Alice avoided solely due to being a minor. She still had her Wonderland in this world, though, and was able to use it to lever herself out of her catatonia and eventually deal with her grief enough to join the waking world…and promptly ended up sent to the Houndsditch Home in Charhollow (one of the “poor but honest” districts), where she helped the owner, Dr. Bumby, as a general dogsbody and girl-of-all-work, and received his special hypnosis-based therapy to help her forget her past. As per A:MR, after about a year there, Wonderland kicked her in the pants and helped her realize Bumby was the one that killed her family – but unlike canon, by the time of the main action of the AU, she has NOT pushed him onto any train tracks. Mostly because that would likely result in him leaving a ghost, and a spectral Bumby is the LAST thing she wants to deal with.

Victor is the son of William and Nell Van Dort, fish merchants living in Nightmarket (one of the main shopping districts, and where the “new money” tends to live). William invented canned fish when Victor was young, which the public pounced on, and his canneries easily made the Van Dorts the wealthiest family in Nightmarket. Nell wanted to eventually make the transition to Brightstone, though, and thus when Victor came of age, she started trying to arrange a marriage with one of the noble families living there. She got lucky shortly before the beginning of the AU, as the Everglots (an old noble family whose fortunes were on the downswing thanks to their leviathan hunter ship coming back dry more often than not, meaning their power, prestige, and most importantly coin was running out) consented to let Victor marry their daughter Victoria in exchange for some of that sweet sweet Van Dort fortune. As per canon, Victor and Victoria met right before the wedding rehearsal, and while they liked each other, it wasn’t enough to calm Victor’s nerves. Three hours of failed practice, one dropped ring, and one burn on Maudeline Everglot’s dress from a forgotten candle later, and Victor was banished into the streets to learn his lines. He wandered around for a while, trying to get them straight in his head, and eventually got them right down an old forgotten alley…only for the wandering ghost of a bride, Emily, to hear them and think they were meant for her. Victor was promptly dragged into the “ghost field,” the spectral echo of the city where ghosts live, and held captive by Emily (whom he did feel sorry for, but ghosts are bad news in Duskwall – they tend to lose their minds quickly due to not being able to pass on, and Emily was showing a few signs of “going feral,” as it were). The main AU is actually kicked off by him finally escaping her and finding his way back to the material plane by falling out of a wall in front of Alice and Smiler…

Smiler was the “son” of one Dr. Kellard Kelman, owner of The Sanctuary, a refuge for people who have “lost their smile” – in actuality, a horrible hellhole of a “mental hospital” where Dr. Kelman conducted experiments on the patients and threw failures in the basement. Smiler and their father clashed about a lot of things (including Kelman’s brutal methods for ensuring “social compliance” and his refusal to accept Smiler as nonbinary), and eventually Smiler just ran away at about twelve years old, rather than be a part of Kelman’s nonsense any further. They ended up in Silkshore (the “red light” district), where they encountered Carol and Matthew Alton, members of the Advocates cult, who worship Mar-Mal, the Unending Smile. Matt and Carol took in the young Smiler and told them what the cult was all about (basically, maximizing happiness however possible, from genuine kind acts to straight-up selling drugs and hypnotizing people) – Smiler thought it all sounded better than Kelman’s deal and joined up, changing their name from Marmaduke Kelman to Smiler Alton. They proved to be a very eager little cultist, developing a knack for hypnosis and – as they got older – a talent with chemical concoctions, eventually making a drug that induced a heavy state of bliss that they called Joy Serum. The invention of this drug caused Mar-Mal to mark them with its favor, turning their previously green eyes a glowing yellow (Matt and Carol were so proud!). At the start of the main AU, they spend most of their time brewing up and selling Joy Serum in Silkshore – not far from The Mangled Mermaid where Alice’s old nanny now plies her trade as a prostitute, meaning Smiler and Alice were acquainted just from her visits to see Nan there (Smiler in fact just straight-up gave Alice some money to buy lunch one day, making them about the closest thing she had to a friend there).

So! With all that in mind, the actual meat of the AU starts with Alice having fled the Houndsditch Home looking for help with her Bumby problem (either a way to bring evidence to the Inspectors, the only members of the police force known to be incorruptible, or at least not subject to bribes, or a way to kill him and make sure he didn’t come back as a ghost). Her first instinct was to go to Nanny, and along the way she encountered Smiler, packing up after finishing their sales for the day. They asked her what was wrong, and she decided she could trust them enough to let them in on what she’d found — however, her attempt to tell them what was going on was interrupted by Victor’s attempted escape from Emily, as he fell out of the ghost field in front of him. Concerned, the two ended up helping him over to the Mangled Mermaid to get some food and water in him and help him calm down after his experience. Unfortunately, Emily managed to follow them there and got rather annoyed at finding her husband in a brothel – fortunately, before she could do any damage, Smiler managed to talk her down (mainly by reminding her that humans gotta eat). Victor took the opportunity to finally explain to her what he’d been doing and that he was already engaged –

But when he mentioned Victoria’s name, Nanny commented that she’d heard that she’d already gotten married that day, to someone named “Lord Barkis.” And Emily recognized the “Barkis” name, as that was the name of the man who killed her. She and Victor agreed they had to go see Victoria for her own good, just in case she’d gotten married to a murderer, and Smiler and Alice chose to come along as back-up, and to talk to the Bluecoats (nickname for the local police) about Alice’s recent revelation over her family’s death not being an accident, but instead murder. The four took a gondola over to Brightstone (as Duskwall is part Venice as well as being part Victorian London, and is cut all over the place by canals) and crashed the Everglot-Barkis wedding reception, where Emily did indeed identify Barkis as her murderer. Barkis attempted to take Victoria hostage as the guests fled, but the group was able to free her – Victor sending her away to get help or at least find a safe place to hide – and Emily ended up destroying herself to possess Barkis and kill him with an electroplasmic bomb he had on him for some reason, thanking Victor for at least helping her get revenge on her killer and tossing a spare bomb to Alice to help with her own issues. The Bluecoats finally arrived once the deed was done, and searched the corpse while the trio tried to explain what happened –

And then one of the Bluecoats found a fancy brass mask on Barkis. Marking him as one of the Spirit Wardens, the group that goes around collecting corpses and burning them in electroplasm to make sure that the city isn’t entirely overrun by ghosts. A group of people bankrolled by the Immortal Emperor himself.

Yeah, that wasn’t good. The Bluecoats, already not really believing the gang’s story, decided they’d murdered Barkis (or, at least Alice and Smiler had – Victor got added to the list when he refused to just run off back home or bribe them) and were prepared to take them in, but Alice managed to hold off the entire patrol with a butcher’s knife just long enough for them to start running. Through various means (like Alice practically leaping over a carriage in her way double-jump style, Smiler just straight-up injecting a purser with Joy Serum, and Victor managing to accidentally lead a couple more into a very angry, very electric ghost by using his new ability to sense hidden ghosts to help his new friends avoid it), the trio was able to escape into Six Towers, a previously rich neighborhood fallen to ruin and squatters in recent years. They found shelter in an abandoned building, which proved to be the old home of one Elder Gutknecht, a former occult researcher who had managed to keep his senses after death and become a genuinely friendly ghost. The three began wondering what to do next, and Alice finally told Victor and Smiler the full story about Bumby…

And then Victor and Smiler were like, “Well, we’re already accused of murder…”

And so the group became a crew of criminals, ready to take that bastard Bumby out of the picture, before moving onto more traditional scores. I picture them as a group of Shadows, spies, thieves, and saboteurs, though there’s a bit of a Hawker element because Smiler is of course still selling Joy Serum (and is working on an inhaled drug called Giggler Gas). And even though they are criminals, they’re trying to help where they can – Victor, after figuring out how to infuse insects with electroplasm to make glowing moths and stuff to help plants grow, wants to make a community greenhouse for people; Alice still looks after the kids at Houndsditch as best she can from afar, and is only too happy to kill other people hurting children for free; and Smiler of course does want to spread happiness, even if it’s in a bit of a bizarre way sometimes. They’re my chaos crime morally gray group and I love them.

Character tags include:

~C: Victor Van Dort (a kind-hearted if not always clear-thinking new-money noodle of a young man, whose anxiety has NOT been helped by being kidnapped, however, briefly, by a ghost bride. He’s doing his best to cope, though, and train his new powers. He is the group’s Whisper (who are the ones who develop a special affinity for the ghostly and demonic in the city) and has the ability Ghost Mind, which allows him to sense every ghost in his presence no matter if they’re visible or not)

~C: Alice Liddell (a young lady with a tongue as sharp as her favorite blade, she nonetheless tries to do the right thing by the people around her, and has a soft spot for cats, rabbits, and her newfound friends. If only she could do something about those damn hallucinations… She is the group’s Cutter (the ones who are best suited to solving a problem with violence), and has the abilities Not To Be Trifled With, which allows her to push herself to perform a feat of great physical force, or to take on up to six people at once on equal footing, and The Devil’s Footsteps, which allows her to push herself to perform a feat of great athletic prowess or maneuver in such a way that she tricks her enemies into attacking each other)

~C: Smiler Alton (a cheerful nonbinary person always ready with a smile, a friendly word, and, if necessary, a needle full of Joy Serum to make people happy. They genuinely want to make the world a better, brighter place — just their ideas of how to do so are strongly informed by growing up in a happiness cult. . . They are the group’s Slide (the ones who are the smooth-talkers and master manipulators) and Leech (the ones who are the chemists and tinkerers), and have the ability Alchemist, which makes them better at crafting anything alchemical (like their Joy Serum))

This verse has no time period or subverse tags.

This verse may touch upon such subjects as rape, murder, burglary, weird mind control stuff, cult activity (though intentionally made kinda silly), and other things that you might expect to find in a horrible crime-ridden city.

This verse is open to everyone!

#~M: meanwhile in our reality (OOC))#~V: Valicer In The Dark #~C: Victor Van Dort #~C: Alice Liddell #~C: Smiler Alton #((it's official yay #I finally got around to it #feel free to ask them things!))#~M: with this hand I will lift your queue

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haine-kleine · 3 months ago

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and now for something different: another thought piece on the ending.

if you really think about it, the setups for the villains by itself weren't bad, what made the ending bad was so random abandonment of those setups.

I'd go as far as saying the villains got the better end of the deal, writing wise. unlike the heroes, who had to be reduced to ooc or had their screen time almost completely cut to make the contradicting ending flow fast without stumbling against the actual characters, the League were in character until the very end, and then they just disappeared from the story. just compare Shouto barely appearing and for the most part just Standing There to Touya being allowed to stay bitter and express that to his family, telling Enji off and then growing enough to apologize to Shouto. compare Ochako's stepford smiler complex blowing up in her face, and her breakdown about Toga being glossed over, shifting the focus to the class shenanigans, showing her perfectly happy and smiling in every single appearance from then on to Spinner's rightful rage and grief over Shigaraki's death, calling Deku a murderer and never coming to forgive him or move on from what was done to him, to all of them.

the villains are allowed consistency that the heroes aren't. because to make the ending happen so quickly and for the ending's events to make sense, the characters need to be reshaped and mutate into completely different ones, or to disappear from the radar completely.

and yeah, it sucks that we are left to decode and finish the threads of the story Horikoshi had left for us on our own, but at least the wiggle room and a wide door of possibilities was left open for the villains. the heroes' conclusions were strictly established and pretending that this ending doesn't belong to a completely different story seems like a worse option.

say, Deku has been pushed along the way by the narrative to save Shigaraki for almost the entirety of the manga. it's not even his failure that breaks the story in half, it's him and every other character save for Spinner acting like they are fine with it. Izuku's acceptance of this outcome for Shigaraki before he is even gone reshapes him into a completely different character, one who was fine with passing Eri by and not organizing a whole operation to save the little girl who was set up as Shigaraki's foil.

Shigaraki however, remains a whole character true to himself. his goals of making his voice heard and saving his friends are unchanged. he didn't change his mind and remained committed to these goals, and even if he wasn't allowed to do that on-screen, that's what our literacy analysis and imagination are for. one thing he and Deku did successfully achieve was breaking him free of AFO's vice grip on his life, and for the rest, he has Kurogiri and the League. who are conveniently missing throughout the final chapter.

Spinner was suffering in the end because of Shigaraki and his other friends' loss. Toga had committed a heroic act and then was left by the heroes to die. Dabi was reunited with his family and despite getting everything he ever dreamed of from them, he is miserable and crying in the end. Mr Compress was imprisoned after sacrificing himself to save the League, similarly to how Kurogiri was. Kurogiri was freed by the League. his consciousness was damaged but he pulled himself together for the singular goal of saving Tomura, because his friends are waiting for him, because he was supposed to save these people and become their hero.

he was even given a tool to do that, a combination of OFA and Overhaul quirks. the boy who had killed his family by accident, with a five fingers touch, brainwashed to think he did that to punish them for rejecting him. that boy being freed from the man who has been grooming and manipulating him since he was 5, having the freedom to make his own decisions and saving the people he had welcomed into his life with that same five fingers touch. becoming the League of Villains' saviour.

#here #wrote the ending for horikoshi #sucks to have to do that myself #but 90% of the work was already done by the author himself lol #i won't ever pretend that the actual ending is something that was meant to be this way #bnha #bnha spoilers #league of villains #shigaraki tomura #dabi #spinner bnha #mister compress #toga himiko #kurogiri

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