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bigskydreaming · 4 months ago

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I actually can not believe I've never posted this X-Men headcanon that turned into a whole treatment/outline, but for those few followers who know who Dallas Gibson aka Specter is, or Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, or just anything about Academy X in general.....enjoy! (You actually don't have to know anything about Dallas or Laynia to follow this, I don't think.)

Anyway, I give you:

THE GREAT MANIFESTO OF WHAT IF DALLAS GIBSON WAS THE SECRET LOVE CHILD ONE NIGHT STAND CHILD OF BOBBY DRAKE AND LAYNIA PETROVNA: A CRACK FIC THEORY OUTLINE SOMETHING IN THREE PARTS

(Like I GENUINELY thought I had posted this before but found this in my drafts so apparently not. Anyway, I feel like this is particularly relevant again after Laynia was just brought out of comic book limbo as the head of a mutant mercenary group in the wake of Krakoa's fall. She's massively OOC in the one issue of X-Factor released so far and I don't like it, but it did reignite this particular headcanon so....there's that I guess).

Anyway! My treatment for revealing Dallas Gibson as actually being Dallas Drake, secret child of Bobby Drake the Iceman and Laynia Petrovna the Darkstar from when they were on the Champions together when they were both only nineteen.....without actually destroying continuity to make it work!

A triptych of linked five issue minis:

ICEMAN AND DARKSTAR: SHADOW GAMES

ICEMAN: A HOUSE OF DRAGONS

DARKSTAR: SONS OF SNOW AND SHADOW

So I have approximately 80 different pitches for what to do with Iceman at any given time, but let's go with one that I know would never in a million years happen purely because the X-Office will never let the 05 be the ages I perceive them as which is mid to late thirties at this point. Like I picture Bobby as around thirty-six or so, though for him it actually makes sense for him to be eternally portrayed as LOOKING like he's in his early 20s, since that was the age he first transmuted to his ice form and so makes sense to be his default template/molecular blueprint his power resets him to every time he has to make a new body from scratch.

Anyway, wildly self-indulgent pitch ahead, which ties into a cracky headcanon I've had since Academy X, a couple OCs, and combines my ideas for giving Bobby an antagonist of his own, more characters to interact with other than major X-Men so his story beats aren't reliant on whatever's going on with other X-Men and who's available, and gives him concrete reasons to want to level up quickly in terms of how much social influence he wields among mutantkind, take more prominent/proactive stances on things, etc. While still leaving room for him to be goofy and always trying to use humor to seem more relatable, less threatening, etc.

So. I'm picturing this as a triptych like Sabretooth, three interlocked minis of five issues each that form a trilogy by the end.

First mini:

ICEMAN AND DARKSTAR: SHADOW GAMES

ISSUE ONE:

First issue opens with Bobby in his apartment in LA, sometime after he's left the most recent X-Men lineup and is back to living off of Krakoa. He's just gotten in and is going through his mail where he comes across a card with no return address. Opening it, he finds its a condolence card that says "Thinking of you on this anniversary of such a tragic day." His internal monologue, conveyed in caption boxes and a key element of this whole mini, shows he's totally confused by this. He has no idea why this date would hold any special significance, or who would have sent the card or why. (The specific date would just be somewhere around the date of publication, in a world where this actually got published, lol. Let's go with April 27th, for instance).

Deciding to just shrug it off as some weird thing, Bobby's basically just being moody for a page or two of reflection before Scott calls. They're trying to do better about keeping in touch even when they're not on the same team. Some generic catching up, and Bobby eventually mentions he's just been in a weird mood all day, to which Scott says he's not surprised. Turns out Scott's noticed that for as long as he can remember now, Bobby's ALWAYS in a shitty mood every time April 27th rolls around. Yes, Scott being Scott, after years of Bobby being weird around the same time every year, he eventually narrowed it down to its epicenter. This very day. Bobby is both weirded out and touched by Scott's attention to something so specific about Bobby...more attentive than even Bobby himself. When they hang up, he's still clueless about why today would be such a big deal to him, but apparently there's a pattern. That card might not have been so random after all.

Confused & uncomfortable now, Bobby decides to get out of the house & just do hero stuff. That always makes him feel better. He helps put out some fires, divert a tidal wave, gating back and forth across the planet, restless. The whole issue, even as he uses his usual banter to make the people he helps feel at ease in the wake of whatever catastrophe they were just saved from, his internal monologue shows he's second-guessing himself constantly, being his own worst enemy, criticizing every choice he makes about his saves, how he could've done things better, etc. Things come to a head when he intervenes at a protest - I don't have a specific cause in mind but ideally something non mutant related - as a group attacks the protesters until Bobby drops in to protect them.

The protesters thank him but are pretty cynical about the whole thing. They note that this happens constantly and most of those same people will be back stirring up trouble and violence at another event like this down the line. They hope for change for the better but point out that some people never will, because they're not interested in better. They're happy with their hate. Bobby reflects on what they said, and here's where his thoughts start to take a particularly dark turn. He thinks of some of the ways his powers could be used to ensure those ppl never hurt anyone again, how the full potential of his powers include a lot of lethal options, and why shouldn't he use them when its true most of these ppl will just commit heinous acts in the future, and he might not be around to protect their victims next time. He even reflects on how he's used some of those darker options in the past, so its not like it'd be crossing a line he hasn't already....

Disturbed by the fact that the only reason he can think of not to go there is he's a hero and heroes don't do that, he just wants to be anywhere else in a hurry so he skips heading for a gate and does something he does only rarely....turns himself into mist and starts to disperse, to teleport somewhere far away, but as he does he gets the weirdest feeling, like his spread out consciousness is brushing up against someone else's. He's not alone he realizes. And he stops and recoalesces right there and talking to the empty air he demands that someone show themselves. A man appears out of nowhere, laughing.

Stranger: Your observational skills are a lot sharper than they used to be, Drake. Back in the day, you had no idea when I was around.

Bobby: Who are you and why are you talking like I'm supposed to know who you are? I've never seen you before in my life.

Stranger: Wow, it sucks to realize you left way less of an impression on someone than they left on you. I guess it makes sense though. I mean, when you KILLED me almost twenty years ago, this very day - that was obviously a big deal for me, but hey, I've been out of the loop awhile so what do I know? Maybe it was just another Tuesday for you.

Bobby: Are you the one who sent me that card earlier? Who the hell are you and what kind of game are you playing?

Stranger: Same one we were playing all those years ago, Bob. Before you got all pissy and flipped the board before I got a chance to make my next move. But thanks to the wonders of Krakoan resurrection, now we can pick up right where we left off. It really is a miracle, isn't it?

Bobby: Well maybe you should check with the Five and make sure they didn't bring you back with a few screws loose, because I'm pretty sure I'd remember this if it was actually me you were playing this game with.

Stranger: Maybe you just forgot. Or who knows? Maybe someone made you forget.

Bobby: Okay, yeah, I'm bored now. Time to put you on ice.

He starts icing the area around the stranger, intending to trap him in a block of ice, but the stranger just laughs and turns incorporeal, becoming a transparent outline hovering above the street....so to anyone who hadn't been watching their conversation - like the very protesters Bobby had saved earlier - it looked like Bobby was just furiously creating some kind of ice attack that didn't seem to be aimed at anyone...other than them. The now ghost-like stranger zips over to the crowd and starts weaving among them, seeming to whisper in a bunch of peoples' ears....and before long, the crowd that had just been saved from one attack and were primed not to just sit down and take another, were ready to choose fight over flight...and all of that fight now seemed focused directly on Bobby.

He constructs some ice barriers to just keep them at bay, not really worried they'll hurt him and more concerned about not hurting them, when the stranger's ghost form swirls around Bobby, hovering above his shoulder and now whispering in his ear. But there's no dialogue in the stranger's speech bubble....just caption boxes displaying Bobby's internal monologue....and now calling into question every single box earlier in the issue.

Caption box: Isn't it surreal how the right words whispered in the right ears can dramatically change a person's perception of something....or someone? How easy it is to change peoples' courses....even the course of their entire life?

Caption box: And fear, well, fear's one of the best motivators there is. So much easier to get someone to listen to you when they're afraid of something else.

Caption box: But maybe you can't really relate to that. A guy as powerful as you, you're probably not afraid of much these days.

Caption box: That wasn't always true though, was it? This take you back at all? Remind you of when you were just a kid, and there was a mob gunning for you just for the crime of being mutant and vulnerable? I bet you were scared then.

Caption box: Considering what a guy like you could do if he were scared enough, if the right person used the right words as the spark to ignite all that fear....the world's probably pretty lucky that Saint Xavier was there to be the voice you listened to back then, huh. Y'know, instead of someone like Magneto or Apocalypse being the ones to tell traumatized, impressionable little you what to do with all that fear and anger you felt....

Caption box: Do you ever think about that, Drake? Wonder if all that separates you from the worst of the worst is you had the right voice in your ear at the right time? That maybe there's nothing special about you at all, nothing innately noble, heroic.

Caption box: That you were just....lucky?

Caption box: Food for thought. Anyway, I gotta run for now, but I'll be seeing you, Bob.

Caption box: We have so much to catch up on.

Then its just Bobby left keeping the crowd at bay with his ice structures, him visibly shutting down, trying not to think too much and just running on instinct, until a hand reaches down from above and snatches him up into the air, until the streets are just a speck below them. Bobby looks up and to his shock its Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, his old friend and teammate from back when he was on the Champions as a teenager. The issue closes with her saying: "Hello, Bobby. I'd say its nice to see you and all the usual pleasantries, but we don't have much time. And we need to talk about our son."

ISSUE TWO

This issue switches to Laynia's POV with her internal monologue in caption boxes, and picks up with them having teleported somewhere secluded via Laynia's powers (she's much more practiced using hers to teleport than Bobby is using his that way). This issue goes back and forth between past and present, as during Laynia's narration of past events they're shown as if they're happening in real time.

Bobby's pointing out that they were never together, and considering she was the one who turned him down, you'd think she'd be aware of that. Laynia responds that no, they were never a couple, but they did sleep together once and once only....she'd been feeling particularly down about her ex-boyfriend Yuri after running into him, it was a rebound thing for her and she never hid that but Bobby took it to mean more than it did anyway and acted a fool about it, aligning with their canon interactions at the very end of their Champions run, before getting on the same page and they went back to just being friends.

Except, Laynia says, then she found out she was pregnant, and he flew to Russia to join her and decide what to do together, while everyone else thought he was still at UCLA. He doesn't remember any of this, because blocks were put in their memories, hiding everything related to this. But it did happen, and they do have a son. She'll explain everything, but they need to keep moving around, as she doesn't want the man who just confronted Bobby to overhear any of this and its very hard to detect when he's around. Their best option is to keep on the move, teleporting frequently and not staying anywhere long enough for him to track where they are.

Bobby: Oh crap. HE'S not our son, is he?

Laynia: Hell no.

Bobby: Phew, I was worried we had a Stryfe situation for a second there. I am barely holding it together as is and I am NOT equipped to handle an evil Bobby Jr. from the future.

Laynia reaffirms that he is definitely not their son, but he is the reason for much of what happened back when they were eighteen. They only ever knew him by his moniker, 'Doubting Thomas' and honestly were never sure when exactly he started watching them and messing with their heads. That's his MO. His power lets him turn from flesh and blood into a form made solely of psychic energy...an astral ghost that's invisible, immaterial and can travel via the astral plane. But his only power to affect the material world in that form lies in telepathy. He can project thoughts into someone's mind and its almost impossible to keep him out or tell his intrusions from ordinary thoughts.

She's not sure how he'd fare against other telepaths, but at least with non-psychics, even the best psychic shielding or anti-telepath technology isn't a guarantee against him. Because he doesn't try to break into minds, or even sneak past mental defenses. He just surveils his targets, watching them invisibly, learning all he can about them, and then he looks for cracks in whatever mental shields they have. Tiny gaps here and there that he can just whisper into, slipping a thought in amongst the chaos and chatter generated by someone's own mind.

All of which means they never were sure where their own natural fears and paranoia ended, and his whispering began. They were eighteen, she reminds Bobby, already freaking out about this giant life change neither were sure they were ready for, even if they did keep the baby...and neither of them was an ordinary civilian. They were powerful mutants with lots of enemies....from day one, they were concerned that their child would be born with a target on their back just from that. And then there was the fact that one of the things they'd always bonded over was resentment for how early they felt their childhoods ended.

Laynia and her twin brother Nikolai were taken from their parents at birth, and raised separately with government agents for foster parents. They were always intended to be mutant operatives for their government, their lives scripted out for them, and their training began in their early teens. Laynia didn't even know she had a twin brother until she was in her twenties.

And Bobby had always quietly nursed resentment for being put out into the field at the same time as the rest of the 05, all years older than him and with a lot more focus from the Professor. Scott was his protege, a tactical genius, Jean was his preferred pupil in terms of power development, Hank was a bonafide genius, and Warren was a millionaire playboy, a natural spokesman and inevitable future celebrity. Bobby was just Bobby though, with no awareness of his full potential, and the only one the Professor didn't seem to have any real purpose for or interest in. Like he was tacked on as a spare, his presence more of an afterthought than intentional.

So especially in his late teens, after the 05 went their separate ways, Bobby had always been bothered by the fact that he'd gone through all the same traumas and hardships as the rest on their various missions, but always wondering what he was even doing there when it didn't even seem like there was any reason he was supposed to be. Privately he'd always wanted someone - his parents, the Professor, even the older 05 - to question whether there was really nobody else Xavier could have been sending out to fight Magneto, than a fifteen year old too afraid of being abandoned to say no on his own behalf. After all, the issue was complicated by the fact that when his parents weren't fully on board with Bobby going to the Institute, Xavier mindwiped them into thinking he was just at boarding school, and it was only when Bobby was eighteen that the Professor restored their full awareness of what Bobby had been doing for years.

All of which played into why Bobby and Laynia didn't tell anyone about the pregnancy, even their closest friends. It started out as them just putting it off, wanting to be more sure of their own thoughts on this before someone else tried to make the decision what to do for them, but by the time Laynia gave birth, they'd fully isolated themselves, paranoid that Xavier or the Red Room would take the baby and just make them forget all about it. And problem is, as Laynia put it, they couldn't tell how much of that was Doubting Thomas whispering all the right things to ramp up their anxieties and specific fears.

And obviously someone did mess with their memories anyway, Bobby points out crankily. This all is partly meant to seed two ongoing character arcs for Bobby in the future....the first, his awareness of how often his mind and memories have been messed with over the years, by enemies and allies alike, to the point he's honestly not sure how much of 'him' is really even him, and how much he's just the end result of people just editing his mind whenever he started heading in a direction they didn't want him to. With how long the memories of their time travel trip were hidden, now these missing memories, what other holes could exist in his memories without him ever having a clue?

And the second character arc is his misgivings about Xavier and the role he played in Bobby's childhood. Knowing what he knows now of his omega potential, aware that all the biggest developments and learning curves with his powers happened when Bobby WASN'T Xavier's student, Bobby's increasingly convinced that Xavier never trusted Bobby with his own power, and while he might not have actively stunted his growth, he certainly didn't help or encourage it the way he did his other students. The foundation is there for Bobby to wonder if the only reason Xavier ever even recruited him was to keep him from falling into anyone else's hands and becoming a threat.

As Laynia reminds him of what they were like back then and how they viewed things, things fall into place for Bobby and its very easy for him to see how they could have ended up hiding this from anyone in Xavier's orbit, etc...and this starts to become less abstract for him. It wasn't that he thought she was lying at any point, but its hitting him now....he has a son, and someone made him forget. He's someone who has always yearned for family that won't judge or condemn him, leave him, always been determined to be everything his own father wasn't and nothing like him, and yet he has a son who's grown up without him. Whose name he doesn't even know.

He does know his son though, it turns out. At least somewhat. Its one of Bobby's former students before M-Day. Dallas Gibson aka Specter. He has no idea who he really is, Laynia says, but the parents who died when Dallas was ten were his adoptive parents. But he was born Dallas Drake, as Petrovna wasn't even Laynia's real last name and she had no idea what it originally was. Heir to the merged powersets of both his biological parents, with his father's elemental form but made from his mother's signature Darkforce energies.

As for why Laynia remembers when Bobby doesn't....she didn't originally. But then years ago (during the Morrison run), she was possessed by one of Weapon X's most dangerous creations, the Huntsman. However, thanks to how her powers were designed to let her mind travel through the Darkforce Dimension to do things like teleport, when she was possessed, her mind tried to flee into that dimension. When Fantomex killed her, he only killed her body, and her mental tether to it. The shock and trauma of her physical death broke down the barriers around her memories, and they all came flooding back. Problem was, she only existed as a consciousness drifting aimlessly in the Darkforce Dimension.

But then Dallas started learning more about his powers and growing them during his time at the Academy. And his powerset also includes the ability to make shadow golems similar to the ice golems his father makes. But he didn't realize this as the first time he made one, with Darkforce energy being the clay his golem was sculpted from...Laynia was able to use that as a doorway into the physical world. She inhabited his shadow golem as her vessel, the way a future Iceman's golem once split off from him and became a separate entity. So Dallas never realized his newfound shadow friend started out as something he made unconsciously...he just knew that it seemed to have its own sentience from the jump, was a friend and protector who'd show up whenever he needed them. That friend and protector just happened to be his biological mother, watching over him the only way she could.

Until M-Day. When Dallas was depowered, Laynia lost her connection to the physical world and was stuck again in the Darkforce Dimension....until her brother Nikolai made a bargain with Immortus that led to her full resurrection. Finally she was back, and she remembered everything. But also knew Bobby remembered none of this. And so for the next couple years she just checked in on Dallas periodically but kept her distance, because she not only remembered her son...she also remembered why they were so desperate to hide his connection to them that they covered up their own memories of him ever existing.

At the end of the issue, they arrive at the hideout of the Russian mutant underground, a community of mutants who mistrust Krakoa and its leaders, but aren't on board with Mikhail Rasputin and his faction either. Laynia brought Bobby to the person who originally hid their memories and locked them away - at their own request....Bobby's idea, in fact - Alexi Garnoff aka Blind Faith, a telepath Bobby first met in his X-Factor days. But who was so quick to trust Bobby, because turns out that wasn't actually the first time Alexi remembered meeting him.

As Bobby reels from the reveal that this particular manipulation of his mind had been something he himself asked for, Alexi says he can erase all his work and return his own memories of all this, and Laynia warns him that remembering it all will hurt. Because they have a son, yes, Dallas Gibson aka Dallas Drake aka Specter. But twins run in her family.

And for a brief - too brief - window of time, they had not one son, but two.

ISSUE THREE

This issue returns to Bobby's POV and internal monologue, and takes place almost entirely in the past, or in Bobby's mindscape. He tells Alexi to do his thing, he wants to know, NEEDS to know everything. The walls come down and in his mind, Bobby finds himself standing at the start of a giant labyrinth made of ice. He sees a little boy running through it and gives chase, needing to catch up to him, desperate even as he's aware he's running on autopilot, more instinct than knowledge. He's never seen this boy before - he's not even a real memory himself. But he knows what an older Dallas looks like, at least. And he's sure this is what his mind imagines a Dmitri older than what he actually remembers might look like, and he desperately wants a closer look. But this Dima stays forever just out of range because his mind doesn't actually have a clear image of an older Dmitri to conjure, and up close, the illusion would be too obvious, and the loss all the more real for that.

Following the boy through the labyrinth, he sees memories unveil themselves on the ice walls around them. He remembers Laynia telling him she was pregnant, their agitated debates over the months that followed as they agonized over what to do, how to keep the baby safe - babies, once they found out it was twins. He sees the day the twins were born, relives them deciding to name the elder twin Dallas, after the city where they first met, before Laynia even joined the Champions, and the younger they named Dmitri, or Dima for short....after the only teacher Laynia ever felt actually valued her for herself instead of seeing her as a weapon being honed.

He remembers them leaving the hospital and hiding for a few weeks at a secluded cabin their old teammate the Black Widow found for them....she was the only one they told, figuring nobody could keep a secret better than her, and how they wavered and grew closer to caving and letting their closest friends and teammates help them figure out how to keep the twins safe. Sees flashbacks of him playing with the boys while Laynia watches fondly, and vice versa. Relives as he - still little older than a child himself - puts them in their crib and tells them not to be scared, talks about how his grandfather used to have a saying: "all Drakes are dragons," and making a dragon sculpture that catches the light to act as their nightlight.

And then he relives the day they woke up to find the crib empty and the twins missing. The first time they met Doubting Thomas, who left them an easy trail to follow because he wanted them to find him, wanted a confrontation. Bobby and Laynia had descended on the facility they tracked him to with the full fury of midnight and winter at their most destructive, and once inside they separated as they found the twins had been split up and taken in different directions. Laynia went after Dallas, who she could feel faintly, an early sign of his link to the Darkforce Dimension that she shares - second generation mutants always tend to manifest early - and Bobby went after Dmitri.

Doubting Thomas was waiting though, and the villain backstory reveal unfolded. The Professor, the Hellfire Club, etc....they weren't the only people who went around looking for young mutants to mold, seeing their potential. He grew up under the thumb of a woman even he only knows as Mother Nurture, a sadist with unguessable motivations even to her lackeys that she raised from childhood....to be their worst selves. Apparently she claims to be a precog, who knew what mutant children would grow up to be great heroes or positive influences on the world....which appears to be contrary to her agenda, whatever that is....as she targets kids who COULD grow up to be great forces for change, change for the better, and picks the ones with the brightest potential to stamp out and corrupt, turn to darkness. Her obsession with proving that there are no real heroes, that anyone can be twisted into the villain was apparently a recurring theme of Doubting Thomas' childhood, so when she assigned him the task of abducting the Drake twins when they were still months away from even being born, Thomas fixated on Bobby and Laynia during his surveillance of them, and developed an obsession of his own.

It was the first time he'd ever targeted superhero parents, let alone ones close enough in age to him that he could project onto them, see them as an inverted reflection of his own life. And even as he prepared to take the Drake twins at the earliest opportunity, that was just his assignment. His obsession with Bobby and Laynia was wholly personal, as he clearly became consumed with a need to prove to himself that they weren't better than him, that he could have BEEN them in another life, with better influences....that they would have been no different than he if they'd been in his shoes.

In fact, he was convinced there was such a slim margin of difference between them that he could topple Iceman from his heroic perch with just the slightest push. Bobby refutes this, saying he's nothing like him, but that's when Thomas says he lied. Mother Nurture actually only sent him after one Drake boy. She wasn't expecting two. Apparently, one of them was never destined to live all that long to begin with.

The issue never actually shows Dmitri, just Bobby breaking down, cradling the swaddled figure to his chest. He's dead-eyed when he looks up, frozen tear tracks on his cheeks as one icy drop falls to the ground and shatters.

Bobby: Guess you were right about me. Congrats. You win.

And then over the next two panels, Thomas flash-freezes before he can react, his entire body frozen on a cellular level...and then he shatters.

We only see glimpses of Laynia's horrified reaction when she arrives with Dallas in her arms, as Bobby hurries past those memories, he has them back but he doesn't want to relive those moments at all...and there are more snapshots of barely glimpsed memories of Bobby and Laynia reducing the entire facility to nothing but an empty crater. Bobby arrives at the memory of Laynia and Bobby, fueled by trauma and desperation, panicking about this Mother Nurture sending someone else after Dallas, their original fears reignite, the list of people who might want a baby like Dallas for their own agendas seems endless....culminating in them giving Dallas to Black Widow to place with a family she trusts to raise him safely. But Bobby notes despondently that even with all that, it'd take someone like Xavier or with similar resources all of five minutes to find a powerful mutant that young, if they ever got so much as a hint about him from Bobby or Laynia's minds.

Which is when Bobby decides: "In a world of telepaths, Cerebros and Wolverines, the only foolproof way to keep a secret...is to not even know it yourself.

They both agree, and seek out a telepath unaffiliated with any team or organization: Alexi Garnoff. Which brings us back to the present.

April 27th. The anniversary of the day one son died, and they made the decision to give up the other for his own safety.

ISSUE FOUR

With both of their memories fully restored, they're on the same page about what happens now: They have to find a way to keep the resurrected Doubting Thomas from figuring out who and where Dallas is. If he truly wants revenge, or if he still just feels compelled to fulfill his original assignment, Dallas is his real target. But they're fairly certain the extreme lengths they went to all those years ago at least did their job. Even with Bobby unaware of Thomas' existence, let alone vendetta against him, the latter was able to stalk him ever since his resurrection without finding even a hint of Dallas' location or identity...he would have had better luck stalking Laynia probably, but they assumed his fixation on Bobby for killing him, along with Laynia steering clear of Krakoa (ironically because she was worried about the many telepaths there picking up on her secret), Thomas concentrated his efforts on following Bobby and might not have even realized that unlike him, Laynia DID already know who and where Dallas was.

Thomas must have come out into the open in the way he did specifically to push Bobby to regain his memories, figuring then it would only be a matter of time before Bobby slipped up enough for Thomas to zero in on his target....so now they had to figure out how to keep that from happening, while now having a whole new host of reasons not to want to advertise they had a son. The last thing they want is to keep him out of Thomas' clutches just to put him on Sinister's radar, especially now that they know Bobby's an omega and how 'highly prized' they are as resources....which would no doubt make his offspring of interest to various villains.

Not to mention, Laynia's got her own misgivings about Krakoa. She's FURIOUS about the Crucible - Dallas was among the earliest to sign up and go through it, desperate to get his powers back and return to his place among his former classmates. Not only does she consider it needless trauma of the very sort they sacrificed so much to protect their son from, Laynia is territorial. Dallas' name and powers were pretty much the only thing he got from his biological parents, that they were able to give him as his birthright, the upside to all the downs that came with being their kid, and Laynia's pissed as hell that Bobby's new government had the gall to demand their son EARN BACK what was always his and that losing had ALREADY been a trauma all its own.

This in turn sows the seeds for Bobby's development into a more proactive role in mutant society, as well as future conflict with a lot of the personalities that put the Crucible in place initially, as he's forced to confront why he didn't have more problems with it in the first place, or at least not enough that he wasn't able to justify its existence. Has he gotten so used to assuming others know better than him, that he no longer bothers trying to weigh the morality of things himself? Is he comfortable with what it says about him that it took having a personal stake - his son having gone through it - to make him sit up and think hey, that was fucked up?

Meanwhile, Thomas has not been idle, and is using reports of Bobby seemingly attacking innocent protesters the other day to stir up doubts in him among any influential mutants or X-Men he can whisper suspicions to, without them being aware of his presence/influence. Bobby is 'strongly encouraged' by Xavier to return to Krakoa to clear up the confusion, and when he refuses, that just adds more fuel for Thomas to work with. Plus he uses all the paranoia Beast has drummed up over the past couple years to cast suspicion on Bobby suddenly being inseparable from Laynia, a known Russian operative who has no allegiances to Krakoa, while also stirring mutants in Mikhail's camp to view Laynia's choice of companions as suspicious, which threatens her work with the Russian mutant underground and her efforts to keep them safe and hidden as well.

Finally they decide the best way to deal with Thomas is to lure him in and get Alexi to do to him what he did to Bobby and Laynia years ago. Hide away all Thomas' memories of things related to them and give him a tailored memory of how he died and why.

ISSUE FIVE

Most of this issue is just Thomas, Laynia and Bobby all playing cat and mouse with each other...Thomas having his own schemes even as the other two try to implement theirs, until its hard to tell who is the hunter and who is the hunted. Bobby and Laynia are still teleporting as often as they can, both to keep him from sneaking up on them and poisoning their thoughts or manipulating their plans, as well as to evade various friends and teammates who are now seeking them out, concerned by their behavior and increasingly susceptible to distrusting them as they refuse to give any hints as to what the hell they're doing.

It should be very clear that Bobby and Laynia are NOT acting wholly rationally here, and they're both aware of it. Doubting Thomas is GOOD at what he does, and he's familiar enough with them and their sore spots, from intel he gained long ago still being relevant here and now, particularly with how recently their memories were refocused on those days....that they're sure even the tiniest or briefest amounts of access to them is enough for him to skew their own paranoia in extreme ways. Not to mention.....they're much older now than they were when they made the choice to hide Dallas in the way they did, and they made that decision at the absolute height of their grief, fear and anxiety. They're second-guessing every choice they made back then, as well as the ones they're making now, and they're NOT sure that staying away, doing this on their own, not confiding in anyone or pulling them in....they're not doing all that because they're convinced its the right move.

They're staying the course because they don't have any idea what the right move is, and until they do, doubling down on their previous choices is because there's no take-backs, no undoing things once the secret is out. They can't afford to decide that was the wrong move after they've done it, when that will do them no good.

So they stick to their plan and try to get Thomas in Alexi's range, but with his guard down enough for the other telepath to act. The POV shifts back and forth between Bobby and Laynia's, with a lot of their internal doubts about everything they've done, the thoughts Thomas raised in Bobby back in Issue #1, the ideological battle Thomas imagines exists between him and the heroes he resents so much - this back-and-forth spans most of the issue and keeps these themes front and center, until ultimately Bobby and Thomas face off again.

Bobby surprises Thomas by using his powers in an unexpected way....he makes dozens of golems spread out all over the place and then shuffles his actual consciousness through them one at a time, 'possessing' one golem as his vessel, his ice form before leaping into another one. Thomas can't get a bead on him, keeps chasing his own tail trying to keep up with Bobby's constant shell game in an attempt to find the 'real one,' where Bobby's actually vulnerable.

Finally, Bobby makes it clear he's not going to be playing this game with Thomas anymore, because thing is, the point Thomas is so obsessed with proving, wanting Bobby to know he's no better than him, is capable of terrible things....Bobby flat out just doesn't care.

Bobby: I remember everything now, Thomas. That's what you wanted, right? For me to relive all that, make sure I can't hide from it? That I have to feel every bit of pain I shut away back then because I couldn't deal? Because the truth is, as much as that was to protect my son it was also to protect me from everything I WANTED to forget? I remember. I remember my kids, losing them....I remember killing you. But I also remembered something else, that you probably didn't factor in.

Thomas: And what's that?

Bobby: I remembered that I'm not sorry.

He goes on the attack, just destruction every which way you look so that Thomas is forced to stay on the defensive, keeping himself immaterial and jaunting around because there's no safe space for him to land, so to speak.

Bobby: The Five can bring you back a thousand times and I'll kill you a thousand and one, if that's what it takes to keep my son safe from you. Here's what you never got. The whole hero vs villain, right or wrong, good or evil thing you're so obsessed with? I just don't care, man. That's never been why I do any of this. I know I'm flawed, too flawed to ever be 'truly good' but by the same token, I know there's enough good in me I'm not truly bad either. I've done terrible things before and I'll do them again, because at the end of the day, I'm not trying to be a hero. I'm just trying to save people where I can.

Bobby: Its about priorities, see. Its people that matter to me, if I'm helping or hurting. And I'll hurt someone to help someone I think deserves it more and maybe that's wrong but thing is I'm not making that choice based on if its right or wrong. I'm making it based on who I think needs help and what do I have to do to help them. Let someone else figure out the scorecard, I'm just trying to make sure the person I'm protecting makes it home safe.

Bobby: And you? You don't matter. My son matters to me. That's all that matters here. I choose him, no matter what, every time, and whatever that means, whatever I have to do to choose him, or because I choose him? I'll deal with it. If I make the wrong choices, if they backfire and get him hurt or they're not what he would want - that's the stuff that can keep me up at night. But if choosing him means killing an asshole like you to keep him safe?

Bobby: Don't worry about my virtue. I'll cope.

With that, Thomas makes his retreat, tail between his legs. They weren't able to implement their plan to have Alexi erase his memories, but they don't consider this to be over. He'll be back, they'll have more opportunities to make that happen. At least this time he was the one doing the running.

But as the finale of the issue, Thomas adapts and changes the game. He waits until Bobby's back on Krakoa, meeting with Xavier and other X-Men about recent events and trying to say as little as possible...and then Thomas picks that place and time to make his first public appearance on Krakoa since he was resurrected as just another name on the resurrection queue. Nobody knew who he was then or cared that he didn't seem interested in staying on the island, claiming amnesty and official Krakoan citizenship....but he does that now in the most dramatic way possible....as he turns to Bobby and blatantly advertises they have history.

Thomas: And in the spirit of new beginnings, I just want to say I forgive you for killing me eighteen years ago. Fresh starts for everyone, right?

And with that bombshell - and the fact that one look at Bobby tells everyone present that he's not denying it - he saunters off, leaving Bobby with more questions to answer but no closer to being able to fully disclose what he's keeping hidden....which Thomas can still reveal to anyone at any time. What he did reveal was enough to ensure there was no chance now of changing his memories of their shared past....not after he dragged them both into the spotlight and made sure they were linked so if anything did happen to Thomas or seem awry with him....there'd be no doubt who was Suspect Number One. And that was always going to come with the question of why.

The mini ends with a final page where Bobby's finally done talking w/the QC for now, and he's just standing on the beach far enough away from where a bunch of the Academy X kids are having a bonfire - with Dallas right in the thick of them - that it wouldn't be obvious that his sole reason for being out there was to catch a glimpse of him, even if only from a distance. Elsewhere, Laynia is browsing through a shop and notices a stuffed dragon similar to one flashbacks showed Dmitri cuddling with as a baby. She picks it up, hesitating as if debating whether to purchase it, with the final panel being of her back as she walks out of the shop, the stuffed animal still sitting where she'd found it.

ICEMAN: A HOUSE OF DRAGONS

The second mini of three, this one introduces Dallas as a POV character, still oblivious of everything readers learned in the first mini. It explores his feelings about being depowered on M-Day and his survivor's guilt from having left the Institute and been relatively safe compared to those who stayed, when other depowered mutants like David still stayed and fought for mutants. His best friends, Julian and Brian Cruz, insist that nobody thinks less of him for it and he was a minor, it wasn't like anybody was really consulting him on whether he wanted to stay or go at the time, but he can't shake the feeling he should have done more. Its what drove him to go through the Crucible so early on, and its what drives his determination to make it onto the X-Men team.

Seeds are also planted for later, via some brief scenes that reveal that while depowered and living away from the Institute, Dallas started exploring magic as an alternative to his powers, since there are various arts that access the same Darkforce Dimension his powers connected him to. He's no longer pursuing it as feverishly as he did while depowered, but it remains an interest as he's determined to never be powerless again, whether he has his mutant abilities or not.

He also has several chance encounters with Iceman, who he really only knows as his old math teacher, and no idea they're not so chance encounters at all.

Meanwhile, Bobby and Laynia are meeting more regularly off the island as they argue about whether or not they should tell Dallas the truth - he has a right to know and he's old enough to make his own choices about what he wants or doesn't want done in the name of keeping him safe. Their various rationales are undercut by the underlying awareness that both of them are afraid of his reaction and worried he won't understand why they did it and might even hate them for the choices they made.

At the same time, they're trying to figure out how to even go about resurrecting Dmitri. They know from Joanna Beaubier-Jinadu's example that despite his young age, Dima could still theoretically be resurrected....they just have no idea how to ask the Five or X-Factor to look for him in the Waiting Room without disclosing everything about Dallas at the same time...which brings them back to how do we tell Dallas.

Ultimately, they wait too long and Thomas takes the choice out of their hands. While Dallas is in the Mojoverse along with various other Academy X kids who have been regular presences there while taking advantage of the treaty between Krakoa and Mojo to try and get some Krakoan media entertainment off the ground,

It turns out that while Bobby was worried about Doubting Thomas approaching Sinister, Shaw or one of the other notorious mutants on Krakoa as part of his schemes, he went a different direction entirely. He approached Mojo with his proposal for a must-see show that would have all of Krakoa glued to the nearest TV screen.

And so what was supposed to be just a random trip to the Mojoverse leads to Dallas being trapped as the very confused and unwilling star of what Mojo describes as the ultimate reality show: DALLAS GIBSON, THIS IS YOUR LIFE.

The show proceeds to take viewers - and Dallas - through a recreation of his entire life, including all the parts he didn’t know about. Starting before his birth even, with Krakoans flocking to their TVs just as Thomas promised, as soon the bombshell claim of who his biological parents are drops and word spreads throughout the island. Even X-Men close to Bobby have no idea what to make of this at first and they start trying to figure out how to shut it down and figure things out from there, but it’s a futile effort, honestly.

Even if they could get Mojo to shut it down right away, the damage was already done - and its clear that nobody is more interested in seeing what comes next than Dallas himself. Seemingly having forgotten that everyone is watching this, he’s half in denial, half captivated by what he’s watching. It seems impossible but that doesn’t stop him from having a lot of confused and conflicting feelings as he watches literal surveillance footage Thomas had installed to spy on the much younger Bobby and Laynia as they interacted with their newborn sons.

Much of this is used to flesh out flashback scenes from the first mini, where Bobby and Laynia’s POVs of these early days were shown, stringing together a timeline without reproducing the same scenes exactly. In contrast, some of these scenes do directly recreate scenes seen previously in Bobby and Laynia’s memories….but now reproduced for Dallas’ viewing by objective technology devoid of the emotions layered around his parents’ actual memories of that time.

The video retelling includes footage from security cameras at the facility Thomas had retreated to for their final fateful confrontation years ago, similarly providing a stark and explicit view of Bobby and Laynia’s rampage through the facility and Bobby’s unapologetic killing of Thomas. It’s a side of Bobby few had ever seen before and raises more than a few eyebrows while answering the questions many of them had had ever since Thomas made his dramatic entrance to Krakoan society at the end of the first mini.

Bobby meanwhile started racing for Mojoworld the second Rogue called him and told him to get there fast and laid out what was going on. But it still took long enough for him to navigate Mojoworld’s confusing layout that he only smashed his way onto the ‘set’ Dallas was trapped on in time to see his eighteen year old self hand an infant Dallas over to the Black Widow onscreen.

One look at Bobby, not hiding behind his ice form and with pain and remorse writ large all over his face, told Dallas (and everyone else) everything they needed to know about how true or not all this was.

But before Bobby can even attempt to figure out what to say, Mojo calls everyone’s attention back to the screens, as he announces there’s a plot twist featuring never-before-seen-footage from that first tragic April 27th.

The screen jumps to more security camera footage from Thomas’ facility….but the time stamp puts this at just before Bobby & Laynia’s arrival. Bobby (and Laynia who has arrived on Krakoa for the first time, as soon as she learned what was happening) watch in shock as Thomas hands Dmitri off to a lackey and instructs him to get offsite before the two arrive. Onscreen, Thomas says if he’s there’s one thing he’s figured out about Bobby & Laynia, its that they’ll never stop searching for one of their babies so long as they’re still alive….so if they’re convinced this one is dead and the other one is taken to Mother Nurture as she instructed him, they’ll focus all their efforts on trying to reclaim that one. Let her deal with that Thomas sniffs derisively. I have different plans for this one.

Of course, those plans never came to fruition, Mojo narrates. He underestimated just how….fatally Bobby would react to the simulacrum he believed to be his now dead son. He was never able to follow up with the lackey who took the real Dmitri, and his hired hand - who had not signed up for any of this and was freaking out once he saw what was left of the facility he’d last seen his boss in - well, he basically said fuck this and anonymously dropped Dmitri off at the nearest hospital.

Given the lengths Bobby & Laynia had gone to make sure their kids’ information WASN’T readily available anywhere when they were born, there was no indication of Dmitri’s real identity or where he came from, so he went into the system where he grew up in a series of homes that left him not especially traumatized, but at least distrustful of authority. Then Thomas revealed that when he’d first been resurrected, he’d tracked down Dmitri by finding his lackey and figuring out where he’d left the baby, retracing Dmitri’s path from there. Unlike Dallas, Thomas had always known exactly where to find Dmitri….but felt that particular reveal really needed the RIGHT moment.

And that moment apparently was now. Taking over narrator duties from Mojo, Thomas now speaks into the cameras, directly addressing Bobby and Laynia as he tells them Dmitri too manifested powers early and has had years to learn to make the most of his powerset. He apparently can access a mirror dimension that lets him teleport via reflective surfaces, use them as scrying portals by which he can see anything within visual range of that surface….and there’s one particularly interesting twist to his power. When Dmitri’s in the mirror dimension and watching events play out in the real world via a mirror or other surface….those events don’t just have to be in the present.

Time is wonky in the mirror dimension, as is often true of extradimensional spaces. Dmitri has limited precognitive abilities as he can use the mirror dimension to peer out of mirrors and watch what’ll happen in view of them at some point in various possible future timelines.

Apparently its tricky and unreliable, but its at least effective enough that Dmitri counts as a precog by anyone’s standard. And in the early days of Krakoa, when deciding whether to go there himself, he apparently glimpsed enough clandestine conversations to know that at that point, at least…..Krakoa was not a safe place to be a precog.

Onscreen, Thomas claps his hands energetically and addresses the entire audience now:

Thomas: So, to recap, somewhere out there is the teleporting precog son of an omega level mutant who’s already proven he’s willing to cross just about any line for this son’s sake. Said son is also primed to be extremely distrustful of Krakoa….and anyone who might be seen as an emissary of it. Like, oh say, X-Men. And to top it all off….he has absolutely no idea where he comes from nor does he have any reason to believe anyone who comes out of nowhere claiming to be his longlost parents or friends of theirs.

Thomas: Now I don’t know about all of you, but I think whomever were to find him first, and gain his trust, well - they could probably figure out any number of ways those combined factors could be useful.

The screen flashes to a generic street camera view of a Dmitri Drake that looks a lot like his brother, just with brown hair instead of blond. There’s little to distinguish either his surroundings or Dmitri himself, but its clearly being presented as a starting point for potential searchers.

The final pages show an array of panels showing notorious mutant villains all leaning forward and studying the screen with interest. Sinister, Shaw, Selene (if she’s back yet), Abigail Brand, MLF members, Stryfe, Mystique and Destiny, the Fenris twins, etc.

The second mini concludes with Doubting Thomas winking into the camera, essentially staring straight at the reader.

Thomas: May the best influence win!

DARKSTAR: SONS OF SNOW AND SHADOW

Subtitled: “Run, Dima, Run!”

The third and final mini of the triptych is a chaotic free for all as basically everyone is hunting for Dmitri Drake, who has absolutely no idea why people are suddenly coming out of the woodwork looking for him but quickly decides he doesn’t want to be found.

Dallas is aggressively putting off dealing with how he feels about any of this and flat out shuts down any attempts Bobby or Laynia make to approach him. He’s totally fixated on being the one to find basically the only person in the universe who could understand how he’s feeling right now, and they can figure it out together then. He’s blatantly underestimating how much his longlost twin actually might NOT be able to relate to his specific perspective here, and vice versa. Something his friends and Academy X classmates try to caution him about while helping him on his search.

Surge: Oh shut up, dumbass. I don’t have to like you for you to be one of us, and any twin of yours is basically a two-for-one deal, so of course we’re going to do whatever it takes to keep your longlost brother from being exploited and used by adults who suck. I would include your parents in that but I actually think them hiding you from that musty bald bitch Xavier was probably the smartest thing any X-parent has done for their kid so I’m fighting down the impulse to be impressed.

Dallas: …thank you? I think?

Thus the Academy X kids actually take one of the most prominent roles in the mini as Dallas and his classmates’ search is heavily prioritized. There’s a strong focus on various kids who have history being exploited by older mutants and are now projecting heavily. Brian and Julian are of course Dallas’ closest confidantes through this, maybe Brian a little more than Julian as the latter flip-flops back and forth between calling Dallas a legacy and a nepo baby at different intervals. He can’t seem to decide if he thinks it’s something to be envied or not. Anole is unrepentant about ranking Dallas’ dad’s most infamous costumes and how hot or not he looked in each of them. He and Dallas never got along in school. Icarus absently notes that he’s pretty sure his brother and Dallas’ dad had a thing going on at one point.

They’re not quite all as helpful as they could be, is the takeaway. But they do feel the stakes and if any generation of mutants is prone to embracing gallows humor to cope, it’s the Academy X kids.

Elsewhere Bobby is conducting his own search with the help of numerous X-Men and friends, who are all trying to process everything they just learned and saw. Most of them are supportive and understanding, though a few are more abrasive about the sheer amount of stuff they didn’t know about him or even suspect.

Xavier tries to lecture Bobby about how they wouldn’t be in this situation if he had trusted them with this at any point in the past. Bobby shuts that down with gusto, emphasizing that Xavier was one of the people they were most concerned about hiding the twins from - and a good thing too, he points out, given what could have happened to Dallas if Onslaught had known about him when Dallas was still just a kid.

But then he gets downright chilly and makes it clear how and why his dynamic with many of them will be at least somewhat different from this point on…..Xavier especially.

He brings attention back to the not so minor detail of Xavier, Moira and Magneto apparently originally declaring Krakoa to be for all mutants….except for precogs.

Bobby: You keep saying this place is the culmination of everything we’ve fought for from the first day we put on an X-Men uniform, so I just wanna know, Professor. Why the HELL did I spend my whole life fighting for you to create your own personal vision of paradise….which apparently was meant to exclude one of my children, just because of what freaking power he was born with?

Xavier: Compromises had to be made in order to -

Bobby: Y’know, you’ve been using that line since I was fifteen and its tired, X. Every time we asked why you couldn’t just use your powers in ways you insisted would ethically compromise you - except for whenever you decided it was okay because it made things more convenient for you specifically.

Bobby: From day one you’ve kept your secrets from us, for a lot shadier reasons than I’ve ever had for keeping one, so you don’t need to be telling me I’m not entitled to my secrets. You have all these contingencies for if any of us go bad, while telling us nobody’s beyond redemption except for those times you decide Magneto is, or the Shadow King is.

Bobby: You know what the real problem with your dream has always been, Professor? It asks for a leap of faith that you’ve never been prepared to make yourself. You’re always asking us to line up and put it all on the line for the chance at a better world, no matter how realistic it is….but you’ve never actually put down your own cynicism or pragmatism or whatever you want to call it….and just….dreamed. How does that even work, huh?

Bobby: Just….what the hell would you have even done, Professor, if I had raised my kids at the mansion all this time? What spin would you have given me when you finally embarked on this grand Krakoan experiment you’ve been planning for years….and needed to tell me one of my sons wasn’t allowed to come with? That if he died, you had no intention of resurrecting him and his politically inconvenient power?

Xavier: *keeps silent*

Bobby: Yeah, y’know what, on second thought I don’t think I actually want to know the answer to that. Stay away from me and my kids, X. You and I are done.

Finally, last but not least, Laynia will be running her own search for Dima with the help of her brother, the Black Widow, and Warren, who wanted to make sure she knew that he’s her friend too, not just Bobby’s. Despite the lack of detail here, she’d actually have the most prominent role in this mini - being associated publicly with Krakoa is actually an obstacle for Bobby gaining Dmitri’s trust. Laynia’s lack of affiliation with it or Russia’s government or any other organization, is what lets her convince Dmitri to give her a chance and hear her out when she does find him.

(Something she’s ultimately able to do by going to Arakko and asking Storm if she can get her an audience with Lactuca, who should know exactly where to find him. In exchange, Lactuca will ask a favor of Laynia at some point in the future, which plants some seeds to bring Laynia more into X-books without just being an extension of Bobby).

There will be a final reckoning between Laynia and Thomas this time, and the mini will end with things still messy as hell, as the newfound family of four (plus Uncle Nikolai, standing awkwardly off to the side) basically stand there staring at each other and wondering what next. But even with them all as relative strangers now, there’s a wealth of possibilities now that everything’s out in the open.

This mysterious Mother Nurture still lingers offscreen as a potential future threat, especially as they still don’t know what they intended with Dallas - if he was even the twin she was after in the first place. Iceman’s poised to be launched in any number of directions as he’s now essentially reinventing himself while everyone is paying more attention to him than ever before, all while he’s trying to fall back on comfortable, familiar habits of joking and pranks to try and bond with the sons who are grown up and don’t really know what - if any - dynamic they even need or want with him. Laynia’s reluctantly taken Krakoan citizenship to be closer to her sons, but finds she prefers staying on Arakko and grows closer to mutants she meets there, with Dima joining her more often than not, as he’ll never be fully comfortable with Krakoa even if precogs are ‘allowed’ now. Dallas is more determined than ever to be an X-Man but he’s worried that now he’ll never make it on his own merits and it’ll always be more about him being a legacy, a founding X-Man’s kid.

Etc, etc.

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the-bloody-sadist · 2 years ago

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Me-Centered Narration in Fiction

"For characters' hearts to be open to readers, characters must talk to us quite a bit about what's going on inside. In many manuscripts, the characters don't disclose much. Often they, or rather their authors, simply report what's happening to them--a dry, play-by-play conveyance of the action. Even the witty, ironically detached first-person voices of Young Adult, New Adult, and Para-Everything fiction aren't necessarily open. An ironic, snarky, or perky tone can be used to avoid true intimacy with readers. Literary writing isn't necessarily intimate, either. A life "closely observed" doesn't mean we'll care about it." -Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction

Welcome to the new tag, Sadist's fiction advice!! For those of you interested, I'll be taking bits out of books I personally studied all my life to learn how to write--the majority of those being by the fantastic and insightful Donald Maass, whose writing help books I've collected for my shelf! If you want to start anywhere for your own novel, start with him. I'm not fucking kidding. He's THE BEST out there.

Let's start with some discussion on that first quote, alone! Most often, the first thing that turns me off to a story is the main character's voice. I'm an extremely picky reader, nowadays, after growing up reading, and especially after discovering the fanfiction world. But one thing that I actually tend to like more about fanfiction is that a lot of the authors--since their source material is an existing couple of characters that they can research and have a template to add their own details to--are not afraid to explore how that character talks to the reader and sees the world.

In so much of professional fiction I've found only bland, annoying main characters who fail to make me laugh with their sarcastic quips about living on earth. It's just...boring. It's all the same. And don't even get me started on the erotic world, because what are they ON?? I've never found more abrasive or boring main characters than in professional erotica. I've tried and dropped nearly every gay romance I've come across with a pretty cover (meaning NOT a stock image of a hunky, shirtless man because ew, low effort)...and literally none of them except one grabbed me. And that one took CHAPTERS UPON CHAPTERS of dealing with yet another boring main character just to get to the love interest that I was curious about. And if you're curious, that book was the Captive Prince series by C.S. Pacat. I will slander it, I'm sorry. The writing is frustratingly basic and the prose is very weird at times, and Damen is a cardboard cutout in my opinion. Laurent was the saving grace of that series, and if not for him, I would've dropped that book on chapter one.

Captive Prince eventually got much better, so it's still one of the only good ones I've ever read, but--BUT--Damen's inner world? Boring as shit. I wanted to know his complexities and conflicts, the things that directly impacted his worldview and the ways he was a multifaceted person. I really wanted him to win me over. But I mostly skimmed a lot of the "thoughts" that were going on in his head, because he had none that were worth listening to. He wasn't unique. He wasn't particularly conflicted about anything interesting.

In direct contrast to that, probably my favorite romance to ever exist in the LGBT category is Anne Rice's The Vampire Armand. Talk about a fascinating writer with a strong voice. Anne is INSANE, for one. The things she puts together on paper are wild and ravishing and they will fucking sweep you off your feet. And that's what I'm always looking for. We see the world through the vampire Armand's eyes, who has a riveting and thorough perspective--far different from the pessimistic narcissism of most modern tellings of vampire "romances" (Twilight can eat my dick). He feels tangible, terrifying, and so warm at the same time. He displays a full and seasoned view of the world, and it reads as realistic for someone having lived so long. Marius, the boy who is with him who's caught up in sexuality, is a fantastic contrast to Armand, and thus provides a thrilling relationship dynamic of push-and-pull. He is headstrong; Armand is mature and set on rules.

Ugh, I could go on and on about how good Anne is when it comes to these things. Her characters are top-notch every time, and though there are sometimes exceedingly long rants about topics that neither interest me nor entertain me, somehow the way that she structures it in her characters' voices could convince me otherwise. (I still skip some of the LOOOONG expositions on history and religion but LMAO, I could read it if I had time.)

Let me infuse some more of Donald Maass into this, going on with his advice from The Emotional Craft of Fiction:

"Elsewhere I have advocated building the world of the story not by describing how it looks, sounds, feels, smells, or tastes, but rather by conveying characters' experience of that world. Opening the emotional world of a story is just as important, but doing so involves delving not only into characters' experience of their world but also of themselves.

For some authors this can be uncomfortable. Plot-driven storytellers, for example, may fear that they're slowing the action. Character-driven storytellers can be afraid of getting their characters' inner lives wrong, believing that even a tiny misstep can ruin years of effort. Both fears strangle emotional effect. The truth is that there is nothing wrong with opening up characters' inner lives. The bigger problem is that most authors don't do so enough. That said, letting characters simply gush on the page isn't terribly effective, either."

I always hesitate to talk about my own writing, because it feels egotistical to use my own as an example, but since you're here because you either like my writing or my art, well... 😂 I feel like it's the best way to give you a glimpse of how I think when I create them! Plus I know you want to hear about it, so I'll put my self-deprecation in the closet.

That said, let's talk about Dancing With Death--particularly what Maass mentioned in presenting world building through the eyes of your character and not the physicality of the setting. I am not someone who enjoys the observation of fantasy cultures and elements that we don't have in the real world. I simply do not care. I don't like Avatar for this reason--the entire world of Avatar is the biggest character in the story, and I don't care. Biology and science is boring. There's no interesting person to see the world through, so I find myself lost on why I'm watching it as a story, when it feels like it should be a video game to explore instead.

This being the case, my portal for the world was Emery, whom I consider to be the least interesting character I've ever created LMAO. Probably because he's so normal, and basically everyone else I've created is wildly off-kilter on morality, thought process, and mental health.

BUT!

My workaround for this character concept was having him come from an isle with a directly opposing culture to the one he'd be entering for the story. Now, I'm not much for introductions to characters living their normal life, so I started right off with Emery arriving in Gailda, so that the reader could find out organically how much different Gailda was to Emery's home in Dorne. Pretty much everything he comes into contact with--starting with the isle's ruler, Taushin--is entirely backwards to the way Emery has been raised. It adds interest because it adds inherent conflict. But the complexity here is that Emery came to Gailda of his own accord. Because he was curious about Gailda, and wanted to see if it was really as bad as the rumors he'd heard.

He travels there under the pretense that he's going to go free some Pets (the bed slaves of the world structure). But the readers should suspect right away that this isn't the case. Emery is a reckless, curious little man. He thinks he's an upstanding citizen, but he's naïve and--as we soon find out--pretty easily swayed.

So, seeing the world through Emery's eyes makes the world seem new and horrifying and thrilling to the readers--at least, this is my aim, of course! Going off of the current feedback I've received, most readers saw it this way. And while Emery might still be my least favorite man in my repertoire, he has deeply conflicting views, which constantly create dilemmas he has to resolve.

If you can keep a character on his toes, talking to the reader about the choices he has to make and how his morals might object to those choices, it opens up an intimate connection between us and them. The more specific their problems, the more chance the reader has to relate. What would they do in that situation? Don't make it easy.

For instance, one of Emery's first choices involves Minx, a Pet who's sent to his chambers the first night as a custom of Gaildan hospitality. Emery has come to free the Pets, so seeing Minx in his room instantly creates a dilemma. He thinks he can resolve this by not sexually interacting with Minx. But of course it's not that easy. Minx has to have intercourse with him, as per his master, Taushin (the ruler of the isle whom Emery is "doing business" with), or else he'll be punished. Then it's up to Emery whether he'll protect Minx by fucking him (LMAO), or not fucking him and knowingly submitting the boy to unjust punishment.

Okay, well that's enough rambling for my FIRST FUCKING POST. I hope this helps you, or otherwise lets you know that I'm just as long-winded in discussions as I am in my stories. 🥲 But in stories, that's a good thing! I hope that's what you've learned, today. Get to know your character by writing how he thinks and sees and feels the world around him, and make him INTERESTING, goddamnit! The more intricate and unique, the more we're inclined to listen to his inner world.

I'll leave you with another quote on that same page from Donald Maass's book--and feel free to send me asks about this topic or to let me know if it helped you! If I don't have feedback, I'll likely not continue these posts. It's hard to write and ramble to an audience I can't see. T_T Tumblr makes it tough for comments and likes!

"Creating a world that is emotionally involving for readers means raising questions and concerns about that world. It means both welcoming readers inside that world and making them curious, or uneasy, about where they are. First-person narration, the self-absorbed voice of our age, would seem to do that automatically but that belief is deceptive. True emotional engagement happens when a reader isn't just enjoying a character's patter but when she cannot avoid self-reflection, whether she's aware of it happening or not."

If you're interested in my own work that I talked about, Dancing With Death, and haven't read it, some of it is on Tumblr! Here's a link to the first chapter. It's more polished now than what is posted, but when it's published someday, you can see it in its full glory!

Dancing With Death chapter 1

About Donald Maass' The Emotional Craft of Fiction

#Sadist's fiction advice #long posts #rambling #writing advice #Donald Maass #the emotional craft of fiction #writing #dancing with death #writers of tumblr #fanfiction #deep dive #tips on writing #writing tips #writing tools #writing characters #creative writing #on writing #writeblr

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xiv-wolfram · 1 year ago

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Wolfram's Character Inspiration Chart

This took me a while because I've answered variations of this one before but forgot who I said. Honestly I consume a lot of media so… Wolf is basically 80% me with character traits thrown in from shows I like. I'm focusing more on personality/aesthetic/narrative than physical inspiration here... Ok maybe if Ravi and Eliot had a kid with Geralt's muscles and green eyes from somewhere?

Xena - Xena: Warrior Princess A person with a dark past seeks redemption by traveling around and doing good deeds. Wears lots of leather. Their primary weapon is a sword. Consistently flirting with their best friend. After writing the synopsis of his character story I realized Wolf is basically Xena… ok he looks more like Ares. Whatever, it's my bi-awakening show I can do what I want! After realizing this, I had to give Wolf some chakram lore too for the comparison to be complete! (which was easy with the Thavnairian dad)

Geralt - The Witcher Excellent fashion sense plus Wolf is also a person who tries to be neutral but will do anything to protect their loved ones. Mostly, Geralt is on here for his fighting style. Wolf uses more magic but he also has a very active/fluid way of combat. This is due to his dancer training and why he's so evasive, but I imagine it looks similar to how Geralt fights in the Blaviken scene from the first episode of season 1, just with the occasional VerFlare.

Ravi Chakrabarti - iZombie Did ya'll know Wolf is a bit of a nerd? I try and show it sometimes but due to the subject matter of many of the comics, it may not be obvious. He's really smart. Figures things out before others (like how did other people not realize Liv is a zombie?!) Unlike Ravi, he didn't have a formal education. He only knows the common language but reads a lot and even asks Y'Shtola to translate tomes for him. When he's around friends he's extremely talkative, usually about his interests (Mhachi history, cuisine, non-traditional uses for magic, etc). Also, Ravi's relationship with Peyton is (usually) really great power couple stuff. Plus they're good friends who joke around but are very sweet and flirty with each other. (Rahul Kohli is also Wolfram's voice claim btw!)

M.M. (Marvin Milk) - The Boys For some reason, I'm the only person I know who watches The Boys?! Anyway MM is great. He's got stuff from his past that really weighs on him but he fights through it for his friends and family. He's usually kind of the moral center of The Boys with a strong sense of right and wrong even if it doesn't align with those around him. He's also the paternal/fraternal figure trying to look out for everyone.

Jessica Jones - Jessica Jones She's got kind of a dark and snarky sense of humor. Leather. Alcoholic with PTSD but she doesn't let it stop her from doing what needs to be done and being a hero. Honestly I just really love characters who save people while not really knowing how to save themselves but hanging on anyway. Wolf's also got a pretty strong vigilante side…

Eliot Waugh - The Magicians Absolutely the most relatable depiction of depression I've seen on TV. He's usually really friendly and charismatic. Always joking around. It's all a mask for his major chronic depression. Drinks a lot. Also, very smart and talented mage without having to put in as much effort as Alice (read the books) which can be a double-edged sword. His biggest enemy is himself.

tagged by: @talion-graves (Thanks! This was funnnnn!!!)

tagging: This part always makes me nervous I'll forget someone. So just - anyone else who wants to do it - I wanna see it! The original template is here! I just tweaked it a bit for me.

#Character inspiration #ffxiv wol #oc wolfram #ffxiv #ffxiv oc #HunklanderBlogs #WolframGposes

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woethehero · 10 months ago

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Wyrd RPG Blog Post #1 !!! - Introduction to my Project

Hey Hero (: Thanks for taking a look! If you'll have me, I'd like to share a TTRPG (tabletop roleplaying game) project I've been working on for a bit after finally taking a plunge, and I wanted to document it in a fun way. So far, it's been about 2+ weeks of brainstorming and prototyping with my partner, so we're talking super early stuff.

Quick important foreword please read, I don't want anyone confused! I am exploring designing an RPG as a way to express my art, but I am not a professional game designer and can not promise this will become a full, polished, amazing new RPG at the end of the process. That'd be super sick, but this is primarily just a creative way for me to document exploring my interests of game design and writing alongside my art. I've wanted to do something more long term and dreamed of playing an RPG in my own art world, and no ones gonna try to make it but I.

TLDR: No promises of an actual game. Exploring for fun, documenting to share. Yay!

Now on to the post!

In this first post, I wanted to talk about my design goals, scope, expectations, and what I'm looking forward to so far!

Major Design Goals:

A singular core dice system of d12's being the most used die to determine the success of actions and their outcomes.

Player Characters take on the roles of Aspiring Champions, adventurer-types that wish to make a name for themselves. You are what you do. Your actions, the skills you focus on, and the people you walk with all have an impact on who you become as you grow in power and status.

Asymmetrical combat for GM's and PC's. Player Characters have a much deeper experience

Provide the tools needed for GM's and Players to create custom "home brew" content for their games based on templates so they grounded to the system but unique to the player.

Encourage GM and Player collaboration as much as possible

Classless Characters, characters comprised of Skill Levels and Traits that make up their core identity and capabilities. No EXP, No Levels. Character progression is awarded through play and during the Downtime Phase.

Different modes of play to break up the pacing of a game, examples being Combat, Exploration, Downtime, Social, and Meta.

Quick and lethal combat experience. Fighting directly isn't always the best solution, clever action to shift the odds more in your favor should always be preferred.

Dang Woe, that's pretty ambitious.

Uhh yeah lol. I tried to imagine my dream game for my art and it came out huge. I think it's just gonna be fun to try and explore a lot of different things and learning how to "gamify" things. Digital game dev has just too many barriers for me to explore, but I know my way around a TTRPG! I can't imagine having all these ideas written into mechanics and tested and everything flowing perfectly, but it's gonna be fun to try.

d12 System Yeehaw

The biggest thing I want to cover right away in this post is explaining the d12 action die pool system and how they work. Every Player Character will have a pool of d12s that make up your Effort.

What is Effort? Effort is your "action points," your Stamina, your Energy. You can give something your all, but you can't do it all the time. Effort is broken down into Regen, Stored, and Exhausted, which will be explained later in this post.

Internalize this now before moving on, in the context of rolling dice, 1 is good. 1 is the new slay. 1 is best number. You now love small numbers. When you come to a WyrdRPG post you will be pavloved into remembering 1 is best ever.

Your skills come into play when rolling your Effort. They determine what numbers on the dice count for successes and which do not. Skills lie on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being an absolute beginner and 10 being a renowned legend. Skills are displayed as "Skill #".

ex. Small Blades 8 is a decorated Knight known for their sword and shield mastery. They strike reliably and true.

ex. Small Blades 4 is an amateur or a young mercenary. They are competent and can cause deep wounds, but are far less reliable and strong, and thus require more effort to do the same damage.

Actions in this game have their outcomes determined by how many successes turned up in an effort roll. The max amount of successes you can get is up to how much effort you put in. As a brief example, if you want to swing a sword and have Small Blades 4 as a skill, every die you roll needs to have a 4 or lower to count as a success towards the outcome.

The fun part, 1's are Crits! They count as two successes!

You roll 5 Effort dice. You get 1-3-4-6-10. 1 counts twice, then 3 and 4, for a total of 4 successes. Gonna be a big hit!

12's aren't critical failures. They don't count against you or anything, unless something says otherwise. I'm currently thinking if you use a tool or item that's "broken" or "malfunctioning" then maybe that could apply. Could be cool idk!

Effort Explained More

Last important piece of this heartbeat is Regen, Exert, and Exhausted, the 3 states of Effort. Regen will show up like Regen 3 or Regen 4, meaning you have that number of Effort dice that cannot become Exhausted. You always get these back.

Exert is exhaustible Effort, that if used in addition to your Regen die as all must be used first, will be moved to Exhausted. You cannot use these dice until they are restored. In order to restore Exhausted dice, you have to underspend your Regen dice. For every Regen not used during a round, one exhausted is returned to Exert.

The idea behind this neutral-exert-rest flow is to give more long winded battles a chance to shift and provide risky opportunities to gamble a rest or full-sending an attack with more effort than you probably should, but you really wanna be sure you get this guy.

I appreciate you reading, I'm really curious to hear some of your thoughts as things are moving along. I have a lot of ideas for art and I think regardless of how this goes there's going to be something cool from it!

Okay bye hero!

Yours,

Woe

#fantasy #digital illustration #artists on tumblr #ttrpg art #ttrpg #rpg #indie rpg #illustrative art #woelock #woecore #WyrdRPG

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bklynmusicnerd · 11 months ago

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My fear is based off the fact that Trina and Spencer literally almost died once before in Greenland by Victor and the show had them come back and go about their daily lives like all that shit didn’t just happen to them. No traumatic PTSD, no therapy, no nothing. So I’m preparing them to act the same way in regards to Trina’s grief. They probably will give her a few days-2/3 weeks max of grieving episodes and be like okay that’s enough.

Interesting, I'm actually a little concerned in the opposite direction, that Trina's ooc behavior in regards to her depression will take away some of the stuff we love most about her.

Again, it's so hard to get into the post-Greenland stuff because that is the stockpile of shit that blew everything up because they were so focused on trying to sell us on Amnesia Esme, that it overrode everything. The weirdest case of creative tunnel vision I've seen in a minute, especially heading into a strike.

I mean, Spencer never really got legit pov on being forced to "kill" his Uncle Victor, who he loved and trusted. I will say, I don't think that's going to be the case this time for Trina. She's dropping the semester (aka making major life decisions) in immediate reaction to Spencer's "death".

It sounds like they're setting up a survivor's guilt arc for Trina which means we're going to see her feel like she doesn't deserve to live or "move on". It's very much sounding like a culmination of the worst parts of her savior complex. Everything that I've read from TA's interviews suggests that this won't be a phase that Trina just gets over but something that "alters" her.

But in regards to your concerns, I don't want a whitewashing of her grief but I would like her grief to be fluid if that makes sense? I don't want an entire month of Trina just bursting into tears over the mere mention of Spencer. I don't think that's really true to her in the long run, and I think it would get stale quickly.

There are a lot of different ways to write grief and depression (Spencer was a depression coded character from the moment he showed up in his ninja costume) and hopefully whatever way they write Trina's dark era is still grounded in who she is and not just a generic template for a grieving soap heroine.

Let her have moments where she lashes out, let her have moments where she's completely impolite, let her have moments where she loses control. It'd be frustrating (and tbh very telling) if the only atypical to her character writing we see for Trina during her depression this month is just her giving up her ambition.

#general hospital #trina robinson #trina having a depression era is interesting to me #im coming around to it #trina going through a type of spiritual death in accordance with spencer's fake death is interesting #especially because that would absolutely factor into their reunion #but it all depends on how it's written #as we know lol

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otnesse · 2 years ago

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I agree with the first post. Ariel always wanted to experience humanity for herself, even before she even learned of Eric's existence, much less met him face to face. The most Eric did was give her a nudge in the right direction (which isn't downplaying his role either). And even IF Ariel did indeed only want to become human because of Eric, given what she saw of him before he was even slightly aware of her existence, I'd say she definitely chose the right man for her anyways.

That said, I strongly disagree with the hashtag reply. Look, if Ariel fell in love with a guy, the opposite sex in other words, the movie's straight, period. And that even goes for her original story counterpart too. They're opposing sexes, they fall for each other, or at least one of them falls for the other, that essentially means straight, no matter what. Can't even work as allegory at all for homosexuality since it doesn't even indirectly communicate the core point behind it (with indirect communication being the whole point behind allegory and metaphor). The most the movie ever touched upon was MAYBE biracial marriages (those are also something that one wasn't allowed to love a while back). Also, Tropic Thunder had as a major plot point one of the actors undergoing radical therapy to literally become black for the role of Sgt. Osiris for the in-universe movie and the controversy that ensued, so Ariel wanting to become human could just as easily equate to that bit (and there was in fact at least one real life instance of a guy taking melanin therapy during the 1960s so he'd personally experience first hand how blacks' lives were like). It hardly was trans especially when Ariel STILL was content with the sex she was born with (ie, she intended to STAY female). Dune and The Matrix Trilogy had more claims to being trans metaphors than The Little Mermaid EVER did, either the original or the Disney version.

And you know who ELSE was involved in the writing and designing of Ariel as a character? Glen Keane, who designed her iconic features AND even wrote the template for her character back in the day. And he was straight (heck, one of the templates used for her design had in fact been his wife).

Also, we don't even know what exactly inspired Hans Christian Andersen to write the fairy tale. For all we know, it could have been the girl who married his best friend that he pined after and lost his chance with rather than his best friend. I've actually seen the former theory go around as well. I've even seen a theory that it was his physical ugliness that prevented him from marrying and had absolutely NOTHING to do with which way he swings.

Sorry for the rant, just get really annoyed with that kind of commentary, especially speaking as someone who is a fan of the movie and Ariel, and is firmly heterosexual as well (albeit autistic, probably the closest I'll ever get to queer due to it being a synonym for "eccentric"). Just makes me feel excluded and othered, a bit like Ariel regarding her fascination with humanity (if anything acted as the thing that made me undyingly loyal and respectful of her, it's more my autism than which way I lean. Heck, being forced to shut up about my conservative and traditionalist views in College if anything makes me relate even MORE to Ariel).

“Ariel sold her voice for legs just because of a guy“

Meanwhile Ariel with legs;

Ariel already loved the human world long before meeting Eric (you don’t get a collection like hers overnight) and when she finally got a chance to explore it, she took it.

Ursula made it more about Eric than Ariel ever did.

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findroleplay · 2 years ago

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Hello all! While I do have a specific RP idea in mind, I'm still going to use the RP template offered by the mod of findroleplay (danke danke mate) to make my thoughts more streamlined. I have a tendency to ramble, after all!

I'm Writer, 22NB! I've been roleplaying for years, but in the past six months, I swapped over to RP'ing on only Discord, with the occasional exception. This RP, should you choose to accept it, will be a double-up RP (so two ships going on at the same time)! I will only RP with someone who is 18+.

On to the actual ad!

Literacy: Literate/Advanced Literate - Each reply would be a total of 12-18 paragraphs per reply, bare minimum. This would mean roughly 6-9 paragraphs per character (this is a double-up ad, so two characters for each of us!). Please write a minimum of 4,000 characters/600-800 words/6-9 paragraphs per reply side.

Fandom: My Hero Academia/Boku No Hero Academia (MHA/BNHA), though this is all based on a semi-in-depth soulmate AU I've spent months crafting. If you would like to read the full description of the AU, please feel free to contact me! In its most basic form, it is 'First Words'- and upon meeting your soulmate, you gain a stat boost. However, if your soulmate dies, so do you. A link to a far more thorough explanation will be at the end of the ad!

Pairing Types: CCxOC/SI (I write 'OC/SI' because I RP as a self-insert, but those who do RP with me interchangeably call Fin an OC). You can choose if you want your side to be CCxCC or CCxOC, or even CCxSI, but mine will be CCxSI. ^^ I'm also fine with portraying any romantic inclination from FxF to MxM, or MxF, NBxF, so on and so forth. My side will be MxNB!

Characters: Finley Well/The Quirkless Hero (SI), Toshinori Yagi/All Might (Canon), Your OC/Character of Your Choice, Said Character's Love Interest (Canon)

Ships: YagiFin, Your Ship!

Triggers: Age Gaps (Fin is 26, Yagi is 49- if your ship is a minor x adult I will not be RP'ing with you, age gaps between consenting adults are fine), Emotional/Physical Abuse (mentions thereof), Attempted Murder, Mental Health discussed in some depth, depicted Panic Attacks.

Genres: Romance, Adventure, Action, Slice of Life

Plot Ideas: The RP itself would, by-and-large, follow canon events/the series itself. Over time, however, more and more events would diverge from canon and into fanon thanks to the inputs of our ships/OCs (if you also have an OC in the mix!). The RP itself would focus a lot more on the romantic aspect, since that's my jam~! I don't like humongous amounts of angst (like- characters breaking up and whatnot), and tend to prefer very fluffy RPs.

Where: Discord. I don't RP on Tumblr anymore, so if this ad intrigues you, please DM me so we can hash out details! I'll send over all necessary documents and links near the start of our conversation, feel free to do the same!

Other: Like I mentioned above, while I don't mind angst (it's tasty in decent doses!) I don't want the RP to be a major-angst fest. I very much prefer fluff and romance and all that tooth-rotting nonsense, but Fin's history does contain some dark moments that will crop up during the RP itself. I will ask for a writing sample early on, since I would like to see if our RP styles will mesh or not!

If you're interested and want to see if we can RP together, please send me a message with your pen name, pronouns, and favorite/least favorite characters of My Hero Academia so we can get started! Please and thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you. ^^

Links for Those Interested (will be sent to any interested if it appears you have not read any of the links): AU Explanation: https://www.reddit.com/user/Defeated_Author/comments/13arnle/my_mha_aus_please_credit_if_you_use/ *Please try to view the docs on a computer, as viewing them on other devices tends to break the formatting. Apologies! Finley Well's Info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/163bwFtJydqGCNtY2iUBLnVLOxVlVcc-Ti8KzxxhoXWE/edit?usp=sharing My RP Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lOHqNhRHDsWvW-8NngLFbwwYJ-KH2lwDzIKfx5kRV8Q/edit?usp=sharing

#rp #roleplay #oc rp #my hero academia rp #boku no hero academia rp #BNHA rp #MHA rp

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wordsbymae · 2 years ago

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Eli Finch Alphabet 18+

Bastard, feral man! I literally conjured this man into my mind involuntarily and now he's stuck there. First time I've done something like this so hopefully you guys like it! I've based this on an alphabet template I saw credited to @/dear-yandere. I will probably do a much more in-depth one, about how he met the reader and some background info, but I thought this would be a good starter! Also, there is a bit of an NSFW section but I'll warn you before :) Also swearing!!! I see him as Jack O'Connell but see him as you like! 18+

Also, I haven't published the majority of the story yet so most of this is just can be seen as a character study as I have left some things a bit vague to not spoilt potential future plots. If you want to read the beginning of his series go here!

Okay before we get into it, let's cover the basics.

Eli is a bastard through and through. His early years were not kind and in order to survive, he did what he needed to do. Stealing, lying, cheating, violence, manipulation, etc. Now I know what you're wondering, but why does the reader care so much for him? Why do they seem to not care about his more violent tendencies? Simple, he refuses to let you see that side of him. Ever since you showed him a crumb of kindness he vowed to always protect you and that means protecting you from the sides of him that border on monstrous. That doesn't mean he won't use his skills for your benefit. We've seen that he is more than willing to lie, cheat and steal to get you whatever your heart desires.

Those jewels look real pretty on you sweetheart

Also, he is a naturally charismatic person and while he hates the idea of physically hurting you or you seeing him be violent, he has no moral objections to using his charms to manipulate you. In fact, he's been manipulating you since the first moment you met. Although it has been in small, innocent-seeming ways, he's been in control of your friendship since the beginning. Not that you had any idea though.

You wouldn't want to break my heart now would you darling?

NSFW:

This man is a fucking massive perv. He's been thinking of fucking you since the day he got an accidental sneak peek down by the river (okay so maybe it wasn't an accident as he claims). But I'm not just talking about just thinking about it, I mean he takes active steps to get as much intimacy from you as possible (even before his change). Whether it be from you yourself, hugging a bit too long and too tight and leaning a bit too close behind you when you are kneading dough.

But sweetheart! I'm just giving you a hand! Don't you want me to give you a helping hand?

Or the way he forces intimacy with you via your things.

You two are sitting up in your room, teaching him to read

You are doing so well!

Do you really think so darling? With all this hard work I think I deserve a reward. How bout a kiss?

When you suddenly get called away by your parents. Hogs to be fed, chickens to be plucked. He doesn't mind, it gives him some alone time with your things. Your soiled clothes, your pretty undergarments and all the time in the world to imagine what you would look like bent over your desk in the corner.

He may love and cherish you but if you think that's gonna stop him from fucking your undergarments (I hate the world panties and we use the word undies in Australia, so argue with a wall, also it's the 1800s) and putting them back like nothing happened your dead wrong.

Then there's the brothel (let's all ignore the existence of STI/Ds please and thank you). After a particularly hard and restless day of trying not to fuck you like an animal bent over the closest surface he can find or hell even the floor, Eli is forced to look elsewhere. He'll take a nice stroll down to the brothel, there he'll find whichever worker looks the most like you

(Also I just want to say sex workers deserve respect. fun fact sex workers in the wild west were often quite rich and would build a lot of the infrastructure of a town, that was why prostitution was outlawed to stop them from gaining a lot of money.)

He'll imagine fucking you the entire time, and will definitely cry out your name throughout the entire thing. The first few times he got the worker to say things like how much you loved him and how you would let him take care of you, but the voice didn't match up so since then the only sound that can be heard is his grunts and moans, and your name being cried out. The worker doesn't mind, they get paid well with all the money Eli stole from the other patrons at the bar.

And this was all before he got turned.

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A = Affection (How do they show their love and affection?)

Oh boy. If there is one thing that defines Eli, it's the length he would go to show you affection. Quite a large part of this is his belief that it is right and proper for a man to provide for those they love. While Eli didn't have a very good childhood, he did have a good father. A strong and devout man who would do anything for his family (even get killed). So this idea of providing for someone was heavily ingrained into Eli from a young age.

However, he missed the lesson about right and wrong. I spoke before about his criminal ways, most of which he keeps hidden away from you. But he will use his skills to pinch small shiny trinkets to place just outside your window when you get mad at him. Blackmail to make sure you are crowned Autumn harvest Queen/King, and his disregard for personal property when he rips pretty flowers from Mrs Colton's garden to give you when you came running to tell him you were to be crowned the Autumn Harvest King/Queen.

Did you hear Eli! Can you believe it? Me!

Of course I believe it, sweetpea! How could they choose anyone else?

And that's not even getting into the amount of physical affection he gives you. Kisses on cheeks, surprise hugs from behind, playing with your hair as you lay along the bank of the river and all the while oblivious you thinking that's just what friends do.

B = Blood (How messy are they willing to get when it comes to you?)

man oh man, you have no idea. Before the change, Eli was already a violent man. Constantly picking fights with anyone who got in his way. Most of the time there wasn't even a good reason for him to break jaws or noses. He just wanted a fight. But if he needed to defend you? If you were threatened in some way? It would be a bloodbath. He would have either just gone straight for his revolver or if he knew he could win, his bare hands would do. Thankfully there had never been a reason for him to defend you. You would never be seen in the areas where Eli lurked looking for trouble, and those you were in the company of were good God-fearing folk.

But after his change? Even a man looking at you for too long would cause him to snap. Not only was he more aggressive now, but he was also a downright predator. Before the change, he would have just started the fight then and there. But now? He would watch and wait, stalk his prey until the opportune moment to strike. These moments were often along dark alleyways or narrow pathways along the outskirts of town. His favourite moments to attack were out on the plains, that way he could take as long as he wanted and didn't have to worry about anyone hearing the screams.

C = Cruelty (How would they treat you? Would they mock/tease you?)

Eli is definitely someone who would tease, but not mock. He's not a very cruel person, at least to you. To you, he is the almost perfect gentleman. Almost, because he looks through his fingers when you ask him to cover his eyes when you get changed down by the river. But other than his less-than-savoruy ways, he truly is a gentleman to you. He is kind and sweet, always pushes in your chair, opens doors, and pays for anything you buy when you go out together. He definitely teases though. He will tease you about anything, what and how you say things, what your wearing, how you act around people

Careful darling, keep acting like that and that boy is gonna think he has a chance at the heaven between your legs

Aw, come on sweetheart! I'm only telling the truth! It's not my fault boys like him are dimwits who think they have a chance. We both know he's never gonna get between your legs. You're too good for a man like that, I mean you're as pretty as a Georgia peach and twice as sweet!

Pretty much all the time his teasing could be called flirting. Which it is, he is flirting with you. Unfortunately for him, you've been friends for so long that you've just decided that it's just his way of being friends.

That is the extent of his cruelty with you, sometimes he does take it further but that's for another time. On the other hand, his cruelty to others has no limit. I mentioned above he enjoys when he can take his time with those he kills. I won't say much, but I will say he is pretty handy with a knife.

D = Darling (Would they do anything against your will?)

Fuck no, not outright forcing you to do things. I mentioned previously he had a good father figure and that was the first thing his father ever taught him. Real men don't force themselves on others. But let's be real this is the 1800s and consent wasn't as black and white as it is/should be today. While a maybe isn't a yes today, telling him maybe is like giving him a free pass. And I don't exclusively mean sexual or intimate things. It can be as simple as jumping from the rope swing by the creek or sneaking out with him to much much bigger things. I mentioned before he doesn't mind manipulating you to get what he wants from you.

However!!!!!! As soon as a no or a stop leaves your mouth he is stopping instantly. He takes his pleasure in being able to make you say yes of your own accord, not forcing it.

I think there are instances when he might manhandle you a bit to rein you in but they are when he is at the end of his rope and has run out of patience.

E = Exposed (How much of their heart do they bare to you? How vulnerable are they when it comes to you?)

Eli acts like a very confident and arrogant person, which he is, but there is sadness within him on the act of his childhood. You know hardly anything. He refuses to tell you anything other than the very basics and even then he has shifted than a bit. It is the 1800s so anything seen as a weakness in emotion is looked down upon. Although Eli knows you wouldn't do that to him but it is so ingrained in him that it would be many more years before the whole story is revealed.

F = Fight (How would they feel if you fought them?)

Physically? He would just laugh. Even before his change, this man was working as a ranchhand and stockman. He has spent years working hard and fighting anything that looked his way. So when play fighting began it wasn't long before you were calling for mercy, although he often pretends to not hear you so he could spend a few more moments pressed up tight against your ass and hands gripped tightly round your waist or chest. You always get mad that he keeps his switchblade in his pocket when you wrestle (it isn't his pocket knife). After the change, there was no question he would win, even if you threatened him with a gun or knife that the same laugh would come through and you would know that you were in for a long night.

G = Game (How much of this is a game to them?)

This man's whole life is one big game. He is constantly looking for ways to joke around and have some fun but don't be mistaken. He may tease and cause mischief but this man can switch between fun and games to a steal-hearted killer in a moment. It all depends on who he is dealing with.

H = Hell (What would be your worst experience with them?)

I have some things in the works regarding this, but one that sticks out is the moment you realise that he isn't the same Eli you knew and loved and that there was no way for him to change back. It would involve lotta blood and gore and the crumbling realisation that you might never have known Eli at all.

I = Ideals (What kind of future do they have in mind for/with you?)

Eli has it all mapped out. A fancy homestead on a hill with white shutters and pretty blue doors. A few 80 acres for some steers and some mares. A pretty garden out the front for you and a large red barn for him (filled with chains and shackles). He wants enough room for all the kids he plans to have (he has yet to ask you how many if you want any at all). He wants you to name them all, he thinks it's only fair since he's gonna change your last name (oh how gentlemanly). He really just wants what was taken from him when he was a child. This time is gonna be different though, this time he will be strong enough to protect his family (like his father should have been)

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous? Do they lash out or find a way to cope?)

Oh yeah, this boy gets jealous. I went into it a bit above. After the change, it really only takes someone looking at you wrong to set him off. He'll stalk them all the way to their home, and just before they set foot on their property he's dragging them off into the wilds for a quick lesson in manners.

K = Kisses (How do they act around you?)

He is constantly checking you out. Always watch what you're doing and offering to help in any way. Teases like it's his fucking job. Joking around about how your father hasn't married you off yet (never gonna fucking happen, there's a reason your father doesn't ask suitors over anymore) and if both of you are still without spouses by a certain age you should just marry each other (wow so subtle)

I think it's a great idea sweet cheeks. I mean think about it! We're already the best of friends, why can't we just be the best of friend's in our marital bed!

ow! No need to hit so hard darling, if you wanted me to get on my knees you only had to ask.

L = Love letters (How would they go about courting or approaching you?)

This man has been courting you since day one, you are just too much of an oblivious idiot to see it. I have said this before and I'll keep saying it until the cows come home, this man would steal the crown jewels for you. He's been leaving you trinkets outside your window for years now, sometimes wildflowers and sometimes whole clothing he's nabbed from someone's laundry line.

Oh, how you wound me, darling! Refusing to try on the fruits of my hard labour! Come on sweetheart, for me? I promise I won't peek.

He definitely peeks and has to excuse himself to take care of a situation behind the stables.

M = Mask (Are their true colours drastically different from the way they act around everyone else?)

Oh yeah, I think I've explained it enough so I won't go too in-depth but it's really night and day. You get all the best of Eli, all his kindness and love. Those who aren't so lucky get the worst.

N = Naughty (How would they punish you?)

*good girl/boy is used*

Not physically, unless you did something he really didn't like, but in small (toxic) ways. You no longer get little trinkets outside your window, he isn't waiting at the river for you and he won't talk to you when you do see him. He acts like you don't exist. After a few days of this torture, it's too much for you. You've been crying yourself to sleep and you can't take any more. You sneak out in the middle of the night to confront him. As soon as you see him you burst into tears. All he does is take you in his arms and slowly pat your back.

Have you learned your lesson now sweet pea? No more talking with that boy, alright? We don't want him getting ideas do we peaches? Good girl/boy

Oh my goodness I nearly forgot!! This man would have a thing for spanking you. I mean you bent over his knees with his hands all over that ass? Say no more. But I think this would only come in when you do something that could have ended in you getting hurt.

I thought I told you to never do that without me, darling. Stop your crying now, there's no way you're getting out of this one. So be a good girl/boy for once and do as your told

O = Oppression (How many rights would they take away from you?)

*primarily female reader*

Welp, it's the 1800s so if you're a woman (or really anyone other than a white man) boy do I have some bad news for you. Can't really take away rights you don't have. If he were to take rights away, it would all be legal in the sense that as your husband (it was bound to happen really) he really has the last say. So if you try and make a run for it, you'll just be sent right back. On the other hand, it could be a lot worse for you. It just wasn't a great time to be a woman in America (or anywhere really).

P = Patience (How patient are they with you?)

For you? He has all the time in the world. He is more than happy to partake in anything that takes your fancy, even if it may be seen as annoying by others or something seemingly pointless like showing him a rock you found. When it relates to you it's the most important thing in the world. However, put yourself in harm's way or god forbid flirt with another man, things will hit the fan. Not towards you though, no his anger is directly targeted at the fucker who thinks it's ok to flirt with another man's claim.

Q = Quit (If you die or leave would they ever be able to move on?)

Nope, no, never. If you die then that's it, game over. He'll probably mourn for you in the wildness of the north in some forest thousands of miles away from anything that reminds him of you. If you leave???? It doesn't matter if you went to the ends of the earth and back, Eli will drag you back kicking and screaming right back to where you belong, underneath beside him.

All in all, it's you or nothing.

R = Regret (Would they ever feel guilty about abducting you? Would they ever let you go?)

Can't really get into this yet, but I think a very very very small part of him would feel guilt but the majority of him is just overjoyed to have you as his, finally.

S = Stigma (What brought about this side of them [childhood, curiosity, etc]?)

Oh, definitely childhood but that's another story for another day.

T = Tears (How do they feel about seeing you scream, cry, and/or isolate yourself?)

It depends on what type of crying. I think some light tears would result in some teasing.

Come on peaches am I really that bad? Here I thought you liked me. You sure seemed to like me last night. How bout we stop these tears and have some fun?

but ugly sobbing? That's a different story. He is a true protector at heart so it would cause some emotional damage to him. Although it does give him a good excuse to get close to you.

Screaming? He would find it a bit silly and ridiculous. You've known each other for years so this is no way friends act around each other. This is where I see the manhandling come into effect

Is this really how your gonna act? Like a child? I think your way past acting like that at your age. But If I need to put you in your place, so be it

Isolating yourself? How? this man is in your business 24/7. You can't even try to ignore him, he's just so annoying

U = Unique (Would they do anything different from the classic yandere?)

I can't really think of anything at this stage. There are so many good writers out there with all their own little quirks added into their writing so I really don't know how Eli differs. If I had to make a choice, it would be that his yandere tendencies aren't really acted upon you but onto those around you. if that makes sense? If he never turned, you might never have known how willing to kill for you he was.

V = Vice (What weakness can you exploit in order to escape?)

Lust for sure! This man has wanted to fuck you for years. He's so horny for you, he couldn't see a trap being laid from a mile away.

Well, would you look at that! Ain't that a pretty sight! And all for me? you spoil me, darling!

(flashforward to him being knocked out by a wile e. coyote-looking trap with his pants around his ankles)

W = Wit’s end (Would they ever physically hurt you?)

Not in an extreme sense but a little punishment for trying to do something dangerous he told you to never ever do? Oh yeah. You'll be bent over his knee quicker than you can say I'm sorry.

X = Xoanon (How much would they revere or worship you? To what length would they go to win you over?)

This man worships the hell out of you. You were the first person to show him kindness after his tragic childhood. Since then you are the apple of his eye. He would do anything for you, no questions asked. You tell him some people have been rude to you, and he'll ask how many graves he needs to dig. Moreover, your body? His temple. That place between your legs? The altar on which he worships you. This man is a simp.

Y = Yearn (How long do they pine after you before they snap?)

This one is quite tricky. If he never turned, I think he might have never really "snapped". I think he would have eventually told you what he really felt and it would have been a happily ever after situation - he had actually planned on telling you before he left for mustering but talked himself out of it. But with him changing everything went downhill, all the raw emotions he had were multiplied and the love he had before exploded into obsession. If we are looking at it as a before and after sorta thing, as soon as he changed he snapped. He had been pining after you for years and now all those emotions, which were strong already, became tenfold.

Z = Zenith (Would they ever break you?)

Break in a physical way? No.

In a mental way? Never, your personality is the one thing he loves the most about you - that and your thighs.

In an emotional way? Oh yeah, he's gonna wear you down until you can't find the strength to say no to the ring he's placing on your finger.

#oc #eli finch #yandere drabble #yandere x reader #yandere imagines #yandere #cowboy yandere #yandere werewolf x reader #werewolf #yandere werewolf

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lockejhaven · 2 years ago

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↪ 𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚋𝚎𝚛 / 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟸 --- monthly summary 02

»»—————————-　𓆩❤︎𓆪　—————————-««

Hello, my sprites! Here we are for another wrapup ❤︎

It's been quite a busy month full of progress and creation! I'm excited to see what I've accomplished, so let's get into it!

»»—————————-　𓆩❤︎𓆪　—————————-««

𝚐𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚕 𝚙𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜 —

➺ First of all, I created a kofi ! I’ve been more active in the community and as such, I’ve offered to help others with tumblr theme coding, WIP graphics, and more, for free! The kofi is for those of you who would like to support what I write and do ^^

➺ In a similar vein, I created a Notion template for free use; it’s a character masterlist, includes an expanded character page template, and is completely free for any notion user. (That said, Notion does offer a free premium membership for students, if you have a student email c;)

➺ This month has been a major increase in activity. We welcome 52 new sprites to the Haven, for a total of 540 members! I'm elated that so many of you are interested in my work ❤︎

➺ Along with this, I’ve reached two other milestones; 5,000 liked posts and 1,000 original posts. Honestly, I’m not too sure whether to be proud of these or not. If anything, it’s slightly unnerving to see how active I am, LOL.

➺ The writeblr list is up to 37 members and is still open to adding more! Simply fill out the form, reblog the original promo post, and I’ll tag you once I’ve added you to the Locket.

➺ North Haven Discord has reached 52 members! I’ve also worked hard to bring in new bots, reorganize realms, and allow members to share their work in a more effective manner. All writers are welcome to join, and if you do, I ask that you reblog the promo post for it!

➺ I’ve been generally more active this month, as have all of my lovely sprites! My inbox has been absolutely overflowing with asks and I’ve got plenty of tag games to work with; I’m extremely grateful for everyone’s support, and I will always get to your asks + tags.

➺ That said, I wanted to give a few mutuals a shoutout, as my community has grown quite a bit and I’ve started interacting with even more wonderful writeblrs ❤︎

@writingpotato07 @kaatiba @ink-fireplace-coffee @andromedatalksaboutstuff @aghostwriteblr @bloodlessheirbyjacques @sweetieguk @tragicbackstoryenjoyer

Each of you have been so wonderful and supportive, and I’m so grateful to have the pleasure of sharing my works with you and to get to learn about yours ❤︎

»»—————————-　𓆩❤︎𓆪　—————————-««

𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚙𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜 —

➺ I created a tag list for my writing, poetry, snippets, and more; reblog with which lists you’d like to be on! (A/N: If you want everything, you’ll be added to the ‘general’ list)

➺ Most of my writing has been fully compiled into Google Drive and Notion, with a few straggling bits of info in notebook.ai and kumu.io. This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to having everything in one, single place!

➺ All of my characters have been noted down in Notion (or, most of them) in one big masterlist; a few have linked pages, which I’ve been slowly working on expanding!

➺ Faefinder has had a major update! I made an intro, designed some covers, and even managed to post the first part! I’m still mostly in the planning stages with this one, but at the very least I have a general idea of the direction I want to go!

➺ My blog has expanded into multiple new pages, with more yet to be added! Please welcome the following to my page list…

WIP Pages A Ghost, a Quill, and a Mockingbird Angel to Mage Fable: Servant to Dragon and King Faefinder

Character Pages Archaics Inamorata StDK (Cast) Luminaries

»»—————————-　𓆩❤︎𓆪　—————————-««

𝚗𝚎𝚠 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝𝚜 —

BLORBO BLURSDAY

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Myhren & Artwyn 02 Krisdi Varalei 01

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TAG GAMES

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Find the word 03 Find the word 04 Find the word 04 (2) Find the word 05 Find the word 06 URL music tags Heads Up/Last Line 01 Heads Up 02 3 images tag (01-StDK) 3 images tag (02-AtM) Pick your poison Favorite movies Deify yourself Get to know me 02

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STORYTELLING SATURDAY

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WIP Symbols WIP Progress

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WORLDBUILDING WEDNESDAY

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The Locket: Energy

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WRITING/LORE/ART

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A Bond Broken (Repost) Midnight Banners Angel to Mage Snippets StDK: The Blade GQM: Updated Intro

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POETRY

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The War w/ Wallpatternz Refusal

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OTHER ASKS/OC ASKS

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Writing questions 01 Writing questions 02 Writer’s asks 01 Adjective asks 01 Adjective asks 02 Adjective asks 03 Fall asks 01 Flustered 01 Flustered 02 Word search 01 OC asks 01

╚═════════════════════╝

»»—————————-　𓆩❤︎𓆪　—————————-««

𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚋𝚎𝚛 — --- checklist

I actually managed to make progress on my goals from this past month…

➺ Progress w/ Character Library ➺ Continue answering asks ➺ Update The Locket ➺ Introduce a few more WIPs and Characters

𝚗𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛 — --- checklist

Which means… I can make a list of new goals for the coming month!

➺ Complete a few more WIP + Character pages ➺ Post my favorite snippet c; ➺ Expand on character masterlist info ➺ Answer asks + tag games

»»—————————-　𓆩❤︎𓆪　—————————-««

This marks a two month streak on monthly wrap-up posts, which I’m super proud of! It turns out that the motivation of seeing my progress laid out is more than enough to do this, and hopefully, I’ll be able to continue this next month as well. Once again, thank you to every single one of my sprites for the support and love; I can’t wait to see what the next month holds for us ❤︎

~ Of Fables & Feathers,

🕊️ Locke J. Haven

locket’s tags: ╔═════════════════════╗

@365runesofwritingg @enchanted-lightning-aes @thepixiediaries @midnight-and-his-melodiverse @perasperaadastrawriting@fearofahumanplanet @orphicpoieses @writeblrsupport [ your tag could be here… ]

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#lockejhaven #monthly wrapup #october #october 2022 #2022

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prokopetz · 2 years ago

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Thanks – I've fixed up all of the noted issues that won't require major rewrites and uploaded revised files. To address specific comments in the order in which they appear (under the cut to spare the dashboard):

d12s are actually my very favourite die. I've historically tried to restrain myself because most people don't own more than one twelve-sider, but we're in an era where most groups are using dice-rolling apps anyway, so that's less of a barrier than once it was. Heck, Costume Fairy Adventures probably would have used d12s rather than d6s if sourcing custom d12s for the crowdfunding rewards hadn't turned out to be a huge pain in the ass.

You've just about got it for the Facets. In full, the rules for Facet spreads are "must add up to 15, no Facet may be greater than 7, no Facet may be less than 3; at least one Facet must be 6 or greater". That means the only valid spreads are 7/5/3, 7/4/4, 6/6/3, and 6/5/4. I might add some discussion of that in a future revision, but for now being concise was a bigger priority.

(There's a specific rationale behind each of those requirements, including the "at least one 6" bit, but I'd be lying if I claimed that the fact that they make every possible permutation of Facets fit neatly into a d66 table – thereby allowing balanced stat spreads to be randomly chosen – wasn't a significant motivator. I do love my stupid dice tricks.)

I don't need to write a game where dwarves are carved from stone because that's actually a fairly common trope in tabletop RPGs. Troika! springs most readily to mind because one of the standard templates you can roll at character creation is "Poorly Made Dwarf", but there are plenty of others.

No comment regarding the squirrels.

It's mostly the case that the ones which lack alliteration are because I was in a hurry to get this teaser out the door and couldn't think of one. I passed up the obvious alliteration for "Mighty Thews" because I like the ring of it, and "Unusual SIze" is, of course, a not-terribly-subtle Princess Bride joke. If anybody has ideas regarding alliterative names for the ones that are presently one word or otherwise non-alliterative, I'm open to suggestions!

The subject of true names will be addressed in depth in the as-yet-hypothetical "Playing the Game" chapter. I should probably add something about it to the "Finishing Touches" section of character creation now that you mention it, though. In brief, the default assumption is that God-eaters all know each others' true names unless they explicitly decide otherwise at character creation, while discovering the true names of NPCs is variably difficult; your average human doesn't think to keep theirs a secret, but digging up the true name of a mighty wizard will take some doing.

Snot may also be G-rated, depending on how permissive your local ratings board is. It's a bit of a squick for some players, though, so it's not a default option.

With my schedule being The Way That It Is lately, I don't know when I'll be able to pull together a complete and playable version of Eat God, so I'm hoping this will sustain interest until that time comes. This document contains the complete character creation rules, more or less, incorporating reader feedback from the previous thread.

For those who've expressed interest in giving the character creation rules a spin, well, here you go!

For those just joining us (and anyone who's been following this blog all along but has somehow managed to miss every single previous post), Eat God is a tabletop roleplaying game where you play as a bunch of small muppety critters who are – as the title suggests – on a mission to kill and eat God. Its inspirations include... well, I'm going to let y'all work that out for yourselves.

As always, comments, criticisms, and bizarre rants welcome, though I can't promise I'll be able to respond in any timely fashion.

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #eat god #game design #violence mention #death mention #religion mention #food mention #unsanitary #swearing #(yes i'm tagging this 'food mention')#(if it's good enough for the catholic church it's good enough for me)

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bigskydreaming · 6 months ago

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I actually can not believe I've never posted this X-Men headcanon (that turned into a whole treatment/thesis) here on this blog, but for those few followers who know who Dallas Gibson aka Specter is, or Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, or just anything about Academy X in general.....enjoy!

(Mostly because I don't trust the random PDF hosting site I've got it stored on and I like to keep stuff backed up online and not just in my files so posting it for posterity here anyway.)

Anyway, I give you:

THE GREAT MANIFESTO OF WHAT IF DALLAS GIBSON WAS THE SECRET LOVE CHILD ONE NIGHT STAND CHILD OF BOBBY DRAKE AND LAYNIA PETROVNA: A CRACK FIC THEORY OUTLINE SOMETHING IN THREE PARTS

(Relax. Its actually only about 10,000 words long. That's like, barely ANYTHING when its me. Its a itty bitty teeny tiny nothing of a thing. Hardly even counts).

So, okay. I have approximately 80 different pitches for what to do with Iceman at any given time, but here's one that I know would never in a million years happen purely because the X-Office will never let the 05 be the ages I perceive them as which is mid to late thirties at this point. Like I picture Bobby as around thirty-six or so, though for him it actually makes sense for him to be eternally portrayed as LOOKING like he's in his early 20s, since that was the age he first transmuted to his ice form and so makes sense to be his default template/molecular blueprint his power resets him to every time he has to make a new body from scratch. BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyway, wildly self-indulgent pitch ahead, which ties into a cracky headcanon I've had since Academy X, includes a couple OCs, and explores his past history with Laynia, long before he was out, as well as his connections to other heroes beyond the X-Men like Laynia and her brother, Black Widow, etc. And then it combines my ideas for giving Bobby an antagonist of his own, more characters to interact with other than major X-Men so his story beats aren't reliant on whatever's going on with other X-Men and who's available, and gives him concrete reasons to want to level up quickly in terms of how much social influence he wields among mutantkind, take more prominent/proactive stances on things, etc. While still leaving room for him to be goofy and always trying to use humor to seem more relatable, less threatening, etc.

So. I'm picturing this as a triptych like Sabretooth, three interlocked minis of five issues each that form a trilogy by the end.

First mini:

ICEMAN AND DARKSTAR: SHADOW GAMES

ISSUE ONE:

Deciding to just shrug it off as some weird thing, Bobby's basically just being moody for a page or two of reflection before Scott calls. They're trying to do better about keeping in touch even when they're not on the same team. Some generic catching up, and Bobby eventually mentions he's just been in a weird mood all day, to which Scott says he's not surprised. Turns out Scott's noticed that for as long as he can remember now, Bobby's ALWAYS in a shitty mood every time April 27th rolls around. Yes, Scott is anal enough that after years of Bobby being weird around the same time every year, he eventually narrowed it down to its epicenter. This very day. Bobby is both weirded out and touched by Scott's attention to something so specific about Bobby...more attentive than even Bobby himself. When they hang up, he's still clueless about why today would be such a big deal to him, but apparently there's a pattern. That card might not have been so random after all.

Stranger: Your observational skills are a lot sharper than they used to be, Drake. Back in the day, you had no idea when I was around.

Bobby: Who are you and why are you talking like I'm supposed to know who you are? I've never seen you before in my life.

Bobby: Are you the one who sent me that card earlier? Who the hell are you and what kind of game are you playing?

Stranger: Maybe you just forgot. Or who knows? Maybe someone made you forget.

Bobby: Okay, yeah, I'm bored now. Time to put you on ice.

Caption box: And fear, well, fear's one of the best motivators there is. So much easier to get someone to listen to you when they're afraid of something else.

Caption box: But maybe you can't really relate to that. A guy as powerful as you, you're probably not afraid of much these days.

Caption box: That you were just....lucky?

Caption box: Food for thought. Anyway, I gotta run for now, but I'll be seeing you, Bob.

Caption box: We have so much to catch up on.

Then its just Bobby left keeping the mob at bay with his ice structures, him visibly shutting down, trying not to think too much and just running on instinct, until a hand reaches down from above and snatches him up into the air, until the streets are just a speck below them. Bobby looks up and to his shock its Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, his old friend and teammate from back when he was on the Champions as a teenager. The issue closes with her saying: "Hello, Bobby. I'd say its nice to see you and all the usual pleasantries, but we don't have much time. And we need to talk about our son."

ISSUE TWO

Bobby: Oh crap. HE'S not our son, is he?

Laynia: Hell no.

Bobby: Phew, I was worried we had a Stryfe situation for a second there. I am barely holding it together as is and I am NOT equipped to handle an evil Bobby Jr. from the future.

She's not sure how he'd fare against other telepaths, but at least with non-psychics, even the best psychic shielding or anti-telepath technology isn't a guarantee against him. Because doesn't try to break into minds, or even sneak past mental defenses. He just surveils his targets, watching them invisibly, learning all he can about them, and then he looks for cracks in whatever mental shields they have. Tiny gaps here and there that he can just whisper into, slipping a thought in amongst the chaos and chatter generated by someone's own mind.

And for a brief - too brief - window of time, they had not one son, but two.

ISSUE THREE

Bobby: Guess you were right about me. Congrats. You win.

And then over the next two panels, Thomas flash-freezes before he can react, his entire body frozen on a cellular level...and then he shatters.

Which is when Bobby decides: "In a world of telepaths, Cerebros and Wolverines, the only foolproof way to keep a secret...is to not even know it yourself.

They both agree, and seek out a telepath unaffiliated with any team or organization: Alexi Garnoff. Which brings us back to the present.

April 27th. The anniversary of the day one son died, and they made the decision to give up the other for his own safety.

ISSUE FOUR

ISSUE FIVE

Thomas: And what's that?

Bobby: I remembered that I'm not sorry.

Bobby: Don't worry about my virtue. I'll cope.

Thomas: And in the spirit of new beginnings, I just want to say I forgive you for killing me eighteen years ago. Fresh starts for everyone, right?

ICEMAN: A HOUSE OF DRAGONS

He also has several chance encounters with Iceman, who he really only knows as his old math teacher, and no idea they're not so chance encounters at all.

Onscreen, Thomas claps his hands energetically and addresses the entire audience now:

The second mini concludes with Doubting Thomas winking into the camera, essentially staring straight at the reader.

Thomas: May the best influence win!

DARKSTAR: SONS OF SNOW AND SHADOW

Subtitled: “Run, Dima, Run!”

Dallas: …thank you? I think?

But then he gets downright chilly and makes it clear how and why his dynamic with many of them will be at least somewhat different from this point on…..Xavier especially.

He brings attention back to the not so minor detail of Xavier, Moira and Magneto apparently originally declaring Krakoa to be for all mutants….except for precogs.

Xavier: Compromises had to be made in order to -

Xavier: *keeps silent*

Bobby: Yeah, y’know what, on second thought I don’t think I actually want to know the answer to that. Stay away from me and my kids, X. You and I are done.

Etc, etc.

#X-Men: Academy X #academy x #new xmen #Bobby Drake #Iceman

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