#tiny bit of worldbuilding turned into uh

[didiwaffles]

ah yes, trauma is sure to follow anyone that lives past a normal human lifespan. i love the way you explain the events in your world! speaking of which, i would like to ask about it.

whats the setting? what are the main building blocks for it? you mentioned gods and stuff, so what are their functions?

on another note, i think i am shadowbanned, so i can only interact through anon asks… i have seen people sign off their anons with different things, so can i be void anon for recognition?

(also ive read the tags heheh i see you)

It goes like this.

What humans call their planet (most call it the Earth, but it can vary) is actually just a tiny fraction of what's out there called a "world". That being said, not every planet is a world, only those that are inhabited. Such planets are normally covered with the outer layer called "ada". Ada is the source of all supernatural energy within the worlds, be it magic or technology, the only exclusion being natural elements (like fire, water, etc.) The farther away from ada, the brighter it glows, so all the bright stars in the sky are actually other worlds within the universe. More advanced civilizations who manage to bypass their ada and go for the cosmic travels may try to reach other worlds, but from how so far the worlds from each other and the way ada is more hostile to what's coming from the outside rather than inside, it's practically impossible for the mortals to travel between worlds.

A universe consists from an infinite number of such worlds, everexpanding in the mind of a mortal. And outside the universe, there are an infinity of such universes. But that's a normal multiverse theory.

Each world has at least one god, sometimes many, all depending on the practiced religions within the world. There are several afterlife dimensions, their influence extending to the entirety of the universe, and mortals get in each based on their deeds while being alive as well as their religion. (And then there's another one that exists outside any universe and does not fall under the rules of any universe and any god.)

Each god that overlooks every given world answers before the God of Destruction - the one who oversees their universe. Despite the name, the God of Destruction's job is not so much destroying everything they don't like but rather keeping a balance within the universe, destroying only proportionally to the creation that occurs naturally. That is done not for the reason of preventing the universe of expanding too much - that is not a problem in itself - but to keep humans in check and not let them get way too self- (and everyone else) destructive.

Every God of Destruction has their respective Angel to help them, and together they answer before the Higher God. Such a God oversees a "section" of the multiverse. Each section of the multiverse consists of an even number of universes which can vary from section to section, and all the universes within one section are divided in pairs, forming "parallel" universes. (That being said that phenomenon can exist outside one section; with the multiverse being infinite there always exists a parallel universe that would be many many sections apart from the other; they're not connected like normal parallel universes but they still can reflect each other.)

All the Higher Gods are alternative versions of each other, essentially being the same being. They don't have names, and they rarely communicate among each other (there's only one exception to this rule.) And overseeing them all, there is an ultimate being, a giant golden dragon, named Tianlong. They are the most powerful being that exists, having the absolute authority over everything that exists within the Multiverse.

Now, if we return to our little universe and Devi...

The Universe itself is an entity. It has the ultimate power much like Tianlong but on a much smaller scale, in comparison. So it started like this.

Once upon a time, there was the Universe. It was alone in the void. Nothing existed but the universe itself. Then the Universe created the first ever living being. It was a little girl named Aredess. She was just there to keep the Universe company. She was created a perfect being - a perfect balance of everything. And for a while there was only her and her creator. But then something went wrong.

No one knows why that happened. Maybe Aredess was curious what will happen, or she was just bored, or it happened unbeknownst to her. Only the fact remains - the perfect balance within her shifted. And she split into two parts, the Aspect of Light, Andariel, and the Aspect of Darkness, Anorava. And from the moment they were born, those two started fighting. Andariel would go on to say that his sister was evil and he was just trying to not let her run rampant and consume the universe. In turn, Anorava would insist that Andariel was the one who started it all and she was just fighting back, to not let him kill her. What was the truth? No one knows, and probably will never know.

After a long battle, Anorava started overpowering Andariel. Seeing as he could no longer win, Andariel hid under the barrier of Light that Anorava could not surpass. That created the first ever world, as well as ada that initially was made to protect the world - later to be known as Afiar - from Anorava. But the war didn't end there - in fact, it only began.

Anorava started to spread her Darkness everywhere else she could reach. She knew that Andariel would have to stop her which will make his barrier weaker, and she can strike right then and there. But Andariel wasn't stupid. Instead, her created his son, Darinir. And then it was Darinir who went on creating worlds one after the other, overwhelming Anorava until she got cornered outside the worlds where the life quickly sprouted. The Light could not reach her, but she could not get through ada anymore at all. If she wanted to get back to Andariel, she needed to act in some other way rather than head on.

Now, when it comes to Devi, she would get created around this time. The truth was, she originated not from this universe at all. Once, she was a part of a Goddess in one of the nearby universes. But to save those she loved, the Goddess turned herself to dust that got blown over the whole multiverse. One of the specs of dust fell into the hands of our Universe. Even if it was only a spec of dust, it still held the divine power, so the Universe used it to create a being whose purpose would be protecting her Universe, being it outside danger, or inner conflicts of two dumbasses who were tearing the Universe apart.

But to make sure nothing goes array, the Universe had to make sure its warrior was truly perfect. So it created multiple timelines and put Devi in each of them, observing her growth to choose the one where she'd come out the strongest. In the end, it was truly satisfied with only two outcomes, but couldn't decide which one to go with. It pondered for a long time and in the end, apparently, completely forgot to choose one, and both timelines became reality at the same time, in different worlds.

In one, she was half human, half dragon. When she was 16, she went on a quest of finding her father, killing every dragon she saw on her way. After traveling the whole world over the span of a few years, she returned to her hometown, where she found a book that teleported her to a dimension ruled over by a demonic entity. She found her father there, completely under the demon's control. But having him under his control already, the demon had no use in Devi, so he killed her.

In the other one, Devi was born among the race of angel-like humans. They lived on an island on a cloud, had big beautiful white wings... And had an ego that could blind the sun. They were not actually angels, but living so high above humans and having angel-like wings made them consider themselves closer than anyone to the Heavens. But Devi was... different. As she grew, and her wings started to grow, they turned to be... black. At first her family made her hide her wings, but once they grew big enough, it became impossible. Her family disowned her, she was bullied by her peers, with her older brother being in the front lines of hurting her, and adults didn't even acknowledge her existence, as if to them she was lower than humans. Eventually, her brother thought of a funny prank - he tore one of her wings and threw it off the cloud, pushing Devi right after it into the world of humans below.

But both of these timelines were eventually coming into one. Be it a fallen one-winged angel finding a church that worshiped the God of Darkness and prayed to the higher being she knew nothing about, or a half-dragon girl, being killed over, and over, and over again by a demon who was confused and angry as to "why wouldn't she just die?!", she had Anorava's eyes turned to her, and both timelines came into one when Anorava poured her power inside Devi's body. The angel-like body was naturally very strong and durable, much more so than the half-dragon, but the latter was making up by a lot of fighting, and so they turned out the strongest amongst all the others, and the trauma she received in the process forged her to be stronger. Both timelines came into one outcome that went on to become Devi. With the power Anorava gave her, her broken wing healed and restored. But even though Devi's body was incredibly strong, Anorava still poured more darkness into her than she could take, making her shell crack, the crack appearing instead of one of her eyes, but there was nothing but the endless emptiness behind the crack. That also erased all the memories she previously had, making her believe that there was no life for her before she saw Anorava for the first time, leading her to believe that she was her mother.

Now, stepping back just a little bit, while Devi was going through different timelines of her childhood, Anorava started executing her plan long before she found Devi. Realizing she can't fight Andariel head-on anymore, she decided to do something different. At first, she did the same as Andariel, created her son with her powers, Anoam. Unlike his mother, Anoam had a physical form, so it was possible for him to bypass the ada. But to Anorava's disappointment, met with Darinir, Anoam decided to take his side in the conflict. So that was a complete failure for Anorava.

But she didn't give up. She decided to act even more discreetly. She sent a tiny fraction of her power into the core of Afiar. It was so small that it easily bypassed ada, and eluded the attention of everyone - be it Andariel, Darinir, or Anoam. It slowly drained the world's resources, slowly growing. But its growth became much faster with human activity damaging the environment. When Andariel noticed the massive Monster of Darkness right next to him, it was too late. The Light that would usually burn Darkness was just being swallowed by the Monster, making them even stronger. Until they eventually broke out from beneath the ground.

It threw a huge piece of the earth away through the ada out into the outer space, killing all inhabitants. Over a span of hundreds of thousands years this piece would evolve to become its own world, but ada didn't protect it. Instead it became an anomaly zone, where everything and anything magical was drained completely.

As for the Monster. Andariel, Darinir and Anoam, as well as their children - twins Ula and Lana - everyone fought against the Monster of Darkness, and nothing could do any damage to them, not Light, not Darkness. It just grew way too big and powerful. No one knew what to do.

That's when Devi stepped in. She didn't defeat them. No that wasn't the point, and she couldn't even if she tried. No, the only solution there was to seal them. So that's what she did, sealing the monster inside of her own body. After that was done, she created the Spirits of Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Life, who went on to restore the damage done to Afiar. (She later would also create the Spirit of Time, and then the Spirit of Art.)

But although Devi has never done anything but good, everyone knew she was just Anorava's puppet. No matter what she did or how hard she tried to convince everyone she doesn't mean harm to anyone, as long as she stood by her mother - because she believed her mother has not done anything wrong (and of course she never believed them that the Monster she sealed within herself was created by Anorava... I mean, if that was true, why would she tell Devi how to defeat them, right?) - everyone viewed her as an enemy.

And it would turn out to go a bit too far. So far that there would be no turning back.

[chronurgy]

20 writer questions

tagged by: @lamortwrites (thank you!)

Tagging: @andrigyn, @defira85, and anyone else who's interested! I'm a little behind the curve so I don't want to tag a bunch of people who've probably already done this, but please consider yourself tagged if you're interested

How many works do you have on ao3?

Nineteen!

What’s your total ao3 word count?

65,507

What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Möbius Strips and Other Such Eternities (T, 8k, Ketheric writes letters to Isobel after her resurrection) 2. Departure from the Vulgar Crowd (M, 5k, dark urge/gortash, first meeting) 3. They Who Seek to Deceive (M, 10k, dark urge/gortash, post-coronation reunion) 4. Would You Give the Devil This Dance? (Would You be a Part of His Plans?) (T, 8k, dark urge/gortash, Wyll goes to a party and tries to square a circle) 5. The Bloody Spectacle of It (T, 3k, dark urge/gortash, a bhaalist observes his god and master)

What fandoms do you write for?

Bg3 is the only fandom I've put anything up on ao3 for so far, but I've also got a critical role campaign 2 wip and some rogue trader wips that I'm working on!

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! Eventually (oops). I always try to respond because comments mean so much to me and I want the person who left the comment to know how much I appreciate it! I'm just, uh, bad at knowing how to do that so it sometimes takes me awhile

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oh hmm, that's hard to say! A few of my fics end on darker or less happy notes, but those tend to lean closer toward horror than angst, if that makes sense. I think I'd have to say either Would You Give the Devil This Dance? (Would You be a Part of His Plans?) for just how hard Wyll is working to make things seem okay when they clearly aren't or Not Glory but Power for how the near triumphant ending for young Enver is curdled with our knowledge of where this will lead him.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Also a somewhat difficult question! Probably They Who Seek to Deceive, in the sense that the main two characters certainly seem very happy about how things have turned out!

Do you get hate on fics?

Happily, no.

Do you write smut?

I would say that I haven't yet, but on the other hand my spouse says that I absolutely do. When I pointed out that there isn't any sex in any of my fics, they just said "you know that's worse, right?" So I guess it all depends on what you consider smut lol.

Do you write crossovers?

I haven't yet, but I might give it a try someday

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of! I think my stuff is too niche to be worth stealing for clout, honestly

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, no way is anything I write on that level of popularity!

Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

I have not! I have no idea how that would even work with my slow and chaotic writing process

What's your all time favorite ship?

Really, really good question. Hard to say. I think dark urge/gortash has to be up there. Shadowgast, obviously. Probably Merlin/Arthur from the TV show too (yes I have bad taste).

What's the wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have the start of a very long Gale pov fic that's meant to cover all of acts 1 and 2, plus a tiny bit of act 3. It was going to focus on Gale and Vesper's developing relationship, on Gale slowly putting the bhaalspawn-shaped pieces together, and on moral flexibility and the relationship between wizards and power. So an exceptionally long fic already, made longer by the long-winded chatteriness of Gale's pov reinforcing my own worst tendencies, lol. It's one of those things I doubt I'll ever finish just for the sheer length of it, especially given that I'm not the fastest writer and I keep putting it aside for other projects. Maybe someday!

What are your writing strengths?

I'm a pretty decent worldbuilder I think, though that doesn't necessarily get a lot of airtime in fic. I'm solid with character voice and internal monologue as well.

What are you writing weaknesses?

I get lost in the sauce really easily and end up writing more than is really necessary or helpful to tell the story I'm trying to tell. I'm tend towards overexplaning things and not trusting people to pick up in what I'm trying to say (I'm working on it!)

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

If it's done to serve a purpose in the story, why not? Especially when you're pulling from a source material that does a lot of it to begin with.

First fandom you wrote for?

Almost certainly warrior cats

Favorite fic you've ever written?

It's tough and a very close competition, but in the end I think I have to go with They Who Seek to Deceive. The sheer amount of planning and double meaning I put into everything the characters say and don't say is what makes it for me, I think.

[gnashingwailing]

Kept notes on a reread I was doing of The Art of Love and War because I am so obsessed with the gay little borrower darkfic... sharing with u @fireflywritesgt

it falls apart at ch12 because that is where i consistently turn into a puddle under my covers kicking my legs and making sounds only audible to shrimps.

I HOPE THIS IS A SMALL TOKEN OF APPRECIATION FOR HOW GUD THIS FIC IS, SINCERELY... LIKE I SAID PUTTING THIS IN SOMEBODY'S INBOX IS PROBABLY A WAR CRIME. SO.

There is soooo muuuuch I want to saaaay. I did a reread and excuse my being verbose but.

Ch10 where Harry reads about how tinies don’t ask for things and prefer to do favors for them — how extra insulting that makes his message in Ch1!! “Just ask” no wonder Joe was so pissed!!

ALSO him feeling “dirty, somehow” about accepting chocolate that didn’t kill him… was he having a little bit of feelings for “the kind man” and it got transmuted into self-loathing… 😭 oh internalized homophobia tag we’re really in it now…

Re: ch2 I would kill for Joe’s pov of this… I’m also so fascinated to pick up the detail that Joe apparently talked to himself regularly, for Harry to hear him through the radiator pipes… one assumes Joe doesn’t have guests. Poor guy! He’s really smart! He likes talking! The assistant job is perfect for himmmm.

Re: ch3, i wonder how much Captain Calloway’s “if you die it’s your own damn fault” has influenced Joe’s life ethos of fucking around and finding out (btw�� Harry would be sooo horrified to know Joe had been poisoned 3 times and still tried that chocolate 😭 yet another fun! anecdote of his) … im also kinda curious about Gutters. What’s that guy’s deal. And OF. COURSE. How Captain got all his injuries. It’s also so very sad he feels this tension with the guys, what they’d do to him if they knew more about who he really was. I love this as a metaphor for homophobia…

Ch5 I’m still fixated on the giants who are guarding the place. Hundreds of tinies going there every day… you’d think there’d be snatchers all over the place 👀 and the other great worldbuilding… lab tinies… “they were corralling everyone everywhere and the women and kids went one way…” GOD. also them building tiny capitalism plus tiny race science is just 😭😭😭 noooo… the way Harry reinforces their shared dignity and humanity by showing genuine interest in Joe’s art.. ouuuugh it hits every time.

ALSO I WAS SO SUSPICIOUS OF HILL WHEN I FIRST READ CH6 BUT NOW THST I KNOW HE IS A BONA FIDE WIFEGUY ALL IS REDEEMED. I AM so curious as to why he keeps tiny town schematics in his office if he dislikes it…

Ch7 profoundly funny to me how Hill is like “miniature is the academic term” and Joe is like what. Tinies.

I really appreciate how Harry started off having some uh. Idk. Colonizer savior complex stuff + noble savage ideas about Joe? Like “oh it’s in mother nature’s hands whether he survives then… I see…” as if the tinies social constructs about Pets are some immutable fact of nature instead of. A social construct !! It’s really well-done, how you show him gradually understanding that he needs to listen to Joe, not assume he knows what’s best for him just because he read a 50yr old anthropology book!! It makes me love Harry all the more that he managed to grow through it out of fondness for Joe 🥺

AND OF COURSE. THE G/T GOODNESS. My god. I loooooove that Joe is so creeped out by giants that he has to keep his eyes closed to stomach it… just feels. Hmm. Realistic?? It would be so overwhelming. I love that his trust gets rewarded with the doctor not hurting him…

The rapport they establish being based on talking to one another… it’s just suuuuch a perfect central theme for this story… Joe being able to tame Harry’s anger by reminding him of Joe’s own humanity. “Please don’t do that, doc. This is mean. You’re being mean.” And “you’re treating me like I’m not even… not even…” UGH. RENT FREE IN MY HEAD, WARREN. “Maybe he could do it; maybe he could sit in the same room as a giant for five minutes. He would only have to do it once, and then he would never have to do it again, he reasoned.” Bitch u thought… get loved and cared for idiot…

Joe asking him “why not”, echoing Harry’s words that stuck with him…

And then him being sooo pissed at the phone it’s just absolutely amazing stuff. Wagging his finger at it/Dr Hill lmaooo. I was hootin and hollerin when I realized this foreshadows him being the assistant!!! He can talk on the phone just fine!!!!

His legs threatening to give way from the prospect of Harry seeing him at ground level after he escapes using the phone receiver… ouuugh. It’s SO GOOD. He’s come such a long way…

“Touching every wooden beam he passed for good luck” is INCREDIBLY cute mental imagery.., he’s happy… poor guy has awful luck tho so Harry is just pissed 😭 HIM NEARLY DESTROYING THE PLATES BECSUSE HARRY SCARED HIM SO BAD HAD ME FEELING.. SOME KIND OF WAY…

Ch8 also has the first mention of Joe’s books… I’m sooo curious where he got these.. did he perhaps make them…? 👀 YEAH HARRY SHOULD FEEL LIKE A MONSTER THO. YOU TERRORIZED A LIL MOVIE STAR!!! HE ONLY BROKE A FEW THINGS… Making him hide under his covers like he saw a monster… 😭

I love their first god awful handshake lmao. Incredible subversion of the usual g/t first meetings… Joe’s just like OK 👋 NOW GET THAT THANG OUTTA HERE

And then Joe going “I know about that!” Joe protested, his voice growing stronger. “It’s up to me, doc. If it happens, it happens and it’ll be my own damn fault.” … something tells me when Harry finally comes to understand Joe’s recklessness with his own life and what feelings about its worth may be underpinning that, he will be so sad 😔

Joe losing his toes to frostbite… realizing that could very likely be from when he was kidnapped and enslaved with O’Grady… uuuugh he’s so brave to want to connect with anybody at all let alone with Harry!!

Ch9 professor wifeguy moments… yesss… I love that he wants to hang out with another tiny too 😭 Joe is making friends!! I can’t wait to find out about Lorraine and what “other place” she knows about!!! Lmfao I can tell she’s going to be incredible just from the little bit Joe hears of her. I wonder too if she’s been marked… aahhh I’m so excited to learn more about these two. How interesting of a parallel, too, that Harry noted Dr Hill might also be a former soldier… something-something folks unable to fully integrate into society finding and building community with each other…

Also PROFOUNDLY interested to note on a reread that the tiny town on his wall says “a SAFE place to be” and the one in Riverdale said “a CIVILIZED place to be” 😬 a damn prison indeed… I also really wonder just HOW the tinies are paying their rent(?) to stay there, if they’re all as disdainful of “borrowing” as a career as O’Grady seems to be…

MAY I JUST NOTE that Joe stimming around is sooo charming to me. He’s kickin’ his legs. He’s pacing back and forth. He’s doing something like that in the walls when Harry was first listening to him. I LOVE HIM.. aND I love how this chapter we see him going from “that tall bastard (derogatory)” to “that tall bastard (amused)”

AND POOR JOE ON THE MOST CURSED FIELD TRIP IMAGINABLE. There is much to love here but I absolutely adore this imagery: “Joe buried himself in the curtain as the doctor, dressed to the nines in his work clothes and vaguely resembling a horse in a brown suit, sidled over to him and towered there and seethed.” HE’S TERRIFIED 😭 and Joe learns that other people value his wellbeing more than he does… wow Joe no need to ponder that any further until Ch15!!!

There’s SO much incredible prose in this chapter… the haaaaands oh my god the hands. The tinies are on the order of 2-3 inches tall, right? You really get a vivid sense of how big and dangerous everything is to them… absolutely A+ stuff.

This part also slays me everytime I think about it: “Joe was hidden inside [the pocket], and the thought of how unhinged his dear neighbour must look to his fellow giants as he walked and talked gave him no small amount of delight.” HE WOUUUULD.

The mystery of just what Joe created as a boy… what he can’t find it in himself to articulate… why he can hardly fathom talking about himself and his inner world to anyone …

PART 10… the difference in the way Joe confronts Harry here vs with the assistant in part 16 is somehow heartbreaking to me. I think the anger must just be displacement for how he’s really feeling (worried, uncomfortable…) and he’s more able to show his feelings to Harry with the assistants than he is now… but Joeeeee. I don’t ever want him to feel hopeless with Harry, like he just has to accept whatever he wants 😭 I love him in this chapter… Arms crossed, eyes narrowed… red faced… clawing at the air as he ranted Jdhdhdj GOD HE’S SO ICONIC: ““Nope. Not gonna happen! Veto!” Joe leapt up from the box, strode all the way to the edge of the table, and jabbed a finger at him. “I don’t know what kind of sick, twisted doctor things you intend to do to people but whatever it is, it’s not happening in my house!”” I guess I want him to still be comfortable with yelling veto at Harry lmao!!

And then Joe being like WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOU SAVING ME THE OTHER DAY. THAT MEANS NOTHING TO ME, A WILD AND INDEPENDENT TINY WHO HAD IT ALL UNDER CONTROL, AT ALL.

ALSO: the way he words this, I have a strong suspicion he does not know the word “patients”?! “”Let’s make a deal in exchange for patients. Give me something in exchange for patients.” Joe stammered. “You do that and I won’t make any trouble.””

Harry thinking of Joe as “the little bastard” in counterpoint to Joe’s “the tall bastard” really makes me smile too, hahahah.

AND THE FURTHER G/T TROPE INVERSION… just because he was willing to get in the giant’s hands one time doesn’t mean he’s suddenly fine with it!! I love how pissed they are at each other over this misunderstanding lmfao. He’s 👏 a 👏 wild 👏 tiny 👏 ‼️

And it’s so meaningful to me that the two of them bond more over sharing art with one another… Harry wants to introduce Joe to an amazing piano player… and Joe is so happy!!! The idea for a Charlie Chaplin bit with a rich miniature woman is SO inspired btw, I was as delighted as Joe was 😭 Harry being like “oh shit wait is this offensive” and then Joe just being like “THIS FUCKS SO HARD LMAO IT REALLY DO BE LIKE THAT”

And then the tragic aftermath… Harry NOTICING that he didn’t even know that he was doing anything wrong by bringing Joe there, it just FELT so dreadfully taboo (enough that Hill, who is MARRIED TO A TINY, also seems like he’s been caught doing something wrong when Harry first meets him)…. and then of course society reinforces that fear in a terrible way. Only a shared humanity regarding love of art saves poor Joe.. how lucky he’s gotten enough exposure to be able to speak in the presence of giants. You have to ponder how many tinies just as wonderfully complex as him have died for not having that skill. It’s so very sad!!! THE IMAGERY OF HIM ON THE LAMP LIKE IT’S A STREETCORNER JUST TWISTED THE KNIFE. Your writing really is so excellent, the way you can carry us through so many different emotions… Joe my belovedddd. I’m simply obsessed with the implications of him NAMING HARRY. WHAT IS /THAT/?? And the way that the narration in the story from this point on swaps to using Harry as his name… it speaks VOLUMES without you needing to elaborate on it at all. Joe has changed him! He’s becoming someone he likes better than Herman! A day we had good luck… Harry is good luck… Luck as a concept very different from what giants think of… I am absolutely enamored with how clearly he has a whole other world, another culture, that Harry can only guess at and be grateful to be included in.

JOE GETTING A NICE BATH AND A COMFORTABLE BED IN THIS CHAPTER IS JUST SO WHOLESOME (even if it will torment his Calvinist sensibilities later…) I am also so charmed to imagine how Joe must have woken up and been like “what the FUCK did I do last night. Where the HELL am I 🤨”

And then in Ch11 he’s like I WILL PROCEED NOT TO THINK OF THAT AT ALL. <- clueless

Ch11 is one of my favorites I think… we really get a good glimpse into how much heavy-duty rationalizing Joe is doing LMAO. “Taking food is fine, because I’m just using this tall bastard.” “It’s fine if I have leisure time.” “It’s fine if I like Harry and his company and I miss him when he’s gone and I want to give him a name.” “AS LONG AS I DON’T GET COMFORTABLE ALL OF THIS IS FINE.” This line is such a banger lol: “Joe Piccoli was many things as he went to sleep that night, but he was not a pet, and he was not comfortable.” And then the mouse!!! That Joe decides to draw rather than kill!!! Look at his needs being met!!!!!

IT ALSO ABSOLUTELY FUCKIN KILLED ME WHEN I REALIZED IN THIS CHAPTER THAT THE BOYS HAVE JUST. FULLY LEFT THAT FLOORBOARD OFF LMFAO??? THAT’S HIS SKYLIGHT NOW…

And then. Good god. The arm scene… it’s just. Soooo. 👌👌👌👌 I’m so … 😵‍💫💖❤️‍🔥…

“I’m a wild tiny!” “You’re going to be a dead tiny if that gets infected.” Their dynamic is so fucking funny. AND THE TENDERNESS OF HARRY TOUCHING JOE… Joe being so overwhelmed not exactly with fear but HMMM I WONDER WHAT EMOTION AND WHY HE MIGHT FEEL SO OVERWHELMED HE STILL NEEDS TO CLOSE HIS EYES AND PRETEND HE’S HIDDEN UNDER THE FLOOR AGAIN… 🤔🤔🤔 whyever would the touch of this kind giant make his hair stand on end and make him contemplate the reverence he’s being touched with and leave his cheeks burning… it is a mystery

And then Joe being so afraid the mouse would be hurt because in contrast to the kindness he’s been shown, he still has this long history of awful experiences with giants.. this part in particular made my heart hurt:

“Don’t kill the mouse, Harry, please don’t kill it. It’s just like me. It hasn’t done anything to you.” Joe begged.

Followed by him remembering that this is /Harry, his friend, who he knows/:

“The words hit Joe like the breaking of a spell, and he stood in the kitchen windowsill feeling downright foolish. Of course Harry wouldn’t kill the mouse, Joe realized - of course he wouldn’t do that.”

OUGH. This story is SO delicious I’m beyond obsessed…

The two of them having a much less Charged encounter after Joe has resolved some of his internal conflicts, at least for the moment… chatting away like they’re two normal friends while Harry touches him… 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 I LOVE THESE TWO SO MUCH‼️

Their motorcycle shenanigans… Harry showing Joe his precious Contraption and Joe absolutely hating it omg it was so peak 😭 PLAYING “WHO’S-MORE-BORING CHICKEN”… the way Joe is like “I would rather Die than have to listen to this guy talk about how he’s more exciting than me. Absolutely not.”

I also very much appreciate the foreshadowing of the street car on this re-read…

AND may I say I really love that they went on a little nature trip together!!! I have thought often of the potential of a g/t story set outdoors, where the normal sized person and the tiny are both made small by how all-encompassing the wilderness is. Something to do with camping or backpacking! Maybe something I want to write one day! This gave me a delightful taste of that.

AND ANYWAY THE ACCEPTING OF COMFORT EVEN AS IT FLIES IN THE FACE OF EVERYTHING HE’S BEEN TAUGHT TO ROMANTICIZE AND VALUE… ouuuughhh GET LOVED IDIOT!! GET SEEN AND KNOWN AND TAKEN CARE OF!!!

And then ch12… Harry’s realization that Joe won’t ever bring up anything if it’s just for his own benefit. Which by the way, on a re-read I can appreciate how cleverly you’ve set this up, if I didn’t write that clearly enough before! There’s something cultural there but also, I think, something uniquely Joe that Harry maybe can’t fully see yet. Harry’s watch from his parents breaking down at the same moment he’s trying to change his relationship with Joe, the new most important person in his life (at least I presume! He doesn’t seem to have other close friends/family) … very very good. This sentence is so evocative. Simultaneously funny and sad: “With the way Joe’s eyes shifted from side to side one would think the doctor had suggested they go rob a bank.” It’s very good angst realizing how much Harry is asking of Joe without him even knowing it…

BTW this part is so delightful. They’re so interested in each other!!! “When his footsteps announced his arrival, he could see the tiny’s movements through the missing floorboards as his neighbour crossed the floor and climbed back up to the windowsill above the counter.” <- guy who absolutely has NOT been gotten

“Joe smiling. A rare sight indeed.” JUST…. My heaaaart ‼️‼️

Also hilarious how Joe and now Harry have both had “mmm I do NOT like the way this guy is smiling right now” moments 🤣

GOD tho, Joe’s opening up about getting snatched… much like Harry, it made me feel absolutely beside myself.

^^^ AS YOU CAN SEE. I'VE FULLY FALLEN APART.

[commander-shad]

Unprompted rambling on my HK experience and how it changed overtime because this is deranged ramblings website and I'm taking advantage of that

(Spoilers for Hollow Knight ahead, for those who haven't played it (also a tiny bit of Tunic as well but very briefly))

Hollow Knight, the game I (somewhat) hated playing but I loved getting into

To start with, I gotta go into my beef with souls like games first. So uh, I HATE souls like games. I have tried getting into Elden Ring multiple times, I had to turn on the invincibility setting while playing Tunic to actually enjoy playing the game because I liked the lore and exploration, and well, the same thing went for Hollow Knight really.

I'm just the kind of person who isn't good at recognizing enemy attack patterns, I'm bad at remembering my own combos and just basically swing at my enemy until they die and overall, I'm not really playing games to overcome challenges, but to relax, and dying like a dozen times to a boss trying to figure out how to beat them isn't the ideal way to spend my time.

So given these, I should have just accepted that Hollow Knight is a game that's just not for me and just move on... Buuuuuut I'm stubborn, so I decided to go for it anyway.

The first time I played the game I think I just gave up a bit before the first fight with Hornet for aforementioned reasons, I was just not having fun with this.

A few years later, I give it another go after seeing my friends talk about it, but this time, I have the power of mods on my side, and manage to make my experience with the game a lot less aggravating. Basically I used an easy difficulty mod which does stuff like dealing slightly more damage, no shade spawns and no geo is lost upon death, so that really helped. I just feel bad I had to install a mod to even be able to get into the game but moving on.

This time, I did a lot better and made it further than the first Hornet fight and on to the next area of the game. That's where I hit my next frustration block: the traversal. Tbh, even now that I've gotten better, I still find traversal a tiny bit janky, as small adjustments can be hard to make, and the somewhat restrictive camera [for example, if I could move the camera not just up and down (which is very useful, it's a good feature) but also right or left so I could have a better idea of where to move next would be nice], plus the sometimes delayed response to actually swinging my nail, made moving around the world very annoying. Either the game fucked over my attempts at pogo-ing around obstacles, or the attack button didn't respond in time to hit an enemy and I got hit instead, those were just fhdjsnw (tho this could be a problem with my controller, I'm not very sure).

Another issue I had is how long it took to obtain basic movement features that other games basically have as default, like the good ol double jump or wall climbing. Like, discovering the world bit by bit is the point, yes, but the fact that it took that long to unlock a shortcut in the City of Tears so I didn't have to fast travel in via stag is something I found unnecessarily contrived. It was only when I found all traversal tools, which was like 3/4 in the game, is when travelling around actually became fun and started growing on me even, but I just don't like that it had to take this long to reach this point. Traversal did eventually become fun, but it didn't feel all that satisfying to finally achieve that.

I gotta say that if not for other stuff like the music, characters, worldbuilding, how pretty the game looks in general, I would have enjoyed the game far less, all those really (almost entirely) made the experience worth it.

For the music, the City of Tears, Resting Grounds, Dream Battle and Sealed Vessel themes are up there as my favorites, the composer did a crazy good job with the soundtrack.

The characters are certainly pretty charming all in their own ways, even with their limited lines of dialogue which is good writing. Like, I did feel bad for Myla's fate, which is kind of a feat for the writing as I typically don't feel bad when a character I knew for less than half an hour dies.

The worldbuilding is the part that while left vague oftentimes (like, uh tbh I don't think I would have managed to figure out the whole Radiance thing on my own fhensn) is still something I did like, the theory making on the origin of the main character was fun to speculate on. I just wish there was even more to discover (that does not require wiki browsing lol), that's all.

Did I mention the game just looks really pretty? Blue Lake, Crystal Peak, Spirit Glade are my favorite locations in the game.

Tho, a small nitpick, I think some areas look a bit same-y. Maybe it's the color palette and the backgrounds (which are very well drawn, don't get me wrong here, the art in this game is so good) just don't really try to look so different from each other. Perhaps this is intentional, as well, the whole game takes place in a big cave, and places like Forgotten Crossroads are supposed to get the average first time player a bit confused, get them a bit turned around before they find their way again. But still, some areas could afford to be a bit more distinct, for example Greenpath and Queen's Gardens are a bit too similar looking.

Moving on, stuff that I did like in no particular order:

•Some of the dream fights, like Gorb and Marmu, those were a lot of fun

•Nosk's whole thing, while I should have expected a boss fight in hindsight, seeing that weird clone far into Deepnest while lost and panicking sure was an Experience™

•The Abyss and the Birthplace sequence, just The Lore™ in general

•Grey Prince Zote, which sure was something™

•The Dream World, wish there was more of it

•Big fan of the Hornet fights, she's such a good opponent, very fun to fight

•Subverted expectations with the Dreamers, I was expecting them to be boss fights tbh

Things I didn't like (more affectionately than my actual criticisms) in no particular order

•Failed Champion and Lost Kin are little crabs

•Trial of the Fool walls section

•Primal Aspids my beloathed

•Those creatures in Royal Waterways, could those things just stay dead fjendnsn

•Deepnest as a whole (Gray Mourner voice: Whyyyyyyy)

•Those dang jellyfish in Fog Canyon

•*crying in White Palace platforming*

Once again moving on, and to the side activities of the game. Ngl, I think they too suffer from the same thing as many other games do, "why is the main character even bothering with these again", not that they aren't interesting, it's just that our Knight has no actual reason to engage in the various activities such as the delicate flower quest and the summoning of the Grimm Troupe.

Speaking of that one DLC (which btw I uh, kinda banished them not knowing it would just fuck over my save), it just wasn't really for me. I can see their appeal tho. Also, forgive me for this but Grimm looks like he came out of Hazbin Hotel or smth and I don't even watch that chrnsnwn

Didn't do the Godhome expansion for boss reasons, I'm just not good at those lol so I can't really speak of that (I do know what happens tho, I got a summary)

So, that leaves us with the ending of the game. I went into it low-key knowing what would happen, the source of spoilers was just me kind of seeing my brother's own playthrough as I was passing by, even though they were out of context spoilers, by that point I managed to piece what was going to happen together. Nothing about the whole thing particularly surprised me, as well, I kinda knew how it would go.

I first got the "classic" ending, then worked to get the other two, "Sealed Siblings" and then "Dream No More". Again, not much to say about those, since I kinda knew how they all end.

I like the classic ending because I'm a sucker for the "defeating the Sealed Away Being Of Doom™ and taking their place" trope (I was just kinda looking like that one Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme because of my experience with Tunic dhndns). I low-key like the "Sealed Siblings" ending for the Angst Potential, like yes, put them in the Torment Nexus. Not much to say about "Dream No More", just kind of a standard bittersweet ending, it was great in its own right, the true final boss was really cool.

So uh, all in all, Hollow Knight is an interesting game to me, I have a tiny bit of a love-hate relationship with it, but I've come to mostly loving it at this point, while still holding onto my criticisms of it.

When Silksong comes out, I will be playing it, but will probably be waiting for an easy difficulty mod for it as well.

That was it, thanks for coming to my TED-Talk :3

[jjcocker]

Little bit of worldbuilding (tiny ghosts + the afterlife. also involves jj to a degree but its not actually related to her)

They were already a band before dying. In fact they. actually died on the same day! Were going on tour in a plane. abd it crashed (im basing that off of a real life band from where i live PORQUEEE MAMONASSS </3) ..

on RH, the sneaky spirits house is kind of a purgatory-- You Cannot escape it unless

a. You're small

b. The entity that holds the arrow (in 4th wall terms, the player) is kinda shit at its job

c. Both

the tiny ghsosts case was A. they. were uhh. Tiny.

they already used a lot of ghost motifs on their bands and i mean even thr stage and band names were the same. ecto booboo and uh the spooky one? I think spooky is his name yeah.

The reasin why I said that involved jj to a degree is bc she has a dog. She reeeeally liked the tiny ghosts before they died (and for a while, didn't know they turned into ghosts!) so after their death she felt. Bad. and named the pupydog booboo cuz he was her favorite member !!

[themagicmusicman]

quick context: character im doing is shå; she is the girlfriend of angu, one of the main characters in neim’s worldbuilding project, kunirn. shå uses she/her, angu uses she/ her, kik (angu’s close friend/basically brother at this point lmao) uses he/xey 👍

1. i reckon she’s usually too busy beating people up to have other hobbies but like. does cooking count as crafting? she crafts. food lmao

2. this bitch might be trans but she wears the manliest man cologne lmfao like. whatever the kunirn equivalent of something tobacco, sandalwood and orange would smell like. man shite /fem

3. fuck yeah!!! that’s basically the main thing she does besides being gay and fighting people

4. mmmm not really, unless her and angu are baking together for the sillies (kik sometimes joins in too)

5. yeah!! she has the Ǎtrothang mark on her right shoulder (shown at the bottom of the post) as well as loads of others hjehekr

6. probably kik (angu’s friend n basically non blood brother) bcs xey seem like they would work the best under pressure and know first aid. all that shit yknow [update. neim told me that kik is canonically good at patching people up so i was right!]

7. bitch isnt scared of anything except her parents, and thats fairly normal i think. guys thats normal. right. ri-

8. yeah she probably has the weirdest collections of shit. stuff like bones, eyeballs, that kinda thing

9. she usually tries to just wait it out and continue whatever she’s doing, but when it gets so bad she can’t, she just leeches to angu until it goes away

10. not standing up to her parents’ bullshit :[

11. ehhhh probably not anything. canon but she seems like the kind of person who would

12. oh yeah shå has amazing style /gen this bitch dresses like the most butch lesbian. also she’s just hot lmao (evidence at tje bottom)

13. not in the slightest lmao

14. absolutely. it took her close to a year to open up to angu about her parent bs so. yeah just a bit

15. she’s just a silly lil guy. the sillies! silly and tiny and definitely doesnt have a really dark/horny sense of humour!

16. nope and nope :D

17. basically never. she stands by what she believes at doesnt bend for anyone

18. easier to become her enemy than her friend :3

19. you have to be pretty awesome she has trust issues lmao

20. meh not really seeing as her life in Ǎtrothang was. pretty traumatising

21. friends. friends for sure

22. never

23. n/a shes immortal /j (in other words doesnt think about dying ever)

24. most people are her enemies :3👍

25. uh morning routine, wake up and get on with the day. evening routine, go to bed and toss n turn until she eventually falls asleep

26. she’s her own hero (aka has no heroes (except maybe kik or angu but thats just her being gay lmao))

27. i mean. her meeting angu was pretty much a chance encounter and that changed her life drastically so!

28. # idontthinkgamingexistslmao

29. i’d want to be but she would scare me 😔

30. she doesn’t want to be famous. the less people who know her, the better

31. i would probably give her some sort of silly telepathic powers, she’d want invisibility

32. being afab (she doesnt mind the dick but she occasionally gets dysphoria thinking that she’s a Fake Woman because she has not biological booba (she is the most womanly woman i know))

33. oh yeah. i think angu, shå and kik would play silly ttrpgs the same way i play dnd with neim and my irl mates

34. terribly. she hides it well, but inside she’s struggling :[[[

35. in charge of her own destiny. fuck the dead gods she’s deciding her fate

36. yes and uh. for legal reasons no /hj

37. she doesn’t really like the gods, n chooses to just kinda. do her own thing lmao (same as angu but less Loud About It /lh)

38. she doesn’t dream (me core)

39. definitely!!! that sounds fun as shit!

40. she would be able to pull it out first try because shes a big strong jerboa. speaking of pulling ou-

41. she hates making mistakes so doesn’t learn from them as much as. promise herself not to make the same mistake again

42. yeh! she speaks mainly speaks rurleki (surprisingly. the language of rurlek) but also speaks atro from living in atrothang

43. fairly well, except mentally. afterwards she’ll freak out but she’s usually fine in the moment

44. only angu, not even kik i dont think

45. wing it gdejdbksbdkf

46. for sure, she probably lies quite a lot lmao

47. she would for quite a few people, ofc including angu and kik

48. in a heartbeat. revenge quest time babyyy!

49. nah she knows the difference. big difference (this is a threat 👍)

50. shes a trans lesbian jerboa!!!!! what is there to not love!!!!!!!!!

@neim-batteries-not-included haiiiiii :3

You've Got Questions and I've Got Answers OC Edition

Do they have any crafting hobbies?

Do they wear perfume/cologne? If so what scents do they prefer?

Do they enjoy cooking?

Do they enjoy baking?

Do they have any tattoos? If so what are they and do they have any special meaning?

If they were badly injured, and for whatever reason couldn't go to a hospital, who would they go to for help?

Do they have any unusual fears?

Do they collect anything? If so what and why?

When they're sick what do they do to feel better?

Do they have any regrets?

Do they have any addictions?

Do they have any sense of style? Regardless of the answer do they believe they have a sense of style?

Do they enjoy poetry?

Do they have a hard time opening up to people?

What kind of sense of humor do they have? Or do they have one at all?

Do they have or want kids?

How easily would they be convinced to do something that goes against their morals?

How easy is it to become their enemy?

How easy is it to become their friend?

Do they have a strong connection to their culture?

What is more important to them, friends or family?

Would they ever betray someone for money?

How would they want to die?

Do they have any enemies?

Do they have a daily/nightly routine?

Have they met any of their heroes? Did they regret it?

Has a chance encounter ever had an unexpected effect on them?

Are they a #gamer?

If they were real would you be friends with them?

If they had the chance to be famous would they take it? If they are famous would they rather they weren't?

What superpower would you choose for them and what would they choose for themselves? If they have one would they choose something else?

If they could change one thing about themselves what would it be?

Do they play ttrpgs? If so what kind of characters do they play? Or are they more likely to GM?

How well do they deal with grief?

Do they believe in fate or do they believe they are in charge of their own destiny?

Would they ever kill someone? Have they already?

Are they religious? If so do they have a strong sense of faith, are they uncertain, or are they somewhere in between?

What are their dreams like? Do they have any recurring dreams/nightmares?

Would they ever crash a wedding?

If they found a sword in a stone would they try to pull it out? How would they react to being able to pull it out or not?

Do they learn from their mistakes?

Can they speak multiple languages? If yes which all do they speak and why?

Can they handle stressful situations?

Who, if anyone, would they trust with their deepest secrets?

Do they plan in advance or just wing it?

Would they lie to get out of trouble?

Would they lie to get someone else out of trouble? Even if they would have to take that someone else's place?

How likely are they to go on a quest for revenge?

Do they have trouble keeping their enemies and their friends straight?

What is your favorite thing about them?

I love these so I figured I'd make one of my own! Just be sure that if you reblog this ask one or two of these to the person you reblogged from (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

[blueberry-mufffinz]

ROBLOX OCS

Okay Actually Wait Before I COntinue Okay So I Like. For One Dont Think Too Hard About The World Around Them Bc I Know Its Roblox But Also Me N My Friend Just Made Shit Up On The Spot Second I Really Like These Guys But Idk If Theyre Like. Cringe Or Whatever So Uh. If They Are Block Me Or Smthn I Guess Sorry Man Anyways This Bouta Be A Long Ass Post So Literally Everything Undercut

GITE

Okay So. Gite, Along With Their Counterpart Who I'll Take About Later, Originally Was Just. An Outfit I Made Using A Bunch Of Items I Had On Hand. Then My Friend Had Me Turn Them Into An OC Which Is Actually What Started This Entire Thing And Goodness Gracious Do I Have A Lot Of Little Guys Now>

Notes

Maasssivee Fucking Yapper. Does Not Stop Yapping Worlds Biggest Yapper

Theyre Very Headstrong And Also A Littleee Tiny Bit Obnoxious Man Oh Man I Sure Do Wonder Why(Yapper)

Gite Plays Whatever (Roblox)Games Reck Plays, Originally Played Obbies

Poor Understanding Of Personal Space, Also Thinks Reck Should Be More Friendly And Talk To People

Uses Sarcasm Somewhat Often But It Always Sounds Friendly Or Passive Aggressive

Cannot Fly With Their Wings

This Guy Dont Rlly Got Much Lore So I Wont Like Make A Dedicated Lore Second For Him But, Okay This Is Where The Like Worldbuilding Gets Confusing But Bare With Me Here Okay, Gite And Reck Are Counterparts Because They Were Like. Spawned(??) At The Same Time In Cribs Next To Each Other. As Those Little. Pill Baby Things Life In Paradise Style Yeah

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

RECK

Same Thing With Gite Reck Was Originally An Outfit Then Turned Into An OC I Honestly Dont Rlly Like His Wings But Aint No Way Im Buying New Ones When I. Actually Buy The Outfit Because Genuinely I Only Own Gite's Outfit Out Of All These OCs

Notes

Far More Introverted(???) Than Gite, Doesnt Yap Nearly As Much More Of A Listener

Pretty Calm And Chill Guy Honestly, Just Vibin'

Listens To Music Literally Whenever Possible, I Would Say 24/7 But Not 24/7 Because Gite Exists

Plays A Lot Of Tycoons Usually, But Also Sometimes Jumps Around To Try And Avoid Gite(Gite Keeps Finding Them)

Also I Think Reck Has That Retail Worker Tiredness Like In General I Think Reck Works Retail

Thinks Gite Needs To Back The Fuck Off And Learn Some Personal Space

Very Firm With Their Boundries. If Theyre Unhappy Or Uncomfortable With The Things Youre Doing Theyll Let You Know.

CAN Fly With Their Wings

Gite&Reck Notes

There's Some Notes That Apply To Both Of Them So Like-

Gite And Reck Like. Dont Like Each Other. They Dont Hate Each Other But They Sure As Hell Dont Like Each Other

Theyve Never Said They Hated Each Other But Sometimes They Call Each Other Annoying

I Think Maybe Perhaps I Havent Decided Honestly That They Become Lovers At. Some Point I Dont Know When

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

DRAGON LOSER/FLORAL

Okay YEAH I Know Her Name Is A Little Mean But Like. For Context Some Of These Guys Get Names Based On Experience And Like. Itll Make Sense Soon I Swear

Notes

Plays A TON Of Dragon Games, Primarily Dragons Life And Dragon Adventures

Floral Is More Like Their "Roleplay" Name So Technically Her Name Is Really Just Dragon Loser, DL For Short Btw, But Dont Worry About It

They Have A Minor Liking For Fishes, But Its Mostly Dragons(But If Something Is Like- A Fantasy Sea Dragon She Goes CRAZY Over That Stuff)

She Incredibly Friendly And Will Just Walk Up To People And Start Talking Which is Probably Why She Thrives In RP Games So Much

Her Name Doesnt Effect Her In The Slightest

Can In Fact See Despite Their Eyes Not Being Visible

The Paint Is Actually Because Their Head Is Constantly Spewing Paint And Its Actually The Reason They Have A Hat On But Yeah Wiping It Away Wont Help With Anything

Chains Are Purely Aesthetic

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

SOUL WANDER

This Guy I Made Like Purely As A Rival Of Some Form For My Friend's OC, Who Ill Be Calling F Because Yeah Also Im Shortening SOUL WANDER(yes its capitalized like that every time)'s Name To SW Because There Is No Way Im Typing That Every Single Time

Notes

Mysterious Guy, Fairly Quiet And Speaks In Vague Terms. Sometimes Riddles If He Feels Like It

Also He's A Little Smug

Ghostwalker(yes the SFOTH sword) Fanboy If You Couldnt Tell By The Shirt

Fucking HATES F, Like Knife Through A Picture Of Him On A Wall Type Of Hate. Does Not Like That Guy In The Slightest

Drops The Whole Vague Thing When Talking To F For Reasons I Genuinely Have Not Figured Out

Lives Alone And Also Doesnt Friends

And He's Also Poor Barely Paying For His Apartment And Food(I Dont Even Know How He's Making Money Honestly)

Like Genuinely Sleeps In A Corner With A Single Blanket Like I Feel Kinda Bad And He's My OC

Literally He Doesnt Even Care Either We Love Poor Self Preservation/j

Practically Half-Blind Pretty Much Also Taking Off Those Bandages WILL Flashbang Him He's Had Them On For So Long

The Face Shadow Thing Is Some He Can Do Entirely At Will

Used To Own A Cat

Ngl I Forgot To Write This But He Plays SFOTH Primarily And. Yeah Thats It Honestly

Lore

Look At That First Guy To Have Actual Thought Out Lore Lets Go Wahoo When SW Was Younger He'd Participate In Like Illegal Fighting Rings Or Whatever To Make Money. Nobody Is Supposed To Die But He Accidentally Kill A Person(Who Is An OC Ill Talk About Later) Once Near When He Started Because He Went To Into A Blind Panic And Punched Them To Death. Uh. Somebody(Also An OC Ill Talk ABout Later) Close To This Person Took Revenge Against SW And Brought A Knife Into The Fight In A Attempt To Blind SW, It??? Half-Worked Because The Sight In His Covered Eye Is Really Blurry(Eye Wasnt Punctured Fully But Got Damaged). This Situation Is Also Indirectly The Cause Of The Whole Vague Thing He Does, Because The Person Who Almost Blinded Him Is Tracking Him Down And Trying To Get Information On Him And SW KNOWS That So He Speaks Very Vague Because He's Paranoid As Fuck. ALSO! He Used To Own A White Cat He Named Spirit But F Stole Spirit When He Was Drunk And Then Kept Her So Now SW Thinks Spirit Is Dead But Actually F Has Her And Renamed Her Sparkle. SW Feels Really Bad For Failing To Care For Spirit, Used To Sacrifice Eating To Feed Her. Anyways Somewhere At Some Point In The Future SW Finally Gets Tracked Down, Cause Its Guarenteed To Happen At Some Point, And Gets Like Entirely Blinded I Drew Art Of Him Actually Ill Put All The Art Of These Guys At The End I Swear Anyways Yeah Gets Fully Blinded And Also One Of His Head Wings Gets Chopped To A Nub Also He Cant Do Whatever The Hell He Was Doing To Make Money Anymore So He's Homeless Again(Forgot To Mention He Was Homeless When Younger) But Its. Significantly More Difficult Now That He's Blind. And Also The Paranoia Is Still There Because He Literally Cant See And Also He Goes Entirely Silent Stops Speaking Completely GOODNESS I YAPPED SORRY!!!

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

CAUTION: HAZARD

This Is The Guy Responsible For Almost Blinding, Eventually Fully Blinding, SW. Im Callin Him C:H For Short Because Again Im Not Typing All That Shit Out. I Dont Actually Have A Lot On This Guy or His Brother So Hopefully This Is Shorter Than SW's Section

Notes

Him And His Brother Are Aggressive In Nature, Hence The Whole Caution Thing

Barbarically Aggressive

Played Like. A Bunch A Ro:Bio N Shit With His Brother

Lore

C:H Watched SW Kill His Brother In The Fighting Ring, Overheard SW Talking About How He Went Into A Blind Panic And Decided "Why Dont I Make Him Actually Blind" So Uh. Yeah. His Plan Is To Catch SW Off-Guard In An Isolated Area Which Is Difficult Because Of SW's Paranoia. Has Sent People To Try And Get Information From SW Or Get Close To SW, So SW's Still Persistent Paranoia Is Valid

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

CAUTION: RADIATION

This Is The Guy That SW Accidentally Killed. Callin Him C:R Because Long Ass Name. He's Not A Ghost Or Anythin Btw But If He Was He'd Be Actively Cheering C:H On Also Dont Have Much Information With This Guy Sorry

Notes

Yeah He Played Ro:Bio With C:H

And Again Yeah Naturally Aggressive

C:R Is More Sinsterly Aggressive If That Makes Sense

The Toxic Waste On His Head IS Apart Of Him The Barrel Is Not, Barrel For Aesthetic

Toxic Fumes Naturally Eminate From His Mouth, It Doesnt Smell Like Anything But Again It Is Toxic So Mask Holds Filters It Out

He's Immune To It Though So Its Okay

Lore

Not Much Lore Honestly But Basically Like. What Happened Is He Got Punched In The Gut Rlly Hard Which Winded Him Or Whatever Like Out Of Breath And Then Punched In The Jaw So Broken Jaw And Then SW Just Kept Punching Him Til He Died He Did Not Expect, What Percieved As, The Dumb Scared Kid To Straight Up Kill Him

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

ABNORMALITY/MORPHO

Okay Last One I Swear Anyways Morpho Here Is Based Of Abnormality Dancin' Girl. I Was Listening To The Song And I Had A Vision™ And Went On A Spree Making Them

Notes

Okay To Start, I Will Be Using They/Them For Them Because Theyre Good With They/Them Pronouns Yes Thats Fine But Internally They Naturally Refer To Themself With It/Its For Lore Reasons

MASSIVE People Pleaser Like REALLY REALLY Big People Pleaser Its Genuinely Detrimental To Their Mental Health

Also A Social Chameleon To The Extreme, Changes Their Personality The Way They Talk And They Way They Dress Just To Fit In With The People Theyre Talking To

Used To Play A Lot Of Simulators And Tower Defense Games. Especially Tower Defense They Were Pretty Good At Those

Lore

Morpho Doesnt Really Know Who They Are Anymore. Theyve Been Changing And People Pleasing For So Long That They Dont Even Know If Theyre A Person, Thinking Of Themself As More Of An Object On On A Stage All Of This Changing Is Literally Like Physically Tearing Them Apart The Switching And Trying To Be Someone Thats A Them They Dont Know Is Physically Destroying Them They Cant Stop Though, Theyre So Tired And Nothing Feels Good Anymore But They Just Cant Stop. Theyre A Ticking Time Bomb Waiting To Die, Waiting To Scatter Into Thousands Of Blue Butterflies Even Then Their Efforts Will End Up For Nothing. The More They Switch And People Please The More They Fall Apart, And The More They Fall Apart The More People Leave, Which Then Causes Them To Change And People Please Even More And Try Even Harder Which Makes Them Fall Apart More And Its Just A Downwards Spiral Speeding Towards Their Death. Uhh. All Of This Started From A Person(I Might Leave This Person Unknown), Who They Were Really Really Close To And Told Everything To, Ghosting Them Suddenly And Leaving Them For Someone Else

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

Art Time Yippe Hoorayy

This Is Gonna Go In Order, Also As A Note I Have Not Drawn DL, C:H, C:R, OR Morpho Yet. I Will Ebventually Just. Later.

This Next One W/ Gite And Reck Is Like A Comic Sortve I Made It Rlly Late At Night And Its A Situation That Will Happen At. Some Point Idk When. Dialogue Is Messy im Bad At Dialogue.

I Love Making Angst Of My OCs :)) Anyways Gite Yapping

I Cant Believe I Forgot To Put This Ill Just Put It Here But Reck Does Not Listen To A Word Gite Says A Majority of The Time. Gite Can Say The Most Out Of Pocket Shit Ever And Reck Will Go "Uh Huh Yeah" And Reck Wont Even Notice Until Gite Points It Out

Anyways SW Art Yayayay

Silly Little Video Of What Happened Heehoo Also Last Frame PNG Bc Yeah

Also Here's That Blinded SW Drawing I Promised

Okay Sorry For Yapping Those R All My Guys Wahoo

[sundiscus]

wangxian dragon age au: ficlet

[part of a larger au i’ve mapped out + started drafting, but want to post as snippets for now! i’ve taken many liberties with the worldbuilding, and as such i think most can be inferred with context if you’re unfamiliar with dragon age.

part one now here

this snippet: the meet-ugly, ~1.7k]

✨✨✨

When Lan Wangji wakes up, he isn’t alone.

He doesn’t realize it right away. The first thing he notices is that, this time, there are no shackles. He shifts his hands the slightest bit, enough to confirm they are indeed free. The movement pulls at the little cuts on his fingers and forearms from where the shackles shattered apart, already scabbing over—so he has been unconscious long enough for the magebane to burn out of his system, which he confirms, finding his meridians free and clear. He’s lying on his back, something that feels slightly too soft to be a stone floor under him and something that feels slightly too rough to be a blanket draped over him. An odd green light pulses against his eyelids and the only sound is a muted, continuous hiss, like a distant waterfall. Wherever he is, it isn’t the cell from earlier.

It doesn’t matter. He won’t be here long.

He takes one more slow breath, listening closely. There. To his left, a few paces away, he hears a tiny, cut-off inhale. Now he knows where to aim. His eyes fly open as he launches himself upright, summoning his sword into his raised hand, and—

It’s like expecting the ocean and finding only a puddle. His sword flickers into existence for the barest moment, its glow illuminating a circle of stone walls, a pallet beneath him, and then Lan Wangji’s lungs stutter, pressure squeezing his temples, as if all air has been sucked out of the room. Bichen dissipates and Lan Wangji is left gasping, one hand still raised uselessly in the air.

From the shadows, someone says: “Ah, that’s not going to work.”

Lan Wangji is already looking to the side. He sees only a figure at first, because when his sword disappeared so had the strange, omnipresent green glow. The glow returns now, slowly illuminating a young man curled against the opposite wall, his hair a dark, tangled wave over his shoulders, wrists chained together with thick iron manacles. For a moment his eyes, staring right back at Lan Wangji, are the brightest thing in the room.

“What do you mean?” Lan Wangji demands, finding his voice. “Is there a suppression array?” It must be powerful to choke off his magic so finitely. If he can see it, though, he can figure out how to undo it.

The man wrinkles his nose. “Not exactly. But—ah, ah,” he says as Lan Wangji starts to stand, “don’t move too fast, the blowback from that is going to be pretty harsh.”

Lan Wangji understands almost instantly as a wave of vertigo hits him. His knees buckle before he’s halfway to his feet and he collapses back on the pallet, bracing his weight on his elbow to keep from falling entirely. When his ears stop ringing he can hear his own ragged breathing.

Enough, he thinks, and forces himself to even his breaths. To shift focus. Clearly whatever precautions Wen Chao and his soldiers have taken to secure this room go beyond magebane and a simple suppression array. He won’t be able to escape by sheer force like last time, but this will still be no more than a brief detour on his journey. He will make sure of it.

Yesterday—was it yesterday, now? The chamber has no windows, just the eerie green glow emanating from the walls—Lan Wangji had been traveling with a retinue of junior enchanters to retrieve research texts from the Circle in Hedong, where scholars claimed to have promising studies related to fade rifts. They were nearly there when a raven alighted on Lan Wangji’s shoulder, bearing the message: Siege on Gusu Circle. Reconvene to the north. He’d sent the junior enchanters ahead and turned back before the raven even took flight.

(The note had not mentioned his brother, so his brother must be alive. Rumors were already spreading outward from Gusu as he rode, saying Wen Xu had an archdemon, Wen Xu burned the Gusu library to the ground. They did not say Wen Xu killed Zewu-jun, Wen Xu killed a mage with a glowing hand. So his brother must have escaped. Knowing this did not stop Lan Wangji’s heart from racing as he spurred his horse faster, past refugee settlements and Templar camps, toward the distant gash in the sky.)

And then: a poisoned arrow biting into his arm, his horse crumpling on a hardpacked road outside Lingchuan. The Wen soldiers, ready for him. (Not ready enough, when at least six of their bodies fell before Lan Wangji did.) One day in the first cell, his failed escape attempt.

And now: magicless, trapped in a strange room with a strange, sharp-eyed prisoner watching him struggle to sit upright, the slow crawl of time a physical weight on Lan Wangji’s shoulders.

“Honestly, just ride it out,” the prisoner is saying. He has his chained hands up and open, like he’s trying to calm a spooked animal. “You’ll feel better in about an hour. Maybe less, if you’ve had a good meal recently.”

Lan Wangji’s head spins sickeningly. He ignores it, pushing himself up until he can prop himself against the wall, putting himself eye-level with the prisoner, at least.

“Or sit up anyway, I suppose,” the prisoner says. His voice has a ragged edge, as if it’s scraping its way out of his throat. “Sorry, I’d offer you some water, but I drank it all before I knew I’d have company. What are you doing here, anyway?”

If First Enchanter Lan wants his nephew back, he’ll have to lend us a few books, Wen Chao had mocked from outside the first cell. And if he wants you back with all your limbs attached, he’ll have to throw in trading deeds with the eastern lyrium mines for good measure. Do you think he can deliver that before you die here?

Wen Chao wanted demonic texts, Lan Wangji had guessed, the ones hidden deep within the library. No doubt for some dangerous, power-hungry scheme, and no doubt connected to the rifts. From there, it wasn’t hard to piece together that the attack on the Circle was meant to discover which texts were critical enough to be rescued and transported away, and likely steal them in transit. There are protocols for such events, Lan Wangji knows, and his presence here means the raid was unsuccessful, and he will be used as leverage for a second attempt.

If Wen Chao meant to scare Lan Wangji with his demands, he had only succeeded in doing the opposite. Because if all they want from Lan Wangji’s family are books and deeds, it means they don’t know about his brother yet.

Lan Wangji doesn’t share any of this. “Political prisoner,” is all he says.

“Ahh.” The man nods. “I figured, what with the…” He gestures at his own forehead, chains clinking as he does. “You’re obviously a Lan. Someone will pay well to have you back home.”

“They should not have to pay at all,” Lan Wangji bites out. Something about the prisoner’s casual attitude grates at him. The world outside is quite literally falling apart at the seams, and Lan Wangji doesn’t have time to be used as bait in Wen Chao’s small-minded games.

The prisoner shrugs. “Yeah, but there’s not much choice at the moment, is there? For now you’re stuck here with me. I’m—my name is Wei Ying, by the way. What should I call you, while we wait?”

“Do the Wen soldiers enter this cell often?” Lan Wangji says instead of answering. “Is there a chance of overpowering them?”

A grimace. “Often enough. And no, I’ve tried. They’re stupid, but they’re prepared.”

Lan Wangji casts another glance over the man—Wei Ying—and carefully keeps any skepticism out of his expression. Then he looks around properly for the first time. Wei Ying is right—there’s no visible array on the floor, no glyphs on the circular stone walls. The green glow fades as it climbs the wall, leaving the ceiling cloaked in shadow and dizzying to look at, like an endless tunnel. Disturbingly, there isn’t a visible door, either. There isn’t much of anything but the one straw pallet, a lidded pot against the wall, an empty bowl next to Wei Ying, bone-dry, and Wei Ying himself.

“A Lan,” Wei Ying says when Lan Wangji is silent for long enough, pitched low, almost like he’s talking to himself. “I’m surprised Wen Chao would be so bold. He has to know that won’t go over well in the long run, I wonder if his father has any idea? No, he would’ve sent Wen Xu. Maybe Wen Chao thinks that by the time someone comes for you, he’ll have—” Wei Ying cuts himself off. Blinks. “You are real, aren’t you?”

Lan Wangji narrows his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you’re not…” Wei Ying waves a hand at the room around them. “But, ah, why would I dream up a whole Knight-Enchanter? A Lan at that? You felt real enough, when I dragged you onto the pallet, but it’s still hard to tell.” Lan Wangji must have some reaction to that—to knowing this stranger’s hands have been on him, when he was unconscious—because Wei Ying adds, defensive: “What was I supposed to do? They left you on the floor.”

Lan Wangji doesn’t have an answer to that.

Wei Ying tips his head back against the wall. “Well. Your Circle, they have your phylactery, right? They’ll find you. Pay the ransom, or lay siege to Wen Chao’s little fortress here. That would be nice.” He casts his gaze over Lan Wangji again. “Looks like our captors were gentle enough in the meanwhile.”

There’s dried blood tugging at the hair of Lan Wangji’s temple, and he still has the nauseating sense that if he moves too fast he might collapse again. Gentle isn’t how Lan Wangji would describe his treatment so far. But it is also far below the threshold of what he can withstand, so it doesn’t seem like a point worth arguing. “And you?” he hears himself say.

“Uh.” Wei Ying shifts and holds up his shackled hands. “Less gentle, I suppose.”

“I meant—who will be paying your ransom.”

Wei Ying drops his hands into his lap. “Oh. No one.”

“Then,” Lan Wangji says, “why are you here?”

For the first time, Wei Ying flashes a smile. A hooked dagger in the dim light.

“I have something they want.”

[bataddictedloony]

I done finished it 👍

Yeah so… not as good as the books, not even close. Obviously.

good on it’s own though? I’d say so, yeah.

It’s hard to really review it on its own as someone who loves the books so much, since most of the fun I had watching this was me going !!! at things I recognise from the books. It’s not a very well known book series so any reference I see of it makes my heart beat a lil’ faster. Like I said before, they nail the core of the story pretty dang well: Alek’s and Deryn’s characters, their friendship, the clanker and the darwinism cultures, the war and what it means for everyone, being noble vs protecting your own, etc. The animation is pretty good too, mixing 2D and 3D so the characters can match the technology and the world around them. Deryn and Tesla’s mannerisms especially were very nice. I’m even guessing some mocap was used, the animations were so fluid and human. I also liked the changes they made to save time and keep the pace up. It faltered a bit in the Behemoth act but really picked it back up again in Goliath. It’s definitely understandable how much they cut and changed from Goliath since that book is…. A goliath. Heh. And the changes they made, unlike other adaptations, made Sense. There was no loss of character or story or the message. Hell, even Volger’s lil’ turn-about Made Sense. All we lost was some events from the books. That’s really it, everything else that’s important was kept pretty cleverly.

I do miss the epicness of what I associate with the Leviathan series. Like I said, I associate the music playing in Phantasialand’s Rookburgh and the music from the Golden Compass PS game with the series. Cus I listened to them as I was reading them but I picked them specifically BECAUSE I felt like they fit so well. Rookburgh specifically is MADE for a steampunk background. The heavy clanks and the sound of steam releasing is part of the music and made me feel like I was on a constantly moving airship. The ghibli-esque piano was nice but it also felt pretty superficial. Like there was silence that needed to be filled, so we did what never fails and add smthn soft. Yeah, that’s fine but it’s not “we’re using a whale as an airship to bomb german warships”. I also missed movement on the Leviathan. For a ship that literally cannot be still, it was oddly static. Of course, that’s for budget reasons but I would’ve liked a little bit of swaying to have been added in editing, maybe have a hanging lamp in the bg going back and forth a little. Same with sound design: if I didn’t know better, I would’ve forgotten we were in a steel hanger under the belly of a flying whale. There was also - and I’m pretty pissed about this - scale issues. Like literally. There was a point where midshipman were climbing the side of the Leviathan and they were the same size as the directional engines. Uh, what? No, no, the WHALE is a WHALE. The humans on top of it should be teeny teeensy tiny! Lil’ lil humans! Toiny!

All of these are kinda nitpicks but it’s a genuine issue I think the series had: lack of scale. A whale flying through the skies as an airship to fight war battles, should be in the dictionary under ‘epic’. The series is good, but it’s not Epic. And it Should be. Like imagine Pacific Rim, without that boss soundtrack, without the sound design, and the robot to human scale is just a little off. You’d feel something is missing!

The finale kicked ass though! And every time they released the fletchet bats and the strafing hawks, HO! And Deryn is so funny, I love them so much. And Klopp. And Alek. I love them all so much. And Bovril was so cute. Bovril Plushie When?

So yeah, it’s not blow you socks off fantastic, but it’s pretty entertaining and worth the Saturday. If you’re into the ‘girl dresses as boy cus fucking patriarchy’ trope, steampunk, some kickass worldbuilding and the 1910’s, watch Leviathan on Netflix! (And then read the books afterwards and thank me later.)

okay, netflix, Leviathan is my favourite book series ever, DO NOT FUCK IT UP

[border-spam]

Does troy really have a split jaw or is that fanon?

It's total fanon!

The design of the split lines across his cheekbones and chin coupled with the cheek clips and v shaped hinge outline next to his ears lead to a lot of people coming to that same outcome, that there is something up with his mouth from a prosthetic/mod standpoint.

So much of his design is never mentioned once or referenced in any way (hightech spinal rig with tattoos under it, neuro connector, mech arm that's much older and doesn't seem related to the spine and neuroport, implants on bicep, face mod etc) that like Tyreen's scars and possible lower body Siren markings, fandom took over when it came to coming up with logical explanations for 'em.

This actually touches ground with some Ao3 comments I wanted to share as they are all Leech Lord compliant, so I'll list them here alongside links to the fics they were related to (note warnings!)

You leave no avenue for characterization unexplored. Troy's facial prostheses finally receiving backstory is amazing

- Maw (Gore/Bodyhorror)

I LOVE the idea of it being not just decorative shit on his face, but my MO for any content I make is always based around asking why, over and over, and trying to make sense of what material I'm using in the first place. The modded mouth is a popular piece of fanon but you know... why? Why would he do that shit to himself. WHY would he want to be grotesque, why would he be chasing the reaction people would have to it when canonically he seems to really not be interested in fan attention the same way Tyreen is, what's the difference to him between being adored as his persona or being lusted after as a monster, etc. I just love deep-diving into the logic behind character and world building? It's what adds meat to the bone for me.

Big 'ol character and worldbuilding / lore responses list under the cut -

He could afford better robots but these ones UNDERSTAND Ty, don't you get it?

- Good night in (tooth rotting fluff)

Hey just because it's mangled and broken, and can't perform its intended function to a degree expected of it by everyone around it... and it's got rusty sharp bits it accidentally hurts you with sometimes... and it's cranky but it doesn't mean it... and sometimes it errors out in a way that's mildly disturbing in a way you can't place.. uh.. doesn't mean you should just GIVE UP ON IT you know? He can fix them :) They will be fine :) No one should just throw away something that's trying so hard just because it's damaged... haha... :')

It's so hard seeing how much they tear each other down when they're the only thing they have left. And what a poor self-image Tyreen has beyond all that glitter and bluster...

- Wolf in sheep's clothing

The twins function well enough as a unit till tensions rise, and I was trying to seed in The Leech's influence on them in earlier work like this too - towards anyone else Ty would become MORE aggressively confident, more assured in her complete and utter dominance of the situation, her flawlessness, but against Troy who see's her for what she is, it turns inwards and eats at her instead of lashing outwards. He switches from relatively submissive around her to almost surgical levels of dissection, he knows exactly how to go for the jugular with words, and doesn't hold back. She's The Leech's mouth but he's its eyes and it's only when they lose control emotionally enough for it to claw to the surface of their psyches that you get an idea of how much it really affects them individually. GB had an absolute goldmine on their hands here of cosmic/body horror and the concept of toxic family when all you have is each other, there's so much to work with, and I figure it's a factor in why some people still really enjoy messing around with Calypso content.

I like how you allow Troy to be a disabled character, how his congenital defects and prosthetics colour his outlook and appear in ways big and small in all these vignettes. It's easy, I think, to see him as largely untroubled by his health apart from when he needs a charge from Tyreen in the game, but you allow him to struggle with his weakness.

- Chronic (Drug use)

I'm really glad to hear that's coming through in the writing because it's something I noticed a lot too. Very often when Troy, or other characters canonically disabled / chronically unwell are written it's "told" and not "shown". Chronic pain, illness, it's not something that is just a little tickbox in a life or some descriptive terms added to a character synopsis, it's something you live and deal with. There are bad days. There are times it is a negative that has to be worked around or faced in ways that aren't pleasant. It doesn't make you lesser or weak to have times where illness does leave you unable to function to a level you want to, it's not a failure for you to be unable to perform tasks when a disability or flair up means it's not viable. I feel personally that by showing scenes like this where his health and body issues do have a very visceral and impossible to ignore the effect on his ability to function, and going through his mental processes of dealing with and managing them, it brings the character across as stronger than if he never seemed to be shown dealing with symptoms or weaknesses. People are more than their disabilities and conditions, those aren't just kinda taglines to add onto a character's description and then never address. I feel like doing that in a way undermines what people deal with who manage chronic illness, pain, and who have disabilities that affect their daily lives negatively. Appreciating the effort it takes to manage them is important.

What I really like about these is that you can really understand as a reader how their dynamic must have evolved. How even before Leda's death Tyreen would have felt demonized while Troy got the attention because of his condition, because he was less willful.

- Starlight, Moonbright

Ah man, absolutely - and that shit stayed with them. It wasn't his fault and he never wanted it, but of course their parents would have had their extremely ill child at the forefront of their thoughts, especially during weeks when he was.. bad. Tyreen by nature even without The Leech's influence is a little attention seeker, she'd be the life of any party and she BLOSSOMS if she's got the spotlight, but as a little kid who's got literally no one but her parents and her brother, and who all three of which can't give her nearly as much time as she deserved? That's rough. That's really unfair. That coupled with The Leech's warping effect on their egos as they grew up and the bitterness and resentment they harbored in different ways created a reverse dynamic. She'd never be out of the Galaxy's attention again, and he'd have no choice but to take his rightful place in her shadow.

I love how you illustrate both how much more, and yet how much less Troy is now. How the blameless child, full of potential, is inextricably linked to the brutal, larger-than-life avatar he fashions.

- DeLeon ( Graphic Violence / Gore / Hallucinations)

He's molded the monster he is now out of the bones of the man he should have been - there's no going back really. There's nothing left to go back to. He broke Troy DeLeon apart to build the persona that acts like an iron lung now, suffocating him breath by breath while forcing him to still take them. That life is over, he killed it before it had a chance, but the idea of it is still there in his subconscious. Somewhere in the absolute trainwreck of Troy's brain is the tiny, flickering belief that maaaaaybe one day this will all be over and he can shuck off the bracer and spines, peel off all the shit he's covered his skin with, and just go back to not being Calypso. DeLeon here isn't some aspect of his mental state or his sins haunting him - it's The Leech, spitting venom at a host it loathes in something that's not sound or comprehensible language. His subconscious has just translated it into something it can understand - his greatest regret.

On if Borderlands Humans originated on Earth -

There's a really tenuous link between BL verse and rEarth, but it's there and can't be ignored. The cultures, accents, terminologies, so many are Earth specific despite these people being spread across galaxies, so hell yes - Earth as an emergence point makes total sense. The next question then, is why is it never mentioned - and you can cover for that with a lot of things like say, tt was so long ago that it's not relevant to anything that would ever be discussed, or it could be a mass evacuation from a catastrophe there is little record of now. I like to go with something along those lines, that the first human Siren host emergence on earth just absolutely decimated the planet. Like, we were doing fine till this random woman somewhere in the ass-end of nowhere develops weird markings overnight, then goes apocalyptic. The first Leech maybe, not understanding her powers and having them rip across continents in a spread of crackling electric death that only left husked shells of plants and animals in its wake, or the first Firehawk who went nuclear and burned the sky, or the first Voidgrasp who lost control and began to collapse the planet's core - some extreme shit that had humans fleeing en masse with barely any preparation and HUGE swathes of history and knowledge left behind. That would cover so many social things surviving into the BL verse, cultures, accents, cooking, that shit comes with us regardless of what we were able to throw into escape ships. Like so much data would be stored on any tech and data arrays within the vessels people would use to leave a dying planet even in an insane rush, but that shit waters down over time - if you're farming barely edible plants on some planet that smells like farts, are you really gonna be that stressed about teaching your kids history from a lost planet when your current concerns are not being eaten by something with 19 legs and 4 buttholes? Don't think so.

On if the other Siren entities are as influential to their hosts as The Leech -

I touch on it a wee bit throughout LL, but the others are FAR more passive and meld more to their host's whims. The Firehawk Siren wouldn't.. like.. care? If the host was burning down a planet or fighting off an evil corporation? They are removed from any nonsense happening on this side, they might not even really be able to tell, it's like asking an amoeba or a collection of sentient atomic particles what its opinion is on Brexit. That's not really its priority. The Leech is so aggressive in its control of the twins and desperation to drive them towards an outcome it desires only cause it's split, broken, removed from the song, and completely lost. We're talking a caged, half-mad animal removed from its natural environment and left totally isolated from its own kind for millennia. It's in pain, it's confused, it wants to find its way back to the song and the others and where it belongs, but it's stopped by a barrier it can't comprehend ( the twins and being ripped between them), so in its impotent rage it feeds back that hatred onto them. It's not really sentient in the way we would describe functional intelligence, but it wants, and craves, and FEELS. And it feels very, very angry.

Big thanks to @undergoingcalibrations for talking through so much of this with me!

Asks are Open!

[rattyarts]

Huge-ask post (I am VERY funny)

Because I have so many questions that can be answered with just text, and I have mentioned my dislike of filling my art blog up with Words Words Words... let’s get them all done in one go!

(You guys can blacklist #rattytalks if you’re just here for the draws, btw)

A shit ton of asks under the cut!

Anonymous said: So for the center of the world, what with it being forcefully PG and all Bad Thoughts TM being prevented, how does having kids happen? Do parents just black out and wake up holding a child in their arms and vague memories of the last 9 months?

Ever seen a movie where they do that “and one day... a baby was born!” thing and a kid just appears offscreen with no explanation?

(This is how it works everywhere, Edgelands included; no one does the do or gets pregnant in this setting.)

Anonymous said: Hello! Quick question, and sorry if you’ve answered this before, but can other elves see the “intangible” bits of one another? Big fan of your work btw!

Nope! And thank you!

Anonymous said: Leopold was in my dream last night but I sadly cannot remember any of it.

I am SO sorry. I will try to keep my stinky murder men out of your head in the future.

Anonymous said: are the floaty bits stuck in one spot, or could the one they are attached to learn to move them around their body as long as its still within a certain distance? like, someone with the Floaty limbs, lets call him Ray, can move his limbs all over his body, allowing him to do all sorts of neat things that others with their attached limbs probably couldn't?

Whatever you want, honestly. As a general rule of thumb I don’t like putting down TOO many hard rules that prevent people from having fun with this setting. (Please ignore and scrap anything you think is stupid, I do this all the time and enjoy keeping this setting inconsistent and contradictory)

Anonymous said: Do elf names work off of Death Note rules, or is it like, if you know one elf’s name, all elves with that name are now unable to harm you? So if all the elf brothers are named Martin, for example, does it only work with blue?

I think it’s prolly just the one! Probably? Idk, might change if I think of something funnier.

Anonymous said: Can elves do magic on themselves or does thst go against the knowing name rule

Most people tend to know their own names, lol. So in my opinion, no, but don’t let me stop you if you got a fun idea.

Anonymous said: Could an Elf stitch on parts from another elf and have them work? i.e an Elf's finds the arm of another Elf. "Hey, free arm, might as well put it to good use", so they attach the arm and now they can give three high fives at once!

Same deal as previous questions, I personally would say no, but I also encourage people to do whatever the hell they want. It’s more fun that way!

Anonymous said: I bet elves are greasy to the touch.

They’re very powdery! Like if you rolled them in flour. And by flour I mean nasty glowing elf dandruff.

Anonymous said: Can elves fly or are their wings just for show?

No flying!!! (Unless you’re a mousefly)

Anonymous said: Something tells me that the elves would LOVE Obatzda.

Had to look that up, but definitely!

no1fan15: Not sure if someone asked already- Does Edgeworld have any equivalent to demons and angels? Like the old rubberhose cartoon kind?

Demons, yes! That’s what imps are: basically any demon, devil, or generic monster, but tiny! Even a couple of pop culture critters in there, there’s probably a very small gillman or robot monster running around there somewhere.

Angels, not so far. 

Anonymous said: How come Margaret hasn't yeeted George's jar into the Edge yet

I’d say being locked in a closet is good enough! (and also I need him for plot reasons, don’t tell anyone)

Anonymous said: If elves have knees bulges in the front then do they have butt bulges in the back?

i do not want to think about elf bulges

Anonymous said: So if you find a baby Therewoof and you say "aw you're so cute", their true name is So Cute?

Yep!

Anonymous said: Since a Therewoof's true name can be something like "cutie pie" or "dingus", does their name have to be spoken with "intent" for it to doggo-fy them? Or do they just have to live with the reality that any casual conversation/flirting can make them lose up to a month to Doggy Mode? My mom has little terrier dog named "Sweetie" so that got me thinking 'bout Therewoof names. & Anonymous said: here's a good question: If someone says a therewoof's true name, but not reffering to them, does it still affect them?

Just saying it will do! It’s based on those old werewolf stories where calling out the person’s name will change them back into a human/cure them, and a lot of the time it was by accident.

(My favorite is the one where they slam the door on the wolf’s tail and then say his name, and the dude ends up with a wolf tail for the rest of his life.)

Anonymous said: Would Seeing eye Therewoofs be a thing?

I... guess? Probably? Since regular dogs can turn into woofs, yeah. You might have to start paying em once they turn into a person tho. 

Anonymous said: Was ChalkZone ever an inspiration for you? Because I just love the silly world of ChalkZone and I noticed getting that same warm feeling when thinking about Edgeworld.

Maaaan, I wish. I’ve only seen about three episodes or so, but it seems really fun!

Anonymous said: So I saw your mimic post, and even though I don't think I've seen any other of your art before I was absolutely HAMMERED with an indescribable sense of slightly unsettling strangeness and comfortable familiarity. Your art feels like something from like, an old point and click computer game I would have had formative memories of before accidentally losing or scratching the disc therefore making me unsure if it ever REALLY existed. Sorry for being weird but I love the wacky nostalgia feel here

Aaaaaah, THANK YOU! That is SUCH a cool comparison and I appreciate!!!

Anonymous said: If the Edgeworld is based on cartoons then is there a Reverse Edge-world that’s based on anime?

Lol, I mean I DID have an anime phase for a while there, so...

caydebug: Man I’d love to see this as a cartoon some day

Honestly, same. Best you’re gonna get is the occasional animatic or gif, tho.

Anonymous said: Does anyone..."go" in Edgeworld? or is it like Pleasantville where bathrooms exist but there are no toilets in them because acknowledging it is yucky?

Oh god I keep getting asked this and have been avoiding it like the damn plague. But... Uh. No. No they do not. I am begging you all not to send any followup questions.

Anonymous said: Have you considered putting computer viruses or illnesses in with the buggymen? Since those are typically called ‘bugs’

Sure!

Anonymous said: are there any limits to what an Animimic could posess? i.e if they were in a costume of a Buggieman with multiple arms, could they control all of them? what about a small Mousefly costume? can multiple fit into one costume like a clown car? and what about in pitch black darkness, where you can only see the lights of their eyes and not their bodies? could one fit inside the pocket of a jacket you are wearing and help you steal things/wield a gun like a living turret?

Since clothing fills into the body type of the intended wearer, they would indeed be able to control all arms/legs in buggieman clothes.

Size restrictions is one of these things I wanna try to be vague about: I personally have been imagining them sticking to hiding in things no smaller than, um. Maybe imp sized, but really, whatever. It’s a cartoon eyeball critter!

You can put multiple animimics in one outfit!

They can move around just fine in darkness without being off screen, yeah!

And sure why not. lol

Anonymous said: I know you have been asked this once before, and you said nah you don't, but with a few more months of worldbuilding, do you have an idea for what could be down the edge now? 🤔

Not really! It’s not super important, honestly. I’d say any fan theory is about as valid as anything else I can come up with.

ps2polpo: I doubt you’ll ever elaborate on The Edge but I like to imagine there’s just one dude there like the Nowhere Man from the Yellow Submarine movie. Mostly cause the thought of someone accidentally winding up there being like “where am I?” And there’s just a guy casually waving at him like a friendly neighbor is funny to me & Anonymous said: The implication that the Edge is the physical manifestation of edginess so there’s probably like, Trevor Henderson monsters hanging out down there.

See above question! Valid! I also accept falling forever, getting erased from existence, ending up in another universe, getting stuck in limbo with thousands of other people, whatever you want, really!

Anonymous said: " he has very few bones and weighs basically nothing, " "Fastball special" trope, but with Leo?

YEET THE NASTY MAN

Anonymous said: did you ever watch dragon tales as a kid? because george and margaret make me think of murderous zak and wheezie from that show, and i love it to bits

I did not, but I would have loved it. Definitely up my alley!

(watched Quest for Camelot a loooot, though!)

Imma go ahead and stop here! There’s more but I’ve been writing for well over an hour and I have things to do. If your question is missing I’m either saving it for later, wasn’t entirely sure how to answer, or it’s spoilery.

Will probably do another one of these at some point!

[queenangst]

I am TRYING to pick a scene from Secondhand for the commentary ask but there are just. All of it is my favorite. But I think maybe...the scene where Midoriya and Nana talk about going to fight villains, and the USJ attack?

me, rereading secondhand for this: wow i love this

i was going to start with just nana & izuku, but i’m so soft for nana & gran, so i included fighting villains like you asked with a little bit of that dynamic! so of course this is going to be a long one i hope no one minds, i couldn’t help myself.

let’s go

[Sorahiko] paused to look at Nana. "And you'll come, of course," he said, but it was half a question. From here, Midoriya couldn't see Sorahiko's face—almost pleading.

"I'll come, of course," Nana said softly to her friend. She turned back to smile at Midoriya. "Don't worry."

Nana and Sorahiko were partners, so this part is Sorahiko tentatively reaching out in this familiar-unfamiliar relationship. But of course Nana will go with them. The “don’t worry” is directed at both him and Izuku.

Midoriya finally started working again as they stepped through the door, and ran to catch up, bursting between the two of them. He apologized hastily, and then looked at both of them with wide eyes.

"Don't- worry?" He looked at Sorahiko, flippant, and Nana, who was used to this kind of thing. "Wait, wait, what do you mean, don't worry? We're going to, you're taking me to fight, villains?"

I thought the first line here was a little bit funny, like Izuku.exe had stopped working once he heard they were going to go seek out and fight villains. Obviously, as we see upcoming in this scene, Izuku has a very different definition of villains, so he sort of shut down for a second. 

He’s super incredulous, while Nana knows Sorahiko is just Like That. She’s not fazed at all, because they’ve known each other for years, and it’s certainly something he made Toshinori do.

His voice grew small on the word villains. He was scared.

Nana frowned at the look on his face.

"Have a little more courage than that," she said, patting him on the shoulder. He flinched, and she pulled back. "I mean— Sorahiko used to make Toshinori do it all the time, when they were training without me. And I used to take Toshinori on patrol with me when I could. It's good experience."

Here’s the part where Nana almost-disapproves a little bit. It’s okay to be scared as a hero, but because a large part of it is fighting villains, she doesn’t understand why Izuku has such a strong reaction. It actually concerns her, because right now it seems like he might not be brave enough. They don’t know each other very well, so I thought this was a reasonable reaction, especially with how important One for All is.

But Nana is also very attentive. 

"Villains?" Midoriya said again. It was like he'd gotten stuck on the word and was now circling it, tethered by a line. "Don't you think that's a little— I hardly have any control over— I mean..."

"That's why we're going with you," Nana said soothingly. "We'll make sure nothing goes disastrously wrong. Chin up."

On the other side, Nana knows a scared child when she sees one. She’s definitely a mom, and someone who cares, so after she tells him he shouldn’t be scared she also tries to reassure him that she and Sorahiko both will be there.

And a little peek of Izuku’s inner thoughts, as best as I can show them through Nana’s perspective. He’s freaking out a little.

"Villains," Midoriya mumbled. He wrung his hands together; he looked a little reassured by Nana's offer of safety, but not by much.

"Oh, get that look off your face," Sorahiko said, spinning around. "It won't be as bad as you think. You'll be fine—you might not be able to take me, but you can handle a crook or two. It's not like we're facing S-Rank villains."

Color returned to Midoriya's face. "Okay," he said quietly, and that was that.

Now, Sorahiko does know about USJ (of course), so after Nana only semi-succeeded at reassuring Izuku he finally gives up and just tells Izuku it’ll all be fine. No S-Ranks here. It’s the reassurance that he really needs. ‘Course, Sorahiko has to sound grumpy-old-man while doing it. 

She'd seen the way his brow had creased when Sorahiko had mentioned the villain classification ranks they all followed. Most villains, of course, tended to be on the lesser scale—petty crime using Quirks was much easier, but there was always going to be the villains lurking in the shadows. All for One, looming, the puppetmaster of a whole organization of crime that haunted the streets and back alleys of Japan. That crept its roots of corruption into every crack it could squeeze through.

She bit the inside of her cheek and closed off her expression.

A tiny bit of “worldbuilding” to slip in there, though this is more-so based off of what we already have in canon with the classification. Also, it makes sense to me that it would be common to have a lot of petty crime, such as the bag-snatcher or the thugs the League hired. People who don’t get to use their Quirks in the system and resort to crime, etc, etc, because the definition of villain is so loose. 

But then of course there are villains like All for One. Nana hates him. Deeply. So much that sometimes it frightens even her how angry she is, but she doesn’t want to show it in front of Izuku right now, so she closes herself off.

"I don't know about you," Sorahiko started, "well. I don't care what you do, but leave me alone."

He glanced at the time, then nodded to himself and disappeared. Nana laughed.

"I don't suppose you’re leaving me alone, too?" Midoriya asked, a little sullen, and Nana shook her head. She'd hardly done anything all morning.

Sorahiko just doesn’t care. He’s done with people younger than twenty for now. In case anyone was wondering, he went off to take a nap, leaving Izuku and Nana to their own devices. 

I just thought it would be a small light-hearted break in the somber tone of the conversation, before we go back to it.

"Would you," Midoriya began, then dropped his gaze. "Would you spar with me then?"

Nana shook her head.

"I shouldn't." She shrugged at his pleading look. "Sorahiko's right. You need a break before we go out tonight. You don't want to be in a real fight and be dead on your feet."

When Izuku asks, Nana doesn’t agree to spar with him. Here, it’s because she believes she’s not his teacher. His training should be Toshinori’s responsibility, and then Gran Torino because of the internship. Nana will help eventually, but to her, it’s not her main role in the relationship with Izuku. 

They walked to the kitchen together. "I still don't understand why we're going to go fight some villains," Midoriya said offhandedly. "I mean, getting experience, sure—all my other friends are doing some light patrols, I think, but seeking out a fight?"

"Sorahiko can't just train you for the rest of the, what is it, the week? You'll get too used to his fighting style, and you'll get stuck. It's better if you're out there experiencing things yourself."

"If you say so," Midoriya said. She didn't think she was meant to hear that.

A little more slight disagreement, though of course from misunderstanding. Izuku’s a little disrespectful at the end there (and even, a little hypocritical considering the way he gets himself into things) but his point stands - that he’s concerned about a pro hero sanctioning him to go seek out villains, rather than how other pro heroes might work by assigning interns to light patrol, learning about agencies, etc.

"Can I ask you something?" Nana leaned back against the counter and watched Midoriya fill a glass of water. He handed it to her, then took another one out, and she nodded in thanks.

"Uh-huh," Midoriya said, filling his own glass.

"Why did you react like that?" Nana asked. "When we were talking about villains earlier."

Midoriya's face darkened. He stared into his glass, like he was looking for an answer in the way the water distorted his vision.

"You don't have to say," Nana said. "I understand being scared of villains. Everyone's scared. But you seemed to have a..."

She didn't know how to describe it. But she'd seen that look before on a few faces—and she'd seen it on Shinroku's face, struck pale.

Like I said, Nana gets that villains are scary. Of course they are, but it is a hero’s job to face them. So she still doesn’t get why Izuku is acting like this, and why he’s so scared, to the point where it reminds her of her own mentor facing All for One. (Haha, fun reference, yeah? Successor facing successor and predecessor facing predecessor.) 

"I don't think you know much about Class 1-A, do you?" He peeked at her face. "I guess you wouldn't know. Er, well... earlier this year, when we- when we went to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, for training... the League of Villains attacked us. It was— bad."

"The League of Villains?"

The League didn’t exist, to Nana’s knowledge, and she’s basically been given the Cliff Notes on everything happening. So here’s the start of the explanation... she hasn’t had a chance to learn much about 1-A or USJ or the League.

"That's.. yes," Midoriya said, "and they weren't just a— I mean, it was planned. They targeted us specifically. And the Nomu... Shigaraki..."

"Shigaraki," Nana said. She couldn't say she'd heard the name before; actually it was entirely unfamiliar to her. "He's a villain?"

God, I’m terrible, truly. Haha. The mention of Shigaraki... just a little bit of dramatic irony here where we’re all like “he’s your grandson!!!! He’s your grandson!” and Nana does not recognize the name at all. And this sets up for later: the only identity Nana knows of Shigaraki is that he’s a villain.  

"The leader, I think," Midoriya said. He tugged his lip between his teeth. "He was directing the others. He gave orders. And he hurt— it was re- really bad."

What Izuku was going to say here was how badly Shigaraki and the Nomu hurt Aizawa, but he couldn’t get the words out. It was really bad. I mean, timeline wise, Aizawa only got his bandages off basically after the Sports Festival, so the memories are still very fresh.

He tipped his head back and drank from his water deeply so that he wouldn't have to keep talking. Nana paused. She hadn't expected that.

"You're a first-year student," she said. "You..."

And now Nana is absolutely horrified because he is a Baby, U.A. He’s a baby!

"They want to kill All Might," Midoriya said suddenly. He set down the glass, and it rang dully. Water sloshed against the side. He gripped the edge of the counter with both hands. "And they— it wasn't human, it was- it was- strong... I couldn't do anything!"

A chill ran down her spine as more and more of the story unraveled. A creature, barely human if at all, that Midoriya referred to as a Nomu. A creature that had been built to kill All Might.

And she’s even more horrified because that’s Her Baby. It does not matter that Toshinori is like, four decades older or so, because he’s still her boy and they were trying to kill him. Specifically. 

Good day slowly turning to bad day.

"He beat it," Midoriya told her, but he seemed less happy about it than she would have assumed. "But... it was a real threat. It withstood him at a hundred percent of One for All.

“And that- that leader, Shigaraki, he would have killed… ”

Nana set down her empty glass. She lifted a hand, then remembered the way he had flinched when she had put it to his shoulder earlier and dropped it again.

Shigaraki would have killed Aizawa, and Tsuyu, and probably him and his classmates, and All Might. 

Here, Nana assumes Izuku would be happier because of the victory, but Izuku really isn’t. All Might won but the Nomu was a real threat to him, and his time limit was already so dangerously low. Izuku remembers All Might pushing himself past his limit. 

And back to earlier, Nana notices Izuku’s reaction. She wants to comfort him, but she thinks he might flinch away if she does.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though it didn’t quite feel like enough. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”

He was a kid. Strong, yes. Smart, yes. But in the end, Midoriya was at most fourteen or fifteen—no one his age should have encountered and seen what he had just earlier this year. He was already carrying enough of a burden, she thought, the legacy of the number one hero and the heroes before him.

Not much to say about this part besides it reads as it is on the tin, you know?

Midoriya shrugged uncomfortably. “Anyway, that’s all.”

That's all, like it was fiction, just a tale recounted. Nana didn't feel it. Horror was coursing through her veins. She couldn't even imagine what it must have been like for him.

It was true Nana had lived a rough life, but she had never faced anything like that so young and almost alone.

Nana adopts a child again. I think USJ was a really sad event, too, of course it shouldn’t have happened. And it was a bunch of kids who wanted to be heroes suddenly thrust into an extremely dangerous and traumatizing situation, their teachers were dying, and they were split up and scared and very much in danger. 

I tried to express that too, how horrifying it is as someone who is older than Izuku, to try and treat such an event so casually as a way of dealing with it. Like it’s over, it’s done. But it’s really not.

She certainly has a hard time in life, but Nana sympathizes a lot because she’s never lived something like USJ. No one should have to.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"It's over," Midoriya said. "Everyone lived, and recovered. So I'm grateful."

"It's good to be grateful," Nana murmured, bowing her head. Not everyone lived. Not everyone recovered.

And cut, here at least. Izuku doesn’t really want to talk about it too much more. He’s ready to move on from USJ, and get stronger... for himself, his classmates, and especially for All Might. And he really is grateful everyone came out alive though not unscathed. 

Not everyone lived, not everyone recovered. Tadao didn’t live, and Nana hasn’t recovered. 

send me your favorite scene/chapter from one of my works + i’ll write commentary on it!

[askthechaoticcharacters]

Mod Kou’s Intro~

Hihi all!! My name is Kou (also been called Crimson/Crispy), and I’m one of the mods of this lovely little chaotic blog! 

A little bit about me, I am a tiny, anxious fire bunny who loves music, drawing, and worldbuilding! (eh,, I’m always really bad at listing likes and dislikes lkgfgfk) I am very very terrified of spiders and I cannot, for the life of me, confront people. My main blog is @crimsonsolace and my art blog is @bunny-arts !!  I’ll most likely be answering asks with drawings and stuff ^^

Anyways, enough about me... Time to meet my characters! I’m gonna put them under a read more (which I just figured out how to do, yay!) so you don’t get floodedkdfslk 

Uh. be prepared for a lot of text. I’m so sorry. I got carried away. 

Earth Chat

Crimzon - A guardian Demon, born with only the reason to protect others in war. She came to Earth with no clear purpose, worried her illness would take her over and kill her before she found someone to serve. But, thankfully! She found a child, Willow, out on the streets with no caretakers! Despite being awful with children, she took matters into her own hands and now protects Willow as she searches for proper parents for the child! 

Trilis - Riil’s ‘mother’, having fled to Earth after their family was killed by a group of vampires. Though not actually their mother, Trilis is Riil’s Mom’s cousin, and they took it as their responsibility to care for the child, even though they have a deadly illness that will soon take their life. Unfortunately, Riil knows nothing of their dead family nor Trilis’s illness.. Oh! They also have an adopted child, Melody, and are good friends with Eos! They are,,, the Mama Demon that you NEVER mess with. terrifying.. uses a spear with a leaf etched on its blade.. other stuff,

Teen!Riil - The teenage version of Riil, a salty demon whose best friend is Beep! They refuse to go anywhere without either their mother (Trilis) or Beep with them unless they’re horribly upset, and can tend to get jealous when they see another child with their mother. They’re also very willing to throw down for their bestie, even if they wont admit he’s their best friendkfflkkfjgfd 

Universe - The goddess of the universe, a tall, joyful, kind woman! Married to Eos, her child is Osiris, she lives a happy life with her family and works at a lab! I dunno if there’s much to say on her, honestly,, 

Teen!Osiris - A teenage version of Osiris! Child of Universe and Eos, she’s like.. 16 here? They are very playful, still curious as ever, but is terrified of learning how to fly and sort of procrastinates on learning her magic and stuff. They’re a very childish life god ^^;

Faura + Ufio - FAURA! The, uh. Meme master and fourth-wall breaker of my bunch- She’s a witch who came to Earth to break free of her chains back home, and now runs Faura’s Bakery! She has a special interest in tech, after finding her best bud Ufio- which is a small UFO that she’s been fixing up ever since she found him in a junkyard! She’s also really, really clumsy,

Helroe + Gaser - The parents of Ainara, who brought her to Earth to punish her for attempting to run away. Both are magic users who force the same profession on Ain, despite the fact she’s always had difficulties with magic. They are cold, harsh, and often would refuse her food if she couldn’t study properly. They are bastards(tm) 

Earth!Ainara - This Ain is a mouse, and extra tiny! She’s also a magic user instead of an axe user, and is much more easily startled than the normal Ain. Thankfully, she was rescued and taken in by Axis, and now she lives with him sorta! Oh also she can turn into a littol mouse,

DnD Chat

Elyscia - An Elf bard who plays harp, violin, and piano! She’s elegant, glittery, and very charismatic! Has an adopted child, Connor, and a girlfriend, Nathala :> She’s... probably one of my most sane characters ngl. Oh also she’s 7′5-

Shizue - A Mermaid sorceress, doomed to be lost in the woods forever... The silly Mermaid has a very low attention span, and gets distracted by anything and everything very quickly! She’s seen with her big pet guinea pig, Chonk! 

Ainara - A Gnome barbarian wielding a giant axe, two handaxes, and a boomerang axe! Ran from her abusive parents and met her master Faerghis, who took her in and taught her how to use her weapons! However, they died, and she ended up in the forest of the DnD chat where she met her current best friend, Axis, and her adopted child, Willow! She is Feral Gnome.

DnD!Riil - Less than a year old, this Riil lost most of their family in an attack, found and saved by Roisin, their new mother. The small demon has made a dragon friend who they named Xilr, after their late brother, and a friend named Beep! 

Aav - The only other member of Riil’s family that survived, Aav is a sorrowful demon who only misses her siblings and her parents. She stays with Riil and Roisin, rarely speaking- but she’s a fast and silent demon with a gun, so don’t mess with her or her new family! 

DnD!Osiris - A young life god, the daughter of Universe and Eos! They are curious, love hair, and hates the fact their mom tries to cover their inhuman features with a cloak- but really, that’s only for their safety. Their token baby phrase is “BWBWBWBWBWBWB” and that is all you need to know 

DnD!Universe (Hevasrra) - The goddess of the universe, yet here she’s very disguised- hiding her normal godlike features under a more humanlike appearance. She also goes by her ‘true’ name rather than the one she prefers. Her wife is Eos, her child is Osiris! She’s a,, lot more on edge in this chat

Space Chat

Crimson - A nervous human(?) who came to the ship to escape her step-father, Crimson is sort of... Like a persona? But honestly, not really ^^; Her (best? Maybe?) friend is Tone (it is an important rule to know that if she dies, so does he,) and her enemy is Impo!Riil, who keeps trying to attack her! yay.. 

Impo!Riil - That’s right- an Imposter version of Riil! This is a version of them who found out about the fact Trilis was not their real mother, and they flew into a rage and killed them. Due to this, they turned to delusions, calling and talking to their spear as if it were “Mom”. It’s quite easy to tick them off, and once you do, they’ll become blinded by rage and try to attack you,, According to Blue. They need therapy badly

[achaosfilledworld]

Mod Kou’s Intro~

Hihi all!! My name is Kou (also been called Crimson/Crispy), and I’m one of the mods of this lovely little chaotic blog! 

A little bit about me, I am a tiny, anxious fire bunny who loves music, drawing, and worldbuilding! (eh,, I’m always really bad at listing likes and dislikes lkgfgfk) I am very very terrified of spiders and I cannot, for the life of me, confront people. My main blog is @crimsonsolace and my art blog is @bunny-arts !!  I’ll most likely be answering asks with drawings and stuff ^^

Anyways, enough about me... Time to meet my characters! I’m gonna put them under a read more (which I just figured out how to do, yay!) so you don’t get floodedkdfslk 

Uh. be prepared for a lot of text. I’m so sorry. I got carried away. 

Earth Chat

Crimzon - A guardian Demon, born with only the reason to protect others in war. She came to Earth with no clear purpose, worried her illness would take her over and kill her before she found someone to serve. But, thankfully! She found a child, Willow, out on the streets with no caretakers! Despite being awful with children, she took matters into her own hands and now protects Willow as she searches for proper parents for the child! 

Trilis - Riil’s ‘mother’, having fled to Earth after their family was killed by a group of vampires. Though not actually their mother, Trilis is Riil’s Mom’s cousin, and they took it as their responsibility to care for the child, even though they have a deadly illness that will soon take their life. Unfortunately, Riil knows nothing of their dead family nor Trilis’s illness.. Oh! They also have an adopted child, Melody, and are good friends with Eos! They are,,, the Mama Demon that you NEVER mess with. terrifying.. uses a spear with a leaf etched on its blade.. other stuff,

Teen!Riil - The teenage version of Riil, a salty demon whose best friend is Beep! They refuse to go anywhere without either their mother (Trilis) or Beep with them unless they’re horribly upset, and can tend to get jealous when they see another child with their mother. They’re also very willing to throw down for their bestie, even if they wont admit he’s their best friendkfflkkfjgfd 

Universe - The goddess of the universe, a tall, joyful, kind woman! Married to Eos, her child is Osiris, she lives a happy life with her family and works at a lab! I dunno if there’s much to say on her, honestly,, 

Teen!Osiris - A teenage version of Osiris! Child of Universe and Eos, she’s like.. 16 here? They are very playful, still curious as ever, but is terrified of learning how to fly and sort of procrastinates on learning her magic and stuff. They’re a very childish life god ^^;

Faura + Ufio - FAURA! The, uh. Meme master and fourth-wall breaker of my bunch- She’s a witch who came to Earth to break free of her chains back home, and now runs Faura’s Bakery! She has a special interest in tech, after finding her best bud Ufio- which is a small UFO that she’s been fixing up ever since she found him in a junkyard! She’s also really, really clumsy,

Helroe + Gaser - The parents of Ainara, who brought her to Earth to punish her for attempting to run away. Both are magic users who force the same profession on Ain, despite the fact she’s always had difficulties with magic. They are cold, harsh, and often would refuse her food if she couldn’t study properly. They are bastards(tm) 

Earth!Ainara - This Ain is a mouse, and extra tiny! She’s also a magic user instead of an axe user, and is much more easily startled than the normal Ain. Thankfully, she was rescued and taken in by Axis, and now she lives with him sorta! Oh also she can turn into a littol mouse,

DnD Chat

Elyscia - An Elf bard who plays harp, violin, and piano! She’s elegant, glittery, and very charismatic! Has an adopted child, Connor, and a girlfriend, Nathala :> She’s... probably one of my most sane characters ngl. Oh also she’s 7′5-

Shizue - A Mermaid sorceress, doomed to be lost in the woods forever... The silly Mermaid has a very low attention span, and gets distracted by anything and everything very quickly! She’s seen with her big pet guinea pig, Chonk! 

Ainara - A Gnome barbarian wielding a giant axe, two handaxes, and a boomerang axe! Ran from her abusive parents and met her master Faerghis, who took her in and taught her how to use her weapons! However, they died, and she ended up in the forest of the DnD chat where she met her current best friend, Axis, and her adopted child, Willow! She is Feral Gnome.

DnD!Riil - Less than a year old, this Riil lost most of their family in an attack, found and saved by Roisin, their new mother. The small demon has made a dragon friend who they named Xilr, after their late brother, and a friend named Beep! 

Aav - The only other member of Riil’s family that survived, Aav is a sorrowful demon who only misses her siblings and her parents. She stays with Riil and Roisin, rarely speaking- but she’s a fast and silent demon with a gun, so don’t mess with her or her new family! 

DnD!Osiris - A young life god, the daughter of Universe and Eos! They are curious, love hair, and hates the fact their mom tries to cover their inhuman features with a cloak- but really, that’s only for their safety. Their token baby phrase is “BWBWBWBWBWBWB” and that is all you need to know 

DnD!Universe (Hevasrra) - The goddess of the universe, yet here she’s very disguised- hiding her normal godlike features under a more humanlike appearance. She also goes by her ‘true’ name rather than the one she prefers. Her wife is Eos, her child is Osiris! She’s a,, lot more on edge in this chat

Space Chat

Crimson - A nervous human(?) who came to the ship to escape her step-father, Crimson is sort of... Like a persona? But honestly, not really ^^; Her (best? Maybe?) friend is Tone (it is an important rule to know that if she dies, so does he,) and her enemy is Impo!Riil, who keeps trying to attack her! yay.. 

Impo!Riil - That’s right- an Imposter version of Riil! This is a version of them who found out about the fact Trilis was not their real mother, and they flew into a rage and killed them. Due to this, they turned to delusions, calling and talking to their spear as if it were “Mom”. It’s quite easy to tick them off, and once you do, they’ll become blinded by rage and try to attack you,, According to Blue. They need therapy badly

[breakingsomething]

the fall part nine - the truth about magic

basic summary: henrik meets some old friends, a LOT of worldbuilding happens, and the world falls apart

trigger warnings: vomit, kidnapping, violence

tagslist: @synonymsforzombie @spicydanhowell @skyewardlight @dreaming-of-stories-and-stars @cest-mellow

henrik was hurting. his phone was dead. and he had not realized how far away the golf club was.

fuck, maybe he was going to need help.

he wasn't far from one of his coworker's houses, and they were on... decent terms, so henrik figured he'd be able to rest a bit there and maybe ask him for a lift. just the thought spurred him on, giving him the energy to walk just the little bit further to the expensive houses two streets away.

this was one of the much nicer areas of brighton. of course, henrik and his coworker worked as surgeons. that was a high paying job. but henrik lived in a small flat with his brothers (because it was in a safe area to practice magic in, and because staying together had always helped keep anti at bay), and he couldn't help but feel slightly insecure as he limped up to the white doorway surrounded by green shrubs in a well kept garden and rung the bell. christ, even the doorbell sounded posh. henrik winced in pain as he shifted from foot to foot, trying to find a comfortable position to stand in while he waited.

after maybe ten seconds, he heard sounds from the other side. shuffling, footsteps, a loud barking. when the door opened, henrik was immediately greeted by two tiny dogs leaping up his legs, and he cried out, grabbing at the door so his legs wouldn't give out.

"down, bacon, down, hash!" a sharp voice yelled, and henrik's head snapped up from the yipping puppies to the man in the doorway. brown hair shaved at the sides, skin orange from fake tan, wearing plaid pajamas like a cartoon character. nevertheless, he grinned when he saw henrik, bright white teeth practically glowing in his mouth. "schneeplestein!" he boomed, throwing out his arms for a hug that henrik wasn't sure he wanted but felt obliged to accept. "haven't seen you at work in yonks! where've you been, friend? come inside!" he clapped henrik's back, to which he began coughing wildly. the other man didn't appear to notice. "i have another friend inside you may want to see - she also visited unexpectedly, haha! is this a surprise party or something?"

henrik couldn't answer. his head was suddenly spinning, and without warning, he grabbed at the man's shoulder as he collapsed to the floor.

"oh - oh, jeez! schneep, are you alright?" the man asked, yanking him back to his feet. "son of a monkey - what did you do to your leg and your back?"

"parker - don't - i -" henrik ran out of words and simply let parker drag him inside, hardly able to stand up himself. the man rambled on and on as henrik stared, awe struck, at all the intricate decorations and paintings on the walls. "nice place," he managed to say. "it's… changed a bit, since since i was last here."

"it sure has!" parker laughed loudly, guiding him towards what henrik remembered to be the kitchen, if it hadn't been renovated into a ballroom. "me and molly got pay rises, her especially - don't know what i'd do without that woman, by the way - and we redecorated! i like it much better. what do you think, schneep?"

"yeah," henrik agreed weakly. "lovely. also, i've mentioned that i'm not fond of the nickname -"

"and these are our dogs, bacon and hashbrown!" parker interrupted, gesturing towards the fluffy white dogs that were padding behind their owner, tongues hanging out. "very clever names, molly chose them. do you have a cat?"

"my brother has one -"

"ah, so that explains why they're so enthusiastic. they love cat smells. ellie, schneep's here!"

henrik paled as they entered the kitchen and he saw who it was that was sitting at the table.

a woman. long brown hair, a pale, heart shaped face, dark painted lips forming the shape of an "o". henrik didn't blame her; he was doing the same thing. "el - why are you here?"

"i could ask you the same thing," she snapped, scraping her chair back and standing. "nathan, what is henrik doing here?"

parker held up both hands beside his head - not that henrik was looking at him. his eyes were pinned on the furious looking woman at the table, her yellow-brown eyes stormy. she hadn't changed a bit in the six months it had been since he'd last seen her. he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting.

"i didn't invite anyone!" parker cried. "i'm still in my damn nightclothes!"

ellie and henrik simply stared at each other for a long moment, until henrik cried out in sudden pain and grasped one of the kitchen chairs. parker helped him sit, propping his leg up on another chair in front of him.

"what happened?" ellie asked, concern darkening her face despite everything. she shuffled over as parker rolled up his trouser leg, hissing through his teeth in sympathy.

"jeez louise, schneep, these are some bad burns," parker commented. "what the heck did you do? did someone hurt you? should we call a hospital?"

henrik shook his head rapidly. "no, no, no," he babbled desperately. this had so been a bad idea. "i - i need a lift, if that's ok. to the golf club a little ways away. i would have walked, but -"

"oh no, you can't walk like this!" parker exclaimed. "especially not - you could get an infection - what burned you, tell me th-"

he suddenly cut off, eyes glazing over unnaturally. he stood up straight almost robotically before turning and leaving the room. henrik watched him go, confused, before turning to ellie.

"what was that?" he laughed awkwardly, before his face fell. her expression, too, was completely blank for a moment before returning to its previous rage.

"why did you never call?" she asked angrily, as though having forgotten everything they'd just been saying. henrik blinked, wondering how to reply.

"i - well, i…" he trailed off, looking away. "i don't know."

he could feel ellie's eyes on him. the guilt burned underneath his skin.

"six months, henrik," she said softly. "are you that much of a coward? do you always date women then leave them on read for months?"

henrik wanted to argue that he couldn't have left her on read because he'd only ever read her messages from the notification bar, never clicking them, but decided that was maybe a bad thing to bring up at this moment in time. "i didn't mean to," he mumbled. "i got overwhelmed. i'm so sorry, ellie. you deserve better than that."

she paused, staring down. "you're a douchebag," she told her clasped hands.

"i know," henrik agreed miserably. he tapped his fingers on his thighs. "i, uh, hope you have been doing ok. i should have checked up on you. i… haven't exact been very social with anyone recently. things have been happening, which i know is not an excuse for what i did, but… yeah."

she nodded. "i've been doing ok, i guess. nathan's been good to me. he was the only one who kept in touch after i left work."

henrik bobbed his head, guilt eating him up. they sat in awkward silence for a couple minutes until parker came back into the room. "found my keys!" he announced cheerfully, waving them in the air. he had also changed clothes to a pale blue button up and black dress trousers. he looked like he was going to a job interview. "now let's take you…" his blue eyes clouded over again. "where was i taking you?"

"um… hecate golf club." henrik glanced back and forth between parker and ellie, confused. "are you two ok?"

ellie got to her feet suddenly, not looking directly at henrik. "i'll leave too," she said loudly. "i should probably be getting home too. i'll drive myself. thank you, nathan, for your hospitality."

"anytime," he said with a smile. "see you, els. come on, schneeplestein, i gotta get you there before molly gets home. i'm not supposed to leave the dogs home alone for too long."

had they completely forgot about the injuries on his leg and back? henrik stood on shaky legs and limped to the door and outside, where two cars were in the driveway. parker walked over to his car (a mercades benz) and threw open the door casually. "hurry up! i'll get her started, let's just…"

"henrik?" ellie asked quickly, lowering her voice so parker couldn't hear. she turned to face him fully, eyes large. "your whole not talking to me thing… was that because of… the reason i left work? i know people were gossiping, and -"

"mein gott, no!" henrik exclaimed. he shook his head rapidly, rushing to explain. "ellie, i understand - if the whole gossip bullshit is true, then i completely understand. mental health is - it's much more important than work, ok? i get that."

ellie hummed softly, seemingly unconvinced. henrik softened. "perle," he murmured. "did you - did you ever wonder why i took so many breaks from work myself?"

she blinked, but before she could say a word, parker called him over again. "come on, we don't have all day!" he cried, and henrik finally ducked into the car, watching ellie step back.

"i'll call you this time," henrik promised. "i swear."

she said nothing, but the corner of her mouth twitched. henrik sat back in his seat, breathing deeply.

"hecate golf club, here we come," parker told him. henrik craned round to see ellie out the window. she was standing in the driveway still, but she was smiling softly.

-

the drive to hecate was rather awkward, especially given that lucas was their driver.

"are you like, the official chauffeur of hecate?" marvin asked sarcastically from the back seat. chase had called shotgun, and was awkwardly tapping his seat with his nails as lucas drove.

"kinda, actually!" lucas said cheerfully. "my main magic specialty is shields and protection, after all. i make a good chauffer."

"really?" chase said, looking up at lucas with wide eyes. "marvin can do protection spells and stuff, is that what you do?"

"kinda," lucas said again. "marvin here is a very skilled magician - one of the best i've seen. he can probably do the spells better than me, not gonna lie." he laughed, and marvin sunk lower in his seat, glaring out the window and listening to the other two chatter on and on.

he wasn't sure how chase was so calm, given what they'd just heard. everything was falling apart and jackie was partially responsible - marvin refused to believe it. a few people acting odd and a strange magic smell wasn't exactly the end of the world. not only that, but the possibility that henrik could be in danger made marvin feel sick, and anti had fucking drained his phone before he could finish the call. god, he hoped he was ok. "are we nearly there?" marvin interrupted. "i can barely see out the bloody windows, and i'm tired of having anti on my shoulder."

marvin shoved anti off to accentuate his point. anti, half conscious, groaned and weakly batted at marvin's legs before slumping against the car door.

"nearly there, yeah," lucas told him. "miss kamata asked me personally to take you there. it must be big stuff. is it about your brother?"

marvin hesitated. "yeah," he mumbled. "i guess."

when they drove up to the parking lot, chase peered through the window curiously. "so many cars," he noticed. "and people. i thought this wasn't a real golf club?"

"it's not," lucas said, parking the car in an empty space. "a bunch of this is all illusions, to keep up the pretense of this being an active organization. well, it is an active organization, but not… a normal, active golf club. that's it. yeah."

"while do you act as a golf club?" chase asked. "like, out of everything you could choose…"

"because it's easier to hide," lucas said. the car stopped fully, the locks on the doors clicking open. "no one important notices an expensive golfing place. that's why they chose this area to base it in too, i think. not only is this one of the more magical areas of the city, but it's subtle. blends in with all the other rich people shit."

"so some parts of the city are more magical than others?" chase asked. he and lucas stepped out of the car, leaving marvin and anti in the backseat. marvin frowned - chase knew all this stuff, why was he asking?

"yep!" lucas said, flashing chase a grin. "especially in brighton. brighton is one of the more magical places of the world. mostly cause there was a resurgence of magic here in the last few years. no one knows why, but it's good for us. our branch of hecate is pretty powerful, considering."

marvin rolled his eyes. "hey, can someone help with anti, please?" he called. the two men startled, like they'd forgotten he was there.

"oh - oh, shit, sorry!" chase spluttered, turning bright red. he and lucas helped marvin to get anti out the car, and together they dragged him inside.

two magicians were waiting for them at the door. "mcloughlin?" one woman asked, and marvin nodded. anti moaned softly, stirring and attempting to straighten himself.

"miss kamata asked us to take the sick one to our medbay," said a man with purple hair. "she'll speak with him later. you're to come upstairs to her office so she can fill you in on the current situation."

"my brother's coming here," marvin said. "his name is henrik von schneeplestein. looks just like us but - shorter hair than all of us, uh, with a streak of grey. glasses. he's hurt, i think. will you keep a lookout for him?"

the magicians exchanged glances. "we'll see what we can do," the woman told him. she gestured for him to follow. "come on, we'll take you to her."

some other magicians took anti from marvin's arms to help him along to the medbay while they walked through the halls. marvin had seen it all before, but chase was in awe, craning his head back to look. "woah!" he cried, spinning on the spot. "this place is epic!"

"it's under an illusion," the male magician told him. "to all those without magic blood, it's just a normal place. it's a risk to mask it that way, as those with evil intent could theoretically discover us through that, but we have other ways of hiding such things. besides, we help those with magic. do you have magic, young man?"

chase shook his head sadly. "i wish," he said longingly. "i've always wanted to do magic."

"but you can see through our illusions," the woman said, perplexed. "you have magic blood."

"just from my brothers," chase said casually. "marvin does a lot of miscellaneous spells, stuff he discovers, and jackie has photokinesis. henrik can heal minor injuries as well, i'm pretty sure."

"a healer?" the magicians look at each other again. "we don't have many of those. i think your brother could be a useful asset to hecate."

"wait, wait, wait," marvin interrupted. he moved between the magicians and his younger brother, holding his hands up. "you're not here to fucking recruit my brothers, especially not the ones who aren't here." he shot chase a look, and chase shrank under his gaze. "we probably shouldn't talk about that stuff right now anyway."

they continued up the stairs in silence.

"sorry, marvin," chase mumbled to him. "didn't mean to say too much. i'm not used to all this."

marvin just sighed. "don't mention jamie," was all he said in response.

they were taken to kazuki's door and the man went to knock, but the door swung open almost as soon as his knuckles graced the wood. "thank you alana, zack," came kazuki's voice from inside, and the doors quickly shut behind them.

"kazuki," marvin said cooly, standing straight. "explain what's going on, please. what's happening to the people?"

"hello to you too, marvin," kazuki said. she was standing in front of her desk, wearing a red suit with her hair loose around her shoulders. she nodded at the other two men with him. "chase brody. lucas. good to see you two. lucas, thank you for driving them here."

"my pleasure, miss kamata," lucas said with a smile and an awkward hand twirl. "shall i go?"

kazuki considered. "do you wish for him to stay?" she asked. the question was directed at marvin, but chase answered.

"yes, please," he said, giving lucas a smile. lucas smiled back, surprised, and chase turned back to kazuki confidently. "i like this guy."

kazuki's lips upturned, and suddenly the four of them were sitting in an odd circle next to her desk. there were no seats under them, just what felt like solid air. "cool," chase breathed, and he giggled. kazuki tittered softly at his amazed reaction before turning serious again.

"so let's talk about your brother," she started. "we know he stole your magic - the black magic spells you discovered."

"i never performed them," marvin said quickly. "i just found them and never would have -"

"yes, we've been through this," kazuki sighed. she shifted in her invisible air chair, possibly using magic to make it more comfortable. "but here's the thing. we... know of the organization he sold it to."

marvin turned to look at chase and lucas, who both looked surprised. "we do?" lucas said uncertainly.

"let me rephrase that. the higher ups of hecate know," kazuki said. she leaned back onto the desk behind her, blue eyes scrutinizing their reactions. "the leaders of each branch around the world."

"this is a worldwide problem?" marvin said. rage suddenly rose in his chest like boiling water. "why did i never know? i was practically top of hecate when i was with you!"

kazuki raised an eyebrow. "were you?" she said flatly. "even your ex boyfriend was higher ranking than you."

chase piped up while marvin spluttered indignantly. "there are rankings in hecate?"

"in a way," hecate told him. "but that's a conversation for another day. this other organization…" she sighed. "they were once part of hecate."

no one said anything. marvin blinked rapidly, mouth hanging open, but couldn't summon any words. kazuki continued. "hecate was originally a rebel organization founded by british magicians in 1735, when the witchcraft act was passed by parliament. you don't need all the history, though. magic was highly disliked by many back then, is all you need. we named ourselves "restitutio", latin for "restoration." our cause spread. we took in magicians and everyone who did magic and trained them. we hid. but some of us did not want to hide. some of us… turned to darker ways of life."

there was a dramatic pause. chase cleared his throat and opened his mouth, but didn't say anything. lucas sniffed loudly. marvin tapped his foot against the floor.

kazuki twirled her hand absentmindedly. a few trinkets floated off her desk and round her hand. "some of them wanted to fight. didn't want to keep our magic hidden. they… did many horrible things. people died. many of them. this was near the end of the 1700s, and many of the original values of restitutio had been lost." she took a breath, glancing up at her hands. "eventually, we, the hecate side of restitutio, took as much dark magic as we could and the others left. it was more recently that things began to change."

"what was the change?" lucas asked.

"there were a few," kazuki said. "all happening within a few years. first off, we discovered that the darker half of us had been hiding for years, cultivating dark magic by infiltrating our ranks. then, around the same time, magic itself changed. it seemed it learned to hide itself, through a barrier we called the veil."

"i didn't know all this," marvin muttered. then he raised his voice. "is this another thing only higher ups know?"

"you should know about the veil," kazuki said. "it hides our magic from nonmag eyes. it was discovered a few years before the dark organization."

"and.. when were these discovered?" chase said, voice low. he had a strange look on his face, and didn't turn to look at marvin.

"well, the veil was discovered on, i believe, october 10th of 2014," kazuki said, seemingly not noticing how marvin and chase jolted. "and we found the first traces of the black magic on october 31st of 2016. we thought it was a halloween prank of sorts, at first - are you two ok?"

chase shook his head rapidly, bouncing on his air seat and waving his hands, slapping his thighs lightly. "we're fine," he said firmly. "fuck, we're fine - what does jackie have to do with this? where does he tie in?"

kazuki frowned, though didn't comment. "his magic… is unnatural. you say he's a user of photokinesis?" the brothers nodded, and kazuki took a breath. "that's not good. photokinesis is a branch of light magic. whatever magic the organization gave him - i'm sorry for always calling it that, it doesn't have a name that we know of - we don't know what that magic is. it's dark, and it's corrupting him."

"it comes from a necklace," chase said. "does that mean anything?"

kazuki swore under her breath. "it could be… we'll talk about that later. here's the important point."

she leaned forward, eyes cold. "the magic in him is fighting for power. and he clearly has never been trained in controlling either branch of magic. and ever since the explosion in that motel in new romney, the veil has been… breaking."

the silence was deafening. marvin felt like it was crushing him, his breaths coming quicker with the effort of staying upright. "could be a coincidence," he said, but his voice was very small. "it can't be… breaking, what do you mean -"

"the two worlds are trying to collide and for some reason they're physically unable to now," kazuki said. "he's tearing a hole in the veil, in the barrier between magic and… normality, i suppose."

marvin was about to finally say something - he wasn't sure what, just something - when a man burst into the room. zack, the purple haired magician from earlier, was gasping and panting for breath, trying to force out words.

"zack," kazuki said, narrowing her eyes and standing. the air chairs under marvin and the others lifted them up onto their feet and promptly dissolved underneath them. "this better be important."

"it - it is, miss kamata," he wheezed. "we've been breached. one of our own has been taken."

-

it all happened so fast.

parker dropped henrik off at the gates of hecate, not even heading into the car park. "see you soon, schneeplestein! come visit, i'm sure molly would love to see you," he said with a dazed grin, eyes unfocused. henrik stepped out of the car and closed the door, smiling nervously at the doctor's strange expression.

"are you alright, parker?" he asked with a small laugh. "you are acting very strange."

"what? just - just fine!" parker exclaimed. he didn't look at henrik. "go do your… golf. i'll be seeing you."

henrik swallowed, straightening as much as he could with his injured leg. "yes," he mumbled. "i'm sure you will."

parker's grin was far too wide. he turned the car, preparing to drive off down the road, when the car glitched and disappeared.

henrik stood in absolute shook for a moment.

the car glitched. and disappeared. it had glitched in a burst of static and vanished completely, leaving nothing behind. not parker. not anything.

ok, so henrik was hallucinating. the magic aaron had hit him with was making him hallucinate. he blinked and turned away, suddenly aware of his head pounding, feeling slightly sick. there was a strange smell in the air. something wrong. he sniffed, realizing it was a very specific scent. like… smoke. like smoke through an open window.

"henrik?"

he jumped, eyes focusing on the man in front of him. as soon as they did, he soured. "raymond," he said with slight disdain. "fancy seeing you here."

raymond snorted. "i work here, friend," he said, sarcasm in the last word. "what are -" his brown eyes widened as he took in henrik's wounds. "oh, bloody hell!"

henrik grabbed the man's arms for support. "don't feel well," he managed. "ich glaube, ich könnte krank sein…"

he stumbled back and promptly threw up on the concrete. raymond's noises of disgust reached his ears through his retching, and as he wiped his mouth he just managed to decipher "fuck, dude, you got vom on my fuckin' suit!"

"sorry," henrik said weakly. his vision was beginning to blur, blackness creeping into the corners of his eyes. "g'hit… car, it glitch…"

"i am not looking after my ex's sick brother," raymond said disgustedly. he reached up and tapped a device behind his ear. "hey, some guy down here is sick. probably a bad hex or something. i dunno, man, it doesn't look good. physical too. leg, back. should i send him to the medbay?"

the more the man spoke, the dizzier henrik felt. someone else was talking to him. he thought he couldn't hear what they were saying.

" - here, come inside," raymond was saying. "we'll check you over. alana, open the spell for a sec so i can get him in."

henrik passed out then. but later, people filled him in on what had happened.

the spells on the gates to the car park has briefly been lowered to let henrik inside. but the second they were down was all that was needed. two men had burst in, ripping through the air with magic that reeked of smoke and something else, something unplaceable. the attack hadn't even really been an attack; it had lasted maybe a minute. when henrik woke in the medbay, he was informed that raymond had been taken, kidnapped, captured, and that was that.

it all happened so fast. so fast.

not only that, but the magicians didn't know what the magic in henrik's body was. dark stuff, they said. incurable, at least by them, they said. it must have come from the same two men who had broken into hecate, they said. they thought black magic didn't exist anymore, they said.

henrik was numb to it all.

"i'm sorry i wasn't there!" marvin had said when he came to see him, chase and another blonde man in tow. "i tried to contact you, anti drained my phone - henny, i'm so sorry, i shouldn't have left you alone!"

henrik hurt. jackie was truly gone. hecate had been breached. a man had beem captured. henrik didn't say a word.

fuck, it had all happened so fast.

-

"you did it, babe!"

"we did it! fuck, it was far easier than i expected. i can say this now, but i was pretty certain we weren't going to manage it."

jackie laughed at aaron's words, kissing him before drawing back with a grin on his face. "honestly? me neither," he giggled. "but look at what we got! far, far better than i could have hoped - oh, he doesn't like that, does he?"

the man chained to the chair in front of them narrowed his eyes, rage burning in them. jackie bent down in front of him, grinning wide. "been a while since i last saw you, raymond! when was it? god, i can't remember. was it the time that you came round demanding marvin paid back your money? was it the time marvin caught you in bed with some fucking nomag twink and you and him had that screaming match? was it the time we saw you in the street with your new boyfriend and marvin started crying so i nearly hit you?" jackie flicked raymond's nose, still giggling like a child. "god, every day since then i've wished i'd beaten the fucking shit out of you. i used to be disgusted with myself for thinking that kind of stuff too, you know? but now… i think i've embraced it."

he tapped a sleek black dagger on raymond's face, just on top of the gag shoved in his mouth. "you like my knife? my boyfriend got it for me. this is him, by the way. say hi, aaron!"

aaron waved from the corner where he was leaning, resting on a blue baseball bat. raymond's eyes were wild with fear and anger, and he shook his head to try and get the blade away.

"what's that?" jackie said, pretending to listen like a kid playing with a doll. "you want to talk? certainly!" he slashed the knife down the man's face, cutting through the gag but the skin underneath as well. raymond screamed in pain, but cut himself off as quickly as he could, biting down on his lip and panting.

"bitch," raymond spat. "what are you? a demon? what type of magic is this?" blood dribbled down his chin. "and - ha, why did you break in? idiot, i would have left anyway - do you not understand how high security hecate is? you got in, and all you did was, what, knock out your sick brother and kidnap me?"

jackie leaned back, sticking out his lip and looking upset. then his smirk returned like it had never left, and he threw back his head to roar with laughter. aaron giggled from the corner before coming to stand next to his boyfriend.

"oh - oh, raymond, no," jackie giggled, wiping at his eyes. "oh, you think we - you think we just grabbed you and left? nooo, no no no. time is an illusion, my bastard friend!"

"we got so much done!" aaron said joyfully. "all thanks to jackie's wonderful brother -"

"oh, stop it, mo chroí, we couldn't have done anything without your lovely magic!" jackie elbowed aaron and the two dissolved into peals of laughter while raymond watched with a forced neutral expression.

"what do you want with me?" he said, trying to keep his voice flat. "i don't know what information you think i know, but it's nothing good. i'm not as high ranked as you might think, i swear, i -"

"shut up now, ok?" aaron suddenly interrupted. "we were having a moment there and you ruined it. fuck, they're never polite, are they, jackson?"

"i don't know, this is only my second prisoner!" jackie joked. then he rolled his eyes. "and we don't fucking care what rank you are, we just snatched the first guy we saw. it just so happened to be my brother's filthy, cheating whore ex." he leaned forward, right into raymond's face. "you're my ticket to a better life, bitch. look at that. you have a fucking use after all."

jackie turned to aaron, gripping his arm and turning him to face him. "they're really gonna love him, aren't they?" he cooed. "will he be good enough?"

"course he will, babe," aaron said. "he's hecate, he - what does he do, teleport? he teleports. that's interesting, they might like that."

"'they?'" raymond shouted angrily. he struggled against his chains, grunting. "who is 'they?' why can't i teleport? is this - is this about what i did to marvin? i never meant to hurt him!"

without warning, jackie slapped raymond right across the face. "i already fucking told you that it's nothing to do with you," he snapped, dropping the soft tone from before. "i saw you and took you. we kind of had other priorities at that moment. you fucking got it? jesus shit, dude, not everything's about you - although, i know you think it is, huh?" he hit raymond again, sending him reeling. "do you know how many nights i spent holding marvin while he cried, feeling worthless, depressed - you meant so much to him but you are nothing but a repulsive -"

"jackson, calm," aaron soothed, taking his face in hand. "you can't hurt him too bad. they'll get upset, it'll show a lack of control. that's something they look for. do you want to be accepted or not?"

"accepted?" raymond cried, voice high in pitch. "are you selling me to a cult or something?"

"nope," aaron said cheerfully. "much worse."

jackie growled in raymond's direction. "fucking bastard. the organization better see self control from me if it means i can't beat the living daylights outta this guy."

"they will," aaron reassured. "they will. then we can properly be together, and you can't -"

jackie suddenly screamed, a howl of complete agony that made raymond throw his head back like it would save him. jackie clawed at his chest, doubling over as his whole form… his form, his body… raymond cringed. the man's form was flickering, like a glitching computer screen. and as he watched, raymond started to smell something. a stinking, magical smell so thick it almost made him choke. it smelled like smoke. like smoke creeping through an open window.

"jackson, jackson - fuck, let's get out of here," aaron said, pushing jackie out the door of the small room raymond was being kept in. aaron whipped back round to look at him as he left, glaring. "get comfortable," he said. "you might be in here a while."

the door shut behind them, leaving raymond cold with the taste of copper and smoke on his tongue.

[stylishanachronism]

So uh, this Got Long, but here, have a couple of thousand words about Edér's narrative (and like... the game structure as a whole, I tried to stay on topic but I've got a couple of dozen essays somewhere (some are even cited because that's what I do with my life) about this nonsense so.) and also his character development, because those aren't actually the same thing. It is probably the Worst essay I have ever written, and that's saying something.

Anyways.

Edér's character thread (not his character development per se but the thing that permits it if I'm making any sense whatsoever) in both games is very much both 'grappling with religion' and 'grappling with choices he didn't know he was making' but also 'grappling with choices he made based on incomplete information' and the consequences of all three. (Honestly, speaking as somebody who, if I had a character thread, it'd be the same damn one, I was really pleased by how well they handled it in both games (the fact it’s not supposed to be his narrative in Deadfire nonwithstanding). Most series don't, but that's a completely different kettle of fish.) 

So like, in the first game, when you find him he's basically stuck at the point where he feels utterly betrayed (by his god, by his church, by his community, even by his family, sort of), but also like nothing he did mattered in the short or long run, and despite his best efforts, every time he's tried to help he's just made things worse, so there's really nothing he can or should do, and even if he did, it wouldn't help or matter, so why should he bother? Like he's flat out 'yeah, they're going to kill me next, just killing time 'till that happens, what of it?', which is a hell of a lead off, given you don't find out the rest of it until later and the fact that despite all that, he’s not particularly suicidal. And he's so desperate to feel like he's doing something he wanders off with the first wild-eyed possibly-crazy definitely-sicker-than-a-dog person he comes across, without even squaring up his debts or closing up his house or quitting his metaphorical job, (Obsidian show me your setting bible, I need to know what the Dyrwood exports and if ring lace isn't on that list somewhere I'll make every single developer eat the ring shawl I haven't knit, I have Opinions about this, but also, kettle, fish.), just because they gave him the thinnest, most ridiculous scrap of a hope that he might get answers that make the rest of it okay! And he doesn't! He never gets those answers! 

...Well, sort of. He doesn't get the answer to 'What did Woden, the brother I idolize above all else, know that I didn't?' for vaguely bullshit reasons (look I'm just saying if I can articulate 'yeah, that was really Eothas, and yeah, Woden basically had a fucking pentacostal moment and then got his brain steamrolled' (...more on that later, that's actually relevant), the Watcher ought to have been able to do the same, which changes the lack of answers to 'why didn't Eothas just... do something to prove it was him' and/or 'if it was that obvious, why did it come to that?', which are the questions that the narrative's actually concerned with (and also sort of get addressed in Deadfire, but More On That Later), Obsidian Where is Your Setting Bible I Have Questions), but he does get to come to terms with what he actually did, Not Knowing What Woden Knew (and it's a solid ending either way! I liked the consequences! Either he tries to make amends for what he sees as a dereliction of duty, not just to his god but to his community on a spiritual level (the Night Market ending), or he says 'fuck you, I failed but so did you, Eothas' and he sets out make amends for what he sees a dereliction of duty to his community and his community alone, on a practical level (the Mayor ending) and either way he's no longer stuck feeling worthless, and he has a purpose again, more accurately has learned to forge his own purpose, and he's good at whatever it is he's doing!)

And in the meantime, he's been doing good shit! Lasting shit! Even when it all goes to hell he's making progress, which is excellent for his state of mind (and you see that reflected in not only how he treats the Watcher but also how he reacts to shit like giant setbacks (Maerwald! What Happened to Woden! That time Defiance Bay was on fire! Hell even the wolf encounter in White March, that's something Gilded Vale Edér would have wanted to do, but probably wouldn't have been able to bring himself to do or would have but like, Knowing one or both of them would die for it, and by the earliest point you can hit that, he can just… do it) and this is the part where I do not talk about romance novel tropes because that development is also where he starts being the Romantic Lead for realsies. It’s very interesting! But this essay is trying to stay focused.)

Anyways that's… a lot of words to say the heart of his first game character arc is that he learns to live with what happened without ever knowing why, for better or for worse, it did, learns to forgive himself (and everyone else involved, more or less) and any way you cut it, he makes his own purpose, and he ends up okay at the end. 

(Going off on a momentary tangent, one of the things I really liked about the first game is how focused it was? Like all the quests, even the stupid ones, asked serious moral questions about various things, and made you stick to the answers. I've talked before about the Dyrford questline, which is ugly on every front, but doesn't pull any of those punches either, and doesn't have a clear 'right' answer, but they're really all like that to some extent, and especially the character quests. Like, Edér's is about religion and forgiveness, Aloth's is about authority and 'divine right v free will' so to speak, Grieving Mother's is about doing horrible things with the very best of intentions and living with that, Sagani's is about deciding what's important enough to hold on to when all else is lost, etc. etc., and even the tiny ones have questions like ‘if murder is the only way out of an abusive relationship, is that the right answer?’ like there's no quest you could cut without actual ramifications to the overall storyline or the worldbuilding, and that was Great.)

...Which brings us to Deadfire, and this is where it might get a little weird? I need to stress that my first playthrough was bugged to hell, my second was... almost as bad, tbh, and I didn't manage to finish any of the DLC (mostly due to charming things like invisible indestructible final bosses, for example, which still have not been fixed), and by the time I hit the third go round (because it turns out turn based is a ton more fun) I was extremely confused about the actual order of events, due to the aforementioned bugs, so some of the conclusions I've drawn might be a bit off base. (Also Deadfire suffers from sequelitis, by which I mean it has a bunch of internal and, uh, intertextual contradictions of established canon, and it’s not particularly tightly plotted, among other things. I still really liked it! But the worldbuilding's cracked a little bit.)

So Deadfire opens with Eothas bursting out of the earth like a really big chick in a really small egg or something, killing a lot of people in the process, and Edér going 'oh shit, my god just more than half murdered my bff!' and, touching back on what @brightoncemore said earlier, racing off after the statue he’s piloting on basically a hope and a prayer, Watcher in tow, on the half chance this might save their life. It's a hell of a thing, but it means that the opening of his Deadfire arc is 'Dear Eothas, why the Fuck do you keep doing this (to me)?', and depending on which of his endings he's coming off of, this is either a further betrayal from someone he'd managed, not to forgive, but to move on from, or a further betrayal from someone he had managed to forgive, and whose forgiveness in turn he'd spent a solid five years seeking. It is not 'huh, wonder what my old flame's up to?' (not that Elafa was his old flame, but more on that later, and alternately if it is the old flame is Eothas and the answer is ‘being a casually murderous dick for inscrutable reasons’), and nor is it a 'my biological clock is ticking and I didn't manage to adopt Vela properly', which to be honest is what I got out of his bit of his actual personal quest, more or less. (Spoilers: his personal quest is actually Bearn’s personal quest, and he’s not even a recruitable companion, which is rude considering Tekēhu, among other companions.)

What happens to the Watcher is rather more intimately tied up in his character arc in Deadfire, which is where the real trouble comes from; the developers Did Not Want the romance, so they kept trying to walk it back (remember I don’t find this particularly tightly plotted), while all of his character development was tied up in the same tropes that make him the Romantic Lead (we aren’t even going to mention the fucking wedding), and frankly it’s a mess.

So you’ve got the shoe-horned in ‘I’m head over heels for someone I literally never mentioned before, whoops she’s dead and her kid, who might be my kid (spoilers: he’s not, the timeline doesn’t work, not that the timeline works anywhere ever), is going to do something Really Stupid’ thing that his Named personal quest, which is just barely even about him to begin with, while meanwhile he’s yelling at gods and making the same big sweeping decisions from the first game as he gets more information about what did/might have/could have happened. Like, there’s one revelation in the base game (Eothas is the reason for his rad magic armor, and despite Edér feeling betrayed and abandoned for almost two decades(!), he really was paying close attention to everything Edér did, and I at least got the impression that part of the reason Eothas is trying to make amends is because of what happened to Edér due to his actions, like he’s here to ‘help’ kith in general, and Edér in particular, and the Watcher makes a particularly convenient tool to do so), and then BoW and FS each have another (that instead of St. Waidwen, it might have been St. Edér, and it was pretty much the flip of a coin that decided it the way it was, and also that Waidwen didn’t know what he was doing but he did it with intent anyways, so they were both betrayed on multiple levels (I left the first game convinced Eothas had just steamrolled Waidwen’s brain the same way he’d steamrolled Woden’s, so it was very interesting to discover that that didn’t precisely happen), and also that there was a distinct difference between Waidwen, who theoretically went into this with his eyes open, and Woden, who didn’t. There’s a whole series of essays in that alone, but again, kettle, fish.), and what ought to have been his ‘defining choice’ (v whatever happened to Bearn), is his whole thing at Magran’s Teeth, where he demands Eothas be better (which, if it had been his personal quest, could have been reactive on ‘I was right, you’re just as bad as the rest’ if he comes to the conclusion Eothas sees all their lives as playthings, and he doesn’t actually care he just wants to be Right, or the canonical ‘Do better you fucker’ if he comes to the conclusion that Eothas just Doesn’t Get It, with a reprise at Ukaizo, because I loved the narrative callbacks that actually exist and it would have been a really good place for one.), instead of what we got (I went and looked them up, what the fuck), which was… completely backwards for his character, holy shit. Either he goes and camps on Elafa’s grave because her kid was a moron (well… kettle, fish, here is another essay and this one’s already too long, we don’t need a discussion of cults and Bearn’s equal desire for a purpose, which is a narrative foil they could have done something with but never did), or he decides to parent this kid who he firstly doesn’t know, secondly doesn’t know him, and thirdly in a place that’s been pretty wrecked that he’s completely unfamiliar with for what’s seriously no reason (Bearn is…. arguably 17? 18? The timeline never works, but that’s about where he’s written, also kettle, fish, arguments that don’t go here.) since the boy is almost an adult to begin with, none of which has anything to do with his need to have a purpose, or the fact he explicitly follows the Watcher around as part of that, and they’ve gone back to the Dyrwood either way. Like it’s just… such a reversal from his growth in the first game, basically dropping him back where he started at the very very beginning, mired in hopeless, apathetic guilt over something that he actually had fuck all to do with this time around.

Anyways, the whole thing where the developers rooted his endstate choices in something that, to be really frank, could have been deleted without doing fuck all to the narrative (remember how all the quests in the first games were important? Yeah, no, a solid chunk of the quests serve little to no real purpose in Deadfire, even the ones I love.) is unfortunately a Thing. Tekehu’s lack of a quest is the Watershaper’s Guild questline, it straight up should have been his personal quest, he’s got the only solid one in the game, Xoti’s feels like it was supposed to be a callback to Grieving Mother’s, but in reverse, and while I loved it, it doesn’t go anywhere, not for her character (either she does a shitty thing for a good reason and goes crazy and can’t regret her choices, or she does a good thing for terrible reasons and doesn’t learn from that either, so far as I can tell) or for the narrative as a whole (there is also an essay about Gaun’s place in the worldbuilding here, kettle, fish), Seraphen either asks the important questions and Gets It, or he doesn’t and he… doesn’t, and either way it’s literally never addressed again, Maia’s has backwards consequences for some reason, which completely defeats the purpose of a character development quest on top of being basically Sir Not Appearing in this Game to begin with, Aloth’s doesn’t really do anything for his development either (his is all elsewhere in the game, too), and as much highly appreciated narrative context Pallegina’s provided, it didn’t make any sense for her character where it was (in either state) in Deadfire, not to mention it was confusing as hell. (Also, narratively speaking? Rekke should have had one, as should Ydwin, on the bias (she’s bugged to shit, and therefore keeps vanishing from my playthroughs, but what I’ve managed to see of her opens a lot of doors, so to speak). They’re both more plot important than some of the *actual* companions, and it’s terrible.)

And like, I get it, Deadfire had a *lot* more moving parts than Pillars did, having character quests that were any more timeline/location dependent would have been a terrible idea, it’s already so easy to fuck up the order of events without even trying, simply because you can just travel anywhere at any point just by picking a direction, and I have the very strong feeling that a lot of the existant character arcs were not intended to be as important as they ended up being, but still. Still. I expected a lot more out of… pretty much everything.

Speaking of: the very last sequence of the game. Eothas, doing the thing. Breaking the wheel. Murdering the world. Ending the Game. Whatever you want to call it.

Dear Obsidian: what, pray tell, the Actual Fuck.

One of the things that I got out of the first game, like not even extrapolating it’s right there in black and white in the text, is that the Wheel? Co-opted by the Engwithans, who essentially bolted a tap onto it to power their gods, but who neither invented nor really affected it in any way, shape, or form. Like, I think it’s Iovara who says that the gods are built on an existing system, parasites on a natural process? I’m not citing this and I don’t remember, but it’s in the last sequence of that game somewhere, and I’m 99% sure it’s one of her revelations. Anyways, smashing the physical wheel should have done fuck all to the metaphysical process, even with the Valians eating all the adra, like the question of ‘what do we do now???’ should have been about ‘how do we keep the gods alive, and do we even want to?’ not ‘oh shit, how do we keep the fucking world running’, that’s not the thematically relevant question. Like the game spends the whole time asking nitty gritty questions on the theme of ‘do we need the gods or do they need us?’ (Pallegina’s whole quest, for example, everything about the godlikes ever, a solid chunk of the underpinning of all three DLCs, the weird shit in Cignath Mor, like it’s woven through e v e r y t h i n g.) The fact that the final deciding question is instead ‘who gets the leftover power’ (and that you can’t talk Eothas out of the thing, or tell him to tip it back into the wheel in like, a useful way) honestly felt like a cop out to me. Like suddenly the narrative weight is on a random god and/or group of people who spent most of the game squabbling over stupid shit while the Watcher tried to save the world again, this time with Real Actual Obvious signs of shit going down. Like in the first game? The Watcher doesn’t figure it out until almost the end of the game, but what you stumble into stopping is both highly subtle and *really* awful on every level, and the consequences are going to be worse, but nobody knows anything about it and you’ve only got the clues you have because you made a bunch of stupid decisions a dozen lifetimes ago, like, you don’t have proof and there’s no way to get it until everything’s over and done with. Deadfire? People have seen Eothas! He’s wandering around, wrecking ships and causing tsunamis and basically being Obvious as Fuck that he’s the thing causing all these problems, and letting him keep going is a Bad Idea, And Yet. Literally nobody in the entire fucking game can focus on the real problem for five seconds until it’s too late, and even then they can’t let go long enough to fix it. And yes, I know, the developers intended it to be more politically minded, they’re not focused on Eothas because he’s far away and this particular thing blowing up in their faces is right here, but…. that’s not how it worked as a narrative? Not even a little? Eothas is on top of your super secret laboratory and he ate your lighthouse or whatever, but that’s not important right now because oh no there’s a different lighthouse that’s a weird color (yes I know the diseased adra pillar is not a lighthouse give me the metaphor) really, really doesn’t look like being politically minded, frankly it looks like, well, real life right this second, and let me tell you, if I had a god I was hell bent on yelling at for being a dick telling me I had to pick who ended up in charge of the fate of the world, I’d be yelling him into not doing that using any trick I had to. And obviously that wasn’t applicable when Deadfire came out, but the sentiment remains.

And what complicates this is that I loved most of Ukaizo. Like up until the final two minutes I found it really narratively fulfilling, more or less (I remain cross enough about said last two minutes it’s rather scrambled my actual impressions of the rest, but I remember being very excited), and then that happened (and the game crashed because I had technically defied the gods again I guess) and then I was very cross.

If this was a real essay, I’d have something to say here about looking at the narrative as it is, not how I’d like it to be, or maybe about how Edér ends up with multiple narrative foils that literally never see any use, and that’s another essay right there. If I were editing this into something readable, I might have actually come to a point at some point, and I could talk about that instead, but I guess I’m just going to say that I wish the developers had owned what they’d built, instead of trying to head it off. Like, cheers, you built one of the more rewarding romances in modern fiction, tell me more about Edér’s relationship with god, don’t murder a perfectly good female character to give him something to be sad about so you don’t have to acknowledge that.