#also are skins canon to the lore or are they made purely for the fun of it
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The idea of Diggers, a playable character, having a Manus Vindictae skin is kinda funny to me.
"Alright, Diggers. We're gonna beat up some Manus Vindictae butt and you - a member of the Manus Vindictae - will be joining us."
#reverse 1999#reverse 1999 diggers#diggers#manus vindictae#i really wanna buy his skin but i am saving up for papi pavia#also are skins canon to the lore or are they made purely for the fun of it
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Hello again. I spent a good deal of time trying to write down a translation of that account’s deleted blog post, but then I realized it would take to long to do properly (and because I was trying to properly show it in English). I hope you forgive me for showing instead a shortened version (and this is still quite long, so I apologize again):
Pros: graphics are greatly improved and the cutscenes look beautiful. The gameplay is very entertaining and the level of difficulty is challenging in a good way. There is a lot to do around the base camp, and its changing locations add to the excitement. It’s good to have characters like Rodrigue and Jeritza as playable cast members (especially Rodrigue, he enjoys high popularity in Japan). Byleth speaking out loud and having supports with Jeralt is pleasant and highly prized. It’s good to see the rest of the cast show up in cutscenes and cgs to show their own parts in the story.
Unfortunately this is where the pros end…
The reviewer has maintained a blog to criticize the mistakes and issues in the fodolan series since launch but did so out of love. The reviewer’s stance is that Musou storyline totally butchers the spirit and integrity of Houses
Self-described as a lore purist who at least enjoyed being able to ”fill in the blanks” for everything left unsaid in Houses. Musou introduces a lot of information that is contradictory to established canon such as House Bergliez with its crest of cichol, Kronya’s attitude being the first sign of something wrong instead of that being Monica’s true personality. Monica herself is controversial, she’s seen as good yuri fanservice and a loyal vassal but others dislike how she is now part of ”the Emperor’s loyal court” (Hubert, Dorothea, now Monica follow Edelgard to praise her constantly).
Arval as the antithesis to Sothis went nowhere, was ultimately not considered of much interest by the fans.
Sothis having her memories but no interactions with her children and Rhea angered many people. The reviewer notes they also made her sound crueler and haughtier in English
Shez is a fun and likeable character, though fans ultimately care more about the established cast.
Eyebrows were raised over why pertinent lore the game wants players to consider canon is now suddenly in a Musou spin off instead of the main game. Suspicions were raised over Kusakihara and Iwata as the main scenario planners (this is the term general used for those in charge of the story scripts): is this the story they originally meant to tell, but couldn’t because of the rush to finish the deadline [in 2019]?
Further suspicions over the Nintendo Life/Famitsu interviews confirming the canonicity of both, which is unheard of for any Musou spinoff. Musou is meant first and foremost as a purely fanservice vehicle, and it’s how people buy those games at all
“In fact, the game seems to struggle with wanting to take itself seriously, and also tell players to enjoy the fanservice, while winking at the camera”
More suspicions, now towards Westerners. The reviewer notes the large size of the English speaking fandom…as well as the strange changes made for the international releases of previous FE titles (censored cg art and dialogue in Awakening, censored dialogue in Fates plus the LGBT controversy). There are concerns that the development team took to heart too many complaints over previous games’ characters, writing, settings, scenarios.
Reviewer casts aspersions over English fandom as vulgar yet strangely puritanical, constantly given to fighting, not tagging properly, the frequent interactions between fans and seiyuu so casually on social media, and generally being an unpleasant space to be in
Reviewer embedded several tweets from a few prominent English speaker FE fans showing…bad behavior basically.
The reviewer then compared them to other events like an asian fanartist who drew a Disney’s Encanto fanart being run off twitter because of perceived issues in skin coloration. They also pointed to reddit and 4chan as further evidence of bad behavior and made an explicit comparison to calling it “otaku behavior” and hoping they’re wrong about their feedback suspicions
The reviewer is pessimistic however as they explain about complaints that Fates got a Golden Route while Houses did not, and that it seems prominent in foreign fandom as a desire
“We as players understood that taking the hand of Emperor, clad in red, and wearing horns, whose own tragedy was working with the shadows while lying to Byleth (Jpn writes them together as Beretoresu since they actually share a name overseas), and as shown in the Safflower route’s ending illustration as the dark route, was meant mostly as a pleasant delusion (the term used for headcanon) and a particular fanservice. There seems to be no such distinction for foreigners.”
The review is then divided into critiquing each lord in Musou:
Edelgard’s tragic side is stripped to make her into a full-blooded Red Emperor character. This comes across as unpleasant since the reviewer feels like the scenario team is trying to trick the players with fanservice (her outfit is very youthful and cute) when it does not mesh well with her blatant agenda of conquest. In Houses at least players understood her goals as contradicting her image when she was dressed more like an adult, and had Amyr, with its menacing looks and movements. There is a great deal of confusion over why she wants to keep Rhea alive this time, yet still greatly hates the church. Her ending was nonsensical and unsatisfying and there was no reason for the Hegemon form to make an appearance
Claude. Goodness. The reviewer is incensed. Claude’s curiosity, wanting more knowledge, to learn the truth behind things, they’re gone here. His attitude towards the Kingdom comes across as condescending. He is called a hypocrite more than once. Though showing him having doubts, and expressing fears over his vulnerabilities is good, that’s negated when his actions only invite more disaster, and his worries look more like self-pity when he’s unhappy one moment, and then coldly executing another assault against the Kingdom the next. The Sreng invasion is particularly used to lambast him. There is no reason why his mistrust suddenly allows him to swallow Edelgard lying to his face or why he is suddenly so against the Church
Shahid is wasted when Claude is then shoved back into Fodla’s war. The reviewer snidely recommended watching The Lion King for better family conflicts over a throne.
Rhea is considered a lord in that she represents another faction, the Church. Rhea is quite popular in Japan and her treatment in the game is seen as insulting. Her motherly concern for Cyril’s safety is touching, but does not negate the strangeness of sacrificing herself for Edelgard against Thales, or (worse) Claude killing her. The reviewer brings up the apparent fact of the English voice director’s dislike of Rhea and his instructions for her English seiyuu to sound more harsh, violent, not as serene or dignified as in Japanese (circling back to concerns over Western involvement)
Dimitri, written surprisingly well. His arc is of a noble young king coming into his own, his friends are just as brave and amazing next to him. Unfortunately his route starts to falter in the middle, since it does not know how to strike a balance between suddenly knowing about Those Whoe Slither in the Dark and the Empire invading when both are now separately working. The powerful pathos of fighting against the girl who was once his family (and betrayed him) is gone, so it just seems like Marth fighting Hardin again. His redemption in Houses was one of the most popular things about him, and that is also gone too in Hopes…so taking both previous things into account makes Edelgard as part of his final fight seem very forced. “This is a king who is resigned to being a king, who will sadly be glad to kill his phantom, and say that his happiest moment will be on his deathbead, instead of living for his people.” Him not reaching a hand out to a helpless Edelgard is seen as cold.
Here is Byleth’s section. It is the bleakest part of the review so far and honestly made me feel really bad:
”The box art shows Byleth quite prominently, which is laughable considering her (reviewer played as Beresu for two routes and Bereto in one) almost non-existence in the story itself. The so-called rivalry pushed in [commercials and promotional work] was nothing more than an audacious lie designed to part us from nearly ¥6000 (reviewer purchased the LE box).”
The reviewer goes on to note Byleth’s high popularity and how it contradicts the magazine interviews acknowledging this. ”Is this how a [fan-favorite] is treated in other spinoffs? I can’t imagine this happening to characters like [Persona Five’s] Joker without angering fans.”
Byleth is seen as uniquely a target of particular scorn from Iwata considering their position in the game: recruiting them can be difficult and easily missed, and so means seeing Jeralt die painfully again, and absurd yet heart-wrenching retaliatory deaths of other characters. Rodrigue’s death is seen as particularly punishing, especially with dialogue from Felix and Dimitri then calling Byleth a monster and their enemy. Their death is anticlimatic yet also painful, and this level of death also unheard of for what is supposed to be a fanservice genre of games, nevermind for the former main character! In supports Jeralt laughs at the idea of Byleth becoming a teacher and calls them unqualified and Leonie still hates them.
Even when recruited, they play no further level of involvement in the story, nor do they show up in the fight against Arval that their recruitment unlocks, nor does that change the unsatisfactory route endings in any way.
The reviewer cites more suspicions and points to how Byleth is popular in Japan, but their research across English social media shows a lot of hatred for Byleth. ”Perhaps an English speaking fan wrote this game.”
”For fans of a teacher who grew close with their students, and formed bonds of cherished warmth with them in Houses, comes across as a slap in the face to see them being strangers [among the rest of the cast]”
This also carries on to other routes. If recruited for Edelgard the emperor says she feels drawn to them but nothing comes of it, but if not recruited then it means Claude recruits them and says he wants them to work together even after the war ends, but this results in both dying in Ailel. If recruited for Claude he also says he feels drawn to them but nothing else comes from it.
The dimitri one is particularly bad. I would like to stress that Dimileth is the most popular ship of Houses and in a popularity poll, Dimiresu scored first place, Dimireto second, with both varieties far outstripping any other ship (no Edelgard ship showed up in the top ten). Dimileth fans are particularly heartbroken
Considering the previous point: it seems like Koei/Iwata want to punish the players for liking Houses and Byleth, and to declare Musou, the new canon. In Musou, though the war continues, no one really dies (except maybe Claude and Rhea and Byleth and one of the other three that Byleth can kill). Nothing really terrible happens like Jeralt dying, the monastery being invaded, Rodrigue dying, Those Who Slither In the Dark are defeated. In contrast, many tragic things happen in Houses permanently for each route.
Considering the previous two points, this is especially heartbreaking for fans of Azure Moon: playing Azure Gleam means Byleth never becomes a teacher, and Dimitri keeps his eye, the whole truth of the Tragedy of Dusca is uncovered, Those Who Slither in the Dark are defeated, Dedue is never separated from Dimitri, Rodrigue and Jeralt stay alive, and so does Claude, Edelgard, and Rhea
Many Dimileth fans say their enjoyment of the ship and Houses is destroyed because they can no longer consciously think of submitting Dimitri, Dedue, Faerghus and the rest of the continent (!) to the sad events of Azure Moon when Azure Gleam clearly shows better fates for them all
A large-scale figure of Byleth is planned for release in July and is quite expensive. The reviewer calls it a poor yet expensive consolation for what is seen as the development team spitting in the fans’ eye
The reviewer concluded their blog post by saying that their enjoyment in Houses is shattered. They don’t know who to blame, either Koei or Intelligent Systems, but they know they are working on the next mainline title together, so it likely means they will stop playing Fire Emblem (they apparently started since the first games) if it means not giving KT-Intsys their money
I am sorry that this is so long. And I am sorry that this is such a negative thing to plant in your inbox. I just wanted to show information and the perspective of Japanese fans to others, since many outside of Japan don’t know what opinions are shared in those circles.
Thanks anon, and thank you for sharing other links as well (which I will keep private for their privacy).
This must have taken a lot of time, and your hard work is appreciated.
I really like these insights into other language speaking fandoms. I'm posting this for others to read as well.
<3 You are wonderful, anon, no need to apologize.
I’m going to make a post to regard these points more thoroughly. I just don’t have the time at this moment. Please forgive me if my response is inadequate to the work you put in at this time.
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Aphrodite’s Stone [Maxwell Lord x Reader] SMUT *sex pollen*
Summary: Your boss, Maxwell Lord, tasks you to acquire an important gemstone from the Smithsonian museum's annual gala, not realising the powers that it possesses and how it can possibly affect you when an accident occurs.
Rating: 18+ ONLY.
Word Count: 6k
Warnings: SMUT (sex pollen, automatic dub-con due to the nature of it being a sex pollen), female recieving oral, thigh riding, fingering, creampie, boss x employee relationship, mutual pining. No spoilers for WW84 but some slight references and mentions of canon type mythology/lore. Oh, and there's actually plot!!
Author's note: Feels like all I ever do is write for Max Lord hehe. This is my first ever sex pollen so I hope it’s okay! I tried to make it as canon-typical as I could and I’m actually really happy with the outcome. Also I haven’t written mutual pining in so long so this has been really fun!
Masterlist
"Did you get the stone?" you whispered, waltzing over to Maxwell who had been schmoozing with a few of the gala guests. He stiffened up when he heard the sweetness of your voice. Your presence always took his breath away. He cleared his throat and placed his half empty champagne glass on one of the silver trays that were getting passed around.
"No, not yet," Maxwell admitted and you sighed. "I've tried swindling the geology department but they won't budge."
"Can't imagine why," you rolled your eyes sarcastically, referencing the time earlier in the year when Max had stolen a very specific citrine stone from the Smithsonian Museum. Of course their trust in him would've been altered. Maxwell quirked an eyebrow at your brief comment and you raised your hands defensively. "Sorry sir." you looked down nervously and he nodded his head, choosing to dismiss what you'd said.
"This is where you come in," Maxwell said, clicking his tongue. Your eyes met his again with curiosity. He took your hand, carefully dragging you to a quiet corner of the party. "You can get the stone."
"Me?" you asked almost rhetorically, your eyes turning comically wide. You were his assistant. He trusted you with menial tasks such as making coffee, handing over paperwork and grabbing his mail— not acquiring some ancient artifact from a different continent.
"You can do it!" he grinned enthusiastically. You were beginning to think he was putting on his charming and persuasive television voice and you furrowed your eyebrows together unimpressed. "Carol Thomas over there, she's the director of the museum. You must make sure she doesn't see a thing. But that tall guy with the dark hair? That’s Ken, and he’s been watching you all night."
You blinked in bewilderment. "He has?" you tilted your head, looking at the man Max had pointed at.
Maxwell's gaze burned into your body as you watched the geology department interact with one another. Of course he has— Maxwell felt like saying. Every man at the damn gala had their eye on you. You looked remarkable, and you were too humble to have even noticed. He brushed off your question.
"Go over there and butter him up a little," Maxwell smirked as you turned back around to face your boss. "But not too much." he quickly added on to the end, feeling a little too defensive over you. "Find out where the stone is. Can you do that?"
"What does it look like?" you mumbled, not really liking the idea of having to flirt with a slimy looking man just to get some random rock thing.
"Ruby." Max snapped back like there was no question about it.
You looked back at Maxwell, a small gasp escaping your lips as you took in his appearance. He looked drunk with desire, and you realised how much he must've wanted that stone. Maxwell's eyes were a beautiful shade of honeyed brown that sparkled under the amber lights; they were beautiful. You felt your lips curve into a small smile of agreement and you felt Maxwell's large, ring clad hand rest on your shoulder, his touch sending a shiver down your spine. You made the decision to get the stone, knowing how much it meant to him. You hadn't even realised that the primal, hungry look that crossed his face was actually nothing but pure lust for you.
The second you walked away, Maxwell picked up his champagne glass and finished it off with one quick swing, the bitter taste of alcohol rolling down his throat. He tried to shake off these feelings he had for you, deeming it as unprofessional. He knew from the very start that it was a mistake hiring you. The moment he saw you waiting outside his office to be interviewed, was the moment he had to have you. But of course, his own insecurity meant that he felt as though he couldn't act on these feelings. He may have been a charismatic TV personality but deep down, he had his own, personal reasons that made him feel smaller and weaker than everyone else. For who could ever love a man like him?
"Hey, Ken, is it?" you smiled, extending your arm and grabbing the man's hand. You immediately cringed, feeling the sticky nervous sweat that coated his skin. The dark haired archeologist pushed his glasses up the curve of his nose and shook your hand a little too aggressively.
"Wow," he muttered, looking you up and down before clearing his throat. "Uh, yes. Ken."
You fake smiled, hiding your disgust, tearing your hand away from his and rubbing your palm against the material of your dress in disgust. You wanted to kill Maxwell for making you do this. From the dark, shadowed corner in the ballroom, Maxwell watched you intently, a flame of envy burning in the pit of his stomach.
"I hear you have an exhibition happening?" you took a glass of your favourite alcoholic beverage that was being passed around by a waiter.
"Yes, but it's not ready yet." Ken revealed and you nodded your head understandingly.
"That's a shame," you sighed, a fake sadness dripping from your tongue. "I'm a sucker for gemstones."
"Yeah?" Ken asked as you peaked his curiosity. "What's your favourite kind?"
"Oh, I like the red ones," you joked, and to your surprise, Ken actually laughed.
"We have a whole sub-section on garnet," Ken admitted and your lips parted slightly, omitting a small ‘oh’ as he continued on. "It's beautiful."
"I'm actually more of a ruby type girl myself." you explained, wondering if you were evening making the slightest bit of sense. Even if you weren't, Max knew that you'd be able to wrap Ken around your finger from your good looks alone. And he was right.
"We have one ruby," Ken whispered, leaning into you. Maxwell scowled as he watched Ken push his body into yours. He was seconds away from intervening. Max wanted the stone, but not if some slimy gemologist was making you uncomfortable in the process. Maxwell paused dead in his tracks when he saw you gently push Ken away from you, laughing politely. Max decided he couldn't watch anymore and decided to walk away, finding a group of women to distract himself with.
"Can I see?" you shot Ken your best pleading eyes.
"I'm afraid not. I could pull a few strings with the garnet collection but the ruby is 3000 years old. It's from ancient Greece, and it's the last of its kind."
You pouted, turning your heel, about to walk away, when Ken grabbed your arm and stopped you. "I mean!" he called and you raised your eyebrow, trying to hide your winning smirk. "I suppose I could pull a few strings. It's in the gallery, you must go alone though. And don't tell anyone. And remember to look— not touch."
You grinned, leaning in and gently pecking Ken on the cheek. "Thank you." you said, feeling his cheeks heat up under your lips. You pulled away from him and spun around. You watched out for Carol Thomas, making sure she wasn't looking before you slipped out of the gala and made your way to the gallery.
You were truly in awe as you looked over all the different rocks, each different sizes and different colours but all equally as beautiful as each other. Your eye finally caught the attention of the ruby Max had sought after for so long. You were no expert on geology but this didn't seem like any normal ruby, it sparkled and glittered and stood out from all the others. It was caged in an acrylic box, but it took no effort for you to lift the box off the crystal and swipe it, pushing it into your purse. It barely fit, but you managed to make it work. Double checking that no one was around, you swiftly exited the gallery and made your way back to the main party.
Maxwell wasn't in the corner you had left him, but instead, he was talking to a group of women; flirting no doubt. You rolled your eyes as they tossed their hair and giggled as he leaned into them. You couldn't help but wonder what exactly he was saying to woo them. Grimacing, you stormed past the group of girls and grabbed Max's arm, tugging and pulling him away from them.
"I got the stone," you informed your boss, briefly glancing back at the girls who were scowling at you for whisking away Max. You frowned, feeling unamused.
"Are you okay?" Max asked, sounding genuienly concerned. This was so dumb— of course you were okay. You had to be okay. It was completely fine that Max was flirting with other women, it's not like he had any interest in you anyway. It's not like you owned him. He was a grown man and he could do whatever he wanted.
"Yeah." you shot back, offering him a gritted smile. Maxwell nodded his head slowly and leaned into you.
"My driver is outside waiting. Head back to my office with the stone, I'll only be right behind you." you didn't know what it was, but suddenly, your boss' voice sounded dark and... seductive. The way his breath fanned over the shell of your ear made you shiver. Without saying another word, you left the party and travelled back to your workplace.
It was no surprise that Black Gold Cooperative was deserted when you let yourself in, sliding your employee card through the terminal and squeezing through the revolving doors. It must've been almost midnight, and you were the only one in the building. You slipped behind the main desk and booted up the computer where you had access to turn on all the lights in the building so it didn't feel so sinister. As you waited for the computer to turn on (and it felt like forever), you took out the gemstone and placed it on the top of the desk. Even in the darkness, there was something so attractive about it. No wonder Maxwell was so desperate to get his hands on it. He had an affinity for geology, although it was almost secretive. You remembered the one time he invited you over to his house, he had a whole shelf that was proudly displayed with rocks and minerals. It was a hobby of his that he didn't share with anyone else. But he trusted you.
He definitely shouldn't have trusted you.
You left your purse on the main desk as the lights finally illuminated the building. Holding the ruby in both of your hands, you carried it up the stairs, through the call centre and into Maxwell Lord's extensive sized office. You admired the way it sparkled and shone under the bright lights, so much so, you weren't watching your step. You let out a yelp as you tripped over a chair which had been carelessly pulled out, falling to your knees as the stone went flying across the office, landing near his desk.
You felt your heart sink into the depths of your chest when you heard it smash. No— there was no way. Gemstones don't just smash like that. Terrified, you crawled over to where the stone had landed and saw that it had quite literally smashed into smithereens; almost like glass. At least, that's how it sounded. The crystalized rock had turned into some kind of sparkling red fairy dust that looked almost magical. It was like a shimmering illusion. You scurried around the floor wondering how the hell this had happened. How the rock had smashed and turned into a pile of glitter. You knew you wouldn't have long until Max came back.
Your legs began to feel weak, but you decided it was just from your anxiety. Shit, the rock meant so much to Max. He gave you one job. One easy fucking job and you couldn't even do that right. You were so fired.
You began to collect the sparkling red dust in your hands, desperately scooping it up but sighing when it fell through your fingers. Your actions became more erratic, knowing your boss would be back any second. No matter what, you couldn't pick up the dust. You looked around his office, wondering if he had a brush or something to shovel it up with, but of course he didn't.
There was something weird… the dust from the gemstone wasn't just glittering, it was quite literally sparkling— gleaming, even. When you touched it, it made your skin tingle. It sent aches of heat flooding down your body. It was enough to make you suspicious but once again, you shrugged it off as nerves. You cared about Max so much, and he was going to be so pissed with you.
When you heard the double doors to his office swing open, your whole body stiffened up, your eyes squeezing shut. You were on your knees still, your back faced away from Maxwell as he merrily came waltzing into his office.
"I called Roman Antiquities from the carphone," he announced, his voice as vibrant as ever. "They're so happy we managed to get the stone," You felt your eyes grow comically wide. Wait— the stone wasn't even for him. It was for somebody else. Things just went from bad to worse. "So," Maxwell slid his hands into the pockets of his tailored pants. "Where is it?"
You slowly rose to your feet, scrunching your nose up in displeasure as you prepared to tell your boss what had happened. How you had been so clumsy. "I- I didn't realise you were sending the stone to Roman Antiquities." you mumbled, slowly turning around and nervously biting your lip.
"I didn't mention it?" Max shrugged casually. "Yeah, apparently it's in high demand."
"Ken said it comes from ancient Greece, and there's only one made," hearing the words leave your lips didn't make the situation any better, you realised. "Do you know what's so special about it?"
"Yeah," Max replied, walking towards his desk. "There's a lot of things special about it. Can I see it?" His dismissive tone made you feel small and uneasy.
"Max…" you drew his name out like it was the longest melody in the world. He looked up at you, waiting for you to continue. "Something happened. I uhm…" you let your eyes wander around his spacious office, refusing to land anywhere but him. He, however, was staring directly at you. "I had it with me. And I carried it carefully to your office but— I wasn't really paying attention to my surroundings and I-" you halted suddenly, feeling your whole body heat up, and a fire shooting through your core. You squeezed your legs together and pursed your lips into a fine line, stopping a moan from escaping. What was going on?
"And?" Maxwell urged, his voice growing increasingly more concerned.
"And-" you gulped. It was a weird, strange feeling. Like suddenly, all your scents had been heightened. The smell of Maxwell's rich cologne filled the room, intoxicating you and sending you into a frenzy. "Wow." you mumbled out.
Maxwell said your name sternly, breaking you out of your strange yet blissful haze. You were used to him saying your name, usually in a condescending way. But this time it was different. It was deep, gravelly and outright delicious.
"I broke the stone," you announced with a shaky exhale. You began to feel slick between your thighs and your eyes widened. Were you… aroused? You just about managed to look back at Max and suddenly everything felt different. You saw him in a completely different light.
Sure, you'd had fantasies about your boss before. He was an attractive, single bachelor and he always made you feel special. He always made you feel important. You would sometimes daydream about him at work, watching him from the back of the conference room as he led team meetings. You'd go home after a long day only to think about him whilst you showered, and even before you went to sleep. Suddenly, your feelings made sense.
"You. Broke. The. Stone?" Maxwell gritted out. Your eyes dropped down to fixate on his Adams Apple. Had his voice always been so sensual?
"Max," you whined, squeezing your eyes shut as you grabbed onto the edge of his desk, your fingers curling around the corner so hard your knuckles turned white. "I don't feel so good."
Max slowly walked over to you, looking you up and down. "Where are the remnants of the rock?" Max quizzed. You let out a moan as the feeling of arousal became excruciating. He called your name again and you just about managed to point in the general direction of the pile of glittering red dust. Maxwell's eyes widened. "Oh no no." he said, hurrying over and examining it, but being extra careful not to get too close.
"I know," you cried. "I'm sorry."
"Did you-" Maxwell swallowed the lump in his throat before turning back around to face you. "Did you touch it?"
"Y-yes," you drew out, rubbing your thighs together trying to create some feeling of friction, but doing so discreetly so your boss wouldn't notice. "I tried to clean it up."
"Shit," Maxwell muttered, hurrying over to his desk and spreading out a pile of papers. The papers were filled with information about the very specific ruby stone, and Max read it closely and as quickly as possible.
"What is it?" you asked worriedly. Maxwell's eyes widened and he wrapped an arm around you, carefully navigating you behind his desk and sitting you in his chair. You curled up into the softness of the leather seat, humming in delight your dress rode up slightly and the material stuck to the back of your legs.
"There's something you should know," Maxwell frowned. "The rock… they call it Aphrodite’s Stone."
"Aphrodite?" you breathed out. "Like, the goddess of love?"
Maxwell nodded, flicking through a few more of the pages. "Yes," he confirmed. "But uh- not just love. I mean, it was love, yeah but. She was also the goddess of beauty, uh- procreation, passion and…" Maxwell took a deep breath. "Pleasure."
You made a fist so tight your fingernails pressed into your skin as you shuffled around in the chair. Maxwell was so close to you, you just wanted to pull him on top of you and take him now— exactly how he was. But no, he was going on about some Greek goddess.
"Max please," you begged and his head snapped in your direction. You didn't even realise the way your chest was rising and falling, the way you were heaving and panting. Just the sight of you alone was enough to stir something up inside of Max. Beads of sweat laced your collarbones and hairline as you whimpered and moaned. "Can you just- please- tell me- what’s going on? What's happening to me?"
"The stone contains a kind of sex pollen," Max blurted out and your eyes snapped open.
"Are you kidding me?" you asked and Max shook his head quickly. "Like- a drug?"
"Yeah… and you touched it. Shit okay, let me go grab a bowl of water and we’ll try and clean the remnants from your hands…" Max said quickly, biting his lip and bolting over to leave his office when you shouted for him to come back.
"N-no, it won't work," you whispered, holding your arms out and ushering for him to come back over to you. "Please, please Max…" Your hands travelled to the hem of your dress as you started to peel it up. Max watched with intent, his once honeyed brown eyes turning so dark— almost black. His eyes raked your body as he watched you squirm in his office chair. The same chair he sat in every single day. "Please help me take this dress off. I feel so constricted."
"I-" Maxwell began but stopped when you sighed dramatically, tossing your head back.
"Don't fucking argue," you groaned and Maxwell felt taken aback by your attitude. You had never spoken to him like that before. He'd hate to admit it, but the desperation that dripped from your tongue caused Max's cock to throb in his pants. "Please."
Maxwell took your hand and pulled you up from his chair, briefly noting the wet patch from where you had been sitting. He had to sit back in that chair tomorrow morning, and you had made such a beautiful mess of it. His large hands manouvered around your body as he turned you around, finding the zip to your dress and pulling it all the way down to the small of your back. He took a step back as you shuffled out of it and he politely looked away, not wanting to invade your privacy or make you feel uncomfortable. He took off his tuxedo jacket and offered it to you, in case you felt the need to cover up, but instead you just glared at him.
Maxwell found himself subconsciously licking his lips as his heart rate climbed at the mere sight of you. There you were, standing before him in nothing but lacy black lingerie. He felt his cock grow thick and stand at full attention as he took in the sight of your alluring body. It was perfect in every way, even better than he had ever imagined in his dreams.
"What do you need?" Maxwell asked, his voice low. "What can I do for you?" The pollen in the stone made everything sound so seductive but you could swear that even amongst all the heat, you heard genuine care in his voice.
"I don't… I don't…" you weren't about to tell him that you didn't know, because that would be a lie. You knew exactly what you wanted, and he knew enough about the stone to know exactly what you wanted as well. You needed him, craved his body and ached for him to fill you up and pleasure you. You felt your cheeks heat up, unable to find the pride to actually ask your boss for this. Maxwell took a step closer to you, breaking any distance. He smelt so good.
"Anything you want," he whispered, wanting you to know that he'd be more than willing to help ease you. "Anything you want you can have it."
"Anything?" you asked, pressing your hands to his chest and letting your fingers trace the soft material of his dress shirt.
"Anything." he affirmed.
With that, you grabbed the straps of his suspenders and pulled his body into yours. A low groan emitted from the back of his throat as you pressed your lips against his. You wrapped your arms around his body, your palms laying flat against his back as he kissed you. His tongue licked your lower lip and you moaned wantonly, opening your mouth slightly and granting him access to explore you further.
Max's hands settled on your hips, his fingers playing with the waistband of your panties. You moaned, dragging your own hands to his hair and running his fingers through it.
You loved his hair, you always thought about touching it and playing with it. He always styled it so perfectly but, to your surprise, it wasn't hard with hair-product. Instead, it was soft and glossy and it was like you could feel every wave. He eventually pulled off you, gasping for breath.
"I don't want to take advantage of you when you're like this," Maxwell frowned, as you pushed him into his office chair. "I mean, shit. I want this. I've wanted this for so long…" he rambled on as you slid out of your panties and unclipped your bra. His eyes widened when he saw you stand on his office, completely nude and shameless. He thought you looked breathtaking. You were quick to discard the garments, unable to hide the triumphant smirk that played across your lips as you straddled him. You perched yourself on top of his leg and instantly began to ride his thigh, rubbing your soaking wet pussy over his expensive pants.
"Let me," you moaned, leaning into him and kissing his neck. "Let me use you then."
"Yeah?" Maxwell asked shakily and he felt you nod into his shoulder as you gasped out another moan. "Okay. Take what you need." he said before wrapping his arms around you and dipping his fingers into the small of your back. You could feel the coolness of his gold rings tingle against your warm skin and it only turned you on even more. You couldn't count the amount of times you had imagined the ridged feeling of his rings press up against your walls as he slid his fingers inside of you. Max flexed the muscles in his thigh and you yelped slightly at the friction. "Oh, you like that?" Maxwell asked, and done it again before you could even respond. You tugged on his tie, fumbling as you slid up and down over his leg. You just about managed to loosen it, pull it off, and discarding it on the floor amongst your other pieces of clothing.
"I like these," you giggled, tugging on his suspenders. "But I want them off."
"Cum for me first," Maxwell growled, feeling his hard member press against the confines of his pants. They'd grown extremely tight around his now throbbing erection. You looked down and gasped just at the sight of him. You lowered one hand, while keeping the other hand draped around his body, keeping you steady. With your free hand, you traced the imprint of his cock and smiled when you watched his eyes flutter shut from only your gentlest of touches.
"You weren't even affected by the stone," you giggled, humming in delight as you reached for his zipper. You didn't stop sliding your slick pussy over his thigh, your movements building up your oncoming high. "And look at you." you wiggled your fingers into his pants and your eyes widened as you felt his cock. "Fuck… Max Lord going commando?" your laugh came to an abrupt end when Max's grip around you tightened. He took your hand away from his manhood and set it on his bicep as he held you by your hips and muttered dirty words into your ear.
"Cum for me." He gritted out again, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck and gently nibbling at your skin. He pulls his hands down to your breasts and squeezes at them, his thumbs grazing over your nipples.
"So close," you warned him as your walls began to contract against nothing. You ached for his cock, now more than ever. Still massaging your breasts, he reattached his lips to your neck and trailed sloppy kisses all the way down your collarbone. "Shit Max, fuck I cant," you gasped.
"Can't what? What is it baby?" Max asked, pulling away slightly and cupping your cheek with his hand.
"I can't cum without… without…" tears pricked your eyes as the gushing sense of sexual desire coarsed through your body.
"What do you need?" Max whispered.
"You. Inside me," you managed to stammer out with absolutely no shame. Max looked absolutely wrecked, his dark blonde hair that was once perfectly styled had completely fallen out of place and his chocolate brown eyes were glazed with lust. But he was gorgeous and you couldn't help but smile knowing what exactly you had done to the esteemed Maxwell Lord. You shuffled back slightly, and Max glanced down at the wet patch you had left on his pants. He couldn't contain his grin.
"I don't have a condom," Max admitted. The revelation surprised you as you pegged Max for the kinda guy who endured a lot of sex in his office. It seemed like the perfect place, but come to think of it, he never really had girls around. Only you. You didn't care that he didn't have a condom. In fact, you kinda liked it. You wanted to feel every ridge and vein of his thick cock as it filled your pussy.
"Good," you smiled, standing up with a wobble. Max stood up after you and cleared his desk before patting the expensive oak wood, ushering you to lay down.
But first, you pulled down his suspenders, unclipping them from his pants and throwing them to one side. You worked at his shirt buttons one by one until eventually, you pulled it off and dropped it to the ground. You wasted no time, unzipping his pants and pulling them down to his ankles. You licked your lips in delight as his cock sprung free and he stepped out of the pants that had pooled around his feet.
Max gently pushed you backwards into his desk and you hopped up, sitting down and laying back. "You're so beautiful," Max sighed as he drank in your appearance, wanting to savour this moment and remember it forever. "Open your legs." he commanded as he stroked his cock. He gathered his precum which had been leaking from the tip for God knows how long, letting it slick between his fingers as he jerked himself off at the mere sight of you spread out on his office desk. You obeyed his instruction, closing your eyes as you prepared to feel his cock push inside of you.
But instead, you felt his hot, wet tongue lick a stripe up your clit. Your whole body stiffened up as you released a groan you didn't even know you were holding back. "Fuck- what the fuck," you curled your fingers into a fist as he continued to cat lick you. You just about managed to open your eyes and see the vision of his head in between your legs as he devoured your dripping pussy. "You're really dragging this out, huh?"
He was good. He was so good. He knew his way around your body perfectly and you swore, in that moment, that perhaps you were made for each other. Maybe it was just the effects of the stone but you had never had such a satisfying sexual encounter.
"When I saw the mess you made on my leg, and how wet you were, I knew I had to taste you," Max admitted, his voice was gruff and sent vibrations through your core. He continued lapping you up, humming and moaning in delight on the occasion he'd suck at the bud of your clit and draw out a moan from your lips. "And fuck, you taste so good."
"But I want your cock inside of meeee," you whined.
Max didn't attach his mouth from you once, but he did bring up his hand and push a finger in between your folds and began to massage the entrance to your hole.
"Gotta prep you first," Max told you, before pushing his index finger deep inside you. He moaned at the feeling of your walls around him and felt his cock twitch against his stomach. Obscene wet noises echoed through his office, as well as your moans and pleas for more. "So greedy," Maxwell chuckled. "Always wanting more," he pushed in his middle finger, stretching you open. He looked up at you, his eyes hungry as he pumped his fingers into your pussy. It wasn't long until your legs began to quiver and shake profusely. You screamed when Maxwell pulled out his fingers and shoved them in your mouth. "Taste," he told you as you sucked on his fingers. "Good girl. See? You taste so fucking good. I could get used to this."
When you had cleaned your juices from his fingers, you felt him line himself up against your entrance. You reached out, holding onto his strong biceps for support as he thrusted inside of you. He grunted, squeezing his eyes tight shut as your walls tightened around you. He was big— bigger than you'd ever taken before. If you weren't so aroused from the stone, you wouldn't know if you'd be able to take him. He filled you perfectly. He pushed himself balls deep into you and then came to a halt.
"M-move," you whimpered, pressing your nails into his skin.
"Beg." he shot back, smoothing the hair out of your face and running his thumb over your puckered and sore lower lip.
"Please Max, please. Fuck me." you felt tears prick your eyes and Maxwell took the hint, finally thrusting in and out of you. Your cunt was so tight around Maxwell he couldn't believe how perfect of a fit you were. He dragged his thumb to your clit and started rubbing intricate circles as he increased his speed. His movements became sloppy and rapid as his fingers pushed you over the edge. "Cum inside of me," you gasped out the second you felt his cock twitch inside of you, indicating that he was close.
"Are you sure?" Max asked and you nodded your head.
"Never been so sure about anything in my life." you screamed, your back arching as you finally came undone. You absolutely drench him, and if it was any other situation, you might've felt a little embarrassed. But Max was in ecstasy when your cunt tightened around his cock like a vice and milked him of all that he had. He spilt his seed inside of you, the warmth coating your walls and shooting jolts of pleasure down your body.
You found yourself completely engulfed in a post coital haze, and Max kept himself inside of you until he softened and could slip out of you without causing you any discomfort. "You might be sore tomorrow," he mumbled, pressing a kiss into your neck. You hummed, whispering something incoherent but your smile was very telling. You had never been so happy. "But the effects of Aphrodite's Stone should wear off now."
"You took care of me," you whispered, your eyes slowly opening. You sat up and wrapped your arms around Max, pulling him into you. You felt completely and utterly spent, and Maxwell couldn't disagree either. He walked you over to his chair and sat you in his lap.
"Of course I took care of you," his voice was gentle and sweet like honey. "This was all my fault. And I should've warned you about the stupid fucking rock in the first place."
"Stupid?" you raised an eyebrow. "That was the most fun I've ever had," you laughed and Maxwell couldn't contain how happy your revelation made him. "But… are we going to be in trouble?"
"You don't have to worry about a thing," Maxwell hushed you, smoothing out your hair and pressing a kiss into your hair. Something in his voice made you trust him and believe in him. You just knew he wouldn't let you get into trouble. "I'm glad this happened."
"Me too." you whispered before closing your eyes and burying your head into his chest. Curled up into his lap, your naked bodies tangled together, you both fell asleep in his office chair. Maxwell Lord created a frightening and intimidating aura, but, the truth is, you had never felt more safe and more comfortable in your whole entire life. You knew that this happy accident was going to be the start of something great.
Taglists (let me know if you wish to be added!)
Permanent: @supernaturalgirl @phoenixhalliwell @ah-callie @luvzoria @stardust-galaxies @wickedfrsgrl @goth-topic @nerdypinupcrystal @wonderfulfluffer @kiwi-the-first @pedroepascal @castiel-barnes @honeymandos @rocketqueen @ladycumberbatchofcamelot @dybalalover10 @girl-obsessed-with-things @elena-myth @moth-guillotine @pedro-pascal-love
This fic: @lostcherryinwonderland @thewayofthemandalorian
#pedro pascal#pedro pascal x reader#maxwell lord#max lord#maxwell lord x reader#max lord x reader#pedro pascal smut#ww84
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captain puffy lore q&a!
notes taken while listening to her stream tonight (july 14 stream, “[DreamSMP] Lore School and Lore Q&A!”) feel free to add on if i missed anything - i probably zoned out a bit and missed some questions!
- she stressed multiple times throughout the q&a segment that her character was never intended to play a parental role. while she’s happy with a sort of guardian/protector role, she isn’t as much a fan of her character being a parent. the reason she’s not a huge fan of c!dream (or other characters besides c!foolish) being c!puffy’s child is because people then get angry about c!puffy making chaotic decisions because they view her in a purely responsible/parental role. she likes for her character to be there as a mentor for the younger characters, but still wants the freedom to make chaotic decisions for her character without being criticized for it!
- she doesn’t like when anything her character does is immediately related to other people’s characters. an example she offered is that if she were to blow something up, people would say “that’s not something a good parent figure would do.”
- if she were to have take a different direction with her character, she would’ve done a “chaotic girlboss” character type.
- when asked whether she prefers unplanned lore or big lore streams, she says she enjoys both. she finds semi-lore very fun because she loves interacting with chat and likes how community-focused unplanned and improv lore can be. big lore is fun for her too, but because of the high expectations and having to be zoned in to the story, she doesn’t get to interact with the chat.
- thinks of her chat as if they’re “looking down on” the dream smp universe rather than a physical being within it. referred to it as celestial beings and the dream smp being “the universe that we control” - chat is the stars that the captain navigates by.
- puffychu - “i don’t know. we’ll have to find out about that.” she says puffy and niki’s characters have ended up on completely different sides, so now they are trying to figure that out.
- her character’s skin has something more to its design than just being half sheep, half human. she says there’s an element that has more to do with her character’s “personal struggle” than with her species.
- she gave a hint about the next c!puffy lore stream: “it relates in a way to a billie eilish song. i can’t say which one because it would give too much away!”
- something in lore is going to greatly affect c!puffy eventually. “she’s going to have a switch sometime soon”
- quite a bit of c!puffy’s personality is influenced by cc!puffy’s personality. the character is evidently based quite a bit on how cc!puffy grew up as a child, which we will see more in later lore!
- c!puffy’s character flaws are that they’re a perfectionist and doesn’t want to disappoint people, and in turn ends up not being able to do things for themselves. they also have lots of patience until she’s pushed too far and then will snap.
- she would like to be more involved with the las nevadas lore!
- she was asked about tommy’s therapy and whether it has been happening “off-screen” as tommy has implied, but she said she was going to save the question for another day.
- c!puffy doesn’t necessarily agree with being an anarchist. they aren’t big on titles or labels, but they do respect order. they’ve taken on titles not because they want to but because it’s necessary to keep the peace of things.
- c!puffy uses any pronouns, but usually she/her mostly because so far no one has referred to her otherwise in lore.
- c!puffy’s alignment is chaotic good!
- c!puffy, c!ant, and c!bad have made up since the red banquet and there are few hard feelings between them. c!puffy felt less hurt by c!hannah since she was a new member to the smp and they hadn’t had any chance to form a relationship.
- when asked which character’s development surprised her the most, she answered that she really likes tommy and tubbo’s arcs, but bad’s caught her the most off-guard because of how different c!bad’s arc has turned out from how cc!bad is.
- she says tubbo’s character has gone through just as much as tommy even though people tend to focus more on tommy, and c!tubbo is one of her favorite lore characters.
- her favorite character dynamics are puffy and bad (she finds it fun how they go from a fun friendship duo as ccs into polar opposites in lore), tubbo and ranboo (she likes the very different dynamic they have from tubbo and tommy, saying tubbo didn’t replace tommy with ranboo but rather has a different kind of relationship to explore his character in), and tommy and techno (she likes how techno is a big and powerful anarchist and still was protective of tommy).
- her favorite canon character is c!dream. she says while his character arc always involves manipulation and dark aspects, they’re very clever and there’s always an interesting reason to be found behind what they do.
- as for her character’s thoughts on c!dream, c!puffy feels more disappointed in dream than guilty about his actions. puffy says she’s “always seen the underlying good” in dream and so is disappointed in him for what he’s done.
- she says sam’s character is very difficult. he tries to do what in his mind is the lawfully correct thing to do, even if it’s a bad thing to do or might hurt someone else.
- her favorite build is foolish’s summer home area!
- she thinks c!wilbur has been the best villain so far.
(( there might be more q&a later as she’s still streaming, but this is all i’ve got tonight! i’m off to bed, i’ll skim the rest of the vod tomorrow for any other tidbits i missed! ))
#dsmp#dream smp#mcyt#captain puffy#captainpuffy#live-blogging#apologies if this is a little disjointed#i was just typing things down as quickly as i could and then tried to make it coherent later skfjskdk
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this is an essay post that was written in response to an in-depth discussion i was having with another person on a lot of topics. that’s why it’s written like it’s addressing someone. because of that, it is a little confusing on its own (because the things in quotes are responding to things the other person said) but me and the person who runs this blog thought it would be better to make this a separate post, so that people who want to see this response can see it without it being attached to the person i was having the discussion with. we spoke to the person and they said that would be fine. with that being said, this is a very long post. if anyone finds parts of it useful, it will have served its original purpose.
so what i mean about it “making sense” that dream became like that is that it kind of does, you know? i’m saying that the desires were always there. not that he was always willing to go so far for them, or even that they were as strong as they ended up being! after all, there’s a difference between declaring war to reclaim land and people, and making a vault in order to take things that were important to people.
what he always did possess is a sort of “ownership” of the server. and this was probably founded from the fact that it was, you know, his server. he wanted l’manburg back because he didn’t like that people came onto his server and then said he couldn’t have something. and that’s one of his primary points in his conversation with skeppy: the analogy he uses of someone coming into his house and saying he can’t have a table.
and later, in the vault, this is the reason he gives for wanting control: that it is his server. he tells tommy it isn’t supposed to be fair, it doesn’t need to be fair, because fairness implies equality, and he doesn’t see everyone else as having equal claim to the server. so that’s what i mean when i say the signs were always there: his statements match upand paint a path through the story. true, you don’t just “become” a bad person. there’s no reason for him to suddenly get all weird and want ultimate control, if he was completely neutral and peaceful in the beginning. this is why his character is decently written!
and since the potential was there in the first place, that’s what gave him the ability to or put him in danger of doing what he did.
so yeah, it’s true that his spiral was not only his fault, because even someone who thinks they own something is not going to just jump to the lengths that he did. he had other experiences, and saw how other people worked, and then was met by pushback from people when he wanted them all to do what he said. because his house analogy is lacking something: he owns the house, but everyone else lives there too.
it may be “his” server in that he pays upkeep fees, but that doesn’t mean he deserves control over everything that happens on it! if your roommate goes “i want this table and you can’t have it”, even if the house belongs to you, it’s kind of weird to go “no you can’t have it, it’s mine”. especially if all the roommate wants the table for is so they can play monopoly or something with their group. and even more so if the roommate will let you play monopoly if you want to (remember the embassy?), and if you can just buy a new table then what’s the point in getting upset over the one?
i just think you put a lot more of the responsibility on other characters. saying that all they did was villainize him and treat him as pure evil and break his boundaries is wrong because one, no, that’s not all they did, it’s exaggerated, and two, he was also doing things to them! it did not come out of nowhere! and clearly, his mindset didn’t come from nothing, so a personal flaw contributed to it! people who are innocent and care too much about others and are then mistreated do not do what dream did, and we know this because there is a character very similar to that: ranboo.
(i could talk about this for a super long time honestly. it’s very interesting how close they are, and since enderwalk ranboo is just ranboo with all his memories and he helped dream... there’s clearly something that happened that he’s forgotten that’s very important.)
hates conflict, tries to mediate things, cares about the people he loves to a fault. and we don’t see him running around and telling people they can’t build nations because it “divides people”! he has also been hurt and betrayed, but he still recognizes his responsibility to respect others and their agency. the difference between dream and ranboo is that one, dream has a spine, and two, dream thinks of the server as his. dream’s belief is one of the driving causes of his actions.
it’s true that nobody deserves to lose half their friends at once. it’s also true that before he declared war, nobody had any actual negative feelings towards him. they made fun of him for saying his side had more women. he made fun of them for having none. it was playful banter. that’s the thing about the hot dog stream: the tone is incredibly light. wilbur soot, known dramatic idiot, decided he was going to go play capitalism on a minecraft server. both tommy and wilbur at that point had been making various stupid attempts to gain “power”. and none of this was treated seriously, because others were doing the same kinds of things.
you know how many times tommy logged on and got involved in small petty conflicts? pretty much none of them are mentioned in canon again, because at this point, there wasn’t even much of a canon to get involved in. the smp at this point was a place for people to go and do bits. and invoking wilbur’s joke hatred of tommy and those like him seems a little unfair. wilbur’s main bit was calling tommy an annoying child. when wilbur was stealing the blaze rods, it was not an actual attempt to get power because it was not treated as such by anyone, it was treated with the exact seriousness that it deserved: sapnap and tubbo declared themselves the “police”.
what kind of actual control is going to come from taking blaze rods, especially on a server where you can just go get more? and it’s not like theft is really a crime on the server. everyone else chose to play into the bit.
it’s like now, when tommy shows up with a new idea and people who don’t like him start claiming that this is proof that he never learned anything and he was actually bad all along. the church prime thing, l’sandburg, any time he steals something or is rude to jack manifold. because although semi-lore is fun, sometimes people treat it as serious lore when parts of it are not intended to be and then use it to imply things about the characters that don’t line up with canon.
that’s kinda off topic and not really about dream, so i’ll move on
“i’d like to ask you to once again watch the actual stream.”
i mean, yeah. i did watch the stream. i don’t know a lot about george, and i prefaced my thoughts at the start by saying that. obviously attempting to catch up after isn’t as good as knowing the context and plot, (this sounds sarcastic but it is genuine i’m sorry sjhksjs) but i do want to offer this: it’s an opportunity to look at the plot in a different way. you say that you are on dream’s side in this scene, and while having that bias alone isn’t bad, i think it’s a good idea to attempt to see the other side. that’s what i’ve been doing while going back and forth with you; examining my own bias and attempting to look past it, and explain why it’s there.so dream kicks george off the throne. and you say that it’s not bad that dream does it, because george’s monarchy was already a figurehead. you know, i don’t see this as being any better? this means that when dream made george king, he already did it with the fact that george wasn’t really in charge in dream’s mind, meaning that dream was, you know, the ultimate authority. that is a power dynamic. dream has control over who is king of his faction.
when you watch the stream where dream makes george king originally, dream doesn’t really let him know that his power isn’t real. that’s the problem with this situation: the presence of a power dynamic alone is not the issue, it’s the fact that dream was misleading about its presence. dream just tells him “you’re king.” in fact, dream demonstrates more control over eret, by telling them just that they can’t be in charge anymore and george is king now. he tells them to take off their crown, to which they protest because it’s a layer on their skin and it would show their eyes, something they’re uncomfortable with. dream says “i need you to do it. you gotta do it. i mean, i’m not asking you, we have three of us here.”
they physically threaten eret. and by the way, the reason that dream thought eret had “betrayed” the greater smp? eret was attempting to help pogtopia and make things right with the people of l’manburg, something you claim was also dream’s wish during this time (he had switched over to manburg at this point). dream told eret that the king had a duty to remain neutral.
it is only then, when dream tells eret to remain neutral on things, that dream tells eret that the act of being king means nothing. this is where the “what makes you king” quote coms from, by the way. dream has the ultimate control over who is king. but whenever he makes someone king, he doesn’t tell them that. and when dream leaves, eret fully realizes this and admits that dream’s right: they don’t have any power. so what was the point of betraying l’manburg?
if there was no power with being king, why did george accept it? why was there even a king in the first place? the only reason eret agreed to betray l’manburg in the first place was because dream offered them power.
when dream confronts eret about remaining neutral, dream says “my plan is that there’s no manburg, there’s no l’manburg, there’s no pogtopia, there’s just dream smp and there’s dream smp everywhere. and that’s been my plan since the very beginning, i’ve never wavered on that. that’s why i had you betray them, and that’s why i gave you kingship, because i felt like you’d be a good king because you’re neutral.”
ignoring the fact that he’s twisting why he made eret king (they were on the side of l’manburg and he tempted them away), he also claims that his faction only has been his goal since the beginning. this will be important later.
cc!eret confirmed in a twitter thread on their alt that their character was possibly the longest victim of dream’s manipulation.
and finally, watching the stream where dream dethrones george, the thing sticking out to me is how dream is phrasing it. he says that george should step down because people are attacking him, and dream isn’t always going to be able to protect him. and then he says this.
“and i think you’ll just be targeted if you’re the king. and you want to be able to like, get revenge on tommy and stuff, right? so we can work together.”
i kind of wish he didn’t bring up tommy. i kind of wish his main goal at this time wasn’t just going after tommy because he thought tommy was the root of all the problems. and i think this kind of highlights a little bit that when dream built the walls around l’manburg again, it wasn’t just because he was “defending george” or anything, because i don’t think george really cared that much? dream was using the fact that it was george’s house that blew up in order to go after tommy.
after this line, the others all kind of gang up on dream, true. it’s partially for the joke, as evidenced by quackity’s “THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING!”, but it’s also kind of them being, you know, legitimately angry at his character. and it’s funny that it’s sapnap who leads it. sapnap brings up what dream said, that he doesn’t care about anything except for the disks. dream says that he didn’t mean it, and then george says “then why did you say it?” so dream saying that clearly hurt them, and he can’t just push it off by saying he didn’t mean it once.
and in the end, george doesn’t even agree before dream makes eret king again! george and sapnap are trying to have a conversation with dream about how they feel they’ve been treated, and dream brushes it off with “maybe this isn’t a good time to bring it up,” before ultimately ignoring what they’re both saying because in his mind he has a good enough reason and it doesn’t matter what george thinks.
dream is in the act of passing power over to eret, and george says “i’m still king. i’m literally right here.” dream shushes him. dream also implies that the reason george is getting attacked is because he backs up everything dream says, reducing george down to an extension of his own will or calling him a follower. dream accuses sapnap of trying to divide him and george, and sapnap says this: “i’m not dividing anyone, i stand by george. he’s my king but most importantly he’s my friend.” dream replies that george is his friend but not his king.
i just sort of want to show you the other side here. george and sapnap weren’t just running around instigating conflict any more than dream was. and although george didn’t do anything as king, it meant something to him, because it was a symbol of the trust he thought dream had for him. dream saying he was taking it away for his own good meant he didn’t even trust george to protect himself. he was treating him like a child.
and then when george is silent, listening to everyone debate whether he deserves this or not, dream accuses him of only pretending to be sad. it’s true that he was pretending to cry, but i don’t think that warranted dream telling him he’s “acting like a baby” and that he was a bad king.
sapnap and george had a real point, and dream ignored them. he hadn’t addressed the things he had said that hurt them, and so they raised legitimate grievances with him! dream doesn’t treat their concerns as important, and talks down to george in particular.
ignoring the fact that sapnap and george were also hurting is kind of hypocritical. you’re right, “abandonment hurts you, no matter if the people have good reasons for it or not”. dream said the spirit thing before sapnap did any sort of real leaving him. and dream’s reasons were definitely not good.
i have no idea why you got the idea that george is so awful. he was walking around with his head down. the only one also calling him things like manipulative and a drama queen is, well, dream.
basically: (/hj)
george: :(
dream: you are attempting to emotionally manipulate me
butternut is a master of psychological manipulation
anyway
so sapnap, george and quackity felt betrayed there. they left, and went to mexican l’manburg to try and console george. and then dream shoots quackity and kills him, and tries to attack the others as well. it’s worth noting that quackity also had a reason to be upset at dream: dream’s treatment of l’manburg. dream then shows up and calls george a tyrant. dream never listens to what george says during this, he just continues saying what he already said. dream taking the kingship away from george hurt him more than letting him stay would have.
watching this is painful, because it’s making me realize just how much dream doesn’t actually care what his friends think! he says he cares, and he might think he cares, but then he calls them babies and liars and tyrants. his argument with george here reads like something awful. he’s using the excuse of “caring about him” in order to undermine and insult him, and take the moral high ground. dream essentially tells george that he didn’t make george king out of any respect for him, it was just random. he doesn’t treat his friends well during this scene. i don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to get angry.
when quackity, after sitting in silence for the entire conversation, says he disagrees, dream tells him that he’s just dumb. doesn’t wait to hear his reasons, doesn’t value his opinion, because dream is so sure that he’s right and he knows what’s best for the server, and by extension, everyone.
other interesting things: dream brings tommy into it again by saying he’s what causes all the problems on the server. dream tells quackity to think about what tubbo would think about him picking this fight. dream says that george would probably do anything he told him to do. his entire position is “you guys can think whatever you want, but it won’t change anything.” genuinely, tell me how this is them abandoning him? and when they do drift away later, tell me why they don’t have a reason to? dream doesn’t respect them! he takes their friendship for granted!
“would you consider it justified for all of tommy’s friends (even tubbo who he’s been close with for so long) to abandon him just because he’s said basically the same thing about the discs - like three times?”
thank you for bringing up the disk thing. do you really think that tommy and dream acted the same when saying that an item held more worth than their friends?
think about what the disks symbolize. control over tommy. tommy wants them back because they are a sign of dream having power over him! tommy doesn’t want his abuser having power over him! and yeah! it was a messed up thing for him to say to tubbo that the disks were worth more than him, but he apologized! he understood that what he said hurt tubbo, and he tried to rebuild the relationship! tommy took responsibility for what he said, and tried to be better. notice how afterwards, he was willing to sacrifice anything for the safety of his friends? notice how in the vault he told dream to take the disks and do whatever he wanted with them, when dream switched from threatening the disks to threatening the life of tubbo?
and what do the disks mean to dream? they mean power over tommy. the disks have no power over dream. they are a tool that he can use to hurt and control tommy. and he never apologized for this, because he wasn’t sorry. sapnap told dream that this hurt him, and all dream said was that he didn’t mean it. who is he lying to, then? tommy or sapnap? it was so important to dream that he had ultimate control over the life of someone else that he almost drove them to take their own life. i’m sorry, but this comparison sucks.
people gave dream a chance. people gave him a lot of chances. the disregard he showed for others is disgusting, especially towards his friends, and even more so towards those who he didn’t like. my problem is that though you repeat that you don’t “blame” others for what they did, you still hold them to more responsibility than you’re willing to hold him to, or at least that’s what it seems like. i’ve been investigating the other side through this whole process. and yeah, there are definitely places where i was wrong. but sometimes i do not understand, and maybe that means i should just give up on trying to understand those places. if other people can see things i can’t, maybe we agree to disagree.
i legitimately cannot see dream being the person who was treated the worst here, but let me know if i’m misrepresenting you.
i’m sorry that i sound angry, and i’m not really upset at you, but the comparison of what dream said and what tommy said set me off.
“no one having respect for him as a person”
people did respect dream, man. he was the leader of his faction. he had a lot of power. his friends trusted him to be a good friend to them. but he didn’t feel like he had an obligation to do that, yeah? and you only get respect if you give it, so they stopped respecting them because he hurt them. he didn’t learn any hard lessons about violence being the only way because he never stopped to consider another way. when faced with a problem, his options were for the problem to go away or he would make it go away: surrender or die.
during the stream where he sets up the walls with sapnap, his message is the same throughout: wipe them out. no mercy. burn their land to the ground, leave no survivors. there’s no love in war. children get hurt in war. this is a warning shot, he says, as he fires into their land. as sapnap burns down tubbo’s house and chat spams “no mercy”. they don’t show mercy because mercy is weak, and they are powerful.
one day i’m gonna write a thing that talks about the greater smp like how people talk about early l’manburg because oh boy
i’d like to see evidence of dream learning that violence is the only way, and only being able to protect himself through fighting. i don’t remember this happening, i remember him generally choosing violence as the first option.
“dream didn’t have an arising god complex.”
a god complex means more than just saying “i’m a god.” there was buildup because that’s how characters work. tommy was also trapped in the prison, and he didn’t suddenly get a god complex at the slightest bit of power, did he? the definition of a god complex is “an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.” dream cannot admit when he is wrong. he feels as if he has a right to the control of the server, and that grows into a state of obsession. and when he’s taking tubbo and tommy down into the vault, he mocks them for thinking he was weak or that he didn’t think ahead.
once dream knew he had control over death, the complex reached its peak, and that’s when he actually admits it. characters that antagonize others already possess traits that contribute to their arc.
and hey, i know that cc!dream says his character is blocked off emotionally. i also know that he’s been given a lot of chances to apologize to people, to be sorry, to admit fault, even in small situations. did dream show remorse during exile? did dream sound like he was being “forced” to isolate and control tommy, or did he sound like an abusive parent scolding a kid for something? when dream beat tommy and tubbo and took them down to the vault, did he sound sorry? the thing about subtext is that it has to actually be there, no matter how quiet, at least a little bit. listen to dream arguing with quackity after george was dethroned and tell me he sees himself as anything other than right.
a few one off lines are not enough evidence to wipe out the rest of his character’s development.
he sounds sorry once he is faced with direct consequences, because that is the only time he is held responsible for his actions.
it’s also a weak argument to say that something is happening when, as you said, we don’t see his pov. it is fair to say that i don’t know if it’s not happening, and that’s a good point. cc!dream’s comments about his character being closed off emotionally can mean a lot of things. for instance, they could mean that his character is willing to do this to himself in order to get control. or it could mean something else entirely, i don’t know. basing an entire fact about a character off something we don’t see at all doesn’t tell us anything useful about the character, and i apologize for doing that.
i guess my reason for saying that was that i don’t see evidence of him trying to get better during pogtopia. if we don’t see signs of him being sorry or attempting to treat other people better, why should we assume that he was doing those things?
“yes, and none of c!dream’s “friends” ever did.”
dream’s friends supported him until he abandoned them and disrespected them. his time in the prison is a consequence of his time out of the prison, albeit an unfair one.
“dream didn’t hurt george.”
dream’s disrespect of george is what hurt him. dream didn’t apologize for it, he didn’t attempt to understand what george was feeling, and he didn’t look for a compromise. and yeah, it was beckerson in the vault. he had a space for mars, he just hadn’t collected it yet. so yes, dream did betray sapnap. if you have legitimate evidence of sapnap doing something that made dream actually upset, before the vault, i’d like to see it. (there might be something lol i’m sorry i’m Very Bad on his lore but from what i’ve investigated i didn’t find anything really important.)
i don’t think puffy saying “this person does bad things” is her dismissing their trauma. and the eggpire and her have both hurt each other. puffy isn’t the Trauma Designator of the server. if there’s an instance of her straight up saying that someone doesn’t have trauma then i missed it.
“she’s another one c!dream was attached to and who failed to ever reach out to him”
i don’t see evidence of this? there was the one stream where the relationship was established, but after that he never tried to seek her out. he doesn’t even talk about her. it’s not a failure from her to not reach out to him, if their connection is light at best. i honestly feel like she was more attached to him than he was to her.
“like she’s doing something extra by being a decent person.”
she’s saying he didn’t deserve to see her because he did bad things! she still cares about someone who has done bad things, but she recognizes that those things are bad. she’s saying the punishment for what he’s done should involve not seeing her, personally, and i think she should be able to make that decision? she doesn’t endorse the rest of his punishment, because she doesn’t know what it entails.
she helped him by thinking he was in the right. she helped him by even trying to understand him, when everyone else could not. she gave him the help that she could by being on his side, by being friendly to him, and after she realized he was wrong she could not do that because he was off preparing the vault! and she had other things to worry about! “could have” is useless because it can mean anything! tommy “could have” not burned george’s house down. would it have mattered, when dream already had it out for him? no!
dream took anyone being close to him for granted. he did not give anything back to them once he started going down the path. if he did something bad to them, and they were angry, that was it for him. he did not attempt to fix the bond, like other characters do when they hurt someone they care about.
“i never said anything negative about them other than describing things they did that had a negative effect.”
here’s my main point: we don’t know they had a negative effect.
you criticize the characters for not taking an action that we do not know the implications of. everyone could have been super nice and worried about dream and that could have changed nothing. that’s why i think the criticism is unwarranted.
their crime is inattention to a situation that some of them did not even know was happening. that’s like saying that techno is “responsible” for some of the pain of tommy’s exile, because he did nothing to stop it. that’s like saying that quackity or tommy “should have” removed the tnt from the button room under l’manburg.
i just don’t get the point of the criticism. because it can apply to any character in any situation, you know? we could say that eret taking back the kingship from george enabled dream into taking more control over his friends, and that eret should have stopped him. we could say that skeppy telling dream he was wrong about l’manburg pushed him further into the role of the bad guy. if you aren’t being negative about the characters, then why bring it up in the first place?
“truly believe they did all those things” they didn’t do anything. if you’re talking about the “actual consequences and effect it had on him as a character”, you have to look at what affects his character.
we can say “sapnap should not have said this to dream”. because that is something sapnap actually did, directly to dream’s face, and it is something that visibly affected dream. considering the conditions of the prison, it is an inhumane thing to say. that’s something i would call reasonable to consider when analyzing dream’s character.
but puffy talking to herself, writing her own thoughts and reactions down? that does not impact dream in any way! and i think puffy thinking internally that dream is a bad person (when she has been given adequate reason to think so) has a lot less impact on Real Plot Events than the stuff that dream actually did.
what is her “fault” here? what harm did she do? what am i excusing? what did she do wrong, and how is the effect of her specifically visible in dream’s actions? he hasn’t mentioned her in months, and it’s my perspective that if he cared, we would know.
if a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around, does it make any noise?
(the person i was responding to linked a thread about how the prison isn’t helping dream and how puffy and sapnap saying he deserves it is inhumane)
that thread doesn’t actually seem to be assigning any fault to puffy, it’s just saying that hearing that kind of thing hurts.
(also, the person who wrote the thread saying “i told you so” is going to have nobody to tell it to. we all already know dream is going to be violent when he gets out, because he told tommy he would hunt down and take revenge on the things he loves. but he’s not going to be violent because puffy didn’t visit him.)
“another person he cared about who didn’t prove to care about him enough to stop him from spiralling or try help at all.”
how did puffy not care about him? what did she do before the vault that showed that? how did she specifically abandon him, by actions of her own will and not of consequences of his? for supposedly caring about her, dream did pretty much nothing to show it.
“if “they don’t owe him anything” is your base argument against someone being hurt via being left by people they care about over and over again until they’re utterly alone with no support system and unhealthy mindsets, we might have to agree to disagree”
we would disagree if that was my point, but it’s not. because that’s not what the characters did. they didn’t all abandon him, as i’ve said. he says that he cut ties with them, but if you say he’s lying when he says that you can disregard it, i guess. and five to six people are definitely not responsible for him. again, you’re critical of them for an action they didn’t take, and in some cases it was impossible for them to take like with tommy, who certainly didn’t abandon him, as hard as he tried to.
“his (dream’s) manipulation is the clumsiest thing i’ve ever seen”
i mean i don’t really find it funny that dream was “bad” at manipulation. and clearly it was powerful enough to work on multiple people, and if he was that ineffective at it it wouldn’t have worked. but i understand what you’re saying, although i disagree with your take on wilbur.
it’s true that wilbur’s smart, but this is again saying things about stuff we can’t prove. if you look at the context of wilbur’s actions next to everyone else’s, they seem pretty tame. and he can play a morally grey character without the intent being that the character was seriously manipulative all along. although i guess it’s nice to think that you’ve solved the code, if “solving the code” means “the majority of everyone else is wrong” then you may want to take a step back.
i think the principle of occam’s razor sort of applies here, and especially applies later to the conversion between dream and wilbur. unless there is strong, strong evidence for a theory that sort of goes against stuff, there may be a better explanation. i’ve scrapped like fifty theories because of this dude hskhdksjsthe things i said at the start about tommy and wilbur’s grabs for power not being serious still do apply, and so does the fact that at the start of the roleplay, the cc’s didn’t see their characters as that separate from themselves. i think it would be kind of weird for cc!wilbur’s intent to be genuine manipulation of his actual friends all along, especially when he wasn’t playing it as a bit.
“that’s precisely what he did and how he got them to side with him in the war.”
nope. he didn’t tell anyone they “needed” to to anything. anyone who joined the country joined of their own free will, and nobody joined during the war, just before and after.
wilbur didn’t really “recruit” tommy so much as they were on a team of causing small arguments. wilbur joined and he and tommy went to go scam people together, while tommy told him about the various other little schemes he had been running. and i don’t really think he was intending to do a real takeover, which is why i called it “weak”. the man told people that potions give you diarrhea. does that sound like the work of a mastermind? no, because it’s the self proclaimed “crime boy”. and that “drug empire” got shut down pretty quick for something that was supposed to last a long time.
“just put “revolution” instead of “business” as a guise of what he was actually doing.”
l’manburg was not the drug empire under a different name. l’manburg was about separation from the greater smp, admittedly because they felt that being stopped from selling drugs was a bad thing, but then they pretty much completely dropped the drugs and the empire throughout the wall vod.
so when he was recruiting people like fundy, he was doing it with the intent of getting them to make drugs with him. he says nothing about dream when fundy joins his drug empire. and yeah, he lied to him originally, but it didn’t work. fundy visited the van and saw through wilbur (and tommy)’s story, and then he decided to join, on his own. because he wanted to make drugs.
a quote from the wall vod:
“we’re starting a revolution, not a war.”
there was no targeted hatred towards dream until he approached them. and i would say the most “evidence” that wilbur was trying to go after dream in any way is the infamous “what’s tyrannical mean” moment. the thing about that moment is that taking a single moment and using it to define an entire period is unfair. it’s not like that’s a turning point, and after that they solely go after dream. they don’t. i agree that you have to watch the actions of wilbur, and his actions at the time were geared towards becoming independent and progressing the condition of l’manburg.
wilbur is honest with eret when they join that they are committing crimes. eret joins because “haha americans bad”. meanwhile, dream is in chat telling eret that there are “three defectors from the kingdom”.
“the only reason people disbelieve this is not because it doesn’t align with canon, but because they assume he’s lying for the sole reason that it doesn’t align with the way they see canon.”
if what revivedbur said agreed with canon, people wouldn’t be pointing out that it doesn’t. watch back the hot dog stream, the wall stream, the first war stream, even the stream after that when niki joins. look at how wilbur speaks, and also look at how he acts. it does not match up with all of what revivedbur says.
early wilbur is naive. he thinks he’s doing the right thing, so he therefore concludes the people against him are wrong. the only fighting back that l’manburg does before war is declared is killing alyssa (and this was tommy’s idea, wilbur was discouraging killing her), because they thought she set the fire. once she told them she didn’t, they gave her back the stuff they thought they had. tubbo still had her pickaxe, but didn’t realize. and for this? the people of the greater smp hunted him down, trapped him in a box, and killed him as well as killing tommy, who tried to save tubbo.
wilbur scolded tommy for killing alyssa. wilbur wanted to focus on building the nation, on declaring independence, and actively ignored the other side. he writes the declaration and he believes in everything it stands for! half the things in there are things that the other people of l’manburg yelled out, that he wrote in as they were being fired on by the greater smp. it comes from all the people.
the declaration of war from the greater smp pretty much says “sometimes you just gotta kill some people, you know?”
i am not disagreeing with you that after the first war, wilbur fell into corruption. it’s implied greatly that this is partially a consequence of the first war, and also partially stems from his fierce protectiveness of l’manburg.
also, if you’re saying that you have never and will never believe wilbur, i would urge you to re-examine that. it’s hard to avoid bias when you refuse to take most things that someone says as truth. i am also curious how you came to this conclusion as you began to watch the smp (if you never believed him at all) and who’s perspective you were watching.
“according to his actions and all known laws of logic” according to the streams and vods that very much still exist, and his actions in them, no, he wasn’t lying since the beginning. did he tell lies? yes, everyone did. was he being untruthful about his devotion to l’manburg when he took arrows for it and died for it? no. it’s pretty clear to see when you watch the vod. his actions speak louder than his words.
so no, it doesn’t make sense for him to be lying since the beginning. it doesn’t make sense that revivedbur’s ideals are a switch from how he was even right before he died, so we cannot trust his memory and his morals to remain intact! the man was alone for thirteen years, speaking of torture.
“he thought l'manberg his and no one else’s, a weapon of power for him to use however he pleases. unlike dream who destroyed himself bit by bit trying to take back what he cares about, because it was not power, but people - wilbur saw no more worth in it and destroyed it instead.”
hmm. i’ll come back to this later.
a point- not everything cc!wilbur says about his character is negative.
a lot of his commentary on his character came after his death, so it encompasses his spiral. i will again suggest that you listen to “eight” by sleeping at last. it’s true he can play a morally complex character, because he does, but he does not play an intentional antagonist the entire time, even in “secret”.
“i was just talking about how hypocritical and downright ridiculous his later accusations are, which you didn’t address.”
how are his later accusations hypocritical? wilbur calls him a tyrant in the moment, yeah. wilbur thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants, and since it’s the dream smp, he assumes dream is the leader. dream never contradicts this, by the way. wilbur writes in the declaration of independence that “in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one to dissolve the bonds which bind us. disregarding of this truth is nothing short of tyranny.” so that’s what he considers tyranny. when he got stopped from selling drugs and tommy got arrested, he didn’t yell “tyranny”.
mistreatment of citizens by authority and denial of independence is tyranny.
dream and the people of the greater smp hurt and attack the people of l’manburg throughout the wall stream. importantly, since they denied l’manburg independence, the people they were firing and attacking were their own citizens in their eyes. mistreatment of citizens is cruel. upon hearing that l’manburg existed, they became even more tyrannical. thus when wilbur writes this in the book, as they are being fired on, he believes this to be true because it is.
“despite there being no evidence” watch the wall vod. think about the definition of tyranny, and even the different definitions of tyranny.
“a capitalistic empire on dream’s land” so wilbur did have reason for thinking dream was the leader, yes? because it was his land? his “house”? how dream said they were taking back the land that was rightfully theirs? how he called them “traitors to the kingdom”? ignoring the fact that once again, wilbur did not say anything negative towards dream until dream showed up and insulted l’manburg.
wilbur’s form of lying and deception for the drug empire was the norm for the server at the time. we don’t see him pulling this sort of exaggerated bit once he gets into l’manburg, because he’s idealistic and he really believes in it. if you watch tommy’s stream where wilbur first proposes the country, he jokingly says the reason he’s making it is because “americans ruin bits”. also during that stream, tommy asks if they’re making a drug empire, and wilbur says that no, they’re making a nation where drugs are legal.
“didn’t even do that much” hmm. no, i’m pretty sure dream and the people of the greater smp did do the stuff wilbur accused them of. one, he wasn’t directly accusing dream, (because. his problem wasn’t with dream specifically.) and two, the things he said in the declaration did happen?
“they have robbed us.”
to be fair everyone on the server did that lol
“imprisoned us.”
tommy was imprisoned for the drugs and for other things he was involved in, and tubbo was trapped and murdered for a thing he didn’t even know he had.
“threatened us.”
they were fired on multiple times when building l’manburg, they were threatened with consequences for the drug stuff, they told them in pretty clear terms that they were prepared to kill them instead of letting them be independent. the day of the war, dream and sapnap burned down all the trees around l’manburg and lavacast walls around it, saying it was a “warning”.
“killed many of our men.”
again, true. tommy and tubbo in particular died a lot during this time.
so since these things really did happen, how is wilbur lying about them?
“the people he was accusing of being tyrannical were very selective”
one, he accused sapnap of being an american, and it was the americans that were going for them. you don’t need to protect people that aren’t being hurt. most of his reasoning for “no americans” during this time was that anti-mask protests were happening in america, and he was making fun of them. two, the others imprisoned tommy, which does not count as “self defense in an anarchist society”. they accepted tubbo because he was european, and because he was willing to work for the nation like the rest of them. sapnap just wanted a drug dealer.
“dream’s “no factions” thing he had going on also included no government by default, showcased by him having problems with people starting countries.”
if there was no government, why did dream never point this out when wilbur said he was seceding? the server is dream’s faction! he doesn’t want “no factions”, he wants only his faction. dream refers to the server multiple times as a nation, and even a kingdom. anarchist societies don’t have prisons. the prison and the police is a system. if you have an anarchist society, but two specific people are going around arresting people, them going “oh but there’s no government” doesn’t take away the fact that they’re creating a hierarchy, using their own power? they also never claimed that there was no government.
everything that dream said later in the conversation with skeppy also lines up with this. ignoring the fact that there was a monarchy established because it “didn’t have any real power” is disregarding the fact that one, it was there, and two, that there was someone around with enough power to establish it in the first place. i don’t know how to say this any clearer. anarchist places do not have kings.
and anarchy is not the only thing that fits. it wasn’t designed to be a geopolitical drama, they just made the mistake of letting wilbur soot onto the server. so they didn’t need to have a name for the system, because the system was “do whatever you want”, including establishing authority.
“dream had all the reasons to believe they were aggressive and was fully justified in declaring war.”
dream didn’t declare war because alyssa was attacked. he had done stuff to them before that happened, and they got back all of her stuff (again, not by asking and trying to work it out, but by kidnapping someone who genuinely believed they were innocent and killing them as they begged for help.) dream started the official conflict because he declared war. he also started the unofficial conflict. he didn’t think they were aggressive, he thought they were weak.
“if he (wilbur) thought he was being mistreated he could just stop trying to mistreat others”
what, because he had any sort of power? he did stop mistreating others. l’manburg legitimately did nothing to intentionally hurt anyone, and tommy killing alyssa doesn’t count because that was his decision and revenge was already paid out for that. so wilbur stopped scamming people, built the walls to contain his country (he said that they needed nothing outside the walls at some point) and then was attacked multiple times. his mistreatment didn’t stop.
“it was supposed to be his l'manberg.”
wilbur didn’t destroy it because it was supposed to be his and it got away from him, that’s why he held the election: to try and restore peace through attempting to rig the election. he destroyed it because “the thing i built this nation for doesn’t exist anymore”, meaning the freedom it originally granted to its citizens was gone under schlatt. meaning the policy of no violence and using words was ruined. if the thing he built this nation for was power, this would make no sense. he could have taken power so easily. he passed off the presidency.
“something worth having power over” is something important. it is something that can be good for lots of people, and the power over it is what makes it safe. it’s worth having power over because when others, like schlatt, take that power, it is no longer safe.
violence and tyranny had become so much a part of l’manburg that wilbur felt the freedom and peace was gone. so when he blows it up, and says “my l’manburg”, he means it can no longer be used for evil. “my unfinished symphony, forever unfinished”. he saves it for himself by destroying it. so yes, he is being selfish, but not to ruin it for other people. he takes it into his own hands to weed out the fighting, and by doing so takes himself with it. his vision was never complete, because the wars had taught him that the only true freedom, the only true victory (“i won.”) for him was in death. (and then that turned out to be wrong.)
there’s a reddit post that cc!wilbur approved
that explains this a little better than i can, and cc!wilbur commented on it “any truers???” so i think it can be counted as reliable.
this full quote from cc!wilbur about his character (from his hey and stuff podcast) is very interesting. i’ll transcribe it here:
“i decided i was going to make a breaking bad style roleplay, where me and tommy would be drug dealers. and uh, one thing lead to another and i’m the president of a nation losing it due to my own insolence and uh, short sighted naivety. basically disregard for my fellow citizens who i claim to love so much. and a, and a dark, twisted understanding of what is possession. and what is, what is my right.”
i like this quote a lot because it highlights the initial traits that caused his spiral. it also places him as kind of similar to dream. the reason he lost the presidency is that he got too cocky. and the reason his spiral was so selfish is that it was all he could see— when his earlier vision of freedom was shattered by the first war, he didn’t know how to adapt and so became attached to power as it now felt like the only way to keep what mattered to him.
this is emphasized in his conversation with quackity during his second lore stream: that there was a drastic change between the person who made l’manburg and the person running for president. this quote matches up very well with the election arc. wilbur’s motives were different before the election, and they were different after.
once he had the freedom that he wanted, he became scared of losing it and that is what pushed him down. “if i can’t have it, no one can” is on the surface about the power, but the lament for what he once had (freedom in a country without tyranny) is there. that’s why he became so power-oriented. if he did not have control of l’manburg, it could be used to go against his original vision and it would be better off gone.
another good piece of information is cc!wilbur’s comment on his dnd alignment post, where he says this:
“wilbur is on the border of chaotic and neutral evil. wilbur, in his chaotic sense, is a crazy man who wants to blow up his old nation and kill his friends. but, more realistically, in his neutral sense, wilbur is the archetype of a man who had great power and who lost it all due to his own poor choices and negligence who sees destruction as his ratification.”
note the “realistically”.
he feels as if he owes it to l’manburg at the end to blow it up, and he didn’t mind taking himself with it as he thought that nobody cared about him anymore and he didn’t have any more to give.
(related to this, in the dnd alignment post, cc!wilbur places season 1 dream as chaotic evil and says his only motive is chaos. firstly, this would only apply to season one, and although cc!wilbur was working with cc!dream and everyone else to write the plot here, i wonder why he says this instead of saying anything else about dream’s motives. this seems to disagree pretty severely with what you think, but it also disagrees with what even i think about dream during this time.)
revivedbur comes back and has plans because he regrets his past. he hates that he gave up that easily. and he could absolutely lie about his past actions! there is no reason to ignore the contents of an entire war because someone who was alone for thirteen years says it!
“shouldn’t have it” doesn’t mean he was lying when he said he wanted it. he was just wrong, which he knew when he blew up l’manburg and that’s part of why he did it.
“they said they “fought with words”, like that doesn’t sound like a peaceful solution, more like a different approach, and it was because that is what they did”
they said the words thing a lot of times, and most of the time it was used as a “tommy don’t attack that person.” and “fighting with words” is arguing, it is replacing the trauma of real battle with talking it out. l’manburg did stick very closely to their motto of words over violence. look at the contents of the first war.
and once war was declared, wilbur was enthusiastic for it. sounds suspicious from someone claiming to not want war, right? he said it was a chance for them to prove themselves, to prove they could rule themselves. he also said that if they could defend themselves it would be proof. he never went “time to attack them”, and when he said he didn’t want a war in the past he meant that he didn’t want to start one. his being enthusiastic about the war ties into his naivety about running a country. it was also an acceptance in a way, no? it meant that the greater smp saw them as something worth declaring war on.
and it’s heartbreaking seeing him so excited to prove himself, because we know that the experience of the war is what lead to his spiral and his cynicism as president. we know that a few weeks later, he’s going to be crying into his pillow every night.
for the clip (the “something worth having power over and then you get killed by your dad” clip), i kind of don’t know what to say. i don’t think this is a clear condemnation of the entirety of l’manburg’s beginnings, but i do think that i was probably reaching a bit with trying to interpret it. there are definitely a lot of ways to see that, though.
no, he showed it in the first war and he clearly said it. i don’t think somebody who wants to mess with dream is going to not even think about him until he shows up, and even after then largely ignore him until he declares war.
“yes, it was worth something to wilbur, and that worth was power.”
question: power over what? power for what purpose? how did he use that power?
if it was only worth having power over, then why did he give it up? why didn’t he just kill schlatt in the first place? again i think the reddit post addresses a lot of this. original l’manburg was worth more to wilbur than power because he was willing to surrender when his life and his friend’s lives were threatened, and he told tommy it was not worth it to enter a duel and sacrifice his own life for it. after the war, he cared about power over it in order to keep peace, and then he realized that his own desire for power caused him to abandon his morals and he attempted to destroy it all.
“the greater smp did represent anarchy and peace.”
i just don’t think the ideals of the early smp line up with anarchy, and especially not dream’s actions later. he believes in forced peace, and unity under his terms although that belief is more gradual.
“see you tell me you didn’t fall for propaganda and then say this.”
it’s not “falling for propaganda” to watch the streams and interpret them. “propaganda” is defined as an attempt to spread information, often of a misleading nature. it’s what wilbur used during his presidential campaign, it’s what everyone used during the election. i do not base my opinion of his character off things that have been said about him after the fact. i watched the content when it happened.
so what about the facts that one, he wanted peace at the start, and two, that he cared about protecting his nation and the people he cared about is propaganda? it is information that i believe to be true based on my own analyzing of his actions during that time.
wilbur never says this as an attempt to lie to anyone. he wanted peace if it meant he could have freedom, but he would not attack anyone for freedom, he would defend it once he had established it. he wasn’t trying to establish an empire after the drug van stream (he says this in the vod where he discusses his plans for l’manburg with tommy) and the actions of the greater smp were tyrannical. what happened is that later, after the first war, he lost faith in peace because people continued to attack him!
“he did create division for his own benefit the way i see it.”
can you explain the “benefit” that division would give him? because like i said, his goal was his own personal freedom. he wasn’t attempting to divide people, he was reacting to mistreatment, whether perceived or real. and more often than not, people asked to join him, he didn’t try to convince them.
“yeah wilbur said it genuinely to tubbo when he first brought him armor”
as i was going through the old vods, i did find the origin of that quote (the quote where wilbur says “we go in with no armor and then stab them in the back” or something along those lines)! there’s something funny about it though. notice how he says it and then never does anything about it? and how nobody from l’manburg acts on it? because you have to look at his actions, something you emphasized that i agree with. they have more weight than his words. he also said “wanna kiss” to dream, so i don’t think this really counts as “proof” of an ulterior motive, because he said a lot of things.
“you see a pattern already?”
the “pattern” i see of his reactions to conflict in his nation is that he didn’t want to assert control in order to oppress people, he wanted to assert control to keep the peace, by rigging the election so that he had “legitimate” authority. was it a hypocritical? yeah! it reminds me of what dream was doing, too: placing his goal of peace over his wish for freedom of everyone.
the difference is that dream didn’t have any reserves about “starting an army and asserting dominance over his own people because they didn’t respect his authority and he was irritated by it”. weird that that can be used to describe dream as well, huh? and before it can be used to describe wilbur?
this is also after the first war, where wilbur learned a very important lesson! and it’s right before he realizes he’d become what he had tried to destroy. the other person who acts like this never realized this, though. it’s because he was never trying to destroy it. just saying.
“the friendships inside of it could’ve existed without, and would’ve probably been better off without being stained by war”
wilbur did not consider making l’manburg as a severing of relationships between the two nations. he even expresses neutrality towards some members of the greater smp. wilbur didn’t “make people think” they needed l’manburg, he saw it as a thing to devote yourself to, an ideology. he did not force others to think this way, although he encouraged it. people ended up sacrificing a lot for that (against their will sometimes), and so they became attached to it.
“the original dream smp was this but actually true instead of just being a front.”
ah yes, the dream smp with absolutely no hierarchies. nothing like mister “my house” at all. no “my land”, no “my server”, no “the king has no power”, no “it’s the dream smp”. /s
“wilbur didn’t fear for anyone’s safety”
hmm, no, wilbur did fear for everyone’s safety. you know, when they were being attacked continuously throughout the war? and when he finally surrendered because they were being threatened and killed?
“the dream smp was already safe”
dream and sapnap need better ways to “keep the server safe” than by blowing up people who wanted to go off and do their own thing and posed no threat to the greater server.
i don’t know how to provide “evidence” that dream and the others attacked l’manburg? the evidence is the fact that they did. again, wilbur’s initial goal was not conflict with the greater smp, it was emancipation. when tubbo was taken hostage and killed, shot at, robbed multiple times of materials it had taken him hours to get, and had his old house burned down simply because he was part of l’manburg, those were the reasons that tubbo ever fired a shot at them in the first place!
when wilbur lead his people out on the first day of the war, it was to negotiate. they dodged the arrows and went to the embassy, where they were then trapped and driven back into tommy’s house. it was then that they fought back. self defense. i don’t know what else to tell you.
“trying to end the war as soon as he could” is kind of misleading, because it implies that dream hated the violence. he just wanted to win as soon as he could. he didn’t care what he had to do to win it. no mercy.
the dream smp was not freedom because when you try to leave freedom, it doesn’t hunt you down and try to destroy you. anarchy doesn’t call you a traitor when you leave. and yeah, dream was real friendly to tommy when he continued the disk war when it first settled. and of course when your friends join a different nation, the most logical course of action is to murder them repeatedly! /s
the definition of anarchy includes personal freedom, the exact thing wilbur wanted. anarchy does not include authority, it is firmly opposed to it. i think i would place the early greater smp as more of a stateless society, if i had to put a name on it (again, i am extremely wary to do that because it wasn’t written as anything with a name. this is also a mediocre take that i don’t really believe because dream had his own faction.). a stateless society is one of the goals of anarchism, but does not encompass the entire belief.
dream’s main motivation was that he didn’t want anyone being independent. it didn’t matter who was leading it.
and i’m sorry, but you can’t just take away evidence by saying “he was lying” when there is no proof he is? if you take this conversation at face value it makes more sense! (this is about the conversation between wilbur and dream right before the “independence or death” scene)
“both sides had their losses and were ready to harm the other” what did the greater smp lose. its people? its land? there was other land, and the people could still remain friends. some of them did. dream even says before this that yeah, l’manburg is losing. and wilbur here is attempting to downplay that loss, claiming they’re on even ground because that’s what he wants to happen. he is trying to appear stronger than he really is. he’s bluffing, but it doesn’t work.
i don’t like saying “nobody’s the victim” here when one side was getting absolutely whaled on by the other. wilbur has the ability to be genuine, and he does. if he was trying to “play” the victim, he would exaggerate the damage his side had suffered. his words and his actions match up, and this is a pretty different circumstance from him doing a bit. he is a victim. that’s just straight up true.
i’m not surprised that you think this way, as you’ve said you were on dream’s side since the start, but i’d like to once again ask you to examine where you got these perceptions.
dream offering them “chances” was just offering them surrender. that’s not merciful, and it’s not fair, either. and he may not have wanted to hurt them, but he sure didn’t mind doing it. wilbur wasn’t sewing some kind of anti-dream propaganda in his nation while the battle was going on, the hatred for dream came from the fact that he was attacking all of them.
“colonize” is a bad word choice for what l’manburg was. nobody was living on that land before they got there. the land should have belonged to nobody, so why did dream get so mad about “his” land being taken? what about that specific area was so important to him, when he did have the ability to visit?
wilbur was pacifist, he was not the instigator, again i have to say i can’t offer up proof if you’re convinced that he was lying. when he fought back later it was in self defense. please watch the vods. and recognize that wilbur’s actions election era are consequences of his experiences revolution era.
i genuinely don’t understand what you mean by comparing this to exile. please rephrase your point. if you’re comparing what dream did to tommy to wilbur trying to stop dream from hurting him and his people more i have to say that’s a... questionable take. it’s probably a bad idea to make exile comparisons if you’re going to use them to victim-blame, as that’s very antithetical to exile as a whole and kid of ironic.
“i mean, what other choice was there?”
no, dream had a lot of choices. he did not offer them a peaceful way out. he declared war and then he attacked. it was then that he told them many times to surrender. and no, wilbur didn’t push them to go and die, evidenced again by the times he used himself as a distraction so that they could run, and that he didn’t want tommy to do the duel but ultimately respected his decision and his freedom.
“dream constantly asked them to give up instead of fighting.”
dream has a responsibility to not attack kids. dream also has a responsibility to attempt any sort of peaceful negotiation. tubbo was boxed and murdered before war was declared, and tubbo personally had done straight up nothing to the people of the greater smp, and he didn’t even know why he died until tommy saw that alyssa’s pickaxe was mixed in with his stuff.
if wilbur claimed to wish to prevent violence, and then he did, or at least attempted to, i don’t know why you think it’s untrue. calling someone a rude name is not equal to murder. “verbally violent” means pretty much nothing and was coming from both sides.
(this next part is about the “let me be your vassal” scene in pogtopia)
“there’s a theory wilbur legitimately thinks dream selfish”
i mean, yeah. i think that kind of sums it up. wilbur was appealing to dream’s personal goals. i don’t see how he was shut down though. he already helped pogtopia, so him being asked to further help someone from pogtopia shows that they trusted him enough to tell him the plan.
i’ve watched the clip a lot of times and i think that the meaning can be ambiguous. i am using dream’s other actions during that time to determine how much of an effect i think it had on him. i don’t think he got “shut down” in any sort of meaningful way here.
“he didn’t seem to hold even that against him as he tried to help get back l’manberg with him.”
if dream didn’t hold the disk thing against tommy then, he sure decided to get mad about it later (he brings it up when arguing with quackity), despite the fact that he had also re-opened the conflict in the past.
“i believe they (dream and tommy) had genuinely been friends once.”
sure, i think they were friends before dream did what he did with the disks, and allies during early pogtopia. dream still decided to switch sides and team with manburg because schlatt offered him the book. this is, ironically, dream abandoning tommy.
“he has a sense of responsibility (not control) over the people on his smp.”
i think it can be responsibility and control. most of the responsibility is misguided, and lots of it is just actual control. i don’t know where you’re getting a lot of this.
and i do not know where you got that his fatal flaw was caring too much? he “cares” in the way of having control! he doesn’t care about the well being of others as long as he thinks he’s right. i’m just saying that he sure could have walked away, because he did just that later when he sided with schlatt. it’s not a speculation about his character when it’s something that he did.
him walking away did not entail complete surrender to wilbur. there were a lot of other things he could have done, but i don’t want to get into “could have”’s as i don’t really think there’s a point. wilbur was attempting to convince him, yeah, but that didn’t mean it was true. we know that wilbur was lying about wanting ambition.
also, i don’t think dream was allied with pogtopia because he liked them or he was trying to be better or anything. he said in “tyrant” that it’s because schlatt was worse, and wilbur didn’t have any ambition to expand.
“maybe you misunderstood something i said, but no, he definitely didn’t.”
okay, so since dream didn’t think wilbur was a villain, wilbur was not “pressuring him” into becoming one by helping him. my point was that dream didn’t think that, and wilbur didn’t care. sorry for not making that clear, i was asking a rhetorical question.
(i said here that “someone calling someone else out for hurting them is not the same thing as villanizing them,” and they responded with this)
“yeah, they are. and dream was villanized.”
oh boy.
vilify: to utter slanderous and abusive statements against, to defame.
(i probably should have been saying vilify instead of villainize because they mean the same thing but i straight up did not know it was a word, sorry lol)
slanderous means false and malicious. abusive means offensive and insulting. defamation is things that are not true.
if somebody says, “this guy punched me.” that would not be vilifying them. it is a true statement with a neutral tone. if they add “he is a bad person”, that could possibly be seen as abusive, as it is insulting, but the point of vilifying someone is that you are making them out to be someone they’re not. it involves the use of lies and continuous exaggerated language. slanderous and abusive. abusive only is not enough to classify something as vilifying.
someone reacting to something dream did by calling him a name is not vilifying him. it is true that he did the thing, and it is also true that the person saying it believes it. it is rare that someone criticizes him without real reason or goes overboard (the person who really does this as far as i can remember is tommy), and when tommy does so it is almost always reciprocated. so we have dream and tommy constantly vilifying each other, and other people saying negative things about dream and sometimes vilifying him, if they lie about it. he sometimes vilifies them.
my point is that vilification is not wilbur telling niki, “dream burnt tubbo’s house down”, despite the fact that he calls dream a bad guy. it’s not slanderous because it is true. dream assisted sapnap with the act. vilification is not tommy explaining to ranboo what was happening during exile, or telling dream that dream makes him worse. “someone calling someone out for hurting them” implies truth, and it doesn’t necessarily imply abusive language, but it doesn’t matter because it’s true.
maybe we were going off different definitions of vilify. but when we’re accusing characters who are victims of abuse and manipulation, we need to be careful with what we accuse them of.
anyway
wilbur saying he wanted to use the tommys of the world was left in the drug van stream. tommy himself was pushing a lot of the “dream bad” stuff because he had more experience with him. when tommy was confused during those two scenes (vassal scene and revivedbur calling dream his hero)it was because he believed that wilbur respected him, and wilbur working with or idolizing someone who had hurt tommy in the past was a contradiction to that belief. wilbur does not question tommy’s anger during the vassal scene because he doesn’t care that dream is bad, and when he is revived he either does not believe it or does not want to acknowledge it. revivedbur cares a whole lot more about power for the sake of power than wilbur ever did.
again, tommy isn’t stupid. he has his own reasons for not liking dream, and the disconnect comes from a place of trusting wilbur.
by the way, wilbur left the vc before saying that tommy didn’t care. he was talking to himself (and chat). and he was more fearful that tommy was leaving than angry. plus, he didn’t actually force tommy to give up his house: there was miscommunication between them and the embassy was the power tower in the end. wilbur just wanted confirmation that tommy would spend time in l’manburg. it’s true that he went about it in a bad way, though.
he didn’t push patriotism onto them, they were also excited about the country. there were other scenes beside the tyrant scene, and the amount of times wilbur had to tell tommy to shut up about how great the country is is a lot higher than the one time he had them call dream a tyrant.
true, that scene (scene where wilbur asserts his authority as president) is before pogtopia. it’s also after the war for independence. i am not saying that wilbur should have said any of that stuff. i’m just pointing out that it wasn’t always like that.
also i do not really see “you’re never gonna be president” as a taunt or manipulation or anything. i think wilbur genuinely believed that having tommy in charge of the country would one, get them into more conflicts, and two, mess up tommy mentally. being the president sucked and wilbur knew that. wilbur was not kind to tommy. but a lot of stuff that’s pointed at as manipulative is pretty clearly wilbur’s own paranoia spilling over in a desire to protect tommy, ie saying that tubbo would betray them. wilbur genuinely thought that and he was trying to warn tommy.
“tommy, when i said you’d never be president, it wasn’t a challenge. it’s true. you’re never going to be president.”
tommy’s life has been hard, that’s true. not disagreeing with you there. but not every adult has been using him the whole time. and if you’re looking for fault, i would personally look at the guy who killed him three times first, just saying. other things had impacts but there’s a clear scale.
“tommy formed an attachment to them as a result of the disc war, not the other way around.”
so yeah, initially it was a shallow trade: the disks for the armor. once that conflict was resolved, and tommy apologized, that should have been the end of it, yeah? especially since tommy now had a stronger connection to the disks? that would have been nice.
the problem is that dream took them back for no reason. because he did, he went back and dug up tommy’s whole front yard and spawned months of conflict after. having “leverage” over someone like that is kinda messed up! it’s not like tommy was going around committing mass murder every tuesday, he got in scraps with other people on the server who also committed petty crimes. so i can’t really blame tommy for wanting them back, even though he stole them.
and if dream didn’t care about the disks, why did he later use it as “proof” that tommy caused all the trouble on the server? if they were so worthless to him that he gave them to skeppy, why did it matter that tommy stole them?
i don’t know what you mean about this being the only way dream could control people. the amount of genuine fear other characters felt when he logged on was there for a long time. he held a lot of power on the server, and a lot of his control was physical, evidenced by exile in particular but also the wars.
when he did ultimately use connections to control people, that was still a bad thing.
“his friend’s house got burnt down and he wanted the person who did it to be held accountable?”
okay, george’s house got burned down. do you remember the initial punishment that dream proposed? probation for tommy until he was eighteen. and when dream was arguing with his friends, he pointed out that the only reason l’manburg was being held hostage for tommy’s crime was that tommy was involved in the government. he said that if tommy hadn’t been involved in the government, he probably would have just hunted him down and killed him.
also, someone responding to this pointed out that dream was trying to frame tommy for things at the time. dream was intentionally creating other conflict in order to get to tommy. dream did not care about the house. he burnt down other people’s houses.
that’s not “holding someone accountable”. that’s not even close.
“he was taught this from experience”
the leather from the horse was used to blackmail him after he had already started doing that to people. you know how tommy mimicks him? that’s what was going on (still bad that he did it but like. come on.) so that may have been the push that caused dream to cut his own connections (so that nobody could ever do that to him again, and he would have no chance of failure), but it didn’t just happen to him for no reason: it was a behavior he taught someone else.
“he did genuinely think he was a villain before the war”
tommy called dream a lot of stuff before the war, and most of it was unprompted by wilbur. a lot of it was also, like you said, two friends joking around. just because wilbur taught him a new word (he didn’t really tell him what it meant though) doesn’t mean he was manipulated into using it all the time or something. and i’m pretty sure tommy got a decent definition of tyranny later, when the greater smp decided to attack l’manburg before anything went down.
“it’s just a character acknowledging what people who looked deeper into the narrative already knew.”
what i’m saying is that narratively, wilbur has an extremely good reason to be biased right now. taking anything he says as truth doesn’t solidify an interpretation as truth. there has to be enough evidence to actually back the entire thing up in the first place, and i’m just not seeing “wilbur was always going for power and division” as solidified by his actions during the first war.
and again, tommy’s not stupid, and the entire time tommy is yelling at him! tommy knows something is off! if people also in the story are saying “this isn’t right”, i feel like they’d know? tommy was also part of l’manburg, he has an opinion too. so when he says “we founded l’manburg because we knew dream was the bad guy”, he’s talking about why he did it. and he brings up a good point: “you say you did it to stick it to the man, but you’re idolizing dream, who is the man”. (paraphrased i don’t know his exact words but this was his point) this shows that wilbur’s motives have changed, even from what revivedbur will say.
(they linked three twitter threads here. i don’t know if relinking them here is a good idea as the whole point of this separate post is to disconnect the two sides, but the threads were by dr3amofagame on twitter, for reference purposes. i’m not going to link the independent threads but i think people can tell which ones i was responding to.
if this is wrong to say who made them please let me know, i do not know how Any of these websites work. if you’ve read this far, please don’t try to like,,, look up who any of these people are (especially the person i was debating with. don’t do that /srs) and send anything bad to them. that’s the whole point of this separate post. if anyone sends negativity directly towards people because of this post i’ll bite you)
that first analysis has some Opinions. oh man.
i don’t know man i’m just going to point some things out:
-the person who wrote the thread pulling the “child” card makes me laugh because tommy had committed more crimes than wilbur at that point. ah yes tommy innit innocent child being horribly dragged into a giant war by evil wilbur /s
-wilbur did not call dream a tyrant before dream showed up and made fun of their land
-wilbur did not legitimately think dream a tyrant when he told tommy and tubbo to call him that. neither, really, did tommy and tubbo. it was a joke. like infinite women. like dream saying “i’m evil” when he was blowing up creepers on their land before the battle. like dream and sapnap being all “down with the british”.
-their attitude on that changed when the greater smp begin exhibiting tyrannical behavior (before war was declared!).
-“having tommy and tubbo fight his battles and build his walls” is just untrue
-the l’manburg anthem was, one, not written by wilbur (he commissioned someone to do it on fiver), and two, was written after the first war. they sing it in the stream where niki joins. so yeah, at that point, they did emancipate from the brutality and tyranny of their rulers! it doesn’t say who the rulers are (therefore it’s. not blaming solely dream.) but pretty much all of them were brutal!
-also oh my god this thread has a lot of things that wilbur just straight up didn’t say (or do).
-“would rather die than submit to your tyrannical rule” is a quote from the speech wilbur gives before dream lights the tnt. dream had done stuff to them at that point. this is out of context.
-i don’t want to seriously critique this thread because a lot of it seems more like something emotional than an attempt to start conversation, and i can’t really go against that.
-the main argument, that dream did nothing before being irreversibly forced into the role of the villain does not really match up with what happened.
-there’s a lot less of people calling dream a villain than people seem to remember.
-and also, dream was lying about wanting l’manburg to be something. he says to eret a few days later the quote that i included a while back, that his goal has always been for there to be one faction: the dream smp. note that at this point he’s officially on manburg’s “side” now. he also says he has never wavered on this from the beginning. so he’s either continuing his manipulation of eret and lying to them, or he’s just saying that he wants l’manburg to be something to wilbur and tommy to try to get them to trust him. and hearing him yell “YES!” after the explosion? i’m inclined to think it’s the latter.
okay, so then looking at the second analysis:
-once again, calling wilbur a colonizer? there is a definition of that word that matches up with his actions, but that definition is something establishing itself in a place. by that definition, everyone on the server is a colonizer. so calling just wilbur that seems... a bit weird, considering that the common definition does not match up with what he did.
-“got his (wilbur’s) entire side killed” ignores the fact that it was Dream And His Friends Who Killed Them hghfnjgnfm
dream: wow wilbur you’re bad at this war thing
wilbur: please stop killing us
dream: how could you do this to your people
wilbur: you??? declared war???
dream: no you don’t understand. i had a really good reas—
sorry sorry i’m just. yeah
-also this thread reminded me that “tyrant” (the book) exists and yeah, i do see your point that dream did care about tommy (a little bit). i just wonder why he turned against him again? and why dream is willing to admit here that l’manburg was peaceful, and also that wilbur was not like schlatt in some key ways?
-and again i don’t see wilbur calling dream a villain during the vassal scene.
-some of this thread is just speculation. i’m not going to consider “wilbur may manipulate dream in the future because they had a conversation in the past”, especially because revivedbur’s mental state right now is godawful, because i don’t think it holds any value to examining the past. the important part is the breakdown of the vassal scene.
-i’ve already said what i think about the vassal scene. dream wasn’t getting tossed around during that. just because he’s quiet doesn’t mean he’s being manipulated? and wilbur isn’t going “you think this”, he’s asking dream what he thinks by paraphrasing what wilbur’s heard from him before, and adjusts it once dream corrects him. i do think this one is more open to interpretation though; this is just my opinion and it doesn’t have a lot of stuff to back it up lol but i’m not convinced either side has much evidence
and the third analysis:
-dream had no idea what kind of government they were setting up there. he didn’t ask, so he wouldn’t know if it was a dictatorship. and again he was allowed on the land, he just never built the embassy. the “no americans” rule was weakly enforced during the first war, and the reason wilbur got so serious about it later is that the americans were the ones who went after him and killed everyone during the war! so he had a reason to want them off. objectively a bad reason? maybe
-it would be cool if dream said “hey don’t do this here’s why” instead of stomping off during negotiations and then coming back to beat them up and declare war. he didn’t though
-the problem people have with greater smp vs. l’manburg is scale. the greater smp was quite literally infinite, and l’manburg was a small space. there wasn’t anything important in l’manburg that other server members needed to get to. people could still leave to visit their friends. they didn’t legitimately hate americans. but nooo, you can’t have the table because it’s my table. what if you do something bad with the table? remember when you tried to sell people “better air” for three dollars and then took someone’s air conditioning? you just want power! i’m going to go bring back rubber bands to pelt you with.
anywAys moving on
no, i do agree with you on the sam stuff. for some reason i was under the impression that cc!sam was uncomfortable with being depicted as torturing dream a while back, but with the stuff happening with quackity now, i’m reasonably sure that doesn’t apply. they don’t retcon stuff that was intentional but there may have been something taken back a few months ago before they planned this.
but yeah, clearly the prison stuff is awful and messed up. that’s why i noted the thing at the start of the reply: i am in no way saying that anything sam or quackity have done to dream since prison hasn’t affected him. these are things that i see as having visible impacts on the character.
(i pointed out that dream originally commissioned the prison)
i understand that it’s frustrating to hear that used as an excuse, but i wasn’t using it that way. i was pointing out that neither of them deserve it. during the vault stream, dream tells tommy that his plan is to put him in the prison. he says that exile was “perfect”, and the only issue was that tommy could get away. putting him in the prison fixes that.
so yeah, what dream was planning to do to tommy is different than what’s happening to him. but the reasons that other people wanted dream in the prison match why he wanted tommy in there: like you said, it’s a vault. it’s so he can store him and use him later, to give attachments and thus power and control over others.
tommy’s original plan was to kill dream. ultimately, he didn’t want him to suffer more, he wanted him gone. nobody on the server knew yet that death was limbo, and tommy probably thought it was mercy for someone like dream. dream was the one who brought up the book, as an attempt to save himself. he will say whatever he needs to say to avoid death, because anyone would (except someone like wilbur who’s. accepted his role. you know?) so he’s the one who reduced himself down the the book, saying if he goes, so does it. that’s when sam suggests the prison.
true, the arc is dark. this is where sam’s actions become corrupted and he loses sight of some of the responsibility he claims to have. it’s also the arc where dream lied to tommy that he had changed, and pressured him into staying by saying he was his friend. it’s the arc where dream kills tommy, and doesn’t allow sam to come get his body for days. it’s the arc where dream gets even worse, whether because of his time in the prison or because of his peaked god complex, probably both.
and again, my problem is that criticizing characters for actions they didn’t take is pointless. it tells you not much about the character, and considering the circumstances of what dream had done it does make sense for none of them to step in! they are looking at the fact that dream had an entire vault dedicated to controlling them. they are seeing that dream was fully prepared to murder tubbo and lock tommy away forever to be used. they are witnessing tommy giving dream exactly what he got.
so “acknowledging” this does nothing useful! we do not see these actions (or lack of) specifically affecting dream. i can tell you what dream told people he was doing, and it matches up with things he had done in the past, and there are moments he denies the narrative that you say drove him to do this. but i can’t really prove anything when you say he’s lying here because it fits how you interpret the story.
it’s what you’re saying people are doing to revivedbur: saying he’s lying without any proof, when with him there is evidence and he has the motive to lie. when revivedbur lies, tommy calls him on it. tommy doesn’t call dream on it. i’ve laid out why i think it’s not true, and i’ve seen stuff in early canon that directly contradicts what revivedbur says. occam’s razor! many pieces of evidence versus a few statements from someone who at that point commonly lied about things like that.
dream standing by while tommy and the other citizens get killed in l’manburg by his own orders isn’t very peaceful or non-tyrannical of him. tommy was enforcing an eye for an eye, and to be honest? i don’t think “kill your abuser” is such a terrible message to send, despite the fact that we know that tommy’s coping mechanisms come from a bad source. and tommy was far from free of what dream did to him, as evidenced by later when he again attempts to mirror what dream had done to him in the past.
yeah, i read your analysis of the interaction (skeppy and dream arguing over l’manburg). that’s not the only interpretation. skeppy doesn’t call him the villain. he is repeating back to dream the actions that dream took, and dream tells him he’s making him sound bad. skeppy wasn’t influenced by any “propaganda” you think l’manburg was putting out while they were getting murdered. skeppy was an outsider who was calling it as he saw it.
and if other people saw what dream was doing as bad, maybe he was... doing bad things? for bad reasons? skeppy was critical of dream for his actions. talking over somebody does not certify it as “twisting words”. skeppy was accusing him of doing the actions, like “so you did this? you started the war?”. dream was defending the logic behind his actions, like “well i did it because.”
basically
skeppy: hey it’s kind of. messed up that you killed a bunch of people. you know? you kind of just attacked them out of nowhere
dream: no no no you don’t understand. i had a really good reason
skeppy: i don’t see a reason?
dream: you’re making it seem like i didn’t have to do this
skeppy: you d i d n ‘ t
and skeppy didn’t finish the conversation with “you’re lying” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about”, he just told him he was wrong! as in his actions were cruel and needless! “people must have hated coming to your house”.
(they asked me to name one person who dream cut off first)
okay, name one? puffy. sam. punz? he did cut them off, he straight up told tommy he did it, and making a place in the vault for fran when sam had done nothing but work with him? and they didn’t “show up ready to kill him”, they showed up to see what he was doing. so he tells tommy he abandoned them, and indirectly tells them with the spirit scene. sapnap and george noticed this, and called him on it, but he just said he didn’t mean it?
if dream “wasn’t as close” with sam/puffy/punz, why are we putting responsibility on them for his actions.
so sapnap and george walked away from him, but because he did something to them. and puffy didn’t abandon him. punz didn’t abandon him, punz got paid off because that’s what punz cares about: money. he’s a mercenary.
using “they left him first” for sapnap and george doesn’t allow for why they left him: because he wasn’t treating them fairly. he isn’t their parent, he’s their friend, and he wasn’t acting like it.
“he was hurt and abandoned to the point” “he ended up hurting people doesn’t negate the fact he was hurt himself first” “the environment they all were a part of pushed him this far, and that’s just what happened”
so you’re saying it’s right that the reason dream did bad things to people is because bad things were done to him first? because dream was definitely the one who got attacked first during l’manburg. because he just cared so much about george that he kicked someone out of society just to defend his honor. /s and then, because his real purpose was protecting george, he went back and tried to make things right with george because it wasn’t about tommy? oh wait, he didn’t. he focused on only tommy. because george’s house was an excuse.
“that’s just what happened” is a bad take on “people got abused”. the fact is that dream started a lot of the conflict. looking at the retaliation and self-defense that people did towards him and saying “he got hurt a bunch that’s why he did the later bad stuff” completely negates that he started it? and his “retribution” was always exponentially worse than the actual crime committed?
dude, i’m just trying to point out that the story says he cut people off. yeah, he was hurt at times, but that is not an explanation for what he did. it’s not even a logical cause, because we do not see it affect his character. the subtext has gotta be there. the fact that he was hurt does not make him any more justified.
“circle of violence” does apply (not all of them, though). but in this situation, it’s a kid stealing someone’s lunch money, and then the other kid breaks their nose. the first kid punches the kid, the second kid puts them in the hospital. when the retribution dream gave was always worse than whatever happened to him, the issue is not “look at the people hurting him”, it’s “stop him from hurting people”!
so clearly dream needs some kind of therapy (not from puffy though i’m not letting him near her /hj), because just killing him would be a permanent solution but it would upset people who like his character. the prison is awful and not going to work. my personal solution for him is to send him out somewhere a long way away, so that nobody he’s hurt has to see him again. maybe people that wanted to go with him could, and it would be like a new smp. but when that idea was proposed, tommy said darkly that he was always going to come back. maybe it’ll be the solution in the future. who knows.
if the mistakes were unintentional, why criticize the characters for them? and what about “the environment” besides the other people changed how dream thought? a lot of it was internal.
we have him exiling tommy as a weird, desperate plea for friends (not really) when he very much could have gone back and spoken to the people who were his friends. we have him continuously saying that tommy causes all the problems, and he needs to be “restrained” or “controlled” or whatever other excuse he came up with for taking away a person’s free will.
we have him obsessing over the disks, and we know it’s not about the disks, it’s about power over tommy and power in general. he says this in the vault. he says this at the community house scene. his progression is towards a twisted sense of possession, same as wilbur, oddly enough. but they are different in that wilbur is possessive over the idea of freedom that he created with l’manburg (and having power over that) and dream is possessive over control over all.
wilbur’s idea is ruined. he tied his sense of self to the nation and when it was used for corruption (kind of by him and mostly by others) he saw himself as corrupted and decided to take them both out so that they couldn’t hurt anyone. he admits his own fault to the point of self destruction.
dream’s idea is threatened. other people live there, other people want to do things, and so he becomes so attached to the idea that it’s his server and he will do anything to control opposition. he cannot admit his fault unless forced to.
wilbur would do anything to control a tool of power, because he wanted to not use it as that tool. wilbur wanted anarchy at the end. he says so in his last presidential speech. his naive views about freedom from the start of the server had worn off, as he saw people use power as a tool in a way that he had never intended or meant to use it.
wilbur created the election so that he would have an actual authority over the land, and he could stop the fighting of its citizens. he thought he knew better, kind of like dream did. this is when his motives get the most twisted and selfish, he wanted peace so bad that he would take away freedom for it (like dream). but when he lost, he accepted it, and that’s the difference. he saw the desire for control in his own actions, and hated himself for it. that’s why he wanted to blow up l’manburg, to take away the tool for power and the person who had been tempted to use it.
wilbur was a good leader in the political sense (dream admits this in “tyrant”) but when he stands before the rubble of l’manburg and calls it his, he’s saying that his rule would only lead to destruction. anyone’s rule would. power corrupts. l’manburg ruined is his l’manburg, it’s his original vision of complete freedom laid out before him, and tracked to its inevitable end.
so then, you would say, dream was right, yeah? he didn’t want l’manburg. but wilbur before he explodes l’manburg doesn’t like dream. he thinks dream’s right in that factions lead to oppression, no matter how good the intentions, but he also knows that dream was a little too willing to hurt them and that dream doesn’t believe this. dream does not want anarchy, he wants chaos but only if it gives him control. he treats the smp like his country, and once again, power corrupts.
went off there, sorry. dream and wilbur are similar but different in some very important ways.
sapnap had been hurt by dream before the vault, and as dream didn’t see himself as in the wrong, he didn’t reach out. sapnap was with pogtopia (wait this might be wrong i do not remember but he was definitely on l’manburg’s side during doomsday) because tommy had shown him more kindness than dream, and that was originally dream’s side. dream just turned on them for the book.
and sapnap also witnessed dream mocking tubbo, making fun of tommy, exposing ranboo. he heard dream going off about how tubbo was so stupid for thinking dream was his friend, for thinking dream cared about him. why would sapnap side with dream if dream was showing no signs of even wanting him?
sapnap accused dream of that, and dream did not listen to him. he could not see the other side: he was so convinced that he was right. we do not know if sapnap went into the vault with the intent of killing dream. i’m pretty sure most of them were there to see if what tommy had said was true. and then, sapnap saw that it was.
nobody abandoned him because of the vault because he had already abandoned them. they just made it mutual. it being a “consequence” of stuff doesn’t make it any less of a messed up, power hungry thing to do, and some of them had done nothing to him before he decided he needed to control them. he was planning to use friend to control ghostbur, who he had already taken advantage of and tried to kill once.
“people do not decide to isolate themselves for no reason.”
true, people don’t cut themselves off for no reason. the reason was power and control. i once again have to emphasize that nobody forced him into this: it was a spiral. other people didn’t do everything “first”. the small taste he got of his own medicine was a poor mimic thrown at him by someone he had done terrible things to. he started spiraling before the spirit scene happened. and if people are telling him he can’t achieve peace, maybe they’re just... right? did he go up to someone and go “i don’t know how to make this server peaceful :(“? because if he did, and if they then pointed at his long list of war crimes and told him not like this, i don’t really see that as anything more than a consequence for things he had already done.
someone can lie about what they want. maybe he did originally want peace, or maybe he was lying to himself that he did. l’manburg did not invite war. he wanted unity above peace, and that “unity” dissolved into “control”.
it was a defense so that nobody could control him the way he was going to control them. cutting himself off was out of fear, yeah. collecting everyone else’s items? power and control. he says this a ton of times, sometimes not even out loud.
i did rewatch the vault vod. that’s how i got all the quotes of him stating his motives. i’m not saying it was a healthy thing to do at all. i never said dream was mentally healthy, i said he had a god complex and he was obsessed with control. someone’s bad mental state can hurt others as well as themself, and they’re still responsible for the others and for trying to be a better and more respectful person. that’s why revivedbur’s “apologies” mean nothing right now.
“he lists his reason for starting the war as them declaring independence, so i don’t think it really matters when the official document was sent.”
it does matter a little bit, actually. they were already attacking l’manburg before official war was declared. they also attacked them during the peace period. wilbur wrote the declaration as he was standing on the roof of the caravan, being shot at by the greater smp.
a country becomes independent when it officially declares itself to be independent. they were still united; it was tyranny.
when dream saw that l’manburg was writing the declaration, he scrambled to declare war. he had reopened and started other conflicts in the past, and involved himself in places he did not need to be. it’s true that a response is a response, but you cannot treat all responses the same way. quackity’s “response” to the things dream had done (killing tommy among those) was to torture him. we do not consider that good, or fair, or “just a response”, we consider it cruel and unusual punishment.
the greater smp fulfilled the words that wilbur had not yet written in the document, and that’s because they weren’t a prophesy, they were a history.
“...would be completely honest about (dream’s motivations in the vault) in front of his biggest enemy. /s”
i don’t see evidence that dream wasn’t being honest. what did he have to lose by it? tommy could do nothing to hurt him. so yep, he would be honest about it. and he’s listed his reasons as power before. he also has the ability to tell the truth about his motives.
dream does not see tommy that way. he sees him as someone whose only positive contribution to the server is attachment. he tells tommy that evil is relative, and to dream, tommy is the evil one. in fact, he says that tommy is evil lots of times. he only says that tommy sees himself as a hero when he’s trying to convince him to let him kill his friend. dream is using tommy’s black and white perception to get him to do what dream wants. he only says tommy sees himself as the hero, not that dream sees him that way. dream does not care about who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, because he’s not idealistic like wilbur and he’s not a kid like tommy.
him making a joke about building the prison with a “little bit of evil” doesn’t matter because next line he says that tommy’s evil to him. dream isn’t playing the villain, cc!dream is. cc!dream is playing a character that is antagonistic towards others, and he plays into it and jokes around with it, as other people playing antagonistic roles have in the past. cc!wilbur does this a lot during the election and pogtopia. cc!techno hints at it with his “ah yes, blowing up a country, we must be the good guys”.
it may sound like a character because someone’s playing it, but it’s not dream.
this video matches up with some of my points here, but it’s also framed like an english class. it is an interesting meta argument, and one that i would say i partially agree with, but as we’re not really arguing on terms of meta it does not act as a general opposition to your argument. the intent of the authors does not dictate how you see the story, but it can help with interpretation of it.
dream’s words during the vault scene sure do line up with his actions for the months before that. so yeah, no discredit to cc!dream. he’s playing his character. and it’s not like he’s unwilling to make him sympathetic. he’s done so in the past (and is doing so now) and the fact that he does not do it during the vault, and downplays the tragic part of it (him losing his friends) sure makes it seem like the main point here isn’t “poor dream”, it’s “poor tommy”. they’re telling a story. it has a moral.
dream being reserved about his plans may be shown in the fact that nobody knew about the vault (except punz i think?) until dream was ready to put it into play. he generally is quiet about what he wants, he just cares a lot about it and will do a lot to get it. he’s not one for speeches unless he’s trying to make a point. the point here being that tommy is trapped. dream’s capable of explaining his thoughts. tommy asks him why and invites him to share, so he does.
this isn’t really a “nobody can interpret it like this”, it’s just pointing out that the events of canon are there and should be fully considered. character dream’s perspective of the story is biased, so people can look at it and be correct in how dream sees the situation, but “how dream sees it” and “how the story goes” do not necessarily line up.
conflicts dream has started besides the vault? okay.
-reopening the disk war by digging up the hidden disks
-declaring war on l’manburg the first time
-burning down other buildings in order to frame tommy
-blowing up the community house (or having it done for him)
-attacking l’manburg again with techno and phil
(didn’t start really, but inserted himself into when it wasn’t his business:)
-helped pogtopia
-gave wilbur tnt
-sided with manburg in the fight
-built walls around l’manburg
-demanded tommy be punished
-took personal responsibility for exile and used it as a way to isolate tommy
there’s also this post that describes things dream has done in general. the tone of the post is biased, but the actions were canon. some of these may be “retribution” but they sure were uncalled for.
so when he exiled tommy, that was about “unity”? big happy family except for one guy because “he causes all the problems”? it doesn’t matter whether he believed he was in the right for his motives. the vault does not make sense for peace or unity. it is a twisted, controlled unity. what i’m saying is that he uses peace as an excuse for his actions. he had to exile tommy, tommy would have just gotten worse. he had to declare war on l’manburg, it was a necessary evil. because nothing screams “peace” like declaring war and killing the other side, right?
those may be his actual motives in the early scenes, and he thinks he’s doing the right thing. this changes with the vault. he no longer uses this as an excuse, his “excuse” is that he has a right to it. his self proclaimed motive is power and control, and unity through that. so why not accept that as his motive when he says it there?
“becoming a control freak as a result of feeling the loss of control over your own circumstances isn’t equal to dehumanizing the people you’re trying to control.”
nah dude he absolutely dehumanized them and took away their agency? he describes tommy as a pet and a tool, minutes before he switches and describes himself as the book. this could also be used to make an interesting point on how he sees people as their values, in item form. so he’s using one item to control another. tubbo’s a pawn, tommy’s a tool, techno’s a weapon, he’s the book.
he calls george a baby, and makes decisions for him. by planning to using the items to control the people, he was prepared to take away their freedom and agency by emotionally manipulating them. he did this to tommy. agency is the capacity of someone to act. he takes away that ability in order to have control.
he’s not just a control freak over his own life, the problem is that he does it to others. again, we’re talking true freedom here: the ability to do anything, even things that we would consider morally wrong. he takes away george’s power, which is revealed to be nothing. he then swiftly turns and tells him that if he tries to overthrow eret, he would be a tyrant. not acknowledging that dream just overthrew a king and stated in a new one, he hypocritically calls george the tyrant for planning to do that.
(i didn’t even notice this until now, but it’s actually interesting: dream is extremely hypocritical here, unless, of course, he sees himself as having more claim to who is king. now why would he think that? a hierarchy, perhaps?)
“which is understandable seeing as you’ve said already you never tried to look deeper into him, but it’s incorrect nonetheless.”
i said that before this i had not attempted to examine his character in a sympathetic light. that’s what i’ve been doing. his wish to “fix” his home is really just a wish to control his home, which is pretty evident when you look at right before exile. the smp was peaceful then. tommy had committed petty crimes before, and george didn’t even really care about the house. it was minimal damage. dream jumped at the opportunity to convince everyone else that tommy was the real problem (speaking of propaganda and vilifying).
and “he was getting better until the sixteenth” disregards that he threatened eret, enabled wilbur (however you interpret that, he still enabled him), and sided with schlatt for power reasons even though he said he would help pogtopia. giving pogtopia some stuff doesn’t make him the “good guy” because pogtopia were not the good guys! that’s the point! he sided with them because wilbur had less ambition than schlatt, and therefore posed less of a threat to the greater smp! he wasn’t helping them just purely out of the goodness of his heart. he didn’t think schlatt was right, he abandoned him very quickly, but he could have just taken the book and dipped. he fought in the war. he took the book for personal gain and he placed that above the trust of pogtopia.
“he wasn’t on a power trip at all, he didn’t have a god complex up until the prison stripped him of all his dignity and then threw an opportunity at him, and he wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone.”
power trip: an activity or way of behaving that makes a person feel powerful
exile and the vault, arguably before that a few times as well. there are a few quotes that emphasize this.
dream’s god complex was already there in the vault. that’s why he was scared enough of being controlled that he shut everyone else away: he wanted to secure himself even more as the sole power.
and exactly. he wasn’t proving anything to anyone else, he was proving it to himself. therefore he also wasn’t trying to “prove” he was big and bad and evil and irredeemable, he was trying to feel confident about his own power!
if he doesn’t care if he’s thought as of evil, why did it supposedly drive him into the spiral? if he stopped caring about it, that would also explain why he was indifferent towards it (because he was indifferent towards it, every time someone called him that, indifferent or angry). he didn’t think he was evil because he thought he had a right to what he was doing. so he pushed himself into wanting more control, after seeing something he identified as a problem: tommy. you’re right that that’s part of what makes him tragic: that he stopped caring about what he owed to anyone else. that’s why he hurt them.
“it’s likely and fits perfectly into his character arc in canon.”
people who are emotionally repressed still show emotions, they just don’t show them as often. dream shows emotions but he does not show the specific emotion that would give evidence to this theory. i’m saying that claiming something is deeply rooted in his character (not the emotional repression, that’s confirmed) when he shows no sign of it doesn’t line up with canon. it’s more of a theory than an analysis.
“it is good storytelling because cc!wilbur pulls it off brilliantly.”
cc!wilbur still played a complex character! his behavior changed significantly after the war, but there is evidence that he was a certain way during the war. his character grew from that point but my argument is that he was not always a liar about important things and that he genuinely believed in the values he formed l’manburg for. if you want to watch wilbur being power hungry and hypocritical, rewatch the election arc.
actions, not words. cc!wilbur pointed out hypocritical things his character said, but that just shows he was playing a flawed character. people using the wall thing as some kind of proof that he was evil is stupid because part of the idea behind the wall was poking fun at america. it was “look, this is what you guys do”.
his early character was passionate and naive. cc!wilbur was aware of this. he was still a chaotic crimeboy, the nation was founded on drugs. but not everything he did was “for chaos” because again, he played a multi-dimensional character. he can make jokes about politics.
“his main support system left by themselves.”
i’ve already explained why i think dream broke most of his own bonds. again, there’s textual evidence to support this and actions as well that line up with it. and lots of people were willing to help dream. he didn’t murder all those people by himself.
“it also seems you’re strongly biased against c!dream, which, to be fair, the majority of the fandom is.”
it’s true my bias is against dream. it’s also true that my reasons for that bias are backed up by moments in the story where he clearly states his intentions, and a lot of the evidence to the contrary is, to me, one-off moments that can be interpreted in many ways. a lot of the bias also comes from the fact that he did pretty bad things and i’ve been watching this for a long time.
this post is pretty much what i’m saying, i guess.
alright @flypaw here it is :]
~ Lad 2
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Shattered Breaths
Summary: After running into two alphas in the middle of the night, you, an Omega, find yourself falling for the elder Winchester brother, but for reasons unspoken, neither of you will act on it.
Pairing: Alpha!Dean x Omega!Reader
Word Count: 6,312
Warnings: Angst. Lots of angst. Mutual pining. Two morons that won’t admit their feelings for one another. Canon compliant death. ABO dynamics. Smut. P in v with knotting and claiming. Some cockwarming. Some quick and dirty oral sex both ways if you squint. All very desperate.
A/N: For those of you 18 and over! This fulfills my omegaverse square for @spnkinkbingo. There’s a TON of build up and it all goes in order from around the beginning of season 7 to after Dean returns from Purgatory.
Beta’d by: The always lovely @stusbunker. Cannot thank you enough! <3
Blood pulsed quickly through your veins as you ran through the desolate forest, low growls from behind pushing you forward at breakneck speed despite the fact that your muscles were on fire. So tired. You were so tired of this.
Moonlight streamed through the trees, lighting a sliver of a path between them that you took without hesitation. Each thud of your feet against the cold ground sent shockwaves through your body, muscles threatening to tear themselves from your bones.
As the growling got closer, you felt a shiver run up your spine and prayed to anyone that was listening to give you a reprieve. Trees surrounded you, light barely hitting your sweat-slick skin through the canopy overhead.
After locking yourself inside for days on end, you ventured outside to feel the sun on your skin. You knew you could be tracked by alphas, especially during your heat, but after days spent underground in an abandoned house, you’d been desperate - and sloppy.
Glancing behind you, you saw a glint of the alpha werewolves’ eyes and pushed your body as hard as you were physically able, running straight into the arms of a tall, well-built man. “Where is it?” He asked, his hands wrapping around your wrists to steady you.
“Them, there’s two of them!” You whispered.
“Stay between me and my brother.” Turning around, you saw an even taller man with his gun drawn and sandwiched yourselves between them.
For a moment, the forest stood still, breath catching in the air as your eyes darted all around. Seemingly out of nowhere, one of the alphas that had been chasing you swiped at the taller of the two brothers, knocking him down and leaving you vulnerable. Turning, you saw the man you’d run into get tackled to the ground by the other alpha.
A gunshot went off, piercing the werewolf in the heart before it collapsed on top of the shorter brother. Quickly, both of you turned your attention to the other man, who was still pinned to the ground, fighting off swipe after swipe of the werewolf’s piercing claws.
Before you could run to help him, the other man rushed past you, screaming his brother’s name.“Sam!”
But the moment he made contact with the werewolf, the unnamed man was thrown backward into a tree.
These men had stopped to help you. You couldn’t turn away now. As your fangs descended, a chest-deep growl emanated from within you, talking the alpha off guard long enough for you to get him away from Sam.
“Now you stand and fight? You stupid, omega bitch.”
He pinned you up against a tree and ran his nose up the side of your neck, inhaling your scent. You felt your claws extend from your fingertips but before you could do anything the unidentified man called for him. “Hey!”
The minute the werewolf’s attention was diverted, the man fired a shot that landed directly between your assailant’s eyes.
When he fell to the floor, you heard Sam call for his brother, Dean, who immediately ran toward him to make sure he was okay. Both had a few nicks and bruises, but they would survive. As soon as they assured the other was safe, their attention turned to you.
“Stay away!” You growled, more for their benefit than yours. “I need a minute.”
They both held their hands up and tried to impress upon you that they weren’t about to hurt you. They’d stopped to help and put themselves in great danger to do so, so you trusted them, but you didn’t trust yourself. Whenever you let yourself tap into the feral side of yourself, you needed time to come down.
“You’re pretty tough for an omega,” Dean said, injecting a little levity into his voice.
Eyes closed, you took deep breaths and noted the lightness in his tone.
“When you’ve been on your own since you presented at 16, you kind of have no other choice.” With each breath, you managed to slow your heart rate and finally felt your claws retract. “You’re hunters.”
Sam nodded and stepped forward, catching you as your shaky legs gave way underneath you. “We are. You okay?”
“I will be. Thank you, Sam. Dean, thank you.”
The brothers guided you out of the forest and toward their car. “Nice ride,” you said, impressed.
“This is my Baby,” Dean replied.
Sam rolled his eyes and laughed, opening the door for you. “Can we give you a ride somewhere?”
“We’re definitely giving you a ride somewhere,” Dean echoed. “I’m not about to leave an in-heat Omega out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.”
“Much appreciated, boys. But I’ve got nowhere to go.” More than 15 years had passed since you’d had a place to call home.
“We don’t either.” Sam shrugged. “We travel all over to hunt. You have any money?”
Shaking your head, you retreated into yourself, realizing for the first time since you ran that you were well and truly fucked. “No, actually. I did. But I ran as soon as the werewolves spotted me.”
Dean shot you a pitiful look. “Why don’t you stay with us?”
Running from two alphas into the arms of two others? Was that wise? Probably not. But you’d never been one for the wise. At least they were human, and hunters.
-------
Shortly after joining Sam and Dean on their continuous cross-country trek, you had to distance yourself from them, if only by a few motel rooms; your heat had triggered their ruts. Even though they were both amazing looking guys, you weren’t about to jeopardize your newfound camaraderie by begging one of them to fuck you senseless. No matter how good looking they were. Out of pure need to not screw up the first home you’d ever had, you made a habit of keeping to yourself during your heats and asked them to do the same whenever biology kicked into overdrive.
They taught you everything they knew. You’d come across werewolves and vamps, but that was about it, and there was so much more to this big scary world than you’d originally thought. Leviathans were apparently a thing, and they couldn’t die. At least they hadn’t figured out a way yet. Whenever the boys thought they’d killed one, the same one showed their ugly face again. None of their usual methods worked, so that was fun.
Sam schooled you on the lore, loading you up with facts about any and every creature he knew of whenever he could, much to Dean’s feigned dismay; you could tell in his eyes how proud he was of his brother. He also taught you self defense, which was harder than you thought. Sure, you’d defended yourself a thousand times before but that had been feral swiping and growling and hoping for the best, mixed with a healthy dose of luck. Sam was able to refine your ferocity into swift and pointed movements. After a while, you could even defend yourself against Sam.
Dean, on the other hand, taught you how to handle a knife and how to shoot. For some reason, learning to handle the knife had been easy, but shooting was another story all together. “This is fucking hopeless,” you muttered as your arm fell to your side in defeat.
“A’right, ‘mega,” he said, gathering his arms around you, his hands splaying over your own. A delicious shiver crawled up your spine at the sound of your nickname rolling off his tongue. Only Dean called you Omega; Sam just used your name.
“Relax your shoulders,” he said, his deep, gravely voice rolling through you. It’s a good thing you weren’t in heat, you thought to yourself as you swallowed hard, because not jumping his bones was hard enough under the best of circumstances. “You want to keep your arms extended, but not locked.”
“K, Alpha. Now what? Because I suck at this.”
He chuckled at your back and placed his hands on your hips, moving you into a good standing position. “Like this.” He tapped your leg with his left hand. He was
making this easy.
“Fake it ‘til you make it,” he continued, sending your mind in a completely different direction than the one he intended. Which really wasn’t all that hard to do considering your mind was in the gutter already.
“You make it sound so simple,” you huffed. “You’ve been doing this since you were practically in diapers.” You lost yourself in the thought for a moment; he deserved so much more than that.
“You want to pretend that you know exactly what you’re doing, because it’ll feel more natural, and when it feels more natural, you’re in the better position to hit your target. Pick one.”
Picking one of his empty whiskey bottles that he’d placed in the middle of the area ahead, you leaned forward slightly.
“What made you lean forward?” He asked.
“I don’t know. Instinct, I guess? I figure my body should be pitched forward a little bit to counteract the kick of the gun.”
“See, you’re a fuckin natural,” Dean said proudly. “Grab the grip tight and aim.”
When he let go of your arms, you felt cold and off your game again. You didn’t like to admit how much he steadied you. Something about Dean was comforting, like that first sip of whiskey - warm and inviting. You wavered and his arms returned to where they were.
“You’re questioning your aim,” he said softly. “You had it. Have faith in yourself and follow through on your target.” Stepping back, he pulled out his other gun and hit the furthest bottle back without any problem.
With a deep breath, you playfully growled at him, frustrated at how good he was and how good he looked doing it. “So all I need to do is fake it?”
“Yup. Keep in mind everything I just said, and fake it. Don’t go for the one in the back, go for that one,” he replied, pointing to a dark blue bottle toward the front, maybe 15 to 20 feet away from you.
Turning your attention back toward the bottles, you shook out your nerves, breathed in through your nose, out through your mouth, and applied steady pressure on the trigger, feeling a bit of kickback as the bottle shattered into a thousand pieces.
“See!” Dean said, smiling wide. “I told you!”
You put the gun down and danced around. Sure, you needed consistency, but at least you were making progress. “Now I just have to get my own gun. One similar to this. Because I don’t wanna get used to this and then have to handle something else entirely.”
Dean swallowed hard and picked the gun up, letting it slip through his fingers effortlessly as the grip was turned toward you. “Take this.”
“Dean, this is your gun. Your trusty gun. I couldn’t.” Besides Sam, Cas and Baby, this gun had to be one of the constants in his life.
Gripping the barrel firmly, he extended it toward you again. “Take this one.”
“Exactly, it’s never failed me. And if I can’t be there, it won’t fail you either.” His strong hand glided over yours and opened your palm before laying the gun down. “Besides Sam and Cas, you’re all I’ve got, ‘Mega.”
Pride gave way to sadness before her eyes. She could see the cogs turning, wanting to know more than anything what made him tick. When he closed the gap between you, you leaned into his embrace and closed your eyes as he pressed a kiss to your forehead.
-------
“You okay?”
With a strained laugh, you grabbed Dean by the wrist and pushed him into the motel room. “Me? Am I okay? Dean, what the hell were you thinking?”
If he wasn’t already in pain you’d kick the ever-living shit out of him. As it was, you were about to rip him a new asshole.
“He was -”
“Sam, shut up!” You snapped before turning to Dean, whose mouth you knew was open despite having your back turned to him. “And you! Don’t even! I had that werewolf no problem, and because you had to come out and be Mr. Hero and shove me out of the way, you got hurt.”
Your heart was racing a mile a minute. When the wolf’s claws had slashed through the fabric of Dean’s henley and the skin underneath, your heart nearly stopped. His scream of agony still echoed through your head.
“Sam, are you okay?” You asked, peeling back the blood-stained material of Dean’s shirt. Thankfully, the marks weren’t too deep, but he still scared you half to death.
“Yea, I’m fine. There anything I can do?”
“No, I’ve got this,” you replied. “We have no food and he’s not about to go grab a meal like this though.”
Sam nodded in understanding and ducked out of the motel room quickly. You made a mental note to apologize for snapping at him.
“Can I talk?” Dean asked, testing where you were on the anger scale.
Huffing, you poured some alcohol onto a rag to clean out his wounds. “Depends. You plan on making excuses for getting yourself hurt? Or do you plan on apologizing? Because I’ll only accept one of those as a reason to open your mouth.”
With pursed lips, he mumbled. “You’re a little bossy, Omega.”
“Get used to it. What the hell were you thinking?” Crouching before him, you wiped his wounds clean as he hissed at the pain.
Dean’s hand slipped underneath your chin, tipping your head up so you’d look at him. “I saw you when we first met; scared. I saw your death flash before my eyes, so I jumped without thinking.”
His thumb caressed the side of your cheek. Your instinct was to lean into it, but you were so angry with him. “Fuckin’ hell, Dean. That’s the problem. Fucking think!”
He flinched at your outburst. You were so mad. But it was more than that. “Dean, I’m scared every time we go out. I’m scared of monsters. I’m scared of alphas that don’t know how to take no for an answer. I’m always scared. But I do shit anyway because it’s either do something or die and I really don’t feel like dying. D’ya know what scares me more than anything though?”
When he shook his head, you tried to speak, but felt the words catch in your throat. Your lip began to tremble, all of the fear and adrenaline finally steadying out. “Losing you.”
Swallowing back the bile rising in your throat, you continued. “I ran from my father, an abusive alpha. I was so afraid of being hurt again that I stayed away from anyone and everyone. Until I ran into you. Even when I lived with my father, I never really had a home. And now I do,” you said softly, a tear falling down your cheek. “Do you know what it would do to me to lose you? Not only to lose you, but realize I lost you because of me?”
“I don’t wanna die, but if I die protecting you; I’ll consider it a good death,” he replied. “But I’m sorry. I should’ve trusted you to handle it. Because you could’ve and you were going to. I just...I wasn’t thinking.”
Letting go of a breath you didn’t know you were holding, you bandaged up Dean’s wounds and sat on the crappy motel bed beside him. “Start thinking,” you commanded, your hand cradling the back of his neck.
Without any thought for the consequences or the implications, you pressed your lips to his, memorizing the scent of musk and evergreen that floated off his body. He smelled like home. Wherever he was, you were home. “Please, start thinking. Don’t make me lose you, Alpha.”
Dean nuzzled his forehead into yours and whispered. “I’m sorry, ‘Mega.”
-------
Whenever you weren’t hunting or isolating yourselves during heats and ruts, you, Dean and Sam indulged in cheap booze, cheaper food and bad movies. “If I don’t get food, I might kill one of you.”
Dean popped up from his seat like he’d just been yelled at and forced to go to his room. “I’ll grab some then,” he laughed, an easy-going smile dancing across his face.
Smiling excitedly, you clasped your hands together and brought them up by the side of your face. “Bacon cheeseburger and fries, please. And pie?”
“What kind?”
“Whatever you get.”
“What makes you think I’m getting pie?”
“Your name is Dean.”
“Touche, ‘Mega,” he said with a laugh. Sam ordered a wildly boring salad with a fruit cup for dessert. You could swear it actually pained Dean to hear such an order. “I’ll be back in 30.”
As he closed the door, you ran into the bathroom and changed into your pajamas before picking out your movie for the night on one of the on-demand channels. “This cool, Sam? The Gingerbread Man starring Gary Busey.”
Looking up, he nodded quickly, clearly not registering what you’d just said, as you were sure he’d have some snarky remark. “Yea, that’s fine by me. Y/N, can I ask you a question?”
You bristled at the frankness in his voice. “Sure, Sam. What is it?”
A little chuckle put you more at ease as he spoke. “Why don’t you and Dean just fuck already?”
A very undignified snort escaped you. It made no sense to try and dissuade him of his opinion. It was obvious you and Dean liked each other, wanted each other. “It’s too complicated, Sam.”
He shot you an ‘are-you-serious’ look, which spurred you on. “Dean wouldn’t want a needy Omega at home that he felt beholden too. Plus, I’m not just gonna sit home and raise pups, as much as I’d like them. I need an identity outside of that. And that would come with it’s own host of issues, because I’m assuming he would be ‘just a tad’ overprotective. And-”
“As opposed to how he already is,” Sam interjected, leaning forward to place his head in his propped up hands. “But go on.”
“Don’t be a smartass, Sam. What we have here is good. The three of us. I have a home. If something were to fuck that up by, like oh, I don’t know, fucking Dean and it not working out? I would lose the only home I’ve ever really known. As much as I love Dean, and you know I do, I’m too afraid to risk it.”
Sam looked at you sadly, hoping that maybe you’d all met in a different life. “I understand that. More than you know.”
A comfortable silence hung between you for a moment, and you thought that was the end of it. “Dean loves you, too, you know? If anyone could get my brother to settle down and have pups, it’d be you. Yea, he’d be an overprotective pain-in-the-ass, but he knows he can’t control you. I’m not saying you have to say anything to him. But I think you should. I think you guys are more on the same page than you think.”
For a moment, you allowed yourself to drift off into thoughts of what a life with Dean might be like. Kickass hunters with a family of pups to raise. Happy. Together. It made your heart swell, but then you saw the picture shatter before your eyes and the realization hit you like a truck. The reason you were too afraid to pursue things with Dean wasn’t because it could screw up the home you’d managed to find. In this life, a hunter’s life, you rarely got a happy ending, and if you lost Dean after being claimed by him? The man you loved more than anything?
There would be no coming back from that.
You’d shatter.
------
After your brief fast food, crappy B-movie respite, you finally formulated a decent enough plan to kill Dick Roman. If by formulated, you mean Sam and Dean trusting Crowley, relying on the new and improved bee-loving Castiel, all while watching the boys crumble at the loss of Bobby for a second time, then yes, a plan had been formulated. “This is so, so very stupid,” you muttered. “A bone from a righteous nun bathed in the blood of an angel, head Daddy vamp, and possibly Crowley if he didn’t fuck us royally, and we’re about to walk right in.”
“You got a better idea?” Dean asked.
“Not a one. Ready to go?”
“That’s my girl.”
Speeding down the highway, you chuckled to yourself at the stupidity of this. Dean, Sam, Cas, Ghost Bobby, even Meg had said you could sit this one out, but you weren’t about to let the boys go in by themselves. Maybe you couldn’t do anything that they wouldn’t have already tried. But if they were gonna die, you were gonna bite the bullet with them. You wouldn’t be left alone again.
You split up into teams of two. Dean needed Cas to identify the real, fake Dick, which left you and Sam to search for Kevin and get the hell out of there, all while using Meg as a distraction. Each footstep felt like a bomb going off underneath your feet; you were bound to get caught. But as you snuck through hallway after sanitized, boring-ass hallway, picking the locks of every door in your wake, you finally found Kevin. Who, of course, had to throw another wrench in the already shaky, we’re-absolutely-gonna-get-ourselves-killed plan.
“We have to blow up the lab,” Kevin said desperately, looking every inch a scared child making the decisions of a man.
More than anything, you and Sam wanted to get him out, but you knew he was right. With enough Borax on you to clean the entirety of insert-large-monument-of--choice-here, you doused every leviathan in your path before finally making it to the lab in one piece, if slightly covered in leviathan goo.
With the traps set, you began the search for Dean, Cas and Dick, only to find the head leviathan with the bone sticking through his throat. A wretched sound emanated from the slimy creature’s throat before his limbs began to twitch. “We need to go!” You screamed over the shockwaves building in the small room. “Guys, we have to go now!”
But before they had even taken a step, Dick Roman exploded, flinging his remnants all over the room, and when you could finally see again, Cas and Dean were gone. Sam spun toward you, eyes darting around the room, mouth agape.
“Where are they? You cried, grasping Sam’s jacket in your hands. “What happened to them?”
“I-I-”
“Hello, Sam. Y/N,” Crowley touted upon his entrance.
Sam held you back as you lunged toward the demon without a care for what he might do to you. “What happened to Dean? Where is Cas?”
With a click of his fingers, two of his henchmen had Kevin in their grasp. And with the next, they were gone.
“That bone had a bit of a kick,” he replied with a sickly smug smile on his face. “God weapons often do. Looks like you two are well and truly alone.”
Another snap and Crowley was gone.
Dean was gone.
“We have to find Dean,” you said meekly, numbness lapping at your toes like a wave on the shore.
Off in the distance, other Leviathan approached.
“We have to get out of here,” Sam said.
But you couldn’t move. Your limbs were heavy with exhaustion and a black hole of despair that was devouring you from the inside out. “We have to find Dean,” you whispered.
“We have to go!” Sam picked you up and threw you over his shoulder.
In your grief, you tried to fight him off - you begged him to put you down and go find Dean and Cas, but he refused. “I’m not leaving!” You punched his back with your fist with every ounce of strength you had, screaming until your throat hurt.
“I’m not letting you die, too,” he said, voice ragged as he carried you through the hallways.
“Die too.” The words rolled through your mind like a bullet. “He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead.”
Sam threw you into the Impala and slipped the key into the starter, panicking when the engine sputtered to life. As it finally kicked into drive, the monstrous squealing of the Impala’s damaged engine was drowned out by the screech of your anguished cries.
-----
You were caged.
Within these walls. Within this world. Within your skin.
As you trembled, the overwhelming ache between your thighs spread outward to your entire body. You sobbed into the mattress. After losing Dean, you’d done anything and everything you could think of to find him, but to no avail. And then your heat hit.
Despite the medication that Sam had found to help you through them, the stress and desolate sadness somehow made this heat even worse. Pain overwhelmed you, every nerve on fire, boiling like lava. You tried everything to alleviate the pain, even touching yourself in the hopes that an orgasm would lessen the effects, but it did nothing physically, leaving you emotionally worse for the wear.
When your hands slipped across your sweat-slick, nerve-wracked skin you thought of Dean. The way he made you laugh. The way he smiled when he watched terrible horror movies. The way his green eyes saw through your tough exterior into the softness beneath. The way his muscled arms gathered around you, allowing you to find a home in the most unlikely of places. In that moment, there was a brief respite, your heart lightening every so slightly at the thought of home, only to be jerked back to reality when you realized he was gone. All you wanted was for the pain to subside. To feel okay again.
A heavy knock on the motel room door alerted you to Sam’s presence. “Y/N, it’s me. I have more medication and some food for you.”
Grunting in agony, you called for him to come in, noticing the softness in his eyes as he touched your head with the back of his hand. ‘I’m fine, Sam. You can just leave the stuff on the table.”
“You’re burning up,” he said, running to the bathroom to grab some water so that you could take your pills.
He placed the pills into your quaking hands and watched you take them, your eyes numb and forward-facing. “You’re gonna be okay.”
“I can’t do this,” you said, voice barely above a whisper.
“What?”
“The pain!” You snapped through clenched teeth. “It’s even worse now, I can’t, I-” Lifting your head, you saw the sorrow in your soul reflected in his eyes. “Sam, help me. Please.”
He knew what you were asking and he shook his head, standing up quickly from his place at your side and pacing across the room. “No, Y/N, I can’t.”
With every ounce of strength you had, you crawled to the end of the bed, begging. “Sam, this pain is overwhelming. I don’t trust anyone else, and I can’t do this anymore. I trust you. Please, Sam. Please.”
You gasped as Sam wrapped his arms around you, his cock straining against his jeans.
“You’re Dean’s,” he said matter-of-factly, almost more for himself than for you. “I can’t.”
“I’m sorry,” you said as you sobbed into his chest. You repeat yourself over and over again, hoping it would absolve you of the overwhelming guilt that blanketed you - mind, body and soul.
----
After you threw yourself at Sam, he started distancing himself. Of course he came to check on you multiple times a week, he helped you find a legitimate job, ensured you had enough food and money and medication to survive your heightened heats, but that was it. Whether it was because of what you’d done or how he felt about you, you weren’t sure. You hadn’t the strength or desire to ask, figuring it didn’t truly matter either way.
Each day was an exercise in strength, with you going through the motions despite the desire to let go. A year passed.
Then one morning, you woke up with the knowledge that your heat was, in fact, here again. Even though it continued to come every three months as it always had, you could swear you were constantly in the throes of it. Your body hurt, muscles heavy, nerves always on fire to some degree. It never ended. Nor did your thoughts of Dean. Essentially, you remained because you were too scared to die. That and hope. There was a sliver of it still lingering, even though its presence tore you to shreds day in and day out.
At your desk job, you clamped your legs together, wishing that someone out there could satiate your hunger. The medication had done a bit to tamp down your physical pain, enough where you could work without much interruption, but the sexual aspect of your heat still remained in full force.
You made it through another day and began to walk back to your motel room, but it was just a room. Home had evaporated when Dean had been taken from you. As you walked down the street, passing playing children and the occasional speeding car, you inhaled the cool air in the hopes that it would refresh you - bring you back to the land of the living - only to be hit with the scent of musk and evergreen.
A warmth spread over you and a smile returned to your face for the first time in months. It smelled so much like Dean, like being wrapped in his arms all those years ago when he first taught you how to shoot. The feeling of peace quickly left you and you cursed the gods for their inequity, tears running down your cheeks as you stormed through your motel room door.
Collapsing into the bed, you pulled the matted pillow toward your head and sunk into the overly-used mattress, praying that the memory of the scent would stop torturing you when you awoke next.
-----
Hours later, as the sun began to set, varying hues of pink and orange dabbling the dusky sky, you woke to the comforting yet torturing scent. But you were all cried out and instead attempted to move through it, as you had with most things for the past year.
A knock on the door startled you. For a moment, you contemplated not answering. You really weren’t in the mood to talk to Sam right now. You’d text him later to let him know you were okay. With another thud, you swung the door open, ready to yell. “Dean?” You cracked. “Am I alive? Did I die in my sleep?”
Tired eyes smiled at you, happiness overtaking the misery that had filled them for so long. “You’re alive. It’s me, ‘Mega.”
“How?”
“Do you really want to know right now?”
With a disbelieving chuckle, you replied. “No.”
Reaching out, you grabbed him by the collar of his t-shirt and pulled him toward you, lips hungrily finding his without hesitation or thought. He sunk into your kiss, practically collapsing into you as he crossed the threshold into the room and kicked the door closed behind him. “‘Mega, I need you.”
In an instant, you were home again, arching into his hurried kisses. Frantic hands grabbed at the hem of your t-shirt and slipped it over your head before snaking his fingers underneath the straps of your bra.
“You have me, Alpha.”
You jumped into his embrace and wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling at the material of his shirt like someone starved of all sustenance. When your fingers found his muscled chest, you moaned at the feel of him underneath your fingertips. He’d been gone for more than a year, but here he was, in the flesh; he was real.
Dean walked you toward the bed and tripped into it, falling onto the mattress with you pinned beneath him. He let out a breathy laugh and collapsed into the side of the bed, kneeling before you as he peeled your pants and panties down your legs and threw them to the floor. “You were my last thought before closing my eyes,” he said, biting and sucking patches on your inner thighs. “My first thought in the morning. You kept me going, ‘Mega.”
Whining, you bucked up into his mouth and grasped his hair, pulling him closer to your heated sex. With every swipe of his tongue up your slit, you felt yourself melt into his embrace - a stillness overcoming you despite your desperation for his touch. “Alpha,” you breathed.
You shimmied yourself off the bed before him. “Need your knot. Need to taste you.”
“Oh fuck,” he choked out as you licked your lips and slipped them over his swollen cock. “‘Mega, ‘M, not-” He braced himself, his grip white-hot against the sheets as he towered over you.
“Don’t care.” You hastily tugged his jeans and boxers down just far enough to grab his cock. Hungrily, you slid your hands up and down in tandem with your mouth. Each pass left trails of spit dripping down your chin and onto the floor. But you didn’t care. Looking up, you saw Dean at peace for the first time in years, mouth agape, muscles taut, unthinking.
When you moaned around his length and reached your hand between your legs, he couldn’t take it anymore. He lifted you up onto the bed and crawled up the length of your body, laying hungry open-mouthed kisses along your pliant flesh as he kicked off the remainder of his clothing. You managed to lift your head to find his mouth again, whimpering at the sight of the dark flesh of his knot. How he came back, what he did when he was gone, what you’d gone through in his absence, none of it mattered - not when it came down to it. He was yours and you were his, scars and all.
Climbing onto the bed, he moved your head toward the headboard and up against the pillow, placing his cock at your entrance before effortlessly slipping inside.
“Fuck, Alpha. I need you. Need you to knot me.”
Dean chokes out an incoherent word or two, groaning as he hastily slides his hand into your hair. Teeth scrape along the side of your neck as he pumps into you, his knot swelling with each thrust. There’s no grace in either of your movements as he fucks into you, bucking into each other as if your lives depend on it.
As his knot rolled into you, connecting you both, you cried out and bit down on his shoulder, only to scream out again when his teeth found a spot on your neck just below your ear. Whenever you’d heard of omegas and their alphas before, about the connection between them and the wholeness they felt being claimed, you’d never understood it - but you did now.
Every atom in your body felt connected with his. It was deeper than anything you’d ever felt before. “Alpha!” You cried into his waiting mouth.
Thick, hot streams of come filled your insides as he trembled above you, lips finding yours in a desperate attempt to make this last forever. To stay in this moment.
When his eyes found yours, he let out a strangled laugh, thumb rubbing over the spot where he’d claimed you. “‘Mega, I’m not the same man I was.” Already, he was trying to run. But you wouldn’t allow it.
“I know,” you said softly before kissing his forehead. “We’ll figure it out, okay? Where were you? What happened?”
He fell to your side and gathered you close, slipping himself back into your slick heat, needing the closeness. To stay here for just a moment more. Relaxing your head against his chest, you listened as he told you what happened after Dick Roman’s death. Strained words and shattered breaths made you realize he wasn’t telling the whole truth, but he was saying what he could, and for now, that was enough.
Purgatory. He was in Purgatory. Surrounded by monsters every day.
“Thing is…” He started, trailing off almost immediately.
“What is it?” You asked, clenching your walls around his cock. Anything to take his mind off the horrors he’d witnessed. “Dean, you can tell me.”
“Thing is, there was a peace in it. Fighting day in and day out. The routine of it. I-I liked it. The killing. What does that make me?”
You tipped your head up to kiss the underside of his chin, finding the salty taste of his tears. “It makes you human. It makes you a hunter, Alpha.” Dean dipped his head to kiss the mark he’d given you, massaging your breasts as you spoke. “There is something I want you to know though.”
“What is it?” He asked.
“After you died, I thought you were gone forever. And the stress of it all made my heats so much worse than they ever had been. And I-” You broke, a sob bubbling in your throat.
“It’s okay, ‘Mega. I promise, it’s okay.”
“Nothing happened between us, but I threw myself at Sam. It’s been eating at me ever since it happened. I love Sam, but I love him like my brother and I never wanted it to happen. He turned me down, because I’ve always been yours,” you said quickly, trying to get it all out and breathe at the same time. “I was just so desperate and so alone and-”
Grasping your chin, Dean turned your head toward his and cut you off with a searing kiss. “We have some guilt to deal with, I guess,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. He slid his hands down your arms, fingers entwined with yours. “Together?”
Whisper soft, you replied. “Together.”
#spnkinkbingo#spnkinkbingo2020#alpha!dean#alpha!dean x omega!reader#alpha!dean smut#alpha!dean fanfiction#alpha!dean x reader#supernatural#supernatural smut#supernatural fanfiction#supernatural omegaverse#omegaverse#dontshootmespence#shattered breaths
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Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life review
So I bought the game only last week simply because of the “A Pirate’s Life” expansion since im a POTC fan. Now that I’ve seen and experienced the 5 tall tales, it was worth suffering through the week of figuring out all the coordinating it takes to keep up with the game. So here are all my “novice” thoughts and opinions of it; spoilers follow.
-I have the dark warsmith skeleton skin so playing with that (and my undead parrot) was different but fun
-all the POTC references and stuff were great, especially when clarified that it takes place after the events of the films and is canon with them. It’s explained that because will turner being free from the Dutchman in the 5th film somehow allowed davy jones to return and reclaim the dutchman, filling in the after credit scene of that movie.
-Playing with and being with jack sparrow and part of his adventure is a dream come true, plus great seeing so many other POTC characters than I expected (gibbs, scrum, anamaria, ghost beckett, and mentions of will, elizabeth and even regetti)
-the castaway is confirmed and revealed to by calypso, which most people already kinda figured. Its very cool in the final battle to finally see them have it out over their past and relationship and see it resolved(in a way).
-the cursed skeleton captain was a super fun new character; I love when pirates are designed with all three impairments (hook hand, eye patch, peg leg)
-we are reunited with some beloved departed SOT faces in the tavern of the damned.
-a large part of enjoying the experience was purely from the music; whether new scores or remakes of old SOT or POTC music, it was always deep and able to elicit such emotion in me every step of the way to make it an astounding gameplay.
-all the levels were equal challenging and enjoyable, even those that were pretty difficult to get through; if I had rate the 5 tall tales on enjoyability, they’d be
1. Captains of the Damned
2. A Pirate’s Life
3. The Sunken Pearl(this was tied with dark brethren but won out because of the haunting singing/music)
4. Dark Brethren
5. Lords of the sea
-“A Pirates Life” and “Captains of the Damned” were great highlights that I know I will play multiple times for their easy and fun explorative gameplay and nostalgic inspiration from the ride.
-The Ocean crawlers, while hard to fight, look awesome and were great stand-ins for davy jones’ trademark crew.
-we get a bit of ominous world building with the dark brethren; gold hoarder being alive(and hilariously being gifted the cursed gold from the first POTC), captain warsmith(wanda) appears to be going solo from flameheart and is revealed to have been the masked stranger associated with the Reapers(edit-that was already known, but i have a lot of gaps in lore knowledge), and Duke, former associate of the Bilge Rats, apparently gone rogue.
-these also lead into serious consequences for future events in the game; davy jones is now imprisoned on the ferry of the damned(I wonder if we’ll be able to see him when we go there); the dark brethren are still loose; whether the ocean crawlers, ghosts, sirens and the kraken will continue to be enemies in the game; will the portal to the sea of the damned stay open; Rose and George being restored to life and joining jack’s crew and returning to his world. There is also the question of two mysterious unrevealed characters; first is the “her” that jack keeps mentioning he made a promise to regarding the treasure. The other is the mysterious “Captain” who evidently stole Jones’ heart, commanded his actions and is the grand mastermind of these events. i lrecently found out who “the captain” of SOT lore is and that its most likely him...but how did he gets jones’ heart from another world though?
Cons
-all the time spent in the sea of the damned, and we never get to see captain briggsy(my fav character)
-flameheart is talked about by the brethren in the past tense, as if he’s gone and no longer a factor; I sure as hell hope not, he’s the primary and best villain of this game, the guy’s awesome.
-3 of the 5 tall tales felt way to hard/complex except for the most skilled of players(thank god for crews).
-No Barbossa; Captains of the Damned mentioned him quite a bit and I thought we were building up to him being introduced but it never happening. A small part of me suspects he may be the mysterious captain with jones’ heart.(edit-found out the captain is of SOT lore tied with flameheart)
-Bill Nighy and Geoffrey Rush not reprising their POTC characters.
-wish we got to spend more time with the cursed captain
-I know it’s typical for this game and others like it, but not getting a bit more close up interactions with davy jones.
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Fable IV rant:
I'm so pumped up for the 23rd because everything has led me to believe that Fable 4 will be announced this year and the game's existence has been confirmed for a while anyway it's just a matter of time of when will Fable 4 show itself. It's a badly kept secret tbh.
So to those who don't mind a big rant or wish to add on to my rant- here we go!
Can you imagine how good the graphics would be for this game, we've all seen modern games, surely, and they're all bloody fantastic looking. Fable Legends is technically the most recent Fable game despite it being a free to play online game
and that it's cancelled
but it also had a gorgeous look to it all! And the character models did great justice to the concept art and honestly that has my hopes real high because I love the concept art of Fable, specifically from Mike McCarthy, so exaggerated and recognisable- yet in all the games I can confidently say they did not do justice to his character design, specifically for Reaver. Sure, he looks stunning in the third game, but not quite what he looks like in his concept art sadly.
But also, since Fable was made in Unreal Engine (I'm pretty sure at least) we've seen examples of what can be done in Unreal Engine now and it's absolutely breath taking!
If you haven't seen here are some examples and they're so life-like.
Moving on from graphics!
Since Playground Games is behind the development of Fable 4, they would be spectacular at an open spaced world, judging from the Forza games.
I always loved the open world feature added to Fable, it made things more adventurous and you could do so many things that weren't at all related to the main quest to progress the story and it was just thrilling to see there were other things going on! I'd love to just have my dog companion running through fields, fighting enemies left and right and finding buried treasure or forgotten chests.
Run into strangers who request aid in something silly or rather serious and it would be up to you with how you go about the quest or if you even accept it to get renown or gold. Cause a massacre in towns and villages, running off with low morality and plentiful loot- oh one could fantasise of this all day.
Story, characters, writing and voices.
Fable has always had a fun environment of fantasy and a rather good story (despite the curse of mundane or pathetic boss fights in which I hope Fable 4 breaks this cycle) but the one thing that's always kept me on my feet in the games is the writing and the characters. It always just tried not to take itself too seriously, throwing in absurd quests that probably requires cheese or a really weird-looking outfit. It always kept my attention rather than just pure edge and seriousness of life or death.
The characters are a given, the writing done for them all is perfect in my eyes, I love hearing the variations of how characters of NPCs interacted (enough so that I even bought two of the Fable books written by Peter David). Despite Fable 3 not being the greatest at it's time, I found myself absolutely enjoy the characters for how they were- I even cried over Walter's death because it genuinely felt like I lost somebody pretty close (RIP Walter🙏). The writing and the chosen voice actors were superb and I'd love more of it.
I hope this time we can receive a full story instead of how Fable 2 and 3 were where plenty of plot points and such were cut out due to time constraints- thanks Microsoft, very cool. I'm still in anguish when listening to the Developer's Diary 3 of Fable 3 hearing lines that were just never said in the final product and it was definitely not just additional lines that weren't required as it seemed to mention entirely different things that weren't in the game; i.e. Reaver talks about his pirates in Bloodstone and how he misses them- in the final product he never mentions it and it's even shown that he's tried to completely bury his pirate past for whatever reason.
The pacing in Fable 3 was rather strange too, it felt like the revolution should've lasted longer.
Another hope of mine is to have choices that aren't so painfully black-and-white because it's very obvious which is the good or bad option to a scenario- personally for me I'd like to be morally grey rather than pure good or pure evil.
They better have kept the mechanic of your actions affecting your appearance too to the point where you grow horns and get cracked magma-like skin or this slight glow and aura around you and this flawless skin. It kind of died down in Fable 3, only looking more tired or have completely black eyes and the good- eh yeah not much I can say for when you're good. Purity and corruption seemed to also vanish in Fable 3 (at least I think) since you couldn't really change prices of the homes you were renting out, unless I've been a big goof who didn't arrange the rent prices in the game because I didn't know how.
Combat
Combat in all the games was rather straight forward, especially in Fable 2 and 3 where everything was just easy to beat or you could get overpowered around the start of the game. I'd hope the combat improves greatly this time and even bring back real consequences to dying instead of immediate revival with some lost experience and a scar. We need more serious consequences to your actions (this can be applied to all decisions rather than just if you die in a battle) even if it's just having to reload the last checkpoint. Makes things more challenging this way.
Another thing is to make boss fights less repetitive and simple- sure I can forgive it if the boss is from around the start but if they had phases you had to keep ontop of and didn't rely on summoning a bajillion other enemies to strike you, I'd be ever so grateful.
And if there's other characters fighting along side you, I'd hope they'd genuinely be helpful and keep up to speed with the player. I'm sure the AI in the past was the problem for this as AI wasn't at its best during that time so characters fighting by you didn't do too much or just did whatever that wasn't helpful. Now though, AI has improved immensely (I mean look at The Last Of Us 2, the AI is👌) and due to this, I'm sure characters would make battles more fun and the characters be more involved with the fight and even story.
Mana should be brought back as well, in Fable 2 and 3 mana just ceased to exist so you could just endlessly and repeatedly use the same spells and it just gave you too much power and the enemies barely stood a chance.
We need challenges people- CHALLENGES!
Medieval times? Yes.
I love Medieval fantasy and as much as I like the Victorian era too, I didn't think it quite suited Fable, as fascinating as it was to see fantasy turn industrial, it kind of took away from the Fable feel that I so crave. If they have indeed brought the game back to medieval times it means more creatures and enemies are back rather than driven away or limited to the same handful of enemies.
We can all also agree the guns were overpowered, though I did like receiving the Red Dragon late in Fable 2 to absolutely mow down enemies, it was satisfying to say the least. However, guns were far too powerful for the game, so I demand the bows and crossbows back thank you very much- or even throwing knives- I'll take what I'm given.
I'd love to see more of the natural landscape rather than towns or buildings that took over once entirely natural areas (Millfields/Bowerlake). However, I won't object to ruins of old buildings taken over by nature.
Skeptical with Playground Games? Don't be.
Are you worried that Playground Games wouldn't do justice to Fable since it's not Lionhead Studios? Don't be, it's been noted that Playground Games has hired several ex-lionhead workers and plenty other skillful workers to ensure we get the best product. I have high hopes and expectations for Fable 4 even if it's developed under a different studio, I've seen great things from them and I will believe they'll deliver us only the best.
Side note to all this
I will crash and burn if I don't see a crumb of Reaver or Jack of Blades in Fable 4- I don't know how true any rumours are of Fable 4 with time travelling and Jack returning, but we'll just have to see. Reaver still remains as my absolute favourite character of all time and I'd love to see more of him, even see him before he was 'Reaver'.
Jack too, more of his lore is stated elsewhere rather than in the game itself and I'd love to see it all be brought into light and really expand on his lore and make it known- rather than have ever-loving Fable fans like me dig around for these rather delicious bits of canon information.
That's my big rant, feel free to share your thoughts and what you'd look forward to!
Have some accidental art leaks from a Playground Game concept artist- believed to be for Fable 4👀
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The League of Villains Plays DnD AU
(Saw a post by @bunny-loverxiv last night that reminded me I’ve had this stupid thing in my drafts unfinished for over a year now. I’m not sure I’ll ever have time to come back and finish it, but in the spirit of what I posted earlier, here it is, in all its unfinished.. glory...)
Since I asked for a League of Villains plays DnD AU and no one delivered, alas, I guess I’ll just do all the work myself!
So, without further ado:
Shigaraki Tomura’s Character Sheet:
Race and Appearance: Fallen Aasimar, with hair pale as the flesh of wraiths and eyes like two burning pools of blood, reflecting out from the infernal pits of the abyss. His rippling muscles under his bone-white skin carry the scars of his uncountable victories, and when his corrupted celestial powers radiate forth, ghostly skeletal wings rise--
( “Do I have to keep reading? This is really long...”
“It’s important!”)
Alias: “Zephiroth”
(”Isn’t that the guy from Final Fantasy?”
“No! That was Sephiroth! My character’s name is totally different!”)
Class: Oath of Conquest Paladin/Hell Knight
Motto: Dim the Ray of Hope
A dread knight whose armor is black with the blood of his enemies; to stand against him on the field of battle is to know true fear, and none have called themselves his equal and lived to tell the tale. His menacing aura is a cloud of evil righteous murder that spreads across the land as he advances, and everywhere he travels is seeped into the deepest of despairs. Civilizations tremble before the darkness of his impossibly dark darkness.
(“Did you run out of adjectives?”
No, I meant exactly what I said.”)
Also, collects the severed hands of his conquests.
(”Tomura-kun, this isn’t a character, this is just you!”
“Collecting body trophies is standard lore for conquest paladin; you’d know if you read Xanathar’s Guide.”)
Alignment: Chaotic Good
(“Shigaraki Tomura, I am not sure this alignment fits with the character you’re describing--”
“I wrote the campaign, so good’s whatever I say it is.”
“Boss, doesn’t playing in your own campaign defeat the purpose? Knowing everything ahead of time’s a great idea!”
“Shut up, I don’t care about spoilers.”)
Backstory: Zephiroth the Bloody swore an oath to complete the conquest of his father, King Jenovo, who fell in battle to his eternal rival and estranged foolish younger brother, Nimbus Might ( “You know, I really think I’ve heard these names before...”). Jenovo’s quest was undoubtedly a noble one: to reunite the brothers’ separated kingdoms under a single legitimate banner--and its single legitimate ruler. The two brothers clashed in a battle of titans that shook the entire world, and though he was in the wrong, Nimbus Might reigned supreme in the end, and took Jenovo’s life and kingdom both. The death of his father crushed the last remnants of joy and love in young Prince Zephiroth’s black heart and now he will stop at nothing to put an end to Nimbus Might’s reign by turning every symbol of his false kingdom to dust.
Notable Stats and Weapon: +5 Intimidation, +5 Persuasion; greatsword and shield wielder.
Tomura is a quintessential min-maxer; he made everyone else take the standard array for stats but... “rolled” for his.
(”This old man’s been reviewing the character sheets, Shigaraki, and couldn’t help but notice some discrepancies in the party’s stats compared to yours--”
“You’re welcome to not play. Ever.”
“Must have been a trick of the light!”)
Carrying: The holy relic “Lavos”
(”Isn’t that just from Chrono Cross?”
“I think you mean, Khrono Kross, Spinny.”)
The relic is a glowing black and red container imbued with a hellish aura, containing magical bullets said to be formed from the blood of the time goddess, allowing Shigaraki to permanently unwind his opponents’ powers. Limited use, 5 times.
Dabi:
Race and Appearance: Tiefling.
(“Did you not even bother to write an appearance?!”
“My character has the same appearance as me.”
“That’s not even possible. Tieflings are supposed to have horns!”
“Okay, my character has the same appearance as me with horns.”)
Alias: “Dabi”
(”You can’t name your character after yourself!”
“But I’m not named Dabi.”)
Class: Phoenix Sorcerer
Motto: Ashes to Ashes
(”You can’t play this class either, it isn’t canon.”
“You told me to pick one from the wiki; ain’t my problem you didn’t specify.”
“I said no homebrew!”
“And that means... what?”)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
(”You ignored my instructions about our alignment too, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but you said ‘good’ so I assumed I misheard.”
“We’re the protagonists of this story--our cause is just!”)
Feats and Skills: ...Hmm, for some reason, many things have been written and then crossed out?
(“W-What have you done?! You can’t just modify things however you feel! Why would you even swap out Nourishing Fire for an Elemental Affinity that deals ice damage?! And did you just scratch out ‘long rest’ and put ‘short rest’ here? That’s OP!”
“When the hell have any of you let me get a long rest?”
“Animal Handling as a skill, seriously?!”
“Figured you’d give me some monsters to tame.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
Shigaraki was, in fact, planning on there being monsters for Dabi to tame.)
Backstory: A traveler with a shadowy past.
(”That’s... your whole backstory? Are you freaking kidd--”
”Aww, come on Dabi, this bio is lame! Oh, I know, I know! You’re actually a prince in disguise, exiled from his kingdom and seeking vengeance on his father, the one who left him horrifically burned and on the brink of death, which caused you to be rescued by the soul of a lonely phoenix, and at the end of your quest, after reclaiming your rightful throne from your evil father, you free the phoenix who possessed you to save your life, but then it returns and swears its eternal love to you! Eehee!”
“We’re...not doing that.”
“You can’t do that anyways, it completely undermines my lore. There are only two kingdoms in this world, and I’m going to be the ruler of both of them.”)
Notable Stats and Weapon: +3 Deception, +4 Insight; wields darts.
(”But why do I even have to pick a weapon? It says right there I have Burning Hands.”)
Carrying: A shard of never-melting ice in the shape of a three-petaled flower; it exudes a calming chill even when wreathed in the wildest of fires. Looking at it makes you feel... melancholy?
(”Why is this the only section with detail?! If you could put this much effort in here, you should have taken the rest seriously too!”)
Mr. Compress:
Race and Appearance: Human, a man in the prime of his life, with a roguish glint in his eye and a rakish gold mustache above his mysterious smirk. There’s an artfully placed scar below his right eye that speaks to a life of the blade and adventure, and his pressed linen and metallic brocade doublet belies his nature as a man of impeccable taste. His jaunty black bandana is always pulled low over his eyes, but mischief seems to twinkle out from beneath the accompanying black mask nevertheless.
(“Oh, I like it! A lot! Hey, hey, will you rewrite mine for me? Make it like yours but cuter!”)
Alias: The Dread Pirate Roberts
(“Huh? The first part is good, but why “Roberts”?
“Well, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley.”
“What are you snickering about, Kurogiri?”
“Nothing at all, Shigaraki Tomura.”)
Class: Multi-class Swashbuckler and School of Conjuration Wizard
Motto: To the Pain!
(“These two classes don’t compliment each other at all. You should change to Hexblade at least!”
“As you wish.”
“Kurogiri’s laughing again. What are you two hiding? Tell me!”)
Mr. Compress knew full well the classes he picked didn’t mesh; he just lives for the shits and giggles. He’s actually been playing DnD longer than Toga’s been alive, but where’s the fun in telling Tomura that?
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Skills: Acrobatics, Persuasion, Performance, Sleight of Hand
(“Okay, but am I the only one who actually created a real character instead of a self-insert? DnD’s a role-playing game; isn’t the whole point to use your imagination?!”
“Ain’t our fault your real self is too boring to be a decent character, Lizard.”
“You never miss an opportunity to insult me, do you, asshole?!”)
Backstory: Although he came from unremarkable origins, Westley Roberts found himself thrust on to the path of great destiny when the merchant ship on which he was employed was attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts--
“How can he attack his own ship? You forgot your own name, didn’t you?”
“Not all, Shigaraki! I’m not that old!”
--but when Roberts heard the tale of Westley’s quest to prove himself for the one he loved--
“Wait, who is this other character now? There was no love interest listed before!”
“Just let me tell the story!”
--Roberts was overcome by the depth of Westley’s tale of woe and decided to name him his successor, passing down the title of Dread Pirate Roberts--
“Can I change my character to a Dread Pirate?”
“No, Dabi!”
“I’m just sayin’, why was I not informed of this option?”
--sothathecouldmildlyterrorizethewatersaroundhishomekingdomandfinallyamasstherichesneededtoimpresshischarminglove. PHEW! Thank you for letting me finish!
Notable Stats and Weapon: +4 Dexterity, +5 Charisma; wields a rapier with impeccable skill. Is definitely not left-handed.
Carrying: A Rodent of Unusual Size. Excellent distraction. Also edible.
“What is wrong with everyone in this room?!”
And the rest of the League I didn’t finish, but:
Spinner: A gorgeous lady Argonian who spits beams of pure light--
“No, this is too cool. Change it.”
“Awww come on, Shigaraki, just let me have this--”
“Change it.”
Toga: Tabaxi assassin. ON A QUEST FOR LOVE. (May or may not have decided this after peering over Mr. Compress’s shoulder during character creation time.)
Twice: Halfling wizard. None of his stats make sense because he couldn’t make up his mind where to put them.
Hawks: Aarakochra bard. Entirely useless. That asshole who rolls to seduce everything.
Kurogiri: The DM. But not by choice.
There’s no Giran or Gigantomachia because I started writing this before either of them were really “part” of the League. Use your imaginations~
#League of Villains#Dungeons and Dragons#DnD AU#boku no hero academia#Shigaraki Tomura#Dabi#Mr. Compress#dabihawks#but like only as a joke#because I can't take anything serious#dabi is a todoroki#BNHA#these are like completely and totally official#don't @ me
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Reflection
Author’s Notes and Commentary
Well, here we are at the end.
When I started writing The Followers, I genuinely didn’t think it would come this far. I wasn’t setting out to write a literal novel’s worth of content (122,655 words between everything before I edit the original Followers fic, to be precise) about some self-insert OCs that some friends and I ended up creating on a whim. When I started with this project, it was supposed to be some fun little things between friends, a little like DMP in that regard: a fun fic writing with friends where plenty of bad things happen. Except like its source material, it turned into something much greater than even its creator could’ve imagined.
Nearly everything that we came up with was pure speculation, because at the time, DMP didn’t have a lot of solid lore to build a more canon-compliant AU (not that I/we were ever trying to do that in the first place, but I digress). Part of me is a bit sad that I was never able to incorporate other Awakened or even write fics centered around the Awakened as opposed to the Followers; at the time most of this was being written, there simply weren’t enough characters in DMP for me to have a cast I could write with. By the time there were, there was no way I could take on another project of this size. The Followers fit that niche of having a relatively large cast with varying interpersonal dynamics that DMP now has, and at the very least, I am glad to see I was able to predict something in the major narrative.
This being said, as a person, I love making self insert characters for stories and media. In my eyes, if I can see myself or a character I have made interacting with a world someone else has created, that piece of media has made a world that others can see themselves in. Even in its early days, DMP created a world that I felt could be expanded upon beyond what we were explicitly told, which is how the Followers really came to be in the first place. Even if none of it is canon, the lore of the Followers still reasonably fits with the information we were given in Season 1, and that makes me happy.
(No, I’m never updating this to explore what we know as of season 3.)
A lot has changed since I started writing the Followers, and more broadly, writing anything for myself again. For those who didn’t know, I had a lot of hangups writing fanfiction for a long time due to some events in my past, and it wasn’t until DMP that I felt both inspired enough and comfortable enough with the community surrounding it to branch out into fic writing once again. Throughout this two and a half year journey, material and backstory elements were fleshed out behind the scenes, quite a bit of stuff got retconned within the Follower’s AU, and overall, I have quite simply changed as a writer and a person. I’ve made a lot of amazing friends (and a significant other) in this process, interacted with a lot of wonderful people, and in something that surprised even me, some of the DMP cast themselves have read my work. It’s really helped me break out of my shell and branch out into other avenues, and I genuinely don’t know where I’d be without writing the Followers.
So, to everyone who has been here on this journey, whether you helped develop the characters (shout outs to my fellow creators, Onyx, Missfoxx, ArcherOwl, Arahul, CollectorOfMyst, Caaarl, KyleTheWarrior, you guys are sincerely wonderful and amazing people to work with), been an avid fan of the series, or have simply enjoyed watching all of this from the side lines: thank you. I couldn’t have done this alone, and I’m glad to have gone on this journey with you all.
The Followers: Agents of Stories
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t have a working theme going into this whole novel long journey, but I will be touching on some of the various themes I began to weave into the story as time went on.
The truth matters.
The truth is the single most driving factor throughout the series. Characters uncover each other’s backstories, Young Priest learns the real reason why the stories of the Followers have been so inconsistent, Vincent learns the truth about his wife, and even the readers of this fic learn the truth about the lore I’ve created for this AU. Wanting to know what is really going on is really the driver of any modern narrative, because it’s often the readers who are in the dark since we can only experience things from (typically) one perspective as we read.
Truth, like history, is often written by the victors and people in power.
Murder God and the Followers are experts at lying. To them, truth is a tool, and whoever knows the truth has the most power. The truth is complicated, the truth is messy, and for beings that powerful, the truth is objectively dangerous. If word gets out Gale is the Witch’s daughter, if too many people know Young Priest’s sister is in the Void, if people learn that Priestess actually cares about Lieutenant, that gives other people power over them. This is where the idea of unreliable narrators also comes into play; there’s simply things that the reader doesn’t know because of who’s POV they’re experiencing the world through and what they’re going to care about letting other people know. They don’t want people to know the truth. I
A story’s message is more important than the truth.
Good narratives and good historical records rarely intersect well. There’s always going to be embellishment, stuff that is left out or skimmed over, or timelines that are changed to better suit the story someone is trying to tell. Because the truth is often written by people in power, it makes sense for the general scope of the narrative to be prioritized over getting every single detail correct. No one actually cares if Witch lost her pregnancy, if Huntress was killed by another god, if Advisor actually feared something happening to him. People care about the Witch, the human who has fallen from grace. People care about the Huntress, bringer of vengeance and the hunt. People care about the Advisor, collector of knowledge and secrets. As long as the mythos is served, who cares about the truth?
General Questions
What is the order the Followers joined?
Old Priestess, Lieutenant, Witch, Bookkeeper, Advisor, Huntress, Part Timer, Young Priest
What do all of the Followers represent in terms of game rolls?
Old Priestess and Lieutenant are the Murderers, Witch is the Witch (you can save someone and you can kill someone), Bookkeeper is the Minion (aids the murderers but does not partake in the killings), Advisor is the Seer, Huntress is the Gunslinger, Part Timer is the Doctor/Bodyguard (protect one person every night), and Young Priest is the Gardener.
How many of the Followers have been replaced?
Less than you think. Witch is the last in a long line of typically human or quasi-immortal witches who didn’t survive. The Young Priest position has changed hands multiple times due to that role actively needing some human morality to work properly, which usually results in minds being broken or rebellions taking place.
Can Old Priestess and Lieutenant bleed?
Old Priestess, yes. Lieutenant, no, but I suppose he could make blood if he really felt like it.
The Masquerade chapter mentioned something about Priestess having "ichor" that helped stabilize Bookkeepers' blood. What is that quote un quote ichor?
It’s just her own blood. Priestess donated her own blood to help stabilize Bookkeeper.
How many years did it take for Bookkeeper’s legs to heal? Are there any scars?
Time doesn’t really exist in the Void, but if I had to put a number to it, about ten years. There are some very small scars, but they’re not easy to see. Bookkeeper also never wears anything that isn’t long sleeved, so take that as you will.
Could you stick your hand through Part Timer’s eye hole? How does he function with half of his skin gone? Does he get blood everywhere?
Yes, you can, but you’d soon hit red strings. His muscle tissue and bones are held together with magic and magic alone, so his ‘undead’ side needs blood only in the vaguest sense. That being said, his clothes are almost always bloodstained to some extent, so that blood has to come from somewhere.
What are the Followers’ opinions on sleeping? Do any of them need sleep?
None of them need sleep. Most of them are too busy to ever want sleep. Huntress occasionally lies down for a nap, and Witch slept a fair bit while she was raising Gale.
How do Advisor's…emotion switches work? Could they get unwillingly triggered by something?
The switches are more metaphorical. The idea is that since he understands how emotions are processed and created and how he responds to them, he can willingly enable or disable his ability to feel them. This also means he can, in theory, control his mood at all given times. However, as shown in Inter Spem et Metum, if he has had no reason to experience a certain emotion until that exact moment, it can temporarily render that control useless, as he doesn’t know enough about it to control it.
Can any of them get sick? If yes, what could cause it and how would they get better?
Biological illness, no. Curse based illnesses, yes. Typically if one of them were to get cursed by something strong enough to hold, Witch would be the one to break it. She’s their primary curse breaker. If Witch gets cursed, the others know enough about curse breaking to get her out of it.
Can they get sick from something their own bodies do (ie. hives from stress, allergies)?
Almost all of their bodies are so infused with magic that most problems that would plague mortals aren’t as much of a concern. It would be a little bit like, say, Aphrodite getting hives from stress. While she might look human, she’s definitely not, and a lot of the problems that come with being human don’t apply.
When did Retribution take place?
Before Part Timer joined. That’s the closest to an actual answer you’re going to get.
How many of the Followers actually know each other’s stories?
Everyone has an inkling of the truth of the others, but only Witch and Bookkeeper have let the others know their full story. Bookkeeper has never really cared, and Witch was all but forced to tell her full story.
Are there any ships that the creators ship among the Followers?
Old Priestess and Lieutenant is shipped by Old Priestess’s creator (Missfoxx), Lieutenant’s creator (Onyx), and me. It’ll never be canon, because Lieutenant doesn’t know what love feels like and Old Priestess will never admit her own feelings, but it is a strong ship between the three of us. Bookkeeper’s creator (Caaarl) and I actually ship Bookkeeper and Witch due to their unspoken bond they developed being the only former humans amongst ancient deities and eldritch entities. Again, non canon, but it’s definitely an exploration for both of us how the two of them would cope with such traumatic transformations.
What actually happened with Vincent’s wish in Chapter 20?
This was intentionally left vague due to it being from Vincent’s point of view, and Vincent calls himself not a smart man. Essentially, Murder God and the Followers caused a timeline divergence due to their canon ability to fuck up timelines as they so desire. Gale still married Vincent Marshall Reid, but he simply just died in the war overseas and never took Murder God’s deal. Vincent Marshall Reid of DMP canon instead grew up in West Virginia and married Abigail Crane. Essentially, the two of them exist in different timelines now, unable to ever interact again in any meaningful way.
Is Gale going to be okay?
Gale is Witch’s daughter. Witch refuses to let Gale get mixed up with the cults. Even with her current actions and making a deal with Murder God, Gale is considered a free agent and always will be a free agent. She and the kids will be fine. Star sickness isn’t a thing in the Followers AU either, so she won’t be coughing up goop.
What is actually going to happen to Young Priest in Chapter 21?
That’s meant for reader speculation; part of the horror of the Followers is not knowing specifically what they’re willing to do to someone and how far they’re willing to go to make someone into the image they need. I’ll probably expand on how I think he turns out once everything has been done to him, but I can tell you this. His eyes are turned a solid sparkling blue.
#the followers#the strings that bind us together#don't read this until you've read chapter 21#or do#there's spoilers under the readmore
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Susie legion
Give me a character and I will answer:
Why I like them: The concept of Legion is a super fun, engaging one, even if in practice it was kinda underwhelming. As a character, Susie as a kinda shy, naive hanger-on that got in so far over her head and is now struggling to stay a part of her gang, being forced to kill people when she isn’t even all the way grown up yet and definitely wouldn’t have chosen to in the first place-- that’s engaging.
Why I don’t: Hate how fandom infantilizes her at times. I tend to never specifically hate a character for how they’re shown in canon, unless the devs fuck it up (see: Doc, Julie’s tome), with some notable exceptions that I think have just been poorly conceived and written from the start (say, Mustafa Ali leading Retribution, also bc out of kayfabe he’s I think said he’s unhappy with it because he doesn’t want to be playing a villain; it makes no sense with his previously established character and he’s clearly not having a good time playing it, and Retribution is ALSO clearly thinly-veiled Antifa or whatever so we’re supposed to think they’re villains bc mr mcmahon is an old fuck), and at that point it’s not even hatred for the character themselves; I fucking HATE Freddy but can’t deny that he’s a PHENOMENAL villain and the visceral, passionate hatred I have for him makes me root against him and for the heroes, and I love seeing him get what’s coming to him. In wrestling terms, that’s called heat, and it’s a good thing and good villains should be able to generate heat. After Doc’s tome, I’m like a skittish feral animal, I don’t trust them to not wreck him further-- they took a great fckn villain and decided to depart entirely from one trope onto another, which would be fine, if they had introduced an entirely new character to fill the niche! The emotion I feel toward tome-Doc is, in wrestling, “go away heat”, which is a bad kind of heat bc the audience doesn’t want to SEE the villain, doesn’t want to watch them get beat up even, they just want them to go away and for the story to continue. I feel this way toward say, Thanos too btw, purely because of how he was portrayed by the writers. A good writer can take a mediocre, C-list character and elevate them to godlike status (Kite Man. F*** yeah Kite man) and writers who don’t care, don’t know the character, have an alternate agenda, or just... don’t have time or energy to do a character justice can cause a fandom to lose interest in a character entirely. I’m sure there’s a way to make me interested in Thanos. Apologia for his abuse and shitty actions throughout an entire series of movies is not the way to do that.
ANYWAY BACK TO SUSIE. Her Lunar New Year skin is a prime example of me losing interest in the canon direction of a character. It contradicts her original lore and the characterization set forth there. If we’re to assume that these skins are legitimate/”real”, which people are totally allowed to do, it paints a very different picture of Susie.
Thank god for fic that rehabilitates her tho (ILM by @ziracona does a good job of portraying a semi-adult Susie who still has some kidlike attributes, bc ofc she’s the baby of the gang).
Favorite episode (scene if movie): N/A
Favorite season/movie: Darkness Among Us bc devs hadn’t fucked her up at that point
Favorite line: DbD does not have voice lines sadly but I love her stun noise lol
Favorite outfit: IDK I don’t play Susie. The new Chimeric Horde Blight skin is SICK though, it’s visually striking and elicits so much pathos, and I do like her default skin bc it’s unapologetically cute. Can’t kill survivors if you aren’t feelin cute.
OTP: No OTPS here unfortunately, I’m not super into shipping Susie with anyone. Susie/Meg is kinda cute tho
Brotp: Susie/Julie is super cute.
Head Canon: Susie likes wrestling. Big Diva stan if I’ve ever seen one; what’s more fun than curling up on the couch and watching pretty ladies toss each other across a ring? Gay awakening. Made her realize she had a crush on Julie bc one of the divas looked kinda similar to Julie.
Unpopular opinion: IDK see what I hate. People who like the new lore are entitled to that and I’m glad there’s someone out there pulling for it, but it’s just personally not for me.
A wish: I wish people would stop being weird about her and start being weird about Deathslinger instead
An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: BHVR please stop contradicting your own lore
5 words to best describe them: Shy, fawning, playful, affectionate, naive
My nickname for them: Miss Susie Legion/Miss Susie/Susan
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Hey! So, I noticed a post of yours talking about how much different races are in your gfs world. I'm currently worldbuilding for my homebrew campaign that I'll run in two weeks. I want the races to be unique and break stereotypes (such as goblins being greedy, orcs being barbariac, etc.) What tools did your gf use to figure out what the races should be in her world/what are some examples of it? Thanks!
This got really long, I’m sorry. :’) I tried to be as thorough as I could though!
Basically, she tried to do the opposite of the shitty, racist things that white dude authors usually do with fantasy races. She didn’t make new of everything, but she took what was existing in the canon lore and made it her own, twisting things to better fit the world she wanted to tell stories in. Some of her updated races were inspired by real world cultures and mythology (especially weird misogynist myths to turn upside down) and did a lot of research on them. Another thing she thought about was how the influence of magic on the world and how it would effect certain races.
Examples:
Since you mentioned orcs, I’ll start with them: They are still tribal and still have the blood rage, since that’s pretty integral to what orcs are, but both things are a result from being hunted so much that they were blessed by a god called Gruumsh, who gave them the ability to defend themselves. (It’s very inspired by TES lore I think, where they used to be related to elves but were changed.) They’re also really connected to nature and animals, naturally have a proficiency in Animal Handling, and typically tribes have a really close relationship with one animal from the area that they’re from. But on top of that, they’re also one of the races that are at the top when it comes to engineering and technological advances, right under the gnomes. They help the world recover after a phenomenon when magic is wiped out of the land, and without the orcs, they wouldn’t ever develop scientific medicine.
She has some lore about goblins too: they’re in a state of flux right now, where a grand majority of them are trying really hard to end the stigma on their race. A lot of them can be found in cities, trying to escape what people think of them.
Magical reproduction is super common among some species rather than physical reproduction (dwarves are carved from stone, gnomes have little gnomeling plants that they carry around in dirt backpacks for gestation, the world is heavily populated with LGBT+ folks so gender/sex doesn’t matter when it comes to magic rituals to make babies, etc.)
Dwarves are also very in-tune with nature! They have a close relationship with the Elemental Plane of Earth because they live underground, so there’s a lot of dwarven druids and rangers who instead of working against nature (like dwarves do in a lot of canon fantasy worlds) their mission is to protect the mountains from the Underdark below because they feel an innate urge to protect the stone.
Also I think it kind of started as a joke, but dwarves eat stone too? A dwarf once told me that instead of like cow milk or something, they make milk out of stone? I’m not sure if she was joking or not but it’s kind of hilarious and it makes me like dwarves more.
Drow aren’t inherently evil. You can find drow farmers with big sunhats on. The idea of a purely evil species is pretty racist, so she tends to stray away from that at all costs. (Related: Yuan-Ti Purebloods don’t exist ‘cause yikes! Racist and probably antisemetic.)
She basically re-packaged all of the tiefling and devil lore to make it more interesting; she really embraces the tiefling variants. Tieflings’ appearances and inherent magical abilities and bonuses are related to the devil that they are related to. My tiefling druid, Leda, is my favorite example because she’s so weird: She’s the granddaughter of Tiamat, so she looks super dragon-like (scales, weird feet, claws) and instead of Hellish Rebuke, she has a breath weapon. Little homebrew things like that have made tieflings go from my least favorite race to one of my favorites to play.
High elves are typically the most boring to me in any setting, but she made them pretty rad in a simple way: their appearances typically depend on what time of the day and year they were born. Morning elves are pale while night elves are very dark-skinned; summer elves have golden or green eyes, spring elves have blue or hazel, fall elves have orange or red, and winter elves have purple or silver.
Half races aren’t just half-human. There’s an infinite combination! My latest character, Gadget, is the daughter of a half-elf/half-orc and a gnome, so her physical appearance has little glimpses into that. That has really made the world feel more real and alive.
An example of turning misogynist myths on their head is Gorgons. In her world, they were created by a goddess after men were invented to help protect women, and they’re a very neutral good species. A lot of them are super peaceful and monk-like.
I hope that helps! She told me to mention that you definitely shouldn’t feel pressured to go along with canon; it’s mostly just the basic chunk of clay for you to mold into what you want to exist in your world. Have fun with it! And don’t be afraid to be weird.
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I'm working on your ask, but here's some for you: I, A, M, S, P, O, T
Ask prompt here: x
thanks puffin!! this is gonna be long and nostalgic eyy
I - HasTumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?
I wouldn’t say “actively dislike” butthe toxicity of fandom on this website has sucked away most of my passion for Voltron lol. I used to really dig itthe first month or so after getting really into it when S2 aired. I still havean unfinished draft for a 7-parter rarepair fic //ey guess my fav duo ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)// sitting in my folders. don’t think I’llbe touching it any time soon though. im rather burnt out from this fandom, evenif I do still enjoy watching all the new seasons thereafter.
another is StevenUniverse ah a. (but in its and my defence, I wasn’t really into it anywaysas compared to other fandoms. the songs are still good, but I haven’t beenkeeping up with the newer Steven bombs, one part because of motivation, andanother because the thought of going into the tags to reblog contentintimidates the heck out of me pffft)
A - Ships that youcurrently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone hasOTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.
(puffin this question is gonnatake up half the ask oh god)oh bOY where do I start hahahaha. there’s so many aph and fe callbacks hahaha few otps aside I really have too manycrackpairs and platonic friendship ride-or-die squads I would die for. theseare only a few really relevant ones from the top of my head-
OTPS:
Norway/Vietnam (Hetalia) – alWAYS. i dont talk about and reblog much aph anymore but i still think about these two frequently. they were my first and closestthing ever to an actual otp in all my years of knowing what an otp was gosh Ihope to write about them again soon. their dynamics are the peak of mypreferences.
MU(avatar unit)/Silas (FE Fates) – thechildhood friends + loyal knight and liege trope + a pinch of memory loss wasnever really my thing, but guess there’s a first for everything ha h a ah a….silas is too pure for the angst I put him through im so sorry ಸ ل͜ ಸ
Berkut/Rinea (FE: SOV) – the second that one cutscene of these two played I got1000% more invested in the story pffft. anyways rinea may be top tier fav andberkut shit tier fav, and their story tragic as heck (and I would also arguethat he doesn’t deserve her), but their genuine and honest love for each otheramidst the incoming death flags gets me every time
707/MC (Mystic messenger) – honestly they can either be a really good platonicdynamic duo or a solid otp. purely from the perspective of my own MC, theycomplement each other well; perfect balance of light-hearted teasing and asolid wall of comfort for each other.
Ray-Saeran/MC (Mystic messenger) – ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ
(Other) Ships:
Seychelles/Iceland/HK (Hetalia) – they are good togetherromantically or platonically hahahaha. a good golden trio of kids
Russia/Vietnam (Hetalia) – their potential relationship and clashof character due to conflicting personalities fascinate me. a totally differentnoir vibe from norviet and one I hope to explore if I ever come back to aph
Nyx/Leo (FE Fates) – nyx ships are reallyrare but half of them are surprisingly sweet and poignant. Odin and Laslow tooare really sweet candidates to woo this jaded grandma’s heart.
MU/Laslow (FE Fates) – got to thank a wacky7-11 employee au dream I had for this one. but in the games their supportconversations are surprisingly thoughtful and low-key flirting which was notwhat I expected at all. wholesome.
Ham/Kai (MUxMU, FE) – remember when I said protag/protagships are the good stuff? yea h thatprincess tutu au is coming along swell
Alm/Celica (FE: SOV) – the rare main canon couple I love whodon’t die and get their happy ending (LOL this sounds really pathetic now thatI’ve said it)
Leon/Valbar (FE: SOV) – no one is surprised LOL. romantic orno, as long as leon is happy with where he stands with valbar and valbar ishappy with where he is im happy for them both
Conrad/Rinea (FE: SOV) – I know there are a couple of youreading this whos gonna give me that look but liste n; they could have met, and there is potential for them.(honestly this is just like another norviet situation where I put my 2 topfaves together for crackpair experimentation bUT IT WORKS I ASSURE YOU)
Zen/MC (Mystic messenger) – zen is so earnest that I can’t refute himhahaha. he also has a special seat in my mysme heart, since he was the firstroute I played and made me create content for the fandom proper
707/Jaehee (Mystic messenger) – they are rapidly gaining OTP status ꉂ (´∀｀)ʱªʱªʱª aaaa nightmare flashbacks because justlike norviet they really are the rarest of crackpairs and have almost to no content(gonna get down to business and churn fic out one day). these two are moresimilar than they’d think too.
Cecil/Haruka (Utapri) – ahahaha a good ship from a guiltypleasure fandom
(Purely) Platonic:
Izuku/Iida/Ochako (BNHA) – the first golden trio of thisseries. I love them so much.
Vanderwood/MC (Mystic messenger) – they parallel each other. truly thebiggest ride-or-die duo I will support to the end of time
Zen/Yoosung (Mystic messenger) – zen is such a mother hen to yoosungwwwww truly wholesome
Chise/Ruth (Ancient Magus Bride) – platonic master/familiar-partner relationships where both of them care for each other so much to the point where they would die for the other are my one weakness. its the reason i love writing more fleshed-out pokemon aus and loyal dogs/animals in longer fics. anyways these two are good
M - Name acharacter that you’d like to have for a friend.
707. It would be a trip justknowing him. (apart from the memes. but my life is already 80% meme, honestlywhats the difference ahahaha aaa-) Just, I feel like it would be really fun tohang out with him and revel in his wackiness (even if that personality is afront, maybe one day when i finally get into his inner-circle of friends, I hopeto be privy and be a good listening ear to his truer, more sombre personality.)
On the other hand, myself-confidence and 2nd hand embarrassment will be directlyproportional to each other (And im 100% sure Seven is the kind of person whowill exploit that hAH)
S - Show us anexample of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)
Every relevant character inMysmes is either a type of asexual (greysexual etc.), or on various points ofthe bi-spectrum. Yeah; even self-proclaimed, “straight-laced” Zen lol.
P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (wealways need more ideas)
Vampire/Selkie AU ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
a selkie whose skin gets stolen and hidden from a human man is forced to become his bride and taken back to his village. there, to escape the stares of bigoted villagers and the clutches of her overbearing and possessive husband, she takes refuge in the only place he would not go; the old holy church.
only, she finds she isn’t the first to occupy this place of solitude. the master of the church notices her soon enough, and when vampire recognises the ancient weave of magic that flows within her, he appears; intrigued for something other than a fresh meal.
(basically a deviation from the standard vampire (romance-ish) novels lolol plot bunny hit me pre-Christmas eve dinner/yesterday and sofar im digging it. still planning the ship and fandom though; it might very easily be OC-based)
O - Choose a songat random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?
since 1 is never enough, hereare 4 songs I was listening to recently:
Little Knights, Nem feat.Noire : Zen/MC(a zen-ish song through and through)
over and over, Yanagi Nagi : Saeran Choi + 707&MC(more saeran-centric with interpretative lyrics and referencing to both ray andunknown personas)
Finding something to do, HelloGoodbye : 707/Jaehee(fits their “don’t go where I can’t follow” dynamic haha ow.)
Life will Change, Shoji Meguro + Benjamin Franklin feat. Lyn Inaizumi : Kai(mui) or Ham(let)(honestly the entire persona 5 ost is massive fe fates protag feels)
T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons thatyou will die defending?
Not really. I’m a very flexible person when it comes tointerpretable lore and content, especially if it’s the type of HCs that thefandom collectively comes up with. Unless it’s a canon fact, I like to dabble orjust stay away from HCs in general. If I have to come up with some in my fics,then so be it. But most of the time these HCs are either super vague or onlyapply to the context in this particular piece or series of writing. Basically Idon’t mind switching HCs for charas frequently as long as it does notfundamentally change their own character. (HCs for hobbies and loves and habitsand relationships apart from their inner circle, etc. are all fine)
Honestly it just boils down to expectations lol I know myown limits, and I know not to be disappointed when canon updates end updebunking (popular) fandom HCs or my own.
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The Foxhole Court, Chapter 3 - Ball Is Life
In which things get progressively gayer, Neil has a boner over Orange Sportsball, Andrew’s Serious Issues™ continue and youth alcoholism has never looked this good.
Sounds good? Then it’s time for Nicki to read The Foxhole Court.
Neil spotted the Foxhole Court long before they made it onto the stadium parking lot. Built to seat sixty-five thousand fans, it’d been placed on the outskirts on campus.
SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND WHAT. To put this into perspective, the three biggest stadiums currently used in American lacrosse seat 30,000 (Harvard Stadium, Boston Cannons/Harvard Crimson), 34,000 (Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, Chesapeake Bayhawks) and 70,000 (Sports Authority Field at Mile High, Denver Outlaws).
It should look something like this (the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, used in football, seating exactly 65,000):
And that’s the seating capacity for a shitty Exy team.
What the fuck. I’m beginning to realise that this sport may be bigger than I initially thought.
Neil went up to the fence and stared through it at the outer grounds. (…) It made every hair on his body stand on end, and his heartbeat echoing in his ears sounded like an Exy ball rebounding off a court wall.
This is some Oliver Wood type of sportsball obsession, holy shit. Calm down, hombre.
(Will I make a Harry Potter reference every single chapter? Probably.)
And now, things get good:
“What’d your girlfriend get you [for your birthday]?”
Neil looked at him. “What?”
“Come on, cute face like yours has to have a girlfriend.”
Okay, first I freaked out over this because he’s canonically cute omg this is the best th-
And then this happens.
“Unless you swing my way, of course, in which case please tell me now and save me the trouble of having to figure it out.”
NICKY I LOVE YOU. YOUR ASS HAS JUST BEEN INSTANTLY PROMOTED TO SECOND FAVE.
Canon gay people!! I expected this but still!! This is chapter three and we’ve already got canon gay people!!
Am I biased because of my own queerness? Totally. Ya girl loves herself some good representation.
But hold on, my friends! This masterpiece of a scene isn’t done yet!
Neil stared at him, wondering how Nicky could care about such things when the stadium was right there.
I am HOWLING. This may be the best sentence in this entire chapter.
BALL IS LIFE. BALL IS LOVE.
Neil has priorities, you guys.
“I don’t swing either way,” Neil said. “Let’s go in.”
“Bullshit,” Nicky said.
“I don’t,” Neil said, and impatience put an edge in his voice. It wasn’t quite the truth, but it was close enough.
Spoiler alert: He’s demisexual, tumblr (and certain demisexual friends) have told me this as I got it wrong in my powerpoint slideshow post. Sorry about that.
S/o to all my demisexual peeps, and s/o to Nora Sakavic for representation beyond the usual. ❤
The majority of the pictures looked like they’d been taken by one of the Foxes themselves. These were scattered anywhere they could fit and held up by tape.
Where is the Foxes’ snapchat I need to see it.
Nicky probably uses the Fox filter all the time. Andrew probably hits him for it.
Exy was a co-ed sport, but few colleges wanted women in their lines. According to Fox lore, Palmetto State refused to approve any of the women Wymack asked for his first year.
*effie trinket voice* That is MISOGYNY!
Nicky tapped the faces in the closest photograph. “Dan, Renee and Allison. Dan’s good people, but she’ll work you to the bone. Allison’s a catty bitch you should avoid at all costs. Renee’s a sweetheart. Be nice to her.”
Yet another quote I fucking knew by heart before even starting the books. Y’all really aren’t very creative in finding captions for your grunge-y pastel moodboards.
Also, if Renee is such a sweet soft angel (which is pointed out again later, so I believe it), the fuck is she doing with the Foxes? Has she killed a man with kindness? Am intrigued. When do we meet this murderous snowflake.
Next up, they enter the actual stadium and Neil proceeds to have the Biggest Sports Boner Ever over the court.
I can’t quote here because this description goes on for two pages, but I would like to point out that this is one of the most well-written passages of the book so far. I had the scene play in my head like a film, lights flooding the stadium, Neil imagining what it would look like flooded with people caught up in thrill of a game, his longing to play this court even if it will cost him his freedom. Chapeau, Miss Sakavic.
Also damn. And they said Kevin is the obsessed one.
(Cue generic “enemies discover they have more in common than initially thought and overcome their differences by playing sports together and become close friends” trope.)
(I apologize for calling this generic. I love it.)
“Satellites can pick these [windbreakers] up in outer space,” [Neil] said.
Nicky laughed at that. “Dan commissioned them her first year here. She said she was tired of everyone trying to look past us.”
Nicky laughs, my skin is cleared, my crops are growing and an angel gets his wings.
Also I will present this Dan with the Best Captain Ever Award instantly when we meet her.
“You know we donate a portion of our ticket sales to charity? Our tickets cost a little more than anyone else’s because of that. Renee’s idea. Told you she’s pure gold.”
WE HAVE FOUND THE SECOND HUFFLEPUFF THIS IS NOT A DRILL. RENEE LET ME LOVE YOU.
And now it’s Orange Sportsball time!
“Is Kevin not going to play today?”
Nicky looked surprised that he’d ask. “Kevin only tolerates our court under two conditions: Alone, or with Andrew on it.”
Ah yes, thank you for reminding me, I had momentarily forgotten what level of EXTRA Kevin is on.
“Thank you,” Neil said belatedly.
“Huh? Oh no. Don’t worry about it. You can make it up to me some other time when the others aren’t around.”
“Can you try and get ass when I’m not standing right here?” Aaron asked.
I thank our otherworldly overlords every day for the comedic gay blessing that is Nicky Hemmings.
“If you take German as your elective here, just let me know and I’ll tutor you. I’m good with my tongue.”
For fuck’s sake, keep it in your goddamned pants.
Or, as Germans would say: Jetzt ist nicht der richtige Zeitpunkt, den Lörres reinzuhämmern, mein Freund. #erstmaldlrh
Also, is this Erik guy for real? He sounds p irrelevant. 10 bucks says they’re gonna break up.
They play a beautiful game of Orange Sportsball, Neil gets a glimpse of happiness (yay), and on their way out they are greeted by Kevin being Mad and Extra.
Kevin got right in his face and tangled his fingers through the netting on Neil’s racquet. (…)
“Forget the stadium. Forget the Foxes and your useless high school team and your family. See it the only way it really matters, where Exy is the only road to take. What do you see?”
[bla bla long sequence in which Neil ponders on the fact that Exy is Everything™]
“You,” Neil said at last.
“Tell me I can have your game.”
It wouldn’t do them any good, but Neil wasn’t going to get into that. “Take it.”
“Neil understands,” Kevin said.
*”enemies discover they have more in common than initially thought and overcome their differences by playing sports together and become close friends” trope intensifies*
Do people ship those two? Because I can totally see that happening.
Speaking of shipping: Andrew is back!
[Andrew] scooped the whiskey up and twisted the lid off.
(…) “About time you stopped that, don’t you think? Abby’s going to beat me senseless if she realizes you’ve been drinking.”
“Doesn’t sound like my problem,” Andrew said with a brilliant smile.
Daamn Andrew, back at it again with the youth alcoholism!
I’m not kidding though, manic Andrew scares me so much more than soulless Andrew did. I want my murder son back, not this fake-cheery, Joker rip-off version.
I’m temporarily comforted as we are reminded that Wymack is, in fact, the Best Person Ever:
“Showers aren’t communal here. Coach put in stalls when he built the stadium. The board wouldn’t pay for it – they didn’t see the point – so it came out of Coach’s own pocket.”
LET ME LOVE YOU, YOU WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING.
Andrew makes fun of Neil for wanting to shower in privacy and for having a beat up body, Neil freaks out, yadda yadda, go die in a fire, you manic asshole.
Also, I know this isn’t what’s meant here, but I’m really liking the idea of trans!Neil. Scars on his torso? Always showers in privacy? Changed his identity and his name? Just saying.
They then drive over to Abby’s house, who also immediately claims a place in my too-big heart:
“David? Shut up and make sure the vegetables aren’t boiling over. Kevin, check the bread. It’s in the oven. Nicky, table. Aaron, help him. Andrew Joseph Minyard, that better not be what I think it is.”
What. A. Mom.
For the record: I’m chipping in with Nicky’s betting pot as well. Those two have skipped long past the boning zone, straight into actual married couple land.
Everyone gathers round and eats some lasagna like the wonderful dysfunctional family that they are. Yay. Now I want some lasagna.
(Note to self: Do not read before dinner.)
Then, Neil is taken to his new home by Coach Wymack, and Nora Sakavic gets childhood abuse trauma spot on once again:
Getting in the car alone with [Wymack] was the hardest thing Neil had done all day. Andrew was crazy, but Neil had an ingrained distrust of men old enough to be his father. He spent the entire ride frozen and silent in the passenger seat.
Kudos.
However, of course, Wymack is totally undeserving of distrust as he is the Best Person Ever, Coach of Champions, Owner of My Heart.
“Use what you need, and take what you want from the kitchen. It’ll piss me off more if you act like a skittish stray cat than it will if you eat the last bowl of cereal.”
Happy sigh.
Nicki out.
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