#but there is also the paste under the readmore if the link does not work
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chaining cherry blossom to clover (Clio/Aria)
Clio being chosen for the Dandelions means she gets to avoid the approaching Keyblade War, and Aria vows to find a way to join her in the new world despite not also being chosen. Despite the road ahead not being clear, a very special gift is given, one which would come to be the key to the two reuniting later down the line. (1974 words)
This is my first piece of selfship writing for my new blog, and also my first piece of selfship writing for my (current) newest romantic selfship with my OC, Clio! I hope that anyone who wants to read it enjoys doing so, as I definitely enjoyed writing it ^-^
Tag list: @sunlight-ships | @artificervaldi | @hirael | @thatslikesometaldude (to be tagged in what I make, please see this post!)
Comments on and reblogs of my work are always okay, and appreciated, but are by no means required!
(Document transcript under the readmore:)
When the Dandelions began to be chosen, the Sapphires were one of the first parties whose members were approached, to the surprise of approximately none of them.
After all, although the group’s existence and purpose did not become widely known for some time, it seemed logical in retrospect that the party which once collected more Lux than any other in the Anguis Union (save for one) would harbour many Keyblade wielders with powerful light; wielders who were therefore wanted, wielders who were valued, wielders whose identities - their bonds to their parties and their Unions - would all be cast aside as they would be made Dandelions, made into Dandelions.
As war’s shadow loomed ever closer over Daybreak Town, tensions slowly but surely rising up to boiling point, the Sapphires found themselves being able to count more than one of their wielders in the ranks of the Dandelions - the ranks of the few who had been chosen from all others to survive the world’s end, leaving the rest of the people they had known to simply fall and be lost in the senseless combat that fate would have them march towards.
“So they want you as well, do they?”
Aria’s casual question that she already knew the answer to reignited the spark in her girlfriend’s eyes as the two sat together by the sunset-lit fountain one evening.
“Yes!” came Clio’s reply, in a light voice that shone with much of her typical positive temperament. “I really can’t say I saw it coming, but it feels like such an honour, you know?”
“I can only imagine it must.”, Aria smiled, though her own tone was comparatively much more subdued. “After all, so few individuals have been selected for such an important role.”
“Mmm! Yeah, that’s.. a really good point..” Clio’s excitement had softened and dissolved somewhat as she picked up on her girlfriend’s quietness. It was easy for her to tell when something was up with Aria, based on subtle details like the way her catlike ears were slightly downcast, or how her wings were subconsciously tilted to face the floor; it had gotten to the point where she couldn’t help but feel slightly surprised when others said that Aria was almost impossible to read, and tended to blame it on things like her cold way of speaking, or the mask that she wore across the lower half of her face.
“..What’s wrong, Ari?”
“I.. it’s nothing.” she tried to insist.
At this, Clio shifted closer towards her on the fountain’s edge, reaching forwards to place a comforting hand on Aria’s shoulder. “Are you sure? I don’t wanna pry if it’s not something you want to talk about, but if something’s up, then it isn’t good to keep it locked up in your heart or anything.“
Careful not to shake Clio’s hand away in the process, Aria shifted, drawing her legs up to lean them on the edge of the fountain. Her wings were now being held outwards slightly to better improve her balance, ensuring she would not go toppling backwards into the fountain.
“It’s.. more that I don’t know how to word it properly without sounding mean..?” she tried to explain. She was looking away at this point, and her left hand was absentmindedly toying with the ribbon of her hairpin, while her right hand held her legs.
“Huh? How so?” Clio asked her. “..What, d’you think I shouldn’t have been picked or something?”
“What? No, it isn’t that at all!” she clarified quickly, finally turning to look at Clio’s now-worried expression. Her own eyes carried surprise; she would never doubt Clio’s worth like that.
“It’s of no surprise to us that you were selected, because you possess such strong light. But you’re not arrogant with it like so many others of similar strength seem to end up being - in fact, I would say you’re the only person with such bright light that I feel so comfortable being around like this.” she admitted. “So, in many ways, you’re perfect for this.”
“Aww, that’s really kind of you to say!” she replied, worry fading away with relative ease and becoming relief. “But, uh.. What is it, then? If I can ask that?”
“Of course you can ask that.” Aria stated plainly. “It’s just.. If you go with the Dandelions, I won’t be permitted to come with you.”
“Why not? I’m.. sure they’d let me bring you with me!” Clio tried to smile further and be reassuring, but the way her voice faltered slightly indicated she was not entirely confident in her statement.
“..Maybe if what they were after were simply strong Keyblade wielders. But they aren’t.” she insisted, turning her head to look down at the ground again. “All they want is light; they’re gathering those whose hearts have strong light inside of them, and leaving everyone else to the chaos that we all know is coming. So, the last thing they would want within their precious ranks is something like me.”
“Oh.. I guess I didn’t think of it like that.” Clio shuffled closer once again, trying to give Aria as much comfort as she could after hearing the “something” and the spite in her tone. “But, if a war really is on its way like they said it was, then surely they’d just want to rescue as many people as they could from it?”
“That would be the sensible way of going about things, but..” She let out a sigh. “Keyblade wielders who have darkness in their hearts are seen by some as weaker, or less trustworthy. Even moreso if those wielders actively try to make use of their natural affinity for darkness, if they happen to have it. It’s.. arguably not entirely misguided, considering the corruptive effect that darkness can have on people’s hearts when too much is present, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who wields the darkness is evil.” Her hand was playing with her hairpin again.
Now it was Clio’s turn to sigh, feeling dejected. “I sure wish more people could actually see that instead of insisting otherwise..”
There was a fairly long pause as the older wielder trailed off, and the pair of girlfriends could only hear the steadily-flowing water from the fountain they were sat on the edge of.
“I mean.. I haven’t technically joined the Dandelions yet.” Clio then stated, taking a moment to lift up the crown of clovers she wore around her head to stop it slipping. “There’s meant to be a meeting pretty soon, but.. I could always just stay here with you instead! At the end of the day, I- I really don’t want to lose you..”
“No.” came Aria’s response, bluntly but not coldly. “You should go with them.”
“Huh? But.. what about you?” she replied. “And everyone else, too - I can’t just leave everyone to suffer while I go with the others!”
“Just because they don’t want me there doesn’t mean I won’t go there, clover.” she stated, very matter-of-factly. “If you’re with them, then I’ll just find a way to make it to you. And it’ll be easier to do that if you go with them, because not only will they then be easier to find, but I can be more certain of your safety while I hunt for them.”
“You really think you can follow them..?” she wondered.
“Yes.”
“..How?” she then asked. “I mean, I definitely reckon you could do it, but.. You sound surprisingly sure about it. A lot more than I would be, in your shoes.”
“..It’s because of this.”
For the third time that evening, Aria’s hand found her hairpin, but this time it was much more deliberate - she reached up above where the ribbon ends hung and carefully brought her fingers around the cherry blossom flower in its centre, running her thumb across its large, soft petals.
“..Your hairpin?” Clio asked.
“Yes.” she repeated. “If you’ll have it, then.. Please take this with you when you go with the rest of the Dandelions. Take it as a promise, and a sign - if it’s with you, then the rest of me can follow. And I will follow, somehow, even if we don’t quite know the method yet. I will find a way to be with you, no matter what it takes. Whether I’m a Dandelion or not.”
A brief moment passed as Clio’s eyes became glittery with tears.
“Aww, you’re going to make me blush, Ari! That’s so sweet of you to say, I.. I don’t think I know what to say! Of course I’ll take it, if you’re okay with giving it to me!”
She smiled. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”
Using her right hand as well to ensure none of her hair got unnecessarily caught, Aria carefully moved her hands into position, her dark red nails that Clio had painted for her working their way to where the cherry blossom grew from. She then took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tugged as hard as she could bring herself to pull. Despite bracing for the action, she still let out an involuntary hiss as she did this, wincing and shutting her eyes much more tightly as the pale pink flower came sailing away from her head with the force.
Keeping her right hand pressed against the left side of her head to try and lessen the intensity of that awfully sharp pain she now felt, she tried desperately to stop tears forming in her eyes, before all of a sudden becoming aware that a strong hand was pressing into her back, gently but firmly, just below her wings.
“I’ve got you.” came Clio’s voice from her right-hand side, before her other hand reached up to clear the tears from Aria’s eyes. “You nearly sent yourself right into the water with how hard you pulled on that.”
“It.. was needed..” she replied, somewhat vaguely. Her head was now tilted to be facing Clio’s more directly, allowing her to see her girlfriend’s supportive if slightly concerned expression. She could feel both her arm and her hand on her back now, giving her confidence that she would not fall backwards even if she wasn’t holding herself upright out of tension.
It was then that Aria realised she had one more thing left to do, so she moved her left hand towards Clio’s right. Resting on her open palm was the flower that once rested in the centre of the hairpin she had never been seen without, the blossom’s five pink petals and two green leaves looking delicate and tender in the sunset’s light. As carefully as if she were handling a baby bird, Clio reached out and tentatively lifted up the flower, making sure not to accidentally damage the petals as she took a closer look before then holding it close to her chest. It seemed to attach itself directly to her jacket once she had decided where it would go.
“..Thank you.” was all Aria could say to fill the silence, her voice just as soft as the flower petals felt to touch. The sharpness of the pain was thankfully becoming somewhat duller and less intrusive with time, and Clio’s gesture of bringing the flower to her heart was something she had treasured immensely.
“Don’t worry, shadow. I’ll keep this safe for you.” Clio declared, now placing her hand on her chest next to the flower. “You’ve just got to make sure you stay safe as well.”
“I will. I trust you, clover.” she replied, shifting to more properly reciprocate her girlfriend’s support with a hug. “No matter what the future holds.. No matter how long it takes.. I will reach you, and we’ll both make it past whatever is coming, in our own ways.”
As the last of the sunlight faded, the pair stayed and cherished this moment in each other’s arms.
#a call from the void#heart of the void#love: crown of clovers (clio)#selfship: of flowers unchained (clio/aria)#wait drat I can’t type aria’s tag on my phone because it needs a desktop apostrophe AND non-breaking hyphen#someone please remind me to fix that in approximately nine hours or so#creations from the void#this post is okay for anyone to reblog as long as my DNI is respected!!#OC F/Os#kingdom hearts selfshipping#..I mean clio is my OC but she’s my OC *for* kingdom hearts so this still at least somewhat counts right?#comments should be enabled on the google doc itself if I’ve done it right!#I recommend reading on the document rather than through the paste under the readmore#but there is also the paste under the readmore if the link does not work#yes I know I said I was going to bed but.. I wanted to finish this#and I did#so now I can sleep except I can’t sleep yet because I need to have a shower#this one might be a bit of an “if you know then you know’’ but hopefully it still holds up alright on its own without knowing that#I can explain what the.. I guess full extent of the significance? is#self‑insert: darkness' champion (aria)#selfshipping
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if you're still into hadestown id love to hear more details of act II in your broadway x nytw au :)
OHHH ANON DEAREST....... YOU’VE ACTIVATED MY INFODUMP CARD!
ok ok first of all i am so sorry for my incessant videnoirposting, rest assured i am still very very into hadestown and I Will become normal again! and i have a backlog of ht-related art to finish lol.
Second.... BOY OH BOY DO I LOVE TALKING ABOUT MY NYTW x BWAY AU!
(for the uninitiated: for the longest time i've had this nytw x broadway au, called the “Old Song” au, in which nytw orpheus becomes a very sad ghost and haunts the present (broadway) orpheus. Meanwhile, nytw Eurydice and bway Eurydice find each other in Hadestown and try to help each other 'survive'. I’d recommend reading the first part, otherwise the rest of this post won’t make much sense. I'll drop the link in a rb.)
(And I'm putting this under a readmore, because this is gonna get long.)
Now there are a few things I forgot to mention in that post, one of them being what this whole AU is actually about. Greek tragedy says that, despite what we (the audience) desire and what we understand, the characters will still fail. And that's alright. Life goes on, sometimes for the better. It's awful, but it's not the end.
In this AU, we're past having the characters try and fail. And y’know, it wasn't the end for them, either! Their failures mattered then, and they will now! Orpheus and Eurydice's futures will still go on whether they want them to or not!
But... because they are worlds apart, with (seemingly) no other way of reuniting and having the happy ending they desired... does that leave any hope for either of them?
This leads me to another theme of Hadestown, and the one I'm focusing on in this AU: despite everything, there will always be hope. It might take a while to see it, but it's always gonna be there. And how this AU is gonna work out is that we'll see this hope manifest in some characters (bway Orpheus, nytw Eurydice), how the lack of hope manifests in others (nytw Orpheus, bway Eurydice), and how all of that is subject to change as the characters grow. Somehow, though, they'll all have to cling onto that hope - that struggling dream of a better future - if they want to finally build a better life.
uh
ok
um
enough cringe talk about themes let's get some found family in this house
Soo.... Act II! I'm gonna start a bit ahead, where the first post left off: the Orphei are traversing the underground, and nytw Eurydice is giving bway Eurydice refuge.
Anyway, where we last left off, the Orphei have made it to the underworld! bway Orpheus kind of broke the Wall, which nytw Orph (nicknamed Ghost in this AU to make things easier, and to let nytw Orph distance himself from his past life) takes as good sign. If he can get past the wall like that by singin' a little tune, then the rest of the journey will be a cinch!
...It was not, in fact, a cinch.
Everything in Hadestown is Really loud, Really bright, and Really unfriendly to trespassers. Bway Orpheus gets overwhelmed very quickly and nytw Orph gets frustrated - he knows this place already, and also knows that strolling in during daytime hours is a one-way ticket to death (see Hermes's advice in Wait for Me).
They end up hiding in some abandoned worker cabin for the rest of the day, a rather unproductive start to their journey.
It's not helping matters that the Orphei had quite the argument back during Chant - nytw Orpheus got after bway Orpheus for not helping Eurydice, and it got to the point where he deliberately tried to break bway Orpheus's optimism so that he'd "wake up" and "finally try to be useful"... yes he was projecting, no it was not fun, yes it is still eating at him, and Yes, their relationship is... pretty strained right now. As if bway Orpheus's self-esteem wasn't already garbage.
This isn't the case for the Eurydices though! They're chilling in the house nytw Eurydice borrowed from Persephone + are escaping work quotas. The bad news is that they're content with sharing a name, which is kind of frustrating to try and write. Oh well!
Anyway, bway Eurydice finds it nice to have someone who actually understands her. Not that Orpheus wasn't understanding, he really, really, was, but he just didn't see the world the way she did. And nytw Eurydice can talk to someone who hasn't lost their head to the mines + machines! So yeah they hit it off real fast.
Eventually, though, bway Eurydice asks how the other managed to get stuck in Hadestown for so long. Nytw Eurydice stiffens. Frowns a bit. She stares at the floor for a beat or two before telling her that she doesn't know. Forgot.
She does know. She knows that it could probably happen to bway Eurydice, too, given all their similarities. But she's not going to be the one to break this new girl's spirit.
It's a vow that nytw Eurydice makes around the same time nytw Orpheus does, too. bway Orpheus isn't sleeping, and whether it's the noise outside the cabin walls, or the sneering voices in his head, nytw Orph doesn't really want to know.
That poor kid. He'd been nothing but kind to nytw Orpheus, trying to make his (after)life more bearable, a little more colorful - and nytw Orpheus had the gall to tear him down. He wouldn't have dared to hurt him if he were his old self.
It's just that bway Orpheus doesn't know how the world really is. Hadestown was cruel, and its brainwashed people wouldn't stop at hunting him down. Hades wouldn't let Eurydice go - not without an impossible price to pay. Nytw Orpheus didn't want to crush his successor's hopes by telling him all that.
And yet, he kind of... did.
Damn it.
He’s got to be better toward that boy. For both their sakes.
The nytw duo realizes that, despite what happened to them before, they can’t let it interfere with the future of the bway duo. There’s still a chance for things to turn out, and after all, they aren’t the ones with something to lose.
However, not everyone in this story has this mindset. There’s still one more thing I really forgot to mention in the last post...
Because of her appearance in both NYTW and Broadway Hadestown, Jessie Shelton’s fate, Clotho, is here to add even more conflict! What about her sisters? uhhhhhhhh don’t worry about it lol they’re fine. She’s with the bway Lachesis and Atropos, but this is likely to change.
Clotho’s not pleased with the trajectory of this story. It was her job to keep it from changing, and now her #1 enemies are coming around to throw wrenches in her plans? Well. If she’s going to clean up the messes they’re making, she might as well have fun with it.
Clotho ends up terrorizing all four heroes, but really the bway duo, and mostly bway Orpheus because in the end, it's his actions that will determine the outcome of the story. The nytw duo is Very Much Not Happy with Clotho’s existence and they get very protective of their counterparts whenever she shows up.
bway Orph tries really hard to guard nytw Orph from her, knowing their history and all. It doesn’t really work, but he tries!
(Clotho does, at one point, threaten to kill bway Orph if the Orphei continue their journey. Remember this.)
The Eurydices learn more about each other the more questions bway Eurydice asks - Do you think your Orpheus is looking for you? Is he down here? Will everyone forget about me, too? Different words, all asking the same thing: Is there a chance for me to get out of here?
bway Eurydice tries not to show it, but she’s scared. She has no idea what she’s gotten herself into, and she’s desperate for a ray of hope.
Nytw Eurydice tries her best to reassure her, but sometimes she just can’t answer.
bway Eurydice does ask if the other workers could break free of Hadestown’s brainwashing. Nytw Eurydice thinks it’s possible.
Meanwhile, the Orphei have taken to sleeping during the day and moving at night - to keep from getting caught. bway Orpheus isn’t handling this well, nor is he handling the constant overstimulation, the paranoia of being an ‘outlaw’, all the pain and horrors inflicted on Hadestown’s people, Clotho being Clotho, etc., and one night he just... breaks down. He never thought the world could be this cruel.
Luckily for him, though, a certain someone who understands exactly what he’s going through sits down with him. Lets him vent. Gives him a hug.
Nytw Orpheus finally apologizes to the boy for his distance, and convinces him that not everything is awful; they have each other, and the very reason Nytw Orpheus is down with him is that he cares about bway Orph and wants to protect him.
It’s here that bway Orpheus starts to smile again.
From that night on, things are a little better. Sure, all the terrible things mentioned 4 bullet points ago still exist, but now the Orphei are joking between one another, collaborating on songs, and climbing the petrified trees scattering Hadestown’s landscape.
And for the Eurydices, life-after-death is getting... almost bearable?! Nytw Eurydice made the other a notebook of all her surface memories, just in case, and it’s not like either of them stopped singing. They’ll go out and check if one of their Orphei is out there. Sometimes they’ll just talk for hours about whatever the Memory of the Day is.
For the first time in decades, there's a sound so sweet and clear against the echoes of steel on stone: laughter is heard in the realm of Hades.
A month or two pass, and neither party has found the other. It’s around this time when the bway duo wonders about their companion’s past.
It’s a topic that sickens the nytw duo, but they figure it’s time to talk about what happened. Time to show where all these mental - and in some cases, physical - scars came from.
After nytw Orpheus turned, Eurydice was almost immediately offered sanctuary by Persephone, who took pity on her. Eurydice took it, as long as she didn’t have to see Hades ever again.
She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t upset with Orpheus. She was actually pretty bitter about him for months, before she came to terms with how powerless they both were in that situation.
However, time wore on, and the mini-revolution Eurydice + Orpheus created fell further into obscurity. Less workers remembered what happened that fateful night. And then, to Eurydice’s dread, not even the gods knew who she was anymore. Afraid of losing herself, Eurydice hid by herself most of the time, alone with her memories in the old goddess’s house. At least without Hades knowing her, she couldn’t be tracked.
For Orpheus... well, he definitely didn’t receive a hero’s welcome upon returning to the surface. Wholly blamed for the loss of his wife, Orpheus, too, hid himself from the public. His relationship with Hermes soured as he pressured the poet to move on. It wasn’t just a shift in the people, either - in the rare times when Orpheus played music, his songs were so sorrowful that nature herself turned gray, and wept. Believing the change in Orpheus to be a curse, the townspeople banished him. Not that Orpheus had any time to grieve - he had brought upon himself the fury of the Maenads, whose courtship he refused. They slaughtered him by the river and threw his bones into the current. (Hermes found them, but never told Eurydice.) Orpheus woke up as a ghost, stuck on the surface with his guitar. No longer could he be seen, heard, or touched by mortals. Not that they’d want to find him, anyway, Orpheus thinks.
All four members of this Songbird Quartet are in tears by the time the tales are told.
It’s also worth mentioning that both nytw Orpheus and Eurydice conveniently left out the part where Orpheus turns.
It’s also also worth mentioning that nytw Orpheus takes off his red jacket for the first time since death, letting bway Orph see the extent of the Maenad’s brutality.
The strangest thing happened to the nytw duo, though: things started getting much better for them once the bway duo came into their lives. Orpheus is finding his hope again and Eurydice has found meaning in her afterlife. Through the tragedy, something good did happen.
(... uh, little side note: I really hope y’all are catching on that the relationships between Orphei and Eurydices... are platonic in a brother/sister sense. I mean, I can’t stop you from shipping them, i guess, but romance isn’t what I’m aiming for... that’s all.)
A n y w a y , what ho! After months of searching, bway Orpheus gets the biggest smile on his face upon seeing his beloved Eurydice creeping through metal stacks surrounding Hades’s mansion (it’s work hours). The Orphei agree to split up for a bit: bway Orpheus reunites with Eurydice, while nytw Orph makes a quick last look for his own lover.
He travels a little far, and then farther, getting increasingly desperate. Where is she? Was he never meant to find her? Is she on the other side of Hadestown? Where is she now?
Panic and heartache spark in his chest and he starts to call her name into the expanse.
“...Orpheus?”
The voice is from behind. Orpheus won’t dare turn around. Not again.
She knows this. She knows his posture, too, and the shape of his hands - which are shaking. She comes up to his side and takes one before facing him. Tears are already spilling over his cheeks.
“It’s you.”
Tears threaten to spill on Eurydice’s cheeks, too.
“It’s me.”
yayyyy they’re together again! it’s really sappy and they keep apologizing to each other for everything. It’s a little sad when Eurydice puts a hand on Orpheus’s scarred face but that’s neither here nor there.
But woe! the happy reunion is cut short when a loud, booming voice shakes the songbirds’ cores:
“Young man!”
Eeeheeeheheeehee
the nytw duo, realizing that their sibling is now in Huge Danger, rush to Hades’s mansion. There stand a stricken bway Orpheus, a dreading bway Eurydice, Persephone, Hades, Hermes, workers... and the Fates.
There’s a moment of “woah everyone’s here” as the Songbird Quartet recognizes one another.
Hades and Persephone don’t recognize nytw Orph, which is great for some reasons and terrible for others.
Hades tells bway Orph that Eurydice can’t go back - she signed the deal, and sold her soul. Orpheus, horrified, looks at her, and Hades... and nytw Orph, who was too afraid to tell him.
Nytw Eurydice, on the other hand, stares down Clotho with a ‘what the fuck do you want’ look. Clotho just smiles.
Hey, so, remember when I told you that Clotho threatened to kill bway Orpheus if they kept looking for Eurydice? Well.........
Hades calls upon the workers to drive bway Orpheus out. Unfortunately, though, Clotho has also given them the order to kill. Her word isn’t questioned: If Fate wishes it, then it shall be so, after all.
Clotho + her sisters nab bway Eurydice. Two workers restrain nytw Orpheus, who, while not knowing what exactly will happen to bway Orph, can deduct from Clotho’s threat that it won’t be good, and begs Hades to spare the boy. Nytw Eurydice, still wearing worker clothes and remaining undetected, sneaks out of the fuss and creeps behind the mansion (if we are thinking of the stage setup, where everyone is kind of in a circle, the nytw duo are on the opposite side from where the Fates + bway Eurydice are).
Workers circle bway Orpheus, and he gives nytw Orpheus one last terrified look before the first strike lands.
Now, we all know nytw Orpheus as a guy who’d have no problem throwing hands during Papers. Except this Orpheus has been ruined by his past, and freezes up when he sees the mob attack bway Orpheus. There are screams in his ears that aren’t there, the smell of metal, blood and wine, and a thousand terrible scenes in his head. It’s too much for him to watch.
...But the very reason nytw Orpheus is down here is because he cares about his newfound brother and wants to protect him. It was the one thing he promised to do.
So god damn, what was he doing?
Something snaps in him and he tries once again to wrestle his arms away from the workers holding him back. They don’t budge - nytw Orpheus’s strength is his words, not his muscles.
But then a low thud sounds against nytw Orpheus’s ears, and the hold goes loose.
“Go!” cries nytw Eurydice, wielding a shovel and slamming its head against the other worker’s. “I’ll get Eurydice!”
nytw Orpheus gives a quick nod of thanks to his lover before rushing up to bway Orpheus, grabbing a pickaxe on the way.
Bway Orpheus has tried to flee the pack, but they keep catching him and throwing him down. He’s exhausted, he’s injured, and they aren’t letting up. One of the workers - the largest one in the mob - raises a pick. Orpheus can’t get himself off the ground.
Then there’s a flash of red, a scream, a metallic smell.
bway Orpheus dares to open his eyes and sees that the mob has stopped, paralyzed with shock. The worker who held the pick now clutched his arm instead, pressing against a long, gruesome tear in the skin.
And standing in front of him, a pickaxe in his hands and a wild, cold glare that’s stark against his bloodied face - is Orpheus’s brother.
A couple steps behind the mob are the Eurydices, and one of them still has her shovel. Nytw Orpheus shouts at the workers, telling them to back off (in a much ruder way). The workers, seeing the outcome of fighting these three, retreat.
Nytw Orpheus, chest heaving, drops the pickaxe and carefully steps over bway Orpheus so that he is behind the latter. He gently scoops the boy into his arms. He’s blacked out, but he’s still got a pulse, thank the gods.
Now, while nytw Eurydice did do what she said she would (free Eurydice), that doesn’t mean she got rid of the fates. And of course, Clotho appears.
Nytw Eurydice somehow keeps enough composure to not beat the shit out of her with a rusty shovel. She gives Clotho enough time for her to say that while, yes, the initial murder plan was foiled by our heroic rulebreakers, the damage has already been done. bway Orpheus has been told that his lover sold herself to Hades, and on top of that, the people who could’ve been his friends on the surface nearly killed him in Hadestown. It’s not like this was a sudden effect - Orpheus’s worldview started crumbling the minute he entered Hadestown. This was just the last step. Now with that sweet, sweet doubt in his head, things should go back to normal.
bway Eurydice is quite shaken by this - it’s her story, too. So nytw Eurydice swings her shovel a bit to get her to fuck off. Clotho does. (I like to think that the Fates can appear + disappear in a plume of dark smoke. Just a lil thing that’d look cool in animation.)
The three of them kinda. stare at each other for a bit.
They take bway Orph to nytw Eurydice’s house to patch him up and rest. Nytw Orpheus washes the blood from his face, and there’s a distant look in his eyes as he recovers from what he did. bway Eurydice, who’s a smidge intimidated by him, says she thought he was pretty cool back there. It gets nytw Orpheus to laugh just the slightest bit, and thus, a friendship is born.
Nytw Eurydice and Orpheus take some time to catch each other up on what happened to them while bway Eurydice looks after her Orpheus.
He wakes up after some hours, a little worried, but with Eurydice there he settles down. She jogs his memory of what happened.
He starts venting to her, apologizing profusely for putting everyone in this mess and placing all their hopes on a song he couldn’t finish. Nothing Eurydice says can comfort him.
Unfortunately, Clotho was right: bway Orpheus is shattered. He goes on about how he is at fault, not just for Eurydice’s imprisonment in Hadestown, but for forcing nytw Orpheus to re-live his trauma to save him, and putting nytw Eurydice back on Hades’s hitlist. He’s hopeless, he says. This whole journey is hopeless. And because he’s the one to blame, he’s better off leaving.
He tries to leave Hadestown, despite the other three trying to get him to stop, but there’s another force keeping him from going too far: the workers. They’ve been listening to his plight, and they feel their old humanity come back to them at his sorrowful song (If It’s True).
Orpheus looks at his family, then looks back at the workers. Perhaps he did do something good for these people. Perhaps there’s still a chance for them.
Hermes comes up to the quartet, bearing news (it’s kind of his thing): Hades has also heard what the workers are starting to whisper about - a possible revolt against Hadestown’s cold-hearted structure - and demands for the four of them to come to his mansion. It’s judgment time.
Nytw Orpheus, who is bitter toward Hermes, demands to know why he didn’t help bway Orpheus since he was a god. Hermes, unfazed, asks why he couldn’t prevent the mob from attacking bway Orpheus, if he’d already lived Orpheus’s life. This quiets nytw Orpheus’s anger.
At the mansion, Hades tries to intimidate bway Orpheus before he actually passes judgment, though a very aggressive nytw Orpheus protects the other. Not today, Hades!
Persephone gives the Eurydices a bit of advice - maybe a mix of the London and NYTW Seph verses for Chant II - as she, too, heard the poet’s song.
The Fates are also there, watching. Plotting, probably.
Finally, Hades gives bway Orpheus his task: Sing a pretty song, and perhaps Hades will make use of him and spare his family. If he fails, it’s to the Great Beyond for all of them.
bway Orph is shaking like an autumn leaf. He’s not done with his song. It never worked the way he wanted it to. He’d tried to get nytw Orpheus to help him with it, but he’d refused, saying that if the song were really special, it would’ve come straight from bway Orpheus’s heart.
From the heart. Okay. That’s what Orpheus will do.
And to make a long story short, it works. beautifully. Orpheus sings his song of love and it swells as everyone else joins in. It’s like the heart of Hadestown is glowing.
At the end, Hades remembers his love for Persephone. He remembers his humanity. The old gods dance as if they were young lovers again.
And Orpheus just about blacks out again from cathartic relief. (Side note: I like to think that nytw Orph says something along the lines of “Easy there, rockstar!” I know the term won’t come around until the 60s but I think it’s really cute :))
Well, things seem to be going alright now! Hades isn’t as Bent on Harming the Four, Persephone’s smiling again, the workers are getting hopeful, and our four songbirds are together now.
... Except, a look of unease haunts the nytw duo’s faces. They know what comes next after this. So does Clotho. The song wasn’t the real test, as we all know.
bway Orph asks if they can go, Hades says no, blah blah blah we've been here before.
Hermes tells the four (well, mainly the bway duo) of the task ahead. They are, of course, dumbfounded and frightened by what it entails. They look back at their older siblings, wordlessly asking, “did you know?”
Nytw Orpheus and Eurydice look away.
The bway duo demands them to tell the full truth of how they were separated. So they do. They tell their doomed successors that nytw Orpheus failed to bring them both out, and that the chances of it happening again are high. It’s completely up to the new duo, and the nytw duo didn’t want to talk of it out of fear of crushing their hopes.
The bway duo is... not pleased. They’re not just crushed, they’re betrayed. How could the nytw duo lie to them for so long, lead them down this path just to pull the rug out from under them?
Nytw Orpheus reaches out to bway Orpheus, but the latter backs away, and leaves them. Bway Eurydice just shakes her head. She leaves them, too.
That night, when the four are preparing for the journey out, bway Eurydice finds her lover cupping his carnation in his palms. They talk quietly about the trek ahead, and Eurydice tells Orpheus that, even though their predecessors failed, that doesn’t mean they will, too. For what it’s worth, said predecessors didn’t have dead companions to travel with. And if the nytw duo were able to change (for the better) because of the bway duo’s actions, then maybe their ending could, too. “If they could do it, so can we.”
Orpheus smiles, but his doubts still gnaw at him. What if their actions changed the outcome for the worse? He just wanted everyone to be safe and happy, but what if this night’s events shouldn’t have happened the way they did? Especially with Clotho’s plan unraveling faster than ever, did they really make all the right decisions? Could he put faith in himself, or was everything that the townspeople said up top, about the harshness of the world and all, really true?
Speaking of Clotho, she appears once more to nytw Eurydice. Eurydice snaps at her for putting everyone on the road to ruin, but Clotho merely states that she’s not the only one trying to get what she wants. Like it or not, everyone had a part to play. “This story of ours was your doing, too,” she says. “Now you finish it. I’m just helping it move along.”
As Clotho departs, Eurydice finds that statement... oddly comforting. If bway Orpheus just holds onto the hope he’d always had with him, then maybe... just maybe...
It’s a long night, and it’s a little odd with two somewhat estranged couples sharing a house. Eventually, they all decide to try and make amends in the tiny living room. Apologizing, conversing softly about their fears and hopes, curling up together on the surprisingly large worn couch. bway Orpheus lets his brother hug him.
“I’m scared.”
“I know,” nytw Orpheus whispers. “And I have so much faith in you nonetheless.”
They sleep together on the couch that night. Lovers, brothers, and sisters say “I love you”. Hell, friends do, too, why not. There’s an air of peace in the stony caverns of Hadestown, and it’s enough to bring the four to a restful sleep.
They’ll need it for the journey ahead.
And, then, that morning, they set out, and...
OHHH, GEE! Look at how long this got! Gee whizz, look at the time, too! I think it’s time to stop. We’ll leave the thrilling conclusion for another time!
Thanks a billion for the ask, anon, and thanks a lot to you, reader, if you actually got this far! I don’t write much, but when I do, I get really into it...
There’s some stuff in Act I of this AU I still haven’t talked about - mostly silly fluff between the brothers, fluff between the sisters, some angst between the brothers, orphydice fluff, and nytw Orph’s strained relationship with the new Hermes, but again, that’s for another time.
#OOOOAGHGH maybe notn didn't give me carpal tunnel but writing this sure did!#this was so much fun tho. i got so excited when i read the ask bc that's a Thing I'm Really Passionate About!#I've been refining it for years! no i don't like letting old ideas go lol#hadestown#hadestown au#hadestown broadway#hadestown nytw#orpheus#eurydice#orpheus hadestown#eurydice hadestown#nytw x broadway crossover#old song au#rook roars!#long post#rook's mailbox#also sorry if i misinterpreted all the characters. i promise bway orph is still sweet n loveable it's just that (class) war is hell#caps tw
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I wrote a quick thing based off my thoughts of how the hatchling might feel about Hal.
It's short, just 1036 words, so here's the AO3 link, but also I'll paste it under the readmore if that would be easier.
[note: the hatchling's name is Sodalite in this story]
“Hey, time buddy!” greets Gabbro, swaying in their hammock as they glance over at their intermittent visitor.
Said visitor doesn’t reply, instead plopping down on the wet ground and staring out at the water and cyclones.
“What’s eating at you?”
They don’t reply; their helmeted head droops.
Gabbro props themself up on an elbow to look at the hatchling better. “Sodalite?”
Nothing.
Finally concerned, the traveler slides out of their hammock and kneels by the young astronaut. When they put a hand on the other’s shoulder, they can feel the trembles of held-back sobs. “Hey… What happened? Did you learn some new and awful piece of information?”
They shake their head.
“Was last death a rough one?”
They shake their head again.
“Come on, hatchling. You have to help me out a little bit. I’m running out of guesses.”
Sodalite sniffs, scuffs their feet, and turns quickly to lean their helmet against Gabbro’s chest. Finally, they choke out, “I miss Hal.”
After taking a few seconds to process the actions and the words and the silent spike of worry, Gabbro wraps their arms around the hatchling as much as they can given the bulk of suits and backpack. “Did something happen to them? You haven’t mentioned them doing anything before.” Gabbro wonders if the hatchling said something that Hal overreacted to, but that didn’t seem in character for Hal.
“No. No, no, they’re fine. They’re… they’re fine! Haha… They’re completely fine and don’t know anything, and they’re in the museum just like they always are and- and-”
“Breathe.”
Shakily, they do so. In… out… in… out…
Gabbro can feel their body relax slightly and pats them gently. “There you go. That always does the trick, yeah?”
“Not for this. Not for… Gabbro, I can’t meditate away how lonely this is. I’ll miss them nest loop too. I have you, I know! And I think I’d go crazy if I didn’t- But we’re not- I mean- No offense, but-”
The older hearthian smiles, the expression hidden by their helmet. “You’ll have to do better than that to offend me.”
“I’ve got time to figure it out,” Sodalite mutters darkly, trying and failing to truly feel the humor of their statement even as they hear Gabbro chuckle. It just compounds the weight of how much time they’ve experienced without their best friend. They admit, “I can’t even bear to look towards the museum anymore…”
Gabbro stays silent. Sodalite is going through a lot, and Gabbro is the only other person they can come to who can understand how it feels even a little bit.
“I want to share what I’ve learned with them. I want to- I want to tell them about all the Nomai runes that our- that our translator tool has seen. It works so well! And it’s sort of like I have them with me when I read the scripts…Just for a little while… But they’re not with me, and they can’t be. And I just- I- I really miss them!” Sodalite sobs against Gabbro who pats their shoulder rhythmically.
“Cry it out. This loop is a therapy session now. Or something.” That earns a snort from the hatchling. Trying a different approach, Gabbro asks, “What do you think they’d have done if they’d been the one the statue bonded with?”
“Don’t want to think about it,” Sodalite replies immediately.
“Sounds like you already have.”
With a sigh, the hatchling pulls away and settles on the wet ground again staring out at the wet waves and the wet sky and very aware of the wetness on their face and in their heart. Finally, they respond, “I think we’d be doomed.”
Gabbro makes a noise of polite interest and grabs their flute. They begin to play a quiet accompaniment as the hatchling continues to speak.
What they say isn’t very comprehensible. They jump from not wanting to speak ill of Hal to saying everyone would be doomed if Hal had bonded with the statue. They fret about how Hal would suffer, and they wonder if they themself would be open to the concept of a time loop if Hal confided in them about it. But it wouldn’t help! They’d forget by the next loop, and Hal would be sad. At least with Sodalite as the one doing the loops, there’s progress. They’re the astronaut of the duo, so it’s better that it’s them instead of Hal. So they just… have to keep dealing with it… keep going, even when they’re so sad and lonely and hurting…”
Gabbro notices the darkness. Quickly, they reach out and hold Sodalite’s shoulder again. “Hatchling, listen to me. You are very brave. You’re going through so much.”
Sodalite looks up in time to see the flash of bright light through the cloud cover.
Gabbro continues, “I’m proud of you, hatchling. And Hal would be to.”
There is a rushing, a whooshing, a roaring-
Their “thank you” is whisked away as they burn up.
—
Sodalite wakes and watches the probe shoot out until trees obscure their view of it. They take their time getting up, wave away Slate’s mild concern at their less than energetic start, and stare up at the launch pad. They can’t really run from their problems when their problems are everywhere and come back after twenty-two minutes. But maybe, at least for a while, they can solve one problem plaguing their heart.
They turn and head to the museum.
Hal is surprised when Sodalite hugs them, but they still return it with a smile. “What’s this for? Miss me already?” they tease.
“Something like that,” Sodalite mumbles as they let go. Fondly, they listen to their friend ramble about nerves and excitement and the potential of the translator tool. Dutifully, they reassure Hal that they will treat it carefully and record their findings. Reluctantly, they walk away.
Every ten loops, they return to their friend. It’s not ideal, and there is so much they want to do and say, but they do find comfort in the exchange and the brief company of their friend before they blast off to continue trying to save the solar system.
They still miss Hal. But it’s a little more bearable now.
#outer wilds#gabbro#the hatchling#mywriting#im rusty and wrote this while sleepy so if there are mistakes or things don't flow perfectly that's why#tossing it into the void anyway cuz hey here it is why not
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Today is the day I finish some outlines I hope. Current progress is something like this (under a readmore to save your dashes):
Swallow the Ground: This is the sequel to Break Open the Sky, and is 90% outlined. I just need to wiggle in a tertiary plot that I'd like to carry into the third story in the series. Outline is sitting around 6,200 words and the story takes place over a full calendar year. The main plot is about Regal, Zelos, Sheena, and Raine trying to compile enough evidence against Sybak to have it shut down, with some help from Kate, Presea, Genis, Viscount Alaric, and a half-elf informant who lived most of their long life in Sybak and has plenty of evidence to spare. The secondary plot is the romance, which focuses most heavily on Raine's struggle as an asexual woman who never really processed her past relationship trauma. Even though Regal told her he didn't care how long it took for them to figure things out/things to progress between them, she still feels pressure to be ready before that one-year anniversary hits. She does a lot of conflating love and sex in the "if I love him enough I should be comfortable having sex with him" sense. As far as a tertiary plot goes, I'm thinking something along the lines of exspheres and the exsphere mines—something to draw Lloyd and Colette into the third story in the series more directly.
--
Balacruf Mausoleum Fic: The completion status of this one is hard to define. The trauma of the accident is entirely outlined, but this is the kind of story where it's difficult to figure out where to go afterward because there isn't a big catch-all solution to the issues that plague the characters. The outline is about 6,100 words long right now.
I do think any story centering on certain characters in ToS probably tends to struggle with a similar issue to what I'm looking at here, which is more or less difficulty finding a good/believable stopping point because the grind never ends. Think about Lloyd's journey to gather all the exspheres or Zelos's responsibilities in Tethe'alla in the post-game: it feels like there's no stopping point in their lives because the characters will never get a real break. In the case of this story, Raine and Regal pay pretty heavy prices for being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Balacruf Mausoleum caves in on them. While Raine is at least logically free to do whatever she wants after this is over, Regal has to return to his life in Altamira and all the responsibilities that wait there for him while continuing to deal with his share of the consequences. Like Zelos and Lloyd, there isn't really a point where he gets a break; too many people depend on him.
This also isn't the usual kind of story for me. Sure, I love torturing my blorbos, but I don't usually delve into trauma-bonding or magic, and one of the big plots of this story is centered on the idea of what might happen if Raine severely over-extended herself as a healer as a "last stand" kind of thing and accidentally formed a very literal link/connection with the person whose life she was trying to save. And because I'm writing it, of course, this device skews toward having far more downsides than upsides, and it's almost made worse with the trauma-bonding. So while Raine is logically free to go her own way once the dust settles (so to speak), emotionally it becomes a much more difficult decision for her.
But where does a story like this go, other than smack into the daily grind of the characters as they try to untangle everything? And this, I am finding, is quite difficult to outline.
--
Declining!Tethe'alla: Character backstories are 90% complete and part of the journey arc is outlined. Sitting at 6,300 words. I don't really know what else to say about this one except that there were at least 10 ways to write any particular character arc, and I went with what seemed most appealing to me/what worked best in tandem with other character arcs.
Here are some small tidbits: Seles is Tethe'alla's Chosen of Regeneration. Zelos is the one tasked to carry on the mana lineage. Both Mylene and Seles's mother (named Carina in this story unless she has an official name) are alive. Sheena is a celebrated hero/summoner. Colette is Sylvarant's Chosen of Mana and Lloyd is her right-hand man/bodyguard/sidekick/bestie. Anna is alive. Regal has been at a human ranch for half his life. Raine and Genis are Sybak's property. Presea's story is similar to the game but somehow 10x worse.
A few characters were aged up for the sake of a better/more interesting/more believable storyline. Several relationships from the canon are also altered or changed in some way (including Raine and Genis's).
Speaking of Raine and Genis, I really wanted to avoid them being in Sybak because I feel like everyone jumps to that, so I toyed with the idea of Raine as a Desian (thanks @ciryze LOL) and while this would grant me some great storyline stuff between my blorbos if they were both at the same ranch (rapport before they meet the others!) I felt like that sort of story had a lot of short-term strength, but not enough staying power for the rest of the tale I wanted to tell. It also makes Genis a tough character to write.
Also, it's probably worth mentioning that I don't think many people actually want to read my take on Raine as a Desian; it wouldn't be that dark or interesting lmao. (I might have a one-shot brewing for this, though.)
Anyway, as it turns out, it's exceedingly difficult to ensure all these characters meet without some outside influence. While it's true that Raine and Genis could meet the Chosen's Group by pure coincidence, I would prefer a story that felt a little more intentional, especially for characters who will matter even more in a story where the Chosen herself is a half-elf. So I went with Sybak. But oops, it's not the Sybak you know and love!
The most difficult part about outlining this story is definitely getting all the characters together in a timely manner and not boring the shit out of my audience. We all played the game, after all, and we know what the Chosen's journey entails and how it should theoretically end. The second most difficult part is purely logistics-related: which human ranch goes where, which grand cardinal oversees it, how to weave in so many varying perspectives into one story, what the fUCK to do with Kratos other than let him show up, do nothing, reveal nothing, then leave, the order of the seals, and so on.
And then the third hardest thing is being nitpicky about character stuff. Let's use Regal for an example. So if he's been at a human ranch for the last 18 years, he should be long dead. He's not, so I had to figure out why. Through pure spite (or any other strong emotion) he doesn't let his exsphere awaken? He's too physically useful to be thrown away? He's not allowed to die too easily because he has to pay for the sins of his family? The Desians are intrigued by his ability to heal and use a little magic even though he reads as human to them? He has elven blood way back in the bloodline and the Desians take a small measure of pity on him? Is it possible he is being used in an experiment like the Angelus Project? Multiple of the above?
And then bigger questions, like which cardinal is most likely to have allowed this to happen? And where should this ranch be located so that the main characters can run into Regal at the right time?
We can't forget the emotional stuff, either! For example, after 18 years of mistreatment in a human ranch and seeing so many humans die at the hands of half-elves, how does Regal react to the literal Chosen being a half-elf? What about Raine and Genis, who were exploited by humans for the last 14 years?
And this isn't even getting into the backstory of his family, or George's role in anything. And this is just Regal! There are a lot of other characters, and I feel exceedingly picky about all of them.
I'm maybe 20% through this outline because there's just so much to consider.
--
One-night Stand Fic: The happier outline is 1,800 words (while the tragic version is 4,600) but it's maybe only like 30% complete. I think I'm going to go with the happier story because my blorbos need a break and there's something to be said about the consequences of a one-night stand being terrible enough on their own.
Like, imagine having to tell the friend that you banged a couple of months ago on a whim that uhhhh there's a baby now. There's something particularly bad about Raine being the one who has to get up the courage to say something, too; the world is prejudiced and while logically she's certain Regal will take the news in stride/take at least some responsibility, it's still a scary conversation to have.
Like, he is her friend, and she likes him, but this is a life-changing thing to announce. There is no way for her to know with 100% certainty how he will react to it. He has literally all of the power here.
What a terrifying situation to be in. And also to have to sail to Altamira when already suffering morning sickness? Hahaha. RIP.
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Hey are you posting your alt world fic? And if so can I have the link? I’d love to read it
Hi, I am assuming this is from me tagging with “alt world fic tag” and not because I haven’t updated a chapter of the fanfic since November because the current in-progress chapter is kicking my butt and I am busy with grad life. When I am able to devote proper weekends to it, "Alternate World" updates every 2/3 weeks and I have been working on it since August 2021. All of that to say, it is very long at ~157,000 words and of course you can have a link! I’m flattered that you asked. I should maybe link it in my header or pin a post or something, huh?
If you want to read without knowing the source material’s season 1 spoilers, I put them under the readmore. You also are welcome to anon ask here, tell me to turn on my DMs for you, or comment in the story itself for more information if something is confusing. The fic deals with past child abuse, eldritch horror, parenting, and psychological horror with the acknowledgment that love will save us in the end. I try to give appropriate CWs in chpt headers of the fic.
Some overview if you aren’t familiar with Dungeons and Daddies, which this is an AU of: 1) Four dads have their kids kidnapped after being pulled into a D&D setting by a mysterious hooded figure, who taunts them individually for being bad fathers. They finally confront the hooded figures who are revealed to be three of their own fathers with the fourth missing. The men were neglectful/abusive throughout the men’s childhoods in various ways and now wish to exploit fantasy “daddy magic” as the alleged most powerful magic. Obviously the abusive fathers assume one does this by forcing kids to depend on a father entirely. 2) The men successfully rescue their kids but have to confront their own fathers to get back to Earth in the portal they had entered from. 3) One bad dad reveals to his son that ‘lol you have an eldritch god living inside you and your sons. Can’t you see I’m the only one who can harness Its power before your 11 year olds kill everyone?’ So that is where the reblogs about holes and space are coming from— eldritch horror plays a role.
Personal opinion: It’s a good podcast until ep 48 when the writers decided to kill a child and then kill another child later, and season 2 is keeping that pattern up. The cast is infamously bad at giving content warnings, so if you want a doesthedogdie style breakdown for what has caused triggers in the past, I am more than happy to give it for s1.
I loved the story up until the point when I didn’t, so writing a long thing that I am putting a lot of effort and thought into is cathartic in a nice way if the writers refuse to pay off for the pain characters are put through.
Conversely, if you like s1 and s2 of the podcast I hope you have/are having fun. I just personally stopped being able to, hence the long fic.
#alt world fic tag#genuinely hope it lives up to my reblogs of inspiration#feel free to chat I enjoy talking to people#thank you for asking
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Revised FS Magical Girl AU
This is a long idea dump, so it's all going under a readmore. If you end up reading it though, I hope you enjoy it!
The AU follows a typical magical girl structure: the Links and Zelda must work together to stop darkness from taking over the world. To do so, they must collect the three pieces of the Triforce, an item of godly power from an age long forgotten. Along the way, the bonds between all of the team members grow stronger, and each kid completes their character arc.
The initial team consists of Zelda, Green, Red, Blue, and Vio. Zelda is an only child, whereas the four Links are biological quadruplets. Zelda has been adopted by the Yellow Maiden, while the Links live with their biological father. The Green, Red, Blue, and Purple Maidens are mother figures for Green, Red, Blue, and Vio, respectively, as their father has trouble raising four sons on his own and doesn't mind the boys spending time at the Maidens' houses instead.
The Links have been friends with Zelda since they were babies, so the group is already close to each other. They share everything with each other - which is why, one day, when Zelda is greeted by Miss Fairy and learns that she is the reincarnation of the princess of Hyrule, the Links are the first to find out.
This works out in Miss Fairy's favor, as she's come to reawaken the heroic spirit of the Hero of Light. It turns out the Links, who are not named Link in the present day to avoid confusion with each other, are the reincarnation of the Hero of Light, his soul split into four like it was in the past. Upon finding the modern-day Links, Miss Fairy bestows to each one a baby fairy. These baby fairies have a natural proficiency for one type of elemental power and are named as such: Windy, Blazy, Rainy, and Terry. It is each Link's job to help them hone their powers while taking care of them.
Each Link is also given a Royal Jewel of their theme color, which grants them their magical boy powers: Green's power of wind, Red's power of fire, Blue's power of water, and Vio's power of earth. They can transform into magical boys using transformation devices (also provided by Miss Fairy) in tandem with the Royal Jewels. As for Zelda, being the reincarnation of a goddess and magical princess, she can simply transform at will.
Transforming calls upon the power of the user's previous self, so the Links become proficient in many types of combat while transformed, and Zelda can use light magic and swords with ease. This does not mean that their powers will be sufficient to stop all enemies, though, which is why they must learn to draw out more of their latent powers as enemies become tougher - whether it be through training or personal growth. The Links start with Four Swords for weapons while Zelda has her magic, but as they complete their character arcs, the Links gain their individual weapons, and Zelda acquires a powerful sword reminiscent of the ones her past selves owned.
At the same time that the magical kids are getting established and learning how to balance school and magical duties, the forces of darkness are awakening. Vaati has been reincarnated into a humanoid form similar to the one seen in The Minish Cap, and Ganon has come back as a modern-day Ganondorf. Upon realizing who they once were and what the Triforce's infinite power could allow them to do in the modern world, they form a secret alliance and create Shadow Link using what dark magic they've regained.
Shadow Link is a demon, as he was in the past, though he too has been reincarnated (rather than being the exact same Shadow Link who arose from the Dark Mirror) and therefore only vaguely knows about his past self. He is tasked by Vaati and Ganondorf to spy on the magical kids, posing as a human boy who goes to their school and befriends them. In typical magical girl fashion, Shadow eventually realizes that his friends genuinely love him while his masters do not, and so he joins the team later in the story. He transforms using his dark magic (which remains dark even after he joins the team, but is used in good ways rather than bad ones). He is adopted by the White Maiden after leaving Vaati and Ganondorf, who provided him with shelter before.
As the story progresses, it turns out that each piece of the Triforce manifests when one of the Links demonstrates a deep understanding of power, wisdom, or courage. This is directly related to the character arcs of Red, Blue, and Vio, who come to understand power, wisdom, and courage, respectively. Red learns to believe in and wield his own power rather than relying on others, Blue learns to stop and listen to his thoughts rather than act immediately (therefore acting wisely), and Vio gains the courage to express his love for others without fear of being seen as weird. Green is the only Link to not cause a Triforce piece to appear, which causes his character arc to come to its climax before it is resolved with support from his teammates. Meanwhile, Zelda and Shadow face their own internal conflicts which eventually come to hopeful, satisfying resolutions as well.
With the Triforce in hand, the magical kids learn to hone its power, and they eventually are able to free Vaati and Ganondorf from the darkness remaining in their hearts, leftover from their past selves. This allows the magical kids to not have to kill them while also preventing them from committing any more acts of evil. The story ends in a generic happy ending with the Links learning their baby fairies can stay with them, as well as Shadow Link, who becomes human thanks to one last boon from the Triforce before it returns to the heavens.
Some details are omitted, but that's the general gist!
#four swords#four swords manga#PHEW please let me know what you think if you read all of this#long post
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*chanting* human AU human AU
For the color addisons, their names are related to their colors, yes, for Spamton i wanted somethin that sounded along the lines of his name. All 5 of them studied marketing, thats where they met n became friends. They hang after work n complain.
The height comparisons at the bottom there, Pinks visibly taller, Spamtons visibly shorter but its usually not SUPER noticeable (ok maybe it is).
A stray NEO and doodles of Blue n Pink
The basics are there, more details under the readmore (please work this is a lot of ramblin)
Redds gotta be the one sellin the most things in game, so i figured a department store attendant would work since they can shuffle him to any station. He REALLY likes rings but also favors jewelry in general
Sky n Amber are p self explanatory, but yellow doesnt really show up in game so I gave him social media manager. That sponsored wendys account? it might just be Dande
And good ol Spencer, poor guys stuck w any odd jobs he can find. “Digital marketer” is just a nice way to say “has to copy paste and send out thousands of “Pipis enlargement pills” emails in hopes to get any bites”. hes not happy about it but what can u do.
As to why I gave him a cane/wheelchair it mostly has to do w my headcanons for his in game form: normal Spamton moves around on a wheel like MTT, and NEOs legs are limp, so i felt it made sense to translate it this way
One day while heading out after one of their catch up dinners, a man stops Spencer and offers him some voicework. What a nice guy, that Mike! After changin his look, Spencer becomes a huge radio personality, lendin his voice on adverts and the like; its the energy hes always longed for.
Oh, his hands? dont worry about it
While hes makin it big he decides to settle down n have a family. admittedly i dont have a good idea for the spouse, but the important thing is kris. I just love the link the two seem to have in game, i feel like if theyd met when Spamton was on his better days theyd have a good relationship. Cool uncle might be more accurate but I like the idea of parent....
But yes, the two of em are a happy family. Since Spencer has to wear glasses a lot, Kris just gets him more n more glasses on special occasions; now Spencers real proud of his collection. Kris really appreciates their dad, hopefully that doesnt change when/if the man hits rock bottom.
His friends groups on an odd spot, while they were initially happy, sometimes he does get a bit too high of himself n it makes em mad, but they feel like callin him out would be admitin they felt above him.
Skys the one w the most patience for him, n has always felt close to Spencer, but a person can only take bein dismissed so much, after all, even his partner left him w the kid, so theyd all be justified to cut off contact w him
#deltarune#deltarune chapter 2#deltarune fanart#spamton#addison#addisons#hopefully the readmoore works#it is quite a wall of text
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This shit is fake bby!!!
Here she is.. My masterpost of all the dumb, illogical bits of info contained within these s15 “leaks” that make me fairly confident they are complete bullshit. It also includes my little tinhat theories that have absolutely no evidence.
I will be putting it all under a Readmore in case you don't want to risk it or if you simply Do Not Care
First up, I'd like to point out that these call sheets repeatedly give very detailed backstories to characters that have few lines which conveniently paints a picture of each episode's plot. And I'm not an expert so correct me if I'm wrong, but after looking at other similar casting calls, they only ever include the demographic and necessary skills.
Basically who in their right mind would write up casting calls that give away so many spoilers? Seems like that could cause and issue if they were leaked lol. But anyway that's my 1st point. But onto the actual content
So the conceit of this episode as a whole is that during the pandemic, the gang "gamed the system" and received three (3!) Loans to start businesses that went bankrupt. One of these businesses is implied to be the one started by dee and charlie who end up selling to Qanon shaman. Already this is so impossible baby.
1. We've already seen the gang try to get a loan and it didn't work. They don't have good ideas. Ur telling me, they managed to finagle 3 separate loans for 3 separate business ideas from an actual bank?
2. Maybe I just have bad reading comprehension but how does one have a business that is both fictitious and bankrupt?
3. If the customer is supposed to be Qanon shaman, an actual real life guy, why are the only descriptors white and male? They say he's shirtless so are they going to paint on all of the tattoos he has? And if so, doesn't that kind of ruin the dramatic reveal when charlie "throws in" the viking helmet? Why would he do that anyways? Sus.
Moving on
Alright this episode would fucking blow for obvious reasons but im going to refrain from looking at this through my gay dennis thruther lens because im biased.
Purely from a narrative standpoint, a woman hasn't been shown to be interested in dennis in nearly 5 years during the wade boggs episode. Ever since, every single woman he approaches has been actively creeped out by him. And now I'm supposed to believe that 3 "smart, passionate woman" (In Their Twenties!!!!!!) agreed to go on a date with him? And Anna even slept with him! Just because he what? Agreed with her? I'm not buyin it.
Plus the concept of this scenario lacks any potential for comedy. When iasip gets political, they always discuss a very specific topic using hyperbolic situations and flawed metaphors. If this is supposed to be a political episode, what ultimately lukewarm point would rob be trying to make here? So far we know they're ranting about
The patriarchy
Privilege
Socialism
No more personal responsibility(?)
The... nature of power in society(??)
How on earth would an episode like get approved? This shit sounds like a Ted talk. It sounds like it was written specifically to sound like a political episode so boring and pointless it would generate outrage and mile long essay posts from Tumblr users and reddit users alike. Almost like this one lol.
On a completely unrelated note, do not try and convince me that Frank "casual cock ring wearer" Reynolds is unable to perform.
Jeez this is getting out of hand fast. Let's move on
Ok now we're starting to getting into the Ireland of it all. Let me go on a bit of a tangent here about all this.. Now I thinq there are just 3 possibilities. Either this is all a publicity stunt and there is some truth to the Ireland rumors, the entire thing could be bogus from some weirdo fan (ps, if a fan did write this I want you to know I fucking hate you. You did this to me), or it is a publicity stunt but Ireland is just more bullshit.
I am going to assume it was a publicity stunt, otherwise I just wasted my entire evening and I can't have that kind of mentality rn. Additionally, I'm Going to tinhat here for a second and say that the Ireland rumors are true, but the details are different.
I say this because if they were going to do filming in Ireland, they probably figured that that information would be impossible to hide. In essence, my completely unfounded hypothesis is that this leak was their fucked up little way of controlling the situation while simultaneously messing with us.
Ok tangent is over, returning to the casting calls. From the looks of it, dee starts a "scam" acting class and has some very devoted students (Note that Tony was also the name of the porn shop owner. Seems weird!) Presumably after the gang replaces her with a monkey as the title suggests.
Honestly, there isn't too much here that's a red flag to me... seems like a nice little dee-centric episode that is the link to the Dublin angle. Assuming I am At All right, this could be a genuine plotline for Dee. However, the monkey could be a red herring and there could be a whole different side plot with the guys. who's to say. Next one!
Ah yes this is the dennis we all know and despise.. no red flags for me here really, I'm also running out of steam because idk if it shows, but I am majorly sleep deprived atm. Anyway I'm going to the next one
Okay this is where things start getting weird again ough a migraine just hit, anyway back to my earlier point about how casting calls would never contains major spoilers bc the people who see these wont be under any kind of NDA..
These ones reveal that bonnie dies. Again, that info wouldn't be in a casting call.
But also they suggest charlie has a irish penpal named Shelley who is his biological father. First off charlie is illiterate, although as pointed out by @undeadbreeze shelley could also be communicating in symbols. However, this scenario is still unbelievable to me for a couple reasons:
1. Bonnie's last name is Kelly obviously, and we know it's her maiden name because Jack's last name is also Kelly. But Shelley's last name is... also Kelly? In the context of this big ol hoax, it feels like it was written to show that look! his last name is the same as charlie's! That's how you know that's his dad! But It would be way too big of a coincidence if charlie's dad happened to have the same last name bonnie.
And 2. There's the whole mystery of charlie's long-lost sister from 'charlie got molested' but never any mention of a brother which according to this, shelley has been pretending to be his brother for years. And we all know how much rcg loves their continuity, it seems uncharacteristically lazy to just tack this on without any prior buildup.
And finally let me talk about mac for a second and specifically the line in gus's summary "both are gay men who are attracted to the priesthood for all the wrong reasons"
Iasip has commented on pedophilia in the priesthood many times in the past which leads me to believe that they are implying that mac is a pedophile? Please let me know if I completely misread the implications of that statement, but if not, then that is completely insane and one of the biggest indictators that this is fake. Mac is awful, just like everyone in the gang but he is definitely not a pedophile.
However even if i did completely misread that, it's still proof this is fake.. For all his faults, Rob put a surprising amount of care and effort into mac's coming-out. It hasn't been perfect, but Mfhp in particular firmly established that mac's faith is integral to his identity so Its unlikely that rob would throw all of that away for a cheap shot at priests.
Ok my brain is irradiated sludge at this point, but in conclusion. I hope that 1. I'm right, at least about it being fake (Otherwise damb that'll be so humiliating for me) And 2. This eases ur fears a bit. I don't want to lose all faith in future seasons bc I love iasip and miss the gang. If you read this far youre insane but I literally love you so goddamn much because I spent so so long tapping this out on my silly little phone
Please feel free to add on or message me your thoughts and opinions I need to know I'm not the only one who uhhh went a bit insane. And finally: whoever made these is a cunt. Mwah.
#iasip#s15 spoilers#oy vey.....#they could also be written by a reddit fan who is too much of a pussy to just write fanfic but that seems kinda unlikely?#cause 1. itll be disproven so everyone will know u just... wrote weird fanfic#and 2. there are a lot of little details that are so random that even if this is a fan just messing with people.... why put in so much effo#wahtever im pressing post#actually tho what gge fuck is that priest line supposed to imply#i guess for mac it could be talking about his view that god smites enemies and u must fear him blah blah#i jus don't know what it was supposed to imply about gus!!!#bc they describe gus like he is fat mac with healthy views on the bible which :]#then that last line just gives me whiplash what does that mean!!
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A Holistic Integration of Type 1 Narcolepsy into the Reading of Moist von Lipwig
Literary Interpretation, Disability, and Finding Yourself Between the Lines
As it goes, "I wrote this for me, but you can read it if you want." It might be a fun ride for anyone who is very interested in Moist von Lipwig, or narcolepsy, or both, and/or anyone who enjoys collecting small details from within a body of work and arranging them into threads that are supportable by the text, without being actually suggested by it.
Personally, I find it very interesting to read the meta behind different headcanons, and see how creators can unintentionally write a character who fits certain criteria. There are only so many traits, after all, and some of them tend to travel in groups! Humans are pattern seekers, etc etc.
The first step of reading Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic is wanting to read Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic. Being narcoleptic myself and relating heavily to Moist, this step was very easy. I invite you to take my hand and come along, at least briefly, if you were interested enough to click the readmore.
Once you have taken that step, things start falling into place. At least they do if you're intimately familiar with narcolepsy, or if you first learn about it in detail through, for instance, a Tumblr post with an agenda :)
I'll break this down symptom by symptom, citing only the ones I both have personal experience with and see textual support for.
I'll be using OverDrive's search function to catalogue "evidence" in (the American editions of) Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam, so I might miss passages that don't use certain keywords.
Please take any statements along the lines of "being narcoleptic means X" with a huge grain of salt. Sometimes it's just more succinct. Narcolepsy can manifest in many different ways, and is still being actively studied. Don't base your entire understanding of it on a fandom essay I wrote to cope with the crushing pressures of capitalism. I have not even fully read the scientific studies linked here as sources.
Here we go! Spoilers abound.
I. Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) and sleep attacks.
Being narcoleptic means (salt now, please) that your brain does not get adequate rest while you sleep, no matter how much you sleep. This is because of a disturbance in the order and length of REM and NREM sleep phases. This leads to constant exhaustion. Some sources describe narcoleptic EDS as "comparable to [the sleepiness] experienced by a healthy individual who has been sleep-deprived continuously for 48–72 hours."
(Source.)
Sleep attacks can come on gradually or suddenly. In my case, I become irritable and easily overwhelmed, and nothing matters except finding a place to lie down. A more severe attack, under the right circumstances, can put me to sleep while I'm actively trying to stay awake and engaged.
Moist refers to 6:45 am as "still nighttime." He is "allergic to the concept of two seven o'clocks in one day" and is "not good at early mornings," and the narration even cites this as "one of the advantages of a life of crime; you didn't have to get up until other people had got the streets aired."
In Going Postal, he repeatedly falls asleep at his desk. I can only find two instances, but the first one describes it as having happened "again," so it happens at least three times over the course of one week. Both of the times I found were after Mr. Pump cleared his apartment, giving him access to a bed, and I can't find any reference to the fire destroying it—just that his office is "missing the whole of one wall." His presumably wooden desk is still intact, even, just "charred."
There's also no build-up either time. No direct narration of the time right before he falls asleep, just retroactive accounting for it.
Which is primarily a function of stories not showing us every boring second, and secondarily one of the smaller ways we're shown Moist being overwhelmed and racing to keep up with himself, but tertiarily it's a great set dressing if you've already decided he's narcoleptic. Sometimes sleep is just a thing that happens, without any deliberate transition. Sometimes you sit down to catch your breath or get some paperwork done, and wake up several hours later.
I've found only one example in GP of Moist waking up in his actual bed at the post office: the morning after being possessed by all the undelivered letters. Presumably either they put him there, or Mr. Pump did.
There are two points in Making Money where Moist, in an effort to be a comforting and/or guiding hand, advises people to get some sleep. First Owlswick Jenkins, and then one of the clerks (Robert) who is worried about Mr. Bent.
I take the optimistic view that this is Moist genuinely caring about these people, not just trying to get them to do what he wants. He has always done some combination of those things (GP opens with him having befriended his jailers, after all), but there's definitely a thread of him learning to treat both himself and those around him more like real people. (See also.)
Looking at this thread through narcolepsy-colored lenses, you get Moist perhaps drawing from his own experiences in an effort to be helpful. In Owlswick or Robert's position, what is something he would want to hear from the man currently in charge of his fate, or at least his job? "Get some sleep."
If we accept this as a pattern, it culminates in Raising Steam, when Moist starts to worry about "Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers," fixating particularly on their lack of sleep.
What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going.
[...]
"People are going to die if we push them any further," he said to Dick. "You lot would rather work than sleep!"
[...]
The young man swayed in front of him and Moist's tone became gentle. "And I see now that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You've run out of steam, Dick. Look, we're well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it's daylight and we're out of the mountains it's going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We're all going to need our wits about us when we get near the pass. Surely you can take some rest?"
Simnel blinked as if he'd not seen Moist the first time, and said, "Yes, you're right."
And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man's speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed, and noted that the engineer didn't so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it.
Moist then recruits Vimes to help him talk the rest of the engineers into getting some rest. The two of them briefly commiserate about people not realizing how important it is.
"I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night's rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can."
"Very good."
II. Insomnia.
This is a lesser-known but very common symptom of narcolepsy. Or a comorbidity, depending on how you look at it. It seems counterintuitive if narcolepsy has been presented to you as "sleeping all the time," but it makes sense once you know it's really a matter of disruption in the brain's ability to regulate sleep cycles.
The case for this symptom is flimsier, and I fully admit I'm just reading my own experience into it. But here are two excerpts from Going Postal that I find quite suitable for my sleepy agenda:
1. "A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall's thickness away."
I latched hard onto this detail the first time I read GP.
At my worst, I could not get more than a couple hours of sleep in my bed. I kept taking naps in the bath because it was one of the few places I could sleep. It seemed to fulfill some of the criteria (isolation, temperature control, etc) that my brain demanded in exchange for playing nice.
We're told over and over again, throughout Moist's books, that he functions best under pressure.
(Brief aside: This is often cited as a reason to interpret Moist as having ADHD, which I'm also fully on board with. Not coincidentally, narcolepsy and ADHD share a few symptoms, have a notable comorbidity rate, and are treated with some of the same medications. Source.)
So again, if you're already inclined to read Moist as narcoleptic, the following is an easy jump:
"Moist thinks he's good at sleeping in strange places under strange circumstances. This is because A) his basis for comparison is a disordered attempt to sleep in normal places under normal circumstances, B) something about danger satisfies his brain into running more smoothly, and C) he's a resourceful person who is 'not given to introspection,' and so is less likely to wonder why his body demands sleep at strange times and more likely to focus on finding a place for that sleep to happen, and chalk this up later as a skill."
And returning briefly to EDS: Why would someone like Moist waste time finding a safe place to sleep while people are actively trying to kill him? At the beginning of GP, he leaves Vetinari's office and immediately goes on the run. In multiple books, when he feels threatened, his brain instinctively launches into complex escape plans. We see him successfully blend into an Ankh-Morpork crowd at least once after becoming a public figure.
So why bother? After all, a safe place to sleep is also a safe place to change clothes, or at least remove whatever distinguishing features he's given himself. Why wouldn't he just become someone else and leave town immediately?
The obvious answer is that sometimes things just happen, and an author doesn't need to know or explain every single detail of a character's past.
I would suggest, though, that one of those things might be Moist reaching a point where sleep is just not optional. A point where he not only doesn't, but can't, care about anything else. Where he is too tired to think straight, too tired to talk his way out of trouble, too tired to even contemplate the long journey from one town to the next.
2. "Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there, too, alive and sparkling."
Sometimes (especially in combination with underlying mental health issues) narcoleptic sleep deprivation can bypass everything I've described so far, and lead straight into a manic state. You won't necessarily find that on Google, but it's been my experience.
That's obviously not what the text is implying. "Alive and sparkling" is just a very relatable description. And we do often see Moist getting away from himself, speaking without thinking, making absurd promises that he justifies immediately afterwards as Just Part Of Being Him, always raising the stakes.
And here are a couple of excerpts from Raising Steam that could be interpreted as Moist being a light sleeper, AKA struggling to get deep sleep:
1. "And slowly Moist shut down, although a part of him was always listening to the rhythm of the rails, listening in his sleep, like a sailor listening to the sounds of the sea."
2. "All Moist's life he'd managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard's van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn't know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open."
Moist is exactly the kind of opportunist to see that as a useful tool, isn't he?
III. Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations.
These are hallucinations that come on as you're falling asleep or waking up. They can also happen during REM intrusions while you're awake. My most memorable ones include piano notes, someone calling my name, being trapped in the waves of a large body of water, and a huge truck going over a guard rail and tumbling down a hill. These are often, but not always, accompanied by sleep paralysis (and sleep paralysis is often, but not always, accompanied by hallucinations).
In GP, Moist casually cites his own hallucinations as proof that what is happening at the post office is not one.
"They're all alive! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I've had hallucinations and they don't hurt!"
Obviously that's not true for everyone, but it's true for Moist, and he has enough experience that he immediately recognizes the difference.
At one point while awake, Moist "[snaps] out of a dream of chandeliers" to realize someone has approached him to talk, while he was busy having visions of what the post office used to look like/could look like again.
Now, that's cheating, because we're probably supposed to assume it's a side effect of being possessed, but... I'm putting it here anyway.
There is also perhaps a case to be made for the tendency of Moist's internal monologue to lapse into extremely specific and prolonged hypotheticals. The lines between hallucinations, waking dreams, and "regular" daydreams have always been very blurry to me. I'm especially curious about the example at the end of Going Postal, which goes like this:
"Look, I know what I'm like," he said. "I'm not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I'm not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I'm still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can't tell. I mess with people's heads—"
"You're fooling no one but yourself," said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.
Moist shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city, and back to his old life, or lives, always moving on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn't seem to work anymore, the flair wasn't there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn't seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall—
And an angel appeared.
"What just happened?" said Miss Dearheart.
Perhaps you do get two...
"Only a passing thought," said Moist.
In-universe... what is Adora reacting to? What did just happen? The fact that these incidents are not isolated to Going Postal is a point against it being some sort of literal timeline divergence caused by The Spirit Of The Post.
So maybe Moist visibly zoned out. Maybe he had some kind of minor but noticeable cataplexy attack (more on those later) as part of a REM intrusion, brought on by the intense emotions he's currently struggling with.
IV. Vivid Dreams.
Again, at least some of this is probably supposed to be part of the possession, but I've been professionally projecting myself onto the surreal dreams of magically afflicted characters for years. Do try this at home.
1. "Moist dreamed of bottled wizards, all shouting his name. In the best tradition of awaking from a nightmare, the voices gradually became one voice, which turned out to be the voice of Mr. Pump, who was shaking him."
2. Moist is uneasy about the Smoking Gnu's plan, and then he has an extremely detailed dream about the Grand Trunk burning down.
This culminates in "Moist awoke, the Grand Trunk burning in his head," followed by a paragraph of him thinking things through and starting to form his own alternative plan, followed immediately by "Moist awoke. He was at his desk, and someone had put a pillow under his head."
So he fell asleep at his desk, woke up from a vivid nightmare, was awake just long enough for a coherent train of thought, and then passed back out. Which once again is not "proof" of anything, but fits the predetermined interpretation like a glove.
V. Cataplexy.
Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle control, usually triggered by strong emotions. This is thought to be a facet of REM intrusion—waking instances of the atonia that is meant to stop us from acting out our dreams.
The most well-known manifestation is laughter making your knees buckle, but it's not always that severe. My own attacks range from facial twitching, usually when I'm angry or otherwise extremely upset, to all-over weakness/immobilization and near-collapse when I laugh. My knees have fully buckled once or twice.
This is the biggest stretch. This is the one that is absolutely only there if you've already decided to read entire novels between the lines. It's also not even necessary for the broader headcanon; plenty of people have narcolepsy without cataplexy (or such mild cataplexy that it's never noticeable, or very delayed onset, etc).
However. I am doing this for fun. So I want him to have it. It's also become a major part of how I imagine Moist engaging with emotion, and I'd like to make a case for that.
There are a few scattered references to Moist's legs shaking, or being unsteady, or outright giving way, but there's usually an external physical reason, and/or enough psychological shock to justify it without a medical condition.
The most compelling example I've found so far comes from Moist and Adora's conversation about people expecting Moist to deliver letters to the gods.
"I never promised to—"
"You promised to when you sold them the stamps!"
Moist almost fell off his chair. She'd wielded the sentence like a fist.
"And it'll give them hope," she added, rather more quietly.
"False hope," said Moist, struggling upright.
"Almost fell off his chair" at first sounds like casual hyperbole, but then "struggling upright" implies it was a bit more literal. It's also an accurate description of me recovering from my more severe attacks, supporting myself on a wall or my spouse, or pushing myself up if I've fallen over in bed.
That happens to me multiple times per day, by the way. It doesn't bother me, and I didn't realize there was anything unusual about it for a long time. I barely think about it, except to fondly note that my spouse is good at making me laugh.
Which is to say, even severe cataplexy is not always noticeable or debilitating. Sometimes it absolutely is! It can be downright dangerous, depending on where you are, what you're doing, and whether you have any other conditions it might exacerbate. I don't want to undermine that.
I am just hell-bent on justifying the idea that this fictional character could have repeated attacks throughout the canonical narrative that are so routine they don't merit an explanation, or even a description. Especially for someone who is used to hiding his few distinguishing features behind false ones that are much more memorable. (See also.)
(That link goes to my own fanfic. Sorry.)
On the milder side, between Going Postal and Making Money, there are three instances of Moist's mouth "dropping open" when he's shocked, upset, confused, or some combination of the three. This is the kind of thing that shows up a lot in fiction, but rarely happens so literally in real life.
(There's technically a fourth instance, but I'm not counting it because it seems to be a deliberate choice on his part to convey surprise.)
And then there's laughter. Or rather, there isn't. I could be missing something, but I've searched all three books for instances of laughter and various synonyms (not counting spoken "Ha!"s), and what I've come up with is:
Moist laughs once in Going Postal, when he receives the assignment for the race to Genua.
Two packages were handed over. Moist undid his, and burst out laughing.
There's also an instance earlier in the book where Moist nearly "burst[s] out laughing."
I find the specifics here interesting, and, for our purposes, fortuitous. Cataplexy is complicated and presents differently for everyone. In my case, when laughter triggers an attack, one of the effects (which is sometimes also a cause) is that I laugh very hard, with little or no control. "Burst out laughing" is quite apt.
Let's move on to Making Money, and start with a quick tangent:
Mr. Bent explains that he has no sense of humor due to a medical condition, and that he isn't upset about this and doesn't understand why people feel sorry for him.
Moist immediately starts in with "Have you tried—" before getting cut off by the frustrated Bent.
Out-of-universe, "Have you tried" is such a well-known refrain to anyone with an incurable condition, I'm not at all surprised to find it in a book written by someone who had at least begun the process that would lead to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. And Pratchett has certainly never shied away from portraying ignorance in his protagonists.
In-universe, it feels a little odd. Moist's tongue runs away from him all the time, but usually in the form of making ridiculous claims or impossible promises. Moist's entire stock-in-trade is People Skills, and it feels strange for him to make this kind of mistake immediately after being told Mr. Bent is not looking for solutions.
But if one were reading with, for instance, the idea in mind that Moist himself has an incurable condition related to laughter and is enthusiastic about, but still relatively new to, the practice of drawing on his own experiences to help people... it is easy to imagine the gears in his head turning the wrong way, superimposing those experiences over the tail end of Mr. Bent's explanation. Disabled people are not immune to these well-meaning pitfalls.
There is another Mr. Bent moment that I want to discuss, but we'll circle back around to it later.
I found two instances of Moist himself laughing in MM.
1. "He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little."
This is deliberate laughter, employed as a social tactic. A polite chuckle, probably. Not the sort of thing that generally triggers cataplexy.
2. "Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression."
The first and only involuntary laugh in MM. It doesn't always trigger attacks...
Which brings us to Raising Steam. Compared to the first two books, Moist laughs a lot here. I count nine instances. Two of them are "burst out laughing"s, a couple include him as part of a group, some of it comes off as deliberate, and some of it doesn't.
I've always seen a lot of... rage in Raising Steam. Combing through it for laughter, I realized Moist's emotions in general are much closer to the surface here, and he's much less concerned about letting people see them. He laughs with friends and acquaintances, he cries in front of strangers, he shouts at Harry King, he has that entire conversation with Dick that boils down to "I'm very worried about you," etc.
Opinions vary wildly and sharply on Raising Steam. I have my own hangups with it, as I do with most books in the series. (Every time I make a new Discworld post, Tumblr passive-aggressively suggests the tag "my kingdom for a discworld character who is normal about women and other species.")
But I like this particular change in Moist, and I choose to see it as character development. He's trading in the professional detachment of a conman for the ability to grow into himself as a person and make meaningful connections.
So, what does that have to do with cataplexy? A lot.
I don't want to get too maudlin, so I'll just say I have plenty of personal experience with emotional repression masking cataplexy symptoms. And so, I believe, does the version of Moist we've put together over the course of this post.
Which brings us back to Making Money, and Mr. Bent. He says something about Moist that I find very interesting: "I do not trust those who laugh too easily."
Unless I've missed something, at that point in the book, Moist has never actually laughed in front of him. And Mr. Bent is a man who pays very close attention to details.
So, what is the in-universe explanation for this? I'd like to propose that Moist is very skilled at seeming to laugh, without actually laughing. He smiles, he's friendly, and he makes other people laugh, which is another thing Bent dislikes about him. He gives the impression of being someone who laughs a lot. (He certainly left that impression on me; I was very surprised by the lack of examples in the first two books.)
Even staying strictly within the bounds of canon, it's easy to imagine why this might have become part of Moist's camouflage in his previous life. He wasn't looking to get attached to anyone, and he didn't want anyone getting inside his head. Engaging with people genuinely enough to laugh at their jokes would run counter to both of those things, but some of his personas still needed to come off as friendly and sociable.
Still working within the canon, it makes sense to assume he's similarly distanced himself from emotion in general. He sits in a cell for several weeks without truly believing he's going to die. He's bewildered when Mr. Pump points out that his schemes have hurt innocent people. He has no idea what to do with his feelings for Adora. Etc.
Interpreting Moist as having cataplexy adds an extra element of danger. Moist thrives on danger, but there's a difference between the thrill of a con and the threat of sudden, uncontrollable displays of vulnerability. And so it becomes even easier to see him stifling his own emotional capacity.*
We meet Moist at a moment of great upheaval. He is forcibly removed from his cocoon of false identities, and pushed out into the world as himself. And we are shown and told throughout Going Postal that he does not know how to be himself. (See also.)
He is repeatedly stymied by his own emotions. He gets tongue-tied and confused around Adora, he snaps at Mr. Pump, he lashes out at Mr. Groat, he gets lost in school flashbacks when he meets Miss Maccalariat. This thread continues in Making Money, where the sudden reappearance of Cribbins immediately rattles him into making an uncharacteristic mistake.
I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed!
Later in the same book, Moist misses a crucial opportunity to run damage control on the bank's public image... because he's excited to see Adora.
The Moist of GP and MM is not used to feeling things so deeply. It throws him off his game. I'm not at all suggesting cataplexy is the only (or even primary) reason for that, but I do think there's room for it on both sides of the cause and effect equation.
With or without the cataplexy, I find Moist's relative emotional openness in Raising Steam... really nice. (It's a work in progress. He's still getting a handle on anger.)
Cataplexy just adds another dimension. A physical manifestation of emotional vulnerability, which would have been especially untenable for a teenager on the run. Just one more facet of the real, human, fallible Moist von Lipwig who spent years buried beneath Albert Spangler and all the rest.
Another piece of himself that Moist is growing to understand and accept, as he learns to more comfortably be himself.
The Moist of Going Postal runs into a burning building to save lives without fully understanding why he wants to, and justifies it on the fly as an essential part of the role he's trying to play.
The Moist of Raising Steam mindlessly throws himself under a train to save two children, and then blows up at Harry King about the lack of safety regulations. Freshly traumatized by the murder of several railway workers and his own violent, vengeful response to it, he still offers, in the face of Harry's own grief, to be the one to inform their families. On a long and dangerous journey with plenty of moving parts to think about, he worries about Dick Simnel and the other engineers, and pushes them to take better care of themselves.
He also meets a bunch of kids who nearly derailed a train as part of a childish scheme. His admonishment is startlingly vivid.
"Can you imagine a railway accident? The screaming of the rails and the people inside and the explosion that scythes the countryside around when the boiler bursts? And you, little girl, and your little friends, would have done all that. Killed a trainload of people."
[...]
"I'll square this with the engine driver, but if I was you I'd get my pencil and turn any clever ideas you have like this into a book or two. Those penny dreadfuls are all the rage in the railway bookshops."
Maybe what he is also saying, between the lines, is:
I left home at 14 and began a life of smoke and mirrors. I was empty inside, and I thought everyone else was, too. It was all fun and games, and then a man made of clay told me I was killing people. Nip it in the bud, child. Write books.
------------
*There are studies suggesting that in addition to deliberately employed "tricks," people with cataplexy may experience physiological reactions in the brain meant to inhibit laughter. (Source 1, Source 2.)
Most of the information here is way over my head, but that second link also says "one region of the brain called the zona incerta (meaning 'zone of uncertainty') was only activated during laughter in people with narcolepsy, not in controls. Research on the zona incerta in animals suggests that it also helps to control fear-associated behavior."
The linked article about that (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03581-6) is also over my head, but I would certainly describe Moist von Lipwig as having unusual fear responses.**
**Narcolepsy is a fun roller-coaster ride of constant scientific discoveries about exactly which parts of your brain are paying too much attention, not paying enough attention, or trying to eat each other.
#moist von lipwig#narcolepsy#discworld#disabled headcanons#oh my god this got so out of hand#earned itself a title AND a subtitle#mr. cybulskis i'm sorry i fell asleep in your class every day it was at the exact wrong time and temperature and lighting
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Why do you like Kakasasu?
I waited to reply to this because I wanted to be sure it wasn’t a troll and it wasn’t a drama starting attempt (like this or this, gems found in the sasuke/KS tag) since it’s a subject I am very interested in.
I replied to Kakashi/Sasuke related asks, shippy or not shippy, here, here and here. More about them here, here and here. Put yourself comfortable cause this is gonna be long. Not putting it under a readmore cause I remember ppl complaining they coulnd’t open it on mobile phones (?). Also, moralists who are lurking: don’t interact, get out of my blog. Youll be blocked on sight.
When I started reading N*ruto I was into Bleach a lot, and the fact that the characters were a little older and looked older made me not get into Nar that much at first, because they looked like kiddies lol. I didn’t care about Nar as a character and his initial rivalry with Sas was cute but not enough to get me interested. Only when Kakashi got closer to Sasuke I started being veery interested in the story and in the characters. What I found intriguing was that Kakashi was older and an authority figure, but also someone to look up and who helped his students, BUT at the same time he wasn’t exactly a father-like figure or a big brother-like figure, because he had his dark side, that back then wasn’t well flashed out but that nevertheless showed a closed-off person who kept everything inside, not letting others get too close to him.
(then I started liking N*rusasu mostly because there were so many cool doujinshi especially Emi10/Rankai and Engawaken, while KS doujinshi were so meh, kinda in old yaoi style like Loveless, with tiny Sas who looked even younger hahaha, not my thing)
As those who know my blog and/or my writing know already, I am not interested in healthy, cute, positive dynamics in fiction. I might enjoy them, I might be happy when there are such moments, but I can’t like a whole relationship/dynamic/story only like this because I like to explore complicated ones in fiction.Because fiction is very useful for this, it makes you explore dark, taboo things, without affecting reality (no matter what idiots say), it’s cathartic, it’s a way to do, see, experience things without doing anything.
Back to topic tho, I found their initial dynamic very intriguing. A broken, traumatized yet extremely driven Sasuke, acting as confident and strong as he can, but showing his trauma in various occasions, otherwise being mostly aloof, lost in his own thoughts, and a differently broken Kakashi, acting chill but at the same time always ready to act when needed, yet always kinda distracted, aloof, lost in his owh thoughts (and later we’ll know he took Obito’s mannerisms because he was a stickler to rules). The way Kakashi takes a special interest for Sasuke, clearly the most driven, the best of the team, with whom he holds back much less (when he trains them, like when in the beginning, during the bell test, he fights with Sas and seeing that he almost took it, he overpowers him) while he is different with the others (Nar will have Jiraiya later). The way he protects Sasuke during the chuunin exams, while he’s in the hospital and Kabuto is trying to kill him.
Mostly, the controversial moments...like I said I live for these kind of things. where he both protects and threatens him...like when he does that seal to Sasuke, for his curse mark, and he tells him that if that curse mark takes over he’ll kill him. Or when he ties Sasuke up so he won’t join Orochimaru.
Before someone says bs like *you’re not Sas fan if you like that scene* (I know there are many like this and I want all of them out of my blog btw) uh, it’s not how it works guys. You can support a character and still be intrigued by scenes where said character is tied up/in a forcibly submitted position and so on. Guess what, some of those scenes are made for fanservice even (and Sas has many of these, so if you don’t see the appeal/refuse to admit that there is appeal, it’s you who have a problem). So even tho I disagree with Kakashi not wanting to listen to Sasuke’s reasons for revenge (and later supporting SHikamaru’s, I replied to this in one of the asks I linked) I do find that scene interesting...I mean Sasuke tied up in a very suggestive way and yet defying him and threatening to kill his loved ones and Kakashi opening up in a very weird way vaguely replying that he lost those ppl already? It shows a lot about them, their personalities, everything.
I am sticking to part 1 because there are more meaningful interactions between them, I wished there were more in part 2 but kishi shifted Kakashi’s ‘interest’ to Nar, making him one of Nar’s followers...even so, the intractions they had were very interesting. Their fight after Sasuke fights Danzo is one of my fave moments in the whole story tbh, much more than the later confrontation with Nar. Kakashi for the first time has an inner only, yet strong, emotional reaction, having to fight and supposedly kill his former student who became a rogue with a death sentence on his head...he realizes this is how Hiruzen felt against Orochimaru. It’s a strong realization from someone like him who was always so closed off and aloof that he totally lacked empathy.
On the other hand Sasuke is in a different mindset. He’s sort of high for having succeeded in eliminating the one who made Itachi suffer so much, he’s thinking about killing the elders and destroy the village, so he’s basically lost in the recent past of Danzo’s death and in the future plans he’s making, he’s not in the present moment almost...but he has to fight anyway, and it’s a cool fight, also because he’s weakened already and Kakashi is strong...and then he gets blind, totally, and it’s an amazingly intriguing moment, the kind of controversial stuff I’m interested in, because that’s when he could be totally overpowered by Kakashi, if the story didn’t have other priorities (putting Nar in the center of attention with their confrontation).
Their later moments, like during the war, are meh cause the interest shifted already completely, but their moments in jail (anime only ofc) and their Shinden interactions (only through messages) are interesting to me. Very much so, because they show power dynamics very well, with Kakashi as THE authority and Sasuke as the one submitted. In jail it’s even more evident with him looking down at the younger tied up and blindfolded...like, wow. It’s like fanfiction material (in fact I wrote one (ff.net/a03) and there was the coolest fanart inspired by it! here..there were more but this came on my dash today so).
You mentioned power dynamics...their dynamics are all power dynamics because Kakashi was never at Sasuke’s same level and he never acted like he was, and when Sasuke was stronger, during the war, they basically didn’t interact, and when the war was over and Sasuke was brainwashed and tamed into submission the power dynamic remained the same.
The difference imo between them and other power dynamics based pairings is that they are closer than what could be defined rare pairings such as Obito (they had a very interesting one tho, if only it was developed), Madara (the story was already developed in a pro Konoha-anti Uchiha way but it would have been so cool to have the 2 Uchiha interact more), or other older and stronger characters, so the dynamic could be written in a cool way in a fanfiction but in canon Kakashi created it already. So, while I can imagine something like Shisui/Sasuke, Obisasu or more, in my head, and I can come up with some AU or canon divergent/canon behind the screen (like when Sas stayed with Obito after the transplant), Kakashi and Sasuke had canon interactions that showed power dynamics already.
(Then there is Itasasu, which is a huge power dynamic based relationship, that also had amazingly strong feelings though, and those who know me know that for me Itachi will always be Sasuke’s most loved person, and that he was the same for Itachi. So ofc imo IS is a much stronger bond compared to KS but still. Also I remember in the beginning how many fics I read where Itachi was abusive to Sas and Kakashi stepped in lol. And it’s not a mystery that even though I think the IS bond is the strongest I find other pairings and character dynamics very interesting, so much that I like to explore them even more than IS, which, imo, is almost a given fact so I don’t always feel the need to explore it)
Another thing I find intriguing is that Kakashi always saw Sas at his ‘worst’...in Konoha’s terms I mean. When he wanted revenge in pt 1, after he killed Danzo and he was weak and so desperate and hysterical that they thought he got crazy, when he was jailed. It’s a big power he has, to be able to see someone like this.
Tbh it’s a pity that there were no post war moments (B*ruto shit doesn’t count) where they interact ‘normally’ cause I would have liked to see them, both as normal interactions where they get closer again, now that Sas is older, where they train and they get physical (and Kakashi has a lot of repressed anger, jealousy and possessiveness to let out on the one who betrayed his sensei and went to another...not my opinion but it could be Kakashi’s pov) because I think power dynamic would come up a lot, even from apparently cute moments.
I’ll end this super long essay hoping that you didn’t fall asleep lol, and adding that Kakasasu was the first Nar pairing I shipped, which it speaks a lot about why I get so irritated when someone mentions it negatively.
#kakasasu#unfollow me or block me if this bothers you#even tho I want to be the one blocking you guys who have something to say against this#vivalarevolution#vivalarevolution: bonds
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a public message to animecore and pink blogs: stop posting nekopara
TW for pedophilia, slavery, incest
I’ve seen an uncomfortable amount of Nekopara on my dash. I don’t know if it’s because of the anime, but it is not a remotely okay series. I understand the appeal, the character designs are very cute, but that is not remotely an excuse.
Details will be under the readmore, please reblog and spread this.
to begin with, here is the synopsis of the nekopara visual novels taken dirctly from the wikia
[IMG TEXT: Nekopara is a Japanese adult visual novel series developed by NEKO Works and published by Sekai Project. The first game in the series, Nekopara Vol. 1, was released on December 29, 2014. The series is set in a world where humans live alongside catgirls, known as "Nekos," and are able to keep them as pets. The games are fully voiced (except for the protagonist) and use a system called "E-Mote" that allows the in-game characters to be animated, instead of stationary sprites. The scenario was written by Yukijin, and the theme song was written by KOMEWORKS and performed by nao. ]
as you can see, it is described as an adult visual novel series. normally that would not be enough to label it as disgusting, however, if we look at the character’s ages, there begins to be a problem:
[IMG TEXT: Age: 9 months old]
this is the age of both of the poster girls, Chocola and Vanilla. Nekopara, being an adult game, attempts to justify this with the fact that “they age like cats, so they’ve reached sexual maturity!” But that’s not really an excuse considering the game also claims that catgirls have humanlike intelligence
[IMG Text: Catgirls, also known as Nekos, are an intelligent species of cat-human hybrids that live alongside humans in the Nekopara universe. Catgirls physically resemble humans with feline ears the same color as their hair , slitted pupils, a tail, and a cat-like mouth. ]
[IMG Text: Catgirls were once left homeless and living in the streets, but now they are domesticated by humans and aren't allowed to go anywhere by themselves without their masters unless they have a bell. ]
Nekopara clearly operates on some basis of slavery, even if you say “but they like it, so it’s ok!” that doesn’t make it okay. They aren’t even allowed to go anywhere without their masters without a bell.
Apparently the anime removes all the references to sex and even romance, so it’s somewhat understandable that if you don’t know the source and are new to anime you wouldn’t know this. However, I really don’t feel comfortable with seeing it at all, knowing the source.
EDIT (04/19/2020):
I have been informed by a mutual that Nekopara also features incest. Not only does the mc harbor parental feelings towards Chocola and Vanilla, and calls them lovers.
[Transcription will be added later]
Additionally, there is an incestuous subplot involving the MCs little sister, Shigure.
[Transcription will be added later]
Text that follows will be taken from a review cited at the end.
“ As mentioned previously, Shigure is fucking terrifying. It’s implied that all the catgirls are scared of her for conspicuously undisclosed reasons, while about 70% of her dialogue is spent expressing just how much she loves her nii-sama (and yes, it’s that kind of love). At one point in Vol. 0, she worries Kashou might have a girlfriend and plots to send said theoretical girlfriend naked photos of herself in order to sabotage the relationship (and, let’s face, probably get somebody arrested – she has to be like 12). If I were Kashou, Shigure alone would be more than enough reason to move out (as well as maybe get a restraining order). “
Text from the wikia:
“ However, despite her intelligence and elegant appearance, she is implied to harbour an incestuous and unrequited love for Kashou, her brother, occasionally lamenting how he doesn't seem as close to her as in the past. “
This just isn’t it, chief!
Sources:
Nekopara Wiki
Review link: https://visualnovelreviews.tumblr.com/post/139596251290/but-i-dont-wanna-fuck-my-cats-nekopara-vol-1
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Can agree, that guy was gross. Please talk about Thalia, I am also very interested.
Thalia time :) heres the copypaste under a readmore + some bonus:
So I've not actually gotten to play as Thalia yet, she's waiting in the wings for "the next campaign" which yknow. Could happen at any point between now and the sun exploding and we'd still be struggling to coordinate schedules.
This is the 5e homebrew I sent to the DM and was like "HEY CAN I PLAY AN ILLITHID IN THE NEXT CAMPAIGN" and he was like lol sure
Thalia is lawful neutral! She doesn't necessarily enjoy causing harm for no reason though she very much has the characteristic mind flayer sadism she just... doesn't go out of her way to cause harm. She very much will need the rest of the party to be her moral compass because she's maybe like one pixel above the line on the alignment chart between lawful neutral and lawful evil.
My idea for her backstory is that she fled left for the surface after encountering some of the Gith and feeling a spark of sympathy for them and instead of being subjected to being "fixed" by the other illithids, she went to the surface. She was already training as an artificer, so she masquerades as a plague doctor in order to hide the fact she's an illithid on account of most people freak out. She's come to the conclusion that illithid society is fucked up and while she deeply misses the collective of linked minds she left, she doesn't hate the surface at all and has discovered fun things like gender and compassion.
She still does not feel empathy but she's trying her best. She also still eats brains.
MORE THALIA LORE:
She pretends to be a drow on the surface just in case someone sees some of her skin she can just be like oh im a subspecies of drow since in most of the campaigns I've been a part of, drow have been like... Purple-ish. She's usually pretty heavily wrapped up in clothing and she hides her face with her plague doctor mask as much as possible. Depending on how long she's been on the surface (+ what the DM says obviously) I'm either gonna have her be a wandering physician or a small town's Trusted Weird Doctor
She has exactly one (1) moral and it's that slavery is bad. She's working on developing more morals but I don't think she's ever going to get past the "murder is ok" thing. Not with an adventuring party.
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Status: Archived. Thank you for the memories!
Important links: 「 Rules 」 || 「 Interest Checker 」 || 「 Verses 」 || 「 Commission info 」
Personals and non-roleplay blogs, do not reblog my roleplay posts. Please get photos and photosets from the source. If not followed, you will be blocked on sight. Thank you.
Mobile Rules:
Last updated: Jan. 17th, 2023
General info
No godmodding, heavy metagaming, and so on. Normal rpc etiquette that we all post in our rules applies here.
Specify which muse or you’ll have to face my plush newspaper. If you don’t, unless there’s just one you interact with, I won’t answer it.
Selective and private, meaning I only interact with mutuals. Duplicate friendly. Open to OCs and crossovers!
I do not associate myself with the Genshin Impact, Fire Emblem, and Fate series RPCs due to past experiences. I’m going to be very selective with these fandoms.
Kae (pseudomonarkaerenea) has also helped me with writing a fair amount of the verses and backstories of my muses in those verses, as we’ve done a lot of plotting over with them in private. This includes ships. Please don’t steal our work. If I find out you have, I will approach you and speak civilly about it.
Bios are a constant work in progress, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
Please tell me what muse you want me to do a meme for when you tag me in dash memes!
Icons and PSDs
Most icon art is taken from official sources. Some icons are taken from doujins and MMDs, while some have alternate faceclaims. I do not claim credit for the artwork or models used.
A fair amount of my icons were commissioned by serphaholic. Please do not take them without her permission!
Some Kama icons were provided by animerpicons!! Go check them out!
I own the PSD for the icons.
Verses
Verses will have a general tag. Please block the tag itself if you’re uncomfortable with seeing content relating to that series. Specific subverses will have their own tag.
Triggers
I tag all the common ones with “ Trigger//.” However, if you have a specific thing you need tagged, and it’s in your rules, I’ll go ahead and use that! I also have the right to not tag anything.
This blog has mentions of war, blood, violence, sex, and other NSFW content.
While I do not stray from harder kinks and more taboo subjects for threads, I do have a separate blog for those kinds of subjects. I’ll only share it with you if I’m comfortable with you, and I’ve moved the thread/ask over there.
Shipping
While I do write some unhealthy and otherwise taboo ships, that does not reflect on my morality, as there are some canon characters I write that have certain themes attached to them as a part of their character. They will be tagged with a trigger tag and their ship tag so you can block them. I will never force these onto you unless you’re comfortable with the subject and we discuss it beforehand. I’m not an asshole.
WITH THAT SAID, I do not ship Kaeluc. Please don’t come to me for this ship.
I am not your rp booty call. I like to build chemistry before we dive into shipping. I ask that we have had a fair amount of OOC interactions as well.
Polyshipping is accepted on this blog! All parties must be OK with it.
Threads
Can do anything from one-liners to novella. I have a habit of dropping threads if I have no interest after a while. If after a month you’re waiting on a reply, please nudge me! We can discuss where to go or if we want to drop it for now. I'm trying to break this habit, so the reminders are appreciated!
Smut threads will be written under a readmore and tagged. 18+ for those threads.
Mun info
Hello! I’m Carrie; 28 and a very tired person. Any pronouns are OK. Give me coffee or give me death at this rate. But anyway, I work a full-time job for a manufacturing company, as well as a part-time student. Activity will be all over the place due to this. The best place to catch me is on Discord! It’s always open for those who ask.
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also what mods do u use for minecraft,, i wanna get some but idk what to do i just want more cute animals and plants and pretty things
also i use my laptop which can’t cope w too much lol
YESSS ANIMALS AND PLANTS AND PRETTY THINGS IS LIKE MY MAIN PURPOSE W MODS ok heres a list w links and brief descriptions so u kinda know whats going on <3 ill kind of categorise them too...
some laptops seem way better than others at handling mods but i would say just pick and choose ur absolute favorites and if thats too much for it then take one out until its more manageable! my laptop handled mods very well but i dont think i had THIS many on it hadflkjghdfkjlghndklfjhg
under a readmore bc idk how long this will get LOL
animals:
ice and fire adds dragons and TONS of like fantasy animals and some scary mobs too!!! u can tame most of the animals and theyre all very unique and SUPER cool! u can ride some of them, theyll fight for u, etc... its very configurable like u can change spawn rates and stuff, i personally turned dragons WAY down so theyre very rare to come across, bc they kill u like instantly and also cause a ton of lag if theres a lot at once, and theyre default spawn rates are ummm too high lol. but yah this is one of the best mods i think ever probably...i love it sm its like a classic
better animal models makes vanilla animals look cuter and better and better animals plus (by the same ppl) adds a bunch of other animals that are rly cute! a lot of them are tameable and theyre very well thought out
genetic animals adds a bunch of dif breeds + colors and new breeding and feeding mechanics to farm animals, its kind of new but very well done but i really really love it! if you use it in conjuncture with better animal models, it replaces to vanilla farm animals but not the wolves and foxes and stuff, so they work very well together. also the chicken babies are like incredibly teeny tiny and adorable. and it lets you be able to ride llamas and cows with saddles and bridles... i could go on (this mod is what i use in place of animania, my favorite mod ever, but that one hasnt updated past 1.12)
alexs mobs also just adds a bunch of new animals, almost all of these are tameable and very unique, i LOVE that it adds crows lol you can also ride some of these animals once u tame them... u can also configure spawn rates for these if theres ones you dont want or want more of, etc. they update pretty often with new animals as well
realistic horse genetics is a super well done mod that makes horses come in wayyyyy more colors, it also has them come in different sizes and stuff...basically what it says in the name but its like. INCREDIBLY well done i couldnt live without it lol
exotic birds adds a ton of pretty birds! it also adds a rare phoenix you can obtain and tame, and ride, which is cool! you can keep birds in birdcages breed them and incubate eggs and all kinds of stuff
making stuff pretty:
biomes o plenty is super popular and really awesome, adds a tonnnn of new biomes with their own trees and wood types and plants and stuff! theres also some cool rare biomes (this mod also works well with all the animal mods); and some other biome mods i kinda cycle between are terraforged (also makes terrain generate better, smoother and stuff and super configurable! this works alongside mods that add biomes) and traverse is good too
macaws roofs, doors, windows, furniture, fences, etc are good for making ur houses pretty! i havent done much w this yet bc i havent built a house since i got it, but it looks really nice
diagonal fences does what it says on the can its suuper convenient and i like it a lot since i make a lot of animal pastures hehe... and it works with custom fences (so if you have macaws fences it will work for those too!)
fairy lights adds paper lanterns and string lights which look way better than torches! also lets u make flag banners and stuff
falling tree lets you chop a tree down in 1 swoop, and automatically destroys the floating leaves so u dont have floating trees and stuff everywhere...might seem cheaty but i like it lol (i also use this in place of dynamic trees, which makes trees BEAUTIFUL but, again, hasnt updated past 1.12)
i also use the unity resource pack (i like this one bc it makes colors more coordinated and muted! my ocd lollll i also like mizunos of courseee) and sildurs vibrant shaders (sildurs is pretty graphics intensive but the lite or medium versions are less so! there are also less intense shaders out there, this is just the one i use)... for shaders to work u need optifine (which also adds dynamic lighting! i.e torches will light the way when you hold them without placing them, stuff like that. its also just good to have, it optimises your game better to prevent lag)
SO YEAH LOL those are all the mods i use rn! some of these have dependents you have to download to make them work (like biomes o plenty requires open terrain generator) but they tell u that on the download pages and stuff, just look out for that <3 also most of these mods have wikis if you wanna know how to tame an animal or crafting recipes and stuff like that, i pretty much keep the wikis open whenever im playing lol. idk how much u know abt the like process of installing mods n stuff but if u need help hmu and ill try to help!
(sorry this is SO long btw but i wanted to be thorough and also have this in my minecraft tag in case anyone else is curious lol)
#OK into the tag...#deer plays minecraft#HOPE THIS HELPS#im very picky abt what mods i use tbh but theres a ton more that seem rly good but just dont rly vibe w me#pams harvestcraft is very highly regarded...adds a bunch of food recipes and gardening type stuff#Anonymous
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YAY :D! OK, I wanted to please ask what your thoughts were on Dick and Shawn's relationship. Did you feel it was in character? Did you feel it made sense? Did you want them to last or did you feel it came out of left field and didn't make any sense? How did you feel about the pregnancy scare and how they broke up ("I know what I said/did was shitty but we can fix this. We can make this work!") - does it sound like Dick? I'm also happy ur still here. I'm so used to asking you & Shelly so thank u!
I'll be honest with you, anon--DC burnt me hard with the Spyral travesty and then putting Tom King on Batman and keeping Seeley on Nightwing, so I don't keep up with current DC comics. I don’t enjoy them and nearly without exception I don’t find them to be written well or in character. However, you're very sweet and I want to help fill the meta void in your life, so I read through Dick and Shawn's arc together and here's my analysis.
I’m dividing this into two parts. The first half will be as objective as possible and analyze your questions on whether Dick seems in character, what he says during the break up, etc. It’s roughly chronological, starting when we first meet Shawn and continuing through to the break up itself.
The second half I’ll put under a readmore, as it’ll answer your questions about my more subjective opinions about the arc.
Let’s start by looking at Dick’s previous and most happy relationships to see what good indicators for an in-character relationship would be.
Getting physically involved with someone -before- having a secure emotional connection with them is not in character for him. All of Dick's major relationships have been preceded by extended periods of mutual flirtation and bonding before physical overtures. His most significant and longest lasting romantic connections began by building emotional and romantic attachment before sexual intimacy, frequently paired with a shared history together that precedes even the flirtation.
There’s significant canon evidence that he’s demi sexual: a comprehensive, though hardly exhaustive, collection of it can be found here and here (the latter half of the second link relates to the Grayson series specifically, but overall it offers a nice long view on his relationship history since character creation and also addresses beyond-canon factors at DC that impacted some relevant canon writings.) Whether you use the label demi for him or not, it’s canon that he’s not comfortable jumping into bed without a secure emotional connection.
So let’s look at Shawn’s relationship with Dick through the lens of relationships in which he was the happiest and most comfortable. Those relationships have these things in common:
He has a stable, safe emotional connection to the individual.
He is willing and comfortable engaging in banter and flirtation.
Relationship is based on mutual respect and affection, often paired with shared history together.
Now, let’s look at Shawn’s relationship.
Their ‘history’ together (as Defacer and Robin) is antagonistic, and their interaction in the past leave Dick feeling uneasy. Sure, he seems to think about her situation, but as this panel reads, the kindest that can be said of any emotional connection there seems to be here is one-sided pity.
Nightwing #10 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)
Once they meet again, she’s his boss. Even or perhaps especially in the world of #MeToo, it’s important to address workplace relationships, particularly boss/employee scenarios, with care and sensitivity. Seeley sidesteps this by just…having her later quit the non-profit she founded and giving Dick her position for a while. However, even if she’d just worked in HR at an equal level with him when they met instead of being his boss, let’s look at the amount of participation he shows in their first meeting:
Nightwing #10 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)
There is a lot of her talking and almost none of him. He’s not engaged in their interaction here. Where he tries later as Nightwing to engage more personally, he’s immediately shut down. The most dialogue we hear from him is in his own head—in their first meeting, the ratio of her dialogue to his is literally 22 sentences to 9. Of those 9 sentences, one is a lie he gives to avoid establishing an emotional connection with her, another she interrupts, and three of which were less than five words long: “Sorry.” “You can call me Dick” and “Thanks, Ms Chang”. Even taking the workplace environment into account as best we can, this is not meeting any of the three criteria for Dick to be feeling emotionally attachment or attraction. No one would look at those 9 almost-sentences and that flashback and say, “Ah yes, this man is deeply infatuated with her.”
This is made even more jarring by the fact that the internal narration frequently doesn’t match the actual scenes we’ve witnessed.
Nightwing #11 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)
Nothing about the few sentences Dick has managed to finish around Shawn when this narration comes up has said ‘attraction’, physical or otherwise, but the dialogue here reads like Dick was laying the flirtations on thick every time he saw her. Same with when they talk about the flashback scene later. There’s a lot of cognitive disconnect between what Seeley wants to tell us happened and what we actually see and hear and have evidence of between the characters.
If you’re wondering why I’m examining these initial interactions with particular depth, it is because frankly, these are the most interactions the two have together for roughly the first five issues of their ‘getting to know each other’ phase...and when they reunite at the end of those issues, we are supposed to believe they are already heavily, life-changingly in love. So, for all intents and purposes, this scattered handful of conversations is all we have to analyze to examine whether this fits the qualifications for whether Dick would feel comfortable and emotionally attached enough to approach a physical relationship.
We have three chances in their various guises for Dick and Shawn to meet and start developing that all-important rapport. This is our first initiation to their relationship and it certainly doesn’t read as a positive one. The next one, she yells at him and kicks him out—again, a whole page of her dialogue to a fragmented sentence of his. The third one, the flashback panel posted above, they don’t even speak to each other. Two of them are actively red-flags of being unable to establish a closer connection with that person; the third is a neutral connection. This is not the kind of two-way interaction we see where he’s comfortable and interested in someone, and this is not an emotionally secure connection.
Shawn disappears for three issues or so, during which they have, obviously, no interactions.
The very next after that, by the end of it, she lunges into him to kiss him.
The next issue after that, they’re evidently in honeymoon heaven and already shacking up.
Trust me, we’ll be going over that under the readmore later.
Back in the area of the objective, if you ever need to know the number of days Tim Seeley thinks is needed for two people with self-admitted enormous trust issues to form the ideal Hollywood manic pixie dream girl relationship, we were given a careful timeline.
68 days—first date
Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)
62 days—first intercourse.
Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)
Six days. Not even a week.
They’ve met each other, then met each other’s parents and are living together and are one baby scare away from the suburbs in less time than it takes for someone to finish a semester at college. It took literally longer for the issues of Nightwing where Shawn was an absent character in her own arc to get published in our real lives than it did for their on-panel romance to go from not even knowing each other to Nightwing (not Dick, but Nightwing) kissing Shawn (not Defacer, but Shawn) upside down in the middle of the city.
Trust issues, amirite?
Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)
Meanwhile during that mostly off-panel ‘dating’ period we have these wildly out of character moments. In particular, there are two noteworthy things.
Shawn says she never would have pinned Dick for being a traditionalist.
That directly contradicts…well…most of the statements people close to him have made of his dating views, and also his own self-stated views of them, whose top tracks include things like “…this might sound unhip, but I feel strange about living with someone I’m not married to”, “I gotta be honest, Roy—I couldn’t make love to someone I didn’t really love”, and “Love should be between two people”.
We have a direct parallel of an in-character Dick moment walking someone home after an early date to use for comparison.
Nightwing #31
Things Dick does in this panel: reassures his date there is no pressure for sex and the night will not be ending that way, plan out just about the most traditional date experience, and engage in light-hearted mutual bantering.
Additional relevant context around this panel: Dick and Clancy have known each other for months and have a friendly, mutually respectful connection. Dick’s turned down a sizable number of invitations from her because despite living in the same building, the vigilante life made it difficult for him to make and keep plans. This is their second date because Dick had to bail in the middle of their first. It took months both in comics-time and in real-time of developing a mutual interest to lead up to that first real date. And by then, the reader is invested in the status of that relationship, too.
To contrast the then vs now, we also have in that same moment with Shawn Dick, of all people, ignores a phone call without a second thought in favor of trying for a booty call. On the first date. Let’s take a look at Dick and Clancy’s first date, 9 issues earlier than the one we just saw.
Nightwing #22
Dick is a chronic workaholic, with all the associated inability to disconnect from his work while in relationships even during date night or intimate moments. It’s perfectly reasonable, considering that with his lifestyle choice, that phone call could be life or death for someone he loves, a stranger, or many, many someones, and it’s put significant strain on his past relationships when dating those not actively in the superhero lifestyle. Clancy is, again, a great example of this--despite genuine interest on both sides, he blew her off at least half a dozen times because of vigilante emergencies before they even got to their first date. And then despite their great rapport and a genuine interest in being there, he still ditched her in the middle of it when his phone rang.
What we see in Seeley’s Nightwing #15 not only runs directly contrary to significant chunks of his history and personality, it also tells a deeply upsetting story of a world where exists a horndog Dick Grayson who would risk other people’s lives to get laid with a chick he’s known less than a week.
They handle vigilante interruptions more in character in later issues once the relationship is established, but...yikes.
Not in character.
We’re going to take a little jump here to move from discussing whether their relationship is in character for Dick to whether their breakup was in character.
In general, it actually is pretty in character for Dick to panic himself into commitment in a romantic relationship even if he’s not really sure about it. Dick is very interesting that way: he runs away from platonic relationships under tension, either by throwing himself into casework or by literally setting up in a new location. If his romantic relationship is undergoing trauma, however, he's very capable of reacting the opposite, like in this example with Kory.
Team Titans #2
There’s even an awkward Devin Grayson incident where he thinks a woman is serial-murdering her husbands, fake-marries her to solve the case, uncovers the real killer who wasn’t her, and feels bad enough afterward that he offers to date her for real. (An interesting side-note: this makes Devin Grayson responsible for not one but two of Dick’s emotionally compromised almost-marriages. This one, at least, came before she jumped the shark with the dreaded Catalina Flores arc.)
Nightwing Annual #1
So let’s take a look at where Shawn’s exact circumstance falls in against those.
To me, the lines that sound the most like Dick are actually the lines he says that cause their break-up.
Nightwing #23 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)
Dick has a lot of darkness and anger in him. He’s a lot like Bruce and he’s a lot scared of how much he’s like Bruce. We’ve seen several timelines where Dick’s had biological children and we’ve also seen how he tempered Damian’s darkness when Bruce was lost in the timestream. Though this arc and timeline does not show it well (and that’s a whole different meta), we have the advantage of having known how Dick behaves as a father in a way this particular Dick has never had to experience. And we know that when kids are in the picture he does work hard at repressing or concealing his anger and darkness to be a good role model, often in a way he isn’t sure he has the capacity to do when there are no children involved. Despite some of the specific phrasings being iffy, the general sentiments here do feel like legitimate concerns Dick would have.
With this knowledge, that moment felt significantly more honest to Dick Grayson’s character than most of the rest of their relationship.
Nightwing #25 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)
The actual break-up dialogue itself is…well, it’s not out of character, exactly, because as shown, Dick has been known to clutch onto potential romances hardest when he feels they’re about to slip away. But the delivery of it isn’t in character. Yes, in general, Dick has a temper and he lashes out. However, he’s clearly aggressive and angry in this panel, where previous experience has showed us he should be at his most emotionally vulnerable and pleading. Dick, who is a generally emotionally closed-off person despite his extroverted demeanor, reacts to these kind of romance scares by showing emotional vulnerability in ways he frequently is unable to do during the relationship itself. And the panel that he’s apologizing for as being a crappy thing to have said, is…as mentioned, the panel that comes closest to a consistent Dick Grayson.
And the thing they’re fighting about is that Dick missed a job interview because he was doing Nightwing things. Shawn fell in love with Dick knowing he was Nightwing (somehow), he’s been Nightwing the whole time they dated, constant interruptions and all, but she breaks up with him because somehow 'the thing I always loved most…you.’ apparently wasn’t one that included the Nightwing schedule. She also seems to be both blaming him for wanting the baby and also accusing him of not wanting it. At the risk of getting off-topic and subjective, I’ll be honest and say Shawn’s dialogue here makes no sense to me at all.
Dick’s tried not being Nightwing, in both pre-52 and new-52. Dick spends a fair amount of pre-52 time either bouncing from job to job or lacking a day job entirely. In both pre-52 and new-52, the Dick she’s claiming is the one she’s always loved the most…doesn’t exist anywhere I can think of. Certainly not anywhere during their on-panel relationship.
Now that we’ve looked at what we see of Dick and Shawn on-panel, it’s time to talk about the impact this has off-panel.
I happen to have been re-reading a lot of Chuck Dixon’s original Nightwing’s run lately. And here’s the thing. Clancy’s been showing up consistently in that run as someone Dick could be attracted to for for oh, about...two full graphic novels now (that’s 17 single-issues) and they haven’t so much as gone on a date, let alone shared a smooch. It takes 20 issues before they make it to the first date we saw from Nightwing #22. I don’t remember if she’s in every single issue of that period, so I’m going to round down by probably a lot and say that’s a minimum of a year when this was getting published for us as readers to get to know her and how she interacts with Dick, to get interested and invested in a potential relationship. In comics-time, it’s weeks before Dick actually sees her face, not just hears her voice. Even if you’re reading post-publication like me, that’s hours and hours where we watch she and Dick bond and banter and develop a mutual interest.
That’s build up. That’s emotional investment developed over time.
I’m not saying every single relationship has to take more than a year’s worth of issues on-panel to develop. However, she does summarize one of the single biggest struggles for DC’s cadre of writers over the last few years. Basically, the problem I have with this beyond just the characterizations is the same that made me stop reading from New 52 onward: DC constantly trying to skip out on the process of creating meaningful emotional build-up or connections but still expecting to cash in on an emotional payoff.
You can’t go from ‘kissed once’ to ‘been together for years like an old married couple couple vibes’ off-pages like Nightwing #15 tries to do. Even if you expect the readers to believe the protagonist now feels that connection (which, frankly, I don’t), we don’t have that connection to the relationship. It’s a cheap paper cutout with no actual emotional content behind it--why should we care if it tears under pressure? We have no stake in it; we don’t know why the protagonist has a stake in it. It’s meaningless.
As a reader, my experience with Shawn and Dick’s relationship is as follows: a) they meet in a scenario where she is his boss (strong do not date vibes) b) they meet as vigilante and paroled ex-villain and she doesn’t even let him finish a sentence (would not date) c) they show a flashback where they don’t even speak to each other (Robin pities her; no ‘date/no date’ vibe data gathered), d) they share a confusingly out of nowhere ‘emotional’ moment that didn’t match up with my prior understanding of either what I extrapolated from the flashback or what I saw in their on-panel interactions (vibe check, please??) then she disappears for several issues into police custody (no ‘date/no date’ vibe data gathered) The very next time she sees him, she betrays him (STRONG do not/would not date). Then all of a sudden at the end of that issue she kisses him.
My context for their relationship is based on two ‘emotional’ conversations of dubious quality and consistency, one ‘look’ where their dialogue contradicts my own understanding of the on-panel events, a shouting match or two, and a very major betrayal that just happened to work out alright for everybody but is never actually addressed. Most of her introductory arc where we’d be piecing out how she fits in with Dick and how they interact together, she isn’t even there for. They’ve known each other for less than a week. I the reader have known them for, in my case, maybe an hour of read-time.
And the very next time I see them, I’m supposed to believe, and more importantly, feel emotionally attached to the fact that They Are The Most In Love Couple To Ever Be In Love.
Trying to put a timeline on intimacy as a gimmick instead of establishing genuine emotional connection never works. Yes, maybe we knew that one person in high school or know someone in college who falls hard and often and met and married someone within two months, but Dick Grayson has never been that person. Maybe this style of flashback manic pixie romance would be more believable if they’d tried it on a different character with a different history and personality, but it especially never works on a character like Dick Grayson with a strong history of being slow to decide his feelings and even slower to jump into bed.
In order to work, the entire arc that follows with the kidnapping by Pyg is predicated on the fact that I, the reader, am supposed to already care about Shawn’s relationship with Dick, and that I, the reader, believe in the validity of Shawn’s relationship with Dick and in Dick’s commitment to it. But I haven’t been given time or reason to do either of those things by the time that arc starts.
You cannot shortcut relationships and expect them to be meaningful to the reader.
So they threw in a baby. Because even if you don’t care about a relationship, everyone cares about babies.
Throwing in a baby to up the emotional stakes is just a further step up that same problematic cheap-shortcuts ladder I was talking about: like in a stereotyped failing marriage, if you feel like you have to add a kid just to put meaning into your relationship again, maybe what you actually need to do is take time and consider what that relationship is built on.
#dick grayson#dc#nightwing#meta#tim seeley#panels#o.c.#relationships#asks#anonymous#analysis#shawn tsang#character analysis#relationship analysis#long post#love and relationships#I realized toward the end I hadn't addressed the pregnancy itself very much but I covered the jyst of my thoughts on it in the readmore#Dick's reaction to it felt like it was separate from his relationship to Shawn so I stuck to what it seemed like you were more interested in
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sup ok here’s the promised details on uhhhhhh All for One in @guardianlioness‘s and I’s Ageswap Mess, formed by collaborative headcanon jamming on discord and then roughly paraphrased via a run thru the unfortunate Quadruple Lengthening Filter that’s built into my brain bc I’m incapable of being brief.
(something of an expansion on this post and this ask. Nooooot spoiler free, actually pretty spoilers, idk, will pop it under a readmore bc who knows how long I’m gonna go on also)
ALSO!! I can’t at u but @randommly-passing-mia u asked forever ago about Toshinori and AfO’s relationship in this AU and i answered what I could then but I’m pleased to announce this goes more into that bc I knew Very Little back then. :)
So, All for One! Now, I feel it appropriate to note that the previous post I made regarding the history of OfA in Ageswap, as well as just about everything I’ve posted abt AfO and OfA for Ageswap (except for the linked ask above, obv) was made before the arc with the League of Villains and Shigaraki’s backstory all came out. Now that we’ve got some of those contexts, we can go a little further in fleshing everything else out, which we did, a little, today.
Pls keep in mind that Ageswap’s goal is not and never has been to make a direct 1:1 translation of adults to kids and vice versa -- good lord we’d have a lot of empty spaces if we were doing that. So, uh. Anyway. it’s time for “we make a mess of the characters and also the timeline and the plot because it’s Our City Now”
Student AfO is a different creature to small Toshinori of our au. For the purposes of this post we’ll call him AfO, because while I’d love to just jump into referring to him as Shigaraki there’s a lot of confusions that lie down that road. Also, again, we’re calling mr heckhands mcmike Tomura, because Shigaraki is a name with Weight.
Because canon parallels, Ageswap AfO has a little brother who we’re making Kyudai Garaki/the Good Doctor and also quirkless for our purposes (whether he’s AfO’s biological brother is up in the air, we haven’t settled yet). Garaki has something of an intense obsession with quirks, constantly studying and doing research, not unlike Izuku, and the age gap between him and AfO is... about six years. Now, because AfO had already manifested a quirk of his own and that quirk had fearsome potential, One for All was originally going to be passed on to his brother, because before Ageswap Izuku, OfA had strictly been handed down to trained members of the family.
Tomura was a member of the group that had, through the generations, been working to fight against the users of One for All. To hit them where it hurt, he attacked Izuku’s mentor’s (we’ll call them the Mentor) home with a group of League fighters. When he found out there was a quirkless boy, and a second one who was all but quirkless for all that he’d been told to avoid using his own powers, he quickly took them in under the League’s wing -- both in an act of cruelty against OfA and out of some misguided sympathy for the boys.
The fearsome thing is the toxicity of the relationships Tomura formed with the League, and eventually with the boys. He meant well, when he took them in, but whatever this version of him went through... well, just about all his relationships are some level of manipulative and unhealthy by default. See: his tendency for physical closeness and being tactile, as mentioned in the ask.
He’s firmly of an opinion along the lines of “if you’ve got the power, and you know you have the power, and you’re not using it to do whatever you can or want, then why do you even have it?” and, for all of AfO’s childhood, Tomura tried his hardest to share this with AfO and sway the kid to his side. With the Mentor having dropped off the grid and abandoned the Shigaraki name in grief, AfO and his brother had nowhere else to go, but AfO was a smart and cautious kid: he couldn’t just listen without a fight, or a reason.
(AfO didn’t know Tomura meant to kill them, that he attacked their home on purpose. When he eventually finds out, he firmly believes Tomura meant to save them)
But Tomura’s persistent, and he doesn’t stop, and eventually he points out: if All for One is a quirk that allows him to take and give quirks, does that not mean he can seek out the perfect quirk for his little brother? All the reasons he’s suffered, AfO has the power to fix that.
That’s the thing that sways AfO to their side, that convinces him to stay with the League and learn under Tomura. Because if it’s for family, isn’t it worth it?
(AfO sees Tomura as a teacher, as a friend, as someone beloved and important. Shigaraki was AfO’s name, but it can be Tomura’s too, if Tomura wants. Then everyone knows they’re family. And Tomura accepts it -- another spit in the face of an enemy, a welcomed token from a beloved student. Shigaraki is a good name for the rest of the world to use, but Tomura, Tomura is a name for the League and the League alone.)
AfO tries, at first, to find other quirks for his brother while he trains, while his brother studies (while Tomura tries to sway Garaki to their side also, because look at what you know, what you could do with that knowledge, combined with your brother’s quirk, you’re so young and so so smart-). OfA is gone beyond the League’s sight, in the hands of the Symbol of Peace, so there’s no point on dwelling on it, really, surely another quirk would work better?
But then One for All comes back around, in the hands of this blond... nobody. His brother’s quirk, running around in a stranger. AfO continues to hunt potential quirks down for his brother and his brother’s studies, but he has a new goal: to try and claim OfA back and give it to who it really belongs to.
the problem of course being that he can’t take it by force like every other quirk, and killing Toshinori would merely render it lost forever.
Essentially, AfO’s primary grudge against Toshinori is the fact that he’s the current bearer of a quirk that, in AfO’s eyes, should belong to Garaki. And Toshinori’s quirklessness, or past quirklessness... is easy to know when you know the secret of One for All.
Some good stuff gets said abt AfO vs Toshinori in this answer here I think, and I’m drawing on it: Toshinori’s more instinct and heart to AfO’s logic and strategy. That’s not to say, obv, that neither of them draw on the other quality, but it’s what stands out most to me about the two of them and just, kind of their general dynamic (or at least, that’s how it seems).
USJ was a subtle message laid beneath a louder declaration. Two-for-one, if you will. “Wouldn't it be so nice to have a quirk that fit better in your hands? that didn't fritz or go funky whenever you so much as turned your head? A quirk you might not even have to coax and strain and train and change your body for?”
But AfO does not confront Toshinori until much later, until after the sports festival. See, the mall incident in this AU is a scene on bargaining.
He confronts Toshinori at the mall -- his face is not known, and it’s a simple matter to pull him off to the side. But there won’t be fighting here today. No, he only came to talk.
Questions, first. About Toshinori, his experience with One for All, what he thinks of other people’s quirks. About what it was like for him, growing up quirkless, left abandoned by so many people for it. Eventually, his conversation circles back around. I have a little brother. He’s quirkless, just like you. You know what he went through, what he suffered.
All for One even did his research, is even willing to play by rules closer to Toshinori’s own: tucked under his arm is a folder, with lists upon lists of people. Villains with sentences for life, villains under the death sentence, people who would have no life of returning to the world ever again. People who don’t have a reason to use their quirks any longer. People for whom it wouldn’t matter if he took their quirks anyway. “Take your pick,” he offers Toshinori. “I’ll give you whatever quirk you’ve ever wanted. I’ll even take it from a villain so none of your precious civilians have to suffer the loss — but that one belongs to my little brother.”
And, well. We all know he says no.
Why would Toshinori hang onto a quirk that isn’t even his? All the people out there, bearing the quirks that his brother and even his greatest enemy were robbed of at birth, and AfO has the power to grant both Toshinori and Garaki the power that they’d dreamed of, that belongs to them. He knows what it means to suffer without a quirk. Why won’t Toshinori let him fix that?
and idk specifically what Toshi would say, but I think it’s something along the lines of “no one asks for what they're born with or given, but we make the most of it anyway. That's how we're supposed to live.“
Anyway Toshinori and All for One hate each other SO fucking much but. Unfortunately, also just kind of Get Each Other on some level. Like, they despise one another but also, if there’s one thing they can believe in, it’s that the other will always Be The Way They Are. Friendly Enemyship, if you will.
There’s some level of pity that AfO also holds on the percieved coldness of Toshinori’s relationship to his mentor, Izuku. Izuku is... really awkward, in his relationship with Toshi, and while Izuku loves his student very much he has a hard time showing it -- and Toshinori thinks so poorly of himself, it’s hard to grasp how close they are from the outside sometimes. AfO totally tries to recruit Toshinori to their side, even after he figures they’re Tight and also even though he knows Toshinori won’t ever say yes. Like, he hates the guy, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a kickass ally.
Tomura would like Toshinori and AfO says as much to his face. “You’re more like him than I am, anyway. You can act without overthinking. And he wouldn’t care if you were quirkless. He doesn’t with my brother.”
(Toshinori hates that. He isn’t, he isn’t he isn’t like him at all.)
Tomura has also more or less promised AfO that, at the end of his lifespan, his student should take on Decay. AfO, of course, doesn’t want that and is on the hunt for a good longevity quirk to give to his mentor
In the end, the way All for One is kind of being played in this AU is something not so far off from Anakin Skywalker.
In Lioness’ words:
Noble in his desire to keep his family alive
But horribly misdirected
#Boku no hero academia#BNHA#My hero academia#mha#Ageswap AU#Blacknovelist talks#BNHA AU#BNHA Spoilers#long post#fukc this is long#All for One#AfO#Shigaraki#also technically#Toshinori#yeehaw yall
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