#can any lore nerds here help me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

elbiotipo · 4 months

Text

Notes on a South Asian Tropical Cyrodiil (and more!)

So, many TES fans know that before Oblivion, Cyrodiil was supposed to be tropical. The most striking phrase to describe it, "most is endelss jungle", says it all. The quick and snarky explanation is that Todd Howard watched LOTR, was "inspired" by it, and that's why everything in Oblivion looks sort of like a Rennaisance Fair. In any case, I think it was a huge missed opportunity, especially in a world where most popular fantasy is European inspired, to have replaced what could have been very cool tropical enviroments with what is frankly a lame "Talos used his magic" lore retcon. You can read the 1st edition of the Pocket Guide to the Empire to see what we missed.

But it's not only Cyrodiil which we missed this way… Tamriel just makes more sense as a tropical continent. While the size and the exact location of the continent is discussed by nerdier nerds than me, I think it does make sense like this, and not only that, we have a very interesting world parallel to compare it to: India. From a tropical rainy south to the cold mountains of Skyrim, Tamriel is surprisingly similar to the Indian subcontinent, and many of its geographical quirks can be explained if, instead of assuming a temperate Cyrodiil, we go all out with that concept. This is going to be a long post, you have been warned.

So with that in mind, I'll try to make a not-so brief tour (with some evocative pictures along the way) of a rebuilt tropical Tamriel, following the rains of the moonson:

The position of Tamriel, in this case, would be roughly where the Indian subcontinent is located in real life, that is again, tropical, stretching the Tropic of Cancer (is there a name for the tropics of Nirn? Interesting to think about) Here, we see our numbers pan out well: Tamriel is mentioned to be between 4000 and 3000km across east to west and 2000 and 3000km south to north. VERY, VERY roughly, there is 4000km between Pakistan and Myanmar, and 3000km from Sri Lanka to the northern tip of Tibet. Plot that on a map, and you already can see some coincidences. Now, this is a rather average continent, not Pangea sized like some imagine Tamriel to be. This does help explain why, for example, the interior of Cyrodiil is rainy and good for agriculture instead of a desert. But it also means that it's very likely that Tamriel is ruled by monsoons. Monsoons are complex, but they basically form when there are plenty of warm places for water to evaporate (the South Indian ocean), and mountains that block cool winds from the opposite direction (the Himalayas). We have a very similar situation here, with a mountainous Skyrim on the north of a tropical Cyrodiil facing an equatorial southern ocean. So, what happens are monsoons, perhaps not as strong as IRL India, but carrying rains very deep into the continent. This would feed the rivers and the rich agricultural areas of Cyrodiil, and would have some other consequences.

So let's imagine our trip South to North. In the South, in Black Marsh, Blackwood and Lleyawiin, and Pellentine (southern Elsweyr) we would find, much like in the original lore, humid tropical climates, jungle, wetlands, and my favorite, mangrooves. I would expect mangrooves to stretch in this whole area, across rivers. In fact, one of the reasons why Black Marsh could be so hard to explore and control by the Empires at Cyrodiil would be the presence of thick mangrooves all over its coast. This is the region of Cyrodiil that would most resemble "endless jungle".

(Rice fields in India, what I imagine most of this Tropical Cyrodiil would look like)

However, as any lore person knows, Anequina, northern Elsweyr, is arid desert. Does this mean a contradiction? Far from it, we have a similar example in IRL India: the Deccan Plateau, which has a semi-arid to arid climate. This can be easily explained by higher elevations up to a small mountain chain separating it from Cyrodiil to the north, and the fact that little rain would reach behind this "Anequina Plateau" would make the region of Kvatch and Anvil more dry much like in canon, in this case, more scrublike. This highland desert would not be as harsh as Elsweyr is usually concieved, maybe, but its driest regions might justify places such as Dune. (On that matter, it always bothered me to read about the "cities" of southern Elsweyr and there being only two or three there. If I had to redesign it, I would move some from the north to the south).

(the Deccan Plateau in India, it gets greener or drier according to the monsoon)

Keeping on our tour of Tamriel, the Topal Bay and the very rainy Black Marsh funnels the rainy monsoon from the south towards central Cyrodiil. Here we find the endless jungle of the Nibenay Valley. But unlike the rainforests of Elsweyr and Black Marsh, these dense forests and rich river plains are mediated by the monsoon winds, with dry seasons alternating with copious rain. This has huge effects on agriculture and culture in general, as agriculture is defined by the rythms of the rain. Keeping with our South Asian theme and the 1st edition of the Guide to the Empire, Cyrodiil would have huge extensions of rice paddies, as well as terrace farming and much hardier crops in the highlands, instead of the… well, almost absent agriculture we saw in Oblivion. The food, clothing, architecture and overall culture of Cyrodiil would be very different with this. The original Pocket Guide said some of its main exports besides rice and fruit are moon sugar and silk. Moon sugar in Cyrodiil, can you believe it?

Another thing I imagine Cyrodiil would be famous for would be fish and seafood, well, river food. Rice plantations can host fishes and crustaceans to get some extra protein, and well, what about mudcrabs? Hell, as preparing muddy soil is vital for rice cultivation, no wonder mudcrabs are considered a nuisance. Imagining critters in gameplay in such an enviroment also makes my mind roam. Tigers, elephants, rhinoceros, and this is not even getting into the more mythical creatures you could find, instead of endless wolves… Rice cultivation is also more labor intensive than other crops, and it also has a deep impact on the terrain, "terraforming" so to say, huge expanses into paddies and terrace farms. This level of cultivation also requires an established infraestructure of irrigation. While this does not necessarily means a centralized goverment, as farmers can build it and maintain it by themselves, the rise of an empire, i.e., the Empire, will also increase the complexity of these systems, adding canals, dams, reservoirs and more ambitious projects, like we see in India and China. I am sure some people more knowledgeable about those cultures can comment more.

While this Cyrodiil is a tropical/subtropical region covered in "endless jungle", some parts might indeed resemble the rolling hills and grasslands you see in Oblivion. Deforesting jungle for pasture is something very common around the world (some have joked this mass deforestation was later in canon explained as a gift from Talos lol) and you can see the results, like in tropical Australia and my closer Mata Atlantica, do superficially resemble temperate pastures in say, Europe. Until you notice the palm trees, of course. But yes, I can see the Nords being a mostly herding people (more on that below) bringing their sheep and cows to the tropical lowlands and, well, deforesting to make space for them.

(ranches in Sao Paulo state, Brazil, notice the palm trees)

Imperial City just so happens to be built in an island in the middle of several river crossings, in what seems to be a swampland. The first thing that came to mind when I read that was Tenochtitlán. The districts of Imperial City would have been built over the centuries on artificial islands on a shallow lake, using plentiful mud and organic matter to make fertile chinampas. I believe this would make for a striking sight. Instead of just a city in the middle of a empty island, you would see the White-Gold tower and the rest of Imperial City rising from Lake Rumare, surrounded by rich farmland and its districts joined by walkways. (much like the old descriptions, actually, could you believe I wrote that without reading them?)

(Reconstruction of Tenochtitlán... and I just noticed, it's surrounded by (volcanic) mountains too, much like Imperial City)

Much like the Pantanal is one of the sources to the Paraguay River (which merges with the Paraná and then the Río de la Plata) IRL, here, the swamps of central Cyrodiil would be the source of the Niben. This does raise an interesting question, where is the source of the Niben? Is it Lake Rumare? No, I believe it would be several smaller rivers all the way from Bruma and even Skyrim. These small, violent mountain rivers eventually flow into the Rumare wetlands and only THEN in the placid great Niben. You DON'T want to be caught in one of the mountain valleys in rainy season. This does raise the question; won't the developments upriver, like Imperial City itself and the surrounding farmland, affect the course of the river downwards? There's plenty of water from the rain, but a more developed Cyrodiil might indeed have to grapple with this, supposing, for example, they manage to dam the river.

Looking west, we got the Colovian region, said to be composed of drier highlands and cliffs in the early Pocket Guide. Probably cut from the rain because of the Anequina Plateau, this is indeed more arid or "mediterranean", though I actually see it as more Australian. Maybe some of the drier parts near Hammerfell, resembling Argentine Cuyo and the northwest, would be a distant cry from the wetlands, having thorny dry forests and dry valleys, where yes, you could plant wine. The wetter cloud forests (much like the Yungas in South America, the place where the rain reaches last) could maybe be the home of the last pre-Imperial cultures of Cyrodiil. Fascinating places.

(Jujuy, Argentina. Just *near* are the Yungas cloud forests, where the last rains from the Atlantic meet the Andes, making for some AMAZING places)

Given that I mentioned enviroments near to/on the Andes IRL, let's talk about potatoes. Potatoes are unique crops, because they are the only ones who offer such calories and also be planted in cold enviroments like Europe. Or Skyrim. The discovery and spread of potatoes would cause demographic shifts on people living in cold areas. And they also originated in a unique enivorment IRL: the Andes, actually with possible hybridization from the Magallenic foresWHAT I MEAN, is that potatoes are very important and have been domesticated in very specific conditions. The Wroghtgarian Mountains would seem like a perfect equivalent of the Andes at the first glance, but they would be very different. The Andes, located between the Pacific Ocean and the greater Amazonian region, are very, very unique enviroments. These mountains, however, are in between inner seas. Something like the Atlas or the Alps? In any case, if there is some people who would appreciate hardy tubers that can grow in mountainous places, they are for sure the Orcs, or perhaps the Reachmen. Maybe an hybridization even between them?

This returns me back to Bruma and Skyrim. Some people (who make those excellent Oblivion mods) imagine Bruma with a Tibetan flavor. Personally, I imagine it more like Pakistan or Afghanistan, with lots of mesas and plateaus and valleys. It would look dry and rocky with some very fertile valleys by snowmelt, but it would look like a snowy wonderland on winter, indeed, Pakistan and Afghanistan are very snowy. Eventually, of course, ending up in the great barrier of the Jerall mountains and finally, Skyrim.

(the Alps? Skyrim? No, this is Kashmir on winter!)

In this scenario, Skyrim would be a quite dry place… or would it? There is no need for the Jeralls to be a straight line of peaks like the Himalayas. They could be a more "broken" series of mountains, like the southern Andes, but in any case, the rain from the south would clash into the higher mountains. Indeed, that is what actually happens in the Himalayas, the foothills of the Himalayas are some of the rainest places IN THE WORLD. These small valleys are something very unique and not very well known part of the world IRL. I can imagine the Skyrim equivalent would be as unique too, hard to navigate and live in. The forests of the Rift and Falkreath would be mazes of windy forests valleys, each with their own unique secrets under a perpetual fog and drizzle. This is a very interesting enviroment to imagine, where again, some of the older cultures of Tamriel could still live.

(forests of Bhutan, note how the humid valleys stretch into the distance before the cold Himalayas begin)

However, what does Skyrim look like once you cross the border with Ralof? I imagine some sort of more fertile Tibet, not as high as the Tibetan plateau, allowing for forest and alpine tundra. This is mostly because, while Skyrim is high up, I don't imagine as a plateau, but rather a series of broken mountains like the North American Rockies, which makes sense when you account for all the volcanic activity (there is another super-volcano down in Skyrim but nobody notices). I imagine that Skyrim would be a primarily herding pastoral land before the introduction of hardier crops such as potatoes, and even then. Nord culture would be very interesting reimagined like this; hillforts guarding herds of sheep and cows. It would also create a clash between the very, very agrarian south and the nomadic herding north, with High Rock and Hammerfell a gradient between the two.

I decide I will stop here, I haven't even touched Valenwood (though its subtropical forest seems rather coherent to me), High Rock (the most boring part of Tamriel IMO), Hammerfell, Summerset Islands (if you don't have tropical elves in your setting, you're a coward), or whatever the hell is going on Morrowind. But I hope you enjoyed this worldbuilding exercise and how to make sense of Tamriel's crazy geography. Next time, I'll try to play with tectonics and see if we can make it even more interesting.

But here we enter a problem; if we are operating on a level where Cyrodiil is roughly at the same latitude of India, wouldn't that make Skyrim too far from the poles to allow its tundra like climate, even with elevation? No doubt. Tibet is only as cold as it is because it's the roof of the world and far from any ocean. The northernmost tip Skyrim, like Tibet, would be at the latitude of Turkey, Korea or California, which can get quite cold, but not to the level of what we see on Winterhold or Dawnstar (Solitude sounds familiar, though). What's more, having an ocean up north would only moderate the temperature. Cool currents often don't bring cold per-se, just decrease rainfall. This would end with a very temperate and pleasant Skyrim instead of tundra. Which is on its own, interesting to explore.

Could Nirn be going through an ice age, like it's implied with the dissapearance of Atmora? Possibly, but it would imply revising everything I said before, as ice ages decrease rainfall and mess up with weather patterns all over the world. A colder Nirn would explain a lot, though.

If you liked what you read and would like more worldbuilding, consider tipping me on Ko-Fi and send me stuff to talk about, or just send an ask! I'm the kind of guy who reads encyclopedias and RPG manuals for fun, so I have plenty to talk about about everything from fantasy to science fiction to speculative evolution and alternate history!

#worldbuilding #tes #elder scrolls #skyrim #oblivion #the 'do more tropical worldbuilding you eurocentric cowards' agenda #fantasy #cosas mias

253 notes · View notes

inkelea · 6 months

Text

SKZ AS ANIMAL CROSSING PLAYERS! ✭

pairing: ot8 x gn!reader

synopsis: how do each member play animal crossing and how it made you grow close with each other.

genre: fluff. headcanons.

warnings: chan is a sweetheart<3, LINO’S PART IS CHAOTIC. in general all of this is very chaotic.

word count: 1.7k

a/n: animal crossing is so>>>> ik tmblr is full of 12 y/o but I hope you all know what new leaf is. you can see how I lost inspiration through the members😔, I’m still hoping it’s good. this has a lot of references to animal crossing as a whole (obviously) so if you’re not in touch with the game you might not understand:(

#BANG CHAN!

this man YOU ALL, THIS MAN.

he’s the good neighbor.

his animal crossing daily routine is: loading the game, eat three pieces of whichever fruit was the one that he got, and greet his villagers.

if you ask him about his no. 1 priority he’ll always answer the same: forming good and meaningful relationships with his villagers

you can argue with the possibility of that since villagers personalities start to get watered down in new leaf

BUT HE DOESN’T CARE

every day he talks with them and helps them with whatever they need

chan will go down in history as villagers no. 1 defender

“most important part of the game, without them there’s no game. that’s why new horizons is shit” HE’LL BE SAYING, EVERYDAY, WHILE THEY’RE ON TOUR

at least two hours of his day are spent on animal crossing without exception

don’t ask him how, he just does it

big on villagers lore, he’ll tell you everything there is to tell about tom nook’s evolution through the games

probably likes him too

so hear me out, maybe you were a staff member and heard the 4pm soundtrack, and AHHHH

since then you would get in petty arguments about which villagers are the best ones

you definitely visit the others town when he’s on break

you have dates where you see which one of the both of you can help more villagers under an hour

yea, you’re nerds like that:)

#LEE KNOW!

okay so these headcanons are about new leaf but…

you can’t tell me he wouldn’t play new horizons and be the trader

THIS LITTLE SHIT RIGHT HERE

he would be one of the ones who went crazy over raymond

paying ridiculous amount of bells to get him on his island

he would be on nookazon EVERYDAY

he’s a man of business

also on the stalk market

half of his island are rows of growing turnips. it gets to the point where villagers start to complain about it. he doesn’t care.

chan tells him to drop his “rebellious act” as he calls it

but he excuses himself saying it comes from way back

yes i am implying that 14 year old lino was already doing suspicious things on new leaf

TOTALLY TIME TRAVELS

and gets his turnips spoiled from doing it wrong…

BUT ANYWAY

you aren’t any better, you two meet when he’s looking to get raymond and you’re selling him

since then you get used to trade only with the other

aww, look at you, being criminal only with each other🫶🫶🫶

why can I see you holding a new horizons red lily cardboard cutout in a concert?

#SEO CHANGBIN!

and here comes the most normal person on this bullet fic

my guy here is so the escapist

!!!

he’s prone to stop playing the game for months only to come back to find his hair like a mess

(and he doesn’t have shampoodle yet)

(probably doesn’t have kicks either🤪)

by escapist i mean escaping from the real world and from playing the game

he loves the soothing feeling the game carries and gives him in stressful times, but he often feels too lazy to get in the game and do everything he wants to do

like.. fishing, catching bugs, looking for fossils… it’s too MUCH

probably doesn’t ever change outfits, entered in able sisters maximum five times

but that’s okay

it’s isn’t about the looks it’s about the friendships you make along the way💗

or that’s what you tell him

SO LISTEN

you met in high school, started dating and you introduced him to the amazing world of what animal crossing is

you try and get him to play wild world first, but it’s a nono for him

says the graphics are too ugly💀

you sigh, move on, and remember to be grateful for getting him to play new leaf

you still can’t believe he’s been playing for so long and still has kicks locked

he gives you the cold shoulder every time you mention it

you still send him texts every other week reminding him to log in

just for the sake of doing so and greeting his villagers

you’re lucky he loves you, if not, you’d be blocked already😘

#HWANG HYUNJIN!

we all know he’s a pretty good artist

and in animal crossing, he’s the artist too

OBSESSED WITH FURNITURE

type of person who spent the 7,595,800 bells to expand his house to the fullest

for what? to decorate it with everything his heart desires

yep, each room has a different aesthetic

OBSSESED WITH THE FROGGY CHAIR

went nuts when he saw its absence in new horizons

new horizons no. 2 hater

(first one is chan)

has beef with people who don’t care about their house appearance

THIS MAN SPENT YEARS MAKING HIS PERFECT HOUSE

just for a delusional person to tell him it isn’t that important

yes, you’re that person

your first conversation about the game is him rambling about his love for decorating and you telling him how you never really cared about how your house looked

OH BOY

he almost throws hands

he’s just VERY PASSIONATE, he loves what he loves yk

he steals your nintendo one day and decorates it as much as he can

you give him a big old smooch when you see it<3

#HAN JISUNG!

hannie💗💗💗

THIS ONE RIGHT HERE: the collector

he wants ALL

he spends his days catching bugs on the town, going after crickets that jump away from him

every day, without missing, he wastes 1,000 bells on going to tortimer island to try and get a whale shark so he can give it to blathers

no but seriously he does spend more time on tortimer island than in his own town

LOVES THE MINIGAMES!!

forces lino to play with him

(he sucks at the scavenger hunt tour)

he would enter the same house a million times to try and find the stupid object he has left

ANYWAY

when he found the t-rex skull..

he looked like he had just won the lottery

random fact but loveees gyroids

BFFS WITH BLATHERS

loves him so so much

spends hours going around the museum and reading every info plaque!!

tells the members little facts about dinosaurs everyday since then

has a blathers plushie🥰

YOU GAVE IT TO HIM!!!!

you met by a friend of a friend who does animal crossing youtube videos

ofc the blathers and brewster stans would end up together

your brewster plushie appears in the background of one of han’s vlogs and fans went crazy about it

little did they know it was a gift from him that you forgot in his house the last time you visited

#LEE FELIX!

our sunshine!!!

he’s the dreamer

and what does that mean you might ask

well, his whole animal crossing experience rests on dream addresses

luna best character!!

(as he says)

he loves going around other people’s dream towns. his favorite pastime fr

WAS ON ACNL TUMBLR IN 2015

you can still find his abandoned (but not deactivated) account in present day

doesn’t regret anything!

not even losing time entering more than five times every day in the town hall to try and find isabelle sleeping so he can have the dream suite in main street

it takes luna so long to arrive at his town😔

luna you’re making lix sad:((

but yea

big fan of dream towns

and so, you meet when he visits your dream town (you left your address written in some desk at school) and you become friends (in 2015)

DEVASTATED WHEN HE BECAME A TRAINEE

but everything was good again when he debuted and started playing again

you guys reconnected and started talking more again

AND started dating not much later:)

(long distance kinda hard)

you probably move to seoul

or maybe not, who knows…

#KIM SEUNGMIN!

the bully.

yep, you read that right

THIS MAN’S A BULLY

to who?

HIS VILLAGERS

type of player who’s least favorite villager is hopper bc he’s “scary”

like he doesn’t have his villagers traumatized himself

he wants his favorites on his town, and he’ll get them

he doesn’t care, he’ll do whatever is needed

knows every single way of getting ugly villagers out of his island

his favorite tho? probably pushing them into pitfalls

laughs out loud while they cry out in their little dialogue

knows every dialogue by heart

i swear this man has seen every single angry dialogue one by one

forgives the dog villagers from his torture🤞

HAS HIT TOM IN THE HEAD WITH A NET TOO MANY TIMES

oh you know seungmin is a wild life lover

AND YOU🫵

you’re as bad as him

you love to shit-talk about hopper (and some other villagers) together

will send each other photos of your villagers being angry

you guys would feel bad if it didn’t help you release so much stress

visits to the other’s island to meet the other’s enemies- villagers i mean

what can i say, you guys are just menaces in love

#YANG JEONGIN!

don’t let our maknae fool you

he’s no innocent angel

BABY BREAD: GONE

he’s the achiever

you know how this is about new leaf?

well, he’s an acnh player too

and you know what his goal is?

EVERYTHING

and not in the collector, han jisung, kinda way

we’re talking of EVERYTHING

he NEEDS to have those 4,059,999 bells at all times

terraforms like his life depends on it

and space to walk? he doesn’t know it, just like lino, most of his island is covered in turnips

he didn’t sleep until he got the street piano diy recipe

LIKE, HOW COULD HE?

very big fan on getting into fights with people online about new horizons awesomeness

he was raised by lino after all

HOWEVER

he did not get the trading villagers gene at all

doesn’t have time for that shit💀

more like the type of want EVERYTHING, but for himself

and for you<3

HEAR ME OUT, you meet at a gaming convention (acnl era)

before he became a trainee

AND YOU JUST CLICK

the time he saw you looking at animal crossing stickers with wide eyes and a big smile

he knew he had lost the battle

it’s tough but you are able to maintain contact

first as friends

and then as partners:D

he loves giving you stuff incredibly difficult to get in-game

and you love to send him letters thanking him for it💗

@mochamvgz

146 notes · View notes

vaspider · 1 year

Text

Intro Post, updated March 1, 2023

I post all asks under the name they were submitted under, and I post them when I feel like answering them. I will never honor a request to answer an ask privately or anonymously. Anon is never turned on. These are hard self-care boundaries. Please block the tag "harassment tag" if you don't want to be subjected to some of the horrible shit I get sent sometimes.

If you like what I do, please consider hiring me, consider buying something from NerdyKeppie (the shop I own with my spouse - we do custom work!), consider buying me a coffee or becoming a Patron or tossing some money in my PayPal tip jar. I am a disabled, queer, fat, Jewish non-binary butch whose entire income is derived from selling Quality Queerwear via our company NerdyKeppie (we also offer patches of all sorts, nerd gear, etc -- if you don’t see it, ask!), Patreon (queer fiction for a dollar) and freelance work.

If asking me to boost a post for you, ask at most once per week, and please don't make that the only way you interact with me, or follow me just to send an ask that I boost your posts. I notice, and I'll end up just blocking you if you make me feel "used." It's gross, y'all. I'm glad to help, but don't use me. It's getting to a point where I'm starting to feel pretty gross about it, and I'm one of the more relaxed ppl about boosting posts, so please don't put me in a position where I feel like I have to stop doing it.

I will not debate my identity or its history with anyone. I am a transmasculine non-binary butch lesbian, a cripple, a dyke, and lots of other things, too. You don't get a vote in that, and if any of those words are words you can't stand to have someone use around you in reference to himself, go ahead and block me. I won't censor my identity for your comfort; I took a long time becoming proud of who I am.

No, I am not an anti or an anti-anti. Literally no one cares about these distinctions outside of Tumblr. Please leave me alone. I am not going to have that conversation. No is a complete sentence.

I’m not interested in interacting with TWERFs, SWERFs, or any sort of exclusionary LGBTQ/queer people. Y'all are exhausting.

Do the work to root out TERF/2nd-wave "man bad woman good" philosophies from your head. Do the work to root out the gendered behavior you were taught. I am not here to raise other people's children.

I am not here to raise other people's children. My daughter is an adult and I am done being responsible for the experiences of a minor. If you read or interact with me, you acknowledge that you chose to do that and I can't control what happens to what I post once I post it on my Tumblr. People will reblog it and I can't control where it ends up. I can only control what I say in my space, which I do.

Curate your own online experiences. If you don't like seeing what I write, then add 'vaspider' to your "filtered content" list and don't bother me about it. Tumblr is a 17+ environment and I am not responsible for you seeing things you don't like. Adults having adult conversations do not need to be filtered for children. This is your notification.

I’ve been Out for over 30 years. I don't tolerate lectures from strangers, especially people half my age, about history I lived through.

I'm transmasc and if you believe transmisandry/transandrophobia aren't "real things," or that transmascs aren't "really oppressed," please just leave me alone. Oppression Olympics are bad, actually.

My immediate family consists of my partners, my adult daughter, and our dogs.

No one in my immediate family is cis or het. I have been called Spider for 20+ years, & now a lot of people call me Mama Spider. Mom is a role, it need not be gendered.

This is a lot shorter than it used to be. I don't really feel like posting paragraphs explaining stuff anymore.

My icon has lore, apparently.

I post all asks and anon is never turned on.

505 notes · View notes

rxttenfish · 14 days

Note

Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#monster prom #asks #vanillabeenflower #this is. so long i am so sorry.#and its still not my entire thoughts because i have so many thoughts #this is an unedited ramble tbh and im very sorry for that #i have more complaints like #how fucking snide and condescending the narration is to its own characters #which it already had but gets even worse in the later games #which is why despite loving aaravi i dont want to play moncamp at all #where a character says they like something or feel something and the narration has to be so. sarcastic about it?#like how i mentioned about how it feels like how its looking down on them as people #instead of whats probably the intended read which is #more jokingly calling them dumb in an affectionate way like how you might do with friends #and ofc theres the whole miranda rant #i hate what theyve done with the merkingdom and i HATE adrien as a concept i wont lie #just. cool. this female character is too stupid to count as a lore character. we obviously need a MALE character to fill in instead #we cant just have miranda talk about this or center any of the other female characters #and how they feel about this and whats going on for them #no we need to make up a new man to talk to instead #im. im still really bitter about it i wont lie.#like i said i could go on and get way more specific about it #i just feel like any and all emotional weight to this has died and the characters are more and more obviously actors on a stage #for your own self gratification rather than their own people living their own lives #this is so bitter and i really shouldnt put this in the main tag #i am so sorry everyone who will see my rant. but my peace must be made.#dont worry im already asking myself if im just making all this shit up myself #what if some of us liked that the characters were so mean to the player and had no qualms about aggressively rejecting us #because it gave some illusion of them being able to make their own choices and decisions in what they wanted

26 notes · View notes

katiekatdragon27 · 18 days

Text

I was listening to "All Eyes on Me" and "Respectless" during a car ride and had an epiphany.

Progress shots and lore below cut:

OK OK BEFORE WE START THIS IS VERY HEADCANONED BASED.

Design choices and character motivations are very much based on my own hcs (such as Wizard being woman, Wizard being Ales's twin and having his hair as a result, the whole Rabiteen/Hopiteensy lore situation, Bad Rayman and Goth being homies, etc.) I love self-indulgence, what can I say?

Here is a synposis since ik most of you looooooooove my essays below my posts:

This AU takes place between Origins and Legends. Instead of Goth being the 4th player, it's Wizard (like in the concept art). She and Ales are the magician twins that Polokus talks about when pulling on his beard in Origins.

During Origins, Wizard and Ales are working together to harvest lum magic. However, the two of them are not that good at it. So, Ales has the brilliant idea to have Wizard hang out with Rayman and help convince him to help with lum collection. The game proceeds as normal, until they get to Moody Clouds.

While the build is falling apart, the Raygang, minus Wizard, fall to the groud bc of a magic spell Ales casted while they were all busting it down. They fall asleep in the random-ass tree they're found sleeping on in Legends and that's why they're all out of the plot. Wizard, fueled on anger and betrayal of her brother's evil plans, chases his ass onto the ship and stops it from hitting the giant lum ball. Ales thinks his sister is protecting him, but then gets socked in the gut and thrown in a cage. Wizard then hijacks the ship and returns to the port in Moody Clouds, leaving Ales in a dark basement under his office. She returns to the lum ball and considers letting all the lums go but goes back on that decision and decides to keep them.

By enhancing some of Ales's mechanics (all of it is fueled with lums) with her natural strong magic, she goes on a massive power high, capturing all the remaining yellow lums on her own. She then turns her attention to the blue lums.

The ones that are inside of people.

At first, she goes for objectively bad people. The baddies who beat up all the teensies in Teensies in Trouble and so on, but then goes for the bigger fish. The fish like Jano. And she wins. Kills his ass so fast. It's terrifying.

She then starts trying to get the Fairy Council in on her tech and lum magic usage. No one (especially Betilla) vibe with this, cuz they're too busy looking for Rayman or a replacement. She then shows of her Jano kill and everyone is utterly flabbergasted. All the teensies are onboard tho, so that's a win. They start doing public executions of bad nightmares and dreams. Then... it turns into executing people who dislike executions or people who just dislike Wizard in general.

(This is the point where she starts dressing like this. The orange is a ref to her old concept art and the purple with yellow is pieces of Jano's hat she turned into cloths. Also, the stick's not wood. It's actually very strong steel that is incredibly sharp.)

Fun times.

The fairies really don't vibe with any of this, especially Voodoo Mama and Betilla, but for different reasons. For VM, it's because her populations are in dwindling numbers at this point. For Betilla, it's because the lack of lums is stunting/destroying the growth of the Glade and is lowkey incapacitating Polokus. The two of them then come together to figure out a way to stop this girl. They decide to recruit two individuals, a young looking Rayman clone that Betilla remembers a certain dark magic user creating, and a little nightmare teensy who is a massive nerd when it comes to lums. Those being bad Rayman (Shadi) and Goth Teensy.

We love recruiting kids to kill grown ass baddies cuz the authority figures are all shit at figuring their own problems out.

Together, the two of them, plus some other figures like First King and Rabbiteen, go to fight this overpowered scary woman who could easily smite them if she wanted. Good luck soldiers🫡🫡

I have more, but I'm still working on the story not bc I'm lazy noooo neeeeeverrrr.

Anyways, have a lovely day :))

21 notes · View notes

gooeygoldies · 2 months

Text

Y'know what surprise post it's Otacon time he's on my mind rn (I have had some of the songs I've assigned to him on repeat lately) pokemon au is back!! Og mgs, mgs2 and mgs4

BUT YEAH!! POKEMON!!! he's one of my -if not the- most developed character au-wise in regards to pokemon and teams and things so yuh yuh under cut my insane person rambles

Okay SO we are going by game.

Mgs

- Porygon and Magnemite: Very straightforward the hacker/engineer pokemon duo!! He got them in college. His buddies his pals

- Sobble: actual plot here! It was a gift by Sniper wolf, who had Intelleon as her main pokemon. It is very much like him in the first game (cries and can turn invisible, in this au he got the camo gear idea from Sobble!!) and is perked upon his shoulder always. Also the water type is a sad little connection to the.pool. yeah. Anyways, he leaves it behind after leaving shadow Moses cuz he isn't a crybaby anymore!! Character growth!! The Sobble is okay don't worry about it

- Venonat: in au-lore. Originally assigned cuz I felt they looked alike, also a nocturnal pokemon to accompany him! But it was a pokemon he saved from being attacked by wolf's mightyenas (stand-in for wolves) it helps him sneak around shadow Moses thanks to its enhanced sight!

Mgs2 (now we get more into my own lore)

- Porygon2 and Magneton: Evolved!! Thanks to philanthropy that is, now they battle alongside snake and Otacon and are key helpers in all things electricity. Magneton is especially key in destabilizing electrical power sources

- Patrat (Shiny): Shiny bcs the color scheme felt cuter, but aside from that its here to match the 'eyes in the sky' role Otacon has now. A little sentinel! It keeps guard if accompanying snake or Otacon in missions.

- Swadloon: its all cozy and cooped up like. Like a nerd. But beside that, and it's role in the future (aka MGS4) it's main function is to sew up any torn garments, and helped Otacon make the new sneaking suit.

- Joltik: you know the bug things set to record conversations in spy movies? Make it an actual bug. Also it eats electricity so its a rlly good pal to have on the computer.

- Helioptile: It's actually a power generator!! Solar powered friend and I'd feel it would've been caught while moving around for philanthropy

* Venonat: He's still there!

Mgs4

Porygon2 & Magneton: Same ol' guys

Galvantula, Watchog, Heliolisk, Venomoth: They all evolved! Even if they spend most of their time in the nomad, Otacon took the time to train all of them after Snake's health started deteriorating just in case they needed to protect Sunny.

Leavanny: Honorable and separate mention! The nanny pokemon and it evolves by friendship. Evolved not long after Sunny arrived into his life, as the pokemon category implies, it takes care of Sunny as well!! Main caretaker whenever Snake and Otacon need some backup in that regard

Rotom: you know Rotom dex? Think metal gear Rotom... Rotom gear. But it's the mk.II instead. Rotom powered! The little dude also helps with every day appliances with it's usual forms

Beheeyem: It matches his sleeker, cooler look. That concept art with the coat? It's the cooler nerd pokemon

Porygon-Z: Used to be Emma's, and it ends up being the last puzzle piece in FOXALIVE in this au. She gave it to him before, y'know, spoilers but dying and all dat!

Well that's it!! I love Otacon he's so me I'm so him. Nerds with big glasses... Hopefully if I get the energy I'll do more deep dives like these but tbh for Snake his team is p static. Whatever !!! Ty guys for listening gn !!

#long one #mgs #pokemon #pokemon au #metal gear solid #metal gear pokemon #otacon

24 notes · View notes

cream0fwheat1998 · 2 years

Text

The Parts Only We know Ch.1

part 2

Bully!Dark!Eddie Munson x Reader

*Intimidation, more serious bullying (no wedgies cause that shit is cringe), non-Con (eventually), abusive/toxic-ish relationship*

It's gotten worse, y/n thought looking at the bluish-purple bruise on her leg. She dug through her clothing drawers and pulled out a long pair of pants. Even though a skirt would make more sense considering the warm weather, a skirt would also bring her unwanted attention.

With her parents still asleep, she took light steps around the house and gathered her supplies. She took her seat on the bus and listened to her Walkman alone. The bus ride to school is the only time of day she'd feel peace because once she stepped off the bus, she switches to survival mode all because of Eddie Munson.

Y/n swerved through the hallways while trying to hide her face. She avoided him all day and even though they were both seniors they didn't share any classes. A tap on y/n's shoulder made her jump and squeal like a mouse.

Robin put her hands up in defense, "Woah it's just me! Are you alright?" She asked, squeezing Y/n's shoulder to comfort her.

"Yeah I'm fine. Just didn't sleep much last night and my advanced classes have been kicking my ass." Y/n admitted.

"I won't be much help but if you need a study partner I'm here for you. Also sorry Steve and I didn't pick you up this morning." Robin continued walking by y/n.

Y/n took no offense, she actually had her own license but didn't have a car. Her dreams of an independent morning commute were dashed when her parents saw her slipping grades and decided that if she couldn't handle schoolwork, she wasn't mature enough to handle a car.

Y/n shrugged her shoulders and continued looking side to side for a tall, brunet man who wore lot's of rings. She thought she saw glimpses of him, shadows of his figure in the corner of her eyes, the top of his head behind large groups of people or his laugh in the midst of all the hallway chatter. It's like, on the days where she couldn't find him anywhere, his essence the devil permanently attached to her back.

After school, Robin dragged y/n into the woods to watch some friends play some nerd, fantasy game. D&D, and it sounded kinda fun but she didn't have time for games these days.

Closer to the abandoned lunch table, farther away from the school, she could hear yelling. People arguing about scores, dice rolling and lore. But what made her stop was the man standing at the head of the table.

Eddie lifted his head to see Robin and his favorite plaything walking his way. He smirked at the way y/n stopped frozen in her tracks, daring herself not to come any closer.

"Ah, come on y/n! I don't bite!" Eddie yelled, gesturing for the girls to observe the game. Robin laughed at Eddie but Y/n knew he was lying. Eddie Munson DID bite and scratch and hit and hurt her many times over the years.

The campaign ended with a win for the freshmen nerds. Eddie clapped and hugged his friends; Eddie was anything but a poor sport. Everyone shuffled off after Nancy dragged Mike away because she had to drive him home.

Steve and Robin offered to drive me home but before I could accept, Eddie put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him.

"I'll drive her guys! See you later." Eddie jingled his keys and waved his friends off.

When no one was around, Y/n was pushed against a tree. Her bag fell on the ground with its' contents scattered amongst the dead grass and dirt.

"You think you can avoid me the whole year huh?" Eddie accused Y/n, giving her a slap in the face.

Cupping her burning cheek, y/n turned her face away from Eddie's predatory gaze. "I'm sorry Eddie...." She said.

Eddie was in a forgiving mood and sighed, backing away from Y/n just a little. His heart ached to see her avoid eye contact with him but she did this to herself. She needed a reminder if his rules.

"Can you look at me? Please?" Eddie asked, cupping y/n's chin with his fingers.

Hesitant, y/n glanced up with her sweet, innocent eyes. Something about them made Eddie feel vulnerable, weak and under her spell. Whore magic, he decided.

With a chuckle, Eddie said, "You've caught me in a good mood. I'll forgive you this time with minimal punishment this time but if I catch you hiding from me in the hallways again, I'm gonna drag you by your hair into the closest broom closet and force my cock in your mouth. Understood?"

Y/n felt her eyes cloud with tears but forced herself to hold them back; she knew how Eddie felt about crying and didn't want to make the situation worse.

Y/n nodded, "Yes Eddie, I won't hide from you anymore."

Eddie didn't let go or her chin but got closer and kissed her forehead. He let her chin go and gave her a pat on the head, "That's my good girl. As for your punishment, you should walk home but give me a call so I know you got home safe." Eddie said walking from the woods leaving y/n there to pick up her stuff and wonder what Eddie had in store for her this year.

#eddie munson #eddie x reader #dark!eddie munson #dark!eddie munson x reader #dark!eddie munson x you #bully!eddie #stranger things

417 notes · View notes

etherealspacejelly · 2 months

Text

ok so. i am currently working on a fic. its a story that has been rotating in my brain for years about an avengers OC. idk if i want to start posting it as a WIP or wait until it's finished.

what im gonna do is post the prologue here, under the cut. it is entirely worldbuilding because. i came up with a new alien species with Lore™️ that i made as canon compliant as possible because im a fucking nerd. so you kinda need to know all of that before i can tell the actual story.

if you're interested, please give it a read and tell me what you think and whether you would want to read more! if it gets enough attention i'll start posting the chapters i have to ao3. i have a tag list for my fics so lmk if you want to be added to that too.

quick summary of the fic as a whole: The last surviving member of the Light Elf race, Einar, is taken in by the Avengers when they are orphaned at 10 years old. They nurse Einar back to health, and slowly form a bond with them, helping them to process their grief and heal from their trauma. There's a lot of fluff, a lot of angst, a lot of hurt/comfort, and of course found family.

It starts during the events of Thor: The Dark World and follows the storyline of the MCU from there.

Prologue:

In the beginning, there was only darkness. The only world to exist in that darkness was a tiny, desolate rock named Alfheim. This was the home of my ancestors, the Elves, before time, before space, before light.

No one knows how long they lived like that, alone in the dark. All we know is that at some point that darkness ended. The universe began, and light and life exploded into existence. For most of the Elves, this was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen. They swore to protect and nurture all life and to serve the light. But others believed that this was a perversion of the natural order, that the universe belonged in darkness and should be returned to that state. They vowed to destroy the light by any means possible.

War broke out between the two opposing sides, an Elvish Civil War that lasted for many billions of years, with both sides only ever coming together to kill each other. And so, they evolved separately into two species: the Dark Elves and the Light Elves. Each side became stronger and stronger with each generation, evolving new abilities and traits to give them an edge in battle.

A few millennia ago, a great battle ensued between these two sides on Svardalfheim. The Dark Elves tried to use their most powerful weapon, the Aether, to destroy the universe. The Light Elves fought with all their might, but the Dark Elves had the upper hand. That is until the Asgardians arrived.

Odin's father, King Bor, and his army tipped the scales and won the battle for the Light Elves. They confiscated the Aether and sealed it away where no one would find it. Malekith, the leader of the Dark Elves, fled in his ship and bombed the planet behind him hoping to destroy what remained of the Light Elf army, not caring if his own perished as well.

Only two Light Elves survived.

They fled to find a place to hide, to recover their strength for what they knew would be the final battle of the War. They needed a primitive, unknown, safe planet to seek refuge. They found one.

Earth. Dominated by a bipedal, fairly intelligent species descended from tree dwellers. No one would think to look for them there. It was on this planet in the middle of nowhere that these two Elves decided to take a risk, one last desperate attempt to give them an edge against the Dark Elves. They had a baby.

That child, the last Light Elf baby to ever be born, came to be in England, Earth, in the spring of 2003. They named the child Einar, an old Norse name meaning 'the lonely warrior', for that is the future they believed their child was destined for. Little did they know how wrong they would turn out to be.

#fanfic #fanfiction #space jelly writes #marvel fanfiction #marvel #marvel mcu #mcu

21 notes · View notes

martyrmystik · 4 months

Text

I think Tumblr needs to know about my dumbass Poppy Playtime AU I literally JUST made today so uhm... Here's the AU I've been hyperfixating on-

More information under the cut!

This is the first half of the Smiling Critters references (I loved making their designs omg)

Basically to summarize why they are a significant part in this AU:

This is an AU where the Smiling Critters survive, using anything and everything they can to continue to do so. It's a small resistance group (hence the AU name, "RESISTANCE") trying to fight against The Prototype! They still have their dynamics and everything else but they have more freedom to express themselves (hence, the clothes and accessories. And how Kickin' Chicken is wearing two bandana's because yes, he is extra.) AFTER the events of The Hour of Joy. By that time they were like what? 1st-2nd graders considering the experiments that were done? Now they are more like teenagers in this AU since I still follow the plot-line of the actual Poppy Playtime story taking place 10 years later-.

As for how the group works, everybody has their own little role and is in charge of something, they aren't made useless as it is a group based off of teamwork and friendship (despite the casualties.) Here's some of the roles they fall into:

(IF I SEE ANYBODY SEXUALIZE THESE CHARACTERS ISTG. THATS ICKY AND GROSS and I will make sure you get smited by lightning, because even if these guys are aged up THEY ARE STILL MINORS!!!)

Kickin Chicken: The vice president if you will, the leaders right hand man. (Because Dogday is the leader.) He's kind of full of himself but the confidence and pep talks help the team keep motivated, even if he is a bit self-centered

Bobby Bearhug: Assistant to Kickin Chicken (although they have a rivalry.) and also the medic. Is also the one who helps Dogday with anything considering in this AU he still has half of him torn off. (More on Dogday in his own section sometime later)

Hoppy Hopscotch: Basically explores the facility in any area at any time to gather new information on ways to try and get out (all of them are actively looking to escape btw!)

Craftycorn: Maps out stuff (maps, plans, other things) using her drawing abilities, although she also acts as the therapist friend because her art is soothing to others.

Bubba Bubbaphant: THE LITERAL. EMBODIMENT. OF. THE NERD EMOJI. He is a actual know-it-all which can come in handy but that makes him seem like a dick sometimes because of his knowledge.

Picky Piggy: I don't really have anything important to add to her, since I want to keep some of her lore a secret [might be revealed through the ask page I just set up for the AU on my page] HOWEVER she is the chef of the group and is literally the only one that can cook, if anybody else tried they'd all get food poisoning LMAO.

Here's some extra things in this AU that won't go in my other posts about this AU (maybe):

(So take notes if you want.)

- Catnap is redeemed, but it takes a VERY long time for him to get out of "old habits" as I'm going to word it. (Without spoiling too much of what I have planned.)

- I don't know what to plan for The Prototype yet but I'm talking with a couple of my mutuals on discord so maybe I'll figure it out eventually

- Dogday can normally stand and do other things because of the belts he has, however he can't put them on for too long (for like at max, more than 4 hours a day.) because they will wear into the plush, and he needs to put the belts on tight or they will come loose. He only uses such method when the group goes to hunt for food or similar activities, otherwise, he just uses a wheelchair when in the groups safe environment (the Playhouse!)

- This is going to be a shock to some people, but there is NO player character in this AU, not only is this a what if the Smiling Critters survived, but it's also a what if the player character never returned to Playtime Co.! This does come with some issues, like on how the asks are going to work, but trust me, I got everything taken care of when it comes to that!

- There also isn't really any shipping in this AU at all, I'm focusing on the story/friendship dynamics more than that, so if somehow you were looking for Dogday X Catnap this is, unfortunately not the place for that.

- This AU also has the personal interpretation of Dogday being part of the experiments some of the orphanage kids faced, as I don't really vibe with the idea that Dogday might be a Playtime Co. worker??? I don't know, I'm sticking with my idea for now but I will be keeping a close eye on canon if anything confirms or denies it, and I may adjust the AU accordingly if that's the case.

- Future posts may or may not contain other Poppy Playtime characters but the main focus is the Smiling Critters and The Prototype.

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

References of Dogday and Catnap are already done but I may wait a bit on Tumblr to see how well this AU is being received :)

(I spent 6 hours on all references in total 😭😭😭)

31 notes · View notes

fareehaandspaniards · 5 months

Note

I sometimes wonder how comes you ended up SO attached to Damian specifically? When you first appeared you was just one of us Micolash simps, but before I've noticed it is just Damian everywhere ggjhggkj Sorry if you've answered somewhere already, but what made you so obsessed with Damian? What was that thing that made you see his potential and appeal the way you do now?

Well, yes, you were right to point out that when I came here, I was mostly interested only in Micolash! But gradually getting used to the character, you start to think about his surroundings! And if Edgar I liked from the first glance and he always will be my favourite nerd-accountant-church boy with issues, then Damian I just ignored at first xd And in the game did not really notice him, although he stands out among the phantoms - Loch Shield, ability to heal with choir bell, Mensis cage (AND his amazing look. Long hair and tired old face? Ooooh, I'm in). The cage in particular makes you think that he is a very difficult character which belongs to an enemy fraction and fights on your side. Well beyond that, it was worth taking a closer look at him and it all went on its own :'D

Most of the fandom sees him in a similar way - caring, selflessly giving of himself to Micolash, loyal to the core, a bit slow due to age, and cozy man. My first vision of him was also like he is an absolute angel, the purest creation in the entire game! That was second phase of my simping I think xD Granddilf with the biggest heart and purest soul, loyal servant of his beloved one - oh my god!! Makes me go crazy because I want him to be respected immediately, be loved and cherished. Maybe he is my type? I don't know. Old, really OLD man with loving heart and I-i-i-i... melting...

One of my headcanons is that Damian can kill a human, do crimes, cruel medical experiments (he is a Mensis scholar after all) but he can never hurt a child! ^^^^ There is him with little Yurie, Micolash and Edgar, and image I drew after a cool discussion with Fantomette! We talked about possibility of Edgar being Micolash's son, which means that Damian could possibly be his godfather xd

(Also you may see a plushie bunnie in little Micolash's hands and it has much more sense that it may seem!)

I am too lazy to explain I am sorry Dx But I wrote about bunny and little Irzhie here, in an ask game. The question was - what would be his favourite toy? >>>

Me and my husband talked about Irzhie too much and came to many funny and creepy conclusions and ideas (Damian's obsession with his little brother, projection his brother on Micolash, insanity, necromancy and,,,, Many other things :^) , so that picture was born)

(Sorry to put it in your ask lkak.ermkeamg,g,fdmg BUT you can't shut me up when it's about Damian D: )

I mean you can put Damian in ANY headcanon and he still be kindest man ever existed.

In myvision of lore he helped Rom when she felt really bad in Byrgenwerth, was one amongst three people in the whole college who supported Caryll, he protected Micolash his whole life, he was trying to soften Micolash's deeds and didn't want him to involve innocent children in his experiments (as much as adults. But I believe that Yahar'gul people were sort of fanatics so there were many volunteers for School of Mensis medical stuff), he was the one who will always do his best to help whenever you ask.

And my poor old man is also a saddest creature, because the fact is a fact - no matter if he hates or loves Micolash or just fights against his ideas in game, Micolash is in a Nightmare and Damian is here. I shipped Damicolash and it was really bittersweet. Mico dies and what is left for Damian? Only grieve and sorrow?

Damian/Yurie - bitter end, Damian/Rom - bitter end, Damian/Micolash - bitter end, Damian/anyone else - bitter end! :^)

Anyone else except sir Gremia! (This man deserves another post he is also so complicated! My husband KNOWS how much I adore him. Many of our daily jokes include him lol) Gremia has a strong need in an "adult/mother" archetype and also in "wife/lover", he needs someone who will pat his head and whom he can protect. And Damian needs someone to take care of, to protect and to be protected by that someone (Theme for another post :Р)

Damian, who gave love but didn't receive it, who did his best for Micolash but ended up leaving the Mensis School because his beloved crossed all bounds of sanity, who believed in Kos, his goddess of mothers and children, who genuinely tried to help everyone - I wanted him to be happy.

It really concerned me and I think then started the third phase of simping, when I found out that Sir Gremia exists and Damian just can't be perfect (it's so wrong and boring. I love when a character is like alive person, so it means they are problematic! There are no "normal" people)

I have to say, as you mentioned, I have seen him as a chad, attracting everyone to him xD But right now for me he has flaws, he can be very annoying sometimes, plus overprotection of Micolash (I think Micolash even got tired of him. Sounds like an absolute Micolash plus that may be a reason he let Damian go from serving him), weaknesses and traumas, cruelty and coldness in his heart, and a strong attachment to the past. But he's the kind one. And that's what hit my heart the hardest way. He is player friendly for his own unknown reasons, but I believe his destiny and talent is to lead and protect, which is what he has been doing all his life.

I write a fic about him and Gremia right now, connected with the early Healing Church and I want to put there all my headcanons, big and small and finally finish his story and give him the end of the game that he deserves

I am sorry for the amount of text. Old man took a place in my heart, he does not only looks like an absolute perfection but also seems to be a wonderful person with lots of issues and flaws. I LOVE HIM

I need to improve my drawing skill so I will draw him better and he will become more popular :'D

Maybe I got a little off-topic? But I want you to know how I see him - it's the main point of my simping xD So hard to put all my thoughts in one text. Hope it's not hard to read. It's much easier to write a story than tell the chaos that is happening in your head with your blorbo xD

#my art #mensis scholar damian #bloodborne #bloodborne headcanons #longpost #mutuals #ask

20 notes · View notes

justaduckarts · 2 years

Text

Quack!

Welcome to my little pond where I daydream about celestial jesters and maybe possibly other stuff in the future (the Undertale Phase is creeping back in slowly I can feel it). I’m a huge FNAF nerd and I will write a whole essay if you ask me one single lore question (eat your hear out, Matpat /j).

Some things to know:

Asks: General questions welcome, requests closed for the time! (For Star Holder related asks, please visit the official Star Holder Blog )

Fandoms: FNAF, Undertale, Transformers, My Dear Hatchet Man

Fanart: Have a piece you’ve made for a thing I wrote? I’d love to see it! Please feel free to @ me! I will cry. :’)

I DO NOT give my permission for any of my characters or works to be used for AI Chatbots.

Tags:

#justauckarts -general tag for all works that I make!

#pcu au -tag for Personal Care Unit AU

#umw -tag for Unclip My Wings fanfic (DCA x Agoraphobe!Reader) (18+)

#star holder -tag for the reader x God! Eclipse AU

#sunfish au -tag for my mermay work!

#lunar phantom -tag for the DCA x reader Phantom of the Opera AU

#HITIAF! -tag for my meta/comedy DCA x reader fanfic, Help I’m Trapped In a Fanfiction!

#DLNS -tag for my mystery/romance DCA x reader fanfic, Days of Laughs And Nights of Screams!

#ducksfunnyocs -tag for my ocs <3

AO3: Justaduck6432

Carrd: Duck’s Very Cool Links

Things About Me: I am 26! They/Them! I write and draw full time! Married to a very silly goose :)

Works:

Days of Laughs And Nights of Screams: (Completed): A thrilling mystery/romance (but the burn is slow)! Welcome to an incredible theme park! During the day, a place of whimsy and fun! During the night, however, the animatronics come creeping out to terrorize all who enter!

Extra DLNS Content: This includes drabbles, artwork, and perhaps even more in the future!

Glimpse of Us: (Completed) A heartwarming story of reconnecting after a long time apart! Watch our MC (that’s you!) do their best to help their dear friend after returning to the pizzaplex to find things are much worse than they ever imagined...

Help! I’m Trapped In a Fanfiction!: (Ongoing, much slower updates) A meta/joke story where our MC (that’s you!) wakes up to find they can hear someone narrating everything they do... Coffee shop AU! MC and Author are frenemies! This one’s just for laughs, don’t take it too seriously :)

One Who Holds A Star: (Completed) A gods/goddesses AU featuring a morally questionable Eclipse and his devoted follower (that’s you!). Stumble through the rabbit hole of defying the fate the gods have decided for you and falling in love with someone you really shouldn’t. :)

Extra Star Holder Content: This includes fluff drabbles, lore, and artwork for the star holder au! Feel free to eat this up! <3

Below The Surface: My mermay fic! A hot-headed reader and a pair of aggressive river fish tangling in this exciting enemies to lovers <3 Dive into this chaotic adventure and enjoy the ride.

Unclip My Wings (18+): A story taking place in the PCU AU, set in a future where the world is run by machines. Step into the life of a mentally ill adult struggling to overcome their agoraphobia with the help of two very kind Units. But not all is as it seems. The shadows of your past are lurking just out of sight. (Minors, I am begging and pleading you not to touch this fic.)

Lunar Phantom: Link leads to first part. A Phantom Of The Opera/Daycare Attendant Crossover! You are a hard-working performer preparing for your next big musical in an fancy, older theatre. However, you’ve been distracted by the arrival of little notes and gits in your dressing room. One night, you stay late to practice a few steps of the show you’re having trouble with. But while you’re there, you here the sound of a piano down below...

Thanks so much for visiting the pond! :) I hope you enjoy your time here.

#justaduckarts #introducing myself #lunar phantom #star holder #HITIAF!#masterlist #DLNS #snake holder au #ducksfunnyocs #sunfish au #umw #pcu au

317 notes · View notes

alltimefail-sims · 1 month

Note

https://www.tumblr.com/alltimefail-sims/748883412368179200/i-thought-what-you-said-about-using-granite-falls?source=share where would you put forgotten hallow and glimmerbrook?

Again, not 1:1 here, but I personally imagine Forgotten Hollow would be in a state like Massachusetts/Connecticut/Delaware. I'm a history nerd at heart, and due to the Colony lore surrounding Vlad I can't help but personally headcanon Forgotten Hollow as a part of the original 13 British colonies. Anywhere in here would work:

Knowing what we know about Glimmerbrook, the (alluded to be) original Mesopotamian-adjacent spellcasters, and the accidental invention of vampires, we can confidently say that spellcasters predate their companion occults by a significant margin. Because of this, I see the OG Spellcasters as existing most prominently all over the Eastern part of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, etc.), but not specifically central to any one area. They've had lots of time to travel and expand their kind for one thing, but also I think magic comes in all different forms and therefore is just accessible to every person/place/culture/ethnicity/etc. You get the idea!

For me, Glimmerbrook has always felt more like a place a lot of spellcasters fled to after the initial magical war, not a place of origin for their occult type. But as for where it is specifically in our real world, I group Glimmerbrook, Windenburg, and Henford together and would palce them all somewhere in central/western Europe!

But again, I don't think Spellcasters as a whole are isolated to one location! In my mind, the "newer" an occult is, the less likely you are to find them outside of their "source location" that houses peers of their same condition. This is why Werewolves, being the newest of the three, are still mainly based in Moonwood Mill and why the oldest and most prominent vampire clans are still located in Forgotten Hollow but do have a few other established clans that have branched out elsewhere (in places like San Myshuno, my NYC adjacent world, for example).

Because spellcasters are just sort of everywhere, I imagine there are well-hidden entrances to the magic realm all over the world and various ways to access the magic relam that don't require you to go to the portal in Glimmerbrook or any portal for thag matter - thus the stone they cary around, for example. Glimmerbrook just happens to have the largest and most obvious entrance because it was really never meant to be there in the first place! The Glimmerbrook portal is the remaining evidence of the spellcasters who had to make a hasty escape in the realm explosion and ultimately created a tear of that size in our world. There was no thought behind the location, the tear was just the result of a quick escape, thus why the location of Glimmerbrook has little to do with how spellcasters behave, speek, look, and so on. This would also explain why no one lives in the magic realm any more, and why Glimmerbrook is so unremarkably magical in its appearance by comparison. Today the Glimmerbrook portal is protected and monitored by the sages and other high ranking "protectors," but by and large Spellcasters have come and gone from Glimmerbrook over the years with no issue and no attachment. Some spellcasters weren't even in the magic realm, nor did they live there, when the explosion happened! Although some families have chosen to stay in order to be closer to the realm's entrance and their family's history to the realm itself, for the most part it was never intended to be a place spellcasters would be forced to stay forever; they don't need to live in Glimmerbrook to find individuals like themselves, as they're all over the world!

I hope that all made sense and that I didn't get too redundant; again I don't want to get into the governances of the magical world that I've made up unless people are really interested haha, so I tried to keep this as short and concise as I could. As always feel free to ask for clarification! Thank you so much for this ask!!! ❤

#ts4 #simblr #ts4 lore #the sims 4 #sims 4 #ts4 spellcasters #ts4 vampires #ts4 werewolves #glimmerbrook #forgotten hollow #moonwood mill #ddseries #my lore #ts4 occult #atfs ask #anon

11 notes · View notes

thegeneticopera · 8 months

Text

MR. LARGO'S REPO SITE MASTERPOST!

in this post, I will link all the sites I deem important and where I draw a lot of our rare images and lore. I will also teach you how to access these sites since flash is no longer available!

Also, if you have any questions, need any help, you find that a link is broken, or you find a link that you feel should be added to this list, don't hesitate to dm me:

Discord -> luigilargo or my main @captainspaulding

First thing's first: In order to actually see a lot of these sites, you gotta have Flash. As we all know, Flash was discontinued in 2020, but thanks to some nerds out there, someone created a custom version of pre-2020 chrome with flash installed!

I've already backed this zip file up to a drive folder for you. All that is needed is this:

Download and extract the zip file. It is 100% safe because it's mine, and this is what I use every day.

Open the folder, do not delete or move anything obviously. Open the Google Chrome application

This will already have flash preinstalled. You don't have to do anything. To be safe, google Flash Checker and open the site, right-click the box that says you need Adobe Flash and run it. If you can see the animation, that means Flash is working ☝️😎

You may have to turn it on each time you reload a new web archive page and may have to right-click the flash animations to turn it on. Otherwise, you're all set, and you now have Flash just like the good ol days!

Now with that outta the way, here is a list of all Repo! related sites that you can access through the wayback machine:

Repo! film site

Repo! stage play site

GeneCo site (this one is still up and running so it can actually be accessed without wayback)

Zydrate site

Anti GeneCo blog site

Repo! members site (this one I so far have only been able to access the homepage, but I'm putting it here in case someone can figure out how to see more since this site apparently had lots of art and bts things for the film)

MySpace links:

Pavi's MySpace

Amber's MySpace

Shilo's MySpace

(as of now these are all that I can access, if anyone has working links to view the others please dm us so we can update this list)

It should go without saying that these are archived sites, a good chunk of the images are broken and its up to you to sift through all the snapshots and find working pages!

Have fun and I will update this list with any new sites or information I find.

- mod luigi

#repo! the genetic opera #repo the genetic opera #r!tgo #rtgo #links #important #mod luigi

26 notes · View notes

moon-spirit-yue · 7 months

Text

Settle Down

Chapter 1: You’re Cold and I Burn

(I feel like Raya deserves several apologies so I made this little fic. Also I’m a firm believer of angry Raya rights and bitter Benja rights. I really don’t think either of them really just got over everything so quickly. Plus some Benja lore I’m making up to explain why things went down the way they did. And for once in my life it’s a fic that’s canon compliant! Get ready for angst today!)

Life is great.

Raya’s father has finally come back from stone and they reunited once more. In fact, he’s standing a mere ten feet away from her mingling with a couple diplomats from the other lands. Only a three months since the Druun were destroyed for good and already there’s so much progress.

Life is great.

The dragons have returned too. That was something Raya never anticipated to happen, even if she did manage to bring her ba back. Seeing the stunning celestial beings dance along the horizon has been making Raya’s little dragon nerd heart flutter in excitement.

Life is great.

There’s also the nice addition of her and Namaari being on uh, she’s not exactly sure of the right term, but it’s not murderous terms so that’s an improvement. They shared a couple fruits, they smile at each other, so their relationship is certainly going in the right direction.

It’s great. This is what Raya wanted, what she’s been wanting for the past six years. Yet somehow, she doesn’t feel great.

In fact, Raya felt something close to miserable. Which is incredibly irritating because she doesn’t understand why she feels so awful.

The Heart princess had become quickly accustomed to smiling and agreeing with whatever anyone says over the past couple months about how wonderful it is everyone is back and the dragons are miracles. Heart’s been the hotspot for discussing political alliances and was used as a way to show the other lands’ good graces by helping with Heart’s rebuilding. Raya’s cheek hurt from faking her smiles.

She wishes so badly that her cheerful demeanor and welcoming attitude was sincere, but it wasn’t. When a new person approaches, she reaches for her sword. When Raya gets a new plate of food or a drink, she has to give it a thorough search to make sure no drugs or poisons are in it. When someone smiles and asks how she is, Raya has to lie when she says, “never better.”

And here she sits, watching everyone else either discuss potential political solutions or party hard with people that used be stone statues. Raya can’t bring herself to join anyone.

“Heeeeeeey bestie!” Sisu exclaimed, slithering right next Raya’s seat which is a rather uncomfortable rock.

“Hi, Sisu. What’s up?” she asked, smiling sincerely for the first time in a while.

“Nothing crazy, just hanging with the people. You know, people that can actually respond back to me. You should really try it,” the dragon insisted, giving her a look.

Raya sighed and rubbed her face tiredly. Sisu has been trying to drag Raya into any and every social event that’s popped up since the Druun were vanquished. Considering the fact that the past three months have basically been one big celebration, Raya has experienced a lot of attempted dragging.

“I’ve already helped with the crops, my people quota has been reached for the day,” Raya said dismissively.

“Well sure, but that’s work! Why don’t you talk to some of the homies for fun! Like you could hang out with your ba or Namaari-,” Sisu continued to ramble, but Raya kind of checked out after those two names,

Her relationship with both people had been rather tense, to say the least. It’s certainly to be expected with Namaari given their history, but Raya was surprised at herself to realize she’s not quite as comfortable with her ba as she used to be.

Raya just doesn’t know how to act around him anymore. Of course, she’s so happy that he’s back, that’s never been an issue, but there’s a barrier between them now that the Heart princess hadn’t considered.

Maybe it was the fact that so much time had passed? Raya did tell him upfront that she’s no longer a child and doesn’t want to be treated as such but he has been as good as he can be given everything that happened. It’s just so hard to connect with her ba now. The one person that used to make her feel more secure than anything in the world no longer gives Raya the safety he once did.

It has been years since she’s seen him, and a lot has happened, so maybe Raya is trying to rush the process. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t wish things could exactly how they used to be.

“-or you could even make some new friends! Doesn’t that sound fun?” Sisu yelled right when Raya’s brain focused on the conversation again.

“Right, sounds spectacular. I’m going to make a little fruit bowl, can I get you anything?” the Heart warrior asked.

“Oh, strawberries and pineapple would be amazing!” Sisu grinned.

“Coming right up,” Raya mumbled. At least she was no longer being peer pressured into becoming a social butterfly.

She then began weaving in through people, tables, even a couple dragons before reaching her destination. Raya approached the table filled with assortments of fruits from all five lands thus beginning her examination of which ones look the best.

“Raya,” a voice said out of literally nowhere.

The Heart princess is rather ashamed to say she actually squeaked a bit as she jumped back, frantically turning to whoever said her name. Feeling her pulse go a mile a minute, she realized that it was Namaari standing next to her.

“Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to uh, startle you,” Namaari awkwardly sighed. Raya’s entire body tensed but she waved her off like everything was fine.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s a habit I’m trying to break,” Raya shrugged. She’s constantly on edge being surrounded by people all the time. The adjustment period is longer than she anticipated. “So, what’s up? You said that Raya with some urgency there.”

“Ah, I did. I was hoping we could talk? In private?” Namaari asked.

The Heart princess paused for a moment to weigh her options. While it’s true that she’s kind of been hoping an opportunity like this would arise, now she’s not so sure she actually wants to talk. But, it would probably be rude to deny Namaari.

Honestly, Raya just wants to turn in for the night. The day has been way too long for her taste. She then decided to suck it up and just talk to the Fang princess before retiring to her room.

“Sure, I just need to give Sisu her fruits real quick. The appetite of a dragon amazes me,” Raya smiled in her poor attempt to crack a joke.

Thankfully, Namaari managed a small smile from the remark.

“No problem, I can wait,” Namaari said.

They started idle chit chat as Raya filled up the bowl with Sisu’s favorites. After promptly excusing herself, Raya wandered back to the dragon’s side to give her the fruit.

“Your snack as requested, Almighty Sisudatu,” Raya grinned. She then bowed dramatically and lifted the bowl right above her head.

“I love it when you act like you haven’t had to share the same boat as me to sleep,” the dragon laughed and eagerly took the bowl from her. “Okay, so I’m thinking after I replenish my strength, you and I head down to the river for some good old swimming practice?”

“Oh, that probably won’t work out. Namaari just asked to speak with me and there’s a really good chance the discussion will take a while,” Raya frowned.

“You’re going to talk to Namaari?! That’s great! You guys could use a little bonding experience!” Sisu exclaimed, weirdly ecstatic of Raya talking to Namaari.

“Uh huh. Well, if we both make it out of this interaction alive I’ll find you,” Raya snorted as she walked in Namaari’s direction.

“You got it Raya!” Sisu cheered as she all but waved Raya off.

“Strange, strange dragon,” she whispered to herself as she met up with Namaari. “My mission was a success. Where are we headed?”

“I thought the kitchens would be a good place to talk now that all the cooks are done for the night,” Namaari said as she already began walking in that direction.

“Alright,” Raya gulped.

She looked around for an excuse to not do this but when she couldn’t find one, Raya hastily followed the other princess.

The walk to the kitchens was both quiet and awkward. The two women haven’t communicated much since the Druun were vanquished. After the first day of everyone returning from stone, their interactions had become few and far between despite Namaari being so active in Heart’s rebuilding.

Raya had no clue what the hell she should even say to Namaari and had a pretty good feeling she felt the same way. What could they even say to each other? ‘Hey, I know that we’ve almost killed each other several times in the past six years, but want to grab a bite to eat?’

Absolutely not.

She could feel her blood pumping, already thinking of the several ways this interaction could turn violent. What was she thinking, going somewhere alone with Namaari after what happened last time. This was a bad idea. Raya can’t do this, she wants to go back to her room or run off to the courtyard or just leave the general area because she just can’t-

“After you,” Namaari said in a quiet voice.

Raya blinked dumbly before registering the fact that Namaari was holding the door open for her and had stepped to the side. Raya’s shoulders tensed up as she reluctantly walked past her and into the kitchen.

She only took about three steps into the room before turning to face Namaari. Raya didn’t feel comfortable having her back face the other princess and prayed she wouldn’t take notice.

Once Namaari closed the door behind her, Raya became claustrophobic in about four seconds. Small spaces never felt like an issue before now. Maybe she should pretend to faint or something.

“Well, we’re here. What’s on your mind?” Raya asked, trying really hard not to sound too agitated.

“I wanted to apologize. For everything. I never should manipulated you into gaining your trust only to take it away. And Sisu’s death? I completely messed up by bringing my crossbow. I’ve only ever tried to do the right thing and it always managed to be wrong. I can’t even imagine what you had to go through because of me. I’m so sorry for anything that happened to you because of my actions,” Namaari said remorsefully.

To both Namaari and Raya’s surprise, Raya began to laugh. Her hand covered her mouth as a snort managed to escape her. Now, the reason why Raya is currently laughing is because this feels like one big joke.

And not the good kind.

“Namaari, has anyone ever told you what a fucking coward you are?” Raya asked, still giggling like a three year old with too much candy.

“I’m sorry what?” Namaari said with a raised eyebrow.

“I mean, it’s true. You’re a fucking coward. It’s a trait that stayed with you since we were kids. When we fought in that cave, you could only kick me when my back was turned, and when I faced you like a big girl, you got your ass handed to you. If you didn’t have that flare and let your mommy bail you out, you would have left that cave black and blue,” Raya rushed out.

The Heart princess shouldn’t be saying any of this. For god’s sake, Kumandra is too delicate for her to be yelling at this woman and saying exactly how she feels. It’s like Namaari’s stupid face and even more stupid apology opened the door to all of Raya’s horrible feelings that she’s been too polite to talk about.

Being polite is officially over.

“Congratulations for stating the obvious, though. Because yeah, a peaceful meeting means no weapons! Honestly, Sisu’s death was on both of us, I’m big enough to realize that. I shouldn’t have been too eager to swing my sword, but you have never once given me a reason to trust you a day in my life! Anytime we see each other swords are drawn, blood is shed, and someone limps away crying. Mostly you, because if I was the one limping and crying, I’d have been in jail,” Raya snapped.

Namaari had the luxury of healthcare and support when she got injured. Raya had Tuk Tuk. As cute as he may be, he does not have the fine motor skills or the thumbs to properly help her tend to her wounds. Not to mention the fact that he wasn’t always the getaway transport he is today. If Raya didn’t win their little interactions, she’d be utterly screwed.

“Okay, that is completely untrue,” Namaari said.

And she had the audacity to sound annoyed. God, Raya wants to throttle her. She has both hands clasped tightly behind her back because she is afraid she may start brawling with this undercut nightmare at a moment’s notice.

“Seriously, you’re upset that I called you out for being a weak binturi? Of all the things that I’m dishing out to you, your physical strength is what’s getting you all hot and bothered?” Raya scoffed.

“That’s not the issue here,” the Fang woman frowned.

“No, the issue is that you suck!” Raya childishly yelled.

Why can’t Raya just stop talking? It’s like a dam overflowed and she has no choice but to say what’s on her mind. This is going to end in disaster. Raya knows that. And still, she continues to speak.

“My god, Namaari! You hunted a homeless orphan for months! I get a couple weeks, Fang pride and all that because hell, I stole from you, but months? What the actual fuck?! I had nothing. No father, no money, no home, and yet somehow you thought I was such a threat that you hunted me down for months? Did it make you feel powerful, knowing that with a snap you fingers you could make my life even more miserable than it already was?” Raya glared.

“Of course not-,” Namaari began, but was very quickly cut off.

“Well I can’t possibly think of what else you needed from me! I asked about that stupid scroll, you know. With the way you were hunting me, I thought I got my hands on a goldmine. I’m sure you can imagine how surprised I was when I found out it was worth about as much as a bag full of dirt,” Raya scowled.

Shut up, shut up, shut up, her internal voice screamed. Raya wants to stop talking. So badly, Raya just wants to breath and move on. But she can’t. She is so enraged that it’s hard for her to stand still.

“You should have left me alone,” Raya continued when Namaari was suddenly rendered speechless. “I was weak, alone, and I didn’t have a single piece of jade to my name that wasn’t stolen. The very least you could have done was just leave me alone. What the hell was the point of coming after me? What exactly were you trying to prove to your almighty mother?”

“Raya, please, just settle down for one moment,” Namaari sighed as if she was talking to some petulant child.

Once Raya heard the words ‘settle down’ she knew there was no way this conversation was going to end peacefully.

“Settle down? Settle down?! Are you kidding me? After six years of defending myself from people trying to take what little jade I had, of starving myself so that Tuk Tuk could eat, of missing my ba, of running from the Druun and you might I add, of falling asleep crying because there was no real point in living you want me to SETTLE DOWN?!” Raya screamed with anger seeping out of her pores.

Namaari just stood there. She stood there like a fucking imbecile and it only pissed Raya off more. She can’t even look at the other woman right now. Raya might actually kill her.

“I have no desire to talk to you anymore so get out! Bother someone else for change of pace!” Raya yelled at her.

Her nails began digging into her palms from how tight her fist was balled up. It was taking every ounce of self control Raya has to not grab what ever sharp object was closest to her and charge.

“Raya,” Namaari whispered, at an apparent loss for words.

“Get out! Just get the hell out of here before I actually burn you alive, you cold, heartless binturi!” Raya shrieked.

Raya’s pretty sure her own rage is really starting to blind her because Namaari’s facial expression isn’t registering in her mind but thankfully, she could see the Fang princess’s figure quietly walk out. Good. Finally, something’s going right.

But see, the really unfortunate thing is that Raya is still not quite happy with her current state of being. The anger she feels for Namaari did not leave with her. It was hard enough to resist bashing Namaari’s face in so now she needs to find an outlet for her wrath without getting another living thing involved.

Raya scanned the room to find dozens of wine glasses lined on the kitchen counter tops. Before she knew, the Heart princess grabbed wine glass and threw it on the ground as hard as she could. She watched intently the glass shattered the second it made impact with floor.

Raya grabbed another glass and gave it the same harsh treatment. Just like the one before, the glass shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces. From that moment on, Raya began to pick up a rhythm in her madness. Grab, throw, shatter, repeat.

Sometimes she’d squeeze them so tightly that they were broken before they could even hit the floor. Her hands began to bleed from little cuts the glasses gave her but she did’t care. She needed this. It’s the only thing stopping Raya from marching out of this room and finishing what she started in Fang.

“What on earth are you doing?!” a familiar voice boomed.

The Heart princess turned her furious glare to her father. He was standing there and looked to be a mixture of confused and panicked. Then Benja had the audacity to look at Raya like she had somehow lost her mind. Then Raya finally realized why she was having so many difficulties with her father.

She’s mad at him. Actually mad him. A daughter being mad at her father isn’t an uncommon occurrence. That is, unless you were Raya and Benja.

Looking back at her childhood, Raya legitimately can’t remember a time where she had been so genuinely angry at her father. Sure, they’d both get a bit upset at each other. But that was usually from a petty incident and the negative feelings lasted for like, one day. There was also the occasional moment of Raya going too far for whatever reason and needing to be scolded, but she always knew when she deserved it and her father always apologized when she didn’t.

But here and now? Raya’s so enraged that she feels like her whole body was set on fire.

Well, Raya is already on a roll with screaming at the people that exist in her presence, might as well add another to the list.

“And you,” Raya spat, pointing the wine glass she seized at her father like she’d hold her sword. “How dare you look at me like I’m crazy! You should have seen this coming Ba, but then again, your foresight has a pretty bad rep!”

“Honestly Raya, I thought you knew better than to make a huge mess like this! What has gotten into you!? You were completely fine when you were out with the others! What changed in such a short amount of time?” her father exclaimed while slamming the door shut.

“Are you kidding me right now? I have not been fine for the past six years Ba! Because you threw me in a damn river!” Raya roared at him, squeezing the glass in her hand.

“Dewdrop,” he whispered, taking a step forward only for Raya to quickly retreat in the opposite direction.

“Do not Dewdrop me! I was twelve! I was twelve years old and you gave me a responsibility that most adults couldn’t handle! You said not to give up on them when they’d all given up on themselves! I would lay on the ground night after night, wondering what slight detail could have been changed to avoid this entire mess,” the Heart princess yelled as she felt tears begin to stream down her face. “Why didn’t you wait! You should have built relationships with the other lands before inviting them into our home! Or you should have not made me a guardian of them gem so young! Why didn’t you stop me? You should have done something, damn it!”

Though her eyes were still blurred, she could see her father’s form sit on the floor across from her.

“You’re right. It was the biggest mistake of my life,” she heard her father mumble out.

“It definitely was, so why did you do it?” Raya asked, desperate for an explanation.

“I just, I wanted you to live in a better world. And I was too impatient with the progress we had been making. I hadn’t been planning on telling you this until you were much older, but a few weeks before that gathering, I was attacked,” Benja admitted.

“You what?” Raya gasped.

“You know your grandparents died very early on in my youth. The elders thrust me onto the throne before I was ready. After the attempt on my life, I just wanted to make sure that would never happen to you. I had to find a way to make the world a better place before it was too late,” her Ba whispered.

Raya wiped away her tears and got a good look at her father that was now sitting on the floor. She’d never seen him look so haunted in her entire life.

“You know, when I had you, I wanted nothing more than for you to have all the time in the world to be a child,” her father continued solemnly. “That’s why I was so hellbent on finding a way to make Kumandra united again. I wanted a quick and easy solution to our problems. The whole point of that day was to make your future better. Instead, I doomed you.”

Raya walked closer to her father when she heard the quiver in his voice. Se crouched down to see tears were streaming down his face.

“I failed you, Raya. Not a day goes by where I don’t think of it. From the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry for all the pain I caused you. I should have protected you more. I put too much weight on your shoulders. I understand if you resent me for the rest of your life, but please know that I never meant to hurt you. Everything I have ever done has been to love you and keep you safe from the day you were born,” he choked out.

Seeing her ba cry just made tears well up in Raya’s eyes. Wordlessly, Raya crawled onto his lap like she used to as a kid. Her father wrapped his arms around her waist and she leaned against his neck.

Raya didn’t even realize how much her chest has been heaving until she stopped moving. Hearing her father truly acknowledge his faults in the way everything went down helped Raya find clarity inside herself.

“You know the thing that I hated the most about the Druun?” Raya asked.

“I’m a little scared to hear this but what?” her father replied.

“I hated that you were gone because you’re my best friend and the person I love most,” the Heart princess cried. She felt her father’s arm tighten around her.

No words were exchanged as the two wallowed in their own misery and regret together. Despite the heavy atmosphere in the room, it’s the lightest Raya has felt since her ba returned from stone.

“I’m sorry, for everything I’ve done. Please, please don’t hate me forever,” her father begged her. Raya laughed weakly while shaking her head.

“I could never hate you, ba. I didn’t even realize I was holding a grudge, but having this talk made me feel a lot better. I think we just need to take everything one step at a time from this point on,” the Heart princess sniffled. She smiled hearing her father sigh in relief.

“Okay good. I know I said resenting me forever would have been okay and it would have, but I honestly don’t know if my heart would have been able to take it,” Benja chuckled.

“On that note, I should probably address that mess I made behind me,” Raya frowned, looking at the wreckage.

“You certainly did a number here,” her father noted.

“Hey Ba? One more thing,” Raya said.

“What is it Dewdrop?” he asked curiously.

“I forgive you,” Raya told him sincerely.

“Thank you,” Benja sighed, completely relieved. After giving her one last squeeze he loosened his arms a bit so that Raya could break free.

Raya smiled a bit and used the rather minimal strength she had left to get back up on her feet. She stretched out her hand for her father. Just when he was about to take it, he gasped loudly and brought her hand to his face. Raya’s confusion didn’t last long when she realized her hand was covered in tiny cuts from the glass. Raya hadn’t even realize she was bleeding until now.

“Stay there, I know there’s some disinfectants stuffed in this kitchen somewhere. We have way too many accident prone chefs,” her father mentioned.

Raya nodded and sat quietly on floor as her father rummaged through the cabinets to get what he needed to heal her wounds. No words were spoken as Benja took her left hand in his.

The Heart princess winced when the disinfectant made contact with her skin. She bit her lip as the stinging sensation traveled all across her hand. Raya then watched her ba firmly wrap the bandage around her hand. Thankfully, the right hand was done at a much faster pace.

“Does that feel okay? I didn’t wrap them too tightly did I?” Benja asked with concern etched in his voice.

“It’s good, Ba. Thank you. I suppose now I need to get rid of this wreck,” Raya sighed. Turning her attention to the floor with the shattered glass made her cringe because of how much work needed to be done. The glass shattered into very tiny pieces. Man, she really didn’t think this through.

“Dewdrop, you’re exhausted and injured. I’m more than happy to send a couple maids up here,” Benja told her. Then he reassessed the damage and realized how bad it was. “Or maybe a small army of maids, but the point still stands.”

“No, don’t make the poor maids suffer because of my breakdown. I’ll clean it up, it’s fine. I can make it work even with the bandages. It was kind of on purpose so I’d feel bad making them do it,” Raya sighed, waving her ba off.

She grabbed an empty bag that was originally used to transport fresh vegetables and crouched down to start picking up the glass shards. To Raya’s surprise, her father crouched down and also began picking up shards.

“Ba, it’s okay, I can clean it up myself. I’m not a kid anymore,” Raya told him.

“Well I know that, but I’m still your ba. Just because you can do something alone doesn’t mean you have to. It’s my job as a father to help my daughter clean up her messes, no matter how old she is,” Benja said.

Raya said no words but flung her arms around him. Her ba wasted no time in wrapping both arms around her tightly, almost afraid to let go. The Heart princess bit back another sob when she realized she felt protected in her father’s arms again. She needed that talk more than she realized. The Heart princess still sniffled a bit and tried regaining her composure.

“Since you’re so adamant about helping me clean my messes, I sorta kinda may have threatened to burn Namaari alive and had huge screaming match with her so if there’s any way you could do some damage control for that, I’d be eternally grateful,” Raya laughed nervously as they slowly pulled away from each other.

“I’ll handle it,” her ba sighed. “I see that violent charm you had as a child hasn’t changed throughout the years. You definitely got that from your mother.”

“Hey, don’t pawn off all my bad traits on Ma. Poor woman can’t even defend herself,” the princess joked as she proceeded to clean up the glass shards.

“I know she would have done the same to me, we understood each other that way,” her father chuckled.

Benja reached forward to grab a piece of glass but winced before he even got hold of it.

“You alright back there? You didn’t cut yourself, did you?” Raya asked.

“No, I’m fine. My knees just started really hurting all of a sudden,” her father frowned.

“Oh ba, just sit down and let me clean up myself. I wouldn’t want you to hurt your old man knees,” Raya grinned. Amusement was shining in her eyes as her ba pulled the most offended face he could muster.

“Excuse you, I am not old! I have not aged a day since I’ve been turned to stone! In fact, I haven’t aged at all. I’m still thirty five!” Benja spat indignantly.

“I don’t know ba, I see those grey hairs,” Raya laughed knowing full well there was not a single strand of grey on his head.

“Wait are you serious?” Benja asked as he brought one of the bigger glass shards to his face to examine his reflection. “I’m telling you right now that if there is a grey strand in here I’m grounding you because it was definitely your fault.”

The Heart princess began absolutely cackling at the sight of her father’s distressed face. After a very in depth examination Benja was able to come to the conclusion that Raya was pulling his leg.

“You’re just lucky,” her ba huffed.

“Yeah, I really am,” Raya said sincerely.

With these horrible barriers broken down, both father and daughter worked tirelessly to pick up the pieces, one step at a time.

#raya and the last dragon #namaari #ratld #raya x namaari #rayaari #namaari x raya #raya and namaari #ratld namaari #raya disney #ratld raya #rayamaari #raya of heart #raymaari #disney raya #raya namaari #namaari of fang #raya incorrect quotes #ratld incorrect quotes #disney ratld

22 notes · View notes