#this was like. enrichment. thank you
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PLEASE do the toontown online rant i want it so badly
this post kinda got away from me, and by "got away from me" i mean this 3000 word toontown rant is Part One. there will be a Part Two to this later in which i actually talk about the fanservers i wanted to talk about. anyway let's go
toontown online (tto) was a children's mostly-turn-based subscription MMO released in 2003. after a few years of obviously being on life support, disney gave a one-month notice that tto (and several other games) would be closing on september 19th, 2013. on the same day the game closed, the fan-run server toontown rewritten (ttr) was announced (with multiple other fanservers/fangames/reimaginings being established since), and is a few months away from outliving the original game
see, one thing about tto that allowed fanservers to crop up so quickly and easily was that it had, um, interesting choices. very interesting choices. like, "kids could use a code injector to turn their backyards into giant mashed-together nightmarescapes"-level choices
youtube
(loose video description: a rabbit toon running around a chaotic mismash of rooms, obstacles, and npcs that Should Not Be There. audio caption: Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life".)
but ok let's talk about the actual game first.
toontown online (tto)
the game starts with you creating your player character - you can pick from eventually-9 species, a couple body types, and 2 dozen preset colors. the gender code is a spaghetti nightmare but you won't learn this until the fanservers come about so don't worry about it. you're then taken to the Toontorial, which explains maybe 20% of the game's mechanics before setting you loose into the main game
the toontorial also gives you the basic "plot", such as it is: Toontown is suddenly* under attack by a bunch of boring businessrobots called the Cogs. their goal is to turn toontown into a dreary gray featureless corporate hell; their business activities are so boring that they're physically painful to be around. luckily, they can't take a joke, so the toons have figured out how to defeat them: by playing pranks on them until they laugh so hard they Explode
*originally, the game installer had a little animation giving a backstory for the Cogs' creation. this was never referenced in game, removed pretty quickly, and i think even the devs kinda forgot it existed
that's...pretty much the whole story! in that context, your toon progresses through all of toontown, helping some mostly-pretty-interchangeable shopkeepers, reclaiming buildings from the cogs, eating ice cream, etc. occasionally, the cogs would Come Up With New Tricks (read: major content update) and the toons would Find A Way To Fight Back (read: same major content update). that was the closest thing to Plot, unless you count "the devs scheduled a bunch of invasions of high-tier cogs right before the game's closure". but...i doubt most the kids really expected a Plot. mickey mouse was there
the gameplay:
the Free Account
there were two...pretty different approaches to playing toontown online. when the game launched, there was a 3-day free trial to the entire game, after which you got kicked entirely until you subscribed. at some point, this was changed so that the first area, Toontown Central (TTC), was Always Free - you could do all of that area's quests/"taskline" and limited activities, indefinitely, and in theory this would make you beg your parents for the rest of the game
i have no idea if this actually got more subscriptions or not. from what i can tell it just spawned more warrior cats
(source)
there were. a Lot of warrior cats. there were some other social activities, too, such as Fashion Shows (with your limited range of clothes) and Begging Subscribed Players To Summon Cog Buildings To TTC and Getting Chat Banned. ...however, as one of the subscription kids i didn't really interact with this side of the game, so i'm not the best person to talk about it
2. the Paid Account
mmm look at those crisp clear graphics. hell yes
a subscription account gave you access to this whole map, along with all these areas' tasklines. to progress through the game, you must complete a variety of "ToonTasks" for the Toon Resistance (it's called that. their catchphrase is "Toons of the World, Unite!". you were giving disney money for this). these reward you by increasing your max health (your "Laff Points"), slowly unlocking more combat options, and sending you to different, higher-difficulty areas of toontown
some of these tasks were...longer than others. generally, though, they all boiled down to: "just go fight some cogs"
combat:
(source)
toontown battles are turn-based: the players use their attacks ("gags") first, and then any surviving cogs attack you with, usually, office equipment and puns thereof (unless the cog is e.g. a Loan Shark, in which case they can just fucking bite you). if you defeat a cog, it explodes; if the cog defeats you, you "go sad" and are sent back to the safety of the playground, lose your gag inventory, and can't leave until you heal.
early on, most your battles are 1v1, but later on almost everything is a multiplayer 4-ish-v-4.
an...interesting feature here in the game's early days was that you could only Type Your Own Words to someone who shared their "friend code" with you IRL. otherwise, you had to use this thing:
(source)
you had a set list of phrases you could string together, which generally covered most the things you wanted to say. but it could get frustrating when you wanted to have a real conversation with your toontown friends! so...as the source above mentions, people obviously found ways around the system. turns out that if you let players move objects around their houses, they will use that to Draw Letters and pass their friend code along regardless
eventually - before the warrior cats, of course - disney presumably realized this system was pretty goofy (🥁) , so the game got a real chat, albeit one that functioned on a very strict whitelist. my favorite is that it didn't let you type numbers, however you could just say won too tree for hive etc. like. disney i really don't know what to tell you. anyway
(isn't he charming)
cogs come in levels 1-12, with levels displayed above their heads, and as you'd expect their damage output and HP increase with their level. however, the game doesn't...actually show you cog HP? instead they have a little colored light on their chest that fades from green to red until they explode. you see numbers on all the damage you do, and you see your own HP/laff, but never the cogs'. also lategame cogs are Too Tall For You To See Their Level once they line up for battle (which isn't actually that bad but it's funny). there's a formula for HP per level, but it's never mentioned in-game. i guess someone can teach it to you but then you have to watch them type "a level tin cog has won tree too health" and is that really worth it
(as you can tell i just…don't get this. "my kid is practicing arithmetic with toontown!" - marketing angle expressly denied by god. the stealth edutainment was right there)
anyway! in theory, you have seven base combat options ("gag tracks"), which combine in a variety of ways:
toon-up, which restores your teammates' health;
trap, which does guaranteed high damage but only if someone uses lure;
lure, which stuns the cogs for a few turns and is the only way to make trap work
sound, which does low damage to every cog;
throw, which does medium-high-ish damage to one cog; multiple throws combined give percentage combo damage, and hitting a lured cog will also add percentage "knockback damage";
squirt, which is exactly like throw but less damage;
and drop, which does high damage but cannot hit lured cogs, and has low accuracy unless you hit the cog with something else first
each gag track has 6 levels, which you unlock by using that gag track a bunch. you can't carry as many of the high levels with you - i mean, putting one piano in your backpack makes perfect sense, but two is just silly, right
a few years into the game's lifespan, level 7s were added - these were huge AOE that you could regain with every 500 track EXP. there was also something called "organic gags" to promote the please-log-in-every-day gardening system
every player starts with throw and squirt, and throughout the game you slowly unlock four more gag tracks. your choices are permanent: once you have your six tracks, you're locked out of the seventh forever.
in theory, all of this opens up a huge variety of combat options!
in practice, the battle strategy looks something like this:
use sound
as mentioned, almost all of lategame will be 4v4 battles, which means sound will almost always outdamage everything on earth. you don't even need four foghorns (the highest normal sound gag) to break 200 AOE damage, and the highest health a cog EVER has is 200*. and two of the boss battles can reward you with gag restocks and heals that you can use mid-battle with no consequences (other than having to grind for those rewards a bunch). and failing THAT, you can just...ration your foghorns and take 2 turns to clear a set of cogs, interspersed with healing.
(*okay there was something called "v2.0 cogs" but they were...strange, and we just used sound anyway)
sure, once level 7s were added you could use those occasionally. and you could fall back on lure+throw if you didn't want to use your sound restocks. but even then, for most of tto's existence there was something called the "knockback bug" which. well. just look at it
(link for transcript. it's tvtropes sorry)
if you are a target-audience eight-year-old this translates to "lure + throw will only do enough damage if the cogs Feel like it." like it's really just insult to injury at this point. this was the result of One misplaced variable and was not fixed until the game closed
in the tto era, if you didn't have sound, you were kinda doomed to be kicked out of every fight forever
(bonus fun fact: there were Four entire battle themes and they were 40-second midi loops. let me out)
the bosses:
each of the four cog departments has a Boss Cog. to face off against them, you have to assemble a cog disguise and collect enough merits/stock options/whatever to be allowed into the boss's office.
(pictured: your convincing disguise)
when you enter, your disguise pops off due to Reasons, and you have to fight through...a bunch of waves of normal cogs. it's basically a really long normal battle. once the minions are dealt with, you have to, inexplicably, do a live-action battle against the boss themself:
youtube
(loose video description: four toons defeating the CFO by using magnet cranes to hit him in the face with safes for 32 seconds.)
the live-action rounds aren't supposed to go this quickly, but it's still...kinda strange? certain reoccurring game areas require Parkour, but there are no battles like this outside of the Four bosses. the CFO's room is the only place you see these cranes and they have A Lot Going On. the other 3 bosses have their own unique weird mechanics. before the first boss was added we neither had nor needed the ability to Jump. it's just weird
once you've defeated the boss, you're given a reward of varying usefulness (the best/most unbalanced reward type is Unites, which are a free heal or gag restock you can do inside or outside of battle. essentially lategame toons can simply choose not to die. riv2u etc.)
and, um. then you get some more merits/stock options/whatever and do it again. and again. and again. and again. and agai
the grind:
so the thing is that tto was a subscription mmo. every addition to the game had to be measured, above all, in terms of "how can we best get kids to beg their parents to give us money." this especially shows in the suit grind:
(source/source)
you have to defeat each boss 78 times in order to get all their laff points - and as you proceed, you have to defeat an increasing amount of cogs to even be allowed into the boss (although once you max you get in for free).
by far the easiest way is to run through the designated HQ facilities - basically, cog fights interspersed with some platforming or minigames. you only collect your merits/whatever at the Very End of the facility. the only way to increase what a facility gives you is if your last battle ends during an "invasion" - a timed period where One Specific Cog replaces all street cogs, usually summoned with boss rewards.
the sellbot HQ grind isn't so bad. bossbot HQ - the endest-game HQ - frequently requires you to do an hour-long facility and on six separate occasions you have to do seven of them. if the invasion ends before your final battle, you have to sit around until someone summons another. if you lose your internet connection because it's 2008, or if your parents make you come to dinner, or if hacking or the game's general bugginess cause a server reset because you're probably in the busiest district for the invasion bonus, you have spent that Entire Hour On Nothing. the CEO (bossbot cog boss) probably also takes an hour because you and your fellow players are 10
this shit, combined with laff points locked behind gardening (time-gated), racing and golfing (multiplayer minigames with absurd requirements), and fishing (RNG-based with some fish being absurdly rare. i watched my mom fish for one every day for a month), meant that maxing a toon took Years, if you managed it ever.
it wasn't, um. it wasn't good
ok so what else is wrong with this game:
i had "aged out of the game" (lol) by the early '10s, so i'm not the best person to do a writeup of the hacking/scripting situation of those days. that said, what i'm going to do is give you a few examples, and i want you to just...look at them
(source)
(source). early '10s youtube was funny i'm trying to decide if i miss it
(source). fun thing to note here is that other players had collision, so a swarm of t-posing toons could just barricade the gag shop if they wanted to
youtube
(video description: toon who has Replaced His Head Model With An Anime Logo throwing thousands of jellybeans at everyone) (cw mild flashing just in case? and also the feather headband accessory)
i should note that the Bring Me To Life vid i started with was client-side, meaning only the player could see their technicolor hellscape. this guy's face was server-side. i do Not Think you should be able to do that
youtube
(video description: a player demonstrating use of a bot to get into the nutty river district, followed by other players using it to go to different game areas)
the above video was posted on august 17th, 2013. if you don't want to watch an Unregistered Hypercam 3 recording at about 5 frames per second, what's going on here is:
the player goes to a specific location and says a specific speedchat phrase.
a bot toon teleports to their location and provides some prompts on how to use it
the player tells the bot, via speedchat, to teleport to the (currently closed from the outside) busiest district so the player can follow
these "taxi toons" were server-sided, persisted across server resets, were made by a future fanserver dev, had younger kids referring to them as a "glitch" as if this were something that could Accidentally Happen, and stayed functional until the game closed
like...a lot of the "hacking" was just baby's first script download. this one - afaict also created by the laughing man head guy - is like...the fact that after years of no substantial game updates, someone effectively programmed their own "QOL feature" (note: not actually good for the poor mid-00s server being turned into a clown car) into a silly disney MMO and it just fucking sat there for a year is just. it's just.
i don't know what this is. this is not Playing The Game Toontown Online. this is nothing. this is everything. there are comments from 2013 on some of these videos saying stuff like "hackers killed toontown", but your game cannot have this happen if it is not already dying
and, like...it was. i'm not sure how many moderators there were by this point, but at the very end of tto, the number of active devs was One. the original devteam recently brought this up at the 20th anniversary celebration: devs just...slowly started getting pulled from the game, one at a time. there were a few updates after bossbot HQ - Field Offices, which i've basically never heard anything good about in their tto form ever; the Silly Meter, a yearly event...thing whose main function was to add unskippable dancing-inanimate-object cutscenes to your street battles; Parties, which...yknow parties were okay actually. i accept parties. but they weren't exactly a Major Game Update like the ones that had come before. in 2011 we gained the ability to Wear Hats. in 2012 the test server got some actual QOL updates that never made it to the main game; the final test server update was some maintenance in february, and then nothing for 18 months. disney was not providing enough resources to address the scripting because disney was not providing enough resources to address toontown. imagine being the last dev standing on an MMO that was older than some of its players, was losing its business model to mobile gaming, and spent most of its life falling apart at the seams. just imagine it, for a second
it couldn't have kept going, not like this.
on august 20, 2013, the closing announcement came: we had a month left of toontown online. the test server shut immediately; subscription refunds went out, and the game became actually F2P for the month; the part of the announcement that went like "we're shifting our focus to other games!" made a bunch of twelve-year-olds hate club penguin as if club penguin wouldn't also close in a few years; all the holiday events went off at once; and...
there wasn't a "thanks for playing!" popup. everyone online just got kicked, all at once. it was finally over
hey wait.
#toontown#toontown online#tto#tft talks#tft stuff#<- this goes in that tag i think#this was like. enrichment. thank you
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nothing better than taking your bra off after a long day
tip or treat 🖤
#queer ns/fw#queer nsft#sapphic ns/fw#sapphic nsft#bi ns/fw#ns/fw gif#not really a jpg but i’m not making a second tag for imagery of my visage#i’ve had this blog/account for like a week and it’s already been very enriching#so you get this as a treat!#please say thank you#morrigan.gif
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Oh that's a dwagon! (they're so cute!)
Siblings that hoot and holler together, stay together. (thank you so much!! I love these silly lil kids)
#my characters#sobbing thank you anon for liking my ocs#like she might have a human form but she really loves being in her dragon form#big lizard gal napping in the sun just vibing at home#they luckily live in the middle of nowhere so she can do so peacefully and not terrify neighbors#also because i just live this fact so much about them im gonna say it again#vik literally learned how to use a bow and arrow JUST for playing fetch with his sister as enrichment for a dragon#hes incredibly skilled at archery now so thats his weapon of choice and the fact he trained as making arrows fly as far as possible#he has really good range lmao hes like wow thats way closer than for a flying dragon pog i got this#he does like to be contrary a lot so when asked about why he picked the bow n arrow hes like#i dont like fighting :c i have to fight from a distance or im scared :c i dont wanna be mean#and his traveling buddies are like that is the biggest lie i have ever heard wtf
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Maxiel prompt: anything to do with wag Daniel.
daniel is a fan-favourite wag-- or like, as much of a fan favourite as you can be while still being a wag (there will always be strange haters). he's a bit weirded out by it all at first, the attention for literally just seeing a guy (and max is, definitely in all ways just some guy) but daniel is also a bit of a peacock in every universe, so OBVIOUSLY thrives off of this
daniel loves those wag fashion accounts he finds them so funny but also likes to be helpful-- sometimes when he sees that they've gone hat: unknown, he'll reach out and be like hey bought my hat from (x brand) btw!
he likes posting max, making tiktoks with him etc. not just in big ways but subtle ones too (think: lily muni he's brillll socials presence) and like... daniel understands marketing and the importance of image and sure, it's not like this is some kind of PR relationship, or that he's shelling out their life for content but... he's always liked documenting!!
daniel makes his .jpg acc in this verse and it blows up, obviously, he just gets along with everyone really well and at this point its like, 2-3 years into their relationship so he's been in the paddock a ton now and just hung out with drivers/their wags in a normal way. so he CAN just go up to valtteri (who they see a lot if they're all in melbs/aus) and be like LOL CHEESE! (everyone finds it rlly funny when he gets in 'trouble' then has to put that 'licensed photographer' sticker on his camera from the f1 officials) daniel changes his bio to say an official f1 photographer 📷 for shits and giggles
the first time he gets interviewed in the paddock he doesn't even remember what he says-- totally blanks out and just rambles because he's already nervous and oh god totally not pr trained and-- gah! he's sure it's a weird rambling mess! except then he catches up to max later and max is like "so i heard you were off being famous!" and daniels like urghh no don't make fun of me, and max is like what? no you were rlly great apparently! very impressive. and daniels like oh.... oh okay :)
max and daniel do NOT do soft launching-- they literally go on a few dates fall very hard and fast in love and then daniel is being hard posted on max's ig bc he does not do social conventions like that lmfao. max is very like but im dating you... so im going to post our photos together. obviously. and daniels like oh but the mystery! the intrigue! max finds it rlly funny.
they do dinner at the horners pretty often-- daniel always says he feels like some kind of real housewife, which max finds hilarious, and they get very VERY drunk on their expensive gins.
#thanks i made this into just like a bunch of headcanons lolll#very silly simple.. thank you for the enrichment lolll.#daniel taking selfies in max's helmets mushroom style#maxiel#mv33#dr3#my fic#asks
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@undead-dante submitted:
Rereading jtta.. Ik in her big ass bed
—
she is just a little baby 😔 not her fault lucifer severely overestimated the amount of space one juvenile human would need
#planned it out like 'alright big enclosure with lots of enrichment. big ass tree in the middle that'll do it.'#'little humans run around right. they need lots of room for that. big bed. yeah that should work'#(i know based on nightbringer they already had the guest room as is when they first moved in)#(but i think that's stupid therefore in jtta the guest room used to be a glorified storage room basically)#(and lucifer just bought whatever to make it into what he thought would be a suitable room for a human)#(he was like one misguided research book away from giving her a big water bottle like hamsters have)#submission#undead-dante#thank you for this by the way it's excellent
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Yo do you have like a masterpost explaining the fantasy au???? I've been eating that shit up it is DELIGHTFUL and VERY well done 10/10 but I'm not 10000% sure what's going on bc I found your blog kinda recently lol
Also I hope you feel better, sorry you're sick <3
uhhhh not really! things on this blog are Very spread out bc im not serious about aus enough to make like. masterposts or big explanations. its for funsies Not seriousies.
but you can piece it together through the au tag, which every post is tagged with, either through my archive (recommended) or by just clicking on the tag (not recommended)
#aus are just me fuckin around and finding out! <3#plus. its enrichment for you guys#gotta go digging... gotta piece it together yourselves...#i say as if ive been planting like. idk secrets or whatever#which i havent lmao#that would be a whole lotta Effort! and i couldnt be fucked!#gotta save the real brainpower for my own things yk yk#and for ripping WH apart like a dog with its favorite chew toy ofc <3#rambles from the bog#also Thank You!#through the power of dayquil and frequent naps i am surviving!#i will Persevere!
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so i'm coming from LA and a friend's reccomendation, and i was told zoro keeps the crew's single braincell safe until someone needs it, can you confirm this?
this is definitely a loaded question, because my gut instinct was to say, “no! absolutely not!” he’s plenty smart, but not the keeper of the braincell. he’s the levelheaded backbone of the crew and the voice of reason when circumstances get utterly dire—and he’s an expert at close-range battle strategy—but 99% of the time he is one of the crew’s TOP mayhem mode enablers.
HOWEVER, i can absolutely see how you (and/or your friend) would get that impression from OPLA. despite the delicious violence (and sass!) OPLA zoro gave us, he is significantly less chaotic overall. in some ways, OPLA zoro feels closer to post-timeskip manga zoro—pre-ts manga zoro is just as silly as the rest of the straw hats—
(exhibit A—healing after trying to cut his own legs off)
(exhibit B—going without a coat or shoes on a winter island for “training” reasons, then regretting it a little)
but even after the timeskip (when he gets a bit more serious) he’s still Prime Dumbass (affectionate)
(exhibit A—they’re attempting to infiltrate another country using fake names and… well. 10/10 creativity, guys. absolutely killing it.)
(exhibit B—the joke here is that they’re attempting a stealth mission, but Zoro has just leveled several buildings and left a number of bodies in his wake… and yet…)
—all in all, manga/anime zoro is similar but fundamentally different from OPLA zoro, so the short answer is no, although he does have his turn with the crew braincell (and he’s by no means unintelligent), he’s definitely not the primary braincell holder. he’s way too chaotic for that, and we love him for it (♡-_-♡)
if anyone on the crew holds the braincell for safekeeping, i would argue it’s either nami or jinbei
#answers#i don’t really ever do this with asks but i was FRIED after work and#real talk i presented this ask to the server and it sent everyone into a frenzy#EXTREMELY funny and started like a four hour discussion on zoros character#OPLA zoro vs. manga/anime zoro#then we got on the topic of translations and stuff#thank you for providing enrichment to our enclosure#we were a bunch of greek philosophers debating about zoros baseline braincell holding capabilities#caps from salteytakesonmanga
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I love it when durge gets this one particular expression on their face and you just know you're gonna do something fucked up in T-minus 10 seconds. I have lovingly dubbed it The Grinch Face™️
#it's been a minute since i've seen this face. not since we killed timber i don't think#thanks papa bhaal for the incredible powers of *checks notes* persistent and uncalled for animal murder. bro wtf lmfao#RIP to all the animals my NATURE CLERIC tries to talk to i guess 😂#(I'm kidding it's only the two but like. if I had a nickle etc etc)#bg3#rosie plays games kinda okay#ah shit here we go again#the dark urge#sorry for showing you (people on this blog) all of these but they are my enrichment and they must be posted
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I see people talk about fanfiction and novels being different mediums a lot, and while I don’t necessarily disagree, I don’t feel like I understand either. In your opinion, what makes them different mediums from each other? What decides that two things are separate mediums like in general? It’s totally cool if you don’t wanna answer this btw, I know it’s kind of a lot
No worries I think that's an interesting question! With any categories, the boundaries on this are going to be fuzzy, but the reason I believe they're different mediums is that fundamentally, on a metatextual level, the languages are different. What do I mean by this? Let's use film as an example, a medium that I'd argue is very obviously a different medium than novels, even if we may not be able to articulate all the reasons why.
What are some attributes of film that differentiate it from novels (another storytelling medium) or paintings (another visual medium)? Films and novels are both storytelling mediums, but films have visual and auditory components. They also mainly consist of storytelling through visual cues and dialogue. Exposition is given visually or in media res by characters speaking. In a novel, your omniscient narrator giving you a few paragraphs of background on your main characters is common, and so expected it probably flies over the reader's head. In a film, a narrator doing the exact same thing for all the main characters often comes off clumsy. It takes you out of the story in a film, where it doesn't in a novel.
Film is also a time-based medium. A film unfolds over time, and you cannot experience the entire film in one moment or glance. That's not true of a painting (at least traditionally). With a painting, you can view the whole painting in one look. Now, you can sit with a painting, pick out details, analyze the craft or ponder it for a long time and watch as new aspects jump out at you. Fundamentally, however, if you wanted to view a whole painting in one look, you can, and it would still make sense. You cannot do that with a film. On the other hand, a painting is typically not an auditory experience. To do so would be an experimental use of the form. In modern film-making, the exact opposite is true. Music, dialogue, and environmental sound, all of these things are essential to how a film tells a story. To not use them would be considered experimental or odd.
These are three different mediums with three different "languages" in how they interact with their audience. They may share parts of their languages, like I said above, but they don't speak the same language. What works well for one medium can come off clumsy or strange in another.
I believe fanfic and novels have sufficiently different languages that they should be considered different mediums. Both of them are short or long form written mediums telling some sort of story. But fanfic's relationship to its source material is such an inherent trait that novels do not have. The relationship doesn't have to be positive (it's often, in fact, argumentative or strained or dismissive), but the relationship exists. Even in AU fanfiction. Even in fics full of OCs.
In canon compliant and even canon divergent fics, this relationship is more obvious. These fics are both conversations with the source material as much as they are stories. They're playing in the author's sandbox, or they're wrecking their sandcastle and building something else. They're saying "I like/dislike what you did with this specific story, and I'm going to show you that by rewriting or expanding it." They take large aspects of the author's story whole cloth: the characters, the setting, the magic system, the tech, etc.
These fanfics often have little exposition at the top because they presume a familiarity with the characters, the world, or both. This alone makes them really different from novels. Creatively and seamlessly integrating exposition, immersing your audience in a new world and convincing them to stay, is a really important aspect of a novel that these fics don't have to contend with. This alone fundamentally changes how you'd structure a story.
For AU fics, both fics in AU settings and AU fics full of OCs, the above still applies. These fics are still a conversation with the source material. Something about the source material compelled an author to flip it and remix it and change it around. That conversation might be "in the source material, these characters suffered, and I don't want them to suffer any longer" or it could be "I felt the story had a vacancy that this OC fills" or it could be "if these characters had the time/awareness/ability to grow closer, they would've fallen in love." These are all direct commentaries on the original work.
An exercise that I believe illustrates this point the best is to try and adapt an AU fanfic to an original work. Try to file the serial numbers off. I've done this with some of my fic, and it just doesn't work. You don't realize how much you presume the audience knows until you have to cater to an audience who knows nothing of the source material. That hilarious joke you wrote? Turns out it's only funny because it's a nod to this character's original characterization. This awesome climatic plot point that ties the whole story together? Turns out in relies on a specific bit of lore, a quirk of the magic system, or an aspect of the character's past history or personality. Now that this is a novel, you have to back-fill all of that exposition. And you can try to do that, but watch how your story gets clunky and bloated. You will have to start viciously killing your darlings, as you realize that your favorite scene is beautiful in a fic, but sounds awkward and out of place in a novel. Soon, you're basically just rewriting the whole thing to fit a different medium.
Many fanfic writers are extremely talented. And much of that talent, that wit, that perfect line that you can't get out of your head, is integrally informed by your knowledge of the source material. The irony falls flat without having read the source books. The relationships suddenly feel shallow when you don't have seasons of backstory to deepen them. You do not realize how much of fanfic writing consists of this back and forth until you go looking for it.
And here's the thing: if your fanfic has a totally AU setting and it consists of completely original characters, I'd argue that's just a novel posted to AO3. If all you need to do is change the names to make it work, that's a novel. This is why Clueless is inspired by Jane Austen's Emma and not an AU fanfic of it. If you've never read Emma, if you went into Clueless not knowing that Emma was the inspiration for it, you'd perfectly understand the movie.
In fanfic, the source material is always present. It can be obviously present with canon compliant fic. It can be antagonistically present with canon divergent or AU fic. And it is still present, floating in the background, with totally AU fic. Ultimately, the changes a fanfic author makes to the source material are, themselves, as integral to the fanfic as the words on the page. It is a dialogue with the source material: what it did well, what it could've done better, what this author believes is the essence of the story, or the world pushed to its limit, that even though we're in space or in a coffee shop or 1920s New York, we're still, on some level talking about the source material.
This is an aspect of fanfic I love that novels do not have. Novels have a lot of other great stuff! I love novels! But while novels are often engaged in a dialogue with their present society or their predecessors in a genre, that conversation is much more nebulous than it is with fanfic. You can read Slaughterhouse-Five or Gravity's Rainbow, and while knowing their contexts helps you understand them on a deeper level, that is unnecessary to their enjoyment. They are fundamentally more standalone works than fanfic will ever be.
This is ultimately why I think comparing fanfic and novels is comparing apples to oranges. They're different mediums. They use different languages. They require different skills and they fill different artistic niches. You might as well be comparing a film to a painting just because they're both visual art.
#ok to rb#this is not the point of the post but people do often compare films to paintings ('every frame a painting etc')#it's perfectly valid and super cool to compare fics and novels as two different mediums#by doing so we gain a deeper understanding of both mediums#bc all art is a conversation with other art#but this is not what these posts are doing when they say 'see! fanfic writers are more talented than lots of published novels!'#they are treating both as the same form and making an argument that fanfic is slighted within this medium for a presumed lack of skill#which to me is like comparing a film to a painting by saying#'reblog if you know cinematographers who compose more beautiful shots than any jackson pollock painting!'#hailing frequencies open#Anonymous#thank you for this! i'm recovering from bottom surgery and this was excellent enrichment that i could do from bed#apologies for the long post but i feel like it's better than putting the whole thing under cut#long post ///
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I have a headcanon I'm curious about your opinion on if you don't mind, as I've seen many differing opinions on this.
In BotW, Urbosa brings up Nabooru by name, even stating her to be the namesake of Divine Beast Vah Naboris. The Divine Beasts are also believed to be based off of the masks once worn by the ancient Sages, and to me the way the avatars wear the old sage helms when you put on the Divine Helms all but confirms it.
The Nabooru we know and love, I am not sure how likely it is her name alone survived all the way to Hyrule, especially having the ancient part of TotK being over 10,000 years before the Era of the Wilds, and OoT being even further before that (at least as I headcanon it. Hyrule has been destroyed and refounded before. Why couldn't it have happened again?)
That being said, I believe that while the tale of the Sage of Spirit may not have made it to the creation of the Divine Beasts, her name did, often being a beautiful and strong name for young Gerudo. Eventually this name landed upon the young girl who would eventually grow up to harness the very power of the skies, gaining the graces of the newborn kingdom of Hyrule and fighting against her people's corrupted, demonic king, donning a mask that would inspire a machine that embraced her power and then mothering a bloodline of strong matriarchs who would carry her command over lightning in their blood.
Therefore: I believe that the Sage of Lighting from the Era of Myth is named Nabooru, likely unknowingly sharing the name of another great Gerudo hero from a time long forgotten.
That's a great headcanon, and it works well within your framing! And I agree that there's probably been thousands of children named after the original sages. It sounds solid to me!
I haven't read much on the differing headcanons, so I'm in no place to really compare them opinion-wise, as I personally don't place the Wilds Era with the other timelines. It feels to me like a retcon/consolidation of all the games, so I don't try to place it in concurrence, but I salute those of you who do! It's hard work!
This isn't intended to debunk anyone's theory, I'm just gonna ramble about neat things in Game Design real quick lol
I do think there are very distinct and intentional design pulls from Nabooru in the SoL's design that are not (as far as I know) consistent with other Gerudo design, including Riju and Urbosa. Though her design is Completely Different from Nabooru in OoT, there are a lot of very subtle detail references:
Credit to @/sidonisms for the model pull
The most obvious to me is the color of her secret stone: Despite the color for lightning stones in both BotW and TotK being topaz (Ganondorf's favored gem and pre-triforce ability in OoT) and it becoming more of a gold on Riju, this sage's stone is specifically the color of the Spirit token from Ocarina of Time (shown more clearly below). It's also the same shape, but I've dismissed that since they're all the same shape.
She also appears to be one of the few if not the only?? Gerudo with a vertical earring, where most of them wear hoops (also true in OoT! The other Gerudo wear studs like Ganondorf did pre-timeskip -- fun fact, Ganondorf wears hoops in TotK).
While most Gerudo wear an arm band or two, most of them are solid bands. The Sage's, I suspect, is intentionally complex (albeit much more simplified than OoT's) to be reminiscent of Nabooru's. The placement and shape language in her necklace, the placement and stone pattern of her belt, the golden leg braces that only resemble Ganondorf's also imply references to me (only Nabooru and Ganondorf wore the star shaped crests in OoT), and her neon lip color! Which I take to be a reference to Nabooru's original Ganguro Girl design influence.
ALTHOUGH,
It's also very possible that they split Nabooru's aspects into two separate characters; As this woman's high ponytail in a golden cuff, distinctly shaped/colored necklace, and apparent status as Ganondorf's right hand also appear to be direct references to Nabooru:
Maybe it's like Majin Buu and they split her into Nabu and Ru.
Or OOOOH MAYBE it's the SAME character, and it IS a direct reference to OoT Nabooru, since they both have the same eyes and lips and skin tone (and nail polish!), and she just changed her look when she started doubting Ganondorf. I think I just gave myself a new hc, haha, thank you for making me think about this.
ANYWAY!!
For me and my headcanons I feel exactly the same way about the Sage of Lightning that I do about TotK Ganondorf in that -- Yep, that's Nabooru. Also, it's not Nabooru at all. It both is and isn't. It's Naboo-AU-ru.
But my personal hcs aside, I think yours work very well within your framing and make a lot of sense! My opinion is "Yes, Good."
#lozhc#Nabooru#Ganondorf#I feel like I just unlocked something magical in my brain bless#Someone in the fandom has probably already thought of this but as I may have mentioned I am AWFUL at participating in the fandom aklsdJlaks#because of my perspective on TotK my hcs for TotK are Wildly Different but run parallel to my HCs for OoT#so this was very very fun to chew on thank you for throwing a pumpkin into my enclosure for enrichment
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fav chuuya trivia: he’s a lightweight and a wine collector. combine it with the fact that poisons a weakness for him, ability wise, and too much alcohol is in fact poison. he chooses that often.
bonus: combine that with the fact that dazai’s coming of age came with going to a bar, and i don’t know what that means
anon cause shy
Untitled
I.
My dear, even though you treat me kindly,
I'm stubborn. After we parted last night,
I went drinking and berated some weakling. This morning,
Waking up, I remember your kindness
And sadly reflect on my vile behavior. And now,
I, a total fraud, will here confess that, without shame,
Stripped of all dignity, and therefore lacking honesty—
I was urged on by my own illusions, raving mad.
[...]
III.
In this world we sadly live in like this, your heart—
Don't let it grow stubborn my dear
Because I hope for intimacy with you
Your heart— don't let it grow stubborn my dear.
[Excerpted from Poems of the Goat, written by Chuuya Nakahara, translated by Ry Beville]
#bsd chuuya#chuuya nakahara#bungo stray dogs#japanese poetry#thank you for sharing!!#no need to explain anon to me#you are entitled to your mysteries and boundaries and bashfulness#i have anon on because i feel comfy and fine with people engaging however feels most comfortable to them#also i'm going to avoid commenting on what y'all share because i'm already sharing in return by offering up chuuya poetry that strikes me#and because i don't want anyone to think that a lack of a more specific response isn't because i didn't go !!!!! at what they shared#(this exercise is designed so I can also work throughout the day while getting chuuya enrichment)#BUT#alcohol IS poison and that's something I've thought about a lot in my framing of it for myself and generally#but I've never connected it with chuuya's vulnerability to poison and how it is such an equalizer#and how when shirase wanted to ground him and render him someone shirase felt he could face both honestly and to fight he poisoned him#i wonder if alcohol makes chuuya feel a teeny bit more visceral and real and like a person in a body#rather than an experiment or a leader or an act of violence or the salve to someone's loneliness or the vessel of a storm#or someone who wants terribly to lead and protect but is so unsure of himself because of how much he understands the gravity of that role#which isn't to say i think he doesn't want to be a leader and doesn't want to be an act of violence or a salve or a liberated ex-experiment#all of these things and the choices he's made for and because of and despite these things are inextricable from who he is#but every so often#it's nice just to be flesh and electricity
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Just saw a random video of a Star Wars x wing folded from a single page. Would Eiffel be able to do that? I feel you are the one to talk about his skills the most accurately. I think he would see that origami and get excited and try to fold it from the same piece like 2-3 times, give up and get annoyed. But then someday he’d do it without really noticing and get SO excited when it works out
hm. partially, it might come down to framing? if you told him it was origami, he would be like, i don't know, that sounds complicated. but i guarantee he spent many long hours of class time (and subsequent detention time) perfecting his paper plane folding technique, so. if you presented it to him that way, he'd be like, why didn't you say that in the first place? but, that said, he's bad at following instructions, not known for his finer coordination, and it's a tricky thing with a lot of very precise steps, so i don't think it would be his preferred hobby if he had other options. he likes to build and tinker with things. get him one of those star wars lego sets or model building kits; he'd love that.
... i think hera would like origami, though, if she had hands to do it with. i think she'd find something like that grounding. maybe that's my answer, actually. eiffel would get frustrated, but hera could make him little pop culture crafts. as tokens of her affection.
#i think i found the video you mean and it miiight be a little too much to retain the infamous Doug Eiffel Attention Span#like he could eventually do it if he had the instructions and a stack of paper and nothing else to do with his hands#but i think he likes to make things that are a little more technical and tactile and. he likes to put his own spin on things#there's not much room for error or improvisation for something like this and that would bother him#it would blow his mind though for SURE#thank you for asking!! i'm honored to be asked about eiffel#this is enrichment for me#asks
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I just want you to know that your shitposts have inspired me to adopt the saying: “it’s not giving me ✨enrichment✨” when small inconveniences occur in my daily life.
wait i'm gonna start using that phrase it's so good. 2023 the year of using "✨enrichment✨" and "it's not giving me ✨enrichment✨" in our daily lives and not giving anyone context why
#i fully blame watching a wildlife conservationist on my use of enrichment#you see a chinchilla & some foxes get toys and you're like oh this is the best word ever im using it for ellie#im very happy with the outcome#im glad to be doing my part in ruining everyones vocabulary#anonymous#asks#thank you for the new phrase btw im using it now
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It’s so disappointing people don’t engage anymore. No comments, no reblogs, ppl can’t even take a micro second to leave kudos.
I miss having support. I miss community. I miss people caring and being interested. I miss people coming along for the ride with me.
Really makes me want to stop sharing publicly. I try to not get discouraged but man. I’m really fucking discouraged right now.
At least if I went full private and left things just for my eyes, I wouldn’t be so disappointed or feel so neglected.
I’m also such an active cheerleader for other writers, I feel like I am super supportive and to not get any love back, or very little I should say ( the beautiful 2-4 ppl who are amazing, you know who you are) , starts to wear on me. I am seriously thinking about pulling all my work and going private.
I miss how these spaces used to be. And how supportive readers and others used to be too.
#this is a big decision and I’m gonna sit on it before deciding#I’m so tempted to delete everything right now#this isn’t about writing for me#I do#but like many I share because the community and support enriches the experince#now that it’s gone it all just feels to empty and lonely (the public sharing part)#not the writing I’ll always love that#I’m gonna try to think this thru but if I suddenly peace out this month or delete my masterlist u know why#to those who have been lovely thank you
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CAPTAIN IT'S ROBIN PLEEEEASE TELL ME ABOUT THE DEATH GAME RPG YOU PUT YOUR FRIENDS THROUGH I LOVE THOSE
ROBIN ROBIN MY DEAR DEAR MUTUAL ROBIN YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT KIND OF PANDORAN BOX YOU'VE JUST OPENED. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE EXECUTION GAMES
The Execution Games (otherwise known as the exgames, or usually teg) is a series of death games run by yours truly, but more Specifically, is run by the hosts: Killer, Hunter, and Ripper. I'll talk more about them later because I can't ever shut up about them, but the players then include, surprise! me again, but also my dear friends :) who enjoy violence like me :) Teg was truly inspired by my obsession with last life and how badly I wanted to play with my friends, plus my inability to play minecraft at the time and my game design and digital storytelling muses, so you can see those influences. A good handful of us play characters that share names with us (helps that many of us have large hoards of names lol) and so p! is used for players, c! for contestants, the characters actually fighting in the games, and then there are also spectators (s!) who mainly watch, but also Can interact with the playing field in limited ways
As far as what the games actually look like, they go on a weekly basis, with wednesday being Execution Day (or exday), where every contestant must draw a card. The contestant who draws the ace is that week's Executioner, though there can be multiple as people lose lives and also become executioner if they draw the 2 or 3. If you're executioner, you need to kill someone by the end of next exday. Simple as that. If you don't, you become the target of the next week's executioner, and you take double damage from their attacks! :)
Now. the hosts. ohhhhhh the hosts. So the thing about teg is that it's a bit of a meta game. There's an item called your talisman that players have to carry around in real life, and if caught without it they're are consequences for their contestant, and all resources for crafting and whatnot come from photos of real life. So in this nature, the hosts are.. weird. They can talk to the players, for one thing. If we consider Killer (any prns), who was originally the sole host of the games and is their creator, well. a lot of players have talked to Killer directly, and more than once. It's a common occurrence. Killer knows the players, and knows the contestants, and knows the difference between them, because a crucial aspect of teg is this: the contestants are the manifestation of the player's desire to play. The games are violent, and deadly, and lead to heartbreak and destruction and anguish. So of course not every contestant might be happy about playing. But if the player is having a good time? sucks to suck <3 that's what it's all about
As far as the other hosts, they're all siblings, but the other two emerged after Killer. Despite this contradiction, Hunter (she/he/they/it/none) is actually the eldest, and while it doesn't do the hands-on hosting that Killer does, she is responsible for the story and lore of teg, as well as the world itself, the playing field, the arena the contestants find themselves in every games. They actually work with Killer in a sandbox to construct the new playing field between games <3 very sweet. What Isn't so sweet is the youngest bitch Ripper (he/she/they/any). This thing is a bastard. and rude. and generally awful. But Ripper's entire purpose is to be on standby in case of Killer's death, which spawned from a point in time where. uhm. some players were considering trying to kill Killer LMAO so yknow. Ripper can Only host if Killer is dead. which makes him a bit salty LOL
But all of that aside ! The point I touched on about contestants being forced to play even if they don't want to (which a lot don't LOL) is the part I think you'd enjoy as far as "forcing my friends to play death games with me ^_^" since as far as the actual players my dear wondrous friends, they ofc aren't forced to play if they don't want lol, but their contestants are held to their whims <3 and it is the job of me and Killer to keep that locked down YIPPEEEEEEEE!!! ^_^!!!
I'm now going to stop talking before this becomes four billion words LOL. but I love teg. There's actually a secret hidden tegblr that is extremely unfinished and hasn't been touched since the first exgames (we're currently on the fourth) but I've been wanting to revamp, and likely will once I'm back at college ! :D and if you want to hear more, there will certainly be more about it there <3 and also if anyone wants to talk more about teg more it is not hard to get me to talk about it. clearly ASDFLJSABDF. it's been my passion project for a couple years now and I love it dearly <3 so yeah. I love putting my friends through my deathgame rpg ^_^
#captain's mailbox#teg#literally robin you have no idea how happy this ask made me#we r in love now sorry you basically proposed to me (platonic and silly)#but yeah I. love teg. reallyreally wanna get tegblr up and running again. talk about my contestants. etc <3#also @ any teggers if you see this ily. thanks for letting me put you through deathgame <3#it is the best ever enrichment for me HEHEEEE ^_^#edit just started rereading this and it's kind of. incomprehensible in places ASDLFJBSADF but I did have to limit myself#because I Truly could talk about teg for hours. days. months years 4ever#so like idk if you're confused/curious please feel free to ask for clarification this was just excitable wordvomit LMAO
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realizing it is probably better to Use The Askbox For Its Intended Purpose than to attempt conversation in tags ^^; anyway. YEAH I WOULD LOVE FWHIP THOUGHTS. MY LITTLE GUY. MY DUDE. I LOVE HE. fwhip's throughline IS SO VERY MUCH AVOIDANCE YOU'RE SO RIGHT (haven't seen scott s1 so can't comment on that yet). feel free to elaborate on any of [fwhip's avoidance, the thing about fwhip instinctually shooting sausage, fwhip's relationship to the rest of the WRA]! (also, 13:05 - 13:12 on the twelfth episode in fwhip's e1 playlist, "MAKING PEACE and NEW SKIN!", has the moment with the bow, if you're curious)
Ooh yes, okay. I’m gonna go into Empires season one fWhip and the Wither Rose Alliance, how fWhip handled the rise of Xornoth and the proceeding corruption of Sausage, as well as Sausage’s curing, and the reconciliation of the WRA. Basically, I’m gonna talk about why I love the WRA so much, as well as highlighting some really interesting character moments for fWhip, and his overarching theme of avoidance. Welcome to my Ted Talk.
(If you’ve only ever heard about empires season one through osmosis, or never watched any of the Wither Rose Alliance POVs— fWhip, Gem, or Sausage, this might be a good way to kinda figure out what their deal is. I ended up explaining a lot of context for things, for the sake of saying what I wanted to say, so I feel like it’ll be comprehensive even if you don’t have much prior knowledge of season one.)
At the start of the season, fWhip and Sausage got pretty close pretty quickly. They were partners in crime, if you will, each often helping each other out with various schemes and pranks, such as fWhip helping Sausage get back at Pix for stealing Sausage’s villagers, [fWhip e9, 7:18], even before the proper foundation of the WRA [fWhip e10, 17:25]. Which is to say, they were very close, even before everything went down. After fWhip steals the Codfather head— which he seems to be happy to deflect partial blame onto Gem for, trying to avoid any accountability— the WRA together gear up to create a sort of trap vault, to secure the Codfather head.
The tentative rise of Xornoth began before the vault was constructed, with fWhip having an encounter with the demon happening just before the vault plans were solidified, in his episode 17. In that episode, he makes a log of things he knows about the demon, including a list of things the demon seems to like, which includes two notable entries— “I think [the demon] likes MythicalSausage? And, they really like the idea of the dragon being killed […] they really dislike the dragon. I think their goals are […] the death of the ender dragon, it really keeps coming back to that, and they keep saying, if we kill the ender dragon, they’re gonna be free” [12:43].
This, combined with the need to create a secret vault, would ultimately result in the items being hidden in the End. fWhip, tasked with finding the location of the vault, decides on hiding the items this way, saying “With everything, especially the demon being so scared? Of the dragon? I feel like leaving the Codfather’s head with the dragon, as like a final form of defense, might not be a bad idea. Because, then Jimmy will never be able to get it. He’ll never be able to get it. Nobody’s gonna be able to take out the dragon” [17:21]. He presumes that everything will be safe with the dragon, that nobody will be able to take it down.
Meanwhile, Sausage seems to have almost made friends with the demon. When fWhip visits him to bring him some firearms, he says “Xornoth is uh, is planning some things, it’s great! […] For the demon! For armageddon!!” [fWhip e17, 30:20]. fWhip becomes, understandably, somewhat nervous, yet even here he still seems to… deflect. He laughs, nervously, telling them to have fun, before heading home. fWhip flies off, saying “What a weird guy— people say I’m the evil one. Quite worried about him.” fWhip sees that something is… definitely wrong, with Sausage, and yet he still can’t bring himself to properly have that confrontation. He’s avoiding it, maybe just hoping that things will turn out alright.
Another moment right in this era that I think about often, that I’m not sure where else to put, is the moment where Sausage and Gem have a brief stand down, when Gem says that she’s the most powerful wizard on the server, to which Sausage bites back that she only is for now [fWhip e18, 32:40]. This happens right around when Sausage was starting to get corrupted, and Xornoth promised him great magical power— power that Gem had said he would never have. And I think often about this moment, in the context of the WRA as siblings, right— you’re fWhip, and you’re standing there as your younger brother and older sister are doing the magical equivalent of holding guns to each other’s heads, and just… how do you react? What do you even do? He’s not sure, which leads to that horribly nervous little song he sings, and it’s just… god. It’s so much. Caught in the middle of all the things he’s been trying to look away from, unable to do anything as the two most important people in his life are a hair away from taking each other out.
Finishing up the final preparations on the WRA vault, fWhip expands on his reasoning to hide the Codfather head in the End: “Right now, the only way out of the End is either by killing the dragon, or by jumping into the void […] there’s a little bit of a demon, on the server right now, who keeps trying to tell people to kill the dragon to unleash it upon the world. And, there’s one thing I’m pretty confident in: Jimmy does not want to free Xornoth. And, well, at this point, neither do I. So, if I put the cod head in there, I think Jimmy’s gonna find an ultimatum where he’s like, hm, nope, I can’t get it back. Or, if he does, and he wants to bring it to the overworld, he has to unleash the most evil thing, on this entire server, into the open. So, uh, hopefully he doesn’t do that. I think he’s smart enough” [fWhip e19 9:43]. He tells Gem about the plan later in that same episode, to which she agrees that it seems like a good plan. The idea is foolproof. Surely, Jimmy won’t risk the entire server’s safety, all for the cod head, right? It feels reasonable enough to assume that Jimmy wouldn’t willingly doom the world by releasing the demon, and that’s something that he banks on— it’s the perfect way to get rid of the Codfather head, in a way that Jimmy can never get it back. Surely, nobody would be so foolish. Problem successfully solved!
Right?
Wrong. But… it wasn’t just Jimmy.
The collapse of the Wither Rose Alliance, in fWhip’s episode 20 [4:10 - 7:28], is what finally forces fWhip to really face what Sausage has become. Xornoth demands a sacrifice to allow the WRA to escape the Nether, and Sausage, imbued with the power of Xornoth, takes Gem out quickly. As fWhip is left alone to face an invincible Sausage, Gem pleads with Xornoth: “I was sacrificed! You have to let fWhip out!” Of course, it’s to no avail, and fWhip is forcefully dragged out of hiding to face Sausage once more, being taken down. fWhip and Gem reconvene in Mythland, where fWhip hides Sausage’s dog Bubbles in the ground. Sausage returns, demanding to know where Bubbles is.
This moment, right here, is one I find very chilling. fWhip, a character who so often avoids direct serious conflict, one who worries for people on the sidelines, takes his stand. While Gem demands their stuff back, he says “I told you, [Bubbles is] gone until you get rid of the demon.” He knows this isn’t good, that Sausage is making a mistake siding with Xornoth. He tries the last ditch effort he can think of to get his little brother to snap out of Xornoth’s control.
It’s not enough. Sausage begrudgingly returns their things, and as the two sort through their jumbled items, Gem mutters that they can’t be allies anymore, after this. fWhip agrees, with a haunting certainty, “Sausage, you chose a side… you chose a side. […] We tried to save us all, you chose.” The two stand on the bridge in Mythland, opposite Sausage, and fWhip says it seems like their endeavor that day may have been their last, as an alliance. Sausage shouts for them to leave, and as they take off, Sausage swings, hitting fWhip.
Gem and fWhip fly off, without Sausage. As they make their way back to their lands, fWhip says, in a shaking voice, “Gem, it’s back to just you and me here,” to which Gem assures that they’ll be fine, that they’ll stand up for each other. He quickly accepts her words, saying “Yeah, it’s— it’s all good, it’s all good… it’s all good. He— he took the powers of the demon to kill us, there, that is— that is one too— one too far. That is— it’s one too far.” He’s afraid, having just firmly ousted one of his oldest allies— his own brother— from his oldest alliance, despite knowing that it was the only thing he could’ve possibly done. There was no other option… and yet, he barely gives himself a single sentence to essentially mourn that loss, before he’s trying to pave back on the mask of indifference— look away, avoid, avoid— it’s fine, he says, it’s all good, as if he didn’t just have to do the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life.
But it’s not over yet. Not even close.
(Continued under the cut. This got Really Long)
In that very same episode, a meeting is held [16:30 - 18:03] where fWhip and Gem happily tell the others about how they hid the Codfather head in the end. Everyone else is, of course, terrified. Scott tells them that Jimmy’s just gonna kill the dragon to escape, and that if Xornoth is released, it’ll bring about an eternal winter. Gem and fWhip, realizing they’ve messed up, devise a plan to prevent the Cod Alliance from killing the dragon— they need to heal it, keep it alive at all costs. Gem insists to everyone that they have to be a team, that even though they’ve messed up, that they can fix it.
It’s now or never. They head into the End.
[End scene from 19:20 - 22:57] fWhip immediately flies around to the main island, before stepping down onto the bridge in front of Jimmy. He begs, pleads for them not to do this. “Jimmy— Jimmy, I’m sorry. Jimmy— Jimmy— I’m sorry, Jimmy, we need to not kill the dragon here.” Jimmy demands the Codfather head, and fWhip immediately agrees to return it, reiterating that they must not kill the dragon. It’s this— this moment of being immediately and forcefully thrust into the face of the problem he caused, the problem he’d been trying to avoid, by hiding the Codfather head away in a place where he was sure that Jimmy would never dare to go. It’s this moment of fWhip pleading with Jimmy, to please, please not do this— they’ve lost so much to this demon, they can’t let this happen. He can’t let the demon be freed because of his mistake, he’ll do anything to prevent it from happening. The absolute, terrified resolve of a man faced with a problem he can no longer run from.
Jimmy says he’s gonna kill the dragon, barging past fWhip, up the main island. Chaos breaks out, and fWhip leads Jimmy down, beneath the portal frame. Jimmy says it better not be a trick, and he assures it isn’t, voice panicked. He returns the head, and begs them not to do this, in a soft, shaking voice, “We gotta keep the dragon alive, don’t— don’t let— don’t let Sausage kill it, don’t… […] Chaos, chaos is coming, we can’t— we can’t let the dragon die.” The fear, and absolute certainty… he can’t let this happen. Can’t let his mistake ruin the world.
Jimmy, uncertainly, says “fWhip, I think, whether you like it or not, this dragon is dying.”
fWhip desperately attempts to prevent the dragon’s death, to no avail. Chaos, as the two sides wage war in the end, with Jimmy caught conflicted in the middle. Sausage and Joey, corrupted by Xornoth, cheer for the carnage.
From the moment the Codfather head was stolen— perhaps even from the moment Jimmy started a confrontation with Sausage at all, all that time ago— it was too late. Xornoth would be released.
In a single episode, fWhip’s entire world is turned upside down. The WRA is shattered, the world is fast approaching an eternal corruption, and… he doesn’t know what to do. Gem says they can fix it, that she has the dragon egg, but… what else can he do but to just… shut down. He turns away from it— from Sausage, from Xornoth, from everything. He avoids it all— doubles down on the construction of his city, Eastvale, resolutely looking away from everything else.
With Xornoth freed, and Sausage well and truly corrupted, fWhip becomes extremely cold towards Sausage, to the point of being openly defensively hostile. The brother that he knew… that isn’t Sausage, anymore. One of the best examples of this can be seen in Sausage’s episode 32, 12:54, where Sausage and Pearl go to invite fWhip to their arena. fWhip answers the knock on his gate with a drawn bow, immediately and coldly asking what they want with him, even as Sausage still greets him as a friend. While fWhip is willing to speak to Pearl, he refuses to even entertain the idea that Sausage isn’t here to hurt him, shooting him a few times throughout the conversation, to the point where Sausage is sent away from the gate so that Pearl can speak to fWhip alone.
And… god, isn’t that just so much? You’re fWhip, and whatever thing is possessing the person in front of you, he isn’t your brother anymore. He’s not your friend anymore. He’s not safe, and you’re not safe with him here, even though… he used to be one of the safest people for you to be with. Not anymore. That’s not him, anymore.
And, it’s not unwarranted, with Sausage later saying to Pearl “I try my best around him, but sometimes I just wanna choke him out, Pearl” [15:24]. Yet… Sausage still greets fWhip as a friend, at first. Still tries to talk to him, insists that he’s “not evil today,” and… well, Sausage really did still care very much about the WRA, even while corrupted.
In Sausage’s episode 33, he opens by reading his last will and testament, knowing that soon enough he’ll be taken by the corruption. Within his will, he writes out things that he wants the other emperors to have, should he not return: “To fWhip, you can keep all my deepslate redstone ores… I don’t know what you want them for, they’re kind of useless to me, but… I kept a lot, […] Gem, you can have my great staff of Mythland. Uh… in your hands, it’ll probably be very effective. And to the Wither Rose Alliance, you can have access to my iron farm still” [1:07]. He still thought about them… still cared about them. The fact that Sausage kept collecting deepslate redstone— something that fWhip loves and cares for very much, for the sole purpose of giving it to him, even though they were on such horrible terms… I think about that. He loved them, even still. Even through the corruption, he loved them.
Gem never turns her back on Sausage in quite the same way fWhip does. It was she who cured him, in the end— killing him, at his own request, voice corrupted as he struggled against the influence of Xornoth. She finds him in Mythland, after he’s free from the corruption, and asks if he’s okay, saying she’s so glad to have him back again. He shakily asks her if he can be back in the alliance again, now that he’s cured, and Gem says “We’ll have to talk to fWhip about it, how about for now, you just… heal up over here” [Sausage e33, 33:25].
Gem knows that she forgives Sausage, that it wasn’t his fault. But… she also knows fWhip, and she knows it won’t be so easy for him, that it’ll take time. It has to be his own choice, in the end, to forgive Sausage for everything he put them all through.
Gem brings fWhip around to see Sausage, now that he’s uncorrupted. [Sausage e34, 24:00 - 34:25]. Once fWhip realizes that Sausage is there, he draws his bow, asking coldly why they’re here. Sausage asks what’s going on, and Gem says she’s brought him fWhip. Sausage is immediately distracted by Gem’s wizard hat, and fWhip happily jumps on the bandwagon of teasing Gem. Gem tells fWhip that Sausage is cured, and while fWhip is skeptical at first, having to kill Sausage himself to make sure he’s no longer unkillable, the three seem to fall back into their old patterns. Gem sends the two running into the river, lightheartedly chasing them with her sword, and as they both climb out giggling, she says “I missed this.”
This scene, this moment of the WRA, finally back together again after so long, it’s so… god. They’ve been apart for so long, they haven’t been able to hang out and laugh with each other, and this is the first time in so, so long, that Sausage has been able to hear that light in fWhip’s voice again— that he’s been able to speak to fWhip on any terms that aren’t cold and callous and unloving. They have each other again, they have their family back, unsteady as it is.
Sausage asks if he’s back in the alliance, and Gem says it’s up to fWhip. He seems… uncertain, but says that Sausage can be tentatively back— like he’s still nervous, still feels like something could go wrong. The three of them agree that Sausage owes them both three favors, and then he’ll be back in the alliance for real.
In Sausage’s episode 35, fWhip cashes in his first favor [9:30 - 10:17]. He asks Sausage to come by to help him with something, and as Sausage flies in, fWhip immediately shoots him with a flaming arrow. Sausage flies away, circling around before making his way back to land near fWhip. fWhip greets him with that old harsh coldness, a curt “Hi, can I help you,” how fWhip used to speak to Sausage, while he was corrupted. Sausage says he didn’t come to fight, that he’s good now, and fWhip lets out a slightly nervous laugh, saying “oh, right, right… sorry, sorry, I’m still just a little… it’s gonna take a while, it’s gonna take a while— you can’t just expect me to like— just like, forget, instantly, right? It was just— you know,” fWhip trails off, and Sausage says that fWhip hit him in the face, to which fWhip laughs, slightly, before restating his initial greeting in a much more friendly tone.
And it’s just… god. Isn’t that so much? Isn’t that So Much? Like, you’re fWhip, and you see your own little brother coming, and your immediate instinct is that you have to protect yourself. That you aren’t safe, that he’s gonna hurt you, prepare to fight back— god. Could you imagine what it must be like to be feeling that way? To be trying to reconcile the feelings so ingrained in you now, with the person now before you? He’s trying— he’s trying so hard to let Sausage back in. But… it’s not that easy.
I think this essay has definitely gotten long enough, but I do wanna leave off with one final moment. In Sausage’s episode 41 [11:25 - 14:22], fWhip finally feels able to fully accept Sausage back into the alliance. He tells them that he wants to make them all a new meeting room. The three end up falling back into their old antics, playfully attacking each other, and Sausage ends up getting killed. fWhip picks up a bunch of his things, including a splash potion of invisibility that he had. fWhip cheekily says he’ll keep the potion, and Sausage asks for it back, to which fWhip starts to walk off to where he wanted to show them anyway. Gem follows, and in a disapproving tone, says “fWhip, give him his things.” fWhip turns around, says “Okay, here you go,” and splashes the invis on them all, to which Sausage indignantly says “I can’t believe this!” fWhip immediately starts laughing, with Gem giggling as well, and both fWhip and Sausage quickly realize how silly Gem looks while invisible, with her massive hat floating in the air.
I point out this moment because it really encapsulates why I love the WRA so much. They’re such a chaotic bunch— acting like three siblings who love to tease each other, who get into fights and have falling outs and still, in the end, they make up again. They find each other again. They never stop caring about each other, even through everything. It’s a really sweet little moment— the WRA, finally, truly whole again.
#empires smp#THIS GOT SO LONG. OOPS.#i spent like. over 5 hours making this#and I could keep going. i could talk more about fWhip and Gem#about the moment where Scott accidentally blasts Gem with the magic. how worried fWhip was#how he insists that she get help#but honestly that gets into territory that I haven’t yet seen myself#and I can’t tell it properly#and honestly this is long enough#also thank you for the timestamp for the bow thing!! it’s very interesting#i reckon it’s more about them wanting to create peace in that moment than it was about Jimmy specifically? if that makes sense?#but! who’s to say#you’ll notice I ended up talking a lot about Jimmy here#this is because it is impossible to talk about fWhip without talking about Jimmy literally ever#thank you so much for the free excuse to talk about empires one fWhip and the WRA. this is been so enriching for me#i love them so much#and e1 fWhip is my favorite character across both seasons of empires#uh. can you tell?#ANYWAY. thank you to anyone that ends up reading my whole essay.#it is over 3000 words in total.#umbrify talks#umbrify answers#erstwhilesparrow
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