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[shazzbaa]

taking poor edward too seriously as is my wont but just thinking a lot lately about the horror of traumatic abuse that doesn't show on the body, the horror of being in a terrible situation but you Look Fine, the headcanons of Edward's weird strength and speed etc being due to Orphanage Experiments, the fact that despite him almost certainly having been mistreated there he doesn't seem to bear visible scars from his time as an Orphanage Boy, surely most people would at LEAST come out looking haunted or broken in some way but he still looks like a rosy-cheeked innocent boy despite everything that's happened to him and everything he's had to become in response……. and thinking about the fact that he goes by "Poor Edward" and wears a literal tragedy mask at all times. he wants to be a nightmare, he wants to be feared and powerful, but what he's decided to make his appearance forever is just something that looks like he ought to. Just thinking about the idea that it's ugly and strange and incongruous with the whole rest of his "elegant" presentation, but on some level he needs people to look at him and know that something's wrong with him, because without the mask, nobody could tell.

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DW HES ONLY A LITTLE BIT POSSESSED. ONLY A SMIDGEON!!! Feat. @little-red-notebook's little guy, Clarence, a friend of Sam's who is slightly psychic (long story) and would immediately realise something is up, but is gonna just roll with it as long as everyone is behaving themselves.

The "king" here is a piece of the Knot of Tales, a collector (and eater...) of stories, and since single fingerkings on their own tend to struggle with speech, I kind of enjoy the idea of it just talking in story-pieces that style itself as a fairytale sort of King... normal nickname......

(more doodles and also how this happened under the cut....)

So I recently played through Dream of a Thousand Tails (I RLY ENJOYED IT), a story where you help a young rat Dreamer try to recover lost ratty myths and legends in Parabola. Long story short, the Knot of Tales at one point offers to share these lost legends in return for its freedom -- but it has to place the stories into your mind. Samuel was... a little concerned this might involve possession, but wanted to help both his new rat friend and the trapped fingerking, and accepted being the recipient on the Dreamer's behalf. AND THEN HE GOT AEONS OF RATTY LEGENDS DUMPED DIRECTLY INTO HIS MIND and was unconscious(???) and babbling incoherently about rat myths for MULTIPLE DAYS.

Now, the text doesn't say Samuel got possessed, specifically. But I did get an achievement called "A MIND OUROBOROS" and this entity is described now as "mostly dormant" and while Samuel was still reeling from being overwhelmed with more rat myths than a human mind can hold, his body was apparently moving without his input. So it makes sense to me if the Knot of Tales sent a fragment of itself to possess Samuel, to be rid of the stories that were confining it and impart them into his mind. After his interactions with the Catastrophe of Crowns, Samuel sort of thought this could be a temporary arrangement... but he has been unable to find the rest of the Knot of Tales once he woke up, and after seeing how the Catastrophe's fragment faired on its own, he doesn't actually want to kick this one out. Fingerkings really seem to prefer a communal state...

Anyway, Samuel is...... probably going to have to quit his job at the Labyrinth of Tigers LMAO, but he IS trying to make this work out for both of them. The king is usually content to listen, has (probably?) not eaten any of his memories, and is interested to travel through the Is and see what stories its new knight can unearth.

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The most recent @neathyfashioncoalition prompt is Parabolan Elegance, which of course brings to mind all sorts of impossibly vibrant or ephemeral dream-clothes... but it was hard to imagine Samuel Ashman being that sort of fancy. Eventually I realised he spends most of his time in Parabola hunting nightmares and dream-beasts, so maybe his idea of fancy clothes for the dream realm would just be a nice hunting get up. Norfolk jackets are period-appropriate as far as my haphazard googling could tell, and I thought he might be handsome in one......

I had already been thinking Sam might look a little ratty in Parabola since his experiences in Death and Tax Evasion, bUT THEN IN THE MIDST OF SKETCHING THIS I finished playing Dream of a Thousand Tails and where u get access to ratty dreaming so......... ITS EVEN MORE CANON NOW. Sometimes he just gives his parabolan self rat features. He doesn't notice he's doing it.

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we were talking about the hybrid getting sticky and then tumbling around in parabola plants and getting grass and leaves stuck to its carapace...... needs dad to wrangle it for brushies....... this was such a cute concept to me I had to doodle it

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FL friends have bandied about a Modern Day College AU a few times and like, Samuel is in it but obviously I got carried away thinking about Poor Edward as an Obnoxious Teen In College.... so now im inflicting this nonsense on the innocent followers of my blog

despite other people having different and more reasonable suggestions I couldn't stop picturing him as some sort of greaser for unknown reasons LMAO. he drives a motorcycle obviously.

"it looks like hes smoking but its a lollipop actually" was victor's idea lmao. world's most bulliable weirdo makes himself an enormous asshole so he can be the bully instead

[thinks about obligatory episode of this TV series where he loses his mask somehow and we discover he's the cutest boy in the world and would definitely get mistaken for a highschooler if he didn't wear it]

I think when talking about the AU collectively we were just like "Edward has unwise crushes on a bunch of people" in order to not go into detail about Light Fingers Spoilers but I KEPT SELF-INDULGENTLY THINKING ABOUT a version where it IS still a love potion, just gets splashed with a love potion in the middle of a study group that just happens to contain all the Light Fingers pcs and falls in love with like 7 people simultaneously. The stakes are much lower in college, so maybe other students would stick around to be like??? worried about him actually??? which I'm sure goes great with being suddenly completely smitten with all of them. (Feat. doodle attempts at Peter, Tomas, and Sam)

as to why he even has a love potion the obvious answer is that this homeless orphan's full-ride scholarship is contingent on an internship with Mr Fires, who has Only Normal Tasks for its interns. I didn't know how to make Mr Fires look professorial so I gave it a tie.

okay i think thats everything

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A while back on my doodle of the Youthful Naturalist I got these tags from @interdimentionalsnapdragon...

...speculating that the Wheel of Fortune ending seemed most likely for Sam.

YOU'RE RIGHT, but not for the reasons you think! Puts a long ramble about Samuel's feelings under the cut (spoilers for The Shallows ES, Light Fingers, and some info from All Things Must End ES):

A thing Samuel really struggles with in Fallen London is that he is, at heart, pro-death, believing that people are at some point meant to cease to be. Despite his faith he never fully believed in Heaven -- it's a nice thought that he isn't opposed to, but he finds the idea of an eternal rest more comforting and is extremely distressed to find that this doesn't seem to exist down here; apparently our only options are two different flavours of Hell.

The idea of someone becoming a shameful deep-zee beast does not, in and of itself, seem wrong to him; not anymore. Samuel is close friends with the Rubbery Men. He helped to bring a human/moon-miser hybrid into the world and was terrifyingly aware he was breaking natural law to do it. He advised Dr. Vaughan to go to the roof and become Starved. He's a monster-hunter, no longer fully human, who dabbles in Red Science and diligently practices Shapeling Arts. He no longer believes that breaking natural laws is inherently sinful. BUT, the Hanged Man ending looks horrifying in every way! It's terrible for London, but it's also bad for the Naturalist. In Sam's view, the Naturalist doesn't successfully reject death; he's only running from death, forever. The Naturalist basically becomes the equivalent of a guy who's pissed off every guard in Skyrim and just keeps fighting them off -- sure, he can always get past unscathed, but he can also never interact normally with any town ever again. What's the point of a life like that?

The Hierophant ending was THE MOST TEMPTING, and one I can easily imagine Sam choosing. The Naturalist gets to just….. live life, something he hasn't done in a long time, and acceptance seems to make him genuinely happier in a way he never got to be when his whole existence revolved around this obsessive avoidance. I've seen a couple of people shudder at the loss of identity, but if the Naturalist truly ceased to exist, then as far as Sam's concerned he would be afforded the kindest death available to anyone in the Neath. Honestly, that's true either way -- either he has to ferry people forever, or he ceases to be, while the rest of us eventually suffer eternally on the Far Shore, begging for an escape.

The thing is, after the Shallows, Samuel genuinely did want the Boatman to receive a holiday. He'd even wondered whether it might be possible for him to someday go back and take over the boat again voluntarily; he doesn't consider this a terrible fate. But how can he, in good conscience, participate in this awful scheme to force someone else into that fate kicking and screaming? The fact that you can convince the Naturalist to accept it, and eventually that will make him happier, doesn't fix how messed up this whole scenario is (or how uneasy Samuel is about the Bishop's machinations). The Boatman gets to retire -- but at the cost of damning someone else to the same role he wanted so badly to escape. Whether the entity that the Naturalist becomes is still him or someone new, they are still doomed to a task they didn't want forever. It isn't a kind system.

So Samuel picked the path that breaks the system.

Sam doesn't dislike the idea of death, he just wants it to be kinder. Is the Naturalist the best person to be in charge of that? Frankly, probably not. But yknow, something something Esther 4:14.... back when Samuel was the Boatman, and someone asked to go to the Waswood instead, Samuel refused, frightened of the unknown consequences, and dutifully rowed them to the Far Shore. Perhaps he would make a different choice now, but he's certain the Youthful Naturalist would never blindly follow procedure like that; the Naturalist has the courage and (unlike Sam) cleverness to figure out where his loopholes are and what he can get away with. For all that this makes him very insufferable, Samuel recognises these are virtues, too. He's not a schemer like the Bishop of St Fiacre's, and he doesn't have any kind of grand plan..... but it's a step that might lead to changing things, to finding a better option, someday.

(still dodging world/setting/lore spoilers for now so gonna ask for no LORE ADDITIONS on this from sources not mentioned here, even if there's something Sam's wrong about! There's a lot he still doesn't know but I'm enjoying discovering stuff as I go for.)

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Ultimately I don't think we have solid info on this either way in canon so like. IT KINDA CAN GO HOWEVER YOU INTERPRET IT in your own writing. And it doesn't seem unbelievable!

As far as my own headcanons, I lean in the direction of him not really deviating much from the Nightmare-Orphanage's general vibe. Reasoning:

I like the idea that Poor Edward has no Glasswork skill of his own. He was gifted power by the fingerkings, but he doesn't know how all this works outside of that -- given that he should really know if your character is a silverer, but then is surprised you're able to fight back.

Poor Edward does seem to have a lot of power in his own realm, though, so I tend to imagine that comes from (a) whatever was not revoked as part of his fingerking bargain and (b) his status as a nightmare

Fingerkings are not cultivators like the cats are; I kind of understand it as like, parabola is natural to them, and to be fingerking-aligned is to work with Parabola as it is, more about skillfully navigating and calling upon what's there than enforcing your will upon it, which would lean in the direction of working with what fears and nightmares already exist.

In Parabola, stories and dreams and desires hold much more power than in reality, and so it makes sense that binding Poor Edward to a nightmare makes him, on some level, literally a part of that nightmare. The Nightmare-Orphanage is made of actual nightmares of the actual Orphanage, and so imo this is what Edward is drawing a lot of his power from. (I also like to imagine that, even if the real Orphanage was destroyed and years from now no one in reality remembers its horrors, Edward may be a former patient himself, and some of his own nightmares may fuel this place)

In the same way that Poor Edward cannot, for whatever reason, FORCE moon-milk upon you the player, can he bear to Change his beloved Orphanage into something it is not? The love he has for the Nightmare-Orphanage is much stronger than the love he has for you.

So ultimately, while he SURELY can add rooms that weren't there originally (the Nightmare-Orphanage adds... a lot of things that weren't there originally), I think anything he shifted would all sort of have to be True to the Orphanage as a nightmare, whether realistically or symbolically, and that Edward himself wouldn't want to violate that even if he could.

(Though, re: making a room of a thing your character loves to tempt them, "a room unsettlingly filled with the inhabitant's favourite thing" is a canon Orphanage experience!! Some doctor or orderly must have had nightmares about watching patients happily fall under that spell, there's gotta be something for him to work with in that vein).

Okay but speaking of the nightmare orphanage. Given the very nature of that place and how it’s described, do we think Edward could theoretically add whatever rooms he likes to it? Or would it have to solely imitate the memories of the orphanage?

I ask because I have something in my drafts.

[shazzbaa]

just a scribble of the rat market from a while back... samuel is definitely about to be scammed into buying those books. cmon sam support the ratty economy

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THE POLL IS DONE. RESULTS ARE IN. your chance to skew this sampling of edward sentiments is over! For our mutual edification (ha) I have organised the statistics.

Of the 94 Light Fingers players surveyed on Tumblr:

31 Killed Poor Edward (32.9%)

16 Trapped Poor Edward (17%)

47 Married Poor Edward (50%)

Kind of wild that, at least for this little participating snippet of tumblr, whether LF folks married him or not is PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY 50/50? Trapped being in the minority was a surprise, but on reflection it makes sense -- if you know how the options work out ahead of time, people who like Poor Edward would be more likely marry him to get Additional Edward Content if nothing else, while Edward-sympathisers who go in blind are more likely to marry him because the other merciful options are hidden behind punching him in the face.

Of characters married to Poor Edward:

12 have a fraught or complicated relationship on both sides (25.5%)

10 match his freak (21.2%)

10 are somehow cute together (21.2%)

9 married him to control or use him (19.1%)

4 don't count the marriage, or merely consider him an annoyance (8.5%)

2 are haunted by him (4.2%)

So, perhaps it follows that the percentage of characters who shot or trapped Edward but are sympathetic/still in contact, AND the percentage of characters who married Edward but are uninterested or straightforwardly don't want him there, are both much smaller! Only 2% of Light Fingers FLOCs have a marriage where Poor Edward is primarily a terror to the player character and not vice versa, and only 3% of Light Fingers FLOCs murdered Poor Edward and felt bad about it.

I CONFESS I DIDNT EXPECT "CUTE TOGETHER" TO BE SO HIGH???? CONGRATS ON YOUR HAPPY MARRIAGES EVERYONE

As an aside, of participants who have either not played Fallen London at all, or have not played the Light Fingers story specifically, 22.9% are Nemesis players whose characters would absolutely murder Edward if they could (thanks for appreciating this silly option by the way, IM DELIGHTED BY HOW MANY RESULTS IT GOT LMAO). Interestingly, this is very close to the percentage of Light Fingers players who murdered him. Is this a constant? Would 20-30% of people murder Poor Edward if given the opportunity as a general rule? More study needed.

And finally, if you wanna see ALL THE LITTLE CATEGORIES minus the "see results" options, here's a pie chart for that:

Obviously some room for nuance since many people were torn between a couple different options that could fit, but here's the results as they stand! I know it's just because "married" is split between 6 options which occasionally overlap but "Killed, Doesn't Feel Bad" being such a giant chunk is so funny.

ANYWAY THANK YOU ALL FOR VOTING! This was a delight, I've highly enjoyed soaking up everyone's takes and elaborations and EDWARD-BASED ESSAYS in tags and reblogs, thank you so much omg

It's been neat getting tags on some of my Poor Edward art talking about how various flocs regard Edward, so I got curious!! if u have more than one light fingers pc u can pick whichever one you want to represent on this poll. and please feel free to qualify/clarify your choice in tags/replies/reblogs; I tried to have sort of broad categories that could manifest in a few different ways.

Matches his freak vs Cute together is probably going to have some overlap just because of The Way Edward Is; my thought process was to have some distinction between the happily marrieds who might have unconventional quality time but still very much look like a happy couple, vs those with a more deranged or dangerous or antagonistic vibe of relationship that both parties are nonetheless very happy with; but overall please follow your heart on what sounds more like the way you picture them.

(also, just to be safe, please no spoilers for storylines other than light fingers in the notes; i enjoy playing FL blind and am still spoiler-dodging some stories!)

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LKAJSDF;LASEKFASE INCREDIBLE TIMING SAMUEL....... of course he got this failure DURING WHITSUN..... incredible combo with Tomas' current bird situation this year. im sure hes fine

[shazzbaa]

It's been neat getting tags on some of my Poor Edward art talking about how various flocs regard Edward, so I got curious!! if u have more than one light fingers pc u can pick whichever one you want to represent on this poll. and please feel free to qualify/clarify your choice in tags/replies/reblogs; I tried to have sort of broad categories that could manifest in a few different ways.

Matches his freak vs Cute together is probably going to have some overlap just because of The Way Edward Is; my thought process was to have some distinction between the happily marrieds who might have unconventional quality time but still very much look like a happy couple, vs those with a more deranged or dangerous or antagonistic vibe of relationship that both parties are nonetheless very happy with; but overall please follow your heart on what sounds more like the way you picture them.

(also, just to be safe, please no spoilers for storylines other than light fingers in the notes; i enjoy playing FL blind and am still spoiler-dodging some stories!)

[shazzbaa]

Fallen London has added a feature where you can hire this Luckless Captain guy as an Agent to run a ship for you, loan him some of the equipment you're not using, and then let him do tasks for you in the background. It's neat! Naturally there's a lot of funny applications of getting to play dress-up with this NPC and the various wild things FL counts as "equipment" -- one of which is... a nightmare of Poor Edward??? if you married him then you can LOAN THIS GUY YOUR NIGHTMARE HUSBAND??????????? THIS IS MY FAVOURITE ONE, I couldn't stop thinking about it

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LMAO OH GOOD YES EXCELLENT

adds the doodle i contributed after the port cecil drawings:

dream kidnapping just seemed, like a natural edward reaction,

I keep on putting off actually posting these self indulgent shitposty doodles but no it's my blog I'm posting Naturalist Poor Edward interactions and nobody can stop me. The first half was drawn when I was playing through the Port Cecil section, the latter half was soon after I finished.

I don't actually think Edward is a very jealous husband but I do think that the Naturalist's specific combination of personality traits + the fact that he got to spend months together with Tomas where Edward couldn't see (no mirrors on boats, after all) made a terrible cocktail where anything he does is intolerable to Edward. Edward can't actually hurt him though, because Tomas asked him with big sad eyes not to.

And I just think after EVERYTHING, Tomas wants to crash somewhere with both their husband that they haven't been able to visit much in ages, and their best friend that they haven't been apart from for very long for months. Is that too much to ask?

[shazzbaa]

in the current fallen london event, disposing bombs in the zee has hit a Lorn-Fluke (giant terrifying eldritch sea urchin thing) and now we have to drive the fluke's dangerously firey wrath away from London. If you don't know a lot about flukes, your only option is to shoot it to make it go away. If you've learned more about the kind of thing the fluke is and the language it speaks, a new option unlocks: to apologise, and insist that London was negligent, but did not mean to hit it.

...This has happened before, about a year ago. Samuel, at the time, only had the option to shoot it in the eye, but the good doctor Lukas (@slightly-sigilant's character) had the option to apologise, and I mentioned that if they were on the same boat, Sam would hold off on firing and let him speak. Watching Lukas communicate with this monster -- and seeing that it worked -- changed his whole understanding of the Neath. It's also the reason Samuel put real effort into learning the Correspondence, while seeing Sam was willing to hold off was what led Lukas to encourage him towards visiting Flute Street, and to send him regular lessons on Correspondence.

And now, Sam has that knowledge; he can see an option he couldn't before. I DUNNO MAN IT JUST GOT ME. IM A LIL EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT.

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People who follow this blog know what Samuel looks like BUT I've made a useful illustration of Samuel's Notable Characteristics for this question anyway:

Colours-wise he does tend to be sort of boringly monochrome; he's a little more blue-leaning when he's zailing and a little more purple-leaning when he's dressed fancy. His posture is like, fine. I tend to imagine him with a sort of natural amount of slouch, but a smart stance for fighting, where you can probably tell he's a street fighter rather than classically trained, but you can also tell he knows what he's doing. Samuel is 40 years old as of the current Flondon year -- his birthday was last November (in terms of surface zodiacs, he's the most sopping wet Scorpio you've ever met).

That should be all the questions answered but for SOME reason I saw this post and thought "what a great excuse to try to make a lil reference of all of Samuel's scars!" and then I got completely lost in the sauce doing that. SO! Click the readmore if you'd like to see that??????

Samuel has made only good and safe choices in Fallen London. I'm sure I've forgotten some, but I try to give him a lasting scar whenever something actually kills him!

The Lucky Star tattoo's concept was inspired by @coffeethathurtsyou's design, combining the point of a compass with the false-star to both watch Sam's back and guide him, which I really loved. Both tattoos are intended to show a little bit -- since you give up a respectable bonus for having them, I felt like they should show when he's clothed, even if you can't tell what they are.

Anyway this is probably not all his scars and he'll probably get more bUT I THINK ITS A NICE REPRESENTATIVE COLLECTION....

#1

What does your character look like? Do they have any notable physical characteristics? Do they have a set colour-scheme? What's their posture like? How old is your character?

[shazzbaa]

What certain promises did Poor Edward make?

His plan -- for you to drink moon-milk and be in love with him forever -- is NOT in conflict with his fingerking bargain.

But your plan -- for HIM to drink the moon-milk and be trapped in the Nightmare-Orphanage -- IS in conflict and he's not able to take that offer.

HOWEVER: you apologising to the Boil of Calamities gets him out of it; the Boil is fine to let him go ahead with your plan if you've made amends. So it seems unlikely to be some unrelated thing he was supposed to do afterwards, or else he wouldn't be off the hook; his promise probably has something to do with you.

If you side with the Cats and offer to marry him, he uncertainly implies he can't take the offer and then just freezes as the Boil impatiently descends to threaten you. If you apologise to the Boil and then don't marry him, Edward seems betrayed and confused when the Boil leaves -- but he doesn't react this way to the Boil attacking you pre-emptively. As if that was not a surprise or betrayal, but already part of the plan.

So my best guess is that Poor Edward's mutual arrangement with the Boil was a promise to imprison you. With its powers, he can entice you to the misermere and make you an offer -- to be trapped with him of your own will or suffer the consequences; if you reject him, he chimes the little bell and the Boil is meant to come deal with you. Given the fingerkings' WHOLE THING it feels very possible that they might've guaranteed Edward some, uh, version of you in return. (and you could write a whole au fanfic about whether he would find that version ultimately disappointing...)

The problem with your counter-offer, then, would be that you're not trapped. Edward himself seems to want to accept, and he doesn't chime the bell, but he knows this doesn't uphold his end of the bargain. If you haven't made amends, he's caught -- there's nothing he can do but let the Boil have you. If you have made amends, then there's no problem -- the Boil no longer demands your imprisonment.

(This would also fit well with penance being an option at all -- if the original bargain, for example, promised Poor Edward the power to deal with This Trespasser, then once you shed your skin and no longer carry the guilt of that crime, the Boil is not even breaking its side of the arrangement when it withdraws its gift. There's not any specific evidence of that but IT WOULD BE QUITE TIDY LMAO)

[shazzbaa]

Normal Samuel behaviour.....

There's an event on in Fallen London where an unmanned ship full of unstable bombs has drifted into London's waters and Brave Zeefaring Citizens have been called to ferry bombs to a (theoretically) safe decommissioning site. There's an option to "take a conservative load," another to "keep the unstable explosives from sliding around by bracing them against OTHER boxes of unstable explosives" and a final option to "CRAM THE SHIP TO THE GUNWALES" so guess which one Sam is doing!!!!!! In a brief moment of wisdom he's decided NOT to simultaneously do piracy so he hasn't been running into the Rowdy Corsair unfortunately, but u know, maybe thats best for everyone