#but sometimes i do toy with a few outcomes to manipulate the best overall story for the character c:

[blackjackkent]

OK, so I might have to take back some of my decisions in the last post. Getting to the Inquisitor is more complicated than I thought.

He's currently behind a barrier, to which Therezzyn is holding the key. Our options, according to Google, are to a) give Therezzyn the artifact and get access given to us, b) pickpocket Therezzyn when she's not looking, or c) kill her.

Hector doesn't want to do any of these things, and I'm trying to figure out which one would be least out of character. :/

Really (going back to what I said in the previous post about Hector's usual compulsive honesty), option A makes the most sense for him. And, apparently, it doesn't actually take the artifact from us long-term and does actually get some approval from Lae'zel. The downside, of course, is everyone ELSE disapproves, and I want to get Karlach's romance going, goddammit. :P

Hypothesis. What if I ungroup Karlach and Gale and leave them outside the door on the (in-character) grounds that Therezzyn will be more likely to listen to a smaller number of random strangers barging into her office.

[tests]

OK, apparently that does work. We don't get any disapproval from the rest of the party, we still get Lae'zel's approval, we keep the artifact in the long run, and Hector gets to be his usual honest self. (The Dream Guardian is pretty unhappy with us, but hopefully she'll get over it and still keep us from turning into a squid in our sleep.)

On the bright side, also, this doesn't negate any of the previous scene, as we can pick up from right afterwards:

"I presume you are not stupid enough to return empty-handed. So give me the weapon - NOW."

"Here it is." Wondering if he is making the right decision, Hector reaches into his pack and pulls out the small, strangely-shaped item. Inwardly he thinks a small apology to Shadowheart. There seems no point to trying to navigate this place without being forthright, but it is such a dangerous choice...

Then again, no choice seems safe at present. Not anymore.

He can feel his dream guardian rebelling against this choice, her voice piercing in his mind. "No. NO!"

But he has no choice but to be forthright, and he extends his hand with the item held carefully between his fingers.

The kith'rak's eyes light with sudden glee. She flicks her hand outwards, pulling the object towards her with a spell and examining it as it hovers in her grasp.

"Yes...there it is...exactly as described. The inquisition will finally come to an end."

She moves as if to pocket the artifact...and suddenly, a familiar glow bursts around it, knocking her backwards against the wall. The artifact erupts from her hands and crashes back into Hector, settling itself back into his hands, vibrating with power.

"Tsk'va!" Therezzyn scrambles back to a standing position and glares at him furiously. "Trickery! Heresy! How did you--" She stammers incoherently, fists clenching at her sides. "You manipulate it when I cannot?!"

She visibly stills herself. Hector has seen this movement before in Lae'zel, and in himself - the grounding, centering, shoving aside the inconvenient, chaotic emotions. Her face goes hard as stone.

"It appears you have been chosen, istik," she says coldly. "You are lucky it is not for me to question why."

She pulls the glowing keystone from her pocket and stalks past him to the barrier blocking the way to the ch'r'ai. "Go. Seek the inquisitor below. And take the cursed thing with you."

[majoraop]

Dressrosa dream

(plus some Doflamingo character analysis because why not?) A few days ago, I dreamed that I was in Dressrosa (as myself, not as another character) with someone else: I don’t remember who he/she was, anyway I wasn’t alone. I and this other person came from the real world and we already knew what would happen in the island in the near future. We were quite worried and talked about what we could do to avoid getting to the point we see in the manga: Doflamingo destroying most of the cities, basically (I don’t think anyone but that person shot by Baby 5 actually died in the end). Even if we knew about the future “plot” though, we absolutely had no idea how to stop him. We didn’t want to kill him (or anyone for that matter), and we also knew his good side of course. Please keep in mind that I like the character of Doflamingo a lot (if you hadn’t noticed already  ^^’  ). Basically, I like all of him except the fact that he is so emotionally damaged that he doesn’t care about anything and anyone anymore–his family excluded. I don’t like that he traded slaves and weapons either, and I don’t like when he uses his (physical) strength on much weaker people (Bellamy deserved it a bit though  :P  ). That said, I know why he’s written that way and I have absolutely no problem about how Oda depicted him, from his childhood to his early years as a pirate and up to the current timeline. To me, his development and characterization is perfect so far. I like Doflamingo since I totally understand (rationally, more than emotionally) where he comes from: he personally witnessed by being also a victim himself that people are all the same, and that they can even harm/kill children in some circumstances. It’s a generalization, I know, but in Doflamingo and Roci’s flashback we see desperate people, people who lost they loved ones, people who had nothing left and were so desperate that they became cruel themselves. When really pushed or desensitized most people can do evil acts, and that “normality” is the scariest thing about it. Doflamingo saw that (the cruelness lingering in every human being), and was old enough to understand (unlike Roci). And, well, you know the rest. What do I wish for him as a character, though? Basically, I would like to see him become stronger (mentally and emotionally, which to me is real strength) and overcome his fear. It pains me to see such a great character being so damaged that he can’t be a better person, and instead keeps hurting others in a spiral of hatred that’s difficult to stop. But back to my dream. I remember that at one point we saw Doflamingo organizing a sort of hospital/ambulatory to heal injured people (thanks to Mansherry’s dandelions of course). He did that to look like a good king to the eyes of the people of Dressrosa, of course, but it was clear that such decision had obvious positive effects too–and he was aware of that and wanted that positive outcome too, and not simply manipulate people. So, even if in the dream we saw Doflamingo’s manipulating side, it was more complicated than that: he used people but still wanted them to be in good health and even happy if achieving that didn’t collide with his own plans. Of course, that only applied to the “winners” of Dressrosa, and not to the “losers” (the one turned into toys and the Colosseum fighters). He knew that saving everyone is impossible, so why bother to threat people equally? But is it really impossible? Well, in the current political/social system we see in the OP world it is. At that point, once can either live with it (and even take advantage of it), or try to change it. So far, Doflamingo did the former--even if there are a few exceptions here and there (but the post would become too long to discuss those too). In the dream, we also heard Doflamingo’s speaking: his voice was similar to the one in the anime (the Japanese version), but... more normal? Like an actual person’s voice, and I remember it sounding calm, a bit deep but not too much. It definitively was a beautiful voice, which boosted his overall charisma. At the same time though, listening to him was scary since we knew what he could do if put with his back against the wall or simply enraged. I don’t remember what he was speaking about, but I do remember that what he was saying made sense and that’s not surprising since it’s the same in the manga too (Doflamingo’s has some of the best speeches).

It definitely was a strange dream, and a dream that made me think a lot. I found myself in a really difficult position: I knew who Doflamingo was and what he would do in the near future, but I had no means to stop him. First of all, because he wasn’t alone. I think someone like him may be persuaded to take a different path if someone gave him a viable alternative, but someone like Trebol probably wants just power (from what we saw so far at least, but with Oda you never know). Furthermore, Doflamingo is always on the defensive (and for good reasons, considering the assassins sent after him). Taking into account where he came from, how he was treated as a child, and how he grew up, it’s easy to imagine that it would be really difficult to persuade him to choose a different path--even if probably not impossible. Actually, I think it’s more than that: I believe Doflamingo is right, that the world in which he lives should be destroyed–only, I would try to do that as the revolutionary are planning to do: I would try to change the whole system, not simply destroy everything… Or at least, I would side with the people who are trying to change things for the better. But I was also put before a moral dilemma: I’m against death penalty, and would only do something as drastic as killing in self-defence or to save someone I love (and I’m not even sure: I never found myself in such a dangerous situation to have to take such decision, so I don’t really know if I would do it in the end). Still, my alter ego in the dream absolutely wanted to do something to stop Doflamingo before things turned for the worst... I probably felt a bit like Rocinante, minus his personal connection with his brother of course (which surely made things even harder for him). I hadn’t enough time in the dream to think about a strategy anyway since I woke up too soon for that, but the interesting part is that I realized that even if we know what happens next, sometimes it’s simply hard (if not impossible) to interfere with large-scale events. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, it may be impossible to really make a difference. Maybe what holds us back in such circumstances is simply fear, which is natural and understandable. Luffy is a great protagonist because nobody or nothing can hold him back: sometimes he takes a pause (the time-skip is an example of that), but he will always fight back against people trying to take freedom away from him or his friends. Luffy’s line in his final confrontation with Doflamingo in Dressrosa his great for that reason: Doflamingo is so self-centred, so closed in himself in order to protect his own life and the lives of the few people he chose as his new family, that he told Luffy he was interfering with his plans. Luffy, though, turned that argument against him: it was Doflamingo that was interfering with Luffy’s plans (or better, with his very right to be free). If Doflamingo will change, I bet Luffy’s words were what started the process. Maybe, for the first time in Doflamingo’s life, someone told him something that was, to use Doffy’s words, a “fact”. And the best part is that Luffy did that not to make him change his mind or anything but just to point out the obvious: Luffy wanted to be free, he wanted his friends to be free, but Doflamingo wasn’t allowing them to be just that. The king is naked. And yet, Doflamingo still put his glasses back after his defeat. He put his mask on again. But later, while talking with Tsuru, he started to consider “if”s too--something that he usually didn’t do. He started to consider different possibilities, different outcomes. Maybe, he started to think that he could have done something differently, too? Could he start feeling remorse, if he hadn’t already (or maybe had just buried that feeling away until now)? If Doflamingo will take his glasses off by himself before the end of the manga I’ll forever love Oda and I don’t care if I’m sounding cheesy here, because that gesture alone would be a huge character development for Doffy and I can only imagine few way to represent it as effectively as with a symbolic scene like that. Back to my dream, another problem I had to face in it was that, as I explained, I hope Doflamingo will have a change of heart later in the story. More like a change of mind in his case, actually, since I’m not sure his heart is in the wrong place to begin with: he has “simply” been afraid his whole life, without a place to call home anymore. People around him either couldn’t handle and guide him properly (his father) or used him to reach fame, power, and wealth since they weren’t strong enough to do that by themselves (Trebol and the older members of Doffy’s family). And his brother never talked to him (which is understandable and believable, but still sad if you think about it). In my dream I should have gone totally Otohime on Doflamingo, but I’m sure he would have killed me on the spot!  XD  Or maybe he would have listened, who knows? Did anyone even properly talked to him? Only Tsuru, probably. Interesting relationship between them, from the little we saw. (Otohime is one of the best character in the manga and I’ll never repeat that enough: in ONE SINGLE WEEK she opened Mjosgard’s eyes and made him a new man–actually, made him human.) But even if I had realized that talking to him was the best option, would I have had the courage to do that to begin with? To be honest, I think I would probably be too scared to talk to someone like Doflamingo, to try to make him change for the better (and not just for others’ sake--but for his own too). Since I don’t like to fight or to use weapons (and wouldn’t have a chance anyway) though, if a found myself in a situation in which I was forced to face him I would definitely try to talk to him. But I wouldn’t do as king Riku: he basically didn’t negotiate, and simply saying “yes” when someone asks you to do something unacceptable isn’t a way to solve problems. I think that, as much as Rocinante is a positive character generally and another top favourite of mine (and a character I hope is still alive every single day--yes, I’m obsessed like that), one of the mistakes he made was not trying to talk to his brother. However, at the same time I can understand Roci being afraid of him, even if I didn’t go through his same trauma of Doflamingo killing their father before his eyes of course. They are such complex characters that they almost seem alive, and I need Oda to go back to them in a way or another before the end of the manga. Please do it, Odacchi!