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quackinquack · 3 years

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Recap and Theories of Quackity’s Second Lore Stream

1. Sam (72 hours before the visit)

So after the first cutscene which basically shows us that Quackity has been visiting Dream daily, we get to find out what was going on with Sam in the time between Tommy's death and revival. So we find Sam on an island in the middle of nowhere, where he's been overcome by grief and guilt over Tommy's death. Quackity and Sam talk, and eventually it gets to Quackity telling Sam it wasn't his fault that Tommy died, it's entirely Dream's fault. He continually escalates the situation in order to convince Sam to kill Dream with him, and in this conversation you can interpret Quackity as being sometimes genuine and caring or continuously manipulative (Although personally, I think it’s both).

They leave the island in a rage, ready to kill Dream. Only for Sam to back out once they get to the prison. Sam says Tommy would want him to keep Dream locked up, and that if someone else dies, Dream is the only one who can do anything about it. At this point, Quackity lashes out at Sam for backing out, and claims that Sam can redeem himself by killing Dream. Sam, in my opinion, does want to kill Dream, and does hold a great amount of resentment and malice towards him, but is holding back mainly to respect Tommy’s wishes.

An important exchange to end this conversation is:

"It's okay if you don't want to do it Sam. But at one point or another, someone's gonna have to teach that guy a fucking thing or two. And if it's not you Sam, it's gonna be me.”

"Okay, but we can't kill him."

So this is obviously a prelude to Quackity and Sam in the first lore stream. Now that Tommy has been brought back and Quackity has seen him, he has confirmation that Dream can revive people, making him valuable. Quackity manipulates Sam into letting him torture Dream by playing into his guilt over Tommy's death, as well as exacerbating his anxiety over something similar happening again in the future. He has already convinced Sam that Dream's death will be the only way to his own mental peace, even if he simultaneously feels it's his responsibility to keep him alive in order to abide by Tommy’s wishes. This also explains why during the exchange, Quackity reassures Sam multiple times that he won’t kill Dream.

Along with Tommy’s wishes, they still have another hangup: Dream is the only one capable of revival. So it makes sense that Sam is so willing to help and allow Quackity to torture Dream daily. Once he learns how to revive, Dream no longer holds any value or power. Not saying Quackity is gonna kill him after, butttt....remember that Quackity didn't actually sign any of the papers Sam gave to him when he first visited the prison...kind of indicates that when something goes wrong, Sam won't be able to hold Quackity responsible because Quackity never actually agreed to his terms. And whatever happens to Dream will fall on Sam’s shoulder.

(Sidenote: This also brings up a few questions and theories about revival. Depending on the rules of revival and what it requires, is it possible to revive oneself? Because I do have some theories about Dream visiting Schlatt in the afterlife after killing and reviving himself...)

So mainly for this chapter we get to understand their motives a bit better, we get a greater insight into Sam's character and his guilt, and we learn more about Sam and Quackity's relationship. Personally, I think Sam trusts and cares for Quackity, as exemplified by him worrying over Quackity being in a cell with Dream, as well as not checking that he signed the books. And I think Quackity does care somewhat for Sam...but not enough to not guilt him over Tommy's death so he can torture Dream. (More confirmation that Quackity is an 'ends justify the means' type of character now!)

2. Badboyhalo (42 hours before the visit)

Okay this chapter revealed the most about potential future plots imo! Quackity digs down to the egg and places a bunch of TNT everywhere, only to be interrupted by Bad and Punz. We learn that Quackity wants the egg gone because of how it's affecting Bad - I believe Quackity wants Bad on the side of Las Nevadas, but only once the egg is gone. From their conversation a bit ago on Bad's stream, we know that Quackity thinks of Bad highly, but is also fully prepared to 'get in his way' if need be. In the end, Quackity does set off the TNT, and then we get a cutscene of him hazily walking through the area with the egg speaking to him. It says "how dare you try to take this one from me, you will suffer for this".

Also, apparently during his conversation with George, he says 'what the egg', so some are theorizing that he's already been taken by the egg (throwback to Karl distracting Quackity away from the egg in the past, indicating in some future he was taken).

And another thing, Quackity has been shown the egg before (not sure if it was /rp though), but he went through the usual entrance. Which has led some to wonder how Quackity knew where to dig down to reach the egg, and if there's someone who leaked that info to him? I've also seen people say that the TNT near Punz seemed to go off first, so some are theorizing that Punz is maybe a traitor(?) though I don't know too much about Punz's character so take that with a grain of salt. I would also like to theorize that the traitor may actually be Fundy, considering one of his lore streams where he is chased down by a black figure, and once he sleeps there is Quackity's smile and casino sounds. Plus him being warned against Quackity in a book.

Additionally: we've seen Puffy accidentally blow up a creeper on the egg, and all it did was turn obsidian for a couple seconds. I have a feeling that all that TNT didn't really do anything but upset the egg. That said, we also know Tubbo recently lost a nuke. I wonder if Quackity is attempting to blow up the egg again...

This is all, of course, a prelude to Quackity and Bad's conversation in the first lore stream, so now we know why Bad seemed pretty hostile to Quackity, and why he essentially said Quackity was 'getting in his way'. (Although he did still visit Las Nevadas with him...) Potential allyship between Las Nevadas and the egg question mark?

3. George (24 hours before the visit)

Quackity sees George standing outside the prison, and the two have a sweet and happy greeting, as it's been a while since the two talked. Quackity begins talking about Las Nevadas and the casinos (which we learn he built for each member of El Rapids) only to be interrupted by George asking 'what about Kinoko Kingdom?'. We learn that while George, Sapnap, and Karl have moved on from El Rapids already and created Kinoko Kingdom, Quackity has believed it to still be a country, going as far as to create Las Nevadas and casinos for them, and had no idea of even the existence of Kinoko Kingdom. George insists that Karl told him, but we quickly learn he didn't. The meeting ends with Quackity somberly agreeing to maybe visit one day.

Quackity and Sapnap/George/Karl's relationship is now soured a bit on Quackity's end. He doesn't seem angry or hateful to them, but instead unsurprised and saddened at their leaving him behind. (Also, on the wiki, Quackity's relationship sign towards Sapnap and Karl has changed while theirs hasn't towards him.) It seems likely that Karl may have forgotten to tell Quackity due to his memory issues which are a result of his time traveling. Whether that be him just forgetting to tell Quackity, maybe telling a past/future person similar to Quackity, or maybe he has completely forgotten who Quackity even is, is unknown at this point. On the side of him having completely forgotten Quackity though, we do have the fact that Karl has distracted/saved Quackity from the egg in the past, but didn't do so this time…It's also hinted at that Quackity created Las Nevadas as a place for the trio to get married (similar to Las Vegas!) so :( sad face.

Also, I have no theories on why George was waiting outside the prison, but I'm sure you NotFounders have a couple ideas ;) In terms of Quackity's character, this chapter is him at his most vulnerable and emotional, and therefore provides us with the most insight to his character so far. In the previous lore stream, we saw him somberly take down El Rapids, piece by piece, then jarringly interrupted by his plans to torture dream daily. That cutscene seemed, to me, to be him moving on from El Rapids completely (although he does still seem to care for the El Rapids members). An attempt to both confront and let go of his past.

And the tone change makes me feel that this was very much the last straw for Quackity, and the 'new man' he's become is far less...friendly than he's been in the past. So we saw his moment of acceptance, but now we get to see his heartbreak. And it really is sad, the way he reacts to what is a betrayal in his eyes. He's unsurprised that he was unwanted and forgotten, even by his own fiancés. And I believe that's very much related to Quackity choosing to see Schlatt in the previous lore stream. For a quick recap, basically Quackity and Schlatt had a toxic/abusive relationship during the whole Manberg era. Quackity has, understandably, been very resentful towards Schlatt since. So it makes sense that only in light of being left behind by the people he valued most, does he agree to go and see Schlatt in the first place. Especially since Schlatt is the only person who has reached out first and wanted to see Quackity.

4. Wilbur (During the Elections)

We get a flashback to the election times, where Quackity and Wilbur have a conversation.

Quackity asks to genuinely talk with Wilbur, who initially says no, then says he'll try. Quackity says that he understands that Wilbur is trying to protect his people, trying to save his nation, and that he doesn’t hate him or want to overthrow him. He states that none of this is about fighting to him, and that he just believes there is a major difference between him and Wilbur. He states that he likes to see the good in people, and believes that there’s a side to everyone that wants to see a better future, and that’s what’s different between him and Wilbur. He retells his story of coming to L’Manberg, how he felt unwelcome, and that he’ll become president himself just to make sure no one else ever feels unwelcome.

Wilbur responds with an interesting line, “Your aspirations of optimism are not going to be subject to my nation's security. I'm afraid.” Wilbur claims that everyone has a good side, but that side is only there to help themselves, and if you want to really help people, you're going to need power. He continues to make a speech about how one could make a movement or resistance, and they would be celebrated, but it will change nothing. During this portion of the speech, we see flashbacks of Quackity interacting with Technoblade and Dream.

Wilbur continues to say, that “if you have a revolution, everyone will hate you. You will sacrifice everything, and you will lose everything you've ever had. But you will come back and everything will be changed.” This portion of his speech is aided by flashbacks to Wilbur blowing up Manberg, with Philza in sight. Wilbur continues by saying that power is only gained through swords, steel, violence. Not diplomacy or bureaucracy.

He continues to say that even if everyone has the good side Quackity claims they have, the only way to prove it is by showing their dark side first, presumably to gain power. He ends with another interesting line, “When I look at you, as a fellow outsider, you're not ready for that.”

There have already been a lot of fantastic takes on what this says about Wilbur’s character, so I’m not going to talk too much about that. I would, however, like to acknowledge that Wilbur was a lot more jaded than I’d noticed, even before the elections. He refers to Quackity as a ‘fellow outsider’, and it seems to me like he sees himself in Quackity, at least when he was younger and more naive. Wilbur, by this point, seems to have already had the revelation that the only way to have any influence on the server, even a positive one, is by first gaining power through violence. Quackity, as we see him now, jaded and hurt so many times, seems to finally agree with Wilbur. And so we end with him leaving a note to Wilbur, calling him a ‘dearest friend’ and saying that he won’t make the same mistake again.

I thoroughly believe that Quackity didn’t actually lose his bet with Schlatt. One reason being that if he did, there is literally nothing forcing him to make good on his word, especially to this extent. And I don’t think Quackity, as he is now, would try nearly as hard as he is to get information on revival just to save Schlatt, of all people. It seems to me that Quackity is actually trying so hard so that he can revive Wilbur. There are only a few people dead at the moment: Schlatt, Mexican Dream, and Wilbur. Quackity does not have a good relationship with Schlatt, he literally didn’t know who Mexican Dream was, and he referred to Wilbur as a ‘dearest friend’. As for why he left the note in that spot, I’m not sure. I mean, it is where Wilbur died, but I wonder if Wilbur, as a ghost, can actually receive the note?

Additionally: In the very first cutscene of the stream, we see three figures, entirely black, riding on horses. We know that one of those figures chased down Fundy, as well, and Fundy was also warned against Quackity. When Quackity leaves the note for Wilbur, we see him, as a completely black figure, leave on his horse. So we know who one of the figures is, but I wonder who the others are? And what exactly they’re doing that they need to be disguised for?

++ Random tidbits that I don't know what to do with!

The Red Banquet apparently only needs one more lore stream before it happens, do with this what you will.

Charlie Slimecicle apparently said he's gonna be 'doing some gambling' so. Hm.

Three months ago Techno and Philza arrived on Sam's island, where there was only the cross at the time, and said 'its foreshadowing!' sooo its safe to say they've been planning this for a while.

#awesamdude #quackity #badboyhalo #wilbur soot #dsmp #georgenotfound #i promise they're discussed in depth i'm not just clogging their tags!#quackinquack #yes i've lost my mind. but i'm okay with that #please rb if u enjoy lol i'm not above begging for rbs #i tried very hard to write nicely and break up blocks of words with italics/spaces/bolding

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thebestofoneshots · 4 years

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SUNDAY BAKING MADNESS

Paring: Dean Winchester x reader

Prompt: You and Dean are determined to finish a homemade meal and a cake for Jack’s birthday. So, naturally, the kitchen turns upside down.

Warnings: None, maybe a spoilers for 15x14? But nothing serious.

A/N: this is just a bunch of fluffy fluff because my boy Dean deserves some happy times.

You sat on the library table flipping through some monster lore pages, trying to find interesting information on possibly unknown monsters when Dean walked in, looking around suspiciously.

“Have you seen Jack?” He asked you and Sam, who had been silently reading on the chair opposite yours.

You denied with your head.

“He must still be in his room,” replied Sam “he’s been in his room ever since Mrs. Butters left.”

Dean nodded “I need you to keep him out of the kitchen at all costs!” He explained.

Sammy frowned “Why?”

“I’m making burgers, and a cake for his birthday,” He nodded and a little smile appeared on his mouth.

“Oh I can help you with the burger buns,” you volunteered.

“Did you just offered yourself to buy burger buns?”

“Not buy, make them!” You answered matter of factly.

“Wait second... you know how to make burger buns?”

“Well they’re just bread,” you shrugged.

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“Well it’s basically just yeast, flour and water...” you elaborated.

“Huh,” he nodded “well that sounds awesome, fresh buns and homemade patties... it’ll be a feast!”

You nodded and stood up to follow Dean to the kitchen.

He turned around right before reaching the door “Sammy, you better make sure he doesn’t go in the kitchen,”

Sammy nodded and then went back to his book.

As the two of you reached the kitchen, Dean took out some ground meat from the fridge, and an apron from the cupboard, that he then placed over his shoulders, it was a stupid black one that said “kiss the cook” in bold cursive, he loved wearing it.

You rolled your eyes but started looking for all the ingredients on your list. You needed yeast, flour, milk, butter and 2 eggs. Your buns had to rise before going in the oven so you had to start with those.

As the two of you worked in synchrony around the kitchen, just like you would on a hunt, he finished his meat blend and you finished the bread, but it still needed more kneading, if only the men of letters had a stand mixer, you wouldn’t have to do it by hand.

“Do you want some help?” He asked from behind, as he noticed you struggling with the dough.

“Be my guest,” you replied stepping aside. He started moving the dough around like playing with playdough, bland then he tried to spin it around like a pizza, you giggled from behind.

“What?” He asked.

“Nothing,” you replied “is just that you’re making burger buns, not pizza.”

He just turned around and raised his eyebrows at you.

“Here,” you approached him “you need to push, and then bring it back, push and then bring it back towards you,” you explained as you kneaded the dough on the counter.

He nodded and tried it himself. He wasn’t half bad “if you weren’t a Hunter, you’d make a decent cook.”

“Hey! I’d make an amazing cook!”

“Sure thing,” you answers and then, now that the dough looked even grabbed it deposited on a bowl, draped a wet towel above it and left on the furthest places on the counter possible.

Dean's patties were already on the fridge and your dough was going through the first rise time. “should we start with the cake?”

He nodded, “I found this recipe,” he pointed at a chocolate sponge cake one on an old men of letters’ book. You gave it a quick overview and it seemed nice, you weren’t anything close to a professional baker but you had made your fair share of cakes in the past.

“I think is a good one, you can measure the dry ingredients while I do the wet ones,” you said casually as you walked to the fridge to get some milk.

“Why are they wet?” He asked with a little sly smirk on his face. Of course he would, you weren’t even surprised. This was Dean Winchester after all.

“Well, you know Dean, wet ingredients are generally liquids, like milk, eggs, butter, that kind of stuff, so yeah, that kind of makes them wet... it does not mean they are aroused in any shape or form,” you added at the end just to mess with him. He drew a short breath like he was about to speak but you quickly interrupted “Now focus on the flour and cocoa powder please.”

He nodded and started measuring the ingredients. “The books say you have to sift them,” you told him as you departed the egg whites from the yolks.

He nodded and started sifting. As you busied yourself measuring the milk and melting some butter, you heard Dean from behind.

“Hey (Y/N)! Look what I found!” He said showing you an electric hand mixer. It was already connected, and he had already turned it on, it was just seconds from inches away from touching the mix. The mix with only dry ingredients.

Your eyes opened wide and you definitely screamed “Nooo!” as you walked towards Dean to try and stop him. But it was too late, as soon as the beaters touched the flour mixture a cloud of light brown powder filled the kitchen. Dusting not only Dean but also you and the entire kitchen around the two of you.

It didn’t take too long for him to realize his mistake and turn off the mixer. You drew in a deep breath and stared at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, now setting the mixer on the counter, still holding the bowl in his hands.

“You just dusted me completely...” you stated.

“Well not completely,” he argued.

“Dean Winchester, don’t you dare argue with me.”

“I should measure the ingredients again,” he nodded towards the Noe half-empty bowl. “Is all of this really going to waste?” He questioned, looking at the red bowl on his hands.

“Oh no, it won’t,” you said carefully grabbing it from his hands “In fact, it will be of great use,” you smiled at him and proceeded to dump the leftovers of the bowl towards him.

“What the f...” he started but you brushed out laughing, he couldn’t even finish.

“Ok fine, if that’s what we’re playing at,” he said then, dusting off all the powder towards you. The two of you were laughing at this point, and you grabbed some barbecue sauce he’d prepared earlier with a wooden spoon and softly spread it on his cheek.

“There, that’s the icing!” You smirked. He just narrowed his eyes at you but decided to be the bigger person and did not, ouch an egg on top of your head. Once your laughter died out, you almost felt bad for him. He genuinely wanted to make this dinner for Jack and an accident had gotten him filled with spices and ingredients. “All right, all right, we should probably focus,” you managed to say.

He just raised his eyebrows at you. “Sorry,” you mumbled as you started dusting off some of the powder on his shoulders and his chest. Then with a towel that sat on the counter, you started cleaning his sauce filled face. You had one hand on his left cheek and the other cleaning his right. After cleaning out most of it you nodded to yourself. “There you go, like new.”

He missed your hands cupping his cheeks as soon as you removed them. No one had cleaned his cheeks that way since he was 4, ever so gentle... so loving...

You stared at his big green eyes for a little too long before snapping out of the trance “we should go back to baking, or the cake won’t be finished, nor will the bread,” you said as you walked towards the dough and as you punched it and worked your way with it to start making the little balls.

“Is this ready?” He asked showing you the batter he was mixing.

“When there are no lumps, probably like a minute more. When it’s done you can put it on the moulds,” you commanded, “Also, don’t forget to grease the pans.”

He nodded and continued with his work until he was done. “Ready! Should I put them in the oven?”

“Yes! And then you can come over, help me make the little balls.”

He placed the cakes on the oven and walked towards you, “aren’t they too small for burger buns?” He questioned.

You shook your head “We’ll let them rise another hour before placing them in the oven.”

“Awesome,” he said and then paid attention to what you were doing “so you just roll them around?”

“Not quite, first, you have to pull the dough towards the bottom, to make the top smooth, then you can start rolling,” he nodded and tried following, but his little dough balls were a little weird. “Here, let me help,” you said as you placed your hand on top of his to coach him on the circular movement he was supposed to do. Not that either of you would admit it, but you loved every second of that hand over hand contact. “There you go!” You said as you removed your hand from his “you’re a natural.”

He smiled and continued. In just a few minutes you were done with the little balls and placed them on top of the oven, so they would rise nicely on the warm area. You then turned around and saw the mess the kitchen had turned into. You sighed “We’re gonna have to clean this out...”

He drew a deep breath “Yeah we do.”

As the two of you started cleaning the counter, Dean tripped, on attempts to keep himself off the floor he grabbed the side of the counter with one hand, but the sauce bowl was there and he only succeeded in flipping it and consequently it falling over his face, you, trying to help tried to grab his free hand, but his weight pulled you in and the two of you ended ok the floor. You on top of him and the sauce bowl on top of his head.

“Awww,” you heard him complain from underneath, you removed the bowl from his head and couldn’t help but let a small google out.

“That sauce most really like your face,” you pointed out and with your index finger grabbed a bit from the sauce and plopped on your mouth to taste it “and I’m sorry to inform you, you’re going make more since it’s incredibly tasty.”

He let out a small chuckle after that. He was in a good mood, after all, he loved having you on top of him. Not that he would ever admit it “Do you want some more?” He asked, grabbing some on his finger and plopping it on his mouth.

You thought it over “I don’t know... I’d be kind of weird to lick your face...” you joked.

But he wasn’t going to let the joke slip away that easily “you wouldn’t!” He played offended.

And that was all you needed, Dean turns things into a dare and you almost lose complete control over your own actions. Leaning closer to his face and lowering your head towards his ear, you whispered “Ah... wouldn’t I?”

And you gave a fast long kick to the far side of his cheek, laughing uncontrollably at his reaction as you rolled off of him. Your hair was now too filled with sticky sauce.

“Did you really just?” He asked in between laughter, you were both just like children when you were around each other. This just prooved it.

The two of you finally stood off the ground and continued with the cleaning. You tied your hair after trying to get some of the sauce with water and he did the same. You were determined to finish this dinner.

“Go bathe!” He said, “I’ll take the cakes out when they’re done, and put the buns in, that way you can check on them while I shower and after we can finish the burgers.”

“10 minutes more,” you said pointing at the oven “make sure to use a toothpick to make sure they’re ready!”

“You know, I’ve made cake before,” he replied.

“Have you, really?” You questioned.

He thought about it for a moment. He must have, he thought to himself. He knew he had at some point he just couldn’t quite pinpoint when. So he just repeated his earlier words “Go clean up, I’ll take care of it,” and so he did.

He checked the cakes were ready and took them out, set the timer for the buns, who had now grown into beautifully big dough balls for perfect burgers and, and placed them in the oven. But when he tried to take the bread out of the mould it wouldn’t come out.

“Hey (Y/N)!” He said loudly, so you would hear him from wherever he was, you walked in with a towel over your shoulders since your hair was still wet. “The bread won’t come out.”

You frowned “Did you grease the pans?”

“Yeah, they’re over there,” he pointed at a pile of oily frypans that sat per the kitchen table “but I don’t understand what that has to do with this...”

You sighed “Dean. You’re telling me you greased the frypans over the kitchen table...”

“Yeah, so the meat wouldn’t stick while cooking,” he replied, still fumbling with the bread on the mould.

“And didn’t it occur to you, that the moulds should’ve been greased too? So that the bread wouldn’t stick?”

Realization downed of him, that by “greasing the pans” You meant the moulds for the cake, rather than the frypans for the meat. “oh...”

“Yeah...”

“Can we fix it?” He questioned.

“We could try taking them out, some of it definitely won’t come off, no matter how much we try, especially the bottom part, but some can be salvaged,” You explained. And so the two of you went around the cakes with a knife to try and unstick the sides before Turing around the bread, luckily, two cakes came out, since the moulds were good quality and the bread had its fair share of butter on it. So other than the tops, the bread had come out almost entirely. Still good for a cake.

“All right, your turn,” you said motioning to the door, “there’re so many ingredients on top of you, you might as well be a cake.”

He chuckled at your words and walked towards the bathroom. Leaving you to tend the buns. Dean came about 15 minutes later, all fresh and clean and the two of you took the buns out of the oven together. But since he was cold from the shower you told him to focus on decorating the cake while you finished the meat. He tried to argue by telling you that he was the grill master and not you, but you shot him down by telling him he would be the master of nothing if he got arthritis from switching between cold and hot all the time.

So he finished decorating the cake, a masterpiece he called it. You tried not to laugh at the sweet intents of the big broad man to make a nice cake for Jack. You chuckled when you took a look at his face. It was again filled with stuff. This time the frosting you had prepared for the cake.

“All right grill master,” you said, walking closer to him and using the same towel as earlier to clean his face again. After removing most of if with the damp towel you smiled. He was so pretty, with his big green eyes just waiting for you to finish. “You really need to stop getting your face filled with food.”

“Well it’s not so bad if you lick it off like earlier,” he mumbled, barely audible, but you paid way too much attention to his words anyway, so you heard it. But you didn’t comprehend what he meant by it, or maybe you were too set on the idea that he would never think of you that way that you were now oblivious to the very evidence against it. So you ignored it and moved on.

The two of you finished preparing the burgers, the cake was in the fridge and you started bringing the burgers to the library, were Sam, Jack and now even Cass sat.

The dinner was fun, everyone loved your food and Jack even argued that Dean and You should open a restaurant together. He couldn’t believe his eyes when Dean brought over his cake. With a cap covering the cake to make more impact on the surprise.

“Ta daaa” he said as he revealed the cake, “Well it’s not like Mrs. Butters but—“

“— it’s great,” Jack said with a smile.

You were sitting in the table next to Sam, and couldn’t help but smile, you knew Dean was still hurt, from everything that had happened, but he was getting better, and he was starting to forgive, even if it was the hardest thing.

“Come here!” You said motioning Dean to sit next to you.

“It’s actually Nut and almond on the inside,” you said as you helped cut the cake.

“Like Nougat?” Asked Jack, with a bright smile.

“Exactly like Nougat,” replied Dean with a tiny little smirk, like he was so proud of himself.

You sighed deeply, staring at Dean for a little too long before going back to cutting the cake.

As Dean tried his first bite his face turned into one of surprise “Wow, we did great!” He said pointing at the cake “this is delicious!”

You took a bite of your slice and nodded in agreement.

“We should bake together more often,” he said casually as he took another bite.

You laughed since the frosting had gotten all over his face again. You had to resist the urge of cleaning it off. Not in front of everyone at least. “I doubt the kitchen would survive if we did...”

“Wait why?” Asked Sam with a frown.

“Oh nothing, right (Y/N)?” Said Dean giving you a look.

“Right... nothing,” you replied smirking complicitly.

What happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen.

Permanent Dean taglist: @akshi8278 @hobby27

Find more Dean fluff here

#imagine #one shot #oneshot #x reader #dean winchester #supernatural #dean winchester one shot #fanfic #dean one shot #dean x reader #Dean oneshot #Dean x you #dean winchester x (y/n)#dean winchester x you #Dean Winchester x reader #x you #x (y/n)

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rawliverandcigarettes · 3 years

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Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens” that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

#Mass Effect #mass effect retribution #me critical #writing #mass effect novels #anderson #kahlee sanders #Aria T'loak #paul grayson #liselle #salarians #IP conversation #omega #mass effect lore #reapers #book review

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hermits-that-craft · 3 years

Text

Marionette Roulette - Chapter 4

TW: Abuse, murder, violence, death, blood

ao3 link in the reblogs

Eret looks out over the prison, his eyes set in anger. He saw what Dream did to Tommy. He knows where the teen is. Dream may have the rest of the mourning server wrapped around his fingers, but Eret won’t let himself be puppeteered again. He won’t fall into line.

But he can’t just break in.

He was at the funeral. He was heralding that Tommy was alive during the funeral preparations. Surely, it would feel more complete. Surely, Dream would have brought his body back.

Eret doesn’t know why he didn’t tell everyone that he saw Dream take Tommy into the prison. It could be guilt, from not confronting the man. It could be fear. It could even be that he knows that the server will not allow him to move on from his betrayal - that the server believes his crown is gilded with blood.

But it isn’t that. It’s not as selfish as Eret lets herself believe it to be.

She’s scared for Sam and Puffy.

Sam, who built the prison. Sam, who lost his job after Dream returned. Sam, who is nothing but kind to her. Sam, who ignores Eret’s past crimes. Sam who visits her in her lonely castle. Sam who took Tubbo and Tommy’s deaths as though they were personal failings, as though Sam killed the pair. Puffy, who practically adopted Dream. Puffy, who let Dream stay with her. Puffy, who patched Dream up after fights. Puffy, who wouldn’t let Dream push her away like he had with his other friends. Puffy, who visited Eret over the winter. Puffy, who had Christmas dinner with Eret instead of her girlfriend. Puffy, who writes to Eret as often as possible. Puffy, who took Tommy and Tubbo’s deaths as though Dream had killed her children.

They don’t want to watch two of the kindest people they know die, be punished for what Dream did.

They don’t want their only parental figures to die.

Eret glares at the prison, not noticing someone approaching them. In fact, they didn’t notice the other person until there was a tap on their shoulder. Eret screeches indignantly, panic squeezing their lungs as they spin around.

“Sorry for scaring you.” Fundy says softly. “You’ve been staring at the prison for a while, I got worried.”

“It’s alright.” Eret sighs, smiling weakly at their friend. “I’m- I’m fine.”

Fundy gives her an incredulous look, but sighs, turning away from Eret. Eret doesn’t feel guilty for lying - she’s making sure his friend won’t snap, won’t fall off the deep end. She can’t allow Fundy to hurt because of Eret. The poor man is already upset because his ex fiance killed his uncle, she can’t let her friend be lead down the path of revenge.

“Where are you staying?” Eret asks quietly.

“Dry waters, with Niki.” Fundy responds. “We’re going back today, probably won’t be back for a while.”

“Oh.” Is all Eret can muster, not having the strength for what they know will come next.

“You could join us, if you’d like?” Fundy asks. It’s the same question, the same offer.

“I have a country to rule.” He responds, his eyes tired. Fundy doesn’t - can’t - notice, Eret’s eyes firmly hidden behind his sunglasses. “I can’t leave everyone without a leader, especially not since Dream hasn’t been punished.”

“You’re going to go up against Dream?” Fundy mumbles, shock on his face.

“Everything’s gotten out of hand. He killed Tubbo!” Eret snaps, she doesn’t understand why Fundy doesn’t see this.

“Eret, promise me one thing. Just one.” Fundy says, taking Eret’s hands. “Don’t make me come back to the SMP for your funeral.”

----

Tuboo walks alongside Ghostbur and Glatt, taking in the land. He remembers everything - all the suffering, all the pain - but allows the two elder ghosts to tell him the lore of the land. And the laws that they made. No one follows them, Tuboo notes, but he can’t find himself caring all to much about it.

What he does care about, is Eret. The king stands, staring at the prison, for hours. Ghostbur and Glatt don’t explain, and when Ghostbur begins to melt without the presence of water the two elder ghosts book it for the Aether.

Tuboo floats towards Eret, ready to talk to the king. They would be the first living person to know that Tuboo is real, the first living person to see him. Tuboo wanted it to be his father, but he isn’t certain that his father will want to see him.

“Are you okay, Eret?” Tuboo’s voice echoes slightly, taking on an airy quality.

“Tubbo?” Eret spins around, tears in his eyes. “Oh, Tubbo. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t do this.” Tuboo says, though he knows none of this would have happened if Eret didn’t betray them. Tommy and he wouldn’t have lost their first lives. But Eret didn’t want their deaths. Eret was - is - the only adult to know what Wilbur and Techno were like to Tommy. Eret didn’t want Tommy and him to die. He wanted to protect them.

“If I hadn’t of-”

“Dream would have done this anyway.” Tuboo shrugs. “Death is not the end of the road. Just the turn off that will take you to your next destination.”

“Then why are you back here?” Eret doesn’t sound judgemental, just confused.

“Because I failed. I failed to protect Tommy.”

“You saved his life.”

“Dream executed me. Why are you staring at the prison?” Tuboo asks, the grass beneath his feat wilting. Eret looks down nervously, as though he doesn’t want to admit to something.

“I saw Dream take Tommy into the prison.” Eret blurts out, her voice wavering. “I tried to tell the others, but no one would listen to me. I tried Tubbo, I really did! No one trusts me anymore, this is all my fault if I hadn’t of-”

“Eret, shut up.” Tuboo says softly. “You didn’t throw the axe. You didn’t send us off. You tried. Now, let me help you get my best friend out of prison.”

Eret smiles, offering his hand to Tuboo. Tuboo considers it for a moment, before taking the hand. Tuboo’s always liked the king, and the good memories that he pushes away outweigh the anger. The betrayal. Tuboo is glad that the king is on his side, and the two walk towards the castle, hand in hand, as the moon rises over the horizon.

----

Phil sits in Techno’s house, a lukewarm cup of green tea resting in his hands. Snow falls onto the ground softly, and Techno’s soft snores hit his ears. He promised his son that he would sleep, but can he sleep? Phil had heard what Ranboo had said to the other members of the smp. Techno and he pretended not to hear, but they did. Techno refuses to let Ranboo sleep in his own house now, worried that the teen will be hunted for what he said.

Phil doesn’t think people will hunt Ranboo. There are now only two children on the Dream SMP, and Phil doesn’t think that anyone will kill them. Not after the joint funeral for the other two. Not after everyone saw the too small caskets get lowered into the ground.

“I should check in on Eret.” Phil mumbles to himself, his communicator lying on the table besides him. The king seemed hysterical from Tubbo and Tommy’s deaths. They insisted Tommy was alive - quite possibly due to the fact that a body has yet to be discovered - and wept every time that someone told them that he wasn’t. Eret is looking after his grandson, even if the fox hybrid seemingly doesn’t care for their family. Phil won’t let Eret’s hysterics harm his grandson.

Phil sends a message to the king, asking if they are alright. No response is given back, though perhaps that is a good thing.

It’s two am, and Phil’s tea is ice cold. Phil tips it down the sink, mourning the loss of the tea that he didn’t even drink.

Did Phil spend enough time with Tommy? Did Tommy die thinking he was unloved, unwanted by his family? Did Phil, in his attempts to help Techno control his voices and help Wilbur learn to fly, push away his youngest? What could Phil have done differently, in order to make the teen less reckless? Phil blew up New L’Manburg to teach him a lesson on corruption and recklessness, why would Tommy continue to run into danger?

Phil drops his cup, tears blurring his vision. He doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand where he went wrong. Sure, he spent more time with his eldest two, but Tommy always was so fucking independent - refusing his help when offered, learning to read before being taught how, even toddling around their home without help.

Cuts dig into Phil’s knees. He doesn’t know when he fell onto the ground, he doesn’t remember dropping his cup. His knees bleed, but is it enough? Is the blood that flows from the enough to staunch the wound that Tommy and Tubbo’s deaths opened?

Is Phil hurting enough?

Phil killed one of his sons. Pushed the other away, even before grief had overtaken him. Ghostbur doesn’t visit anymore, and Tommy and Tubbo’s ghosts haven’t been seen. Techno funnels his grief into anger and Ranboo blames him - blames everyone - for his friends deaths.

Phil stands up, leaning against the wall. He can’t stay here, his wings itch against his skin. He needs to get into the air. He needs to leave, leave the warm home that he doesn’t belong in. He craves the comfort of war and blood and death falling from his hands, gifted to innocent civilians and soldiers who stand in his path.

The cold comfort of violence beckons him, and Phil flees the sanctuary his only living son built. The moon lights the sky above him, and Phil flies over open fields, not willing to touch the villagers that Techno and Ranboo spent months trading with.

He finds a village, a good seven hundred blocks away from Techno’s home. Phil flies in front of the moon, his black wings illuminated from behind. The angel of death. A euphemism that Phil more than once preened himself on. A mortal, an emperor of a hard to reach land in a far off world, having epithets and euphemisms as though he were some underworld god the mortals dared not speak of, in fear of incurring his wrath.

Only the moon bares witness to his slaughter.

Blood stains the grass as animals and people die without a chance to struggle. Blood pools on the floor and coats walls. Phil is no psychopomp, but he serves the same purpose, ferrying the dead to the underworld.

Phil washes the blood off in a nearby river before he flies back to Techno’s base, hopelessness making him moonsick.

----

Tommy curls up in his cell, his ears pressed flat against his head. His tail wraps around his waist, trying to help him warm up. He’s still chained to the wall, though he isn’t bleeding anymore. A plate of food sits on a chest nearby, and Tommy’s new instincts scream at him to take it. That he needs to eat so that he can continue to grow. To live.

Tommy doesn’t want to do either of those things, so he doesn’t touch the food.

Tommy knows Dream is watching. He knows that Dream will come in, will force feed him until Tommy either passes out or throws up. He knows, because Dream is always watching. Because he can feel eyes watching him. Tommy knows, knows too much. He’s scared, he doesn’t want to have Dream force food and potions down his throat.

But he wants to be held again.

Dream is pack. Dream isn’t family. Dream is safe. Dream hurts him. Tommy doesn’t know the truth. Sure - Techno and Phil told him that what Dream had done to him in exile was wrong, was abuse, but they also teamed up with Dream to destroy his only home. Does that make his family evil, or Dream good? Is Tommy the problem, or is Tommy the victim?

Tommy knows one thing for certain about Dream. The man is the only person who visits him. He comforts him after Tommy gets punished for his mistakes, he made sure Tommy is feeling alright after his tail grew in. He gives Tommy apples and a caldron to wash them in. He gives Tommy shiny things to hide around his cell - his den .

Dream wants to help him. Dream wants to hurt him. Tommy doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Maybe if he eats Dream will come. Dream will come if he doesn’t, but maybe he will if Tommy does eat. Maybe.

He won’t eat, even if Dream promised to come. Dream is pack, and Tommy wants to see him again.

He lies on his bed, wishing for his abuser to come back and hurt him again, if only so that he can feel again. He wishes to be hurt or helped. Saved or slaughtered. Killed or kept. Tommy buries his face into the pillow and weeps for a lost friend. For the only brother who didn’t hurt him, the one that wasn’t even blood family.

God, he’s such a fuck up.

#Marionette Roulette #dream smp fanfiction

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teruthecreator · 3 years

Note

THS IS A ROBBERY 🔫YOUR ROLESWAP LORE!!! HAND IT OVER 🤲if u want 2 :)

just took my melatonin bc i have to wake up at 4:30 AM to drive 16 hours to my mother’s so i’m sorry if this becomes derailed but uh. here’s the roleswap lore! or, at least, everything i’ve decided (along with matthew and corinne bc the three of us tagteamed on it)

gonna chuck it all under a readmore bc this is going to get long

so first off, just gonna run out in front and say i have no idea how this fits into graduation plot. i haven’t gotten that in plot consideration, given their character differences in comparison to their canonical selves. so, for the most part, it’s a lot of background establishment and character traits. but i do have a few plot bits that i’ve figured out bc i thought it was cool. why such a long preamble? i don’t know. help me

fitzroy maplecourt:

first off, he’s not called sir!!! because he doesn’t go to knight school!

my idea for his backstory is that the way he decides to grapple with his identity crisis/imposter syndrome (which he definitely Still has) is that instead of becoming a grander, larger than life version of himself. he just. goes the opposite.

not necessarily becoming a degenerate (bc he just smokes pot and that’s not bad he’s just vibing)??? but more just like. leaning into the laid-back nature of life that one might pick up from a lifetime in rural country.

he goes to a liberal arts school a ways away and just decides to bum around and take life not seriously. he develops a pretty large group of acquaintances being a hippie stoner; he doesn’t really pursue a degree either. i think if he picked up any major it was probably like. an art major or an english but he basically fails most of his classes bc he doesn’t care!

unlike his canonical counterpart, fitzroy doesn’t mind being called nicknames!! ones i think he has the most are fitz or roy, but basically you could call him anything and he’ll respond. that is because, instead of clinging to the concept of his identity bc it’s the only thing he feels he has, his identity is nebulous!! he doesn’t understand it and it scares him too much to be concrete, so he just lets people decide shit about him for him.

his personal philosophy is more about floating through life and letting people assume shit about him than having a solid personality and backstory that people understand and recognize. it is a more dissociative way of having an identity crisis! how fun! he also barely talks about his past, and what he does talk about are cherrypicked points of his past that fit his narrative of being a casual down-to-earth hippie

the moment that this all changes is when order decides to pop in and grant him powers!!!! wahoo!!!! here’s how that happens:

he’s baked out of his fucking gourd in his dorm room, in the spring semester of his junior year. he’s alone (which is rare) and he’s maybe a little sad, but he decides to just ignore it. he looks at his table and laughs. “hehe, what if this table just. blew up?” he says to himself. it isn’t that funny, but he laughs. then he lays his hand on the table.

the table blows up.

after that, he has magic!!!

i’m going to go into detail a little bit later about how fitzroy’s magic manifests in the roleswap universe, but i wanna get through the backstory first. basically, he gets really freaked out after his magic comes to him because it is So New and Wow What and What The Fuck.

he realizes that this new addition to his character Completely changes how people who know him would perceive him (as a bum stoner chill guy), and he can no longer have control of his narrative with this magic business. so he drops out!

well, he actually just transfers. to a school far, far away where people will never know who he was and he can rebuild his narrative with this magic incorporated into it. he chooses wiggenstaff’s because he figures the school would have more of a knowledge of magic than his libarts school, which would mean he could understand why the fuck weed gave him magic (sidenote: it wasn’t weed, obvs, but he thinks this so for a while he doesn’t smoke!)

he is now the chill hippie of wiggenstaff’s!!! most people like him because his personality is fairly easy to digest; some people think he shouldn’t be there, but he is! he starts out as a sidekick and he would’ve honestly been fine with that forever, but then he’s suddenly thrust into the hero track!!! wow!!!! i will also explain this with the magic.

but yeah!! that’s fitzroy, for the most part. now we’ll move onto the other boy

argonaut keene:

he actually prefers if people call him argonaut, but he’s less likely to correct people than canon fitzroy Or canon argo. he’s a tad bit shyer in this universe!

argo’s backstory pretty much follows the same idea of his canonical background, but with some key differences that shape him into the character he is in the present!

basically he still grows up on shebrie’s ship, surrounded by crewmates and the salty sea air. but his fascination with the sea doesn’t manifest into this swashbuckling lifestyle that he has in canon.

what fascinates him more is the ship itself. how it functions, how water wears down wood, how directional currents can affect navigation. basically, he becomes invested in the sciences part of sealife more than the pirateering. he has special interests in marine biology, but his heart remains in nautical engineering. figuring out ways to make the ship run better, faster, and more efficiently consumes his childhood thoughts!

shebrie encourages her son’s craving for knowledge with tomes and books from all over the world about anything related to engineering and nautical things. he’s homeschooled, basically, but he becomes rather intelligent within a few short years!

and then, well....shebrie dies. yeah we aren’t escaping that finality, sorry folks. that part of canon Still Applies.

after shebrie’s death (coughMURDERcough), argo is. traumatized! and he makes the decision to almost entirely sever himself from his life on the sea. it’s all too painful to look back upon--the times he spent studying with his mother in the captain’s quarters, rattling off dolphin facts as they sailed onward, dreaming of turning gears as the ship gently rocked him to sleep--and so he just decides to throw the whole thing out!

he can’t ignore his lifetime of education, though, so he continues to pursue it. with the remainder of money his mother left behind, he enrolls himself in a boarding school of science and technology, with plans to continue study in Only engineering. no more nautical Anything on his roster.

eventually, when he is old enough and graduates high school, he roams around...trying to figure out what to do. he doesn’t have enough money for college, so he can’t continue his scholarly efforts yet. he works around, job-to-job, city-to-city, and just notices how...delayed everything feels. like society is suffering under this slow pace towards innovation.

and that’s when he decides his next course of action. if he were to discover the root of some problem and engineer a solution, he would be famous! he would gain notoriety and praise and--and all the things his mother had as a captain. but he would have it on his own, separate from his mother, and separate from his past.

he figures out his next course of action: attend a school that will give his prestigious enough marks to be accepted onto a research team, find a problem, solve it, help the world, maybe earn a little bit of that credit and respect that would make him feel like he was doing his mother proud.

the thing i want to emphasize here is that argo’s take on helping the world comes from that morality that canon fitzroy has. canon fitzroy wanted to be a knight because he wanted to fairly and justly instill ideas of “good” and “bad” onto the world. roleswap argo has a similar moral sense, but instead of establishing rules he wants to fix the “bad” and make it “good” in a technological/scientific sense.

the only school argo can think of that can get him that kind of notoriety is wiggenstaff’s. getting onto the HOG board would mean he’d have access to countless resources and be respected by a large audience, which would give him the opportunity to make change happen. even if he’s only a sidekick On Paper, what matters is that the diploma would give him the ability to Apply to the HOG. so he drafts a carefully worded letter for a scholarship and achieves a full-ride!!! epic

like fitzroy’s magic, i’m going to break down argo’s relation to the unbroken chain after i get through backstory stuff. but trust me, I’ve Thought Of It

argo sort of blends into the background at wiggenstaff’s. or, he would, if his roommates/friends weren’t so Fucking Out There. fitzroy is enough to make him always be visible, but even the firbolg’s massive frame means eyes are always on him. which makes him nervous!! he doesn’t like the attention (as opposed to his canonical self, who revels in it for the self-esteem fuel) his insecurities manifest more in what he’s Doing rather than what he Is, mostly because his identity is barricaded by a wall of trauma repression

he’s still plenty funny and witty, just quieter. also he’s a lot Meaner than canon argo, at least to me. because if you irritate him he Will just completely shut you down with words. motherfucker doesn’t bark but he will most DEFINITELY bite

that’s their backstories, for the most part! in terms of how they interact together:

as established, they meet prior to wiggenstaff’s on a tinder date (during the grace period of argo working odd jobs and fitzroy about to be granted immense fucking power) and end up casually dating during the course of their wiggenstaff education. argo is a nervous goober and fitzroy just likes making him blush. it’s very cute.

fitzroy is still less inclined for the romantic than argo, who remains a steadfast absolute romantic internally. fitzroy still holds a lot of the self-doubt and distrust that canon fitzroy has, only it manifests in him not taking anything seriously! which means when he catches Feelings feelings he basically freaks out

argo still falls in love really quickly, only now he’s more conflicted about it because being in love means trusting and trust means communication and communication means Oops Years Of Trauma Are Being Unloaded Uh Oh!

now i’m going to touch on the big points that i find really interesting: fitzroy’s magic and argo’s relation to the unbroken chain

fitzroy’s magic:

chaos is not the being that grants him magic. it’s order!

my take on what this means for what deity is on what plane of reality is that chaos is more Needed so they are the one that is physically On Nua, while Order remains in dreamscapes because they are already a constant amongst the tangible world. yes i know this directly contradicts the reasoning for why theyre Supposed to be where in canon, leave me alone i’m having fun.

my reasoning for this switch is because chaos stands to be a contradiction to everything canon fitzroy has going on. he has a very strict, nailed-down understanding of himself and the world. everything he thinks is in black and white, bold statements, no questions, he follows rules and obeys the law. untiiiiil chaos gives him magic and shocks him out of that complacency. they lean into his inner impulses and that rage he’s kept locked deep inside. they allow for magic to Explode out of him, rather in calculated bursts or with intent.

which is why order is more fitting for roleswap fitzroy!! because fitzroy, in this world, has less of a concrete grasp of himself and the world. he purposely lets himself be nebulous and goes with the flow. thinking of the future in real terms is not something fitzroy Does, he has no plans and that’s Fine. order seeks to give fitzroy a backbone, to put it simply.

his magic doesn’t go impulsively out of him. it is calculated--it comes with thoughts and intentions. the reason it surprises fitzroy when the table blows up is because he didn’t think his thoughts or wants would amount into that, but that’s what order is trying to show him. that his intentions matter. that he matters and he has to Think and Focus and Be Here.

i’m still not sure if his power would manifest as lightning??? because the imagery for the lightning works perfectly for canon fitzroy because of the random power of lightning strikes. but for roleswap fitzroy it’s more like...thunder. like Purpose. thunder happens because of a reaction--it comes with intent. if differing air temperatures collide, it creates thunder. that combination is purpose + intent equating in magic.

i think that part needs word bc like. how would one quantify thunder?? i think fire might also work really well because the idea of a controlled fire. like things have to Happen in order for fire to start, it can’t just appear like lightning can.

order’s manipulation relies more heavily on the concept of boosting him up as a savior/hero, rather than boosting his ego and desire for power. fitzroy Has no desires in roleswap world--he’s just there. but when he gets put on the hero track, now he’s suddenly been given purpose. and order uses that to be like “wow, look at all these people who rely on you! look how important you are! don’t you want to use this magic for good?? to do good?? start a war with a demon come on pussy :-)”

OH YEAH also he becomes a hero in this universe (like in terms of tracks) because of the fact that it directly contradicts how he views himself. for canon fitzroy, it was showing him how much more he is capable of without the restrictions of morals (i.e, king fitzroy). but roleswap fitzroy doesn’t Have an image he wants to bolster! he doesn’t think he needs it and, frankly, he doesn’t care for it. the hero tracks carries with it all these stereotypes and expectations that now directly contradict his personality--thus showing him he is capable of more.

okay now for argo’s business jesus christ this post is so long and im NOT EVEN DONE WITH ALL THE POINTS I WANTED TO MENTION

argo’s relation to the unbroken chain:

so since roleswap argo has less of an association with his past (and, by extension, the memory of his mother), he is less inclined to join the mysterious cult that his mother was a part of.

moreover, he doesn’t necessarily believe the shit he’s told??? he’s way more skeptical of jackal than canon argo is--immediately questioning why and how jackal knew his mother, and constantly trying to poke holes through his narrative.

generally speaking, if you try to talk to roleswap argo about his mother or his past, he Shuts Down. like completely. and that usually results in him snapping at you or just clamming up completely. mostly he just gets really snippy and angry because Hey Shut Up Dickhead I Don’t Want To Talk About It

a part of me still isn’t sure whether or not argo would take the unbroken chain up on their offer. but i also know that, plot wise and character arc wise, it is a necessary part of argo’s story. so i think, at most, he agrees but is extremely hesitant and might even let fitzroy on immediately once he’s given the task of digging into fitzroy’s life

also, they’re boyfriends in this universe, so how could he Really keep it a secret for that long. come on jackal, you idiot, you know they’re kissing.

i think he’d Eventually warm up to jackal as a sort of father figure, but only after many nights of conversation and dancing around the subject of shebrie.

OH YEAH. this argo doesn’t know the commodore murdered his mother! important to note! he just assumes what he was told was true, that she sailed into dangerous territory and was ambushed.

during the tribunal bit If That Even Happens In This World, i think fitzroy actually is the one who figures it out Before argo. and once argo does, well............fuck!

OKAY last little bit, just gonna talk about some random extra parts of the world that i’ve thought of already:

in this universe, grey takes on higglemas’s identity instead of hieronymous’s!!! this is for good reason actually

okay so basically my thought was that, instead of whatever happened in canon yadda yadda dog time, hieronymous and grey are fighting and it’s a pretty evenly matched battle. there’s a cooldown moment where hiero thinks he’s safe but grey uses sneaky backhanded tactics to try and get the drop on him.

only higgs sees it in time and saves his brother, taking the hit himself. he collapses, extremely wounded, and hiero rushes to his aid. he’s cradling his brother’s body, trying to keep him alive, when grey approaches to deliver the final blow.

hiero is completely crushed and defeated and basically will let grey do anything to him by this point. the only thing he begs of is to let him live long enough to save his brother.

now, grey isn’t nice. let me make that clear. grey fucking SUCKS and the reason he agrees is because he wants a Real War with hiero and he can’t get that if hiero is basically like “if you let higgs die then you might as well kill me”.

so, grey agrees, and hiero ends up saving higgs by turning him into a cat. was supposed to be a temporary solution until he could find a better spell, but he wasn’t the magic guy in the duo. eventually, grey gets tired of waiting and decides to do some other shit. like turning the school the brothers have been running into a backalley place for demons!!

he takes the form of higglemas and leaves hieronymous locked in his office as basically a mascot. he’s like the queen and grey is the parliament--grey makes all the rules, but everyone assumes it’s hiero. faux-higgs is more on the ground, changing things and making the school a place more fitting for an eventual war. he builds up the concept of heroes and villains being Real, in the hopes he can sway some mortals to his side when he’s able to open a portal to hell.

hiero still tries to stop this from happening, but his pride and his self-image is wounded by what happened. he feels guilty and puts the blame entirely on him, instead of doing the whole cowardice route like higgs did in canon. he gets people to help him eventually, via mind control and all tht jazz.

also in this universe, buckminster is the one who gets birdified instead of leon!! has to do with my leon/buckminster and higgs/hiero narrative parallels that i’ve thought of for far too long.

firbolg is exactly the same in this universe. it is hard to swap three people and i didn’t want to think about him.

fitzroy doesn’t pick a grab. i think he’d rather a lizard, like a bearded dragon. he names him something stupid. like scaly. or kyle.

uhhh yeah!!! i think that’s....everything i’ve thought of so far!! lemme know if you wanna hear my takes on any other elements in the roleswap world!!!!

#taz graduation #taz sir fitzroy maplecourt #taz argo keene #roleswap maplekeene #ignorance cloud on #thanks em!!!!#sorry this is a mile long i had a lot to say #and now...i sleep!#jesus christ i have to drive 16 hrs tomorrow #help me :-)#ember360

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fencesandfrogs · 3 years

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an abridged history/explanation of warrior cats if you didn’t read them as a kid and have questions (a primer)

welcome. i’m going to keep things to the point, this is not a plot summary, just, well, its a pandemic and people are seeking items of childhood comfort and its come to my attention that a lot of people didn’t read these books as kids and then they come up in conversation and they act shocked so! i felt compelled to write this.

[2.5k words, 10min read. section headers, no pictures. not a ton of helpful formatting. i don’t want to say don’t read this because obviously i wrote it and think it’s worth reading, but i’ll be honest, this is a lot.]

section one: about me

i was an avid reader as a child, most of which fits solidly into “stories for another time,” and some of which would necessitate me adding tags onto this post that are, well, not necessary. so i will skip over that backstory but for those aware of lexile scores, i had one that was too high for literally any book that was appropriate to give me. so reading in school was torture and reading for fun was excellent.

now because i was a first-ish grader and my mom was trying to keep the fifth harry potter out of my hands, she looked desperately for something else to pass to me. her friend, who had a daughter a year or two older than me, was into these cat books, and my mom was like “here honey you like cats” without thinking too much about it.

which is good, because as i’ll get into, it was a really good fit for me. but like a dozen books later she asked me about the plot and well. i think at that moment she realized that it might have been better to just let me read harry potter.

but yeah i continued to read them long past the recommended reading ages and still as a Young Adult will return to them for nostalgia, and also as i will get into, some really good books. (see a list of books for “morbidly curious but i don’t want to spend 56 to 168 hours reading this”)

i’m not fully caught up on the series but this is not a plot summary so that should not impact my ability to discuss this

section two: content warnings

these books (not this post) includes the following:

discussion of castration (1.1 series 1, book 1, i’m not including this on every item/discussion because this is a complicated series but i want to demo how up front some of this is)

teenage romance/sex/pregnancy (1.1ish-1.3 or 4, continues throughout the series quite a lot, comes up again in 3.4/5, 4.4-5, and a bit in 5)

death from childbirth (1.can’t remember which book, many others)

unwanted pregnancy (se super edition, or a longer one off novel, discussed in 4&5)

sex/implied, discussed, and very very very heavily hinted but never directly said/shown (1.1-3ish, se, other)

murder (constantly, 1.1, 1.4, literally every book, 3.5, i’m just listing the ones i remember off the top of my head that were particularly graphic)

disability/illness, esp. the debilitating and/or deadly nature of it (1.3-5ish, 3.1, but all of 3, 3.4ish)

dementia (1.3-5, i’ve heard in some of the later series?)

abuse (7/8 this is reported i haven’t read these books but based on what i know it’s def there)

child abandonment (1.4-5, 3.4/5, it’s also all over the place but i think those are the only major character incidents of it)

treason (1.3-5, all over the place)

the horror/tragedy of war (background, but pretty constant)

disagreeing with an integral religion/tradition (3, based on the series title, 8, and generally scattered)

the corrupting influence of power (1.4/5, possibly 7/8, others)

racism (1, 3-5, possibly others)

sexism (se, background)

patriarchal societies (se, seems to be somewhat softened based on what i’ve heard but i’m not entirely sure about this)

and more! but it starts to get stranger and this is enough to prove my point

basically everything that could go wrong does

oh yeah! child abuse also child abuse that’s a very major theme in the first series as well as during other points. and elder abuse in the first series.

okay i’ve made my point.

section three: the appeal

look. so. i think we’re kind of pastel-ify children’s literature based on movies. see, parents have to watch children’s movies with their kids, so they can’t be gritty and intense because a lot of parents will say “not for my nine year old! they can’t deal with treason!” and that seems to be bleeding into children’s literature.

but warriors is not that. it’s intense, it borders on “too gruesome for children,” and it’s from a time where kids books got to be serious and heavy and dark because they were about animals. which was great because i couldn’t find books at my reading level that weren’t too thematically difficult, so i got to read something below my reading level, but thematically too hard, so it kind of balanced out.

and then well. so. the series grows with the audience, but the books don’t grow in terms of like difficulty so new readers start deep into it and it’s a complicated thing, the fandom history is complex, but.

the appeal is that parents don’t usually read the books their kids read and so they see a book about cats and assume it’s fluff, and kids who are starved of complex content get to read hamlet-for-kids.

section four: worldbuilding/lore

oh yeah also there’s some really deep lore to explore. so there’s two bits of appeal.

i’m not doing a full world/plot summary, but i’ll explain some common elements here.

thunder/shadow/wind/riverclan: harry potter houses for cats (gryffindor, slytherin, hufflepuff, ravenclaw, except this doesn’t work for the last two but that’s fine because no one cares about them despite riverclan being pretty important in most of the books)

-kit/-paw/-star: naming conventions. everyone has a two part name. (we’ll use cinder as an example because i like the two cinders we know, even tho neither of them get to be cinderstar.) babies are -kit (cinderkit), then when they’re apprentices, which is like being a student, you know, elementary through high school, you’re paw, so cinderpaw. then you get an Official Name from ur clan leader (cinderheart). if you become clan leader, you get to be -star (cinderstar). i know i haven’t explained clan leaders bear with me. this is kind of important because i have the names burned into my memory so i cannot simply always call firestar firestar if he was firepaw at the time of the events i’m describing. it won’t be ambiguous, cinderheart/cinderpelt are a special case. if this is tricky for you it’s fine just only read the first part of the name.

clan (leader, deputy, medicine cat, elder): roles with in the clan. leaders literally have nine lives. deputies are next in line and chosen by the leader. leaders usually go through several deputies, because deputies don’t have nine lives. medicine cats are doctors. they also have an apprentice. those are all one per clan. elders are just retired cats. they’re not a special category per say, but i wanted to mention them.

warrior: adult.

warrior code: laws.

star clan: dead cats. this ties into the religion which is pretty important to the books but for the most part if you understand that dead cats get to give guidance and send their approval, you have the gist of it.

section five: so um, what the fuck

so we start with a cat named rusty who runs into the woods to join thunderclan and then his name is firepaw and we all forget that he’s named rusty except for like that one time it comes up again. bluestar is a great leader with some corrupt deputies but fireheart eventually takes care of it and becomes clan leader which is a big deal.

then a bunch of other shit happens and suddenly ashfur is possessing brackenstar and being (more) abusive to squirrelflight (who is on the outs with brackenstar anyway for lying about their kits jayfeather, hollyleaf, and lionheart because they’re actually the children of firestar’s other daughter leafpool who had them with crowfeather after she fell in love with him but he’s from windclan and she’s a medicine cat so that’s double illegal and apparently hollyleaf is alive even though she yeeted herself into a pit and died because she killed ashfur when he threatened to reveal this but couldn’t live with being the product of an illegal meeting and then it was all pointless because leafpool stopped being a medicine cat out of guilt anyway and jayfeather is just an ornery bitch about everything but especially all of this)

i’m not explaining any of that.

section six: i repeat: so um, what the fuck

so the thing about these books is they’re soap operas and dramas about cats and that means they get just as strange and chaotic as anything else in the genre. i think a lot of people like me, who read them as children, regard the series we knew as a child (usually either the first three or the first five, plus super editions) as something good and warm and comforting (despite being dark and gruesome) because they made us feel good.

they were also a breeding ground for young fandom because of all the the drama that exists and the nature of the books providing that.

section seven: super editions

the simple answer to what a super edition is has already been given (it’s a novel length one-off about a single character, and its usually either a side character - bluestar, crowfeather - or a event/perspective we don’t get to see - firestar, skyclan, greystripe - and they’re generally more mature)

my favorite super edition is bluestar’s prophecy. i read it at like 16, slinking into the children’s library with a stack of other ya fiction and a “children’s book” which dealt with unwanted pregnancy, grief, forbidden love, and more. still not sure why that’s in the children’s section.

section eight: about the drama

so there’s been a lot of fandom drama about these books. i can’t tell you about the nuances, because i am an old fan, so i watched but didn’t partake. the highlights reel that i can recall goes as follows (please note i will refer to characters by name without explanation. it’s fine. the point of this section is to convey the pettiness of this drama):

tigerstar: did he do anything wrong? (the answer is holy shit yes, this isn’t discourse, it’s okay to like a villain)

scourge: did he do anything wrong, also what color is his collar? (also yes, doesn’t matter)

was the new prophecy (2)/omen of the stars (3)/etc good? (yes, eh, no, yes, no comment, no comment)

should jaypaw or hollypaw be medicine cat apprentice (neither of them, but jaypaw’s employment opportunities are limited because he’s blind, so its gotta b him)

uhh a massive tangle around this parentage drama between squirrelflight, leafpool, brackenfur, and crowfeather, which i used as the crux of humor for how batshit the plots can get, so i’m not even going to pretend i can make it funny, but just know that it’s batshit and the correct opinion is as follows: no one is right, but squirrelflight has done the least wrong, brackenfur is an asshole to her where it’s unwarrented, and hollyleaf is an idiot

and the current drama centers around brackenstar and ashfur and is tied directly to the point above, which is why i’ve kind of given up trying to make jokes about this because this is the culmination of like 35 novels.

section nine: i feel like i need to have some conclusive point to justify writing all of this

but i don’t have one, because this was really an excuse to ramble about an old passion for like half an hour. i mean i guess i can say, like, i think younger fans are sort of embroiled in this drama they don’t really have context for, because i’m not kidding, the current drama centers around the grandchildren of our original cast.

it’s kind of hard to know why, say, mistystar matters if you don’t know that she’s the child of bluefur and oakheart and if you don’t remember the drama that surrounded that when bluestar was dying and tigerstar and leopardstar were ruling a combined shadow/riverclan.

(i really hope that’s intelligible i tried to lay the groundwork for it. basically, there’s a biracial kid in a very segregated society who becomes the leader of one of the clans. which is obviously drama, especially considering that that clan was part of a weird supremacy movement a while back.)

& you know? i really hope one of the new series gets to be like, a soft reboot. just. end the current drama and pick up again with the latest generation. a) we’re starting to run out of names, and b) i think that it’s kind of tipped over the edge of sane.

the series also used to be very low fantasy. the cat societies are reasonably close to feral cat colonies (the biggest detail is that toms don’t all have their own territory, but there’s honestly in-universe discussion of this and it’s basically a culture thing), and while star clan/religion is a real and legitimate thing, there’s also a discussion of its abuse and most of the early books don’t really use star clan/related ideas as a physical force so much as a plot device, barring, like, when a new leader gets their nine lives.

honestly, i’ll always adore these books for serving the role they did, and a lot of the series is fantastically well written. but the fandom surrounding it can be, uh, not great because 9-14 year olds don’t really have good brains to understand this.

also, i’m very sad that i can’t find the flash game that was for the great prophecy. it was not very fun, but i enjoyed playing it, so if anyone knows the url so i can search the internet archive for it, please let me know.

section ten: i’m morbidly curious but there are 56 hours of books to read, assuming a very fast reading pace, so is there something i can start with to experience this without dedicating 4 days to it?

yes, there is.

it’s called bluestar’s prophecy. it’s standalone, and i should have given you enough of a background on the lore that you don’t need to know anything else. i’ve already given away the twist in series 1 that it would spoil, so you’re all good on that front.

if you want more, or want the original experience, the first series is self contained and quite good. i’ve given the broad outlines of the plot, but trust me, there’s a lot of surprises and all sorts of things i skipped over because while i like it, it’s not exactly fandom primer material

i also enjoy firestar’s quest and skyclan’s destiny for super editions, but you’ll need to read the first series to understand FQ and FQ to understand SD, so it’s not exactly a starting point. also, SD especially deals with a very different set of themes as the other books.

also, if you were to, say, search “readwarriorcats” (no spaces) on duckduckgo, and then click on one of the first links, you know, not the official site, the one hosted on one of those free website things, you know, not wix, not wordpress, the other one, you would only find lists of the books with hyperlinks.

#warrior cats #fandom #txt #mine #1st #February #2021 #February 1st 2021 #essay #personal #long #q

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ask-the-crimson-king · 4 years

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Tales from D&D: The Campfire Song Song

[It is I, your friendly neighborhood Hermit back with another tale from D&D. And this one is... Certainly a saga. LONG POST AHOY.

IT IS ONCE AGAIN FROM MY CURSE OF STRAHD CAMPAIGN! The characters, in brief, are:

AETERNUS -- Goliath wild soul barbarian, played more like a golem than a goliath. Stoic, remembers almost nothing of his past. ARAZEL -- Blood angel (aasimar x tiefling hybrid) bard, has a patron because he used to be a Warlock and the player wanted to keep the patron. Very much a Bard. Has tamed a fucking dire wolf who is now named Boris. He is a good boy. LEON -- Human time domain cleric, worships a god of time called Tempus. Old retired soldier sent out into the world because his god has plans for him. CALEB -- Vampire desperado gunslinger, a vampire hunter who wants revenge against the creatures who turned him and killed his family.

In the last session, the players had made it to the Old Bonegrinder and met the three hags living there. Thanks to a Fifth Nat 1, the hags became hostile because Arazel mentioned how he had a pet dire wolf and the hags thought he was sent by Strahd.

I told them at the beginning of this one, “If you can talk your way out of this encounter, I’ll let you level up right now instead of waiting for Friday.”

What the fuck happens right after I say that?

Arazel fucking crits on persuasion and the party is now LEVEL FOUR! HURRAY!

Caleb is dealing with the two sisters upstairs, his gun is mentioned, and then Arazel’s player says, and I quote,

Arazel had also purchased a pastry, and Aeternus ends up charging upstairs and Arazel turns to him and says, "Hey Pebbles, eat this okay?" Aeternus made the con save, so instead of having weird dream visions, he instead felt this weird sense of nostalgia that he cant place his finger on. Seeing the cakes were safe, the rest of the party all pay for a cake themselves and they all. fail. the save.

So they get to fall into a pleasant, dreamlike state, for 1d4+4 hours... and OF COURSE I roll a 4. So eight hours of them being in this trance. Arazel, Leon, and Caleb, all conked the hell out. Which meant Aeternus was alone with this Night Hag who was now cackling.

And so he asked the witch what was in the cakes, and she simply said “some very rare and exotic ingredients. it is an acquired taste.” aeternus then took many hints, scooped everyone up, and left with Ismark (Kolyana and Ireena were waiting outside in a cart, not trusting that place one bit, but Ismark went in to help guard the party and keep an eye on Caleb.)

They run back to the cart and Kolyana is asking what happened. Aeternus explains the situation with the cakes, and Kolyana then facepalms. He says,

"You didn't eat any, did you?" "I did, why?" "Those are dream cakes. they're popular in Vallaki -- you'll see why." "I do not dream." "Everyone dreams, my boy. daydreams, plans for the future, or-" "I have nothing to dream about." The cart goes quiet before Ismark speaks up. "What do you mean?" Aeternus then says, "I remember nothing but war from my past." "A miserable existence, then." "Heh, makes you sound like a barovian," Kolyana says with a snicker. "We're all miserable bastards."

More silence.

"You really don't remember anything?" Ismark then asks. "Nothing but war." Aeternus shakes his head. "How old are you?" "... I do not know. I have been wandering for some time, but I know I am quite old." "I don’t remember any wars in our recent history. You don’t seem to be old enough for any of those." "Definitely not," Kolyana agrees. The cart is silent, and Aeternus goes quiet.

Hours pass, and the cart is pulled off to the side of the road. Ireena and Valerie, a Vistana woman they had met, (who owned the cart), go off to build a fire, while the rest stay back in order to wait for the others to come out of their trances.

When they do awaken, the world is darker. More grim, more miserable. The mists seem to cling to them, and they long to be back in their dreams.

Arazel awakes with a start, drawing out his magic string and wrapping it around Leon's neck while a thin knife hovers at Caleb's throat. Kolyana, Ismark, and Aeternus all stand to try and apprehend him as he asks, "What the HELL happened to me?" "You were dreaming," Aeternus tells him. "We didn’t do anything to you." "Put the weapons away, you're around friends here," Ismark says, his sword half out of its sheath. Slowly, Arazel backs down, checking his wings to see if any feathers are out of place. Boris looks up at him expectantly, and Arazel takes him to the fire as the rest of the party files out of the cart.

They all go and head down to the fireplace, and enjoy a nice thick stew. Some of the vegetables are freshly picked from the lands around them, although they are thick mountain-dwelling plants. They are a bit higher up in elevation, though more surrounded by foothills instead of mountains.

They enjoy their dinner and Kolyana asks them what they saw in their visions. Leon goes first, recalling his home. recalling the people he loved, the community fostered, everything. It felt warm. It felt safe. But that wasn't here anymore. Kolyana gave him a small reassuring pat on the shoulder before Arazel spoke up.

"I saw my mother." "Your mother?" Aeternus asks. "Okay, well, here's the thing. My mother was this holy angel, and my father was a damned and hated tiefling. And my father kinda dipped on me when i was younger. My mother served a very holy god who didn't want to be sullied with such a sinful abomination," he then gestures to himself, "and so my mum had to leave me." "Wait, wait, your mom left you because her god said so?" Caleb asks. "Well yeah but I mean I get it. if she didn't then she would've lost her powers, and-" "That’s pretty selfish of her." Caleb shrugs. "sorry, man." "Not really. I’m sure any parent would do that." "I can tell you, as a father myself, I would never do that to my children. No matter who the god was. I'm sorry you had to go through that," Kolyana tells him, giving Arazel a meaningful look.

“And what about you, vampire?” the old man asks. “What did you see?”

"I saw my home. I saw the old homestead. I saw my parents, and my siblings. It was nice." Before Kolyana responds, a conspiracy of ravens descends from the sky. one lands on each of Aeternus' shoulders, cawing. The three Barovians all gasp.

"What fantastic luck," Kolyana mutters. Arazel is tempted to have Boris pounce on them, but Kolyana quickly says "DO NOT ATTACK THEM! That would bring nothing but doom and misfortune. Ravens are symbols of good luck, not evil. At least not here."

Arazel shrugs, and tosses a piece of his stew at them. They caw and hop off the giant's shoulders, peck at the food, then flutter off into the night. The party all decides to settle in for the night, and this comes my FAVORITE fucking part of the session;

Dream Chats with Strahd!

(Yes I’m bending the lore a bit but it’s for the rule of cool okay)

I bring each of the players into the Special Corner (Discord call, we have a D&D voice chat and then Special Corner for 1-on-1 with the DM) one by one.

First in was Arazel.

Arazel feels the presence of his patron. He feels a warm, golden glow about him, even if he cannot visualize Sanguinius himself. He soon finds himself within a hall. It seems to be that of a cathedral. Polished stone, nearly gleaming, is under his feet. But everything feels... a bit fuzzed out. Just barely out of focus. He sees a lectern at the end of this great hall, with, what 40k fans would recognize, as the BA symbol, inscribed into it.

And then he hears a very familiar voice, and sees a very familiar figure walk out from behind a pillar.

Familiar dark clothing, familiar face, familiar dark eyes.

It is Strahd von Zarovich, and he has come for a chat.

And he doesnt greet arazel with hostility. He says that he is impressed with this place of worship, and that he knows very little about Arazel’s patron. But he would love to learn more about him, and about Arazel himself. Arazel asks “why are you here?”

Strahd takes a sip from his glass before he says, “You and your compatriots all fascinate me. So I want to learn just a little more about you. How you think, what your morality is." He shrugs, and then explains that he does not have too much time to speak. An invitation will be given -- soon, though he does not know when -- and tells him it is within Arazel’s best interests to accept it. He wants to be able to have an open, honest chat with him and his friends.

He also asks that he does not discuss this meeting with anyone. A measure of trust. Arazel agrees, and Strahd disappears.

Next up, Caleb.

Caleb is dreaming of his homestead. He feels grass beneath his feet, but none of his family is here. Everything around him feels fuzzy, blurry. The only crisp image is of the homestead itself. Strahd appears to him as well, coming out of the homestead, and says similar things to what he told Arazel, namely the reason for his arrival and his interest in him and his friends. However, he also remarks on how similar the two of them are, referring to their shared vampiric nature. Caleb says,

"Actually we're probably very different. I think we became who we are through very different ways."

Strahd agrees, but he offers a solution to Caleb's little bloodthirst-issue, (which luckily has been able to be curbed thanks to Leon being generous), and potentially knowledge about his abilities. Caleb recently gained the ability to be able to shift into bat form, and he thinks he may have other skills locked away.

An invitation is mentioned, along with the same condition. He cannot tell anyone of this meeting.

Caleb, begrudgingly, agrees. Strahd vanishes once more. Interestingly, Strahd does not mention how one of Caleb’s current goals is to go into van Richten’s tower to find the old hunter in order to find a way to kill Strahd.

But we’ll get to that.

Then we go to Leon.

Leon appears within an old library. The books around him are nothing more than vague shapes, and there is a musty smell from the bookshelves. Ahead of him is a strange device, a piece of machinery made of many different concentric rings, which he realizes must represent the different planes of reality. It slowly moves, casting around shadows as an unknown light source dances around the room. This is a representation of how Tempus views reality and its many potential timelines, he realizes. Just a very, very simple model, but it resembles the one from his own church.

Enter Strahd, a warm smile on his face.

“I’ve been waiting to speak with you for some time. You and I have much to discuss.”

Leon asks why he is here, and Strahd explains what he had told Caleb and Arazel -- though he also adds he wants to learn a little more about him, here and now. He wants to also extend the offer for Leon to learn more about Strahd himself in a sort of private talk, and expresses interest in learning more about Tempus and Leon's nature and relationship. He asks Leon to tell him a few things, and Leon agrees to tell him a bit about his past -- his life as a soldier, the village he had settled within, how he found Tempus, that sort of stuff.

Then Leon cuts right to the point, saying, "Why are you really asking me this? I don’t like to associate with bad people."

"Well I wouldn’t call myself bad. I have made my mistakes, and I am no saint, but I’m not a horrible person." Strahd shrugs. "I ask because I’m fascinated by you. By all of you, honestly. You're quite the interesting little crew."

He mentions the invitation, but also gives a different message.

"I know Caleb is going to be going to van Richten's tower. I want you to stay behind in Vallaki when he does. I will send my invitation then. Our conversation will be a little more... private, for lack of a better term, then the one I shall have with all of you."

He gives the same terms -- that Leon cannot tell anyone of this meeting -- which Leon agrees to, and Strahd disappears once more.

Last but not least...

Aeternus.

Aeternus doesn't dream, but his mind does come to a daydreaming-state. He comes to one of the few scenes he remembers. A field, with the rubble of a broken house nearby. Nothing else is clear, or even blurred. It feels like he’s standing on the edge of a vast void.

Strahd appears once more, commenting on how grim this place was. Aeternus is on edge at the appearance of the vampire, but simply replies, "this is all I can remember."

"Oh, I know. All you remember is warfare. But even then, of no clear battle. Just fragments of death and misery. A shame, really." Strahd sighs. "I know of a way for you to begin remembering all you had lost. My libraries may hold some of the answers you seek, as do I."

Aeternus is quiet. Before he speaks, strahd smiles.

"Petting that wolf made you remember something, didn't it? And the cake you ate? You remember something about a raven, too."

Aeternus is caught way off guard. Strahd has, somehow (rule of cool and plot reasons) gotten into his head. He goes on guard, but Strahd puts his hands up.

"I can offer answers. I will be sending an invitation, soon. I do not know when. But I need to be able to trust you. Tell no one of this encounter."

"How can i be able to trust you?" Aeternus responds with a grunt. One hand is on his axe. Strahd chuckles. "Caleb wants to go to van Richten's tower. Go with him. There is something waiting for you there."

And then he disappears, and that is where the session ended.

#very long post #sorry about that #D&D stories #tales from D&D #moonclaws dm bullshit #i need to come up with a D&D tag #D&D

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inugamibeyi · 3 years

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Finallyyyy I was able to draw my Kemono Jihen oc ! Nota bene : Today, on 02/25/2021, there hasn’t been any information in the manga (I’ve read 49 chapters) about mermaids ! So my oc is only based on the few things I know about the lore and my own imagination. This might explain mistakes about mermaids and Alma ! Now, let’s have fun with her ! -------------------

IEVANOV Alma - Mermaid 28 yo (born on March 11th) - born near Russia Favorite food : Tonkatsu Not-so-favorite food : cheese (which clashes with Shiki who wonders how you can dislike pizza’s main ingredient) Udon or Soba ? Doesn’t care as long as it’s tasty Okay with being on display ? Totally disagrees (has been exploited by a human for 8 years) First thing she did when she arrived at Tokyo : Buy clothes Favorite part of the human culture ? Books (especially whodunits) Least favorite part of the human culture ? Social networks (but mainly due to a fear of being found again by Tachibana. She avoids them as much as possible)

----------------------------------------- Alma is the only female employee from Inugami Detective Office. She’s also Inugami’s first employee, as she’s been there for 6 years (from 22 to 28). She considers that she has a debt towards Inugami as he freed her from the man that was exploiting her powers back in Hokkaido. Alma spent 8 years locked in the pool of a japanese’s millionaire’s mansion, Tachibana Haruto. He used her powers to stay young and healthy, mermaid tears being able to heal wounds, cure disease and stop and even reverse lightly the body’s aging.

Mermaids powers aren’t very strong compared to other kemonos. They seem to be mainly focused on surviving and escaping. It allows them : - A sharp vision : Mermaid have perfect eyes. Their sight is precise, they can see without difficulties on wide areas and can even see in the dark.

- A strong stamina and a slower aging : Compared to human, mermaids only needs 3 to 4 hours of sleep per night. Their bodies being used to swimming all day, they can endure longer days of work without feeling tired. Thanks to their healing and regenerating powers, it also appears that mermaid age slower.

- The Sing : Mermaid’s voice were mainly focused on tricking their prey so they can hunt and eat them easier. The song of a mermaid mainly affects persons that feel attraction toward women, but it doesn’t always work (uneffective on asexual person as an exemple) but mermaid can also decides to focus on one person (which Alma tried to do with Tachibana, but it didn’t work). With time, this ability mutated, leaving mermaid able to do many things while using their voice, such as, for exemple, erasing or replacing some memories.

- The wave : Basically, it’s a form of defense that allows mermaid to escape. It’s a big scream that’ll provoc a sound wave, leaving the enemy unable to move, when they simple don’t faint because of the sound. Isn’t deadly but buys time.

- Healing tears : Mermaid tears contains something (unlike Aya’s thread, nobody can perfectly explain what it is) that is able to heal wounds and prevent bodies from disease. Yet it doesn’t seems all efficient, because what the tears give you seems to be balanced by a shorten lifespan. Alma doesn’t really know how long she’ll be able to live, but she thinks she’ll live for 400 yo without having trouble.

Inugami freed her after hearing the story of a man in Hokkaido that doesn’t age and the other story of a woman who sings her sadness, making whoever hears her voice cry for hours. Alma being afraid that she’ll have nowhere to go, and most importantly, fearing she’ll be kidnapped again, choosed to stay by Inugami’s side, trying to assist him and help other kemonos. Being at first very naive and curious, about everything, Alma quickly learned how humans’ world works and got used to it. Her curiosity also helped her to adapt very fast, Alma being the kind of person who doesn’t have any trouble to focus and work for a long time (probably thanks to the fact that mermaids have to keep swimming no matter what they do, which helped her to develop a strong stamina and a small need to sleep). She was able to understand quickly the new world she was stepping in and had no problem to blend in. Alma grew up to be less naive and childish, turning into a person who tends to think a lot before acting, making her a good advisor for Inugami. She also tends to be tougher than him, especially on food. She doesn’t want him to eat junkfood all day because he’s too lazy to cook. She’s strongwilled and doesn’t hesitate to scold him on the points she judges important. Even if Inugami thinks she can be annoying, he knows that’s her way to care about them. When it comes to fighting, Alma’s abilities aren’t the best so what she can’t do with powers, she completes it with training and strenght. Inugami taught her how to shoot and realised her sharp vision would make her a nice sniper. He taught her how to use a longshot gun. When Mihai came, he was able to create her bullets that are effectives against Kemono. Alma’s relationships are pretty good in the Inugami Detective office. She just doesn’t like the way Shiki tends to ask for pizza almost everyday, despite the fact that she’s cooking for them when she’s in Tokyo. But he is a nice boy and he is smart. Despite her differences with Akira, she tends to be nice with him, as long as he doesn’t post her face on his social media (which truly makes him sad because he thinks Alma’s pretty face could boost his account). She likes the bubbly side o his personnality, she thinks he lightens the mood. Kabane made her unconfortable at first : this kid just didn’t said anything to her. He was just sitting quietly and watching, and doing the chores. But when Inugami explained her his past, she tried to help him to feel fine at the office, by learning him how to cook since he wanted her to do it. She took a liking in him, seeing a little bit of her younger self in that curious, yet naive young boy. Mihai... Oh Mihai... Perhaps it’s her worst relationship here. She knows he deserves his place at the office and doesn’t say he’s useless but... He’s just so annoying ! Annoying her, pulling the curls in her hair just to mess with her (”but they’re bouncy” he says)... So she just messes back with him, intentionally turning down the wifi, making some sarcasms... Yet they tend to help each other when they need to (Mihai helping her to create her weapon’s bullets, Alma translating for him documents but also the dialogues for his game and editing some videos for his channel). Guess it’s a “I like you/I hate you” relationship. Then Inugami, or “Kohachi” for her. She’s the only person who calls him by his first name, both of them being adults and Alma being here for many years now. Kohachi is Alma’s savior. She’s loyal to him for freeing her from Tachibana. He also the one who offered her a home and a work, leading her to be able to start a new life. He’s also the one who helped her to learn more about mermaids and how to use her powers. She did everything she could to make sure he understood how thankful she was. She took care of him, she helped him with work, paperwork, she helped him to gain more informations... With both of them actively helping each other, their relationship sure went fine... Too fine. Were they helping each other because they needed to or because they deeply cared about the other one ? Were they living under the same roof because Alma had nowhere else to go or because both of them wanted her to stay ? When they were together, they were flustered, yet happy. Flustered by the way people were calling her his wife. The way he thanked her for the food, the way she scolded him for his cigarettes, saying she didn’t want him to have troubles because of a shitty stick. The way they looked at each other, the sweet smell of her hair, the way she had to get on her tiptoes when she wanted to fix his tie... He remembered their few moments of weakness, ending in each other’s arms while the children were heavily sleeping, how they desperately moaned, swallowing their voice in order to remain silent, keeping the night they shared as a secret. And the next day, living as if nothing happened, pretending he stole her shampoo when Kabane noticed how Kohachi smelled like Alma. “ Hey, Kohachi ? - Hm ? - Let’s put an end to that. - ... To what ? - To our secret. - What ? Oh... I thought you were enjoying this... Guess I’m really that bad huh ? “

His sarcasm and his dumb playing only earned him a light slap on the arm, as Alma laughed. “I don’t want it to be a secret anymore, I... I think I like you... - You know you’ll have to deal with Akira putting us on Instagram to “celebrate it” ? - Oh, shit, I haven’t though about... Wait, is that a “yes” ? - What else could it be ?” As he was trying to light up his cigarette, she smiled while snatching it from him. He knew she was messing with him... Yet he just pulled her closer, his arms around her waist as she was putting hers behind his neck. It was their first kiss that wasn’t in a hurry, that wasn’t almost stolen while they were sharing their nights together. It felt different. Better. “ I love you... - Me too. “ They stayed in each other’s arms for a few seconds, now realising what happened. “ So... We’re a couple ? - Yup. Sounds like you’re stuck with me, young lady. - “Oh no, my crush is liking me back, I wonder how I’ll manage to survive that”. - I just wondered how you didn’t notice before... - I’m gonna break that cigarette, Kohachi. - Wait don’t, it’s expens- “ *snap* Oh. Oh shit. “ Guyyyys ! They confessed ! They confessed ! - Well... Shit. - Akira ! Don’t post that picture, I swear to god I’ll break that stupid phone !”

#kemono jihen #kemono squad now has a mom #inugami kohachi x oc #kemono jihen oc #kemono incidents

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edelwoodsouls · 4 years

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all roads lead - ch.2

When his mother dies, Stiles runs away, straight into danger - only to be saved by Peter Hale. Seven years later, after burying their alpha, Stiles and Malia return home.

Word Count: 2,065 | Also on Ao3 | Other Chapters: 1, 3, 4, 5,

Chapter 2: BOOKS

The bus drops them on the outskirts of Beacon Hills, and as it retreats back down the forest-hemmed road Stiles feels a desperate urge to run after it and beg the driver to take him back to New York.

Instead he swallows the fear that beats like his heart in his throat, and turns to face the sign in front of them, which reads Welcome to Beacon Hills, Please enjoy your stay in large, rust-marred letters.

Past that is the road into town, crowded by dense trees which tower into the sky on both sides. Stiles used to feel so at home in the woods, with their hushed magic and teeming life hidden just below the surface. But these woods are menacing, oppressively quiet but far from silent. These trees are old, centuries of memories imprinted in the whispers of their leaves and cracks in their bark.

"We've come this far." Malia's voice is like a shot in the quiet, cold air, snapping Stiles from his thoughts.

"I don't think we thought this through." Stiles replies. He's right, of course. It's only been four days since Malia stumbled across the article which mentions his dad - the sheriff of Beacon Hills closing yet another thought-unsolvable case only a handful of weeks ago - while she was searching for any remaining members of Peter's elusive family, or a trace of her mysterious mother. They packed light, buying a ticket on the first bus to California that very night.

He has no idea what he's doing. What could he possibly say to explain the last nine years to the father whose death he mourned almost a decade ago? How can he face what Stiles running away so soon after losing Claudia must have done to him?

"We can't turn back now." Malia sounds so sure of herself, so without doubt - it's a trait Stiles has always been jealous of, now more than ever. "And besides, we need to tell the Hales that Peter is dead."

"Pretty sure they already thought he was." Stiles snorts derisively despite himself. "Either that or they'll be glad to hear the news. There's a reason he refused to talk about them."

"Well then I want to meet them and punch them in the face."

"Sounds like a plan," Stiles concedes, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he squeezes Malia's hand.

"Let's go then." She shoves him playfully, and he promptly trips over his own feet, landing with a thud beside his rucksack. "How can you be a big, bad alpha werewolf and still be clumsy?"

"Guess I'm just talented that way."

"It's a very impressive talent."

He takes a mock bow as he stands. "Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week."

Malia rolls her eyes and starts walking towards the town, leaving him to scoop up his bag and scramble after her.

~~~

Half an hour later finds them standing in the library in the centre of town. It's small, considering it's the only one in the entire town - low roofed and darkly lit, shelves stretching as far as the eye can see.

This would be Peter's idea of heaven. Stiles can imagine him - a less broken, teenage version of him - curling up behind the stacks, going through book after book, determined to read the whole damn library.

Even the smell, of old books and ink, reminds him of Peter.

Stiles blinks rapidly and forces himself to focus on the task at hand: research.

He's always been able to trust in 2AM internet spirals to find any information he desires - his aversion to Peter's dusty old tomes of lore is one of the things they argued over most - but of course these things can never be that simple. The Hale fire is a thing of mystery, its details buried under confusion and wrapped in conspiracy - almost as if someone went to great lengths to obscure the facts.

He wouldn't be surprised if that someone had been Peter. Know thy enemy, he would always say, a favourite refrain heavy with the weight of experience. What better way to fight an enemy than to make yourself unknowable?

They don't even know how many people died in the fire, how many survived. How long Peter's excruciating coma lasted. How he ended up stumbling across Stiles, sweeping him and Malia up in a whirwind of pack and safety and home. It wasn't something Peter prefered to dwell on, and even Malia never pushed.

Stiles tears his eyes away from the bank of admittedly ancient computers, turning regretfully to the newspaper archives, and gets to work.

It takes far longer than he'd like. His attention span has never been a trusted thing, either flitting between things like a bird or doubling down on one and letting the world fall away. As a wolf the impatience, the frustration, only grows.

What little he knows about the Hales is information he's collected, hoarded like gold in the tiny morsels he's been able to gather along with any information about Beacon Hills. The Hale family, a long line of wolves settled in Northen California. Settled there for a reason, the grapevine insists, though none can remember why. Power. Magic. It alls boils down to those two inextricable things, in Stiles' experience.

And then came January, 2005. The Wolf Moon. A family gathering gone awfully, terribly wrong. He finds, buried, in the wrong box, the newspaper for the day after. Electrical fire, the headline claims, though it is too soon after the incident for such a judgement to have been made. Eleven dead - the number burns into his eyes, and for a moment he's lost in imagining it, those last moments, the smell of ash on the wind. He feels sick.

Finally, he finds two names: Laura and Derek Hale, Peter's niece and nephew. The only other survivors of the fire. A passing mention in a middle page column announces them leaving Beacon Hills.

Leaving Peter.

A sudden flush of anger takes Stiles by surprise. He has to squeeze his eyes shut to hide his flickering irises.

They left him. Alone, in agony, paralysed, and they fled, tearing away the one thing which might aid his healing. The warmth of pack, of family, replaced only by the burning memories of a house and life ablaze.

He'd known the story was bad, but still. Stiles feels sick, imagining how awful those months must have been. He feels hollow enough with one burnt and broken pack bond, cold in a way no fire could warm - but he has Malia, and her connection burns inside him, a guiding lantern in the dark, softening the edge.

Peter had a pack of thirteen reduced to two in an instant. And then those two lights had wandered far into the dark where even their glow would be useless.

No wonder he'd been so broken. No wonder he'd clung to Malia, to Stiles, like lifelines that might vanish like so much smoke.

Malia wanders over to his desk and seats herself on top of the table, ignoring the poisonous look the librarian gives her. "You're spiraling," she says shortly.

He pushes the newspaper article towards her. She wrinkles her nose - he's sure she would rather put her own arm in a vat of acid before having to read - but nonetheless skims over the words, a frown settling between her brows.

"Nothing we didn't already know," she says eventually, with a nochalance he knows is fake. Malia doesn't understand a lot about social cues or human interaction, but pack loyalty holds a close place in her heart. Shot at for most of her younger years by hunters, chased by other creatures in the Beacon Hills Preserve, abandoned by her own father for being too animal, too inhuman - the only safe haven she's ever known is Peter and Stiles. Her pack, always there, without question or demand.

Stiles sighs and nods, leaning to rest his forehead on her knee. She combs her fingers absently through his hair, and the gesture settles something inside him.

He's so tired. So lost. He feels as if he hasn't stopped moving, thinking, panicking in years. Was it really only weeks ago that he'd made a deal with the devil, let a fox crawl into his skin to save his pack, only for it to make a home there, to lead to that pack's very decimation?

And you'd do it again, he thinks, and he can't tell if the voice is a lingering other or his own. But he knows it's true. Better a quick and bloody death from the claws of mindless trickery than a slow and excruciating torture at the hands of hunters.

He wants to curl into a ball in the woods and never move again, but he forces himself to look up at his beta, his best friend, his sister. They've picked a direction to move, and until they can find steady ground again, it seems easiest to simply follow.

"Where to?" Malia asks, sensing his thoughts. Sometimes he wonders whether their pack bonds share more than connection, emotion, warmth. Then again, Malia knows his scent, knows his mind, perhaps better than she knows her own - as does he for her. They are in tune in a way deeper than words can surmise.

"The Hale house," he says slowly, "...or my dad's."

"Charred ruins and a possibly hostile pack of werewolves, or the grieving father you abandoned to alcoholism. Tough choice."

"You really know how to put sparkles on everything," he snipes. She tugs his hair almost painfully in response.

He weighs the options in his head for a moment, makes a show of thinking, but his heart has already decided. "My dad," he says. "He might be able to tell us what we need to know about the town. Give us the history, the inside track."

"And he isn't supernatural," Malia reads between the lines like they're the whole goddamn book.

"Yeah," Stiles admits.

He's had enough of the supernatural for a lifetime.

~~~

Unfortunately, life can never be that simple, and things have changed in the almost-decade Stiles has been gone. He knocks on the door of his old house, ignoring the ghosts of a buried past which curl around him. He doesn't dare wander directly into the sheriff's office, isn't sure how he'd handle that many guns and the overwhelming smell of death; only now, facing this monument of his buried regrets, he's not sure that's any worse-

The door swings open, and he finds himself face to face with a girl around his own age, all angles and dark hair.

She smells sharply of wolfsbane and iron.

He flinches back in surprise.. "You're not the sheriff."

"Last time I checked, yeah," the girl laughs. It's a nice sound, entirely at odds with the scent of violence on the air. "I'm Allison. My family moved here last year- this used to be the sheriff's house, though. Are you looking for him?"

Words fail Stiles entirely. Everything here is so wrong, on so many levels.

"We are," Malia steps in smoothly. "Could you tell us where to find him?"

"Have you tried the sheriff's station?"

Malia gives her such a deadpan glare even Stiles would cower under its full intensity. He's impressed by how long the girl - Allison - lasts before wilting, scrawling an address onto a post-it note and handing it over with a bashful smile.

He's never seen such an effective wolf in sheep's clothing.

Except perhaps himself.

He nods wordlessly at her, not trusting himself to speak, but as they turn to leave Allison speaks out. "What do you want with Stilinski anyway?" Her tone tries to sound benignly curious, but there's an edge to her voice, a personal concern that strikes him as odd.

Stiles pauses a moment before answering. "I owe him something, and I'm here to pay my debts."

The words are more true than he'd like to admit in their vagueness. He has no idea what he'll say, what he'll do, what he wants, he just knows that the path leads to his father, and that's where he has to follow. To talk. To explain. To fight. To apologise.

Something.

Nevertheless, the words have the desired effect - he tastes Allison's suspicion on the air and smiles, grabbing Malia's hand and walking away.

He's always loved courting danger a little too much.

#fanfiction #teen wolf #stiles stilinski #malia tate #allison argent #own work #morgan writes

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team-free-will-oneshots · 5 years

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First Love Never Die (Second Chances)

Title: First Love Never Die (Second Chances) Request: Can you do a deanxreader song fic to first love never die by soko and can it be angsty and fluffy - anon Pairing: Dean x Reader Warnings: angst, canon violence Word Count: 3.8k

note; here you go, i hope this is what you were after and that you enjoy! xx

Masterlist

“It’s over, Y/N. There’s- there’s nothing we can do. You should go - you don’t need to be around for what happens next.”

Dean’s words were like a knife to your chest, and you shook your head vehemently as you slammed the lore book in front of you closed.

“Dammit, Dean, there’s still time! We can find a way-”

“There’s no saving me, Y/N! The hellhounds are gonna come for me, they’ll drag me to hell, and that will be that,” Dean said firmly. His jaw was clenched, and you could see the hint of tears in his eyes that he was quick to blink away. “It’s not a matter of months anymore, Y/N. It’s- it’s hours.”

Your boyfriend’s voice cracked, and you felt a sob of desperation claw its way up your throat. You swallowed it down - you couldn’t break, not right now, not in what might be Dean’s final hours.

“If you think that’s gonna stop me, then you don’t know me at all,” you shot back, but your words fell flat, clumsy and heavy on your tongue. Dean sighed, running his hands over his face as he shook his head.

“C’mere,” he murmured. Your eyes lingered on the yellowing pages in front of you, before they once again found Dean. You wanted to argue - wanted to tell him to stop acting like he was already dead, that you’d find a way out of this, that you had to. But your words died on your lips at the look in his eyes, and before you knew it you were across the room, his arms folding around you as he crushed you to his chest.

Your hands fisted in his shirt as you clung to him, burying your face in the crook of his neck as you breathed him in, memorising every facet of this moment; the press of his lips on your temple, the gentle, soothing caress of his hands on your back, the murmured reassurances he breathed in your ear. You didn’t realise you were crying until Dean gently pulled away, his warm, calloused hands cupping your cheeks as he leaned in to kiss away your tears.

“You’re going to be okay,” he whispered, his thumb running soothingly over your cheekbone. “I promise.”

You felt your face crumple as you stopped fighting the sobs ripping from your throat. “I don’t care about me - I just want you. I need you to be okay, Dean, I can’t-”

He shook his head, eyes heavy with pain. “Shh… it’s okay.” His voice was soft, kind. You longed to lose yourself in the honey of his words, to bring yourself to believe they were true - that this wasn’t the last moment you’d spend with him. That somehow, everything would be okay.

“I love you.” Your words came out as a whimper, and Dean swallowed hard as he rested his forehead against yours.

“I love you more,” he breathed. And then he was kissing you, his mouth urgent and passionate over yours, and you knew that this was it. But if this was going to be your last kiss, then you’d be damned if it wasn’t epic.

You pressed your body close to his, one hand on his shoulder as the other threaded into his hair, pulling him to your height as his tongue sought yours and his hands found your waist. His fingertips clawed into the flesh of your hips, and you almost believed that if you held one another tightly enough, then nothing would ever separate you. Not even the hellhounds that were surely tracking him at this second.

Dean moved his hand back to your cheek, holding you like you were something precious as he slowly pulled back, eyes closed as the taste of you still lingered on his lips. He placed one last long, soft kiss to your mouth, and then... he was gone.

---

4 years later

You woke up screaming.

Your nails clawed at empty bed sheets as you threw yourself upright, hair clinging to your forehead and sleep clothes drenched with sweat. You were too scared to close your eyes again, terrified of the sight you’d be met with; Dean, screaming and twisting in agony as invisible beasts sliced at his chest, his shirt blossoming with blood as the life slowly drained out of him and his eyes turned glassy. You’d hear Sam’s cries next to you, hear Lilith’s icy laugh as she stood idly by and watched…

It took you a few moments to calm down - a few deep breaths, a few minutes to wipe the sweat from your face, to test your shaky legs until you could make it to the shower and wash the last clinging remnants of your nightmare away.

As you stumbled to your bathroom, you tripped on your boots, laying where you had left them at the foot of your bed the night prior. They were crusted with dried blood, and the clothes you were still wearing had fared no better. You stripped them off, tossing them in the laundry hamper before stepping in the shower and letting the scalding water cascade over your skin.

You’d almost forgotten about your werewolf hunt last night - that was probably what had dragged up the memories you’d worked so hard to bury.

When Dean had died, you and Sam had gone your separate ways. He only reminded you of his brother, and vice versa - there were only painful memories between you both. The two of you had started off by checking in with each other every few days - a text here, a phone call there. But somewhere along the line he stopped replying, and you stopped trying.

And so, you’d made the decision to leave hunting, and all that came with it, behind. To give normal life a second chance - like Dean had always wanted for you.

You’d done well so far - found yourself a house in a nice neighbourhood, a job that you enjoyed, even a few friends that you’d meet for coffee every now and then. Life wasn’t perfect by any means, but you didn’t lose anyone anymore; not in the way you had as a hunter.

But even though you’d vowed to leave that life behind, when the victim of what was clearly a werewolf turned up on your own street, you weren’t about to just ignore it. Though you were a tad out of practice, it hadn’t taken you long at all to track the monster and put a bullet in its brain before it had the chance to claim another life.

That doesn’t matter now, you reminded yourself. It was dead - a non-issue. And you’d go back to your ordinary job, in your ordinary life, and you’d put the past behind you once again. This was your second chance - you weren’t letting one hunt pull you back in.

When you stepped from the shower, raw and red after scrubbing the dried blood from your skin, you stripped your dirtied sheets and tossed them in the hamper to join your clothes. As you prepared your laundry you flipped on the TV, rolling your eyes as you saw that it was another press coverage of the one and only ‘Dick Roman.’

You’d just left the washing machine when you heard a knock at your door. Sighing, you gave yourself a once over in the mirror and ran your fingers through your hair before heading to answer it.

Another impatient knock resounded as you approached, and you rolled your eyes. “Calm down, I’m coming!” you muttered. The person on the other side started speaking before you’d even had a chance to fully open the door.

“FBI, my partner and I need to ask you a fe- Y/N?”

Your heart stopped as you saw him.

He looked exactly the same, albeit a little older. His mouth was slightly agape, eyes bulging in shock as they raked over you, drinking in the sight like a parched man gulped water. You felt your heart leap to your throat as you struggled to find the words to reply, but only one word was on your mind.

“Dean?”

“Y/N,” he breathed again, your name an echoed prayer on his lips. Sam cleared his throat, and you blinked away your stupor as your eyes turned to the youngest Winchester. His hair was longer, and Christ, was he always that tall?

“What- what are you doing-” You couldn’t string together a coherent sentence, and you immediately stumbled away from the entrance, fingers fumbling for the vase of holy water you always kept by the door. You threw it over him, and his shocked expression shifted to one of annoyance as the water rolled down his face and drenched his suit. Dean sighed loudly.

“Not a demon,” he said, before pulling a blade from his pocket - silver. He cut his palm. Nothing.

“Listen, Y/N, can we come in?” Sam asked, and you blinked as you nodded vaguely, stepping aside in disbelief as the Winchester brothers stepped over your threshold, easily passing over the devil’s trap you had hidden beneath the welcome mat. Somehow the three of you found yourselves sitting in your living room. They seemed so out of place there - two halves of your life colliding, two different worlds meeting where they were never supposed to converge.

You didn’t speak, just stared open-mouthed at Dean as he made himself comfortable on your couch, fiddling with his thumbs as he avoided eye contact.

“So-uh- you probably have a few questions,” he said with a nervous chuckle, and your brows shot to your hairline.

“A few? You- I thought you were dead, Dean! What the hell happened?!” you demanded, and as you saw him search for the right way to explain, you felt your eyes brimming with tears. He was alive - Dean Winchester, your first love, the man you would have traded your soul for… he was back.

And so, he explained. He told you stories of angels, of Lilith and Lucifer and Michael. Of Alpha monsters, of his brother losing his soul. Of leviathans, and their quest to stop them. You leaned back in your chair, blinking as you struggled to take it all in.

“Wait, so- angels are real?” you demanded. “And- and you’re friends with one?”

Dean nodded sheepishly, and you exhaled sharply.

“Wow. Wow. How- how is everybody? I haven’t been in contact with anyone since… well, you know. How are Ellen and Jo? Bobby?” you pressed eagerly, and your stomach plummeted as you saw the brothers’ faces fall.

“They… they didn’t make it, Y/N,” Dean murmured, jaw tight. “We- we only lost Bobby a few weeks ago, actually.” His voice was low and gruff, and you swallowed hard.

“Oh,” you replied thickly. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice was heavy with sorrow, and you skittishly tucked your hair behind your ear as his words sunk in and weighed on your heart. Suddenly, your eyes shot up to meet his as you latched on to the one thing he hadn’t explained.

“You- you were only gone for four months?” you checked, and Dean nodded.

“Yeah..?” he replied slowly. You set your jaw.

“And you didn’t think it would be a good idea to, oh, I dunno, let me know that you were alive?” you demanded, and guilt flared in Dean’s eyes at your words.

“I- I wanted to call, but you… you changed your number,” he said weakly, and you scoffed.

“You know very well you could’ve found me without that,” you shot back. “What the hell, Dean? All these years, I- I thought you were dead! In hell! Being tortured!”

Dean closed his eyes, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry. But with everything going on… Lilith and the seals… I thought you’d be better off without me. You’d finally found a normal life for yourself, a good life for yourself, you… you got a second chance at all this, Y/N. I couldn’t ruin that for you. I’d never be able to live with myself.”

You clenched your jaw, but his voice melted your heart. Even after all these years, he knew exactly the words that would make you crumble. Besides, you couldn’t find it in yourself to stay angry at him - not after missing him for so long.

“That should have been my choice,” you said softly. Dean nodded.

“I know,” he murmured.

The three of you fell into a long silence, and by the time Sam cleared his throat, you’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Uh- look, the reason we’re here…” he began, and you sighed shakily, snapping back to reality.

“The werewolf, right?” you checked, and he nodded.

“Yeah. You have any leads?”

You chuckled. “Sorry to burst your bubble, boys, but I ganked that son of a bitch last night. No more case - sorry.”

Sam’s eyes widened in surprise, as did Dean’s.

“What happened to the normal, apple pie life and all that crap?” Dean asked, and you managed a smile.

“You really think I’d ignore a werewolf attack in my own street? Of course I took care of it,” you teased, and he huffed an amused sound.

“Right. Right… I guess we should… uh… I guess there’s no reason for us to stay here, then,” Dean muttered, but his hopeful eyes found yours. You licked your lips nervously.

“I mean… you guys can stay a bit longer, right? Catch up? You- you can crash here for a while, if you don’t have anywhere to be. I’ll bet it’s nicer here than any motel you’ve stayed at for a while, right?” you suggested, and Dean grinned.

“Yeah, I’ll say,” he said with a snicker, and you smiled warmly.

“Great. Awesome.” Another silence. Your eyes found Dean’s, and your heart skipped a beat as you lost yourself in their depths. They seemed… different. Older. Wiser.

“Well… I feel like walking,” you announced, getting to your feet. Your eyes wandered to Dean. “Do you feel like coming? I’d really like to talk, I mean… it’s been a long time.”

He flashed you a half-smile as he nodded, pushing himself up. “Make yourself comfortable, Sam - the wifi password is on the router if you need to do any research or anything,” you said, and Sam nodded.

“Yeah, great - thanks, Y/N,” he said, and you left him to sort himself as you and Dean made your way onto the street. The two of you walked for a bit, skin soaking in the sunshine as your feet thudded on the pavement.

“Nice place you got,” Dean said eventually. “Nice neighbourhood,” he added, nodding to the flourishing greenery, the kids kicking a soccer ball in the nearby park. “You- you seem really happy here.”

You smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s really nice. It was nice to get away from it all, you know? Hunting, I mean. I got a second shot at a normal life. And it’s... good,” you told him, and he smiled tightly.

“Yeah. Well, I… I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Yeah,” you mumbled. “Wow, long time no see, huh? Four years…”

Dean nodded, whistling. “Time flies, huh?”

You half shrugged. “I guess,” you allowed. “Sometimes, it… doesn’t feel like it. I- I still get nightmares. About the night the hounds- well, I’m sure you remember.”

Dean chuckled dryly, and you could hear the pain behind his words as he responded. “Yeah. I remember.”

“Four years, and I still cry sometimes. Kinda lame, right?” you asked weakly, and Dean shook his head.

“No, I get it,” he said. “They say you never forget your first, right?” he said, shooting you a cheeky grin. You rolled your eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. First loves never die, all that. I never expected mine to die and come back,” you teased, and he laughed quietly.

“Yeah.”

You watched him for a moment.

“You seem… older,” you remarked. Dean snorted.

“Gee, thanks,” he said sarcastically, and you shook your head, traces of a smile ghosting over your lips.

“No, I mean… your eyes. You’re, what, thirty-two now? Thirty-three? You don’t seem it. Before, you were just a boy who was trying to fill his dad’s too-big leather jacket. Now… you’re a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

He chuckled darkly. “Yeah, well, forty years in hell will do that to ya,” he joked, but it fell flat. Your eyes widened.

“Forty years? But I thought… four months…” you spluttered, and Dean nodded.

“Up here, yeah. But downstairs time moves... differently.” You saw Dean’s jaw twitch, and before you could process exactly what he’d gone through, Dean was changing the subject.

“Well, I’ve spent a long time wondering what you were doing, who you were seeing…” He glanced at you slyly. “Found any guys who can compare to me?” he asked, shooting you a wink.

You sniggered, but shook your head. “No… I’ve been on a few dates here and there, but… honestly, I’m not sure I can ever love again,” you murmured, before chuckling to yourself. “God, that sounds lame, doesn’t it?”

Dean shook his head somberly. “No, I get it. Believe me, I get it.” His eyes were soft, trained on you as you tucked your hair self-consciously behind your hair.

“Ever wish you could go back to it?” you asked. “Back to when… everything was easier? When it was just us and Sam and whatever the monster of the week was?”

Dean smiled fondly. “Yeah. All the time. Things have changed a lot, huh?”

“I’ll say,” you murmured. “But… I guess it’s all worked out, right? I got my second chance, here. You got yours. Hell, Sam even got his. It’s… it’s good, isn’t it?”

He sighed. “Sure,” he murmured. The two of you reached a park bench and sat together, the tree branches an interwoven canopy above you as you rested your feet. Dean’s knee bumped yours, and even after all these years, the contact sent sparks flying across your skin. You glanced at his face, and found yourself snared in his gaze as his eyes locked on yours. He exhaled shakily.

“Y/N… I’m sorry I never came to find you. Really,” he said, and you gave a sad smile.

“It’s okay. I get it - I do. I probably would have done the same,” you told him. His hand found yours, warm and large. You interlocked your fingers and squeezed gently. “But I’m glad you’re back. That you’re alive.”

You felt tears spring to your eyes and blinked them away, laughing and rubbing at your eyes before they could fall. Dean’s hand caught your wrist, and he leaned forward to gently wipe a stray drop from your cheek. His eyes bore into yours, and suddenly he was kissing you.

Dean’s mouth was soft and tender on yours as you leaned into him, tasting the salt of your tears as his hand moved to rest on your cheek. Your hand fell to his chest, gripping the tie of his suit as you pulled him closer, falling into old rhythms as easily as breathing - when he kissed you, it felt like you’d never been apart. Like those four years had never happened, that when you opened your eyes you’d be the way you once were - bright-eyed and hopeful... back in that room... striving to save him from-

You pulled back abruptly, and Dean licked his lips, ducking his head.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

“No, it’s not- it’s not that,” you said. “Dean…” You sighed heavily, and he ran his thumb over the back of your hand gently, eyes searching yours and imploring you to continue.

“The reason I’ll never love again… it’s too terrifying, Dean. I- I haven’t let anyone in since you, because I’m terrified that I’ll lose them. Like I lost you. That’s why- us, it can’t… we’d never work, not anymore. It’s why I can’t go back into hunting. I couldn’t risk losing you, not like that. Not again,” you whispered. “I- I’ve got something good here. We both got our second chances, without each other, and I think… I think we should take them.”

Dean’s eyes fell closed, and he withdrew his hand from yours, pinching the bridge of his nose as he nodded.

“Yeah. I get it. Trust me, I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, and he shook his head.

“No, don’t apologise,” he said. “You’re right. We- things are different now.”

You nodded. “Yeah,” you mumbled, though you couldn’t ignore the pain squeezing in your chest. It felt like your heart was breaking as he got to his feet, rubbing his jaw absentmindedly.

“Well… we should probably get back,” he said, shooting you a tight smile. You exhaled, plastering a smile on your face in return.

Your walk back to the house was silent, and the moment you entered, Sam was speaking quickly - something about a lead on the leviathans, that they had to go, now-

“Okay, okay, Sam, calm down!” Dean said slowly, rubbing his temple. “I… you two finish up, I’m grabbing a glass of water,” he said, heading to your kitchen.

You and Sam say your goodbyes, and although they’re hurried, they’re paired with a warm hug and empty promises to keep in touch. He made his way to the Impala as you stood in your entryway. When Dean returned, his face was set in a smile a little too wide to be totally genuine.

“Well, it… it was great seeing you again,” he said weakly, and you nodded.

“Yeah. You too. Stay safe, alright?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, yeah… you too, y’hear?”

You smiled, genuinely this time. “You know me, up to all sorts of mischief these days,” you teased, and he chuckled before pulling you in for a hug. You buried your face into his neck, clinging to him desperately and wishing the moment could last forever. But of course, it didn’t, and when he pulled away, his hand found yours. He squeezed it gently, and pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

“Seeya, Y/N.”

“Seeya,” you managed, watching as Dean walked to the Impala and slipped into the passenger seat. The car roared to life, and you leaned against the doorway, raising your hand up in a half-wave that Dean returned as he pulled away from the curb. You watched as the sleek black car rolled down the street, and when it vanished from sight entirely, you unfurled your clenched fist to see the piece of paper Dean had stuffed into your palm before he’d let go.

A phone number was scribbled on it, and you couldn’t help but smile at the message scrawled beneath it.

Just in case - we deserve a second chance, too.

_________

Forever tags: @babygirloreo @calaofnoldor @lmpala97 @sebastianshoe @81mysteriouslyme @castieliswatchingoverme @kina666 @liviaolivia @simplyxparker @helpmeluci @demonsofhunting @bee-happy-buzz-on

Dean tags: @polina-93 @justagirlinafandomworld @coupleofgoons

If you wanna be added to any tag lists just let me know!

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steve0discusses · 5 years

Text

Yugioh S4 E3: So Many Dragons in This One

Y’all so I’m like getting over a pretty nasty cold that’s pretty much wiped me clean like a hard reset and this episode coinciding with it is something else because this episode is essentially a fever dream start to finish.

First off:

If your mind didn’t immediately start playing ska-like alt rock and go through every lyric from “Escape From the City” then I can’t help you. Because that’s where my mind directly went and stayed for the entirety of this episode.

Back in the museum, Yugi learns about some more crypto-history.

Because Y’all, Yugioh just LOVES to screw with history. I mean we’ve already seen what they did to Seto Kaiba’s timeline, but get a load of what they’re about to do with world history.

(Arthur now has the USA gradient because I was at a loss of how else to describe Arthur. If Bandit Keith comes back then I’ll be mixing fonts, yet again.)

This was done mostly to recap the last 3 seasons, but also to drop in some brand new lore that came out of freakin nowhere.

Atlantis.

Yes, he said Atlantis.

(read more under the cut)

In the actual dialogue of the show, Tea mentions she read a single book about Atlantis once in her life, and then Joey and Tristan go “Tea, you nerd!” and it’s like wow the standards are low in this group. One single book, boys? That’s all it takes to be a nerd? When you have any of the KAIBAS right over there? One single book is the requirement?

Starting to think no one in this universe knows what a nerd is.

So the underwater cave dwelling from a few episodes back is none other than the Atlantis ruins. I feel like this should be a way bigger deal in terms of like all of history, since in this universe, Atlantis is time wise at the dawn of (checks wikipedia)...proto-writing...and yet they seem to really have their math and large construction science down.

The arch wasn’t really utilized (I hesitate to say “discovered” as it is an arch) until about 2000 BC or so. Good on the Atlanteans, I guess?

Don’t know why we’re getting so sidetracked by cards when a civilization 10000 years ago could make immense underwater 60 ft castles that don’t immediately collapse under the pressure, but this is the Yugioh universe and everyone’s card addiction runs strong and true.

It just seems funny to me that Hawkins, who devoted I want to say like 60 years of his life toward becoming a walking encyclopedia about Egypt, got super sidetracked and ended up 10000 leagues under the sea in Atlantis. He just threw all that Egypt work completely to the wind and basically changed his career at age I dunno 70 or so. Or maybe this guy is only 50 but he just seems super way old to me.

(And raising his granddaughter for some reason? Hell knows what happened to Rebecca’s parents, but knowing Yugioh, it will probably be really, really tragic.)

So then, although Atlantis is in our world and under the sea, Hawkins decides to throw another fast one on us.

(I just chose a random number, but Buzzfeed decided Washington was 34th. Which is wild.)

Bro took this moment to explain to me in great and excruciating detail that the Atlanteans in Aquaman did in fact invent tanks. Aquaman is his favorite. Ya, I know.

So I thought “ah, this is the Shadow Realm” (since we have seen Bakura just make a monster a real boy before) but then it became kind of unclear if the Shadow Realm is a different realm than this other realm which is just where the nice monsters live. So um...I’m still not sure about that one, I’ll get back to you when it’s made clear (I may never get back to you on that one)

Then Rebecca decides to drop this lore about the ghost that lives in Yugi Muto’s head that we’ve been *pretty Sure* up to this point was strictly Egyptian dealing with strictly Egyptian things.

I am not entirely sure how we’re going to take a guy who lived 5000 years ago and explain why he’s living now in AD 2002 Yugi Muto’s head because of some guy 10000 years ago. But they’re going to try.

Like I’ve heard this referred to as a filler season, because it uh did not happen in the Manga. So, legally, they can’t really touch the manga at all (and I assume they were probably waiting for the manga to finish at this point), and so we’re just gonna...pull Atlantis out of nowhere because the nice thing about Atlantis is that it is so freakin old that it is well outside of copyright. Completely fair use. But it’s still kinda wild.

Also, Yugi made sure to off-handedly tell us that most of the monsters who’ve invaded their world have been very, very, nice, and that’s why everyone has been so chill.

I mean. OK?

You still have literal dragons flying around but apparently only some of the dragons are mean and attack, the rest just chill and float around like a fish or something. Personally, I wouldn’t be thrilled by this.

Hawkins notices Yugi’s enchanted dead guy necklace, and without asking “so...does this belong to a dead guy? Did you get this from the dead guy’s corpse? Yugi? Yugi, look at me. Yugi, young man, is this another dead guy necklace you’ve been carrying around in your pocket because I feel like I see a problem here, buster.”

Hawkins suggests, instead:

Oh OK...that’s a lot to take in.

Didn’t expect giant possessed lady statues but it’s a nice spooky touch. Can’t have enough giant possessed lady statues in your anime, honestly.

Also, I’m really glad they gave this skinny lady statue a double chin.

And after all that, Hawkins decides he’s done with his one single afternoon in Japan, and he’s going to go and travel 16 hours back to the US stuck in a plane within hearing distance of Rebecca. Worth that 32 hour round trip for that one afternoon in Japan (or actually one way is 4 hours longer than the other way or something? I forget the details.)

And like the show had him blush and then Tea got mad, but like Yugi also blushed when Mai gave him a note once that said “thanks for the help!” so I feel like Yugi just shuts down completely whenever he has to deal with girls.

Maybe this is just the face Yugi makes when he quickly enters the pyramid zone and is like “Pharaoh, it’s getting mad weird out there!” And Pharaoh’s just sitting on his throne eating cheese whiz straight out of a can in star pj’s with matching bootspants and he’s like “My Gods, Yugi! If I’m here, and you’re here, who’s driving the plane!?” and then they just start shrugging at eachother about who has to go on the date this time until Yugi snaps out of it.

ah, a disembodied voice.

Literally thought it was my own voice.

It keeps Yugi up for a while, but when has Yugi ever fallen asleep right away on this show?

After Yugi calms down enough to go the hell to bed, we zoom back to our Xtreme sports boys who have finally decided to stop Tony Hawking all over this island long enough to deliver the sober news that Gurimo is freakin dead.

Which they barely brought up at all because who freakin cares about Gurimo? This guy sure didn’t.

Cool. Good plan.

Hard to rebuild civilization without people. Just throwing that out there.

But ya. Lets go end mankind on Episode 3. Thought it would take a little bit longer for him to get enough soul juice but apparently he’s good on the soul juice from these three juicy cards that have no souls (I thought).

3 God Cards + 1 Gurimo - 1 Rex - 1 Weevil = Destroy Humanity

First, a dream sequence.

This is one bizarre ass dream sequence and like...I don’t even know if I have much to say because it’s like...so out of left field and both out of the lore of this show and just barely inside the lore enough for it to work.

Still feels hella out of nowhere though.

That may be just the Dayquil talking.

Either way, we get to have Yugi run around in pjs again, but unfortunately they have no stars so I just don’t freakin care when see it. I get that stars are hard to animate and he’s a year older and maybe grew out of the star pj’s but c’mon. We had a good thing going, show.

But they hear a voice within the pyramid, and I’m using Tea’s font color here but it’s not Tea, it’s another girl who is...a lot like Tea honestly.

So up to this point we’ve accepted that the puzzle is all of Pharaoh’s mysteries and also mixed with the memories of Yugi as well. We have a room of short term memory (that pharaoh never uses) full of little clones of Yugi’s friends. We have a room full of all the lego pieces that Yugi lost over his young life (and 2 very cursed tamagachis.) We have a room that has a gigantic guardian Dark Magician who almost killed Shadi once. We also have several rooms that are just traps that can basically kill you, or if you are Shadi, just totally set you on fire, because screw Shadi.

Also it has this room:

But we find a new room that is like an entire fantasy realm and it’s like...so what memory is this?

Somewhat confusing if you’re me and you’ve assumed up to this point that everything in the puzzle has something to do with Pharaoh’s past. Apparently there’s just a door to another world in here they just never knew was here.

Just this entire time Yugi and Pharaoh were completely unaware that they had a DOOR TO ANOTHER WORLD in their necklace. Which, as I mentioned before, is where all the duel monsters live, but looks nothing like the Shadow Realm, which we’ve seen before.

And like honestly I kinda just figured at first that the giant eye was supposed to be there eating dragons, as if this was some sort of cycle of life for the duel monsters, to be a dragon, grow old, and then get devoured by the eyeball in the sky to start over again as nutrients to feed the baby dragons.

But in fact the eye is Not Normal and we should be alarmed by it.

Very hard to know what should and should not be normal when I’ve never seen this place before, also it has three crystal dragons that I guess the other monsters MUST be worshiping or something because check out the purple tile palace they made just for these crystal dragons.

Like this made me ask a LOT of questions about the civilization of duel monsters. Like who made this? Did a bunch of Kuriboh make this? Hell does this civilization works and is it a monarchy and are there castes?

Do they do taxes?

And then we meet her, the voice asking for our help, it’s this girl. Dark Magician girl. Nice to finally meet you. Wish it had a little more build up and made more sense.

We’ve talked to this chick before. She was digital at the time, but she kind of pretends that she already knows Pharaoh and Yugi and they kinda just...take this as it comes. I mean there wasn’t much time to deliver this dialogue so they were like, if the lady in the cornucopia hat says so, I guess we have to do the thing.

It is nice that we do finally get an explanation for why Pegasus could make all these cards but could not resurrect his dead wife--being that she is...not from this world.

But like now the puzzle not only dives into Pharaoh’s past but is also just a straight up a dimension portal. You can just...visit these people whenever? I guess?

I was getting used to the puzzle being a very large metaphor, and I wasn’t actually prepared for it to have a utilitarian use like a Stargate. This asks a lot of questions, but put those questions aside because we have to adopt this dragon by pulling a huge ass sword out of it’s right eyeball.

This show is SO mean to eyeballs.

She explains that there was some lore that lead to this sword being plunged into this buddy’s eye over here but I forgot it already. It was like half a sentence and then it was gone and I’m on Dayquil and I’m sure it’ll come back. At some point they’ll bring it all full circle, I’m sure.

Like if this happened in a dream then does this place even exist on a mortal plane at all? Can it only be accessed through dreams and being dead? It’s kind of a fascinating concept since these duel monsters have to be summoned through paper, which has all sorts of relevant meaning in a lot of Eastern mythologies.

Stuff I’ll never know because say goodbye to the Duel Monster Land that Apparently-Exists-Now-And-Absolutely-Always-Existed,-Stop-Thinking-About-Who-Invented-Tanks,-It-Was-Obviously-The-Atlanteans-10000-Years-Ago, we’re gonna go and take this huge ass dragon we have no business inheriting but are anyway because the dumbass ghost in our brain has this grand reputation that he banished some sort of evil 5000 years ago but has absolutely no memory of how the hell he did that or what even occurred, and because of his completely wiped bean, this makes him a complete idiot at best and a complete psychopath at his absolute worst.

But yeah, lets take this dragon and see what happens.

You gotta bring furniture, but the dragon is free. 2 bedrooms, no rugs, it’s free.

I just realized we got a dragon and not the sword. Only in this anime.

And then he wakes up to the last thing I expected.

It was nice of Yugi to take the time it took for him to get entirely dressed and ready, but I guess if the world has to end you gotta go out in style. Which for him means his school uniform because, although Yugi absolutely hates this school for some reason, he has a lot of pride for it. Just a crazy amount of school pride for how rarely he attends school and for the lengths he went to get out of soccer practice that one time. But will Yugi be caught dead in anything but his school colors? No.

HOW IS THIS CITY STILL STANDING.

Also Kaiba must be having a wild time on the top of Kaiba Tower but maybe he took a helicopter a while back to go on a world dragon tour because we didn’t hear a peep out of him this entire very Very VERY dragon-centric episode.

Really weird how many dragons there are with so few Kaibas. It’s like the moment they turned around, every dragon on Earth came out of hiding to throw a huge ass dragon party.

PS get a load of this dragon.

Why would you ever give a dragon an ass?

I don’t even know how this is possible because it doesn’t have a butt crack, but it’s got serious ass going on. It’s the Lizzo of dragons, when you set it to defense mode, it probs just twerks to intimidate the other side.

(Yugi’s friends are so freakin patient OMG)

Also how the hell can Yugi play this card on his duel disk if neither Kaiba or Pegasus have any idea this card exists? Magic, I guess? The duel disk is part magic?

Not like it matters much, we know from Bakura that you don’t need a duel disk to make real boy cards if you have a millennium item anyway.

So at this point I’m like...I think I watched the last episode of the season, I think it’s...out of order and bro was like “nope...it’s Episode 3. We’re still on Episode 3.”

And so after that it closed the...dimension joining portal, which was a Golden Compass style aurora borealis, then Dark Magician Girl returned to her home planet.

...Which is also dangling around Yugi’s neck.

This was a lot.

I have a lot of questions.

Everyone in domino SHOULD have a lot of questions but I think they all went back to bed.

A tornado with a GLOWING EYE tried to destroy their city, and they just rolled over and went back to bed.

This season sure takes off really quickly holy crap.

Now fair warning, because I’ve been hella sick the next recap is uhh...a huge mess so it will probably be a week or so before I post it/even get to it. At some point I started numbering them completely wrong and I either saved 10 caps to a different folder or I never made them in the first place and I honestly am not entirely sure. Last week is kind of a blur and it’s a mess on my desktop right now, so my pacing is gonna reflect that because I am...behind...on everything.

Oh dude and actually now that I look at what date it freakin is, I have to go to one of my best friends weddings real soon so can we just say...it might be a few weeks before I can steadily update again? I have to learn a whole dance routine for this giant wedding and y’all, I am not a dancer. And, while my friends have had dance classes since they were like 5, I’m like...low key extremely certain I will fall completely on my ass. Anyway, there is no way out of this situation I thought would never actually happen, and thought was just a funny idea they invented when they got drunk at the bachelorette, but nah, they remembered, and this is really happening but the bride will think it’s funny so here we go.

PS this dance is to the only existing mashup of Bollywood and N*syncs Bye Bye Bye (which, yes, it is a breakup song) I hope you feel the second hand embarrassment through your computer, I am dancing for 300+ people. Directly following the groom’s parent’s dance, which is 10 minutes long, and for which they hired a professional choreographer. We are the only dance out of four epically spectacular dances that is from the bride’s side, and our dance is...2 minutes and the equivalent of a high school lipsync.

TBH I'm low key excited to do it because potentially it could be a really great story depending on the reaction of what happens.

Anyway, so if I disappear for a while only to post fanart I’ve drawn out of stress, that is what I’ve been doing in the background. I’ve just been trying to remember how to do the Bye Bye Bye dance correctly for 2 straight weeks while feverishly trying to catch up with all my other work.

Also, because I mentioned George Washington, I had to go and find the horny grandma clip from Gilmore Girls and I’m so glad that two people on the internet managed to clip it, and I can’t believe the only two people who’ve clipped this did it with their phones. In fact, kudos to this youtuber for videoing a Tablet with his phone, because there’s no better way to watch a show from the 00′s than to make you feel really illegal about it.

youtube

#Yugioh #ygo #photo recap #episode recap #Yugi Muto #dragons #Joey Wheeler #Tea Gardner #Tristan Taylor #Arthur Hawkins #Rebecca Hawkins #Grandpa Muto #The Eye of Sauran or something #Again this episode is kind of a blur and I'm amazed I managed to cap anything this week #Oh yeah #The lost city of atlantis #s4 ep3

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lunarmoonflowyr · 4 years

Text

Because I’m bored I’m going to write down a bunch of my passive thoughts on a new game I started playing and because once I start making streaming/youtube content related to viddy game I might make a video on this

Vambrace: Cold Soul Initial Impressions

Vambrace: Cold Soul is a game by Devespresso Games, an independent game developer based out of Seoul, South Korea who’s other notable titles seem to be a series of horror adventure games titled “The Coma”.

Vambrace however, is a game far more akin to something like Darkest Dungeon in visual style and gameplay design however the Steam store page description has it claiming to be inspired by “the gothic fantasy of Castlevania, the deep lore of a series like The Elder Scrolls, the replayability of roguelites like FTL: Faster Than Light, and the sweeping, character-driven epics of our favorite JRPGs.”

This is going to be a small writeup of my initial impressions after 2 hours of the game.

THE STORY SO FAR

We are a woman named Evelia Lyric, although she just goes by Lyric most of the time so that’s what I’ll be referring to her as throughout the rest of this writeup. Lyric immediately begins showing tell-tale signs of “JRPG Protagonist Syndrome”, as she:

1. Survives being passed out in a freezing arctic-like environment while wearing what could maybe be called clothing for a slightly harsh winter in New England, and comes out of it with barely any complications to speak of

2. Has an (allegedly) famous father who leaves her a Mysterious Book That No One Can Read, and the titular Vambrace, which is now apparently fused to her arm, that lets her pass through what the game refers to as the “Frostfell”, a massive magical ice barrier surrounding the city of “Icenaire” that apparently kills anyone who touches it. Apparently she can also one-shot evil ghosts with it, but only in the narrative. She did it in a cutscene once, and so far that hasn’t translated to gameplay.

3. Has so-far-unmentioned heterochromia

4. Gets a high-ranking soldier to trust her almost immediately when only one brief conversation ago he had a suspicion that she was a spy for “The Green Flame”, apparently some rival faction that’s very, very Not Good.

Getting confused by all the random names yet? Trust me, it doesn’t really get much better. This game’s story shows a lot of the very painful signs of an over-written, over-developed fantasy world that someone very obviously put a lot of time and love into, but didn’t really know where to stop.

Names, places, and concepts are thrown at you non-stop with a new one being introduced almost every dialogue sequence if you spend time talking to the locals of Icenaire once you convince the guard captain to let you go wandering the streets. You can also find random lore pages strewn around the place that add even more lore on top of everything else.

It all gets to be so dense and confusing you almost completely lose track of what the actual, present-day story is. The game has no trouble throwing random scraps of lore at you, full of names that mean nothing, but when it comes to actually explaining what the hell is going on right now, it falls a bit short. Here’s my understanding so far.

Lyric’s father has either died or mysteriously disappeared, I can’t remember which, and she’s been left a letter, a book, and the titular Vambrace. The book is referred to in the game mechanics as “The Codex” and is referred to by NPCs as a “book that nobody can read”, because apparently foreign languages don’t exist in this world, yet so far I’ve counted 6 or 7 distinct fantasy races that apparently all speak the exact same language all the time.

The vambrace has fused itself to Lyrics arm, and her fathers letter tells her to go to Icenaire (I have no fucking clue what that name is supposed to mean by the way, and it sounds really fucking awkward to say so it has to mean -something-. The “ice” part is pretty self-explanatory if a little on the nose, the entire game takes place in what appears to be an apocalypse along the lines of if you took the events of “Frozen” and turned it up to 11, but the only insight I could get on the “naire” part is that it’s from the Irish Gaelic word “náire” which means something along the lines of “ashamed” or “to have shame”. So this city is basically named “ice-ashamed”, which I have no clue what that’s supposed to mean, and it’s bothering me enough that I’ve gone on an entire run-on paragraph to rant about it because it sounds stupid to say and exactly like a city name I would’ve come up with for my crappy fantasy stories that I wrote when I was fourteen.)

Where was I again?

Right, okay, so Lyrics father instructs her to go to Icenaire (blech) and find some dude named “Zaquard Ventrue”. That name also means nothing, except as far as I can tell, “Zaquard” is the pseudonym of one of the people at Devespresso, and the first thing that comes to mind for Ventrue is Vampire: The Masquerade, and I’m not sure it really means anything there either.

The naming system in this game seems really off, it has no consistency and a lot of it is really self-indulgent, because you find out that this Zaquard fellow (in the game) is the big head honcho of what apparently is some kind of resistance movement of the oppressive organization called “The Green Flame”.

So Lyric goes through the “Frostfell” (the magical ice barrier thing around the city that allegedly is the cause of this whole Frozenpocalypse deal) by using the power of the mysterious Vambrace, and...passes out because of it, only to be found by a scavenging party in a tutorial section where the game teaches you how to play it using said scavenging party.