#hey I'm back to Jak and Daxter fandom because it's the time of the year when I feel nostalgic for these games again

[seirei-bh]

A theory about Maia and Onin

Reading through J&D TPL's design bible, I realized that Onin and Maia have one thing in common: they can both predict the future and can hear and interpret prophecies.

The description about Maia in TPL design bible says Maia was able to predict the future and shout prophecies with a voice that was not her own. In addition, Maia is said to have used a "dark socery" and it is even hinted that she was so powerful that she created an army of enemies (it may refer to her creating the Lurkers or at least experimenting with them to mutate them in different ways). Onin is also renowned in Haven City as a true sort of fortune teller and sorceress. The two are the only human characters who have these powers so strange and uniques.

But why do they have these powers? Why does Onin know so much about the Precursors? And why was Maia going into a trance and speaking in a voice that was not her own? Why did Maia and Gol wanted to experiment with dark eco?

Here we go, theory time!

I believe that Maia and Onin are people "chosen" from birth, just like Jak, to fulfill a role that guides Jak to be the hero he is today. But Onin and Maia had an opposite role. One was chosen by the Precursors, and the other by the Dark Makers.

Onin was born blind and mute, therefore, the Precursors spoke to her and gave her a gift of light eco, so that she used her gift for good, and was, like Samos and Damas, a key person to guide Jak on the good path of his hero journey. Meanwhile, the voice Maia heard was not the voice of dark creatures who used to be Precursors: the Dark Makers, who tempted her and Gol to the dark side. On the one hand, this would cause the future, Jak and Daxter to have to embark on their path as heroes and become stronger, but it would also be what would trigger Jak and Daxter to find the Rift Gate and with it the metalheads could reach their world, destroy, conquer, and later the Darkmakers might also come to that world and destroy it.

However, it's true Onin came to do things that can be considered not very good, since it was she who told Erol that Jak was "special" and that is why the KG took him to prison, but we need to remember that the Precursors are gods who play with people as game board pieces, So Onin knew that Jak needed to go to prison to gain the power of the dark eco to defeat Kor, in the same way Samos also knew it was necesary Jak needed to go to the past and later go to the future.

And in certain way, Samos also is a opposite parallel to Gol, both being sages with an important role in Jak's journey. In both cases, we have a sage and a sorceress.

It was necesary that also Jak had people in both sides of that coin that helped him to become in the hero Mar. Since he achieved both eco powers: light and dark. That's whay the Symbol of Mar represents: the balance.

//extra side note: I also have some headcanons (for fanfics that I never couldn't finished and I hope I can back to write them some day) about Onin being a long lost member of the House of Mar (a Damas's great-aunt or something like that), and that was why she knew so many things about the tomb of Mar, and Jak's mother being a distant relative descendant of the Acheron clan -not directly of the evil twins, of course, I mean descendant about other non-mentioned members of Acheron family. Being those things even here more representative and symbolic to Jak's light/dark sides, but I'll talk more about this in other post~)

[ab-memoria]

Long post-

Hey guys...(J&D Fandom)

... I like all the AU's and UA's so many of you have come up with so I came up with one too!! Anyone think brainwashed KG!Keira would dope?

Heartache for days ya know!!!... 😢 AND because I love to suffer I figured I'd share my AU idea with all of youuu!!!

****

So for this idea Jak would be pretty much be the same except along the way to getting revenge on the Baron he has to face off against his long lost friend Keira a la Bucky Barnes style. -

Dark Eco Warrior vs. Mind Controlled Super Solider kinda deal!!!!

-

Ok since Jak's been on a one man campaign to take on the Baron and Erol, he hasn't looked for Keira or Samos at all. He has no idea if they are alive or dead but hasn't given up on the idea of finding them one day. Daxter hasn't seen Keira or Samos either but he knows they have to be alive somewhere and that they'll find them when the time is right...

-

Then while getting set up for a new mission Torn reveals that the KG have a strange and powerful fighter in their ranks and while Jak is initally dismissive his interests are peaked at the prospects of facing a new enemy. Whoever this new fighter was Jak was going to make them regret messing with him if they decided to do so...

Some time passes and while on a different mission for the Underground to destroy a secret supply line Jak accidentally meets the mysterious new fighter.

.

.

... And his heart sinks at the revelation that it's his missing friend. He recognized those eyes the very moment they locked onto his. Why the fuck was she working for the Guard!!!

Jak's pissed, the sweet and sassy girl from the village was gone and had been replaced with some kind of solider, this wasn't the girl he knew but he has his orders and... he can't. Not her - anyone else would be easy to kill but not her...

So while our darkboi is having a quiet mental breakdown Keria raises her weapon at her target and sends out several shots... Quickly recovering from his shock Jak goes down to face Keria then all hell breaks loose they have themselves a good old fashioned gu ...?!?!?Channeler battle!?!?

``````

So our boi Jak isn't going to be able to mentally deal with the reality that he might have to kill the girl he spent his entire childhood playing with. And that's unfortunate because Keira isn't going to give him much of a choice. She is Alpha now and her objective is clear. Take out Subject Delta - the only survivor of the D.W.P. and then destroy the Underground once and for all.

-

Lol So pretty much our fav tech head is gonna be an experimental soldier created in secret to take on Jak, she was made as a back up plan to the D.W.P. which would have been a solid idea if the Baron was wise enough to have done it.

But as for the inspiration it was a tie between the Underground!Erol tag and the cutscene in Daxter with Erol and Veger about how everyone except Jak died from Dark Eco that made me think about an alternative warrior.

-

So our villain in the AU is going to be Veger because of course, he has his obsession with light eco and not liking the D.W.P. to begin with. That alone would give him a reason to have a back up plan in case Jak failed. To show Erol up and to have his own solider at his beck and call.

My plot plan was that he found Keira through some old security camera recordings. He was trying to look for the missing Kid by retracing his steps but he accidentally saw Keira be spat out from the blast that Jak also came from. So Veger had his goons look for her to take in. She was in the process of rebuilding the Rift Rider at the Stadium so Veger has his lackeys take that too and even if she can't channel he know she can be broken enough to be of some use.

It's a win-win for him.

-

The Underground deems her a high level threat at some point and they want Jak to take her out. But Jak can't disconnect the girl from the solider. And Older Samos can't find it in himself to have his own daughter killed. So it leaves them at a stand still on what to do about the girl which is perfect for the Baron because he isn't going to lose his newest and most effective solider anytime soon.

Then Ashelin gets put with Keira for some time and it quickly becomes apparent to Ashelin that something isn't right with her new squad memeber and she begins to investigate Keira's origins. After a short time the red head finds secret documents through an old corrupted computer server detailing parts of Keira's creation. It becomes a moral dilema to Torn ... Can he order the execution of a 16 year old brainwash girl?

Unfortunately Veger isn't stupid enough to leave anything incriminating that would lead back to him so for a while he's not suspected of anything.

But he's not without a plan in case Keira also fails.

Several Key Phrases have been ingrained in Keira's mind to keep her under control but there is also memory wipe code that will partially remove traces of the solider program so she won't be able to recall anything from before she was taken. It's a fail safe incase anyone thinks about using her with the current codes. Her mind can be reset with new codes and phrases later on.

----

Her powers might be Light Eco based or the original red, blue, green, yellow set with advanced powers I'm not dead set on it cause I'm trying to figure how much plot I can take from Jak 3 for this.

Maybe Seem found an opened Light Eco vent at the Monk Temple and Veger used that to create his own light warrior or that Veger discovered that the four colors combined make a synthetic light eco type?

And apart from being Veger's new toy she also creates weapons for the KG and the Baron. So the new armored Hellcats, guard armor, and mini deathbots were made by her in this AU which would be cool as heck.

So these were my thoughts and if you wanna talk J&D with me you can totally message me here. ❤

[demyrie]

I'm curious but why did you delete JAM? It was one of my favorite JxD fics and I never got to finish reading it.

ahhhh oh dear, yeah, that happened.

So, for everyone arriving, I wrote a fic called Just Another Mission for the Jak and Daxter game series, and Jak/Daxter pairing. Yes, the green haired elf protag with the fuzzy orange thing, which btw used to be a human and was a human in fic. I think I started it when I was maybe 14 (yikes omg) and a few years ago, I deleted it, and I don’t delete fics.

Rant and personal history ahead, but tldr; i deleted this particular fic because:

1) I became more and more uncomfortable with the way I’d treated certain characters without giving them respect or resolution (throwing around things like domestic abuse while being too young to properly understand What I Was Doing or How to Answer Very Triggered Friends Who Had the Misfortune of Reading This I’m So Goddamn Sorry, as well as falling into that Not Like Other Girls slash fan ditch of treating female characters like shit/obstacles to the main pairing WHICH IS JUST ******) as well as personally uncomfortable portrayals of obsession and taking advantage of people that turn my stomach to this day (see reason 4)

2) i got way in over my head with my own writing/style which was so obtuse and self-indulgent that I felt a great amount of shame over it, including the attention it had gotten, and the way it went to my head and turned me into an egotistic little shit. I was an asshole peacock and I regret it. There was a break where I got waylaid before the final confrontation in the fic (see reason 4, also a very bad time to get held up in any narrative) and when I returned to the story, i nearly cried because it was such a mess and I didn’t know what I was saying anymore. Finishing it was a struggle and I even remember one JnD fan friend being like “hey this chapter seemed really curt??? short?? not like you” and I was like YEAH THATS NOT ME ANYMORE god i hope

3) there was a sort of ... anti-JxD surge in my little pool from people I really respected and it made me think i was doing something wrong even just remembering it, so I cut off that memory.

4) it coincided with two ugly relationships in my life that marred it, and I just wanted it gone for my own mental health.

So anon, I’m very sorry that you never got to finish it. I had good intentions in mind and gave them a happy ending where they realized they loved each other, even if the journey there was difficult. 

It both touched me and broke a piece of my heart when someone came to me years ago and asked me why I had deleted it, saying the story had given them the courage to come out as gay to their family. In that moment, overwhelmed with how ProblematicTM the whole story was, I was really struck with just ... how subjective our world experience is, and how so many things can mean so many different things to every single soul and how terrifyingly VALID peoples experiences are, no matter how they come by them. We’re all so unique and convoluted, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure -- and one man’s trigger is another man’s key to Becoming. But no matter how inspiring, I couldn’t bring myself to repost it. 

Hopefully this will be the only fic i ever delete with relish. Jak and Daxter will always be a good memory for me, regardless. Thanks for the ask, anon.

(even more) personal stuff below the cut. tw for stalking, harassment, manipulation and emotional abuse.

So.

Im a firm believer in stories living beyond their authors (something that JK rowling doesnt seem to understand iykwim). I don’t normally delete past works, because while I wrote them, I also know that they’ve outgrown me as most narratives do: people are absolutely allowed to enjoy what they want to or need to, not just because I think said thing is reflective of my current work or jives with my current stage of life. 

However, JAM was a particular Thing that Had to Go.

The timeline is hella fuzzy to me because I’ve blocked a lot of it out, but I was coming out of middle school and struggling with my mental health. On the real life side, I was stuck in a situation with a close friend of mine who was very fixated on us being in a relationship and the pining was loud enough to hear from the other side of the country. Wounded people pleaser that I was, I flipped (exhaustingly) back and forth between “i dont like you like that” and “but I want you to be happy so what if I tried liking you like that?” and there was massive amounts of hidden hurt and resentment and tension and abandonment complex activation and just ... a strangling of anything that made our friendship good for either of us. 

Also she was a she. So. Yannoe, gay is difficult.

This definitely burnt me out on the “best friends pining” trope and is probably legit the ONLY reason I’m not equally in the erasermic and erasermight camp haha. That trope feels claustrophobic and draining to me, so I leave it for others to enjoy.

It also coincided with a married 45yo adult man luring me into a “platonic, ecstatic, boundary-breaking, you-are-my-beautiful-young-muse, words cannot express how much I love you” creative type relationship that inevitably turned possessive, domineering and manipulative. Within the bounds of the Renaissance Faire community, I thought he was a safe person and he was not, and his constant reassurance that I wasn’t like other women my age was absolutely hypnotizing to a undeveloped soul who really, really wanted to be special.

We traded poetry and tarot card readings over email. He bought me manga and shared stories about his time overseas and in the service. He made me props to go with my renaissance faire character and showed me where to find cheap leather so I could piece things together myself.

He also stalked me and owned me for the better part of a year and I only realized it once he started harassing a dear friend of mine overseas, whom I was visiting, about a package that he’d sent, which apparently he’d covered in original poetry to let me know how much he loved me But Not In a Hetero or Sexual Way Bro, so of course he didn’t want it to get lost in the postal system. So what is he going to do? Note my friend twice a day asking if its arrived until she inevitably, tearfully spills that this guy is stressing her out and who is he anyway?

My horrible secret was out, which only sounded horrible when I explained it to someone else. I realized this man was trying to follow me wherever i went and I got so fucking angry that he was messing with my friend that I had to stop it.

(He called me a cunt when I broke it off with him on the phone in the dark on the floor of my bedroom in the middle of the night so my parents wouldn’t hear, then sobbed and said he was sorry. I was so dissociated from the rush of anger and helplessness that it took for me to actually MAKE the call that all I could do was wiggle my foot and watch it in the reflection of the mirror on the back of my door, and think maybe I was a cunt but I wasn’t his cunt anymore. So there. 

Afterward I slammed my forehead into the mirror a few times to make sure I’d actually done it and it wasn’t a dream.)

During all of this, I was writing this stupid fic. I think. Honestly, I don’t fucking know, but I can’t think of it without thinking of him and how i was devoured.

The stress of hiding this “totally wonderful but NORMAL PEOPLE DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT WE HAVE!!!!” grooming shit from my parents was gutting me alive, and I was so far gone RE: worthiness/autonomy that I didn’t even consider why I BOTHERED diffusing his petulant accusations over notes on deviantArt again and again as he baited me into shit just to explode over how I didn’t love him and I figured out another way to soothe his engorged and tarry ego without explicitly lying that I loved him too. 

He made me regret my silver tongue and way with words as I used it to defend myself again and again, and crushed my love of writing. I would pace the neighborhood for almost an hour several times a week, claiming I was ‘exercising’ but really trying to understand why i felt so trapped, or where the lines between love and hate lay, or why I wanted to cry all the time, as i low key tried to get hit by a car just to force something to change in my life and jolt me out of his smothering, needy nightmare of constant texting and emails and notes. I couldn’t fucking flinch without him knowing about it, and asking me if I was okay. For this reason, I react very poorly to people fretting over me at length, and loudly. I get angry and feel violated, or just pinned to the floor by someone Performing their love on me with no real regard for my health.

This whole time, I was escaping into fandom. It probably saved my life, in one way or another, because I found friends who supported me and made me laugh in the JnD sphere. Especially the friend whose distress caused me to snap and realize This Couldn’t Continue.

This terrible man was the first one outside of my friend group that I showed my writing to, the first adult as well. It was on the dark side even then, but he said it was wonderful and amazing. He teased me for being stuck up in my authors notes on JAM (one of the reasons I’m just getting over ... talking ...) but said it inspired him to start writing as well. He used that writing to imagine hokey sprawling stories of him being a hot rod racer and me being his sexy girlfriend, Very Totally in Love. Why Couldn’t We have Just Met in a Different Lifetime??? not that its a relevant question for my young 16yo friend lol just something dreamers wonder lol lol here why don’t you take this traditional irish engagement ring aka claddagh i bought for you, lie to your parents and say I bought one for everyone in our renfaire group, and turn it toward your heart, to imply that you’re in love, so that I can keep your heart safe for you until you find a boyfriend?

FUCKER YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKER ok I’m done. Fuck.

JAM was a project of mine that spanned a year or two and is intrinsically tangled in those very bad relationships and very bad lessons. I deleted it because I needed to, for purely personal reasons beyond the fact that it was generally bombastic, over-long, tone-deaf and dealt with very serious issues poorly. Due to these experiences, you won’t catch me in a hot minute writing either best-friends-pining or heavy jealousy/possessiveness fic, but everyone else? Go crazy just tag your shit.

so. anyway. isn’t subjectivity actually terrifying? You never know what something can mean to someone else. So just ask, maybe.

Damn, son. Some fics you just can’t repost.