#i LOVE a lot of the game actually. i came around on settlement building and i loved the weapon system | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

finnritter · 1 year

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I just saw the ask game (if you are still doing it) so of COURSE I have to ask for Turgon!!

Ask Game:

Thank youu!! I always love to talk about him so this came super easy to me. Also huge thank you @swanmaids, who requested him as well <3

Turgon

one aspect about them i love

Except for “everything”? No, I mean, I adore him and his complexity and his contradiction, and how sad he makes me, but mostly I love his whole theme of homesickness and his general love for places. Obviously a lot of that is my personal interpretation that goes deeper than what the actual text says, but he is explicitely stated to be so homesick for a city that be built a whole new one as a memorial. That’s some dedication. And surely, everyone following the Flight of the Noldor must have missed Aman a lot, that goes without saying, so this mention of him missing Tirion so much makes me imagine that he is the type of person who really builds his sense of safety and identity around the places he lives in. For many people, home is where some of their most important belongings are, or where they can be around their family and friends, but I think that Turgon feels most at home when he knows the town or city he lives in like the back of his own hand. He has a great understanding of architecture and city planning and so he mostly understands why buildings are designed the way they are, what the benefits or certain street arrangements are, why certain landmarks are placed where they are. He knew Tirion inside out and that familiarity was very important for him to feel safe and at home. Vinyamar was a quick built, mostly to have a settlement other than tents (he hated the tents s o much.) and he did plan on expanding it, and finding a style that better suited the mingling of Noldorin and Sindarin culture. When he found the Hidden Valley and knew that he could design a city from scratch there, without being pressed for time that much, he was very methodical about it. The idea was “re-design of Tirion, but better suited for my people’s needs and also fit for the natural landscape it’s being placed in”. This was, in that regard, a total success.

(I just realised how much this has drifted off into basically just headcanons, whoops. But I do really love the homesickness-theme, it brings some a bit more innovative character motivations with it which are very interesting to me.)

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

While I do think many people, if they like him or not, depict him as a pretty layered and complicated character, I do still see him being used as the “Anti-Russingon”-party, or even worse, the “mean uncle”, sometimes borderline abusive, to Maeglin. And I often have the feeling that this is mostly to give Fingon, the Fëanorians or Maeglin an opponent, which, fair, but it really irks me that through this he often ends up a very one-dimensional a-hole, instead of having actual reasons or motives for his actions. I mean, he definitely isn’t an easy person to be around and surely not the perfect brother or uncle, but I think that it’s unfair to just assume that he wouldn’t at least try his best, especially with his family, which he obviously cares a great deal about!

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

This is a very general personality-headcanon but it’s very dear to me, so: I hc him to be a very gentle, sensitive guy at heart. I mean, obviously he is described as bold and fiery, and he is terribly pig-headed, especially later in life. But part of the reason why he comes off as so stoic and secluded is that he is very prone to bottling up feelings he thinks he “should just get over”. He feels things very deeply, is easily hurt emotionally and takes things very personally, which makes him very caring and loyal on the one hand, but also very very badly equipped for dealing with grief or guilt – not an easy way to live your life if you’re a Noldor in the First Age.

one character i love seeing them interact with

Finrod!! I could talk for hours about how much I love their friendship and how their stories heavily parallel each other a couple of times throughout the silm, which is so interesting. They also seem like such polar opposites, but I imagine them to share a lot of their most important values and opinions, which makes them insperable despite their obvious personality differences. I would love to see what would have happened had they actually told each other about their respective dreams by Ulmo (why they didn’t tell each other is actually one of the things I can’t really wrap my mind around. They either each had a very big, important reason that was just never mentioned, or a very stupid one). A joined Middle Earth-Hidden City-architecture-project would have actually been so cool tbh. Guess it still makes for a super fun AU, though.

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

Elenwë! We get next to nothing about her and because she is not present for 90% of the actual plot of the Silmarillion, there isn’t even that much fan interpretation, but I love every tiny bit of what IS there. She, and her death, were huge influences on Turgon’s and Idril’s lives and I would love to know what she was like. Turgon was canonically reluctant about leaving Aman, and I think following the biggest part of his family was a big motivator. But I don’t think he would have just decided this and left, leaving the decision of following him or not (together with their daughter) to Elenwë alone. They must have talked about this. She might have even encouraged him to leave together. Idk, I just would love to see how that decisionmaking actually played out. Also, pre-darkening young couple/family fluff with Elenwë and him is so important to me!! They were the sweet, slightly nerdy next-door couple, change my mind. They pined for each other for ages and even decades after their marriage, they were both sometimes still silently stunned how they had managed to pull the best husband/wife on the continent. Absolute dorks in love, but determined to always support each other and communicate healthily as well. I need this bit of Valinor romcom fluff for my heart, okay, it’s very important to me.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

He freaked out (very quietly and inwardly, because it’s Turgon.) when he heard that Maeglin wanted to follow his host for the Nirnaeth. He also knew that he couldn’t forbid him without a) completely undermining the autonomy he gave him as one of his lords (and since Idril was staying and the house of the mole was not strictly necessary to stay for the city’s protection, he had no real reason to stay back), and b) actively trapping his nephew against his will again, this time without any good reason, which would definitely hurt him enough to create a rift between them. He came close to forbidding him to come anyway because he was terrified for him, but didn’t in the end (Idril played a part in convincing him) and Turgon was actually glad, in the end, that Maeglin would get to meet Fingon, at least. He kept Maeglin close at his side through everything, though, but made sure he didn’t feel patronised by very much relying on him as an advisor and taking in his rather out-of-the-box takes on strategy. He also did intend to talk to Maeglin afterwards and make sure he really was okay, as an uncle, not a king, but with the end of the battle being what it was, it never actually came to that.

#i realised i need to talk more about all my turgon thoughts in depth #there were so many instances where it was hard to chose what to pick #i already cheated like 7 times by rambling about 3 things at once for some points #silmarillion #turgon #finrod #elenwe #maeglin #ask game #answered

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powdermelonkeg · 3 years

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Hyrule Brochure: A Potential for BotW’s Future

Hyrule’s map in BotW is pretty sparse as far as cities go. Yes, it’s got more than any other Zelda game, but it also has like, 90% of its map being pure dead space.

So I decided to play around and make what I imagine Hyrule would look like, as far as cities go, if it were allowed to properly rebuild and not get totally wrecked by Ganon again.

Credit to Eragon2589 on DeviantArt for the free-to-use map icons. I love these little buttons so much.

So, these are the canon towns we get in BotW; Hateno, Lurelin, Tarrey, Zora’s Domain, Goron City, Korok Forest, Rito Village, Yiga Hideout, and Gerudo Town. I’m counting Yiga Hideout as a town because if the Yiga were a little nicer, it WOULD be marked one.

Adding the various stables on makes the place look MUCH less empty, but still; what can we do with this?

Well, I’ve spent the last several days locating all the significant ruins and landmarks, with one or two extra things thrown in, that I think would make this place much more populated.

Maps are free to use if you want them, btw. Have fun!

As a general rule of thumb, I want to make the towers and stables their own cities. The towers are a good landmark and beacon of safety, and the stables have all the building blocks to start building up a village.

If I’m particularly inspired, I’ll give some background on what the town is/does!

Starting off with the Rito! Their village has grown into a town, and the stable at its foothill is its own village now. I called it “fledgeling” because that’s where the Rito and Hylians would intermingle most, so the Rito aren’t exactly flying around here.

Beacon City is built around Tabantha Tower; the Rito have turned it into a sort of lighthouse, reflecting light off into the distance to help guide nighttime fliers home. Because of this, it’s a very popular stop for mail carriers, and where they go, development and cultural mixing follows.

Kaysa Town is built around Great Fairy Kaysa’s fountain; it’s a popular tourist attraction, and she gets plenty of offerings, so win-win!

For the Gorons, we’ve only got two more cities: Silversmith Village and Din’s Spire. Silversmith is built around the culture in the southern mines, and it has down-the-road access to the Goron Hot Springs. Din’s Spire is less of a town and more of a landmark, due to the sheer cliffs all around it, but the huge (and notably not in the burning death zone) hot spring lake makes it a popular rest stop for people on their way through.

I decided not to rebuild the northern mines; they’re pretty busted up and lava soaked, so my assumption is that they were abandoned either due to hazards or due to the ore being stripped out.

Korok Forest wouldn’t change much, besides the Royal Family declaring it a protected area. The Koroks don’t seem to have much interest in expansion, and they, as far as I know, don’t live in houses.

Gerudo Territory is MUCH more expansive than the others so far, and with good reason.

Gerudo Town itself is now Gerudo City, and the Kara Kara Bazaar has grown into a town. Canyon Stable has developed a village (mostly full of Gerudo husbands so they don’t have to travel a million miles just to see their families).

The Gerudo have control of one of the towers in their region, and the town built around it is Overlook Town. It mostly serves as a training grounds for young Gerudo warriors.

The City of the Seven developed when the Seven Heroine statues were recovered and restored; the town around them was built to honor them, and then it got a LOT of foot traffic from those wanting to see the legendary statues.

Tera Town rose up much in the same way Kaysa Town did up in Rito territory, centered around the Great Fairy Fountain.

Mesa Village and West Gerudo Town are both smaller Gerudo settlements; West Gerudo sprung up out of access to snowmelt from the Gerudo Highlands, and Mesa Village, because of its relative safety from Molduga and access to oasis water.

Finally, Gerudo Valley, in reference to Ocarina of Time. This town is a Gerudo-only zone, and is more a fortress than a town. It exists both to keep an eye on the Yiga and to gain control of the mountain pass, making people go through Canyon Village to get to Gerudo instead of avoiding Gerudo customs.

Speaking of the Yiga, they’ve taken two new spots for themselves; Gerudo Tower, which they’ve renamed Kohga Tower in honor of their late Master, and Banana Labyrinth, which serves as their highest security area. Imagine if you’d had to go through the LABYRINTH to get the Thunder Helm back.

Up next we’ve got the Zora. Truthfully, their territory spans as long as Zora river and WELL into the ocean, but these are the only cities that, technically, a Hylian with adequate gear can enter.

Mipha’s Landing is an above-water city built expressly for doing trade. It got its name from the late Mipha; since the tower reaches up into the sky, it was hoped that someday, her spirit would sit atop it for a rest and see all that her people had been able to do thanks to her sacrifice.

Lakebed Village is in Lake Hylia, and it’s actually a slowly-repopulating Lakebed Temple, from Twilight Princess. Meanwhile, Great Bay City is a port town above water and an aquatic metropolis below, full of music and dance and exotic wares.

And finally, Hylians.

Hoo boy.

I’ve split this up region by region but

THIS is how many living spots they’ve got.

Silver stars indicate military towns. Red stars indicate military outposts.

I USE THE TERM MILITARY VERY LOOSELY HERE. Hyrule, since it doesn’t interact with its neighbors, only has the Yiga and the various monsters to fight against. Anything labeled “military” means that it’s staffed by royal employ, meaning knights and Sheikah and the like.

Let’s start with Akkala. The northeast labyrinth has been converted into an emergency bunker, in case Calamity strikes and people need a safe place to hide. Not only is it difficult to break into, it also has a completely empty lower level that’s PERFECT for long-term seige.

City Tempest got its name for being near-constantly wracked by storms. Despite this, though, it remains a popular vacation spot for people who don’t mind a little rain; the Skull Lake and the giant flowers are worth it.

Valley Town rose up out of both East Akkala Stable and Robbie’s workshop. It doesn’t get too much foot traffic, but it doesn’t really need to.

Midna Village, I built where the ruins of Shadow Hamlet are. I figured it was a fitting name, and the area is almost constantly covered in the shadow of Death Mountain.

Four Brothers’ Base is a knight outpost that’s up extremely high, spanning huge bridges between the four Tingle isles.

Then Parapa Palace, in reference to Zelda II: Adventure of Link, was built in place of the Akkala Citadel and functions as a mini Hyrule Castle + Castle Town. In real life, monarchs would have several palaces to go between, kind of like how well-off people nowadays would have a summer home. So, I followed that trend! This is Zel’s summer palace.

And you guys know what Tarrey Town is. Although interestingly, as it expands, it goes vertical into the stone column it was built on.

Onto Central Hyrule.

Camp Rauru is training camp and lodging for new knights. Rebonae Village and Kasuto City were made out of the Wetland and Riverside stables respectively, though Kasuto (also an Adventure of Link reference) gets substantially more foot traffic due to being on the way from Castle Town to Dueling Peaks.

Outset Town got its name, lore-wise, from the fact that it’s the first bit of land Link from BotW visited after leaving the Great Plateau, and meta-wise, because it’s the starting point for Wind Waker Link.

Aquame City surrounds the Coliseum, which is how it grew to be so popular. The grand stage holds sparring matches and various other shows regularly, and it’s a pleasant boat trip from Castle Town to get there.

Saria Town was built out of the old exchange ruins, and it’s in walking distance of the ruined Sage Temple—which, at this point in time, would have been rebuilt—and its existence is both an AoL reference and an OoT one (but mostly AoL, I’ve kind of fallen in love with its map).

New Mabe is where you can find the new Lon Lon Ranch! The ruins there are actually called the Mabe Town Ruins in game, and they’re right by the Ranch Ruins!

Eldin’s pretty sparse as far as Hylian towns go. It’s got Gut Check Camp, where Sheikah train for endurance and elemental resistance, and Windfall Town, a place that sees a LOT of gemstones pass through, freshly mined. That includes rupee ore, mind you!

Faron Province is a little more spaced out, due to the nature of the region. Lurelin’s grown since BotW, becoming a trading bay; meanwhile Cora Lake’s Sheikah Tower has expanded into Parache Town, and the Highland Stable has become Malanya Village. Both of those locations are VERY fond of horses, and they’re a bit competitive, especially during archery season.

Ordona Hamlet is a tiny village tucked away into the middle of Faron. It came about due to the Lakeside Stable, and it’s named that because I am STILL salty that the Zeldevs didn’t put an Ordon Village reference in the game.

Eventide Outpost is more of a testing ground for boats than anything particularly significant, population-wise. The even tides that gave the isle its name make it an ideal location to work out the kinks in new watercraft (and occasionally, the lieutenant in charge of that base demonstrates how to launch a raft into the sky with octo balloons).

Hebra’s the most militarized area of Hyrule, and ideally, it functions as a reserve of men and tech in case Calamity rises again. If there’s anything that BotW’s era learned, it’s to never underprepare for Gann’s return.

Fort Lomei is a converted base, just like the Banana Labyrinth is to the Yiga. This one, though, is patrolled diligently by knights who use daily-changing codes, and it’s impossible to navigate without the locals’ help.

Fort Pikida is situated in that weird stone cavern-y area, and it’s a supply stach and Hebran monster patrol site. It’s the soldiers there’s job to make sure that the Lynels that like to roam the region don’t get too close to residential areas.

Hia Miu Outpost is a training spot for knights sent to the Hebra region; any new soldier to the area has to prove they can handle themselves by going into the Hia Miu shrine and taking on the Major Test of Strength Trial. (Fun fact, did you know that the X-test-of-strength trials reset themselves every blood moon?)

Snowpeak Fortress exists both because it makes a fantastic secondary base for the Hyrulean royals to plan, and because i am once again salty about the lack of Twilight Princess in this game.

Sturnida Resort is built around hot springs! It’s a nice spot for people living around Rito Town and Fledgling Village to take a vacation without having to trek all the way across the country to do it.

Snowfield City came from Snowfield Stable, and it’s the Windfall of Hebra; it sees a LOT of people coming in and out of the region, and the view of the northern lights you can get from there? You’d be hard-pressed to find a Hylian that didn’t have it on their bucket list.

New Tabantha was built on the ruined spot of the original Tabantha Village; you can visit there in-game! It’s a quiet town that raises highland sheep for a living, and its team won the Hebran Triathlon three whole years in a row.

Then, the Tanagar Restricted Zone. If you’ve ever been there, you know EXACTLY why it’s restricted.

Most of the Guardians inside have been dealt with, but the ruined temple remains a hazard testing ground for new tech. It’s off limits to everyone but those with the HIGHEST clearance; I’m talking a direct letter from Zelda herself.

The Thyphlo Secret Camp is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a place for Hyrulean lieutenants to meet for top-secret missions, and it’s one of those places that you need to be SERIOUSLY high rank to even KNOW about.

Over on the edge of Lanayru, we’ve got New Goponga, built where the old Goponga ruins are, and the Crenel Garrison. The Garrison was built to take care of the Lizalfos problems in the waterways, keeping it safe for Hylians and Zora travelers alike. Goponga, on the other hand, is what Lurelin was in game; nice, friendly, and centered around fishery.

In Necluda, we’ve got New Deya where old Deya was ruined (I think BotW Link was born in old Deya!), Watchtower Village built around the lakeside of the Dueling Peaks tower, and then Dueling Peaks City, a HUGE trade hub that was once the Dueling Peaks stable.

Kakariko Village is now a Town, Hateno has grown into a full blown trade harbor, and a tiny village has started to form around the Hateno Tower, making Firly Overlook.

But what I most love is the City of Hylanay.

Back in the game, it was the ruins of the Lanayru Promenade. So I had the promenade rebuilt, then people moved in around it, and now, Hylanay’s basically Hyrulean Venice! I want to visit it.

On the Great Plateau, we’ve got Aboda Town, named after Spirit Tracks’ Aboda Village in reference to the starting point in each game. This Town has access to the original Temple of Time, but because of the nature of the isolated plateau, it doesn’t see a lot of new faces often.

Over around Thundra, we’ve got Tanagar Village overlooking the canyon, built out of the old Tabantha Stable. The village actually builds downwards into the canyon; people have windows carved right out of the cliff face!

Thundra Village is built into the rocky slopes surrounding Thundra Plateau and the Ridgeland Tower. Their houses are built in the shelter of the giant mushroom things that grow so well in the area, and they’re famous for their signature dish of escargot.

The Serenne Exchange is up north, encompassing both the old Serenne Stable and the Maritta exchange ruins. You can buy practically ANYTHING there; if ever there was a supermarket in Hyrule, it would be right there.

The Royal Lab was rebuilt out of its ruins post Calamity, and it’s directed by Purah, who still hasn’t cured her immortality yet. It’s not uncommon to hear explosions as you pass by that place.

And then Camp Rutile is a small observational outpost, meant to keep track of the activity on Satori Mountain. Supposedly, the mountain’s health reflects the state of the rest of the kingdom, so the researchers assigned there are tasked with monitoring it EXTREMELY closely.

And Hyrule Castle. It’s Hyrule Castle.

Now completely bolted into the ground! :D

If we put all these locations together, we get a very nice, very well populated Hyrule, with LOTS to see. This is how I would design the future of BotW’s Hyrule.

Thanks for reading!

#loz #zelda #worldbuilding #headcanons #MAPS #CITIES #I WANT A POPULATED HYRULE #botw

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hayden-thefuck-whywouldyoudothis · 3 years

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The Inevitable

Hello wonderful people! This is going to be my first ever fanfic that I am posting anywhere, so please be nice. I would appreciate feedback, and I think that if it does well here I’ll post it n Ao3.

I came up with this fic idea a little while back, and I’ve been writing it since 03/13/21. Basically the idea is that while Tommy was in the afterlife, he met characters who died during Tales From The SMP episodes that took place in the past. They told him their stories, and Tommy connected the dots. He goes to confront Karl in Kinoko Kingdom.

This story includes a headcanon that is not mine. I read a fanfic with the mute!Karl headcanon. The story was an absolute banger. If you want to hear a little more about that go read their story Come Home With Me by icaruswontmelt on Ao3

Story starts under the cut .

The Inevitable, by BangHaydenCoven

Death was the one thing that had always been truly eternal. When Wilbur came back as Ghostbur, it had seemed like death maybe wasn’t completely permanent because Wilbur was back. But he hadn’t been brought back to life. He was a ghost, a shell of the person he had been before everything went to shit. Tommy had truly thought that death was the one thing that stayed constant on this god-forsaken server. Being beaten to death and brought back by the person who hurt you so deeply puts a lot of things that were just beyond reach of perfectly understandable, into perspective. In the amount of time that had gone by while Tommy’s life actually went to hell and back, everything had changed. Tubbo had gotten married of all things, He had a kid. And a new best friend as well, apparently. There was, for the first time in a long time, a semblance of peace between all of the factions. Peace smashed, the moment he had been let out of the prison. No one looked at him the same way anymore. No one looked at him like the kid he was. The kid he was supposed to be. All they saw was an anomaly. Not a real, live, breathing person who has feelings and needs validation, just like other people. Proof of something that never should have been real.

Since declaring that Dream had to die, Tommy had holed himself up in his little house dirt mound of a house. When he finally got over the initial panic, the firsthand terror of forcing himself to think about the time he had spent dead, he allowed himself to do it freely. Puffy had told him it was good to think back on the trauma. He wasn’t sure just how much he could trust that ideology, but it seemed to work for the most part. Tommy had spent the majority of his time in the afterlife with the people he had known when he was alive. Wilbur, Schlatt, Mexican Dream. It had been pretty simple. They spent a lot of time playing card games, for some reason. But one day, a fight had sparked between Tommy and Schlatt, causing the younger to storm off into the distance. He had been fuming that day. It hadn’t even been a fight that made sense. Schlatt had thrown some baseless accusations his way, and Tommy had just given up. He needed a break. So he walked away.

He walked.

And he walked.

And he stopped.

Looming over him was a building that was like nothing Tommy had ever seen. It was old, dusty, and cold. It belonged in the afterlife, to put it simply. It fit. It was a simple embodiment. Then, laughter filled the air. Frightening, drunk laughter that was cold but inviting. Tommy followed the spine-chilling noise into the building where he found four people. Three were dressed like they were from the Wild West. Cowboy hats, cowboy boots, and simple revolvers at their hips. The fourth was also clearly from the same time period, put was dressed simply. When he walked into the building, they just stared at him. Cold, level stares that made him feel like he would rather die all over again then be stuck under those gazes for the rest of eternity. But suddenly the looks of the people softened as they beckoned him over, introducing themselves as Connor, Mason, and Jack Kanoff. They were group of bandits called the Democrat Haters, and a simple bartender named John John. They told him their story, to put it simply. They told him how they died.

That was only the beginning.

Tommy wandered for a week straight, meeting people, hearing their stories. He met higher members of society who attended a masquerade only to die brutal deaths at the hands of a possessed butler, the members of a village with a crazed murderer that didn’t know haw to stop, that killed people brutally, among many others. And every single story Tommy heard had a one thing in common. There was always one man, in every story, who appeared out of no where, wearing colourful clothing and iridescent goggles perched on his head. He didn’t always use the same name, but he was always there, no matter when it had happened. As Tommy moved around his home to prepare, one thought rang true in his mind.

Karl was getting a visitor tomorrow.

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Walking to Kinoko Kingdom had taken a lot longer than Tommy had originally thought and planned for. Not that the little settlement was close to the rest of the Greater SMP, but it wasn’t far either. Regardless of distance, it was still far too long of a walk for Tommy to be in a good mood when he arrived to find Sapnap of all people tending to the garden in Kinoko. Usually Tommy would have snuck up behind Sapnap and scared him to intentionally piss the older man off, but that was the old Tommy. The old Tommy had stayed dead. Instead, he announced his presence by kicking an acorn at the other mans head. There was a loud yelp, followed by a string of curses that matched the flowers in the garden with how colourful they were.

“George, I swear to god, if-” his sentence dropped of in a look of pure disbelief as he turned around, expecting to see his best friend that deserved a good scolding. A dead teenager was definitely different. And confusing.

“Shit...” Sapnap mumbled, “Tommy?”

“Hello Sapnap. I must say its very nice to see you doing something other than killing pets. Or your fiances.” He smirks.

“Well it’s definitely you. The question is how. How are you alive?” he says as the shock on his face fades into confusion mixed with disbelief. Tommy freezes.

“Only if your okay with it of course. Don’t answer if your not comfortable. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought that up. That was insensitive of me...” he trails off as he realizes Tommy seems less stressed at the fact that Sapnap isn’t going to make him talk about it.

“Sapnap,” Tommy started, “I need to talk to Karl. Like, right now.”

“Alright,” said Sapnap, nodding slowly, “I’ll go get him. Stay right here.” As Tommy watched the other man walk away to retrieve one of his fiances, he really hopes that what he is about to accuse Karl of is wrong. Maybe one day they’ll laugh about this. Probably not.

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As Sapnap entered the house, looking for his fiances, he couldn’t help but wonder what it was that Tommy so urgently needed to talk to Karl about. Not finding his fiances on the first floor of their shared house, he went upstairs to continue his search, not wanting to keep the teen waiting for too long. As he opened the door to the throuples bedroom, he let out a small huff of affection when he saw his fiances, the loves of his life, asleep in their bed. Quackity had his arms around Karls waist, with his wings over both of them like a blanket, reflecting the golden light of the sun filtering through the window. Not wanting to disturb the scene in front of him, he let out a small sigh of annoyance as he forced himself to wake up Karl, and by extension Quackity.

“Theres someone here who wants to talk to you.” he muttered softly in Karls ear.

“Who?” Karl signed sleepily.

“Tommy. It seems pretty important. He’s down in the garden.” Sapnap said a little louder, seeing that Q was now awake, so there was no reason to stay quiet.

“Alright.” He signed, “Let’s go.” as he got up, he tugged on Quackity’s sleeve lightly. “Are you coming, Q?” He nodded and gave a small smile.

“Alright,” Sapnap said, pulling Quackity into a quick hug, and giving him a quick kiss on the temple, “Let’s go then.”

As they left the house and approached Tommy sitting at the picnic table in their back garden, they exchanged a small conversation in sign language.

“Is he okay?” said Quackity with some concern clear on his face, his movements slow and scuffed from sleep.

“He looks really tired.” Sapnap added.

“Q, could you run in and prepare some sandwiches and lemonade?” Signed Karl, “We’ll bring Tommy inside and we can all have lunch together while we talk.”

“Of course, my love.” Said Quackity, giving Karl a small kiss on the cheek before hurrying inside to prepare some lunch.

Turning to Tommy to thank him for waiting, he was met with a face of absolute, genuine confusion. As Tommy stared at their hands, then looked back over to Karl, his face quickly changed to a look of understanding.

“I forgot,” he said as he stood up sheepishly, “that Karl was mute.”

“That’s okay Tommy.” Karl cut in before Sapnap could say anything, “I know you’ve been through a lot recently. It’s okay to forget things from time to time. I should know.” Karl signed slowly so that Tommy could keep up with his rusty remembrance of sign language, adding a small smile at the end of his sentence.

“Thank you Karl.” Tommy said with a sigh of relief.

“Would you like to come inside and have lunch with us? I know you have something to talk to me about, but you look hungry. We could talk right after though. How does that sound?” Karl signed with a smile on his face.

“That sounds great.” Tommy said after a beat of hesitation.

“Perfect,” said Sapnap, “let’s head inside. Q is making some sandwiches.” They all headed inside, one dreading the talk that would come after, the other two wondering what could possibly be so important to cause Tommy to come all the way out to Kinoko Kingdom to talk to Karl.

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Tommy and Sapnap sat down at the table in the dining room as Karl went into the kitchen to help Quackity. Usually it would be all three of the in the kitchen, making food and having a good time, but Sapnap needed to take advantage of the situation at hand. Since he hadn’t visited the main SMP in a while, Tommy gave him the rundown of the current and recent events he knew of. Nothing too bad, but Sapnap knows you can never be too careful. A few minutes later, Quackity and Karl emerge from the kitchen carrying some plates and the food. As they sit down and start to eat, Sapnap and Quackity make small talk that Karl contributes too every once in a while with some one handed movements, putting his sandwich down when it was necessary. But Tommy stayed quiet, which the fiances found quite odd. Clearly whatever the boy had been through recently, on top of all his other trauma, had really messed with him. The loud, boisterous teenager they had known before was gone, replaced with someone they didn’t recognize in the slightest. So Tommy stayed silent the entire time, not noticing the quick, worry filled glances the trio sent his way every so often.

Soon enough, they had all finished eating. They were sitting in the fiances’ living room together, Tommy on one couch, the tree of them on the other. The room sat in an awkward silence as Karl, Quackity, and Sapnap waited for Tommy to talk to them, and as Tommy decided what to say.

After a moment, Tommy said, “Are you sure you want them here for this?” Karl’s eyes widened at how blatant he had been.

“Of course I want them here.” He signed quickly, “They are the people who matter most to me. Whatever you need to say to me you can say to all three of us.” Sapnap and Quackity nodded, not wanting to disrupt anything.

“Alright,” Tommy sighed, “Where should I start...” Karl’s hands stayed firmly in his lap to give Tommy a moment to think. “Well, I guess I’m just going to say what I came here to say, and pray to Prime that I’m wrong.” Karl nodded, once, slowly. Tommy took a deep breath before opening his mouth and saying...

“Your a time traveler, aren’t you?”

Silence.

And then laughter

All he could hear was laughter.

Sapnap and Big Q were laughing.

Karl was not.

Karl wasn’t laughing.

The look on his face was not one of someone who had just been accused of some laughable fallacy.

A fantasy, really.

Sapnap and Quackity had stopped laughing.

They seemed to have come to the same conclusion that Tommy had.

“Karlos?” Quackity started, “There is no possible way...” he stopped, a look of pure disbelief on his face.

“Tell me that he’s lying Karl.” said Sapnap. “Please.” Karl’s hands started to move, making aborted and scuffed movements as he tried to figure out what to say.

“No,” He finally settled on, “he’s right. I’m a time traveler.” Sapnap started crying at this, and Quackity gave him a hug as he buried his face into his fiances neck. Karl looked completely torn. He clearly wanted to comfort his fiances, but he knew he shouldn’t while Tommy was still here. But he also didn’t know if he could. Karl didn’t know if he was even still allowed to comfort them after keeping this big of a secret from them, and for so long. Karl started signing again, this time with clear urgency behind each movement.

“Two things, and then I need you to leave. Understood?”

“Of course,” said Tommy, “I will leave immediately.” Karl nodded.

“Thank you. First things first,” he signed, “how did you know?” Tommy sighed. He really didn’t want to talk about this. But Karl deserved to hear the truth.

“When I died, I was in the afterlife for a little while,” Tommy said softly, “One day I walked away from the people I knew in the afterlife, Schlatt, Wilbur, and Mexican Dream. I walked for so long I came across a building I had never seen before, and when I went in I met a group of people from the Wild West.” Karl’s eyes had gone wide.

“You met Jack and Mason and Connor?” he signed.

“Yeah, and John John as well. They told me what happened the day they died, and they mentioned you. Not directly, but they mentioned a man that had showed up out of nowhere wearing bright colours and iridescent goggles.” Karl looked wistful, remembering his time sent in the Wild West, even if it hadn’t been an exceptionally fun trip at the time. Tommy continued. “I also met the people who visited the masquerade, same story. But this time they mentioned your name. And lastly I met the townfolk of the Village that went Mad. Same story, but no name once again. I just connected the dots.” Tommy fell silent, waiting for Karl to tell him something. Sometime during his revelations, Sapnap and Quackity had left the room to comfort each other. Karl clearly wanted to tell them he was sorry, but he couldn’t do that until Tommy had left. Turning back to the teen, he started signing once more.

“Thank you for telling me, Tommy. I just have one thing to ask of you, then you can leave.” Tommy nodded his head, and Karl continued, “You cannot, under any circumstances, tell anyone what you know. It would put everyone in grave danger. Is that clear?”

“Of course. I won’t tell a soul.” Karl gave him a small smile. “Now I think you should go talk to your fiances.”

“I will,” he signed, leading Tommy to the front door, “Goodbye, Tommy. Have a good trip back.”

“Goodbye, Karl.”

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As he walked towards the door of their shared bedroom, he could barely hold himself back from running to the room to comfort them. But Karl couldn’t be sure that they would ever be the same again. It broke him to think that, but he had lied to them, for a long time. They probably hated him.

He stopped outside of the door, hearing faint sounds of crying on the other side of the door. He slowly opened the door to see Quackity and Sapnap cuddled up together against the headboard of their bed, with all of the lights out. Sapnap was asleep against Quackitys chest, tear tracks all over his face. Q wasn’t much better.

“Hey Karl.” Quackity said softly, sniffling a little.

“Hi.” he signed back, gong to sit on the edge of the bed. “I’m so sorry.” he signed after a beat of silence. “I have no excuses. I just wanted both of you to be safe from it.”

“But... what is it, Karl? Why couldn’t you tell us? Are these the trips you’ve been going on? Does it have something to do with your memory problems?” Quackity rambled, question after question. He cut off when he realized how tense Karl looked. “...sorry.” he said, lowering his voice once more.

“Woah, Q, it’s okay. But I can only answer one question at a time.” Quackity nodded. “It is the In-Between,” he started, making the ASL sign for between, then spelling it out, “I don’t actually know what it is, but I managed to get away from it recently. It was stopping me from telling you about my time traveling. It told me that telling you guys would put you guys in grave danger. I couldn’t let that happen. So I kept it a secret.” He stopped, hands dropping when he couldn’t figure out where to go from there. Quackity opened his mouth, about to ask a question, when he felt Sapnap stir at his side.

“Hey babe.” Quackity said, Sapnap just let out a little huff. “Sap, do you feel up to talking right now?”

“...yeah...is he here?” he mumbled, voice heavy and slurred with sleep.

“He is.” Quackity answered. Sapnap looked up at him, then looked over to Karl.

“Hi Sap.” he signed, not making eye contact. “I want to apologize to both of you. For not telling you. There really is no valid excuse that I have. The In-Between was crazy. I just wanted to keep both of you safe.”

“What is the In-Between?” Sapnap asked. Before Karl could answer, Quackity cut in.

“He doesn’t know, Sap.” he whispered.

Sapnap continued, “I want you to tell us the whole story. Please?” Karl looked conflicted.

“Alright.” he signed, “I’ll start at the beginning.” So he did. He told them the whole story. By the time he had finished, all three had tears running down their face. “Do you understand now?” Karl wiped his eyes before continuing, “It wasn’t safe to tell you.” Sapnap nodded, eyes red and puffy from crying.

“You need to stop traveling Karl. Me and Sapnap wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves if you forgot everything.” said Quackity, pulling Sapnap even closer. Karl sighed.

“I can’t control the traveling. I don’t know if it will ever stop. All I need right now is you two. If I hadn’t wanted to get home to you guys so desperately, I would have forgotten long ago.” Karl got up and grabbed his journal. “Fill it.” he signed, after he gave it to his two fiances, “fill it with everything I need to remember. And when I come back each time, help me remember. Please.” Sapnap looked up at him, then glanced at Quackity, coming to a silent agreement. They would do anything to keep Karl with them.

“Of course we will, mi amor.” said Quackity, opening his arms to invite Karl to come sit with them. Karl smiled, tears running down his face once again, crawling into their warm embrace. And as they sat there, holding each other close, Karl took each of heir hands, pressing his favourite symbol in ASL into their palms.

“I love you.”

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Thank you for reading!!! Once again, if you like this, leave a comment or something, idk. And make sure to go check out the story linked at the top of this post for more about the mute!Karl Jacobs hc.

Have an amazing day, wonderful people.

#karlnapity #afterlife #karlnapity fic #ficlet #fanfiction #dream smp #dream smp au #quackity #sapnap #karl jacobs #tales from the smp #the masquerade #the village that went mad #the wild west #time travel #mute character #headcanon #canon divergent au

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botwstoriesandsuch · 4 years

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im loving the history lesson posts!!! what are you're thoughts on the ruins in Tabantha? based on the memory near the skywatchers and the shrine quests in the region, the stone ruins in tabantha existed about 10,000 years ago and were destroyed or vacated and left to crumble. but the stone structures contrast heavily with the wooden architecture of Rito Village? bUT if i'm remembering correctly the song lyrics go "pride of the rito/pillar to the sky" so the rito stone and tabantha itself has (1)

Ok first off, I AM SO SORRY! I read this ask months ago and I worked on it in my google docs and then I was going pure theory mode and then another person sent in another ask about ruins and I was getting all excited so basically long story short I got so caught up in making a masterlist of all the ruins that I completely forgot about this ask until now... So anon I apologize for the terrible wait but hopefully you’ll still enjoy what I have in planned.

You’ve given me a lot to work with so I’m going to break this up into several posts based on your asks. I’m gonna post them on different days becauseeeee content management, schedules, things.....I’m lazy and also if I posted all my thoughts in one post it would be like a giant book with zero pacing so

[Today] Thoughts on the Ancient Columns and the Ruins of Tabantha

[Some time later idk when I post it I’ll shove the link here] The Effects of the Calamity on the Rito and People of Hyrule

The Relationship between Skywatcher Locations and the Cunning of Calamity Ganon

Buckled in ladies, lads, and gentlefolk? It’s time for a history lesson, Part 1 o’ Trois. So today here is

Ancient Ruins, Architectural Parallels, and the Probable Worship of the Fae

So! Let’s start with the ruins of Tabantha. Specifically, the Ancient Columns.

Anon you’re correct in that these ruins are over 10,000 years old. We can not only gather this from the fact that their condition is the same even 100 years ago, meaning they have to be older than a century (see their crumbled state and similar moss patterns) but also from direct lines from the Creating a Champion (CaC) book itself.

However, I’m inclined to believe (for several reasons that I’m going to get into) that these ruins have nothing to do with the “pillar in the sky” as mentioned in the Rito songs. For one, the pillar of Rito village is of an entirely different architectural style, given that it looks like the natural work of wind erosion. And for another, the existence of the Rito village pillar has to have been much younger, around 100 years old, in order to coincide with the Sheikah Shrine quest, as the Sheikah platform thingy has to correlate with the characteristics of the pillar’s shape. Ergo, ergo, ergo, the “pillar in the sky” isn’t 10,000 years old and has no correlation with the Ancient Columns.

Ok so! Back to the actual ruins themselves and what we can analyze from them.

Circled above is every instance of ruins in the Tabantha region. Although I should specify that I’m talking about the Ancient Hylian ruins, as that is the type that is most notably scattered across this area.

We know that all these ruins are off the same civilization because of their style and material.

[Remember this picture for later^^]

In addition, we can also tell from ruin maps in the CaC book that these ruins are from the same Hylian civilization, as well as the important detail that these ruins were centered around the Goddess.

Citing that other screenshot at the beginning on the Ancient Hylian Culture, these ruins were built around the same time as the Sacred Springs, so I think it’s safe to assume that these ruins had a religious purpose.

But I can take this one step further! Up until now, all this information has been based on interpretations from the botw ruins and official info alone, but if we take into account the real life counterparts/parallels, I can prove the exact purpose to what these ruins are for!

Firstly, these ruins are obviously inspired by architecture in Ancient Greece, and other old Empires (like the Romans and Byzantines) across the Mediterranean.

We also know that the ruins are constructed out of limestone. One, because moss is able to grow on it, so it is unlikely that it is marble. And two, we can see the actual limestone texture when seeing the broken parts of certain columns and walls.

[and kinda quick side note here: but the existence of large limestone rich structures 10,000 years ago gives more credit to the theory that Botw takes place after a large flood, notably the events of Wind Waker. One, because limestone is a material mined near the sea, as seen with the Island of Paros and Naxos for the Ancient Greeks. And Two, this ancient sea was directly mentioned in the description for botw rock salt. And also Three, this explains the weird placement of certain structures, such as the buildings placed on suspended and isolated rocky plateaus like the ones I showed earlier by the Skywatchers. So there’s your mini theory which kinda proves that the Tanagar Canyon was probably an ocean trench at one point and it also still proves my connection of the Ancient Hylian ruins being parallels to the Ancient Greeks and all that because...ocean. Greece, peninsula, hundreds of islands, lots of quarries in Hyrule by the sea. Akkala is by the sea, there’s quarries, also the islands with mining equipment like Tingle Island. You get it by now right?]

Anyway. Greeks, Romans, polytheistic gods, temples for sacrifices, limestone, yadayadayada. Safe to assume that these Hylian ruins were of a civilization centered around a temple of some sort worshiping a powerful being, or beings, such Hylia. Hurray! Theory seems done.

BUT!

I can take it

A step FURTHER!!!

You see, I was originally gonna leave this post at that. The Ancient Columns are of an Ancient Hylian civilization 10,000 years ago that worshiped some higher powers. “Great!” I think to myself. “Time to get all my screenshots so that my ADHD followers wont die immediately”

But but but! As I was spending an hour or so getting said screenshots, I took this picture right here and came across a revelation so bright you could have placed a light bulb over my head...

A pretty enough capture, got a nice aerial view of the ruins, the suspended island thing in the middle of the path... nice view of Tanagar Canyon and the Ancient Columns, the sunset is all pretty and—Oh hey! The Great Fairy Fountain is there. Heh, that’s nice. You know it’s kinda weird that it’s just plopped right in the middle of all these Ancient ruin and temp—

BAadaBing, badaBoom, ladies, lads, and gentlefolk! I’m here to tell ya that these giant fae ladies were once worshiped by 10,000 year old Hylian civilizations. And not just this fairy mind you, but all four of them.

First piece of evidence? The proximity of 10,000 year old structures to every Great Fairy. Mind you, these are the most rare type of ruin in the game. 90% of the ruins are of settlements destroyed 100 years ago by the Calamity, and then the other 10% is still divide up between the Ancient Sheikah and Zonai. So I find it quite interesting that almost every case these special ruined civilizations are near a Great Fairy. [Uh, spoilers for all the Great Fairy locations btw]

First, of course, you got the Great Fairy in Tabantha.

Then you got the one in Akkala, by the Torrin Wetlands (again, the highlights in yellow are of the canonical 10,000 year old Hylian ruins)

The Lanayru Promenade isn’t even up for debate at this point....I mean it was the parade ground for the ceremony up to the Spring of Wisdom. How much more “Ancient Hylian” can you get then that?

The only kinda iffy one is the Great Fairy in the Gerudo desert, but even THEN this fairy is by two out of the three only instances of 10,000 year old ruins in the entire desert, the third instance being the Zonai labyrinth.

But, sure. Correlation might not equal causation. But I think the picture becomes all the more clear when you take a look at the timeline of events!

Note that no one in Hyrule really knows what the fairies are all about. Sure, you got that one researched in Tabantha that knew about one of them, and some of the elders in Kakariko had a sort of understanding that a fairy was their neighbor. However, their stance was that of wariness and caution, and they very much did not worship or give offerings to them. Dorian, for example explicitly shows suspicion towards the fairy, and thinks they might be dangerous. (Which, to be fair, is valid if you’ve ever read ANYTHING about the fae)

My point is, people don’t know what the Great Fairies are, or what their powers, motives, or *anything* really are. Sure, 100 years might have passed, but it would be pretty hard to forget something as eye catching as the fae. The people of Hyrule can remember century old white horses, cook books, treasure locations, ancient songs, and vague legends, but the majority of them don’t know about the Giant (seriously, it’s right in the name) Fairy Fountains?!

That is, of course, under the assumption that the Great Fairies existence was known 100 years ago. But what if it wasn’t?

You might be inclined to assume that the fairies lost their power because the Calamity prevented them from getting offerings 100 years ago, but in truth, there is no evidence whatsoever saying that their lack of power originated at the rise of Calamity.

It’s entirely likely that they haven’t been sitting around for 100 years, but 10,000, or even more. It explains why no one knows anything about them, and also their proximity to the ruins.

A beautiful spring you say? You power is directly correlated to offerings you say?

Gee if only there was some ancient civilization that existed a long time ago, that has ties to old religious practices, temples, and polytheistic, which has parallels to the Ancient Greeks and Romans who build their civilizations centering around certain gods and offerings to said powers, and also if only these said civilizations were nearby to all of the fae oh WAIT!

Even when Link gives his offerings, the results are only that of the Great Fairy Fountain blooming, not an entire spring. Could an entire spring existed long ago, providing for the hundreds or thousands of people who worshiped the fae? Who’s to say that these old 10,000 year old civilizations gave offerings to the fae not only for the magic and all that, but for the vitality and life that they provide? Who’s to say that those earlier relief arts of warriors on chariots were of people with enhanced armour. Fairies that give you magic defense would be quit helpful for a civilization that liked to battle... the possibilities are endless....

TL;DR, the Ancient Columns, along with the other 10,000 year old Hylian structures, were constructed for religious purposes, centering around the Great Fairies, who accepted their offerings in exchange for the vitality of their springs, as well as their enchantments.

So! That’s that. Can you believe this is just me tackling only one aspect of anon’s ask? I realize that the majority of the ask was about the Rito but...oops! That’s why I split it into parts. [When I post the other posts I’ll update the contents at the top to link to them]

A like and reblog is appreciated! I spent too long on this, including an extra week because tumblr deleted my original draft which was much longer... so if you liked it, let me know! It’d be nice to know that my time didn’t completely go to waste, :P Anyhow thanks for reading all this

#the only thing stopping me from outright making a theory channel is my lack of youtube skills #zeltik how do you dO IT #botw #breath of the wild #legend of zelda botw #loz botw #botw theory #botw ruins

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ye-bloodeh-liar · 3 years

Text

I just finished AC Valhalla – A résumé.

I finished the "main story" of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. These are some thoughts of mine. (This was saved in my drafts for two weeks or so. But my stance hasn't altered. Actually, I'm even angrier now.)

Disclaimer: This obviously contains some spoilers here and there. You've been warned, but tbh, who even cares about the story at this point. Also, I know I don't have many followers, and I suspect none of the few that will come across this post will actually be interested in it. That said, if you like reading people's rants about things, regardless of your interest in video games, this might be something for you. I just needed to get this out of my system somewhere. This is a rant (well, vent? I'm venting, I guess) written as it came to my mind. There's no real structure, I think. Sorry for that in advance.

After Origins, which I thoroughly enjoyed and actually played again between Odyssey and Valhalla, and Odyssey, which's name was perfectly fitting since it felt like a fucking odyssey to grind through, I hoped, actually, I was convinced, Valhalla would right Odyssey's wrongs. You see, Odyssey had one big problem for me: It did none of the things that made and still make me love Origins. In short: The world was massive, but felt copied and pasted, uninteresting to explore and lifeless. Basically, it was a lot of green sprinkled with some olive branches. A lot of the times the only way to know roughly where I am was pulling up the map because based on my surroundings, I could've been anywhere. Compared to the intriguing world of Origins, where you always knew in which area of the map you currently were, this was a shitshow. I mean, just walking through the desert in Origins had more atmosphere than the whole city of Athens (the main fucking city) could ever muster up. (Oh, remember the times of AC Brotherhood, where Rome actually felt like a city even though it wasn't actually humongous like the new games are? Or how atmospheric the whole of AC II was? I mean, Venice? Hello? M a s t e r p i e c e) But I can overlook that. The combat didn't feel heavy, or to put it better, "impactful" like it did in Origins, but more like poking the enemies to their deaths with something that made sword-y sounds. But I can overlook that. The loot system improved a bit, in the sense of giving the option to modify your loot and being able to combine different armor pieces, however, Origins outfit-system was more up my alley. But I can overlook that. Funnily enough, compared to its predecessor, Odyssey looked worse. In Origins the fabric of your outfit look like actual fabric and, I can't stress this enough, waved in the wind. In Odyssey everything felt more static and somehow "fake". But I can overlook that. To me, Origins' story was masterfully done. Personally, I'd say, that this is the closest we've ever gotten to the Ezio-Trilogy. The voice acting was top notch. Bayek was a great character, and the side characters like Aya/Amunet were equally intriguing. I still remember the first time I saw the first confession cutscene after killing Medunamun. It gave me shivers and goosebumps and got me excited for what was about to come. What I want to say with this, is that Origins made me care; care about its characters, care about their backstory and motives, care about the world, etc. After I had finished the DLC The Hidden Ones I felt like I had actually witnessed the igniting spark of something epic, namely the Assassin Brotherhood, in such a chilling way, even though they basically were just chillin' in a cave. Because that's what character building gives you: payoffs. Well, Odyssey did none of that. All it did made me care about was to get all the loot, because that's what my mind always goes for in any game (I'm that kind of stupid ape). I didn't care about what would happen in the end – I just wanted to get there. I wanted to know how the story would end, but in whichever way it would, I knew I wouldn't care for it in the sense of being disappointed or yearning for a different outcome for the character I was so invested in, because, as I said, nothing got me invested in the character(s) in the first place. That's what bugged me the most about Odyssey. Not the flimsy feeling combat, not the husk of a world I found myself in, not the downgrade in design and animation, etc., but the lack of care it invoked.

Now, when Valhalla was originally announced, I was excited as I could be for a video game. Ubisoft was clearly aware of their mistakes with Odyssey and tried to show that they're willing to listen to their fanbase. A world where every area has its own identity? Sounds great. Heavy combat? Hell yeah. Gear and loot that actually matters and is special (unlike in Odyssey where after a few hours of playing you find yourself carrying the same fucking bow 25 times)? Oh my. Choices not for the sake of choices, but story? Yes please. I mean, if you have to implement choices. Even though choices don't really make sense in Assassin's Creed, but that's another topic.

Well, did it deliver (for me)? No. And to be completely honest, I prefer Odyssey, even as the grindfest that it is, over Valhalla, and me replaying Odyssey seems a lot more likely to me, than going through all of Valhalla again. I'm not going to list all of the points mentioned above again in full detail: The world is a bit more intriguing than Greece, but a shadow of what Egypt was. The combat feels heavy, yet every weapon looks too big (????) and it still feels a bit off. My biggest grudge of the minor points is actually the look/the graphics: How on earth does Valhalla manage to look less real than Origins? The fur and pelts on the armor, every piece of cloth, i mean just e v e r y t h i n g looks somewhat plasticy (at loss for a better word here; just compare Origins' outfits in motion to Valhalla's) Anyway, let's get to the real problem here, because all boils down to the point I've mentioned before: Invoking care.

This became very apparent to me after forging the fourth (?; was it the fourth? They all blur together. That's how e n t i c i n g they are. Great.) alliance or so. I didn't give a single fuck about the characters in those arcs. It was very clear that they'd be soon replaced by other characters in the next alliance's arc, which I probably wouldn't care for either, especially, since they all felt somewhat the same: empty. Alliances felt like checklists to do. Even Wincestre, which had an interesting beginning, somehow managed to loose all of its "darkness" after the first two quests. But I could overlook the dreary sidequest-like alliance arcs, if they served the main storyline in some way or form. Now you might ask, what main storyline? E x a c t l y. Looking back, there is none. At least not really. And there where a lot of times playing the game where I found myself wondering, if this alliance-arc-thing I was currently dragging myself through was in fact meant to be the actual story. But it shouldn't be. Was it? I have no fucking clue. My conclusion on what Valhalla's main overarching story is, is what follows:

Eivor's parents got killed when he was a child (never seen before lol), got adopted, and is now part of the Raven clan with his "brother" Sigurd//Sigurd comes home from some raid with the Assassins Basim and Hytham//(Eivor gets the Hidden Blade; I mean, this is an Assassin's Creed game. Big moment. Done in 2 seconds.)//Sigurd and Eivor aren't happy with the new King of Norway.//Sigurd and Eivor fuck off to England (with Basim and Hytham) to set camp there.//Eivor starts to forge alliances throughout England to make his clan's hold on England stronger.// Sigurd and Basim do their own thing.//Eivor meets Sigurd and Basim two or three times throughout his alliance forging.//Basim seems a bit off.//Sigurd says that he was told (by Basim?) that he is a descendant of the gods.// Sigurd wants to "pursue his destiny"// (sidenote: the last few things are all within one (!) short cutscene in a small house. d e v e l o p m e n t.)//Sigurd gets captured and tortured and loses his hand.//Eivor rescues Sigurd.// Sigurd is back in the settlement.//Sigurd distrusts Eivor because Eivor doesn't believe Sigurd and Sigurd thinks Eivor wants to take his title as the jarl (jarls are the bosses of settlements).// And then the end sequence hits. This is where I want to go into somewhat detail again. We go from Sigurd distrusts Eivor to "Eivor, I don't wanna be the boss of the town, so I don't hold a grudge anymore, let's go back to Norway and I'll show you I was right all along" like it's nothing. It's literally just that: You walk up to Sigurd, he says this (more or less) and you sail away. Again: development is taken very seriously in this game. Honestly, at this point I didn't even know that this was going to trigger the ending. My genuine thoughts were "Oh my, finally, after all this grinding, the story is going to start." when in reality of course, ironically, it was going to end. Absolute belter. So you sail to Norway with Sigurd, which takes fucking forever, because OF COURSE you have to sail (for everyone who didn't play the game, yes, sail, that means looking at a viking longship while occasionally moving the stick slightly to change its directions slightly) to your original settlement in Norway, for what feels like far too long, only to say Hi to your dad. Fucking lost it. I thought we were going to assassinate the King? Nah bruv let's just have some quick family talk instead. Some action? Nah. Just get back to the longship. A N D S T A R T S A I L I N G A G A I N. Where? Just around the curve of our settlement in Norway. Yes, they pulled the old trick of the ending is literally just right around the corner of your starting position hehe. Absolute belter. Is this to make it seem like something is about to happen? The calm before the storm? It doesn't work like that. Well, then you actually sail through a storm (lol), which doesn't matter, because Sigurd just says "Let's keep going" and, well, you keep going. Also, to this point the weather conditions have never affected neither Eivors health, nor the ship in any way whatsoever, so why should I be impacted by a storm now? Like, it's a nice thing for atmosphere, but at least make the ship harder to steer or something. Then you walk up a mountain. Funnily enough Sigurd walks in manner that shows that the walk against the storm isn't easy, whereas you, hah, you can just yeet yourself up that mountain like nothing. I could sprint up there. Fucking sprint. Anyway, Eivor and Sigurd enter the Isu temple, because of course, we had to throw an Isu temple in there, I mean, i t ' s A s s a s s i n ' s C r e e d. Was it hinted at before in the story? Not really. Were we chasing or searchig for it? Nah, better get that next alliance going. It just suddenly was. Again: development. So we walk to the main platform of the temple and activate the machine and bam we're in Valhalla (because at some point Ubisoft realised that maybe they should include what is literally in the name of the game). Again, were we looking for Valhalla? Like not in the sense that every viking was, but more in the sense

of was it the main objective of the game? Did Eivor look for a way to Valhalla? Was there anything that led us here other than Sigurd having had a few dreams (that only got mentioned, like, twice?) and being influenced into thinking he was a demigod or something? Nope, Eivor was looking for that next alliance to forge. So, Eivor realises that his experience of Valhalla is fake and he wants to get out. But fake-Odin doesn't want to let him go. In a really weird cutscene (jump to 6:30), Eivor eventually escapes Odin and enters a door with his settlement-family (look, I'm all here for metaphors, but this, this is just utter rubbish. It just doesn't make sense, and there is no payoff whatsoever). Odin actually had a build-up of some sort. In every assassination sequence he's there and talks with Eivor. I actually thought there would be some cool payoff/ending/reveal here. But nah, this ain't it chief. Yet somehow, until here, I had hope. I thought maybe now, building on all this confusion, there's gonna be a relatively good ending. Something enticing. Something that made everything somewhat worthwile. And Ubisoft went: Lol nah. So, you're out of the Isu machine again (for all the non-AC-peoples here: basically like the matrix. Eivor gets hooked up to the machine and experiences alternate reality: Valhalla), and Basim is there. What a twist. The guy that showed up like three times and went from friendly in the first time to super suspicious (like glaring-in-your-face-suspicious) in the two-or-so other major cutscenes he was in, has now been revealed as the enemy. Congrats to that. What a twist. The thing is, and this bothers me a lot actually, it could have been anyone there. It didn't need to be Basim. It wouldn't have felt out of place if it wasn't him. Why? Because Ubisoft failed terribly at making you connect to any character and at building any actual story (or character). It could have been Gunnar, the friendly black-smith in our settlement, and it would have been as fitting as Basim. Then Basim says that this is "for his son". Ah yes, the lost son of Basim, which was mentioned once. Right. Eivor defeats Basim by hooking him up on the Isu machine and gets back to the settlement with Sigurd (in my ending at least. There seems to be a possible ending in which Sigurd doesn't come back.) Cut to the modern day, where Layla now knows the coordinates of the Isu temple, goes there, hooks herself up to the machine, becomes the overseer of time with the other overseer of time which already was hanging out there (I mean yeah, great idea, terrible execution. Build it up, then you can have a payoff. This was just straight outta nowhere, and who cared about Layla anyway.) Anyway, meanwhile Basim, who was still hanging on that machine a fuck ton of years later, pops off, and is now living in the modern day. The idea here is, that we lost the hero (Layla) which caused the (just established) vilain (Basim) to do his fuckery in the modern day. But why should I care? Basim was basically nonexistent in the basically nonexistent story and suddendly I should feel sad or shocked, because he's in the modern day? Is this supposed to be intriguing? And yeah, Layla is "gone". Layla, who had no character building over three fucking games. Why should i be bothered? Why should I care about anything that just happened? Remember when a side character (Lucy) died in AC Brotherhood? That was intriguing. Why? Because they built her as a character we (Desmond) trusted, even though it was in the modern day (which no one really cares about in AC). And this is why Valhalla broke me and Odyssey didn't. Valhalla failed to make me care on a much deeper level. It's just a lot of nothingness. Empty characters in a nonexistent story. And by nonexistent, I mean non-built at all. When I play the game now, I have no actual reason, and throughout the game never actually had any actual reason, to continue. It was a chore. I didn't bother if after three hours of grind I would eventually get a mini-snippet of a husk of a story, and neither do I care now. Everything in

this game is so devoid of sparking curiosity and screams of lacklusterness to the point where I don't even know what I have actually expierenced. For fuck's sake Ubisoft, make me care again. At least once in 40 hours.

May I sum up Valhalla's "story" and content in the glorious words of Catherine Tate: Am I bovvered? The answer, sadly, is a holistic no.

#assassins creed #ac valhalla #sorry for the rant #this is my longest post yet #am i bovvered #sidenote: this is actually the first time that i'm genuinely pissed at ubisoft #i wasn't even this mad with odyssey #and that thing got a lot of hate #maybe i'm gonna delete this again

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violet975 · 4 years

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Random thoughts.

So i replayed BOTW a while ago for the first time and decided to write down some of the random thoughts that i get while exploring Hyrule, here they are.

… A lot of these things gave me some fanfic ideas and I hope that they will do the same for someone more competent.

It's realty in character that the response to being asked why you took the man's torch is either to bludgeon things to death with it or to be a pyromaniac.

When the tower pedestal shines, Link instinctively leans back for a second before diving right back in because curiosity kills the cat.

The message from the slate/tower is to watch out for falling rocks which either means that

1: zelda is writing them (and has a fair bit of free reign still).

2: the ancient Sheikah could see the future.

3: Ai to the likes of Fi.

Ganon kinda reawakens when the towers are up so maybe he was resting and building a body until he was interrupted here, which could be why his form later is such a hodgepodge of the Blights?.

Link is not too naive since he kinda clamps up in his answers to the totally unimportant old man.

Did Link briefly make eye-contact with the camera when he got the spirit orb!?

Link is a bit freaked out in his "How did you know!?" Response cas now he knows something major is up when the old man directly mentions the spirit orb.

Again, in character that you can choose to be an impatient brat with the "paraglider please?" Or inquisitive when Roam points out the slate.

Either run out of temper with the "that wasn't the deal!" Or be resigned with "so I need more now?" When the old fart sends you off to the other three shrines.

Ohh, another adrenaline junkie option with the "got it!" Over climbing the tower for a good view or a Deadpan "are you joking?".

"Or so i heard quite some time ago.. I do not know if it actually works as such" so they did not get teleporting to work before? or he just didn't learn how it was done.

So the monks, according to how the Triforce signs they held, apparently associate Power with Magnesis, Wisdom with bombs, Stability with stasis and Courage with cryonis?

The monks dissipate into green specks like Ganon’s soul does under the castle!

I'm not into men but damn if Link doesn't look good in the Warm Doublet.

Oh. My. God, he was King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule!!!!!

Link is such a dumbass, you get to ask Kass "are you a ...bird?" As if the man isn't standing right in front of you. No shit Sherlock! What next, is that a recorder?.

OhhohoHO! You either say "no(, i have not heard of them)" or "Ancient songs?" As if you do not initially realize why they are thought to be ancient which either is old memories warring with the now world or Link not realizing what impact The Calamity had on culture.

Another flat-faced sarcastic remark everyone!

When Manny mentions that his job is checking for beauties/sus people you can either be a dumb dunce and ask about the said beauties or a little menace with "sounds though".

Manny is an Incel, talks a big game and puts himself on top of a pedestal alongside being demanding and a creep.

Does Hateno not have a goddess shrine? Just the ~Evil~ one?

There is a pair of rusty knights sword and shield by the leftmost part of the walkway of Fort Hateno. Some knight probably died laying there, watching out over the field of guardians having been/being purged by Zelda.

A traveler (Chelessa) is interested in history and wants to question Impa about it, and is on her way to do so in fact. . Describes her personality as very pleasant, that must be wrong.

The Yiga know exactly how Links first waking moments played out so either they have extensive knowledge about his character and the setup of the Shrine Of Resurrection or Ganon was watching in on Zelda's call and relayed it to a minion in the clan.

"Hero boy" - derogatory.

Arrow in the eye of the bridge at the entrance of Kakariko, the Yiga are petty and I love it.

Piano's (the painter) hair bun thing that is styled like a pencil has paint on the tip... this man painted with his hair.

So the great fairy Cotera makes it sound like she will enchant your gear because you rejuvenated her, not because you bring the materials to do the enchanting.

The levels of enchantment seemingly depends on physical closeness to the Fairy (blow< indirect kiss< kiss < sex)

She can not enchant beyond Lv 1 without her sister's help, so they share power?

Paya specifies that they have watched over the Orb since the grandmother of the grandmother of Impa, that's 9 whole generations of long lived Sheikah! roughly 1000 years of recorded history!

Again with Link being a dense Shonen protagonist with "where is it?" Or a sly bastard with "really, though?"... maybe so that she would want to prove it ;)

…”I'll answer you some day, just not today!”

Either Paya is just not ready for that or she is so nervous that she did not think about the fact that her own grandmother was in the room when she said it!

“Served the royal family in secret” so it's not common knowledge that the royals have a village of Magic ninjas!? No wonder it took a damn demon to topple it instead of rebellion or infighting... probably has been like this since the old old king banished 'em.

"The royal family was destroyed, and the members of our tribe scattered."- okay so it was probably some Sheikah that either thought the royal family was completely extinct and either fled or, according to this next bit- "Sadly, there were some who swore allegiance to Ganon at that time. They joined together as the Yiga Clan, seeking out all who opposed Ganon... cutting them down, one after another."

So from that we get to know that not all Sheikah deserters became enemies (unless the Sheikah dislike defectors enough to hunt them down) and others who either joined an existing opposing group or simply up and created the Yiga clan that then aligned itself with Ganon... probably under either the belief that Hylia's line was extinct and that it was join or die or because they wished to spite the goddess and her followers.

I actually like this way more because it makes no sense that the Yiga could survive before the Calamity when the Royals would have an entire damn country and anbu black-ops to hunt them down with.

"Master link, now that you are awake, you are surely the most formidable opponent standing against them!" Either hero worship or the Sheikah are freshly out on capable warriors with Ninja magic tricks, probably the latter which would explain why the world isn't infested with Lynels or why hynoxes haven't just trampled every settlement.

"No doubt they will come for you, employing whatever underhanded methods they can device"

oh come on! Do not tell me that i'm stuck with the goodie two shoe ninja clan!? Underhandedness is your bread and butter! No wonder you served the royals in secret because you and them by proxy would have been a laughingstock otherwise!!!

"The great fairy Cotera... few remain who know that this village was built under her watchful eye." So the village is fairy new and the Yiga came about before Kakariko or it is old and so well protected that they can't get in... at least not easily.

"The mysterious power of Cotera is that of sacred protection..." so the Great fairies are linked to either Hylia or the gods, good to know.

So it’s not that Cotera “-would be happy to help” but, instead “i can't think of any reason why she wouldn't be happy to help you”. so either she only directly helps men or the earlier "you can put your trust in the great fairy" means that she judges more favorably for the chosen hero.

"I heard that the weather is going to be beautifully tomorrow... to bad you won't be alive to enjoy it"

So they have weather accurate~ich prediction? through magic or old time methods?

Again: Hero boy - derogatory... It's a common nickname for Link within the Yiga.

The lush green shrine could tell that a buck was on it, so the platforms are most definitely scanners.

A travelers sword by a campfire at the foot of mount Lanayru, so someone either took a swim and died to the Lizardfo, dramatically quit or got killed in their sleep.

Love the effect when you have metal weapons on the ground and swing a ThunderBlade!

You automatically reflect the Octorock's rocks, goes faster if you do it manually.

There is a hollowed out part of a hill/mountain with a lot of fic potential to the North-West of the Sword by the campfire.

Located where the lines meet if you draw a line to the right from Rabia plain and up from Trotter's Downfall.

Koko of Kakariko has been deceived by my cunning and slight-of-hand.

Yes, Sagessa (woman by the lake of the Dueling peaks stable), there is, in fact, something "quite romantic" in Link's "endeavor" to save Zelda, thank you for noticing!

The chests inside the shrines can only (non-violently) be opened by use of the Sheikah slate so why not steal a few? prefect safe-keeping for more stuff to keep in Links house.

Dunce moment everyone!

The Yiga traveler tries to seduce Link and you either go with "OK..." so he either has no damn idea about what is going on or is just not good with women?

Orrrrr you go with a straight "I refuse!" cas you see through their ruse and want to rub their face in the dirt!

According to Mina the Hylian, taking out two Bokoblins is considered as great martial caliber which both she and her traveling companion could not do while decently armed.

Best way to deal with a guardian scout when you have weak weapons: hit with electricity, switch weapon, hit 2-5 times, switch to electric, repeat.

When you first enter the area around Hyrule Castle, smoke Ganon throws a fit until Zelda slaps him away.

This either means that Zelda canonically gets a larger workload from there on and out or that the both of them push harder against each other every time you get close.

According to Zelda's diary, Link was assigned as her guard after the champions had been appointed.

How Link was focused on her yet did not voice his thoughts apparently "makes my imagination run wild!". Either romantic or dense.

Link admits to staying quiet because of the pressure of being the boy chosen by the sword.

King Rhoam mentions that he decided to honor THE royal family's traditions by naming his daughter Zelda, and that he is "not a man accustomed to frivolous musings".

Basically confirming that he is not the parent of royal blood.

They probably knew about The Calamity for a good while cas the page after zelda's naming speaks of the fortune teller, probs 3-8 years since Zelda was described to already have vast interest in the relics.

Pikango gets up at 10 past 5, I spent the night watching him and Beetle sleep.

According to all known laws of aerodynamics, Rito should not be able to fly, is Revali's gale then just an absurdly strong variation of some kind of sky Arcanum that all Rito possess? Do all the races possess one as Well?

Slimes ate the Bokoblins in the tree base at the center of the west Hyrule fields.

Savelle is a helpful guy without a pension for violence.

Munk Shae Loya is just flexing on all the other Munks, those old farts need to sit down while he's been squatting on one leg the last 10'000 years.

Chork of the Tabantha Bridge Stable is drunk.

Toren is either naive or a simp for the Faireys.

If you have the Hylian hood equipped with no weapon while riding at max speed then your cape will flap.

"Sweet boy..." "...I see now that my first impression of you was correct. You most definitely are pleasant to look at."

So link has some kind of presence/soul-thingy that appears pleasant to mystical creatures? Might be the spirit of the hero or this link in particular.

The Fairy Kaysar makes Link blush! No player input needed! We’ve found one of his types!... either that or he's just shy.

The fairies almost never use normal materials to enchant, it's always either monster parts that don't dissipate or things that grow in magical arias.

The Sheikah towers are sturdy as all hell, the Tabantha tower did not even get a scratch from a giant fucking pillar falling on it.

Okay, am I just crazy or is a Lizardfo and a Moblin holding a class for 5 bokoblins just to the left of the Tabanta fairy fountain!?

Lester, the wise curry rice guy at Rito Stable, describes Link as sunny boy, another point to the soul/aura theory thingy.

Phontos laughs to hide the pain.

According to the story that Kass sings.

Calamity Ganon was the result of sealing the enemy at its source.

It fought not only the spawn of the Goddess and the bearer of the Spirit Of The Hero but also the army of Guardians and the Champions that piloted the Divine Beasts for quite some time, as implied in the "and the guardians protected them throughout every hour".

So what i get from this is that the attack 10 000 years ago was the first sighting of what we know as calamity Ganon.

It was also far stronger than the one that attacked 100 years ago which implies that that one was either a rush job or that Ganon bounds had been tightened, both of which would drive him to seek out other methods like corrupting the Guardians.

...And the Guardians are apparently powered by the ancient blue energy which was, time-line wise, first shown when the Golden Goddesses created the world.

No wonder that Ganon was capable of doing this since he most likely is running on fumes, spite and the power of the Triforce which likely is made of/channels said energy.

According to the rumor mill, you need the blood of the Hero in your veins to wield the Master Sword, if this is accurate then that means that Fi is sentimental or that Link has magic blood.

Wildberrys are fucking massive.

Genli (the salmon child) is a cunt, one kid was crying about someone Vah Medoh killed and then Genli is all like "no don't stop it, if you do then i have to go to class again!", She would fit right in with today's youth.

Monk Akh Va'quot has the best position so far, he is just done with your shit.

"You adventurers are Crazy" -> "you're right"

You get nothing if you melt all the ice by the Tabantha tower! You lose! Good day sir!

Monk Daka Tuss got bored during his self-inflicted quarantine and started stacking his arm bands.

Tula (the bathing Zora) said "wow either you are a Hylian or hideously deformed"

Phura has vandalized and mounted one of the spirit frog statues above her door.

Okay but the fucking noice that comes out of Bolson when you buy everything!! It's as if you just walked up and twisted his nuts with the power fit to shield block a Lynel’s charge.

Is the flower by Link's bed a Korok version of a Silent Princess?

The monsters of Hyrule are show to have interest in consumption based on three accounts.

1: the Bocoblins and the Moblins by Hateno bay steal cattle.

2: Hynoxes carry around warriors foodstuffs.

3: Moblins (or at least the ones by the camp near the Serenne stable/forgotten temple) have a resting animation where they dig through the dirt and stuff something down their goblet.

...not to mention that nearly every camp has a bit of meat roasting by the fire.

Koyin has joined the fan-club!

God, the Naydra snowfield is fucking loaded in chill-shromes!

Stasis is perfect for looking for ingredients in forests, just open it, look around and bam! No more hidey hoe.

Why no shiny text for hylia's statue!?

I really do not like that they changed Naydra's colors when the malice was removed, they were so cool and then bam! White! White is not the color for ice and cold!

When praying by the spring of wisdom you are facing Hyrule castle, the same with courage and power if my memory serves me right.

...The master Torch

The Katona Aug shrine is just fucking mini-golf, how is that meant to prepare the hero?! Imagine how that Monk goes to the afterlife and has to look his fellows straight in the eye and admit that he was so lazy that not only did he make the hero play golf, not only was he so lazy that he made the Hero play mini-golf, but that he was so lazy that he did not even make a course! It is literally just a straight line!

Robie wants to see Links scars to verify that he is who he says that he is, Robie was likely one of the ninja that took Link to the shrine of resurrection.

Oh and Robin has two interesting sketches in his lab, the first is a detailed graph of a Sheikah tower so those were likely known about long before Link activated one (the one closest to Robin would be the one covered in malice and guardians so he could not have gotten enough detail from that one).

And the other is a sketch of what I believe is either a tier 2 or tier 3 guardian scout. Now, how can Robin know how that looks if only Link can/could enter shrines?

The Sheikah shrine that has the Barbarian helm is located at the end of the Sinai maze, did they just plop the shrine down there and steal the treasure of the ruin to later present to the hero?

There is one usable room in the citadel.

There is no compendium slot for the malice eyes that litter Naydra, Hyrule Castle and the Divine Beasts.

You can change the element of already elemental slime, not just the neutral kind.

Those head-spitting fuckers inside the divine beasts! They are partially reanimating mobs! So it's not that the Blood Moon is the time where Ganon is at his strongest, it's just where he chooses to revive everything.

The edge of duality can also be found in the shrine at the top of the dueling peaks.

#botw #lore #fanfic ideas #the legend of zelda #breath of the wild

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emerald-amidst-gold · 3 years

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So, Dragons...

Time for me to ramble ramble about the whole basis of my fanfics when it comes to Dragon Age!

Honestly, it all started when I was just playing, made Fane a Reaver, and decided that he would be a dragon.

But then I started thinking and beautiful things can happen when one thinks for over long.

To start: I’ve always believed dragons have a connection with Uthenera. My reasoning to that is because they go centuries without waking until something either awakens them (’normal’ dragons its could be a number of things and Archdemons are awakened with the Taint). Who’s to say that dragons don’t have magical connections or dreams, either? The Archdemon can reach out to a Warden in their dreams, but this could be from the Taint itself. Who knows? Furthermore, dragons expel elemental attacks (fire, ice, electricity), and the only beings we know that can do that from practically the moment they’re born is mages, albeit mages don’t come into their powers until fairly later in life, but that could be because of the presence of the Veil.

So, what would potentially awaken a dragon other than the darkspawn or a ‘instinctual’ time clock to mate? Perhaps in the way Solas did? They just woke up after sleeping for years and years and years? Or did someone or something powerful wake them? And my thought on the dragons in Dragon Age: Inquisition is that the Breach woke them up. After all, Solas states that animals can be driven mad by the Breach and its effects (the wolves in the Hinterlands were being controlled by a demon that more or less probably came through a rift). I think this because of how many dragons we face in Inquisition (10 base; 3 DLC). That’s a total of 13 dragons where in the other games you had barely any. (Origins there are 4; that includes the Archdemon and in DA2, there’s the two in the Bone Pit).

This influx in numbers proves to me that something is going on, and it could be the Breach’s influence or it could be something more.

Now, in my stories, I constantly reiterate with Fane saying, ‘The Veil is driving my kin mad. It must come down. It isn’t natural to them. They see this world and it is wrong to them; it is wrong to me.’ This ties back to my thoughts on Uthenera. Imagine waking up centuries later to a world that was not what you fell asleep to. Imagine the sky feeling different, feeling like a wall rather than a clear expanse and not knowing why or how. Imagine seeing familiarity in everything, but it still feeling foreign because it is. Imagine not hearing or smelling your brethren, your kin, your people, when they were otherwise rulers of the skies. This exact thing is what happens to Solas; everything he wakes up to is not the world he knew and loved. And I believe the same thing happens with dragons who’ve been asleep for just as long, if not longer.

They awaken to a world that doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel like home. So, the ‘mindless’ destruction of settlements where they used to have a lair, the constant ‘ravaging’ of livestock where there used to be plains of game for easy picking? It’s all in an attempt to try and fix what feels so wrong. After all, would you be sane if you woke up in a place you were unfamiliar with, if all you ever knew was gone and destroyed by something you could only feel, but couldn’t see? I think dragons are more sentient than we’ve seen thus far, and they can feel emotions. Fear, despair, anger, happiness; I think they can feel it all. And to have your home torn to shreds, to have the world crumbling around you when it otherwise sang with life, to have pitchfork and boulders thrown at you because of ignorance and misconceptions, to see none of your people among the masses of snarls of disgust or eyes of fear of creatures you don’t recognize. That would induce madness, insanity so deep, so potent, so destructive that it would cause any being to lash out, to try and correct what was wrong, even though they knew they shouldn’t. Again, these are just my thoughts based on how I observe dragon movements in games and patterns they have, but I feel like something is missing. Dragons are more than just a fun boss battle or an inclusion for world building.

Mainly because dragons in Dragon Age appear in almost every ancient civilization. Tevinter with the Old Gods, who were represented by dragons. The Elvhen (basing this off the theory about the Forgotten Ones), who believed taking the form of a dragon was only reserved for divinity, and thus anyone that took that form without ‘inherent’ permission was considered reviled, to be forgotten. It’s a stretch, I know, but what if dragons were the first right along with the Elvhen? What if they were actual guardians of the world like how I depict in my stories, tasked with perserving and observing the creatures that had been wrought?

Obviously, I’m leaving a lot out from the comics and whatnot, but from what I’ve read, those have some fascinating depictions and actual scenes where dragons are more than just mindless creatures fueled by lone instinct and primal surges.

BIOWARE. I NEED ANSWERS. TELL ME I’M NOT MAD.

Anyways, thank you for crinkling the tin foil with me! It’s a little scattered and sloppy, but percolating thoughts must be brewed! >:D

#tin foil hat #dragon age #i just feel like something is going on with dragons #the one in origins with the cult of andraste was AWARE enough to understand the arrangement it had was beneficial #archdemons are also highly intelligent enough to build an army of creatures who are generally mindless #maybe...maybe BLOOD MAGIC?! like like the Taint is located in the blood so it can control the darkspawn with that?!#the Joining ritual does use a vial of Archdemon blood in it so that's how Wardens connect with it but there's definitely magic involved #I need to research in case i'm blowing this out of proportion but HOLY SHIT #this isn't all of my thoughts but its what i could piece together between all the frenzied ones XD

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leapyearkisses · 3 years

Note

For the director’s cut: Orbs Are Bad News, please? Part 2 (or both, if you’re willing!) It’s one of my favorites 💗

One of my favorites, too! Thanks for the ask! :D I'll do both parts, with Part 2 to follow this a bit later.

Director's cut comments in bold below the cut! MESS, m/m, holding a handkerchief, etc.

This story came from a prompt on a writing meme about a character losing the use of their hands while having to deal with snz. I can't remember at the moment if the prompt was D&D-flavored or if I just picked that setting myself because I was really into playing the game at the time (still am!). Also I'm incredibly sleep-deprived, so I hope these comments don't ramble overmuch.

"Okay, we don't know what we're dealing with here, so let's be careful." Gerrit pushed open the heavy wooden door and lifted his torch to illuminate the room inside. The firelight played over several tables covered in intriguing objects and glinted teasingly off of more than one hint of gold. Gerrit himself spotted a stolid wooden chest in the corner and his heart rate quickened.

When I was a kid, my mom gave me the Dragonlance books and I fell in love with them, although it was a long time before I was able to play D&D myself. I attribute my love of the very traditional fantasy realm to these books and my enduring love of sickly mages to Raistlin (Soulforge was like an EXPERIENCE for me). Gerrit has his origins in Tanis Half-Elven - he's a good guy, kind of a normal/default fighter build. "Jackpot," breathed Remembrance, the party's resident ne'er-do-well. She rubbed her hands together, sharp nails clicking. Gerrit was sure she was assigning price tags to the lot of it, except for whatever she hid in her bags for herself, of course. "I know a guy in the capitol who'll pay through the nose for that pervy little statue there." "That is a religious object," chastised Cordes with a haughty tsk. "It's used in rituals of worship for the goddess Fortuna." "Oh, I'm sure he'll be worshipping," cackled Remembrance, and she slipped past Gerrit into the vault. "Few hundred gold and he'll be rubbing out a grand ol' prayer." Her pointed tail waved with greedy delight. "Hey! The proper course of action would be to bring it back to a temple!" Cordes went after her, pushing Gerrit aside.

Remembrance and Cordes are here to be the beta couple and provide background color. Their development was based on a few factors: A) a D&D party should have ~4 people with different abilities (fighter, sorcerer, cleric, rogue), B) a priest and a devil is never not a fun/ny dynamic, C) I'm not into F snz but I feel bad that most of my OCs are not women, and D) given that Gerrit is a "default" archetype, there needed to be differing characters to contrast his personality with (or he would seem to have none). Also I like dirty jokes, so Remembrance can be my humorous id for this purpose lol The half-elf grumbled but wasn't surprised. "At least TRY not to touch anything cursed," he called. He'd been the one to organize this little band, but although he was the one who reported to their patron, he had precious little influence over what they did. They were happy to point to him when some upstart had a problem with the party, though. Ingrates. He turned to the last member of the group. "What about you, Llewellyn? I thought I saw some books on the far table." "Lead the way," replied the sorcerer, and his usually mellifluous voice sounded strained. Purple shadowed the hollows under his faintly luminous silver eyes, and he had his nose tucked into his handkerchief again. Gerrit hadn't spent much time around full elves, but he'd always believed they couldn't get sick, at least not like a human or dwarf. Llewellyn had been dragging since Saints' Day, though, and seemed to have come down with a flu. His skin, where visible under his fitted robes, was wan.

Fuck up that slender, haughty elf man is an endlessly running subroutine in my head. "Sure," said Gerrit, and he stepped into the room, holding the door out so that Llewellyn could join him. "You, uh, you don't look like you're feeling any better." "Oh," said the sorcerer, "I'm not. I ran out of tonics." He entered the vault and walked over to one of the tables, investigating a strangely shaped glass bowl. "But as we were already down here, I'm not sure what you want me to say. There's no inn at which I might rest my weary bones." "Cordes could make you an herbal remedy," Gerrit grumped. He went over to the chest he'd seen earlier and smashed the lock off with the pommel of his dagger. He didn't need any fancy lockpicking tools like Remembrance's. And hitting something felt good when his companions were all intent to be annoying, acerbic, or both. "I suppose," Llewellyn replied, sounding uncertain as his voice wavered. Gerrit tried to ignore the way his ears heated at that. That was the tone that overtook the elf when he was preparing to sneeze. It wasn't any of Gerrit's concern. His occasional roll in the hay (literal and figurative) with Llewellyn did not make it easier or more appropriate to acknowledge his odd attractions, especially since they were currently ransacking a dungeon with a priest and a psychopath. He focused his attention on searching the chest, and he was rewarded with a heavy coin purse, a stack of calfskin-bound journals, and a ruby the size of a robin's egg. He whistled.

Gerrit and Llewellyn are the dynamic opposite of Eliseo and Padgett. Gerrit is the less-privileged, more personable, "low class" character and Llewellyn is the high-born, fussier, sarcastic noble; however, in this story Gerrit is the voyeur character with the fetish and the POV window while Llewellyn is tortured for everyone's amusement. Narratively it's more fun and easier for me to describe the non-fetish-having character because I also like the power of the narrator to be that voyeuristic eye. Llewellyn gasped. "Hah- hahttsch-ow!"

I made myself laugh while writing this hahah "'Ow'?" Cordes appeared from behind a bookshelf, one arm wrapped tightly around a thick rug, the other reaching for his pack of salves. "What is it? Cut? Burn?" When Gerrit looked, their sorcerer was rubbing his nose with his left hand. "Bruise," Llewellyn said. He lifted his right hand, in which he held a blue crystal orb that was knotted inside a thin lattice of gold chain. "I got my hand caught." He'd apparently run the thing into his nose when trying to cover his sneeze. Llewellyn's thin face was already dusted pink from the embarrassment. Gerrit couldn't help but laugh. "Very graceful," he chuckled. "I will thank you for keeping it to yourself," Llewellyn replied, and that was elvish dialect for "fuck you." Gerrit laughed again.

Embarrassment is a huge part of my enjoyment of this kink because of the ensuing power dynamics. The victim is thrown into disequilibrium by something (snz) that is inherently seen as socially inappropriate, disgusting, or at least uncomfortable. Almost always their reaction is outsized to what it would probably be outside of a fet context (most people can sneeze in public without feeling shame - which is the typical mode, lol. It's a normal bodily function). However, then the other character, motivated by their BF's anxiety and potential humiliation is prompted to caretake and comfort them, "approve" of the "shameful" act, and deepen the intimacy of the couple. They can also enjoy the embarrassment and the act voyeuristically while feeling their own discomfort about watching, then deal with either having to divulge the kink or be found out by their partner later (because consent is the sexiest thing, really). But I love my characters and I'm not into hardcore stuff so much, so there are almost never any consequences of the "humiliation" - the characters do not get caught out, they do not get shamed by society, they do not actually lose face or have to explain their sexual preferences to anyone who should not know them.

Now you know way too much about my psychology but also the basic formula for any kink story I have written or will write in my entire life. Yay! Cordes had leaned over to see the orb better in the firelight. He was the only one among them whose vision was hindered by the dim light. "What kind of artifact is this?" he asked. "It doesn't resemble anything I've studied."

Lol humans don't have darkvision. "I'm not sure." Llewellyn held it up to the torch. The orb lit up like a lamp, but otherwise nothing happened. "Whatever this chain is, though, it's very prone to tangling." He tried to shake it off his wrist and failed. This was a task for both hands, and he set to freeing himself. And kept trying. And trying. Gerrit frowned. "What are you doing? Cordes, would you get that off of him?" "Sure." The priest reached out to help, but Llewellyn suddenly backed away out of reach. "Uh... I'm not trying to steal it, elf." "Oh, I would let you take it," Llewellyn said, scowling. "But I have a feeling we would be in for some trouble if you touch it now." He held up both hands. His palms were wrapped around the crystal and bound with the ball in that thin gold chain. "I am... I'm stuck."

---

"STUCK," hooted Remembrance again. She was crouched at the entrance to the dungeon - a root-cellar-like set of doors they'd found in a small bandit settlement - and hauling out a heavy pack stuffed with loot. In the daylight, she looked menacing and out of place, her horns, dusky maroon skin tone, and black eyes setting her apart from this land's primarily human residents. "And you even said not to touch any curses!"

Jump cuts are funny! I love this kind of thing, honestly. It's some of my favorite humor - that and dramatic irony, which is also often depicted in visual media with a funny jump cut. "I recall you said so as well," said Cordes, who looked exactly like a run-of-the-mill human resident except for the star-like scar on his left temple. He reached down and grabbed Gerrit's hand, steadying the half-elf as he climbed out of the hole. Llewellyn was hanging uncomfortably on Gerrit's back, arms looped around the other man's neck. They'd tried to find a more dignified way to get him out of the dungeon, but he couldn't manage the ladder well enough without the use of his hands. "The artifact didn't react to my detection spell," sniffed Llewellyn disdainfully, and Gerrit was quick to set him down before that sniffing could become another sneeze. He didn't want to blush in front of the others.

Blushing is very appealing to me, so everyone blushes all of the time. "There must be someone in Veigh who can help you," Gerrit said. "We'll just swing by on our way to the capitol." The city was three days out of their way, but they couldn't have Llewellyn stuck this way for the two week trip back to their patron. With his hands bound, he couldn't cast any spells that required him to gesture, and that was almost all of them. He'd effectively rendered himself completely useless in combat. Veigh had a chapter of the Mages Guild in residence, though, and if no one there could help, they might at least be able to send Llewellyn on ahead via a transportation spell.

Let's go on a short tangent about names. Usually I name my characters using Babynames.com or similar sites and I pick based on the look, sound, and meaning of the names. For this little group, things were slightly more haphazard. Llewellyn is a Welsh name meaning "leader." I just happen to like this name already, but it also has a visual beauty and difficulty to pronounce on sight that lent it well to an elf character without me having to look up specifically elven names. When I make elf characters in D&D, I tend to give them a nickname or alias that is easy to remember and pronounce so that the name isn't a hindrance while playing the game.

Gerrit's name was picked based on sound. It is similar to the Welsh name Gareth ("spear ruler"), which is on purpose, but it was altered to make it a bit more fantastical/removed. It's appropriate for a fighter in meaning but also suits his more familiar/pedestrian half-elven experience vs. that of a noble elf.

Cordes was given a short name because he is a no-nonsense human, but I chose it to resemble that of conquistador Hernan Cortes because of the "holy invasion" and "treasure hunter" associations. Remembrance is named using the PHB's suggestion that tieflings often pick "ideal" names for themselves, and she has a complicated past (like most tieflings). "I will hope there is." Llewellyn looked pale and worn, though his fine features still exuded the otherworldly beauty of the high elves. His hair was a silky black, although mostly covered by his hood, and the contrast made his silver eyes look even more curious. He fumbled for a minute at his waist before scowling heavily. "I can't get into any of my bags, of course..." "What do you need?" asked Gerrit. Remembrance had started off through the trees, humming, her bulging pack swaying with her sinuous movements. Gerrit really didn't want to let her get too far ahead, not least because she was scary good at concealing herself in the foliage and might slip the party completely. However, Cordes was with her, and Llewellyn couldn't exactly fend for himself right now. "My handkerchief..." The elf's voice had gone wavery again, and Gerrit watched as his nostrils flared. Fuck.

Oho! Here is the plot and the kink conceit. Gerrit hurriedly patted his pockets until he produced his own handkerchief, or what he bothered with when necessary. It was a large square of flannel, rough around the edges. It wasn't embroidered or monogrammed like Llewellyn's, but he figured by now the flannel was a hell of a lot cleaner, and it was soft for an irritated nose. "Here, take mine."

Characters' belongings are also a good way to contrast their situations and personalities. I don't consider handkerchiefs particularly vital to my enjoyment of this kink, but they are a useful visual and I like to describe things. Small details like this are how you can worldbuild without having to do too much extra research. Llewellyn held out his hands plus the orb for it, breath hitching, but no matter how Gerrit tried to drape the cloth, it kept slipping off of the artifact. He supposed he could try to tie it around the-

This is just so funny to me XD Llewellyn made a desperate sound and tipped his head back, exposing the long line of his throat. His breath was coming in soft pants now. And he was raising the orb reflexively. Gerrit couldn't let him whack himself in the face again, so he did the only other thing he could think of. With one hand he reached out and took Llewellyn by the shoulder. With the other, he lifted the handkerchief and pressed it over the elf's nose. His fingers settled firmly on either side of Llewellyn's nostrils, and none too soon. After another half-hitch, Llewellyn ducked forward again with a quiet but insistent sneeze. "Happtsch!

One of the most pleasing sneeze sounds, tbh. Gerrit was sure he was beet red. “Bless you,” he mumbled. Through the cloth, Llewelyn’s nose felt hot, and any gentle pressure resulted in a bit of a squish. “Let me just…” "Whh- wait-" Llewellyn leaned into the handkerchief. "I'm nh- I'm not done hhH-" His eyes slipped shut and he gasped again. Gerrit swallowed and tried to ignore the tenting of his breeches. "R-roger that." He could feel Llewellyn's nostrils twitching against his fingers. "Hh...Haah- Hapttschuh! Snrk... Aptschiu!" His body rocked, and he took a half-step forward. Gerrit could hear the thick sound of congestion in the elf's nose as he tried to stave off another sneeze.

The desperation, talking through the sneezing, and congestion are all vital parts of this scenario. Unavoidable embarrassment + disgust factor + need for caretaking/mitigation. "Blow your nose," he said. "It will help." Llewellyn hesitated, but in the end, he had to comply. There was nowhere for the mucus to go except out. He started to blow with a gurgle.

I used to be really against mess, but the taboo/disgust part of the brain turns off psychologically a LOT during arousal and now I really do not find snz interesting without it. Snz without mess isn't embarrassing enough or visually exciting. Gerrit moved the hand from his shoulder to start rubbing Llewellyn's back. The handkerchief and his fingers were rapidly growing damp, but he really didn't mind. "There you go." He held the handkerchief to Llewellyn's nose until the elf moved back on his own. His nose was red and tender looking, and his cheeks were flushed rosy. He didn't seem to want to meet Gerrit's eyes. Gerrit didn't mention it. He didn't really want to look at Llewellyn either right now. It had been a while since the elf had looked so very fuckable.

Potentially due to my propensity to write fanfic about established ships, all of my OCs apparently have a history or mutual attraction out of the gate. On one hand, it's difficult just mechanically to write a scenario about a romantic or sexual encounter without there being chemistry and an excuse for them to already want to rub bits (obviously), especially in short stories, but I also cannot stand the thin veneer of situational causality that underlies porn (to borrow from Cards Against Humanity). If I can't care about my characters' lives outside of the one random fetish scenario, I can't care enough to write about them at all. He put the handkerchief in an easily-accessible outside pocket of his vest. "Ready to go?" Llewellyn coughed lightly. "Yes." "Excellent." Gerrit gestured for Llewellyn to precede him, and the two of them headed out through the trees, following the sounds of Cordes negotiating the underbrush and swearing about it. --- Travel proved easy enough once they made it to the road. They were fortunate not to meet anyone else along the way. The party could handle a group of bandits without their sorcerer, but they had their treasure to worry about, and Remembrance always drew stares, and sometimes aggression, even from normal travelers. Gerrit thought her skills more than made up for the extra negative attention they drew. And anyway, Remembrance was crazy but she wasn't evil. She did better out on the road than in town, but that was probably true of all of them. Llewellyn kept up with her pace, but it was clearly a struggle. He was usually fairly quiet, but he didn't speak at all as they walked, focusing on breathing and not devolving into coughing or more sneezing. There were a few times when Gerrit hastily reached into his pocket, at the ready, but Llewellyn fought back the itch with admirable determination. He kept his nose from running by sniffling heavily, which sounded somewhere between awful and revolting. Cordes commented on it multiple times with disgust, but nothing could be done. Llewellyn held his tongue, and Gerrit was reluctant in this case to offer the handkerchief without being asked.

Cordes is here providing the societal reaction and voice of reason lol, but there still aren't any consequences or shaming from them. I just imagine how fricking uncomfortable it would be if people acknowledged this porn scenario happening in-world and so that is never part of the story development. They found a place to camp about half an hour outside the small village of Tewks. Remembrance cleared out some brush to make a flat area for the bedrolls and then promptly decided she'd rather sleep in a tree with everything she owned. She found a good, solid oak a few yards from the camp and ensconced herself in the crux of its branches. She had a good view of the road in either direction and volunteered to take the second watch in the middle of the night, which was her favorite time. Gerrit agreed to take the first watch as Cordes started to set up his tent. The priest refused to sleep on the ground and always took an extra fifteen minutes to erect a curious one-person canvas canopy. It wasn't even large enough to sit up inside, but whatever. The priest never asked anyone else to haul it along, so Gerrit wouldn't complain.

Remembrance and Cordes are thus handwaved away from the sexual center of the plot and they will neither see nor hear anything they aren't invited to. These arrangements left him and Llewellyn alone together on one side of the fire, and he supposed that was preferable during the orb situation anyway. Llewellyn couldn't handle his own bedroll, help with the fire, or unpack any of their supplies. Gerrit realized he would probably have to help the elf eat, too. And... Well, when he noticed Llewellyn fidgeting uncomfortably, Gerrit took him out into a thicker copse to see to his other needs. They didn't talk about it... Llewellyn could hardly undo his own buttons, though, and it wasn't the first time Gerrit had taken over.

I am very into watersports, so it creeps in, although I don't think there's a friendly community out there for that like there is for snz, so I haven't developed any kind of presence for it. It appeals to me for pretty much all of the same reasons as described above. Maybe someday I will start writing those kinds of stories on this account as well, but I don't know if they would find an audience, so maybe not. By the time the fire was hot enough to cook over, Llewellyn had tucked himself up to sit on a tree stump, exuding an aura of furious self-reproach. Cordes took some jerky into his tiny tent with him - for some reason. Gerrit made up two bowls of pottage and sat himself on the ground at the roots of the stump. He put one bowl on the ground for himself and then held up the other. "Hungry?" "Not particularly," Llewellyn replied, voice blunted with congestion. He coughed. "But you're going to make me eat something, aren't you." "I'd prefer you do it willingly." Gerrit tapped the spoon on the side of the bowl. "Come on. It's hot. You'll feel better." Llewellyn growled in a manner more suited to orcs than elves. "I feel like an invalid." Gerrit sighed. "Well, if it makes you feel better, we can pretend you lost your arms in an owlbear attack very tragically." He could feel Llewellyn's fiery glare on him and smiled a little. "Look, we've all done stupid things while adventuring. I'm sure you remember when I tripped and knocked myself out on that knight's shield during the tournament." "I remember," replied the elf, begrudgingly. "Besides, you're sick on top of the whole orb thing. Maybe your detection spell wasn't sensitive enough. Maybe the thing's not even cursed! Maybe it's supposed to do this, and we just don't know why." "I have a hard time believing that. What possible purpose could this serve?"

Porn! Gerrit shrugged. "Don't ask me. Dad says my mother was a druid, but I haven't got a magical bone in my body." He tilted his head. "We could always try smashing it?" Llewellyn's rejection was forceful. "Do you want to explode?!" Gerrit chuckled. "Not really." Llewellyn sighed. Gerrit held out a spoonful of pottage. Feeding both Llewellyn and himself was a bit difficult, but Gerrit did well enough when he could alternate. It would be better if he could use both hands equally like Cordes, but he couldn't, and so he didn't. He just thought about it wistfully as he worked. Llewellyn ended up eating most of his bowl, then went back to sitting quietly and sniffling. Gerrit finished the rest and put the utensils aside to deal with later. And... Even though Llewellyn hadn't asked, he drew out his handkerchief again.

More caretaking, more intimacy. Gerrit is a kind and loving person even though he's a fighter by trade. "Hey," he began, trying not to sound awkward. "You wanna blow your nose?" No one else was paying attention and Llewellyn didn't need to inhale any more of that crap. The elf gave him a shitty side-eye. "Come on," said Gerrit. "Don't be like this." He patted the ground in front of him encouragingly as if Llewellyn was a recalcitrant cat. "I'm fine," said Llewellyn, and then betrayed himself with a quick breath. "Hah--" "Come on," Gerrit repeated, "before you make a mess."

He is also pretty comfortable talking about a lot of things that people with the fetish have generally admitted difficulty acknowledging. This is because even though he's the one with the fetish in this, he is also the "Padgett" character and practical and not caught up in the anxiety prison. Llewellyn came down off the stump to sit in front of him, legs tucked underneath, and rested the orb on Gerrit's thigh to balance himself. His eyes were pinched with reluctance, but Gerrit could see that the elf's nostrils were already damp. "Hah- hh- hurry," Llewellyn gasped.

People should sit in each other's laps. It's good. Again, Gerrit reached out with the handkerchief, enfolding his companion's nose. He could feel Llewellyn's breath fluttering against his hand through the fabric and hear quite clearly how it kept catching on congestion. "Hah-hngk- Hahgkttscht!" Llewellyn ducked forward with the force of it and Gerrit steadied him with a hand on his hip. "Ngkttsch! Hnggktxch!!"

The sneezes now involve nasal consonants because of congestion. Sometimes people tend to have a certain way their sneezes always sound, and I try to maintain that, but these details are important to show a change in the severity of the cold (and evidence of sniffling for hours). Gerrit bit his lip sharply to keep from saying anything, but his body was singing with arousal. Llewellyn hiccupped a short gasp and Gerrit pulled the handkerchief away to present a clean corner. The current spot had become soaked and silvery. "Bless," he managed after a moment, and he carefully readjusted the cloth. "Are you going to sneeze again?"

Hiccupping is also sexy and cute. Also I spelled that wrong in the original, gdi... Llewellyn nodded, eyes teary with the effort of the first bunch. Gerrit wasn't surprised; the elf had been holding back since they left the dungeon. He couldn't imagine it had been comfortable, but Llewellyn had his pride. He never would let Gerrit give him love bites either. Annnd Gerrit was going to have to stop thinking about that. "Haptsch!" Easier said than done. Really. But Llewellyn's comfort came first.

Voyeur with a heart of gold. "Hahkptsch!" The sorcerer groaned softly. "Hah- hh- Hgnaptscxhx!" Gerrit did his best to assist Llewellyn through the fit. He kept the handkerchief secure, moving it when necessary to keep it dry enough. He steadied the elf when the sneezes bent his body or when he felt faint from lack of breath. He even massaged Llewellyn's nose for him when he was trying to blow it and the congestion was stubbornly refusing to move. By the time he felt finished enough to lean back, Llewellyn was flushed and light-headed, swaying where he sat. Gerrit was sweating and needed a towel. "........Thanks," murmured Llewellyn, eventually.

Sometimes kink authors tend to just write out like twenty sneezes in a row and I hate that, honestly. (No shade - I don't even have an example in mind because I don't read a lot of stories anymore and everyone has their preferences.) I just think that the kink should support the storyline and not the other way around. The story should be enjoyable and sexy but have a narrative structure and coherent rising and falling action. Even if a fit is a sexy scenario (it is), trying to make your eyeballs power through a repetitive series of nonsense syllables is counterproductive and takes the reader out of the story and into the realm of annoyance, which disrupts arousal as well. "Yeah," said Gerrit. "Sure." He swallowed. "Let's wash up." He helped Llewellyn to his feet and they went a little way to a creek (generously; it was little more than a ditch through the woods). Gerrit gently washed Llewellyn's face, careful of his tender eyes and nose, and sent him back to camp to lay down for the night. He lingered at the water's edge to wash the handkerchief and, well, to take other matters in hand.

If ya know what I mean. Llewellyn was completely out when he returned, and Gerrit was grateful. He smoothed the elf's bangs back and then settled beside the fire to take watch. The woods in the dark were full of the sounds of insects and small animals moving in the undergrowth. And Llewellyn snoring and sniffling in his sleep. Safe sounds. Gerrit rested his chin on his hand and looked toward the road. Damn orb. It was going to be a long way to Veigh.

And this was getting long, so this is where I cut it to make part 2, which I will also commentate in a bit (hopefully after a nap =___=). Thanks!

#lyk writes #snz #llewellyn mistwalker #gerrit truestride #gerwellyn #director's cut commentary exercise

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blackevermore · 3 years

Text

x Secrets of The Lake: The Company of Misery and Pain

{ Chapter 5 }

Summary: Vladimir Masters’ family tree has always been tainted by secrets swept under the rug. From generation to generation there have been countless reasons the Masters’ family had seemed to keep private from the public. Even to this day, Vladimir was no exception. But what was one to do when a restless spirit from the settlement years finally breaks free from restraints and demands you answer for your ancestor’s crimes? Vladimir doesn’t know. However, Clockworks does.

Notes: We just having fun, rewriting some of the canon, new adventure new characters. I will apologize now for any grammar, spelling, weird sentence structuring in advance. My brain writes faster than my fingers and even when I go back through to reread it I still miss things. Sorry about that!

Word Count: 3063

It wasn’t that it was hard to pinpoint where things began to fall apart for the Masters family. Rather it was who was to blame when all of it happened all at once. Could it have been the people they married or was it the family itself that had the bad luck? Either way, the Masters family had a very long list of unfortunate events that seemed to flock like birds to a nest. Vlad sat at his computer scanning through the digital archives of his family. He never truly sat down and looked through all of this, when he was younger it was more like being shown a picture and being asked to guess how far apart they were in life and death. His father did it often trying to brag about how headstrong all the men in the family were.

So many names, so much trading property or what seemed like stealing others. Not that Vlad was surprised at all by that, how else do you think he got where he was in life, it was just the game of business. Not having many divorces and remarrying, now that was surprising, he would have thought the men in his family would have had the least of the draw, or he was just shamefully projecting. Of course the latter could be farther from the truth when Vlad went through two stepmothers. Both his and his first stepmother died of unknown causes which left the last one living the longest. Luckily they were both lovely and the sweetest of women, but maybe would have been better off not in the family. At last Mrs Helena was alive, he hoped.

Vlad had scrolled to the very beginning of the files which started in the mid 16th century. The family name had just been respelt to the changing Germanic language and someone named Alger had married and inherited land in southern modern Germany; he died of an infection in the mouth at 32. From there they had seven children but only two survived due to the plague. From the two, only one was a boy and he carried the family name and expanded the family east. After that was a long line of names that either was married in, inherit, how they died, and weird scribbled notes off to the side Vlad couldn’t read. As the 16th century files ended the 17th century file started and was a lot more organized than the former. Vlad could actually read what jobs the males in his family had and where they actually ended up near the end of their life. The Masters family had once again gone through a name respelling and this time they were established merchants.

As he combed through the notes and names, Vlad had this weird ‘yes’ ‘no’ feeling, so far everyone had been a ‘no’ and his gut told him he was getting closer. Closer to what? Not sure, but he followed it anyway hoping to reach the end. But when he came across blank records, he was closer to the mid 17 century. The last family was the house of Anya with three dependents, a wife named Yolan and two sons, Vladan and Luther. In the notes it said that Anya served the ruler as a travelling merchant and was paid wealthy for it; he died of poison. The family lived in the furthest part of the eastern Germanic states which meant they would have been closer to migrating towards Slavic area. But after that there was nothing but empty rows. That was 50 years missing and that didn’t sit right with Vlad. Surely there had to be something or someone during that time. With how detailed the records were so far there had to be something- anything.

Vlad scrolled down to the beginning of the 18th century and that’s where the names picked back up with Vladan being the head of the house. There was an asterisk next to Vladan's name that read ‘only surviving heir’. Vlad sighed, of course, the family had died and was only survived by a single son. He could only imagine the tragedy that could have happened to the rest of the family.

‘Yes’

Vlad’s gut pulled as he read over the name again and the notes beside it. This man went through four wives whose names weren’t listed other than ‘wife 1… wife 2...’ and only had a daughter.

“Seems like misery was your only friend,” Vlad mumbled as he looked on and saw that the daughter took over for her father once he died of heart issues, and moved the family due to marriage. She didn’t change her name nor give up belongings and had five sons but only two of them had her last name. It seemed that it was on purpose for the lack of arguing on who got what when she died. The husband on the other hand disappeared early into their marriage, “You were truly a Wollstonecraft it seems, Miss Ursula Masters.” Sadly tragedy struck her down as well as she died of horse trampling. After Ursula the next four families had lost all the old money they once sat on due to wars and the collapsing economies. They did however maintain their pride and kept building themselves back up. By the end of the 18th century, the Masters family was in Russia and had branched off.

‘No’

Vlad knotted his brows as his gut once again pulled at him as a sign of the wrong direction. Rolling his eyes tired from looking at small prints and shitty handwriting he scrolled back up to the empty space.

“So you’re from right here it seems,” Vlad rubbed his chin and groaned. “What in the world happened and how did you get here?” As Vlad tried to think of another way to figure out the gap, the phone at his desk began to ring and broke him away from his trance. Deciding that that was enough for the day, Vlad closed his laptop and picked up the phone. Vlad had been so invested in his ghostly business he nearly forgot about his human one. Vlad pulled the phone away from his ear and rolled his neck as he tried to put on his Vlad Co. facade. Vlad pulled the phone back in when he heard a question and he politely asked the woman on the other side to repeat herself.

“I asked if you will still be holding the theme banquet this coming Wednesday.” Sha! Vlad had forgotten all about the company banquet. As a boss he felt it was important to give your employees a ‘thank you’, especially if there was company corruptness being swept under the rug. So as a treat every so often Vlad would announce he would host a banquet and give everyone the day off. Vlad felt his eye twitch as he thought over whether or not he should cancel it. Wednesday was in three days and he hadn’t even told his ghostly staff about it.

As his mind thought it over the words came out by themselves, “Yes.” Yes? Yes?! He had no time to play host when he had a ghost to deal with and any other madness being thrown his way. Why in the world would he say yes?

“That’s wonderful! Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s the theme?” The woman said, eagerly.

“Well I do mind, that’s my little secret. Surely you wouldn’t want to take the surprise away from yourself, now would you.” Vlad gagged as he sweetly replied and heard the woman become flustered.

“You’re right,” Of course I am . “ Well I can’t wait to see what you put together, Sir. You never cease to amaze us.”

“Hmm, yes, now if you excuse me, Miss Wright, I have some emails to look over before prepping.”

“Very well, Sir good-” Vlad didn’t wait for the woman’s goodbye and hung up, he dropped his face into his hands and held his breath as he tried to mentally organize himself.

Clockwork? Check.

Vengeful spirit out to kill him? Check.

Nearly being torn apart? Check.

Waking up three days later? Check?

Prepping for a banquet he forgot all about? Wonderful .

Vlad stood up from his desk chair and stretched his back, he needed to get out of the house for fresh air. Maybe go for a walk or if he was feeling up to it, a quick flight, then come back and start on what was being served at the banquet and what the theme was. As he walked around his desk and reached out a hand to draw the handle he heard the low rumble of bickering outside his door. He used his ghost sense to hone in on it and only shook his head in disappointment.

“Yeah well I could have been there for backup if you had let me go with you. How come he got to go with you?” Dani crossed her arms angrily and shot Danny the meanest eyes she could muster.

“I didn’t bring him along, he showed up by himself, he was supposed to be on his way to pick you up, remember.” Danny retorted as she and he rounded the corner to Vlad’s office. “Besides I told you it was dangerous and you would have only gotten hurt.”

“No way I’m like super badass!” Dani yelled.

“Language, especially in this house, Danielle.” Vlad opened the door and looked on towards the children. Dani turned away and grumbled as Danny sighed and gave a quick wave.

“Either she was gonna fly here and pester you by herself or I would at least try to stop her, as you can see I didn’t do much.” Danny motioned towards his clone and she stuck out a tongue.

“Well at least you showed up at the right time, I have news I think you will like to hear.” Vlad rubbed the bridge of his nose and gestured for Danny to come inside. Guess the walk would have to wait.

“Boy would I!” Dani stepped out in front of Danny and Vlad quickly stuck a hand out.

“Miss Masters, you have other things to do. This problem has nothing to do with you and I would much prefer it if you stop trying to be a part of it.” Vlad put on his father voice and it saw how it made Dani upset. She looked back at Danny for help only for the older teen narrowed his eyes and looked away. Vlad gave her the all knowing look of ‘you are out ruled’ and Dani stomped her foot. She had been told no so much in the last few days of wanting to help.

“I swear you two still treat me like some weak baby. I have control over myself and my powers, stop doing that!” The hurt in Dani’s voice almost made the others cave but Vlad stood by his words and shook his head.

“I know you’re not a baby, far from, but this isn’t your fight. Now run along.” Dani's face nearly turned red and she flew off through the walls to god knows where.

“Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt to let her listen,” Danny rubbed his arm, feeling very much like a villain. Vlad on the other hand deadpanned him and turned to walk into his office.

“You should know what happens to those that become too curious, they only get in trouble.” Vlad’s monotone voice irked Danny, the jab was unnecessary considering they both ended up as they were due to curiosity. Once they were seated in their respective chairs Vlad opened his laptop again. Danny watched him scroll through files before turning the computer around for him to look at. Danny had no idea how to read any of this, cocking an eyebrow he shook his head.

“Explain,” Danny said.

“As I looked through everything, I noticed that my family record suddenly stopped between the late 1650s to the 1700s.” Vlad began pointing towards the screen. “This may sound odd but I had a feeling this might be where Tayonna is from. However, it doesn’t make sense because there is no mention of coming to America. This name, Vladan, is the only surviving member of his family and he stayed in the empire and got married. He was one of the sons of the family before the gap.” Vlad turned the computer back around and stared heavily at the name trying to make something of it.

“Is there any way for you to throw money on this and figure out what happened in those 50 years?” Danny asked with a shrug, surely, Vlad had that power considering he was a billionaire. Vlad did not have that power. Vlad blinked a few times and shook his head.

“If only it was that easy, however, I have no idea where to look nor do I have time to fly out to one of the thirteen colonies and check.”

“Get an assistant to do it, you have plenty of those and I know it, Miss Kate is a really cool lady.” Danny smirked, he had the honours of meeting a few of Vlad’s assistants who sometimes had very nasty things to say about him. Which Danny promised not to repeat back and enjoyed listening to. Truly, what man has a random sweet tooth at 3am and demands a strawberry shortcake?

“I doubt any of them would wish to take a random trip at the moment.” Vlad thought over his few underhands and couldn’t think of a single one he could trust with this. They all had their pros and cons and yet Vlad found himself cancelling all of them.

“When did you become considerate of anyone but yourself?” Danny asked with a cocked brow and pressed lips. Vlad was a bit taken back by the question but knew where Danny was coming from.

“When I decided to stop playing childish games with a child. My company is not a playpen and my workers are not playmates I can throw away.” Vlad answered with a hiss on his lips and Danny mumbled a ‘whatever’ before throwing his hands up and standing to his feet.

“I still say send one of them out to Ellis Island to find something.”

“Ellis Island was built in the late 1800s not the 16oos, Daniel.” Danny opened his mouth then quickly closed it.

“I knew that… I knew that.”

“Of course,” Vlad wore his annoying amused smirk that he always gave Danny when he messed up. “But I will take your suggestion into consideration since it’s something rather than nothing.”

“That’s the spirit. Get it?” Danny shot Vlad finger guns and a wink and the man snickered and walked around his desk to head towards the door.

“Besides, it's not like we can ask Tayonna herself.” Vlad added as he opened the door and allowed Danny to head out first.

“Dude, I think the last person she wants to see is you or me.” Danny snorted. Vlad only hummed and they walked towards the stairs to bring them to the first floor. Danny B-lined his way to the kitchen and quickly found home in Vlad’s frig. Vlad joined him and made himself a cup of coffee for his midday crisis. “Besides, the last place I left her was at the bottom of the pond as I drug your lifeless body away.” Danny shoved a gogurt in his mouth and raised his eyebrows. Vlad huffed and looked over the top of his cup.

“Don’t remind me. Those are Dani’s.”

“She’ll understand, her gogurts are going towards a great cause. And I know how much Masters love donating towards “ good causes ”.” Danny wiggled his brows and ghosted another hand into the frig to pull out another snack to shove into his pocket.

“Don’t say anything to me when she finds out. I’ve seen nothing.” Vlad chuckled behind his drink and playfully turned the other way.

“Oh ha ha.” Danny finished his first snack and threw it away. He pulled out the next and started in on it, he made an about face and gave Vlad a concerned expression.

“We gotta make it up to her, she really wanted to help, but this is hella dangerous and she could get hurt. Tayonna isn’t gone, she’s still in the ghost zone and we both have to go back in there to deal with her.” Danny voicing his worries for not only Dani’s feelings but the threat she kept trying to chase made Vlad feel like a drained parent. He always thought of Danny as a distant son, more so now than before. So when he made Danielle and then rekindled a relationship with her he really did feel like a single father. The last thing he wanted at the moment was to cause another rift in their relationship. Having a happy Dani around the house made Vlad feel way less lonely.

“I know and that’s why I’ll ask her to aid me in planning the company banquet for Wednesday.” Vlad finished his drink and placed it in the dishwasher before snapping his fingers to turn it on.

“You’re seriously having a banquet while we’re in the middle of this?” Danny's expression quickly dropped and Vlad shooed him away.

“Correction, this is happening while I was planning the banquet. Ghosts seem to have no consideration for my very busy life. But the show must go on.” Danny could only facepalm as he listened to Vlad.

“You are such a fruitloop, ya know.”

“Yes, yes, I’m well aware.” Vlad chuckled and walked out of the kitchen. Danny was about to follow him until he stepped out and nearly slipped. He looked down and saw that where Vlad once stood was now a puddle of water with a few smaller puddles heading the way Vlad did. Danny’s first thought was danger and panic but the beeping sound of the dishwasher snapped him out of it. Besides, if she would have gotten in, not only would Vlad’s ghost security alert him, but his own ghost sense would have told him. Danny hadn’t felt any weird energy nor had his senses go off the whole time he was here. Danny calmed down and told himself it was just a leak in the dishwasher he would have to tell Vlad about.

#📖Ghost Stories👻#vlad masters #Danny Phantom #My writing #self ship community #I have no idea where this is going but its going chuga chuga choo choo #dp fanfic

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warsofasoiaf · 4 years

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Have you played Fallout 4? What did you think of it?

Joseph Anderson had a phenomenal video on Fallout 4. Although it is enormous, so be careful. Overall, there were things to like and things not to like about Fallout 4. I’ll start with what I liked first. Throwing a cut in here because it’s long.

Combat in the first-person Fallout games has always been clunky, and enemy AI relatively largely consisted of straight charging or shooting from as maximum range as possible. Difficulty came primarily from enemy quantity, high damage output, or incredibly enemy hitpoints. The last of these has been a particular Bethesda problem in their games, with enemies being incredible damage sponges, making late-game fights a boring slog as you slowly whittle down their health while being impossible to damage in any meaningful capacity. While enemy variations aren’t nearly as high as the game’s fans would have you believe if you conceive of them as AI patterns, the AI activity did have some nice variations. Human enemies used cover, ghouls bobbed and weaved as you shot them, mole rats tried to ambush you. It’s got nothing on games with fully realized combat system, but it does make the combat that you do engage in much more enjoyable.

All of the random crap you can pick up in a Bethesda game having a purpose is another positive. It is a true nuisance to find out when playing a game that I hit my encumbrance limit only to find out it’s because I’ve picked up a bunch of brooms, bowls, and other garbage accidentally while grabbing coin and other worthwhile treasures. Actually having these things mean an object is worthy mechanically, aside from level design; typewriters are useful as items as opposed to something that shows you that the ruined building you’re in was formerly a newspaper. As crafting is a big portion of the game, having these things provide component parts that you use for crafting on their own creates more utility in these elements of clutter which still require modeling, rendering, placement, etc. Now if you need aluminum, you’ll try to raid something like a cannery because it will have aluminum cans, which is an excellent way to create player-generated initiative. It also reinforces one of the primary themes of the game which is crafting and design, where even the trailers of the game suggest building as a key idea of the game. Certainly sensible for a post-apocalyptic game to focus on building a new society upon the ruins of the older one, and given what the game was trying to do with their four factions mechanic, it’s clear that this was their intent, and good job for trying to ensure that things factor back into their principal intent.

Deathclaws look properly scary, the animations with Vault Boy were funny, there’s some pretty window dressing. The voice work wasn’t bad, the notable standout being Nick Valentine. The Brotherhood airship was an impressive visual. I had a little fun creating some basic settlements, particularly in Hangman’s Alley where I tried to create a network of suspended buildings and Spectacle Island where I had room to grant every prospective settler a shack. Bethesda clearly looked to create a game with mass market appeal, and I believe the metrics bears out that they succeeded in that regard. The robots in the USS Constitution quest were very funny, the writers were able to make the absolute ridiculousness of the situation work (curse you Weatherby Savings and Loan!) and framed it well as a comedic sidequest, with a final impressive visual if you side with the bots and the ship takes flight.

Now that this is out of the way, I think that a lot of what Fallout 4 did was not the right move.

The quest design was particularly atrocious in this regard. Most of the radiant quests boiled them down to a simple formula - go to the dungeon, get to the final room where you need to either kill the boss or get an item from the boss chest, return. In this game though, the main story quests often were boiled down to just this simple formula. You need to find a doodad from a Courser to complete your teleporter? Go to the dungeon, kill the boss, recover the item. The Railroad needs you to help an escaped synth! Do it by going to the dungeon and getting to the final room. This really hampers the enjoyment of games because the expressiveness of the setting and elements of an RPG is often explored through quests. Quests are meant to get you out into the world and give you an objective, but they are also meant to connect you to the people that you’re dealing with. If every quest is boiled down to the same procedure, that hurts the immersion, but the bigger sin is that when you return you have another quest waiting for you. That robs the player of the sense of accomplishment because there is no permanent solution to problems, even for a minute. There is no different end-state for the player to see the transition from one to the other and feel accomplished that they were the ones who did it. Other RPG’s always understood this - a D&D game might have a party save a town investigate an illness dealing with a town, take out an evil druid who has charmed the wildlife into attacking supply and trade shipments, slay goblins who are raiding cattle, there are a lot of possibilities that might even feel samey: if you’re killing charmed dire wolves or goblin cattle thieves, you’re still going to the dungeon and fighting the boss, the usual flair and variation came from encounter design. After you’d do that though, the NPC’s might say “Hey, Mom is feeling better after you cured that disease, she’s starting to walk again,” “Hey, we were able to send a shipment of wine from the vineyards out to the capital, here’s some coin for the shipment as reward for your service,” or even just a simple “Hey, thanks for taking out those cattle thieves.” There’s a sense of accomplishment even if it’s a fleeting “we did a cool thing.” Computer RPG’s are tougher in this regard, part of the sense of accomplishment in tabletop gaming is also with your friends, it’s a shared activity, but usually in that the reward was some experience and character growth and going to new content. There isn’t new content here in Fallout 4 though, because of the samey quest design and lack of progression.

The conversational depth was also ruined, with so much of the voice choices mangled by the system of conversation they designed. By demanding a four-choice system, they limited themselves to always requiring four options which completely mangled interactivity. The previous menu design allowed for as many lines as you wanted, even if the choices were usually beads on a string. The depth and variation, however, are even lower than what could be found in games like Mass Effect 3, and the small word descriptions were often so inaccurate that it created a massive disconnect between myself the player and the Sole Survivor, because they weren’t saying what I thought they would be saying. That prevented me from feeling immersed, because a “Sarcastic” option could be a witty joke or a threat that sounds like it should come out of a bouncer. The character options were already limited, with Nate being a veteran and Nora being a lawyer, but this lack of depth prevents me from feeling the character even moreso than a scripted backstory. You get those in games, but being unable to predict how I’m reacting is something that kills character.

Bethesda needs to end the “find (x) loved one” as a means to get people motivated to do a quest, or if they don’t want to rid themselves of that tool in their toolbox, they need to do a better job getting me to like them. More linear games can get away with this, but open world games encourage the sort of idle dicking around that doesn’t make any sense for a person who is attempting to find a family member. Morrowind did this much better, where your main task was to be an Imperial agent, and you were encouraged to join other factions and do quests as a means to establish a cover identity and get more acquainted with combat. Folks who didn’t usually ended up going to Hasphat Antabolius and getting their face kicked in by Snowy Granius. Here though, what sort of parent am I if instead of pursuing a lead to find my infant son I’m wandering over east because I saw what looked like a cool ruin, and I need XP to get my next perk (another gripe, perks that are simple percentage increases because they slow down advancement and make combat a slog if you don’t take them, depressing what should be a sense of accomplishment). By making us try to feel close with a character but by refusing to give us the players time with them, there is no sense of bonding. I felt more connection to James in Fallout 3 than I did for Sean, but even then, I felt more connection to him because he was voiced by Liam Neeson than because of any sense of fatherly affection. The same goes for the spouse and baby Sean, I feel little for them because I see them only a little. I know that I should care more, but I also know that I the player don’t because all that I was given is “you should care about them.” You need time to get to know characters in game, along with good writing and voicework. I like Nick because he quoted “The Raven” when seeing the Brotherhood airship and I thought that was excellent writing, I didn’t have any experiences with Sean to give me that same sense of bonding.

They’ve also ruined the worldbuilding. The first-person Fallout games have always had a problem with this, with Fallout 3 recycling Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and other iconic Fallout things into Washington D.C. Part of this is almost certainly the same reason that The Force Awakens was such a dull rehash of the plot of A New Hope, they wanted to establish some sort of continuity with a new director to not frighten off old fans who they relied on to provide a significant majority of the sales. The problem of course, is that this runs into significant continuity problems, now needing Vault 87 to have a strain of FEV and having a joint Vault-Tec/US Government experiment program there on the East Coast, so we can have Super Mutants. Jackson’s chameleon isn’t native to Washington D.C., but we need to have Deathclaws because they’re the iconic scary Fallout enemy, as opposed to creating something new with the local fauna, which is only made worse because they did do that with the yao guai formed from the American black bear (the black bear doesn’t typically range in the Chesapeake Basin near DC these days, but it’s close enough and given the loss of humans to force them back they could easily return to their old pre-human rangings). Some creatures are functions of the overall setting and can be global, ghouls are the big one here since radiation would be a global thing and fitting considering Fallout is a post-apocalypse specifically destroyed by nuclear war. Others though, are clearly mutated creatures and so they would be more localized. Centaurs and floaters were designed by FEV experiments and collared by Super Mutants, they should really only be around Super Mutants. Radscorpions shouldn’t be around, there would probably be instead be mutated spiders. Making things worse are that the monster designers do develop some excellent enemies when they think about it. Far Harbor has a mutant hermit crab that uses a truck as a shell (a lobster restaurant truck, which is passable enough for a visual joke even if it falls apart when you think about other trucks that they might use) and a monster that uses an angler lure that resembles a crafting component - these are good ideas but the developers needed to awkwardly shoehorn in iconic Fallout things that have no place there. This isn’t to say that I’m in love with a lot of Fallout’s worldbuilding, a lot of the stuff in Fallout 2 I found to be kind of dumb particularly the talking deathclaws, but as the series went on it took objects without meaning. The G.E.C.K in Fallout 3 was pretty much a magic recombinator which makes no sense as a technology in a world devastated by resource collapse, something similar can be said about the Sierra Madre vending machines.

Fallout 4 though, had a lot of worldbuilding inconsistencies that really took an axe to the setting. The boy in the fridge outlasts the entire Great War, but apparently never needed to eat or drink water. This is, of course, stupid, because ghouls have always been shown to need to eat and drink - Fallout 1′s Necropolis section has a Water Chip but if you take it without finding an alternate source of clean water, the ghouls will die. Ghoul settler NPC’s that flock to your player-crafted towns require food and water. The entire thing was ruined from a complete lack of care, to build a quest where you reunite a lost boy with his still-alive ghoulified parents. I think this one bothers me not simply because of the egregious worldbuilding which isn’t even consistent in the very game it’s written it, but it’s done so frivolously for a boring escort quest. It feels scattershot, and that’s the problem I think with a lot of Fallout 4′s quests. They feel disconnected, like every writer worked in a cubicle without talking to any of the other writers. Same with things like the Lady in the Fog.

Are we done with that? Good, because now we’re going into the parts that I really dislike - the main quest and the factions. These are just awful. The developers took what folks really liked when it came to Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas (Fallout 1 did have interesting factions but they were largely self-contained, more towns than anything else) and completely botched it. New Vegas was the clear inspiration for these factions, with the four faction model of NCR, Legion, House, and Indepenedent meaning that there were four different ways to go forward into the future, so we get three factions that fight each other and a fourth more player friendly faction that roughly resembles the Independent Vegas where you can pick and choose which factions you bring in with you and which you get rid of. Thematically, this fits in with the core of the game, crafting is a big portion of what you do and so crafting what sort of world the Commonwealth would be is simply a logical extension of it. The factions aren’t presented well though. The Railroad are impossibly naive and don’t demonstrate any rougher edges like denying supplies to humans in order to fuel their synth effort, even though such a thing should be evident if the post-apocalypse of the Commonwealth is to be believed. The Institute are sinister murderers and replacers without bringing any of the advanced technology that could provide some benefit such as the gigantic orange gourd that can grow. So much of their kill-and-replace mentality seems to be done for no great overarching purpose. The Minutemen are basically blank, pretty much just a catch-all for the player-built settlements, though the player as the leader of the Minutemen ends up getting bossed around by Preston to the point of the faction rejecting your commands to proceed with the main quest, a significant problem with Bethesda factions where you are the leader but never get any actual sense of leadership. There doesn’t appear to be any addressing of the failures of the previous Minutemen whether that be the previous summit, or new problems such as settlements feuding with each other requiring the general to intervene and mediate. The Brotherhood come the closest to a real faction with advantages and drawbacks if you squint, they are feudal overlords with the firepower to fight Super Mutants and other mutated nasties, but also violently reject ghouls and synths as part of their violent dogma except for seemingly not caring when you bring a companion around or killing ghoul settlers in settlements they control. But even then, we don’t really see the Brotherhood providing protection to the settlements that they demand for food, the typical radiant quest to destroy a pack of feral ghouls or super mutants is directed from a Brotherhood quest giver to a randomly determined location, hardly a good way to illustrate whether or not the Brotherhood is actually protecting settlements that they administer. We see little change in the way of the Commonwealth save that certain factions are alive or not because the game needs to stay active in order to perform radiant quests, so not even the signature ending slideshows can give us the illusion of effects building off of our actions. This is contrary to the theme of building a better world in the Commonwealth because there is no building.

Special notice must be given to the Nuka-World raiders because they show the big problems with the factions. You can be a Raider in Nuka-World but only after becoming the Overboss, which is fair enough. But you’re already a Minuteman, but the Minutemen don’t activate any kill-on-sight order and Preston still helps you out. The game is so terrified of people losing out on content that they make permanent consequences rare, and when you do something like order an attack, it can be rescinded automatically if one of your companions is there. As an Overboss, you do grunt work in the Commonwealth, and the factions get mad and pissy if you don’t give them things despite even if you only give one section of the park to one of the factions, that’s more than they got from Colter. It’s like they don’t exist until the player shows up, which is exactly how a lot of modern Bethesda character and faction building seems to be. While in most computer games a sort of uneasy status quo is the desired beginning state because it gives the protagonist the chance to make ripples while justifying the existence of a status that allows the player to change it, it has to be applied consistently.

The main quest itself is silly. There’s a decent twist with Sean becoming Father that sort of works, which would have worked much better if we had actually gotten a chance to bond with him, although the continuity of everything gets wiggy quick. When he said that he looked over the world and saw nothing but despair, I was wondering if they were going to actually bring a big question up and a debate between Father and the Player, the idea of what worth the people on the surface have, but it goes nowhere, it’s a missed opportunity. The main quest is just a means to meet all four factions and it’s a barebones skeleton at best. There are some interesting concepts they try, but what they do often falls flat. They try to establish some sort of empathy for Kellogg in the memory den, but it’s lazy and cheap because he kidnaps a baby and wastes your spouse, a wasted effort of empathy only made worse when you get criticized for not showing any sympathy. Kellogg then shows up in Nick’s memory for one second and then that little story nugget is ignored. The half-baked nature of the story keeps being brought back up, which is a pity because we actually saw them do a competent job in Far Harbor. The Followers of Atom are crazy and they really aren’t sympathetic in any way, but some of the folks inside the sub aren’t so bad that it might prevent you from wanting to detonate the sub, or at least you might think enough that you look for another solution. DiMA did some monstrous things, and if you bring him to justice, the game actually takes the time to evaluate whether or not you helped out Far Harbor, with meaningful consequences being taken if you took the time to do the sidequests which imparts far more meaning to them.

While there’s a lot of problems that show up in terms of binary completion, the question of whether to replace Tektus and turn the Children of Atom to a more moderate path is a good question, it actually gives a lot more merit to the Institute if they were ever to have been shown to enact the same level of care. That only makes the Fallout problems stand out more, because it shows that they were capable of it but didn’t. This isn’t the only missed opportunity, synths themselves become a big problem. The goal was to create a very paranoid feeling but it was so sorely under-utilized that I never grew suspicious of folks because the game never gave me enough incentive to be suspicious of them. I didn’t think that Bethesda made synths that would give you false information or ambush you because that would have been potentially missed content. The idea of whether you are a synth or not is clearly an attempt to give the game more depth than it is presenting. You’re not a synth, Father’s actions make no sense if you are one, and DiMA attempting to make you think you are is silly because you know you aren’t one.

I think the game would have been much better if they had dropped the notion of Fallout entirely. If they had instead looked to create an open-world post-apocalyptic game focusing on crafting and building towns, perhaps with an eventual goal state of building many towns, establishing transportation networks, and rebuilding a junkyard society as a decent place (or going full Mad Max Bartertown complete with a Thunderdome for players looking for an evil and over-the-top option). That might have been an interesting game for Bethesda to potentially develop a new IP, even contracting with smaller studios for those who wish to tell story-heavy games in the setting. Instead, they applied Fallout like a bad paint job, cobbling together weak RP elements and story that made the game feel like a hydra that couldn’t recognize it was one being with multiple heads, constantly tearing the other parts of itself to ribbons.

If I wanted to further improve it, I think I would have instead made the spouse a synth. It would require some serious reworking, but I would have made it so that Sean did believe that synths were people, or that they were real enough that the difference was negligible, they had free will. During the initial grab, the Institute took the entire cryopod where Sean was, baby and parent both. They used Sean to create the next generation of synths, but something happened with the parent, and they died during defrost. Sean hates the Institute for what they did, but what happened was truly a medical complication, not malicious in any way. When he learns that the player character is active, he creates a synth programmed to believe they are the spouse. He believes that exposing who he really is to the surviving parent would be traumatic, and as he hears that the player character is thriving, he wants to give them a chance at a normal life, and to alleviate the loss that he had in his life with the loss of his own parents. So the spouse is sent to you, and for a long time, you and the spouse have no idea. You adventure together, you build settlements together, the game encourages you to have a good relationship. It doesn’t have to be hunky dory, and I’d argue it’s actually better if it’s not. Have the spouse be programmed with some rough experiences in the Wasteland, so they’re nervous, skittish, maybe even a little resentful that the player character snoozed their way through everything, but slowly rebuild the relationship. That way, when the quest eventually comes where you find the truth, the player character has to confront that reality. Then when you confront Sean, Sean explains himself and the player is given the choice to forgive him, be understanding but still angry, or be hugely pissed at the manipulation. That’s drama that uses the core theme of what synths are about with the whole kill-and-replace motif the Institute does. There’s a plot twist that batters the player, there’s one that’s just messy and gross and tough to reconcile. There’s one where the conclusion the player comes to is valid because it’s the player themselves deciding what the meaning of it is.

So overall, I see Fallout 4 as a bunch of missed opportunities and clumsy writing wrapped up in the popular shallow open-worlds that triple-A games end up having.

Thanks for the question, Jackie.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#fallout 4 #fallout #video game reviews

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glitterwolfvi · 4 years

Note

Can you talk abt ur favourite fallout character and your hcs for them?

OK YEAH I CAN! this is going to maybe get a bit long tho because I have.. a few favorites from each game

also in general, I want to smooch all the ghouls

Fallout 3

Butch DeLoria: ah yes, the boy, the bastard. I love him and his whole look, and the Tunnel Snakes! first off, I like to imagine he is a GNC Trans Masc dude, he’s gay, and he’s 5′1. he/him pronouns! he HATES how short he is and will fight anyone who calls him that, don’t test him. huge fear of radroaches AND the dark, don’t mix them. he’s bipolar and autistic, and favors vocal stims. echolalia!!! growing up he was forced to be pretty feminine and hated that he was forced, so when he first came out, he tried to be as masc as possible, but later at 19, he started letting himself being as feminine as he wants, but not forcing it, y’know? smokes and drinks. later, I imagine he absolutely gets his gang up and running again, with better people. they stab transphobes. Tunnel Snakes Rule!!

Charon: heart eyes motherfucker. I love him. he’s a big dude, and I mean big. 6′10. he’s bi! he/him pronouns! he’s always super nervous to act on his attractions, because not only is he a ghoul, he’s honor bound to a contract. Azrukhal said he got hypnotized to follow it I think?? I imagine he actually did! he’s not a pre-war ghoul, but a more recent one. maybe ghoulified during the what the people did to hypnotize him. canonly, he has a 3 Intelligence, and I like to think before he got hypnotized, he had a higher Int. but still had a low Charisma heh. probably also has a brain injury. selective mutism! BIG softie under all that grump

Sergeant RL-3: love this Mister Gutsy! I think he sounds way too like.. charming to be a Gutsy, but I love it. good robot! they’re definitely demi-bi/ace and Masc Nonbinary! He/They pronouns for this bot. they’re protective of the Lone Wanderer, and he just wants them safe and secure. I think he should be a companion that doesn’t have karma requirements to have them. despite his... patriotic comments, I feel like he doesn’t really care who you are or what you follow, as long as you don’t harm those they care about. the patriotism is just how he was programmed anyways. they love to just be called Sarge, rather than Sergeant RL-3

Gob: ;o; I want him to be safe and ok. Trans Masc and bi with a preference for men. He/They. 5′6. PTSD, anxiety, depression. he’s autistic too! vocal stimming and hand flaps. but he can’t because of stupid Moriarty. loves his lesbian moms and just wants to go back to them, where he’s safe. crush on Charon!

Fallout: New Vegas

Raul Tejada: love this old ghoul and his voice. augh I just can’t get over it. anyways, he’s gay, 5′8, and he/him pronouns. he absolutely hates being alone, but is scared to get close to anybody. if you do manage to get close to this man, he’s a ride or die kind of friend, y’know? he’s also the type of guy for lots of platonic ‘I love you’s and cheek kisses if you’re close. he doesn’t like when those he cares about wanders far from him when they’re traveling, and gets super nervous, and just wants to run and make sure they’re ok. he respects boundaries, but still worries over them. sweet man, jokes a lot, but also complains a lot about being old

Arcade Gannon: I haven’t known him for very long, but I love he. he’s a Demi-Boy, he’s gay, and he/they pronouns. 6′0. autistic and will go on and on about certain topics, there’s no stopping him. not like you’d want to, but still. likes the sound of a clicking pen and stims with it. more stims than that, but y’know, his favorite. he has lots of anxiety, but does have plenty of ways to cope. he gets crushes super easily. you’re nice to him? he loves you. that cute guy over there that said hi to him? love. dhfgkjgf

Lily Bowen: don’t have much for headcanons. but just... grandma. I love her. lesbian grandma. she/her

Yes Man: the best bot in the Mojave!!! good bot!!!! baby boy. baby. anyways, Masc Nonbinary, bi, and He/They. just loves everyone! easy to make friends with. when he’s allowed to feel other things and say no, he’s still super friendly and happy. he just... he’s filled with love. shaped like a friend. relationships with them? lots and lots of affection, and sweet gestures, and gifts. he tries his best, and likes making people happy. but he’s also a sarcastic shit at times, and can get very passive-aggressive

Fallout 4

Deacon: stealth egg!!!! Trans Masc Genderfluid, Demi-Bi, and He/They/She. 5′5. the sunglasses are to hide who he was. jokes about his depression and anxiety and ptsd. which is.. not good. he’s super good at sewing. he has lots of wigs, but that pompadour is his favorite! it’s so so so hard to get him to open up, but when you do, it’s only in private, with said person, but when he is, he’s super sweet and soft-spoken, makes less jokes. sensitive, but has it easier time hiding it when not being... himself

RJ MacCready: trash husband. rude garbage weasel. I want to smooch. Trans Masc, Bi, and he/him. 5′2. don’t call him a mungo, he gets super whiny and pouty. he’s a good dad tho and loves his son very much. probably spoils Duncan a shit ton when he’s cured. he’s very awkward with relationships but is very loving. he’s very nervous something will happen to his partner a lot, considering what happened to Lucy. loves dogs a lot

Nick Valentine: ahh, the reason for my last name. synth detective. BETHESDA LET ME ROMANCE HIM. Questioning his gender, Bi, and He/They. 6′0. it’s easy for him to defuse a situation. one of the sweetest people alive. he’s comforting, and if someone he cares about needs it, will sit by them while they sleep, just to make them feel safe. good singing voice. pre-war Nick wasn’t a movie person, more of a book person, so everyone’s favorite synth detective is the same. puts himself down a lot, because he’s an old synth. especially if you confess to him. doesn’t feel like he deserves whoever is his partner, but is so sweet and loving

Ada: not many headcanons for her yet. tiny lesbian bot, she/her. gives you anything that reminds her of you ;o; and random junk to help build settlements

Oswald the Outrageous: LOVE. good ghoul. Trans Masc Nonbinary, Demi-Bi/Ace, and He/They. 6′2. autistic, love performance and painting. tbh? water is a big sensory issue, especially now because water has been described as ‘sludge’ now. often covered in paint

Kent Connolly: I love him and his excitement. Demi and He/Him. 5′7. autistic and his special interest is The Unstoppables! specifically the Silver Shroud! sweet man. easily flustered

Fallout 76

Mordecai McCoy: good ol Morty-Mort. Trans Masc, Bi, and He/Him. 5′6. wants to make a name for himself, besides just being able to go into heavily irradiated places for people. a sweet man and easily excitable, but always tries to put on like.. a kinda tough guy act. but it’s super easy to break. likes to joke around a lot, and can be a flirt

ok to rb!!!

#answer #booshwash.txt #Fallout #my headcanons #Anonymous

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twdmusicboxmystery · 4 years

Text

FTWD 6x03: Details

Okay, let's talk details.

***As always, spoilers abound below for episode 6x03. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

We start out with seeing Morgan back with Rachel, Isaac's wife and little baby Morgan. At first, I thought this was a flashback, but it's not. Apparently, he went and saw Daniel at Virginia’s settlement, but then came back. He's planning go back and forth and obviously has plans to rescue everyone. (Yay!) Also, he pulled an S5 Rick and shaved off his huge beard. ;D

The opening credits have a green background and show Al with her camera. I did note the green background when I started watching it, but I wasn't sure how significant it would be. So far, we've seen the red and blue background, and if they change colors with each episode, it might just be a matter of this is the color of the week, right? Except then we saw massive Beth parallels and foreshadows in this episode. Probably not a coincidence.

So, we had Al and Dwight go into the house. Al says, “camera A,” and then location 731, and 1600 hours.

I think the A is part of the A/B theme. Especially because, after watching a second time, I realized the helipad on the roof of the building Al goes to is called Bakers Drop. So camera A, Bakers drop.

The 1600 caught my attention as well. Earlier, with Rachel, Morgan said he felt like he'd been 16 different people since the apocalypse head. So the number 16 is appearing a lot in random places in the episode.

About Al and Dwight collecting drivers’ licenses? It also reminded me of 1x01. If you remember, just before Rick and Glenn slathered themselves with guts, Rick pulled out the dead guy’s license. This could be a callback to that as well.

There are lots of little symbols in the basement of the funeral home around Al. There's a green bottle, upside down, that’s either bleach or formaldehyde (which Al mentions). There are anatomical diagrams on the walls, including one of a brain. And then there's the Rich Bitch. She's wearing pink for one thing (Pink Theory) but it's obvious that she hasn't been dead long because she's not terribly decomposed. Al mentions that she thinks somebody might have embalmed her.

Obviously, that didn't keep the woman from turning, and Dwight asked who would've done that. I think it's a hint to something else they talk about near the end. I’ll come back to that. When Al and Dwight sit on the coffin, talking, there are background symbols there as well. Green awning, boarded up windows that look like the moonshine shack, Xs in the metal pillars framing Dwight. This is also where Dwight says seriously.

When they get into the office building in the city, they see the writing, "The end is the beginning," on the wall. This is not the same place we saw that phrase in episode 1. In that case, two guys spray painted it on the side of that enormous red submarine. So, whoever is spray painting this is going around spray painting it in different locations for some reason.

Al and Dwight see rats in cages. She takes a particular interest in them. But Dwight pulls her back because he doesn't like rats. I'm thinking that at this point Al already thought these rats were infected. Then she sees the sick people and their boils, and she knows that it's bubonic plague. But the weird thing is that the rats are in cages.

It's also interesting to note that those who were sick were very dehydrated. They needed water to help them survive, along with antibiotics. It reminded me of the virus at the prison in 4A. It’s also something we predicted with Beth for a long time: that she’ll show up and save everyone in some way. Water is a big symbol for her and also medicine/healing. I’ll come back to these details.

There are several mentions of being lucky, which we talked about about last week. The Luck Theory and what it means. (X, X)

I actually got Consumed feels a few times during this episode. The first was when Al and Dwight were in one of the office rooms, talking things through. It just reminded me of some of the office Daryl and Carol were in during 5x06. Then, when they got to the fifth floor with all the sick people, there were tents set up, just like we saw around Daryl, Carol, and Noah in Consumed.

@wdway even said she thought Al and Dwight’s relationship was supposed to have been paralleled to Carol and Daryl in Consumed. I hadn’t thought of it quite that way, but I LOVE that and totally agree. Notice how Al and Dwight were close, even hugging at one point, but they’re never going to be a romantic couple. Just saying. 😉

When Dwight realizes going to see Isabel could be dangerous for Al, he tries to talk her out of it. This is where she got some Beth dialogue. First she said they'd been doing what Virginia wanted by filming the dead, and, "calling it living." Pretty much synonymous with that Beth said at Grady ("You call this living?") to Dr. Edwards on the roof.

Then Al says, "We made a game out of seeing where dead people came from." That reminded me of two things. First, Beth and Daryl’s “I Never” game. But also when she yelled at him about the walker in the yard, saying, "killing them isn't supposed to be fun."

Then Al says, "The last time I felt alive was with her." Definitely sounds like something Daryl might say about Beth, no?

At one point, Al and Dwight go inside the walls to climb up to the next floor. It's not exactly the elevator shaft. The climb up using the pipes, but it's kind of similar. And there were some yellowish pipes as they crawl along, which reminded me of the pipes we saw when Noah and Beth try to escape the hospital.

Nora shows up to help them get up to the roof and wound up having to kill people that she knew when they were still alive. She becomes upset after having to kill one of them. What I noticed here was a small detail. She uses the bottom of an office chair to kill the walker. The bottoms of those chairs with the wheels on them are naturally in a five-pointed star shape. And she slammed it down into the walker’s eye. It showed this walker several times with his missing eye. So, more Sirius/Dog Star symbolism.

When Al gets to the roof to wait for Isabel, we see a red box with flare gun in it. She ends up firing off the flare gun to get Isabel's attention before telling her not to land. We've seen plenty of flare guns and they’re always entangled with Beth symbolism. One that always sticks out to me the most was in 5x11, The Distance, when they met Aaron he led them back to Alexandria. He shot up a flare gun right next to water tower, which was always a major symbol for me. You can read more details HERE. But after that, we also saw the flare gun in the barn next to a bunch of other Beth symbols, including the music box.

Let’s talk about the Trevitt callback. For anyone who doesn’t remember Trevitt, he was the guy that was brought into Grady while Beth was there. He had internal bleeding, and Edwards had Beth kill him by giving him the wrong medication.

(And, you know, scissors!)

I always thought Trevitt was interesting and probably a potent symbol, though I didn't know of what. Because he just seems so random. They went out of their way to say the Grady people had found him on the street and that he’d jumped from the top of some building. He had internal injuries and probably wouldn't have survived anyway, but I wondered what that was all about and why they bothered to give us his back story only to kill him off without even waking him up.

In this episode, Al and Dwight find a guy who's fallen from the roof of the building Nora and her group are in. We learn the man was shot by the helicopter people and then just fell. I'm still not sure exactly what this symbolizes, but it might strengthen the ties between Grady and helicopter people. Maybe Trevitt was somebody, much like this guy, who the helicopter people found, but for some reason killed him. Maybe he didn't so much fall from the roof as he was pushed or something. It's definitely a parallel and a very interesting one.

Let's talk about the plague. Al suggests the plague isn't happening naturally just because of unclean conditions. She thinks someone—and they go out of their way to say it probably isn't Virginia—is making people sick. Spreading the plague purposely. I think that's what that first scene with Al looking at the rats in the cages was about. Why would there be a rat in a cage, especially one with bubonic plague, in the basement of a nice office building.? Someone had to put it there.

Al concludes that whoever is writing, "the end is the beginning," on the walls is the one spreading the bubonic plague through the rats. We don't know who this is. Could it be the CRM? Maybe. Could be someone else, another group, we aren't aware of yet? Yeah, it could be. We just don't know.

But here's why this is so interesting to me. If these guys are purposely spreading a plague, then it's like they're purposely trying to kill off the human race. And yet they write, "the end is the beginning," on the wall. So, it's like they feel like they need to kill everyone off to start a whole new era or something like that.

Remind you of anything? Like…the wolves? We never learned much about their dogma, but they seemed to believe that by killing people, they were "freeing" them. As if sending humans to a new plane of existence.

I'm not saying these guys necessarily are the wolves or have direct ties to them in the show, but thematically, their beliefs are similar.

So, I gotta say it. Could wolves have foreshadowed these people? Could Beth be returning with them? We simply don't know. But remember that we saw the Alaska license plate with Aaron at the wolf trap. Now, we’re getting people with perhaps similar beliefs in an episode called Alaska. And in this episode, characters are reuniting with lost, romantic partners who, until now, have been, "just gone."

Have I mentioned how much I freaking loved this episode? Thoughts?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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lady-olive-oil · 5 years

Text

Work Out: Chapter 1

The moment you’ve all been waiting for; chapter 1 of Work Out. It took a lot out of me to finally get this out and im glad it’s here. The song in this is My Love For You by Sevyn Streeter, and I’m having it to where Geneva sings a few songs and have written some. Hence why it’s so long and the lyrics are in it, i recommend you listen to it while Geneva sings. So without further ado, here we go! If ya wanna be apart of my Lil Nasties Tag Squad, let me know!

Warning(s): nothing but language and a few heated moments

Word Count: 3,009 [i snapped]

Lil Nasties: @maddiestundentwritergaines || @themyscxiras || @sparklemichele || @designerwriterchic || @honeychicana || @chaneajoyyy || @jojolu || @dc41896 || @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove || @jozigrrl

-3 Weeks Later-

“What in the pink Himalayan salt, is this shit?!”

The year barely started and I was already in deep with issues. With trying to open up my own gym; moving and trying to spend time with my friends, my soon to be ex husband just had to add more things to his side of the divorce settlement.

“Genevieve Leona. Language.” Her father had the chance to look over the new settlement that she has given, checking to see if there were any plausible loopholes.

Placing a gentle kiss on her father's graying cheek, she handed him a glass of water, before sitting across from him at the island.

“Sorry dad. But you of all people should know how difficult this is. You've handled cases harder than this.”

“Sweet pea, I get it. I do, but I need for you to calm down please?”

His hardworking hands were placed on top of my delicate one's, trying to ease my pain. Who knew that going through a divorce was so time consuming and dreadful.

“He just works my nerves. I’m glad I went with the prenup before hand, because he would've gotten half of my building space. Which I’m not having that.”

Opening my own space is a dream of mine, something I've always wanted since I was 12. Whether is was going to become a gym; a skating rink or a combination of both, I was going to have it. Jake knows about it too, but he doesn’t like seeing me succeed more than him.

“We’ll get this all straightened out soon enough. In the meantime, don’t work yourself up over this clown. Like ya mama says ‘he ain’t worth hella beans.’ She’s wise you know. Imma head on home, and we’ll talk more later.” A hearty chuckle escaped him, as he kissed my head before heading to his car, to make it home before the sunset.

“I know, I know. She was right about this one, maybe. Call me when you get home, pops. Ok?” Giving him one more goodbye kiss, I waved at him before making it back inside.

“Operation: Get Jake out of my Life, is a go. All I need is some wine and dancing. I know just who to call.”

Picking up the phone to dial the FaceTime group chat, I was greeted by the other two angels in my life.

“What’s up golden girls. Y’all busy this weekend?”

“Nah not really no. We could go out tonight, I just finished up the schedule for the upcoming comic con in July. Gotta have costumes on deck to win. Ryan and I are good to go, his work thing ain’t till Thursday right?

Destiny never stopped working, even after college she made sure her coin was on point.

“I’m free this weekend too. Yeah him and John have this medical convention Thursday, which I clocked it to be 15 min away, so we all good to tag along as a group. Whatcha have in mind?”

Cynthia, our resident spy, could never be too careful when it came to men she dated. But Johnny never gave her a reason to doubt him.

“Skate night at Roller Jam. I need to get loose for a few hours to some Cool & The Gang. Besides it’ll give y’all a chance to see ya girl get down on some wheels.”

Roller skating has been in my blood since I was in the womb. My parents met at a roller skating rink and they’ve been groovin ever since. I happen to be the captain of my own roller skating team called Roller Queens. Best team to ever roll into Staten Island.

“I can get down with that, be like old times.” Destiny agreed.

“Great times. Oh what about Mr. Tall, blonde and gorgeous? Have you talked to him lately?” Cynthia changed the subject.

“Ha ha. No I haven’t. But he has been blowing up my Instagram like crazy. I have replied a bit though, nothing too drastic. Some chicks have been messaging me like ‘get away from him’; ‘he doesn’t want a hoe like you’ or ‘you’re not his type. Step off’ These little girls man, I’m telling you.”

It’s not like I don’t want Florian, I mean who doesn’t? Have you seen him lately? All jokes aside, I’m not looking for anything serious right now no way. I’m too busy trying to get my divorce finalized.

“We know you clapped them back. No time for the girls, this is grown woman ish.”

“What Dede said.” Cynthia chuckled a bit, candying is all to join in and I saw her man in the background. So I gave him a wave before looking at the time.

“Speaking of time, it’s getting late. I have to go get Leilani from the recording studio today since Lucas has their car and his game ran late. Plus Donny is on a date so, Older sister to the rescue.”

“We’ll see you at the rink Friday, ok?” Destiny said as she moved around the kitchen only for Ryan to say hi to me as well.

“Yeah. At like 5 ish, it’s late skate so it’s better. See y’all later. Mwha!” Sending then both my love and kisses, we hung up and went on about our business.

As I got ready to head downtown, I got a text from Michael saying he’s still in town for the next few weeks. That could only mean one thing: it was for business. Which also meant that Florian would be with him too. Maybe my week we starting to look up. I texted him what studio I’d be at, kill two birds with one stone.

Walking into the studio, I heard the smooth R&B sounds of Leilani’s voice through the speakers. This is where she’s always in her element, she turns everything out and puts her all into her vocals and practices. I couldn’t be more prouder of my siblings for going for their dreams.

“Good job little bird. Come out real quick would ya?” I smiled happily as she walked out the booth, proceeding to give me a hug in return.

“You really think I’m good? I know I need more practice, but I know I’m getting better day by day. How’s life going for you? Jake still being a little shit?” Leilani arched a brow, sitting in the chair across from me.

“As always. He added more “demands” to our divorce settlement, and I’m pretty sure I can’t meet them at all. So he’s stuck with his shit, and I keep mine.” I shrugged a tad, spinning in my chair and Leilani gave me a look.

“Well I hope he gets what he’s asking for cause all this is too much on me, and I ain’t even the one divorcing him. Let’s get your mind off of it, why don’t you go sing in the booth one time?” She suggested and the look turned into a smile.

“Me? In the booth? I haven’t done that in years Lei.” 6 years to be exact, but who's counting.

“That’s just it. Give it a shot and try it. That one song you were working on for the talent show, back home. What was it called?” She really wanted me to sing for her once. Anything for my sister I guess.

“My Love For You. It’s called My Love For You.”

“See?! Please sis? I want to hear you sang one time. I got Marcus here and we can cut it real fast. Nothing like a side hobby next to skating right? Please!” Leilani held my hands and gave me a puppy dog pout.

“Fine! Fine I’ll do it.” I broke down and earned a squeal from her, as I went into the booth. Putting on the headphones I saw Michael and Florian walk in just in time.

“Oh snap, cuzzo going in the booth.” Michael received a hug from Leilani, before he introduced her Florian who was a smitten kitten over seen Geneva again.

“Yeah yeah. Mike, don’t distract me please I’m in my zone. And you brought Florian too. Now I gotta show out.” I shook my shoulders a bit, receiving some laughs from the group before getting the signal from Marcus.

“Yes I’m here too. Michael didn’t tell me you could sing. So I am interested even more now.” The smirk that etched his perfect face wasn’t helping the fact that he looked good in his red track suit. Jesus be a fence.

Did it get hot in here? The heat must be on cause my face was feeling warm, when he smirked at me. I can not lose myself over this man.

“I’m ok. Been a while but maybe it’ll all come back to me soon.”

With a slight nod, I opened my phone to the lyrics I had saved in my notes, and just went with the rhythm. I had to think of something that made me happy in order to do the song. At the time it was Jake but, now I just had myself.

The track started off and Leilani was already vibing to the beat. Michael was too, with Florian soon falling in line. Controlling my breathing, getting the hang of it all over again. Hearing the background vocals, I got into the groove.

I, I'm saving all the

I'm saving all my love for you (to you, I)

I'm saving all the love (whoo, oh)

I'm saving all my love for you

Looking straight at Florian, I decided pour all my emotion into the song to practically let him know what i was feeling without being direct.

Ridin' round town in your black Impala

With my baby, yeah, that's my partner

Look the other way when they tryna holler

So unbothered, we're so unbothered

See I got niggas slidin' in my DMs

Stevie Wonderin' if I'ma ever see 'em

But I don't pay that shit no mind

No, I don't give that shit no time, no time

I just curve 'em from the a.m. to the p.m

Oh, baby, you're the reason

That none of these niggas can touch me

Ain't none of these niggas get lucky

No, no, no, no, no

Florian’s POV

“Man, I think she’s singing to you.” Michael lean over towards me, mumbling about something as a smirk appeared on my face.

“Maybe so. Remember the bet I told you about, that we set at the New Years party? I still have to prove myself to her a lot if I want to make this work.” I mentioned while leaning against the wall. Entranced by her voice.

“Yeah yall both told me about it actually. You think you can do it? I mean she’s pretty persistent with whom she dates. Last guy only lasted 3 weeks, on top of her on going divorce cause Jake plays too much.” Michael had informed me about her future ex husband and how much of a moocher he is. The faster he leaves, the better chance I have.

“Better me than him.” I knew i had to make a good impression on her at least, because she hasn’t been treated right in so long from what I’ve been told by her friends. Giving her my undivided attention, I know she felt the sudden shift in change.

Geneva’s POV

Whatever the boys were talking about must’ve been important, by the way there were engaged in the topic. Once Florian looked at me again I got back into the zone, hitting those notes.

Only you, yeah, it's only you that get my attention

Only you, swear it's only you, ain't no competition, no

'Cause baby, you give me everything that I've been missin'

That's why I'm saving all my love for you

yeah yeah, saving all my love

Saving all my love for you

(I'm saving all my love)

Saving, saving all my love, I'm saving all my love for you

It ain't with nobody else, you got it all to yourself

Just keep doin' what you do, baby

And I'ma keep saving all my love for you

Oh oh oh

Saving all my love for you, saving all my love for you

(I, I'm saving all the love I'm saving all my love for you) Yeah

I felt the rhythm all over my body while moving to the beat, imagining what it would be like to be with someone who might actually love me for me.

Yeah, if I had a hundred, I would break you off a fifty

Yeah, I know you'd do the same, I know you'd split it with me

Yeah, on ya team, Micheal Jordan, Scottie Pippin

Long as we got each other, I ain't trippin'

You the one, you the realest, you the realest (I, I)

Only you, yeah, it's only you (only you) that get my attention

Only you, swear it's only you, ain't no competition, no

'Cause baby, you give me everything that I've been missin' (oh)

That's why I'm saving all my love for you

“Oh shit, sis is snappin on the vocals.” I could hear Leilani through the cracked door with one headphone on my right ear. It felt good seeing her vibe to me singing, it was something we do growing up. To get that opportunity again was amazing. Florian kept smirking at me, with a sudden lovey look in his green-gold eyes. He was leaning by Marcus, on the soundboard just in tranced by everything. I gave it my all and even hit a high note in there.

Saving, saving saving all my love

Saving all my love for you

I been saving (saving it for you)

(I'm saving all my love)

Saving all my love, saving all my love for you

You got it all to yourself

Just keep doin' what you do, baby

And I'ma keep saving all my love (all my) for you, oh (oh yeah)

Saving all my love (my love) for you, saving all my love for you

All (you) my (you) love (you) for you

(You) all (you) of my love saving all my love

You got it all to yourself

Just keep doin' what you do baby, yeah yeah

You got it all to yourself

Just keep doin' what you do baby, doin' what you do baby, yeah

You got it all to yourself

Just keep doin' what you do baby, doin' what you do baby, yeah yeah

You got it all to yourself

Just keep doin' what you do, baby, doin' what you do, baby, hey

Oh, what you do to me, baby

I, I'm saving all the

I'm saving all my love for you (for you, I)

I, I'm saving all the

I'm saving all my love for you

Sending a wink in Florian’s direction, the game had started for us both. I had remembered that skate night was this weekend, the perfect opportunity to get this bet started. Coming out the booth feeling giddy about myself, I received a hug from my sister gaining my confidence over tenfold.

“You my dear, have a gift.” Florian took my hand and placed a kiss on top of it, trying to sway my way.

“Thanks. It’s one of my hidden talents, that I let you see without an ulterior motive.” with an arch in my brow, I gained a few laughs in the room. Looking him up and down, he eyed me too.

“You plan on giving me a show with your other talents, love?” He arched his brow as well, biting his bottom lip. Michael and Leilani were eating up the commentary.

Leilani took a picture of me for a split second, along with getting one of Florian with a shit eating grin on his face.

“Now yall both can either kiss already or do the first challenge. Am I right?” Mike reminded us both, setting the whole mood in motion.

“He’s right. Listen, this friday there’s a skate night at my old stomping grounds; Roller Jam in Staten Island. If you can skate to the beat, with some rhythm, I’ll go on a date with you.” crossing my arms across my chest, I felt confident in myself and always up for a challenge.

“Roller skating? You may have to help me out then. I’m tall enough but willing to learn.” Florian nodded in agreement and smiled genuinely at me. He handed me his phone to plug his number in, to set the game in motion and vice versa.

Sending the directions to the skating rink to him, I managed to take a picture of myself for the contact, and he did one for his in my phone. Before I left with my sister I set the tone of the challenge, standing on my tippy toes in my vermillion Nike Air Maxs, and placed a sweet kiss to his cheek. Looking into the reflective mirror on the wall I saw his cheeks turn red. His scent caught my senses, and it was intoxicating. He smelled like a warm fire and cocoa, something I wouldn't mind snuggling up against. Pulling away, I saw him look into my eyes for a split second, drawing me in but I had to be strong.

“Let the games begin, Munteanu.” With a gentle whisper against his ear, I grabbed my things and left him there speechless. Watching him watch me walk away with a sway in my hips.

“Let the games begin indeed, Shaw.” he was biting his plump bottom and giving me a once over one last time.

“You got it bad for my cousin bro. Let’s just hope for your sake, Jake doesn't come around and try to win her back.” I heard my cousin say to Florian as they left as well.

“I’d like to seem him try. I never lose.” the confidence in his voice stirred something in me, awakened the desire in me to finally be happy.

If Jake thinks he can mess up my fun, well he’s got another thing coming.

#florian munteanu x oc #florian munteanu #florian x geneva #florian munteanu fanfic #florian munteanu imagines #geneva shaw #work out #lil nasties #sevyn streeter

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fallout4holmes · 5 years

Text

Journal 54

We encountered a group of the Mechanist's creations distressingly close to Abernathy farm. An eyebot broadcasted a message from their creator as we struck;

"People of the Commonwealth. Again, I, the Mechanist, have come to warn you of the Scourge that terrorizes this land. Many of my robot allies have been defeated, leaving you all vulnerable to the insidious predators of the world today. But fear not! I have increased production of my robots. Soon, our patrols will be doubled, and there will be nowhere for our enemies to hide."

"Scourge?" I wondered aloud.

"I believe he is referring to you, sir!" Ada called as she shot down the offending floating speaker.

As the last robot fell, Valentine quipped, "Gotta say, this Mechanist fella sure gives a good villainous monologue."

I felt like an idiot. No wonder the name had sounded familiar; I was closely acquainted with The Mechanist's number one foe. That, however, was something to be considered later. The most pressing matter at hand was the restoration of Jezebel’s body, and holding her to her bargain.

Sturges was hard at work with a handful of volunteers from Sanctuary to assist with improvements around Red Rocket. When I handed him Jezebel’s head, he nearly dropped it in surprise and disgust. “Uhh… right. Ok. Building a robobrain, then?”

“Supposedly this one will be able to tell us how to get inside the Mechanist’s facility, provided we restore the body that raiders scrapped.”

“Got it.”

“Wouldn’t go crazy on the accessories,” Valentine said as he lit a cigarette. “She’s got a pretty damn big gap in her logic protocols, so. I’d stick her on something as non-threatening as possible.”

Sturges nodded, “I’ve got just the thing. Won’t take long.”

When Jezebel came out of standby mode, she found herself attached to an armless, armorless, protectron's body. She was… underwhelmed with the development.

"... Interesting. This body isn't quite what I had envisioned."

"Well, I was going to have Sturges connect your head to Liberty Prime's body," I said, "but I’m afraid relations with the Brotherhood are a little strained at the moment. This will have to suffice."

"If you're attempting to use sarcasm as an intimidation tactic, I'm afraid you're wasting your time."

“Intimidation?" Valentine was amused, "Can't say I've ever considered being a smart-ass to be intimidating.”

I've never heard a more impatient robot, “Why don't you ask me everything you wanted to know and then I'll be on my way.”

"Very well," I said. "Tell me everything you know about the Mechanist."

"Amazingly adept at programming, a veritable genius with electronics," she said, clearly impressed. "I've been dutifully carrying out the Mechanist's instructions to help the people of the Commonwealth for quite a long time."

Valentine, Ada, and I shared a glance. "Helping the people of the Commonwealth?" I asked. "You?"

"Absolutely," Jezebel confirmed, "it's my primary directive. The Mechanist instructed me to seek out and help the people of the Commonwealth. By my calculations, the easiest way to help a human is simply to destroy it. There's no point in prolonging a laughably fragile life. It's the most efficient way to assist them. Any other effort to help tends to result in numerous complex side-effects."

Valentine was aghast and furious, "You don't help people by killing them, that's insane!"

"On the contrary. Assisting a human to the best of my abilities only affords a twenty-five percent survival rate. That means there's a seventy-five percent chance that despite my efforts, the human I'm assisting will die from something beyond my control. Therefore it's better to hasten the human's death and put them out of their likely chance of misery than to deplete my limited time. It's actually quite elementary--"

"Enough," I commanded. "How do we gain access to the Mechanist’s facility?"

"It's rather simple, really. In order to gain entry to the Mechanist's facility, you're going to need to outfit one of your robots with an 'M-SAT' modification."

Ada was impressed. "A custom modification that acts as a key to the Mechanist facility. Very smart. In fact, chances are high the M-SAT may be required for multiple access points, like a robot identification card."

"Precisely," Jezebel said. "I'll upload the plans to your Pip-Boy device, and I will have fulfilled my portion of our agreement." She did so, and commented, "Perhaps I'll remain here for a while and see how things resolve between yourself and the Mechanist... purely for my own amusement, of course. I suspect you'll have quite a tale to tell once you return, but then again, I'd be surprised if you ever return at all."

"Don't wear out your welcome," Valentine warned, and we moved away to show Sturges the plans.

"Were you able to decrypt the signal, Ada?"

"Yes. The source is coming from a RobCo Sales & Service Center. Most likely a front for a larger operation."

I nodded, "Then it's time to confront the Mechanist."

"I hope you're allowed the opportunity. I too am curious as to what the Mechanist would have to say."

Sturges confirmed he had all the materials necessary for the M-SAT at hand. Ada volunteered for the installation. As she said, "I may be a robot, but I feel a strong amount of personal investment to see this mission through."

And so, "key" in hand, we headed east.

At my insistence, we made a detour south to Diamond City. Not only did I want to see my son before confronting a mad inventor of robots, but there was an item I wanted to take with us. I was fairly certain it would help.

Shaun was ecstatic to see us, greeting both his fathers with a tight hug. Codsworth greeted us warmly and asked if the rumors of war were to be believed.

"I'm afraid so," I confirmed.

"But why?" Shaun asked.

"The Brotherhood refuse to stop hunting synths. They've discovered the location of the Railroad; the only reason they haven't attacked is because the Minutemen and Railroad are allies.” I knelt down in front of him, “I wish I could have done or said something to change their leader’s mind. Perhaps I could have, but whatever needed to be done, I didn’t do.”

“Will a lot of people be hurt?”

“Probably. Let’s sit down a moment.”

Codsworth and Ada occupied themselves talking in the workshop while my partner and I sat on the sofa with our son between us and attempted to answer all of his questions. Shaun understood the concept of war, he fully realized what was going to happen. Violence born of fear and anger and hate is something one quickly becomes all too familiar with in this world, even when sheltered behind a wall. I suppose it is especially true when one’s father is responsible for destroying an entire underground civilization. What he didn’t understand was why the Brotherhood didn’t simply leave. I told him they believe they are in the right.

This did not seem to be a satisfactory answer, but he accepted it and asked why the Railroad wasn’t involved.

"The Railroad are spies, not soldiers," I told him. "A few members might be considered exceptions, but they do not have an army. I do. I had to choose whether I would ignore the Brotherhood, let them do what they wanted as long as they didn’t hurt any Minutemen or our allied settlements, or I could stand against them and their misguided desire to destroy that which they see as strictly evil. Either choice I made, people would die. I could not choose to ignore the Brotherhood."

"Ignoring would be like apathy, right?" Shaun asked.

"It would be similar." I’ve previously made my opinion of apathy dramatically clear.

Shaun was, of course, worried. "Promise you'll come home safe?"

I sighed, "Well, Valentine will be fine, it'll take more than a few bullets or energy blasts to stop him, after all."

"Don't joke, Sherlock," Valentine said softly.

I held my son's hand and gathered my thoughts. I thought my partner would assist, but he seemed to think I was the one that should do the talking. "Shaun,” I tried again, “I… don’t know what to expect in the next few days. The next week. I can’t even say when you’ll see us again. It might be a few days, it might be a long time. But if there is one fact I know for certain to be true, it is that Nick and I both love you.”

“I love you too, Dad. Promise you’ll be careful, at least?”

“That I can certainly promise,” I smiled. “However, first we have to stop the madman releasing deranged robots into the world.”

Shaun made a face, "The Mechanist."

"That's right."

Valentine chuckled, "Awful strong look of disgust for a name. You take after Dad for dramatics."

The comment got a quick laugh from me, but a frustrated huff from Shaun, "What's the point of building robots that only kill people?"

"It seems that was not the intention," I said.

Valentine nodded gravely, "Sounds like the killing bit might just be a horrible misunderstanding."

"Then why doesn't he stop?" Shaun asked.

"We must assume the Mechanist doesn't know what his creations are doing," I said. "Either that, or there is no misunderstanding at all and this is some twisted plot."

"Whatever it is, you're going to stop him, right?"

"Yes. Now, Valentine and I are only here for tonight, so let's make the most of it."

We played. I had scavenged a chess board together a month ago and taught Shaun the basic game; he'd been practicing with Codsworth and was eager to play against me. Valentine became complicit in a teddy bear's murder, and Shaun proudly informed us he had fixed Public Occurrences’ printing press while Piper was in Goodneighbor. According to Nat, she’d gone to tell Mayor Hancock about Diamond City’s decision to remain essentially neutral between Brotherhood and Minutemen, a decision which rankled me a bit, I must admit. I don’t know what Hancock is going to do with this information, if anything at all. To be perfectly honest, I don’t have time to worry about it.

Valentine and I smoked on the roof once Shaun was in bed that night. “So what's the plan when we get to the Mechanist?” he asked.

“That depends on how convincing The Mechanist finds my Silver Shroud performance.”

“Wait. The Shroud costume? That’s the item you wanted to pick up?”

“If The Mechanist wishes to model his career after a radio drama villain, why shouldn’t the hero make an appearance?”

Valentine shook his head with a smile, “God help us if Shaun’s this dramatic when he’s older.”

#fallout 4 #fan fiction #nick valentine #The Mechanist #ada #Sherlock Holmes #crossover

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