#jenkins' friendships with various immortal beings!

[smallblueandloud]

wow, i have so many thoughts about so many fandoms right now that it is inevitable that i will forget all of them before i can write them down.

anyway, let’s do jenkins immortality headcanons!

i haven’t actually read any arthuriana and i MEANT to but like. who the heck cares. not me. we’re going OFF THE RAILS of canon right now.

okay so finx @aethersea suggested that camelot was a magical kingdom and has lost its tether to reality in the same way that the library lost its tether to reality (...frequently) and i LOVE that so we’re going with that.

camelot was a kingdom of magic, one of the only of its kind, and then it fell. her king was wounded and sent off onto the lake and her knights stayed behind to guard her and she was broken from the world until the day when her king returned (in england’s hour of greatest need) and summoned it back.

the three left outside were: galahad, morgan le fay, and the exiled lancelot. they three are immortal. don’t ask me why. i GUESS the holy grail is supposed to make people immortal, but lancelot never got ahold of it, so like, don’t ask me. maybe they’re immortal since they’re of the magical isle and therefore they’re inherently magic. whatever.

galahad (i’m gonna call him jenkins now for the sake of clarity) sees that magic is running rampant without camelot to organize it, direct it. he watches the rise of the library. when the first librarian starts to collect artifacts, he offers his services. who better to deal with artifacts than a knight of the round table? besides, he is noble, and good, and full of justice, and this is something he can do to help.

lancelot watches the library grow, too. but he craves the power for himself and bides his time, growing his resources. jenkins tries not to think about him too much. this is his wisest decision and his biggest regret.

(morgan le fay, of course, entertains herself. jenkins runs across her about once a century. his reaction depends entirely on his loneliness at the time. he knows she’s evil, he knows, and he hates her for it, but he just... he can’t shake the comfort of being with someone who knows him and knows who he is and has seen the magic isle. the years that he tries to kill her, he fails. he can’t forgive himself for the years when he doesn’t try at all.)

here’s my biggest headcanon: jenkins isn’t a fictional, sure, but it’s a similar process. the stories of camelot live and grow and flourish and jenkins feels it. at first, it’s minor - the styles of clothing he remembers change with the fashions of the time. but then it gets more extreme. he can’t remember how formally his king spoke. he wakes up one morning feeling the clank of spurs on his horse’s side, despite spurs not having been invented for another four hundred years. and one day he realizes that he’s unsure what lancelot looked like.

here is how jenkins is similar to a fictional. jenkins belongs to a place that is more myth than fact, and its image changes to fit the times and the popular versions. jenkins’ memories are changed with them. he gets into the habit of writing down every change he experiences. those records are the only things he keeps, throughout his very (very very) long life. books and books’ worth, crammed into his desk in the library and spilling over into the shelves. his favorite versions - the ones that feel closest to the fact he can no longer reliably identify - are sometimes ones that have been lost to history.

(“in no version!” he hears jake insisting angrily one day, “in no version was the outcast knight kind! that never happens, it ruins the- the- the INTEGRITY of it, and the STRUCTURE of it, and NO one’s EVER argued-”

“actually, mr. stone,” says jenkins as mildly as he can. “actually, there was a mildly popular version in the early 1400s that said something similar. it never got out of germany, or well, it wasn’t germany at the time, but they didn’t like writing things down much. i’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it before.”)

yes, jenkins has annotated copies of every version he can find, and yes he DOES have strong opinions about adaptations. isn’t it hilarious? enjoy it for the moment, because--

it’s not just the facts of the story itself that changes in his mind. the faces shift, too. guinevere always matches the beauty standard of the time, or later the most famous actress to play her. while dulaque’s face doesn’t change, jenkins’ memory of it does, depending on who’s been illustrating him recently.

(most of why he is so grumpy in the early 21st century is because he keeps seeing merlin as this skinny child. he doesn’t know who’s in charge of bbc casting but he is SICK and TIRED of visualizing this MORGAN person every time he thinks back to the great and terrible wizard that introduced him to court.)

arthur, though. arthur’s face changes the most. sometimes he resembles the best and most beloved leader of the time. sometimes he is from a painting, or he looks like jesus, or he is simply a famous actor. whatever it is, his face has changed in jenkins’ mind more times that he can count, and jenkins knows in his heart that he has absolutely no recollection of his king’s true face.

he worries, sometimes, that arthur will return to save england - and he won’t recognize him at all.

[just-rhys-things]

~ Logic Behind my Favorite Choice of Games List ~

(possible spoilers)

1. Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Malin Rydén)🧠😈👥

- Great writing, compelling story, friendship opts

- I loved looking at supervillainy from the perspective of a depressed ex-hero with PTSD

- I get to be a plot hobo, searching for various scraps of backstory in bins to peak my interest for later

2. Psy High (Rebecca Slitt)🧠🎒😶

- Fun story, creepy villains, and 11th grade nostalgia

- Brainwashing elements are actually well done

- I joined the bad guys and got another path (it didn’t just end)

3. Wayhaven Chronicles (Mishka Jenkins)🧛🏻‍♀️💉👩🏻‍✈️

- Likable characters, good writing, enjoyed customizing my MC’s personality outside of stats

- my MC was an idiot and I love them regardless

- Any interaction with the villain is hilariously creepy

4. The Grim and I (Thom Baylay) 💀👻⛓

- Great thoughtful tale of accepting your own death

- The Grim Reaper is an amazingly written character

- Gave options to have ur Grim be from diff. cultures

5. Heart of the House (Nissa Campbell) 🏰🔮👻

- Interesting characters and setting, good plotline

- The supernatural stuff was amazingly offputting

- I grew very protective of Reaves and Loren

6. Sea Eternal (Lynnea Glasser)🧜🏻‍♀️🧜🏽‍♂️🐳

- Interesting thoughts on the limits of immortality

- Chill underwater life as a mermaid (+squid war)

- I didn’t have an opinion on whales b4, now I do

7. Choice of Robots (Kevin Gold)🤖💰⚔️

- Plays the long game and feels very impactful 4 me

- My lil’ robot is the best and I won’t stop lovin’ them

- Teaching a robot about death is intriguing to me

8. I, Cyborg (Tracy Canfield)🤖🚀👩‍👦

- It’s just fun being a conniving cyborg bastard in space

- I genuinely wanted to help my character get better

- Me n’ Marley became unlikely divorced parents

9. The Orpheas Ruse (Paul Gresty)🧠👥⏳

- A fun body-hopping adventure with friends

- Mind trickery and the like is fun

- The villain was actually pretty friendly to me

10. Choice of the Deathless/Devil’s Thirst (Max Gladstone) 👿⚖️⚔️

- The storybuilding being a mix of supernatural(?) and legal stuff really interested me

- I got to be a demon’s lawyer, basically

- Some of the fight scenes really impressed me