#story based on an obscure game

[art]

Meet the Artist: @erindrawsstuff

Hi, I’m Erin, and I draw stuff! I’m an illustrator and 2D animator based in Austin, Texas (yee-haw). I’ve been in and out of the animation/entertainment industry for about 3 years, working many different roles like character designer for Rooster Teeth, animator for The Daytripper (a Texas-based PBS special), and character and prop designer for Lowbrow Studios (Adam Ruins Everything, etc.). Most of my work is now in personal projects like my webcomic “SUBSIX” (I promise I’m coming back to it!) and working with friends and colleagues within indie spaces, all while working my day job and returning to school for a degree in 3D animation! Most of my inspiration can likely be traced back to my cringe anime roots and the more obscure 2D animated movies from Disney while looking to new inspirations like Into the Spider-verse and Delicious in Dungeon. I think my main goal has been to create compelling stories with enticing characters while trying to navigate the complexities of life and the people in it (both in the media I create and irl). In the meantime, I explore this through reading works like The Locked Tomb, listening to Philosophy Tube, playing disaster lesbians in our DnD campaign of nearly 4 years, playing video games that make me cry and question things, and challenging myself to grow and improve in all aspects. I hope someday I’m able to return to being a full-time artist, but for now, I’m rediscovering why I create and how to maintain a reasonable work/life balance. I’m truly grateful that people enjoy my work, regardless of how big or small my following is or becomes in the future. I hope one day I’m able to be an inspiration to someone as many have for me! Thank you for this opportunity to introduce myself!

Nice to meet you, Erin! Below are some pieces they have shared with you all.

Check out more of Erin's work over at their Tumblr, @erindrawsstuff!

[purplealmonds]

This is my tribute to the late Technoblade. I'm well over a week late to the anniversary of his passing, but I think it was worth the wait. I wanted to get this right.

The story I want to tell is of time's passage after his passing, and the set dressing of this space is a symbolic amalgamation of various aspects of his life depicting that concept.

I have a lot more to say about this painting - three pages just for the symbolism alone. If you're interested, please let me know and I'll share my analysis on a separate post! Edit: I caved. Aight, prepare for a massive info dump below the cut!

DISCLAIMERS:

Although I put a lot of research into this piece, my knowledge is likely flawed and incomplete. If I missed or misinterpreted a reference, it’s because I’m new to the Technoblade community. If I got a symbolism thing wrong, it’s because I relied on Google search for answers. I fact checked where I could. And with this analysis, I hope I can clear up any misinterpretations! 

—

OVERVIEW:

There’s lots of imagery to unpack so I’ll try parsing it in a structured manner. Let’s first examine it holistically. 

The story I want to tell here is of time’s passage after Technoblade’s passing. As such,the set dressing of this space is a symbolic amalgamation of that concept.

Prominently featured are the various medical equipments - a nod to the grim reality of his cancer. But let’s not linger upon that aspect of his story.

Of equal importance are the more mundane objects - his gaming setup, the couch and pillow which Floof sat upon in that one photo, the plethora of paraphernalia of branded merchandise, and references to his exploits in Minecraft. These are relics and mementos of his legacy.

All of these elements intermingle in flooded, lushly overgrown room looking out to a rose-tinted exterior. Is it dawn? Dusk? I’ll leave that interpretation up to the viewers.  

The third and final component is the plant life representing his community -us. We beautify this metaphorical space with where it was once laden with tragedy. Yet, despite these riotous blooms, we never quite encroach on the bed - the empty space left behind by him.

—

SET DRESSING:

Much care was taken in selecting the blossoms and placing them in symbolically significant locations.  And this neatly transitions us into the analysis individual details.

Foreground: 

In the foreground, ivy crawls through a lamp and white clovers thrive atop a pile of pillboxes. The lamp base, once a shining bronze-like finish, is heavily tarnished. The lampshade is overgrown with moss and ivy. Even if the greenery has yet to damage the electric wiring, the damp surely has finished the job. Even if the bulb is replaced, the body is too far gone. The light’s never coming on again. 

I was initially put out that my painstakingly 3D modeled pillboxes became entirely obscured, but I think it works in favor of the piece’s overarching theme: the beautiful wilds overtaking a space that once reeked of the desperate fight to prolong life. 

White clover blossoms meaning “thinking of you” is paired with the ivy meaning “everlasting devotion”.  It’s an apt combination. It has been over a year since his passing, and we still remember and carry on his legacy. 

Nestled amongst the foliage is Techno’s compass. It was once used to hunt him down in the Dream SMP. But now, it’s an odd comfort. Even though he’s no longer with us, he’s still somewhere far, far away– or is he? The original idea was for the needle to point heavenwards, but it is currently pointing…sideways?  I’ll get to the reasoning a bit later. 

The Flood:

Moving deeper into the space, we hit the floodwaters. These once turbulent currents are now tranquil enough to nourish this verdant place. The thriving plant life hides much of this darkness. It is beautiful, hopeful, even. But always bittersweet, because everything that grows here is laced with an old sorrow.

White lotus rise from the murky depths. That is us, overcoming our grief. Breaching the surface, we gain a new vantage point to contemplate this loss. Perhaps we can also find a more comforting perspective of it.

Submerged amongst the blossoms is a rusted oxygen machine. I wanted to decorate the machine with stickers, much like one would personalize a plaster cast for a broken limb. It is deliberate that the “Technoblade Never Dies” sticker is in shadow, while the “So Long, Nerds" is in light. 

Immediately to the right was meant to be a box of assorted Technoblade apparel.  But then I flooded the space for narrative reasons, rendering that idea unusable. I eventually converted it into a Welch’s Fruit Snacks box, because apparently Technoblade liked them? It’s one of the shallower references here but it is what it is.

And finally, there is a little cameo floating somewhere in the waters. An Easter egg, if you will. I wonder if you can find it? 

Furnishings from Home:

I found the couch and Technoblade’s gaming setup during my trawl through the Technoblade Reddit page for reference photos. Balancing this space full of impersonal medical equipment with more personalized belongings is grounding. These areas insert familiarity in this strange environment.

Gaming Setup:

The gaming setup is bare bones - just the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. There was no space to add more iconic elements like his Blue Yeti microphone or the steering wheel from that Minecraft challenge. Hanging above but heavily obscured by overgrowth are two framed pictures of Technoblade’s cabin and a potato minion. It is a blink-and-you-miss-it detail, placed in a dim space and requiring close examining to notice. Without the context of the rest of this environment, it is easily mistaken as generic set dressing. 

That’s the point, though. This was a space where he streamed and created videos much beloved by his community. This space was the means of creation, not the creations themselves. Without the creator at the helm, this setup becomes insignificant. Does one dote over the easel on which paintings were created, or the paintings themselves? So now it sits in darkness, a footnote of Technoblade’s legacy. 

Nostalgia Corner:

On the other end, we have the sold out Youtooz plushies and the Agro Pig plush from the recent merch drop sat atop the couch.  If you look closely, you’ll see a Skeppy coin leaning against one of the plushies. Behind the couch is a shelf. A generic shelf, but the important bits here are the sellout bell, Youtube plaque, and vinyl figurines. 

This corner of the room is nostalgic and soft. Everything is bathed in rosy pink light, and it is filled with things that are comfortingly familiar. All across the world, people in his community have these pieces of merch to remember him by. 

The red poppies that also grow here have multiple meanings. It represents the battle - one against sarcoma - which was fought here. It symbolizes death, but also resilience in the face of grueling conditions. It is said that they grow in former battlefields where of fallen warriors. I believe of all the flowers here, this one best represents Technoblade.

The Hanging Mobile:

Strung up above it is a rather last minute addition to the environment - a hanging mobile fabricated from totems representing each member of the Sleepy Bois Inc. friend group. First and foremost is Technoblade’s iconic MCC crown, aptly placed at the top. Although it is untouched by the greenery, the gold and jewelry are somewhat muted and tarnished by time.

This is not the case for the objects below. TommyInnit’s music disc shines iridiscent green and purple - Cat and Mellohi merged into one. To is right is a sky-blue guitar pick with the LoveJoy logo engraved onto it for Wilbur Soot. And finally, below it all is Philza’s Friendship Emerald - sparkling and refracting light - with Elytra feathers fastened at the bottom. They, suspended and isolated from everything, maintain a pristine vibrancy which strongly contrasts against everything else in this space. 

IV Stand:

Next to the computer setup is the IV stand. It sustains life which is incapable of continuing on without intervention. The butterfly milkweed growing on it, in contrast, says “let me go.” The latter, overtaking the tangle of tubes and powered off patient monitor, is victorious. The hooks stand rusted, and the IV bag empty from disuse.

Sat atop the patient monitor but almost blending into the walls is a pig figurine featured in Dream’s latest music video. It stands on a high perch, yet is unassuming as to direct focus on Technoblade, or rather, his absence. 

Hanging from the wired basket is an air freshener tag. If you look on the official website, this is one of the only products which has what I can only call interesting flavor text. Most are merely descriptions and specs of the product. To quote it verbatim:

“Yes, this is a real product. And no, this ‘air freshener’ has no discernible fragrance. ‘Why’ you ask? Because Mr. Technodad and our team agreed this was exactly the sort of air freshener Alex would have found hilarious.”

As morbid as it sounds, I feel like this air freshener tag would not have existed before Technoblade’s passing. It is so unlike any other merchandise I’ve seen in any other branded merchandise store. It’s like an inside joke, secretly shared within the descriptions for the world to eventually discover. 

Window:

Unlit candles line the window sill - the aftermath of a candlelight vigil. It is a versatile symbol. It raises awareness of a disease or illness. It pays tribute the dead. Judging from the melted wax dribbling down the candle shafts and the wall below (the opacity was reduced so it looks less like bloodstains), this has been done many times over. But there is so much more candle to burn, representing the people still continuing this ceremony, albeit in the privacy of their own homes.

Above the candles are some broken blinds. When grieving, it would have been so easy for Mr. Technodad to hide away from the world in his grief. It’s understandable, to give into that primal urge to flee from prying eyes when he’s at his most vulnerable. He had the difficult task of reading out his son’s final farewell to us. This barrier between him and us dismantled by this gesture so we can remember Technoblade together. 

Coincidentally, the window frame itself somewhat resembles the kitchen window featured in Technoblade and Technodad's cooking videos. Completely unintentional on my end, but fitting in a way since in both those videos they're pulling back the metaphorical curtains for the audience to peer into a small aspect of their private lives.

To the right of the window is a nondescript clock, forever stopped at the 6:30 as a nod to the date when the "So Long, Nerds" video was published. The minute hand is accidentally left out removed to signify that time will no longer move forward for Technoblade. In contrast, the rest of the world - represented by this space - continues to grow and change around his absence.

A wind chime hangs just outside the window. It is said that the soothing sounds produced by them is a healing balm during tumultuous times. Where there is wind there is stirred up emotions, but it is motionless on this calm, breezeless day. A rare respite, where remembrance overrides grief. 

On a more amusing note, there is an interesting looking moth perched on the window glass. Upon closer inspection, the wing pattern may look somewhat familiar. In Chinese culture, when a huge moth visiting your home is the embodiment of your recently deceased loved one checking on you. Remember the compass in the foreground? Well, here’s why it is pointed sideways instead of upwards. This idea came up rather organically during a VC session in the R/Technoblade Discord server. My handful of viewers and myself affectionately dubbed this doofy looking moth TechnoMoff!

Venturing further beyond the windows, ferns grow with wild abandon. They represent eternal youth, and from a certain point of view, he will remain youthful forever at the age of 23. He lives on through us carrying on his legacy and spreading his story. 

Everything outside is tinged with pink. After someone dies, we start seeing them less as a person and more as a legacy. It is the natural course of things to start seeing the deceased through rose-tinted lenses - hence the artificially pink hue of the outside contrasting with the more grounded color palette of the inside. 

Bed:

And now we circle back to the centerpiece of this entire composition: the bed and the things that surround it. 

In front of the bed is an over-bed table with a single object: an incense bowl filled to the brim with burnt sticks of incense. A simple shrine for Technoblade. In Chinese culture, we light incense at the altar to honor our loved ones. We may live separate lives and not cross paths often, but we all come together to leave our marks through this ritual. It is proof that he is still very much loved and missed by us all.

The bariatric bed frame is typically seen in hospitals. It allows the patient to comfortably sit up or recline without expending valuable energy. Encased in this frame is something more personal - the mattress and cushions which Technoblade laid upon in his photo with the Youtube plaque. Their unique patterning is a foil for the impersonal receptacle it is caged in. It is spotlit by the window light, emphasizing its emptiness. Not a single blossom dares to encroach upon this space, because to do so would be to erase the space where Technoblade last resided. Like I mentioned before, this is story is about the space around him as much as it is about him. 

Cradling this bed frame are several flowers. Rosemary and forget-me-not’s for remembrance. Appropriate, given its proximity to the bed. Morning glories, for resilience. That’s us, again. For a while, we meander and spread in the upper walls of this space, avoiding the floodwaters which symbolize grief. But eventually, we gather the strength to meander down to the bed, where grief was the strongest.

—

CONCLUSION:

There is that cheesy quote from that one Marvel TV show – “What is grief, but love persevering?” While this reframes our perception of dealing with loss, grief is not some thing that should linger. The absence of grief does not equate to the lack of love. Instead, I would like you to consider this: remembrance is love persevering. And with our combined perseverance, Technoblade will never truly die. 

[luxlightly]

Each of the "bad" endings for the bg3 companions is them getting what they think they want, but only because of a deep insecurity instilled in them from the unbalanced relationship they were in before the events of the game.

Gale tries to become a god because he has been made to feel by Mystra that he could never be enough the way he is.

Astarion becomes a carbon copy of his abuser because of the fear he instilled in him that makes him believe he can only be safe through power.

Shadowheart gives herself entirely to the very goddess who stole her whole life from her because she was made to believe she owed it to her and that she could only regain her lost memory through her.

Lae'zel is killed and consumed by the queen who enslaved her people because she was made to believe that she could only exist and be known through her devotion to her.

Wyll swears eternal servitude to the hells because he was made to feel by Mizora that anything short of total and complete sacrifice for his father was tantamount to killing him himself and his only worth was what he could do for others.

Karlach burns up and dies because she's been made to feel that her life can never be her own and that the only way to keep hold of her autonomy is through death.

And the great irony is that, in getting what they want, they ensure they get what they most fear.

Gale will never feel like he is enough.

Astarion will never stop being afraid.

Shadowheart will never know who she is.

Lae'zel will die in obscurity, never known by her people.

Wyll will never truly be able to reconsile with his father or devote himself fully to the people he wants to help most.

Karlach still doesn't get to live her life free of the hells. Zariel still gets the last laugh.

It's by overcoming their insecurities and fears that they come to understand what they truly want and find happiness.

I far prefer this style of "what you want may not be what you need" kind of story to the "the most healthy thing in life is acceptance of not being happy" style that's so popular. When what you want isn't what you need, it's not generally because you were meant to be humbled or because you needed to accept a level of unhappiness in order to be "healthy".

It's because what you think you want is often based on fears and insecurities. Each character's good ending is not them realizing "you can't get what you want", it's realizing they never really wanted it in the first place. And the thing they thought they'd get from it : acceptance, safety, family, renown, etc, they DO get, because of the support your character gives them. And they are so much happier for it.

I like that a lot.

[easy-there-leftovers]

I See You, Darling (2)

[Astarion x reader] Due to surprisingly overwhelming demand, the previous fic, along with this one and many more to follow, will now be part of a series!! It was honestly very difficult trying to come up with what happens next, but here we are. The idea came to me during a fever!! |Word count: 2.5k.| Based off of this post I made.

Part 1 here!!

Next part here!!

The reader believes they are in a dream. It wouldn’t be the first time their fantasies conjured up such an obscure, yet somehow realistic scene. And so they’ve elected to treat the experience with as much realism as one would observe in a dream; little to none.

Alternatively;An ex-art-student-now-traveler accustoms themselves to the party.

————━─━────༺༻────━─━————

“Shadowheart. Shadow…heart. Hm.” His gaze bounced between you and her. 

“I’m sure her parents meant well, but the name is rather ominous, isn’t it?” He leaned over to your side, not bothering to hide his blatant distrust. Lowering his voice dramatically, if anything.

“Unless she chose it herself. Which is even more worrying, honestly.” He chuckled out.

It had been no more than two bells after mornbright when you met Astarion. Since then, you’ve come to realize how…different your presence has changed the course of the story. Though more subtle than you expected.

It would seem as if you had met the elven vampire before the party was formed, which was strange as your last save point was far later than that and the forest had been quite a long way from the beach.

When you finally stumbled upon Shadowheart, he was quick to share his inner thoughts that you haven’t heard from the game before. 

As they continued with their quest to find a cure for the Illithid problem, expanding their party as they did so, you had tried to make yourself useful by doing the dirty work for them. Looting and opening crates filled with camp supplies, armor, and potentially useful weapons and artifacts could always come in handy for trade or for “artifact consumption,” as per Gale’s need. Sorting them for your group’s convenience.

And while you did not have more direct and immediate practical use for your course of study in the modern world, the research you’ve created and reviewed for character creation and world building was doing wonders for your survival.

Or as much as it can for a magicless, not so athletic human. 

The “runes” of the medieval ages that have been carved into stone, along with the basic history and background of the common races and deities of the fantastical world that tabletop RPG has offered puts you at quite an advantage.

Not to mention your experience with the areas of the game giving you the same effect.

But this library of information had also aroused something akin to suspicion and concern. It would be understandable if you were a simple traveler just like them, or perhaps even an artisan from the guild, but you were not as astute as either background.

So how could you have access to this much knowledge yet be unaware of more practical matters? It’s as if you had simply read about it from somewhere. 

Astarion had been quick to give an explanation before you could form one of your own that could poorly convince your companions. Although, perhaps his suggestion was more outlandish than anything you could have come up with.

“They came with me. Property and all the formality that comes with it. A family pet, if you will.” A perfect excuse to justify your constant proximity to him, and a likely explanation to being well read, but not well experienced.

You thought nothing of the title, your apathy to the non-hazardous labels of this world apparent.

The same couldn’t have been said about your associates who had a few comments about this disclosure.

“I am unfamiliar with the–well, I shall not say ‘culture.’ ‘Customs’, perhaps. I did not think your kind to house such breed of cattle. Perhaps they could be useful.” Was Lae’zel’s. 

“I assure you, they typically don’t. Humans aren’t naturally subservient to Elves, at least in this manner. This setup sounds more akin to slavery. Blink twice if you need help.” Was Gale’s response. 

“It seems like Astarion's from the upper city, given the embroidery on his armor. I wouldn’t put it past them to have servants that follow them around.” Shadowheart’s nose crinkled at the thought. 

The party already had such an interesting rapport. Not entirely comfortable with one another to divulge everything, but loose enough to have semi-pleasant conversation with.

You thought this as you sorted out the fruits of your collective labor into neat pouches and bags, keeping items similar to one another factioned into their respective holding space. The chest being closer to Withers more than you’d like, but it was nice to hear the ramblings of an…undead person? Hearing someone continuously talking allows you to be more productive.

You’ll admit, handling enchanted armor and crystals does make you a tad nervous but you’re comforted by the thought that it will not be you who wields it in battle.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Gale approaching your direction. Possibly to ask for his share of the camp supplies just a little earlier to sate himself as you had an abundance of it for now. You regard him with your back turned and he stops for a bit.

“I will say that I don’t have the lightest of feet, but I figured myself better at sneaking around.” It’s not his fault that he got caught, but the bright purple robe and the smell of the oils you’ve been crafting for them are particularly noticeable.

“You are, but I’ll assume you're not exactly in the best shape after dealing with a few goblins.” You hold up a bottle of a healing potion, swinging it a bit with your fingers to indicate that the smell had warned you of his arrival.

“You’ve got a keen nose on you. Must be from all of Astarion’s training but, speaking of which,” He nears himself to your crouched form, going in to lean against a very old and empty crate.

“Gale, wait–” Right as your warning leaves you, they seem to evade him as falls right through the wood. A comical layer of dust and lichen pluming out from the force. He tries to quickly recover from both the physical and emotional damage as he brushes himself off to make himself presentable once more. 

“Ahem, as I was saying,” He again makes his way over to you, settling for just standing close as his attempts to look unbothered temporarily cost him his ego.

“I was serious about what I said before. While I don’t know what to make of our pallid friend just yet, as enigmatic as he is, what he said before is quite confusing. Best make haste away from here if you want your freedom while we’re distracted with this worm problem.” His tone suggests a genuine concern which confuses you.

You’d be lying to yourself if the label of the set up didn’t sound odd, but you’ve never expressed discomfort as there was nothing all too worrying about it on your end. It was mostly for show, and you had as much independence as Tav would have in your game.

You endeavor to quickly dispel his worries.

“You don’t have to worry, I’m very satisfied with my servitude under Astarion. He’s very lenient and reliable, and I’m better off with him than on my own." You return to your task of sifting through your materials but pause and look back up at him to continue.

"I do thank you for turning my way though. Your concern is much appreciated but unnecessary.” You lowered your head a bit to show your thanks.

“Well if someone as generous as yourself says to trust you on this, then I have no choice but to concede! I’ll keep a watchful eye and offer guidance, should you need it. Also, do we happen to have something for—” As he asks you for some sort of salve, just a few ways off, your eccentric “handler,” of sorts, watches the two of you interact.

Don’t get him wrong, such matters don’t really catch his attention, but being an elf does curse him with the ability to have extensive hearing. Something that he thinks Gale knew, and something you forgot. That would explain the lack of distance between you two.

He thinks it’s amusing how the wizard is trying to make conversation with you as if you were some foreign creature. His usual eloquence nowhere to be seen, and you seemed as unbothered as ever. Like how he usually saw you when you conversed with someone through a crystal.

It was a phone, not that he knew that though.

“They’re a real nice one, aren’t they?” Karlach says from her side of the camp which was nearer towards his tent and yours.

“Hm, yes. While that may be an admirable trait, it’s hardly going to get them anywhere if they keep this up.” Astarion huffed out, not very keen on your altruistic playstyle so far.

He doesn’t know much about what you do and don’t know, all he knows is that you do know of the events to unfold and could be the key to defeating his master.

 All he needs is to keep you at his side. So he’ll allow you this much freedom.

“Oh come on, you. You can’t seriously think that after everything. Our camp’s pretty well maintained because of ‘em, not to mention the connections we’ve been able to get!” She fortifies her statement by knocking on her chest, the engine humming within feels lighter and newer since you’ve informed her of the tiefling blacksmith at the grove. 

He hums in response, returning to reading his book as he thinks about his growing hunger. He’ll have to hunt soon enough. While your positive reputation occasionally reflects on him by proxy, it can also reflect negatively due to the alleged nature of your relationship. If he wants the journey to a way of understanding the tadpoles to be a more comfortable one, he has to at least prevent their trust in him from diminishing.

~

Night falls later than he’d have liked, having waited for everyone to be asleep so that he may prowl the forest for sustenance.

The rest were sound asleep in their bedroll as the skirmish from earlier on in the day had proven to be sufficiently tiring. The crackling fire surely brings a lulling warmth that he supposes he’ll have to miss out on for a while.

As he begins to slink off into the darkness, he looks back to gauge his surroundings and catches your form from across the settlement. It seems you were tallying away the items in the shared chest and double-checking to see that everything is checked and balanced with your records. 

Your shoulders jump at his suddenly standing form, but try to understand his intentions. You mouth, “where?” with a very confused face, to which he responds with a simple shushing motion and waits for your acknowledgement.

You nod slowly, and he holds your gaze before sneaking off once again.

‘He’s coming back, right?’ You wondered. The progression of your experience now in comparison to the game was vastly different, and you didn’t know if all scenes, or only some, would present themselves in this world. You assume he planned to hunt, and while you trust his abilities, you want to make sure he’s attended to properly should he be harmed in any way.

So after retrieving a few potions, a journal, and a pencil, you stashed them in a satchel and positioned yourself at the base of the tree in the direction he left in. You weren’t particularly sleepy tonight, and planned to pass the time in wait of your companion. 

There wasn’t much to do in this century to keep yourself entertained. The only things you’ve found so far were a few instruments and all manners of journals and inks.

The inkpot that you picked up appeared to be red this time. The game of, “which ink dye will I get this time?” will have to be the most of your entertainment for now. Not all too different from home, you suppose. And while writing keeps your mind at bay, illustrating all manners of wildlife have proven to be quite the fun exercise. 

You’ve made a few notes on creatures that you and your company have encountered. The visual elements of a drawing allowed you and the others to keep track of materials that could be salvaged from them, and their resistances to certain attacks. 

Though as much as you liked depicting such lifeforms in paper, you’ve come to be very interested in portraying your vampire friend.

Evidence of your interest present in the pages filled with his likeness as you search for an unmarked page. You’ve made a few of the others, yes, but anyone who would gain access to your journal would surely see which member of the group you favor more.

You continued to draw, and occasionally write, on the parchment as you waited for Astarion to come back. All sense of time evading you as you focus on the task at hand.

A perfect opportunity for a tired rogue to surprise an unsuspecting human.

“And what are you still doing up, little one?” He appears from behind the very tree you rested against, causing you to spill a bit of ink on your thumb.

You clicked your tongue, not at all annoyed by the character but by your absentmindedness and now stained appendage.

“Sorry, I was just waiting for you.” You sealed the inkpot, and gathered your materials. Effectively, but unknowingly, hiding your work from peering eyes that were the same deep red as your finger.

“I’m very flattered, darling. But couldn’t you wait until morning? I'm sure this couldn’t have been all too important, yes?” He gestures to your satchel, referring to your journal, but you misinterpreted it as him asking for your medical supplies.

“Oh, that depends. Are you hurt, by any chance? I stayed awake in case you might've needed help tending to yourself.” You opened the pouch to reveal its contents to him, your stained thumb in full view.

The sight makes him sigh out, but is thankful for your offered service.

“I’m alright, nothing of interest happened while I was away.” He considers telling you about the nature of his little…'escapade.' He's unaware if you are of his condition, and he doesn’t wish to out himself if not necessary to avoid possible conflict. So he settles for advising you to rest.

“We need you well rested, my dear. You sleep. I’ll keep watch.” The dialogue is familiar, and you can’t stop yourself from letting a small laugh out as you responded with an equally familiar line

“Thank you. I’ll sleep better for that.” You lower your head as you usually do in gratitude.

“The pleasure is all mine.” He mirrors your gesture, albeit in a way that is most appropriate for someone of his character. “Sweet dreams.”

You walked back to the chest. Returning the potions and ink you’ve plucked from the supply, but keeping the rest of the pouch’s materials with you as you turn in for the night. Awaiting the promise of further study that a new day typically makes.

As Astarion is left with his own thoughts, a sour taste still in his mouth from his earlier meal, he thinks about the man in the journal you kept. He did not see much, only a vague outline of the figure. He thinks about who, or what, it could have been but dismisses the thought rather quickly.

He has no time for a mysterious person with hair less perfect than his own, touching his untainted locks as he does.

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Thank you everyone for your interest in the series!! As per the request of some, I'll now be adding a taglist!

Thank you to @rey26, @shyminnie07, @lynnloveshobi, @iggee-rose, @automnepoet, and @tiannamortis for asking to be tagged!!

[im-only-here-for-the-fandom]

Astronomy Teacher Danny

so dp x dc idea, i don’t know if anyone has thought of this but instead of danny teaching chemistry in gotham( which i really love) because of his fenton/phantom/amity park craziness, he teaches astronomy because space obsession danny is best danny , it could be an elective or a club it doesn’t really matter.

i totally see danny as the fun and sweet teacher that all students liked, he would wear comfy clothes like jumpers or knitted sweaters, have a cup of something warm in his hand as well as an extra thermos and paper cups for his students (tea, hot chocolate, hot lemon), and just be an all around nice person.

damian had join the astronomy club because he had always thought that the stars of nanda parbat were beautiful, not because he was kicked out of the art club for acting ‘condescending’ towards the teacher one too many times or anything, definitely not, but his father insists that he be in a school club to develop his social skills.

damian had not expected to be so enamored by his teacher. on his first day his teacher made everyone push the desks back, layed down a rug/carpet on the floo and placed a projector in the middle( he made it himself) and made them sit around like some kind of camp fire, he handed out drinks, it was tea, he said that his friend sam started growing flower tea and tea leaves and she needed someone to taste test. the he started to talk about what the club will be about.

danny seemed to glow as he explained the origins of stars, their life cycles, how they were formed, how constellations were dicovered and the myths behind their names. talk about platents suns and moons, about the type if life you could find in each planet like the spices you could find on mars( something he shouldn’t have known)[he learnt this from martians in the ghost zone].

he would draw stars and constellations on the board, have them make up stories about stars and constellations just based on their name, play games such as having the projector on and one of the constellations would light up and they get a point if they manage to correctly guess their name then they would get extra points if they could say some more facts about it, and danny always made it so engaging for the kids, it was that one class that every student couldn’t wait to get to because it was just so fun.

damian would totally try to be the teachers favorite by giving him accurate painting of stars and constellations, he would be in competition with that girl that makes dioramas of planets, he would stay up all night researching really obscure space related things so that he could impress his teacher. his family would at first be really happy that he’s getting a new hobby until they hear him asking martian manhunter if he could get such and such spice/plant from mars so he could gift it to his teacher, and now his family is curious about where he learned about this and become suspicious when he tells them it was his astronomy teacher that taught such things in class along with martian/kryptonian culture among other things.

so now damian trys to stop them from ruining his favorite class by being nosy vigilantes.

so this was more of a dp idea than a dpxdc idea, but i might add more later. if anyone wants to use this idea feel free to do so just tag me because i really want to see what other could add on.

[galedekarios]

gale, elminster & mystra: new infos from the epilogue and how they tie in with what we know from the base game

so i was mulling over bits and pieces of new information we got from the epilogue, connecting it to the stuff we already knew:

1. gale's story of how mystra came into his life in the full release

gale jumping from from "i'm what one might call a wizard prodigy, who from an early age could not only control the weave, but compose it" to "such was my skill that it earned me the attention of the mother of magic herself" to then the teacher, muse and lover dynamic.

and from early access:

Player: What did Mystra’s attention feel like? Gale: Love.  Player: He sounds like a very talented individual Gale: He was. Even though it was in Mystra’s affections that his true power lay. Player: Teacher’s pet, was he? Gale: He fancied himself much more than that. He fancied himself favoured above all others. Perhaps it was not quite love, but you see, the wizard was but a very young man. It was most certainly love to him. Mystra showed him the secrets behind the veils. The gossamer veils first, draped across the Weave. The delicate veils next, draped across her body. ‘Chosen One’ she whispered, as she slipped them off completely.

2. elminster's new letter from the epilogue

we knew before that elminster must have come into his life early-ish as well from this convo:

"While most know Elminster the legend, few know him as you have. He plucked you from obscurity. Offered you his guidance. His faith."

we also know that gale got to attend blackstaff academy.

&

now, with the new letters from the epilogue, we know that elminster met him at eight years old:

elminster coming into his when gale was just "eight summers old", gale's talents being as they were from "an early age", mystra involving herself in his life.

perhaps those two events happening are connected: the chosen of mystra. plucking him from obscurity. taking him under his wing.

perhaps on the guidance of someone? someone very clever? someone who'd later use said mentor to also deliver a message that needed to be conveyed with the utmost severity of her bidding?

someone who'd involve herself in gale's life, too? someone who needs his ambitions to be laid to rest because of a future she glimpsed at?

3. raphael's new epilogue lines if gale fails his ascension:

Raphael: I owe you a debt of gratitude. You were the spark of ambition that rekindled Gale's ambitions, after Mystra had so cleverly put them to rest.

i'm thinking thoughts not only about "cleverly", implying some sort of scheming here or manipulation.

a goddess involving her chosen, to oversee a child, so full of promise and ambition -

(a relationship forming between elminster and gale, which even by the point we see them interact in the game, speaks of the care and love they hold for each other) -

before she too involves herself: becomes his mentor, teacher, and he becomes her chosen.

making gale her chosen as a form of control, so he perhaps would not oppose her, like, for instance, even elminster is hardly capable of.

but not only did she make him her chosen, in the same breath, she made him her lover.

we know she very much is capable of using her chosen for her needs.

raphael is also very directly saying that gale's "ambition" reawakened after meeting the protag. so we are talking about mystra putting them to rest before gale met the protag, so the comment couldn't possibly be about his character arc during the game.

i already touched on this a bit earlier but:

4. we also know that mystra has foresight, being able to predict the future to some sort of degree:

History of the Chosen of Mystra: The reason why Mystra, the Goddess of Magic, invested a portion of her divine might into mortals is not known. One of the popular theories, and one that is gaining more support in light of the other goddess' during that period, is that Mystra foresaw the Time of Troubles (and her own passing at the hands of Helm) and chose to give some of her powers to mortals in order to ensure that her successor (the female mage, Midnight, as it turned out) would have a number of nearly immortal allies in the struggle against the schemes of the gods (the now dead Bane, Myrkul and Bhaal) who precipitated the Time of Troubles by stealing the Tablets of Fate.

(again, i want to reiterate that larian doesn't keep close to the dnd timeline at times, and has quite a few lore mistakes and even breaks. i know mystra was 'dead' around the time gale would have been that young. take it up with larian, please. i'm only trying to extrapolate from the things we are told in the game and the narrative in it.)

[darcytaylor]

Everyone should just breathe. Take a step back and recognize the limits of what we know.

They are in a relationship. They are only friends. She is giving him connections within the industry. She got him a job for the movie. She is being a supportive friend (because of the show cancellation and/or breakup). He is there with his significant other. He is being a supportive friend because she has been nonstop working. Her ring means something. Her ring means nothing. He isn't in Malta. He is in Malta. This is a PR move to take the focus off of someone else. He is playing games. He isn't playing games. He is just like someone else. He isn't like someone else. Followings mean something. Followings mean nothing. Likes mean something. Likes mean nothing. He's gay. He's straight. She's gay. She's straight. She is in a relationship with her costar. She is in love with her costar. She is a good person. She isn't a good person.

He is in a relationship. He isn't in a relationship. She called the paparazzi. She didn't call the paparazzi. He's in love with his costar. He isn't in love with his costar. He's engaged. He isn't engaged. They are friends. They are only coworkers. They love each other. They don't love each other. They hangout. They only hangout at work. He was in Cyprus. He wasn't in Cyprus. He has an ego. He doesn't have an ego. His friends want attention. She only wants attention. He hard launched. He didn't hard launch. His likes mean something. His likes mean nothing. His following means something. His following means nothing. She has been hooking up with his best friend. She has a working relationship with Deux Moi. She's not smart enough to have a working relationship with Deux Moi. He is dating a zionist. He isn't dating a zionist. They live together. They don't live together. He is a good person. He isn't a good person. He ruined his career. He didn't ruin his career. He deserves a vacation. He doesn't deserve a vacation.

It was all PR. It wasn't PR.

The truth can be any combination of these statements, somewhere in between or none at all. The amount of conflicting narratives creates an environment where it’s so easy for the truth to become obscured by the noise.

I've laid out some of the conflicting narratives and speculation. It kind of highlights how chaotic and overwhelming fandom and public discourse can become. There are so many interpretations and assumptions flying around that it’s almost impossible to keep track of what’s being said or believed at any given moment.

This kind of environment makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction, especially when people are quick to jump to conclusions or declare their version of events as the truth.

When everyone is trying to piece together a story based on fragments of information, the truth often gets lost in the mix. It’s important to take a step back and recognize the limits of what we know.

[easternmind]

The weird and wonderful history of Kowloon as a digital interactive space - Part I

The Kowloon Walled City was one of the most emblematic locations in Hong Kong due to its irregular, fast-paced and largely ungoverned growth within a minute parcel of land. During the occupation of Hong Kong Island by the British in the mid 18th century, the Qing authorities surrounded the area with walls, turning it into a strategic position from where to closely inspect the foreign nation's covert activities. Almost a century later, during World War II, the area was seized by the Japanese, who tore down the walls and repurposed the stone for the construction of a nearby airport.

After the war, China would eventually regain possession of the city, though the disinterest of local authorities in addressing its increasing social disturbances placed it in a downward path to a state of utter degradation. By the 1970s, Kowloon had become the epicentre of Hong Kong's criminal underworld, dominated by a handful of its most vicious Triads.

Towards the last years of its existence, the ancient settlement was as a precarious heap of concrete, sheltering nearly half a million people within less than seven acres of land. Cultural and political changes in China made it increasingly difficult for this urban anomaly to remain unaddressed. In the late 1980s, an action plan was put together aiming to relocate its inhabitants and reconvert the real estate into an inner-city park. Stories about residents refusing to leave their unsafe and unsanitary homes were featured prominently in newspapers, baffling readers all over the world. Once the single most densely populated area in the world, this enclave was an architectural aberration whose disconcerting aesthetic influenced numerous works of art in different fields of creation; including a small yet consequential number of video games that briefly reference or prominently feature this abominably transfixing space.

九龍島 (Kyu-Ryu-Tou) - Starcraft - 1986

The year is 2025. An arms dealer escalates the tensions between East and West by developing a genetic weapon in a secret base at Kowloon Island. The United Nations react by sending in their best man, Jamie Starr. Unrelated to the Walled City itself, the first game to be located in the Kowloon peninsula - and indeed include the name as a part of its title - is this obscure turn-based RPG, Kyu-Ryu-Tou for the NEC PC88 and FM-77 machines. The game is a sequel to Shangai, released the year before, featuring the same protagonist. Starcraft would also go on to produce a third instalment in 1987 named TO.KY.O. Clearly there wasn't much regard here from the developers part for geographic accuracy, as Kowloon is depicted here as being an island. While Hong Kong's southern territory is composed of an actual island, all the different areas named Kowloon are located in the mainland.

Riot City - Westone - 1991

One of the most shameless specimens among a relatively long list of Final Fight clones, Riot City contains subtle references to Kowloon, though never referring to it by name. Two narcotics detectives are assigned with the mission of dismantling a cartel running a crime-ridden located in fictional Riot Island. This recurring yet geographically nonsensical notion of Kowloon as an island comes up here, yet again. The final moment of the introduction sequence for this minor Sega arcade success shows both protagonists approaching a tight cluster of buildings whose source inspiration is quite unmistakable. Because Westone maintained ownership of most of this production's intellectual property, a later port to the PC Engine entitled Riot Zone was made possible with the help of Hudson soft. Kowloon's Gate - Zeque - 1997

Reviving the Walled City through the lens of cybermystic surrealism, Kowloon's Gate is a dense, daunting adventure masterfully capturing the slum's dark and narrow recesses. This 1997 Japanese Playstation exclusive spans across four discs of unparalleled full motion 3D CGI spectacle, alternating with real-time 3D dungeons brimming with outlandish characters and concepts deeply inspired by Chinese history, geography and cultural traditions.

Ironically, Zeque managed to embed the theme of Feng-Shui, the ancient geomantic art seeking harmony between the individual and their surrounding space, into a story set in the world's most historically untidy district.

SaGa Frontier - Square - 1997

SaGa Frontier takes place in a solar system named The Regions, composed of multiple inhabited worlds for the player to explore, each with its different degree of civilizational development and culture. One of these planets goes by the suggestive name Kūron. Its pervasive neon light signs, food stalls, makeshift cabins and rooftop scaffolding instantly evoke the memory of China’s so-called city of darkness.

Shadow Hearts - Sacnoth - 2001

Shortly after the release of Koudelka, Sacnoth's initiated the development of Shadow Hearts, the first episode from a cult RPG trilogy exclusively designed for the Playstation 2. In good Japanese fashion, the game proposes an anachronistic yet visually suggestive depiction of Kowloon, portraying its architectural style and degree of decay as it existed in the late twentieth century, despite the fact that the game's events take place during the nineteen twenties.

Just as noteworthy is the almost complete absence of any inhabitants, which inadvertently make this portrayal of the quarter eerily reminiscent of the state in which it was found circa 1993 or 1994, as local authorities brought the long, arduous eviction project to a close.

Shenmue II - SEGA AM2 - 2001

Shenmue II exhibits the most complete and period-accurate video game representation of Kowloon to date. While more recent games featuring this area may represent a number of its aspects with the aid of improved visual fidelity, none features it with such depth as this masterpiece of masterpieces. More than mere background decoration, Kowloon exists in the Shenmue series as a crucial, climacteric element of its modern epic narrative.

It is a well known fact that Yu Suzuki and his team conducted extensive research of the region so as to achieve a result that impresses even to this day. It must be noted, however, that they have similarly taken a fair share of creative liberty when converting the area to best align with the themes they wished to explore. Further reading is required for a more complete context in this regard, namely how this area ties with an early Dreamcast tech demo design which fans lovingly named Tower of Babel. Ostensively, technical limitations did curtail the degree of precision in which the surrounding area could be replicated. The aerial view from the cutscene in which Ryo Hazuki arrives on location places Kowloon at an imaginary degree of elevation over surrounding vegetation. In the year of 1987, during which the game is set, the actual enclave stood perfectly levelled with a myriad of other modern buildings, undoubtedly more than could be reproduced under the circumstances. These trifling considerations aside, Shenmue II entirely succeeds in capturing the vibrant life and mesmerizing beauty of the destitute and decayed urban agglomeration, in a way that it was deemed entirely impossible at the time of its release.

For reasons entirely related to per post content limitations imposed by Tumblr, this article will be continued in PART II.

[meanbossart]

Just thinking thoughts about Orin and Drow lore, and idk if this has been asked already, but

If Orin had just disappeared for like a year, not even Sceleritas could find her, with how obsessive pre-tadpole Drow was how would he handle that? Aside from being prideful and murdery, I don’t remember in the pre-tadpole Drow lore about any instance (after he made it to the temple) of him expressing anything else. Did the two ever have a wholesome moment?

Hmmmm not wholesome, no. I'm sorry to disappoint people who might wanted to see a more explicitly vulnerable side to both of them at that stage in their lives, but that's just not... How I envision things. I don't think anyone born into the temple would have had much room to express themselves in the way average people do.

What they did have was an undeniable connection and mutual understanding. This lasted for about 7 years, so between ages 18-25 for DU drow. (Canonically he's currently 28, give or take). I think that, sometimes, they also silently understood among themselves that things weren't always fair or good.

This might sound like a whole load of nothing to some people, but based on the culture within the cult, Orin's story, and the behavior of everyone involved in it, it seems huge to me that two people who were essentially groomed to be the embodiment of murder would harbor any kind of care for one another, even if it was subtle. The fact that they could share a bed, talk shit about Sarevok, and seamlessly work together and share in the glory of their deeds as equals is what intimacy looked like for them - before DU drow's ego (and the very need of a more explicitly intimate connection with someone, to be fair) got to his head.

They killed together, they rolled around in blood together, they bickered and fought and one time Orin stabbed him in the gut and DU drow punched her jaw out of it's socket. Then they flopped down on the ground and cackled about it while Sceleritas rushed in to stop the bleeding. Is that wholesome? I think for deified bhaalspawn who know nothing but that life it's the closest it gets.

There had to have been quiet moments I'm sure. Like Orin waiting around while DU drow got ready to go somewhere, him adjusting her headpiece, Orin slicing her brother's long hair off when he first arrived and looked like some sort of sinewy wood's creature. At night, they probably laid in bed in silence and sometimes stared at each other until either fell asleep.

I am very interested in not inventing an obscured, soft side to Orin that we didn't get to see, you know? While she wasn't always the level of manic we see in-game, she was completely unfit to function normally due to her upbringing, and this reflects in her relationships. DU drow is also undeniably emotionally stunted, just in a slightly different way.

I got off rambling to no one's surprise LOL but to answer the first part of your question - I don't think he would have been quite as dramatic about Orin just up and vanishing, as there's no explicit suggestion of death in that. He would have been insufferable to be around for a while, but in that scenario I could see his duties keeping him busy.

Not to mention that, while through death, she would be leaving him unwillingly - disappearing with no trace implies the uncomfortable possibility that she truly, honestly, just didn't want to be around him. That allows room for contempt and bitterness to fester until you wrongly convince yourself there was never any love there at all, even if just to soothe your own conscience.

He would have just become a much, much worse person that way in the sense that he would have nothing to focus on besides for his lord's will - as horrific as his attitude towards Orin was, it is very much a human feature to desperately cling to connection. With Orin around, he had a little bit of fucked up tenderness and love in him - it was a personal desire completely separate from his "job", a vestige of free-will. Without her, he just has Bhaal and whatever Bhaal wants.

Orin has always unwittingly anchored him, and then, later freed him. And he never ever deserved any of it.

🤷

[lightandfellowship]

Fellow KHUX fans talk about this all the time I imagine, but it really can not be overstated how impressive and cool the meta narrative elements of KHX/KHUX are.

Not going to list them all here, but the most mind-blowing one for me personally: the fact that the devs looked at how browser KHX was being remade/ported to phones and said "What if the porting process was actually canon to the story? What if KHX is the real, original world and KHUX is the data copy of it?" And much like any porting process, the copy isn't completely identical to the original, which is represented in the game by gameplay things like medals replacing cards, or plot things like the Keyblade War being erased from the Dandelions' memories. (You could even argue that each game ending its services coincided with the world ending in the story.)

What's even more wild is that unless you played/watched KHX yourself or read up on KHX, the meta aspect of this particular plot point would likely fly right over your head (as it did mine, at first, as someone who back in the day avoided KHX in favor of waiting for an English release). And that probably applies to a large portion of the global playerbase since KHX was a JP exclusive game. Such an unbelievably cool and novel concept for a plot point...and yet its very existence is so obscure!

Anyway, this is partially why I have faith in KHML being cool/interesting, if nothing else. I'm fairly confident that the GPS-based gameplay wasn't chosen on a whim or to jump on a bandwagon (I don't think Pokemon GO has been new/trendy for a while now), but rather because it's going to be relevant to the plot in a meta way. Likely having to do with the connection between fiction and reality, between our world and the world of KH.

[mask131]

Many people have talked about the Japanese influence of the Little Nightmares game - more precisely how the games offered themselves as a nightmarish and twisted Ghibli movie, what Miyazaki would have created for a Silent Hill game.

But I don't see many people talk about the French style and influence of the games...

Yes, I said French. It might surprise you, but one of the main sources for the aesthetic and tone of the games is a set of French works. The creators of Little Nightmares have been pretty clear in interviews that the movies of Jean-Pierre Jeunet were a big design and concept influence for the game. Now, Jean-Pierre Jeunet is most famous for his slightly absurd romance-comedy Amélie Poulain... But it was his two other most famous movies that inspired the Little Nightmares world.

On one side: Delicatessen

In a post-apocalyptic world, a building stands alone in the middle of the ruins of a city... A block of flats, each one hosting weird and excentric people: a tenant lives in water-filled rooms infested with snails and frogs, another keeps trying to kill herself with incredibly complex and extravagant suicide plans, others are dedicated creators of moo boxes... But all of them live under the domination and tyrany of the butcher whose shop is located at the base of the building: he is the one who provides the meat for all those who live above him, and thus has full authority over them, and nobody asks where it comes from...

One day, a new janitor arrives. A naive former circus clown, a gentle but farcical man who soon falls in love with the shy and secluded musician-daughter of the butcher. Unfortunately, it proves to be an actual fairytale as the janitor didn't just fell in love with a princess high up in her tower... but with the daughter of the ogre, for all the janitors before our protagonist mysteriously disappeared right with every new "meat supplies" delivery... The sweet and touching budding romance of these two youths in a no man's land soon turns into horror as the shadow of the butcher's cleaver falls upon them, and as the madness of the buildings' tenants keep increasing to absurd levels.

And what seems to be the couple's only hope? A secret network of sewer-dwelling, vegetarian terrorists that the butcher's daughter contacts in secret...

On the other side: La cité des enfants perdus

While Delicatessen was a dark comedy (or an humoristic horror, depending on which side you take it), The City of Lost Children is much harder to categorize as Jeunet (and Marc Caro, who also co-created Delicatessen) fully delve into the urban nightmare, the obscure poetry, the dark fairytale, the disturbing children story.

La Cité des Enfants perdus is the story of a mad scientist who lives in a derelict oil platform at sea, surrounded by various "failed" experiments (idiotic clones, a dwarf-wife, a brain in a jar). Unable to dream, he decides to capture the children of the nearest portuary town, in order to steal their dreams for himself - and he performs these crimes with the help of a strange cult of one eyed men referred to as the "cyclops".

One day, the scientist kidnaps the little brother of a simple-minded former circus strongman called "One". Determined to find him back, One teams up with miette (Crumb), a clever and cynical street-urchin girl ; however, their quest to find the secret of the Cyclops is made even more complicated by the presence of the Pieuvre (Octopus), cruel and greedy conjoined twins who are the boss of the children-thief network Miette belonged to, and hatch nefarious plans in light of the recent events...

In a way you could say that Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a sort of French Terry Gilliam. He has a very unique and distinctive style when it comes to his movies, something halway between a realistic Guillermo del Toro and a dirty Wes Anderson. His movies are still to this day a weir, but cult, part of French cinema.

And... Little Nightmares borrowed heavily from them. The large One and the little girl Crumb teaming up to save a child from a sea-dwelling villain becomes Six fighting for her life in the sea-faring Maw against the Lady. The butchering cannibalism of Delicatessen can be found back ; the water-infested flat of the elderly frog-raiser can evoke the Granny's quarters, while the strange suicide plans of the depressed tenant evoke the various "puzzles" of the game. The school run by the Octopus (stern school-teachers by day, vicious crime-lords at night) brings back to mind the school of Little Nightmares 2, and so forth and so on. Plus, of course, the strange technology: these two movies thrive on weird contraptions and strange buildings and never-ending pipes and other bizarre soul-sucking machinery, all elements that were very determinant in the visuals of the Little Nightmares universe.

If you ever wondered what a Little Nightmares movie would feel like... These movies could be of some help. Do yourself a marathon of Ghibli movies and Terry Gilliam ones intercut with Jeunet's pieces, and you could recreate yourself a strange Little Nightmares-flavored experience.

[roseghoul26]

Chapter 12: What Would He Do If He Found Us Out?

Synopsis: A fic based off the song “ivy” by Taylor Swift. After a startling introduction to the man, Arthur Morgan became the most important part of your life. Married at a young age to an older, wealthy man to help your family, you were trapped in a loveless marriage, your only sense of escape with the rugged cowboy. Will you be able to keep your affair hidden, or will your husband find out, and destroy the last thing that made you happy?

Tags: Fluff, Angst, Smut, Strangers To Lovers, Infidelity, Fem!Reader, She/Her Pronouns Used For Reader, Period Typical Misogyny, Emotional Manipulative Relationship (not with Arthur), Mostly Follows Timeline of Game, High Honor Arthur Morgan, Not Beta Read, Slow Burn, First Kiss, Arthur Is Bad At Emotions, Confessions, First Time Together, Cunnilingus, Missionary, Doggy Style, Handjobs, Mirrors, Party, Semi-Public Sex, Quickies, Unsafe Sex, Kidnapping, Murder, Torture, Betrayal, Attempted Murder, Tags Updated Per Chapter

Author’s Note: This story is gonna start getting dark and sad, so heads up. Content warnings for this chapter: kidnapping, murder, light torture, and misogyny.

Taglist: @lokiofasgard12 @ultraporcelainpig @that-one-beannnn @morethantheycansay@nn-hh192 @photo1030 @just-pure-trash @julialoopeezz @hqxee @salientseraph @crypticlxrsh @lorenaloveslewis @tswizzleislike8foot4 @oziozzioslo

Chapter List

The sound of two men talking is what you woke up to, barely audible over the ringing in your ears and the rain coming down in heavy sheets. 

Blinking away the remnants of unconsciousness, the back of your head screamed out in pain as you raised it. You tried to grit your teeth but were unable to do so with the cloth between your lips, tied so tightly that it hurt. Confusion washed over you momentarily, before the memories of what happened before you lost consciousness came back. 

Panic took over now, adrenaline coursing through your veins as you whipped your head around, trying to find the source of the voices. You tried to move your arms, but they were unsurprisingly tied down, ropes long having since irritated your skin. 

The room you were in was dimly lit, moonlight trickling in from the window well, the only window you could see in the room. It only took a few moments of glancing around before recognition flashed in your mind. You were in the basement, a place you’d only been into on two occasions. Both times you’d been escorted by Hans, as he had the only key. So that means someone either took his key or…

On cue, a figure emerged from the shadows, finally noticing that you were awake. A lantern was in his hand, casting shadows across his face, and it took you having to squint to make out who it was. 

It was the beard you made out first, then his eyes, anger making them furrow. Any noises you made were muffled behind the cloth as Hans stood in front of you, bringing the lantern close to your face. You could feel the heat from both the lantern and his gaze burning your skin.

A second figure emerged from the shadows behind Hans, face obscured. The new figure placed a hand on Hans’ shoulder, pulling him back a few feet from you. He leaned down in front of you until his face was level with yours, allowing the lantern to fully illuminate his face. Your blood ran cold when you immediately recognized him, despite not seeing him for two years. 

It wasn’t your father, who you were expecting. 

No, seeing him hadn’t even been a possibility in your mind. 

A cruel smile pulled at his lips, something you’d never seen on him growing up, and you felt genuine terror. “Hello, sister.” Even though it had only been two years since you last saw him, he looked… different. Physically, he looked the same, hair a little longer, the last remnants of his soft, boyish features having vanished. It was his demeanor that was different, eyes cold and calculating, an air of superiority to his actions. 

His grin turned wider when you tried to talk, and in the low light, you saw the flash of a blade. Instinctively you leaned back as far as you could, nearly toppling the chair you were tied to in the process. But you could do nothing but watch as your brother brought the blade up to your face, cutting through the fabric between your lips. But he pressed too hard, and tears stung your eyes as he cut your cheek as well. “Whoops,” he muttered, not sounding the tiniest bit remorseful. 

He tugged the cloth from your mouth, turning red from the blood now dripping from your cheeks, and you stretched out your aching jaw. “J-Joey? What’re you doin’?”

He visibly flinched at the nickname, anger flashing in his eyes. “We ain’t children anymore. You best remember that.”

You swallowed, your throat dry and scratchy. Betrayal unlike anything you’d felt before tore at your heart, but you still refused to believe that your brother would do anything to harm you. “Joseph. What. Are. You. Doing?”

He laughed at that, standing back upright, swinging the blade without a care in the world. “What does it look like? I’m making sure everythin’ doesn’t fall apart.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” 

“She still doesn’t know?” Your brother directed the question at Hans, who nodded. “I have to say, I’m impressed. I hadn’t expected you to hold up your end of the deal so well.”

If Hans was offended, he didn’t show. “What fuckin’ deal?” You spat out, eyes flicking between the two men.

“Now, that ain’t no talk for a lady. And I don’t think you’re in any position to be askin’ questions.”

You could hardly recognize the person in front of you, your younger brother. Long gone was the wide-eyed child that asked you to read him to sleep, or to mend his broken stuffed animals. “Joseph-”

You were cut off when he stuffed the cloth back into your mouth, nearly making you gag, and you resisted the urge to bite down on his fingers. Hurting him wouldn’t be in your favor right now. “You never know when to be silent, do you?” He asked, shaking his head lightly. “Even when we were kids, you could never just be quiet. You always had to be the center of attention, to get everything that you wanted. It was always about you.” 

He crouched down in front of you, resting the dagger on your thigh. “Do you know what it’s like, to to live in your shadow? To always be second to you. To watch you get everything, and leave me with crumbs?”

You managed to spit out the cloth, making his recoil slightly. “What’re you talkin’ ‘bout?” He sighed, and you couldn’t help the slight bit of anger that flared. “Answer me!”

A sharp slap across the face stunned you, rings cutting into your cheek. Tears once again sprung to your eyes, and they flowed down your cheeks, mixing with the blood there. “God, you’re insufferable. You put up with this for two years?”

“She was never this… combative,” Hans admitted, talking about you like you weren’t a person, but a prize horse he was trying to sell.

“Let’s see those manners that mother taught you.” When you remained silent, a pleased look appeared on his face, getting true enjoyment from watching you break. “Very good,” he spoke condescendingly, following your gaze when you tried to avert it. 

You flinched when you felt the blade graze your leg, dangerously close to breaking skin. “Mr. Van Buren.” Hans’ tone was undistinguishable, but your brother took it as Hans was watching him doing something he wanted to do. 

The only word you could use to describe Joseph’s smile was sadistic as he stood, handing the knife to Hans. The older man eyed it warily, yet he still took it. His hands shook, but whether it was because of nerves or age you couldn’t tell. “Apologize,” Joseph spoke, taking a step back. “I’ll save you the honors. You’ve plenty you’d like to say to your wife, I suppose.”

“That I do.” His words made you shiver, a deathly anger to them, and for the first time since you’d gotten married, you were afraid of him. Knife in hand, he took Joseph’s place, and you felt the blade poke back into your leg. It would take one slice and you’d bleed out, and so you kept as still as you could. 

You didn’t have to think hard to know what Hans was about to say to you; it was either going to be about his business or Arthur. God, how you wished for Arthur to be here right now, to kick down the door and save you. But that was just a beautiful fantasy, one that brought you the tiniest semblance of comfort. It was at that point you realized that the only reason you weren’t fighting back was the possibility of never seeing him again. You were more likely to survive if you complied, right?

“How long?” Hans asked, demanded. 

“How long…?” You had to be careful now, not wanting to admit to something he didn’t know about.

“Don’t play coy,” he gritted his teeth, pressing the blade down harder. “How long were you working with them?”

“Helpin’ the Van Der Linde gang exploit your moonshine business?” A curt nod was all you got in response, but even then you could see a slight bit of surprise by your bluntness. “Since a few weeks after we met Mr. Van Der Linde in Rhodes.”

He chewed over your words for a few moments, time ticking by torturously slow. His expression was unreadable, which made you more worried than anything. His next question you weren’t expecting, your eyes widening in both shock and horror. “How long has he been coming over for?” So he knew about both things.

You both stared at each other, words escaping you momentarily. “For even longer,” you whispered, thinking it would be a smarter choice to tell the truth. “He… he kept me company while you were away.”

“‘Kept you company’,” he scoffed, partially in disbelief. 

You mustered up enough courage to ask a question. “How did you-” 

“I didn’t know for certain, but I had my suspicions when you wouldn’t put that newspaper down. Then I remembered how you used to stare at him like he was a saint, not some deranged outlaw, and it just clicked. I finally opened my eyes, refusing to ignorantly believe that after all I’ve done for you, that you’d betray me like that.”

“You’ve done nothing for me,” you seethed, pulling at your restraints, all cautions thrown to the wind. Two years of pent-up emotions came tumbling out, and you could do nothing to stop them. “You treated me like I was a fuckin’ accessory, not a person. You kept me caged, controlling everything little thing I did, trying to sculpt me into who you wanted me to be. And I let it happen, ‘cause I thought by sacrificing my fuckin’ freedom that I was helpin’ my family. But turns out that was all a lie,” you glared at Joseph, who seemed to be reveling in your outburst. “You didn’t care about me. You didn’t love me. So why should you care that I had someone else take care of that need?”

“Because you’re mine,” Hans practically screamed at you, the vein at his temple bulging. “You’re my wife, and I don’t like people touching what’s mine.”

“I don’t belong to you,” you leaned forward, bringing your face as close to Hans as you could. You were surprised to find that you were able to move closer than you thought, the ropes looser than they were originally, your trashing no doubt making them so. But you kept your revelation to yourself, showing no indication on your face. “I am my own person. No one has claim to me.”

“What about Arthur?” You hated the way he said his name. 

“I belong to him as much as he belongs to me. Unlike you, he respects me. He treats me like a person, and he listens when I talk. He cares about me. He loves me. He’s earned the right to claim me as his, but only because I let him. I never gave that permission to you.”

“Then where is he?” Joseph finally spoke, not trying to hide the smugness in his voice. “If he cares about you as much as you claim, then where is he?” He chuckled, responding before you could answer. “If my memory serves me well, Arthur Morgan hasn’t been seen alive since the robbery in Saint Denis.” 

You didn’t give him the satisfaction of upsetting you, as much as you wanted to let your face fall. “He’s alive,” was all you said, a certainty you weren’t expecting in your infliction.

He just laughed. “If it makes you feel better, then keep telling yourself that.”

You took a shuddering breath. “What do you want?” You finally asked, glancing between Hans, who still sat crouched in front of you, and your brother, who was pacing slowly. Carefully, you began to twist your wrists, the action going unnoticed by the two men, loosening the rope even further. You swore you could slip your hands out if you wanted; you just needed an opportunity to do so. 

“I’m making sure that you don’t mess everything up, sister. I’ve worked so hard to make sure everything’s been perfect for the past two years, and I’m not about to let you mess it all up.” Joseph spoke as he walked past you, heading straight to the basement stairs. “Do with her as you wish, Hans. Just make sure she stays… quiet.” 

“Joseph, don’t-”

“I’ll send the family your regards. Oh, how excited they were to hear from you again.” You couldn’t see him any longer, but you knew he was smiling. “How tragic that a terrible, contagious illness has rendered you bedridden.”

“Joey-”

Slam!

The basement hatch closed, shaking the foundation of the house, and making your head pound. With a thundering heart, you realized it was just you and Hans in the basement, and he still had the knife trained on your leg. A whimper left you when he dragged it up until it poked you right in the center of your chest. “You’ve humiliated me, you know,” you heard Hans mutter. 

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t lie to me,” his voice was dripping with hatred. “You’re just gonna make this harder for yourself.”

“Hans-”

“Just a quick thrust, and it’ll be done.” He was mainly speaking to himself, his eyes trained on the blade that sat above your heart. “Or should I draw this out, make it hurt?”

Too distracted by the prospect of doing unimaginable things to you, he didn’t notice that your hands were now free of their bindings. A well-aimed punch to the nose sent him falling backward, his head hitting the hard cement floor. It wasn’t enough to render him unconscious, but it disoriented him momentarily, and he lost grip of the knife, sending it scattering across the floor. 

You were on your feet in seconds, thankful that they hadn’t had the mind to tie your legs down. Hans had just recovered when you got the weapon in your hands, holding it out in front of you. “Let me go,” you warned him, taking slight pride in the fact that his nose was now crooked, blood spewing from it. 

“You bitch,” he roared, making you panic that Joseph heard him. You didn’t have much time to think, though, before he was lunging at you. You managed to sidestep him, his movements slow, but weren’t expecting him to stick out a leg as you ran past. It wasn’t enough to make you fall to the floor, but you stumbled. 

It gave him enough of an opportunity to reach at you from behind, arms wrapping around your waist as if he had completely forgotten you had a knife in your hands. Or maybe he was convinced that you wouldn’t use it. If that was the case, then he was in for the surprise of his life.

It only took one plunge into his arm before he was letting you go, a cry of pain leaving him. Even in the dim light, you could see the blood now coating the blade, and you had to fight back a wave of nausea. 

Spinning around, you watched as he gripped his now wounded forearm, crimson spilling between his fingers. Pure hatred shone in his eyes, and you watched as he let go of his injury to reach for something in his pocket. All you had to see was the grip of a gun before you were lunging at him yourself, blade outstretched. 

A horrible noise filled the room as the knife burrowed into his chest, the breath being knocked out of Hans as it did. Slowly, he looked down to where it was embedded, then back up to you, the fire slowly leaving his eyes. You heard your name being muttered before he fell to his knees in front of you, life quickly leaving his body.

He tried to speak again, but could only muster a small gurgle. Bile rose in your throat, but you forced it back down. “Oh, God,” you whimpered and were about to run your hands down your face until you noticed they were covered in blood. 

You could do nothing but watch as Hans finally fell, head hitting the cement as the last bit of air left his body, before going completely still. Despite everything, you couldn’t help the tinge of sorrow you felt in your heart, never have taken a life before, and a small sob left you. 

Thudding from upstairs quickly tore you from your lamenting, and taking a steadying breath you regained enough composure to move. With shaky hands, you grabbed the gun that was still in Hans’ pocket, making sure to not look at his face, the expression of shock forever etched onto it. Your hands shook as you grasped the weapon, which you were relieved to find was a revolver, albeit a bit heavier than the one Arthur taught you to use. Still, you’d be able to use it. 

Another loud thump from upstairs made you jump, and you realized you needed to get the hell out of there. Going up the stairs was out of the question, leaving you with just the window as well as your only means of escape. Dashing over, you were relieved to find that the window locked from the inside, and was definitely large enough to allow you to crawl through. 

Throwing the window open, you were immediately met with rain pelting your skin, irritating the wounds on your body. Shrugging it off, you climbed into the well, fighting with your skirts the entire time. Eventually, you were able to stand, and slowly but surely you began to climb up the brick walls, not before tossing the gun to the top.

You’d barely gotten halfway out before you heard the sound of the basement hatch being slammed open, and adrenaline took over You refused to let yourself be taken prisoner by your brother. Another thought crossed your mind, providing you with the extra push you needed to climb out of the well; you needed to see Arthur again. 

Gasping for breath, you lay on your back for a second, your body immediately getting soaked with rain. Glancing around, you recognized that you were in front of the house, the porch to your right. You didn’t even bother to glance at it, heading straight for the dark forest that surrounded your house.

Grimacing, you grabbed the gun and stood up, your bare feet squishing into the mud as you began to run. Where to, you had no idea, but you needed to escape. So caught up in surviving, you failed to notice the two horses tied up near the entrance, one of them nickering in recognition. 

You’d barely stepped foot into the forest before you heard your name being shouted, loudly despite the rain coming down heavily. Despite how loud it was, you couldn’t recognize the voice. Or maybe you refused to recognize it. All you know is that it just pushed you deeper into the forest, your running turning into a full-on sprint. 

Sticks and twigs tore at you as you sprinted, cutting into your skin. Your bare feet cried out in pain with every sharp rock and piece of wood you stepped on, but you ignored them. But you could only run for so long, especially with how heavy your dress had gotten from the rain, and before you knew it you were slowing down. 

Ducking behind a large tree, you gave yourself a moment to catch your breath, the gun shaking in your hands. It was then you finally heard the sound of someone tearing through the forest behind you, and you readied the gun in your hand as they drew closer. 

It was incredibly dark, and you could barely even see a few inches in front of you. Making yourself as quiet as possible, you could feel your heart pounding in your chest as you waited. 

And waited.

And waited, until finally a dark figure appeared at your right, their steps slow. He was leaning forward, like he was following your track, before looking up in confusion when it suddenly stopped. It was then you cocked the gun, making the stranger spin around, his hands up. 

You couldn’t make out his features, but you didn’t have to see him to know who it was. Still, you wouldn’t let yourself believe it was actually him, and you held the gun up in front of you, both hands gripping it, just like he taught you. 

You heard your name leave his lips, oh-so softly, the familiarity of it making your heart ache. Yet, you shook your head, keeping the gun raised high, despite the way your hands shook. He took a step towards you, keeping his hands raised, and you didn’t stop him. Even as he brought his hands on top of the barrel and pushed it down gently, you didn’t stop him. It was like you’d lost control of your body. 

Tears mixed in with the rain that ran in rivulets down your cheeks, a pained noise leaving you as you finally let the gun drop. He caught it before it hit the ground, and he pocketed it, eyes never once leaving yours. Even though you knew those blue eyes so well, you couldn’t bring yourself to move anymore, and a sympathetic sigh left the man in front of you. 

“Darlin’...” he murmured, voice raspier than you remembered, and a calloused hand grasped your face softly, reverently. 

“Arthur?” Your voice cracked and wavered, yet it was hopeful. 

“Unfortunately,” he tried to joke, but emotion made his words sound heavy. A thumb brushed over your cheek, narrowly avoiding the wound there. “What did they do to ya…”

Finally, a sob tore through you, and it wasn’t so much that your body let you move than it was your legs giving out beneath you, and you flung your arms around his shoulders. His body was thinner than you remembered, yet it was still him, and another sob racked your body as you buried your face into his neck. He still smelled of gunpowder and tobacco. 

Oh, how you missed that scent.

Immediately, his hands were on you, one of them cradling the back of your head, the other resting on the small of your back. His lips pressed against the top of your head, providing an overwhelming sense of relief to flood your body. You were safe. He was alive. 

Arthur murmured sweet nothings into your ear as he held you, letting you cry and sob and shake in his embrace. Even as the rain soaked both of your bodies, he continued to hold you, like the elements did not affect him. 

Eventually, your cries rescinded, coming out as hiccups instead. Peeling your head away, you glanced up at Arthur, still partially convinced that this was all a dream. His hair was longer than last time, and instinctively you reached a hand to run your fingers through it, at least as well as you could with his hat on. “I’m so sorry-”

“You came back to me,” you cut him off accidentally but were glad of it.

“Of course,” he responded almost immediately, instinctively. “I promised, didn’t I?”

“But… but what happened, Arthur?” I thought you were dead. 

He sighed, a soft smile still on his lips. “I promise I’ll tell ya, but you’re gonna catch your death out here. Let’s get back to the house.”

You shook your head, fear overtaking you momentarily. “He’s back at the house, I-”

“We’ve got him, darlin’. Don’t worry ‘bout that.” He paused a moment, unsure of how to ask the next question. “And your husband?”

“Dead.”

You had no idea if he realized that you were the one who killed him. He simply nodded and then placed another gentle kiss on your head. You felt an arm secure behind your legs, and you weren’t given a chance to protest before he was lifting you bridal-style. “Let’s get outta here.”

You didn’t have any arguments against that. Now that adrenaline had worn off, you finally realized how cold you were, shivering in Arthur’s grasp, despite the warmth you felt radiating from his body. It was strange, the way everything seemed to click into place once you were back in his arms. He expertly weaved his way through the forest, careful not to let any more branches snag at your body, and eventually, the house came into view.

You weren’t shivering because of the cold anymore, and you pressed yourself as close as you could to Arthur. You hated how small those two men were making you feel, and how much power they had over you even though they were both currently not an issue. A light cough from Arthur tore you from your thoughts, and it seemed like he was holding back a coughing fit.

He carried you right up the porch stairs and right into the house, setting you on your feet in the living room. You cringed as your mud-covered feet made contact with the ground, and you felt him chuckle lightly. “I’ll clean it, I promise.”

Any response you had tied in your throat when you saw movement out of the corner of your eye in the kitchen. It wasn’t the tied-up unconscious form of your brother that you saw first, rather it was the woman with a gun behind him. Something about her was familiar, and despite every instinct in your body telling you otherwise, you took a step towards her.

It was her eyes that you recognized, ones you’d seen in Arthur’s sketchbook. They were filled with rage, just like you remembered. If you thought they made you uneasy in a drawing, it was even worse in person. Still, you kept your head up high, not wanting to make a bad impression. 

You felt Arthur behind you, a hand planted on the small of your back. “Darlin’, this is-”

“Sadie Adler,” you finished his sentence, catching them both by surprise. 

“Mrs. Kerrigan,” she nodded to you. 

“Please, just my first name is fine. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” You took another step towards her, bowing your head slightly. “Although I would’ve preferred it to be under less… macabre circumstances.”

She chuckled at that, falling into an easy stance. “The feeling’s mutual. Arthur’s told me all about you.”

“Is that so?” You turned to look at Arthur, who met your eye, yet had a slight blush to his cheeks. Now in a well-lit area, you noticed that his skin was tanner than the last time you saw him, yet even that couldn’t hide how tired he looked. The circles beneath his eyes were impossibly dark, and you could now see that his eyes were bloodshot. You opened your mouth to ask about it, but the sound of your brother groaning captured your attention.

When you turned, you saw that Sadie had her gun already trained on him, her other hand yanking back his head by the hair. “What’re you doin’ here?” You hear Sadie ask, her voice sounding more like a growl than anything. “Whaddya want with her?”

You answered for him. “He’s my brother,” you explained softly, and you heard Arthur inhale sharply. “He and my husband struck a deal two years ago, but apparently I was close to ruinin’ whatever they had goin’ on. They… they were gonna kill me.” You rubbed at your irritated wrists, which allowed Arthur to finally see the rope burn there.

Warm hands encapsulated your wrist, tugging it towards his chest as he moved beside you. His expression was nothing short of murderous, his jaw clenched so tight you swore you could hear his teeth grinding. “They tied ya up?” He asked like he couldn’t even fathom someone doing that to you. 

You nodded your head, flashes of the last hour popping into your mind, but you ignored them as best you could. “Thankfully they weren’t very good at it.”

He hummed in agreement. “What’s this ‘bout a deal?”

“I ain’t too sure,” you admitted. “All I know is it had to do with my marriage. He refused to tell me anythin’ more.”

“We’ll get some answers for ya.” The sound of Sadie’s voice made you jump, momentarily forgetting she and your brother were still in the room. Even still, you could get so distracted by Arthur, especially when he was touching you. He let your wrist drop, but he kept a light touch on your back, reminding you of his presence, comforting you. 

Your brother groaned your name as he continued to come to, brows furrowed in confusion when he felt the rope restraints around his arms and legs. “W-What’s goin’ on?” He slurred out, eyes darting between you and Arthur, wincing when Sadie tugged harshly at his hair.

“I don’t think you’re in any position to be askin’ questions, brother,” you spat his own words back at him. 

“Oh, spare me the dramatics,” he scoffed, his attitude returning to him, despite the position he was in. “What do you want?”

“I want, no, deserve an explanation.” You were impressed by how steady your voice was. “What deal did you make with Hans? What did you do?”

He attempted to struggle against the ropes, but his attempt was cut short by the sound of a gun being cocked behind him. “She asked ya a question,” the woman behind him spoke lowly. 

He sighed dramatically like this was all some minor inconvenience. “Look, this is all a small misunderstanding-”

“‘Small misunderstanding’?” Your voice rattled your ears. “This is my fuckin’ life we’re talkin’ ‘bout here! Not a petty disagreement!”

“Bring Hans in, and we’ll explain-”

Without thinking, you grabbed the knife off of Arthur’s belt, too quick for him to stop you. All you could see was red as you charged at your brother, yet you still had enough restraint to prevent the blade from sinking into his chest. Instead, the tip of it poked his skin, most likely hard enough to draw blood beneath his shirt. “He’s dead, Joseph. I killed him. And I’m gonna kill you too if you don’t start talkin’.”

You were grateful that neither Arthur nor Sadie tried to ease you away. Instead, they watched on, both impressed in their own ways. For a moment, you saw fear flash across your brother's face, clearly not expecting his docile sister to ever attempt to bring harm to him. He gulped, face turning pale, and you watched as his eyes flicked to Arthur, attempting to find any help in this situation.

“You best answer her,” is all Arthur said, taking a step closer to you. Not to stop you, but in support. 

“Sister-”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t-”

“Tell me!” 

He cried out when you pressed the blade in deeper, his head bobbing in all directions. “Okay! Okay! J-Just stop! Please!” Tears ran down his cheeks, and for a moment you saw your little brother again, scared and helpless, and despite yourself, you felt an instinctive need to protect him. But you were able to shake that off, especially when his eyes returned to your own, filled with intense malice. 

He sighed out in relief when you let up some, and he let his head hang limply. “Me… Me and Hans came to an arrangement two years ago. He’d get a wife, you, and unrestricted travel through northern New Hanover, for his moonshine. And I would receive a cut of his profits,” he took a breath, “and I would be free of you.”

“Free of me?”

He groaned. “Yes. With you out of the picture, I’d be the one to inherit the family’s business. I wouldn’t have to live in your shadow anymore. I’d be the head of the Van Buren family, as is my right as a first-born son. I don’t know what father was thinking, planning to let his daughter inherit everything. It goes against everything society expects, and if that were to happen, we’d be freaks. Outcasts. I did this to protect our family.”

“Oh no, don’t lie. You did it for your own selfish needs. You were jealous.”

“And so what if I was?” Joseph snarled. “Our entire childhood, you were treated like you were a goddess. Whatever you wanted, you got. If you were wrong, you were right. Mother and father catered to your every whim, while I was told to figure it out myself.”

“How is that my fault?”

He ignored you. “So yeah, I was jealous. But any person in that position would be. And when father said he was signing away all ownership of the business to you, I damn near lost it.”

“And so you thought the next best thing to do was to marry me off, which you had no right to do.”

“I didn’t marry you off. That was father’s doing.”

“But why?” Joseph looked away, and your stomach dropped. “You made him do it.”

“It didn’t take much to convince father that you’d fallen pregnant with Hans’ child. Rather than deal with the embarrassing matter of your first-born daughter having a child out of wedlock, he agreed to let you marry Hans to prevent any sort of ill reputation from falling on our family. But being the kind man he is, he didn’t want to humiliate you by letting you know that he knew you were with child, so he lied and told you that this was for… what was it… ‘financial stability’.” 

You couldn’t tell if you wanted him to be silent or to spill every detail. Your head was spinning so much you swore you were about to collapse. 

“But… he wouldn’t just take you at your word. Right?”

Joseph shook his head, chuckling humorlessly. “Your handwriting is quite easy to replicate sister. A few fake letters between you and Hans, paying a few people to spread some rumors, it didn’t take much.” He paused, remembering something. “Remember how sick you got a week before your wedding?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He ignored you again. “It was like the smell of food made you sick, and each morning you’d be hunched over a bowl. A bit suspicious, no?”

“What did you do?”

“Our staff is surprisingly easy to pay off,” he laughed. “It only took a bit of money to get the chefs to slip a little something extra into your meals.”

You gasped, recoiling from him slightly. “You… you poisoned me?”

His mouth opened and closed like he was trying to find some other explanation, but he eventually gave up. “Yes.”

So many questions bounced around your head. Why Hans? What was the extent of his part of the agreement? Why couldn’t I see the rest of our family? Why didn’t you just talk to me? 

There were so many questions, yet you couldn’t bring yourself to ask them. You were overwhelmed, betrayed, hurt, and lost. A distressed noise spilled from you, unable to be stopped, and you stumbled backward. The knife was pulled from your hand by Arthur, tucking it back into his belt before wrapping an arm around you, pressing his front against your back, steadying you.

Your chest heaved, rapid breaths leaving you, the room spinning. “Sadie, get him outta here.” His voice carried the fury of a thousand men, but you knew it wasn’t directed at you. It was never at you.

Sadie didn’t have to be told twice, understanding flashing across her face. Joseph cried out when she yanked his hair up hard, pulling him to his feet. She pushed him to the doorway, his tied-together feet tripping him with each step. “Take him to the Van Buren estate,” you muttered, focusing your last bit of composure on speaking. “He’s gonna tell them everything.”

Dread washed across Joseph’s features, and he shook his head like a petulant child. “I’m not-”

“Shut it!” Sadie smacked him across the face with her gun, drawing blood, before directing her attention to you and Arthur. “Should I wait for y’all out there, or…?”

“We’ll meet ya there.” You felt his fingers squeeze your hip. I’ve got other priorities, it said. “You’ve got him alright?”

“This puny thing?” She barked out a laugh. “I’ve got him, Arthur. I’ll see ya both there, then.” With a nod, she exited the house, dragging Joseph along behind her.

You felt Arthur speak, but you couldn’t hear him, your fast breathing and pounding heart the only thing you could. Gently, you felt him turn you so that you were facing him, hands then immediately cupping the sides of your face. His lips moved, but you couldn’t understand him, and you shook your head at him. Or maybe your entire body was shaking. You couldn’t tell. 

You hadn’t realized you were crying until you felt his thumbs brush tears away. The ringing in your ears was incessant, making your head spin even more. Your shaky hands scrabbled for purchase on Arthur’s body, fingers grasping the material of his shirt with uncontained desperation to find security. 

It was when Arthur brought your head against his that you finally heard his words. “Let it out, darlin’.”

Whatever restraint you had left snapped, a terrible wail erupting from you, barely being muffled as you buried your face into his chest. Sobs wracked your body as you slid to the floor, Arthur’s arms keeping you from collapsing completely as he followed you down. 

You’re not sure how long you sat there, crying until your body couldn’t produce any more tears, lacking the energy to continue to shake your body with sobs. But you realized it wasn’t just the events of the past hour that had upset you so deeply. No, you realized you were in mourning. 

You were mourning those past two years, years that you’d never get back. Mourning years that had been taken away from you, sacrificed in your brother’s game of greed. Years that weren’t his to have, which never had been, and never would be, yet he took them anyway. 

Eventually, you managed to lift your head enough to look at Arthur, but what you saw nearly made you break again. 

He was crying too. 

[drieddpetals]

modern things the crows would love

(based of the reference of them being in the victorian era)

(also, i've seen a couple people do this so full credit to them for inspiring this)

kaz:

* (secretly) card shuffling asmr/those asmr videos where they teach you card games, even tho he knows how to play them already

* (when he was a kid) those diaries where you have to have a code to get in with a speaker to record messages in

* ^^ also diaries with locks on them

* combination locks

* hard swing jazz

* mean girls (movie & musical)

* "dark acadamia" literature

* making sure everyone in a fifteen mile radius of him knows that frankenstein was the DOCTOR and the monster was frankenstein's MONSTER

* making up conlangs/ciphers for fun

* ^^ getting the crows to memorize them so they can communicate secretly

* gloves with pads on the fingers that let you use screens

inej:

* tumblr aesthetic moodboards

* taking hyperspecific uquiz personality quizzes

* crystal jewelry

* competitive gymnastics & tumbling

* claw clips & french pins

* colored eyeliner & mascara

* midi skirts

* making boards on pinterest—sharing those boards with jesper & wylan

* ^^ having massive joint pinterest boards with all the crows

* leg warmers

* ballet & "ballet aesthetic"

* any movie with natalie portman

* birkenstocks but specifically the ones with a holder for your big toe (idk if this makes sense)

* phantom of the opera

* oil diffusers

* american girl dolls

jesper:

* laser tag

* rollerskating & roller derby

* plato's closet

* tourist jewelry

* volleyball

* colored & funky shaped sunglasses

* just dance 2

* bruno mars

* fall out boy

* cargo shorts

* hamilton

* finding obscure fashion inspo on pinterest

* showing everyone how he can run barefoot on gravel

* gyaru fashion

* sour candy

* mt. dew

* saying, "i'm just joshing you" ironically

* sneezing extremely loud on purpose when it's dead silent

wylan:

* papa louie arcade games

* laufey

* asmr

* flute beatboxing

* green and brown colored converse

* tumblr aesthetic moodboards

* magnetic puzzle tiles

* percy jackson

* moisturizer with sunscreen in it

* the great comet of 1812

* dr. pepper

* accidentally dropping really traumatizing memories bc he genuinely thinks they're just funny stories from his childhood

* watercolor pencils

* shazam & the google "hum a tune" feature

nina:

* forever 21

* lush

* those mommy baking blogs that post their whole life stories before the recipe

* french tip manicures but in any other color but white

* ^^ also charms on nails

* gel manicures

* megan thee stallion

* lip gloss

* juicy couture

* the met gala

* amy winehouse

* duolingo/memrise/babbel

* panera bread

matthias:

* ^^ also, those mommy baking blogs that post their whole life stories before the recipe

* volunteering at animal shelters

* carhaart & patagonia

* those massage chairs at malls

* apple watches

* buying those massive bottles of ibuprofen at costco

* ^^ buying bulk protein powder from costco

* ^^^ generally he just likes costco & buying things in bulk

* colored fairy lights (HATES LED light strips)

* those big tubs of aquaphor

* vera bradley blankets

* gallon water bottles with the motivational time checkpoints

* at home gyms

* the classic white boy flannel over hoodie combo

* jacuzzis

* massage guns

* steel toe boots

* yawning and sneezing like a dad

* hair and beard oil

[catboxcoffin]

On Furniture

(Apologies for discursive definition-talk..)

I believe the label of ‘furniture’ itself, like anything that isn’t given a complete answer, to host a catbox of meanings, so I’ll list some thoughts and categorize them by factual/thematic v.s. (meta-)fictional. I am separating these categories based on the word’s two ‘origins’: [1.] the ‘in-universe’ coinage; and [2.] the first usage within the episodic structure.

Regarding/defining categories:

Factual/Thematic:

The canon, chronological storyline [1.] underneath the story’s presentation tends to connect more to the Factual—I use this term to refer to the material events upon which everything else is built (‘Prime’) because Umineko likes to play with the word ‘Truth.’ Extra-gameboard events are as close to ‘factual’ as we can hope for, as they should occur outside of the Catbox. I willfully ignore the gestures pointing otherwise, as that would completely ruin the entire game’s truth-search, but I will concede differing ‘perspectives’ as a means of obscuring, and stories told by catbox pieces to be dubious. Literal and Thematic are not oppositional here; all metaphor/hyperbole/concepts in this category are rational extensions of the in-universe ‘reality’ because they remain as such—by this I mean that they are not visualized as chairs or rabbits, but instead concepts as intuitive as love and evil that exist among the world's inhabitants. Although these themes are delicately woven into the meta-fiction, they are born from ‘reality,’ not personified from a third source or a tool within the game.

2. (Meta-)Fictional:

The story’s presentation [2.] aligns more with the subjective, fantastical elements within the story. Considering the nature of an ‘endless witch’ and voyager witches in general, the Meta-World falls into this category as well (Also... take my usage of 'Meta' lightly—I am referring to fiction-within-fiction and the common term for the worlds, not asserting that Umineko is an effective work of MetaFiction). The gameboards in their entirety cannot logically exist without Meta interference, because their planes often (arbitrarily) merge. To simplify the discussion I’m treating the layers somewhat like this: —> (Note: it would take me ages to map out a consistent meta layer system for Umineko, so bear with the simplicity)

Prime - Umineko’s ‘real’ universe. The fragment of authored message bottles and (pardon my presumption) Ange/Eva’s survival. + What can reasonably be gleaned chronologically from the following layer (2) along with flashbacks.

Gameboards and the pieces within them. Were written with an intended purpose & elements of reality. In order of importance: 1, 2 > 3, 4 > Chiru

The Meta-World 1. Where Battler and Beatrice fight & the presentation/narration of the board. Seems to seep into every other layer somehow. Hypothetically contains Yasutrice as-author

The Meta-World 2. Whatever the hell was going on with Featherine and Ange reading about MW1. Arguably any extra-catbox people (voyager&endless witches of the future) contribute to this layer.

My Factual-thematic category focuses nearly entirely on layer 1, with extrapolation from persistent themes/discussions in 2. My (Meta-)fictional category encompasses layers 2 & 3. 4 can be relevant but I largely dislike using it for theories. In other words, category 2 is everything that is non-factual, meaning mostly presentation and interpretation.

I. Factual / Thematic

The in-universe coinage of ‘furniture’ is only disclosed in Reqiuem. I find this to be an interesting choice considering the inverted ‘answer sheet’ theme of EP7; Ryukishi is handing us a short, retrospectively logical explanation, but its brevity leaves much to be interpreted.

"This body that isn't even capable of love...!! / What's...what's the point in living like that?! / This isn't a Human's life...!! / It's like being furniture!! / That's right, I'm...furniture...!!"

The term is suddenly flipped on its head. Prior, furniture was presented as unable to love because it was furniture (implied to be status-based, seemingly just an effect of inferiority). However, it’s the other way around: one is furniture because it cannot love. The condition of the body precedes & defines worth. Unlike the dramatized, bodiless nature of Beato’s fantasies, this solution is grotesque and earthly. Being physically alienated from the universe of two makes one sub-human. Yasu-Shannon-Kannon’s—I’ll use ’YSK’—mutilated organs make ‘them’ (collective, not gender-neutral) unable to form a sexual union with any of their respective partners. Shannon cannot fulfill the marital duty of motherhood or even sex with George, Kanon is literally impotent, both physically and emotionally/volitionally in his pursuit of Jessica, and Yasu is so alienated from the feminine ideal that she cannot allow herself to ‘exist’ without performing through the former two (&Beatrice). None of them are sexually ‘complete.’

Continuing the material interpretation, its application to Genji is obvious: He loyally serves Kinzo as a friend and confidant, possesses a flamboyant, flirtatious fictional counterpart, and remains unmarried with a certain sterility towards women... He is gay. Blatant subtext aside this answer also ties up some of my personal qualms with his characterization. His senseless, sociopathic dedication to the head and his successor, complete unwillingness to intervene regarding Kuwatrice, and legitimate desirelessness can at least partially be humanized by lolgayforkinzo… If anything, a possible envy of Beatrice(s) could have solidified their doom. This unrequited love makes Genji too ‘sexually incomplete.’ While not literally mutilated, there is metaphorical castration in being a sexual minority. Kinzo would never love him, and I doubt Genji even respected himself enough to wish for it. He is the other half-universe that complements YSK, and possibly the only one who could begin to understand them. Their dramatically fatalistic tendencies can be narratively justified by their banishment from (yet proximity to) the world of love. There is no purpose in ‘living’ without the single element of life.

On a simpler note, we can also reverse-engineer the label simply based on those excluded. On my first read, ‘furniture’ initially, obviously seemed to be a hyperbolic representation of servitude. Being barricaded from the rest of society by class would certainly render one ‘sub-human.’ This, however, is self-eliminating by exempting Gohda and Kumasawa from the label. My immediate conclusion then was that the basis was not physical status, but psychological servitude. KumaGoh always felt far more human to me, which I chalked up to abysmally poor writing of ShKaGenji—a belief I still hold to an extent, but have found ways to cope with. Kumasawa and Gohda are distinctly rebellious, obviously thinking little of their status as servants. They are petty, greedy individuals who fit in well with the Ushiromiyas despite their class differences. Kumasawa is a pathological slacker, and Gohda is a skirt of responsibilities, but this doesn’t make them 'bad' in any sense. They have a passion for and qualms with their employment because it is their job, not their identity. The same cannot be said for SKG, who literally embody their vocation. I could never take their little spats with Beatrice seriously because of how bizarrely complacent they were in the face of reality; to this day I get irritated with searching for satisfactory answers in EP2. Thus, ‘furniture’ can be taken to mean a lack of humanity constituted by a lack of will & individuation.

In a similar (& more personally satisfying) vein, ‘Furniture’ can represent a debt and unbreakable tie to Kinzo. ShKanon and Genji are closer than anyone to being his property, yet they obtain strange respect from him, bearing the One-winged eagle as both a brand and honor—prized possessions. The magical perspective refers to them as his ‘creations,’ which works literally with Yasu/Lion as his paternal creation and Genji-as-servant as a circumstantial creation. Genji owes Kinzo as his savior, his remaining existence eternally devoted to paying back the favor of being spared from death in the seizing of Taiwan. Serving for so long, and so absolutely, definitely degraded his sense of humanity and began to merge his identity with his master’s.

(GEN): ”......We must continue to return the favor we received from the Master...until our final moments."

YSK, on the other hand, are tied to Kinzo by blood. Even in their ignorance and physical distance, and much to their personal detriment, they cannot escape him. They merge with projections of Beatrice without even meeting him, they come to work in the mansion without knowledge of their ancestry, and they become treasured servants seemingly by coincidence. Both ShKanon and Genji have a sense of being Kinzo's above all else, to the point of being distrusted as servants by the rest of the family, an unfortunate state since neither has families of their own. I think of this as a semi-intended and enforced alienation by Kinzo, furthering their already lonely situations for the sake of dependence and loyalty (I do not find this entirely loveless, though…). This loneliness could explain the affective resignation felt by furniture, and their inability to ‘love.’ YSK’s case is cemented in youth due to special treatment both inciting bullying and cultivating a strange relationship between them and Kinzo—Kanon’s mention of shooting with Kinzo and participating in pranks tugs on a heartstring I can’t explain. I am particularly fond of this interpretation…

II. (Meta-)Fictional

There is a stupid amount of facets to furniture in the 'fictional' portion of the story, to the point where it’s difficult to speculate on a cohesive definition. 50 new characters now fall under the label, and they must be encompassed as well. Is the term simply an extension of its connotation in reality, or is it morphed by meta-context like many of the other themes? My vote? Entirely Meta.

As I did earlier, I will begin with the first usage—this time, the coinage within the episodic structure [2.]. Doing this, I found something interesting:

The first use of furniture is Self-Referential and used as a reason to not do something: Kanon not giving a real interactive greeting, or accepting sweets; Shannon not fighting off Battler’s assault. It actually takes a while for the term to be used by non-furniture, making it appear entirely self-imposed. The word is persistently used despite the discomfort and intervention by others. It’s not self-deprecation or knowledge of one’s place; it’s a rule—a rule seemingly ingrained into the fabric of their existence. This is what I assert in this section—it is.

Shannon, Kanon, and Genji to a lesser extent, are wholly pieces owned by Yasu as their author. Not in the sense that Piece-Maria or Piece-Eva are pieces—I mean literal fiction. SKG are Yasu’s characters. Their differentiation from ‘humans’ all hinges on what can be ascribed to their fictionality.

They have an unchangeable position in the world because they are born with a singular practical purpose: to facilitate the gameboards’ culprit. (The strife that appears down the line is due to the conflicting purpose of creation) They cannot obey promises, only orders. Furniture does nothing but rot with the passage of time (…due to the triumph of new truths, I presume). Furniture is a reliable ‘tool,’ aptly fitting for characters who exist to fit neatly into the logic of murders, allowed meta-sentience but not autonomy. Writing about Humans is inefficient; you must cater to their flaws and desires, bound by what they Would or Wouldn’t do. What they are shown to be like is what they are like; the room for duplicity is small in stories corroborated by the Truth of the outside world. To surpass this—to create the perfect culprit without constraints, morals, or ties to reality—one only must ensure they are embodied. Embodied, they must be, by someone who could feasibly be them, due to an intentional lack of information. The benefit of the ambiguous identity is the excusability of multiple identities and secret motives. Yasu, with the least history, is the default, practical culprit for such a scheme. It would be entirely possible for Yasu to have no motive against the family at all, and through a simple desire to write the most effective story possible, just happened to write herself as the villain (though I obviously do not believe this, based on… well… everything).

Genji is not quite ‘fictional’ in the way that I’m claiming ShKanon are, but his nature makes him the perfect culprit-tool. Little can be known regarding prime-Genji aside from his undying loyalty to Kinzo and his successor (and how this makes him starkly morally bereft). Without family or distinct loyalties aside from the aforementioned, he too becomes a motive-mystery, and can be written to feasibly facilitate and assist almost any act if dictated by the ‘Master.’ The role of Master is pretty significant regarding Genji’s utility, considering that if the boards are chronologically honest (which they must be), Kinzo is dead and Yasu is ‘the Master.’ This aggressively recontextualizes most of Genji’s references to being furniture:

(GEN): ".......I believe everything has proceeded as the Master has hoped and arranged for. ...To distrust that would exceed my role as furniture in service to the Master.”

(KAN): "...............I wonder if this means the Master's ceremony has already begun." / (GEN): "...Probably. However, that has nothing to do with furniture like us.”

Obviously, we could read this as commentary on Yasu literally carrying out the murders, but the passivity and strange sentience regarding the ceremony leads me to believe this comes from a character aware of his narrative function. He was Yasu’s original ‘piece’ in reality, remaining her greatest asset in fiction as well. His loyalty was not just feasible, but real. Like ShKanon, he functions as a limitless Queen. Unlike SK, though, he does little to ever interfere or reject his status. Although, there is that scene of him knifing the butterfly…

Before I discuss the other(s)’ fictionality, I have to preface: I will not suspend my disbelief—I do not think ShKanon was a ‘thing’ in prime. I don’t doubt the mental manifestation of Kanon as an ideal, and am even open to a Kanon ‘alter,’ but I cannot accept that YasuShannon regularly dressed up as him or that anyone knew of a Kanon (besides maybe Genji, and even that’s tenuous). I honestly don’t mind the impracticality of performing Kanon, more so the meaninglessness. Within a gameboard ruleset where absurdities being ‘technically possible’ warrants its writing as truth, why would Kanon be real? Wouldn’t that be stripping Yasu of her hilarious authorial tricks? His existence as “extra person without extra body” is the perfect tool for a game, but totally worthless in reality. It’s not unreasonable that he ‘existed’ at Jessica’s school festival as a favor, but I wouldn’t push further than that. Besides, he was 90% covered and still considered strikingly young and androgynous, which only confirms the difficulty of genderswapping in reality. Plus, most of the ‘confirmation’ of PrimeKanon exists among swaths of half-truths (i.e. Requiem stating that a whole separate kid is being summoned out of thin air and Yasu is doing magic). Don’t take this as discrediting his significance, though; Beatrice also isn’t ‘real,’ and she’s more interesting for it.

As for Shannon, she is also largely fake. Yes, the servant named ‘Shannon’ exists in Prime. That is Yasu (or, well, what was left after the Clair-trice fragmentation [Ironically enough, I do actually take this absurd plot point at face value. Because it’s interesting]). However, I truly believe that Gameboard Shannon (GS) is a fictional entity born to serve (exempting murders) the desire for conformity and traditional femininity as much as Kanon was born from loneliness and repression. Again, these facets and desires absolutely existed in reality, I just don’t see them as being sustainable, performed identities. The fact that Battler’s memories of his first love aren’t remotely jogged by GS, and the fact that such memories would make the culprit obvious, insists upon the idea that GS is an intentional construction for the sake of the story. Battler isn’t an idiot, his androgynous intellectual gf just morphed into a moeblob tradwife over 6 years…

I feel like there’s a sticking conception that either: 1. Shannon is literally mentally Beatrice le evil culprit mastermind and is just inhabiting a servant body; or 2. Shannon is completely disconnected and the evil witch is hidden in her head as a separate consciousness and possesses her and seriously fights her alternate personas. I find these neither compelling nor reasonable. As for the first, I really do not feel like labeling a character’s entire real-world existence as a facade, no matter how boring they may be. Besides, it would be quite difficult to earnestly repress your true self enough to love not one, but two other people on the side. As for the second, a split personality is meaningless and nigh impossible when within the board’s logic you can literally kill, resurrect, and swap identities at will. They’re all fiction. That’s it. They’re all Yasu’s characters. Granted, they each contain large, separate amounts of herself, but none are uniquely her. As Zepar and Furfur said, “Their soul is less than a single person.” Existent, in a sense, but not fully ensouled.

It should go without saying that I reject Prime!JessiKanon or and ShaGeorge (for the most part). I think their inclusion in the story is a mechanic to solidify just how disconnected Yasu’s desires and ‘selves’ are, and to provide ample commentary on Love. It’s entirely likely that Yasu fantasized a romantic pursuit of George to distract herself from Battler, but I have a hard time reconciling her character with that sort of activity unless, again, Shannon was a literal split identity. Besides, the love square serves to soften the absolute disingenuousness of ShKanon for being what they are—tools.

However, Shannon does have an undeniable centrality, a ‘Heart’ that the others are not afforded, including Beatrice. My answer for this is that she is the only one truly Embodied outside of the board, pushing her into a strange half-furniture, half-human category. Kinzo is said to have made her by hand without a demon and to have given her a heart. This alludes to her being a child born from flesh, not contrived by circumstance. As always, Kinzo is paralleled by Yasu, who has a similar (meta-)relationship to Shannon.

Gameboard-Shannon does not ‘exist,’ but she surely contains the most real rudiments of Prime-’Shannon.’ Though less than human, she is Named and privileged with a body the others could never have. Her higher existence can also be explained by her being the simplest to potentially ‘exist’ (no gender-bend, no blonde witch). The conflict between her narrative role as Yasu’s piece and the narrative constraints of her ties to reality affords her a special rebelliousness, manifesting as a stronger Heart. Shannon’s bindings to Prime are a hindrance from an authorial perspective, narrowing culpability, but a privilege to the piece herself, who may circumvent fate with her ‘humanity.’ This is why she always precedes Kanon, and why she wins the love duel (Yes, I think the duel was identity>love). I also believe that Yasu envied the conceptual GS (The Beatrice/Shannon clash is enough to evidence this) and that Shannon’s internal strife is a consequence of Yasu’s teetering consideration of embodying her completely—hence the “heart that can know love.” By abandoning her Self and personifying this ideal, she could pursue a love beyond Battler, but it would be a charade. Thus the ‘Shannon’ character was trapped in a dream she wasn’t allowed, with a new purpose outgrowing the old, fighting her own authorship.

“…Burning with infatuation and worried by love, being tempted constantly and eternally with a way out was truly a cruel trial.”

This could easily be read as Yasu’s conception of Shannon—her last way “out.” However, her piece is not allowed to transgress its role, or the catbox games would shatter.

Though I have agonized over it, I don’t think my thoughts here ignore the heart. To understand the nature of furniture, one must deconstruct each character and what makes them human. Metaphors & representation are crucial to Umineko and, by extension, Yasu. The motive compelling one to author iterative ‘selves’ containing neuroses invisible in reality yet contained in one body for the sake of their nature being solved is far more bittersweet than reverse-engineering a split personality because it’s the only way to make the Logick Work. Applying the sentiment of Eva-trice and the black witch, internal conflict may be made comfortable through literal bifurcation, but the mind in reality is painfully united. The possession of multitudes can justify the inability to understand or accept yourself; to love yourself. Many but one.

I consider the Golden Land’s ‘liberation’ of furniture into love & bodies of their own to be the opposite of what it seems—instead of external fabrication, the identities unite cohesively within the single mind, thus allowing them ‘each’ a body and the capacity to love.

TLDR; Furniture in the meta-perspective is the role of a character & narrative tool. Furniture in ‘reality’ is a physical, psychological, and relational condition.

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

[aubrey-shifts]

does anyone want to be shifting friends? my main dr is marauders but i have over 40 including but certainly not limited to a fame dr, a percy jackson dr, a doctor who dr, a fantasy dr, a bridgerton dr, a harry potter dr and an ancient world dr!

(i don't support jk rowling btw i'm trans myself)

list of other drs under break:

- a steampunk world

- ancient rome (i visited pompeii once and was fascinated)

- call me by your name but NOT bc i condone the author or rly like the characters or anything but js because that PLACE.

- druck (a fairly obscure german tv show)

- magnus chase where i'm in valhalla

- medieval dr where i'm a traveller and get to see what the world was like (because in history class you mainly learn about the politics/lives of the royals/aristocracy, but i wanna know what everyone else's lives were like)

- warped tour 2005 (my inner emo kid never stopped being sad that warped tour was discontinued)

- boarding school dr (a school that i made up with cool subjects like fashion design class and with rly cute uniforms)

- pirate dr because why not

- good omens dr

- dr where i get to be in this one house that i dreamt up one day that would be my perfect house

- dr based on an original story i have (i can't WAIT to go to this one and meet my ocs)

- suits dr (like, the tv show)

- jet lag the game dr (it's this one silly travel competition show on youtube and it seems like so much fun to participate in)

- old bollywood dr (i'm indian)