#the REAL fire that killed dream aradia

[thewertsearch]

Oh, also - that version of Megalovania rivals the Undertale one. Holy shit?

[solluxonhivestuck]

Backstory.

((OOC and It’s likely going to get lost, but I’ll link it at the front. This is my Sol’s story, in chronological order, from the time I started RPing this iteration of him. It’s going to be a lot, so it’s under the link. This is mostly for me but also anyone who’s interested?))

- The story's the same up until after Sollux gets blinded pre-retcon and leaves with Aradia to drift in the dream bubbles, greeting ghosts and talking to dead friends, etc etc, everything you do in dream bubbles while still alive and totally reliant on your moirail for everything.

- He decided he wanted to fight in the battle against Lord English. He hated being a burden, being Aradia's pet pity project. He wanted to do something. He wanted to fight. He was adamant. He'd thought there wasn't anything left for him to do, anyway. He'd already survived to the end of his lifelong prophecy, heard no more voices, received no more visions. Aradia didn't have the heart to tell him that it was the wrong path.

- Using her music boxes, which were not given to Gamzee in this timeline, she rolls time back with him and takes him to his planet. He'd already completed most of the planet quest on his own and with Feferi's help at the time, with Aradia's help and actual conviction he was able to complete the puzzle and eradicate the fire that plagued his world.

- His plan was to reach god tier, to reset and heal his body, to awaken his powers, and to throw everything he could into protecting his timeline and fighting. Unfortunately that wasn't in Paradox Space's plans, and although this wasn't the contributing factor to this timeline's doom, he goes on to believe his decision was the cause for it without any evidence ever given to prove otherwise. His quest cocoon was still aflame, so he and Aradia didn't have to think too hard about how he'd actually need to die in it. It was a matter of being held in it long enough to suffocate and die. It wasn't a great plan to be honest.

- Turns out none of it was a great plan. Burning alive sucks. At least you suffocate before you burn to death. Worse is going a sweep and a half in silent bliss only to have sight returned, voices tenfold, and knowledge beyond comprehension of doom and what it entails to all. Sensory overload. His pan couldn't handle it. Too much screaming, too much death, countless upon countless ghosts would be killed in the battle of Lord English and he heard each one at once, his own included. He was going to die heroically. His pan was too busy drowning to even decide if he was okay with that.

- Aradia decided she'd seen enough of the suffering. The timeline was doomed anyway, and Sollux put in this much effort, this much will to fight, that she didn't want to see him throw it away so quickly. On her way back to their own time, she split into an alternate timeline and dropped him there, leaving him alone. Her reasons were her own, and he couldn't tell you what they were beyond the fact he trusted whatever Aradia had been thinking.

- Wherever he'd been left alone at, Sollux's thinkpan couldn't handle the stimulation overload and shut off from itself. His memories of what happened were locked off, trapping him into a confused state for a long time that he just learned to get used to. He remembers being blind and being with Aradia, but he's got no answers as to why he's healthy, can see, and is alone now. He'd taken up residence in a memory of his old hive.

- Thanks to time being wrong in the dream bubbles and Sollux missing a large chunk of his memory thanks to trauma-induced memory loss, he's complacent to stay for a while without really having a grasp of how much time has gone by, especially when he's being left alone, unsupervised, and already had an abysmal sense of time passing. This period of time doesn't treat him well, it's a miracle he manages to sustain himself at all, but he does manage to not die out of stupidity and miscare.

(Here is where backstory "ends" and roleplay begins. A lot of this backstory was fleshed out through play, because for a while I didn't have an explanation as to why he could see but remembered being blind.)

- He finds a Psii trapped in a dream bubble, unaware that he's dead, still serving as the Helmsman to the Battleship Condescension. Sollux goes through his usual habit when meeting a ghost that doesn't know they're dead: don't tell them, help them through the memory and let them remember on their own. Psii never remembered. Sollux eventually grew fond of the pitiful fuck. Wanted to help him. Learned more about him. Looked forward to talking to him. Several perigees pass talking to the dead Helmsman and he never once mentions the truth to Psii. He's falling in pity.

- It doesn't help that a new Aradia has stumbled into his life. Not HIS Aradia, he's never seen her since before he could see. It doesn't help that Sollux Captor is head over heels in love with Aradia, a troll who had been only pale with him. Her feelings never went ruddy the way his did, so he'd never told her. Tried to move on. This girl, though. She had different plans. She was flush for this certain wreck of a Sollux captor. And that made things difficult.

- He's got feelings split, half between the old trapped helmsman who's newest fear is decommissioning. He doesn't know he's already dead and he's begging Sollux not to let him die. Half between the girl he grew up with, an alternate perhaps but timelines close enough that they meshed anyway. The old Helmsman and the girl both know about each other, he's never been interested in hiding their existance from each other. And they never chose to fight.

- Sollux comes up with a reckless rescue plan involving Aradia, Vriska, and Jane. The day Psii's memory has him pulled from the helm, which saves Sollux and them a lot of trouble of having to learn how to unhook a helmsman on the fly, is the day they infiltrate the ship. There's several phantoms of the crew around, but since none of it is really real, they have little problem retrieving the "dying" helmsman. Sollux has informed none of the other players that Psii is in fact already dead, and convinces Jane to use a life restoration skill on Psii to save him from death. This revives his ghost, and the Psiionic is now half-alive. Sollux didn't want him to know he died as a slave, and that was his single selfish drive through the entire mission.

- Psii comes to live with Sollux at Sollux's hive and Aradia visits often. The three have decided on an arrangement where the three of them share a poly flush arrangement between themselves equally, quite possibly the best outcome the tangle of feelings could have had. It was good. Psii stays with Sollux as he heals, builds weight, and generally learns how to be a troll again.

- Psii brings home a half-grown ghost kitten which they decide to name Sanity.

- The Psiionic becomes pale with an Eridan younger than Sollux, but no less feisty. It takes them a long time to get along, but they eventually, tentatively manage. Psii, for the most part, visits Eridan's hive when he needs some pale time.

- Due to shenanigans originally intent on Sollux wanting to harass every Eridan he could find, he gathers them into a group and picks a fight. Like he's trying to prove something, he was in an especially manic phase and felt it was a good idea. Unfortunately, Psii had come with him and things didn't go as planned. It ended up being a peaceful arrangement with three of the Amporas entranced in a lightshow, one of them taking a shine to Sollux. Psii ended up forcing two of them along with Sollux into a cuddle pile, and it was all a gross pseudo-pale, peaceful mess.

- Since he could tolerate the guy fairly well, Sollux decided to follow up on the second, older Eridan. Since they both had the same name, Psii decided to split their names; the younger one who was his own moirail became Eri, and the elder one who took a shine to Sollux became Danny. Both Eridans complied without complaint, and that just became the way they were addressed.

- Sollux meets a stranger named Jaydia who turns out to be his descendant from an alternate timeline. They grow close, and form a tentative pale bond after some time. Unfortunately, Sollux is an absolute mess, and she wasn't able to provide for him in the way he needed her to. They break off the relationship, but remain friends. She stays together with Aradia.

- Turns out Amporas are stupid and pitiful if you actually take the time to get to know them. Sollux wouldn't be sure which one of them was paler first, but eventually they had a sit-down at Danny's hive and discussed some clear pity tension that lead to the diamond quadrant being happily filled. Which was good, because Sollux desperately needed that someone to take care of him, and Danny was more than willing to deliver, and gave him what he needed perfectly to keep him a sane, functioning troll.

- For a short period of time, Sollux has a pitch entanglement with Vriska. She proves to be a rather terrible kismesis, not that anyone was surprised by that. Not one fuckin' bit. The relationship lasts little over two weeks before he addresses her directly and severs it. They don't speak again after that, probably out of shame for being shitty spades. Who knows.

- Danny and Sollux attempt to vacillate black together now that the quadrant is free, because Sollux is so fucking pale for his diamond that he was willing to help the seatroll let off steam. While it helped a little bit, both of them were too pale for that shit and it ultimately wasn't a option they pursued.

- A grub is created through ectobiology from the donors Meenah Peixes and Roxy Lalonde, then ultimately abandoned to Psii through Meenah because he was the only troll she knew who wouldn't kill it. A white-skinned fuschia grub that they eventually decided to name Caliya Peixes, and she became a part of their family. Soon after this, they all decide to move to Aradia's hive, because there's a lot more space for the lot of them there rather than a hivecell that used to belong to a stem.

- He talks to Danny about his memory problems. It'd been something he'd been so used to that he never gave it thought, but Eridan had to go asking QUESTIONS, and Sollux realized with a prickle of discomfort he was met with confusion and darkness when he tried to answer them. Brought up suggestions. Maybe he was dead, and didn't remember. A ghost. Maybe he was god tier. Maybe he was just fucked up. It made him scared. Thankfully, Danny knew someone. A Kurloz Makara, who was talented enough with his chucklevoodoos that he could pick apart a troll's brain and surface any repressed memories. After discussing with both of his matesprits what he should do, he decides to accept the offer and meet with Kurloz.

- The retrieval, in essense, was simple. Sit in the same room, lower his mental barriers, and let Kurloz pick apart his thinkpan. It was absolutely fucking terrifying, and it was only his trust for Danny's suggestion that he allowed the clown in. And Kurloz discovered a lot more than they'd bargained for. Having his pan opened to everything that had been locked out for who knows how long, he nearly lost his mind a second time, but Kurloz was able to grab hold of his mind and calm him just enough for Sollux to get a grip on himself and work on getting the overwhelming sensations under control.

- Under control is a loose definition, he takes a long time to learn how to make anything manageable, lots of sleepless days and restless nights. Lots of sweat-filled late-day piles with his moirail to keep himself in one piece while he sorted through the voices that overwhelmed even those that he remembered, voices from many different timelines overlapping, trying to force their way into his understanding as was the way of the Mage.

- Danny goes missing. There's no word, no warning, nothing at all to indicate where he might have gone. Sollux looks, but can't find him. Stays alone in the other troll's hive sometimes. Wanders. Tries countless code functions to try and track him, met with dead end after dead end. He doesn't take the loss well, feels betrayed and abandoned. Like it was his fault.

- Aradia's gone on longer and longer excursions until she stops coming back at all. Jaydia goes missing in this time as well. It's down to Sollux and Psii again, and they come to terms with having been abandoned by their matesprit.

- Eri comes to stay with the Captors at Aradia's hive after being attacked in his hive and it being rendered unlivable until repairs are made. Repairs end up being put off because Eridan is injured from the attack, and he honestly prefers living with the Captors as opposed to being alone on his island.

- Sollux and Psii are asleep in the couch when Psii has a nightmare. Eri happens to pass through and wake his moirail because it looks fairly bad. However, the nightmare was an old memory of his time with Dualscar, and Eridan waking him up only left him trapped frightened in the memory. Two optic blasts from the frightened Psiionic lost Eri his right arm and Sollux one of his expendable lives. It was later revealed that Sollux hadn't prevented injury because he'd forseen the event, and had he interfered he would have died a Heroic death trying to protect Eridan, and Eridan would have suffered a doubledeath, leaving Psii alive, traumatized, and alone.

- Sollux has gone through a few different coping mechanisms to handle not having his goddamned moirail, who he's still in love with, his matesprit, who he's still in love with. Alcohol, sparingly, but he's no good with that. Self harm in the form of self-neglect. He even tried smoking after bumming cigarrettes off of Cronus to see if nicotine would calm his nerves. It's not even the fact that he doesn't have his close people anymore, it's the fact that Paradox wants to claim the death he's supposed to have. What's worse, it wants Psii dead too. Two Captors who shouldn't even be alive, and it wants to fix this mistake. And he's trying so hard on his own to keep them safe without anyone knowing. It's hard. It's hard and no one understands.

- Psii is stressed because Sollux is stressed, and finding out Sollux started smoking was the last straw for Psii. He tears into Sollux after cornering him, and the confrontation turns to fighting until they flip to an unhealthy sort of black.  Eri, who can hear the crashing and thumping from the other room, ends up coming in in an attempt to auspiticize the whole affair. His attempts are wildly unsuccessful but the situation gets diffused regardless, and Sollux stops smoking.

- Eridan becomes kismesis with Nepeta Leijon.

- Eridan befriends Equius Zahhak, and the two, over time, become close enough to form a matespritship. Eridan decides he'd like to move back to his ship and bring the Captors with him, there's plenty of splace. The four end up forming a familiy unit thanks to the closeness of their quadrants. Eridan also receives a useful robotic arm from an alternate Equius.

- A Dualscar, who had been periodically giving trouble to Sollux, Aradia, Psii, and Caliya, appears again after months of silence and shoves a seadwelling grub into Eridan's arms. Being disallowed to cull the grub by both his matesprit and his moirail, Eridan chooses to raise it, naming him Aristl after the ancient philosopher, Aristotl.

- Eridan ends up breaking up with Nepeta after nearly killing her twice because she continued to press the wrong buttons. She attempted to get Sollux to ausptitize their relationship in an attempt to save it, but he refuses because there was no saving it.

- Sollux engages in a kismessitude with a fuschia-blooded emporer Eridan for a short period of time before he to vanishes from the grid. At this point he's really bitter about making any sort of relationships. Bitter and hesitant. Psii and Eri are starting to collectively force pale time on him, because he's a nervous wreck who refuses to let anything out and cross quadrant lines. He's the only one that seems to actually give a fuck about that, though.

- After joining hivestuck in a last attempt at salvation from himself and hope for distraction, he comes across his missing moirail very briefly. He barely gets an exchange and then doesn't see him again. He's extremely sad and bitter over this, understandably. Something tentative and pale is happening with Equius at home, but Sollux is so fucking scared of someone leaving him again that he won't even look at it.

- He accidentally got bit right in the neck by one of the grubs, and the little guy's fangs were long enough to pierce into an important vein in his neck, which would produce internal bleeding that none of them knew how to heal. Eri ended up talking Psii out of a mercy kill to do it himself and trigger Sollux's conditional immortality to make him well again.

- He currently has a robot he received from an alternate Equius that he's been working on programming an AI for, because he wants to see if he can use it as a surrogate moirail, because he is that fucking scared of another troll leaving him behind and he's going to end up getting himself killed if he doesn't have something that he won't push away. This route's going to go about as well as you're expecting it to: awfully.

- His kismesis returned to him after some pisspoor excuse but has made promise not to leave again. He’s skeptical, but he’s getting really jaded on people being close to him all around.

This brings us to present.

[blitherandblather]

CAoS Theory

If I were a religious man, I'm pretty sure I'd have given Satanism a shot. I'm not the kind of person who commits to anything for very long, so it wouldn't be that big a deal. I switch pinball-fashion from one dead-end, minimum wage job to the next on a bi-weekly basis. I just don't have the attention span to make a career of anything. I've already forgotten what I was talking about at the start of this paragraph and now I'm going to have to go all the way back to beginning to find out. It has pros and cons,  short attention span.

Satan, that's it. Or, at least, the Church of Satan. It's hip, it's new and it's utter bullshit. I find most religions to be utter bullshit, but at least this one has a few ideals I can get on board with. For one thing, Stupidity in a cardinal sin in Satanism. In fact, it's sin number one; it's the worst thing you do in the Church, be stupid. I can agree with that, it's my least favourite characteristic in a person too. There's a suspiciously prominent “don't fuck children” rule thrown in there too, as if in direct response to some other religion. Almost as if they were worried priests getting kicked out of other churches might end up theirs, so they just wanted to get the message out there. Come if you want, but, let's just be clear here, absolutely no fucking children. In fact, no children at all. Seriously, we're not letting anyone under the age of 18 through the door. Understand? Good, welcome to the CoS; here's your birthday cake.

Satanists are also atheists, so there's no real worry about being judged in the afterlife, because there isn't one. They also don't really care if you're a Satanist or not. They don't have masses or go knocking door-to-door. There's very little you actually have to do to be a Satanist. Most of it is about self-reflection and embracing nihilism. Oh, and their High Priest has released a bunch of albums you could use as mood setters while playing Dungeons and Dragons. Above all, though, Satanism is a philosophy and a way of thinking as opposed to an actual religion, and, if I were to join any organisation, I think they'd be the ones for me.

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with the Netflix show Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a new imagining of the Archie Horror comic book of the same name. It's a far darker and grittier look at the character than that taken by Melissa Joan Hart. Like most of Netflix's own shows, this 10-parter has an ongoing arc, split by story-of-the-week episodes. Sabrina is a half-witch, which means youngsters can relate to her, but also that her life is going to be more interesting than yours.

The Dark Lord, the devil, wants Sabrina to join his legion of followers, like her father promised she would before mysteriously dying in a plot point. But Sabrina is half-human, too, and she has a boyfriend and it's all, like, so unfair and stuff. So, a deal is struck between the innocent teenager and the manifestation of all evil, ruler of hell and destroyer of souls. She's allowed to go to her regular, human school, as long as she also attends The Academy of Unseen Arts, which I was positive was where Rincewind got kicked out of. As if this wasn't complicated enough, there is a witch-killer on the loose picking off Satan's followers. Also, there's like, these really mean girls? And, like, this boy? Like, a wizard boy? And he, like, likes Sabrina? But Sabrina's already with this human guy? It's totes drama, you guys.

There are a lot of positives with the show. Kiernan Shipka, playing Sabrina, is very likeable and exudes a confidence which makes us feel like she's been playing the role for years. The certifiably insane Michelle Gomez, perfectly cast as the possessed corpse of Sabrina's (human) High School teacher/(spoilers) Madame Satan herself, has great fun lurking around mischievously in the background of shots, plotting devious deeds and threatening pretty much everyone she happens to bang in to. Richard Coyle, playing the High Priest, hams it up unapologetically as the puritanical and ever-so-slightly-corrupt Father Blackwood. The show rarely panders to the viewer, assuming we already have at least a passing knowledge of the occult, mentioning Morgan le Fay, Lilith of Aradia, the Witch of Endor, Hildegard of Bingen, Marie Laveau, Tituba, Nehman, Badb, Macha, the Virgin of Juno, and the Kindly Ones (not looking forward to spellchecking that sentence). All of that is in one monologue, by the way, powerful stuff although, admittedly, utter gibberish if you don't know your witches. The plot also leans heavily on the Devil and Mr. Webster, with many feel-good moments where the clever half-human beats the devil himself in a game of wits.

There is plenty to moan about too, however. The storyline is plodding and, for most of the season, utterly directionless. Minor plot points are brought up to give the show a feel of gravitas it doesn't actually possess; an underdeveloped young girl is bullied by transphobic jocks, her father refers to his gay brother as “an abomination” and Sabrina's ward, Aunt Zelda (she's got a harsh exterior but, shock and horror, there's a heart of gold under there!) has an affair with Father Blackwood, whose wife is too pregnant to satisfy him sexually. To atone for this affair, both participants flagellate themselves, which also brings BDSM in to the mix, completely out of place and tone with the rest of the show.

Lucy Davis, Sabrina's other ward, Aunt Hilda (she's got a soft and squishy exterior but, shock and horror, there's a bellyful of fire under there!) mumbles distractedly in the background, utterly unsure how to play the character and becomes more of a distraction from, as opposed to a part of the story. The love triangle between Sabrina, dishy human Harvey Kinkle (who is given precisely fuck all to do except be dishy) and the dishy warlock Nicholas Scratch (maybe a spoiler alert, this was the devil's name in The Devil and Mr. Webster) feels tacked on and pointless. All YA fiction requires a love triangle, because how else can a young woman figure out who she truly is unless she can figure out which, of two, boys she wants to fuck the most?

Characters motives change on a whim, ranging from mildly irritating – Aunt Hilda warning Sabrina not to cast a particular spell, while simultaneously telling her exactly how to do so – to the fucking baffling – Madame Satan helping Sabrina exorcise a demon out of a human body, then coming back later on to murder the human for no fucking reason.

A plot point is brought up early in which a young, and possibly unaware, warlock is brought in to the morgue. He has definitely been murdered, and the Spellmans worry a Witch Hunter has come to town. They are so sure of it, they bring the news to the attention of Father Blackwood, who tells them to “keep an eye on it”. And it's never mentioned again.

Father Blackwood's position is similarly vague and malleable. In the first episode, the Spellman sisters are so terrified of the man, they're reluctant to even speak to him. In a later episode, when they've got shit going on, they pretty much to tell him to fuck off and let them get on with it. And he agrees. Sabrina constantly interrupts his sermons, pointing out that their religion is a crock of shit and that he, himself, is making up shit as he goes along. She's correct, of course, but he's the head of his particular coven and yet does nothing about her impertinence. On the other hand, when a full witch makes a minor mistake, he threatens to kill her and her two sisters if they ever screw up again. There's absolutely no consistency with his standing in the community, nor what his reaction will be to any given situation. Particularly irritating are the scenes with Blackwood and Madame Satan, during which it's never explained who is whose boss. They bark orders at each other one minute, then cow down the next. It feels like parts of the show are still in their first draft, whereas others have had copious amounts of rewrites, but both have been filmed and edited in to the final product.

Episode five – of ten – is a dream episode! The ultimate failure in any show (Star Trek disguised their dream episodes using a Holodeck instead, but the result was exactly the same), dream episodes are ones in which nothing fucking matters, because it's all a dream. It doesn't matter what happens in the episode, it's wiped out by the end credits. To stick a dream episode halfway through your first season stinks of an underdeveloped script. If there isn't enough plot to fill up ten episodes (and, believe me, there isn't), then don't film ten episodes. Condense it in to nine, or eight. Hell, be British about it and just have two six-part seasons and then never return to the premise ever again. You'll be beloved forever.

Therein lies the major problem with CAOS. There just isn't enough of it, and there's too much of it. The characters are, on the whole, dull, unimaginative and one-dimensional. The plots to each episode are dribbled across an hour plus of screen time, with barely half an hour's worth of material and the overall arc of season one focusses far too much on setting things up for season two, without giving us a reason to want to come back. By the end of episode ten, I was bored more than anything. I cared nothing for any of the characters and any good will I had felt towards the show at the beginning had been long-since spent. To the devil with them all.