Im procastinating on studying so i'll take this as an opportunity to ramble lmao it's vaguely set in the age of sail but with a few tweaks and so.
My marble hornets sea au (name pending kekw) it's a psychological horror au focused on the isolation and paranoia that ravages a small ship (The Hornet probably lmao, I am NOT that original) after it's left stranded on the sea.
With the captain and most of the more experienced workers dead, Brian, Alex, Jay, Tim, Seth and Sarah are left adrift on the ocean for almost 5 months. The ship is eventually found by a whaling ship, however, only Jay is found aboard. passed out and hid beneath the deck between the empty wooden boxes that once held the cargo.
The only thing Jay is left with is the memories of the night before the incident that left most of the crew dead, a week of the isolation the new crew was left in and the incoherent ramblings of the logbook of the ship.
He remakes his life back on land, having gotten an intense fear of the sea for reasons he can't recall, and becomes a small journalist for a local paper in a whaling town. However, after 3 years and increasing curiosity, Jay decides to try and find out what happened to the ship, for both himself and in honor of the few memories he has of his friends.
However, as Jay starts joining different ships in search of the truth, following an old letter that claims to have been sent by his old friend Alex, he begins to feel increased paranoia and fear as each ship he joins has a tragedy happen upon it.
It's almost like he is being hunted by something...
So we all like the “if you die then I’ll burn down the world” trope but there’s something so powerful and beautiful about living on with their memory instead. It’s not “because you’re dead the world has nothing worth saving in it” but “everyday something in this world reminds me of you and I’m glad for it even if it hurts”.
It’s “I’ll bring your kindness with me wherever I go and someone will remember it even if they’ll never know I borrowed it from you.”
It’s “This is what you would do.”
It’s “I’ll remember you for you and not for what the people hail you as.”
Everyone knows that Light and L matched each other's freak but I think their dynamic in the musical (the Japanese ver specifically) is underrated. Like it's not super different from canon but they just had this extra edge of Violence that we never quite saw from the more methodical and careful mindgames in canon death note and I think it's great. Like, yes, they did declare in canon that they will bring each other to justice, yes L says he wants to send Kira to his execution, but in the lyrics of the musical they both outright say multiple times that they just want to straight up Kill each other. It's direct the whole way through. There's more mutual contempt. This game is about nothing more than simply being the first one to Kill the Other (they actually use the word "殺し合い" (koroshiau) or "to kill each other" to describe their game (translated as "murderous ... game")).
(Sidenote but all those references about wanting to send each other to Hell?? Beautiful)
Yeah this is a battle of justice and ideals, yes that clash is a key part of their final confrontation at the end of the musical, but throughout their duets (or even songs like The Game Begins where they're singing by themselves) there's this near singleminded desire to just fucking End each other. It's fucking Raw and it's great.
Also THIS FUCKING SCENE?? THIS SCENE FROM SECRETS AND LIES. Iconic. Actually Insane. My jaw dropped. Light looks like a crazy bitch it's beautiful.
Um. Also. Obligatory Playing His Game (yknow the gay sex song) lines dump. It basically says everything I just said above in like 9 lines. You see what I mean right.
In canon they're playing a game of mental chess, trying to use everyone around them to finally catch the other as their end goal, but in the musical you really do feel like all they see is each other. They would probably beat each other to death with their fists if it came down to that. Idk they're just so excited and fired up about their little game in the musical and it's so unhinged and fun and special and I love it. It's like the writers for the musical decided to kick their murderous intent up a couple notches and the result is absolutely Beautiful.
I also think that the intensity of their rivalry in the beginning just makes the wind-down of The Way It Ends soo much better. It's such a good contrast to their previous duets where they try to sing over each other (Secrets and Lies & Stalemate) or with each other but basically at the top of their lungs (Playing His Game). It feels like there's both a quiet mutual understanding but also an underlying disappointment that the game is finally over. In canon, L's death Is instead the peak of their game, the moment he gets confirmation that Light is Kira is the exact same moment that he dies. In the jdrama it's almost sudden, how L dies, after the quiet moment has already passed. But in the musical L's death, ironically, Is the one quieter moment in their game. Their peak was the game itself. It was Secrets and Lies and Playing His Game. But the end of the game in the musical is not a victory, it's just (as L says) the end of everything they'd been wanting up until this point.
Uh. Fuck it. Clip from the Kenji Urai version because I just love his delivery here. His tone just goes so well with the silence and the sound of the clock ticking. You see what I mean right.
Their rivalry in the musical may have been more shortlived but like Damn they were really enjoying every second of it. They were truly insane about each other until the very end. (Like despite everything I just said about the ending it was still unhinged as fuck. Light Making L Shoot Him and then Making L Shoot Himself with L's Own Hand?? Holy shit man. What the fuck /pos)
Musical Light and L your game might've been shorter but you'll always be famous <33 Please never inflict what you had on anyone else ever please stay in hell forever thank you
“Were you trained as a dancer?”
“An acrobat. My whole family are acrobats.”
//
“Some people see a magic trick and say, ‘Impossible!’ They clap their hands, turn over their money, and forget about it ten minutes later. [..] And then there are the ones who stay awake, running through the trick again and again, looking for that skip in perception, the crack in the illusion that will explain how their eyes got duped; they’re the kind who won’t rest until they’ve mastered that little bit of mystery for themselves. I’m that kind.”
can someone check on taliesin jaffe please. this is two campaigns now that he’s built a pc specifically designed to seduce liam o’brien and both times he’s gotten cucked by a cool-toned trust fund baby that wasn’t even in the main party
I think this is one of my favorite lines from the Wraith route because of (imo) how much the meaning changes depending on if you got there via Spectre or Nightmare.
For Spectre, it honestly strikes me as a genuine question. Why are you doing this to her? If you're on the Spectre route, you presumably already know the Narrator can't really be trusted, since you had to reject his reward to get here. What are you hoping to gain from continuing to hurt her?
For Nightmare, it honestly just makes me sad. As the Shifting Mound describes her, "She desires only companionship, but the only thing she knows is how to hurt." This line feels like a plea from someone who genuinely doesn't understand why you keep rejecting her. She wants to be with you, but she just can't understand how to do that in a way which doesn't hurt you.