#you're depriving me here

[tomboxed]

best believe i don't know shit about mk11 but i sure as hell know these guys gay asf

[e-adlirez]

Treasure Seekers 3 Review/Ramble

Welcome to the third and last entry of the Treasure Seekers trilogy :D

"Wait what?" I probably hear you ask. "What about the other four treasures they said the girls would find?"

And to that I say

yeah it do be a bit sad that they never made a book 4

But make no mistake, Legend of the Maze is a doozy of a third book, and I'd say it's almost on-par with book 1 if not surpassing it. Unfortunately there is no free digital copy of the book, so uh if you're down to spend a bit on a digital copy on the E-book site of your choosing or on a physical copy in a bookstore, I salute you for your determination.

As for the rest of you, you're just gonna have to trust me bro :] /j

Ready? Let's go :D (also this is being written by a sleep-deprived E running on hyperfixation juice so if you find any grammar issues feel free to let me know so I can fix them)

The story begins with the Thea Sisters touring the Capelletti House in Verona with their Italian friend/tour guide Sebastiano. Yes, this Verona.

So yeah Colette is fantasizing about Romeo and Juliet as a romantic ship, Vi is trying to kill her Santa by telling her that Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters (which Colette responds to with "oh hush I can dream"), and oop-- loose floorboard-- what's this package under the flo-- LE GAAASSSPPPP LANE LOOORRREEEEE

The girls fangirl about the ABL jumpscare a lil' too loudly and Sebastiano is a lil' confusion, soooooooo the squad goes out for some snacks outside the Capelletti house to explain stuff to Sebastiano

buckle up Sebastiano you're about to get two 300-page books worth of Lane Lore™

While listening to the story, it turns out that Sebastiano may or may not have heard a peep about a legend about a treasure called the Treasure of Eternal Love (adapted Scholastic name is "Treasure of True Love" which ew, snatches the original Italian name instead), which was said to have been owned by Juliet and tho a lotta people are trying to find it, they dunno where it is now. Sounds very Seven Treasures of the World to me :]

How does Sebastiano know a peep about this very obscure legend? Turns out he learned about it from a letter written by his great-grandpappy Jacopo, who was an archaeologist like Aurora :3

So Sebastiano invites the girls to dinner at his place so the girls can look for the letter. Vi don't get too comfy with the house library I know it looks very cool and antique but we got a goal and that is sifting through a lil' box of Jacopo's kept things and find some-- HOLY CRAP LANE LORE™

-

"Hi Jacopo, tysm for helping me with my research on the Treasure of Eternal Love, you're a real g my guy, regards from me and my sister Linda, also tysm for the tour of Verona."

-- ABL

-

The girls tell Sebastiano their findings over a dinner of bigoli al pomodoro, give some extra Lane Lore™ about Jan von Klawitz and Aurora's six sisters, and mention the possibility that Linda knows where the treasure is, which means that Luke is probably after it too, but also Linda might know where the treasure is, which means a lead >:3

First stop: Verona's city hall, where Sebastiano's friend Guido works and is able to help them with finding information about a Linda Lane who may or may not have lived in Verona approximately a century ago. They find a document that says yes, Linda did in fact live in Verona once, and also her address is listed there because legalities, y'know how it is.

So the girls head on over to the address, knock at the door, and are greeted by an old lady, and :0 turns out this old lady (her name is Mia) knew Linda personally.

-

Linda and Mia met when Linda was in her older years and Mia was a smol child. Mia would read for Linda since her eyesight deteriorated in her old age, and they hung out a lot together. When Linda left to return to England, she left the house to Mia, as well as a good chunk of the stuff she had in said house as mementos for Mia to remember her by.

-

Hey guys you wanna see a trick, it's called "the Lane Lore™ %", aka how fast can we get this old lady up to speed with the ABL drama-- /j

Unfortunately Mia doesn't really know anything about the treasures, but she does have this wack painting of a scenery in Japan that just won't align correctly no matter how much finagling you do to it-- oh there was an envelope inside-- LANE LORE™?

So the letter inside the envelope is a letter from Aurora to Linda basically Aurora telling Linda she found the Treasure of Eternal Love, but because Jan is on her tail, she left the treasure in the "House of the Sun" for now. Now, if you tried looking up "house of the sun", you'd get a hotel in Florida, a manga, a former Incan temple that's now a monastery-- you get the picture, it do be a weird detail and probably not it bro, besides Aurora's too much of a gremlin to be that obvious with her riddles.

At least if you're not a Shakespeare nerd like Colette is (the kind that never read past Romeo and Juliet's wedding), because if you were, you'd know that at one point Romeo equates Juliet to the sun rising in the east. Romeo is simping for Juliet, Juliet is the sun, ergo, the Capelletti house.

But uh, thing is we already went to the house and we already know that Aurora came back for the treasure and took it somewhere else. Sooooo might as well see what the last letter says--

"Hi so I'm on the run rn I can't chat for long because Jan is pissed and he wants to find me and force me to reveal the treasure, and I don't think I wanna know how not-kid-friendly this is gonna get if he does find me. Thanks for introducing me to your friend tho :D she's cool and thanks to her help, the treasure is safe and sound in the shade of the cherry trees! I'll come back for it one day, hopefully that day comes soon. Anyway, hugs and kisses, Linda." - ABL

Spoiler alert, despite having a beeg cherry tree on the painting, there was in fact nothing else hiding behind the painting.

LUKE TRANSITION

So Luke is doing Luke things, not touching grass as per usual. Cassidy comes by to give him a lil' souvenir from great-grandpappy Jan von Klawitz's house in London: Jan's old notes. Luke immediately dismisses Cassidy without even so much as a thank you -- Cassidy girlypop you're not scoring that man no matter what you do, he's the Adrien to your Marinette girlie we're only at book 3, you might as well accept your fate -- and Luke takes a lil' peek into Jan's notebook (he also calls his great-grandpappy "Jan", like just "Jan". I dunno maybe I'm just finding it weird because I'm Asian . .) for the goods.

And goods Luke does find, which he proceeds to consume like a goblin. Bit of Klawitz lore here:

-

"Grrr grrr stupid Aurora and her smartass tricks grrrrr who does she think she is grrrrr she beat me to the Treasure of Eternal Love in Verona grrrrrrrrrrrr well at least now I know how she works, I managed to find this friend of hers Jacopo, who definitely knows about the treasure even though he keeps playing stupid like I don't know that he knows Aurora. Something something cherry trees, I ransacked every single cherry tree in Verona and there was literally nothing, wth, Aurora why are you like this" - Jan von Klawitz

-

Luke responds to this seedy lore from his great-grandpappy with "hehehHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHH JAN YOU IDIOT, YOU COULDN'T SEE WHAT WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU BECAUSE YOU UNDERESTIMATED THE LITTLE PILOT GIRL, I ALREADY KNOW WHERE TO LOOK"

Cut back to the girls, and they know where to look next, too

It's Japan, i-it's Japan, y'know Japan's relationship with their sakura/cherry blossoms

Turns out Linda has a friend named Kyoko Bianchi, a Japanese-Italian botanist who was raised in Japan. Since Aurora mentions in her letter that Linda's friend came in clutch, she was obviously referring to Kyoko and now the treasure is in Japan.

So Japan transition :D (based on my personal experience in Japan and also a bit of canon continuity consistency, I headcanon that despite being written in English, this segment of the story mostly had the girls speaking in Japanese, a language they would know how to speak a bit of at least (and apparently Vi is conversational in Japanese so c'mooonnnn).)

The girls land at Narita Airport and take a train to central Tokyo (damn Kumi from Cherry Blossom Adventure you came in clutch possibly teaching the girls how to Japanese subway offscreen because they actually didn't get lost using it on their own :D). Kyoko's hometown was Tokyo, so might as well start searching for her descendants/relatives there. First stop: Shibuya.

Colette is playfully ribbed a bit for having a big-ass bag while everyone else only brought smol backpacks around with them, the luck of the girls not getting lost using the Japanese subway must be balanced out so Paulina's GPS decides now is the right time to be a dick, Shibuya Crossing, and finally they make it to the hotel where Amrita Bianchi, their first Kyoko descendant candidate, is at.

And this is the first time the girls come across the concept of cosplaying, I genuinely don't know how they managed to sidestep it for so long especially since they've been to Japan before for a student exchange, all I can really justify it with is that university has been kicking their a-- RATSUNE MIKU??

Gahd even in 2018 Italy there was no escape from her /j

Anyway so Amrita didn't know Kyoko, so their second candidate is Shinobu Bianchi, a guy living in Shinjuku. They find him-- or more accurately run into him (literally) on his way to work, try to explain things to him but this man is running late, so he invites the girls to follow him to his workplace. They find themselves in a cafe on opening time, customers start filing in before the girls can even tell Shinobu what the whole deal is, soooooo karaoke break :D

Vi c'mon it's not like there's much else to do while waiting for Shinobu-- what're you gonna do, sit there and wait? A-actually y'know what that sounds like something Vi would happily do but c'mooonnn Vi where's your sense-a humor :D

Thirty minutes of singing later, they finally get five minutes to explain to Shinobu what they're looking for and Shinobu says "sorry I dunno Kyoko, I am half-Italian on my dad's side, but my mom has a different Japanese surname"

So the girls Peter William a bit emotionally, Pam goes to what Scholastic is telling me is a kiosk but might as well be a 7/11 based on the banger food Pam got from said kiosk, the girls take a taxi to a Capsule Hotel (judging from the illustration it looks like the Shinjuku Kuyakusho-mae Capsule Hotel), and after a bit of dinner, Peter William into their capsule rooms physically.

The next morning, Nicky goes out for a morning jog as usual (she prolly slept with her capsule open so she wouldn't get claustrophobic), and she finds a gardener tending to a Kyoko Bianchi flower :0 like no joke that's the name, it's a K. bianchi, named after a botanist who founded the Fairy Garden (Disclaimer: neither the K. bianchi nor the Fairy Garden Foundation in Japan exist, they're fictional bits for this fictional story and that's fine :3). Nicky gets the address for the Fairy Garden, runs back to the girls who are having breakfast, and they head on over to the venue.

At the Fairy Garden, the girls meet a gardener named Toshio who happily shows them around, and despite not knowing all the Lane Lore™ (yet), he knows enough to lead them to Kyoko's perfectly preserved office, where the late Bianchi has displayed some pictures from Verona, as well as her furniture and encyclopedia collection.

After a search, they find what was presumably a haiku alluding to Jomon Sugi and the writer's voice being hidden in there, and one jaunt to the record of Jomon Sugi in Kyoko's encyclopedia collection and uhp-- a hidden cassette tape inside the volume!

On one hand, victory, the girls have found a VHS tape that is implied to have a personal recording from Kyoko Bianchi herself, so they're super-close to the treasure now :D

But on the other hand, they found a VHS tape in the year of our lord 2018.

Good news, Toshio knows a buddy who's super tech-savvy, and that's including tech things. Bad news, he's in Kyoto, which is about 445 km/283 miles away from Tokyo.

So the girls quickly take a shinkansen and some bento boxes to Kyoto :D (their wallets are probably sobbing in an 86-USD ticket per person)

At Kyoto, meet Ren, are lowkey surprised that his house is a traditional Japanese house as opposed to a modern flat but hey it's a pleasant surprise, and Ren is able to play the tape for them.

In the tape, Kyoko explains the Treasure of Eternal Love, how it ended up in her hands at the ripe age of 20 through Linda and Aurora, and some Treasure of Eternal Love lore, or rather Ring of Eternal Love lore:

-

Yeah sure Romeo and Juliet were fictional characters, but reality, so it goes, isn't that much different. The Ring of Eternal Love was a courting gift from a suitor to a bachelorette of the Cappelletti household. The suitor and the girl's families had hate boners for each other for a while now, but instead of spiraling into a destructive mess of family feuding and death like in Shakespeare's play, they decided to call off the feud so the two lovers could be happy together. And now the ring, as Kyoko puts it, has been passed down from her to "one who shows love every day, in every way, towards everything that grows from the earth."

-

The girls are happy they got to see the tape and its contents, but they Peter William emotionally once more because well, they're back to square one now-- literally the only clue they have is the thing Kyoko said, and what is the thing Kyoko said? It's cryptic and weird and h a h ? Ren offers to accommodate them for the night, the girls get to sleep on futons for the first time since Secret of the Snow, and the next day they decide to have some downtime vacay-ing in Nijo Castle. A vacay that results in Vi having an epiphany about the riddle and thus who has the ring.

Meanwhile with Luke, he's planning something. Something that's got Cassidy in Japan and putting her master's degrees in Engineering, Chemistry and Computer Sciences to use by assembling a drone (I'm wondering how Cassidy has so little braincells out on the field despite having THREE MASTER'S DEGREES like holy crap--)

Cassidy tries complimenting Luke on the motherboard he sent in from Alaska and-- ew Omar why are you here I thought Luke fired you-- ooh what's that package thing-- oi don't diss on Japanese people being polite, once you see the ruder options you're gonna be pining for that shnit-- wait what how's this drone gonna find the Ring of Eternal Love--

Anyway the girls plus Toshio and Ren take the train back to Tokyo (istg if they took the shinkansen--) and back to the Fairy Garden Foundation, where they talk to the current head gardener: Mr. Murakami.

Mr. Murakami does in fact know Kyoko personally, and after a bit of persuading (it involves a bord like many good things in this world), he decides to bring them to his hometown Nara (which involves a train to Kyoto and then a train from Kyoto to Nara which on the Kodama plus the cheapest option from Kyoto to Nara is-- CHEESUS CRUST 91 USD PER PERSON AND THEY HAVE TO GO BACK TO TOKYO AFTER THIS???)

ANYWAY Mr. Murakami takes them to Nara Park, where he hid the treasure. He brings the girls to it, he checks the hiding place and

It's empty?

Wait, the hiding place is empty?

WAIT WHAT THE HIDING PLACE IS EM--

Off in Alaska, Luke is cackling in his fancy custom-made not-gamer chair.

Mr. Murakami is distraught, most of the girls stay to comfort him while Nicky and Ren scout out the area. In their search, Nicky and Ren find a big broken drone that seems to have crash-landed in the garden, and oop-- LVK logo. It was probably used to spy on Mr. Murakami to snatch the treasure. "DAAAMMMNNNN YOOOUUUU LUUUKKEEEE" Nicky probably would've shrieked at the top of her lungs if she weren't A. in Japan (it's very quiet generally), and B. within earshot of poor Mr. Murakami, who's still recovering from the horrible shock. The girls, Toshio and Ren take the drone to Kyoto while Mr. Murakami stays in Nara with the fam to recover because man, he deserves the break :(

In Ren's house in Kyoto, Paulina and Ren get to work hacking into the drone to snatch its data, and they find that the drone's memory goes as far back as to being in Alaska for some reason. Why would an LVK drone be in Alaska? Unless-- :OOOOO SECRET BASE??

With that lead, the girls depart for Anchorage, Alaska (if I plugged it into Google correctly the price for the flight totals out at a 567-USD one-way flight holy crap girlies have mercy on your wallets-- not including the mini shopping spree for winter clothes Colette was more than happy to drag the girls on). Ren gives Paulina a little flash drive with some written code that could come in clutch in whatever shenanigans they end up in in that secret base of Luke's. Yes Violet as much as I think you're the only person in the group who seems to be concerned for your wallet, ya'll are nawt surviving Alaska with those summer clothes ya'll are wearing.

Behold, a long rest/14-hour timeskip in the form of the last two letters the girls have yet to read from Aurora to Linda. (Well the girls besides Vi, God's sleepiest soldier over here is eeping in the back before the flight's even taken off--)

-

(These are the real letters this time around lmao, if you're confused, Aurora addresses Linda in these letters via her middle name Amaryllis.)

Dear Amaryllis,

I'm very sorry that, because of my job, you are taking on a responsibility that is perhaps too great, and that puts you at risk.

It's all because of the greed of my former professor, a mouse who is incapable of recognizing that beauty should be shared. My dear sister, I have thought about it for a long time, and I have come to the conclusion that the best solution is to take the Treasure of Eternal Love from Verona, where it is not safe... and put you at risk. I am sending you a copy of one of the photos I hold the most dear, in memory of the love that binds us. I hope it will help you make the best decision...

Yours, Aurora

-

Dear Amaryllis,

You wrote me that you are making a decision about the treasure. I agree that the mouse you're planning to entrust it to is worthy of that trust, and I will wait for more news. But you must be careful, even when you write to me, to not mention names or places. We need to watch out, because my former professor is more alert than ever.

It seems that he's building an underground shelter for his riches, designed as a kind of maze to test anyone who manages to enter it...

Professor Jan is clever, and he's always loved riddles, puzzles, and mysteries. I wouldn't wish for any mouse to find themselves in his maze!

Now I must say good-bye, my dear. Sending a big hug.

Yours, Aurora

-

Once the girls land in Anchorage, Alaska, they rent an SUV, pull out Google Maps, read some of the brochures Ren printed out for them just in case, fangirl over a moose (Nicky that's not something to fangirl about have you seen what they're capable of--), and accidental secret tunnel discovery?

Well, accidental secret garbage chute discovery, anyway, since the one thing that allows the girls to not break their ankles when landing is some garbage bags. Food waste garbage bags no less :D Ew :D

Some old aircraft bits are found too which is nice but it's never elaborated on whose old aircraft bits those were so we're moving on to the girls entering Luke's secret headquarters and Nicky trying not to die from claustrophobia :D

CCTVs pose an initial problem, but Ren's flash drive comes in clutch and allows Paulina to freeze the cameras so they can go in undetected (Ren how do you know how to program that is there something you wanna share to the class--). One lengthy labyrinth later, the girls manage to get out of the "we're walking in circles" loop-dee-loop they wound up in and find this little room with a little lit fire pit and an ominous riddle involving the "elements of nature". Pam has the idea of extinguishing the fire pit, and sure enough, inside the fire pit is a key that fits perfectly into the door across the room.

And right after Pam turns the lock on the door, a trapdoor opens up beneath her and she falls into the pit below. It's padded, it's kinda cozy, but it's way too deep for the girls to reach Pam from above without a rope or attempting to risk falling in and getting trapped as well. The girls are very reluctant to leave Pam, but Pam unfortunately only metaphorically slaps some sense into the girls and tells them to go on because they've gone too far to back out now so COMMIT TO THE BIT GODDAMMIT

(you guys like the rhyme-y bits? They're kinda fun to write I do like the rhyme-y bits a bit <:])

And thus the girls minus Pam go through the door to the next room, where there's this swimming pool with a key inside it, which Nicky swims down for, assuming that the trap in the room will only activate once they get the key into the door leading to the next room. Obviously she winds up being very incorrect, as the moment she takes the key from the bottom of the pool, the water starts to drain away until all you got left is a sopping wet Nicky in an empty pool and the key to the next room, which Nicky tosses over to Paulina while asking for her shoes and her dry clothes that they packed. Colette is devastated, devastated I tell you at the idea of leaving Nicky behind, on top of having to leave Pam behind, but Nicky's got faith that the girls will pull through and come back for her; so Colette, Paulina and Violet move on to the next room.

A LOT of walking down a twisting hallway later, the trio make it to the next room (which they use Nicky's key for), and we got four pots with something or other in them, lighting too dim to discern properly what's in the pots, a button sequence puzzle with no margin for error, and a wack riddle. Oh and Paulina's tablet's finally died after possibly uh, 18-ish hours of not charging it. RIP Paulina's tablet, that's gonna be set aside in the corner for the time being.

The pots turn out to have different types of sediment in them, and the wack riddle turns out to be the clue to the correct sequence to input, so the three figure that out fairly quickly and slide down the chute leading to the next room. Except for Paulina, who had to get her tablet from that corner she set it aside in, and wasn't able to make it to the trapdoor-chute in time before it closed on her face, leaving her trapped "forever", as the wack riddle states. The one time you're told to stop holding it, man, unbelievable. I'm never letting go of my tablet again /j

Now Vi and Colette find themselves in an empty room, and they only realize when they get down that Paulina wasn't able to make it out in time. Now this entire time, Colette has been going through it. Of the girls, Colette's been taking the whole leaving-my-friends-behind-for-the-greater-good thing not well at all, and it culminates in an emotional breakdown. Violet comforts her and reassures her that they'll get the ring, they'll pick up the other girls and they'll get outa here soon, but they gotta be brave now for the other girls. (Kinda hard to capture in short and sweet words what the emotion of the scene was but oh well). After a bit of calming down, Colette and Violet look around to find themselves in a... surprisingly simple room? There's a door on the other side of the room from them, and besides that there's literally nothing but thin air.

The two go to the door and move to open it. Yeah this one's surprisingly simple. Just walk on over, pull the door open, walk o-- a gust of wind slammed the door shut . .

Yeah that's right. You ever leave a window in your room open on a windy day and leave your door also open, and the wind going into the room slams the door shut? Yeah, it's that multiplied by uhhhh how much is a vent opposite the door opening up just to blow f%#ken WIMDY-level winds just to slam that metal door shut? However that much multiplies that. The two find themselves in a situation where had all five of them been there to do this puzzle, it would've been far easier; but it is doable with only two people. The plan is one of them wedges themself between the door and the frame and prop it open, while the other crawls under the first person's leg. Transitioning to the second person propping the door open for the first person is gonna be a bit dodgy, but it is doable kinda.

Now Colette has been going through the ringer emotionally, and if you've seen this trope before, you'd know that it'd be a real damn shame if they lost their emotional pillar and had to carry the entire plan on their own, riiiiggghhttt? She's been the handling this situation the worst (emotionally), and it would bring her a belly of the beast to trump all bellies of all beasts and force her to do a The Next Right Thing (hot take: Anna's arc in Frozen 2 was really good), presumably after a lot of sobbing in the corner! It's perfect for angst, and it's perfect for empowerment to see Colette pick herself up and be strong for the girls and save the day!

Which is why Colette doesn't end up being the last one standing :D

Colette was the one who propped the door open for Violet, who crawled through to the other side. The plan was to have Vi switch with Colette so Colette can get through, but one thing they didn't take into account was the fact that the vent would slowly create stronger and stronger winds the longer the door is held open for, so Colette winds up allowing herself to be trapped in the air room so Violet can do the thing. (Oh and the plan was Colette's idea too.)

Heeyyyy Viiiiiiii~ Do you have some cash left over in your wallet? Because I think it's time for you to put your money where your mouth is :DDD

So yeah Violet continues on alone.

Also if you're wondering where Luke is this entire time, he is in fact in his base, still not touching grass and none the wiser about the whole five lil' rat girls sneaking into his base because of the whole frozen cams situation. He does technically notice something's off, but he thinks that the clock in one of the cameras is broken and he ends up complaining about it to Cassidy, haha L. It is also at this point where we learn that the girls have been in Luke's base for a little over three hours at this point :D

Meanwhile, Violet goes down the narrow metal staircase in the hallway outside of the last room and finds herself reminding herself to stay calm but also inside Luke's treasure room, where treasures of all shapes and sizes reside. From whole dinosaur skeletons to ancient Egyptian statues to paintings to suits of armor and-- holy shnit Luke has the Ark of the Covenant in there too o o yeah this guy means business holy crap--

The Ring of Eternal Love is in there too, the lone treasure in the set of seven empty pedestals that Luke was prolly intending for the Seven Treasures of the World. So Vi, clearly not having watched Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark, attempts to lift the glass case protecting the ring, which sets off the alarms in the treasure rooms, and whoa holy crap there's a robot voice speaking through the alarms? WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN FIFTEEN MINUTES TO SELF-DESTRUCTION

Luke, having the shock of his life, comes down to the treasure room to see what's up, and of course it's one of the five brats who's been getting in the way of his endeavors. Hardly a surprise, really, those five have been a pain in the ass from minute one of Luke looking into the Seven Treasures-- from stopping him getting the Alabaster Garden (he didn't even get to see what it was smh), to duping him with the most audacious of gottems to exist only partially due to his goon's stupidity, and now sneaking into the heart of his base without him, his cameras, or his sensors noticing. Strange how there's only one of them, though.

Just like Aurora Beatrix Lane almost a hundred years prior, this young lady is naive, morally stubborn, and idealistic. She is preaching out about sharing these treasures to all, even when the worth of these treasures comes partly in the luxury of not everyone being able to enjoy them. There is value in that sense of rarity, and it's not like any of the uncaring, ignorant whelps working in the museums look at the pieces that sit before them and realize the true value that they have the privilege of looking at everyday. They wouldn't care about them-- they would do the bare minimum to these unique masterpieces and leave it at that. And this naive brat thinks that they are more loving, more caring to these pieces than Luke is?

But as naive and morally pretentious and... ignorant of time and place this woman is (did she really not hear the self-destruct alarm and is thus willing to babble to her grave?)... she is clearly very intelligent. She was able to affect the base's security system such that she could come in undetected. She was able to get past all four traps without getting trapped herself. It is strange how she is alone here, though. She is usually with four other girls-- ah, that's it. They got trapped, and she left them, so she could get to the treasures on her own. What a show of common sense, that is! She must've seen that the traps were designed such that risking oneself to rescue a trapped person is just not worth it, and that first point already makes her far more intelligent than Cassidy or her buffoons could ever be. It could even be on-par with Luke himself. What if... perhaps....

What if they worked together?

Luke, after a bit of back and forth with Violet, gives Violet an offer to ditch her friends and become his partner. If she accepts they can divide everything between each other in the vault, and together, they'll be able to uncover the treasures of the world and enjoy them all to themselves.

I mean of course Vi turns down the offer in favor of sticking with her friends but y'know what it was worth a shot, Luke, kudos to you for spotting a gemstone instead of covering it with mud and pretending it's not there.

Heavily disappointed by Vi turning him down for the sake of "the power of friendship" (I wish I was kidding)(Scholastic!Vi's (?) words not mine)(I would be incredibly disappointed too), he turns to leave her in the treasure room, and it's only then that Vi realizes she kinda effed up. Luke is the only guy here who knows the base inside-out, and thus would know a way to get the girls out so they can Not Die. And to add insult to injury, Luke made a bomb shelter out of his treasure room, so the entire base may explode and the girls might die, but the treasures are gonna be completely fine. Intact, even. Luke leaves, and the robot voice announces ten minutes before self-destruction.

As soon as she's able to, Vi calls the elevator, juggling anxiety and being able to think under pressure. She figures out that Luke oh so helpfully uses pictograms for his elevator buttons instead of numbers, and presses the button for the control room (the heliport floor is locked by a key). She arrives in the control room, eight minutes before self-destruction.

Just as Vi enters the control room, the cameras get kicked back into action, oh so conveniently showing to Violet a timer ticking down to the big kaboom in real time, and footage of Nicky waiting anxiously in the pool room (and Luke leaving), for extra stakes. One Perception check said "yeah, this is a LOT of buttons, TOO MANY BUTTONS", and the tablet sitting on the desk required a password, so oh god what do

Six minutes before self-destruction and one panic attack later, Vi manages to psyche herself up enough to roll for Investigation. She finds a button for disarming the traps, and that allows the girls to get outa the traps and meet up again in the treasure room. Happy reunions aside tho, four minutes to self-destruction

Turns out the girls (thankfully) didn't know about the self-destruct situation. No need to explain tho because Vi is deadlifting the group braincell like she's never done before. She drags them down to the base's... basement, where a train that was probably used to carry the treasures into the base sits unused and ready for the girls to figure out how to work. Three minutes before self-destruction, no pressure :D

Pam sits at the train's controls, Paulina tries to help but immediately brain crashes at the old-timey controls, thus deciding she'd rather help Nicky get the bars off the rails up ahead. Two minutes left, and Pam figures it out and is ready to-- wait they need electricity-- okay cool Nicky and Paulina are taking care of that, cool

Pam gets the train to start up, Nicky and Paulina manage to hop back into the train, and escape the base's explosion range with about ten seconds to spare :D

After stopping the train in a spot where their braincells could afford to deflate, the girls take a minute or two to breathe y'know, just take a minute to breathe, nibble on some wild raspberries growing in Denali National Park, before figuring out what the hell their next move is.

Vi suggests they tell the authorities about the whole secret-base-under-the-park situation and the treasure room and the stuff inside it (since Luke oh so foolishly gloated to Vi about the treasures being perfectly safe), on top of removing the train so it's not getting up in nature's business. They head back to the car talking about their adventure, get a bit sad that they weren't able to find the Ring of Eternal Love-- and oop just kidding, Vi pocketed it in the treasure room right after Luke dipped :D

So on top of the girls escaping with their lives, not only is Luke gonna lose the Ring of Eternal Love as quickly as he got it, he's also losing his entire treasure vault. Can I get a ripperooni

And that's Legend of the Maze :D

I would say that the hyperfixation-that-consumed-these-girls'-lives-for-a-whole-week energy is very strong in this one in the best way, and the girls' personalities are at their most showcased here. The banter is bantering, the girls' dynamics with each other is very believable here, Vi is carrying the group's braincell the entire time and she looks like she's a bit tired from carrying it but y'know wut she's still willing to carry it because it's honest work and she knows how important it is to have it :3 also her trying to kill Colette's "Romeo and Juliet are so romantic" Santa but failing miserably because Colette unashamedly likes believing in the power of love is hilarious

The main thing I wasn't sure about was.... all the infodumpy bits? The infodump goes a significant bit harder in this book than the previous ones (even more than Compass of the Stars, which is an achievement), and it's Scholastic-style infodumping, so you get the girls calling Luke an "evil mouse" or "selfish mouse" and I'm sitting here like "just call him sewer rat please ya'll had no problems calling him that before please for the love of god use that instead it sounds better--"

Don't even get me started with Amrita Bianchi explaining to the girls what cosplay is like she's the damn Merriam Webster dictionary--

Also the Japan segment with y'know Japanese culture and stuff had the terms localized for some reason??? Like haori became "dark jacket", kimono became "long, elegant Japanese dress", they didn't even mention Ren's hakama (he was wearing a very traditional Japanese look), they felt the need to explain bento boxes as "typical Japanese portable lunch boxes" even though "Japanese lunch box" probably would've gotten the point across just fine and also there was an illustration of the bento boxes, Japanese characters became "logograms" for some reason, and dango became "rice dumplings" which became infinitely more confusing for me because the illustration made it look like takoyaki--

I could go on and on but yeah, there are a lot of these and it felt very infodump-y to me. I'm hoping it's just a translation thing, because the story overall feels pretty solid. Scholastic, what happened to the asterisks? Were they just too much for one page? I feel like you would've been able to squeeze them in just fine to make the reading experience a little smoother,,, just like, so it's an optional thing for the reader to read the mini-infodump of the term if they dunno what it means,,,

Other than that tho I don't think I have much to complain ab--

COUGHS GAGS SCREAMS CRIES WRITHES ON THE FLOOR

(I have the magic-of-friendship-invocation tolerance of an angsty teen I'm sorry :'3)

Scholastic, buddy chum pal buddy chum buddy chum pal,,,,

You could've had Vi say "the only way I got here was thanks to my friends", and it would've been fine and infinitely better-sounding and probably more in-character,,, o<-<

Gahd I hate it when Vi's used as the power of friendship prophet -m-

There's a more minor one as the girls are going back to the car and Vi is telling the girls about the deal Luke offered her, and the girls ask her what she said, and she says "I told him I already had the greatest treasure in the world... true friendship!"

Meanwhile I'm sitting there like "MMMMMGGGGGGHHHHHH 'friends like you' or 'sisters like you' or 'my friendship with you' would've sounded better -m-"

(Also the girls call each other like "friends", so like "you were in fact right, friends", which is like, what happened to "sisters" or "girls" those work perfectly fine and get the girls' close relationship across significantly better than "just friends")

Most of what I'm saying here tho are just nitpicks and probably (hopefully) are just stuff with the English translation-- in all seriousness, the book is pretty good.

Aurora's trail here makes sense and is rather logical, and the interesting thing I find about it is that it feels different from the previous two books' worth of shenanigans. Aurora in this one had far less veers and nation hopping shenanigans, and I feel that it was perhaps intentional. Perhaps to give off finale vibes-- Aurora works far more closely with her sister in this one, and the main thing the girls had to work with was not Aurora's diaries, but the letter she wrote to Linda when they were discussing the Ring of Eternal Love. Something about it feels closer, more intimate, more tragic than the previous ones. I felt the need to put her last to letters in the book verbatim because they were emotional dammit -m- Damn you British Amelia Earhart you've done it again /lhj

Luke's character I think is the strongest here. He gives off in a way the most... normal? Vibes here? He's still not touching grass and muttering to himself ominously a whole lot, but his mindset is nice and easy to wrap your head around here. He literally doesn't care about his goons unless he needs something from them, he is more than happy to overanalyze the crap out of a piece of text if he feels Cassidy didn't look through it thoroughly enough, and he wants what he wants right away, and that includes the things he needs to get the thing he actually wants. He as a character literally observes everything happen from his base in Alaska and backseat gamers the crap out of his goons if he sees something they didn't, or if they fumbled the bag and it was perfectly avoidable had it not been for SM being SM--

Also his blatant disrespect for his great-grandpappy Jan is holy crap haha-- it might just be my cultural background, but when I saw Luke call his great-grandpa "Jan" and then say "you disappoint me, Jan", I was flabbergasted haha, not a criticism I just wanted to mention it because I thought it was funny

I really like the fact that Stan and Max (aka SM) didn't show up at all in this book. It would've been easy to have them show up for regularly scheduled hijinks, but in Luke's mind, none of SM's operations have ever been... up to Luke's standards. Especially with how much of a ruckus they tended to make with their presence, they were more of a liability to Luke than an asset; therefore Luke changing up his strategy to be as hands-off and clean and non-intrusive as possible feels like something he'd do, what with how laser-focused he is on min-maxing efficiency to get what he wants as soon as possible.

Omar still being there despite being "fired" might just be a Scholastic oopsie so I can forgive it, Cassidy is still simping for Luke and trying to impress this man and trying to prove she's at an equal level to him, but every time nah. Just nah. Girlie you think you're on the same level as him, which can't possibly be further than the truth. I haven't seen Miraculous Ladybug, but I'd bet Cassidy has even less of a chance of impressing Luke, than Marinette had a chance at getting Adrien to see her as more than "just a friend" before they finally got together.

Now here's something I've been wanting to ramble about for a while: Violet being left alone instead of Colette. It's actually pretty clever when you think about it: Colette is the closest the girls have to a heart (tho she plays hot potato with Paulina when it comes to that role imo), so she's been the most emotional and the most sentimental of the group this entire time. From daydreaming about Romeo, to wanting to believe in love, to happily picking up a microphone to sing karaoke with the girls, to her strong reactions to having to leave the girls behind one by one for the sake of their mission, Colette was being set up for a moment where she is the one who is left alone. You see it a lot in media: the main character is the most sentimental one and as their friend squad make their way to the Big Bad Evil Guy, the supporting characters are forced to get left behind one by one to either hold the evil minions back or because there's no way for the character to move forward with the MC; so the MC is forced to go through the five stages of grief knowing that their friends trust them to get the job they'd set out to do done. It literally happened in Geronimo's third Kingdom of Fantasy book Amazing Voyage, and in that one Geronimo was the one who desperately didn't want to be alone, but he wound up carrying on alone anyway. You see this kinda thing everywhere.

However, in this bit, it makes total sense that Violet is the one who ends up carrying the last leg of the journey alone instead of Colette. Compared to Colette (and honestly the rest of the girls), Violet is the most level-headed. She's the girls' braincell keeper (in this trilogy), the babysitter holding the leash tied to the four gremlins, the one keeping everyone on track and also making sure that the group's collective ADHD doesn't spiral down as badly as it could possibly be. Whenever the girls make a big move that could affect the whole group, Vi is the one asking if it's a good idea or if it's worth doing, and she's the one thinking ahead enough to say "if x happens instead of y, what then?" You get the idea-- Vi is the most capable of keeping herself level-headed even when she's under all this pressure, and she's good at analyzing and planning on account of her often taking the position of the quiet observer.

With this context, it sort've makes you wonder what was going through Colette's head when she offered to help Violet get out of the air room. Violet and Colette in particular get paired together fairly often, and it's probably because of how well they're able to understand each other-- so with the plan, was Colette volunteering herself to prop the door open out of "it was my idea" courtesy, or was she thinking that maybe Violet would be able to figure things out better and thus needed to get to the other side? She probably was expecting to get to the other side with Vi, but would she have thought far enough ahead to a what-if where that wasn't possible? :3c

And Scholastic and power-of-friendship funkiness aside, Violet did handle the situation well, all things considered. The one bit where she only realized Luke was hers and the girls' only ticket out of there was a bit weird, but it can be chalked up to her not being able to take that into account in the moment because of a mix of stress, sheer bafflement from Luke's deal, and the fact that when put on the spot, observers don't exactly handle taking the driver's seat that well :'D (speaking as an observer myself here)

It makes me wonder a bit if Violet and Luke were meant to be foils of each other, what with how similar they are to each other (both of them being observers and planners who delegate more often than they do the work themselves), yet different enough that the contrast between the two is striking. Said difference being

Violet touches grass. Luke does not :)

Anyway so yeah, that's Treasure Seekers 3, and while it is kinda sad that this is where Treasure Seekers ends, y'know what? It gave a solid show as the last installment in the trilogy. I liked it, I liked the canon compliant blorbo angst, I liked the characters character-ing when the dialogue was letting them breathe :]

And of course, we can't forget

God's sleepiest soldier <3

She deserves that nap after what she went through and you know it--

[moonchild-in-blue]

.

[sleepyyypumpkin]

Veggies Tale's tickle monster was something else.

That was the true villain.

The Realest Boogie Man

[rainbowvamp]

Something something dream becomes a raven and he's a bit of a freak about it. it's probably a bet. he loses. Matthew gets to gloat and hob pets dream on his bird beak and thinks he's at the mercy of this giant idiot but, well... at least he can't die.

[jichanxo]

yes hello that's my cuddliest specialest guy ever [from jan/2023 for valentine's day]

[pirategauguin]

Teha'amana was the native wife of Paul Gauguin during his first visit to Tahiti in 1891 to 1893. It was common at that time for French colonists to take native wives; the wives simply referred to as vahine, Tahitian for "woman". These vahines were often underage children, as was the case with Teha'amana, their marriage being arranged by their family for reasons of status or financial advantage. The marriages were generally not legally binding. All three of Gauguin's vahines, the two he took after Teha'amana eventually returned home while Teha'amana herself declined to continue their relationship when Gauguin returned to Tahiti in 1895. Teha'amana undoubtedly saw herself as conventionally married according to her local customs, but for Gauguin the marriage was clearly a temporary arrangement. Nevertheless, he did profess a tender love for Teha'amana in his journal Noa Noa. Pierre Loti's Le Mariage de Loti, a book that influenced Gauguin's decision to travel to Tahiti, was an immensely popular account of such a marriage twenty years earlier, although in that case the marriage was actually a fictional composite of many casual liaisons indulged by Loti during a two-month visit to Papeete. In Loti's account his wife was fourteen years old, while in Gauguin's account Teha'amana was just thirteen years old.

These things are true. I want to make it clear that I do not condone these actions. However, this blog is not meant to refer to the real Gauguin. There is a degree of separation between the Gauguin from history and the fictional portrayal of Gauguin in the musical Starry. I do try to make this clear, as I have pinned a post discussing this to the top of this blog.

The difference between a real person from history and a character based off of that person is an important distinction to make. A character is not a real person, they are used as tools in a story and this may involve exaggerating certain elements of their historical counterpart and eliminating others, or for the sake of the plot, it may make more sense to put a character in a position the real person was never in. Beyond the plot, another reason these things may be done is to better convey a message that the writer(s) want to share. Applying this to Gauguin, if I remember correctly, the historical Gauguin never directly stated how he felt about how he had left the Yellow House. The Gauguin in Starry, however, has a line in the last song of the show that makes his view on this very clear: "I want to live again so I can stay." The character of Gauguin regrets his actions because that was what was right for the story the writers wanted to tell.

I do think this is an important discussion to have; the bad things historical people have done is something that should be talked about and recognized to be Not Good, but if these things are not relevant to the story being told, they should not be brought up as a reason to dislike the character. Not that a character doing bad things means that you're wrong to like them, but I could make a whole other post about that.

[ehlnofay]

content warnings: discussions of abuse, death and violence

The knife Torr usually uses is too thick and blunt to split the pane from the frame; with a muffled curse they sheathe it and feel for the letter-opener in their sleeve. (Katla gave it to them a few weeks back, managing to look guilty and irrepressible at the same time. They’d sighed, enough to make the guilt flicker, and told her that they’d told her to stop taking shit, that they weren’t going to stand for it, where did she steal it from? She’d told them. They’d told her they’d go and give it back. They lied, of course; it’s a nifty little blade, and it wouldn’t be missed by the stationer’s shop, what good would returning it do? They just needed there to be no point to it, to make sure she wouldn’t do it again.)

The house is a bitch to break into, worse than Torr anticipated. The locks, he’d expected them to be beyond his skill level – he’s a novice pick at best – but from what he could glean with his awkward fumbling they’re even tougher to crack than he’d thought they would be. He almost cracked his pick in half just trying to dislodge it from wherever he managed to stick it. No dice there. None of the lower-floor windows are open, and thanks to the weird layout getting higher up would be practically impossible, not to mention very visible. He’s already more obvious than he would like; tucked just behind the corner of the house, in clear view of anyone who passes through the road, very obviously fucking with a window.

He's chosen the most time-consuming way of getting in, too, but what else could he do? Doors won’t work and smashing a window’s a terrible idea for so many reasons. (The situation in there is going to be sensitive, judging from everything Torr’s heard; strange rumours bleeding poisonous through the city and Griss’ dead certainty that she saw him, her less-than-favourable description. The last thing they need to do is freak the kid out, ruin it before it’s begun. Plus if they shattered the window it would let the cold in. Probably the last thing the boy needs.)

The letter-opener works better than the dagger. The narrow blade worms into the space between the windowpane and its sturdy wooden framing, chipping away at the glaze, widening the gap bit by bit. Whenever Torr shifts its angle there’s a hair-raising sound of metal point scratching glass. The wood creaks. It’s all quiet enough that Torr can only just hear it when they’re inches away, but in the strange and silent shadow of the lopsided house it feels deafening.

Torr keeps going, carefully listening out for anyone approaching, preparing potential excuses or escape routes just-in-case. He doesn’t have to use any of them; no-one comes, not in all the time he spends separating the glass from the wood. It takes more time than it feels like it should. More time than Torr has. There’s a million other things he could be doing right now.

(It’s a market day, and there’s always work to be had when the stalls are out – runner errands, mostly, and it’s a pittance but it’s something. Skrauti at least is probably down the markets, begging maybe, or helping with some of the stalls there if the vendors let him. They probably are – they like him. Talres might be there as well, if Idrela is. And then there’s checking up on Skygna, who he hasn’t seen in long enough to worry, and asking around for jobs for Ogaefa that would let her bring her sister as well. He needs to figure something out about Kyrri’s nightmares, too – he won’t go to sleep half the time and it’s not sustainable.)

But. There’s a kid in there that needs his help. Needs something. (Another Windhelm orphan. You’d think the city would get sick of making them.)

The gap Torr’s made reaches all the way around the glass. They chip away extra along the place where it joins at the bottom – the frame looks peeling and scrabbled, like an animal ate away at it – and then finally the pane shivers, loose enough that when Torr drops the letter-opener into the snow and presses it down it slips right out of place without a fuss. They ease it out of the window-frame – it’s heavy, they always manage to be surprised by how heavy glass is – and lean it gently against the wall by the door.

The good thing about this method is that the window can go back in. (More or less. As long as no-one touches it, or the wind doesn’t blow too hard the wrong way.) Hopefully, the house will stay insulated. Torr doesn’t want to give the boy in there hypothermia. (Torr doesn’t need to see that again.)

They take up the letter opener again, cold and wet with snow, and slide it back into their sleeve. (Its freezing shape against their skin feels like a brand.)

They take a breath.

The boy’s name is Aventus Aretino. That’s what Torr’s heard. His mother was well-known in political circles, apparently – her death, a few months back, caused quite a stir. (So they’ve heard, at least. Naalia Aretino wasn’t exactly part of Torr’s social strata.) Torr doesn’t know if the kid left, or kept real to himself, or what, but he’s there now, holed up in his house, performing a ritual to summon assassins. Apparently. That’s the talk, anyway – it’s all swear on the Nine, my cousin heard him, scared her half out of her wits kind of stuff. Not substantiated. But some of the kids have heard noises in the house – not assassin cult rituals necessarily, but something – and who else would be in there? The place is shut up. Plus Griss is dead certain she saw him once (creepy boy with a lip split from the cold that talked to himself) and Skrauti thinks they might have met when they were younger and was worrying about it. So Torr had to check, to assuage their concerns, and to help how necessary. Who the hell would he be if he didn’t?

Torr braces his hands against the emptied frame, splintered wood digging into his palms, and hoists himself deftly through the deconstructed window.

 Inside, the house is both muggy and colder than Torr feels like it should be.

The windows haven’t been open – no airflow – but it doesn’t feel like there’s been a fire lit, either; at least not today. Maybe not for a while. It doesn’t feel like a place someone should live. But, separated by the thin walls (sans one window) from the noise of the city large, Torr’s pretty sure he can hear something somewhere upstairs.

The windowpane Torr took out let him into what looks like – a larder, maybe? Some kind of storage room? An aboveground cellar? Fuck if he knows; he’s never lived in a house with more than two rooms (or any houses, for that matter, in the last four years) and this seems excessive. Whatever it is it has shelves and not much else. Whether that’s by design or the place has been cleared out, he couldn’t say.

The shelves are covered in dust, mostly; the wind whistling in through the empty window-frame, clingy collections of dirt and debris tumbling merrily along the wooden surfaces. There’s nothing in here.

Torr moves on.

The hallway isn’t much better – all creaky floorboards and dark, no windows or fireplaces to light it up. They have to blink hard to adjust. There’s pictures on the walls but in the dim lighting they can’t make them out.

Torr checks the whole ground floor (two rooms and a hallway, already more than they’re used to) and finds nothing. The place feels like a mausoleum. All the curtains that there are, are drawn. Half the furniture seems to have been taken away and what’s left is just gathering dust. It’s all a strange warped tableau of how these people lived, before, but now the mother is dead and the son – well, who’s to say?

Torr feels a bit weird in what looks like a study, running his fingers over inkpots that have long since congealed, glancing over a shuffle of papers left precariously at the corner of a desk. (One of the pages has fallen onto the floor. He can see the track it left in the dust.) After a few seconds, he leaves; there’s nothing for him there.

(Yet. They didn’t rummage through the desk drawers. Could be something valuable in there, and it’s not like anybody else is using it. Not like they’d care too much if they were.)

The staircase groans obnoxiously as soon as Torr puts a foot on the first step – even though he has nothing to fear from discovery, he freezes. No-one comes peeking around the corner of the upper floor, though. Even though by rights someone should – Torr can definitely hear something higher up in the house. A sort of banging, he thinks. Slow and rhythmic, as if on a drum.

The rest of the steps squeak as well, but they’re quieter about it. The pounding gets louder the higher he goes. Thud, thud… thud. The staircase leads onto a landing that’s as blank and dim and dusty as everywhere else.

A bedroom with the bed stripped. Toys on the windowsill (nice ones, the kind Torr points out in shop windows and lets the kids imagine having). The door was closed when Torr came in. No-one has been in here, he thinks, for a long time.

They close the door again behind them.

The noise is on this side of the house, they’re sure of it, so they don’t bother crossing to the other half. (It’s strange – they’ve been poking around, and they’ve definitely not been quiet about it. If there’s someone in the house, they should have come to look.) There’s a sort of living room – a nice space, with chairs and an ashy fireplace; and it’s not dusty, wouldn’t even be dark if not for the heavy drapes drawn over the windows. The drapes trap everything in. The dark. The sweaty cold. The smell.

There’s definitely a smell. Torr thought initially that it might just be mould. It’s not.

On the other side of the living room, there is a door. On the other side of the door is the banging noise. Torr takes a deep breath – almost chokes, because it stinks. (They’re used to normal bad smells – fucking have to be, spending time with so many children who’d barely know how to bathe themselves even with regular access to washing things – but this is something else. Sickly sweet and rancid all at once. They can taste it.)

(It isn’t wholly unfamiliar. Shit.)

Torr takes another steeling breath, this one shallow, and crosses the room, giving the arm of a chair an absent pat as they go. The door is cracked just a little bit open. There is something very bad on the other side.

They nudge it open.

It’s brighter, in this room, and stuffier. The smell is much worse, settling around their shoulders like a shroud, worming through their ribcage into their lungs – they don’t gag, but it’s a near thing. The room is brighter, even though its curtains are drawn as well, because it is lit by candles. Several of them. The smell is worse because of the mess of rotting meat laid out over the floor. (Torr recognises some – that’s a human heart, for example, there between two candles; he’s seen one in Nurelion’s shop, though it was much better preserved. Good for poisons, but only if you really know what you’re doing.) There are bones, too, carefully arranged in a caricature of a person’s skeleton. And before it all is the child.

The kid is here. Torr doesn’t know whether that’s worthy of relief or not.

The boy is the one making the noise. He kneels, huddled, a fraying blanket draped around his hips and puddling on the floor behind him. It might have been covering his shoulders at one time and slipped down quite badly. He’s bent almost in two, hunched over his own thighs, so bent Torr wonders if it’s a spinal condition, a kitchen knife in hand, rhythmically lifting it up and bringing it thudding down into the floorboards.

The knife leaves deep grooves in the wood. Periodically it hits one of the bones and splinters them into bits.

Torr’s not sure how long they’ve been watching. Fuck, they don’t know how long the boy’s been here, doing this. He doesn’t move to acknowledge them; didn’t seem to hear them come in. Doesn’t shift to pull the blanket back up or change the position of his legs or stretch his back. He just stays, head lowered, lifting the knife like it’s the heaviest thing he’s ever held, plunging it into the floor over and over and over again. Knees tucked under him, bent almost in half, forehead almost touching the ground, he seems almost to be prostrating himself. The candleflames rise and fall with the knife. The shadows flicker over the rotting heart with eerie regularity. A languid, lifeless beat.

Torr steps into the room. He’s not quiet. Aventus Aretino doesn’t move but to stab the space between the bones again.

“Hey,” Torr says, “Aventus,” but there’s nothing.

He kneels down, bending over the candles, trying to get a look at the kid’s face.

His lips are cracked, like Griss said; it’s hard to see in the strange lighting but his cheeks look hollow. The veins stand out on his hands. His eyes stare into fathomless distance as though seeing through the smoothed-out knots of the flooring; and his mouth moves, though all Torr can hear is the rattling of breath in his chest, and that’s only if they really listen.

“Aventus,” they say again, sharper, louder, but he doesn’t seem to hear, bloody lips almost kissing the floor, corpse-scented oxygen whistling in and out of his lungs. His mouth forms the same shapes again and again. Prayer. Supplication. Deadly benediction. Torr was already not particularly religious; this is going to put them off it for life.

Even so, in their head, they offer the Nine a quick, impious plea. Something is very badly wrong; they need whatever help they can scramble to get.

“Aventus,” they snap, placing a hand on his shoulder, and he responds then, flinging himself away across the meat and bones and fire, the knife at least left standing straight up in between two wooden planks where he can’t hurt himself with it. The bones scatter. There is an unpleasant stain on the boy’s sleeve. The knocked over candles, dripping wax, fizzle out before they manage to set either the walls or his hair alight; small mercies.

The boy stares, eyes bloodshot and hollow – eyes like gore dripping down a too-pale throat and beneath a collar, eyes like poison splattered on a bedspread, eyes like dirt and blood and snow. He gapes at Torr with something like wonder; when he smiles, it looks like it hurts, the dark scabs on his lips reopened. The hope on his face is the worst thing Torr has ever seen.

“You came,” he says, his voice so cracked and raw it’s barely audible. “You came, you –”

He’s still lying there, among the candles and the remains – he seems to register this at the same time Torr does, and he starts to scramble into a sitting position, the process looking much more laborious than it should. Torr reaches out to help, a hand on his arm pulling him to his feet, but the boy’s head drops into Torr’s palm and they freeze.

With a sound not unlike a sob, but also not quite like anything in the world, he rubs his matted thatch of hair into their hand.

Torr feels their face creasing; very deliberately, they smooth it out. “Okay,” they say, soft and soothing, and they adjust the angle of their knees so they can reach him without being in danger of tipping over. They crook their fingers enough to scratch gently at his scalp and he makes another horrible sound. “Okay. Let’s get you up, yeah?”

He ends up having to shuffle over on his knees. The kid can’t or won’t move until Torr’s basically holding him up, an arm tight around the shoulders, one hand still in his hair. Torr’s pretty sure he cracks one of the bones, stepping on it. He hauls the boy, trembling, to his feet.

“You’re here,” the kid mumbles. Torr can feel the points of his shoulder-blades through his shirt. They almost forgot the blanket – he hooks it around his shoe and shuffles it into the next room with them. The poor bugger clearly needs something to keep him warm.

He pauses to pull the door closed behind them with his unoccupied foot. They don’t need that right now. “I am. You’re Aventus Aretino?”

The boy nods, near-frantic. “I – and you – I –”

“Relax,” Torr says automatically as he lowers him into an armchair. Aventus sounds like he’ll cough up a bloody lung if he keeps trying to talk. “You need to drink. You got water in here?”

Aventus points mutely to a bucket next to the cold fireplace, but when Torr goes to get it, he clings. Like he’s a mirage. Like he’ll disappear if he stops touching him.

Torr ruffles Aventus’ hair again unthinkingly, his mind elsewhere. So there’s water, and the boy knows where it is, even in his state. (Whatever his state is – all Torr really knows is bad.) But they’d bet money he hasn’t been eating, enough or at all; he’s pale, slow, his eyes sunken. Torr knows that look far too well. He hasn’t been sleeping, either, or going outside – curtains all drawn and doors all locked. And his behaviour – well.

It’s not promising.

Gently, Torr detaches his arm from Aventus’ grasping fingers and goes to get the bucket. He hears the kid’s breathing kick into something sharp and uneven behind him. The bucket, he finds, is indeed full of water; there’s a mug lying on the bottom, under the surface. He brings it back, scoops out the mug, offers it to Aventus, who, naturally, can’t manage to get his shaking fingers to get a hold of it; he lifts it to his lips and tips down his throat. A bit of water splashes down the boy’s chest; he doesn’t seem to notice. Torr doesn’t think it matters.

Aventus isn’t able to drink much before he starts coughing. Torr sets the mug down. Aventus grasps for him again; he grabs a fistful of sleeve and tips his head back, air rattling in his chest. Torr stays crouched by the chair, looking up at him, and waits.

“You’re here,” Aventus repeats, gazing unfocused at the rafters. “I knew – I knew you would be. I prayed.”

Torr’s face scrunches. “You prayed for me?”

“Again and again.” The words sound like a prayer in the boy’s reedy voice; a litany. “And again and again and again and again… with the bones and things. I kept praying. I knew you’d come. I just had to be patient.”

Ah.

Shit.

Torr closes a hand around the boy’s wrist. He opens his mouth to speak, but Aventus beats him to it – his eyes slide down from the ceiling, vague and bottomless, and he confesses, “I’m tired.”

“I’m sure you are,” Torr says, rubbing their thumb in comforting circles over the point of his wrist. They keep their voice level. “Aventus. I’m not an assassin.”

In the blink of an eye, the boy is sitting bolt upright.

“Yes you are,” he says, saying the words louder than he really seems able to, wheezing them out with as much fierce desperation as he can manage. His scrabbly little fingers dig into Torr’s arm. His face is frightening. “Yes, you are. You are, I prayed, I prayed so much –” He chokes. His grip is actually beginning to hurt. “Did I do something wrong? Please, don’t go, please, I can do it right!”

“Aventus,” Torr tries.

“I can do it right,” Aventus insists. The frenetic energy with which he speaks makes him stretch his lips more than advisable. The scabs are splitting open. “I can, I can, and I can pay, I promise, I promise, I promise – !”

Torr shoves into the chair next to him, crushing him against the arm (just a little, just enough to force him to stay inside his body) and pulls him to leaning on Torr’s shoulder. He can feel his jaw still working, like with the prayer. He wraps an arm around the kid’s neck and threads fingers into his hair and waits for the shuddering to subside.

“I can,” he mumbles weakly after a few minutes of desparate silence. “I promise.”

“Stop talking,” Torr tells him, and he does. “I believe you, okay? Just try to keep calm. I’m here to help you.”

Aventus’ hands, crabbed and clawed, are fisted in the folds of Torr’s jacket. Even through their layers they can feel his bony fingers pressing into their ribs. He isn’t letting his eyes close, no matter how soothing a presence Torr tries to be, carding their fingers through the knots of his hair as best they can, badly humming that lullaby Swims down the docks taught them. It has the slow rolling cadence of the waves lapping at the barnacle-covered board. Aventus doesn’t stop shaking, but at least it slows.

Torr squeezes his shoulder. “There you go.”

The boy heaves a rasping breath.

“Why do you need an assassin so bad, anyway?” It might be a bad idea to ask – just rile him up again – but Torr has to know. He’s met a lot of kids with a lot of problems and none of them have ever tried to hire a hitman in reaction.

(Skygna might come close, he supposes, but no money ever changed hands. And besides, it’s not like she ever asked him to.)

Aventus takes another shaky breath, still clinging to Torr hard enough to bruise, like he’s trying to put down roots in their chest. “Grelod,” he says, and then doesn’t say anymore.

Torr pauses, replies, “I don’t know who that is.”

“They made me go to the orphanage,” Aventus croaks. The side of his head is pressed hard against Torr’s shoulder. “In Riften. After my mother –”

Another pause.

Torr tries to tease the knots out of his hair one-handed. “I never heard much about the orphanage,” he muses; it’s often been mentioned, but no details, except, “I hear it’s nicer than the street.”

“It’s not,” says Aventus with sudden, unshakeable conviction; considering the fact that he evidently travelled back from the Rift up to Windhelm alone, and has been in this house doing fuck only knows for a while, Torr’s inclined to think he would know.

The corpse smell permeates this room as well, even with the door closed.

“It was bad enough that you learned how to invoke the Dark Brotherhood?”

“Black Sacrament,” Aventus mutters, still leaning into Torr’s hand like a starved dog; they’re not sure if it’s a correction, or just information, or what. “I learned it on accident in a bookshop. First time I ran away.”

What the hell kind of bookshop includes instructions for ritualistically summoning a quasi-folkloric murder cult? “How many times did you run away?”

“Three.” He offers no other information. He tucks his face into Torr’s sleeve and says, muffled, “I want her dead.”

“Who?”

“Grelod.”

“Why?”

Aventus’ whole body quakes. His hands dig into Torr’s torso; they feel like he’s going to try to pry up their ribs and rearrange everything underneath. “She can’t,” he starts, then stops, like a fire sputtering in the absence of fuel. “It’s not fair. She doesn’t – she – I need – and everyone else –”

“Slow down,” Torr says, slipping into the soft voice he uses when things get bad; he doesn’t think he’ll end up having any other voices with Aventus. “So she’s in charge of the orphanage?”

Aventus nods into his shoulder.

“And she’s not nice?” Torr can’t really make heads or tails of anything the kid’s been saying, but this seems like hazarding a safe guess.

He tries to press closer, though that isn’t really possible with how he’s already clinging. He mumbles, but his voice is rasping and whispery already, and all Torr can make out is the word monster.

There’s some familiarity to it all, and not in a good way. Aventus’ desperation for touch and reassurance is reminiscent of Gellir when the anger goes. His reticence and scrunched-up posture reminds them of Skygna back when they first met her. Something is very wrong – that much is clear, has been clear since Torr broke into this bloody house – but they don’t know what.

They want to ask, but they don’t want to make it worse.

But then Aventus’ chin nudges at their arm. He’s doing it again, the mouthing – only not quite; when Torr cranes their head, almost snapping their neck in half, they can actually just about hear his whispers.

(Not understand them – they’re an unsettling stream of consciousness – but they can hear them.)

“�� the keyhole,” he murmurs, teeth dampening their sleeve, nails scraping against the fraying fabric. “Just in the dark with the keyhole. In the dark, days, and she’d put your face in it. Make you sick.  Made Hroar sick, and she was too old, even with the cane, and she made us. Made us hate each other. But I can’t leave them. They’re my friends.”

“Aventus,” Torr says gently, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Sorry,” he says, automatic, and then they feel his face screw up, his nose pressing itself flat against their arm. He’s quaking again.

Not crying; Torr checks. Just shaking, jaw clenched tight enough to crack a tooth, his eyes huge and hollow.

Torr holds him, silent, for another few minutes, and thinks.

Malnourished, sleep deprived, mannerisms too close to kids who have been through shit Torr wishes he could have protected them from. Won’t meet Torr’s eyes. Won’t cry, just shakes. That state he was in when they arrived – trance-like, unfocused. Lost it when Torr stepped away to grab water. Disjointed speech. Blood on his lips.

Open-ended questions, thus far, have not gone well. “Did she hurt you?” Torr asks.

The kid nods into his sleeve.

He swallows the how. “Are you afraid she’ll hurt the other kids in her care?”

Aventus mumbles, “Already did. Can’t do it again.”

Won’t stop. Have to make her go away. “Right,” Torr says, low and drawn-out, pondering more than they should; and then, “Aventus. How long have you been praying?”

He lifts his head. “I don’t,” he starts, and squints, his eyes more focused than Torr’s seen them. “I’m not sure. Whenever I’m awake.”

“Since how long ago?”

“I don’t know.”

Griss saw the boy matching Aventus’ description almost five weeks ago. Torr’s been hearing rumours of the Aretino kid trying to summon assassins for two.

How does a ten-or-so-year-old even get his hands on a human fucking heart? On bones? How long has he been in that room, swaddled by the stink of flesh putrefying, methodically carving a hole into his dead mother’s floorboards? If he’s been praying to the Dark Brotherhood for a month, then where the fuck are they?

This is a terrible idea. Hafgrim and the guards and whatnot, they were all one thing; they were pragmatic. Necessary. Close to home. Surely this Grelod woman being a hold away is enough distance?

Only it’s not, clearly. Whatever put Aventus here was bad, bad enough that he hasn’t escaped it, isn’t going to with the threat of it lingering. If it were enough distance the windows would be opened to clear out the smell. And what of the other children down in the Rift, left to rot – sucks to suck, kids, maybe you should have suffered closer to home?

Torr has to draw a line somewhere, he knows that. He can only just manage the responsibilities he’s taken on as is. And yet.

If I don’t, no-one will.

Torr doesn’t groan aloud, if only because it would frighten Aventus more than he already is. Instead, they say, “You said you could pay?”

He snaps to attention quick enough that the top of his head clips Torr’s chin. “I can,” he assures them, so terribly eager. “Anything. Promise. There’s a family heirloom.”

Bloody hell, they’re not doing this. (They are.) (They’re already thinking – need to research the cheapest ways to travel fast, because they can’t get away for long. Borrow some money – from Nurelion, maybe, they’ve got enough of a rapport with him he might actually consider it. They’ll probably need to steal as well. Which is a shit. They don’t even like it. There’s just so rarely a better option. Sort things out with the kids as well, get food and things arranged, get someone to keep an eye on the rabble – Kat and Talres will help, of course, and maybe if they ask Eirmund and Ambarys…)

“Okay,” Torr says eventually. He gently, but not without difficulty, unhooks Aventus’ hands from his jacket and begins to stand. “Okay. I’m going to get you some food, right, kid?”

Aventus’ face crumbles. “But –”

“I’ll take the contract.” And he’s committed now. Damn it. “Okay? But you’re going to eat first. Get some sleep, too. Condition of the deal.”

“Okay,” Aventus copies, blinking; he nods. “Yes. I will. And then you’ll go to Riften?”

“I need to sort some things out first.” A lot of things. Torr really doesn’t have the time for this. (He’ll have to make it.) “But I will soon. Swear on –” and he stops; what do Dark Brotherhood types swear on? Should he tell the kid he’s not an assassin? Is he now, effectively, an assassin, thereby negating the point? Is the honesty worth it, or will it just be confusing? Is it better for him to believe that his prayers were answered, or to know that they weren’t but someone will help him anyway?

It really doesn’t matter in the end; Aventus cuts him off before he can figure out how to end the sentence. “Thank you,” he says, far too earnestly, scrambling to his feet.

Torr holds out a hand to stop him. “Don’t,” he says, and he retrieves the blanket from where it’s crumpled on the floor and spreads it over the boy’s lap. “Rest. Remember? I’ll be back in a bit with some food, yeah?” He glances at the closed door behind him. “I’ll dispose of your Sacrament, too.” It can’t be healthy to be in a house with rotting remains.

Aventus blinks; his face twists like he’s just now realising the smell, or perhaps like he’s about to cry. “Thank you,” he repeats.

“No problem.” Even if it is, a bit. Nothing they can’t handle.

Torr wraps the mess in the fraying scarf that he’d planned on using as repair material. Aventus’ eyes are already closed by the time he comes back into the living room, though he doesn’t look any less stressed. Torr thinks about squeezing his hand or ruffling his hair, anything to make him relax, but if he is dozing they don’t want to wake him up.

So they just leave, replacing the window in its framing as they go. There’s a lot they need to do.

[fakedoc]

Listening to you're losing me for the thousandth time. What makes this song so heart-wrenching is that you just GET IT. The kind of heartbreak that you're bound to feel someday as a human being. So many of us have been there, not necessarily in the same context. It can happen in so many ways; your relationship that you thought was gonna be IT; a friend or family member that knew you better than anyone else; the kind of connection that usually happens once in a lifetime; a career or educational path that you put your all into; the place you grew up and hoped to make a better place for future children to be born into; that one specific thing that got you through heartbreak and anxiety and a million other things time and time again; the one place you felt safe in... No matter who you are or the life you've lived, you've been there once, one way or another. The moment when you finally realize that maybe you're beating a dead horse. The cold that creeps in when you know it isn't working anymore. Is your person really your person if they don't see how hard you're struggling, how close you are to the edge you swore you would never go back to, and they are pushing you towards it? When you're a footnote in your own story. Is it worth all the effort when nobody appreciates what you're putting your blood and tears into? When you're a team of one person trying to make things better and everybody else is going the opposite path. You're on a downward spiral and nothing's improving. It's the one last breath before the inevitable, one last desperate plea that no one's gonna hear. Your heart's breaking, but it's been broken so many times over the last couple of weeks/months/years that you don't even really feel it anymore. Like, what's the difference? What's one more when you're drowning in pain? The arrow's hit you on your Achilles' heel, and there's no fixing that. Where do you go from there? What's the point of anything if the one constant good thing in the world has turned out to be the final blow? It's the personal equivalent of standing at the end of the world, breathing in the ashes of what has been and what could've been, and trying to build a new civilization on the scorched ground.

[viksalos]

i hope i am not only a mutual to you all but also a semianonymous benevolent presence that wishes you well when you’re online and going thru it <3

[namorslutfanfiction]

Two requests posted today. That will probably it for tonight.

Enjoy and please leave me comments, reactions, and reviews.

To my lovely followers and friends, I appreciate you.

Stay Happy, Stay Healthy,

[famia-of-87]

I'm so deranged for my babygirl

Ofc you know who babygirl I'm talkin abt

[snekdood]

You fucking idiots dont fucking get it. ive been taking care of plants since i was 14. Ive tried FUCKING EVERYTHING. Fungus gnats are just apparently gonna exist around me no matter what i do or try, apparently just like these yerfs who also seem to be breeding like maggots.

[pa-pa-plasma]

i don't think i'll ever get over how people treat kids that aren't good in school as worthless no matter what. "oh it can't be that bad" my guy idk how to tell you this but the last time i went to a normal high school the principal called me into his office to brag about how he failed me in all of my classes before the semester was even finished & i should quit while i'm ahead cuz i'm too stupid ("officially" diagnosed as such by a school counselor & a psychiatrist!!) to succeed. & this is considered normal

[jewishvitya]

A pro-Palestine Jew on tiktok asked those of us who were raised pro-Israel, what got us to change our minds on Palestine. I made a video to answer (with my voice, not my face), and a few people watched it and found some value in it. I'm putting this here too. I communicate through text better than voice.

So I feel repetitive for saying this at this point, but I grew up in the West Bank settlements. I wrote this post to give an example of the extent to which Palestinians are dehumanized there.

Where I live now, I meet Palestinians in day to day life. Israeli Arab citizens living their lives. In the West Bank, it was nothing like that. Over there, I only saw them through the electric fence, and the hostility between us and Palestinians was tangible.

When you're a child being brought into the situation, you don't experience the context, you don't experience the history, you don't know why they're hostile to you. You just feel "these people hate me, they don't want me to exist." And that bubble was my reality. So when I was taught in school that everything we did was in self defense, that our military is special and uniquely ethical because it's the only defensive military in the world - that made sense to me. It slotted neatly into the reality I knew.

One of the first things to burst the bubble for me was when I spoke to an old Israeli man and he was talking about his trauma from battle. I don't remember what he said, but it hit me wrong. It conflicted with the history as I understood it. So I was a bit desperate to make it make sense again, and I said, "But everything we did was in self defense, right?"

He kinda looked at me, couldn't understand at all why I was upset, and he went, "We destroyed whole villages. Of course we did. It was war, that's what you do."

And that casual "of course" stuck with me. I had to look into it more.

I couldn't look at more accurate history, and not at accounts by Palestinians, I was too primed against these sources to trust them. The community I grew up in had an anti-intellectual element to it where scholars weren't trusted about things like this.

So what really solidified this for me, was seeing Palestinian culture.

Because part of the story that Israel tells us to justify everything, is that Palestinians are not a distinct group of people, they're just Arabs. They belong to the nations around us. They insist on being here because they want to deny us a homeland. The Palestinian identity exists to hurt us. This, because the idea of displacing them and taking over their lands doesn't sound like stealing, if this was never theirs and they're only pretending because they want to deprive us.

But then foods, dances, clothing, embroidery, the Palestinian dialect. These things are history. They don't pop into existence just because you hate Jews and they're trying to move here. How gorgeous is the Palestinian thobe? How stunning is tatreez in general? And when I saw specific patterns belonging to different regions of Palestine?

All of these painted for me a rich shared life of a group of people, and countered the narrative that the Palestininian identity was fabricated to hurt us. It taught me that, whatever we call them, whatever they call themselves, they have a history in this land, they have a right to it, they have a connection to it that we can't override with our own.

I started having conversations with leftist friends. Confronting the fact that the borders of the occupied territories are arbitrary and every Israeli city was taken from them. In one of those conversations, I was encouraged to rethink how I imagine peace.

This also goes back to schooling. Because they drilled into us, we're the ones who want peace, they're the ones who keep fighting, they're just so dedicated to death and killing and they won't leave us alone.

In high school, we had a stadium event with a speaker who was telling us about a person who defected from Hamas, converted to Christianity and became a Shin Bet agent. Pretty sure you can read this in the book "Son of Hamas." A lot of my friends read the book, I didn't read it, I only know what I was told in that lecture. I guess they couldn't risk us missing out on the indoctrination if we chose not to read it.

One of the things they told us was how he thought, we've been fighting with them for so long, Israelis must have a culture around the glorification of violence. And he looked for that in music. He looked for songs about war. And for a while he just couldn't find any, but when he did, he translated it more fully, and he found out the song was about an end to wars. And this, according to the story as I was told it, was one of the things that convinced him. If you know know the current trending Israeli "war anthem," you know this flimsy reasoning doesn't work.

Back then, my friend encouraged me to think more critically about how we as Israelis envision peace, as the absence of resistance. And how self-centered it is. They can be suffering under our occupation, but as long as it doesn't reach us, that's called peace. So of course we want it and they don't.

Unless we're willing to work to change the situation entirely, our calls for peace are just "please stop fighting back against the harm we cause you."

In this video, Shlomo Yitzchak shares how he changed his mind. His story is much more interesting than mine, and he's much more eloquent telling it. He mentions how he was taught to fear Palestinians. An automatic thought, "If I go with you, you'll kill me." I was taught this too. I was taught that, if I'm in a taxi, I should be looking at the driver's name. And if that name is Arab, I should watch the road and the route he's taking, to be prepared in case he wants to take me somewhere to kill me. Just a random person trying to work. For years it stayed a habit, I'd automatically look at the driver's name. Even after knowing that I want to align myself with liberation, justice, and equality. It was a process of unlearning.

On October, not long after the current escalation of violence, I had to take a taxi again. A Jewish driver stopped and told me he'll take me, "so an Arab doesn't get you." Israeli Jews are so comfortable saying things like this to each other. My neighbors discussed a Palestinian employee, with one saying "We should tell him not to come anymore, that we want to hire a Jew." The second answered, "No, he'll say it's discrimination," like it would be so ridiculous of him. And the first just shrugged, "So we don't have to tell him why." They didn't go through with it, but they were so casual about this conversation.

In the Torah, we're told to treat those who are foreign to us well, because we know what it's like to be the foreigner. Fighting back against oppression is the natural human thing to do. We know it because we lived it. And as soon as I looked at things from this angle, it wasn't really a choice of what to support.

[whumptober]

WHUMPTOBER 2024: PROMPTS LIST

Welcome to Whumptober 2024 — Seventh Time's a Charm!

Please make sure to read the Event Info and FAQ below carefully, as most of your questions will be answered there already. For everything else, you are welcome to come to our ask box or ask questions in our Discord server here.

This year’s AO3 Collection can be found here.

This year's playlist can be found here.

And the Anatomy of a Whumptober Prompt post can be found here.

We’re very excited to see the community come together for another year of Whumptober! Go wild with the prompts, and support your fellow creators - we wish you all the fun!

Best of luck and happy whumping,

Mods Vanne, Yenn, Kitty and Surro

(Text versions of the prompts, as well as event information, rules and FAQ are posted below the cut!)

Whumptober 2024 Prompt List

No. 1: RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK

Search Party | Panic Attack | "If only we could hold on.” (Icysami x Renegaderr, Strangers.)

No. 2: TRUST ISSUES

Amusement Park | Role Reversal | “You got away with the crime while the knife's in my back.” (Charlotte Sands, Rollercoaster)

No. 3: SET UP FOR FAILURE

Fingerprints | Wrongfully Arrested | "I warned you."

No. 4: HALLUCINATIONS

Hypnosis | Sensory Deprivation | “You're still alive in my head.” (Billy Lockett, More)

No. 5: SUNBURN

Healing Salve | Heatstroke | "If my pain will stretch that far." (Lottery Winners, Burning House)

No. 6: NOT REALISING THEY'RE INJURED

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms | Healed Wrong | "It's not my blood."

No. 7: ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES

Unconventional Weapon | Magic with a Cost | "It's us or them."

No. 8: SLEEP DEPRIVATION

Isolation Chamber | Forced to Stay Awake | "Leave the lights on." (Coldplay, Midnight)

No. 9: OBSESSION

Broken Window | Bruises | “Frame me up on the wall, just to keep me out of trouble.” (Fall Out Boy, Irresistible)

No. 10: BLOW TO THE HEAD

Slurred Words | Passing Out from Pain | "I can't think straight."

No. 11: SEEING DOUBLE

Convenience Store | Loneliness | “Leave no trace behind, like you don't even exist.” (Taylor Swift, Illicit Affairs)

No. 12: STARVATION

Underground Caverns | Cannibalism | "Just a little more."

No. 13: TEAM AS A FAMILY

Familial Curse | Multiple Whumpees | "Death will do us part." (Set It Off, Partner's In Crime)

No. 14: LEFT FOR DEAD

Hunting Gear | Blackmail | “Because I want you to know what it feels like to be haunted” (tiLLie, kooL aiD mAn)

No. 15: CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

Painful Hug | Moment of Clarity | "I did good, right?"

No. 16: NECROSIS

Swamp | Wound Cleaning | "No, I can't feel anything."

No. 17: NOWHERE ELSE TO GO

Ruined Map | Shipwrecked | "We had a good run."

No. 18: REVENGE

Unreliable Narrator | Loss of Identity | “I see what's mine and take it.” (Panic! at the Disco, Emperor's New Clothes)

No. 19: BLOOD TRAIL

Abandoned Cabin | One Way Out | "Is there anybody alive out there?" (Bruce Springsteen, Radio Nowhere)

No. 20: EMOTIONAL ANGST

Shoulder to Cry On | Giving Permission to Die | "It's not your fault."

No. 21: BODY HORROR

Body Horror | Tattoo Gun | Spirit Possession | “Let the bedsheet soak up the tears.” (Apparat feat. Soap & Skin, Goodbye)

No. 22: BLEEDING THROUGH BANDAGES

Tourniquet | Reopening Wounds | "Oh that's not good."

No. 23: FORCED CHOICE

Public Display | Broken Pedestal | "I'm doing this for you."

No. 24: RADIATION POISONING

Collapsed Building | Equipment Failure | “I never knew daylight could be so violent.” (Florence + The Machine, No Light, No Light)

No. 25: SURGERY

Stitches | Being Monitored | "It's for your own good."

No. 26: NIGHTMARES

Breakfast Table | Parting Words of Regret | “I'm haunted by the lies that I have loved, the actions I have hated.” (Poe, Haunted)

No. 27: VOICELESS

Laboratory | Muzzled | “I have no mouth and I must scream.”

No. 28: DENIAL

CCTV | Exposure | "They caught me red handed."

No. 29: FATIGUE

Labyrinth | Burnout | "Who said you could rest?"

No. 30: RECOVERY

Hospital Bed | Holding Back Tears | "What have I done?"

No. 31: ASKING FOR HELP

Therapy | Making Amends | "I'm alive, I'm just not well." (Elliot Lee, Alive, Not Well.)

Alternatives List:

Body Swap

Communication Barrier

Finding Old Messages

Forgotten

Friendly Fire

Motion Sickness

No-Holds-Barred Beatdown

Regret

Secrets Revealed

Shivering

Survivor's Guilt

Time Loop

Used As Bait

Venom

Vermin

Event Info & Rules

WHUMPTOBER is a month-long, prompt-based creation challenge (think: Inktober, but whumpier). There are 31 official themes this year - one for each day of the month - which can be used, skipped, or combined in any way you’d like. They are meant to serve as inspiration without being taken literally (e.g. you don’t have to include the exact wording of prompts into your work). Feel free to run rampant on interpretation. For example, if the prompt is “flame", you could create something with reference to a candle/campfire, your character could have suffered a burn, or the flame could be a reference to an ‘old flame’ - an old relationship. It’s truly down to you!

In total, there are 4 prompts for each day. These are optional suggestions and can be used in conjunction with the theme, or as options/alternatives.  We want to give everyone as much creative freedom as possible, as well as increase event accessibility for folks with triggers and squicks. There is also a list of 15 alternative prompts that can be subbed in for any day, again to give participants as much creative freedom as possible.

Creators can PRODUCE work in any media they choose, including but not limited to: writing, visual artwork, photo/video/audio edits, paper crafts and elaborate recommendation lists (not just a list of links). Creators can PARTICIPATE as much or as little as they want (i.e. you don’t have to do ALL the prompts if you don’t want to) and prompts can be used in any order. They are also free to use even after the event ends.

When uploading Whumptober content to your blog, be sure to tag it with:

#whumptober2024 …..(the event tag)

#no.1, #no.2, #no.3, …..(theme number)

#bruises, #stabbing, …..(the theme or specific prompt you chose)

#altprompt …..(if you use an altprompt, tag the post with the number of the prompt you replace)

#fandom or #OC, …..(ironman, original content, oc, etc.)

#medium …..(gifs, fic, podcast, art, etc.)

#teeth, #etc …..(trigger warnings & any additional tags. Keep in mind not to add “tw” in front but only use the word/trigger itself)

#nsfwhump …..(only for nsfw content)

#your own tags go here

PLEASE BE DILIGENT WITH YOUR TAGGING. Only properly tagged posts are considered for archiving on the official @whumptober-archive blog. They must be tagged in the order above. An elaborate post about our tagging system can be found [here]

Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of participants in recent years, we cannot guarantee your work will be archived. A random selection of properly tagged posts from all genres will be reblogged each day.

Whumpers who produce content for 31 total theme days are considered event completionists and will be tagged in a masterpost at the end of the month. A form will be published at the beginning of November asking you to tell us if you completed. This is based on trust and we will not check this.

Frequently Asked Questions

Please read this before you send an ask!

TIMELINE

July: Trope voting form released. Late August: Prompt list is released for at least four weeks of preparation time. Tropes cannot be posted earlier than August 25th because of Moderator obligations in real life. (But, you know, go ahead and start writing/drawing, and add the themes in later, if you want!) September: Do as much or as little on your works as you want. You can prepare everything in advance or let September go by with vibes and start working in October. It’s up to you. October 1st: Challenge begins! A storm of whump breaks upon us all! During this time, some posts will be reblogged to the whumptober archive blog. We open the yearly AO3 collection for posting (optional). November 1st: The challenge is officially over! Completionist form opens for those who want to be included in the hall-of-fame. Early November: We release completionist and participant badges, solicit feedback, and post a hall-of-fame list of completionists by the 10th.

PARTICIPATION AND COMPLETION

Q: What counts as participation? Create or continue at least one work inspired by one of this year’s prompts. Q: What counts as completion? Creating work(s) inspired by at least one prompt from each day (or alts), for a total of 31 unique prompts. Q: Do I need to create 31 works? No. You can, if you want. Or you can create one work that you add to every day with a new prompt. Or several works that combine prompts. You can also update an existing work by adding new material with the current prompts. Q: Do I need to post my works somewhere to be a completionist or a participant? No. Q: How do you know I actually completed the challenge? We’ll take your word for it! Q: Do I have to finish my work(s) to be a completionist? No, you can post WIPs. And you’re not obligated to finish them in October, but if you want it to count towards being a completionist, you must have completed 31 prompts by the end of the month. So for example, if you’re writing a long fic and you fit 31 different prompts into the writing you did in October, it’s okay if that fic isn’t finished by the time October ends, you’ll still be a completionist. Q: Is co-writing/illustrating allowed? Yes, absolutely, and it would count towards being a completionist for both/all of you. Q: Is there a min/max limit on word count for written works? No. Q: Is there a min/max limit of quality for art? No. Q: Do I have to do something each day to be a completionist? No. You can skip days whenever you want, and as long as 31 daily prompts (or alts) are in your works done in October, you can be a completionist. For example, if you wrote a 1000-word ficlet that covers prompts in days 2, 3, and 17, you can check all three days off your list even though it’s only one work. Q: Is this challenge just for fics? No! Artworks, GIFsets, headcannons, rec lists, poetry, moodboards, or any other creative work is encouraged. Q: Can I combine Whumptober with other creation challenges? Absolutely, as long as the other challenges allow it too.

PROMPTS

Q: How do the prompts work? There are FOUR prompts per day: a theme and three ideas. You can use one, two, three, or all four prompts for each day. If you don’t like any of the daily prompts, you can substitute one of the ALT prompts instead. Q: How strictly/literally should we interpret the prompts? As literally or as figuratively as you want. For example, if the theme is WATER, that could mean drowning, waterboarding, raining, swimming, take place underwater, be lost at sea, construct a metaphor about a character’s mood that changes like a flowing river, crying, or whatever else you can think of that fits that theme. Q: Can I combine prompts? Is there a limit on how many? No limit and combine as many as you’d like. If you create a work that checks off multiple prompts, that work will count for a fill of multiple prompts. You need to address 31 different prompts to be an official completionist, but you don’t have to produce 31 separate works.

WORKS

Q: What’s whump? Hurting a character, whether that’s physically, emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, or any other way you can think of. Comfort afterwards is optional. Angst is emotional whump, so it counts. Q: How do I know if it’s whumpy enough? If your character is just mildly inconvenienced, it probably needs more whump. However, no participant has to prove whumpiness to the mods. Whatever you write is up to you. Q: What kind of characters can I create for? Anything. Generic “whumpee,” OC, PC, NPC, major characters, minor characters, or whatever you want. There are no limits. Q: Does it have to take place in a specific fandom? No, you can create works for your own worlds or for fandoms or for both. You can also create more generic or pan-fandom works. You can do cross-overs or use OCs, whatever you want. Q: Can I create AI-created works? We will not reblog or promote any works we know to be generative AI-created. Q: Is there anything we’re not allowed to write? As long as it contains whump and is based on our prompts, it’s fine. Please courtesy tag your works if you post them so people who follow the #whumptober2024 tag can filter according to their preferences. Q: What about sex, minor characters, and potentially disturbing content? You can create whatever works are legal in your country and post them accordingly. Please courtesy tag anything you think might be objectionable if you post to Tumblr so people who follow the #whumptober2024 tag can filter according to their preferences.

POSTING

Q: Where can I post my work? Post where and how you want. You don’t even have to (cross)post it to Tumblr. Just keep in mind if it’s not on Tumblr we will not be able to add it to the blog archive. There is an AO3 archive for Whumptober 2024, as well as the parent collection for works completed outside of the event. Q: Can I start posting early? You can, but this is an October event and wouldn’t it be more fun with everyone doing it at the same time? We won’t be reblogging any work predating October 1st. Q: Can I post late? Yes. For the sake of our hardworking Post Fairies, only a day’s themes will be reblogged to @whumptober-archive each day of October. But you can post whenever. Some of us are still working on and posting Whumptober fics from years ago. Q: Do I have to use your tags? Only on Tumblr and only if you want us to reblog your work on @whumptober-archive. Q: How do I have my works reblogged to the archive? Properly tagged posts will be reblogged to @whumptober-archive. If you want the official archive blog to reblog you, post on Tumblr and tag correctly (see this FAQ link for more info on tagging). Please note not all posts will be reblogged each day. Q: Can we @ you? For questions and comments, of course. We’ll be getting a flood of notifications, so if you really want us to see something send an ask. Q: Can I cross post on other blogs? Yes, multiple platforms and blogs are perfectly acceptable, as long as they allow cross-posting (to us). You can also post different works to different accounts under different names, without posting them everywhere at once. If you post some works under your main and others under an alt blog, that’s fine for completionist purposes. Q: Can I upload/repost my Whumptober content to other social media platforms? Of course! We’ve created an AO3 Collection to archive any fics posted there, which can be found here. The blog is the official archive, so please respect the personal boundaries of any whumpers in your social circle (don’t out anyone as a participant who would prefer not to be outed).

Most importantly, have fun, create, and enjoy all the whump posted this October!