My character is your character's weird relative, or vice versa! How are they related (found family always counts) and how's it going?
My loudest right now are Red and Cheris, but open to others too.<3
(Would possibly add Mithrun but he's only just been introduced in the anime and doesn't have a journal.)
tbf I'm not sure who counts as "the weird relative" between Eckert and Eden lol
...probably Eden
HEEEEE~
She's pretty much Eckert's madcap lil cousin<3
and a breath of fresh air because under most other circumstances Eckert's the weird relative!
It's kind of hard to out weird Eden when she is in full Chaos Mode lol
it's restful to be the responsible adult for once!
...until it's not restful. 
But he adores her anyway.
She means well! She's just a little bit of a gremlin sometimes that gets into everything because her parameters are constantly evolving and expanding in that "not confirmed but most likely Alpha ISO" fashion.
At least she will eventually leave Eckert's chandelier alone. Eventually. 
He gets it (or tries to), and always tries to add new nonbreakable things to the club's environment and lineup for her to enjoy. ^^
But they definitely need a gymnastics floor somewhere in the building.
Hey, she's good for business! In a way lol
She makes him think outside the box a bit and in doing so inspires him to make the club even more of an entertainment attraction in the city.
Ram as Ark's uncle or something would be so fun!
PhoenixDown She's just good in general, but he'd never say no to inspiration. 
MewtwoWarrior I'd see him more like a brother or cousin, but definitely! 
Ohhhhh, brother or cousin is so good, too! They could get into so many shenanigans 🤭
SO MANY. 
Siblings in weirdness!
Yessss! All the adventures!
well, let's see. one of my loudest is still an AU/OC char who fills the roles of Maleficent, the Fairy Godmother, and the Blue Fairy (actually the Purple/wine fairy - did you know that it's only in fairly recent centuries that Western languages even have words for blue and purple? lol...)
she's basically a Disney Princess with a gothy butterfly aesthetic.
she's basically a Disney Princess with a gothy butterfly aesthetic.
she is absolutely an enabler of fun pranks, and is able to pull massive amounts of energy from the environment, to put it into MP refill form, pass it out to others, etc. so she's the one to charge everyone's staffs and amulets and whatnot. GO FORTH AND HAVE FUN and all that. (yanno, so long as it is all in good fun, and no one's left worse off for it who-
(-doesn't deserve it. her BFF is the one to take up Merlin and Rumplestiltskin roles, among dozens of others, who has a Thing for handing jerkwads their own butts in public, like making egoistic rulers parade around nekkid thinking they have fancy clothes on, and all that... XD yeah, she approves.)
so while I'm not familiar with the chars you've named (yet!), I'm sure there'd be a ton of potential for shenanigans there. how are they related? well, not by blood, but that counts for so little, sometimes. 
her culture's tradition allows for simply declaring someone a sibling/etc and nodding and carrying on as if that's the case anyway, so uh. XD
her culture's tradition allows for simply declaring someone a sibling/etc and nodding and carrying on as if that's the case anyway, so uh. XD
Nightsail I remember you telling me about this OC; she sounded super intriguing! Remind me what her name is as I write up a bunch of ponderings?
Was her name actually Maleficent?
(I'd thought purple went back farther than blue, being stereotyped as a royal color, but have heard about the whole "wine-dark sea" thing!)
her name's Mallia. "Maleficent" is an insult given by the humans - it literally translates to "evildoer". and no one would actually name their kid Villain, so uh... even in the old Disney movie, it definitely wasn't her actual name, lol.
("Mal" as in bad - malevolent, etc.)
(etymology is fun, lol)
(it very much is )
)
ok let's see.....
but colors... "purple" as we think of it isn't entirely the same "purple" as was regarded as a royal color. the old Royal Purple was an almost mulberry-ish sort of red-purple, that they got from... shells, I think? stupidly expensive stuff, hence reserved for royalty.... 
but there's other factors at play here with my char, like the wine she loves so much and its color tying into things. for her, her colors aren't Making A Statement, they're just her natural born-with-them colors. the wine likewise used to be super common, but did cool things like going from all-black to purply as it fermented... hence the associations.
well, Iris is OG Jedao's adopted sister so she and Cheris count as related
also, woad has been a stable blue dye for.... many many centuries? idk exactly which would be older, the old "royal purple" or woad blue, but I do believe woad was even accessible to the peasant classes? ...iirc?
it's a plant that... I want to say it looks like mustard, at a glance, with all the little yellow flowers? I know that when indigo plants became more popular, it finally had stiff competition, lol. ....and I kinda want to try growing some myself, just because that'd be pretty cool.... XD
I grew woad from seed once just out of curiosity
they were these tall slightly cabbagey plants with yellow flowers that turned into lots of dangly black seeds
Fun fact, there's a blue-dye controversy in the Talmud! There's a pure-sky-blue dye ( tekhelet ) used for some holy items whose method of manufacture was lost during the Middle Ages.
self seeded like whoa
It was produced from mollusks and was said to be nearly identical to indigo. With no textual source for the exact mollusk, there's a controversy as to whether the rediscovered method uses the right mollusk and therefore whether it is appropriate to use its dye for religious purposes.
But the original stuff was in production several thousand years ago.
Dyes are extremely cool.
Is woad edible as well as used for dyeing?
oooh! ....on both counts. I may need to get my hands on some seeds after all. and possibly look up that shells thing, when my coffee has kicked my duff enough to let me focus to do so. XD
...oh man, just picturing going to the ren fair later, and gifting the historical-village-recreation people baggies of woad seeds because I can
even better, if I can somehow manage to do my 1959 Sleeping Beauty Maleficent cosplay and go like that to pass it out. probably keep it in a pocket up my sleeve, lol....
ooooooooooooh
that'd be fantastic
(I have PLANS, okay. some involving a 5' pvc pipe and a 3" plastic Xmas sphere ornament I'll be painting pearl-gold-and-glow-in-the-dark-acryllic inside, then stuffing green fairy lights into....)
(I'd love to see the whole process!)
(hang on though, I'm still writing up all the details about how Maleficent might intersect with my characters and will go on to Iris right after 
)
)
(if/when I finally get started, I'll be photo-ing the heck out of the whole thing. ....unless I get wrapped up in doing the things and completely space out taking any pics. that's happened before. XD)
muahahaha... well, she might end up mom-ing at someone, too, if they ping her as kiddish/needing hugs. XD just saying.
(entirely understandable; I've done that too 
)
Ok, let's see. Mithrun's the most likely to stand still for a hug; Red would be next likely, and Cheris would be reeeally hard to get close to but that's a personal/situational flaw that will bite her if she doesn't work on it.
TL;DR INCOMING:
)Ok, let's see. Mithrun's the most likely to stand still for a hug; Red would be next likely, and Cheris would be reeeally hard to get close to but that's a personal/situational flaw that will bite her if she doesn't work on it.
TL;DR INCOMING:
So the question here is whose universe to AU whom into, since most of my characters' universes don't have entities analogous to Mallia's type of fairy.
Mithrun (Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon) is the only one who's really from a feudal-style fantasy world. He's the captain of an elvish squad that investigates dangerous dungeons full of traps and magical monsters,
a phenomenon that mysteriously pops up all over the known world. Due to An Incident, he has a glass eye, lost the tips of his ears, and is entirely tunnel-visioned toward destroying the evils at the root of these dungeons, constantly forgetting to eat or sleep or care about much of anything else.
The elvish noble houses send their adult offspring as tribute to the Queen to manage the convicts that fill out these investigation squads, and that's where Mithrun came from before The Incident.
Elvish nobility, royalty, and supercilious, paternalistic attitude toward shorter-lived races (dwarves have similar prejudices) take a backseat to other matters in the manga, but the feudal problem of wealthy long-lived races not considering short-lived races mature enough to manage lands of their own
is a constant background noise when elves show up. There's no analog for Mallia's type of fairy in this world, so she'd likely be an elf mage with several centuries of specialization in her magical fields, probably landed nobility with a dangerous dungeon or two of her own to play around with.
I'd see Mithrun as a nephew a couple times removed and Mallia as an eccentric wine aunt who constantly mocks elvish social structure but wields too much power to directly offend; Mithrun's very-noble-high-financier parents (who have a couple closet skeletons of their own
and seem as prone to gossip, pretention, and snobbery as most elvish nobility) are probably Shocked at her shenanigans and careful allowing him around her, since although he's a dungeon-exploration veteran and very capable with regard to the one (1) thing he cares about doing,
his blankness with regard to all other situations makes him very vulnerable to pranks. (But the blankness also means he doesn't get angry or embarrassed,
just checks out until he's pointed at his goal. What he really needs is a few more decades of rehab instead of being allowed to fling himself at dungeon after dungeon, but he won't stop while [spoiler] is still out there.
Mallia could also narratively fit as one of the [spoiler]s themselves, but that's [very spoiler and more evil than she is] and would not work out well for her in the context of the series.)
If Mithrun was AUed into her world, he'd be a human(?) monster-hunter of some kind who fell afoul of one of Mallia's peers and, after a too-brief rehabilitation period, was sent out to hunt more monsters because heroics and the illusion of having heroic protectors are all that matters to his House.
He'd still need a ton of work to restore his will to do anything but hunt the thing that did all this to him, but if Mallia thought it worthwhile to take him under her wing, she could do a lot better with him than his canon peers usually manage.
So that's Mithrun! Now for Red.
Red (Transistor) is a video-game protagonist from a lushly beautiful computer-generated city, but its politics are small and boring at the scale where Mallia operates. The scope is really just one mystery confined to one city with a few administrative districts,
where the analog to magic would be the admins' ability to write changes into the city's root code with the Transistor, a tool/sword that can provide root access to infrastructure but which is so irrelevant to most peoples' regular lives that it had to be rediscovered from scratch.
Red herself is a wildly influential singer/lyricist who was attacked by a group trying to "collect" unique individuals to basically develop an AI that could control the city without human input. The attempted murder stole her voice,
but left her in control of the Transistor (and the ghost of her lover, who took the blow for her and is trapped inside it) as she traverses the city to find answers. Ideally, Mallia would fit in the broader world that the game doesn't explore:
larger cities and polities founded on the same deeply-hidden computer architecture, exploration of how the system architecture can be manipulated with root access, individuals and groups who want to control how the world operates for benign or less-benign reasons, and the large range of mysterious and dangerous entities,
controllable by the Transistor only if its connection with the architecture is still operating, which actually do all the landscape-editing behind the scenes. (Transistor was made a while back and no sequel is planned afaik, but if the devs did come back and explore its world
on the scale they would later bring to Hades and Hades II, I could definitely see them doing a character like Mallia justice.) Red is a regular citizen with a unique ability to influence her audience, a dogged determination to fix what the bad guys have broken,
and a desperation to do something about her unnamed-narrator lover's imprisonment in the Transistor; if she listened to his advice and fled the city with the sword instead of [events of game], she might have become involved with a broader power struggle
and met someone with Mallia's level of social influence. It's certainly also possible for Mallia to be an artificial intelligence powerful and independent enough to wield visible influence on the end-User-level surface world where all the humans live,
leading to discourse between the admins and the vast virtual space where all the programs running the landscape operate. Red didn't have anyone on Mallia's social scale in her life before the Transistor,
but she absolutely needs found family (even shenanigany found family), especially since [events of game] imply that her city and everything homely and familiar to her would still be devastated whether she stayed or left.
If Red was AUed into Mallia's world? Bard. 100% bard. Intrepid reserved-but-decisive vocalist bard whose voice was stolen by a magical artifact and now she's on the run with that artifact and looking for answers. She'd have to get involved with a bigger picture than her home village to wind up meeting Mallia,
Intrepid reserved-but-decisive vocalist bard whose voice was stolen by a magical artifact and now she's on the run with that artifact and looking for answers. She'd have to get involved with a bigger picture than her home village to wind up meeting Mallia,
but I think it could happen.
And now Cheris!
Kel Cheris (Machineries of Empire trilogy) is a career soldier and mathematical prodigy in a VERY ENORMOUS space empire where physics-breaking magic technology is powered by universal acceptance of a mathematically and socially complex calendar.
Calendrical polities like the hexarchate (named for its six political factions) are constantly at war with each other, each struggling to impose its own calendar as widely as possible while harshly repressing any internal practices which fall outside calendrically-approved norms,
branding such practices heretical and violently purging practitioners. This has been going on for so long that it's completely normalized. Cheris, from a barely-approved minority culture on a backwater planet, joined the Kel brainwashed-military faction in order to feel like she belonged,
reached a breaking point (thanks to a certain undead ghost general who kept pushing her to examine the system she was working for despite the brainwashing that should have forced her to stay in compliance), and ended up writing a new calendar
in which the hexarchate's six governing factions were still present but whose mandatory social order involved less ritual torture and a little more free will. However, she's a soldier, not a politician, and had to leave the work of maintaining the new regime to actual politicians and generals
while she went underground (or the space-travel equivalent) to hunt down the evil mathematician who wanted the old calendar back.
Out of the six factions that run the hexarchate, I think Mallia would fit in most neatly with the Andan, who control most of the polity's economy
Out of the six factions that run the hexarchate, I think Mallia would fit in most neatly with the Andan, who control most of the polity's economy
and have a stranglehold on cultural expression and entertainment. They're also the hexarchate's diplomats and conduct all the above-table foreign policy. Whether Mallia went through Andan Academy to join the faction (which would make her name Andan Mallia) or was a non-faction member of an Andan family,
she would wield considerable influence in any sphere in which she chose to meddle, and could easily fund research into magic powerful calendrical technology; this would make her eccentric for an Andan, since researchers and technicians usually enter the Nirai (the fairly apolitical and asocial tech-research faction;
they tried to recruit Cheris but she chose the military instead). If Cheris had any Andan relatives, they'd be on her father's side (he married into her mother's minority culture and their members tend to avoid faction service),
and his branch of the family must have been extremely obscure for the main family not to have spotted Cheris's mathematical talent earlier and tried to make something of her, so it would be a fairly distant relationship. However, they'd hear about her fairly quickly after she broke the old calendar.
The problem would be finding a reason for her and Mallia to intersect, since she used some very secret contacts to disappear fairly completely while on her mission.
She does not easily grow close to people because there's nothing, including herself, that she isn't willing to sacrifice to right the hexarchate's awful injustices. So I'll have to think about this one some more.
If Cheris were from a medieval fantasy world... I'm not sure. She'd have some kind of low-level background, with parents who wanted nothing more than for her to keep her head down and be as insignificant as possible to avoid enmeshment in the realm's power struggles.
Instead, she'd accidentally make a name for herself as a captain in her polity's military and be pushed into discovering and strategically revealing some huge secret that would shake the foundations of the nobility's power, willingly bringing it all down now that she understands the enormous harms they're causing.
She'd then go undercover to try to keep the bad guys from regaining power. In this AU, Mallia might be the secret contact that enables Cheris to stay undercover and benefit from a wider intelligence network while she hunts down the big bad,
who is an immortal evil ghost in canon but might be a fairy or other supernatural being in this world. I think it would be very difficult but very worth it for her to accept a mom-ish figure into her life, since the political destabilization she caused resulted in the destruction of her birth family.
(Hang on, got a meeting, back soon.)
/plotting, plotting, brainstorming~
only hiccups I'd point out for AUing yours into mine would be that it's fairly close to what bits most people know of IRL history. few monster-hunter guilds, more just knights going out for trophies and bragging rights (which stopped well before the 1400s because they'd murdered all the degs and unicorns already)
only hiccups I'd point out for AUing yours into mine would be that it's fairly close to what bits most people know of IRL history. few monster-hunter guilds, more just knights going out for trophies and bragging rights (which stopped well before the 1400s because they'd murdered all the degs and unicorns already)
that, and the magic-using species (collectively, the fae: elves, fairies, unicorns, and dragons, mostly; the only one with any population to speak of are the elves, though) are pretty much immortal pacifists (as in, the elves are just straight-up vegetarians) that consider the humans to be painfully immature, on account of their standard for adulthood has to
do with conflict/problem-solving to fix the root of the problem. bt their standards, most humans are never adults, even if they live to be 90, because they think "deal with the immediate superficial conflict by punishing someone" is even halfway acceptable. :/a
so it's one of those things where, post-Sleeping-Beauty, humans regard the old stories as merely that; magic is totally not real (says the humans, who could generally never use it in the first place, plus it confirms expectations, therefore skeptics will never be proven wrong. and without Mallia around to fuel the few remaining elves' antics, well....)
and what few elves are still managing to hang around are pretty well in hiding because their lives are pretty well literally on the line, in their view. if the humans could somehow take out one of their strongest (Mallia's land was left in flames that lasted ages), then clearly none of them are remotely safe....
...which actually led to her pulling a few more stunts once she'd started to recover from that. she couldn't find anyone, and went out pulling off wild stunts in a bid to get others' attention instead... only to keep getting pressured/chased out of the area before her BFF could catch up with her, until she gave up and hid away in a "haunted" forest. 
(read: Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, among a few other incidents.)
Those elves sound WAY more mature than the Dungeon Meshi elves, who point to their long lifespans as proof of Extra Maturity but are often just as shortsighted about conflict resolution as humans. XD Elves being underground instead of wielding huge political clout and using their military power to hold the short-lived races down is also different.
Mithrun's life would have been very different without the nobility-caste shenanigans among his parents' generation.
LOL, well, this difference in viewing what counts as "(positive) maturity" vs "(negative/unwanted) immaturity" is definitely a different one than humans would be used to; her BFF Sia's antics with humiliating human rulers and pranking people in general isn't seen as childish, just him having fun. what would be seen as childish is what humans term
"revenge" - which notably does not have a 1:1 translation for the fae/elves' language (she went into this in a thread somewhere, if you're curious!) ...but to sum, it's basically that instinct angry toddlers have, to smack someone for upsetting them. they see the humans' prescribed punishments for perceived wrongdoings as extensions of that, see.
(sure, I'd like to see!)
more interestingly, Sia going and pranking those rulers would be seen as him being an adult for the fact that him doing so is for the aim of teaching them life lessons (like not being an egotistical parasite on their peoples) primarily; having fun at their expense is just an added bonus, lol
Sia's antics wouldn't be considered socially acceptable to the Dungeon Meshi elves; they pride themselves on the appearance of know-it-all perfection and propriety, but that's because they do openly interact socially and politically with the shorter-lived races.
They prefer to dock military vessels nearby and send in their diplomats so the humans can "voluntarily" "choose" to submit to their authority.
Without that political framework, their values might be very different.
What would life be like for a second-born elf in Mallia's world?
oh, very. one of Mallia's bigger regrets is that her people (the elves; she might be a fairy, but they aren't a society, since to become people instead of just pretty little insects, they need assistance, like being kept as pets, and even then it's not a guarantee) were many centuries too late in figuring out that the humans couldn't be reasoned with or
guided the way their own kind could be, and therefore shouldn't have been being treated as equals the whole time... that maybe if they'd realized how crucial it was to try putting their foot down early on and maybe taking control forever ago, they might not be in the very real brink of extinction now.
ouch.
(this is exactly the kind of enormous injustice Cheris would bring down countries for.)
they were basically already well settled, back when the humans were still immigrating to Europe. if anything, the humans' takeover of it was a much slower-played-out version of what happened in a relative blink, later on, in the Americas.
and boop! ....she got wordsy. XD (for context, Chell is a "dryad" at a glance: tree guy. ...he's actually an elf in a form made out of an ent grown into humanoid shape for him. he's hermited in an ent forest for forever and basically went full Ghost Rider on the occasional invading knights chasing unicorns and dergs.)
(he sounds awesome XD)
/reads
(so he has basically no real understanding of the humans' civilization, but from what he's picked up on from the peasants visiting on their search for food (he sends them away loaded with produce! GOLDEN RULE, for real) and therefore a VERY dim view of their societal structure, of a few nastier types having essentially conquered their own species.)
(hence him getting tripped up in trying to talk to YS in a previous thread; he has no context to explain how his kind operated... it just kept coming down to more or less "we don't need official laws like you claim humans keep, because we aren't children" - because in their view, adults police themselves, tyvm. if they don't, they aren't adults.)
(....it helps that the adults outnumbered their "children" several thousands to one, overall....)
(so he finally suggested YS chat with the wine fairy because she's probably had more contact with the humans, and maybe she'd know better how to explain things? (yep, hands down.)
...tbqh, I'm pretty sure the fae's old society would've been classed in modern terms as (utopian) anarchist: no vertical hierarchy of authority (past parent/child, lol))
...tbqh, I'm pretty sure the fae's old society would've been classed in modern terms as (utopian) anarchist: no vertical hierarchy of authority (past parent/child, lol))
(hence them taking such offense overall to what they see as humans' absolutely 1000% unearned ego/self-importance, and presuming to have any authority over any of them; a good many are older than those humans' countries. they don't believe in the humans' classes ("nobility" is a bad joke) and will absolutely not bow to upstart brats as demanded...)
(that Mallia and Chell there are being so cooperative in that game absolutely comes down to shared goals and them not yet giving them any reason to go up against them... and a bit of acknowledgment that this is the native chars' home, rather than theirs.
meanwhile, in their own world, they'd absolutely make the argument that stolen things don't rightly
meanwhile, in their own world, they'd absolutely make the argument that stolen things don't rightly
(-"belong to" the thieves, even after generations have passed - especially not when the original owners still exist. therefore, logically, they'd actually be entirely justified in herding every last human out of Europe entirely... but they haven't. even if they wanted to, they don't have the numbers to be able to any more, and haven't for centuries.)
possible point of interest: in her setting, "Atlantis" was absolutely real. the fae got sick of constantly being attacked and murdered for their lands, and attempted to create a floating citystate of their own, as a means of retreating from the humans' aggression... and when the humans came to investigate and were denied, said angry monkeys destroyed it.
it was very much the "if you won't let us have it, you can't keep it either" fit-throwing mentality... and led to a significant number of the fae dying in the resulting destruction. and they never did recover from it. of course the humans spun it as it having been destroyed by hubris (because something something winners writing history...)
(and who wants to admit to being the villains, after all, when they could instead lie their duffs off about how it was always the others' fault, especially when said others can't effectively correct the narrative, right?)
yyyyeah. >.<
Yep, the cultural forces that shaped Mithrun really only exist in human society here. The flaws in him that contributed to The Incident were well-hidden until it happened due to the elvish insistance on the appearance of perfection,
but living in a culture where antisocial behavior and revenge stemming from to personal jealousies and insecurities is considered immature and has its root causes actively worked on would have completely changed the way he was brought up.
oh, I'm sure....
on one hand, a society that works on what amounts to internalizing therapy takeaways and the Golden Rule and its ilk... and on the other... the humans. lol.
I bet Mallia would be horrified to see the what the elves and dwarves have made of themselves in his world. On the one hand, elves are in power and in no danger from humans, but on the other, they're just as bad in a lot of ways.
oh, absolutely.
(also, to clarify exactly what Chell'd done to those hunters: he inflicted the experiences of their victims on them, via telepathy, and then sent them on their way back home. "ptsd" would probably be a fair assessment.)
(sounds appropriate to me, though with Mallia's caveat about individual solutions not actually addressing cultural problems)
(he tried explaining to YS that yes he was certain they were monsters - his definition of which has to do with a lack of empathy. he could absolutely see that they were enjoying killing the people they were after, and didn't even believe them to be people. ....if he meant "nonhuman" or "cryptid" the word he'd have used is alker.)
(ah, that's the context for that word!)
(YEP. ...in fact, I added hovertext to it! )
)
( which I missed, oops)
which I missed, oops)
...One way Mithrun could end up the way he is in canon is if he were raised by humans. That could also explain his clipped ears.
(so Chell was in the relatively unique position of being able to see for himself that these trophy hunters were sociopaths, and then forcibly making them understand what they'd done wrong by experiencing it. in his mind, it may have seemed cruel, but it actually fixed the problem. and there kinda weren't alternatives, besides....)
(nodnod)
(at some point some action has to be taken to mitigate actively ongoing harm)
(exactly)
(plus, on one hand, rattling some human terribly. on the other, they were actively trying to murder innocents. that's not even remotely on the same level.)
and yeah, quite possible!
...might also be interesting since the elves' magic isn't quite magic, in the conventional-fantasy sense. it's more akin to the Persona games' stuff: it's expectation/belief-based. which is why the elves "stop aging" after a certain point. they actually don't... but it's a subtle, subconscious/reflexive sort of use of it for what
...might also be interesting since the elves' magic isn't quite magic, in the conventional-fantasy sense. it's more akin to the Persona games' stuff: it's expectation/belief-based. which is why the elves "stop aging" after a certain point. they actually don't... but it's a subtle, subconscious/reflexive sort of use of it for what
amounts to a glamour skill, or makeup or something. it's superficial, if they don't go gray or wrinkle.
Are there circumstances in which an elf might be raised inside human high society? Would he be objectified as a status symbol or would those in the know be actively hiding his identity, maybe even from him?
Hmm, would expectation/belief magic allow him to learn to teleport things/people around (one of his signature skills)?
similarly, because they clearly don't age, of course they'll live forever. ...and since their MP tanks tend to expand over time/with age, then by the time they'd reasonably have died of old age, they can effectively ignore their own biological deaths. as in, it's actually possible for them to not actually realize when it happens. XD
CONVENIENT XD
so what would happen to an elf whose expectations of how the world works are shaped by what humans expect an elf to be able to do?
teleportation in the true sense of it isn't a thing. it's not a matter of cutting holes in reality; their magic is more like... holograms, sort of? "conjuring" things, illusions, creating fire and ice and wind and the like all by various kinds of manifestation/expression of energy....
/nodnod!
I think it might best be explained with pointing out the diff between fae and mortal being whether or not they retain the MP they create by living, or shed it. fae retain; mortals shed. mortals generally lack the patterns to interact all that effectively with it in the first place, even.
Is the fire/ice real? As in, is it a manipulation of energy that genuinely burns or freezes, or something that looks and feels like fire or ice but doesn't actually change temperature?
that kind of MP-type energy comes from mental activity, the way that electromagnetic energy comes from electronics, or heat from a fire. it's a byproduct of the organic circuitry in use.
no, it could very well be real. someone in another PSL demonstrated that energy can be converted, by draining some AA batteries to pull off some magic. it's kinda like how sunlight, wind/water kinetic energy, and even heat can all be converted into electricity. you wouldn't expect a comp to run off sunlight, but it's not impossible, if you know how.
/nodnod!
that's part of Mallia's Big Weird Power thing - she figured out not just how to take those other forms of energy from the environment, and put it into forms they can all use (soak up sunlight/heat and store it in a bottle of liquid or a crystal, that kind of thing) but how to do it on a massive scale without being overwhelmed and it destroying her.
hence building her castle where she did: in super easy reach of some ley lines (think tectonic plate areas, natural magnetic fields' reaches, etc)
So Mithrun's type of teleportation (exchanging matter for an equal volume of other matter, allowing, for example, people to be teleported safely across distances or into a wall or objects to be teleported into an enemy's body) might require a large buildup of power
on the scale of what Mallia does, but a relative youngster like Mithrun (adult but not middle-aged) would need a lot more time and practice?
but turning said MP into other forms of energy is easier: of course they can output it like that; they're used to doing it.
lighting candles, closing a door without touching it (read: telekinesis) or creating lights without sources ("will-o-wisps"/"ghost candles" and the like) that's all considered standard fare.
lighting candles, closing a door without touching it (read: telekinesis) or creating lights without sources ("will-o-wisps"/"ghost candles" and the like) that's all considered standard fare.
Or would it not be possible because something has to physically cross the intervening distance?
generally speaking, the thing would simply need to cross that distance. to make something appear way the heck over there, it'd basically need to be "conjured" to that place: made over there.
pulling something's molecules apart in one area, only to reassemble them in another location... that's not... uh.... XD
Ok, then yeah, that kind of teleportation is out. ^^
but what he grows up to think is even possible in the first place might be interesting, though maybe not always in the best ways; the humans around him almost certainly wouldn't be able to pull off diddly but for mundane sleight of hand, and if he doesn't grow up being able to easily internalize "no, that's expected"/"just how things work", then he might
The molecules in the origin point and the destination point would have to be pulled apart and swapped; for safe teleportation the destination point is just air, but if an object was teleported into the same space as a person, the amount of the person's mass it replaces ends up at the origin point. Which makes it super useful in battle.
not have that kind of belief himself, to be able to pull it off.
it's actually one of the reasons why the elves kept fairies in the first place: because by the time they were people, if they became people at all, they'd already be bio-dead and thus made of magic, and what was that saying, about being able to do stuff because you don't know you can't?
it's actually one of the reasons why the elves kept fairies in the first place: because by the time they were people, if they became people at all, they'd already be bio-dead and thus made of magic, and what was that saying, about being able to do stuff because you don't know you can't?
and if they can see the fairy doing the previously-thought-impossible, then... something something seeing is believing, you know?
(fae are mortal at birth; their MP has to build up over time, after all. and due to its nature, it's more or less seen as part of their souls, if a relatively disposable part, like how hair is part of one's body, but grows back if cut....)
(so by the time they're old enough to use magic, they're old enough to understand How Things Work, by having seen stuff happening that way around them, you know? ...so it's kind of a self-sustaining status quo, until someone can disrupt it enough....)
So if the humans could only pull off sleight of hand but they believed that elves were capable of ridiculous things and told Mithrun that, and no other elves were around to prove otherwise, then could Mithrun figure out how to use MP on a normal elven level by not knowing he can't? Or would he have to see it happen?
(If he knew he was an elf and therefore Different From Humans.)
were an elf to grow up among humans and somehow no one knows they're not human, including them themselves? it's entirely possible for them to never use magic in the first place and die of old age and remain dead of it instead of continuing on.
same logic: a human raised among elves might actually manage to build up MP by constantly being exposed to it,
same logic: a human raised among elves might actually manage to build up MP by constantly being exposed to it,
and therefore end up fae despite their species not falling into that category.
/nodnod
depends on him. does he believe he should be able to pull off the stuff demonstrated/explained to him? like, not even having doubts due to experience otherwise? /shrug!
I could see it happening if "elvish powers" were described to him as a child, during the developmental period where everything feels credible and possible.
Once he did do some apparent magic, that could give him enough belief to counteract the rest of what he sees around him, especially if he hears stories of what people like Mallia are capable of.
again, belief influences it. it's why the Sleeping Beauty "curse" even came true in the first place: her magic does not work like that. you can't really set timers, certainly not for sixteen years. what she actually did was all just some scary-looking theatrics... and then turned and plotted to put on a show for them in sixteen years.
except she lost track of time, and what could be called mass hysteria and a whole country being in one place for the party was enough 0.000001% ability to collectively make it come true how they expected it to.
(see: why there are so many cryptid sightings, when they're not even legit alker, but would actually instead be tulpas... and why those are so seldom more than brief glances before they quit existing again until the next (accidental) summoning....)
(if a conjured/summoned creature is to remain as a being, they have to have a mind of their own, because cogito ergo sum is the name of the game here. ...which is possible, if those around them understand them well enough for the shadowstuff-energy-magic-whatchamacallit to actually fall into stable patterns based on those ideas.)
(hence fae ghosts have no problem continuing on as made-of-magic beings...)
...so she was actually entirely caught off guard when Philip came barging in and attacked her. (she'd been prepping on and off to ready her home, to offer the princess to more or less fake her own death and come live with her instead, pick up magic, and have her own power, to do what she wanted with her life, instead of be a prisoner on a pedestal.)
So in this AU, Mithrun would have some magic because he expects to; the humans around him might have raised him as a secret weapon to deploy against their rivals, teaching him that he is an elf but keeping his identity a secret from outsiders. Eventually, as one does, he would question where he came from and where all the other elves are.
Depending on the doubtless self-serving and incorrect information he received, he might well go looking for answers and could easily get into a lot of trouble.
With some ability to build up his own MP and all the short-sighted vengeful idiocy of the nobles who were controlling him....
Well, it'd be easy for him to end up with one eye and a damaged psyche
oh, probably. assuming it's well enough before the Sleeping Beauty fiasco, and therefore Mallia's still at her castle (and it isn't just endlessly in flames!) ....well, it's debatable if he'd have heard much about her, or know that all the lil stories are about her. names aren't as emphasized among them, so much as reputation, as said in that thread...
she was, however, that well-kept but also well-known-among-the-fae secret, for being their MP dealer.... the Wine Fairy (a reference both to her colors and her fondness of that particular wine, which is an elvish cultural thing) or Purple Fairy, or Rose Fairy (she bred roses in gothy colors, and they covered her castle!) etc etc....
hence her having visitors fairly regularly, despite her castle being somewhere in the Alps, in southern France. they'd come with crystals and stuff, and leave with it all glowing, and she'd spoil them while they were there in general, and they'd tell her what news they know of, and she'd write it down in her notebooks too (she kept a library of it!)
so her library was actually pretty significant too.... hmm.
What if it was after the Sleeping Beauty fiasco and that story was one of the ones he was raised on? What is she up to at that point? He'd probably have heard a hideously distorted version, among other dangerous-powerful-fae-monster stories, and wouldn't have heard of any living fae or elves by (accurate) name,
and after his injury, he'd be stuck as a dangerous but damaged warden of a group of glory-hunting knights (mostly actually convicts and undesirables working off their sentences by risking their lives) while trying to figure out how to kill whatever damaged him.
None of which probably had anything to do with Mallia, unless, in his search, he encroaches on her territory?
He'd be an infant by her standards because he doesn't know better.
But if he were actually to encounter any fae, he would have to learn better.
In canon, the thing that injured him was no more grownup-by-Mallia's-standards than Mithrun was; it had exploited his flaws to the point where it wanted to finish up by consuming him, but had no intention of teaching him anything. After that, it was hard for anything to hold his attention except making things like that stop hurting people.
Whatever the thing was in the AU, actual fae values are very different than that, but like magic, he'd have to see it to believe it.
Or even begin to comprehend the difference from what he was taught.
He'd have a very long way to go.
But the kind of fae patience that seeks the root of a problem instead of patching it up and tossing it out to fight more monsters would be far preferable to the values he was raised with.
so, as to the timeline....
very early on: the fae didn't really hide. plenty of fairy-tale fodder, but a whole lot of the humans hunting them down due to their rulers being violently insecure and greedy af
later: still like fairy tales and folklore might suggest. Mallia's being the MP dealer, elves still try to live in (hidden) little towns.
very early on: the fae didn't really hide. plenty of fairy-tale fodder, but a whole lot of the humans hunting them down due to their rulers being violently insecure and greedy af
later: still like fairy tales and folklore might suggest. Mallia's being the MP dealer, elves still try to live in (hidden) little towns.
they're in decline. dergs and unicorns go extinct prolly around 1000AD-ish? functionally, at least, as far as being a biological species is concerned.
Sleeping Beauty: the fae pretty much all go "oh shit" and scatter and hide. this is the turning point of no more as-blatant magic, since she's no longer around to be their MP fountain.
Sleeping Beauty: the fae pretty much all go "oh shit" and scatter and hide. this is the turning point of no more as-blatant magic, since she's no longer around to be their MP fountain.
just after SB: Mallia's a wreck when she finally gets free of the fire (the ent forest that surrounded her castle? ents are telepaths. let that sink in a moment.) and being totally traumatized, wanders off. finally comes to her senses eyeing a big mansion, but the guy was a grade A piece of crap to her, and she broke down again (hello, Beast.)
and lashed out... and then calmed down and started trying to make things right again. the servants weren't turned into objects, they ran away and so she was puppeting the things. if she ended up making them legit animate in the process, I haven't decided yet, lol.
moved on, kept searching for other fae, but they're doubling down on hiding now....
moved on, kept searching for other fae, but they're doubling down on hiding now....
so at this point, humans are discovering SCIENCE!!! and getting far more skeptical of "~magic~" and especially with the other fae all keeping their heads down, the old stories are dubbed fictional anyway. suffice to say, SB was the turning point between the "fantasy" era and "reality as the humans currently mostly believe it to be"
eventually, she goes to "retire" (to sleep, maybe let herself fade away) in one of the very few surviving "haunted" forests (read: an ent forest) and everyone thinks she's been dead since SB.
bonus: Chell's story was, later, that one of those hunting parties had more than the usual number of them, and managed to kill the unicorn family before he could stop
bonus: Chell's story was, later, that one of those hunting parties had more than the usual number of them, and managed to kill the unicorn family before he could stop
them, then killed him too. sorta. hacked him to bits. the ents were working off his rage and the family's pain, and killed the humans right back while he wasn't thinking straight to even think to try stopping them from doing so. they put him back together and basically cocooned him up in several of them like a cast, and he ended up basically asleep since.
...so the forest she ended up in was only still around because that one really giant several-trees-twisted-up-together tree in the middle was basically keeping them somewhat organized... because Chell was sleeping in it.
once someone went searching again and found her, brought her back out and woke her up properly, she and Sia rebuilt her castle and he went
once someone went searching again and found her, brought her back out and woke her up properly, she and Sia rebuilt her castle and he went
off to go fetch her forest, so it can sit around her land again. (and neither of them had any clue Chell was there, until well after, when they started questioning that one being so ridiculous, and investigated, lmfao)
so the most likely thing would be pre-SB, I think? how far before would depend on if you want unicorns and dergs around still; even a bit earlier, if you want Chell as a chance encounter in that forest across France from her castle, lol. he could go out and try finding this legendary boogieman Black Knight figure, maybe? XD idk.
(that might not end up so well for him, though... the chances of a human learning elvish without having been adopted is slim to none. Chell doesn't teach it, he bypasses the issue entirely with his ability, see. ...so yer boi might end up getting metaphorically spanked a bit too, depending on how much of a pill he's being...)
Yeah, you're right, the timeline does work better pre-SB. Probably pretty early, before it was apparent (to the humans) that they were actually going to succeed in wiping out the unicorns and dragons.
you know, I don't think that "wipe them both out" was even their conscious aim, so much? at least, not with the unicorns. but BRAGGING RIGHTS!!! etc....
Complete lack of knowledge of actual elven language (or anything but human language(s)) would definitely make communication difficult if/when he actually manages to find any nonhumans, and together with all the human cultural flaws he hasn't questioned yet, he'd very likely run into a smackdown or few.
Ah, so the humans were all "hunt them for glory!" and then, when they'd driven them to extinction, "lol they must have never really existed"?
Y E P
with the dergs, prolly did think they were something of a threat, at least.
(spoilers: they were not. did you see the lil sketch I did of one for size-comparison reasons? lol....)
"Pacify places where local monsters are getting too numerous and dangerous (by killing all the monsters)" was literally Mithrun's canon job, but the monsters were actually a threat in canon, so.....
(maybe, but show me again? )
)
SO.their dergs were obligate carnivores - like how cats are! - but they're also sapient. as in, they're people. can speak the elves' language and everything. they hunted mostly like. rats. and goblins (2' humanoid feral lil buggers). they do not, contrary to common human belief, ever hunt human kids
or anyone's livestock.
oh no cute and smol
tales of Smaug types are 100% Big Fish stories, lbr here
(tbf animals that size, even herbivores, can absolutely do significant damage, but these are SAPIENT....)
they didn't fly, exactly, but more like assisted jumps and short glides....
(Y E P)
doubtless any information on their sapince was twisted to "evil and cunning and stealing your children specifically to make you cry"
*sapience
people can always find a way to make what they're demonizing sound bad
more fun: their unicorns are not horses with horns. they're deer related. very dainty little things with very long legs for sprints and jumps. could not carry an adult human, but might give a child a ride?
so the tales of them being "tamed by virgins" -LOL NAW, but being close-range telepath/empath types means "aww, sweet kidlet wants a hug? okay!" was
so the tales of them being "tamed by virgins" -LOL NAW, but being close-range telepath/empath types means "aww, sweet kidlet wants a hug? okay!" was
very often used to attempt to distract them....
And that implies children being groomed to wish oh so hard for a good and pure unicorn to come to them in the forest
given how so often, puberty was deemed "adulthood" among some humans, W E L P....
you can see why the humans would come to the wrong conclusions there. >_>;
>.<
also: also sapient, and on par with the dergs and elves, mentally.
(In Dungeon Meshi, there were horselike unicorns, but the horn is on the nose where a rhino's is 
)
)
awww ;;
...yeah, there are reasons that Chell flipped his shit about the humans needing to stop to the point where he'd rub their noses in it like he did....
yyyyyeah
(hence also why when he clarified to Mallia in that thread about how he did what he was saying he did, without elaborating, she figured it out, lmfao)
(oh... oh, he has that ability? like- .....ohhhh. D: )
(yeah. just a whole bunch of oh no.)
(yep. all worked out beautifully in theory, but there were things he was absolutely ignorant of that spelled disaster for the whole thing overall. ....and of course he's not going to enjoy hearing that in trying to make a safe haven for them and discourage the humans, he actually encouraged them instead....)
(yep. that had to be a hard pill to swallow.)
(probably sped up their extinction by a century or more, I'd imagine. )
)
:c!
but also: unicorns in particular being fae means that if they were old enough to be able to figure out how to manifest again after being killed... well, let's say that there're stories of knights being visited by some very pretty lady the night after a successful hunt, only to end up with his head going missing the next day, the room a horror scene....
So what I'm hearing is that Mithrun, with the backstory adaptions needed to put him at an equivalent of his current position and his current mindset while conforming to this timeline, would need a lot of remedial fae history/values education in addition to the rehab he already needs for his psychic injuries.
"oh, we're not hunting each other to brutally slay them and cut their heads off? COULD HAVE FOOLED ME. and no, you don't get to keep your 'trophy'. GIMME THAT."
oh, I'm sure
What do fae do with another fae who is physically dangerous and also dangerously immature?
mostly just sit on them, sometimes even physically. ....I mean. they outnumber their "kids". they don't die of old age, though they're not invulnerable. the kid will wear out before the adults collectively do, if they're going to lash out. when they're done throwing their fit and willing to listen, they can come downstairs and have dinner. hmph.
....I mean. they outnumber their "kids". they don't die of old age, though they're not invulnerable. the kid will wear out before the adults collectively do, if they're going to lash out. when they're done throwing their fit and willing to listen, they can come downstairs and have dinner. hmph.
but more than that, as far as how they'd done things before the humans basically wiped them out?
well, assuming someone went down that path in the first place.... eventually they'd prolly end up turning around regardless. humans aren't immortal. loneliness happens. and if the only way to have a community of actual peers is to learn to navigate how to
well, assuming someone went down that path in the first place.... eventually they'd prolly end up turning around regardless. humans aren't immortal. loneliness happens. and if the only way to have a community of actual peers is to learn to navigate how to
resolve conflicts productively? ...oh, there's a lot of leeway for behavior, just... it's a very "you have to be considerate of others? sort of values system. it's not hard to follow, but they'll all admit that getting to a point where someone's changed their way of thinking and catches themselves before they do something that crosses a line... isn't
always a quick and easy thing. but everyone starts somewhere.
That's another difference; the Dungeon Meshi elves do die of old age, though they can last several centuries. In this scenario, if Mithrun's lucky, someone does sit on him until he learns the language and history he needs to recontextualize his approach.
And if he's really lucky, he didn't cross too many lines first.
handling them directly, though... really would depend on who he runs into.ell'd have little patience for some antics.
....pfff, keyboard
Chell-
if he's being violent, that's where he pulls out the Poison Ivy act with having the plants tie him up, maybe hang him upside down until he gives up. XD ...manages to inflict damage? might turn that back around on him to feel it himself; does he not understand the results of his actions? he'll show him. >_>
if he's being violent, that's where he pulls out the Poison Ivy act with having the plants tie him up, maybe hang him upside down until he gives up. XD ...manages to inflict damage? might turn that back around on him to feel it himself; does he not understand the results of his actions? he'll show him. >_>
Do Unto Others and all that, right?
Sia and Mallia, though... those two are uh. they're definitely influences on each other. Sia leans toward having fun about it. there's a reason his mummy's in such poor shape. just lets him use that sword on him, run him through a few times, maybe taunts him. is that all he has? IS IT? LOL. dies dramatically! ....and then gets right back up. you get that
all outta your system, bub? no? okay, round two, go ahead. :3 let him know when you're tired. hahaha.... yes this is funny to him, why does he ask?
The sticking point is that something did hurt him, very badly and very premeditatedly and not in any self-defensive or "for your own good" kind of way, and in canon, that thing kept popping up in different forms and trying to do the same to others.
Mithrun's relentless and single-minded, but he's not stupid. Show him that he has the wrong target and he stops. He doesn't WANT the wrong target, he wants the thing that actively does harm.
makes sense. and the thing that did it might've even been a tulpa - the humans get hysterical enough about some boogieman monster or other, something might just kill off the chickens at night or something, you know? like how the SB "curse" came to pass in the first place.
so if people are freaked out enough about their own stories, and basically high on their own farts from it all, they might actually manage to summon up the beast that someone thought they'd invented. >_>
Remind me how you're defining a tulpa? This thing was intelligent (I haven't been specific because big spoilers for material that isn't in the anime yet).
..ahhhh I see
that would actually fit very well
would take a good many people to, but-
collective mass delusion, basically? see: cults inventing new deities in Shin Megami Tensei games, for example.
collective mass delusion, basically? see: cults inventing new deities in Shin Megami Tensei games, for example.
it could definitely happen
enough people have a specific-enough belief that there's a consensus strong enough to shape the MP into that thing? welp.
the way people tell themselves and each other stories to feel in control of what they think is happening to them
sorta, yeah
sometimes that goes down a bad rabbit hole, though
I could even see a cult leader who knows how MP works deliberately trying to create mass belief in something they think would benefit them
oh, totally.
....see also: one more reason Sia in particular tried starting a few cults himself, though ones aimed at teaching the humans better. (and then was, predictably, yet again disappointed when some humans took it and twisted it and ran off with it to go climb to power with it...)
(casual reminder that Sia = "Merlin" here, lol)
also quite possible, that if its creation/belief in it pointed it that way, it could very well be an intelligent creature after all, one that was self-sustaining and everything.
tulpa, I mean
creatures like that can even be deliberately created by fae... see: poppetry. a poppet is uh. Pinocchio would firmly be in that category, but that particular story isn't Actual Real History there.
In Cheris's universe, belief in intangibles wasn't as important as ritual, but the effect was somewhat similar; if a large enough group keeps calendrical time and observes the festivals and discards all practices not aligned with the calendar (even down to names and clothing), their physics-breaking technology runs smoothly.
(Wooden doll not required; Mallia prefers sewing dolls from fabric, when she'd go all Blue Fairy Godmother for the humans....)
Not creating monsters, but maintaining the underlying conditions that can allow monsters to be designed. And if enough people flout the calendar, calendrical rot sets in and calendrical technology stops working properly.
(Poor Sia. Good idea, too idealistic. XD;; )
(Y E A H, he uh. kinda.... tapered off on doing that over the years. >_>; )
(understandable XDDD;;; )
If Mithrun escaped from some kind of culty polity where fear of outsiders had congealed into some kind of Great Old Ones narrative that actually resulted in real intelligent self-sustaining horrors, his need to stop the evil bad thing
that had escaped into the wider world wouldn't be entirely unjustified. He'd just have to learn what really happened and who to leave alone.
And once the thing was actually gone, learn to have literally any other want or goal. But at that point, he'd have the time and hopefully know people he could trust to guide him in the right directions.
That's the kind of post-canon development I'd want for him if I do pick him up.
yeah. ...Big Bad learns to hide itself somehow, gets to be a menace elsewhere too... you know, I could see Sia wanting to hunt it down too. but if Mithrun'd been turned against all the other magic things, because logically if "they" spawned the Big Bad, then they're evil too; evil doesn't just come from nowhere, right? so this other mage must
...Big Bad learns to hide itself somehow, gets to be a menace elsewhere too... you know, I could see Sia wanting to hunt it down too. but if Mithrun'd been turned against all the other magic things, because logically if "they" spawned the Big Bad, then they're evil too; evil doesn't just come from nowhere, right? so this other mage must
surely be evil too. I'm sure it'd be entirely plausible/likely if the church was involved on his side; what better to help drum up us-vs-them rivalries, than by further demonizing everything that isn't yours, right? like actually happened all too many times in history anyway.....
Oh, definitely. So much of human history. >.<
Figuring out that he can't kill Sia and also Sia won't kill him for trying but is just letting him get it out of his system would be so confusing at first! What do you mean there's nuance!
mm, here, have something else to help complicate things, possibly: biology! ...elves actually are human-cousins. like how the Neanderthals were cousins to Denisovans and Erectus (aka, us). but they split off long enough ago that they're not entirely compatible; half-elves can exist! but they can't have kids of their own.
but half-elves also might look more like one or the other; it's not just the (already rather subtle) ears, but things like their irises being much bigger than humans', and just. subtle trends with facial shape and such. there're reasons they've been described both as "having unearthly beauty" and "absolutely hideous" (read: Uncanny Valley revulsion)
Ohh, interesting! There's a similar relationship in Dungeon Meshi; elves, dwarves, tallmen (what we'd call humans), and half-foots (halflings) are just all called different kinds of human, but half-elves whose other half is a shorter-lived race mature at a weird pace so out of keeping with their peers that it makes things socially hard.
not dramatic differences, but if they're not using any glamour type illusions, they're not likely to 100% blend in perfectly. ...so might be another reason he's set aside from some others and ~taken in~ by these high-ranking humans, to ~keep him safe~ or some nonsense....
...so might be another reason he's set aside from some others and ~taken in~ by these high-ranking humans, to ~keep him safe~ or some nonsense....
(heck, maybe he'd have found it easier to find a gf or bf, who knows.... XD)
And the Dungeon Meshi half-elves also can't have kids.
eeeyyyy, realism! 
Elven royalty and "traditionalists" are very disdainful of half-elves for a whole bunch of reasons that mostly just sum up to using bits of biology to justify bigotry.
Mithrun's a full elf in canon, but there could be all kinds of other reasons a young elf gets separated from his family and ~taken in~ by ~well-meaning~ human nobility.
...meanwhile, the fae in my setting don't see anything wrong with getting into a relationship with a unicorn or something.... XD once they're both elders (aka, bio-dead) then they're demonstrably the same. they just have different skeletons. ...unless they get rid of those, anyway. in which case.... /gestures to the degs and unicorns appearing as elves....
Makes sense!
At a certain point you're made of magic and biology is pretty much voluntary anyway!
pretty much, lmfao
biology's only a concern for having biological kids, far as they're concerned. one is still biological and the other's an elder, or not of the same species? arrange a night with someone they can have kids with if they want kids. where's the issue??
(so probably surprising no one, "jealousy" isn't encouraged either. XD)
These are just some of the social realities you have to deal with in a setting where people become magically immortal!
yeah. and sometimes relationships change over time! or you realize you care equally about more than one person! or- you know, insert list of things likely to happen over a thousand years or more here....
Yeah. Stuff humans just aren't living long enough to confront.
pretty much.
(so probably surprising no one, Sia's basically Bugs Bunny, re: gender. XD)
(presentation is merely aesthetics, after all.)
(extremely legit ^^)
(funny to me: someone in a thread tried attacking him by uh. kneeing him. ....he ignored it. XD)
fjdskg well, if your physical body's basically optional anyway....
well, if your physical body's basically optional anyway....
YEP, he's just manifested over his long-dead skeleton....
one word: pranks.
which is just another word for shenanigans if I stop and think about it XD
see, you already know him well. XD
the worst and best big brother both at the same time.
Sia is being chased by the palace guards, carrying some jewels in a bag? turns a corner, and by the time the guards also do, the only person there is some young lady with a baby in her arms, coming out their way. says someone went past her that direction, but she has no idea what's going on??
they run past; she turns another corner... and is Sia again.
they run past; she turns another corner... and is Sia again.
/INNOCENT WHISTLE~
Bugs Bunny is an excellent role model in this regard. XDDD
Mithrun had.... i s s u e s.... with his canonical older brother (not said brother's fault) but that was because elf society. In this reality he would only know an adoptive older human sibling whom he would - very rapidly in the greater scheme of things - outlive.
or by the time the guards get there, the alley's empty but for the usual barrels and firewood sitting out back there....
Sia: /lying down, the shape of the uneven ground hiding him and his loot....
Sia: /lying down, the shape of the uneven ground hiding him and his loot....
XDDDDDDD
given that he's also prone to Robin Hood sorts of antics.... I mean. there're plenty of reasons for Mithrun to be keeping an eye out for Sia while he's out and about. trouble is, he changes his appearance and what name he goes by regularly, so good luck with that, right?
Having someone with a sense of fun he could learn to look up to a bit who wouldn't have all that nobility baggage and also wouldn't immediately grow old and die? That'd be good for Mithrun.
How do elves relate to their parents once they do reach adulthood, given that they spend so much more time as fellow adults than as children?
oh, absolutely. and by SB, he's already... idek how many centuries old. because he's not honest about it, because it doesn't matter, tbh. two? three thousand? four? whatever, it all blurs together.
I'd imagine there's always going to be some respect there - they did their best, after all, and had so very much help to make sure things went right for their kids. something to be said for being mature enough to admit that they don't know a thing, even while still young enough to have kids of their own!
Ahh, that's true; biological kids would have to occur before biological death, even if that death can be delayed a lot more than a human's can.
Once Mithrun got a handle on how much he didn't know, he'd have a lot of respect for any fae patient enough to put up with him as he learned.
ah, has to get over the Dunning-Kruger effect, I see, I see... XD
Well, when you start out living with humans who have to constantly jump to whatever conclusion is available just to get anything done before dying.....
yeeeeaaaahhhh......
and when part of what they're trying to get done and much of what they obsess over is to accumulate social, financial, and military power in all these stupid ways.... >.<
It doesn't take much to be a better mom than Mithrun's canon mom, but I think he'd learn a whole lot from Mallia.
meanwhile, Sia's out at the bar, dramatically "barely" winning a drinking contest for funsies and then slipping out to go rob the local rulers... or at least run their skivvies up the flagpole or similar....
....still considered a Mature And Responsible Adult....
Oh man once Mithrun learns that "have fun" is a real thing they'd be unstoppable
why do I just see it becoming an ongoing prank-joke thing, that Sia comes up and ruffles his hair at random, and thus completely changes the look of it every time? ...no, he did not have RUBY RED hair a moment ago, nor was it this long. ruffle ruffle~ WHY IS IT NOW JET BLACK? wtf, what are you- ruffle ruffle~ PURPLE ISN'T REMOTELY NATURAL, FFS.
PROBABLY BECAUSE HIS HAIR IS VERY RUFFLABLE?
LOL yep
(his silver hair is a family trait; so were his silver eyes but the one he still has turned black after his injury)
but reaching the point where he could actually care what happens to his hair would be a big step for him so I wholeheartedly approve of Sia's efforts in this direction ^^
huh. I wonder how it'd go if he ever crossed paths with "Merlin". probably the one well-known mage figure that was widely regarded as good even among the humans....
(the King Arthur saga totally did happen; Sia arranged a trick sword-in-a-rock that he could ~magically~ release when he found someone manipulatable enough worthy of being assisted on the throne to help steer these stupid monkeys in a better direction.... XD)
yeah, if that was happening when he was young, he'd definitely have heard stories about Merlin
he wouldn't know it had been Sia for a long time, probably, but it'd definitely influence his understanding of what was possible for those who could access magic
How did it actually go for Sia? Did he get anywhere with the humans in this instance?
oh, it might've been long before then, but word spreads and all, if it was! so maybe, maybe not?
but SORT OF. it was sorta going well-ish... but then humans had to human and get jealous and go behind each other's backs and generally be petty and self-interested and oh lookie that, it fell apart AGAIN, goddammit WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS. XD
but SORT OF. it was sorta going well-ish... but then humans had to human and get jealous and go behind each other's backs and generally be petty and self-interested and oh lookie that, it fell apart AGAIN, goddammit WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS. XD
oh! actually, I have a big huge long bio app thing written up for Sia, despite having no intention of ever apping him to the game I play in, if you're ever curious. XD
if not, legit! but you might be amused to read the sections on his more important deeds...
both things he'd brag about, and sore spots for him and/or others, tbh
Sometimes you just gotta do an app for someone you're not gonna app! I probably don't have brain enough for it right now, but can read it tomorrow!
I probably don't have brain enough for it right now, but can read it tomorrow!
And aw man, poor Sia. He tried so hard.
he constantly tries....
(it's Mallia's journal, so you can find hers too, if you go poking. it's equally tldr though. XD)
sure!
...I might also have Chell's app, but.
you know, musing on it more... they'd have had to really work on their idea of their Big Bad Boogieman? because there's a reason a lot of the other demon/devil types haven't really been summoned, over the centuries. I mean. besides humans generally being crud at being able to do so. you'd think eventually, the Christian church would manage their devil...?
but thing is, there's so little actual consensus on it, so not quite enough to actually focus it into being. plus, a lack of understanding of their mind means there's nothing there for the shadowstuff to mimic - and a thing without a mind isn't a self-sustaining spirit, it's just an illusion.
in the main PSL with someone else? some kids were spooking themselves out with "haunted forest???" and Slenderman creepypastas. yanno, as one does.
most squealed and ran away. one kid froze, and looked more carefully. thing was hiding behind a tree, still and silent.
....maybe it's shy? only moved when no one was actively looking at it.... hmmm.
most squealed and ran away. one kid froze, and looked more carefully. thing was hiding behind a tree, still and silent.
....maybe it's shy? only moved when no one was actively looking at it.... hmmm.
kid "figured out" (...decided, lbr here) that Slendy there was actually just very awkward and skittish af, but actually wanted to be social. ended up dragging him back to the base, and explained all this to the adults there, while holding onto his hand so he couldn't bolt.
see? HE'S FRIENDLY, GUYS, he's just shy as all else!!
see? HE'S FRIENDLY, GUYS, he's just shy as all else!!
so here's this kid, happily dragging in a creepypasta horrorbeast that's clearly ready to flee if he lets go of his hand... clearly, the kid is right?
so for pretty much the first time, this cryptid was actually given a relatable thought process. tldr is, they now have a friendly neighborhood stick figure lurking in the forest, scaring the bajeezums out of
so for pretty much the first time, this cryptid was actually given a relatable thought process. tldr is, they now have a friendly neighborhood stick figure lurking in the forest, scaring the bajeezums out of
the idiots with GoPros and/or rifles, and (accidentally!) scaring him into going POOF and disappearing is all but a rite of passage, because it's easier than one might think to accidentally sneak up on him, what with that startle reflex of his. XD ....also easy for him to accidentally sneak up on others because usually silent and still, lmfao. it's mutual.
but that's kinda the difference between them being maintained coherently by those around them until they're stable, and... not. only the one ended up being a person, but only the one of them, someone took the time to focus on and figure out. lbr here, "creepy and spooky" isn't exactly a fleshed-out personality, when it comes to this sort of thing. >_>;
so whatever group he was with must've been very detailed in coming up with a Big Bad to scare people with... and good about telling the people about what they made up. :/
("made up"? well, not if they're asked, surely. we know how these things really work....)
("made up"? well, not if they're asked, surely. we know how these things really work....)
(...tbh, I'd sincerely doubt the humans causing all this mess even actually know that they're legit causing it. they just plain don't understand magic well at all.)
Awww, cute! Yeah, I'd imagine most of the people involved would have no idea their belief was causing anything. Someone intentionally trying to create the conditions under which such an entity could be created might be able to codify enough dogma and repetitive group focusing rituals to get away with it.
I'll probably have more thoughts tomorrow but first:
Lizblackdog ...ok depending on the canonpoint Cheris would be very ?????? to be related to someone through Jedao. 
I know Iris is fantastic, but Cheris would have to learn that through experience!
I know Iris is fantastic, but Cheris would have to learn that through experience!
Cheris and Iris would probably meet for Barge reasons (although I'm sure Iris could find a way to seek her out in the hexarchate too). Cheris held Jedao's memories for eleven years: continually felt his feelings, thought his thoughts, remembered his traumas layered across her memories as though they'd all happened to her too.
It was a constant struggle to remember herself as a separate person with a separate life, and ever since she met him, there hasn't been any time in canon for her to just exist without him.
If she and Iris met during those eleven years, Iris could probably sense how thoroughly Jedao's carrion glass had been sharded into her, but also sense that out of the two of them, she was the one who was alive, while he, for all practical purposes, wasn't.
If afterward, Iris could probably sense how inescapably he'd been there and how raw and scoured Cheris sometimes feels without him; no matter how thoroughly the carrion glass was removed, there are ways she would have had to grow around him and adapt to carrying him during those eleven years,
and now the scaffolding for that growth is gone and she hasn't had time to adapt to its absence. And in another complication, iirc both J1 and J2 have been on the Barge at various times, so Iris would be aware of Cheris's history with J2 as well, and if THAT isn't a can of worms idk what is.
As for being family... Jedao isn't the reason Cheris no longer has a family. The hexarchate is the reason, or, during her more self-condemning moments, her own rigid convictions. But that doesn't mean the whole idea of family isn't extremely loaded for her,
and she also knows in her bones all the ways it was loaded for Jedao. What do you mean he went off and adopted some more family and that means some kind of transitive-property relationship by association?
Are we talking about the same undead traitor assassin who was so wistfully aware that no one (known to be) adjacent to his bloodline had survived to the present day? Who taught Cheris how thoroughly she could turn herself into a weapon
for even a slightly smaller amount of aggregate unjust bloodshed in the future, however exhaustive and inevitable the personal cost? Who allowed himself only the most glancing relationships until loneliness lured him into centuries of horrific isolation and abuse?
That Jedao is allowing himself to be a sibling??? WHAT IS GOING ON.
Tl;dr Cheris, with no experience outside calendrical space, vastly underestimates the mental health benefits of living literally anywhere else!
She's never met anyone as free as Iris. She'd have to lower a whole bunch of walls to trust that caring about someone wouldn't kill them, and decompressing from hexarchate-normal hypervigilence would take time, but it'd be worth it.
Iris would be a kind of family Cheris never had: the kind that's safe.
(And she would immediately want her help freeing the voidmoths, whom she JUST found out about, and wonder if Iris could talk to them telepathically, and and AND.)
RIGHT?
I think J2 has freeing the voidmoths in hand
...I think I'd mostly only question if the person bringing about making the Big Bad actually knew they were doing it; humans generally don't actually understand magic. it confirms whatever beliefs someone has, if they can even influence it in the first place, so figuring it out is often pretty... tricky. like, how would they know to do it?
like, how would they know to do it?
but drill into Mithrun that he's Not Actually A Human enough, point out the tells (his ears, if they're not already cropped, his eyes, if applicable...) and make sure he believes it and that nonhumans can do Actual Magic, from a young age.... yeah, prolly. HMM. maybe they're fussed enough about BUT MAGIC?? to try hypnosis or something?
oh! one other tell, actually, that they might unfortunately find out the hard way: iron is kinda bad?? more like an allergy, like how too much zinc is bad for you, even though in trace amounts, it's good. just, lower upper tolerances. easy enough to avoid, just don't wear or cook/eat with steel, mostly? but I can imagine a ring causing irritation, and oops,
discovered that on his own?
(elsepsl, someone figured out that a foster "human" kid was actually half-elf because they were constantly having health problems. ...because the family was using cast iron and the usual steel silverware constantly. kidlet recovered fine once they switched to something else, at least...)
(elsepsl, someone figured out that a foster "human" kid was actually half-elf because they were constantly having health problems. ...because the family was using cast iron and the usual steel silverware constantly. kidlet recovered fine once they switched to something else, at least...)
lizblackdog She would also wonder if Jedao considers her family (???????) or if this is coming from how Iris sees things. And yay, good for J2! She'd be so relieved and also feel like she really needs to catch up to current events!
And yay, good for J2! She'd be so relieved and also feel like she really needs to catch up to current events!
nightsail My first thought is a fae trying to pull off some scheme by using humans to generate tulpas; it'd be getting into spoiler territory about the thing's canon motivations, but the mastermind could have been trying to create something to teach "greed is humanity's downfall" lessons
and things got out of control. This would then be a different culty group than Mithrun's. I'm sure humanity isn't short of those.
Mithrun would know he's not human; his ears weren't clipped until The Incident in adulthood. Maybe some of his first baby magic lessons were humans putting him in front of a mirror
Mithrun would know he's not human; his ears weren't clipped until The Incident in adulthood. Maybe some of his first baby magic lessons were humans putting him in front of a mirror
and insisting that he glamor himself to look more human, drilling it into him that this is something elves can do. Would he also grow from childhood to physical maturity at a different pace than humans? That's a thing in canon.
the two don't mature differently enough to make any real difference here, no. and... very well could be, tbh, though I'd imagine the fae behind that kind of attempt might not exactly have been part of the larger community for one reason or another, if so! maybe someone whose family was killed by humans already, so while they've previously been part of the
community, were being raised with that kind of know-how, but didn't quite grow up long enough with them to know better how not to go so overboard, or that this hairbrained scheme would turn out to be one? or how to get back in touch with their own people, even, maybe....
plus, possible bonus to motivation? humans being greedy and killing them for their land = clearly the humans need to be taught more firmly, time to smack their hands?
well, that'd work for the mastermind being an elf too, anyway
yeah, it'd have to be a fairly isolated fae who's missed out on actual community because human depredation
this one might have been basically an adolescent, lost everyone, hid among the humans, and knows enough to be dangerous and not enough to know better
and having ended up living among the humans much older than Mithrun, wouldn't have any familial feelings toward them
yeah, sounds about right. finished growing up surrounded by slander, getting only more pissed off....
there's a neat parallel to another Dungeon Meshi character there, someone Mithrun didn't really meet but who got involved with the thing much earlier and tried to trap and control it
which. didn't work out well. because while the thing draws people in by promising everything someone wants if only they rely on it, all it wants is to fatten them for the psychic slaughter.
(the betrayal when it turns on you is as bad as the attack.)
(the more they want from it, the more delicious they are later.)
(afterward, Mithrun had to acknowledge how skillfully it had played on his flaws and jealousies to draw him in.)
(it's not that deep itself, though. it's just hungry and very good at cultivating its preferred prey.)
(Dungeon Meshi: exploring hunger and consumption on multiple levels!)
lol
kinda makes me think of Chell's history, too: grew up in an elf town that ended up attacked. he was pretty much the only one that survived, that he knew of, of those that were there at the time. kid ran off into the woods. was already using a big wooden-doll type body (had been since he was bitty; his grandma(-figure?) was a woodworker and taught him)
hence he was already damaged and needing help when he ended up falling in with a few unicorns and ents. one of the unicorns directed the ents into growing him a new form, because how the heck is he supposed to make new parts with no cured dry wood on hand and no tools? but a living form can heal itself! ...hence now he is like he is and very wary of the
soldiers, as though their efforts to go sport-hunting aren't enough reason. (good thing him having an ent form and spending centuries with them means he ended up being telepathic/empathic; no need to guess intentions when you can just tell what mood the other's in and if they're being a hostile bastage or just there to enjoy the pretty flowers, lol.)
at least the ents don't normally try to tempt anyone; closest they usually come is to figure out someone's looking for food or whatever, and try giving them that. more often, they'll play on their fears instead, to drive them off, if they're hostile. otherwise... they don't necessarily care. if they're not being bothered, oh well.