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bidaryl · 6 months

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time travel fix it au's are done to death in this fandom but also they're my favourite thing in the world so au where the entire show happens as is and it's heartbreaking and inspiring etc but then. restart button. waking back up at the start of the end except only the people that lived remember

wanna think about what would happen when daryl and carol wake up at camp, remembering everything that happened; carol stronger, knowing in her gut that everything that she remembers is real, and daryl fucking terrified, because if everything in his head actually happened, then what the fuck is this

wanna think about a rick dragging a hostile merle and a wide-eyed glenn back to camp, memories completely intact, and running to reunite with his family. not letting daryl go and hugging carol so so so tight, collapsing to the ground with carl in his arms

wanna think about them dragging the atlanta group to the farm, maggie leaving the front porch light on for them, and everyone reuniting. rick seeing hershel again, daryl seeing beth, carol pulling sophia close, and maggie being unable to even breath, looking at glenn

wanna think about them tossing up whether to even go to the prison, but they met important people there, and alexandria's a long way, and if they're gonna survive this time–if they're gonna live–they're gonna do it right

so they go to the prison so they can figure out their next step, and michonne's there and waiting, andre on her hip, and they deal with the governor before the governor deals with them, and sasha and tyresse finally show up, they find the prisoners, and then one day they get a knock on the front gate, and it's negan

negan showing up, no baseball bat in hand but his leather jacket still in place, a sick but alive lucille by his side, laura and doctor franklin behind him, and all he's got to say is at the end of the world, i know which side i wanna be on

the fallout of that, of maggie being against it, of rick never having gotten to see negan at the end, not knowing the choices he made, the good and the bad. daryl and carol looking at glenn, seeing him alive and in love and having no memory of his last moments, and never wanting anything to ruin that, but negan saved judiths life, helped save all their lives. he chose, in the end, and now it's their turn

wanna think about a future where beth doesn't die, but they go on a rescue mission to get noah anyway. a future where tara turns up with her niece, led by eugene with abraham and rosita following right behind him

wanna think about how they'd handle terminus, how they'd handle the claimers. wanna think about them trying to find father gabriel, except gabe made it the first time around, and he wasn't wasting his second chance. he saved his flock, and he led them to alexandria, and he's waiting

wanna think of connie's group searching for hilltop. not finding maggie, or alden, but finding jesus. wanna think about lydia, being a fucking child, and watching her mother kill her dad, and remembering aaron telling her how loved she was

wanna think of the growing pains of them being able to save so many more family members this time, but god, a larger group is harder to keep alive

daryl trying to run interference with merle and everyone else, getting the jack of it one day and telling him he's already mourned him once, and he won't again. if merle wants to stay–to live–then it's up to him. daryl's not gonna babysit him anymore

rick trying to find his footing between lori and shane and judith, with carl, with michonne and andre. michonne looking at a weak but alive lori grimes holding a screaming and crying newborn in her arms, and knowing that she's never gonna be her daughter the way she was before, but knowing she'll always be something to her

carol struggling to be the mother sophia needs her to be, emotions too sharp and constantly fucking terrified. doesn't know how to hold onto someone like that anymore, either gripping too tight or not at all

maggie trying to exist in a world where she has everyone she's ever loved back, so close and so fucking dear, except it cost her her son. not knowing if she'll ever get him back at all. doesn't know how to live with the grief of losing someone she never technically had in this world

they make it to alexandria and it's aaron opening the gate for them, waiting to welcome them home

#posts u type on christmas eve when watching christmas movies #anyway this is too big and too complicated in my head but i wanna dissect it like a bug yknow #wanna see daryl and aaron remember something lydia said about her life at the start #and set off to go find her #wanna see a world where hershel meets aaron and tara #wanna see the complicated blended grimes family in action #want to see princess and tara and rick interact becos i think it'd be so so special #want to see alden and negan interact #want to see how lucille would fit into it all then see how annie would fit into it #wanna see mercer come into it wanna see him go find princess except princess finds him #also just want to see who would believe them when the truth eventually spills out #shane not believing at all that time travel could ever possibly be real and currently happening #but merle believing daryl becos daryl could break his nose daryl could fuck up his bike daryl could raise actual hell.but daryl wouldn't li #at least–not about this #just! wanna see! wanna think!#anyway. merry christmas eve im going to bed now #there are so many characters and points and interactions im probably missing or forgetting but u Get It #m #text

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threewaysdivided · 1 month

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The Shaper of Minds and its possible consequences for a certain character

I have finally joined the rest of the internet in losing my mind over a D&D Podcast - in my case, the wonderful Dan Jones & Dragons. With Episode 26 due to stream on Dan’s Twitch this week, I really want to talk about some of the stuff that came up across the just-finished Gala sessions because the fallout from that has the potential to be incredibly fraught.

THE SHAPER OF MINDS

The relic the Flower Crowns were going after this mission – The Shaper of Minds – is a potentially fascinating narrative device that might as well have been lab-engineered to be my exact brand of personal nightmare fuel. It’s a small, ornate brass key that can alter any part of the target’s mental faculties/thoughts/memories at will should the wielder touch it to any part of their victim’s skin.

Now, on one hand, there are a heap of interesting (and even benevolent) applications for a tool like that. It could instantly grant access to skills, languages and knowledge that would otherwise take a person years of study to learn. It could be used to sort through and resolve memories that had been faded by time, muddied by trauma or forcibly supressed by magical/medical means. But on the other…

As described and used in campaign so far, the primary function of the Mindshaper is to alter memories (and the attendant personality) with the target having no awareness that their mind has been changed. It’s basically gaslighting on steroids, except that where a gaslighting victim still retains their original recollection – and has to be manipulated by their abuser into doubting their own perceptions and instead accepting the alternate telling of events (a cognitive dissonance that can eventually lead the person to recognise the manipulation) – the Shaper of Minds entirely replaces the original recollection of events with the version the wielder wants their victim to perceive. There is no internal conflict between accounts, no inconsistencies that could alert the victim that someone has broken into their head and rewritten their perceived reality. The person they reshape you to be is the person you believe you always were. And all it takes is a single touch.

That is a brand of existential horror that had me on edge all throughout Session 24 (basically from the moment it was implied the key was in play). Reality may be objective, but each individual person’s internal reality is governed by their perception – their memories – of the events in their life, no matter how incomplete, biased or otherwise skewed that personal perspective may have been. You have value just by being you because you are not replaceable, but the thing that makes you unique is, in large part, the sum total of those inimitably specific personal memories. No-one else will perceive the world in exactly the same way you do, and even a few minor changes to just a few of those perceptions can flow on to massive differences in ideals, values, priorities and future choices. In that regard, the use of the Mindshaper Key isn’t so much an alteration as an obliteration of the victim’s former self and replacement with someone new; even if that new stranger is largely indistinguishable from the original. And, again, all it takes is a single touch.

[Sidenote: This made Mister Wick an especially effective antagonist to wield the key, since his Galas functionally trap even targets who are aware of the threat within the rules of high-society behavioural expectations. Otherwise-innocuous actions like a handshake or private conversation suddenly become incredibly dangerous, while being nigh-impossible for the Flower Crowns to extract themselves from without committing an atrocious faux pas and potentially tipping Wick off. Perfectly designed stage for a psychological horror-thriller encounter.]

Which of course, brings us to a certain character who fell victim to the key in Episode 24… [put under the cut for spoiler reasons]

MORENTHAL

This poor Drow, he can never catch a break…

Morenthal may not have been the most mechanically dangerous party member to fall victim to Mister Wick’s manipulations although, given that the key was revealed to let its wielder read existing memories during the alteration, and that all of the Flower Crowns were fully briefed on the locations and nature of the Eversteel artefacts, him getting a hand on any of them could have been very bad plot-wise but from a character point of view I think he’s the one who the key’s effects had the potential to be most personally devastating for.

The way things ended up playing out across Session 25 was precisely the nightmare scenario Gamb was fretting about out of game: Mister Wick forcibly implanted Morenthal’s mind with false memories of being his lifelong trusted confidant and supporter, then – before the Flower Crowns could reverse the key’s effect – Morenthal discovered that Mister Wick had been killed in combat with Coil and Preston, leading to the Party having to physically restrain him so they could use the key to undo the damage, thus confronting Morenthal with the realisation that not only was everything he thought he knew about Jonathan a lie, but in actuality Jonathan had committed possibly the most invasive violation he’d ever been subjected to in order to forcibly make Morenthal into one of his loyal tools. That level of emotional and mental whiplash would be rough on any character, but for Morenthal it’s particularly brutal because…

Based on what’s been revealed in-game so far, the core of his character is that Morenthal is an abused child. This most-clearly came up in his conversation with Gelnek in Session 14; he was a child who grew up with nothing, raised by the Bloodletter Mercenaries as a tool instead of a person, and taught to see faces only as targets – with him also mentioning to Hobson in that their “combat training” involved being relentlessly beaten down until he learned to fight back. During his Session 21 visit with the Nightmother, he openly admits that “nowhere feels safe”. From that it’s pretty clear to read that Morenthal has never felt unconditionally loved, safe or respected around other mortals.

(This also helps contextualise why he’s so devoted to the Nightmother. From what little we have seen of his visits to her, Iris is a fond “adult” figure, who does not threaten, does not judge, asks nothing of him aside from his company, and cares equally for all the souls that pass through her domain. For a child “growing up with nothing” but violence, that would have been everything.)

But then, enter Jonathan fucking Wick. And now, just for a short while, Morenthal has all these “memories” of Jonathan being there to confide in, encourage him and support his escape from the Bloodletters. Suddenly he believes someone was there for him and, while the memories might be fake, the feelings of unconditional safety they would have brought were very real. Little wonder that he started acting like a Trilby-level naive goober around Mister Wick to the point of accidentally snitching on the rest of the group. Only, then it turns out to be a lie and those memories are gone.

For me, I think one of the worst things Morenthal might end up dealing with in the aftermath of having his memory fixed isn’t the specific feeling of personal betrayal or the potential shame at having been caught: it’s the realisation that he was always alone. That there was no mortal on the outside who cared or came for him when he needed them – just him and the distant fondness of a Divine. That would be awful beyond words, and yet the Flower Crowns were forced to inadvertently inflict it upon him in order to restore his mind. No wonder he wouldn’t look any of them in the eye before the session closed.

Worse still, the nature of the key makes it incredibly hard not only to trust others, but to trust your own mind. The players and audience above-table know that Morenthal is back to experiencing and remembering reality as it happened, but the question could very well linger for him, bringing with it a hefty dose of paranoia. Sure, Morenthal correctly remembers that Coil is a straightforward, loyal person who wouldn’t be tempted to tamper with his mind beyond undoing Jonathan’s manipulations… but he “remembered” that about Mister Wick too, and wouldn’t that be a beneficial thing for the Party to have him think? To Morenthal, people were already Not Safe™, but now the one person he ever believed might be had actually violated him worse than anyone else in order to force and abuse that trust. How is he supposed to trust anyone if he can’t trust the authenticity of his own recollections. (I get the feeling that Morenthal probably isn't going to be capable of relaxing until the Shaper of Minds is confirmed to either be locked back safely in the Vaults of Eversteel or fully removed from the Mortal Plane by Six).

It makes it really tragic that all of this came directly on the back of Episode 23, where Gamb revealed during the above-table break chat that - even if Morenthal didn’t recognise why – he unconsciously trusted Trilby and Gelnek enough to jump off the airship without checking that his rope was secure, because deep-down he knew they would catch him. To go from that high-point to the whiplash of him first thinking the Flower Crowns had killed the only person he was ever “safe” with, then them inadvertently subjecting him to the most painful realisation he could ever experience and potentially leaving him wondering whether he can even trust his feelings about them is absolutely gutting.

I think the thing that scares me most about how the aftermath could potentially play out is another trait that Gamb and Dan have established for Morenthal: he's a flight-risk. He shies away from letting people get close and, if he feels unsafe enough, he runs. It’s already been mentioned/implied that he’s considered fleeing the group at multiple different points across the sessions. And with him likely not feeling safe even in inside his own mind right now, that risk is probably at an all-time high. The poor lad is staring down the barrel of a potentially-impending multi-level emotional crisis, where a lifetime of instincts will probably be urging him to run hard and fast because People Are Not Safe™.

And the thing is, that instinct isn’t a good one for him either. Morenthal might have gotten by on his own “just living to be” up until Filgrove, but that feels a lot more like surviving out of necessity than having an actual life. It’s pretty obvious that he pushes people away as a defence mechanism: if you don’t care about anyone then you can’t be hurt by them or have those people used against you. But if you don’t let yourself care and feel things, you’re not really living. The truly tragic part of his running being a potential foreseeable outcome is that the Flower Crowns are good for Morenthal. (I doubt Morenthal realises it and can’t speak to Gamb’s above-table thought process but it’s interesting that one potential interpretation of Morenthal’s cynical, faux-apathetic, “stinky” behaviour is that of a former abused child quietly testing the boundaries of whether he’s allowed to exist in a way that’s inconvenient for others, to which the answer from the Party has largely been yes provided he isn’t actively encouraging Trilby to get himself killed, or killing people without explaining himself). He survived alone before because that was all he knew, but I get the feeling he wouldn’t do so well if he tried to go it solo again after being with people (he’s already confessed that the idea of Feyli being gone makes him miss her). That’s not a road to walk on his best day, let alone with his current headspace and tendency towards self-destructive choices.

It reminds me a lot of this article:

“Still, it’s easier for us to keep blaming ourselves because it’s preferable to facing the unthinkable: the fact that our parents don’t love us. … Most people would rather do anything than accept this as the truth. Not only is it painful; it’s humiliating.”

So yeah, suffice to say I am incredibly concerned about how Morenthal’s arc is going to play out over the next session(s). Here’s hoping that Gelnek and/or Coil have enough emotional savvy to keep an eye out, and enough patience to stick to him even if he lashes out in attempt to drive them off. Even if it all works out okay, I get the feeling that this one’s going to be ugly.

Can’t wait to see how everyone chooses to play it ❤️‍🩹

#The Shaper of Minds #An artefact that is absolutely fascinating and whose implications make me PHYSICALLY NAUSEOUS if I contemplate them too much #(So now I must share that nausea with you all)#Session 26 is going to be so rough for the poor guy I feel anxious just thinking about it #I am CONCERNED FOR THE LAD #there is a nonzero chance that he could walk away from the best thing that's ever happened to him and that terrifies me #Also just to say: this is NOT me trying to enforce a certain reading of events or backseat game how Gamb and the cast should play things #I'm just indulgently speculating because I have a personal interest in trauma recovery and character analysis is my great love #child abuse discussed cw #gaslighting discussed cw #existential horror #Dan Jones and Dragons #DJ&D #The Flower Crowns of E'lythia #A Party to Forget #DJ&D Meta #DJ&D Spoilers #Morenthal #Morenthal (Wolfsbane)#Character analysis #(Also for anyone unfamiliar with this campaign: Yes. The villain of this arc WAS named Jon Wick. DJ&D is great)#3WD

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