Forgive me if I'm a bit nervous about Gorgug this season. It's just that the last Zac Oyama pc was Colin Provolone, who was arguably one of his greatest D20 performances, if not the greatest.
Zac always does great with every pc he plays, but Colin was something else. He came out swinging with actions and words that were teeming with unspoken emotional baggage. The way Colin's presence affected the other pcs; there was this level of depth that I don't think I've seen in any of his other characters. It was understated and quiet in that signature "just a guy" way that he tends to be, while still captivating everyone instantly with just how raw it was.
Not to say we haven't seen emotional depth in Gorgug. It's just that, compared to the other Bad Kids, Gorgug's journey and progression as a character has been very... impersonal? Like, yes, he found his birth parents, and he found friends who appreciate him, and he faced his insecurities about his intelligence, and he navigated relationship troubles, and his trial through the claustrophobic bug-tunnels was a horrifically-uncanny parallel to how he's spent his entire life trying to make himself as small as possible.
But how much of that has actually changed him from the Gorgug we started with? I would agree that he's definitely happier with his life, given all the loving and supportive people that have been added to it when it used to be just him and his parents. And he's certainly grown into himself and become more self-assured in his abilities, even if he's still, and always will be, our anxious little guy. And there's nothing wrong with that. I've always liked how Gorgug was a representation of all the little things. The subtle acts and kindnesses that don't seem like much to most, but to some are everything.
We don't need another Bad Kid living in fear that their mouth could be shit-in at any moment. We've already got one-too-many.
All that being said, I just feel like Gorgug's personal story beats are much easier to sweep under the rug than everyone else's. He has the same soft and understated quality that Colin held, but they lack that extra oomph that pushed Colin over the edge from being just another guy in a series of dudes, to a character that the vast majority of us could not get out of our heads. He took someone who was anxious and softspoken, who ultimately never wanted to be violent— someone who is remarkably similar to Gorgug in many ways— and maintained that demeanor and core in Colin's character while still hitting us in the feels with character development at max velocity at every turn.
I think Zac gets better and better at this with every season that goes by. With each new character, there is always something that leaves me stunned in awe. And it's been, what, three? Four years since we last saw Gorgug?
I'm just,,, I'm cautiously optimistic but also going into a bit of a worry about what violence this man may inflict upon us
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@lightcreators get thrown into a mirror
They were on Earth today to refuel— they didn’t actually go to Earth often, but Koschei had noticed it was becoming more of a habit. (Koschei always insisted that when they did go to Earth, it was simply for Theta’s benefit.)(He was a liar, but it was a lie Theta allowed him to tell himself.)
All to say that… Neither of them expected someone to try and unlock the ship. And then to knock when it didn’t work. The two time lords paused, looked at one another and decidedly didn’t check the TARDIS monitors.
“I’ve… Got it?” Theta says in their quiet bewilderment, adjusts himself before walking to the front doors, “You know,” he starts as they just open, “In over 900 years I never thought I’d have to say that I think you might have the wrong blue…. Box?”
And now the door was open, and he’d been using his slim frame to block the doorway, and… Theta was now staring at an entirely too familiar face. He squinted, leaned in a little as if to get a better look while keeping his distance. “What?” he says quietly, and it’s mostly to himself.
“… Right. Uh. Koschei?” Theta calls over his shoulder, but doesn’t take his eyes off the man in front of him. “We have a… A Guest?” And before Koschei can come up beside him he was leaning in again, both hands on either side of the doorway. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
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The first thing he noticed properly was not the sudden impossible change in location, or the unnaturally colored light drenching the mountain, or the partially reconstructed temple above his head, or the anguished screams from all around, or the feeling of utter wrongness seeping into his bones, but the streaks of red on the stone pavement. He couldn't fully figure out what they were, or why they had such a strange shape, or what were the small dark scraps near them, or from where they could have come; but something about them made his face pale and his blood freeze.
A sudden sense of vertigo struck him, and he lowered almost to his knees to keep himself steady. A sudden sense of vertigo struck him, and he lowered almost to his knees to keep himself steady. A sudden sense of vertigo struck him, and he lowered almost to his knees to keep himself steady.
Then finally he broke out of that repeating moment, and looked up. An amiable smile greeted him before the shattering sky.
"Good morning, Warden Ingo," it said with a powerful, gentle voice that cracked the ground somewhere far, too far away.
It didn't sound nearly as human as it should have been.
It was morning, or at least it had been when the smile had spoken. Now rains of five months past were falling backwards out of the earth and into red clouds, and it was at once evening and dawn together, and night and dusk and afternoon all stuck in a gruesome thing that gave him a headache.
In horrid confusion he found himself unsure of where he was.
His only landmark in the all consuming spiraling were the red streaks of red on the stone pavement.
"Let me apologize," the powerful, gentle voice said. The amiable smile from which it came curled in a wide curve, dulcet in shape yet sharp enough to almost sever his head right there and then. "Your presence here was a mistake. An honest accident."
The grey eye looked at him with pity.
A black hole was emerging. He could see it everywhere at once, larger and smaller, in different moments of its growth: one second it had already swallowed him, the next it was a microscopic speck, the next it was a serpentine beast coiling around what should have once been a human body.
The serpentine beast looked at him with burning eyes, as red as the streaks of red on the stone pavement.
It dawned on him, in a constantly repeating minute, what those streaks were; and in the constantly repeating minute, he cried, or screamed, or froze, or puked, or trembled, or asked why.
The grey eye remained blind and deaf to his anguish.
"Unfortunately, we have not had the means to fix this until now," the powerful, gentle voice said as it rolled out of the amiable smile.
Something was wrong.
Down to the atoms that composed his body, he felt it.
Something was wrong.
Down to the atoms that composed his body, he felt it.
Something was wrong.
The serpentine beast opened its rotting wings wider, blood red bones peaking through the dark lunging slowly towards him.
"Be not afraid," said the powerful, gentle voice as the grey eye looked at him and gifted him an amiable smile so sharp it cut him in half. "Our plan always meant to help you, too, in the end. You won't even notice this unfairness took place."
He watched, feeling his limbs be torn apart at the joints painlessly, like a ragdoll methodically pulled until its seams rip, a hand lay graceful and calm on what should have been a human chest.
The grey eye looked at him without seeing, triumphant, with an amiable smile and a powerful, gentle voice drowning the very world it was collapsing within itself in the way a misguided parent drowns their child in a wine bath, spurred by teachings of a false prophet.
"I am a very just god, after all."
"You good?"
He blinked.
Then he blinked again.
He turned: "Huh?"
His brother looked at him blankly, maybe a little concerned. The station buzzed outside the door.
"You stood up," his brother said. "Blacked out for a bit. Are you ok?"
"Ah." he replied, and tilted a bit when he went to touch his forehead: "I think I might have had a dizzy spell, a moment of vertigo."
"Do you want some water?"
"No, it's nothing to worry about. Give me just a moment."
He sat back down, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his eyes shut for a few seconds.
Then he stood back up.
"Are you ok?"
"Yes, I feel much better already. Let's go now - better to avoid delays."
He closed the door behind himself.
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