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FE selfship lore I: the broad sketches
I've been procrastinating on filling out this FEH selfship meme that I made simply just because there is so much goddamn lore I've cooked up over 20 years. :P and it was a little hard filling out a question and halfway through realizing that people probably won't give a shit about the non-Heroes backstory.
SO i'm just gonna... lay out the context here for people who do want to read it, and then that way i have a link to point people to if they want the long version.
[ ok but what the fuck are you talking about krad ] oh yeah lol. i've been obsessed with a series of games called fire emblem for twenty years now. the base games/worlds are marvelous and absolutely well worth playing by themselves. i just happen to have shipped my self-insert with zihark for said, uh, 20 years. got a shit ton of art with them. it's a thing, sometimes you'll hear the concept be called selfshipping or being a yumejoshi. (bright eyes/krad/she/her/your summoner all OK to refer to the self insert, just for clarity's sake, all's cool).
ONWARDS TO THE LORE
[ AU number 1a: Tellius, PoR, before RD ]
* said AU really starts with bright eyes functionally being another tellius character that joins the greil mercenaries in Port Toha, zihark's joining chapter but totally separately from him. ("bright eyes" is a nickname that she earns right before RD; more on that alter)
* her general backstory is being born to begnion merchants who lived on the begnion/daein border. gets hit with a fatal childhood disease that not even begnion priests could cure. out of sheer desperation when she was dying she made a spirit charmer pact with a demon to "not die". well. with the faustian bargain and all, she didn't die, sure - she got better from the disease while always being quite frail. but now thanks to the spirit, bright eyes can't die. can't die to disease, can't die to battle wounds (she regenerates slowly and painfully), can't die to medical experiments, etc. realizing this could land her in hot water she keeps that a secret from everyone, and grows up as a pretty average if ambitious dark mage/clerk/low level begnion spy.
* fast forward to PoR where she was chilling in crimea and was anonymously directed by her handlers to board nasir's ship.
* surprisingly she and zihark don't talk a whole lot throughout PoR! they're lightly friends (imagine a B or maybe A support). he eventually and vaguely tells her that he's from daein and more or less what he told muarim about his old deceased laguz lover, maybe a little less, but certinally not anything beyond that. they leave the mercenaries after PoR's last battle and go separate ways. past the three year time skip (and in RD proper), though, is really when the relationship kicks off.
* right before RD happens she's been working her way up the begnion's intelligence agency (more or less), who had sent her to infiltrate a cult (i imagine begnion's priesthood wants all dark mages eradicated and had her systematically kill them as heretics/cultists.) saw and had some nasty stuff happen when she fucked up and got caught being a mole and was experimented on a bit, kills them all, earns "bright eyes" as a name for her unusual yellow eyes. basically bloodied here and not in PoR. long story short - very jaded, much better with dark magic, very used to regenerating from horrific shit. the priests in the intelligence branch wanted to give her an easier job after that, and she chooses investigating daein and this so-called 'silver haired madien' since she had been thinking about zihark more often lately and knew that's where he had been last headed.
[ AU number 1b: Tellius, RD, Post-RD ]
* anyway, she finds him right in that battle where we first see zihark in RD. gets absolutely clobbered in the head with the 'oh fuck me i'm in love with him' love at first sight realization when seeing him for the first time again <3 (meanwhile he just obliviously remembers her warmly as an(other) old friend LOL #friendzoned)
[ sidenote: this bit in the canonical Part 1, 3, and 4 of RD is my favorite (and most detailed) part of all of these AU's x) - there's a lot i'm glossing over here, and this will probably be its own post at some point.]
* they catch up like old times for a few chapters (while she's playing cool and totally not head over heels LOL). the biggest plot relevant thing is during that prison escape chapter where she sees an archer's about to hit zihark and steps in the line of fire. the arrow hits her in a bad way - he's frantically thinking she's actually dying in a shaded corner of the prison but she knows she can regenerate from it and begs him not to tell anyone and to help her crawl back to the tent. 'i'll explain later' kind of thing which is honestly, the worst possible move.
* see the thing is, zihark is actually, genuinely pissed afterwards. i've always felt like he'd be an ice king; and having an old friend literally dying in front of him a little too similarly to his old laguz lover makes him overreact and completely ice her out out afterwards. he's not entirely clear on how she survives and he doesn't want to know. she's quite emotionally hurt given well, it's him, she incorrectly thinks it's about the regeneration which a bit of a sore spot for her too (its' not; it's about his past).
* jill -bless her- sees the very messy situation for what it is and kinda swoops in as a wingwoman XD bright eyes and jill had been friends for a long time too, with bright eyes giving her advice/a shoulder of commiseration about haar for a long while, and so jill really works on zihark to thaw the ice LOL. long story is that bright eyes and zihark have a long, long absolutely critical private talk where she shows him the regeneration (cuts her arm in front of him like an edgelord so he can see it heal right over), they both apologize, it partially dawns on her why he overreacted. they're not entirely warm afterwards but there's a mutual agreement to start over, and a definite softening on his side.
* i think it's about this time he's all '.... huh....' with the start of slightly flirtatious interest. emotionally, bright eyes is really quite independent / aloof / notably, intentionally doesn't like. throw herself at him lol, compared to a lot of attention he gets from the ladies. (this is so fuckin stereotypical i'm DYING here). he doesn't fall in love easily, not after what happened, but there's a baseline of flirting he dials up and down for ladies, and very pointedly. starts dialing it up. (he's like a cat. likes you more if you don't show interest and in fact will start happily messing with you hellaciously the more you don't show interest lol.)
* anyway uh, plot. lol. P1 endgame happen, micaiah wins. as micaiah reconstructs daein, bright eyes works with tauroneo a lot in documenting both ashnard's and begnion's war crimes (awkwardly, while also being a begnion mole for sanaki. much like tormod but stealthily). it helps that she's actually kind of financially loaded from the merchant background and slightly secretly helps bankroll a not-small chunk of the reconstruction.
* this is when she and zihark really start acting warmly towards each other x) basically bantering / slightly flirting when she has to go document a bunch of old arena / interrogation / prison sites and tauroneo assigns zihark as her bodyguard while traipsing around daein. (tauroneo thinks bright eyes' crush on zihark is kinda cute too lol) lots of genuinely, warm thoughtful discussions at night in the common room about anything and everything. a few dinners together. they're not "an item" by any means (he actually goes out on a few infrequent dinner dates with ilyana LOL ) but there's a distinct sense of slowly getting to know each other and discovering that they genuinely gel and like each other's company. one time he gets sick with the flu and she fusses over him which he realizes to slight horror he actually likes quite a lot XD (i imagine he acts much like howl in howl's moving castle if he's sick)
* P3 of RD rolls around where micaiah gets the orders to attack the laguz army. thiiiis is when things change. both bright eyes and zihark hear - he's ... hit hard, and is numbly paralyzed in a sleepwalking kind of decision paralysis, much like canon. bright eyes on the other hand, is all action.
* bright eyes immediately confronts micaiah much like this strip (ngl i've doodled a part of it like this) -- and oh she is pissed. (best part is that micaiah having mind reading powers mentally is thinking sadly, 'oh this would set you off because of him.) basically threatens both her and sothe, and gets surprisingly close to the truth given her long complicated history with cults/dark magic/being a spy ('this isn't like you. the only reason you'd do this is under duress, so what fucking power are we talking here?'). zihark overhears the latter part and she basically stalks out all 'okay fuck this, you're coming with me.'
* bright eyes' eventual reasoning is they need to go with ike (because she wants to basically half switch sides and spill to ike all the secrets she's been sending to begnion knowing his history of getting at the root of issues to save lives, even if she doesn't actually know about the blood pact. she just thinks it's complicated political shit. ironically bright eyes doesn't actually care for ike too much LOL, she just thinks he's a useful tool.)
hilariously, her and zihark's vague dynamic is still not even a relationship yet; they've just both settled really nicely into the whole bodyguard/client thing. he appreciates her clear (aries) direction and mind and unflappability. she appreciates his steadiness and humor and company. it's this moment when he's emotionally adrift for any kind of emotional anchor that he finds he's appreciating any kind of clear and different decision than what's left for him with micaiah, and it also secondarily kinda... forces him to think long and hard about how his feelings are developing, versus just ignoring them and being a general flirt.
* jill meets them while they're packing, commiserates but ultimately decides to stay. that said jill flies them both back over the ribahn river secretly (it's here while bright eyes is passed out sleeping on the wyvern in zihark's lap while he and jill have a Talk about Oh My God You Dense Man when are you going to KISS her or do something about her XD ) (he's amused; been planning to for a few weeks, the timing was just off. but rather touched at jill fussing over them both.) funnily enough there's a related jill sketch here ~
* they kiss for the first time that night, after setting up the tent x) takes bright eyes by total surprise. there's a long talk here too. anyway, they eventually work their way back to ike's army in seliora castle (3-5 "retreat" of RD). start notably getting a bit, ahem, romantically handsy, but taking it slow. zihark gets slightly wounded in the lava caves when retreating through goldoa; some delicious hurt/comfort.they make love here for the first time x). find out very quickly being on the march is absolutely fucking terrible for suddenly realizing they want to be in bed the whole time and much to their delight they find out the short break in crimea's perfect for fucking off and. WELL.
* much to their chargin the Plot still happens. XD anyway they travel with ike back through daein (and later, tibarn's third of the army, naturally for the zihark vs izuka fight) and even when ashera turns everyone else to stone they're trying to ignore the plot aaaaaall the way right up until ashera's tower LOL.
* all the heroes converge on ashera's tower and slowly battle their way desperately up to the goddess to save the world.there's a lot of delicious 'the world's ending let's have some desperate passionate fucking', just saying. lots of talking about what they'd like to do after the war. she finds out he wants to travel a bit and wants to do it with her. she's a little haunted by the idea there might be a time where she has to put the regeneration magic to the test again to save them all -- the fear's not (solely) the from the regeneration pain mind you, but by the idea she'd hurt him again; talks it out with him and zihark essentially say 'do what you need to do but promise me you'll come back'.
* in the final battle as ashera does one of her massive, often lethal, AoE spells, bright eyes magically "consumes it" and then redirects the MASSIVE attack spell on ashera, shattering one of the barrier layers but basically like, electrocutes/almost kills herself doing it. i mean honestly does kill herself, but hangs on by a thread with the spirit (and was in fact, banking on that to survive).
* she comes back :') it ain't pretty though. burns her eyes and ears out, paralyzed for a good while. massive burns. like literally takes four weeks to recover under sanaki and lehran's best healers, even leanne and rafiel stops by to sing a few times and say good bye. (she was closer friends with rafiel in daein than anything). (you uh. could probably tell there's an equally massive delicious amount of hurt-comfort/recovery potential x) ) i may or may not have a half-finished fanfic written in this period.
* a little while after RD and the recovery they happily move in together to a shop/house combo in begnion where they sell enchanted pieces of leather armor (it's canonical he knows a bit of leatherwork). some of these doodles are in that shop/house, as a matter of fact. a little while after that (think a year or two after RD) they marry :> honeymoon actually traces the same route that they took after becoming an item -- from central begnion to goldoa and back into crimea.
* honestly they just take odd jobs and travel frequently; there's no real specific post-tellius story.
* that said tellius-verse ending is actually really sad since zihark dies of natural old age long before she does and like sephiran/lehran she kinda goes off the deep end for a few decades there. ironically lehran - being old acquaintances and recognizing that's exactly what he went through - intervenes, and long story short they mutually figure out a loophole to the whole 'you can't die' curse by ripping her soul out of the body, and affixing her soul to zihark's sword, thereby essentially putting it to rest as long as the sword's not picked up by somebody else. after centuries when it rusts to oblivion, the curse is broken.
(i'm aware this is half the plot to the unrelated game called 'transistor' which i've been meaning to play pretty much for that reason x) )
[ AU reincarnation number 2: Awakening ]
* Awakening's selfship story is honestly the least filled out since i was never a huge fan of Awakening's story, but milked the spotpass gimmick for all of what it's worth. this is actually where this current selfship reincarnation series of stories started; there was a very, very old series of tellius-exclusive selfship stories I actually RP'd with somebody but it was with such a thoroughly outdated version of a self-insert that it's not relevant. (it did feature villain!zihark though. who still lives rent free in my head especially after playing with gunter recently. LOL)
* this and this series of artwork pretty accurately capture the awakening selfship vibe.
* this time in awakening it's bright eyes that dies first in that choice of whether you sacrifice the avatar to kill grima or not. she takes the desperate gamble of still being possessed by the demon / questionably "unkillable" that it might fuck up grima's plans enough, and/or that she might meet zihark in a separate future, though it absolutely guts her knowing she's functionally hurting him in the worst way possible. (yes i like angst lul)
[ AU reincarnation number 3: Heroes/Gachaverse ]
* Heroes really suits itself to this style of reincarnation / isekai story so i just simply added it to the post-Awakening one. bright eyes lands in that world first as a summoner, is relieved that the Awakening ending wasn't the last ending, genuinely takes to Askr's world like a fish to water, but keenly remembers her live(s) with him and desperately researches how she could possibly summon him. (it's a running gag she sleeps in the library early on, and is a chronic insomniac. )
* their reunion is basically this comic with minor changes, etc etc (less explaining things to the audience, more sobbing into his shoulder and then them both heading to her rooms lOL).
* i actually have not really uh. been paying much attention to heroes' actual story LOL. the whole 'got kidnapped and experimented on' shit with eitri is the bit most likely to be a mini story - eitri is actually exceptionally similar to her so there's meat there. honestly it's a hazy 'ongoing happy ending' bit here :> god knows they've deserved it after the last few rounds haha ...
ANYWAY you deserve a cookie too if you read all of that <3
SO i'm just gonna... lay out the context here for people who do want to read it, and then that way i have a link to point people to if they want the long version.
[ ok but what the fuck are you talking about krad ] oh yeah lol. i've been obsessed with a series of games called fire emblem for twenty years now. the base games/worlds are marvelous and absolutely well worth playing by themselves. i just happen to have shipped my self-insert with zihark for said, uh, 20 years. got a shit ton of art with them. it's a thing, sometimes you'll hear the concept be called selfshipping or being a yumejoshi. (bright eyes/krad/she/her/your summoner all OK to refer to the self insert, just for clarity's sake, all's cool).
ONWARDS TO THE LORE
[ AU number 1a: Tellius, PoR, before RD ]
* said AU really starts with bright eyes functionally being another tellius character that joins the greil mercenaries in Port Toha, zihark's joining chapter but totally separately from him. ("bright eyes" is a nickname that she earns right before RD; more on that alter)
* her general backstory is being born to begnion merchants who lived on the begnion/daein border. gets hit with a fatal childhood disease that not even begnion priests could cure. out of sheer desperation when she was dying she made a spirit charmer pact with a demon to "not die". well. with the faustian bargain and all, she didn't die, sure - she got better from the disease while always being quite frail. but now thanks to the spirit, bright eyes can't die. can't die to disease, can't die to battle wounds (she regenerates slowly and painfully), can't die to medical experiments, etc. realizing this could land her in hot water she keeps that a secret from everyone, and grows up as a pretty average if ambitious dark mage/clerk/low level begnion spy.
* fast forward to PoR where she was chilling in crimea and was anonymously directed by her handlers to board nasir's ship.
* surprisingly she and zihark don't talk a whole lot throughout PoR! they're lightly friends (imagine a B or maybe A support). he eventually and vaguely tells her that he's from daein and more or less what he told muarim about his old deceased laguz lover, maybe a little less, but certinally not anything beyond that. they leave the mercenaries after PoR's last battle and go separate ways. past the three year time skip (and in RD proper), though, is really when the relationship kicks off.
* right before RD happens she's been working her way up the begnion's intelligence agency (more or less), who had sent her to infiltrate a cult (i imagine begnion's priesthood wants all dark mages eradicated and had her systematically kill them as heretics/cultists.) saw and had some nasty stuff happen when she fucked up and got caught being a mole and was experimented on a bit, kills them all, earns "bright eyes" as a name for her unusual yellow eyes. basically bloodied here and not in PoR. long story short - very jaded, much better with dark magic, very used to regenerating from horrific shit. the priests in the intelligence branch wanted to give her an easier job after that, and she chooses investigating daein and this so-called 'silver haired madien' since she had been thinking about zihark more often lately and knew that's where he had been last headed.
[ AU number 1b: Tellius, RD, Post-RD ]
* anyway, she finds him right in that battle where we first see zihark in RD. gets absolutely clobbered in the head with the 'oh fuck me i'm in love with him' love at first sight realization when seeing him for the first time again <3 (meanwhile he just obliviously remembers her warmly as an(other) old friend LOL #friendzoned)
[ sidenote: this bit in the canonical Part 1, 3, and 4 of RD is my favorite (and most detailed) part of all of these AU's x) - there's a lot i'm glossing over here, and this will probably be its own post at some point.]
* they catch up like old times for a few chapters (while she's playing cool and totally not head over heels LOL). the biggest plot relevant thing is during that prison escape chapter where she sees an archer's about to hit zihark and steps in the line of fire. the arrow hits her in a bad way - he's frantically thinking she's actually dying in a shaded corner of the prison but she knows she can regenerate from it and begs him not to tell anyone and to help her crawl back to the tent. 'i'll explain later' kind of thing which is honestly, the worst possible move.
* see the thing is, zihark is actually, genuinely pissed afterwards. i've always felt like he'd be an ice king; and having an old friend literally dying in front of him a little too similarly to his old laguz lover makes him overreact and completely ice her out out afterwards. he's not entirely clear on how she survives and he doesn't want to know. she's quite emotionally hurt given well, it's him, she incorrectly thinks it's about the regeneration which a bit of a sore spot for her too (its' not; it's about his past).
* jill -bless her- sees the very messy situation for what it is and kinda swoops in as a wingwoman XD bright eyes and jill had been friends for a long time too, with bright eyes giving her advice/a shoulder of commiseration about haar for a long while, and so jill really works on zihark to thaw the ice LOL. long story is that bright eyes and zihark have a long, long absolutely critical private talk where she shows him the regeneration (cuts her arm in front of him like an edgelord so he can see it heal right over), they both apologize, it partially dawns on her why he overreacted. they're not entirely warm afterwards but there's a mutual agreement to start over, and a definite softening on his side.
* i think it's about this time he's all '.... huh....' with the start of slightly flirtatious interest. emotionally, bright eyes is really quite independent / aloof / notably, intentionally doesn't like. throw herself at him lol, compared to a lot of attention he gets from the ladies. (this is so fuckin stereotypical i'm DYING here). he doesn't fall in love easily, not after what happened, but there's a baseline of flirting he dials up and down for ladies, and very pointedly. starts dialing it up. (he's like a cat. likes you more if you don't show interest and in fact will start happily messing with you hellaciously the more you don't show interest lol.)
* anyway uh, plot. lol. P1 endgame happen, micaiah wins. as micaiah reconstructs daein, bright eyes works with tauroneo a lot in documenting both ashnard's and begnion's war crimes (awkwardly, while also being a begnion mole for sanaki. much like tormod but stealthily). it helps that she's actually kind of financially loaded from the merchant background and slightly secretly helps bankroll a not-small chunk of the reconstruction.
* this is when she and zihark really start acting warmly towards each other x) basically bantering / slightly flirting when she has to go document a bunch of old arena / interrogation / prison sites and tauroneo assigns zihark as her bodyguard while traipsing around daein. (tauroneo thinks bright eyes' crush on zihark is kinda cute too lol) lots of genuinely, warm thoughtful discussions at night in the common room about anything and everything. a few dinners together. they're not "an item" by any means (he actually goes out on a few infrequent dinner dates with ilyana LOL ) but there's a distinct sense of slowly getting to know each other and discovering that they genuinely gel and like each other's company. one time he gets sick with the flu and she fusses over him which he realizes to slight horror he actually likes quite a lot XD (i imagine he acts much like howl in howl's moving castle if he's sick)
* P3 of RD rolls around where micaiah gets the orders to attack the laguz army. thiiiis is when things change. both bright eyes and zihark hear - he's ... hit hard, and is numbly paralyzed in a sleepwalking kind of decision paralysis, much like canon. bright eyes on the other hand, is all action.
* bright eyes immediately confronts micaiah much like this strip (ngl i've doodled a part of it like this) -- and oh she is pissed. (best part is that micaiah having mind reading powers mentally is thinking sadly, 'oh this would set you off because of him.) basically threatens both her and sothe, and gets surprisingly close to the truth given her long complicated history with cults/dark magic/being a spy ('this isn't like you. the only reason you'd do this is under duress, so what fucking power are we talking here?'). zihark overhears the latter part and she basically stalks out all 'okay fuck this, you're coming with me.'
* bright eyes' eventual reasoning is they need to go with ike (because she wants to basically half switch sides and spill to ike all the secrets she's been sending to begnion knowing his history of getting at the root of issues to save lives, even if she doesn't actually know about the blood pact. she just thinks it's complicated political shit. ironically bright eyes doesn't actually care for ike too much LOL, she just thinks he's a useful tool.)
hilariously, her and zihark's vague dynamic is still not even a relationship yet; they've just both settled really nicely into the whole bodyguard/client thing. he appreciates her clear (aries) direction and mind and unflappability. she appreciates his steadiness and humor and company. it's this moment when he's emotionally adrift for any kind of emotional anchor that he finds he's appreciating any kind of clear and different decision than what's left for him with micaiah, and it also secondarily kinda... forces him to think long and hard about how his feelings are developing, versus just ignoring them and being a general flirt.
* jill meets them while they're packing, commiserates but ultimately decides to stay. that said jill flies them both back over the ribahn river secretly (it's here while bright eyes is passed out sleeping on the wyvern in zihark's lap while he and jill have a Talk about Oh My God You Dense Man when are you going to KISS her or do something about her XD ) (he's amused; been planning to for a few weeks, the timing was just off. but rather touched at jill fussing over them both.) funnily enough there's a related jill sketch here ~
* they kiss for the first time that night, after setting up the tent x) takes bright eyes by total surprise. there's a long talk here too. anyway, they eventually work their way back to ike's army in seliora castle (3-5 "retreat" of RD). start notably getting a bit, ahem, romantically handsy, but taking it slow. zihark gets slightly wounded in the lava caves when retreating through goldoa; some delicious hurt/comfort.
* much to their chargin the Plot still happens. XD anyway they travel with ike back through daein (and later, tibarn's third of the army, naturally for the zihark vs izuka fight) and even when ashera turns everyone else to stone they're trying to ignore the plot aaaaaall the way right up until ashera's tower LOL.
* all the heroes converge on ashera's tower and slowly battle their way desperately up to the goddess to save the world.
* in the final battle as ashera does one of her massive, often lethal, AoE spells, bright eyes magically "consumes it" and then redirects the MASSIVE attack spell on ashera, shattering one of the barrier layers but basically like, electrocutes/almost kills herself doing it. i mean honestly does kill herself, but hangs on by a thread with the spirit (and was in fact, banking on that to survive).
* she comes back :') it ain't pretty though. burns her eyes and ears out, paralyzed for a good while. massive burns. like literally takes four weeks to recover under sanaki and lehran's best healers, even leanne and rafiel stops by to sing a few times and say good bye. (she was closer friends with rafiel in daein than anything). (you uh. could probably tell there's an equally massive delicious amount of hurt-comfort/recovery potential x) ) i may or may not have a half-finished fanfic written in this period.
* a little while after RD and the recovery they happily move in together to a shop/house combo in begnion where they sell enchanted pieces of leather armor (it's canonical he knows a bit of leatherwork). some of these doodles are in that shop/house, as a matter of fact. a little while after that (think a year or two after RD) they marry :> honeymoon actually traces the same route that they took after becoming an item -- from central begnion to goldoa and back into crimea.
* honestly they just take odd jobs and travel frequently; there's no real specific post-tellius story.
* that said tellius-verse ending is actually really sad since zihark dies of natural old age long before she does and like sephiran/lehran she kinda goes off the deep end for a few decades there. ironically lehran - being old acquaintances and recognizing that's exactly what he went through - intervenes, and long story short they mutually figure out a loophole to the whole 'you can't die' curse by ripping her soul out of the body, and affixing her soul to zihark's sword, thereby essentially putting it to rest as long as the sword's not picked up by somebody else. after centuries when it rusts to oblivion, the curse is broken.
(i'm aware this is half the plot to the unrelated game called 'transistor' which i've been meaning to play pretty much for that reason x) )
[ AU reincarnation number 2: Awakening ]
* Awakening's selfship story is honestly the least filled out since i was never a huge fan of Awakening's story, but milked the spotpass gimmick for all of what it's worth. this is actually where this current selfship reincarnation series of stories started; there was a very, very old series of tellius-exclusive selfship stories I actually RP'd with somebody but it was with such a thoroughly outdated version of a self-insert that it's not relevant. (it did feature villain!zihark though. who still lives rent free in my head especially after playing with gunter recently. LOL)
* this and this series of artwork pretty accurately capture the awakening selfship vibe.
* this time in awakening it's bright eyes that dies first in that choice of whether you sacrifice the avatar to kill grima or not. she takes the desperate gamble of still being possessed by the demon / questionably "unkillable" that it might fuck up grima's plans enough, and/or that she might meet zihark in a separate future, though it absolutely guts her knowing she's functionally hurting him in the worst way possible. (yes i like angst lul)
[ AU reincarnation number 3: Heroes/Gachaverse ]
* Heroes really suits itself to this style of reincarnation / isekai story so i just simply added it to the post-Awakening one. bright eyes lands in that world first as a summoner, is relieved that the Awakening ending wasn't the last ending, genuinely takes to Askr's world like a fish to water, but keenly remembers her live(s) with him and desperately researches how she could possibly summon him. (it's a running gag she sleeps in the library early on, and is a chronic insomniac. )
* their reunion is basically this comic with minor changes, etc etc (less explaining things to the audience, more sobbing into his shoulder and then them both heading to her rooms lOL).
* i actually have not really uh. been paying much attention to heroes' actual story LOL. the whole 'got kidnapped and experimented on' shit with eitri is the bit most likely to be a mini story - eitri is actually exceptionally similar to her so there's meat there. honestly it's a hazy 'ongoing happy ending' bit here :> god knows they've deserved it after the last few rounds haha ...
ANYWAY you deserve a cookie too if you read all of that <3
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1- LOVE the initial upset between her and zihark, now THAT is the kind of misunderstanding I love, because it HURTS. the same event, two totally different takes on it, and not comprehending (yet) why the other is upset... misalignment of takes is so good, and oof painful. Thank you though Jill, girl, you go
also, man, jill/haar... extremely good. get that nap king. do some somno to him- I mean-2- >> since zihark dies of natural old age long before she does
the way I was like oH NO SHE'S GONNA LOSE IT OVER THIS- and then immediately let's read the rest of the sentence T_T good god, poor thing. the sword binding is... look. yes. very transistor. but SO GOOD! it's so good. it's such a creative ending. this is a good vibe, in a desperately tragic way. I eat that up. I do think you'll very much enjoy transistor, and it's a pretty quick play. it's got a fun combat mechanic as well. I cried at it, a lot (':
3- >> * this and this series of artwork pretty accurately capture the awakening selfship vibe.
HEHE I loved these when I was browsing the tag for vibes. They have such a fun, also terrifying in a hot way energy
4- >> though it absolutely guts her knowing she's functionally hurting him in the worst way possible.
mmfufufufufu yes listen the angst potential there.... it is so delicious
5- >> the whole 'got kidnapped and experimented on' shit with eitri is the bit most likely to be a mini story
bright eyes (handhold) mark - I also have been planning to do something with that, though, she's certainly got much more background in it
6- >> god knows they've deserved it after the last few rounds haha ...
CoRRECT, god, they do, they extremely do, I love this for them <3
/munches on the cookie while I continue to string together mark's history which will likely be on hold until I remember all of the tellius story that I've forgotten
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haha you get me - misunderstandings in fiction usually wig me out because oh my god you people need to get BETTER at communication (and it's clearly done for the drama) but this one feels genuinely honest and realistic especially since both of them are harboring a lot of secrets. truthfully, secrets that *need* to get aired before they come anywhere close to dating much less more.
awwww man if transistor gutted you in the feelings that much, i gotta play it. gonna pick it up after rogue trader, looks like it's compatible with the steam deck. gonna blame you too if i sob at it too x)
cannot WAIT to see what you do with mark and eitri - don't let me hog the angst there ;) that was such a wickedly compelling bit in FEH especially with being kidnapped and then the summoner's closest connections reacting in all the ways. (volke reacting very differently than karel i imagine)
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Krad I gotta be real, I'm not hard to make cry, if you know which buttons to hit XD I'm wet and pathetic, as the kids say. A sad meow meow. But transistor sat its whole ass on all of said buttons. And sword boyfriend's voice....hoo. it's an audio-on game if voices are a thing that can do it for you, I tell you what.
Legitimately letting the player character get kidnapped was a fun thing for a goofy little gacha game to do, and once I get these three to stop basically honeymooning in my head, I definitely plan to fuck with it. It definitely involves Mark's regression abilities, and it is not pretty and I'm thinking involves significant bodily harm and may dip into some of my fixation on manji's abilities in blade of the immortal, in a sideways way... Which, thank god they've told the lads about their lil timeturner ability beforehand or else that would be a hell of a time for it to come to light.
is it more or less that eitri tries to ship of theseus them... with themself? Maaaaaaybe so. And said closest connections...yes haha very much react badly and very differentlyno subject
(Anonymous) 2025-06-16 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)i genuinely had such a good time reading about your selfship lore, thank you for sharing!!!!!!!!!! it's so fun to learn what others are up to with their fictional others in their own little worlds~! <3
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i can totally see our summoners having another lil' double date over tea with some of this coming up XD
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(also. want to do this so bad for my ffxiv character, now. love the idea of typing it all out like this.)
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the more the merrier i say ~
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it took me a while to read through this, and i don't have All the context yet, since i'm still only 3/4 of the way through Path of Radiance (just got Geoffrey yesterday) but i very much enjoyed reading this!!! the main reason i wanted to play* tellius was because of your art and mentions of zihark. i wanted to get to know him a bit. enjoying this lore that lets me get to know him more!
you IMMEDIATELY had my attention when you said "demon pact." i hadn't seen anything about spirit charmers til now! i have been falling in love with warlocks in D&D lately, so i really really like this idea. fascinating that they are often mistaken for branded, and vice versa. some interesting contrast there: both stigmatized for what they are, but one for circumstances of birth, and the other for a drastic and self-destructive choice.
and ough, zihark. of course it would hurt seeing someone take an arrow for you and then refuse help! and of course bright eyes is hurt by his response!
*"play tellius" not quite accurate. i am watching my brother play it because i love the story but do not like the gameplay. i will be doing this with any fire emblem i engage with, tbh-- it's very relaxed and fun for me this way. downside is there are some characters he dislikes & avoids playing for purely mechanical reasons, like soren, so i might be missing out on some bits.
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(don't want to disappoint you but there's really like, *no* demon lore, although there *is* some fascinating magical lore especially once when you get to part 3 of radiant dawn, haha. so much of this is spun out of 20 years of daydreaming.)
thankfully the two tellius games are indeed fun to watch :D so tickled you and your bro are having a good time. love love your thoughts on spirit charmers/branded, especially since it feels rarer that fantasy worlds mess around with the *social* considerations of being marked by magic like that versus some divine hodgepodge.