Friends' betrayals make me feel like a deer standing on a highway. I saw the light coming from far far away and couldn't move because the road used to be safe, I used to come here a lot, I used to feel okay, when did it go wrong? and now I am paralysed with fear as the light approaches until I am shattered.
I see it coming every single time, I just can't move.
This is such a silly idea but- Cale being able to talk to animals. And talk as in mutual understanding, not Cale randomly chirping and squeaking.
See, he already has such affinity with nature due to his APs, alongside people commenting how he smells like nature and forests. And considering all of this, animals are always rather fond of him (this part is canon).
So, maybe he discovers that he can talk to them after gathering about 3-4 APs, and just shrugs it off, adaptable as he is.
Now imagine his fam randomly finding him sitting on trees, birds perched on his shoulders and squirrels nibbling on his loose shirt.
Imagine finding him lying in a meadow and an hour later, there's literal snakes coiled around him sleeping peacefully. He wakes up, groans, and shifts them a little to turn over and continues napping. All to his family's horror.
Instead of sending scouts and receiving reports, he just whistles and a hawk emerges out of nowhere and lands on his head. While Raon is left feeling odd in the corner.
Imagine him chatting with doves, saying things like 'what, your house got destroyed? Tsk,' and inviting them over to the trees near his villa. Saying 'that's the way to my home, there's a lot of bushes there' while pointing directions to a hedgehog. Imagine him watching a pair of swans and smiling so brightly, shouting 'congratulations!' and the swans actually bow politely and swim away. All the while others are just ????
Imagine the plethora of misunderstandings since Cale never bothered to explain anything. Some assume it's his usual shenanigans, while some actually find it terrifying.
And he always carries a strange pouch with him. Others think its some mysterious power or a bunch of golden plaques. But no. It's a bag containing premium quality bird feed, nuts, dried flowers and fruits and sometimes, bird eggs. And worms. And raw meat. Because believe it or not, even animals don't work for free (He wouldn't accept bothering them for free either).
Please i want to see him nodding and humming along to rabbits settled around his lap, complaining of their lives. I want these goofballs to spread news around the continent of a human who looks even prettier than disney princesses.
And the best part—Cale glaring at a sloth crawling atop a branch and just saying, 'Yk, you're living my dream. Just like that.' And the sloth just squeaks in pity. Which only irritates him further because even the natural smile of a sloth looks mocking to him. His fam doesn't even bother at this point.
So, maybe, just maybe, Cale might get freckles? Might already have freckles? Sensitive skin too?
Can we get the artists on this, please?
Cale sleeping and his kids drawing constellations on his face (The great black dragon constellation, the twin cats, the sword, the shield, etc),
Ron constantly carrying around hats and umbrellas for the sensitive young master's skin,
Raon screaming that he will blow up the sun when Cale gets a sunburn from sleeping in the sun for too long,
Hong sleeping on cale's face next time when they go out to play to protect his face but all he does is choke him and Cale doesn't have the heart to move him so he just tries to go back to sleep with fur in his mouth,
Choi Han, being the wall that he is, stands in front of Cale whenever they are outside,
Eruhaben casually inventing sunscreen for the brat human he adopted and tends to stare at him if he catches him not applying it before going outside, until Cale caves because dragons are scary.
Alberu just teasing the heck out of Cale for having such sensitive skin and is finally free to talk about the advantages of being part dark elf with much durable skin while Cale gives him a stinky eye.
So, maybe, just maybe, Cale might get freckles? Might already have freckles? Sensitive skin too?
Can we get the artists on this, please?
Cale sleeping and his kids drawing constellations on his face (The great black dragon constellation, the twin cats, the sword, the shield, etc),
Ron constantly carrying around hats and umbrellas for the sensitive young master's skin,
Raon screaming that he will blow up the sun when Cale gets a sunburn from sleeping in the sun for too long,
Hong sleeping on cale's face next time when they go out to play to protect his face but all he does is choke him and Cale doesn't have the heart to move him so he just tries to go back to sleep with fur in his mouth,
Choi Han, being the wall that he is, stands in front of Cale whenever they are outside,
Eruhaben casually inventing sunscreen for the brat human he adopted and tends to stare at him if he catches him not applying it before going outside, until Cale caves because dragons are scary.
Alberu just teasing the heck out of Cale for having such sensitive skin and is finally free to talk about the advantages of being part dark elf with much durable skin while Cale gives him a stinky eye.
“HUMAN!”
Cale flinched and unconsciously hid the document behind him.
Raon flew to the couch as he did the day before but with far more anger in his chubby frame. “Weak human, you promised! You said you would sleep after breakfast but it has been an hour, thirty-one minutes and twenty three seconds!”
“I know, but I only have one-”
“No!” The dragon stomps his legs on the couch, Cale actually bounces a bit from the heavy pounding. “Weak human is stupid!”
He then crawled over Cale’s legs and physically pushed his chest to lie down, Cale went down so easily it was almost laughable how this six year old was easily manhandling his guardian..
greetings! my piece for the LCF BigBang 2025! I worked with @majestic0pheonix (and thanks to @snowflake-06 for beta-ing the story) to make the art (ha) for "The art of putting Cale Henituse to bed" my first dip into the lcf fandom and i need everyone to read the story cause i love it so much
Pro tip: if your hobby is reading and you can't get anything done, open a book you are absolutely sure you are going to hate and suddenly, you will want to escape that book by doing literally everything else.
Always remember that you can threaten to ruin your own hobby and it will back off.
I keep seeing the take that authors on AO3 need to stop deleting their fics and instead to orphan them without any explanation of the consequences of orphaning a fic and as an author I really need to say something to this.
Stop telling people to just orphan their fics.
Orphaning a fic means giving up any and all ownership over it. No way to claim it back, edit it or delete it. Yes it's an archive but an author should still have the right to delete their work if they feel like they don't want it to be up anymore.
Readers always scream for authors to orphan their fics instead of deleting because they feel like they have a right to the fanworks that is shared with them for free. If it's so important to you to not lose a fic, download it. Also comment and encourage the authors, instead of telling them to give up all ownership to their work.
To authors, if you think about deleting your fics, there are other options you should employ first. If you don't want it connected to your name, put it into an anonymous collection. As long as it's in there, noone can see you wrote it, you still can edit ot or delete it and moderate comments on it. You can even move it to anther account, just create another one, add it as co author and then take your main account off. Then you can still edit it from your second account but it's no longer connected to your account.
If you don't want it to show anymore put it in a unrevealed collection, that way, the fic won't show up but it's still there, you can still see it, read comments and make it public again.
If you feel the urge to delete your fic, try one of these options first and see how you feel about it after a while, you can still delete or orphan afterwards, but this hopefully makes your decision easier.
Only orphan a fic if you're 100% sure. This is permanent, there is no way back from that, AO3 support will NOT help you if you did it on accident or change your mind. Don't listen to people telling you to just orphan it, make very sure, this is what you want.
I love that this really enraptured the fear the White Star felt when Cale told him his 1000 year old plans were nothing to him.
He only needed 2 years, after all.
And then, the utter confusion the annual rings in the background are giving the art, just like that moment he woke up in the temple when Cale broke the seal and soon realised that Cale only released him because he has a plan to kill him.
So, maybe, just maybe, Cale might get freckles? Might already have freckles? Sensitive skin too?
Can we get the artists on this, please?
Cale sleeping and his kids drawing constellations on his face (The great black dragon constellation, the twin cats, the sword, the shield, etc),
Ron constantly carrying around hats and umbrellas for the sensitive young master's skin,
Raon screaming that he will blow up the sun when Cale gets a sunburn from sleeping in the sun for too long,
Hong sleeping on cale's face next time when they go out to play to protect his face but all he does is choke him and Cale doesn't have the heart to move him so he just tries to go back to sleep with fur in his mouth,
Choi Han, being the wall that he is, stands in front of Cale whenever they are outside,
Eruhaben casually inventing sunscreen for the brat human he adopted and tends to stare at him if he catches him not applying it before going outside, until Cale caves because dragons are scary.
Alberu just teasing the heck out of Cale for having such sensitive skin and is finally free to talk about the advantages of being part dark elf with much durable skin while Cale gives him a stinky eye.
Okay, but what if there was a flower that was known to make the strongest warriors, most powerful wizards, etc. Basically a wish flower which lets your life's wish become true once you have digested it.
The twist is that the flower only causes indigestion. It is just a mildly poisonous flower and nothing else but the placebo effect was so strong that all those who consumed the flower became impenetrable.
Making Severus Snape, the character who is actively bullying every child and is constantly accused of being the bad guy by Harry, a black man is arguably much more racist than me wanting a white actor as Snape 'cus that is how we all imagined him.
Okay! I have been stuck at home so I thought I would write down my theories here for a change.
Here are some of the things I am most curious about and that I think will lead somewhere. Basically ADHD rambles, enjoy!
1. BRIAN
Everyone is suspecting this guy for a reason. Ash couldn't reach him in episode 1 and Eric said he called him but he had really bad reception and the call cut off in the middle, and who else has terrible reception? Adam. Eric never once faced reception issues in the forest. Only in the cave which I still think is odd, because there was the sound of water, wasn't there? And he did say the cave was flooded?
Anyways, Brian is hidden so far for a dang reason and I suspect he is close to where Adam is.
2. TAROT CARDS.
The meeting might not be between just Adam and MC. There is a whole deck of Tarot cards, people. I bet even Adam had his own tarot card.
The problem is, why on earth did Adam believe MC was coming for him when no one contacted us? No one gave us the card yet? Was there someone else who was supposed to contact us? Did someone tell Adam to come meet MC in Greenside? And did they fail to reach us for some reason? Also Unknown believed we would go into the forest as well, he had gotten the same info as Adam, that we were going to meet him in greenside.
Is the reason they failed to reach us because someone has been messing with our phone? Yeah I didn't forget the dang video that was ruined. Our phone had been compromised from Episode 1, we as fans just adore that cus it reminds us of Jake.
Back to the main point, there are more tarot cards. Is there a meeting in that room that we will find out about next episode?
3. UNKNOWN
As I mentioned before, I think Unknown has his own tarot card. The Magician, I suspect. I did some lil research into Tarot cards so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe that Adam might have been The Fool. Purely because he was always talked about as this spontaneous fun person and he got taken out so early in the game so I believe he might have been more than a little naive.
Also, are we forgetting that Whitmore might have shot Unknown? Did he get shot and ran away and ended up in the motel to recuperate? In room 031, to be precise?
(But tbh, I have the strongest feeling it will turn out to be Charlie. Purely because he was so suspicious of the motel in the conversation with his friend who i believe doesn't have a name yet and then suddenly switched to No, I have to go to my super important job. I bet he is still there and managed to break into the room and scare the heck out of Ash and MC, who had switched from talking on the group to talking privately. But. The music box? Did charlie find a music box that has the same melody as the one we heard being whispered while Adam was being taken?)
Hope that poor baby unknown is okay next episode. And, no. I don't suspect him of being Jake at all. Duskwood characters will not come back as main characters cus it doesn't make sense. If anything, he could even be Brian.
4. Whitmore
Whitmore is the liar, supposedly. We haven't seen his name on the envelope so we can't be 100% sure. He could have found that envelope in the forest and destroyed it cus it meant nothing to him.
I am very confused about this man tbh, probably because his actions didn't make any sense to us and kept changing rapidly.
Why does he have alarms in the forest? Why is he roaming around after midnight? Why did Unknown warn us of him? Did he actually mean to hurt Eric? Perhaps trade him into the game that he is stuck in? Give his tarot to him so he takes his role?
If he wanted to use Eric for whatever reason, why on earth did he throw him away so suddenly? He had probably seen Unknown, right? Did he perhaps know Unknown? The same way Unknown knows of him? Is that why he threw Eric out, because he knew they were probably affliated or that there was something related to the dang game going on? That he had essentially played himself?
Too many theories that are pointing absolutely no where. Excited to see where this man will show up again (probably when Bucket gets his stuff together and decides to check what Eric says and goes to ask him questions?)
5. Adam and Co.
The man of the hour. Or the game, you could say.
I am about 90% sure we are going to go into his apartment next now that his keys have been mentioned and that we will find a tarot card as well as some other clue.
Also, the reception issue. So far the places that have bad reception are the cave and, according to the comments on Maps, Greenside motel.
I suspect Adam did reach his destination after all and there is perhaps a secret room in greenside motel.
The video calls of his are also very vague. The first two video calls, it seems like he is running from someone and he calls us to tell us who he saw, like he is giving us some kind of hint, and then we have the video call where the phone is hidden in a bag or something? What was up with all these holes that the camera barely saw through? And Adam looked like he was trying to show us something or ah, the whistling? He was trying to let us hear the whistling? He didn't try to say a singly word in that video call, and the whistling is the same as the melody at the end of episode 2. It is probably a hint towards the person who took him, isn't it? I doubt it is any of the characters we know right now, though.
Also, I don't think Violet and Adam are a thing, perhaps they have history or a one-sided crush, but Violet is way too calm. It feels like she knows something.
Oh, and what could Charlie help us with? Is it related to his job as a journalist? Or will he become our hacker friend? He doesn't strike me as a hacking type of guy. I feel like MC is gonna handle the hacking on their own this game.
So yeah. That is all for now, my brain is coming up blank.
"you're the writer, you control how the story goes" no not really. i wrote the first sentence and then my characters said "WE WILL TAKE IT FROM HERE" and promptly swerved into an electrical fence.