#alvelotyl

[murderthegods]

I think it would be useful to have a list of tags I use on a pinned post so I can easily search my blog for them

[murderthegods]

Hello again! I'm here to ask you more Alvelotyl questions! And sorry for the long wait. Part of it was that Tumblr had a weird log in wall happen that prevented me from viewing like half of the public blogs. I managed to fix it on my computer though! Not my phone unfortunately. Now then, time for Questions! Who is Gwinne de Faim? I learned that this person existed about five minutes before I sent my gay comics ask. Do you have any other Alvelotyl tags I've missed?

Ok I'm here now! That third ask was fun I'm glad that particular tag had the intended effect >:3c

(Real quick before I start @excelsian wanted me to tag asks because he didn't know I was getting them and he wants to spy so they're gonna be tagged #asks now)

Gwinne is a member of the Fables! I didn't list every member before, but if you remember the big ol Dorian answers, she's the one who stabbed him as leverage to get Tetra to make a deal.

... I started typing out the whole thing explaining Gwinne's deal and then I realized. This is someone else's character. Maybe she wants to explain. She's even on Tumblr! Maybe she doesn't care idk but I've decided I'll ask her first and I'll send her this post and probably one of us will still answer your questions soon. But I can still answer one of these:

I don't exactly consider these all to be "Alvelotyl tags"- I mean, obviously they are, but like, tagging Gwinne wasn't exactly for "now I can search this" it was mostly for "heheh this is just like Gwinne" and I kinda just tag whatever character I think would be funny to tag. I decided I was gonna start tagging things #Alvelotyl when I tag them with Alvelotyl characters since they're are too many to track individually. I don't really remember which of these I've tagged before, probably most of them I haven't, but the full list of Fables is Dorian Derringer, Arthmael Stillstone, Gwinne de Faim, Erin Hylein, Carrow... I think he hasn't told us a last name but that's an alias anyway and his real name is Joshua, Erelra Hylein (aka Erin Hylein), Edmund Carnifex, Bloodpowder (or Gilles I forget his last name), and Quail Tartaine (not sure I spelled that last name right). Those last three are npcs, ex-members include Z, Indra, and Sabien, and Wuckle will likely join the team soon.

[murderthegods]

I want to know more about your first tagged post about visibly dropping a ruse. About Dorian or some other character. It’s just so great. Also, please tell me more about Dorian Derringer.

Part 4 and final!

His ruse is that he's happy, and he can't keep it up forever. Someday he's gonna really break, and I can't wait to write it.

That one feels a little short but I've been typing on my phone for. Hours I think. Please feel free to ask more questions, or for more specifics, I love talking about Dorian and this campaign! Responses might take longer in the future though because in the future I probably shouldn't require myself to start typing a response immediately when I get the exciting asks XD

[murderthegods]

He thinks he’s smart but his downfall is clear. A glass chalice dropped from high above the clouds. Ever forward he marches, the same path ad infinitum. He has been hurt. It is unclear if others know or if he does. He needs therapy but you give him the opposite. His prison does not want him but he wants it. He is stuck in his ways, or ever-changing. He has trauma and has a beautiful personality. He is mellow and ignores all his problems.

Part 3!

Interestingly, he doesn't think he's smart! Or, well, maybe he does, it's kinda complicated. See, it's a big secret, but he's actually not just a [Hero], he's also got just a few levels in [Historian]. So he knows a lot more than he lets on, but being knowledgeable isn't the same as being smart. He doesn't want to be the kind of [Hero] who knows things, he wants to hit things. So he thinks he's a little smarter than he is because he's really dumb, and he pretends to be way less knowledgeable than he is because he's embarrassed about being a nerd, and possibly most relevantly here, he definitely thinks he's Got It All Figured Out. The inevitable downfall part was in part 2 I think.

Hubris is Dorian's middle name! (It's actually not, his real name is Chester Robertson but I forgot what I made his middle name.) He's not actually able to deal with life but he does anyway because that's what Heroes do! He could change the path he walks but he's desperate not to because he MADE this path so it would be SAFE and he wouldn't have to DEAL with anything! It's not working very well but he'll be damned if he's letting go of his coping mechanism!

He has been hurt, unfortunately this is backstory stuff and I can't say for fear my mutuals will see but the people around him know there's SOMETHING wrong, they just dunno what. He theoretically knows he's been hurt but he's not thinking about it he's living in his best world.

He does need therapy, and I'm giving him... well, that's a secret plan that certain mutuals aren't allowed to know about.

His prison doesn't want him but he wants it: I refer you back to- um. Part 1? Part 2? One of those? And kinda the one three paragraphs up. He's crafted a System for himself where he doesn't have to decide what he wants or needs, and whenever he trusts it too much it bites him in the ass. He's determined to stay there though because it's easier.

Stuck in his ways or ever changing: sorta both! Well no that's cheating he's definitely stuck in his ways, it's just that the ways he's stuck in are the ways he chose after radically reinventing himself! So he also has this element of like, he knows how much people can change and he values that choice a lot, he just absolutely refuses to touch character development with a ten foot pole.

Trauma and a beautiful personality: y'know the beautiful personality is debatable and kinda a matter of opinion but he's definitely fun to watch when I play him right! I dunno if I'd wanna hang out with him though.

Mellow in the sense of "refuses to let anything bother him out of SPITE and DESPERATION" but tbh not really calm. That post's connection to him was more about the contrast between brooding dark emotional barriers vs the kind of emotional barrier where you're supposedly happy and you just kinda don't talk about yourself.

[murderthegods]

Dorian is trapped and in some denial about it. But he loves it. He likes repetition and fourth wall breaks. His loop is a bad one and he may be the last. His thoughts about religion are unknown. He is in so much pain and may be a knight. He is symbolic of himself and probably should be dead by now. Just statistically. He is a hero because he will stop others from falling into his own trap. His defeat is endless and all the same. Inevitable but delicate. The fractures and its own defeat is nigh.

Part two of the big Dorian Derringer answering!

Symbolic of himself: not sure what this means tbh, I don't remember this one

Probably should be dead: yup! He's an idiot who thinks he has actual plot armor that makes him invincible! He fights monsters for a living! How is he alive???

Stop others from falling into his trap: there are a few ways this might happen. He could die spectacularly and famously in such a way that he warns other young adventurers off from thinking they might be invincible, he could learn from his mistakes and start actually teaching people not to do what he's done, or he could do such a bad job of coping with trauma that people who get to know him learn what not to do. Depends what the trap being referred to is specifically.

I'm having a little trouble parsing this last bit, but yeah, if he keeps going like this... Well, he can't keep going like this. And he shows no signs of getting better anytime soon. Sooner or later he's gonna die or drive everyone away or leave or completely lose his mind or maybe, maybe he'll actually learn something instead. Or learn something also. Unclear!

[murderthegods]

I’ve been “following” your blog for a while. Not really because I don’t have a Tumblr. And I can’t keep it in anymore: Who Is Dorian Derringer?!?!!??????!!!!! Also the other ones but only DD. I feel like I have a connection despite knowing practically nothing. I only recently learned his pronouns. I think he’s a knight. He seems to be a character over yours, maybe DND. I have read your every post about him and want you to expand on all of them! Please do.

Anon this makes me so happy, I get very excited about Dorian Derringer, Gentleman Adventurer sometimes (it used to be you had to type his name like that every time for the bit but that got tiresome) and I'm so happy I've got someone this curious about him, you've put a smile on my face, now buckle in for a long explanation.

First thing's first, he is my dnd character, or at least, my character in a basically entirely homebrewed campaign based on dnd. The gm works very hard on this setting and has somehow managed to give us all custom spells and movesets despite hating balancing numbers. I dunno how that happened but I try to not forget to be grateful for all the cool shit it's gonna let me do. The world is called Alvelotyl and actually if this post ends up making you interested in the broader setting I'll recommend you look up The Shape of Home, which is a web serial set in this same world written by the dm until he paused it indefinitely. (I helped! Did proofreading and also a big chunk of a chapter that I'm not super proud of because I wanted to work on it more. Also Dorian is in it briefly at the beginning.)

Oh and real quick before I start, two of my mutuals are in this campaign and I don't wanna give them spoilers, because they don't know all of Dorian's backstory, and they don't know what I have planned for him. This is fine, it just means I may have to leave out some cool things. Three paragraphs of prelude, I accidentally tapped the poll button so let's just get that out of the way real quick

I don't know how to get rid of this

um

uh

Voting ended onFeb 19, 2023

Ok! The fundamental concept of Dorian Derringer that I have to mention first is the Story. Dorian Derringer has decided that he is the Protagonist. The world, obviously, functions like a story, it wouldn't make sense otherwise. And he, obviously, is the main character, it wouldn't make sense otherwise. At some point, some undisclosed backstory thing happened, and he went from "guy who reads too many books" to "guy with a big sword who kills goblins and no he does not want to go home". Now, he is a big strong [Hero]! And not just any [Hero], the Hero. Of the story. Who's gonna save the world! From something! As soon as he finds it! No he won't be killed by goblins first, are you stupid, the hero never gets killed by goblins in chapter one. No he won't scout ahead for traps, the [Necromancer] definitely did set a trap but he's supposed to fall into it so he can escape heroically!

Worldbuilding note to explain the brackets: Classes like rogue and warrior are diagetic in Alvelotyl. Pretty much everyone has one, but for most people it's [Teacher] or [Gardener] or something. (This is a thing that's also in a separate web serial called The Wandering Inn if you've heard of that.) So when I say he's a [Hero], that's his Class, and a very rare one since it requires him to not only see himself as a hero, but to be seen as one by enough other people that his soul or whatever decides he is one. Brackets go around lots of names of magic things, like spell names and stuff.

Next, Tetra Mariven. She is the Villain, by which I mean that she is a [Villain], and also that she is the Big Bad npc of the campaign, and also that Dorian has decided she fits into the Story as the Villain. She has memory altering abilities which she uses to collect an army of minions by rewriting their brains so they remember always being loyal to her. She also has a Spell (technically a Soulbrand which is different in universe but yk, a magical ability) that gives her effective omnipotence within a set area. We don't know the details of how [Tesseract] works (or really why it's called that) but it's apparently very difficult to set up. Her goal is to end all suffering in the world by helping a cult destroy the world and using [Tesseract] to save everyone loyal to her in a set area so that she can make everyone alive happy all the time.

If you want to frighten anyone in this campaign just mention Krysalia, because that's the city we were in when she found us. She got three Fables (our adventuring party is called the Fables) in the [Tesseract], first one of us named Carrow, who made the mistake of getting in trouble with the law in a city she was taking over, and then she got Dorian and our team captain, Arthmael Stillstone, who is a talking polar bear. We were told Carrow was killed by the Watch, and when we went to get his things and sort out what affairs we could, she and a brainwashed Carrow got us in the [Tesseract] instead. Arth got brainwashed, but Dorian immediately recognized that this girl was exactly as overdramatic as he was, with the same obsession with making things Right that he has! Someone who knows her role, and leans into it! And he's been so terribly lonely, when was the last time you read a book where the hero told people all about how they were in a book and he knows what's gonna happen next? He can't talk about it. But he can recognize when there's finally someone else around who seems like she knows that none of this matters. It'll all go how it's supposed to go, we just have to fill our roles. So he fell in love, and she fell in love, and she let him go without brainwashing him, and they began a forbidden enemies to lovers romance! Just like the books!

They are Not Good For Each Other. Both of them are living in their best worlds super hard (I think you're the same as the Unsounded anon so I think you'll get the reference) and both are encouraging that behavior in each other and they're obsessed with each other and they're currently in the campaign going through their very first rough patch and I'm super excited to see where it goes. Oh, and for context, they were planning to do like a secret relationship thing where they would keep fighting because they're on opposite sides and all, but they were discovered by the Fables, and he was held hostage and stabbed by one of his own teammates (a child!!! Arth's player said Sette reminded him of her a little her name is Gwinne) as leverage to get Tetra to put Arthmael and Carrow back to how they were. There is now a sort of truce between the Fables and Tetra. Gwinne and Tetra signed a magical [Contract] that will kill whoever breaks the terms, so they can't hurt each other, but they did have to let Tetra take over the city and a lot of people died as a result. She's traveling with them now, temporarily, but they trust her to varying degrees. General consensus seems to be that she's fun to hang around when she's not being horribly manipulative or commiting atrocities, but Dorian is way far on the "She's just misunderstood" end of the spectrum and Edmund is way far on the "she's an evil bitch and the security of our team is currently compromised" end.

Speaking of Edmund, there's actually not all that much to say about him tbh. I tagged him once because he's a Fable I thought of when I was thinking of unhappy people for that post, but he's not mine or directly related to mine so my brainrot about him is lower comparatively. He was a pc at first but the player got bored with him so he's an npc now and his player made Carrow as a replacement. Grumpy gun man.

Ok. Time for specifics. You have a list there, lemme go through in order now you have the context.

I do ship him with Tetra, they are in fact canonically dating.

They both delude themselves and have a connection to the past: they are both traumatized and in denial. Tetra has literally wiped her own memory of certain events, and Dorian copes by telling himself he's the Protagonist.

Fooled by Tetra and not Dorian: I'll be honest, I skimmed through them all before typing this but I don't remember this one and I apparently can't save drafts of answers to asks. Best guess would be, maybe I was referring to myself actually for a period of time getting caught up in the mindset of my character and thinking Tetra really wasn't all that bad, which was a thing that happened.

They've grown apart, were once codependent and are now too separate: not exactly. They're having their first fight and it might be a doozy. This is so long a post already, I can't go into details, but the short version is, Dorian has realized that Tetra doesn't actually understand his Story, she just fits it pretty well, and this realization is making him want to put a little distance between them that manipulative codependent Tetra is in all likelihood NOT going to like, especially since he's kinda been more committal than would've been wise. This is something that's gonna pop up a couple times, I tagged a few posts with them that were about them growing apart or breaking up, and that hasn't happened, it just kinda seems like it might be a doomed relationship. It'll probably survive this fight, but these are not healthy people, we've been predicting since they started that this was either gonna be the happiest unhealthy relationship in the world or it was gonna explode and take hundreds of lives with them.

They're stupid and weird and complex and horny: yup, not mich more to say on that except that they fucked on top of the wagon where everyone else was sleeping and I rolled a nat 20 for Dorian to pull out in time. I have perhaps been a little too eager to pursue horny activities with them because I am horny and sometimes I forget that irl they haven't fucked in months but since Krysalia the campaign's slowed down and they literally fucked two days in a row and the second day was yesterday.

Edmund pretends not to give fucks: yup, he's very grumpy, but he seems to be getting attached to another npc in our group, Quail. She drives the wagon, she's great. He does probably hate most of us though.

Surprised when they smile: Edmund doesn't smile, so that's pretty obvious, but the thing is, Dorian smiles all the time. He never stops. The Hero can't be sad, after all. That's not what kind of Story this is! He's gonna be happy all the time! Someday though, I hope he'll learn to stop forcing it, and then someday I hope he actually smiles, a real smile that he didn't put up on purpose to communicate. Which like, I suppose probably already happens on occasion too, this post might've been a little bit of a stretch to tag Dorian.

Trapped, repetition, fourth wall breaks: Dorian traps himself in a Story. It restricts his actions to only the Right ones, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Deciding what to do is hard! It's a lot easier when you have a System. There's honestly not a whole lot about repetition with him, but I guess you could say he does have this kind of cycle, sorta, where he saves towns and defeats bad guys and then moves on. Because that's what a Hero would do! Fourth wall breaks are probably something he likes in books, when used sparingly, but in the sense of his own Story, he kinda hates fourth wall breaks actually. If he acknowledges the Story, he risks breaking it! No one is ever supposed to acknowledge it, and letting Tetra find out about it is one of his big regrets that's now getting between them.

Bad loop may be the last: yeah sorta, that one was a bit of a stretch too, but he doesn't want anything to change in his life. He wants it to keep looping forever where he keeps beating bad guys until he dies gloriously in combat. It would be good for him to question that.

Unknown religion thoughts: he's a little religious but not super religious. Not really sure what post it was that specifically made you wonder about it? But he believes in a religion and doesn't think about it a whole lot except to swear dramatically. "By Dia Sol! This power!"

Pain and knighthood: yes and no. Lots of pain, he kinda had the aesthetic of a knight but he's not a [Knight]. He used to wear plate armor (but without a helmet) until I decided that was inconvenient. I kinda remember the knight post and that one iirc was close but like also kind of a stretch.

WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF JUST ANSWERING THESE IN THEIR INDIVIDUAL ASKS I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO DO A READ MORE fuck it the rest is going in the corresponding asks.