Music Monday & WIP Wednesday
Tagged by @direwombat and @josephseedismyfather
Tagging @inafieldofdaisies @voidika @raresvtm @imogenkol @noodlecupcakes @socially-awkward-skeleton @adelaidedrubman @josephslittledeputy @cassietrn @g0dspeeed @aceghosts @cloudofbutterflies92 @derelictheretic @icecutioner @shallow-gravy @strangefable @statichvm @carlosoliveiraa @wrathfulrook @starsandskies @ladyoriza @la-grosse-patate @thewanderer-000 @omen-speaker @alypink @shellibisshe @skoll-sun-eater @afarcryfrommymain @strafethesesinners @turbo-virgins @florbelles @minilev @justasmolbard @yokobai and @saynogrumpy + anyone else who'd like to join.
Music for The Silver Chronicles, Life, Despair & Monsters and the terrible trio Noir, Nova and Noa, as well as an WIP for a new FC5 AU called Doll!Silva AU... I'll elaborate some more later below the cut:
Noir, Nova and Noa are a trio of sixth-generation kin whose entire purpose is to act as both an obstacle and represent the number one thing to keep in mind about the multiverse, especially while Jade Smith and Jasmine Rafiq are exploring the various worlds; everything and everyone they will come across will be unpredictable and are never as simply good and bad. Noir, Nova and Noa are both nuisances, guides, roadblocks and advisors. If Jade and Jasmine can adapt to their wacky antics, then to the three kin, the couple are ready for anything that comes their way.
"I hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums Oh, what a shame that you came here with someone So while you're here in my arms Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young We're gonna die young We're gonna die young Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young!"
"Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, like we're gonna die young Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, like we're gonna die young Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, like we're gonna die young!" "Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young!"
Out of all the stories in The Silva Chronicles, I think the most tragic of them all is my Bloodborne WIP, thus far, that is. I only say this cause while WIPs like La Última En Pie, Ain't It A Joy? and How Good Is A Heist If It's Improvised? (although Silva's Hope, Call To Arms and No One's Safe At Home can qualify) are all expressively tragic and often end more bitter rather sweet, they are also kind of connected together, their previous arcs and growth following over to Silva's Hope and then ending rather hopefully in Old Dusk. Meanwhile, the Bloodborne WIP, which I shall call Hematophobia: Fear The Paleblood, is the MOST tragic and the only one I'm confident in saying has a downer ending for majority of characters, even if I keep some of it very ambiguous, like the game itself does. Yharnam and its inhabitants, are doomed to fall. The hunters get little to no peace for their duties, in fact most go mad. The Jäger siblings, Tobias and Caroline, went to Yharnam to cure Caroline of her blood disease, and in the end, one is too ignorant towards duty over family, while the other is irreversibly changed by the knowledge accumulated and all the violence and horror that was witnessed over the course of the long night, and neither will ever be able to see each other again. Splinter succeeds in killing Nigel but fails in his vows to protect others and can't rectify his mistake once he's awoken from the dream and detained by the Time Bureau Authority. In fact, with exception to Caroline's actions (although that's being too generous), mostly everyone else fails in their missions or suffer from the Monkey Paw effect, meaning a lot of everyone's actions throughout this WIP end up being all for nothing, really. It's weird that one Soulsborne WIP (this one) ends ambiguously but certainly the closest to an outright downer ending in my series, while the Elden Ring WIP (another Soulsborne game), ends up being the closest to an actual legitimate happy ending in this series (I'd say Old Dusk is the second closest to a happy ending for Silva, Azriel, Nadi, Alexander, Schrödinger, Isiah and Gemini in addition to most canon characters, though it still has a few bitterness to its overall sweetness).
"Do you realize? That you have the most beautiful face
Do you realize? We're floating in space
Do you realize? That happiness makes you cry
Do you realize? Everyone you know Someday Will die
Do you realize? Everyone you know Someday Will die!"
And lastly, let's talk about one of the little cheeky themes of Life, Despair & Monsters. That being: Connection and bonds, and how strong bonds can make and break a person. How bonds can be the greatest and worst thing. How bonds if maintained well can never shake against adversity, and if maintained poorly, or just one-sided/superficial, will result in failure. The bonds of siblings (like between Haoyu and Monika, Icarus/Hatsukami/Xavier and their family, or even Corvus and Rhaenyra and their half-siblings), the bond of lovers (Sonya and Jennifer, Guenevere and Morgana, Haoyu and Icarus), the bond of friends (Rico and Lora, Lora and Lancelot, Hatter and Marinette & Adrien) and other type of bonds are important in their success to be maintained and reinforced, lest they fall apart and are left alone. To serve as a contrast, the members of the Ruins of the Midnight Rise do not manage their bonds rather well; Malvolio is a being incapable of comprehending the importance of connection and bonds considering he originates from a wild dimension where the main consensus is "survive or die" and therefore his bonds with those around him (such as Denise, Evie and Inviticus) are more superficial rather than deeply genuine (he cries no rivers when Evie dies, only expresses disappointment that his favored creation has failed to continue living, and abandons Denise when she's proven unable to uphold her end of their accord with her lack of arms), with members like Inviticus and Impulse, and allies like Paul Yellowjack, being aware of this fact, and only keeping up their ends of this social accord to get what they want out of it. The only exception to this is Uni (or rather, the Unity) and Frederick Rosemary, the former of whom is an amalgamation of the worlds greatest Third Eye users downloaded/possessing in a mechanical monstrosity holding history and knowledge and scientific endeavors, which is something Malvolio can connect with, while the latter is unbothered by the "necessity" to do horrific things in the "name of progress" with a darkly crude sense of humor, something Malvolio finds himself flocking to the closest thing of a genuine if twisted friendship with Frederick despite his depravities. Minor note is that Denise doesn't really like the other members with exception to the Director, Evie only cares about gaining Malvolio's praise, Inviticus and Impulse only desire to hunt, and the other Displacements are enslaved by Malvolio. Sliding away from the Midnight Rise and focusing on the Occult, Aggrevor genuinely doesn't care about his fellow cultists and the relationship between the Occult and the Kin they want to bring back and worship is explicitly either one-sided or mutually abusive. Haoyu, Icarus, Sonya and the others are able to rise above their enemies due to learning to secure and keep their bonds strong with mutual respect and genuine friendship, even when they are all at their lowest point in the journey.
"We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise 'til we fall They say we got no-no-no-no future at all They wanna ke-ke-keep us out Can't hold us down anymore We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise 'til we fall
When we hit the bottom, nothing gonna stop us Climb to the top with you We could be the greatest, ones who never made it Yeah, I could be talking to you They tryna hate, hate, hate But we won't change, change anything at all, oh We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise 'til we fall
They think we're just dropouts Living at out mom's house Parents must be so proud They know it all No, they don't speak out language They say we're too savage, yeah No, no, we don't give a- anymore
We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise 'til we fall We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise 'til we fall No, they don't speak out language They say we're too savage, yeah No, no, we don't give a- anymore We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise 'til we fall
They say we're goin' no-no-no-no-no-no-nowhere But what they don't know, know, know is that we don't, don't care We're gon' keepin' on, keepin' on goin' 'til we can't go no more We're gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise 'til we fall, yeah!"
And here's the WIP snippet for my newest FC5 AU for Silva... Doll!Silva AU, inspired by Bloodborne yet again, but this time, neglecting the werewolves and gothic horror for just the existential and lovecraftian horror with the main focus being on the altered Gehrman and Plain Doll dynamic (old badass mentor appears physically weak with only the human-sized and somehow magically alive doll of his equally badass pupil to take care of him but he feels self-hatred and guilt for making her every time he looks at her due her having more subjectively traditionally feminine and obedient qualities which misses the qualities that the original alive woman had in the first place and is nothing more but the physical manifestation of his shame and mistakes), but with Silva and Paul instead. And in Hope County. So here's Mary May (in contribution to... ahem, Mary MAY) coming across the spitting image of a rookie deputy who is supposed to be dead but yet is alive in front of her and very off-putting and different from before she maybe died(?). Read below:
Mary shut off the radio, much to Drew's complaints, shaking her head as she continued to drive them back to Fall's End, which was a long ride away while in the Henbane.
But shutting up her yapping brother and that irritating music wasn't enough to escape the topic of the cult; they passed a multitude of billboards and signs of Eden's Gate propaganda.
In the span of two years, they've spread like an infection across the county's three regions. And yet, the Henbane seems to have gone through the most changes. Especially with the introduction of those batches of white flowers.
Flowers that either make you high or nauseous when going too close to it, Mary snarled in her mind, How is that NOT considered a health issue, or extremely dangerous? Why haven't the Sheriff's Department actually done anything about that yet?
She remembered Deputy Omar seemed keen on tackling a potential investigation, probably one of the few deputies who actually took the cult's growing influence with serious consideration, much like her father...
Not like it matters much now, considering the funeral last week.
Such a reminder made Mary huff, taking a swift glance to Drew in the passenger seat. Her little brother was quiet, looking out the window, trying to read whatever were on the billboards they passed. Most likely the cult's, since she picked him up from the Convent.
Her grip tightened on the leathery wheel. She hoped Ma and Pa could talk some sense into Drew. She could see how curious he was about the cult, and she was so afraid of how far they hot their claws in him. She hoped he could be dissuaded by seeing how bad Eden's Gate had effected business at the Spread Eagle.
She couldn't fathom the feeling of losing a family member. Not like how Paul had recently. Considering she hasn't seen him since a little after the funeral when he came to the Spread Eagle, she was certain he wasn't doing well.
That was a pain she wasn't going to let happen to her family. Not now, and especially not by the cult.
She opened her mouth to say something to Drew; to let him know he can talk to her, that his older sister is just worried for him, that she loves and cherishes him just as Ma and Pa do, even if they are a little hard on him. To affirm to him that he can turn to them for anything. Better than the cult could possibly do.
However, no such words leave her mouth as she spotted something out on the side of the road.
Her gaze locked on to a crouching figure adorned in black as the truck passed them, a little way on the side of the road, way too close to those pale flowers that the cult owned.
Does this person not know about the flowers? she pondered briefly, as it seemed to be the only reasonable explanation considering how new those flowers are. They certainly didn't appear to be a Peggie, usually the cult were adorned in white, browns and sometimes an occasional red and black. Never just... black.
Regardless, while watching from her rear view mirror, Mary watched in abject horror how the person - a woman, she was sure now - picked a flower out and curiously brought it closer to her face.
Not a moment longer, Mary slammed her foot down on the breaks, much to Drew's shock, swerving to park on the side of the road as she unbuckled her seat belt and practically hopped out of the truck once she opened the door without further elaboration.
She urgently ran towards the black-clad woman who held the flower up to her nose. The woman still hadn't noticed her yet. There was something familiar about her to Mary, but she couldn't fathom what it was; the dark hair or the silvery white flowing down the braid tail behind her.
It didn't matter; she had to get the woman away from the flowers.
"Hey!" she shouted towards the stranger, gaining closer, "Stop!"
Her shouts seemed to alarm the woman, causing her to lift her head away from the flower and towards Mary's approaching figure.
Once she gained close enough to be a few big steps from coming up to the woman, Mary states, "You need to get away from those flowers-"
Her words caught in her throat as the woman stood up from her crouched position. There were a total number of three thoughts that crashed Mary's brain.
Her first thought being, Oh, she's TALL. With how the woman loomed over her, and the way she had to tilt her head down to reach eye contact with Mary. A part of Mary wanted to claim the woman was eight feet tall. Perhaps it wouldn't be quite an exaggeration, but reasonably the woman had to be at least a little over seven feet.
The second thought was focused on what the woman was wearing; obviously it was a modest knee-length black dress (the hem of which seemed to reach a bit more below the knees), dark gloves with leathery knee-high boots that successfully covered the rest of the woman's legs. Even her neck was covered by an ascot of some kind. She also adorned a laced veil or shawl over her dark and silvery hair, with a large comb fixed in her braided hair. Every inch of the woman's body, with exception to her face, didn't allow any skin to show off.
She looks like she came back from a funeral, is the impression Mary got.
But the final thought was what truly had Mary staring at the stranger's face in a state of shock. Except, it wasn't a stranger's face she was looking at.
It can't be, Mary struggled to contextualize the impossibility of what or rather who she was in front of her. Skin that held a dark complexion. The faint scarring from a time before entering Hope County. Chapped lips that hadn't been healing for long since arriving to the county. And although her eyes weren't as dull or grey as they should have been, the silver that practically illuminated from those rings around her pupils were not far off from the color she did possess.
Mary wondered if the nearby pale flowers were messing with her mind, their sweet and citrus smell not too far off. Because how else could she rationalize seeing a dead woman standing in front of her.
Though the more she stared at her, the more she her head pounded, her blue eyes blinking as it felt like her retinas burned, and how ill she felt from just standing near her.
It had to be those flowers that were causing such a reaction out of her. Although that didn't explain why the woman in front of her didn't appear to even be as effected by them as she should be. After all, she practically had one of those flowers up to her face, and here Mary was struggling to stand by being a couple steps away from the batch.
"Are you alright, señorita?" the woman asked in a clear and non-slurring tone, with such a familiar voice that held the same purr of the accent that had Mary almost shamelessly swoon when she first heard it, and fuck, did that not sound like her voice.
She could practically remember like it was yesterday, even if it was a little over last week, answering the woman - the deputy's - questions in regards to the cult.
There was no way to get a confirmation without forcing her tongue to form the words and ask the one question that she most certainly knows the answer to.
"I'm fine," she said all too quickly, her words struggling to form properly as her mind withered at the sight of this spitting image of someone she knew and saw on a regular occurrence, "It's just- who are you? What's your name?"
She could hear Drew's steps come closer, but she couldn't focus on that now, even if it was more bearable than focusing on the woman before her, who's very appearance both made her want to collapse from the confusion of it all and yet also hurl from the mixing scents of sweet citruses, sharp woodwork, nature and decay. She blamed that particular response on those flowers though.
The woman before her tilted her head curiously, unblinking, even if the first thing she should be asking was who Mary was, or the approaching Drew, or why Mary shouted to her to stop and get away from the pale flowers, or any number of questions that wouldn't make such a interaction feel even more off than it already was.
Instead, the woman, a mirror of the dead rookie deputy Mary attended the funeral for a week ago, merely gives her a polite smile, and bows her head slightly in greeting and responds to her question with an answer that Mary feared to hear.
"I am Silva. Caretaker of Paul, mi... padre," she tells a disbelieving Mary, her silver eyes glinting with familiarity as she adds, "It is a pleasure to see you again, Señorita Fairgrave."
