underused art blog of @enbyboiwonder｜full of Dragon Quest, sports animanga, and whatever other interests I pick up along the way｜this artist will never use AI or knowingly support it or those who do
I’m enbyboiwonder or EBW, pen name Danny Bartosz, a hobbyist traditional artist and fic-writer in their twenties, as well as a collector of rarepairs and a lover of headcanoning my faves as trans/nonbinary/genderqueer. And letting guys wear skirts and dresses. I gotta learn to draw bodies again…
In years past, I’ve been known on this site as: wishing-on-the-moon, melsbancroft, actualkunikida, enbyspacemonkey, gaymalcolmreid, and enbyreid. (Possibly others that I’m forgetting; I used to change URLs somewhat often, though since I remade, I haven’t at all. And even if I end up picking a new chosen name again, my pen name will stay the same. This is my brand now.)
I’ll read/watch pretty much any genre of animanga, but my favorite is sports, and though I love a good sports shounen as much as the next guy, I particularly love sports dramas—like, to absolutely no one’s surprise, 2.43 Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get back into BSD, but I’ll likely still be drawing and writing Kunikida every now and then, interspersed with the other random fandoms my 2.43 hyperfixation will sometimes let me create for, because I will never stop loving him.
Huh, this apparently actually got notes on it, not that I can see them, thank you, tumblr, for being such a functional website.
Going under a cut because boy howdy did I ramble
Anyway. So I’ve been thinking about DQVI off and on for… a couple months or so now? At least? I recently got many of the DS (not 3DS, as they’re region locked and I don’t currently have a JP 3DS) games in JP, and it was mainly down to IX, VI, and M:J to play first. I went with Joker first, and pretty early on started thinking about and writing an AU where Terry gets isekaid again and is its protag. After finishing the game, I started IX, and while I’d had ideas for party member names, I plumb forgot them by the time I unlocked Patty’s Party-Planning Place, so I ended up making part of the VI party (Terry as a warrior, Milly as a mage, Botts as a priest, and Ashlynn as a thief as a temp member so I could Half-Inch me some alchemy ingredients before defeating the Master of Nu’un). I also read the Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry’s Wonderland 4-Panel Manga Theatre. So, yeah, VI was on the brain a lot, though it was mostly Terry (and 6terry) and much of it was actually more directly the Monsters spinoffs. Even when it was set during VI, it still had to do with Monsters.
Which. This also does. Because more recently, I read the Dragon Quest Monsters Plus manga. While Terry does appear in it, it follows a new protagonist, Clio, who travels to the world of the original trilogy at different points in time, so both Alef and Loran (and later Satori—I typically call Cannock by the name Grant, but Yoshizaki called him Satori, and thus so will I—and Luna) show up as well. Loran actually gets a pretty big role, and he’s probably the only reason I like the last two volumes LOL. I got attached to him pretty quickly. He doesn’t see all monsters as inherently a threat, unlike Alef, and while he’s still surprised at Clio considering them friends, he also doesn’t freak, also unlike Alef. He strikes me as autistic tbh, and also he’s definitely Going Through Some Shit. He’s at the very least passively suicidal. We meet him some time after the scions have defeated Malroth, and the same people who’d hailed him as a hero during his journey now call him a monster (化け物 bakemono) and fear, hate, and alienate him—humans are not supposed to be that strong, and so he must not be human. Presumably Satori and Luna don’t get it to the same degree, because while they also have a fear-inspiring amount of power, they have magic, so it’s at least understandable/explainable. Loran doesn’t. Humans are not supposed to be strong enough to destroy the literal God of Destruction, especially without magic.
(I would sooo totally read a manga that’s just about that Loran. That deals with his depression and viewing himself as more of a monster (化け物 bakemono) than the monsters (魔物/モンスター mamono/monster[s]) and not having the right to be called/call himself a Hero, and struggling to reconcile with who he’s become. His passive-to-active suicidality—he wants to know that he can die, but also he wouldn’t mind actually dying because it would mean he is human after all and not a monster. His alienation and the change in attitude toward him of the people around him from before and after he slew Hargon and Malroth. How he feels distanced even from Satori and Luna until they go out and track him down. By the way.)
So that’s how they got into my head at the same time. But how they then ended up combining…? Especially the way they did.
Loran winds up falling into a portal to the DQVI dream world at some point before he would have met Clio—or else he gets taken there instead of the time Clio finds himself in, as I started thinking about this before reading vol 5 and thus didn’t know that this was a whole 300 years after Malroth’s defeat. He runs into Botts and co. and joins the party. I’m thinking, since he’s not actually a dream-world resident, others will be able to see him when they travel to the real world? Yeah, Botts, Carver, and Milly are real-world residents, but Murdaw banished them to the dream world, effectively making them its residents, which is different from simply travelling there. After all, none of the party members you pick up in the real world suddenly need dream drops after making a round trip. But, the party still think he will at first, or at least wonder if he will.
I’m also not sure yet at what point exactly the party meet him. I’ve only played VI once before, and I’m not very far into my current playthrough, so I do not have nearly the same familiarity with it as with IX.
In any case, Loran feels sort of out of place at first, not just because he’s the new guy and in a different world (or timeline; possibly due to IX having you find Erdrick’s rusted equipment and alchemise them to be new again, I like to think of the mainline games all being set in the same world just in [sometimes vastly] different time periods), but because of the whole “more of a 化け物 (bakemono) than the 魔物 (monsters)” thing. He’s afraid of the party rejecting him if they learn of his true power, but they don’t. Botts assures him that he’s not a monster, and even tells him that he finds it impressive what people are able to do, the lengths they’re able to go, for those they care about. (Also, if the world needs a literal god dead in order to stave off her destruction, she’s going to produce a Hero or set of Heroes strong enough to kill god. Like, in Dai no Daibouken, Avan was strong enough to defeat Hadlar, but not Vearn, so he could not also be the Hero who faced him and so Dai came along and surpassed him. And, yeah, Dai’s only half human, but that’s one of the amazing things about humans: our adaptability and limitlessness. No, not every individual [hello, I’m disabled], but there is always going to be someone who will make the impossible possible.)
Botts and Loran end up bonding and even eventually courting. They both know when they start it that it cannot last, that it will end sooner rather than later when Loran returns to his own world/time. Even were they not from different worlds/times, they’re both crown princes; even were they not princes, they’re both from different worlds/times. So it’s just for now. A bit of normalcy amidst everything. Except they defeat Mortamor (and in this world, where he has people who accept him, Loran doesn’t mind being known as a Hero, even if it’s Botts who’s the true Hero), and they still haven’t found a way to send him back. He ends up staying at Somnia Castle with Botts after it’s all over, and they still haven’t found a way to send him back—even if they can create a portal, they still don’t know how to find the intended destination. Before they know it, they’ve fallen into a routine, in their peaceful castle life, and they realise they’ve fallen in love. That wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to become anything. It can’t. Loran breaks things off and leaves to search for a way home in a more practical/proactive manner, and while Botts puts on a brave face to see him off, he’s more gutted than he wants to be or thought he would be when he always knew it would come to this.
Some time later, Botts is leading some men on some expedition or other, haven't figured out what beyond that it likely has to do with monsters (even when they’re not under a Dark Lord’s influence, many of them are still effectively wild animals and thus more than capable of causing problems), and he meets a familiar figure on the road: Loran. He hasn’t found a way back, and he also… isn’t so sure he wants to return anymore. He misses his cousins and his parents, yes, but he’s an outsider there now. Here is where he’s found acceptance; here is where being known as a Hero doesn’t seem so unfitting, doesn’t make him uncomfortable. And he knows there can’t really be anything between them because Botts has his duties as crown prince and, later, king, but he wants to be with him. Botts, of course, does too. Neither of them have gotten over each other in the slightest in the intervening time. But he wants to be together-together; he wants to make this work if Loran does. Yes, there’s the matter of him needing an heir, but just because it’s traditionally been a (the closest) blood relative doesn’t necessarily mean it absolutely has to be. They also don’t know that there will be any need for him to enter into a political marriage. If it comes to that, he’ll try to find some other arrangement instead, but if it’s unavoidable, then it’ll be political/symbolic only. And he’s still not siring an heir himself. He doesn’t want to give up before they’ve even gotten started.
Sooo, they get betrothed. They just decide it right there, hugging in the middle of the road. Botts kind of wants to give him a piece of his jewellery, but Loran doesn’t have pierced ears, and his clothing isn’t exactly conducive to wearing chokers or armbands (plus I’m pretty sure the armband would be too big for him anyway lol), and, indeed, he isn’t exactly the type to wear jewellery in the first place. Loran considers this and decides that he wouldn’t mind piercing his ear.
Really all I know about piercing ears is you’re supposed to wear a stud until it heals (a hoop would be more likely to catch on things and cause issues…?) and also that you’re not supposed to take it out until then. So the next town they stop in, when Botts shops for what he’ll need, he has Loran pick out a stud he likes. He chooses one with a brown gem that matches Botts’ eye colour; if he can’t wear one of Botts’ earrings, he still wants it to be connected somehow. Botts is flattered. After affixing him with the stud, Botts takes out one of his hoops and gives it to Loran to hold onto until he can switch to it; Loran accepts it, though he wants Botts to be the one to put it on him that first time.
(Botts thinks Loran looks very good with the stud, just in general but also because it marks him as his—though he isn’t sure how many people will connect the brown with his eye colour since it isn’t exactly unique or even uncommon—and he likes it more than he quite expected he would and decides he needs Loran to pick out something to similarly mark his as Loran’s too. idk, I just don’t think Botts would be the type to want to hide. They share a room and bed since Loran first comes to stay at the castle, too.)
I see Loran being a bit shorter than Botts and a bit older than him. The wiki has him at 16 in II and I don’t know how much time has passed between when he slays Malroth and when we meet him in DQM+, time-travel shenanigans aside, and I also can’t tell how old he’s supposed to be from Yoshizaki’s drawings, as there are times he looks closer to 20 and times he looks closer to 15. But he feels to me like he should be a bit older than Botts. idk, probably the only thing I’m confident on about his character is that he’s autistic. (Well, and suicidal, and kind.) I haven't gotten very far in II, I don’t think—just as far as visiting Moonbrooke and seeing the destruction that Hargon’s forces wrought—so I don’t really have much of an idea of him from that. I’ve really just got DQM+ to go off of. I’m very much considering getting the CD Theater, but I’m not really sure if I wanna pay $50 for it? That is better than the VI CD Theater, though…
I was originally planning that Botts would plan to name a kid of his sister’s as his heir… completely forgetting that his real-life sister died young. I thought since Murdaw gave him Tania in the dream world, that meant he (currently) had a sister in the real world too. That he gave him a sister so this fake life would feel more natural than one that’s even further from his actual life than being a country bumpkin already is. It still works, though, right? He just doesn’t already have in mind who he’ll name. (And he miiight have a harder time having whoever it is accepted than if they’re blood-related, but he’s still being somewhat idealistic here. But also I don’t exactly know much about that sort of thing.)
DQSG’s DQVI event has you and your companions be invisible to the inhabitants of the real world, so I guess they would need to use the dream drops on Loran. Now, the question is—will they still be able to see him? Milly can see Carver and Botts because she doesn’t have her real body back yet and thus is still effectively a dream-world resident. Depending on when they meet, everyone (save Ashlynn) would be fully a real-world resident.
But also. What does that imply about someone who traveled into the dream world from a different time/world entirely? Only your consciousness got isekai’d while your real body is still right where you were before? That might work for the S/G party who’s only there temporarily in the first place, but for someone there for longer…? Plus, Ashlynn can’t stay in the real world after the end of the game because she doesn’t have a real body. Loran wouldn’t be able to stay either.
Hm. Yeah, I think I’m sticking with my original idea, and I don’t care if S/G contradicts it.
Huh, this apparently actually got notes on it, not that I can see them, thank you, tumblr, for being such a functional website.
Going under a cut because boy howdy did I ramble
Anyway. So I’ve been thinking about DQVI off and on for… a couple months or so now? At least? I recently got many of the DS (not 3DS, as they’re region locked and I don’t currently have a JP 3DS) games in JP, and it was mainly down to IX, VI, and M:J to play first. I went with Joker first, and pretty early on started thinking about and writing an AU where Terry gets isekaid again and is its protag. After finishing the game, I started IX, and while I’d had ideas for party member names, I plumb forgot them by the time I unlocked Patty’s Party-Planning Place, so I ended up making part of the VI party (Terry as a warrior, Milly as a mage, Botts as a priest, and Ashlynn as a thief as a temp member so I could Half-Inch me some alchemy ingredients before defeating the Master of Nu’un). I also read the Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry’s Wonderland 4-Panel Manga Theatre. So, yeah, VI was on the brain a lot, though it was mostly Terry (and 6terry) and much of it was actually more directly the Monsters spinoffs. Even when it was set during VI, it still had to do with Monsters.
Which. This also does. Because more recently, I read the Dragon Quest Monsters Plus manga. While Terry does appear in it, it follows a new protagonist, Clio, who travels to the world of the original trilogy at different points in time, so both Alef and Loran (and later Satori—I typically call Cannock by the name Grant, but Yoshizaki called him Satori, and thus so will I—and Luna) show up as well. Loran actually gets a pretty big role, and he’s probably the only reason I like the last two volumes LOL. I got attached to him pretty quickly. He doesn’t see all monsters as inherently a threat, unlike Alef, and while he’s still surprised at Clio considering them friends, he also doesn’t freak, also unlike Alef. He strikes me as autistic tbh, and also he’s definitely Going Through Some Shit. He’s at the very least passively suicidal. We meet him some time after the scions have defeated Malroth, and the same people who’d hailed him as a hero during his journey now call him a monster (化け物 bakemono) and fear, hate, and alienate him—humans are not supposed to be that strong, and so he must not be human. Presumably Satori and Luna don’t get it to the same degree, because while they also have a fear-inspiring amount of power, they have magic, so it’s at least understandable/explainable. Loran doesn’t. Humans are not supposed to be strong enough to destroy the literal God of Destruction, especially without magic.
(I would sooo totally read a manga that’s just about that Loran. That deals with his depression and viewing himself as more of a monster (化け物 bakemono) than the monsters (魔物/モンスター mamono/monster[s]) and not having the right to be called/call himself a Hero, and struggling to reconcile with who he’s become. His passive-to-active suicidality—he wants to know that he can die, but also he wouldn’t mind actually dying because it would mean he is human after all and not a monster. His alienation and the change in attitude toward him of the people around him from before and after he slew Hargon and Malroth. How he feels distanced even from Satori and Luna until they go out and track him down. By the way.)
So that’s how they got into my head at the same time. But how they then ended up combining…? Especially the way they did.
Loran winds up falling into a portal to the DQVI dream world at some point before he would have met Clio—or else he gets taken there instead of the time Clio finds himself in, as I started thinking about this before reading vol 5 and thus didn’t know that this was a whole 300 years after Malroth’s defeat. He runs into Botts and co. and joins the party. I’m thinking, since he’s not actually a dream-world resident, others will be able to see him when they travel to the real world? Yeah, Botts, Carver, and Milly are real-world residents, but Murdaw banished them to the dream world, effectively making them its residents, which is different from simply travelling there. After all, none of the party members you pick up in the real world suddenly need dream drops after making a round trip. But, the party still think he will at first, or at least wonder if he will.
I’m also not sure yet at what point exactly the party meet him. I’ve only played VI once before, and I’m not very far into my current playthrough, so I do not have nearly the same familiarity with it as with IX.
In any case, Loran feels sort of out of place at first, not just because he’s the new guy and in a different world (or timeline; possibly due to IX having you find Erdrick’s rusted equipment and alchemise them to be new again, I like to think of the mainline games all being set in the same world just in [sometimes vastly] different time periods), but because of the whole “more of a 化け物 (bakemono) than the 魔物 (monsters)” thing. He’s afraid of the party rejecting him if they learn of his true power, but they don’t. Botts assures him that he’s not a monster, and even tells him that he finds it impressive what people are able to do, the lengths they’re able to go, for those they care about. (Also, if the world needs a literal god dead in order to stave off her destruction, she’s going to produce a Hero or set of Heroes strong enough to kill god. Like, in Dai no Daibouken, Avan was strong enough to defeat Hadlar, but not Vearn, so he could not also be the Hero who faced him and so Dai came along and surpassed him. And, yeah, Dai’s only half human, but that’s one of the amazing things about humans: our adaptability and limitlessness. No, not every individual [hello, I’m disabled], but there is always going to be someone who will make the impossible possible.)
Botts and Loran end up bonding and even eventually courting. They both know when they start it that it cannot last, that it will end sooner rather than later when Loran returns to his own world/time. Even were they not from different worlds/times, they’re both crown princes; even were they not princes, they’re both from different worlds/times. So it’s just for now. A bit of normalcy amidst everything. Except they defeat Mortamor (and in this world, where he has people who accept him, Loran doesn’t mind being known as a Hero, even if it’s Botts who’s the true Hero), and they still haven’t found a way to send him back. He ends up staying at Somnia Castle with Botts after it’s all over, and they still haven’t found a way to send him back—even if they can create a portal, they still don’t know how to find the intended destination. Before they know it, they’ve fallen into a routine, in their peaceful castle life, and they realise they’ve fallen in love. That wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to become anything. It can’t. Loran breaks things off and leaves to search for a way home in a more practical/proactive manner, and while Botts puts on a brave face to see him off, he’s more gutted than he wants to be or thought he would be when he always knew it would come to this.
Some time later, Botts is leading some men on some expedition or other, haven't figured out what beyond that it likely has to do with monsters (even when they’re not under a Dark Lord’s influence, many of them are still effectively wild animals and thus more than capable of causing problems), and he meets a familiar figure on the road: Loran. He hasn’t found a way back, and he also… isn’t so sure he wants to return anymore. He misses his cousins and his parents, yes, but he’s an outsider there now. Here is where he’s found acceptance; here is where being known as a Hero doesn’t seem so unfitting, doesn’t make him uncomfortable. And he knows there can’t really be anything between them because Botts has his duties as crown prince and, later, king, but he wants to be with him. Botts, of course, does too. Neither of them have gotten over each other in the slightest in the intervening time. But he wants to be together-together; he wants to make this work if Loran does. Yes, there’s the matter of him needing an heir, but just because it’s traditionally been a (the closest) blood relative doesn’t necessarily mean it absolutely has to be. They also don’t know that there will be any need for him to enter into a political marriage. If it comes to that, he’ll try to find some other arrangement instead, but if it’s unavoidable, then it’ll be political/symbolic only. And he’s still not siring an heir himself. He doesn’t want to give up before they’ve even gotten started.
Sooo, they get betrothed. They just decide it right there, hugging in the middle of the road. Botts kind of wants to give him a piece of his jewellery, but Loran doesn’t have pierced ears, and his clothing isn’t exactly conducive to wearing chokers or armbands (plus I’m pretty sure the armband would be too big for him anyway lol), and, indeed, he isn’t exactly the type to wear jewellery in the first place. Loran considers this and decides that he wouldn’t mind piercing his ear.
Really all I know about piercing ears is you’re supposed to wear a stud until it heals (a hoop would be more likely to catch on things and cause issues…?) and also that you’re not supposed to take it out until then. So the next town they stop in, when Botts shops for what he’ll need, he has Loran pick out a stud he likes. He chooses one with a brown gem that matches Botts’ eye colour; if he can’t wear one of Botts’ earrings, he still wants it to be connected somehow. Botts is flattered. After affixing him with the stud, Botts takes out one of his hoops and gives it to Loran to hold onto until he can switch to it; Loran accepts it, though he wants Botts to be the one to put it on him that first time.
(Botts thinks Loran looks very good with the stud, just in general but also because it marks him as his—though he isn’t sure how many people will connect the brown with his eye colour since it isn’t exactly unique or even uncommon—and he likes it more than he quite expected he would and decides he needs Loran to pick out something to similarly mark his as Loran’s too. idk, I just don’t think Botts would be the type to want to hide. They share a room and bed since Loran first comes to stay at the castle, too.)
I see Loran being a bit shorter than Botts and a bit older than him. The wiki has him at 16 in II and I don’t know how much time has passed between when he slays Malroth and when we meet him in DQM+, time-travel shenanigans aside, and I also can’t tell how old he’s supposed to be from Yoshizaki’s drawings, as there are times he looks closer to 20 and times he looks closer to 15. But he feels to me like he should be a bit older than Botts. idk, probably the only thing I’m confident on about his character is that he’s autistic. (Well, and suicidal, and kind.) I haven't gotten very far in II, I don’t think—just as far as visiting Moonbrooke and seeing the destruction that Hargon’s forces wrought—so I don’t really have much of an idea of him from that. I’ve really just got DQM+ to go off of. I’m very much considering getting the CD Theater, but I’m not really sure if I wanna pay $50 for it? That is better than the VI CD Theater, though…
I was originally planning that Botts would plan to name a kid of his sister’s as his heir… completely forgetting that his real-life sister died young. I thought since Murdaw gave him Tania in the dream world, that meant he (currently) had a sister in the real world too. That he gave him a sister so this fake life would feel more natural than one that’s even further from his actual life than being a country bumpkin already is. It still works, though, right? He just doesn’t already have in mind who he’ll name. (And he miiight have a harder time having whoever it is accepted than if they’re blood-related, but he’s still being somewhat idealistic here. But also I don’t exactly know much about that sort of thing.)
Huh, this apparently actually got notes on it, not that I can see them, thank you, tumblr, for being such a functional website.
Going under a cut because boy howdy did I ramble
Anyway. So I’ve been thinking about DQVI off and on for… a couple months or so now? At least? I recently got many of the DS (not 3DS, as they’re region locked and I don’t currently have a JP 3DS) games in JP, and it was mainly down to IX, VI, and M:J to play first. I went with Joker first, and pretty early on started thinking about and writing an AU where Terry gets isekaid again and is its protag. After finishing the game, I started IX, and while I’d had ideas for party member names, I plumb forgot them by the time I unlocked Patty’s Party-Planning Place, so I ended up making part of the VI party (Terry as a warrior, Milly as a mage, Botts as a priest, and Ashlynn as a thief as a temp member so I could Half-Inch me some alchemy ingredients before defeating the Master of Nu’un). I also read the Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry’s Wonderland 4-Panel Manga Theatre. So, yeah, VI was on the brain a lot, though it was mostly Terry (and 6terry) and much of it was actually more directly the Monsters spinoffs. Even when it was set during VI, it still had to do with Monsters.
Which. This also does. Because more recently, I read the Dragon Quest Monsters Plus manga. While Terry does appear in it, it follows a new protagonist, Clio, who travels to the world of the original trilogy at different points in time, so both Alef and Loran (and later Satori—I typically call Cannock by the name Grant, but Yoshizaki called him Satori, and thus so will I—and Luna) show up as well. Loran actually gets a pretty big role, and he’s probably the only reason I like the last two volumes LOL. I got attached to him pretty quickly. He doesn’t see all monsters as inherently a threat, unlike Alef, and while he’s still surprised at Clio considering them friends, he also doesn’t freak, also unlike Alef. He strikes me as autistic tbh, and also he’s definitely Going Through Some Shit. He’s at the very least passively suicidal. We meet him some time after the scions have defeated Malroth, and the same people who’d hailed him as a hero during his journey now call him a monster (化け物 bakemono) and fear, hate, and alienate him—humans are not supposed to be that strong, and so he must not be human. Presumably Satori and Luna don’t get it to the same degree, because while they also have a fear-inspiring amount of power, they have magic, so it’s at least understandable/explainable. Loran doesn’t. Humans are not supposed to be strong enough to destroy the literal God of Destruction, especially without magic.
(I would sooo totally read a manga that’s just about that Loran. That deals with his depression and viewing himself as more of a monster (化け物 bakemono) than the monsters (魔物/モンスター mamono/monster[s]) and not having the right to be called/call himself a Hero, and struggling to reconcile with who he’s become. His passive-to-active suicidality—he wants to know that he can die, but also he wouldn’t mind actually dying because it would mean he is human after all and not a monster. His alienation and the change in attitude toward him of the people around him from before and after he slew Hargon and Malroth. How he feels distanced even from Satori and Luna until they go out and track him down. By the way.)
So that’s how they got into my head at the same time. But how they then ended up combining…? Especially the way they did.
Loran winds up falling into a portal to the DQVI dream world at some point before he would have met Clio—or else he gets taken there instead of the time Clio finds himself in, as I started thinking about this before reading vol 5 and thus didn’t know that this was a whole 300 years after Malroth’s defeat. He runs into Botts and co. and joins the party. I’m thinking, since he’s not actually a dream-world resident, others will be able to see him when they travel to the real world? Yeah, Botts, Carver, and Milly are real-world residents, but Murdaw banished them to the dream world, effectively making them its residents, which is different from simply travelling there. After all, none of the party members you pick up in the real world suddenly need dream drops after making a round trip. But, the party still think he will at first, or at least wonder if he will.
I’m also not sure yet at what point exactly the party meet him. I’ve only played VI once before, and I’m not very far into my current playthrough, so I do not have nearly the same familiarity with it as with IX.
In any case, Loran feels sort of out of place at first, not just because he’s the new guy and in a different world (or timeline; possibly due to IX having you find Erdrick’s rusted equipment and alchemise them to be new again, I like to think of the mainline games all being set in the same world just in [sometimes vastly] different time periods), but because of the whole “more of a 化け物 (bakemono) than the 魔物 (monsters)” thing. He’s afraid of the party rejecting him if they learn of his true power, but they don’t. Botts assures him that he’s not a monster, and even tells him that he finds it impressive what people are able to do, the lengths they’re able to go, for those they care about. (Also, if the world needs a literal god dead in order to stave off her destruction, she’s going to produce a Hero or set of Heroes strong enough to kill god. Like, in Dai no Daibouken, Avan was strong enough to defeat Hadlar, but not Vearn, so he could not also be the Hero who faced him and so Dai came along and surpassed him. And, yeah, Dai’s only half human, but that’s one of the amazing things about humans: our adaptability and limitlessness. No, not every individual [hello, I’m disabled], but there is always going to be someone who will make the impossible possible.)
Botts and Loran end up bonding and even eventually courting. They both know when they start it that it cannot last, that it will end sooner rather than later when Loran returns to his own world/time. Even were they not from different worlds/times, they’re both crown princes; even were they not princes, they’re both from different worlds/times. So it’s just for now. A bit of normalcy amidst everything. Except they defeat Mortamor (and in this world, where he has people who accept him, Loran doesn’t mind being known as a Hero, even if it’s Botts who’s the true Hero), and they still haven’t found a way to send him back. He ends up staying at Somnia Castle with Botts after it’s all over, and they still haven’t found a way to send him back—even if they can create a portal, they still don’t know how to find the intended destination. Before they know it, they’ve fallen into a routine, in their peaceful castle life, and they realise they’ve fallen in love. That wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to become anything. It can’t. Loran breaks things off and leaves to search for a way home in a more practical/proactive manner, and while Botts puts on a brave face to see him off, he’s more gutted than he wants to be or thought he would be when he always knew it would come to this.
Some time later, Botts is leading some men on some expedition or other, haven't figured out what beyond that it likely has to do with monsters (even when they’re not under a Dark Lord’s influence, many of them are still effectively wild animals and thus more than capable of causing problems), and he meets a familiar figure on the road: Loran. He hasn’t found a way back, and he also… isn’t so sure he wants to return anymore. He misses his cousins and his parents, yes, but he’s an outsider there now. Here is where he’s found acceptance; here is where being known as a Hero doesn’t seem so unfitting, doesn’t make him uncomfortable. And he knows there can’t really be anything between them because Botts has his duties as crown prince and, later, king, but he wants to be with him. Botts, of course, does too. Neither of them have gotten over each other in the slightest in the intervening time. But he wants to be together-together; he wants to make this work if Loran does. Yes, there’s the matter of him needing an heir, but just because it’s traditionally been a (the closest) blood relative doesn’t necessarily mean it absolutely has to be. They also don’t know that there will be any need for him to enter into a political marriage. If it comes to that, he’ll try to find some other arrangement instead, but if it’s unavoidable, then it’ll be political/symbolic only. And he’s still not siring an heir himself. He doesn’t want to give up before they’ve even gotten started.
Sooo, they get betrothed. They just decide it right there, hugging in the middle of the road. Botts kind of wants to give him a piece of his jewellery, but Loran doesn’t have pierced ears, and his clothing isn’t exactly conducive to wearing chokers or armbands (plus I’m pretty sure the armband would be too big for him anyway lol), and, indeed, he isn’t exactly the type to wear jewellery in the first place. Loran considers this and decides that he wouldn’t mind piercing his ear.
Really all I know about piercing ears is you’re supposed to wear a stud until it heals (a hoop would be more likely to catch on things and cause issues…?) and also that you’re not supposed to take it out until then. So the next town they stop in, when Botts shops for what he’ll need, he has Loran pick out a stud he likes. He chooses one with a brown gem that matches Botts’ eye colour; if he can’t wear one of Botts’ earrings, he still wants it to be connected somehow. Botts is flattered. After affixing him with the stud, Botts takes out one of his hoops and gives it to Loran to hold onto until he can switch to it; Loran accepts it, though he wants Botts to be the one to put it on him that first time.
(Botts thinks Loran looks very good with the stud, just in general but also because it marks him as his—though he isn’t sure how many people will connect the brown with his eye colour since it isn’t exactly unique or even uncommon—and he likes it more than he quite expected he would and decides he needs Loran to pick out something to similarly mark his as Loran’s too. idk, I just don’t think Botts would be the type to want to hide. They share a room and bed since Loran first comes to stay at the castle, too.)
I see Loran being a bit shorter than Botts and a bit older than him. The wiki has him at 16 in II and I don’t know how much time has passed between when he slays Malroth and when we meet him in DQM+, time-travel shenanigans aside, and I also can’t tell how old he’s supposed to be from Yoshizaki’s drawings, as there are times he looks closer to 20 and times he looks closer to 15. But he feels to me like he should be a bit older than Botts. idk, probably the only thing I’m confident on about his character is that he’s autistic. (Well, and suicidal, and kind.) I haven't gotten very far in II, I don’t think—just as far as visiting Moonbrooke and seeing the destruction that Hargon’s forces wrought—so I don’t really have much of an idea of him from that. I’ve really just got DQM+ to go off of. I’m very much considering getting the CD Theater, but I’m not really sure if I wanna pay $50 for it? That is better than the VI CD Theater, though…
and is a re-run from our very first word game back in 2020!
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How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
After much sifting through of words that contained the letters “rain” without being a form of the word, I finally found this one! It’s from the prosification (I don’t wanna call it a novelization since there’s zero way it’ll reach novel length even if I do manage to finish it) of my NWN module The Wizard’s Tower (also still a WIP). I haven’t exactly worked on either of them in a while, but.
The tall stone tower looms through a gap in the canopy. Adrian shields his eyes against the rain dripping from the leaves as he peers up at it: sloping walls and conical roof grey as the clouds behind it, ivy, brown and withered, winding upward along the joins between the dull stone bricks.
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
This is from a reguri one that I’ve been working on recently, where I project my inability to wear anything on my left wrist because sensory issues onto Red (I know he has no trouble, but shhh). I’ve just been calling it “watch and bracelet” for the time being, and I am determined not to let that stick as a title
Red freezes in surprise for a moment before tipping his head forward to let the object slide off the bill of his cap and into his cupped hands: a bracelet made of knotted thread nearly the same shade of red as his cap, with a clear bead on one end and a loop on the other to serve as a closure. He looks up at Green wide-eyed.
"Figured you could start small, use a bracelet to get used to having something around your left wrist before moving your watch."
「Thank you,」 Red tells him, his movements a little awkward with the bracelet held between two of his fingers.
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
This is from an as-yet-unnamed (preslash) 6Terry fic based off an idea I had a while back where Milly decides that Terry needs a name for “Terry” to be short for that she can call him when she’s mad at him and goes with Terrance. He hates it and calls her Mireille (which “Milly” is actually short for, and which she hates just as much as he does “Terrance”) in retaliation, but also he’s happy, because, well, he did know that she sees him as a guy, but he likes having this proof of it.
"Have I mentioned you're kind of a weirdo?" Botts says. "That's not a bad thing," he goes on, holding up his hands when Terry glares at him. "In fact, it's kind of cute."
I’m apparently still drawing in the graph notebook I use for notes and sketches for builds, but at least I managed to grab a non-gel-ink pen to sketch with this time, so! Here is a better (?) drawing of Saya. Changed her bangs a bit, but I’m still not sure how to draw her twin tails. Also I realised while drawing this that Babs’ bunny suit is actually only slightly different from DQIX’s, design-wise. I wish you could acquire that one. I honestly don’t care that much for the normal bunny suit in this game; I like the vest.
I personally feel like it looks weird colouring her skin with pencil when everything else is pen, but she is a bit too dark-complexioned to leave it when everything else is coloured/shaded, so. Y’all get both versions.
I’ve forgotten how to draw, and using pen certainly didn’t help, but here’s my builder Saya (サーヤ). I gave her different hair ribbons since I wanted something between the default ones and the red bow. And since I didn’t want to try drawing no bangs, she’s ended up looking like Miku…
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
This is from an as-yet-untitled Camus/Astarion fic, an AU that was born from a combination of those “We ran in different circles” and “I would have ended up just like Sebastian had we met before” lines, as well as Astarion telling that one woman that her beau is a vampire and it’s for the best he didn’t show. I still don’t know how old I see Camus as being tbh, but usually he’s not old enough to have lived through all three BG games (I think he would’ve been ~7 during the first two in this AU?)
Also I just like the idea of Tav figuring out early that Astarion’s a vampire, or at least, like, y’know, not being surprised. I have several fics started surrounding the vampire reveal specifically because I’m disappointed there’s no option for the PC to be completely chill/nonchalant about it. He’s not subtle!
He turns again as Camus draws even with him, and now, able to see his face clearly, he finds himself stopping short and his thoughts tumbling to a halt in his head while his breath does the same in his throat. He doesn't hear what the man or Shadowheart say after that, their words washing over him unnoticed.
It would be a lie if he said he remembers what the man looked like. It was one evening, a hundred years ago, and though he's inherited his mother's lifespan, without the ability to enter Reverie, he doesn't nearly have her elven memory. What he remembers is silver curls; an almost ethereal beauty that surpassed any he had seen—man or woman, elf or otherwise—in his fifteen short years of life; red eyes that glowed faintly when shadows fell upon them. Even then, he had known that those eyes meant he was a vampire. He hadn't cared.
There is no way that this is the same man, not able to stand in the sun as he is. But there is no shaking this visceral certainty that he is, that he knows him.
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
Another one from The Wizard’s Tower. I’ve been working on it pretty consistently, though my progress has been anything but lol. It’s at ~6k now! And that’s without having gone and added more than a small bit of the dialogue from the module yet.
A small, answering smile flickers across Xander's expression. "And I'm grateful for that, but I still don't think we should go carelessly messing with Elnimster's… displays. I doubt he had those crates blocking off this room for no reason."
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
This is actually the most recent paragraph I’ve written. It’s from the “novelization” of my NWN1 module The Wizard’s Tower (also a WIP). Adrian, in the role of the PC, is a preexisting D&D OC, while Xander, the companion, I created specifically for the module (though he’s heavily influenced by another of my D&D OCs, Camus).
Adrian cuts his gaze away, back to where the skeleton sorcerer had stood, suddenly discomfited at the praise, at the earnest expression in Xander's pale green eyes. It's not as though his intentions were as noble as all that. He just… "I just felt sorry for them, honestly," he says. "Just standing there, with no purpose… Potentially for eternity."
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
From “on still waters the sky laid its head,” an Adrian/Mantides fic I began for Nevervember, which is an AU of the last act of MoW wherein Orbakh decides that Adrian would be too big an asset to kill and so makes him a spawn despite Adrian’s refusal of his offer. Mantides won’t kill him, and they both have to live with that.
"Don't worry." Adrian's voice cuts into his thoughts, and Mantides drags his gaze up from the pair of stakes in his hands. "If they decide to go after you first, I'll stake you before you've even risen, assuming they don't get to me too before I've had the chance. I know how much you Lathanderites hate the undead."
Mantides swallows thickly. "Right," he manages.
With a nod, Adrian turns on his heel to head toward the door opposite the one they came in, turning his stake over in his hand with a certain sort of hunger. "Now, let's find where those two keep their coffins. I don't know about you, but I am not keen on giving them the chance to come after us again."
As he follows after him, Mantides prays to no one in particular that he will only have to use the one stake.
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
From my as-yet-untitled HotU fic involving the Hall of Mirrors which I started for Nevervember. Adrian in this is the Hero of Neverwinter rather than Drogan’s Apprentice, so he’s already pretty close with Daelan.
He casts a quick look about the room for signs of lurking enemies before jogging over to Daelan's side, removing the Rod of Resurrection from where he has it strapped to his pack and falling to his knees beside him.
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
This is from the Zarad fight in Sea of Stars, my AU where I plopped Aoki into BGDA2 in Ysuran’s place
A brown blur streaks toward him, and Misao stumbles back from the sudden explosion of pain and warmth that blooms across the lower half of his face. Blinking tears from his eyes, he daubs gingerly at his—no doubt broken—nose as he turns unsteadily to find Zarad now standing on the opposite side of the room. The wizard’s bowed shoulders heave with his laboured breathing, his retrieved staff dangling loosely from the fingers of his left hand, the crazed fire burning in his eyes made all the madder by Misao’s blood smudged across his forehead and his own now dripping freely from his right hand hanging uselessly at his side, his sleeve plastered against his skin by a large, dark stain stretching from his elbow to his wrist.
Was this how he himself looked, before, when it came to humans? A hatred that consumed everything, leaving no room for reason, only the so-called “truth” that he himself had written upon the world before him. He can see, now, why Zarad felt he had no choice but to kill him. And now it is he who has no choice. For Zarad’s earlier words were true: this time, only one of them will leave this observatory alive. Zarad will have it no other way.
“I should have chased you down and made sure of your death myself when you fled, Misao Aoki.” The wizard’s voice is but a whisper, but Misao can hear it as clearly as if the man were standing at his side. “Rest assured, I am not a man who makes the same mistake twice!”
