the soul of a poet & delusions of grandeur

like the fact that you were out of earshot for the entirety of Purple Kingdom's discussions about the Gold Kingdom's base, and only wandered into earshot once they started talking about Gold's makeshift "floating island" is so funny. like poor Matto was God's most least favorite that day.

also as a nosey person who loves putting way too much effort into a bit. i am dying to know Willow's whole imagined deal. i don't know if it's weird to come out and ask for the information this way, maybe you'll have it saved on the backburner for a trillion years. whatever the case may be i will gladly be an ear on this beautiful tale of a Very Real Bard Who's Very Real. if i were in your shoes i would have evaporated into a fine mist.

Legit the infiltration bit is so funny in retrospect because like... everything that could've racheted up my anxiety did. Like I legit thought they all knew about our floating island from that point on and somehow didn't process the fact my own team was talking on the radio with em.

Now as far as Willow goes, their fake half assed backstory is rife with tropes and cliches that would let me bullshit my way out of anything so it's a bit basic but here goes.

Willow is from a kingdom on another continent up north past the world border (all bullshit, needed a location no one could verify existed) where citizens in their 20s are encouraged to travel the world in search of beauty in both the natural world and in surrounding kingdoms (excuses to pop up wherever, whenever, needed an excuse incase folks showed up to Green when I was there, or if I risked going to Gold afterwards, which probably wouldn't have ended well)

Willow specifically hails from the fictional town of Valia up in the frigid mountains of the Millennium Wastes towards the north tip of the equally fake kingdom of Arcadia, because I'm a sucker for thinly veiled references to media I like. The cold weather location was, of course, all an elongated excuse to show up in multiple layers of clothes and wear a huge scarf to cover up my robot bits, although I completely forgot to give em gloves but no one seemed to notice cause minecraft skins are so low detail anyway. (It's funny because, like... I think very few people clocked I was in a crop top hoodie for days 1-2, and the green coat I wore for the rest of the smp was like... a really baggy army jacket with a pan pride pin on it, i need to draw refs of all 3 outfits tbh)

The bard aspect was partly an excuse to move from place to place, and partly because people kept calling me a bard in character, the backstory reason was Willow grew up loving being able to share whatever creative spark they had, and naturally that led to them becoming a bard! The title "Bard of the Winds" was a lofty title I made up to seem more skilled and notable, but in backstory, it was a title given to Willow by Arcadian nobility to have em be an emmisary of the Winds that supposedly protect the kingdom from outward threats. Basically, a bard that goes where the wind goes. (Also, an accidental scrungecraft reference I rolled with after it was pointed out to me by a friend I workshopped some stuff with)

And I think that's that! Any oddities or strange behavior would be bullshited until folks believed me, like how I originally planned to speak but was smartly told not to cause it'd be obvious, so I instead used signs to communicate. I figured "cursed to not speak by a warlock" made sense as an excuse, but honestly? I could've just said I was mute. That's like just a normal thing and way easier to explain.

Oh! Also, Willow uses any pronouns! I figured I'd mention that, but I'm also predictable and make a good chunk of my characters genderfluid for that sweet, sweet self indulgent gender representation.

TLDR cause I went a lil nuts: