how would nerissa smith and poseidon smith react if they met up with their extremely-distant-relative cynthia conifer smith to partake in the age-old tradition of Mario Kart Wii (2008)
okay so. first of all. nerissa would 100% hate cynthia, and depending on at what point in the plot weāre yoinking her out of the narrative, specifically too she would be a bit jealous of how easily she gets along with poseidon. they have similar dispositions i think, although poseidon may be a little moodier than cynthia LMAO (not his fault. he is suffering an incurable disease called being 12 years old) but overall they are both giving Major Idealist. also they both have that artsy creative vibe and thatās not really something nerissa understands in Any capacity. so yeah
anywayā¦from my understanding all three of them are pretty socially isolated (though in very different flavours) so this would beā¦interesting LOL. nerissa is very competitive. i strongly believe poseidon would hate playing video games with her because she would be both a sore loser AND a sore winner. but he has no one else to play with so. he has no choice
but like. mario kart wii? nerissa would suck at this game. cynthia is for sure kicking her ass. and sheād start feeling all inferior about it and sheād be like āclearly the game is busted. clearly youāre cheating. clearly the physics of this game are all wrong and iām losing because the devs were bad at their jobs.ā and poseidon would be soooo mad like issa itās not that deep. stop. and heād be asking cynthia for pointers which would just make nerissa even more frustrated because like, he should be asking HER for help? SHEāS his sister?
now. the question here i cannot answer is, would cynthia come away from this feeling like she can Fix Her?
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Just because Iām feeling extra: Whenever he moves, thereās a rainbow trail following the movement; where itās just wagging a finger or him full-on sprinting. Itās not that taxing since itās just light and itās just extra enough to make him feel better. He can also fill a whole room with lights and rainbows/stars so long as theyāre not actual bullets. Just to be extra.
And I am also interested in a very big "what if" (or AU) where either Poseidon or Nerissa rescue some kind of animal and keep it as a pet, for some reason I'm imagining some kind of magical tiny animal with Poseidon haha (but write whatever comes to mind, if anything)
okay iām only responding to this one with this rather than writing it because i have already written a fic with this plot :p in osa modern au though, so i will rotate the idea for canon āverse and maybe revisit it hahaha but in the meantime. poseidon adopting stray cats is canon to modern au <3
ALSO as a casual lore dump, fun fact! before osa was about mages and Oppression and etc etc it was a story about poseidon wanting to help the fae and nerissa of course helping him do that because she is the bestest big sister and must protecc him. so heād definitely adopt a fairy. canonically. if such a think existed in the canon āverse.
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if i adjust my hyperfixation slightly to the left i can start working on the asld pokemon au again (likely won't happen anytime soon, but i have been Thinking fondly of it. it's been a MINUTE since i worked on it, like probably 2 or 3 years). i don't think i ever shared the cast's partner pokemon publicly but it is why my first best buddy in pokego was a glaceon named nerissa. anyway if you're interested we had
nerissa - glaceon: an ice type, obviously. it mostly just felt right, but i think there's something to be said about, like, her having a partner with SO many potential evolutions and choosing to evolve it into an ice type (a la having so many different potential manifestations of her magic but actively choosing to freeze it and favouring ice-based magic even after she becomes an angel and can do whatever the fuck she want, because she's Literally god now, etc.). my second option for her was froslass for the dual ghost-ice typing
poseidon - mudkip: i have no reasoning for this other than i think it'd be cute. and water type. starter pokemon and all that. they're both just little guys. i have a note somewhere that he received mudkip from ryes when he was 11, which is a cute mental image
ada - altaria. a shiny one because then they have matching golden aesthetics. its a big fluffy powerhouse that evolves from a small fluffy bird. in my head she met swablu as a kid when she found it injured and nursed it back to health, despite her mother's disdain for pokemon
emmet - lucario. ORIGINALLY, i thought to give him a fire type, but fighting fits so much better honestly. emmet's whole Thing is like...his ability to Stand Up And Fight. and a lot of his development is centred around this idea of inner strength > physical strength, so the aura pokemon feels...fitting
isobel - blaziken. similar vibes as my rationale behind emmet's pokemon, but obviously with the dual fire type too because she's well. she's got that inner flame. what can i say
avery - in the au she actually doesn't have a pokemon for most of her life, although adonis and amery do. however i believe as a nod to her ward-setting capabilities and self-destructive tendencies, i assigned her forretress
adonis - charizard. he's THAT guy
adrienne - arcanine. big fire puppy? that's literally her. in crafting this storyline i definitely began seeing parallels between her and james team rocket but you know. it's just how it is when youre rich and your parents suck and whatever
ely - milotic. a beautiful water type for a beautiful water mage. also in a way it sort of mirrors his relationship with adrienne (ok in the sense of shes like this guy fucking sucks [racist] and then "haha i guess hes kinda hot tho" in the way everyone hates feebas until it evolves, i don't know. but actually in the idea i wrote down for this he, like ada, found his pokemon buddy injured and nursed it back to health. UNLIKE ada, he set it free after - but then it came back to him after it evolved because it was endeared by his healer swag)
i also wrote down that amery has a deerling, which is fitting because of her and ada's shared spring motif, i suppose. ryes i assigned relicanth because i mean. yeah (side note: he would be OBSESSED with the regis, lmao). emerson was a piplup probably for the same reason poseidon was a mudkip. for whatever reason in this au i assigned aether and erebus ho-oh and lugia respectively, even though there are LITERALLY White and Black legendary pokemon, lmao. my mind is an enigma even i can't comprehend
also, elnora's was zorua, which is...such a good choice. kudos to past me for that one. stella was mightyena so i guess dark types run in the family
anyway, that's pretty much all i've got. i had like, ideas about legendary encounters, etc. too (OBVIOUSLY poseidon would encounter and befriend mew, it's kinda analogous to chaos right??) and i think reasonably nerissa would Have to meet giratina because like. underworld = distortion world, maybe. i also think she and articuno would make an epic duo strictly in the sense of they uh. both have wings. and ice beam. aether is like that guy in the one anipoke movie who somehow manages to trap arceus in his basement so he can cast judgement on the haters (that is not what happened in that movie. but it IS what aether would do, except "the haters" is just erebus). in my ideal world this is an au in comic form but i really don't draw that often so it'll probably never properly see the light of day. still. it's in my brain. and my notes app, apparently
request: nerissa & poseidon + #12: things you said when you thought i was asleep.
wc: 888
Sometimes, Nerissa feels something tugging at her. A hand, a familiar one, but she cannot identify whose. It feels the same, yetādifferent. It is too small, it is somehow gentler. She canāt open her eyes to see. She tells herself she wouldnāt want to, even if she could.
Sometimes, she supposes she must be dreaming it. Other timesā¦sheās not so sure.
But even if she knows it is not the sameāthinks she knows, at leastāit serves the same purpose. Calls to her, says, Come back to me. She is trying, but her eyes refuse to open. Her body, which feels at times too heavy and at others weightless, like it doesnāt exist at all, remains immovable, and the rest of her is simply too exhausted to do anything about it.
The hand is not a permanent fixture, or, if it is, then it is not one she can feel all the time. She never hears anyone moving, though. She never feels any other presence nearby. There is no sensation of touch other than the gentle hold this hand has over her own, and yet its grip is far from steady. It trembles. Sometimes it is a tight grasp; others, so loose she is certain this, too, is merely a phantom.
But it happens so often. It is like she is not even breathing when the hand is gone, like her existence is somehow tethered to it, and she thinks it must be, because there is nothing left of her except for that hand and that voice and the feeling like, maybe, she belongs somewhereāwith someoneāafter all.
The more time that passes, the firmer the hold becomes, though, quite opposite to what she might expect of a spirit. Unless, of course, she is drawing nearer and nearer to the Underworldāthis would make sense, and yet she has always thought death to be some sort of reprieve. It is true, though, isnāt it, that she is in no pain? She simply cannot open her eyes, cannot readjust her limbs. This is almost better, anyway; she has grown so very tired of making choices, like she ever even had any to begin with.
But it is not just the pressure of this hand over hers. Eventually, there does come an accompanying sound: a voice, muffled and distant but familiar. Comforting. She knows it, and yet canāt place it, is too worn by this violent lethargy to even try. At first, it is indistinguishable. Over time, it becomes clearer:
āā¦and I thought that made sense, ācause, you know, itās like Mom always said, but itās not like I want to make everyone else upset just ācause I am.ā A sigh. āBut thatās why sheās helping me. Itās just taking longer than I thought, even though Chaosā¦ā The hand holding hers twitches, and then the voice goes on with, āAnd she knows itās your fault too, but I knowāitās not your fault, I mean, butā¦ I donāt always know how to feel, thatās all. I guess I just wish youād wake up already.ā
The words donāt make sense, not really. But the voiceāthe voice is soothing, even when it is sharper, almost angry. Just as quickly, it will smooth out again, mellow down. Its ownerās emotional volatility is beyond clear, and yet those ever-shifting emotions mean nothing to Nerissa, she cannot feel them at allā¦
It is impossible to tell how much time passes between the words that are spoken to her. Sometimes, they are clearer than at other times. Sometimes, she thinks she is straining to hear, and yet there is no strength left for her to strain with.
āI was doing more training today,ā the voice often informs her. āAuntie Emerson says my control is improving, but itās hard. I always feel likeā¦ā Sometimes, a pensive silence. Sometimes, a hard, angry tone: āI canāt focus, ācause I worry too much about you. And how is that fair, when you donāt evenāknow?ā
There are other times, too. Times when tears overpower words, or there are no words at all, and yet she knows the presence extends beyond that hand in hers, because she can hear the steady inhale, exhaleālong and soft, as if deepened by sleep. The hand never leaves hers. She wonders which of them is the lifeline, and which is drowning. She can never wonder about much for long, though; no matter how the hand pulls at her, there is the other side, the sheer relief of blank darkness. It, too, is constant. It is warm. It is comfortable.
āI brought everything back,ā the voice tells her, once. āBut I wanted toā¦ The pictures, I meanāI wanted to hold on to them for a little while longer. I wish you hadnāt, but I guess I get why you never showed me them. I never really realized before how much you look like Dad. But maybeāyou smile like Mom, I think. Maybe not. I donāt know the last time I even saw you smile.ā A pause. āI miss your smile, Issa. I miss you.ā
The compulsion to respondāto, perhaps, smileāis there, and yet, just as quickly, the words become muddled. The compulsion dies. She thinks only of that dark nothingness. This is a sort of death, too, but the hand never leaves. Somewhere from deep within, Nerissa knows it never will.
YAYY thank you for sending nerissa <3 always a privilege to get to yap about her
44: Do they believe they are more in control or being controlled (by others, their circumstances or their life in general) and are they correct in their assumption?
being controlled, 100%. so much of her story is about this! she has no agency, she has no control - she is holding desperately on to the only thing that gives her some security, and in OSF she feels that slip away from her, too, when it turns out poseidon feels betrayed by the lengths she went to to āprotectā him. at its heart ASLD is still a story about how, like, society is structured for the benefit of a Few, and everyone else gets screwed over in the process. eventually obviously nerissa gets to live freely, but i donāt know how in control of her own life she would ever really feel. her parents were killed because of what she is. she died and came back to life, because someone else screwed up the world and she had the shit luck of being born ācaught in the middleā of the conflict that propelled him to do that. even after aether is dead and the border has been opened, i imagine those things - and everything she had to do as this symbol of revolution for the people of both kingdoms - would haunt her forever. so even if she has agency at that point, it would be Complicated
45: What is their fatal flaw?
according to my planning document, itās hubris LOL. and i do think there is merit to that, though i think itās a bit more complex post-OSA. by OSF you wouldnāt necessarily see nerissa as arrogant really at all - actually this is one of the things that makes everyone else realize how much she is suffering, the fact that she isnāt even going āUM, ACTUALLY, YOUāRE WRONG AND IāM RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.ā however, she very much has an attitude of āiām the only person who can protect poseidonā that gets her in a lot of trouble in OES and OSF, but this isnāt really founded in arrogance so much as this paranoia and fear of the world. so i think it may be more accurate to say her fatal flaw is that she is untrusting, even though in OSA she had this inner conflict of like, well mom says everyone is Bad and Out To Get Us, but these people seem nice, i want to trust them - and then she loses adrienne, and in a short time after nearly loses poseidon, too. and she starts to think like, i was wrong. i fucked up. this is all my fault. i canāt trust anyone but myself. i canāt even trust poseidon to know whatās best for himself. so, yeah. nerissa is a very dynamic character so you could make an argument for either thing depending on where in her arc she is i think
55: Do they live in the past, the present or the future?
past. and iāve already written a huge DW entry about how chronosās gate is a metaphor for nerissaās (well, also other peopleās lol but she has main character privilege) trauma, and this idea of āgetting lostā in the gate is all about this. so if you donāt mind the OSF spoilers, you can read all about that here! but the tl;dr is i donāt think nerissa ever stops being defined by her past. but her development is in her decision to keep living and striving for a future she deserves anyway. not just because itās what poseidon wants, but also for her own sake: to live even though it is hard and even though there was a time when she wanted nothing more than to die and get away from it all
