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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Story Summary:
āEven the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.ā
-Sun Tzu
--
Charlie has a lot of work to do. He has to maintain a questionable job with a familiar boss that has an unexplainable grudge against him, work more diligently than ever as a villain, keep his husband's many stressors at bay (despite him often being one of them), try to get rid of the information people have on his identity, worry about whoever the hell keeps stalking him, and--what's that? His marriage is starting to suffer the consequences?
Oh.
--
ok so i just finished reading kyec. and uh. art. yeah. enjoy i guess. sorry my social skills aren't very good.
dude??
DUDE???????????
?????
shakes you. shakes you and explodes you with my mind. wh hat the freak this is so cool THIS IS SO COOL i adorree your designs so much?? the angel mask design HELLO??????
ive been staring at these forr uh. ten minutes in silence now i thinkk im very very excited about this
the winggsss..... ohmygod the iwngs the wings look so fucking good this is so peak im going to be thinking about this all week im losing my mind
āEven the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.ā -Sun Tzu -- Charlie has a lot of work to do. He has to maintain a questionable job with a familiar boss that has an unexplainable grudge against him, work more diligently than ever as a villain, keep his husband's many stressors at bay (despite him often being one of them), try to get rid of the information people have on his identity, worry about whoever the hell keeps stalking him, and--what's that? His marriage is starting to suffer the consequences? Oh. --
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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A List of References in Keep Your Enemies Close (Wait, Not That Close)
Since itās somehow been a year since I posted KYEC (to the warmest reception Iāve ever gotten from a fic!! Seriously yāall are the bestāI canāt believe Iām still getting comments a year after publication), I compiled a complete (as far as I can remember, at least) list of all of the references (with a few explanations about my writing choices) within the fic for funsies (and also bc I put Way Too Much effort into melding all of these elements together and wanted a full list of all the things I put together that were not intended to be put together lmao)
Oh, and if it wasnāt obvious⦠spoilers for the fic lol ā if you haven't read it but are interested in what the heck I'm talking about, it's here on ao3!
(Iām just calling every segment separated by a line break a scene even though some of them arenāt reallyyy an actual scene for the sake of clarity)
Scene 1:
One line in and Iāve already name-dropped the Watchers: not much to say about them at this point since itās pretty much the usual āgodly beings that resemble indigo biblically-accurate angels that watch people.ā All I really added here was the threads of Fate mention thatāll become relevant later
Scene 3:
Grian-proof vault: this oneās a double reference! The obvious one is from Season 9 (Grianās ep 10) where Mumbo challenges Grian to get into his vault without breaking blocks and it turns out to be a decoy vault, but the second one is from Season 6 (Grian ep 100), where Grian, Bdubs, and Iskall (as the Dragon Bros) break into Mumboās vault to induct him into the cult club by guessing the code to be 1-2-3-4 (the āI didnāt plan for someone to come in and start jamming codes inā and KYEC!Grianās response, āIt was the second thing I triedā are reworded from their follow-up convo about it in the next episode)
KYEC!Grianās stolen diamonds: okay Iām pretty sure this Season 6 arc started in Grianās ep 73, where he mentions for the first time that his diamonds have āmysteriously gone missingā ā KYEC!Grianās got the same problem, only most of his diamonds are accidentally stolen and are causing more problems than economic deficits lol ā weāll get to the completion of this arc wayyy later, but this was the very first plot point to fall into place for this fic
Detective Grian: going even farther back into Season 6, we have the Sherlock Grian arc (begins in Grianās ep 56) ā once again, weāll get back to this one
Fun fact: the moment where KYEC!Grianās āskin prickled with the distinct sensation that someone was watching, waiting for him to do somethingā was meant to be foreshadowing that would become obvious at the end bc I originally planned to have KYEC!Grianās time traveling be onscreen ā that scene was meant to show Future Grian traveling to the past to steal his diamonds, but getting the timing slightly off so he was still in the apartment when this convo takes place, and is therefore the mysterious watcher mentioned here; I didnāt end up writing out that scene, though so now it just looks like another surface level Watcher reference
Scene 4:
KYEC!Grianās powers: the wings donāt require explanation but hereās my rationale for the āperspective-shiftingā (which, lemme tell you was cool in theory but SO annoying to figure out what to call/describe) ā itās basically just being able to go into F5 mode (the range limit for him is basically that he can move what Iāll call his mental camera to any point provided that at all times, his body is visible to the mental camera from some angle, i.e. he canāt see into the next room if there are no doors/windows but he can see around corners and objects); this powerās another Watcher parallel but also a contrast to Scarās in that itās good for revealing āthe truthā while Scarās power is deceptive in nature
Scene 5:
Hotguy!: fun fact, I actually started writing this fic before I knew about Scarās Hotguy persona (I was grievously behind on Season 9 when I started this fic in mid 2022) so KYEC!Scarās original hero name was Goodfellow and he used a staff, not a bow ā but obviously, I swapped it to fit the Hotguy we all know and love (and for the sake of keeping track of episode references, Iām naming Scarās Season 9 ep 5 as the first Hotguy mention in canon, donāt @ me if Iām wrong lol)
KYEC!Scarās powers: alright, hereās a lil secret, thereās actually smth going on with his bow that never gets brought up in this fic and that I will be keeping secret bc I may or may have smth in the works. I can, however, talk about his illusions! While KYEC!Grianās power lets him change how he sees things, KYEC!Scarās lets him change what other people see. The illusions are also a nod at Scarās terraforming + building skills since he can create intricate landscapesĀ
Xelqua (as KYEC!Grianās villain name): other ideas for KYEC!Grianās villain name included Poultry Man + Watcher but I settled on Xelqua since itās commonly associated with Watcher!Grian but feels more like a name than just plain Watcher, and then afterwards, I developed the actual Xelqua lore
Xelqua (the lore one): obviously we have the nod at our tried and tested fanon āhe was only meant to watchā but the mention of him āengineer[ing] countless games⦠with gods and men alikeā is a blink and youāll miss it Life series reference (I suppose it could also be a reference any of Grianās other minigames but the Life series was what I had in mind lol) ā also, the whole āUltimately, the Watchers located Xelqua after he succumbed to his nature and began stirring up trouble againā bit of lore was just me riffing off that fable about the frog and the scorpion, which traumatized me as a kid and therefore lives in my brain rent-free
Scene 6:Ā
Harmless pranks: rapidfire references, letās go! āa bit of āmisplaced copperāā = Mumboās copper ālaggingā into Grianās inventory (Grian Season 8 ep 13), āa few disappearing doorsā = Grian being a chronic door thief (...pretty much all of Season 7), āa few chests filled with eggsā = Grian + his quest to clog up his messaging system with Mumbo (Grian Season 6 ep 22 + many, many more instances)
Scene 7:
Roofed forest: very, very random but I did write this scene with Scarās first Third Life episode in the background and was imagining the roofed forest he and Grian decimated as the scene he projects here
Also, I need you to know this fight scene was fully rewritten at least four times ;-;
Scene 9:
Mumbo unlocking Grianās handcuffs: this wasnāt a reference when I wrote the fic but now itās a reference to the Mumbo side fic I wrote for this au that writes out this scene
Scene 11:
KYEC!Grianās comment: āI was broke and in need of a flatmate so he couldāve been an arsonist for all I cared, as long as he didnāt touch my stuffā ā can I just cite all of the Life series here
Okay, I SWEAR the line, āYou watch, Mumbo, Iāll be so subtle that youāll forget Iām a supervillainā was based on an actual Grian line (or several) that start the same way but I canāt remember where itās from
Scene 13:
More stolen diamonds: hereās the unofficial start of the Jangler plot lol ā the moment this ficās foundation really āclickedā for me was when I noticed mysterious diamond thievery appeared in both the time travel arc and the Jangler arc, and I was like āI can work with thatā
Jellie: I want you to know the staging of this scene was specifically so I could have a reversal of the āvillain stroking a cat while schemingā trope where Scar is a) wanting to do a good deed not a villainous one and b) basically getting a plan fed to him
Scene 14:
Okay pretty much this sceneās basically the transcribed version of a scene from Grianās Season 6 ep 56 lmao but ig Iāll just talk more about how I thought to include the Jangler plot in the first place; originally, the premise of this fic was adapted from an abandoned non-MCYT fic draft I had floating around in my WIP folder, where the two characters were university dormmates who were unknowingly also vigilante partners + there was a whole Miraculous Ladybug style love square going on (on second thought, I was basically just making MLB with vigilantes lmao). When I got the idea to adapt it to a Desert Duo-centric superhero trying to catch supervillain fic, I wanted to make it platonic since most of the superhero aus Iāve read for the pair are romantic and I wanted to do smth different ā the problem was that getting rid of the romance also got rid of a lot of the tension between the characters, so I needed smth to replace it ā hence the detective/Jangler dynamic being included to make sure both characters were actively hiding a secret from the other at all times
Scene 16:Ā
This is probably a little obvious on second read but I did leave a comment to myself on one of my draft docs pointing out that KYEC!Scar decided to continue going out as the Jangler (even though heād already technically fulfilled the returning diamonds thing heād invented the persona for) because he overheard Grian talking about how heād prefer to have more to work on + would get money from itĀ
Scene 18:
Attempted murder: back on the Season 6 reference train we go! This is from Grianās ep 12 where he pranks an AFK Jevin by putting him on a flying machine and the game glitches and sends Jevin falling to his death
Scene 20:
The foreshadowing here is very obvious but this scene was a last minute addition I did not plan to include but was compelled to write bc I needed something to lighten the mood a bit since it was getting too serious and also bc I wanted to include the āsweet jobā pun. Yes, I know itās terrible. Yes, I laugh at it every time.
Scene 21 + 22:Ā
Cookie trail: hereās another āmostly transcribedā scene from Grianās Season 6 ep 57 ā I ran into a little problem logistically since flying isnāt the norm in this world but is in Hermitcraft, so I had to shove in the whole āflying machine to reach the top of the cookieā thing lmaoĀ
KYEC!Stress: she does not make an appearance but I gave her ice powers bc of her ice castle base in Season 6
Scene 24:Ā
This entire scene is just Desert Duo dancing around each other trying to keep their secret identities secret but KYEC!Scarās comment, āI always forget what informationās publicā is a bit of irony that made me laugh while writing bc it comes straight after he accidentally reveals he knows where the cookie was
Scene 25ā28:
Hitman after KYEC!Grian: yep this goes back to Grianās Season 6 ep 14 where Jevin puts out a hit on Grian after the AFK prank that Iskall tries to carry outĀ
Grianās trap: this is obviously just the trap for Iskall that Grian makes to stop him but I would like you to know that I went back to the episode to count the number of pistons used to make sure it lined up lmao
Scene 28 is also basically just a very dramatic version of the chase scene in this episode with some Watcher paranoia for spice
Scene 30ā31:
Time machine: time to circle all the way back around to this plot lol ā I didnāt think it made sense for KYEC!Grian to build a time machine himself during all of this but he still gets access to one in the end thanks to Mumbo. Grianās Season 6 ep 79 has him go back in time to stop his diamonds from being stolen, only to realize heās the one who stole them in the first place, and I thought it was a fitting way to end the fic after all the diamond stealing shenanigans
And hey, that's it! That list totally didn't take me like two hours to write up and find the episodes for! No wonder I had to restructure this fic like seven times when writing it!
Anyway, if you read this far, thanks for indulging my madness :) And to anyone who's engaged with any of my fics, thank you thank you thank you for every hit, kudos, comment, and bookmark!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Behold, the elaborate Grian and Scar identity shenanigans au that has been plaguing my mind for the past six months lolā
In which Grian is a detective by day and supervillain by night, Scar is a hero by day and the Jangler by night, and they're both unknowingly chasing each other (oh, and they're roommates because of course they are).