(trying to be less) inactive

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.)

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.)