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mal_contentedWarning for Spoilers for Isle Of The Lost and Descendants.
CW: for angst, food gross, some violence and horror, abuse, possible animal cruelty mentions (One of her best friends is Cruella's son....) and a lot of other things you'd probably be shocked to realize is actually fairly canon for Disney after all....
CW: for angst, food gross, some violence and horror, abuse, possible animal cruelty mentions (One of her best friends is Cruella's son....) and a lot of other things you'd probably be shocked to realize is actually fairly canon for Disney after all....
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Date: 2021-07-26 11:12 am (UTC)Name: Chicklet
Contact: PM here, or
18+? Still am, yep.
Other Character: Sho Minamimoto is coming baaaaack.
Character
Name: Her first name is Mal, short for Maleficent. She has not yet earned her full first name, according to her mother. Her middle name is Bertha. Her last name is not yet given in canon.
Canon: Isle Of The Lost (books)/ Descendants (Movies)/ the assorted related media where they actually make sense. (So some of the quick read read books in the sub series, and only the parts of Wicked World that don't, you know, actively contradict the rest of canon.)
Canon point: CRAU, taken originally from the part in Descendants 2 when she is driving her vespa off the cliff.
Age: Late teens, not sure her exact age. This was either early senior year of HS or late the year before, since the books after deal with senior year stuff.
Canon history: OC/malleable protagonist-only. For OCs, provide a brief background detail of your character's canon, sufficient to understand the context of your character and relevant setting terms. For malleable protagonists, list their important choices here (for easy reference of castmates).(since this isn't for her? If I misread that I will edit and add whatever is needed here!)no subject
Date: 2021-07-29 06:07 pm (UTC)All Or Nothing - In canon, Mal was raised to be evil. Her world was very black and white. Good and evil were clear and obvious. Everyone knew that princes and princesses who were heroes or the kids of heroes were good guys. Villains and their kids were evil. Pink was a "good" colour. Anything dark was coded evil. Good guys ate good food, villains ate trash. The Isle was for the Evil, the rest of the world for the Good. When she went to Auradon she was evil among good working towards an evil plan. And then she flipped, she chose good. And when she did, she tried to go all in. She thought she had to be perfect good. And honestly the one thing she did knowingly that wasn't - embracing her magic - was berated by nearly everyone around her as bad. She felt stifled by good. And when she felt she couldn't handle good any ore, she decided that clearly meant she had to go back to evil.
She followed that same pattern in SMK, which was a huge part of what she and Lydia fought about at the end. (That, and a mattress...) She felt she had to show them all that she was the new big bad, that she was evil. Rotten to the core. She avoided letting anyone see any evidence that she had any good in her because she couldn't have good in her. She failed at being good... so she clearly was evil, right....? RIGHT?
Art please! Like Pi-face, Mal doesn't confine her art to polite little paintings on canvas. But where he makes his trash sculptures, she mostly paints. All over. Everything. Clothes? YEP. Lockers. For sure. The wall over her bed in the dorm? YEP. The outside of the school, every fountain she can find...? Yes and yes. She will tag everything and anything. But unlike most taggers, her paintings - even with spray paint - are pretty amazing. In SMK she spent months on a wall mural of all the apprentices, until a sort of friend, brainwashed, wrecked her work. Ace and Lydia tried to fix it but... that was kind of it for her. Plus she was getting sick of having to get to know all the new kids just to paint them properly. But when Mal gets too stressed she turns to painting to blow off steam. Paid work, tagging, decorating her own space... so long as she can be creative, it doesn't matter to her. She also canonically does some amazing sketches.
Rep is everything - Mal was the worst of the worst for her age on the Isle. She reveled in her rep and what it got her. She didn't care about respect, she had fear. Then in Auradon she tried to be good, so again she needed her rep. She needed to be seen as good, she needed them to love her. Not because she wanted to be loved, but because that was the rep she needed to be what she thought she had to be. In SMK she tried for the baddest of the bad rep again, because she was afraid that anything else would make her a victim. She doesn't know how not to try to be the best/worst. Or rather she doesn't know how not to try to seem that way. She doesn't know how to just exist as one of many. She needs people to think they know who she is, to buy into whatever persona she is selling. Because if they buy into the persona... so can she. It is easier to be evil when everyone treats her as evil. She had herself convinced it was easier to be good when people saw her as good.... but that was not the case. That she still thinks it is, is vital, however.
Four Hearts as One - Mal.... Mal refuses to admit how fiercely she can love. Her friends. Ben. Even her mother who... never loved her. Mal tries to justify the things she does for love, but the truth is... it is love that made her try to be good, love that made her stick with it as long as she could and love... that made her sure she had to leave. As shown in a scene just past her canon point, she was sure that she was all wrong for Ben, that she was ruining his goodness, that she would destroy Auradon if she stayed with him. Also after her pull point we see just how close she is with Evie, and then later with her other friends. She loves. Deeply. Strongly. Leaving them tore her apart, and she didn't leave until staying was worse. And again in a scene just after her pull, Evie offers to stay with her on the Isle, and she rips her heart apart again by not letting her. Because Evie had been happy in Auradon in a way she never had been on the Isle. Evie would be miserable, and as much as Mal didn't want to be alone, she'd rather be alone than see her best friend suffer.
Defensive obsession - I have to say I felt very vindicated in how I played Mal obsessively patrolling in SMK when canon showed her constant vigilance at the start of the third movie in hunting for Uma. Mal is a protector, no matter what she thinks she is. She wants to protect those who matter to her. Once Carlos became one of hers, she refused to let anyone else bully him. Once Evie became hers, she made sure everyone knew it, knew that crossing Evie was crossing Mal. When she came to love Ben, she kept on with the plan to protect her friends until she saw a way to protect all of them - by choosing good. By choosing love. In the battle against her mother, if you watch, she keeps herself between her mother - the threat - and her friends as much as possible.
And when she couldn't, like when her mother was between her and Ben, she did the best she could to keep her mother's attention. Even though she was scared to death. And in defense of her friends and Auradon... she was able to stare dow her mother for the first time in her life.
Again, just past her pull point we see that she puts herself on the line to save Ben, even though it puts her in horrible positions and means that she might never regain her rep. To save him, she even lets herself get dragged back to Auradon and when she realizes he's been spelled she makes herself vulnerable in front of everyone to save him.
CRAU Personality: CRAUs only:
CRAU was changing her, but hadn't finished when the came petered out. Slyvando is desperately trying to show her that middle grounds exist, and that she can find them. Sylvando, Lydia, and Ace were all working on trying to get her to love and accept herself as she is, without trying to be what she thinks she should be.
She also has learned to think on a larger scale. Not just save one kingdom, save whole worlds. Even though she was claiming she was saving it so she could take it over herself. She also had more places to paint and started seeing that painting could be a way to earn money, which she never had thought of before. Getting paid for her art. It was a path towards something more banal than being the most evil evil or being the best girlfriend of the king. It was something that was just about Mal being Mal.
Always Keep In Mind: Watching her vulnerabilities. Making sure she is very aware when someone that she doesn't trust sees something she fears could be used against her.
CRAU - the way the game tapered out, trying to remember the people she encountered but didn't have strong CR with. Trying to remember if she actually met the other Lydia, and things like that since I no longer have access to some of those players.
Green eyes: Her eyes turn green when she uses magic of any sort, and can go green during a stare down.
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Date: 2021-07-26 11:13 am (UTC)Mal was born on the Isle Of The Lost, a magical isle were all the villains had been sent as punishment. Some were even brought back to life specifically to punish them on this isle. She was raised by her Mother, Maleficent, who was not only known by all to be the worst of the worst but also the leader of the Isle.
When Mal was five, the only person to seriously challenge her mother for leadership (the Evil Queen) decided to make one big play for rulership, because Maleficent was without magic like the rest of them, what could she really do to her? So EQ had a huge birthday party for her daughter, Evie, and held it right outside Bargain Castle (where Mal and her mother lived). Every child on the Isle except Mal was invited. Every parent except Maleficent.
Unsurprisingly, given her history when not invited to parties, Maleficent's rage knew few bounds. EQ and her daughter were banished to Castle Across The Way, not allowed to leave their crumbling home near **** Hall (Where Cruella lived. Not by any stretch of the imagination a nice neighbor.)
The next ten and change years were fairly routine for Mal. She grew up working towards being the evilest brat of her generation. Where her mother ruled the adults, she ruled the next generation. Everyone either was cared of her or toadied to her. Or both in some cases. Even some of the adults treated her as something other than just another brat.
But it wasn't enough. Not for Mal's mother. Nothing Mal ever did was ever bad enough. she got horrible grades despite being smart (or good grades in bad classes, depending), she left her graffiti all over the isle, she was one of the two best thieves there (constantly warring for first with Jay, Jafar's son). She tole what little candy there was from children. She stiffed the slop shop on her morning sludge. Nothing worked. Her mother constantly told her what a disappointment she was. Her father was even less help, not only did he actively avoid both her and her mother, but her mother only ever discussed him when she was making it clear that her time with him, leading as it did to having Mal, was the biggest mistake of her life.
Things were pretty rotten for Mal, but she grew up on the Isle. None of them exactly had good parents. So she kept trying, and used the pain to make her meaner, crueler, colder.
She had a few "friends" that she knew weren't friends at all. The first had been Ursula's daughter, Uma. Uma and Mal had been partners in crime and nearly inseparable when not in school (they went to schools on opposite ends of the Isle) and were true terrors. That is, they were until a prank gone wrong led to Mal sliding down a pier and into the ocean, nearly dying. Uma was one of the few good swimmers on the Isle, since the barrier kept most of them from having enough space to learn. Instead of saving Mal, Uma stood there and watched, and laughed. And when Mal didn't seem to come up, Uma kept laughing. Mal dragged herself to what passed for a beach, climbed up the pier behind Uma, saw her still laughing, and dumped a bucket of rotten chum over her head. They were enemies from that day forth, especially when Mal got everyone on the Isle to call Uma "Shrimpy".
There was Mad Maddy (Mad Madam Mim's daughter), but Maddy went to the witches' school and Mal went to Dragon Hall, so they drifted apart. After Uma, Mal wasn't letting herself get close to or care about anyone again.
Finally there was Jay. Who went to the same school she did and was almost as bad in his own way. Both were well aware that the other would betray them for anything, without warning. Accepting that, and always watching their backs, they made an interesting duo, and other than Uma and Maddy, Jay was the closest thing she had to a friend for most of her life.
Then one night she had a very disturbing dream. Very. She was somewhere outside the Isle in the dream and that did NOT happen. The barrier kept them all in, kept them apart from the rest of the world. But she was off the Isle. She was in a ruin, but a beautiful and clean one. She'd never seen anything clean before. There was a lake, and the water was actually clear. There was food in front of her. Fruit. And none of it was spoiled, moulding, rotten.
Worst of all there was a boy there and he was like the rest of this place. Tall, handsome, princely. She knew where she had to be. Auradon. The kingdom of good across the ocean, the kingdom whose king and queen had revived and banished all the villains, the kingdom whose trash the Isle residents fought over because it was all they had. The prince said that he was her friend, which made it even more clear this was a dream. Mal had no friends, and she told him as much.
The horrible dream ended about there, but it stayed with her in the way a nightmare might stick with a good person. It disgusted her, even if the food had been amazing.
Not long after that horrible dream something new happened. There was a new student in school. This didn't happen. Not on the Isle. The Witches stayed to their school, the pirates and such to theirs, and all the truly vile villian kids went to Dragon Hall. The Barrier had been up for decades, more or less. There should have been nowhere for a new kid to come from. Except there was. There was one kid their age who had been castle schooled since she was five.
Evie.
Evil Queen and Evie figured there was no way that the mistress of all evil - who it should be recalled sent out a curse that lasted sixteen years, and then wound up waiting another hundred in her quest for revenge over not being invited to a party - must have certainly gotten over it by now. She wasn't. And perhaps worse for Evie, neither was Mal.
It probably didn't help matters that Evie was dazzlingly pretty and that she sat down in Mal's seat in class. Mal needed a project for Evil Schemes class anyway. So revenge on Evie was going to be it. To have her proper revenge she had to do something horrible that went against her very upbringing. She had to... ugh... throw a party.
Or rather, she had to bully someone weak and terrified of her into throwing it for her. She picked Cruella's son, Carlos, as Cruella was across the Isle for the weekend and he was a pushover of a coward. She told him he was holding the rager of the year, and that everyone was invited. Everyone... except Evie.
But this wasn't evil enough. Just doing to Evie what had been done to her wasn't enough. She'd never get her mother's approval that way. She had to step it up, be more evil. So she let Evie think she wasn't invited - that she was the only one not invited - until the end of the school day, at which point she invited her. Everyone was confused. Good.
Mal had been to ***** Hall before, and she knew all about the horrors of Cruella's fur closet. While what Cruella would do to anyone who harmed her precious furs was terrifying all on its own... the closet was dark, confusing and the floor was covered in rusted metal animal traps. Mal had almost lost a limb there as a kid. She intended for princess blueberry to lose far more.
The party was both a success and a failure. It was an absolute rager. Carlos really pulled it off for all he complained. But while Mal was, of course, fashionably late, Evie was even later. And Mal had no clue what to do at a party while she waited. And when Evie finally did show up and Mal did trap her in the closet...
Somehow... SOMEHOW the little blue twit not only escaped the closet but she and Carlos did... SOMETHING that punched a hole in the barrier. Just for a moment there was magic. Not that Mal and them knew it just then. All they knew was that Evie had somehow escaped more or less unscathed.
Things only got worse for Mal when she got home. Her mother was waiting up for her, which was... a shock. Her mother would hardly care that she was out late, right?
Sadly, she was right. Her mother didn't care that Mal had been out late or that her revenge had failed. Because her pet raven, Diablo, missing all this time was back. And he bore news. Maleficent's scepter, the Dragon's Eye was somewhere on the Isle. She charged Mal with finding and fetching it. Or else.
Mal had no choice. But she did see an evil little light in all this for her. The staff was cursed. Whoever other than Maleficent touched it would sleep for a thousand years. Her perfect revenge. She had to find the staff... but make sure that Evie was the one to trigger it.
In the end, the party that set out included Mal, Evie who wasn't sure why she was invited, Carlos because he had a machine that could track the Dragon Eye, apparently, and Jay. Jay was planning to steal the Dragon Eye, she was sure of it. Made for a good plan B. Either way one of them was touching it first. And if all else failed, she could throw Carlos at it.
But getting to the staff was no easy task, and as it happens on such adventures, the four kids who all had similar horrible childhoods bonded. They had to work together and came to understand each other and Mal had to fight a constant rising unfamiliar sensation. Guilt.
When the moment came and they stood before the staff, she saw Jay hesitate. But Evie didn't. The little twit went right for it...
And Mal, with a surge of this new and unnamed emotion, moved, getting there first. Her fingers closed on the staff.
Mal awoke on the floor of the crumbling fortress, the staff gone. They had failed. But oddly... as much as she feared her mother's reaction to their failure, she had found something new. For the first time since she upended a bucket over Uma's head as a small child she had friends.
Of course they got back and the staff had not been destroyed, but rather had used the last of its magic, when awoken by her touch, to return to Maleficent. The magic was gone, but her mother had her staff and her raven and... despised Mal more than ever. Mal had clearly been foolishly weak, touching it herself when there were three victims there and waiting. She had no way to know that she was mostly immune to sleep spells because of who her mother was. So to Maleficent, Mal had been the most unforgivable of things - self sacrificing. Kind. Things became even more strained, but that just meant that Mal now spent more time with her crew. Her friends.
Together the four started to bleed over into each other. Carlos got some of Mal's confidence and Jay's swagger. Evie picked up some of their edge. Mal picked up some of Evie's friendliness. But only within the group. Jay... well Jay was Jay. But Mal and Jay went from the most feared kids at Dragon Hall to two of the four members of the most feared Crew in Dragon Hall. And it quickly became clear that no one messed with Carlos or Evie without taking on Mal and Jay.
Then one day Maleficent stopped the four on the street. She had evil tidings. They were to go to Auradon on a mission for her. The king to be had declared that four kids from the Isle would leave their home and move to Auradon, going to school there. An experiment. Mal didn't know what strings her mother had pulled - or cut - to make it Mal and her crew, but there it was. She didn't want to go. That didn't matter, of course. The four of them were to go and steal Fairy Godmother's magic wand. OR ELSE.
Plan after plan failed. Worse yet the king to be, the prince who met them when they arrived in Auradon? The boy from her dream. And his girlfriend... The granddaughter of the people who had pushed Mal's mother to cursing their new born. Audrey, daughter of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Philip, Granddaughter of Queen Leah and King Stephan. Both girls knew by heart the history that lay between them. And Audrey's boyfriend, Ben, couldn't stop staring at Mal. So clearly Mal and Audrey hated each other on sight.
Auradon was everything Mal feared it would be. It was terrifyingly clean, disgustingly pink, the people were suspiciously nice - for the most part. While not everyone was happy they were there, the adults, at least, seemed to be genuinely trying to help them fit in. And Mal couldn't figure out their angle. FG taught them Remedial Goodness. The science teacher even apologized to Evie when she passed a test without cheating. The Tourny couch scouted Jay and Carlos for the team. Mal had to pretend to befriend Jane to try and work on a plan which led to people actually seeking her out to use magic on their hair, an olive branch. She was used to classmates fleeing before her, not offering to pay her for magic.
More and more she found small doubts growing. She watched Evie learn how smart she could really be, and sae her realizing that maybe a prince wasn't her answer. She watched how Jay came alive as part of a team, how he actually seemed more himself on the field than stealing. Saw Carlos... adopt a dog! Back on the Isle most people who wanted to bother Carlos in passing just barked in his ear, the scrawny boy had always been terrified of dogs.
As for Mal herself. She mostly stayed mission focused until the mission took a sharp turn. Because they found out that the wand would be vulnerable at Ben's coronation. But the only ones close enough to touch it would be FG herself, Ben's parents - King Beast and Queen Belle, and Ben's girlfriend.
So Audrey had to go.
One love spell later and Mal was now his girlfriend and in position to take the wand and help her mother destroy all of Auradon. But there was time between then and the coronation, and Ben wasn't the sort to sit idle. He took Mal out on dates. And where just being in Auradon hadn't been able to push much past her defenses... he was breaking her down, bit by bit. (The strawberries helped, though.) Their first date was in the ruins where she had first seen him in her dream, and the fruit was better in real life than it had been in a dream. Not just the fruit. Everything. Talking to him, being with him, and that amazing jelly donut. But then he wanted to swim, and she refused to admit that she couldn't, so he swam while she devoured the strawberries and had a musical soliloquy.
When she realized he hadn't come up for a while, she rushed into the water, trying to find him. But as he could swim and she couldn't, he rescued her. A lot of crucial things happened on that date that Mal didn't realize util much later. The water of that lake wore away her spell for one. And he, reeling from having realized he had been spelled, had been reassessing... when she tried to save him without thought for her own life. He didn't tell her that the spell was broken though, and she was too busy feeling like an idiot to notice the way he now watched her.
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Date: 2021-07-26 11:13 am (UTC)Mal was wavering. And she knew the others were as well. But what could they do? They spent their whole lives afraid of their parents. They knew that disobeying was going to be costly, and ultimately futile.
They joined the other students for Parents' day anyway, to keep up the act that they were adjusting, all of them fighting to keep it an act. Until Queen Lea mistook Mal for her mom and all chaos broke loose. A punch and a spell were thrown and just like that the VKs had become pariahs among their classmates. Mal got back at Jane by undoing the spell she had cast on Jane's hair when she had been pretending to befriend her, and the other kids fled. She used to like watching people flee in terror of her. She felt both smugly satisfied and... hurt.... this time.
Coronation day came, the VKs had their plan set, but she could see that she wasn't the only one uneasy. Even though she knew her mother would be disgusted with her, she made an antidote to the love spell. Ben being in love with her when she betrayed him felt a little too evil. Odd how that used to be the goal. But her shriveled black little heart was no longer in it. She was doing this because she had no choice, because you did NOT say no to Maleficent, and because there really was no place for her here. Seemingly the only one who had not turned his back on the VKs was Ben himself, and she was sure that was due to the spell.
On the way to coronation, she gave Ben the small treat with the antidote in it, so he could eat it after but he ate it then, and confessed that he knew about the spell and told her when it had been broken. He gave her his ring, and his heart as her own broke. She knew what she had to do. Though knowing Ben loved her... if she thought she could have survived defying her mother... even with everyone else hating her she thought she could almost try, could almost stay. But she had no choice. Do as her mother said or... she would be doomed with the rest. And even if she was willing to take that risk... She couldn't save Ben but she could still save Evie Carlos and Jay.
She was still at war with herself when Ben was crowned. When the Wand was within reach, when a pale hand reached out and stole the wand. But it wasn't her hand. It was Jane's. The girl, desperate to be beautiful again, had stolen FG's wand. But she couldn't control it and wild magic shot out in all directions. Mal moved before she had a chance to think about it. She grabbed the wand away from Jane and unlike FG's daughter... Mal was able to handle it. It calmed in her grip.
Moment of truth.
Part of her wanted to hand back the wand. It really did. But seeing the look of terror on people's faces as they realized a VK held the wand warred with the faith in her Ben seemed to have. She tried to explain to him, to all of them, that they had no choice. Her friends came up behind her and she struggled warring between what she must do and what... what she wanted.
She wanted to be good. Or at least... to try. She had been happy here, for small moments. Evie, Jay, and Carlos had been happy most of their time here. Evil didn't make her friends as happy as Auradon did. And while she herself preferred evil in general to Auradon in general... Her friends belonged here. Ben belonged here. And she chose the four of them over evil. She chose good. She talked her friends around, which was easy enough to make her feel she was right.
Except that Jane's flailing had accidentally hit the barrier, and Maleficent had used the power that reached her staff to teleport to where Mal was. She demanded the wand and Mal and her mother had a magical showdown that ended in a staring contest that was so much more than their usual battles of wills. And for the first time, Mal won. Her mother... shrank to the size of the love in her heart, becoming a small lizard. Mal handed back the wand, spells were cleared up and undone and Maleficent was put into a terrarium under guard.
Things seemed to calm down a little. At least at first. Ben was king, Mal was the king's girlfriend, and people having seen them stand against the worst evil to ever walk the land or fly the skies started to welcome them more.
Time is a little confusing here, because somewhere after this and before book 2, Freddie arrives in Auradon, along with CJ. The companion novels and Wicked World seem to disagree on how and what happens when they arrive, and the main series kind of side steps committing to much. The basics, in as best a compilation as I can manage that makes sense is this: Freddie and CJ arrive in Aradon. By accident. Somehow. CJ causes a lot of trouble and chaos, but Freddie despite being CJ's best friend is trying to live by Auradon rules. CJ almost gets Freddie kicked out and they wind up in a mess that Mal and them have to deal with, and then CJ runs away to find adventure on the high seas, and Freddie stays at the school, spending a lot of time with Audrey. Mal and Freddie do not really get along. Mal tries to ignore the other girl as best she can and the two each have their own circle of friends that rarely interact.
Until one dat Mal finds a mysterious note, telling her to go back to the Isle. So does Jay. And Evie. And Carlos. But not Freddie. The messages together paint an ultimatum with a deadline. They dive into researching, but Ben can't help because a huge purple dragon is rampaging in Camelot. Maleficent is still under surveillance, so they can't figure out how she's escaping to cause trouble halfway across Auradon. But as king Ben has to look into it, and Mal has to look into the issue with the Isle.
Their research turns up an "Anti-heroes club" on the "dark net" and it advertises membership using a photo of Mal and her three fellow original VKs with Xs over their faces.
The four main MKs make their way to the Isle in secret and try to figure out what the trap is before they spring it. But things are... odd back on the Isle. For one thing Jafar, Cruella, and EQ all seem to be missing. And the other kids seem to be acting cagey, even for the Isle. Mal finds that Bargain Castle has been destroyed and looted... except for her room which is just how she left it. Evie, Carlos, and Jay all find things left behind by their parents that they would never have left behind. Like Jafar's bird Iago, and most of Cruella's furs and her car....
Not knowing what else to do, the four decide to investigate the anti-heroes meeting that night and what they find stuns them all. The club is run by the only non-villian on the Isle - Yensid. Yensid was a teacher from Auradon who volunteered to come to the Isle before the shield went up, saying that the future generations would need a proper education. The four also learned the other meaning for antiheroes. The villian you root for. This wasn't a club that hated them for being heroes, it was a club for VKs that wanted to be just like them, to overthrow their parents and choose good.
Yensid informs them all of a grave threat. The three missing parents were searching the catacombs for artifacts of power called talismans. And more, the very path that could lead them to these talismans could let them out in Auradon! The VKs work together to try to figure out where the entrance might be. But Mal is betrayed by Maddy who lured her away from the group and tried to drown her. Evie had thought there was something odd about those two leaving together and had followed. By the time Maddy tried to kill Mal, Carlos and Jay were there as well. They ran off Maddy and saved Mal and discovered that Maddy had accidentally helped them. The entrance to the catacombs was right where she had tried to drown Mal.
The four took off to try and beat the parents to the talismans. Just like the fight to get the scepter, their own weaknesses were explored and they grew stronger as individuals as well as a group. They got the talismans and escaped into Auradon, where Merlin and Ben had tracked the dragon... it was Madam Mim, and she'd been using the catacombs to sneak into Auradon to cause trouble. Merlin used a spell to send everyone back where they belonged - villains to the Isle specifically. He closed off the Auradon side of the entrance, and that was that.
It turned out that Freddie had been behind the letters, but they had no real way to communicate back to the Isle to update the club. And honestly, Mal was distracted and din't give the antiheroes back on the Isle too much more thought.
Life went on in Auradon. Mal tried hard to be good, but it got harder and harder. She knew magic was not allowed, but she became more and more dependent upon her mother's spell book. Between fighting the lure of the dragons' egg, trying to actually do well in school, and trying to be the perfect girlfriend to the king of Auradon and thus constantly in the spotlight, she was starting to unravel. She made frequent use of a spell that turned time back, for example, to keep her from being marked tardy to classes when she woke up over her school books and realized she had never gone to bed the night before but had fallen asleep studying.
It was getting bad.
So the tour of the parts of the kingdom seemed to be just what she needed. A break from school. Ben invited the main four VKs to join him, and they got to go to festivals held in his honor. In Atlantica she fought with the Dragons' egg, while unbeknownst to them all, disaster was brewing.
A huge storm cut the celebrations short, and the VKs wound up turning over the talismans to FG to be destroyed. Mal felt like part of her was destroyed with it, though she couldn't say why.
Not long after that they learned about the true disaster. Arabella, King Triton's granddaughter, had borrowed - an Auradon word for stealing - his trident. And in the storm had lost it. Things got worse and worse as the VKs tried to help her find it before anyone found out it was lost.
So now Mal was in a race against time to find the trident while trying to be a perfect girlfriend and a perfect student. She was fracturing more and more.
Their adventure to try to get it back almost got all four VKs expelled, but Ben was able to swoop in and save them, claiming he knew what was going on and had told them to borrow that boat they had gotten busted trying to steal.
They raced in the boat across the ocean and they got to the trident... it was just under the barrier, half on the Auradon side, half on the Isle side. And Uma of all people had found it. Uma got a hold of it, but Mal used her time rewind spell and managed to win the day. Just barely.
They got back and Evie handed over her magic mirror, having had a reminder of what a disaster any magic at all could be in the wrong hands. Mal... still couldn't give up her spell book. But as the trident was returned, people let the matter drop for the time being.
Mal tried harder than ever after their near brush with expulsion and banishment. She knew in her heart she wasn't good enough. A life of trying to be evil enough, it was hard to try to be what she had always been sure she was not. She was splintering and breaking and everyone wound up so involved in their own concerns that none of them saw it. Jane informed her that as the king's girlfriend she was also in charge of cotillion, and Ben was constantly going on various diplomatic ​trips and photo ops, some she had to be there for but... they hardly saw each other, and almost never was it just them.
Mal was breaking more and more.
Carlos was busy trying to get up the guts to ask Jane out. Jay had joined yet another team and had been made captain. Even her best friend Evie was constantly busy, having started doing professional fashion design. Evie had turned their dorm room into her workshop as she spent every spare moment making cotillion dresses for sale. She made sure that Mal's dress looked amazing but missed that it didn't suit her friend at all. Ben's colors, not Mal's.
Mal felt her identity slipping away, and Evie and Ben kept giving her a hard time the few times she did see them, about the fact that she still held her mother's spellbook. Her mother had also been moved to her room which made things both better and worse in turn.
She even had to be told by the other girls that going as Ben's date was a statement to the kingdom that he planned to marry her, that he had decided she was going to be the Queen. Without him having discussed it with her. To quote from the script:
Jane: The Royal Cotillion is like getting engaged to be engaged to be engaged.
Evie: I knew it!
Lonnie: Well, everyone knows it.
Mal: I didn't know it! How come nobody told me that? Is my entire life just planned out in front of me--
The breaking point for Mal came when with all of that on her plate, as it were, she mixed up her days. Ben had been able to clear a few hours for a date just the two of them, something they both desperately needed. She had promised to take care of the food, but she had been so pressured and backed into the corner that she lied and said she had it under control; she was still desperately trying to be the "perfect" girlfriend of the Queen. And on top of that he had just bought her a ridiculously expensive gift. She was under pressure. So once more she used her magic, creating a grand feast. The date went well for Ben but Mal was clearly feeling more and more on stage; she was spending more energy and effort on trying to seem like what she thought he wanted that she was breaking more and more. Then Ben found her spellbook in the picnic basket and saw what she had bookmarked. The spell used to make her look like she fit in - blond hair spell (past her canon point when she dyes her hair back she even says "I mean, whatever makes me feel like me"), speed reading spell, and the spell she used to make the meal.
They had a huge row about it. She panicked and tried to do the spell to turn back time and both of them realized that she had crossed a line. She blew up verbally instead and stalked off after breaking the spell on the food to show him what she had actually had time to prepare. A sandwich (not sure if the wich/witch pun was intentional there, but I appreciate it.) Then she stalked off.
She knew she couldn't stay. She was breaking breaking breaking, nearly broken. She didn't know who she was any more. She had turned her back on evil to be good, but then she had utterly failed at good. If she stayed in Auradon she would do something horrible, she would be banished back to the Isle. Better to go back on her on terms. The choice stunk, but it was her choice. She was throwing off all of the pressure to be good and be perfect and be what she thought everyone else wanted and was reclaiming who she thought she was. If she couldn't handle being good, if being good was clearly so much harder for her than it was for everyone else...
Then clearly... she was meant to e evil. Right? It was what she had known longest, what she was best at. Evil came more easily to her, she had daydreamed about being evil while breaking under the pressure of good. So she got on her new vespa and drove it right off a cliff, counting on her forbidden magic to create the bridge to take her back to the Isle...
no subject
Date: 2021-07-28 11:04 am (UTC)This was her time in SMK or Sorcerers Of The Magic Kingdom. Mal lost access to her usual magic there, and was granted the class of "Princess" and the magic and weaknesses that went with it. She learned to use her new magic, revealing in being somewhere where magic was not only available and accepted, but expected. But she was still in the "guess I'm evil" mindset which was at odds with their mission there, to save that world and in doing so save all worlds.
Mal spent a lot of time finding "evil" justifications for her good acts and threw herself into fighting the corroded which threatened all worlds.
All of the "Apprentices" were expected to also get day jobs and pay their rent, and Mal got a job at the salon, practicing magic by doing hair spells on other people.
She made some friends while there. A demon named Micheal who was trying to learn how to be good - she kept trying to talk him back to evil, which led to some interesting conversations. Also they both collected things other people considered trash. Ace, a pirate who had a fire affinity and was the main reason she championed environmental causes. Webby, a duck who decided that Mal was going to be her friend. A few others. But two stood out from the others. Lydia and Sylvando.
This was the first time Mal was meeting people that weren't raised to be all good or all evil and Lydia was something of an education for her, because the girl had all the visual cues of evil, but was at her core good. And yet they shared a lot of aesthetic. The two became more honest than they were with nearly anyone else, and Lydia was one of the few people Mal actually trusted. That she let herself trust. They were roommates and Mal was constantly saving money to get them a better place. Lydia said Mal was her best friend and Mal was completely honest that Lydia was her best friend there, but that she could not and would not ever see anyone as a best friend other than Evie. Lydia accepted it. Lydia accepted Mal as she was very often which was completely new to Mal. And until they had a blow up fight their friendship was one of the healthiest things in Mal's life. When Lydia left the Kingdom, Mal found out from Beetlejuice of all demons.
The other friend that stood out was Sylvando. Unlike Lydia who she clicked with almost at once... Sylvando snuck in under and around the walls Mal put up around herself. He constantly challenged her understanding of herself, constantly spoke against the notion that she had to be one or the other. He had a knack for finding her when the various events made her more vulnerable. He gave her outlets for her art and... and he saw her. When she and Lydia fought, it was his couch she crashed on. When Lydia left Mal trapped the apartment that she and Lydia had shared so no one but her could enter it and then moved in with Sylvando since his roommate moved out.
She also made a few notable foes. Crowley and Beetlejuice being the most notable (Though she still feels MT owes her a metric ton of candy). Beetlejuice and Mal... tried to get along, for Lydia's sake. They did try. But they both had very different idea of friendship and what it was. It went... badly. He kept hitting her issue with her name and Mal... Well, Mal picked his pocket, then he said something that made her want to try this friendship thing/reminded her of Lydia. So she used the money she stole from him buying stuff for him. He was touched and thrilled... until he found out she had robbed him first, and he lost it. And that was the end of any chance for friendship between them... which strained things between her and Lydia. Especially when the other Lydia showed up...
The other enemy was Crowley. From very early on these two who should, in theory, have been aligned as bad figures who tried being god for love.... they clashed. Badly. He had gone through a number of jobs before landing at a candy shop. He liked the shop owner, so when he spotted Mal helping herself to a five fingered discount... he ratted her out. They have been in a long running prank war ever since. Most notable of that would be the time he turned her into a tea pot (boy was she steamed!).
Events aside, their main mission there was to deal with the corroded, either by purification or destruction. Mal, as a Princess could purify. And she did. She became obsessed with patrolling and the people who cared about her constantly found her heading in deeper than she should have been alone. She had a standard pack she started carrying with her everywhere, supplies so that she could head out on a moment's notice. As most game events threatened to show people things about her she was sure they could use against her, she constantly tried to go into the deepest thick of the evil to escape. Better to wear herself out fighting than give people knowledge about her...
no subject
Date: 2021-07-29 06:50 pm (UTC)Log Sample: TDM
Questions: Write an IC answer to the following questions:
What do you want to study at Diatu Magicademy? "Um... magic. It is a magic school, right? Might as well get what I can out of it while I'm here."
If you knew you could go back to the moment you left, would you leave immediately or continue your studies for a while? "I have no intention of going back to Boreadon. You're stuck with me unless I find something more appealing."
If your enemy was at Diatu Magicademy, how would you react? "I'd destroy her, of course."
When is it acceptable to resolve a dispute by force? "I think you mean, when isn't it?"
What should the supreme goal of any wizard be? "I don't know about wizards but for me? World domination. This one, the Kingdom. Don't care which, really."
Special Considerations
Your Special Something: Let's go rare familiar.
Rank Your House Choice:If there is an Evie, Jay, Carlos (descendants) or Lydia (Beetlejuice) same as them, otherwise same as Sylvando, please.
Items: So guessing that means not the ones she shows up with? Cool okay then:
Her Vespa - it is purple and awesome looking
Her mom's spell book (she thinks of it as her mom's but she's the only one who uses it in canon)
really freak her out... the card board box her mom had been in... (As I'm sure her mum won't be able to show up)
More spray paint
More of her clothes from back home
Her sketch books from back home
The ring Ben gave her that she left behind when she ran away
Anything Else:
Mal is a bit of an odd student. On the one hand she would seem not to care, like she doesn't try. She shows up late - though she intends to use bullying to make sure "her" seat is saved for her (a good seat with a good view of whatever needs to be seen in that class, be it a board or a demonstration area). She seems to be doodling through class, seems not to be paying attention.
But on the other side of it, she is actually paying attention and if called on will generally know the answer if a student reasonably could. She might give it (probably will give it) with attitude... but she is paying attention. She also will have read ahead in any book not spelled against that, and is taking every class she can related to magic. Her homework and exams will all be turned in covered in lovely doodles, generally of wands and weapons.
Basically she's trying to build a rep for being the troubled student, the bad girl, but also genuinely wants to learn. And not just to keep from exploding. She just doesn't want anyone to realize she wants to learn. This only applies to magic class, any of the non magical classes she will probably cut more often than she intends and will genuinely not be paying attention. (Though she is a bright girl, and might get answers right anyway.)
If she gets good grades, she will be implying to the other students that it is because the teachers are afraid of her. "Well, if you were a teacher and didn't want to spend another hour as a frog, you'd probably give me an A too," said with a shrug. That sort of thing. She'll also often take "credit" for pranks that aren't her fault if no one else steps up, because she wants the bad girl rep. She'd rather get it through implication and lies than actually being overly destructive, but she will if she has to.
Also some of her "mistakes" in class will be disruptive. Were they intentional, or did she actually get it wrong? Since it will be some of each, it will generally be hard to tell.