>>454426
Don't let her cow you into submission.
"Anna is my friend. Anybody who harms my friends is an enemy. If you harm Anna, you will become my enemy. You will not harm her in any way.
These are statements of fact.

If you trusted me you wouldn't try to control me. I've shown you more trust than you've shown me."

>>454435
Wait... Drinking blood is taking a person into yourself. I think providing blood might actually be the dominant role here.

Grab Elle and tell her she will treat Anna with respect.

She's been calling you "Love" this whole time. If she really loves you, you just CRUSHED her heart. The fact that she didn't just outright kill Anna in that case means she's restraining herself.

First, send Anna home. I remember several times that other fae pushed you over borders to teleport you without them following. Do that with Anna. Second, ask Elle if she really loves you. If she does, then you just really REALLY fucked up. Think back to everything she's done recently keeping that fact in mind. That should change how you look at her actions.

Don't take back Elle's iron immunity. This situation is not unrecoverable!

You know what, it seems like Evan's feelings for Elle changed drastically as soon as he woke up from the daze he was in after killing the hobo.

Maybe Evan should yell at her about it, to get it off his chest so they can cooperate like PEOPLE again.

>>454430
>>454445
Okay we need to go into appeasement mode without giving up ground. If we can do the fae face, do it. It might help mollify her. Get her to let go of Anna, so you can push her back into her house. Maybe phrase as showing her a little bit of what you learned you can do! Also, apologize for the abuse of her name. You were being silly and didn't realize how OBVIOUSLY important that was (No sarcasm. A fae's true name is SRS BISNESS)

>>454426
For being immortal she certainly is acting more -human.

Hmm, we may also want to mention that another fae (Orion, probably shouldn't say the name out loud though) was named prior to Elle during the conversation. For all we know there may be more unexpected company around. Also not sure how effective a barrier on Anna would be, I could easily be wrong but are we sure it would protect against Elle attacking with a mundane object?

>>454459
we cant create barriers, what we do is imagine/find borders to teleport... don't know where the barrier thing came from.

>>454445
I got the impression she doesn't know how love works, but she's trying anyway. She thinks if she throws enough sex and adventure at Evan then he'll love her. She doesn't think using him should affect how he feels about her. She's missing the human element of love. Her entire emotional spectrum is very foreign to us.

If we're going to start opposing Elle, I don't think talking is going to do much good. Just grab Anna and teleport with her to her house. I really don't think we're ready for that, though.

A better plan would be >>454445 send Anna home while not moving, yourself.

Go, "You're right, I /do/ have a real fortress. Do you want your invitation from that one rescinded, Elle, or are you going to let me have human friends? It's your choice."

>>454445
The kind of one-sided "love" that one stranger forces upon another is only damaging. We don't want it if we can safely escape it.

She seems pretty clearly an enemy at this point, working for her own best interests with complete disregard to our own, but we still have use for her, so don't kill her outright.

>>454445
REALLY. The fact that, due to her being restrained from explaining anything to us, perhaps due to her own nature, we went to a fellow human who might know more, crushed the poor, delicate man-killer's heart.

"'The whore'? She's the one in this clearing I haven't had sex with." and "You've done much for me- but if I keep stumbling from fight to pitfall to ambush without understanding anything, I'm eventually going to get myself killed." don't seem out of place here.

WE CAN STILL RECONCILE THIS SITUATION. She is really pissed off, and does not operate on our morality, but she has an investment in us and we in her. Elle is our one ally in this new world, stop trying to make her an enemy. EVAN NEEDS ELLE. For now.

>>455031
We're not trying to make Elle an enemy. She's accomplishing that on her own just fine. We know nothing about her motives. For all we know, she needs Evan to build her a court so that she can takeover the world and begin her reign of terror as the death queen of the universe.

We know very little about the fae. They are bound by rules, but we don't know the rules. Perhaps she truthfully can't tell us the truth because of fae rules. Alternatively, she could be taking advantage of our ignorance and is feeding us bullshit false rules in order to keep us in the dark. If the later is the case, then Anna is a huge threat to Elle's plans. That would explain why she is so desperate to split Evan and Anna apart.


We saw what Elle did to that monster thing. She is extremely dangerous. I am extremely worried about Anna's safety. I believe that Evan should do everything in his power to safeguard Anna. We could teleport her to her home, but Elle could potentially destroy Anna's home or endanger Anna's parents. I think the best way to protect Anna is to negotiate her safety. Make it very clear to Elle. Anna stays with you. If Elle does anything to harm Anna, her family, or her home, then you won't help her build her court.

Ideally we will be able to resolve this mess and keep them both as allies. If forced to make a decision, I'd throw my cards in with Anna. She's less likely to dispose of us the moment we cease being useful.

"I have a real fortress. It's right here. You are not invited. And the whore does have to go."

Stare at her.

"I'm done, Elle. I'm done being manipulated, pulled along, told what to do, being a part of a janky whatever-you-are conspiracy. You will leave. You will not come near me again. Or so help me god, I will find a way to use your name against you.

"You used your slim form and your tender lips to control me, once. But talking to my friend, I've discovered what a monster you are, what you've MADE me do, with words and assurances. I live for myself and my friends. If you want to be a part of that, earn it. No stealing, no tricking, you will WORK for my trust, with promises fulfilled and good will given."

We know Elle is dangerous. We also know that if shit does go down, we can't take her. We CANNOT PROTECT ANNA FROM ELLE. We need to get Elle to back down ON HER OWN. The only way we can do that is if we get her to calm down. Do you guys WANT a BAD END? No matter what we say right now, Anna will understand. Even if we appear to sell her out or side with Elle, Anna will forgive us. We don't know what kind of grudge Elle can hold, but you guys are about to turn her into a woman scorned. I Guarantee that will not end well. SIDE WITH ELLE.

Elle destroying that monster does prove she's a more VALUABLE ally than witch girl, though. We have a prince trying to kill us- he won't exactly be gently hugged to death (probably?).

>>455144
I'm with the 'teleport her home, stay to deal with Elle' camp.

when she destroyed the monster she waited until we dared her to, but the fact she blew up the fort means she could have at any time but WOULDN'T. she could of easily earned more trust by doing it freely.

>>455318
I don't really know how this stuff works, but I feel like there's an order of magnitude difference in the energy required between breaking something a child made out of materials he found in the woods and rendering a large, dangerous living creature into a completely unidentifiable bloody paste. On the other hand, maybe magic doesn't really care about the energy involved and just cares that something is being broken. Elle's explanation at the time was "Games make us stronger together", but I suppose it's entirely possible she's yanking Evan's chain. I've been operating this whole time under the assumption that the fair folk don't lie (at least not directly) but on re-skimming the prior chapters I don't see anything to indicate that that's the case in this setting.

I still think that Anna will be more valuable than Elle in the long run. We should do what we can to keep her safe. Evan certainly seems to be an important player in whatever the fuck is going on, but for the moment the extent of his abilities is teleportation. I doubt that he could protect Anna from Elle's wrath if things become violent. His best bet for keeping Anna safe is probably negotiating with Elle for her safety.

Evan's cooperation is his biggest bargaining chip at the moment. If he has to continue playing the role as a pawn in Elle's game for the short term, fine. But it should be on his terms. If Elle wants Evan's help, then Elle will have to guarantee the safety of Anna (and her family, and her home. The devil is in the details).

I'm assuming that Elle desperately wants that new court. I'm under the impression that Evan is supposed to play some key role in the creation of the court (If she doesn't need Evan, why is she involving him in its creation at all? Why go through all this seduction and manipulation to try and get him wrapped around her finger?). His refusal to cooperate with Elle may very well be suicide for Evan. While I don't think that Elle gives a fuck about Evan's safety, his demise would most certainly completely ruin Elle's court plan. From where I'm standing, Elle doesn't have a choice in the matter. If she wants her court, then she is forced to agree to Evan's terms.

This could buy Anna the time she needs to do some more extensive research. Evan's deal should probably include some means of keeping in contact with Anna (I'd push for the freedom to visit whoever he wants whenever he wants). Her research is next to useless if we can't learn the results.

I'd still prefer a solution where we become one big party of 3, but that might not be possible at this time.

ChildOfAB 2012/09/21(Fri)21:40 No. 456627 ID: 4b44fc
File 134828880167.png - (716.77KB , 720x1910 , 83.png )

You shake your head numbly. Frustration, pity, and fear make terrible battle for control of your actions. Something clicks into place. Whichever wins, you know what you have to do first. There is a border now, between you and Elle. That's all it takes. "Sorry, Anna," you say, weakly.
"EVAN! Don't let go!" she shouts, fearful. You are helping her, she just doesn't understand.
You push her away, towards Elle. She disappears back to her house.
Elle, suddenly unencumbered, tips over backwards. Her black eyes grow wide as she falls. You realize this is the first time you've seen her shocked. The forest seems to have gone silent around you, as if it shares the sentiment.
You rise to your feet as Elle scrambles to hers. "Wh...WHERE WAS THE BORDER?" she yells, her head darting from side to side.
You take a deep breath. Your voice stays quiet. "Why do you think I will tell you when you've done nothing but make me resent and distrust you?"
"STOP IT!" she screeches. "STOP DISTRUSTING ME! After all this! What else do you want? TELL ME!" Her voice cracks. You think you see the glint of a tear in her eye. She suddenly throws herself at you, pushing you down. "Tell me...tell me you love me."
She doesn't want you to have a choice, but you do.

>>456627
"I think I did, until you had me kill that guy."

"i want to"

she can't give you a straight answer for no reason. she CAN'T. so say "truth or dare" and if she picks truth ask "do YOU love me?" if she says yes then i'll trust her, the games restrict as much free as they grant.

"You don't know what love is, Elle."

Sex isn't love Elle, and saving a person's life doesn't make them like you. And power? What use does a boy have for power? I was happy being just a boy.

To love someone is to care for them, to take their own thoughts and feelings into consideration. You've never done that for me so how can I feel love for you?

Quit Shutting Elle down. I honestly have no Idea what to do in this situation. I know we shouldn't just shut her down.

Lets go the fae route and be indirect. Say that you Don't love anna. or something.

No lectures, though.

>>456627
"You want me to trust you? To be loyal to you? To obey you?
Love isn't expecting trust, loyalty, and obedience; it's giving them. Love isn't exploiting weakness in somebody else; it's making yourself weak against them.

Love isn't certain. When you give somebody your love you aren't sure they'll you love back. You give them your loyalty and obedience and make yourself helpless against them, because you trust them.

If you love me, with real love, then you will obey me and you will be loyal to me, because you trust me.

I loved you, Elle, but you never showed me love. You used me, and things that made me feel terrible.

If you want me to love you again, then first you'll have to show me real love. For humans this would be a long and difficult process, but you can skip most of that.

You can make yourself unable to break an agreement, right?
Swear you'll give me your obedience, loyalty, and trust. You can chose how strongly you wish to be under my control, and how strong that is tells me how much you love me.

If it seems like a one-sided deal, that's because it is. Like I said, love isn't certain. You'll just have to trust me."

>>456651
>Swear you'll give me your obedience, loyalty, and trust.
She cheats the rules, and her promises. They all do. This is not going to work out smoothly, even if she did it.

>>456627
"Love comes from understanding, not sex. I'm trying and I'm here for you but it needs to go both ways. I know it's hard because we're so different We'll work on it, alright?"

Then just hold her for a while.

>>456627
How can you trust her when she has consistently avoided explaining anything to you, when she condescends to you, when she serves her own interests, when she takes what is yours?

oh oh. say to prove that she loves you, she must give you something, without expecting anything in return, because after you get the gift, you will only think about if you love her, not guarantee you will. and it must be important, not a flower from the field or something.

>>456731
Eh I think she'd just say she's already given us our own court or something

Idea: Ask why she wants us to love her.

>>456733

This sounds good.

well, fuck.

After rereading a couple times something popped out at me: she's trying to command Evan there, to make him say he loves her. But the command isn't "tell me if you love me or not". It's "tell me you love me".
We know that people can choose not to follow a command if it goes against something they feel strongly about, right? At least, that's how I am interpreting it. Failure to obey "tell me if you love me or not" means you feel strongly that she shouldn't know whether you love her or not, which is an edge case sort of thing with a low chance of happening. In other words, she would be pretty much guaranteed a "yes" or "no".
On the other hand, failure to obey "tell me you love me" indicates not only do you not love her, but you feel strongly enough about not loving her that you can't even say you do to make her feel better. And that's a much worse situation for her.
So why didn't she command, "Tell me if you love me or not"? I think it's because she already knows the answer is no. She's not going to take an "I love you" response to mean that we actually love her, she's going to take it to mean that we're not so far away from loving her that we can't even bring ourselves to say it.
tl;dr: say "I love you" but you don't have to mean it.

ChildOfAB 2012/09/23(Sun)23:13 No. 457468 ID: 4b44fc
File 134846718684.png - (490.59KB , 720x1258 , 84.png )

You look Elle in the eye. "Do you love me?"
She recoils a little. "You can't even say it," she says, quietly.
"No, Elle, listen. This is important. Love can't be one way," you respond.
She looks angry again. "WHAT? YES IT CAN, EVAN," she yells, "Of course it can! You don't even know what you're talking about! It happens all the time! I've seen it!"
You take a deep breath. "So you're saying you don't? But you want me to love you? How does that work?" Elle sits back, taking her weight off your shoulders. She mumbles something under her breath, but you can't make it out. "What?" you ask.
"You're asking a cloud to go swimming," she says.
It takes you a second to parse the saying. "Clouds can't swim, is that what you're saying? You can't love?"
"Of course I can love!" she snaps. "It's you! You and all the humans think love means something stupid and weird. You don't even know what it means! You all think it's something different. I tried to figure it out, I tried to learn, I tried to do everything. For you, all of it. But it didn't work, you don't love me, and you're running off sharing all your secrets with the other stupid girl because she's got the same stupid ideas you do."
"I don't love-well, I'm not in love with Anna," you say. "I don't think I've ever been in love, really."
Elle droops a little. It's hard to tell with her black eyes, but it seems like she's staring off into space. "If...you ever do decide to try it, will you try it with me?" she asks.
You sigh. "Why do you want me to love you so badly, anyway?"
She runs her hand through your hair and looks sad. "I just...I don't know. Don't you want someone to love you?"
"I guess," you respond, "but you don't love me, not even with whatever definition you use."
She finally shakes her head. "No, I don't. You wouldn't want that, anyway."
"I wouldn't?" you ask.
She slumps over on your shoulder and sighs. "Trust me," she says. "Please?"

"What I'm getting from this is that we're both WAY out of our depths. So it's confession time."

We need more information.

"well, since you admitted it, i can give you another shot."

>>457468
Sure, okay, now that she's dropped the big act she seems a lot more trustworthy. It seems like that was why she was all mysterious and manipulative- she was trying to engage you with mystique and adventure.

But we're not gonna trust her completely yet. She should understand that takes time. Ask her about that weird wind power she's got. Can she give you any hints on how to use it yourself?

Well the poor girl is trying, I'll give her that. I think right now is her being more honest and human than we've ever seen her.

Answer her "Sure." Then hold her a bit closer and give her a kiss on the forehead. Because that's a lot more like the kind of love we understand. Then to show trust, tell her about what you've learned about barriers.

Tell her that we aren't interested in giving up all our power by being in love with someone who doesn't love us. At the very least, there ought to be equality in love.

Privately, to yourself, understand that if she loved you and you didn't love her, that'd be fine, too.

>>457478
This guy is right.

>>457468
"Trust is part of the problem. We're not in love, but we can still be friends. I'm going to need you to trust me more, though"
Sigh
"Ok, you want to know why I went to Anna? Because she's been abused by one of your kind, and I wanted to help her protect herself.
That's something friends do - they do what they can to help each other.
I hoped she might be able to tell me more about the rules since they don't apply to her, but she didn't know anything more than I did.
Of course, the reason you would care about is that I need human contact to think like a human. That's like my entire superpower, right? Being able to bend the rules so far they look broken? I can't do that if I stop thinking like a human, and I can't think like a human if I don't spend time with them. You keep trying to pull me away from humans, but they're where I get my strength.
I trust Anna. Trust in my trust of her.

... That guy who was toying with Anna. You heard the name he went by, but I dunno if that's a fake name or not. You know anything about him?

What should I call your kind, anyway? Anna thought you were demons, at least one of you is known as a fairy.

What I'm hearing from this is she wants Evan to love her exclusively, because if he loved anyone else she would get jealous. Even though she can't/won't love him back. May I be the first to say, "Fuck that."
It makes me wonder what fae love is, since she seems to think Evan wouldn't like it.
I recommend friendzoning her.

Well at least Elle is no longer in murder-mode. She also seems more talkative than usual. Take advantage of that. Keep her talking. DO NOT LET HER SILENCE THINGS WITH A FUCK.

Let her know that you want to trust her. While she has done a lot for Evan, he really knows next to nothing about her. Opening up about herself will be a huge step towards earning Evan's trust.

What is the fae definition of love? How does it differ from human love? Which type of love does she want from Evan?

What is Elle's motivation? What are her goals? What are her plans for the new court?

Elle is our friend. So is Anna. We might still be able to form one big happy party. We may be able to convince Elle that Anna is a potential ally rather than a rival. Anna has been hurt by the fae. Fae that are probably aligned with the fae that have hurt Evan. Evan, Anna, and Elle all share a common enemy.

Ultimately we may be able to get Elle to realize that her outrage at Anna was a misunderstanding. We may even be able to get her to apologize to Anna for frightening her. The definitions of love and friendship may vary between humans and fae, but I bet that the concept of an enemy is the same in both cultures. For the time being, it might be easier to focus on the angle that we are allies because we share a common foe.

>>457468
sorry, Elle. just a 'please' isn't going to cut it.. trust has to be earned.

>>457478
Yes. Might want to point out that right now she was being honest, and that makes trust.
Maybe she has some issues with the whole love thing, you should know by now how easy it is for bad things to happen to someone... even someone of your and her kind. So maybe you shouldn't be too harsh on her and shouldn't push her too far.

Its worth breaking this down things too. She protected you, she has helped you gain power, build your other fort which she calls the red court, she seems honest in her desire for you to love her. where you are having issues is the secrets, and wondering the reasons for why things are done (the fruit, the blood, the fort, etc). More answers are needed.

But remember the rules, iron hurts them, they can't enter places, they can't answer many questions... They can cheat, and you can cheat. but there are rules. She couldn't answer your questions so she asked you questions that made you guess the answer. So the rules could be part of why she is keeping so many secrets, so ask her more questions and guess more answers. And maybe their love has rules too.

>>457540
What? you barely know anna. You ARE one of Elle's "kind" (or at least, half of you), and you went to anna for answers and someone who can talk to you not because you have some "trust" or "love" going on with her.

"I'll trust you as far as I can throw you" and leave it at that.

How much trust is she asking you for anyway? There could be very good reasons for her to not love you. There are creatures in folklore whose love kills and that is a strong candidate for what she's trying to say without directly saying it.

A more productive line of questioning would be to ask what she can tell you about why it's so hard for you to get answers.

God damn, I haven't checked on this quest in months and it hasn't progressed too far. Guess /tg/chan really is a lot slower. Anyway, good read as always OP. Keep up the good work.