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These examples of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome seem to violate at least one of these rules, which disqualifies them: No character reactions (characters get angry, don't forgive, don't change their personality instantly, etc.); Too fantastical (depends on the properties of magic, powers, sci-fi tech, monsters, etc.); Not surprising (a character was warned about the outcome, it's used to provide Karma or An Aesop, or it simply follows normal conventions for this genre or medium); Plot happens (the example only describes an event, but not why audiences would expect a different, unrealistic outcome); Not an outcome (a character just explains why something wouldn't work as expected); More of a Deconstruction (the event has major, lasting effects on the plot, make something more realistic, but not completely realistic, or a parody/fanwork applies realistic consequences to the events of a different work); or fits better under a different trope. See the trope's definition for more details. If you believe a removal was a mistake, please bring it up in the cleanup thread
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* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps from all the injuries he's suffered during the game's climax when he and Yorda wash up in Dormin's land. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
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* OffingTheOffspring: [[spoiler:In an attempt to save at least one of his daughters from becoming the Queen's newest host, Wander kills them first.]]
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* OffingTheOffspring: [[spoiler:In an attempt to save at least one of his daughters from becoming the Queen's newest host, Wander kills them first.her first. Keeping the horned boy he adopted from being sacrificed to power the Queen's body hopping is also what motivates Wander to kill him.]]
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* HopeSpot: When it looks like the Queen [[spoiler:is barren.]] However... [[spoiler:she isn't, and she figures out why Wander is sterile, the reason being that he's been taking drugs that serve as a natural contraceptive.]]
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* HopeSpot: When it looks like the Queen [[spoiler:is barren.barren, preventing her from being able to rape Wander and create new host bodies from their union.]] However... [[spoiler:she isn't, and she figures out why Wander is sterile, the reason being that he's been taking drugs that serve as a natural contraceptive.]]
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* RealityEnsues: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps from all the injuries he's suffered during the game's climax when he and Yorda wash up in Dormin's land. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
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* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps from all the injuries he's suffered during the game's climax when he and Yorda wash up in Dormin's land. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
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* PlaguedByNightmares: Wander rarely sleeps until he's pushed himself to exhaustion in an effort to avoid his nightmares, which rarely works. Dormin does later come up with a medication that blocks his recall and helps him sleep better.
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* FamilialBodySnatcher: The Queen has survived over the centuries by taking over the bodies of her daughters once she she feels she's approaching the end of her current host body's life.
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* IncestIsRelative: The fic doesn't dwell on it, but given that the Queen is stealing her daughters' bodies yet has the same husband through the ages, it technically counts as an example of the trope.
* ParentalIncest: The fic doesn't dwell on it, but given that the Queen is stealing her daughters' bodies yet has the same husband through the ages, it technically counts as an example of the trope.
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* RealityEnsues: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps from all the injuries he's suffered during the climax when he and Yorda wash up in Dormin's land. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
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* RealityEnsues: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps from all the injuries he's suffered during the game's climax when he and Yorda wash up in Dormin's land. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
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Expanding Zero Context Examples.
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* FantasyContraception: The crux of [[spoiler:Dormin's plan to stop the Queen.]]
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* FantasyContraception: The [[spoiler:The crux of [[spoiler:Dormin's Dormin's plan to stop the Queen.Queen is having Wander take contraceptive drugs without his knowledge in order to make the Queen think her host body is barren, and make it so that her current host body is her last one, dooming her to a final death by old age. Unfortunately, she figures out what's going on and Wander is forced back into being her breeding stud.]]
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* IncestIsRelative: The fic doesn't dwell on it, but given that the Queen is stealing her daughters' bodies yet has the same husband through the ages...
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* IncestIsRelative: The fic doesn't dwell on it, but given that the Queen is stealing her daughters' bodies yet has the same husband through the ages...ages, it technically counts as an example of the trope.
* OffingTheOffspring: [[spoiler:In an attempt to save at least one of his daughters from becoming the Queen's newest host, Wander kills them first.]]
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* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Wander appears to have already tried all of the obvious solutions to stopping the Queen, including stabbing her, sterilising himself, killing their daughters, and killing the horned boys before they could be taken to the Castle in the Mist, but always failed because of the compelling voice effect she has on him. It contributes to his first HeroicBSOD.
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* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Wander appears to have already tried all of the obvious solutions to stopping the Queen, including stabbing her, sterilising sterilizing himself, killing their daughters, and killing the horned boys before they could be taken to the Castle in the Mist, but always failed because of the compelling voice effect she has on him. It contributes to his first HeroicBSOD.
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* TheAgeless: After ''Colossus'', Wander aged up from the baby Dormin slipped him out of the seal as to about how old he was during most of the game, and got stuck there.
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* ChildByRape: All of Wander and the Queen's children after their first son, who was conceived before she got corrupted. Wander doesn't hold it against them.
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* ChildByRape: All of Wander and the Queen's children after their first son, who was conceived before she got corrupted. corrupted, are the result of her compelling him to have sex with her to make new host bodies. Wander doesn't hold it the circumstances of their conception against them.
* ExtremelyShortTimespan: Inverted, the story takes place over 200 years, starting about 300 years after the events of ''Shadow of the Colossus'' and ending during ''ICO'''s aftermath.
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* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Twisted a bit. Wander asks Dormin if they had him try mushrooms for this reason, since he did recgonise them as something that holy men used back in his original home. Dormin's answer is no, they just wanted him to have some new sensations to mull over. [[spoiler:On the other hand, it does reduce his inhibitions enough that he tells Dormin why the Queen banished him to their land, which draws the two of them a little closer together.]]
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* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Twisted a bit. Wander asks Dormin if they had him try mushrooms for this reason, since he did recgonise recognize them as something that holy men used back in his original home. Dormin's answer is no, they just wanted him to have some new sensations to mull over. [[spoiler:On the other hand, it does reduce his inhibitions enough that he tells Dormin why the Queen banished him to their land, which draws the two of them a little closer together.]]
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* {{Immortality}}: Wander has it. He's pretty bitter about it by the time the story starts.
** TheAgeless: After ''Colossus'', Wander aged up from the baby Dormin slipped him out of the seal as to about how old he was during most of the game, and got stuck there.
** ResurrectiveImmortality: Wander breaks his neck falling off a cliff in the first chapter, and it just has the effect of knocking him out for an unspecified length of time before Dormin's soul heals him and he gets right back up again. [[spoiler:He has attempted suicide before, and it never sticks; by the time of the story he's given up on that as an option, though at times he is still tempted to try it.]]
** TheAgeless: After ''Colossus'', Wander aged up from the baby Dormin slipped him out of the seal as to about how old he was during most of the game, and got stuck there.
** ResurrectiveImmortality: Wander breaks his neck falling off a cliff in the first chapter, and it just has the effect of knocking him out for an unspecified length of time before Dormin's soul heals him and he gets right back up again. [[spoiler:He has attempted suicide before, and it never sticks; by the time of the story he's given up on that as an option, though at times he is still tempted to try it.]]
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* LongGame: Dormin's eventual plan to help Wander stop the Queen is to [[spoiler:have him take a medicine that has a sterilising side effect and wait until her current body dies of old age. Because of Wander being compelled to tell the truth to the Queen by some previous command of hers, they don't tell him this.]]
* MercyKill: [[spoiler:Wander's motivation for killing various of the horned boys and at least one of his daughters. From his perspective, better to die quickly from a cut throat than to take three or more days of agony to die of dehydration and have your spirit enslaved, and better to drown than to have your mother steal your body.]]
* MercyKill: [[spoiler:Wander's motivation for killing various of the horned boys and at least one of his daughters. From his perspective, better to die quickly from a cut throat than to take three or more days of agony to die of dehydration and have your spirit enslaved, and better to drown than to have your mother steal your body.]]
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* LongGame: Dormin's eventual plan to help Wander stop the Queen is to [[spoiler:have him take a medicine that has a sterilising sterilizing side effect and wait until her current body dies of old age. Because of Wander being compelled to tell the truth to the Queen by some previous command of hers, they don't tell him this.]]
* MercyKill: [[spoiler:Wander's motivation for killing various incarnations of the horned boys and at least one of his daughters. From his perspective, better to die quickly from a cut throat than to take three or more days of agony to die of dehydration and have your spirit enslaved, and better to drown than to have your mother steal your body.]]
* MercyKill: [[spoiler:Wander's motivation for killing various incarnations of the horned boys and at least one of his daughters. From his perspective, better to die quickly from a cut throat than to take three or more days of agony to die of dehydration and have your spirit enslaved, and better to drown than to have your mother steal your body.]]
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* OnlyFriend: Eventually, Wander and Dormin become this to one another.
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* OnlyFriend: Eventually, Wander and Dormin become this to one another.each other's only friend as the Queen turns more corrupt.
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* RealityEnsues: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps when he and Yorda wash up. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
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* RealityEnsues: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps from all the injuries he's suffered during the climax when he and Yorda wash up.up in Dormin's land. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
* ResurrectiveImmortality: Wander breaks his neck falling off a cliff in the first chapter, and it just has the effect of knocking him out for an unspecified length of time before Dormin's soul heals him and he gets right back up again. [[spoiler:He has attempted suicide before, and it never sticks; by the time of the story he's given up on that as an option, though at times he is still tempted to try it.]]
* ResurrectiveImmortality: Wander breaks his neck falling off a cliff in the first chapter, and it just has the effect of knocking him out for an unspecified length of time before Dormin's soul heals him and he gets right back up again. [[spoiler:He has attempted suicide before, and it never sticks; by the time of the story he's given up on that as an option, though at times he is still tempted to try it.]]
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* {{Xenofiction}}: Has more focus on humans than is typical for the genre. However, the whole thing is from Dormin's perspective, and they're definitely ''not'' human; they have radically inhuman senses and have trouble explaining how they perceive things to humans as well as trouble understanding normal human experiences, such as why Wander gets angry when they first try directly intervening in his nightmares without asking permission. Their morality is also a little [[BlueAndOrangeMorality blue and orange]], given they initially consider the very abnormal situation with the Queen to still be a mortal problem for the mortals to solve.
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* WouldHurtAChild: The Queen and Wander, for different reasons. As depicted in ''ICO'', the Queen uses the horned boys' souls and her daughters' bodies to power her immortality. Wander doesn't ''want'' to hurt children so much as he's either forced to or feels he's giving them a MercyKill. He also yells at some soldiers over this, saying that the horned boys are abused even before the Queen gets to them and blaming their communities for not doing anything to stop her.
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* WouldHurtAChild: The Queen and Wander, for different reasons. As depicted in ''ICO'', the Queen uses the horned boys' souls and her daughters' bodies to power her immortality. Wander doesn't ''want'' to hurt children so much as he's either forced to or feels he's giving them a MercyKill. He also yells at some soldiers over this, saying that the horned boys are abused even before the Queen gets to them and blaming their communities for not doing anything to stop her.
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* SemiDivine: Wander, thanks to the whole "still has a large chunk of Dormin's soul in him" thing. The horned boys are much weaker semi-divine entities, with their horns caused by the equivalent of one of Dormin's breaths; they're still mostly human.
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* SemiDivine: Wander, thanks to the whole "still has a large chunk of Dormin's soul in him" thing. His powers are mostly just enhanced strength, being categorically unable to die and stay dead, and having a constant telepathic connection to Dormin. The horned boys are much weaker semi-divine entities, with their horns caused by the equivalent of one of Dormin's breaths; they're still mostly human.human compared to Wander.
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* HornedHumanoid: Naturally, given it's ''Shadow of the Colossus'' and ''ICO''. Wander has horns and Dormin's power causes Ico and his fellow horned boys to be born. Dormin also has horns when in physical form, but given they never get to manifest fully, it never comes up.
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* HornedHumanoid: Naturally, given it's ''Shadow of the Colossus'' and ''ICO''. Wander has horns and Dormin's power causes Ico and his fellow horned boys to be born. Dormin also has horns when in physical form, but given they never get to manifest fully, it never comes up. Some fanon additions to how the horns work include Dormin seeing them as light: most glow faintly to divine senses, but Wander's shine because of his relatively high concentration of Dormin's soul. Dormin can also use the horns to see through any horned person's eyes or read their minds more easily than they can unaffiliated mortals, though it's easier for them the "brighter" the horns' light is.
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* HitSoHardTheCalendarFeltIt: When Wander asks what year it is at one point, Dormin's asks him "by whose count?" Wander settles on essentially asking for the regnal year of the Queen.
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* HitSoHardTheCalendarFeltIt: When Wander asks what year it is at one point, Dormin's the extremely ancient Dormin asks him "by whose count?" in all seriousness. Wander settles on essentially asking for the regnal year of the Queen.Queen (Year 365 at that point, for the curious).
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* HitSoHardTheCalendarFeltIt: When Wander asks what year it is at one point, Dormin's asks him "by whose count?" Wander settles on essentially asking for the regnal year of the Queen.
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* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Twisted a bit. Wander asks Dormin if they had him try mushrooms for this reason, since he did recgonise them as something that holy men used back in his original home. Dormin's answer is no, they just wanted him to have some new sensations to mull over. [[spoiler:On the other hand, it does reduce his inhibitions enough that he tells Dormin why the Queen banished him to their land, which draws the two of them a little closer together.]]
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* ContemplatingYourHands: Wander, briefly, towards the start of his mushroom trip.
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* FantasyContraception: The crux of [[spoiler:Dormin's plan to stop the Queen.]]
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* ChildByRape: All of Wander and the Queen's children after their first son, who was conceived before she got corrupted. Wander doesn't hold it against them.
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* HappilyAdopted: Seems to have been the case for Wander adopting the horned boy Rilu, [[spoiler:right up until Wander kills him to prevent the Queen from taking him.]]
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* HappilyAdopted: HappilyAdopted:
** Seems to have been the case for Wander adopting the horned boy Rilu, [[spoiler:right up until Wander kills him to prevent the Queen from taking him.]]
** Less tragically, [[spoiler:he takes Ico in after the events of ''ICO'', though it's ultimately up to Yorda and Ico if it's going to be as a son or as a future son-in-law, which isn't resolved by the end of the fic.]]
** Seems to have been the case for Wander adopting the horned boy Rilu, [[spoiler:right up until Wander kills him to prevent the Queen from taking him.]]
** Less tragically, [[spoiler:he takes Ico in after the events of ''ICO'', though it's ultimately up to Yorda and Ico if it's going to be as a son or as a future son-in-law, which isn't resolved by the end of the fic.]]
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* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Wander considers his and the Queen's names to be dead, though she still thinks of them as Sabae and Mono.
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* TakeAwayTheirName: Wander's original name was killed by whatever god he lived under before ''Shadow of the Colossus''. Because of the way Mono was corrupted into the Queen, he considers her name dead, too. It doesn't stop the Queen from using his old name and he can freely think and say hers if he wants to.
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* TakeAwayTheirName: Wander's original name name, Sabae, was killed by whatever god he lived under before ''Shadow of the Colossus''. Because of the way Mono was corrupted into the Queen, he considers her name dead, too. It doesn't stop the Queen from using his old name name, and he can freely think and say hers if he wants to.
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* NamelessNarrative: "Wander" is implied to be more of a nickname for a nameless person and isn't used instory; he doesn't consider himself to have a name, and Dormin doesn't, either, thinking of him as various epithets and using 'wanderer' when they want to get his attention. The Queen does occasionally call him Sabae, but as far as he's concerned that name died a long time ago.
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* SomebodyNamedNobody: "Wander" isn't used in the story; a sequel short implies it's just a convenient way of referring to a nameless person. Wander doesn't consider himself to have a name, and Dormin doesn't, either, thinking of him as various epithets and using 'wanderer' when they want to get his attention.
* TakeAwayTheirName: Wander's original name was killed by whatever god he lived under before ''Shadow of the Colossus''. Because of the way Mono was corrupted into the Queen, he considers her name dead, too. It doesn't stop the Queen from using his old name and he can freely think and say hers if he wants to.
* TakeAwayTheirName: Wander's original name was killed by whatever god he lived under before ''Shadow of the Colossus''. Because of the way Mono was corrupted into the Queen, he considers her name dead, too. It doesn't stop the Queen from using his old name and he can freely think and say hers if he wants to.
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* NightmareSequence: Wander doesn't sleep well thanks to his frequent nightmares, which mostly centre around the horned children and his daughters dying or his abusive relationship with the Queen.
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* PastExperienceNightmare: Wander has a lot, though they are very rarely literal memories. Instead, they tend to be amalgams of various experiences and frighteningly surreal imagery. The imagery is garbled enough that even though Dormin can read his mind while he's having them, they have no way of knowing what the real events were unless he tells them.
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* FriendshipMoment: [[spoiler:The last line of the fic, where Dormin directly thinks of Wander as their friend for the first time.]]
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* InsultOfEndearment: Wander's language seems to have a feature that doesn't translate directly to English: specific sets of pronouns that are used to refer to divine entities. Wander rarely uses them to refer to Dormin, instead using the pronouns one would use for a mortal of the same gender. Over time it shifts from him being mildly insulting to a sign of how close he and Dormin are.
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* OnlyFriend: Eventually, Wander and Dormin become this to one another.
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-->He laughed, mocking the stern note in Their voices as he staggered along the cliff face, walking the dizzy spell off. "And just what are ''you'' going to do about it, you rancid, toothless old thing?" He dropped down in the shade of a cliff and yelled at the sky, "''Kill me?!''"
-->His voice echoed up and down the canyon: ''kill me?! kill me! kill me. kill me...''
-->With each echo, his snarl fell further and further. As his voice faded, he curled his knees to his chest and shut his eyes.
-->Dormin said nothing more, moving Their attention away from him and back to the seal. He was trapped, They were trapped, and now they shared the same prison.
-->His voice echoed up and down the canyon: ''kill me?! kill me! kill me. kill me...''
-->With each echo, his snarl fell further and further. As his voice faded, he curled his knees to his chest and shut his eyes.
-->Dormin said nothing more, moving Their attention away from him and back to the seal. He was trapped, They were trapped, and now they shared the same prison.
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** Wander has a less severe one after [[spoiler:the Queen figures out Dormin's plan. It's mostly only less severe because ''ICO'' happened twelve years later.]]
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** Wander has a less severe one after [[spoiler:the Queen figures out Dormin's plan. It's mostly only less severe because ''ICO'' happened happens twelve years later.]]
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* DomesticAbuse: Five hundred years of it.
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* DomesticAbuse: Five hundred years of it.The Queen has been using Wander as a breeding stud for soul vessels for centuries, using her voice to compel him to sleep with her.
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* HappilyAdopted: Seems to have been the case for Wander adopting the horned boy Rilu, [[spoiler:right up until Wander killed him to prevent the Queen from taking him.]]
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* HappilyAdopted: Seems to have been the case for Wander adopting the horned boy Rilu, [[spoiler:right up until Wander killed kills him to prevent the Queen from taking him.]]
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* HopeSpot: When it looks like the Queen [[spoiler:is barren.]] However... [[spoiler:she isn't, and she figures out why Wander is sterile.]]
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* HopeSpot: When it looks like the Queen [[spoiler:is barren.]] However... [[spoiler:she isn't, and she figures out why Wander is sterile.sterile, the reason being that he's been taking drugs that serve as a natural contraceptive.]]
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* BizarreAlienSenses: Dormin does not have the same senses as a mortal, and it doesn't help that they're incorporeal. The fic is fully from their perspective, so we're treated to various aspects of this, such as the way they sense pieces of their soul as light (Wander's horns shine to their vision because of this) and the Queen's shadows as a garbled mess of colours that hurts to look at for too long. They also don't have the same sense of time as Wander does: he thinks in approximately 24 hour days, but Dormin has no real concept of day vs. night and instead thinks in either 20-hour periods.
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* BizarreAlienSenses: Dormin does not have the same senses as a mortal, and it doesn't help that they're incorporeal. The fic is fully from their perspective, so we're treated to various aspects of this, such as the way they sense pieces of their soul as light (Wander's horns shine to their vision because of this) and the Queen's shadows as a garbled mess of colours that hurts to look at for too long. They also don't have the same sense of time as Wander does: he thinks in approximately 24 hour days, but Dormin has no real concept of day vs. night and instead thinks in either 20-hour periods.
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At some unspecified time in the past, a botched exorcism ceremony both transformed Mono into the Queen of the Castle in the Mist and bound Wander to her under a CompellingVoice effect. Meanwhile, the seal on the Dormin is imperfect, and small pieces of their power periodically leak out and create the horned boys. Wander has been spending the last three hundred years trying to find a way to stop the Queen from killing their daughters and the horned boys, and his latest attempt makes her command him to stay in Dormin's land.
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At some unspecified time in the past, a botched exorcism ceremony both transformed Mono into the Queen of the Castle in the Mist and bound Wander to her under a CompellingVoice effect. Meanwhile, the seal on the Dormin is imperfect, and small pieces of their power periodically leak out and create the horned boys. Wander has been spending the last three hundred years trying to find a way to stop the Queen from killing their daughters and the horned boys, and his latest attempt makes her command him to stay in Dormin's land.
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''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/24993688/chapters/60515488 Enlightenments]]'' is a Videogame/TeamICOSeries fanfic by Tropers/SparkyLurkdragon, set in their Immortal Wander continuity.
The fic begins about three hundred years after ''Videogame/ShadowOfTheColossus'' and spans approximately two hundred years until the time ''Videogame/{{ICO}}'' happens. The way Dormin slipped Wander out of the Ancient Sword's seal at the end of ''Colossus'' means that he still has a relatively large amount of Dormin's soul in him which they can't reclaim because of the seal. The connection makes him immortal, gives Dormin easy insight into his thoughts unless he actively shuts the connection down, and made him grow horns.
At some unspecified time in the past, a botched exorcism ceremony both transformed Mono into the Queen of the Castle in the Mist and bound Wander to her under a CompellingVoice effect. Meanwhile, the seal on the Dormin is imperfect, and small pieces of their power periodically leak out and create the horned boys. Wander has been spending the last three hundred years trying to find a way to stop the Queen from killing their daughters and the horned boys, and his latest attempt makes her command him to stay in Dormin's land.
So begins about two hundred years of Dormin and Wander having to get used to one another, slowly overcoming Dormin's aloofness towards mortals and Wander's extreme bitterness towards the situation he's been trapped in because of his connection to Dormin.
The author notes that reader discretion is advised and has a long list of content warnings in the tags. Let the reader beware of the following tropes for the same reasons.
!! This fanfic has examples of:
* BizarreAlienSenses: Dormin does not have the same senses as a mortal, and it doesn't help that they're incorporeal. The fic is fully from their perspective, so we're treated to various aspects of this, such as the way they sense pieces of their soul as light (Wander's horns shine to their vision because of this) and the Queen's shadows as a garbled mess of colours that hurts to look at for too long. They also don't have the same sense of time as Wander does: he thinks in approximately 24 hour days, but Dormin has no real concept of day vs. night and instead thinks in either 20-hour periods.
* CompellingVoice: The Queen has this effect on Wander. He can resist to a certain extent if she's far away, suffering from debilitating headaches and nausea for his efforts, but the closer she is to him the less he's able to, to the point that if she's a few feet away he can't even change his expression in reaction to things he does ''not'' want to do.
* DemotedToExtra: The Colossi. Wander does have mixed feelings about having killed them, but he's a lot more concerned with the present problem of the horned children and his daughters dying horribly. He does visit the tenth Colossus briefly, and the seventh Colossus shows up in one of his nightmares.
* DivineAssistance: The second half of the story is mostly Dormin tying to help Wander with his trauma. [[spoiler:In more than one way.]]
* DontFearTheReaper: One of Dormin's main domains is death, and while they are initially aloof to the concerns of mortals, they're mellow, and as time goes on they grow more and more compassionate.
* DomesticAbuse: Five hundred years of it.
* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: Averted. None of the rape scenes are played for laughs or titillation: Wander is clearly the victim here and is deeply traumatised by the whole thing. It doesn't help that the Queen intends to use the results of these meetings to body hop.
* FloweryElizabethanEnglish: Dormin's dialect. It's well-researched to the point of [[spoiler:Dormin using "you" for the Queen to put an extra layer of formality between them, contrasting the familiar "thou" they use for Wander.]]
* HappilyAdopted: Seems to have been the case for Wander adopting the horned boy Rilu, [[spoiler:right up until Wander killed him to prevent the Queen from taking him.]]
* HeroicBSOD:
** Wander enters a deep depression after [[spoiler:catching the graveyard up to the present and losing what little sense of purpose it was giving him. He had already lost all hope that anything about his current situation was going to change.]] Dormin slowly dragging him out of the BSOD drives most of the second half of the story.
** Wander has a less severe one after [[spoiler:the Queen figures out Dormin's plan. It's mostly only less severe because ''ICO'' happened twelve years later.]]
* HomeOfTheGods: Home of ''a'' god, anyway. The story takes place in Dormin's land.
* HopeSpot: When it looks like the Queen [[spoiler:is barren.]] However... [[spoiler:she isn't, and she figures out why Wander is sterile.]]
* HornedHumanoid: Naturally, given it's ''Shadow of the Colossus'' and ''ICO''. Wander has horns and Dormin's power causes Ico and his fellow horned boys to be born. Dormin also has horns when in physical form, but given they never get to manifest fully, it never comes up.
* {{Immortality}}: Wander has it. He's pretty bitter about it by the time the story starts.
** TheAgeless: After ''Colossus'', Wander aged up from the baby Dormin slipped him out of the seal as to about how old he was during most of the game, and got stuck there.
** ResurrectiveImmortality: Wander breaks his neck falling off a cliff in the first chapter, and it just has the effect of knocking him out for an unspecified length of time before Dormin's soul heals him and he gets right back up again. [[spoiler:He has attempted suicide before, and it never sticks; by the time of the story he's given up on that as an option, though at times he is still tempted to try it.]]
* IncestIsRelative: The fic doesn't dwell on it, but given that the Queen is stealing her daughters' bodies yet has the same husband through the ages...
* LongGame: Dormin's eventual plan to help Wander stop the Queen is to [[spoiler:have him take a medicine that has a sterilising side effect and wait until her current body dies of old age. Because of Wander being compelled to tell the truth to the Queen by some previous command of hers, they don't tell him this.]]
* MercyKill: [[spoiler:Wander's motivation for killing various of the horned boys and at least one of his daughters. From his perspective, better to die quickly from a cut throat than to take three or more days of agony to die of dehydration and have your spirit enslaved, and better to drown than to have your mother steal your body.]]
* MushroomSamba: Dormin gently convinces Wander to eat some psychotropic mushrooms [[spoiler: to try and shake him out of his depression by giving him some new sensations to mull over. It incidentally lowers his guard enough that he talks about what happened to lead the Queen to banish him to Dormin's land, and by the time the trip's over he's a little more inclined to be friendly towards Dormin.]]
* NamelessNarrative: "Wander" is implied to be more of a nickname for a nameless person and isn't used instory; he doesn't consider himself to have a name, and Dormin doesn't, either, thinking of him as various epithets and using 'wanderer' when they want to get his attention. The Queen does occasionally call him Sabae, but as far as he's concerned that name died a long time ago.
* NayTheist: Wander is obviously fully aware that Dormin and other gods exist, but he initially doesn't want anything to do with them.
* ObliviouslyEvil: The Queen. The fic never gets inside her head since Dormin can't read her mind, but her actions seem to indicate that after the corrupted exorcism spell, she thinks she's inducing the horned kids into her and "Sabae's" family and that it's only natural that he'd want her to steal her daughters' bodies to stay with him.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Wander considers his and the Queen's names to be dead, though she still thinks of them as Sabae and Mono.
* RealityEnsues: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps when he and Yorda wash up. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
* OurGodsAreDifferent: Dormin's primary domains are life, death, and how they intertwine, and they have a secondary domain of light that causes eternal day in their lands and the horns which mark their influence on mortals to glow to divine sight. It's implied that the Colossi were created by other gods in the area that have the developer nicknames for the Colossi: the tenth Colossus is referred to as "Dirge's Colossus", for example.
* SemiDivine: Wander, thanks to the whole "still has a large chunk of Dormin's soul in him" thing. The horned boys are much weaker semi-divine entities, with their horns caused by the equivalent of one of Dormin's breaths; they're still mostly human.
* ShellShockedVeteran: Wander has persistent, violent nightmares, and later experiences flashbacks and intrusive thoughts. When he [[spoiler:takes Yorda and Ico in, he's initially blunt to the point of scaring Ico. He is improving by the end of the story, but he's still awkward with them in spite of his best efforts, and it's made fairly clear that he isn't anywhere close to fully recovered.]]
* TouchedByVorlons: Wander's immortality is from having some of Dormin's soul still inside him after ''Colossus''.
* TranslationConvention:
** Both of the fictional languages featured (Wander's/Yorda's and Ico's) are translated as English, and both seem to have a specific set of pronouns for addressing the divine that don't have a direct analogue in English. It's signified by capitalising pronouns related to Dormin. Dormin always thinks of Themself with these pronouns and most of the mortal characters use them consistently when referring to the deity. Wander doesn't. Initially it's from his NayTheist tendencies, but it later comes to be something of a sign of familiarity between them. He ''does'' use the divine pronouns when he's either concentrating on being respectful or just overawed.
** Wander's writing system is implied to be syllabic.
* TricksterGod: Downplayed. It isn't one of their main domains, but Dormin does occasionally tease Wander as they get more used to each other. [[spoiler:They come up with a pretty impressive bit of misdirection to try to solve the Queen problem, too.]]
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Wander appears to have already tried all of the obvious solutions to stopping the Queen, including stabbing her, sterilising himself, killing their daughters, and killing the horned boys before they could be taken to the Castle in the Mist, but always failed because of the compelling voice effect she has on him. It contributes to his first HeroicBSOD.
* WouldHurtAChild: The Queen and Wander, for different reasons. As depicted in ''ICO'', the Queen uses the horned boys' souls and her daughters' bodies to power her immortality. Wander doesn't ''want'' to hurt children so much as he's either forced to or feels he's giving them a MercyKill. He also yells at some soldiers over this, saying that the horned boys are abused even before the Queen gets to them and blaming their communities for not doing anything to stop her.
The fic begins about three hundred years after ''Videogame/ShadowOfTheColossus'' and spans approximately two hundred years until the time ''Videogame/{{ICO}}'' happens. The way Dormin slipped Wander out of the Ancient Sword's seal at the end of ''Colossus'' means that he still has a relatively large amount of Dormin's soul in him which they can't reclaim because of the seal. The connection makes him immortal, gives Dormin easy insight into his thoughts unless he actively shuts the connection down, and made him grow horns.
At some unspecified time in the past, a botched exorcism ceremony both transformed Mono into the Queen of the Castle in the Mist and bound Wander to her under a CompellingVoice effect. Meanwhile, the seal on the Dormin is imperfect, and small pieces of their power periodically leak out and create the horned boys. Wander has been spending the last three hundred years trying to find a way to stop the Queen from killing their daughters and the horned boys, and his latest attempt makes her command him to stay in Dormin's land.
So begins about two hundred years of Dormin and Wander having to get used to one another, slowly overcoming Dormin's aloofness towards mortals and Wander's extreme bitterness towards the situation he's been trapped in because of his connection to Dormin.
The author notes that reader discretion is advised and has a long list of content warnings in the tags. Let the reader beware of the following tropes for the same reasons.
!! This fanfic has examples of:
* BizarreAlienSenses: Dormin does not have the same senses as a mortal, and it doesn't help that they're incorporeal. The fic is fully from their perspective, so we're treated to various aspects of this, such as the way they sense pieces of their soul as light (Wander's horns shine to their vision because of this) and the Queen's shadows as a garbled mess of colours that hurts to look at for too long. They also don't have the same sense of time as Wander does: he thinks in approximately 24 hour days, but Dormin has no real concept of day vs. night and instead thinks in either 20-hour periods.
* CompellingVoice: The Queen has this effect on Wander. He can resist to a certain extent if she's far away, suffering from debilitating headaches and nausea for his efforts, but the closer she is to him the less he's able to, to the point that if she's a few feet away he can't even change his expression in reaction to things he does ''not'' want to do.
* DemotedToExtra: The Colossi. Wander does have mixed feelings about having killed them, but he's a lot more concerned with the present problem of the horned children and his daughters dying horribly. He does visit the tenth Colossus briefly, and the seventh Colossus shows up in one of his nightmares.
* DivineAssistance: The second half of the story is mostly Dormin tying to help Wander with his trauma. [[spoiler:In more than one way.]]
* DontFearTheReaper: One of Dormin's main domains is death, and while they are initially aloof to the concerns of mortals, they're mellow, and as time goes on they grow more and more compassionate.
* DomesticAbuse: Five hundred years of it.
* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: Averted. None of the rape scenes are played for laughs or titillation: Wander is clearly the victim here and is deeply traumatised by the whole thing. It doesn't help that the Queen intends to use the results of these meetings to body hop.
* FloweryElizabethanEnglish: Dormin's dialect. It's well-researched to the point of [[spoiler:Dormin using "you" for the Queen to put an extra layer of formality between them, contrasting the familiar "thou" they use for Wander.]]
* HappilyAdopted: Seems to have been the case for Wander adopting the horned boy Rilu, [[spoiler:right up until Wander killed him to prevent the Queen from taking him.]]
* HeroicBSOD:
** Wander enters a deep depression after [[spoiler:catching the graveyard up to the present and losing what little sense of purpose it was giving him. He had already lost all hope that anything about his current situation was going to change.]] Dormin slowly dragging him out of the BSOD drives most of the second half of the story.
** Wander has a less severe one after [[spoiler:the Queen figures out Dormin's plan. It's mostly only less severe because ''ICO'' happened twelve years later.]]
* HomeOfTheGods: Home of ''a'' god, anyway. The story takes place in Dormin's land.
* HopeSpot: When it looks like the Queen [[spoiler:is barren.]] However... [[spoiler:she isn't, and she figures out why Wander is sterile.]]
* HornedHumanoid: Naturally, given it's ''Shadow of the Colossus'' and ''ICO''. Wander has horns and Dormin's power causes Ico and his fellow horned boys to be born. Dormin also has horns when in physical form, but given they never get to manifest fully, it never comes up.
* {{Immortality}}: Wander has it. He's pretty bitter about it by the time the story starts.
** TheAgeless: After ''Colossus'', Wander aged up from the baby Dormin slipped him out of the seal as to about how old he was during most of the game, and got stuck there.
** ResurrectiveImmortality: Wander breaks his neck falling off a cliff in the first chapter, and it just has the effect of knocking him out for an unspecified length of time before Dormin's soul heals him and he gets right back up again. [[spoiler:He has attempted suicide before, and it never sticks; by the time of the story he's given up on that as an option, though at times he is still tempted to try it.]]
* IncestIsRelative: The fic doesn't dwell on it, but given that the Queen is stealing her daughters' bodies yet has the same husband through the ages...
* LongGame: Dormin's eventual plan to help Wander stop the Queen is to [[spoiler:have him take a medicine that has a sterilising side effect and wait until her current body dies of old age. Because of Wander being compelled to tell the truth to the Queen by some previous command of hers, they don't tell him this.]]
* MercyKill: [[spoiler:Wander's motivation for killing various of the horned boys and at least one of his daughters. From his perspective, better to die quickly from a cut throat than to take three or more days of agony to die of dehydration and have your spirit enslaved, and better to drown than to have your mother steal your body.]]
* MushroomSamba: Dormin gently convinces Wander to eat some psychotropic mushrooms [[spoiler: to try and shake him out of his depression by giving him some new sensations to mull over. It incidentally lowers his guard enough that he talks about what happened to lead the Queen to banish him to Dormin's land, and by the time the trip's over he's a little more inclined to be friendly towards Dormin.]]
* NamelessNarrative: "Wander" is implied to be more of a nickname for a nameless person and isn't used instory; he doesn't consider himself to have a name, and Dormin doesn't, either, thinking of him as various epithets and using 'wanderer' when they want to get his attention. The Queen does occasionally call him Sabae, but as far as he's concerned that name died a long time ago.
* NayTheist: Wander is obviously fully aware that Dormin and other gods exist, but he initially doesn't want anything to do with them.
* ObliviouslyEvil: The Queen. The fic never gets inside her head since Dormin can't read her mind, but her actions seem to indicate that after the corrupted exorcism spell, she thinks she's inducing the horned kids into her and "Sabae's" family and that it's only natural that he'd want her to steal her daughters' bodies to stay with him.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Wander considers his and the Queen's names to be dead, though she still thinks of them as Sabae and Mono.
* RealityEnsues: Right after the end of ''ICO''. [[spoiler:Ico is concussed, has some cracked ribs, and is beginning to develop an infection in his horn stumps when he and Yorda wash up. The kids also have no idea how to take care of themselves after escaping the Castle, so Wander takes them under his wing.]]
* OurGodsAreDifferent: Dormin's primary domains are life, death, and how they intertwine, and they have a secondary domain of light that causes eternal day in their lands and the horns which mark their influence on mortals to glow to divine sight. It's implied that the Colossi were created by other gods in the area that have the developer nicknames for the Colossi: the tenth Colossus is referred to as "Dirge's Colossus", for example.
* SemiDivine: Wander, thanks to the whole "still has a large chunk of Dormin's soul in him" thing. The horned boys are much weaker semi-divine entities, with their horns caused by the equivalent of one of Dormin's breaths; they're still mostly human.
* ShellShockedVeteran: Wander has persistent, violent nightmares, and later experiences flashbacks and intrusive thoughts. When he [[spoiler:takes Yorda and Ico in, he's initially blunt to the point of scaring Ico. He is improving by the end of the story, but he's still awkward with them in spite of his best efforts, and it's made fairly clear that he isn't anywhere close to fully recovered.]]
* TouchedByVorlons: Wander's immortality is from having some of Dormin's soul still inside him after ''Colossus''.
* TranslationConvention:
** Both of the fictional languages featured (Wander's/Yorda's and Ico's) are translated as English, and both seem to have a specific set of pronouns for addressing the divine that don't have a direct analogue in English. It's signified by capitalising pronouns related to Dormin. Dormin always thinks of Themself with these pronouns and most of the mortal characters use them consistently when referring to the deity. Wander doesn't. Initially it's from his NayTheist tendencies, but it later comes to be something of a sign of familiarity between them. He ''does'' use the divine pronouns when he's either concentrating on being respectful or just overawed.
** Wander's writing system is implied to be syllabic.
* TricksterGod: Downplayed. It isn't one of their main domains, but Dormin does occasionally tease Wander as they get more used to each other. [[spoiler:They come up with a pretty impressive bit of misdirection to try to solve the Queen problem, too.]]
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Wander appears to have already tried all of the obvious solutions to stopping the Queen, including stabbing her, sterilising himself, killing their daughters, and killing the horned boys before they could be taken to the Castle in the Mist, but always failed because of the compelling voice effect she has on him. It contributes to his first HeroicBSOD.
* WouldHurtAChild: The Queen and Wander, for different reasons. As depicted in ''ICO'', the Queen uses the horned boys' souls and her daughters' bodies to power her immortality. Wander doesn't ''want'' to hurt children so much as he's either forced to or feels he's giving them a MercyKill. He also yells at some soldiers over this, saying that the horned boys are abused even before the Queen gets to them and blaming their communities for not doing anything to stop her.
