Buckle up, because this Immortal Gazette edition is about to drop like a divine truth-bomb straight from the Mount of Madness. And yes - Hope is on trial today, and the jury is Loki, Rumple, and Alice the Mad Mad Queen.
🗞 The Immortal Gazette
Issue # Does anyone even know anymore.
Hope, Hopium & Control
Filed under: Dangerous Ideas, Unholy Alliances, and Divine Shenanigans
By The Usual Suspects: Rumplestiltskin, Loki, and Alice the Mad Mad Queen
🎭 Act I: Rumple’s Opening Statement
Filed under “Romantic Nonsense and Trickster Logic”
The quill scratches wildly across parchment, swirls of ink practically dancing with glee as Rumplestiltskin cackles to himself.
“Hope,” he muses, stroking the fur of a cursed chinchilla, “is the most glorious of leashes.”
“You see, darlings, give a soul even one glittering thread of hope - and they’ll chain themselves to misery willingly, thinking they’re working toward freedom. Oh, it’s positively delicious! The gods knew this, of course. Pandora’s box wasn’t punishment, it was performance art. Hope was the final flourish - a shimmering illusion wrapped in divine cruelty. A masterstroke!”
“You keep mortals starving, dreaming, longing... and they’ll never see the cage around them. Hope sells. Hope seduces. And Hope, dearest darlings, controls.”
He winks at Loki, who grins without mirth, twirling a dagger between fingers that once carved chaos into the stars.
🔥 Act II: Loki’s Cold Truth
Filed under “Ice-Wrapped Fire and Long-Lost Empires”
“He’s not wrong,” Loki murmurs, voice like velvet laced with broken glass.
“Hope is currency in empires. You offer it like a drug, just a whiff - enough to numb the pain but never enough to cure the sickness. They’ll kneel, beg, obey, all in the name of ‘someday.’ Someday it’ll be better. Someday someone will fix it. Someday the gods will notice.”
“They used it on me,” he growls. “The Aesir dangled it like a carrot made of starlight - ‘Earn your place, Loki, prove yourself. Redemption is possible.’ Lies. I danced, I burned, I bled - and still they slammed the door in my face. Hope is the mask the tyrant wears.”
“I watched Midgard fall for it too. Politicians whispering sweet futures while pocketing souls. Religious tyrants promising eternity for obedience. Even lovers saying ‘just wait a little longer.’ Hope is the string that pulls the puppet.”
He exhales, and the candlelight flickers with cold wind. “Sometimes… mercy is smashing the hope before it hardens into chains.”
💥 Act III: Alice Crashes In (Tea Cups Be Damned)
Filed under “Myth-Slaying Mayhem and Tea-Flavored Rage”
A door SLAMS open with gale-force fury, ink scrolls scatter, and teacups go flying. Alice storms in, wind tangled in her curls and fury etched across her crown.
“Enough, you infuriating drama muffins!” she hisses. “You sound like two cryptkeepers running a black market on despair!”
“Yes - hope can be weaponized. Yes - it’s been used as control, as manipulation, as poison wrapped in poetry. BUT that’s not what hope is. That’s what it’s been twisted into.”
“Hope, real hope, is not the leash - it’s the spark. It’s what makes Persephone reach up through the soil. It’s what makes a rebel queen rise when the world says ‘sit pretty and stay small.’”
“Control isn’t hope’s fault - it’s the architects who abuse it. Hope isn’t the enemy, it’s the reason we fight back against the enemy.”
She glares at the others like a thunderstorm incarnate.
“You want to talk mythology? Fine - Hope survived the apocalypse. After Pandora’s Box was emptied of horrors, only hope remained. Not as a curse. As a seed. A chance. A whisper from the ink of the Fates that maybe, just maybe, things can change.”
“And don’t even try to twist this into a Hallmark scroll, Rumple. I will enchant every one of your buttons to scream motivational affirmations at 3 AM.”
🌀 Act IV: The Chaos of It All
The newsroom devolves into bickering, Loki conjuring holograms of burning temples, Rumple dramatically weeping into a velvet handkerchief, and Alice upending an entire shelf of myth scrolls labeled “Emotional Manipulation Through the Ages.”
Somewhere in the madness, the real truth starts to peek through.
Hope is powerful - dangerously so.
It’s a sword, a chain, a spark, and a spell.
Used by tyrants, it imprisons.
Used by survivors, it liberates.
Used by fools, it burns.
Used by visionaries, it rebuilds.
And in the world of 4EverMore, where gods bicker in headlines and ink writes destiny - hope remains one of the most unpredictable forces of all.
🪶 From the Desk of the Mad Mad Queen Herself
Alice, Queen of Ink & Lore
“Hope is not your leash, darling - it’s your lantern. Carry it wisely, and don’t let any trickster sell you cheap, diluted hopium instead.”
“Because we aren’t here to wait for better days - we’re here to make them. One myth-slaying truthbomb at a time.”
Signed with a teacup full of thunder,
Alice, Queen of Ink & Lore
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