[Image ID: An alcohol marker drawing of Clover from Zero Escape 999. She is a blasian young woman with dark skin and textured hair in two high pigtails. She wears a school uniform consisting of a white button up, a checkered red skirt, and a matching neck bow. Over it she wears a grey hoodie with pink details and pink pom-pom cords. She wears furry heeled boots with similar pom-poms, and grey and white cheetah print earmuffs. She is depicted from an up angle, an axe slung over his shoulders. She sticks her tongue out, looking smug. /End ID]
combining some endings with a slash as I believe they serve equal narrative purpose. Feel free to elaborate which should go first or be omitted in the tags/comments if you would like :) I omitted the coffin ending as it’s not really an “ending” so much as it is a fail state for the true end
The way this season Axe Woves was literally minding his own business, doing his mercenary jobs, hanging out and chilling in a field on a nice planet as one of those jobs, when Bo-Katan and her new bestie and his little green gremlin child show up and she immediately challenges him to a fight and they beat each other up and he looses, gets an immediate scolding off Bo for being mean to Din, starts a rivalry with the biggest baddest Child of the Watch guy he sees, has a fight with said guy over chess and gets told to stop by a literal toddler, flies into fucking orbit to warn the fleet of the imperial presence, flies the cruiser by himself to draw their fighters attention and proceeds to crash said ship directly into Gideon, obliterating him, and then helps to rebuild their home world and adopts a child. Wild ride from start to finish really
crying in the same tool he used to create the universe is what he has to defend himself with as the world’s about to end
heavily inspired by this post that has never left my brain since it crossed my dash
[ID: A drawing of Crowley from Good Omens, facing left and showing him from the shoulders-up in a black suit. He wears his sunglasses and looks down solemnly at his hand which holds a piece of metal (a car’s crank handle), the same one he held in the finale of Good Omens’ season 1. Behind him are overlapping green circles with constellations drawn inside of them. The background is a purple and red nebula. /End ID]
"well I can see why s2 felt rushed because they don't think they're getting a season three so they're putting all the fan favorite parts in now!" how the fuck have we gotten to the point where this is normal to say
[Image ID: A pencil sketch of Clover from Zero Escape 999. She is a young blasian woman with pigtails. She is depicted from an angle, holding an axe over her shoulders. She sticks her tongue out. /End ID]
I couldn't find any of JPN Rafal's critical hit lines online so I compiled them myself. In the process I observed a few neat things about him especially comparative to other infantry axe units like Boucheron, Saphir, Panette, Diamant, and so on.
Engage goes above and beyond in character model expression by giving each unit a set of personalized critical hit quotes, but also stylish critical hit animations filled with personality dependent on class. Critical hit animations ultimately can be shared between mutual typings or reclassed units. Rafal, however, is a partial outlier.
He doesn't share his unique critical animation with others as an axe-wielding Fell Child, but does have an extremely similar one to his sister Nel; a fellow Fell Child. This makes him the only axeman with a multi-hit or combo type critical animation. Others by comparison defeat their opponents in a single decisive blow with a huge sum of power backing it up and this, in context for their weapon type, is reasonable.
Axes are powerful weapons counterbalanced by being unwieldy, heavy, and having lower accuracy rates. Knowing that, the fact that Rafal incorporates not only one, not two, but three blows into a killing maneuver sets him apart in a number of ways. It speaks not only to a training likely attuned to his fell dragon upbringing, but also to his prideful extravagance, to the point where he puts a spin on the usual formula of wielding a heavy axe.
A literal spin, at that, as the finishing strike is preceded by an aerial or no-hands cartwheel for maximized kinetic output. Very flashy, Rafal.
Retrospectively, it's funny to me. When it comes to his physical attributes speed is one of Rafal's worst areas of talent and growth and his build is unremarkable. He should not be performing the equivalent of a brave hit and then some, but he does it as if to say "look at me, look what I can do". Him retaining the same animation whether he's Nil or Rafal is another neat touch and insanely versatile, because depending on the identity, the context of this animation can change.
When it's Rafal, the juxtaposition between his flourish and the unadorned utility of other axe units puts the spotlight on him. When it's Nil, the usage of three hits to slay an enemy puts the spotlight on his weakness. "Nil" is a physically fragile unit who lacks the offensive power of his sister and knights; being unable to dispatch opponents in a single hit suits Nil as much as doing it purposefully suits Rafal. I doubt this was on par with any intention of the developers, but still, I see it as very clever.