#MAYBE THE HEADLESS MANNEQUINS COULD BE GOLLEMS...

[bibiana112]

would LOVE to hear u talk abt ur ideas for the ib au! always loved that art but i dont know anythiiiing abt ib besides the very basics but id so incredibly love to listen what it, and in turn the au is abt!!! always open for all thoughts

Okay so Mary- the one with the yellow rose Akane is holding- is this like super lonely and isolated weird little girl that literally has a book called "how to make friends" and well spoilers that's because she's actually a painting of a girl that never existed that was the gallery artist's like idea of a perfect daughter kind of? Since the name of the gallery, the "World of ___" thing, is Kurashiki then you could really have the artist be A) Aoi which uhhh I guess and it could be that she did exist and died or B) Akane herself and have it be a thing where she painted the idealized version of her younger self that never was which I like a lot more because the artist is in fact dead and their spirit is what makes things in the game come to life and the fact he did that kind of intentionally by pouring his soul into his work and thus creates a labyrinth with death at every corner just feels very close to her envisioning and haunting them death games. Okay so, the game has the protagonist as this semi verbal too young to read properly kid named Ib that gets lost from her parents during a visit to this art exhibit so that's Quark, lost baby child that gets nightmares from the horrors™ and is in constant danger of shutting off and staying in their ideal imagining of reality instead of facing it and leaving to the real world again and ending up all alone despite that being the scariest possible fate in this game. And Junpei as Gary as in queer guy who's barely put together and a bit of a clumsy wuss that grows to support this kid that he's come across and also Mary for the duration of time where she isn't. well. Okay so there's the thing that this haunted gallery place meets with reality in a very specific way, you can enter or leave through the Figment of the World painting however.. only the same amount of people who have entered from reality can also return to it so the whole thing is that Mary wants to be real and have a friend and thus latches onto the kid her own age and decides to try and get rid of the adult that is said to remind her of the gallery's artist aka the guy who painted her aka absent father figure aka Akane in this version but then sooo... Mini Akane sees grown up Junpei and thinks of grown up Akane but would she. Would that be a negative? Would she be mad? Would she want to escape with Junpei or Quark? Which one would she try to kill? Which one would forget to take the knife away from her while she's passed out– that part is just salt I don't really know how to tackle this lol I can't imagine this Akane doing the pallet knife shtick either even if I don't have a good reason for her not to? I can very well imagine her doing the whole cute bunny sculptures being actually creepy dolls thing like instead of attacking she only does the thing of not intervening there so one of them is so scarred that they can't leave but it's mostly the gallery's will there and not her own which omg this whole line of thinking along with the Painting's Demise ending would just fit so well with a narrative of how indifferent and cruel future Akane is even to younger versions of herself... Also something I think you'd find particularly interesting is that you find Gary like an inch away from death and save him before he joins you so that could be like an inverse of their situation in canon because it'd be Quark saving him first and then depending on the ending it could either be Tenmyouji returning the favor just by being a supportive figure to lead them away from the gallery or by trading away his life for them and being sure to tell the kid he's only going to take a nap which doesn't hurt at all and you could also easily fix the weird undertones of the best possible ending by having Quark on his own in the gallery to begin with and them both making the actual decision to stick by each other once they get their memories somehow AND OMG MARY FUCKING BURNS ALIVE IN THE ENDINGS WHERE THE OTHER TWO ESCAPE TOGETHER?? SO LIKE MY GOD I don't Know if there's anything to explain there but there sure is a lot of implications.....

#we could like play this game if you want it is super short and free and it's so special... #I like to stop at 999 because I can just interpret it as Akane's love letter to her younger self and getting justice for her inner child #and not. whatever she keeps dragging herself into after #MAYBE THE HEADLESS MANNEQUINS COULD BE GOLLEMS... #I don't know how to spell that #but yeah! I will jump at any opportunity to introduce this game to anyone and it's literally like three to four hours only so let's let's #did I mention I love Mary so much it's unreal I am losing my shit so hard at this comparison #I also compare her to Namine a lot too but more for the lonely blonde surrounded by art thing instead of the. everything else #a tag for asks #hh goddamit #vlr spoilers #okay with that out of the way I. I didn't expect to write this much on it my god akdhksjs #dreamy don't look