#literally every other character has dialogue that reflects how they were at the end of their game. even him! but not her

[larnax]

ok i have. i have more disgaea thoughts. my girl fuka what did they do to you

ok so the thing abt d4 is that overall its story is quite fun, it's peak disgaea because it is wacky in a way where its absurdly exaggerated literal events are used to represent emotional conflicts ie a character's dad shutting himself away in his lab for her entire childhood who reveals it was to fulfill her dream of taking over the world by developing machines that she can command to take over the world as an allegory for a dad doing his best to provide for his kids at the expense of being there for his kids so they grow up without feeling like he loves them, and it legitimately is the only story i think really intertwines serious and batshit to make "WE HAVE TO POWER THE MECH WITH LOVE SO IT CAN STOP THE MOON FROM CRASHING TO EARTH, QUICK, PRAY TO YOUR PARTNER BECAUSE WHILE YOU HAVE NO FAITH IN GOD YOU HAVE FAITH IN HIM!" instead of in d1 having the story be wacky with occasional stops to tell a standard story with normal emotional stakes and etna is there to tell jokes, or from d5 onwards basically just being standard fantasy stories with normal emotional stakes but theres wacky backgrounds.

the actual main story of d4 is all bangers, there are a lot of great heels to keep the story interesting and although they all come around to val in the end they don't all become his bff which avoids the d7 problem of "you made a new guy up just so we would have anyone to fight and nobody we do recruit puts up an interesting struggle and therefore none of us have an interesting reason we're still here beyond inertia". i do wish artina got to do more stuff i think she's way too fun a character who is way too important in the story to be relegated to third wheel as often as she is, but to fix that i would just give her most of axel's stuff. she becomes president and then is absent for the moon episode on intel that she'll meet "someone she doesn't wanna see" and then when she radios in for the roll call you have a little joke about flonne being that person.

usually i really like flonne being a straightforward heel in her adult appearances. shes the whitest woman in existence and shes very nasty when she thinks she's doing the right thing, which is always. i support women's wrongs and her stealing billions from the netherworld(which celestia already exploits in a lot of ways/sometimes just decides to destroy) to fuck around with by forcing an underling who actively does not want to do it to shake down random civilians and public infrastructure, all to fund her stupid ass mech shaped like her who's powered by prayer? thats horrible! shes so nasty! it's really funny and them being forced to deal with That being their only way to keep fenrich from having the most important thing in his life(after val) fucking exploded leads to one of the reasons they should have won that fucking noncanon gayest ships tournament FUCK those community bitches.

HOWEVER. the fuka dlc is so bad. or let me rephrase: the fuka dlc is transcendantly good until the ending at which point it becomes the worst thing that happens in disgaea 4.

bc ok ok ok. so fuka is dead. that's her story, after a childhood of being neglected by her always busy dad she breaks into his lab and finds his evil scientist lair full of mutant constructs, one of whom kills her. she doesn't accept that she's dead because she's only 14 and her life hasn't even started yet and on top of that she's been sent to hell despite being a normal ass 14 year old whos biggest crime is being a teenager. so she deals with it by denying it and deluding herself into believing that this is all a dream and someday she'll wake up in a happy life she's just starting and she won't have to confront the terrible fate she met with. so the solution is obvious, right?

after the main story resolves and fuka has a group of friends and caretakers who love her and she's patched things up with her dad, fuka needs to accept that she's dead. disgaea uses a reincarnation system as a core part of the series mythology and gameplay. reincarnation is good and necessary. fuka, eventually, needs to let go, and stop haunting the world she did get cheated out of a life in.

so in the dlc, her friends and family help her. val puts her through the toughest puzzle course he can because he's her teacher and he wants her to prove that she's strong and resourceful and capable, and she does! she passes all his tests and he gives her his formal blessing. then her secondary father figure, her bio dad, finally delivers on his promise to help her take over the world, they like. rent out a city and give her a bunch of crazy machines to go wild on with the power she's worked so hard for and the allies she's found so much support in, including her little sister who she only recently got to meet and connect with during the main story and her surrogate reluctant little brother, The Grim Reaper, who is the one guiding her through the mechanics of reincarnation in the first place as a sign of his own personal growth that he's now mature enough to handle this difficult case.

and it works! fuka accepts it! she accepts, sadly, that she's dead, and she should move on. she'll lose this life, which is sad! they're all sad about it! but it's okay. and then-- it's an ending, right?

it's going to be an ending, you think. disgaea has a bunch of specific endings. there's one for completing a single optional stage in d1. it would make perfect sense narratively and gameplay wise to have an ending with fuka reincarnating, then just. introduce a bill to resummon fuka from an alternate dimension or time travel shenanigans or literally whatever other funny joake you can think of this is a comedy series and doing it this way doesn't undercut the emotional part While Its Happening. because if that happened itd be Bad.

enter flonne. because it is not an ending. flonne barrels through the fourth wall at the last second and, dead vfucking serious, CONDEMNS FUKA TO ETERNAL HELL WITH NO CHANCE OF REINCARNATION because she "tried to take over the world" by fighting in a stage consisting of like three blocks her dad set up for her where no civilians were even present. also bc shes the ruler of heaven this is the character who condemned her to hell originally when she was FOURTEEN because when she was six she wanted to take over the world.

which is a baller heel move and i would be so so so so into it IF she was a boss fight. if they had to defeat her before she was forced to reluctantly give fuka her very well-deserved reincarnation. but, uh, nope, last minute twist, Moving On Is Bad Actually and fuka is still condemned to eternal hell. fuck you. sure its technically a sentence that lets her spend time with her besties forever but like. at what cost. flonne only works as a heel if the other characters clash with her instead of valvatorez and emizel of all fucking people being like Woof so glad we don't have to say goodbye, i guess our entire characters and the things we find important and the reasons we were doing this do not matter and all that shit about caring about fuka and wanting her to find peace was Bullshit. have fun being 14 for the rest of your life, Dumbass!

← literally what its like to be 14 years old

#c.paradisi #like disgaeas done gameplay concessions to have characters come back Just Because #when the narrative demands that they leave but they dont wanna steal your units #you can just give em back afterwards!!! video games are all fake anyway!!!! #give her some new lines if youre so worried about consistency but otherwise just make up something funny. we will laugh #it is SO much worse to turn the climax of an otherwise really compelling arc totally impotent #flonne as a character is so insane though. i cant stress enough: shes always like this #just like auuuugh. fuka my girl. you deserved so much better #emizel has a line in d5 where hes lamenting that he still cant get fuka to accept things #and its like. facedown on floor. :( #literally every other character has dialogue that reflects how they were at the end of their game. even him! but not her #fittingly she never gets to move on

[theskysungqueen]

to make things brief cause I suck at organizing what I have to say, the live action was definitely Something™.

Cast: 10/10 kinda biased personally but yall can't take this from me

Gordon as Aang and Dallas as Zuko were the standouts imo. Gordon needs some direction on line delivery and the angstier scenes but overall he's very charming and I'm so proud of him for getting so much exposure!

Ian as Sokka was great, I just wish he was allowed to be more...messy? like Sokka pretends to be chill and all that but he's actually dramatic so I hope that gets improved in the next season if there is one

speaking of improvement, Kiawentiio as Katara brought out a softer side to the character but sadly diminished her spark and passion. I like that Katara now actually feels like a younger sister, it makes sense within the context of the story that Sokka and Gran Gran would shelter her after what happened, but as someone said, her anger is so central to her character and I just wish that got shown more. It's more of a script and direction problem tbh, if you look at Kia's interviews she has the sass and feistiness Katara needs

Lizzy as Azula is great, the writing is a bit clunky though so she did the best she could with it. Can't really comment on Mai and Ty Lee yet because they're kinda just there but it's a nice setup

Maria as Suki? perfection show stopping never the same she is a queen and I love the tidbit of Suki backstory which she never really had in the og show. I love her being such a loser around her crush we love to see girlfailures girlfailing. I wish the writers didn't make them KISS though 😭 slowburn ftw

the adults were great

Writing: 6.5/10

There were genuinely good moments and I love the concept of mixing up certain plot points to condense the story

But they just suffered from too much Telling instead of Showing WRITERS PLEASE LISTEN TO THE CRITICISM YOU HAVE TIME TO IMPROVE PLEASE

Omashu, mechanist, and Jet plot mixing as a concept was fine, but it dragged on and my friends and I got bored of it. I like it in theory but if it was going to take THAT long couldn't they have just separated one of those storylines for a different episode?

I appreciate that they tried to develop the water siblings' relationship by making them the stars of the Secret Tunnels, but I would've changed the way they "conquered" the problem (really? badgermoles respond to love? cute in theory but like why). If anyone's watched Barbie: A Fairy Secret there's a part where Barbie and her frenemy accuse each other of why their friendship failed, and it helps them make up and breaks the curse put on them. So that's what I would've done, force them in a life or death situation in which they have to say the unsaid things, maybe hug it out and boom

The way they handled Koh and the Spirit World was a Mess™ but the effects were decent

Zhao meeting horrible ends in every incarnation is so deserved

Yue having more agency was a welcome change AND I LOVE THAT SHE WATERBENDS. Then waterbends even when the moon is gone. It's such a nice visual nod to the fact that she has the moon spirit within her

That said, the show could definitely use more visual storytelling, less weird dialogue. Like it's so strangely common for shows or adaptations these days to exposition dump. Like they did not have to make Yue say that the ocean spirit was angry, literally just show me the dead moon fish and I'll get the idea. Then Iroh says "That's Wrath" that's just redundant now isn't it

I like that they saved Katara bringing Aang out of the Avatar State until last even if it could've been done better

HOW DARE THEY MAKE ME LIKE HAHN HE WAS A JERK IN THE SHOW BUT THEY MADE HIM A GENUINELY GOOD CHARACTER. Yes to brown men not being portrayed as jerks but also in the original it was a nice contrast to how far Sokka had come because Hahn reflected who he used to be. But live action Hahn </3

I like that they showed the deaths and blood. I wanted a live action that was both lighthearted but more realistic when it came to the injuries and death, and that'd kind of what I got

Other thoughts + overall

You can tell they put so much heart into this show, watching the bts, the bending boot camp with the correct martial arts, the easter eggs, the nods to the comics, the beautiful adaptations of Cabbage Merchant and Secret Tunnel nomads, there's so much passion behind the show it's a shame it suffered in its writing

which is why if they read reviews and criticism from the bigger name fans (TheAvatarist, HelloFutureMe, etc.) it would really help them improve for future seasons! The cast is stunning already and they have great chemistry (hopefully gets improved too!)

The live action is just a different angle to the show. And I'm saying this as an Avatar fan–the original wasn't perfect, either. I had some problems w it but the overall show was genuinely so good and heartfelt, those problems weren't glaring enough to put me off (unlike The Dragon Prince, sorry). The live action definitely wasn't perfect, but it tried to give us a new look into Avatar. Again, no adaptation will ever be a 1:1 remake and none should be. Where's the fun in that? But while the show is so full of heart and with actual fans working behind the scenes, I doubt if they listen to any criticism that they can't pull this off better next season.

#atla #avatar the last airbender netflix #avatar netflix #netflix avatar #avatar the last airbender #netflix atla #avatar live action #aang #katara #sokka #zuko #iroh #azula

[evasiveagaric]

I have a physical reaction every time i think about the queercoding of Dave at the end of homestuck. My roommate and I were reading it and i kept having to take a moment to think “holy shit, is he coming out??? is that what we missed on the meteor round 2?”. I don’t keep up with Andrew Hussie news bc i don’t really like him as a person, but the whole talk with Egbert on the lillypad makes me think Hussie either was really close to a queer person or queer himself with just how accurately he wrote Dave talking about the queer experience, even if he doesn’t actually come out in that part. It doesn’t feel like queerbaiting either bc it bc fits with Dave’s characterization and how hard it is for him to talk about anything sincerely.

I don’t want to downplay the importance of Dave realizing the thoughts Bro instilled in him about how a man should act in favor of speculating about his sexuality tho. Not wanting to be a stoic hero of man who doesn’t have attachments or be soft with anyone is a huge part of Dave’s characterization and character arc. I think they go hand in hand tho, his struggles with toxic masculinity and his sexuality. I think the conversation was blatantly about both while Dave gave himself an out to pretend it was just about one. And he didn’t even do that.

I’m about to get hella pretentious and read way too much into things under the cut. More rambling about Dave’s character arc as a whole and nitpicking of dialogue towards the end of homestuck down below.

Future peepaw edit: this turned into a fucking play by play essay, my bad

Out of order but I also want to talk about his characterization as a whole.

Homestuck Mobile formatting jumpscare:

He’s willing to talk about another guy’s feelings. Romantic ones. for someone at the time presents as a guy. It doesn’t even feel like he’s joking. 13 year old Dave would never.

And this happens before all the stuff i mentioned earlier, showing exactly what he talked about. I honestly don’t think any other character has an arc like Dave’s. Which, seeing as Dave is a fully fleshed out complex character that makes sense, but I mean in general. I have consumed a lot of media, i’ve consumed a lot of queer media too. I’m really into the history of queercoding and how it relates to representation. I don’t think I’ve seen a character arc quite like Dave’s, especially in relation to sexuality and toxic masculinity.

Egbert assumes that Dave’s being a dick on purpose, and Dave rebukes it so strongly he uses an exclamation point. In a series where how people type is kind of a big thing, Dave’s frequent lack of punctuation is a nod to his “cool guy” facade, the lack of tone indication part of the “mystery” a cool guy has to be surrounded with. So, the fact that he feels strongly enough, or has loosened up enough on the cool guy show no emotions routine speaks to his self reflection. Of course this is stated literally a few more dialogue lines down, about how much time he spent on the meteor thinking about societal norms and his Bro’s teachings but the fact that it’s sprinkled in before hand too makes it feel less like it’s come out of the blue, or that it’s out of character.

“yeah we coulda talked about this” says so much. Not only to his relationship with Karkat (romantic or not, i’m a Davekat shipper but that’s not what i’m getting at here) but just how far he’s come with getting close to others. Not to mention the fact that it’s implied that they talk at least somewhat frequently about heavy and deep issues such as feelings for other people definitely feels like a major shift in Dave’s character, one for the better.

He’s probably been vulnerable with Karkat in a way that he never was with anyone as a kid. They talk about things. They talk about important enough things that Karkat’s past black crush on Egbert never coming up probably feels a little strange, hence Dave asking if he’s been thinking about it all this time. He has that connection with Karkat, which is important bc Karkat is masculine presenting. I’d bet money that Bro would not have approved, regardless of them just being friends or not.

That level of vulnerability? Not immediately calling Karkat gay and dunking on him? Treating what would be seen a gay relationship as completely normal and not even something to bat an eye at? 13 year old Dave WISHES he had the emotional maturity Dave has now.

He even encourages Karkat to hold on to those feelings bc Egbert expressed that they could hate people, at least platonically. Egbert even calls him out, saying he sounds like he’s being a dick about it and Dave says he’s being real.

Not to mention he kind of forgets that Egbert “isn’t a homosexual” at this point, that or he suspects Egbert isn’t straight in some capacity. I think he has less hang ups about queerness than Karkat does at this point. Or at least less hang ups about being honest. It feels fitting for his character and i’m sad that most of that character arc is off screen. I get it tho, writing meteorstuck round 2 would have made homestuck significantly longer most likely.

In conclusion: I like Dave and his character arc too damn much. I have to go to work now, i was not expecting to have this many thoughts about it and i’ve rambled enough.

#homestuck #dave strider #does this count as #character study #karkat vantas #john egbert #june egbert #i’m vague on pronouns for Egbert #peepaw story time

[alicelufenia]

Thinking about my last reblog and how Baldur's Gate 3 character creation kinda fucked with my perception of paladins in the bg3 setting (it's specific version of the Forgotten Realms at least)

Since paladins don't get to select a deity at CC, I got the impression that paladins who's oath was not sworn before any particular god were more common than they really are.

There's technically a "Paladin of X" tag in game for dialogue, but the ONLY way to get it without mods is to also take a level of cleric and select a deity that way.

So when I made Alice as essentially a renegade paladin whose oath was sworn before no one except through her own conviction and fervor to self-actualize (she's Oath of Glory in canon) and that manifested divine power anyway, turns out that's really weird and uncommon in setting where most paladins swear an oath before a deity, and thus presumably are bound to tenets dictated by said deity (or the order of paladins they belong to, whether that reflects the true will of the god or not)

This is, in my defense, NOT how it works in tabletop 5e, where paladins select an oath but are not required to pick a deity (they still can pick one like many characters do, even those with no levels in divine casters). Giving a paladin a deity is more a nod to tradition, but RAW you're free to hold an oath without following a faith, just like you can be any alignment regardless of your oath (except maybe oathbreaker. BG3 even turns that on it's head by making it possible to be 'Good' as an oathbreaker, even restoring your oath, which isn't a thing in tabletop unless it's to repent for breaking it but without going full oathbreaker subclass)

Enter the most prominent paladin in Baldur's Gate 3, Minthara

Don't have any art saved to my phone so enjoy plushthara instead

She originally swore her oath of vengeance while in service to Lolth, to seek out and eliminate the enemies of the faith in Menzoberranzan (essentially part of the Lolthite Inquisition). This, by the way, is why she's so insightful when it comes to the other companions; it was literally her job to get good at reading people to find out what their deal was.

Her crusade against the enemies of Lolth led her and an army of House Baenre soldiers to Moonrise Towers, but instead of putting an end to the Absolute cult, she was captured, tortured for days, her soldiers killed or enthralled, and finally tadpoled and made to turn all that religious ferver and devotion towards serving the Absolute.

For this failure, Lolth abandoned her. As a Lolth-sworn drow (a problematic term basically made up for bg3 but works here) losing Lolth's favor is the most devastating thing possible, and there's almost no chance of going back. After being released from command of the Absolute by the Prism, she was, spiritually, alone for probably the first time in 250+ years of memory. Unless you come from a religious background only to lose faith later in life, you can't imagine what that's like (I don't ftr, but this is how I have come to understand it based on @spiderwarden's analysis)

And yet, despite this severing from a god that works Her way into every facet of Udadrow life, her oath endures. She remains a faithless (really faith-orphaned), but still undeniably spiritual paladin, bound to an oath that, for now, has her carrying out the same objective that sent her out of the Underdark before—destroy the cult of the Absolute, and seize that godlike power from those who control it.

When you rescue Minthara after romancing her in act 1, she says "You came. I prayed that you would, but there are no gods left for me." That raw-as-fuck line also spells out her current relationship to religion; IF a god would have her, she would be devoted. She even calls out to Lolth who, if the Spider Queen were to somehow take her back, she would in a heartbeat. With none answering her, she has no one but her savior, Tav/Durge, and their companions (whom she is now oath-bound to help whether she likes them or not)

And her natural inclination is to channel all that hurt, all that resentment and humiliation at being left with no divinity to know and to be known, into abject RAGE. Though she doesn't show it, I believe she is angrier and meaner NOW than she's ever been in life. That's why she talks about spitting on a shrine to Lolth, why she disapproves of offering tithe to any god at the Stormshore Tabernacle. Why she wants to BECOME a god, to become Absolute.

Hate is love betrayed. And I believe she had a LOT of love for Lolth.

Anyway this started as me musing on the spiritual nature of 5e paladin oaths in bg3, and kinda turned into character analysis for Minthara. Still, as the game's biggest example of a paladin who no longer serves any god but still commands divine powers to ⚔️SMITE Evil⚔️ by her oath, I think it came around in the end.

#bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate iii #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #paladin #oath #dnd 5e #bg3 minthara #minthara #minthara baenre #minthara bg3 #minthara romance #nightwarden minthara #lolth sworn drow #lolth #character analysis #this doesn't even get into the implications of an Oathbreaker Minthara #which was out of scope for this post #and since you have to go out of your way to break her oath #and she arrives at camp with her oath of vengeance intact #I interpret that to mean she is canonically meant to be an oath of vengeance #queue

[eerna]

For the continuity issues in totk you've seen is it just the Hateno/people who should not recognising Link thing or are there more?? Cause like whilst playing I have desperately been trying to figure out where the past stuff goes on the timeline but have been worried it's going to contradict skyward sword as continuity issue

Oh yes I meant that the NPCs who should def know Link (basically everyone he met without being disguised) should know who he is, if not as the savior of Hyrule then that random dude who caught a bunch of lizards for them. I am also not a fan of how NPCs explain the events of BotW to you even though YOU WERE LITERALLY THERE and THE GAME REPEATEDLY STATES YOU WERE THERE. Only Purah has dialogue that reflects how weird it is that you don't know (she's like "oh you forgot? well that's in character for you isn't it" bvjsdabvkdabvkj). They have Link go undercover during the game and get explained things he should know and it's not weird at all, they could have easily done that a few more times for the players who don't know what happened in BotW.

As for Skyward Sword, I am still not far enough into the story to tell if this game breaks it or not? Hyrule has risen and fallen and been re-established many times. If Sonia doesn't find out she is actually the first generation of Goddess incarnate, TotK can easily be set thousands of years after Skyward Sword. I mean, Hylia is DEF real because she speaks to you through statues, so I don't think Zelda's light powers come from the Zonai? They could say "Actually Hylia was Zonai and that's where the royal family gets their powers" but none of her statues reflect that so I don't think that's it, and the powers are passed down the female line. And Zelda as Sage of Time was a fan theory up until now, correct? So maybe this is the first real time she has had proper time sage powers, and it can come at the very end. Right now I'm operating under this timeline: Skyward Sword, every other game, Zonai era, the first Calamity, BotW+TotK era.

#floweryfandomnerd #eernask #eernask talk loz #totk spoilers

[i-like-eyes]

DevLog 2

We are at log 2 and real life has already got in the way. As I don't got a lot to show off I'll post some non-spoilery asset stuff and hide the rambling under read more.

While I did get a good chunk of the script done, there is still plenty of dialogue I need to get to. As a result, I didn't get any maps done. I'm trying to make this game with RPG Paper Maker's strengths in mind, but every once in awhile I'll realize I made an assumption of what the engine can do and the script has to be put on pause because of it. For example, a lot of this game I had already planned out having pictures on screen for more cinematic scenes. Literally two days ago I realized I don't actually know how to do that in the engine. Thankfully there is a Discord for RPGPM and the people there have been a huge help.

To supplement my question I had drawn a reference of what I meant; it's nothing significant I just think it looks funny.

I'm probably not going to show off the script itself because words on a doc isn't terribly interesting. Here are talk sprites in the mean time.

In order they are Holly, Jim, and Micheal. I might talk more about them next month.

Grant herself I debating making a talk sprite for, I probably will in the end but I'm wondering if how she reacts in those sections should be left up to the player to interpret. I'm thinking about how you see Phoenix clearly while in a courtroom because of the more cinematic approach to that section of the game, but when talking to other characters you don't see his face; instead the characters are talking directly to you because it's more personal. That (and a stupid amount of over analyzing the portraits of FE13-16 because FETH criticism is fucking weird) contributed to the npcs in this game looking directly at you. Also because horror game, things are supposed to be a bit unnerving. If Grant had a sprite she wouldn't look at the player because you are playing as he;, she should reflect the fact that you are looking at the npcs.

While this is the first game I've taken really seriously as a personal project, it's development cycle still throws me off because of what I've done beforehand for school.

It's weird, normally when making a game I'd focus on gameplay first and story last. I've done a handful of small scale projects at school, and the number one thing teachers drill into your head is to have the gameplay and the narrative play off each other. Most students go in with this epic idea for a story and only really want to make it a game because games are cool, not that they think they can have the gameplay enhance the plot. This combined with a lot of demos we made were based on popular genres (FPS for example) meant our development cycle looked a lot like gameplay first then story built to compliment that. My other game ideas either looked like that or smth more equally balanced, I think of a story element and a gameplay element I thought of happens to compliment that, but I've never had to come up with the majority of the plot first then the gameplay afterwards. Part of it was trying to discourage students from doing that, because they tend to have far too ambitious plotlines in mind. The other part was like fucking hell they are teaching us that weird niche visual novel shit because we are being trained to work for some company's Toronto division pumping out sequels.

But ultimately I've just never had an idea like this one before. Half my game ideas are fighting games and the rest are platformers, puzzle games, etc. I have thought of two -ish TRPG's, and briefly came up with a couple of other visual novel ideas, but they never stuck with me as long as the likes of Red Spikey Hair Guy Needs To Let Out Some Anger The Platformer (WIP name). If that title is any indication, the plot isn't my main concern for that game yet. That's because I want to figure out the gameplay more before I further flesh the story out because I want it to blend together. And then it gets put on hold because I forget how to program. Anyways, with Riverside there is very minimal gameplay. The reason why it is still a game and not just a comic or smth is because I think it is very important that you are put in the shoes of a patient at a nursing home, because you can't really get the same empathy with any other medium. Or hell, you don't get that same experience in real life until it's too late.

#devlog #rpg maker #rpg horror #riverside game

[dragoncookies]

(PT 2) STELLARLUNE ANALYZATION: Chapters 3-5

(foreword) This is a series where I go through each chapter of Stellarlune and dissect it for y’all. I bring up things you might have missed, the importance of what is said and what happens in each chapter, how it might relate to the book as a whole or how it might relate to the series as a whole. This book might seem boring and useless, but when you look at it, it’s really just a book that steps back and reflects on the whole series. It’s like the series is taking a refreshing deep breath and putting everything from the past together, so it can go and deliver a WILDLY  wonderful ending. All I can say is that the book gets way sweeter on the second read, and it might be too early to say, but my guess is that it’ll age finer than wine.

(excuse my grammar/spelling mistakes)

Chapters 3-5:

I’ll be honest, these chapters were a little sluggish, but at the same time...it was interesting to read about Gisela and Cassius lore. I’ll say why later in this post, but It was dark and creepy and tense; well written. There’s also a bunch of notable tid-bits in these scenes from Cassius’s memory and just what he has to say. He’s not a useless character or a 2d character, that’s for sure. Lets dive in, shall we?

SUMMARIES:

(because I forget too)

Ch 3 summary: Sophie shows up at Cassius’s house and they banter for a bit after Sophie tells him that Keefe ran away. Sophie originally went there to get Cassius’s pathfinder so she could look for Keefe in the Forbidden cities, but Cassius tells her he’s working on another assignment from the Black Swan that has to do with the trollish treaty and such after what happened at Everglen (in flashback). He also has a memory he recovered that Lady Gisela tried to wipe from his mind, so Sophie agreed to watch it. 

Ch 4 summary: Sophie and Cassius watching the memory

Ch 5 summary: Sophie and Cassius banter about the following→ Cassius’s parenting, whether or not Sophie should keep looking for Keefe (she shouldn’t) or if letting Gisela finish the final step of Stellarlune on Keefe is a good idea.

Ch 3:

Sophie REALLY hates Cassius. Like, the Cassius slander is HEAVY throughout this chapter. She just gotta quip at his behavior for every reason. 

One thing that is made strikingly clear by Sophie’s conversations with Cassius is how emotionally driven she is, especially when compared to Cassius’s almost purely objective approach to things. They’re almost foils of each other, in this sense.

Also, the dialogue in the first few pages of this chapter is lowkey entertaining, even from Ro. 

“’If Keefe had come home with me-’

‘he would’ve run off even faster,’ Ro finished for him. ‘Probably would’ve left a Keefe shaped hole in one of these walls.’” (page 36). 

Haha funny for no reason. Anyways.

Ro is REALLY given an actual purpose (as are a shocking majority of the characters) as I continue to reread through stellarlune. As much as I cannot stand how nosy and obnoxious Ro can be, her background has a whole chunk of the dialogue in this chapter. I will have far more to say on Ro’s character when we get to the part where she actually leaves later on so stay tuned for that.

Now, with Lord Cassius here, we have been shown an important revelation on the current state of political affairs in the Lost Cities, and a reminder that the Black Swan is a little bigger than we thought. It makes me curious as to what other things go on behind the scenes in the Black Swan. 

Also: Sophie said she really does hate secrets. Why did sophie say she hates secrets when her wanting privacy is literally the whole point of conflict between her and Fitz for the entire previous book and the rest of Stellarlune???? Smh.

The troll treaty negotiations are stalled at the moment!!!! Empress Pernille has closed the borders and doesn’t want the elves messing with them atm, basically. This means there MIGHT be more mutant trolls. Wild. The trolls want to be isolated from everyone…which is kind of what the neverseen wants if we’re being honest…scary. 

One question: Why does the black swan want to protect the councilors from being overthrown if there’s so much emphasis on how the councilors are flawed? What is the point? 

CH4:

This is where I notice things really start to get interesting in this book. 

I love when Shannon describes telepathy. Like all the “swooping and spinning” and “sinking into warmth” and describing the mind like a room makes me imagine Sophie and everyone else as little glowing people in the mind, navigating the endless maze. She describes it so vividly, its so fun to imagine being Sophie when she gets blasted by wind or goes on a rollercoaster-esc loop, or goes somewhere small and quiet, or just somewhere blue. Like that is so cool, who goes ahead describes a mind like that? And every mind in the series is different too. It's just so cool. Anyways. Back to Gisela and Cassius lore. 

This chapter really makes you think about Cassius’s and Gisela’s relationship. Its important to understand, since Gisela is like a main villain giving her character depth (like what her relationship with Cassius was exactly like) makes her feel like a REAL person, more like us. Which makes her scarier. 

This scene is where Gisela throws away her act of just wanting Keefe to be strong to make her and Cassius look good. 

Man, from the first read, it really seems like Shannon is trying to redeem Cassius with this memory. “gosh Shannon, please don’t redeem Cassius…please stop trying to redeem him”, but it’s less “poor Cassius” and more we just get to understand Cassius, because what I get out of this is that Cassius really loved Gisela, and Gisela was just using him to have a strong baby (which is sort of like the entire flaw of matchmaking…hmmm…). Like when Gisela starts explaining all these wack things she’s doing, he’s just completely shocked. Like she really flat out told him that his role was done, and he’d already provided his DNA so she didn’t need him anymore. No wonder Cassius said the memory was personal, I would be HEARTBROKEN. He’s not the best, but maybe there’s a reason he’s so cold…

If you hadn’t before, you REALLY start to see how creepy Gisela is, too. At the end of this chapter, Gisela just drugs him, and as his world slowly fades to black she whispers “don't fight it, it’ll all be over soon enough” (paraphrasing page 57). Damn she's creepy. Just, her carelessly messing with Cassius’s heart for her own gain, and doing painful horrible things to herself, to Cassius and to their relationship...she’s so sick omg. She really built Cassius the whole illusion of a happy marriage. What if Cassius was actually a happy surfer guy before Gisela? Maybe thats why his getaway is on the beach. Who knows? Maybe Gisela ruined an avid beach-boys listener and a regular cowabunger. Its all so messed up, but the theme of the importance of family is strengthened through all of this. 

What I start to wonder as I read through this chapter is…why? Why does Gisela want Keefe to be super powerful? WHY does she want to rule the world? 

She mentions she wants to harness all the elements because she believes it will make her ultra-powerful, but for WHAT? 

Gisela talking about the elements also reminds me how elemental elves are. They really are such nature-y beings. Little hippies. Talking to plants. Never killing animals. Using scrolls. No technology and A LOT of living with nature’s cycles. They see so much power in elements that Gisela is convinced she can be all-powerful if she uses all them. I ought to start seeing the elven world in a more woodsy aesthetic lmao. Alas, Shannon’s world-building never ends. 

The most important thing we learn in this chapter is that Keefe needs to go through one last step to really finish his transformation of his abilities. Yay!

Ch5:

Cassius’s mind was really messy after the memory, so he definitely did love her and he’s definitely messed up by that. Even Shannon’s most hateable characters get backstory and understanding, so you don't have to like what they did but it makes the story she’s telling so enriching. 

This chapter highlights how stubborn or blindsighted by emotions Sophie can be, but at least she can be persuaded. She neglects that Cassius has an OBJECTIVE approach and thinks he has a COLD HEARTED approach, and struggles to wrap her brain around the concept that Cassius could actually, in fact, be right in his suggestion that Keefe needs to finish the process of his new abilities to function properly. The fact that she sees “cold hearted” and “objective” as synonymous proves that she’s just a very emotionally driven person, which is important to understand, considering the entire series is from her point of view and if we really want to understand the story we have to understand how Sophie might tell the story. 

Also, Sophie JUST NOW realizes how she probably should have read through the archetype before she burned it. Nice one girly. I’m sorry I bag on her so much during these first few chapters, it gets better later I promise.  AND WHAT WAS THIS SHANNON:

“Lord Cassius couldn’t be right...

...

...

...could he?” (page 62). 

TAKE AWAY HER ENTER BUTTON. Made me chortle a little but like Shannon what. 

Not much else to say about this chapter. The last page was a masterpiece, though. 

“Let him take care of himself, he’s been doing it his whole life” (page 66). 

I’m not all about the endless Keefe sob story we get throughout the series, but the way it's told on page 66 is quite sad and impactful. Like oof, the self-actualization from Cassius and the cold hard truth…ouch Shannon. That hurt. Chefs kiss to the writing but yeowch. 

Overall, these few chapters are pretty satisfying because both Cassius and Sophie change a little. Cassius starts off presented as his usual hateable self, but by the end of these chapters you feel a little heavier, a little older and a little colder because of him. He just gets deeper as a character. Sophie changes her mind about finding Keefe and actually listens to Cassius’s reasoning, which is important because it changes the trajectory of this section of the book. It would have been ooc for her to just not care or decide on her own not to find Keefe because she cares about Keefe ALOT (a lil too much sometimes I’ll be honest), but it did take 5 chapters to get to this point. She also could have gone on a mission to look for Keefe, but thank goodness she decided not to, for the sake of the plot and the other characters. Victory!

She really does talk to herself a lot. 

Anyways, stay tuned for more!

#KotLC #kotlc keefe #Keefe Sencen #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc stellarlune #stellarlune #kotlc sophie #sophie foster #kotlc gisela #gisela sencen #kotlc cassius #lady gisela #lord cassius #kotlc rant

[rathologic]

sorry if you've discussed this in detail b4 but I'm curious how you feel about marble nest as a game/text especially compared to P2...

I don't have a ton of thoughts on it really! I think it's frustrating that the "all a dream" nature of The Marble Nest makes it hard to connect into any discussion of how it reflects on "real" p2 - its being subjective to Dankovsky is kind of an excuse to retcon any of the game. its 2019 (bundled) release was a huge downgrade; beyond cutting out a lot of content including the House of Death quest, rats, and the "break marat's neck with your bare hands" cutscene, and making the lighting/shaders homogeneous with release p2's shaders, its addition of the stamina bar turns walking around from a necessity of motion where the player didn't need to worry about their speed into a pointless stamina management minigame that constantly diverts the player's attention. just visually and ludologically 1.5 stars worse and yet IPL asks you to pay for that version & also the 2016 one isn't downloadable anymore. 👎

I enjoy the focus on townsfolk/unnamed NPCs over the People list (and am excited to see this continue in the upcoming route), especially the portrayal of the major characters as chess pieces implying that they're seen in a strategic-manipulation kind of way, and how the same treatment extends to the NPCs you interact with in order to get the true ending. in short, the way that having to select specific actions and get specific endings for plot threads overrules the Bachelor's personal will and his care for people in the pursuit of "winning" / the truth, in the same way that his tooltip thoughts about the adherents are secondary to their roles and usage in the game he's been playing... very characteristic of him :-)

tmn is 95% of all characterization we have for p2 Georgiy so as a note, I love Georgiy's writing in the marble nest, he's awful but he's one of the only p2 characters who has a defined philosophy and will actually explain it to the player and attempt to achieve his own goals at your expense. it's literally not georgiy's fault that haruspex route copied his deal for its OWN antagonist. similarly, Aspity's great in it it's nice that she got to have a character and express her view of death at some point before being flattened into a mother figure for the haruspex. eva comes pre-fridged in this one so we don't get to see the hole generated by her absence, only how sad the bachelor feels walking past her house, which could've been at least mentioned in the cathedral part but my theory is the writers just didn't know what they wanted to do with her yet. other notes:

the graveman is one of the best and coolest game design features they could've added & fixes tmn's most annoying aspect in a way that adheres to the bachelor's constant themes about time

the meta aspect of being a video game played by the player is handled much more cleanly IMO by the time loop than by 2's theater play framing

even with unlimited sprint, walking is The weak point - while it's mitigated a little by having so much wandering NPC dialogue and frequent event changes, it's a lot of time and attention spent without even the reward of (having a use for) trash pickups, and I think the district's sound design could've been improved to add variety. boats fix this in the haruspex route

the graphics and mechanics don't take precedence over the narrative content / dialogue so it feels way more solid and put-together. including how every piece ultimately fits together... the use of limited characters and physical space works to ensure that each conversation brings in something unique :-)

AND the kids have a high measure of control over the game situation & ability to speak for themselves, as it were. & it even connects to and ultimately explains a piece of lore (the nuts) and introduces characters (marat and dora) beyond the bounds of what 1 had established, without breaking anything fundamental

in general I think it was excellent as a demo, pretty good as a game in the pathologic franchise, and definitely a worthy use of (checks notes) 8.15 gigabytes of hard drive capacity. and the important thing is that it's fun

#tmn #tmn spoilers #asks #anonymous #daniil dankovsky #<- it's 1 paragraph more than I usually post about him so.

[retphienix]

Considering just how much I adore the characters and dialogue in Persona 5, it's a bit surprising how... unimpressed I am with the actual dialogue system in place. Or a specific part of it at least.

The decision to have your dialogue choices have no "meaningful" impact outside of Extremely Obvious Moments (Romance or friendship rank 10, choosing bad ends early) is entirely okay with me- contrary to the implication of the saying, "Illusion of choice" is not a bad thing all the time.

Sometimes the point of the choice is what You get out of it as a player melding with your character, not the A B C dialogue tree or the ending points that robustly and completely reflect the decision you made.

So my disappointment with the dialogue /System/ is not a lack of 900 endings and a billion call backs to every line of dialogue I chose.

It's the consequences the devs DID choose to include for dialogue because it honestly just makes the whole thing feel mediocre the second you realize what it is.

I went through P5 blind as hell, but the SECOND I found out exactly what the dialogue was doing, the entire interaction became so much less rewarding and immersive and I quickly began pulling up dialogue guides because it just feels cheap otherwise.

Well, maybe "so much less rewarding" is an overstatement.

I went from tackling every interpersonal moment as if I was in Joker's shoes, or following my understanding of the characters to confront the various issues- to just- playing a video game quiz where I have to look up the right answer every time Joker's dialogue appeared because it's sometimes unclear since someone arbitrarily got to decide what was best despite multiple options sounding great.

It's "gamey" where I'd much prefer it not be and the arguably intended effect (displaying different parts of yourself to properly support different people) falters when so much of the writing would equally support said characters- but the devs picked One to be correct.

In most story situations your choices have no purpose beyond melding you with Joker- letting you settle in as the voice he will be putting out into the world- and then to consistently reinstate that one-ness as the story progresses- basic protag dialogue stuff- nothing to see here.

A+

Perhaps I'm forgetting an instance where a story dialogue box had a "correct" answer that rewarded social stats while the others didn't offer alternative social stat rewards- thus forcing you to either break your immersion to Play Game or follow your understanding of the characters into the ground without even knowing- but I don't recall this so I'm spitballing nonsense there.

MY issue is the whole confidant dialogue deal, it just doesn't feel like an adequate test of your understanding of the characters most of the time AND the form of the punishment feels just fucking bad for keeping me interested in continuing blind- hence why I started just using a dialogue guide for confidants despite keeping my playthrough blind.

You can get the "correct" (most character affinity) options most of the time by just following your gut, but the exact second you make a mistake you are subject to the lamest punishment possible- wasting your time in a game that has a constant time limit.

Like what's the deal with that, I really feel like something could have been done to avoid that.

When you confront a confidant moment blind it's great!

Literally, choosing the wrong options still feels great because it feels like a genuine conversation between the two involved and like even if you fumbled your words you were genuine and the two of them grew closer because of it!

The game does not agree.

The narrative does! But the mechanics do not.

The writing is on point and only has 1 end goal in mind so the writing is perfectly laid out to allow you to fumble and for things to work out- but the game mechanics are waiting around the corner with a bat to kneecap you for not doing things perfectly.

As I said though, it's "generally" easy to "read" the right answers to these encounters. Generally.

As in not always.

As sometimes the answer that speaks most to you is one the devs arbitrarily decided gets less social points because THEY prefer THIS answer instead.

And as alluded to, if you make too many of these mistakes then you are doomed to waste a part of a day "hanging out" which is a non-narrative-progressing version of a confidant meet up that exists purely to waste your time and give you the social points you would have gotten if you read the dev's mind earlier (or used a guide).

Look, tbh, I'm nearly a year divorced from when I beat P5R for the first time (ALREADY?! Jeez.) and my mind's dwelling on it as a whole a lot because I wouldn't mind finally going for that perfect run but I can't "exactly" because my save file is trapped on broken hardware for now yada yada yada

I just wanted to ramble about P5 and then what came to mind was how annoying I find the punishment for confidant dialogue to be- namely- because it REALLY doesn't feel like it's written in a way that warrants there being a fail state to begin with.

Like you can't chat with Ryuji at Confidant rank 3 and piss him off and end the conversation. The game isn't written like that!

Every dialogue tree ends with the same general vibe- and yet- the devs decided to arbitrarily pick one path as their favorite and then punish you for not going down that route.

THAT is my issue, because it feels like no punishment is necessary and yet they implemented one.

I'd prefer to be more genuine with my confidants and not punished for doing so- thus subtly encouraging me to be less genuine and more guide-heavy.

That's all.

Also today years old when I found out the chalk is RNG. That is dumb lmao

That's literally free social points that you have to save scum if you want. The game isn't SO strict that you need them, but the game is still rather demanding so why even implement RNG like that?

Ah well.

Good game.

#Persona #Persona 5 #P5 #P5R #Persona 5 Royal #RetPlays

[spontaneousglitterbees]

Here’s a hell of a theory about Undertale/Deltarune that’s probably wrong, but like. Imagine. (Spoilers for Undertale and the first two chapters of Deltarune)

Papyrus and Sans aren’t literal brothers. They’re dancestors.

Basically a spinoff theory after watching some JaruJaruJ and HalfBreadChaos videos: the idea is that Sans is from the Deltarune universe (given he and other Deltarune monsters, since they have no magic but still have bodies and per an unused Susie sprite, bleed), and in that game he only refers to “my brother”. Starting from the presumption this is an intentional detail, plus the description in Undertale that Papyrus is “Forgettable” in possible reference to the Goner dialogue (tl;dr: “what if everything was exactly the same, except you didn’t exist”) you arrive at the thought that, since we haven’t seen him in Deltarune yet, Papyrus just. Doesn’t exist there. We aren’t going to meet Papyrus, because he isn’t in Deltarune at all.

But what if that’s not it?

Papyrus dusts if you kill him in Undertale. He is pretty blatantly made of magic, and the river person brings up the “man from the other world”, no Papyrus attached. It is not unreasonable to imagine Papyrus is native to the Undertale timeline/universe. But every other major and supporting character in Undertale seems to have some kind of parallel in Deltarune, making Papyrus a deliberate exception. So: what if he, a skeleton of unclear origin with no defined family, is fulfilling the same “niche” as Sans? Or, in so many words, Papyrus is who Sans would have been were he from the Undertale universe? Homestuck, a series Toby Fox did music for pretty prolifically, has a very similar concept in “dancestors” where there are mirrored counterparts of a character in two different versions of their universe (an initial universe, and one after a ‘reset’ of a reality-warping video game) where the initial character’s ancestor takes their role in the other world and vice-versa (being a pair of descendant/ancestor). Something inexact but similar could be going on here.

I think that has very interesting implications for what the skelebros are, what they represent, and how they link to eachother. Each is the only skeleton monster we know of from their respective universe, making each fundamentally lonely. Smashing together some ideas from Undertale fanon circa-2015, if the skeletons are some variety of experiment by Gaster (thus Sans’ Gaster blasters, among other things), that could exacerbate the feelings of not fitting anywhere or really belonging, since they’d likely have no roots or peers, hence seeming to drift into (Hometown and Snowdin). The nature of that experiment can also explain why the two of them are far more different from one another in appearance and personality than any other “alternate versions” between universes: a sub-theory I’m not fully committed to but partially considering is the skelebros are kind of a Frankenstein situation for Gaster, where a human skeleton acts as a base for an artificial Monster; the two could, in that case, just have come from two different corpses. Whether that comes to pass or not, I think there’s a bigger reason at play.

I’m torn on whether this will be text or just metatext, but it seems on-brand for the nuance here to be both: these experiments, the skeleton brothers, are reflections of the world(s) they’re from. Papyrus embodies the gentle kindness that is integral to Undertale, and Sans is equipped to cope with harm and hardship, emotionally and circumstantially. IIRC Asriel has lines at the end of the Pacifist route about how not all worlds are like Undertale’s, and not every conflict can be resolved just by talking things out-- bringing attention to the way there isn’t really malice in Undertale’s world. It’s idealistic where Deltarune isn’t exactly cynical, but has potential for more nuanced and varied morality (see: the “weird” route, a lack of good/bad classifications and, reportedly, endings; see also my thought that the Shadow Crystals you collect in Deltarune show you not the truth or a parallel universe in a literal sense, but instead show you your own fears and anxieties realized: thus a Susie looking at Kris derisively when shes demonstratively friendly towards them, Kris seeing through their hand in a kind of dissociation esp seeing as they aren’t always in control of their own body bc of the player, etc.) and those themes turn Sans into a more complicated figure, moralistically. One less willing to trust people, one who is necessarily guarded upon first meeting people because he’s been burned before where Papyrus just isn’t. Paps is from Undertale; there was never a need to get defensive.

JaruJaruJ’s latest video (about UTDR and blood) brings up the idea that Sans may have taken the time-and-space warping machine we see in his shed in Undertale as a means by which to escape some stable time-loop around The Roaring. Imagine with me a scenario where kind, trusting, lonely Papyrus (potentially one without as much confidence or bravado to him without someone there to believe in him, yet) sees someone like him for the first time. Someone he doesn’t need to worry about impressing, or maybe someone he doesn’t even think to impress because they’re just like me, they look like me, and they’re on their own, too, and that Papyrus does not think twice before helping him up. It seems very in-character to me that, even knowing it’s beyond improbable that it’s literally true, Papyrus would decide that this new strange friend of his isn’t just his friend, but his ‘brother’, they’re family now. And cynical Sans, who (metaphorically speaking) always keeps one eye open sees the first person to greet him in this new and strange frontier doesn’t have ulterior motives, that there is no ‘catch’ to his companionship, but in a turn of events there is just an unconditional acceptance of him beyond anything he could rationalize, at first. It makes some sense with how protective Sans is of Papyrus: after all, it’s the Undertale universe. Who, except maybe Flowey and the player, is out to take advantage of his brother’s naivete? It could just be a result of remembering other timelines and the player specifically, sure, but if Sans is from Deltarune that focuses the context on who he is as a person more than the circumstances around him. Sans sees something valuable in how the Undertale world treats people, an underlying positivity he himself cannot achieve, and the will with which he tries to protect it becomes more powerful, at least imo, if he is not of that world and it chose to accept him anyway. It makes him feel similar to the player, in that sense, where you want to protect what is good there because the reality you’re accustomed to is unlike it. I think if Papyrus just started calling Sans his brother, one day, he’d probably just accept it as the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for him. If it wasn’t true before, it is by the time they move to Snowdin together.

Potential bonus idea, the shopkeep in Undertale implies the skelebros moved into town recently (compared to Frisk’s arrival), but like. What if Papyrus, the “forgettable”, lived there alone before, and just nobody took notice of his presence until his brother helped boost his confidence? 

Either way, I think Sans probably played lab assistant more than Papyrus, but Papyrus probably knows more than he’s letting on as well. There’s potential that, similarly to Homestuck, there’s ambiguity in how Gaster fits into all of this and how that meshes timelines together. I almost think Gaster may have been from Undertale and been less than a stand-up guy (not evil, probably, but more like a Prometheus bringing ill-intent and moral complexity to the Underground, hence his motif of 6′s as the closest the Underground gets to a devil figure), made Papyrus, and, when he fell into the Core, had some semblance of himself end up in Deltarune to make the equivalent Sans (and mess with Spamton over the phone, among other things).

As for Deltarune!Sans’ “brother”? Unclear. If Sans is maybe a bit more directly involved with Gaster than Papyrus (in a ‘keep your enemies closer’ sort of way) his ‘brother’ may be another experiment or associate of Gaster’s. The Vessel fits into that role somewhat, thus why Kris and the player can’t hang out with them (they appear to be stuck in the game’s code for now, however that manifests in-game) but that would then gender the Vessel. It’s possible that A) Sans has not actually met the Vessel, but only knows of their existence and at this point sardonically remarks about just the idea of having family to Kris (so we see character development from him in reverse order?) or B) since the Vessel was discarded prior to Chapter 1 shortly after their creation, they then took on an independent identity and adopted he/him pronouns with it regardless of the player’s intent (trans rights). Possibly both! I think if it is the Vessel it’s probably that Toby wrote in ‘brother’ to stay consistent since ‘sibling’ or something like it would be too conspicuous. It’s very speculative, but would probably throw a lot of people for a loop while keeping some narrative satisfaction intact (plus, paralleling Papyrus again with contrast between a strong bond with chosen may-as-well-be-blood family and potential for less-than-amiable family that is functionally the same level of ‘blood family’ but feels more obligatory due to shared circumstances, highlighting the difference the kindness Papyrus represents can make).

Idk you’ve heard of Sans is Ness I raise you one Sans is Papyrus

#undertale theory #deltarune theory #utdr #this idea came to me and Will Not leave so I figure I'll shout into the void #sans is papyrus #is this dumb? probably. but i kind of like it unironically? idk #undertale #deltarune #long post

[cospinol]

omg what a perfect episode of kingdom to come home to, though ;_; extremely comfy popcorn ep that’s 90% big shou hei kun Martial Feats / coolguy showcase scenes (which means a lot of suwabe lines lol), exactly what I needed today

I love him… and also still hope that we’ll get to see him use these skills against a more serious opponent one day, because I think the sheer one-sidedness of this fight makes it pretty clear that duke juuteki (for all the thematic significance of his position) is kind of a two-bit opponent; I want to see him face a kan mei-class general so badly!!! for that matter I’d specifically like to see him face ri boku, even though as far as we know ri boku isn’t on that level as a combatant, I just think abt their parallels so often. Kai oku’s description this ep makes it sound like shou hei kun is all-around superior but it’s always seemed to me like the core of their opposing-positions is that ri boku can see slightly further than shou hei kun/is a ‘special’ talent in a way that shou hei kun Isn’t, for all his genius, and that his larger schemes lose out solely on the basis of their respective personnel; even though the results don’t reflect it, I’ll always believe that shou hei kun is the one slightly outclassed. Sorry I know this is his week but it’s kai oku’s fault for bringing it up

also really love this line where shin just comes out and addresses the elephant in the room about his entire heel turn plot in this arc—

—which is that his actions in sai made it extremely obvious that he was preparing to leave ryo fui’s faction, and the issue all this time has just been that literally every other character involved is too steeped in Court Politics to believe that he’d be willing to permanently endanger himself for the sake of doing the right thing. But shin’s plain-and-simple enough to just have seen his actions for what they are, all this time :’)

In general housecleaning — we’ve got a good chunk of narration about the qin army’s objective that got turned into monologue from kai oku, since he’s got some lines surrounding it, and it’s a very cute reframing since the formerly-narration lines are all about how the priority is securing kanyou and the lines that were originally kai oku’s are about how impressed he is in ten’s managing to take the walls, so stitched together his reaction becomes a direct response to his own concerns abt the wider situation. A nice little additional moment for them as student and teacher :’)

anddd some additional lines for another couple of relationships that I love, so excited abt this !!!

Neither of these panels have dialogue in the manga, this is such a great little treat — both pairs of characters who I really like together but who we rarely see interact, and actually ten and mou ki’s only moment together in this arc at all :’) and of course shou kaku’s line is a little teasing, lol. Cute !!

we did lose one tiny line of dialogue, though, in this panel:

the background officer who goes (;ŏ_ŏ) about the prospect of kan ki being assigned the cleanup operation, because yeah, oh my god. Next week we’ll get to see him carrying out that operation and yeah, (;ŏ_ŏ)!!!!

and to end on a sweet note … this wonderful little shin scene. Just no words for how satisfying this is —

His little blink of realization, his little ‘Ah.’, the way he lets his whole body relax after this whole arc of the tightest-wound tension, the relief that’s washing over him so tangible … so sweet!!! ;_;

#and I think we’re finally hitting the point in the season where pacing is making it clear that we Are getting chu arc #which is so so so exciting lol. like we’d be getting ka rin next week either way(❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️) but we’re getting LORE!!!!!! #and ren pa. uwaaaaaaaaa #txt #kingdomposting

[wordsandrobots]

IBO reference notes on . . . character parallels and counterpoints

Spoilers for everything, warning for references to child abuse and other unpleasantness

Iron-Blooded Orphans is obviously chock full of parallels, similar situations repeating at different times and levels of society, under different circumstances, with different degrees of desperation. Some of this is prefigurative, in the way that tragedies are structured so you can see the disaster coming. Some of it is merely reinforcing the omnipresence of the series' themes.

It is also full of things that counterpoint those parallels, despite appearing superficially similar, throwing the themes into sharper relief by the contrast.

I wanted to get my thoughts in order about a couple sets of character parallels that form the core of the story.

Spears, axes and swords: Mikazuki, Ein and Julieta

Mikazuki Augus, as we know, is utterly devoted to Orga Itsuka, hanging on his every word and doing anything he says without hesitation. Orga uses him as a weapon, in pursuit of a dream of happiness, never stopping or backing down because he's got Mika at his side.

Except, this is almost precisely backwards. Mika is devoted to Orga and the dream Orga promised him, but in actuality, Orga hasn't got a clue what that dream actually looks like and is mostly trying to make Mika's dreams come true. Mika heads steadily towards what he wants do – be a farmer – while Orga only ever runs from what he has in the moment. And though Mika outsources his morality and decisions with no complaints, Orga is driven half-crazy by trying to live up to the impossible pedestal Mika has put him on. He's terrified by how far Mika will go, knowing Mika literally won't let him stop, and in this lies the root of everything that goes wrong for Tekkadan.

It is this dynamic that we see reflected in Ein Dalton and Gaelio Bauduin's arc throughout season one. Ein forms an explicit parallel to Mika: a low-born (half-)Martian, reliant on the orders of authority figures, ultimately surrendering to machine augmentation in order to win. They even get near-identical dialogue, variants on “What shall we do now, Orga/Specialist Major?” Crucially, like Mika, Ein is the one in the dynamic with the definite dream in need of fulfilling. While Gaelio gets his pride hurt by being trounced every time he tries to fight Tekkadan, pursuing them is just his job. It's Ein who is obsessed with revenge on Mika for killing Lieutenant Crank and the moral pretext of that obsession slowly drags Gaelio into its orbit.

Interestingly, Gaelio only ever displays admiration for Ein, with none of the fear lurking behind Orga's similar praise for Mika's determination and strength. For Gaelio, Ein is an exemplar of dedication the likes of which he has never seen before in an organisation populated by schemers and toadies. From his lofty position in society, he waxes poetic about Ein's positive qualities and has his world-view shifted by coming to understand what it is like to be an outsider in Gjallarhorn. Ein really does make him a better person.

But that admiration also blinds Gaelio to how over-zealous and misguided Ein is. He cannot see the things he should be wary of in his new friend. I think, as a character, he is capable of doing so – it tracks with what is established about him that he'd one day have a moment of realisation to the effect of 'I've fallen in love with a nutcase'. This being a tragedy, however, that moment is denied to him until it is far too late.

Ein dies raving to an indifference audience. For all their similarities, Mika cannot comprehend what Ein is talking about and so has no chance to end things peacefully, if de-escalation is even something he were capable of (it absolutely is not; have you seen this kid?). Ironic, given where Mika himself ends up – another parallel, though I imagine most people reading this will have more sympathy for our protagonist than his season one nemesis. And certainly Ein is the villain here. He embraces Gjallarhorn as a way to accrue the power denied him as a colonial citizen, turning on his fellow Martians and showing not one shred of compassion for their equally (if not more) dire situation. This is despicable. But I can't help feeling sorry for him anyway, or for Gaelio in lacking Orga's clarity on precisely what kind of person has latched to his side.

With Ein off the table and rebuilt into another piece of furniture for season two, his spot on the antagonists' roster is taken in an approximate sense by Julieta Juris. For several reasons, she initially appears to be another straight parallel to Mika.

First, she is more or less explicitly a child soldier. Ein can be hand-waved as being at least a sensible age for joining the army; Julieta is clearly either very young or very immature to be holding the position she does. Second, she's a supremely gifted pilot. Ein is merely dogged until he gets wired into a mobile suit; Julieta is actually capable of giving Mika a run for his money in her own right. Third, like Mika, she is written as being somewhat off in her social interactions. She relates to people atypically compared to those around her, showing both inappropriate candidness and misinterpreting things people say. Plus there's the whole 'how does this butterfly taste' moment.

(When I say this, I mean it's used in the story to convey that she's weird. Obviously there's an ickiness in this usage, one neither unique to this show nor something I feel qualified to discuss in depth there. But it's worth noting 'being off' is part of Ein's characterisation too, just hidden better until he gets incarnated as a giant red-eyed robot and his obsessiveness goes into overdrive.)

The key difference separating Julieta from Mikazuki lies in her relationship to Rustal Elion. Like Mika, Julieta devotes herself to someone else's cause, killing and suffering for it. But unlike Mika, for Julieta, it really is a case of having no dream of her own. As Amida highlights when they fight, there is an emptiness to Julieta's devotion to Elion. When Mika gives everything he has to Orga, it's out of a sincere belief Orga really can take him to the place where everyone is happy. I don't think anything Mika does makes sense if that's not what he honestly thinks. But for Julieta, following Elion is simply payback for being lifted out of a life of impoverishment. She knows – by the end of the series, if not before – that he isn't the kind of honourable adult she once imagined him to be. Yet she remains at his side, still assuming he knows best.

Compare this to the breakdown in Mika's demeanour when he thinks Orga might go back on his word. I could be wrong, but I think that's the only time in the entire series when Mika raises his voice. It's certainly the most outwardly emotional he gets. He near-on attacks Orga over the prospect of giving up. Of course he does. The dream Orga gave him, that he shaped for himself into a vision of being a farmer, peacefully raising crops, is something he fiercely wants to happen, for him and everyone else. Whenever he asks Orga what to do next, it's always with that goal in mind.

Julieta, meanwhile, merely waits for the next order. For all her talk of honing herself into the sharpest sword Elion has, she expresses very little interest in what she will be used for. Her devotion is the entire focus of her life and it prevents her from really growing as a person, no matter that she is more capable of interrogating and questioning the world around her than most of Tekkaan.

In their final confrontation, she can't understand why Mika keeps on fighting when it's hopeless, despite having shown a similar disregard for her own life in past battles. And I think that speaks to a sense in which she really can't conceptualise life without Elion's instruction. Mika chooses to carry Orga's vision forward after losing him because in all the most important respects, it was already his. I'm not sure Julieta could do likewise.

In summary, then, Ein provides a parallel to how Mika actually exists in his relationship to Orga, while Julieta provides one to how it appears. Julieta is utterly subservient to someone else's ambitions, while both Mika and Ein are by far the more influential halves of their respective relationships.

Hollow kings: Orga, McGillis and Elion

As I said above, Orga, bless him, hasn't got a clue what he's doing. He desperately wants something better for himself and his friends, but can't ever quite articulate what 'better' should be. We see him latch on to a series of different possibilities: the First Group, a family, a Teiwaz subsidiary, the people backing Kudelia's cause, kings of Mars. Each one of these comes from someone else and each one is a wavering mirage, always just past the next battle.

There's no insincerity in what Orga does, mind you. He is easily one of the most open hearted characters in the series, having no gear between 'indifferent you exist' and 'I would bend heaven to get you the stars on a plate.' Orga wants more than anything to give Tekkadan decent lives, where they'll never have to go back to the nothing they had before. Sadly, he's also the ultimate short-term planner, constantly revising where he's headed and letting others dazzle him into different conceptions of who he and Tekkadan should be. With the loss of one voice of reason after another, it's inevitable that things go off the rails.

One of those people telling him what he should be is the guy who, by rights, ought to be the main villain of IBO: McGillis Fareed. At first, McGillis is set up as a traditional Gundam enemy, manipulating both sides of the conflict for his own gain while wearing some funky headgear. He masterminds the deaths of several close friends, the obliteration of his adoptive father's plans and installs himself as one of the leaders of Gjallarhorn. You would be forgiven for thinking him Orga's counterpoint: the man with a solid goal who lies to everyone around him, manipulating without any genuine feeling at all.

Except, when we finally get his backstory, we discover that it's his smug, manipulative persona that is the act, carefully built over a life of poverty and sexual abuse. McGillis is, beneath the smarm and chess-mastery, exactly the same as Orga. A kid from the streets, running away from nothing, taking every chance he can get to become stronger and safer. As a result, everything he says to Tekkadan is absolutely, one hundred percent true.

I'm going to say that again for those at the back because this is absolutely crucial to everything to do with McGillis: he means everything he says about how inspiring and remarkable Tekkadan are. From the very first time he sees Barbatos in action, McGillis is enamoured with the idea this bunch of Martian kids can change the world, because that would mean that he can do the same thing. He is flat out in love with how Mikazuki fights and I honestly think he would have done everything he could to make Orga king of Mars if they'd won.

Which is plainly absurd. Thinking one group of mercenaries, no matter how talented, would tip the balance of power is as nuts as thinking the whole of Gjallarhorn would follow him for the sake of an old myth. It's a child's logic.

And, well . . . of course it is. See, Orga had Mika to help him through the misery of his early life. Whatever the horrible, terrible, not good outcomes of their co-dependency, Orga and Mika do genuinely care for one another. They drive each other forward in large part because of how much the other matters to them. But McGillis never had anyone like that. He was always alone, forced to fight only for his own survival.

Until, one day, he read a book.

If Orga has Mika than, bizarre as it sounds, McGillis has Agnika Kaieru, founder of Gjallarhorn and presumed Ars Goetia enthusiast. More precisely, he has whatever heavily editorialised version found its way into the official history. Sneaking out of his abuser's bed in the middle of the night, he comes across this text and it changes everything. Suddenly he realises that someone like him, with no one to rely on, can still reshape the world if he gains enough power. In that book, he finds his inspiration and a dream to chase.

Is that dream any more well-formed than Orga's? Certainly McGillis is capable of long-term planning. He wanted Bael since he was twelve and he gets it, finally becoming one with his hero. But what were the next steps? What did restoring Gjallarhorn to its original glory look like? He's very vague on the details, never committing to an actual description of what will change past him being king of the world. I suspect the truth is, he no more knows than Orga knows what 'that place' where he and Mika can belong will be like. These are two characters escaping horrible presents by aiming for the idea of somewhere else, be it an imagined future or an imagined past.

For the true counterpoint to these would-be kings, we have to turn to the man who actually does end up as king: Rustal Elion. Now, Elion spends much of his screen-time calling McGillis 'power mad' or some variation thereof, which is ironic given everything Elion does is in the name of preserving a status quo in which he is one of the most powerful people in the world. I say ironic, what I really mean is: fucking aristocrats, man. I've explored how I think Elion sees the world in fan-fic, but to summarise, he's your typical colonial officer, dressing brutality up in terms of the way things ought to be while showing nothing but contempt for anyone who dares disrupt an unjust order. He doesn't aim for dreams; he aims for exactly what he already has, with all the unequalled force at his command.

Orga and McGillis are actors, both less than they appear, constantly favouring how they think they should present themselves over who they actually are. In Orga's case, this manifests as trying to be like Naze and the other besuited big shots in Teiwaz, a no-nonsense boss who can make the tough calls. He feels he has to be, for everyone else's sake. He hides away his doubt and his uncertainty, his desperate longing for someone to please tell him what he's supposed to do, even though he has plenty of people around him who would be willing to help. McGillis starts out playing the roll of diligent son and dedicated officer, slowly revealing the ambition beneath. Only, that ambition itself seems more aspiration than truth: it's what he wants to become, the ideal he plucked out of mythology, and it shakes in the light of actually having people who give a damn about him. A poor boy with a storybook, his loneliness is how he defines himself and winning will only matter if he does it alone. He can't face the idea that might not be possible.

But Elion is exactly what he looks like: the consummate pragmatist, supremely comfortable in his position as a leader. Moreover, he's good at being what he is in a way McGillis and Orga can only dream of. Lethally stupid though he and this comment are, Iok has a point when he remarks on the fact Elion plans of what happens after the battle. Of course he does. He can see the big picture, divorced from the pressures that make it hard for others to grasp or do anything about.

I think that's why it doesn't trouble me overmuch that Elion swerves unexpectedly into democratisation in the epilogue. This is a man who will do anything to preserve his authority, including starting wars and breaking ancient weapons bans. A little adjustment to the existing system, introducing homeopathic traces of what McGillis claimed he was after, that leaves Elion on top, doesn't seem especially contradictory given the circumstances at the end of the series.

Because ultimately, Orga and McGillis are chasing ideals that they've shaped their entire sense of self around. They have to play those parts, not because the alternative is unthinkable but because they've lived it and it sucked. Orga has to give his family everything. McGillis has to be the singular great man of history. Anything else is a lethal failure. Elion has the luxury to reshape himself as events required. He can go from bombing children from orbit to signing a slavery abolition treaty because these are equally minimal costs in the service of keeping his big fancy chair.

If Julieta is an empty vessel of devotion in comparison to Mika, then Elion is the perfect inverse of Orga for her to attach herself to.

Concluding note: It's all in the presentation

Like my previous character interpretation, I don't really have a point to make here beyond that I find it interesting how this plays out over the series and, well, this is how I read what's shown on screen. All acts of reading or viewing are in part hallucinations, filling in what is not said outright, and I don't know for sure to what extent anything I have constructed here was intended.

That said, there are clear deliberate motifs that recur throughout the comparisons I'm drawing. The most blatantly obvious is Mika and Orga, Ein and Gaelio, and Julieta and Elion all consist of a short person in a (seemingly) subordinate role to a taller one. Then we have things like the way Elion and Orga both favour a coat worn over their shoulders when directing battles, and the way McGillis and Orga use their hair to obscure their faces at certain points. There are constant similarities in how one side of each relationship addresses the other, with the overarching theme of what it means to 'give everything you've got', and echoes of Orga's concern for Mika's deterioration in how Elion treats Julieta or Gaelio's fear for Ein after his injuries. And I think it telling that Orga and McGillis both meet ignoble, anticlimactic fates, the one succeeding with his aim as best he can, the other having it stripped away from him, piece by piece.

A parallel in a story is often more to show the tyranny of small differences than anything else. Switch any of these characters around and they might have done the same as the person they swapped with. Even those I raise as counterpoints are perhaps only so because of how they lived. It's a neat trick, evoking the tragedy that comes from missed understanding. And I personally think IBO pulls it off very, very well.

Other reference posts include:

IBO reference notes on … Gjallarhorn (Part 1)

IBO reference notes on … Gjallarhorn (Part 2)

IBO reference notes on … Gjallarhorn (corrigendum) [mainly covering my inability to recognise mythical wolves]

IBO reference notes on … three key Yamagi scenes

IBO reference notes on … three key Shino scenes

IBO reference notes on … three key Eugene scenes

IBO reference notes on … three key Ride scenes

IBO reference notes on … the tone of the setting

IBO reference notes on … a perfect villain

IBO reference notes on … Iron-Blooded Orphans: Gekko

IBO reference notes on … an act of unspeakable cruelty

IBO reference notes on … original(ish) characters [this one is mainly fanfic]

IBO reference notes on … Kudelia’s decisions

#gundam #gundam iron-blooded orphans #gundam ibo #reference #my fic #fanfic #character interpretation #mikazuki augus #orga itsuka #ein dalton #gaelio bauduin #julieta juris #rustal elion #mcgillis fareed #parallels #counterpoints #wasn't planning to write this but then I did #as often happens #g tekketsu #tekketsu no orphans

[omentranslates]

Notes of ways I notice Genshin characters using Japanese in the dub that I find interesting and stand out to me

Various characters that don't have enough notes for their own thread compilation edition

i did single character threads of this for Xiao, Albedo and Paimon

Kazuha

-he's just kinda quirky

-I don't watch many old movies but I know a LITTLE bit abt like stereotypical samurai stuff and also like older classical Japanese and I don't hear him use most of it, he's perfectly understandable in modern Japanese (disclaimer he does use SOME just not a lot, nothing you’d have to look up or anything)

-like he says かたじけない (katajikenai, it’s like samurai thank you basically) and uses ぬ for his verbs a lot but that’s Mostly it. And it comes out mostly in his longer quest dialogues, not as much in his like voice lines and stuff

-most of the places he sounds noticeably different in are when he's speaking like poetically

-Beidou was not kidding abt the flowers thing Kazuha speaks almost like a romantic poem is written like at least half the time (romantic as in like era of poetry)

-it’s kinda hard to tell what’s supposed to be fantasy poetry language and what’s supposed to be him being a samurai bc tbh it works for both in some cases, altho I’m confident in my interpretation

-uses せっしゃ (sessha) as his pronouns which is essentially the samurai pronoun

-when he says "gozaru" all the time he's literally just replacing the usual だ or である at the end of the sentence with archaism

-it's the non-formal ending of gozaimasu which is a word I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with, but like said how he uses it is not used in modern Japanese almost at all I can't think of any situations where you'd need it and I'd never come across it in other media before him. If the situation isn't formal enough for gozaimasu you just use the other two or nothing at all

-in other words he's just kinda quirky

-I've seen the Japanese community clown on him for this too, I personally find it endearing and the general consensus seems to be between that and like mildly funny

-has one of the most noticeable speaking styles in the game, like he Really stands out. The others you gotta listen for it or it’s only a few things every now and then that will encourage deeper analysis as a whole, but like every sentence Kazuha says is like “huh what’s the deal this guy”

Raiden Shogun

-she's always kinda stuck out for me bc she speaks really respectfully

-like it's not really strong full on keigo or anything just like regular polite Japanese you'd use with someone you don't know well

-but it stands out bc she's a god and the direct leader of her country and both of those positions do Not need to do that

-she never seems to grow closer with the traveler through her language (her character I think does but it doesn't reflect much in her speech)

-she even speaks politely like this to the Inazuman citizens during her like date story quest

-she speaks even less like a god than Venti does

-my personal interpretation of his is that she doesn't feel like an archon and still sees herself as serving her sister, so she still speaks as if she's in the presence of her superior

-supporting this, during her story quest 2 cutscene Makoto speaks very casual and feminine Japanese like they're very close but Ei continues to use longform polite Japanese even with her

-I don't think the English translation that I read really goes into the dynamic between the sisters in the same way that the Japanese really shines in like that. The Japanese version implies a whole world of respect and admiration for her sister that the English misses that she would consider herself not even to be in the same class

-It also suggests that Makoto may have been older than Ei, like they were twins obviously but the younger twin will still use honorifics/respectful words with the older twin depending on their relationship

-altho that's not nearly as important as Ei's relationship with Makoto and how she thought of her, I thought it bared mentioning bc it would be exceedingly uncommon for an older sibling to use that kind of language with their younger sibling no matter how much they respect them

-there is a certain trope regarding gods speaking formally bc they’re just that removed from humanity and I went more into detail in the notes about how different levels of Japanese can be used to express distance rather than respect, and I do want to emphasize that it doesn’t feel like Ei’s respect is directed towards the player or Inazuman citizens or anything like that

-it does make her sound spacey but it doesn’t feel to me personally like that’s the case because then I would expect her language to change with her story, but that’s just one interpretation so I’m just leaving all the information I can think of

-tbh a polite, long form desu and masu speaking girl who wants to be guided through the human world speaks to Quite A Few tropes in anime so

Shenhe

-I don't have Shenhe but while I was playing her story quest I msged a friend saying that she was "detached and vaguely polite" and that she sounded like she worked in the Tower of Fangs

-pretty sure I meant that as in her speech structure is similar to the like fantasy tone of the mountain adepti, but stripped of all the like boastful self-aggrandizing flair

-so it's close in tone to just standard Japanese while still being noticeably removed

-that's why I compared her to Xiao in his post they both talk like wizards

-she had the distinct impression that she's used to speaking to superiors, but she mostly speaks to people in her quest like she's talking down to them and they're noticeably lower than her socially

Xinyan

-considering how strong her accent is in the eng dub I was expecting Kansai dialect

-I was wrong though she speaks very standard

-I remember a little dialect coming out at the end of her sentences during Labyrinth Warriors but I went back over her voicelines and. No it's just not there

-she uses あたい (atai) as her pronouns, which is not very standard

-when I researched this it's apparently associated with girls' biker gangs it's like the punk rocker girl pronoun

-so yeah apparently Japanese has a punk girlboss pronoun, tho it's largely out of style now (unfortunately)

-she speaks with a rough masculine flair that I'm not used to hearing on female characters

-she doesn't completely talk like "one of the boys" tho. if it serves comparison, she's not even close to Paimon's level

-I think the non-committal direction matches her like scary but cute on the inside thing she's got going on

Yoimiya

-this is where all of Xinyan's accent went

-was literally bashed over the head with Kansaiben when I started her story quest

-she sounds like the teacher lady in white from twin star exorcists and I could listen to her talk all day

Ayato

-another character of supposedly super high status who speaks politely to the traveler for some reason

-definitely sounds spoiled even if he's polite abt it tho

-I find it amusing that he and his sister use the same pronouns

-when people started clowning on his English chest dialogue I was surprised bc his JP version just ranges from like politely curious to grudging approval, when I heard his like smug ass English dub it was. A departure

-I expected him to be more like smug and vaguely patronizing like Yae but tbh he's more like. Feigning innocence.

-does not speak formally to Thoma (Thoma does with him tho)

Zhongli

-speaks more modern Japanese than most of his wizard friends

-the content of his dialogue sounds really chill and relaxed but his manner of speaking is like surprisingly forceful

-talks the most like an actual god out of the 3 archons

-if he wasn't a god he would sound like kinda pushy, his dialogue is full of really commanding sentences (what constitutes a demand in Japanese is a little more broad than English, so he can sound really demanding in spoken Japanese without the English subtitles giving it away)

Gorou

-he just always takes me off guard bc he sounds just like Reki but talks nothing like him

-very meticulous pronunciation like idk he just annunciates every sound extremely clearly even tho he speaks really fast

-you can tell that for his personality archetype they just wrote "soldier"

Yae

-she shares some quirks of speech with the adepti and I think that's funny for lore reasons

-she talks like an old person, like not like an ancient being just like a grandma

Cloud Retainer

-speaks like an object

-I do not know how else to describe this

-but it's a very important object

Fun Genshin Japanese fact if you for some reason read this entire thing: the word they use for "adeptus" in Japanese is 仙人, which is listed in the dictionary as "immortal mountain wizard" and I laugh harder every time I think about this.

There are now extra notes abt the shogun puppet, Venti, Kaeya, Diluc and more Ayato in the reblogs

#genshin impact #kaedehara kazuha #raiden shogun #shenhe #xinyan #yoimiya #kamisato ayato #zhongli #gorou #yae #cloud retainer

[onigiri-dorkk]

Chapter 56 moment Levi (+Mikasa) Analysis

The first time you hear these words from Levi, it just goes over your head/he just seems like a hardened soldier who doesn’t stop to think about loss. But then you realize… shit… Levi thinks about every single loss, EVERY SINGLE DAY. He goes into every day assuming the people around him won’t make it or won’t be there the next day.

He just dismisses his traumatic way of viewing his life as “Well, I just think like this because I’m not normal and have seen shit. Moving on now...” But??? Like??? Can we stop to think about that? Like how tragic it is to view his daily life like that. Think about how dark and heavy that nonstop mindset would be for Levi.

This is coming from a man who, just the next day/soon after, indeed loses even more of his squad traumatically AGAIN — the soldiers who were standing literally next to him during this speech, exactly like he says. (His pained face illustrated as Kenny shoots their heads was brutal ;-; Poor Levi…)

Once again… Levi has only ever known loss and suffering and outliving people he grows even REMOTELY close to. And always in tragic ways. He deserves to be stone hearted. And yet he reveals every time that he feels deeply — SO deeply. Isayama always says Levi is the most emotional character and it makes sense.

And we see this even in more dialogue of Dimo to his son — he trusts Levi wholeheartedly and calls Levi a good guy, softhearted, despite being awkward and clumsy.

And then you have Mikasa who reaffirms this. She acknowledges the same thing that Dimo does — that Levi is awkward and maybe imperfect in his own way, BUT he is trustworthy and dependable, and his judgment deserves to be followed without question.

She also uses and mirrors Levi’s usual words of asking others to make a choice. Mikasa could just tell them “Levi is right. We need to follow him.” Instead, she says Levi’s orders are the best option, and asks Connie, Sasha and Jean to MAKE A CHOICE to follow and trust him.

In the end, Levi says he will do anything and everything for even some of humanity to see another day. He doesn’t care if that makes him a bad guy in people’s eyes. Again, his wording is awkward and intense, but all he is saying is that he values protecting others and values the idea of tomorrow — he holds onto hope in his own way.

Now we get into Rivamika. If fast forward Levi were to fall in love with Mikasa or anyone for that matter, I can see this mindset easily playing into that love. He wouldn’t care what he has to do and how that reflects on him if it means he can 1) protect who he loves, and 2) have hope of his loved ones seeing tomorrow. He would go ANY lengths for himself seeing tomorrow; what more someone he loves?

He lives daily thinking the people around him won’t last. He only knows that HE himself will outlive everyone because he’s the strongest. Then there’s Mikasa who rolls in and so happens to be the only person he can rely on not dying because she’s strong as fuck. And he calls upon her all the time. And she’s become his right hand woman.

Like she’s probably the only person he could possibly see living forward. And Mikasa sees him the same way. And now they both have their FULLEST trust in each other to 1) live, and 2) help each other to see tomorrow.

So much that even when everyone was STILL doubting Levi when he ordered them to kill the enemies, Mikasa was the only one who instantly said yes to him.

(In the end, as much confidence as he has in Mikasa, I know his inner demons will always chew at him and convince him that she would tragically die like everyone else in his life.)

Anyway! UGH!!! Levi is just so freaking complex and wonderful and sad and tragic but I’m only realizing how hopeful of a human he secretly is. He says a lot of things but there’s always a layer of care beneath the words.

I’ve been having a lot of fun writing a lot of my ff in his perspective because of things like this. I LOVE LEVI holy shit

#rivamika #Ch 54 #onigirianalyzes

[pingutats]

could you write a really fluffy bit on harry kissing every single self harm scar on your body? like, stroking them and cuddling with you and reassuring you that your body is beautiful and okay even with scars? 🥺

thank you for requesting this! this was genuinely quite therapeutic to write so i’m glad i did it — it’s longer than i meant it to be at about 2.4k words, but anyway. here’s a difficult conversation with new boyfriend!harry. 

major trigger warning for discussions of self-harm and scars. this is not a story for everyone, and could definitely be triggering if you are not in the right headspace. please be responsible and look after yourselves <3 

this is also pretty unedited so forgive any mistakes. okay!! onwards!

It’s getting late when Harry asks you, ‘Do you want to spend the night?’

The meandering film you found on Netflix is drawing to a close, finally. The characters are on a boat, drifting away into an Italian sunset. You barely have a grasp of how they got there — mostly, you just listened to Harry talk over the dialogue about a pretty little café he knows just around the corner from where this scene was filmed, or how cool the water gets at night there and so the actors must have been shivering. All of it wrapped up, of course, in a quiet suggestion to take you there someday so you can see for yourself. You get a little thrill every time he says something like that. It means he’s thinking of a future with you, which means he wants one, even though it’s only been just over a month since you’ve been seeing each other.

He trails his fingers up and down your arm, bringing up goosebumps beneath your sleeve, and looks at you. ‘Or I can drive you home, if you’d rather sleep in your own bed.’

You hum. ‘No,’ you say. ‘I’ll stay. I’d probably end up falling asleep in the car anyway. I’m so tired.’

His dimple appears. ‘Good, because I’d probably fall asleep at the wheel.’ He grabs the remote and turns the TV off, then pushes himself off the couch with a groan. He holds his hand out for you. ’C’mon, then.’

You grab his hand and he hauls you up, his other arm coming up to your back to pull you into his chest. You fall against him, grabbing his biceps to steady yourself. The two glasses of wine you’ve had tonight have thrown your balance off. He presses a kiss to your hair as you giggle. Then he brings his hand up to your jaw to tilt your head up to look at him properly. You nearly melt at his green eyes.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘I can sleep on the couch.’ His gaze is completely sincere.

You haven’t slept together before, both in the literal and figurative senses. You haven’t had sex with anybody at all, actually, and Harry seems to have picked up on your hesitancy. He’s never asked for anything. He lets everything stay on your terms. 

That’s what makes you trust him.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ you tell him.

He holds your gaze for a moment longer, just to make sure. ’Right,’ he says, breaking into a smile.

He finds a new toothbrush in his cupboard for you, and you brush your teeth together. It feels like a big step to do these nighttime rituals with him. It’s so domestic. He shares his cleanser with you and offers his moisturiser that smells like vanilla. You imagine spending every night like this.

As he leads the way back into his bedroom, he pulls his shirt off. ‘I get hot at night. D’you mind?’

You giggle — you can’t help yourself, at the sight of his muscled torso with all of its tattoos. He’s so handsome. ‘Not at all,’ you tell him.

He throws the shirt into a hamper in the corner, and the birds on his chest seem to fly with the movement of his shoulder, then looks back to catch you ogling him. He chuckles, and the sight of his dimples gives you butterflies.

‘You like?’ he asks.

You narrow your eyes. ’Are you flexing?’

He relaxes. ‘Yeah, a bit. Just wanna impress you.’

You snort at that. ‘Like you need to do anything to impress me.’

He grins. ‘D’you want something more comfortable to sleep in?’ He rummages around in his drawer for a moment, then pulls out a t-shirt and holds it up for you. It has an incredibly faded image of Flinstones characters on the front. ‘How’s this?’ he asks.

You smile at his courtesy. ’Perfect. I love your t-shirt collection, by the way. Where the hell do you find things like this?’

‘Oh, you know… Here and there.’ He tosses it to you.

You catch it with some semblance of grace — you’re proud of yourself for that. ‘Thanks.’ You glance at the bathroom door. ‘Alright. I’ll just… get changed in here,’ you say, slipping through the ajar door.

‘Alright, love.’

You shut the door, and realise you’ve forgotten to turn the light on, leaving you in pitch-black. You grope against the wall for the switch and turn it on, and take a deep breath. Why are you so nervous, so frazzled? It’s just Harry. You shimmy out of your leggings, then pull your sweater over your head.

You look at your reflection. Well. There’s a problem. It’s easy for you to forget when you’re alone, or wrapped up in layers of clothing — it’s just a part of your body now. Artefacts from a different time, years ago. Even the memory of how you got them — how you gave them to yourself — is slipping away, thank God. It’s all a haze. These scars were carved by a girl that you don’t see much anymore. They aren’t really a painful reminder anymore, just a fact of life. You know they're there. The problem is, no one else expects it.

You stare down at your wrists, seeing the lines that never faded. Maybe if they were all like the thin white lines, barely visible until you look closely, you wouldn’t mind. You’re going to sleep, anyway, and it’s not like he’s inspecting your forearms. No, it’s the three darker ones, hard twisting scar tissue that you can feel even through sleeves. Times where you went just a little too deep, were a little too reckless. The ones you regret the most. They’re big, and ugly, and too obvious. He’d notice them right away.

But he gave you his t-shirt.

You look at your reflection in the mirror, furrowing your brows. You adjust your pose, twisting your arms around so the inside of your wrists are hidden, facing behind you. You look ridiculous. You know, as soon as you see Harry, you’ll reach for him, and he’ll see.

Would that be so bad?

You look down at your arms again. It’s been years, and they’re still there. They’ll probably be there forever. They’re as permanent as the tattoos on his skin — except those are beautiful, and what you have is not. You can’t show this to him. The world where these scars exist, and the world where he exists, should never cross over. It wouldn’t be right.

You pull your long-sleeve back on, covering them again. Then you put the t-shirt, which is long enough to be modest on you. This is fine, right? It’s better than any alternative, at least.

You leave the bathroom holding your folded sweats up to your chest, nervous now realising that you are standing in front of Harry in just your underwear, more naked than you ever have been in front of him.

He’s checking something on his phone as he sits on the bed, back against the headboard and long legs stretching down the covers, but he brightens up at the sight of you. His gaze drops to your legs — which makes your cheeks burn, but his boyishly excited expression dissolves your nerves — then rises up again to your shirt. He frowns at the long-sleeve. 

‘Are you cold?’ he asks. ‘I thought it was pretty warm but I can turn the heat up if you need.’

You shake your head, dropping your sweats on the floor beside the dresser. ’No, it’s fine.’

He sits up straighter, swinging his legs over the side so his feet rest on the ground. ’Can’t be comfortable to sleep like that.’ He hesitates. ‘You didn’t have to wear the t-shirt if you don’t want to.’

‘No, I want to. I do.’ You wrap your arms around yourself, trying to figure out how to navigate this situation in a way that won’t end in him being annoyed or disgusted. ‘It’s just…’ You trail off, but one glance at his frown, at the way he leans forward and hangs on every word, makes your resolve crumble. You’ll have to have this conversation at one point or another. ‘Okay. Shit, Harry, can I talk to you about something?’

The way he answers immediately makes you want to cry. ‘Yeah, of course. Anything.’ He sits up straighter, pats the covers next to him, inviting you to sit down.

You sigh and cross the room to sit next to him, not daring to meet his eyes. How the hell do you explain this?

He moves his arm behind you once you’re sitting. Not touching you, but enough so he’s close. ‘What’s wrong?’ he prompts. ‘Do you need me to drive you home instead? Because I didn’t—’

‘No,’ you interrupt. ‘It’s fine. It’s just, I kinda…’ You take a deep breath. ‘Okay, please don’t freak out?’

He frowns. His next words are measured. ‘I’ll try not to. Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah,’ you whisper. It feels like the greatest effort in the world, but you curl your fingers around the end of your sleeve and pull it up, revealing your wrists. ‘So, I have these…’ Your voice shakes.

‘Oh, baby,’ Harry says quietly, and that’s all you need to hear. His arm behind you reaches around and pulls you into his chest, hugging you close to him. His thumb rubs circles into your shoulder as you sniffle, his other hand resting on top of yours.

‘It’s in the past, you know,’ you say, muffled into his shoulder. He smells good, you notice. Not that it’s really important right now, but you appreciate it all the same. ‘Not a big deal. Just didn’t want to scare you or anything. ’S embarrassing.’

‘Listen to me,’ he says, pulling back and holding your face in his hands. He waits until you manage to look him in his eyes. They’re watery, you realise, and that might be the most painful thing about this night. ’It’s not embarrassing, alright? I don’t want you to feel like that. They’re part of you, and I really like you, every part.’ He smiles. ‘I really do, you know.’

You sniff, wiping at your cheek with your fingertips, trying to calm your tears. Suddenly all your fears seem ridiculous. Did you really expect him to turn you away, disgusted? Ask to never see you again? You knuckle at your eyes. ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’

‘Hey.’ He springs from the bed to grab the tissue box from the dresser and brings it to you, pulling out a tissue and dabbing under your eyes himself. He’s so gentle. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I’m sorry, that you were worried to show me.’

You chuckle, grabbing a tissue from the box and blowing your nose. What more can you say to him? He’s so wonderful to you. It’s early days still, and you’re wary of moving too fast and coming on too strong. You aren’t experienced with relationships in the same way that you know he is. But you love him. You’re sure of it. You’ll tell him, one day. Soon.

‘You don’t need to wear my shirt if you don’t want to,’ he repeats once you’re calmer.

‘I’ll wear it.’ And to show him, in your sudden burst of confidence, you undress right next to him, taking off both layers and then putting the only t-shirt back on. You turn to him, and giggle. He’s turned his head away. ‘You can look,’ you tell him, nudging his knee with yours.

He looks back with a sheepish smile. ‘Didn’t want to be a creep.’ He scoots backwards onto the bed, settling his back against the headboard. ‘C’mere.’

You crawl over to him, settling with your back against his chest, sitting between his legs. His arms wrap around your middle, anchoring you to him. He presses kisses to your neck, the scruff on his cheeks tickling you. You curl up, twisting your neck away, giggling.

‘Harry!’

‘Sorry, love.’ His hands relax, and find your own. He rests his chin over your shoulder, and gently turns your palms upwards, so your wrists are visible to him.

You shiver, but allow it. You feel this is important. You don’t want to hide with him.

‘Y/N…’ he says quietly. You feel his chest push against your back as it expands with a breath. ‘Am I… am I allowed to touch them?’ he asks.

You’re surprised. You thought he would want to avoid them. You nod, then, realising he can’t really see you, you add, ‘Yeah.’

Your fingers are tense. You can’t help it. His thumb presses into your palm, massaging the tension away. He pulls the back of your hand to his lips and brings it back to your lap.

You close your eyes.

When he finds the first hard lump of scarring with his thumb, he pauses. He takes a shaky breath, then he runs his thumb up and down the length of it.

‘Y/N,’ he says softly.

You squeeze your eyes shut tighter. ‘Mm?’

‘You’re beautiful, you know.’ He pulls your hand back up to his lips, but instead he kisses the biggest scar on your wrist. ‘No matter what. You are.’

‘Harry,’ you whisper, because you don’t know what to say.

He kisses the scar again, then trails his lips up your wrist, covering them all. ‘I don’t want you to be ashamed of anything. You survived. That’s a wonderful thing.’ He drops your hand and cups your jaw, turning your head towards his. He leans around your shoulder to face you properly. ’I’m so fucking proud of you, you know?’

You never were good at taking compliments, so you just cross the distance between the two of you and kiss him.

When you’re lying together in the dark a little while later, with his arm thrown over you protectively and his soft breaths hitting your neck where his t-shirt doesn’t cover, you feel safe. Your arms are bare, you’re with another person, and you feel safe in this situation for the first time in years. It’s a wonderful feeling. All because of Harry.

You can’t wait to wake up in the morning and see his face again.

#harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fluff #harry styles blurb #harry styles x reader #fic #self harm tw

[frogwithsocks]

‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ was released 9 years ago today.

*I wrote this text in June 2021.*

I watched my favorite movie today for the fortieth time. every time I watch it is a different experience and I never get tired of reviewing it. this movie has been part of my life from the first moment I watched it, I'm completely attached to each character and each scene. it's hard to put into words how important this movie is to me, maybe it's impossible to convey how much I love it. but, I've been writing for a while about every sensation and every little thing I notice in this movie, one of which I recently noticed while listening to Bowie's song, 'Heroes', when Bowie says "Though nothing will drive them away" and the one titled "nothing", Patrick is driving, and in another part he says "Though nothing, will keep us together", and sometimes Charlie or someone of the group moved away in some situation, Patrick who brought them together. and the last bit that says it "And we kissed, as though nothing could fall", the interpretation of Patrick's kisses with all the people he kissed in the movie.

I read the book as soon as I saw it for sale in a bookstore in my city for the first time, and soon I was very intrigued by the story and how things were developing. I must have been about 13 or 14 years old at the time i read it and I must admit I was confused by some things, I was very young and didn't understand some situations that happen, but it left me with my eyes open when I watched the movie and interpreted the scenes with the book links. Years have passed and every year I see this movie, at random times like today,or on dates like my birthday or Christmas.

This year I bought the new version of the book with the exclusive cover and unpublished excerpts and when this version was announced I almost cried with so much happiness and I was so moved, because this book, and especially the movie, are a part of me. I read the book again with more mature interpretations of the situations and was able to make interpretations of the situations and was able to increasingly feel the scenes and the feelings of the characters. the classic phrases are part of my life and make me reflect always, I feel super cliché thinking about these phrases because they have become so popular and maybe banal for some people, but they make me complete, the scenes and the songs and the characters in the movie and the hired actors are all perfect for their roles, I can't imagine other people playing each of them.

every little part has a piece of my heart and it makes me emotional to talk about how many people may not understand what it's like to connect so strongly with a character, movie and story. it's very difficult to express the relevance of this movie in my life, and every time i see it, i get sad, happy, hopeful and devastated too. but, I feel infinite, and ok, maybe it's coincidentally because the movie repeats that and Charlie's letter says that, but, I can understand why he says that and why I can feel it when I see this movie.

when i was 16 i started writing a book - lol-  i literally put myself in the role of "hello i'm charlie" but actually i'm me, in case i'm the character, but in case i didn't want to put myself as the protagonist, it was just putting experiences of my life, coincidentally as the author of the book wrote. i swear I didn't realize at first that I was copying the writing mode and the dialogues between the characters, but then I realized that I was completely influenced to do it that way because I ended up basing a lot on the author's writing mode and the letter mode that Charlie did. *a spoiler, I never got past 8 pages of this supposed book about a supposed character very like me*, but it's nice to read it every now and then because I like what's in there, even though it's pretty embarrassing.

I once tried to redo the tunnel scene with my friend, but it wasn't exactly as I expected, 1. because I live in a city that doesn't exactly have the tunnel that way and those lights, 2. because there wasn't one of those cars with opening at the back, so it was just the window, but it was good while it lasted, and yes, I put heroes playing. but my dream is to pass by the place where it was recorded and feel that scene three hundred times.

I don't know why I'm writing this, but I wanted to express at least 1% of how I feel about this movie. and how attached I am to absolutely everything in it. I wanted to thank you (I don't know exactly who because no one who made the film will read this here) but thank you anyway.

#the perks of being a wallflower #the perks of being a wallflower 9 years #movies #movie gifs #as vantagens de ser invisível #tunnel scene #david bowie