#I love talking about the idv characters in general tbh !!!!

[muralconservator]

i know this will not be seen until the following morning in your timezone but. aaaaaaa florian thoughts. i'm in on the savior complex and have been for a good while (read: i drew him like. under 24 hours after he was revealed and went all in on analyzing my boy), and really? this is a guy who hates the cold equation of having to sell teammates in matches. this is a guy who would not keep his cool if he failed to save someone he meant to. he thinks what he's doing is for the best, he thinks he'll be able to create all these miracles. and then someone dies. because of him. mmmm post arson clarity destroying him. one of the few times he'd be unable to keep the act/his cool because he couldn't be the person he had to. he couldn't save them. he couldn't– and then there's the matter of florian and identity issues! when there's only one clearly first person deduction tagline (the one for deduction 6)? he's lived so much of his conscious life being photographed that i imagine he's sort of gotten used to living like he's always being perceived and like the spotlight will burn him if he plays his cards wrong. in deduction 3, we have that photo of him standing indifferently, before the repetition-induced (?) recontextualization of the fire that stole his parents from a painful nightmare into a motivation to act. heck, in deduction 1, we see a photo of his parents showing him how fire works when controlled, what it could be. and we see the depths of calculation for even simple theories of how flames spread that he'll take into account. that talk about how he "always stays friendly and humble to donors and the children who require treatment"... this is after white sand became an asylum, and he was there when it was simply (?) an orphanage. he's been in the system for too many years, he's been given authority. and what does he do? he burns the place down, rescuing as many as he can. he sees the drugs that can't treat (deduction 6) and uses them for his own measures. with talk of how "in any case, he needs the attention" (deduction 8), i also see that knowing the newspaper's description, and knowing he could save people without having to sacrifice himself... it could be another kind of miracle, could it not? and with descriptions of how he's seen as "the friendliest person to ever exist" (deduction 9), how he refuses to let that smile of his falter, i can't help but see it as a conscious thing. he's hiding the arson when he refuses to talk about his personal life, but there could also be so many things he's hiding. the parts that aren't photogenic. the parts that don't fit the story people tell about him. he's so many things as a character and i love him dearly. in regards to the facade he constantly holds in my personal headcanon (this man is masking so hard i am convinced), i think victor would catch that (source: victor does the same for his own reasons. man is on the run, man knows what's expected of him and what could easily happen if he messes up) and. victor dislikes face to face conversations because of the lies people tell, how they hide so much. and yet both victor and florian hide so much and say so little about themselves. it's just that i imagine florian's forgotten where the presentation of himself ends and his internal thoughts begin. letting them both find a way to connect and see each other as the messy, complicated humans they are as opposed to the images and superlatives on newspapers or the ways they have to act in terms of the work they did. victor having the "who are you really?" moment but he can't/doesn't say since it would be out of pocket for him. but it lingers in his mind. in both their minds, faltering has a very real cost, very present stakes. i am so sorry for the ramble i just have too many things i think of when it comes to this man. he's a normal guy who does normal things trust.

don't apologise for the rambles I love when people talk to me about this stuff !!!! I'm sorry I don't have more to add though (I'll probably end up adding to this later ngl), I fully agree with you and I really enjoyed reading this

I'm really into the whole saviour complex idea with him and the idea of him trying to hide and mask things, he's the kind of person that'd want to hide his flaws to me, he wants people to see him as good, to say the least, to see him as always happy, always brave, and always smiling despite what's happened to him, he's noble

[jils-things]

Idk if you ever mentioned it (or i was just not a follower back then) but how did you come across idv 💭 also tell me when/how you started to like freaky Campbell bc i like hearing those stories 👊

YAY LOREEEE YES YES OF COURSE i love telling stories as well so this is perfect HEHEHEHE (im v sorry this is so long. this is what 5 years does)

so i joined idv when it was still quite new! november 2018, i checked. my best friend (who is also a selfshipper here, just inactive atm) asked me one day if id like to play with her this game! she only got into it recently and wanted someone to play with so she thought of me. without much hesitation, i did (i was immediately convinced with the dbd styled gameplay) so ive been playing idv with her non stop (we even played together recently after i went back to it for norton hehe)

norton wasnt even there when i first joined! there used to be a small roster of survivor and hunters and i remember either she or i get leaks on new survivors and we talk about it! norton was the second "new" survivor at the time that i got introduced to, i think that was on march 19 (which is also his birthday). at first, i was simply excited to get new survivors so of course i was like "yay!! this prospector looks awesome!" (foreshadowing. /j). i think one of my initial thoughts of him was "dang, that is definitely a design i fuck with" (his miner's hat really gives a lot of character! i still believe that today).

i was pretty much neutral at first. i just go yay cool guy is here in the game lalala (same attitude when the other "new" survivor came out)

one day my friend was designing an oc to pair with a random character (i dont think it was a yume thing, she just wanted to ship with someone because why not) and i wanted to join her as well, that's when I conceptualized irene - she was initially a shell collector :D like my friend, i wanted to find a survivor to pair her up with and without hesitation I just went. yeah. norton . nortons the one (as i said, his design really resonated with me and imo he was like, one of the actually "good looking" survivors to me at the time. its hard to say that now because we have characters like luca, aesop, edgar, mike etc etc LMAO)

so i was like yeahh! irene x norton real :D at first it was just a very lighthearted thing for me to do (as in, i wasnt very. 'HES SO CUTE LALALA") but i think it was when i tried to google fanart of him to draw at the time - that's when i was like "ooh... he kinda cute tbh..." but mostly just kept it hidden

at that time, i didnt really accept being a yumejoshi yet - i was super casual abt it and didnt think much abt liking him (i thought he was just a handsome blorbo to me). also because i was very preoccupied shipping him with emma (whom i very much projected into hehehe)

so after some time this becomes an on and off thing where i like him, and then ignore. like him, then ignore. cue the dormant years

then timeskip to maybe like, my 1st year in the yumeblr community, i missed him and this time i was becoming more head over heels for him for a brief time so i drew him and irene (irene was still a shell collector there too.) it was short lived

then uhh, time skip to a little more recently last year -- fools gold was becoming a thing! I don't know fucking HOW, BUT THAT TRAILER/NEWS CAME INTO MY YOUTUBE TIMELINE EVEN IF I DID NOT... TOUCH IDV? AND, FUCKIN HELL, I THINK I BECAME A NEW PERSON THAT DAY 😭😭 LIKE SEEING FOOLS GOLD WAS A WHOLE ASS RESTART BUTTON BECAUSE SUDDENLY I WAS IMMEDIATELY DOWN HORRENDOUS

AND AFTER THAT, I JUST. BECAME. WHAT I AM RN. EXTREMELY GIDDY AND SILLY ABT THIS DUMB HOT ROCK FUCKER LMAOOO but again it didn't last long? (medium lived ...?) cuz of steven. but also my friends (yk the fuckplace server) were constantly teasing me abt norton in general at this point so i couldn't exactly get him off my radar but i kept quiet. its worth mentioning that irene was still a shell collector too but i was starting to debate whether i should redesign her or not

and then, skip to the present. what got me to like, really selfship with him and just fully commit to liking him for Months now even -- was because of the stageplay which my aforementioned friends kept encouraging me to check (and when stageplay norton came up. i basically had the same reaction w fools gold but more positively and more lovingly SKAKWKKASKA) and that's when i fully retconned irene's lore to really align with his lore.

its worth mentioning that during norton's early years in the idv community - we did not know his personality and lore. the only keyword we had was "gloomy" but that didnt stop me and my friend from misinterpreting his attitude to be friendly and goofy (and irene was... believe me or not. a fucking Hater.. he was the goofy. she was the Not goofy one. its scary to look back on). and im so serious when i say the fools gold trailer changed the whole game for me because thats when i actually KNOW: 1) his personality 2) his lore 3) he is not a goofy Guy and i revamped irene's entire lore to align with his - making her the rich happy girl to his poor emo boy

so yeah. Meta Constabell Lore /JJJJJ

[embalmerandphotographer]

Tbh while I do like the fact that there is somewhat some diversity in identity v it kinda sucks when the only two prominent poc in the game are “hard headed aggressive athlete” and “voodoo witch” like I get it identity isn’t exactly a western game but literally all other characters that are brown are ambiguous (ex. cowboy, mercenary, gameskeeper)

oh absolutely its one of my gripes with the game (along with a few skins cough cough the brave skin cough cough) 

it is severely lacking in diversity and likes to lean on stereotypes; leaning on stereotypes is super common in horror media, b/c its a genre that thrives on character archetypes, but its not okay when other horror media does it and its not okay when IdV does it either

and a narrative can feature archetypes without turning them into stereotypes

theres a lot i love about the game but its far from perfect in some pretty drastic ways

i wouldnt necessarily say that the merc, cowboy and gameskeeper are ambiguously POC- kevin and bane are most likely latino, and naib is explicitly stated to be nepalese- but the fact that all of their designs are light skinned (well, bane’s a deer man but you know what i mean) is absolutely rooted in colourism

similarly colourism and racism are not exclusive to western cultures and anyone who tries to defend it because “oh its not a western game” is just being kind of a dipshit

and the team behind the game is clearly very creative in some character design and development decisions- they CAN do better, and i wish they would

and thats not even touching on how much the fandom whitewashes the few dark skinned characters that are already there

- 📷

yeah agreed anon, for all that i enjoy the game i despise the casual racism in idv (the stereotype of the enchantress, as much as i love her as a character, seems especially bad tbh). there are in particular some skins that need to be both reworked and renamed because they’re straightforwardly not ok (cowboy’s brave skin, there’s some romani stereotyping that’s super nasty, and again patricia’s skins and her whole “wicked voodoo” thing, plus i’m sure i’m missing things). 

i also wish the survivors had a better range of skintones ie more dark skinned characters and more visible representation of the different ethnicities of the characters. i don’t wish the same for the hunters tbh because making violent/scary characters dark skinned is not great due to the ongoing violence of white supremacy/racism in general and to colorism specifically.

but yeh! it’s a common situation for me that i property that i otherwise love has parts that make me very uncomfortable and that i wish they would address. we as fans should talk about how it’s not okay that these racist elements are included in the game, even if there’s very little else we can do aside from correcting as much of the Unfortunate stuff as we can in our fanworks.

-⚰️