#If I was this dedicated to literally anything else in my life I'd be unstoppable

[theusernameiwantisntavailable]

Sometimes I think I'm doing okay but I have times like today where I've hit a 910 day daily mini game streak on a game I play and now I'm re-evaluating several life choices

[idvconfessions]

It's so hard to pick a favorite character!! ;u; They do such a good job with all of them in terms of lore and characterization.

I think I'd have to pick my mains though. Luca and Soul Weaver.

Originally, I didn't want to like Luca. I felt like he was overrated. Idk y, but I always feel like I shouldn't like the characters who have a ton of fans. I just...felt like he had enough attention ig?

But then I found a VAL fan comic by an artist known as Jimjams. After scrambling and scrounging for every bit of their VAL/VALE content I could, I started to look into the lore of each of them more seriously. I'd known Luca was an amnesiac, which is a trope I've had a soft spot for since I can remember, but that was about it. I decided to play him and haven't stopped since. I delved deeper into his lore and have since come up with a ton of headcanon ideas of things he enjoys, things he struggles with, what he might be like based on his birthday letters and also taking the Stage interpretation of him and mixing that with what I know is canon.

Now, instead of seeing him as an overrated character, I just...see a character with a lot of potential internal struggles and crises. A character with an obsession completely lost on him. The one thing he loves is something his brain no longer has the ability to achieve. And yet, he still tries. He still moves forward despite losing literally everything he thought made him himself. He's lost his mental and physical health due to something completely avoidable that I give complete blame to neither side for. He's broken, but he puts on his braces and keeps walking. He has a keen intellect, a strong sense of pride, and an unstoppable, dedicated spirit to live life the way he finds fulfilling. He's a tragic character, to be sure, but he doesn't let that, or anything else that will happen, stop him. He doesn't stop looking or asking questions. He's filled with a curiosity that occupies each moment and allows him to be aware of his own shortcomings and determine the sacrifices he's willing to make. If anything, even without the rest of VALE, I've found a lot to admire in Luca. Qualities I often wish I had myself. Though writing about or thinking of headcanons for VALE in a time when Luca could have the time to make friends is also delightful to me, even just his canon character on its own stands out to me.

Not to mention his design is just absolutely fire. Easily discernable silhouette with lots of small, recognizable features and a few more prominent ones that are most recognizable and a voice to match ;u; I just like his design a lot. I wish I could make characters with designs just as simple, but as recognizable. His design feels effortless. Easy to draw, easy to remember, and I'm just blown away with how unique he still is despite that. (And he likes hamsters. Netease is SO good at adding tiny little details that make my heart melt for their characters even if I was originally disinterested)

As for Violetta, as soon as I got the game and looked at the hunters, she was my favorite by design. I've always loved spiders and spider-themed characters, so when I saw her I loved her immediately. However...I didn't know how to play hunter at all, much less one with multiple abilities, so I ended up ignoring her for quite some time in favor of Joker who was easy for me to understand and later Feaster bc I drew his CoA VII S-tier. I saw her played in CoA finals that year and decided to give her another try now that I understood the game better. Haven't stopped playing her since, even though I've added more hunters to my pool.

Violetta, for me, is one of the best characters in Identity V. She's the sweetest, gentlest soul despite everything she's been through and how she's been treated. All she wants to do is make people happy while she performs, but she never gets the chance. She's always kicked to the curb as soon as anyone gets bored with her. She tries her best no matter what, but she keeps getting sidelined, even by those she considers her friends and castmates. She feels things very deeply and wants to make others feel just as deeply through her skills. Perhaps I'm projecting a bit here, but that is my understanding, especially after Closing Night. She wants to be loved. She wants to be admired. She wants to be treated the way she tries to treat other people, with respect and kindness.

Her goals and desires are so simple and pure, but her love of them becomes obsessive and even embittering, but she keeps the bitterness to herself as soon as she sees someone else, immediately turning her attention back to what they're going to perform together. Back to what she thinks will make others as happy as herself when she's onstage.

I imagine when she first started performing at the circus, and she saw people smiling and laughing, despite it being at her, it was the first time someone smiled because of her. As such she desired to do it again and again. Who cares if it's because she's weird? SHE made them happy. She may have found purpose in that. Like she felt no other reason to exist. When they grew bored of her and left her as one of the sideshows to be ignored, she may have sort of had withdrawals. An absence of her purpose even though she was still putting in all the work. As a result, she longed for the spotlight again. She longed to be an actress as she knew THAT was where she could fulfill her purpose again.

Again, this is mostly conjecture. Most of the information we have is ABOUT her not FROM her, but this is what I've gathered from listening to her lines and reading her letters, though it's been a while since I've done the latter. Another tragic character, longing to be warm, loved and cherished as she wishes to warm and cherish the hearts of others, dreaming of such freedom as she gives in to the cold. In her last moments her wish came true, but not within reality.

A lot of hunters in IDV are seen as tragic, sympathetic characters who should never have gone through what happened to them. Ann, for example, was the victim of a cult. The Wu Chang boys were the victims of a corrupt legal system. Leo got scammed and then his family ripped apart by his sleazy business partner. Geisha was murdered by her father-in-law for no better reason than him not liking her. So technically speaking, Violetta doesn't bring much new or different to the table. She's also a tragic character who didn't deserve the way she was treated.

So, why does she stand out to me? I think it's because most of the other characters had something to lose and ultimately lost it. They started with something. A rose-tinted truth, a best friend, a twin, a parent, fame, authority, etc.

Violetta had nothing from the very beginning. Nobody cared about her, she had nothing to call her own, no family, no nothing. She cared about everyone else. She found something to care for even when those feelings would never be reciprocated. That's why she found joy in performing. She found value in people who never saw the same in her. She had every right to be bitter and angry towards these people. Every right to treat them with the same amount of respect they gave her (none). But she didn't. She found it worth her time, love and effort to give everything to make people laugh and smile and took joy in it when no one else would ever give her the same. She had nothing to lose, but found something to lose anyway. Or, more accurately, something she could never truly attain.

I wonder if Murro was one who helped her see things this way. He's one of the few that doesn't ignore her and treats her kindly. Maybe he's the one who allowed her to think of people as capable of kindness and love, and thus gave her her goal in reciprocating such in the hopes of finding it in return just through being himself.

The more I think about these characters, the more similar they seem to me. Both are trying to attain what is now unattainable to them. Both seem to have struggles with the purpose of their own existence in various ways. Their answers for such things so far away and vague. An unrequited love for something intangible or even perhaps impossible, and not due to their lack of effort. Characters strong enough to rise each day still determined to attain the impossible.

It's scary, realizing everything you're doing can come crashing down into nothing whether you screw up or not, and endlessly frustrating to know you don't have the same potential you'd otherwise have had and exactly why. But it doesn't stop them. They keep going, their questions unanswered, the road of reality ready to fall from under them any second, but on they go because it's what they've chosen to love. It's what they've chosen to live, hope and die for no matter what happens.

-💀

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───