#Kojima when i find you

[beatlespussy]

Thinking about emma emmerich again

[dontmindme2600]

The obnoxious way some people will act under Japanese creator’s twitter posts is honestly so embarrassing- like Kohei Horikoshi’s (creator of My Hero Academia) replies are actually hell, I feel so bad. I don’t want to come across as babying them, but creators from entirely different cultures who speak entirely different languages do not understand what you mean when you obsessively comment that their character is a twink, and even putting that aside I don’t think they’d appreciate you leaving sexual comments about their characters (or even worse-themselves) under their tweets about what they had for lunch of smthn. Again, this isn’t to infantilize them, but. Please. Just. Keep in mind that these people are probably unfamiliar with our culture and fandom terms before leaving some weird comment

[beevean]

Favorite detail about Isaac's design

the low pants

these are the "almost flash my dick" pants of a king

In all seriousness, though, 100% the tattoos. I love Isaac's tattoos and everything that they symbolize.

He has very interesting shapes on his body, mostly jagged spikes and coiled curves. The sun on his chest and the stars on his back are the most obvious, but I also see the design on his belly and his lower back as abstract dragons. Apparently, he has moons on his thigh too. They are all alchemical symbols, that are echoed in the Devil Forgemaster crest (the dragons are even eating their own tails, as an infinite-shaped version of the ouroboros). And you ask yourself: why did he do this? How long did he took? Did he look forward to the pain, or did he tolerate it for the sake of painting his body? Was it an act of blasphemy, or a way to show how committed to Dracula he is?

Because of course his most prominent tattoo is the Devil Forgemaster crest. And that says everything. Hector only wears the crest: he can choose when to don it or remove it. He is forced to wear his old uniform again, as Isaac pulls him back to his dark past, but otherwise, Hector wants to be a free man. Isaac, however? He has tied his identity to his role, to his purpose: he died with that crest on his back, in plain sight. He chose to give himself that big, painful tattoo, to mark himself as Dracula's general for the rest of his life: consider that he was the less favorite, and you can read insecurity in the act. And with those tattoos, there was no way he could ever mingle back with humanity: he chose to look demonic. In the same way he didn't choose to be born with red hair and yellow eyes during a time of witch huntings.

Isaac, to me, reads like someone who wants to reclaim all the horrible things he was told and he believes of himself, one who flaunts his imperfections and insanity with pride. He wants you to look at him, at his bright unnatural hair, at his red eyeliner, at his thin body, at the blasphemous way he "ruined" it. If you find him scary or repulsive, good. The collar, too, a clear way to say that he's still Dracula's servant even after his death, and another way he contrasts with Hector, selfish in his desire for utter freedom.

Also, another detail I love is... just his face lmao

I really like that Isaac is allowed to be attractive without falling into the mold of the Kojima Pretty Boy. He has a big nose, a large mouth, and slightly downwards eyes: he looks unique in the cast. Look at this panel!

You can tell who is who by the nose and the eyelashes before you look at the hair or even the tattoo. It's not something to take for granted!

Isaac is wonderfully designed and I will die on this hill <3

[stackslip]

Something I’ve noticed on Twitter wrt mangaka is how people will either completely deny they’re into xyz thing they obviously have a kink for because they think it taints the work (Fujimoto being a prime example of this) or completely reduce them to Epstein and Diddy jokes.

it's because people don't see irl incest and csa as forms of oppression and harm that make the world a worse place and destroy lives, but as objects of primarily moral disgust that they can joke about to distance themselves from as an "ewww, everyone look at this and groan with us" point not an actual harm to combat. alternatively, it's because they think incestuous abuse and csa only happen because someone has Weird Kinks or has written a bad fic or something, not bc the nuclear family and the legal/cultural status of minors allows young people to be easily abused and discarded with little fear of repercussions. as for the jokes about diddy and epstein, wait til people find out that most abusers don't get away with it because they're rich conspirators, but because their friends and family will cover for them and pressure victims--you don't want daddy/the pastor/cousin robbie to go to jail, do you? hell, most trafficking victims in these cases have been sold by their families. it's almost like most csa happens via people the child already knows and trusts.

when it comes to people like fujimoto they think it's impossible for an author to have a kink AND to think of the real life implications of the abuses depicted, but mysteriously everyone knows that just because kojima thinks military shit is cool as hell it doesn't do anything to diminish the anti imperialist and anti war messages in his work. and besides they love making jokes about their favourite fictional war criminals bc sexual abuse is a Real And Serious Thing That Happens as opposed to war crimes apparently which Never Happens To Anyone.

anyhow i've already complained about these kind of losers. they'll happily go after some rando trans person online for tweeting/posting a fantasy about a fictional sister and cry about how she's single handedly responsible for incestuous abuse while combing through her sexual life to have her exposed and shamed to thousands, and that apparently doesn't count as sexual harassment in any way. and then maybe they'll hear she's a csa victim and a few of them will go "oh wow i'm sowwy i didn't know she was a *victim* trying to *cope*, but nevertheless couldn't she have done so more privately? why didn't she get therapy? it's not like that art LOOKED like vent art it looked like fetish" after having told their minor followers to go gawk at her sexual life and gasp in shock with them at how much of a freak she supposedly is.

anyhow nobody owes you an explanation for their Bad Kinks. there's horny stuff i find tasteless and dislike (ask me about why i didn't bother to go past the first chapter of dandandan), as long as they are not materially harming anybody--who cares. your moral disgust and shock is not actual inflicted harm! you acting on said disgust to try to ruin lives and convince your teen followers that they are surrounded by sex pests and that sexual predators can be spotted bc of their weird kinks/tastes in fiction and nothing else is doing more harm than anything a so-called "weirdo" who enjoys momson hentai doujinshi in a corner ever will and i stand on that

[acquired-stardust]

Game Spotlight #15: Policenauts (1996)

Ash finds herself firmly back in the Kojimaverse as she talks about the 1996 Sega Saturn version of Policenauts for Acquired-Stardust's first spotlight of our second year. Disappointing followup or misunderstood masterpiece? And just what is a "sexy adventure" anyway? Come read along as we answer all these questions and more!

Oh, Hideo Kojima. When last we covered his work in written form on the blog it was almost a year ago in the form of a spotlight on 1994's Sega CD port of Snatcher (which you can read by clicking here). If it wasn't already abundantly clear let me state the obvious: I'm a huge fan of the man and his work. I think he's one of gaming's top creative geniuses alongside the likes of Yasumi Matsuno, Fumito Ueda and Yoko Taro. But you could be forgiven for not sharing that feeling when looking at Policenauts on a surface level or by taking common talking points about it at face value.

Policenauts is something of a black sheep in the Kojima portfolio that is often maligned by people for being 'Snatcher but worse'. It has a similar fish out of water setup taking place in a near-future science fiction world. Its lead character, the womanizing Jonathan Ingram, has a similar relationship with a former lover to Snatcher's Gillian Seed and even looks a bit like him, a point that is alluded to in the game itself as part of a meta cameo (one of several callbacks and references to Snatcher). The sexuality and its use for attempts at comedy can be obnoxious and over the top. Some of the themes of Policenauts are also retreads of themes Snatcher deals with, which can certainly dip into feeling like they were less effective this time around. What's more, the game is far more linear and on-rails than Snatcher, presenting far fewer opportunities to tinker with it and discover much in the way of hidden easter eggs or cleverly placed extras. Some of its later developments feel a little bit like 'a hat on a hat' and not entirely necessary. Its featured romance is very forced and odd (though ultimately executed extremely well). These things are all true.

Be that as it may, make no mistake about it: Policenauts is a fantastic experience that is, like its lead character, a fascinating time capsule from a long gone era. Following a similar blueprint to Snatcher's usage of various sci-fi media (most notably Blade Runner), Policenauts is heavily patterned after the Lethal Weapon franchise, and uses the familiarity one may have with its buddy cop formula to get its foot in the door before subverting your expectations as it deviates into its own original work rather quickly.

Opening after an accident in combination policeman-astronaut (the titular Policenauts) Jonathan Ingram's testing of a high tech mech suit during a spacewalk outside of the space colony Beyond Coast that sends him adrift in space for 25 years while cryogenically frozen, Jonathan picks up where he left off by becoming a private investigator of meager success in Earth's Old LA. Finding himself a stranger in a world he is 25 years removed from and stricken with severe cosmophobia from his ordeal. Jonathan's former wife has moved on and remarried. His four fellow policenauts have settled into comfortable lives on space colony Beyond Coast as something of heroes and celebrities. Forced to overcome his cosmophobia when a very personal case sends him once more to Beyond Coast, Jonathan reunites with his best friend and former fellow policenaut Ed Brown (himself still a cop on the aforementioned space colony) to unravel a conspiracy.

It's often said that Jonathan is a very unlikable character, but I find the opposite to be true. There is a solemness, sadness and resilience to him that comes across very well, being inherently at odds with a time that did not stop and life that moved on without him. Much is also made, as previously noted, of his womanizing, and I'd like to address that talking point by first pointing out that much like Snatcher, the vast majority (in fact all but one or two instances) of the sexuality of the game is entirely optional and serves as a bit of meta humor. Jonathan's inability to control himself is a direct result of his literal inability to control himself as he is at the complete mercy of the player, who can decide to pester multiple female characters to with zero benefit. Just as well, Policenauts lands firmly in the genre of something I like to call 'Sexy Adventure', a term borrowed from a song featured in the iconic Lupin III franchise that contains works you might be familiar with such as Space Dandy, City Hunter, Dirty Pair and indeed Lupin III.

Several tropes of the genre include a strong sense of Japanese sensuality and horniness, action sequences involving guns and cars, romance, large scale conspiracies and characters who are masters of their particular fields to an absurd degree. Jonathan's womanizing, something almost exclusively indulged in as optional behavior by the player, is certainly less than Arsene Lupin III for example, but coming to terms with the horniness of this micro-genre is imperative if you hope to enjoy anything it has to offer. Just as well, Policenauts' original release platform before being ported to the Sega Saturn was the PC98 which (along with the earlier PC88) was known for a frankly overwhelming amount of pornographic hentai games. To a large extent this was very much the norm for games on the platform and the time, and while nothing in Policenauts borders on pornographic, the sexuality of it is to be expected.

Policenauts doubles down on a distinguishing feature of Snatcher in its thorough worldbuilding, and is perhaps the key area that the game shines in most especially when compared to Snatcher. Containing an in-game encyclopedia that is always accessible at the touch of a button, it is dauntingly dense and features countless clickable entries detailing many aspects of life, culture and science in the Policenauts universe, often dipping into heavy doses of hard science with surprisingly detailed explanations behind even mundane parts of everyday life on Beyond Coast, such as biodegradable plastics, a problem which Kojima envisioned solved by 2040. I was a bit taken aback by given the foresight of the plastics issue given our own real-world news cycles being dominated by topics like microplastics in recent years.

The level of real science involved in the encyclopedia is rewarding for those of us who like to devour every bit of information we can get our hands on and can pick out the real from the fictional and it helps make Beyond Coast feel all the more real. The sci-fi Japanifornia that is Beyond Coast is almost a character unto itself to an even further extent than Snatcher's setting of Neo Kobe and remains in my book one of the most fleshed out and believable settings in all of gaming. Furthermore the knowledge Hideo Kojima has in a time before the level of availability and access to information we have in the current internet age is hugely impressive.

Overwhelming density is a recurring aspect of the game which may make or break your enjoyment of it. For a game that is less interactive than Snatcher it is somehow more dense, intimidatingly so if you are willing to indulge in its encyclopedia and really study the universe that Kojima created. The player is also able to examine a shocking number of elements of backgrounds and get multiple optional lines of dialogue about them, although as previously noted Policenauts offers much less in the way of diversion and distraction, and is significantly more linear.

Some of the core themes and strengths of Policenauts are similar to Snatcher, and while not all of them are as well executed this time around, a number of them exceed Snatcher. The importance of family, as well as different utilizations of it, is highlighted through the game. For Jonathan it is a trauma. A source of obligation and a constant reminder of not belonging in the world. Fellow former policenauts Ed Brown and Joseph Sadaoki Tokugawa are also used to explore these themes, with Ed's family keeping him grounded after personal and professional tragedy leaves him similarly traumatized and Tokugawa's lineage is a guiding beacon, instilling in him an ambition that sees his rise to the head of the Tokugawa Corporation, which has become large enough in the 25 years Jonathan spent in cryo sleep that it's said to quite literally own outer space. Ed's scenes with his family are perhaps the emotional core of the game and are shockingly well done for a game that features slapping a woman's breasts in an attempt to swat a mosquito.

Further themes explored are the way that the past becomes the future, and how easily it is manipulated by bad actors with agendas when few people who lived through it are around to contradict those agendas and narratives. Policenauts also plays into real history in its utilization of time as a story theme with its character names, often referencing real Sengoku-era Japanese family clans.

It is a fascinating predictor for some of the subjects explored through some of Kojima's later works. The toll that time takes on individuals is is also a constant fixture of the story. Pioneering heroes become broken down and traumatized. Corruption will slowly trickle in if you allow it to in ways that a past self would've stood against. One's life can always change in the future for both better and worse in ways that the present self could never have foreseen.

Jonathan contrasts Snatcher's Gillian Seed masterfully in this particular regard as a man who is a literal manifestation of the past, confronting his former comrades and the state of the world head-on as a reminder of the bright ideals that guided mankind to space to begin with. Also of particular note, without delving too much into spoiler territory, is the remarkable way that Jonathan trusts the corrupting factor of time to help Ed's son Marc given all the damage Jon has seen it do to those around him as well as the world itself.

Although there is a genuine tension to the game as well as a real feeling of both being and interacting with important in-universe figures, the conclusion of the game is a bit lackluster and sudden. Policenauts' plot is largely intentionally predictable, only containing a few twists you might not expect. The game's romance, previously noted as being a bit inexplicable, is ultimately resolved very satisfyingly and in a way that reinforces some prominent themes of the game.

Just as well the game takes criticism of Snatcher (and adventure games as well as visual novels as a whole) a little unevenly. It is far more linear than Snatcher, but features significantly more combat sections that see the player shoot an ungodly number of bullets and drop a frankly impossibly comedic amount of enemies by the end of the game. They are unnecessary and detract from the experience a bit, but understandable over-correctons to criticism of the traditional Japanese adventure game genre as well as Snatcher in particular.

As an aside, Policenauts features one of the most clever inclusions of a sound test mode that allows you to listen to various tracks from the game including its haunting opening theme "End of the Dark" as well as the fantastic "One Night in Neo Kobe" that was featured in the opening of Snatcher.

Policenauts is an uneven experience that in some ways reflects common trappings of its time while also looking forward to humanity's future. It asks some very pertinent questions about humanity's ability to conquer big issues if we are so unable to conquer the worst aspects of ourselves. Its usage of time and the trauma it can inflict on even the best of us can be rather sobering to see, and Jonathan's hope for Ed's son in the face of that is rather inspiring.

In some ways it reacts too strongly to criticism of adventure games as whole as well as Snatcher in particular by creating a lighter, more predictable and linear experience with more lightgun gameplay segments that detract from the overall package. Its sexuality and hamfisted comedy that comes part and parcel with the sexy adventure micro-genre can be a pain point, and it can be off putting in its density if you allow it to be. In some ways it is inferior to Snatcher, which makes an incredible case for the necessity of actually playing a good adventure game rather than just watching it that Policenauts sadly does not live up to.

But despite it all Policenauts is every bit as clever as Snatcher and in some ways it is just as strong, if not even stronger, a predictor of Hideo Kojima's future runaway success with Metal Gear Solid. Its highs may often not reach the peaks that Snatcher does, but even its valleys remain far higher than most games you could spend your time on and it remains a constant influence on some of the most popular indie game standouts like VA-11 Hall-A, 2064: Read Only Memories and Mullet Mad Jack.

If you have an interest in the works of Hideo Kojima, traditional Japanese style adventure games or the sexy adventure micro-genre, a vacation to Beyond Coast might be just the thing for you.

A gem hidden among the stones, Policenauts is undoubtedly stardust.

-- Ash

[vagabond-umlaut]

THE LOVE CONFESSION THAT NEVER HAPPENED

▸ TEEN!GOJO SATORU X TEEN!FEM!READER; FLUFF WITH A PINCH OF ANGST; THIS FIC IS NOT CANON TO THE SERIES WE'RE THE SUMMER TO OUR WINTER RAIN!!!!; READER MIGHT BE A BIT OOC!!!! ▸ READER'S CLAN NAME & CURSED TECHNIQUE ARE REVEALED IN THIS. ANY & ALL SIMILARITIES TO ANOTHER'S READER/OC IS PURELY UNINTENTIONAL AND COINCIDENTAL. I SWEAR I DIDN'T PLAGIARIZE IT. ALSO, I'M UTTERLY AWFUL AT FINDING JAPANESE TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, DESPITE GOOGLING. SORRY :((

▸ THIS IS FOR THE AWESOME @heresan WHO NEVER FAILS TO SPOIL ME WITH HER ASK. ILYSM TINA! <333 ▸ WARNING: BRIEF MENTION OF A HIT-AND-RUN CASE & INFIDELITY IN ONE LINE [SATORU & READER ARE NOT INVOLVED, DW] ▸ AS ALWAYS, THE GIF, DIVIDER & CHARACTERS USED AIN'T MINE. PLS DON'T PLAGIARIZE, TRANSLATE OR REPOST THIS. ENJOY READING! ❤️

The stars are but mere fireflies to the sun that is the Kojima household tonight. 

Bedecked in bright lights and a thousand and one paper lanterns, the palatial grounds of the property exude a brilliance, the likes of which the guests claim to have never been seen before, their awestruck voices drawing a polite smile from your grandmother (though the pride in her ancient eyes is unmistakable, you note). 

You move your eyes away from your clan matriarch and let them rove over those around you – and their glowing selves – rendered more luminous by their expensive fabrics, sparkling jewels, and gleaming smiles. 

Oh, what a couple of scraps of paper can do to one’s self, you muse silently, glancing at the woman batting her eyelashes at your cousin – the former the same one who was convicted in a hit-and-run case a year or two back, though now, with a Louis Vuitton dress hanging off her frame, no one, except you, perhaps, remembers on seeing her the innocent blood she wiped off her hands, all thanks to her wealth. 

Not wanting to mar this celebratory evening with such dark thoughts, you shift your gaze to tonight’s centre of attention: the older of your two brothers, Takeshi and his fiancée Sara, your lips turning upwards into a small smile on seeing how dazzling they look beside each other – how beautiful, how well-suited, how happy, how… very artificial they look beside each other. 

As artificial as the thousand and one paper lanterns your grandmother’s so proud of. 

As artificial as your guests’ smiles - too-white, too-wide, too-thin. 

As artificial as the compliments you can hear that woman shower upon the wife of the man she was attempting to seduce not too long ago. 

Your smile disappears to give way to a frown, as you take in the falsity around you. 

And a leaden weight lodges itself in your chest, right where your heart should be, when your eyes again meet the sight of your brother and your childhood friend smiling at the photographer – while your ears hear the wails of anguish, the snarls of contempt and the sighs of wistfulness –a cacophony of abandoned dreams and stifled desires emanating from the two souls soon to be joined in holy matrimony, two weeks from today. 

Your mother says marriage is one of, if not the happiest event in a person’s life. 

Oh Mom! If only you could hear what I can now… 

Placing your empty glass of mojito mocktail on the grass near you, you lean back against a tree and close your eyes to soothe the throbbing pain in your temples – one which always happens after you’ve been amid too many people for too long a time, much to your great discomfort. 

Sighing loudly, you move to lie down on the grass when the sounds of an approaching pair of footsteps reach you, soon joined by a boisterous yell of “Aha! There’s the woman of my dreams I’ve been searching for so long!” 

“Hello to you too, Satoru,” You say, turning to the side and propping yourself up on an elbow, your eyes now open. “Didn’t think you would make it to the party.” 

Gojo flops down beside you with an exaggerated pout. 

“Oh, come on, Momo-chan. Think a bit higher of me, will you? Of course, I would make it to the party. My best friend’s brother’s getting engaged today. How on earth could I ever miss it?” 

“And since when have you and Takeshi been on such good terms, hm? That you’re willing to leave your comfortable life at school to attend a party filled with clan elders for an entire evening?” You ask him, an eyebrow raised, unwilling to buy into his rubbish explanation. 

Gojo chuckles. “Oh, it’s not Takeshi I’m here for today,” He says softly, shuffling closer to you until your sides are almost touching, “It’s you.” 

You open your mouth, ready with a snarky reply, when his expression makes you stop – the words you were planning to say, now lost in your throat, as you look at his unusually earnest face. 

“Satoru?” Your voice comes out as a shaky whisper, reasons behind which you cannot fathom for the love of your life. 

(It’s ’cause he’s so close to you, silly! A part of your brain whispers – the same one which had made you call Gojo handsome, out of all the damned things you could say to him – that day you first saw him in his Jujutsu Tech uniform – much to your utter bewilderment and embarrassment.) 

You clear your throat and repeat yourself loudly, “Hey, Satoru?” 

“Hm?” Gojo moves even closer to you when you call his name and places a hand on your cheek, the warmth of it making a wonderful contrast with your cold skin that chilly autumn night. 

“Do-” You hesitate, as an odd (warm? bubbly?) feeling creeps into your chest, but ultimately your concern for the eerie way his eyes seem to shine at you outweighs that weird feeling, and you ask, “Do you have a fever, Satoru? You don’t really look okay there.” 

Gojo blinks, his unusual expression soon overtaken by a stupefied one as you continue to peer up at him, frowning. 

“Satoru,” You shake him gently, after a few seconds of him staring at you. “Hey! Gojo!” 

That seems to shake him out of his stupor, as he quickly removes his hand away from your cheek and scoots away, his face reddening with each passing moment. 

“N-no, no. I’m okay. Totally okay,” He mumbles, “There’s no need to worry. I’m perfectly fine.” 

But you know the white-haired shaman way better than that. 

You sit up and move closer to him and place your palm on his forehead, the other palm on your own forehead. “Now, lie still and let me check your temperature.” 

“Your skin’s warm… But not so warm for you to have a fever,” You say after a while, still frowning down at your friend whose head you have now placed in your lap, “But your face looks awfully red. And your eyes too seem weird. And,” Pausing, you place your hand on the kimono over his heart, remembering a person’s pulse rate is said to speak volumes about their health, and gasp. 

“My goodness, Toru! What the hell happened to you? Your heart is beating really fast! Are you-” 

A finger to your lips stops your outburst, and within the next moment, you find yourself crushed to his chest, his arms holding you in a vice-like grip and his nose muzzling into your hair. 

“Toru, you’re not really okay, are you?” You ask, tilting your head up at him, the slight tremor in your voice inaudible to all except you – and Gojo too, perhaps, judging by the way you notice him smirk a little at you, before it slips into an indecipherable twitch of his lips. 

“No, I’m not okay,” He answers above you, his arms around you tightening a touch. “I’m really, really not okay.” 

You crane your neck upwards to fully look at him and brush the pads of your thumbs over the skin under his eyes. “Then why did you come here tonight, you idiot? You should have stayed back in your dorms and taken rest,” You scold him, concerned eyes sweeping over his appearance. 

Gently removing your hand from his face to intertwine his fingers with yours, Gojo leans closer to your face and whispers, every breath he exhales hitting your face like a little puff of smoke in the cold, “But I couldn’t stay back in my dorms tonight, Momo-chan – Not when I know the medicine to my treatment is here.” 

It takes a while for his words to register themselves in your brain. 

And when they do, you can’t help but let out a small gasp (the same time as that portion of your brain lets out a small squeal in joy). 

“Are you-” You begin but stop yourself from speaking any further, your trust in your oratory skills having plummeted to an all-time low, and choose instead to focus on his electric blue eyes as the slew of nervous mutterings, which had been lost in the background of your mind until now, slowly turns intelligible. 

Was that too much for her? 

Am I going to get rejected? 

Well, shit, she’s going to reject me. 

Oh wait – did she even understand me? 

My Momo-chan can be really dense at times – though she’s cute too then – like really, really cute! 

But no, seriously – was I too roundabout for her? Or should I have confessed to her directly? 

Oh no, she’s looking at me right now. Is she angry? Is she disappointed? Is she horrified? 

Oh no, that’d be the worst – if she’s horrified. 

Calm down, Satoru. Calm down. Take a breath in and think straight. Panicking won’t help you now. 

But I’m too much in love with Momo-chan to even think straight. 

Damn it, damn it, just damn it. 

I should have just listened to Suguru and written her a love letter or something. 

“Love letters are really beautiful, Toru-chan,” Reaching up a hand, you tuck some of his unkempt hair behind his ear – while a giggle erupts from you at the way his face changes from being lovestruck (and not fever-stricken, you realise, relieved) to horrified to the most apprehensive you’ve ever seen him – and you add with a grin, “But this confession is the most beautiful of them all. I love it.” 

Gojo blinks. “So does that mean…” He trails off, an unsure yet hopeful look in his eyes. 

Sliding your hand down to his cheek and keeping it there, you reply, “Yeah, I guess it does mean so, Toru-chan.” 

A moment passes in pin drop silence between the two – the only sounds being the distant chatter of the party and the occasional wind blowing through the trees – before a wide grin breaks out across Gojo’s face, its absolute natural radiance banishing the darkness around you in a way a billion suns could never do – your grandmother’s flimsy paper lanterns or your vain guests’ mountains of gold and gems nothing but tiny specks of dust to the constellation of stars his joy reveals to you. 

And in that instant, as Gojo presses a sweet kiss to your forehead and wraps his arms around you, excitedly describing the new dessert café he discovered on his last mission and the matcha eclairs you just can’t not try – you swear to yourself that you will do anything to keep that blinding beauty of his smile unharmed – even throw away your life, if that’s what it takes. 

[I'M LOW-KEY ASHAMED OF THIS LMAOOO]

▸ MASTERLIST

[ikkiokuma]

just finished mgs2 and i have nowhere else to take my thoughts so i’ll just dump them hear for my little internet vacuum:

> the AI/simulation plot twist is really interesting but at the same time doesn’t feel like it was resolved in the best way? outside of the patriots being a typical shady organization controlling literally everything, the explanation the AI colonel gives about human mind control feels at least a tiny bit more unique that your typical 1984 premise and excuse…i only have to wonder the aftermath of raiden and rose’s relationship with such a huge rift torn between them through the course of this game (which feels like it goes largely unaddressed considering raiden basically proposes to her after their reunion?) i think his character has a lot of good potential and their connection could have undergone some kind slow burn rebuild to make it more satisfying (it’s not like i didn’t root for them sometimes! tho im aware they are actually quite toxic tho)

> i’m also thinking of the people on twitter engaging in discourse about whether mgs2 is anti-AI to which i think it’s pretty clear that kojima encourages us to exercise our free will and critical thinking in this digital age…though raiden doesn’t outright say “fuck the patriots”—who are ostensibly using such a program to try and keep the masses ignorant, complacent, and dependent—in this game, his decision to pick his future for himself entirely goes against the AI colonel’s impression that everything in the simulation could decide the kind of person raiden becomes. to me mgs2 (along with being more explicitly about life in the digital age) takes the idea of free will or destiny from the first game up a notch with the question of: hey, what if it your future wasn’t just programmed for you by birth but by a simulation which you regard as the truth? it’s interesting to see this blend of themes (that the persona franchise decided to create two separate games based on, funny enough) work together in a new context

> sitting with the full weight of otacon’s backstory is kind of crushing. i know it’s not the worst thing ever but something about his tragedy feels all the more pointed when you think about how vulnerable he was…how he was basically abused and groomed and still blames himself to this day because he doesn’t know any better at all? it’s just such a heavy burden for someone so young to bear—an illicit affair and the death of your father because of your actions would mess anyone up in the head (im genuinely surprised he’s not worse than he is right now). his loneliness is so interesting because to a certain extent it’s self imposed by his own inaction (waiting to be loved instead of seeking it out for himself—some kind of self-esteem problem, maybe?) and for the first time in years solid snake manages to break down his walls and they form this beautiful mutual connection that i think holds so much more weight than any potential female relationship the games try to force him into (also with the fact that he seems into women that would only be somewhat unhealthy/toxic for him something something childhood trauma something something twisted conception of romance tragic doomed heterosexuality but he could find everything he looked for and more in the man who’s stayed beside him this whole time but i digress) otasune is so beautiful to me and i’ve been thinking more about how it really is only them against the world and burying my head in my hands i think im going to develop heartburn because of these fools and if anyone has good fic recs i would love for them to be sent my way im going to start writing essays about them again ffs. also something something otacon really is at his best self when he’s around snake—confident, in control, and a little sassy when he wants to be—which honestly makes him that more attractive … snake truly brought the best out of this nerd god bless

> pliskin is sooooooo gorgeous in this game i wish snake wore his hair down more i genuinely think i grinned like a maniac every time i saw his beautiful face on my screen 🤤🤤

> gameplay wise the game honestly doesn’t feel as bad as the first one (i was fucking struggling in the original)…fingers crossed the rest of the games will be somewhat similar difficulty to get through

now on to mgs3!! i’m so excited for snake eater yayyyyy

[sanctaignorantia]

Hello… it's me again...

Thinking that Kojima could well have used Cliffs and Fragile as examples with that post from The Crow, since Fragile literally has tar dripping from his face just like Cliff in trailer2, but no, he opted to use Higgs as a second option, and Higgs in DS2 and then we have Troy "'saying" something about… Okay, don't let me go crazy.

Can we elaborate on how all this is going to work when Higgs in DS2 is technically an inspiration from The Crow?

We'll have a hero and a villain with every justification for taking revenge, and all because they love.

Higgs being devoted to Amelie to the point of creating a cult for her, wearing a mask of her face, feel her to the point of "becoming" her. That devotion is love. In the same way, his resentment, obsession and hatred for Sam is also love, and this kind of love is what Higgs will hide under lock and key and will fear everyone seeing.

Sam spent his life alone, having only the love and "freedom" that Amelie gave him, then came Lucy and Lou and the loss of both made Sam "broken" again. Finding out the whole truth about Amelie could break him even more, but at that point in the game we had new friends, new connections, new loves and as much as Sam had burned Bridges' handcuff in order to isolate himself again, having Lou alive by his side was enough, that love would be enough to sustain him. But now Sam no longer has Louise and the question is: will the love of his friends, these other connections, be enough for him to overcome this great loss, AGAIN? Sam has lost a lot of valuable things.

I would never say that one or the other has lost more or less. All the characters are built on trauma and the loss of people they loved. Death Stranding is about that, connections and love. You don't connect if there's no love. It's if there's love, there's connection.

So we have Sam who believes that Higgs killed Lou and I think he's going to lean on that for a long time. He'll put his energy into it no matter what Higgs tells him, so I wonder if Sam will become his father. If he's going to hold onto revenge so much that his emotions become toxic to himself and what that might create. We'll use more violence, more guns, so we'll have a more violent Sam. Sam will change with the loss of Lou, definitely.

The same way I think of Higgs. His love for Amelie (or whatever it is, because Higgs is still an mystery to all of us) will lead him to extreme situations because that's part of who Higgs is, no one has shown him the other side.

While Sam holds on to his sadness and gets caught up in grief and revenge and this makes him a bit "bad", could Higgs' situation make him a bit "good"? This is where I lose track because I don't know how Kojima works on developing his heroes and villains.

But I've been thinking for a long time about the possibility of Sam having an emotional relapse and not only becoming more aggressive, but also going into some kind of depression. And how much that would change him. And how that, combined with the desire for revenge, could unleash terrible things.

And now I play the other side of the coin. How much can Higgs' desire for revenge (if that's what it really is) make him see things in other ways and make him more... good?

Remembering that it's not directly romantic love that may be being talked about here, just as it is in The Crow, it's just love, because love is love…

And every time I think or talk about love, I remember a song we sing in my religion that literally goes like:

"Every disease has a cure, only love doesn't".

[bidonica]

Hey! I see you're into fragile/higgs ship and caught myself quite like them too recently (tho i've been in DS fandom already for a year and mostly thought about them as a friends)

Just wondering why do you like them? Do you have any headcanons/interesting thoughts? I'm very curious 👀

Hi! First of all apologies for the wall of text you're about to get, but unfortunately you came knocking at my door after I spent nearly two months ruminating about this ship basically by myself sooo I'm dumping it all here

Well the short (lol) version is that in my first playthrough I mostly just absorbed the characters and storyline, but by the time I got to their final scene on the Beach I was like wait a minute... their whole shared storyline feels way too loaded for them to simply have been business associates, that shit is personal, even Higgs wanting to damage Fragile feels way too pointed to just be justified by "he was a turncloak with a secret agenda." Now, I'm not against a "they were simply close friends" interpretation, it works just as well to explain the emotional weight of their falling out, BUT I also cannot ignore the zest, the flavor, the spice of them actually having been involved romantically at some point. And honestly going into my second playthrough with the shipping goggles on I can't help thinking that Fragile speaks about Higgs like he was an ex that hurt her, and the way that she is suspiciously cagey about the specifics of their relationship makes my ears shoot up like a German shepherd.

On a Doylist level I also find it interesting that Kojima gave Higgs extra backstory that connects him to Fragile in the Director's Cut, and also how the behind the scenes for the DS2 mocap show Troy and Léa sharing a scene... I think Kojima is not done intertwining their story and we'll get more info in the sequel.

Now for the headcanons... I have enough that I might or might not be writing a long-ish fic about it, but I want to finish this Director's Cut playthrough before completing it (I could just look stuff up on the wiki but that's not fun). Also I have some art in the pipeline about it that I hope to post within the week. Anyway, the bite sized version of how I envision their relationship:

I hc Higgs as being immediately attracted to Fragile but not really acting on it, while she develops her attraction after getting to know him a little. Then she's down bad but she doesn't even realize it until it's so obvious it hits her in the face

A few people at their joint Fragile Express/whatever Higgs' operation was called co-op assume they are an item long before anything ever happens, because they just hang out together a lot. They have a similar penchant for corny jokes and puns and enjoy some light banter; Fragile finds Higgs' flair for theatrics endearing, while he is drawn to how gentle she is because he has known so little softness in his life (also he thinks she's insanely pretty, which duh. It's self evident because Léa Seydoux) (it's his first serious girl crush anyway; I hc him as bi and as having had mostly experiences with men before her)

They bond over their DOOMS condition and Higgs is fascinated by Fragile's powers, while she is less enthused by all the collateral effects. In my hc, at this point she has yet to become as skilled at traveling through dimensions as she is in the game, which makes her reluctant to agree to Higgs' requests to show him the Beach. This sows the seeds of his resentment towards her, because he feels she has a privilege she doesn't make use of and doesn't want to share.

They are both pretty touchy feely (canon!) so when their relationship goes from friendly to romantic it gets physical immediately and enthusiastically. Yes even accounting for the worldwide lowered sex drive. If there's one thing I never do is put characters in horny jail 🫡

 I think Fragile got to know a version of Higgs that was quite different from what we see in the game, which you sort of can gauge from the more optimistic pages of his diary. Like there's a part of him who's starved for love and connection and a sense of belonging and gravitates towards people like Coffin (he never had a mother) and Fragile herself; ironically, the pull towards Amelie answers to the same need but in reality it feeds on his more nihilistic, call-of-the-void side. I'm not saying that Amelie brainwashed him or anything, but I think she saw what was already there – a  deep seated resentment towards a hostile world and towards those he feels got handed a luckier deal than he did, that he countered by clinging to the notion of being special because of his DOOMS, but then there's someone like Fragile who's even more special and doesn't seem to be doing much with it. Amelie gave him a chance to fulfill what he felt was his potential and shared her power with him, but the tradeoff was severing  the connections he had, "killing" the part of him that wanted to be loved to make space for what he perceived as a higher form of love ("I found someone who completes me" which he says to Fragile specifically like he wants to rub it in her face? Like she wasn’t  enough to fulfill that role?)

That’s why I think it’s significant that he lost his hands with his power-up, because the (holding, welcoming) hands are strongly associated with Fragile; and to me it makes sense if he purposely ruins her body also because it’s a way to stifle his attraction to her. There’s also a lot of projection because HE is the one who’s felt like damaged goods all along, who grew up being  crushed psychologically and physically. I also think that both of them coming close to annihilating the other but choosing not to – leaving them in a dicey situation but not entirely without escape – shows in some twisted way that their bond still exists, which makes me giggle and rub my hands like a nasty little goblin knowing we have another game coming.

So… That’s the gist of it. Sorry for rambling on but as I said, I don’t really get the chance to talk about this ship much – greetings from rarepair hell, etc.

[flagellant]

Kojima makes a new character for MGS6 just named Wolfman and he’s like. A trans dude but he got that gender of a lifetime and straight up has a wolf cock knot and all

I can’t find the tweet that’s like ‘Kojima could make a trans woman named Hard Mommy and transfems everywhere would be like ‘brb changing my name’’ or whatever but I think they’d be friends. Hard Mommy and Wolfman. They wax poetic about the futility of war and trying to put fear into the populous when trying to destroy the unwavering power of the human spirit and also they both have fucking rocket launchers

Hideo Kojima I know that's you GIVE ME THE HRT.

[tofutasties]

To live is to fall into a pit

In a conversation with an American screenwriter, Ryu Murakami once said that all stories follow the same plot: the protagonist falls into a hole and either crawls out or dies within. When I heard that, it made sense to me; I could see nearly all stories fitting into that pattern. But in his genius, Abe would not settle for the ordinary. The Woman in the Dunes offers a third plot: the man finds a life inside the pit. Even in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice’s experiences inside the rabbit hole work toward bringing her back to reality. Not so in The Woman in the Dunes. When the man is stranded at the bottom of the pit, he at first struggles to escape, but in the end, he chooses to remain there. When he finally obtains his much-longed-for means of escape, he has an epiphany and comes to understand the freedom to be found in staying inside the hole — a freedom that he chooses while letting a different freedom go. And that is what life is. Is that same third option not the framework that governs our society, our work, our families, our life, and our day-to-day life? Unknowingly, we all are lured into our pits, swallowed up, and we struggle to crawl out. But even if we make it out, nothing is changed. Outside, new holes are being dug; being trapped in a different pit is the only outcome. There are many such pits in life. Some are made for us, and others we make particularly for ourselves. For every pit trap, there is also a shelter. To live is to fall into many pits. As long as you are walking forward, you will fall into a pit. —Hideo Kojima, The Creative Gene (2010)

[faint-kitten]

So about Solid Snake being in Fortnite...

by Faint_Kitten

I got into Fortnite in December 2023 for the first time. I just unlocked Snake and I have so many thoughts on it I can't completely break them all down. But I think I've done my best.

But the #1 thing I think I want everyone to know is: Despite shaving off his ass. Despite being artistically bankrupt and pushed out by Konami and Epic as a means to make money and promote the MGS Vol 2 collection.

Despite artistically, and Narratively being antithetical to Metal Gear Solid…

Snake being in Fortnite feels mechanically and tonally consistent with his legacy.

There is so much inherent "Kojima" in Metal Gear Solid. This weird blend of hyper realism, mixed with anime siliness, mixed with philosophy mixed with trying way too hard to be sombre while also mechanically being silly and then you spin around three times to puke, or Johnny does a big poop fart and all of it adds to the weird just Kojima-esque nature of the series. It extends to the love, the fandom and the humor around Metal Gear Solid. So many memes around Snake, between fan art, in jokes, and original Animations and gifs that it doesn't feel THAT weird to see him do like a...Naruto Run emote. So much of Metal Gear Solid* was a very serious drama taking place in a game that mechanically is silly and lets you do goofy shit and has elaborate bro fist handshakes played deadly serious. And Fortnite is a game where you have these characters doing goofy shit that doesn't mesh with who they are or the universe they came from all the fucking time.

You also have to realize the Battle Royale mode has big locations full of NPC's and Bosses you can kill for loot.

The "narrative" as it is of Fortnite Chapter 5: Season 1 is (near as I can tell) that Peely the Banana has been kidnapped by the Society (who serve as the current skins for this season and AI controlled bosses and NPC's on locations of the map.) And the map is littered with their fortresses with Jonesy (I guess the main character?) Going up against them to get his friend back. Which means there are a handful of locations in the current Fortnite Map that are just Boss bases. These are bunkers, and huge mansions and little outposts that you have to be careful around because once they know you're there they will just start spawning endless enemies to try and kill you, and the attention WILL draw enemy players. So you're shooting out cameras for XP and to keep them from beeping, avoiding turrets to keep from alerting guards and keep them from chewing up your health.

Guards already had the "?" and "!" system for showing if they detected you, despite having no inherent stealth mechanics in the game or any intention of introducing MGS. They didn't do this FOR an MGS tie in. There are recruitable companions and they can't speak so a way for players and enemies to detect if their companion "senses" an enemy player is to use the "?" and "!" system. While it doesn't mean that much without him. This is very clearly taken from Metal Gear, and as a result the alert system feels very natural around Snake.

In game modes where you have teams of two three or Four players, you get downed like Gears of War or Apex, and have to be revived. You can crawl and move. But players who are on their feet can pick you up and sling you over their back, or even yeet you to safety.

Enemy Players can do this too.

When I play Team modes by myself (I am alone, everyone else is in a team) I frequently pick enemies who wandered off of their pack and pick them off, tossing them somewhere their team mates can't get to or won't find them specifically to draw them in to their rescue.

Additionally there IS wildlife to hunt: Chickens, Frogs and Fish which give you medium effect healing items.

The game has items you can put on to "disguise yourself" like bushes, or snowmen during christmas that work EXACTLY like the card board boxes in MGS (though it's debatable if players are convinced by anything but the bush)

All of this was going on BEFORE Snake was unlockable. (I don't know if the camera's and bosses stuff existed before this season)

Which means that MECHANICALLY. Snake doesn't feel out of place at all in Fortnite.

It's super weird when a Xenomorph, or Spiderman, or a Ninja Turtle, or Goku, or a teen from My hero Academia, or Eleven from stranger things comes in and starts mowing people down with an assault rifle. The disconnect is part of the charm for better or worse, and it's both amusing and horrifyingly upsetting when you think about these characters sold as nothing but IP to get rich off of being so taken out of context from their character's intended art, themes and meaning.

It's just weird to see bright bubbly Mina from My Hero shooting people dead. Spiderman doesn't kill people, that's the Punisher, it's fucking weird to have Spiderman just gunning people down, if you get my gist.

It's super fucking weird to see these characters handle a fire arm and move around in a shooter. They feel less like themselves and more like what they are: A skin of a popular thing, plugged into a world to please fans and rake in money. It's fucking weird to see Spider-man holding a firearm.

It is NOT weird to watch Solid Snake do it. As a result of this, Snake kind of slips into the absurd world of Fortnite rather well.

It feels kind of cool strip snake of all like falling trail effects and just watch him super-hero sky dive toward a giant compound full of NPC's and land on the roof (It looks cooler in the dead of night but I didn't get a screenshot of it)

It's not weird to experience Snake in Fortnite's world handling Fortnite's mechanics. Because so many of the mechanics and the tone feels distinctly normal for Metal Gear Solid. This is not the first time Snake has been pawned out as a mascott to other properties.

It's weird as hell to watch Kratos blow a car up with a rocket launcher. That is not a part of his world, you see. It's NOT weird to watch Snake fire an RPG at anything. It's not weird to watch Snake do a bulk of the things he can do in Fortnite.

It's not weird to watch Snake run around a forest and shoot a frog or hunt a chicken for it's meat because we've played Snake Eater

It's not weird to hide in a bush as Snake:

It's not weird to watch snake shoot someone or Reload a fire-arm. The Snowy Mountains bases, the outposts, the big mansions and small cities the open world all feel like places Snake has been at home in, from Shadow Moses, to the Middle East, it's not unusual to see Snake* surrounded by girders and steps and concrete and cabins and tents and forrests etc. It's not weird to watch Snake pick someone up who's downed and carry them over his shoulder, or chuck them into a closet: We've seen this in MGS V: The Phantom Pain. Metal Gear Solid kind of invented a lot of these mechanics.

There isn't that much about Snake in the following footage seems out of place for Metal Gear Solid:

Snake doesn't feel out of place in fortnite. It might feel sacriligious for the biggest thing in gaming adding snake (with no cheeks I might add) to it's roster to be eyerolling or cringe. But Snake doesn't feel "too good" for fortnite. But he also doesn't feel like a total shill in fortnite either. A lot of the gear and missions and challengees to unlock him felt like a someone was asked to put together activities at a Metal Gear Solid themed birthday party (Use hiding spots. Shoot out 2 cameras. Fire an RPG, shoot silenced weapons, uses the disguise mechanics, travel in the disguise items. hack Trains or Vaults) the Emote could have easily been just the alert noise over Snake's head, but they put it on a freaking stick, Wile E Coyote style.

There's a weird Fortnite blend of "Lets make something as cheaply as possible in some places and yet give some things the love and attention that comes from making 5billion in revenue a year affords you." that shows up in everything they do. And they clearly put a lot more effort into this promotion than they did the Family guy stuff (not that I care one way or the other about Family guy I'm just calling it like I see it.) To be honest Snake has been shilled out to so many other games for cross promotion over the years this is hardly his first.

Snake has been blended with many things like Ape Escape, Smash Bros, and Monster Hunter. Seeing him along other games and even other characteres not of MGS's worldbuilding doesn't feel that odd. Snake has kind of left his "world" behind many times. Which is...kind of in keeping with Snake being this cipher? This character the player slips on. Snake is a character an icon but he's also this THING puppeted by us. A lot of games work to break this illusion to make us forget we're not Kratos, or We're not Nathan Drake but ever since Metal Gear Solid 1 Kojima's writing has been pretty clear there's "something" that drives snake. Not motivationally, but literally piloting him giving him what he needed to succeed (us). To put it simply. Snake has always been a bit Meta as a character. And it's hard to see liscenced characters (sold for up to 15 dollars a pop) as themselves when we're piloting them telling them to drink slurp juice out of jars, or swing a pickaxe or or sing "The Real Slim Shady" or do cutesy Jpop dances. All of this is to say, having played MGS 1 through TPP: nothing about this gameplay feels that out of character for Metal Gear aside from the cartoony art style. The look and feel of Fortnite naturally lends itself to having Snake as a Playable character in it. Narratively, Thematically, Fortnite is almost antithetical to Metal Gear Solid. But tonally, and mechanically, it feels in keeping with the series.

Part of this is just the fact that Kojima's games have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to what you can do in gameplay and so many of these things were adopted by gaming later that slotting Snake back into mechanics his games inspired just doesn't feel disjointed. So many games have copied Metal Gear Solid over the years and became main stream. MGS has also had it's own unique air owing to both Kojima's own unique style and the weirdness/humor brought about as the game tries very seriously to balance it's story and themes against poop jokes, and mechanics that are often very silly but very fun and a total detachment from the poe faced somberness snake goes for or is possibly trying to mock. This, overall is a chunk of what makes metal gear feel like metal gear. The mechanics of Fortnite feel eerily comparable to the mechanics of later Metal Gear games (especially MGS V) .

And the tonal disconnect between what Metal Gear games are doing as a plot, and the inherent nonsense the mechanics provide contrasting it, have always been a part of MGS and it's charm, and that's kind of what makes Fortnite the thing it is today? You have a very serious plot about war and the military and a gravely voiced man and then in the corner a Vampire man does a big dance, and large bi-pedal mechs moo like cows. It's why any time any popular thing is announced in fortnite it kind of becomes a joke. Very serious Rapper Eminem is in Fortnite, and has his personal OC Slim Shady as a playable skin, and he's shoving his hand in Pinata's and chugging slurp juice, it's kind of weird to see someone who takes themself so seriously dancing at the whims of whoever controls him. But that's been a core part of Metal Gear and the Metal Gear Solid Franchise, and the fandom forever. I dunno. I'm not trying to defend the fact that Fortnite is a center for companies to strip their IP of all love and meaning and sell it to us as pure nostalgia and profit. I'm just trying to say I was surprised by how weirdly normal (and to be honest kind fun) it felt to run around RPing Solid Snake in fortnite and I've been at it all day. As someone who originally didn't care one way or the other, and felt kind of cynical about such a beloved character being absorbed into this mess: I'm kinda glad he's here now.

*I know Snake and Big Boss (and by extension Venom/Punished Snake/Boss) are all different characters. But for the sake of this discussion I dipped in and out of talking about Solid Snake and "Snake" (any) as a whole in Metal Gear as a whole

[ariaofsorrows]

CASTLEVANIA AGE GUESSING GAME

fictional characters who don’t really look their age is a really prevalent trope in media, but i find that castlevania is a really funny instance of this because of its plot. anyways, i’m going to put you all through the same shock i experienced when i found out how old some of these people are

it’s recommended that you go into this blind, so the less you know about the series, the the better. this is just a fun little way to get to know the franchise. hopefully this inspires more people to pick up the games.

i’ll put a picture of a character, list some fun facts about them, and all you have to do is guess whether they’re a teenager, an adult, or even immortal in some cases

of course more obscure characters will be prioritized so it’s fairer for die hard fans, but if you can make a strong case for a more popular character (example: manual and game inconsistency or a deceiving appearance), i will consider them

i already have a starting lineup, but feel free to send in some characters. just don’t mention their age. i’ll look it up myself

disclaimer: i know that castlevania’s inconsistent art style may influence how these characters look. i will try to keep it mostly ayami kojima, but if i can’t find art for a certain character, i will just use official game art for them.

[beevean]

d'oh, i'm not sure if tumblr ate the ask you sent me, but i've also noticed my inbox suddenly has over 100 asks sitting in it, when previously it was hovering around 20ish 👀💦

i'm gonna see if i can find your ask, but please feel free to share any other Julia thoughts you have as well~

mhhhh you know what I don't talk about enough? Julia's design

first of all: she pretty <3

second of all, special shout out to Kojima who covered up her legs because she didn't want to make her too erotic. I don't need to explain why it sends my sides in orbit.

But also, to the serious part: at first I headcanonned that she and Isaac came from poverty, but in hindsight, it was pretty dumb lol. Everything about this dress speaks noble elegance, from the purple color to the fancy design. Which makes me wonder if the Laforeze family wasn't just one of dark sorcerers, but also a wealthy one, before the witch persecution started and Isaac and Julia had to flee...

(maybe the treasure chest she has in her shop really comes from her family lol)

And another thing that connects to Julia's implied impoverished noble status is that Isaac's theme is called Young Nobleman of Madness (狂気の貴公子), 貴公子 meaning "scion, young nobleman, man with an aristocratic air". (fun fact, Alucard and Joachim are also called 貴公子 in their themes :3)

So I don't know. Julia's past is all but a mystery. I'm just saying that it must have been traumatic for her, to go from an implied good life to hiding in the mountains while her only family is off practicing blasphemous arts.

In this sense, it's interesting to compare her with Rosaly. Rosaly is a humble woman, a postulant nun, who only knew her small village and was happy that way. She comes off as innocent and honest, maybe even too innocent, naive even: but it's alright, because her innocence and stubborn optimism is what makes her bond with Hector: think of the part where she admits she has been living all by herself since her parents died and that's why she would love for him to stay. Julia, on the other hand, is much more reserved and cagey, playing coy with Hector until she can be sure that he can be trusted, and even then revealing her relationship with Isaac only by accident. As we know, she's one hell of a stepford smiler, refusing to let Hector know the depths of her grief. She has probably known more hardships in life and she's slower to trust. She, too, invites Hector to live with her after she's left alone in the world, but she doesn't quite admit it, instead once again being more sly and using the excuse of finding a home for Hector's Devils.

... man, now I want to think of how they could eventually grow closer and also learn how to deal with their traumas because boy.

anyway in this house we love and respect julia laforeze, her agency, her personality, her role in the story and her strength :3 also her beauty hehe blue pretty boy and pink pretty girl go brr

[bigmonsteras]

mentions of love in the JP MGS script because why not. the official translations are correct! I just found it interesting at the time 😅

NOTE: WOULD'VE NEEDED MORE EDITING to make sense lol

[ 愛 ] ai = General feelings of love:

"Do you think love can bloom even on a battlefield?"

愛する = to love. (note how mostly indirect) Snake: "I think at any time, any place..people can fall in love with each other." Big Mama: "I loved him." Code Talker: "Someone who loves you, or despises you." The Boss: "As long as we have 'loyalty to the end', there's no point in believing in anything…even in those we love." >compound for patriotism has it too - bit more meaning?

愛し = beloved. The Boss: "I raised you. I loved you." Strangelove: "(…) ended by her most beloved disciple…"

愛情 = affection. (lit. love + feels). Pliskin: "Don't think of it as just another box. Treat it with love" Otacon: "You can't wait to be loved, you have to go out and find it"

愛人 = a lover (+ extramarital relationship) Pliskin: "Rumor has it Vamp was the lover of Scott Dolph."

純愛 = pure love Bonus! Kojima used this for Snake/Ocelot & Grey Fox. Dictionary says that but I feel it's a much deeper concept of love excepting nothing in return. and a genre?

-- --

[ 恋 ] koi = love, for a person (romantic)

EVA: "I only get off my bike when I fall in love…-" Paz: "Miller called it 'Love Deterrence.'"

[恋愛] = Romance (also as the genre) Meryl: "I'm done playing little love games." Jack & Rose dialogue.

[恋人] = a lover, SO Cécile: "I think (Strangelove) must've been talking about an old lover."

-- --

[ 好き ] suki = "like" but can mean love :

Otacon : "Have you ever …loved someone?" Otacon : "I was wondering if even soldiers fall in love…"

EVA: "Do you love her?"

Johnny : "I've always loved you."

-- --

+ others that didn't have any of the 3:

Otacon : "So, this is where we say goodbye to our loves as well…" 彼女達ともお別れだ Funny bc lit. translation would be: "here we say goodbye to girls"

Liquid: Falling for a man who doesn't even have a name. : 惚れる Ocelot: She's in love with the legend. : 惚れ込む Kanji just for falling for x?

Paz: All that is clear is his infatuation with Big Boss. : 心酔する Lol the compound is heart + drunk

[letstalktea]

Marionette

Content: Sano Kojima x Reader, dollification, insects

Word count: 0.6k

Note: My day. I hated my first fic so I scraped it last second. Wrote for my boy Sano instead. Had to write very quickly to publish before the day ended. Fuck me.

You sit, still as the dead, watching hundreds of little legs skitter by through the small plexiglass wall of the enclosure. The long, slick body of the centipede descends upon an unfortunate silverfish that is quickly and unceremoniously torn apart in the centipede’s mandibles piece by piece. That one is your favorite. You had nicknamed it and everything. Your lover thought the nickname was cute and let it keep the name. He named the other 16 centipedes that hatched personally. But this one? This one is yours, it lives alone in your room to avoid being eaten by its siblings, and you always watch it while waiting for your lover to return.

Your favorite arthropod finishes its hunt and quickly dashes below the decaying foliage within its enclosure. The end of its body still sticks out slightly and you stare lovingly at it. The poor thing is lucky that you take such good care of it, because it’s so careless that it would be eaten by a predator if it had been born wild. It is, in its own way, as weak as you are.

You place your forehead against the plexiglass and watch the quiet stillness of your beloved centipede.

After some time – how much you can’t say since you haven’t been watching the clock – you hear creaking from somewhere else in the house. The front door, perhaps? It may also be the door leading to the basement? You only know that the sound of the closing door is quickly followed by steady footsteps growing louder and louder as they come near. 

You shift your eyes toward the bedroom door, staring as it opens wide.

A smile spreads across your face as your lover steps into the room. The scar on his face and his dark hair covering a single eye being the most distinct difference between him and his brother. As soon as his one exposed eye locks on your welcoming smile, he speaks.

"You stayed there all day." Your lover Sano – what a wonderful title – states like a fact rather than a question.

"This is where you put me." You watch him stride over, trying to keep your focus on his face and nothing lower. "It would be wrong if I moved."

Sano gently grabs your hand, examining it with a neutral expression. He turns it over, flexing your wrist before kneeling down and moving to your knees to check those as well. When he doesn't find any issues with your joints, he kisses them.

The wood is cool against his lips.

You stare down at him and notice the white surrounding his faint grey iris shifts to a black so deep that it swallows all light in the room.

He is pleased. You can tell.

"Sano?" You roll your shoulder, trying to use what muscles you still have to move your wooden arm.

He notices your struggle and moves from kissing your ball joints to hooking his arm around your waist and under your knees. With little effort, he lifts you from your spot.

Your head lays naturally against his shoulder and the bulge in his pants presses comfortably against your hip. He really did love dolls. Or, maybe that reaction was reserved for his favorite doll; you.

You kiss the small patch of skin you can reach and nuzzle against him. With a cheeky tone you ask, "Are you going to play with your doll now?"

Sano's grin is small but telling.