#Lmao and the tragedy created itself

[angievores]

PIT BABE, The hot mess.

I feel like the story was just adapted from novel on surface level and they didn't really creat much changes except giving some screentime to side characters. Way was the same friend as novel but they write flashbacks so people would feel little sympathetic about his death. But things got turned how they turned because Nut acted too fabulously out of his character. His eyes always expressed a sadness that it created a past story which wasn't written in script and made people feel for him more.

On the other hand ( don't hate me for this) ,Charlie actor didn't delivered his character on the same level. And so in the end people end up sympathizing with Way more. Like whenever Way looks at Babe, anyone can believe this man is sadly pining after his 10 year one sided love. Whenever Babe looks at Charlie, love droops from his face and it's in his sparkling eyes that says Charlie means world to him. Whereas, Charlie most of times he appears as.... yk reading the script.( swallow the bitter pill) . Even in supposedly emotionally charged scenes like in ep 7 confrontation or in ep 9 him saving Babe, his expression just doesn't appear as much compelling or convincing. At most he was just a prop while Pavel carried their whole love arc emotions. ( It might be different for novel readers as they had context but I as just series watcher felt so. Tbh, I see more chemistry in PavelPooh bts scenes or events and interviews than on screen. Their visual slays. ). That might be why I couldn't get into main cp scenes and was about to drop at ep 3, but then restaurant scene of Way and Babe in ep 4 caught my interest and the chemistry ( even as friends) was spotted there and I continued to see more of how Way character or his dynamic with Babe is gonna turn out. ( And AlanJeff happened and so saved the show for me. Sorry not sorry. )

But actors acting skills doesn't really make that much difference as most of the times script compensates for it by NOT writing any chemistrying scenes with any other character.

So, I don't understand where the directors were going with when they gave so many emotionally charged scenes to Babe and Way. These two were fabulous prettiest criers as ice on cake. And their toxic codependent homosexual friendship/relationship was very well fleshed out. Babe got a new boy, and we saw all of Way jealousy, pining, manipulation, loneliness. Babe going to him after Way is upset, their fight, his constant ' you're my best friend, I love u. ' Their slow falling apart, ugly betrayal, past betrayal relationship and apologies and end death.

Like after finale there might be something we felt we didn't got from fixed pairs , whether BabeCharlie, AlanJeff, NorthSonic. But there isn't anything that could be felt lacking from Babe Way relationship ( whatever more than friends less than lovers, toxic but wanting, torturous/ codependent / possesive friendship not friendship their relationship was ) . This relationship arc was fully delivered in all of it's gloriously doomed tragedy.

So it kinda felt like Way and Babe were main characters and their tragic story was main focus. But since tragedies doesn't attract people, they pretended Babe and his love for Charlie was main focus. ( yes, Change lied till the end).

Yeah, i also don't wanna believe this, but there wasn't any step we didn't see of their relationship. Way pinning after his friend for a decade, doing everything to separate him from other lovers but never confessing himself. Taking care of him, by his side always, waiting , snapping when finding himself at the edge and with one decision ruining everything, ignoring the love of another men, then dying saving his only love.. Like can you see MY LOVE MIGHT BE TOXIC BUT IT WAS TRUTH AND MAYBE WAS TOO MUCH FOR YOU And Babe crying, forgiving other of everything in instant, , saying I won't be angry at you anymore. Crying I love u three times at the end when Way was taking his last breadths, if that was what all Way wanted to hear Babe would say it, in desperation for other to not leave him anyhow. Even after receiving worst and most hurtful betrayal of his life, still not letting go of other. Wishing to meet in next life. Can you see this MY LOVE MAYBE WAS NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU BUT IT WAS TOO DEEP FOR ME AND TRUE TO ITS ENDS.

Did you see it? THE CINEMA. 💀

I mean i also get that sloppy writing mess, illogical death instead of good redemption arc, undigestable instant forgiveness from Babe, pointless Pete Kenta triangle. But if we take what show delivered, that's what ( Way Babe) they served us on gold platter. We just ignoring it bcz our fave ships. Trust me I was also too immersed in pete way myself but you see when Way got shot Pete didn't come running to him and was holding Charlie while Tony delivered that monologue. Pete ( the man who is supposed to have good body balance and never missing his targets) couldn't shoot Tony and was listening the blabbering while Way was bleeding on floor. Like 🙃💀 I'm sorry, His death scene was written so bad. 😭. They all cried but no one pressed on his wounds, neither anyone called ambulance. He was alive for like ten minutes to talk to Babe. Atleast they should have given him a good death scene 😭. Way deserved that much atleast.

[swordsandarms]

i know you just tend to lurk (me too) but your fandomised rhaegar thoughts are very validating lol. ive always thought blue roses are symbolic of a child born from love, not symbolic of a woman. like lyanna has the roses cause she's jon's mother and rhaegar's love, not because they're her "thing"? never thought that was far fetched til coming online lmao.

OK, this was in my drafts for like a decade.

The roses aren't really the child or the woman, but a representation of the (tragic, but bittersweet) love itself. Though, of course, Jon as the "fruit"/"proof" of it is still at the centre of it all.

Used to hate the concept of "tragedy" and not understand how that can be compelling/satisfying. Turns out a lot of tragedy is badly done, hence the feeling of meaningless/pointlessness of it all some of them give you. Look at HOTD. The problem with the writing is that everything is made meaningless, not that your "favourite" isn't winning everything. It is the fact that it's all bitter and no sweet at the end of the day. (Not the book version, which is also a matter of how much better ASOIAF handles the "continuation" of the tragedy better than GOT).

I see Rhaelya as a representation of the concept: "The love was there. It didn't save anyone, it didn't change anything, but the love was there."

Once you get to look at it like that, it becomes very annoying when people in the fandom sound like a broken record of "what's nice about this?? EveRYoNE dIeS". Yeah, that's how tragedies work, but look at it as such and you'll see the nice, too.

It's not about how "oh, why would you think the author is trying to paint Romeo and Juliet as a romance when he liked Rosaline before, and now suddenly her overnight?"/"oh, it's all about how they are dumb teenagers messing up"/"oh, isn't Orpheus the dumbest for turning round".

Romeo and Juliet are young people finding a shiny thing in a shitty society that creates generational cycles of pain and hate for stupid reasons. The ending is satisfying not because the love is successful but because the characters - and readers are meant to - finally get that. Orpheus turns round because he loves Eurydice and if you did you would, too.

Westeros is a hellscape of ambition, heartlessness, and corruption. Everyone is stabbing everyone's back for a bit more of land, a bit more of wealth, a bit more political influence. Selling and pawning their loved ones for a corn chip. (Controversial opinion, neither Elia or Lyanna should have been in that position, but that's the reason why, "loving families" and all. Even more Controversial, Rhaegar shouldn't have been in that position also. And that's the "good" people - as Controversial as people might think that statement is for Rhaegar. But also OH, you mean selling off Cersei didn't work out well cause she was meant to be a pretty object and didn't have to be taught about armies and resources, just vanity? Or Lysa for some reason wasn't all that grateful to papa to give armies to the great alliance when they needed them, for reasons of keeping the one "trueborn child" she had sheltered, cause that's the one thing you promised her she could get if she did your bidding?) Looking away from what is fair when it is "lawful" according to the status quo (and fandom finds it easy to pinpoint it when it's someone deemed hateworthy, but will be 1000% lenient towards a Ned Stark, and will even hold characters they hate accountable when putting FAIRNESS ABOVE LAW).

And the thing about ASOIAF fandom is THEY LOVE THIS SHIT. They love to romanticise it all. But there's the paradox of it all. Romanticising comes with this idea of unrealistic wistfulness, I guess. If a character lives in "the cruel real world", the romanticised ideal is nice to think about. If they actually reach for ideals, they are fools who should get real about living in the "cruel real world".

Oop, I ventured far from the point. But I just love the whole CONCEPT of the blue rose at its roots. 💙 It literally means just that at its roots. Something wistful but unattainable.

[redflagfan]

I played the “Shattered Souls” demo, and you should too! (Mini review)

TL;DR: I am so excited for the full release of this this fun dark fantasy isekai otome game!

Shattered Souls is an upcoming game by @eternallovestudios. They just launched their Kickstarter and you can check out their short demo (one to two hours) on Steam or on itch.io.

In the words of the studio...

Celeste finds herself fighting for her life after enduring a betrayal that no one should experience.

As she nears her final breath, she is whisked away to a different world: Remoire.

Things are not as they seem, though. She’s not a mortal. Her past is as vast as the ocean. Her soul is fractured and barely holding together from the traumas she’s faced and forgotten. She must heal herself or even the tiniest tragedy could shatter her. But she’s not the only one who is broken.

Join Celeste as she fights not only to save her own life, but to change the lives of those around her. 

Will you traverse worlds, realms, and even time itself? Will you test your fate? Will you try again?

I played the demo, and I can't wait for more!

In this game, you play as Celeste - a mortal (?) girl determined to seek revenge, but also tied to seven different men (the romanceable characters). These are:

Marris: Literally God

Lance: The Actual "White Knight"

Shiro: Tsundere Demon Hunter

Ezra: Warrior Priest

Aizen: The Emperor

Karver: Childhood Best Friend

Eternal: ???

Basically, in the demo, you get introduced to Celeste's world and meet all these men. While this demo was short, it left me wanting more!

Here's what I liked:

The voice acting!! I love that this is a fully voice acted demo. It added so much to the game. Marris had me honestly laughing out loud!

The soundtrack! The music in this demo was beautiful. I can't wait to hear more of it.

The atmosphere! There was some tonal whiplash just in this demo, and I thought the devs did a great job of having me laughing but just a few minutes later, creating a dark, creepy atmosphere.

The art! Beautiful backgrounds and character design, especially on our MC, Celeste. She was so pretty I found myself just staring at her sprite the whole time!

And of course...the men! Seven is an ambitious amount of LIs, but I appreciated that each of them came off as distinct and unique. Plus, as someone who is a sucker for tsunderes and the childhood best friend trope, I can already tell who I'm going to go for first hahaha.

Basically, this game immediately sucked me in. I really enjoyed the world the demo set up and it left me wanting more - especially because there were a lot of questions raised that don't have answers yet. It feels like a lot of work went into building this fantasy world and I want more!

The writing is really good too and some of the lines were kinda silly, but the VAs said them with their chest lmao so it was good. I really liked the story. I feel like isekai is everywhere these days but this seems like it'll be something different from the usual.

I really recommend checking out this demo, and if you can, supporting the Kickstarter! I already have lmao. Please do because one of the stretch goals is a NSFW DLC.........

[swallowtail-ageha]

2 and 3 for Miquella!

2 Favorite canon thing about this character?

His character even his pre sote arc

He is (was) genuinely one of the kindest demigods around and did factually care about making a safe haven for other races because he did see in their plight what he and malenia went through. He cares so much about malenia to literally split off from his main faith and go live outside the continent.

And yet even then even at what might have been his possible kindest he was still willing to sacrifice people or manipulate them. The haligtree suicide bombers (i do not think they were mind controlled, but i do think their willingness to blow themselves up to begin with shows how the behavior was at least tolerated in elphael), the charm (which tbh in cases like leda aren't that egregious since it significantly makes them less dangerous, but in cases like ansbach, and mohg it is. Uh well. You Know).

He was someone who had a savior complex (which by itself wasn't even born out of arrogance but trauma) and put too many expectations onto himself, which combined with his empyrean status and his possibility to become a god created this... absolute monster of a mentality that ended up in him becoming more and more ruthless because he is the only one who can help those people, you see?

He is so sweetly tragic in the hero-of-a-greek-tragedy way. His fate was fucked from the start by being an empyrean and cursed, but his obsession to cure himself (and malenia) from his afflictions is what truly brought him to his end

3 Least favorite thing about this character?

I will be a PCR hater until i die. I hate it way less than i did when it was revealed canon (i remember fucking. Coping oh so hard in an unrelated discord server's voice chat LMAO) but i just think it's very. Shitty of a plottwist and a blatant retcon that ends up being the wish-ordered version of the twin princes from dark souls 3. Just... uuuugh. The thing is that i can *see* an interesting dynamic born out of this thing but the blatant add in just spoils everything for me

(And yes yadda yadda miquella/radahn paralleling marika/godfrey but sometimes parallelisms just aren't enough to make a story choice better, and while i am a huge parallelism fan myself i think its too heavy handed for me to enjoy lol)

Also not really a big fan of him apparently being at aeonia because its just a huge ??? timeline and logistic headache that might as well be called a plot hole

Thanks for the ask!

[a-shower-of-stars-and-madness]

a collection of secret life thoughts

So a bit late, but the secret life finale(which was amazing) has gotten me thinking abt the canary curse again.

As a writer and artist that loves the tragic possibility of being doomed by the narrative i have several ideas as to how jimmys death plays into the canary curse. While its totally possible that its been broken, these are just some thoughts/sorta explanations that have been running through my head. (Def includes inspo from the eyes and ears stream)

-canaries are heralds of death, but miners often became attached and attempted to save the birds even if it put them in danger. Lizzies death might have come first, ‘saving’ him, but it was still futile. Possible tie into the parallels to last life where mumbo dies right after jimmy and dies because he tried to save/mourn his friend

-jimmys death and the canary curse are a token prt of the series and the watchers and listeners are aware of this. The watchers want to uphold the curse throughout the life series to create tragedy and yada yada. The listeners want to disrupt the watchers plans and lizzie dying first represents their efforts to at least complicate the lives if the watchers. The struggle between the two groups is ongoing and a casualty of that struggle for the watchers is an inability to kill jimmy first, but they recover swiftly enough to ensure he dies second. This one is pulled from the eyes and ears stream and i like the idea that we have no way of seeing the watcher/listener conflict other than through the impactd it has on the players

-I absolutley love Lizzie, but i also like th idea that her death came as an oversight. She was a quieter player to the point where some of her failed tasks came as a result of people ignoring her (like with her slumber party) and her final death came as a result of failing to kill scott. Scott doesnt even fight back, and in the end its a game mechanic thst takes her out, not a player. obvs the idea that the watchers/game itself forgot she existed is tragic, but its a series about death games so it fits the vibe, and i kinda like the thought that the watchers let her die because she didnt make enough of an impact on them. (i mostly like this take because its dramatic and fits with the idea of the canary curse bringing death/tragedy lmao)

anyways, just some thoughts since having feelings over block characters is a totally normal hobby. any other thoughts/comments/new ideas?

#

[slutcore-starships]

i think the most dangerous part of reactionary sentiment is the appeal of autonomy that it so frequently gets molded around . whenever someone on the right starts making appeals to the past, 4/5 times theyre gonna use extremely specific examples (i.e. the elite soldiers of x empire, a notable middle-class profession, a period of peace and prosperity ~that tends to come right before the inevitable crash~, etc.) that serves to conjure a vision of the world where one has near complete control over their circumstances with a comfortable security net and disposable income, which will inevitably get folded in with new age myths about how much healthier everyone used to be (which is always just snake oil salesmanship and eugenics). regardless of the numerous fabrications inherent to the world they create, its all built around the real and omnipresent nugget of truth that so many people do lack the freedom to dramatically change their lives, better themselves, and live comfortably without having to make extensive sacrifices (or being born into it) and its appealing to imagine that the lack of autonomy has a single source, a target who bears all responsibility, and that defeating xyz entities will take things back to how they used to be (giant asterisk) . trying to convince someone that the world they picture never truly existed and that their appeals to traditionalism are completely unfounded and counterproductive first requires the person listening to be . open to having their mind changed in the first place - a. lmao no and b. the same lies thatve convinced them of this world are the same lies that tell them that the people most likely to try and dissuade them are the people responsible for the current state of things (racial minorities, queer people, etc.) which frequently just reinforces their beliefs . trying to deradicalize someone from romanticism is so difficult because it has to be prompted from within and the revelation itself externally reinforced before others around them can persuade them back to reactionary sentiment . its a vicious beast with far too many heads and the capacity to regrow whenever any distraction or tragedy leads someone to the perception of lost status or lifestyle, true or not

[spike-dearheart]

Hello! I am very I retested in hearing your thought on characterization for the Dearhearts, especially pertaining to your „meeting the parents“ fic. What personalities do they have? How do they like Moist?

YO I'm sorry this is kind of a late answer, anon! I had things happening all last week SO HERE WE ARE

The thing about this question is... well, frankly, I'm also still deciding all these things for myself lmao, I'm the sort to kind of start with vibes and then organize them better as I write

Right now a lot of it comes down to grief, and the ways it manifests itself for this family. Adora turned all her grief into action, she turned it into fighting for other people who got fucked over by society (to an even more extreme degree than the Dearhearts), because she knew what it felt like to be overlooked and ignored. (She also turned it into a lot of chainsmoking and a hard outer shell so thick you'd be lucky to get through it with an axe, but that's besides the point.)

For the Dearhearts themselves, the only things we really know for sure in canon are that Robert Dearheart founded the clacks, was better with engineering than he was with money, and that he fell into a huge slump when John died. As for Mrs. Unnamed Woman Dearheart, meanwhile, we know that she has a sister who lives in the Dolly Sisters district (who let the family move in when they went bankrupt) and we know she was VERY excited about Moist and Adora getting married.

So far the Vibes that I want to go for, at least in my writing of the Dearhearts, is like...

Robert Dearheart is a perpetual tinkerer. I think the only thing that stopped him from tinkering EVER was John's death, and even then it couldn't stop him long term. He's an inventor, the drive to create is in his bones. I think, though, after everything that's happened, he's lost his confidence. He makes things, invents them, tinkers with them, but he's not convinced any of them are any good. The clacks was his baby, his ultimate brainchild, and having it taken away is one thing, but watching it crumble? Watching it get worse? That's painful. Even after the Dearheart family gets it back in their name, I think he quietly lets Adora take over as CEO (though she insists he have a seat at the table to represent the engineering interests, but he never wants to deal with the finances, and Adora does him proud). Robert Dearheart is a brilliant man who doesn't think he is, who carries around the weight of losing his son to the clacks towers that he invented. The main emotions I want him to embody are like... exhaustion but also he is where Adora got that "I won't believe it's impossible until I've tried it" trait she carries.

And Mrs. Dearheart is like... she's inventive, too, and she's tenacious. She managed to keep the family on their feet when they lost everything to bankruptcy and that requires grit. She's excited about Adora getting married (even starts planning the wedding), and I take that as a sort of relief, right? She's so relieved that Adora's found happiness and some sort of slice of "normalcy", despite the fact that "normal" for Adora looks very different than other people's "normal", and so finding a partner who looks at all that and goes "yeah of course I want that" has to be like... a Big Deal. I sort of landed on this idea that Mrs. Dearheart is where Adora gets that... edge. Like, the eyes that see straight through you, the sheer willpower, except in Mrs. Dearheart it's been tempered out by fewer early-life tragedies. And a love of birds (because I decided she likes birds, but since there tend to only be pigeons in Ankh-Morpork, she has specific pigeons that she likes and knows). And the fact that Mrs. Dearheart doesn't wear all black and shoes that can stab a man through the foot. All the same, the main emotions I want her to embody are (like I said) tenacity but also this deeper sense of...

I don't know how to explain it unless you meet someone like this, but there's people who've been through really awful shit and sometimes you scrape some paint off the surface and you go "oh my god this is really tragic" and they nod and they smile and they go "but I painted it yellow... like sunflowers, you know?" and it's not that they're hiding it, they know it's sad but they've managed, somehow, to keep hold of the sadness but still re-contextualize parts of it?? AM I MAKING SENSE??

Anyway lmao they do like Moist, but he's exTREMELY emotions about it all because I don't think they know? about what he did? Adora knows and she's decided (for better or worse) not to tell them! And this makes Moist Definitely Feel A Way at first, but once he gets told off for putting up a front partway through the first meeting with them, he relaxes bit by bit. I do think they see how good he is for Adora (and how good Adora is for him), although they're maybe a little bewildered at first because despite his pretty eccentric public image, Moist is... very nearly normal when you sit him down and talk to him at a dinner. A bit odd, maybe, and sometimes he's got funny ideas about what's common knowledge or not, but otherwise? Normal.

LMAO anyway thank you for the ask and I hope you enjoy my extreme rambling! And I hope that actually answered it for you, I know it's kinda VAGUE but... I'm still cooking

[llycaons]

final ch lb reposted bc it's not showing up in the tags???

AUGH THE CHAPTER IS CALLED DUNGEON MESHI. it's simple but I love it when they do that. perfect for dm, which is pared-down in themes but applies itself perfectly to what it wants to say

wow, damn, guess that makes sense, it's so amazing that laios brought so many people together with the simple promise of something that unites all living things - nourishment - and they in turn brought their own food to add to the communal pot. I would have liked to see more exploration of this community-building through food, but this is literally one of the only things I would change about dm it's so impeccable crafted

damn marcille

JESUS LAIOS

aw man, that's genuinely an awful thing to live with. this might be a happy ending, but laios lives with the consequences of his defeat of the demon

this is an actual medical condition too...people can get really sick

celebratory panel!!! ofc senshi is stoic (though without ever being unkind! he's unruffled without being cold) and izu doesn't rly care

sorry but 👀

THIS IS SO FUNNY. senshi being like 'I'm politely staying out of this' and everyone else being like 'yeah there's no way he's that selfless'

damn, what a step for marcille, who was so terrified of losing the people close to her

she's so hot here ugh

OHHH this visual is so cool

mmm tasty! her face says hehe she's so cute I missed her so bad. real babygirl material

yayy!!! and standing up suddenly able to walk, and TAKING the dragon with her??? that's so cute like a little plush

it would have been an interesting ending for her to maybe not recover the use of her legs? ending the story with a disability wouldn't have been a tragedy, and it's been done really well in other stories. like, I'm still me, this is a change that happened because of something I've been through, and it's something to adjust to and keep moving forward with. sorry to bring up tgcf here but sqx's storyline is truly so compelling like she DID that

SHES SO CUTE I CAN'T STAND IT. farlyn are you free friday I can take you to a movie and buy you dinner

really incredible how she's hot in one panel then charming in another then ravenous in the third. her range...

this is such lover behavior <3

AHHH SIBLING LOVE!!

marcille love!!! her legs lmao

😭😭😭 not many stories end this straightforwardly satisfyingly and honestly it's really really nice. a more bittersweet ending or a more 'mature' one might have had farlyn not come back at all a lesson abt death or w/e but fuck that!!

ohhhh sexy

STOP THIS IS SO FUCKING CUTE!!! LOOK HOW HE'S SMILING. CRYING OVER THIS!!! character who barely know each other and have met like once before but will absolutely be friends for life. this might be my favorite panel in the chapter and maybe even series

PEACE AND LOVE ON THE PLANET EARTH

aww she's trying to reach out to izu. she's not someone who warms up to people easily but farlyn is just so lovable and sincere and weird that I can def see a friendship potentially for them

STOP STOP THIS IS SO CUTE. im so glad farlyn didn't get paired off or even god forbid MARRIED to that guy who likes her can you fucking imagine. maybe farcille isn't confirmed but they're real in our hearts and nothing disproves them

damn, pizza? I don't remember that

of course she does!!! she's outgoing and adventurous and loves to eat!

you know this story wouldn't have worked half as well if farlyn wasn't legitimately a charming and lovable character who was easy to get attached to and root for. if they tried going the jerk with a heart of gold route, it would have taken a lot longer and been harder to create sympathy for her. like how cql's appeal rests disproportionately on you liking and rooting for wwx, dungeon meshi's driving plot relied on you WANTING this woman to come back to life, to eat and see her friends and do her magic and get into her weird hobbies. and she's perfect! the writing doesn't rely on one cliched line or scene to get you to realize 'oh they're a good person despite their harsh exterior' to get you to root for her (even tho that's an underutilized technique for writing women), it just presents this oddball and lets you love her. rk is so good at writing women who feel like real people, it's a reason adore marcille - for her awkwardness, her judgement, her readiness to blow things up without thought. she's just a deeply uncool person who's very endearing

not to be a monarchist or anything but this is probably the best they could have gotten given the situation so I'm not going to complain too much. it's not like I read dm for in-depth and realistic political engagement

and this is like the easiest way to be a good leader. just care about your people getting the food they need. that's enough, really. I don't think laios is capable of much more anyway. it's not like he's a politican

also what does the succession line look like? I know he's not having a kid. omg kabru!! his face is so ajshdksad. and yayy marcille and farlyn staying to advise him together!!

oHHH SHIT. thesis statement of the series! also these babies are so fucking cute I can't deal. ik that one of them is a dog person but the other one??? is that an orc??? well take back what I said about just food being important. integration is happening here too - it's clear that laios's kingdom is welcoming of people like orcs who have historically been expelled from other places and violently targeted by other races. idk how he managed that but like, well done, laios!

you know I adore cql but it's such a relief to step into other stories that aren't quite so much about Good (TM ) in a vague and all-encompassing sense and also have characters who aren't laserfocused on one person and who you can envision making connections to and becoming close with other characters 😭 loving lwj is so hard sometimes loving farlyn is so easy always

[vilonnie]

I have distracting brainrot + this is the brainrot website here are some vague key points of VW which I could probs write an essay on but I need to get it out of my system (mostly claudethoughts):

two protagonists who don't know what's going on fighting for what is thematically a misfit underdog nation that nobody else respects who don't share the theatric tragedy of the tormented fodlan royals born into high esteem, which I think is why the as previously stated misfit-underdog route may appeal to some people more than a classic tragic hero (dimitri) or martyred chosen one (edelgard) route

^ reworded this several times to avoid sounding derogatory towards dimi and el because I like them too I just want to go through the obvious reasons why g'deer feels so tonally different

golden deer has the closest and most consistently strong/positive relationships + dynamics between classmates as opposed to the other houses whose secondary characters tend to have more complicated and loaded feelings toward one another, but I think the reason that the consistent power of friendship writing works so well for me here is because when the deer reconcile so lightly and easily again and again it's a response to the route's overall themes of isolation. golden deer found family forever etc etc

they have the power of god and anime on their side

the notable association of claude with edelgard and vice versa is probably for heterosexual reasons courtesy of the writing team or someone on it lol which I don't mind because they're both bi to me anyway but I think it's more interesting to think about it as a friendship-that-could've-been dynamic because even though they have similar ideals and could've worked together with better communication/compromise of course the golden day protag and the blackest night antag are doomed to kill each other over and over and can never reconcile lmao. also contributes to the scarlet blaze bad end being my favorite route in that game

there's a slight note of bitterness when claude speaks to or about the other lords which I think is probably is more to do with either his own self-image or the way he's perceived than anything else. yet he was still the one the writers chose to insist that he and the other two were friends in the cindered shadows story and to staunchly (and explicitly naively) claim that war between them was impossible. which is interesting to me

claude and rhea vs khalid and seiros. you know?

no matter what you have to strive for knowledge and understanding of each other and of our world

no matter what you have to strive to cultivate and cherish your bonds of friendship even after a life of loneliness

thinking also about how even though ultimately it is vital to sympathize with and humanize seiros it can still be said that nemesis vs seiros, as well as seiros and wilhelm's initial conquest that created adrestria, is a cycle that repeats itself in rhea vs edelgard, as well as the reunification of adrestia. edelgard ironically becomes seiros here in that she is a "chosen one" fighting to be strong enough so that the trauma they experienced when vulnerable can never happen to their people ever again, though it can be argued that when they come to power over the land they will inadvertently perpetuate other injustices themselves

so if crimson flower is about exploring cycles then verdant wind is about breaking them, hence it being the only route that brings the game full circle with its opening cutscene, and why relations with almyra are brought up so frequently in concurrence with the foundational history of fodlan (i.e. the timeline regarding the construction of fodlan's locket and garreg mach)

and to do this you need KNOWLEDGE and FRIENDSHIP!!!!!!!!!!

in the end, again, it is always about understanding

claude and byleth is about how if you feel like you're all alone and the only freak of your kind among your peers do not worry! there is a circle of ride-and-die weirdos just waiting for you to become attached at a truly unnatural pace <3

hilda and claude is actually one of the most interesting relationships for me because I love their whole rose-colored boy vibe they have going on like with the "hand heart even my neck" quote which is unironically my favorite and I think has a lot of implicit nuance, the relationship has a lot of risk/danger to it inherently but snowballs into such casual trust it leaves you breathless, even though the environments they were raised in would suggest they should be afraid of each other and each other's natural enemy, I think it's because they cultivated such a lighthearted, mundane, fun-loving teenage friendship that the weight of their absolute devotion and loyalty to each other later on feels meaningful, the "imposter complex gf who sucks (affectionate)" and "deranged workaholic bf who won't let up" dynamic is so fun and I think just as hilda allows claude to relax and open up claude motivates hilda to expect more from herself and be her best self, I love how despite his self-image hilda sees so much kindness and integrity in claude and despite her self-image claude sees so much strength and brilliance in hilda, also since I have problems I like how they die in crimson flower lol

aaaaaaauguughgh. sword lord

ok thats enough for now

[canmom]

Animation Night 149: Toei

Hi there. It’s Thursday. You know what that means (yes, it means i’m freeeeee)

Today we will be rolling back to some of the earliest days of anime!

The story of Toei goes back to 1946. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, there were very few games in town when it came to Japanese animation (or, to be fair, animation in most places). During the war, animators had been recruited to make propaganda films such as Momotaro: Sacred Sailors, among them Akira Daikuhara.

In the immediate aftermath, Kenzō Masoaka (of Benkei tai Ushiwaka, for anyone who remembers AN24) began the first effort to make an animated film post-war. This film was titled Sakura: Haru no genso (Cherry Blossom: Spring’s Fantasy); it was followed by a series of three films about a cat called Tora-Chan. But Masoaka’s studio struggled, constantly closing and re-opening. At the time it was operating under the name 日本動画映画 Nihon Dōga Eiga or Japan Animated Films, or just the abbreviation 日動映画 Nichidō Eiga. In 1956, they were bought by live action studio Toei (itself approaching 20 years old, founded in 1938) and renamed to Toei Dōga, where they started making increasingly elaborate animated films.

Toei of this era was sometimes called the rather patronising name ‘Disney of the East’. There is some truth to it, in that their ambition, especially in the early years, was certainly to make animated films as elaborate as those of old Walt. Their first feature was 白蛇伝 Hakujaden (1958), based on a Song Dynasty Chinese legend about a lost pet snake who transforms into a woman in the hopes of reuniting with her former owner, a monk who thinks that’s sus, and two pandas who try to sort it all out; in English it’s variously translated as The White Snake Enchantress, Legend of the White Serpent or even Panda and the Magic Serpent.

Part of the goal of the film, to Toei Dōga president Hiroshi Ōkawa, was a gesture of reconciliation towards China after the whole ‘invading and occupying’ thing.

The film was Rintarō’s first animation job; it also left a massive impression on a young Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote the following in Gekkan ehon bessatsu: Animēshon (1979), trans. Beth Cary and Frederik L Schodt in Starting Point:

What I’m saying here is that when young people feel attracted to the heroes of a tragedy [context: such as The Diary of Anne Frank], whether in animation or other media, a type of narcissism is really involved; this attraction they feel is a surrogate emotion for something they have lost.

From personal experience, I can say that I first fell in love with animation when I saw Hakujaden, the animated feature produced by Toei Animation in 1958. I can still remember the pangs of emotion I felt at the sight of the incredibly beautiful, young female character Bai-Niang, and how I went to see the film over and over as a result. It was like being in love, and Bai-Niang became a surrogate girlfriend for me at a time when I had none.

It is in this sense that I think we can achieve a type of satisfaction, by substituting something for the unfulfilled portion of our lives.

The feelings evoked by Bai-Niang may go some way to explaining the role of similar girls in Miyazaki’s movies...

Hakujaden has some curious properties as a work of animation. It was, especially for the time, astonishingly elaborate and straining the technical capabilities of the industry (although the claim on Wikipedia that it had 13,590 staff seems rather dubious lmao). The drawing count is stratospheric thanks most scenes being animated on ones and twos - the opposite of the limited animation techniques that anime would later perfect. Despite that, it is also the work of an inexperienced team, and compared to later works its animation can feel awkwardly timed, the flood of inbetweens turning everything to mush.

Nevertheless, there are two stars of the show in terms of animation. One is Yasuji Mori, who would later be one of Toei’s star animators, creating scenes such as the dance at the beginning of this post - as well as teaching Miyazaki after he joined Toei. The other is Akira Daikuhara, who was way ahead of the game on effects animation, creating the film’s transformation sequences. Daikuhara would go on to be one of Toei’s main animators of human characters, while Mori tended to take the animal/mascots; he has been a relatively forgotten figure, although that’s starting to change with articles like these ones by Matteo Watzky, whose research just digs deeper and deeper.

Toei’s early films tend to follow the precedent set in Hakujaden, adapting folktales from (mostly) China and Japan. In 1959 they covered a Japanese story in Shōnen Sarutobi Sasuke; 1960, they took on Saiyūki (Journey to the West); then Anju to Zushiōmaru (The Orphan Brother, 1961) and Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad (1962).

In this period of Toei, there was a lot of ambition, and also a feeling of inadequacy compared to the elaborate animated films being made in other countries. Hayao Miyazaki, who joined Toei in the 1963, wrote in 1982:

I used to create feature-length works for Toei Animation, but compared to the works just mentioned, they were obviously far inferior, at least technically. Sort of like showing rabbits slipping and falling, that sort of thing. We wondered if we would ever catch up to the level of what was being done in America, France or Russia, or if it were even possible to do so. Frankly, we really didn’t know.

To begin with, we didn’t even know what we had to do to reach the same level of excellent as the best works out there. We knew we had constraints, such as short production schedules, small budgets and so forth, but above and beyond that, we began to develop an inferiority complex: we wondered if we even had the basic talent needed to proceed. In retrospect, the only thing that probably kept us going, and drove us to pursue such a long-term goal, was our determination.

Miyazaki’s words should be taken with a grain of salt, since they definitely suit his personal myth-making. Still, conditions at Toei in the 60s were rough, leading to the first major unionisation struggle of anime history, which I wrote about in AN70. The studio started bringing on part-timers paid hourly rather than a salary, and created severe pay discrepancies, which were met with strikes and departures from the studio. Saiyūki took such a tole on its director Taiji Yabushita that he was hospitalised; Yasuji Mori would later create the term ‘anime syndrome’ for this sort of overwork because it was not the last time by any means.

However, I’m going to zoom over all of these to get to the わんぱく王子の大蛇退治 Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji (The Naughty Prince’s Orōchi Slaying, more commonly translated The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon) in 1963 - not because it’s necessarily more important, although it’s remembered as one Toei’s best films, but because I happen to have a fantastic analysis of one of its key scenes on hand thanks to AniObsesive and Toadette.

Wanpaku Ōji breaks from precedent in many ways, particularly its visual design, which takes on highly simplified shapes reminiscent of the then ultra-modern UPA style by way of haniwa figures. The story at least follows the pattern, adapting a Shinto myth in which the storm god Susanoo battles (guess what) an eight-headed dragon Yamat no Orochi. Susanoo is motivated by the death of his mother Izanami, and goes on a journey to try to find her, which leads him to the village of Princess Kushinada - a village with a dragon problem, which they’ve kept at bay only by sacrificing Kushinada’s seven sisters. Susanoo, horny for a princess who looks like his mum, decides it’s time to intervene.

The dance scene above comes in the middle of the movie, in which the goddess Ame-no-Uzume performs an increasingly mystical dance. It was an ambitious experiment of Makoto Nagasawa, who had joined as an inbetweener on Saiyūki, with large spacing and broad motion to create a snappy feeling. Animation Obsessive writes:

Typical motion at Toei, Nagasawa said, would be “neatly in-betweened from the first [key] pose to the last [key] pose.” In other words, in-betweens smoothed out the movement and made it longer, more complete and more realistic. By contrast, Nagasawa’s drawings of Uzume are often at wide intervals, with minimal in-betweens. Sometimes, she basically teleports from one frame to the next.

Even when the intervals aren’t that wide, the way Uzume moves remains big, broad, clear and non-real. Nagasawa pushes her gestures, increases her speed, shows us only what he wants to show us. The action is crisp, always holding its abstract shape. No naturalistic touches distract from the core form of what Uzume does.

Alongside Nagasawa, Yasuji Mori was now coming into a role close to that of the now-standard 作画監督 sakuga kantoku aka sakkan or animation director, an experienced artist whose job is to correct the drawings from many different key animators to keep them on-model. Modern anime productions tend to have a strictly hierarchical approach where the characters are designed by one or a few character designers, usually also the lead sakkan. At Toei, things had been a bit more fluid - the individual animators would often design the characters they were going to animate, with a division of labour closer to the old Disney style. On this film, it became more of a hybrid: Mori drew the final model sheets, but the animators would submit suggested designs to him.

For the most elaborate scenes, such as the dance, they went to great lengths to record a suitable score and record live-action footage with professional ballet dancers. I encourage you to read the AniObsessive article for the details.

At the time of Wanpaku Ōji, Toei was starting to face competition. The already-renowned mangaka Osamu Tezuka had founded MushiPro, which was rapidly taking over TV, and the sphere of TMS satellite studios were starting to get going and siphon away many of their best people such as Yasuo Ōtsuka. Still, the animators at Toei were determined to try and stand alongside international animators:

The team was well aware of the trends in world animation at that time. According to Nagasawa, they were watching work from Canada (Norman McLaren), Czechoslovakia (Jiří Trnka), Russia (The Snow Queen), France (The King and the Mockingbird) and so on. It was all bold, new animation. In The Little Prince, Toei took up the challenge this work presented, without simply copying it. The team contributed to modern animation while staying rooted in the ancient, and in Japan itself.

Subsequently, Japanese animation is sometimes divided into a ‘Toei tradition’ vs. a ‘MushiPro tradition’, of full vs limited animation respectively, followed by the various successors such as Ghibli on the one hand and Madhouse on the other. As ever this is not really very accurate, and both ‘lineages’ crossed over extensively (just look at Kanada).

Toei’s own output adapted to the times. Takahata’s Horus: Prince of the Sun (AN 70) might be the last of the ambitious movies in their old style; after this, the fairytale films were gradually replaced by gekiga animation such as Tiger Mask, super robots like Mazinger Z, and then at the end of the 70s increasingly science fiction adaptations of Leiji Matsumoto’s works (AN 146). In the 80s, shōnen exploded onto the scene and Toei made a lot of Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya, later joined by other franchises like PreCure, Digimon and One Piece. So Toei remains one of the largest and most robust animation studios in Japan. They’ve got a lot of salaried staff, a union(!), and regular work in the form of wildly popular franchises. But occasionally they’ll make something cool and weird within that remit, like Hosoda’s One Piece film (AN61), Kyōsōgiga (AN98) - or Interstella 5555 which we watched last week.

So! Tonight though we’re going to go back and look at those ambitious early days, where it started, with snakes and dragons and a bishōjo who’s 美 enough to inspire the entire career of Hayao Miyazaki. Animation Night 149 will begin at 20:00 UK time (UTC), (13:00 California time), at twitch.tv/canmom - hope to see you there!

And next week I have a serious treat for you, because the Inu-Oh BD finally dropped. Can’t think of something more perfect for #150 than returning to Masaaki Yuasa.

And now to spend the rest of the day until 8pm on intensive gamdev 😵‍💫

[musical-chick-13]

I understand the need to complain, so 7 and 12 for that violence ask game!

Thank you for your solidarity, I appreciate it. :)

7. What character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

I answered this here. But I'll talk about another one. Ava from LoT. Like the previous answer, she was originally just kind of there to me. But I felt like she kind of took over the show, and I wasn't really happy with the development regarding her relationship with Sara (and apparently they decided they had to destroy Sara's friendship with Rip to make this ship happen? or something?), but I liked the other characters enough to just go, "Eh, not for me" and move on.

And then there were just...too many things I saw that bothered me. People tended to act like anyone calling Ava out was inherently...bad? I never really even saw a specific reason for this, it just seemed like people didn't want to admit a character in their preferred ship could make mistakes or be wrong. There was such a horrific level of biphobia I saw regarding Sara, too (which, big surprise, eventually spread to other characters who people wanted to be confirmed as not being straight onscreen). And like I mentioned before, Sara and Rip's working relationship got caught in the crossfire, and the things I saw from too many stans of this character about how horrible Rip was for basically...daring to ever be traumatized? Or how little sympathy they had for the show killing off a grieving, deeply hurting man with a thinly-veiled death wish/suicidal ideation just...really created some not-great associations regarding this character in my brain.

12. The unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them?

Lmao.

So Idk if y'all know this but I REALLY love Cersei Lannister, yeah, shocking, I know. I've talked about her at length, but she's my Ultimate Fave so I can't NOT mention her here. Her interior emotional world is so rich and layered that I learn new things about her (and, very frequently, about my own relationship to my mental illness) every time I think about her. All of her choices make sense narratively in accordance to what we know about her, even if they aren't good ones. Her mental illness and trauma seen as a tragedy worthy of sympathy, and it is her refusal to constructively deal with them and her insistence of externalizing her pain that leads to her horrible behavior toward others, not the presence of the mental illness or trauma itself. And like...yeah, we weren't supposed to root for her (even though I did because I'm me, lol), but we were supposed to feel for her. And she was allowed to continue to exist in the narrative. For better or worse, her story still mattered and was still worth telling, and, Idk, it was the first time I'd ever seen that being afforded to a mentally ill character. She processes everything in a very ugly way, that's not societally-palatable, and I cannot begin to tell you how utterly refreshing that was. She's capable of great love, but that love is tinged with all the negative and deeply unhealthy things she's held onto. She's a villain, but she is so clearly still a hurting person under there, grieving for all the things that were denied to her. Everything she does can be tied back to an overwhelming, all-consuming desire to Avoid Being Hurt Again. She keeps going out of spite. Her paranoia is understandable, but she deal with it in increasingly unhelpfully hostile ways. She flips between being cold and angry and sad and impulsive and even, occasionally, soft, and unlike usual ""evil queen"" archetype characters, she feels so much. She thinks love is literally being as close to same person as someone else as humanly possible. SHE KILLED A WHOLE MASS OF PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO RUIN HER, GOOD FOR HER. She's fascinating.

In the interest of saying something that's NOT repeating myself for the billionth time: Martha Jones from Doctor Who. Truly the most competent companion The Doctor ever had. She didn't suffer nonsense, she was INCREDIBLY resourceful and intelligent, she extended compassion to everyone she met, even those who could (or did) easily pose a hostile threat. She was the only companion in all of RTD or Moffat-era DW to leave completely on her own terms and break away from a lifestyle that was hurting her. The characters I love don't generally tend to be people I'd want to be like irl, but as a teenager, I wanted to be her when I grew up, and I still do. (Sadly, people are racist. And they couldn't get over the fact that she wasn't her predecessor, who was half of a fan-favorite ship involving the conventionally attractive white man. I'm still mad, I'll always be mad.)

I Choose Violence asks

[jerek]

man seeing how wrathion is treated by the writers(and as such, the fans) in dragonflight is so fucking frustrating. like at first i thought they wrote him ooc but when i went to see the cutscenes, he's actually written consistently. its just that he's being written next to these characters old fans go YEAH MY FAVE I KNOW YOU and when THEY tell wrathion he's wrong and insensitive when they themselves are to him, it's like.. insulting? idk. Like he's never wrong or unreasonable and yet people say he is, and they play dark music in the background when he's reasonably upset and people go OOUUHH DEATHWING oh shitttt And NEVER do they consider helping him while he helps everyone all the time, literally everything he does is to help and ensure a future. He went for raszageth on his own to save everyone. like BITCH?? i feel like im going crazy when i see comments about him being evil or bad or mean and aaaaaAAAUUGHGHGH wrathion deserves to be free from world of warcraft, let him OUT

you are so real for this kisses you.

Idk what I can say that I haven't put in the wrathionposting tag lmao. He's.

Anduin Wrynn, feeling a deep sense of guilt for young men and women going off to war under his banner, for his kingdom, tells Jaina Proudmoore in the novel Shadows Rising:

"It isn't fair. It should make everything stop. The whole world should stop and point at that, but it doesn't."

I think of that line almost every time I see Wrathion. I've described him before as a 'walking humanitarian crisis.' He's inherited a role just below the living, physically incarnated creator gods of the universe. The Titans created Azeroth, and when they left, they left his father and his father's comrades in charge. For almost all of his life, he's been trying to assume this same responsibility. Acting as if he already IS the guardian of Azeroth.

He was transparently terrified in Mists of Pandaria. He might still be terrified, or he might be overwhelmed by the need to prove himself now that he's not just been the son of Deathwing, but a fugitive of Alliance justice (after the events of War Crimes.) I'm glad he seems confident enough, but...

Is there literally anyone on Azeroth who can care for him without insulting him? I wonder if there isn't a sort of built-in martyr complex in dragon culture too, explaining why Dracasia is a drake and a broodmother, Wrathion's a drake and a potential Aspect, and somehow none of this seems strange to someone like Ebyssian.

I do think there are tragedies like this probably built into the fabric of Azeroth itself. That's why I write my rogue, Midha, as having joined Wrathion's cause at around 13. There are few residential buildings in Stormwind because so much of the Alliance population is made up of travelling adventurers: soldiers with no rank. Same for Orgrimmar. Their leaders have no responsibility for them, and no reason to take responsibility, and the history of Azeroth is only recorded in terms of great heroes.

They're training up new, young heroes almost as fast as they're killing them. Isn't that something? Shouldn't the world stop and point at that? Imagine what the wider fanbase could say about Wrathion and other characters like him if they weren't so solely committed to either vilifying or sexualizing them.

[searchingforserendipity25]

"The look of a thing, the thing itself" is just a god title! Would love to know where this is goin

Thank you @melestasflight! The title happened very early into writing it, and while it's going very very slowly, at least the title is there lmao.

Mostly, it's about Maglor's return to Aman. It is (ideally) going to be divided in acts and each one focused in a different confrontation, but tone wise it's absolutely a farce masquerading as a tragedy, since Maglor is masquerading as a tragic figure while having reached his saturation point on that role, and is aware of it, and thinks it is a little funny.

So it is very much about how, of course, life is not a play, and no one is only a role in someone else's life or a cog in the narrative, however convenient it might be to create emotional distance or closure like that. It's about holding up a ruse and how to set it down, and also what it means to go from severe cultural isolation to intense assimilation, because there is no possibility where Maglor is not so very, very weird after so long away from elvenkind.

I've talked more about the goals of it here. But really it's pretty slow going! I want too much for it to be perfect, and I think it's time to just write and set that aside.

[james-fun-in-the-sunderland]

1, 6, 8, 11, 14, 21, 22, 26, 28, 29, 30. maybe too many for one post but u can split it up as u like.

HIIII you always give me a billion qs from ask games i love u sm for it <3

obligatory link back to the npc ask game

1. What’s your NPC creation process like?

ALREADY ANSWERED FOOL!! (/j <3)

6. How do you pick names for NPCs?

same way i pick names for ocs of mine! if theyre not a one off npc or one off turned main npc then i search for a name that has a meaning relevant to who they are as a character! (swords's last name is lyon and her symbolic animal is a lion... winifreds name means reconciliation, giving her a fun ironic twist since she wants to KILL her ex husband soso bad lol) but if theyre a one off then typically i just generate the name using this american name generator and pick something i think fits the character at hand!

the only one that doesnt fit in either here is jacques who as i belief i said is named off of my old cat with the same name <3

8. What kinds of NPC (personality, class, culture, age, whatever occurs to you!) tends to be your favorite to make and/or play?

i really enjoy fucked up dudes!!!! if it werent obvious from my ocs... this was supposed to be a lighter campaign but i really love tragedy and making people have OBVIOUS issues and its fun to have stuff with those play out with the players, sometimes even being used to bounce off the players! also i like magic users. theyre fun. or people involved with the gods of this world! i think i really really enjoy making people who give off lore hints or just straight up tell you interesting stuff about the world c:

11. (which oc is...) Most unique?

oh this is a hard one... if we mean in context of the world itself like in that world then i would have to say speciallest girl ever henrietta but also not really bc theres also vanya.... hmmmmmmm but out of context i would have to say probably daggers, swords or dr. shi, i feel like those three have a good spread of not being too like many of my other ocs! (daggers having lots of image issues and being outwardly guilt trippy and feminine, swords being impulsive and almost like a shonen character, and dr shi being very monotone and intelligent (i like my dumbasses) plus all three have big as hell prides, they think they are HOT shit)

(putting the rest under a readmore so that people dont hate seeing me on their dash)

14. Most likely to be on a reality show?

HARD TO TELL... first instinct is to say daggers or swords bc those two interact with media enough to want to go onto a reality show (or henrietta bc shes. you know. leader of the old rebellion imagine the numbers that could do for the show) but i think final answer would be delilah bc not only would she LOVE to be on tv but she would like have an AWESOME time

21. Which NPC is the easiest for you to roleplay? Why?

ALREADY ANSWERED AGAIN!!!!!!

22. Which NPC is the most difficult to roleplay? Why?

ouhhh hard one here but id probably say first of all vanya bc my russian accent skills are NOT there. but in terms of personality and roleplaying in general not just speaking as them then probably wiz or daggers! both have to have an incredible amount of balance, in daggers's case its so that she is nuanced and not an annoying caricature considering my concept for her and with wiz its just . not revealing some things too early and not revealing some things too late, plus hes the quest giver and PLUS idk why but doing his voice gives me troubles. this is all ironic bc he is like. one of my favorite npcs lmao (hes better in writing IMO)

26. Which NPC is YOUR least favorite and why?

oh interesting... this is like having to say i hate one of my children i really never dislike any characters i create i just get agonies over them tbh but if i HAD to choose one..... hmmm probably vanya and/or richter, i really enjoy them conceptually but i feel like i fumble them too much and their story, while interesting and exciting in the beginning, became a bit more extraneous as time went on ! but really its not by much that i dislike them, i really love every npc i make

28. Is there any NPC you wish your party interacted with more?

THREE STRIKES YOURE OUT SIR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

29. Are there any NPCs you wish you could play as a PC one day?

wiz probably fits most closely into the type of pc i would create for a game like this! however if i would want to be more fun more creative then i would actually really like to play jacques or vanya, mostly because they also are the types of characters i would make and they are easily translateable into a pc for this specific campaign (both in stat ways and in story ways!) as for a complete wildcard i think also playing as someone closer to the religion of this campaign (swords, rhys, etc) would be very interesting ! but im sure if i were to recycle a character concept from this game i would not expect who i would choose in the future...

30. Bonus question! Answer any that you haven’t been asked, or talk about any NPC you want!

oh god an open ended q ummm this is really the hardest question ever . i will give you a few little tidbits abt characters not on their toyhouse and not like fully really talked abt i tink...

Vanya is based on a character from dungeon meshi and originally followed this characters plot way more closely before i changed her up! not saying who tho

hook and rex came out to each other at the exact same time (as trans).... it was really funny and they almost immediately did a fun little clothes swap :)

even though wiz has his 50 ft vision, sometimes bc of habit when hes in his house he wont use it and if he has a guest he will often times get spooked by them... he feels silly after it happens every time lol

jacques is bisexual. also has never dated anyone ever. (he feels like its weird to date anyone from the village hes from bc everyones kinda like family there...)

rhys and the griffin god priest (mr hightower) have actually met once on occasion, they found each others company very enlightening but will not meet again ever

[sugaaz]

rewatched a few eps of zi-o and the whole “getting the riders powers means retconning their existence as riders from history” made me overthink about how their life would have gone

i have a lot of questions (?) about how emu’s life would have gone and i’m putting all my thoughts here

(read more under the cut)

so the creation of another rider means the retconning of the main rider and it’s done by erasing the source of their antagonists (idk if this was said in the show or a fan theory. it’s been years since zio and im slightly confused on the details)

anyways in that case, it would be the bugster virus that is erased from existence. so no more parad (sobs)

that would also mean the worst father kiyonaga didn’t create the bugster virus so wouldn’t have any reason to be distant from his son or sell said son to the dans to save his own skin.

and yet emu is in pediatrics even if history is rewritten. one can assume that he still had that “accident” and was saved by hinata sensei which is why he filled in his footsteps in becoming a doctor.

in the novel (the novel backstory fucked me up so bad, there’s no way i can’t not bring it up) emu mentions that the mighty action c demo was the trigger for him to walk into the road. but if there was no bugster virus in this world, kuroto would have never sent emu the demo cd. so the trigger that originally made him take that step was not present yet history repeated itself with its tragedy.

if you take it a step further, emu technically shouldn’t have been lonely that games were the only thing to keep him company. i say technically because his father “should have” been there for him. but he was still a genius gamer in the new world which means he was still obsessed with games but probably didn’t send that letter to kuroto for unknown reasons. (does that mean kiyonaga was a deadbeat father in the new world too? man emu deserves better)

to think that even in the other world emu made similar choices to walk into his reset makes me uncontrollably sad ngl. yes he survived and became the hero who saves children but no child should ever have to go through that much pain in their life (fuck you kiyonaga)

i actually forgot what point i was making with this welp. should have followed sento’s third rule

it’s definitely fascinating that people somehow make similar choices in life even if history is rewritten. also i call bs on hiiro’s line “the only thing that changed was history. my personality wouldn’t change” like you’re telling me nothing in them changed from the all the things they went through in their own world? come on

sure hiiro would definitely be in surgery in the new world. would saki be alive though? were they able to work out their relationship issues? would they be together without being separated by tragedy.

would taiga still have his license? would taiga and nico meet? actually did emu and nico go up against each other? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS YALL

kiriya i suppose would be chilling with his friend who would not be dead so good for him.

anyways this is a slice of my millions of thoughts. i might add more to it when i have any more coherent thoughts lmao.

[thelanor-s-astame]

You're generally incredibly lgbtq+ friendly, so I have to ask, why is it that you consistently misgender the vessels?

I promise I'm asking in good faith. You trust me, don't you? I'm random anonymous person on tumblr, your most trusted confidant!

Very good question! And unfortunately with a good question the answer is a little complicated. But I'll do my best to try and explain Now I'm amusing that you're talking about how the Vessels are non-binary, if it's not, then I'm not sure what you mean. And if that's the case it's because I did not know I was misgendering them and legitimately do not know what you mean lmao But assuming the former is true. The answer is, because, at some point, I couldn't tell you when, but HKR became a different story then Hollow Knight. And quite a bit of that story is about the Dude Currently Haunting The Narrative, The Pale King In HK proper, The Pale King was *correct* about what he was doing. Moral implications aside, he did create void vessels that could trap or even destroy the radiance, he was trying to save his kingdom, no strings or frills or secret plots. That's what he was doing. The vessels are nb, because they are Void. They Were Built For A Job kind of like a machine. The Pale King just chose the wrong one. When The Hollow Knight started feeling, even if it was a little bit of love for his father, the machine broke. Despite it all, he was a good enough father that one of his kids loved him, and thus into downfall, and horrible tragedy. The Main Character Vessel, especially after turning the kings soul into the voidheart and being able to capture the Voids essence, was proof that the plan did, actually, work, it just took some more time. In HKR the pale king, spoilers, is kind of a Lying Bastard who is mostly interested in continuing his hegemony at any cost. He created children who he beveled were empty vessels that he could put anything into, that would continue to grow his empire. Charlie is not that. He chose a name and a gender for himself (and did for his compatriots too, even if they didn't entirely like it.) He was a person even if the world saw him, and constantly told him that he was a tool for his father's plans. (Big reason I'm lgbtqia+ positive is because I'm queer as shit myself, and so I got daddy issues that go STRAIGHT into the fanfic lmaooooo). when he got out of that he met several men that were kind, and caring, and honorable and he wanted to emulate them. Hornet did the very same thing except there were women around her, and that's who she felt most conformable identifying as. They're both extremely similar in that regard, but, like the siblings they are, took very different roads to the same destination. That's why I voice both of them! As for everyone else essentially immediately assuming Charlie and the rest of the vessels are male, That one is easy. Hallownest is a patriarchal society that used to be a matriarchal one, is bordered by matriarchal societies, many that it has subsumed into itself, and is, even after it's death, trying to assert cultural dominance. You know how it is. This sort of didn't really come up as a thing in the game, because the game wasn't terribly interested in that aspect of it's world and didn't really need to be. I'm just a freak about that sorta thing. So, I guess the main answer is, due to the theming of these two stories and how I sorta divested from cannon somewhere along the way The Knight is Non-bianry Charlie is not Now, does that mean that the other vessels might've been non-binary if they were given the same opportunities as charlie?, and charlie might be jumping the gun a little by just gendering them all as male? Yeah. But he's not the brightest bulb in the box. Or even thinking about any of this consciously. The only one who is, is Hornet. And she's only thinking about it in, like, an early 2000s girl power sort of way.