#also it largely does not make sense

[the-magpie-collective]

Wyll seems to be the only companion who intentionally and repeatedly uses the mindflayer tadpole to communicate. I did a quick search through the dialogue files and the only other instance I found was at the beginning of Act I, when Lae'zel is captured by the tieflings, she'll use the tadpole to demand you free her.

And yet, Wyll is one of the companions most against using the tadpole's powers. Arguably, I'd say he's more against it than anyone save for Lae'zel. Which is why I find it so interesting that out of all of companions, Wyll is the one to latch onto and make use of this facet of the tadpole's powers.

The first time Wyll can use the tadpole is when Mizora bids him to rescue Zariel's asset. If the Player succeeds on their perception check, they can bargain with Mizora to free Wyll from his pact. Wyll link his mind with the Player's Character in panic, demanding to know "What are you doing?"

Then again when Wyll is finally reunited with his father, he uses the tadpole to show his father why he pacted with Mizora. Instead of explaining in his own words, he shows him the cultists as they attempt to summon Tiamat into Baldur's Gate. He'll do the same for the Player Character if his father isn't saved, even when he is freed from his pact and could say it in his own words. If the PC refuses to let Wyll show them, he will explain it, but clearly prefers to use the tadpole.

Finally, Wyll will also use the tadpole to bid farewell if he has a falling out with the player character, telling the player "Godspeed, and may your journey be true."

For Wyll, who had spent the last seven years under a devil's thumb, this narrative choice to use the tadpoles to communicate is telling. One thing all of these scenes have in common is that they all emotionally charged moments. They are also moments in which, in my opinion, it is very important for Wyll to convey his sincerity. Wyll has spent the last seven years always dancing around the truth and now here comes along a power where not only can he tell the truth, he can show the truth as he sees it, so that there is much less risk of being misunderstood. A power like that has to be irresistible.

Just another thing I wish was explored more in depth in game.

Edit: Thank you to everyone who pointed out instances when other characters also use the tadpoles to communicate <3

Turns out Wyll/Lae'zel's writer is the only one who bothered to use proper tagging in the dialogue system ('MINDMELD' if you're curious). This is why I can never find what I'm looking for in the dialogue files smh

[djcarnationsblog]

So like-I made more Mystic Forest Fanart

and again, it's Leosagi

BECAUSE WHAT IS MY LIFE WITHOUT THEM GOD DAMNIT-

@amevello-blue / @bluepeachstudios and @wondrous-art I done did another one of these things and I do NOT think this will be the last of them from me-

[huginsmemory]

Even with TBOB and thisisnotawebsite.com there's... Still so much we don't know about Bill. Like ok yeah he's given a tragic background, we know a bit more about his henchmaniacs, but we really don't know a lot. Like, what happened directly after he accidentally destroyed his dimension? It isn't said. Sure time baby KNOWS about Bill's destruction of his dimension, but it seems like he didn't show up after Bill's dimension was destroyed to apprehend him because he only knows about Bill after Bill tries to make a deal with him, causing Bill's wanted poster. And how did Bill become basically the overlord of the nightmare realm, and gather all his henchmaniacs? Like there's a good period where we just don't know. And it's implied he's shocked and horrified (likely even dissociates, since he does that) after he destroys his dimension. But his characterization doesn't seem by that point to be one that immediately goes into a self-destructive, violent god-becoming maniacal spiral of self hatred; it's more one to be overwhelmed with grief and spend a good long time in the midst of his grief, then necessarily he's about to DO anything. And generally speaking trope wise, there's steps missing; typically in this sort of scenario, the usual progression is this:

characterized as monster due to being different in some way

tries to prove their not

ends up hurting someone anyways

gets further villainized, and antagonized by others

Acceptance of being a monster, and goes okay? You wanted a monster? I'll be a monster.

Now this fits Bill's early life, up to number 4, but we don't know what happens immediately after. It's possible he just went into his spiral immediately after, but it feels wrong, because it is missing the part of someone further villainizing him beyond himself which causes him to lash out due to the expectation (and internalized) idea that he would cause harm. I'd assume maybe some kind of interdimensional authority showed up and accused him of purposely trying to kill his dimension, which triggered his "okay, then I'll be a monster", or even a situation where his 'monstrosity' through the badge of killing his dimension is garners him respect. Considering that his henchmaniacs are chosen out of monstrosity and violence as a badge of honor, it feels very much like this would make sense, except none of them really know about Bill's dimension. He doesn't brag about the violence of it; he only calls it a liberation, contrary to the idea that Bill ever used it to gain clout. Instead, it's more likely that an interdimensional authority showed up and accused Bill, except from circumstances, it doesn't seem like it was Time Baby, so not sure who it would be... but at the same time, that expectation is often required for the character to truly embrace their 'monstrosity' and become truly violent. Or perhaps it was delayed after the destruction of his dimension, later when he begins to run with his henchmaniacs and disregards the law, but that also doesn't feel satisfactory for character development. Or perhaps I'm just overthinking this trope...

Also, how did he have his powers? Some is clearly stuff he's always had; pyrokinesis from that one rhyme, the ability to see into 3d, and he was somehow able to destroy his dimension by whatever he did to let Euclydians see the stars (telekinesis?), but beyond that? Was he always all-seeing? How did he become a 'dream demon'? Are his deals actually binding or does he lie? Are these things that he acquired later, because Euclydians seem to be written about as if they usually don't have any of these abilities, nor the abilities Bill is known to have when young, nor did Bill seem to be able to be all seeing when he was younger. Plus, how was Bill able to survive the destruction of his dimension, if he's technically made of the same stuff as everyone else, who all seems to have a physical form? Why then does he seems to be characterized as a being made of pure energy and thought; is that just in Earth's dimension, or does he have a physical form within the nightmare realm? There's multiple things that are contradictory about his body (mouth-eye, yet talked about removing his exoskeleton to feed--not sure exactly when this was mentioned--plus his mouth located under his bricks and bowtie in his exoskeleton in journal 3). But he seems so thrilled by his physical form though on earth, and we know that physical forms exist within the Nightmare realm as Ford was in it... yet it seems like hes characterized to have no physical form, so did he perhaps lose his physical form when his dimension died? Did he technically die with them too, but with his powers was able to survive essentially as a ghost like he tells Dipper you become without a body?

[earthlyruins]

seeing people mischaracterize sanji will forever boil my blood but seeing people mischaracterize LUFFY and say that he only has sanji on his crew because he can cook actually has me wanting to kill someone HOW can you be that stupid. no genuinely how

[aroaceleovaldez]

i would like to say my ideal PJO adaptation (if i was being physically forced against my will to have to pick a live action adaptation over an animated one for some reason) would be a combo like writing of the musical + casting of the show + visuals of the movies

BUT the show actually does have the playwright for the musical as one of the major writers for like three episodes and that did nothing for it. so...

[petrichorium]

the capitano breadwinner thing pluvi….i just could not picture him being okay with you leaving for long periods of time lol. plus i sort of imagine him living somewhere extremely isolated ? like a days journey into town at least. if you were a writer or an artist he’d be totally fine with that but anything that requires you to leave his home is sort of out of the question i fear

Yeah exactly exactly. It’s a classic nobility setup where u could take on the household responsibilities as the lady and manage the staff but only if u rlly want to, I think he’d actually rather u be the quiet eccentric type who largely keeps alone so preferring to write or paint or garden is the ideal for him. Also you having hobbies (and he does think of them as hobbies even if u think of them as a job) gives him more opportunity to shower u with gifts……. he just doesn’t want you out and about. Wait until he returns to take you out to that new shop with the nice paintbrushes, don’t go on your own.

[doghart]

rereading house of leaves, once again i think johnny truant can read in a very interesting trans man narrative. the explicit lies/exaggerations about how stereotypically masculine he is (virility, ability as a tattoo artist, how much women love him, how strong and brave he is) in order to separate himself from femininity, and the way this degrades as he becomes more consumed by the story. the fear of femininity and the inescapable nature of it. the way his mother looms over the story even before you know she’s present, and the way johnny is repeatedly compared to being more similar to his mother than he wants, and unable to escape the things they share in common no matter how hard he tries to throw her off (this also ties into his fears of inheriting his mom’s schizoaffective disorder but that’s not relevant here). johnny removing his name in the obituary and being implied to have changed it in the whalestoe letters despite him having already introduced himself to us as johnny.

there’s a lot of criticism of the segments of johnny’s writing as being misogynistic (specifically that he as a character acts w/ misogyny not that house of leaves itself is misogynistic) which i absolutely feel holds ground, but it should also be remember that before anything else johnny truant is a liar and cannot be taken at his word as a narrator. his best friend’s name is a club drug. HIS name is johnny TRUANT. the ending of the book specifically contradicts itself to show that he’s a liar. with that lens, and especially with how as the story develops, johnny becomes increasingly distanced from the exploits he mentions early in the books, revealing a quiet and deeply unhappy man (who doesn’t really seem interested in any of the things he writes about doing at all), even textually it’s clear he’s writing all that to appear masculine and rugged in a way he thinks masculinity should be. when johnny’s character is actually revealed (in glimpses between his own ramblings about strippers and coke use), he reveals himself again to be more prone to his mother’s poetics and fails again and again to separate himself for that

[angel---eater]

im so curious what u mean by the vriskafication of jegbert? /genq

ive been watching the hs fandom from afar since the epilogues were dropped.

this is a rlly good question- i have a lot of thoughts and feelings abt june and how the fandom has taken to her her and is now portraying her in popular fanon. im so sorry this has gotten so long. im also sorry if i say smth you or anyone reading this disagrees with, but in my experience this is kind of inevitable when it comes to the topic of june egbert, trans characters who havent come out in canon yet, and trans headcanons as a whole. this shits personal to all of us and we all have different perspectives on transness, and oftentimes how we view transness in fiction is very much coloured by our own gendered experience.

it boils down to: can we please fucking let trans girls live. we are so fuckin weird about transfem folks and trans girls/women, even in fiction. sometimes especially in fiction, actually. especially on this gd website. if i have to see one more person defending june (and tgirl roxy) as a concept, and through that, defending real life transfems existences by talking about girldick or being a sweet docile sugary femme babygirlie kittycat, i will turn everyone into a fucking goldfish and flush you all one by one down my toilet. this, again, also extends to how a lot of the fandom handles trans headcanons in general, regardless of gender. all of what im about to say is from watching the homestuck fandom and fanon grow and change over 10+ years, basically since the beginning on this site specifically

some disclaimers for my trans resume i guess: i am intersex. i am plural. we as a system identify systemwide as transfemasuline or transneutral in an attempt to both honor and not speak over each other in terms of gender expression and individuality, while also trying to condense our existence for singlets to understand better, faster. we dont have time to explain all our shit all the time lol. we have transfems and transmascs in our system and everyone getting a fair, even chance at their preferred presentation is how we roll. we have lived a transfemasculine life. you cant put us in a single blue or pink corner, it wont work we are immune to that bullshit.

the vriskafication of june egbert is basically me trying to short-hand describe the way that ive seen some fans portray june post-transition by turning her into a mean girl[tm] type of person. there's also the roxyfication of june egbert, where other people make her a ditzy bimbo who can do no wrong because 'shes a girl now' and thats apparently how ppl still think girls should behave?? jegbert's canon personality traits need not apply anymore, apparently, bc that was icky boy behaviour. ghostbusters who? she likes shopping now. fanon june is sometimes eerily similar or exactly like vriska (fanon, woobified vriska, mind you, bc we still cant get a grasp on vriska as a fandom either) while also dressing very high femme and only high femme. because she has to perform someone elses femininity (spoiler: our own concept of what girls 'should look like' to be considered girls) instead of her dads masculinity now. shes either mean like vriska, or dumbed down like fanon roxy, who again has been watered down into a ditzy dumb girly girl who has done nothing wrong ever, bc shes 'just a girl', and bc people get Uncomfy when fictional tgirls do bad things. and oh boy has canon roxy done some bad things

as a counterpoint to my aesthetic based grievances, which are entirely personal- you can portray june egbert however you want. i personally invision her as very butch, but i could be totally wrong! im not even trying to make guesses here! this is my personal make-believe! she is not a real person and has never actually appeared as herself in canon. we dont know what junathan would/will be like during and post-transition. we dont know what an egg crack event will do to them. but some of the ways ive seen june portrayed feels........ off, personality wise. very off. and thats what i care about. it feels like malgendering in way too many cases, with the ditzy girliepop/catty girlbully thing. its straying too close to the tgirl brand of madonna/whore that tfems have to face in real life constantly. this is especially bad for tgirl roxy but i'll get to how fanon vs canon roxy is handled later

i use the word 'vriskafication' bc like vriska, june egbert (meaning tgirl jegbert, previously known as john in fandom and currently as john in canon, just to hammer it home that june and john are the same person, because some fans do seem to forget that john is living life believing shes a boy and a man right now and i dont think that should be erased) is still a pretty polarizing concept. fans either love her and disregard jegbert as ever having been john, or they disregard her as a concept in favour of how john is right now in canon. or theyre just straight up transmisogynistic about it bc they want their yaoi or their het ships. and BOY are some of the fandom not shy about that. which actually leads me into my next disclaimer:

im not including tboy/tmasc john headcanons in the above statement. i do not care about fighting over trans headcanons. i think that shit is just disrespectful and pointless and juvenial. you are fighting for nothing. june/john will not thank you for fighting for their trans rights bc they are not real and have no rights. june is not canon (yet) because she has not had that realization yet, and we dont know if/when she will. and genderbend aus have been a thing since the dawn of fandom anyway. more than one type of headcanon can exist at the same time. we are playing pretend. headcanons will never be proper representation. we are fans, not corporate entities or big directors or production teams churning out content for mass audiences. john has been considered a cis boy for FAR longer than june has been a popular concept, and you dont know how long someone has had or how close to someones heart their trans headcanon is, regardless of what flavour of trans headcanon it is. its rude. some of yall are so fucking mean for no reason other than 'you cant sit with us. on wednesdays we wear pink' rules. very intentional reference there

and i mean okay, roxy. big pink elephant in the room. no one respects or even acknowledges the fact that roxy in the Meat timeline is transmasc and currently only uses he/him, and when they do they're bullied fuckin relentlessly and ostracised from fandom spaces. ive seen entire hate campagns specifically for badmouthing transmasc roxy fans to try to get them to stop posting tmasc roxy stuff, or to see it as transmisogynistic violence akin to shooting a real trans girl live on tv. i have seen these comparisons be made on this site. ive seen others get actually violently transphobic about it back in 2019-2022, and even now. ive talked to fans who were mass dogpiled and harrassed off tumblr for liking meat!roxy's direction, or even just not publicly condemning him while having a neutral stance. i myself have been instablocked from servers and off of ppls blogs for thinking tmasc roxy is cool and a good plot point for his overall personal arc, especially in juxtaposition with roxy's pregnancy in candy, and how that affected her rship with her body and her gender. ive been called horrible things for even considering roxy to be anything but DMAB. that chapter in candy where we get a glimpse inside roxy's head about gender was beautifuly written with a lot of tact for trans people who can be or have been pregnant and enjoyed it, something that is INSANELY RARE. UNHEARD OF, EVEN, IN MEDIA. so this really isnt about trans rights or representation from my perspective. its just gendered bullying and a whole lotta white knighting from people who are majoratively not even fucking transfem.

the same notes of trans coding for roxy that fans deem only as transfem could be seen as coding for transmasculinity too. yes, including the XY thing. does anyone remember what foreshadowing is. and all of this even depends, hinges, on whether hussie intentionally wrote ANY of the human kids as trans initially or had it planned from the very beginning, which i really really really dont think she did!!! in 2009??? yeah fucking right!!!! the entire thing about roxy and jane pressuring dirk and jake into relationships is about cis girls feeling posessive of and entitled to queer boy's bodies and attention, because its something they cant have, and cis girls are seen as a group of people physically incapable of harm, which is misogyny that directly effects cis girls/womens victims. its a direct mirroring to cis boys doing the same to queer girls. and as much as i love all flavour of trans reads for the alpha kids in fandom, i dont think i wouldve appreciated it in canon. i wouldve hated it, actually. it waters down the message and makes everything far too messy and open to bad faith interpretation. we need more trans characters doing bad things in media, but the era the alpha kids section of HS1 was being published was NOT the time. an inarguably canon tgirl character preying on an inarguably queer tboy in 2011-2012? there would have been blood in the streets. i VASTLY prefer fanon interpretations when it comes to the alpha kids being trans. i trust fans way more, but i obviously still have reservations about that which is why im here writing all this

to further back this up- hussie has also openly discussed having her eyes opened to queer issues BY queer fans WHILE HS1 was still being updated!!! THATS why you can see a gradual influx of genuine queerness in homestuck as you read it!!! the vagueness of the trans coding we percieve in the text is why tboy john is still so popular!!! WAY more trans experiences, especially in childhood, are more similar than The Current Discourse bad actors will try to have you believe. please dont believe them, they're not right in the head and the ppl trying to convince you that someone has it The Absolute Worst are lying to you. we all have it bad, thats how oppressive systems work. its just in different patterns for indiviuduals. a middle class trans persons oppression can and often will look VASTLY different to a poor trans persons oppression bc different axis of oppression are at work. it depends on the type of person our oppressors label us as, they dgaf if anyone identifies as TME or TMA. thats a little beside the point but its absolutely contributed to how fans treat fictional trans characters, especially in the last few years

i hate hate hate the ideology in this fandom that one trans interpretation or headcanon is more valuable, or hits harder, or is more idk narratively transcendient or powerful than The Other, so The Other is deemed boring/bland/sauceless/whatever and deserves all the hate and takedowns and dismantling and nitpicking it gets. the fans of this Other Trans Headcanon deserve their hate and calls to kill themselves because theyre just Wrong About It. but thats not true. none of that is true. you just dont vibe with other flavours of fanmade trans narrative. and thats completely fine actually. its literally like preferring carrot cake to raspberry pie. it is on that level outside of transphobic biases, and i sincerely believe that a lot of fans start out on that level, but dip into transphobic biases because of the constant fucking weird moral panic about trans girls, and by extension, young trans people as a whole. which is not fine. whats also not fine is attacking fans of trans characters over said trans characters gender, canon or interpreted!!!

to tie this tf up bc i dont want this to go on for any longer than it has, im so so SO SO SO tired of fanon june and roxy being trans girls first and foremost over their actual characterization. and im even MORE tired of the word 'girl' being taken in fiction to mean dumb, sweet, (white)feminine, wouldnt hurt a fly, so so cuddlysoft, girlboss it up girlfriend, you cant sit with us, im such a cool bitch, im cooler than you dumb gross boy because im a girl, what personality i dont have one i dont need one because im a girl.

so much of fandom has forgotten that roxy is fucking mean and WILL ignore whatever doesnt fit her whims/wants and will plow through her closest friends and loved ones regardless of the situation at hand because of what she wants. she canonically admitted to harrassing dirk on the daily because she wanted him, because she was lonely and couldnt see past her own hurt to see that she was also hurting her friend. and oh my god, mom lalonde, worlds first abscent mother who swears up and down that she loves you really, rosie posie, its just that mommy's real hungover again and also very busy. that is BRILLIANT characterization for a female character, and its been forgotten behind the big pink bedazzled neon ITS A GIRL sign. and the same has been happening with june!!! and it sucks!!!! us transfems are just people we are JUST people. i dont want trans girl characters only point of characterization to be trans and girls!!!! i dont want talking heads and perfect cardboard cutouts in lipstick!!!! when june happens i want her to be exactly the same as when she was john because thats who i became enamoured with in HS1 and thats who i watched grow up in the epilogues and THATS who i want to see finally find their place in paradox space as herself. i want her personality intact, and i dont want to see her forget or turn her back on her childhood and teen and young adult years. i dont want june to be fanon vriskafied

[orangerosebush]

I love when Holly confronts Artemis about the (lack of) value he places on the lives and agency of others, as Butler will be simultaneously chilling offscreen somewhere, having definitely killed before in his career.

[onemoreattempt]

In nature, the female is so often larger than the male.

I think we need to reflect this more when we create fantasy creatures.

Give me a new kind of elves where the afab are usually taller/bigger than the amab.

Give me a giant who keeps talking to mc (not a giant and has met no other giants) about how much he loves his wife. Then later the wife is revealed and she’s like 1.3-1.5 times the size of him.

But it doesn’t even have to be significantly taller, I just think that would be funny in the case of the giants bc the mc has never seen someone as big as giant 1, and then giant 2 is even larger. This would also work the opposite way with like…dwarves

I’m also down for some same size representations. Like give me some kind of fairy creature where males and females have the same size on average and same standard deviation.

[outeremissary]

For no reason in particular I think it's really important to note that as much as I am a pretty intense atheist irl in 2024 I do not blame Sarenrae for all of Tristian's fuckups and am generally disinclined to point fingers at the gods in Kingmaker for mortal affairs (someone at Owlcat just straight up hates Shelyn and whatever they are doing there is mildly incoherent). Is it best practice to leave your now ex-angel with Nyrissa? Definitely not, many things would have been solved by Tristian Not being there. But I don't think in the least that Sarenrae has "broken" Tristian out of malice or neglect. I believe that Tristian's divinity was an extraordinary privilege which was revoked for Tristian's failures to be worthy of that privilege (which I hardly think started with Nyrissa, that was just the breaking point).

I also think that there's a way of seeing being left at that moment as both a moment of harm reduction and a trial of faith. I don't think Nyrissa expected to find herself with an angel who had fallen. I think she had likely prepared to manipulate an actual outsider, had wanted someone in command of the full range of their supernatural abilities. And I think such a being could have enabled more damage much faster. And as for the trial of faith: I think there was a solve to this puzzle, a way to prove that one could hold themself to the extraordinary standards of a servant of the transcendent divine, and that was to have faith in the goddess regardless of fear and to refuse to cooperate no matter what. To as soon as aware refuse to be complicit in the slaughter of innocents, the assassination of a stranger. I'm not the world's biggest self-sacrifice advocate and Balthazar certainly reflects that about me but: these are the deeds of heroes and saints. Furthermore, the soul of a mortal can be recovered. If Tristian dies in chapter seven, the given explanation is that they can't be resurrected because Sarenrae has intervened- I firmly believe that if Tristian had died standing up to Nyrissa Sarenrae would have reclaimed them and restored their divinity. Tristian's failures are failures of first ego and then cowardice. When push actually came to shove, they could not be what they claimed to be. It's pitiable. It's very human. Huge fan of the angel who fails by being too human and too flawed. But I do not place this at the feet of Sarenrae. Not fully, at least. Not even mostly.

Of course, Balthazar would be a different matter: he's always happy to throw accusations to the heavens.

[suffarustuffaru]

Reading your tags about how people miss the very obvious "there's some fucked up shit boiling underneath" regarding Otto, just gave me a sudden realization. Otto is the only character I know in fiction where they act all innocent and drive up the "clumsy", "just in the side-lines" and "straight-man (heh)" persona. When. Like no one's in the EMT camp is buying it. They know he's way more capable than he let's on. Meanwhile, the tomfoolery is completely brought on by the Western audience.

Like Otto is failing miserably to make other characters believe that he's not up to mischief, Roswaal even thinks it can bring his downfall. But the audience, who even sometimes *sees* his fucked up thought process, is buying it.

*head in hands*

no u bring up so many good points bc ive been really thinking about this for a while T^T its such an interesting phenomenon in the difference in perception otto has between the japanese speaking half of the fandom vs the english speaking half which can be explained by—yeah. media illiteracy mainly. im also putting my head in my hands anon T^T

because—okay sorry wkdndn im gonna get into meta again but hear me out bc this pattern of the fandom underestimating otto is interesting bc i kind of sort of i cracked the code maybe??? o.o i think the nature of otto is a character is that youre SUPPOSED to underestimate him at first, just like what happens sometimes in universe. i mean wayyy back then i definitely wasnt expecting him to get more depth added to him in arc 4–which was a pleasant surprise—which is also the reaction the vast majority of people have to reading/watching arc 4, along with the other vast majority reaction which is being a bit endeared to ottosubas friendship and respecting otto for being a good friend. and then its easy to underestimate otto bc of 1. all the chaos going on in rezero at any given moment and 2. hes almost always overshadowed by other characters doing worse shit or being more insane than he is and 3. otto of course damn well knows hes easy to underestimate and counts on that. thats what he did against roswaal in arc 4. plus—i mean even aesthetics-wise hes 100% DESIGNED to be easy to underestimate. his outfit and physical features make him look either friendly or frazzled or soft. so i think that the point is that we were supposed to be kind of fooled—at first.

because yeah, we’re endeared to otto. we respect him for helping subaru the way he did. we think that hes a nice person and we now support his actions especially after feeling sympathetic towards him after learning his backstory. (or at least the average audience member will think this wjdndn.) but like—you dont even NEED to look at any side content at all for it to dawn on you that theres something Wrong. with him. like all you need is main route arcs 3-8 aka ottos entire screentime thus far, because at arc 4 its so easy to overlook otto unless youre thinking a bit deeper (for example—he gets violent with subaru. like yeah its entertaining, its played for laughs a bit, yeah subaru needed to be snapped out of his own head, but was it 100% necessary??? why did otto have this response??? bc if you just look at the main timeline otto really decided to beat up subaru first. and bc this tendency is now Less Funny in arc 8).

but even if youre just looking at rezero face value, when you get to arc 5 its starting to get even more clear that ottos weird in the head. like we already saw him being very good at scheming and planning in arc 4–in arc 5, we find out about otto hiding the tome for a year. we find out WHY hes been hiding the tome for a year. the tome then leads the witch cult into priestella, so like—in the sense, otto is RESPONSIBLE for arc 5. but theres STILL a tendency sometimes for the audience to continue underestimating him even though by this point we’re getting more clues and many characters around otto, like you said anon, KNOW hes very capable. i keep wondering why this is, but arc 5 is, again, FULL of chaos and different storylines happening at once, so its so easy to almost kind of forget otto there in the background until he occasionally pops up again. plus otto serves an additional role as comedic relief sometimes—he spends all of arc 5 being bitchy and whiny (i say this affectionately HAH) about his camp being full of disasters, for example, so i think the natural response from the audience tends to be “aw otto!! what a silly guy!!” sometimes. you know? so its like. i think at this point some people tend to be like “yeah fair that otto was wary of roswaal and thats why he saved the tome…. anyway ooooh whats going on with these other plot points” wobsbss. its so fascinating bc—ok this might be my own personal experience but anyone reading this pls tell me if you agree or not—i dont think ive seen a lot of people actually even MENTION otto bringing the tome into priestella attracting witch cultists. and the english speaking fandom LOVES to go into certain characters’ wrongdoings so why gloss over otto????

the only explanation i have for this is that from arcs 3-4 underestimating otto is. kind of the point of his character UNTIL you get to arc 5 and the clues in the main story start seeping in even more. and also the western audience DOES have media illiteracy a lot. theres that too. just look at rezero content on youtube or reddit or fanfic sites or other things of that sort T^T but no yeah i think ottos nature as a character exacerbates it. youre supposed to start asking questions about him. youre supposed to start connecting the dots and then SUDDENLY its now EXTREMELY obvious in arc 7-8 and even while theres so much chaos going on its basically shoved in your face. arc 7-8 is just delivering on all the leadup that was arcs 3-5.

and i think that youve gotta be media illiterate for sure to NOT get that otto is not squeaky clean and innocent BY ARC 8. i think that ottos the deconstruction of the loyal best friend trope, and also a mirror into what subaru couldve been like if he decided to be more ruthless instead of jumping right to forgiveness and saving everyone, except sometimes that flies right over the audience’s head wkdndnd. it confuses me bc ive seen some people completely miss the point or completely agree with otto and overlook the Bad Parts of it or, you know, STILL think ottos perfectly sane—like T^T please.

and yeah so back to what you said about otto Not being underestimated In Universe—its such an interesting detail bc hes ALWAYS been simultaneously pathetic and Very Competent wjdndnd. but yeah no all of his friends have seen various hints and clues and evidence of what hes capable of. like even though he hid the tome from them successfully and even though hes hiding info now its INEVITABLE that its gonna blow up in his face one day. like you got characters like garfiel who literally saw otto punch the wall and break his hand in an unhinged fit of rage, julius who got snapped at by otto and while julius is a Bit naive definitely knows somethings off there, anastasia whos smart as hell and definitely knows not to underestimate otto, and roswaal who, like you said anon, literally went out of his way to stop otto from breaking his hand in another unhinged fit of rage and warned otto that he will literally be destroying himself if he keeps going on like this. its this fascinating dichotomy bc otto is NOT fooling anyone around him but at the same time his current schemes are mostly unnoticed—for now—which yeah i havent seen that in a lot of media!!! its an interesting balancing act bc people around him realistically know hes competent after seeing the Proof of that for the past couple arcs, but otto is still finding ways to try and Win…

which—again, the anger and violence is an extension of arc 4 otto!! this is the same guy!! hes always been like this!! ottos kind of stayed the same, deep down, this whole time and as an audience its ONLY shoved in our face with a big gigantic spotlight on it FOUR ARCS LATER, but it was hinted to all this time. and like you said anon—we LITERALLY see ottos fucked up thought processes. literally what sane person thinks any of that shit. its spelled right out for the reader HAH T^T which—yeah. media illiteracy…. and also this whole ask was a longer way of just saying that otto is VERY easy to see at surface level if youre media illiterate. but at the same time it should be very easy to figure out otto is A Bit Fucked Up bc tappei underlines it in bright red print!!! i think people sometimes just hang onto soft awkward silly otto and forget about the rest T^T either that or they dont think he cares about subaru at all. which. that phenomenon of thinking characters that do care about subaru Dont Care is also interesting to me bc why????? we’re at arc 8 and you STILL dont get it??? o.ooooo

but yeah apart from that….. i said this earlier but yeah sometimes some people agree with ottos realism in arc 8 which is. understandable, but the whole point is that he is EXTREME. with it. hes Not in the right here, but the same crowd that wants wanton revenge in rezero is gonna agree with that kind of stuff T^T ottos been lurking in the background so much so that tappei made it meta by doing the whole “walking in darkness” part of his character, so i guess people just. dont see ottos ACTUAL worst traits and instead think he would ditch subaru at the first opportunity or something. but at the point we are now, arc 8 ottos problem isnt that hed ditch subaru. his problem is that he would sacrifice the world for subaru. his problem is that he gets extremely angry at subaru for trying to do good. his problem is that hes trying to micromanage everything around him and is willing to sacrifice anything necessary to get what he wants. but sometimes people dont get that bc otto doesnt look sound or seem like a character thatd do that. the Underestimation part of his character is doing too well on. certain audiences. please T^T the soft and awkward and silly parts ARE part of his character just like all the Darker parts are!!!

additionally im also wondering if western audience perception of otto is also clouded by the fact that otto looks and sounds more feminine / androgynous and he doesnt have the appeal of Overt Power either……. he cant Really be waifu-ified… and he cant be used as a weird self insert like subaru…. and you Have to look at him closer to understand him…. and for some reason people dont tend to hate on him so aggressively, if anything people cant even see his actual canonical flaws half the time wkdndn so if youre not paying attention otto CANT be aggressively hated on bc theres nothing there if ur not looking at it….. and if youre not paying attention otto seems more “boring” compared to the others…… (not that people arent allowed to not have otto as a favorite character bc thats totally fair but im talking about the tendency to think hes Saner than he actually is.) but yeah these are just my guesses. i have no clue the western fandom is a little T^T some people unfortunately cannot read.

anyway. big thank you to the japanese fanbase for understanding ottos character more and making so much wonderful fancontent for him T^T also i think that we as a collective fanbase should stop underestimating otto in general bc its exactly what he wouldnt want and i think itd be really hilarious. <3333 make him explode with rage please

[notecapn]

Heizou from the arranged marriage au - again, by @throwingstuffhere, very inspiring, thank you

Ayato here for emotional support (and as a point of reference)

some thoughts on that under the cut (and close ups of the coloured Heizous)

i talked previously about this a bit, so there are going to be things i've said previously and a couple of new thoughts. but mostly just rambling

the design choices were made as if Heizou was an in-game character who frequently fights but still needs to look presentable

i’m still on the hakama pants for Heizou, and if not that, he’d probably ask to make the trousers loose (like slacks maybe), with all the splits Heizou can do they’d tear otherwise, unless the material is more flexible than how it looks on Ayato. but quite frankly they look just like normal ones, if a bit more expensive

i am, in fact, speaking from personal experience, dress trousers are very likely to tear if you try kicking something high above your waist level - especially if it's more than once, and i don’t imagine Heizou is very careful about this, and i think he’s used to more freedom in his leg work, or any body part actually, he has a lot of skin showing

as for everything else: it's pending, really.

the vision could be both on his right hip - just like Ayato, or his left one - sort of like it used to be, and mirroring Ayato and also kind of completing the Kamisato's vision placements: Ayato and Thoma on the right hip, Ayaka on her back and Heizou on his left. i also could be reading too much into things (or i'm actually not reading into this enough and it's very important for the characters where they place their visions: like how important their vision is to them, or there's symbolism of the placement, or it's just pure aesthetics)

i had half a mind to put Heizou in a pair of dancing shoes. they look so funky - i have no idea if they are comfortable or not and they look like they could slip off at any moment. for the record i am not planning on putting him in a pair of funky dancing shoes (for now)

tbh i didn't think too much about his footwear previously, i just thought to put him in some dress shoes like Ayato, even if those are not particularly comfortable - but it would be more painful if he delivers some sick kicks: physics of pressure, with the area being smaller and the force staying the same and all that

he could also go with geta (or sandals?) like Ayaka - which would also make sense. Ayato's job requires him to sit a lot so naturally he doesn't walk too much for the shoes to cause him any trouble, but if we're going with the assumption that Heizou tends to work best on foot (old habits die hard, you see), then he'd be miserable if he wore the shoes all the time. counterpoint, however, is that i don't want to draw toes, and i am a coward

also the coloured designs are what i'd consider his formal outfit: as far as my research goes, yukatas (which Heizou usually wears in the au from what i can tell) tend to be worn for less formal events, and it's at the very least not customary to wear yukatas under hakama pants, so..

also also it has been a while since i’ve properly worked with colour so i am extremely unsure how I want this to look, that is why there are two sets of colours of each design. and i don't even think i'm satisfied with that? and obviously the outfit can be a combination of the two styles, i just threw things at the wall to see what sticks

the first version is based on the one i've made previously, with some minor changes, like the Anemo inspired print on the pants and on the inside of the cloak (i don't know if it is noticable, there are sakura petals as well), and the arm guards (also yes, the red does not look very good on him, i just wanted to add something different, spice things up a little). and yes, i still imagine Heizou magically discarding the cloak when he attacks

(edit) additionally, Heizou with more blue in his palette:

the second one is very heavily leaning on Ayato's design, with less layers, loose trousers and a western shirt underneath. this one was done mostly to test out the coat and the trousers

and lastly: i'm not a historian or a fashion designer or a historian fashion expert. i have no idea what i'm doing other than looking at all the pictures available on the internet and drawing inspiration from that

and @raccoonwithacoffeeproblem, if you wish to see it

[superfluouskeys]

forget me not

Stray Gods || Grace/Persephone

She can’t bear to face anyone since she dropped out of college.  She had to talk to her parents, obviously, but it’s been almost a year since they spoke.  She was expecting them to yell at her, tell her she was wasting her life, tell her she’d never get anywhere without a college degree, that she was almost done, so why couldn’t she just wait it out another couple of years and then at least she’d have finished something? But they didn’t yell.  They both just seemed…sad.  Tired.  And that was so much worse. It was like they had given up on her. Grace doesn’t know how to explain.  She still hasn’t quite managed to explain it even to herself.  Would anyone understand?  Freddie never demanded an explanation—she loved Grace no matter what—but Grace was sure she wouldn’t get it.  Freddie was passionate about so many things.  Freddie was the sort of person who would probably go on to get a Master’s and a Doctorate or maybe two or three, because she just couldn’t decide what she loved the most. And Grace? Grace barely even felt like a person in college.  She tried to do all kinds of things, join clubs, meet people, take classes she thought might be interesting.  She tried to distance herself from Freddie, even, and she was not gentle.  She tried to destroy herself over and over again, and make something entirely new.  She tried to forge herself into someone interesting, someone worthwhile. But in the end, the truth always came crashing back to her.  She can’t escape herself.  She can’t escape how utterly unremarkable she is.

Read More (AO3)

[junotter]

sometimes researching for avatar redesigns has you 6 layers deep into the Japan's Meiji era allies wiki

[goldentigerfestival]

Forgot to post this earlier but I did in fact comb the entire Vesperia script to determine how many times he uses ま/まあ throughout the game, along with a few other phrases he uses repeatedly. This counts all of main story, every single sidequest, and every single skit in the game.

Final counts were:

ま/まあ: 279

Ma/Maa; translates to "well". He uses this at the beginning of a sentence usually, but it's sometimes in the middle. "Ma" is usually more quick and snappy. "Maa" is more thoughtful and/or prolonged. Obviously it can vary based on context, but that's the general breakdown.

んじゃ and any variants: 133

Nja, along with variants such as "ja", "soreja", etc. Variants are counted when they're all used to express "let's get going", when they're about to head off ("ja" could be used in a sentence such as "ja/but then, why is xyz like this", etc). They encompass translations such as "well then" (let's get going implied. includes "so then", "then" "alright then", and so on), "we should be off", "let's get going", "let's go", etc. (not to be confused with 行こう(ikou), 行くぜ, (ikuze), and other similar versions of this phrase. That can also mean "let's go", but any instances of Yuri using that particular phrase was not counted because it wasn't a variant of, specifically, んじゃ, which is also his most common "let's go" ja variant).

おい / おいおい: 66

Oi/Oi oi; translates to "hey"/"hey, hey", though "oi" is more or less an accepted word in English nowadays.

おっと: 12

Otto (not to be confused with "oto", referring to sound); an expression of surprise that can translate roughly to "whoa there" (which is the most common translation I do see for it and what I'd use in most cases too, context of course varying). The reason I included this one despite it being so seemingly low in number is because it's not a particularly common expression, much less one used multiple times by a single character? It's so rare from anyone else, which is just a regular thing relative to Yuri and his dialogue/speech (i.e. most characters sparingly use phrases repeatedly, as compared to Yuri... as you can see lol. Other characters use these words/phrases, but nowhere near as regularly, if regularly at all).

Realized along the way I should've included やれやれ (yare yare, "good grief", "oh dear", "oh boy" etc), but by the time I realized I should have in case it was an interesting count, I was too far into the script to be able to handle going all the way back through it LOL.

No. No, I am not joking that Yuri used ま/まあ 279 times throughout the course of the game. That is to say, it could be more if I missed any, but on the assumption I didn't, that's where it stands.

Why do I love this so much? Because it's a very specific character quirk of a character I adore. I'm very fond of his repetition. Thank you.