#god that being my personal post tag now is gonna be really funny whenever I'm posting about CRYMACHINA specifically

[gloochi]

Mikoto and Noein?

So if you've looked in the CRYMACHINA artbook at all, you've probably noticed this interesting tidbit on Noein's page.

Her face resembles Mikoto's? And the fact that it's secret lore means that this was intentional. This wasn't just some "oh, we're gonna reuse a face on this character whose face will never be fully shown" situation, so what's the deal here?

Warning! Major spoilers for the end of the game below the Read More. Click at your own risk (preferably don't click if you haven't at least finished chapter 7).

Importantly, I think it's less that Mikoto and Noein resemble each other and more that they both resemble Eve. Sort of. Humans are very much nothing like they are in our world (unless we're also in a simulation that lost what humanity truly looks like), so there are some liberties to take here. We'll start with the Noein connection as that's the one that takes a bit more explaining and Hurts Me more.

Noein is very much a Missing Link of sorts between Humanity and the E.V.E., largely looking like a cross between the two. In fact, she rather heavily resembles the statues in Eden specifically.

Notably, there's also concept art of Noein with four arms, which I truly desperately wish had made the final cut.

As for the connections to Eve, Noein carries herself in much the same way, and I'd even argue that her thorny crown is somewhat reminiscent of Eve's thorny head.

On its own, this sounds tenuous at best, especially since Eve notably has NO eyes due to being a designer baby, but we know from Noein's Personality Data Memoir, one of the Cardinals' Personality Data Memoirs, and the document obtained from completing the Cardinals sidequest that Xu Dong, Noein's creator, was in love with Eve. Considering that Eve's presence on the project was being completely scrubbed, Xu Dong likely would've wanted to immortalize Eve's involvement in some other way, likely by drawing on Eve as her inspiration for building Noein, and thus, Noein could be argued to resemble an abstraction of what Eve would've looked like as a normal Human, a connection that I definitely feel would've been stronger with the four-armed Noein design.

And with that explained, now I can touch on why Mikoto has the same face. As we know, the E.V.E. Project was an attempt to recreate Eve for Lilly's sake, and Mikoto seems to have been the closest to that goal by far. She showed little to no rejection responses when given ExP (her reactions largely being limited to flashbacks whenever it altered her memories), and Evetization even seemed to be progressing at a decent pace, considering that Leben comments on how Mikoto has been acting differently lately in a Tea Party towards the end of chapter 3. On top of that, Lilly even recognized her as her sister ON SIGHT and took her head on the spot, confident that she was the one without even needing to check her personality data. Considering Lilly's genuine confusion as to why Mikoto wasn't fully awakening as Eve at the end of chapter 5, it can be assumed that she still wasn't getting major rejection responses, and the only reason it was failing was due to Eden's failsafes preventing a second Eve from existing. Thus, add on the fact that Mikoto shares a face with Noein and what we've previously established about the both of them, and we can surmise that Mikoto looks INCREDIBLY similar to what Eve would've looked like as an E.V.E., to the point where they could potentially look like twins when side-by-side.

Further backing this up, though, is Mikoto's eyes. As we know, Eve doesn't actually have any eyes, almost certainly due to her being a designer baby. It's unknown whether she can see without them or if she relies more on her remaining senses, but she can at least perceive the E.V.E. well enough to know that they're a poor approximation of Humans.

Mikoto, meanwhile, has two notable details about her eyes. The most obvious detail is that she wears glasses in her virtual form, and considering Eve's (lack of) eyes, Mikoto's glasses are probably just as functional as they are fashionable.

The less obvious detail is that, while it's perfectly obscured in her virtual form, her right eye is incredibly fucked up, and you can see as much if you look closely enough at her synthetic frame. The sclera is blood red, and the iris is pitch black.

Interestingly, there's concept art in the artbook showing her with her hair up, and there, the colors of the sclera and iris are swapped. The old colors can also be seen on her character model (if you use her launcher, then activate photo mode while she's ascending) and very briefly during the NotToNotice(); MV, but the MakeFlowerCrown(); MV uses the new colors, meaning that the change likely happened late in development. This particular shot also feels like it calls attention to it, with it being centered on the camera and only flashing on screen for a brief moment. If I had to guess, there may have originally been plans to call attention to her eye at some point, but those were scrapped for one reason or another, and the colors were swapped to make it easier for eagle-eyed players to notice. Again, though, this is just speculation.

Considering everything else about the connection between Mikoto and Eve, this is almost certainly an analog to Eve's missing eyes, especially when we consider how the NotToNotice(); MV focuses on it for just a brief moment. Interestingly, the fact that Mikoto specifically hides the eye with her hair (even around family) implies a lack of self-confidence in regards to it. It's possible she was mistreated because of it while growing up, which would line up with her being rather similar to Eve. I do wish we had gotten at least a Tea Party touching on her eye, but considering that it would likely have required a whole new set of portraits for her with her eye exposed just for the very little time it's used, I get why it ended up being just a background detail.

Tl;dr, Noein was likely an abstraction of what a Human looked like, likely modeled after Eve as an act of love from Xu Dong, and Mikoto almost certainly looks incredibly similar to how Eve would've looked as an E.V.E. Thus, Mikoto and Noein share the same face. This lore truly is secret, given all the pieces you have to connect to uncover the why of it all. 😆

[harrowing-of-hell]

it is 4am and i have consumed alcohol and i'm having tlt thoughts but they will probably not be coherent and this will be a very stream of consciousness post you have been warned

ok so to be very honest i was baffled that people read griddlehark as like, explicitly romantic whenever i first was browsing the tlt tag

like they were very obvs homoerotic and like i will directly quote tazmuir here and say there were "elements of a love story there" but i was not getting the same vibes that apparently everyone else was??

and maybe this is the difference between reading GTN in 2019 and then having to wait a year for HTN, because to me that allows a lot of time for your mind to sit and think on things and speculate

meanwhile i read GTN and HTN back to back. from my notes i finished GTN sept 14, 2022 (and i started reading it like, at MOST a week before that) and then i started HTN on sept 22 and finished it four days later (rip to people who say HTN was hard to read couldn't have been me. saw that it was in second person and nutted on the spot literally my favorite POV. guess im just built different. anyways)

so like, very obviously little down time between reading those 2 books so not a lot of time to really sit and think on it given that this is TLT we're talking about

but even now having read NTN and it now being a full year later since starting the series i still... don't get it

rather, i do not get it trying to read their relationship from the way that most people in the fandom seem to be reading it.

the pool scene and like, the drastic shift that it caused in harrow and gideon's relationship made very little sense to me and seemed kinda out of nowhere until i started thinking about it in this way; harrow and gideon do not love each other for who the other person is but rather what that person might mean for them.

to me gideon is vrry obviously someone who craves purpose after being treated like shit and generally just viewed as someone as disposable. so it makes sense to me that her goal was to escape the ninth and go join the cohort (so she can go be disposable but With Purpose).

but when they got to Canaan house....

bro cytherea groomed her SO FUCKING HARD. it's actually kinda fucking funny in a fucked up way because cytherea was like "noo gideon don't let anyone treat u like this" while gideon was getting her life force succed out of her but LITERALLY every one of cytherea's interactions with gideon just... reinforced and instilled the idea of cavalierhood in gideon

so much so that by the end of GTN gideon was like "no harrow YOU'RE the one who doesn't understand what a necro and cav are supposed to mean to each other." brainwashed. absolutely brainwashed.

ofc being surrounded by other necro/cav pairs who were Properly fulfilling their social roles influenced her as well, but cytherea had such a big part to play in it.

so naturally gideon's Search For Purpose shifts from being disposable-but-with-purpose in the cohort to being disposable-but-with-purpose as a cavalier.

so for gideon a relationship with harrow as her cavalier might mean a chance at having a Purpose, and this is why gideon loves her

meanwhile for harrow... the girl is 200 dead children and has been suicidal about that shit from day one. so here is one of the children that was supposed to die for her, but didn't, and fought her every single day of their lives, and it's this child that's offering her forgiveness???? like bro ofc she's gonna take that it's literally the salvation she's been looking for that even God, as we learn in HTN, can't offer her.

so naturally when the answer to lyctorhood is "ok now kill her and vore her soul <3" harrow would be like FUCK no. harrow has only now really beginning to think of gideon as a person and not a slave, as someone who is OF the Ninth house and not just beholden to it. so whyy would she ever kill her at this point.

and we KNOW this means so much to harrow because, thinking she's on the brink of death, she just straight up asks gideon if she's really forgiven her.

this is why i think they love each other and also i think this adds up with where they are now in the series. their reasons for loving the other person are completely at odds!!! so even with their now "Repaired" relationship it is still hopelessly fractured!!!

and tbh i do think griddlehark at this point is more, but not at all completely, one-sided than most people think because like, i think (or at least i hope??) harrowhark is slowly snapping out of this line of thinking and is realizing that's Not a healthy way to view gideon (idk i may be wrong) while gideon is DOUBLING DOWN SO HARD on being a cavalier. like that is her Purpose now it is her Identity!!! she needs to be someone's cavalier, and if she can't be harrow's then she'll try to be her father's.

not a fucking word out of her mouth when alecto kisses harrow but when alecto pledges herself to harrow?? she called the soul of the earth A SLUT!! absolutely insane.

anyways that's it that's all i had to say. i hope harrow and alecto fuck nasty in ATN <3

im not tagging this as anything tlt related but this will prob still some how show up in tags anyways because tumblr is stupid and broken

[batarangsoundsdumb]

guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.

For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell

fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one

i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft

that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you

tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again

as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)

hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s

holy shit yes.

SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe

superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'

does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom

it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.

I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?

as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)

somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.

and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!

babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence

babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to

JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT

again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song

The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian

oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag

soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"

i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage

Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?

don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)

What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk

stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.

This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it

This is canon now @nctxrejects

lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out

idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family

bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another

I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.

yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.

Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings

smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn

Duke was adopted by Bruce?

not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?

True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live

true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?

apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome

ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.

ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut

lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash

oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man

while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.

dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie

magnum hot take

hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth

thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)

why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???

what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones

oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no

I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked

yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends

"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years

i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.

BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them

lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.

I am in love with your posts your honour thank you

omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?

The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john

Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian

yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

and what about it?

when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST

oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat

Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes

lmao i do too

I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it

he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.

you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank

babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)

ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something

that's a very good vocabulary upgrade

somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”

steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.

Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious

babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks

In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97

lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)

You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.

bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers

How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?

horrible, next question.

I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid

yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time

bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)

lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)

Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje

he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'

I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??

i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way

SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed

'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'

i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam

fair enough