#hope this is useful! lmk if you need any further help or clarification i love helping with stuff like this!

[hartro-owns-my-heart-ro]

Hi! You reblogged some welcome home art and I’m really curious, but I can’t find anything online about it that doesn’t feel like it’s lying to me. Could you tell me what it is and how I can find out more?

omg I’ll try to give my best summary!! It’s very website-based and uses some unreality so its reasonable to have problems finding out what its deal is at first.

Welcome Home is a web horror with ARG elements that hasn’t fully taken off yet and is still in its prologue stage, though we’ve been getting more breadcrumbs recently. It’s made by clown (partycoffin on tumblr) and some others. It’s being told through the format of a website run by a fictional group trying to recover and preserve remnants of an old 70’s muppet show. This site currently just introduces the show and its characters as well as the preservation project, with just a few hints of something strange going on if you poke around.

This first link is to the website the story is told through, no horror warnings if you’re going through it normally and not messing with the source code or anything

This link is to another page where clown explains about Welcome Home as a horror project and their plans for the story, warning for various kinds of disturbing horror art

After these I’d also recommend youtuber Night Mind’s ‘viewer discoveries’ video which goes through all the hidden stuff on the site that’s harder to find (warning for scopophobia and some short screaming and retching audio in that one). They also did a read-through video of the above sites if that’s your preferred viewing method!

[everything-laito]

What do you think that Yui did different that didn't made Laito feel tediousness, other than being supportive and being able to break his walls? I know that she is the surrogate of the player so her writing is limited, but I never found her that unique, of the few characterisation given to her.

Ooooh! Interesting question, anon! This will be fun. 

Ok first of all, Yui’s character has quite a bit of characterization and development to her. Yes she’s the “surrogate” character, but compared to other otome games like Mystic Messenger, she has enough writing to her to be treated both as the player character,  but also as a character on her own. 

You are entitled to your own opinion, and I’m not here to change that despite me disagreeing, but I am going to list some examples of unique Yui related characterization. If you’re talking about her in the anime, she’s completely watered down and is written very poorly. As always, rant under the cut!

Before I get into the specifics of her character with Laito, one of the big things about Yui’s character at first is definitely her relationship with religion. She’s a Roman Catholic I believe, which is a pretty strict denomination of Christianity. I don’t practice a religion, but I do have some Catholic friends and my family is Methodist, so I do have some brushes with that specific religion. Catholicism these days are all over the place, sure it’s more strict (from what I’ve heard) compared to other Christian denominations, but some people who are Catholic these days are more lenient and just take the Bible with a grain of salt. That goes for all denominations of all sorts of religions; there’s a lot of conflict with what’s “right” practice and what’s “wrong.” However I’m just talking about Catholicism now from what I know. 

We do know that Yui was brought up in a pretty strict area. It’s canon that she wanted to be a nun as well. She was prepared to be devoted to her god for the rest of her life. In Laito’s chapter, she still continued to pray to god and to ask them for help, despite all the awful things Laito has put her through. The reason why I believe she can be a character of her own and not a surrogate character is this niche characterization given to her. I’d say most people playing DL aren’t Catholic, so putting in specific writing stuff such as that doesn’t make her a typical “surrogate character.” 

Yui’s an extremely strong female character, and her religious belief definitely gives her strength, and many people in real life also gets strength from their beliefs as well. Again, I’m not sure how that works personally, but I do know it gives most people some kind of optimism, and you can extract that from Yui’s reactions.

Yui doesn’t break easily because of her optimism and caring nature. She doesn’t feel too alone in the Sakamaki mansion because she has her god, so it doesn’t make her despair easily. I know I’m talking about one niche characterization given to her, but I’ll be talking about more as I continue with Laito in the picture. 

Laito definitely has a corruption kink. He projects what Cordelia did to him on poor Yui. He’s attracted to Yui’s innocence and says this in Limited V of HDB in Dark 07:

“Haa…Such an innocent smell of someone who does not know what it’s like to be defiled yet. Say…Become more and more dirty until you’ve fallen. Show me that side of you who has genuinely surrendered themselves to me.” (Limited V edition)

A motif I’ve come across Laito’s route is him telling Yui that he will make her “fall.” I use my translations from @/dialovers-translations, and at the beginning of Laito’s route, she makes this T/N to this quote:

Laito: The pleasure that comes from falling. (4)

Vee: (4) The verb 落ちる or ‘ochiru’ used here literally means to fall, such as falling from a building, etc. However, it can always be used to refer to ‘falling’ in the sense of giving in to lust or any other vice. (Think of English expression like ‘fallen angel’) 

Laito references this many times throughout his HDB route. He claims a couple of times that he likes to take his “sweet time” tainting Yui. He’s taken a liking to her because of her purity. I believe Yui probably reminded Laito of himself. I elaborate on this even more in this analysis as well. 

I mention in that analysis that Laito takes a liking to Yui because he considers her as a challenge. Not only does he take pleasure in making others “fall” to make himself feel better about himself and more powerful (I’ve said this before but he’s a typical bully), but he also gets bored easily. Laito mentioned how he’s never met a girl like Yui. She’s stubborn and sticks to her own morals, and it takes a bit of time to make her completely give up her own morals and fit them to Laito’s. It takes until the Ecstacy prologue for her to ask herself if she has a right in praying to them anymore. It’s also mentioned how someone has never survived this long into the awakening before. Either the process is too much for the girls, or the brothers just get bored and find the sacrificial bride a nuisance. 

On top of Yui continuously being caring to Laito (I don’t mean not standing up for herself, because she definitely does that; although it doesn't faze Laito) and entertaining to him, there is the mystery of her blood being Cordelia’s. Obviously we know the answer to that, but Laito didn’t, and he found it more peculiar as well. Here’s another post in regards to that as well that someone else wrote. Yui’s also smart, and although Laito has power over her, she continues to try to outwit him and stick to her guns. She does that a lot in MB from what I remember, although I can’t think of specific examples (if anyone has any, please lmk!). By then in MB, she kinda knew how Laito ticked mid route, and was able to get her way temporarily by tricking him. 

This kind of went all over the place I apologize, I just love Yui and her character. It breaks my heart at the end of Laito’s route with her saying she doesn’t deserve to believe in her religion anymore and the one thing that got her through most of Laito’s character was crumbling. I’m not even religious like I mentioned and that even got me in the heart. It’s scary how someone can do that.

I hope I was able to answer (and if this mess made any sense haha) but if you have any further questions or need more clarification, don’t hesitate to reach out, anon!