#i really expected this to be way longer

[gaygirldoodles]

I already made a post about the ocs themselves, so heres more about the worldbuilding

The mages are basically just normal humans but they have an organ that secreats magic juice into their bloodstream that sits by their heart (i stole this from the owl house)

While normal folk, or homo sapiens tend to be better at more crafty things, mages, or homo facundus, tend to focus on magic and the arts. This is not the end all be all in any way, but yeah.

Mages and normal folk interact all the time and even have kids together. There aren't as many mages as there are normal folk, and there are certain communities that are mostly mages

Most mages do not see normal folk as beneath them for not being able to do magic. Obviously there would be at least one, but its not really an issue and they tend to respect eachother a lot

Homo sapien means wise man, while homo facundus means fluent man. This is because of the mages connection to language and its connection to their magic

Sometimes, when a mage and normal folk have kids, that kid will be able to do magic

As the generations go by, there are still traces of magic in the descendants blood, but the further back the most common mage ancestor is, the less they can do. If someone's grandmother was a mage, but none of their parents were, they wouldn't be able to do magic, but would have a significant resistance to it

Most of the time is a common person is cursed or hexed by a mage, the effects don't linger if it is reversed properly. If the person has a mage ancestor, in very extreme cases, they may have permanent effects from the curse

My character Lily, retains some crow traits that only get more severe over time after being turned into a crow by Delilah's mother (more on that on the previous post which i will try to link)

There are certain laws that were created specifically because of magic. There are doctors who work specifically with mages or descendants of them

There are also doctors who specialize in those who have lingering effects from some kind of curse

While the two species to interact a whole lot, most communities consist of mostly one of them. While there are communities that are more heavily mixed, they aren't as many as the former.

[forgettable-au]

FORGETTABLE-AU (Page 48-52)

FOUND.

[BEGINNING] [PREVIOUS] [CONTINUE]

[clownsuu]

Hey I'm Panic, and it's time to Gay!

Biblically accurate gay people jumpscare

[thecandymaticart]

A silly little idea I had

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Ok, I think I have a pretty good idea of why a lot of Akechi's dialogue is... like that.

So, even before his confidant truly started, I noticed that he has a real knack for directing the flow of a conversation. This is very fitting for someone who is both a detective and skilled at interviews - when there is a topic and a goal, Akechi is in his element.

All this to say, he's actually kind of controlling when it comes to conversational flow. He probes for information, or turns the conversation around to a particular topic, usually the Phantom Thieves. He manages to take a few of Joker's dialogue options and spin them so they sound mildly incriminating in the context he's placed them in - the only way to truly get around this is to pick answers that feign indifference, and even then, that's more than a bit telling. He's clearly very good at this kind of thing.

But then, we get conversations where either Joker does something he didn't expect, or else he doesn't have a particular goal in mind - and the conversation stutters. In the first instance, Joker does something (a particularly egregious example is putting his glasses on him and fluffing his hair in rank 3) which both leaves him wrong-footed and no longer in perfect control of the situation. He just kind of... freezes, for awhile. It's hilarious. He has no idea how to respond.

He picks up control again in the phone call afterwards, having chosen to play into it, turning this "fooling the crowds" into a kind of game or secret between them. Nice save.

But in instances where there isn't an obvious topic and the goal is somewhat nebulous, for instance, that one Leblanc scene, it becomes pretty apparent that Akechi doesn't have the right "script" to go off of. Again, it's particularly notable in that scene, because I'm fairly sure he didn't have any specific reason to be at Leblanc, other than him looking for a quiet spot now that public opinion has turned on him. And because there isn't anything specific he's digging for, he kind of just ends up throwing things at the wall to see what will stick. Probing for any kind of recognizable reaction that he can jump on and work with, and that just doesn't really happen in this scene.

He references Sae, a woman in a respectable position, to Sojiro, but instead of that netting a welcome, it earns his ire, given Sae's recent actions against him. He then tries to greet Joker, his... rival? friend? enemy? person who at least seems to somewhat enjoy spending time with him? But Joker's responses are somewhat short, and Akechi practically wilts. He tries to commiserate by oversharing. He tries to involve Futaba and reaches out for the only topic of interest he can think of around "young people". He compliments the coffee. He compliments Joker. He tries to invoke that connection between them. None of it is really sticking, nor does it serve as a jumping off point for him to steer the conversation, or even really start one.

So, he basically just ends up having a one-sided chat with himself and then leaves. Hilarious. Also a little sad, if I'm being honest. It's really giving "guy with no friends who only knows how to speak to adults" energy. If there's no specific purpose to the exchange, or he is not in control of its direction, he seems to be kind of out of his depth. He succeeds only in being a little awkward and confusing, more than anything.

[anonymous-chicken-was-taken]

There is a man named Stanford Pines.

Just about anyone in the scientific community knows his name, and most know his face. It would be hard not to. It's plastered on magazines, on websites, on informational guides about the Institute of Oddology. Stanford Pines is synonymous with the word odd, peculiar, strange; it takes very little digging to find that.

Yet, when it comes to actually meeting the man? No matter who you ask, the answer is almost always no, they have not met him. Everyone knows of him, but nobody knows him. They see his face, they hear his name, they read his papers, they know his arguments. A lucky few even converse with him through email, or letters, or phone conversations. However, meeting him face to face seems to be an occurrence even rarer than the beasts he writes essays about.

Sometimes, he makes a public appearance. Sometimes, someone will see him walking about in some small, secluded space. His co-founder follows him like a shadow, never long taking his eyes away, full as they are of both care and peculiar caution.

Even more unheard of, sometimes, Stanford Pines will do something that interacts with the public. Once every few years, he will appear for an interview, or a photo, or something else to please the magazines that fill up his inbox. McGucket will be with him, every single time, and afterwards there will be whispers on the very internet he created from the people he'd spoken to. By all accounts, Stanford Pines is a very subdued, polite gentleman. Someone who is very intelligent and awkward, and attached to his co-founder at the hip. A man who is followed at all times by an army of personal security and NDAs. "For safety," McGucket will say as Pines' face goes dark. No one ever explains who's being kept safe, or from what.

To the students at the Institute of Oddology, it's even stranger. Nowhere does it say that seeing or meeting the core founder is guaranteed -- in fact, in comparison to other institutes, it's hardly even advertised that he's there -- but it's still surprising. If Stanford Pines is seen at all, it's almost always from behind a screen. Some students graduate without ever having seen him in-person. He does not attend events. He does not greet families. He does not make speeches unless he's being projected on a screen, a stark contrast to McGucket and his exaggerated mannerisms as his very real and present form hovers nearby. He holds no office on the entire campus. It is not unheard of to see him taking a walk with his co-founder, but it's rare enough to be shocking.

Rumors fly. Some are silly, absent things that would seem implausible to anyone who hasn't spent time in Gravity Falls. He's a vampire. He's a robot made by McGucket. He's a whole eldritch entity. Some rumors are more serious, whispered when his reclusive nature rings suspicious among the masses. None of them change the facts.

Perhaps it would make more sense if his co-founder was similar. However, Fiddleford McGucket is the polar opposite of Stanford Pines. He responds to interviewers asking about his computers. He makes speeches. He wanders around campus, stopping to chat with anyone who cares to listen. He's amiable and approachable as long as you can get past his rather extreme eccentricities, with an open-door policy and only one question he won't answer. If anyone builds up the guts to ask about Stanford Pines, and why he's so gosh darn reclusive, his only response is a sad, painful smile and a change of subject. In general, however, if one were to ask a given student of the institute where they could find Fiddleford McGucket, the chances are would be they'd be able to relay the information. However, like so much having to do with Stanford Pines, there is always a but.

At least three days a week, Fiddleford McGucket disappears for hours at a time. In theory, this would not be unusual. There's a section of the campus, slightly separate from the rest, dedicated to research. It takes much clearance to get to this area, for it is full of many very dangerous things. Some of the newer students fall under the misconseption that this is where he goes off to. However, there is a secretary at the entrance to this section of the campus, and when McGucket disappears, no amount of asking will get them to respond that he lies within. There is no summary of what he's there for, and there is no estimate of when he'll be back in his office. He is not there. For those hours, it's like he's vanished off the face of the planet.

There is another building seperated from the rest, barely visible through the trees. Tucked far behind the research area of the campus and heavily guarded at all times. No amount of clearance, or ID, or begging, will get anyone in. This place, most know, is where McGucket goes. No one can be certain, but there's a conviction there that this is the truth. It's the same way people know that this is where Stanford Pines resides. In those hours, McGucket disappears to the same nowhere at all that his co-founder lives.

No one tries to get there. Not anymore. There would be no point.

In order to do so, one would have to get into the research zone of campus. Already, this requires more clearance than most students could imagine. From there, one would have to go through a building only staff can open, at the very back of the campus, where only the most dangerous of research is kept. A security officer stands ever-vigilant at a back door leading to a winding pathway, intersected halfway through by a pair of guard stations. Past them lies a towering locked gate, centered in the midst of a towering electric fence. There is no guard station at the gate itself, though guards patrol the perimeter, even though the underbrush is too thick to walk through. There is no visible way to unlock the gate, but if one managed to get through regardless, they would find that the obstacles were still not over. The acre the fences encircle is thick with security, only some of which is human. It's impossible not to get caught, but if somehow, someone did, they would find themselves face to face with the sloped roof and charming wooden exterior so vaguely visible from the more well-trodden paths.

If one were to make it behind the reinforced door and yet one more pair of security guards, they would find nothing of note at all. In fact, were the windows not so thick, and the place not full of rooms with no place in a residence, and the path not so elaborate, and the whole area not so heavily reeking of isolation and uncanniness, one could almost mistake it for a normal home.

Inside, one would find Stanford Pines. Shorter than his head-and-shoulders shot makes him seem, and with a tangible air of melancholy about him that no projection could ever communicate.

Above all, Stanford Pines would appear incredibly alone, with only security, a McGucket Computer, and shelves upon shelves of books for company. If this someone who somehow managed to sneak in got lucky, they would arrive in this not-quite-a-home while McGucket had disappeared to there. They would find the two of them in deep conversation, and Stanford Pines would appear happier and more animated than most any living soul had seen him in decades, content in the company of his one connection; his shadow. Even when they had serious conversations, about the most serious topics in the world, something about him would be just that bit more lively. The visit would end, every time, with McGucket asking the same question. Every time, Pines would shake his head sadly as he responded; would the answer have been different, they both know that McGucket would have been informed long before he arrived.

Upon his co-founder's departure, one would be able to see Stanford Pines either sigh and sink right back into his melancholy, or the energy persist for another handful of hours. One would wonder why he was so reclusive, if he seemed so much brighter when he was among friends. One -- the impressive, unstoppable individual who managed to get into such a heavily monitored area -- would more than likely leave confused.

They wouldn't realize, unless they stayed within the bounds of the not-quite-home until it was far too late, what the hoards of security was designed for. Wouldn't realize that just as much as much as they are meant to keep someone out, they are also meant to keep someone in.

[zincfingermotif]

spoiled brat

[beaft]

I just watched the Deadpool movie the other day, it makes fun of Marvel and has a lot of gay sex (fight scenes between Deadpool and Wolverine)

twenty minutes in, and i have to say there is something perversely fascinating about a movie that slings an arm round your shoulder and says cheerfully: "so... marvel sucks, right? we can all agree that marvel sucks, right? it's sucked for a while now, hasn't it? yeah. and guess what? this movie is gonna suck too. and it's gonna have a ton of cameos and unfunny banter and predictable plot beats, just like all the others. you're still going to watch it, though, aren't you? of course you are, you're watching it right now. well, don't let me stop you."

[hollymacycomic]

Holly & Macy and Everyone Else

Chapter 4: Page 37

Start at the Beginning | About the comic | Tip-jar 

🌘 Support the comic & read the next page now on Patreon! 🌘

[trianglesimpfordpines]

ok so like 2 people said they wanted to see the "ford is the most realistic genius" post and that's all the encouragement i need. i'm probably gonna sound pretty full-of-myself on this post but that's just how it be like sometimes.

a lot of the time, "intelligence" is assumed to mean "knows more things." fictional characters who are supposed to be geniuses typically just...miraculously Know information they have no real way of acquiring, anticipate events that cannot reasonably anticipated, or every other character just suddenly gets stupid when the genius character is around so that the "genius" character just doing the logical thing comes off as particularly smart.

so you have a character who supposedly has a really high iq, but in practice they may as well be psychic.

as someone who actually has an iq of 147 (bear with me, because this isn't a flexing post), being "really intelligent" does not mean Just Knowing Things. what it means is that someone who's "smart" (in the traditional sense) can process more information, draw more conclusions, and do so faster than most people. it also usually means being really good at rationalizing things. so if you're someone who's well-adjusted and well-informed, that can definitely look like knowing all the right answers...but if you're someone who's not well-adjusted or well-informed, it can, if anything, make you even wronger. you get better at rationalizing your mistakes and digging yourself in deeper. and heaven help you if you have paranoid tendencies, because it's that much harder to convince someone they're being irrational when they're on a whole 'nother level of finding information to back up their irrationality.

ford is a genius. he learns incredibly fast and thoroughly. but he's also constrained by the information he has available to him, and by his own biases and past trauma and people issues.

that one writing advice post that made the rounds saying that a character's biggest flaw is usually their biggest strength in the wrong situation is very true of people who are very intelligent. it's why, for example, you'll sometimes see doctors, academics, experts buy into conspiracy theories. it's not because they're stupid; it's because they're smart enough to recontextualize all their knowledge to support their biases and beliefs.

and so many people do not understand this because they still think of "intelligence" as "knowing & being right about everything." so you get people arguing that ford isn't really a genius, because he was wrong and he made mistakes. but in my opinion, the mistakes he makes make perfect sense because he's a genius. that kind of recklessness is exactly what you get when you combine abnormally high iq with ford's myriad of personal issues. you get someone who's great at rationalizing, great at taking in information, and great at finding surprisingly well-thought-out reasons why their paranoia and antisocial tendencies are totally just the rational response.

think of it this way; the smartest people alive in the medieval era believed in the miasma theory. they weren't too stupid to understand what bacteria and viruses are; they just didn't have the tools needed to observe them. so they came up with a theory based on the information they did know, wrote essays and papers about it, made medical practices based on it...and it was completely incorrect, because genius without correct information leads to spectacular and very well-thought-out mistakes.

anyway, all this to say, as someone who could nominally be considered a "genius" but has been hella wrong about a lot of things in my life, i think ford is an incredibly realistic take on what most "geniuses" are really like. impressive in the right situations, not so much in the wrong ones, and very much not magical beings capable of mysteriously knowing all the correct information because they're Just That Smart. and very much not immune to emotional and personal issues getting in the way.

thanks for coming to my "i-just-slept-for-20-hours-and-my-brain-is-a-bit-scrambled-right-now" ted talk

[hammill-goes-fogwalking]

I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI. I HATE AI.

[pastawayallday]

So... i was cooking something.

It's not spiderverse and i gave up halfway with the shadows because i no longer have time to work on it, but i thought it was decent enough to put here.

Overall, it was a nice exercise.

[quantomeno]

@mysterysnail reblogged my post about Layton music saying they were trying to learn the basics about music.

I'm sure there are better resources, but here's what I know (skip to the very end if you just want to hear me analyse some Layton music).

Let's start with some definitions of things that make up music:

Notes: the individual sounds made by an instrument/voice. I often use it interchangeably with pitch, but they are different terms.

Pitch: How high or low the note is. In UK/US etc systems each pitch is given a letter name A to G then which repeats. Other European countries often use 'do re mi fa so la ti' instead. I don't know about other places because our system just copies the UK naming conventions and that's ingrained in my head.

Accidentals (sharps/flats): pitches are separated by semitones (half a tone), which is just a set distance in pitch (the Jaws theme, dah-duh, is two notes separated by one semitone. the second and third notes of Happy Birthday (-py birth-) is a tone, a gap twice the size). An increase or decrease by one semitone makes a note sharp or flat, respectively. You can get multiple notes with the same name (B sharp = C natural), this sounds confusing but it makes sense when you write/play music. Natural means there is no sharp or flat.

Scales: a set of notes ordered by ascending pitch. Each scale has a 'mood' or flavour associated with it. For example, minor scales are often considered sad, while major are happy. The flavour is determined not just by the choice of notes, but by the role of each note in the scale. Often a scale played starting from a different note will become a different scale (if you play C major starting from A, you get the A minor scale). This is because a new note has become the tonic, the base pitch that roots the scale.

Key: the scale used to write a piece of music. This is not always set in stone and deviations are allowed. It is determined by a mixture of factors, most importantly which pitch the piece is centred around. The key can change in a song (key change, or modulation).

Chord: a set of two or more notes played at once. Chords come in many types, but the typical three note chords are major, minor, diminished and augmented. They are named after the the note which defines the chord (e.g. CEG make the chord C Major).

Arpeggio: a chord split up so the notes are played separately.

Interval: the gap between two notes. These go unison (no gap), second (two 'letters', e.g. A to B), third, etc then octave for eight (A to A or C to C etc). After octave you can keep going with ninth etc, but it's rare for jumps that large. Intervals can also be classified as major, minor, perfect, diminished or augmented.

What's a little more generally useful than understanding each of these things is the elements that make up music:

Tempo: how fast/slow all the notes are

Rhythm: the duration of each note. The 'horizontal axis' in sheet music. It's different from tempo since you can play the same rhythm at different tempos. It's like word length in a sentence while tempo is how fast you say the words.

Melody: the movement up or down in pitch. The 'vertical axis' in sheet music. It is tied to the key of the music (the scale/set of notes the piece uses), but with a focus on direction and the 'shape' of the music.

Harmony: the consonance (agreeing sounds) or dissonance (clashing sounds) that occur when you have chords or layered melodies.

Chord progressions: moving from one chord to another, you get certain patterns. This is like the chord version of melody.

Texture: how many sounds are layered on top of each other. How thick/dense or thin/sparse the music is.

Dynamics: how loud or soft (quiet) the music is.

Timbre: the unique sound of the instrument. It's like how a note played on a piano sounds different to when it's played on the flute. This is qualified by adjectives like airy, metallic, brassy, warm, crisp, nasally etc.

Articulation: how the note is made. Is it detached from the other notes (staccato), is it smoothly joined (legato, slurred) is it emphasised (marcato, accented)? Some instruments have different ways of playing separate to these instructions, like a violin can play plucked (pizzicato) or bowed (arco) but it can still be staccato either way.

Ornamentation/improvisation/embellishment: grace notes, trills, glissandi, etc etc. These are little flourishes that add tiny little notes between other notes. I'm including improvisation here because these are all sort of playing around with the basic melody of a piece of music.

There are other things you could consider but this will do.

Below the read more, I'll apply some of these ideas to a song from Layton to illustrate how it all comes together

Let's use Folsense for our example because I happen to have the sheet music for it handy.

So, it opens with a solo piano. We've got melody in the upper register (high notes) and the chords in the lower register.

Note that this isn't the actual score. I think I adapted it from here.

It's fairly slow (63 beats per minute). This fits into how the town feels aged and weary.

The key is ostensibly F Major or D minor, due to the key signature (the sharps/flats before those two fours): there's one flat (B flat), which matches both those keys. This means every B will be B flat. You can see though that we have an accidental, an E flat, in the lower part, which doesn't fit with either of the proposed keys. The music also doesn't really anchor itself to an F or a D.

This can be felt in the music: Folsense sounds rather untethered and ethereal. The whole song, like the town itself, doesn't quite feel real or settled.

The sparseness adds to this, with only one or two instruments ever really playing at any moment. It evokes a sense of loneliness and emptiness: the town in the game feels oddly unpopulated and so does the music.

At about 35 seconds in we get a lot of long, sustained notes on the violin. These are bowed and quite smoothly connected, which almost exaggerates their length.

Note that the rhythms of the piano's chords don't line up with the violin. The violin notes are also of an unusual length. (I forgot to say this, but the two 4s at the start is the time signature and it means "4 crotchets per bar" where a crotchet (quarter note for Americans) is half a minim (half note) which is half a semibreve (whole note). 4 4 is the most common time sign, and means you can count the beat with an even 1, 2, 3, 4). The violin holds a note for three and a quarter beats. This length, combined with the (I'm getting flashbacks to high school exams, sorry) mismatched rhythms in the melody and harmony parts is unsettling, and further emphasises that something in Folsense is not quite right.

At 1:00 we get a return to the opening melody, but instead of accordion we have a trumpet (I think?). This has a brassy, nasally timbre. It feels warm, but there's a certain warbling quality to it which makes it sound plaintive and sad.

The melody is incredibly simple, and its often just ascending notes, with very small intervals. This, combined with the warmth of the strings, brass and accordion, along with the crip, clean sound of the piano, should evoke a sense of calm and maybe even joy. But there is a constant dissonance throughout the piece. It's notable in the second fragment I showed that while the second bar (bar 10, a bar is the space between two black lines and made of 4 beats in 4 4 time) had E flat major as the chord on the bottom (E flat, G, B flat), the melody plays an A, which uncomfortable sits one semitone below the B flat.

All music can be boiled down to tension and resolution. Unpleasant-sounding chords are only unpleasant in that the ear cries for them to be resolved. If you play the chords CEG (C major) then GBDF (G dominant 7th) on a piano, you'll feel a tension. If you play another CEG, it'll be resolved. Resolution feels complete, like the music has properly ended.

Here we have a tension that is never resolved, due to the lack of a defined key and the recurring dissonance, which creates this interplay between joy and sadness. Just like Folsense, brightly lit up but strangely quiet, the piece never feels right. It is trapped in a constant state of inertia, just like the town is stuck in the past and slowly decaying.

[faunandfloraas]

It is kinda funny seeing people talk about Seungmin lately because he definitely has gotten more bold and confident for sure. He's also just getting opportunities to be perceived as an individual on his own as well for the first time in a while but it's still jarring to see people be like Aw he was always such a quiet goodie two shoes little nerd and it's like...... he was the one to leave and seek out his own vocal coach and blatantly talk about it, which of course lead to I.N and Lee Know also doing the same, he was the one to go on bubble and tell off sasaengs who used to camp outside their old dorm for invading members privacy but also because it effected other residents and staff at the complex, something that i'm certain upper management wouldnt have been happy about, and he wasn't curt or nice about it either. like he's never actually been a wallflower, he's always had a pretty strong backbone and seems to stick to his principals, its not really new.

[good-beanswrites]

Any thoughts about your Hello Es AU?🎤

Thank you ooh -- this was so fun to think about! (I did some art earlier here :)) Spoiler warning for all three episodes of Hello Charlotte 🧸👁️🩸

So, out there in the real world somewhere, there exists “real Es”, (the Charles of the story) who has created Es as his perfect protagonist/ideal identity. Real Es ends up killing someone, and undergoing some kind of psychotic break that creates The House (now known as The Prison). Various people from his life appear there, each with their own murder, reflecting Real Es’ complex feelings about their own crime.

Es/Charlotte – A puppet at the whims of the audience. They have many forms along with conflicting thoughts and motivations. As lax as they may get about their own safety, they always take their duty to the tenets very seriously. They have a little Magalope pet :3 I know in canon the characters are separate, but I’m still picturing them as some combination of Q84 and Ep1/2 Charlotte. 

Fuuta/Felix – The fiery friend who's all bark and no bite. He’s the most openly aggressive out of everyone, but still ends up trying to help people around him. Through his attempts to do something helpful, his recklessness, and need to be treated as an adult, he can find himself in pretty significant danger.

Kazui/Aiden – Calm and quiet, but you get a sense he's very observant to the current situation in his silence. Just because he prefers to do his tailoring/piano hobbies doesn't mean he doesn’t have that underlying demon strength. The most parental over Es, even if they're not always receptive.

Shidou/Huxley – A doctor/scientist with a desire to help save the most (alien) lives that he can, even if it means living on the run as a criminal, as well as an odd coolness when it comes to unethical medical procedures.

Mikoto and John/Bennett – when he’s high on soap, he’s as cheery as always :) Just a normal working guy, you probably won’t even remember his face under the hazmat suit, very normal :) When the effects wear off and the stress gets to him, though, John fronts and isn't afraid to defend himself from any perceived threat.

Yuno/Florence – Puts up a cheery front and is happy to work when she's having fun. After a bit of prodding, she reveals a much more serious and jaded side. She gets along with everyone, but isn't afraid to tell her real feelings to Es when the time is right.

Haruka and Muu /Anri – I’m kind of splitting Anri to make two characters, still capturing her fluctuating status in school and attitude of give-and-receive in friendships. They're caring but clingy, they can be protective but also aggressive. Both of them go back and forth between the personalities we see from her in all three episodes. 

Amane/Frei – (I know in canon Frei is another Charlotte, so I think that works well given how close they are in age and stubbornness.) She sees things through a view of gods/religion, even if not everyone sees the situation that way. She's a bit at odds with Es, trying to persuade them to join in her mindset, but genuinely cares for their well-being while doing it.

Mahiru/Vincent – The new friend with some strange delusions of a perfect “heavenly” world, a hobby of literature, and suicidal intentions. Es takes pity on her after she receives serious injuries from people who reject her. Real Es developed some kind of attachment to her real counterpart (like Charles' idolization of Vincent), and this manifests into Mahiru crazy about relationships and love.

Kotoko/Scarlett – Has a close mindset to Es (close enough to stem more directly from them) but her intensity and drive for perfection/justice turn them into enemies in some timelines. She gets the closest look at the “real” situation compared to the others, seeing behind the scenes and criticizing Es and the Prison as a whole. She's determined she could do better herself, and Es takes her up on that…

—

I’m not going to make a whole post, but for a reverse au I think it’d be fun to see The House tenants featured in Charles’ milgram mv – as the focal character, the audience/Warden would probably assume Charlotte was his victim. Only later would they realize that Charlotte is the stand-in for himself, and that truly he feels responsible for not stopping Vincent’s suicide. 

[ewingstan]

We sort of touched on it in a prior post, but you’ve gotten a fair few details on how Mark and Carol raised Victoria by this point.

From what details you recall, how does her handling/raising of Kenzie fall into compare and contrast with those details?

Wooh. Hm. Well, I think she has Kenzie's ultimate wellbeing in mind more than Carol probably did while raising her and Amy. At the same time, when Victoria's first reaction to Kenzie getting publicly pilloried was "lets get you in front of cameras to argue your case, and also while we're at it lets keep our cape-network plan from falling through by jumping on the public-Scion-reveal grenade" I thought well. Yeah that's something Carol's daughter would think to do huh.

Its a dangerous relationship they're in. Victoria legitimately wants to keep Kenzie safe and stop her from overworking herself. She also really wants this cape group thing to work. She'd probably not consciously let the latter get in the way of the former, but she will let Kenzie fight as a hero if it seems like that's what Kenzie wants. The problem, of course, is that Kenzie wants what Victoria wants. Kenzie will act in whatever way will make the people around her happy, and so if she thinks Victoria wants her to be a hero (which you don't exactly need to be an observation tinker to notice), she's gonna make being a hero her whole thing. Not to mention that Kenzie also knows Ashley wants her to be an active cape, Sveta enjoys being on a hero team, etc....

I'll also say that the way Victoria's treating Chris.... kind of reminds me of how Carol treated Amy growing up? Victoria sees him as her responsibility: he's a member of the group Dr. Yamada asked her to shepherd, and he's a kid, and now that Dr. Yamada's gone that responsibility is even greater. Victoria is burdened with Chris in the same way Marquis burdens Carol with Amy; sure, Victoria does it a lot more voluntarily.... but she's also doing it more because she agreed to care for "the group," not for Chris. Chris is a responsibility that came packaged with what she wanted to do. And while the care she has for Kenzie seems to come from a place of genuine concern and affection, her keeping tabs on Chris feels strictly procedural. She's responsible for him, she'll keep tabs on him, nothing more to it. There's a lot of resentment and some frustration that boils into how Victoria treats Chris as a result. Insert your arrested development "I don't care for Chris" image here.

Hell, despite otherwise having pretty wildly different viewpoints when interacting with people, Victoria ends up resembling Taylor a lot in how she thinks about Chris, because it matches up so well with how Taylor thought about Regent. Its another case of "That guy I'm not as close to as the others, the dangerous one, the one whose probably a sociopath waiting to be let loose." I remember thinking that Chris seemed like "the Regent of the group" in my early reading, but they're really not so alike personality-wise, or even in terms of their place in the team dynamic; they're just positioned the same way in the mind of each text's narrator.

I read Taylor's reaction to Alec as one part fear-response to people who seem to delight in other's pain for no obvious reason, and one part a reaction to all the stuff she doesn't like about herself projected onto some twink in leggings. Her fixation on the idea that Regent must just like hurting people, that its just the kind of person he is, comes from the same scared confusion about why her best friend and the whole of the school started torturing her for no apparent reason. Its a reaction from a person who still categorizes everyone as bullies or victims, and is distressed about whether there's more to that and where she is on the spectrum. In her mind, he's a kinda evil dude that likes to hurt people because hes a bully and that's what bullies are, but actually maybe he's fine to hang around with? Which is getting churned in her head alongside her pledging to protect people by becoming a horrifying warlord and making long arguments to Pariah and Flechette about how villains can be helpful and heroes can be bullies. Taylor's relationship to Alec and her distance from him is symptomatic of her evolving views about who people can be, what power can be used for, and why people act the way they do.

Of course, Taylor conversely forms one of her strongest emotional bonds with someone who reminds her of her bullies even more than Alec does. But I think this makes sense for the same reason Chris and Kenzie could both remind Victoria of Amy but inspire such differing treatment. Bitch's first encounter with Taylor was a seemingly random attack that Taylor directly compares to the trio's assaults: she instinctively looks for a reason to hold back like she did for them, and then finds freedom in not having one. But while Rachel at first seems to directly fit the "bullies because she's a bully" model, Taylor learns pretty early on that Rachel has perfectly understandable reasons for her behavior, and that she can be predicted and made into a close ally if she just pays attention and puts in the work. Taylor's relationship with Alec is her sticking to the idea that the world is bullies and victims, and you have to find your place in it without understanding it because there's nothing more to understand. Taylor's relationship with Rachel, meanwhile, is her finding out the world isn't just bullies doing bad things because they're bad people. Rachel is the possibility of understanding the world, bringing it to heel, learning to love it and make it love you.

Similarly, Victoria's relationship with Chris is a reflection of everything she internalized from the Wretchening, while her relationship with Kenzie is her reacting against those internalized lessons towards something more hopeful. Chris is a medical freak who becomes a horrible misshapen monster on a regular basis and who suffers horribly for it, yet keeps choosing to do so. He's wretchening himself at the slightest provocation—he's impatient to wretchen himself! Add to that how his emotions rule him to the degree that they physically transform him, and that he shows absolutely no desire to reign them in, and its pretty clear why Victoria is often so negative to him. He's a powderkeg waiting to go off in a horrible way like his sister was, filled with strange and offputting desires turned into strange and offputting flesh, and unlike Amy he doesn't even have the decency to shamefully repress it. Chris is Amy as the deviant who qua deviancy will inevitably be a danger to everyone around him. Kenzie, meanwhile, is Amy as the sister who gave too much of herself. Victoria's shown at times that she hasn't forgotten how she loved Amy as a sister, how she wasn't inherently evil. She spoke with regret about not listening to Amy when she begged Victoria not to hug her. And she's pretty much said in-text "I don't want Kenzie, who I love as I once loved my sister, to exhaust herself to the point that she becomes lost in the way my sister did." Victoria looks at Chris and is reminded of all her fears of what strange and dangerous people will do, of her belief that bad people do bad things because their bad people. Victoria looks at Kenzie and remembers that's not true, and that she can do something about it.