#i would have almost no attachment to these characters and probably not a lot of desire to watch rebels

[kurishiri]

Hiiii!! I want to say how much I really appreciate and enjoy reading your translations!! I enjoy rereading them often because it helps me understand something new about the character I am interested in!! Right now it is Darius so I have been reading a lot of your translations on him and I can’t wait to read more about him on his bond levels as I really want to know more about him and how he is with Kate. I am really curious what kind of suitor do you think Darius would be and how his overall character is with Kate? Again thank you so much for your hard work and hope you have an amazing 2025!! 🫶🫶🫶 Please take care!! 💕

haaii, happy 2025! ✨✨ and ty for your kind words too. i’m so happy to hear you’ve been enjoying the translations i do – it makes it all worth it 🥹🙏

and as for darius…he’s indeed one fascinating cookie! i’m gonna put thoughts under the cut bc ,, uh it may or may not have gotten kiiinda long 😂👌

darius vogel essay ↓

HIS CHARACTER.

i feel he, as a character, is quite childlike in the sense he just does whatever strikes his fancy because that’s what he wants to do. but he’s also very calculating and subtle to not show potential weaknesses. i wouldn’t be surprised if he’s gone through a lot of trauma overall, though, seeing how he seems to dissociate from himself, going so far as to think he’s “above” humans, as if he himself isn’t one (and yet, he is also very human, in an almost raw sense – his interest in kate as his “favorite” shows that he is not actually that capable of letting go of worldly attachments, and he is drawn to the idea of the “impure” in his birthday epilogue, when he smeared berry sauce on kate’s cheeks and wanted to keep his eyes on that).

interestingly, how his childlike front and calculating personality interact is something we can witness in one go when we can look at his relationship with food. he probably has had some form of food trauma (e.g. dealing with assassination attempts via poison in his food), as he seems to need to see others eat the same food first before he himself eats. but he doesn’t ask this directly, instead phrasing it like an invitation for the other to eat first. in this way, he doesn’t have to put himself in a more vulnerable state than the other. he eats with proper table manners while dining with crown “out of consideration,” but he prefers to eat messily, likely as an act of rebellion…could he have been in a very controlling environment when he was young?

this could in turn spur him on to be controlling of others in the present. i don’t think he is incapable of love like he claims, but i do think his sense of love, thanks to what could be growing up in a controlling environment, is inherently warped. i mean, if we look at dari and his relationship with ring…i don’t think it’s that darius doesn’t hold any “love” for ring — he probably thinks it’s a form of love in a way — and i think ring does need darius in the sense that darius is the one who can provide him stability and validation. when ring is hesitant to do something, he turns to darius. if darius thinks it’s alright, then ring does too. but also, darius is arguably very controlling over ring and manipulates him too. could be abuse, if we’re speaking bluntly. (one that i think, in a sense, ring can feel too.)

RELATIONSHIP WITH KATE.

so if we extend from that logic, i think his relationship with kate would get a bit twisted and gnarly as time goes on, when kate starts to become more than a “favorite” that darius sorta likes to coddle over like a pet. he seems to hold some yandere tendencies fs over kate — which goes further to show his sort of controlling nature. hell, he joked abt shipping her to germany. darius calm down! we can discuss this ,,!

anw it’s probably more so a relationship where kate chooses to “fall” along with darius. stuck in this cycle of trying to prove love exists to him and whatnot. or, i think it would be cool for it to sort of be that way. i know it’s an otome game, but also i think i kind of like the idea of sort of exploring a more complicated relationship, where whether it’s really truly romantic in nature is sorta left more vague and up to interpretation.

at the moment, though, from what i can glean from these two…kate seems to want to get along with darius, yk, like she would want to do for others. she sort of wants to treat darius as an equal, even though she is a bit cautious of him, very understandably so. she doesn’t seem that afraid of approaching him as a whole, though she also expresses some dissatisfaction at him sort of treating her like a pet and whatnot. however, it feels like in the end, it’s always him who gets the last word. they also seem to be opposites in the sense that darius doesn’t believe in love, while kate believes no one can truly live without love, to which darius says to “prove” that love exists. so maybe there’s a bit of that opposites attract sorta vibe going on too?

basically, kate can either “prove” love to darius, or the “poison” darius imbues in her will act on her first. perhaps that’s a matter of time.

[hiding-under-the-willow]

Could I ask for any and all info you have about ghosts!Gem?

(i'm so normal about her i promise)

I kind of imagine Gem coming from a high class family with just like a shit ton of brothers and some incredibly lenient parents. So she grows up a little rough, rowdy, and snarky. Her family does a lot of hunting, and so they own a lot of different hunting estates in different areas, including the property that she would later go on to haunt and Etho would go on to buy much later down the line. She's one of the best shots in the family, much to the jealousy of her brothers'. She dies in the 1890s in a hunting accident when one of her brothers shoots her in the back. Whether or not this was purely a true accident or a malicious act of some kind is up for debate. The property ends up essentially abandoned after that. I very much was thinking about Dorian Grey when I was brainstorming about her, hence the time period and hunting accident death and the uncertainty of the circumstances.

I imagine her being a little entitled and full of herself, but also easy to befriend. I imagine this is how she manages to win over Helsknight. He's an asshole but she manages to match and exceed his asshole energy so perfectly that he has to respect her, by the time she's living in the little cabin with him and starts actually being nice he's just in too deep to even register what's happened or when the change occured. What can I say maybe the confidence isn't unearned on her part.

I think after spending almost 100 years alone with Helsknight, who can be kind of dreary even after she manages to soften him a bit, she probably gets a little weird and obsessive about other people who come onto the property. Very much an embrace of change as opposed to Hels' stubborn clinging to the past. She'll just follow people around and talk to them and commentate on their actions, knowing full well they can't hear her. She's delighted when Cub dies and she finally has someone to bother besides Helsknight. She's equally delighted when Etho comes back able to see them, a delight that Etho is not fond of. She eventually wins him over the same way she did Hels, the queen of worming her way into people's good graces without them noticing. She also, maybe, gets a little bit too attached to the idea that people who have near death experiences involving ghosts end up being able to see them, especially after Grian and Joel come around and they realize the same thing had happened to Grian.

So, y’know, maybe she puts a little too much effort into playing cat and mouse with Joel, putting those old hunting skills to good use trying to find a way to /almost/ kill him so he could also see them and she could give him some of her much needed comentary on his perceived skills or lack thereof. She drags Hels into it a lot of the time since he has an ability to interact with the living world that she doesn't, and so honestly the fact that most of her plans fail is probably owed less to her skill as a hunter, or Joel's complete ability to walk out of dangerous situations unscathed and unbothered like a looney toons character, and more so to Hels own hesitance to be responsible for another near death experience on the property.