#ill fuck the monster out of you

[puppppppppy]

i like him

[sluckythewizard]

'I wont cry for you, I wont crucify the things you do. I wont cry for you, see, when you're gone, I'll still be BLOODY MARY'

[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?

[kakushusband]

Real big fan of robots and monsters and aliens btw in case u couldn't tell.

And a trope I Hate is forced humanization, in general. If a non human character is supposed to become connected to humankind, then fine. It's not atrocious on it's own. I don't care.

What I do care about is when they're belittled for not being "human enough" in a "weird way". Like, yeah, maybe the alien that doesn't celebrate birthdays is strange to the protagonist. They don't have to call them out on it. The alien doesn't have to be seen at the end celebrating their birthday to solidify how human they've become.

If you want it to happen have it happen gradually. Have them become curious about it, and find out they actually like the customs they're not used to yet. Aliens finding pleasure in a playground, monsters enjoying food they'd never gotten to taste before, and robots discovering they genuinely like watching TV. Whatever!

Just work around their differences, make it be gradual, and not born from the main, human cast making fun of them or pointing out how weird they are for not liking X thing. And for the love of god, don't make "Becoming Human uwu" the center of their story. It's so... Heartbreaking. Bleak, even.

[ourceliumnetwork]

dry swallowing pills is my stupidest flex. i'm not even showing off anymore i'm just impatient

[rizaposting]

I like angst as much as the next guy but... is anyone else getting a little sick of misery wankfest royai...... o|-<

[quietwingsinthesky]

See, the thing about the Amy episode that makes Dean’s actions so reprehensible is not only the part where he doesn’t trust Sam and goes behind his back to kill Amy or even the hypocrisy of Dean ‘you can’t change what you are so you’re going to kill someone eventually’ Winchester sparing the kid right after stabbing his mom, it’s that Amy is very explicitly supposed to be a Sam parallel. There is no other way about it, from the they’re both freaks part of it to Dean dropping the line about ‘the other shoe’ right before he kills her, she is Sam, how Dean reacts to her is supposed to give us insight into how he feels about Sam. And Dean. kills her.

The not very subtle subtext being that Dean is ready to off Sam if he goes too far off the deep end? He’s aggressive and mistrustful of Sam at every turn in the episode, lays the feet of it all at Sam’s hallucinations maybe leading him astray, but end of the day, Sam’s crimes here are A) was tortured in Hell and B) is traumatized by that in a way that makes Dean’s life more difficult.

And it is hard to watch. To spend this whole episode with Sam being completely functional on his own, making a rational decision based on past experience and on all the information about Amy he has available, and for the episode to end with, ‘but yeah, if dean thinks sam goes too far, he’s probably gonna kill him. because sam can’t change or be fixed, so it’s for the good of everyone that he be put down.’

[infernaltenor]

the third (and... maybe final?) niki shiina analysis

thats a lie there's a nonzero chance i'll do more <- i really like reading into his character

the focus of this is intended to be the foil relationship of niki and mayoi. this is something observable between all members of alkaloid and crazy:b, with clear distinctions between who is meant to be a foil/mirror of who: rinne and hiiro, kohaku and aira, himeru and tatsumi. while i would love to do a full in depth analysis of every member in this particular grouping, i've been avoiding any discussion of events that are out on jp but haven't been on en, if only because i want to experience the stories myself, which is why, for the time being, i'll be skipping the rest of the alkaloid and crazy:b units.

there's a second major factor as to why i'm focusing on niki and mayoi: they have the weakest link. that is to say, everyone else in the group has a clear connection in their pasts. niki and mayoi lack this. while you can extrapolate and make guesses (mayoi living in the basement of es and having a surprising amount of information in the building construction and hidden rooms; niki's father being kicked off the air in preference of idols; my conclusion here is that mayoi's parents probably run es and likely ran niki's off the air. is there proof? no. that's why i'm not counting it.), nothing for them is as explicitly stated as it is for the rest: rinne and hiiro through the nature of being brothers, kohaku and aira's childhood friendship online, whatever the hell is happening with himeru and tatsumi's complicated fucking relationship. niki and mayoi have... none of that. and arguably, that's a connection in and of itself, that they have no past in common, but given the care taken for the rest of the units it feels almost like an oversight.

no matter! i'm not here to discuss what ifs; i'm here to read far too much into the silly goofy character of what is otherwise an incredibly sad and tragic unit (despite their rather goofy construct) because i love him and need his depth to be at the front page rather than ostensibly passed over. enstars where's my niki shiina breakdow-

anyway. with that out of the way, let's start with the most basic parts! game design and character design. for game design, they also typically are in the same spot (spot 4 for the live mechanics), although i'm willing to ignore this due to the fact that kohaku and aira, as well as tatsumi and himeru, do not adhere to this particular criteria. niki and mayoi are the two characters within their unit that have long hair; niki's side ponytail and mayoi's side braid (hey where's the niki shiina hair down car-). interestingly, niki and mayoi's main hairstyles occupy opposite shoulders. while it's something that's easy to overlook, i'm counting it because it's something i think is also an easy way to put differences together, the same way color palette is. and for niki and mayoi, color palette isn't really a concern (the same dictates the rest of the crazy:b and alkaloid pairings, however), but niki's hair is more blue-toned, while mayoi's retains a level of red in his purple (shinobu's, for instance, is way cooler in tone).

but this is all superficial stuff. things you can simply observe. beyond the unspecified parents, where's the digging in way too much?

well.

crazy:b is a unit that is altogether kind of goofy, but the individual characters are by and large, tragic. niki shiina reads as an outlier to this specific set up.

alkaloid is a unit that is altogether serious down to their aesthetic, but the individual characters are largely kind of silly. mayoi ayase reads as an outlier to this specific set up.

as an author's note, right here in the middle of this analysis, i know both units are not so clear cut, and that you can see incredible amounts of angst and silliness in the characters i have decided not to focus on. why i am focusing on niki and mayoi is because of their decidedly obvious contrasting personalities to the larger construction of their unit. niki, more often than not, serves as the crazy:b character who has no indication of what is going on, not to mention how much his personality is driven by his own unspecified condition and his relation to food; mayoi is the alkaloid character who has such a clear indication of his tragedy, as opposed to hiiro and tatsumi, both of whom acknowledge it less, and aira, who does it moreso through inner monologues. i digress.

with both niki and mayoi serving as the contrasting element to their respective units, this does include that they are not always that contrasting element; think, whenever niki puts himself down or reads rinne like a book, or mayoi's clear serious relationship with teaching the other members of his unit.

another aspect that i think contributes to a foil relationship more than the mirroring is the opposite ways they talk about themselves and even moreso, how they think about themselves. niki, by and large, puts himself down as an idol; it's expected, especially since being an idol was never his intention (for fun and profit! and also rinne), so he tends to think of himself (frequently) as someone with less experience. while mayoi's full story (afaik) hasn't been touched on, he shows considerable knowledge to the background and teaching of idols (dropping notes in on unsuspecting juniors, teaching alkaloid the choreography throughout the main story, just to name some off the top of my head), even showing in some ways his mastery of the skills for being an idol. what mayoi lacks for in confidence of himself, he makes up for in being confident in his ability to guide others with advice and teaching. this places niki and mayoi in clear opposite corners of their idol positions. that being said, mayoi hardly does think himself an expert in the industry, but while niki recognizes himself as not being an idol expert, he does frequently call up his cooking expertise, something that cannot be overstated. just with these two skills you can see how niki and mayoi treat their own expertise: niki acknowledges his with frequency, mayoi tries to push people away from knowing his.

niki is a character that tries to stay silly on the surface. to be fair to crazy:b, rinne also attempts this. the difference is that rinne's silliness has been broken clearly before, notably in the main story for the game. niki's character, at the point that i'm writing this post, has not had such a break yet. another aspect of niki is he does try to stay as clueless as possible (try isn't quite the word i'm looking for; he seems genuinely uninterested in the politics of the idol world! this is something i count in contrast to his fellow unit members, as much of crazy:b is focused primarily on that political atmosphere). without such a drastic break, niki's character does read as one intending to be seen as a silly character.

mayoi's character, while being silly in his own over the top reactions to, well, everything (alkaloid and mayoi is bocchi the rock if btr was yaoi, but that's... that's a different post), is probably one i would argue meant to be taken much more seriously in alkaloid. for one, his character does frequently deal with intrusive thoughts, which imo makes his overall character feel more serious. another aspect of this matches him with tatsumi for overall being what i feel to be the more seriously read parts of the alkaloid unit, as tatsumi is shown to be levelheaded often; there are some clear breaks for this particular formula with tatsumi imo, for instance, both his driving and technology usage serve to lighten his character considerably. mayoi's character, i think, due to the heavy usage of self-deprecating language, is meant to be read much more seriously than he sometimes ends up being.

my conclusion is basically... well niki and mayoi occupy (what i think) is an interesting balance for the foil/mirror imagery of crazy:b and alkaloid. their unit structures and symbols, as well as intentions feed into this, as do their character pairs, but due to niki and mayoi's own (mostly) untouched connections, their place in the structure feels much harder to nail down. this doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it does mean that i can (and more importantly) will tear into this gacha game like its a piece of literature.

[snakedog-exe]

looked up from working on this drawing and realized suddenly my face was dripping sweat. tried to stand up and almost fucking fell over. what is happening

[shinkai-kaiju]

if theres one thing im a huge sucker for, it's monster ecology. Monster hunter sometimes misses/goes for the rule of cool and "if the monster looks bad its probably dangerous and we should kill it NOW" and like. sometimes loses me. But sometimes they're fucking spot-on with designs and lore and ecological interactions.

[spearxwind]

Hi Alex! I was wondering, since there's leviathans of all fuck off sizes, are there other species in this world? Like Wyverns that can fly above and swan dive to say hi to their leviathan buds?

Hiya! There arent any dragons if that is what youre asking, nor any other massive species.

Besides the leviathans and all the regular sealife, fauna in CD is mostly avian (primarily seafaring birds and jungle fowl on the islands)

There are some bigger birds around but they are nowhere near as big as the leviathans are. I think the max size for birds would roughly be around cutter class sized (the smallest leviathan class), and those DO dive for fish like ospreys, though leviathans might chomp at them if they get too close (the same would happen with wyverns too)

----

As a note, there's a non-lore adjacent reason for it too, it's that I do not want the focus to shift away from the ocean and the leviathans. If I made giant flying things there would have to be logistics around that and I would not want them to interfere with what I already have.

Though now that I'm thinking about it, it could be really swag to have hunters who ride on big birds (I am immensely biased), though as much as I like it idk if I can make it work without pulling too much focus from the CD vibe haha

[anaalnathrakhs]

ghezikjfjekzjkezn i cannot fucking WAIT to move out

[todayisafridaynight]

Especially because in the end... Arakawa loses his son in small ways that just Accumulate... but Jo's the one who even gets to outlive his son... AUGH. THROWING MYSELF INTO A WOODCHIPPER

Also while going through old messages, I saw I actually had a dream back in 2021 that Jo came back in LaD8. I mean sure he had "longer hair" and "a new outfit NOBODY liked except me" and was Unserious like RGGJo whereas in the actual teaser he sounds more depressed than ever but I'm still taking credit alright... the vision came to me...

And in a Hell Will Freeze Over Before This Happens I Just Like To Think About It way. I want him in my goddamn party and I have for all of Y7 so it's not related to the new game. I don't care. I want to find out what his favorite flowers are I want to take him to Every Movie and get his commentary on all of it I want to take him out to eat and watch his little itadakimasu animation play out I want to have the most light-hearted and inconsequential conversations and I want him to chime in I want to exhaust every option on his Drink Link I want to unlock his sickass tag-team moves I want to wear True Hero and fight by his side I want to shower him with so much love and affection he won't know what hit him (<- channeling Arakawa tbh)

its just insane because from a metaphorical sense arakawa 'outlives' masato in that he becomes aoki and like. That's One Thing, but then Of Course. There's Jo. //stuffing my mouth with wet cement// like OHHHH the pain never stops it never ends,,

mate i think your brain was just tryna manifest RGGJo to make a come back through y7 ☠️☠️ CREDIT WHERE CREDITS DUE THO BUT DAMN would have been. THE MOST interesting change to his character though.... on the real.... because yeah he just sounds so tired from the trailer so far （；´д｀）would be hilarious if instead of entering a Super Depression arc bro's just. Yeah Alright Fuck It. What Can We Do Now Amirite. walk right out the cell with the white suit and snake-patterned lapels and all ☠️☠️

OK BUT MOST VALID RANT EVER. MOST VALID WANT EVER. would really just have the vibe of dragging your jaded uncle around the city i would died to have that,,, 😭😭

[cursedlors]

op what do you mean cursed.

this is the most accurate odypen art i have seen.

So there’s this cursed Odypen I did when Ithaca saga just came out. I think it was too cursed to post so I didn’t. But today I realized there is nothing too cursed for this platform apparently.

[chisungie]

.

[angel-on-parole]

I'm digging my yearly grave to rot in early

Because how fucking dare you

You sweep back in on your promises after hurting me once

Only to disappear when they're due

To disappear after I gracefully gave you another fucking chance

I hope you're fucking proud of yourself

Because your name now belongs on a list

The list of people I'd sooner leave in the ashes

Than give them yet another fucking opportunity to strike me when I'm down