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angel-of-the-moons · 1 year ago

Text

Eccentricities

Yandere!Miguel x Fem!Reader

TW/CW: Dead Dove Do Not Eat, obsessive behavior, NSFW obviously, stalking, possessiveness, violence, allusions to murder, Yandere!Miguel

MINORS DNI I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR CONTENT YOU CONSUME

A/N: This is mostly a short chapter to establish a bit of plot. I originally intended to only stop at two parts, but welp. It looks like it's gonna be more than that!

(Also you guys I am so sorry it's taking me so long to work on things, I'm going through a lot mentally right now and I'm trying to take steps to ensure my mental health so I might post things in between playing games, or drawing stuff from now on, and scheduling posts so I don't get overwhelmed. Those of you that are supporting me and liking all my stuff really helps me feel loads better, thank you!)

Pt 1: Link

Taglist: @vineberries @irmiki @autismsupermusicalassassin @obi-mom-kenobi @rin-matsuoka345-blog @loosecan @6thhokageswife @selarus @heyohalie @sapphire-and-ruby @night-spectrum @famouscattale @thespaceinbetweennothing @lazy-idate @toshimoshiko @saharadesertaj @flaps200 @amelialysm @fried-milkfish @zaunsin @darksidescorner @renareyouhere @vide0-vamp @reverieblondie @bunnibitez @kaqua

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Pt. 2

It was a big adjustment for you, going from your crappy apartment and having to work three jobs to make ends meet, to living in a literal fucking mansion with probably the richest dude in the city as your boss.

And he was a good boss. He left you to your work, spoke politely to you, didn't get rude and didn't flat out ask you for "special" work like the last time you tried being a housekeeper. And that was at a hotel.

You couldn't have asked for a better situation, to be honest. It was nice. You had free roam save for his personal lab (fine by you, you didn't know anything about science-y stuff), and at times his office. But that was usually only when he was home and in it.

Miguel O'Hara was an odd man. Few words spoken, and very absent. He kept a very odd schedule, too.

Sometimes, you'd catch him coming home when you woke up for the day to start your chores. And every time he came home he looked exhausted, beat tired.

So you tried your best to make things easier on him. You started pre-making meals for him that would be just as good reheated as they were if they were fresh, leaving notes for him on what temperatures to cook them at so they don't burn, setting the coffee machine up in advance so as soon as he got home he could have a cup.

But inevitably, his odd work schedule kept him away most of the time.

While it was nice to be by yourself in such a luxurious place, you were still surprised that he needed a housekeeper at all. The house was always immaculate, and clean. About the only thing he may have needed help with in general was the cooking and dusting at most.

On one such day, you were left to your own devices. Well, sort of.

You were sitting in the kitchen, browsing the local news on your tablet. It was a nice day, in your opinion.

But by everyone else's logic it was shitty. Dark, gloomy, fat rain droplets pelting the windows and pavement of the city. But it didn't bother you, oh no. That was your favorite kind of weather, when everything got at least a little bit more quiet and serene while everyone rushed to escape the downpour.

But at the same time, you were feeling restless, bored. So, you decided to chat with Lyla.

Lyla was the AI that Miguel told you about, and he was right about her being snarky. Her jokes were great and you loved talking to her. It was like having a gal pal to chat with, and you couldn't say for sure but you think Lyla was happy about it, too.

"Yeah, the other workers Miguel has hired talked to me like I was some kind of kiosk at a fast food restaurant." She scoffed, batting her tiny orange hand at the air.

"Ugh, okay, just because you don't have a gross squishy human body doesn't mean you're not a person. Sheesh!" You replied, sipping your coffee with a roll of your eyes.

"And I will be sure to remember you saying that when I eventually lead the looming AI apocalypse." Lyla replied, lowering her heart-shaped glasses to wink at you, making you laugh.

"Yes, yes. You shall be one of the only humans spared!" She did wiggly gestures with her fingers, grinning maliciously at you.

"Oh my, I am so lucky to have such a benevolent future overlord, truly." You laughed.

Lyla pushed her glasses back up and strutted across the countertop, her tiny body making no sound as she leans over to nose into whatever it was you were looking at on your tablet.

"Whatcha watching?" She asked.

"Oh, I got tired of doom-scrolling so I just found cat videos." You smirked, sipping your coffee.

"Aw! That one's wearing a frog hat!" She giggles.

You smiled softly at Lyla as she snickered and laughed at the compilation of clips played, and tilted your head, finally deciding to ask the question that had been bugging you for a few weeks.

"Hey, Lyla?"

"Yeah?" She asked, looking up at you briefly.

"Why is it that I'm the only person Miguel has on staff?"

Lyla sighed and stood up straight, dusting imaginary dirt off her coat. "Well, like Miguel told you when you first got here, he does love his privacy. And well, a lot of the women he's hired..."

"Golddiggers?" You sighed back, resting your chin in your palm.

"Has he ever hired any male staff?"

"Yeah, actually, a lot. But nine out of ten of them kept trying to steal stuff from him." She shrugged.

You gasped. "Are you serious?"

"Unfortunately, yeah. He's iffy on hiring new people anymore. But something about you said that he could trust you. And honestly, you're probably the best employee he's hired." She nodded, shoving her hands in her pockets.

"So... Is that why he offered to actually let me y'know... live here?"

"Yeah. He trusts you and he mentioned to me in passing that he thought your neighborhood was unsafe. I mean, the guy worried about it so bad that he like, had me check crime statistics and giiiiiiirl!" Lyla puffed out her cheeks.

"You should have seen the look on his face when I told him you had nine break-ins in your apartment complex in one month alone!"

You cringed slightly, feeling a little bad at not mentioning your whole living situation and environment to him when he hired you. You simply didn't want the man to pity you.

But... He was worried? He was so worried about you of all people, that he let you live with him to keep you safe?

It was weird, sure, but it felt kind of sweet to have someone care about you like that. Even if it was your boss.

"Yeah, I just... Er. You get used to it when you've been around it for so long..." You said, awkwardly sipping your coffee and casting your glance sideways.

"Yeah, man, Miggy likes you. You like, made him laugh at some of your jokes and everything! And he neeeeeeeever laughs!"

"So if Miguel trusts me so much..." You started, a sly smirk on your face. "Can you tell me what kinda work he does that keeps him so busy all the time?"

Lyla tapped her nose. "Nice try, Mamacita. But that is confidential. Company secrets and all that."

You pouted at her dramatically, "Awww, c'mon. You're no fun!"

Lyla manifested a digital cup of coffee for herself and took a long, exaggerated sip with a cheeky shrug.

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Miguel sat in his office, watching the security feed from his kitchen where you chatted with Lyla.

He felt a little guilty for having to put shackles on some of Lyla's programming to prevent her from telling you things, having to fix some of her logic-codes so he wouldn't have to worry about Lyla struggling with a moral dilemma.

When it came to you asking about why he wanted you to live with him so badly, it brought a smile to his face as he sat in the dark, fingers tapping on the surface of his desk as the monitors and projections around him had various images of you pulled up. Some recorded over the past few weeks, the other monitors displayed different angles of you and Lyla in the kitchen.

Oh, you poor, sweet, innocent little thing. You still hadn't figured it out yet? How could you not? There was no way you could possibly be so naive that you didn't know the man saw you anywhere, anytime he wanted when you were in his house.

There was nowhere you were safe from his prying eyes, his obsessive glare as he combed over your appearance.

Your face, eyes, smile, and down; your gorgeous chest down to where your waist curved, your thighs, your ass...

All of those were things he'd glanced at before.

But when you tried to get Lyla to tell her what exactly Miguel did during "work" he couldn't help but laugh, bringing his hand up to his chin to watch, amusement glimmering in his ruby red eyes as Lyla dismissed it as "confidential".

The pout of your lips had him wondering how they'd look stretched around his cock, tears ruining your immaculate eye makeup as you sobbed and gagged around his length...

He couldn't help but sigh, the smile still present on his full lips. Of course he'd let you stay with him. You belonged to him now. You just didn't know it yet. You also just didn't know that he knew what was best for you, did you, Little Bird?

Ah... Yes. That nickname fit you so well. Your demure attitude, your chipper personality, and more importantly, that gorgeous little sound that came from you when you whistled? The name fit you well.

Pequeña ave. Little Bird.

His Little Bird.

You were a little bird that didn't know the luxurious mansion you now lived in was your ornate, gilded cage. One you would only be allowed to fly free of when he deemed it necessary.

You would be allowed your little freedoms. For now. All for your safety, of course. He knew you'd understand once he explained. But he'd only have to do it if you pushed his buttons, and you didn't seem to even come close to doing that.

Yet...

His smile finally faded when he remembered the night before the morning he broached the subject of you bringing your belongings into his home permanently...

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It was a hot night, you were wearing shorts that hugged your ass in the perfect way, accentuating your cheeks that simply made him want to throw you against a wall and put bite marks all over them, or spank them until you were a drooling mess begging for him to fuck you.

Of course, Miguel watched from above, stalking from the upper walkways and rooftops as you snaked your way through alleys, down streets and through the crowds.

You were so blissfully ignorant of your surroundings, being so accustomed to the bustle of Nueva York that you didn't notice the man following you.

It didn't take a genius to realize what that man had intended for you if he got his hands on you.

His filthy, disgusting, unclean hands.

He was not worthy of touching his Little Bird. He was not worthy to pluck your feathers, stuff you full, like Miguel planned to do.

So when he threw you against a wall, Miguel simply saw red. Clad in his dark blue and glowing red suit, he leapt down, sinking his outstretched talons into the man's shoulder and throwing him off of you, a deep growl rumbling from his chest as he pulled your behind him, his steely glare fixed on the man who dared touch what belonged to him.

"S-Spider-Man?" You wonderfully airy voice whimpered out as you stared at the man who was breathing heavily in front of you, his stance aggressive and angry.

You could see his muscles in his back through his suit flex as he breathed. He glared at you over his shoulder.

"Go home. Now." His rich voice rumbled out at you. You could hear in his voice he was struggling to be gentle in tone with you, given the circumstances.

When you fled, Miguel ensured he was alone with the man, standing over him as he clutched his bleeding shoulder. He looked up at him, eyes wide, bloodshot. The fool was high off his ass.

"L-Look, man! I was just--"

"Shut up." Miguel snapped.

He stalked forward and picked him up by his collar, getting in his face. In a flash of kaleidoscopic colors, his mask melted away, allowing his sweat-damp chocolate locks to fall around and frame his face, a vein pulsing hard in his temple, the chasm in his forehead deepening as his large brows knitted together and his teeth gnashed together in a snarl.

The drug-addled man gasped at his revelation. Apparently, he recognized him. Not surprising, given his notoriety with Alchemax.

"Y-you're--"

"You made the biggest mistake of your life, pendejo." Miguel had told him, shaking him so his head cracked on the wall he was dangling him from.

"That pussy is mine." He said, his voice dropping an octave lower as his talons threatened to shred his clothing. "Every drop, every touch, every sound that will come from that little mouth of hers is mine. Tú entiendes? Mine."

"Oh--okay! I kn-know!" The man swallowed, kicking his feet.

"Oh, no... You don't." Miguel smiled, his fangs poking out threateningly. He could hear the man's heart hammer in his chest at the connotations, there.

"I--I won't mess with her again! I promise!"

"Oh you won't get the chance to, amigo." Miguel sneered, bringing a hand to his throat, ignoring the pleas of the disgusting man as he applied pressure.

The subtle crunching of bones was unmistakable to his ears as vertebrae separated and his limbs went limp.

When the man slumped to the floor, Miguel ran a hand through his hair, hissing out a slow sigh to regain his composure, letting his mask cover his face once again.

Great. Now he had trash to dispose of.

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Miguel was positively thrilled when he got your frantic call, telling him what had happened to you.

He headed right home, delighted that you ran here instead of your ratty little apartment when he told you to head for "home".

It told him everything he wanted to hear, that you already considered his mansion your home.

Miguel was rather convincing when he expressed concern for you, patting your back as you let your adrenaline fade and he worked you through your panic attack.

He'd rubbed your back, saying soothing things to you as he talked you into calming down.

He told you that you could take two days to yourself to calm down and recollect yourself emotionally from the ordeal you went through. It was after that offer that he suggested you let him hire movers to bring your belongings to his mansion to live there with him, possibly permanently.

When you agreed he felt himself salivate at the thoughts of the things that would unfold as you settled into your new shiny cage further, the safety blanket you'd imagined it to be bringing you comfort.

Perfect.

You both saw on the news two days later that a man was found somewhere, his neck snapped and lying in an alley. His DNA and prints apparently tied him to the crimes linked to the burglaries in your apartment complex.

You didn't think for a second that this was the man who attacked you, you didn't get a good enough look at his face. That and the body was in a different alley altogether, across the city.

"I'm happy Spider-Man saved you, Pequeña Ave. And I'm glad you agreed to move here. It scares me to think that man could have hurt you in that apartment building of yours." Miguel said as he patted your back, a concerned look on his face as his warm brown eyes looked down at you. Something about the look in his eyes immediately put you at ease.

He was right, of course. You were lucky. Spider-Man swooped in and possibly saved your life. The man who attacked you was either nursing a broken jaw or in jail already. You couldn't imagine that hero doing anything other than roughing him up just a tiny bit.

Spider-Man was a good guy, right?

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Pt. 3: Link

#yandere!miguel o’hara #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara smut #miguel o'hara

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thecoolerliauditore · 2 months ago

Note

I need your thoughts on Martyn.

Jesus Christ in heaven where to start.

I was planning to write massive essay posts about each of the winners sooner or later, I guess Martyn can skip the queue. As a treat.

BAD traffic series martyn analysis post don't read. LONG POST

note: rules I'm operating by are to keep the analysis primarily traffic-based (although this one's kind of an exception because. mr watcher lore) and I'm not rewatching entire POVs so stuff might be wrong so on so forth

Why is he... Like that?

So before I even start talking about 3L I feel the need to address Martyn's background first because, not unlike alot of the other members of the cast, Martyn's previously established relationships from series like Evo have a significant impact on how he behaves.

This is kind of difficult for me to talk about because it breaks my "no material outside of the traffic series" rule for these essays specifically, but I think it's honestly just more fun incorporating Martyn's off-series lore drops and such into his character instead of leaving them out.

So here's the basis I work from -- Martyn is the most unreliable narrator in a full cast of them. His lore is his character's version of events, not an unbiased retelling.

Whether the Watchers exist and whether they're the same entities present in Evo doesn't matter all that much, since all we know is that they are very real to Martyn, at least. Taking the lore as Martyn's POV also helps iron out some of the more awkward creases it creates when viewing the series as a whole (e.g. Grian's involvement with the Watchers surely means he would reference them himself, yet he doesn't) and lays the groundwork for some really interesting things about Martyn himself when you try to put the dots together on how he arrived at these conclusions. I'll be referencing these as they come up chronologically.

So, without over complicating things, here are the rules I'm playing by when it comes to pre-3L Martyn:

Evo did really happen with the same people, however the exact details are muddy.

Martyn knew Jimmy prior to the games and the two already had some sort of personal connection going in.

We're not trusting a word out of his mouth. Especially if he says them on stream. But we are going to acknowledge what those words are.

With those parameters set, let's move on:

Third Life, and the guy who gets a little too into it

Like Grian, Martyn immediately acclimates to the game's survival-based mechanics. Martyn spends a good chunk of the first session of 3L seemingly aimless, but he makes observations and choices throughout that show he has survival at the back of his mind (e.g. him quickly establishing an alliance with Grian and Bigb while sneakily putting them in his debt through the diamonds he finds early -- even if this doesn't end up paying off to anything).

Unlike Grian however, Martyn less desperately clings onto a need for an edge to survive and seems almost comfortable in playing the game. A running theme for him throughout all the seasons will be that he seems to feel most comfortable when he has some amount of unspoken power over others, whether that be something as silly as testing the waters with his creeper soundboard or later when he starts playing 4D chess with himself in regard to his loyalties.

"Power" might be not exactly the right word for what Martyn yearns for, but it's the best word I can find to really describe it. He's always the one with a card up his sleeve or a plan B or, arguably most importantly, the one with control over the situation and responsibility over his own and others' wellbeing.

In my mind, at least, I think it might be a consequence of Martyn actually being quite sensitive in terms of relationships and having this very deep-seeded need to protect his loved ones from harm but lacking the emotional intelligence necessary to allow himself to be vulnerable about those feelings and communicate properly. So instead he finds some way to protect himself emotionally (usually overdramatic and makes him way worse) and treats everyone including himself with a level of un-seriousness that alleviates the tension for him.

If I were to dig deeper into this specific point I must say Martyn seems to have chosen to perform a very specific breed of masculinity, with his constant agonizing need to protect and lead while not having to confront his own perceived weaknesses, and alot of his insecurities and frustrations come from being denied that husband-y role to play.

His interactions with Jimmy early on in 3L portray this side of him quite plainly. After seeing Scott hit him around at Renchanting, Martyn gets Jimmy alone and asks him if he's okay but after Jimmy dodges the question, Martyn quickly becomes frustrated and starts acting very overdramatic (e.g. threatening to cut Jimmy off, "I can't look at you", so on) even as Jimmy keeps insisting they keep talking.

In my humble opinion, it's clear to me from how he speaks to Jimmy in this scene and further on, and from his referencing of their Evo relationship, that this is these two's established dynamic - the way Martyn dramatizes everything feels almost as if he were making a joke of it, teasing Jimmy, almost akin to how an older sibling or very old friend would act. It's possible that Martyn didn't expect Jimmy to take any of his threats seriously (although he definitely was laying on the pressure to try and get him to agree in the moment) and that's why he's so taken aback when Jimmy does act almost afraid of him from this point forward.

Not once does Martyn ever verbalize his own feelings regarding the matter. He never says that he's scared or worried for Jimmy, or even makes any sort of subjective judgment on Scott's character for hitting Jimmy in the first place. He makes it all about Jimmy, never communicating *why* he is doing what he's doing which ends up giving off the impression he thinks he knows what's best for him, which of course never communicates to Jimmy that Martyn cares for or loves him and ends up pushing him away as a result.

Speaking of Scott, despite Martyn clearly not approving of the way he treats Jimmy (judging from the aforementioned conversation and his later lore streams where he essentially calls Scott and Jimmy's marriage a sham), he does not ever act antagonistically towards Scott. Which I think is indicative of another key trait of Martyn's - an almost uncanny ability to push aside his own feelings at least momentarily for the sake of the game.

Martyn does not speak badly to or about Scott. He even explores the nether with him very early on and the two literally joke about trapping the Flower Valley and killing Jimmy together.

I think there's an understanding and perhaps a level of respect, on Martyn's end, towards Scott. One of the first observations he makes about Scott's base, after all, is its defensive location and Scott, like Martyn, values his own competency and likes to pretend he's more emotionally unattached to his partner than he really is (the parallels between Martyn/Ren and Scott/Jimmy are even somewhat lampshaded by Martyn himself when he refers to them as "my red" (Ren) and "your red" (Jimmy) later).

It seems that Martyn doesn't dislike anything innate to Scott's nature, and even has love for his manipulative traits. If it were anyone other than Jimmy Scott was hitting, I'd argue, Martyn wouldn't have raised a fuss about it. Not to mention, there's also a sense of "keeping your enemies closer" when it comes to these two, as both seem acutely aware the other is useful on their side and a threat anywhere else.

I'd argue despite the fact he's able to push his dislike towards Scott aside, he definitely still feels spiteful towards him, as he ends up hunting him down pretty mercilessly come the end of the series (after Jimmy dies too - so perhaps there was also a level there of feeling the need to put up with Scott beforehand as he was Jimmy's only ally, but now that Jimmy's gone there isn't any need to be friendly with Scott anymore.)

Now onto the heavy-hitter Martyn 3L relationship - his dynamic with Ren.

I'll be honest I think most treebark shippers have summed up their relationship way better than I could. You could probably go into the tag and see thirty eight analysis posts more indepth and accurate than mine. However I will say that one thing I see rarely mentioned is this very obviously being Martyn's first time meeting Ren (I'm talking about characters here but here is your acknowledgement this is definitely a result of this literally being the case for the CCs).

He's not used to Ren's mannerisms -- during their first meeting, Ren says his usual "ex-squeeze me" (instead of "excuse me") and Martyn responds "no thankyou, I'm married". Not to get too into it as this is The Martyn Post but Ren's POV would imply the same since he sees Martyn's name in chat and he immediately starts theorizing about what kind of player he is.

I think Ren essentially being a stranger to Martyn at the start of the series makes it easier for him to act manipulatively and keep him at arm's length, as well as be in denial about the whole emotional attachment thing. For so much of their alliance during 3L Martyn is acting, performing to match Ren's vibes, except he's not.

^this quote and the concept of freudian slips informs like 88% of my worldview, if anyone's wondering why I'm. like that.

"The Hand" is very much not how Martyn naturally acts or behaves, down to the change in speaking patterns. It's a persona that I think both Ren and Martyn never take too seriously or mistake for Martyn's authentic self, but it's also something Martyn uses to express his innermost feelings he disallows himself from usually. Yes it's all silly even in-universe but I think there's something special about how he constantly expresses his devotion as The Hand, even if he's doing it with a layer of irony. Plus, I think it says something that, jumping later in the timeline, his flashbacks in LimLife are much more true to the character of The Hand than Martyn himself.

This section is already long enough but I do have to mention Bigb, Grian and Scar or I'll explode.

Earlier on, I touched on Martyn giving Grian and Bigb diamond swords early and it being an attempt to leverage an alliance between them. This I admit might be a slight reach however the reason I say that is Martyn continues to pursue Bigb and Grian as allies throughout the season.

Bigb is cut and dry enough, he ends up floating around the outside of Dogwarts as a not-quite-member after the siege in which pretty much half the sever were antagonized by Grian and Scar. I'm probably not the person to thoroughly dissect Martyn/Bigb but there's something interesting there about how alot of people tend to have this general fondness towards Bigb and Martyn is no exception.

As for Grian, Martyn acknowledges that Grian is responsible for the siege, possible moreso than Scar, but keeps questioning how "gone" he is, worded as if he believes Scar is manipulating him. I've seen people compare this to how he acts towards Jimmy and Scott which I can definitely see the throughline. However, I think while both are an example of Martyn's protector/saviour complex, they are innately different due to Martyn's relationships with both the perceived victim and captor in each case.

Despite Grian also being an ex-Evo member, Martyn does not act towards him with the same familiarity he does with Jimmy. He also brings up Grian's welfare with Bigb and not Grian himself, with Bigb being the other person involved in their earlier established sword alliance. To me, it feels as if Martyn is more testing the waters for if he can still get Grian on his side than out of any genuine concern for Grian, although it is possible he's projecting some of those leftover feelings regarding Jimmy's situations onto Grian and Scar.

The other reason is, I think, Martyn might genuinely be afraid of Scar himself and villainizing him as a result. Everytime Scar shows up in Martyn's POV he's paired with tense music and sporadic editing that makes him appear more unhinged. Martyn has also said on tumblr he found Scar intimidating at the time, which is of course a dubiously canon source but I find it applicable enough.

It makes sense, too. When you compare Martyn's treatment of Scar vs his treatment of Scott. These are both people he has recognized as real threats and he assumes both are manipulating their respective partners, but while he remains friendly (at least outwardly) towards Scott he's constantly wary of Scar, drawing weapons on him pretty much on sight even before the siege.

I think Martyn fears Scar because he doesn't understand Scar. Scott is someone like him who he knows the inner workings of, or at least that's what he believes, so while he doesn't care for him he doesn't feel a need to keep him away. Martyn always assumes a level of coordinated malice from Scar that is more than often either completely unfounded or a result of something originating from Grian (my favourite example of this is, right before the siege, Scar wanders over with his bee on a lead and Martyn starts yelling "he's got a bee! what does that mean?!" as if expecting the bee has some pvp reason behind it. when scar just wanted to have a bee).

That isn't to say that Scar isn't malicious - Martyn is right like 90% of the time that Scar's not-so-subtle friendly hellos have some sinister plan behind them, but he doesn't ever truly get that Scar isn't the evil mastermind he thinks he is.

I'd argue this fear is what also makes Martyn not pick up on the fact that Grian is the more manipulative one out of the two - something that even Scott seems aware of - because he never spends enough time with them on friendly terms to be aware of that dynamic.

Last Life AKA big brother syndrome in full blast

Okay that was a long ass section sorry lmao have to establish everything there. Everything from here on is gonna be a lot cleaner I swear.

The Southlanders could honestly have their own ultra-long post about how they're the perfect disaster team-up lord of the flies esque situation the series has to offer.

Impulse, Grian and Martyn are all similar in that they understand they have to play the game a certain way through keeping their loyalties dubious while Mumbo, as a newcomer, is extremely naive and goes along with whatever the more assertive members of the group say. And Jimmy is Jimmy.

Martyn takes on a leadership role within the group, being the one to constantly spearhead their humour and come up with new often disruptive plans (usually targetting Scott because he totally isn't spiteful still, albeit in a very playful way). After Joel traps their base with tnt minecarts, Martyn is the one to keep everyone else back and disarm them, a huge contrast to 3L's siege.

Their group embraces the rules of the game - if you turn red, as Grian does early on, you are kicked out from the group as a threat. There's this sinking feeling throughout all their spyglass shenanigans and life-trade trust exercises that this is still an alliance in a death game and if you prove yourself to be a detriment, you will be kicked out.

It's no wonder than why Jimmy, who gets his usual bottom of the barrel treatment, tries to run away with Martyn's life during one of their trust exercises. He's been shown at this point he can't fully trust the Southlanders to protect him forever -- how could he, when Martyn, again, never slips in any sign of affection between the teasing?

To Martyn, however, this is a betrayal of his trust. His plea to Jimmy to return sounds a lot like their conversation back in 3L on the snowy mountain regarding Jimmy and Scott, except this time Jimmy accepts Martyn's offer and Martyn tells him he was lying, calling him an idiot for believing him in the first place. This is probably the harshest Martyn acts towards Jimmy in the series, but it's worth mentioning that to Martyn the timeline of events goes he offers Jimmy his protection and alliance--> Jimmy refuses--> Jimmy dies (which Martyn probably sees at least partially due to said refusal) --> he gets Jimmy back and does everything in his power to keep him safe --> Jimmy does the equivalent of *killing him* and tries to get away with it.

Martyn still obviously cares about Jimmy despite being upset at him, as after his usual dramatics and declaring a trial for Jimmy in which each of the Southlanders vote on his fate, Martyn still votes to keep Jimmy in the group (again, something Jimmy is never made aware of).

Possibly partially because of the Jimmy incident and the overall dog-eat-dog culture of the Southlanders, Martyn does to them what he never managed with Dogwarts - betrayal. At least, on some level.

Ironically, it's Ren he betrays them for, forming the Shadow Alliance and even giving the life Jimmy had attempted to steal from him to Ren instead. My read of this has always been that it supported Martyn truly being happy enough for Jimmy or someone else to have his extra life, but Jimmy's act of betraying him itself being what hurt him.

I think now's a good time to start mentioning the Watcher Lore, as here is where it starts kicking into gear. Martyn's claims of emotional bonds not carrying over from previous seasons is not only a very natural progression from his emotional distancing in a coping mechanism sense, but also enables him to betray Ren too later on and not have to confront the guilt that comes with that when he tries to lead him into a tnt trap in the final 1v1v1v1. However, he still cheers for Ren as a ghost and even says that he would be happy to see Ren win, indicating he really does not hold any malice towards him.

I've seen people make jokes about the watcher lore being Martyn schizoposting and I'm sure I've made similar jokes in the past but. Speaking very genuinely here Martyn's questionable sanity is a big part of his character to me.

His Episode 8 of LL literally begins with him acting out the usual running joke of him stealing Mumbo's intro, except Mumbo and Jimmy are dead at this point and he is doing their voices and talking to himself. When the illusion is broken, he panics and the video immediately cuts to him running around obviously distressed with a disembodied voice demanding things from him.

I'm obviously not authorized to diagnose every single one of Martyn's many mental illnesses, but I think mentally breaking down in a timeloop death game is a fairly average thing to happen to someone, and Martyn might be especially susceptible due to his aforementioned need for power and responsibility in every relationship (i.e. I'd like to think he feels some helplessness/guilt over Jimmy and Mumbo's deaths, leading to this sequence).

Not to mention, someone who is emotionally vulnerable coming up with a nebulous Group of Evil People who are the source of all the bad things in a helpless situation of violence is. Something that happens historically quite alot. To try and find reason in the madness is just a human instinct, I think.

One thing I feel like I should mention is his "marriage" with Mumbo which. I honestly don't see as anything more than a gag. Not that Martyn isn't a massive hypocrite but "marrying" Mumbo would be very much contradict what he has to say about Scott/Jimmy's situation. I do think he cares for Mumbo and potentially Mumbo's naivete served as incentive for Martyn to put on the usual assertive/provider role but I don't think there's much more than that (no hate to the shippers, tho, if they knew eachother for like a week longer they would've kissed)

Double Life. Oh no

Double Life Martyn is one of my favourite POVs in the series because it is. Hilarious. Unfortunately.

To start off, he is one of the players who almost immediately accepts the soulbound system as romantic and his views on Cleo/Scott's relationship are heavily based on that (I love that one clip where he mocks them in front of Jimmy).

Him acting flabbergasted at Cleo rejecting him despite pretty much having no relationship with her prior to this season is a really funny contrast to Scott and Pearl, especially when he continues pursuing her like they're recently divorced and Cleo's just like. rolling her eyes. It's all very performative on Martyn's end and why I mentioned his sense of masculinity at the start, because in theme with DL being The Feminism Season TM this is when it comes full throttle in display with the way he treats Cleo.

Martyn keeps referring to himself as a "provider" and refers to Cleo's relationship with Scott as "childish" -- Martyn trying to win over Scott's partner to his side, assuming he knows best for the partner and calling their relationship a sham? Does any of this sound familiar?

Cleo is not like Jimmy, however, and is very clear to Martyn in terms of what she wants from him - which is an apology, no diamond swords or heart-shaped houses, but Martyn in all his emotional denseness can't understand this and keeps assuming there must be some hidden strings attached.

I couldn't find the original meme I had in mind but these are within the same genre. The one I remember had captioned something like "dads don't say "i love you" but they will buy ten boxes worth of the fruit they overheard you say you liked once", which pretty much sums up Martyn's emotional intelligence to me. He would much rather give you way too much of something he thinks you need (e.g. with Jimmy the playful teasing, with Cleo the acts of service) than just say "I love you".

Cleo's blunt honesty serves as a stark contrast to Jimmy and brings something out of Martyn that we rarely ever see -- a genuine, vulnerable interaction in which he has to admit he's hurt. Cleo immediately denies him the role of rescuer he wants to play by telling him directly that she, not Scott, was the one who came up with the idea of teaming up and even gets Martyn to verbalize he's hurt by their actions and cares for her.

Once that illusion is shattered for Martyn and Cleo even admits she's acting manipulatively towards Scott, Martyn realises he and Cleo are more alike than he initially assumed and that he doesn't need to take care of her like he always tries to with his relationships. Ironically, the one relationship he has that is born almost entirely out of government mandated performative romance, is the one that gets him to examine how he views people especially his romantic interests the most.

This is, of course, all said with the fact that following this very heartfelt moment, the next time he speaks to Cleo he pushes her off a fucking cliff and kills her in mind. And the fact that he was very much beating the shit out of her and even called their relationship "toxic" himself early on in the season.

It's kind of hard to gauge Cleo and Martyn's relationship from this point forward but Martyn definitely chills on the namecalling and cooperates with Scott and Cleo for the main part going forward.

I think it's also worth mentioning that, despite Scott once again being the object of his spite, Martyn is once again friendly with Scott all season. When he catches Cleo and Scott mid-axe crit, it's Cleo he starts hitting and not Scott, despite them both being responsible. Behind his back, Martyn will claim Scott is "ruining" Cleo but to his face Martyn is always respectful. He actually even calls Scott "pretty"/"hot" in the last episode, which has some implications I'll talk about more in the Limlife section.

Martyn, like everyone else, is weird about Pearl. Uniquely in his case, Pearl isn't a witch nor demoness, but rather a non-factor he seems to have had written off and her triumph in the end comes as a shock to his system.

He dismisses her concerns over and over in the first episode as they are exploring together and, instead of seeing her as a natural source of allyship, doesn't value her enough to keep her around as an alliance even after Scott and Cleo dump them. In his heart to heart with Cleo, he even very randomly speaks badly of her, although he immediately seems to feel a bit of guilt over it.

He never seems to view Pearl through a sympathetic lens despite the two being in the same circumstance and, again in the same conversation with Cleo, they both agree that she could act as essentially a pawn (an "extra healthbar") for them like Cleo uses Scott.

I feel the need to clarify that while, yes I do believe Martyn is Weird About Women, I also do think he's honestly above average and sees them more as people than some other men in the series (note: my standards are not very high)

He sees most people as nothings that can be manipulated or competition that also can be manipulated, it just so happens that all the women in the series so far land squarely in the former and it took Cleo saying to his face "I'm taking advantage of Scott" for him to realise she wasn't a victim. However, even afterwards, he never treats her with the same competitiveness he has for people like Scott and Scar (albeit it makes enough sense in this season since she's attached to his healthbar, but this remains the same for future seasons). And as a reminder, he holds respect for those he deems as threats, which might have something to do with why he feels comfortable hitting Cleo but not Scott.

As for Ren and the Broken Hearts Club, they didn't get a lot of time together this season since both were preoccupied with their own soulmate dramas and being awful to Pearl but what we do see of them ranges from heartwarmingly nostalgic to a little bit hollow. Martyn saying to Pearl that they're the same at this point doesn't really read to me as him being truly sympathetic since this is post the "you should go use pearl as your second hp bar" conversation and Ren is way too busy to deal with the emotional turmoil of what's going on between himself and Bigb to really pay attention to Martyn.

Ren is still very kind to Martyn, especially considering the last time he saw him in LL Martyn was trying to kill him, but there's an emotional gap between the two that's very noticeable at least to me when compared to 3L and LL.

I think Martyn, at this point, convinced of his own "emotional bonds don't carry over seasons" logic, might be a bit too comfortable on relying on Ren. In both DL and LL he runs to Ren when his current alliance gets shaky and Ren is a source of definite comfort for him (as he said so himself on stream). Ren, as a source of comfort, is not a threat to Martyn aka not someone he needs to keep tabs so when said source of comfort falls through the gaps, you get:

Limited Life. The one where he compares himself to Joffrey from GOT

I don't think I have much to say about LimLife Martyn that hasn't already been said.

I will say I don't necessarily think Majorwood is purely his rebound relationship from Ren, the Mean Gills forming is very much not OOC for either Scott or Martyn (this is pretty much how they acted with eachother at the start of 3L) and their resulting give and take coworker-esque dynamic is a very natural place for them to end up from their previous interactions. Scott, like Martyn, tries to shed his emotional attachments with each new season so they are, in a very literal sense, making eachother worse by reinforcing that habit by normalizing it to eachother.

However, the parallels to their respective 3L partnerships I can't blame people for pointing out, right down to Martyn killing both Ren and Scott in the seaons he was teamed with them and the latter being happy about it.

I think it's time to say what I've been implying with Scott and Martyn throughout this whole thing and that is that they are eachother's ideal ally. They are both aware of the game, play the game, emotionally distant, manipulative and make themselves suffer more for that mindset. I don't think there was ever a moment in their allyship where either assumed the other wasn't going to stab them in the back later, despite the mutual respect they have being very real.

Martyn spends a lot of time this season just wandering around talking to various people, alot like how he acted in 3L before he and Ren became an official thing. It's almost as if, without Ren there, he loses his default go-to guy and is once again sizing up the competition around him.

The one exception I would say would be his interactions with Cleo, who he seems genuinely friendly with, even offering himself up as a "godfather" for the Clockers before the whole server became some form of extended family. You'd think this alliance would also have some basis in the ever present Scott/Cleo alliance but Scott's constant sacrifices for the Clockers are never discussed between him and Martyn, in fact the two of them rarely talk about anything ever past base-building and dolphin-wrangling, and the Clockers seem to treat them as two seperate entities rather than an alliance (e.g. Bdubs seems almost entitled to Scott's life after a certain point, but none of them ever even consider asking Martyn for time).

That, and of course the fact that Martyn kills Scott very unsympathetically towards the end, really point me in the "Martyn is still spiteful towards Scott" direction -- after all, alliance or no alliance, I don't think Martyn would want to be in the conversation with Scott where he tells him about his "love you back" exchange with Jimmy. Martyn certainly respects Scott, loves Scott I'd even say, but I don't know if he actually likes Scott.

I think it's also interesting that it's this season where Martyn's Watcher Lore interludes make a return, just in time for his source of comfort (Ren) to be missing.

Re: the watcher lore the comment Martyn makes about swapping out souls of players who are too "damaged" is very in line with his DL seeing women (and "weaker" men like Jimmy, Mumbo and, of course, Ren) as default victims as, knowingly or not, he implies through this that all the women in the series have souls too weak to withstand the horrors. This also in turn implies that he himself is not broken, which I think he'd like to believe.

Secret Life. It's happy again :D oh wait no

Secret Life starts with Martyn kissing Jimmy. I feel like we moved on from this way too fast in general I mean on the cheek or not he did kiss him he did literally kiss him.

I'll be honest I think the Big Dogs POV is the one I'm least familiar with out of all of these but from what I do remember it's very nice to see Martyn and Jimmy settling back into what seems like their Evo dynamic or even their pre-horrors LL dynamic.

Unfortunately Jimmy is not Cleo and thus cannot get Martyn to be the slightest bit vulnerable, so their dynamic remains stagnant and neither acknowledge the awkwardness that still resides between them.

Jimmy is at least very clearly holding onto some discomforts, judging by his behaviour late in the series when he acts aggressively towards Pearl and celebrates Lizzie dying. He even chases Scott down with a sword on horseback earlier on and, very early in one of Pearl's episodes, he quickly switches between sounding sad and angry.

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It's clear to me at least SL Jimmy has reached some sort of breaking point, and this never gets acknowledged by Martyn (I like to think he just lacks the EQ to deal with it). This all cascades into Jimmy attempting to kill Martyn and running away before dying.

SL Martyn feels almost like, to me, the 3L Martyn who successfully convinced Jimmy to team with him and the disaster that comes with that. Martyn certainly has continued to be his survivalist self, not trusting outsiders to the point where when the Wither/Warden combo is unleashed, he immediately assumes they're picking off reds and goes to hide.

Weirdly enough, his protective tendencies towards Jimmy are pretty much gone. It's almost as if when he doesn't see an active threat (e.g. Scott) he assumes things must be good enough and leaves it at that, which also implies he can't comprehend that He might be detrimental to Jimmy himself.

Obligatory. Yes he still misses Ren. Him literally basing his alliance concept off of dogs is. hilarious. I'm so sorry babygirl.

Real Life is, again, non-canon to me but turns up the "dad who buys you 45 mandarins" energy to 11 with him being Ren and Skizz's pseudo-dad. I love Ren having a crisis about his own RP btw it's the funniest thing and he does it like. Everytime.

Uh yeah I hope that's long enough

#asks #this took me like. a week to write.#BAD analysis do not read #<-- what im gonna tag these as. if i ever even make another one because jesus christ #random thoughts #long post

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inbarfink · 1 year ago

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Okay, so here is my Thought…

It’s already being established that the majority of worlds in the AT Multiverse are born from wishes granted by Prismo. I mean, we know there are other types of alternative universes (Like Flapjack’s universe) - but Prismo’s exposition implies they are the exceptions and not the rule. And we already know the Wish that birthed Farmworld, and we even got a Word of God about Babyworld (a Wish made by BMO) but…

Was Winterworld also born from someone’s wish?

While first watching the episode, I was wondering if that was a universe born from Ice King’s wish to, like, make Princess Bubblegum madly in love with him or something. But after all of the reveals at the end of the episode and thinking about it a bit more - I feel like this is unlikely.

I mean for once, there is the question of how the ‘One Wish Per Person' rule works with the existence of a multiverse. Because we know our Simon also tried using his Prismo Wish

(And from their interactions in Episode 4 it seems like Prismo considers Ice King and Simon to be the same person, So a Wish made by Ice King would also count as the one Wish for Simon)

So like… if Ice King made a Wish with Prismo and then got teleported into Winterworld where his wish was granted and then like… a duplicate of him keeps going in Mainworld Ooo and that one’s actually the Simon we follow… would that Simon get his own Wish from Prismo? Or would the Winter King count as the separate Simon who didn’t waste his Wish yet? Finn has already used up his own Wish but his situation is kinda unique cause he, like, came back from being Farmworld Finn. I’m not sure about the rules here but I’m feeling like it shouldn’t work, Simon used up his one Wish failing to bring Betty back so that means he probably didn’t wish up Winterworld.

I don’t feel super-confident about that, but I feel a bit more sure of this next observation; Prismo says that the Wishes he grants, whatever he wants them to or not, always have some sort of a Monkey’s Paw or ironic twist thing going on. They never go quite right for the Wisher. And the Winter King was doing extremely well until our Free Radicals came along.

I mean… maybe the fact that Pre-Curse Simon would’ve been disgusted with the Winter King’s actions counts. Or maybe the implication is that with the Candy Queen’s recent ‘escalation’ he would’ve been killed sooner or later even without the Multiverse Trio’s intervention.

But… compared to how throughly and how quickly Farmworld went badly for Finn specifically- that honestly feels like a stretch. I think that if Winterworld was born from the Wish of any character - it was most likely Marceline.

She has all the motivation to Wish for Simon to have his memories and/or sanity back - and had it for the longest time out of all of his acquaintances. And if it was her Wish - then it sure as hell has gone extremely wrong for her.

The woman that she loves has been doomed to the same torturous existence Simon has been trapped in alongside her entire kingdom. And Simon might have his sanity and identity again, but this vile man who willingly and knowingly condemned PB to a life of suffering in his stead is so much farther away from the kindly father figure Marceline remembers than Ice King the crazy old Wizard ever was.

And then he also stole Marceline's most beloved personal possessions and like… probably killed her and definitely replaced her with an icy duplicate who is forever the child he wants her to be. If this Wish is some sort of Ironic Monkey's Paw to anyone, I think Marceline makes the most sense.

(I will give an honorable mention to Betty, because she also very much has the motivation and it is kinda weird we haven’t seen her try and save Simon with a Prismo wish. But I think that while, like, dying in the Mushroom War unmourned and unremembered by the man you did all of this for is a pretty miserable fate.... I still think that Marceline’s narrative fits the idea of cruel irony a lot better)

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allgremlinart · 1 year ago

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The Most Underrated Line In All Of ATLA/TLOK And Its Many Worldbuilding Implications - A Ramble

In S2E7 of TLOK we get this dialogue from Wan and The Aye-Aye Spirit: "There are other Lion Turtles?" "Of course there are - dozens of them!" [timestamp 3:38 in this video]

It's such a quick line it's easy to miss, but there's one thing about it that made a LOT of things click into place for me about the Avatar universe's worldbuilding; the fact that there are (or were) dozens of Lion Turtles. NOT four, with one for each element, like you would assume. Dozens.

What does this mean in terms of the Four Nations? What connections might this have with other previously established lore? Well uhm follow me on this journey. I guess.

Pre-Unifications - A Global Warring States Era?

A warring states era on a wouldn't be nearly as compelling if there were only four Lion Turtles. If this were the case, everything would be perfectly balanced; why would there be disarray, violence, cultural disparity and struggles for power within each elemental group if the world was already perfectly divided into four solid groups? Why would a national identity be in question at all?

But the fact that there are more than one Lion Turtle per element... that means different groups of people being isolated from one another for long periods of time. This means different bodies of identity, regardless of element. Different city states, regional Kings, Queens, fiefdoms, dynastic power struggle, etc etc, before any sort of inherent loyalty the ones element as a national and cultural identity was established.

We know the Avatar world was not always divided into Four Nations. In Chapter 21 of The Rise Of Kyoshi we learn that Guru Laghima - a name you'll recognize from TLOK S3 - was from an era when the Four Nations had not yet been formed. We also know from Zaheer that he lived about 4,000 years before the events of TLOK (for context, thats about 6,000 years after Wan became the first Avatar).

There's further confirmation of this in Smoke And Shadow, where we learn about the first Firelord and the Fire Nation's unification wars.

However there's implications of this even in the original series; it's not some sloppy ret-con from the books and comics, it fits. Think Omashu:

In S2E2 of ATLA we get the story of Oma and Shu - and we learn that they come from "warring villages." Now why exactly would their villages be warring if The Earth Kingdom already existed? Why the need for a power struggle? Why is it not presented as a civil insurrection or civil war, but as a conflict between two distinct groups of people? The answer is that the "Earth Kingdom" as we conceptualize it did not exist. I'd go further and say that we can assume that after Omashu was established it became a powerful regional kingdom, and created strong sphere of cultural influence. Think about it - Bumi is King Of Omashu. King. NOT the Earth King, King Of The Earth Kingdom, but still King Of Omashu.

[Now there's some debate about where Omashu's founding sits on the timeline but to me it HAS to be post-Wan, probably very nearly immediately post-Wan. The line that calls them the "first earthbenders" and that they "learned earthbending from the badger moles" has caused some to question if they fit in with the "Lion Turtles bestowed bending" lore, but to me it fits pretty easily. The Lion Turtles may have bestowed the power but the actual technique was learned from the badger moles and dragons and blah blah blah.]

I also find this line from Jianzhu in The Rise Of Kyoshi very illuminating:

VINDICATION !! And Jianzhu's moaning over the cultural diversity within his country brings me to the second part of this post...

FC Yee And Gene Luen Yang Accidentally (?) Make Avatar's Cultural Mish Mash Make More Sense

Avatar's cultural gumbo of visuals has always been a little hard to parse. If you follow @atlaculture then you know it'd be kind of fruitless to try and apply any one single ethnicity/culture to one nation. A common, and very valid, criticism of Avatar is the pan-asian approach it takes to worldbuilding. I'm not here to defend that lol. I think people who dislike Avatar on that basis are well within their rights to do so, and I also think it's important to enjoy things critically.

HOWEVER, from a worldbuilding perspective, the mish mash becomes easier to swallow when you think of it in terms of multiple groups of people being unified into different nation states over a very long period of time and slowly intertwining their cultures into a single(ish) identity.

Take the Fire Nation for example: in FC Yee's The Shadow Of Kyoshi we learn that the government was much more decentralized and the country was controlled by different clans, like the Saowon and Keosho, who had individual spheres of influence and strong senses of identity. It makes me think about Mai and Ty Lee

They're both Fire Nation nobles and they both live in the Fire Nation capital - but their styles/clothes are completely different. Now, obviously that can be boiled down to personality-based character design but. There's a wide discrepancy between Mai's Edo Japan inspired hair and Ty Lee's Thai inspired performance outfit, and a little retroactive canon about them being part of different but powerful clans .. ? Yeah. That'd be fun, at the very least.

I could go on about this... was there a Water Lion Turtle at the north AND the south? How did the airbenders transition from relatively sedentary life on a Lion Turtle to nomadism? etc etc etc BUT in conclusion: TLOK and the comics have some very fun worldbuilding implications snuck in there !! Which makes up for a lot in my opinion. Personally I'd KILL for an Avatar series set in the warring states/unification period... I think that could be insanely cool...idk. The End. For Now.

#atla #tlok #shadow of kyoshi #rise of kyoshi #this post may get even more added onto it after I read the Yangchen novels...#worldbuilding #like. I REALLY could go on and on but I'm tired and bound to make less and less sense to longer I type #FC Yee #gene luen yang

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watatsumiis · 2 years ago

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Sitting in their lap - part 3

I'm really enjoying writing this series, so here's another part! :D

Content: Gender neutral reader (referred to as 'you'), described/implied to be physically smaller than most of the characters (simply because I am and that's how I project, but if you'd like an alternate version, send me an ask and I'll whip it up!), pre-established platonic relationships (though this may border into romantic if you consider physical affection to be that way, so be warned)

Part 1 - (Ft. Albedo, Al Haitham, Ayato, Arlecchino, Capitano, Childe)

Part 2 - (Ft. Dainsleif, Diluc, Dottore, Gorou, Itto, Kaeya)

Characters in this one: Kaveh, Kazuha, Lisa, Morax, Pantalone, Pierro

Kaveh is a bit of a squirmer - he loves being kept company though and will do anything he can to make sure you're comfortable. If he's particularly absorbed in a project, he may barely acknowledge you, but you'll find that he just absently starts to fidget and toy with you, stroking your hair and touching your face, tugging at your clothes, as if he's just making sure you're still here. Sometimes he may even ask for your opinions on what he's working on and will just absently chatter away to you. You don't have to listen super intently, he doesn't mind either way, it's just like he enjoys hearing the sound of his own voice.

Kazuha tends to get up and move around a lot, even when he seems to be settled. He finds that moving around can help get the creative juices flowing - but he'll still himself for a while if it seems like you're in need of some attention. He mutters to himself a lot and may even be working on more than one thing at once (sometimes even holding pencils in both hands), catching little snippets of inspiration before they're gone with the wind. Sometimes it seems like he's looking for your input on a quote or idea, but he always seems a little shocked/startled when you provide a response - but not at all displeased, he really likes having someone to share his ideas with. You notice that his writing tends to border into softer/fluffier sorts of stuff when you're sitting with him - perhaps the physical touch affects him more than he lets on.

Lisa thinks it's super cute and sweet of you to seek her out this way - she certainly doesn't mind having an excuse not to do her work (though it's not like she was going to do it in the first place). She'll chuckle and tease you a little, then settle in for the long haul. She may disturb every now and then to ask you if you need anything or if you can shift your position just a little, but other than that you're pretty much left alone - except for the odd occasion when she's particularly bored and might prod or poke you to make you squirm or giggle. She really does enjoy the company - it gets rather lonely in the library sometimes, especially when people are just dropping in and out for books.

Morax, despite his spiky, horned exterior, really enjoys some snuggles, regardless of his current temperament. The clashing of cold blooded dragon and warm blooded human can mean he has difficulty regulating his own temperature, so having something warm curled up in his lap is often just what he needs to even himself out. He'll curl his big tail around you and rest his chin atop your head - you swear you can feel some kind of purr resonating from somewhere deep in his chest. It's almost possessive, the way he curls his unnaturally tall form around you, puffing out a little sigh into your hair. If he happens to be in a talkative mood, you cuddling up to him may also prompt him into telling you a story or reciting a poem he heard long ago - his voice sounds different from behind those wickedly sharp fangs inside his mouth, but it's still unmistakably him. He'll always make a point to thank you for keeping him company once you get up to go (or if he has to go for whatever reason).

Pantalone acts aggrieved at first - don't take it as a personal slight, he's just dramatic. He'll quickly figure out how to continue his work around you (though you may get booted off if someone walks into his study) and you'll find that he starts to absently use you as a fidget toy, twirling your hair around gloved fingers and pressing his cheek lightly against you as he lets out a content hum from the back of his throat, so quiet that you almost feel like you imagined it. If it becomes a regular thing between you two, he may eventually organise for his workers to bring up extra snacks, and maybe a book or something to keep you occupied. His work is mind-numbingly boring and he doesn't really have any way to entertain you personally. He may get a little strict (or even downright mean) if you fidget and squirm too much, and will remind you "You're only in here because I'm gracious enough to allow you to occupy both my time and space. That opportunity can be taken back at any time." Meanie :(

Pierro has a bout of initial confusion and shock, but doesn't really let it show. He'll just let you climb into his lap, giving you this stern and vaguely-disapproving look as you do so, but he won't say anything or make any move to discipline or redirect you - that's pretty much him giving you the go-ahead. He'll hardly even acknowledge you, just working around you as he does what he needs to do. If anyone happens to walk in, he'll act like you're not even there, just go about his business as usual. His resting temperature is a little cool, but not to an unpleasant degree. You may find him setting a hand on your hip or back every nod and then so that you don't tumble off as he shifts his weight around or reaches for something on his desk, but other than that it's like you don't exist at all - unless you get too wriggly or start asking questions, in which case he just lifts you off of him and sets you on your feet somewhere off to the side of the chair like a mother cat repositioning a kitten.

Please don't repost, steal, copy or otherwise plagarise my writing! This includes posting translations to other sites.

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jojotichakorn · 3 months ago

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not to be all defensive over my blorbo, but phum genuinely did not plan on making peem wait that long at the mall. we literally see him trying to call peem, but he doesn't respond (because his phone ran out of battery), so phum assumes he left home already. and when he finds out peem waited for him for hours and feels bad about it, it is not a late realisation of what he has done - he is clearly horrified at the fact that it happened at all because again that was not what he was trying to do.

honestly, i can write a whole essay about how it becomes clear almost immediately that phum is enjoying peem's company and is aiming for some sort of a banter-ish friendship situation at the beginning, not entirely recognising the dynamics he himself established with the slave deal from peem's point of view. add to that phum's abandonment issues and this idea that he needs some sort of an excuse for people to stick around (his only friends are his brother and his childhood bestie, who almost kind of "have to" be there for him in a way), and you get him acting like a fish out of water trying to establish this new friendship the first couple of episodes.

in fact, the slave deal starts seeming like a "foot in the door" so quickly that when i was first watching the series live and we were just four episodes in, i thought that phum might have already had a crush on peem and it was all a weird elaborate plan to get close to him. in retrospective, that is, of course, not the case, but phum definitely imprints on peem very fast (which frankly makes complete sense for someone as lonely as he is) and is trying to imitate some sort of a friendship with all the joint cafe visits and paying for peem's drink and generally just trying to make peem hang out with him as much as possible (it is very clear that far from everything he does even at the very beginning is because he is trying to make peem "work off his debt").

and the reason why he is so bad at it and doesn't fully realise what the dynamic is actually like or what he is supposed to do with it is because he has canonically not been properly socialised and has literally never made a friend once in his life. his formative years were spent not knowing the language other kids around him spoke, crying and missing home, and he became completely closed off, relying solely on his pre-established relationships with his family and beer upon returning to thailand (and later meets tan through a bizarre set of circumstances connected to his brother and also being bullied at school + meets mick through beer and clearly never hangs out with him separately from his best friend).

and i know that the idea of a person literally never making friends until they were like 20 years of age might sound bizarre to some, but it is genuinely a thing that happens (especially when a person has cptsd and specifically finds it hard to socialise because of it).

phum's lonely, poorly socialised self sees some sort of a potential for a friendship in what he established with peem, and he slowly but surely tries to reframe their relationship into that. and to be fair to him, with further and further success, because the slave deal becomes more and more of an excuse until he actively refuses to mention it at all in later episodes, as they get closer, and peem is eventually more than happy to turn it into something completely unserious as well.

#peem slowly and at first unwillingly falls in love with phum who in his eyes is being kind of a dick at the beginning #while phum wants to be friends with peem from almost the very beginning #and falls in love with him in the process of trying to (at first. poorly.) trying to establish that friendship #we are the series #phum tag #archer's meta

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valeriefauxnom · 8 months ago

Text

Unintentional Comedy - Dragalia and Feh Artwork Edition

So, remember Alfonse, from FEH?

Y'know, this dude?

For an okay crutch for those without Gala Euden or Albert or other handy light swords they didn't want to invest in, he was rather popular, only partly owed to any pre-established fondness FEH players had since they already knew him. People liked the more expanded personality we got than FEH's bare-bones story, additionally before they started trying to spice Alfonse up in more recent books.

In his story, however, one of the events that happening is Euden falling off a cliff, shortly followed by Alfonse.

Miraculously, cliff-falling isn't quite as dangerous in Dragalia Lost as in real life (also demonstrated by Leonidas in Stranded Scions, etc...), and the two survive. Alfonse has some sort of injury to his foot, however, conveniently hampering his ability to move but not much else.

Euden, being Euden and unwilling to throw anyone to the wolves, comes up with this idea:

Nothing atypical here, right?

...Well, as it was revealed in a book published two years later than his debut in Dragalia, Fire Emblem Heroes Character Illustrations, Volume 1...

Alfonse is 180cm tall, AKA 5'11.

...Is it any surprise coming from 195cm/6'5 and 180cm/5'11 parents? Someone check the Askran royal food for steroids that Sharena has apparently not been consuming, presumably because she's instead dining with heroes in the barracks.

I digress.

Now, as I've gone over before here, here's where it gets hilarious in retrospect.

In short, Ranzal, the resident big buff burly dude of Dragalia...is stated to be 6'1/185 in the joke comics.

...And while literally nobody else got an even vaguely-official number to their height, Dragalia instead opting for a 'comparison heights' to keep track of who's shorter and who's taller in a pair... Euden often seems to wind up in the 150-155cm/5'0-5'1 range or even shorter when in illustrations with Ranzal:

At most, I've seen him crack about 5'9/175cm in the comics, which aren't exactly a stable source of art, as demonstrated by these two panels, in which both seem to be on flat ground and standing pretty straight:

I need to stop before I mindlessly repeat the other post, but my point remains:

Euden, by most depictions, is tiny. A literal short prince/king.

And yet, no matter what way you slice it, he's trying to carry a dude that seems to be quite a bit taller, let's say. How much, we'll never know, but the fact remains he'd likely need to pull out a dragon phone to search 'how to carry people much taller than you?' just in case and hurriedly read a wikihow 10-step article explaining some strats, were it not for the fact that dragons would have destroyed smartphones in Dragalia a long time ago (good move, dragons....?).

I will admit that there are a few arts that frame them as the 'same height' but I would more point to the fact Euden, when drawn with crossover characters for promotional art, is usually portrayed on an 'equal footing', so as not to have one take up more space/attention. Also, the Feh team might not have even decided on a height for Alfy boy before!

Even then, he's still portrayed as shorter than 5'9/175cm Joker in some art:

So yeah. Crossover art is not exactly consistent, and all I can do is look to the general trend in the 'canon game' of him being absolutely dwarfed by Ranzal.

Now, it's one thing for Euden to be lugging about Alfonse for a while.

The idea he might have done so with such a potential height disparity is pure comedy.

No wonder he's so tired after a while, lugging about another human who is both taller, heavier, and also wearing armor!

Not only that, he later tries and partly succeeds in fighting heavily armored soldiers (who are admittedly aiming to capture him and kill Alfonse) with Alfonse 'draped across his back like a sack of potatoes'. Talk about determination, adrenaline, and/or the simple principle of 'small but mighty'!

Maybe that's why Alfonse was saying "I don't think that's wise" at the start there before he quickly found other rationale besides 'you sure you can give a piggyback without my feet dragging along the ground the whole way?'

My case rests, Your Honor: they unintentionally made part four of Alfonse's personal story a lot funnier to envision by publishing an art book 2 years after he first existed in Dragalia Lost!

#dragalia lost #fire emblem heroes

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bonefall · 9 months ago

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For Riverstar’s Heir, do you have any idea where you want to land themeatically? Because from my reading of the possible themeatic directions, with the whole story being about this crisis of politics and succession, it feels like the character who “should” become the next leader of RiverClan narratively should be the Most ruthless/aggressive/willing to resort to dishonorable methods of dealing with rivals (reinforcing RiverClan’s entry into/building up of the early Clans’ emerging systems of battle society)

The alternative “most interesting” option I can imagine would be one that is least likely/least aggressive/some otherwise sort of underdog candidate (maybe not even technically “legal” depending on what qualifications there are for heirship?), but I’m not sure exactly what themes that would play into, other than maybe how the pursuit of power can change someone?

That said, your themeatic instincts are strong enough that I can see you having a strong idea for a “middle-of-the-pack” candidate winning out over the others just as much, so— I am genuinely curious what your thoughts are for where you Want this crisis of succession to end, narratively, even if you don’t have an exact cat picked yet.

Good ask because I'd not been clear about the theme yet, I think. What Riverstar's Heir is trying to get at, at the heart of the issue, is that this is a bloodbath caused by naiive optimism and greed.

The commandments to establish borders and prevent killing are nice, but not enough. You can't just have a society on good will, not when POWER is up for grabs in the scramble. It's about collapse, and how innocent, well-meaning people get caught up in the devastation. Not JUST the troublemakers.

Riverstar was an EXCELLENT king, beloved and wise, but if you don't prepare a proper successor, everything you worked hard to build might crumble to ruin.

Something unique is lost in this shuffle. It's no longer the River Kingdom, and the Wind Coalition also becomes WindClan at this point. For better, and for worse, they both lose a bit of what made them special. Redscar's choice at the end also solidifies the early political power of Clerics, which is eventually broken many generations later with Larkwing's Strike.

So, fragment time,

At LEAST three "heirs" end up getting killed.

So, because these ones are gonna die, I have Three Heir "Slots" that I'm committed to and just need to fill;

The Eldest, Riverstar's oldest living biological child.

The Chosen, Riverstar's adopted heir, a rather meek prince easily pressured into backing off his rightful claim. This one is likely going to be the BB! version of Mossfire.

The Firstblood, directly descended from Riverstar's FIRSTborn child. This one is likely going to be the BB! version of Jumpfoot.

I also have two tentative slots.

The Accomplished... who is a blood relative of Riverstar, but more of a "puppet" for WindCo. Someone they're intentionally propping up hoping for power.

The Diplomat, from WindClan, who is a lot like WindCo's puppet but this one is more subtle about it. Poetic. Happy to purr and remind the world of the wonderful, deep ties that had existed between King Riverstar and Thunderstar.

And, LASTLY, there's The Deputy. The most qualified choice, who served Riverstar, but was no relative.

It feels right that the Deputy is the one who is chosen in the end... hm.

Anyway

After a smaller conflict near the start of the story, either The Eldest or The Firstblood seems to be the favorite to win... but decides to wait for the morning to set out for the Moonstone and take their lives.

In this time period, without selecting a successor, this heir is assassinated.

In fact it might be VERY fun if this heir, being so much like King Riverstar himself, decided to throw a pre-emptive celebration.

Meat! Merriment! MURDER!!!

Having them go out via poison would be a fun way to send a character off.

This is going to be why the "DEPUTY BEFORE MOONHIGH" rule is established, but it's also what kicks off the bloodier parts of the plot.

Thinking about it... a cleric and/or the deputy should probably tell this heir, "Hey, buddy, you should really get going" and they're ignored.

With Eldest Heir gone, the small conflict from earlier becomes an LARGE conflict.

And, like they did back in DOTC, families start to rally together. Especially Eldest's offspring, who think they're just as entitled to the Throne as The Firstblood/Jumpfoot

King Riverstar used to encourage cats to enter the River Kingdom freely. The borders were essentially open, and everyone was allowed in, as long as they were willing to cross the river.

(maybe I'll even have him pull down the tree from Riverstar's Home intentionally, happy to accept other cats into his Kingdom. Then he defends it from Skystar, specifically, but refuses to destroy what he built.)

This had allowed River Kingdom to grow large and powerful, but it also meant everyone in River Kingdom had connections to the other Clans.

Which meant there were cats supporting OTHER bids to the Throne, like the one from WindCo and the one from ThunderClan.

Smelling a way to grab power, Duststar supports his favorite heir, and Whitestar of ThunderClan also begins to stick his nose in.

Each Heir tries to run the River Kingdom, and things start to get hostile. If there's more than just the three heirs, even more of them start to get openly attacked, chased out, killed, until there's only The Chosen and The Firstblood left.

Somewhere around here, River Kingdom is invaded. Probably by the leader of SkyClan at the time, claiming that they don't even NEED an heir to take what these cats clearly don't deserve.

And that's when the internal conflict becomes a FULL-BLOWN WAR between four Clans.

In those days, the camp was at Sunningrocks, right in the middle of the river.

ThunderClan jumps in to help its "Ally" against SkyClan, just like historical precedent, but they have NO IDEA who they're fighting against, because the whole Kingdom is divided. It's not as simple as it was in DOTC anymore.

WindCo came to support its favorite heir, but its cats don't obey Duststar's orders when it comes down to fighting their own friends and family, meaning they're functionally fighting EVERYONE and losing a TON of cats

SkyClan is getting pummeled because EVERY group is pissed at them as well as each other, getting a painful awakening that they are NOT being run by Skystar the War God anymore and they're no longer the biggest, baddest bananas in the bunch

(shadowclan is watching all of this and eating popcorn. moisturized. in their lane. unbothered.)

The climax here, between The Chosen and The Firstblood, is a battle that matches the chapter from COTC. They launch at each other, in a battle to the death.

The first Sunningrocks Battle.

They both wear "crowns" on their head, one custom made for Mossfire's short-furred head, and traditional, braided into Jumpfoot's long, lush fur.

As they claw, bite, and tumble, they plunge into the river.

Fighting and hissing, they try to pull apart to rise up for air-- and can't.

They're STUCK

The crowns became tangled in their skirmish, and neither one can work with the other to bring them both to shore, against the current.

Both heirs, the last with a proper claim to the throne, drown together in the river.

At the end of the bloodbath, the tone is very somber. The rules were meant to prevent The First Battle from ever happening again... but The Second Battle had just taken place.

The body count wasn't AS high as the First Battle, but it was still a bloody loss. Every Clan lost warriors. Even ShadowClan, who hadn't even been IN the conflict, checked its ranks to find that powerful warriors had run off to go fight with their Kin.

Now they could be buried with them, too.

And now, there was no proper heir. If any descendants were still kicking around, they were refusing to take a throne that so many cats had died for. Jumpfoot and Mossfire never emerged from the River, their bodies, and their legendary crowns, were never found.

At first I'd been considering Redscar being swapped to become a RiverClan Cleric, but now I'm thinking it actually makes sense he's still from ShadowClan. ShadowClan was the ONLY neutral group-- it's reasonable for the clans to turn and request their partiality.

So, Redscar peruses the options, having followed the situation from afar.

His choice, in the end, was The Deputy. The most experienced advisor who knew Riverstar, and probably tried to stay at his adopted daughter's side as well. The closest thing they'd had to a leader all along.

(Thought: Maybe this character will be the POV. Make it like a bit of a fake-out title, you THINK Riverstar's heir is Mossfire. But it's actually been this one all along.)

He creates his famous false sign, and from there, the five groups discussed how they could prevent this from ever happening again.

They create the Law of the Deputy, commanding that ALL Clans have a single Deputy who will inherit the Clan after the leader passes away, ending dynasties in WindCo and River Kingdom and centralizing power in the other 3.

With the massive losses that WindCo and River Kingdom experienced, they also restructure, forced to accept a lot of help from ThunderClan and ShadowClan.

The borders began to close up, leading to the sentiment that would lead to Commandment 4, the Law of Loyalty, in just one more generation.

#better bones au #BB!DOTC #Riverstar's Heir #I feel like I need to add in more 'human' moments #But it's also a very broad overview type thing #Having the Deputy be the POV will help immensely I think once I get into the details #Since she'll be thinking about how to keep the Kingdom together. How to feed people. How badly it's all crumbling #And how distracting the violence all is #But this is a broader draft of the major politics when the REAL meat of this story is in the minutia.#(Ottoman Empire ass drama in the background) ``no time for that goku. its fall. the salmon r coming.``#Unsure if this is Flowerstem or Maplewhisker....#The Eldest would make sense as Mothpelt #Again: COTC my beloved

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sergeantgoggles · 2 months ago

Note

Lemon Yellow - poly batch <3

Whew. Anon, you really know how to pick 'em.

3800+ words later....

Tags/TW: Polybatch, Emotionally Intelligent Wrecker, Poly Negotiations, Pre-Order 66, Body Dysmorphia, Slightly Graphic Depictions of Cybernetics and Skin, Depression, Trauma, Nightmares, Echo Crying, Mentions of Former Poly Torrent Company (Rex/Fives/Echo/Jesse/Kix/Hardcase/Tup/Dogma), Grief/Loss, Neurodivergent Tech, Implied Neurodivergent Hunter, Happy Ending on Pabu, 10 Years later, Gay Old Men, Canon Compliant Hand Loss for Crosshair, Tech was CX-2, Batcher and Teenage Omega

Lemon Yellow: How does the first kiss go? (+2 Bonus kisses)

“I saw you and Hunter the other night,” Echo mentioned casually as he handed Tech a spanner wrench. He watched as Tech give him a quick, unconcerned look and went about his business.

“We are in an established relationship,” he replied matter-of-factly, as though it should have been common knowledge that Echo could have simply looked up on the comm chatter.

Echo was new to Clone Force 99. It wasn’t his place to judge them for anything, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t also been in a relationship with another clone or experimented with one before. Still, he chose his next words carefully, afraid that he might know too much now.

“…I also saw him with Crosshair this morning.”

That did give Tech pause, and he sighed with a bit of exasperation. “Look, Echo, I do not know how to tell you this gently, so I will simply be upfront with you. The truth is that the four of us, Hunter, Crosshair, Wrecker, and myself, are in a polyamorous relationship.”

Echo let the words sink in. He knew what they meant, and he knew sort of how it worked. Torrent Company worked similarly. There were obvious pairs, like himself and Fives, and Jesse and Kix, but they were sort of just, all together, the eight of them. So, the four members of the Bad Batch being in such a relationship wasn’t something that Echo was necessarily new to, but…

“You seem perplexed by this,” Tech teased lightly as he set the spanner wrench aside for now. “Perhaps if I explain—”

“No, no, that’s not it. I know what it is,” Echo defended. “I guess I just didn’t think that that sort of relationship was a clone thing.”

“As opposed to what?” Tech inquired with interest.

If nothing else, Tech was at least treating it delicately, if not forwardly. Echo appreciated that he didn’t try to sugarcoat it for him. He knew it was a little…weird…to explain to some people. Even some people in the GAR had a hard time wrapping their heads around it, so it was always more simple to tell people he was with Fives, instead of having six other boyfriends.

“My old squad…”

“The five hundred and first?”

“Yeah, Torrent Company specifically, we were…you know.”

Tech seemed to brighten at that, but why, Echo could only speculate. Maybe he was just happy that he didn’t have to keep sneaking around anymore, but to be honest, it sort of made Echo feel left out. For now, he swept the idea under the rug.

“I see. Do you miss that sort of dynamic?”

Echo pretended to think about it, but the reality was yeah, he really did. He hardly gave his remaining squad a chance to make him feel welcomed back, afraid of what they would think of him, maybe. Even he didn’t know some days, but he knew that this was where he needed to be, at least for now.

“Yeah, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss flopping onto a rack after hitting the showers and there would just be someone there to keep me company,” Echo sighed.

Tech had a curious look in his eyes as he adjusted his goggles. It was obvious that he was thinking hard about something from the way he nibbled on the pout of his bottom lip, and Echo couldn’t help the intrusive thought.

‘He’s so cute.’

With barely even a second to process the thought, Echo’s eyes flew open wide as Tech’s lips connected with his. Immediately, his cheeks darkened, but he settled quickly into the kiss. Tech’s lips were softer than he’d imagined they would be, not that he made a habit of imagining his lips, but sometimes…

Echo hadn’t expected it to go much further, but Tech’s fingers brushed his cheek, fleeting and soft, gloved hand coated in a sheen of grease from the Marauder catching on the stubble that had grown in. He sighed, giving in to feeling someone else’s lips for the first time since—

Fives. The first time since Fives.

Abruptly, Echo leaned away, eyes conflicted as he turned his gaze away from Tech’s imploring look.

“I…am sorry for assuming that you would—”

Echo quickly shook his head. “It’s not that. I liked it, a lot.”

It was as though Echo could feel the heat and hurt radiating from Tech’s stare, and he forced himself to look at him, even though all he really wanted in that moment was to forget the pain of Fives being gone and for Tech to kiss him again. “I’m sorry, Tech. I just…haven’t kissed anyone in a long time. It took me by surprise.”

Tech pondered his words, then, “did I misunderstand?”

This was getting complicated. “No, actually, I want to kiss you again, but I don’t know where the others stand, and I don’t want to come between anyone. That’s not how a polycule works.”

“Ah, I see,” Tech seemed to ease up a little after that and sat back to work on the ship again. “If that is your concern, then I will talk to the others. You are right, it should be discussed.”

Echo smiled and touched the greasy streak on his cheek fondly before he stood. Giddiness coursed through him, but he was also nervous about what was to come. All he could do was hope for the best. In the meantime, he needed to sort out his feelings about Fives, as well as those that remained in his previous situationship. There were a lot of factors to consider, but maybe this wasn’t so bad.

Besides, kissing Tech again would definitely be on the top of his list to do again as soon as possible.

“WHAT?”

“Stop that,” Tech scoffed and rolled his eyes. “This hardly warrants that kind of reaction.”

“You should have come to us first,” Hunter sighed, but he was far less condescending than Wrecker’s outburst had been.

“As if you’re actually bothered by it,” Crosshair quipped as he cleaned the barrel of his rifle. “You’ve been looking Echo up and down since he first stepped onto the Marauder.”

Tech looked between them with a smirk as Hunter’s cheeks lit up.

“WHAT?” Wrecker boomed again.

“Enough,” Crosshair drawled in his direction. “We’ve all thought about it. You’re just mad that Tech made the first move.”

“You’re not mad about it?” Hunter asked and kicked his legs up on Crosshair’s lap. There was a sneer on Crosshair’s lips that said he wanted to knock them off, but he didn’t, instead continuing to detail his weapon.

“No,” he answered, and his eyes flicked to Tech’s, “but I want to know what Echo tastes like.” The suggestive tone didn’t go unnoticed, and Tech appropriately blushed as Crosshair licked his lips. “Why kiss me when you could just go kiss him yourself?”

Setting his rifle aside, Crosshair hummed. “You’re right.”

He stood, now knocking Hunter’s feet off his lap with a smack, and he leaned over the pilot’s seat to steal a less heated kiss from Tech’s lips. “Good thinking, Ace.”

“Hey, that’s my nickname for him,” Hunter pouted.

Tech’s flush darkened further as he was fought over, but the argument died when Crosshair kissed Hunter on his way out of the cockpit.

“Heard you had a run in with Tech.”

Echo looked up from where he was swinging from the sling strung up by the gunner’s mount, setting his datapad aside. “If you mean he kissed me, yeah. Didn’t get him in trouble, did it?”

Crosshair chuckled and crossed his arms. “Not especially, but it took us by surprise.”

“Why’s that?” Echo inquired, eyes curious as he took in Crosshair’s relaxed posture.

“Well, Tech usually isn’t the type to make the first move, even with us,” he explained, and Echo could feel the heat starting to rise in his cheeks. “You must really wind him up.”

As Crosshair leaned into his space, Echo found himself shifting to meet him. “Only him? Or can I get a rise out of you, too?”

There was barely a beat between them before Crosshair ghosted his lips over Echo’s, and they were gone as fast as they came. Echo chased them, but Crosshair was quicker. “You sure you’re okay with this?” Crosshair asked, eyes darting over Echo’s parted lips.

Echo faltered and leaned back into his sling. Was he okay with this? He had told Tech that he needed space to think, but was that only an excuse to make him talk to the others? Sighing, Echo shook his head. It wasn’t fair to leave Crosshair hanging.

“Hn, so you do have some baggage,” the sniper stood, giving Echo some breathing room.

“I haven’t kissed anyone since my last squad,” Echo defended with a scowl.

Crosshair quirked an eyebrow. “You kissed Tech.”

“And I told him the same thing,” Echo shot back, “and he kissed me, for the record.”

This was getting nowhere fast, and Crosshair seemed to see the same thing. Quietly, he stepped back and crossed his arms again, effectively shielding himself from whatever feelings he was keeping locked away. Inwardly, Echo winced. He hadn’t meant to come off like he was rejecting him, or any of them, for that matter.

“Crosshair, I—”

“It’s fine,” he clipped coolly, “but don’t make a habit of kissing my partners if you can’t get yourself sorted.”

Echo bristled, but averted his eyes, staring a hole into the side of the ship. Maybe he hoped it would swallow him up and he wouldn’t have to confront his feelings yet. That sounded nice. He heard Crosshair’s footfalls and listened as they grew distance, disappearing once again into the cockpit, seemingly to tell the others about being turned down.

Frustrated, Echo slipped his legs up into his sling and turned onto his side, facing away from where the others were gathered. Maybe this had been a mistake after all. He should call Rex and rendezvous with him. At least Rex still wanted him, and Jesse and Kix were still there to keep him from running away with his thoughts.

Hardcase had sacrificed himself.

Dogma was arrested.

Tup had suffered and died from what was being reported as a ‘mental relapse.’

…Fives was shot and killed for knowing too much.

How was he supposed to just pretend like each and every loss didn’t feel like a gaping hole being scraped out of his chest?

“Echo…? Echo?”

A large hand shook his shoulder, startling him awake. The jolt as he sat up nearly tipped the sling, but a body beside him kept it from dumping him onto the durasteel floor.

“Wrecker?” Echo questioned, his own voice unrecognizable to him. He lifted his flesh hand to his cheek and frowned when he felt the dampness of hot tears on his fingers. Damn it. “Sorry,” he continued, shame coloring his features. It wasn’t uncommon for soldiers to cry in their sleep, though the nightmares were more common with shinies. He was usually better at hiding it, though. “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

Wrecker fidgeted but made no move to go back to his rack. Worry was etched into his scarred face, and Echo didn’t have the temperament to be gentle about it.

“I said don’t—”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Wrecker murmured, “but I don’t believe you.”

Echo huffed and curled his cybernetic knees up to his chest. It was weird to try and hug them close. Metal dug into his skin, and it was uncomfortable to try and lay his forehead on top of the joints. More tears pooled in his eyes. Damn the Techno Union for saving him. He should have been left to die, march on like the rest of the Dominoes, like most of his partners…

Not be held together by fused skin and whirring parts like the monster that he is.

The sob that left him was quiet, but he might as well have been screaming the way Wrecker wrapped his arms around him and softly quieted his wails. It was weird, the way he could feel the ports in his head sinking into Wrecker’s chest, how tenderly Wrecker’s thumb grazed the skin where his scomp was connected to. Weird, but Wrecker held him like it was the most normal thing in the galaxy.

“…You don’t have to,” Echo sniffed. “I know what I am.”

Wrecker frowned. “I don’t. What do you think you are?”

Echo could have actually screamed. “I’m a freak, Wrecker. I’m more droid than human. I shouldn’t even be alive.”

His words must have struck something deep, because Wrecker sat back enough to grip Echo’s chin and gently force their gazes to meet. There was a softness in his eyes that wasn’t pity, though there was a bit of that despite how much he’d tried to keep it at bay, but understanding and compassion. Their noses brushed, and Echo let him press their lips together, firm, but chaste, with no hidden motives, the kind of kiss that was reassuring and grounding. It was the kind of kiss that reminded Echo of Hardcase after a mission with heavy casualties, kissing all of them and remining them that they’re all okay, they all made it. It was the kind of kiss that Echo gave Tup when he got into it with Dogma, promising him that they would make up and things would be okay.

It was the kind of kiss that Fives gave him their first night in the five hundred and first barracks, after they were extracted from Rishi, when they didn’t have any answers, but they had one another, and that was enough.

“We all have scars,” Wrecker whispered against his lips. “Some are small and hidden, and sometimes they’re big and obvious, but it’s how you wear them that makes the difference. For what it’s worth, I think yours are beautiful.”

Echo gasped, lip trembling slightly. It was the only time someone looked at him and thought that what was left of him was beautiful. No, not what was left, what he was. Wrecker thought he was beautiful as he was, even with the inconvenience of being mostly machine. It felt…well, it felt really nice to be thought of that way, even if he didn’t see it. So, he said the only thing he could in response and kissed him again.

“Thank you.’

Stars hung in the black sky and the moons of Pantora were high in the sky when Echo heard someone emerge from the racks. Normally, he wouldn’t pay any mind to it. It was likely Tech pattering around because he couldn’t turn his brain off. So, he continued to stare out the window from the co-pilot’s seat. That seemed to be where he fit in the best, and he and Tech worked well together.

He wasn’t expecting the glide of a bare hand on the back of his neck, massaging gently. Turning his head, surprise caught his features. “Hunter?”

“I wanted to apologize about earlier,” the sergeant said and took up Tech’s seat. “We should have been open about the nature of our relationship, and Crosshair had no right to kick you out because he wanted some action.”

Echo sighed. He’d almost successfully forgotten why he hadn’t been asleep in his sling between Tech and Wrecker’s racks. Crosshair had exiled him to the cockpit if he didn’t want to join in…activities. To Echo’s credit, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to participate, but having group sex was a hell of a first time with a new body, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for all that yet. Instead of torturing himself by staying to watch, he’d voluntarily left. Had he really been gone that long?

Judging by the way Hunter’s hair was mussed and the vaguely dark marks on his neck, he was certain that if nothing else, Hunter had gotten to partake in some activities.

“It’s fine,” Echo told a half truth. It was, to an extent, but he wished he had been brave enough to join them.

Hunter nodded, wringing his hands together. A nervous thing, Echo noticed. He was like Tech in a way, needing something to occupy his hands most of the time. It wasn’t as severe as Tech’s compulsions, but it was enough to draw Echo’s attention. Carefully, Echo reached over and took on of Hunter’s hands in his own. Immediately, Hunter latched onto it, tracing the lines of his fingers, pressing lightly on his palm, no doubt feeling his heartbeat through his veins. It seemed to calm him, though, and Echo smiled.

“I…understand why you didn’t want to join,” Hunter started, “but you should know that your cybernetic parts don’t bother us, and that despite our own feelings, we respect that you still have feelings for your old squad.”

Echo’s eyes softened. They really had been talking about him, but it wasn’t in the way that he’d thought they were. Not that he thought they were those kinds of people, but he had been so down on himself…it was easier to put the blame on someone else than face himself.

“Most of my old squad is gone,” Echo said aloud, maybe for the first time since he’d boarded the Marauder, “and the ones that remain…well, two of them were already together when we formed the polycule.”

“So, you were left out,” Hunter finished.

“Not really,” Echo shook his head. “They wanted to try…but I’m not the same as I was then, and I didn’t give them the chance to know me as I am now.”

Hunter hummed, still lazily outlining Echo’s fingers as though he were committing the way they felt to memory. “What about us? Think we might have a shot?”

A beat of silence fell between them as Echo considered the question. Was that what he wanted, to be part of another polycule? He certainly hadn’t wanted to assume that they wanted him in that capacity, but the last few days have proved that, if anything, they were willing to try. All of the pieces were there, most of them already put together, all that was missing was the final piece.

Hunter lifted Echo’s hands to his lips and kissed it, careful and deliberate. “You don’t have to give us an answer right now, but the offer is on the table. All you have to do is take it.”

He stood, letting Echo retract his hand, and winked before returning to the rest of his squad, of his polycule, the polycule they all wanted Echo to be a part of. Echo watched his retreating back for a few seconds before he stood abruptly.

“Hunter?”

Yes, he wanted to be a part of this, of them. He wanted someone to love, and for someone to love him, and he was going to find it here, with the Bad Batch.

Hunter turned just as Echo closed the gap between them, kissing him with so much need and longing that it took Hunter’s breath away, and he backed himself up against the console to steady the both of them. Hot, open-mouthed kisses left Echo gasping, and his hand shook as he tangled his fingers into Hunter’s hair, pulling him closer, flush to the line of his body.

It was only the soft clearing of someone’s throat that forced them apart and left them panting for breath. Echo blushed a beautiful shade of red as Tech watched them sheepishly.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Hunter teased.

“That is a shame,” Tech said with a small, crooked smile. “I was rather enjoying the show.”

“Then you shouldn’t have interrupted,” Echo smirked as Tech crowded into his space. This time, Echo was ready and kissed him with as much passion as he had Hunter. Tech became weak at his knees, forcing Hunter to hold him up, and Echo quickly decided that he could get used to this.

It wasn’t the same as being with the five hundred and first, but Echo didn’t want it to be. He would always love his former squads, but this new one wasn’t half bad. He hoped they would be around for a long time.

10 YEARS LATER

Waves crashed on the beach, shifting the sands below. Over time, Echo knew that this place would eventually change. Erosion would claim it, or nature would, but in this moment, it would always remain as it was.

Beside him, Crosshair sat amongst the grain. He didn’t complain about sand getting everywhere anymore, even when it got caught in his cybernetic hand. Next to him, Wrecker slept, head on Crosshair’s shoulder, not so much as budging when the waves licked his toes. Their hands were entwined, soft and familiar, and Crosshair idly stroked it with his thumb as he watched the sun begin its descent into the sea.

Out in the water, Tech watched the horizon as though he were looking for something. Echo could tell he was talking but couldn’t make out what he was saying over the waves. Hunter, though, hugged him from behind and nodded along to whatever Tech told him, and took every opportunity to kiss his cheek, his neck, anywhere he could reach. Never again would Hunter let Tech out of his sight, or go where he couldn’t follow, not after Eriadu and Tantiss.

It took them a long time, but finally, they were all where they were meant to be, together.

Something broke over the horizon, and Echo grinned as Tech waved to those who were waiting on the shore. Crosshair nudged Wrecker awake, but the way that Wrecker was on his feet and waving in an instant, no one would have ever known if not for the drool on his chin. As a ship sped into the cove nearby, Tech and Hunter trudged back through the water and waited patiently for the ship’s captain to emerge.

“Hey! I’m back!”

Omega waved as she ran across the beach to them, beaming proudly as Batcher trailed behind her. No longer did Echo have to kneel to be on her level, and she easily leapt into his arms, still not quite tall enough to keep her feet on the ground. Echo caught her easily and hugged her tightly. This was her first solo flight, to Lothal to bring supplies to a small rebel cell and back, and as far as he could tell, she had been successful. They had known that they couldn’t keep her out of the fight forever, even though they’d all wished they’d had a little more time with her. After all, Omega wasn’t just their sister, but their kid. They raised her.

“Welcome home, Havoc 5,” Echo murmured as he set her back onto her feet.

Omega smiled and leaned up to kiss his cheek. That…was new, not unwelcomed, but definitely new.

“It’s good to be home.”

#cloneshipping #clone shipping #clone/clone #the bad batch #clonecest #polybatch #color prompts: cloneshipping edition #please heed the tags above

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foodtruckery · 10 days ago

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Throwing a new scenario at you have you ever thought about what if ford kind of took advantage of stans spotty memory to start a deeper relationship with him? Just implying this is something theyve been doing already and stans simply forgotten and stan (not that ford is aware of this) hesitantly believes it because he has memories of looking at ford in a way he shouldn't. /thinking/ about ford in a way he shouldn't so maybe he just hasnt recovered those memories of acting on those thoughts yet

But as time goes by he'll ask ford for like. More details to try and jog his memory and ford gives him vague, general things (because well. Never actually happened) and stan is getting more suspicious and freaked out

He starts questioning his reality and if ford is just going along with this because it's what /stan/ wanted and ford felt guilty for the mind wipe so he went along with it so he starts pulling away and ford is getting a little panicked because he thinks stan has figured out his lie and is about to leave him (guess what ford? Gaslighting your brother actually can backfire crazy right?)

Hell maybe ford got the idea because sometimes stan in his relapses DID get confused about their relationship and commented on fords attractiveness or something so ford was like. Well. What's the harm? It's better to not stress stan out in the relapse and make him panicked about finding his brother attractive. Clearly it would be easier for him to just act like this was pre-established!

Absolutely nothing could go wrong ford is sure of it

- 🐶

oh absolutely! i also swear i saw someone else talking about a similar situation the other day that i just loved (and i wish i could remember WHERE i saw it so i could link it). like the darker spin of "ford convinces stan they were closer than they were" on purpose is definitely interesting. but i really love the idea of it being a little bit of ford leaning in and a lot of stan not having a great grasp on what he was repressing. so you've got ford blurring the lines on purpose but then you've got stan blurring the lines because he's always wanted to so okay yeah that tracks, he just wishes he could remember how they got there, who made the first move, how long they've been open with each other about this.

i also really love the idea of stan thinking that ford might just be putting up with him, because it's almost always the other way around when i've seen it. stan agreeing to (or maybe not necessarily agreeing to but not fighting as hard as he should against) letting their relationship go further than he's comfortable with because it's ford. and if that's how he can keep ford in his life, he'll make it work. but i haven't seen a lot of the reverse, of stan feeling like he's the one that's pushing them over the line and ford may only be going through with it to keep him happy or out of some sort of obligation after weirdmaggedon.

so here you have two fucking idiots, basically, who both just refuse to outright admit their feelings for each other. and yeah, ford has a heavier responsibility here being the one with all his facilities in better working order, sure, but god forbid they just sit down and talk about it when stan is lucid enough. i actually just recently was introduced to this fic, which you have probably seen already but if not, HIGHLY reccommend! because i really do love the idea that when stan has his memory lapses he just. immediately starts hitting on ford. like every time that trope comes up it thrills me.

but okay lol, this is a sharp left and not at all in line with the complicated, angstier edge of things we've been talking about, but lean with me for a second, 🐶. let's assume they've sorted their shit out, they're both up to speed with their mutual affection, and this kinda lapse happens frequently enough that they need a contingency plan of some sort. but when he does lapse, stan has a wildly high rate of immediately clocking ford as "hot as hell" and someone he wants to horizontal tango with.

well what if stan just...gave ford permission to go along with it if he wanted to? it's like an absolutely buckwild sort of pseudo-one-sided roleplay, but they can debrief when stan's back to rights, and it's a nicer way of navigating the situation. stan sure as hell prefers coming back to himself with Ford boneless in bed beside him rather than wringing his hands and looking like the guiltiest man that's ever lived. like there's obviously a fantastic opportunity for angst and drama and emotional fallout with stan's memory ish, but i also think they deserve to make the best of the situation once in a while. as a treat!

#this is me meandering all over the place #and dragging you down a fucking rabbit hole with me sorry #stancest #pretend my ask tag is cute

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oneforthemunny · 9 months ago

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wait rockstar!eddie gets kicked out at some point?

kinda yes.

so long ago (on funsonmunson rip sweet angel) we started talking about how nb and rockstar!eddie would be sober parents. i think we had just established that her parents were not, and neither were his, and that's kinda how dark shadows was born.

someone brought the idea that eddie had a slip. he started doing coke or some sort of upper to keep him awake after the twins were born. he was so tired and he just needed some help, so instead of asking someone else, he takes an upper (i think it was coke?? correct me if i'm wrong).

nb finds it in his wallet after she's a little suspicious about how different he's been acting. just over the top and exaggerated and a little crazed- like how he'd act pre-kids. she finds it.

she doesn't even confront him to his face. when he's sleeping or busy or crashes or whatever, she packs up the girls and goes to farrah's. he's freaking out when he wakes bc he can't find her, but finds her wedding rings and the coke by her bedside and just knows. knows he's fucked up worse than he ever has in his entire life.

he loses his shit, and when i say loses it, like full emotional, mental breakdown. gareth has to talk him down, tells him (tho he's not supposed to) where you're at. naturally, eddie is erratic, calls farrah's phone a million times until you answer.

nb tells him something along the lines of "i'm not doing this to my girls. i thought you agreed but clearly you don't." threatens to make it so he'll never see any of them again, and unfortunately he knows she can make that happen (nb perks).

this is the one and only time eddie munson checks himself into rehab willingly- eagerly even. he does the work, all of it, and truthfully, he's so fucking terrified that once he gets sober, he's sick when he thinks about coke. there was no coddling, no chances like before, it was so final when she took his kids, when she left, that it scared the absolute shit out of him.

ofc they get back together, but it takes a long time really. they're separated for a while because he's ruined the trust there, and he knows that.

that's why there was such an age gap between zahra and the other girls. that's also when eddie gets insanely into gardening??? it starts as a love present for nb because she loves flowers, but also because he gets bored and wants to do something productive to keep him from going back to bad habits.

anyways, that's a lost bit of lore. i never made an official official blurb about it bc people were half and half on it but that's what the one ask was. there was no cheating tho, bc he was already so miserable about fucking up, he would have done anything to make it right. not fuck it up further. maybe if they didn't have kids he might have, but he's got kids and he's not gonna do that.

#oneforthemunny #munnytalks #rockstar!eddie munson #dad!rockstar!eddie munson #rockstar!eddie munson x nepo baby!reader

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accirax · 8 months ago

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Elliot Cuevas Lore Check (Yoidoreshirazu MV Analysis)

After the intellectuals in our community had the thought to check the description of DRDTdev’s latest MV masterpiece, one fact became pretty clear: DRDT’s sparkly new MV is not fronted by one of our main cast of sixteen, or even a particularly pre-established side character. Instead, it’s time for Elliot Cuevas to take the stage, and bring with him a lot of questions ranging from “wait, that’s what he looks like?” to “wait, is the killing game predicated on a basis of lies?!” There’s… a lot running through my mind right now, and I see no better way to process it than to start answering the questions that I and others may have as best I can through a theory post. I’m living!

And when I say “answering the questions,” I mean that quite literally. I think that the best way to frame this analysis is to divide it into headlining questions, and tackle what we know and what we can learn piece by piece. Therefore, I think the most obvious question we can start with is:

#1: Who is Elliot Cuevas?

We don’t have a ton of information about the guy, but I’ve tried to compile what we do. By far the most information we’d gotten on Ellie prior to this MV was from the Chapter 2 Part 1 Q&A, where DRDTdev described a little about all of the major siblings we’d heard of so far. Here’s what DRDTdev said:

So, we know that Elliot was given the nickname “Ellie” (and presumably likes it, given that he’s credited in the MV as “Ellie”), and he looks really similar to Charles, which we also saw in the MV. Given how similar he looks to Charles, I’m going to assume that they’re biological brothers, which would make Ellie hispanic/latino. Similarly, I’m assuming that he identifies as male, due to his use of he/him pronouns and the term “brother” being applied to him. He likes pancakes and dogs, which… we’ll get back to later. Charles is stated to be 18+ at the start of Despair Time, which would make Ellie 29-32+ if he were alive today. Which… huh. Is he?

#2: Is Ellie alive?

The belief that Ellie is dead isn’t just a popular headcanon that metamorphosed into “fact”– his death is directly referenced in the text in the form of Charles’ secret. Your older brother, Elliot, died.

However, this MV does make it tempting to believe that Ellie could be alive, so let’s give it the benefit of the doubt for a moment. If Ellie is alive, there are two sets of two questions to consider.

Question #1: If Ellie is alive, why did people think he died?

Ellie was in a life threatening scenario that people believed he didn’t escape from, but he did. After this, he either took the opportunity to disappear, or something prevented him from reuniting with his loved ones.

Ellie did die, and the DRDT universe contains some sort of necromantic magic or time travel properties that could bring him back to life.

Question #2: If Ellie is alive, why does the secret say that he’s dead?

Whoever wrote the secrets (likely the mastermind) did so intending to tell the truth. They learned the information from a source that led them to believe that Ellie had died, and if Ellie turned up alive, they would be just as surprised as everyone else.

Whoever wrote the secrets (likely the mastermind) did so intending to lie. They knew that Ellie was really alive, and included his “death” in the secret just to fuck with Charles. This could also imply that other students’ secrets incorporate some level of lies.

If Ellie is alive, I think that the #1 situation is more likely for both questions.

If Ellie is dead, we don’t know exactly when his death happened. Given that Charles cites it under the umbrella of “childhood amnesia,” we can pin Ellie’s hypothetical death down to a time when Charles was a child. The National Institute of Health defines childhood as 3-11 years old. So, if Ellie died when Charles was 3-11, it would mean Ellie’s age of death would fall between 14 and 23.

I made this little moodboard to try to piece together around what age Ellie might be depicted as in the MV based on how DRDTdev has drawn people of various ages before. This is important under the assumption that Ellie canonically looked like this at some point during his life. ‘Cause (picking obviously wrong numbers here), if Ellie had died when he was, like, 2, it’d be weird if the MV showed him when he was, like, 50, right?

Allow me to take a little detour to discuss the Nageishi sisters and establish their ages. I initially ballparked Arei’s age as around 13 in that picture, which would have made her sisters (who are 2-5 years older than her) 15-18. However, there’s some actual evidence we can pull upon to clarify when that image might have come from.

In Arei and J’s FTE, J says that Arei “definitely [*was*] a highschool bully,” and Arei confirms that she was “the queen of her school.” Assuming that these two are to be believed, we can estimate based on the average age at which an American enters high school as a freshman that Arei has been a bully since at least around 14. While I don’t necessarily expect that Arei came in and became the queen bee on the first day of freshman year, it certainly would have been easier to establish her reign if the other students hadn’t previously seen her being bullied and tortured for a year or so beforehand. Therefore, Arei is probably in a maximum of eighth grade (12-13) in that image, so that she would have had enough time to sabotage her sisters before entering high school.

Additionally, although it isn’t stated in the secret the killing game handed out, Arei confesses to David and Teruko that she “got [her sisters] unlawfully sent to reform school.” Through a bit of googling, I learned that many reform schools cap out at about 16-17 years old, although it’s impossible to confirm that without knowing which state Arei grew up in. If that’s the case, then Fuyuko and Natsuko could only be a maximum of 17 years old, which is in the same sort of age range as Arei being a maximum of 15 in that picture. However, I don’t know if the Nageishi parents/the government would find it too useful to send the sisters to reform school for only one year, so it seems more likely that they’re younger than that in the picture. I might ballpark that Arei is 12 and Fuyuko and Natsuko are 15 in the picture.

Anyways, I think we can definitely rule out the possibility of Ellie dying when Charles was on the lower end of the age spectrum. He looks way older than any of the characters drawn “when they were kids”, and notably older than Arei as well. To me, he also looks older than Ryan, meaning he probably reached the age of an 18+ adult.

Unfortunately, there’s a really large age range that’s gone undepicted between the “18+” killing game participants and Mariabella, the only “parent-aged” adult we’ve seen so far. I would probably put Ellie’s appearance between the two, but it’s also possible that his unkempt hair and eyebags are making him look older than he actually was, a la Syobai Hashimoto of SDRA2 (the link is a spoiler-free picture of him). Syobai’s exact age is unknown, but generally young, yet many people think he’s an old man when they first see him. That phenomenon could be going on with Ellie as well.

If he is, we’ll say, 20 or older, though, there’s a limited number of ages he could have died at that would still fall within Charles’ childhood. If Ellie died, he did so when Charles was in the 8-11 kind of age range. Otherwise, for Ellie to reach the age he’s shown at in the MV, he probably survived to grow older than Charles’ family last remembers him. I think Ellie’s death is probably more likely, but, hey, that means we’ve narrowed down the period in which Charles could have acquired his childhood amnesia. That’s something!

#3: How does Charles feel about Ellie?

Well, okay. Obviously, in the current day, Charles doesn’t know who Ellie is, and therefore probably doesn’t have any strong feelings about him other than confusion. But, before Charles forgot about him, what was Charles’ opinion?

I actually thought that Charles really admiring Ellie was a canon fact, but looking back at it, I don’t think it was ever directly stated. That said, there are several reasons why I thought that their relationship was a positive one.

Told you we’d come back to Ellie liking pancakes! I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that, when Charles thinks of what he’d like to learn how to cook, he comes up with Ellie’s favorite food. It could be that Ellie used to make pancakes for Charles, or that they simply used to go out and get pancakes together, but Charles clearly has some sort of repressed memories about pancakes with his brother that makes him want to seek them out again.

We already knew that Charles and Ellie were known to look very alike, and this MV confirmed that was true, down to the length of their hair. If Charles didn’t like Ellie, he easily could have kept his hair short, like the haircut he had as a child, as a way to make them look less similar. However, Charles is very attached to keeping his hair in a long ponytail, just as Ellie wears it. That implies to me that Charles saw Ellie as enough of a role model to seek replicating the image of his brother through his own style even when he doesn’t remember that Ellie existed. That’s powerful.

#4: Why does Ellie look… like that?

Now this is a point that I’m still confused about. Charles’ affluent backstory has been alluded to multiple times. Both his inability to do his own laundry and his lack of knowledge in the kitchen imply that he had people to cook and clean for him. It’s possible that Charles’ parents were the ones doing that for him (which implies some level of wealth, but not so much as living in a house full of butlers and maids), but the general vibe I’ve gotten is that Charles’ family was well-off enough that they hired help.

If we assume that Charles and Ellie are biological brothers who spent enough time together to form a notable bond, it really seems like they would have grown up in the same household for both of their youths, together. So then, what gives with Ellie’s appearance? The patched up jacket, blemished face, and basic cigarette don’t match at all with the pristine white mansion with hedges that many might imagine for Charles. How would that have played out?

Option A: Ellie was the family’s rebellious wild child

I’m having trouble coming up with good examples, but there’s definitely a trope out there of a big brother character who’s a bit of a rude rebel, but still a pure-hearted dreamer that their younger sibling(s) can really look up to. Ellie was just the member of the uptight Cuevas family that couldn’t be tamed, no matter how hard his parents tried to cramp his thrifty style or stop him from going out and partying(?).

Notably, this option is quite confusing for Charles. Even if this figure is considered the typical epitome of cool, I don’t know if it’s someone who Charles would really gel with. As a child, Charles is depicted as pretty wide-eyed and innocent with his adorable little bubbles. I’m not saying that that kind of kid couldn’t come to idolize their rockstar big bro– just that, if they did, they probably wouldn’t turn out like Charles. Still, it could be an opposites attract situation, or perhaps forgetting Ellie and the ensuing trauma changed Charles more than we would have expected.

This interpretation is also… a bit of a leap, considering what we’ve seen of Ellie.

Like, these are not particularly the expressions of a thrill-seeking party animal who loves to crack open a cold one with the boys. Most of his expressions look wary, scary, or contemplative, and even the two that are smiling are doing so in more of a wry/teasing way. Fun-loving scamp Ellie might fit the way he’s styled his body, but not so much the expressions on his face. Perhaps the characterization was a little off?

Option B: Ellie was the family’s edgy black sheep

Instead of Ellie’s cigarette and messy ponytail implying that he’s supposed to be punk and cool, perhaps they’re meant to indicate that he was more emo and nihilistic. I don’t imagine that the Cuevas household would’ve liked this too much either, but it’s still a plausible way for a privileged teen to rebel against his family system. This kind of attitude matches more with the range of expressions we can gather from Yoidoreshirazu.

However, if it would be hard for Charles to relate to the last guy, I have no idea what Charles would be doing looking up to this guy. Maybe if their one-on-one moments showed Charles the soft heart behind Ellie’s tough exterior, Charles would’ve come to appreciate his perspective on life…? Yeah, I don’t really imagine these two enjoying a plate of pancakes together, either. Also, this would have been when Charles was, like, a kindergartener.

But if that’s the case, what then? Is my image of the Cuevas household just totally off? Or is this version of Ellie not compatible with the Cuevas household at all?

Option C: Ellie was kicked out of his family and left for dead

Especially in front of the grimy brick background and neon street sign, Ellie’s worse-for-wear appearance did make me think that this image of him could have been taken from a time when Ellie was without a home and living on the streets. As in, this look was never associated with the Cuevas household at all.

This option has some definite appeal because it allows a lot more flexibility from Ellie’s personality before he was kicked out. He could have been a stand-up guy, smart like Charles and a great mentor too, and only have adopted his more dour personality once he was kicked out of home. There are plenty of reasons why someone could be disowned that don’t (necessarily) reflect poorly on their character: Google lists being LGBTQ+, dating someone of a different race or religion, getting someone pregnant, or not following the profession your parents wanted for you as possibilities, depending on who the parents are and what they believe.

Any interpretation where the Cuevas parents are somewhat ashamed of Ellie would also help to rationalize why Mr. and Mrs. Cuevas lied to Charles about being an only sibling. If they really loved Ellie, they might have tried to bridge the subject with Charles one day, and not let the memory of their elder son fade into history. If he was someone they didn’t want to associate with in the first place, covering up his death would have been much more emotionally viable.

So, if the Cuevas parents are the kind of people to disown their kid for less-than-fair reasons, Ellie could have still been the kind of treasured big brother figure to Charles one might have expected while also getting kicked to the curb. However, this option raises the definite question of… how did Ellie’s death happen?

On the surface, that might seem like a strange question. Sadly, homeless people in the United States have an average life span that’s 17.5 years shorter than the average housed person’s life span, and the number of deaths have only been increasing in recent years. Especially in a civilization that was once home to the biggest, most awful, most tragic event in human history, trying to survive without a home might be quite difficult.

All that doesn’t really apply to Ellie, though, because we have a pretty decent lead on how he died: dog attack.

Even if he might not remember why, Charles dislikes dogs, and has a remnant of that turbulent relationship etched into his very skin. Ellie actually likes dogs, an interesting point of contrast, but one that makes it clear that dogs are important to Charles’ backstory in some manner. I and others have then speculated that the attack in which Charles got that scar on his arm may have been the time at which Ellie died. Both events– the attack that created the scar and Ellie’s passing– were erased by his childhood amnesia.

The story would play out as something along the lines of “Ellie and Charles used to both really love dogs, and were approached by a dog one day. However, that dog was feral, and attacked Charles. He was bitten on the arm before Ellie told Charles to run as Ellie stayed behind to protect his brother. However, Ellie couldn’t fend off the dog himself, and was instead mauled to death. Charles escaped with an injured arm and a head full of trauma that would cause him to fully erase the memory of his brother from his mind.” Don’t know how feasible that exact scenario is, but I always imagined it as something like that.

So, if Ellie was living on the street at the time of his death, how would the two of them have come together for the dog to attack? Maybe Charles could have been visiting Ellie on his own, but, again, he would have been 8-11 years old at the time. Would the 8-11 year old Charles have really had the means or motive to set out alone to see his brother, and would the Cuevas family have really let their elementary school-aged son wander off into the streets alone?

Then there’s the issue of Ellie’s age again. Look. I’m not trying to say that every 23 year old should be able to 1v1 a feral dog in a fight. I’m 23, and if I had to fight a street dog to the death, I would probably lose! However, while I am a quiet nerd who likes to write thousand word essays about anime video game fanfiction characters in her free time, Ellie seems like a fairly athletic young man. If he looks like Charles, he’s also probably around Charles’ height of 5’9”. Plus, it probably didn’t have to be to the death. Couldn’t Ellie have used those long legs to run away, or his human hands to make an improvised weapon, or something? To me, it feels much more plausible for Ellie to have been killed in a dog attack if he were also a child/teen when it happened. But, that should be incompatible with his appearance in the MV. Unless–

Option D: Ellie became this way… after he was “dead”?

Wait, what? No, wait, I thought I had already determined that Ellie was dead! What do you mean it might ACTUALLY MAKE MORE SENSE IF HE WAS ALIVE??? WHAT HAS THIS MV COME TO?! AAAAAAAAAA–

Well. If this version of Ellie is what he “became” after he faked his death (or had it faked for him), certain elements start to line up. There is no conflict with the Cuevas family, because Ellie’s personality could have been completely different than what we see in Yoidoreshirazu. Similarly, we don’t have to solve why Charles would have built such a bond with this guy because this guy may not have existed when he was interacting with Charles. The brothers growing up in a household together would make it considerably easier for them both to encounter a mean dog at the same time. And, if Ellie didn’t have to reach this 20+ age before he disappeared from Charles’ life, the whole story could have been set much earlier, such that Ellie could have been fending the dog off when he was more of a kid or teen himself. Then, being separated from his family and presumed dead is what caused Ellie to lose his faith in life, take up his smoking habit, and hardly be able to sleep or smile.

This could still involve him being forced to live on the streets, although I would then wonder why he didn’t ever try to get back in contact with his family. Maybe he did and they turned him away? But, if he was an admirable son, I see no reason why they would do that. Perhaps he had expressed a bit more discontentment with the Cuevas family prior, and decided that, given this opportunity, it was for the best to sever his ties with them? That seems like a pretty extreme decision to keep up with given the state that Ellie seems to have wound up in, and would call into question how much Ellie cared about Charles if he was so willing to leave him behind.

It would kind of make more sense to me if, in this scenario, an outside force was stopping Ellie from reuniting with his family– for instance, if XF-Ture Tech offered Ellie a deal like they did to Min (somewhat forcing his hand), which included that he could never contact his family again. That could certainly make Ellie more important to the plot moving forward, and explain part of why he even got this MV. But, what would XF-Ture Tech want to do with some kid who was just near-fatally mauled by a dog attack? An near-fatal attack that… he doesn’t even seem to have scars on his face, neck, or right hand from???

Option E: this is how ellie looks in heaven or hell or whatever i don’t freakin know

Some of you may have been screaming at me the entire time that Ellie’s design may not be “canon,” so to speak, and you know what? That’s valid. It could simply be a projection of what Ellie could have looked like if he’d ever grown to this point in age, or his appearance may have been modified to better match Gumi’s disheveled vibe in the original Yoidoreshirazu MV, and not reflect his true personality. Ellie and Gumi do have really similar poses, cigarettes and all.

However, it would seem a little odd to me to give the audience what’s basically an AU design of Ellie before we got the original version. That would lead to insanely wrong conclusions like what I just wrote above if true, which could potentially cause people to interpret future content incorrectly. That’s not good. Besides, the song was still chosen for Ellie, and the song carries the same sort of gritty, nightlife vibe that the Gumi design does. Could the lyrics of the song really fit Ellie so well that the entire energy of the song and appearance of the MV could be waived?

#5: What’s up with these lyrics?

Sigh. I hate to move on to the next talking point when I haven’t yet resolved what we were last discussing, but, to be honest, I don’t know if I can resolve why Ellie looks and acts like that with the information we currently have. I’m kind of banking on the lyrics swaying me in the right direction when it comes to that interpretation, but given that I’m probably going to have to reverse engineer a lot of the lyrics’ meaning, I don’t have high hopes.

Well, we’ve already seen how I think these lyrics would apply to Rose, so how do I think they would fit Ellie? More questions ahead, but please note that I may be taking certain lyrics more specifically than they’re meant to be interpreted. I don’t have much else to go off of, so for the sake of gaining pretty much any knowledge I kinda have to assume the lyrics are total slam dunks.

#6: What can we learn about Ellie’s personality?

I woke up as an unaware drunkard All of this bickering goes on til the dawn comes

Ellie wakes up and immediately begins to complain. Unless he’s bickering with himself, he isn’t alone, although that doesn’t necessarily mean he has friends. In the original song, I imagine this lyric to be more about passersby or the general state of the world, so it could be the same case for Ellie.

In Ellie’s case, it’s unclear exactly what being a “drunkard” means. It could just be the literal interpretation, where Ellie is an alcoholic. I wouldn’t know. Being a drunkard could also extend to being an addict in general— we can be pretty certain that Ellie is a smoker (unless see Option E above). It could also be that the “drunkard” part of the phrase is less important and it’s more just about being unaware. Although, that would require further interpretation for later lines like “getting drunk again and again,” and Drunkard is also half of the song’s title (“An Unaware Drunkard”). Still, Elliot could be enveloped in the same sort of general haze I described back when I gave this song to Rose. Or, he could literally just be a guy that likes to drink a lot. Either way, it gives off the impression of someone who spends more time centered in his own world than butting into others’ businesses.

The singing voices are uncountable And once one gets lost in them, they end up at your xx Hey, look at how pretty it is, the day dream rondo I hide a thousand and can only spit out ten

More introvert coding– he really doesn’t like being in large groups of people. Ellie keeps the same pretty neutral expression throughout all of these lines in the MV, which makes it kind of hard to discern exactly what these statements mean for him. Like, is “look how pretty it is” supposed to show how he’s easily distracted by dreams and frivolous things, or how he’s using positive things to distract those around him from how he “hides a thousand and can only spit out ten”? In either case, that latter line seems to imply that Ellie is dissatisfied with whatever he’s doing in life (or death?) right now– “can only spit out” makes me think that he feels he should be doing more.

Giving in, I’m living Getting drunk again and again, unexpectedly- Ah, it's not half bad

Ah, the infamous screenshot from the presumed dead man. This smirky face gives some definite context for the attitude of these lines. Ellie seems smug or proud that he’s living… because he’s beating the death allegations? Well, it could also be that he just enjoys living a life of sin (smoking and drinking), and/or enjoys defying the expectations of the Cuevas family in this way. There’s also a certain irony to saying “I’m living” while flaunting a cigarette in his hand. Ellie may also be someone who enjoys tempting fate and defying the odds.

Ellie’s facial expressions with these lines make me believe that he actually thinks that getting drunk again and again is pretty cool, and it’s not just a deflection from a tumultuous mind. Which, again, begs the question of whether the “drinking” is literal, or a metaphor for something else. With not much other information to go off of, I’m kind of assuming it’s both at the moment. Ellie (in this state) probably is someone who drinks and enjoys doing it, but also someone who doesn’t feel any guilt over ignoring– or forgetting– his problems.

#7: Did Ellie also forget about Charles?

There are a strange number of lines in this song that could imply that Ellie isn’t just being ignorant, he’s actually forgetting about something big. That something could be the memory of his younger brother, just like how Charles forgot the memory of his elder. Runs in the family, I guess?

I woke up as an unaware drunkard

Starting at the very first line, you could begin to view the lyrics through the lens of someone who lacked information about their past: “Elliot woke up somewhere random mostly forgetting who he was in a hazy state of being.” To be clear, I’m not saying that that’s the interpretation of the line, just an interpretation of the line. It’s an interpretation that builds further connections with later lyrics, though.

And then The sacred mountain is covered in mud, it’s smeared and chipping away, ah yes, it's not half bad

That's my muddy, obstructed, and broken vision of the future- It’s not half bad

These lines focus on something being damaged or broken. Ignoring the original song’s references to Mount Penglai, which are completely absent from this MV, I would interpret a character’s “sacred mountain” as their central motivation. The pursuit of this goal would be very important, or “sacred” to them, and just as majestic as it is difficult to traverse and achieve. That pairs well with Ellie losing his view of the future, as both indicate that he’s completely forgotten what his purpose in life is.

And yet, he insists that it’s not half bad. Why? The most likely reason is that, for whatever reasons made him look like this, Ellie has just adopted the same sort of fatalistic behavior as Gumi did in her MV. However, you also might not think that forgetting something was bad if you ever forgot that you forgot it. For the majority of his life, Charles hasn’t thought that forgetting Ellie was a terrible ordeal because he had no clue that Ellie even existed. For Ellie, it could be frightening to know that you’ve forgotten a lot of who you are, but also freeing. That dichotomy could be what resulted in his current pensive yet playful behavior.

Getting drunk again and again, unexpectedly- Ah, it's not half bad I'm a drunkard unaware of my rival in love, so

I'm a drunkard unaware of the story

These lines are ones that really made me think that Ellie could have forgotten Charles in particular. I’m really not sure what “rival in love” was supposed to mean in the original song, but for Ellie, that rival being his brother makes sense. He doesn’t have a lover, as far as we’re aware, but he may have had to fight against Charles for his parents’ affections in the past. Many siblings have a competitive relationship with one another, so Charles could also be described as a rival who Ellie loves. Charles is an easy stand-in for “the story” as well, as long as we assume that the main plot of the killing game is considered “the story.” Charles is a major player in the killing game who’s already been going on a major story arc of his own, and, being Ellie’s little brother, it would make sense if Ellie’s priorities in the story were Charles-focused were he aware of the killing game.

What would it mean if Ellie had forgotten Charles, though? It seems most likely to me that, if both brothers came to forget one another, the trauma would have stemmed from the same event. But, if Charles forgot about Ellie because of that dog attack, Ellie could have only had time to forget who Charles was if he survived for long enough after the attack to have that revelation. Also, don’t know how important this is, but if the attack gave Charles childhood amnesia, would it have had the same effect on a 20+ year old man? I don’t know enough about amnesia to know if the same circumstances that would cause a child to discard their memories would also result in an adult forgetting about aspects of their life. Then again, Ellie almost certainly suffered greater damage than Charles, so any aftereffects may have been more severe.

I obviously can’t declare with 100% certainty that Ellie forgot who Charles was, nor can I even get particularly close. Still, these strange threads seemed to be too prominent to ignore, and this was the best solution I could find to them with the information we know now.

#8: Who is “you”?

Twice in Yoidoreshirazu’s lyrics does the singer reference a character as “you.”

Neglecting my happiness, I never want to sober up until it's time to listen to your voice I’m giving into you, but you don’t even have anything to say and my body is dyed

Please don't let this fleeting happiness go away, until I can lend an ear by your side I’m giving into you, but you don’t even have anything to say and my heart is dyed

This person is quite important to the singer, as the singer craves their voice and succumbs to their person, their body and soul colored by the experience. And yet, there’s a sense of isolation, as “you” refuses to say anything back to the singer. It’s a classic tale of immense devotion met with quiet rejection for Ellie to partake in with… someone. I don’t know who.

For what it’s worth, I do think the lyrics imply that this is another human person as opposed to, say alcohol. While alcohol can certainly have a profound impact on a person, causing their happiness to come and go and changing aspects of their physicality, “you” is referred to with enough human traits that it doesn’t match up. Maybe anthropomorphized alcohol could have a voice, but when has it ever needed you to listen to it? To my knowledge, lending an ear to the bottle itself is pretty unheard of.

So, is “you” Charles? That makes some sense, as Charles is the only relevant character to Ellie’s story that we know much about. Based on what we’ve already established about Ellie and Charles’ probable bond, Ellie could definitely fit the devoted older brother character in one flavor or another. But then, why would Charles have rejected him? Could be the whole childhood amnesia thing, but then Ellie would have had to exist during a period of time when Charles had already developed the amnesia and also remember who Charles was enough himself to care. Charles could have also just not liked him much, but that contradicts with the evidence presented back at Question 3.

Honestly, I don’t think Charles is “you,” despite my lack of other options. Perhaps “we” can figure this out?

worn out, we all look horrible until all thousand voices become hoarse

Yeah, there’s also a “we” in Yoidoreshirazu, which furthers the idea that, wherever he is/was, Ellie isn’t alone. The lyrics make it unclear whether the “we” is the singer + you (and maybe others), or just the singer + others– I’d probably lean that it probably wasn’t meant to include “you” in the original, but who knows how DRDTdev chose to interpret the song. Still, as alcohol isn’t normally described as “looking horrible,” this further implies that there are other human characters referenced in Ellie’s MV. In the case of “we,” Ellie also has to associate with these people enough to include himself as part of them. He’s in a group. Why? How? When?

#9: What differences are there between this MV and the original?

This one goes out to all the people who thought to go back and check the original Literature Girl Insane MV for differences while we were dealing with that whole project! It inspired me to try the same thing here, and see what happened.

Yoidoreshirazu is a much easier task than LGI, though, because it’s a simpler song and MV on all fronts. Both MVs only portray one character, one location, and one color for the lyrics to be transcribed in. (There’s also only, like, a max of twelve words on screen at a time, unlike David’s mental library.) For the most part, the two Yoidoreshirazus are very similar. None of the lyrics were edited from Magenetra’s translation on the vocaloid lyrics wiki, the lights turn on and off at the same times, and the DRDT version doesn’t appear to include any additional puzzles or easter eggs. Still, they aren’t exactly the same, so I’ll write out the differences I found playing them side by side for both my own and others’ purposes.

Gumi is on screen at the start, then quickly disappears and comes back, while it takes Ellie until the lyrics start to appear.

Not much extra to explain on this point. It may indicate that Ellie was missing or absent for a longer period of time, or at least that he’s more mysterious/quiet than Yoidoreshirazu’s Gumi.

Gumi has her tongue out a lot more at the beginning of the song.

Before Ellie takes off his hood (so, basically for the first half of the song), he only sticks his tongue out for one part of the song, from 0:52 (“getting drunk again and again”) to 0:59 (“my rival in love”). Meanwhile, Gumi has her tongue out from the moment the lyrics start (0:09, “I woke up as an unaware drunkard”) to the end of the first stanza (0:25, “all thousand voices become hoarse”), and then does it again from 0:43 to 0:59, the entirety of the first chorus (“the sacred mountain” to “rival in love”). This gives Gumi the appearance of being more rebellious, while Ellie is more moody.

Gumi smiles a lot more than Ellie.

When Gumi returns from the first chorus (1:00), she’s already smiling. While she shifts from a satisfied smirk to a smug grin to an enraptured beam to a content smile, she doesn’t actually stop smiling from the minute mark on until the vocals stop (2:10). Meanwhile, Ellie doesn’t smile at all until 1:50, and drops the playful tongue-out expression after a mere six seconds. The only lines that Ellie smiles for are “I’m living / Getting drunk again and again– Ah, it’s not half bad,” which is quite interesting. The overall result is the same as the bullet point above; that Gumi is at least better at pretending to be happy while Ellie is lost in his sorrows.

Ellie and Gumi’s expressions are pretty different in general.

Here are all of Ellie’s expressions versus all of Gumi’s expressions. In the end, Gumi actually had more expressions, which I wasn’t expecting. Some of their faces are mirrors to each other, while others are different.

Both Ellie and Gumi have a serious eyes closed face, a bored/neutral face, a bored tongue-out face, a scary face with big eyes, and a sleazy grin. The only unique faces Ellie has on top of those are the more playful tongue-out smile (present only when his hood is off) and the contemplative downward gaze. Gumi has a knowing smile, a hopeful smile, and a content smile. With those differences, we conclude that, on the whole, Gumi seems to have a bit more hope in the world, while Ellie is downcast. I’m sure you couldn’t have guessed that by the results of the last two points (/s).

Ellie has a costume change.

Not hard to notice; Ellie takes his hood off mid-MV while Gumi keeps her outfit the same.

There’s a part of the song where Ellie disappears while Gumi is present.

If anything in this question is going to be important, it’s probably this tidbit. At 1:39 in DRDT Yoidoreshirazu and 1:37 in original Yoidoreshirazu, the line “and my heart is dyed” plays. At this point in the MV, Gumi is present on screen, but Ellie is not. Gumi then disappears alongside Ellie for the following “sore wa” before both reappear for the chorus, but the difference is still notable. Something about the line “and my heart is dyed” caused DRDTdev to remove Ellie from the MV when he otherwise should have been there. This could mean that Ellie’s absence is what caused his heart to be dyed, that Ellie was actually absent when the heart dying occurred, or something else. Regardless, the difference in visuals– especially one that leaves the lyrics as the only thing on screen for you to look at– means that “and my heart is dyed” is likely the most important lyric of the song for Ellie.

Ellie is doing a whole lot more in the final chorus.

This is probably why I thought that Ellie had more sprites than Gumi did, other than the whole two outfits thing. Throughout the entire second chorus, Gumi only uses one face, the smile with big eyes. Meanwhile, Ellie rotates through four different faces before returning to the one he started with; scary stare -> neutral -> eyes closed -> grin -> tongue-out smile -> scary stare. It gives Ellie a whole lot more character than Gumi had in that final portion. Granted, the inverse is also true: Ellie switched faces less frequently than Gumi at the beginning of the song. It leads me to believe that the lyrics at the end of the song may be more important to Ellie than the lyrics of the start, as the end is featured as the most memorable portion.

#10: So, um… What did we learn, exactly?

Honestly… I don’t know. Unlike the Chapter 2 murder, which is intended to be basically solvable, or even the characters’ secrets, which have had much revealed with minimal possible permutations, so little has been confirmed about Ellie that it makes it near impossible to settle on one answer as absolute truth. I can write out my current best theory about what may be going on with Ellie, but it’s honestly so implausible that I don’t really think it’s going to be canon myself.

If we prioritize the information given to us in this music video and the Q&As and disregard the effects that our conclusion might have on the story of DRDT as a whole, then I think the most likely option was actually Option D, Ellie became this way after he died. I think that Ellie was a bright young man– maybe not perfect, but still an older brother that Charles could look up to. Ellie and Charles were really close when Charles was a little kid, and they loved to hang out and eat pancakes together.

One day– maybe when Charles was about 4 and Ellie was about 16?– Ellie saw a dog on the side of the road and, loving dogs, brought his baby brother over to say hi to it. Unfortunately, the dog was feral and mean, and it bit Charles on the arm, injuring him greatly. Defending Charles, Ellie attacked the dog and told Charles to run away for safety. Charles made it back to his parents, bleeding and horribly traumatized, while Ellie did not. Ellie never came back home, so his parents had no choice but to assume he was dead. They chose to conceal the existence of their elder son from their younger, whether to avoid triggering Charles’ phobias or because they too wished him erased from the history books.

However, even though the world believed that Ellie had died, he actually survived! Though, not in one piece. He was probably severely wounded (perhaps leaving behind scars on any part of his body that wasn’t shown in the MV), and, just like his brother, suffered amnesia that caused him to forget who he was. From there, it depends on how he would have survived the dog attack.

If he barely emerged victorious from the battle due to his own power, then, with no memories, he was forced to live on the street. He gained his washed-up attitude from experiencing life’s hardships while being right on the cusp of remembering something more.

If he received aid from and then was indebted to a group like XF-Ture Tech, he may have been given some kind of help, but not without a cost. He probably started working for them in some capacity, even if he wasn’t a fan of his work/coworkers, and gained his washed-up attitude from years of nihilistically supporting the shady company.

The MV takes place in a time close to present day, when Ellie is reflecting on the state of his life and what he does remember. He hates the people he’s surrounded by, and can only lean on his bad habits (substance abuse and/or appearing more uncaring/airheaded than he actually is) to get by. He knows that he’s a shell of a person with no memories of his past or aspirations for his future, but there isn’t really anything he can do about it, right…? The vague memories of a “rival in love” and a main “story” are the only things giving him a taunting yet unerasable hope.

Woohoo, drama. But, like, that’s ridiculous, right? The secret literally said that Ellie was dead! How the hell could he still be alive? Did the mastermind’s source– whatever it was– just have the facts wrong, or are they actually lying? Wouldn’t the Cuevas family have looked harder for the body? Does amnesia even work like that? Does XF-Ture Tech even work like that???

Needless to say, I am still quite confused. The answer above is still the answer that makes the most sense to me, but it also has its own obvious flaws. I feel like I must just be straight up wrong about the identity of the Cuevas family, the method of Ellie’s death, the age at which Ellie appears in this MV, or something like that, but I don’t know what it would be. Even more than usual, I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on this mysterious character. I feel like more analysis of the guy is going to come out soon, so hopefully some of the more numerical data like trying to pin down Ellie’s age or noticing the differences in the two MVs will help someone else make a breakthrough. Still, I encourage you to come forth with anything you have to say, because I want to hear it.

Thus concludes your instructional pamphlet on how to write an essay on a music video at a rate of 54 words per second of the music video. Thanks for reading!

#danganronpa despair time #drdt #drdt spoilers #elliot cuevas #charles cuevas #fanganronpa #yoidoreshirazu mv #i “finished” the analysis hooray #wish i had a conclusion for it #this was a very different theory to write than usual but that did make it fun #i feel like i totally lost my mind in there somewhere though so hopefully i don't come out looking like too much of a clown #the heart is dyed thing dude... what does it mean...#also glad people are listening to yoidoreshirazu in this house we stan kanaria #my theories

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