sorry I just.
Dariax trusting that Opal had a plan
Dariax going back for Cyrus to see his lifeless corpse
Dariax seeing Morri leaving in the opposite direction
Dariax not knowing what happened to Fy'ra
Dariax putting aside dealing with his feelings of betrayal over Opal magically compelling them to leave specifically so he can make sure Dorian is okay and support him as best as he can
Dariax turning around in a crowded tavern with a smile on his face, holding Dorian's lute...
and not even seeing his last friend leave him
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If I'm with you, I'm happy
'If I'm with you, I'm happy' - the meaning of the yellow hyacinth, the flower that inspired me to make this in the first place ♡
/Print will be on the shop tomorrow / edit: print here! <3
Hanakotoba notes:
Hyacinth (general) - 悲しみを越えた愛 ‘kanashimi o koeta ai’ love that transcends sadness
Yellow hyacinth - あなたとなら幸せ ‘anata to nara shiawase’ if I’m with you I’m happy, 勝負 'shoubu' battle/match
Blue hyacinth - 変わらぬ愛 ‘kawaranu ai’ unchanging love
White hyacinth - 控えめな愛らしいさ 'hikaemena airashisa' reserved love, 心静かな愛 'kokoroshizukana ai' tranquil love
Purple hyacinth - 悲しみ 'kanashimi' / 悲哀 'hiai' sadness/grief/sorrow, 初恋の直向きさ ‘hatsukoi no hitamukisa‘ devotion of first love
Pink hyacinth - スポーツ sports, ゲーム games, しとやかなかわいらしさ 'shitoyakana kawairashisa' graceful cuteness (shitoyaka 'graceful' can also be translated as 'refined', 'modest', 'gentle', 'quiet' etc.)
Red hyacinths also exist but I didn't add them here as they didn't fit (meaning is 'envy')
Margaret - 真実の愛 ‘shinjitsu no ai’ true love, 信頼 ‘shinrai’ trust.
There's also 恋占い koiuranai 'love fortune-telling' which I think may refer to that 'he loves me, he loves me not' game.
Twisted trees also have some nice symbolism to them (in general). What I'm about to say isn't something I found anywhere in particular, just my own thoughts about them.
Disregarding the *hahaha* about the not-straight tree implications that I'm sure will be lost to no one single tumblr resident whatsoever- generally twisted trees are that way because of the winds they withstood (I mean there are other reasons too of course...). They're beautiful in their perseverance towards life. Life may have shaped you a certain way, with the good and the bad - and the shape you've taken is to be appreciated in its beauty... of simply being, and existing, and persevering despite all.
Link to the Hanakotoba site (set up so you can switch between JP and (auto)translation - keep in mind autotranslation is not perfect, in fact there are a few differences I corrected above) :
hyacinths and margarets
You can also search some words on jisho to see additional meanings, there are quite a few... I chose the ones I deemed most apt. Unfortunately you can't copy-paste the Japanese, I use the rikaikun extension for the kanji I don't know (which is most of them I gotta be honest). I have the JP keyboard installed and I just retype it to post it here haha.
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invisible scars (referenced previous talk here)
[ID: A colourless, digital Trigun comic of Vash and Wolfwood talking about Wolfwood's scars. They're both laying in bed and topless. Vash lays on top of Wolfwood, playing with the rosary around his neck. Then, Vash kisses a spot on Wolfwood's chest. Wolfwood asks, "What are you doing?" Vash smiles sadly, "You got shot here. In the last town we visited. You didn't even bother moving."
Vash props himself up over Wolfwood, who frowns slightly. Wolfwood is quiet for a moment before he says, "You remember that, huh?" Vash grabs Wolfwood's left wrist and brings it to his face. "And here." He kisses another spot there. "When you helped free the hostages from that robber..." Wolfwood dismissively says, looking away, "Was a lucky shot." Vash huffs, “Don’t brag. Jeez.”
Half of Wolfwood's expression is shown, eyes returning to Vash who is now sitting up, continuing to say, "And..." Vash goes on and kiss Wolfwood's right palm. "You got cut here, even though that girl was aiming at me." A moment from the past flashes, of Wolfwood grabbing a knife aimed at Vash, his hand bleeding.
At present, Vash moves down and puts another kiss on Wolfwood's right shoulder. "And here, from watching my back." Another memory flashes of Wolfwood and Vash back to back. Vash looks back as Wolfwood grins while holding Punisher, bleeding from multiple gunshots in his shoulder.
"And," Vash combs up Wolfwood's hair to reveal his forehead, "Here." A final memory shows Wolfwood with a regeneration vial in his mouth while getting shot on his temple. The next panel is framed in blood with Vash at the center, eyes wide and stunned in horror. The next panel is a closed up shot of Wolfwood's eye, locked on Vash's face.
Back to present, Vash’s head is bowed down as Wolfwood raises a hand to his nape and says, “Spikey.”
Wolfwood looks serious and frowns as he says, "We talked about this. Those were my decisions. They're not there anymore. Forget about them." Vash looks very sad before he smiles ruefully and says, "I still see them. All the time." He leans down so they touch foreheads. Wolfwood’s sorrowful expression can be seen as Vash says, "You protect so much. I could never forget what you've done to me. And many others..."
In the last image, they're drawn more cartoonishly. Wolfwood sweats and asks, "You don't actually remember every wound, right?" Vash points at a spot on his chest. "Kuroneko left a scratch here 7 times." Wolfwood, startled, says, "Why the hell are you keeping count—" End ID]
Credits for ID here and here
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thing is, i want to pair yasuhiro and celeste together, but not in a shipping way. in a “i think they could’ve been cool parallels to each other if the writers wanted to explore that even a little” way.
i mean there’s the chapter three stuff, money is a huge motivator for both of them, they’ve done shady things to get their money, i feel like they can both be pretty manipulative (celeste for obvious reasons. and i mean, hiro’s so open about his fortune telling success rate and is still able to run a successful business despite that. what is he saying to his customers??? especially the more notable ones? how is he able to get ceo’s to give him hundreds of thousands of dollars for something that isn’t guaranteed??), and of course, the “yasuhiro” thing. interesting how celeste calls yasuhiro a loser’s name, yet she’s the one who died and hiro ended up in the survivor’s circle.
also they’re both very lucky. celeste uses her luck for her gambling and hiro always seems like he’s constantly avoiding death by sheer luck so-
like i just need these two to have one full two-sided conversation. just to monitor what happens like im recording data.
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To elaborate more on the Pesterquest stuff -
Alternia is a hell world. It's shitty to live in, even if you're a highblood, unless you fit a very specific mold of person AND are lucky enough to be born of a high caste. Every troll character we care about is, in some way, fucked over by their relationship to their society; Eridan and Vriska get it the worst, having been forced to participate in the murdering side of things since they were young, but every lowblood is screwed and every highblood is made worse even just by their passive participation. Kanaya becomes less sympathetic because she seems completely at peace with the society she grew up in, and Feferi wants to enforce casteism, even if it's of a different flavor. Gamzee and Equius both hold genuinely casteist beliefs and attitudes, which slip out and alienate them from the people they care about.
Putting a friendship simulator into the middle of all this is... a choice, I guess. I'm not going to begrudge anyone for wanting that or liking that, but it's going to be inherently at odds with what Alternia is and is meant to represent, and thus, fundamentally at odds with many of the characters' arcs and even basic personality traits, so heavily are they influenced by the shit society they grew up in.
For a non-Eridan example, Karkat loathes himself in massive part because his society loathes him. He's kill-on-sight and lives in daily terror of death. He wears a symbol at all because not having one marks him as even more of a freak, even though he knows that that symbol is connected to the empire's biggest rebel, whose footsteps he is expected to follow. The reason he's so obsessed with being leader-y and earning his teammates' reapect, or the respect of anybody, is because he's so deeply insecure about whether or not he even deserves to exist.
If you soften Alternia to the point you can write a lighthearted friendship simulator in it, then that characterization... goes away. Karkat is no longer motivated by deep, overwhelming insecurities, which drive him to idolize the society that deems him unworthy, mistakenly believing that if he can find validation in that society, he'll feel less bad about himself. Instead, Karkat is just kind of an asshole!
It's the same way with Eridan. He and Karkat are equal and opposite in this way - while Karkat is marked for death by his society, Eridan belongs to the extremely privileged caste of sea dweller royalty - even moreso than Feferi, as Feferi is slated to be murdered by the Condesce as soon as she comes of age (and her ridiculous optimism is likely something she cultivated in outright defiance of this fate). But it turns out that being a sea dweller sucks shit, too, if you aren't the extremely niche type of person that society deems "correct."
Eridan is not actually casteist and genuinely likes his land dweller friends - and this is unacceptible. Not only that, but smaller "unacceptible" offenses are wrapped up in big ones - despite not liking murder and feeling guilty about it, murder is objectively the correct thing for Eridan to be doing, constantly, to the point of it being "all [he's] ever done practically," because if he doesn't fulfil the duty of his bloodline to be murdering lusii (and by extension, their charges, who are culled when their lusii die), EVERYBODY dies. The constant push-pull of trauma, societal expectations and obligations, the fate of the species, and the fact that he is inherently not the "right" kind of person for his society, are pretty much his entire character. He's basically a walking ball of anxiety and emotional turmoil.
So, again, if you soften Alternia to the point where you can write a story about Eridan wanting to see Shrek in a public theater (something he would not actually be able to peacefully do in canon Alternia - at least not without taking off his cape, hiding his fins, and going anonblood - as sea dwellers are considered ridiculously hostile to the point even Gamzee's nervous about being on the beach for too long), Eridan ends up being just kind of an asshole!
Pesterquest!Eridan is, and I cannot stress this enough, fundamentally not the same guy as canon Eridan. They have practically nothing in common, from the fact that PQ!Eridan is willing to do something for leisure, to the fact that he isn't widely feared and the movie theater doesn't empty out in a panic when he turns up, even down to the fact that he likes femme fashion (canon Eridan goes to Lengths to lean into masc fashion) and Shrek (canon Eridan is a hipster). Hell, even the fact that PQ!Eridan SMILES is a massive deviation from canon!Eridan, who has never once been depicted smiling, and probably hasn't for many sweeps.
Also that he has that much beef with Sollux when, canonically, the two had a lukewarm mutual dislike and didn't even bother interacting until Feferi was added to the mix and Eridan became mad that Sollux was dating her. He wasn't even casteist about him until then, and after, even Sollux and Feferi don't think he's casteist, they just think he's ashenflirting so he can get into a quad with Feferi. Like come on, if you're going to feature another troll in Eridan's route, 1) make it be Karkat, and 2) have Eridan cheat on you the whole time with Karkat like he does to Feferi.
Eridan is just overall a wild choice in a friendship sim - I can't even blame them for just writing an OC and putting an Eridan skin on top - because societally, Eridan isn't even supposed to have non-sea dweller friends. The sea dweller/land dweller race war is something the Condesce deliberately put into place in order to keep land dwelling nobility in line, and Equius cites it as one of the reasons he never got along with Eridan. Like, the very fact that Eridan talks to two land dwellers on friendly terms (Kanaya and Karkat) is a MASSIVE deviation from what he's "supposed" to be like, and a huge hint that he's not as casteist as he'd like to appear. You are genuinely hundreds, if not thousands, of times likelier to end an encounter with Eridan either orphaned or dead than as his friend. He's an unstable maniac, and there's a reason so many members of his team don't like him even though he's legitimately not casteist and they mostly seem aware of it (nobody really complains about or even notices Eridan's casteism by the time they're on the meteor - his contradictions are really obvious, and it's likely that they've more or less realized that he's full of shit).
Again, I don't begrudge anybody for wanting or liking PQ. Who cares, really. I'm just saying that as a canon discussion blog, there's not really any place for PQ because it's so far removed from canon that, like, there's not really anything meaningful to discuss about it. The setting and characters in PQ are fundamentally divested from canon, and not even in an AU way. And it's totally fine if that's what you like, but, yeah, like.
Was Eridan written well (where "well" = accurate to canon): no. Maybe he's fine as an OC with an Eridan Minecraft skin slapped on, but that's not my beautiful son, that's not my baby boy.
What did they get wrong about Eridan (where "wrong" = inaccurate to canon): all.
What route would I have written for Eridan: he shoots you with a gun and you die. And then maybe cheats on you with Karkat
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