#posting separately just in case....

[onyxalsolikesart]

code says "HA! WHO KNEW VOODOO COULD BE SO FUN"

cheerleader bill code says "go sixer!"

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

Hot take maybe but I think Bertie would be FAR more likely to survive the first two months of Dracula than Jeeves would be. Bertie has a healthy sense of self-preservation. Jeeves consistently underestimates how dangerous a situation might get (Steeple Bumpleigh, the club book) because he’s overconfident about his level of control over any given situation. He'd handle Dracula masterfully if they faced off in England, but on Dracula's home turf? Much more doubtful.

I realize this might be a tough sell, so I will explain further (or it's not a tough sell, and I'm going to explain further because I want to). (criteria taken from @canyourfavesurvivecastledracula) Without further ado.

Would Jeeves and Wooster survive Castle Dracula?

Jeeves

Jeeves' survival will depend on how long Dracula finds him more entertaining than irritating. On that basis, I don't think he's long for this world. On the one hand, he has a huge wealth of knowledge about English society and culture that he can recite perfectly from memory. That should buy him at least a little time with noted teaboo Dracula.

On the other hand, he would be absolutely no fun as a vampire plaything. Jeeves cannot be got. Sneaking up on him while he's shaving will yield zero reaction (though that's at least good for his short-term survival--given that, although he DID take the crucifix from the old woman out of politeness, he certainly isn't going to wear it. The rules of fashion don't go out the window just because you're in a spooky castle). Then, although managing the whims of rich jerks is not an insignificant part of a valet's job, Jeeves usually does this by bending his employers to his will. Dracula is not the sort of employer this will work on. It'll just add insult to injury when on top of being impossible to scare, NOW Jeeves is telling Dracula that his favorite cloak is several centuries out of fashion and he's not allowed to wear it anymore.

Jeeves will 100% go exploring in the areas he was told not to go-- though to be fair, he MIGHT actually get away with this, what with his superpower of appearing in rooms without being seen or heard. Said superpower might save him from the brides as well (though this is by no means guaranteed). Since I find it doubtful that Dracula would come to rescue his annoying ass, not being noticed is his best defense.

There are a couple other things working in Jeeves's favor; the question is just whether they'll be enough to save him.

He DOES know shorthand, and could try to send coded letters. He might even have the foresight to squirrel away some extra stationary where Dracula can't find it. But could he get them posted? Would it even do him any good?

He certainly has enough cultural literacy to figure out what his new boss is pretty quickly. If he didn't chuck the crucifix out the carriage window, he might start carrying it around in his pocket.

Psychology of the individual, sure, but the individual in question is a 400-year-old vampire who lives in an isolated castle in a foreign country and is regarded as a terrifying mythological figure in the surrounding villages. Jeeves has never come up against anything this alien before, he's cut off from his normal resources, and opportunities to play people against each other are limited.

He probably has enough upper body strength from all that shrimping and fishing to climb the wall, so he COULD escape if he wanted to, if he survived long enough. It's just, again, that overconfidence, and also Dracula has a vast library full of rare old books that are entirely at his disposal. He's keeping his eyes and ears alert for potential escape strategies, of course, but I don't see him being as desperate to get out as Jonathan was.

There are just a lot of "depends on"s here, and I'm not convinced that luck would shake out in Jeeves's favor, all things considered.

Bertie

Bertie is so perfect for the job of Castle Dracula Prisoner it's like it was made for him. Think about it. Being held against his will in big manor houses comes more naturally to him than breathing. He's afraid of things that are scary. A lifetime of dealing with Aunt Agatha has made him the world's preeminent expert in "curl[ing] up in a ball in the hope that a meek subservience [will] enable [him] to get off lightly." He will NEVER go exploring in places he's been warned away from if nobody is forcing him to (Rev. Aubrey Upjohn's office notwithstanding. There were biscuits in there). He's both fun to talk to and easy to toy with (and extremely English). A+ prisoner. Dracula adores him.

In my opinion, Bertie is at Castle Dracula either because Aunt Agatha got some wires seriously crossed and thinks he’s going to meet an eligible potential bride (I mean, there are certainly brides there), or because Dracula has something Aunt Dahlia wants him to steal (far less likely, given that one of Dracula’s THINGS is famously not owning anything silver). Either way, he's shown himself entirely willing and able to escape down drainpipes if a sitch gets too scaly.

He DOES take the crucifix, and DOES wear it (which is what will save him during the shaving scene, because you KNOW he's going to jump a foot and cut himself like the dickens). He's read enough supernatural goosefleshers to be genre savvy about terrified old women cryptically pushing crucifixes into one's hands. I also think his sunny disposish endeared him to the villagers, and they were particularly vehement about urging him not to go. He doesn't speak German or Romanian, but he's empathetic enough to recognize Pure Terror. So by the time he actually gets to the castle, his imagination is already running wild and he's plenty aware that he is in imminent danger.

I think the biggest risk to Bertie will be the brides; whether or not he's susceptible to trances, if he thinks they're trying to marry him, it's against the code of the Woosters to turn them down. But that only becomes an issue if he comes face to face with them, which, luckily, I think is unlikely on account of the aforementioned "won't go exploring" (and if he did, Dracula would definitely rescue him).

I'm inclined to say due to his drainpipe-escape habits that he WOULD be able to climb the wall and MAY attempt to sneak into Dracula's room to look for the keys if his desperation grows to outweigh his fear. Whether he does or not, though, he does NOT have the stomach to attempt shovel murder, and therefore won't get magic brain fever, and may very well simply walk out the front doors when the people come to take the boxes away. OR he climbs his way out like Jonathan did. Either way.

When Bertie tells this story at the Drones later, Tuppy will say that no doubt it's been greatly exaggerated and all that probably happened was that he spent a couple months in an oldish house entertaining a weird loner.

[raycatzdraws]

Wolfie and Four friendship appreciation doodles! They're shared secrets besties! I hope Four's distrust of the shadow crystal doesn't drive anything between them. Wild found his way into this compilation with a force. It seems I can't draw Wolfie and not include him too!

[sualne]

posting some op art i hadn't posted, there's a Lot more.

[felassan]

The list of Achievements for Dragon Age: The Veilguard is reportedly now available to view online. (<- DA:TV spoiler warning for link) before deciding whether or not to click on that link and look at them (I am not), be aware that sometimes the names of achievements in games can be quite spoilery. [source, via]

[arrgh-whatever]

Commissioned by @spookaslug

[descendant-of-truth]

If I may throw my hat into the ring here, I think the source of a lot of problems in the writing of Miraculous can be boiled down to its confusion over its target demographic.

There are two very clear audiences the show is trying to cater to:

Grade school girls around 5-10

Teens/young adults around 15-20

And this results in some. unique conflicts in the show's internal logic.

Because it's a superhero show for little kids, it's full of fun, bright colors, wacky villain-of-the-week designs, and the characters are all very straightforward with exaggerated personality traits. The cheerful, clumsy, scatterbrained girl protagonist, her utterly charming and goofy (but slightly clueless) love interest, her cool best friend, her mean bully, etc.

This extends to the romance; the show is so comedic that Marinette's nervous crush and Cat Noir's flirting are played up for laughs. Their more "problematic" behaviors read as cartoon shenanigans first and foremost, which I do think was the intention - they're both shown as being more than a little ridiculous for acting this way, so they're not exactly trying to encourage people to emulate them. They're allowed to be genuinely wholesome, too, because it's nice to give the kids something to go "aww!" at, but it's not meant to be more complicated or deep than that.

And of course, it's gotta follow a sweet and simple episodic formula! A conflict in Marinette's civilian life, an inciting incident to get a side character upset enough for Hawk Moth to turn into a villain, Ladybug and Cat Noir show up, there's fun banter, Ladybug uses her Lucky Charm to figure out a wacky solution to the problem, and boom! The day is saved, Marinette and/or someone else learns a moral, and we get a cute little end screen showing all the key players of the episode.

The one aspect of the show's setup that's a little more serious is the fact that Adrien has a super controlling and distant father, but even this is something that doesn't necessarily break the kid-friendly tone for the first season or two. Superhero shows in particular like to put in some stuff that's a little more emotionally challenging for the viewers, even when they're mostly comedic, so it's not totally out of place here.

For example, while they tend to have more grounded tones overall, Spider-Man cartoons are aimed at kids and regularly keep the conflict between Harry Osborn and his father, Norman, intact; often including the plot point of Norman being the Green Goblin, a notorious villain. It's a similar deal with Adrien, and his dad secretly being Hawk Moth.

You can easily anticipate drama coming from this, but the show primes you to expect it to work out fine in the end because every other conflict so far has been wrapped up in a nice little bow once the episode's over. Though I will say, the choice to have Hawk Moth be Gabriel instead of his own, separate character is perhaps the first sign of the tone shift to come.

And, uh. it sure is a shift.

See, Miraculous does not start out with what you'd call a... plot. It vaguely alludes to there being more going on behind the scenes, but the only thing it really tries to get you invested in is the Love Square dynamic. Marinette and Adrien dancing around each other while fighting crime IS the plot, and it's clearly going to end with a cool final confrontation with Hawk Moth.

You expect it to end like... well, like the movie. Identities are revealed, Gabriel realizes the error of his ways when he finds out he's been fighting his son this whole time, and they may or may not make up but he almost definitely gets arrested. Marinette and Adrien kiss, roll credits.

This is not what happens, because the plot the writers actually had in mind is complex in a way that I would argue is meant for the same audience as YA novels. And with that plot comes a lot of darker, weightier traits to these otherwise silly characters.

Marinette isn't just scatterbrained and nervous, she has debilitating anxiety and an increasing need to be in control of everything due to the stress she's under. She has panic attacks on-screen. She's not just great at strategizing, she also knows how to manipulate people, and does so with increasing frequency - and to Cat Noir at times, no less. Her positive traits haven't gone anywhere, she's still loving and creative and sweet and doing her best to help everyone she can, she just. has all of that other stuff going on, now.

Adrien isn't just a charming, goofy, clueless love interest with a gazillion skills and a controlling father, he's like. actively being abused, and in some cases straight-up mind controlled. His tendency to heroically sacrifice himself so that Ladybug can do her Cool Protagonist Thing is gradually but unmistakably reframed as being a sign of suicidal inclinations. He has identity issues out the wazoo and he doesn't even know he's an artificially created human yet, because everyone in his life is keeping secrets from him and/or lying to his face about crucial information.

Information like, uh. how his dad died???

Yeah, so we're at a point in the story now where there was no satisfying conclusion to the Gabriel plot, no team-up, no moment where he realizes he's been fighting his son, none of that. He still has something akin to a change of heart, but he also still kind of gets what he wants - the Miraculous of the Ladybug and Black Cat, which he uses to rewrite the universe with a wish. It's just that instead of reviving his wife, he trades his life for Natalie's. Of course, he was already dying anyway, which was his own fault but he did force Cat Noir's Cataclysm onto himself, so, that's another thing poor Adrien is going to have to deal with at some point.

And because there's all these astronomically messed up things in Adrien's life, and Marinette's the one who got to learn about all of it before him, she decides that maybe it would be better if he just. didn't know about it. Which is understandable, if I was 14 and had all this information about my boyfriend's life that he didn't, I wouldn't know how to begin telling him about it, either.

But. can you see how we've maybe lost the plot, here?

Here's the thing: starting with a simple framework and gradually getting more complex and subverting the audience's expectations for how the main villain is going to be dealt with is not a bad thing. The fact that it gets darker over time is not an issue. I actually think that all these developments are, themselves, pretty cool! I'm a sucker for angst and complex character dynamics and the show is absolutely giving me those things.

The problem is that it didn't just start with a simple framework, it started with the framework for a different demographic entirely, and perhaps just as importantly, it never actually... stopped.

For as much complexity and intensity they're injecting this story with, they're still working under the logic of it being "for young kids." We still get goofy villain-of-the-week designs with equally goofy motivations, and the supporting cast is stuck remaining two-dimensional no matter their circumstances. Chloe is the most blatant example of this - she was made to be a simple bully first, so no matter what else they do with her, she has to remain straightforwardly evil.

This, I think, is the reason that Gabriel is a more nuanced and "sympathetic" antagonist than her, and why so much care goes into Adrien's character as a victim of abuse while Chloe is just a Problem Child despite suffering similar neglect; she wasn't made to be interesting, and so the show is resistant to changing that. Gabriel and Adrien, however, were already made with nuance in mind, and so they're allowed to develop as characters. And at the same time, it's a kid's show! We need to teach the kids what kind of behavior is acceptable, and Chloe's home life isn't an excuse to treat people badly, so--!

...Oh crap we're supposed to be teaching kids about acceptable behavior. Uh. Um. Quick, bring back the ice cream akuma who cares way too much about his ships so that Cat Noir can learn about consent! Uhh, but don't change his character too much afterwards, he's only marketable because of his silly flirting, and we can't lose that.

Yeah, remember when I said that the romance having problematic elements to it used to work well enough because it was clearly just exaggerated cartooniness? It wasn't free from criticism or anything, but you could see how it was intended to be endearing and silly, right? You were supposed to point and laugh at Marinette's convoluted plans to spend time with Adrien, at Cat Noir's dramatic flirting attempts that Ladybug herself fondly rolled her eyes at.

The tonal shift into deep character exploration kinda paints the previous stuff in a worse light, and to an extent, I think the writers know that. It's hard to laugh at Cat Noir being flirty all the time when he's also supposed to be taken completely seriously, and the more Ladybug rejects him, the more it turns into harassment, and it. kinda just stops being funny, even with the comedic framing.

It's also hard to laugh at Marinette's crush being so all-consuming when they try to tell us (in what I can only assume was an attempt to get people to stop complaining) that she's like this because it's fueled by an event in her past, one that made her so scared of loving the wrong person that she now needs to know Everything about them before asking them out. Her cartoon antics aren't funny under that light, it's just concerning, but they're dedicated to keeping it up anyway.

The show runs on straightforward cartoon logic where you're not supposed to think about it too hard just as much as it runs on grounded, closer-to-real-life logic where people are messy and complicated and actions have consequences. It's so divided that you can hand-pick parts of the story that are influenced by one or the other pretty easily, and depending on the episode you can find instances of both in the same 20-minute time span. Maybe even multiple times!

Neither thing they're trying to go for is bad, and neither is a better approach than the other, but forcing them into the same show makes both sides suffer.

It's not just hard to laugh at the parts I mentioned earlier, it's hard to take Gabriel seriously as a villain whenever you rewatch an episode and remember that he has a once-per-episode pun-based speech that he says so self-seriously that you can't help but laugh at. It's hard to take him seriously when you remember that he repeatedly akumatized a Literal Baby and practically threw a tantrum every time it didn't work, or when he randomly steals (and enthusiastically performs) his nephew's musical dance number, or something similar that you would only do for a cartoon villain aimed at five-year-olds.

And I can only imagine this whole show is a marketing nightmare, too. Hey, little girls, here's your cool role model! She's cute and smart and talented and powerful and can fix anything by shouting the title of the show! Hope you're having fun watching her tell her boyfriend that his newly-deceased father (who used deepfakes of him to sell merchandise that's built to enslave the population and then locked him in a solitary confinement chamber in another country) was actually a hero who sacrificed himself to stop the main villain instead of, y'know, being the main villain! Aren't you excited to watch her wrestle with the guilt of this lie for the next season or so? Doesn't it just make you want to buy her merchandise??

Like. what is even happening right now. what am I watching. how did we get here and why did we start where we did if this was what the story was going to be about

[gingermintpepper]

One of my biggest pet peeves is the assumption that something has to be sad for it to be tragic.

I've always been a big believer of the 'Apollo has an awful love life'/'Apollo is plain unlucky with love' line of thinking but it does bother me that the general reasoning for that statement is given to the concept of 'Apollo is somehow undesireable and thus rejected' (Cassandra/Daphne/Marpessa) or 'his lovers die young and thus their love is unfulfilled' (Cyparissus/Hyacinthus/Coronis). I personally think that's a very unfortunate way of looking at things - not only because it neglects the many perfectly cordial entanglements and affairs Apollo has had, both mortal and divine - but because it presents a very shallow interpretation of the concepts of love and loss and how loss affects people.

Apollo can still grieve lovers that have a long, healthy life. The inherent tragedy of an immortal who knows his lovers and children will die and cannot stop it does not stop being tragic simply because those lovers and children live long, fulfilled lives. The inherent tragedy of loss does not stop being tragic simply because someone knows better than to mourn something that was always going to end.

What is tragic is not that Apollo loves and loses but that loss itself follows him. Apollo does not love with the distance of an immortal, he does not have affairs and then leaves never to listen to their prayers again. He does not have offspring and then abandon them to their trials only to appear when it is time to lead them to their destinies. He raises his young, he protects the mothers of his children, he blesses the households that have his favour and multiplies their flocks that they may never go hungry. He educates his sons, he adorns his daughters and even in wrath he is quick to come to his senses and regret the punishments he doles out.

Apollo loves. And like mortals, there will always be some part of him that wishes to protect the objects of his affections. Apollo, however, is also an emissary of Fate. He knows that the fate of all mortal things is death. He knows that to love a mortal is to accept that eventually he will have to bury them. There is no illusion of forever, there is no fantasy where he fights against the nature of living things and shields his beloveds from death. Apollo loves and because of that love, he also accepts.

And that, while beautiful, is also tragic.

[pixlatedvampire]

I havent finished anything in a bit so please enjoy my favorite Grima doodles lmao 💗🥰

[cosmicaces]

let's talk about pino!

according to the whm booklet, rody's quirk is always active. she isn't always present, though. from what we can see in the movie, pino primarily nests in rody's hair!

so... is there a trend?

obviously she hops out when a strong emotion flares up, but it seems like she's also more likely to be out and about when he's feeling relatively safe/comfortable? she's present when he says goodbye to his siblings, she's present when they're settling down for that first night on the run, she's present when they're in the hotel, etc. etc.

there are only a few times where pino is present during an action scene. the first instance is, of course, during the first chase scene when she flew out to stop deku. she briefly remained out, notifying rody that they were still being chased before disappearing. she appears again when he's going down the rail, disappears, and then comes out of his hair again to check on him after he was almost crushed by falling debris.

pino was not present during the attempted betrayal. after leading deku to him, we can presume that, offscreen, she returned to his hair or went into his hood. the next time she comes out is when rody finally warms up to deku in the cave scene.

it's also worth noting that she is not present during the following villain encounter, only coming out for introductions when their safety was guaranteed.

honestly, the only time we actually see pino in harm's way is during the battle with flect, and that was because rody relied on her to not only signal deku, but to catch the flash drive.

why am i talking about this? well, and this is a far-fetched assumption that's going to get into more headcanon/character interpretation territory, but hear me out:

pino is very similar to something from another property: the daemons from his dark materials. for anyone unaware: daemons are the physical manifestation of a person's soul and take the form of an animal. they mirror the way their human interacts with others and can provide emotional insight into how their human is feeling, which is... like i said before, VERY similar to how pino functions.

with this in mind, one has to wonder if their similarities end there or if, potentially, pino shares some other functionalities as a daemon. namely... if pino gets hurt, can rody feel it?

i know that her main function as a quirk is to articulate rody's feelings. still, her tendency to stay out of harm's way really makes you think, especially since we don't see her get injured at any point. little roughed up, sure! but not injured.

[dykedvonte]

Something something perhaps the reason Curly lacks a truly undamaged ID where his face is visible is to represent how much damage Jimmy had already affected on him throughout their relationship and the way Curly obscured part of who he is and what he stood to unintentionally cater to this toxic influence in his life.

[musicalmoritz]

“Mitsukou is cute but-” cannot relate, every time I ship Kou with someone else Mitsuba is still inexplicably there. Whether he’s present or not he is haunting the narrative. Not the side chick nor part of the actual relationship but a secret third thing. Those male best friends in every series that have more chemistry than the main couple but don’t end up together. You, me, and Steve.

[54625]

I know we're all quite disappointed, now, about all of the things QSMP had going that will likely never happen. So I'm curious; what things can you think of, big or small, did we never get to see? A big arc planned, character growth that never occurred, a build never started or finished, a plot point that went nowhere, a question that was never answered, people who never reunited or met, even just a person reacting to/ seeing something.

Feel free to list as many as you can think of, or rant to your heart's content. We could all do with getting some of that grief of missed potential of our chests.

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

akechi's "i do not regret with my choices i'm rather proud" line in no more what ifs is so widely misunderstood it drives me nuts. it's a coping mechanism guys. it's a lie.*

(*that has an element of truth to it, as most of akechi's lies do.)

like. there's this trend to take the line at face value. he doesn't regret what he did for shido. he doesn't feel bad or think he did anything wrong. he has zero remorse. but you shouldn't take anything akechi says at face value, and regret and remorse are two very different things.

there's a lot to unpack here, so bear with me as i try to break it all down.

so okay, the source of this whole misunderstanding--the line in no more what ifs. i've gotten into this before in my analysis of the song, but the context of it is specifically in maruki's reality. goro is looking back on his life and thinking about where he ended up because of his choices. he's thinking, was i a fool? did i mess up? was there a better way? this line of thinking is reflected within the game itself when he explicitly says in the engine room that he wishes he met akira sooner, but that it doesn't matter what he wants because it's impossible to change what happened.

but here's the thing--that impossible wish he made in the engine room, where things were different and he and akira could be friends? it's no longer impossible. it's literally right in front of him. but it has a catch. accepting the reality of his impossible dream comes at the cost of being himself. all his choices and agency will be stolen, including the choices he made in the past that got him here. so he's left with one last choice--accept maruki's reality, give into his desires, and lose himself. or accept the choices he made for himself, and the consequences that came with them.

so, his conclusion in the song is that any what if's and regrets are pointless. he cannot afford to regret. he must be proud of what he did and who he is. goro is terrified of losing himself and being forced into becoming another puppet like he was for shido. (and notice--him acknowledging that he was a subservient puppet before, as he does on 2/2, requires that he's aware that the choices he is so apparently proud of weren't entirely his own. he was pushed there by someone else. he still blames himself for being manipulated, but a part of him knows that what he did for shido was wrong, and that he shouldn't have done it. doesn't sound like someone completely without regrets to me.) so he has to hold onto his choices and be proud of them. he can't let himself be tempted. the price he'd pay for them is far too high.

so, yeah. it's a coping mechanism. he's forced into that conclusion by his circumstances. akechi does regret where life has brought him and how he got there and the choices he's made, but regret is pointless, because he can't change the past and he can't accept maruki's future. so he chooses not to regret. people like him can't let themselves regret.

but of course, that's not all. in a post-canon world where he lives, goro isn't going to suddenly break down and be filled with remorse. because like i said, his feelings are complicated, and he still has his pride. akechi doesn't want to admit his faults or his weaknesses, and he does still think the people he targeted deserved it. so is he remorseful? yes and no. he is aware what he did was wrong, and that it was all for absolutely nothing. but he still doesn't view the world as something worthy of saving or protecting. to him people are all still inherently evil, save perhaps for akira, so what he did was both deserved and negligible, because the people he hurt were on the path of destruction regardless of him anyway.

so feeling for his victims and experiencing true remorse is going to be a process of recovery. at the same time, akechi still has the innocent child who wanted to be a hero hidden inside him. part of him does care, it's just been so neglected he isn't aware of it most of the time. that part of him began to be reawakened with akira and would continue to be as he makes connections, especially with the people he hurt like the phantom thieves.

which is part of why i think akechi befriending and reconciling with the thieves is so important! he needs to face the consequences of his actions and realize what he did didn't just hurt evil people, but innocents too. he needs to learn to see people as beings who can change, who are redeemable and are good. that people can love him even if he's done horrible things. and as he realizes these things about himself, he will eventually start to realize that it's true about the rest of the world, too.

goro wants to believe in the world, and in people. he doesn't anymore, but he wants to. when he starts to believe in people again, that's when he'll be able to finally be honest about his past mistakes, and feel true remorse for his actions and mistakes, and be able to start to make amends. the parts of the detective prince that reflected the little boy who believed in truth and justice are still in him somewhere, he just needs a lot of time, self reflection, recovery, and help to rediscover those parts of himself.

another aspect of this is how akechi voluntarily turns himself in. i do think there are ulterior motives here, mainly that he can be the one to help convict shido. it's also self-destructive, a way to sort of end his life when literally doing that didn't work. it's the path of least resistance, where he never has to truly look back on his crimes and self reflect because well, he's paying for his crimes anyway, so who cares. it's the easy out. but it also shows that he is aware what he did was wrong and that it's right for him to try to make amends. goro isn't totally without remorse or regret. his remorse and regret literally pushed him into trying to kill himself. he's just very, very bad at coping with them, and so chooses instead to repress those emotions like he has been for years.

okay, so, conclusion. stop forcing in lines in comics and fic where akechi is like "I don't regret!" without also portraying the nuance lying beneath that line. how in third sem it's a coping mechanism, and otherwise it's a shield keeping him from being honest with himself about his past and his ruined dreams of being a hero. remorse ≠ regret, and goro feels both but to different extents and different reasons. he hates his victims, but he's deluding himself about their guilt, and once that delusion crashes down and he sees that he's hurt innocents, he's going to have to deal with a lot of intense feelings like his already existing self hatred.

akechi isn't some heartless killer who feels nothing for his victims. he's only using that idea of himself as a coping mechanism. he forced himself to become that by repressing the parts of him that care until he can barely feel them anymore. he isn't just the black mask, he is also the detective prince. he's both. akechi is and always will be both sides of himself, even when he tries so hard to shut one of those sides down and ignore it as an aspect of the truth. you can't write akechi well until you understand that. akechi is always both.

so, does akechi regret? well...it's complicated.

[doodleodds]

Happy Valentines, Akira. Happy Valentines, Asshole.

If you can’t read what Akechi’s secondary inner-dialogue says cause I obscured it too much behind his regular dialogue, here’s a transcription in panel order: Hello, you fucking- Ah- Hello, Akira! Fuck off, why should I tell you- Just a soda- there’s a new flavor.

I don’t want your shitty gift. Oh- haha! You’re so sweet.

I hope I choke. They’re lovely, thank you.

Like hell. Likewise. There’s no way it’s just a coincidence. Still though, it’s a funny coincidence.

[friendlyengie]

Continuing to be annoying about my fem fortress mercs bc I am . Having fun:) here’s a little doodle collection! Uncovered eye designs for Soldier, Spy, n Demo + other nonsense :]