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moonlit-tulip · 1 year ago

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Tsukihime Remake Liveblog Archive, Part 2: Ciel Route

The newly-translated route! Which I finished last night. I had been thinking I'd wait a couple extra days before posting it, just in case I developed more to say, but on consideration… nah, I'm impatient, I'll just post it now. If I say additional things later I'll… I don't know, edit them onto the end and post a notice-of-something-having-been-added, or put them in a reblog, or something.

Below the cut: the Ciel-route segment of the liveblog, featuring spoilers for all of both the original Tsukihime and Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-.

June 17, 2023

[4:14 PM] Knowing that everyone’s memories of Ciel are fake, it’s very funny going through the opening segments of her being widely known as The Perfect Senpai So Good That Even The Teachers Rely On Her. Like, sure, useful cover, but also, that sure is a reputation to have given herself! (And to then, in proper Perfect Senpai fashion, deny when it’s mentioned to her face.)

[6:36 PM] The “dreaming of a story that has already passed” scene at the start of the second day has me wondering, now, whether this remake is yet another of the ‘remake’-as-stealth-sequel setups that seem to be popular nowadays. I somewhat hope not—I find that pattern somewhat frustrating—but it is a possibility I should maybe keep in mind, given that scene.

[6:59 PM] …especially, it now occurs to me, in the context of Day 2 being called ‘Day that Wasn’t’. That’s a name whose significance-to-the-local-narrative I was never able to figure out, last year; the only meaning I could ever get out of it was the “this day wasn’t in the original, only in the remake” meaning, and while that’s definitely part of the meaning I’d assumed it was just one half of a double-meaning. But, if the remake is doing the stealth-sequel thing, that assumption suddenly seems much less well-founded; it could, easily, just be the reference-to-this-being-different-from-the-original that I first read it as.

[7:04 PM] In other news… so, last time, I talked about how the mansion feels less isolated in the remake than in the original, with Saiki Gouto and Arach showing up early on. This remains true. But the flip side of this, which I didn’t consciously register last time, is: while the mansion itself is less isolated, Shiki is more isolated within it. There’s much more emphasis on his status as the Ill-Fitting Outsider, with Saiki’s “your getting injured and disowned about it was an Unvirtuous Desertion Of Family Obligations” monologue and then with Akiha’s generally-more-emphasized-in-the-remake degree of Pointedly Overbearing Demandingness towards Shiki. So it’s actually more of a change to the mansion’s tone than I’d realized; minus one thing and plus another, rather than just the minus.

[10:13 PM] Day 3 complete! I am now Solidly On Ciel's Route, I think. Or at the very least I've made it past the point which (a) was the final point-of-no-return for onboarding to Ciel's route in the original and (b) is where I ran into Japanese text when I found my way onto it under the old Arcueid-route-only patch-version. The "Ciel talks Shiki down from suicide-via-exposure and gets him into a state of thinking and engaging with the world again" scene was very good, as it was in the original, although it's been long enough since I've read the original that I can't easily do detailed comparison of content beyond "very good", or of fine details of how very-good they were relative to one another. And I look forward to seeing how things diverge from here! I strongly suspect that one of the things the remake is going to change is the degree to which Arcueid and Ciel's routes overlap one another, since that was one of the more awkward structural elements of the original; but I'm not sure how much earlier to expect the divergence this time. The one Arcueid-route Bad End with the investigation-of-Vlov's-lair, where Ciel-sensei strongly hints that that it'll be safer to do that in Ciel's route, could be interpreted as meaning that it'll still re-merge at least for the initial adventures-with-Arcueid section—especially in combination with the game UI suggesting we're still in common-route territory, with Day 4 having the same name even after the big heartfelt moment with Ciel and with the save still not being marked with any particular route—but also could be compatible, potentially, with "things continue diverging and the investigation-of-Vlov's-lair happens in some other different context". I look forward to finding out!

[10:39 PM] Also, off in the realm of Parallels Which Were There All Along But Which I’m Only Now Managing To Catch: it Sure Does Hit A Way, seeing Ciel give Shiki the “don’t just sit there and drown in suicidal guilt about the murder-you-did-while-not-yourself, instead figure out how to atone” speech given the knowledge of her own position having (a) done way more of those than he did and (b) being pretty suicidal about it. Giving him the maximally-optimistic form of advice which she refuses to accept in that form from herself. :(

June 18, 2023

[1:10 PM] …so Shiki was explicitly noted, during the stalking-Arcueid sequence, to have hidden away his jacket before breaking into the apartment building. But then, the next morning, Ciel implies that she’s washed it. This suggests that either (a) he had the presence-of-mind to retrieve it on exit even while in full barely-coherent-despair-and-guilt mode or (b) Ciel managed to figure out where he’d left it. (More likely (a), since he presumably retained his jacket in the non-Ciel branch too? I don’t specifically remember it, but I assume I’d remember if his school uniform had been incomplete the next day.) Both of these branches are Interesting, from an “implying things-not-otherwise-shown about characters’ mental stated” standpoint!

[1:13 PM] …or never mind that parenthetical! Since apparently they’ve got spare jackets at the Tohno household.

[2:59 PM] …huh. So this time I noticed: Arcueid gave the “only one vampire ever took in more than one beast as a familiar, and he’s already gone” line that makes Nrvnqsr’s nonexistence in the remake-timeline clear and that left me-a-year-ago Confused by the two dogs accompanying Vlov in his attack on the hotel. But then, on the whiteboard behind her, she’s written “Usually 1-3 animals”. So… only Nrvnqsr has taken in more than one kind of beast but others have taken in e.g. more than one dog? Or they can take in a single dog but then release multiple copies? It’s a bit unclear, but does make me lean towards “there’s something hard-to-translate in the thing Arcueid says there” as a more likely hypothesis over the “Vlov’s two dogs are an Actual Mystery” reading I’d taken last time.

June 19, 2023

[3:01 PM] …huh, apparently Vlov’s gang got a girl from Shiki’s school some time before they got Shiki. I wonder if, in the remake, Satsuki got vampirified by Vlov rather than by Roa? Relevance-to-Satsuki’s-route could certainly explain the otherwise-mysterious thing where the remake inserted Vlov in place of Nrvnqsr, if for whatever reason Nrvnqsr’s personality and habits would be incompatible with the route’s happenings. (Although also plausibly it was just some other not-Satsuki girl; after all, we already have had very strong implications of at least one non-Satsuki victim of Vlov’s gang from Souya High, namely the teacher who Noel replaced.)

[3:27 PM] …ah, nope, at least the most recent one they were talking about is Not Satsuki.

[4:49 PM] Ciel with a gun! :o

[5:50 PM] It's interesting how much worse Shiki's mental state is in Ciel's route, compared with in Arcueid's. During Day 5 he had two internal monologues with "well, the only thing I'm good for is Doing Murder" as a core component, compared with zero similar ones that I recall in the Arcueid branch. Apparently the combination of "be less in denial about having killed Arcueid" plus "encounter the Deeply Unpleasant Environment of Vlov's basement" was Not Good For Him!

[5:52 PM] (Or possibly just the former? I haven't yet checked what happens if, at the apparent point-of-no-return of "set out to attack Vlov in his lair during the day", I instead choose the other option of waiting for night, whether that merges into Arcueid's route or whether it leads to some sort of death instead. If the latter, then perhaps it's just the being-less-in-denial part which leads to the worse mental state.)

[6:14 PM] Also: Vlov has a grudge against Roa, apparently! There won't be much more chance to explore it from Vlov's perspective this route, given the thing where he's now dead, but I'm curious if we're going to get anything on it from Roa's perspective, once he starts leaking more into Shiki.

[6:37 PM] (I say 'leaking more', as opposed to just 'leaking', because, while popular interpretation of Shiki's big moment of Suddenly Stalking And Murdering Arcueid In A Fashion Laden With Blatant Sexual Overtones seems to be that it's just a Nanaya-family-instincts thing, I myself have always taken that moment to be at least partially leakage of Roa's influence. For one thing because that is very much in-character as a direction for Roa's influence to point—he is far more obsessed with Arcueid than with anyone else, it makes sense for him to reach through more strongly to Shiki about her than about anyone else—and for another thing because, as I recall (it having, admittedly, been a while since I last read Tsukihime), Shiki-running-on-Nanaya-instincts usually doesn't have those sorts of sexual overtones around killing, whereas Shiki-influenced-by-Roa consistently does.)

June 20, 2023

[1:49 PM] Well! Things sure did just diverge much harder than expected, the night of Day 6! Roa dead already thanks to Arcueid not burning as much energy against Vlov, and Arcueid herself possibly lining up to take over as Chief Antagonist, even before realizing that Roa has moved into Shiki Specifically, just for Difficultly Keeping Her Bloodlust Under Control Post-Being-Murdered reasons??? We’ve still got so many days left! Well, then. I guess it’s time for Lots Of New Things to happen!

[1:55 PM] (Notably, this feels like a much more… Fate/stay night-shaped way for the route-structuring to go. Less routes-hugging-one-another-closely-until-towards-the-end like in the original Tsukihime, more “okay, you’ve done the previous route, you’ve had all the exposition on who these people are and what they can do, now time to Elaborate and Explore New Ground From That Baseline Of Knowledge”. I hadn’t been sure, before, whether the Arcueid-and-then-Ciel route order would be enforced in the remake��it wasn’t enforced in the original, just recommended, and I didn’t think to test “try to get on Ciel’s route” in the remake last year before finishing Arcueid’s route, partially for “already knew that recommendation” reasons and partially for “it was untranslated so there wouldn’t be much point” reasons—but I now strongly suspect that we’re doing FSN-style route-order-enforcement here, because I don’t think the exposition-structures at play here would work otherwise.)

[1:57 PM] (Once I’ve finished the route and don’t need to worry about spoilers, I should go look this up and see whether this prediction actually holds up. :p)

[9:59 PM] > "I never said that Vlov was my target, did I?" Actually you did! I missed it in my run of your own route, but with more context I managed to catch it on this pass! You said the burning Dead in the alleyway had been created by your target. You were mistaken about that, but it still sure was a thing you said!

[10:03 PM] …also apparently Arcueid is running the same “bring Shiki in to hunt down Roa” maneuver this route as last route despite Roa already being dead! This is Suspicious, and I don’t think it’s being driven by Ciel-style suspicion-he’s-in-Shiki, I think it’s relatively pure “she likes Shiki and wants an excuse to spend time with him (plus bonus Growing Bloodlust Problems which seem noticeably less under-control this route compared with the last).

[10:06 PM] …ah, no, she is being open about having already killed Roa and is just bringing Shiki in for subsequent cleanup, never mind.

[10:42 PM] Arcueid is being So Worrying here, wow.

[10:47 PM] (Her reaction to Shiki’s headache-spike in the park. Not the hostility I’d expect if she’d realized Roa was working on possessing him, but she sure did realize Something. (Or maybe it was the Roa thing, just with bonus “aha, he’s not really in control yet and this is an Exploitable Opportunity of some sort”?))

[10:50 PM] …also. Wait a minute. Vlov has a grudge against Roa. Vlov stated his intention in town as being revenge, and expressed disgust for the overall state of the town. Arcueid doesn’t know what brought Vlov to the town in the first place. Did Vlov come by for purposes of launching some sort of attack on Roa?

June 21, 2023

[4:28 PM] Oh wow Noel has So Many Issues. That interlude was great. And I spent the first half of it wondering if she’s always like this by default or if this was the lingering-influence-from-Vlov’s-bite that Ciel and Mario had been discussing as a possibility, but after that second half… yeah, definitely some lingering (and escalating) influence. (Parallel with Shiki and his slowly-accumulating Roa-derived issues!) Although that doesn’t actually, on consideration, preclude that sort of vampire-mass-murder-with-bonus-torture having been among her habits even pre-Vlov! Since she sure did imply having pulled similar stunts previously in Europe, albeit to less effect.

[4:30 PM] Also: something happened thirteen years ago, apparently! It got mentioned once earlier, and again now this time. Roa’s pre-Ciel incarnation, maybe? But, mostly, Not Enough Information, for now. Something to keep an eye on as things continue developing.

[4:49 PM] ...hmm. Timeline. So. 1989, start of the Ciel-and-Roa flashback. Age 12, presumably 2001, the point where Roa-derived intrusive thoughts started hitting her. Age ???, the point where hiding in her room broke down as a strategy and Roa grabbed more substantial influence. Main story takes place... I'm not sure it's been stated directly, but probably 2020ish. Which would line up, given Ciel's outwardly-visible age, with that particular round of Roa-causing-trouble actually being the thirteen-years-ago one? Except in that case I'm not sure what would have happened seven years ago to set SHIKI off; Ciel had a Moment Of Horrified Realization about whatever-it-was, in the restaurant, but apparently in the remake it's not as simple as "Roa jumping into SHIKI set him off ~instantaneously upon Roa's arrival" the way I recall it was in the original, and I lack alternative hypotheses.

[4:52 PM] And apparently Roa has Plans To Make Arcueid His, beyond just "keep fighting her forever because he doesn't know how to deconflate lust from hatred" as in the original. I'm not sure what plans those might be, but whatever they are, they seem Worrying probably!

June 22, 2023

[5:25 PM] I am now re-confused! Ciel was 13 years old when she became an Executor? That doesn’t line up at all with Roa getting to her 13 years ago! And there’s a tempting alternate theory of “1989 was when Roa got to her, not her birth-year”, but in that case we run into the problem of why it would be the 13-years-ago incident that Noel is particularly traumatized about, as opposed to the ~31-years-ago one. My best guess is that the 13-years-old thing was just a cover story? Second-best guess is that the 13-years-ago Roa was somehow so bad that he managed to traumatize Noel even harder than the Roa who destroyed her hometown ~31 years ago? But I’ve got decently large piles of probability-mass on “neither of these, something weirder (or at least harder-for-me-to-predict) is going on”.

[6:38 PM] ...and Day 9 complete! That was very good. And now Ciel has said her goodbye. Which... if I'm remembering the trajectory of the original right, at that point she disappeared from everyone but Shiki's memories at school, and only reappeared to save Shiki from Roa. Which means it's time for the derailedness to progress still farther! What will drive Ciel to return this time, given the lack of external Roa to threaten Shiki? My best guess is Noel doing... something? Deciding to try to kill Shiki on the off-chance he's Roa? But low confidence in that, for now.

June 23, 2023

[5:35 PM] Well! Arach finally interacting with plot-significant events in a more substantial way than just "exist next to them"! I... expect that the references to her having eight legs were metaphorical, Nasu doing his usual animal-metaphors thing, rather than her being Literally Spider-Shaped? Given the lack of spideriness on her sprite that scene. But as for her actions... well. She claims that her 'helping' Noel is just charity; I find that I don't particularly believe her about that. Nor do I think it's likely to be as trivial as just "finally get to do a clinical trial of her Vampire Juice". She's up to something bigger. The question is whether we're going to actually learn anything about what that thing is, this route; I'm expecting her to be mostly involved in far-side events, even if she's unexpectedly poked her head into the near side—she was tied up with Makihisa, and is a regular at the mansion, and both of those are points far-side-ward—and as such it wouldn't shock me if she were to mostly just Not Involve Herself Farther in things for now.

[5:36 PM] Plus bonus "turns out Noel wasn't turning into a Dead Apostle to begin with, prior to Arach's intervention" irony!

[5:41 PM] ...and, for all her talk about how it's better to die than to become a vampire, it's kind of striking how definitively Noel chooses to live even when this entails turning-into-a-vampire. When she gave that die-rather-than-being-a-vampire speech to Shiki, I'd assumed this was her projecting, that her plan was to kill Shiki-who-she-Gettiered-herself-into-'know'ing-was-possessed-by-Roa and then to kill herself before her transformation was done. But then not only did she not do that but she also deliberately avoided letting the church find out about her transformation-in-progress, thus ensuring that they wouldn't kill her and she would (on her world-model) become a vampire. (And thus, because Cruel Irony, losing her chance to discover that she was Not Actually Becoming A Vampire before Arach got her.)

[5:51 PM] Also: Yet More Timeline Confusion! Ciel has affirmed the 'joined the church at age twelve' story, and apparently has been an Executor for six years. Which doesn't fit any of my projected timelines! If Ciel snapped quicker-than-I-initially-thought under pressure from Roa, got fully possessed and destroyed her hometown and got killed and joined the church at age 12, became an Executor at age 13, and has been at it for six years, then... well, that does line up with SHIKI's incident seven years ago, but then in that case what's going on with 1989 and with 13-years-ago? (Which aren't the same year, because this version of Tsukihime is set in The Era Of Smartphones and that era started post-2002.) Let's see. Suppose Ciel was born 1989, Roa possessed her in 2001, and now it's 2008. That's... unlikely, unless smartphones reached fixation a few years earlier in Japan than in the US? But the first iPhone was only 2007, so I doubt it. Overall, I continue to not see any plausible timeline in which Noel-and-now-Ciel's claims around Ciel's age-at-which-she-got-tied-up-with-the-church line up.

[11:17 PM] ...am I wrong about when the present day is? Is it actually 2014, rather than 2020ish? If the present is 2014, then smartphones are plausibly already reasonably at-fixation in a way they wouldn't have been in 2008, and that lines up with the 13-years-ago number. But then that doesn't line up with her supposed 7-year timeline in the church, and so yet again I'm forced to conclude that that has to be some sort of lie unless there's something weird going on that I'm failing to consider.

June 24, 2023

[1:09 PM] !!! Satsuki is here at school on Day 11! Alive, to all appearances! I’d thought she was one of the unnamed-at-the-time missing students who got mentioned on Day 3, but apparently not!

[1:14 PM] …or, no, apparently she was out for a few days for reasons related to the serial killings, she’s just back now! I’m not sure what to make of that, but it’s definitely Interesting! Either she’s been vampirized but found some very-exceptionally-effective way of hiding it and avoiding sun-related problems and continuing to act like herself-as-she-was-pre-turning, or her run-in with the serial killer in this route somehow got derailed such that she didn’t end up vampirized by it! Interesting either way; I’m curious to see how her thread gets developed, when the far side comes around!

[2:43 PM] Huh, interesting that Shiki still pulls the “escape to the park” maneuver after The Incident With Kohaku, despite this involving running through a residential area a ways and despite the largeness of the Tohno mansion-grounds-forest! I suppose distance-from-the-targets-he’s-been-most-fixated-on was a higher priority for him, in his escape-panic, than more general distance-from-the-nearest-people. (Or perhaps the park is bigger than I’m envisioning it as being from the art, enough to beat out even the 40-acre-if-I’m-remembering-right Tohno forest. Or perhaps he’s thinking strategically enough to realize that he’s more likely to be successfully chased after in the Tohno forest than in the public park. There are lots of options, just all of those options Imply Things Not (Yet?) Stated Directly.)

[6:49 PM] Day 13 complete! Wow that was A Lot.

[6:53 PM] So, the timeline-mystery is now resolved, via a six-year gap in which it was in fact very reasonable to count her as not-aging, because she was dead throughout that time. (Placing us, then, in 2014.) Meaning that Ciel is actually substantially younger in the remake, 19 rather than ~25! And also meaning that she Just So Happened to wake up the same year that Roa got to SHIKI, which seems like very much Not A Coincidence, even if it's not quite as direct a connection as the original's "SHIKI inverted ~immediately upon Roa!Ciel's death" one. Something something world didn't consider Roa to be alive until he was back re-active something something, maybe, and thus didn't see the need to enforce aliveness on 'Roa'-who-was-actually-Ciel?

[6:56 PM] (I don't recall any explanation from the original, and am somewhat unclear in the remake too, regarding why it is that Ciel alone seems to have immortality-for-as-long-as-Roa-lives, from among his many castoffs over the centuries. Presumably the same bug-in-the-world with her soul being bound to his also applied to everyone else's? I suppose possibly there are, in fact, a bunch of other immortal Roa-castoffs running around, and they just lack the rest of Ciel's exceptional ability-set and as such aren't Doing Big Things with their immortality the way Ciel is. (After all, someone at the Church needed to have enough idea what was going on to give Ciel the authentication-error metaphor.))

[7:02 PM] The remake version of the Ciel-versus-Shiki showdown was, as the original was, Thoroughly Excellent. Even with my faded-at-this-point memories of the original, I feel reasonably confident this time in proclaiming that the remake version is at least comparable in quality, if not better. Because it successfully brought me near-to-crying, towards the end, and crying is a rare-and-prized thing for me which I would remember had I done it during the original Tsukihime; thus I infer that, while the original plausibly brought me near-to-crying too (the memory is fuzzy enough that I'm not confident it did, but it's at least plausible), it didn't bring me to Actual Crying, meaning plausibly-comparable quality but probably-not-substantially-higher quality.

[7:06 PM] (I am somewhat unclear on where Ciel's information-source is, as far as backtracing the Shiki-Adoption Switcheroo goes. Records-investigation could get her as far as learning of the existence of two Shikis, if the records were erased sloppily, but at the time when she found Roa's coffin she'd gotten that investigation done and inferred SHIKI, rather than Shiki, to have been the adopted one, and I'm not sure what additional records she could have found to make her realize that she had it backwards. But this is the sort of minor thing which will plausibly not be returned to; the details aren't hugely plot-essential, even if I happen to be idly curious about them.)

[7:08 PM] (And I don't think she was lying, at the coffin scene, about getting it backwards, because it wouldn't really have... helped? It wasn't like exactly which of the Shikis was which particularly factored into her cover-story for continuing to hang around him, or anything. I think she just... got additional information, somehow, afterwards?)

[7:24 PM] Then we had the Noel showdown. Which was... not nearly as intensely good as the Ciel showdown? But it was still interesting; it felt much less out-of-place than e.g. the Ciel-versus-random-monster-of-Roa's fight in the finale of Arcueid's route, much more like it was actually about the characters rather than just a new fight scene for its own sake. Overall, I like Noel a lot as a villain! I'm not sure where I'm ultimately going to fall on whether her finale taking the form it did was to the benefit or the detriment of the remake, relative to the original—it involved... a lot of Flashy Fighting With Less Emotional Baggage Than The Fight It Immediately Followed?, where I found Noel at her most interesting during the earlier sections of the route where she was less about the Direct Fair-Ish Combat (which she was, after all, not hugely good at) and more about the Preying Upon Those Weaker Than Her—but it was, at the very least, Interesting.

[7:29 PM] And, as a subcomponent of the Noel showdown, we got the big flashback to Roa!Ciel! Which was both effective-in-its-own-right, as an establishment-of-how-horrible-Roa-can-get and as a contextualization for Noel and why she's a mess in some of the specific ways that she is, and also interesting from a standpoint of there sure did seem to be some familiar figures there. There was the spidery one who was monologuing in a very recognizably Arach-like manner, and there was also, I'm pretty sure, Vlov's silhouette! Which, coupled with the mention of an unexpected sixth person showing up and throwing off Roa's plans, has me very much suspecting that this isn't the last we're going to see of this particular event, that it's going to be unveiled still farther either over the remaining day(-or-maybe-days-if-the-remake-adds-an-extra) or somewhere in the Far Side. (More likely the latter, for previously-mentioned "Arach seems Far Side-flavored" reasons.)

[7:32 PM] (And also: Vlov seemed to really hate Roa, during his fight with Shiki and Ciel, to the point of there being some implication that he'd come to town specifically in order to get some sort of revenge on him. Vlov's silhouette seemed, in Noel's flashback, to be not actively attacking. So what happened, to flip Vlov's opinions on Roa as hard into antagonism as they ultimately got flipped? This also points in the direction that probably Vlov will have more revealed about him in the Far Side, that he won't be relegated to Offscreen Irrelevance the way Nrvnqsr did in the original Far Side.)

[7:37 PM] And then Ciel made her very interesting comment, that since Shiki and Roa are merging into one Shiki would be able to remember anything Roa had done, and thus definitely hadn't killed anyone. Which leads to the question: where, then, did Shiki's two days of missing memories disappear to? He jumped straight from Friday to Sunday. At first I'd been leaning towards mostly Roa with some outside chance that it had been Ciel doing her memory-wiping thing repeatedly, but at this point if Ciel had done it she'd have admitted it, and apparently it can't have been Roa either. So who can it have been? It seems like not-Arcueid's-style, so I'm leaning towards not-her; and, while it seems like it might have served Mario's goals somehow (...not that I've got the best read on what his goals are, even now), it doesn't seem like it's within his capabilities, relative to my current model of them. So I'm not sure! One more Lingering Mystery for the collection.

[7:41 PM] One place where I find the remake to suffer a bit relative to the original, here: it loses the feeling of Repeated Finale-Fakeouts. In the original, Roa is killed, and this initially appears like, okay, the protagonists have won, now we've just got Happy Epilogue to go! And then he starts possessing Shiki. And then Shiki and Ciel have their big showdown, and at the end of it they're closer to one another than ever and have a plausible-sounding plan for his defeat, and this initially appears like, okay, the protagonists have won, now we've just got the Happy Epilogue to go! And then Roa is stronger-than-planned and takes Shiki outside and Arcueid is there waiting, and only then does the true finale happen. Whereas, here, Roa's death happens early enough to be very clearly a start-of-tension-building rather than a finale, and then the narrative pointedly brings back all its hooks of Future Antagonists after the Shiki-and-Ciel showdown rather than doing any sort of fakeout, with Noel showing up immediately and then with Arcueid getting her interlude-to-remind-everyone-that-she's-still-active before the Shiki-and-Ciel-in-Ciel's-apartment scene. And I liked the original's finale-fakeouts, so I feel a bit sad about their absence in the remake.

[7:49 PM] Also I was somewhat surprised at how non-awful Roa!Shiki's attack on Kohaku ended up being, in this version. Still bad, certainly—and presumably worse, in the Bad End branch I have yet to explore—but much less specifically hitting her right in the yet-to-be-revealed Deep Backstory Traumas, compared to how it went in the original. Which... probably wouldn't have been surprising to me if Arcueid's route were different, but since Arcueid's route did still keep the sexual elements of Shiki's attack on her in the alleyway the one night (albeit in toned-down form), I was kind of expecting something similar here? But instead the thing of Roa-instilled aggression taking on a specifically-sexual shape is mostly left very understated, mostly only visible (at least so far) in Shiki's somewhat-more-active flirtation in the days before things come to a head and in Flashback!Roa!Ciel's state of nudity. Which is interesting! I wonder what led Nasu to tone that down as far as he did in the rewrite, while still leaving the Arcueid-route bit relatively un-toned-down; in my mind, the two had seemed more of-a-kind with one another, more "probably either both go or neither goes"-shaped.

June 25, 2023

[11:22 AM] Well! Normal end get! Which is not the true end, because apparently the endings have been rearranged this time around! :o

[3:40 PM] ...and true end get! In unexpectedly-actionized form!

[3:46 PM] This is much more the sort of thing I was semi-expecting back in Arcueid's route, after the Vlov fight proved Unexpectedly Escalatory relative to anything in the original. But was nonetheless unexpected here, because after the way Arcueid's route was in fact not ever re-actionized to that degree of intensity post-Vlov I expected the same to hold of Ciel's route. But nope! Big Apocalyptic Setpiece-Battle Finale! Which it's going to take me a while to settle my feelings on, probably; but it does definitely drive me in the direction of more substantially internally differentiating the remake from the original, thinking of it more as a different story which happens to contain many overlapping components from the original, rather than as the-original-but-with-extra-budget. (Much moreso than e.g. Noel did; Noel felt like she was still basically running on standard Tsukihime-ish narrative stakes and standard-for-the-remake-ish power scales, being an extra wrinkle in the plot and character arcs but being mostly tonally in-line with the original; whereas the Big Arcueid Fight was very dramatically outside of the tone-space covered at any point in the original.)

[3:48 PM] (I remain confused about what That One Monster Of Roa's was doing, in the finale. Like, it felt like much less of a tonal/pacing hiccup this time around, a much briefer fight which did some work in showing Ciel's mental state in a route where her mental state is a core focus in a way it wasn't nearly as much in Arcueid's route; but it's still weird, from an "I don't understand why Nasu included it at all" standpoint. Given its spideriness, maybe it's going to be related somehow to whatever-is-going-on-with-Arach, once the far side comes around, and so it's here for purposes of Early Foreshadowing?)

[4:05 PM] ...I feel like Nasu's action-scene-writing has grown increasingly extravagant over time in a not-unambiguously-positive way. Like, the original Tsukihime's action scenes were generally pretty lightweight; Fate/stay night's were a lot more intense, but were still mostly pretty grounded scale-wise, even despite all the overpowered abilities being thrown around; but then Mahoyo had [rot13 for Mahoyo spoilers]gur ovt nzhfrzrag-cnex frdhrapr[/rot13] which dwarfed even the biggest Fate/stay night fights scale-wise, and the Tsukihime remake escalated still farther from there, with both Vlov and Arcueid escalating to attacks which straight-up would have destroyed the whole city had they not been stopped. And, like, the scenes are cool? But I feel like they're also... tipping increasingly in the direction of feeling out-of-place relative to their surrounding works, over time, tonally, in some way that's hard to articulate. Or... no, not quite that. Shaping the tone of their surrounding works, let's say. It's very hard to hold onto an original-Tsukihime-ish relatively-small-scale-storytelling mood amid a Big Fight Scene Where The City Is At Risk Of Being Casually Squished As A Side-Casualty; that those sorts of big fights happen anyway is one of the key elements tonally differentiating the remake from the original. And that's fine as long as one is aiming to write stories with the sort of tone that those fight scenes bring about; but it seems like a... loss of versatility? It reduces his ability to do other sorts of tone. I'm not sure that the modern-day Nasu would be capable of writing the sorts of relatively-smaller-scale stories that he started his career with, with Kara no Kyoukai and with the original Tsukihime, and that seems kind of sad, because I liked those stories. And, like, I like his more recent stuff too! But there's still something sad in the feeling that he couldn't go back to doing things-like-the-older-stuff even if he tried.

[4:11 PM] Anyway! Big Action Setpiece. Cool novel way of killing off Roa, which I found very elegant. And then a nice epilogue, mostly pretty similar to the original Ciel true-end epilogue as far as I'm managing to recall it. (...although it felt a bit more repetitive after the normal-end epilogue, here, since they covered a lot of the same ground as one another.) I didn't find the epilogue this time around to be as emotionally-impactful as I recall having found the Arcueid true-end epilogue—the big moments of emotional impact this route were mostly earlier, the various Big Moments Of Catharsis between Shiki and Ciel and between Shiki and Arcueid—but it still closed things off well enough in its own right, and was generally enjoyable.

[4:12 PM] ...and now all that's left is branch-exploration! And then the final accounting of my thoughts and of whatever lingering mysteries-from-this-route have yet to be resolved.

[4:17 PM] (Also I don't 100% understand the divergence between the normal-end branch and the true-end branch. Or, like, I get that Shiki trying harder to let Arcueid down gently in the true-end branch leads her to have more brainpower to spare on continuing to think while being All-Consumingly Mad At Him, thus leading her to invoke Serious Large-Scale Reality-Warping against him rather than simpler-and-more-direct "regenerate and then apply Large Quantities Of Violence"-shaped actions like she uses in the normal-end branch; but I don't get the divergence on Ciel's end, why normal-end!Ciel has the Seventh Scripture but true-end!Ciel delays getting it and instead rushes to grab Shiki first. It seems like they diverge even before the reality-warping comes out, based on some other factor I have yet to discern?)

[10:51 PM] 100% completion done! At least to the best of my ability to discern via lack of non-viewed flowchart-entries, via lack of non-unlocked music-player tracks, and in general based on gallery-completion. 44 hours logged total for Ciel's-route-counting-branch-exploration, apparently. I'd be curious to see how that compares with my time on Arcueid's route, but unfortunately I didn't have game-time-logging set up for my Switch emulator last year the way I do now, so I suppose that will remain forever a mystery.

[11:02 PM] Thoughts from branch-exploration: - The "Shiki-under-Roa's-influence kills everyone in the mansion" bad-end-branch was High-Quality Horror. Very effective slow unveiling. Also I am very curious what Kohaku was thinking, in that one, with her continuing to pretend everything was normal even after both Akiha and Hisui were dead. I mean, presumably she was thinking "it would be undollish to have feelings about this, so I'm going to Not"; but it's still somewhat surprising to me that she was so blase about Hisui's death specifically, as opposed to e.g. adding Shiki more unambiguously to her revenge-target-pile and then being more cautious around him. I suppose possibly she intended to lace his food with Interesting Substances next time she fed him, and was foiled only by his un-accounted-for change of diet, or something? - Meanwhile, in the branch where everything isn't quite as terrible, we've got a very interesting interaction between Kohaku and Hisui around carrying Shiki up to his room, wherein Kohaku asks Hisui to do it (despite knowing about Hisui's issues around physical-contact-with-men), Hisui objects, and then Kohaku proceeds to formally give Hisui permission to make an exception to her usual patterns, after which Hisui does it without further objection (albeit while still pretty clearly feeling uncomfortable about it.) This is interesting. This is a wrinkle in the Kohaku-Hisui dynamic that I don't recall seeing in the original; in the original, as I recall, Hisui's issue-pile is more purely her own, influenced by her knowledge of Kohaku's history but never indicated as far as I recall to be a product of any sort of, like, explicit understanding between the two of them, as opposed to just Hisui reacting in her own way to the knowledge of what Kohaku went through for her sake. But apparently there's more to it, in the remake! - ...and then we had the Big Moment in the other side of red garden trailer, with Satsuki. The trailer as a whole was Very Pretty, but also more specifically I am so interested to see what's going on with the Satsuki route, and that single few-second patch of trailer is probably the biggest indicator I've seen to date of its likely shape.

[11:17 PM] Lingering mysteries: - Whence the missing memories? I would think Roa even more, now, after the everyone-in-the-mansion-dies branch, except once again that contradicts Ciel's statement that, if one does a thing under Roa's influence, one will remember that. And, indeed, even when Shiki is temporarily forgetting / not turning his mind towards Roa's activities, as in the scene with Mario and Shiki's lack of thinking-about-it-afterwards, it's pretty consistently the case that those moments are still followed by the eye of the narrative, indicating at least some degree of theoretical accessibility-to-Shiki probably. Whereas for the two missing days there's just nothing. So I'm not sure what's going on there. - Speaking of which: Mario! What's his deal? After this route we've got probably-close-to-everything-we're-going-to-get on Noel—she seemed like she had a pretty complete arc, here, and while I expect her to still feature in the far side I don't specifically expect her to be a big player in it—and I've updated towards Mario's two less-in-focus minions (Karius and the other one) being probably Actually Genuinely Unimportant Side Characters, but Mario himself has taken a big step up in Mysteriousness, similarly to Arach albeit less immediately plot-affectingly. It sure does seem like there's some sort of hivemind or body-transference or something along those lines going on, in the Laurentis family, and apparently they-via-Mario are looking for the secrets of immortality, but we've got very little in the way of detail, so far. Little enough that I find myself wondering if we're going to get more church-focus in The Other Side of Red Garden than we did in the original Far Side, to go more into this. - What's up with the variable stopping power of Shiki's eyes? The story specifically makes a point of noting that even just tracing a line, on one of Vlov's dogs, is enough to stop it in its tracks and render it sufficiently definitively Dead that it can't even take purely-reflexive final actions like Bite Down Harder On Shiki; and yet, in the Roa!Shiki-and-Ciel-kill-each-other ending, Ciel manages to remain functional enough to stab through Roa!Shiki even after he stabs a point on her, which naively I'd expect to have even more stopping power than tracing a line. (And I half-recall that Roa similarly managed Action In His Final Moments in Arcueid's route, even if it's been long enough that I no longer remember the precise details.) Something something Lifescale something something, higher Lifescale leads to increased ability to continue acting after getting got with Mystic Eyes of Death Perception? (This would also line up with Arcueid being able to straight-up keep on fighting him, when he slashes her lines in the normal-end branch, only being somewhat slowed down rather than anything more serious.) - ...plus everything already discussed earlier, Vlov's feelings towards Roa and Arach's deal and so forth.

[11:18 PM] ...oh, also, the bit in the Black Key exposition-branch where Ciel starts out trying to replace all references to magecraft with prayer only to give up midway through was Very Funny. One of my favorite comedic moments in the whole VN, I think.

[11:20 PM] And that's everything, I think! It's been fun. I look forward to The Other Side of Red Garden coming out, whenever it does that.

[11:23 PM] (It sounds, from Ciel-sensei's lesson with the Other Side of Red Garden trailer, like plausibly it'll be less action-y; it was described there as being more mystery-shaped instead. I'm curious to see whether that means the Fights With Apocalyptically Powerful Abilities Being Thrown Around Endangering Everyone are less present in the far side than in the near side; my current guess is no, that we'll see similar sorts of stakes-escalation around e.g. the big Akiha fight, plausibly whatever is going on with Arach, et cetera, because as mentioned earlier I'm not convinced Nasu is really capable any more of not doing that sort of thing.)

[11:30 PM] ...also I wonder if Satsuki's route is going to end up being sort of a bridge between the near side and the far side. Because we keep getting all these hints of far-side-content hooking back in with Roa's schemes, with the person-who-sounded-like-Arach in Noel's flashback (and, for that matter, more generally with the nature of whatever Roa was trying to do against Arcueid in that incarnation being repeatedly teased-but-not-revealed), and with whatever is going on between Roa and Vlov that hasn't been discussed much yet, and so forth; and, in the Other Side of Red Garden trailer, Satsuki was the one character to be shown against the backdrop of the broader city rather than specifically of the Tohno mansion; and, of course, Satsuki herself has a connection with Roa, on account of his being the one who turns her. So... possibly that route is going to be some sort of grand-finale blend-of-the-two-halves'-respective-tones-and-casts, or something? And if the remake were following original-Tsukihime-tone then I'd expect not-that, because the near-side/far-side split in the original is pretty sharp and never really gets blended like that; but the remake has at this point established itself as fully willing to handle tonal things differently, compared with the original, so I'm less confident in that and as such this seems a lot more plausible.

[11:34 PM] ...oh, also another lingering mystery I forgot to list earlier: what's up with Satsuki's apparent survival, in Ciel's route? Being attacked and then making it through well enough to be able to attend school in daylight, which is even more mysterious than if she'd just been butterflied into not-being-attacked. I have very little idea, right now, what to make of that, but it's definitely Interesting and something to keep an eye on.

#Archive #Tsukihime #Tsukihime Remake Liveblog Archive

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forbiddenseason · 10 months ago

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indigosabyss · 1 year ago

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Birthday Blitz 2: Electric Boogaloo

So, context, I like to do special writing projects on my bday. Idk which year, but a couple years ago I did this by updating all my WIPs on the same day. Instead of the three WIPs I had that year, this time I have SIX. So, here's a directory to Every Single Project being updated. Both fanfic and original work.

Fanfiction

Chapter 3 of Screeching Raptors [N/R, 20k] Basically, an AroAce Gwen Poole Study that details her entire life with an aspec lens. Chapter 3 is the finale.

Chapter 2 of Vengeance and Sunshine [G, 4k+] A Dr. STONE and PJO crossover, featuring Apollo and Ethan Nakamura waking up in the stone world. Picks up around the end of a different PJO crossover I have written, but that's not necessary to read.

Chapter 17 of Extraordinarily Close By [G, 47k] Saiki K no sainan au with all the characters secretly having psychic powers that they themselves are unaware of while also being paranoid of Saiki for possibly having psychic powers. This will be the finale!

Chapter 6 of The Bullseye Cut [T, 16k+] Gwenpool AU where instead of being recruited by MODOK, Gwen is taken in by Bullseye. Somewhat grim and gory, but desperately balanced out by her comedy background.

All of my work is hidden to those without accounts to prevent AI scraping. Sorry if that upsets you, but I'd rather get less attention than let a language model make uninspired facsimiles of art.

To read more of my fics, go to my Ao3!

Original Fiction

Chapter 3 of Mirrors in the Hallways A work I'm doing for the RoyalRoad June Magazine Competition. It centers around a mailwoman who uses mirrors to teleport and deliver parcels. Until someone dies inside the mirrors, and sparks a search for the beast that lives inside.

Chapter 3 of EndWalkers An apocalypse story with heavy Gamer elements, with a group of several characters coming together through several dimensions to solve the Ends of each dimension while also being traumatized, queer and barely adults. Updates twice a week.

For more original content, go to RoyalRoad.

#fanfic #original writing #gwenpool #gwen poole #pjo fanfic #pjo #marvel #dr stone #ethan nakamura #pjo apollo #ishigami senku #aromantic #asexual #muslim

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thebirdofthechapel · 2 years ago

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10 Moments Showcasing swapped!Saiki and Ritsu’s Brotherly Bond

I am obsessed with sibling love and if you wanted to see snippets of it, here are 10 scenes of swapped!Saiki and Ritsu being the closest siblings in Room of Hyacinth. There are spoilers beyond the read-more up until Chapter 13 (out of 17) unfortunately. Lots of text, and a comic panel at the end!

1. Ritsu is used to swapped!Saiki’s telepathy

My attention wanes as I let the rest of Ritsu’s thoughts merge into the constant, noisy buzzing in my head. I have already become desensitized to the endless whisperings, and twelve years with telepathy, growing in range every year, has allowed me enough skill to pick through them. It’s at least good in helping me not hear thoughts of those close to me. It still takes a bit of focus, since I have to get into a state of - ironically enough - spacing out. Of course, my little brother is used to this by now. No pausing or questions asked. It’s almost psychic how he seems to have picked up on small cues even I’m not aware of. He taps me on the shoulder, picking up the rest of the dishes. “I can do the rest. You go take a bath.” — Kageyama Shigeo (C1: Not Using Pyrokinesis to Start the Fire)

2. And swapped!Saiki is saved by Ritsu’s inner voice

There’s a chime—a sharp, small ripple of sound slicing the dense mud. A transparent thread, bleeding in a pink glow. When I open my eyes, every second is a battle to keep them open. I can sense the back of my hand again and push all my willpower to force its form to clench as tightly as possible. I can’t feel my extremities, but I can feel the tension as I squeeze Ritsu’s hand. I want to black out, to sleep through these overwhelming sensations. But I have to stay with Ritsu. I can’t leave him out here. He must be scared. I’ve put him through something ugly and terrifying again. I’m still too unfocused to understand his thoughts, but his inner voice has been unraveled from the rest. Maybe it’s because we’re brothers or each other’s closest friend, but I can always zero in on it. Ritsu knows this, so he knows talking or yelling can’t help me. All he can do is to call me in his mind — Kageyama Shigeo (C11: Giving Cakes To A God)

3. Hurting Ritsu turns swapped!Saiki into a villain

“Ow, ow, ow!” howls Nendou, his offending hand hoisted up as he did with mine. Except there’s nothing touching him. Only the wrinkles in his sleeves show evidence of a force keeping him in the air. A beastly growl resounds in the chambers of my mind. Nii-san’s teeth are clenched, and his usual serene eyes, bold and alive like the shine of cutting knives Shut up. I don’t even want to hear you scream. I tilt my head at the strangeness of what I’m hearing. Nii-san? As I move my legs, I feel a cold wetness in my pocket. Which rock are you insects skittering out from? Tell me, so I can burn it down to ashes! — Kageyama Ritsu (C5: The Worst Thing to Say Out Loud )

4. ...and he’s a villain that isn’t afraid to kill (he’s 12)

The sky has turned fiery in the sunset with long trail of fluffy clouds drifting by. Because of my prodigal older brother’s mysterious machinations, I ended up watching my first sunset with this person, Nendou Riki, someone from my past who I never expected to meet again. He doesn’t seem to be aware yet that he had survived an attack that would have tragically killed him. It’s for the best. The problem now is resolving this mess. — Saiki Kusuo (C6: What Every Loving Parent Would)

5. swapped!Saiki adores/dotes on his younger brother (and is very obvious about it)

“Well,” I start, considering how to explain it without being technical. “Ritsu is great, so it doesn’t matter.” It’s as simple as it can get, but Miyaike is still confused. “Is Ritsu considered tall in the club?” “No. But since he started back in third grade, he had a lot of experience with taller opponents from facing off with the senpai.” “He must have a lot of experience sparring with you,” says Takahara-san. “No,” I answer. “I don’t want to hurt Ritsu.” Miyaike arcs a brow, smirking. “It’s not supposed to hurt.” “Well.” I blow a puff of air, somewhat annoyed. “Then I don’t feel like it.” — Kageyama Shigeo (C10: It’s an A+++ Photo )

6. ...but also finds him terrifying when angered

Ritsu doesn’t look very happy to be here. On top of waking up early and standing in long lines in the shrine, he’s been spending all day and night studying as finals draw in. I keep telling him he’ll be fine without exerting so much effort, but even I, the strongest person in the planet, started to feel like something dangerous would awaken if I continued on. — Kageyama Shigeo (C4: A Cause of Unhappiness)

7. Ritsu won’t stand for slander on his older brother - even from their own mom

“Yeah, sure… Besides,” says Ritsu, smiling as he realizes he can seize the opportunity to turn this around. “I can’t have a fan club first before Nii-san. It doesn’t make sense.” My little brother can be so silly at times. “I don’t need something so inane….” “That’s impossible,” says Mom bluntly. “We’re talking about Shige.” Ritsu gapes in disbelief. Slowly, he collects himself. “Yes, we are talking about Nii-san. An incredibly talented person.” “Yes, yes, that person,” jests Mom. “I know you look up to your brother, but Shige’s always been shy. You can’t be popular if you’re shy.” I can hear Ritsu coming up with five different arguments, but he settles for the sharpest jab. I don’t know where Ritsu gets the courage to talk to our parents like this. “What would you know? Are you going to tell us you were the most popular girl in school back in your days?” — Kageyama Shigeo (C10: It’s an A+++ Photo )

8. ... and does not hesitate to use his charm to provide him with more crepes

They even have a sign for it: 250 of their bestseller crepes a day, strictly one per person only. Ritsu addresses this next. "Of course, you can bring me along any time. I can even get you a third." Dad had been with him when he brought home two, so I'd assumed he got it with his help. Had he done it without Dad? Did he say the second extra was for his cute little sister back home? "It's a popular store for couples, so all I did was to make sure they see me talking to a girl and act like I'm buying for the two of us." I turn to stare at him. "What? I bet plenty of other people do it too." Flirting with a random girl to get an extra crepe? Somehow, I doubt that. — Kageyama Shigeo (C12: Always Blame the Rain)

9. They have secret telepathic conversations all the time

A pause. Arataka takes another glance at the mirror, and as he suspected, the brothers are wordlessly communicating with a look. They are doing their utmost not to speak to one another. He wants to reassure them they can have a conversation without including him, but calling attention to it may only discourage them. "Nii-san isn't feeling well, so - um - he may sound succinct." "Hmm. I see." Arataka is bemused at what made the younger brother speak up. "It doesn't bother me. But, more importantly, Shigeo-kun, maybe you should lay off the pudding until you get home." "Can I have one last cup?" "One last," he allows. "How many is that?" Plastic being peeled away scratches from the back. "Six," answers Ritsu-kun, picking an empty cup. "Nii-san? This isn't pudding. It's coffee jelly." "Oh, my bad," says Arataka. "You don't like coffee," goes Ritsu-kun, almost like an accusation. "Are you okay?" Shigeo-kun doesn't reply. "There's sugar…" Ritsu-kun's voice fades and the conversation ends without another word. — Reigen Arataka (C13: Almost Out of Tokyo)

10. And, of course, they have “sibling fights” (aka Ritsu’s patience is tested)

As soon as he finishes the sentence, a scuffle breaks out. Takahara-san almost falls over as Ritsu gets into a stance and slams his elbow onto my rib cage, having perfectly predicted my reaction. That blow is serious. I catch Ritsu glowering darkly my way. No words, just a look that can absolutely kill. Is it enough to convince me to stop? Of course not. Some things are worth dying for. I grab the mic with my superior, older brother arm. Ritsu, achieving zen, is not fazed by my decisiveness and makes a smooth pass behind him. "Mishima-san!" "Huh? Me? Huh? Why?" Mishima-san scrambles to her feet and, with wide, confused eyes, successfully catches the mic like a pro baseball player. Takahagara-san gasps, impressed. You fool. You just made it easier for me, and you even picked the only person in the room who would understand how important this is. Mishima-san lets out a shrill, mouse-like "eek!" as I lock my target on her. Then, before I can make another move, I fly. The room spins, and before I can brute force a counter, it turns upside down, and I'm lying on the floor on my back. — Kageyama Shigeo (C12: Always Blame the Rain)

10.1 Comic bonus

#Saiki Kusuo no PSI Nan #saiki no psi nan #mp100 #mob psycho 100 #the disastrous life of saiki k.#saiki k #saiki kusuo #kageyama ritsu #roh #no ototo no ani #tbotc posts

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ullwinner · 2 years ago

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I posted 64 times in 2021

5 posts created (8%)

59 posts reblogged (92%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 11.8 posts.

I added 181 tags in 2021

#text - 52 posts

#art - 18 posts

#pic - 17 posts

#hbtqia+ - 14 posts

#red vs blue - 14 posts

#rvb - 14 posts

#fun - 13 posts

#saiki kusuo no ψ nan - 13 posts

#hbtq - 13 posts

#lgbtq - 13 posts

Longest Tag: 58 characters

#come on guys. we can’t just let belgium do better than us!

My Top Posts in 2021

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Wanted to get a more genderfluid hair cut.

When I want short, I can put up my hair in a man bun/high bun and when I want long, I just let my hair, a long bit left over the undercut, out.

The stylist asked if she could make an inbaked braid, And I have never had one so I said yeah.

0 notes • Posted 2021-06-08 09:46:47 GMT

A ask About my agenderness

Hey, could you tell me a bit about your experience as agender? For example how you figured out you're agender, what's your relationship with gender, what pronouns do you use, struggles, representation etc.

Thanks!

Sincerely, A slightly gender confused child

Ok, so, I lost your ask, SO I am tagging you. @official-virtual-hug-dealer

I am not the standard when it comes to gender or agender and this post is long so i’ll try doing a read more

Very different childhood, not bad, just different from most.

My mother was raised with different “Fancy” “high class” standards, Make-up mostly no (She learned only about old types of make-up that was not great for the body), natural beauty, pretty nails not need, Shaving was not as important to her to talk about to me as I mostly wore long armed and long-legged clothing (When I started wearing shorter, then she started), clothing not an issue, etc.

That, plus other stuff, meant that it took a long time to realize that I was different gender-wise, just thought I was different because childhood.

When you think you’re different just because your family is different, then you can dismiss differences between you and others.

If my mom had push me to be more fem, I may have realize sooner, because I would have been uncomfortable on my non-fem days

how you figured out you're agender:

It started after realizing that people feel gender.

I started thinking, what am I?

Big epiphany a day when the towel over my body laid in a way that made it look like a male part. My brain went: that’s a penis you have and I felt not bad no matter how long I looked or thought about it.

Just a few days earlier I had looked at my foot imaging it being like a chimpanzee, spreading it out and moving the toes, and after a minute, it felt so wrong that I had to look away.

I started recording when I felt a type of way about gender. When I felt masc, fem, and when I felt nothing.

I used to correct people about gender but after I thought about it, I realized that I am fine with any, I only corrected because I was taught that female was right and male was not me. I also wanted to show a different type of women.

It took years to find agender and many more to accept it. (This is first year as out to anyone).

what's your relationship with gender: Gender? I hardly know her! But for real, I can see gender mostly when it comes to others.

One day, I put up my hair. My brain went: A girl. I paused, put my hair in a different way, and my brain went: a man.

I let my hair down and asked my brain, what now, And it was silent.

what pronouns do you use: All except English It/itself, but haven’t had the chance to test any except hon(Swedish she) which I don’t always like and I think I like Hen (a Swedish gender neutral)

struggles:

1. Imposter syndrome, which my genderfluidity is not helping. (When I write “Hon”, I felt bad as today is apparently not a girl day, but 2 days ago I was a girl and thought I was fake, being not cis),

2. accepting that I am part of the trans and nonbinary umbrella (After thinking that I “was not a part of that” for so long, it’s hard to stop),

3. getting others to understand, accepting, and not feel pity because I don’t feel gender. It’s hard to explain to some who need to understand to really accept.

You don’t have to do that but I really really wanted this person to understand. So.

Representation: I am still trying to involve myself in agender things so I don’t know much but, as far as I can tell, we don’t have much.

Most you may find on sites are not human (Robots, aliens, monsters etc) but are around humans.

It’s, in those cases, not the character finding agender and making themselves id as agender, the maker just didn’t give them an id or the media uses agender for things that don’t have a sex and/or as a form of dehumanizing/ seeing or showing the character as not human.

Some reclaiming probably does happen with those characters.

My Tips if you are wondering about your gender is:

1. read about all sorts of gender, (Even “silly” ones).

2. find a label that you like, Labels are meant to make you happy

3. Remember presentation is not gender, pronouns don’t automatically mean any one gender.

4. If how you feel about your gender changes, that’s ok, no matter how many times it does.

5. Try looking at stuff beyond gender eyes (binding, tucking, make-up, sport) What makes you happy, what makes you comfortable etc. Do them, even if you aren’t a part of those who do that. If it makes you feel good(And doesn’t hurt anyone, Including you!), then it’s not bad.

10 notes • Posted 2021-05-25 14:45:00 GMT

Agender Pride (A part of a longer post)

Agender Pride

When I was young, I didn’t understand trans people. I didn’t know that others carried baskets of gender, that they could look in their baskets and see their gender. I thought that everyone felt like me: “you don’t Feel like a gender, you just are”.

But as I grew older, I met trans people, and saw on Tumblr, how they talked about feeling their gender, how even cis people feel their gender. I wasn’t the norm, everyone else felt gender.

I was Alone.

And then I found the term Agender and I wasn’t alone anymore.

I don’t feel the same as all of you. I don’t (right now, it may change) feel gender dysphoria or euphoria, And I am sure that some of you don’t feel with my description of Agender. It’s an umbrella term after all and its definition even as a non-umbrella term is meant to include us all.

But I wanted to share this, on this Agender day, to show one of the many ways you can feel as Agender.

11 notes • Posted 2021-05-19 09:47:04 GMT

What my gender feels like for me and why I use Agender.

Explanation of gender and My gender.

Imagine that everyone has a basket full of stuff. That stuff is their gender. The gender binary is apples and oranges.

In order to know what gender you are, you have to pick up and look at what you are carrying.

Trans people carry their actually gender in their basket but wear the clothes of their AGAB.

Some people have grapefruit and say: Well, it isn’t an apple, so it must be an orange.” It kind of looks like an orange, but something feels off when they call it an orange.

Some have bananas and quickly feel like something’s up. It’s not an apple or an orange, but unless they learn about other things, they will only think that there is something weird with them.

Genderfluid people carry multiple things so when they look every day, what they pick up out of their basket can be different.

People carry their baskets differently as well. Some carry on their back, not really seeing their gender until they turn to look, some on their front where their gender is always in the periphery, and the smallest movement can bring attention to their gender.

But no matter how you carry, you can do sudden moves that bring forth the gender. the movements are also different for differnet people, but like all of the above, have some taught aspects.

Other people can ask or say something that reminds you of your gender as well.

Things Like: “Apples left, oranges right”, “oranges are so weird”, “If you are not an orange, then you are an apple”

Most of the time, I don’t carry a basket. My parents may have dress me to signal that I’m an apple carrier, and people look at me and think I have apples, but I don’t most of the time.

On rare days I do carry a basket and most of those days it’s apples, but some days it is not.

But because of those few days with apples, I have internalized saying I have apples, even when I don’t, and it took a longer time for me to realize and accept that I mostly don’t.

People ask: “What are you carrying?”, and I say Apples, because that’s what others have taught me

All ideas of "What color are the things you are carrying?", "Maybe you are carrying oranges!" "You just check what you're carrying!" etc, are confusing. I carry nothing.

I have had a hard time describing why I don’t identify with gendervoid. For me, being gendervoid is carrying an empty basket/ a basket with a blackhole. You can see or feel void. I don’t carry a basket, so I don’t feel the void.

Agender Pride

But as I grew older, I met trans people, and saw on Tumblr, how they talked about feeling their gender, how even cis people feel their gender. I wasn’t the norm, everyone else felt gender.

I was Alone.

And then I found the term Agender and I wasn’t alone anymore.

But I wanted to share this, on this Agender day, to show one of the many ways you can feel as Agender.

12 notes • Posted 2021-05-19 09:45:46 GMT

Explaintion of gender and My gender.(Agenderfluid) (Part of a longer post)