#she never says any of the lines most other npcs do about being scared or not scared of death or injury

[questdesign]

she's insane i love her so much

[sycamorre]

Can I please get the whole girl gang with Ori, Mela, Vaela, and Riven!

[send me a character]

Oh boy you're making me do my homework over here!

Oriana —

Favorite thing about them: I'm going to be incredibly non-specific and say that her growth as a character was my favorite part of playing her. She started out as this uptight, dutiful monk who was scared to show her own face too much for fear of making people mildly uncomfortable (and honestly to avoid invasive questions) to someone who was finally getting comfortable with who they were was such a blast. I love her newly-acquired confidence and the dynamic it brings to her post-campaign. She's far from perfect, and never will be, but she's maturing and making a new purpose for herself other than being someone's errand girl.

Least favorite thing about them: She is the worst pessimist in the world and sometimes her logic is so quick to jump to the worst conclusions that she literally puts her foot in her mouth. And it hurts for me to write that every single time due to secondhand embarrassment but I have to commit.

Favorite line: "She loved you! She still loves you!" at the Prince during the final fight while she's trying to distract him (or something like that). Or Ori's first jab at Damak "Maybe you would see more of it if you stepped out of the shadows" since it still makes me chuckle.

brOTP: Even though the Ori/Damak ship didn't sail, I still think they probably stay pretty close and end up working together on jobs in the future. They absolutely still push each other's buttons, but that's just how they are and they don't question it.

OTP: I am so mad at myself retroactively for not giving into the OriRanna feels by the conclusion of the campaign but I do not regret bringing it up afterwards and getting to enjoy it now at least.

nOTP: Ori and Cobalt are forever divorced and they barely know each other, this is just canon.

Random Headcanon: Ori has a hard time accepting the fact that Sharaea is basically keeping her distance after the Prince's defeat. In part because she does feel that connection still and worries that Sharaea is hurting, and partially because it is such a strange sensation to her to be without the dreams for so long after such a major revelation. It takes her a long time to get used to it, but she still wishes that there was more she could do.

Unpopular Opinion: I don't know if it's an unpopular opinion among our little group, but I never had intentions of making Oriana some kind of fated hero. I never had thoughts of making her tied to a major NPC or giving her any kind of serious destiny, I just wanted to play a radiant energy bomb with the aasimar/monk combo because I thought it would be funny once I pitched the idea to Sam and he told me about Damak who was basically her foil. But I do adore how her story developed and how well it ended up narratively.

Song I associate with them: So many... "Like the Dawn" by The Oh Hellos, "Warrior" by AURORA, and "Drumming Song" by Florence + The Machine to name a few.

Favorite picture of them: I like a lot but honestly one of my favs is the one I made of Chibs trying to hit on her, partly because it's Chibs and partly because I did really like how Ori's outfit came out in this one.

Mela —

Favorite thing about them: Literally the most wholesome member of the group. Not a bad bone or crystal in her body. I am so sorry for all that we put her though.

Least favorite thing about them: Only that I didn't get enough time to learn more about her and her backstory. Sigh.

Favorite line: "Real neighbors. Real family. Not just people that make you feel like you can pretend it doesn't exist."

brOTP: Mela and Halion. Druid buddies that deserve the world.

OTP: Mela is an independent Genasi who don't need no one... though I could be swayed about a certain fae...

nOTP: Literally anyone who would try to be mean to her in a relationship will meet a swift end by my hand.

Random Headcanon: 100% think that Mela's magic is flavored to look like the crystals on her body. If she wildshapes and doesn't specifically want to look a certain way, the animal she changes into will have things like crystal horns/claws, the flame sword she summons has the appearance of a crystal blade, etc.

Unpopular Opinion: I do wish she had gotten a chance to use wild shape more. I think Mela being a cute little critter sneaking around would have been amazing.

Song I associate with them: "Come Out and Play" by Billie Eilish

Favorite picture of them: That dang sketch I never colored, rip

Vaela —

Favorite thing about them: Drinking game QUEEN. Also just the fact that she doesn't take any shit while still having a lot of heart and empathy to those who earn it. Something about that balance between the two just made her all the more lovable.

Least favorite thing about them: she can out-drink my high constituion monk I do think I missed out on really getting to know her during the campaign, and I regret that a lot.

Favorite line: Not a specific line but I think back to Vaela's talks with Erosen when he was ready and willing to be her stand-in dad before Vaela was ready to reach back out to her family and i can't help but smile.

brOTP: Vaela, Riven, and Mela is the real brot3 and nothing can change my mine

OTP: I mean... I definitely have a certain paladin that turns a lovely shade of pink when someone talks about her because she sure is pretty and really cool to boot~

nOTP: Zaresh and his memory is not allowed to ever hurt Vaela again. If Damak didn't do it, Ori would have definitely put him out of his misery.

Random Headcanon: Very little thing, but I could see her gathering small, light trinkets that remind her of her friends and tie them to her bow, possibly for good luck, and possibly as a way to to tell which direction the wind is blowing when she's aiming.

Unpopular Opinion: I still think it would have been cool for her to pull an Erosen and punch Zaresh in the face. Just once.

Song I associate with them: "Dear Fellow Traveler" by Sea Wolf

Favorite picture of them: So fun fact: I never finished them but I started making emojis of the party members for kicks and here's the one I started of Vaela:

Riven —

Favorite thing about them: Riven's sassiness and perfect comedic timing always leaves me in stitches. She really felt like the heart of the party in that way.

Least favorite thing about them: This is the hardest thing and most of my "least favorite" things are mostly the things Oriana keeps fretting about when she thinks about Riven being in such a high position so I'm gonna go with not much at this time to be honest.

Favorite line: Not a line again, but specifically the scene between Ori and Riven where Riv dressed her up while Ori reassured her that she didn't think any less of Riven after they all found out about her half-drow heritage. That always felt like a major point in their friendship and I hold onto it fondly.

brOTP: I wanna say Riven and Halion just because I think their friendship was so neat, and it hurts a bit when I think about their falling out post-campaign. But there's also Riv and Damak's sibling-ish dynamic that I love a lot, too.

OTP: As much as he pushes Ori's nerves, I do think Riv and Delethil are on the same wavelength as each other and fit very well together, even with Eravin in the mix.

nOTP: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Random Headcanon: On the occasions where Oriana comes up to Aerenth on business (either with Ranna for her research or at the request of various Tyados officials who think she's got some kind of in with them because she's friends with Riven), Ori always makes a point to find Riven and any of the other girls that might be there with them after all the formalities are done and run off into the woods to find a clearing to just hang out in like they did before.

Unpopular Opinion: As much as I understand the reason why she and Del made the choice to execute Vasion, I still disagree that it was the best decision.

Song I associate with them: "Savage Daughter" by Sarah Hester mostly because of the rebellious vibes

Favorite picture of them: I mean... I think it's obvious (also bonus Vaela).

[goldentail-readswarriorcats]

HFAHSAFgSJasgjh

I'm normal about Bive wdy--Trivia

Bive is currently the elevator NPC that enters the elevator from the most floors, coming from 5 floors, the second being Reddy coming from 2.

Players are able to get the "BRAIN WASHER" by spraying her with Spray Bottle.

Bive has three currently uploaded UGC items: "Bive Hairball Head", "Bive Spectacles", and "Bive Teeth". A fourth accessory is planned, in which it'll be the hair on its own without the tuff in front.

Bive was originally going to be named "Scag" back when Scag wasn't conceptualized.

One of Bive's alternative official renders is a reference to the Spirit Phone album by Lemon Demon.[1]

Her name is pronounced "bye-vuh/Bīv".[2]

One of Bive's April Fools idle dialogue lines is most likely a reference to this infamous tweet.

Bive’s glasses glow in the dark. It is unknown if this is intentional.

Bive is voiced by BARB1ESPACE.[3]

Bive makes an appearance in a crossover with another game, PHIGHTING!, as the skin "Bivekit".

Bive may be getting a remodel alongside, or after Split.[4]

Bive refuses to accept the Kitty item, as she knows Split doesn't like cats.[5]

The "Shwaffle House" location that Bive occasionally mentions in dialogue is planned to be added to the game.[6]

Bive is a self-appointed detective and a conspiracy theorist.[7]

She comes up with all of her conspiracy theories herself.[8]

Bive is made completely out of hair.[9]

Her bones are made out of highly condensed hair.

The only parts of her that isn't made of hair is her nervous system and partially her muscles.

Cutting her hair wouldn't hurt her, unless a nerve was hit.[10]

She doesn't mind that she is a "hair monster".[11]

According to Yeuc_c in stage, Bive weighs roughly the same as an average person due to how dense her hair is.

When wet, her hair flattens out.[12]

She would be a safety hazard if she came into contact with static.[13]

She feels like horse hair. [citation needed]

Bive was a lab accident.[14]

The lab she was made in was heavily associated with MR.[15]

She has a little bit of human DNA.[16]

She was never a child, she was always a hairball monster.[17]

It has been confirmed by Yeuc_c that Bive and Split have feelings for each other.[18]

They are not in a relationship, according to TheCanvasCreature[19]; however, it has been confirmed by Yeuc_c[20] that they will eventually confess their love to each other.

They can still be shipped with other characters.[21]

Bive worries about Split often.[22]

Bive hates MR.[23]

She knows things about it that others do not.

Bive does not trust Enphoso.[24]

She also doesn't trust DrRETRO.[25]

She does not trust Pest at all, and given the chance, she would run away from him as fast as possible.[26]

Despite this, Bive and Pest would work together under a common enemy.[27]

Bive is scared of Scary Mike.[28]

She ends up on the Funny Maze floor due to her floor-hopping.

Bive was attacked by Jaoba before, but escaped.[29]

Bive was banned from Glorp N' Go, after she stole batter and ran off.[30]

She stole the batter in order to break into buildings, as the yeast extracted from it can be used to eat away and replace glass, so she can enter through windows without them shattering.[31]

Bive is dressed in stolen clothing.

She would wear anything, if she believes it wouldn't get her hurt, but she isn't too picky about style.[32]

Bive is dealing with a very real stalker situation.[33]

Bive is uncomfortable and afraid of the "eye tree", due to its association with a "very evil thing".[34]

Bive has reason to what she says. She has seen a lot of horrific things and doesn't know how to emotionally handle it.[35]

Judging by Bive's dialogues, she seems to have some sort of trauma regarding the lab she was made in.

As stated by Yeucc on stream, this will be elaborated more in future updates. [citation needed]

Bive doesn't have a house.[36]

Bive is 5'9.[37]

Bive is m-spec, though she does not identify with any specific sexuality.[38]

Bive listens to most of whatever is playing on her radio. She does not trust a fair amount of radio stations.[39]

She despises the country pop music genre, as she believes it is made to trick people into buying red pickup trucks. She is concerned specifically about bright colors of vehicles, since she believes it allows the clown militia's cars to blend in with normal vehicles easier.[40]

Bive would be into lost media, and talk about it like a murder case.[41]

Bive is lactose-intolerant.

Despite this, dialogue between her and Split shows that she still ate at an ice cream parlor with her, indicating that she either had lactose-free ice cream and it wasn't stated, or ate the ice cream with lactose anyway.

Bive is not good at singing.[42]

Bive is the most likely to get a lobotomy; however, it would be unwillingly.[43]

Bive cooks mold over an open flame and cuts it up to use it as seasoning.[44]

Bive doesn't have a favourite instrument, but she wouldn't trust pianos.[45]

According to dialogue between Split and Spud!, Bive likes forests. She describes them as "always calm and natural" until those darn aliens arrive.

Bive considers hygiene "arbitrary", according to dialogue with Gnarpy.

She doesn't use shampoo, conditioner, or any kind of soap.[10]

She is the worst-smelling in Regretevator. [citation needed]

As stated by Yeucc on stream, she smells like wet dog. [citation needed]

Bive is easily startled by loud noises.[40][46]

Bive has very excellent focus when she is heavily concentrating on something.[40]

Bive only likes specific types of math, mainly geometry.[47]

If there was a zombie apocalypse, Bive would most likely thrive.[48]

Alt under the cut

[majjiktricks]

2, 5, 6, 10, 13, 21, 23, 24, 31, 33, 34, 42 48, 54, 64, 74?

god damn this took some thought... its 2am tho i'll blame my slowness on tired brain LOL

questions from this post!

2. First game you played? my first console was a ds lite so it had to be a game from that... i wanna say it was pokemon heartgold? that sounds right...

5. Game with the best soundtrack? this is SO hard... i love video game music very much... i can do top 3 maybe... pokemon b/w, stardew valley, the witcher 3. i would list ace attorney but i dont actually know what soundtracks go to which games because i always listen to series soundtrack compilations LOL

6. An underrated game from within the last few years? i genuinely dont think ive played anything recently released that hasnt gotten its due attention... most of the games i consider underrated are older or simply old enough to no longer get the attention they once did. if 2017 is "recent" then prey 2017. its a beautiful game with a good story and solid gameplay. i think it was overshadowed by other projects by arkane, but it still deserves attention.

10. Prefer PC or console? PC absolutely. i am much more comfortable with a mouse and keyboard than i am with a controller. that said, some games ARE significantly better played with a controller (yakuza, furi, hyper light drifter, etc)

13. Scariest game you've played? i tend to avoid horror games because i get little enjoyment out of being scared in a mental sense. i enjoy thrill rides and carnival games, but not thriller media, yknow? the scariest game ive ever played was prey 2017 by arkane studios because i didnt know it was a survival horror game when i bought it LOL

21. If you had to play one game for the rest of your life, what would it be? something multiplayer so i could do it with my friends and never run out of things to do. maybe ARK survival evolved, or minecraft. ive been playing overwatch since it first came out, so maybe that.

23. Favorite genre of video game? rpg or immersive sim i think. rpg because i love fantasy-scifi and those tend to come in the format of rpgs, and immersive sim because i LOVE it when you get to pick exactly how you get to accomplish your goals.

24. Ever cried because of a video game? i cant remember exactly. i probably have. the closest thing i can remember is being really emotional about the ending to yakuza 6, but i dont remember if i actually cried or not. tears of frustration, however, ABSOLUTELY.

31. Game with the best theme song? legend of zelda series. i cant think of a more iconic theme that works for any game of its catalogue.

33. Favorite female npc? my brain's immediate answer is mia fey. i cant explain exactly why but i love that lady very much. shes only around for a short time in the games but man. i also remember really liking josephine in dragon age inquisition, though its been so long since ive played it, i cant remember why.

34. Favorite male npc? i.. hmm. i like quite lot of them. to pick one? fenris dragon age. hes up there in the amorphous unranked blob of npcs i like.

42. A game you will never forget (in a bad OR good way)? borderlands 2. ive played that game so many times (of my own volition or not) that i have most of the story and quests memorized and can quote verbatim a decent number of lines if i encounter the scene theyre played it. i love the game to death, dont get me wrong, but i will likely not play it again for a looooong while.

48. A game you've always wanted to play but have never gotten to it? final fantasy and/or kingdom hearts. i read the kingdom hearts manga for a short time as a kid and was fascinated by it, but ive just never gotten around to picking any of them up.

54. A sequel you really want? a sequel to deus ex: mankind divided. i just wanna see adam jensen again... man deserves a proper ending to his story, and mankind divided was NOT it.

64. Describe your favorite video game using only three words. this requires me to establish a favorite video game... have you noticed i am bad at picking one-above-all favorites yet? hmmm. bodyguard's revenge quest.

74. Which game has the best lore? i cant speak for the "best" lore but for the lore i was the most invested in? probably dragon age. ive played all three games start to finish, read most of the lore in the games, and own almost all of the comics and one of the books.

[wastelandlovingscenarios]

Romanced!companions react to their precious fem!sole survivor getting slapped or strikes by an npc right in front of them? Can we categorize this; who would be the violent/threatening/just angry group? >:^0

omg, i’m pretty sure none of them would be remotely calm if that happened... but damn imagine the outcome of that poor npc. they lived a good life. this was a short request while i work on like 7 other ones, LOL.

thank you for requesting and please enjoy!

the next request i’m posting is gonna be a react that turned out a little longer than i expected so buckle up. 🤠

-

Danse:

violent/threatening

danse would for sure fall under the violent criteria of this situation. he already has one foot in the door once someone dares to go too close to sole, but hit her? that’s a totally different story for another day. that person better be praying to some god out there to give them mercy cause danse knows he won’t. the minute he hears that slap on soles face, it will trigger him to attack without a word. and to answer the question; does danse need a gun to do the job? absolutely not. those muscles are not just for show after all. no matter how many people hold him back, he will always fight his way through the crowd of people and beat the living fuck out of the person, even if they’re begging for him to stop. he won’t even realize the damage he’s done until after and won’t regret it either way, knowing that it was well deserved on their case. now if it was a situation where it was shoving or showing signs of starting a fight with his beloved, he’d step right in front of them and stare them down angrily with the biggest scowl ever. in some cases, that’s more than enough to scare most people off towards the other direction but in a few, he’s forced to threaten them. “i advise you step away unless you desire for this situation to escalate into something that involves solely you and i.” no one will ever be a threat to sole on his watch and he will make sure that nothing will stop him from protecting her.

Deacon:

threatening mixed with violence (depending the intensity of the situation)

deacons nice. he’s really laid back in most situations and is more than willing to let things go if he feels like it’s not worth the trouble. following that, deacons nice to a certain point and if you cross that point? consider yourself on his hitlist for the rest of your life. the intensity of the situation will determine how he’ll react towards it. if the person were to do as simple as shove sole, he’d keep an eye on them and say something within the lines of, “woah, woah, take it easy.” now if it was something like a slap or a punch, he wouldn’t even let it happen, not while he’s around. deacon would have fast enough reflexes to catch their wrist and he’d grip it enough to leave a mark, a displeased expression on his face. he’d even go as far as making jokes with an evil smile, such as, “oops my hand slipped,” or “oh you dropped this,” and proceed to deck the person as hard as he can with his free hand, not caring whether or not he knocks them unconscious. after that incident, he’d constantly terrorize the poor individual, often pulling pranks on them without any breaks. sometimes, he’d even go near them and speak in a happy tone while patting their back in a manner where it seemed a little too friendly.

Maccready:

threatening

mac is aware he’s not muscular nor is he made for fighting, which is why he sticks with guns during most situations. hes a lanky man and gets intimidated a little easier than most people, knowing that many of them could take him down with something as simple as a punch. it’s easier to say he’s more confident with a gun in his hand in these instances. despite his weaknesses, he would not hesitate to step up, knowing that hes unable to control his anger. he’d immediately point the gun at the persons temple and cock it just for intimidation purposes, but knows that he’s more than willing to pull the trigger if he needs to. it benefits him and the commonwealth more than damages it, seeing that this world needs one less asshole living it in, so who is he to care if this person dies or not? he’d slowly press it harder against the persons head, angrily speaking, “back away now.” if the person does so, he’ll gladly let them walk away without an injury and instead tend to sole. he wouldn’t let them go without some snarky comment like, “yeah keep walking and please let the door hit you on the way out.” if they refuse to move away from sole though, he’d gladly take the butt of his gun and smack it against their temple within seconds, completely ignoring the persons body knocked out on the floor. mac would get sole up and out of there as soon as he can, complaining under his breath about how much of that guy was an asshole and how he shouldve shot him.

Hancock:

violent group

consider one thing; that this person who fucked over his lover is beyond dead in his eyes. no one touches his sunshine, and if they dared to? theyll be wishing they hadn’t. hancock can quickly become someone’s friend, but the same can be said if it were an enemy. if he’s willing to stab someone for getting even a little too chummy and touchy with sole, imagine what he’d do if they dared to inflict pain on them. depending on where they are, like a bar for instance, he’d grab a glass bottle and crack it on the guys head, pushing him down on the floor without another word. using his shotgun, he’d make sure he’d put a few bullets through his body before he decides he’s completely satisfied with the new makeover he’s given them. now if he was in a more violent mood and was definitely not having it, he’d want to have their blood on his hands and wouldn’t care if it stained his clothes or not. he wants to send the message to everyone watching that if anyone dares to fucking cross his line, they’re gonna learn it the hard way and he will make it very known how the outcome of the situation will be. for example, he has a knife and what better way to use it than to stab the fuck out of someone for pissing him off? in some cases (depending on the severity of the situation), he’ll shank them in a place where he knows it’ll hurt the most and leave them there to suffer so they’ll get the idea that if they fuck with the people he treasures, they have another thing coming.

Nick Valentine:

mix of threatening and just angry.

honestly, nick is very civil about most cases and he won’t get violent unless absolutely necessary. he will definitely be beyond angry and give the person so much fucking shit for their actions. nick almost never yells but in this case, he’d yell so loud, it would fill up the silence of the room. nick also uses a lot of profanities when doing so, unable to maintain his professional attitude and his usual cool. “now what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” he’d even go as far as shoving them back, keeping a distance between sole and the person who deemed themselves as a threat to her presence. he’d try to minimize the possibility of violence arising, knowing that both him and sole are not as replaceable as they seem. he’d sneer at the person who striked sole, talking in the most irritated tone possible, “if i wasn’t here controlling her anger, you would’ve been dead on the pavement just a few minutes back, pal. consider yourself lucky that you were spared.” regardless if the person continued talking or not, nick would casually take soles hand and pull her away from the scene as he let out a remark loud enough for them to hear; “we don’t have time for the likes of you anyway, so take your trouble elsewhere.” nick has like zero shame when it comes to back talking or insulting someone he’s not fond of, so you best believe he won’t shut up until you both are out of sight.

Preston:

honestly, just angry.

preston will avoid violence at all costs, considering he doesn’t favor the idea and as much as he hates seeing sole get hurt, he doesn’t want to risk starting another issue. sole has a reputation amongst the commonwealth and the last thing he wants is to taint it or fuck it up, so he lets sole decide whether or not violence should be pursued. also considering that she has more than enough on her plate, he doesn’t want to add on to the list of problems she already has. so unless this guy is literally on the verge of gravely injuring his other half, he won’t do much besides step in front of sole to protect her from any further hits. he’d rather take the hits than to let someone as important as her take them firsthand. he wouldn’t forgive himself if such a thing happened. even if sole did most of the work in the end, he’d still send them the dirtiest look he’s ever given anyone and his hand would already be on the trigger of his laser musket, ready to fire at the guy anytime just in case. before officially leaving the person to do their own thing and bidding them goodbye, he’d get a little up close and personal, talking in the most threatening tone possible (even if he’s not the greatest at it); “once you mess with the general, you mess with the minutemen. i’d suggest you choose your battles a little better next time around.”

Sturges:

just angry

we all know by now sturges is a huge pacifist and will refuse to resort to violence unless he has no absolute choice but to do so. sturges is a very kind man and just like deacon, he’s willing to let most cases go but he respects sole too much to let violent situations like this slide. even if he’s very afraid to get into a violent situation head on, he’ll try to keep it as calm as possible, not wanting to escalate the situation more. being the considerate lover he is, he will ask sole to stay back and keep away from the person as much as possible as he tries to handle the situation himself. even if sturges doesn’t show it, he does get very angry in these instances and will not allow it to happen regardless of the reason. he’ll probably talk to the person with a firm tone and an irate expression but do nothing further than that unless the individual wants blood spilled, which in this case, sole is brought back into the situation. knowing sturges, he’d probably tell the person something like, “hey buddy, i really don’t appreciate what ya just did to my girl. ya need to quit it cause it ain’t right.” or, “if we got a problem, you can always just come to me instead of strikin’ that beautiful lady of mine. i’m willin’ to fix it with ya and if not, then i’m willin’ to take the hit.. though i’m sure my girl wouldn’ appreciate such a motive.” he knew she really wouldn’t. sole would shoot them down before he could let out a soft, “told ya so.”

Gage:

the ceo of violent

even if the raider life consists of injuries, blood, dirty work, and violence, he will never allow sole to get hurt under his watch. even if he tells her to toughen up and get used to it, he truly wants to protect her from the world and anything that could run as a potential hazard. that being said, he doesn’t care who the fuck strikes sole- it could be a man, woman, the highest and most royal person in the planet and it’d still have the same result in the end. gage wouldn’t even give them a chance to explain themselves and would simply let out a small, “oh fuck no, you ain’t.” and shoot them down himself before sole could give him an order. he would take the situation into his own hands with or without soles persmission, knowing that they crossed gages line of comfort. if he’s not satisfied with that or feels as if that’s too much of an easy way out, he’ll shoot their leg and come closer to them to step on their chest to block any chance of escaping. “wanna act tough, huh? show me how tough ya are, why dontcha? be my guest and apologize to the overboss. i’ll let her decide if it’s good enough to let ya go.” if sole were to deny every apology, he’d continue to shoot them limb by limb until he decides to put them down completely. now if sole decides their apology is more than enough, he’ll willfully let them go but let her decide their fate on whether they should be put down or not. in the end, if he had his way with that bastard, they wouldn’t be seeing the light for a long while.

[white-tulips]

I spent most of this morning continuing playing through the hikikomori route, more of my thoughts below!! (major spoilers ahead!!!!!)

if you haven’t but want to read my first post on my hikikomori playthrough, you can see it [here]!! it’s been a month since I last played any, aha...

I played for quite a few hours earlier but I don’t think I really progressed all that much aha. most of my time went towards grinding and wandering around and seeing little things. oh, and also playing through Orange Oasis. I never actually did that in my first run of the game. it was okay.

I really love how many little details and things to go back to that there are, but I’m still a little bitter at just. how long everything is. I talked about this a lot in my previous post, but it irritates me that the first 15-20 hours (give or take depending on how fast you’re able to blast through this game) is just. exactly the same as what you experience in the main route. especially since now my hikikomori save file is even longer than my main story file, and I think I still have a decent ways to go until I finish. I don’t actually know! I haven’t been spoiled for this route, thankfully, so I don’t really know how much is left. I have a vague idea of a couple areas I need to go to, but that’s about it.

ok, on to my thoughts!! this post is probably just going to be me rambling about tiny details I found interesting since I didn’t progress through much plot stuff, I think.

when I opened up my save file, I. completely forgot what I had been doing a month ago and what I wanted to do next, so I decided to go back to the Last Resort. I don’t know what compelled me to go, but there was a lot of fun stuff there so I’m glad that I did!

I had never tried to use Aubrey to go into the girls’ bathroom before? it was very cute, I liked it. I don’t know why, but as soon as I walked in it really reminded me of Basil. I think it’s all the flowers, photos hanging from the wall, and general soft cutesy vibe. I’m not really sure what to make of that, but it was just my general impression. hmmmm.

I have no words for this other than it just made me amused. go get your vacation, king.

also:

I didn’t know Hero had a confirmed age!! all this time I had been assuming he and Mari were 16 years old, so it’s nice to have something set in stone!

I have no words for these, either. seeing all of the Hero pictures just made me laugh out loud a little I loved it.

when I was standing in Jawsum’s office, I noticed that the elevator behind his desk was shaking. I went to examine it, and was surprised when this was where I ended up.

the black space elevator.

something I completely forgot to mention in my last hikikomori post was black space!! it had completely took me by surprise so I can’t believe I forgot to talk about it.

last time I played and went back to Last Resort, there was a completely black car on the highway and it had really freaked me out. as soon as I clicked on it, instead of giving me some kind of prompt Omori just got in and it drove off. I was so shocked because I wasn’t expecting it fhgjdfhgj. it ended up taking Omori back to one of the black space rooms, and I had no clue what to make of it. I wandered around for a little while, and ended up finding this... friend?

I’m... not sure! who are you......

anyways, so I got in the elevator and we’re back here, now with more spiders.

the spider wasn’t interactable. not sure whether to be upset or relieved.

aaaand then there was this guy in the treehouse. I want to know what these black space NPCs are!!! as soon as I tried to interact with it, the screen glitched out (intentionally) and then it was gone. one day I’ll know what it means.

oh, another thing I spent quite a bit of time doing at the Last Resort-

getting statues made of everyone!! RIP to all of my clams, but these are so cute.

cuuute.

I really liked the comment on Mari’s! it made me happy that it highlighted her playful side.

after I was done reexploring Last Resort, I wanted to go back to Sweetheart’s castle. I was walking through Pyrefly Forest, and I noticed one of the picnic blankets had a cooler open (signaling that you can see a new picnic cutscene) so I went to go sit down and have a picnic.

so, when I was going around earlier and doing some stuff, there were a few picnics that I think I had skipped for some reason so I was doing them and mindlessly skipping through the text for no reason other than it would bother be if I just left them. nothing about the conversations was different even though Basil is here now, so I didn’t think anything would be different for the one in Pyrefly Forest, but I was wrong!! I almost completely skipped through everything aha.

it started off the same, with Hero being scared of the spiders, and then Kel prompted Basil to say something positive to try and make him less scared.

it’s pretty insignificant, but I thought it was interesting that he said pretty much the exact same thing he says in the spider room in black space.

when I got to the castle, I went straight to the library. something about the pattern of going to black space, plus being able to go into the barn in Otherworld, just made me feel like there would be something there. and oh boy was I right. the entire place was crawling with Something.

very good.....

I wasn’t able to get screenshots of them, but there were a couple text popups that really stood out to me. my memory is so bad I can’t remember all of them even though it was only this morning,,, but I’m pretty sure one of them had a popup that was just “Liar.” and I was like HM....

it just really had me thinking....

in my previous post, I mentioned that I had a gut feeling that the Something in the barn was supposed to represent Basil, not Mari. this kind of added fuel to that thought!

the barn in Otherworld was only used in the main route in reference to Basil, with it literally showing Omori a vision of him, and also having Stranger walking into it. now, the library also has a lot of connection to Basil! after picking up one of the keys, it shows us another vision of him, and it’s also littered with egret orchids. I don’t think choosing to have all of these Somethings in both of these places is just a coincidence.

now, about the “Liar.” line. in any fight with Something, if there’s a text popup meant to be Something speaking, it’s always done like this-

with the “???:” to indicate character speech. but the “Liar.” popup was just a standalone line. and it instantly reminded me of this room in black space-

and this just kept making my brain whirl.

in this room, there were all of these popups with “Liar.” and then of course there was-

see here how there also weren’t indications of who was saying ‘liar”, but there was for Something? my idea for this room was always that it was Omori repeating it to himself. because we all know by now that Something is Mari, and her saying “I love you”, especially in this form, is nothing but pure torment. and I think here, we have Omori unwilling to believe it. there’s no way Mari could love him/Sunny. she has to be lying.

soooo then, this brings me back to the library. having the “Liar.” popup there, keeping in consideration that the Somethings there might represent Basil, what could that mean?? it could be in reference to Basil’s words “Everything is going to be okay” because clearly everything is not okay. if all of these Somethings are meant to be Basil, it could fit!!!

... so there’s my long winded theory. idk! I think it makes sense, but I could be wrong!! that’s just my first impressions right now, maybe my thoughts will change when I play more!

moving onto the piano room-

this was when I thought “ohhhh so that’s why the wall always felt hallow. it all makes sense now”

and then I spent the next 30 or so minutes fighting all of the Somethings

I LOVED this. this was the first time a fight was put on a time limit, and since Something was so much more powerful, it felt actually stressful. I was stressed! but I managed to make it with 2-3 turns left, and I didn’t die. I did die about 1 or 2 times to arachnophobia and thalassophobia though F. but it’s okay because I got an achievement and also Omori’s suffocate skill is really good.

anyways I did some more mindless walking around (I had to kill time waiting for all my statues to be built, you know!)

this made me really happy. Big Molio I love you you’re the mvp and you deserve the world.

... looking through my screenshots I wish I could forget this one-

,, do I need to even explain it.

I remember a while ago, I saw someone on twitter post this and iirc the caption was something like “isn’t it a bit morbid to have the jumprope there” and, at the time, I had never gone through Orange Oasis, so seeing that tweet I had the wind knocked out of me. I was just sitting there like “fuuuuuuuuck”. and then I went through Orange Oasis today, saw it again, went “fuuuuuuuuck” and then forgot I screenshot it. it’s just a lot.

okay who knows how I filled the rest of the 6 hours I played because I didn’t take many screenshots of the downtime and running around completing sidequests I never did. the last point of interest today was I had went back to Humphrey.

I didn’t do too much, but I did fight Mutantheart.

I adore her!!!! so cute!!! Mutantheart my beloved.

I lost to her once, because I was a bit confused, but once I caught on to the gimmick of her fight, it was actually pretty easy. rest in peace, queen, I love you...

and then, uh. Her-

I tried 3 times. I didn’t win... all of the characters are maxed leveled at 50, but this is so difficult... well, the first half of the fight I found to be pretty easy, actually. but once she switches into full power mode it’s over. I don’t know how I’m supposed to win. farewell my dream of completing the foe facts book, it was a nice goal while it was realistic. 

and then I stopped for the day! I think I needed that month of not playing, because coming back into the game after a lot of my rage and burnout settled was probably best, and I had a lot of fun playing! hopefully it doesn’t take me another month to continue.

if you made it all the way through this post, thank you for reading! I hope you like my thoughts~

I’ll leave on this note-

king shit

[reversecreek]

MEET THE NPCS...

BOBBY YANG, “BIG BOB” .

1. how old are they and what do they look like?

thirty-four. implausibly tall. the day magda first saw a sketch of slenderman she thought of him. when her aunt shelly pulled up the dirt road to abernathy creek magda remembers seeing him through a dusty back window with his head bowed to avoid getting tree leaves in his eyes, joint between his lips, dungarees dirty and half unbuckled. one side of his hair is buzzed with no apparent style intention and he has a weed leaf tattooed behind his left ear. an elephant on his thigh. a name on his ankle he often wears a plaster over. once it soaked through and fell off in the creek and, newly glossy in the sun, nine year old magda reached to give it a blunt and shameless prod. big bob never explained who the name belonged to, he only reached to thumb at the minari growing by the water bed and talk about the fact it was a "versatile little sucker”. 

2. if applicable, where and when did they meet your muse?

big bob introduced himself as such and magda raised her eyebrow in disbelief, the soul of a disgruntled pensioner in a seven yr old’s body. magda didn’t rly talk to anyone when she first arrived in her new home, verging on mute. she was angry at the move, angry that her dad hadn’t called her when she got there, angry that she didn’t know her mother’s voice to imagine it telling her everything was okay. the world made her so angry she didn’t want to acknowledge it. she sat outside in silence for a long time letting a ladybug crawl over her hand, and big bob didn’t ask anything of her, he only schlepped closer and presented her with a buttercup. she looked at it like it’d spat in her face but took it nonetheless. it was strange having an actual bed, if you could call a bare mattress that, used to sleeping on the sofa in shelly’s old trailer, and the springs nipped at her like a dog demanding treats, so she wandered outside in one of shelly’s big tie dye shirts like a nightdress, searching for the moon. big bob was standing out there already in the overgrown grass, stark naked, chin lifted to gawk at the moon himself. magda didn’t disturb him. this is when she first discovered his habit of naked sleepwalking. abernathy creek felt like a bird house overrun with all kinds of eccentric, squawking parakeets. it was a lot for a seven yr old to take in. this was a strange reality she’d never signed up for, swallowed by the commune to overheat inside it’s belly. 

3. what kind of a presence do they have in your muse’s life? do they have a positive or negative relationship?

bob’s definitely a character. three times now he’s slipped hallucinogens into magda’s tea without her knowing under the impression that this is just harmless fun and he’s actually helping her by pushing her little boat to bob along the ocean of enlightenment, once at as young as 16. every time she realises he’s like “y’just got bobbeddddd!” and magda’s like here we go ig. told her the raw earth has healing properties to explain why he’d dug up the grass just to rub his hands in the soil and lay there like a panting, overheated dog. he’s an important component to abernathy creek and oversees a lot of the agriculture there. rigged up the irrigation system himself using copper pipes that magda suspects were stolen. the beat up camper van that’s usually parked up behind abernathy and hidden under leafy branches appeared when he did, apparently, although he insists it belongs to everyone. he leads the crusades to drive it up to the mountains and take a group of abernathy creek residents shroom picking. he’s in charge of drying them for selling, too. jack of all trades, really. magda claims not to care for him (or anyone) but she still walked out onto the grass, took his hand and lead him inside whenever she found him sleepwalking at night in her teens. once a group of kids were daring each other to get closer when he was out there and magda threw a stone so hard at one of their shin’s it split it open and made them scatter. but again, magda “does not care about him”. the jury is not convinced.

4. are they revered in irving? do they have bad blood with anyone?

honestly everyone in irving probably thinks he’s a rly strange guy and i won’t fk around. he kind of is. wears many necklaces around his neck n one is just a pouch that has a prehistoric mosquito encased in a little piece of amber inside. sometimes magda wonders if he likes to play up to his reputation by putting it on a little bit. once she saw him suddenly jerking his head like a pecking chicken and saying “g’warn GET” to scare a random middle aged hiker into galloping in the opposite direction in the trees near abernathy. has a masterful knowledge of bird songs and can imitate them all impeccably. sometimes does this instead of replying with words. never cares about the holes in his shoes where his toes poke out. always seems to be turning a rusty coin between his fingers like it helps him think. he makes moonshine that will knock u off ur feet tho which is always a good time if ur lucky enough to try it. he has a very rich n warm voice like a log fire or a gooey chocolate brownie. even with all of his oddities he sounds kind. he’s very unconventional n doesn’t abide by rules of society a lot but he’s quite funny n a good time. makes engaging smalltalk if u treat him with respect. weird but admittedly a tiny bit wonderful. 

OTIS WOLFE.

1. how old are they and what do they look like?

forty-six but he looks older. the skin beneath his eyes is subtly purpled like it’s been dyed by a lick of beetroot juice. he has a very charismatic walk which doesn’t sound like it makes sense but it does to look at him. he walks everywhere buoyantly and with purpose. very high energy in his good days. lives everything in large quantities, good and bad. always used to wear a tan leather bomber jacket when magda was growing up but he forgot it w her one visit n it’s the only time she’s known him to call up two days after leaving to ask if she’d seen it. magda lied and said she hadn’t. she still has it to this day. sleeps in it on her bad days. otis has a smile so big it shines like live wires are sparking in his mouth. magda’s fingertips prickle like she’s an hour recovering from shoving a fork into a plug socket whenever she sees it. she used to think that’s what excitement felt like. that used to be true.

2. what kind of a presence do they have in your muse’s life? do they have a positive or negative relationship?

it’s very complicated. magda knows her dad isn’t a good person but she knows he isn’t a bad person either. sometimes it’s more frustrating to see things in grey because you just want something solid to take shape that u can actually put ur finger on. she finds herself perpetually stood at a fork in the road between believing in him still and deciding he’s no good. sometimes she’ll start walking in one direction only to realise it loops back on itself and she’s right back where she started. otis has given her a lot of fun “adventures”. taught her how to juggle. they stayed in a hotel on someone else’s credit card once and racked up a gargantuan tab ordering every form of room service and renting godzilla and the matrix on pay per view when she was 11. sometimes he’d use her in gimmicks where she had to lie and pretend she had a health condition so they could get a few bucks off charitable strangers on a street corner and under the veil of youth magda found playing up these roles funny because who would ever believe that? wasn’t everyone in the world so stupid except them? it was nice being part of his team. his “little wolfie”. but then a lot of things weren’t nice either. he’s left her stranded on the side of the road with nowhere to go on more than one occasion. he’s passed out in motel corridors and she’s had to lug him into a bed. he’s forgotten almost every birthday apart from one where he sent a card with five dollars inside and handwriting so squiggly she could tell he was drunk when he wrote it. he doesn’t know she likes to sing because he’s only ever listened when he’s fallen asleep. otis is all of magda’s heart and that’s why sometimes she likes to forget that it’s beating. 

3. are they revered in irving? do they have bad blood with anyone?

he’s very flighty n rarely in irving any more tbh but was more when magda was younger n his visits were a little less sporadic. probably owes a bunch of people money for some reason or another. smashed up fannie’s recently when he turned up drunk and got ahead of himself on a giddy n frenzied rampage in the name of “fun” n “just having a laugh”. magda’s aunt shelly really doesn’t get on with her brother n thinks he’s a complete deadbeat waste of space n resents him a lot for the impact he’s had on magda. magda remembers being little and peeking through a crack in shelly’s trailer door when he turned up drunk one time to collect her for a visit n shelly wouldn’t let him in. something along the lines of “you don’t give a rat’s ass about that little girl” and “she worships you, y’know that? most of the time, you don’t even remember her name”. magda crept back onto the sofa and pretended to be asleep by the time she came inside.

4. if your muse is no longer in contact with them, how did the relationship end? did your muse get closure over this?

magda slowly stopped trying to keep in contact over the years. it got embarrassing trying so hard when she didn’t get much back. like pushing a boulder all the way up a hill only to watch it roll back down again. it’s probably contributed a lot towards magda’s inability to really try with people like she should, especially when her heart’s involved. she doesn’t want to be humiliated again. magda hasn’t spoken to her dad in person in almost a year. they had a phone call about seven months back but it turned out to be a butt dial and he hung up because he was in the middle of a conversation at some bar about the moon landing conspiracy. magda’s playlist that i have for her is called “a rodeo clown in a revolving door” which is basically the role otis serves in magda’s life. always in and out. never constant. gone more than he’s there, especially lately. idk if magda will ever get closure over that. she certainly hasn’t now. pouts my fuckable lips to the side w a hand on hip and triple f’s prominent.

[critical-ramblings]

Things that Mean More on a second watch-through of C2

Episode 8-10

"He burned alive in front of me" "Yeah you did that though" this is why I love Beau

Caleb identifying all the things and then not telling them what it is makes a first appearance! It's so clear here how little he trusts them, even as he jokes with Beau 'you look like a nerd' and Fjord 'yeah those manacles just stop you from being gassy"

Fjord snaps Beau's goggles almost immediately upon her acquiring them. so what I'm saying is that they've always had that sibling energy

Caleb purposefully manipulates Jester by giving her the wand--to distract her from the glove of blasting...too bad Beau is on the case.

Beau says she's getting her own room, and Jester says they've always been roommates...this is also the night Beau tucks her in, so....THIS IS IN EPISODE 8 PEOPLE

Jester extorting the starosta for Fjord's letter is still Incredible, as is the first appearance of "Fjord Tough." I still lost it with the rest of the table.

Caleb didn't have to roll a wisdom save after he incinerated the bandit leader because he was immediately knocked unconscious, but Liam makes up for it with the nightmare he has afterward (take them out, take them out!) LOVE ME SOME ANGSTY WIZARD

I already made a post about this, but I feel compelled to remind everyone that the shady guide they meet when they first get to Zadash is the abandoned business partner of Lawrence, Tary's husband. 

First appearance of Pumat Sol! I love how much the cast love's Matt's voices

"Unpleasant one, let's go" "obnoxious one, I'm with ya" Molly and Beau are so good you guys

"There are those who believe [tieflings] are the result of the Curse of Ghor Dranas" cool world-building Matt!

"The Apple Tree Learning Center" is a soltryce-run 'public school' for children and adults...who wants to bet it was a similar school that discovered the blumentrio? Or at least encouraged them to apply

the first time Caleb transcribed a spell (unseen servant) he IMMEDIATELY invited Nott to help him. And Nott, though dismayed that it was going to take 2 hours, was willing to help out.

"What are you doing with my cat?" Molly won't be able to see through Frumpkin's eyes, but he's got the spirit

"When you compliment people it sounds like a fucking insult," Fjord and Beau are GREAT

Maye one reason we have a dim view of the Empire is because our first plot line in Zadash involved corrupt politicians...not to mention Caleb's whole Thing

First mention of the Cerberus Assembly: general complaints that they're grabbing for power and influence in Zadash and beyond.

Nott being afraid of the bath :( "a person could drown in that"

I legitimately forgot how much they treated Nott like a kid...from the swimming lesson, 'you'll get a sticker'

Caleb is SUPER paranoid, asking everyone how they feel about the Empire and sounding out these new party members. Funnily enough, it's Molly who is most on his wavelength as far as keeping a low profile goes

Yasha really didn't want to confess which god she followed to the rest of the Nein, but when pressed said, "he pulled me out of what felt like literally the depths of hell. I owe him my life." this is without even remembering Obann or what he did.

The contrast between early Beau/Yasha 'do I get a good view" 'roll for perv' and later Softness is...a lot

Caleb and Yasha bond over not doing the hugging thing

Nott LEANS AWAY after asking how dangerous the sewer job is going to be. She is Not On Board for risking her life the way the others are--not even for 700 gold.

'you kicked his cat into oblivion!' "I didn't!" Matt doesn't often distance himself from his NPCs, but when he does it's for animal cruelty and bad parenting.

Jester talking about her visit with the Traveler in the Pillow Trove is...Relevant. It's kind of crazy how early the line was drawn between Fjord and Beau not trusting him and Caleb being quick to prop up Jester's faith, "there are stories that tell of gods dabbling with mortals, not often but it does happen." whereas Beau says, "I'm interested in a god who kicks it with mortals. Never heard of that."

Caleb not wanting to get a new jacket because he knows this one is big autism feels (even if it is also his paranoia talking)

"she does see hamster unicorns. they're gods, right?" "No Beau they're just--they're just unicorns" I love them

"I've never been in a sewer" Molly says, excitedly, and also making me Feel Things

the evolution of Yasha's voice is really cute. we stan 1 Ashley Johnson

I think I was still listening to the podcast at this point so I totally missed all of the It jokes Liam did in the sewer job

Nott sees everyone getting ready to fight and takes a drink. It is interesting to keep track of her drinking, knowing everything we know now.

rat punching, the pasttime of lvl 3 adventurers.

Yasha, to Caleb: "are you very scared right now"

Caleb: "no because I am with all of you"

Nott: "I'm very scared right now"

Caleb advocating for looting the guards the spider killed is #vultureculture

It gets overlooked in later episodes, but 10 was when Nott's button collecting really took off.

They meet the Zadash Lawmaster Orentha and Nott immediately says, "she seems nice. I wonder why all those people wanted to rebel against her." if that doesn't sum up the themes of this campaign idk what does

Nott says, "and now we never have to do another adventure again" she's come so far

Caleb is VERY transactional after this fight, handing out loot for favors and goodwill with individual party members rather than splitting the loot.

This leads directly to Molly pinning him to the wall, which in retrospect was definitely a play for authority and dominance and not anything shippy.

Caleb straight up says to Fjord, "I don't trust you yet. I don't trust any of these people yet."

That whole conversation is actually Very Good: 

Fjord: "That's too bad"

Caleb: "yeah I have...I have made mistakes in my life. And, I'm, I have harmed people. Not in a long time. *clears throat* you know I thought I was going to be something, someday, a long time ago, and now I. Don't."

"We've all harmed people, and I hope you come to trust me in time" this is why I ship widofjord (emphasis mine)

 Nott going through Fjord's stuff is also this episode! Such shady motherfuckers

"If the money's right and it's not stupid" is a good philosophy for this group

"Your cat got kicked into another dimension?!" "Oh he had such a face, I will never forget this face"

They have fireflies in Kamordah and not Nicodranas. Canon.

[bards-anonymous]

Feasting On A Lord Session Recap [2/5/2021]

SOOOOO

Todays Session was so much fun and I loved it BUT OH IT WENT SO MUCH WORSE THAN I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO.

Also, if you are reading this, HI ZACH [ @general-van ]

TO START, the party got separated, Darius and Phineas went one way and Harriett another. All of us dressed in different jumpsuits with NONE OF OUR GEAR. SO like....off to a fantastic start

WITH Phineas and Darius here is what happened

First they are taken to what is a really weird circus-esque version of bottle street.

They are taken by a man to a building where they are told they will need to rest up for later and that a pamphlet is in there to explain things.

On there way there they see some really odd eyeless clown like guards meant to remember the city watch.

THE SECOND they are left alone, they start to go off and look for Harriett, they end up come to a wall of light and are stopped by one of the monster like guards.

They toss said guard into the wall of light (The real MVP of the Session]

The other guards are rightfully mad about it but are also tossed into the wall of light.

Phineas....almost falls into the wall of light but is burned pretty bad for getting too close to it

They book it and hide somewhere until the guards pass them, once they are sure they are in the clear they start to head back to the building they were told to go to.

On their way they find Annie, unconscious. They pick her up and take her with them. [That makes 1/4 Npcs that we needed to find]

She wakes up and tells them a little information but before long a intercom goes off saying that all Miners should report immediately. Which Phineas and Darius were

Annie tells them to go as if they don’t they will be looked for which is very un-good. Say also says that she will try to think of something while they are gone.

They head to the mine and are told to collect 10 pounds of silver and the first 15/50 groups to do so will be rewarded. HOWEVER they are also given weapons to protect themselves....which is a red flag already.

So they head in and come across two creatures that are weeper like but not. They fight them and Phineas gets down to 1 Health....

Darius is able to dispatch them and Phineas is able to get back on his feet. The two collect the bit of silver they found and they move on. 

They take some times to listen ahead and they hear commotion and fighting..... SO they creep forward with caution. 

They find 2 guys picking up silver and a third being up someone off in the corner and on the ground was a dead body.

Darius and Phineas kill 2 really quick with 2 shots and the third turns around and looks at them panicked.... .which is fair given the situation.

The random guy starts to try to reason with them HOWEVER Darius and Phineas look over and see that the person who was being beaten up WAS THE NPC WE LOVE DEARLY, her name is Rebecca [This means 2/4 NPCs have been found!]

So...The OBVIOUS ROUTE was now VIOLENCE, for reasons stated above.

He tried to run away but Phineas using his void magic yanked him back over and he was quickly killed. [Which was what he deserved for being any amount of mean to Rebecca]

After picking up Rebecca and some more silver, they head forward to get to the exit. 

They move on to another area and Rebecca hears something so the party goes and stops for a moment. 

They look and up ahead is several dead bodies, a ton of silver and 2 of those zombie weeper things.

Rebecca and Darius shoot one, killing it. [woooooo Go REBECCA] Phineas shoots the other one, but it is still standing. 

Rebecca swings on it but misses, it takes its turn to swing and hit her back, and knocks the ever loving daylights out of her.......[NOO]

Darius, mad about that, kills that last creature and finds that they had been guarding an elevator. 

They collect their silver and BOOK IT out of the mine.....cause damn.....

SO HARRIETT HAD HER OWN HELL OF A TIME.....

This is what happened with her....

Her cart dropped her into some water where she blacked out. Already a fantastic sign....

She wakes up in a prison cell. Chains are attached to the wall, a blanket sits on the floor and a dog bowl sits on the floor as well. 

Harriett picks up the bowl and looks at it. Inscribed on the side is “Lion #3″ [NOW the second I heard that, I was like oh no oh no oh no oh no......It was panic time.]

As she is looking at this she hears yelling from outside her cell. She knows that voice.... ITS HAZEL. [3/4 npcs we were missing were found] 

The two talk and Harriett takes a moment to try and figure out a plan. She looks back to the chains on the wall and figures if she can pull it free, she can use it as a weapon.

UNFORUTNATLY.... she makes a lot of noise and one of the clown guards spiders its way down to look at her and its opens her cell.

WHEN I TELL YOU SHE WAS MORTIFIED, SHE WAS MORTIFIED

Harriett already has some issues with weird void magic monster [which is about to become 10 times worse, just you wait] but this does not help to sooth her fear. 

The creature moves away and start to open other cells, and then calls everyone to the center.

After a small banter, Harriett and Hazel fall into line.

A man, a ring leader looking type starts to make little announcements and around them is a whole circus full of these clown guard creatures. Harriett is terrified and Hazel points it out. 

The man pulls out a dice and rolls for the first event and Harriett is called forward. 

It is an obstacle course. 

of course it is. but this one has acid and long falls and clown guard monsters that attack you. 

Harriett and 2 others race and JUST BARELY HARRIETT WINS 

she falls back in like and nearly hyperventilating. 

Hazel gets called next and has to fight all these creatures. Harriett warns her to not be cocky. [anyone wanna guess what she was]

At first she does pretty well for herself but the last fight she start to lose and uses her void powers to help her. WHICH IS SO UN GOOOOOOD

The ring leader says its a shame she had to cheat to win, which angers her and she gets in his face

and.....and she swings on him.

UNFORUTNATLY, on impact the sword breaks.....and he smacks the life out of her with the staff he had in his hand. 

She fell back to the ground, un moving [WHICH IS NOT GOOD AT ALL] 

Harriett is watching in horror absolutely frozen. 

The ring leader tells the guards to take her away and to make sure she cant do that again.....which means....she is probably gonna lose her arm....

THis leaves HARRIETT ALL ALONE [ back to 2/4 npcs found....]

The ring leader sends them off sayign they need to rest for tomorrow.

SO now Harriett is at half health, 2 slashes across her cest, all alone, no gear, near panicking

So this is very character changing actually, cause now Harriett is away from her friends, surrounded by the thing she fears the very most, and she feels hopeless. 

She is gonna go feral. Harriett is gonna have to go after Hazel because that is the only person she know where they are and she won’t leave her behind. She has 2 plans and she HATES BOTH OF THEM

OH OH OH and something I noticed, Hazel acts a lot like Harriett did at the start of the Campaign. Harriett sees herself in Hazel and WANTS TO HELP HER. Harriett knows what that sort of doom and pride mentality can bring and does not want to see Hazel die. She actually kind of likes Hazel’s company even if she is kinda snarky.  

She is just a little street girl, she has never dealt with something like this before. She has never felt fear like this before and its messing with her bad. Because of the 2 painting incidents, the last one being the worst, Harriett is scared of the void monsters and such. AND NOW SHE IS ALONE SURROUNDED BY THEM. 

I made a post a while back, about how with all the stress, Harriett’s hair would start to grey. Depending on what happens, I might have it so that this series of events cause her hair to grey out of stress and fear. 

Worst part is, she’s scared to die alone. She has so much to tell Phineas and Darius, She has SO MUCH to tell Joseph but in her mind, she may never see any of them again. So now she has no idea what to do in what feels like a hopeless situation to her and she has NO IDEA how to deal with and handle this fear she is feeling. [which she has never felt at this magnitude.] She is gonna break down...

SO ITS BEEN A CRAZY SESSION.....Harriett is not doing well at all. Phineas and Darius are alright....And we still have no idea where Zed is at.....so I CAN NOT WAIT FOR NEXT SESSION AT ALL!!!!!!

[fallershipping]

Looker x Anabel Retrospective

The absolute ultimate Retrospective post as to explain why I’ve been on this OTP since 2016. Especially made in mind with the idea that some new peeps on the boat may not realize the extent of the lore between these two characters. Feel free to read this or skip this if you want, because I did pour out my heart and soul and it can be kind of a lengthy read.

Enjoy~

So Looker and Anabel have been two existing characters in Pokemon for the longest time, with both being sort of beloved for different reasons but not too often thought about as compared to other NPCs. One’s a reoccurring comedy relief detective since Platinum and the other is probably the most memorable and strongest of the Hoenn Battle Frontier from Emerald.

But when SunMoon dropped, these two characters got a new lease on life that no one really saw coming. This special appearance made them go from NPCs I never really thought too much about to placing them as my top two favorite Pokemon characters of all time.

The UB Task Force mission, as much as a glorified fetch quest as it seems to be, continues some of the darker, more adult themes brought along with SunMoon. While the main story dealt with subjects of abuse and what it means to be a truly strong person in the case of hardships, the post game surprisingly delves into the corrupt side of a seemingly good organization and idea of sacrificing one life to save another. What appears to be another run of the mill Looker mission takes a dive into the tragic backstory shared between certain characters, and all of this lore was scrapped in the ‘definitive’ USUM games.

So while a lot of people might have played this portion of the game, many could have skipped it entirely or didn’t give the dialogue too much thought.

But you’re asking, why is it special? And why have I cared so much for a potential romantic relationship between Looker and Anabel enough to draw them as much as I have?

Haha. Buckle up buckaroo.

So right off the bat, Looker and Anabel’s banter sets up what kind of relationship they have with one another. They’re formal as coworkers can be, but the more they talk to one another, the friendliness that they share quickly becomes apparent. They also tend to speak highly of each other, no matter if the person is in the room or gone out.

And he’s not wrong! Looker is well aware of just how capable Anabel is for a guy that isn’t really known for Pokemon battles himself.

After the first UB on the list is securely captured, Looker insists on a feast for everyone to enjoy in one of Alola’s famous restaurants, in which Anabel points out asking how he had known of this already having just now arrived here. Looker, flustered, says that he’s read it in a magazine and dashes out to make reservations, cuing Anabel to react to his odd antics in a more...

Affectionate way.

Look at that lil smile.

He’s an odd fellow, for sure. A lot of characters in the past called him weird or were off put by his personality, but Anabel is very patient and sort of endeared by him. He constantly returns to the gang yelling “It’s a catastrophe!” in different languages-- And Anabel doesn’t snap at him angrily for it, but calmly asks him to repeat himself in english so that she can understand him.

During the course of the post game while Looker’s away, Anabel is always talking about him in a positive manner. Despite his quirks, she finds him a league of his own even amongst the elite of the International Police.

Despite this acknowledgment of Looker’s skill and ability, she seems to be awfully dead set on keeping Looker as backup in their base of operations.

Anabel knows how dangerous UBs are. They’re not human criminals that he can easily deal with with his own fists-- they are aggravated alien monsters. Her imagining Looker facing one of them alone without any Pokemon to defend himself with probably scares her deeply.

Scares her enough for her to constantly assign him to be backup for her and the Protag, despite his protests and his expertise in fieldwork.

And yet she never fails to remind him that he is important regardless of whether he’s on the field fighting alongside her or set to backup. Almost, in a way, finding a way to flatter him. (smiling at him as reassurance or perhaps even putting up a bit of charm) She is thankful for his help on getting intel and he’s a valuable asset to the mission, but she cannot bear the thought of her friend getting hurt when she can handle the UBs with her own fully trained Pokemon team.

However, despite her confidence, Anabel grows more and more fatigued with each UB encounter. Looker’s worry rises and he tries even harder to let himself take her place in the field.

As much as she also insists on not wanting to worry him, Looker’s usual goofy and eccentric demeanor begins to change. His speech patterns start to become more serious and his sentences trail off more often, which throughout all the games, is a rather rare sight to see. His care for Anabel brings out something vulnerable and emotional out of someone self proclaimed hard-boiled.

With all the respect he gives her and all the times he commemorates her aptitude, he still fears for her greatly.

And when a familiar character appears, we understand why.

Nanu comes in to talk about the truth behind Anabel’s reappearance in the series; much like the UBs, she came from another world through Ultra Space and ended up as what Interpol dubbed as a Faller. 

Fallers are bathed in the energy from ultra wormholes. Thus, UBs are attracted to these humans, mistaking them as a way back home and going on the attack. Back then, Interpol found a particular use for Fallers by using them to direct the attention of UBs away from public areas.

Which is what happened ten years prior to the events of SunMoon. Looker, Nanu, and a third member were sent to fight a Guzzlord. However, Looker hesitated in harming it further when it realized it was just scared monster sent here against it’s will. But his lapse in judgment cost the life of the third member, a Faller woman, to fall victim to Guzzlord’s attack.

Looker and Nanu took down the Guzzlord but learned the horrible truth about their companion, who was not trained in combat-- she was designated as bait, but the catastrophic results were a failure that shadows Interpol forever. Not long after, the two agents found a woman washed up Poni’s shore recollecting nothing about herself but her name; Anabel.

This is why Looker has been growing ever so worried for Anabel’s safety and why he even asked the champion in the first place to help. The protag is indeed a Faller as well. He thought he could be able to control the situation with having a fantastic trainer who befriended Solgaleo/Lunala to keep the UB outbreak in check-- To make sure Anabel was safe. After all, the protag is able to help the mission go along beautifully and safely capture each UB.

But not without a price. Anabel was still being hurt, and Nanu had to intervene to make Looker realize that he had made a big mistake.

After all, Anabel isn’t aware that she’s a Faller herself. Why doesn’t she know yet? Wouldn’t Looker tell her? Or Nanu?

It would appear as Interpol learned something after all these years, and isn’t really using her as Bait as they did before with the first Faller. Anabel is said to have autonomy over this and chose to save the UBs from a worse fate. Unlike the first Faller, she was properly trained for the UB Task Force missions and for many other Interpol related missions as her own strong, resourceful agent. However, Interpol is still quiet about her status as a Faller and anything relating to them from the past.

And Looker, years after the incident with Guzzlord, is now met with an Anabel with a newly built Interpol life determined to help people, Pokemon, and UBs in need no matter what. She absolutely believes in her successes and her cause. And she is adamant of going on these missions. Looker grows a bond with her and is faced with this troubling realization;

To tell her the truth would mean to collapse the whole world upon her.

After all... Having rebuilt her life, seeing her so confident, so passionate about what she’s doing... He sees her succeed in something he feels all too familiar with-- Starting from the bottom and creating an identity, somehow.

Having been found in the Battle Resort, washed ashore with no memory, not even a name to go by. Looker knows her pain more than anyone else. She needs to know about what she is going through-- But the uttermost pain she will feel and the lingering eyes of Interpol’s heads has been keeping him mortified and silent.

So he does anything and everything in his power to protect her in the meantime, before she can be told the truth. And with the way the Alola mission went, that time is coming up real soon.

However, with the protag and Nanu’s help the UB Task Force finally had every UB under control. And Anabel was kept safe and sound, much to Looker’s relief. They can finally enjoy some time off and no doubt will be in for quite a long, painful, but necessary conversation when the time comes.

Not of course before Looker going off into a slight panic over the idea of Anabel going on a date.

And that was the line that made me totally think “Oh yep, yep! Looker’s got a massive crush on her!”

SO! What’s the take away from all this madness??

The fact that Looker and Anabel care deeply for one another so much, as they go far too out of their way to protect each other from harm. Not just out of necessity, but their banter clearly shows that there’s a deeper connection between the two than just a professional coworker one.

You might argue that Looker is only worrying about her this deeply because of what he went through all those years ago and is trying to prevent the same thing from happening, and yet... He’s grown to appreciate and know Anabel for who she is. She is in fact her own agent that joined Interpol on her own volition and chose to do the UB missions due to her empathy to the lost beings so far from home.

He knows when she’s unwell, he knows why she hides it away. He understands her as a person and it’s wonderful how much they show that they grew to have a bond with one another. Enough for both of them to catch on to each other’s quirks and feel comfortable.

The small giggle that she gives him, the small yet playfully affectionate jab, the way it just says “Oh there he goes again thinking about the feast at this time... Just Looker being Looker~” Because she also knows him deeply as well! This man is not one of her best allies but one of her most trusted companions in this new life of hers and it shows!! 

They’re each other’s most trusted companions and their partnership is just wonderful to see.

Of course, romance can’t happen between them yet-- Not until Anabel knows the truth about Fallers and what Interpol did long ago. But let’s be honest, even the big angst/hurt/comfort fest that would come from that conversation would be a whirlwind of emotions that would just end up with them having an even stronger relationship than they’ve ever had before.

It’s not just that they look wonderful together, complement each other, and such-- It’s all those things plus the backstory and close bond and tragedy that comes from this mission. It makes me want to see them overcome every hurdle and be happy with one another and have all the joy and happiness they deserve after all they’ve been through.

I want to see them in more situations where they can be casual with one another, fight alongside one another, and so on so forth. They just have so much potential and I really think Game Freak sees it too.

And as for a lil bonus, Looker in USUM finding out the protag is the champion but is more impressed with Anabel’s knowledge than the actual champion. Also they’re always vacationing together mutually huh hmm wowie?

--

tl;dr go ship Looker/Anabel aka Fallershipping aka Lookabel best ship 10/10

[enavance]

i think like  . . .  in terms of the final fantasy setting itself,  i’m honestly not sure if estinien and cherry would ever get married by nature of being the kind of people that they are.  they are both so similar in their values and the way they react and their cold and distant exteriors,  and marriage has never been something on cherry’s mind,  mostly out of fear,  but estinien being so similar to cherry,  i can’t imagine that he’d feel too strongly about it either,  even though he and cherry are  . . .  quite in love but.  like.  they love each other and i think have come to terms with,  enough at least,  the prospect of maybe losing each other because  . . .  that’s one of cherry’s biggest fears,  you know.  getting close to people and loving them only to lose them.  she can’t fathom that hurt.  and like,  to cherry,  she doesn’t necessarily see it like being a difference to the relationship itself,  it’s more a status thing to her and perhaps the intimacy of the ceremony is something she might come around to wanting to experience but.

i like to think that some day they might  ‘  settle down  ’  together,  even if that means continuing to wander the world,  either together or alone on their own respective adventures and jobs,  but i can’t really imagine them being overly domestic,  certainly not cherry.  maybe sometimes,  just as a change of pace and sense of calm and to slip away from the world,  but not often.  they’re both loner types who like to keep moving and just.  i don’t know.  they’ve always had an understanding of each other,  especially after estinien shared his backstory and all,  and cherry eventually shares hers too,  way down the line.  not because she had any intention of spilling anything,  but sometimes,  cherry talks and gets deep without really meaning to and she says things so casually in a reminiscent manner and she shares more than she realizes,  but that just goes to speak on how much she trusts whoever it is she’s talking to,  and in this case if it’s estinien,  she’ll trickle out more words than she likely meant to.

i don’t know.  i think the idea of cherry getting married is a beautiful concept because all of her friends could gather at the ceremony and i think it’s something i want for her,  but it might take some time for cherry to get there herself,  no matter how much she loves someone.  i bring estinien into this because  . . .  that is my favorite cherry/npc ship,  but this is relevant for any ship,  really,  npc or otherwise or crossovers or whatever.  trying to touch on romance with cherry is a very long and hard process and she’ll more likely get scared and run and prefer to be friends with most people.  estinien is just one of those few exceptions just because of their similarities,  both in personality and lifestyle,  and their shared trauma bonding experiences and stuff.  easing into romance with cherry will  . . .   never be easing in.  it is rocky,  turbulent,  because she will get scared and run and push you away and if you’re her type at all and you’re lucky enough to break under her skin through countless trials again and again,  well  . . .  she will still never be soft,  or overwhelmingly loving or the doting type.  cherry can be affectionate,  but she’s affectionate in her own way.  she’s not good at expressing herself or being open or vulnerable and doesn’t like to do so in traditional ways,  and that’s why she and estinien work so well,  too.  her preferred partners are people who are like that and aren’t so doting.  she doesn’t care for really mushy people at all because while cherry does enjoy affection,  after the 435834795 years that it takes to break through to her,  she doesn’t really like to be doted on.  at least,  not too much.  the peak of her tolerance was like laying her head in haurchefant’s lap and he pets her and kisses her but like.  then again.  haurchefant was another special case so.  dfjkbdfv yeah.

even in like a modern setting,  her approach to relationships is more or less the same,  but she may be more willing to think about things like marriage in the modern world.  but it’ll still come with this trouble.

[silenthillmutual]

I beg your pardon! It’s me who is going mad.

So, I know I did a Twitter thread about the ways Daniil is manipulated in Classic, and I thought I’d put it on here too.

I’m going to stop short of calling it gaslighting here though, because too many people are using that term who don’t really understand what it means. Gaslighting is specifically a form of abuse where the intention is to make the victim feel they are going insane. Not all manipulation or abuse is gaslighting - which doesn’t make it less bad, just...not gaslighting.

That being said: in Classic, there are quite a few times where Daniil can say that he thinks he’s losing his mind, and there are times when the game seems constructed to make you feel this way. Particularly I had in mind the ending of the game, and not just the part where you find out you’re a toy and always have been (that falls more under cosmic horror). What bugs me about the end and how that fits into things, is the fact that the Sand Pest and its outcomes have been chasing you - the clouds, the angels, the muggers, the firestarters, the rats, literally chasing you through houses and through town, only for all of it to completely vanish without a trace on the exact day you’re meant to give a solution to it all. I made a point on Twitter about how people attempting to gaslight you will submit you to a large amount of damage - physical, verbal, emotional, take your pick - and then remove the abuse and any signs of it just before they’re caught. it’s how they show to others that it’s you who’s the problem, not them. 

Regardless of whether you think the intention is to make Daniil feel he’s losing is sanity or not, the question would be who is manipulating Daniil, and why? There are a couple answers.

The first answer is the Town. The first playthrough as the Bachelor of the game is probably the closest fitting to psychological horror as the game gets. Like Silent Hill, the Town is full of horrors that seem tailor-made to torture Daniil specifically: most of these people are uneducated (the Town doesn’t even have a school), their cultural beliefs (mostly appropriated from the steppe culture) actively prevent him from doing his job as a doctor, his word and name are constantly weaponized by people with ulterior motives, and men run around on the first two days beating women to death or burning them alive and intervening actively costs you reputation - which you need to do anything. He arrives with the hope of finding evidence to keep his lab opening and, as we later learn, keep himself from execution, only to find that both the man who would serve as this evidence and the colleague who informed you of his existence have been murdered just before your arrival. You have a lot of things riding on your success, and everything about where you are is actively working against you. The government wants you to find a cure single-handedly, but the Town has other plans for you. 

And those plans are: errand boy, and scapegoat. People throughout the Town will inform you that they are scared of you when you’ve barely interacted with them, let alone in ways that should inspire fear. It doesn’t matter how good your reputation as Daniil is (and through the course of the game, there’s very little you’re made to do that lowers your reputation, and it never gets bad enough for you to be attacked on the street or refused sale from shops), what matters is the fact that everyone in Town, from the nameless NPCs to the rulers, are putting every bad thing they’ve done down as being your fault. 

But the Town has another way it’s manipulating Daniil, by almost making him a member of it. I don’t think I got a screenshot, but I’m sure that somewhere along the line Daniil comments that he’s starting to talk like one of the townsfolk. You can see this happens to Andrey, too, later in the game; he talks in what Daniil calls “Griefisms”. 

You have been sent here to fight an adversary that inherently cannot be beaten - in foolish hopes that a miracle would happen and your outstanding mind would stumble upon a once-in-a-million chance. And just so that you wouldn’t give up, they kept insisting that the adversary must be destroyed. Do you see how insidious the Powers That Be are?     > But why? Their motives are becoming less and less comprehensible to me by the day.

The second answer is the Powers That Be.

Three people enter the Town that the Powers That Be want to get rid of: the Bachelor, the Inquisitor, and the Commander. It wants them all to fix or solve or demolish something in the town, and doesn’t really care what happens to any of them. Pathologic 2 spells it out clearer for you that Aglaya, Block, and Daniil will all be executed upon return to the Capital if their answers are not what the Powers That Be want to hear. And for the time that you are in the Town as Daniil Dankovsky, the Powers That Be - like the town itself - actively work against you. The trains that are meant to bring food and medication never, to my knowledge, arrive, and most days bring about a new letter from the Powers spelling out for you how disappointed in you and your progress they are. Some of the ways they attempt to manipulate Daniil through these letters are subtle, but most of them are unsubtle suggestions that what he’s been able to accomplish is not good enough, that he was meant to work alone.

Even one of your first letters from them is suspicious; early on in the game, they write to let you know that they are in no way responsible for the outbreak, which is an incredibly suspicious thing to say. What is the point of sending such a letter? Would the player have really thought that they were if they hadn’t suggested as much through denial? After all, what called you to Town was a letter from Isidor Burakh. But yet, the Powers That Be are the ones who leave you stranded in the Town with limited resources, no help, and constantly shifting goalposts. Aglaya makes this clear to you when she arrives: you were never supposed to be successful. 

The letters from the Powers That Be do not serve any purpose other than to upset Daniil, and most if not all of them contain lies: that a train will be arriving, that they don’t mind if you have help in carrying out your plans, that Thanatica still exists, referencing conversations you’ve never had, signing drafts of letters you didn’t consult on with your name. One of the reasons i had put this down as gaslighting is because people who gaslight like to keep you off balance and emotionally fragile so that you’re easier to manipulate. You’ll do whatever they want to make the feeling stop, because you just can’t handle the stress anymore, and in the process you come across to others as unreasonable, unhinged, crazy, dangerous, so that no one will trust you. And that’s exactly how Daniil starts to come across to the townspeople: deranged, strung out, dangerous, untrustworthy.

You can contrast all that to a different letter they send you where they claim to be proud to call you one of your own. Combine the two, and you get honeymooning. They want to remind you of the good (or at least, not-as-bad) times you’ve had with them. This behavior serves two, sometimes three purposes: to keep you off balance from the violent back-and-forth, dizzying nature of what they’re doing to you, and so that you’ll defend them to people who can see what’s going on and want to get you out of it. You’ll even convince yourself that you’re not really being mistreated. If you were being abused, would they be so nice to you? 

You are the last friend our family has. I hope our attachment to you doesn’t look obtrusive.      > It requires too much from me. I’m not comfortable with it.     > No, not at all. 

The third answer is the Kains. Specifically, Georgiy and Maria repeatedly manipulate Daniil, though I’ve no doubt in the text above Victor stating their attachment to Daniil is also a manipulation, and one possibly planned by either or perhaps both of them. The text above probably looks normal, but think about the purpose it serves: to reinforce that Daniil is friendly with the Kains. Your only two options are to say that it doesn’t bother you, or to express that you feel your boundaries are being violated by their attention. But I even thinking about picking that option... Well, it feels mean. 

Throughout the game, people will comment on Maria’s attachment to you and what they feel is your predestination to be romantically paired with her. All this, despite the fact that you don’t really interact with her that much. I’ve seen this be explained as forced heterosexuality, but I think it also is a way of the Kains manipulating Daniil into doing what they want. Daniil gets upset whenever people cry; when children cry, he tries to calm them and fix whatever’s upset them - there’s an entire sidequest after the army arrives in which Daniil kills a group of soldiers, spurred into action by upset children. Whenever he encounters Maria crying, he reacts with discomfort, and she uses these tears and upset to manipulate Daniil into thinking Aglaya has lied to him, effectively distancing him from one of the only people in the game with a rational mind to show him support and tell him the truth. I don’t think the two are in any way unconnected. Something abusers, manipulators, gaslighters love to do is isolate you so that you only have one source of information to go to. If they cut you off from other people, they can continue to feed off of you. You’ll never have a chance to question if what you’re being told about yourself or others is correct, you’ll just be a constant supply of drama for them. 

DANIIL: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. 

AGLAYA: Your line of thinking is obviously fallacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you no one can really tell the future around here and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes... but hardly more often than anywhere else.

You can see, first, the effect all this has had on Daniil, how dispiriting the past several days have been to him. But you can also see here exactly why a family that prides itself on multi-generational reincarnation and manipulation through “fortune-telling” wants to keep its blunt instrument in the dark. 

That is, ultimately, why they are manipulating Daniil. Georgiy knows full well when he tells Daniil at the beginning that everyone, even himself, will lie to Daniil, that being that honest upfront is more likely to lead Daniil to trusting him. They want to sway him to their cause; this is why you are told that your success here depends on the wellbeing of the people Maria considers useful: herself, her father and uncle - who she gets out of the way later on to come into her power, the architects of the Polyhedron - which she will use to ascend to power, and the theatre director who has pledged himself to be her loyal servant. Eva’s on the list, too, but her inclusion was deliberately set up to make you depend on the Kains later in the game, considering that it’s Maria who convinced her to commit suicide:

DANIIL: Why did Eva die then? AGLAYA: I have a distinct suspicion she was made to die. DANIIL: By whom?  AGLAYA: One of the Kains. I’d even go so far as to claim that they may have performed human sacrifice.

It’s a two-for-one deal: try in vain to make a Focus of the Cathedral, and remove from Daniil the last piece of influence who was not totally in love with Maria. Maria “cries” and is “upset” at you for thinking Eva’s death is her fault, but no one directly tells you Maria is responsible - all Aglaya does is tell you the Kains are at fault. The rest is just you remembering how nasty Maria was about Eva at the beginning of the game. I wouldn’t even say that Maria was removing a rival for Daniil’s affection. She really does only view Daniil as an object: if you speak to her on day 12, she assumes that you’re leaving, and doesn’t even ask you to stay (for kicks, contrast this with either ending of Pathologic 2 when you speak to Daniil as Artemy, where he’s supposed to be your rival. what was all that about Maria being in love with you...?); he’s not even present in his own ending cutscene. Even Mark Immortell says you’re leaving -

And actually, that’s a really fascinating conversation you can have with him on day 12. It’s where the game outright admits exactly what Aglaya told you: it’s all fake. Maria cannot really see the future, you’ve just been manipulated the entire game to achieve someone else’s goals, and unless you’ve gone around and saved Artemy’s or Clara’s bound, it’s too late for you to turn back and make a different decision. If you’ve picked Daniil’s ending, you just destroyed an entire town on the basis of outright lies. 

[magical-marvelous-mistoffelees]

I would love to hear more about Ruzzilo, Beatrice, and Theophilus, too, if you're okay with sharing!

I’d love to! I don’t have great refs for them currently, but I’ll update with refs in the future when I get the chance to make them.

I’m also going to try and keep all of these a little briefer since they aren't my main oc (but still important to me!)

Ruzzilo:

Ruzzilo is Domoria’s long lost twin brother. When she was adopted from the pet store, he ran away, and somehow ended up working as a low level henchman for Macavity. He’s considered expendable, so he’s practically a living weapon. His jobs are to keep shady allies in line, fight on behalf of Macavity when needed, and work for respected allies from time to time. 

One of these allies is a rich queen named Bastet ( @your-missing-period). She despises strays and the Jellicles, and Ruzzilo is basically a bodyguard of sorts. Their relationship is comical since they never see eye to eye, due to being raised with very different lifestyles, but Bastet can’t afford to lose him. A small witchy black cat named Sugar Spice ( @jelliclegifs) works for Bastet as well, and Ruzzilo hates her and her ghost friend Oblivion ( @fandomsandmore394). 

Ruzzilo hates Sugar because of his deep loathing for magic. It is also the only thing he fears. He’s worked for Macavity far too long and has seen the extent of his powers. Macavity’s magic is also how he lost his left ear.

Personality-wise, Ruzzilo is the direct opposite of Domoria. Where she is open and optimistic, Ruzzilo is cold and seemingly apathetic. 3 personality traits I'd use for him are 

Resourceful

Tough

Cynical

He has spent his life building a reputation to scare others away from him. It makes living as a stray easier; he can find food and shelter more secluded since everyone avoids him. He has never lost a fight, and since he will fight to the death need be, the day he loses is the day he dies. 

That’s not to say he is completely incapable of caring for anyone. When he does care about someone, he is extremely loyal and protective. He also has a sharp wit and understanding nature, since he knows he’s probably committed worse atrocities. Currently, his only friend that he cares about is Macavity’s son Alexei ( @star-freckled-kitten). They are one hell of a disaster duo.

Beatrice:

The easiest way to describe Beatrice is lawful good. She’s a very quiet queen that few have ever heard speak. She actually only ever speaks when someone else speaks to her first, due to both shyness and only ever wanting to engage in deep conversation, not small talk. However, if/when you do talk to her, you will find she is very sage. She gives the best advice and is incredibly unbiased and understanding. Her mind is beyond her age. 

However, very few actually talk to her. She is tentative acquaintances with Jemima and Victoria, and has a crush on a much more outgoing queen named Nouvel ( @fandomsandmore394). But that's about it so far- at least for her living friends.

Beatrice is a medium and can speak to essentially what are the ghosts of the junkyard, otherwise known as shadow cats. These are the cats that didn't quite make it to the Heaviside layer. To Beatrice, her powers are both a blessing and a curse. Her best friend is the aforementioned Oblivion, and she has close connections with other shadow cats as well. But not all of the shadow cats are kind. Some are restless spirits, more angry than rational. This can get extremely overwhelming for Beatrice, who strives to help as many shadow cats find peace and move on past this world as she can.

3 personality traits I use for her are:

Reserved

Benevolent

Wise

She also has a deep love for nature, since its quiet, unlike the junkyard.

Theophilus:

Theophilus, or Theo for short, is my newest oc. I’m still unsure of all the details on him, and hopefully I can develop him more over time.

Theo is the definition of a scaredy-cat. Literally everything alarms him at first, from pollicles to butterflies. He’s small and timid, so many even mistake him for a kitten at first! In actuality, he’s a young adult and smarter than most. 

If you need information on anyone or anything, Theo is probably the best person to go to. He knows everything about the Jellicle tribe, both current information and the history. He also is extremely intelligent and logical. The only thing holding him back from sharing this knowledge frequently is his own fear. 

As always, three traits I’d use for him are

Jumpy

Intelligent

Cautious

Since he’s new and also not very outgoing, he doesn't have any friends yet. However, as a friend, he’d be very kind and rational, perhaps just a little clingy from time to time. He’s kind of like a younger brother, even though he’s probably smarter than you. Theo also likes to share random trivia or fun facts from time to time; it’s practically his way of saying “I like being around you and want to share things I find cool with you because you're important to me”. 

I also have two (mostly) NPCs, Sophronia and Gehenna. Sophronia is a mostly blind cat who lives in the local opera house, but breaks out to join the Jellicles. Gehenna is extremely motherly, but she lost her two kittens a few months before joining the tribe. She still wants a family though, and she reminds me a lot of Jane Seymour (SIX).

Thank you so much for asking, if you or anyone else has any more questions or just wants to know more, send in more asks or privately message me! I love hearing about other’s ocs and finding new friends for my ocs!

[bunnibai]

Hello there, if you’re up to it here’s some more ask stuff :)

8, 9, 16, 18

IM FINALLY GETTING BACK TO THESE HOLY SHIT Okay >:) 

8. What's one weird personal headcanon you have for the character that's not addressed or that you haven't found a way to share yet?

Okay so Ari. Is a fucking nerd. It never gets brought up a lot? But she’s a fucking NERD guys. When she was little she read a lot of books? Specifically, her staff would carry her on their shoulders while she read when they walked in markets.  But in the group, since Rosie has kinda taken up the nerd role, it doesn’t usually get talked about a whole lot! Not that I mind that, though. I do ADORE the idea of the girls bonding over being nerds, though. Maybe they can’t sleep and they just stay up reading books over nothing really important and mumbling about it in a half delirious state. Ari isn’t EMBARRASSED by it per say, but she’s never really interacted with another person who liked reading besides Thallan, who you guys haven’t met. 

9. What are your character's relationships like with every member of their party? Bonus, if you want to write a short blurb on your character's opinion of them.

Oh boy this’ll be a long one.

The best way I’ve heard Rosie and Ari be described is actually through my friend who probably isn’t reading this, but she had assumed Rosie and Ari had a queerplatonic relationship? And at first I was like “nah” but if you look at it they super do. They’re not dating by any means; Ari doesn’t see Rosie that way and I assume Rosie doesn’t seem Ari that way, either. But they do a lot of traditionally more like? Date-y things? They cuddle and hold hands and stay up late at night with each other and in that vein, they’re like. Friends plus. It doesn’t help that they’re both “straight” and there’s nothing gay about wanting to cuddle your best friend nope! Girls are just like that there’s no reason to throw the l-word around guys. 

Canyon is really interesting for Ari for a lot of reasons. This isn’t something she’s. Used to. In Brinatia, race is really tricky. Ari was sort of an oddity because she was a halfling, but her family had “proved” themselves, so they tolerated her being inside and walking in the streets. But other than that and other exceptions, everyone was just. Elves. And if you weren’t, you were seen as lesser. Ari’s guard would be spat at in the streets, Lanna had her entire thing, it was. Crazy. And here Canyon is, and he’s so unapologetically himself that it caused whiplash. He does what he wants when he wants and doesn’t care who’s watching. She really admires him for that. She gets a little chide-y sometimes? But it’s really in good faith. I’ll talk more about it with Quill but her chiding them is actually a way of seeing that she’s comfortable. 

Quill is by far the most confusing person Ari has ever met. Ari has always learned obedience. She learned to keep her head down and do what she needed to in order to appear like she was following the rules. If she didn’t, she would be shot and killed without hesitation. But Quill is so unapologetically chaotic. She met Ari and one of the first things she did was openly admit to assassination and treason? To a near stranger? And Ari had no idea how someone could do something like that. Quill was the most avid, by far, supporter of killing Ari’s dad. She pesters Ari to be less scared all the time and actually do the things she wants to do and to Ari, that’s really special. Ari thinks that Quill is really special. The thing about Ari is that, the more comfortable she gets, the more willing she is to argue. It might look like she’s unhappy with Quill’s antics? With how much Ari hisses, “Quill!” and how often she’ll tell Quill she can’t do something. But Ari just being able to speak up at all shows a level of comfort she’s never really reached with anyone before. She does the same thing to Lanna; constantly chiding and telling her what’s socially acceptable. I think that’s a part of the reason Ari is so comfortable around Quill all of the time. Quill acts so much like Lanna and Ari just generally draws towards those people. 

16. What jokes/memes do you have about your character? Are there any jokes that accidentally became canon in the universe?

We have so many that it’s frankly ridiculous but I do wanna talk about the juice thing the most because it’s very sweet. But before I do, shoutout to the Ari meme about her hating vampires. For the uninitiated, Ari’s dad has turned into a vampire and Ari is Extremely Not Happy About It. She’s decided she hates vampires for the rest of her life but at every turn people have decided to make vampire jokes at her expense, and she always gets extremely flustered over it. It’s my favorite thing ever. 

The juice thing started when Josh, unknowing about my Thing with alcohol, gave me the goddess of temperance among other things. So she was ALWAYS drinking wine, and her kind of goal for the campaign was to get Ari to drink it. I said I was confident Ari would never do that, and that was of course about my trigger. Ari will never drink alcohol because I would get uncomfortable. So time goes on and Sarenrae keeps pressuring Ari, and then one day Josh finds out that I have an alcohol trigger! He asks why I never told him and I told him it wasn’t a big deal, but Josh insisted that my comfort is ALWAYS a big deal. So instead of having Sarenrae drink wine, he created this plot point that she actually ended up turning to juice, and now that’s what she likes to drink because Ari likes to drink it. And I just think that’s very nice. 

Other jokes include humans being cryptids in-universe and Ari being Definitely Absolutely Straight, yes sir. 

18. Have you made any fan children between your character and an NPC or PC? Is their relationship canon? Tell us about the kids if you want or have them! Tell us about the characters' lives together!

I have not and this is an ABSOLUTE SHAME because I love designing fan kids. But when it comes to lovers and lives after the campaign, I can tell you a very interesting idea I’ve been playing with. 

After the campaign, we obviously... don’t know what’s going to happen, right? So we don’t know what will be the same or different. So this is going to have a lot of assumptions. But the Order is defeated, Noxus is either dead or redeemed, etc. etc. And the party quietly retires to their various places, either together or separate, and in Brinatia... There’s a power vacuum. Her dad is dead. Ari is respected as a champion and, technically, is the next in line after her father. So what if she actually became queen? Ari and her wife (all too ready to commit arson on the city) aren’t the most beloved rulers by the high elves, but are by far the most beloved by the underdark standard. She does a lot in terms of social justice and equality, and although she’s been attempted to be assassinated a couple times, really. How can you go up against a champion? And she lives a nice life doing good for as many people as possible with Lanna until she eventually retires and passes on. 

[eunahfmdarchive]

popo (how deep is our love?) - partial lyrics & partial composition credit. date: sometime in mid july. word count: 806, not including one (1) line of lyrics. mentions of eunah’s now npc ex, but at this time they were still dating. this is kinda bad and is pure freeform stream of consciousness almost because i’m!! just trying to get these done! holy shit why did i leave these so late!! but also yeah it’s bad, but i still like it kind of so good for me, i guess.

writing love songs facilitates a different sort of catharsis than writing sad songs does, but eunah is beginning to think that it’s just as valuable. she feels a lot, and to be honest, if she always told him everything that she thinks about him, she’d just end up making a fool of herself or coming on too strong. her fingers pause on the piano keys. if this song ever sees the light of day, maybe he’ll hear it and think she’s too much anyways. 

in that case, she can blame the co-writers she’s been working with for the album.

eunah feels that by now, she’s solidified herself enough to take a bit of a risk on her new album, and to have one of the songs be completely in english. she hasn’t written lyrics in english since she released let me in last year. although she’s ultimately pleased with how they turn out, she does think that you can tell she’s a little out of practice, with some of the metaphors turning out on the long winded side. at the same time, eunah feels like that benefits the song’s message and themes. it’s soft, and it’s open, maybe too open, but there’s something heartwarming and sincere about it when she reads them back.

plenty of the songs she’s written have ended up as love songs, usually beginning as something much less romantic and much more personal to eunah herself, before being twisted that way by herself at a later date, or by dimensions’ hired writers or by the vibe provided by the production teams. she doesn’t mind that. she understands that most people would prefer to listen to a love song than to the therapeutic ramblings of an insecure young woman, and at the end of the day, she has to take what she gets from the company. as successful as her solo career has been, dimensions could decide to take it away from her at any point. it’s no harm, then, that she uses her real romantic feelings in her song writing process. it makes sense, even if, at the same time, it makes eunah feel more vulnerable than usual. 

everything that she has written down in front of her is true, and honest, to an extent that she’s not used to letting people see. usually, she would be almost cryptic about a song’s real message, but here, her feelings are plain for anyone to read, for any listener to hear. for a moment, she considers tearing the pages out of her notebook, never to be seen by anyone, but she doesn’t. growth and change are uncomfortable by their very nature. eunah wants to keep growing. she wants to keep changing.

working more on the melody of the song helps calm eunah down. she wants to experiment with different sounds on the album, but she doesn’t want to completely stray away from the sound she’s established for herself over the past year and a half. it wouldn’t be wise. especially the lyrics for this song - thus far named popo in commemoration of their first kiss, a brief brushing of their lips by the water - are something different, both in language and in feeling, eunah thinks that the final product needs to have her typical vibe. ultimately, eunah doesn’t have the final say on what tracks get on the album, and she wants this song to be chosen from the submissions, even if it scares her. no, especially because it scares her. she’s doing a lot of things that scare her recently, things she never thought she would do in a million years. why should this be any different?

she’s worried that maybe the tune she’s slowly pulling from her piano keys might perhaps sound too somber, or that maybe she’s just overthinking it. it sounds nice, and matches the lyrics well, which is what she thinks matters most. singing with it gets rid of any of the downbeat vibes she was worried about. rather than sad, it sounds wistful, like the kind of song she’d listen to to remember better days. her stomach does a flip. why should she be feeling wistful over something that’s still in her life? eunah frowns at her keys, paranoid that she’s creating a bad omen for her relationship. the thought is only there for a moment, a shadow cast over her mind, gone again in the blink of an eye.

but that’s all it is. a brief lapse in her sensibilities. if something happens, and if they do break up, it won’t be because she accidentally turned her love song into a song to listen to while reminiscing on fond memories. she rereads the lyrics, and still plagued by the lingering idea of her relationship’s fate, eunah underlines one line that stands out, eerily among the others: how deep is our love?

[thiefking]

major ddlc spoilers ahead, also i don’t know if all of this has been said/theorized before since i’m extremely late to the party here but i have a lot of Thoughts having finally played the game

firstly: i need to explain that every theory i’m about to present relies on the hypothetical game that would have existed if monika wasn’t self-aware

basically, irl the game was always meant to be what it is, but within the canon of the story, the ORIGINAL (fictional/hypothetical) ddlc was a regular dating sim visual novel. in canon, it was monika who changed it into the game we actually end up playing. we get only a glimpse of what the game would have been without her interference after you delete her and restart the game-- the mc no longer calls sayori “annoying” and yuri no longer mentions being into “surreal horror,” etc etc. that hypothetical unaltered version as a full game (henceforth referred to as “original ddlc”) is where most of my “what if”s have been clustering around to the point where i’ve genuinely considered making a fangame or something but instead i’m just gonna chat about it here

topic 1: monika’s route

monika claims she didn’t have a route in the first place. by all means, it seems that way-- you can’t appeal to her with your poems, can’t pick her for anything, etc etc. however, as much as monika is aware that she’s in a game, that doesn’t mean she’s genre-savvy. 

i’d actually say she probably isn’t too much of a video game person in general, and i’m not referring to her 4th wall shattering, i’m saying she probably just likes to play acnl, minecraft and other casual, lighthearted games that don’t have an ending to them and can be played indefinitely, and maybe mario party if her friends come over, yknow? that’s just kinda what she seems like to me

now i ain’t dunking on anyone who only plays that kind of game, mind you, but if monika isn’t herself someone who plays a lot of video games, and you add that together with the fact that she was not immediately sentient (we don’t see her BEFORE she became aware, because the original ddlc is already gone by the time we start playing), the fact that while she’s aware what genre the game is she clearly has minimal idea of how they work or what makes them appealing, and that she has little coding experience and despite being able to alter files/lines she also couldn’t prevent basic game mechanics or predict said mechanics getting in the way, then i think it’s not only possible but very very very likely that she missed something. she missed something big.

monika was supposed to be an unlockable route.

so, y’all remember mysmes? i haven’t played it since it first came out, so mind you my memories are fuzzy here but mysmes also isn’t the focus of this post in the first place, so excuse any technical inaccuracies here but i’m certain that the IMPORTANT parts here, the italicised ones, are correct: 

there was an unlockable "deep story” which served as the true end.

you had to play every route in the game before you could read the deep story (i think you also had to play the three other character routes before you could play 707′s route, but that might be wrong). also, each of the main story routes ended after the uh... the ball thing. the big event they throw? whatever it was, that’s where the story stops for those routes, whereas the deep story continues on past that.

you had to be on 707′s route for the deep story (i’m pretty sure you had to play his entire route and have it be your most recent playthrough to get at it, even if that isn’t the case, the deep story is specifically a continuation of 707′s route)

to be honest i was never a fan of the deep story for several reasons and i never really saw what the appeal of dating 707 was but that’s not important the point is that out of your four dating options, only one of them was considered the “true end”, but you had to do every single route before you could get that ending.

i’m sure you see what i’m getting at here, yeah?

there are a couple of other things, too:

monika tells you which character your poem appeals to most, she’s the one who introduces the game on the steam page (which is also proof she was sentient, at least to a degree, before you played the game), her name means “advisor/counselor”... iunno how many people reading this are savvy to the usual conventions of “games in which dating characters is a thing” but i’ve played a LOT of harvest moon. monika is a prime example of a Special Bachelorette. in harvest moon, Special Marriage Candidates are generally one or more of the following: a character from another game (like, literally-- you have to have a gba gamepak in while playing a ds game to see them), a shopkeeper or tutorial-fairy, characters with extremely elaborate unlocking and/or courting rituals, and characters who don’t even seem to be romanceable (in harvest moon games, romance candidates tend to have hearts next to their sprites that change colour depending on how close you are. generally that’s how you know who you can marry and who you can’t, but some marriage characters actually don’t have visible heart meters!). ... once again you see what i’m getting at right? put her in harvest moon and you bet your ass she’d have an invisible heart meter and an intricate courting ritual

she’s an important character. she’s club prez, she’s your tutorial fairy, she tells you who you’re appealing to. the tropes don’t lie, man, sayori would probably be the most realistic ending but i don’t think i know of a single game where the childhood friend character is the “true end” route-- they’re so easy to romance, they tend to be the route people do their first run and then never end up coming back to. i’m not trying to say anything in particular about this setup/logic, i just know that it exists and it exists a whole lot. if there’s a true end route in the original ddlc, it’s without question monika

by the way, in the corrupted ddlc, you still have to play every character’s route for the true ending. the true end requires you to have obtained all of the character cgs, which you can only do by playing all of the other characters’ routes, or at the very least, courting sayori, resetting and courting natsuki, and then letting monika warp the game, since you’ll end up on yuri’s route during the second act of the game no matter what you do. and what happens when you’ve had a chance to date sayori, natsuki and yuri? you end up on monika’s route. even when monika corrupted the game, there was still inherent logic to it-- all the characters inevitably become interested in mc, and you still can’t reach the true end without doing everyone’s routes.

as much as it would be painful for monika to watch you romance everyone else before you finally got around to her, she could have at least taken solace knowing she was the real ending, had she just been a little better at coding, just a little more genre-savvy...

of course, there are these lines she gives us, so clearly a sentient monika is still a monika that wouldn’t just sit there and wait regardless of if she knew she was the true end:

she says it herself: she’d still force her route, because she’s terrified, and the only one who seems to be aware that she’s in a game, but the really, really sad part is that as hard as she tries to convince you and herself that she doesn’t regret any of what she did, doesn’t feel guilty, doesn’t miss her friends...

she does. she knows she did something terrible, and she didn’t even actually have to do it.

... well, maybe “she didn’t HAVE to do it” is obvious enough for everything she did, but let’s keep in mind here that monika was scared out of her fucking mind, and reasonably so. if you were in her place, if you found out nothing was real, your friends weren’t real, nothing but code... and someone real came along, but no matter what you did, you couldn’t get them to talk to you long enough for you to ask for help... wouldn’t you get desperate too? monika was scared, and panicking, and remember: she knew she was in a game.

uninstalling a game does not a murderer make, right? the npcs, and the player character, they aren’t dead. they’re just code. if you back up your save, they’ll all be there if you download it again-- if you didn’t, they’ll still exist, they’ll just be reset. it doesn’t mean you’ve actively given someone amnesia.

but you still feel guilty over it, huh? even if you need disk space, even if you make a backup, it still kinda feels bad to delete the fictional friends you made.

you feel bad for doing that, and they were fake to you in the first place. monika was part of the game.

this is why it’s so sad to me. she was scared, and she thought she’d never even have a chance to ask for help, because she thought she didn’t have a route. her situation was, from her perspective, utterly hopeless. she felt terrible doing what she did, she misses her friends, but it was the only way to save herself, and being that she knew she was in a game, of course she’d try to rationalize her actions by telling herself her friends weren’t real and it was no different than overriding a save file. if she didn’t tell that to both you and herself, she’d be a murderer. she isn’t a murderer, either-- it really is just code, the problem is the overwhelming guilt that she has to suppress for the sake of her own sanity that she wouldn’t have had to bear in the first place had she been a normal route, or known that she had a route somewhere in the game.

the other characters do seem to have more sentience/free will than monika thought/noticed, but none of them are as Aware as monika-- natsuki shows the most amount of awareness (without being the club prez), having not only noticed that yuri and monika were acting strangely but even writing a note, one that clearly wouldn’t exist in the original ddlc, asking the mc for help. yuri also has several moments of lucidity, both with her own actions/behaviour and that of her clubmates (and by clubmates i mean pretty much just natsuki). like i said before, though, they aren’t as aware as monika, and while sayori (in the first run), yuri and natsuki all seem to realize something is wrong, they also don’t know that they’re in a game. 

monika was very, very alone, even when she was surrounded by her friends. friends that she legitimately cared about and enjoyed spending time with. i wonder whether it would have been better that she were more self-aware, or never was in the first place

topic 2: the true end

so i already talked a lot about how i think monika woulda been the true route, but not about what i think would happen in the true end. i have less to say on this topic both just in general and because i already spent so much fucking time on the first topic, but of course i have Thoughts, i wouldn’t be claiming monika would be the true route if i didn’t have an idea of how said route would work

i’ll take this character-by-character for the sake of clarity and organization

sayori:

so here’s the thing:

monika exaggerated sayori’s depression, yes.

sayori is, understandably, probably the character most people would rather the mc end up with, sure.

... but sayori never told mc she was suffering, not until he happened to catch her in a moment of weakness

not in the original ddlc either-- the mc has a very lukewarm response when she tells him she’s woken up on time for a few days in a row, which he wouldn’t/shouldn’t have had if he had known. it was always part of the game plot for mc to learn about sayori’s depression onscreen

it makes sense sayori would have feelings for him, but it also seems like she doesn’t trust him very much-- in her “bottles of happiness” poem, towards the end she seems to talk about her friends being concerned for her, but she’s shutting it all out because she doesn’t want them to worry. the mc at this point doesn’t know she’s suffering. it seems like she’s had other friends who have actually noticed she was hurting-- whether those friends are the club members or not, iunno-- and that even though she does try to conceal it, she’s aware that they’re aware, y’know? mc had no idea, and seemed incredibly unequipped and unqualified to help sayori

while that sort of thing would be remedied in sayori’s route, he wouldn’t be spending as much time with her on the other girls’ routes... not to mention that dating someone can’t cure your mental illness, but mc seems exactly like the kind of person to think that it can. that’s just my Own Ape Canyon though

what i’m thinking is true end sayori doesn’t end up with anyone, and she’s okay with that. true end sayori is prioritizing herself and learning to deal with things healthily. she’s letting her friends help her, and she’s holding off on romance, because she acknowledges that if she isn’t careful, she might sacrifice her own well-being for her partner’s happiness. 

natsuki:

fun fact: i didn’t know if the buffsuki edit was actually in the game or not for... up until a few days ago. i had no idea if it was from some kind of joke ending, or if it was fanmade. i was pretty disappointed to learn it was the latter i wanted to watch her physically break out of the game with her giant rippling muscles

now while the main topic is the true end, i’d actually first like to discuss what a full natsuki route would be like

i think that natsuki’s route would be furthest from a good end without being a bad end, tbh

i don’t think her route would be a total disaster, mind you, but i don’t think it’d be a happy end. i think you’d end up dating her, which would make it an unhappy end

see the thing about natsuki is: she’s only got a small handful of friends, she’s used to being made fun of, she immediately gets prickly when sayori brings mc in, specifically saying that the mc being male is killing the vibe-- meaning, she probably doesn’t have any male friends... leaving her dad as probably the only man she interacts with

in other words, she avoids men because of her dad

so when mc shows up, is friendly, doesn’t make fun of her, and he’s the only male figure in her life that she feels remotely safe around, it’s no question she’d probably... maybe... develop feelings for him...?

of course! yes, of course, because natsuki is VERY HETEROSEXUAL, and she likes BOYS! this is proof! most boys, she can’t stand em, but this one was nice to her, so of course she’s got a crush on him right?

in case you’re missing my heavy sarcasm, i’m saying natsuki is a lesbian with compulsory heterosexuality issues and due to said issues convinces herself that she’s romantically interested in mc, because he’s the first boy she’s met who hasn’t treated her like shit

hence making the natsuki route a pretty unfortunate one, since like i said i think you really would end up dating her, at least for most of it. maybe the end would be something like her moving away or something leaving the relationship sort of Over without actually having a breakup, i dunno

oh by the way: do you want some evidence for natsuki lesbian? oh there’s plenty but i’m gonna wait a moment for that one. i’m also not gonna go into natsuki’s true route for now, you’ll see why soon

yuri

and by soon

i mean now

i don’t have any thoughts on what yuri’s route would be so we’re gonna go right into discussing the true end

so, here’s a little something:

monika also exaggerated the turbulence in natsuki and yuri’s relationship

once again, in the original ddlc-- the part you can actually see, after you delete monika, the two are actually pretty close! they do butt heads occasionally but in the one instance you get to see in the original ddlc, they made up very quickly

monika also modified a lot of their lines in the Big Argument they have in act 2, which has both of them saying a lot of shit they wouldn’t have even thought, much less say aloud

the reality is, though, that natsuki is actually very fond of yuri

the amy in this poem is two people, depending on how it’s read: natsuki or yuri

when amy is natsuki, it’s a poem about how her own harmless interest in manga causes her to be made fun of or insulted

when amy is yuri, it’s a poem about... well, her self-harm, but a lot of yuri’s traits/interests could apply as well

and when amy is yuri, you can see a lot of information about natsuki and yuri’s relationship in this poem. natsuki doesn’t hate yuri, of course-- remember that this poem is meant to point out how dumb it is to hate someone for one tiny trait when all of their other traits are that of an all-around nice person

first 3 lines of the second verse. just take a real long look at those

here’s another poem!

this is the poem natsuki writes if 2 or less of the poems mc writes in act 1 don’t appeal to her. this makes it fairly clear the “you” in the poem isn’t mc

the “you” is someone, though

yuri.

it’s yuri. the poem is about yuri.

by the way, if all 3 of your poems did appeal to natsuki, the poem she writes is nowhere near as BLATANTLY ROMANTIC as this one is. it most certainly doesn’t say anything about kissing

btw hey did you know that “yuri” also refers to lesbians

once again i think it’s probably obvious what i’m getting at here: the true end for natsuki and yuri is the two of them dating. hell, i’m pretty sure part of the route would involve mc and monika trying to play cupid-- monika is the one who tells you who your poem appeals to, after all, so why wouldn’t she try some matchmaking for her pals?

i imagine they do still have little spats every now and then, sure, but they’d learn to respect each other’s opinions long before they’d start dating, and the fact that they’re both passionate is what makes them work. while their writing styles are almost polar opposites, that just means they have a lot to learn from each other and could balance the other out when they take their style to an extreme that makes it hard to understand what they’re trying to get across, and i’m certain they could make a kickass story together

anyways, that’s all i’ve got to say for now, partly because i spent four fucking hours writing this post and partly because i gotta get back to staring into monika’s eyes. i added the monika after story mod because i cycled through all of her available dialogue in the vanilla game. i just want to be friends with her so bad