#she originally wasn't going to have any gold in her design | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lindalofbroome · 10 months ago

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original sketches

DELTORA FASHION CONCEPT ART V2

hello i have finally coloured some rough sketches of some deltoran fashions, a redraw of some really old sketches from ages ago.

im a pretty amateur concept artists and i hate designing clothes so truly was a challenge for me hahah BUT it has given me plenty of time to think of headcanons. im not sure what i've already posted about or not so im just gonna go ahead and rant

these characters were originally just models for me to draw the clothes on, so i didn't need to draw a new person every time; although in some of my earliest sketches of different people groups i did a bunch of people. but naturally these characters have developed a little and some of them are my beloved adin-era OCs <3

[about 4,500 words]

⬜ JALIS

since the jalis are reknowned for their warrior prowess and their signature gold armour, i thought it'd be neat that even if when they're not wearing the full set, they are always wearing their arm guards. it's a sense of pride and identity, they probably receive them as a rite of passage into adulthood. not every jalis is a knight, but they value a heart of courage and great feats and they all have them, and would wear them always (or at least special occasions if one prefers not).

i headcanon that jasmine was gifted her own set of arm guards as an expression of their respect and admiration of her. her relationship with glock grew so much and was cut off, but she earned her "heart of a jalis" and we didnt get to see much of jasmine and gers together, but theres plenty of time post-DQ3. i think my jasmine and the jalis thoughts should be a separate post though, otherwise this post will never end 😂

i dont imagine that the jalis had special party clothes, i think they just turn up in their usual clothes and get drunk and dance their hearts out maybe start a brawl thats none of my business

i cant remember why i've been giving them this geometric sort of pattern tbh. i think i drew someone at some point and wanted it to look different to mcbride's design but im not sure if i like it or not. the plus is that i can make diamond motifs though!!

i also cant really remember how my brown skin gold hair came to be 🤔🤔 wait backtracking i think what happened is that i decided to draw del people as black latinx inspired, so it wasn't that big a step to make jalis also dark skinned since they're both in the south (deltora geography is weird tho so like it's not that deep) and then i think i made them blonde as i "why not??" situation but tHEN i thought maybe it's connected to their jalis gold?

my headcanon is that their armour is made of a unique metal that can only be found in diamond territory, it's super hard, tough, and light etc. so maybe whatever is In The Ground is also in them and their blood and shows in their hair????

🥳 fun fact 🥳 wasn't until i had to draw steven and glock side by side that i had realised what i'd done?? i.e. steven canonically has brown skin gold hair too¹. which now forces me to think about whether it should be a coincidence (like it is) or shall i headcanon that steven and nevets' father was jalis² 🤔 ¹ pretty sure it's about the dichotomy, to show contrast but connection between the brothers. i have many steven and nevets thoughts but that should also be another post ² i am.

🟩 DREAD GNOMES

these characters are adin-era, so unfortunately this would be when the gnomes still hunt the kin. whats weird is that i realised that i was picturing the caramelly brown fabric that this gnome is wearing was the kin pelt and not the big furry parts?? i usually picture the kin as more like velvetty. idk what the thicker fur parts would be though?? literally any other animal i guess 😅 i dont know it doesn't make sense and it's only occurring to me right now i shall have to think about it lmao

anyway made them green because why not. maybe they come in different colours idk. this gnome is pre-gellick so does go out in the sun, gellick-era gnomes would be waaaaay more paler they probably looked white. this could be similar to the jalis and like theres something in the grounddd

gla-thon claims that the dread gnomes knew that lesser gems had weaker but the same powers of the great talisman gems (sots), but im not sure if they knew it before adin. would be interesting if they did 🤔 and how they figured it out?? (side note but now im wondering about how withick knew what to write about the gems??) would imply that if they got the great emerald than they could deduce there are others surely. unless they thought it was a freak accident/miracle. anyway we know they love gems and gold etc etc so they obviously decorate themselves with heaps of jewellery

triangle motifs in homage to their mountain 💚

i gave them a sort of war paint ritual. i'm not sure if they all do the same markings, but this one was specifically to symbolise a bow and arrow (arrow going up the nose). you can see it a bit better here lol. i also decided that sometimes they wear it for purely cosmetic purposes. im not sure what the substance is exactly though. i think in my head i was imagining something similar to kohl, but maybe not.

🥳 fun fact 🥳 bre-tak and az-zure are lesbians (i make the rules)

🟦 MERE

oooooh baby this is my guy my babygirl my everything

okay so i think this headcanon developed recently when i last drew sky of rithmere and i thought that mere superstition encouraged them to wear their charms in random spots to avoid them cancelling each other out. it could be construed to be they were inspired by the night sky and the pattern of the stars perhaps. this led them to prefer asymmetrical fashions, mostly prominent in the armour i put badr in

🥳 fun fact 🥳 badr means "full moon" 👀

i think i originally decided the mere had leather armour just to give them something different iirc but the mere characters we see are usually the lithe, speedy, crafty type, so maybe light, mobile armour does work for them lol. anyway the main reason is that i had the image of studded leather, and i was like ohohoho STARS

i generally think of them with muted colours but sometimes they have a bold blue for their prized garmants. like zillah and co, the leaders of rithmere in adin's time were described with bright blue and starry cloaks. (i checked the wiki just to check zillah's name lol and apparently it's actually canon they have leather armour?? so not sure why i thought otherwise) anyway i do currently have minecraft brain but i did vaguely remember that people made ultramarine pigment from grinding lapis lazuli into a powder and im not sure if thats something the mere would do or if there's some strong blue dyes they can get from plants or something native to their territory 🤔

actually im liking that idea now? it would be incredibly time-consuming and labour-intensive but that would add to its value?? real world lapis lazuli has a horrible yield rate of 1kg lapis to 30g of pigment apparently, but it's a strong pigment (unless i misunderstand). alternative name for ultramarine is "permanent blue" apparently so. anyway ultramarine irl is more of a paint pigment, but in roddaverse maybe the mere make a lucky blue dye to use on cloaks and scarfs and shawls etc for good fortune?? me frantically checking that i put badr and luisa's wedding garb in bold blue lmAO oh i did but it's a little muted. they mix in oils and stuff to make the paint, so it doesnt seem like a stretch that they can mix different ingredients or ratio to make a cloth dye (to my very amateur understanding).

so im imagining now that they have a special (probably secret within the mere) process to create bright blue thread speckled with white (also gold to me. im pro deltora lapis with gold) and weave it into their beautiful starry night fabric. the amount of labour and the use of their prized lapis lazuli makes it very special, and maybe some people think it's the lapis that makes the fabric lucky or maybe some people think it's the work of love and time that makes it lucky, maybe both.

🥳 fun fact 🥳 i forgot that "bless your lucky stars" is like a real saying until recently lol

a starry cloak is probably something only the really rich could afford, but i think that they are more like heirlooms and states of office? im not sure if these pieces are things that one would purchase or something they would receive. bit hard to imagine people doing it for free but maybe it's one of those staple things that they revere and everyone else works to support them as well etc like the cooks in noradz are prized. idk. but yeah like a poorer family couldn't get a new one, but they would have one that has been in their family for generations you know? and i think that there would be something about like. idk youre meeting up with your doctor or something and youre nervous and you put on your family's best clothes (the most lucky ones) and maybe youre cynical about the whole good fortune stuff but there's something comforting about wearing the cloak your mother wore and your grandmother and your great grandmother wore, who also had to do such things. something something gives you the confidence to make your own luck because youre no longer pessimistic and allowing avoidable mistakes to happen

this means that the mere giving adin a cloak was a REALLY big deal because they definitely dont just go throwing those around and they would probably only give it to an outsider in trade for a steeeeeeeeeeeep price. which of course means that there would be knock offs with bad quality dye. lmao thats perfect actually. like 10000% there would be merchants in rithmere trying to sell cheaper versions to people that are expensive but still affordable to the average person. some would be different shades of blue, but the more crafty might have dyes that are strong but not lasting.

oh also i headcanon that palace fashion was a conglomerate of aspects from all the tribes but this should be it's own post i think. but i just remembered that i put gold thread in badr's braids in the formal wear sketch. i did that to tie in with the veins/flecks of gold (technically pyrite) in irl lapis lazuli. as such, people at del palace were inspired to weave gold into their hair too.

also gives me another thing to ship badr and luisa lmao. badr can wear some gold and luisa can wear some blue as a treat for me <3 moon and stars ocs beloved

🟨 DEL

alright. okay so del is definitely very white western patriarchal coded (most just a bias of living in that type of society i reckon) but it sucks and i'm passionate about making del NOT that. i think i've said this a million times now but this should be it's own post too, but most succinctly del is a very vibrant, curious, and daring sort of culture (e.g. their recklessness, exploration, trading). they were already marrying non-deltorans before adin (i imagine that some might have dared to marry outside of del, but it would have been way more politically complex so it was rarer and often kept quiet and rural). people of del were moving to other countries (like dorne) and people were probably moving to del, so del is definitely a big mix of different people and languages and superstitions and stuff.

but anyway i wanted to set a sort of base for before that. i've had art on the wip pile for YEARS about this and i'd flesh this out properly when it's done lol (hopefully we see that day) but since the topaz has the power to summon spirits, i really wanted to develop an aspect of del culture around that? i was inspired by Día De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and i still want to do some more in depth research and explore it more properly, but i like the idea that del will celebrate their lost loved ones life, coming together to remember, if they were lucky the got to see and even talk to their spirits. maybe pre-talisman they did know about topaz properties and they had a big deposit of gems that they would wheel out for the festival and the huge pile under the full moon would be enough to allow the spirits and people to interact? anyway this is a longwinded explanation of why my sketches of del fashion could be latinx inspired.

circle motifs in homage to the moon. the trim decoration on luisa's scabbards are based on moon phases :D

i also arbitrarily decided that del people love swishy clothes. they're all about the drama of cloaks and twirling in sundresses etc it's fun. not sure if i will actually follow through with that lol or maybe that can just be luisa.

🥳 fun fact 🥳 i think hearing luisa laugh would heal me

there's no particular reason for why i've been drawing a lot of del people as black, other than maybe spite lol. i think i drew jasmine and that got the ball rolling. del is a blank enough slate that they can be anything. im tired of white people being the front runners asldkjfhalsdf. bUT again del is multicultural, so there isn't a particular look for anyone in del. being del is more a state of mind and being part of community i think. you move to del and you participate in their society in one way or another and boom youre del now they adopted you.

🌈 PLAINS

hiran attire inspired by french aristocratic fashion. i cant remember who posted about it but pretty sure this was something that circulated around the fandom at least a little bit at some point.

added some subtle rainbow to harlow's outfits because he's the strong silent type. but i suppose there are so much more gaudier and extravagant outfits.

i was going to say this was just hira fashion and not like, rural plains fashion but i guess this is the same for all of them. it's just like a general direction for what someone might wear.

the swirly patterns?? i dont know. i drew them when i did adin's pre-battle speech as the last supper but i dont think there's a particular reason. i remember that i was trying to do something unique because lief recognises the cup in the city of rats as the same/similar to the one in noradz, so there had to be something to be recognisable lol but i probably just did it this way because it's relatively easy to doodle, just takes a bit of time.

🥳 fun fact 🥳 harlow was a cook before the shadow invasion. out of desperation, he and many others had to train to defend hira. he's big with natural balance and reflexes so he excelled and is a pretty adept warrior, but he will always think of himself as a cook first, warrior second.

now the armour!! freshest headcanon piping hot. yesterday when i was colouring i was sitting there like wow you look like a tin can man and you are so boring. we went from pretty colours to blank. im almost certain the hiran soldiers were described as silver with white plumes, so i was planning on doing that but they had intricate details on their armour because they are Extra, so it has the swirly patterns you can see on harlow's coat.

but then suddenly i was like. what if. pearlescent.

and honestly i loved it so much i didnt care i was setting myself up for some difficult work ahead lmao. but my general idea was that they're armour looked like it was silver, but if the light catches it at the right angle it exposes the rainbow in it. most of these headcanons i've had baking for at least a year, but this is very new so i dont any hard details yet. kira mentioned enamel or ceramic and lowkey interested in having a look into that so that theres another armour material. maybe it's gonna be like special jalis gold and special plains silver. maybe something else. i also just remembered bismuth exists (same boat as gold as very heavy and soft) but i think maybe it's too loud, i think im liking the more subtle pearlescent thing aLTHOUGH it's a good metallic rainbow reference 👀 maybe there is an esteemed plains warrior with a rainbow sword

ANYWAY pearlescent armour really hit my heart because oh my god once upon a time the plains had a shore and they could visit the sea,,,, lowkey ocean vibes without an ocean [screaming crying cat spinning in a void.gif]

🥳 fun fact 🥳 i have NO idea what food harlow has made. i think i had ratatouille on the brain at the time????

🟥 RALADS

⚠ PROPAGANDA ALERT ⚠

ruby territory best territory. ruby symbol of happiness. warns of danger AND antidote to poison. double helpful. ralads are so sweet and so smart. architectural and engineering marvels. living in harmony with the land and beasts. D'OR!!! manus and nanion friendship underrated and so special to me. horse girls. AND. broome. god theres so much i could say about broome that i cant say anything. anyway you guys know im normal about broome yes of course. separate post etc etc

i think technically this is a headcanon but it's not that big a stretch surely but as above i always picture ralads as in harmony with nature. never take more than they need, know how to work with not against, theyre not the main attraction but an equal part of the bigger picture.. this isn't even about how smart they are with engineering and their perfectly round houses with bricks that are cut perfectly. im thinking about their knowledge of their world is so strong and wide and diverse. they have the most vibrant and potent dyes and pigments around, they have the most colourful fabrics and clothes around. the plains has many colours but it can't compete, and they have different styles. i think that the hirans would trade for the dyes though (maybe undercutting pre-adin, maybe more equal post-unification). i think that they would also have a pretty decent blue dye but it is still inferior to mere lapis lazuli blue. it is probably a dye that could be used for a mid range mere garment?

maybe it's the anime fault but i do usually imagine ralads as barefoot but i also drew iris with construction tools and just the idea of ralads walking around a construction site barefoot was not fun to me. but it could be a hobbit tough soles situation. anyway i drew some shoes so i had a vague reference if i wanted to draw ralad shoes.

obviously had a problem drawing warrior attire for a non-war race. but i thought what if i leaned into the stories the hirans tell about how the scouts and soldiers they send into the ralad wilds never returned and were often found dead with broken bones or whatnot. definitely big watching but never seen vibes imo. so i decked iris out in some camouflage lol

🥳 fun fact 🥳 im sure the ralads can whistle and whatnot to make birdcall signals, but i thought it was fun for iris to be able to make birdcalls with her flute

HEY ALSO headcanon about ralad hair. i was making some dragon art from a doran pov that i was going to save for that but i cant wait now. but we know from Tales that the ralads had a good relationship with the ruby dragons, could even summon them (unless im misremembering and it was more like a premeditated calling) but i was thinking about how they nest with .. human? hair. and i was thinking what if they grow out their hair? and then they offer it to a dragon when they are ready? i dont know if there's a nesting season for dragons but it could be something like that? ralad-dragon ceremony and party time. this isn't a rite of passage type of thing, just something that they like to do. not everyone does it probably, but most do it once, some people do it several or many times in their lifetime. it's an honour, but not really a sacrifice to them. it's part of the world balance and theyre willing to serve the dragons as the dragons serve them as they water the plants and the plants feed them and they feed beasts and beasts feed them.

also dont remember why i did the hair so bright and orangey??? genuinely perplexed lmao. probably was leaning into irl ginger but like THEYRE BLUE so i could probably make them actual red. not sure if this is also like a "theres something in the ground" situation also that makes their hair red but maybe 😂😂

side note but it's lowkey so wild to me that rodda was like yeah these guys are blue-grey with red hair, and then everyone else is like an average person, BUT the mountain people are short. like they're all just some guy basically???

it does make return to del so so funny because fallow is like AYO look at these MONSTERS they are UGLY and WEIRD

but i guess thats part of the motivation to give the deltora tribes some basic unique traits.

🟪 TORANS

okay so toran robes as inspired by japanese fashion is definitely something that's floated around the fandom for ages. i can't remember if it was before or after seeing posts about it that i started my first concept sketches but i think it probably had a hand in helping me visualise what rodda was talking about when she described their robes as butterfly wings when they speed-travelled. like yeah big deep sleeves and floor trailing hems WOULD probably look like colourful butterfly wings in the wind,,

🥳 fun fact 🥳 azami be always hungry. if only she knew someone who liked to cook 🤔

i don't have much to say design-wise, kinda just did various doodling. they would probably be second in extravagance to the plains, but it's a different sort of detail? they are probably a bit more refined and elegant than the hirans who are probably more bold in their designs. torans grow to be vain and selfish (it's already started by adin's time) so they probably have a high value on the beauty of their belongings, and it probably began with imagery of beasts and plants and dragons in amethyst territory, "true" pictures. but as time went on it probably distorted a bit and became idealised and/or fantastical etc.

OKAY SO my brain bluescreened just now for a moment trying to figure out how a people who use magic to make life easier, were also the ones known for their weaving, a manual hands-on task (lief's cloak is praised as being worthy of toran looms, implying high grade; pretty sure this was supposed to be a hint that his mother is not who he thinks she is also). some conclusions are 1) they weave with magic (sad, horrible), 2) they weave as a past-time, for fun etc (okay) but i took it to a third option

for a long time ive been thinking about toran magic as like, a balance and an energy thing (because i like that stuff lol) they cannot create something from nothing, only change things. they couldnt summon a fire, but they could change a piece of wood to fire and start a campfire, or those more advanced could even change the air into fire. but honestly it's left me a bit unsatisfied. like how does that explain the tora-del highway? hELL tora itself? what happened to the marble that got carved away? also how can that mountain have been so perfect there was no cracks or seams?? or did they carve those bits out lol. questions for another day.

anyway i was thinking about how hobbies are good for you, you dont have to be good at something but it's good to do stuff for fun and when you do crafts you get a cool thing at the end of it that you made. but it's also like skills you can develop? and i wondered what if weaving is a starter skill that they learn, some of them at least. maybe there are different activities, and they do the one that speaks to them the most. there were other types of artisans in tora, just not as talked about (i guess they're robes are pretty iconic so it's easy for people to go wow robes wow weavers who made fabric for the robes so soft) like i distinctly remember barda remarking about how tora was untouched and why bandits wouldn't have stolen the carved box that ended up holding the auto-reply letters from the palace.

so what im thinking is that maybe this builds a foundation to help torans visualise and perform their magic?

it actually solves a problem ive had in my headcanons i feel like ive got seven eyes open rn 😂😂 but in relation to del culture and traditions, i've been thinking about there being a physical and spiritual realm of course, and maybe it's the comfort of threes but it felt like something was missing.

i dont know what to call it yet, but im thinking the third thing is like the glue, it connects all things, it's in everything. it's like a third realm but also more of like a medium maybe? kind of sappy but we can just call this the magical realm for now. i actually used to think of toran magic as being like a subset of the greater deltora magic, but now im thinking it's more like torans are more receptive to the magic realm, as del are to the spiritual, and the ralads to the physical; theyre the experts in these things, which is why unified deltora is important 😂; likewise dread gnomes specialise in gems, jalis in combat, mere in cunning, plains in hope perhaps? literally never thought about it quite like this so maybe i will process it different later and designate different specialties.

so when the torans are young, they learn a craft and these skills help them sort of "tap into" the magical realm. so in the case i first thought of, when a toran weaver starts to see and interact with the magical realm, the easiest way for them to engage with it would be to think of it as weaving. they might see the magical realm as threads that connect everything, and weave things together to get what they want. a potter might see it as a malleable mass and sculpt what they want. a carpenter might see it as something to carve, something to break and put together.

the magical realm is not a concrete thing at all, up to interpretation, perhaps a unique experience to anyone who could glimpse in; don't strictly have to be toran, but they are perhaps naturally receptive to it or it could even be entirely a knowledge thing and that they are taught about it more; someone like verity who had her eyes opened to this realm, and learned to interact with it on instinct. does open questions to what the hell is up with the plains lmao but i think thats another post.

sorry about all the "i'll tell you in another post" i was attempting to stay on track 😂😂 also there's a 90% chance im gonna forget to come back and write about them so if anyone is dying to know feel free to send me an ask or something???

also if you want to know more about these OCs let me know 👀 i can find an ask game or something maybe. it's a case of i know a lot but will forget it all if asked to speak freely, i need specific questions. i have also developed the first four a bit more, but the last three are not without character so they can still be included. maybe it will be a group effort and they will have Background.

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ginalongillustrations · 6 months ago

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Vox Machina Details

I realized that now that I've completed all of Vox Machina, I wanted to show off the symbols I chose for each member and their designs as some of them I'm super proud of! If you're unsure what any of the symbols are meant to convey, just read blow the line.

Keyleth

(side note, I finished her original version at like ep 35 and had worked so hard to stay away from spoilers so I had no idea what most of the symbols meant and was struggling to think of things)

Kraken- I included it because the kraken fight will go down in my personal history as the fight that was the biggest... slog to get through. You felt the weariness of it as shit just kept repeating, and unfortunately half the table was slightly drunk making everything worse, and it was so pivotal because Vax died and that hastened his deal with the raven Queen and it was Keyleth completing her journey and it was Tary's first real adventure. It also was right after my Roman Empire Vaxleth quote so it had to have a place.

Goldfish -iconic

Acorn- so this is one that has nothing to do with her journey, but it's something I chose to symbolize what I love about her. I love her passion for life and her willingness to protect it. I chose it after she went against Grog during the Whitestone Arc and ran back to help the townsfolk fight the zombie giant. I loved it because she refused to let those people fight on their own to live, and it really stuck with me. Her unadulterated anger at the death of the fire ashari and so many other times she cares about life and I wanted to represent that, so much that I included it in her personal symbol at the top of the designs.

Fire - obvious reasons

Raven feather - gonna represent the love of her life

Snowdrop- yeah Vax got two but I'm so glad I did because that last episode had me sobbing just like Marisha and it's such a symbol of goodbye and love and stolen time

Vex

She is one of the most straightforward ones, another one that I had help on from the community because I didn't want spoilers but did want to encompass her entire journey and not just what I had seen.

Grizzly paw - for the best companion out there

Gold coins - Her greed is such a defining trait for so much of her journey to the point where it, in part, got her killed by wanting to steal the armour. It is her hating to spend 30 gold on a very useful book, it is so much of her and I love it.

Sun - Paelor, since she was chosen by him

Broom - As much as I wasn't a fan of the broom, it truly is such a big part of her, her fighting technique, and her personality again tied to her greed that I couldn't help but add it.

The gun and the dagger - for the two most important people in her life.

Pike

Her ship - It's cute how often she brought it up even when we never once see her at sea. I think Ashley really enjoyed that part of her backstory even asking about it in campaign 2.

Her holy symbol - Sarenrae is the God who has my heart simply for her kindness to Pike. Her warmth and love and how important that relationship is to Pike. More so than any other cleric, it feels like they get each other and I love that. I'm also sad Sarenrae hasn't been around much in the other campaigns. Someone give this God some love please (I'm on ep 46 of c3 so who knows)

The lute - even if they never go on a date during the campaign, that relationship is super important. It was the first relationship I shipped in VM and how often they look out for each other. I'll always be sad Ashley couldn't be there for ep 85

Grog's axe - adoptive siblings for life

Iris - since it's the flower of Westruun, I thought I should add also because Matt was able to pull that out of his ass when asked was incredible and needs to be remembered always.

Glabrezu claw - even if it's not a death we saw, that death echoed throughout the campaign and it affected Pike so much

Scanlan

Scanlan was harder. So many of his moments are intangible. How do you draw a counterspell? A wish? The hunt for drugs that are actually just cooking spices? the meat man? Modify memory? Scanlan will always be MVP of the VM campaign in my eyes, and so it was so hard to do him justice.

The three eyes of Ioun - No one expected Scanlan to be chosen but chosen he was and the world is better for it.

Triceratops - That fight was the first time Scanlan really showed he could hold his own. Hell, the rest of VM came out worse with 5 people than he did. It was the first time you saw how much of a beast Scanlan could be.

Pike's mace- the woman who made him better

The beret - I had just finished the briarwood Arc what I was working on him and I thought this the best representation of Sam willing to just roll with the stupidest running bits.

The Burt Reynolds mustache - His love of disguises and also one of his most iconic lines

The flute - representing his meeting Kaylie and how that changed so much of his journey.

Percy

I struggled with Percy and his symbols because I couldn't always grasp what was important and what drove him as tangible things outside his family, Revenge, and Vex. I also just have the most trouble connecting to Percy so I think that played a part.

The bird skull - I felt it showed his connect to others? As it passed through his hands it showed a care for others and I dunno, this one just stuck with me. So it's there.

Black powder -no way in hell I'm leaving Viktor out

De Rolo crest - His family and all that he lost

An arrow - his future, his shining north star, his better half

Black smoke - Orthax and how much control it had over him

Vampire teeth - a bit corny I know but had no idea how to represent the briarwoods so I rolled with this.

Vax

Snowdrop - the mirror Keyleth, and if you have the prints next to each other with Vax on the right and Keyleth on the left, the snowdrops mirror. They're the only two of the series to have that (can you tell who my favourite couple is?)

The raven Queen mask - she needed her own spot because she is.. the looming shadow over so much of Vax, his choices, and his story. She is unrelenting, she is ever-present, she is inevitable. And I hate her for it.

The arrow - twins for life

The antlers - This man supports Keyleth's rights and her wrongs and I adore him for it. I love that he says if you're going to your death to fight this dragon then I'm with you no questions asked. He worships her and it makes me weak at the knees.

The feather - those wings become as much a part of his identity as the broom is for Vex.

The belt - his love for that belt but also his use of equipment. Vax, more than anyone I think, has his identity was tied to his equipment and his icknic moments. His boots, his armour, his belt, his daggers. They make up so much of him.

Grog

He's another super straightforward one because we'll, Grog wasn't meant to have a deep and rich and complex character. He has amazing moments but again how do I show them? Craven's edge was something I tried for but it just didn't read as exactly that so I sadly left it out. Believe me, it hurt.

The deck of many things - Those cards were Grog's roman empire and it bit him in the ass at the end and I love it. Also just Travis and his absolute inability to not push the red buttons.

Ale - no group has loved taverns as much as VM, and no one in that group loves a night of drinking as much as Grog.

The Lute - for his best bud

The Mace - for his sister

The shapes - callback to the original audio intro with Grog being first

The bag of holding - few things were as paired as Grog and that bag. No one has their inventory as well organized as that Goliath.

Tary

Blondies - I know he was only a portion of it and I think because he was there for the time they mentioned it the most, I connect Tary the most with the Slayers Cake. It's the friendships he formed in his time with the group.

The list - thinking of him saving Keyleth and getting to mark off rescuing a maiden will never fail to make me laugh

The arrow - his best friend

The gun - his other best friend

The book - his many grand tales all documented in one fantastical book

The helmet - I really wanted it in the original design but it just wasn't going to work with the pose I wanted, so it ended up at the bottom.

Yepp so these are the things I connect with these characters the most. It's silly and so much effort for such a small part of the print, but I'm proud of them.

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ask-the-splitmind-au · 4 months ago

Text

Meet the Saint (Splitmind AU)

Reblogs > Likes (Reblogging helps out a lot, even if it doesn't seem like much!)

The pacifistic god

Nothing of note about the design here, except for that his design actually changes upon each failed ascension. 1) It gains more echo-like attributes (the golden ears in this case) and 2) another gold diamond appears on his tail.

Tagging Station

@doodlebug091

@keeper-of-magic

@angeliteonfridgeduty

@stupidscav

@batnip

@riverripplespeaks

@cherry-b0mber

@luxdraconia

@voldkat

@lunas-sketchbook

Pre - Sliver

Saint was not iterator-made in this world. Instead, he was once a normal sluggie in Sliver's region, but when she wanted to make an organism to try and ascend things (her solution), she wanted to skip a step or two by taking a random cat from outside instead of wasting precious time making her own. Saint just happened to be too close.

After being Sliver's personal lab rat for several cycles, being experimented on and toyed with like an object instead of a living being, it finally was given the power Sliver had desired: He could ascend living beings, even if they weren't attuned to this world. She was trying to make it so that Saint itself didn't need to attune to use this power, but was interrupted.

Post - Sliver

She was interrupted by the same dark slugcat that interrupted everyone else. It introduced itself, but Saint immediately leapt to try and ascend the creature, fearful for his safety. After the creature, named The Firstborn, successfully avoided death and Sliver picked up her cat, it passed her one of the pearls. Sliver was almost ecstatic to be given the ability to ascend creatures herself that she jumped at the chance to put herself in Saint's mind (no matter how opposed it was to the idea).

Saint attempted to ascend Sliver herself before the process could be finished, but all he managed to do was harm her systems (Saint missed hitting anything crucial, but since the whole structure is somewhat alive it did something) and cause her message for a triple affirmative to be sent out too early. Frustrated, Sliver quickly finished up the process and disappeared, leaving every other iterator confused and terrified of what happened to her from the sudden message.

Ever since, Saint and Sliver fight for control over Saint's body. The pair tried to ascend once, since both wanted to, but when they were rejected and thrown back into the world again, Sliver was infuriated. Saint . . . seemed to come to a numb acceptance, but gave Sliver control as she wanted so she could try it again. After the second failed ascension, she wanted to keep trying, but Saint didn't want to when it knew it wasn't going to work.

As more time passed, Sliver became more frustrated, while Saint became more accepting to his predicament and wanted to make the most of the eternal life it was given. However, Sliver became more aggressive in trying to take control, leading to Saint essentially having to mentally block Sliver out as best as he can. Feeling like she'd lost her control over what was originally her creation, Sliver became determined to make Saint as miserable as she was (and to keep trying to ascend). Each time she's in control, she has one goal: Make it to karma 10. If they're already there, she has two goals: Ascend, and ascend everyone/everything Saint holds dear.

Saint roams places, looking for a good spot to settle down. He's passed many other scugerators, though has been careful not to let any know of the one in it's mind. It's heard about to uproar he indirectly caused from the erroneous message, and doesn't want anyone bothering it about the topic. Aside from that, he simply wants peace and tranquility in life, but has to spend much of it's time preventing Sliver from doing what she wants.

In Saint's travels, one of the friends it made that is still around now is a strawberry lizard he affectionately named 'Paci', short for Pacifist, due to how polite and calm the small lizard tends to be.

Saint loves Paci dearly, and does it's best to spoil the lizard rotten. Saint's peaceful disposition is also broken when Paci comes under fire, resorting to anger should harm befall his precious partner.

#rain world #rain world au #rw #rw au #rain world art #rw art #splitmind au #rw splitmind au #rain world saint #rw saint #rain world sliver of straw #rw sliver of straw #rain world lizard #rw lizard #rain world strawberry lizard #rw strawberry lizard

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quartersety-of-a-holsety · 8 months ago

Text

I made myself a Fire Emblem theme for my solitaire game

Deets under the cut

Base theme: Fable Deck: Solitaire Celebrates Effect: Stars

PLAYING BACKGROUND:

CARD BACKING:

ACES:

Ace of Diamonds: Hoshido/Birthright

Ace of Spades: Mark of Naga/Brand of the Exalt

Ace of Hearts: Valla/Revelation

Ace of Clubs: Nohr/Conquest

KINGS:

King of Diamonds: Lewyn

King of Spades: Alm

King of Hearts: Eltshan

King of Clubs: Eliwood

QUEENS:

Queen of Diamonds: Mikoto

Queen of Spades: Edelgard

Queen of Hearts: Tiki

Queen of Clubs: Michaiah

JACKS:

Jack of Diamonds: Forde

Jack of Spades: Inigo

Jack of Hearts: Seliph

Jack of Clubs: Leo

IMAGE SOURCES:

Background: Here

Card backing: Here

Aces: The French Wikipages for Awakening and Fates

Face cards: Heroes and official art [Inigo specifically here]

FUN FACTS NOBODY ASKED FOR:

The face cards did not align this way naturally. All of them had to be zoomed in at least twice, most four, and a few had to be scooted over a little to avoid being cropped in the wrong places or to fix general alignment issues

The game doesn't properly support transparent images, so I had to give each face card a background; really all I did was colour drop the deck's base colour and use that as the background so it would match

Each face card was shrunk to the card's base dimensions [422x562] with the background being twice that size [844x1124] to allow for easier placement without running into a black background because of said transparency issues

I didn't make any changes to the playing background. I just set it and left it as is

The card backing isn't quite aligned in the center, but I have no motivation to try and fix that right now

The backing border was completely unintentional. I chose that deck to build off of simply because of the gold rim around the face-up cards. I didn't realise it would come with a backing border, but hey it works

I chose Fable as the base theme to build off of for two reasons: 1. Aesthetic™, and 2. The background music is the closest to Fire Emblem music the game has [I really wish you could choose your own in-game ambience instead of having to use a preset theme first]

The stars effect has no real impact on the theme, I just like it

I initially wanted Ferdinand to be the Jack of Diamonds, but I didn't want to use his pre-skip design, which is all Heroes had, so Forde was chosen instead

Takumi was briefly considered for Jack of Diamonds and King of Clubs before those roles went to Forde and Eliwood

Ishtar was going to be the Queen of Clubs, but I decided three Genealogy characters was enough, so Michaiah took this spot

Other candidates for Queen of Clubs were Cherche, Celica, Seiros, and Eirika

I went with the Chrom!Inigo edit instead of normal Inigo or Lazward simply because Chrom!Inigo is best Inigo and you cannot change my mind

Alm, Michaiah, and Forde are the only ones who use official art instead of Heroes art. I preferred Alm and Michaiah's official art while Forde isn't even in the game yet [get on that, IS]

I originally wanted to use Edelgard's official post-skip art as I didn't [and still don't] like how her Heroes art sharply cuts off, but it ultimately clashed badly when trying to align it, so I had to use her Legendary alt [her pre-skip and Three Hopes designs were out of the question from the get-go]. I aligned the cutoff with the edge of the card as best I could and I'm surprised it worked

The only set in stone characters from the very beginning were Eltshan, Seliph, and Inigo. The rest I decided as I went on

Tiki was completely spur of the moment. As soon as I remembered she existed, I was like "Oh yeah, adult Tiki would be a perfect Queen of Hearts". I saw her Brave alt and didn't look back

I briefly considered using Eltshan's performance alt, but decided against it

While I knew I wanted Seliph as the Jack of Hearts, I initially wasn't sure which version to use, but I ultimately went with the version I liked the most, which was his Brave alt

Lewyn was a toss-up as to which version I wanted to use, but I went with his festival alt as I liked it more than his normal version

Other characters I considered but with no solid placement were Sigurd, Arvis, Lucina, Ayra, Soleil, Dorothea, Olivia, Deirdre, Say'ri, Elincia, Ryouma, Innes, Tana, Ephraim, Felix, and Constance

Inigo and the aces required some additional editing to remove their white backgrounds before setting up the off-white backgrounds they were supposed to have for this set. I worked on Inigo's for so long trying to edit out lossy pixels around the edges of his art that the editor crashed on me. Hurray for autorecovery

#fire emblem #microsoft solitaire #i'm seriously in love with this i've looked at this for five hours now #though technically i made this theme a few days ago but who cares

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oceansssblue · 10 months ago

Text

[THE BAD BATCH]— "CANVAS"

ECHO/OFC 💖

OMEGA HAS THE BEST IDEA. SHE HAS BEEN EYING THE ARTIST ACROSS CID'S SALON FOR OVER A WEEK NOW; AND SHE'S FINALLY GOING TO ORDER THE BEST PRESENT EVER FOR ECHO.

WARNINGS: FLEETING MENTIONS OF ECHO'S BODY ISSUES&EXPERIENCE (NOTHING EXPLICIT). 99% FLUFF.

ONE-SHOT INSPIRED BY THIS WONDERFUL @cloned-eyes ART PIECE OF TATTOED ECHO! 💙✨

Omega counts the credits in her hands. She has been saving them for months, now; no more unnecessary mantel mix or cool accesories for her bow even if they make her momentarily happy. She's sure Echo's reaction will top all of that; and she has finally collected enough to buy the present she has being eying since she discovered the small tattoo parlour across Cid's salon. It's a cool place; full of bright neon lights and colourful images and shapes painted all over the walls. She has never actually entered the parlour; but she has seen enough through the displays of the window. She wasn't actively looking for a place like that at all, to start with; but once discovered, Omega couldn't think about anything else.

It's not just tattoos that the artist makes; but she draws and paints on every single surface imaginable too. Omega has seen a long line of clients bringing her all sort of pieces for her to decorate, to give some life to; house accesories, jewelry, books, speeders... Everything is a canvas for her. Omega's favourite one was probably a landscape design painted in a beautiful modern style on the back of a datapad.

She's got talent, the young woman that works with his collague in the shop. While she does the main art, her co-worker seems to take care of supplies and management. He helps with purely ink-on-skin jobs too. They're both not human, though they're not too far off anatomically speaking. They're definitely on the humanoid range; just small variations to their features and a whole different set of colour palette. Omega wonders if they came to Ord Mantell together from their native planet or if their encounter here was a mere coincidence. She's always curious; even about strangers that have nothing to do with her.

Their skin has a natural faint purplish tint, and they have big eyes with a pronounced double circled iris –the inner layer a darker lilac colour, the outer one a vibrant gold– and washed-out white marks on their neck and face. She has short purple hair, barely grazing her chin, and always wears six or more small braids that sometimes join together in beautiful ways. A bunch of earings hang of each of her slightly pointed ears; and tattoos roam all over her arms and the sides of her neck. She has two small ones on one cheek as well; black figures and dots Omega's not sure if they hold meaning or not. His co-worker looks and dresses in a similar way; comfortable cargo pants with military-like boots, a red T-shirt and black vest. They both look so cool Omega hasn't grown tired of staring at them yet.

The young teenager half skips happily to the parlour; a replica of Echo's prosthetics inside the bag hanging heavily on her shoulder. She had asked Tech to build them a week and a half ago; explaining her idea to the goggled clone and inmediately achieving his aproval. Tech had told her it was a very considerate and original gift. He had jumped at the challenge of building a copy of Echo's three main prosthetics –his scomp, and both of his cybernetic legs– in record time and without any of the others noticing it. Well, except Hunter, who had obviously heard his quiet screwing in the middle of the night and had quickly been informed of the plan.

Omega radiated energy when she opened the door to the parlour. Her big eyes quickly found their way to the artist that would make her idea come true, and she walked towards the front desk with a spring to her step.

"Hi! I love your work, and I'd like you to draw a bunch of stuff for me, please" she blurted out, her enthusiastic innocent voice inmediately catching the attention of the humanoid.

The artist tilted her head to the side, examining the young girl up and down. The new comer looked to be around thirteen or so; a shock of beautiful blond hair complementing her tanned skin. Her purplish-golden eyes sparkled with curiosity and humour.

"You're a bit young to get your skin inked, kid" she answered with a small chuckle. "Luckyly for you I don't really have an age minimum 'round here. Don't come crying next week when you change your mind, though. Erasing is always a torture, and a loss of my time. You sure?"

Omega's eyes widenned comically. She laughed while shaking her head vigorously to the sides, one hand coming up in a clear sign of rejection.

"Oh, no! No. I don't want to get a tattoo!" she frowned, the posibility passing through her head a second later before she nochalantly shrugged it away. "At least not now. I actually brought you some pieces for you to customize? Like you did with some of your other clients?"

The woman chuckles at Omega's lively personality. She points at the heavy bag hanging of her shoulder.

"I'm assuming they're in there?" She guesses, and Omega quickly nods and carefully places the bag in the floor, opening it up for the artist to see.

The woman crouches down and curiously peers into it. She frowns in confussion, and one hand cautiously hovers over one of the pieces while she tries to make the shape of the pile of cramped metal in her head. She realises what the girl is carrying and tilts her head up to her with clear surprise in her face.

"Are these prosthetics?"

Omega nod's proudly.

"Yeah! My brother Tech managed to make an extra improved pair for Echo –he's my other brother– in no time and I wanted you to decorate them before I give them to him. He's had his own for a while now, but I know he's not fully comfortable with them yet, even if he tries not to show it. So I thought personalizing them a bit would make him feel like they're more him, you know?"

Omega waits for the womans aproval. Tech said it was a good idea, so it must be, right? Anyhow, she kinda wants the opinion of the artist herself too. She makes a living of this; of giving soul and personality to pieces that form a part of others lifes.

To her relief, the woman seems gladly surprised. She slowly takes out one of the leg prosthetics and turns it carefully in her hand, examining the surface and caressing it here and there in an almost distracted way.

"It sounds like a cool idea, kid" she hesitates, not wanting to be the one to break the young girl's heart. "But customizing such large complex pieces is pretty expensive, specially if you want to add specific details yourself. Do you have the money?"

Omega nods proudly and takes the credits out of her pocket. She shows them to her with a smile.

"Yup! I have been saving for weeks now. It's enough, right?"

Omega sees the expression on the artist face fall, and her eyes widen. She looks back and forth between the credits on her hands and the artist; knowing what's going on.

"Is it that much more expensive?" She asks, worried, nibbling on her lower lip, trying to think of a solution to it. "I-maybe I can ask Tech and Hunter for more, uh maybe Wrecker, or I can sell some stuff around and..."

The artist interrumpts her rumbling with a hand on her shoulder, standing up besides her.

"Look, sweetheart... I can't use all my current materials in this pieces for this price, but I must have some old stock somewhere in the back. Outdated stuff is much cheaper, and we can forget about my personal fee as well, so you won't have to pay the extra. Or my time of work. Just the pure old raw materials, that should cut the price drastically" she eyes her expectant expression and the hope in her big eyes and sighs, pulling up a smile. "You can give me what you want and we'll call it a deal, alright?"

"Really?" the blonde nearly squeals, knees bouncing up and down, and the artist's smile widens.

"Yeah. Take the pieces to the front desk and lay them out. Do you have a clear idea of what you want to do with them?"

Omega quickly follows and she inmediately grabs her datapad –one of Tech's old ones– and starts pulling up photos and ideas of designs she had been investigating these last few days. She turns the datapad to the woman and grins.

"I've got loads!"

The artist smiles in amusement and pats the chair next to her. Omega hops on it and tilts her face to her, expectantly. The humanoid nods and points at the datapad with a vague gesture.

"Okay. Let's hear it, then".

(•••)

Viana didn't make a habit of being underpayed. Every inch of the fee for her job was perfectly detailed and taken into consideration; materials, time, number of details, backgrounds, how large was the piece, if it required a special varnish to seal the art, colours, layers... It wasn't the same customizing a watch with barely more than the first letter of someone's name than to decorate someone's speeder; so her prices really varied depending on each request.

The girl's –Omega, she had after learned– story had moved her enough to do a little favor for her. Just an exception to her usual strict rules. The blonde had showed her several images on her datapad –pointing out his brother Tech had runned a check up on her and decided she could be trusted with said information– and the woman had quickly put two plus two together. Those guys were clones, and not the ones that followed the laws of the Empire. These were guys that still remember what was honour, respect, doing the right thing. Viana still remembered how Rak and her had been able to escape their home planet with their help.

Truth is the saasra has always admired them. They were great soldiers, great men; and she had come from a tribe of warriors herself. She had long left those years behind; but she still payed attention to the same things. Plus, Echo's particular story was something else. Omega hadn't really gotten into details; just quickly passing of a coment on how he had been gravely injured in battle and how his body looked like now. Viana had read into the images shown before said change; the proud posture of the ARC trooper surrounded by his brothers and friends. She couldn't imagine what he had been forced to push through; not only accepting his own new body, but coping with the loss of so many dear people too.

She hand't been able to think on anything else after Omega left her workshop. The feeling of a new exciting project surged within her, ideas and splashes of colours and shapes constantly popping in her mind. Viana knew she wouldn't be able to sleep that night unless she started with this unusual project; so she had begun with the initial designs.

She always follows the same process. She draws a lazy sketch; absolutely everything she thinks could go well with the piece. Then she picks them out; re-doing them in better shapes and lines on a new datapad canvas. Once that is done, she meassures the original piece and replicates the dimensions on her app; moving her figures and details and overlapping them in layers so everything is taken to it's destined spot. She plays with colours and details –nothing too specific– in her datapad too; and then she moves onto the real piece. She draws the final selected sketch on it and then it's all a matter of colours and definition; swirls and micro-details. It's her favourite part; watching her ideas finally take life. Making dull pieces stand out.

Three days after Omega's arrival on her parlour, Viana has already drawn the main sketches out. She wanted to personalize everything to the detail, like Omega had requested; every inch of the former soldier's cybernetics was perfectly planned out. Though Omega would probably like something vibrant and jazzy best, the saasra knew it had to be something discreet enough so it wouldn't interfere with Echo's posible future misions. Viana didn't exactly knew what they did for a living, or what the future held for them; but she could get an idea. Times were difficult now, dangerous. She couldn't make the prosthetics striking enough to catch people's attention. It had to be somewhat subtle.

With that main reason in mind, she had designed a background of greys, blacks and reds for all of the three pieces in her hands. The lines parted separetly on the top of the scomp prosthetic before travelling down and crossing each other and swirling at the end; joining together in a splash of dark red. The same went for the legs; full opalascent black for were the top part attached to real skin and slowly switching to a gradient grey as they went down to the feet. Small streaks of dark red also swirled around each other as they went; almost following the shapes of human muscles in soft and precises curves. Not wanting them to look too perfectly made –he was a soldier, after all, not an inmaculate coruscanti model– she added some groundge details too; smearing some black and grey paint together here and there without any particular shape, and with her metalic sharp brushes, simulating scratches and dips on the surface.

Once that was out of the way –she had chosen those reds, greys and blacks to match the rest of the clone's armour by Omega's pictures– she followed with the small details. Viana had given it much thought. She wanted the prosthetics to really feel part of Echo, as Omega had in mind too. She wanted to give him something with which he could feel like himself. That right after he tried them on, he'd feel more confident and reassured. And not just because it was a –poorly– payed comissioned job.

Viana decided on a mix of what seemed to be the clone's most important aspects of his life. Omega had more or less explained parts of his life to her, so she could understand what to work with. Viana knew she needed to include five main pieces of Echo's life in these; the Jedi, Clone Force 99 –Omega's brothers, herself included now–, Captain Rex, the Domino Squad, and his twin Fives.

For the Jedi, Viana drew tiny light-sabers on the edges of each prothesis that at first glance looked like a line of simple stiches. She couldn't plant something on the surfaced that screamed "hey, Empire, right here, i'm your enemy" after all, so it was an unasumming little thing. No-one would find out unless they specifically looked for it. Hell, Echo might not even realise it himself.

For Clone Force 99, she designs four washed-out white skulls to compliment the one already etched on the top left of his chest plate. She adds a very carefully hand-drawn detail for each one, so it represents the rest of the members of the squad; one skull crossed by a delicate black bow, another with a stripe across the head for the long-haired clone's bandana, one with the crosshair on the right eye and the last one with a myriad of scars coming from the left side of the skull and ending on the left.

She adds a splash of a hand print for Captain Rex around the prothesis holding the scomp. The blue sticks up too much with the rest of the colour pattern, though, even if its a dark shade with some black in between; so Viana adds some minor swirls and slashes of the same tone here and there.

Following Omega's idea, she draws five small domino's in black and grey around one of the cybernetic's ankles; tying them up to each other with a thin line of scarlet red. A black five is a perfect replica of one of Omega's pictures on the other ankle; red and greys and blues swirling around the number as if trying to cling to it.

Viana gives a few extra last touches and examines the three pieces in front of her. Satisfied and proud, she gives them a final varnish so they hold all kind of atmospheric adversities; and two weeks after Omega's request, the woman has her art ready to be send on it's way.

(•••)

Viana makes her way to where Omega told her their ship would be docked with her request carefully placed inside a box with the parlour's purple logo. It's heavy, but not as much as she first imagine the prothesis would be; she's able to carry them without much effort til she's standing right in front of the Marauder –Omega's home–.

She examines the external appearence of the ship with intrigue. Omega's a bubbly thing, and she couldn't stop talking in excitement when she visited her workplace. Viana had half-listened distractedly while she pulled out basic designs and drew quick sketches for the blonde to sway in one direction or the other. By the way her eyes filled with warmth and her smile widened while talking of this ship, the saarsa knew it wasn't just a ship for them at all.

There's two men standing on the outside, one crouched down while examining something with a pack of wrenchers and tools by his side; the other observing with his arms crossed. After spending a few hours of the last two weeks staring at Omega's pics, they're easily recognizable; the one with the long hair and red bandana is obviously Hunter, while the one doing the repairs is Tech. She can't see the other two –Wrecker and Echo himself– so she asumes they're either inside or somewhere else in Ord Mantell.

Hunter's eyes flicker around his surroudings before they land on her. It's like he noticed someone staring; she wondered if she had been doing that with too much intensity. To show she's not a threat –this guy is clearly ready and alert– she shows a small gentle smile and hesitantly takes a step towards them.

"Can we help you?" Hunter asks, frowning unconsciously, his stance widening slightly while turning towards her.

Tech glances up and his eyes quickly roams over the newcomer's appearance, quickly drawing the right conclusions by the expresion on his face.

"Oh! You must be the artist from Omega's most recent quest" he nods as a way of hello, standing up and adjusting the right lense of his goggles before continuing talking with her. "I asume that you bring the final results?"

Viana nods and brings the box in her hands up as a demonstration. Hunter relaxes and Tech nods, curiously walking towards her.

"May I have a look?"

They're really polite, and really handsome too. Most clones are, of course. It's no wonder people used to like going to clone's pubs before.

"Sure" Viana answers, her mere observation not making her shy away in the slightest.

She patiently waits while Tech lifts the lid of the box up and takes a peak inside. Hunter can't hold back his curiosity either and follows him. They both stay silent for so long that Viana starts to feel a bit nervous and hesitant about her work.

"Is it... Is it what Omega hoped for?"

She's usually very confident about herself; but Echo's situation is delicate, and the details she has added in the cybernetics, albeit by Omega's request, are too personal for a stranger to play with. She hopes she hasn't overstepped.

"It exceeds my expectations, in fact" points out Tech, to her inmediate relief. "And I am sure Omega's as well. I'm particularly surprised at how detailed and lively this are without drawing too much attention to it, nothing too vibrant or extravagant. It should work perfectly well with our kind of lifestyle. Congratulations are in order, I believe".

Tech has a weird way of speaking; Viana's lips almost tugging upwards in another smile. She feels proud and happy at his observarions, though; and Hunter thinks the same as well by his firm grateful nod.

"Thank you for doing this" the latest says, his voice slightly rougher than the average clone but equally gentle. "I know for a fact Omega doesn't have enough credits to pay for this. She can be very persuasive, I should know. We can pay you a bit extra ourselves".

The offer is tempting, and Viana has spent a lof of her free time doing this; but she wouldn't feel good if she took the credits in. She feels this project has been made personal –there's always one of those once in a while– and she just feels lucky and proud to have produced such an important piece. It's obvious these guys don't have much themselves considering they don't even have a proper house; and she's sure they've already been through a lot. A bit of generosity and genuine compassion wouldn't hurt them.

"Save it for your family" she answers, then. "It has been a fun experience for me. Plus, I'm glad I'm able to do something for you lot".

Hunter watches her in surprise. They're different enough from the original clone templates that people don't usually associate them with clones, specially with a kid by their side; furthermore, they don't usually find people grateful for their service anymore.

Viana smiles.

"I'm native from Saar" she explains, and Hunter inmediately recognises the planet's name. "I remember".

A heavy silence falls between the three of them. Saar was completely destroyed by the Separatists back then; the army of warriors ruled by King Jarelan refusing to lay down their weapons after their monarch's death. They had called for the Republic's help; and two battalions of clones had been sent to them. They hand't been enough to save the planet form the separatist wrath; but they had saved uncountable lives, and the saarsa's had been able to relocate in another planet with the help of the Senate.

In that moment, someone walks down the Marauder towards them. Viana's attention is quickly snapped to the new presence; inmediately recognising the soldier in front of her. He frowns in confussion at the stranger talking with his brothers; but Echo quickly asumes she's just another woman swayed by Hunter's –or maybe Tech's– appeal and doesn't pay her too much attention while he turns to him.

"Hey, Sarge, I'm gonna go replenish our suplies now" he notifies, feeling a bit restless under the stranger's attentive purple and gold eyes. "Com's open, if you need something. Be back in a few".

Hunter nods, gives a small worded agreement and Echo's eyes glance one last time at the woman before walking away. Viana is sure he has some body issues like Omega explained; but right now he looks so confident and handsome –every bit of the perfect soldier– that the saarsa can't help but feel intrigued and attracted to him.

"Always this interested in your clients?" Hunter quietly asks, amused.

Viana tears his eyes from Echo's retreating figure and laughs.

"Not usually, no" she answers calmly, unashamed of being caught by them. "But you can learn a lot about a person from customising their things. And I had a lot of pics and details from him from that blonde girl of yours."

"So you are interested in him, then?" Tech pops in, and Viana shrugs while a telling smile makes her way on her face.

"He's hot, isn't he?" she places the box in Tech's hands, and decides it's time to return to her shop. "Tell Omega I said hi."

Hunter hums thoughtfully while watching her leave.

(•••)

Echo makes his way to the tattoo parlour with a mess of emotions twirling inside his mind. He couldn't even describe what he first felt when he opened Omega's present and his eyes landed on a new customized set of prosthetics; couldn't explain how it felt trying them on. Every swirl of paint, every line and detail... It was all him, the batch's reds and greys and Legion's 501 blue's; the brave people he had sworn to serve and his two families etched on his second skin now, both Force Clone 99 with each of their distinctives, and his Domino brothers. And Fives. Oh, Fives. He would have thought his prosthetics to be the coolest shit ever if he had been there to see him.

Echo had always had a tough time getting used to his cybernetics. He had been forced to accept them pretty quickly, mind you –inmediately jumping back to the fight in Anaxes and after that–; but there had always been a residual disgust and sense of inedequancy in the silence of his mind, after all was set and done. Suddenly half droid, it had been difficult to adjust; even if his new abilities were actually valuable to the team now. This prosthetics, on the other hand... They carried so much meaning. They hold little parts of his story, of his people; and he had felt inmediately conected to them. Echo opened the doors of the shop with a mess on his mind but feeling confident in his steps like never before.

His eyes inmediately found the stranger from the day before and he aproached her in contemplative silence. She was working on something, eyes stuck to her datapad and one of those tech-pencils on her right hand; brow furrowed and lips pursed in concentration.

"We're not taking any more clients for today" she barely mumbled, without taking a glance at the newcomer. "Come back tomorrow, please".

Echo studied her. She resembled a human, but she was undeniably different; her skin a faint purple and her eyes shining brightly even when pointed down at her datapad. His eyes wondered over each mark on her face.

"I just wanted to personally thank you" he voiced, patiently. "You did a great job with these".

She took a fleeting glance at him, nodding distractedly; inmediately abandoning her current sketch when she recognised who he was and straightening in her chair.

"Echo!" she exclaimed, surprised. He gave her a small nod and smile, and tried to stay still while her bright eyes roamed over him.

She hummed appreciately and showed him a wonderfull grin.

"You make a good-looking canvas, soldier".

Echo chuckles, left hand shyly travelling to the back of his neck, and pulls a smile as well.

Gathering up his courage, he tilts his head.

"Fancy going out for a drink, now that your closing the shop?"

Viana is momentarily stunned; but she melts and quickly nods, eager. Hunter and Tech must have pointed out her interest to him; but she doesn't really care. Echo is hot –undeniably so wearing her work–and she hasn't got any other plans for tonight.

"Give me five to close this up and we'll go" she asks.

Echo is surprised –and at the same time, relieved– at how easily all of this is; and waits patiently for Viana to finish her sketch and lock the doors. They walk to none other than Cid's salon chatting with each other and stealing glances along the way.

Maybe he can have some luck after all.

THE END.

---------------------

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

DAMN, THAT WAS A LONG ONE! I FELT SO INSPIREEEED. I'M HAPPY WITH WHAT CAME OUT. DID YOU LIKE IT TOO? LET ME KNOW! HELPS ME STAY MOTIVATED TO CONTINUE WRITING : )

REBLOG IF YOU CAN!

REQUEST/PROMPTS OPENED. WHAT WOULD U LIKE TO READ NEXT?

MORE CLONE WARS & ARCANE CONTENT COMING!

Xx,

Sky.

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mumms-the-word · 8 months ago

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BG3 Tav Backstory Bash

This is a challenge to help people flesh out their Tav’s backstory by exploring their past. It is organized into four sections with seven prompts. You can treat this as a monthly challenge or a general project. You can write headcanons, fics, or share art based on the prompts! You can interpret the prompts however you want. If you want to share use the tag #bg3backstorybash

Got tagged by @elspethdekarios who already knows like way too much about Dani (I always pick Dani for these things, even though I should try to do them for Ardynn, Freyr, and Invi too). I'm insane and did all of the prompts from @kelandrin's original post. Anyone who steals this absolutely does not have to do that.

I'm tagging everyone. All of you. Everyone single person with a Tav.

Meridan "Dani" Zavrai (later Dekarios)

Age: 25

Mephistopheles Tiefling • College of Lore Bard • Entertainer • Chaotic Good

For your sanity, it's all under the cut c:

Baby:

Parents

Dani is the daughter of Maeva Zavrai and some unknown, unnamed (for me) deadbeat bard who never stuck around. Obviously Maeva knew his name, but she never spoke it after he left, because there was no point in dredging him back up.

They met in a tavern. Maeva was working as a barmaid to save up money to accomplish her dream of becoming a talented seamstress who designed elegant clothing. A certain handsome tiefling bard visited one day and the two hit it off really well. He ended up sticking around for a few months right up until the night Maeva told him that she thought she was pregnant. He conveniently disappeared the next day. No notes, no goodbyes. Maeva saw it coming a mile away, but it still stung.

Around the time Dani was a few months old, though, Brannon Rufford stopped by with his wife and brother, calling themselves the Merry Rovers. Brann's wife was heavily pregnant the night they stopped to perform at Maeva's tavern, and went into labor that same night. Maeva assisted with the birth despite not being much of a nursemaid, but Brann's wife died due to complications. Brann was...broken, and at a loss, and wasn't sure what to do next. Maeva offered to nurse his infant daughter for a few days while he figured something out. He and his brother disappeared for a week, but Brann then came back with a handful of gold and a strange request. If he worked to provide money for her, Dani, and his new daughter, Liara, could she care for his daughter for a year or two? Maeva reluctantly agreed, and from then on Brann became a kind of adopted dad to Dani, while Maeva became an adopted mom to Liara.

Birth

Dani was born in a room in the tavern where Maeva worked at the time. It was relatively uneventful as far as births go, but poor Maeva was expected to get back to work only days after giving birth, or else risk losing her room over the tavern. She moved in temporarily with her mother until she met Brann, and Brann's handful of gold and continued support allowed her to purchase a ramshackle house of her own.

First word

Probably "mumma" or something. Maeva was all Dani had for the first several months of her life. Maeva's mom was there, too, but she died before Dani could have any real memory of her.

When they first walked

She was probably a very average 10-11 months or so. I can just see her doing cute butt-scooches for the longest time, with her grandmother tutting that she's falling behind, right up until Maeva brings Liara home. When she first comes home, Dani pulls herself up to peek down into the makeshift cradle where Liara is laying, and it's obvious she's trying to make sense of this not-blue baby with no tail and round ears. Maeva tells her that Liara is going to be staying with them for a while and that it will mean some changes. After that, she's a little more inclined to walk (in part out of necessity).

Tantrum

Dani has had so many tantrums (though she's adapted her style since her baby days). Her first significant tantrum was probably after Liara had joined their household, but after Maeva's mother had died. Maeve had to bring both of them to work at the tavern and had placed them in a corner behind the bar with a couple of wooden toys to keep them occupied. While she was off cleaning tables, Liara snatched one of Dani's toys and Dani just had to scream about it. Just an absolute racket, which set Liara off, so now there are two crying babies in the corner. The tavern owner threatened to fire Maeva if she couldn't find someone to watch her brats, so Maeva quit and returned home to turn her place into a seamstress shop, something she'd been planning to do for ages anyway.

First sickness

Very early in Dani's infancy, she caught a mild cold thanks to the winter chill. Maeva was beside herself. This was her first kid, she didn't have much money for a healer, and she didn't know the first thing about soothing a baby who was hurting from upset tummies, stuffy noses, and other symptoms that must have been very, very new to a baby as young as Dani was. She ended up running to her mother's house in the wee hours of the morning half-convinced Dani was going to be dead by sunrise, until her mother took the baby, told Maeva to go to sleep, and had Dani snoozing peacefully within the hour.

Thunderstorm

Dani probably slept through most thunderstorms in Baldur's Gate. Stonyeyes, the district where Maeva lives and works, is sheltered partly by the Duskhawk Hill, so they didn't have much to fear from the Chionthar river flooding or anything like that. Honestly, the tavern noises she slept through as a baby were probably louder than most thunderstorms.

Childhood:

Friends/Siblings

I'm putting these together because to Dani, her friends Liara, Paraxxel, and Kellen are her siblings, especially Liara.

Liara was obviously the first. Though Liara lived with Dani and Maeva for the first 2-3 years of her life, Brann eventually decided to take Liara traveling with him. So for the next 10-12 years, Brann and Liara were a bit more like extended family who dropped by once a month or so. Liara still calls Maeva "Maemae" (a mix of Maeva and mama) and Dani still considers Brann the closest thing to a father she's ever had, but their relationship during this time was a bit more like really close friends. Liara is a bubbly, romantic girl who is obsessed with a good love story or love ballad and thinks her father hangs the moon.

Dani met Paraxxel (her dragonborn bestie) when he was just a street performer with an old drum and the clothes on his back. I have a whole fic about them meeting. But long story short, she convinces him to join Brann and Liara as part of the Merry Rovers, so now every monthly visit has him in tow, too. Paraxxel is a snarky, restless kind of guy who's always tapping out rhythms on his legs, on the table, etc. He and Dani are often going back and forth, ribbing and teasing each other. He's five years older than Dani, so he also takes on a kind of protective older brother role in her life, even though she insists she can fight in a scrap better than he can.

Kellen, the final member of the current Merry Rovers, joined around the time Dani was 13 or 14. He's a quiet, shy half-elf who mostly plays the flute for the Rovers and doesn't sing as much. He's about a year or two older than Dani and Liara, and Liara fell in love with him at first sight. She constantly talks about the fact that they're going to get married one day, but she never actually told Kellen she liked him until they were all well in their teens, because for a while it seemed like Kellen wasn't interested. He was, he just didn't know how to put it into words, and Brann is scary. Out of all the Merry Rovers, he's the most level-headed and sensible, second only to Brann.

Getting into trouble

When does Dani not get into trouble? She gets into scraps a lot in her childhood, including the scrap that let her meet Paraxxel. The kids that made up little street gangs in Stonyeyes were everywhere, and she wasn't about to let them cause trouble for her and her mom.

Birthday

I don't have an exact date for her birthday because I didn't think that far ahead, but during her childhood, her birthdays were always spent with Maeva (and Brann, Liara, and whoever else was part of the Merry Rovers that year, if they could make it). Maeva usually went out to buy a sweet treat and made as fine a dinner as she could for the evening. Gifts were few and far between, but Dani will never forget her twelfth birthday, when Brann gifted her her first fiddle and promised to teach her how to play it.

Games

Dani loves games. All games. Most of the games she played in childhood were the kinds you can play without actual equipment (no balls, no cards, etc). But being part of tavern culture in many ways, she learned how to play cards and play simple games in the streets with other kids too. (I have a fic where she teaches the BG3 companions one of her favorite games, actually).

Learning something new

Brann taught her every musical thing she knows, plus a couple of easy bard spells once he saw she had the talent for it. He started her off on the lute, since that's what Liara was learning at the same time, but at 12 he gifted her with a small fiddle and began teaching her that, too. She practiced for hours whenever he wasn't around so that when he next arrived, she could impress him and learn something new.

Trauma

This is a good segue into the next section. Despite growing up relatively poor, getting into scraps as a kid, and having several of the people she loved the most only visiting once in a while, Dani's childhood wasn't exactly traumatic. Hard, maybe, but she was happy most of the time. That is until she was 15 and her mother grew ill with some kind of illness that nearly killed her.

Since Dani and her mother couldn't afford healers for the most part, they tried to cure the illness the best they could, but her mother was bedridden for weeks. Dani was forced to pick up a few jobs, in the tavern, playing on the street, trying to do other people's laundry, to earn enough coin to buy her mother potions or herbs. Brann and the other Rovers were nowhere nearby and she didn't know how to get in touch with them. For the first time, she felt suddenly desperately alone and terrified that she might lose her mom.

Maeva eventually recovered, but the illness had forever weakened her legs, and she was unable to leave her bed for several more weeks.

Despite nearly losing her mother, Dani came to the conclusion that the only thing she could do to earn enough money to actually help her mother was to join the Merry Rovers. So once her mother was out of danger, she begged and begged and begged to join the Rovers the next time they passed through. Maeva agreed reluctantly, and the next time Brann arrived, he agreed to let her travel with them for while. Dani vowed to send money back as often as she could so that her mother could afford visits to a healer.

Teenager:

First love

Probably some scrappy Outer City kid who told her she was pretty enough times that she figured he wasn't just flirting. But even then, it was a fleeting relationship and it fizzled out immediately when Dani's mom got sick. After that, well...Dani is a flirty girl, and she's no stranger to one-off trysts and quick flings. It isn't until she meets Gale that she realizes what it actually means to love someone the way ballads sing about love.

Rebellion

Dani is a bit of a rebel at heart. While traveling with the Rovers, even though she loved and respected Brann, she didn't always listen to him when he told her to stay at the inn they were using that night or to not wander off. Liara swears Brann got more gray hair having to deal with Dani ignoring his orders than he ever had traveling with just her, Paraxxel, and Kellen. Sneaking out was just a common thing for Dani for a while. But she always came back.

Running away

Technically Dani didn't run away because she left her mother's home to travel with Brann with her mother's permission...but she did technically leave home at 15 to live the life of a wanderer without a home. I don't think she ever thought about running away from the Rovers. Never once. She loves them too much.

Reckless behavior

More than once while traveling with the Rovers, Dani has snuck out to meet someone for a tryst or gone gambling with the money she's supposed to be saving up to send to her mother. She's a good card player, but she sometimes doesn't know when to stop while she's ahead.

Peer pressure

Paraxxel and Dani have almost always been as thick as thieves, but for the most part it's never been romantic or flirty between them. Despite this, the ever-romantic Liara swore she saw sparks flying between them and that Dani and Paraxxel should totally start going out. Both of them were hesitant, but Liara is pretty persistent. So for Dani's 18th birthday, she and Paraxxel agreed to at least try it out. They both got pretty wasted and slept together that night. It was...fine? But the vibes were weird and both agreed, in the clarity of a slightly hungover morning, that they shouldn't do it again. They both preferred being friends and nothing more.

Growing pains

Dani probably went through a physical growth spurt after joining the Rovers, but it was nothing that she couldn't handle between knowing how to mend her own clothes and pestering Brann with a bunch of questions he always felt a little too awkward to answer. Emotionally, she dealt with the repercussions of several ill-advised trysts or unwise decisions to party or gamble. It took her a while to realize that she didn't have to constantly go out and "experience life" for her to have a good time with the Rovers.

Taking responsibility

Brann doesn't coddle his bards in his troupe. If you're going to be part of the Merry Rovers, you're also going to know how to manage your belongings, keep up with your instrument, mend your own clothes (or pay for someone to mend them), and behave yourself so you don't get tossed in jail (none of them are thieves for the most part, but Dani and Paraxxel did teach themselves how to pick locks and pockets). The most he's going to do for you is negotiate the rooms for the night and occasionally pay for dinner. So while Dani traveled with the Rovers, she had to learn to be a little more independent and deal with the consequences if she decided she was too lazy to keep up with her stuff correctly or gambled away all her money.

Adulthood:

Their “first time”

Her first time was after she left to join with the Rovers, but before she was 18. She can't even remember his name. She just remembers waking up the next morning to Brann throwing the guy out of her room and looking furious. She got smarter about flings after that. No more inviting people to the room that Brann was paying for.

Serious relationships

She never really had a serious romantic relationship. They were constantly on the move. She was fine with that, and put most of her romantic energy into teasing Liara and Kellen about their snails-pace romance while letting out steam with whatever handsome dude or pretty girl was fine with a few hours of fun. Believe it or not, Gale is her first committed romantic relationship ever. It’s very new for her and she often wonders if it’s too good to be true.

Work

Her job was to perform with the Merry Rovers. Brann could play many instruments, but he stuck to the lyre, while Liara played the lute, Paraxxel played the drums, Kellen played the flute, and Dani played the violin. She often sang and danced, too. The Rovers did more than play music, they tried to perform with decent theatricality under Brann's general direction. While not much of an actor himself, he knew how to construct a good performance, relying on the younger bards to perform and dance while he maintained the foundation of the performance with his music and voice. The Rovers were decently popular amid the Outer City districts.

Leaving home

She left home when she was 15. She's been traveling with the Rovers for ten years before she got snatched by the nautiloid.

Aging

Dani's a cool 25. "Old" to her feels like it'll be miles away. She often jokes that Brann, who is only barely 50, is old, but he's a spry guy and she hopes she's half as fit as he is when she's 50.

Finding your place

Dani doesn't feel like Dani unless she's got a fiddle in her hands or a song on her tongue. You couldn't convince her to become anything other than a bard. Separating her from music, song, and dance is like asking her to cut off a limb. She wouldn't be the same without it.

She's also obsessed with Baldur's Gate. She thinks it's the best city in the world. Not the safest, not the richest, but certainly the most colorful and the only place she would want to be. That is...until she's snatched up and dumped outside the city.

Now, she realizes her place is among the people who love her. Home, to her, is a person who holds your heart. It's her mother, it's Brann and the Rovers, it's her companions that she befriends after the nautiloid abduction, and in the end, it's Gale. Baldur's Gate is a wonderful city, and as long as she's within the city she feels happy. But she knows now that she can make a home wherever she is, as long as she's with someone she loves.

Starting a family/found family

Obviously the Rovers were her first found family, but she absolutely considers the companions she makes in BG3 her found family as well. To her, it just means her family is growing. It includes her mom, the Rovers, the companions, but also tieflings like Rolan, Cal and Lia, Bex and Danis, Alfira and Lakrissa.

She marries Gale, of course, and I think they wait to have kids for a few years. She's convinced she would be a bad mom at first (in that “I can barely take care of myself” kind of way) and Gale obviously has reservations. But I do think that down the line, they have a pair of twins who are just utter chaos, and they're only too happy to rely on their wide network of family members to help get through the more turbulent years of raising twins with Dani's personality and Gale's intelligence. It really does take a village...

———

Congrats you made it to the end! Please enjoy Dani’s expression for when she was like “Hey Gale this Waterdeep illusion is cool but I want to smash YOU, not an illusion of you” and his reply was “The old ways then. If that is what you wish, so be it.”

I could caption this so many ways lmao

#bg3 #tag game #my tav #dani #meridan zavrai #bg3backstorybash

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sorcerous-caress · 1 year ago

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Gith have designated breeders that lay eggs and are forbidden from combat.

Githzerai Monk thought he could hide it from Lae'zel, What was so wrong with him wanting to fight? He was good at it and the fellow warriors didn't seem to mind?

Lae'zel wouldn't let this level of deception stand

Dragging him by the hair, pussy already packed full of her eggs and cum towards the center of camp. Lae'zel barking at him to use his hands to hold them in.

Just so full

Pins him with her sword by the shreds of the armor he wasn't suppose to wear.

Declares to the women of the camp that this shameful deception as to be punished. They must take turns with him, as they are the warriors he shamed by fighting by their side.

Karlach? She a giant compared to him, even if she wanted to be gentle, she can't.

Shadowheart? Probably fucks him with Lae'zel eggs, taking pleasure in taking a gith down a peg.

Minthara? His to afraid to imagine.

Jaheira? Hopefully she'll take care of him after..or take him in wildshape

Lae'zel makes one thing clear though, the other males can't touch. Even a filthy Githzerai Monk as more uses than them.

Sorry for any grammar or typos

Anon this is fucking gold omfg, everything i have to say about this would make the devil blush.

She is absolutely disgusted by the fact she fought by your side. No matter how much of a good fighter you were. Vlaakith herself gave you the honour to bear children, and you disobeyed her queen?

Do you realise how many males would kill to be in your place right now? Do you realise just what kind of shame and indignity that you dragged us into?

She is absolutely furious, more than she has been in her entire life.

After dragging you to the center of the camp, she'd spread your legs herself. Slapping your pussy if you dare and close them.

You're barely holding all the eggs and cum inside but she doesn't care as she puts you on display for all the women in the camp to see. Listing all of your indignities and crimes.

how the courages monk githyanki guy they thought they were fighting besides, turned out to be a breeding whore who lost his original purpose.

She'd make you look them in the eyes as you apologise to each one of them for what you did.

Karlach would avoid your gaze, but her eyes can't help but creep back to look at your wet leaking cunt. Biting her lips as she barely hears a word of your apology, her focus glued to the way your pussy spasms and twitches. She feels her throat going dry and she has to swallow down the urges filling her.

Minthara looks you in the eye as she makes you repeat your apology each time you stutter. One of her boots pressing against the inside of your thighs to spread your legs wider, while the other has the tip barely brushing against your clit. Adding the slightest of pressures on your gaping hole that has you choke back tears. Your apology to hear lasts the longests from how many times you had to start over.

Shadowheart looks amused, taking joy in your againy and displeasure. About time someone taught a gith here some manners, even if it was another disgusting gith that broke you in first. She would knee between your spread legs and probs and pushes at the eggs bulging out of you. Laezel gets pissed the longer Shadowheart keeps messing with her eggs inside you that your apology is cut short by their own bickering.

Jaheira would just look at you in disappointment. She really thought you were the hero she was looking for, the miracle. But she supposes life can never be this easy can it? In a way your stuttering and pathetic statu does appeal to her more than she likes to admit. She coos and wipes your tears but she also makes you admit very embarrassing things out loud, like how this is your true purpose and how much you must have enjoyed getting these eggs inside you.

#♡gith anon #♡Male pronouns reader #♡afab reader #♡Laezel #♡smut #♡shart #♡Minthara #♡Karlach #♡Jaheira #♡eggs

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felassan · 2 years ago

Text

Some more snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah PART 2, from a Mark Darrah on Games YouTube video where he is livestreaming playing Dragon Age II [link to Part 1] -

These last bits are collected under a cut due to length:

Chat asked "I don't want to know what was decided, but was there ever a decision on WHAT Andraste was in back rooms in DA:O times?" Mark explained that questions like that are intentionally not answered. They're answered when they're needed to be answered but are otherwise left open for as long as possible." A follow up comment in chat said "Is it undisputed fact that Andraste was a historical figure?" Mark replied "I don't know that it is undisputed fact, I mean you only ever hear about her through the writings of everybody else. Basically nothing in DA is ever presented as absolute fact, it's always presented through the eyes of somebody so nothing is actually confirmed unless you as the PC actually met them, pretty much. I think she's presented as probably real with unknown - [something, was cut off by in-game combat]".

A user in chat asked, "So what Solas said, that everyone was able to use magic before the Veil was a thing, could that have been a lie or him just not counting people that couldn't use it as people?" Mark replied that it could be true or could have just been Solas referring only to people who he saw or who were seen as real people. "The Veil was down so magic was a lot more accessible though, so it could be real. Solas would definitely not include dwarves in his assessment of 'everyone could use magic'. Solas is focused on fixing his mistakes, he isn't thinking about any of the other races very much"

Companion armor in DAII not changing was about making the companions visually distinctive. It probably also served to save dev time, as it meant that they didn't need to make elf and dwarf versions of every armor. "It does give up a degree of change. Though I think there's a way to do it so that they could change but still be [visually distinct]"

DA:O was written originally with the assumption that it wasn't going to get sequels, which was a mistake, but that's how it was. By the time it was coming out, the devs knew that it was going to get sequels, but it was a bit late at that point. So it was kind of retrofitted

Morrigan and Varric are pretty iconic, they also have very strong visuals. Alistair is also iconic, "except that he kind of looks like anyone else in full plate mail. He looks like Generic Fantasy Protagonist and then his arc is like 'I don't wanna be this guy'"

During DA:I development, there was a chess-like game that one of the designers made that they talked about implementing

On DAII's repeating environments, they lampshaded this in DA:I when Varric talks about how all caves look alike to him. "Maybe if we had lampshaded it a bit in DAII and had maybe one other cave, and not all caves looking exactly alike, maybe then we would have gotten away with it. If we had thought of it earlier there would have been time to make the cave in question look more generic and less identifiable. But there wasn't really enough time left to make another new cave"

Chat asked about adding polearms to the game. Mark explained that they "are custom animations, you can't really use the normal 1- and 2-handed animations for them, though there is a little bit of staff stuff in DAII. It's been discussed. Polearms also kind of work differently, you need a bit more ground control and Dragon Age has never really been great at letting the player control territory. So polearms couldn't really serve the role people would expect given the limitations of how the combat AIs worked historically. DA:I spent the most amount of time on control of all 3 DA games, it's the one that cared about the topic the most, but it still doesn't quite pull it off. Javelins are not polearms, spears have a throwing animation"

Chat asked ''Why did you switch from the gold silver bronze coins to just a flat 'gold' currency in DAI?'' Mark replied "I think we thought it was just simpler. I think there's a point at which you're simplifying because you aren't really getting anything out of it for your troubles. Moving away from bronze and silver was seen as an accessibility and streamlining thing. Was it a good idea? Probably not. I think you can simplify away your personality. I don't think the gold thing is a big deal, but it is going down that road. For the purposes of buying stuff, a single flat currency I think is easier to wrap your head around as a player. But from the perspective of looting, having a mix is cool and more interesting. I think there's a middle ground for sure"

Chat asked "Was there ever an attempt to make Kirkwall a seamless open-world?" Mark replied "In the early days of DA:I, one of the programmers got Kirkwall running in Frostbite as a seamless open world. But there was never an attempt made in DAII itself to make it that. But all of Kirkwall itself [during this time on DA:I] was running as an open world, unpopulated, single level in Frostbite at one point. The level of density with the clips, you were never doing this as a single level, it would just have had a heart attack"

One of the advantages of first person view while in Anthem's hub area was that it let the devs do really tight streets, which is cool

The lore in Dragon Age isn't always paid off by the gameplay. "This has always been a problem in Dragon Age"

There have been several times where DA has "lored around" its 'No Teleportation' rule to allow for the gameplay of fast movement without actually introducing teleporting into the setting. Characters actually move very fast in a straight line - DA:I has a ton of superfast movement. On mages who teleport or seem to teleport, Mark said that "I think we would probably lore that out, patch over it. Like Fade Step's lore is literally 'you move really fast'. Eluvians are presented in Trespasser as being more like planar travel. The reason for a lot of the magic rules in DA is that problem of D&D, where if you pick at the magic system you realize, you have a first level spell which is mind control and no-one seems to care, or you could literally teleport into the throne room of the king and stab him in the head. So it's trying to 'patch over' the high fantasy issues of magic by either eliminating some things from the lore like teleportation and making others be viewed with a lot more negativity, like mind control in the case of blood magic and peoples' attitudes to this"

Part 1 of this post can be found here. :)

(pls note that in places there is a bit of paraphrasing of the info, the best source is always the primary source with full quotes in their original context)

[source]

#dragon age #bioware #video games #long post #longpost #dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #anthem #morrigan #solas #queen of my heart #alistair theirin #fav warden #sry these posts were originally posted early unfinished w/ some broken links by mistake and in the wrong order #they're now finished & fixed ^^

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tea-ddie · 9 months ago

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Something that may or may not be clear about my book, Ballyhoo, on a surface level, is for how long it's been in the works. People who've known me for several years will remember the very first draft of the comic from 2018/2019. That version was specifically made for Webtoon and has been more-or-less scraped for the current version of the story. Because of that, all of Ballyhoo's characters have gone through pretty big changes—not just in their design/my art style evolution/etc, but also in their occupation, some elements of their backstory, and more. I've started working on Book 2 and have been making some new concept art. I realized as I looked to the future of the project, it was a good time to look back. This post will go through three of the main characters: Evelyn, Marjorie, and Oretta, and explain how we got to where we are in Ballyhoo.

Evelyn Golubev

2018: Evelyn was one of the very first characters I ever created for this story. She was originally the femme-fatale-type—her girlfriend had just mysteriously gone missing. She worked at a vaudeville-type club as a dancer and, besides being somewhat hot, ominous and foreboding in the way that a femme-fatale must be, that was about it. I was still definitely trying to understand my art style and struggled a lot with making the hair look as "natural" as I wanted. Her outfits all leaned pretty heavily femme and her makeup was heavy... but uncanny as I didn't fully understand how to color makeup on a face then.

2024: Evelyn Golubev, or better known by her stage name, "Evelyn Gold," still works at a vaudeville club, but beyond dancing, also sings and performs at other bars and clubs across the city of Portapolis. She is the frontwoman of her Baby Blue Band, which is the house-band at local lesbian bar, the Lilac. Although she still holds some of her femme-fatale vibes, I wouldn't necessarily describe her as a "femme" in the queer spaces she occupies. She wears custom blue suits at the club and brings a swagger that would make any girl blush to her performances. In both versions of her character, she holds a few secrets that she protects fiercely, but in the currently version of the story, the consequences of these secrets coming out feels more intense. Overall, I think her character has become more refined and deliberate in the story.

Marjorie Miller

2018: Oh, Marjorie. Her role in the story has shifted pretty significantly from the first drafts of the story—in this earliest drawing, she's pictured singing at what was a lesbian house party. She was always a bit desperate—trying to fit into a space that wasn't really for her. I knew she had grown up outside the city, probably in a more rural area, and was trying hard to fit into more classy and elegant circles. She mostly functioned as a background character in the lesbian scene who held a secret that would help solve the mystery (because of course this story was always a mystery).

2021: This was about at the time I was re-developing the story and laying out the groundwork for a new version of the comic. Despite scrapping the house parties, I wanted to redraw that specific scene... mostly because I liked her dress. Marjorie's hair, similar to Evelyn, was something I became more comfortable drawing with time. In 2021, you can see me trying to separate the way her somewhat messy waves and curls fell. Like I said, at this point I knew the house party scene with Marjorie wasn't going to happen, but I wasn't sure what her exact role would be. Was she a hopeful performer? Someone who performed alongside Evelyn in the Vaudeville club? Something else entirely? What was her life like when she wasn't singing? Well...

2024: Marjorie Miller is a married woman, living her perfect, heterosexual, suburban housewife life with her dearest husband George. This might seem like a hard pivot—it also feels like a hard pivot to her old friends Oretta and Evelyn, both of whom she's mostly fallen out of touch with. Despite the changes in her life, she is content with how it's worked out for her, or at least pretends to be. Still, beneath the picture-perfect surface is a woman who was, in every version of the story, desperate to fit-in and who is living a life that feels out of her depth.

Oretta Adams

2018/19: I don't have a drawing for this, but my earliest ideas for Oretta included her arriving in Portapolis on a train. This was always her introduction and it's how she arrives to the city in Ballyhoo, too. Back then, I knew she was an old friend of Marjorie's and Evelyn's who would open up an aspect of the mystery and story that both of them wanted to keep hidden for whatever reasons. I'm sure this sounds woefully underdeveloped—and that's because at that time, it really was. However, this was around the time where I started to have an inkling that maybe the trio's shared past was in the circus.

2021: Because her introduction was so vivid in my mind, a lot of Oretta's early concept art is her at the train station. Pictured in 2021 is a more relaxed version of Oretta: she smokes, she's dressed very casually and comfortably, and, of course, she has her suitcase. It was important to me that she always dressed for comfort and for herself first and foremost. This is part of why Oretta's outfits in the current story consist of a lot of 40s work-pants and sweaters.

2024: As I started writing the comic in 2021/22, it became shockingly apparently that Oretta was the main character of the story. Her being the factor that opens up secrets multiple people wanted to keep hidden put her in a prime place to act as both outsider and instigator. Oretta, Marjorie, and Evelyn share a background in circus performance and it started to make sense that she would be a writer/playwright, taking her experience in showbiz to a backstage role. And it is her play—possibly inspired by past events—that triggers the main events of the story. Her play is a catalyst for too many things coming out, and everyone seems to have a good reason for wanting to make sure the show will not go on.

In Conclusion...

Ballyhoo has been a long time in the works! I hope this is interesting, or maybe even inspiring for those starting longer stories? Things will take time, but it will be worth it. I'm really happy that Ballyhoo: Book One is out there in the world, and I'm honestly so excited to get to keep working on this project. I might do more posts like this about other characters or other aspects of the story—again, it's been in development for what seems like a pretty long time and I have a lot of thoughts about how different aspects of the story have played out.

#ballyhoo #ballyhoo comic #teddie bs ocs #teddie art #ballyhoo process #art progress #comic progress #comic process

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blazenfire223 · 1 year ago

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[ID in undercut]

My reverse AU Darlings Part 2: Zaraphim 🥰🥰

If you have any questions about them feel free to ask. I'd love to answer them :] Also his main hair and sunglasses are different now compared to when I originally drew this because I still had no idea what I was doing with his design.

[ID: A character sheet of my Reverse AU Crowley, Zaraphim. They are the angel from Heaven stationed on Earth in London. He has a half up style, gold sunglasses, freckles, a gold nose ring, gold earings, white and blue angel bites, and a gold cross necklace. He also has a tongue piercing and wears various amounts of rings and bracelets and colored nails. Her clothes consist of a grey turtleneck, a muted or olive green cardigan, tan trousers, and grey zipped boots. There are various doodles around the main full body; A profile of him with short hair and lipstick, a front facing head with their tongue sticking out to see their piercing, a close up of their eyes which are multicolored and change depending on Zaraphim's mental state, A potted plant with gems surrounding it, a chibi doodle of them with their wings out, they are black with stardust covering them and eyes all around them and fiery glowing hair, another chibi of them on their knees and crying gold tears that go up, another chibi of Zaraphim chilling, A close up of their hands that are covered in accessories but only one is important and that is a sapphire with pearls surrounding it, a close up of Zaraphim's ass that has a tattoo that says "Frostie" in white, that is Zaraphim's pet name for Ario, and a final chibi of him looking surprised because they picked up Ario's flaming sword. There is a big box with more information; Phillip Z. Zaraphim (P.Z.Z) During the war: Avoided most of it because they were painting stars while it was happening. He didn't take the idea of angels fighting amongst themselves seriously. She genuinely thought it was a joke she just didn't understand. It wasn't until later when another angel finally came to look for her, that she realized what had just occurred. They were put in as a recovery angel and helped to heal all the angels that were hurt during the war. Ex Star maker. Found Ario's sword and gave it to Adam and Eve. They were originally supposed to be given a weapon but they never took it because they thought nothing could hurt them. He works as a bartender at a nearby pub and is good friends with the owner. When they pass away Zaraphim promised to take the place. Her flat is an aesthetic piece of comfort covered in plants, art, and trinkets. It is more of a storage than a home but it makes her happy. Truly channels their inner office angel when dealing with their plants. They don't like slack offs and will make them suffer through a lecture/ 'talking to' or angry screaming (depending on the plant) if needed. Some of those rants will turn into terrible motivational speeches. He does give praise out but only to the most worthy of plants. Just generally talks to their plants, they know all about Ario. He collects crystals and gems and such. They know all about what they do but he doesn't use or buy them for those reasons. They just like pretty things. They met Madame Tracy at an occulty type store and they became friends. That's how they know Shadwell. She loves making art just as much as they love collecting it and they have dabbled in tons of different artistic mediums over the years. The Bentley is alive and her name is Daria. She is a troll and we love her. /End ID]

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #blazenfire223 #blazenfire223's art #good omens art stuffs #good omens reverse au #azicrow #ID is very long..

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tempestucus · 3 months ago

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[ kristen stewart, cis-woman, she/her ] Look who just landed! L-EV1-77 / LEVIATHAN "LEVI", I sure hope you packed all you need. Perhaps you’re not worried as DETECTIVE of THE OVERSEERS. The city has plenty of spots for a 33 year old ANDROID like you. You’ll be known in the city soon enough as THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER, being DETERMINED and RUTHLESS. ( moth, 28, EST, removed for discretion )

THE BASICS

full name: l-ev1-77

nickname: leviathan or levi

date of birth: december 21st, 2372

gender: cisgender woman

pronouns: she/her

sexual orientation: lesbian

romantic orientation: homoromantic

current age: thirty three

modification: android

affiliation: the overseers

birthplace: new jakarta

current location: mawar district

occupation: detective for the overseers

known languages: english, japanese, indonesian

INSPIRATION

quote: "envy shoots at others and wounds itself"

label or archetype: the green-eyed monster- desire for something you do not possess, watching others imagining it were you, being dissatisfied in life

tropes: the femme fatale, grass is greener, work hard play hard, deadpan snarker, grew beyond their programming

media parallels: luv (bladerunner 2049), caitlyn (arcane), miguel o'hara (spiderman: across the spider-verse), harry hart (kingsman), makima (chainsaw man)

theme song: numb little bug - em beihold, o superman - laurie anderson, vampire - olivia rodrigo

PERSONALITY

positive traits: incisive, elegant, forthright, observant

neutral traits: determined, reserved, idiosyncratic, sarcastic

negative traits: cunning, calculating, inhibited, phlegmatic

peeves: blatant disobedience, inconsistency, dishonesty, failing to succeed, feeling inferior

fears: abandonment, losing her sense of self, existentialism, becoming useless, emotions

skills: persuasion, hand to hand combat, marksmanship, strategic thinking, sleight of hand, stealth, analyzing data, pattern recognition, strategizing, seduction

goals: understanding human emotions better, finding her purpose, learning more about her creator

APPEARANCE

faceclaim: kristen stewart

height: 5' 5" (165.09cm)

eye color: grey

hair color: dark brown

clothing style: elegant, classy pieces custom tailored to fit her perfectly. mostly dresses in black, white and green with gold accents. rarely seen in ill-fitting clothing to conform to the idea that is(or was) a perfect specimen.

jewelry: only wears gold jewelry. triple stacked geometric stud earrings in either ear, a simple chain around her neck, a ring in the shape of a snake on her left ring finger, and plain band on her right index finger. the earrings on her right ear can double as a communication device, while the ones on her left ear can act as a camera. the snake ring stores memory and the band is a collapsible scope.

tattoos: she doesn't have any tattoos, she wasn't designed with the intent to have any for personal or function reasons. silver, barely visible outlines of her vertebrae exist going from the nape of her neck to her tailbone.

marks/scars: none

modifications: her eyes flash green when she feels a strong emotion, originally added to her programming to monitor how much she experiences.

scent/fragrance: sandalwood and undertones of iron.

FAVOURITES

likes: nightclubs, museums, reading, games of cat and mouse, order

dislikes: lack of understanding, unpredictability, nostalgia (from her false memories), feeling alone

hobbies: stargazing, martial arts, journaling, chess, freelance engineering, electronic repair, fitness, knife throwing, origami, calligraphy, self defense, skincare, painting

habits: skincare routine, irregular sleep schedule, procrastinates on cleaning, writes in her journal every day, tends to take the lead, thinks before speaking, engages in risky behavior

one cherished item: a pair of earrings with the december birthstone, blue topaz - a gift from her creator

AESTHETICS

sight: black - nothing, the beginning

sound: a roar in the distance growing closer

taste: the salty iron of blood in your mouth

touch: the sting of scraping your knees on concrete

thought: a spotlight fixed on an empty stage

THE BACKSTORY

(suicide mention tw, death mention tw)

LIFE

l-ev1-77 8-2.5 was created with the sole intent of being a police detective. rogue androids plagued the streets, something needed to be done in order to keep things under control. a solution was developed: a seemingly remorseless individual programmed to specifically target these androids. combat skills were meticulously studied and researched in order to ensure high precision, resulting in an effective soldier.

her model was named for the demon leviathan, a name intended to ignite fear in whoever was unlucky enough to be her target. no, leviathan's coming to being was not a blessing, it was a curse. a curse cast on any android that dared to aspire to be something beyond what it was programmed to be. having her set upon you was an effective death sentence.

perhaps the first mistake was giving her the gift of intelligence, her software capable of adapting quickly and anticipating actions. as a result, leviathan also became aware of her surroundings and how different she was from the rest of the world. it was excruciatingly clear that she was not a being created to bring joys to life, she was to act with a cruel nature. not the most pleasant reason for one's existence, she noted after beginning to interact with the people around her.

to combat the innate intimidation that leviathan gave off when she was in a room, she was given her second gift: beauty. her creator created her with the looks of a model and clothes to mirror that, to make others less inclined to avoid her immediately. she was also given the gift of a golden tongue, programmed to be able to persuade most people with little difficulty. over her development, she slowly morphed into a seductress, easing information out of her targets before they even realized what she was doing.

DEATH

her creator passed in the year of 2400, just five years after leviathan's conception. she remembers attending the funeral, dressed all in black. it was raining that day, fitting for the dreary affair. she had been asked to speak at the service, but she declined publicly voicing her condolences. she did mourn the loss, yes, but what would she say? she couldn't put the loss of the person who created her into words.

after some time, she was told the manner of which her creator had died: suicide. she knew that her creator always considered leviathan a better version of themself; their flaws made nonexistent in her design. they had told her on several occasions how she was their perfect invention, the best thing they would ever create. she never thought that this perspective would lead to their death.

for the first time in her short life, she fell into a "depression". her creator had been her first friend, her parental figure, her confidant. she didn't know how to function without the person she had been closest with. so for weeks she lacked the energy to do anything, not leaving her apartment and taking leave from work. the former was frowned upon because androids "don't need time off", but was granted to her anyway due to her status.

eventually, she learned to go about her life again. it became easier to cope with the loss she had experienced, finding outlets by trying other activities that she had never given the time of day before. she went back to work as if nothing had happened and her coworkers never asked her about it. she was grateful for this, as she didn't care to explain that the death had affected her so. she wasn't supposed to be programmed with the ability to feel emotions, let alone sentimentality. one thing was different from then on: her eyes flashed green much more frequently than they had before.

#ignitedtask #ignitedintro #suicide mention tw #death mention tw

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queenoffishingandcookies · 6 months ago

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Back on my genderbent umineko bullshit, and started thinking about what would change if Kinzo was born as a woman. Or if it were even feasibly possible.

Because if I'm looking how how the rest of the family's characters and dynamics would change based on being born the opposite gender compared to canon, why not Kinzo?

I have never seen a single piece of art depicting Kinzo as a woman, which further made me think about this - and for obvious reasons of Kinzo being genderbent, so much of the plot would change.

Full Spoilers below, you have been warned. This is alos just incoherent ramblings and got pretty long, feel free to poke holes in all things if you suffered through reading this entire post.

First things first, the name:

I've tentatively given Fem! Kinzo the name Kina. That way, her name can still be spelled with the kanji for gold/money, [金].

So, Fem! Kinzo's name would be something like 「右代宮金那」,

When her given name is spelled in katakana, it'd be 「キナ」. In Hiragana, it's written as 「きな」.

I've read that the second kanji (那) can be read as either 'that' or 'beautiful', but take my words with a grain of salt.

If I have got the kanji right, Kina's name is something along the lines of 'beautiful gold' or, alternatively, 'gold / golden beauty'?

What would stay the same to canon?

This will be a superficial account of what I think wouldn't change, because we only have so much information (read: so little) on Kinzo's upbringing in canon.

Kina would still be brought up in Taiwan, as member of a branch family (or the branch of a branch family) off the Ushiromiya Head House. With the same very toxic, misogynistic societal expectations of gender roles.

Kina and Genji would still become friends during the time Kina was growing up in Taiwan, but the level of education they'd receive would be inherently different based on their genders (again, societal expectation).

During the 1923 Kanto Earthquake, and in the aftermath of the quake, the majority of the Ushiromiya Family Head House that resided in Odawara - and potentially a few of the other branch families - dies out.

This likely includes the original family head, his sons, and any children they might of had, as in canon, Kinzo wasn't designated the next-head-in-waiting. He was Head of the Ushiromiya Family outright, even as a puppet.

Alongside the loss of many family members, the Ushiromiya Family also loses the spinning mills from which their fortune originally stemmed from, leading to a great loss of money on their end.

And right here is where Fem! Kinzo hits the first storyline snag.

From what I understand, according to Japanese Civil Code at the time, Kina would not have been able to inherit the position of Head of the Ushiromiya Family, nor the business venture of restoring the spinning mills.

Kina could not legally inherit those duties because she was a woman.

In Japan, according to the Civil Code at this time, family businesses and wealth could only be passed down through the male bloodlines - to male relatives alone. A woman, regardless of her blood connection, could not inherit.

Additionally, we also see this mentioned in Jessica's TIPS screen. Though she is Krauss' daughter, it would actually be her husband who becomes the Head of the Ushiromiya Head House - not Jessica herself. So I'm going out on a limb and assuming the headship was a similar case.

For Kina to feasibly be selected as a wife to the future (puppet) head of the family, that would have to mean at least two things:

All male relatives are either dead or unfit to inherit the Ushiromiya headship and business ventures, so the elders have no choice but to look to living daughters eligible for marriage.

They'd have to find a man of marriageable age willing to become an adopted husband - taking Kina's family name and sacrificing their own to preserve the Ushiromiya ie, as well as become the family's puppet head (I'm assuming this is what would happen in Jessica's case, too).

A quick run down on the ie, duties of the Head, and Mukoyoshi, adopted husbands comes from below.

I found a really interesting pdf on it here, which is where I got my information, so go and check it out.

The ie is literally defined to be a family household, bloodline, or the literal physical home - but it means more than just that. The ie encompasses the history and honor of the family and its name, the deceased ancestors, its traditions and mores, and the important duty of preventing the family from dying out.

The research paper linked above even describes it as revered.

The most important thing to many people was to ensure was that the ie did not die out (which throws Natsuhi and Eva's insistence on family pride and honor in a whole new light, for me - )

The ie is made up of the Head/Main House, the branch houses sired by sons of the head (or branches of said branch house), dead ancestors, recently deceased, and even the unborn.

The Family Head manage all affairs in the ie. From what I understand, he held ownership of all family property, family businesses, was responsible for the wellfare of all family members, the protection of his property, arranging marriages, and so on.

As I mentioned before, woman couldn't inherit the position or the duties it entailed at that time.

So if the Head of House had no eligible male relative to succeed him, in order to preserve the family name and keep family businesses in the family - they'd instead adopt a man of skill, good character, etc, into the family as the eldest daughter's husband.

Which kind of skews normal marriage dynamics in the ie.

Typically, a woman who marries into another ie, bringing with her a dowry, is expected to not only sacrifice her last name, but her own wishes and desires - to place the rest of ie's desires and needs above her own. There is the expectation of total subordination to the traditions of the ie.

Traditionally, women who marry into the ie are the least highest ranking in the family hierarchy. (*Natsuhi*)

As mukoyoshi are seen as 'entering the ie through marriage', even though they are men, they are in a similar position of being 'inferior' to those born in the family - expected to sacrifice their wants for the rest of the ie. They are the ones who bring a dowry of some sort. Gender roles are somewhat reversed.

The adopted husband would be of lower ranking to other members in the family, and in some cases mukoyoshi were derided for their position (more on that in the post i linked above, but also - *NATSUHI*).

Same as a wife can be divorced on the grounds of potential infertility, lack of fitness, or even illness that renders them incapable of performing expected duties - adopted husbands could easily be divorced and sent away if they didn't stand up to expectations, due to a probationary period where they weren't registered in the family Koseki.

From what I understand, traditionally the men adopted into their wives' families were not in line to inherit headship through their own (being second or third sons, etc), and therefore privileges associated with it. Traditional arranged dynamics (we get money, you get social standing, you carry on our family name, we get you an education, and so on).

All this to say, trying to keep to canon as close as reasonably possible with Kina, she'd be placed into an arranged marriage with an adopted husband, remaining Ushiromiya Kina while her husband became the puppet head.

I'm going to go and say that Kina's husband - as in canon, his wife was an aristocratic family - bought a dowry of a large sum of money with him that the Ushiromiya family used to try and rebuild their fortune. In return, he received higher social status as I believe the Ushiromiya Family was old money?

I claim the family, at least the original head house, was old money because of this.

It says until the Meiji and Taishou era, that the Ushiromiya family was prosperous. Meaning they were already wealthy prior to 1868, and that money was passed down several generations. According to Google, being old money means inherited for three+ generations, so that's what I'm going with.

Kina's aristocratic 'new money' spouse, who was out of the line of inheritance in his birth family, gives the Ushiromiya's a nice bit of start-up capital in exchange for higher social status and a better household position.

Kind of.

Canonically, Kinzo was looked down on by the upper class.

It's never confirmed why outright so it could run from the fact that he utilized aggressive business tactics that bordered on insane or was technically 'new' money due to trying to rebuild what was lost in the quake, but my personal headcanon is that his mother was a foreign woman who moved to japan after marriage (hence his deep-rooted like of western literature and styles and names).

While the Original Ushiromiya Head House had a good reputation and social standing on account of their wealth and business acumen, Kinzo - and therefore Kina - were from a branch house. Foreign blood, and their potentially less affluent though still-rich standings, told against her, as well as her husband having been new-money.

That, added onto the fact that on occasion, adopted husbands were looked down on? And this is the Ushiromiya Family we're talking about?

Better status on both accounts is debatable.

Additionally, if Genji were still a man in verses where Kinzo was born a girl, he'd...maybe be a potential option for marriage?

I have no clue whether that'd be feasible though, since we only know he came from a wealthy family, Kinzo tried to save his and his family's lives, only Genji lived (?) and Genji remained indebted to him due to that. His family might not have had anyone to inherit, if he did get adopted into the Ushiromiya Family.

So in the long run, this sets up the Ushiromiya Family (the kids and cousins), in a genderbent-world, still remaining the Ushiromiya Family. Because Kina's husband gets adopted into the family and, in her place, becomes the official head while Kina keeps her surname.

This further shakes up the storyline, because now it isn't Kina who is controlling the family business and money as Kinzo does in canon - at least not officially. It's the family elders, through her husband. Since it isn't specified how they controlled Kinzo in canon, I'm assuming that prior to marriage, they were the ones with ownership over what was left of the Head House's assets.

So the elders pressure Kina's husband on what ways to invest his dowry money, how best to invest it - or even asking for loans to themselves, how about he lets them continue to handle the rest of the family money in the early days of the marriage...?

Which is really just them holding the purse strings over both Kina and her husband's heads, and it probably stays like this for a while. Kina's duty is to carry children for him, work on the household budgets and kitchen, manage the staff, and so on.

This isn't even touching on either Kina's personality, how it would change compared to Kinzo's, or her spouse's, how it would clash against the marriage, their positions in the household, plus the gender roles.

Here, I'm going to sidetrack a little, because the discussion below - on personality and mentality and education - is important. Because again, this is some potentially big changes to canon.

We don't know much of Kinzo's early life, what his education was like, what his personality was like prior to his marriage - though, piecing together his appearances through the vn, we have a good idea of the after and the expectations of a person, derived from their gender, that were instilled in him.

In Kinzo's eyes, the duty of a man lies in business, building connections and improving their family name + reputation, generating income for the household, in furthering their education and so on.

A woman's job is to tend to the household. She is obedient and submissive to her spouse, her duty is occupying herself with domestic matters - cooking dinners and birthing/raising children, etc. The good-wife and wise mother mentality, which effected even educational status, except even more intense because - to the Ushiromiya House - a woman's most important job is having children.

Kina would be raised with this mentality too. As a daughter of the Ushiromiya Family, even from a branch house, that was what was expected of her. Marry for the sake of the family and it's connections, have children that will continue the line of her husband's ie.

Considering she'd from a branch family with a foreign mother, I see Kina still being heavily influenced by this line of thought - but adhering to it less. Brash, bold, and unapologetic about her attitude - like Jessica, like Battler in canon - a bit of a tomboy over a lady. Very...western.

I keep thinking this because Genji mentions Battler and Kinzo are alike - and I'm assuming he's referring to pre-kanto Kinzo's personality, considering that last time he saw Battler, the kid was twelve.

Kina likes sewing, likes tea, knows that's what a woman should - but also likes studying economics at her father's knee, and also from her mother (a bit like Mitsui Shuho, who ran the Mitsui family's merchant business in Edo era).

But it would affect the standard of her education, compared to Kinzo's.

I'm not sure if, in Taiwan, the schooling system on the mainland carried over - but at that time, schooling in Japan was like this:

It was compulsory for boys and girls both to attend school, and around 1906-1908, this period of time was extended from three years to six. Compulsory schooling (elementary) was co-educational. Students were given lesses on morals, mathmatics, reading/writing, composition, calligraphy, history, geography, science, drawing, singing, and P.E.

My headcanon is that Kinzo was born in 1899, so Kina would have attended some point in 1906, while she was attending compulsory schooling would have been extended, so she'd continue elementary until graduating in 1912.

After this, boys would be sent to middle school (chugakkou) for five years, followed by high school (koto gakkou), which I believe spanned a year or two(?), that would prepare them for university.

Girls were sent to high school (kotojogakkou / jogakkou), which was the equivalent of the boy's middle school - with emphasis on different subjects. Both would continue the lessons started in elementary school, but at different standards.

A girl's high school placed higher emphasis on domestic sciences (which I understand to be Home Economics?) - sewing and needlework, managing the household, painting, music, tea ceremony, and morals. Things like English were occasionally optional, both sciences and maths were taught at lower standards (by this, I'm assuming matters like calculus and trig were only men this, but don't take my word for it. This is just a sample of things woman were taught).

Kina would have graduated high school around March 1917, I think. As a woman, her higher form of education could have been Normal School, or Higher Normal Schools, meant to educate women on becoming teachers (or, if they didn't plan to become teachers, they'd pay a tuition fee like with the Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School).

As the first world war was going on, she could also have been given the option to receive three-year training with the Japanese Red Cross as a nurse, or various specialized semmongakkou schools (Like Tsuda Umeko's Women's English College or the Tokyo Women's Medical School founded by Yoshioka Yayoi).

On a few rare occasions, women were enrolled in the all-male imperial universities, though I don't have much information on that, regrettably. But that could also be an option. The duration of higher learning depended on the institution, I'm pretty sure.

Depending on how wealthy Kina's family was, I can see them taking a loan for her education tuition, maybe?

That would be the extent Fem! Kinzo's legal education - I can't see her being sent abroad for 'better' educational standards while the world war was raging, though I can imagine Kina doing self-study. I still need to research the effects of the war on Taiwan especially, as well as the school system in Japan.

So, Kina is a fairly independent, well educated woman, as independent as a woman could be at that time.

Then, presumably, her father dies - because, again, in canon Kinzo was declared head of the family, not head in waiting, and the Kanto Earthquake happens, and the elders forcibly uproot her life.

The freedom that Kina is accustomed to, her studies and so on, is taken from her because the Ushiromiya family needs a head, all the men are dead, and she's one of the eligible woman born into the family who can adopt-in a husband for the position.

To the elders, she is a woman. Meant to sire children and tend to the household. Nothing more.

I'm pretty sure that after the earthquake, Kinzo had to move to Odawara in canon? That's where the (previous) head house had lived, where the bodies of the extended family were, it was on the mainland where their business ventures were, etc. Also, after getting Bice off of Rokkenjima following the shootout between the soldiers of the gold, she lived in a mansion in Odawara - probably nearby?

So Kina is taken away from Taiwan, and her prideful, loud and brash personality is forcibly beaten down into a shape that the elders found suitable (possibly on a physical level?). She may have even been requested to go there, if she found work as a JRC Nurse, and then forcd to stay by her relatives.

Everything is scrutinized about her, from her unusual height as a woman (because she’s still tall, she has reddish hair on her mother’s side before it goes white), to her western tastes, and insubordinate behavior.

So Kina loses the brash cheer and softness she might have had in the past, and starts getting cold and bitter - especially towards the elders.

She is told, not asked, that she will marry a man for money meant to revive the family. Kina is stripped of all agency, if she does not want to be disowned and out of house and home - and be forced to repay the tuiton costs that the Head House might have paid for her.

She has no real estate, (potentially) no experience holding a job which would make it difficult to get one - here her upper-class standing would be against a woman holding a job, maybe? Though nursing was an honorable profession by the time she began schooling - and many people were hesitant to hire women who graduated from higher learning, because the older they are, the more likely they are to soon be married and then retire to raise a family.

Generally, it would be a struggle for her to earn that money - and the disownment would definitely tell against her.

In Japan, arranged marriages stem from arranged meetings (omiai). One family - often the spouse/bride-to-be's parents, meets with a go-between to look through portfolios of potential candidates also looking for a match. Their class standing, wealth, lineage, education, income, appearance - it's all scrutinized.

When a potential spouse is selected, then the families - and potential couple to be - meet at a place designated by the go-between. The couple gets some time alone to get to know the other person by the end of the first meeting, and subsequent dates are set up until the choice on whether or not to marry is made.

Kina, on the account of being not entirely japanese, would be discriminated against despite the Ushiromiya 'Old Money' standing. Also, at risk of being disowned, she could not speak out against the marriage if she did not agree with whoever the elders managed to get who'd be willing to give up their family name for a 'half-blood'.

So, there is that to consider.

I'm figuring that, through the Ushiromiya name, her husband's family believed - even with Kina being 'half' japanese - his marriage would therefore lead to better business connections for them. Or maybe he was attracted to Kina, or was under the misconception that she did agree with the marriage.

He could be half-Korean, and due to rumors that Korea was poisoning water after the earthquake and a plethora of other reasons, people in Japan began rioting, attacking, imprisoning, and killing people of Korean-descent, or even those suspected to be of korean descent. The wedding could be a matter of ensuring safety.

Again, we don't have nearly enough information on Kinzo's wife in canon, so I'm not sure what, in a genderbent au, his situation would be like.

Considering the Kanto Earthquake happened September 1923, I'm leaning towards Kinzo (therefore Kina) getting married in 1924 or '25, once homes were rebuilt, things were getting back on their feet, etc.

Continuing On | Parenthood / Bearing The Adults:

The strain in Kina's marital life is just as bad as in canon.

She is in a marriage to a person she doesn't know, and he doesn't know her. Again, considering her foreign parentage, and her like of western styles (which can be seen as a lack of patriotism?), he may even look down on her (or she perceives it that way).

Though she does have the skillset to hold a job (such as being a JRC nurse, needlepoint, etc), she might be expected and pressured to stay home.

Like Kinzo does in canon, Kina retreats into her western books, running the household, the budget of the head house, paying wages for staff, and drinking. Possibly to a lesser extent than Kinzo in canon, at least publicly (I'm not sure how appropriate ladies drinking in Japan was at the time, or if its something not so important to appearances), but she still drinks.

So, she is extremely distant from her husband, cold towards him, and I'm not sure how he would feel towards her? Again, lack of canon reference material.

Is he just as distant towards her, the marriage nothing more than business as long as she does what she's meant to? Is he frustrated with her lack of empathy or softness? Is he derisive of her, or does he try to reach out to her - at least at first? Or, does he rage against her coldness with fire, lashing out?

After all, he's only the head in name through his marriage. The elders hold all the power, all the money, essentially rendering his hand in his duties unnecessary, and as he married into the family, he'd automatically of the lowest rank in the ie -

Not to mention that the Ushiromiya Family isn't kind to birth-members of the house, forget by marriage.

Even if Kina were a woman, maybe just to make her spouse irritated, maybe they’d involve her over him in financial matters - or put them on equal standing. Kina is blood family, but a woman - her husband is a man, but married into the family.

That is to say, neither of them have any, in regards to what’s left of the original fortune or the investment of the dowry. That may change as years pass, some elders move or pass away, and Kina’s spouse at least achieves more freedom…but at the beginning, there’s none to be had.

If sticking close to canon, which means the future Ushiromiya Family is still heavily influenced by western fashions, he would have at least adopted foreign clothing styles. Maybe Kina refused to comply with the elders, so they pass it off as an eccentricity of hers.

So, based on that, by the elders - not just Kina - he isn't treated well. And in Umineko, hurt engenders hurt.

There's also the whole issue with consummating the marriage, the consent of either of them sleeping together, taking into additional account that Kina becomes a heavy drinker and what that could mean each time they share a bed, and the importance of having children, too - because plausible barrenness/infertility is a reasonable clause for divorce.

And then there’s the subsequent abuse heaped upon both of them, but especially Kina, for the lack of children being born (thinking on it, perhaps the Ushiromiya family puts such importance of a woman’s worth in giving birth because they can not inherit any other assets, other than perhaps money after the death of a father?? I don’t know all the intricacy of the law at that point).

There’s not even a bitter sense of a business-like relationship between them.

Kina, in regards to her children, wouldn’t change very much - even if some things changed a lot. Rather than being apathetic outright, as Kinzo is in canon, Kina would be forced to acknowledge her kids, at least in their early years.

She’d carry them for generally nine months each time she was pregnant, deal with the woes that come from a stretching stomach and aching joints, the recuperation after childbirth, and then be needing to nurse them (or hire a wet nurse).

Children she didn’t want.

Kinzo’s apathy takes on a whole new light, in a world where he’d be a woman. Kina did not want this marriage, did not want to share a bed, and yet had to for her own security - it’s a twisted form a consent that isn’t truly there).

Rather than apathy outright, maybe Kina would even feel resentment towards her kids, if they weren’t promptly handed off to the care of nursemaids while she retreated to her books and drink (which, actually, is concerning when she is the one pregnant. If a woman doesn’t breastfeed or get rid of the milk, sometimes it can harden into lumps in her breast, and likewise their are studies that a mother’s breast milk is best for babies…)

They are parasites eating her life away, vultures that peck away at her corpse to make a living for themselves. I say corpse because Kina isn’t actually living, she’s just doing the bare minimum of keeping herself alive, and in canon Kinzo mentions his life during this time had no meaning - and also, Kinzo and his ‘what is a will’ speech at the start of Legend will always stick with me.

This could also further worsen a relationship with her husband, because Kina - by not caring for her children, even if it’s best to avoid doting overmuch on them - isn’t doing her expected duty as a mother.

Kina is physically abusive still, as well. There is a common lack of belief that women aren’t violent abusers, or maybe most people are just afraid/ashamed to be hurt by women (because gender roles/expectations), but it doesn't change the fact that the abuse happens.

Women can be physically abusive.

I can’t say she’d be viciously abusive towards her husband at first, so much as she’d prefer to ignore his existence entirely or be extremely sharp-tongues, but if they got into arguments - I can imagine Kina’s hands flying if she lost control of emotions (such as lack of maternal behavior?). Slaps, scratches that can jump to punches, kicks…

Depending on the situation, she could escalate - and again, consent about sharing the wedding bed and so on is a concern. Especially with the drinking. It is a woman’s duty to share her bed with her spouse, but for Kina - who hadn’t wanted this spouse, this duty - I’m not sure she would as externally apathetic as Kinzo (and Kinzo just might have refused to feel or acknowledge feeling anything as a coping mechanism, I don’t know), though both were pushed into it.

More than Kina raises the kids, it would…probably end up being her spouse more than her, alongside a team of nursemaids and so on. Which would possibly result in more mocking for him from the family elders, even worse tension between him and Kina.

Kina would, after a point in time I think, just grow as apathetic (at least on the outside) as Kinzo was.

If they get married in 24/25, my headcanon is that Krauss (or, If going full GB, Kristine) wouldn’t be born until 1931. That’s five or six years. Five to six years of repetitive abuse on the lack of children, poor personal financial state for all that they live in relative splendor (a large mansion, staff to care for it, etc), and potentially her husband's family petitioning him for aid on account of blood ties...

Then there’s the poor marital relations + consent issues on both end (if both were pressured into the marriage, the expectation to have kids, it’s could feel like violation on both ends, on top of Kina’s drinking habits), discrimination against both their positions in the household, as well as her ‘eccentricity’ regarding western things and ‘half-Japanese’ status.

Treatment of the Adults (As Kids):

There’s many angles to try and perceive how Kina would resent her kids, if she did not treat them with outright apathy and give the bare minimum of keeping them alive that is expected of her as Kinzo does canonically (If even that, considering his wife ran the household).

If her first born was a boy (Krauss), it would get the elders off her back about having a child to inherit the family headship after her husband’s death (again, I don’t know if she could have operated as head herself if he were to die pre-WWII).

However, Kina would have to deal with the fact that her son has more of a right to freedom than she does, more of a right to have any ownership of the family assets and so on -

Due to a lack of raising her kids herself, Krauss would then be raised in accordance to the elders and her husband’s viewpoint (so. much. misogyny). Which would then probably escalate her dislike of her son as he gets older, his presumed ascendancy over women because he was a man, and therefore better educated in certain matters outside of domestics - even if Krauss doesn’t pull such hierarchy over her as a child.

(Or an adult, because Kina is scary just like Kinzo and twisted into a far cry from her brash and boisterous younger self, and also still his mother - and later, she takes her freedom and creates her own influence.)

If born a woman, Kristine’s birth would do nothing to alleviate the pressure of the elders on either of her parents, the small boon of having a first-born son would be non-existent.

Disappointment all around because a girl can’t inherit (though that would strengthen the elder’s power over a household), which would then disappoint her spouse - who’s still under the elder’s thumb.

Whether he’s happy or not about a child, a daughter, it’s still also a disappointment, and Kina would definitely not be pleased.

Feminine things that she may have still liked - music, sewing, embroidery, and other needlework, managing a house in the future, how to raise children themselves in the future - those were things she was absolutely expected to teach her daughters.

It wasn’t something she could merely indulge in. As a woman, those things were her right to know, what she could involve herself with…

Again, losing bits of herself to the vultures.

With Eva, she fights for her freedom - for the right to do things otherwise unattainable to her. Eva is rough and tumble, she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty, and strives for attention - she’s as bold as Kina was in the past, just as brash when she was young - even if that brashness turns to cutting quips as she gets older.

The comparison is displeasing, especially when Eva’s unladylike behavior is automatically reflected back upon her parents, and Kina specifically.

If she were born a boy instead (Evan? Real creative, I know), their dynamics would be so similar and yet so different. Evan has far more value, to the elders and to their father, based on his gender alone - he is a boy, he can inherit the Ushiromiya name, headship, and assets.

Like Krauss, he stands for everything Kina can’t have and everything that was taken from her by the elders - freedom. With how Kinzo was so apathetic to his kids, again my general thought process is that they were raised with influence from the family elders.

Evan would lord above his siblings, as he was the next head of house. He would inherit everything they left (which, arguably, wouldn’t actually be much?).

But he wouldn’t have his mother’s attention, or appreciation.

Evan would just have her apathy, her revulsion - and depending on how much the elders overlook Kina’s spouse, because the marriage really was just for the sake of money and continuing the ie, he might place his mother on the scale as ‘higher value’ than his father, for all that he is technically head.

Which does still brew resentment between he and Kristine, who can’t even inherit (though he fails to also link this to his mother), because Kristine still has some semblance of interaction with Kina while she doesn’t even seem to bear being in the same room as Evan.

The fights between the two kids get vicious, and that makes Kina even more frustrated with having them in the first place - especially when she’s hung over, when it’s over who gets her attention most.

Their grades in classes, their behavior at home, and even Evan’s attempt at domestic crafts to also gain her attention (but really gets a bit of mockery from everyone, instead), do nothing to endear them to Kina.

Giving birth to Rudolf (or Rochelle) nearly kills her, because Kina would be in her forties by that point. The older a woman is, the more difficult it is for her to get pregnant on account of the loss of eggs over the years during her periods - and the more difficult a pregnancy becomes.

Considering Natsuhi struggled to get pregnant, and I’ve seen a few thoughts float around that it was actually Krauss who struggled with fertility (which, GB AU, isn’t good), so I keep thinking that women in the Ushiromiya Family often have difficult pregnancies if not fertility issues.

Another daughter or son. At this point, Kina is reaching her middle age - and there is also the war going on (Japan actually was part of the war from 1939, because the empire was trying to expand at this time - the invasion of china, I think trying to make moves on British India…?).

She might then be stuck alone, in the mansion, if her husband was fit to be drafted into the war. With a newborn. Though there’s always the chance he wasn’t.

Rudolf/Rochelle are raised already knowing they will receive no affection from Kina, and possibly none from their father, and so they look elsewhere.

Rosa (or…Roland, maybe?) wouldn’t be born for another ten years, an even more dangerous and impossible pregnancy as Kina is around 52 by that point….even less inclined for more reasons (like, perchance, a falsified miscarriage - )

Also, working off the assumption that the Adults’ hair colors are their natural hair colors (they no doubt dyed it black to fit in, because that’s still part of some school dress codes to this day), she could be accused of infidelity, despite her often self-isolation- which would then be assuaged by looking back through her family history (through miniature portraits, maybe?), and seeing if other hair colors were passed down, etc.

The War & Everything Associated With It:

We now come to the Biggest Effect that Fem! Kinzo would have in regards to Umineko.

Rokkenjima, The Legend of the Gold, and Beatrice.

In canon, Kinzo enlisted in the army at somepoint around 1944 or so on. The elders, previously, were able to keep him from getting drafted earlier on - and maybe his depression hadn’t been so bad as to have him wishing to die outright.

However, by 1944, Kinzo wanted to die. He enlisted in the army, perhaps hoping to be sent to the front lines or so on. Instead, he ended up stationed at the military base on Rokkenjima.

While he was stationed at Rokkenjima, 1944-1945, a badly damaged submarine from Italy sought sanctuary, there. On board had been a nobleman, Castiglioni (given name is never mentioned), a close confidant of Mussolini given an important task - to ship a certain bit of ‘cargo’ to safety.

He dies over the voyage, along with some thirty other men - because by the time the submarine reaches Rokkenjima, only ten people aboard it are left alive, including Castiglioni’s daughter, Beatrice.

It eventually comes out that Castiglioni had been transporting some ten tons of gold (ranging anywhere from 800 to 1000 pure golden ingots).

After a certain point, Kinzo is heavily implied to have incited a massacre among the Italian soldiers who’d brought the gold, and his own fellow soldiers. Everyone except Kinzo and Beatrice die in the ensuing firefight, leaving the gold to be either hidden or divided by the two of them, but Beatrice is badly injured.

Kinzo, after the gunfight, brings Beatrice to the nearby island of Nijima to have her injuries treated, and at some point collects a golden ingot - he uses this to take a massive amount of collateral, as the ingot functions as proof he can pay it back, in order to make a series of investments and purchases to make the Ushiromiya name incredibly wealthy.

Perhaps with this money, he covers up the massacre on Rokkenjima, he purchases the island, and this sets the stage for the rest of the tragedy to play out upon.

I’m leaving out and simplifying the aftermath for the sake of focusing on the immediate changes to the story of 1944-45, and Rokkenjima.

Kina, unlike Kinzo, is a woman. From what I understand, during World War II, most women in the military consisted of nurses (or Red Cross nurses). So if she were to attempt to get to the front lines, she would do so as a nurse.

They weren’t typically formed into units though, during the US invasion of Japan, many took part in civilian resistance, such as students and faculty of the Okinawa Daiichi Women’s High School and the Shihan Women’s School being mobilized as nursing units by the army.

I’ve mentioned before that maybe Kina nursing training of some sort in regards to higher learning, so that education would make her available for such a position. So that’s a potential way for her to be sent to Rokkenjima, as a nurse.

However, what would be a concern is the fact that she was also the mother of three children. Most likely, she would have been expected to tend to her children.

Not including whether or not her husband was drafted into the war.

Similar to how Kinzo was prevented from having to enlist in the army, I can see the elders working to keep their puppet head off the front lines, at least while his son is so young.

Or, maybe he was drafted earlier on, and then discharged after being severely wounded and unable to continue working on the frontline as a soldier - or was killed in the line of fire, or still alive and fighting.

Leaving the possibility of the kids being left without either parents, or just one of them, if Kina did manage to enlist as a nurse.

Though Kina isn’t likely to raise them herself, instead having nursemaids to do so for her - so her absence wouldn’t much be remarked upon in regards to that, since it was really the staff of the household raising the children.

So, working off the line of thought that Kina wants to enlist as a nurse, in a bid to get sent to the frontlines and die, we also have to look at whether the elders would let her (depending on who is still alive, living with them in the mansion, etc), as well as her husband and the government itself…

(Or she could disguise herself as a man, because Kina is tall, but I'm not sure how that would pan out.)

That would be a complex situation I don’t even know where to begin with, but it would also plausibly set the stage for Kina being deployed with other nurses, to Rokkenjima, at least at some point.

It’s never mentioned in canon that a nursing unit was stationed there, but it could be possible. When soldiers would got sick or injured, they’d need to be treated - as would the Italian soldiers, once the submarine arrives.

Either Kina’s nursing unit would already be stationed there by the time the submarine arrived, or they’d be sent there by the mainland somehow.

I’m inclined to think the former, because it’s mentioned (at least in the manga) that due to weather conditions, it’s hard for the mainland to get a boat to Rokkenjima for the Italians.

All of that, getting sent to Rokkenjima, leads to Kina and the gold, and how she gets it.

Which, considering Kinzo’s affair with Beatrice, the entire life of Beatrice II, and then the birth of ‘Lion’, the assumed death in a manner identical to their mother, and their subsequent life as Yasuda Sayo…changes a lot about Umineko.

Beatrice / The Gold:

If Beatrice were a girl, at least physically, in a world where Kinzo is a woman, right then and there, it would derail part of the story of Umineko.

The massacre in 1986, later down the line, could still occur of course, with the brewing tension and anger and hate the sibiling have for each other - as it happens in Lion’s miracle fragment, but so much would be different - one fact being that Lion never comes to exist at all.

The epitaph might still exist, as homage to Bice after her passing, the gold would still exist, but there would be no true inheritor - there'd be no true person that the epitaph was meant for.

Beatrice II would never be conceived, not as a daughter of Ushiromiya Kinzo. Therefore, Ushiromiya Lion - Yasuda Sayo - would also never be born at all, as the child of Beatrice II and and Kinzo. The meaning behind the epitaph is different. There will never be any message bottles detailing the massacre, no promises of white horses - the person in they belonged to wouldn't exist at all.

The equipment needed to have a baby with Beatrice I (Bice), Kina doesn’t have.

Rule of the three No’s: No balls, no sperm, no baby.

There's also the fact that, both being women, there'd be internalized homophobia, possibly between the both of them (and it sucks that we know so little about Bice, because there's so much to be explored between her and Kinzo in canon and we only get biased viewpoints on the relationship), Kina is a married woman for all that she doesn't care/resents her family. Also, the potential age gap between them, since I don't think Bice's age is ever discussed in relation to Kinzo's own.

In this case, striving to remain as canon, Kina may still incite (or, as it may be consigned to 'a man's business and the massacre breaks out even without her hand in it, much how the adults later kill even in Lion's miracle fragement over the gold) take advantage of the shootout between the soldiers for the gold.

As what I assume to be the sole translator for japanese to english, while Bice translates that back into italian, it would be in her power to either worsen or assuage rising tension - it also would have a higher increase of death, because of other nurses on the island.

As to why... greed.

With that much money, even as a woman, she could be free, free from the shackles placed on her by the elders, if she managed to find some way to liquidate it. With that much money, she could go anywhere in the world - become anyone, anything besides property of the Ushiromiya family, a womb that had lost its use as age caught up to it.

And...Bice would be, too. Beyond being the daughter of Castiglioni, a noble woman even if the title was mere courtesy in the republic. With that money, money that by virtue of being entrusted to Bice's father belonged to the italian woman (or man, despite physical sex, depending on gender identity-) , the two of them together - because how could she leave behind the dear friend that had made her world into something living again? - would be free.

That gold...paved the path towards peace, happiness, fulfillment.

Kina, like Kinzo, escapes Rokkenjima in the aftermath of the massacre with Bice, brings her to Nijima to get treated. Both she and Bice are the only ones who know about the gold, but as Bice is an illegal presence in japan, Kina's the only one who can potentially utilize that gold.

Following Japan's surrender and the GHQ taking primary control of japan, the ie system was eventually abolished - though the position of head of the family, the koseki, still remained.

I don't know much information from this time on, but I'm taking this to mean that, at some point, a woman could inherit family assets that would have before then fallen into the hands of her spouse or male relative. So, it wouldn't belong to her husband alone.

It belonged to Kina, just as all the family assets should have - and would.

Kina, possibly by using her husband's name (they perhaps came to some form of armistice, the elder's power weakening over the course of the war and their old age, or she forcefully finds a way to take power above him in the family), would make connections with the GHQ and american forces - at the same time, using gold to take massive collateral money.

A woman in business, even if she was using her husband's name. The elders had overlooked her spouse for long enough, and by virtue of being an Ushiromiya by blood, Kina took up the power vacuum they left behind.

It's an interesting twist on the perceived power of their roles, wife and husband, from then on.

Kina's business decisions, the investment of her money, by 1950, makes the Ushiromiya Family one of the wealthiest in the world, taking advantage of the industrial boom post-war, and in preparation for the Korean war.

If Kina were a woman, I could see her - derived from the kanji in her name - being called a Golden Witch, when rumors of the golden ingot she showed to President Marusoo spread, and the way that - through impossible successes after successes - she reaches unheard of levels of wealth.

To become so successful, as a woman, no less, was nothing short of impressive - to the point of being impossible.

What would be especially interesting, to me...

Was if Bice was a man.

The son of one of Mussolini's confidants. At least physically, still not taking into account gender identities for the time being (because that would be interesting, with gender roles hammered so heavily into their skulls, and it is the 1940's).

Due to the Divine Comedy parallels within Umineko, in the manga Kinzo brings up The Divine Comedy outright when speaking to Bice, he'd be named Dante.

He does not treat her as lesser, is overjoyed at having a companion who does not look at him and see just nobility or money. Dante doesn't mind discussing foreign literature with her, of bantering and debating rather than outright overruling...simple things like that, when Kina had been stripped of that level of acceptance, and even engagement from others twenty years prior, plants seed of affection, if not attraction.

Though, I have to wonder, as a woman who has already been forced into a relationship, if Kina would be more aware of whether or not Dante was romantically interested in her in return, or if he only saw her as a friend.

Because in regards to canon, again, we…don’t know how Bice herself felt towards Kinzo, though he loved her enough to go mad and have her daughter, for a time, take her place (not to mention the whole imprisonment on Rokkenjima. Like, damn it Kinzo, if you had people delivering food and so on to Kuwadorian, why not have tutors, or send her to school? But, oh wait, that would mean being separated from Beatrice - )

Bice was in a foreign country, unable to return home, only one person she could speak to (in her second language, no less), who she was also financially dependent on….the power dynamics are decidedly one-sided, here. Add in the fact that her family is dead, and she just survived a traumatic massacre, it’s…not an equal relationship, even if it is love on both ends. Not a healthy one.

It would have been cool, to have more of that fleshed out - but unfortunately, we only see Bice through biased second-person lenses (Kinzo, Nanjo, and Genji).

I feel like maybe Kina would, however, be very aware of the potentially sizeable age gap between them (I’ve always had the sense that Beatrice was younger than Kinzo in canon, but I don’t know for sure). She was raised with the belief that her beauty, that submissive and dedicated behavior to the family, that childbearing was important.

That, and in Japan, passion and love matches were less popular because love could fade over time with looks…things that, maybe, Kinzo in canon didn’t think about. She is in her forties, had several children - might have been a beauty in her youth, but now…who knew?

More awareness, maybe, of what she lost over the past twenty years, being tied to the Ushiromiya name and her marriage?

(Then again, Beatrice / Dante really…couldn’t leave her? Still don’t know the language, have no connections to get out, and Japan is under control of their ‘enemy’ - apparently Bice’s mom died in a American bombing of Italy…? So there’s the risk of being handed over to them, or sent back to Italy…So there’s that).

Though, Dante…I’m presuming that he’d be far more in the line of fire compared to Bice, because he is a man, and therefore more of an immediate threat? Maybe he gets hurt trying to help the innocent (nurses, like Kina to safety?) and it’s a slaughter of the women in the crossfire.

(Considering I’ve seen a few theories float around that Kinzo didn’t intend for the massacre to blow up as massively as it did, and took merely advantage of the aftermath, that’s…pretty traumatic for Kina, seeing these other women she’s worked with get shot down for saving these men’s lives).

They both escape Rokkenjima, same as before, Kina still wrenches control of household affairs from her husband in some way…the rapid fire investment of collateral money (received by proof of the gold)…

It would also set the stage of their child's birth, and if they're born a boy - potentially even Sayo's, as well.

Though, both births would be difficult ones. Kina is in her forties by the time she meets Dante, so forty-something by the time the child is born, and then sixty something around the time Sayo would be born (which isn't impossible, but still extremely difficult because of a decrease in fertility and the natural degradation of a person’s body, not to mention the drinking).

Also, in the 50’s, which is around the time Kuwabeato would be born in canon, if she’s somewhere around her late teens/early twenties, if Kina quits sleeping with her husband after meeting Dante (or Bice), the parentage of the child is immediately called into question, plus that also switches up the Kuwadorian situation.

No paternity tests exist at that time, so her child could be passed off as her husband’s (especially since Krauss/Kristine already had blonde hair).

But, if Dante is still alive at that time (wouldn’t die in childbirth as Bice possibly did in canon), that would be stealing the child that was actually born of love between them from him. Unless he does die in some way, prior to Kuwadorian being built. Illness, following the massacre and submarine?

Kina could attempt to divorce her husband, if Dante were still alive, but that would damage her reputation and future business ventures, not to mention that Dante/Bice don’t have any legal documentation and so on…

There’s also the option of potentially feigning illness and being sent away (doctor’s *Nanjo’s made-up* orders), during the duration of her period, and spending that time/the birth there (with Dante).

If Kina weren’t planning on raising her and Dante’s child with the Ushiromiya family, whether Dante is alive or dead (in the catbox - ), I can see her giving birth in the Odawara mansion Dante’s reside(d) at, and maybe falsifying a miscarriage?

Or she’d give birth at the Ushiromiya family mansion, have Nanjo falsify a miscarriage, and have the child sent to the Odawara (Dante/Bice’s) marriage?

Fem! Kinzo complicates these matters. In real life, I can see her giving birth, and passing child off as her and her legal husband…but then, like her, he will be chained to the Ushiromiya name, a false father, never getting a chance to know the real one, and is tied to everything that Kina resents.

…out of curiosity, I did look up “mom had secret child” on Google, and found this Reddit post, it’s also the first story in a video on YouTube, so maybe it’s not as impossible a scenario as I first thought, for her to leave again due to ‘health’ issues. I don’t know if it is real though, so take the post with a grain of salt.

(It’s also still fairly creepy, real or not, considering the OP in the story is twenty, and the person their mom (40’s?) had an affair with was 24 at the time of the pregnancy, and also the child of a family friend.).

Rokkenjima & Kuwadorian:

I can see things, unfortunately, playing out pretty similarly to canon. In 1952, the Ushiromiya Family Mansion, and likely Kuwadorian, are built upon Rokkenjima once Kina acquired the island.

Kina regularly disappears off to Kuwadorian, and possibly has a way of keeping her husband from looking into matters (perhaps threats, or perhaps the simple fact that she is now the head of house - she is the one who controls the assets, the money. He has no power and - of his own family is indebted to the Ushiromiya family if they ever borrowed money or so on - he would certainly be forced to repay that amount, and knowing Kina, with interest, If pursing divorce or scandal). Or maybe, he takes his anger out just as violent as she does...

As her and Dante’s child grows, in a world where Lion / Sayo is born (the child of Kinzo and his own daughter with Bice, in canon), they’d have to be born as a boy.

In this world, Sayo/Lion would be born as Ushiromiya Kina’s child with her own son.

Eventually, Kina’s mental state - which is likely unstable after having lost Dante, not to mention…her life, in general, post-1923 and then massacre in 1945 - begins to slip as he gets older.

More and more, the child looks like his father - like Dante.

To the point where Kina either can’t - or tries not to - differentiate between father and son, which might further destabilize what mental stability she does have (I’ve also seen it postulated that Kinzo began to develop some form of dementia or other memory disorders, and his heavy drinking definitely wouldn’t have helped matters).

This post (Ushiromiya Family Apologist, here on tumblr) goes into Bice and Kinzo's relationship, and there's a bit of a look into Kinzo's obsession and attachment with Kuwabeato as well. It’s in response to post by Ramblings of the Golden Witch, already linked there. You can scroll down into the comments, to see the look into his mental health at the time.

There's also another post (by Batbeato) regarding Kinzo's trauma, his relationship with Bice, and his abuse, and their really interesting to read. Definitely influences my thoughts on the man.

As par for the course in Umineko, it's a fucked up situation all-around.

Eventually, just like Kinzo in canon, Kina is unable to see her son Dante, so named in honor of his father. Instead, as she sees in the man she loved, the man who had risen from the seas and given her new life, the gold which enabled her to receive a measure of freedom. She sees her lover, Dante.

I'm assuming there have to be brief moments of clarity for Kinzo, in canon - his back and forth between saying he'd give everyhting to Beatrice, before claiming she can't leave him, that dangerous level of dependency and obsession over her.

Kina has those same moments of clarity, but it's ultimately obscured by the desire to see Dante, who in a reverse of roles compared to the Divine Comedy, led Kina from the inferno of hell into paradise. Kina can't let go of her lover, and superimposes that image upon her son, because it was Dante who kept her alive. She could not save his life, not from what killed him (because I don't think she would obsess over her own son if his father was alive), and now...it's like he returned to her again, after another interval of twenty years...

I can't say if Dante II would be kept so isolated, so naive and unknowing of the outer world, as Beatrice II would have been. As Kina's son (initially), he'd - by virtue of being born a man - would not struggle nearly so much in making it in the world, and that's the expectations that stem from being a man.

But I don't think he'd ever leave Rokkenjima, or Kuwadorian itself. He's educated in academics, in languages and countries and economics (as her beloved son, he is her heir - even if she has to have papers forged - ), perhaps more so that Kuwabeato was in canon, with tutors perhaps silenced by money (or threats, who knows), but Kina can't risk losing him (again) by sending him off to school in the mainland - and he is still a person who doesn't (legally) exist.

Books in English, in his father's native italian, and as she slowly loses grasp of her son over his father, Dante (I) clothes are given to him, 'his' favorite meals are brought before him as she tries to make him remember, delving into old occult books she'd once only picked up as curious, superstitious oddities....

A steady decline in her mindset, up until the point that the stroke of his mother's fingers in his hair isn't so innocent anymore, and the precious nicknames she'd given him in the past take on a new, deeper, serious meaning...no longer her beloved heir, but the man that, had things been different, she wanted to take as her spouse.

Kina, like Kinzo with Beatrice II, rapes her son.

It's veiled in the mystique of magic she so heavily to believes in by now, she's so desperate to have 'him' remember his first life, that this will help him - but Dante, her son, remembers nothing. Not when she so slowly, so gently, took him to bed and swore to him that this magic would help him remember, and began to remove his clothes when his own fingers refused to co-operate.

Because no matter how Kina claims he is a sorcerer who has parted the sea and was born from the flames of inferno he rescued her from (the submarine, the explosion which damaged it), who led her through purgatory, the sorcerer who bestowed upon her a pile of magic gold from which she built their home, and even recreated a new form for him after his mortal form died from wound he'd saved her from (the massacre of the base below them) , the sorcerer that gave her the magic power to create paradise above hell and purgatory -

The Golden Sorcerer paired with the Golden Witch, able to create impossible fortune from impossible chances, an empress (over a business empire) over an island she created (the mansions, the chapel) -

Dante, her son, is not that sorcerer.

He is not the man who must have been his father, from what manages to grasp from the servants who state his face has not changed from his last life - because if he is not a sorcerer, does not feel like one, he is a human. One with a mother, and then a father - that's how the stories always go.

A man and a woman - together they bear a child. Dante was likely raised to know that much of how a child was brought into the world, beyond Kuwabeato, if not the specifics as to how (i.e, sex). Very incredibly intelligent, and also sheltered, left ignorant - without a real chance to form his own sense of self, for all that he may be more aware of it than canon Beatrice II (seriously, depending on how old she was when Kinzo started directly treating he like her mother reborn, Beatrice II might not even be aware she had a mom).

I don't know if he would understand that what Kina did to him constituted as rape, because he is still - for all the education he'd been given - sheltered, isolated, in his palace of a mansion (a bit...like..the odawara mansion the elders stuck her in). He may be more well-informed compared to canon Beatrice II, but how far that stretches...it depends on what Kina deems necessary for him to know, and that would be wholly different from canon Kinzo and Beatrice II because of their genders.

Besides that, he still sees Kina as his mother - it's a 'mother knows best' situation. She believes this will help him, or who she sees him as...how can he refuse her, upset her?

Even if it feels horribly wrong, terribly wrong.

Dante II is still, just like Beatrice II for all that their education may have been different, effectively groomed for submission, for obedience to his mother - he stands always in deference to Kina, to the name and persona she'd given to him in her head, to the mansion that cocooned him - a bird in a gilded egg he wasn't allowed to hatch from.

Which isn't good because Kina isn't mentally healthy, at all. Her every action is marred by her instability, her traumas, and expereicences.

However, he wouldn't understand this, other than his discomfort at being seen as his father, if he does truly have a father (again, up for debate, considering in canon Kinzo doesn't allow Beatrice II to call him that, so it is potentially an observation pieced together), because everything he is taught, again, is tied to Kina herself.

Is that not normal in his books, in history, for one son to be said to take after his father? For it to be something to take pride in?

Yet to his mother, Dante doesn't look like his father - like that mythical sorcerer that saved her life. He becomes that person.

Kina doesn't, can not, see that in the moment. She doesn't see her son, who resembles his father. Kina sees the father, himself, alive again.

Dante is not his own person, sometimes.

For all that his mother didn't hurt him, that first night...Dante didn't hate her, didn't fear her, because he didn't understand what was done to him...but perhaps could not ever trust her again.

(Ncfan on ao3 has some fics on Kuwadorian Beatrice, of Kinzo's rape of her, and the effect her abuse and imprisonment in Kuwadorian...highly suggest reading them).

When clarity does strike Kina, I imagine it strikes her very hard. Especially according to both Nanjo and Genji in canon: Kinzo did not set out from Beatrice II's birth to have her replace her mother, and when he came to realize he was beginning to see her as her mother, it 'pained him greatly'.

Nanjo mentions that Kinzo mentioned Beatrice II being her mother reborn and thinking of it as a joke when they were drinking, and maybe it began that way to Kinzo...but then he latches on to that idea, day in and day out of sneaking back and forth between Kuwadorian and the family mansion...

That freedom he associated with Beatrice, that renewel of life, is tied to Kuwadorian and their daughter, who shares her mother's face and name.

This could, of course, be seen as their personal biases in regards to Kinzo - Clair mentions that if Kinzo loved Beatrice II as his daughter, why pass down her mother's name to her? The situation could be as she states, that Kinzo already begun to see his daughter as Beatrice reborn from the day she'd been born, or the truth could lay in the middle somewhere between the two biases.

Jumping way back up the post, where the consent of the marriage bed she shares with her husband is looked at, Kina is, in her eyes...no better than the husband she resented. He saw an obedient bride in the place of a prisoner, a sacrifice -

Kina saw Dante, in place of their son.

She knows what she's doing is wrong, even if in the moment, in her delusions of seeing on person in place of another, she doesn't register why, perhaps does her best to avoid Kuwadorian leading up to the moment where she rapes her son, but her mind still latched on to that desperate idea and doesn't relinquish it.

When clarity hits, it's awful. Kina knows the difference between how her son Dante feels (Kinzo says as much, when Sayo is brought to him dressed as Beatrice, that he knew she hadn't felt the same way even if he denied it with delusions), and the love she felt for his father, which slowly latched onto him like a strangling weed.

It's fucked up. A cycle of abuse.

Kina, and Kinzo, were not mentally stable.

It would have been best to keep him away from Kuwadorian Beatrice, to find some way to mental health evaluations or aid - but this was the sixties, so these things weren't heavily researched - especially in Japan - he was a very rich man, and everyone who knew about Beatrice II was on his payroll...so their livelihood was in his hand.

No one stops him, tries to stop him, maybe don't even see the very real danger, until the deed's already been done.

And it impossibly leads to a pregnancy (or perhaps, if her mental state begins to worsen, chances are raised because Kina rapes Dante again. Kinzo in his later life isn't stable, wasn't stable back when Beatrice II was alive when he took her for her mother - and we don't know if he raped Beatrice II more than once. He could have. That is possible).

Kina, at sixty-six (if Sayo's actual date of birth is in may, and they were carried for a full nine months, they would have been conceived some point in September 1966), is carrying a baby. The baby of her own son.

A pregnancy at such an age, I don't think I've ever heard of one. If it's dangerous when a woman is in her forties, it can be downright deadly once she's at that age.

And this is all just lightly touching on an overview of 1/2 of Kina's life, not looking at the Ushiromiya side of things, because at the same time Dante II is an infant, the Ushiromiya's move to Rokkenjima as well, Kina gives birth to Roland in her fifties...her children's marriages, the birth of her first grandchild - so much happened, yet also so little we know about on Rokkenjima.

There's Kina saving Genji, reaching out to him/her in a bid to save their family from the war, renewing their friendship after some odd twenty years and reconciling with how they both changed, Krauss & Natsuhi's wedding in the early 50's (or, Kristine & Natsu's and that would be something Evan would have issues with, because his sister should have married out - ), Eva and Hideyoshi's marriage (Evan/Hina?), the elder pair's infertility issues, George's birth (I honestly can't tell if George's name would change that much in a GB verse. Georgia? Either that or it stays the same), Rudolf being Rudolf (and I went on a whole rant to Batbeato about how that would work in a genderbent verse, oops - ), and Rosa/Roland's entire early childhood, on top of dealing with her own spouse -

The dynamics would change so much.

Which all spins into Dante II's eventual accidental death, some point possibly after Lion/Sayo is born in 1967 (and I have no clue how Kina would up and hide that pregnancy, unless it was claimed she was sent to a mental institute which - wouldn't be good for the family reputation, though probably not unexpected? But also means that she'd be at Kuwadorian, regularly near Dante II, at least until after the birth...), when he leaves the fence of Kuwadorian for the first time.

There’s so much to look at here - so much.

And Kina…

Kina only gets worse, when Genji breaks the news that Dante is dead to her. The pregnancy and birth was a difficult one at her age, and now -

Just like she feared, he left her - and she lost him. Her lover reborn - no, the poor baby she’d had with him, and forced her own love upon.

Kina lost her son, and depending on the timing, baby Lion, in quick succession (we don’t know the circumstances of Lion’s birth in general, whether Beatrice II knew about the baby/the absence of it, how quickly they were actually brought to the family mansion).

In canon, I don't know if Kinzo was remorseful over the way he raised Beatrice II (ignorant of the world, sheltered to the point of naivety in most matters) compared to his rape itself, or her death. (If Genji never mentions Rosa's involvement, and I don't think he would, it could either be an accident or a suicide in his eyes).

Because I don’t think it’s ever mentioned what happened to Beatrice II’s body, I’m going to assume they were either cremated (which means sending the body to the mainland, paying for the cremation, the urn, having it sent back to Rokkenjima), or given a private burial somewhere on the island once the body was recovered.

(It’s not ever mentioned that a grave was found near Kuwadorian, which is most likely where it would be, but it might have gotten destroyed in the blast radius of explosion of far enough away, or alternatively, was hushed up by Eva, or something - maybe it doesn’t even have a marker to denote that it is a grave, at least not a noticeable one).

In a genderbent au, it would be Dante II’s portrait later hung up in the entrance hall (and every time I think of the portrait I now think of the songs Leia and Reon).

BABY LION / THE CLIFF INCIDENT:

So, Baby Lion is born at some point in 1967 while Dante (II) is still alive (because in canon, Kuwadorian Beatrice had to have been alive to give birth to them in the first place).

Presumably, Kina gives birth at Kuwadorian (under the guise of being elsewhere for treatment of her health), spends some time there recuperating from the birth, and then returns to the Ushiromiya family mansion.

In canon, Kinzo was apparently at the mansion around the time Beatrice died, as Rosa nervously expected him to grow angry with her and glanced at his study (?) door - so, Kina would not be at Kuwadorian, perhaps, prior to Dante II’s death.

Furthermore, baby Lion wouldn’t be with her at this point, as Natsuhi mentions in canon that when she was introduced to the baby, Krauss was away on business, and Rosa with her friends (On a trip? Don’t remember for sure). The others had already moved off island, and maybe his wife had already passed (Battler mentions her in Legend, all of once when he ses the portrait I think, but may have only known her through pictures or something).

I’m pinning Dante’s death at some point in late May or June, which I think is around the time schools would have testing? When Rosa (canon) goes to Kuwadorian, it’s after she’s gotten scolded by her mother for poor grades or something a tutor had brought up. Bad test grades would be one such reason for a scolding, maybe?

The baby is still at Kuwadorian, likely being cared for by the staff and maybe a wet nurse? (and there's a lot to look at her, from Kina's changed relationship to her son, her relationship with baby Lion, and then Dante II's relationship to his son - if he has any, at all).

Rosa/Roland finds Kuwadorian, Dante II leaves with them, and while wandering around Rokkenjima, he falls from one of the island's cliffs and dies. Genji finds out about it that night, likely immediately goes to search for him with the staff of Kuwadorian (which would have noticed him missing, come evening), or the next morning if it is too dark.

Actually how close was Beatrice II's body to the water, if the cliff she fell from overlooked the sea (i don't remember if it's mentioned in the vn/how its depicted in the manga)? Could it have been dragged into the ocean, so that not even her body was left behind?

We don't see Kinzo's immediate reaction to Beatrice II's death, because he doesn't leave his study (at least in the manga, and I don't remember if Beatrice II's death is looked at from his perspective except as 'his golden witch' escaping again, not his daughter - at least, not when when see him most of the time?). He self-isolates, and I think that's as much as we know as his grief / resuming madness in that moment of time.

After Dante II's death, Kina wants baby Lion close to her - wants them to be part of her household in the way their father and grandfather could not have been. Under her eyes, too - maybe they'd be safer (and depending how you interpret Lion's birth sex, AMAB or AFAB, or if Kina would care, they'd unable to leave her/die if she begins to delude herself with 'reincarnation' again).

In a world where the adults are still the canon gender, baby Lion would be given to Natsuhi. Natsuhi then could make a choice, to accept Lion and raise the baby as her own - or what happens in canon.

One day, on a walk with a servant who is carrying baby Lion, the resentment and upset Natsuhi feels for being unable to bear children, and then being handed a child not her own, leads to her pushing both baby Lion and the servant off a cliff.

The servant dies, and unknown to everyone but Genji, Nanjo, and Kumasawa - baby Lion survives, on account of emergency surgery done by Nanjo, which badly messes with hormone production, and renders them unable to have children.

They are then, by Genji, taken away from Rokkenjima, and brought to fukuin house so they are protected, in canon from Kinzo from repeating his sin - but also, HEY, NATSUHI PROBABLY PUSHED THEM OFF THIS CLIFF?

Natsuhi doesn't mention this fact to anyone, that she specifically pushed the servant and baby. According to the manga, she went and told Kinzo that she'd lost track of both baby and servant, and that led to a search for them.

Despite this, when Sayo finds the ten tons of gold, she is told by Nanjo and Genji that Natsuhi was the one who pushed them noff the cliff - Nanjo states this outright, in the manga.

if they weren't there, and Natsuhi was the only other person with the servant at that time, it's probably based on the fact that at least Genji and Kumaswa knew Natsuhi was going on a walk, and that the servant woman planned to bring the baby with them.

They don't have real proof Natsuhi pushed them, but they do know it could have been possible.

I don't know if Kina and Baby Lion in a GB AU would be at risk for a repeat, again based on what their birth gender would be. It's implied in canon that Lion was born as a male (the man from 19 years ago, for example), was surgically assigned female genitalia due to the damage their body suffered from the cliff, and raised that way as Yasuda Sayo.

Because Lion's body was now that of a woman's - even if they could not bare children, or so on - they (the servants, Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo) were worried of Kinzo repeating their sin - raping 'Beatrice'. That's why they were brought to Fukuin House, why Kinzo was not told they had lived.

To protect Lion, now Sayo.

If switching that, even keeping Lion's sex at birth ambiguous, they'd be possibly female at birth - and as Dante was a boy compared to Lion being (born) as a girl, I don't think they'd be so much concerned in regards to Kina repeating the sin of rape as in comparison to the fact they'd been thrown off a cliff when Kina tried to bring them into the Ushiromiya family. After her son, their father, died from falling - or, in worse thoughts, jumping - from a cliff.

After all, they're both girls, in a AFAB Lion's case in this AU - at least physically. She's (Kina) also in her sixties, near seventies. Such a thing didn't happen between two woman (at least not publicly).

I also can't see them performing phalloplasty on an infant with damage to their genitalia, as they would likely have done a vaginoplasty to Sayo if Lion was AMAB in canon, so they'd likely still be raised as a girl.

(Then again, reincarnation doesn't necessarily mean having a body of the same sex as in a past life, so if Lion grew to resemble their father and grandfather, it would be a maybe it still would be concern? So regardless of baby Lion’s physical sex, Kina would be a hazard unto them? I've alsoseen a few times, people wondering if Kinzo and Genji were in a closeted relationship, or if Genji - even onesidedly - had an attraction to Kinzo...in a genderbent au, this implies Kina possibly would be bisexual, maybe, before going straight Bice/Dante-sexual, though Genji might not mention this as a reason why to the others, which would at least have Genji concerned about it, on top of the fact that reincarnation means different body, different physical sex, even if the soul/person is the same, and actually that turns Kina's separation from Taiwan and Genji and the arranged marriage on it's head again - ).

They'd maybe be more concerned with the near murder, of Kina possibly locking the baby up in Kuwadorian again and raising them, so isolated there.

It had been wrong for her to do that to Dante II, there could have been forged papers, an adoption done to bring his into the family house - though, had that happened, he may have suffered as Kina's clearly favorite child, add that to infidelity suspicions, the children fighting of Kina's attention and later the inheritance...the selfish desire to keep her pride and joy free from her chains, her resentment, her apathy.

(Not that they'd be raised much better in Fukuin House. Isolated from others to disguise their age, sickly/simply due to their injuries, and then dragged to work at the family mansion as a servant far too young -)

Meanwhile, all this time, Kina doesn't know said Lion is alive.

If the adults (at least Natsuhi and Krauss) were also genderbent, though the aftermath of the cliff incident with Lion would possibly turn out the same as above, the cliff incident itself might be different?

Unless Kristine (Fem! Krauss) were off island, without Natsu, undergoing a doctor's examination and it's Natsu who the baby is still handed off to, how the servant and baby fall from the cliff is entirely different (because Natsuhi didn't push them).

It's a possible scenario, but I don't know if it's in Natsuhi's character - even as a man - to leave his wife alone, at a doctor's examnination. Or, maybe it would be him on a business trip?

So Kristine/Krauss is the one who baby Lion is handed to. Honestly, each time I've thought about this scenario, for whatever reason, I keep seeing her just actually falling with the baby. Or maybe she's the one who gets pushed with the baby in her hands, but by who....I have no clue.

She'd fall halfway down the cliff, but not all the way, and maybe lose consciousness or something? Baby Lion falls further, because she drops them after losing consciousness? I've pondered on a GB adults au before, and I've kind of always seen her having a lame arm as a result of the incident (and that ties into Kanon (if her persona is the one genderbent, not including aus where they are separate people, because that'd be even messier, impossible in a full GB au-) or Shannon being her personal maid, maybe? That helps her sometimes, or is learning under a previous maid planning to retire -)

I can see Kina...being deathly furious with her or in general (and maybe even the tiniest bit concerned, who knows?).

'What mother outlives her child?' and its not just her eldest daughter she's talking to and there's that connection between the two of them, regardless of Kristine being unaware of it - (she's holding her niece/nephew, and also a sister/brother and it's so fucked up, because she doesn't even know-)

Not mentioning that Kinzo's grief and repentance, in canon? It's a self-absorbed sort of repentance, for all that he might genuinely mean it. He isn't apologetic for caging Beatrice II, might not even understand that because he gave her everything she wanted/needed (he thinks) - except for freedom, for a sense of self apart from her mother, from his Golden witch, and he doesn't ever get the chance to truly apologize for even that-

Beatrice II doesn't have the understanding to know what he did to her was wrong, that her upbringing itself was wrong, it was grooming, and she's dead. Kinzo, instead, uses Sayo - dressed in her mother's clothes - to apologize.

Sayo gives what he thinks is absolution, without even knowing yet what Kinzo did. It's a fake repentance, false absolution, that Kinzo receives. He thinks the gold, the inheritance that he leaves Lion, will be enough - enough to make up for the fact that their father is also their grandfather, that he raped their mother, that when he tried to bring them into the family, they were instead so violently rejected that it nearly killed them - and did get an innocent servant killed.

I think, maybe Kina would be the slightest bit more aware - forced to be more aware, in the wake of Dante II's death, the potential suicide (it may have been an accident, but no one except Rosa/Roland would know), because she had been in those shoes twenty years prior, and that maybe makes her crazier than Kinzo ever was.

Or maybe she's just as self-absorped as Kinzo in that regard, not comprehending - or not considering - the full extent of her sins, slipping into madness. Kinzo seems to have moments of clarity, when finding Sayo, so here...here is where Kina just up and trhows herself down the slippery slope of acting as Kinzo does in canon.

I'm pretty sure it's around Lion's death in canon that Kinzo legitimately starts outright investing in magic...

Also, Kristine would get pregnant later that year, or the next one, because Jessica (or Jessie) is born in August 1968. So, baby Jessie is concieved December 1967 at the earliest, if carried for a full nine months.

It's like by Lion's 'death', a magical sacrifice was offered up to demons in hell somewhere, because how else would Kina's barren daughter be given the power to have a child of her own after so long...?

(There's also the shenanigans going on with Rudolf/Rochelle at this time, rushed wedding and adoption of her/his partner into the family, followed by the birth of Battler/Valor who is a dead ringer for Kina in her youth - )

Considering how Jessica is blonde (again, personal headcanon), and potentially a boy if going full genderbent for the family (Sayo's personas notwithstanding), Kina might be at risk of developing either obsession or hatred - Jessie was born with Lion's death, blood for blood, but with blonde hair and blue eyes and Kina's blood...

At least as an infant, there might be an odd resemblance. Perhaps, he would be Dante, be her son not the lover, be Lion, reborn anew without her sin -

But Jessie grows up, and begins to resemble Natsu and Kristine, only faint vestiges of Dante (II) seen in him - closer to Kina herself over Dante (I & II), and that dangerous obsession doesn't bare anything except Kina being...very strict, at the least, on him. She can differentiate them.

The whole situation. Is. Fucked Up.

This, again, isn't revolving around whatever else is happening with the rest of the family members, or the ordeal with Fukuin House (seriously, where did Kinzo even get the idea, in canon? Those kids are raised in an orphanage, but they're also groomed into believing that serving the ushiromiya family is good for them. I get that ost are around middle or high school age when working, but that's still..iffy, at best???) or Genji or Kumasawa or Nanjo around her.

Then, nine years later, Genji - for whatever reason? - has Yasuda Sayo hired to work on Rokkenjima, as Shannon, despite being six (nine), in 1976.

Kina Realizes:

So much happens, in that time, and I..don't know much about what Kinzo was doing at that time? As distant, as isolated, as harshly abusive as she was back before meeting Beatrice.

Jessica and Battler are born, the children are squabbling over th family money and standing, and their own issues (and the dynamics in a genderbent au are wild, especially with Kristine's fertility issues, though maybe the cliff incident would still be covered up, Evan and scrapping for the head house position from Natsu and pointing this out, who can't even wear the eagle, but George is a girl and they have Jessie who is a boy, Rochelle's blitz wedding and the questionable parentage of baby Valor - not to mention whatever is going on with Roland, up until his own son's birth and the situation with the mother. There Is So Much.)

Lion is dead, Dante is dead - both of them, father and son, though she swears she sees them in the corners of the rooms she enters.

She doesn't care of business, or anything else, anymore - though, her grandchildren do their best to make her, it feels like. It's like the twenty years that just passed by prior to Rokkenjima...bland, mostly lifeless.

Then, in 1980, Valor leaves the family register because her father is dead and Rochelle is carrying another man's baby, sham of shames (and maybe Kina does care the littlest bit about her grandchildren, if only because she sees herself in that one who liked mysteries, and spat in the family name and could leave when she couldn't -)

The world blurs and time passes without meaning, until 1984 when a servant girl (or boy) spills soup on their self, and Kina looks at an odd scar on their foot and the way they scrunch up their face as their ushered into her bathroom and an extra uniform is brought up, and she -

Kina sees the ghostly resemblance between a dead lover, and a dead son, a baby lost years ago on the cliff side, on that face.

She suspects.

She watches Genji praise the servant, who is sometimes a maid by the name Shannon, or a boy named Kanon (or perhaps the genders are in reverse, a Lady Oscar type scenario where they front at the mansion as a boy, sayo and genders are a complex topic - or differently, if looking at au's where the yasusona's are separate...), Kumasawa's cheerfully familiar attitude to them.

She gives them the candy that Dante (II) favored, brings them to her shooting range and shows them to take aim with the gun's muzzle, how to fire and stand against the recoil as their grandfather had taught her forty long years prior -

Kina knows. Even with her age, her own mind, her ailing body working against her - she knows.

Her precious child had lived, where their father and grandfather did not. So she tries to get closer to them, which surprises no one as Kina has always been at least slightly more open to anyone other than her own family. Except maybe her grandkids, and that's a rarity since two of them come by all of once a year, one is everything Dante and Lion was not, and another is a toddler and she's still strict as hell on them.

(there is that on manga panel where Kinzo freaks baby Ange out with that creepy occult hand, and freaking Battler out with the stakes but laughing. If Kinzo felt anything for his grandkids over his kids, it'd be a faint amusement, maybe? compared to the love/obsession for Lion/Dante).

An epitaph is drawn up, meant to lead them to their inheritance. They, above the rest of Kina's foolish children, who fought and scraped for approval and love that she had not carried in the first place to give out and now only wanted money, are the inheritor of all she owns - the root of everything she had built the Ushiromiya name with. The gold of their grandfather, the estate of their father -

Even the reputation of the Ushiromiya House was passed over to their hands.

1984. In a world where Beatrice is one person, with many personas, prior to the meta, Sayo solves the epitaph with a hint from Genji. They are dressed in their father's clothes, the clothes of Kina's presumed lover -

Kina waits for them, maybe (though I think in canon Kinzo arrives after?). Things unfold, very similarly to canon. Though, maybe Kina is slightly less "I've atoned, fuck it, I'm out and bound for hell" compared to Kinzo, who, from what it sounds like in Confession, which I think is the only time we see what happens in the gold room (Unless it shows up in Requiem and I'm not remembering?) on November 29, 1984, just up and drops dead in front of Sayo once she's brought to his study.

If going as canon as possible, Kina still actually dies that day, just as in canon. Maybe she's just laid up in the bed instead of crouched on the ground, waiting for Sayo (dressed already as Dante) to come in. She's dying and apologizing to Sayo on her death bed, and giving the ten tons of gold and headship to them just like that, and Sayo understands none of what's happening except maybe the Madam is dying/deliriously mistaking them for another person.

Meanwhile, Kumasawa, Genji, and Nanjo are just watching.

Genji watches his childhood friend die, clasping her child/grandchild's hand and trying / hoping that the gold will be enough to appease their suffering, and Kumasawa mentions that she'd died long ago but it was magic and willpower that kept Kina alive for so long.

Kina, the Kina that only resurfaced in private conversations, back with Dante II was just a young child and obsession hadn't choked her mind, had probably been dead for quite some time before that.

The jist of it:

Kinzo, even as a woman, is still a horrible abuser and someone who needed help,and it's oddly plausible at least on paper for the story of Umineko to pan out if she were a woman. She's also incredibly mentally sick, and needs help - a lot of it.

There's probably a lot of issues and holes in my line of thoughts, or stuff that contradicts other things I mentioned because I tend to hop between aus and lines of thoughts pretty wildly, and wrote this in a straight shot over two days, but it was fun to look and see what tings could happen - and touch on them, if only briefly and lightly.

Also, listed below are the sources I remember looking at, for some of thing matters on woman's education, the ie, arranged marriage, and so on.

https://dh.japanese-history.org/2020-spring-women-in-japanese-history/female-education-in-early-meiji-japan/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41930686

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1188196 (November 9, 1985 - recent by Umineko time)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42772154

https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/japanese-childhood/home/home-en/topics-2/selective-secondary-education-1900-1945/for-girls/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Empire_of_Japan

https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/japanese-childhood/home/home-en/topics-2/elementary-education/

https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=102914

https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/japanese-culture/japanese-culture-family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ie_(Japanese_family_system)

https://faculty.washington.edu/sangok/JSISA405/Yuko%20-%20Ch%2013%20The%20Modern%20Japanese%20Family%20System.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miai#History

#umineko spoilers #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko #ushiromiya kinzo #kinzo ushiromiya #rule 63 #genderbend #really freaking long #genderbend umineko au

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