#sorry this got a little off track

[brekkie-e]

Thank you for saying that. I was so confused as to why no one in Tevinter called the Qunari an "Ox woman".

You're welcome! I'm glad it resonated with some people. Im always a little anxious posting things that are critical cause I understand not everyone wants to see that.

That being said, the Qwydion situation is really quite confusing to me and plays in to some of my bigger critiques of the show. Early on when the group is entering the city, a gaurd stops Miriam and comments on how gate checking elves is "in case they break the peace" or something along those lines.

:readmore:

When...elves are quite common place in Tevinter. A completely normal part of an average household whether as a servant or a slave, and there are even elves who do not fall into either of those categories in the country. That's not to say they have a good lot, or that it's okay. But they are present and not unusual to see and if they had to gate check every elf it would get excessive very fast.

Qunari on the other hand? They are literally at war with the Qun. If you're going to make a comment about breaking the peace with anyone, it would normally be about someone who's people you're at war with. This would have given them an opportunity to explore how Qwydion might carry her own racial issues as a Tal Vashoth mage who is herself a target of those who serve the Qun. While she also recieves the full brunt of people's prejudices against the Qun despite that.

But no. A qunari may walk around Tevinter with no questions asked or exploration of her identity and story. But an elf? Oh my god we can't let the audience forget how marginalized the elves are. To a degree that seems gratuitous.

[420technoblazeit]

in my mind dean was always supposed to get older and become the new bobby. like ok you're a hunter, maybe a little new to the scene and still figuring things out. and you're tracking down a werewolf, easy case. except some things don't line up quite right and now you're thinking it might not actually be a werewolf. so you ask around a hunter's bar and they all say the same thing. go to this one bunker in the middle of nowhere in kansas

and you're like sure what the hell. you're stumped anyway, might as well check it out. maybe it's a weapons storehouse or something. but then you get there and there's a doorbell and a bee-shaped welcome mat out front and you're starting to think you've got the wrong place. the door swings open and there's this middle aged guy with a robe and batman pyjama bottoms. and he laughs at the look on your face and tells you to come in, he doesn't bite. not since he got that vampire cure, anyway. you're not sure what to make of that last part but he winks at you when he says it so you figure he's joking. maybe.

he gives great advice about hunting everything under the sun and if you stick around long enough he'll go on and on about how he saved the world at least five times. ok sure. you don't want to be rude so you just sit there and sip your coffee politely while he talks about some guy called chuck and how much of a bitch he is. and another guy who's aged a little more gracefully comes padding down the hallway in a metallica t-shirt and rolls his eyes. has he told you about tvland yet? ('i was just getting to that part!')

if you go to the basement you'll find shotguns filled with salt, wooden stakes, holy water, and demon-killing bullets for sale. and if you're lucky the witch who sells hex bags might be around. low-grade curses only, of course. you better leave the powerful stuff to the professionals. and she'll get in trouble if she gives you anything stronger, not that she can't be persuaded. a girl's gotta make a living after all and she's always encouraged eager new witches. it's worked out pretty well for her so far. and then a guy you swear is twice your height will raise an eyebrow at her and insist she only sell the weaker hex bags, please. you don't need any more witches in your coven, rowena. you've got plenty

pagan god giving you trouble? there's a man who swings by every once in a while who knows how to deal with those. give him some candy or a fun magic relic and he might help you out. it depends. he's a little picky about dishing out advice and he likes to play favorites. and if you've got a demon problem they can give you the number of a guy who swears up and down that he used to be the king of hell. but you've seen him walking around with a purse-sized terrier tucked under his arm and a dozen more following him so you're not really sure if you believe him

idk i like to think that dean got to grow old and retire. that doesn't mean he stops helping people, it just means he hangs up his coat and becomes an old man who rambles on and on about 'back in my day' and makes a dent in his leather armchair. there's a foosball table where the dungeon used to be and sam complains about beer bottles being everywhere and it becomes a safe haven for anyone still fighting the good fight. it's just that for dean and the rest of team free will the fight is over. they're done hunting now

[tubbytarchia]

was looking through old pictures and found this drawing I did. We were discussing what Pokemon Jimmy would be and I wanted to say Absol but pre-evolved. So here is my pre-evolved Absol. It's Jimmy

[daz4i]

atsushi being sassy/salty, imo, is just a little comical way in which his... not quite essence, but inner feelings? express themelves. and i don't think that contradicts him being soft - in fact, i think these qualities enhance each other

atsushi being sweet despite having the ability to be cold, even murderous (i think beast shows it well, the fact he DOES have this instinct inside him - not just by showing how easily he became a killer, but also that bit about the beginning, how beast!akutagawa's solution to starving was eating weeds, while canon!atsushi went straight to thinking how he's gonna have to become a thief), is just proof that he's making that choice consciously

even when he's like, complaining to the audience, kinda, about his money when he takes kyouka on their "date", the fact is he still took her on it, he still made a choice to spend it on her to make sure she has a good day. he can be salty, but despite it he chooses to be kind

even with akutagawa. he's always like ready to attack him on sight, but he DID let him lean on his shoulder in that boat, he did protect his head while breaking through that window, he did show kindness to someone who is supposed to be his enemy

atsushi comes from a harsh background, his instincts lean more towards rudeness and selfishness at best and violence at worst, and despite that he chooses to be kind, to help, to be gentle when needed.

this is another way in which he embodies one of bsd's core messages, i think. while other characters lean more towards "you can always start again, you can always be good now even if you weren't before" (dazai, kyouka, akutagawa, odasaku just off the top of my head), atsushi is a slightly different version of this sentiment - "your past doesn't define you, your actions do".

and the beautiful thing is he still struggles with it. he's still quite violent at times, he has an entire breakdown about it in dead apple, he doesn't kill but he does maim. and yet he keeps going, he keeps making that choice every day, because he knows that's what he needs to do in order to live.

[rystiel]

a sketch i’ll never actually finish

[l3viat8an]

i need levi to be at his ultimate, never before seen level of cringe and right as he's about to start self-deprecating i blurt out "i'm madly in love with you"

and Levi chokes on his own breath- still going into his self degrading rant about how ‘there’s no way you mean that and you’re just saying that to tease him and he’s so weird, so gross-’

Well you get the idea just Levi, being Levi and talking down about himself….maybe kiss him to shut him up?

Or even better, list all the things you like about him. Especially if they overlap with some of the things he hates about himself.

Like how he’s somewhat self-conscious about talking about his special interest until he gets into it. Tell him how much you enjoy that. tell him how he makes even the most boring animes sound interesting! Just, tell him you really mean it! You really are madly in love with him. Even if he doesn’t believe you yet :) you’ll still have to take it slow. But just show him how much you mean it!

[gashu-satou-daily]

gashu if he was in samurai yaiba or another band?

DAY 52:

i haven't played chapter 2 in like a year and a half .

[thatgirl4815]

Why does sand still look clueless when ray tells him deal with him or I will? I love my boy but for someone that manipulated the situation that one time to get back at top he is acting really dumb.

What makes me laugh is his "What are you doing?" to Ray, as if he doesn't know exactly the kind of game Ray is getting at. Of course Ray isn't just going to get in Boeing's face and tell him to back off right away! That's not how how the game works my friend. No, you gotta be passive aggressive and manipulative. Most importantly, you have to give your boyfriend every opportunity to prove his ownership over you! (Every opportunity which he inevitably won't take!)

I'm not sure if I interpret Sand's expression in the preview as confused or a mixture of exhaustion/frustration/concern. I don't think Ray's games are a wise choice, as they strike me as immature and will almost certainly play right into the game Boeing himself is playing. But I very much understand Ray's frustration.

Idk if I'm in the minority on this, but I've gotten a lot of pushback for my annoyance with Sand this episode. That's perfectly fair, but I still think that regardless of the emotional toll this relationship with Boeing has taken and is taking on Sand, this is not the same as the RayMew situation. Ray should support Sand as his boyfriend, but Sand is not standing up for him and telling his ex to leave them alone. Imo the only thing Ray should be supporting Sand in with this situation is getting closure with Boeing and telling him to stop making advances that interfere with their relationship. If there is emotional fallout for Sand, Ray should be there to offer his shoulder. But in general, I think Ray is justified in his frustrations at Sand.

[ybep]

Ow, wow, let's go ✒️

[propertyofkylar]

would kylar let you suck on his fingers. would he encourage it???? i feel like sometimes when he's breeding you he just. shoves them in your mouth

kuu not only did this ask send twice the second one came in nearly half an hour after the first. what are you doing

mannnn idc about his nasty ass fingers i wanna suck on them so bad. he probably would to shut you up if you're very bratty.

but also he would just do it at. any time. will stare at you entirely enthralled while you do it. like you're the most amazing thing he's ever seen. like boy i'm just sucking ur fingers get over it...

god fucking this freak isn't enough. i need to beat the shit out of him

[waywardsalt]

thoughts on totk now that i’ve beaten it

under the cut bc of length and bc there is honestly a fair bit of negative stuff

i don’t really think i can say that i liked totk.

it’s fine, it’s genuinely fucking incredible from a technical standpoint with ultrahand, recall, the three map layers and with how smoothly it ran for me. as a game it’s fine.

i’ll start with the things i dislike and end with what i actually liked

i honestly didn’t really like ultrahand? i disliked how much the game leaned on it, since so many puzzles and whatever just boiled down to ‘make something that’ll work’ and it just... it was far too clunky for me to really enjoy using it, outside of using some of the same few designs for traversal. there were a few times when i could see what the game wanted me to do with ultrahand and the given zonai parts and sometimes it just... didn’t work at all. more often than not ultrahand was frustrating for me to use so the game’s reliance on it just made it into a chore sometimes.

in a similar vein the dungeons were serious letdowns. i mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re fine, they had good themes and (mostly) had good aesthetics and general looks and identities to them, but the fact that they were just... basically twenty-ish minute little things was kind of disappointing. i hate that they all had the exact same ‘go hit x number of switches’ gimmick. it really limited what you could do and fucked with the dungeon design, too. the only one where that really worked for me was the fire temple, which was my favorite overall. the water temple was especially dismal, with the least inspired look and just being an astoundingly easy experience. the puzzles in those dungeons were so awfully easy, too, especially since half of the time they just hand you what you need so you barely need to really assess the situation and put a plan together

i hated the water dungeon’s little mini-areas where you do a single piss-easy puzzle to automatically get your prize, i hated the wind temple’s god damn ‘pull a lever and get your prize’ kind of puzzles, i hated how soul-crushingly disappointed i felt when i took a look at the lightning temple’s map and realized that every fucking floor had a singular room just for the switch puzzle. god forbid it’s as fun as the lowest level of that temple. i really miss stuff like mini-bosses or rooms where you have to do a puzzle in order to just... progress, i miss dungeons that i could get lost in or spend a while in or just had... something more interesting or some more substance so that i can’t just breeze through like it’s a glorified shrine. most of the puzzles in those dungeons were simpler than some shrines i did.

i didn’t care to do much exploration since there honestly isn’t much motivation to explore the surface map if you’ve already played botw, and the scarcity of materials this time really got to me, it took me a while to have a half-decent stock of materials, and i still had trouble not running out of stuff even though i was using amiibos to stock up on some things. the money situation was rough, too... a lot of things are cheaper to sell, but some armor is still really expensive plus you have to pay the great fairies to upgrade your equipment in addition to having the correct materials. that especially felt odd- having to grab a handful of (goddamn hard to get) lynel guts is hard enough to upgrade the soldier’s armor, but you want me to cough up 500 rupees, too??

(the scarcity of monster guts also got on my nerves, but i’ll just chalk that up to just some kind of really weird difficulty thing. it was annoying until i tracked down the stronger monsters.)

the story is probably the weakest part of the game to me. it’s really hard to have a baseline investment when you don’t care about these characters, anyway, and what i saw in this game’s story still failed to endear me to hardly any of them. link’s role frustrated me; he just comes off like a tool rather than a character this time through, he barely has any actual relevancy to the story segments beyond being the guy who can use the master sword and being the player’s vehicle to get from point a to b in the story. the blank stare and limited emoting worked in botw because... there’s a given reason for his lack of outward emotion in the past, plus he has no memory in the present. it makes sense. but this time around, he’s gotten memories in the years between this and the last game, but he just feels like a background character in most of the story beats. 

he has no role in the memories and in the present just exists to gather some stuff for other people, he gets the master sword from zelda and then helps the other sages get their secret stones, but he’s barely addressed as his own character in the grand scheme of things unless he’s being directly spoken to. he’s just the swordsman capable of wielding the master sword and zelda’s chosen protector as far as the story is concerned. he has no opinions outside of doing what he’s told and looking for zelda. at least not as far as i could really tell. at least in botw, the story directly concerns him, and it’s his story we’re following. this time around zelda and the sages seem like the most important characters, link’s just... there, doing what he’s been told to.

the new sages are fine, none of them really endeared themselves to me, and i will say that making the player watch essentially the exact same cutscene each time you finish a dungeon was BAFFLING. they were long and you learned almost nothing new after the first one, and there was nothing done to make them very distinct to each individual pair of sages or their respective regions; at the very least, it could have been interesting to meet the ancient sages not in the exact same stone garden, but perhaps at the top of a snowy mountain for the rito, near a volcano or something for the goron, maybe in a shallow pool of water for the zora, and in the desert for the gerudo- but no, they’re all effectively the same thing just with the speaking character swapped out with some minor changes.

(the sages themselves are a pain in the ass to use, having to chase them down to activate their power or accidentally activating a power when you don’t want it; yunobo was honestly my favorite, but because i generally defaulted to having them all activated at all times, i had a lot of trouble with tulin blowing shit away from me when i was trying to grab it while midair. they’re half-decent for combat)

i didn’t really care for rauru or sonia, either. rauru in the present as a ghost was fine, he was kind of interesting and seemed to have changed from his time in the past, but he never managed to be a character i particularly liked. i wasn’t really a fan of his... arrogance? or something in the past scenes, and he never really came off as very interesting. sonia was nearly completely uninteresting which is a shame since she has an interesting design, she just felt delegated to the role of supporting rauru and zelda and then dying to motivate them.

ganondorf is a character i was really looking forward to seeing, and it really fucking sucks that he’s so god damn one-dimensional this time! the story can’t be fucked to delve into him beyond just giving us scenes that just tell us that he’s evil and wants to rule hyrule and get the secret stones and nothing else because fuck having complex villains, i guess. especially frustrating because within the game itself you can draw more interesting motivations up for him, but the game really just doubles-down on him being evil for the fuck of it and wanting to end the world because uhhhh... he’s evil don’t fucking worry about it

the ignoring of the triforce in this game sucks in that way, too, because the way the triforce works and how it can grant wishes made it a much more interesting goal for ganondorf to attain, rather than some poorly-named ‘secret stones’ that do nothing more than just amplify power or something. it sucks how black-and-white this damn story is and how it seems like it just wants to do away with any possible nuance or gray area. no one but the bad guys or side characters are flawed in any actually interesting or significant way.

at least ganondorf was still the most interesting character in the flashbacks.

and then zelda, oh god ZELDA. i honestly really liked her in botw. i liked how you saw her as a flawed, insecure, pressured teen, and how you saw her struggles to relate to link and how she eventually warmed up to him. you saw her as a flawed person who develops and as someone who cares deeply about her friends and her duties and gets frustrated by her failings.

and then in totk a lot of her more interesting traits- her interest in sheikah tech, her excitement over field study and research, her more defining traits as this incarnation of zelda- are basically sanded down and she’s just this perfect flawless princess with great power and an insanely passive role in the past beyond finally taking some kind of action after one of her friends dies and she’s pushed to the brink. cool. great.

she has practically no flaw in totk. if anyone in the present talks about her, they have nothing bad to say and just want to please her and follow her orders, she is right in telling the gerudo how to train their troops she is right even when misheard to tell people to put themselves in danger and she is hardly meaningfully questioned when her imposter is doing very clearly suspicious shit. neither the story nor any of the characters wants to let her be flawed. she’s just perfect in damn near every way and barely retains any interesting characterization she got in botw. there are some interesting snippets in her being a teacher and setting up memorials to those who died in the calamity, but there’s hardly any more than that, and it makes it really hard for me to give a damn about her. she’s not interesting this time.

the whole thing with zelda becoming a dragon too, is... it’s fine. it’s ok. but the fact that she turns back at the end with no problem whatsoever is one hell of a fucking misstep. why talk about draconification being forbidden for a good reason anyways if it doesn’t actually matter anyways??? if you never actually see any of those fucking repercussions why even bring them up??? i really feel like it would have been more effective for there to have been actual consequences for zelda beyond just fucking flying around half-conscious for a millennium or whatever- have her lose her memory when she’s brought back! there you go! there’s the reason why draconification is forbidden! there’s the thing about losing yourself! plus, zelda losing her memories as a result would mirror link having lost his memories in botw! that has so much more weight and significance then ‘oh uh ignore the warnings from a while back she’s completely fine dw abt it’ i hate that she’s back just like that without any of the consequences that the game suggests.

the dragon’s tears in general kinda just felt weaker than botw’s memories anyways bc you’re more just. watching stuff happen then actually learning anything. it has less characters and yet i feel like you only get to know like half of the important ones. like three of them are all about the same event. a few times they just replay parts of old memories in new ones. if they ever reference a past memory they just show you what they’re referencing instead of leaving you to piece it together. just play the voices or something don’t break the flow of things to play a clip of something i’ve already seen.

plus the fact that totk... barely acknowledges that it’s a sequel to botw really rubs me the wrong way. i understand that loz is extremely loose with its lore, but totk is a direct sequel set in the same world a few years later, and yet the events and characters of botw have might as well been forgotten and its all either ignored, brushed aside, or straight up replaced by something else for no good reason. the continuity between these games is absolutely dismal and to see the different ways in which the events and concepts or botw are just... disregarded really just left a bad taste in my mouth.

just- i love good stories and worlds in video games, and while some games can coast by for me by feeling good to play, having a good and engaging story and characters is usually essential to my enjoyment of a game, and when i don’t care about to the point of disliking the story and characters, and when none of the important areas are fascinating or distinct enough from each other, and when the game even fails to really reel me in with the gameplay...

i wanted to like totk, but it really just did not work for me. i just ended up feeling frustrated and disappointed and even sometimes bored with all of the major stuff and man. totk is really, REALLY, not for me, and it just left me wanting to play older zelda games instead.

...

HOWEVER! there were actually some things i really loved about totk! it’s not all doom and gloom! (well, not all doom, at least)

so! the music was great! not all of it really fit or made a lot of sense with the context in which they played or failed to evoke the feeling they were meant to, but the new tracks in this game were great! i especially love the first two phases of the fire temple’s theme, the depths music, and most of the new battle and boss themes. zelda games almost never fail when it comes to the music.

i did genuinely like the fire temple- yunobo’s ability was used the best in this dungeon, and it had the best five switches gimmick, i loved how you had to hit the gongs (sometimes having to construct a path to account for the weaknesses of yunobo’s ability) and how it then ‘scared’ each of the five statues holding a part of the gate- it was very cute and fit in very well with the general feel of that part of the story. it was the best in terms of difficulty and complexity, but it didn’t have the best boss- the lightning temple had the best boss, and i will admit that even if most of them were easy, i really enjoyed the mirror puzzles, as well as the process to unlocking the dungeon. the wind temple had my favorite visual identity and aesthetic, though, i liked it being a part of this old rito song, and how it was the most distinct in looks from the other dungeons.

the sky islands were honestly fun, even if they weren’t all that interesting. getting to some of the harder-to-reach islands were some of my favorite times i had to use ultrahand, and stuff like the zonai forge island and the one orblike island with the mirror puzzle, and pretty much all of the more complicated parts of the sky islands were a lot of fun to explore and figure out.

being able to ride on the dragons was just really cool, and the fact that they come out of the chasms was fun.

the new horns for the monsters were cool, it helps differentiate the different monster strengths and i just thought they were really neat.

the quest with lurelin village was fun, even if the pirates just being monsters was a real let-down.

the stable trotters were also a fun bunch of characters, that was a good, new way to open up fairy fountains.

all of the new stuff with the yiga was really fun, like getting their outfit and being able to pretend to be one of them and learning the blademaster attack- so much fun it was so cute.

most of the new outfits are really good and useful, and while a bit janky and not that great, the house-building bit near tarrey was endearing.

while none of the main characters interested me, i really, especially liked tauro and yona and penn. for some reason they just appealed to me and i really wish they had bigger parts in the game because they’re interesting and they have good designs and i’d really like to know more about them.

the underground gerudo shelter was pretty cool, to be honest, and the look of the caves was really cool.

i adored the proving grounds shrines- easily my favorite shrines in the entire game, i had no problem spending a decent amount of time in those kinds of shrines, they were fantastic.

the new ingredients and recipes and new weapons were cool.

the way you basically return to the area you started at on your way to ganondorf is pretty cool, that whole path is really neat.

ganondorf in general was a pretty cool boss, even if he ended up being kind of easy for me. the whole final boss sequence was neat.

by FAR, though, my absolute favorite part of this game was 100% the depths. the fact that there was just an entire second layer to the map that was the same size as the surface, just inverted and dark and filled with new bosses and locations... i spent hours down there without going back up to the surface and absolutely had a BLAST screwing around in the dark, lighting up my path with brightblooms and tossing together little vehicles with lights so that i could get to the next lightroot off in the distance. the depths was probably where i ended up using zonai vehicles the most, and it was honestly pretty fun to go around spotting and reaching every lightroot, coming across different mines and weird little landforms and coliseums and yiga camps. the music and plantlife and look of the depths were so good, and it really felt distinct from the rest of the game in a very good way. doing all of the lightroots and getting enough zonaite to max out link’s energy cells was definitely a good move since it made finding shrines and dealing with later zonai machine stuff easier.

overall, tears of the kingdom was a severely mixed bag for me, and while there was stuff i did like, i don’t think it’s enough to really get me to say that i really liked this game overall- after all most of the stuff i disliked was unavoidable parts of the games, and it definitely put a hamper on my interest in the rest of the time. totk is fine, but it’s really not my thing. 

[arthur-lesters-balls]

im trying to understand the dynamics of arthur driving on the farm episode. does he like just controls the pedals and john is the one with the steering wheel? does arthur need to put his hand down to not get in the way and so by mistake looks really cool driving with only one hand? did he invented this in the same way he invented the molotov?

[thirsty-4-ghouls]

I splurged on genes for one of my Auraboa with some money I was saving for more den slots

and I'm being so, so, good at not spending ALL my money on the pearlcatcher I breed and have been saving for a breed change because he had nice coloration but looked too much like his dad to be really interesting as a keeper without changing

I already spent money on one of the babies I hatched to turn them into this:

(I'm going to give her branches sometime though) and I'm being so good not creating one of these with my pearlcatcher yet:

but he's just standing there, with great potential :(

[shoechoe]

If I remember correctly, wasn't "Solido Naso" only ever implied to be Diavolo? S.N. is only called Diavolo's alias, and when they get the impression of his face, it has Diavolo's eyes and it's never questioned that it's Diavolo. Did the anime try to make "Solido" some sort of err middle ground between Doppio and Diavolo by giving the baby Doppio's eyes and making him look more like Doppio? I wasn't even aware that there was some sort of question to whether "Solido" was Diavolo. I've kinda seen Solido treated as an entirely different person and not just a younger Diavolo, but I wasn't aware that there were all these fanon complications around it.

I've always believed it's pretty clear that Solido Naso is supposed to be Diavolo, but there is fanon out there that pushes other things. Some say that Solido was Doppio under an alias (which I really don't buy because you're pretty clearly led to believe that Diavolo was the one forging aliases and moving place to place) or that Solido was some kind of "merged" version of the two before they developed DID (which seems contradictory to me because it's stated in-universe that DID starts in early childhood, but I've seen it), which would probably explain Solido kinda being treated as different entirely.

The anime's backstory does kind of confuse this a little, though, because it does make it more Doppio-centric:

In the anime, their backstory is moved back to right before Doppio's introduction, while the manga has their backstory right before Diavolo's reveal.

In the anime, the baby is given Doppio's eyes, whereas in the manga, the eyes aren't given enough detail to tell:

(There's also a moment in the anime where the baby's eyes flash bright red for no reason...? I honestly have no clue what that's about, though.)

3. In their scenes with Donatella as a teenager, the anime gives "Solido" Doppio's personality and voice, whereas the manga keeps them silent. (Though, I find this addition from the anime weird as Doppio does not seem to possess any memory of Donatella- in the Risotto fight, he was carrying around a photo of her for Diavolo and did not make any remarks about recognizing her. Unless Diavolo has some ability to erase Doppio's memories that we never heard about or something, if this scene with meeting Donatella is supposed to be Doppio, I think this would be a plot hole.)

4. The manga states that their legal name listed on the town's records was "Diavolo", while this is omitted from the anime.

I'm not a fan of the debate over whether Diavolo or Doppio was the "original" because I find it largely pointless (not to mention inaccurate to real DID), but if I had to say, I believe the manga is more implying that Diavolo is the "original" one, while the anime more implies that Doppio is the "original". Both adaptations have lines about Diavolo being the "true identity/nature" of the two, though, so interpret what you want from that.

Despite all of this, though, it's pretty obvious to me that "Solido" is mainly Diavolo's alias that he created for himself. Doppio might've had to go along with it as well, but it's very much mainly a Diavolo thing, I think.

Also, little note about the imprint of "Solido" made by Moody Blues: The eyes, to me, actually appear to be something of a mixture of both Diavolo and Doppio, with Diavolo's eye lighting but intact pupils.

This mixture of the two's eyes happens a couple of times in present-day VA when Diavolo is near the "surface" or present at the same time as Doppio.

I believe that this is the best evidence there is for the "Solido Naso is a fusion of both Diavolo and Doppio before they got DID" theory I've seen, but again, we know that in-universe, DID starts to form in early childhood and is fully pronounced and separate by the time adulthood is reached, so this still wouldn't make sense. I don't believe there's a real, full explanation to this, as you have to remember that Doppio and Diavolo's backstory is very vague and intended to leave more questions than it gives answers.

Personally, I've always thought that the eyes on the statue imprint were what Diavolo's eyes used to look like, but as he became more powerful and retracted away from society, becoming more of a paranoid recluse and entirely losing his heart, his eyes became broken like you see in present-day VA- but that's just my own theory. (Though I believe the real real answer as to why Diavolo's eyes have that weird shape is because they needed to be distinguishable from Doppio's in the black-and-white manga.)

[bleue-flora]

Read your discussion with elmhat and I have to add that c!Quackity was basically canonically abused by c!Schlatt. Like, on-screen. He gets threatened, insulted, sexually harassed, and even physically beaten into obedience at least once. It's a huge thing and it's taken as seriously as anything involving Schlatt can be.

It's not an excuse for Q later being abusive himself, but Schlatt mistreating him is a HUGE part of his motivations later, so I needed to correct/add that

I mean… ok that’s fair. I apologize. And I mean that. :) Let’s make sure the facts are straight for sure. So yeah you’re right that did happen but just not to the like extremes that some people portray I guess is what I was more referring to (as far as I remember). Though I am always down for some clips if you have any that come to mind. But I see what you are getting at… though as you said it doesn’t justify it really, but it is still important for making the audience sympathetic and understanding towards a character. (And perhaps take this with a grain of salt because I haven’t been in a real actual like romantic/sexual relationship… though I guess to be fair I do have experience with pretty severe sexual harassment and manipulation (minus the beating)..…but that’s really besides the point) I think in the scale of the dsmp it’s just kinda…. Meh….(don’t apply this to irl btw) for me perhaps the biggest thing is that it was ultimately his own fault and no one forced him to stay and he was already ruthless before c!Schlatt. And it may have been cruel and terrible and screwed him up but ultimately it never really changed his motivations and actions that much… like he ran in an election before c!Schlatt, he serves as an influential government official and forms countries after c!Schlatt. I mean the whole bet thing with c!Schlatt about getting the book ultimately could be taken out of lore and it wouldn’t change much… I don’t know. In the skewed world of the dsmp, abuse is a standard afternoon so it’s hardly that consequential in my opinion of course. That may make me sound cold hearted but… egh like in the same case as c!Tommy for exile. They faced the consequences of their own actions, consequences that on the scale of cruelty on the dsmp are just not on the same scale as what is considered note worthy abuse in the real world. And if we are saying that counts as his traumatic backstory that is both supposed to somewhat make the audience feel for him and make him understandable then it just… isn’t enough? Isn’t substantial?… I don’t know. Maybe that makes me heartless but I’m not saying c!c!Quackity is a one dimensional heartless, control freak, sadistic villain, he’s still a person however flawed and broken and misguided. But I don’t think we can blame c!Quackity’s behavior and cruel delusion as being from c!Schlatt nor do I think he did things because he has a deep care for other people… but then again maybe that says more about me then him, that perhaps my views are scuffed…I don’t know….

[ailendolin]

one trait of thomas' i adore that they've been very consistent with is how much he wants to Help alison.. ghost!thomas and alive!thomas seem to approach love & romance very differently (a lack of respecting boundaries vs care and consideration... 200 years of "i was a fool who died alone and unloved" will do that to ya, i guess). it's nice to see areas where i feel they would have been very much the same thomas, if that makes sense? like in s1e6, when he tells alison he'll help her find money by whatever means and tries to write a(n awful) novel, or s2e1 where he wishes he could just do something to help her but he doesnt have any ghostly powers, or s3e3 when he tells her that he would help her but he physically cant, wanting to help her with making the bed in s4e6 and doing his best to empathise with her stresses even though he doesn't really understand what she's saying.. i dont know, it's something theyve been super consistent about with his character and i just think it's nice :)

Oh I completely agree, anon. It's something I've noticed too - that Thomas very genuinely seems to want to help and regret that he can't. We’ve seen moments like this in every series now which is wonderful because I think they’re glimpses at Thomas’s true character. The fact that they all revolve around Alison might make it seem like it’s just another way of his to try to get her to fall in love with him but I don’t believe that’s the case. The duel, when you really break it down, has been about Thomas trying to help someone he cares about too. He didn’t challenge the officer to make Isabelle change her mind and fall in love with him – he did it because he truly believed it was the right thing to do.

And I think it’s the same with Alison. There’s no ulterior motive to his actions – just the genuine want to help (and maybe also a desperate need to be useful and feel valued through that). It’s like he forgets for a moment that he’s supposed to be in love with her. We see this in other moments as well, for example in 4x01 when he rants to Alison about the Plague Ghosts. It’s only at the very end that he seems to remember who exactly he’s talking to and ends his monologue with one of his typical compliments. He’s also a lot calmer and quieter after he’s gone “cold turkey” in 4x02. I think a lot of us hoped that he would stay that way but the truth is You stay how you die and in Thomas’s case, I guess that means pretending to be someone he’s not (him trying to appear brave during the duel) and desperately searching for companionship (him dying alone and unloved).

Which makes me think that what Thomas needs to move on is not love (as he probably believes) but acceptance – for others to accept him the way he is, bad poetry and all, and also for himself to accept that he's not as good a poet as he'd like to be. And that that’s okay, that his work doesn’t reflect upon him as a person and makes him unworthy of love and attention.

In short, I think he needs an Annie of his own - a friend who is genuinely happy to spend time with him, who likes him for who he is, not who he'd like to be, and makes him feel accepted and, through that, loved for the first time in his very long existence.