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desultory-novice · 2 years ago

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What do you think of the theory that Marx and Kirby are childhood friends, which is why Marx used *kirby* of all people to manipulate and betray?

For a different theory, do you think it's possible for Void to store energy if it's not enough to reincarnate? If so, then both theories I've had about Kirby's possible energy origin could be true.

For the Void thing, I don't see why not! Especially in sealed form, it always kind of looked to me like Void was storing up energy. That energy can be dispersed and coalesce into things like the friendship heart and friend platforms, as it was in the beginning of Star Allies, or reabsorbed later! (Honestly, I always thought the Jamba group had been working on the Void thing for ages anyway!)

As for the first theory... I'm completely smitten by it and a huge devotee of it! Even though it was born from a (official) Kirby gag manga...it makes a lot of sense?! Lemme explain!

It feels a bit like an expansion on the "lost copy ability helper" theory. That being that there is a "Helper" for every copy ability in Kirby Super Star, except for Mic, Crash, and Sleep. But the idea is that if you COULD have turned these into helpers, they would follow Kirby around and help him save the day! And Marx would be the "Sleep" helper! (if you buy into the Noddy theory - even if you don't, you could say he's all three, because he's got the hat, is loud, and EXPLOSIVE!) But he's foe, not friend!

I've seen it said that Marx is a funny character to get fixated on because he appears only twice (one of those times is the pre-game cutscene) in the very last sub-game and has something like four lines of dialogue total. That it's silly because Marx has no "character" to speak of. But even before Star Allies came out, Marx has always been a subject of fan art and fan appreciation. What, then, were fans basing his character off of?

...Well, I think some of the bond between Kirby and Marx ties into the "0%/0%/0% Theory" (which I was going to save for another comic, but I'll go ahead and outline it here. I may have brought it up before, in which case...I don't apologize because it's a damn good theory.)

...

In short, due to the expansion chip “Kirby Super Star” (SNES) used, it was a very volatile game cartridge. Meaning that if you put it into the SNES wrong, or wiggled it or such, you might lose your data. A lot of people would turn the game on after completion only to be greeted with 0% 0% 0% (representing the three save files.) It was a relatively easy game (as long as you weren't going for full completion on GCO) so people would just beat it again.

What began to happen in the fandom thanks to that is the idea that the game was resetting ITSELF. And what's the last thing that happens before that reset? You fight Marx. (Marx who made a wish to get control of Popstar and failed to get his wish. And Galactic Nova is implied to be immortal sooooo...RESET TIME) And as much as I love Milky Way Wishes that (infamous) ending is...a bit anti-climactic? Marx + Galactic Nova explode, Kirby flies home, Kirby has a nap. The END. It's like something is MISSING....

...The idea became that what is missing is Marx himself. You can't "save" Marx. You can't stop him. Or talk him out of it. Or even talk TO him. You're just stuck in this time loop of fighting him again. And again. And again. And every time you fight him, his power inevitably goes berserk and sends him crashing into Nova... And the tragic cycle begins again.

There was a desire, at least in some fans, to want to SAVE Marx. (Anyone getting “Undertale” feels here? Because I think you can draw some “Undertale” parallels with Marx and Kirby and “Milky Way Wishes” being played out hundreds, possibly hundreds of thousands of times.) Even if they weren't friends to begin with, they have to know each other VERY WELL after X number of time loops they're stuck in, never able to escape this sad, inevitable conclusion.

I brought up in my Magolor's theme park post that there's a lot of pretty fanart of Magolor with those blue flowers that mean "I forgive you."

There's an equal amount of fanart that portrays Kirby reaching out and grabbing Marx (saving him) to keep him from falling to his doom in Milky Way Wishes, and I think the timeloop/friends theory is the reason. This time...This time, we can prevent Marx from his fate...!

But while it's a brilliant little theory (and breaks this old fan's heart - I love me some tragic time-travel stories) it’s a little complicated to explain, so I think skipping back even further and setting them up as friends before Milky Way Wishes is an excellent way to reframe the accidental friendship the two of them had "built" over the years since Super Star was released.

It keeps the tragedy of the situation, that of two friends locked in battle, in a nice easy to consume way. If you like the additional idea from said manga that Kirby forgot about him for years, it makes it even more tragic on Marx’s part, and helps fuel why he wishes for what he did - and why he trusted that Kirby, of all people, could get it done. Or maybe that he chose Kirby to do this because he wanted Kirby to be there when he made his reveal?

It’s been questioned before, “Why didn’t Marx just summon Nova himself?” Especially if he’s that powerful? Then Kirby would never get involved and Marx would basically get his wish. If he’s already bitter at Kirby for some reason, it makes perfect sense why Marx wants Kirby there as opposed to just getting what he wants ALONE. (He’s tired of being alone!)

Frankly, outside of the "manipulation" thing, there's really no reason Kirby WOULDN'T be friends with Marx! We know that Kirby is himself someone who loves to play games and be silly. In the various manga, they’re often a total (adorable) troublemaker themself! The fact is, Kirby and Marx would probably have quite a few things in common! (Marx just takes his jokes further and has less interest in lazy, boring days. But even if "keep him fed" from Star Allies is a mistranslation, there's still enough associations with Marx and food that you imagine he enjoys eating enough to have that in common with Kirby too!)

So, yeah. What this boils down to is Dess cares a whole heck of a lot about the Marx + Kirby friendship and all its complexities, bruised feelings, misunderstandings, and eventual redemption! It is probably my second favorite "relationship" in Kirby. (First being my OTP, of course!)

#Kirby #Marx #Marx Kirby #Void Kirby #Kirby Super Star #Dess Answers Questions #Dess Text Post #Undertale mention

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river-of-wine · 3 years ago

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You know. I’ve never properly been able to articulate how the Baker family makes me feel in my art, so I’m just gonna type it down here because my Madhouse playthrough has gotten me all emotional over them again and they deserve to be talked about just as much as the lords, because they are also Mother Miranda’s victims wether she knew of their existence or not, and wether she bothered to care if she did.

This is mostly about Jack and Marguerite with some Zoe in there for flavour.

We don’t get to see a lot of Jack and Marguerite before he infection (even infected, actually, they’re only in one scene together but that isn’t really them) but what we do tells us a lot. In the Daughters DLC, they’re in a far more stressful situation that you would guess by how they’re acting. Jack has found two unconscious people in a massive shipwreck, one of which is what he believes to be a little girl, and they have that to worry about on top of the storm that has already wrecked part of their property. But Jack and Marguerite manage to keep the mood light. They know how to make each other smile, they know what jokes to tell when the time is right, they had that whole bed and breakfast plan. They’re genuinely such a sweet couple for the small amount of time we do get to see if them, and it’s very intentional that their first REAL scene together as themselves in the Daughters DLC is just them being a sweet ,arrived couple. That’s who they were.

Marguerite was the first to go (and the first to later die, interestingly enough) and Zoe finds her first after the power outage. Marguerite attacks her daughter and Jack intervenes, but even still he’s not hurting her. He could, and he could have been entirely justified in doing so, but all he does is try to hold Marguerite back and tell Zoe to get rope to presumably tie Marguerite up. Jack is a strong guy as we all know, a single stomp from him would’ve ended the game then and there if the mould hadn’t picked up where Ethan left off. Marguerite isn’t as strong as he is even after being infected, her thing isn’t brute strength as much as it is Give Birth To Bug Baby Bodyguards, so he could’ve knocked Marguerite out or caused some kind of physical harm to her to keep her under control. He didn’t, though, and I’m guessing by his line after Zoe leaves the room (“don’t you make me do something I’ll regret”) that he didn’t even try to. The madwoman with the centipede flailing out of her mouth is still his wife. Jack never wanted to hurt his family.

This is the last we and Zoe ever see of Jack before the infection with the exception of the free my family scene with him and Ethan near the end of the main game, but we do hear him resisting. While Zoe is running from him in the Daughters DLC, he’s talking to Eveline with lines like “shut up, you ain’t real!” and laughter that eventually devolves into crying. I’d argue that there’s evidence of this in the main game too. Jack has some interesting voice lines to say the least, but one of them is him telling someone to shut up through grit teeth. Ethan stays impressively silent through the chase sequences with Jack aside from his breathing, so Jack isn’t talking to him. They are the only two people in the main house, so the only other conclusion I can personally draw is that he is talking to Eveline.

Marguerite doesn’t get to make an appearance alongside her husband when he asks Ethan to free his family because she is fully dead, unlike the rest of her family who are either saved (yay Zoe!) or killed off for good in the DLCs. This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have her own heart wrenching cutscene though! In the Daughters DLC, Marguerite will stop Zoe to give her the key and apologise, saying that she doesn’t know what’s wrong with her and begging Zoe to go as she desperately fights for control. During this interaction, Marguerite strains to tell Eveline “don’t touch her, don’t hurt my family!”

Anyway, moving in from summaries, it’s made pretty clear from these interactions that Jack and Marguerite remember what they do under Eveline’s control. They are fully conscious but unable to do anything about it. Jack actually explains this in his cutscene with Ethan, and the idea of them being entirely aware of what they’re doing but unable to stop it is just so much worse.

Jack remembers drowning Marguerite, he remembers hunting down his daughter, he remembers cutting his son’s arm off, he remembers killing Ethan.

Marguerite remembers attacking Zoe and violently threatening her in the old house, she remembers infecting Jack, she remembers kidnapping Mia.

They both remember every victim, every moulded, every murder. They couldn’t do anything to stop it, but they remember every second.

The Lord’s were victims and they were prisoners, but they had some semblance of free will. Alcina in particular really revels in how violent she can be, going through maidens like the livestock she keeps them as and delighting in how much she knows she can hurt Ethan. Donna and Moreau are exceptions here (Donna especially, Moreau will kill to impress Mother Miranda and doesn’t seem too guilty about his own Cadou experiments though I doubt he fully understood what he was doing) but Heisenberg and Alcina are really just left to their own devices until the ceremony is brought into things.

The Bakers are different. They were never supposed to be a part of this. They were just a family trying to help a little girl. Their kindness is what killed them.

I’d also like to bring up how much pain they must have been in physically as well as emotionally. Jack sounds like he’s in agony during his mutated boss battle, struggling with all of his lines and crying out for his wife. I’ll re,mid you that by now Eveline has entirely abandoned him and Marguerite as her parental figures in exchange for Mia and Ethan, since Mia is her favourite anyway and now she has a father figure to go along with him. Jack is in this weird in between state where he’s not being controlled but he’s too far gone to the infection to ever regain who he was, so his sobbing for Marguerite and his family is very real emotion slipping through.

I know it’s funny to laugh at the bug pussy jokes, I make them too, but I want to take a moment to just think about that. Marguerite’s womb is tearing through her body. Insects are crawling out of her throat and through her raw flesh. Her limbs grow to unnatural lengths. Her womb is a big hive. It’s ripping through her body. The agony that poor woman must have been in, and sounds like she is in during her boss battle, is hard to consider when she’s taking bites out of you and laying bug hives left and right, but it’s heartbreaking when you do take time to consider it.

And Zoe, the unsung hero of Resident Evil 7, had to sit back and watch it all happen. She had to watch her family slip into madness without her being able to do anything and she coped by refusing to acknowledge them as still being her family at all. It’s Joe who has to remind her that they were still her family and that they did love her deep down in their true hearts in the End of Zoe DLC when she’s finally escaped the property. Zoe is stronger than I think most of us give her credit for, she shouldn’t just be looked at as the bad ending girl because she is honestly so much more than that.

I just love the Baker family, they really deserved better.

#resident evil #resident evil 7 #resident evil biohazard #resident evil 8 #resident evil village #re7 #re biohazard #re8 #re village #jack baker #marguerite baker #ethan winters #zoe baker #I’ve been a fan of this game since it first came out so I’ve been thinking about this for a while

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quazartranslates · 4 years ago

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Welcome to the Nightmare Game II - CH39

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

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Chapter 39: Star Death Reality Show (XXII)

This sound was like a signal to escape. Janet, Alex, Jing Siyu and Jing Sixue ran away in fear, wishing to escape to the ends of the earth.

"Take Lara away, get back! I’ll lead it away, I can deal with it!" Qi Leren kicked Du Yue and told him to act quickly. He shot at the monster's head to attract its attention, and prepared to take it somewhere far away and solve it with his own hands.

The monster came out. The swollen amphioctopus broke from its host body, and Francis's body was like a deflated balloon hanging off the amphioctopus, but this space alien had revealed its true appearance—an odd tentacled creature shaped like an octopus, which was covered in Francis's blood, and had changed from a mass of parasitic "seeds" in the body to a dangerous predator full of viscous body fluids.

Its speed was extremely fast. After breaking free from the shackles of the human body, it rushed toward Qi Leren at an amazing speed!

Qi Leren stopped shooting, picked the flashlight up off the ground, sped up his strides with all his strength, and rushed through the corridor deep in the institute at an inhuman speed!

The boundary between prey and hunter was difficult to distinguish. Both sides were sure that they were the hunter, but it wasn’t known who would die.

The S/L Data’s thirty seconds had passed. At this time, Qi Leren, who didn't have an immortal body, could only rely on his own abilities to handle this difficult opponent. At a gallop, Qi Leren realized that the distance between the octopus and him was getting farther and farther, and he was running fast enough to get rid of this fast-moving monster after having broken the shell.

He looked back, glancing out of the corner of his eye. This monster, which looked like an octopus, came after him as quickly as if it was sliding on the ground. Fortunately, it still didn't run as fast as he did. Seeing that there was a T-shaped intersection ahead, he immediately cheered up and prepared for the final battle.

Three, two, one, do it!

Qi Leren bit the ring off his hand grenade and threw it behind him. He pushed his running body harder, jumping around a 90-degree corner, and hugged his head on the ground.

Boom—

A huge explosion sounded around the corner, and the flames from the explosion lit up the whole passageway. Even Qi Leren, who was lying on the ground, felt the immense heat and shaking, and countless debris blew out and sprayed straight into the corridor ahead. Hiding in the vertical position of the T-shaped corridor, Qi Leren survived the explosion unharmed.

It was over.

Qi Leren stood up and was about to lift his foot to go out when Chen Baiqi's warning came to mind again. He breathed a sigh of relief, kept on alert, and carefully stepped around the corner with his gun drawn.

The explosion had made this area ahead unrecognizable. The body of the octopus had been blown apart, and several tentacles were thrown on the metal wall, sliding down slowly together with mucus, dragging out a scarlet liquid trail. With the loss of its tentacles, the octopus would only move helplessly a few times before falling to the ground completely dead.

All the four mature amphioctopuses had been dealt with, which meant that requirements could be almost declared for this task. Even if there were still a few newly spawned parasitic amphioctopuses in the contestants, they could be easily distinguished by detecting them with the instruments. But to kill people... Qi Leren imagined the scene with a heavy heart.

Once parasitized, it was hopeless. All he could do was let the parasitized people die happily.

Qi Leren pursed his lips and felt a little dry cough. His throat choked by the smoke was also a little painful, but it was still within tolerance.

He should find Du Yue and meet with him first. Qi Leren thought about it and walked along the way back.

At the moment he walked around the corner, the flashlight in Qi Leren’s hands suddenly swept onto a reflective object. When he looked intently, it was a half-open iron door, just at the end of the corridor where he had escaped the explosion just now. That is, at the bottom of this T-shaped intersection, there was no other fork in the road at its end, only a lonely door.

There was no sign on the door, no words, no letters, no special symbols. It was just a heavy iron door, half-hidden, and it was dark inside.

Qi Leren's heartbeat suddenly slowed, and his intuition whispered vaguely in his ear, encouraging him to move forward.

He pushed open the door, and the flashlight lit up the dark space. This small room was an office with desks, bookshelves, and office chairs.

There was also a computer: the same laptop that Qi Leren had been worried about, afraid of, and looking forward to.

His heart jumped wildly. Qi Leren took a deep breath, slammed the door, rushed to the computer in three steps and two steps, took out the prepared mobile power source from the item bar and connected it, and pressed the power-on button with trembling hands.

When the familiar boot screen appeared, Qi Leren clenched his hand and couldn't help tapping on the desk. Hurry up, open it quickly, and let him try again. Could he play Nightmare Game again? He had too many doubts that he needed this game to answer.

After the boot was finished, the mouse cursor moved to the icon of Nightmare Game and double-clicked.

The game interface appeared, and Qi Leren's heart was about to jump out of his throat. He held his breath and moved the cursor to "Save and Load".

Countless save files jumped out, arranged in reverse chronological order, and the last one was in the chapel in the Village of Dusk. At that time, he had gone through rows of old pews and was faced with a choice in the depths of the church: to the left or to the right.

He had saved the file, then walked through the door to the right, received the Holy City task, and had his first death there. In the real Nightmare World, he had chosen to go left, and then he met Ning Zhou in the graveyard outside the door, who had come to sweep Maria’s grave.

What if this time, he chose to turn left in the game? Would he meet Ning Zhou?

This problem had once bothered Qi Leren, but now he could prove it.

[…Reading save file, LOADING……]

[File read completed. Player "Passerby A", welcome back to the Nightmare Game.]

In the game, Qi Leren’s character named "Passerby A" went to the left door under his command. Qi Leren hardly dared to breathe, and countless chaotic thoughts berated him. For the first time, he was strongly aware of the fear that overthinking could bring.

The wooden door opened, and the game entered a cutscene animation. He could no longer manipulate his character, but watched him walk forward.

Outside the door was a gravel path occupied by shrubs and weeds. He went straight ahead. All the greenery in this sunset did not give a feeling of peacefulness, but instead filled his with anxiety and unease.

Qi Leren didn't know whether he wanted to see Ning Zhou in the game or not. His yearning heart was looking forward to meeting him again, even if it was separated by a cold screen. But reason made him resist. He didn't want to see Ning Zhou as an NPC in this game, because he didn't dare to ponder the hidden meaning behind it.

No matter whether he wanted it or not, in the dim afterglow of the sunset, Qi Leren still saw a figure standing in front of the tombstone.

So familiar, because he was so deeply imprinted in his mind, but so strange, because they were separated by the layer of a cold screen.

The figure appeared on the screen murmuring and, just like every NPC, the lines were displayed on the screen:

[Mom, I’ve fallen in love with someone I shouldn't love. He’s made me confused...]

Qi Leren's eyes had just seen this sentence when the words were blurred instantly.

It turned out that on that day, before he had walked from this church and seen Ning Zhou, Ning Zhou had once said such a thing in front of Maria's tombstone.

This was a lost Ning Zhou. At that time, he had not yet firmly believed that he would be willing to exile himself for his love. He was hesitating, unsure and uneasy, but he had no one to talk to. He could only come to his mother's grave and tell her quietly, even if he couldn't get an answer.

Qi Leren covered his face in front of the computer, tears flowing down his fingers and wetting the keyboard. He never knew he was such a fragile person; even if it was just a few words he had never heard before, they made him burst into tears.

He wanted to rush into the screen, embrace that lonely back, and comfort the lonely wandering soul.

But his approach would only wake up the lost man.

"Who’s there?" Ning Zhou appeared again on the screen.

Qi Leren woke up from grief. Ning Zhou had discovered his existence!

He couldn't make any answer. It was just a game with pre-written dialogue. When the game didn't give him options, he couldn't say anything.

They looked at each other without saying a word. They were as unfamiliar as two strangers.

They were indeed strangers.

Footsteps came from behind, and the Qi Leren in the game turned his head. Along this path full of weeds and shrubs, he saw a man walking towards them, bathed in the sunset from where he had come.

His words were also subtitled on the screen: "Passerby A? Ning— Ning Zhou? Why are you here?"

At this moment, Qi Leren was shaking and unable to breathe.

A familiar person stood there, looking surprised and shyly at Ning Zhou behind him.

That was himself.

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star-going-supernova · 4 years ago

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I was rereading your LN stories and a few questions came into my mind... what do you think of Six and Mono? I mean, what do you like and dislike about their characters? And which monster you think is the scariest in the games? I admit all of them scare me.

What do I like and dislike about their characters… hmm, that’s a good one. Six is an absolute gremlin, especially in the original Little Nightmares, and I really do like that about her. Protagonists are so often meant to be good or innocent people, or on some sort of pure-hearted quest, that I was immediately attached to her moral ambiguity that got less ambiguous as the game went. Especially in horror games, we often play characters who are trying to escape a terrible situation. Yes, Six is looking to escape the Maw, but she’s part of the horror that exists inside it. I love the end sequence of LN, where she drains the life from all the Guests she passes.

The moments of teamwork between them felt natural from the very beginning, like they’ve been working together for ages. They click almost immediately without needing to say a word.

I actually really like that Six and Mono don’t talk. Other than calling to each other with whispered, “Hey!”s, their stories are told through the environment and what we’re guided to do as the player. The overall lack of dialogue in the game is something I actually really like.

For Mono, I love the contrast between two of his defining actions, one near the beginning and one near the end of the game. The slow, careful way he offers a hand to Six screams of kindness to me, but the absolutely brutal way he destroys the Thin Man is just as good as Six’s final scene in LN. I would have liked to see how his character might have changed in the long run after that confrontation. The loop reveal was absolutely fantastic and my jaw legit dropped when I realized he was growing up into the Thin Man during that last slow montage.

A tragic but incredible ending, imo.

I can’t think of anything I dislike about their characters. I wish we had more cutscenes that solidified distinct personalities for each of them, but I’m still happy with what we got. Six’s decision to drop Mono will always hurt my soul, but it feels in-line with who we know she becomes in LN.

• • •

I love all the monsters in these games, honestly. The designs are just so good, so delightfully creepy. But if I had to choose a scariest, the Janitor from LN would win, with the Teacher from LN2 taking a close second. For me, it’s because the Janitor was our introduction to the monstrous adults of this world, with his bizarrely short legs, the disturbing way the false flesh on his face is bunched up, and his truly horrific arms. The way he sniffs at the air when he’s looking for Six, patting around the floor with his arms, the way the background music changes to something so tension-inducing when you mess up and he hears you… the Janitor thoroughly freaked me out the first time I watched someone play LN, in the best of ways.

The extra creepy extend-o features of the Janitor and the Teacher are why I find them the scariest. They are so blatantly inhuman like that and it’s horrid, and I love it. With the other characters, there’s certainly something grotesque about them—the Chefs sagging faces that they lift up to scratch beneath, the Hunter’s covered head with his heavy breathing and single eye-hole, the scrambling way the Doctor moves about the ceiling. But they all look human, though the Doctor kinda toes the line. They have human proportions for the most part, and human abilities. Even the Guests and the Viewers, both mindless in their own ways, retain human shapes.

But the blinded Janitor and the empty-eyed Teacher… what happened to make them like that? Why are they different? I don’t know, but I love it. The Teacher’s head chasing Mono through the vents had me physically recoiling from my screen, writhing with terrified tension. It was almost a struggle to keep watching. Similarly, though it’s been a while since I watched a LN play-through, the Janitor’s reaching arms always had me shuddering. His screech tensed me up like nothing else in that game.

As I said before, their designs are just so good. The ridiculous size difference between Six/Mono and everything else really highlights how out of place they are, and how daunting the truly terrifying world is. I adore it. Both of the games as a whole are so interesting to look at and there’s not a thing I would change about the aesthetics. It’s one of my favorite horror game series, even if I never play it, and a very large part of that is because of how it looks.

#i answered a thing #gleamlight the dreamer #little nightmares 2 spoilers #Star's Thoughts about Stuff #life and times of star

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babysizedfics · 4 years ago

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hey! i just wanted to pop by and say that i love your blog loads 🥺🥺 also, i have a question! does roman ever give vee tickles? when they’re big OR small? 💗

aaawW thank u so much for saying so !!

heads up i accidentally made this a ficlet halfway through lol

warning for tickling and teasing

and YES roman tickles vee a lot hsjshdhs you see it on the ic blog quite a lot - if they're hanging out they are actually pretty touchy feely. even when big vee usually ends up in romans lap and he will purposefully be cheeky because he knows roman ends up tickling him as revenge jdhds

just yesterday roman was holding the video game controller out of reach of virgil and fondly teasing him abt being too short to reach it, so vee twisted his septum piercing with his tongue to freak roman out. roman is very grossed out by things easily and dropped the controller to get vee to stop

vee started playing the video game, still sitting in romans lap with a smug smile on his little face... but he was kinda disappointed roman didn't put up more of a (tickle) fight.

so he licked romans cheek

roman freaked out, went to scrub his cheek withm soap, compained on the blog about vee being gross and 'baby snot on his face', then vee just denied it all (purposefully being cheeky to try to get roman to retaliate) until roman started chasing him for revenge

they ended up in virgils room with roman pinning him to the floor. virgil THOUGHT roman was going to lick his cheeks back, but instead roman asked him to admit he did it. virgil denied it and roman started wiggling a finger under his ear

vee squeaked and a giggle escaped

"admit it!" roman demanded

of cours vee knew what would happen if he didnt. so: "no, im innocent!"

then romans other hand circled a finger around the side of his ribs. virgil gasped and started giggling constantly and wriggling under roman

"Last chance, vee-vee!" roman warns with eyebrows raised and a big smile

virgils gigges are squeaky and breathless already, he really is too sensitive for a lot of tickling. but he meets romans eyes for a brief second before they fall shut with another gasp when romans finger brushes a particularly bad tickle spot. "n-no-ho" virgil protests... then he licks his deptum piercing again just to add fuel to the fire

roman cries out in disgust then immediately starts scribbling both his hands quickly over the sides of virgils.

virgil screams and bucks and gasps and blushes so hard

at this point logan appears in the doorway to check what is happening

"h-help, lo-ho" virgil pleads, eyes watering and cheeks aching from laughing so much

"no, don't help Lo!" roman argues, chuckling at vee and kindly slowing his fingers enough to give vee room to breathe between giggles "this is justice for a heinous act!"

logan sniffs in amusement, "well i am not one to stand in the way of justice"

virgils eyes fly open and land on logan "no! pl-hee-he-ease, M-ha-Mama!"

hearing vee call logan mama immediately makes roman stop his fingers, because if vee is starting to regress theres no way he would enjoy such intense tickling

logan steps closer and leans down to better speak to vee. "are you alright, little one?" he asks in a very babytalk voice, then roman stops pinning him and pinches his cheek a little

"hi vee-vee, do you feel tiny?"

and virgil goess BRIGHT RED because he isnt regressing at all, he just used the Mama card to try to get logan to feel sorry for him. he covers his face with his hands and shakes his head and mumbles through his fingers "not little, sorry... just wanted.."

the other two frown. "wanted what, virgil" logan asks.

"do you want me to stop?" roman asks sincerely

virgil wriggles on the floor a little and pulls his hand down from his face enough to chew his thumbnail and reveal one eye and one very pink cheek "no.. just wanted, um... attention" he admits quietly

roman immediately lights up "Ohhhhhh-"

vee whines and covers his face again. roman takes his hands and pulls them away. "let me get this right... did you want more teases?"

vee's silence speaks loudly

"oh my god youre insatiable" roman laughs, but before virgil has time to feel insecure about it roman's fingers start teasing at his ribs again

"i think you have this under control," logan chuckles, then leaves.

"so teasing how tiny you are earier wasn't enough?" roman muses, his fingernails tracing lightly over each individual rib. virgil holds his lips tight to contain a squeal, but it just comes out as a highpitched whimper. "its not enough to just tease how your little arms can't reach when i hold a controller above my head?"

virgil cant respond because one of romans fingers is back under his ear and tickling right under his earlobe and making him titter and squirm

"and i dont think its enough to tease what an itty bitty widdle baby you are, either," roman says in a babytalk voice, laughing when vee whines and tries to hide his red cheeks but then roman pokes his tummy teasingly and vee immediately drops his hands to his tummy protectively. "because we all know what a tiny little cutie you are, with your baby bottles and pacis and your diapers"

"ro-ah!" virgil tried to protest but romans fingers went for the sides of his tummy and all he can do is gasp and wriggle and giggle and hope his cheeks dont catch fire with how much theyre burning

"so i think we'll just stick with teasing you... for how much you love being teased" roman says confidently

"nooo" virgil whines between breathless laughter

"yes, vee-vee" roman laughs. he's drawing little spirals over vee's sides now and it's making vee writhe and squeal

"you love the teases sooo much, how adorable is that, huh?" romans fingers slow down and atart tiptoeing over vee's ribs one by one like theyre stepping stones

vee gasps in a deep breath and lets himself calm down, all while squeaking and smiling so hard

"you pretend to not like it when we tease you for being the shortest, but everytime you get the biggest smile!" romans fingers go up so one wriggles under his ear again and one scribbles at his cheek. vee squeals and shakes his head

"no?!" roman gasps dramatically, "aw, but it's true vee! youre tiny and you love it! and you cant hide it anymore with those cute dimples popping out and your squeaky laughter whenever i hold something out of reach..."

virgils far gone from talking now. he's a flustered giggly mess

"hm and what about how much you love tickles? thats pretty adorable too you know" romans fingers go back to his ribs to circle around slowly and vee instantly curls up, legs bent up to his chest and accidentally trapping romans fingers there

"see!" roman laughs "you love being tickle tickle tickled so much you wont let me take my hands away!" he scribbles his fingers quickly now and vee squeals and rocks on the floor and gasps but his legs still hold romans hands there.

"n-n-no d-doh-ho--"

"no you don't?" roman guesses and virgil nods, eyes squint shut tight with laughter. "yes you do~" roman teases with a sing song babytalk voice. it makes virgils chest feel melty. "you love the tickles vee! Little vee is a little tickly cutie, aren't you?~"

virgil squeaks and gasps. romans fingers slow down and vee breathes through his giggles for a few moments. he's getting to his limit now

"cmon, vee~" roman sings and wiggles his hand sout from between virgils chest and knees. virgil squeals even tho roman wasnt trying to tickle him. roman laughs "if you admit you love teases and tickles then i'll stop"

it takes a couple of minutes for vee to be ready - both because he is so breathless and he keeps getting interrupted by giggle fits even though roman isnt touching him anymore, which just makes roman laugh too - but eventually virgil opens his eyes, squinting past tears of laughter and not bothering to hide his hot cheeks anymore and admits under his breath "i- i um i like being... teased and - and tickled"

"yeah you do" roman agrees with a big smug smile, then he gets up and helps pull vee up from the floor - vee's knees are wobbly and he collapses a little into roman when he is standing and they both laugh and roman keeps an arm around vee's shoulders when they go back to his room to carry on with the video game.

"that wasnt too much, was it?" roman asks a bit meekly after several minute of gameplay.

virgil looks iver to him and sees he refuses to take his eyes off the screen. romans fingers are fidgeting a bit with the controller even though its a cutscene on the screen.

"no," vee whispers, then lets himself wiggle back into romans lap like they'd been before. he looks at the screen as well and breathes deeply when romans arms circle around him. he feels secure and safe in his big brothers lap. "it was perfect" he admits quietly, stroking his fingers over romans arms

#im WOW i did not expect a sort of concept / ficlet for this ajsjhdhsh #thank you anon!!#fam ily tickles #little/big concepts #little/big ficlets #asks #anon #lee virgil #ler roman #ts tickle fic

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dianaburnwood · 4 years ago

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HITMAN 3: First Impressions

This post is full of SPOILERS. Also, it is LONG, so.... yeah. Be prepared lol

HITMAN 3. Also known as: Diana’s Game.

Dear GOD I am in love.

I’m going to do my best to make this coherent. But. I am still freaking out. And I have SO much more to explore!!!! This won’t be very in-depth because I played each map exactly once so far. There’s so much left to see, conversations to overhear, opportunities to exploit - but, I DO have some first impressions, oh hell yes.

Menu:

That menu music!!! I was not expecting that at all. It was a mix of choral and classical with previous themes intertwined, and it reminded me of Blood Money. Speaking of Blood Money, this game is Blood Money.

Dubai:

Very, very beautiful. Kinda thought Grey made it all about himself lol of course he wanted to say “in your face” to the partners, but it was like 47 was just there to pull the trigger, like he’d not been hurt by them too. But, I really liked it. Trapping them in a room and watching them freak while Grey watched me kill them?? Helloo??? Popping off HARD from the start and I love it.

So - here’s the thing. I don’t get the timing. Diana tells them then that Edwards escaped. Did he escape just before the boys got to Dubai? Or were they unavailable to reach until then? It seems that the message Grey got at the end of HAVEN was after Olivia hacked the HAVEN servers, and then the boys were out of reach so after Diana discovered Edwards was gone, she couldn’t tell them until Dubai? And it was shown to us in a different order to leave us hanging? I dunno. Maybe? It seems weird.

THE CUTSCENE here omg - once again establishing that 47 and Diana are ride or die. “Diana will make it right, she always does” - BABE. BABE. SWEET BOY. His little face when Grey doesn’t trust Diana. OMGGG.

Dartmoor:

I went the murder mystery route, of course. I figured it was Emma from her conversation with her husband, but I got all the clues after just to be sure. Can’t believe Carlisle just handed 47 the file on Edwards and then went out alone on the balcony like I wasn’t gonna kill her??? Bitch????? do you forget who i am?????? Anyway, the murder mystery was SO much fun, but I can’t wait to infiltrate this manor in other ways. Lots of Beldingford vibes here.

THE CUTSCENE bdsfgafhlsjfah WAHT????? Ok so HOW did Edwards know where they were? And - ok, so it made for an amazing scene, but Grey is a badass. He is a mercenary genius that duped the ICA and brought Providence to its knees. How did he get himself surrounded in the woods by CICADA? But he did, and it was beautiful, and he literally only shot himself to save 47, and the LOOK in 47′s eyes on his balaclava face - I just bfjKSFasad. I can’t believe he died so early tho. I was very sure he’d die somehow, but SO early. WOW.

Berlin:

fucking hell. Berlin. fuck. fucckkkk.

I wanna shout out to Mini (not gonna tag you in case you’re avoiding spoilers) but hot damn girl if you’re reading you were BANG ON about 47 wearing Grey’s coat. I really didn’t think it was his. It was. It is such a beautiful way for 47 to express his emotions about this death without actually saying anything. Omg. It was perfection. I’m crying thinking about it.

BERLIN was where this game really upped its... game. Like WOW. 5 targets, and it’s the ICA. Clearly Edwards went to the ICA board at this stage and was like uhhhh so you need to take these ppl out. HOWEVER I am amazed that the ICA is like “oh, ok”. DO you not remember what happened in SOUTH DAKOTA.

But going after the ICA is a fucking trip and I love it. I love how 47 says each agent’s name to himself. I love how he listens in and the team handler realises it. I love how she pulls the rest of her team out once you get 5. I love that the ICA agents use disguises too!!! This is truly APEX PREDATOR and I love that they named it that. Y’all think you have the balls to go up against 47??? bitch?????

But the fact that you have to find the targets and none of them are marked is so fantastic. I found 6, but I have no idea how many are actually available - but I’m gonna find out!!! The club is HUGE as well, and lots of throwbacks to Contracts, especially with the biker gang. Amazing. Amazing level. I’m so excited to replay it.

Also they really addressed the elephant in the room with the ICA agents describing 47 as a caucasian male, bald, average height and ppl being like uh that’s every man here, and then he said yeah but he’s got this big tattoo lmao

Chongqing

ok this is where I started to think this game was my fanfiction. Inside the ICA? Showing off how truly international it is, and high tech. Hidden in plain sight. Ready to dismantle in 12 hours if needed. SO perfect. This lore builds on Absolution and Blood Money ICA lore in wonderful ways.

Also, I don’t know why the IOI and DK of the logo looked different in the trailer, they must have been just hard to make out. Cos in the game, the ICA logo is the same as all previous games.

Also, analysts do client vetting? Intrigue. Always assumed that was part of the handlers’ job. I take it all back Diana, you have never done anything wrong in your life, ever

I killed Royce by firing the ppl she recommended so she’d get trapped in the data core cleaning. I killed Hush (what a name I love it) as his patient.

Working with Olivia is really fun. I missed Diana, but Olivia brought a whole fresh perspective. I also really like how neither Grey nor Olivia are as good as Diana - they both fucked up while guiding 47 at least once.

47 saying “...I will leave you to prepare” to Olivia, I yelled fdagsfa

Also I love how 47 decided to expose the ICA exactly like Diana did in Absolution. Those two. One of a kind. My heart. And his desire to protect her. I love that the files showed their start together. Olivia saying “I can see why you...” and then she stopped herself. We all KNOW what she was gonna say.

AND AND AND AND

the cutscene - I screamed

“47 has one weakness. Me.”

I swear to fucking GOD, IO has seen into my soul. I’ve said all along that Diana is 47′s weakness, and he is hers. But to hear it said, aloud, by my girl? WHAT???!!!!!

Mendoza

Ok. OK. OKKKKKK. OK. I can’t even write about this one. This was where I was pretty sure I was hallucinating the entire level. This is my Diana and 47 dreams come true. This is insane. This is EVERYTHING.

So we have OUR MOMENT IN THE SUN. She puts her HAND on HIS HAND and he looks in fucking wonderment at it. ahugarhiewEG;FEJGHEFlejlhsgfes;gjrsgt. I can’t. I can barely get through writing about this.

Diana - the dress, the Jolie thigh slit, the jewellery, the hair (they finally fixed her fucking hair), SASS. “I have tango fever” omg.

How do these ppl not have a pic of 47 by now lol

I followed Diana and Vidal around cos I was entranced by my girl. Diana was fucking amazing each time. So much sass. Little did I know I interrupted them enough times for Vidal to say “ok son let’s talk”. I saw the tango and I was like omg imagine if I could dance with Diana.

well.

WELL.

Anyway, got to kill Vidal via her own setup for me, and that was amazing. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I snuck into the house to kill Yates, and overheard him calling Edwards’ voicemail. Also, it is April 2021?? So, yeah. My previous dates were way wrong lol.

And then, ALL MY DREAMS CAME TRUE. Diana and 47 fucking dancing the tango? I was pissed that I was in a security guard outfit, next time I play he will be in his tuxedo baby.

Diana’s comments to 47 when he’s in disguise tho, I was freaking. As security “you look like a true professional. I feel so much safer with you gentlemen around” aaahhhh

UH HE FELL TO THE GROUND COS OF POISON fngjfagfljgnsdfa

I am so glad I was right about my baby girl tho. She even told him “you didn’t have a choice” about her parents. Good. I’m so glad I was right about that. But omg it broke my heart to have 47 so, SO, SOOO sure of Diana all along, defending her to Grey and Olivia, knowing, KNOWING that she was on his side, and then, he eventually started to doubt it.

I was screaming at my screen - this is BLOOD MONEY! SHe is doing what she did in BLOOD MONEY!!!!

But, for a second, 47 wasn’t sure anymore. And Diana played her part well.

Carpathian Mountains

Ok, what I love most about Contracts was how it gave us an insight into 47′s psyche, and this game upped that tenfold. Him seeing all his targets surround him? Him imagining Diana and the Constant dancing together? Him imagining her say terrible things about him, things he’s thought about himself deep down, always, omg, but he finally snapped out of it. Ironic that thinking about Grey snapped him out of it, when in life Grey had not trusted Diana. But 47 came to the realisation on his own. Diana would never betray him.

opening that door and finding out you’re on a fucking train?????? I screamed.

I am a bit disappointed that it turned out Romania wasn’t significant, they just happened to be passing through. But omg the fact that you are “subject 47″ again. I freaked. This is 47′s worst nightmare.

I love that you have a free pass to kill everyone in this level. I did it in stealth anyway, cos it felt wonderfully tense to sneak through that train. But wow. This is another BIG risk that IO took. The train was straight out of Uncharted, and crafting a silencer for your pistol??? Hello The Last of Us????? But I don’t care. They used those elements super well.

I think some people will be angry at this game because parts of it (especially the last level) were a departure from how HITMAN and HITMAN 2 worked. But I love it. I love that they took risks to tell the story they wanted to tell, and those risks paid off.

47′s undying loyalty to Diana, omg. Telling Edwards bye bitch, I’ll never forget who I am again, and Diana thinks you suck. <3<3<3<3<3

ENDING

OH MY GOD. ONE YEAR LATER????? 47 obviously took some time off cos he fucking needed a break. But he’s back, baby. Ending on “it’s good to be back” was wonderful. The game ended where the 2015 trailer for HITMAN started, and I’m crying. He’s ready to continue with Diana, and not because it’s what he was made to do, not because he doesn’t know what else to do, but finally, because he CHOOSES to do that.

But one year later? What does that mean? Has Diana rebuilt the ICA like in Blood Money, or will she and 47 work together without anyone else? They’ll need the infrastructure that an organisation like the ICA has though. Diana said she would dismantle Providence from the top down once Edwards was gone, but how? Does that mean dismantling what’s left of the ICA? They were one and the same by the end of the game. All that didn’t just disappear. I’m left with so many questions.

I was disappointed Diana wasn’t in the cabin when 47 got there. And I wonder why she wasn’t. She knew he was coming, but they are clearly still on good terms. Maybe she wasn’t sure what to expect. But does that mean they hadn’t spoken in a year since??? But she didn’t sound surprised to hear him, and he had coordinates that he was following, so I think they arranged to meet. But her phone was in there when he arrived, and she wasn’t. Maybe he was tracking her phone? Did she come back there to him after?????

BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT

the game

ended

with 47

smiling

And for that I will be forever grateful.

Ok bye, I need to play it again. RIP work tomorrow lol

#hitman 3 first impressions #hitman3spoilers

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fabdante · 4 years ago

Text

The Vergil and Kat Post

So um. This like idk essay, analysis, rant thing took took like five attempts to write because I would not stop rambling and it’s still like just barely five pages long. And that’s after I cut it down from like 11 pages.

The short version is: Kat and Vergil are really interesting and complex as we view their relationship usually from an outside perspective which leaves much up to interpretation. If you’ve been on my blog for a while you probably know the interpretation I have of them because I eat up tragedy like candy, but that’s not the only one.

The (very) long version is beneath the cut. And unfortunately this time there are no pictures. There’s some analysis but also just a lot of rambling. If Kat and Vergil, in any form, are not your cup of tea, this is probably not a post for you which is chill!

I’m going to start with the end. Vergil’s Downfall.

Recap, when Vergil encounters Hollow Vergil in his personal trip to his personal hell and all, Hollow Vergil eventually asks ‘but what would you do if you had another chance’. Vergil doesn’t answer. But since he’s the player character, we get access to his thoughts. And we get a montage of Kat. At first one might think this is about how the plan went wrong. Vergil’s regretting the plan. Then it becomes increasingly more apparent the thread that ties all the scenes together isn’t the plan, isn’t the plans failings. It’s Kat. Not Dante and Kat. Not the plan. Just Kat. The scene ends with a scene from mission 2, a moment from the end of the only cutscene Vergil and the real Kat share alone. There’s this little moment that seems to exist to show how pretty Kat is.

This is his last thought. Not the plan. Not how Kat relates to the plan. Not how he mistreated Kat in service to the plan. It’s just Kat.

Act one of Vergil’s Downfall is all about Vergil and Kat. The whole things a reenactment, just somewhat twisted, of how they met. Kat in Limbo, in danger from a demon, and Vergil doing what he can to help. He doesn’t hesitate either. He hears Kat call for him, call for help, and he runs. Except in Downfall the threat is with them, something he can fight and slay head on. So he does. But everything is wrong now. ‘Kat’ berates him. She tells him what Vergil must think she’s thinking. That she feels used, that she thinks Dante’s better, and all that. And Vergil tries to explain, he tries to justify himself, even if this ‘Kat’ is not his Kat. He wants her to understand, though. Because she’s Kat after all.

He needs to hurt her to proceed, of course. But he can’t. He can’t until she turns into a physical monster. Not until this fake Kat becomes something entirely unKat can he actually hurt her and proceed.

The Hollows represent aspects of Vergil that he needs to kill to gain power, as well as his insecurities and the people he cares about and more. Kat represents his humanity. So I suppose, in a way, it’s not surprising that she’s the hardest for him to kill and the one who receives the least of his cruelty that we see later in the game. But, the point still remains. He faces Hollow Kat first. And he begs her to understand him, longs for things to go back in what way they can.

(Also, an aside, it’s interesting to think about how Kat is not only humanity, but Vergil’s humanity. The implication being that Kat in a sense grounds him. A foil to how inhuman Vergil is.)

Downfall takes the scraps that the game gives and gives them a revamped, strengthened context for Kat and Vergil and their true feelings and intentions. The first game doesn’t give us much and why should it? They are built in a show don’t tell philosophy because, well, Dante can’t tell us about Vergil and Kat. He can only see. So we only see. But Downfall, we are explicitly told that yes, Vergil cared for Kat. She is important. And she is his one regret.

So, Downfall proposes that Vergil genuinely cared for Kat. And the base game proposes that Kat genuinely cared for Vergil. And it’s hard for me not to talk ramble when I talk about them because there’s…a lot of little moments between them that I love, little things that I find interesting to pick apart and wonder about (and have over the past 8 years). I’m going to try not to do that, though. Try being the operative word (I have failed all five write ups preceding this one).

Kat is often described as naïve because of her relationship with Vergil. But I think this is an inaccurate description. We never see her blindly trust anyone in the game. She doesn’t trust Dante because she just believes in him. We know this because she’s immensely skeptical of him and if he’s going to be helpful up until after the succubus boss fight. And we know she’s skeptical of him because she questions Vergil about it and she remains skeptical, keeping Dante an arm’s length away. She is not naïve. She trusts Vergil because he’s earned that trust.

It’s hard not to see how he managed to do that. He helped her kill her foster father and escape a bad situation, but it’s what happened after that solidifies this deep connection between the two. Kat tells Dante how Vergil helped her afterwards while she coped with the trauma and it’s something she mentions more then once. Kat’s trust and loyalty to Vergil is because he’s earned it. Because he has seen her at her worst and did not run. He stayed. He helped her through it. And still he stays now. It’s easy to imagine this going both ways, that seeing Kat ‘raw’ as he says makes Vergil vulnerable right back.

Plus, Vergil compares Kat when he first met her to Dante (‘He’s raw. Just like you were when I found you.’). I think one would be hard pressed to refer to reboot Dante, the one with self proclaimed trust issues, as naïve.

So, we have a relationship of deep trust between the two over what is implied to be a long time. The sort of trust and intimacy you get when someone sees all of you and knows all of you. At least, I think that’s Kat’s end. When it comes to Vergil…well, opinions are complicated.

There are the three options of how Vergil feels about Kat if we simplify it down. One, he was using her and this was all to use her and get the plan finished. Two, he was using her but grew to care for her over time. Three, he was never using her and this was all real. I’m three all the way but one and two aren’t really contradicted anymore than three is. Which is an issue when talking about Kat and Vergil and trying to be all inclusive but also concise. There’s no one answer. There are just different opinions on what the answer is.

For me, it’s hard to reconcile the idea that he did not care for her with what we see in Vergil’s Downfall. Or when we have moments like his genuine joy that she’s alive in the server room. It’s hard for me to reconcile the idea of Vergil using her this whole time when it feels like a lot of work to keep her at his side when she can’t even control her powers. It’s hard for me to reconcile the deep connection I see between them.

For other people, the opposite is hard. Seeing what happened in the server room, seeing Vergil write off Kat entirely, seeing him call her useful and referring to humans as subjects, cannot be reconciled with the idea that he genuinely cared for and about her. Or how one could get a very loyal side kick the way he goes about this, saving her and giving her a home and purpose and everything. It’s an easy way into getting a loyal assistant.

All that I can tell you is how I see it. And what I see is two people with a deep intimacy with each other. The relationship may be messy and complicated and not perfect, but that’s what I see. That’s not what everyone sees, and that’s ok. That’s just what I see and that’s what this post is about.

I think its notable to about how important this relationship is because Vergil actually gets like, jealous about it. I get side tracked for too long when I go on about this so, in keeping things short, we see Vergil in the background get frustrated with things Dante says to Kat (namely the ‘I like it rough’) and we see him get kind of jealous in the game. But we really see it in Downfall. And sure, there are things he’s jealous about that pertain to Dante that aren’t Kat related. But there are things that do relate to that. We mostly see this, again, with Hollow Kat. She pisses him off when she mentions Dante being a real man. There’s of course stoking at Vergil’s insecurities since he’s lost to his twin and he already seems to feel envious about how easy things are for Dante and everything. But there’s also the fact it’s Kat saying it. It’s Kat who’s telling him she prefers Dante. That stings Vergil, this idea Kat cares about Dante more than him.

Part of this I think is from the fear that Kat will run off to Dante because of their similar backgrounds. They both have similar childhoods, something Vergil didn’t experience. Which, going back to what I said, a person who must pride himself on how well he knows Kat (and how well she knows him) must find that kind of threatening.

There’s this scene added in the Definitive Edition. Before that we were left to assume Kat wandered the tower and that’s how she mapped it for the twins, but the Definitive Edition makes it clear canon. This makes the scene where Mundus records himself with Kat as a threat to the twins the only time we see Kat out of body in the game. During this experience, she assumedly betrays Vergil’s name to Mundus. Before the Definitive Edition scene, I always just kind of wrote off that moment. Kat’s under extreme duress, she’s just saying whatever at this point. I thought this for years after, to.

But then one day, after replaying the game for the umpteenth time, a thought came into my head. She’s out of body, in Limbo, surrounded by demons. She says his name because Kat is looking for him. She say’s his name because despite what happened in the server room, she still trusts Vergil. She doesn’t say Dante’s name, she doesn’t call for anyone else. She calls for Vergil. Because who else would she call for if not Vergil, the person she’s closest to and the person who saved her before?

It’s this sort of thing that makes the betrayal hurt as badly as it does for well, everyone. Us, Kat, Vergil, Dante. But focusing on Kat and Vergil, it’s the trust. It’s this deep bond between the two of them that’s suddenly shattered. What do you do when this person you think you know so well doesn’t do what you expect? When they do the exact opposite, actually? When they suddenly don’t understand you at all? It’s such a foundational relationship for the two of them to, it’s earth shattering to go from knowing a person so truly and deeply to looking at a stranger. This is all kinda true for Vergil who must have expected Kat to understand even if he may have thought she’d get upset. But this is all extremely true for Kat

It’s kind of a double sided betrayal. While I’m not really going to say Kat betrayed Vergil, because she didn’t she stayed true to her word and what she thought they were fighting for and everything, Vergil feels betrayed to, just like Kat and Dante. And oh does Kat feel betrayed. One of my favorite like, animation, character moments is like the pure disbelief, anguish and betrayal on Kat’s face at the betrayal it’s so well done. Like even the little look she does out over the city then back to Vergil like it’s just its good but not important back to topic. Kat thought they were fighting to free humanity. And Vergil seems to truly think this is for the best, if humanity is under his rule.

While one can argue Vergil’s goal was power, I feel like Vergil’s goal was the same he had from the start. Vergil wanted to free humans. He’s not even wrong, really. If Dante and Vergil do not put someone on the throne to replace Mundus, a new demon will take his place. Without someone controlling the demons, the demons will wreck havoc uncontrolled. However his wording could use some work. That said do I think Vergil is susceptible to power corrupting him. Absolute power corrupts absolutely sort of deal. I feel like him and Dante are similar in this regard, neither I think is quite equipped to rule with the amount of power that Vergil proposes they get. I also think Vergil didn’t think he’d get to this part, I don’t think he really thought about what happens after Mundus. Not the specifics. He ended up with this conclusion later in the game, and as a result never floated it by anyone. And to be fair, no one asked.

Kat always seems so full of hope at the end, right after she get’s Dante to stop killing Vergil and everything. She’s got these big Kat eyes, like she expects now things will go back. Vergil will say this was a joke and he’ll come back and things will be normal and she will have her best friend and the world will be safe. But that’s not what happens. Vergil leaves, of course (not after him and Kat have a long extended stare where they must be wondering mutually if the other will change their mind, if she will follow or he will stay). The whole ending in general from start to finish we get a lot with Kat and Vergil subtext. How she manages to get him to listen for a moment, even if Dante ends up getting him too angry to listen by the end. How Kat goes out on a limb to save Vergil, even if she didn’t have to.

She must be wondering, to, how real it all was. Dante’s answer I think is that it wasn’t. From what he saw, from his limited scope, it wasn’t. He cannot reconcile it, and why should he? He was thrown into their lives and resistance group with no context and he ends with little more. But Kat’s left wondering, and Vergil’s left regretting, and I’m left lamenting about the very large lack of post game Vergil/Kat content.

I don’t know. I could keep going. At just over four Microsoft Word pages, this is the shortest attempt I’ve made at this. And I will surely write up some more analysis on them, I didn’t even get to talk about fun stuff like Kat’s theme (or the comics but I left those out on purpose I have…complicated opinions on the comic), or like more about the whole divine/human angle here. I could keep going on and on and on like analyze every little microsecond and sound like this:

Which, to clarify, I will 100 percent do if prompted lmao. But I guess the short of it is, in my biased opinion, I think Kat and Vergil are in love. I think it was real. I think Vergil found her and he helped her because she needed help. I think they know each other better than anyone else. I think some things may have gotten muddled in the mists of being in a rebellion and saving the world and that rebellion was their priority. I think going into the DmC: Devil May Cry post game must be complicated for them, unable to let go of the other but unable to come back. It’s the sort of complicated relationship and tragedy I find fun to write and to read. That’s how I see it, anyway.

Also I mean idk if we are to believe Vergil’s bigger dick comment as truth, who else saw both Dante and Vergil’s dicks? Who except Kat? Who else had this info? Who else would Vergil believe? Just saying. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

(edit: also I spelled hollow wrong like multiple times in this essay forgive me it should be fixed now lmao)

#dmc devil may cry #dmc reboot #devil may cry reboot #vergil/kat #vergilxkat #fab talks meta #can you tell i started a really long fan fic about kat and vergil that i never finished or posted #because thats 100 percent what i did they live rent free in my brain 24/7 #long post

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honhonluigi · 4 years ago

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Hinanami is basically the bland, white-bread version of Naegiri... and so much worse. They really tried to do the whole "put the protagonist with the emotionless stoic girl" but did a terrible job

They didn’t even try to do that, though. The fans did. Chiaki and Hajime don’t have a single real conversation the entire game. He’s not her friend. He doesn’t care about her. Aside from trials and investigations, where they’re focused on solving a murder and they talk to everyone in equal measure, they never speak to each other. Nekomaru spends more time with Hajime than Chiaki does. Hinanami is not canon. Never once in the game is Chiaki implied to mean anything to Hajime at all. He never talks to her. They’re not even friends. It’s the fans who started shipping them and acting like they were best friends. Because Chiaki was a fan-favorite, and fan-favs always get shipped with protags (Ex: Rantaro and Shuichi, who haven’t had a single conversation). Chiaki was supposed to be a fan-fav. She was supposed to be Waifu-bait. But then the cash-grab shitty spinoff anime happened, and they saw how much the fans like Chiaki, so they shipped her with Hajime in the anime. But in the games? Hinanami isn’t even close to canon. Hajime spends more time with literally everyone else except maybe Peko and Hiyoko? He and Chiaki do not have a single authentic conversation.

I made a whole thesis about this. I wrote a whole god damn paper about how Hinanami isn’t canon. It’s somewhere on this blog if you dig. It’s NOT canon. People only assume that it’s canon because of the anime, which came after the games. And if you think the anime is canon? Well, I’ve got a surprise for you. The anime completely goes against the game canon of everything to do with Despair’s founding, the Kamukura Project, and Junko/Mukuro in general. The anime says Chiaki was a real student at Hope’s Peak, but the game? In the game, both Chiaki and Alter Ego say straight up that she never existed outside the Neo World Program. She wasn’t a real person. The anime isn’t canon. The anime was nothing but fan-service. A cash grab. Completely and utter shit. Would you say the How To Train Your Dragon TV show is more canon than the movies? Fuck no! Same with the anime. The games are canon, not the anime. If Hinanami happened in the animes, it doesn’t fucking matter, because Chiaki didn’t even actually exist in the games.

Point is, people only assume Hinanami is canon because of the anime. But in the game, there’s nothing to imply that they’re a couple, or even friends. Let’s take a look at DR couples, shall we? There’s three types of DR relationships. We’ll take a brief look into each.

1. Chapter One Love Interest (AKA: The Red Herring)

You’re probably familiar with this one. It’s the ‘tutorial girl’. You meet them first. They become the protag’s best friend. The MC trusts them. They show the MC around, they get introduced to everyone together, and basically you spend the whole prologue and Chapter 1 getting close to them. You’re supposed to think ‘Oh, they’ll escape with the MC and be their love interest in the end’ even though it’s totally predictable that they end up dying. They end up dying in the first trial because they betrayed the MC by getting involved with a, unsuccessful murder somehow. This was Sayaka and Kaede. (I already went over on this blog why Kaede was a red herring, not a protag. She was only ‘protag’ to avoid people predicting that she would die in chapter 1 like all the other ch 1 friends.) Sayaka is friends with Makoto but ends up trying to kill Leon and getting murdered. Kaede is friends with Shuichi but ends up being executed for trying to kill Rantaro.

What about Chiaki? Does she fit any of that? Fucking no she doesn’t. After her introduction, Hajime ignores her for all of Chapter 1. And ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5, etc etc... But anyway. She’s not his best friend in Ch 1. They don’t talk. She doesn’t get involved in an unsuccessful murder in Ch 1. Who’s Hajime’s friend then? Who shows him around? Who does he trust who ends up betraying him by getting involved in unsuccessful murder during the first trial? Oh yeah-- Nagito. He would’ve died if it wasn’t for his luck saving him. He was supposed to die in his murder, or be executed. But his luck got in the way. Nagito was the chapter 1 love interest. He literally follows the same exact beats as Kaede and Sayaka. But uhhh...Sayaka and Kaede are totally valid love interests, but Nagito isn’t! Why? (Hint: It’s because he’s gay and has a mental illness.)

2. Plot Twist Love Interest (AKA: The Shady One)

This love interest comes on after the Red Herring love interest dies in chapter 1. This love interest starts off as being someone that you don’t trust, who avoids you, who acts super shady and suspicious the whole time. They hide things, act cryptic in trials, and know way more than they let on. They act rude sometimes, but also nice and helpful sometimes, to the protag so that MC has no idea how this person feels about them. The MC is curious, but also wary of them. This person ends up disappearing towards the end of the game so that MC doesn’t have access to them anymore. We lose the option for their free-time events at some point. This person disappears because they’re hell-bent on figuring out the mystery behind the killing game. They end up getting involved in some kind of plot to reveal the truth/mastermind/traitor and then it fails, resulting in their death or the death of someone else. This person gets falsely accused of being the mastermind by the rest of the cast. This describes, to a tee, Kyoko. People acknowledge Kyoko as Makoto’s love interest (because she’s a girl!). But this describes Kokichi too. The role that Kokichi and Kyoko play is the exact same in the story. Now, I don’t think that Shuichi was at all in love with Kokichi, but I think Kokichi had a crush on him. (This is why I make a case that Byakuya shouldn’t be in the ‘unholy trinity’. Kyoko should. Byakuya hits none of the plot requirements for that. He’s just a dick. Also, by all rights, Shuichi’s second love interest probably should’ve been Maki. She was shady enough, and he actually had a chance to like her. But fuck that. They did NOT go that route. Abusive comphet KaiMaki all the way, right?)

Anyway, let’s look at Chiaki for this one, shall we? Suspicious? Well, I knew from Ch 1 investigation that she was the traitor, but no one else did. No one in the cast suspects her of a thing the entire time. They’re completely flabbergasted when she hints that she’s the traitor. They all think she’s perfect. No one ever suspects her of a thing. She doesn’t disappear mysteriously. We don’t lose access to her free-time events. She doesn’t look into the mysteries behind the killing game (because she already knew them). She may help in trials, but she’s not cryptic or mysterious about it. She acts super mega ultra fucking rude the MC, but he doesn’t care, and he’s never torn up in puzzlement over “how she really feels about him” the way that Makoto and Shuichi get frustrated with Kyoko and Kokichi. She doesn’t hatch any plot to try and expose the truth. She does everything she can to cover up the truth until Nagito forces it. Which brings me to my next point. Who does this actually describe? Oh-- Wait! It’s Nagito again!! He follows, line for line, the exact same plot that Kyoko does, and so does Kokichi. So...Why is Kyoko the only one who gets to be a love interest instead of a villain? (Hint: Because Nagito and Kokichi are gay and you could argue that both have mental illnesses.)

The only part of this that Chiaki actually fits is the “knows more than everyone else”. But she doesn’t actually. She doesn’t figure it out because she’s smart, like the other three characters. She knows already because she’s the traitor. She knows more in the way that Sakura, Tsumugi, and Mukuro “knew more”. They were given that information. They are not love interests. And yeah, Chiaki uh...’gets involved’ in a scheme to find out the truth. But not of her own plotting or fruition. It’s Nagito’s plan, and she gets involved because he planned it. In the same way that Makoto ended up taking the fall for Kyoko’s botched first attempt at revealing the truth, too. Makoto, Chiaki, and Kaito took the fall for those plans. They weren’t the cause of them. Makoto only didn’t die because his luck (+ Alter Ego) saved him, just like Nagito’s saved him in ch1.

3. Side-Character Relationships

This is the last and third type of DR relationship. The love between side characters, like Taka & Mondo, Tenko towards Himiko, K1-B0 & Miu, Sakura & Aoi, Kaito & Maki. Honestly, you can’t even compare Hinanami to this logic, because Hajime is an MC. But let’s be generous and do it anyway.

These couples are always super obvious. Since you can’t see them through the eyes of the MC all the time, they’re even more obvious than MC ships. Side-characters in love spend tons of time together outside of trials and investigations. They’re with each other in their free time. They talk about each other all the time. They’re always together. They talk openly about their ‘friendship’ and how much they mean to each other. We get cutscenes showing the love between the two. Even in KaiMaki, which I hate, all of this is present.

What about Chiaki? Nah. She never talks about Hajime, and Hajime never talks about her. He never even thinks about her at all. He never seeks her out. They never ever have a single conversation in their free time. Unless you, the player, chose to do her free time events, they never talk outside of trials. They don’t seek each other out. They don’t spend any of their free time together. They don’t talk about how much they’re friends or lovers. They’re never together. They only get 2 cutscenes when they’re alone together: one of which is investigating Nagito’s room and revealing a major hint that Chiaki is a robot; the second of which is after she dies, wrapping up the plot that she is, in fact, a robot. These cutscenes don’t serve to show how much they care about each other. These cutscenes aren’t about Hajime at all. He might as well not even be there. It’s not like they have meaningful conversations. It’s just about finishing off Chiaki’s boring story, because it’s required. Compare: Taka & Mondo, whose cutscene is them fucking in the sauna. K1-B0 and Miu, whose cutscene is them fucking in Miu’s lab. Hina and Sakura, whose cutscene is Sakura telling Hina that she loves her. Kaito and Maki, whose cutscenes are them hugging and spending time together bonding over mutual interests. Chiaki’s seem pretty fucking stale compared to those, right? Yeah, because her only cutscenes are about bare-bones investigation and trial shit. Lots of people get investigation cutscenes. Doesn’t make them love interests. Chiaki and Hajime never spend free time together. They never seek each other out, have real conversations, or bond over mutual interests. They only talk during trials and investigations. Let me say this again, because I cannot emphasize it enough: HAJIME DOES NOT EVEN EVER THINK ABOUT HER.

4. Elements of Any and All DR Relationships

Now, there are elements of relationships that all DR ships have, regardless of if they involve the MC or not. The two characters spend free time together, outside of investigations and trials. The two characters have plot-related interactions outside of trials and investigations. (This is especially true in cases with the MC. Think how many plot-related scenes we got with Kaede + Shuichi, Sayaka + Makoto, Kyoko + Makoto that happened outside of trials and investigations?) These two characters have at least one heartfelt cutscene alone together. Like I mentioned above, they talk all the time. They think about each other. They talk about each other. Someone always makes a joke about the MC being in love with them.

Like I already pointed out, Chiaki has none of this. She and Hajime spend exactly 0 free-time together, unless the player forces it to happen themselves. They don’t talk. They don’t have plot-related cutscenes, discussions, storylines, etc outside of trials/investigations. They never speak to each other outside of trials/investigations. They don’t spend time together. They don’t have plots involving each other. They don’t seek each other out. They don’t talk to each other. They don’t even think about each other. And absolutely no one in the cast makes a joke about Hajime and Chiaki getting together. Fun fact: Kazuichi makes more moves toward/thinks more about getting with Chiaki in one scene than Hajime does in the entire game. Another Fun Fact: Nekomaru spends more one-on-one time with Hajime than Chiaki does. Where’s my die-hard fans insisting that Nekomaru x Hajime is indisputably canon?

Who has all of the above criteria? Mikan. Mikan does. She’s infinitely more of a love-interest to Hajime than Chiaki.

Now I’m gonna go over some popular arguments I see for why Chiaki is a love interest, and I’m gonna destroy them.

“She’s The Helper Character.” That character doesn’t exist. That’s a fucking lie. Literally everyone talks in trials. Everyone helps in trials. Everyone helps in investigations. There is no singular ‘helper’ character. There’s no assistant. There’s no side-kick. Kaito helps Shuichi in trials. Maki does too. Are they his love interests? Byakuya helps in trials. He’s not Makoto’s love interest. Nagito helps in trials and people are pretty fucking insistent that he’s not Hajime’s love interest. Everyone helps in trials. In a trial/investigation, the MC has to talk to literally everyone. They have no choice. The fact that Hajime talks to Chiaki in an investigation, or listens to her in a trial, is not evidence of him favoring her. Chiaki talking so much in trials and investigations is supposed to be dropping hints at her being the traitor. Not her being a “helper” to Hajime.

“What About The Swimsuit Scene?” “Hajime was totally drooling over Chiaki in that scene!” Yeah, he was. Because he’s a teenage boy and she was wearing a super slutty bikini. Literally everyone, boy and girl, in that scene looked at Chiaki and went “Jeez Chiaki...That’s a...bold swimsuit.” She wore a skimpy swimsuit and Hajime thought it was hot. So did Kazuichi. Kazuichi drooled over her WAY more than Hajime. Is Kazuichi automatically Chiaki’s love interest? Hajime also drooled over Peko when she walked in. Because he’s a teenage boy, and there’s hot girls in skimpy bathing suits. Also, Hajime talks nonstop through the entire fucking game about how hot and beautiful and amazing Sonia is. And he never once even has a thought about Chiaki. But uh...Nah, Sonia’s not his love interest. It’s totally Chiaki, right?

“The ‘I’m Taking My Top Off’ Comment.” Yeah, Chiaki said that to Hajime. And Hajime freaked the fuck out. He didn’t want it to happen. He was like “WAIT WHAT!?” He wasn’t “oh fuck yeah, let me see those gamer titties!” Maybe Chiaki was flirting with him, but Hajime definitely didn’t flirt back. At the very least, it shows that he wasn’t expecting it, because he never thinks of her that way. Hajime didn’t respond to that line at all. Also, the only reason Chiaki even said that in the first place is because she was made to be fap-material for Otaku Gamer Bros. So of course they’re going to make her talk about her boobs, give her a slutty swimsuit, and make her boobs three sizes bigger when she wears it. (It’s true! I checked! Also, does this mean that Chiaki is a closet sex freak? Yikes...Well, it’s more interesting than everything else she’s got going on.) Point being, when she brought it up (and she was joking, for a reminder. She wasn’t serious.), Hajime didn’t want anything to do with it.

“Junko blackmails them about ‘The Girl You Love’.” Yeah, okay, I’ve never actually seen people make this argument. And I better never fucking see that. Because it’s so god damn obvious, and stupid. Junko’s lines are basically “you need to hurry up and make a decision, because the bodies of the girl you love and the boy you hate are in the real world wasting away.” She is talking to everyone, but specifically, she’d just been goading Fuyuhiko on about Peko. This line. Is clearly. About Peko. It’s about Peko. It’s not fucking about Chiaki. And I better never see anyone claim this. Why not? Why can’t it be about Chiaki? SHE’S NOT FUCKING REAL!!! She doesn’t have a body! She’s not wasting away! She has no body outside the Neo World Program! This line literally cannot be about her. Even if you go by the anime and say she did exist, she’s still fucking dead, and still doesn’t have a body to waste away in the first place. Chiaki and Alter Ego BOTH say that she doesn’t exist outside the Neo World Program!!!

“Then Why Did She Appear to Hajime in the Last Trial?” Because of plot convenience. That’s all. See, we’re not supposed to know she’s an AI. (Even though it’s incredibly obvious). When she is executed, we’re not supposed to know that she’s an AI programmed by the Future Foundation. We’re supposed to be like “Why did she do that? Why did she say all those weird things? Why was she the traitor?” We’re supposed to have all these unanswered questions. (I mean, I already knew all of that from ch 1, but the game clearly tries to keep you from suspecting Chiaki at all.) So, if she’s dead and executed, how can we finish her story? How are we going to get a chance to wrap up all those unanswered questions? She appears to Hajime and tells him. She reveals it all to him, answers all the viewer’s questions, and finishes her story. That’s it. She appears to him out of convenience to finishing her own plot. Why him? Why him specifically? Is it because they’re in love? Nah bitch, it’s because he’s the main character and the only way the audience could see their questions answered at all is if she appeared to him. She also appeared to Sonia, as Sonia specifically states. Is Sonia her canonical, definite, not-possibly-arguable love interest? No. Sonia’s love interest is Gundham. If seeing Chiaki had something to do with love, then why did she see her too?

“But Her Free Time Events End With Them In Love.” Yeah, so does everyone else’s. Nagito’s, Akane’s, Kazuichi’s, Mikan’s...Sayaka’s, Toko’s, Kyoko’s...Kokichi’s, Kaito’s...Everyone’s free time events end with them falling in love with the MC. That’s the point of FTEs. That’s the reason why no actual ships are explicitly canon in any DR games. Because they want the player to have the chance to get close to, and pursue a relationship with, whatever characters they choose. That can’t work if that character is dating someone. So they make all FTEs end in love confessions, and they let no ships become canon. You can choose literally any character, go through their free time events, and have them fall in love with you. It’s for the player. It’s not canon. And sure, those FTEs might not specifically end in an outright love confession (like Nagito’s does), but it’s pretty fucking obvious in every single one that you win them over and fall in love. Why do you think you get their underwear? Even Toko, canonically smitten with Byakuya, goes “I’m already in love with master, but...” Sideways glance, smile, “You can think of me if you want...” It exists for the player, and can be done with ANY character. It doesn’t speak to any special privilege for Chiaki.

And just a couple more things I have to say on this topic:

Hajime didn’t like her. Hajime doesn’t fucking like Chiaki. I’m not gonna say that he hates her, but he definitely doesn’t like her. Whenever he has to talk to her, he’s always thinking about how weird she is, how childish she’s being, and how rude she is for talking over him/falling asleep when he talks. He doesn’t enjoy talking to her. I did Chiaki’s first two FTES, and Hajime hated every god damn second of them. He thinks she’s rude, boring, weird, and childish. He thinks about that stuff any time he’s forced to talk to her. When he finds her diary, he goes “God, this is awful, it’s like a five-year-old wrote it.” Why would you think that he likes her??? (You know who Hajime really fucking despises? Gundham. God, talk to Gundham and read Hajime’s thoughts. He’s fucking brutal. This guy has a huge beef...)

So Who’s Hajime’s Actual Love Interest?

Everybody!!! This is actually a theory I cooked up. I think each MC gets a ch 1 love interest (Sayaka, Nagito, Kaede), and then a second plot-twist love interest, but it happens in different ways each time. Kyoko and Makoto get together all nice and neat. Shuichi has a second love-interest who likes him, but Shuichi absolutely does not like him back. Hajime’s second love interest? Everyone. Hajime has this kind of curse where the second someone captures his interest/gets interested in him, they die. I noticed in the game that they’d push characters on Hajime hardcore, and then kill them the next chapter. Now, this happens in every game. But in Hajime’s case, they weren’t just pushed on him as characters. They all flirted with him. One of the reasons why I think almost everyone in the class had a crush on Hajime. First, it’s Nagito, and Impostor confides in Hajime and Teruteru flirt with him too. Then, they either get killed or get taken away (and chained up for three days without food, water, or bathroom access). Next, Mahiru starts flirting with Hajime by bossing him around and always seeking him out. I don’t think Hajime liked her back, but she liked him. And then she dies. After that, Mikan flirts with Hajime, spends time with him, gets cutscenes cuddling with him, hits on him, and other people even make jokes about them fucking. Then she dies. Hajime becomes closer friends with Ibuki, then she dies. Hajime starts to get close to Nagito again. Then he goes crazy and dies. Hajime showed a ton of interest in Sonia, but then she goes for Gundham. Hajime gets close to Kazuichi, but then he goes for Sonia. Hajime is cursed. I think everyone in the game got an inkling of being Hajime’s love-interest before they died/got taken away. With the exceptions of Peko, Hiyoko, Gundham, Akane, Fuyuhiko, and Nekomaru. I think they give Hajime a person who he likes/likes him, and then immediately take them away before any relationship can be formed.

Now, I guess this is the time where you could make a case that Chiaki fits. “Well, he gets close to her, and then he loses her!” But actually, that kind of doesn’t fit. He gets close to her only after she’s already dead. And he’s only ‘close to her’ for one conversation, after she’s already dead. He doesn’t get to spend any quality time with her before she dies. Even if you wanted to make that claim, it still wouldn’t make Chiaki any more of a love interest than Mahiru or Teruteru or Impostor. She wouldn’t be the one-and-only, indisputable, only option for Hajime. Based on evidence in the game, I don’t think Hajime actually had a crush on Teruteru, Impostor, or Mahiru. I think they liked him, but I don’t think he ever would’ve liked them back. And that’s the only way I can see Chiaki being even a little bit his love interest. In this world, where pretty much everyone gets to be his love-interest at some point. In a world where she crushes on him but he doesn’t like her back. Because he doesn’t. That’s obvious in his thoughts and actions. (He reacts worse to Peko and Fuyuhiko’s execution than he does to Chiaki’s, btw.)

But I really don’t think she’s his love interest. She’s definitely not “the” love interest. She’s not the only one. She’s not the “canon” one. She’s not his canon love interest at all. That’s not at all what the evidence in the game points to.

If my crackpot theory isn’t true, then I’d say Hajime’s love interests are Nagito and/or Mikan. Maybe Sonia. They’re the ones that he actually spends time with, and have all of the criteria that are set by literally every other DR couple. He has none of that with Chiaki. Honestly, I think Nagito is the more prominent love interest. I think Mikan and Sonia definitely had their spots too, but Nagito fills the role of both first and second love-interest. He hits literally every single beat of Kaede and Sayaka, but also of Kyoko. Whether or not Hajime loved him by the end is debatable. Sometimes I doubt it. But he loved him at first, and Nagito loved Hajime the whole time. And Hajime was destroyed after Nagito’s death. But even though Nagito hits every single point of being a love interest compared to Sayaka, Kaede, and Kyoko...He’s still not allowed to be a valid love interest for Hajime. If you think Komahina is canon, then you’re just “biased”. You’re just looking “through your shipping goggles.” Even though Nagito’s story is literally both kinds of love interest mixed together. Nah, nah, nah. Who cares about evidence? Clearly I’m just biased. Clearly I’m just “using shipping goggles” to see what I want to see. Because... *looks at smudged writing on hand* Hinanami, the ship with no evidence at all, it definitely 100% canon and Komahina, the ship with all the evidence you could ask for, could never be canon at all. I’m just stupid. Right? Right. And why? Because Nagito is a gay guy with a mental illness!!!!!

I despise KaiMaki, but I still acknowledge that it’s at least partially canon because it was in the game. But I don’t acknowledged Hinanami, because it was never canon. It was never even hinted at. Nobody better come onto my blog arguing that Hinanami is canon in the fucking slightest. I can’t deal with that bullshit. It’s not canon. This is my second essay on the subject. (I wrote a huge essay listing all the reasons they weren’t canon, and yet I was still able to find MORE evidence against them for this one? Wow, that’s a lot of proof that they aren’t indisputably canon.) I’m fine if you want to ship them. You can be like “they had a lot of potential for a relationship!” You can be like “I think Chiaki had a crush on him!” or “I think Hajime would’ve liked her!” That’s fine. You can do that all you want. Like any other DR ship. But don’t go around being like “NO, it’s DEFINITELY canon!!! No other ship is canon because Hinanami is canon and it’s completely indisputable! You’re wrong and stupid!!” It’s not canon. No DR ship is canon. You can ship them but please, do it like any other DR ship. Ship them because you saw potential, but don’t cram it down everyone’s throat as ‘must be canon’.

Hinanami is the only ship that does that. It’s the only ship that is insisted to be 100% canon with no disputing evidence whatsoever. People dispute Kaede and Shuichi. People dispute Kaito and Maki. People dispute Kyoko and Makoto all the fucking time. Every other ship is flexible, except that one. “Hinanami is the only canon ship and no other ship is valid or matters, you can’t ship Hajime with anyone else, all the other ships pale in comparison because Hinanami is so canon, and you’re just a biased delusional idiot if you ever dare to imply otherwise!!!” Stop it. It’s not canon. I should be able to make a valid case for another ship without being immediately shot down because of Hinanami. No other DR ship does that. Quit. I hate seeing everyone insisting that it’s canon. Acting like it’s just “common sense” that it’s canon. It’s not. There’s no fucking evidence for it AT ALL. But it makes me feel like a crazy person whenever I see people insisting that, as if I’m the only one who missed the scene where they fucked without protection or something. If everyone is allowed to dispute literally every other ship, then it should be the same for Hinanami. The “canon” ship with absolutely -67% evidence towards it.

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ryttu3k · 4 years ago

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First Bloodlines run - here’s how it worked out!

Didn’t get to actually finish - thanks, cutscene glitch - but I got to the last scene and I at least watched the Anarch ending on Youtube XD;; While I really do want to do at least two more runs, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to; either way, I mostly enjoyed my first run a ton!

More detail below the cut - how Sierra turned out as protag, and her views on other characters. I’ll write a separate ‘thoughts on Bloodlines as a game and its characters’ later on, this is just for Sierra’s run specifically.

So, Sierra as a character! Usually super high humanity - most drops were due to glitches or completely accidental (glitch - had to kill Hospital Guy because it flat-out wouldn’t let him escape, danced it back. Accidental - shot one of the hostages at Hollowbrook, felt horrible for it). One non-accidental one was convincing Ash to switch clothes with a guy at the club; she hadn’t expected the hunters to kill first and ask questions later. Yeah, also felt guilty about it. Otherwise, I’m pretty happy to put her at 9 for Humanity - she tried to help everyone she could, aside from those actively trying to kill her.

Ended up a much brainier character than I was expecting, which, uh, is usually what happens with my characters tbh. Still fits her character! She’s not scholarly (was a college drop-out) and prefers actually doing things than sitting still, but she’s clever and curious. Combat was usually almost always melee, because vampires with katanas are cool. High persuasion, she’s good at defusing a situation when fighting isn’t warranted.

Most-used discipline ended up being Animalism. Never did max out Protean :( Did use it a ton in dark areas, but mostly for night vision.

Sidequests - got a lot done. Failed three - Spiritual Release (sorry, ghosts :( ), You Only Die Once A Night (actually, I started this then died with 30 seconds to go, reset, and refused to start it again XD), and Dirty Dishes.

Missed or outright avoided Drug Trip, Trick or Treatment (Heather - the whole storyline with her bugs me), Daydream Believer (Copper is sweet, dammit, don't be mean!!), Replanting a Lily (never went back to the clinic after saving Lily), Traffik, And Her Name Was Venus/Venucide, Pimpin' for Romero, A Dish Best Served Cold (alas, you can’t convince the reviewer to give it a ragingly good review just to piss off SparklingWater XD), Model Citizen/Cover Girl, Poster Session, and all the Chinatown ones (I would have done Gone Fishin' if I had found it, refused Eye Gouge Hell, didn't encounter the others).

Character interactions - ended up ride-or-die Anarch. Part of that was that her literal first impressions were of Nines saving her life and Jack guiding her through how to survive a terrifying, bewildering situation, a lot of it was that she did start out as an activist in the first place, so falling in with the Anarchs was a natural continuation of that. Adores and looks up to Nines, felt horrifically guilty at the blood hunt, and was devastated when she thought he had died at Griffith Park. She was a mess after that (also a good part to do with rotschreck and spending a good five minutes or so trying really hard not to frenzy in terror), and it was only because of Jack that she didn’t fall apart completely. Jack is like the favourite weird uncle - she doesn’t know his involvement in the whole plot and I think wouldn’t quite understand why he set it in motion, but she really likes the impression he shows. Adores Damsel, and she’s not sure what to do with Skelter’s belief in the more religious aspects of stuff but likes him a lot too.

Aside from Nines, the other character she adores the most is Beckett! Her first words to him were literally, “Holy shit how did you do that that’s so cool can you teach me to do that?!”, she finds his adventures and knowledge absolutely fascinating, and she definitely started looking up archeological and anthropological stuff both for her own curiosity and to impress him XD

Other positive relationships - Jeanette is a bit complicated because of the whole Slashterpiece and pendant thing, but damn, at least she didn’t try to kill her like Therese did; while she wanted to reconcile the sisters, she was kind of relieved when Jeanette was the one who survived. Just found her more approachable and welcoming. Also definitely got drawn in by VV. She’s weak for pretty girls XD Got on great with Merc (despite the whole... Cammy thing), Knox, the Thinblood kids (who she hung out with a bunch while still in Santa Monica), Trip, Mitnick, and Ash (who she will fight people to protect). Chunk is a precious being who must be protected at all costs; at the Tower, she advised him that LaCroix was no good and he deserved better.

Complicated situations - initially did think Strauss was okay but her views on him soured fast when she learned about gargoyles. Isaac is mostly fine but they don’t have a lot of common ground, given her preferred genre is ‘loud action movies’ XD She can see why VV looks up to him, though, and felt quite sad about everything with Ash in general. Pisha scared her but she tried really hard not to judge, basically? I mean, predators gotta eat too... The cab driver bothers her for reasons she can’t articulate. Very odd man, that one. When she learned why the Southland Slasher was doing what he was doing, she felt sorry for him, and encouraged him to join the Anarchs for direction and a more positive outlet for his emotions.

Antagonists - mostly didn’t take pleasure in killing them, but she definitely felt pretty satisfied stabbing LaCroix >.> Will have nightmares for the rest of her unlife about Andrei’s house and the sanctum at Hollowbrook, the Mandarin’s tests, and the expression on Ash’s face when he talked about how much the Society of Leopold enjoyed torturing him. Gimble freaked her the hell out. And if she ever catches Vandal Cleaver alone, she’s going to flat-out kill him if she gets the opportunity.

For the future, I’ve been trying to work out how she and Lettow supposedly know each other (he mentions the fledgling as ‘a friend of mine’), given their opposing political views. I’m thinking their common ground would be that they’re both Gangrel; I can see them meeting by chance at some point, and Sierra requesting tutoring in Protean forms, which Lettow is pretty damn good at (she might be higher generation, 8th to his 9th, but he’s a lot older and more experienced).

Beyond that, info on her and her coterie can be found here! Yes, she fully appreciates the irony of dating a Garou, haha.

#ry plays bloodlines #oc: sierra #vampire the masquerade #vtm bloodlines #vtmb

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vynnyal · 5 years ago

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Throwing random thoughts, headcanons, and a variety of pasta at the wall (but only those having to do with vessels and/or their biology this time): The Thrilling Third Installment™

...aka pretending i can be dark and dramatic jskhdfd

Thk's larger form is not the standard, but the exception. Thk was cited as being "raised and trained to prime form", which people take to mean pk assisted in the vessel's natural growth. However, that conclusion leaves a lot of unanswered questions, most important of which being “then what about Ghost?” In short, I think that train of thought is backwards. Vessels can't grow- they are ageless, and immortal. We know this due to Ghost, despite living as long if not longer than thk, being completely unchanged over the years. The only thing pk trained into "prime form" was thk’s mind and fighting prowess. Their body... well, I think it was mutated. Most likely either directly by pk, or ordered by him- and with the shenanigans happening over in the sanctum, I wouldn't be surprised if Soul was involved, too. In any case, it was in no means natural. Vessels are corpses reanimated by void; neither corpses nor void tend to make drastic changes on their own all that often. Whether pk predicted the vessel’s “issues” and intended to manually “upgrade” them from the beginning, it's hard to say. But... yeah. Unless Ghost goes out of their way to make themselves grow- if its even possible, now that pk is gone- its fairly safe to say, they never will.

...with that in mind, we are promptly gonna ignore that for the rest of this post lmaooo

Grown-up vessels wouldn't look like thk; while they are described as being raised into "prime form"... prime form, to whom? Rather than looking like an idealized pk soldier, it sounds much more fitting that they’d have an entirely different, natural adult form. Consider: their cloaks being longer and fuller, perhaps filling out into something with a more practical use to their “species”. Better yet, they could even grow up to be more beast-like. Feral vessels, YEhaW

The black egg temple is cited as being "built to sustain [vessels]", yet it can't be their lifespan that is sustained. Rather, it seems the egg is specifically designed to keep the radiance from tearing thk apart, physically and/or mentally. Ngl its p obvious, but worth noting.

Sorta-au where Ghost’s shade has 8 eyes, and/or is generally all-around more cryptid-looking.

@ the sharpshadow charm and the strange, 6-eyed creature their shade turns into: kudos to this post, they bring up something super interesting- the creature not only resembles the Shade Lord, but the lord outright becomes it during the Embrace the Void cutscene.

makes me respect the ol’ civilization a whole lot more if a single charm can turn a baby shade into a baby lord.

The concept of finding ghosts unconscious body, laying next to a corpse, while they battle in their dreams. Alt: when ghost enters the dream realm, their shade leaves their shell... And protects their body from harm.

If steel soul mode is taken as canon, just how did ghost and the shade meet? Alt: Ghost may never have “met” it at all, as it technically doesn’t exist in that mode- instead, its more of a metaphor than an actual entity.

What the vessels looked like- or were supposed to look like- before the void. Alt: a story following a child, alive and untouched, that somehow managed to be spared. They could even have a gender. Alt alt: the void intentionally spared them for some purpose, or even out of simple kindness- or at least, something that resembles kindness.

Re: the shade inexplicably having a nail: all the vessel's swords are crafted from “will-bearing rock”- of which i’ve come to lovingly call living stone- and as such, are of void themselves. That's how the shade seems to conjure up its own copy; it merely shapes it, from the ground, using void. And, while more of a stretch, Ghost’s nail being some sort of living stone/pale ore alloy could explain just how Ghost can do seemingly pretty crazy things with an otherwise ordinary nail. Better, while 100% a baseless hc, its material might actually enable Ghost to build it up and modify it to suite their size as they grow older. finally, a logical reason adult Ghost has an adult-sized nail-claymore. hdsfghjfghdsjf

On that same thought: Ghost outright invented the "art" of manipulating- or creating- living stone to make their nail. ...gimme a sec. The other escaped vessels have nails, too, right? Either meaning they also discovered this ability... or that theres some legitimate ground for the “vessel gang” hc. Or, yanno, i’m reading too much into Ari’s sprites but sHHhh

How did all the vessels know to race to the top? They seemed to be falling merely because they had just been born and had literal, actual baby strength; yet not only did they inexplicably risk everything competing to the top, they somehow knew death was waiting if they lost. Alt: pk just, bringing a fucking megaphone and telling them like a sports announcer.

What if Ghost made it, and instead of falling, they managed to joined thk at the lip? What would pk do? Push them off the edge??? Or just adopt them both?? Oh fuck au where they're raised as twin sacrifices. Or worse yet, they’re raised unequally, and one is trained only as an afterthought. As a backup.

Alternatively, pk keeps all the vessels au, only a few years later when they're grown. Pk now has a literal army of pure knights. Radiance is fucked.

Hm. If vessels were fully coherent entities from the moment of birth, why was there a crib in the white palace? Did... did they use it? I have a feeling team cherry made that asset before the abyss scene lmaooo alt: they did, uh, use the crib. Cue a very awkward scene of thk, clearly not a normal baby, staring at wl with like... idk, the poofy baby hat and pacifier. I can’t tell if the image is more funny or more sad rn shdfgfjsdgg

The og notes that inspired this post, in case my rambling makes more sense (and w/o the awful comic hjsfgjsdfhj): Oh oh OH i GET it now. The void is all about "will" and whatnot, right? And shades are "fragments of a lingering will"- will, like the one you leave after your death, but instead of inheritance its the vessels' desires...last regrets.... DAMN team cherry, that symbolism is clever as heck. That took me a while. Kinda funny how a will is, technically, a person's last regrets Like I knew they were last regrets but I didn't understand WHY. Duh, it's because they're literally Made Of Will. They are the vessel's "wills". I'm so stupid.

Ghost, walking thru the abyss, getting increasingly fed up / freaked out, ducking into a crack in the wall. They follow the crack into the Scream Chamber, pause, then exhale in relief that this was EXACTLY what they needed.

Ghost's shade rolling up its void-sleeves like “fuck it, ima defeat thk myself”

Why was thk's sword there? Was its pedestal decayed? Did it fall from their body? Was it place there as an afterthought, or hurriedly? alt: taking thk's sword before freeing them, but doing the mom thing like you're grounding them hdhfjchjch

I can’t believe it just occured to me now, but... as objectivley stupid as the vessel’s test was, Ghost... technically came in second place. What if that whole scene was a metaphor? Because really, it’s just too silly to take seriously. To do so isn’t too far fetched, either; many other elements in the game’s story are better taken as symbolic or metaphorical, anyways. Take the PoP cutscene- while it could’ve been a literal moment, where they just happened to find themselves standing around and took the moment to appreciate each other... imo it makes much more sense to read it as the concept of their faint ~forbidden love~ and parental pride itself. Or, better yet, the scene at the end of the 4th pantheon. Sorry, but I severely doubt that was an actual event. What I’m trying to get at is the significance of “second place” in the cutscene. My brain is too fried to chase down any other possible connections to this theme rn (if thats even what the theme is), but even without proof, the theory smooths out a few interesting tidbits related to just how Ghost could tough it out when all others failed. All except for #1, anyway. Either way I’m just happy to take this as an excuse to pretend that cutscene didn’t literally happen because like, l m a o

The story of a small group of vessels as they work together to escape hallownest. (aka the aforementioned vessel gang hc... im sure theres a more formal name but you get the idea). Its impossible to tell how long it took them to discover that near-invisible hole, the last exit remaining after the king ordered the abyss to be sealed up. Once they did, however, the remaining vessels were quick to make a desperate scramble to escape- only for the entrance to suddenly crumble shut, far, far too soon. The remaining 8 slowly made their way through deepnest, their numbers quickly dwindling as the jouney started to take its toll. The group was nearly wiped out by those terrible, spiney-legged creatures that used their own kinship against them. Only three finally escaped the deep, yet only two made it through the basin- the third, largest sibling, left to fight alone againt a hopeless battle, just to buy the others time. It was in greenpath, so close yet so far to their goal, that the second succumbed to the infection. It was a mercy killing, that nail through the heart. The last, after all of that, finally made their way to the very precipice of howling cliffs, hesitating for just a moment to gaze out upon the still-fresh ruins of hallownest. But only for a moment, before Ghost jumps down to begin their journey beyond this wretched place.

A vessel running from its shade as it tirelessly pursues them, the vessel refusing to put it to rest.

tw: suicide, + personal on main

Ugh ugh ugh ugh Either thk was fully conscious and in terrible pain for all those years... or they couldn’t feel anything at all. The former is horrible, but imagining thk waking up, chained, unable to do anything but wait for Ghost to heed their call? Did they turn their nail on themselves to help Ghost, end the pain, or some awful mix of both? For someone who has personally dealt with close friends and family that struggled with suicide themselves, hollowknight is one of the worst horror stories I've ever seen. And the fact that the story is so personal, so open to interpretation? The fact that each character is so genuine yet vague enough to be read completely differently to someone else’s biases? Its why hollow knight- the game, and the character- will forever be one of the most powerful stories to me.

in short, good LORD THIS GAME IS SO FUCKING SAD

#hollow knight #Thonking abt hollowknight #blabbing.txt #i should probably proof-read this.... uuuaaaah #anyways #@ that last one: i had to take a week-long break after tiso died. so like. you can imagine my reaction to thk #other than that some of these are VERY OLD #and dsfhhfdj the test one literally just occurred to me #sweet catharsis.... fuck you pk....#also.... yeah. vessels have a p bad time all considered #ghost is like 'i know i look 7 but im actually 1000 years old!'#then hornet punts them into the sun #OH WHAUFHDFKJ

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