#this dude was one of the main antags for most of the game but my friends and i called him Forehead Man/Forehead Guy so often

[vergilberg]

yakuza 4 but the 4 stands for forehead bc of this man whose name i cant remember but fucking look at him. i have almost every game plot-wise burned in my head but this man’s name escapes me bc of his massive fucking dome. u could play tic tac toe on this shit.

[felikatze]

WGAT FAN EMBLEMS DO YOU HAVE. ARE THEY MAIN VERSE OR XENOLOGUE

I HAVE A LIST. I explained in the other ask i answered uhhh just now (link here) these are technically xenologue by virtue of being AU. Veyle-Alear roleswap that I have insane thoughts about thank you Salem. Once again Berkut & Rinea are the most well baked from a gameplay standpoint but I have other ones....

Quick n dirty AU rundown: Veyle-Alear roleswap! Alear is with Sombron and an alternate set of Four Hounds (Lapis, Kagetsu, Pandreo, Zephia. Salem's blorbos), and Veyle was taken in by Lumera. I also took the liberty of making the younger royals the plot important ones.... teehee

My fan emblems trend antagonist and/or possessed for thematic reasons and because it's fun. HOWEVER I excluded most main antags from the pool because I don't think Emblem Medeus would be very interesting from a character standpoint.

I actually made a list!! So I'd have one from every game (this was also brainstormed with Salem lol). I don't have full knowledge of every FE ever and a lot of FEs I am significantly less insane about than The Usual Suspects (Binding Blade, Awakening, now Engage), so you do notice a lot of bias in what has the most detail, lmao.

Anyway. You get the list.

Archanea: Maria. (100% inspired by fell Maria in heroes, lol. LISTEN IT'D BE SO THEMATIC FOR VEYLE THO. Little girl who just wants her big siblings back. Maria would be Veyle's Marth - her first Emblem, and the one closest to her. I still gotta play the Archanea games but... the potential.)

Valentia: Berkut & Rinea (Firene Emblem. Elaborated on in the other post!!)

Jugdral (Fe4): I am not wise enough just yet.... probably Julius.

Jugdral (Fe5): I don't know <3 Ishtar? Reinhardt? Mareeta? I like the thought of Mareeta from what I know abt her actually.

Elibe (Fe6): IDUNN MY GIRL IDUNN. (She'd be Lumera's Emblem as Sigurd equivalent. Sleeping dragon guided by Sleeping Dragon... I love Idunn... I have Thoughts about her.... okay....)

Elibe (Fe7): Ninian (She's Elusia's Emblem!! I have thoughts about her & Hortensia...)

Magvel: Lyon (this was the one and only pick, really.)

Tellius (Fe9): Black Knight (Salem's suggestion, but it works! God I need to beat Radiant Dawn...)

Tellius (Fe10): My initial suggestion was Pelleas but Sothe is also tempting (god I need to beat Radiant Dawn.... 2!!!)

Ylisse: GRIMA. WHO ELSE. (i'd put him down where Corrin is, as the second Solm emblem. Haha Grima you got trapped in a desert temple again.) (Either that or I swap him with Lucina for funny points)

Fates: Takumi (conquest flavored! he is not doing too hot! He's Brodia's Emblem same reason as Berkut: it would remind him of Nohr and he hates being here. Has a soft spot for Alcryst, though. OF COURSE I gave him to Alcryst.)

Fodlan: Shez. For the funnies. (shez's super form is obviously the engaged look. I'd make them Solm's primary Emblem, because I feel like they and Fogado would be friends. But then Shez goes Revenge Mode and Fogado is like. dude. chill. you're scaring the hoes.)

And that's my full list!! The only ones who have gameplay ideas attached to them so far are Berkut & Rinea, Idunn, Takumi, and Shez, for a perfect gender ratio as I've non-biney'd Shez. Because of course I have.

[ayzrules]

✶ 𝐇𝐗𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐒: 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 & 𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒, 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 & 𝐃𝐀𝐌𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍   Long story short, I have been thinking about this for wayyyyy too long now and wanted to get some ~thoughts~ & analysis written down! This post is going to be...fairly long, lol. Apologies in advance :D

  Also, if you can’t see the last gif (the one for ‘holy’), click here. Tumblr keeps fucking up the image when i try to upload it :////

  This post is probably going to be about 2/3 yorknew & phantom troupe/kurapika focused, 1/3 chimera ants, maybe with some references to other arcs (including manga-only arcs) mixed in. so, ofc, tons of spoilers ahead! also, i realize that my blog theme is hard to read (and i’m p sure clicking ‘keep reading’ sends you to the og post itself), so i’m linking the post w/ full text copy/pasted in on my art backup side blog (which has a more legible font) here. 

✶ 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇   I’m sure absolutely nobody is surprised with me starting here - there is just. SO. MUCH. DEATH. in hxh. & right from the start, one thing I noticed that togashi really emphasized was the #4 and its connection to death. in japanese, chinese, and im p sure some other asian cultures the number 4 is pronounced like the word for death so it’s associated with death in general, and boy oh boy does the ‘deadly number 4′ thing show up E V E R Y W H E R E. we get to the hunter exam, and hisoka is applicant #44. kurapika is #404. i didn’t notice it at first, but this was so intentional holy shit. togashi is NOT SUBTLE.

  So pika & hisoka are, right off the bat, associated with death. okay. and then there are even more clues to drive the point home: hisoka is member #4 in the phantom troupe, kurapika’s birthday is april 4th (aka 4/4). 100% not a coincidence (!!). with hisoka, it’s pretty obvious why togashi’s throwing all this death 444444 stuff around - dude is a psycho murder pedo clown, literally gets off on killing people (and there’s also the fact that judas sits 4th from the left in the last supper painting, and he’s sort of the judas equivalent for the phantom troupe). with kurapika, though, it’s a bit more subtle and woven deeper into his characterization, which i LOVE. togashi puts the mans in blue & gold & white (traditionally ‘pure’ or ‘heavenly’ colors), makes him so fucking kind & so good-hearted.....when he’s not relentlessly pursuing his revenge, ofc. more on this in the next section, but pika = death. togashi has made that v v v clear.

  Backtracking a bit to hisoka, though, I also just wanted to point out the 4 is death symbolism in the fortunes too (GOD i love the fortunes): in one translation, he’s the false fourth moon, and in the og japanese (i think), he’s the false hare (4th in the lunar zodiac or w/e it’s called. i don’t know the japanese cultural influences here, but in the chinese legend that established the zodiac animals, they race across the heavenly river & the top 12 animals got zodiac slots. the hare finished 4th, so it’s #4 in the cycle). 

  And just as a final note, Tserriednich is the fourth prince of the kakin empire, and also another dude who has a hard-on for murder & other gory shit. again: togashi is not subtle with this, lmfao

✶ 𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐘, 𝐔𝐍𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐘   As probably everyone who’s gotten to yorknew knows, togashi is so 0 fucks given when he wants to be. I mean there’s the whole thing where he just. took New York and decided, Yorknew. LMFAO, but also, he made the main antag of that arc be named chrollo lucilfer, sit around in a ruined church, have a reversed cross coat, pale & dark-haired/dark-eyed, generally dressed in dark colors, very terrible murder guy. liiiike......chrollo x devil symbolism game is 1000/10 at this point lmaooo

  And i know absolutely nothing about christianity in general, but pt/kurapika & yorknew arc is just so full of christian imagery/symbolism! one thing that i L O O O O O O V E though is how togashi really blurs the traditional christian-coded good/evil, holy/damned boundaries.

  Back to kurapika: he wears gold and blue, his coloring is very stereotypically ‘angelic’, he’s precious and good and kind. his chains are all about ~judgment~ and ~healing~ - some of the chains are also in literal cross shapes, aren’t they? And the chain dagger in his own heart...the imagery is very startlingly similar to the immaculate heart of mary, where the swords stabbing thru the heart apparently represent seven sorrows. IDK much about this stuff other than the visual similarities; literally had to google ‘daggers through heart christianity?’ to even get the name of that thing LOL. anyway, at first, it seems like togashi establishes him as the ‘angel’, the ‘good’, the ‘holy’ in the angel/devil, good/evil, holy/damned dichotomy between him and chrollo.

  But that’s not the end of the story. his entire storyline is driven by a huuuuuuuge giant desire for vengeance, first of all, and then there’s the scarlet eyes, which canonically are seen as demonic/cursed/what have you (according to one of the movies or smth? where they show pika as a 10 y/o?), and then we also have red eyes in modern culture being associated w pretty much the same thing (vampires, anyone?). the fight scene with uvo has everything in b&w besides the blood on his face & his red eyes & the moon (<<< more fortune foreshadowing & symbolism, i love to see it), and there are tonssss of scenes where he has to suppress his rage. so all of that is obviously not very angelic of him i would say LOL. in fact, what i find super interesting is that the scarlet/red eyes (which are ‘demonic’) is actually the driving factor behind his super powerful nen abilities; this ties in so well with the fortunes & death associations imo! the fortunes call him the ‘death-bringer’ in one translation, or ‘half-angel, half-death’, so that’s one side of pika = red eyes = death, but there’s also the fact that emperor time is literally draining his life force. so pika = death for both himself and others namely the pt, question mark?

  Now for chrollo: togashi’s devil symbolism is EXTREMELY overt with him, but i love the subtler jesus references too. the church thing, obviously, and the st. peters cross which is cuz st peter respected jesus too much & didn’t think he was worthy to die in the same way as him (or something like that, i am the most atheist person in the world & hxh is literally my entire christian education pls) but is also used as an anti-christianity symbol these days. bandit’s secret looks like a bible, lbr, and mans has a cross tattoo.

  Other things beyond visuals - 12 spiders, 12 apostles; hisoka’s betrayal, where member #4 can be thought to correspond to judas sitting 4th from left at last supper. and this miiiiight be a bit of a stretch, but i think the meteor city being the place of origin may also play into the blurred line between angel/devil and holy/damned here; meteors are defined as space rocks that are in earth’s atmosphere, becoming incandescent in the process. meteorites are for the kinds that actually reach the ground. and idk, lucifer was cast out of heaven / sky too right? so i think there might be some subtle fallen angel imagery/symbolism playing into the pt as well

✶ 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 (𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒)   Last section yay! i don’t have as much to say about this, besides when i was making chimera ant arc edits & realized that there might have been some subtle gon/meruem parallels???

  So obviously, everyone knows that line killua says to gon - “you are light” - and then i was just remembering that meruem’s name means.... “light that illuminates all” (!!!!). maybe it’s a coincidence, but knowing togashi, i’m leaning towards nahhhh. there HAS TO be some kinda meaning there (!!).

  Going back to the events of the chimera ant arc....ooh boy. let’s see: gon is optimistic & hopeful even in the face of kite potentially being dead, killua says he’s light, they find kite & dude is fucked up, gon is pissed. gets all angry & ~dark~, especially during the palace invasion when he’s staring pitou down as she fixes up komugi. then the actual fight against pitou: more darkness, more anger, but through it all there’s still light, namely his jajanken being very orange & fiery lookin.....and that final sequence, where he puts all his possible nen he’d ever have into his ~final form~ or wahtever & turns into a male version of true form!bisky but dressed in a crop top & short-shorts (i am SCARRED, btw. s c a r r e d !). there’s just huuuge flashes of light as that’s going on, and it reminded me of supernovas or dying stars when i was thinking about it, where the star is like, collapsing under its own weight? & burning thru its own fuel, until there’s nothing left except a dwarf or black hole or what have you. one final, extremely deadly burst of light & energy before death.

  On the meruem side of things: born into a dark cave, exhibits a traditionally evil/cruel/wicked/whatever personality/traits so that has ppl associating him with darkness. then he gets to know komugi, starts to appreciate other aspects of humanity, seems like he could have actually turned into a decent person who doesn’t want to eat everyone - so that’s a ‘path to light’, maybe? - and then the extermination team yeets themselves into the palace, netero takes him out to bumfuck nowhere, they fight. netero’s fighting is just ALL light, from his giant ass golden 100-type guanyin bodhisattva to the poor man’s rose. again, there’s the sense of finality to it all, in a similar vein to dying stars: netero comes in determined to kill meruem no matter what, and we all know netero doesn’t flake. then we see netero get destroyed after the zero hand, and he triggers the rose, and everything is burning & on fire before the flames are put out and all turns dark again.

  But wait!!! pouf & youpi revive meruem and all he does is play gungi with komugi, even with the poison of the rose. he eventually dies, and the gungi pieces in that final shot of them together (i am BAWLING just thinking about it holy shit) has one that’s all white, one that’s a black ring and white inside. i assume all white is for komugi, who has never done ANYTHING wrong in her LIFE, so i like to think that the 2nd one is for meruem - born “into darkness”, literally & figuratively, but he turns something like ‘good’ by the end. it’s interesting how togashi has sort of gone for a bit of a subversion here: the hero going from light to darkness, and the main antag from darkness to light.

✶ 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍   AahhhhHHHHHhhh so if you read all the way down here through my LONG rambles, tysm! i would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear what other people think about all this, and i’ve FOR SURE missed tons and tons of stuff - chimera ants is just. SO MUCH. and i don’t know it as well as yorknew eeek.

  I’m not sure if i’m really ~knowledgeable~ in any other areas relating to hxh, so this might be the only one of these that i do, but i definitely think about some of this - esp all the religious symbolism & #4 stuff - a ton! so in the meantime, if it’s of any interest, i’m just going to shamelessly plug my hxh x religious beliefs/superstitions edit series :D lots of love to all!!!

[sillyguyhotline]

i hate when people compare shin tsukimi to kokichi ouma/nagito komaeda and here’s why

hi first off spoilers for yttd up to chapter 2-2 and for chapter 5 of sdr2 and ndrv3

hi, this is a little disorganized because it was one of my first analysis posts on here lmao. it’s in lapslock and kinda rushed because i wrote this rant to my friends and then decided to post it here!!

ok so!! first of all, sou has very distinct and established reasons for why he acts the way he does: the survival rates. the game shows us that, prior to the death game, sou (shin tsukimi) was very pleasant, even compassionate, and was generally a good dude.

 but the identity he adopted for himself, sou hiyori, the one who trusts nobody and lies to everyone and is a pretty huge dick, is a direct consequence of miley telling him he had no chance at survival. the antagonist characters in danganronpa are just...like that. yeah, they probably have their reasons (we know that nagito lost his parents and has a very weird relationship with luck, and we can infer that kokichi doesnt have parents and probably hasnt for a decent amount of time) but they were turned into their more manipulative selves over time, and that's who they are, whereas "sou hiyori" is more of a mask or an alternate identity than anything

secondly, i know a lot of people lump him in with the dr antags bc they consider him an "antagonist" character, but honestly?? he's really not. (either way, the term antag doesnt really fit kokichi or nagito cuz junko is the antag, they're still technically on our side and id consider them antiheroes). but,,,sou honestly doesnt do the things kokichi and nagito do. those two fuck with you in the trials and then they both have chapter 5, where they stage a murder that is directly intended to confuse either you or the mastermind. 

but sou doesn't do any of that shit! yeah, he declares himself as the keymaster and lies about that kind of stuff, but it's not intended to directly oppose you, he's just trying to survive. it just so happens that sara is the keymaster in the first main game, so sara is the one who has to expose his lies. he's a liar, but especially in the first main game (not as much in the second but i'll get to that later) he's more concerned with his survival than anything. both kokichi and nagito, however, have other goals (expose the traitor from the future foundation and get them out alive/end the killing game) and even when they arent executing those goals they go out of their way to oppose the protag.

thirdly, sou embodies his own, very distinct themes. he's still a foil to sara, as the antags are with the dr protags, but in quite a different way. (oh also ive seen some people point out that sou is also a foil to keiji). kokichi, most distinctly, embodies the theme of truth vs. lies; he's a liar and his entire personality is developed out of him constantly lying to everyone including himself, while shuichi, the protag, struggles throughout the game with the burden of exposing the truth of the murders. 

a lot of people look at sou and immediately think that the main point of his character is his lies (which is fair, as he lies to both sara and himself, similar to kokichi) but it's not- it's his inability to trust anyone. you'd think that him hiding his true personality and fabricating the "sou hiyori" personality would demonstrate that he is, at his core, a liar, but "sou hiyori," especially in comparison to the "shin tsukimi" he once was, is characterized by how little he trusts everyone. this is how he is different from sara, and why he envies her: sara has managed to gain the trust of the entire group, despite being nothing but a high school girl, and is able to utilize this to her advantage (hence why he breaks down in the first main game; he has already separated himself from the group for his own survival, but panics upon seeing everyone choosing to believe sara instead of him). his separation from the rest of the group and the way he loathes sara for the trust she's gained is what's at the core of his character, not his lies. his lies only aid his lack of trust for everyone else. 

also, another thing that separates sou from the other antags is something i outlined earlier: when they die, it is to serve a purpose greater than them. when sou dies, it is to save kanna. he's always been identifiable due to his desire to survive. this is why he becomes sou hiyori, this is why he is unable to trust anyone, this is why we view him as an "antagonist," because we as the player, usually, automatically want as many people as possible to make it out alive. but he forms such a bond with kanna, despite pushing aside everyone else, that he is willing to lose his life, which he's fought so hard to protect, in order to save her. this is also representative of how much more yttd focuses on its characters; nagito and kokichi refuse to die unless it ends the killing game because that is danganronpa's endgame and it's the only reliable point of dr's admittedly shoddy plot. yttd, however, focuses on how the characters grow as people and how relationships between individuals develop, which is why sou's character is so heavily dependent on kanna. he either dies for her or identifies himself as a true threat in order to avenge her, which makes him much more compelling.

sou may be a liar, but he's much more of a human than the danganronpa antags, he presents much less of a threat to the character, and he's able to actually develop bonds with kanna. 

i also find it pretty interesting how both nagito and kokichi's relationships with the protag reflect the main themes of their respective games (hope vs despair, truth vs lies) whereas sou's relationship with sara revolves around trust as opposed to the game's overarching theme of logic vs emotion (which he also helps to embody, but through his actions, not his relationship with sara).

this was very long and probably didnt convey my thoughts as well as it could have but in essence sou and the dr antags are very very different from each other, in both character and their role in the game, and when people compare them it feels like they're looking at a sou that they want to see rather than the sou who actually exists.

as an afterthought i find it sort of ironic that most of the humanization and development of the danganronpa characters occurs in fan circles, whereas sou is already developed and humanized by yttd to the extent that fans instead have to boil him down to danganronpa stereotypes.

if you made it this far, tysm!! this was kinda rushed so if there are any flaws in what i said please lmk and i’d like to hear if anyone else has any other thoughts on this topic!!

[beteljuices]

For the Ask game 1, 2, 5, 25, 26? Idk anything abt the musical but I trust that big brain of urs!!!!!!

yooo thanks for enabling me 😎✨

1. your favorite character

BURR !!!! HANDS DOWN... i love how he's the complete opposite of alexander and gradually becomes fed up with his shit. he's a pretty empathetic antagonist (i kinda think antags are more interesting than protags anyway so uhh) and tbh he carries the fucking show ?? idk what else to say hes just so interesting, complex and cool.. also i'd shoot alexander too ❤️

2. the song that gets stuck in your head the most

tie between the room where it happens and my shot. there's not one flop in the ost but out of the others, i find myself singing these two the most. (also guns and ships but yea)

5. the most powerful line

"dying is easy, young man, living is harder" made me go crazy a lil bit. on everything, christoper jackson's perfomance is the main reason i keep rewatching.

25. your least favorite character

as a person.... alexander 😶 he's a lil annoying and honestly an asshole. bro cheats on his wife with her sister and a mistress, tells his son not to shoot during a duel (KILLING him), votes for a dude he literally hates over his so-called "friend" (burr) and wonders why he got shot ???? make it make sense luv 💅🏿 he makes SO MANY dumbass decisions the jokes lit rally write themselves lmao

26. the actor you would chill with

hmm.. tbh ?? reneé elise goldsbery <3 she seems like, and prob is, such a cool, chill person.. she truly is The Moment™

[heretyc]

Super heavy Val rant as I suffer with a mild sore throat under the cut. :) This is just an opinion, which you obviously don’t have to agree with, but let’s all be respectful if there’s any disagreements. :D I also switch between pronouns so forgive me.

So I was browsing Google for Val’s voice lines and their audios because the Wiki didn’t supply them all, but I came across an article called “What Outlast 2 Could’ve Done Better”

At first I rolled my eyes because I found Outlast 2 to be okay the way it was, even though I prefer all the previous updates, but I clicked on it.

What captured my eye was when they mentioned this,

“Another missing component, and something Outlast 2 could’ve done much better, was showing more of its primary power players. Throughout the game, the player reads made up gospels and threatening notes about the hateful rivalry between Father Knoth and the rebellious former deacon Val, who have split the community of Temple Gate into two separate, warring factions.”

I gave that some thought, because it was true? Throughout the game, you collect notes, journals, gospels, etc regarding Val and how “evil” they were, and you were given hints that perhaps they were the Big Scary Antagonist we were all waiting for. You were also forced to go find them, because they had taken your wife, so it was like Fate, or just some huge scary joke.

But all of that buildup was worth nothing, because they die within 20 minutes/an hour [depending on how your play style is] of meeting them.

Knoth, and Val, are the main antagonists, and yet you only see them twice, and both die when you see them for the second time. Hell, you don’t even see Val die. You just assume that they did. [They also probably did, coming from  the unreleased voicelines].

Let’s take a look at the first game. The antagonists include Chris, Trager and the Twins, but most importantly, Trager.

Before, I don’t even think you know of his existence until he tells you to follow his instructions, and voila, you’re face to face with an asshole doctor. You’re captured by him, blah blah, you get your fingers cut off, you get chased until you grab the keys, you’re chased again, he dies, you’re done.

After that, or during, you’re given documents, info by that one dude and notes of Trager. He was a great character, who also died early, but before, you weren’t given any notices of him even existing and there was no buildup. He was just suddenly there.

Now, Chris. Chris is that haunting, intimidating guy who always comes when least expected, and he ruins your plans. Throughout the game, there is notes on him, and documents, that give you an idea as to why he’s there. 

A character who follows that same plan, is Marta. If you think about it, both Chris and Marta are the same in terms of being the angry guard dog who wants to kill the protagonist.

Marta, in my opinion, was fine. You’re given info on her during the game, and you see her very frequently until the end, much like Chris. She also was just as scary, although supposedly she was very buggy and could teleport, which is true, but that added to the scary factor.

Now, the DLC. Whistleblower seemed to improve, because the two main antagonists, Frank and Eddie, were given time to show themselves off and the Protag was given information on them throughout their whole lifespan.

But Eddie is who was done fantastically. You see him as a little foreshadowing before you even see him officially [when you need to shut the electricity off], Dennis talks about him, and insults you when you’re in the basement, and boom shaka laka, here comes Eddie once you’re in a dark area with no exit...yet.

You also get to see him a bunch of times, and hear him sing his heart out as you frantically find a way to escape him permanently.

That whole time, you think of him as a scary, deranged asshole, because he tries to cut your genitals off, and he calls you insults, but once he dies and says his last words you feel guilty and a little upset. Especially when you read his notes and documents. He was one of those characters that left a tear in your heart for a little while. 

Now, onto Outlast 2. 

I have no issues with Val not being scary, because in my opinion she’s way more ‘disturbing’ than scary, but that’s just my view and others may see her differently [as seen on the Outlast subreddit on Reddit, and other platforms]. You get glimpses into their previous life before getting affected by the microwaves. The only issue I have with them is their short lifespan. 

They have so much potential it hurts. If they were given more voice lines, more screen time, more story, then it would’ve been better, and would’ve given the players more on the satisfactory/disturbing factor.

Like I mentioned before; all that buildup was worth nothing. It’s like getting hyped up to buy a new product, then when you go to buy it, the release was delayed. 

Obviously, I don’t hate RB or Outlast 2 because of it, why would I? I can just put my writing to use. The Fandom can make fan works and help all of us cleanse the lack of Val in our souls. There’s a Val-shaped hole in my soul. RIP.

I will continue to play Outlast 2 until the end of time, but I will only play the Mines and troll the shit out of Val just to repair the Hole in Mah Soul. 

With Outlast, the death of antags is a pattern, isn’t it? So is the ‘loud protag’ trope. Hopefully the next protag doesn’t grunt or breathe loudly. ;) 

...Also if you have links to Val’s voice lines/audios, link me to that shit yo. 

[thegeminisage]

What other characters (of DBH) you think people should appreciate more and why? I love read your opinions❤

omg anon pls thats so sweet

(if anybody wasn’t here for the last ask the first character was north & there’s a follow-up here)

alright just a “””quick””” (lol as if) little thing for each one bc it’s getting late & you’ve already been waiting on this for like an hour at the time i started typing. it’s probably gonna be long as fuck but the tl;dr is at the bottom

LUTHER:

they did luther so dirty…it was like david cage was playing “racist trope bingo” for his entire debut chapter…and then on top of that all he cares about is kara & alice, these two near-strangers, and it’s real easy to get him killed for them. in fact, in an ending where kara sacrifices herself at the border, she tells alice that luther will get her across the border, and after that, rose will take care of her. UM WHAT? don’t call ur PSN trophy “happy family” and then try to erase luther like that!! what does luther want? what are his hopes and dreams, his fears? nobody ever bothers to ask bc they’re too busy making ralph alice’s dad. and it’s not that i don’t like ralph - i do! but he threatened alice with a knife TWICE. after her previous dad’s bullshit, that’s the last thing she needs!!

here’s my take on luther: he says that what his life was before kara & alice doesn’t matter, and that’s because david cage doesn’t care about him. but imagine instead that luther remembers what he did (was forced to do) before he broke his programming. our luther is sweet and gentle and good, but zlatko forced him to use his strength as a weapon for LITERALLY tearing people apart. don’t you think luther regrets that? don’t you think he wishes he could take it back? perhaps his even temper and loving heart is a RESULT of those early memories: he’s seen the worst sides of anger and callousness, he’s had to be complicit in it. my feeling is that he never ever wants to be complicit in something like that again…it feels weird when he picks up a gun in the game because i think he would be even more of a staunch pacifist than josh?? i feel like even when luther does get annoyed or angry he’s so afraid of the harm he’s capable of doing he doesn’t even really let himself feel it And That’s Sad. he should be able to get annoyed at like a broken coffee maker or some shit without illogically worrying it will result in someone’s maiming or death?? maybe he is So Ready to throw himself on a grenade for kara and alice because yes, he does love them, but also he feels he has to redeem himself somehow, yk? he has to be willing to do absolutely WHATEVER it takes to be Good

they didn’t give luther any depth…he never got to speak to zlatko’s captives and apologize, he never got to express a feeling about kara potentially burning down the whole fucking nightmare house (with living androids inside, i might add) - would he have wished to save those androids? would he be glad their suffering was over? would he have motherfucking hearts in his eyes for kara single-handedly destroying his own personal hell? he deviated for alice, it was alice that made him say “ok, doing this to kids is where i literally can’t take it anymore” - don’t you think he’d be so retroactively terrified of all the terrible things that could have happened to her? 

like i truly don’t get why people make ralph alice’s dad when luther loves her so fucking much he’d bring her the moon if she asked - he’s the only person who loves her just as selflessly and unconditionally as kara does. she accepted him and wanted him to say goodnight their very first night together…as soon as he resisted his programming, she stopped being afraid of him, and it must be so amazing for him to finally have people around who don’t either fear him or try to control him…whether u ship him with kara or not (i do, everyone should - it’s one thing to HC kara as gay but i side-eye people who don’t wanna ship luther with anybody) you know he’s gotta cherish them so much

AMANDA:

ok look i know amanda is the antag to connor’s story but honestly she’s metal as FUCK. i was so fucking floored to not only learn the garden isn’t a garden but that amanda isn’t amanda…my first playthrough i was letting connor be just a lil bit deviant but whenever amanda would ask about it i would panic and lie…now i know it doesnt matter what you can say and you can be blatantly deviant right in front of her and she’s like ok Whatever BUT i was deeply shook to realize all my lying to her all along hadn’t meant a thing…she did in fact KNOW i was lying because she wasn’t real, she was living in connor’s brain and she could see all that shit he was doing

and also?? like, imagine you were made out of a dead person’s face and voice. we don’t know if amanda has a body, we don’t know if kamski actually liked what he created or thought it was creepy (like imagine if he and amanda were close and then she died…it’d be weird to see her like that), we don’t know if amanda CAN deviate like the androids…she’s living this half life potentially stuck in some garden and just doing what her program says like everybody else. but even though machines get all the sympathy in this game i very rarely ever see people stop and go “dude, is she ok…is someone controlling her can we help her” - amanda’s a lot like connor, she’s hunting down deviants but she’s not a human and she’s not alive yet so who’s pulling her strings?? can they be cut??? 

JOSH:

i’ll be honest i haven’t figured out what Angle i like best for josh the way i’ve got one for luther and north but he has such strong convictions i feel like they would have to stem from some past experience. everybody’s always arguing about simon vs north that nobody stops to give josh the attention he deserves…he’s part of the fantastic 4 too!! who is josh? what does he want? what is he afraid of? does he refuse to be violent for reasons like luther - did he hurt someone, deliberately or accidentally? (to a lesser extent, a pacifist markus who shoved leo can also follow this pattern - he gave into violence and thought he’d killed carl’s son, so he swore to do no more violence after that.) or: did he see someone else get hurt/get hurt himself? i know the backstory they give him in the gallery but tbh it’s very similar and not stand-out from most of the rest of the stuff we hear…

like, what made josh deviate? we literally never find out. i think it would be interesting tho if instead of just being the victim of violence, he was ordered to DO violence, and refused - maybe that’s why he got hurt. but i think his relationship WITH violence could be a complex thing for anyone who wanted to tackle it. we know why north prefers violence, why does josh detest it? (similarly, why does simon prefer safety over either approach? - but fandom gives him a lot of love and attention and tries to explain this, and nobody tries to explain it for josh.)

KARA & ALICE:

like…to a small extent…i know they’re main characters but i could write an essay just on why they didn’t get a fair shake either - constant victims of assault, little depth, kara got to choose what happened to her but not what kind of person she was gonna be like markus & connor, significantly less playtime than markus & connor, had NO influence on the big macro plot like markus & connor, i could go on…but definitely the worst for me is that everything about kara that made us love her (from the short), was ERASED - david took her memories and never made the slightest move towards kara wanting them back, or her being able to get them back. she’s six years old and he took all of her history from her, all of her agency!! i feel like translated into fic they can both become very flat - all kara cares about is protecting alice, and alice is constantly scared or hurt or needing to be taken care of, like a baby doll. granted that’s not actually far from the game’s canon, but it could have been MORE. kara had six entire years of experiences before she met alice - what makes alice special? who is kara without alice? 

i really wish we had been able to take a personality route with kara - her main superpower seems to be empathy and getting people on her side (ralph, jerrys, zlatko’s creatures), but she can also wave around a gun at anybody who gets near her baby. it would have been really interesting to explore two sides of that - to have a kara who is 1000% Done and ready for wholesale murder if it means surviving vs having a kara who can bring out the best in anyone, even if they seem like bad people at first. (imagine the influence you could have over alice - she would learn to be wary of strangers or be warm to them.) but instead the narrative is wishy-washy; you can’t teach alice anything, and in fact she serves as kara’s moral compass instead of the other way around - you wind up doing things like comforting the guy who broke kara multiple times and waving a gun at ralph (who like, shouldn’t have done that, but also isn’t 100% in control of his own facualities all the time). it would have been really interesting to see kara be able to influence her own fate more as well - the camp sections are shitty and should not exist but like maybe a kara who had spent the whole game yelling at everyone with a gun would have the ability unlocked to then rally the people inside, and who cared what connor and markus were doing, you know? 

but david doesn’t know how to write women so that’s not what we got - kara carried that entire franchise into reality and he totally screwed her over!!

TL;DR

luther was forced to do terrible things and that could explain a lot of his behavior if anybody cared, nobody ever wonders if amanda is being forced to obey programming like the rest of the machines or if she’s ok, josh’s relationship with violence could be very complex and we don’t know his motivation for refusing to participate in it the way we know north’s for preferring it, and david can’t write women so he shafted kara so fucking bad and it is an honest to god shame

(dbh meta tag)

[pendulumprince]

Wow, Vrains is undeniably more violent than previous installments. I won't be surprised if someone from the cast will get killed later in the series. Out of everyone we have now who do you think might meet such a fate?

So I think we can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that Yusaku is safe. He’ll be put through the wringer, and almost died in episode-fucking-two, but he’s the protagonist. He isn’t going to die.

Everyone else is fair game, though.

You said ‘most likely’ but I’m going through multiple people because that’s just how I roll.

It’ll be on a scale of 1-10, 1 being unlikely (but possible) and 10 being expected.

Ignis (1/10)

Tbh, Ignis is probably going to ‘die’ at some point. Being an AI, what this will entail is anyone’s guess, but I would imagine that it’d have something to do with his programming being rewritten/corrupted/deleted.

Thing is, though, we already have two proficient hackers/code nerds in the cast who could potentially ‘fix’ Ignis if this were to happen (Yusaku and Shoichi). More still may be coming. 

The chances of Ignis dying permanently are pretty low. YGO has never permanently killed the protagonist’s partner before, either, but… there’s a first time for everything. If this were to happen, it would for sure be either just before, or during the endgame duel. Just as Ignis was labled as a ‘savior’ both by himself and Yusaku in the first episode, I could only really see Ignis dying trying to save everyone else.

Aoi (1/10)

YGO has also never killed off the main female lead. Doesn’t mean it can’t ever happen. 

I don’t think we know quite enough about Aoi at this point to predict how she could permadie. But if I could dictate how it went down…?

Make Aoi Zaizen a hero. If she has to die, I would want her to go down in a truly spectacular, Magical-Girl-esque fashion. As with any female character, it would be best if her death meant something aside from inspiring/enraging the dudes in her life. It would also be best if it happened in the midst of some heroic act only she could carry out.

I mean this is YGO so I’m not holding my breath, either for her permadeath or for a particularly heroic tempdeath. Still, this would be ideal.

Go (3/10)

Slightly more likely than Ignis or Aoi. 

This past episode has me thinking that Go and Yusaku are eventually gonna develop that quasi-romantic best bro vibe, reminiscent to the one Yuya and Gongenzaka shared. 

And it’s been established that Go, despite his flaws, is pretty golden hearted. He does everything to support the orphanage where he grew up, and only really wants to be the best for their sake. This suggests selflessness, and like Ignis, i could easily see Go sacrificing himself somewhere down the line.

Maybe it’ll be for those orphans he cares so much about. Maybe it’ll be for the citizens of Den City, or to preserve Link Vrains.

Or… maybe it’ll be for Yusaku. Like I said, I feel like this duel set it up for the two of them to be allies down the line, and eventual besties. So what would be more poignant if the first person Yusaku specifically doesn’t want taking on the KoH sacrifices himself for him, in the midst of that cause?

Revolver (3/10)

Revolver should probably be lower down on this list, if not for the fact that we know he’s going to heel-face turn at some point.

Like Aoi, I don’t think we know enough about Revolver yet to predict what his permadeath could look like. The only thing that most readily comes to mind is Specter taking him out in order to assume leadership over the KoH, or his father waking up from his coma (post Revolver’s face turn) and trying to kill his son for defecting/disbanding the KoH.

Akira (5/10)

You know what the writers could do to 1) invoke feels, 2) give a certain big brother his heroic moment of glory, and 3) set up Aoi/Blue Angel to go on a revenge quest?

Kill Akira. 

Akira is a lowkey antag right now—he hasn’t done anything overtly evil, but he’s distant and aloof and even downright negligent (when it comes to Aoi and the safety of Link Vrains users). But we also know that by virtue of being the older brother of our female lead, the he isn’t going to stay this way.

The clearest path with Akira’s death involves him heel-face turning and going up against his bosses (all six of them). They would have reason to go after him if he did, as I’m sure that Akira knows a shitton of company secrets.

And I’m sure they know that the fastest way to make Akira bend to their will is by threatening his sister.

So the writers could have Akira duel them to protect Aoi. And he could lose…

Or if the writers wanted to put in a Pyrrhic Victory, he could win, but sustain enough injuries to kill his body in the real world. 

Ema (7/10)

Wait, you mean the mysterious character who doesn’t have any clear ties to anyone has a high chance of being killed off? Who would’ve thunk! 

With Ema, it could be just about anything. Unless a certain theory of mine comes true, she has no association with anyone besides Akira, and that seems to be a working relationship (mostly). So I can’t see Ema heroically sacrificing herself, at least not as she is right now.

Her death could honestly be in an accident, or in order to display the prowess of a particular antagonist. To be clear, I don’t want Ema to be ‘made an example of’ in this way. It’s just most likely to happen if she doesn’t go through a certain amount of character development beforehand. 

Naoki (8/10)

It’s very simple:

Naoki admires Playmaker because he fights for justice. In episode 1, Naoki says that he, too, wants to someday be a duelist who fights for justice.

So Naoki’s permadeath would involve him doing just that, and dying in the process. 

Shoichi (10/10)

I am here to break hearts.

Yusaku, our mean and distant protagonist, cares about Shoichi way too much. No matter how you interpret their relationship, Shoichi is Yusaku’s rock. He’s the only person Yusaku trusts, as well as the only character thus far not to display any overtly negative traits. 

And that, right there, is why something awful is on the horizon for Shoichi. 

And I can’t say what that could be. ‘Something awful’ could be Yusaku pulling away from him once he (Yusaku) starts making friends. ‘Something awful’ could be him finding out Revolver is his brother, or that his brother is dead and has been for years. Or that awful thing could be his death. 

And like Naoki, there’s a very clear, simple path for it: he could die either protecting/saving Yusaku, or protecting/saving his brother. Extra bonus points if he saves one of them from an attack sent out by the other.