#vessel i do love you just in a way thats unknown to man and different from everyone else /hj

[worship-sleep]

I saw a tweet the other day talking about vessel's speech he gave regarding his feelings of his mask and relationship with the music he makes. This isn't me bashing anyone or anything i'm just giving my perspective on it and hoping it opens a gateway to discuss it.

In the speech he gave at lafayette he talks about feeling selfish for this opportunity he's been given to allow others to understand a very vulnerable version of himself that is almost impossible for anyone else to layout to strangers the way he does. Feeling as if he's taken advantage of something he doesn't really deserve and that people are seeing a version of himself that doesn't even really exist in the first place because he isn't the saviour he is seen as. Which leads to him finishing out the speech saying, "I am nothing without this music; I am nothing without this mask."

It is basically impossible to ask someone to step outside of themselves and truly understand how they are seen by others around them and he is no exception. But, I do not necessarily think that what he is trying to convey is him admitting that "vessel" is better than the "real him," but instead is like a barrier that allows him to explore a version of himself and his art that just wouldn't be able to exist unless it was there. I think viewing it in a negative lighting and putting him on this pedestal to praise him isn't how we should go about reacting to how he views himself.

That being said, this speech in particular has lead me towards very mixed feelings on how I view my feelings towards vessel. The mask feels like a very fine line in the sand on how we should view this persona in relation to the "real vessel," considering he goes so far as to never even letting us hear his speaking voice. I value and I cherish him a lot, especially the version of him he puts on at shows and the version of him he puts into vessel.. but I do not know him and he doesn't necessarily ever want me to know him. I love his music and whatever stories he's trying to tell but I don't love him and I don't really know if us loving the unmasked him is what his problem is.

The mask and the music are his art and I think that's what he wants us to love and I think that's the best love we can give him instead of giving him a false promise of loving someone we couldn't ever know or who maybe never even wants to be known.

apologies for how long this is, the masked man is just very special to me and everyone in the world must know everything I think about him.

[tumblunni]

Quantum Devil Saga is SO GREAT

Oh my god, I’ve only read ten pages into this thing and I’m already being blown away by how much more intense the situation is and how much worldbuilding is written into absolutely every word. Holy SHIT this is gonna be an amazing retread of one of my fave videogames! Random stuff I’ve noticed so far that rocks:

* The printing quality of the hardback cover is AWESOME! It has this really soft plastic cover that feels almost fabriclike, its such high quality. And the cover illustrations are amazing, to see familiar characters with their original designs that we never even saw before, i mean WOW! I adore this version of argilla!

(More under the cut)

* Serph actually having a personality and thoughts and a voice immediately makes this all better. The strength of this setting is that it feels like it’d be so mysterious to be PART of it, its all about the identity struggle of people who live so far away from our concept of reality and things have only just got even tougher on their path to finding peace. So as much as we got all that from the character development of the other party members, it works so much better with an actual inner monologue of our hero experiencing these things. * An example is how we get to see Serph’s monologue getting away with him, how he mentions ‘a cat’ and then backtracks upon realising he has NO IDEA what ‘a cat’ actually is. And apparantly these memories and emotions bubble up often enough that he has his own word for them, he just calls them ‘signal noise’ and has grown used to putting them out of his mind so he can focus on battle. * Also it must be incredibly disarming to find a signal of something on your scanner that has ‘unknown data’, when you’re used to fighting the same way every day for all of eternity. I understand now why the mysterious cat was so much of a hook for these guys, when it wasn’t so much for the player. * ALSO, we get some immediate worldbuilding on the technology of the setting! Apparantly everyone’s strange cyberpunk suits are actually necessary to their fighting, they’re like bio augmentation. And everyone in the junkyard is apparantly created with heightened senses in various different forms of fighting roles, and we get some expanded detail on those. * Like, Argilla isnt just someone who uses a long scope gun in a game where everyone has a gun anyway, she’s specifically the team’s distance sniper and is a prodigy in her field to the point that her senses can outpace the scanner headwear everyone else uses. In the game all you even know is that in the first cutscene she’s using a gun, that’s it. And the game doesnt give her very good treatment for like the first three missions, so I’m glad to see she’s getting screentime and being established as a useful team member immediately! * And apparantly Gale is specifically a ‘bishop type’ who is able to receive and broadcast signals using that headgear of his, which explains the speaker ears aesthetic. These units specialise in scanning the battlefield and reporting tactical data to everyone else's headsets, as well as receiving admin messages from the Karma Temple. There’s a noteable moment in the first few pages, where the unidentified object has interrupted the battle and Gale is standing there yelling ‘Team [Embryon], please remove your unauthorized weapon from the battlefield or be penalized, Team [Vanguard], please remove your unauthorized weapon-’ So, like, does this mean the ‘bishop types’ are unaffiliated and act as referees to both sides? Does he join the heroes later? Or does this mean that them receiving Temple signals is more like channelling, and they just act as a vessel to say it all regardless of whether they want to? i suppose it would be fair if both sides constantly had a feed of equal info on the Temple’s opinion of both sides, with no private messaging. * The colour markings on everyone’s armour actually have a function beyond just being a cool aesthetic ‘tribal’ effect to contrast the future tech. Apparantly marking the teams is a mandatory rule of the Karma Temple’s organized deathmatches, to avoid friendly fire. There’s a very cool description of Serph identifying enemies escaping cover by their flashes of colour against the otherwise grey landscape. I wonder if thats also why everyone is created with these vibrant hair colours and someone normal-looking like Sera is an anomoly? * The player’s team being party-sized when every other tribe is an army is actually a plot point! Embryon is stated to be relatively new, and to have only just carved out their own territory and taken one of the six keys to the Karma Temple. I suppose thats why everyone’s going after them, then! * Its also badass how they describe Embryone’s small size being a disadvantage but also a chance for a new and confusing strategy. Everyone’s used to hiding their leader away in their base and sending out armies of relatively untrained interchangeable soldiers who dont hold any great loyalty. The rule is that if the leader is taken out, all the members of that tribe must join the one who killed them, so this strategy generally works well. And Embryon seems like an easy target because they CANT protect their leader, he HAS to fight alongside them! But that also means Embryon can completely control their enemy’s every move! Serph specializes in being the bait to divide and conquer far greater armies. He’s said to be talented enough to stand up against so many enemies, but its not like he’s a cliche super strong muscle man, he’s just so fast and sneaky that he can lead them all on a wild goose chase while his teammates do the fighting. * Also, Embryon isnt actually just five people, there’s around fifty of them. You KINDA see maybe eight npcs around the base in the early game, but you dont really get a sense its like that. It makes a bit more sense now that serph could narrow down five prodigies in their relative fields, if he had that many underlings to begin with. Also its mildly more believeable that 50 versus 400 could win. * But anyway, the main team of five do the majority of fighting and act more like a split group of multiple generals, instead of a single leader who never even fights. Serph is still the unquestionable actual leader, but like... at least here we get a sense of the reason WHY he is, and why everyone trusts him! He’s not only a badass but his strategy puts himself at the most risk above everyone else, and entirely relies on trusting his comrades to be able to cover him. Even before he fully understood human emotions, he was being the Team Dad! And even back when everyone was merely assigned to him by a higher power and knew they could switch teams any second if he died, they were still being loyal to him! Both sides would absolutely deny this, of course, yknow... * There’s a really good description of how looking at the Karma Temple amidst the grey clouds is like ‘someone painted over it in watercolour’. i dunno, thats just a great metaphor to describe someone straining to see the top of the tower but it dissappearing into the haze of unforgiving weather. You can really see how everyone could believe that a better world is right there above the clouds, its like a really literal depiction of christian heaven. Also, i like that the new translator made it more clear that there’s some christian metaphors along with the hindu ones, the place is still called the Karma Temple for continuity’s sake, but the organization is now called Church of Karma like it was in japanese. And it fits with the referee type units being called bishops instead of like priests or shamans or something. Its really surreal imagining a world thats this stew of badly remembered various religions from our world, all mushed into one!

ANYWAY only ten pages in already so much to talk about! i dunno even if some of my theories and observations are even correct, lol... BUT ANYWAY i love digital devil saga and now I REALLY LOVE quantum devil saga! I was worried it might not stand up to how much I loved the videogame, but so far it just seems like the same BUT MORE. More of everything that was ever vague and I really wanted to learn about! Aaaaaaa!! And the style of it, focusing on the experience of being a person born into this alien kind of existance, actually reminds me a lot of Haibane Renmei. I mean clearly it has more action and its not really intended to be a slice of life but it still kinda captures the same feeling?? I DONT KNOW I JUST KNOW THAT I LOVE IT Also I wanna draw fanart of argilla’s wildly different design, and im curious to see how the others look!