#The immortality/death/ghost/memory thing. The unreliable narration. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lucky-sevens · 5 years ago

Text

mechs deep lore compilation post

so! maybe you’ve read the other compilation post i made of basic lore/how to get into the mechs! maybe you want to know more! or maybe you’re a fan already and want to see how deep down this rabbit hole you can get!

well, good news for you: i have gone down the rabbit hole and hit bedrock only to find maki yamazaki standing by my side with a pickaxe! it is time for mechs lore part 2: electric boogaloo also known as ‘wow blue have you considered sleep’

rest under the cut!

i’ve tried to organize this, but given how many random facts there are, it’s hard! decided to start off with lore for each character (in order of them joining the mechs in-universe), including all the carmilla lore at the end; then move into general world lore/a bit of album lore, and finally more obscure/unknown facts, such as explaining the whole scuzz thing! also, citing the sources has been difficult, as a lot of things are from, say, old twitter posts and the like. there might be less links here than you all would like, but bear with me- compiling all this lore is quite difficult!

disclaimer: unlike stuff like the wiki, this includes a lot of my own theories and red stringing, and while i’m noting if something’s fanon or canon, the fanon may occasionally make its way into my theories!

links to the songs will be mostly TheVoidSings’ youtube lyric videos, as i don’t want to find the links to all the different platforms they’re on and the videos are lovely and accessible!

also- i’ve done some significant editing on the mechanisms wiki, as have other talented people- go check it out! it’s a good source of lore!

now on w/ the actual post!

crew

jonny d’ville

his lore is fairly concrete, but since he’s an unreliable narrator, we don’t know what bits can be trusted! his backstory song is one eyed jacks, which gives a pretty clear picture of events, but here in his crew bio he says that he made up new texas, and doesn’t have a very good memory of events in general. (it’s implied that he didn’t lie about killing his father, but we don’t even know that for sure.) a note: unlike the others, we don’t know what happened to his heart in order for him to be mechanized.

the aurora

the aurora’s lore is a mess. here’s what we know for sure, which is an edited version of what i have on her wiki page, (where i have also given a list of her known physical attributes);

she started off as a moon, but was weaponized and turned into a ship. she initially was a navy ship, but mutinied and joined the rebellion, participating in the october revolution, in which nastya died and was mechanized. this may have been her choice, but it is more likely that carmilla and/or jonny forced her into it, as they are the ones who won her from the cyberian navy.

when they stormed the ship, a woman was trapped inside- specialist 278 tereshkova, presumably aurora's programmer. What her and aurora's relationship was like is unknown, but aurora did not make any attempt to save her, so it may have not been positive. before dying, tereshkova managed to program a final distress message into aurora, as well as coding the mechanisms' blog.

she’s likely to be based off of the historical battleship aurora, like nastya is based off of the historical russian princess anastasia.

now, it’s time to get into the main theory about her: that aurora used to be briar rose! i’m collecting all the evidence on it, as well as all the evidence that can disprove it.

here’s a refresher on briar rose’s whole deal, taken from ‘the aurora strikes’-

The Rose Reds were the most effective of the soldiers created from Rose's genetic material, but they were not the first. Rumours spoke of an early prototype, known as the Briar Rose, that had malfunctioned and slain everyone on the desert moon of Briar, where she was being grown. But she was not dead. As the Mechanisms discovered, instead, she slept, at the heart of the defence grid that surrounded New Constantinople. The grid was composed of Thorn-class gun emplacements and was virtually impenetrable. And in its centre, the Briar Rose slumbered, plugged into the system, her anger, her rage, her hatred and her fear, fueling the machines, and focusing their gun turrets.

the main support for the theory here is that over time, briar rose could have fused to the moon, which is one of the very few conditions in which a biomechanical weaponized moon seems plausible and not just like a collection of vaguely cursed words. however, in the fiction ‘by any other name’, which is some collected lab research on briar rose, there’s this line- “During transportation and integration of the specimen, take all precaution and care.”- key word here being transportation. so she must have been moved off the moon.

the fiction i cited to disprove the theory actually has something that further supports it, though- the presence of a mysterious woman in king cole’s lab, who could be carmilla. hood, the revolution’s hacker, notes on a picture of her ‘[No idea. The others I’ve been able to find evidence of, but she’s a fucking ghost]‘. the description is a bit off, though, as she’s described as a short, pale, woman with hair long enough to be pulled back and carmilla is quite tall and has short hair- as well, in a later part of the fiction, the woman is killed and does not revive. however, there’s also another who could plausibly be her, noted here- ‘A tall woman sits opposite Prof. Root with a tray of her own. From her stature, it is conceivable she was one of the figures in the chemical suits. They talk sporadically, but the audio is heavily corrupted.’ she isn’t one of the ones killed later on, either, so that’s possible.

we know carmilla knew aurora when she was a very young moon and raised her practically from birth, so if she is one of those two people, it would make sense.

in ‘the aurora strikes’, aurora pushes to save briar rose- nastya explains this as ‘she can not bear to see another biomechanical organism in pain’. in my own writing about aurora, i interpret that as her having very high empathy, but there could be a more personal connection here. this is also notable as the only time aurora is mentioned in-album beyond jonny calling the mechanisms ‘the crew of the starship aurora’.

nastya rasputina

nastya’s backstory song (cyberian demons) was only performed when they were still dr. carmilla and the mechanisms, so it’s harder to find! thevoidsings has made a lyric video of it here, though, and it gives another very clear picture of her backstory! there’s also the fiction of the same name, which i didn’t understand upon first read-through but is basically a nastya character study, covering different points in her immortal life.

her performer went on hiatus for a while, and as an in-universe explanation, the cyberian sequence was written! in which nastya flies aurora to cyberia, infects herself with a computer virus, and transmits it to the entire planet, causing it to explode. this is all in the cyberian demons fiction i linked above, and with it are two other tangential fictions- one presumably just before those events, and one that’s an outsider pov.

there’s also out, which i’d suggest reading rather than just looking at my summary; basically, nastya has a crisis over aurora changing so that it’s harder to recognize her love, and ends up leaving the ship to float away into deep space- this is presumed to be her death, but that is never confirmed and nastya seems to assume she will wake up at some point.

ashes o’reilly

ashes’ whole deal is quite straightforward, which is a nice break from aurora and (to a lesser extent) nastya! their backstory song is lucky sevens, and it’s elaborated on further in their crew bio; interestingly, ashes was the one most into the idea of immortality at first, and also gave clear consent to carmilla.

ivy alexandria

we don’t know that much about ivy, which is fitting, as she doesn’t either! the most clear information we can find about her is in her crew bio, which can be summarized as: she grew up in a library!

archive footage explains more about her memory situation. she has no memories of anything before she was mechanized, according to this line ‘[...] she can tell you dates, and places, and body counts, she can list for you the exact circumstances of each event of her long, long life (at least, every event since that time, long ago, among a maze of bookshelves in a library that, awake, she can no longer describe to you, though once she knew its every turn by heart, when a woman stood over her and offered her eternity: before that, there is nothing at all).’ she also processes her memories differently than most people- they’re more like records, instead of things that affect her emotionally. (archive footage is also beautifully written and very much worth reading!)

the toy soldier

would say it has concrete lore, but it’s also almost solely responsible for fucking up my timeline and the album lore, so i’m rather angry at it. nevertheless, its entire backstory can be found in the fiction ‘the story of the toy soldier’. additionally, there’s a short story about its time fighting in the revolution of once upon a time (in space); presumably, this is the first time it did so, though it was likely in the war at least twice and possibly even three times. the mechanisms were only watching the second time, though it’s not out of character for it to have participated in the war again, and there’s also the dr. carmilla song, eleven, (which is about a war and uses a lot of rose symbology so it’s likely the revolution) where it is present. notably, carmilla had left the mechanisms by the time once upon a time (in space) takes place on their timeline, and the toy soldier is the only one there. at first, i interpreted that as carmilla meeting the toy soldier before it had met the mechanisms, but there’s two inconsistencies there: firstly, it doesn’t recognize her when it joins the band, and secondly, in the song they leave together. this increases the likelihood of it having been in the war three times.

we actually have a recording of the toy soldier’s first time joining the band- the mechanisms @ lashings! (part one / part two / transcript) there’s also a note of that show in the story of the toy soldier! they bought it because jonny was in jail (x). interestingly, that show is the first recording of rose red, and it’s later noted jonny was in a rose red prison!

now it’s time to get into the main theory regarding it, which also will factor into the write-up of ulysses dies at dawn later! i personally subscribe to this theory, or at least, most of it.

here is frankie @byron-von-raum‘s post- the theory here is that the toy soldier is the rebodied mind of the widow’s fiance. i’m not going to get too into that part, as i don’t personally incorporate it into my lore and more importantly frankie already has a post on it! read that if you’re more interested!

the most important bit here is the evidence it collects regarding the toy soldier living near labyrinth; in one of the pictures from the toy soldier’s backstory, there’s a dionysus brand wine bottle. the consensus he comes to is that the toy soldier lives in a colony of earth that trades with labyrinth, and while i think that’s possible, the all-encompassing nature of the city makes it more likely that they would have a minimum of outside communication, so the toy soldier would just be from the city proper. i will get into the impacts of this/expand on it more in the world lore section!

another thing: the angel has an out of character explanation! if you look at photos of old mechs gigs, jessica law looks similar to the drawing of the angel in the story of the toy soldier! their voice being stolen was most likely a reference to that.

drumbot brian

brian’s backstory is laid out in his crew bio! i’d summarize it, but to be honest, it’s already a summary, so i’d suggest just taking a second to read that! sadly, this is all of what we know about it. the priest from his backstory was apparently made almost immortal in some twisted form of mechanization, and has never forgiven brian for it/is still trying to hunt him down (x).

his bio is also where his morality switch is introduced! (interestingly, it takes a far lower role/is mentioned far less in canon than in fanworks.)

there was originally going to be a backstory album about him called indistinguishable from magic. this never happened, but ben below is working on a new one called the wanderings of drumbot brian! no more knowledge on this currently.

the main theory about him is that he had some kind of alliance/is lying about something to do with carmilla! we know from maki that carmilla didn’t go out of the airlock (more on that in her section), and when brian is questioned on what happened to her, he doesn’t give a concrete answer. this is in contrast to all the other mechanisms, who assume she fell out an airlock. here’s what he said:

I will not point fingers and lay blame. I do not know how it came to pass that Dr. Carmilla left this vessel, whether by fair means or foul, and so I will not engage in this painful discussion. I hope she did not suffer, and that we may forgive the perpetrator of this deed.

he’s speaking very formally here. (fucking nerd). well, no; legitimately, this is not the normal way he speaks in other contexts. he could be masking something. we know that even when he’s lying, he’s not good at it, and this comes off as clearly odd. in support of this, i believe one of the songs on his unwritten backstory album was called ‘the doctor’s demise’ (though i could be remembering incorrectly).

there’s not much more evidence we can draw on here to come to a consensus, though!

something else to note- i’ve written this other meta about his prophetic powers! feel free to read if you’re interested in that aspect of his character!

gunpowder tim

of course, tim already has a whole mini-album to himself (gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser), but there’s a couple more niche things about him, though not as much as aurora and ts!

mainly, the implications that he destroyed the sun. there’s an old mechanisms tweet that states he 'was floating in the wake of a detonated star’. additionally, there’s this old blog post, which turned into a bit of a fiction! the figure speaking is not named, but given the other mechanisms who speak (therefore knocking them off the possibilities list) and the fact that the post was made around the time tim joined, it’s likely that it’s him. now, he says this:

“It wasn’t the deep space that drove me crazy,” he said, his voice low, calm and polite. “It was the sudden realisation that I was entirely responsible for the destruction of my entire civilisation, and happy for it.”

though destroying the moon and his other actions in gptvtmk could possibly count for this, it would fit more if he had destroyed the sun.

both those posts also imply that he was floating in space for an incredibly long time. i don’t know how he survived if so, but it seems very likely that’s what happened.

i considered these posts being too early/having a changed canon now, like the odd use of different pronouns for some characters in the earlier fiction, but they seemed to have gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser mostly worked out by the time tim ledsam officially joined, as they perform it at the only recorded gig from that year with him (port mahon 2011), which was around when the second blog post was made!

marius von raum

we don’t have a written backstory or backstory song to go on for him, but kofi young (his performer) is working on a full album about him called ‘the death of byron von raum’!

the blog post kofi made about it as a summary is the main source of marius lore that we have! i’d highly suggest reading it, but the main points are:

1. it’s going to be very dark and tragic, and shows that marius at heart isn’t really the kind of comedic figure that he comes off as in the band! ruth @thedreadvampy (the mechanisms’ official artist, as well as morgan’s sister and kofi’s partner) has also made a tumblr post that connects to this!

2. the world he’s from used to be high-tech, but has devolved over time into 18th century levels of technology! what this boils down to is; what we assume is marius and an unknown friend (more on this in raphaella’s part) manage to discover ancient technology and attempt to use it! all we have here is this quote om the blog post- ‘In the middle of this, two kids hiding from the soldiers discover an army of ancient mecha and use them to fight back, but only end up plunging the world into further chaos.’.

3. anime protagonist marius!

we also have this small piece of writing, screenshotted here (monogoggle...)-

[image id: a screenshot of writing, most of it out of view/hard to make out. it’s also in the middle of the line, so the breaks are off. however, it looks to say ‘at the controls of RISML/cockpit is cramped and d[...]/has his monogoggle over his/controls are uncomplicated/the neural interface. They [...]’ end id.]

raphaella la cognizi

i’ve been very deep down the mechs rabbit hole for over a month now, and yet i’ve found hardly anything about her!

there’s a small theory i have, though it doesn’t have too much supporting evidence! in marius’ backstory, it mentions two kids, and raphaella and marius joined together (first mention of either of them is together, in this facebook post!) when questioned about marius and raphaella, nastya says a story instead of stories (x). (that post also clarifies that carmilla was not involved in either raphaella or marius’ backstories!) this could potentially point to raphaella being the other person from marius’ backstory. the evidence against it is that if raphaella featured that heavily, r. l. hughes would have said something about the album as well instead of it just being kofi talking about marius, but it’s still interesting to think about!

there’s also a theory that she was the preacher’s daughter from brian’s backstory, but the only real evidence there is that she could have used his tech to mechanize herself (which her doing is only fanon!) and that she performs ‘lost in the cosmos’.

dr carmilla

this is most likely going to be the shortest section, as it’s basically another crew member; that being said, there’s a lot of lore here!

if you haven’t listened to the carmilla albums, i’d really suggest doing that! there’s two- exhumed and (un)plugged and ageha prototype edition! the story there is harder to put together than in the mechs backstories, especially because the songs are mostly out of order, so i’ve decided to just straight up summarize my interpretation, along with what we have to go on from maki, instead of framing it like a theory, as that’s the easiest way! still, please bear all this with a grain of salt- it’s most likely to be contradicted in the new album maki is working on.

carmilla and her girlfriend loreli lived on a planet called terra. for their childhoods, it was a fairly okay place to live (though i elaborate on this a bit in the world lore section!) however, it was bombed; most likely taking the role of an alternate universe hiroshima, as the blurb on her bandcamp says ‘Dr. Carmilla tells the twisted tales of a dystopian future following WWII having ended very differently.‘ after this, the planet sunk into a nuclear winter.

loreli got sick and died; or, she should have, but carmilla saved her by turning her into a vampire as well. this resulted in loreli losing her morals and becoming abusive towards carmilla. carmilla was too deep in love to see this, and stayed in the relationship for several years.

we don’t know what happened to make her strike out on her own, but eventually she did, and created the mechanisms. while with them, she recognized her own failures with loreli, and left the mechanisms (which they all believe was caused by jonny d’ville pushing her out an airlock, rather than her own volition.)

from there, she traveled back in time to the point where loreli was dying, and let it happen- potentially burying herself and loreli alive, which she survived due to her immortality and loreli did not.

however, she was trapped underground for a hundred years. when she is finally found and dug out, she starts enjoying herself (i.e. committing murder). for some unknown reason, she clones herself multiple times, creating the in-universe version of maki yamazaki.

the mechanisms assume she pursued them after she was pushed out of the airlock, and that that was what eleven was about, but i’m not sure why she would do that, given that she left them of her own volition. because of time shenanigans, it could have been far later on her personal timeline; maybe she simply wished to reconnect with them after all those years.

that’s all we have; we don’t know if she died, or anything like that!

world lore

all the folktales and normal history the irl mechs work off of also exist in-universe! (for an example- the toy soldier and ivy start reciting the walrus and the carpenter together in lashings, and the mechs also do alice in wonderland as a song.)

we know the alternate universe theory is correct, mostly because of this piece in the fiction on kofi’s blog-

In those burning instants, he’d feel the weight of it all, and know it was true. The golden age that never came; the city that stood at the dawn of a world instead of in its dying embers. And beyond – to a myriad of Camelots and a thousand thousand Arthurs, unfathomable worlds apart, each different, each fighting the same hopeless battle.

He’d feel the burden of that task pressing down until it felt like it’d crush his chest, and he’d wake every day gasping for breath, feeling older than he ever had, older even than Ector.

And as he screamed inwardly, Galahad would meet his gaze with those crazed eyes of his and grin, and Arthur would know again that whatever had spoken to Galahad was moving him too.

the mechanisms are most likely traveling between several alternate universe versions of folktales, and occasionally alternate versions of earth! (cyberia, tim’s earth, terra...) this is likely why everyone in their stories is human, and is actually low-key evidence against drawing them as aliens (though ofc feel free to have fun!)

i was initially going to put all the album lore in its own separate sections, but a large amount of it is how it intersects with other pieces of lore, and the rest isn’t necessarily niche enough to cite here? my personal advice is that if you want to learn more about the albums, read the fiction! i have a compilation post of all the fiction up on this blog, and you can find it on the website here!

let’s start with the mechanisms’ roles in ulysses dies at dawn, though! we know for sure ashes is hades, brian is the oracle of delphi, and the toy soldier was a nymph (which is actually quite worrying, considering what that means and the inherent issues with consent there, but i digress.) tim most likely took on the role of achilles (more on that here). then, we know some of the mechanisms’ activities and can guess their roles from that. raphaella was helping athena on her research, marius was psychoanalyzing the olympians, and jonny was committing mass murder. it’s a common theory that one (or three) of the mechanisms was cerberus, but sadly i couldn’t find any evidence towards or against that.

i said in the toy soldier’s section that i would talk more about the implications of it being from labyrinth here! the main thing is the fact that, for it to join the rose red war, the city must have interacted with king cole at some point. it’s a risky thing to pose a theory on the toy soldier’s allegiance towards a certain group, but the fact that it seemed to stick with the rose reds here might also mean that the city was, in fact, under king cole’s power. this fits in nicely with the greek mythology aspect of it all; king cole, in that universe, could have been a stand-in for the figure of kronos/saturn!

a few other theories on how the lore intersects:

1. high noon over camelot takes place after the bifrost incident! in terminus, we see communication breaking down, and that could have been the reason the station was isolated. the mechanisms go from it to the bifrost incident, but as they canonically travel in time, that’s not enough to disprove the theory!

2. arthur becomes king cole eventually! this is mostly going off of the fact he’s called ‘the once and future king’, but also the fact that cole used to be considered a good king.

a few loose pieces of worldbuilding:

people from new constantinople seem to be longer lived, and their culture is built around age as a concept. the older you are, the more wise and important you are. specifically, in this fiction, snow is dismissively noted as ‘barely fifty’ and king cole’s age is held up as evidence to why he’s a good ruler.

terra, carmilla’s planet, has two major languages; high terran and low terran! high terran is a more regulated, formal way of speaking, specifically something that only the rich and privileged tend to know. there are many dialects, but the grammar is dictated by the capital. low terran is a creole language formed from several others, including high terran, that most children are taught in school as the baseline. (though they might speak a completely different, less widely spoken language at home!) carmilla speaks low terran but not high terran (although she pretends to know the latter.)

the mechanisms were all (or mostly all) at fort galfridean at one point; don’t have the source to hand, but marius apparently became a prophet to the saxons for staring into the sun for a very long time.

if you’re looking to draw album fanart, there are a few things i know aren’t as widely known; the ones i can think of off the top of my head is orpheus having a ‘foppish haircut’ (the type of thing that falls under that definition is narcissus’ undercut), and snow’s disfiguring scar. there is also official album art; i, personally, have not seen much of it, and i’d encourage coming up with your own character interpretations.

one last theory- it’s highly likely carmilla was involved in the events of the bifrost incident. in the mechscord (sadly, invites are closed due to the difficulty with handling the boom in the fanbase) maki yamazaki has mentioned that part of the criteria for picking a mechanism is ‘good friend for lyf’. at first, i assumed that she meant good friend for life, but when asked on that she was worryingly cryptic (as tends to happen), and she made a joke earlier in character as doc c about accidentally calling odin. though immortal lyfrassier edda most likely became fanon just so they could become a mechanism, this is a piece of evidence towards them actually becoming immortal.

my personal headcanon is that to gain true immortality (which maki has said king cole and the olympians do not have) you have to have some kind of eldritch component, so carmilla had to go to odin for aid. this is supported by the fact that in drive the cold winter away and cyberian demons, their mechanisms are noted as having a rainbow sheen to them!

other lore

scuzz nishimura

scuzz has built up a bit of a reputation for being the ‘cryptid mech’, but her lore is really quite simple! she was a member of the band back when they were doctor carmilla and the mechanisms, but left before they became more popular, so there’s not too much knowledge about her. she appears in this fiction and the only two recorded gigs from that era (lashings and homesick). she’s also visible in several photos!

i know i’ll get people in the notes asking for photos of her if i don’t include any, so have this;

[image id: a cropped picture of scuzz nishimura, looking tired and resting her head on her hand. she looks to be wearing white gloves and some kind of sweater or waistcoat, and her hair is cut short. her cello is also visible, as is someone else’s hand. end id.]

we don’t know too much about her; all we really have is that she was their cello player!

assorted things with no explanation

there’s this old piece from the wayback machine-

[image id: a screenshot of what looks to be the fiction page from a old site for dr carmilla and the mechs. the writing reads;

Writing

( The Aldwich Horror } A short story in which Dr. Carmilla attempts to solve the mysteries of the Aldwich Horror, the strange appearance of a new crew memeber and several zoologically dubious pets.

( Disinterration } A cautionary tale about exhuming corpses.

end id.]

‘disinterration’ is most likely a reference to the carmilla song exhumed, but i’m unsure about ‘the aldwich horror’. the most intriguing bit there is ‘the strange appearance of a new crew member’. i’ve researched the other aspects in an attempt to figure this out. aldwych is a closed london tube station- it served as a bomb shelter during the blitz, which is interesting as both carmilla and tim have backstories involving the world wars (though only carmilla’s is world war ii specifically; tim’s is wwi). the zoologically dubious pets are most likely the octokittens, which we know the toy soldier brought on board, so it would have to be in a place on the timeline after ts joined and before carmilla left. the only mechanism that joins in that space is gunpowder tim, so it’s possible that he is the new crew member.

the mechanisms blogs have a lot of incidental lore, so if you’re this deep in i’d suggest looking at my compilation post of some of my favorite posts of theirs!

and that’s it! we did it! i can finally go to sleep now. i’m so tired. please. i am going to die. i have homework. thank you all so much. please consider coming to my funeral service.

#the mechanisms #the mechs #my posts #compiliation post #meta

554 notes · View notes

yume-fanfare · 4 years ago

Text

wonder egg priority has a lot of unreliable narrators:

(spoilers under the cut, a long explanation/thoughts on neiru, ep 11 and ep 12 and some theories. feel free to add on! this got long lol)

all we know about neiru's sister, who supposedly stabbed her and then killed herself, was told to us by neiru, who had been told so at the icu.

we have barely seen her statue. and neiru is essentially lab-made, we do not even know what exactly constitutes as a sister. she doesn't know her parents, her sister was not mentioned at all in her focus episode, nor does she appear in the ed like the other statue girls

for all we know, maybe she didn't even have one and:

she was lied to at the icu

she was implanted fake memories

she lied to us

point 1 is the easy solution, and point 2 is included because i think it's possible, given japan plati's impressive technology. but, in the end, they mean the same thing: they position her as on "our side", a deceived girl. she was born with a purpose, for a reason, with a mission to accomplish since the beginning, and she has been raised for that.

neiru, kinda like the accas, grew up under watch, and was essentially treated like an experiment during her childhood. they can even see her Dreams, i don't think she has much privacy. even if she is the president of the company (interesting, her business card said vice-president), she may not have that much power. she is a child, after all, prodigy or not

point 3, however, is interesting, as i've seen people point out her growing resemblance to koito, the person ai is fighting for. neiru was the first girl to be introduced to us, and it looked like she'd been fighting longer than ai, yet she has not finished yet (it's interesting, really, how they're completing their missions in reverse order). neiru also knew about japan plati's involvement but didn't say anything. i don't (want to) think she's Malicious, but there may be something weird going on with her

so, in my opinion, i lean more towards points 1) & 2), but who knows

episode 11: the entirety of frill's story is told by ura-acca

now, i don't think i have to explain why ura-acca is unreliable. the accas have been suspicious since the beginning, filling a kyubey sort of role in the story, the ones who drove the girls to fight

so, they are unreliable narrators. they're sexist, and have odd views on the world (the comment on girls and boys suicides). neiru called them out on the suicide thing on an earlier draft, we know their words are not to be taken as truths

truth is, we don't know if frill killed acca's wife. ura-acca couldn't possibly know either, he wasn't there. we don't know about himari either, much less about all the other girls frill supposedly "tempted to death"

many others have pointed this out: the accas are looking for someone to blame, to try and make sense of a tragedy. i don't think frill has a "magic button" that she can just press and make people kill themselves. she could also just be a metaphor, too, to symbolize a death wish. but, what is a fact is that, as they've said, there isn't a link between the suicides, other than "it Must have been frill because people don't kill themselves", which is the accas' opinion, not a fact

and well, i have watched Bad anime where the conflict was, indeed, that the villain could magically make people kill themselves, but said anime was bad since the beginning, you know

the whole "someone to blame" appears with the wonder killers too. it's not like there was one single thing that drove them to the edge. ai 2 was bullied at school, sawaki isn't the Only problem she had. if he disappeared her problems would still be there, just minus one. kotobuki didn't actively kill herself, she died because of an experiment, so her reaction to seeing her wonder killer was just "huh, yeah, i guess this is the guy that annoyed me the most". the idol fans from the 3rd episode were following another person, the girl who saw ghosts wasn't antagonized by a single person. however, this is the system set up by the accas, because they think it works.

i think everything, eggs and statues, are an artificial environment that can be set up just by pushing a button, because that's how they think frill did it

and why do they do it?

there has to be an ulterior motive. even if they are deluded and truly doing it "for himari", whatever it is that they think they'll achieve, there has to be a more clear explanation or they wouldn't have gotten that many other people into it. someone pointed out, at the end of kotobuki's episode, that it looked like they had made her neiru's wonder egg so she'd turn off kotobuki's life support, and, it could be. they're also, well, mannequins, that's a huge thing we don't know about yet. at first i thought maybe it was some research on immortality, but i'm not so sure about that anymore

kotobuki's case is very interesting. it's the first one that heavily implies the egg was especially made. kotobuki had been monitorized her entire life, so wouldn't be too hard to turn her into an ia, input her personality into an algorithm and tune it in neiru's dream.

so, who's to say all the other kids weren't like that too. none of the girls knew them to say "hey, they're acting different than usual". i think the accas took them from news reports about suicides and inputted them into the program, in neat little folders, one in relation to each of the girls. ai 2 could have been made simply out of their regular monitorizing of her since the beginning

and, how do the girls who committed suicide come back to life? do they really. do they really. we Still don't know if they really do and it's interesting that they still haven't shown us

episode 12: mr sawaki and the dream worlds

the conclusion i got from ai and the wonder killer's battle was that that sawaki, like all the other elements in that dream (koito), were all ai's perception

the wonder killers are cartoonized and exaggerated versions of the real person they're modelled after. sawaki wouldn't say out loud all those things, he's not stupid, and neither did any of the other wonder killers actually say All of That to the victims.

the entire monologue, thus, as ai points out, was supposed to be all in her head. because the fishy things she'd seen were all from her point of view, and she hadn't actually seen him do anything wrong, so maybe she had misunderstood, and that's why she gives her mother her blessings in the end, because he's actually a nice man

things like momoe saying he rescues cats, and seeing a creepy shot of a Lot of cats instead of a tender one of him holding a kitten, were all ai's image of him

so, all of it was supposed to be just an unreliable narrator

now, i, personally, don't like this. the aged-up painting titled latent heat is plain creepy and kinda gross. and that was a real-life Fact, unaltered. someone said that maybe ai was being naive, but episode 12 is a bit late for that

so. mr sawaki redemption arc. how we feeling folks.

please feel free to tell me your thoughts about this! i'd love to hear them, maybe i'm just being too sceptic lol

#wonder egg priority #wep #the sawaki thing was the reason i wrote this #bc it's what bothers me the most #but the accasa and frill part was also worth mentioning and neiru was supposed to be an example that got too long lol #wondegg #mar's midnight rambles

90 notes · View notes

reluming · 8 years ago

Text

Dear Yuletide author

Hi! I’m so happy that you’re writing for me! I’m mapped on AO3, and I’m very excited to read whatever you come up with – please don’t feel like you have to adhere to any of this letter, as long as you avoid my DNWs!

To start with, here are some of my general likes and dislikes!

I read slash, femslash, het, and gen. I love poly relationships. I love fluff, I love angst, I love porn – porn without plot and porn with plot. I love slice of life, and fics with heaps of domesticity. I love character studies.

I prefer happy endings, but bittersweet/sad ones are okay too.

Things I love in porn:

Pegging

D/s

Femdom

Bondage

Spanking/caning/corporal punishment

Dirty talk

Praise kink

Exhibitionism/public sex

Humiliation

Knifeplay

Double penetration

Choking

Crossdressing

Characters being super into giving oral sex

DNWs:

Rape/non-con (dub con is okay!)

A/B/O

Non-canon character death

Onto fandom-specific stuff!

The Bold Type

Requested characters: Any

What’s the canon about? A contemporary TV show featuring three young women who are best friends, working for a fashion magazine in New York and being there for each other through various career and relationship ups and downs. There’s one season with 10 episodes out so far, and it’s been renewed for two more seasons!

What I love about the canon: I love every character on this show! I love the fun and upbeat vibe, the awesome, flawed, beautifully strong women who are so supportive of each other. The focus on the friendship between the three main characters is the best thing! Every time they say “I love you�� to each other my heart grows three sizes. 💞 I love how we see them being ambitious and going for their dreams, taking risks and fucking up and having to learn how to deal with their mistakes. I find it very comforting and inspiring at the same time, watching them being confident and amazing and human. People who don’t always get things right and who don’t always know what they’re doing. I enjoy watching them figure things out: Kat especially, who keeps changing her mind and doubting her choices and not really understanding what it is she wants.

Prompts:

Gen friendship fic with Sutton, Kat, and Jane! I could happily read about them doing something mundane and silly together (like getting froyo, or just hanging out in the apartment on a typical night). What were their first impressions of each other? How did they become friends? When did they agree to move in together and what was apartment-hunting like? What was it like the first night they moved in, did they all end up sleeping in the same bed talking till late? Did it take them some time to get used to living together, and was there a bit of friction at the beginning?

I would also be overjoyed to read anything sexual and/or romantic between Sutton, Kat, and Jane, in any combination! I’d be particularly interested in some kind of scenario where Kat is trying to figure out whether she’s really into women and she sleeps with both of her friends. At the same time. :’) Maybe during that brief time in the show when they’re all single?

Anything that explores what a wonderful woman and mentor and boss Jacqueline Carlyle is. How did she get here? Tell me about her moments of failure and heartbreak, her mistakes and regrets, her moments of triumph and breakthroughs! What does she think when she looks at Jane, especially, who she must see so much of herself in? That MOMENT at the end of S1 when Jane and Jacqueline are staring at each other while they go through their revolving doors and they’re both dressed in red and they’re mirrors of each other!! I’M SO HERE FOR MORE OF THAT CONTENT.

Sutton!! MY PURE RAY OF SUNSHINE. Five fashion moments in Sutton’s life she’ll remember forever? Memories she associates with a particular blouse, or scarf, or bracelet, or coat? (Btw, I prefer Sutton/Alex to Sutton/Richard, although I don’t mind Sutton/Richard. I really love Sutton and Alex’s dynamic and would even appreciate a friendship fic about them!)

One thing I feel like the show didn’t really give me was how JANE got here. Like, clearly writing for Scarlet was always her dream, but I just wanna know more about her motivations and her journey as a writer growing up!

I’d also be happy with a Jane/Ryan fic, they're super cute together! I would love to read about Jane exploring more kinky things with Ryan tbh? Like when Jane was SO OUTRAGED about the wax play thing I just thought maybe she should have the opportunity to try something similar with him! But I’d prefer if Jane/Ryan wasn’t the sole focus of the fic; if there was some focus on Jane & Sutton & Kat’s friendship as well, that would be fab.

Kat/Adena: I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. I would be extremely happy to read fic about them, post-series, during the series, whatever. Missing scenes, conversations and kisses and dreams. What happens in Peru? Future!fic! ANYTHING

Actually future!fic about where any of these characters are in five or ten or twenty years’ time would be very welcome!

Introspective fic about how Kat feels about her identity and how that’s evolved over the course of S1

Backstory about Adena and the countries she’s travelled to and the women she’s fallen in love with. What’s the story with Coco? Why isn’t it working out? What was it like, back when it did work?

Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

Requested characters: Kikuhiko, Miyokichi, Sukeroku

What’s the canon about? An anime (complete, two seasons, 25 episodes in total). Focuses on the art of rakugo, a centuries-old tradition of comic storytelling in Japan. A gangster, fresh out of prison, wants to become the apprentice of an old rakugo master after seeing the master perform in prison. From this, the story of the old rakugo master unfolds, and we learn about two boys who become rakugo apprentices when they’re little, and the friendship that grows between them.

What I love about the canon: This anime!! I was not expecting it to make me feel SO MANY FEELINGS. I love the historical setting, I love the STUNNING use of the unreliable narrator, I love the careful and slow development of Kikuhiko and Sukeroku’s friendship from childhood to adulthood; the way they’re such striking opposites at first glance, but there’s something at the core of them that’s the same. The heady mix of envy and love and bitterness that pulls Kikuhiko to Sukeroku always; the things left unsaid. How Miyokichi’s presence in their lives disrupts some things and catalyses others. The way Miyokichi’s choices have been limited because she’s a woman, and Kikuhiko and Sukeroku are both such terrible assholes in their own ways, but she can’t help being pulled into their orbit. I love the feeling of transience in this anime, of something always slipping away from your grasp, of history crumbling away beneath your fingertips; but there’s a gorgeous sense of continuity too. Beautiful things are fleeting and immortal at the same time. They are preserved – diluted, sometimes; changing and evolving. But still preserved, in some way.

Prompts:

I want fic that explores their complicated and tangled relationship in all its glory. My dearest wish is for them to be all reunited properly in the afterlife, for them to finally sort out their feelings, and to be a happy OT3.

Or a canon AU where events went differently and they lived and raised Konatsu together and were messy but happy, somehow.

I could see Kikuhiko as gay or bi, but no matter what, I feel like his feelings for Miyokichi are fascinating and would be interesting to explore in fic either way; if it’s not that he’s sexually attracted to her, what is it?

I would love something that deals with Kikuhiko’s repression of his sexuality, a fic where he was never able to let himself acknowledge his feelings for Sukeroku while he was alive. But equally I’d love a fic where he did acknowledge those feelings and those feelings were requited and they did something about it, once or twice or many times. But please don’t sideline Miyokichi, whatever you do!

If you want to make me really sad, that’s okay too! Give me Kikuhiko mourning the two people he cared about most in his life and struggling always with their ghosts. I’d be very interested to see something that just falls on the side of horror, or is at least spooky and supernatural in some way, based on the shinigami stuff and those S2 OPs where they coloured Sukeroku’s eyes red. I loved the eerie vibe of all that, so please feel free to run with it! Weird AUs featuring undead!Sukeroku and Miyokichi would be fantastic.

I am particularly into Kikuhiko crossdressing, and I’d love to read about a Kikuhiko whose relationship with gender is complex and hard to define. That scene where he’s in drag and Miyokichi does his makeup is absolutely gorgeous and one of my favourite scenes in the show and if you could do something with that I’d be eternally grateful. I’d be really happy with nb/genderqueer/trans interpretations of Kikuhiko! And if he could talk about his gender feelings with Miyokichi that would be A+++

OR if you just want to write me a Miyokichi-centric fic exploring ANYTHING about her whatsoever I would be ecstatic, I love her to pieces and would dearly love to read some backstory, introspection, character study, anything.

Killjoys

Requested characters: Aneela, Delle Seyah Kendry

What’s the canon about? Sci-fi TV show with three seasons (10 episodes each). Follows a trio of bounty hunters through hijinks and mysteries.

What I love about the canon: I love how fun this show is and how despite the gritty sci-fi settings and the dark look of the show it’s pretty much the OPPOSITE of grimdark? It’s such a joyful and optimistic show and it’s bursting with humour. It doesn’t take itself seriously but it loves its characters and it loves its audience; all the character interactions are just wonderful and the arcs are all fantastic and it always manages to give me exactly what I want. It’s SO satisfying! And SO many people of colour in the foreground and the background!! That’s such a rare and beautiful thing in this genre and I’m so grateful. Plus, so many of those characters of colour are queer too!!

Prompts:

So I shipped Dutch/Delle Seyah DESPERATELY in the first two seasons, and I still do! But oh man, I love Aneela/Delle Seyah, how they’re SO PERFECTLY MATCHED and on equal footing. EVIL SPACE LESBIAN QUEENS!! I love the united front they present, I love how quickly they get into each other’s heads and hearts and develop this fierce and steadfast loyalty towards each other.

So, while I didn’t request Dutch as one of my characters, I’d love a fic that compares Delle Seyah’s feelings for Dutch and for Aneela. Like, obviously Delle Seyah was physically attracted to Dutch and since Dutch and Aneela look the same, there’s that element there from the beginning. Is that weird for Delle Seyah, considering how different Dutch and Aneela are otherwise? What differences between Dutch and Aneela are the most significant to Delle Seyah, and what similarities does she notice, beside the physical? What is it that makes Delle Seyah fall in love with Aneela, as opposed to whatever it was she felt for Dutch? Is she still attracted to Dutch at the end of S3?

It seems like neither Aneela or Delle Seyah have ever felt like this about anybody, so I’d just love any sort of fic dealing with how either/both of them process these emotions!! Is it scary for them? Exciting? How anxious does it make them? What are they most worried about?

I wouldn’t mind a fic about Aneela and Delle Seyah just being evil queens and unleashing themselves on the universe together while luxuriating in their power and having the most passionate, wild sex as they think/talk about all the evil deeds they’ve accomplished!

Honestly uhhh any sort of porn about them would be SO welcome, I’m shallow and they’re beautiful and they clearly seem like they have a lot of fun in bed!

Maybe there’s something you can play with about the green and mind-melding here? I don’t know, just an idea I’m throwing out there! :D

“Be careful” / “Be brutal” might just one of my favourite dialogue exchanges in any piece of fiction ever 💖 I just love their dynamic and I need more of it, so I’d be interested to read anything you’d like to write about them!

The Handmaiden

Requested characters: Sook-hee, Hideko

(I’m basically copy & pasting from my letter last year because I still want the same things!)

What’s the canon about? A 3-hour long movie; Korean adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith. A conwoman falls in love with her female mark!

What I love about the canon: It’s such a beautiful gay romance with brilliant twists and the two female leads are SO endearing in their own ways; the triumph of the women over the horrible men in their lives, and in particular the triumph of Hideko over the trauma she’s experienced, is really moving and buoyant to watch. The movie is also just lush with careful detail and a dazzling experience from start to finish.

Prompts:

I’d love anything about Hideko and Sook-hee, set during or after the film.

If it’s set during the film, I’d really love something from Hideko’s POV, because I feel like her thoughts are much more opaque in the film. I’d like to read about how she feels about her life before Sook-hee appears, what her first impressions of Sook-hee are, and the journey of her falling in love with Sook-hee. (I don’t want explicit detail about the abuse that Hideko has suffered: the level of detail that the film goes into is fine, but nothing beyond that, please!)

Missing scenes from the movie would be SO welcome! I can’t get enough of their precious interactions and how they always feel so honest somehow, even if they’re both hiding behind secrets and lies at first?

After the movie: where do they go, what do they do? Something that takes place immediately afterwards, or something that takes place years in the future – even something that looks at them being old and grey together, omg, that would make my heart melt!

I could totally be into a more plotty kind of fic that shows them running more cons together! Equally, I would be SO here for simple, slice-of-life stuff.

Something that explores Hideko and Sook-hee’s relationship with kink after the movie would be WONDERFUL. How does Hideko feel about kink after the abuse she’s suffered? Does she want to be kinky with Sook-hee, but have really complicated feelings about it? The mutuality and symmetry of their sex scenes in the movie is what strikes me, how the focus is on mirroring each other, doing the same acts together. But I could see them trying out different things as they become more comfortable and settle into their relationship. Like, the ending scene with Hideko reclaiming for her own pleasure the bells that were once used to abuse her – that scene is so lovely and anything in this vein would be great!

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Yuletide, and I can’t wait to read your creation! <3

#yuletide 2017 #yuletide #dear author

0 notes