What Starstruck Dee theory have people made that is your favourite?
there have been quite a lot, and i genuinely love them all!
early on i think the most popular theory was that she was possessed or had been possessed at some point, most likely by dark matter. she actually debunked this theory personally, but i think people just assumed she was lying! 😂
my favourite part is not any one theory, but watching a shift in thoughts over time as more things are revealed, and seeing people share theories/work together in comments and reblogs. i like the "OOHHH WWWWHAT...!?!" moments a lot; whether they are a reaction to my storytelling or to other folks' detective work!
early theories revolved around how she was weird for a waddle dee, or at least a native of popstar. despite my never explicitly confirming anything to the contrary, theories have now broadly shifted to assuming she is not from popstar at all, and most people do now generally agree she's not really a waddle dee.
i don't recall exactly who first came up with each theory (though some big players are @the-void-is-a-disappointment who did a huge amount of early deetective work and encouraged me to build it as a story for solving, @shibuya-toasted-with-extra-cream, @graycoin and @jojo-schmo) and i'm not sure which of these theories are still held by anyone
but here a few of my favourites, roughly in order that they started appearing...
♻️ she's a total mimic species like kirby or void, copying things around her either by intent or by accident
🗑️ similar to above, but she's an incorrect copy or a "beta" mock-up type of a waddle dee
🧚 that she was just born different, like a fae changeling, and might have been hidden away when young as a result
🕰️ she is something totally inorganic and/or mechanical, created by or like the clockwork stars or stardream, perhaps wish contingent
🥇 sometimes attached to the above, she was created to serve some sort of Greater Purpose. she might have failed at it or been flawed, and was subsequently discarded on popstar
🌠 a dozen and one wildly different things connected to the "falling star that hit her". alien life form on the meteor transferred into her on impact. infection by intergalactic bacteria/dark matter. simply massive concussive trauma that fucked up her signature (back when we thought that was the only thing wrong with her). the star was magic and fused with her. she hatched from it and is literally a star herself. probably missing some here.
🪐 waddle dee from a different place/planet. this one is quite a sensible theory, given that we do see many quite different dees!
🤍 she is a fragmented piece of void/void termina. this one in particular i know is @shibuya-toasted-with-extra-cream 's ongoing theory and she's put in a lot of really cool work towards it!
⚔️ she's somehow connected to the heroes of yore. this theory i think has only started popping up since galacta knight has become a reoccurring visitor in her storyline and we've started asking questions about her familiar looking magic spears, but you can certainly 1hko @moonverc3x with this one
🧿 she's connected to the matters. sometimes soul, because it's sometimes star themed and lacks a token representative. where as a connection to dream might link her to fecto forgo/fecto elfilis in some way (a creature also well known for a catastrophic meteor attack). i've also seen folks confident that she's connected to heart matter as well, probably again due to everyone's favourite grumpy swan showing up
this is all i can think of or locate right now, but there's been a pretty wide range of things. i feel there has been a rather interesting transition over time from "she's a messed up waddle dee" to "she's probably connected to a universal superpower of some kind" which i am genuinely really really thrilled about?! 😂 what a glow up for a pathetic little wawa!!!
i'm also personally really fond of seeing how people's existing biases influence what they can find and draw connections in. for instance: i know @jojo-schmo loves the forgotten land and elfilis, and digs into those connections and draws out some really cool stuff because her knowledge is already so specialised! i think this is the true highlight of working on this story for me, people theorising and engaging in the lore, and laser pin-pointing things that tie into our personal faves-- the way we tend to do with kirby lore as a whole-- is such uninhibited delight
i sincerely hope people will enjoy where starstruck's story does go, in the end!!
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3,4,15 for any member of team snakemouth!
...how about all three?
(for this ask game)
3. Obscure headcanon
For Kabbu, though we may have noted this before, we think that the North is quite firmly considered a patch of Deadland - and its inhabitants, as a result, tend to be very, very strange from the perspective of the rest of the world. For Kabbu, specifically, this means a variety of things, both biologically and culturally - though Northern beetles are a lot more common in Bugaria, deadlands in general come with a very high rate of mutation and a very high rate of death, and that means a high rate of superstition both in things that actively impact survival and in things that do not - as well as the simple fact that a constantly-changing set of genetics means that what a northern beetle is like is often very, very open to change.
Kabbu is an example of a burrower - a subspecies of sorts primarily identified by claws designed, very specifically, for digging. His claws grow into a sort of broad shovel shape and tend to be much sturdier than an equivalent beetle's - getting underground in moments in soft ground isn't really an exaggeration! Though he can dig through harder ground, it takes time and effort, and he can't go at it with the sheer speed of softer soil - technically, he could burrow through solid rock given enough time, but it would be both hard and extremely painful. It's a trait that's heavily prized in the North for its ability to create shelter and safety - beetles dominate the North's underground, and there's nothing that can really pose a threat to them. Tunnels are safety, and it really surprises and disorients him when things underground attack him, because back home that just kind of doesn't happen unless it's Another Beetle specifically targeting you.
In terms of more social things, he has a lot of trouble getting used to the concept of mimics. This is mostly due to the fact that mimics as a whole don't really... exist in the north, at least not in the means of gaining benefit from mimicking anything else. If you can talk to them as any other awakened bug, they're usually exactly what they say they are, and species mimicking normal geological features and plants haven't found any success, unless you're willing to get extremely generous with describing the snow-bank camouflage of a Northern Silk Moth's topcoat.
Though sand wasps or "white bees" still exist, the thing they're mimicking no longer exists in the same area. Any Hive that once was in the North is long dead, overly-large groups of bugs tend to die out quickly thanks to the handful of large predators that may decide the benefits outweigh the consequences when enough tasty beetles gather in the same place, and when the enemy you're dealing with is both too heavily armoured to be really deterred by most weaponry and capable and intelligent enough to stalk your group through the snow until the cost outweighs the benefit of eating you... well, the sort of small groups generally sent to start a new colony of social bugs really don't stand a chance.
It is, occasionally, very hard to get used to the fact that southern silk moths only grow a few heads taller than him. He's used to them presenting a lot more of a threat.
For Leif... we think he's completely, 100% blind. His eyes are frozen over due to quirk of his biology - the thing about his integration that makes him a failure, specifically. With any of the Snakemouth cordyceps, they do not naturally transfer the immunity to their own magic that any other variety of mage would have, and so need to alter their hosts in order to get the appropriate biology across. With Leif, that protection is not sufficient to protect the host, much less to preserve valuable organs - eyes, especially, are fragile, after all. The cold he naturally generates exceeds the host adaptations he provides, resulting in, even beyond the blindness, unusually brittle chitin, extremely stiff and easy-to-damage tissue, organic food processing efficiency appropriate for a bug currently freezing to death...
Well, you get the idea. Functionally, if alive, a host body would be in a state of perpetual hypothermia, prone to breaking down over time and needing persistent repair that his strain of cordyceps cannot provide, as any repair he could offer that's not within his host's natural healing capabilities requires manually breaking down and reconstructing any parts, which... is inconvenient at best. As he is, he gets around most of these issues by simply replacing his host body's soft tissue with cordyceps, but that has its own issues, mainly in making him look and move incredibly uncanny. Injuries take a very long time to repair, relatively, though the less tissue damage is done the easier it is to fix - being cleanly sliced in two, for example, might be easier to handle than any sort of crushing damage. As far as his eyes go... eyes of any sort are delicate, and the slightest damage can permanently blind someone. Any of Snakemouth Den's cordyceps tend to go blind anyways as the fungus burrows into ocular nerves - if anything, this is better for hiding, since the frost over his eyeballs conceals any mycelium in the eyes themselves. In theory, it can be repaired... in practice, it would be far too much of a pain for work that will be undone the moment he overtaxes his ice magic again.
...also, he doesn't really care. Sight is not the most important sense a moth has and his scent and ability to sense pheromones is fine, along with a general sensitivity to things like vibrations in the air. More than fine, even, since he's now kind of hybridized with both Ant and Bee and the number of pheromones he's sensitive enough to sense has shot through the roof. This on top of the "magic sense" he has means he has absolutely no trouble getting around, though reading books requires more or less sticking an antenna or fungal tendril over them and parsing out where the ink is by scent and texture. He full-on didn't notice he was blind until after the cordyceps reveal.
For Vi, while this might be one we've mentioned before, we headcanon that she's got a bit of minor mutation throwing her antenna... maybe 2% more towards a non-social relative, which gears her just slightly more towards being able to detect "foreign" scents - predators, prey, and any pollen or nectar in the area. Unfortunately, this slight shift in what scents she's made to pick up comes with a reduced sensitivity to pheromones and pheromone communication within the hive, along with loss of the general innate understanding that an average bee would have of how she's meant to "fit in" to a structure that utterly cripples her communication and social life in the hive.
It's minor enough of a mutation that she's never been flagged - she's a mutation of a social bee, not a normal variant of a solitary - but she smells weird, and she doesn't pick up on pheromones quite enough, and the variation in signals she puts off means that she both fails the communication to get across what she might need and fumbles the communication conveyed back to her about what she should do. Subtle things build up over time, and within the Hive, the negatives far outweigh the benefits - the Hive is only built with bees that fit to a standard in mind, and even minor deviations can get you dragged far, far behind.
This is getting very long so, uhh. Here's a cut. Everything else is below it. We enjoy getting very long-winded. There's a lot in here.
15. Worst thing they’ve ever done
Well, this one will depend on if it's "in general" or "by their standards". Putting any sort of objective moral judgement on just about anything is ridiculously difficult, especially with how values vary by culture or individual.
There is no such thing as objective worst, and we absolutely don't guarantee these would line up with your idea of worse, and so we'll offer two options here - what we believe they would think of first if posed with the question, and an alternative answer that would likely crop up.
For Kabbu, his own response would be easy - abandoning his teammates to The Beast. It haunts him to this day - really, what sort of beetle abandons their swarm to a fate like that? If he was a little faster, a little braver, a little less of a coward - but no. He abandoned those he was meant to care most for, and they died because of it.
For the other...
There are some things that are necessary, to survive somewhere as harsh as the Deadlands. Not everyone can be saved. Not everything can be helped. Not everyone can be taken in. Tradition and law is the heart and soul of the North - rules that everyone must comply to, if not for the sake of themselves, than for the sake of those they may interact with. To break a law, for any reason, is to be shunned by the community, most likely to your eventual death.
She broke a law. It could have been for understandable reasons, or not - it doesn't matter. She put the community at risk, and for that, she couldn't stay. She was put out in the cold, despite her pleading to the contrary. She was allowed to beg and plead and bang on the door, and yet, it meant nothing. The beast she would have lead to them caught up, eventually. He would still believe it was justified.
For Leif, his first response would be... exactly what you expect of him, really. The body he took without a care. The life he stole. He might vary on whether it's the action of stealing it or the lies he's told with that body, but the answer would be the same.
For the one he wouldn't think of... He could have spoken up. He didn't. He met their eye, slated for execution on crimes that he could parlay them on if he implicated himself, and he said nothing.
The look on their face still haunts him sometimes. It hurts more now that he's two, rather than one. It's what was needed to protect his family.
For Vi... a fault in a machine. The instructions were boring, and confusing, and hard to read. She tried to do whatever she thought might work, instead of following the manual. There was an injury. Then another one. It was her fault, really, for rigging it wrong, but she was tired and angry and she argued instead of just sucking it up and fixing it when confronted on it, and it went unfixed for days more. A minor fault can very well lead to deaths, and though this one didn't, it came close - one more inch, a slightly looser bolt, and it would have cracked a bug's shell clean open. It's a miracle it turned out as well as it did. It's a miracle that no one connected it to her enough, even when it was fixed. Someone else was punished, and she was old enough to know not to step forward - she's not stupid, after all.
The guilt still haunts her. The "what-if". The possibility of it. If someone died of her own stupid negligence, if she made someone else take the fall - she would let them, really, her sense of self-preservation isn't that bad, but she's not sure she could live with it after.
With the one she wouldn't think of personally... considering the background she's got, the journey to the Ant Kingdom, and the fact that it's already stated she took jobs before canon? We think there's a fairly good chance that Vi's off jobs got... shady. It's not like she has much in the way of morals when it comes to money, and "will do just about anything for enough cash" is a decent market. If you're willing to forsake your morals, you can get more money than your heart desires - at the cost of just a bit of risk, at that!
She doesn't think about it, really. It wasn't something she needed to think about. They were threatening her, they were a risk to her team, they were the price she had to pay to eat, the specifics of what happened don't matter much at this point. Put in the position again, would she choose their life, or hers? It doesn't matter. They're dead, anyways. She should know. She was the one to take the payment for it.
4. Favorite line?
We're copy-pasting these straight from the game! These Direct Quotes are all sourced from @aquilamage's Bug Fables Transcript project, which we highly recommend checking out! It's an excellent resource for double-checking dialogue without having to replay the game first, and a repository for just about all the dialogue in the game (provided it wasn't taken out by previous patches, of course).
We will be honest: there's a lot of dialogue in this game. This might not be our absolute favorites, as a result of a general poor memory as well as Too Much Game. Also, we have blatant favoritism towards Vi in all ways. Most of these are favorite interactions, rather than anything else, so...
For Leif:
Kabbu: Leif. If you need to take a break, let us know. Vi will carry you.
Vi: That is not happening.
Leif: Oh, the fatigue, it kicks in...
Vi: I said it's not happening!
...and for Vi, we're fond of this dialogue, specifically because the first time we encountered it we misread "exploring" as "exploding".
Leif: Science looks like a lot of hard work.
Vi: It's like uh...the thinking version of exploring!
But of course, our favorite Vi Dialogue as well as our personal favorite dialogue in the game in general would be the Bee Guard overworld spy.
Leif: Vi, you're the only Bee explorer, right?
Vi: Huh? Uh, yeah! That I know of...
Leif: We've been thinking it's a bit weird, to see so many Bee guards, but only one explorer...
Vi: Look, they're not guards because they want to or anything, okay?
Vi: They were born to be guards, so they guard. That's it.
Kabbu: That's a bit somber...
Vi: ...That's just how the Hive is sometimes.
"I'm allergic to bouncers" is a close second, of course. In terms of story implications, we pull on her Jaune interactions and especially the point just after getting kicked out of the studio for the first time during Jaune's request, but that's... it's less we "like" it, per se, and more that the implications are fun to toy with. In terms of the actual dialogue, it just... makes us feel sad. Sad, [], and maybe a bit angry on her behalf. We've been there more than we care to admit, after all.
We... wouldn't wish something similar on anyone. And no matter how good the good gets with Jaune, it still can't really outweigh the fact that the bad starts ticking boxes about emotional abuse in a way that makes relationships like Mothiva & Zasp that more people are willing to try and call out pale in comparison. We probably need to finish that essay some time...
Anyways, we like it when Kabbu gets mad enough to yell at people.
Kabbu: This is ridiculous! You realize you could be dooming us all!?
Kabbu: What if the Termite King loses trust in the Queen!?
Kabbu: What if you lose to the Wasp King without our help!?
Kabbu: Have you gone completely, utterly insane!? Have you lost all intelligence!
Mothiva: Yikes. You're overthinking this WAY too much.
Mothiva: The Ant Kingdom's way better in our hands than with you LOSERS.
Kabbu: We have SAVED YOUR LIFE BEFORE, you WITCH!
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I know I've infodumped this before but not as its own post so let's go. what I'd do if I was in charge of making a live a live anime. I am ignoring the fact that I desperately want it to be a musical because that's not going to happen so ask me about my Separate thoughts about what I'd do if I was in charge of making a The Day The Night Slept The Album-ening of live a live.
ok so my Basic Idea is I'd let the show have a 13 episode (maybe 14? does that happen?) first season. I assume each of the first 7 chapters would need about 2 episodes, but I can see some that end in one like wild west or Definitely present day. I could also see some taking longer though, like distant future and near future. it'd even itself out I think to average to 2 episodes each.
it'd be an anthology series basically. a bunch of non-connected stories, but tied together by one key point. a narrator. see I have a Framing Device idea here and it's that we know odio from the very beginning, but never see his face or know who he is. this is very inspired by princess tutu here but here the stories are actively being Read by somebody outside of it, and occasionally he takes the reins to bend the retelling a bit, likely in the chapter boss' favor. note that while the anime is actually Playing and showing the characters, if the narrator does decide to kick in the characters will likely not be doing what he says they are, and they Definitely cannot hear him. it's an unreliable narrator story, but to the point where it's pretty easy to tell that he's biased. in practice how this probably would go would be like in princess tutu, occasionally when a character reaches a point that justifies his own philosophy in some way he'll cut in and monologue about The Nature Of Man Bringing Only Tragedy or whatever the fuck. also maybe cutting in to give the chapter villains some sympathy for the devil, maybe at the end to close each story out as he turns the last page? I dunno I don't want to be Too obvious but like. odio does sound pretty damn evil by default so maybe it'd be obvious anyway.
anyway! that's season one. anthology of short stories. on the final episode I'd leave it hanging on him picking up one last book or something, but I'd let that be told in either a short season (again, do these happen?) or a movie ??? anyway that would start out with the middle ages chapter, which I don't think will have any narration? I'm iffy on this? it'd be cool to see his retrospective thoughts on his own story but also, that's a bit heavy-handed, I'm not sure. anyway the thing is that around the end, when oersted breaks into his soliloquy at the archons roost. there I think we'd get a sort of cut-in, as halfway through our narrator starts reading it out himself. shut book camera pan Blonde Man Jumpscare I think that's the best way to go about the "oh shit the villain is the protag of that story" reveal. also it'd be fun. anyway that'd be either the beginning chunk or the first two? episodes?
from here I'm not Exactly sure how to frame it because all of the endings are Very important, but also kind of. happen at the same time? I do not know how to do this. the easy way would just be to have it remain anthology-ish, and have say the boss rush version of the dominion of hate be one story while the rest is another, but I don't think that fits into the framing device well. mm?? I have no idea. I think we're good without the bad ending of the dominion of hate happening as long as the "if you kill this dude you'll end up just as fucked as him" message gets conveyed in some way or another but I don't think we can skip the whole other version of the DoH.
maybe we can play it less as Actually Happening and more a what if scenario?? more odio just. Fucking Talking Alone Again about what Could be if not for Man's Folly^tm. I think that'd get the point across, be a good intro for the rest of the dominion of hate and stay in universe but it would Not have the added bonus of "ok you kicked around a bunch of jrpg protagonists now what. did that make you feel any better" unless we tried to hammer that home in a different way. and oh boy do I not have a single idea what to do with the armageddon ending. maybe instead just have him mention how if he and the other odios were Still denied he'd have the page burnt entirely or something. maybe at the end. shrugs. there's not a ton I can do here.
eh. anyway the actual dominion of hate would likely be more based in the protagonists than anything, likely picking a main character (Probably Akira) and not having a Narrator as much as just being in the mc's head from time to time. though I Do like the idea of odio still being there Attempting to nudge the protags and them being actually able to hear him this time, it'd have to be used infrequently. or not at all. there is a certain merit to them not knowing anything about him until getting to the archons roost but Us knowing a lot. I dunno. anyway I think this adaptation would have a lot more interactions between the protagonists (desperately needed) and I think that'd take up most of the runtime there, we can incorporate the trials if we want to (trial of heart is necessary to be sure but the rest really aren't, so it can be a good dungeon for the whole team to go through and have some more plot-motivated character moments) but I think Getting The Band Together might already take a good amount of time if we don't rush past good chances for character building or interaction. I want it to feel like the mcs Do actually start to be a team that is the thing I have the Most problems with about the game, though in doing so that will mean we're gonna have to do away with the 4 character party thing unless we want to have them split up sometimes. that's details. the point is that it's going to be All the mcs together most of the time and hopefully it doesn't feel crowded.
anyway from there it kind of goes as expected, except with the aforementioned (we don't need to have the bad ending be its own thing but we do need to mention the consequences). maybe somebody of the team Does try to grant oersteds wish before being held back or something. for similarities reasons I say oboro but this can be wiggled. anyway I also think around the actual Ending ending you'd get more than just one monologue from the mcs, you'd probably get more of like. an actual Conversation I guess? the mcs building off of each other's points to oersted? I dunno I'm spitballing here I do think it would Start Off with akira's ending though and then somebody scruffs him and continues off from there. I dunno the important thing is that everybody should get a word in or perhaps a hug in in the case of pogo. I think that's it though? I probably won't return to the plot device to show like another book being closed or whatever that is purely A Plot Device so it'd be weird to have it come back after oersted was Thoroughly Dead. I will say though if the live a live anime has an ED it's gotta have sin of odio in the A that's the law.
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