#and in universe because yknow we always get the outside perspective and know these characters flaws and struggles

[martyrbat]

world's finest (1990) #1

[ID: two in-universe drawings from two different orphan children talking about their heros. The first one is by Ann Gray, who's eight years old. She drew a surprisingly decent photo of Batman in front of a yellow background and wrote, ‘My hero — Batman. He is strong and fierce and he can beat anyone. He is very tall. He wears a cool suit with a bat on. He is not afrade of bullits and he saved my life (true). No one nows his reel name or address. the biggist crinminel in all the world could not make him sorender. Batman keeps gothum city safe for everyone and pets.’

The second drawing is by Zachary Sikes who's 12 and a half years old. He drew a photo of Superman using his heat vision as he flies. He wrote, ‘My Hero — Superman. My hero is Superman. He is able to fly and I have seen him lift up a car (with 2 peeple in it). If you hit him in the face then he will just laff. Every one likes him and he saved my life once. The big S on his shirt is for his name (Superman). He lives in Metroplis (where I used to life also). He keeps everything there in law and order.’ END ID]

[joshuaalbert]

very late but. wesley :]

favorite thing about them 

as will be a constant refrain throughout this post I have said this before but I have an overactive older sibling instinct so the most important thing here is that he is a little guy doing his best. in terms of actual traits, ik some people find him bratty but that’s always confused me bc like over and over again he goes out of his way to help people. like the whole b plot of icarus agenda stands out as being real endearing and yeah it’s goody two shoes characterization whatever but it is my god given right to appreciate some kindness in a character. it’s a harsh world yknow? but conversely i also like when he’s a bitch bc i think it’s funny.

i just. also. this requires giving credit to r*n m**re whose heart i would eat in the marketplace etc etc but the first duty is so fucking episode and the progression to journey’s end conceptually is really fascinating. execution of journey’s end? needs improvement. but the idea is SO. it’s so. like yes there are really interesting undertones to wesley’s character present in seasons 1-4 but i think a lot of them are far more meaningful when you return to them after the late season episodes. like. there’s a reason i think about the first duty-lower decks-journey’s end arc all the fucking time.

hang on this got long as shit so im gonna hit this with a read more before we continue on

least favorite thing about them

from a writing perspective they fucked up by not letting him make any significant mistakes pre first duty which is part of why first duty is so good. like that’s just not...how making a character works. i personally think it would’ve been good to have him fail the psych test the first time because there would be a lot to work with there but in s1 that just wasn’t the show they were making. from like a personality perspective. i mean i cant blame him for being the most repressed bitch alive in several key ways but please go to therapy.

brOTP

ok i gotta use this opportunity to get this off my chest (again. because i think this was in my post first duty rant somewhere on my other blog that i gotta find again) but like it’s so weird when the show tries to convince us he has meaningful friendships with kids his own age on the enterprise because like. he definitely doesn’t. his friends each show up for like one episode either for a plot point or literally just to prove to his mom or whoever that he has friends but he spends all his free time either alone or with the senior officers. he does not have friends his own age and i think that very much plays into his dynamic with the squadron later. that said i do think his dynamic with riker is fun and i also love writing his friendship with jaxa now that i’ve nailed down a vibe that was kind of eluding me lmao.

OTP

#cralbertgang but like. do i trust anyone else with it? outside of the little universe i have constructed? unsure. i just know that i watched first duty and was like hey man it’s kinda gay to forget your sweater on a ski trip with the kid whose entire civilian wardrobe is weird sweaters and then to keep it for a month after and while that is by no means the point of the episode, it was an interesting little side thing to ponder. in canon i don’t think it would have been a mutual thing but it’s interesting to explore out of canon. it’s also. like. as stated above none of wesley’s earlier friendships are that convincing so it’s wild that they did actually successfully imply this friendship with like four lines let alone set up the potential for anything else. 

nOTP

i mean. wesley x literally any of the adult main characters but i feel like the one ive run into the most is wesley x riker which is like an incredible misreading of their dynamic to me and also like. even if it’s after wesley turns 18 it implies that riker was Waiting For Him To Turn 18 which is. uh. uhhh. don’t like that! and like ik it’s not 1:1 writing a fic about something equals glorification of that thing, i understand that sometimes people want to explore a dynamic Because there’s something wrong with it that they want to examine, but a lot of times with this specifically im like oh you wanted to ship two white guys and picard was too bald for you.

random headcanon

man i gotta stop posting every thought i have the moment it comes into my head bc now im like uhh what haven’t i already said. ive already said that half his classmates definitely think he’s dead post journey’s end. i think he likes the idea of marriage because he only got to see it very briefly with his own parents but this is another concept that’s idealized to him, and whether or not he ever manages it himself is up to your personal perception of postcanon. i think he’s bad at poker because he has not accepted his queerness but the correlation there is just that that happened to younger me. i think he talks in his sleep. 

unpopular opinion

yeah like both of us have said he is not a funny gen z meme kid. and like a certain percentage of content for any character is gonna be. incorrect quotes style content? of like VERY loose very exaggerated characterization but i feel like for him that’s kind of all you get. admittedly i don’t check tags and shit that often im kind of just vibing but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of engagement with the actual character. this isn’t really an unpopular opinion ive just kind of gone off the rails. whatever.

OH wait okay i thought of something but but a bunch of the youtube comments for the nemesis deleted scene are about how like it wasn’t canon compliant that he would come back for the wedding or be back in starfleet temporarily or whatever and i have beef with that bc im like. dude maybe he just missed his friends and family and wanted to hang out with them for a while. let him chill.

song i associate with them

this is really just me consolidating every post i’ve ever made about him huh. but like kiss off by violent femmes IS the post first duty-pre journey’s end wesley song to me. just like. everything adding up over time until you’re miserable and it feels like the universe is against you and you start lashing out as a result. like it’s a depressing association but i heard it for the first time in years like a month ago and was like holy shit. wesley song.

favorite picture of them

i have a fondness for top 1 photo of wesley crusher that could also be a photo of gordie lachance

[hirazuki]

So like, one thing that's kinda been poking at the back of my mind since the chunin exams finished, is how much Kishimoto really wanted it both ways with younger Naruto and it doesn't quite make sense.

We get flashbacks of Naruto being isolated as a kid at different points, but during that same time period in his life we also see him having those other flashbacks of him with some of the other boys and they come off as friends. Yet, we get ones like when Kiba literally was shown bullying Naruto in the one flashback during their fight in the preliminary round, mind you Naruto doesn't see him that way so it doesn't appear that way to him, but I digress.

Idk I find it mildly annoying. Also on a slightly different but related tangent, also weird as fuck the Shikamaru and Choji didn't meet until they were like eight, considering their parents are close enough to be drinking buddies still even after their genin days are over. Like I know it's typically moms that get together with their kids for playdates, but it just seems kinda baffling that the dads apparently never did. It comes off like Kishi didn't think to write some things for consistency, and kept that younger period of the characters vague so some of the details come off muddy when held up together.

Also the more I watch, the more disappointed I become in every adult that isn't at least embracing their evil shit, yknow?

So the way I've always read that is like, he had a handful of people (Shika, Chouji, Kiba) who weren't outright hateful towards him or didn't seem to mind him beyond what you'd expect from the average childhood rivalry/bullying, and: one, being Naruto; and two, seeing this within the context of how everyone else treated him, it came off to him as friendship. Naruto doesn't actually have a good, solid foundation for what friendship is imo, not experience-wise, and he doesn't have any good examples/role models at this point either. He definitely becomes a champion and role model for friendship himself, but especially in his younger days, I've always felt his understanding for it was conceptual, like something he'd know from stories about it, and not a lived experience. When all he knows is people throwing him out of their stores, whispering about him, glaring at him, etc., I think it's only natural that what would be an unremarkable association with a few classmates to a child that did have that background, to him appears as close bonds because it's the only non-negative experience in his life.

It's been a while since I rewatched the early days, but if I recall correctly, most of those flashbacks are from Naruto's point of view, which would make sense why they have this rose-colored glasses quality to them. Kiba's flashbacks certainly give a different perspective, but also from what I remember, Shika's too give the sense of a much more casual relationship with Naruto. So, I really do think it comes down to perspective. Most of these interactions too, except for one or two instances in the playground I think, happened at the Academy, and the contrast between that and Naruto's life outside of it (at home, walking the village streets, etc.) is pretty severe, so again, it makes sense to me that he would latch onto any non-negative experience and kind of blow it up in terms of how meaningful it was.

Yup, that is weird given how close their clans are supposed to be, and honestly I think it's just an example of growing pains of the series -- the same thing happens in Bleach, where prior to the Ryoka invasion, it seems like none of the squads actually communicate with each other because no one knows each other's powers or sometimes even appearances and names (which is obviously done as an opportunity to introduce these characters to the audience, but in-universe it comes off pretty weird). The details smooth out the further along you get, but early on some things are pretty rocky and I think it's just mangakas figuring their stuff out plus taking editor input into consideration too. Of course, story-wise, you can headcanon away as to the reason why they wouldn't have met until then XD

YES! That's a really good way to summarize why I love Orochimaru so much -- as well as Sasori, Kisame, and so many others. They are self-aware (with a few blind spots here and there, because everyone has those XD) and cognizant of what the system is truly like, and at the very least acknowledge their actions if not wholly embrace them, and it's so refreshing after sitting through so much of Konoha's "sanitized" perspectives and politics. And -- this may be projection -- I think this pervasive disappointment in adults, being promised the "Will of Fire" only for the system to fail you, etc., is why a lot of late 80s/90s kids really latched on to this series. There are very few people from our generation that I've met who didn't have narcissistic or neglectful parents/teachers/mentors (obviously this can be true for any generation, but I honestly do think that millennials got an unfair share of it) and who weren't severely screwed over by the social and economic lot we've been left with, so even if it's something that you may not actively pick up on watching as a child, it's something you subconsciously recognized in the material and why it struck such a deep chord in so many of us.

[faelapis]

i got a message about whether i feel eyeball & aquamarine fusing together “doesn’t make sense, because it wasn’t foreshadowed in any way and they have completely different goals”. 

i initially responded privately, but then i got more messages of similar content, so here’s my thoughts. 

new characters & dynamics often arrive in a way where we only understand why they’re there later. think of ruby squad, spinel, the off-colors, ect.

because they were new, they were hard to predict at the time. when characters showed up at steven’s door, we could guess, but that’s all. so back then, that could feel jarring... but not after we got to know them.

today, we understand and appreciate these characters and their place in the world, because, in hindsight, their inclusion was completely natural. through knowing them, we learn more about the SU universe and the (sometimes unexpected, until you think about it!) interrelation of systemic circumstances. 

i also feel like they’re allowed to, yknow, introduce new things in an epilogue series that takes place 2 years later? again, much like they did with spinel. the whole idea is to show how the status quo has changed & people have changed, which later gives you that “oh.” moment when you finally understand why. 

when a new threat arrives, your immediate first question should be what their motive is. which... seems to be exactly what steven is up to!

if you want more concrete foreshadowing, look to what aqua said about fusion. “sooner or later, you all get sentimental... just unfuse, and we’ll never speak of this again”. she sympathizes with topaz. she makes the deliberate choice to look the other way. and maybe eyeball’s longing for companionship is similar, which i think may have been at the bottom of the creepy way she wanted a pearl. 

she’s a lot more “selfish” than people think. i remember people acted like she saw herself as “selflessly devoted” on the level of someone like jasper... but in reality, she gave me the opposite vibes - eyeball’s a hardened, worn soldier on the outside, but on the inside, her motives are quite self-centered. 

she doesn’t really have exceptional damage or a self-sacrificing goal. she mostly wants recognition for herself & to feel less lonely. that’s what she lacks in life.

which, yknow, is understandable!... but i don’t think that’s opposed to aqua. she, on her side, is young, had a subtle sympathetic moment of her own that can hint at a soft spot for fusion, and similarly seems to yearn for approval.

i try to avoid being overly speculative about stuff we Just Don’t Know yet. i’ve been blindsided by new events before... but after i understand them, i always gain appreciation for their inclusion. 

we don’t always understand the fast-paced events of the show until after they’ve happened - because that’s what it’s like for steven to live in that world. it’s an authentic experience of living in his shoes. it’s an intentional form of frustration, when you first only get minor hints and people are - understandably! - unwilling to share with him.

it’s not a teaspoon story where motivated characters wait to act until they’ve perfectly explained why, to steven’s face, they do everything. this, i feel, many other shows are unfortunately guilty of doing, because they don’t trust their audience to be patient for a more natural explanation.

steven has a limited perspective. sometimes, people approach him - even hurt him - and he only gets why later. because these characters refuse to open up to him until a certain point. and it’s only at that moment that you understand the brief moments of vulnerability they displayed before.

feeling jarred by them (early on) is sometimes the point, yknow - because assertive personalities insert themselves into steven’s life whether he likes it or not. that’s part of his tragedy. spinel, again, is a great example of this, and her seemingly arriving from nowhere served a purpose in her tragedy.

[tomiyeee]

finished the story quests for bl3 (but barely any of the side missions yet) and i got...Opinions(tm)

(sorry if this doesn’t cut on mobile! also if you want to hide spoilers i’m tagging all my bl3 posts as “bl3 spoilers” so ny’all can blacklist it)

in no particular order:

i honestly wanted to give gearbox some slack and try my best to like this game bc i know people had probably unfairly high expectations for this game given all the build up, but they really just kept letting me down in everything but the graphics

said this before but overall, the characters are all Quite lackluster

^^ tyreen and troy included. adding the word "bitch" to every sentence does not automatically make it funnier

that being said, i super love their backstory + relationship with typhon/nekofeyo-whatever

the character designs are equally boring. moxxi was the only one who got a real improvement imo. lilith and maya are okay. rhys...i dont think i have to explain. lia...i dislike her hair; the black felt like it balanced out her design better and the white streak was interesting and cool but full white just looks bad tbh. zer0 feels less sleek and more bulky which doesnt fit him much. tina lost her pretty color palette and cute outfit. where are all the bright pretty color palettes in general???? there are other colors besides brown and black???? use them?????

ending of pre-sequel: “you will need all the vault hunters you can get” me: “ooh does that mean all the vh’s from previous games are back? i can’t wait to see everyone meet each other! :D” bl3: only nine of them come back, 3 of them die, the rest are involved in maybe one mission at most

boss fights. super. boring. and tedious. i mean this could be partly because i was playing on ps4 which made it extra not fun but if the only reason the fight is difficult is because they have a lot of health...it's not fun or challenging. i want fights like handsome jack with interesting mechanics. i want fights like angel with emotional impact. i want fights like the pre-sequel final boss that i forgot the name of with variation that isnt just "now they have an attack that shines bright lights in ur eyes, covers the whole arena, and can knock you down in one hit im looking at you traunt and killavolt". tyreens fight was the only one that i somewhat enjoyed because of this. all the others were just like "ughhhh again?"

im really enjoying melee amara playstyle. taking out badass enemies in four hits is my jam. this is just my fallout 4 playthrough all over again babey heck yea

typhon just wanted to be a good dad!!! he called tyreen starlight which is adorable!!! he did the best he could and tyreen hated him for it!!! i don’t blame either of them for that tbh, it makes sense from both their perspectives. tyreen definitely should have been more understanding, but she’s a dick so :/ (not saying this is a writing flaw, just a character flaw)

hammerlock needs higher standards in men but i really appreciate the undeniably in-your-face "fuck you" to all gamer dudes

i really. hate. how little the player character seems to matter in the story. in pre-sequel the vh's all had unique dialogue AND npcs would respond, sometimes even with character-specific lines. even when it was the same across vh's, it still felt like the npcs were interacting and speaking directly to them. the player character felt like a character of their own, rather than just a vessel for the player to do quests and kill enemies with or an errand runner for the important characters. i thought that was the direction they were going in with bl3 too but this just feels like bl2 only worse. there’s a separation again between you and the story and it feels like you’re just watching things happen. now ur not just a silent protagonist, but instead your a speaking protagonist who gets completely ignored. whats the point of including unique dialogue if it's not even acknowledged beyond an "uh-huh, moving on"?

sometimes the logic just feels kinda dumb. the twins killed/disabled maya and lilith in a heartbeat, they can literally disintegrate the most powerful beings in the universe, but the vault hunters? absolutely not. they must fight them for 40 minutes and then die.

after the fight with troy, no one even touched tyreen. there's no way they could have thought "yup she's definitely dead, no need to shoot her in the head or anything just to make sure. we didn't do anything to even hurt her, we just assumed." turns out she's 100% alive and gets up to start the apocalypse. who'da thunk! i know they wanted the end to seem more dramatic but it just seems stupid that they could have stopped tyreen like 5 missions earlier had they even the slightest bit of common sense.

lilith was one of the biggest threats to tyreen and troy's whole plan. of course they should leave her alive and simply steal her powers. let's kill the monk siren instead.

i know they didn't include this to give all players a fair experience instead of favoring sirens, but it kinda sucks playing a siren character and it's just completely ignored outside of ur action skill. tyreen and troy are sapping siren powers left and right, but they choose to leave you with yours. when you enter the eridian place with typhon tannis starts glowing because it has "something to do with sirens". what about the one standing right next to her? this applies to bl2 as well...jack i would willingly charge ur vault key for u pls why do u take lilith instead :'(

oh yeah speaking of tannis! i LOVE that she got angels powers. for some reason it just makes me really happy. maybe it's bc i think it's sweet that part of angel survived. maybe it's because it makes for cool fanart. maybe it's just cool. idk. also like that we got a solid explanation of what angel's powers were (influence over technology). i always thought her having control over it in bl2 might've been cuz it was hyperion tech and she had access to it same as she had access to the satellite from bl1. it wasn't super clear since it seemed like she could also materialize things like the ammo during her fight.

that also reminds me: all the dramatic reveals in this game felt kinda badly done.

the very first one with zer0/katagawa. like the whole time i was walking around looking for him i was trying to think why he might've turned/something must have happened to him or rhys. everyone was saying it was undeniably zer0. i finally meet him and take one look at his bright ass maliwan armor and its like. really. you couldnt have made it anymore obvious that thats not zer0. and then his helmet gets knocked off and surprise! it's not him. i totally didnt already figure that out with one glance 10 seconds ago. (maybe even earlier when you got glimpses of him around the building but i always missed it cuz i was looking at the fish tanks n shit)

also the tannis reveal. she was speaking to me in the same way that only known siren characters could. weird unexplained things were happening and seemed to be related to tannis. i wonder if she's a siren? surprise! she's a siren.

tyreen and troy knew about the great vault through some unknown means. typhon was talking about having a son and a daughter who he told stories about the great vault. typhon calls tyreen his daughter a while later and lilith acts surprised like honey ur a little slow, i figured that out several lines ago.

basically i'm not saying they were so obvious that i knew from the beginning of the game; i only figured them out a little before they were outright stated. but it was enough that it kinda ruined the effect and the characters acting surprised only when it was blatantly spelled out for them just made it annoying.

i feel like most of this is pretty negative, but i don’t mean that i hate the game and was miserable playing it. it was honestly okay...like i said i wanted to like it, but gearbox hates me specifically and killed/ruined all my faves just to spite me sooo...*waves hand back and forth in a sort of “ehhh” gesture*. i think my opinion on bl games from most to least fav would be: tftbl, bltps, bl2, bl3, and bl1. so it’s not the worst, but deeefinitely not one of my faves. i mean jack’s not in it (or if he is he doesn’t have a big role) so it’s already at a huge disadvantage. the ending was ok, it was all dramatic n stuff and it kinda makes sense i guess, but it was just about as okay as the rest of the game really. i don’t hate it but it’s not great either yknow?

[tumblunni]

Random list of still WIP npc charries I need to make for this game, yo

* Mayor Grandma The Ultimate

Not actually anyone’s grandma but like... Everyone’s Grandma. That whole ‘village elder as a goddamn force of nature’ kind of character. She’s the Big Good. She’s this tiny unassuming gran who had a history as a legendary hero and is now the super amazing mayor who can solve goddamn anything and defeat any threat against the village and just... HOLDS US ALL WITH HER GRUMPY LOVE I’m imagining her like the protagonist’s gran in The Wee Free Men, or Granny Weatherwax from other discworld books, or the grandma from Summer Wars, or the grandma from Jade Cocoon 1 who even turned out to be literally the deity of badass grandmas who came down into mortal form to slap the shit out of some fools. (The “grim midwife of life and death” is a really fucking badass title)

Anyway she isn’t actually technically the ‘mayor’, she’s just like.. village elder under old country rules, but Regis is the duke that was sent down to Officially be ruler of this province. Officially. It’s just that absolutely everyone knows that the duke is just a figurehead and Ancient Powerful Gran Of The Old Ways is the real power behind this well-oiled machine of a town. Even Regis knows, lol! The previous duke was a total asshole that got served a slice of humble pie by gran and they were fighting at every turn, but now Regis and Mortimer are the Comparatively Less Stuck Up Noblefolks and the town is better off for it. Still, even if Regis isn’t evil like his brother, he’s still a bit foppish and occasionally stupid about what it actually takes to run a town. So they do come into conflict sometimes, but mostly its like BFFs quarrelling instead of the old Shephard Grandma Brings The Wrath of The Heavens Upon Rich Man No Matter How Many Rich Man Guards He Has, Seriously We Found One Of Them Upside Down On Top Of The Roof How Did That Even Happen

And then also i think that she might have a larger role in Blair’s plot cos Blair is kinda like the new Village Hero In Training. But she’s INTENSELY reluctant about it! Not cos she doesn’t like being buff as fuck and punching through walls, but because she doesn’t think she could ever be better than supergran. Cos like.. “yeah I’ve got the muscles but I don’t have the brains, how could I ever cope without you?” She gets really fucking sad at the very idea that supergran might be retiring, and like.. might die someday. So it’s someone who’s clearly qualified for the role repeatedly rejecting it and bringing up more and more perfectionist excuses why she isn’t ready yet, just because she cares so much for her mentor figure and wishes she could fight the tide of time. And that’s how Blair became the Miss Perfect rival type character, and why she’s so humble and oblivious of her own strengths. Also I think this same plot would have links to mortimer and sorrel too, because there was An Event that happened 15 years ago that was what caused mayorgran to start feeling as if she’d hit her limits and the town needs a new Hero. Apparantly ~something~ happened that was like.. the one time mayorgran ever found a problem she couldn’t solve. And also at that time mortimer and sorrel used to be childhood friends, since they’re cousins, but suddenly sorrel’s mum fell in status amoung the noble family and there was a huge upheaval of the town’s status quo. What exactly is this mystery...?

ALSO! she must have a big hat i just want her to have a really big hat (mayorgran, not sorrel, she’s fine with her medium hat)

* Sorrel’s mum

(and Regis’s sister and Morty’s aunt. It IS cousins when someone’s the son of your mum’s sibling, right? I can’t remember all the rules for first removed and stuff...)

Generic Mom. She’s just so NICE! Isn’t she nice? Don’t you agree? For some reason she had a falling out with Duke Regis in the past, and now she lives in comparative poverty and like.. no press statement has ever been released on WHY this happened, and everyone’s become rather distrustful of Regis because of it. What exactly is going on?

I kinda wanted to leave it vague at just this, cos you can’t exactly talk about her at all without spoiers. So yeah the next paragraph is gonna not reveal exactly what happened in that backstory, but it’ll talk about this character’s personality and what it.. actually is, I guess..??

SO...

...

...

A kind of over the top cloyingly “nice” person who really isn’t. A bit of Umbridge and a bit of an overbearing soccer mom. Like.. at first you’ll be wondering ‘why is Sorrel so self hatey when her mom is so nice to her’ but then it becomes clear that’s not what’s really happening. Mom only supports when you act how she wants you to, its a classic ‘living through your children’ situation where she pushes her kid way too far to achieve some goals they never wanted in the first place. And she’s a bit of a moral crusader, like she’s just.. SO convinced that she is ‘nice’, and that if she just acts ‘polite’ and ‘mumsy’ and cute and harmless and follows all the feminine stereotypes it balances out any horribly not nice things she does. Because she’s ‘not that kind of person’. Anything she does is good because she’s good, yknow? And anything Sorrel does is bad if it shows any sort of personality outside of what her mum has so kindly picked out for her, I mean why would you be so selfish, seriously! She kinda always lives like that, seething with resentment and selfish desire and looking for excuses she can use to paint someone as Bad so she is Justified in feeling superior to them and/or ruining their life. And her Nice facade covers up a lot of rather bigoted attitudes she holds, in addition to all the abusiveness. Ones that can be far more insidious cos she delivers them in such a Nice way and appeals to Logic and Compromise and oh but You Know, Everyone Knows, Isn’t It Just Natural And Biological, look at them getting Emotional. She’s very much the archetypical horrid nobleman that we were all so grateful that Regis wasn’t. Except she’s also way more devious and able to hide it beneath a relateable facade, so she can get these stupid naive townsfolk to do stuff that only makes life harder for themselves for the sake of like.. mythical trickle-down benefits that don’t actually exist. And oh, Sorrel, you know you could pass so well for a good Narcian lady if you dyed your hair, you know? Not like Regis’s filthy child. (She says, even though she also married a foreigner, just one from a majority white country...)

Basically she’s just gonna be a detestable monster, and the only pure evil person in the plot. And even more evil because she does such a good job hiding it, and has been able to spread her toxic influence to so many victims undetected for so long. Cos seriously, the story starts off with her being treated as a martyr and people clamouring to replace Regis with her, and it’s just gonna be So Damn Uncomfortable in retrospect when you do a second playthrough and see even Sorrel’s friends completely oblivious to her mum’s evilness. (″Friends? Honey, you don’t HAVE friends. Well, who do you need except little old me?”)

Also I was thinking randomly as a subplot there could be a thing that her mum was in charge of the town library once, and her planned renovations fell through and now the town doesn’t have a library at all, just this big abandoned building and The Enduring Shame. It’d be a good example of how she handles things, cos this is an Enduring Shame for Sorrel and not her. from Sorrel’s perspective she thinks that her mother trusted her with a big responsibility and she fucked it up and thus deserves the scorn. But really her mum just threw a sinking ship at her so she could take the blame, and then was all like “OH THE POOR GIRL IT WAS JUST TOO MUCH RESPONSIBILITY, PLEASE DON’T BLAME HER”. Spreading all these negative rumours to encourage Sorrel to never try and be independant ever again, but in a sneaky reverse psychology way so she could still look like a loving mother. But anyway this is how Sorrel ended up running a Secret Underground Library, her one form of rebellion against her mother’s control. She rescued as many books as she could when the library went under, and now she keeps them all crammed in her room and tries to spread them around without leaving any threads back to her. Cos she knows that her mum is super trusted, and that even good people can’t be trusted to keep secrets from her, and nobody would believe her if she tried to explain why it needs to be secret. So instead she just plays it off as if she’s just another person receiving books from the ghost library, and she’s totally searching for an answer to this mystery too, honest! It’d be a sign that you reached high friendship level with her when she’s like.. able to believe that you’d believe her if she told you her mum abuses her. And the first step of that is ‘hey remember that library we were questing for? its literally under my bed.’ Welcomes you to the secret trapdoor book heaven and you have a strangely romantic evening going OOOOMG FIRST EDITION TOLKEINS (or whatever the equivelant is in this universe XD) But it probably still takes her a while after that to open up about exactly why the library has to be secret, and to come to terms with the fact that she really doesn’t deserve how her mother treats her. So I’d definately give you an opportunity here to Fuck Up Massively by telling the mum about the library, yup. Gotta torment the player every now and again! XD ...but I mean if you’re reading this you know all the spoilrs so you’ll be fine, lol

* Quincy’s grandma (or possibly grand aunt?)

A stern and super professional businesswoman who has a bit of a quarrel with him over how exactly to balance profit vs like.. morality. She’s not a BAD person, her business isn’t so profit-heavy that its like all the actual atrocities you see in mega corporations nowadays. But she’s very distant from her customer base and also from what it’s even like to be poor. And she doesn’t believe that such minor things to improve the shopping experience would like.. actually change anything. What is ‘brand loyalty’?! What is this principle that if people are able to live more comfortably they’ll be able to spend more money on luxuries?? She used to be less greedygrump once, but she gets more jaded every year and keeps bumping money higher and higher up her priority list, abandoning things that used to seem important. And similarly she’s become super ‘I don’t need anyone, I’m better off being alone’, and developed this strained relationship with her grand-nephew. I think maybe I could add another layer of sad to this, woo! I think she raised Quincy alone after his parents were Giant Assholes and ran off. Probably stole a bunch of the family money, probably left her with a failing business that they’d ruined with all their selfish decisions over the years, and an angry mob out for blood against the brand name. And Quincy was very sickly as a kid, so she had to work a lot, leading to the distant relationship and obsession with profit. But she’s become so obsessed and paranoid of losing her money even after it became less of a death sentence, and she just keeps working super hard even though now she has time to spend with her family. And she gets scared seeing Quincy grow up cos she remembers how his parents turned into absolute monsters when she used to trust them so much. Being distant is better than getting hurt again... and god damn why does he have his mother’s eyes...

So yeah, they’re a bit estranged, and you can potentially help with that, woo! But mostly during the main game you’ll just hear about her cos everyone is like ‘oh, are you from [grauntie’s brand name]? why don’t you have this thing, she always has it’ and Quincy is like ‘no, this is my own store.. we’re a small business.. but umm, we’re cheaper..’ He’s trying to step out from under her shadow and prove that her philosophy is wrong, so maybe he can bring back the loving grauntie that he remembers from his childhood. i think maybe the ending could be that she turns up to inspect his new shop and they have some sort of merchant showdown and like... even if Quincy loses he still ends up proving her wrong because she sees just how much everyone in this town cares about him and how he’s improved various parts of their life by bringing access to these imported goods and just generally being a supportive community member. Maybe there are some things more important than profit...

Oh and also I think she was the one responsible for helping out Blair and Dionne when they were running from their abusive parents, and that’s why the two of them are the most friendly with Quincy at the start of the game. They hadn’t seen each other since they were kids, and Blair is kinda like I Owe You A Blood Debt, Is There Anyone You Need Me To Stab Grauntie looks back on this as a moment of weakness tho, and that’s why she stopped keeping in touch with them, she’s embarassed she used to be so sentimental. Cos like.. she spent so much money helping set up these girls with their own house and she lost out on a business opportunity (it was a property she originally purchased to turn into a franchise store) She can’t stop thinking about how tight the funds were around that time and how if she messed up she could have lost her own kid for the sake of helping some other kids... But then she turns up in town and its like Oh No I Walked Down The Street By Accident *gets buried in blair hugs* And she can’t stop crying seeing how much they grew up, and then they’re all like “we’ve been trying to send you a cut of the cafe profits for the last seven years!” and she’s like “NOOOOO, KEEP IT” *even more embarassed at doing even more irrational sympathetic actions*

Also possibly she could get a crush on mayor grandma cos they are both grumpy badasses of opposite? Strength gran vs wisdom gran!

+++

so yeh i made a bunch of grans/demigrans of various kinds, and now I am thankfully satisfied with this story’s gremp quotient