#but yeah. caligula effect good

[reaperkaneki]

ok here are my Thoughts on gin noto

under cut bc it got long lol

first off, he is very strong representation. as in, i think this might be the platonic ideal of a transmasc character. which has its good points and bad.

sweet-p’s arc was rooted in some obviously transphobic jokes/points/etc but at its core, her arc felt well-intentioned and overall she was definitely portrayed as one of the most sympathetic of the musicians (who are antagonists but certainly not outright villains, which the musician route makes abundantly clear). she also is not, like, described as trans per se, mostly as a crossdresser who loves cute things and wishes she were a cute girl (so like, she’s trans) and honestly her arc is about self-image and body dysmorphia in general (weight and age and outside perception are all major factors). and that’s what sets her apart from gin, gin is very much about Gender Dysphoria And Conforming To Societal Gender Roles first and foremost.

unlike sweet-p’s writing, gin’s doesn’t have any overt flaws to point to, which is why i had to mull it over for a while to figure out what was missing, and i think it’s because it is very much aimed at a cis audience. the narrative itself is perfectly fine, it’s the meta-narrative that bothers me.

when gin confesses that irl, he was assigned female at birth and presents as female in his day-to-day life, and asks the player, does this change anything, there is a right answer and a wrong answer. the wrong answer is to tell him that you don’t care what gender he is, it doesn’t change anything at all; gin perceives this as a half-assed, dismissive response said without thinking and becomes upset and it locks you out of the rest of his character episodes. the correct answer is to tell him that you don’t know, you’re not sure. maybe it does change things between the two of you. gin feels that this is a understandable position to take, like, of course it might be a big deal, it certainly feels like a big deal to him!

and yes, to someone who hasn’t encountered a trans person before, that’s probably a reasonable response. to me, specifically, a fellow transmasc person, i think i sorta laughed at this part because, like, the only thing that would change if a coworker or friend or whatever told me that they were actually stealth trans this whole time (and that’s being generous bc gin is Not Slick lmfao the foreshadowing for him being trans is super obvious to anyone who knows) i’d be like cool! love that for you. etc etc. bc transgenderism is Normal to me.

but the game assumes You Are A Cis Person Who Isn’t Sure How To React To Trans People. the game doesn’t let you be trans. there’s not a nonbinary option, despite having a cyborg for an antagonist and, more egregiously, a canonically nonbinary character in your party. (i’d say pronouns, but that’s not quite the same in japanese.) not that i was expecting that to be possible, but it is a clear separation of gameplay and story that hinders roleplay (in an rpg where your character’s backstory is almost completely undefined)!

this is not to say that gin is poorly written. like i said, he’s like the platonic ideal of representation. he’s easy to clock specifically because his experiences ring true; he’s always, always, always overcompensating and posturing “as a man”, he’s trying to conform to his own personal image of “what men do”, “how guy friendships work”, “what guys are interested in”. when asked why he gets along with women so well, he lies and says it’s because he has an, uh, older sister! so he’s spent a lot of time around women! he dresses trendy, but not too fashionably (because that’s feminine, he’s function over form allegedly), and the cut of his clothes is soooo. well. the silhouette is masculinizing, or at least androgynous, let’s say. he even wishes he were taller.

i’m pretty sure i’ve done most of those things. this is writing that either speaks from experience or understands the prompt and has done the goddamn research.

it is, however, very, VERY cool that he actually turns out to Not Be A Man, at least in the sense he’s always wanted to be. REALLY good nonbinary arc that i wish wasn’t constrained to, like, the last two character episodes. it’s the one interesting ‘twist’, and i love that it explains a lot of things about him! when he talks about working as a woman irl and busting his ass in heels, he sounds proud, even as he admits that presenting female always made him uncomfortable. and lo and behold, his catharsis effect sports a pair of gold heels! if he was just a hypermasculine trans man, that would be super uncomfortable, as if it were some sort of transphobic indicator of his ‘true self’ being feminine. but no, it’s because he’s hiding that aspect of himself. he repressed his masculine tendencies to conform to social norms, and then inadvertently did the same to his feminine side, but both are important. he likes the heels.

i also like that he’s bi and acknowledges that his relationships never worked out bc he hadn’t figured out his shit yet. it do be like that sometimes.

unfortunately, i think he’s also kind of boring? like, besides her wanting to be a cute girl, sweet-p had other stuff going on, she had that boke/tsukkomi routine with stork, she had a genuine love for yume-kawaii (whereas while gin has many interests, a not-insignificant part of those interests is male posturing), she was even a musician! i understand that gin’s blandness is On Purpose because he dislikes rocking the boat (but he hates posers, which was a genuinely interesting reaction from him that didn’t feature as strongly in his arc as i wanted. even kiriko comments on it), but doesn’t change the fact that he ain’t weird enough! can’t even be an only sane man bc he goes along with everyone’s bs lol

anyway gin is cool and well-written as a trans character but missing a bit otherwise. i’d still definitely love to hang out and get beef bowls and boba with him :)

[causalitylinked]

( work was admittedly hectic... and i had to hardblock a mun for being lesbiphobic today, but on the bright side, i ended up being followed by a multimuse who legit has the female protagonist from tce2 as a muse, which made me vibrate with intense excitement because i didn’t think people would ever pick up tce2 muses...

and rae also managed to distract me with her ic and ooc shenanigans, to the point where i couldn’t really stay disappointed for long, so all in all, i’d say it was a good day!

ofc, i still have to work on the asks i owe @odiamors​ as well as replying back to rae ooc, but i’ll try my best to get everything done before tomorrow evening! )

[archivalofsins]

Hey, this isn't going to be a long post because I want to get back to playing Caligula Effect 2. However, confirmed that Double is mostly a dream with small snippets of reality while MeMe is reality with breaks into dreams. Also that the graphs we see displayed distortedly throughout Double are a polysomnography.

X X

"I’m probably just having a bad dream, I need to wake up soon." - "All I did was dream, and that’s what you found GUILTY? “He’s a liar”, you said, and made me out to be a scoundrel, why?"

So, let's talk about this for a bit.

all gifs made by @apatchworkstar

So, in Caligula Effect 2 there's a heavy focus on the meaning of the word dream. It's highlighted multiple times that a dream can be something you have at night while sleeping or refer to something you want to do in the future. So, throughout double the word dream itself even has a double meaning.

I think that when John states all he did was dream contextually he's referring to the dreams one has when they sleep. I believe this because the structure of Double as I stated before is more dream like than MeMe. Though I have another pertinent reason for believing this outside of that. Let's discuss the telltale signs of a dream displayed throughout Double first.

1. Takes place mainly in one location.

Unlike MeMe where we change locations frequently. From the underpass to the inside of their home, to the dumping area outside of their home, to their bathroom. Double is limited to the train station and the train only. Despite seeing John commuting he never makes it home or to work. He is confined to this location.

2. Seemingly endless terrains. (Never-ending passages or areas that seem to go on forever.)

3. Partial literacy or none. (Not everyone can read within dreams but those who can rarely can read the same thing twice. Instead the words will either keep changing or go blank.)

People who can read in dreams are pretty rare. They tend to be in communications based professions or writers.

CAN YOU READ IN YOUR DREAMS? SCIENCE REVEALS WHY MOST PEOPLE CAN'T

There are also other things that can't be done in dreams according to other sources.

X

That are helpful when it comes to differentiating between reality and dream in Mikoto's case. Also bringing more scrutiny to John's statements during the interrogation where he claims they attacked random strangers on the street an impossibility if it was really a dream like they both claim. We see in Double that none of the people have faces, they're all mannequins.

Since John stated he attacked some stranger it makes sense for everyone in Double to appear this way because in dreams you can't really just create a full ass person that you've never seen before. So, this makes everyone in John's version of events a stranger to him. However, you know where that's definitely not the damn case.

In MeMe where we see this guy plain as day-

As Mikoto does a very physical activity. However, this is a good time to interject- Dreams are very personalized.

Personal anecdote. I once had a dream when I was in a bookstore, and I was browsing around. I'd read a book I'd liked but I was unsure if I wanted to really commit to purchasing it but there was limited time was there with others, I had like twenty minutes at most, and I'd looked at a clock just to see what time that'd be. When I went to skim the book again it was blank. Then I looked at the clock and it was blank too. I was in high school at the time and had already looked into information around dreams and became acutely aware I was which led to a bit of lucid dreaming before I woke up. In other dreams I've been in fights, used weapons etc. even ran for a good while.

So, yeah, I've done physical activities in my dreams before, and I've seen people I know and have never known in my dreams too. It's different for everyone.

Yet, it's still valid to question-

Why would Double something primarily from John's perspective follow the rules of dreams more than Mikoto's?

If what they did was just a dream, then those rules should be applicable to both songs not just one.

It's not as though all of MeMe just shows the reality of the situation either. In fact, dream and reality are more neatly separated within their first trial song. Something that is displayed by one of those things listed. The inability to look in mirrors.

And being confined to one place regardless of how it changes over the course of the video.

So, yes there are very logical ways to discern between what is a dream and what is reality within Mikoto's trial songs. Milgram has done nothing to hide this. They even further displayed this by putting dream in large font for all to see over most of double.

Yet what's the other thing that makes me so sure that when John is discussing dreaming, he's discussing the dreams you have while sleeping and Mikoto is discussing dreams for the future?

For one Mikoto is specifically paired with the woman who sings this-

"Is the damage to get in the way of someone’s dream."- "If it damaged someone’s dream to the points of stopping it I’ll gouge you out with my fangs."

So chances are a part of the reason they were connected is because they lashed out due to someone gettting in the way of their personal goals and dreams. Yet there's also the fact he plainly fucking states what his dream was in his written trial one interrogation.

Q.04 Are you picky when it comes to fashion?

Mikoto: Of course I am. Nobody would want to ask for anything from an unfashionable designer, right?

06 What do you hate?

Mikoto: working overnight / reptiles / violence

Q.14 Where do you think you’ll be in 10 years?

Mikoto: It’d be nice if I could build up my own self-sustaining design business. That’d be pretty liberating.

"Hey now, I saved you, right? So why in the hell are you crying? Cling to me, hoist me up as your “savior”, stand up and sing out your gratitude, that’d be good."

Mikoto even uses similar verbage to that used in his first written interrogation when asked about these things in the lyrics of Double. Such as right, and that'd be good.

So, yeah there's all that.

[wtfuglydemon]

do u have a kin list :>

mmmmm... kind of? yeah? i never know what kin exactly means since everything i see means it in a different way, but in a way of "Characters i relate to way too much that seeing them is like seeing myself" they're:

(putting it under the cut because it got pretty big)

Marie Mizuguchi/Amabuki - The Caligula Effect 1/2

we have the same diagnosis and a scarily similar past, the difference being she actually got paralyzed over her accident (which was also very similar to mine) while mine was just lightly temporary, which sometimes makes me wonder if she is what i would end up like if it did paralyze me, she is definitely the character i relate the most of all the ones here. if you ever play The Caligula Effect please dont play 1, it sucks really bad, just play 2 its an actual good game and doesn't need much of 1 knowledge

Ame-chan - Needy Girl Overdose

this one is funny because i played the game and didnt even consider her to be THAT relatable but some people at the time went, "oh she's just like you" and i questioned that, so my ex at the time just showed me messages that were almost 1 to 1 to stuff Ame-chan posted and sent in-game and that made me way too shocked, like, legitimately some messages i sent her were almost THE SAME.

Nemu Tsukishiro - Sentimental Deathloop

another one just like Ame-chan, people just saw my screenshots of the game and events of stuff and said she is exactly like how i act, the difference being that yeah, i agree that me and her are quite similar, we even share a favorite food!!

Naoka Ueno - A Silent Voice

not elaborating much on this one besides the fact, yeah, i was very horrible in the past and i feel like me and her share a lot of things that we did

Harukaze Rio - A Collar Only for You

oh god they wrote me into a character, again way too much similarities with me but also very personal in a lot of ways so i won't go as in-depth.

Azula - Avatar: The Last Airbender

This is the first character that me as a child, around 7-8 related to hard to that at some points i just liked to pretend i truly was her, so in a sense she was my first true kin, maybe not the best character for a child to relate to but wow, she is still one of the characters that mean a lot to me because i still see myself too much in her

Kazusa, Mika and Misaki - Blue Archive

More simple characters that i relate to in many ways but not as hard as anyone else from this list, but considering i use a lot of icons of then in places like discord/bluesky, they deserve a mention.

[genderqueer-miharu]

Cpuld u tell me a bit a Caligula effect? I keep seeing u talk abt it and I'm intrigued .. also music ? It's a music media (?)

Hi! I'm glad i got you interested in this series ^^ The Caligula Effect is a videogame series, written by Takuya Yamanaka, who's more famous for also being the writer behind Milgram. The plot, at least in the first game is that it's about this virtual reality called Mobius where people can go to fulfill their deepest wishes, this world was created by the virtuadolls µ and Aria to make humans happy. Virutadolls are basically in universe vocaloids. In this world everyone is turned into high school students and they will never age and will repeat high school for as long as they're here. A group of students realizes this world is fake and decide to escape and go back to reality, hence why they call themselves the Go-Home Club. At the same time there's the Ostinato Musicians, a group of people who are aware of Mobius being fake but they want to stay and keep Mobius as it is for their own reasons so they work with µ to stop the Go-Home Club.

That's how the main story goes. But the games also have something called Character Scenarios. These work like the social links in persona though less complicated to unlock. These are important because this is pretty much where you'll learn everything about the characters, something that both games do is that you don't actually get to learn much from them during the mains story. Like you do learn mostly about their views and personalities but you never truly learn about their backstories or why they're here in the first place. That's reserved for the scenarios, this is where you truly learn about these characters and what their problems are. And these are honestly the best part of the game imo.

Another important thing to clarify is that the first game has a remake Caligula Effect Overdose, which adds four new characters, two in each group and also has the musician route. This is a new path in the main story where you get to play as a musician, so after every two dungeons or so there will be segments where you play as a one with the other musicians as your party members, this also gives the musicians their own character scenarios which is great to fully flesh them out and make you sympathize better with them. The remake is the one you should go for since is the most complete.

Some warnings about it tho, the second and third dungeons can be pretty uncomfortable and hard to get through. The second one because the musician here is canonically a trans woman and she's not exactly treated super well during the main story since she's constantly misgendered, deadnamed and experiences fatphobic comments even after her dungeon's done. This wouldn't be so bad since you know it shows how even the people you're sided with can be assholes and be terrible. But after a certain point it becomes tiring and annoying and many of the scenes depicting this have an almost mocking tone. Her character is great though and i love her scenario and the things it discusses, but again the way she's treated in the main story makes the first part of the game hard to get through. As for the third musician he uhh is a creep, and you see him trying and succeeding at peeping on other women during the game. Yeah, it's not good obviously. These two asoects really make the first part of the game hard to get through and honestly a lot of my problems with the game come from these two. I do think everything afterwards is good though. If you want some further warnings you can check out the doesthedogdie page.

Now that was all for the first game, but there's also a second game, and honestly i'm gonna be honest i have a lot of problems with the first game but if there's any reason why i'd recommend it is so you can play the second game, because imo it's better than the first one but i don't think you should jump straight into that one because a lot of the game's plot is built on the first one's and it's just better if you understand all the things they're referencing, a character from the first game even returns. Kinda follows the same formula as the first one, virtual reality, group of people trying to escape, musicians trying to stop them, but i think it pulls it off a lot better. But again you do need to know the events in the first game to understand it better.

Oh yeah you mentioned music, it's not a music based series as like, let's say Milgram is but music is a big part of it because virtuadolls are a big part in the series and again they're just vocaloids. The soundtrack is awesome and the game uses it in a very creative way. Each dungeon has it's own theme, written in universe by the musician in that dungeon, and all the songs are sung by the the main virtuadoll in each game (µ in the first one and Regret in the second one), with the lyrics being personal to each musician. The way it works in gameplay is that when exploring the dungeon, an instrumental version of the song plays, when entering a battle the vocals start playing, and when facing against the boss a remix version of the song plays. It's so good to hear during gameplay and it never gets tiring, and again all the songs are bangers. AND to keep up with the vocaloid feel, each song in both games was composed by a vocaloid producer. And if you're curious yes, Deco27 also worked here, and this is how he and Yamanaka met.

If you're interested in getting into it, let me know so i can send you the playthroughs i watched if you can't or don't feel playing it.

[gunsli-01]

I think DECO*27 100% knew what he was doing with Futa and Muu, and if the point he was trying to make about the both of them was internet/moral radicalization, then hats off to him because Futa is a damn good reflection of internet mob mentality and Muu is just proof that some fans are hypocrites (even Futa calling out voters for condemning him and praising Kotoko was a good detail). Hell, maybe my thoughts on Muu make me a hypocrite too.

Also, if he's been trying to do specific pairings being a juxtaposition of each other, then 03 and 04 make a lot of sense being a specific pairing (moreso than any other).

Personally, I believe everyone is allowed to be a little bit of a hypocrite when it comes to Milgram. I mean it actively promotes voting based on one's own biases. Plus, if that's what makes this experience fun for some then I say keep at it. I'd just enjoy seeing those biases interrogated more or at least noted. I feel like that's what will keep the fandom peaceful and less argumentative.

My focus is what would be fun overall, and I feel like arguing amongst ourselves isn't good for anyone. Like the shape and future of the prison changes with our choices sure but that doesn't mean the fandom space should turn into a prison in and of itself.

In my opinion it seems Deco and the writer working on Milgram Takuya Yamanaka know what they're doing. They also both did work on the Caligula Effect games. Though Takuya was the producer on the first one and the writer of the second game. I'm quite sure he gave writing input on the first one as well though.

Deco and he seem to be discussing possible outcomes from the verdicts already locked in as well.

I'm not that good with Japanese so these will just be slightly corrected google translations.

"In other words, the future changes depending on if one is "forgiven" and "not forgiven" × 10 people. The other day, I went over the possible outcomes that can occur from the current situation with DECO*27, but even for us as the producers, I realized that the future of the prison is very exciting thanks to the choice of the guards."

Though I'm fairly sure the x 10 people means across ten people or times ten. So, the future changes with each new verdict.

As someone who enjoys writing and collaborating/discussing plot points with friends I can't help being a little jealous. This seems like an incredibly fun and lively predicament to be in!

They also said this when Futa's second trial CD went on sale.

"Futa's second trial EP is on sale! I wrote the drama "Baptism of Fire" with the intent of punching the guards who participated in Milgram with all my might, so please enjoy it💪 and keep sharing your thoughts! Look forward to the release of the MV premiere of "Backdraft" from 19:00 today🔥"

So, yeah, they're moving very strategically it seems. Possibly paying attention to how people respond to the videos, maybe even seeing the popular theories floating around. They also seem to genuinely like Futa's character. He's even been compared to a puppy on the Milgram app.

Given the ideas I've seen discussed in Caligula Effect Overdose so far... They seem to enjoy depicting realistic and flawed characters. Sometimes to extreme degrees. @apatchworkstar and I have been going through Caligula Effect Overdose and boy if you think the Milgram characters are messed up then ha, ha, ha... They're a bit tame in comparison to that cast, which is saying a lot given most of them haven't committed murder. Yet somehow some of them are still easier to dislike...

I can't talk much though my favorite character in it so far is Eiji Biwasaka. He is probably one of the most dangerous people there and may have committed some crime, but I don't have confirmation of it yet just a lot of alluding to it~ Real talk he probably did that shit I think he did. Yet, at this point I'm like you've been the realest dude here this could be true, and I would just not care.

Hell, I'd probably help him cover it up at this point. Honestly, I would I know in my heart he did that shit and I'm just like huh well this isn't Milgram and I'm not a snitch this seems like a not my lane issue. Though my bias is oh shit star sign buddy; I don't see enough Pisces in media, sweet!

Things I've seen covered in the first game so far have been fatphobia, transphobia, eating disorders, doxing, assault, peeping, and a myriad of other topics that usually are not dragged to the forefront.

So, they already have some experience with discussing heavy topics and depicting discrimination realistically in various forms.

All that to say yeah, I agree with you they one hundred percent have a grasp of what they're attempting to convey. So, aggrandizing any of the prisoners is going to end up leading to some disappointments. Because they are really good at portraying horrid people and the fact that all the Milgram characters don't seem to be terrible people is more suspicious at this point.

[deuterosapiens]

Just found out about Omegle shutting-down. I totally get it, that place was a hell-scape in the actual worst ways, but I still feel sort, I don't know, weird about it.

I used to use it when I was having some of my worst emotional days to find people to anonymously vent my problems to. Sometimes people actually listened and talked and I felt kind of okay.

I mean, yeah, some of the actual worst wastes of human zygotes stalked and hunted and preyed on it. And its fully anonymous user-base meant there was very little to protect its users: the same kind of anonymity that protects the freaks and sex-offenders hurt the curious, the confused, those who didn't know enough (through no fault of their own) to protect themselves from terrible people.

I think I always took for granted the strange-ness of a chat service without user-profiles. Where it was a feature, rather than a limitation one had to actively go out of their way to restrict their user experience to create.

I don't think there's a good word in English for how I feel about it. Guiltily nostalgic? No. Depressed, bummed-out? Not really. It's a thing that used to be there and isn't anymore and there's a sense of loss, not because the thing missing was valuable or important, bit because it's simply a thing that's gone and wasn't before.

You could go your entire life never one sticking your tongue into an electrical socket, but the moment you are told you can no longer stick your tongue into an electrical socket because electrical sockets no longer exist and there will never again be electrical sockets, you feel almost a slight something. The ever-so-brief desire to jam a metal fork into an electrical socket solely on the basis that you can't anymore, not because of rules or morals or anything, but because forks also don't exist anymore and so now you couldn't even if you wanted to.

The Caligula effect refers to the desire to do something you shouldn't. I'm feeling something like a nostalgic regret seeped perhaps slightly in the dregs of the desire to briefly inflict intense psychological damage by switching to a site that doesn't exist anymore. Call it Caligula's Nostalgia. Or something. I'm not a psychologist.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

since i guess everyone using your askbox as a billboard: have you played the 2021 video game The Caligula Effect 2? whos your favorite go home club member? what would your catharsis effect be in redo?

I have not played this game. I did play the first one though, and it was pretty good but also somewhat frustrating in places (not least because of some really bad voice acting). This review is a little old but still very accurate to my experience with the original Caligula Effect.

My favorite club member would be Kokomi, who seems like she'd probably fit into the "go home" camp. My catharsis effect would probably involve her as well; she has such an amazing body that I want to make sure she knows how awesome she looks so much! That might sound weird but . . . yeah I know, my inner teenage boy can never truly die.

[yusuke-of-valla]

"That's so funny I know they keep dark magic and staffs separate nowadays because it's make healers broken but it's funny how they started out like that"

The weird thing is alot of classes in Fire emblem don't seem to be intended to be balanced.

Like in Genealogy of the Holy War, Mages promote to either Mage Fighter, Mage Knight or Sage. Mage Fighters have significantly less base stats & stat caps than Sage including lower mov, as well as lower weapon ranks in exchange for being able to use C Rank swords.

So why does Mage Fighter exist, because the Sage class is for the plot important characters.

Or similarly look at Wyvern Lord vs General in nearly every Fire Emblem game and General is overshadowed in basically every area that matters.

I think Fire Emblem Engage has done the best at class balance, even providing Armored classes with a niche, though still not perfect yet.

Yeah it's the fact that there are a lot of classes and things have to be standardized enough that a player doesn't entirely screw themsleves.

Like ok in the Caligula Effect 2, certain boss fights are made for certain characters. There's one boss fight where you fight a wheel chair (it makes sense in context I promise) and a good way to handle it is by usin the character that pins enemies down so it can't run you over, and this fight is pretty late game.

But Caligula Effect 2 only has like 9 party members (and some of them do fall into their niche not being good at higher difficulties sorry Ryuto).

In fire Emblem the only time you can make a map built around, say, the player having an armor knight is a map where you give the player an armor knight, and those are early on. You can't really make late game maps built entirely for one specific class to show off because you can't garuntee the player has that class

And as a result really specialized classes end up being worse, like archers who are really frail and armors who don't do enough damage to really be helpful

[violasgamingpalace]

"People should just play Caligula effect, the good persona"

Yeah, you can tell it's good because it all has the transphobia of persona, but without any of that pesky style or budget getting in the way

[kaluawoo]

Well I sure have my priorities straight.

I’m more bothered by Eiji lying about being an IT person than I am about him lying about his past.

[unladielike]

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITING TOGETHER A LOT EASIER. REPOST DO NOT REBLOG !!

NAME: livita (or livi for short)

PRONOUNS: she/her but i won’t be up in arms if you happen to accidentally misgender me. 

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION: tumblr ims or discord but i may be slow to respond if the topic doesn’t revolve around my special interest or roleplay stuff

NAME OF MUSE(S): vivian, kensuke hibiki from the caligula effect whose blog you can find here, and a myriad of other obscure muses on my canon multimuse

RP EXPERIENCE / HOW LONG (MONTHS / YEARS?): OH GOD... i’ve honestly been rping for a long, long while, but tumblr wise, i think i’ve been at it for eight years now? so my first ever blog was made when i was 17 years old.

PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED: gaiaonline, quizilla, email, discord (but ended up discovering it isn’t for me), and tumblr

BEST EXPERIENCE: probably meeting/befriending @aaetherius​ tbh. honestly, i don’t ever regret writing with noise all those years ago, because they helped me gain more experience with novella-esque replies and inspired me to play around/experiment with language. ofc, i only ended up settling on a proper writing style after writing with several other partners over the years, but noise was prob the first one i had that made me develop a love for world building and lore oriented headcanons. ofc, i sadly cannot emulate their descriptive, thought-provoking writing, but i like to think my own writing managed to improve partially because of noise.

RP PET PEEVES / DEALBREAKERS: i seriously have a lot, that i could go all day, talking about them, but the biggest is prob a lack of communication and the ‘i  don’t owe my partners shit’ mentality that is practically rampant in the rpc. ofc, as some of you might know, i’m autistic, so if a partner suddenly ghosts me out of the blue or gives me the silent treatment, especially due to issues with me they never bother addressing, chances are high i would end up softblocking, because i was previously traumatized by someone who did the exact same thing. due to this, i really, really love if a partner tells me stuff and is actually honest with me. like, seriously, i can’t stress enough how much i appreciate someone going, ‘livi do you mind only sending in one ask from one muse at a time?’, instead of internalizing that shit until the bitter end, to the point where resentment builds. but yeah, i had someone claiming i had double standards when it comes to female muses, due to the fact i never once bothered reblogging a promo for their best friend’s female oc... and i’m just ‘first of all, you never asked me to reblog it, and second of all, you have another thing coming if you think i have the attention span to constantly lurk on the dash.’

FLUFF, ANGST OR SMUT: sweats... is it bad i can’t really settle on one? cause i think they’re all great. granted, i need to be in the right state of mind to write smut, but i still love it.

PLOTS OR MEMES: memes, hands down... i’m not against plotting though. i just may not be the best at it.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES: both can be good, as sometimes, you might want a more chill rp experience or something shorter to respond to for a change of pace, but if i write three paragraphs, only to receive two sentences back, then that to me seems incredibly lazy. like, yes, i prefer quality over quantity, but there has to be actual effort put into your replies for me to wanna respond.

BEST TIME TO WRITE: basically when i have caffeine in my system, meaning usually after i had finished drinking my first coffee of the day.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S): it depends on which muse you’re talking about, because i have more than a few, but considering vivian had first started off a self insert before later evolving to become her own person separate from me, i’d say we definitely have some stuff in common... like us both being autistic and sharing the same birthday. vivian, however, is more extroverted than me, less picky when it comes to food, and not afraid to speak her mind even if it means pissing someone off.

TAGGED BY: @immoralraigan ( thank you for tagging me, bandy! <3333 ) TAGGING: @eliteimperialism / @etoilexdechue / @sadamenai / @afacere​ / @enterthestratosphere​ / @shatterher / @banditborn​ / @hehosts / @dxfiedfxte / @s-talking and whoever else might be interested!

[shiranuieditorial]

Mhhhh, so far I like Koyume and Tourai. Koyume because... it sounds fitting for something the Father would pick xD (Eiji Biwasaka from Caligula Effect, btw), and she does have nightmares about possibly inheriting his psychopathy (crimson red dreams seems very fitting x3). Tourai because the winter flower motive would go very nicely as opposed to her fathers fire motive, and a flower that blooms in winter is Camellia, which would also fit very well...

Ahhh, hard decision x3

It does play during modern times btw, I think even a bit into the future.

ah, you learn new things everyday, so cool! i’ve never heard of this video game before, so i just looked through his fandom wiki entry, and hmm, holy hell, that is quite the 6-paragraph rollercoaster. love that. hope you’re giving him more wild rides picking up from where his canon story ended!

based on your reasonings, i’d go for tourai! “firey motive vs chilly motive” trope holds more weight to me than “red dreams = nightmares”. if i were you, i think i’d save koyume for someone with a darker past, crueller ghosts, and a gruesome future!

i feel like turning on the divination brain this fine evening... let’s see if this can help you out any!

so, 琵琶坂 (biwasaki) then. that is 31 strokes. mildly disappointed bc i was really rooting for 枇杷坂, but oh well. beggars can’t be choosers. dude’s given name 永至 is 11. according to the diagnosis, the total of 42 is a mix of good and bad luck. hahah. check out the super lucky triple-wood element there though. you don’t see that everyday.

紅夢 (koyume) has 22 strokes, and the overall total of 53 is also a mix of good and bad lucks, but oh, whoopsie doodles, the five elements aren’t super cool and lucky like daddy dearest’s :// the descriptions are looking slightly more unpleasant than eiji’s, which the monks/shrine diviners will lay out to you in full detail if you decide to get it checked officially.

while 冬蕾 (tourai) over there to the right has a good number of 21 strokes and a super-lucky total of 52 and is faring much better with the destined family name in terms of fortune-told life chronicles. apparently, she will be a hard-working, independent, assertive, stubborn, and overconfident go-getter with a strong pioneering spirit, among other things... big luck though! yessss another point for tourai! 🦸

even if your character’s parents/family doesn’t know about or care much for fortune-telling, it’s okay to base your decision-making on it from an outside-universe pov just bc you feel like it and then claim it was accidental in-universe :) totally fine, really. i’ve never seen anyone complain about this before. in fact, real-life anecdotes of such have more than often resulted in the name-bearer being pleasantly surprised and then carrying on with their non-superstitious life as usual. btw, i don’t remember which of my characters i’ve decided the names of using divination to help the narrowing-down process, so no-one ask about this please.

anyway, yeah. between 琵琶坂紅夢 (biwasaki koyume) and 琵琶坂冬蕾 (biwasaki tourai)? i think it’s gotta be 琵琶坂冬蕾 for me. 😉 helping myself to a serving of having opinions, winkwonk ;)

i’m not sure what the flowers indicate in this series, but the queen of winter flowers sounds like a lovely choice! fortunately, there’s quite a few plants that bloom in (albeit milder) winter other than the average you-definitely-thought-of-this-one-first-and-foremost answer of plum blossoms. 🍑 wow, there’s really no plum emoji? just like that?

thank you and keep us updated!

[archivalofsins]

Hello!! I know it might be too early to talk about this but i wanted to know: what are your cover song predictions for the prisoners in trial 3?

It's never too early! I say as I answer this late so it really can't be too early now.

I was actually thinking about how cool it would be for the Milgram characters to cover the Musicians songs from Caligula Effect 2 because I'm in too deep now. So, this is the perfect chance. Too bad there are only eight musicians but right now my thoughts on that are-

Apologies for the late answer by the way.

Yuno: Alter Garden

"It all comes crashing down without a single sound. Vanishing in cold blood leaving nothing behind and when I think back on it. I just feel like a total fool for ever giving my love to you."/ "The day will come when these words of mine will no longer reach you either."/ "If you're not able to show me the light then don't give me anything at all. If the things I come to trust in can start to crumble so easily. Then I won't let anyone in anymore."

"“UNDER” My cord’s being pulled but nothing’s ever enough Contractual desires, oh what to do, FUTURE."/ "“UNDER” I feel the emptiness inside me. We agreed to seek each other, I wish we could do something about it, Future."

"Just the two of us, I feel a little tingle inside. Our love links us together. Just me alone, the warmth starts fading away. Let’s reload the warmth." - "Let’s just do it, please smile? Hooked up till the morning to this sweet “Umbilical Cable”. Let’s just do it, please smile?"

When I think back on it I just feel like a total fool for ever giving my love to you- And yet despite it all, somewhere deep inside my head, somewhere deep inside my heart I keep on crying out. But see though these feelings show only through tears. They aren't out of sorrow I just want you take these words to heart.

Though if we're talking about trial three I hope Yuno kind of gets a sad song- But at the same time.

Rabbit Hole or Poison Apple would be really good to hear her sing.

Though if Mahiru isn't lost it'd be interesting to see her get Rabbit Hole instead. Though it'd be interesting for Mahiru to get Status Effect Girlfriend. Basically, most songs I can think of for Yuno would be good for Mahiru too. Oh but no one has gotten Dilemma so that could be a good one for Yuno as well.

Yeah, thinking about it now Dilemma may actually fit best. For her given what I think is going on plus I'd just enjoy hearing her sing it. Speaking of Mahiru-

Mahiru: Q-Ai Senorita

"Say you love me! Say you love me! C'mon! Give me even more! Get stained! Get stained. Sate this greedy heart of mine. The words "I love you" alone can't tie me down. Embrace me tight with your- Embrace me tight with your- Embrace me tight with your genuine love."/ "Outside my head, true love, love. Inside my head, through with grief, grief. Outside my head, true love, love. Inside my head, through with grief, grief. Ravenous swelling emotions- Desperately seeking love, love. Dismay and disgust for birthdays. Impatient awareness of my self-styled "Prime"."/ "Tidy, conservative, humble? Oh, please! I nearly trashed it all. See, look! I'll chase after my bliss now. Oh, the pain. The pain. My stomach pangs."/ "This, right here, is how I truly am!"

"”UNDER” I don’t just want to give. Both giving and receiving are good things."" “UNDER” I don’t wanna just give. Giving and taking, this is how to be in love."

"I’m going to start relying on you if you’re kind to me, so please forgive me, thanks!"

(Fun fact in this interaction I chose are you alright not that's enough Kobato. Apparently, I am an outlier in this since literally every fucking let's player on earth apparently including the video, I got these screenshots from chose the that's enough response. Star jokingly made fun of me because if you do that you turn away from Kobato and just look at QP immediately to check on her. So, Star just said "You- 'Is this dude bothering you queen'." And the phrase and framing of my actions by them has lived in my head rent free since.)

Mostly using this because it gives a bit of context to Mahiru's statement about relying on people who have been nice to her or have shown her even a bit of human decency. Through using QP's response to the protagonist doing this. Like intervening was simply the right course of action in this scenario but QP falls in love with you because of this. Like let this sink in-

She falls in love with and views you rescuing her as doing what she said in her song embracing her with genuine love. The fuck is your reality like ma'am where your first response to being ran up on was to cower beneath your own arms and brace yourself and upon one person going hey now, we don't do this part here. We don't jump people after we've beaten them in combat and have never done that calm down. "Oh my gosh you rescued me from being assaulted directly after I said that guys anger was a red flag to me and indicative of a domestic violence case waiting to happen. I think I love you."

QP you shouldn't that is like the bare minimum of human decency what type of fucking people have you been around. If I didn't intervene, I would not only be a shit person but a bad friend who let's their friend do shit like that. That's not okay. Like this is the minimum to me what do you mean you're in love with me? What have your relationships been like before this? This is concerning but also fuck it we ball I guess... Are we gonna talk about this again because this is concerning. No hospital- Oh, okay.

Hopefully I don't learn anything about her songs lyrics that calls into question this sequence of events more-

See, look! I'll keep pursuing my paradise now. Oh, the pain. Pain! Damage: High! Say you love me! Say you love me! C'mon! Give me every bit you can! Touch me! Touch me! Fill the void in this heart of mine! The words "I love you" alone can't satisfy me- Embrace me tight with your genuine love.

"Do you really think you know what love is? If you do, let’s just overheat together!" "If you don’t hug me, even our hearts will start drifting apart. I pretended to be a good girl, but really, I don't want to say "I'm ok"." "I pretended to be a good girl, I don’t want to be “ok”." "The things that I only want to say to you, and the things that I want from you is love."

"It’s ok for everyone else but not for me. Unfair and stuck between in love and love." "This adorable, earnest, sincere ♥ Is bleeding, wailing, this is the end- What you trampled is my, “This is how to be in love with you”." "This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you”. My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care!"

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE-

This, right here, is how I truly am!/ Tell me, oh tell me why, won’t you just accept me?

When it comes to her trial three cover song it's more than likely going to be Zombies considering the imagery in "I love you" and how the lyrics of Zombies would complement and add onto what we were given from her second trial song. Specifically-

I Love You: "This adorable, earnest, sincere ♥." "Mon-mon-monstrously in love in love. Mon-mon-monstrous, cuz I love you so much!"

Zombies: I'm transforming~ ♡♡♡ I luv you half-decomposed isn't bad. Why don't you too? I luv you, a secret between you and me. If we both just transform~♡♡♡♡

This Is How To Be In Love With You: "Let’s just overheat together!"

"I don’t need anyone else, as long as I have you I could do anything as long as you smiled, I actually believed that."

Zombies: If we just love each other- I luv you, you're the only one.

I Love You: "My love, it scored an own goal, destroyed my love and me with its weight- Tell me, oh tell me why, can’t I just do it right?!"

Zombies: I can't hear the thump, thump anymore. Our bodies are cold even when we hug. Oh well! If we transform, we transform!

"That’s inconvenient? I don’t care!"

Still would be interesting if she got Status Effect Girlfriend.

Back to Caligula Effect though- The next prisoner I've thrown into the musician microwave is Kazui.

Kazui: Swap Out

"Borrowed Satisfaction! Set it free, let your charms out. Everything you touch is filled with aspiration. Grant this clever TRICK-STAR the hope of rebirth. I wanna tell my past self, "Hey, dear boy I know you can reach the stars, real boy I know you're someone special.". Snatch up a pinch of envy as a substitute for self-love my signature ingredient from here on out."/ "Most things are no problem at all! That's right so let's keep dancing as we are."/ "I'll draw you in and guide you to them. So, c'mon take a look."

I know nothing's changed one bit. We're unshakeable professionals at deflection. The fraud on the otherside keeps growing rich in wit. Even if we went back it's all the same. So c'mon, take a look. Borrowed Satisfaction! What an ingenious world- Bet it comes from being so superficial. In the end we all get the short end of the stick. So, I've added to the epilogue- "Hey, dear boy you could've reached the stars, real boy I want to believe you're special."

"“UNDER” I keep on seeing dreams I am always indecisive, I can’t be saved."- "“UNDER” I just keep on dreaming half in, half out, I’m doomed."

"Where did I go wrong, probably from the beginning."- "All this time till now has hurt me, the scales of my heart has decided to sway If continuing to hide is called unhappiness, Not even one word will get to you." "Feelings shrouded in lies will float away and disappear."

"Since when have I ignored my feelings? It’s better to be a let down, than to be let down yourself." "INNOCENT, isn’t that right? Maybe, perhaps... or... could it come true... like It’s for the sake of true love, who wouldn’t lie for that?" "Love, it’s tacky, this two-way deceit." "Lie, until it gets better, follow the king of the masquerade."

Time and time again we lose sight of ourselves until we've circled right back around. Maybe our promises were too shakey. There's just no way to find out.

Lie, until it gets better.

Nope no singular way to find out what's up with that. Not a fucking one moving on. So, this is going to sound weird because early last year I said this was more than likely going to be a Shidou cover but that was before cat released showcasing very similar imagery to that in this recently released Deco song.

Really upping the chance of Kazui's third trial cover song being Poison Apple in my opinion. The lyrics of the song would accompany Cat well and would add more depth to Kazui. While keeping the energy of his previous cover songs.

Sadly, I'm getting fatigued. So, I'm not going to go into much depth these next parts. There are some prisoners that I want the trial three songs to be a surprise for. So I haven't put too much thought into it.

Mikoto (briefly)

I like to try to guess Mikoto's for fun but selfishly I still really want him to get Pseudo Hope Syndrome because i really like that song. Though Not A Devil may fit him on a surface level reading but I want to try to dive deeper there. Especially since his second mv didn't focus as much on his work as I expected it to. We still haven't even seen where he works at but apparently his job is what incited him to do the things he did. Kind of weird it's like he's just shifting blame where it's easiest and it's not just his job that was an issue but his entire life as his first glitched voiceline implies.

Just saying we see Amane's abuse but we haven't even seen this man at work yet that's a tad odd. Other than that. I personally think Pseudo Hope would add more depth to his character as well as wrap everything together neatly. Though I'll have to look it over again later with Double and see if my opinion on it has changed.

Mu

For Mu this may be obvious but Cinderella both her songs literally show her being in a coocon and starting over again from scratch only oming out when she feels safe enough too.

Her second song displays this more overtly while After Pain does it in a more subjective way. It would also fit with her last cover being MKDR.

Also,

"So irritating! Hello to the unfortunate me. I'm confused, hate it, hate it." "Getting angry, annoying, annoying- No, no, no! I want to say "I love you" when I'm cuter! AHH- No, no, no- It's not ok! I'll go back to a cocoon and try again!"

After Pain: "Postmortem makeup to hide my heart, how to solve it is a secret~ The stabbing of the little devil’s voice, counterattack being a suicide note “I love YOU”."

"Hey, um... Nevermind, forget about it. I've never been able to say what I want to say. I can't stop my eyes from diverting self-hatred again."

After Pain: "Maybe I’m done. Just one more time before saying goodbye. I’m just kidding, please forget I said that." "If I was gone, if I had just disappeared- I overheard, I found out How much I’m not needed."

Hello to the unfortunate me!/ I am always the drama queen.

So irritating! These shoes don't fit me! Getting angry, annoying, annoying- The bell is ringing, I'm covered in ash I don't want to go home yet. To the XX course. I want to try to dive into it.

The first time for Cinderela! So scared and dizzying, dizzying-

Ahhh- No, no, no I'm really not ok./ Hey, what if- If I am a bad girl?

Don't hate me.

The rest I want to kind of be pleassant surprises. So I haven't really been thinking about like I said before. Though I might think about some of the others at later dates. I really enjoy going in with as little guesses as possible for certain characters. Like Futa, Haruka, and Shidou. I still want to investigate Amane more later when I'm feeling well enough to and I do have a lot of Kotoko thoughts but I don't know if I have enough interest to interrogate what she'll cover next yet or not.

With the other three I just really like getting carried away for the ride and not thinking to much about what they'll get beforehand.

[qqueenofhades]

Having just sent you a message the other day about how much I love your historical asks, I realized I have a question myself that you might know the answer to. I’m a Christian and I have never been able to figure out why Christianity has historically viewed non-procreative sex for pleasure as bad. (And none of my family, including my clergy father, have figured it out either. I think my dad has a bone to pick with Augustine? And I feel like Aquinas also has something to do with this.) But given that Jesus had a body and gives a speech about “the Son of Man came eating and drinking” as though he enjoyed it, how did this whole “the body is sinful especially the sex part” thing happen? I have been thinking about this a lot recently for Old Guard reasons, which should surprise no one.

Oof. So, a short and simple question, then. (Sidenote: did they expand ask limits? Because I’ve definitely gotten a couple asks today, including this one, that are longer than usual, rather than forced to space out and hope that Tumblr doesn’t eat them.)

The entire history of sexuality in the West and its relationship with Christianity throughout the centuries is obviously a topic that far, far exceeds anything I could possibly cram into this ask, but let’s see if I can hit on some of the highlights. First off, one could remark that some aspects of Jesus’s teaching managed to disappear from the official doctrine of Christianity almost immediately, and for a variety of theological, cultural, and social reasons. As anyone who has a passing knowledge of the late Roman Empire is aware, they were known for being sexually liberate (at least if you were a nobleman, as the freedom certainly did NOT apply to women), and the notorious run of emperors who were having orgies and sleeping with boys and their sisters and hosting nonstop sex parties did a lot to sour early Christianity’s relationship with it. Because pre-Constantine/Theodosian Code Rome was Christianity’s enemy (since Christians refused to perform the traditional civic sacrifices to the Roman gods, which was all that Rome required alongside permitting its citizens to practice whatever other religion they wanted), and because the emperors were such a high-profile example of sexual excess, that became an easy point of critique. Obviously, the Roman polemicists, like every other historian, should not be trusted on EVERYTHING they say about the emperors, but the general pattern is there and well-established. So Christianity, trying to establish its religious and moral bona fides, can easily go, “Well, Caligula/Nero obviously sucks, come join us and live a purer and more moral life!”

Constantine converted in the early fourth century and the Theodosian Code was issued at the end of the fourth century, which made Rome officially Catholic and represented a huge reversal of fortune for fledgling Christianity, helping it expand like crazy now that it was officially sanctioned. However, the Roman Empire was splitting into two halves, west and east, and the development of Greek Christianity in the eastern empire was strongly influenced by ascetic and austere traditions (if you’ve heard of the Stylites, i.e. the guys who liked to sit atop poles out in the Syrian desert to prove how holy they were, those are them). The cultural context of denial of the flesh and the renouncing of bodily pleasures also played intensely into the third/fourth/fifth century debates over heresy and orthodoxy. Some of the most vicious arguments came over whether Jesus Christ could have actually had an embodied (and therefore possibly inherently sinful) human body, or it was just a complicated illusion, the “shell” of a body that his entirely divine nature then inhabited without actually being part of. This involved huge theological arguments over the redemptive nature of the Eucharist and even Christ’s sacrifice: was it real/effective/genuine if he didn’t REALLY die and suffer the pain of being crucified, and was just assured that he’d be fine ahead of time? So yeah, the question of whether Christ had a real body (because then that might be sinful) was the knock-down, drag-out theological disagreement of the early centuries C.E., and left a lot of hard feelings and entrenched positions in its wake.

Likewise, your dad is correct in having a bone to pick with Augustine, at least in terms of his impact on views of sexuality in the late antique and early medieval Christian church. Augustine is obviously famous for agonizing endlessly over his sexuality/sexual urges in Confessions, his time as a Manichaean, his relationship with a woman and the birth of his son out of wedlock (and if you want a lot of repressed homoeroticism: well, Augustine’s got that too) and how his conversion to Christianity was intensely tied with his renunciation of himself as a sexual being. Augustine also pioneered the nature of the inheritance of Original Sin: therefore, every human who was born was sinful by virtue of sharing in humanity’s legacy from Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden. (And yes, obviously, this led to the beginnings of the embedding of clerical and social misogyny. Oh Augustine, I kind of hate you anyway because I had to read the entire goddamn 1000-page City of God during my master’s degree, but bro, you got a lot to answer for.) This involved EVEN MORE obscure speculations about whether original sin was passed down in male semen, and therefore Jesus was free of it because he was supposedly born divinely to a woman without a male father, but yeah, the idea that sexuality itself was already a suspect thing was fairly well correlated and then cemented by Augustine’s HUGE influence over the early church. Everything post-Augustine incorporated his ideas somehow, and so the idea of bodily pleasures as separating you from divine purpose got even more established.

Then we had the Carolingians in the eighth and ninth centuries, who were the first “empire” per se in Western Europe post-Rome, and who were also intensely concerned with legislating moral purity, policing the sexual behavior especially of its queens, and correlating moments of political or military defeat with insufficiently virtuous private behavior. The Carolingians likewise passed these ideas onto their successor kingdoms, especially the medieval kingdom of France (which would eventually become the pre-eminent secular power in Western Europe). Then the eleventh century arrived with the Cluniac and Gregorian Reforms (which were interrelated). One of their big goals was for a celibate and unmarried clergy on all levels of holy orders, from humble village priests to bishops and archbishops. Prior to this, clergymen had often been married, and there wasn’t a definite sense that it was bad. But because of this, and the idea that a married clergyman wasn’t pure enough to provide the Eucharist and would be distracted from his commitment to the church by a wife and family, the Cluniac and papal reformers intensely attacked sex and sexuality as evil. Priests didn’t (or rather, were not supposed to) do it, and if you weren’t in a heterosexual church-performed marriage and didn’t want children, you shouldn’t be doing it either. (Did this stop people, and priests, from doing it? Absolutely not, but that was the rhetoric.) This was about when celibacy began to be constructed as the top of the heap in terms of holy lifestyles, for men and women alike and laypeople as well as those in holy orders. NOT having sex was the most virtuous choice for anyone, even if sex was a necessary evil for having heirs and the next generation and so on. (Which is interesting considering that our hypersexualized present attaches so much value to having sex of one sort or another, and the asexual-exclusion types, but yeah, that’s a different topic for now.)

Of course, when the Cathars (a schismatic Catholic heresy in France and Italy) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries began attacking ALL materiality and sexuality as irredeemably evil, the Catholic church went a bit like “whoa whoa that’s a little too far, hold on now, SOME sex is good, sex can be nice, we’re not actually like those guys” (even though they had been about a hundred years before). Because Cathar spirituality taught that any kind of attention or indulgence to the body was sinful, that included any kind of sex at all, even married heterosexual intercourse. (Of course, the Cathars themselves didn’t always live up to it either; see Beatrice de Planissoles and her Cathar priest lover.) The Catholic church obviously didn’t want to go THAT far, so they began rowing back some of their earlier blanket statements about the evilness of sexuality and taught that husband and wife both had a responsibility to offer each other sexual pleasure and fulfillment. I’ve answered many asks about sexual behavior and unions in the medieval era, the arguments over the definition of marriage, and how that changed over time in response to social needs and pressures, so yes. We know what the IDEALS were, and what people were legally supposed to do, but the fact that church writers were complaining about bad behavior, sexual and otherwise, literally the whole time means that, obviously, this did not always match up with reality.

The theories of the Roman physician Galen, which prescribed that female orgasm was necessary to conceive, were also well known and prevalent in the medieval world, which meant that ordinary married couples trying to have children would have had some awareness that female pleasure was supposedly necessary to do it. (This ties into my “it wasn’t an unrestrained extravaganza of violent painful rape for women all the time YOU GODDAMN MORONS JESUS CHRIST” rant, but we will recognize that I have Many Rants. So yes.) Obviously, we can’t know what the sex life of individual married couples behind closed doors was actually like, but there were a variety of teachings and official stances on sex and how it was supposed to be done, and as noted in other posts, just because the church thought it is zero guarantee that ordinary people thought that way too. People are people. They (usually) like having sex. They had sex, both gay and straight, married and unmarried, so on and so forth, even if the church had Opinions. Circle of life, etcetera.

Anyway, then the Renaissance arrived (and we just had the “why the Renaissance sucked for women” ask the other day), which prescribed a reversal of all the comparative sexual and political and social latitude that women had gradually acquired over the medieval era. It very much wanted to see women returned to their silent, domestic, maternal, objet d’arte roles that they had occupied in antiquity, and attacked the actions of women in their public and private lives as one of the major causes of the crises of the late medieval era. (Because you know, misogyny is always a useful scapegoat rather than blaming the powerful men who have fucked everything up, as we’re seeing again right now.) Because the Renaissance is regarded, fairly or unfairly, as the start of the early modern Western world, it’s where a lot of modern gender attitudes and views of sexuality became more explicitly codified and distributed faster than at any point in history before, to a more extensive audience, thanks to the invention of the printing press. We’ve obviously had moves toward sexual liberation and agency in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the emergence of the modern feminist and gay rights movements, but now in some ways, we’re back in oddly Puritan attitudes in the twenty-first century. And since America was founded by Puritans, their social attitudes are still embedded in the culture, fanned today by hyper-conservative Protestant evangelicalism. Even though Puritans themselves ALSO, shock surprise, didn’t always live up to the stringent standards they preached.

...whoof. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but hopefully that gives you the broad-strokes development.

[genderqueer-miharu]

Anyways. Gonna rate all the caligula effect catharsis effect designs ready go

Shogo

[ID: Official art of Shogo's catharsis effect. /End ID]

8/10

Pretty nice overall. Nothing too crazy here though i guess since he's your first party member it makes sense. The cuffs are a nice detail that probably point to how trapped he feels by his past and in Mobius. The fact there's three of them with two on the same hand is also a nice hint to what happened with him in the real world. His sleeve being ripped in this one arm also seems to reference Ichika. The revolver looks badass not sure if it has some other meaning. Good design over all.

Kotono

[ID: Kotono's catharsis effect. /End ID]

6/10

This one confused me sorry. I have no idea how her skirt works or where do those white...belts? come from or connect? It's cool that that's where she keeps her arrows. And i just realized that the white fabric under her skirt are supposed to look like wings, which makes much more sense with her storyline and her original wish of wanting freedom. Still though there's a lot going on here and i don't know how to feel about most of it.

Kotaro

[ID: Kotaro's catharsis effect. /End ID]

7/10

Giant gauntlets!!! Not too many accessories or change in appearance here, which i guess you could say makes for Kotaro as a character. The only thing that i could see is that the armor that covers his arms kiiiiinda looks like a knight's armor? Not sure if that was intentional though. But anyways Kotaro is very much a "hit now talk later" kinda character so the giant gauntlets make sense with his brash personality. It also fits with his wish of wanting to be big and strong in Mobius. It would've been fun if the design had something that hinted at him being 14 in the real world. I like it though.

Kensuke

[ID: Kensuke's catharsis effect. /End ID]

6/10

This design doesn't really have much to talk about tbh. The catharsis effects i like most are the ones that change the appearance if the characters more and subtly hint parts of their characters and storylines through these. Kensuke just doesn't change much for my liking. I like how his claymore has those black stripes in the center that make it look like a keyboard, which points to kensuke's pursuit of music. He also has those petals behind his back that kinda look like wings? Specifically they remind me a lot of fairy wings which made me think of peter pan who you know could fly using fairy dust and had a fairy companion. Which definetely fits with the guy whose song and trauma are listed as Peter Pan Syndrome. The design is fine, wish there was more to it but the wings bumb it up for me.

Mifue

[ID: Mifue's catharsis effect. /End ID]

9/10

NOW we're talking i really like this design. First off, the mask looks cool as hell and second, it's a clever and interesting way of hinting at her backstory and trauma. Since Mifue has an eating disorder the mask covering her mouth serves as a way to showcase how she doesn't let any food in. I know there's mot much but i'm a fan of symbolism through character design and i like how this one accessory hints at one of the most prominent aspects in her story. Not much to say for the hammer though, apparently she was originally supposed to have a whip instead but the og caligula game couldn't work with that so they changed it to a hammer (and they did give Eiji and Stork a whip in overdose). Awesome design i like it

Suzuna

[ID: Suzuna's catharsis effect. /End ID]

7/10

I like a big ass hat so just for that i like this one. I can't really think of what it could represent. I guess maybe it could represent her shyness and how she hides herself. But yeah not sure if it could mean something deeper. It's fun that she has a giant spear, caligula games love to give the sweet soft spoken girl giant weapons like these and make them tanks.

Naruko

[ID: Naruko's catharsis effect. /End ID]

2/10

Girl sorry i love you but this look isn't it you got done dirty. She doesn't change her outfit at all, not even her hands become black like the other characters. All sge has is her backpack and the little drones which yeah makes sense she's obssessed with the internet and to get mire followers and the drones look like cameras which represent her wish for attention and recognition. But this design hust looks too boring i'm sorry

Izuru

[ID: Izuru's catharsis effect. /End ID]

8/10

This is another Mifue situation where he only has one accessory but i like how it hints to a specific aspect of his storyline. Again the mask just looks cool but it being on one half of his face is reference to the scar he gave himself in the real world. Him having a sword could also reference him playing the voilin cause it kinda looks like what you use to play it. I like this one really good

Ayana

[ID: Ayana's catharsis effect. /End ID]

9/10

Girl got a whole get up to handle that shot gun. It looks awesome so i'm glad they gave her this. You can say her having all this caution equipment references her fear of men and how she's cautious and on edge around them, as if she's literally dealing with something that could hurt her if she's not careful. Very crative way of talking about this.

Eiji

[ID: Eiji's catharsis effect. /End ID]

7/10

This fucker, mr perfect himself. Only reason why i'm giving him this much is because his tongue also changes with this effect, you can't see it here but at one point one of his sprite shows how his face looks like here and his tongue looks like a lizard's or something like that and it has piercing as well. Those black spots in the marks next to his mouth also turn out to be his skin literally ripping. Damn. The marks also look like flames which makes sense you know fire powers and also the uhh...whole deal with Kuchinashi.