#even though it has defined his life greatly

[myrfing]

and (pointing at nothing) gourd isn’t really HEALTHY about his execution of his purpose either in that he is kind of insane about it. like he completely lacks a sense of self-preservation until after post-shb. he fully considers the possibility he will get blown up and die one million times and inflict terrible violence and just accepts that as almost a matter of fact. i think from a surface level outside view he can very much be taken as someone with an almost unnatural religious fanaticism but at the same time he’s like. not. he doesn’t actually ascribe to a divinity or a belief that he specifically will be rewarded or saved. he doesn’t do it out of need for approval or self hatred or insecurity or to prove his loyalty. he just believes that if he dies something stronger will grow in his place because that’s what he sees in the world all the time. if he believes in a heaven or hell it’s not somewhere else but right here.

his weirdness about it if anything comes from a sense of detachment-but-not-alienation that he found in the wake of the spires dying. the human part is is that this is him making sense of their choice to fight and die even though it hurt him. he WAS for a long time lost and empty in the wake of that decision and this is how he found purpose…it’s just that just because it came from troubled waters doesn’t mean it’s untrue or just a cheap justification. he feels like his place in the world is a given just because he was born, because that’s what he thought of his loved ones. he loves the world and his own existence within it but he loves the world just as much without so he sees no point in being defensive about his life. it’s very much like. a cucumber is a cucumber and it’s still a cucumber if you ate it. this is making even more sense as I keep going on

[sad-endings-suck]

blue eye samurai popped off so hard in every department, but this post specifically is a shoutout to the character designers who manage to put so much personality, life, and uniqueness into each and every character to create a signature art style, while still maintaining realistic-like proportions and features that are more reminiscent of live action than animation.

not a single character with speaking lines or more than 3 secs of screen-time looks anything like any other character unless it’s intentional (i.e. resemblance between family members). not only are there so many different body types, but no one’s body is ridiculously proportioned. some characters are very thin (heiji), others are very large (shogun’s emissary), some are quite powerfully built (chiaki)… but then there’s everything else in between!! mizu is very lean and androgynous, and she definitely has muscles, but she’s not ridiculously skinny, nor does she greatly lack softness in her torso, hips, and chest. mizu very much has a woman’s body, her proportions are just not exaggerated to make her look overtly masculine or overtly feminine. unlike some other animes that would absolutely give mizu ridiculously defined muscle mass and 8-pack abs, or maybe a 10 inch waist and huge boobs (that she magically hid completely with some diy fabric bindings and a dream) and then credit those choices to “art style”.

ringo is on the bigger softer side physique-wise, and his body is a perfectly normal human body that any normal person may potentially have! akemi and taigen are both conventionally attractive within the story, but even still, neither is the perfect personification of masculine or feminine “beauty”. yes akemi is very petite and slim, with a more hourglass shape, but she still very much has a body type that some real people naturally have. she has a stomach! and i don’t mean that she has a protruding stomach, i just mean her stomach actually exists. so does mizu’s, even if they both have small flat stomachs, they still very much don’t have itty bitty anime waists. though they are both slender women, they have actual room for organs and ribs in their torsos!! or on the other end of things, there’s taigen, who may be very athletically built, but again, it’s not to an impossible degree or standard. he still very much has the build of a real human person, not a comic book hero with a 12-pack. even fowler, who is on the heavier-set side (presumably from his lifestyle, surviving famine, etc) also has strength to his build that many other characters do not, indicating he does keep up with his training and is very much physically dangerous.

and that’s just the body diversity! we are shown characters and character models of young adults, mature adults, babies, seniors, young children, older children, teens, etc. women in their 40s/50s/60s (madame kaji, lady itoh, “mama”).

hell, the fact that the art style can be so consistent throughout, and yet akemi looks like she’s been rendered in watercolours, whereas taigen appears as if he’s been painted with acrylic is crazy!! or how well the show is able to convey that mizu very much looks like a woman, yet it also convincingly shows us how she’s able to pass as a man through a slew of details is amazing. such as her more androgynous features, her height, a scarf to hide her lack of adam’s apple, hat to conceal her features, orange tinted glasses the cancel out the blue of her eyes, baggy pants and boxy top to hide her silhouette, poncho and sword positioned to give the illusion she takes up more space in the world LIKE A MAN WOULD and so much more.

It’s just so beautiful to see, not only because it speaks to the skill of the creatives and the level of care and attention to detail with which this story was clearly made, but also because it proves you don’t have to “choose” between a distinct art/animation style and diversity. by combining animation and live action, and using the best aspects of both, blue eye samurai has managed to capture something that no other animated production I’ve seen, has (no, not even arcane). and that is allowing the personhood and character of a live action actor/model to come through in the character they are portraying. no matter how much beautiful animation i watch, there is almost always some level of “default” face, body type, height, or facial features that are consistent across every character, and blue eye samurai proves that this is not just due to “art style”. it’s a limitation of the medium of animation (to an extent), or at least, it was.

we live in an era where plastic surgery, photo/video retouching, workout supplements, trendy scheme diets, beauty consumerism, etc, are at an all time high. so it’s such a relief to see an animated project of all things choose to reflect real human appearances in its work, and not only that, but do so without ever commenting on it. as an animated project, it could “beautify” its characters as much as it likes to make them all same-face/same-body conventionally attractive, and excuse it as their “art style”. but blue eye samurai does not do that. they said “no, we can do better. we can do way better” and they did. the way bes is shot leaves no room for women (or anyone) to be sexualized or objectified, regardless of how much nudity and sex there is in the show. it demonstrates that sexuality and sexualisation are in no way inherently synonymous. there are no unnecessary comments about a character’s body that feel off or not in tune with the social perceptions of the time period in which the story is set. it’s just amazing to see.

[crookedkryptonitebeliever]

How does Yves react to jealousy? Wether it is him being jealous or his s/o being jealous…. Cause I mean Yves must have his share fair of admirers

tw: cheating mentions

Part 1/2

It depends on how the relationship between the two of you is defined. He knows he has no right to feel jealous if the two of you haven't officially met or you still see him as an acquaintance. Yves won't stop you from dating others, as long as you're not doing that while in a romantic relationship with him. Because that means you would be breaking the boundaries and promises established, there are close to none if you haven't consented to be his partner.

He knows you more than enough to predict if you want him as your husband or a lifelong platonic companion. There are vastly different rules for either role:

If it's the former, polygamy is a no-go. He will lay his needs on the table on the very first day and the first thing on the list is that he is strictly monogamous, asking him to open up the relationship or for a threesome in the future will hurt him badly and is akin to cheating. Obviously, excessive physical contact with anyone else is considered infidelity, though he allows you to receive hugs and kisses from friends and family members that he trusts, and his trust is not easy to earn. No emotional cheating, he does not want you to have such an intimate connection with anyone else. Yves will express his disapproval if he catches you watching porn or gawking at attractive people on the internet, but he can fix that by making it subconsciously 'boring' for you.

He has no problem with you obsessing over fictional characters, Yves knows that they're not real and he sees them as mere toys for you to play with. He has major issues if you try to turn him into one of your fictitious crushes or your obsession has gotten so severe that it affects your life.

Whereas if you wish to remain friends, or something more special but within the realm of familial, Yves would not interfere if you're involved with someone else. Well, he wouldn't 'interfere' to a certain degree; he wouldn't beg you to leave them for him, he wouldn't try to tarnish their reputation in front of you, he wouldn't even cause a scene at your wedding no matter how much he wanted to shoot your spouse dead. Yves would just watch with an unreadable expression, elegantly crossing his legs and resting his palms on his lap. He would still do something behind the scenes if he thinks you're taking him for granted.

Before even dating your current partner, Yves will ensure that he is the person who is closest to you. He will be the one you would call if things go rough and the first one to know of any major changes in your life, good or bad. You would call him for advice on anything, from something as small as changing the wipers on your car to legal advice. Yves will be your safe space and no one can replace him, ever. Not your parents, your siblings, and definitely not your romantic partner.

You're most likely roommates with him, given the economy now. Living in a jarringly rich neighborhood with him. You feel out of place sometimes, because you're probably a university student struggling to get by or a salary worker living paycheck to paycheck. Yves is kind enough to offer you to stay at his place indefinitely with rent that you can afford.

Perhaps you have your own place, or you live with your parents instead. Or frustratingly, you live at your partner's.

Regardless of your sheltering situation, Yves will more likely act like a monster in law. Arriving uninvited, side-eyeing your spouse for not taking good care of you, every compliment about them is backhanded, bringing in meaningful gifts (i.e., flowers, groceries, freshly baked bread, dinner, food that you have been craving) to outshine your partner's goodwill of the day, subtle jabs that greatly bother your significant other but you don't see a problem with.

You would find yourself defending Yves despite his actions degrading your beloved's self-esteem.

The more serious the relationship, the colder he will be towards them. He will not be aggressively antagonistic, but there is an undeniable air around him that feels like spikes down your partner's throat. He is apathetic to temporary flings and one-night stands, though. Unless he knows they can cause grievous harm to you or carry a disease, Yves will work behind the scenes to eradicate them.

Your partner is afraid of him, and rightfully so. Yves warned him once that he would ruin everything they had if you ever got hurt, either due to direct abuse or negligence on their part. The way he delivered it sent a chill down their spine that they will never forget.

Hurting you includes breaking your heart; so your partner can't leave you without Yves skinning them alive. They can't change their behavior to forcefully make you leave them. God have mercy on them if they ever decide to cheat. Yet, they're subjected to constant terror from this man whom you call your friend if they stay. They're caught between a rock and a hard place. If they're just a regular person, they would have gone clinically insane and Yves takes this chance to wean you off them.

Thankfully though, most of them would be scared off by Yves during the dating phase or your standards became so high that you won't bother losing sleep over another person.

There is an interesting outcome if you happen to be with another Yandere. Again, it depends on their personality.

If they're one of those careless fools who keep you captive, kill your loved ones, and only care about their needs, not your happiness; they're dying of "natural causes" as soon as possible.

Those who are Yves wannabes that stalk you and steal your underwear irks him. He appreciates that they share somewhat similar flavors of love for you, but they are pathetic. They think they know you, but they're not even close to scratching the surface. It's laughable as they try to threaten him behind your back, all Yves would do is stare through them. Ten times out of ten, they would back down out of fear, because they could feel the eldritch horrors writhing under his calm facade.

Pathetic, so pathetic. Yves knows a thousand guaranteed ways he could make them disappear by lunch without any lasting consequence, yet his cheap imitation doesn't even know where Yves is at any given time. They can't even tell that Yves is standing next to them at the bus stop, he just puts his hair in a different hairdo and tries a new makeup look. How are they going to protect you if they're this stupid?

He wouldn't off them immediately though, as long as they're relatively harmless and you're happy, he will let them be.

If it's a rich one with non-negligible influential powers, Yves would keep a closer eye on the both of you. They're certainly a lot more dangerous than the first two, but nowhere near as bad as him. It annoys him that your spouse took up a sizable chunk of his library, but it was necessary to find all their weak points and predict the trend of their behavior. They might have an inkling of who Yves is, but he is still an enigma, the information they have on him is either insufficient or false. They're just as blind as everyone else and Yves always have the upper hand.

They generally wouldn't back down threatening him, though. They think they have their finger wrapped around the world just because of their wealth and connections. Yves was young once, he knows how arrogance flows through the blood of the youth. And so did prideful ignorance.

He would let them think they're winning, their immense big boy/big girl powers are sending Yves running with his tail tucked between his legs. Then, when they least expect it, Yves will scare the crap out of them through various methods. Leaving clear-cut evidence that the entirety of their party is actually working for him, having career and life-ending pieces of information, or simply bypassing all his security and meeting them in their so-called surveillance room.

They would find that all their firearms were unloaded and emergency protocols non-functional. Even the ones that no one else but your spouse knows. Yves knows how to fight, he scoffs at their setup for being so primitive. He would even be offended that your spouse couldn't get your information right.

He would dish out the most ego-wrecking insults while gracefully blocking and dodging their attacks, pointing out their incompetence at gathering data.

Yves would let your spouse exhaust themselves to unconsciousness, deriding them for their terrible physique. Then, he would leave, putting everything together back to normal. He left no trace of him ever being there as if your spouse hallucinated the entire encounter. But they definitely didn't.

He successfully sent a message that he wasn't to be underestimated. They have no idea who they're up against and he will be diplomatic only if they stay in their lane, take good care of you, and make you happy.

However, meeting someone exactly like him, though;

It would be ugly at first. Both Yves and his clone will act a bit more erratic than usual, it can go unnoticed by the untrained eye, but between these two giants? It's war. It's their first time meeting each other's match and their first time losing control over the situation.

They would revert to their default answer to anything threatening their ability to puppet reality: elimination. But both of them are too strong to defeat, so they're stuck in this twisted tango.

Yves couldn't find anything on this person. Even if he did, he knew that the information was a decoy to throw him off his trail, are they even a person? Likewise for your (soon-to-be) spouse, who the hell is Yves? Why has their expertise failed them now? How can it be possible that both of them have the same magnitude of verified information on you, yet neither of them knew about each other until you introduced them?

They both can't believe that they misled each other, making your spouse waste precious data space on your close friend that was entirely fabricated, Yves filling up your spouse's section of the library with a random person whom you never even met.

It's a Mexican Standoff between the two. Upon their "first" meeting with you, all they did was glare daggers at each other while they also suspiciously eyed their drink 'prepared' by you. In the end, neither one had their drink go remotely near their lips.

Until they simultaneously had the idea to lovingly send you off somewhere, maybe asking you to help your partner check on the pie that has been baking in the oven downstairs, fetching Yves a fresh cup of tea, leaving the two intelligence-gathering behemoths alone. Yves's lower eyelid would twitch once when he witnessed them placing an appreciative kiss on your forehead.

They don't mince their words. Telling exactly what they thought of each other, they're not kind thoughts. Once that is out of the way, they acknowledge that they're each other's formidable opponents.

They discuss some more and come to the conclusion that they can't take each other down without somehow unintentionally hurting you in the process. Yves's and your partner's tense shoulders would relax a bit when they realize that their ultimate goal is your joy in living. Trying to eradicate each other is not an efficient or smart use of their resources and your happiness is mutually exclusive to the disappearance of either figure.

Hence, the most logically sound decision was made. It was to work together. Every second spent having to interact in your best interest was agony to either side. However, they cannot deny the immense respect they have for each other despite needing to take some sort of sedative prior to meeting, to prevent accidental strangulations out of fury.

You would be in the dark about what goes on out of your sights. However, you would notice how Yves and your partner are stuck to you even more now. Yves's unannounced presence would be much more prevalent and your partner seems to be clingier than before.

Other than that, life would go on. You have two very scary dogs following you around. You are the world's safest person.

[Part 2]

[unicorncornflakes]

Abit random lol! Can I please ask if you can give us your version of Aemond (in Dark Desire) nsfw details? 😜😈🤭🤭.

If there are any filthy headcanons about him jerking off or what he likes in bed (what he likes, how he likes it, when he does it, both in general and as far as Dark Desire is concerned). Any insights would be greatly welcomed as he alittle horny for him!! Even though he doesn’t like the Dornish - what does he like about the reader that turns him on? 🤔😈🙈💕🥵

Dear Anon, I know it took me a long time to reply to you. Sorry, I've been wanting to think about it for quite some time to give you a good answer, so here's an NSFW Headcanons from Aemond's version in Dark Desire (Sorry if it's not very good. I don't think I'm very good at writing this type of things).

First of all, when I write Dark Desire's Aemond, I only have one song to define him, or at least parts of a song: 'Heartless' of The Weeknd. It's mainly the music that I always use to write and this song in particular defines him. How do you define it in a NSFW way? The phrase "Never need a bitch, I'm what a bitch need" defines it very well. He likes himself, he thinks highly of himself after a long time in shit. Therefore even on a more sexual level he is always superior to his partner.

But, all this has to do with the same thing that he says in the song "All this money and this pain got me heartless, Low life for life 'cause I'm heartless". It's how he feels so he doesn't get romantically involved with anyone, in a more sexual context it means that he barely feels much for the person he's fucking with, he doesn't make love, he fucks and it's over. When I say that he is bored with everything it is because he really is bored with everything. He has enough money and connections to have done all the things he wanted to do when he was young. It has already reached a point, that he has done everything he wanted, he doesn't care about his partner in bed and few things excite him.

With that said, I'll move on to the Headcanons:

- Aftercare; not at all. He is not in love, so he is not going to care for no one. Maybe if he is truly, truly, truly in love, he cares. But normally, every encounter is just sex, so no, he is not into Aftercare. With Reader, perhaps he is a little bit different, he can be some  care, but not normally. He fucks, that’s all. He is not there to talk with someone and he just thinks in smoking after a good shag.

- Cum; he has a bit of a breeding kink, unconsciously. Normallly, he enjoys to mark as his the women who is with him and how he marks her? With his cum, inside of her, like a wild animal, “if I cum inside of her, other suitors will levae her alone…” Poor soul, definitively, this only works in his mind, but it works to turn him on, so for him, it´s okay. He also loves to pull out and bust all over your back, because…

- His favorite position is doggy style… this is a general headcanon that I have to all versions that I can think of Aemond, doesn´t matter the story or time. He really loves doggy style. Why? He doesn't have to look your date that night in the eye. He does feel inferior due to the lack of his eye, he just gives pleasure and receives it in this position, without having to establish any kind of emotional connection. We return to the theme that Aemond in Dark Desire doesn't make love, he just fucks. If he looked into someone´s eyes, maybe he could establish a bond, and I think there is nothing that scares him more than anything, because that would make him feel vulnerable, and he just wants to appear strong in front of others, even in a moment as intimate as the sex. Maybe with Reader it's the only one who could really do it in another position, looking into your eyes, because he's in love. That is the difference.

- Jack off; only when is extremely necessary and nothing more. I think he is too much serious to spend his time touching himself, also he feels guilty after it (Too much faith of the seven when he was young). In all Dark Desire, he only touches himself once, and it was after a long time without meeting Reader, so, no. He doesn´t jack off often.

- Kink; a woman who really needs his protection, his money, his power… he doesn´t care, but something who really excites him is to be with someone who really needs him… plus if she always try to look like a strong woman and she has a vulnerable moment. He sees himself in that moment as his savior, so that´s perfect for him. He would never accept it but ‘the blood question’ really turns him on. Reader really makes Aemond Horny because she is a Targaryen, just like him, it is how it must be (Like Rhaenyra and Daemon. He would never accept it, but he always has wanted the same). He thinks that it will be easy to control her, she has those beautiful purples eyes (he really turns on thinking on that eyes fixed on his while she is sucking his cock), and she is a mixture between a Dornish and Valyrian women. He can say that he hates Dornish, but that´s not true. Dornish women really excited him, but he tries to avoid so hard, just looking really correct. All repressed desire turns in a mixture between hate and desire. Other of his kink, he is the one on charge, always. That phrase of “everything is sex except sex which is power” suits him very well. Oh, and his pace is always fast and rough, he has to be too much in love to be slow and sensual to get his climax ;).

- Finally, If he has to decide between giving or receiving oral, he is going to choose receiving. He is the one in charge, by the gods! He has to receive it, he deserves it, he is not going to reduce himself to give pleasure, he always receives. Only, if he is truly in love he can give it, for that reason is so wonderful that moment in the last chapter of Dark Desire. :D

[aesolerin]

So, a dd2 class guide (of all things) ended up bringing me to some really fascinating realizations when it comes to how Baldwin and Sarmenti are foils to each other, so of course I can't help but share it with you.

Short Version: Leper and Jester as characters contrast themselves in terms of personalities compared to skills. These seemingly in-built contradictions are the exact opposite of one another, which is likely why they synergize so well from both a narrative and game mechanics perspective. The makes them a duo of complimentarily contrasting contradictory characters. (yeah, try saying that five times fast)

Long Version: As we both know/adore about him, a key feature of Baldwin as a character is his selflessness, this key desire he has to help and serve others, while his own personal happiness instead comes from the simple joys of life. In his backstory he went out of his way to comfort his sick citizens, killed off his advisors to keep his kingdom safe before abdicating, and even now the reason he wants to die fighting is to help others succeed in their goals with all the skills he has available.

It's super interesting, then, to look at what said skills actually do - heal himself, mitigate his own inaccuracy, protect himself from shuffling via immobility - all things prioritizing self-reliance first and foremost. Out of his ten DD2 moves, only two can be said to have some level of 'party support' mixed in - Purge to clear corpses, and Intimidate to weaken enemies (and remove stealth when upgraded). And even they exist first and foremost to mitigate the blindspots in his own fighting style. Altogether, even as this seems to contradict his actual values as a person, it wouldn't be wrong to frame his entire kit as selfish in nature.

To put it another way, Baldwin personally goes out of his way to help others by prioritizing himself first.

Compare this, in turn, to Sarmenti - a character narratively defined by selfishness (eg; his desires, his ignited ambitions, his prolonged suffering, his current suicidal death wish, plus any other impulse or whim he has at any given moment). And yet, his skills are almost entirely support-focused, with even a lot of the damage-dealing ones being less about the damage and more about applying debuffs and combo tokens to the benefit of the team. It's such a selfless prioritization of others that he has barely anything left in his toolkit that focuses on either his own survivability or his damage-dealing capabilities. (His main exception being Finale, which one could still argue is selfless in how it leaves him immediately vulnerable and slow after he's likely nuked an enemy from any possible rank - meaning the ideal is for other people to take advantage of this.)

As such, Sarmenti's selfish desires and goals lead him to greatly prioritizing the group's benefit over himself as an individual.

And it's this nature as foils, this reversal/mirroring of each other's innate contradictory natures, that make Jester and Leper such a complementary duo both in terms of personality and combat synergy.

idk, that's just how I came to look at 'em in my pretentious academic perspective on the ship, lol. you got any thoughts brought up by it??

oh man, this is such a fantastic analysis, i feel like there's nothing more i really need to add! i do have some thoughts though:

looking at this and thinking about it, yeah isn't it just a bit odd that the selfless Leper barely aids his team, and if anything eats up a lot of the resources they put out? man eats combos like he needs them to live because he kinda does. but oh man, if you take care of Leper he will take care of you tenfold. he rewards selflessness with his strength.

i think his skills could also be viewed not as entirely selfish, but as self-reliant. gently turning down Vestal, Occultist, Plague Doctor's, any sort of healing and simply fortifying himself, allowing them to heal someone not as strong as him or attack with their own skills. using Purge to both strike down a foe and clear corpses so someone else doesn't have to nor can their enemies take advantage of it. let him weaken a foe and draw their ire with Intimidate, he has the strength to take it.

and Jester is such a fun contrast to think about, his top-tier supportive skills vs his snarky and biting personality. all that setting up and dancing he does, the grand orchestra he plays, why doesn't he make himself the star? i think he'd insist it's because he's a twig in a clown costume, why should he be drawing the enemy formation's attention? the faster the warm bodies between him and those bastards cut said bastards down, the better. hence, a selfless skillset for selfish reasons. there is probably some element of fun/humor to it, too. man's Silly.

and together, they work perfectly in sync. Jester wants those bastards dead before they hit him, Leper will smite them out of existence if given the opportunity. Jester will give him those opportunities, Leper will strike down their enemies. also they kiss. nature is beautiful.

[atalina-falling]

bsd analysis: ichiyō higuchi

I’ve had this in my notes app drafts for a long time, but here it is. My analysis on Higuchi, who is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated characters in BSD. Note that I’m not the first person to do an analysis on her and I likely won’t be the last, so there may be things in here that others have already pointed out before. With that said, let’s get into it. No spoilers this time:

pattern of idolization

[ch 14: translated by easygoing scans]

Higuchi’s devotion to Akutagawa is one of her most defining traits. While BSD has several characters who idolize their peers to an unhealthy degree, Higuchi stands out in that a) we still don’t have an explanation for her feelings, and b) this idolization is not based on a connection between the real-life authors. Below, I’ll give examples of other characters who also share this kind of codependent relationship and explain how Higuchi differs from the pattern:

Akutagawa and Dazai

Akutagawa chases after Dazai’s approval because of the way Dazai abused him in the Mafia and subsequently abandoned him afterwards. In real life, their roles were reversed, with Dazai greatly looking up to Akutagawa and trying to win the Akutagawa prize.

Poe and Ranpo

Poe idolizes Ranpo’s intelligence and previously made it his goal to defeat him after Ranpo beat him in a game of deduction. In real life, Ranpo looked up to Poe as a mystery author and even modeled his pen name after Poe.

Nikolai and Fyodor

Nikolai considers Fyodor the only person who will ever understand his messed up psyche. In real life, Fyodor was inspired by Nikolai’s work and the two shared similar political views, although they never met.

The reason that Higuchi breaks this pattern is because a) her reasons for chasing after Akutagawa are unknown, and b) as far as I’m aware, the two authors had no connection in real life. Higuchi lived centuries before Akutagawa and while some famous authors did acknowledge her work (eg. Mori), Akutagawa was not one of them. (If someone ends up discovering a link between them, please let me know, since my Japanese is still not great so all the research I do is in English). Higuchi’s actions in the story show that her feelings for Akutagawa go far beyond simple infatuation: from staying in the Mafia just for him, to stalking him when she sees him with another girl.

relationship with Akutagawa

It’s worth looking at Akutagawa’s character to see what exactly Higuchi might idolize about him. Akutagawa is cruel and senselessly violent. While Higuchi is most likely desensitized from working in the Mafia, it’s been shown several times that she does not enjoy violence and only carries it out when necessary.

[ch 4: translated by easygoing scans]

However, though she might not enjoy Akutagawa’s excessive violence, it’s possible that she looks up to it as a form of strength. Higuchi has been shown to doubt her own strength and value within the Mafia. Meanwhile, Akutagawa is infamously known as the Rabid Dog. Not only does his violence earn him fear and respect, it‘a also what makes the Black Lizard respect Higuchi by extension. At least until chapter 14, where she proves herself by going in to rescue Akutagawa alone. But even after her subordinates learn to respect her, Higuchi still remains devoted to Akutagawa.

Higuchi also hasn’t shown attraction to anyone else in the story. Unlike Dazai, who is naturally flirty and has canonically had multiple failed relationships with women (L), the only time Higuchi ever shows attraction is towards Akutagawa. This makes it less likely that she acts this way towards all her love interests and this is simply a part of her personality.

her eyes

Harukawa once mentioned that they purposefully draw deranged characters with larger and darker pupils, while characters with a chance for redemption have more light in their eyes. Higuchi’s pupils in the manga are half light, half dark, making her one of the Mafia members with the lightest eyes. This could tie in with her wanting to leave the Mafia and goes to show that if not for Akutagawa, she could blend back into society and find a peaceful job with relative ease.

[uploaded by easygoing scans]

unknown ability

Higuchi is one of the few characters with an unknown ability. Back in 2018, Asagiri tweeted about not having decided on a name for her ability yet (look how many exclamation marks lol).

[translated by @Chibikko_Chuuya on Twitter]

In real life, Higuchi’s most well known work was called Takekurabe, which literally means “comparing heights” but is usually translated as Growing Up or Child’s Play. However, the fact that Asagiri struggled to decide on a name for her ability may suggest that it’s either unrelated to her literary work (eg. Oda’s Flawless) or derived from a combination of multiple works (eg. Poe’s Black Cat in the Rue Morgue). Shoutout to @/nikadoesanart for pointing out the second possibility on Discord over a year ago when we first discussed this.

parallels with Tachihara

My theory is that Higuchi’s development will be similar to Tachirara’s. Both started out as side characters with an unknown ability. However, in the DOA arc, Tachirara’s ability was revealed and he suddenly became very important to the plot. Along with his ability, his backstory and motives were also explored and he underwent a lot of development in a short amount of time. It’s very possible that this is what we’ll see with Higuchi as well. Once her ability is revealed, she’ll play a much larger role in the upcoming plot and much of her character—including the backstory of how she ended up in the Mafia and her reasons for being obsessed with Akutagawa—will be explained.

sources

Sources for the historical connections I mentioned between the real-life authors are a little all over the place, especially when it comes to the Japanese writers (doing research in English really is a limitation). However, I’ll do my best to compile them:

This post by @/bsd-bibliophile is honestly the best online source I found regarding Dazai and his relationship to Akutagawa. Much of it is a summary of the book Self Portraits: Tales from the life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic.

There’s also an image scan here of the letter Dazai wrote to Haruo Satō, one of the judges for the Akutagawa Prize, the first time he failed to win the award.

Edogawa Ranpo naming himself after Edgar Allen Poe is probably literary trivia at this point and is mentioned below the information chart on his Wikipedia page.

Nikolai being a literary influence for Fyodor is explored in this 227 page-long PhD dissertation which I probably don’t recommend reading unless you have lots of time, but the section “The Role of Nikolai Gogol in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Literary Mind” (pages 4-16) has a lot of information about the relationship between the two authors.

[lakeofsilverpike]

Ryma and Basan have me thinking again about the Bond and the selfishness of love.

We saw Moiraine spend months hurting Lan terribly to save his life. She pushes him away because she thinks it will keep him alive. Even though this hurts Lan greatly. Even though it hurts Moiraine just as much. Even though it arguably means losing a weapon in her fight against the Dark. She does it anyway because she will sacrifice anything for the cause except Lan’s life.

The ultimate example of this type of love, where loving someone so much leads to removing their agency and not allowing them to make a critical choice about their life, is Basan and Ryma. They walk out to face the Seanchan together. She has clearly decided to sacrifice her life to save Nynaeve and Elayne. It’s in her mind so clearly that Basan knows that is what’s happening. He walks out to join her, and she winks, and they share a knowing smile. They will go down fighting. They will go down to together.

Ryma makes a heartbreaking choice. But it is a choice. And choice is what defines human life, what gives it meaning. She decides she will die rather than become a damane. She trusts her Warder to be the one to kill her, to give her a death with dignity rather than being captured.

In the last critical moment Basan cannot bring himself to kill Ryma even though they have clearly agreed to this through the Bond in the moment before the fight. They fight together. They die together.

In that last moment though, Basan can’t kill this person he loves so much. And his choice dooms her to a fate that she felt was worse than death. His inability to kill her is why Ryma ends up enslaved. Why she faces centuries as a damane being forced to use the power she devoted her life to using as a force of healing, instead as a force of destruction and harm to others.

It’s his love that does this. His love that strips away her agency. Ryma goes to fight trusting her Warder to kill her so she won’t be taken. And when he can’t, because he loves her too much, she is collared, condemned to a life without any choice at all.

[ladylyra]

I'm ngl I've been dying to ask about them and I love when you talk about your characters so I was wondering if maybe you'd be interested in talking a lil about Lucille, Lihue, and Souta? I'm kinda curious about their dynamic but also just them as characters so it's up to you how you want to answer!! Thank you!

i'll talk about them independently and then their dynamics!! thank you for asking!! sorry i talked a lot not a little

lucille is a very others-focused person; if she has the opportunity to help someone out, she will. she enjoys feeling like she is doing the right thing, of course, but she also craves the praise and attention that comes along with it. she's very expressive and silly, which can make her 'funny' to observe, but she's got a different sense of humor than someone like souta; i can't really imagine her ever making a habit of serious jokes at someone else's expense. she really just wants everyone to feel welcome and like they have a place. her greatest weakness is probably her lack of focus and her need for external validation; she has a lot of ideas in her head of what she feels is right and what she should do, but heavily relies on the discipline of others around her to help with implementation and "streamline" her goals and formulate concrete plans. She's gotten better at doing this on her own with age and experience, though, so she's been able to be more independent and an effective leader. she's constantly trying to see the best in others, and their potential, so she can get caught down rabbit holes of situations she may be better off abandoning.

lihue is all about self improvement and efficiency. she hates wasting her time and if she's involving herself in something, it is usually because she feels like there's something she can learn from it. to her, skill acquisition is how she gains self-sufficiency; relying on others too much makes her uncomfortable and she has huge issues with vulnerability. she tries to approach all emotions from an analytical lens and can come off as insensitive as a result. while this emotional neglect impacts others, it has also impacted herself greatly; she is normally very decisive, but her reluctance to pay mind to her emotions has left an experience gap, making her hesitant, scared, and unsure in vulnerable exchanges she considers far outside her depth. rather than wade through her emotions, she holds others at a distance. this is her biggest fault, and something she is actively working on; despite her attitude, which can sometimes come off as if she thinks herself better than others, she is highly self critical, and she doesn't feel like she can ever do enough to distance herself from her past actions.

souta can come off as a "just here to have fun" sort of guy on the surface, but he's far more deep than he lets on, and he takes a lot of enjoyment in seeing others try to understand him. a lot of the things he says and does are to see how others respond, noting their patterns and behaviors, information he stores for use later. because of this, it comes off like he always has a reply to whatever is thrown at him--some detail said offhandedly in a previous convo? he probably remembers that. some nervous tick? he saw that, too. as you may expect, he has a teasing problem, which can make serious conversations a struggle to attain; sometimes, this is just him getting caught up in conversations he sees as games he can win, other times it is a deliberate effort to obfuscate since he does have, to a smaller degree, vulnerability issues like lihue. because he has no memory of his life as a human, he places a great value on his current life and works to carve out a unique identity and purpose; whether that past person was good or bad, he does not want to define himself or be defined by others as someone he doesn't even view as himself. he likes to maintain a sense of independence and control over his life--he loathes ever feeling obligated to do something, and he would rather everything be a product of his own choice. to him, that makes his loyalty worth even more, right?

OKAY NOW THE SEPARATE DYNAMICS

lucille and souta have definitely gotten the most time together. he finds her authenticity and self-sacrificing nature admirable and she's very fun to watch. she's expressive and doesn't tend to hide her thoughts, so it's instant gratification whenever he does something. i don't see him as someone who is super approval-seeking normally ( he's pretty confident on his own) but i think he is a little desperate (won't admit it) for lucille to like him and to find him funny. she was definitely the one most interested in learning about his past life / backstory. the attention was a feeling he got hooked on and got really into baiting, until the point that it began to make her overthink things and for him to start feeling not seen for who he was in the present. they both enjoy being around someone they can have fun with, so they can sometimes forget to GET SERIOUS but they have some good serious moments too (she makes him more committal and honest, he makes her more introspective, both start to think a little more long term because they want the other person there, ect). i didn't plan them from the start, and i only began to explore them after lihue had left. i think comparing them as lucille's 'options' is natural as a result. souta offers a lot that lihue never did; he's a little evasive when hes a tease, but he also doesn't hesitate to validate lucille when she needs it, and he finds her reactions as a result just as satisfying. his decision to follow her also means a lot to her; she's someone who values loyalty highly, and it is difficult for her to let people she loves go. with him, she doesn't find herself questioning loyalty or if he loves her, which means a lot to her.

lucille and lihue were far more planned early-on. i feel their personalities compliment more obviously: high extroversion vs high introversion, lucille is more head-in-the-clouds, lihue is more practical and efficient. lucille's warm and accepting, lihue is critical and severe. with them, i think a mistake would be to believe that lihue was somehow the more mature one. lucille is more upbeat, seemingly "gullible", and allows her herself more vulnerability, but this permission to feel isn't immaturity; it is an acceptance she may be hurt, but she'll take the risk because she wants the chance to connect with others. lihue runs from situations she is scared of and hurts people like lucille as a result. even as she learns this to be wrong, she feels she can never recover from what she has done. it's a game of lucille forgiving and giving chances, and lihue feeling she doesn't deserve the chances or isn't ready for anything lucille has to offer. there's some merit to this; lucille shouldn't have to tolerate being hurt because she is living for someone's potential, but she truly does want lihue in her life, whether it be as a friend or something else, so she's just working on being a good person and someone lihue can rely on once she allows herself that vulnerability. another thing with them is sorting through if you still like a person or if you like your memories of them, since they did originally like each other when they were younger, and a lot of time has passed since then; they are trying to navigate this as more mature people. definitely a big hurdle is that lihue's past behavior does make lucille paranoid about the future, but she's managing this by just being realistic with her expectations and accepting she can't control lihue, only herself.

well well well……….souta and lihue. souta does not feel threatened by lihue at all; he sees her as highly predictable, easy to run circles around, and definitely easy to poke fun at. he'd probably be more inclined to be 'harsher' to her than to lucille because lihue wants to act tough all the time. since she's so self-critical, she'd probably expect that he'd be more confrontational toward her over lucille (she deserves it right?) but he isn't actually. he talks to her about it casually or just makes small jabs about it, but nothing that would start a fight. serious fights aren't his vibe and he thinks lucille can voice her feelings herself. lihue might feel a little jealous that he offers a lot that she feels she cant. BUT BESIDES THE LUCILLE FACTOR. i did intend them to be friends early in the comic. they often appeared more as a pair before lihue left the team. lihue sees him as someone who is highly intelligent but who wastes his time on things that are too inane. she doesn't see the logic in his behavior and feels he wastes a lot of time on things that don't matter. like lucille, he's distinguished from lihue by his extroversion, but he's less silly; he's also a little bit more intimidating because he doesn't see the need to be careful with her. likewise, she also doesn't waste time sparing his feelings, so i can imagine their exchanges coming off as incredibly harsh or direct, and potentially off-putting to outsiders. i think they have a 'bite' to them which has its own appeal--i think she'd eventually catch up to his teases and try to be just as ruthless back.

i definitely have my personal biases for what i feel is 'best' for certain characters and what is most narratively satisfying (whole separate conversation), but i enjoy exploring them all and think they've got interesting drama. i think about them a lot. they have a playlist. i have songs. theyre always on my mind

[bleachbleachbleach]

🌸 Big 🌸 Byakuya 🌸 Energy 🌸

A while back there was a meme with a question about your fave crossover; I'm not a big crossover person, but any time we watch anything there is always running Bleach commentary, whether it's "this is what [Bleach character] would do in this situation" or "oh hey it's Kibune" because the show has some strangely-dressed weirdo with shaggy hair and rectangular glasses. Like I mentioned yesterday, we recently watched Initial D for the first time, which for the uninitiated is an anime about a bunch of guys who drive down hills every night. Sometimes they also drive *up* the hill.

With apologies to Initial D superfans, the human characters really didn't do it for me, though the cars are wonderful 110% of the time. None of the human characters except, that is, Takahashi Ryosuke, because he has the

🌸 BIGGEST BYAKUYA ENERGY I HAVE EVER SEEN 🌸

outside of Byakuya himself. Like, inasmuch as none of the human characters stood out to me, the one thing I do really respect about them as a group is that this show is filled with a bunch of the least cool people you will ever meet in your life, and I love that. But Takahashi Ryosuke is on his own wavelength even in such storied company. The point of this post is not to talk about Initial D so much as it is to celebrate the sheer force of Big Byakuya Energy permeating this other man, because it highlights the intensity of the BBE of it all. Does Takahashi Ryosuke predate Byakuya? Sure, but it's *Big Byakuya Energy* because this is Kuchiki "28th Head of the Noblest of the 5 4 Noble Houses" Byakuya we're talking about.

Here's Takahashi Ryosuke's Top 5 BBE Moments:

1. He once corrected a member of his racing team by stating,

🌸 "I didn't give him advice. I gave him instructions." 🌸

Which reflects an exactitude of diction/intent that Byakuya probably restates on the daily re: his vice captain, Renji.

2. When his teammate/brother [Renji] crashes his car because an opponent illegally/nefariously throws oil over the road, someone asks him if he shouldn't offer [Renji] support, because his car is broken and that's sad. And Takahashi Ryosuke was just like, no, because

🌸 "If I were him [and didn't want to suffer those consequences] then I simply would not have crashed." 🌸

Peak Byakuya logic/critique

3. His primary arc is defined by a hardline adherence to a seemingly arbitrary rule he's set for himself. (He takes even less time to explain his reasoning to the rest of the class than Byakuya does.)

4. HE IS CONSTANTLY MICRONAPPING THROUGH THE TEAM MEETINGS.

5. This is way later in the series, well after we'd decided this guy had Big Byakuya Energy, but I shit you not, he has a doomed past romance with a young dead lover. Also, this romance is wrapped up in THE MOST GOTHIC ROMANCE PLOT you can possibly imagine a Mazda RX-7 to be part of.

And his primary nemesis in this arc's street name is **SHINIGAMI**

LMAOOOOOOO

6. Actually, he also plucked his brother/teammate from the wilds of some bike gang, aka Inuzuri, the chop shop capital of Soul Society. (In the universe where Byakuya is Takahashi Ryosuke, Renji and Rukia have been combined into one person named Keisuke).

Bonus: Here he is throwing his 8 trillion kan heirloom scarf onto Renji:

This is all incredibly endearing to me, because Byakuya is the weirdest weirdo known to man and I adore him, and it charms me greatly to know that if Soul Society were Car Society,

Byakuya's That Guy driving around with a rotary engine because of course he is.

Takahashi Ryosuke is what would happen if Byakuya's reigai found a car dealership. Byakuya would absolutely address him as 'kei' and they would be bewildering and insufferable together and I would die happy.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

hi! firstly, sorry in advance for the long ask. your blog is very thought provoking! secondly, i wanna say i really appreciate all your writing on totk - i’ve kinda deliberately avoided looking at any critiques of the game because, quite frankly, i had a fun time in the moment while playing it and i didn’t want to sully that experience, but your posts have all been quality and have given me a lot to think about with respect to the narrative, its aims, and whether or not “pure, uncomplicated, escapist fiction” is actually a good thing

i digress though - the subject i wanted to ask about, which comes up both in your general “all the consequences were undone and therefore nothing mattered” stance, and more directly in your post about dondons/humanity/morality (specifically the part about “should we trust the bargainer statues that nothing matters? or should we actually care about light vs dark?”) is kind of the age old sentiment that the journey is more important than the destination, and how you think about this in the context of zelda as a narrative, as a defining game in the adventure genre, and now as a landmark in the open world style

in the case of the bargainer statue, i was thrown by you framing “trusting the statues about morality” vs “being moved by the struggle of light against dark” as an either/or - a grimly nihilistic view. in the game (and, i think, in real life), the message is that the ultimate futility of everything does not invalidate the reality of people living their lives in the present, and a positive nihilism challenges us to try and help people and do good in spite of that meaninglessness. this is why the bargainer statues feel so bizarre and un-zelda-like (or at the very least, un-hyrulian. not a bad thing!) - the universe of zelda has always at its core been about how helping other people is a noble endeavor and is its own reward (with gratitude in skyward sword actually manifesting this physically), and the bargainers’ ambivalence flies in the face of this. it’s obvious to us as the player that towns being destroyed and lives being torn apart is objectively bad, even if everyone ends up as a poe in the depths either way, and the bargainers reading as sinister and alien actually reinforces this more than it calls it into question. the quality of the time spent in life matters, even if the ending looks the same

as a game, i think zelda has always been at least as much about the stories and connections you experience on your quest to deal with the big bad as it is about that actual climactic fight. it’s always leaned into the adventure half of “action/adventure,” and in some ways i do think this is what “gameplay before story” originally meant. as you’ve noted, some of the brightest points of totk are the sidequests and characters for whom you can make a small but noticeable difference, and through which you’re driven to interrogate the world and maybe yourself too. and it’s because of these connections that reverting things at the end doesn’t make everything futile and pointless. link is our connection to hyrule, and if the adventure impacted us positively, then we can infer that it impacted link (and to a lesser extent, zelda) positively as well, and that’s worthwhile even if the external circumstances change

a last quick point is that i think the increasingly open world nature of the series also reinforces this - sure you can run naked straight to castle and beat ganondorf without engaging with the game in any way, and you’ll save the day the same as someone who put in 300 hours on the way there, but your takeaway will be completely different, because that journey is the entire point

anyways thanks again for your thoughtful posts and for reading this far if you did!

Heyy thank you so much for perusing my blog and leaving such a thoughtful ask, it's greatly appreciated! <3

That's interesting you took the Dondon post in that way, as it wasn't what I meant at all haha. But I do recognize it was worded in kind of a cryptic way, and left it up to interpretation perhaps a tad too much (see: the limits of subtext), so I can try and make myself a little more clear (and I also think you bring up really good points that completely deserve to be mentioned and that I personally do not mention nearly enough)

What I meant by the "either/or" isn't what we, as an audience should take away as what's important or meaningful, and completely discard the other part as useless. It's not what we experience ingame, and this contradiction is inherently interesting and sparks some degree of conflict (good! storytelling need those and totk is conflict anemic honestly)

What bothered me is that we are prompted, in the game, to see things in an extremely black and white way in spite of an argumentation that maybe, we shouldn't. It's not bad in itself, I even think it's great that we get to question the moral fabric of the world! It's one of the very rare (in my opinion) compelling things about the narrative weaved out for us. But the endgoal of the game still remains the same: find Zelda, and swear yourself/all of your friends to Rauru's ancestral kingdom by using his powers and his guiding hand. Link's role in restoring Hyrule is never even hinted as being a potential question mark, or something we should ponder upon (Twilight Princess did directly question Hyrule in more ways than one, WW is also there, etc). But moreso than in other games in my opinion: we are doing the bidding of a king's territorial war that happened a very long time ago, and the current state of Hyrule doesn't seem to indicate the need for pushing a unified kingdom back onto everybody, or at least it wouldn't be a problem if not for Ganondorf's presence (which in of itself is still arguable as an argument for royal unity, since people would have been willing to band together for the sake of their own communities regardless of whether or not there was a unifying realm --remove the Sage's vow, and I don't believe Link's friends would have let him handle his fight on his own even without having to swear their alliegeance to what is basically a dead kingdom by this point).

My problem isn't the statues; it's that this Light/Darkness framing is only ever questioned when close to them/the Monster Brothers, and the rest of the world is extremely rigid in what is the correct path --but without the added tragic weight that other Zelda games generally have about this aspect (the Sages in OoT being torn from their previous aspect/your own lost childhood, Skyward Sword's Hylia and the way she enacts her plan through people who never had a choice --and that's identified as something bittersweet, not to mention the infamous curse of Demise...)

I do adore what you mention, this sort of "positive nihilism" as a staple of the series. It's never as apparent as in Majora's Mask in my opinion, where getting people comfort and rest is ultimately without consequence as you constantly reset their minds, but it still feels meaningful to have helped. I think BotW did that really well too --where you help people rebuidling life and meaning in the middle of the desolation, making the post-apocalypse hopeful, a place for potential growth and change and resilience and experimentation. In TotK, however, I don't think your efforts are as centered around making sure these people get a future as they were in BotW (except maybe, as you mentioned, in a couple of sidequests --Lurelin's village being one of them, for example). Maybe it's because Ganondorf's threat is not as clear as the Calamity's was, maybe it's because what guides your adventure is to find Zelda first and foremost rather than defeating whatever threatens the peace (treated narratively as a hindrance more than the core problem, even if it is ultimately the core problem --again, the narration/quest design is pretty messy here and it doesn't help matters), or maybe it's because the endgoal is not for people to make their own way into the world, but mostly for the wayward folk of Hyrule to be ushered back onto the glorious trail of Hylian/Zonai's legacy --but to me, the game has a weird agenda regarding Link/the player's role into this world that is generally tangential to his role as a hero and a balancing force in other legends. Here, he starts the game as a knight. His duty is to Zelda, but it ends up overlapping to what Zelda represents in a far more abstract way than usual.

What I think works in TotK in terms of "positive nihilism" is actually Ultrahand, and this gimmick of "world as playground", which I believe is a very clever and engaging way to imagine an open world. There are a ton of little gameplay moments that are yours to shape and inject meaning into; manipulation for the sake of it, the joy of play, and experimentation being rewarded and never punished. To me, this feels the most like inhabiting the world, making it your own, and doing things because they matters to you --and this being enough. But narratively speaking, this is just not really the story being told to us: we are told, us and basically every other NPC, to conform to a plan laid out for us that doesn't ever need to be investigated or questioned --even though now, at crossroad of what the future could look like, would be the perfect moment to do so.

I think what I ultimately tried to point out in that Dondon post is how jarring this hint that, perhaps nothing you do In The Name of Light actually means anything, and this having zero impact on the rigidity of the pupose you are supposed to accomplish In The Name of Light --and the game never seemingly acknowledging that paradox, which made for a (I think, unplanned) pretty oppressive playing experience on my end.

[maxwell-grant]

I've seen several peoplerefer to Wario as an evil opposite of Mario. But it occurs to me that Mario is deliberately kept as an audience insert with his personality being minimal. Whilst Wario himself has a very well defined personality. So that leads me to wonder: If you were to reverse engineer Mario's personality from "Wario is Mario's evil Opposite", what would Mario's personality be?

The same as it is now? Which is sorta Wario’s personality or at least general life, but selfless and more straightforward heroic and friendly and humble, toned down several notches and tailored to fit a much less confrontational and verbal character, who’s supposed to be a versatile all-purpose hero and cartoon mascot instead of a loud and stinky hyperactive crayon doodle anti-hero/villain.

Wario isn't really Mario's evil opposite: if anything that's probably just something he plays up on occasion because it's-a good for business, like this post argues: if he was just some guy, nobody would buy WarioWare. I argued before that Wario basically just does everything Mario already does, but taken to comically gross and brutish extremes. It's in everything from his design to gameplay, even to his worldbuilding. He's not so much Mario's Evil Opposite as he's Mario's Gross Cartoon Bully Mirror: closer to the likes of Bizarro and Lobo, characters notorious first and foremost for their over-the-top wacko personalities rather than any notable roles or stories, specifically because said over-the-top personality is their differential and what makes them appealing to have around.

He's not Mario But Evil, he's Mario But Wrong: he’s Dada Mario, perfect as a vehicle for comedic cartoon brutality and parody and taking potshots at his rival or videogames at large. A character with such a strong personality and hook, it’s a no-brainer to build adventures around his troubles and trials and pigbrained ideas. Charles Martinet touched a little on the differences between playing the two, how Wario gets to be a funny stinker contrasting Mario as a purely good guy, but Mario in turn has a levity of expression and carefree spiritedness that the cantankerous Wario cannot have.

When you’re acting as Wario, does it feel any different than playing Mario? Like there are less rules, or more creative freedom? Can you cut loose a little more? Charles: *laughs* Well, sure, yeah, because he can be a little… he’s just *Wario’s voice* “Yeah, I’m a stinker! Hah-hah-hah! *raspberries*”.

He gets to play and be silly, whereas Mario is *Mario’s voice* “Okie-dokie! I’m a really sweet-a guy! I’m the nice-a man, I love-a the princess, woo-hoo!” You know, it’s a very different sort of job.

But, the Mario energy is so free-flowing, it comes up from the ground, and flies into the air while Wario, he’s going *Wario voice ‘Oh, I’m frustrated! I’m gonna get this next time! I’ll get you! I’m-a gonna win!” 

But it’s never so serious, as to be a harmful sort of energy, you know what I mean? That, I think, goes back to Mr. Miyamoto’s belief and my belief that the characters are fun, they’re playful, even in the sort of flaws of their personality.

Even back in his earliest days, he wasn't really evil (or even Bowser-tier evil) so much as he was a weird rival to Mario, an obnoxious brute who got in everyone's way whether he was taking over castles and forests with armies of monsters, or just sticking buckets in Mario's head so he'd have a bad day. Key to Wario’s success is that, as much as he was greatly developed further in the Wario Land and Wario Ware games, very little had to be changed about him to make him work as a protagonist. You kinda get Wario’s deal just by taking a cursory glance at him, even if you somehow don’t know who he’s a cartoon distortion of.

(art by futuristicghost)

The main change was that Wario’s grudge with Mario was downplayed in favor of a supreme arrogance that made him vastly more fun to watch in general (even though he’s never had any games proper, the same thing happened with Waluigi, and his shift from scowling scheming loser to dancing vanity weirdo loser), and also showed how much Mario was unnecessary for Wario’s adventures. He never really stopped being a party-crashing bad guy, we just got more used to him. WarioWare’s been around for 20 years now, and he’s still the closest thing that series has to a bad guy, even though he’s also the main character and everyone’s boss. Wario’s strong personality is his selling point and the reason why they gave him games of his own, it's a compelling feature to build narratives and puzzles and fun around.

It’s one of the main contrasts between him and Mario: Mario is built to fit his games, Wario’s games are built to fit him. He is much more well-defined than Mario partially because he was designed by an effort to make Mario more interesting than just someone who goes around saving princesses and doing things for other people: He was designed by developers who were fed up with the Mario formula and wanted to try something new, something that gave Mario more agency and character and possessions of his own to fight back for: it’s not for nothing that, if he is to be the dark mirror, if he is what Mario cannot be, Wario thus has to be epitome of selfishness and greed.

The team still desired to provide Mario with a new objective, rather than fighting to rescue the princess as seen in most Mario games leading up to that time. 

The game's staff wanted a "change of pace", and decided that Mario should fight to win back something that belongs to him, rather than fighting for "someone else's benefit" - Development on Super Mario Land 2

It’s part of the problem with trying to reverse engineer a reading of Mario’s personality through Wario: Wario’s design is built around spitting on Mario, you’re gonna be working with too strong a bias. Even his very first appearence was built around this: he was stealing Mario’s castle because of jealousy and spite (and not unjustified, going by supplemental comics that showed Mario treating Wario very poorly) over Mario having everything he wanted (Mario never owned castles before or after this, Wario’s theft might as well be punishment for this particular instance of hubris), and they never really dropped the idea that Wario has some kind of unknown childhood beef with Mario that may, or may not, be justified or true.

It’s part of why Wario on his own kinda makes for a lousy villain for Mario specifically: Beating up Bowser makes Mario a hero, while beating up Wario just makes him look petty and even mean (the Camelot cutscenes get around this by making Wario part of a comedy duo with Waluigi, and making it so they’re never really beaten so much as humiliated in karmic fashion for being such meanies, and most of the time the heroes don’t even know they are up to anything). It’s why Wario tends to make for a much better villain to, say, Toad and Wanda, or the WarioWare cast sometimes. On his own as a main villain, he kinda makes Mario look bad in a way that makes Wario less fun and doesn’t really say much of anything about Mario or does anything interesting with him.

He IS the worst of Mario, running rampant throughout the land, and when you get past Wario, Mario’s worst just isn’t that interesting. Yeah yeah, Donkey Kong Jr, the Power Tennis trophy scene, we’ve all sat through those, fuck off MatPat, Bad Mario is a boring idea used by boring people to make boring arguments or stories, the path-of-least resistance to try and make Mario an interesting character. Wario is as good as that idea is ever gonna get, and the absolute best thing they ever did to him was divorce him from Mario and his role as Mario’s Rival and let him exist on his own wacky worlds and games where he’s got nothing to prove and everything to take. Lets him be versatile in ways Mario can’t be, which is a necessary niche to have when Mario’s versatility is so central to what makes him one of the most successful characters ever.

Mario as a character borrows that design philosophy of early 20th century cartoon mascots like Bugs Bunny and yes his inspiration Popeye, of strong designs and catchy personalities left just vague enough that they can be, do or go whatever and wherever you need them to, but with at least one or more hooks to keep people interested. Mario’s is that, even without any dialogue, he looked completely unlike anyone’s preconception of what an adventure hero is supposed to look like (and still don’t, even though so much of videogames as a medium is build around Mario), which makes him an excellent character to throw into Alice in Wonderland weird fantasy realms, and with dialogue, he speaks in a ridiculous friendly falsetto (that was the diferential that got Martinet the role: instead of the Brooklyn gruff guy, he thought of a nice, jolly guy who he wouldn’t be miserable doing for nine hours a day) that is at odds, and in perfect synch, with the way he looks.

Mario is perpetually mismatched with his environment, and it’s part of why his games revolve around carefree exploration and obstacle courses through weird realms and impossible challenges: we want the little guy who shouldn’t be here to beat the odds, and we want to be the little guy who beats the odds. Mario consistently pulls off a pretty difficult trick of characterization where he’s both The Big Iconic Hero everyone looks up to as well as the clown underdog of every fight he’s in, because everything he faces is ten times his size and combat-ready in ways a funny plumber dude isn’t, and so the funny plumber dude goes on to prove himself without having to say much, and you can decide how he goes on about it, even make him shitty if you want to play around.

Videogames are a medium where non-verbal characters get to shine like nowhere else. The Mario RPGs tend to have the best characterization in the series by far (those, and the Camelot cutscenes) and they keep Mario silent even in instances he could be given lines: all the other characters are made better for having to do the heavy lifting with dialogue, bouncing off Mario, who’s holding the fort and giving them their cues. Mario’s made a better character by the fact that he doesn’t have to talk to make himself understood.

(Mario art by Gemma Roman)

I don't think Mario is without personality, I think he has mostly an understated personality, which might be a funny word to use for someone who hoots and hollers cartwheeling all over the place. I think of Mario as a character very similar to Asterix (definitely a go-to reference point if I was gonna write Mario, and Obelix for Luigi too, you’d be surprised at how much they match), in the sense that he’s rarely gonna be the funniest or most dramatic character in any given scene (although he can do that, to surprising effect), he’s surrounded by so much goofy nonsense and such colorful personalities and such dramatic stakes, that having him contrast with those winds up being the best choice. Our hero is a tiny, loving, humble character, not without flaws or excesses, certainly not someone who’s beyond failing or stumbling before reaching the finish line or making a fool of himself, and who’s made better off for it. You need that contrast, you need that guiding point.

To bring things back around I’d say that’s another thing he contrasts and compares with Wario: Both of them are central characters built in ways that free up all the other characters to thrive by contrast. Wario's sheer force-of-personality forces everyone to react to him, which makes for great comedy, while Mario’s happy to let everyone else do the talking, which makes for a more immersive adventure, and both of which allow for good characterization. A small star be the one that shines brightest to guide all the others, or a big laughing black hole of chaos everyone’s being pulled into whether they like it or not.

[alexihawleys]

Do you think Isobel is coming back to reveal some big news or try and win Tim back? She makes me nervous.

i don't think she's coming back to try and win tim back at all – that ship has so clearly sailed and she is the one who instigated that divorce, so it wouldn't make much sense for her to try and be reaching back to tim.

i think there are two parts to this that really make me incredibly unaffected by isabel/her presence overall (negatively, at least. i am affected in that i am very excited to see her!). for a long time, a lot of people in this fandom felt v put off my isabel and i never really got that. she was a huge part of tim's life and what propelled his story forward – and that should be so majorly respected by fans of tim's character, imo. without isabel, the tim we see today – the tim that goes all in on a relationship with lucy – doesn't exist...i have always been hype about their past and the way the rookie handled that relationship/used it to define tim and help him grow. anyway:

first of all, isabel and tim were together for like, a whole ass decade. that's a very long time, and in some of their most formative years. they grew up together, they were there for each other, they were incredibly important people in each other's lives. that's never going to go away, and they both know that. lucy knows that. it's not weird or upsetting or jealousy-inducing, because tim's ex-wife isn't a threat, she's a person who had a huge impact on him in the past and mattered to him greatly. she's not his wife any more and they've both acknowledged their relationship wasn't working. they've both (i'm assuming both, at least) moved on with their lives and beyond their relationship with one another. the fact that lucy has openly called isabel in the past to ask questions about tim proves to me that there's no bad blood there – the way he's very candidly spoken to lucy about her before they were together (3x08, 4x05, etc.) shows that even though he thinks of the relationship fondly, it's not something he's pining for. he's moved on, she's moved on, but they'll always matter to each other in a familial way, and that's okay.

second, i think she could be there to tell him she's getting re-married, maybe. is that big news? idk, i don't think anything isabel's going to tell tim about herself or her circumstances is going to like, rock his world or anything. i'm not even going to throw around the more bonkers theories i've seen, but whatever dramatic thing can be cooked up surrounding this, i'm sure that's not what'll happen. my guess is she's coming back because something's changing in her life (a relationship, a career path, etc) and she wants to tell tim/thank him for helping her through her roughest time/see how he is. she could also literally just be visiting LA to see family or old friends and wants to check in on tim. like it could be a visit for literally nothing, that's completely normal.

anyway: tl;dr, i don't think this is going to be anything to be nervous about tim/isabel-wise. i do think the writers are clearly setting up some serious chenford angst, which i am excited for – but it's not going to be like, roadblock, "this person wants to be with me" angst. it's going to be deeper than that, more emotional, more personal...and i'm very excited to see how that plays out.

[robotnik-mun]

So, while I primarily jaw about Sonic stuff? I’m also a pretty avid Deltarune fan, and like most in the Fandom I got my own ideas and theories of where this is all heading to. Now, the Big Stuff has been covered a dozen times by now, and better than I could do it, so I’m gonna introduce something a little small scale.

Namely, I think I got an idea of what is up with Kris’ half of the bedroom.

At a glance, this paints an incredibly dismal picture of Kris as a person, especially in contrast with Azzy’s half of the bedroom. It’s just a void of anything you’d expect a teenager to have- no decorations, no awards, nothing to indicate they have any kind of hobbies or interests, not even an alarm clock. Kris’ life is just an unholy, unnatural blank.

Likewise, it says nothing good about Kris’ dynamic with their family, at a glance. What kind of brother lords their accomplishments over their sibling in such a gratuitous manner? What kind of parents PERMIT something like this to occur? You’d be under the impression that Kris is blatantly neglected and overlooked, and it would seem born out by the fact virtually everyone in Hometown is more interested in talking TO Kris about Azzy rather than conversing with Kris for their own sake. The game system in the Dreemurr household has one good controller and one outdated, junky controller. Berdly even refers to Kris as a ‘fellow bluebird’, the context making it clear he regards Kris as being unremarkable and ignored as Berdly himself was prior to the Spelling Bee.

Yeah, this room seems symbolic about Kris, doesn’t it?

Only... I’m not actually sure this room being this way is why we think it is. As we learn more about Kris it becomes clear that Kris isn’t some blank slate we pilot, but someone who does in fact have interests and hobbies and all that jazz, as any teenager should. Nor is Kris actually being neglected by their family- the ‘bad’ controller is used by Asriel rather than Kris. Kris is in fact greatly loved by their family, from what we see. So why is none of that reflected in their half of the room?

I think Kris’ half isn’t like this because Kris is completely unaccomplished and lacking in things they like. I think, at one point in the past, Kris’ corner was every bit as decorated as Azzy’s... and then, for whatever reason, Kris willingly decided to just get rid of it all, and chooses to live this way for reasons that we can guess at, but will probably become clear the further along we go.

Why do I think this? Because whatever their failings as people, I have an incredibly hard time believing that Toriel OR Asgore are so negligent and oblivious that they’d allow a set up like this to persist unless it was by Kris’ own choice. I could be wrong, mind you, and I do believe that Kris’ parents are at some level unwilling to confront that Kris has problems... but I don’t think that even with that caveat that either of them is so utterly incompetent as to just allow one child to seemingly flaunt their accomplishments in front of the other like this.

And then there’s Azzy himself. We don’t know anything about how Asriel is in the present. So far the picture we have painted for us though indicates that he is in fact a good guy who cares deeply for his sibling (as well as being a colossal dork at odds with the kind of Golden Boy that the rest of the town has constructed him to be). So on that front, it seems incredibly unlikely that Asriel would make his half of the room the way it is given how it’d look for Kris. And even if the truth is that Asriel is in fact a horrible asshole (which strikes me as unlikely-but-possible), then it comes back to Asgore and Toriel not allowing this even if Asriel was covering up his actual bad intentions.

Therefore? My conclusion is that Kris, for whatever reason, has gotten rid of all the things that defined THEIR half of the room, and is choosing to live this weird, miserable existence that we see them living. Why they’re doing this, as with everything else, is open to heavy interpretation. My own suspicions range from them doing it out of sheer self-loathing, to them deliberately doing it to hide the details of their life from Us, the Player... there’s a lot going on here that indicates things with Kris go far beyond what We see, and they are privy to thinks that We aren’t. But either way, their corner being the way it is? Is due entirely to their own choice, and Toriel is simply permitting it even though its not a healthy thing for Kris to be doing at all.

In the end we’ll only know once the rest of this game is finally released (and God I hope that’s soon you seriously have no idea), but for now? I choose to believe that Kris’ life isn’t as barren as this room would indicate... they simply, for whatever reason, are unwilling to share that life with others at this point, either due to the events of the past or due to not wanting Us to see.

... I also like to think that, if this is true, Toriel is storing all of Kris’ things in the attic in the hopes that one day they’ll want it back. That however is less textual based and more Realm Of Pure Headcanon, heh.

[usagirln12003]

Mikasa Ackerman: Hogwarts AU

Mikasa Ackerman is a Pureblood witch that was born on the 10th of February 1981 and started attending Hogwarts on the 1st of September 1992, being sorted into Gryffindor house.

She has an Hazel wand with a Phoenix Feather Core.

She has a Non-Corporeal Patronus.

Her favorite subject is Charms and her least favorite subject is Herbology.

She was one of the Gryffindor Prefects of her year and eventually Head-Girl.

Before living with the Yeager family, Mikasa appeared to be a cheerful, outgoing, and gentle child. Her innocence allowed her to push anxious thoughts to the back of her mind, continuing to live with her parents and loved ones happily. Growing up, Mikasa has become emotionally withdrawn and noticeably dangerous, sometimes intimidating her enemies or even her friends. She is quite stoic and level headed, rarely seen to lose her cool or be at a loss of what to do, no matter how bleak the situation seems to be. Her will is remarkably strong, demonstrated when she managed to remain so outwardly calm when Eren was presumed dead; only Armin could tell that she was battling with the pain of losing him.

Mikasa cares deeply for her friends and caretakers, seeing them as the last remnants of a family she cannot afford to lose. She also appears to have a soft spot for children, evidenced by her bowing to a young girl she saved and her instantly saving a dark young witch, despite the latter having earlier killed one of her friends. Mikasa is not completely immune to the effects of her emotions, however: Her strong feelings for her beloved ones, particularly when they are in harm's way, does at times cloud her judgment in fury—sometimes to the endangerment of herself and others. A notable example was when Mikasa briefly gave in to her grief over Eren's apparent demise and lost the will to live, forgetting her responsibility for the lives of the wizards she took upon herself to lead in the process. However, she was reawakened by her memories of Eren and a made decision to never give up again, as her memories would die with her.

From an early age, Mikasa was unusually perceptive, aware of the harshness of nature by witnessing the manner in which predators hunt and kill weaker prey. Her peace was shattered when a band of criminals brutally murdered her parents before her eyes in a failed kidnapping attempt, only saving herself and her rescuer when she managed to abandon all inhibition and hesitation to kill one of her assailants. Following this traumatic event, Mikasa would gain a generally cynical outlook on life and accept the world as a cruel place where only those who are strong are able to survive. Her determination to protect her beloved ones as much as possible has contributed greatly to her phenomenal skills as a soldier. Though being among the best of the best, she remains humble and refrains from putting on airs or displaying arrogance.

Mikasa has a strong sense of right and wrong, doing everything she can to make her most impulsive friends follow what she thinks is the right track. In spite of this, she is well aware that she cannot always sway them in decisions and makes it a point to follow them wherever they go, just so that she can be around to help out when trouble arises. The sole reason she decided to become an auror after her graduation was to keep an eye on Eren, despite the fact that she truly wished to live out the rest of her days in relative peace alongside him.

Mikasa's bond with Eren is undoubtedly her most important relationship and the one that defines her. Her personality as a teenager was very much influenced by Eren, who told her she stood no chance of survival if she did not fight for it. His words continued to stay with her, and she automatically recalled them to spur her on when she was close to death. Mikasa wears the black scarf Eren gave her when they first met, holding on to it as a source of strength and comfort when she is upset. She had openly wept tears of relief at his safety and developed vengeful grudges towards those who harm him, from enemies to her own superiors. She blushed when it was insinuated she and Eren were lovers; furthermore, after he insulted her and stated that he had always hated her, she was visibly hurt and eventually left behind the scarf he had given her.

While she would regain the scarf from Louise, Mikasa would not wear it again until moments before confronting Eren following his mass murder plan. Mikasa's sacrifice of a life with her beloved Eren and choosing to defy and kill him. Mikasa grieves for Eren as she visits his grave, and would continue to regularly visit it with her new family for several decades until passing away of old age while wearing the scarf.

[archduchessofnowhere]

What was the opinion of the people who knew Empress Sissi? Thanks.

Hello anon! I’ll start by apologizing to you because it took me so long to answer not because this was a difficult question, but because it's easy to answer and this will turn ridiculously long since we have plenty of testimony of people who knew her.

Her husband emperor Franz Josef was probably her biggest admirer, and while I personally think their relationship is over-romanticed, that he deeply loved her is undeniable. He saw no fault in her and always called her his “angel”; and while he never understood her he did support her in (almost) all her projects. There are plenty of quotes that show his devotion towards his wife (even though his actions not always reflected that), but to me the most defining is one of the things that he allegedly said after hearing of Elisabeth's death: “Nobody will ever know how much I loved her”.

Archduchess Gisela’s feelings towards her mother remain a mystery, but we do have this letter she wrote after Elisabeth’s death that shows her grief, and I think is safe to say that she loved her, even if they weren't close. Rudolf 's feelings were more complicated. He loved his mother, in fact he idolized her, and felt deeply grateful towards her for having saved him from his abusive tutor. But he also longed for a closer relationship with her, which they never had, and this was a source of sorrow for him.

The child who's feeling we know the best is Valerie, who kept a diary throughout her life in which she often wrote about her mother. She loved Elisabeth, but she also found her love hard to bear, specially since she felt it kept her apart from her father, whom she also adored:

What I most wanted to do was fall at his feet and kiss his paternal imperial hands, even as I felt — God forgive me — a momentary anger at Mama since her unbridled love and exaggerated, groundless concern place me in such an embarrassing and false position.

After Rudolf's death Elisabeth fell into a deep depression, and Valerie felt the burden of being her mother's main emotional support.

My mother often causes me such anxiety. She is capable of everything great, yet incompetent in small things. Now that agitation has given place to the monotony of everyday life, and Papa at least appears outwardly the same and works as he always did, life seems to her oppressive and cheerless.

Elisabeth even said to her youngest daughter that she was the only reason why she still was alive, which greatly stressed Valerie, specially since her wedding was approaching. However, while deeply hurt, Elisabeth wanted nothing more than Valerie's happiness so she fully supported her decision to marry for love, and tried to bother her and her family as little as possible after she got married.

For all that’s been said about Archduchess Sophie disliking her daughter-in-law from the get-go, she in fact had nothing but praises for Sisi when the engagement was announced:

The little girl [Elisabeth]’s posture is so graceful, so modest, so irreproachable, so elegant, almost humble, when she dances with the emperor… She seemed to me so attractive, so childishly modest and yet completely at ease with him.

(...) But you can well imagine that my eyes are also busy looking at Sisi, and they rest with delight on this happy couple who love each other so much and in such a charming way; it is a feast for the eyes to see the happiness and harmony that radiates from them.

She also remarked many times how happy she felt, to the point of tears. While it’s true that Elisabeth later on remembered her mother-in-law with resentment, there's evidence to argue that the sentiment wasn't mutual, and that Sophie did felt love for her daughter-in-law, even if they clashed because of their differences.

Her ladies-in-waiting in general had a good relationship with her, some even forming real friendships with the empress. But they also found her hard to deal with, like one of her first ladies, Princess Helene of Thurn und Taxis, Countess Kinsky (not to be confused with Elisabeth’s sister Helene, Hereditary Princess of Thurn und Taxis). Princess Taxis wrote to a former lady-in-waiting when they returned to Vienna after Elisabeth’s flight to Madeira and Corfu in 1860:

I can only congratulate you, upon not having had to go through these two years of martyrdom with us. Now we are settled in Schönbrunn, and the thought that we are ‘settled for good somewhere’ seems quite strange. It was hard for her [Elisabeth] to give up her recent traveling about, and I quite understand this. When one has no inward peace, one imagines that it makes life easier to move about, and she has now grown too much accustomed to this. (…) I believe, indeed, that she has moments of despair, but nobody can laugh like her, or has such childlike whims. She says herself that it is not unpleasant to her to see us occasionally, but it is odious to her to have us in waiting…

The lady-in-waiting that left us the most “content” about the empress is Countess Maria Festetics, who entered her service in 1872 and became Elisabeth’s close confidant until the end of her life. Maria kept a detailed diary during her years in service, which is one of the main sources about the empress’ later life. In this diary she also wrote her impression’s on Elisabeth:

One never grows tired when one goes out with her. At her side it is delightful, and so it is behind her. Looking alone is enough. She is the embodiment of the idea of loveliness. At one time I will think that she is like a lily, then again like a swan, then I see a fairy-oh, no, a sprite-and finally-no! an empress! From the top of her head to the soles of her feet a royal woman!! In everything excellent and noble. And then I remember all the gossip, and I think there may be much envy in it. She is so enchantingly beautiful and charming.

But while the countess adored Elisabeth, she could be critical towards her too:

In ‘Her’ there is everything, but as in a disordered museum - pure treasures, which go unused. Nor does she know what to do with them.

Stephanie of Belgium also wrote a bit about her mother-in-law in her memoirs. This was her reaction when, according to her, Elisabeth asked her to replace her at fulfilling her official court duties:

Empress Elizabeth detested etiquette. She loved solitude, far from the pomp and ceremony of the Imperial Court. It was her purpose, she said, to withdraw from all such things. The duties of her official position had become slavery, a martyrdom! She had not, as a young girl, been educated for the high mission to which she was subsequently called. In her view, freedom was every one’s inalienable right! Her conception of life was a fairyland, free of all trouble and constraint.

The Viennese court took a dislikeness of Stephanie almost immediately, and Elisabeth was no exception. So the crown princess had her reasons to not have a very positive remembrance of her. According to Stephanie this is what happened when she spoke to Elisabeth after receiving the news of Rudolf's death:

At length I ventured to tell the Empress what, weeks before, I had tried to say to the Emperor. I spoke of Rudolf’s manner of life, his habits and customs, his associates, how completely his health had been disordered. The Empress, however, stubbornly closed her mind against these communications, and it was an additional distress to me to feel that she was turning away from me. In her eyes I was the guilty party. Though outwardly I remained calm, inwardly I was in a state of collapse.

From her extended family we have the very unreliable memoirs of Countess Marie Larisch, Elisabeth’s niece. She gives many long descriptions on how beautifully spellbinding she found her, but I'll just share this one:

She fascinated me and dominated my imagination, and, with her infinite tact, she gave me confidence in myself. Elizabeth was never then the Empress, she was the Aunt Cissi who seemed so understanding, and so completely in sympathy with me, that I would willingly have died for her.

This passage wrote many years after Larisch's fall out with the imperial family is likely an exaggeration, and yet I do believe that the young Baroness probably felt flattered for having the favor of her aunt and found her fascinating.

I could keep on but I'll leave it here since this post is already too long. I hope you found my answer helpful!

[morewittepain]

a snippet from a regulus oneshot I'm working on ♥︎

He’s eleven years old and suddenly painfully aware of what being the youngest in the family truly means. He’s certainly no heir, and even less of a priority. All around, he watches his cousins find their own versions of this impossible concept. He’s not sure how much older he needs to be to finally understand, but eleven doesn’t quite seem to be enough.

Christmas is always at Cygnus and Druella’s, but it’s not so much a holiday as it is a banquet. One by one, the sacred families file in through the manor’s tall mahogany doors, children in tow. It’s an excuse to “mingle,” as one would put it. Meet people. Meet spouses. Mostly, though, it’s been Regulus and Sirius’ excuse to visit the more tolerable cousins, although things are much different this year since Andromeda left.

She’d always been their favourite. She was like them: different. Nicer than her parents, nicer than her sisters, than the rest of the purebloods that argued over the dinner table. But she’d fallen in love — in love with a muggle-born boy she’d met in school, who’d gotten her name and face blasted off of the tapestry.

Regulus can’t quite comprehend the story relayed over harsh comments and disappointed scowls. He can’t quite comprehend how someone could feel so greatly for another person that they’d throw their life away entirely just to be with them. 

But maybe he’s just mad she left him to linger silently in one of the manor’s sitting rooms with the cousins he doesn’t like as much.

“What do you think of Malfoy,” he overhears Narcissa whisper to the slightly taller girl thrown over another one of the velvet armchairs. 

Bellatrix doesn’t sit with the poise of a lady, as his mother would call it, more with the carelessness of a pulled back drape. Her legs dangle over one armrest, her back leaned against the other, as she snickers to her sister. 

“Lucius?”

Narcissa nods. 

“I think he’s sort of ugly if you want my opinion. He looks like a corpse.”

Narcissa nudges her shoulder. 

“Oh, shove it,” she says, but there’s no more malice in the words than there is amusement at the comment. 

She spots him then, blue eyes falling over his silver. It’s no use looking away. She knows well enough that he’s been listening. 

“What do you think, Regulus?” she finally asks.

Regulus studies the tall blond standing just opposite of the three of them, turned toward the Lestranges’ boy and lost in some intense conversation. His eyes are notably a frosty shade of grey, his face pointed and a sickly sort of pale. He’s quite tall, though, and his arms are well defined from his quidditch years — girls like that, right?

“I think…” he trails off, with no clear answer in sight.

Marriage isn’t for love, right?

Regulus notes his sleek black coat and the silver rings adorning his fingers. 

“He has a lot of money.”

Narcissa doesn’t seem satisfied.

“Forget it. Boys never understand.”

Maybe it’s because he’s not supposed to find boys attractive, as Narcissa alludes. Maybe she’s right. Maybe someday it’ll be a girl that he fancies; dainty and delicate, with long silky hair flowing over her shoulders and batting dark lashes. Pureblooded and rich, just as he’s expected to seek out.

He can’t put to words why he dreads that day so much.

♥︎♥︎♥︎

only looking just to live through you vicariously | a regulus oneshot loosely based on people watching by conan gray

find it on my ao3 as soon as I'm done!