#mayor talk

[dois-funnyzone]

some thoughts on partitio and agnea's traveler stories and their ultimate contribution to the connecting plot of octopath traveler 2

i recently finished my second playthrough of octopath 2, and it was really fun because it reminded me on why this game is very special to me in spite of its flaws, as well as give me new reasons to appreciate it and its efforts to better connect all eight traveler stories to a grander plot than the first octopath game.

when i first played octopath 2, i thought agnea's story was pretty disappointing since it was the one that connected the least to the big bads behind the game's final chapter and was very low-stakes and lighthearted. however, after reading some folks' opinions on the game + reexperiencing the whole package for myself, i've softened up to her a bit and really appreciate the role she plays in the story, even if it might not be to the same level as the other travelers. (i'm also lumping partitio into this even though his connections are a little tighter + he's not as talked about regarding this issue since i feel like he and agnea's stories have similar ideas and tone)

this was originally apart of a grand infodump on the game i made after finishing the epilogue that i wanted to isolate into its own post!

some spoilers abound, up to the very end of octopath traveler 2 (with some mentions of stuff revealed in octopath traveler 1's endgame)

so the final chapter of octopath traveler 2 pretty much ties key characters and events together through the moonshade order, whose members were involved in all eight characters' stories in order to enact their plan to bring about eternal night. a common criticism of agnea's story is that her connections to this overarching scheme are pretty loose.

each traveler has a major member of the moonshade order involved in some way or another. temenos was acquainted with mindt, who turned out to be arcanette, the current leader and mastermind behind it all. castti's colleague trousseau was involved in the cult's activities as well, utilizing the shadow to spread pestilence after being corrupted by their teachings.

in agnea's case, her connection to this order is tanzy, who is a very minor character all things considered in her story. she was a member of giselle's traveling troupe, and she often mentions a "goddess" in most of her dialogue (who we later find out was referring to arcanette, who manipulated her into the order's cause). what gets to a lot of people is that agnea, upon finding out about tanzy's fate during the final chapter (that she was used and sacrificed by arcanette in order to further the moonshade order's ambitions), has zero reaction or comment about it. not even giselle, coda, and rico, the only other people that have actually met and interacted with tanzy, have anything to say about tanzy's noticable absence during the reunion during the epilogue, making tanzy as agnea's link to the moonshade order feel strange, especially compared to other members who had a slightly more active role in the other travelers' stories.

since i'm also talking about partitio, i might as well explain his connection as well: his story's moonshade order member is ori, a scrivener that always seems to appear out of nowhere. we learn in the final chapter that she was actually keeping tabs on a bunch of the other travelers (even appearing at osvald's trial at the beginning of his story) to gather information for the moonshade order. ori was a pretty important character, but her involvement with partitio's story is that she was Always There (that's the best i can put it), and partitio was sort of doing his own thing.

he and agnea's stories are the only ones to make no mention of The Shadow or any of d'arquest's shenanigans, and they're also a lot more lighthearted in tone, so they might feel a bit out of place when trying to connect them to the other travelers' stories and how they connect to the overarching plot. does that mean they served no purpose? not so! i think they’re relevant in their own way.

partitio and agnea’s story are about hope and forging a future that’s worth fighting and living for. partitio is all about bringing about prosperity to all and seeks to overcome the gigantic task of buying the rights to the steam engine so he can freely distribute it for the better. his resolve to help others is precisely what gets ori to doubt her nihilistic worldview instilled in her by the moonshade order, and it's what keeps her alive when she attempts to sacrifice herself at the fellsun ruins. ori states in her journal that she believes people, businessmen like partitio, are all destined to fall into the pitfall of greed that makes people suffer, much like how roque brilliante turned out, yet partitio’s compassion changes her mind. it’s really cool, even if it’s a detail buried among a sea of other stuff you have to read to piece everything together. (love the final chapter and its plot revelations, but yeah it's sort of disappointing that a lot of information is obtained through reading ori's journal rather than any kind of interaction between all of the members, but alas)

agnea on the surface has a really lighthearted story that doesn’t really have a natural place to mention the death cult lurking in the shadows of everyone’s story or the supernatural magic that will be used to bring about eternal night (see again, tanzy’s very minor presence compared to other moonshade order members). i thought the same at first after my first playthrough. HOWEVER! her story, more than anyone else’s, IS about hope, the main theme of the game. her final battle theme + the thing she works on her whole story is uniquely called the ‘song of hope’. she’s the only traveler to not have a version of the final battle theme; rather than being an epic clash between her greatest foe, it's a triumphant, uplifting song that she debuts in her "battle" with dolcinea ('song of hope' is such an amazing song too, perhaps my favorite in the ost). her journey involves inspiring others to keep moving forward in the face of adversity, such as motivating gill to pursue his ambitions as a musician or giselle to overcome her doubts or giving laila a reason to keep living and dancing despite her circumstances. it only makes sense then that she is the one to give the final speech that properly ends the story of the game, as it’s her journey that fully encapsulates that theme of hope for the future. it was the very thing the main villains thought there was none left in the world, that nihilism that made them want to put the world out of its misery by bringing about an endless night since the dawn was not worth fighting for.

agnea feels like the true protagonist of the game in my opinion, even if her story feels the least related to The Big Bads.

she’s not here to fight, she’s here to inspire, ya know!!! AAAAA

(if i ever play octopath 2 for the third time, ill definitely be picking her as my starter~)

(the reason why i’m kinda up on my soapbox defending my girl is bc i saw a gamefaqs thread of someone explaining this significance agnea’s story has to the main plot and themes and everyone dismissing it as a dumb, stretchy non-answer. YOU GAMERS KNOW NOTHING!!! /lh)

anyway, as far as lighthearted stories w a sort of vague goal go in octopath traveler, agnea’s heavily tying back to the main theme of the game makes it stronger than someone’s like tressa or alfyn’s since they kind of had their own plots that didn’t really relate back to anyone else’s. their only connection to everyone else’s stories were through their connections with graham crossford, which is PRETTY COOL!! but he was long dead/transformed into redeye before the events of the game and tressa and alfyn sorta do their own thing after he indirectly inspired them to go traveling. it just feels more vague i guess?

~

apologies this is really rambly. again, i lifted this from an infodump i wrote on the fly, so i was not really essay-brained, but i hope my point comes across adequately?

all the same, i just have a big appreciation and love for this game. i'm proud to call it my favorite video game, and though it has its problems, it's very special to me and i like talking about it. hopefully i got that across to any reader on this here post, and maybe it inspires a new appreciation for agnea's story and its place in octopath traveler 2 :)

[mynolia]

25 years of Townsville!

[naturecalls111]

[stiffyck]

im incredibly normal about doppelganger stories. like. the thing with doppelgangers is so interesting to me because. it makes the person think about themselves in a way like "....could i do that?" like if the doppelganger is evil the person sees this person who looks exactly like them do horrible stuff and they have to think.... would they be able to do that? is there smt like that in their heart or whatever.

the mayor and hotguy just inserted themselves in this i dont make the rules but anyway theyre both evil right? but in different ways.

mayor is corrupt in the way that he doesnt care about the environment and the capitalist ways of his mayorship tho right- hotguy on the other hand literally beheads people to bring them to his king. and its not even for his king, he does it because he wants to. he uses the king as an excuse. if the king told him to do something he didnt want to do? hed turn on him in a second. hotguy does things for himself, hes violent and he likes that. the king just gives him a legal excuse to kill people

anyway yes take this incredibly self indulgent thing that ive been thikning about while waiting for my pizza

[mhaikkun]

I wouldn't, if I were you. I know what she can do.

[squishyimps]

I hate to be the one to say it but why are they so nibble nibble nom nom?

[girlboyburger]

mesmerized

[askblueandviolet]

Ask Box is- Oh? What's this???

The ask box is open for... all of them???

You can ask questions to all of them now!!! HORRAY!!! As always, Mayor is aware of everything that happened in the chapter, it's just that I really wanted to draw this setting and use it for the new set of asks :'))). Also, thank you all for the support so far. Chapter Six is a milestone for this fic (practically halfway through Colours) so thanks for sticking around!!!

Ask box will be open until I have 4-6 asks. Have fun!

[amyrlinegwene]

My youngest sister favs <3

I feel like I don't really see people talking about how many parallels Egwene and Moiraine have in the books so here is my venn diagram. Feel free to add any more parallels from the books

[isogenderskitty]

i think it's interesting how steph is like... the nerds see her as part of the popular group, and sure we see her talking to the cheerleaders a little, but other than that she doesn't really seem to be one of them in the truest sense? i could fully believe that she feels like the tiniest bit of an outcast there, like she's just cool enough for max to give her a pass but she doesn't really click with them that well. she feels to me like the bridge between the popular ones and the nerds, which is appropriate i suppose for her place in the story.

[dois-funnyzone]

Smash Tier List, Ordered By Which Characters Have Canon Last Names

i decided one fateful friday evening to make this tier list cuz i was bored. shoutout to the smash prose server for helping me iron out any kinks and retrieve some obscure information to help make this tier list reach its fullest potential (discord link for the server on my blog if youre on desktop or in my pinned post on my art account always b pluggin)

below the cut is some extra details on the tiers and character placements.

THIS IS ROUGH AS HELL!!!!! and the research and sources aren't very cut and dry throughout ;w; a tier list i wanted to make for the sillies that ended up going deeper than expected but not all the way, so it's sorta in a weird gray area of reliability. apologies for not-so-clear info in advanced 😔

Official Surname

what it says on the tin. i'd put detailed explanations of where all of them were "confirmed" but i don't know the nitty gritty of a lot of the characters and just know em from official bios. will provide detail if i see fit cuz its my post.

Byleth: "Eisner"

Joker: Civilian name is "Ren Amamiya", from the anime. Akira Kurusu is another civilian name he goes by, coming from the manga, however Amamiya is more common in official media (and kind of canonized in the PC release of Persona 5 Royal, where changing the language to English from something else will default his name to Ren Amamiya)

Kazuya: "Mishima"

Samus (And Zero Suit Samus): "Aran"

Fox: "McCloud"

Falco: "Lombardi"

Wolf: "O'Donnell"

Terry: "Bogard"

Cloud: "Strife"

SImon and Richter: "Belmont"

Donkey and Diddy Kong: So we all pretty much agreed that "Kong" is a family name :P it could be moved to the yellow canon-ish tier but idk

Peach: "Toadstool", which she signs off as in Mario 64 (So that's pretty canon right)

Generally accepted fanon surname (or exists in obscure non-canon media)

these are kinda? surnames. theyre not official like the ones above or acknowledged in the main source material, but they draw from some sort of source that fans run with. usually, it's common for multiple fanworks to use them as last names when dishing them out :P there could be multiple of these for each character. this is where a lot of handy guidance from the prose server came in, thank you very much once again!!

Mario, Dr. Mario, and Luigi: "Mario", from the live action Super Mario Bros. movie (also, "Mario Mario" is the funniest shit ever to me). Also the joke of "hey if theyre the 'mario bros', then is their last name mario?!"

Yoshi: Alright apparently in the 1993 manual for Super Mario World, Yoshi's full name is "T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas". Alright then?? I was going to put Yoshi in the "species" category, but this bit surprised me :P not sure if it's like, a scientific name or something, but I guess this Yoshi is a special case.

Ganondorf: I think in a manual or something like that (Forgive my vague language, this was just something I recalled that the people I worked with agreed with), he is given the last name "Dragmire".

Marth, Chrom, and Lucina: "Lowell" was a last name given to Marth in the Fire Emblem anime. With Chrom and Lucina being direct descendants of him, they also inherit this last name.

Zelda: "Hyrule" is generally assumed to be her last name. I'm pretty sure Zelda's father in BotW is given the official last name, though I know there's some different reincarnation shenanigans going on. Still, no one stopped me 😎 it's a common theme for a lot of "royalty" characters to be assigned a fanon last name named after their respective kingdom (though I may have overlooked some, we'll get to those later).

Ike: "Greil", named after his father. I thought it was kinda dumb for his last name to be ripped from his dad's first name but idk maybe everyone is on a last-name basis for him (I haven't progressed far in Path of Radiance to know).

Sonic: This one surprised me. Apparently in the Archie comics, his full name "Ogolvie Maurice Hedgehog". So his last name is "Hedgehog"? I suppose this means Sonic's full name could also be Sonic The Hedgehog, with "The" being a middle name :P

Captain Falcon: I was going to include this in "canon", but given that it's technically from a manual and other surnames in this tier come from a similar source, so might as well be consistent. In one of the F-Zero manuals, he's given the name "Douglas J. Falcon" (baller ass name tbh). In the anime, he's also given the civilian name "Bart Lemming".

Sephiroth: According to the Prose pals, it could be "Hojo" or "Crescent" depending on who you ask (idk I'll take their word for it. Yeah sorry this isn't a very thorough list in terms of research and sources).

Ryu: Another Prose pal said that one of the movies gave him the last name "Hoshi".

Bowser and Bowser Jr.: Heard "Koopa" tossed around, given Bowser is the king of Koopas and Jr. is his son.

Mega Man: "Light", after his creator Dr. Light.

Roy: "Pherae", after him being the son of Marquess Pherae.

King K. Rool: I think I assumed "Rool" could be his last name, and the K. is an initialized first name. Heavily based on my own guess tho.

No Canon Surname

Yeah. Though some are Weird and probably misassigned.

Snake I could have sworn had some kind of fanon surname, but I drew up a blank when consulting with the Prose server :P any hardcore Metal Gear fans can swoop in and correct me though.

Corrin and Daisy are kinda... weird to me cuz I assumed they would operate on similar logic to Zelda, being named after their respective kingdoms ("Valla" and "Sarasaland"). But I've never seen those used in practice so it's probably negligible. They bounced between tiers a lot while I made this.

I suppose Dragon Quest 11 Hero could fall in the "kingdom last name" category but idk I'm still internally debating with Corrin and Daisy. Didn't do any research on the other Heroes and no one seemed to stop me. So sorry!! 😭

The only other thing I have to say about this tier is that I'm surprised Bayonetta, Shulk, Olimar, Alph, and Sora didn't have any note-worthy last names to speak of. Unless something slipped through the cracks!

Idk if Sheik would adopt Zelda's assumed last name which is why they are in this tier.

Title, no canon name

Pretty much a title given to the character, be it related to their occupation or status.

This was originally a "no canon first name lmao" tier, but I changed it to be more broad at the request of the Discord buddies to include weird edge cases like Dark Samus (who isn't really a species, but not really a person?) and Duck Hunt (who accounts for three separate entities in one lol so that kind of confused me, but a tier like this worked for him).

Species????

Pretty much a character that comes from a species of many, meaning they don't really have an actual name to begin with (Inklings technically count, since it's not like "Inkling" refers to status or occupation). Yes, I included R.O.B. there due to Subspace Emissary's lore :) one could argue that's not canon, but be fr does R.O.B. have any existing lore to work with? Brawl essentially made him its own OC for the story campaign and that's amazing. Anyway, unnecessary rant aside, R.O.B. is a species in my book, and he's the last of his kind (another detail originating from Smash).

Last two tiers are kind of joke tiers I came up with as the idea for this list cooked up in my brain. One could argue "Mr. Game and Watch" is a title, but I thought his own dedicated tier was funnier so I kept it intact :P

~~~

Thus concludes this dumbass tier list. Feel free to roast me in the notes for inaccuracies cuz there's probably a lot (Or don't I'm sensitive as hell)

[katiekatdragon27]

I LOVE MIXING FIXATIONS IT'S SO FUN!!!

Dust: An Elysian Tail but Rayman characters let's go😎

After extensive analysis of both games (five minutes of thought), we decided that most (not all) of the Warmbloods are teensies, the Mudpot folk are Glutes, and most (not all) Moonbloods are nightmares.

Here's the more focused roles I have paired for this AU:

Dust -> Rayman

This makes complete sense. Main character who is good at combat and kind at heart. Also has a lot of abilities in general lol

Fidget -> Murfy

I really don't care for Murphy buuuut I won't deny that he reminds me a lot of Fidget. Same vibes, different execution.

Aharah -> Maybe Ly?? Maybe Polokus???

That's cuz my man is a talking sword. He helps Dust with combat and advice cuz he's cool like that.

"See how lifelike it is?" (Ugly ass murphy plush)

"Oooh! Campfire fuel~"

Ginger -> Goth Teensy

This is a mix of personal hcs and just cuz vibes lol. Both are angsting and have affiliations with the opposing groups in the series. (Goth with the Livid Dead door, Ginger with the Moonbloods).

"And who are you really? The last time I saw a thingamajig was when my brother died!"

Sereth -> The First King

This one was a little more difficult to decide, but I like this choice lol. The First King being a dream and nightmare creature in all technicality that I would imagine has a similar personality to Sereth is fun. Also he's a little scary looking, which works with canon. Also his eyes are glossed over so it looks like the Sereth's glowing eyes.

"I am here to serve~"

BELOW ARE SPOILERS FOR DUST: AN ELYSIAN TAIL!! PLEAAAAAAAASE PLAY THE GAME OR WATCH A PLAYTHROUGH OR SOMETHING BEFORE LOOKING AT THESE I BEG!!! I DON'T WANT TO RUIN THE TWIST FOR Y'ALL!!

Now that that's out of the way, here are the spoiler doodles.

Can you-c-can you guess who Rayman was created from?

Can you can you?

That's right!

THE MAGICIANS!!

"Forever in battle. Forever at odds."

When I made this decision I felt so smart. They're the same name, same vibes, and the idea that Rayman got his whimsicalness from the Magician and the violent tendencies of Ales makes so much sense to me.

"Only impossible for a creature with a single soul."

"I am Rayman."

Also I get to draw him with the teensy boba eyes, which is a win for me.

I'll probably make more stuff for this cuz I really like this idea. The story will have creative liberties though for character motivation, but that's not too important lol.

Have a lovely day fellas :)))

[bobus]

idk how to fix quality issues lmfao

and this has probably been done already but idc imma do it too

[puffledthomas]

“Oh my god I love Damien! He’s such an innocent bean! I love the Mayor!”

…is this your man?

[thirdiife]

some guy in the datastream just got obliterated by that image

[theguiltinessisyours]

me (being neither British nor American) starting Malevolent:

Okay so he's British. Are they in England? Why does everyone sound weird? Are they in America? No wait that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever? Ooooh Arkham is fictional - so are they in America? Why is there a Scottish accent are they in the UK? No they aren't he just bought a gun?? How are you taxiing everywhere ooooh it's the 1930s that explains the lack of cellphones WHAT THE HELL ARE THOSE DICE ROLLING SOUNDS does Arthur actually talk out loud when he speaks to John that doesn't seem right he hears him in his head right? no wait he does talk out loud because he's stammering man why don't you get yourself some sunglasses and a stick to appear blind does having control over your hand/foot mean you can actually move it or not because you have to use your muscles in the shoulder to move the entire arm-