#tbh i think im rambly because im rendered partially speechless by this whole thing

[rsmrymnt-tea]

「 🐳 」 ohh and what a glorious revelation it must be to realize that your newly gained blue whale anon has decided to reach out to you after silently gazing at your posts for the past few months like a stray, black cat curiously watching you do your silly little daily tasks from your wooden fence, and deciding to finally interact not because it was nervous, but because it thought that the time was finally right for it to show you that it can speak and hope that you find meaning in its words in the midst of all that is hopeless ♡ /lh

yes—i did include gw2 ost!! i noticed that you were always going on about it beginning from a few months ago, and thus i decided to listen to all 9+ hours of it on spotify and delicately put aside my favorites to revisit for later playlists. making playlists for people's ocs, as i've said, is something i heavily enjoy doing!

the contents of the playlist came to me naturally considering how i had specific thoughts about dolasach in mind; there wasn't too much of a struggle as a result. to me, creating content, both literature and art-wise, for others doesn't take much of my energy because i genuinely wish to express that inspiration to others in hopes that they get to create more self-serving content. the description of dola's playlist in particular comes from something i wrote,

“you killed yourself and a garden grew. you looked into the mirror, watched it crack with lightning and felt fury at existence, stifling and electric. you drowned in a pit of tar thick hatred, let it line your tongue and pool beneath your eyes because at least this way you’d be preserved. you dug the grave with your halo, all light and holy diving into the dark, and planted the seeds of solitude ready to bloom into a headstone. abandoned were the zinnias, the poppies, the hope and the love. instead you turned back to camellias and roses, classics revived in a cemetery. the garden was cold. you didn’t know death could grow, but here you are.”

dolasach “died”, and from what i remember, would eventually come back to visit her own grave with what i would imagine to be contempt. to who or what it would be directed towards, i wouldn't know, but would it be so far off to say that it would be towards herself, someone lacking of a great deal of self-compassion and seeks connection as a supplement as she works through her own issues? this thought in mind reminds me a lot of belphegor—

sloth is associated with a variety of complex emotions (more than laziness & apathy), and it all boils down to depression. no love for yourself, others, and all that's left to manifest is anger towards everything because you cannot feel anything else. you desperately try to cling onto something, and that something is self-pity; when you're so disconnected, you can only feel rage (and i think it's a reason why satan & belphegor get along with the exception of their shared interests). i'm not saying that dolasach particularly fits in like a glass slipper with this concept, but i am reminded of her.

like the wildflowers that intimately wrap around her body, she seems to grow in many directions regardless of whether they will aid or hinder her in her journey and i believe that it's genius of you to include so much metaphorical death within her story when she has heavy implications of being in love with flowers (or was that a simple aesthetic choice, i wonder?)

she is full of exhaustion, but there seems to be a yearning to capture the resilience of the wildflowers she so seems to love very much. she isn't delicate by no means, but it's so painfully obvious that she wishes to love in spite of how she looks at herself and can't help but look past her shell and struggle to find something beautiful.

that is what i thought when making her instrumentals-only playlist ^^

i would've included elden ring ost for dolasach, but unfortunately, it isn't on spotify :( but even so, the unravel ost fit perfectly for her ... because i remember those series of posts from a few months ago when you were discussing dola's irish origins with someone, and how you wished to do research for her regarding those origins! the ost in of itself resembles celtic music, despite it being scandinavian in nature.

the dola art i saw was simply none other than your pfp ^^ i was curious as to who it was, so i dug through your account to see if there was a reference sheet for a mc! and there's no shame in tailoring an oc for a canon character if it brings you joy~ it's a lot fun to brainstorm when it comes down to that! especially since you need to seriously analyze the character, and then attempt to comfortably fit them in with your own mc without jeopardizing the story you wish to tell with them.

my adhd begs me to include this part for the description i wrote, but usually when i write descriptions of ocs like that, i always think of them being the innermost thoughts of my mc as her ceramics are being spun with a single flawed touch-- lack of delicacy or a tremor-- the red of the earth tainting the sweet ivory silk that billows with each flowing, curtain-esque movement, sealing fate.

and that is what makes my creations so easy to, well, create! my perspective is magnified from someone else (oc) who is humble and dignified, and yet, has a taste for looking too closely in the hopes of filling in the puzzle pieces to formulate a clearer picture, hoping that the person challenges her on an intellectual level. as for myself, i'm someone who scrutinizes with the intimidating aura of elizabeth bennet's (pride & prejudice) wit, and it often receives mixed reactions (much to both my amusement and my “ah, not again”'s). ^^;; my oc indirectly helps me become more likely to see through a (hopefully) unbiased lens, rather than a stubborn one full of judgement.

and uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu the yokai event alone was so mid tbh,, i don't know if you got the impression from what i said before, but i'd like to confirm that my sights were primarily set on what small, itty bitty pieces of information i could use for my own liking rather than genuinely enjoy the event itself </3 seriously so pissed at the devs for doing satan so dirty. i can't help but think it's out of spite for how the fandom pushed them to make satan like that back when obm first released...

OOF funny how when I threw this into my drafts, I had a bit of preamble on about how it took a while to get to this and now I've answered the newer asks before I got to this one because I forgot I even had this in the drafts >.>

First off--insane to me that you listened to all of it on Spotify? Like, without the game? I'm happy that my rambling about Guild Wars got you to listen to it though! I'm biased as fuck and think that it's got an amazing soundtrack, and personally think that the music started shining more once they stopped getting Jeremy Soule to do their music >.< Can't thank you enough for making the playlist really, because holy shit?

The media that a lot of the music you chose came from intrigues me as well. It's probably not that deep, but there's something about seeing Omori, Unravel, and The Beginner's Guide of all games there, aside from Guild Wars 2. I'm made extra curious about what Sky is now, since a lot of music came from there. There's something very fitting to me that Omori and The Beginner's Guide made it in the playlist.

Nonnie seriously, that playlist is the only thing keeping me tied to Spotify right now hgkjdgfh oh my goodness >.< Ever grateful, and really still so stunned that you went through the trouble. I know you said it comes fairly easy to you, but it doesn't diminish just how touched I am. My goodness >w<

Now... I'm not even sure how to approach everything you said about Dolasach because a lot of it really is striking food for thought--is this how authors feel when their characters are analyzed by someone smarter than them? sjkghdfjgjdfgh

Tbh, the comparison to Belphie and her alignment with Sloth surprised me, because I've always seen Dolasach as someone who actively fought against it in as many forms you can think of. Like you said, she really tries to grow, sometimes not caring in which direction she goes. Contentment is something she wishes she could have, yet it's something she always fears and she knows it; it's part of why there are times she wishes she could just die, because death is probably the most rest she'll ever have. But she also refuses to give in to the urge, even more so after her death at Belphie's hands.

But early on, yes. In the years right before her first year in the Devildom, her life had grown painfully stagnant, and being away from the pressures of her blood family and fully with the freedom to contemplate what she herself really wanted for herself lead to the realization that she's lost and unable to move forward, and has no one she was willing to speak to regarding her troubles. She'd isolated herself without really trying, and the lack of any meaningful connection with anyone or anything to live for lead to her wanting to break routine and force herself to find reason to keep going.

I think she thinks that i's enough for her that others love her if she can't love herself. She doesn't truly understand why, but learns to accept it and thrive under the gentle warmth that her partners and her found family bring her. Despite how much trouble being in the Devildom has given her (including dying and watching herself die), the unexpected whisking away to an exchange program that someone else signed her up for ended up giving her a new lease on life by giving her some beings to love and be loved by, and new passions to explore in the form of magic and magical studies.

Tbh the flower motif stemmed largely from the fact that my Guild Wars 2 character that I got Dola's name from is in fact a literal plant person, and the constant link to death stems from that character being a necromancer >.> Which feels anti-climactic to admit but that's the honest answer. It's just lent itself well to combining into something thematically wonderful for Dolasach the human.

Dolasach the sylvari, the original and namesake >.< The entire person + the clothes and weapon are all plant matter. I have like, 8 other plant people who look something like this

It's honestly so interesting that your thought process is like that :0 You're already so thorough in your analyses, and the added layer that seeing someone from the perspective of someone who would be there, able to observe the character from a first person perspective definitely adds even more to it. It's so nuts to me that you can come to conclusions and hypotheses like that on your own (with the help of your mc) because most of my thoughts on other characters come from reading others' takes, comparing them to canon, then deciding for myself if I agree or not then making adjustments so that I like what I understand.

fdhkgjsdhfjgksdhg the yokai event really let me down, both paths were so... Meh? And truly, I hate that they did Satan so dirty. This may be one of the rare times that everyone's outfits are good, but I personally still greatly dislike what they did with him, even more so after looking into the actual lore of the nekomata. All the more I hate that they incorporated so many cutely elements to his outfit.

Like what's with the paw prints? What's with the bows, what's with the bells? There is something very unimpressive about his silhouette as well in comparison to his brothers. Each one felt like proper respects were given to the yokai that they were based on, and while I understand that the nekomata is commonly made cute, it would've been nice if they leaned in to the ferocity and ferality of it when it came to designing Satan's outfit. A malicious spirit that's also said to grow more in power as a nekomata the more cruelly it was treated in its life as a normal cat... It feeds and kills for fun, and can manipulate the dead.

Then we get Satan's outfit, and a card where he's doing that stupid nyaa post again :/ The unlocked card are is a bit better, but it doesn't remove the fact that I don't like his outfit as a whole lol And I'm also so fucking bitter about the card. I wouldn't have even known that their costumes were supposed to have special abilities if I hadn't seen others post about it... Literally every other card from the Nightmare and Quiz had its respective character mention their costume's powers. Don't get any mention from Satan, and Im still bitter about the lame date and weaker than mediocre romance. So glad the card came home in not that many pulls, I'd be even more upset if I used more than I did and got THAT as the Devilgram...

Anyway anyway the rant got away from me fjdgkdfjhgdfgh And the rest of this answer feels weirdly incohesive but idk how to fix it? Sorry for taking so long to answer this one dgkjdfjh I genuinely forgot that I hadn't answered it but just noticed that it felt like I answered less asks than I knew I had from you...