suouni ceo

21/theythem!!/i draw what i like/no proshippers plz!

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miracle

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innovative 3/4 portraits of my favourite green-haired characters who are full of hope and whimsy despite the constant opposition they face and have big fat gay crushes on their grumpy but ultimately warm-hearted best friend. every witch hat atelier fan should read children of the whales

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more marker practise

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who better to test out my new copic markers on than them

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dress up 🌾

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no other homeland but you

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🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

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someone will remember us, even in another time

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i could lie and say i've been busy with uni work or something but i have in fact been as consumed by them as always. just not finishing anything. i used to post sketch dumps all the time but now i mostly just send them in the cotw discord in case any of you are wondering where they went

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what’s the appeal of Suouni for you?

oh my god you cant just ask max why they love suouni

the short answer is i think they complete each other in a way that feels actually intentional both narrative wise and as people. i talked a little bit about it in the suou post, about how ouni's perspective of suou changes and how that gives suou a bit of belief in himself where there was none. ouni being the one to accept suou as he is and look past his own old prejudices on purpose to do so is incredibly significant for both of them. watching suou throw himself into danger time and again to protect ouni and everyone else, despite being comparatively powerless, is what spurs ouni to allow other people to help him. in the grand scheme it's what finally gives him hope, and even how he wins the last battle.

the way they change each other is so important: their relationship at the start is so completely different from at the end, and it happens so softly and gradually you don't even realise until you go back to compare, but without each other they wouldn't become who they end up being (which is like the basis for any interesting relationship). they both sharpen and soften each other

• ouni laughs twice in the whole series, and both times it's because of suou. which could mean nothing

• suou rarely gets angry at his friends, and the only time he outright fights with one is with ouni. again, could mean nothing

• suou is extremely motivated by ouni's strength, and the hope he has that ouni will one day lead the mud whale people recurs all the way through and actually comes to fruition: they meet in the middle, their separate dreams coming together as one

• they save each other in equal measure, it's not a one-way street. only suou was able to save ouni with sasa both after miden's room and in the white nous. only ouni could save suou from orca in amonlogia (after suou in turn saves him) and by killing the white nous

• the parallels with miden and byakuroku. the mayor (to-be) who extended his hand to the daimonas before anyone else, because he believed in his humanity. suou and ouni find the future that miden and byakuroku couldn't because byakuroku asked suou to save ouni, and in the end gave his life for ouni's. it's not reincarnation but to me it's adjacent (and deliberate)

• whatever happens at the end with the baby daimonas. even i don't have a strong concept of what this was i just know it entwines them in a completely unique way that they don't have with any other characters

• on a visual level, they're just meant to fit together. opposite colour schemes. suou is soft where ouni is sharp. the angel symbolism they both have!

• historians literally say they were very good friends

let me be clear: i don't think they're the only significant relationship they each have. shuan is the most important for ouni imo, as well as nibi (posthumously, with ouni doing all of the heavy lifting) and chakuro. lykos and rochalizo play a big role in suou's development (such as it is lol). but i think suouni is one of the most interesting and equal relationships in in cotw. they need each other, just like chakuro and lykos, platonic or not <3 a pair, do not separate

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I know you kinda hate him, but do you have any thoughts about Rochalízo in relation to Suou’s character development/ potential character development he could have had?

(for anyone unaware i do not hate rochalizo for his writing i have a personal vendetta against him because he hurt suou)

i think he has strong-ish writing but i did already mention that it kind of peters out after amonlogia and he is kind of the same archetype as ouni and lykos in relation to suou: they think they're bad and irredeemable then suou fixes them because of his inherent virtue. with lykos chakuro is the primary fixer while with ouni its also a mix of chakuro and shuan but suou represents ultimate goodness to all of them. their individual personalities set them apart, but at its core these relationships are quite similar.

i think suou gets surprisingly little out of his story with rochalizo. im trying to be as unbiased as i possibly can be under the circumstances when i say this: i would be more open to suou and rochalizo as a pairing if it seemed like there was more conflict between them after rochalizo betrays suou and then regrets it. instead of being pretty quickly welcomed back, it would have been much more interesting to see any kind of friction between them about this and not the weird little nothings in the kivotos arc where rochalizo feels bad about wanting to go home and suou just being like It's okay! it just feels like (as is often the case with suou) it was a lot of buildup with little payoff other than suou being brutalized, rochalizo crying about it, and then suou just shrugs it off because he's just that kind

unfortunately i don't think i can be a totally fair judge on rochalizo lol. so much of his arc centers on suou without expanding on suou and i struggle to care about it

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okay here’s the big question: thoughts on Suou’s writing?

BUCKLE UP THIS IS GONNA BE LONG!!!!!!!

tldr there is a constant attempt at something deeper with him but abi umeda really struggles to fit it into the story and even his best moments are bittersweet for me as someone who knows they don't ever culminate in anything big. his writing is strongest in amonlogia but then after that, alongside rochalizo, it feels like umeda didn't know what to do with him. as someone who has loved him for 4 years and sat with his writing i am forced to expand on everything myself because i don't find most of what canon offers satisfying when it could be satisfying, it's so close!

i really, genuinely think abi umeda was trying to say something with him. other people have described the unmarked as a kind of metaphor for disability and i think that holds at least some weight with him because he defines himself as useless because he's clumsy and can't fight like the marked can

all the way through the series it is this thing that recurs where he tries and usually fails to help and then beats himself up for being in the way, if he isn't beaten up physically by liontari or duke dachylta or orca or whoever (which only drives him to see himself as disposable on top of being useless). the problem with this is that it's not very meaningfully resolved, when it could have been so much more. the solution is just to take away what made the marked stronger (in suou's eyes) which is just kind of a cop out to me? like... yeah this was always going to be how it ended. this ending is his sole obsession. i just wish there was more exposition about why.

this leads me to what i think is the most frustrating thing: we are constantly given little hints about who he truly is beneath the surface.

but nothing much ever comes of these implied negative parts of him, and at the end of it he's much the same as when it began. he is self-sacrificial to a fault, selfish, guilty, and more deceptive than he wants to admit. he projects his views on others and is very resistant to changing them. but it's rarely explored in a satisfying way. at the end he just is still "the mayor", without the self-harm, which was also never concluded or explained more than him feeling things more deeply than everyone else. you're telling me there was no exploration with him on any of these issues? it could have been so good! i was desperate on my first read, back when i was dealing with some of these problems, to see him come to a resolution and he just doesn't. well, barely. dont mind me as i get a bit suounipilled even in the suou post:

they define strength the same way (more or less a person's ability to lead), and see one another as strong, but don't see themselves as strong. suou asks ouni to take over his job because he doesn't see himself as worthy of it, ouni isn't sure about it because he thinks of himself as weaker than suou. at the end they meet in the middle and work together. its a very small development and doesn't make up for suou's writing completely but it does make their relationship technically one of the most important for both of them, it makes them both overcome their little biases, and i was drawn to it because (while for a long time i wouldn't admit that he was less than perfect) it expanded on just one of suou's problems: the way he saw himself as useless. ouni showed him that wasn't quite true, while also receiving a little development of his own as his view of suou changed and he accepted they were friends comrades.

my focus on what happens postcanon is because i can fill the gaps and develop suou more on my own because i am endlessly interested in how he would come to terms with his obsession coming to fruition in the marked being saved. he had no other plans beyond the new home for everyone else, nothing planned for himself outside of it, never dealing with any of his very lightly implied issues. in my fanfic i have him come face to face with some of it, but these things aren't fixed so quickly and so i cling to my headcanons that they aren't a focus in the main story because it all comes after suou can't divert his attention to saving everyone anymore. i really love him so i am constantly thinking about everything that could have been better.

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Can I ask for you opinions on Ouni's writing?

🫵 oomf

i likey it 🙂‍↕️ like u i think hes got some of the strongest writing and i dont have any big problems with it like i do with suou's. i think abi umeda is good with him and characters like him (shuan and orca) but struggles a bit with the direction of characters who don't need redemption because they're already good from the beginning (suou and chakuro)

i think some people would find all the power of friendship™ stuff a little corny but i wholeheartedly love it and not even like through my suouni lens. It's all just very sweet and you know im a sucker for characters who never got to have a childhood (literally in this case) becoming more true to their age like ouni does in the second half of cotw. he realised he took everything he lost for granted and so he opens up and loves and trusts his friends! sorry. Comrades. hes so funny

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idea SUPER NOT STOLEN from rua . suou headcanons + some cotw memes below the cut for old times' sake

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cotw valentines doodles love is cool or whatever #nonchalant

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02/07 (sky and sea)

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seasonal itia outfits for a secret santa. i realised about halfway through that she doesnt wear the monocle all the time and that doesnt actually make sense but. i dont care