:o

[iframemerc]

What the fuck are you on about Gaster

[ashenmind]

zun putting out a game with better language availability than toby fox is pretty funny

[churrochurr0]

Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic - the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Deltarune, Undertale

lol lmao

[iframemerc]

I would be with you if trying to grapple meaning out of an unknown isn't an integral part of the intended experience.

[iframemerc]

Part of the brain that likes writing wants to write, and I feel like I have to put my thoughts into text to make it coherent.

Prefacing, like uh, I'd lurk in places that occasionally spews the Euro right's marching texts against immigration because of things and whatnot, and the narratives there. It's always about how these and that groups of people are doing bad bad shit and like, it predates on, tribalism? The need to not think. Instead of people being people, that that bad shit happens for a reason, you remove all the utility and instead assume that, for some deontological reason, these kinds of people are just inherently bad or somesuch.

The response is, ofcourse, to assume that, deontologically?, I'm misusing that word, ontologically? Assume that people are inherently good. You're fighting with their language as it goes, and while it reduces harm, it's coming from the same roots of the people mattering over the world they exist in. It's privilege made from privilege. It's assuming a spiritual dimension to humanity in a very material world.

People exists in response to their experience. If they are incentivized to do one thing, they will act to do that one thing. Incentivize to pursue power, and they'll pursue power and start deprioritizing being human. On the the higher end of the pyramid, I still have way too much faith in humans to not argue that 50/50 people are gonna be good and bad with it if they were born into it. 80/20 people are gonna be bad because climbing the pyramid takes lives. On the bottom though, the desperation in not getting crushed by it really breaks people. Mechanisms to maintain their identity is at max, and that lack of volition is, universal? There's no choice, because you're going to always be forced to make the same choices.

It's not the people, (drumrolls), it's the system, it's the society. Like, I don't know why nobody thought that predating on the rest of the world will not have consequences a century or two down the line.

--

Mostly just, I don't get how Clark is bad. Did the film say that he's bad because he's Black? Are you doing a bit where you assume that this representation of an idea is actually about something else? He was an alcoholic abuser with egoistic tendencies, but do you not see how he got here? Burned your own chances at a dream, made yourself less human to be a labor provider for your partner, for God knows how many years. He drinks because his life fucking sucks, not because he somehow has a racial tendency to be alcoholic. Made himself less human even more by playing a caricature of himself in front of the camera, store's gotta live somehow, and he's a pirate and a sultan because it really does feel like the world fucking hates him and he's stealing all the sovereignty he could get for himself.

If it's just all bad, okay I can get you, but like, he's a fucking architect, that doesn't happen without struggle, and the moment he discovered the proverbial gold nuggets in his backyard river, did he lose control? He mapped out the whole damned thing and when his emotional need got the better of him, like, he did the pretty reasonable job of just asking the two people that shot his ad to go and explore with him. He feels the urgency of trying to prove this to his singular emotional outlet, and maybe sending the cameraman down some chute is bad calcs, but like, you spent a whole week here and nothing seems to have come for you. Assuming phantoms where there aren't any is unreasonable.

That's all I got.

[stelladess]

This one shot really gets to me:

After how cruel and cold Priestess was towards Kal'tsit in chapter 15. Seeing her with this warm look at the newly created not yet named Kal'tsit ama-10 really gets me.

Priestess is so.... human? Like she is also very inhuman. But the ways in which she sucks are very human. I think Priestess genuinely did feel a lot of affection for ama-10, her creation. And meant it when she said it hurt her to "have" to destroy her. It is the kind of thinking of a parent who believes their child would be better off dead because they became someone that parent does not approve of. She did genuinely, in her own way, feel love for her creation. But she did not love the person that creation became. And in her mind the problem was that her creation was ruined and went wrong.

And I think seeing the warmth in her eyes here really drives that point home.

[petterwass]

I think you hit it perfectly; Priestess doesn't really see Kal'tsit as a person, just as a tool, or a useful pet, something like a working dog combined with a toolbox.

And that tool/pet went feral and defect and had to be put down. It's sad, sure. It was a useful tool and creating it took a lot of time. But it's not like it was a person, right?

[iframemerc]

Lynchpin being what it is, I think she's just carrying the narrative of 'change is death' at a certain level.

[subsequentibis]

not an apologizer but a contextualizer. yes the character did that but please understand the Circumstance. yes they had other options but they had to make this choice in a sea of available bad choices. and also it made the narrative more interesting. won't anybody think about the narrative!!!!!

[antennas-to-heaven]

if rien exclusively reads picture books what would happen if you made him read house of leaves

[leithanienwnt]

The whole internet loves Gun Grandpa, a grandpa that shoots guns! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the grandpa is racist

[iframemerc]

I still think that he's actually far more benevolent than he seems because his whole thing throughout the event was 'I Pretend To Do My Job While Actually Not Doing My Job' and nobody's going to ask why this gunknight is making his ship deport the Sarkaz-fected to Wrankwood when he's the gunknights' young prodigy, but ymmv

[iframemerc]

Something very quickly thought up, why Carmilla?

From outside, you have obvious reasons to introduce this character in that way. Make the subtextual implications of what you're doing if you think she's right to be text.

From inside? I'd like to think. There's meaning in names. Sybil literally did an augury for the Player. Maeve lures, and becomes Verena. I couldn't extend this to Kaneeka and Miles, don't feel I've seen enough to suggest this sort of nominative determinism, but I can say that the Witch applies it to herself.

So, of all names, why Carmilla? Why something so utterly reductive to what the Witch is as a whole?

[iframemerc]

0^0 / Stupid Wordplay

Background: 1. I watched the Gaster 67 vid and thought that 6 and 7 being incomplete and complete was a reach on its own 2. I watched A Wild Last Boss Appeared 3. I was remembering KRS 4. I was thinking of why Wingdings is Gaster's 5. I was making stupid puns

Bullets: 1. Be-ware the man who speaks in hands. 2. The colors 166, 167. The numbers 66, 67.

Smoking Gun: 1. 6 (⌛︎) is an Hourglass, a Loading Symbol, a Passage of Time. 2. 7 (🖮) is a Keyboard, an Interface, an Access Point. 3. 1 (📂︎) is an Open Folder, an (this is a reach) Executable, a Device. 0. 166, is an executable loading, buffering. Incomplete. 167, is an executable loading, then interfacing. Complete. 4. "a" (♋︎) is the Cancer Symbol, the Cage. 0a. a6a6a6 is a cage loading, a7a7a7 is a cage with an interface. 5. The "I" in Wingdings is a human hand splayed out (🖐). It's the symbol most representative of a hand. 0aa. Why is the Cage made out of hands? Hands are the "I". Scope Limit: 1. Usage of Wingdings seems most legible when it directly relates to the man himself or the themes he lives on. It's garbage noise otherwise. 2. I am shooting in the dark. I can't see the heart of the mystery. I am using this thought process to try and draw out meaning. I can only try to be plausible.

Methodology: 1. I am literally just looking at the wiki and fishing out numbers and strings that might be of interest.

Interesting Interpretations: 1. 17 - ENTRY by itself seems promising but NUMBER makes it garbage noise. 17 (📂︎🖮︎) though, by omitting the loading (inbetween), is directly an executable interface. 2. Gaster Entry - 264 (📄︎⌛︎🗐︎) , the room where the Entry is found itself. 2 is a singular document, I would say it's a program. 6 is loading. 4 is an array of pages. I think this describes the shattering. 3. Sound Test - ST is reached from Room 46 (🗐︎⌛︎), array loading, or from Room 272 (📄︎🖮︎📄︎), i.e. program interface program. ST appears on 65. 5 is archive. 65 (⌛︎🗄︎) is loading archive. Curious Strings: 1. WDGASTER - I would have placed it as the Smoking Gun if I had an interpretation for GAS (☝︎✌︎💧︎ - one two drop???). As is, I could only say that WD (🕈︎👎︎ - cross no) is De-Termination (and that Toby intentionally made it WD instead of the reasonable W), and that TER (❄︎☜︎☼︎ - cold from light) is why Northernlights is Northernlights. I think there's an interpretation in WD Gaster, but I'm not smart enough to guess at lowercase gaster. 2. FUN - This (☞︎🕆︎☠︎ - to cross death) is a taunt. 3. Garbage noise - This is where the OST titles ends up in. Not enough context to interpret things properly.

The Mid Zone 1. Fake Hallway - 268, 269. 26 is program loading. 8 and 9 are a mouse and a (track)ballpoint. Wingdings lacks a cursor. I would say that this is tied to "pointed tail". 2. The Bird - 123 in-between 116 and 99. 116 is executable executable loading. 123 is executable program document -> This is describing 116 resulting in a part of him appearing. 99 is a bird carrying you, a child, over a gap. It's a cursor, dragging your cursor, over a boundary. 3. Followers - They appear on loading, on 6. They appear on 1,2,3. 4. Children - 'pointed tail' foreshadowing in UT?? 8 and 9 from Fake Hallway. 80-89 is the mouse, and Clam Girl seems fine, unless the mouse is executed (81) and Clam Girl is taken. 90-99 is the trackball, and Goner Kid is already taken. 5. Nightmare Mode - Oh no. 6. Calls - I don't have an interpretation for this.

Some Conclusions 0. Unskippable Sound Test -> Gaster's Theme is played on a loading screen. 666 (⌛︎⌛︎⌛︎). 1. Within 264, 17. That's the core of the Wingding number mystery. Royal Scientist Doctor WD. Gaster loads himself across time and space because he opened an executable to interface while no one was there, and so shatters himself. 2. 66 -> 67. There's no Gaster after 66 because he is specifcally shattered because he doesn't have anyone to interface with, which 789 is about (🖮︎🖰︎🖲︎). 3. The FRIEND isn't Gaster. Gaster is only a prelude to 99. If I want to make a guess, the FRIEND is more akin to the Titans then they actually are to Gaster. After all, 9 (🖲︎) is literally an inversion of 6 (⌛︎). Gaps 1. I don't have a good interpretation of the calls, and this application of Wingdings should work on them too. 2. This application of Wingdings seems to really effectively work on numbers, and seems to be garbage on most strings. 3. I don't have the brainpower, but I suspect you can try applying Wingdings on the RIver Man, their rooms and whatnot. If Wingdings is intentionally made to be used like this, then the River Man becomes far more important than they originally seem.

[iframemerc]

Additional Speculation

Subroot - Handplay

The "I" in Wingdings is a hand. -> Beware the man who speaks in 'I's. -> You couldn't find your 'I'. -> You couldn't find yourself. Hands are the self. How you interface with the world is through the hand. If you lose your hands, you lose yourself. The Voice is obviously Gaster, but the diegetic reason to why he stopped speaking in hands is that obviously, he lost himself. He fell into his creation, his experiment erred. He lost his 'I's. It was a monster melting from de-termination, but even worse, happening at a level that no one should have reached.

Kris gets all of the ominous hand-loss flags because they're mirroring Gaster here. They faced an utterly unreasonable mystery, and lost themself in the process. In absolute dark darkness, all frames of reference are lost. You think you're moving, your proprioception tells you you're moving, but you don't see consequences. You're drowning in darkness. How can you be sure that you were holding someone's hands? How can you be sure that you're not alone in the dark?

Ofcourse, you're not alone in the dark! You have a FRIEND with you.

Subroot - Chilling

The "I" (eye) in Wingdings is a hand. -> Beware the man who speak in eyes. -> Beware the man who speak in i c e. -> EYES. -> ICE. -> I SEE -> ICE-E -> THE FACE OF GOD

Um. Nightmare Route (in 🗄︎..) . The Snowman (who is melting) and the Royal Scientist (who is shattered). The Forgotten Man (who is forgotten) and the Voice (who forgots). 272 and 269. Can't you see? ICE-E is so off-putting because they're the part of Gaster that saw. That saw the hole where the I is. Remove the I in Pizza. They captured that visage of a Dog God and is burning away from it. Something like that.

Unsure of how exactly to interpret "You couldn't find your eyes." that naturally flows from the Gumball scene with this interpretation.

Subroot - Color Theory

Fucking green and inbetween.

So, RGB? How a screen, a dark mirror displays things. RED (DETERMINATION, FREEDOM) = 255,0,0 GREEN (KINDNESS, FREEDOM FATE?) = 0,255,0 BLUE (INTEGRITY, TRUTH?) = 0,0,255 flowing into, CYAN (PATIENCE, ICE) = 0,255,255 [GREEN + BLUE] PINK (PERSEVERENCE?, ???) = 255, 0, 255 [RED + BLUE] YELLOW (JUSTICE, ???) = 255, 255, 0 [RED + GREEN] ending in, DARK = 0, 0, 0 LIGHT = 255, 255, 255

RED is still FREEDOM because PINK and YELLOW added up is literally just RED again, or I atleast think it is. ICE, CYAN, is the absence of FREEDOM. I think that makes sense more than anything. RED RED GREEN CYAN YELLOW. Hm. The Man will obviously be with us by the Ocean, so BLUE. Strange absence of PINK.

I'm still putting this here because it's directly relevant to ICE-E analysis, and because Green and Inbetween actually deserves the RGB aspect. Someone smarter than me please tell me what's wrong here. This doesn't explain BRAVERY, and the relevance of gold.

[iframemerc]

0^0 / Stupid Wordplay

Background: 1. I watched the Gaster 67 vid and thought that 6 and 7 being incomplete and complete was a reach on its own 2. I watched A Wild Last Boss Appeared 3. I was remembering KRS 4. I was thinking of why Wingdings is Gaster's 5. I was making stupid puns

Bullets: 1. Be-ware the man who speaks in hands. 2. The colors 166, 167. The numbers 66, 67.

Smoking Gun: 1. 6 (⌛︎) is an Hourglass, a Loading Symbol, a Passage of Time. 2. 7 (🖮) is a Keyboard, an Interface, an Access Point. 3. 1 (📂︎) is an Open Folder, an (this is a reach) Executable, a Device. 0. 166, is an executable loading, buffering. Incomplete. 167, is an executable loading, then interfacing. Complete. 4. "a" (♋︎) is the Cancer Symbol, the Cage. 0a. a6a6a6 is a cage loading, a7a7a7 is a cage with an interface. 5. The "I" in Wingdings is a human hand splayed out (🖐). It's the symbol most representative of a hand. 0aa. Why is the Cage made out of hands? Hands are the "I". Scope Limit: 1. Usage of Wingdings seems most legible when it directly relates to the man himself or the themes he lives on. It's garbage noise otherwise. 2. I am shooting in the dark. I can't see the heart of the mystery. I am using this thought process to try and draw out meaning. I can only try to be plausible.

Methodology: 1. I am literally just looking at the wiki and fishing out numbers and strings that might be of interest.

Interesting Interpretations: 1. 17 - ENTRY by itself seems promising but NUMBER makes it garbage noise. 17 (📂︎🖮︎) though, by omitting the loading (inbetween), is directly an executable interface. 2. Gaster Entry - 264 (📄︎⌛︎🗐︎) , the room where the Entry is found itself. 2 is a singular document, I would say it's a program. 6 is loading. 4 is an array of pages. I think this describes the shattering. 3. Sound Test - ST is reached from Room 46 (🗐︎⌛︎), array loading, or from Room 272 (📄︎🖮︎📄︎), i.e. program interface program. ST appears on 65. 5 is archive. 65 (⌛︎🗄︎) is loading archive. Curious Strings: 1. WDGASTER - I would have placed it as the Smoking Gun if I had an interpretation for GAS (☝︎✌︎💧︎ - one two drop???). As is, I could only say that WD (🕈︎👎︎ - cross no) is De-Termination (and that Toby intentionally made it WD instead of the reasonable W), and that TER (❄︎☜︎☼︎ - cold from light) is why Northernlights is Northernlights. I think there's an interpretation in WD Gaster, but I'm not smart enough to guess at lowercase gaster. 2. FUN - This (☞︎🕆︎☠︎ - to cross death) is a taunt. 3. Garbage noise - This is where the OST titles ends up in. Not enough context to interpret things properly.

The Mid Zone 1. Fake Hallway - 268, 269. 26 is program loading. 8 and 9 are a mouse and a (track)ballpoint. Wingdings lacks a cursor. I would say that this is tied to "pointed tail". 2. The Bird - 123 in-between 116 and 99. 116 is executable executable loading. 123 is executable program document -> This is describing 116 resulting in a part of him appearing. 99 is a bird carrying you, a child, over a gap. It's a cursor, dragging your cursor, over a boundary. 3. Followers - They appear on loading, on 6. They appear on 1,2,3. 4. Children - 'pointed tail' foreshadowing in UT?? 8 and 9 from Fake Hallway. 80-89 is the mouse, and Clam Girl seems fine, unless the mouse is executed (81) and Clam Girl is taken. 90-99 is the trackball, and Goner Kid is already taken. 5. Nightmare Mode - Oh no. 6. Calls - I don't have an interpretation for this.

Some Conclusions 0. Unskippable Sound Test -> Gaster's Theme is played on a loading screen. 666 (⌛︎⌛︎⌛︎). 1. Within 264, 17. That's the core of the Wingding number mystery. Royal Scientist Doctor WD. Gaster loads himself across time and space because he opened an executable to interface while no one was there, and so shatters himself. 2. 66 -> 67. There's no Gaster after 66 because he is specifically shattered because he doesn't have anyone to interface with, which 789 is about (🖮︎🖰︎🖲︎). 3. The FRIEND isn't Gaster. Gaster is only a prelude to 99. If I want to make a guess, the FRIEND is more akin to the Titans then they actually are to Gaster. 9 (🖲︎) is literally an inversion of 6 (⌛︎). Gaps 1. I don't have a good interpretation of the calls, and this application of Wingdings should work on them too. 2. This application of Wingdings seems to really effectively work on numbers, and seems to be garbage on most strings. 3. I don't have the brainpower, but I suspect you can try applying Wingdings on the RIver Man, their rooms and whatnot. If Wingdings is intentionally made to be used like this, then the River Man becomes far more important than they originally seem.

[expmemento]

SH ep 5 spoiler.....

JKASBKDHAKJLNC LASKB CKLASNJDHLABGSKJLASBN KCLIAVSBLIVHBADSOGFHÑPSKVNBHASKJVN SLDBFVOSNF ÑLBFIKSDN LFKDBSLFB ,SBF ,SB FASBMFNKÑSLFÑ

KJBKFJLJKFBSK JVLNKLVBKSLNFLSNHFLSNFLSDBJFN SL,V ,SV KD SKVNADBNVÑLSANVOLN LDNAA BK ADKB ADKV AL FAS

ok

[iframemerc]

Finished Ato, and I feel like I gotta jot my thoughts down

Higashi seems to be solidly a mix of Japan and Korea? Don't remember if anyone speculated on if it was a Korea thing with the North and South divide, but I feel like it's notable enough now with an explicit maybe delusional mention of Invisible Hand Cat only patronizing the south. It's going to go slightly Cyberpunk, and I'm interested in seeing how that interacts with Priestess's control over the basis of their technologies.

I've been seeing repeats of stuff and this feels like you can draw clean comparisons. Say.. someone creates a media to communicate, and their philosophy gains power from the distribution of this media, but a stranger from a long ago past, not 19 years ago because haimao isn't a hack, returns and with aid from the good people triumphs against this someone. This someone and this stranger doesn't want to kill eachother, but this someone will pretend and argue to make it easier for the stranger. All the while, the context of the stranger and the someone's conflict is controlled by an unknown yet ominous third party with no malice whatsoever. Smells like prophecy, hopefully it's a prophecy.

I didn't lock in on Act on Die's story because Tragodia wasn't silver enough, but Mifune is, and I like Kinbee! Mio and Haruka, Mio and Hoshiguma, those are good contrasts. Hoshiguma and Kinbee, it's an intentional contrast. Haruka and Kinbee, that's a subtle contrast. Like okay asshat your long-ass sword somehow just did that. You literally just want to leave them with a souvenir and a good story. You left that one alive because you were busy and all. Not that you understand and empathize with someone in practically the same zones as you. Everyone calls him Mifune, and Kinbee got it into his head that he should probably be larping as Mifune, with all the weight the name carries. Circumstance shaped it into a prison for him, I think. If onlys.

I hope Corsica is also an old bastard that's a mite bit deceitful. Priestess could just restore him into whatever the propaganda said he was, but I hope he's somehow silver then too. Washed out statues and all.

[iframemerc]

I'm still haunted by that fucking cop ghost. I think I haven't provided a proper exorcism for the guy, a good nuanced argument for why he's clearly nuanced while he doesn't fucking deserves it.

I've been also tuned by my recent media consumption to try and argue for romance even if there's nothing there, so here's a forgery to enable that sort of thing. 1. Columbia *exists*.

Around the time of Patrizion's knighting, Columbia practically declared its independence, dreamt on an ethos of equality, of the pioneers coming together and doing away with their predecessors. Importantly, the fact that a lot of the people there are miners, and so, Infected, means they get their place in Columbia's cultural myth, not getting other'd as hard as anywhere else. 2. Paganini is unreliable when it comes to Patrizion. If A Firearm Technician's Night is reliable, then Paganini's last accounting of Gia was when she boarded her exile ship (Patrizion's there too). He didn't see what happens afterwards, and I will consider his specific line of her being casted into the wilderness as something he practically conjured out of Patrizion's perceived betrayal for over 70 years.

3. Patrizion, for whatever reason, loves Wrankwood.

This is slightly the clincher. Something very aberrant with Patrizion's character is the fact that he loves the stuff. There's no apparent origin to why he got the bug. This is the continuity ghost I'm using for.. 4. Patrizion didn't exile Gia into the wilderness. Specifically, he exiled her to Columbia, and if I'm letting the ghost autocomplete it, he exiled her to Wrankwood. It feels like, how America and Liberia was. You don't want the black men in your land, you exile them to a place that could welcome them. You don't want the Infected in your land, you exile them to a place that could welcome them. Laterano was absolutely aware of Columbia when Clippy is there. This is their kind of discrimination but civilized bullshit. Patrizion was effectively the authority of the *long-range* landship that Gia boarded. He definitely could've messed with the schedule and destination if he wanted to. He's kind of a prodigy y'know. If these kind of exiling even involves a fucking Gun-Knight, why couldn't old junior just assign himself on these kinds of missions, and you know he likes his movies, a little stop at Wrankwood, catching up with his old acquaintance, she got him into movies a long time ago. Did you know that he exiled his own wife into the wastes? He logged it in himself. He deserves rest. Yeah, kinda strange that he keeps writing letters to his dead fucking wife, been keeping at it since near 70 years. Don't know how he hasn't moved on. He's just there.. Still the Same. (I want to believe that Gia's lifespan wasn't in the months range, that she lived on for decades and that's why her necklace just arrived, why Patrizion is mildly suicidal and still keeping to his habit of writing letters to 'tombstones'.) That's the forgery. Hopefully this explains why he isn't treated as a completely bad person. I wouldn't be surprised if he played at hand at Laterano's modern treatment of Infected, he did try to get a Liberi into the Gun-Knights, you never see his fucking face because he's this subversive. It could explain how he could argue to the Pope to get stationed in Rhodes if his sidegig throughout his whole career is caring for Laterano's Infected. Fucking little smiling bastard. You could read the accompanying voice in Still the Same as either Gia or the Matriarch.

[iframemerc]

Been hearing Still the Same again, and I gotta say, the fucking bastard is also referring to either Fia or Keph in 'they changed when she came near'. You could go even further and argue that it's also fucking Gia if his grandma's death was that character-defining for him. I love shitty ass old men.

Edit: Actually pretty sure, even if I'm overanalyzing things, that the switches at the start implies this.

>Laterano Beat: Keph

>Where Tidings Sweep: Marion Pozzo

>In Mourning: Gia Lopez

>Still the Same: Fiametta

Laterano made him a Lateran, Marion made him a gunknight, Gia made him Patrizion, Fia made him Miksaparato, or something like that. You can extrapolate this further, apply Doing While Not Doing and say that

>while he took to the Spirit of the Law as Keph does, he ignores the Letter wherever is possible

>while he took to becoming a Gun-Knight because of Marion, he's barely... (I got nothing atm) (Edit Edit: I just realized, Pat never mentions his parents anywhere. I'm guessing that's a clue to what the relationship was between Marion and Pat for things to go this way. You'd think that he'd atleast have a snippet or something whenever he parented Fia.)

>aaaa

I'll come back to this when I can morb what Gia's section is. I know Fia came about because of Gia, and that he's Like That with Fia because he doesn't want to be an actual role model to Fia (and turn out like him, and because he knows Laterano is wrong but can't articulate what's wrong with it, but) but I can't write what happened between Gia and Patrizion so this will do for a while.

[iframemerc]

been reading through a lot of Still in Love's story, and while I can morb the

(vampires are satisfied from blood -> vampires gain pleasure from blood -> blood becomes sweet -> vampire likes sweet things -> vampire likes chocolate)

I want to say that whatever conceptual roots that part of her characterization pulls from, it's the same thing haunted chocolatier's trying to pull on? haven't read enough of other vampire-ish media to make a morb of where it even starts, but I feel it's of the same essence.

it's like two years, hopefully hc's out when sil's out so I can hc that still came from wherever the hc is.

(to make this slightly more substantial, the still I read was practically a love vampire? there's definitely supernatural elements going there, standard vampiry stuff, but I would say that it's rooted in (including stuff outside the usual romantic kind) love. still suppressed her vampiric love because chains of others, ended up dissociating it from her or something else along those lines

I definitely am missing the context of ramonu's career and story to make a complete reading, and probably should read up on gentil's stuff as well though.)

[amiya-shirou]

You can tell Arknights did a great job at making you hate Fiammetta's grandpa because I haven't seen anyone shipping him with the pope

[iframemerc]

I'm still haunted by that fucking cop ghost. I think I haven't provided a proper exorcism for the guy, a good nuanced argument for why he's clearly nuanced while he doesn't fucking deserves it.

I've been also tuned by my recent media consumption to try and argue for romance even if there's nothing there, so here's a forgery to enable that sort of thing. 1. Columbia *exists*.

Around the time of Patrizion's knighting, Columbia practically declared its independence, dreamt on an ethos of equality, of the pioneers coming together and doing away with their predecessors. Importantly, the fact that a lot of the people there are miners, and so, Infected, means they get their place in Columbia's cultural myth, not getting other'd as hard as anywhere else. 2. Paganini is unreliable when it comes to Patrizion. If A Firearm Technician's Night is reliable, then Paganini's last accounting of Gia was when she boarded her exile ship (Patrizion's there too). He didn't see what happens afterwards, and I will consider his specific line of her being casted into the wilderness as something he practically conjured out of Patrizion's perceived betrayal for over 70 years.

3. Patrizion, for whatever reason, loves Wrankwood.

This is slightly the clincher. Something very aberrant with Patrizion's character is the fact that he loves the stuff. There's no apparent origin to why he got the bug. This is the continuity ghost I'm using for.. 4. Patrizion didn't exile Gia into the wilderness. Specifically, he exiled her to Columbia, and if I'm letting the ghost autocomplete it, he exiled her to Wrankwood. It feels like, how America and Liberia was. You don't want the black men in your land, you exile them to a place that could welcome them. You don't want the Infected in your land, you exile them to a place that could welcome them. Laterano was absolutely aware of Columbia when Clippy is there. This is their kind of discrimination but civilized bullshit. Patrizion was effectively the authority of the *long-range* landship that Gia boarded. He definitely could've messed with the schedule and destination if he wanted to. He's kind of a prodigy y'know. If these kind of exiling even involves a fucking Gun-Knight, why couldn't old junior just assign himself on these kinds of missions, and you know he likes his movies, a little stop at Wrankwood, catching up with his old acquaintance, she got him into movies a long time ago. Did you know that he exiled his own wife into the wastes? He logged it in himself. He deserves rest. Yeah, kinda strange that he keeps writing letters to his dead fucking wife, been keeping at it since near 70 years. Don't know how he hasn't moved on. He's just there.. Still the Same. (I want to believe that Gia's lifespan wasn't in the months range, that she lived on for decades and that's why her necklace just arrived, why Patrizion is mildly suicidal and still keeping to his habit of writing letters to 'tombstones'.) That's the forgery. Hopefully this explains why he isn't treated as a completely bad person. I wouldn't be surprised if he played at hand at Laterano's modern treatment of Infected, he did try to get a Liberi into the Gun-Knights, you never see his fucking face because he's this subversive. It could explain how he could argue to the Pope to get stationed in Rhodes if his sidegig throughout his whole career is caring for Laterano's Infected. Fucking little smiling bastard. You could read the accompanying voice in Still the Same as either Gia or the Matriarch.

[iframemerc]

Patrizion is really hooking me with the same conceptual lures that Andoain got me with, so I feel like I got to talk about him until I properly exorcised the cop-ghost out of my mind.

I think, the biggest thing you have to consider if you're thinking Patrizion, is that he's absurdly aware of how he looks like. He's a natural at playing movie villains, he connects with Fia by being antagonistic. He literally changed his fucking image song thrice until it's Still the Same. That's the first part.

The second part is that he's basically doing like three things in the Masses' Travels. He's either trying to get people together, trying to not do anything, or trying to get people to shoot him. He clearly loved choice. He's a respecter of choice. He chose to be a Gun-Knight, with all the baggage involved, and he'll damn himself over the choices that he took in his youth to now. It has to mean something in the end.

I feel like, as much as you could judge him by his actions, and see him as someone who had their face surgically removed in favor of being a Holy Blender 24/7, and this is a sort of truth, it's not him truly. That he still has a heart beating in him, because if he were truly a true knight, he wouldn't personally exile Gia, wouldn't try to offer Aurela a redemption, wouldn't adopt and teach Fia. He could've been his vows and oath in truth, but he's tragically way too human for any of that.

Conversely, the Laterano in his head and what it was in actuality is sort of like that. He's fighting for the one in his head, because it's Good, but because he's already running on the logic of denying his own humanity, he'll similarly deny Laterano's own very human failings, because it's not Laterano, it's not him.