You need not bother to remove the bandages wrapping the equipment; there's a sorrowful past that it does not want to reveal.
(Old work from 2023)
@sweetfishies I typed so many words replying to the discussion but Tumblr just lagged like insane and shut itself down and I lost all the words 😭😭😭 I think it might be due to the thread being too long... So I deleted the thread in this reblog and replaced it with the link of the thread here!! Hopefully it would be okay for Tumblr to function properly 😣😣😣
Regarding A, I think Binah's comment in LoR sorta put me off bcs, I think I used to interpret A's motivation as, C is a very important figure of warmth and inspiration to him, like she and her ways of being convinced him to agree with her goals and help her on the path toward them, but it's like he was persuaded to also identify with the goals themselves, instead of he just wanted to acheive the goals because they were hers. Like, after she died, he continued to work toward their shared goal not only because of his relationship with her, but also because he believed (or wanted to still believe) the hope she once showed him. It would feel kinda cheap if A, the person who was the core of the Corp plan, who lead the whole thing and threw himself into infinite torturous loops for it, was only doing this not out of any personal identification with the goal itself, but only for someone else's wishes. I mean, there's really enough characters who were said to join the research team only out of admiration toward someone and wanted to help them, without personally really caring about the ideology part... (But now after the whole Corp and LoR I feel like Project Moon kinda just loves the trope of "committing your whole life into a chase of an unlikely/deadly goal for the memory of your deceased loved ones"... is there a pattern?? lol)
A to me definitely feels like he's not a very well socialized person, like he's usually very socially isolated, has like one attachment figures, and doesn't really put his mind into social relationships (feels like he not only isn't used to participate in social relationships, he's also kinda oblivious to how social relationships function) (← crazy thing to say that in Elijah's case he only after a long time thought of maybe some compliments could be beneficial (something like that)?? That kind of emotions and social instincts wasn't coming to him naturally). He's like the odd introverted cat adopted by Carmen lol?? And after she died he was pushed by the circumstances to inherit her leader position, when he kinda only had the academical competence but none of the other leadership skills (and also was not in the right mental health state). To me, I definitely don't think any of his monologues about the Sephirot feel anything like how a person would usually talk about a friend. I interpret this more like his past colleagues (the Sephirot's past lives) to him would be more like figures carrying fond memories to him. Like they were the closer ones he had who also supported him through a very hard and emotional period of his life. Like the research lab back then was kinda found-family like, in a way, first united under the hopeful warmth of ideology, then went through hardships and tried to stick together and support each other. And it's not like A was personally particularly close with most of the Sephirot, but more like they are some distinct memories from this period of his life who represents the support and warmth he got from this whole dynamic. And also he was like only realizing he needed them and called them friends after most of them died lol? So to me it wasn't really about any literal friendship as a relationship between him and other people, more like the concept of friends, like the people he had shared goals and warm memories with.
About the previous managers Tiphereths talked about, I thought they were talking about the As in previous loops? Angela in mainstory (I found it in Day 40) also talked about some of A's previous loops... So I kinda interpreted it as A entered the loops pretty early and all (or most) managers were A without memories.
About the assistants/employees, I'll add a few more points... So, I'm not really complaining about how much respect any specific characters treated the assistants/employees with, but more about how Project Moon treated the concept of the assistants' existence as a whole. Like, as a writer, what structural role do you consider this concept in your story, that kind of stuff. On specifically a character level, especially about Angela, I don't really expect her to see the assistants as anything more than faceless tools, and she's not supposed to (at least at the start of LoR), since all she was taught and worked for was based on viewing employees as infinite faceless fuels for the larger plan. However, just because dehumanization of the employees is a common attitude shared in the Corp/LoR/the city, doesn't mean the employees/assistants would logically really function as mere faceless tools in the story. Logically, they are all people with their own personalities and opinions, who interact with the environment and other characters around them, and that would have an impact on the environment/characters around them.
I don't think having established assistant characters is the only way to show the effect of assistants' existence (as a concept) on other characters. If a character is said to interact frequently with a group of people / a certain environment, you'd expect the characters' behaviours and thoughts would be reflective and influenced by the culture they were frequently exposed to, even without specific established characters or interactions on screen with the said environment. For example, if a character is a kindergarten teacher, you'd expect them to show traits influenced by frequent interactions with toddlers in a school environment, such as habitually talking in a softer voice, being more used to take control/leadership in a situation, and probably having more knowledge about child behaviour, even without specific toddler characters established in the same story. Therefore, when the Librarians interacted with Roland, I found it kinda odd that the Librarians were arguing like they and Roland were coming from completely different povs, and the Librarians' points were mostly formed based on their own pasts. Because, Roland is a guy who's from the backstreets who has his own philosophy of living (which is also a common shared sentiment in the backstreets culture) who also didn't agree with the Corp's goals, which there would be plenty of employees/assistants who were from a similar culture/pov as him? Given the employees were first hired regardless of their academical/financial backgrounds, and were not informed of the Corp's true goals, you'd expect the employees is a diverse group including people from all kinds of backgrounds, and may have various opinions of the Corp's true goal after being informed. The Librarians in stories are said to interact and have activities with their assistants, and also some of them would have even more motivation to interact with the assistants based on their guilt regarding the employees back in the Corp. Therefore, I find it odd that when the Librarians were confronted by Roland's opinions, they did not react like they were already exposed to similar takes (or at least, a variety of takes), and they did not construct their own arguments based on any worldviews other than their owns based on their own past life events. What I'm saying is, I feel like when Project Moon is writing, they failed to consider the assistants' existence and the potential role of it in the story, and that's why it felt like the Librarians were characters in a vacuum in a lot of their arguments, since the only reference PM would use to build up the Librarians' arguments were the on-screen stories of their own past, without considering the texture of the actual environment they exist in. I feel like most of the time PM write the story like the assistants don't exist, and only mention them when labours are needed to be explained (need more people to fight), or to insert some comments about abnormalities or Angela/Roland without it coming from real characters' personal opinions.
James is not the only employee rep we got in the Corp btw, and I'd even argue he's not as essential in representing the general employee culture... He's an individual with his own specific personalities who mostly served to have a specific effect on another character. However when it comes to the general atmosphere of what being an employee is like, he didn't really do much, since you can't really generalize his behaviour (since he's his own person), and also most of his screen time were specifically focused on his interactions with Yesod in the working environment, from Yesod's pov. (I mean, you can still get valuable details of some aspects of working in the info team, such as they apparently had a rule of not to have the employees work with abnormalities when they are under 20% MP, or how Yesod used to participate in the employee's activities, etc, but it's mostly built on Yesod's perception and interpretation of the event, and you don't get to see what the employee's side think or feel.) When I was talking about employee rep in Corp stories, I was more talking about the random employees mentioned: remember that one desparate control team employee begging to be fired? Two employees in the info team playing word train and was panicky-respectful answering to Yesod when caught? The training team employees complaining about Hod's programs being a waste of time? The welfare team employee confessing their EGO got damaged, and the other one expressing gratitude to Chesed? I definitely appreciate the named employees in the Corp story, like James and Tiffany, but I'd argue many of the named employees function as specific support characters for a Sephirah's character development, and I could get some more generalizable aspects of the employees' culture from the random employee lines. Imo, the degree of freedom LoR allows people to make their assistants is roughly the same as how Corp allow people to make their own employee OCs, with the customizable appearances and all that (of course LoR also has customizable assistant dialogues, which is very cool), but this doesn't interfere with their ability to give the random assistants a bit more spotlight in their mainstory, just like I don't think the random employees in the Corp stories would interfere people's freedom making their own OCs.
Regarding the abnormality lines, I thought in LoR the assistants don't know they can't die in a battle, hence the emotions facing death are real?? But maybe I'm misremembering 😖 Still, I don't think it makes sense for the assistants to be totally chill facing a might-be-triggering entity, given some of them might be brutally killed/injured by the abnormalities, or had witnessed similar events happening on their close ones. I mean, the whole atmosphere working with abnormalities were no way chill, and even they might perceive their current situation be lower stakes, the traumatic associations brains fromed from the past wouldn't really follow logics.
Talking about the abnormalities themselves, I guess it could be fun if you see the abnormalities more like symbols of concepts, and it would be fun using them as a reflection of the characters' worldview and personalities, and I surely also mostly use abnormalities that way in my own writing... But back then the fandom community of Corp I was in had a very big portion built itself around personification and fanfics of the abnormalities themselves (and it might be still a big portion of the community till today, but idk bcs I'm not really involved in the fandom anymore), and I guess it would feel really like being walked over if you see abnormalities as their own characters and yet the canon just choose to use them as ways to expand on other characters. I'd say although they function similarly as EGOs in this aspect back in Corp, in Corp there was no actual characters actually wearing them, and the EGOs were in the same form no matter who was wearing them, therefore you could choose to use the EGOs as more of an expansion of your understandings of the abnormalties themselves, instead of the people wearing them. Most EGO descriptions were also written as some added context of the abnormalities' forms and backstories, instead of being specific to the wielders. It could be really disheartening for the fans of the abnormalities themselves to watch the later games mostly use the abnormalities as symbolisms for other established characters' depictions and developments. Although for me specifically, I couldn't be too mad of abnormalities being used that way, or that would be really hypocritical of me, since I do use abnormalities symbolicly in my employee OCs' stories, and also redesign EGOs to be unique to each different employees wearing them... lol (however, even among the employee oc creators, probably plenty of them would treat EGOs more like stable costumes that's more related to the abnormality itself than to the specific employees wearing them. I'm just talking about my approach)
I don't really have fully developed OCs for all departments either!! 😔 For now I probably only have about 7~10 employees (spreaded among a few departments) who are with (different degrees of) more developed backstories & personalities, and about the departments I probably only have a clearer interpretation of the info team, mainly bcs it's an important background environment for a lot of my favourite employees, and also my OTP (aka chesod). However I don't even know how the welfare team is supposed to work lol, that's how underdeveloped my worldbuilding is... 🤪 I really wish one day I could figure out how all the departments work, and what exact kind of works my employees do in their jobs, but for now I probably only know about the exact works of 2 employees (my current timeline info team captain and training team captain). I have some vague theories of a few other departments general works, such as I'd say the Central Command is responsible for resource management & distribution, because I think beta Chesed asked the Tiphereths if they could give him more coffee?? And I have some vague ideas how the training team works, solely bcs my training team captain is a very eccentric guy that has his own (outrageous) way doing things, lol. I'm really really slow in developing OCs and worldbuildings 🫨🫨🫨 (for my fav employee OC ship (that two guys I posted) (thanks for liking the art I'm so flattered!!!) I've knew them for almost 8 years and some of their backstories are still incomplete 😵😵😵)
(In mid 2024 I started wanting to do an Employee Danganronpa AU about a Danganronpa-style killing game happening in Corp, and after 2 years I still haven't finish designing all 16 of the employees?? lol (it's still slowly ongoing...))
Yeah, about Wonderlab, it just feels like canon employee OC stories to me, which is cool!! I'm not necessarily obsessed with any individual characters but employee OC stories as a concept is always cool, it's cool to see more rep/interpretations of the actual Corp working environment & dynamics!!
Oh no, sucks that you had to retype so much D: I also started writing things somewhere else first because I was getting concerned about the length... so good call with the link!
Regarding Ayin believing in the SoL project, he says on day 50 that "She was the one who made the noble decision to dedicate herself to save humanity. Yet I, who held no such ambition, had to continue her legacy." and Binah in LoR says to Roland that "He [Ayin] merely shouldered the burden of completing the task the one he loved left behind. He never pursued any great cause in a true sense." Ofc Ayin himself is far from a reliable narrator in LC, but I personally would place the attachment he had for her above the belief in the project, or that they eventually became the same thing for him. Different matter after the SoL and him internalizing all the lessons from the Sephirot, given the little snippet from Leviathan with Carmen saying that they are disagreeing on the whole distortion/Ego thing, where he places emphasis on reason and that you should have high regard for the human form. Man I wish we had gotten more from him there... I agree that PM loves the whole shtick with how the idea of your dead loved ones will bind you, no matter how true those are. I personally think that slaps so I don't mind :D
I think odd introverted cat is selling it a bit short, even. I'm not someone to diagnose fictional characters quickly but he's def leaning towards sociopathy (in the antisocial personality disorder meaning not whatever vague thing popculture turned it into). The guy going "oh maybe I should have given some positive attention" is one thing, and then just ignoring Elijah as she dies in agony is like. Truly the most socially well adapted being ever. Excels at everything except being a decent human being, lmao. Yeah sure at that point he already was so struck with grief he wasn't all there but still. The Sephirots more being reminders of the good times they had is a very true, I don't think he would have called them that before everything happened either.
On a tangential note, while re-reading stuff I remember how much I love the day 48 (iirc) convo between him and Carmen where she says she won't be able to endure it if things go sideways and asks him to continue in her stead, because while I think their relationship definitely was genuine no matter how exactly it looked like, I'm glad they showed her selfish side here before everything else went bad. It was a little baffling to me for how long ppl were arguing that Carmen was not trying to convince people to distort, or that I've seen more takes that point towards the eternity she spent in the loops in LC for what made her belief in self-love to this extent when we already were shown things in LC? Plus then in LoR had the very explicit thing with her telling Angela that there is no such thing as a human who can sincerely decide to sacrifice themselves for others (though I think that was added after people complained about the last realization lacking some things)
A being the prior managers as well or not just makes me think that since the Tiphys mention they are getting a new manager & we know there is some time until Angela has the Sephirot mentally fragile enough to she throws A in the mix, it'd seem possible that there are other ppl in that position as she preps things. After all the prior loops only have the option of being a full reset (no one remembers a thing aside from Angela) or just a day 1 reset (only the employees don't remember). Pretty sure it got retconned anyway because in LoR Angela in a flashback does once speak about a new manager, but also says from today on the manager will here as of today / the rest of the flashbacks also give the feeling that she was just running things by herself before which feels more reasonable. It's nothing particularly important, but I think that would be a neat concept for a LC fanfic, some poor person being a puppet manager while Angela is setting things up :D
Re the structural role complaint: I understand what you mean, and already have agreed with that in some cases. Partially this is a matter of how the game is designed - I know that they said in an interview that they held back on having Angela change more throughout the game because it was up to the player to complete her realizations sooner or later and I can imagine that the same principle kinda applied to the patrons, as you can especially with the early floors get through the cutscenes very quickly. Arguing inside the game logic, we know from the Asiyah layer having some weekly rotating cleaning scheme that they have some measure of time, and that several "weeks" pass over the course of the game, which I'm quoting because it's not set how long one of their days is. This could have been prevented by giving hard limits when you had to do what realisation.
But I also think that even if it was designed in a different way, saying the patron librarians should be reflecting being exposed to other backgrounds because of the assistants isn't something that allows for a blanket statement. Not all of them are likely to be actively interacting with their assistants in a way that will change their perception (and even if they are, they would not necessarily let that show in a conversation with an almost stranger). Yes, Hod with her book club is an explicit example of them spending time in a less work-related role, but I don't think that everyone will suddenly be interested in actually bonding with their former employees (plus while guilt can play into it as a driving factor, I’d say the past trauma could inhibit it, too, imo interacting with people you had to potentially watch die several times would not be easy for everyone) - and further be the kind of person to easily change their minds on something. They all still rediscovering themselves again after finally exiting the torment nexus only to reappear in the torment nexus 2: electric boogaloo, now with a little more time to think of things such as your several past lives and the failure of the dream you were willing to die for but don't forget, you still gotta get your kill count in. Additionally, from a design perspective, I feel like having such clashing world views was very useful here, as it allows us to very quickly realise that these people are far removed from the ordinary city dweller, especially since all of the guests are people who have dreams because those are the ones most affected by the light, and thus still not your true average joe. Lastly, if you consider someone like e.g. Malkuth who already had such a jump in her personality from LC to LoR, for me it would feel unsatisfying to have further character development done in just a few cutscenes. The CS worked great for when their issues got so severe they just had to vent them somehow, but I would want something like accepting new point of views to be a more gradual change, and at that point it'd have realistically cut into the time of the guests and introducing the players to the city.
I didn't mean that James is the only named one, but iirc that he's the only one with a canonical design? But very fair point regarding the unnamed employees, I hadn't consciously recognized how little we got from that, just wished for more behind the scenes stuff :D there’s some stuff in the chitchats with some of them fetching other patron librarians, or in the book club on Hod’s floor Roland even says that they are all gathered up there but no one speaks. That also helps me put into words why the LoR cutscenes feel worse at times compared to the LC ones despite those being quite deranged with ppl you've met like twice being all "hey. there is something deeply deeply wrong with me. also i hate you. goodbye". But the one's we get with stuff happening in the bg - so smth like Hod doing her seminar, or the emergency with Chesed and Geburas - make it feel less stilted compared to LoR where it's always just two characters talking.
Still, I gotta say that the more I reread stuff from LoR to ensure I'm not arguing complete bullshit here, the more I like it, haha. Ultimately this really just boils down to wanting a different game experience. Personally, aside from being glad we got the sequel for fanfic purposes - I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have started shipping anyone without LoR, love seeing what people come up with for LC but I couldn't write anything centered on a ship set during that - as someone who writes so rarely because I struggle with perfectionism and the fear of ""doing it wrong"", I would much rather have an imperfect work than none at all :D but as I said before, I get where you’re coming from!
They definitely don't know they can't die in regular battles, but I think the abnormality books are an exception to this? Since it's about the supposed fairness of them thinking their lives are on the line since the guests' think that, too, vs abnos who can't die anyway.
Yeah I'd say while the abnos ofc have their fans who build headcanons etc, I don't think the current fandom behaves like that - but then again, they already know that the abnos will be represented through egos etc so at this point ppl are just used to it. Always interesting to hear how things were before that though, since for me that's the way it's always been :D
And I get being slow to develop things xD I also keep thinking I want to at least finalise all of my captains but… yeah no excuse for not doing it tbh :| procrastination (which it is in my case) is a curse. But then again, if I ever manage to write something it will def be ship focused and in that case I’m kinda worried about how much I should bring up my OCs anyway since that’s not what ppl are here for? And for me the info captain definitely is the weird guy/abno whisperer, so I’d feel like letting that show would just take away from what ppl are there for (says person who will be writing for an ot3 no one else in this fandom has. orz).
But damn lets take the human meat grinder factory and run a death game inside it, death² :D (I totally get it though, torturing characters can be so much fun, hehe)
Sorry for the late reply!!! I was sorta busy in the past few days and got a bit exhausted 😵😵😵
Yeah I guess I was sorta disappointed by A's motivation more bcs I didn't really read the game text throughly in the first place (also blaming the bad translations) and interpreted him the way I preferred... I'm not really a huge fan of the trope of having the character's motivation mainly inherited from lost loved ones |･з･)｡ But I guess in the case of Corp A is kinda the poster child of that lol...
Yeah I've heard several people suggesting A could be some kind of sociopathic... I usually avoid diagnosing characters for a lot of reasons, but one of them is probably if I don't restrain myself I'd go call everyone I relate to or could understand on some degree as autistic (｡>∀<｡) (this is kinda hyperbole and half joke cuz in reality without restraint I'd probably still only do this to 30% of the characters) cuz I am (maybe). Definitely think both depression and some kind of neurodivergency can play big roles in being very disassociated and detached in scenarios of crises, I definitely do that and don't usually mirror other people's expression of pain in front of me, & I feel like it could also be a survival reflex thing to not get completely overwhelmed?? (okay this paragraph is all my unsolicited anecdotes now...) But A did demonstrated not only apathy but also deliberately lying to approach his goals, such as telling Giovanni cogito experiments might lead to a way bringing C back while in his monologues he also admitted he knew that was never gonna happen, so that's also a thing.
About LoR, I don't really have much to say anymore!! It's cool you find it enjoyble (｡>∀<｡) I feel like I'm more of used to creating by myself due to dealing with either rarepairs or OCs for my lifetime, so for me it feels more intuitive making up my own interpretations than relying on elaborated canon material "(º Д º*) I'm OCing for so long that now I even sometimes feel kinda limited (which makes me super anxious) when I do fanfics... I still try to respect canon of course but it's like out of respect so I pick and choose which parts I do or do not respect =͟͟͞͞(๑ò□ó ﾉ)ﾉ to me it's ultimately writing a story for myself to enjoy so I'm like taking enormous creative liberty (;`･∀･、°)...
I'm so not sure how the current fandom treat abnormalities since I hardly ever really go into the fandom space... (and I was not from the western fandom in the first place) I still sorta treat the abnormalities the old way and even have some abnormality ships I like! (also very rarepairs) Back in the day in the fandom space I was from, the most popular abno ships would be Der Freischütz x Funeral of the Dead Butterflies (for some reason) (so I was really suprised they then appeared as the 4th and 5th abno for the tech floor in LoR lol!), Big Bird x Judgement Bird, and probably either WhiteNight x One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds or WhiteNight x Blue Star? (or people sometimes group WhiteNight and Apocalypse Bird together) Some other (common) ships I had seen would be Little Red x Wolf, Burrowing Heaven x Schadenfreude, Nothing There x CENSORED, etc
For me I ship Nothing There x WhiteNight (feel like no one ever thought of that!! The [false god x thing trying to gain humanity] combo) and You Must Be Happy x We Can Change Anything (who even remember these two lol, but I feel like they are both similar and polar opposites)!! I usually don't do anything with my abno ships cuz I'm already pretty occupied by my employees and sometimes Sephirah OTP and also many other OCs out side of Corp. However I actually call today (Jun 6) as Nothing There x WhiteNight's ship day!! Cuz Jun 6 is 6.6, Nothing There is O-06-20 and WhiteNight is T-03-46 (so I sometimes also refer to this ship as 2046, similarly I refer to YMBH x WCCA 9485), and 20 + 46 = 66, and also the number 66 is also kinda WhiteNight related. |･з･) However I still don't really do anything for them today cuz I also call Jun 6 my (that pair of) employee ship's ship day (with different paths leading to the number 66) (꜆꜄꜆˙꒳˙)꜆꜄꜆
Idk if you'd want my unsolicited advice on writing, so if you don't, ignore this following paragraph!! Actually I don't really have any real advice (๑ŐдŐ) I feel like as long as the employees' screen time happens naturally following the flow of the plot, it should be cool to read, cuz that was how canon Corp story went too!! Employees appeared in the background all the time but as long as the spotlight was focused on the Sephirot, we only see what they could see from their povs interacting with employees, and I think this also depends on each Sephirah's personal approach toward the employees, but no matter the approach, systemetically the Sephirot and the employees are always kinda distant, I think! Cuz they are like two very different groups of people being treated and categorized by the Corp. My habit of writing (this is only my habit, not advice) is to usually keep the Sephirot and my employees pretty separated unless really necessary mentionings of each other (cuz the Sephirot are still the employees' bosses), and I'm like nearly not mentioning Sephirot when writing about employees themselves, and when I do fanfic for Sephirot I try to make up new employee characters specific for plot requirements. However this is really not any advice and is probably due to I have this compulsive need of categorizing things and keeping different categories separated... (I even have a lot of blogs here on Tumblr each for different fandoms/topics, and this one is specifically for things Corp related! I also actually thought really hard of if I should have separate blogs for Corp canon characters and Corp OCs... But that's really messy to have a clean cut so both topics are now smashed here together (＞﹏＜)) this appraoch is actually really inefficient I feel like, cuz last year I wanted to do a Chesod short story comic and I had a rough outline and I was like "I'm gonna specifically design the employees I need for this plot" and Σ(⊙□⊙) almost a year passed and I still haven't design the employees!! (╥﹏╥) Anyway, for me I'm always so happy seeing other people's employees in their fics, but probably cuz I already care a lot about employee OCs (and probably more than how much I'd care about canon characters) so as soon as I see an employee I'm immediately happy and quickly temporarily distracted from what's going on with the canon characters in the plot ( ｡∀°)
Ps: Regarding the employee DR AU, I definitely think it's so cool to have a killing game happening inside the facility with employees from various backgrounds as participants, cuz they are gonna be with various personalities and values a bit different from the common DR high schoolers demographic, and as (mostly) adults from the city the employees are gonna be more desensitized to cruelty and stuff... And also maybe there could be some murder plans involving facility specific quirks and also abnormalities!! (I'm still brainstorming though... Just think the idea is cool) (I feel like I was spamming too much of my own stuff in this reply... (＞д＜) really sorry)
