i am BACK and i have OFFICIALLY played caged! (spoilers below for anyone else thats reading this...)
I albsolutely loved it. I think my only issue was how short it is!!! I was so prepared for more :,,( I really love what you have done with Maruki's character -- deep down canon Maruki hates Shido just as much as the PT, but caged!Maruki cant remember why now.. and Azathoth wont let him, under the guise of caring for him :((( I hope thats what you were going for, TBH I thought Maruki was the one caged and he was bearing everyones sins so that the ideal world could be brought to fruition.
I really loved the sprites and the expressions you drew Maruki in. Its so varied yet fits him so well! I love it when fans go deeper with the 'madman' aspect of Marukis character. That man is crazyyyyy!!!
Amazing amazing amazing work. I cant even imagine the work it must be to make a game AND all the art AND all the writing for it! You should really really be proud of urself.
Im really happy I found your blog, I lovelovelovelove maruki sosososo much & as a fellow Transgender its great to see a trans!Maruki (and also fem!Akechi... i always love that). Cant wait to see more of ur art!
waaah thank you very much for reading caged!!!!! i'm really glad you enjoyed, it always makes my day when people love it......
while i don't want to outright confirm too much cause i love to let people just sit with it and think abt it and try and figure out the thoughts i put into it for themselves, i will say that maruki's hatred of shido was a very, very big part of why i decided to write caged..... it had always fascinated me how this is one of the very last things you get to know about him, a feeling he never shares aloud and too explicitly outside of that final tape in his palace, and for someone who tries to put a leash on his emotions and not let himself become too much of an abrasive or an aggressive or otherwise mean person with ugly emotions (even if it's totally justified), the way maruki hates shido has always felt so uncharacteristic to me in a very interesting way. the detail that maruki locked shido away in prison in his reality was so insane to me, a deep desire for revenge of his that he obfuscates behind wanting to merely do this for others because maruki can't let himself be someone that Wants Things, in a way it always felt to me like maruki forcing shido to feel the way that he's always felt, attempting to reverse this game of cat and mouse in which he tries to finally gain the upper hand on this powerful man who traumatized him and destroyed his life, all while trying to ignore the fact that this doesn't do anything for him, because his reality is constructed in a way where he will always be miserable and the most evil person ever and very hyperaware of that fact until he can finally kill himself. the fact that even shido gets the opportunity to live in this reality despite being this horrible tyrannical fascist while everything implies that no matter what happens maruki will swiftly die by suicide has always haunted me in what it implies for how maruki perceives himself..... caged was very much building on that idea and that very one-sided dynamic (because frankly the subtext lends to the idea that shido doesn't even remember this man he did horrible things to), wanting to really get into just what it means to maruki to do this to shido in his reality, all of his feelings about it and all of his feelings about shido, about himself and what all of this really means to him, the mental spiral that he's constantly existing in in third semester. also because i'm not really a fan of how most people tend to talk about these two in relation to each other. sometimes you really have to do the work yourself to see the things you want to see </3
i'm really glad you loved the artwork and everything for the vn!!!! i had a lot of fun drawing maruki's sprites in particular, to the point where a bit of umineko influence accidentally leaked through with a few of them which i didn't even realize till one of my friends pointed it out, haha. i've always loved how restrained maruki's third semester sprites feel, how it's so obvious that he's forcing himself to remain in control as this obedient leashed dog and forcing himself into this dehumanizing facade, and i really wanted to keep pushing it along those lines. i'm a very big fan of making him weird and unsettling but in a very specific way where it's less that he's just Like That and more that he's just deeply mentally ill and has never been treated for it ever in his life and is trying to ignore it as much as he can. he's like an umineko witch to me <3
i'm very honored and very glad!!!!! waaah trans man maruki means the entire world to me and informs so much of how i interpret and read his character, and with how uncommon it seems to feel to really view him through this lens, it always pushes me to want to focus on that more and always give him love with that sort of reading in mind. he deserves it. tysm again!!!!!!!
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