Welcome to my art blog! Call me Rune, and I like to make fanart based on whatever my interests are. Hope you enjoy your stay! She/her | 25 yrs | Lots of OC and canon interactions
Hi all! Welcome to the void where I like to yell about things I enjoy. I’m an artist and writer that likes to create OCs and throw them into canon universes to see what happens. Right now my interests include:
Zenless Zone Zero
Octopath Traveler (1 & 2)
Splatoon
Honkai Star Rail
Madness Combat
Persona (3,4 & 5)
Vocaloid
Stardew Valley
Guide to my tags:
rune’s rambles: Text posts I write myself
rune’s art: my art posts
other’s art: reblogged artwork
other’s text: reblogged text posts
My ask box is open as well. Thanks for stopping by!
I think. I will try to be more active here instead of twitter bc that hellsite is genuinely making me worse off mentally. Might even delete the app for a bit
Ok so like. There was a tweet (a while ago atp) that made me overthink cool things zenless does (or in this case used to do) so let me get my jumbled thoughts out here before I eventually condense it into a thread over there.
Ok so. I was one of those people who genuinely did not mind TV mode at all, because I thought there were a lot of cool concepts there despite the gameplay being a bit clunky at times. I personally think Camilla golden week is still the peak of zenless events as being a good balance of time between exploration bits in the tv and breaks for combat. This isn’t really important to the main topic but I just wanted to add I always thought the TV mode hate was overhyped.
And with the eventual phasing out of TV mode, we lost one of the coolest things zenless did; the dynamic music suites! There’s an amazing video by Jonathan Barouch breaking down how the music builds on top of itself constantly as you kept playing during combat! (and the whole vid is honestly a cool music theory breakdown in general) Like I cannot express the feeling I had upon hearing Derailed Order switch out of the exploration theme to the combat theme for the first time. That feeling is just. Gone now. And do not get me wrong, Zenless absolutely still makes banger music but that feeling of it actively reacting and evolving to your gameplay doesn’t exist in the same way.
I’m gonna use two of my favorite examples of this that weren’t in Jonathan’s video: Endless Construction Day - Day, and Nekomata’s agent theme.
Ngl I’m including Construction Day mostly for the sick transition between the combat and exploration themes. But it really does capture the concept of “exploration antipation” and “high energy combat payoff” I loved so much about 1.0’s music.
I’m including Nekomata’s specifically because I feel like it has more stages in its progression than other agent themes? But again, you can just feel a steady escalation the entire time while still balancing that growing energy with Nekomata’s sly characterization. I could honestly make a whole post about agent themes on their own and how they embody each character so well in both modes of gameplay but I don’t want to just repeat “they understand their characters and know how to express that musically!” over and over.
As always TL;DR I love Zenless’ creative vision. Let them cook because god damn they do cool stuff in their theming and characterization through creative mediums.
ok i love the new patch so much and i'm so happy with how vivian turned out BUT. THEY CHANGED KOLEDA'S VA. I AM FUMING. HER VOICE IS NO LONGER RASPY WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MY GIRLLLL???? why does she no longer sound like she has a sore throat 24/7 ohmygoddd, her voice was one of my favourite things about her😭😭
also to clear this up: obviously i am NOT. blaming the new va. i have nothing against them, i am just so utterly disappointed with hyv pulling the same shit again. they could've at least picked a va that could do a similiar voice to the previous one ugh💔💔
Okay I have to yell about Koleda Belobog Zenless Zone Zero because I feel like I love her in a very specific way that I haven’t seen a lot of people talk about. More under the cut because I have,,, so many thoughts.
Koleda is such a good portrayal of someone who struggles with their perception as an adult. A pretty easy conclusion to make with the first thing she usually says on the character select screen being “Hey, don’t look down on me!”, but it definitely goes a lot deeper the more you spend time with her. Specifically, she seems to struggle in her perception of herself as someone much more mature than her younger peers, but still not on the same level as the adults in similar positions of power as her. I kinda. Hate zenless for not explicitly stating how old she is, but given she rose to her position at Belobog “when she came of age” (which honestly, I still can’t give a concrete answer to what hoyo means by this? Some searches I found claimed the working age to be 16 in China, I’ve seen others online claim 18 but that’s not reliable. Hoyo I'm begging you put official ages on your characters it's a cool and based practice), she waited for a significant amount of time before taking up her role as president. She is an adult from what the game implies, and a core part of her character is fighting against the constant infantilization she faces due to how she looks.
Let’s start with her love of desserts (and a honestly this is the reason I started writing this). It’s her most highlighted character trait (it is also the first known attribute in her trust rank profile when you unlock her), and most of her trust events on 6th street revolves around them. Initially, she hesitates in proclaiming her love for them, likely to avoid being perceived as childish.
Her rank 4 trust special event is, admittedly, my favorite, but it’s one of the best breakdowns of this.
In order to maintain her image as a mature adult, she uses her position as company president to get around having to request a special dessert drink by name (in her defense, "Sweet Girl Fluffy Marshmallow Lambkin Milk" is an insane mouthful of a product name). At the end of the event she admits that saying its name “wasn’t as bad as she thought”, but her initial kneejerk reaction was a complete rejection of even entertaining the idea of doing something that could put the image she worked so hard to create and maintain at risk. Despite this, she still refuses desserts that aren't tooth-rottingly sweet, even if they are seen as the more mature or "refined" option. It's only around people that she really trusts does she allow this part of herself to be known, because she knows they wouldn't misconstrue this behavior as childish.
I also think her perception on the differences between kids and adults is interesting ("thank you agent story quest" we all say in unison). She doesn't ever feel like she fits in with other kids, probably due to all the responsibility she had to take on as the eventual heir to her father's company. But she also holds a vocal distain for many of her adult peers. Her declaration of "When I was younger, I thought the whole world was rotten, trying to make people just as rotten when they grow up." is a reflection of how she struggled to find her place in the world as she was forced to suddenly transition into adulthood, while still trying to understand the actions of the adults around her.
Her relationship with her father becoming strained contributed significantly to her world outlook as well, and may have caused such a specific distinction of what she deems "the world of adults". I don't want to dive too specifically into that because spoilers and the game is only a few weeks old so. Pin that for another time maybe? It definitely matters in the sense that the loss of her father is the catalyst for the loss of her childhood, but a lot of the specifics in how that affected her are speculative (and I don't wanna get too headcanon-y in this particular post) and she explicitly chooses not to discuss it too in-depth with the proxy (which, girl. Valid). But she's slowly learning to cope with that loss, at least it seems that way by the end of chapter 3. Honestly I could probably find more to add about the agent story in particular, but I would have to replay it to get a better idea.
To me, Koleda Belobog is very solid representation for women who had to grow up too fast, struggle with the perception of being seen as an adult, and hold guilt about indulging in acts that can be perceived as childish by their peers because they never fully got the chance to just be a kid. It truly did resonate with me, and it feels like such a specific "if you know, you know" kind of experience that I don't feel is talked about as much in media, especially with people who identify as female during their youth.
Also, also! I hope they dive in a bit more on how she got/has so much hollow corruption at a young age. Because they imply that she is so short as a result of this hollow corruption. Like that's so damn interesting conceptually and I know they delved on it more in Rina's agent story but. It was more of a mental affliction than a physical one.
Anyway I've been working on this for like 2 days now but that's all I have in terms of like. A canon-compliant character analysis.
TLDR; Koleda is such a perfect example of "God forbid short women exist" and I love her for that. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Thinking about how some official sources (such as materials that come from Yasunori Nishiki and the stuff published in tandem with the Octopath orchestra concert last year) like to emphasize masculinity as one of Partitio's stand-out character traits and what that means for him, a character I see as a good example of masculinity in a positive sense
It's evident in some ways more than others but one I'd like to point out is the way he exercises his privileges—and his strengths/talents—in ways that uplift other people, particularly the disadvantaged. He's in contrast to Roque, who is the kind of industrial-age tycoon who (until the end of the narrative) sees the subjugation and dominance over others as his right; he is simply inherently deserving of his position and everybody else deserves to be below him (exemplary of a toxic kind of masculinity, in other words. There are plenty of notable IRL examples of this type of person but I'm not interested in naming names). Partitio on the other hand sees his own privileges and strengths as things that are *meant* to be put to use in service to others. To him it would be a waste to do nothing with them but ensure his own success and leave everyone else behind. His sense of identity is fueled by this principle, even. Obsessed with this
