Because i have been wanting to redesign the dolls I want to know how you interpret them... Who are your favorites.... Do you have any thoughts about how they interact with each other/other characters....
My favorite is Decapre she's my daughter who hates everyone and wants to kill people forever
EHEHEHE
(Kind of a long post, sorry in advance lmfaooo.)
So so so so so, first of all, sorry because a lot of my stuff to do with them runs on an AU timeline, although it doesn't diverge too much after about 1995-1997 and is just little tidbits of info (unless you're looking at Dollhaus lol).
Second of all,,, my faves tend to go on a bit of a rotation, like fixations within fixations, but the whole list is Juni, Enero, Xiayu, Jianyu and Noembelu (Decapre is always on there also but she hasn't had a proper rotation in about 2 years now) so hopefully that answers that question 🔥
3rd, in terms of interpretations, there's been a running gag for about a year and a bit between me and a few friends that Enero and Jianyu have a painfully awkward frenemy thing going on. They hate each other and love each other at the exact same time and they will bicker to no end. Enero thinks Jianyu's annoying and Jianyu thinks Enero is a control-freak bitch (which comes as a side-effect of her wanting to keep the order in the Dolls going after Killer Bee was presumed dead/gone). But nonetheless, they care for each other and usually it's just because bickering is a part of the daily morning routine, after that they'll be like bonded cats the rest of the day.
Xiayu is definitely somewhere on the autism spectrum in my mind and her special interest is most definitely Chinese Opera, with a few other hyperfixations like tigers dotted about the place. She has quite bad anxiety which tends to flare up, and isn't particularly helped by her more brash sister's tendency to cause a ruckus wherever she goes. She most definitely prefers training on her own but if studying kung-fu has taught her anything, it's that you always need another person to practise with. Which is where dear Noe comes in.
My interpretation of Noe is that she seems to be a magnet for the girlies who aren't particularly social. She's very gentle and is quite close to März (who I'll talk about soon) and generally spends her free time working on solo projects. She usually had either Xiayu or März tucked under her arm whilst working if either of them wanted somewhere quiet to chill for a bit. All three can get overwhelmed quite quickly so they found comfort in one another and freedom to express themselves. She's a big fan of mechanisms and enjoys engineering (if Shadaloo hadn't gotten in the way, she would've likely pursued either agriculture or engineering as a career) and often combines her interests to make her work more efficient, especially during time periods where they had a lot of work to do. However, the Löwenzahn girlies are also quite fond of her, so they often took care of her garden whilst she wasn't there, against their Commanders wills lol.
Now, März is kind of at the bottom of the pecking order (with Enero at the top) and typically receives the tail-end of a lot of Enero's anger, whether on purpose or not. She's already quite nervous and skittish so this does not tend to help her at all. Typically her daily antics include using the site Internet to browse yaoi fics, scripting her own games and rushing to complete the next database update within the last 30 minutes of the deadline, but she gets the job done and very well at that. She's got quite a bit of imposter syndrome and doesn't usually respond well to praise out of fear it's rooted in sarcasm, which she either doesn't detect well or detects too well.
Shes very much like a cheetah in the social regard and would have likely required quite a bit of support had Shadaloo not taken her, although it is probably caused by such, but not totally.
Going back to Xiayu, her relationship with Jianyu is a bit strained. With Jianyu often being tense and often annoyed, Xiayu is often playing mediator and has been made her sisters honorary parole officer if that makes sense. She feels she lacks a lot of her already constrained freedom due to her sister's inability to keep herself out of trouble, which does make her resent her a little bit. This is an issue that crops up a lot within the group although under different circumstances. For Xiayu, it's because the others forced the role onto her and often times playing into getting her twin riled up, whether they realise it or not.
A quick side note: a lot of these problems are caused by a multitude of difficulties, a lot of the tense emotions and tendency to harm one another comes from struggling to cope with their situations as they've never had an outlet for. It's reflected I how they talk to one another (often quite harshly and sometimes even cruelly), how they act etc.
Very little of the time is the malice because they genuinely don't like somebody, because they're all just a clowder of kittens that haven't had the chance to grow and have been terrorised for ages by a nasty fox.
Now, onto their fighting styles. I highly doubt all of them actually use the same styles, each of them most definitely has a unique set and the default styles were likely either a time thing or their designers giving up (lol).
Enero knows quite a bit (coming from her posher than posh background), and was taught martial arts from a young age, meaning that for a lot of people (due to her excessive training time) she can essentially mirror them, although if she can't she'll use a fusion. (The mirroring idea came from a move I designed like a few years ago now: Echolalia. It essentially reflects the damage given to her at either 50/75% or 100% depending on how quickly the input is done, which is gonna be complicated to implement lmfaooo)
Fevi doesn't know any martial arts outside of limited moves she's taken on from action films, so she often relies on brute force (and bullets) to get her ass through. Sagat kind of stood there and shook his head for a little bit after he realised but didn't make an attempt to get rid of her because he liked the raging fire that never seemed to leave her expression. (He would later suggest that they put her on meds for her anger issues.)
März and Aprile don't do too much fighting (which contexualises my dear März getting her ass handed to her every fucking chapter) and generally rely on external forces or long-distance attacks to do damage. (Such as drone strikes or bioweaponry.)
Satsuki is trained in Kendo, but she switched styles to Ninjutsu-inspired tactics after bring sent on an espionage mission with Santamu. Not much to say beyond that.
Juni and Juli share a fighting style that isn't particularly defined and often relies on having the other person there for ultimate damage (as seen in Dramatic Battle Mode for A3.)
Santamu used to do javelin in school (it's one of her favourite sports, her other one is rounders.), and took influence from that, although she now focuses primarily on close quarters.
Jianyu and Xiayu speak for themselves, bojutsu/kung-fu-inspired stuff. I personally believe Xiayu does Wing Chun (Wong Sheung Leung) because that's the martial art I do lolzies. Somebody in this group has to experience the dread of having to get a licence to fight in the UFC lmfaooo. (You may actually have to be registered/insured with this martial art if you go into security because of how dangerous it can be lol.)
Noembelu taught herself Systema somehow and can now backflip whilst throwing a hatchet.
Decapre is the only one I believe exclusively practises Shadaloo Forces styles, as she likely hasn't had much exposure to the outside world beyond missions.
On my own timeline, there's two idiots called Anne and Bess (AS-Q is also involved but she'll get her own post eventually hehe). Anne and Bess are canon to the Cammy History Novels, which are a huge part of my interest and aren't canon to the main universe. However, it is speculated they were the uncredited base line for the Dolls.
A big part of their characters is that they are named after saints. Bison got an idea in the late 70's to utilise religion to get more people enrolled into the forces and came across an idea for an all-female support squadron (not a harem, like the original Japanese text seems to imply). He liked the idea a bit too much because around 1982, he took Bess, who was a 14-year old Greek Orthodox girl living in Crete at the time and converted her to Catholicism. He decided he liked the name she already had (he was already into the idea of naming them after Saints, Bess being Elizabeth) and kept it as it was.
After a while of training, he spun a wheel, selected a country and sent Bess off to Ireland to scout out a potential new member.
She spotted Anne (who was 14 in 1984) and began to learn about her from the sidelines. She was incredibly careful to not startle or scare her as she felt terribly guilty already and was only caught out after Anne ran away from home (after being found out as a lesbian). Anne was already Catholic so Bess proposed she take her to the Christian homeless shelter/corporation she works at. Big red flag immediately, yet Anne complies, because frankly, at this stage, she has nothing to lose.
Over the course of a few months, Anne is indoctrinated into Shadaloo, starts an official relationship with Bess (allegedly in secret) and is oftentimes given experimental drugs for her "migranes", which are actually the drug LO-95, more on that in a different post lol.
Bess and Anne's relationship was painfully complex and was often times not healthy, but they tried nonetheless. Elizabeth often felt really really guilty for getting her into the mess that she was and wasn't really against letting Anne murder her when the time came for her to be expunged from the systems.
Anne, now facing bouts of psychosis, identity switches and struggling with numerous addictions, is cast out for the final time with the mission to kill Cammy White, after Vega failed to do so around Alpha 3. The other Dolls are around at this point and all named after saints (the thing Bison was actually excited to do).
There's a list I'll attach at the bottom with their correlating names.
I could probably continue this but I feel this is an appropriate place to end it. If you'd like specific characters feel free to ask at any time! 🙇
Much love, thank you for asking! 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑
Here's the list, old revision 1. Some things need to be changed and/or edited. Satsuki and Santamu are getting names reassigned soon enough.
