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wisteriafield · 1 year

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Finished my revisit through Nioh 1 before going back to the sequel

First of all, jesus tumblr has changed a lot since I last used it.

Streams can be found here but its roughly 17 and a half hours worth, and thats leaving out many of the side missions

preliminary thoughts will be written below about missions, bosses, and some misc thoughts

There are 20 missions in the base game, including the Prologue and Epilogue, and while one mission is just a cutscene, I’m reminded of my girlfriend saying to me that she’s gonna laugh if Nioh 2 had 20 missions because it really just dresses the game up in 3 different PS2 action games in a dark souls rpg trenchcoat (which is correct).

Any Sub-Missions mentioned are because they have a unique map that isn’t reused in Nioh 2 that is worth mentioning.

Prologue: The Man With the Guardian Spirit

The framing device of the narrative means the actual game starts in London before we head out to Japan. Because William has not technically studied kenjutsu via convenient booklet yet, this means that we’re locked in Mid Stance the entire mission, can’t ki pulse, and gain no amrita, meaning that much of the encounters and mission pace are worthless, as we’re missing 80% of the meat of the game. Just run past everything. The only thing interesting about it is that it contrasts in environment with the whole of the upcoming game’s areas. You get to hear Timothy Watson (Urianger FFXIV: Heavensward-onward) as a disembodied voice (later revealed to be John Dee). You get to hear some hamfisted final thoughts of corpses that barely tie into tutorials for them (prisoners getting tortured saying they’re getting kicked while they’re down being a tutorial for Final Blows is my favorite of them).

A little note is that is because these aren’t Japanese shrines, William uses a different emote when praying at them rather than clasping his hands, a neat little detail. Dying in the Tower of London has a different death message, font ("This Life Has Ended" vs "You Died"), and different loading screens and music.

William is made an Irishman compared to his historical counterpart so Team Ninja could give him a spirit from Celtic Mythology as his partner and justification for immortality (a Merrow named Saorise). She’s cute and speaks entirely in Gaelic.

Boss: Derrick the Executioner

He’s mostly just an axe revenant but bigger. Even when he transforms its like a cross between an Amrita Fiend (that being just a slightly upgraded Yoki). And then you beat him with a cutscene.

But now our Merrow wife was stolen!

KYUSHU REGION

Mission 1: Isle of Demons

One of the biggest criticism of the game amongst its peers is the overuse of villages, forests, and caves. While caves are definitely overused, I personally like villages and forests, and you get a couple of different types of the latter in particular even in this game.

Now the game gives a proper tutorial, although the UI for selecting your loadout is a bit dry, it does give a bit of a description of what to expect from the weapon, which the sequel doesn’t really do.

Right away, the proper opening mission gives us an insight into one of the main ways this game’s level design differs from Dark Souls, in that there are multiple routes that converge to a point that can cater to different levels of strength at a time when you play them and discretion, the shorter path of most resistance and the more sensible route for the first time player, but with the way the NG+ system works in this game, your next rodeo you’ll be prepared to handle it.

In that regard, this is a well designed mission to start with. There are few avenues where you will be ambushed with any level of actual threat. There are a few yokai, but mostly dwellers and any yokai realm enemies are Yoki. You’ll mostly contend with humans who have no super armor on their attacks, so its just a matter of picking your fights and watching your ki using ki pulses. You’ll occasionally run into a ranged enemy from a high perch, but not the kind that lure you into a fight before they engage you (which the game loves to try and goad you into later on).

The village fringes are easy to navigate, and upon seeing the slope leading to the larger building atop a hill guarded by multiple enemies, a player will likely be spurned toward the forest to go around and sneak along the edge of the cliff, before getting to the main village and then to the coast on the other side where the boss awaits.

Boss: Onryoki

Starter boss that is emblematic of a lot of the lackluster concept of many Nioh 1 bosses. Slow, but easy to circle around so it’ll constantly be using its back attacks (which are always meaty spin attacks), the active frames being annoying to work around because enemy damage is absurd that it’ll probably kill you. The boss becomes much more bearable once the chains break at a certain HP%.

They overuse this boss way too much.

We now have access to Novice Ninjutsu, which finaly allows us to backstab unaware enemies, among other things.

Mission 2: Deep in the Shadows

Here we get the much-loathed caves. They introduce a few new enemies (Ninja Yoki, One-eyed Oni, Large Skeletons). Enemies do a lot of ki damage and there’s a dearth of footing, so players will probably fall to their death a lot of they’re not getting ki broken and killed after unless you’re a spacing god like me with Yoki lol.

Boss: Hino Enma

When people talk about preferring Nioh 1, they usually mention this boss as this super hard wall that speaks of the game’s difficulty (and for that type of gamer, means they think the game is better). In reality she largely just has basic attacks that do a lot of ki damage that have a lot of active frames that make her annoying, on top of her paralysis shouts. The most interesting thing is that she hits you with an umbrella sometimes, but her gimmick is the paralysis.

I just activated Living Weapon and beat her up, LW is so silly. She’s not hard, just annoyingly simple.

Afterwards we meet Okatsu, who will be conspicuously absent in the DLCs and sequel likely due to not being able to use Emi Takei’s likeness. She seems like a surrogate for the modern viewer’s values commenting on the insanity of honor-based warrior culture and the amount of death it brings.

Both of the Sub-Missions that take place here involve the Heshikiri Hasebe being lost, come on, man.

Mission 3: The Spirit Stone Slumbers

I’m actually pretty fond of the surface level of Dazaifu Temple. Thankfully the water is only knee high so its not lethal. It’s relatively level but gets players more familiar with ambushes.

Boss: Nue

Thunderbolts do an annoyingly high amount of damage, some come out a bit unfairly quick (particularly when recovering from ki break). As always, any boss that specializes in lightning damage will be annoying because shock status is the worst and slows you down. Trying to hit the the stomach when glowing to ki break it instantly is rather inconsistent.

After beating the Nue we go to the underground section, which i hated a lot more because it was so repetitive I got lost and ran in circles a bit, and the stone sentinels are tedious to fight in the early game due to their high damage and slow vulnerability. There’s a good reason they didn’t bring this enemy back for the sequel. They’re like lesser umi-bozu if they actually had the potential to kill you on their own.

Ginchiyo Tachibana joins us for the last hallway of the mission. She has unique animations posing with her hand by her sword and while moving too, but I don’t believe she has any unique attacks like her husband. You can run back to a previous section to bathe in a hot spring and she’ll be appaled at your lack of manners.

Boss: Muneshige Tachibana (sus)

Kelley’s attempt at pretending to be Japanese, but lacks the capacity for lightning the real deal does (thank god). Still, you can parry most of his attacks except the Tiger Sprint (running Iai), and Quadrisect (Sword’s LW skill but he can do it without LW). This is mostly a fight about watching out for not getting ki broken.

We then get access to Novice Onmyo and Novice Martial Arts, and, if one really wanted to tear their hair out, a proper duel with the real deal, as Muneshige is brutal for a duel mission this early in the game (no wonder Nioh 2 waited till the 3rd region to give duel missions).

CHUGOKU REGION

This is largely a filler region, as William is stalled by the appearance of an Umi-bozu damaging the Liefde preventing him from traveling inland.

Mission 4: The Silver Mine Writhes

This is the closest equivalent to a swamp level, but its also a boring cave level. There are fans that vacuum miasma clouds so you can destroy the rocks generating them.

Boss: Great Centipede

A big Nothing Boss, activate LW and cut it into chunks. I feel like this boss might give trypophobics a bad time.

Mission 5: The Ocean Roars Again

I don’t know how to describe it, but this stage has a lot of Otogi vibes to it, which is funny considering Otogi was a pre-Souls From Software game. The stage is likely to invite a lot of watery deaths in the way of its broken wooden floors blending under the water surface. This is when players need to start considering one way drops in order to reach more parts of the area, as well as having to keep watch for Nurikabe to access blocked areas, rather than their existence just getting a way around an area or encounter.

Here’s a stage where they introduce benefits for full exploration in easing the boss fight. Lighting the 3 main bonfires will automatically kill the adds when they enter boss fight, and can be used after to buff your weapon with fire so you don’t need to use your own buff on it.

The place is likely to wear out its welcome very quickly.

Boss: Umi-bozu

I don’t think you’ll find a single person who likes this boss, and for good reason. Aside from the other valid reasons people hate fighting its lesser ilk, not having fire damage makes this fight unbearably slow. Thankfully, Nioh glues you to floor edges when attacking unlike Dark Souls, but moving closer when the boss is at the edge of the arena will result is slipping between the ground and it, falling into the water. And many of its attacks are large, and painfully slowly telegraphed attacks that do tons of damage, which is a source of frustration on its own. Thankfully, due to the nature of the fight and its arena, it is never seen outside of this mission.

We now have access to Adept Martial Arts, Ninjutsu, and Onmyo.

Sub-Mission: Bridge of Bone

A series of enemy gauntlets taking place on a pretty banged up set of bridges. It’s a rather generic environment, but scenic nonetheless given this is a game about samurai, so bridge fights are good. Maybe it was simply too generic after all and that’s why it didn’t reappear in the sequel. A later sub mission has William fight the revenant of Benkei, recreating his famous fight with Yoshitsune. In higher difficulties, Yoshitsune himself is represented by a Raven Tengu accompanying Benkei. The bridge missions were popular for dropping your revenants for other players to get copies of your gear from you, so it made a nice backdrop to fight them in.

KINKI REGION

Mission 6: Spider Nest Castle

If you didn’t hate spiders for dropping on you over loot, you will now, and you will learn to look up at this point. The place is pretty disgusting to look at overall, and unlike usual yokai realm spawned monsters, the giant spiders that jump out of the glowing amrita nests count as an attack when they land, its pretty sudden to, so try not to get spooked by it. I got pretty tired of having to check all the eggs for tiny spiders since their web attack slows you down so much and also does way too much ki damage.

It’s another mission that rewards exploration, as every Hiragumo Teapot Fragment found will remove a plate of leg armor from the boss. The lower caves being just a spider nest was annoying for all the spiders hiding on the ceilings and the parts of the map worth seeing aren’t really used when they bring the location back in Nioh 2 for side missions and the Underworld.

I never actually found Fragment V... as evidenced by my lack of trophy for collecting all the pieces

Boss: Joro-gumo

The boss itself is pretty standard in having a one-two swipe combo, and then an aoe attack when she curls her legs into herself and tries to spin her thorax into you. It just gets even easier when you can hit any of her legs instead of just her front or back.

Mission 7: Falling Snow

Between this mission and the historical Honnoji mission featured in Nioh 2, it was interesting how much of the architecture remained intact, and how removing the ice blockage makes it a different level that is familiar nonetheless, as certain buildings and features are recognizable landmarks in the two missions. The main gimmick is how the lingering regrets of the boss power ice formations in your way that you have to destroy in order to be able to damage the former. Likewise, in the Honnoji mission in Nioh 2, rather than swinging your weapon at the ice butterflies, you merely touch your hand to them, which speaks to the difference in relationship between the boss in question and the player character in 2 vs William who is an outsider to it all.

Ranmaru Mori is encountered as a NPC Revenant with unique dialogue, although he uses Dual Swords instead of Sword in 2, nor is encountering him an obtuse affair involving a specifically looted Devotional Helm.

Overall, I’m a fan of this stage, it helps that nothing in this game happens in the winter until the DLCs due to the much shorter timeframe of the main story, so its the only time you encounter snow.

Boss: Yuki-onna

This is the first boss I felt had any sort of style, especially with her introduction (I’ve said the way characters are introduced in the impression they leave is a specialty Team Ninja really refines in the sequel). Though her attacks are only marginally more interesting, and more likely will give you a hard time with water damage going through your guard. I’ve found her AoE attack is much harder to dodge and is much larger than most, which will also nearly kill you too, it feels a bit too much even for this game. Oh and she starts the first game’s trend of having half-screen dashing grabs, and it only gets worse from there. She's tough but for all the wrong reasons that would make a satisfying challenge.

Mission 8: The Demon of Mount Hiei

It’s a gloomy, rainy stage, again, like “The Spirit Stone Slumbers.” However, I must confess once again I do have a weakspot for the atmosphere it provides. The paths are largely linear, but the main gimmick is that there are a few strong enemies that regenerate health around giant amrita formations that need to be destroyed to kill them. Damage in bursts like an Iai Quickdraw are ideal here. There are some caves but you’ll be weaving between caves and mountain slopes so it doesn’t get as repetitive.

There’s also another Nue here, as a reference to the mythical feat of Minamoto no Yorimasa slaying a Nue on Mt. Hiei.

Boss: White Tiger (Byakko)

Our funny cat gets owned! I hate this boss largely for how jumpy he is and how many hits his AoE spin is, given how much ki damage it does, trying to block it will result in getting ki broken and then killed.

Sub-Mission: The Disappearing Ranjatai

This map is used for quick missions due to it being a tightly packed square, there are a couple of different ways they arrange objectives here. You can count on them not taking too long which is good. Nioh 2 Sub-Missions are a bit more varied in setup (meanwhile the bathhouse map in this game has them use the same “get 3 keys to spell I-RO-HA” twice. In the same region.) I would’ve liked to see them use this map in 2 over the freaking “dilapidated shrine with underground cave” they use more like in “A Request From Ginchiyo” even in 2.

Mission 9: The Iga Escape

TOKAI REGION

Because this area is so far removed from the rest of the locations in both games, locations simply cannot be reused as a result. You dont really travel as far over the course of nioh 2s story (not having a ship will do that).

If you have a terrible sense of direction this place will probably throw you for a loop. If you end up running around in a circle, Hanzo is scripted to appear to give you a hint, which is probably expected since this is the first time encountering ninja trick doors based on the circular floor marks. Not only that, but there are many trick doors and some are one-way trips. The place feels more like a playground but it’ll definitely be more lethal than one. The brief outdoor segment is probably the part I like most.

Aside from there, there’s a section where you enter a dead end and slash a wall scroll and suddenly the entire room is upside when you step out, which is still pretty impressive to me now. This is another mission that I like save for the fact that there’s just a gratuitous room full of spiders, the same one tha flips upside down.

Boss: Giant Toad

Mostly whatever, but rather obnoxious with the jump slam being awkward to dodge through due to combination of camera obscuring and long active frames (are you getting the pattern here). It is funny seeing Masanari’s father alive in Nioh 2 and he indeed has the same spear after all though. Don’t stand behind him either because his turning attack is also multihit, same shit as White Tiger.

We now have access to Veteran Martial Arts, Ninjutsu, and Onmyo (though you’ll need a decent amount of proficiency in a single weapon, 300k).

Mission 10: Memories of Death Lilies

Really beautiful environment that is sadly obscured by fog, which is part of the problem in-universe. It really shines when you get to the shrine parts, combined with the waterfalls and lycoris flowers surrounding the place. Layout is rather linear, but given how confusing the previous mission was, I daresay it’s welcome.

Boss: Ogress

Kinda like Mergo’s Wet Nurse but even easier because she tends to just have a blind spot right under her face lol. She cries tears that grow lycoris that turn into yokai realm, but its not really a big deal. Really pretty arena though.

Mission 11: The Weight of the World

This one is just a one-time cutscene so William gets a little more motivation and trying to fit some kind of character development (not that its really necessary). This does however mark the point that William starts getting involved in the actual war by consequence of his search, as up to this point we’ve been working around the actual battles fought. It’s greatly contrasted with Nioh 2.

Mission 12: The Defiled Castle

We start this mission crawling through shit, so you better have regen talismans or you’ll have a terrible time trying to use your elixirs. This mission has crystal formations that are mind controlling Tokugawa soldiers, which will incapacitate everyone connected to it (as shown on your compass). While you can kill the soldiers in self defense, and there’s no reward for sparing them, it feels nice to, they’ll thank you as the disappear (which is just them retreating).

Boss: Tadakatsu Honda

This guy tends to be a major asshole about using a high speed thrust that will probably oneshot you or something close to it every time he dodges. Just destroy the 3 crystal formations in the arena and try not to get owned.

You can also skip him entirely by giving the necessary amount of shit balls to a random guy before. It’s... odd.

The following region has some branching paths but it’s also the first time you’re climbing up a castle, it can get a bit disorienting where to go, and more of the same mind control crystals, with getting outnumbered being an easy occurance with the cramped rooms. Having Suppa and Catwalking helps a lot.

Boss: Okatsu

She has an annoying habit of constantly dodging, and her dodges go way farther than anyone else. She can do lunging thrusts off walls and technically gets a kind of air dash to do that when she uses her variation of Living Weapon. Ki breaking her is likely not going to happen due to Nioh 1 AI prioritizing dodging at low ki and her special dodges being that way.

I feel like parts of her attacks were reused for Fist weapons in Nioh 2.

SEKIGAHARA REGION

Mission 13: Immortal Flame

One of my favorite missions in terms of layout. There are multiple approaches throughout the stage and they converge and split again there aren’t really any redundant shortcuts either (which is something the game can be guilty of sometimes, even in 2). All of the fire is kind of an eyesore but the castle itself is beautiful, at least, if you think about it before it was attacked. The stage is just the one i think of the most among nioh 1 maps when it comes to the difference in nioh’s level design vs dark souls.

This stage introduces Amrita Fiends that have spikes to throw, but if you know how to strike the horn they’re not any harder than sword Yoki.

Boss: Magoichi Saika

I actually entered this fight unprepared, due to the room where his objective looks like it might be is just another room, the actual boss room is right above that, so I don’t remember if there’s a shrine nearby there. I guess in a way that’s how he “ambushes” you.

As far as human bosses go, he’s definitely one of the most unique due to how he fights with Yatagarasu instead of just having a Living Weapon mode, even then, his fighting with a musket and swinging his sword more like a cane necessitates a much different moveset. He does have an annoying habit of shooting point blank without even rolling in 1 though.

He also has an easy weakness to shuriken when he’s flying, and human bosses in 1 don’t recover quickly from attacks that ground them like in 2 so you get a free Final Blow.

Mystic Art unlock missions are now available for Weapons, you’ll need 500k proficiency for each type.

Mission 14: Sekigahara

The first section is pretty standard, but brief. While it is foggy, this is actually historically true as well and what contributed to a large amount of tension in the decisive battle between the Western and Eastern armies.

Boss: Otani Yoshitsugu

Rather unique in that he has traits of a youkai boss and human boss both. You can clearly see how his attacks are inspired by Dual Sword skills but not exactly the same, which is more fun that just being exactly the same.

However, he’s a lot easier than I remember.

With Tokugawa soldiers’ morale increased, they rush into the field, going with them will remind you that this game is not Samurai Warriors and you will be shot to death with little glory while trying to clash swords with that other guy.

The two main routes, then, are running upstream or hiding in the abandoned village buildings on the lower end of the map.

Boss: Sakon Shima

RIP Keiji Fujiwara, but this guy is a real dick to fight, as expected of an enemy with a lightning Guardian Spirit. His special attack involves launching you off the ground which makes it impossible to avoid the followup. It’s pretty sudden too, and it’ll oneshot.

Unfortunately, they patched all of the Guardian Spirit skills that can launch enemies like Mizuchi or Daiba-washi to do the same to him.

He comes back in a Sub-Mission in the 3rd DLC with his straw hat as “Mysterious Samurai” but with Mitsunari’s Izuna Guardian Spirit.

Mission 15: The Source of Evil

Sekigahara but Fucked Up(TM), now instead of predominantly human enemies its all yokai. You need to talk to Tenkai to get the purifying stakes for the red amrita crystals, which create permanent yokai realm zones (possibly even more intense in their effects) and act as Biwa Boku-boku that will automatically summon any revenants inside the red zones when approached. When purified, there are now zones that give a lot of buffs relating to the Amrita Gauge, allowing frequent use of Living Weapon.

Oh, and the boss will occasionally try to blast you. This gets pretty annoying. The layout isn’t really anything special overall.

Boss: Gasha-Dokuro

My first attempt, something happened and the boss became misaligned when knocked down and I couldn’t hit its face, that was weird and bothersome because I wasn’t sure what to do.

Not terribly difficult, but not fun either despite having more uses of LW from the purified auras (if you did do that). Break the feet one each and have a go at its face, if you have to break the hands things get even more tedious. Sometimes its hands will come from offscreen and oneshot you while youre focused on the feet, yaaaayyy.

OMI REGION

Mission 16: A Defiled Holy Mountain

Also a contender for one of the best maps in the game, in terms of design and atmosphere. It has a very Jade Cocoon-esque quality to it. The mountains can get tiresome to look at but the forest parths and general greenery really do contribute to the concept of Mt. Ibuki being a source of purity. There’s many different winding paths, and you find many officers on the run being cutdown by bandits. This is the first time (and one of the few times in general) that you see NPC graves appearing in real time immediately after someone is killed. You even do that to another person yourself, with the message “Cut down by William” as the cause of death.

Boss: Mitsunari Ishida

He has some stylish attacks but he’s wrapped up in such an annoying package. Also the first boss that has a tendency to activate LW as soon as you knock him out of it, which is a continuing trend. Of note are his two grabs which are pretty fast, one using his Guardian Spirit Izuna (which does an Izuna Drop), the other being a leaping rush that is bound to get someone.

He also has an attack that charges up and then slashes all around him with wind waves, but it’s not really apparently what direction to expect which slashes which make it an utter annoyance considering guarding it will get you blustered by wind damage, and then rocks will fall from the roof after too.

Mystic Art unlock missions are now available for Ninjutsu and Onmyo. You can finally remove cast animations from buffs. You should be leveling both Dexterity and Magic so the 20 stat requirement to do these shouldn’t matter.

Mission 17: The Samurai from Sawayama

What an utterly confusing stage, it’s far too easy to get lost in here, especially if you fall through the trapdoors and end up in the spider filled corpse pits. Easily my most loathed stage. The stage is entirely indoors and its not particularly interesting to look at either.

Boss: Obsidian Samurai (Yasuke)

The good thing is that this boss is very enjoyable, moreso being able to spar with him more easily in Nioh 2. An oddly high amount of his attacks are susceptible to being parried though. He relies less on form and will often just punch or kick you raw in between strikes and overall has a great “give and take” pace, despite not having a fantastical concept to design attacks around, just that he’s got a big axe and tachi, and a mean haymaker.

Mission 18: The Demon King Revealed

Right off the bat we’re assisted by Hanzo and Okatsu, so you can tell the game isn’t going to pull any punches. Painfully so, Nioh 1 didn’t really quite figure out how to balance encounters with NPC allies very well, especially in the rare occasions you get two. You’ll often fight 3 powerful yokai at once who will steamroll your allies and turning into a well greased deathball makes it hard for you to get into as well. There’s at least 3 instances of this, and there are multiple waves of it in each too.

Upon approaching the castle proper after being separated from your allies, on my very first playthrough I was taking in the sight that I didn’t notice the path crumbling and fell to my death, but thankfully, they just put me and my grave at the head end of the approach that I was supposed to run to.

Once we get to Azuchi Castle proper, it turns into a mega man-esque boss rush of 4 earlier yokai bosses, Onryoki, Hino Enma, Nue, and Joro-gumo. Given you have a chance to refresh resources between each fight, it’s not particularly difficult, and there’s no real justification for it either, so it was really just put in to pad the stage, the elevator just automatically activates once that’s cleared.

Boss: Nobunaga Oda

The entire game was building up to this moment, but Nobunaga himself doesn’t really want to be here, so he fights in a somewhat familiar way, taking bits from Mitsunari and Muneshige, while using Tengen Kujaku’s 3 different elemental forms by cycling through a LW with each, giving him different capabilities in each.

He likes to float around a lot at high speed too, which is a bit annoying as he has two different post game fights in which he features as one of the bosses fought alongside another. Despite being feared and being rather powerful in-universe, you can parry him in some ways all the same.

You won’t get a proper boss fight with him alone though, as his fight will end before depleting his HP.

Boss: Kelley

Immediately after, we fight Kelley. Who, surprise, has a dashing grab attack! He’s also one of the only bosses that really has a counter attack, and an annoying one that he likes to spam a lot. He also likes to teleport around to make you chase him. He’s not supposed to have a lot of HP as the tradeoff I guess?

Boss: Yamata-no-Orochi

And then after Kelley he immediately invokes the Yamata-no-Orochi. Thankfully, dying here does not make you repeat Kelley. The one saving grace of this fight is that it’s impossible to fall off the castle during it, so you mostly just need to focusing on reading the snakehead’s attacks. Their breath attacks don’t have a great telegraph, so they’ll probably damage through guard.

Fight one head, then two, and then the last of them show up and open the arena up. By goading them into breaking the amrita structures, they overload and collapse, getting an easy kill on one of them. Once there’s only one head left, the last one will power up, but it’s not that much different. It’s a pretty tedious fight overall, and would probably have made for a more epic boss in a regular RPG rather than an action game. This is something that is greatly rectified with the sequel’s choice of final boss.

Divine rarity gear is now unlocked. Saorise is finally returned to us! She specializes in boosting Amrita Gauge gain, but only physically summoning her with Moment Talismans (retranslated to Fleeting Talismans in 2) or Guardian Spirit Talismans.

Roll credits. But there’s stll something we have to do...

Epilogue: The Queen’s Eyes

Back to the Tower of London, we essentially run the reverse path that we did to escape, which was oddly confusing due to the placement of the two staircases looking similar. Instead of running back to the cells, we find the underground alchemy lab, seeing yokai being cultivated in amrita tanks, and up ahead...

Boss: Kelley Clones

In-game prestige points label this encounter as a boss fight despite lack of boss health bars, but everyone is inclined to agree, as you are essentially fighting 3 (naked) Kelleys at once, and things will get hairy very quickly if you’re not on top of it. You can eliminate the first one crashing out of the tank, but two at once is still an endeavor so it’s best to just leave it to LW, like many things in this game.

Boss: Hundred Eyes

John Dee turns his lab into an arena with dinosaur bones hanging around or something. There’s a lot of Amrita. The boss is rather unconventional in that he doesn’t have as many physical attacks (and bosses don’t have that many different attacks in this game in general). It instead turns into something like bullet hell lite, with many eye drones shooting lasers at you that inflict confusion directly rather than relying on inflicting two elemental debuffs at once. The drones fill a lot of amrita gauge when destroyed so the fight leans into using a lot of LW. He can kill you easily, but the fight isn’t difficult either

POST-GAME MISSIONS

Sub Mission: A Meeting on the Other Shore, The Return of the Gourd

Nioh 1s idea of endgame challenges is throwing 2-3 bosses that were clearly not designed to be fought together and make you figure it out (the answer is always LW). Sometimes preceded by an enemy gauntlet you have to clear each attempt too. Its bad. Really bad.

Key examples are fighting Yuki-onna and Nobunaga together, a gauntlet followed by Obsidian Samurai and Nobunaga, fighting Tadakatsu Honda and Muneshige Tachibana, Hanzo amd Okatsu, a gauntlet of ninjas before fighting Hanzo and Giant Toad, the spear and sword dojo masters. Even the mission that lets you duel Yoshitsugu and Mitsunari will have the latter spawn in if you take too long (and on higher difficulties he comes with an asshole shooting cannons at you).

If that sounds overkill, you would be right. Not only that, but the vital "Yasakani Magatama" accessory that reduces set requirements by 1 is the only guaranteed way to get it by doing Return of the Gourd on NG+

DRAGON OF THE NORTH (DLC1)

This being Team Ninjas first go at releasing DLC there was a rather infamous difficulty spike due to disconnect between them expecting players to have been continually powering themselves up while waiting for dlc to drop which leaves a late player lacking that intermittent time.

As a result, I took a bit of time offstream to find pieces to finish the Dragon Ninja set (which technically wasnt available until dlc3, but nevertheless was necessary, and i was sick of using warrior of the west armor). When completing 7 pieces, True Dragon Sword is activated, reflecting in the swords model having the magatama inserted in thr hilt with a light glow, just like in the xbox ninja gaiden games.

Mission 19: Yokai Country

Its a beautiful snowy forest that gives way to gentle streams, leading to a deep valley and a small village hidden within. It is awfully reminiscent of the good parts of DS3s Road of Sacrifices. Its a much needed change of scenery.

DLC introduces new enemy types the game really needs but uses them often as a result. Red Kappa are combat versions of their green normal types that have paralysis instead of water on their claws. Makes it easier for them to fist your anus. Namahage are a snowier and less predictable foe but equivalent to Yoki. Rokurokubi are slow but powerful foes that rarely can be pulled away from a spot, making you come to them. They are noticably more healthy in nioh 2. You often have to weave in and out because they will often do their aoe grab. Nioh 2 rokurokubi emit yokai mist even before they are revealed compared to the original game.

Boss: Date Shigezane

His deformation makes for more interesting attacks, as a centipede for an arm makes him toss blades lodged inside it or swing in different ways whether he holds his odachi in his human hand or yokai hand. However, this dlc has a nasty pattern of making bosses that swing incredibly fast with high ki damage that will often just kill you before you realize what happened. So once again a cool boss concept is ruined by the execution.

Mission 20: The One-Eyed Dragon’s Castle

As noted in the stages loading screen, Aoba Castle is notable for lacking a castle keep, so the confusing floorplans of Edo, Hifumi, and Sawayama Castle are removed. There are many murder holes for Date musketeers to fire at you from, which is the main stage gimmick. Thankfully they are large enough for you to shoot back at them. Progressing inward the level opens up and encourages you to explore at the urging of Nekomata foreshadowing how there are 3 towers that seem to cover each other...

Boss: Shigenaga Katakura

The boss himself is largely just an axe revenant that uses ninjutsu traps. The main gimmick is that his introduction is not a cutscene, and can be interrupted with him calling you out for it, but you get a trophy for letting him introduce himself. He will then order any men you werent thorough in cleaning out to open fire on you from all directions. If you kill a cannon Yoki in each tower they will permanently despawn.

Afterwards is a brief but beautiful garden trip before we get to a real doozy.

Boss: Masamune Date

A scenic moonlight drop in an arena noted to be similar to Kyoto's Kiyomizudera. You wont have time to enjoy it because Masamune will rip you a new one instantly, with a fast and subtle full screen grab, a large elemental aoe or tons of area denial depending on which guardian spirit hes using. He alternates between using LW between both, so youll have little time to rest, and often shoots flurries of sword beams at you. Rather than giving him many different attacks, they're reflective of the players moves but much faster and shooting sword beams everywhere, its quite disappointing for a man whose clan name would later be defined by his excessive flair.

Mission 21: Spirit Stone Huntress

Picking up immediately from the previous boss arena, this mission is literally only a boss fight, but the balcony is a popular place for people to leave revenants.

Boss: Maria

She has some of the standard combos you would expect from her rapier style, but her being from Spain with a rapier means that you get different kinds of attacks to deal with, so at least she has that over the other bosses in this dlc. She also uses alchemy for spell effects and a mimicry of living weapon, and loves to dash around to create a sense of a frantic pace, though it can vary whether the effect succeeded or not, i personally enjoy the fight but the damage scaling with higher difficulties kills the intended pace which makes it more frustrating, which is a recurring issue with the original game.

Sub-Mission: A Gilded Deception

A exploration mission about fighting revenants of fujitive Minamoto warriors. A brief section of this map is cleverly reused in Nioh 2s The Tengu's Disciple DLC.

DEFIANT HONOR (DLC2)

Due to the emphasis of Yukimura Sanada's refusal to use amrita, the only new enemy type are Ninken, ninja dogs, which are every bit as troublesome as it sounds.

Mission 22: The Siege of Osaka (Winter)

The Winter siege is never covered in Samurai Warriors, so the impenetrability of the Sanadamaru is never really covered. Most of the stage is running from cover to trenches from horrendous waves of flaming arrows and later on cannons that force you to stay on the move as they destroy your cover. Somehow you find a village that hasnt been leveled by the war. This is one of the weaker stages of the dlcs.

Boss: Sasuke Sarutobi

This was the only boss I had attempted to fight on Way of the Strong (NG+) rather than the default difficulty because i had worried I was doing too much damage, so this fight was particularly frustrating and caused me to revert difficulty after.

Sasuke has guns in his tonfas that you can get yourself. Once again, he has a very fast full screen grab with very little telegraph in terms of both startup and lack of exaggerated motion. One is like the lion combo from Naruto and the other just has him dempsey roll you lmao. He has frustratingly good tracking for his combos lengths and high speed and is a rather large pain in the ass rather than enjoyable because of how his speed is expressed in the fight.

Mission 23: Scion of Virtue

Starts in some rather bland caves underneath the Sanadamaru, you encounter 9 of the 10 Sanada Braves (due to Sasuke being the only proper boss fight). Each of them are slightly more skilled than the average revenant but vulnerable in all the same ways as them, if they arent setting up a trap or ambush involving snipers or something. The area itself is a rather tightly packed circle with a raised outer rampart that often has gunners and dense enemy layouts requiring careful engagement.

Boss: Yukimura Sanada

Yukimura reveals that not only does he fight with his own Qilin guardian spirit, he also inherited his father in law's, Janomecho. Qilin gives him familiar LW spear attacks and allows him to use his pistol (literally the only character in the duology that has one, I wish they made it a new ranged weapon type in 2) letting him charge it for explosive shots like devil may cry.

When he uses Janomecho, he floats off the ground like Yoshitsugu and gains a new moveset. Both of these are really cool but he has an annoying tendency to use his large diving aoe thats hard to dodge in Janomecho instead of his interesting attacks, but he's otherwise one of the better bosses in the original game overall.

Sub-Mission: Ganryu

If you finished the Dual Sword mystic art challenge, Yoshiteru Ashikaga gives you a mission to rescue a younger Takezo Shinmen, better known as Musashi Miyamoto back in Sekigahara, its something of a historical myth that he was present there, though highly unlikely. Clearing that will allow a special duel mission here, complete with a unique beach thats unused elsewhere.

Boss: Kojiro Sasaki

Although he is susceptible to reversals and parries like many human enemies, he mixes up a lot of the odachi moveset to create something unique thats still quite enjoyable to fight, and for being a hidden optional boss that is largely a remixed odachi warrior being one of my favorite bosses in this game that says a lot. Unfortunately Shinichiro Miki only voices Yukimura and doesnt voice a Kojiro for a 3rd time.

Many of his moves became available for odachi in the sequel, barring ones based on the LW moves.

BLOODSHED’S END (DLC3)

Mission 24: The Sanada’s Resolve

Half a year has passed, and the ceasefire required Osaka Castle fill its moats and decommission the Sanadamaru, when war breaks out again, the new fortifications are set on a mountain slope, with cannons taking shots. Its a very cramped and dense level, and certain cannons can be baited into destroying their own towers and revealing some extra places. You can also activate some cannons on your own.

The 9 Sanada Braves return but this time they are killed for good here, each with their own parting words and a grave immediately spawning at their feet by Williams hands where you can summom them and kill them again lol. These are the last human enemies youll fight in the main story. Its a pretty straightforward stage but nothing damning about it so its enjoyable.

Boss: Yukimura Sanada, Sasuke Sarutobi

That's right, its a rematch with Yukimura! But this time theres less room and when he gets down to 30%, Sasuke jumps in to assist, turning this fight into a sheer dps race (if you didnt get the memo, that means use LW) to prevent the situation from becoming unwinnable.

Mission 25: Resentment Unleashed

Introducing the last new enemy type, the Magatsu Warrior, a glass cannon elite enemy type that has 4 arms that is best fought by trying to break its extra amrita arms between its flurry of strikes. Its main weakness is lack of tracking, so it is mostly checking to see if players can keep their cool and not panic backwards dodging.

This stage is mostly a series of gauntlets fighting almost exclusively elite type yokai like cannon and ninja yoki with the magatsu warriors, fighting alongside Masamune and Shigezane Date (who has been purified of the centipede deformations). With the boss of the stage blasting you from out of reach.

In that regard, its a bit of a pain.

Boss: Onmoraki

The biggest whatever boss ever. Itll most likely just be spinning around from you being behind it all the time and hardly has any unique traits.

Mission 26: The Last Samurai

This stage is a bit more linear than i remember. But the large chunk of it is fighting elite yokai. There are amrita formations that continually spawn elite enemies while also recovering damage dealt to it quickly, so in order to avoid getting overwhelmed any encounter with these is best dealt with LW, as usual. The amrita roots that encircle the castle feel a bit like hair, or perhaps tails...

There are ghost encounters of Yoshitsugu Otani and Mitsunari Ishida on two separate floors.

Boss: Hideyori Toyotomi

On my very first playthrough, i mostly wrote him off as a joke because i killed him quickly without much trouble, but hes actually quite an impressive fighter for being a coddled child (and also an amrita homunculus). On higher difficulties he no doubt becomes the same issues as many other bosses, since he also loves to shoot sword beams. He switches between a single and dual sword style and at low hp, changes classification to yokai, which also makes him immune to counters (you can still parry him with backwave though, odd). Hes got a surprising amount of flair and is at least a little impressive to watch, though more of an annoyance to fight if you dont push momentum on him.

Afterwards, Yukimura joins you with all of his boss capabilities as you fight one last gauntlet of yokai and revenants while Yukimura expresses his regrets, passing Janomecho to you.

Boss: Nine-Tails

Because youre aided by Yukimura, this fight is not particularly challenging. Using the whole fox shape also doesnt make many of her attacks very interesting. Unfortunately I just dont have much to say about her despite being the final boss of the dlc storyline.

Sub-Mission: A Warrior of Keen Judgment

While not a unique map, I enjoy this sub mission in particular due to it being a remix of the first regions "A Request From Ginchiyo" but with her husband Muneshige now. He is just as strong as he was, and after the battle of Sekigahara, he is now allied with the Tokugawa rather than at odds. Like the earlier mission, the objective is found in one of 3 random marked chests. With each one thats empty, he speaks more about his relationships, and sweetly reminisces about his late wife and fighting alongside her.

Sub-Mission: The Master Ninja

After completing The Last Samurai, we get a mysterious message from the Hayabusa clan. This was a huge surprise, as Ninja Gaiden was the last thing expected in this game at the time.

The arena of choice is evocative of the grass plain seen in the intro of the very first Ninja Gaiden on NES.

Boss: Jin Hayabusa

Jin is a completely different beast from any human fought before. His skills are taken straight out of Ninja Gaiden while having nothing in common in anything else in the game. His Dragon Sword is blindingly fast, high damage and ki damage, including the infamous Flying Swallow that was notoriously overpowered in the original xbox release. He has actual Ninpo which is better than Onmyo despite being a different school, and throws shuriken much faster and damaging than yours ever will. If he switches to Kusarigama though then his moveset is closer to the player's. Presumably because the only weapon similar is the Vigoorian Flails but theres no gama on those.

Despite this, the nostalgia factor makes this one of the most enjoyable fights for me, as it is expressly a matter of overcoming someone who is undoubtedly more overpowered than you.

His boss theme reuses Genshins Theme from Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, and has a unique mission clear tune.

MISC THOUGHTS

Found 146/225 Kodama without Kodama Sensor.

Due to the lack of enemy variety in this game, when they introduce a new enemy type they tend to really wear it out fast by making every yokai realm enemy that new one.

Some regular soldiers and ninja have Odachi and Tonfa in the base game missions on the normal difficulty, I don’t know if this is affected by me having the DLC or not because I don’t remember if there were still Odachi and Tonfa enemies even before I bought the DLCs.

Most shrines nearest to bosses still require a bit of running to get to the boss unlike 2 where most of them are free of enemies on the way.

There’s at least 3 different maps that are some flavor of “underground onmyoji shrine.”

Grabs are inconsistent in whether they get the grey smoke to indicate its a grab, and there’s no specific SFX to indicate one like in 2.

Ki consumption differences in A rank Agility vs B rank is a lot more noticable in this game, and mastering ki pulse flux is much more important in this game when yokai skills in nioh 2 allow for ki recovery while attacking. When you have Agility A suddenly you can attack much more.

Much of the game has to be balanced around the sheer power of Living Weapon, to its detriment.

Boss HP bars do not display ki, which really threw me for a loop even though ki damage isn’t as important in Nioh 1, especially with human enemies prioritizing avoiding getting ki broken and backpedaling a lot more when they’re at risk.

While a chunky LW bar is harder to get, it is surprisingly easy to charge up the amrita gauge between uses.

Casting spells and buffs is unbearably slow but being able to cast buffs with no animation was a bit much. The duration of spells is also annoyingly much shorter than I remember. Cycling through the item shortcuts in one direction is also more annoying than I remember.

Weapon movesets feel barebones now even with LW compared to the skills added in the sequel.

I feel the first dlc had the best level design, but more of the worst bosses. The 2nd dlc was kind of a slump out of all of them but Yukimura is the best boss among the dlcs. The 3rd was pretty average in a lot of respects but had a nice surprise with Jin Hayabusa.

While some levels really suck, a good number of them still feel good to play, and the overall gameplay is fine, just that the bosses by large were lacking and numbers really lacked proper balancing.

Looking forward to revisiting Nioh 2 from a fresh save before the release of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty!

#nioh

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nataliaphantomhivesblog · 3 years

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Newsflash: Dazai cares for Chuuya

Before reading any further, I will be talking about stormbringer, so spoilers ahead!! Translation credits go out to: @popopretty on tumblr, make sure to give this kind human some love and appreciation<3

Also if you want to read the first few chapters of stormbringer: @buraihatranslations is currently translating it, give them much love and appreciation as well, they deserve it!!

Honestly, I have been so obsessed with Soukoku lately and I think the reason behind this is because when it comes to Soukoku, their feelings for each other are not as easy to grasp as love or hate, it is much more profound than that. There is care, hurt, trust, resentment, companionship, bitterness, and consideration...And ironically enough, thats just the tip of the iceberg.

If we break down their individual feelings towards each other, it will be easier to understand their bond.

On Chuuya's end, his feelings are much more clear due to his expressive personality. He wears his emotions on his sleeves, he can try and hide what he feels towards Dazai but his true feelings tend to unravel easily.

He sometimes tries to mask his feelings towards Dazai by throwing insults, but his facial expressions are enough to contradict what he is saying.

Chuuya's feelings towards Dazai can be easier to comprehend. He obviously feels this certain betrayal due to the fact Dazai left the Port Mafia. Not to mention, he and Dazai have always had a rivalry relationship.

In the Soukoku wiki page, it is stated that Chuuya is aware of Dazai not experiencing a proper childhood, therefore allows him to act as childish as he can and lets him tease him relentlessly. I don't know how reliable this source is, but either way I think its worthy enough to add.

In the Dragon head conflict when Dazai was out of sight, Chuuya told Mori to forget about Dazai. That was until Hirotsu mentioned a microscope, Chuuya quickly realizes it was code language because he remembered a previous conversation where Dazai says he needs a microscope to be able to see Chuuya properly.

The moment he figured out it was a tracker, Chuuya did not hesitate to jump in and rescue Dazai. But here is the catch: No one but Chuuya knew about the microscope, if Chuuya really didn't care for Dazai he wouldn't have mentioned the microscope and kept all this under wraps, leaving Dazai in a mess.

Chuuya trusts Dazai with his life. He never hesitates to leave his life on Dazai's hands when it has to come to it. Chuuya and Dazai have known each other for years, for Chuuya to be able to trust Dazai that much is because Dazai also cares for him too, right?

The answer here is yes, Dazai cares for Chuuya. In a superficial level, it doesn't seem like Dazai truly cares, but I can assure you that he does care for him. Weather you like to think of his care in a platonic or romantic manner, the care Dazai has for Chuuya is undeniable and extremely significant for Dazai's character.

I think that stormbringer establishes this idea even further. There is one specific moment in this light novel that shows his genuine concern towards Chuuya's well being:

"There is one problem." Dazai cut off his sentence hesitantly. "It has nothing to do with the sucess rate of the plan. It is a matter we have to overcome in the end but... It may require some time to decide."

"What's with you?" Chuuya raised his eyebrows at Dazai. "Stop dramatizing it. Just hurry up and say it."

"I said earlier about this control spell to open the 'gate' that is used to reset the command inside Chuuya, right?" Dazai spoke with a strangely restrained voice. "If we use that, the logs of the command formula that were written in the past will be erased. That means...even if the memory erasure was used on Chuuya in the past, the traces of that will be erased as well."

"What?"

"I told you before right, the memory erasure command. The only way we can confirm if Chuuya is human or not is to check the history to see if the memory erasure command was ever used. It means..." Dazai looked at Chuuya with eyes that he had never looked at him before. Those eyes were serious. "If we use that control spell, the method to confirm if Chuuya is an artificial personality created by a string of code, or just a normal human being, will be lost. For good."

The time had stopped.

Chuuya opened his eyes and looked towards Dazai but his eyes were not seeing anything. The wind blew between the two of them. Even so, Chuuya did not blink.

"Verlaine became like that because he was tormented by the curse that he was not human. That only is enough of a big problem. The matter of being human or not." Dazai looked at his pocket watch, gave it a glance and continued. "I can delay the time until the plan starts for about two minutes. I will send an order for my men to wait... You can think about it alone for a while. Cuz I guess its hard for you to collect your thoughts with me around."

Having said so, Dazai turned away and walked down the stairs, leaving Chuuya alone.

Dazai fixated in his pocket watch. Two more minutes. Too short for a life decision. But he couldn't afford more than that.

Inside Dazai's head, he was planning a procedure to swith to an alternative plan in case Chuuya refused, at a tremendous speed.

This section in stormbringer is personally one of my favorites, this is a very rare moment between both of them, but especially for Dazai. Like I stated earlier Chuuya wears his emotions on his sleeves, therefore even if he tries to mask his care with insults, its still painfully noticable that he genuienly looks after Dazai. Chuuya also sometimes show a vulnerable side of himself to Dazai, especially after using corruption.

Dazai on the other hand is extremely unreadable. Its hard to understand his true intentions and if he really cares for people or only sees them as a pawn. In this moment though, Dazai was being painfully genuine. Dazai literally prioritized Chuuya over the mission. He was already thinking of coming up with an alternative plan just in case Chuuya refused, obviously the sucess rate of the alternative plan would be lesser than the actual plan Dazai had in mind, he choose Chuuya's wellbeing over a mission.

In this section, Dazai wasn't throwing jokes or witty remarks, he was being serious. Because Dazai knows how desperately Chuuya wants to be human. He knows how important being human is to Chuuya.

Dazai wasn't manipulating Chuuya by giving him the chance to decide, we can see that Dazai was literally showing a lot of hesitation when mentioning this to him, we also get to see what Dazai was thinking, and we can tell he wasn't thinking about manipulative his movements in any way. All of this wasn't coming out of manipulation, it was coming out of pure care.

After six steps, Dazai reached the stair. He stepped on the stair and started walking down. Three steps down the stair, he heard a *clang*, a cool sound of metal echoing behind him. It sounded like the metal was kicked by the sole of someones shoes. The moment Dazai realized what the sound was, Dazai turned around in surprise.

There was already no one at the top.

Dazai was dazed for a moment, then he loosened his lips and laughed.

"Trying to act cool, huh?" Dazai smiled, both annoyed and relieved. Then he turned on his radio and sent out his order. "Chuuya has sallied, everyone get ready for battle."

I personally love this part so much, relief washed over Dazai the moment he noticed that Chuuya was going to go through with the first plan, which proves my point that he wasn't manipulating him and how Dazai was under a lot of stress because he wasn't sure if the alternative plan would be as effective as his original one.

Yet he still was willing to go through the alternative plan if Chuuya refused, because Dazai values him and regards his wellbeing.

Dazai was being surprisingly gentle in this section, he was being honest. There was no ulterior motive behind his actions here, just a boy looking after his partner.

"So i'm going to send an order to my men to prepare for action... Is that okay?"

"Of course it's okay." Chuuya turned to Dazai. "Why are you asking me such a thing?"

Dazai didn't answer right away.

That was an unusual expression. It's like he was trying to say something, but he had to arrange the words in his head to decide where he should start. An expression he rarely shows.

This was right before Dazai drops the bomb to Chuuya about the memory erasure command. He was even asking for Chuuya's opinion on sending his men to get ready, this was the first time Dazai ever showed actual concern without masking it with witty remarks. You can tell that Chuuya isn't used to this.

And when you think about it, when Dazai and Chuuya have missions together, Dazai always uses corruption as a last resort and he always allows Chuuya to make the decision if they will be using it or not.

I personally belive that the main reason Chuuya trusts Dazai with using corruption is because The Sheep used to exploit his powers too much, but Dazai leaves the decision to use corruption up to Chuuya. Dazai understands the physical and mental toll corruption takes on Chuuya and therefore leaves the choice up to him.

Theres another section in stormbringer that I really enjoy, it doesn't necessairly show solicitude but I still think this should still be taken into consideration:

"You seem pretty confident that Chuuya is human, don't you?"

"I am," Dazai laughed with a sigh. "There is no way a man-made code could create such a personality that I detest so much."

Throughout the whole story, Dazai is more than determined that Chuuya is human. The main reason Dazai finds Chuuya so intresting is because of how frighteningly human Chuuya can be, because of the fact that he always wears his emotions on his sleeves, something Dazai rarely does himself. Thats personally a nice sentiment from Dazai's end, even when Chuuya struggles completely when it comes to believing in his own humanity, Dazai still can't help but see him as a human being.

Also I am aware that Dazai literally said he detests Chuuya here but he also sighed and laughed while stating this, showing us that he isn't being serious about hating him.

And its not only in stormbringer were he shows his concern towards Chuuya. In fact, in this following manga pannel Dazai is telling Chuuya that if he is willing to listen him, he will stage his own escape so that Chuuya doesn't get punnished.

Honestly, if Dazai didn't care enough for Chuuya, he wouldn't have mentioned this to him. Chuuya didn't care enough to realize that he literally unwillingly freed Dazai which would get the pm mad at him, so the fact that Dazai is literally helping him out is no doubt out of care for him. If Dazai didn't have any regard for Chuuya he would've not staged his escape or mentioned anything to Chuuya, eventually incriminating him.

There are many misconceptions when it comes to Dazai's feelings towards Chuuya, people think that he doesn't care for him due to the fact that he left the Port Mafia, leaving Chuuya behind. But heres the thing: Dazai's intentions had nothing to do with Chuuya. He left the organization for his own good, he left it to fullfill Oda's wish.

"If Dazai cared for Chuuya then why didn't he take Chuuya with him?" the reason is simple, he knows how much the PM means to Chuuya. In stormbringer it is shown that Chuuya feels as if his humanity is attached to the people he is loyal to, in this case its the port mafia. Verlaine wanted to get rid of the pm because he believed that the pm is what kept Chuuya's humanity, eventually making Chuuya believe that he is only human if he stays loyal to the pm. Dazai knows this. Thats exactly why he didn't take Chuuya with him or even explains to Chuuya why he left, he knows it would be selfish to basically rip Chuuya's sense of humanity apart.

I have a feeling that if Dazai told Chuuya about the real reason he left the Port Mafia, Chuuya will not only feel conflicted about being in the pm, but he would also have an inner conflict with himself as a human.

People also think Dazai may not really care for him because of the fact that after the fight against Lovecraft he actualy deserted him, maybe that part was truly just supposed to be seen as simple humor, but either way I want to talk about it. Chuuya's only request to Dazai was to take him back to base safe, so why did Dazai leave Chuuya behind?

I mean he has carried Chuuya back to saftey before with no problem, for example in stormbringer when Chuuya uses corruption for the first time Dazai carries him back to the billiards bar and not to the mafia’s base so that he could say goodbye to his passing friends.

The reson behind this is because Mori needs to know that unlike Dazai, Chuuya is absolutely loyal to him. Leaving Chuuya the way he did will make Mori believe that these two really are at each others throats and that Dazai is insignificant to Chuuya. Making it seem that for Chuuya, the mafia comes first before anything else.

Therefore Dazai established Chuuya's saftey within the mafia since not only does Mori want these two to be hostile with each other, he doesn't want Chuuya to eventually turn against him if he truly found out more about Dazai's true reason of departure. Then again, this isn't canon but it is a logical assumption.

Not to mention that although Dazai did leave him behind, he folded Chuuya's coat and hat before taking his leave. There is also an an extra chapter where Ozaki Kouyou was talking with Chuuya but when he left he forgot his coat, which made Kouyou came across the coat; where she noticed a badge sewed inside saying "Name: Hatrack", she smiled fondly thinking to herself that some things just never change, in this case, Dazai and Chuuya's bond.

Dazai literally took his time to sew this into his coat just to tease him, it was a simple gesture but it shows us how their dynamic will never change. No matter what these two go through, they will always share a bond that consists on teasing, trust and underlying care.

All of this actually makes that theory of Dazai planting a bomb under Chuuya's car for the sole reason that the PM doesn't find Chuuya as an acomplice who aided Dazai on his escape much more feasable.

For Dazai to just plant a bomb under Chuuya's car with no motive makes no sense because if Dazai's true intentions were to simply mess with Chuuya, he would've most likely made it clear at that time. Dazai always has an underlying motive behind his actions, and in this case it is very likely that he did that for Chuuya's sake.

Don't get me wrong, I am aware that the bomb incident could've just been a comedic moment and I shouldn't look too much into it, but there is still a posibility, right?

These two hold so much trust and care for one another, yet they also hold a lot of bitterness and resentment. In the end the good aspects of their dynamic outweighs the bad.

Either you see these two in a platonic or romantic way, you can't tell me that their bond isn't significant.

Thank you so much for reading!! I wanted to talk about this for a while because I feel like people misinterpret Dazai's feelings towards Chuuya a lot so I hope this clears up things a bit<3

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softpatts · 3 years

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OBEY ME CHARACTERS AND PETNAMES;;

UNDATEABLES EDITION <3

══════ .・♡︎・. ҉ ・゜✰・。.

Warnings;; none !!

Notes;; HI- IM NOT DEAD LOL IVE JUST HAD NO MOTIVATION- schools been really stressful as well,, but hopefully i can get back to posting regularly soon :)) <3

══════ .・♡︎・. ҉ ・゜✰・。.

DIAVOLO

okay first things first,, this man loves being called nicknames just as much as he loves calling you them !!

he loves your reaction as well,, thats probably his favorite part !! whether you get embarrassed or retort with an equally adorable(or cringey) nickname <3

starting off with what he calls you,, he has called you,, many,, many nicknames

some of them are more of a spur of the moment thing,, those tend to be really cheesy n just,, why???

as for calling HIM nicknames,, anything works !! but his favorites are "darling" "my prince" and "my love"

they just make him melt !! <33

if it's in more of a professional setting,, hell get a bit embarrassed,, not because of the nickname itself of course !! but more because he knows that hell definitely get teased by some of his colleagues

though i suppose hell just have to retort and call you your nicknames in public as well !!

good luck with that though,, because as soon as he sees your reaction to it in public,, hes never gonna get enough <3

BARBATOS

Okay so this man,, as much as might not seem like it,, is an absolute sucker for nicknames

he loves some of the more proper sounding nicknames,, such as "dear" "darling" "my love" things like that !!

if youre one who gets more embarrassed when shown affection like that,, hell get somewhat smug about it

hell have a little smirk on his face,, n hell ask you whats wrong,, once again repeating the nickname at the end of the question

though if you dont have that reaction no worries !! if you call him one back,, youll probably manage to make this man blush ><

its quite the sight honestly,, a light pink dust across his cheeks as he struggles to form a sentence without stuttering

try not to tease him to much !! he can easily fire back with something thats sure to make you blush <33

some of his favorite moments are late in the night,, hes laying in bed whilst holding your sleeping body,, hell kiss your forehead and whisper "i love you dear, may you have the sweetest dreams."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

its so adorable and sweet <33

when it comes to his favorite names youve called him,, its a tough choice between "dear" and "sugartits" (though said in a really weird voice)

no i will not provide context,, thats for another post im working on <3

SIMEON

WOOH okay,, so his nicknames are so,, so sweet

id like to think he isnt actually much into nicknames,, just your name seems a lot more intimate than any nickname could ever be

though he will slip in the occasional "angel" every once in a while

those occasions are usually after beinggg,, *ahem* intimate with each other,, or while you two are laying in each others arms

the origin for the nickname is quite simple,, he just finds you so,, angelic,, youre too good for this world and youre so pure,, no matter what you say !!

most of the time he calls you by your actual name,, but he says it in such a way that makes your heart melt !! <3

now onto calling hi m nicknames,, he loves them !!

he didnt actually care much for being called anything other than his name for a while,, but after you explained to him that it was,,, a tradition in a way !! when it comes to dating in the human world,, he was instantly hooked !

Its gotten to the point where if you call him something other than his designated nickname he begins to worry youre upset with him,,

but dont worry dear simeon !! im sure they just forgot,, or theyre having a bad day <3

his favorites out of what youve called him would have to be just "baby" its simple yet it makes his heart flutter ><

SOLOMON

im gonna come out real quick and say HE LOVES NICKNAMES !!! ALL OF THEM !!! WEIRD ONES,, SWEET ONES,, THE REALLY CHEESY ONES THAT MAKE EVERYONE GROAN N ROLL THEIR EYES,, ALL OF THEM !!!!!!

though some of them can get a bit strange,, he mostly sticks to the usual "babe" or "love",, but theres no promises he wont randomly come out with some weird extremely long name that makes you wanna barf

since hes a human too,, hell already know about calling your s/o petnames n such,, and i dont think youll have to ask him !! he quite likes it,, though i dont think he could love anything more than saying your name

hes another man whos an absolute sucker for just regular names,, he loves the way it feels when he says it ><

now when it comes to calling him nicknames,, he could really care less !! though be careful,, because if you call him some strange goes name he can sure as hell fire back with one twice as worse

though if he had to pick a favorite itd be "my love" not love,, but MY love

its the "my" part in there that he loves,, he loves the inotation that hes yours :))

══════ .・♡︎・. ҉ ・゜✰・。.

Tags !! ➪

#obey me #obey me x reader #obey me diavolo #obey me diavolo x reader #diavolo x reader #obey me barbatos #obey me barbatos x reader #barbatos x reader #obey me simeon #obey me simeon x reader #simeon x reader #obey me solomon #obey me solomon x reader #solomon x reader #obey me headcanons #obey me fanfic #headcanons

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vampkomori · 3 years

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anyone else think neo’s reports are weird about composers i think theyre weird about composers. lets make sense of joshuas status as composer and hazuki as comparison

this is gonna be a bit long. so anyway the og reports are p straightforward about what Composers (specifically, joshua) can and cannot do:

- Joshua can only pick up Hanekoma’s vibe, because Angel vibes are too high frequency for him to pick up

- Inter-planar contact (so, communication between the UG and the Higher Plane in this case) is difficult, which is brought up because

- The Composer, Joshua, only resides in the UG.

- But the Producer, who is an Angel, mainly resides in the Higher Plane, and only occasionally lingers in the UG.

The whole matter of jumping between worlds highlights the difference between their abilities even more:

- As Composer, Joshua is one of the beings who can jump between worlds, but isn’t meant to do so often. His vibe dipped too low, so Hanekoma had to come retrieve him, because as an Angel this sort of travel is simple for him.

the OG reports make it pretty clear Joshua isnt an Angel

*But. unfortunately its not that easy. because by clearing the final time trial joshua gives you an item called Angel Feather (天使のハネ in JP), of which the description says “Our buyer used divine means to acquire this mysterious feather that was once in the possession of Shibuya's Composer.“ (which some have interpreted as, “in the possession of” meaning “it was given to him” potentially by hanekoma, who actually IS an Angel)

and if things are vague, we turn to the JP to clear us up! but its. still vague there bc it says “バイヤーが特別な力で入手した渋谷エリアのコンポーザーが持っていた謎の羽根“ (The mysterious feather that was held/carried by the Composer of the Shibuya area that the buyer obtained with a special power)

so. we are none the wiser about whose feather this is. i imagine its up to interpretation whether its joshuas feather or hanekomas, who then gave it to joshua. but given how clearly the reports differentiate between the Composer and Angels in regards to their abilities, suffice to say theres two interpretations that are most likely

- Composers arent Angels, their power disparity is just too much

- Composers are Angels, but theyre so much weaker compared to the Angels who reside in the Higher Plane that they’re never referred to as Angels, just as Composers

which takes us to neo, and hazukis little lightshow

i think its notable that the reports dont comment on kubos so-called “exorcism”, and only on haz erasing his noise.

haz himself refers to his little stunt as “exorcising” kubo, while in JP he actually says haiki 廃棄, get rid of, revoke, invalidate.

i think its important that he clarified “i didnt erase him, i exorcised him”. because with kubo, the executor, being an Angel from the Higher Plane, a Composer shouldnt be able to erase someone of higher ranking than them. i think as the person who called upon kubo in the first place, haz could specifically revoke his services and send him back to the Higher Plane.

which means kubo wasnt erased, he was just sent back. hes still kickin

we could leave things right here as they are. Canonically, Composers are so far beneath Angels to a point where even if they were Angels themselves, they are so much weaker than them that they could hardly be referred to as such

this is where the facts end. but im gonna keep going and have fun speculating about things and include some i dont have physical proof of (yet)

its notable that in JP, hazuki says that kubo tried to purify shibuya probably because he wanted to be praised by Hazuki. which is weird if kubos supposed to be higher ranking than haz. (in EN, haz just says hes always been an overachiever) but lets put a pin in that for later 📌

which takes us to the matter of Shinjuku’s Producer. or their lack thereof

throughout all of neo’s reports, there is not a single mention of Shinjuku having a Producer. before neo, we kind of assumed every UG’s setup follows largely the same structure. a Composer, a Conductor, a Producer, and then some Reapers. but Shinjuku does not seem to have a Producer. and i think its because it doesnt need one.

its important to remember Who is writing these reports and Who theyre for. the reports are written by shibuyas Producer, and theyre written for the Higher Plane. and shibuyas Composer cant pick up the vibes of any Angel except hanekoma, so he cant be the one writing the reports for beings he cant even pick up the vibes from, especially since he only resides in the UG.

and yet, hanekoma comments that Hazuki should have filed a report, and that haz is disinterested in the lower planes.

in English its a little vague about who hes talking about, but the JP specifies Shinjukus Composer as the subject of this sentence.

throughout both reports, the UG and RG are considered part of the lower planes. its strange for a Composer to have no interest in the very planes they govern, plus for a Composer to file a report to the Higher Plane when its been established that Joshua, as a Composer, cant even perceive anyone from there.

so i think Hazuki may actually be a proper Angel from the Higher Plane, who was potentially demoted to become Shinjukus Composer.

though you can very much interpret haz “exorcising” kubo as simply “sending him back whence he came”, its of course pretty anticlimactic to see this massive laser beam essentially disintegrate kubo on a molecular level, only for it to have been a quick ride back to the higher plane with kubo being perfectly in tact after. if haz were actually much more powerful than an ordinary Composer, itd make sense why he would have been able to erase an Angel like kubo so. thoroughly.

this would also explain why kubo may have wanted to be praised by hazuki in the JP dialogue. with hazuki potentially being an outlier for Composers and being far Higher ranking than kubo, our executor may have wanted to sucker up a bit. maybe get promoted and away from his “basically a janitor” job if haz puts in a good word for him upstairs

theres also hazukis entire demeanor, and how Bad he is at acting like a normal person

we know of four paths that Players can take

they can choose erasure

they can choose resurrection to return to the RG

they can become Reapers

they can become Angels

and Reapers can eventually become Angels, though its yet unclear if the only way for that to happen is

for them to become Composer (potentially the Lowest Angel-rank there is) and thats it.

or if Composers can ascend and become Actual Angels and eventually reside in the Higher Plane, though how a successor for the seat of Composer is chosen in that scenario is yet entirely unknown since Usually the seat only becomes vacant when the previous Composer is defeated

or if they, as a Reaper, need to Ask the Composer who then asks the Producer to send a guy for evaluation or something

or if the Higher Plane has like, a talent scout guy somewhere.

potentially more than one may apply but at least the last point is the most likely, because

Conductors are invited to the Higher Plane (probably to become Angels) upon purification

(interesting to note that Composers are not mentioned as being invited, which would point to “theyre Angels, but like, weak-ass Angels”)

anyway, the point is that so far weve been told that Angels were Players or Reapers at one point. we know Joshua was a Player for sure, given the morsels of backstory we get from him and Hanekoma. but we dont know if All Angels came from the RG at one point, or if Angels that have always been Angels exist.

either way, the point is that for Hazuki to act so non-human like and to be disinterested in the UG and RG, he either must have been an Angel for a very long time, or he was never human to begin with.

this is relevant to how he interacts with joshua in the Secret Ending, though its a lot less obvious in English, in JP their dynamic is clear: Joshua is his senior, and as his junior, Hazuki looks to him as an example.

for one, thats hilarious. secondly, that recontextualizes like everything

‘course, you could keep the interpretation that theyre just Both weak-ass angels and hazuki just made kubo use a flashy dramatic elevator to the HP and nothing groundbreakingly powerful happened, but thats kinda anticlimactic

so. staying w the idea that hazuki may be a demoted Angel from the Higher Plane, then itd make sense for Joshua to have been Composer for longer than him, and for haz to act Like...That, since he couldve been not-human for a Very long time, or Never was one in the first place, but is still a younger Composer bc he got demoted like. 4 years back or something.

it also explains why Shinjuku may not need a Producer, and why Hazuki is the one writing his reports. its because hes still an Angel from the Higher Plane, so he does not need an intermediary to contact other Angels.

so to summarize what im tryna say here

Hazuki may have initially been a regular Angel from the Higher Plane, before he eventually got demoted to become Shinjukus Composer, despite how disinterested he is in the UG and RG. (he is considered to be “infamously unsympathetic”, a trait which is reinforced in the JP version to be something he is known for amongst the Higher Plane, which could potentially be the reason for his demotion)

Since hes Joshuas junior, that means he hasnt been Composer for as long as Joshua has, so Hazuki looks to him to know what youre even supposed to do/how to act/etcetera as Composer. With his Special circumstances, he does not need a Producer as an intermediary to interact with the Higher Plane, because hes already an Angel so he can do it himself.

whatever Angel Hierarchy there may be, Hazuki is at the very least a higher rank than an Executor, considering how kubo wanted to impress him, and how haz effortlessly got rid of him. with kubo being from the Higher Plane, joshua is decidedly lower ranking than kubo, and cant even pick up his vibe. which clearly positions haz into a unique circumstance as a Composer bc of this discrepancy in ranking and power. amen

<><><> <><><> <><><> <><><> <><><> <><><> <><><> <><><> <><><>

theres other things that back this up but i unfortunately do not have a source for them, so This section, take with a grain of salt.

Supposedly, in neo’s data files:

Joshua is referred to as an Advanced Angel

Kubo as a Junior Angel, and

Hazuki as a Senior Angel

i only heard this secondhand and have no way of corroborating this myself, but if this is true then that lines up with the super long super sexy little essay i just wrote up there

this “ranking” solidifes Kubos position as Hazukis underling. which, if he were an ordinary Composer, wouldnt even be possible.

Joshua is notably a different rank from Haz, though its difficult to figure out if “Advanced” is supposed to be Lower than junior, or Higher than senior. thats up to interpretation until its possibly ever acknowledged,

but my interpretation is that an Advanced Angel is lower than a Junior Angel. i think “advanced” in this case is meant to refer to the traditional evolution of players to reapers to the composer, advancing from one status to the next.

**Little post-edit, @/inkerii gave me the actual designation in the files! (so this ones backed-up!)

so in the files, theyre designated ranks are as follows

Joshua: 男、天使上級 ※前作 (Male, Senior/Advanced Grade Angel ※from the Previous work)

Hazuki: 男、天使上級 (Male, Senior/Advanced Grade Angel)

Kubo: 男、天使下級 (Male, Junior/Lower Grade Angel)

so haz and joshua are the same rank bc theyre both Composers! since thats an internal data text kinda thing it might not have any bearing on like, potential Technical exceptions since they Are both the same “job”, but mightve gotten it under different circumstances.

as for kubo potentially being lower ranking than even a Composer, i think unless we find out what a Producers ranking is, we cant say much abt whether an Executors lower or higher. i kinda mean it in the sense of, Producers are a Composers subordinate bc they follow their orders and have to create the things theyre tasked to make by the Composer (pins, etc), but may still be “higher” in ranking because they reside in the Higher Plane/jump between parallel worlds, while a Composer cannot. an Executor may be in a similar position where theyre a Composers underling, tasked by Composers to purify things, but may actually be “higher” in ranking because they reside in the higher plane, etc!

i think regardless of whether kubo turns out to be lower ranking than joshua or not, hazuki could still be Even More Higher in a way where he actually has like, sway over whether he could get a promotion! if that was his intent. he could also just be a huge suck up. a real kiss ass. teachers pet for angels

---

theres also the ntwewy Official Guidebook, which has a small comment beneath hazuki that says

and i additionally remember an interview, though i dont have a source for this claim and i could very much be misremembering, but i recall seeing the reason for hazuki not being the final boss is because they did not think players could suspend their disbelief far enough to accept that the twisters would be able to defeat a being from the Higher Plane.

which is perfectly reasonable, but

Composers are meant to be able to be defeated by Players or Reapers. if hazuki really was so powerful that itd be impossible for them to defeat him, then hed be far too strong to be an ordinary Composer, since thats. how you take over in the first place. thats kinda the whole plot of og twewy.

anyway that concludes my case

#neo twewy spoilers #neo twewy #ntwewy #the world ends with you #twewy meta #hazuki mikagi #twewy composer #vampymori.txt #(uses my gay little brain to figure out a way the neo reports dont retcon lore) BEHOLD....#i like this bc its funny as hell to think haz like. did something to be DEMOTED?#SORRY THAT CONCEPTS HILARIOUS TO ME #i didnt talk abt it much but the fact that hes called Infamously Unsympathetic #and in JP it additionally implies that the Higher Plane thinks this way of him as well #that means. they hated his ass so much they were like GET OUT #oh another thing. i didnt know where to add it #but in neos social network joshua is referred to as 'a being from a Higher Plane'#its notable that it says 'a' not 'the' Higher Plane (capitalized) bc the og reports do say the UG is on a higher plane than the RG #so like. its true. just a weird way to say hes from the UG #im p sure joshuas never BEEN to The actual Higher Plane #he wouldnt even be able to SEE anyone there. much less elevate his vibe that high #anyway. godspeed thanks for reading #hazuki demotion theory #is what im basically calling this LOL

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mcklunkers · 3 years

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I think this is the 9th round of Star Wars Shitposty Headcanons, so here yall go!

-The Clones have swimming lessons as a standard part of their training, and when on worlds with safe waters would often teach their General’s Padawan’s to make sure they knew how to swim, or at least kept up with the skills Master Fisto taught them when they were small.

-Zeb would take the younger ghost crew members fishing outside Chopper Base when they needed to calm down.

-Eli Vanto says “fight me” at every minor inconvenience. Thrawn has had to fight loads of people because of this.

-70% of Anxiety experienced by Thrawn is because of Eli “you’ve yeed your last haw” Vanto’s need to fight everything. The Grand Admiral doesn’t fear much, but the small one scares a him.

-This is doubled when Ezra and Eli team up for short angry human boy shenanigans.

-Jedi play strip Sabaac when drunk. No one knows what Obi-Wan looks like beneath his robes. Everyone is uncomfortably aware of what Yoda looks like.

-Poe Dameron can’t do a proper handstand, Finn and Rey can and refuse to stop rubbing that fact in.

-Zeb and Gregor had loads of BBQs because after the Big Bongo incident they were good friends.

-Dex’s diner was one of the few restaurants on Coruscant that actually allowed Clones to eat there, so it became a frequent spot for off duty soldiers to go get burgers with batchmates in other battalions.

-Kallus wears fluffy socks in his boots because no one can see them and they’re warm and comfy. After he leaves the Empire and they repurpose his quarters, Thrawn steals them all. Eli has had socks for life day about 3 years in a row now. Zeb replaced the socks after Kallus started to steal everyone’s socks.

-Maul sits like a whore cos it’s one of the few positions that is comfortable with robot legs. It also makes him feel a bit more normal because he always sat like that when he had normal legs.

-Anakin and Ahsoka once told Obi-Wan that the easiest way to beat Grievous would be to spray him with salt water and watch him rust. He will never tell them that he tried it and it was successful. Ventress was howling with laughter in the background to the point that she was almost captured by Cody.

-Cody boxes. When he’s stressed, his go to is to just beat the shit out of a punching bag. Clone MMA is a pretty common activity on base, but literally no one is willing to fight Commander “I punch droids on a regular basis” Cody except for Obi-Wan. And even the Jedi only agreed once. The only person who has willingly fought Cody more than once is Anakin and even that was a tie. Alpha-17 wouldn’t even try it with Cody on a bad day.

-The Wolfpack are jealous that the 212th get to punch droids so they try it. But Plo catches them and scolds them for a solid hour about reckless behavior that could injure them being inappropriate for the battlefield. They did not try it again.

-Ahsoka makes the best sandwiches in the GAR by claiming that she made her own lunch. Anakin actually used to make them so she’d never be hungry on a mission after finding out Togruta’s need meat and panicking that he wasn’t caring for her properly. She is yet to be called out on it.

-Cal Kestis met Zeb once and the Lasat gave him a hug and said he was sorry for what happened to his master. As a part of the honor guard, Zeb had known Jaro Tapal, and Kanan had told him of his padawan friend who became his apprentice. The hug meant more to both of them than they could ever admit.

Thats all I’ve got! I have a couple of other things that i might do that are pure self indulgence - like characters as specific band songs (think ABBA, Bon Jovi type variety) and what teams they would support in a bunch of sports. Favourite shows and stuff like that. Idk tho? If you have any ideas they’re always welcome lmao. Have a good day lads!

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worldviewcast · 3 years

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The Origin of Worldview

So this is going to be a semi-personal, but also a semi-explanation post about alot of the background info regarding Worldview. Yes it’ll be a long somewhat boring wall of text for many of you, but to ME it’s words I feel need to be said and it would mean the absolute world to me if people would take the time to hear me out. Even if its only gonna be the five of you that continue on after this. Anyway...

Worldview technically started forming in my mind when I was probably about fifteen. (For reference, at the time of writing this, I’m about half a year to thirty-one) I was really into doing comics, I had done probably a hundred pages of a really dumb fantasy comic I came up with when I was TWELVE, a Sonic fancomic, and every morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I would upload my micron inked and colored pencil story about some DnD characters into the school scanner to post on Drunkduck which is probably all still there today. Adventure’s Guild is missed in my heart, for sure. But in between looking for my first job, the constant writing and doodling I was doing, and my schoolwork I was tossing another idea around in my head. A really DUMB idea, cuz ya know I was FIFTEEN. And I wanted to call it ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’. At the time I was influence by all the dumb anime I was watching and my best friend at the time who always wore black and stood about two feet over me. I don’t know if he’ll ever read this, but trust me if he knew I was talking about this he would recognize this story right away. Well. My first job came around, along with my post secondary college work, and then a tech school I paid for, and.....life really started to get in the way of development. I was more focused on drawing Adventures Guild and other doodles for a long time, and soon enough taking care of my daughter took precedence over everything, and then I started sewing, and doing conventions....and the idea of ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’ was just stuck in the back of my head. Sitting. Waiting. Forming slowly as it waited for its existence - its time in the sun. And at some point I decided I wanted Android/Robotic like characters too...some of my FAVORITE series are Kikaider : The Animation and Chobits (the books, not the infants show they try to pass a a fully written anime) - things like that. So I KNEW long before Worldview had a proper name I would be writing robot characters with a twist. But I couldn’t figure out what that twist was, what would make it work. The whole idea was still....building. It needed a push. Right around the time My Hero Academia came around everyone with a creative mind seemed to be suddenly struck with a similar idea - what if unique powers WEREN’T so unique in a world? This is fairly common now, but at the start of MHA I remember finding it weird that suddenly every half the new shows out had a whole population of super powered badasses in a world where living daily life with it was more the norm than the exception. And I remember finding it REALLY weird this all came out the same time I evolving a similar idea for my own thing.... I wish I could prove I was evolving this ideas before I saw em but I can’t. I have a much deeper theory about the evolution of cultural art and how influences drive creative minds to similar conclusions but that’s a LONG mental dive for another day. ANYHOW.

So my original idea in ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’ was the Ninja would be the weird super power in the normal world. NOW I wanted the NINJA to be the ‘normal’ one...and the younger sister would be the WEIRD one because she DIDN’T have some sort of power or ability. I fell in love with this new dynamic and now things were REALLY starting to come together in my mind, what kind of powers were people gonna have, just HOW mundane was it gonna be, how many fantasy elements did I want to have? Because I already KNEW another element I really wanted to include was modern day Paladins - and YES I WILL be covering modern-day style Paladins in Worldview proper, but this meant the universe needed a Deity system, a hierarchy or pantheon. And the world just started to grow....but something was still MISSING, the binding, the elements of what all I wanted to do - Aaaaaaaaaand then came UNDERTALE. And yes this ENTIRE long post is just me mini ranting about how WV came to be so people can TRULY understand just HOW much is inside MY universe so we can stop tagging it as part of the UT Multiverse please and thank you - it’s not that I don’t UNDERSTAND the confusion, but here is your ultimate ‘for the record’ post regarding mine and @little-noko ‘s personal frustrations. Undertale was obviously a HUGE part of pop culture, personal experiences, my life, MANY of my readers lives, I GET why the emotional connection is there and why its the first thing that comes to mind - but the ONLY part I truly was fascinated by with Undertale was the way the Souls were. PHYSICAL Souls - an actual magical entity that represented a person - THIS idea. This was my missing piece. To say artists get inspiration from other artists is beyond an understatement - even Sans and Papyrus are references to Helvetica, right? If not references, inspired by, or ‘great minds think alike’, whatever your argument there....its not uncommon. And Souls being PHYSICAL was the element I wanted to play with - the idea I wanted to expand on, and so much more I want to go into detail about but don’t want to go into spoilers yet so I’m not going to - and the absolute CRUX of my frustrations when dealing with ‘WV is just UT with different characters’. Worldview has.....humans. Only humans, divided into four race. Mechanoid. Masic. Skeleton. Metazoan. (The last one exclusively because I wanted an excuse to draw cute cat girls, so sue me) A pantheon of Gods. It’s own world map. Special BIOLOGY that I have developed to work specifically with the races I have built. Ability trees (diagram to come, don’t worry, we’re just still working out the kinks). It’s own countries, nationalities, and even it’s own tangible form of afterlife which I blame watching WAY too much Supernatural on but HEY Reapers are freaking COOL man. It’s absolutely gut wrenching painful to have people argue with me over a world that I have nurtured and slowly tended to for a good fifteen years...now that it finally, FINALLY gets a chance to exist and be worked on....I feel like the one binding element I finally found and played with and tried to expand on is the ONLY element that people care about. As if absolutely EVERY other element that I want to show just - doesn’t EXIST. We started with Finch because its a good transition from the old projects to the new and it’s the earliest event in the timeline - nothing more than that. But I’m almost starting to feel like that was a mistake because it’s TOO familiar. There’s no going back now, and thats fine. But it does make me anxious to move on to the next ‘chapter’ we’ll be delving into. MAN. I hope that helps clarify a few things. I love answering questions (those that I can) about WV...so my ask box is always open. For those that made it, thanks for listening. :)

#alainatalks #worldview #worldview origins #long post #semi-rant #mostly annoyances I just wanted to get off my chest but I didn't want to be mean about it #its just REALLY frustrating on my end #XD #thank you #!!

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an-army-of-nightmares · 3 years

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Porcelain Jekyll au

This is gonna be long so heres a tldr

TLDR: Jekyll gets taken to a sort of real nightmare party full of dolls, if he misbehaves they'll kill him and if he's a perfect gentleman he'll turn into a doll. There's a branch where he's rescued and two where he turns into a doll

•The au starts with Jekyll going to sleep, timeline honestly doesn't matter as long as Frankenstein, Jasper, and Jekyll are all around. Could start where tgs currently is? But Jasper doesn't accidentally wake Jekyll up in his panic

•"The Party of Dolls" is basically a supernatural nightmare? I haven't found a better explanation but basically it's a nightmare that's real and happening, while still "just" being a nightmare. It takes you to like a different dimension while you sleep basically? (The party of dolls isn't the only one but that's not relevant)

•The dolls invite specific people, they invite people who want to be perfect. People who dont want anyone to hate them or find a flaw. Jekyll fits this perfectly

•Jekyll is taken to the party. He tries to be polite despite being unnerved. There's another human at the party, he doesn't learn the man's name before the man gets ripped apart by the dolls for shouting

The dolls target specific people, but they can still take "fodder", people they know will immediately break the rules. So that their actual guests can learn what happens if they are impolite. The dolls also surround guest on all sides, and have them in the exact middle, so that the guest cannot just run out

•Jekyll is terrified, now knowing he'll die if he does something wrong, he tries his best to be perfect

•Unknown to Jekyll, if he's "perfect" he'll start turning into a doll. Ultimately it's a die or die situation

•Jekyll does start to notice the porcelain creeping up him, its be hard not to. He is very much (silently) panicking. But,, the more porcelain on him the more calm he becomes, the more he acts as if this is a simple party and nothing is wrong

•Eventually he reaches a point where he'd actively resist being taken away from the party, but still not fully covered by porcelain

A quick note, Hyde can't do anything about the situation. He wasn't invited and the dolls are suppressing him so much he can hardly even tell what's happening, or leave the mindscape. He's absolutely terrified about this because he can Feel something is wrong and everything is just becoming more and more suffocating

Now onto the branches! There are 2 and a half branches for this au!

Branch 1: Jekyll gets rescued

(Assuming this takes place at Chapter 11 Page 8)

•Jekyll is asleep on the couch, Jasper rushes in the room like his panic on the page except this time Jekyll does not wake up at Jasper's sudden entry. Jasper, noticing Jekyll is asleep, silently contemplates on if this problem is really worth waking Jekyll. Because on the one hand he's probably overreacting in his mind, but on the other Jekyll is really the only person he can panic to?

•He decides not to wake Jekyll, and wait until it's properly morning or noon?, now that the panic is a bit subdued he probably still has stuff to ask Jekyll

•He goes up to find Jekyll is still asleep, and Zosi frantically pawing at Jekyll's chest, occasionally nibbling him, and seemingly really wants to wake Jekyll up. Jasper tries to wake him up but it seems no matter how hard he tries Jekyll stays asleep

•Seeing how Lanyon probably isn't in the Society at the moment (and besides Jasper is pretty sure Robert dislikes him) and he's currently avoiding Rachel. Jasper cant ask Jekyll's friends if this is normal behavior. Why doesn't he ask the lodgers? Maybe a combination of they all seem busy and still being a bit intimidated by them? So he goes to his last best bet, Frankenstein. She's, kinda a doctor and has traveled quite a bit, so she may know whats up with Jekyll and why Zosi is panicking

Note: This whole decision happens in like a few seconds while Jasper is panicking

•Frankenstein does not ease Jasper's worries

•Ah, I guess there has to be some sort of tell, something that makes it clear someone is in one of these "supernatural nightmares" and that Jekyll is specifically in the party of dolls. Idk yet what that tell would be. But Frankenstein knows and thats all that matters

•They take Jekyll back to the attic, lock the entry, and make preparations for a rescue mission

•Frankenstein will be going in to try and distract the dolls while Jasper will be looking for Jekyll. Creature is there as plan B in case the dolls get hostile towards them (as Creature is fully capable of lifting them all up and running out of there. And the dolls are very likely to get hostile towards them)

•They get in, how? I have no clue. But they do. Probably a potion?

•Jasper quickly finds Jekyll and tries to convince him to leave. Much to Jasper's concern, Jekyll doesn't want to leave, and keeps brushing the danger off

Frankenstein and Jasper dont know much about the nightmare. Its likely all they know is that its filled with dolls and people who are "invited" are never seen again/found dead

•Frankenstein's distraction consists of pointing out flaws in how the dolls act. The dolls keep finding excuses, but eventually become agitated with her

•Japser notices the porcelain on Jekyll and loudly panics, attracting the already agitated dolls attention

•Creature picks them all up and runs towards the doors. Jekyll is greatly struggling against this rescue attempt, but once they get out of the building and onto the stretch of yard before the exit Jekyll calms down significantly

Jekyll did not actually calm down, but rather Hyde managed to weasel control after they left the building. Hyde absolutely does not want to be at this party, and Jekyll's struggling could've jeopardized the rescue

•They get back! Whatever porcelain was on Jekyll falls off him with ease. He's angry for maybe half a day or more. But when the doll's control completely leaves him, he's nothing but relieved

Sidenote: It seems reasonable that this whole experience would leave Jekyll with a fear of going to sleep. Perhaps give him something that can deter these types of nightmares? A desire for the comfort of another person, at least in the room, while he's asleep?

Branch 2: Jekyll fully turns into a doll

•Well either Jekyll went to sleep at his own home or some place where no one would think to look for him, as if he was right in the society they'd certainly take notice that something is wrong

•Jekyll fully turns to porcelain. Once he's a full doll they give him new clothes (the sand/beige colored suit I tend to draw porcelain Jekyll in)

Previously, Jekyll had been wearing the suit he wears at any formal party, like the ball in An Army Of Nightmares

•Porcelain Jekyll gets back to the real world. This is not entirely out of the ordinary for the dolls to do. If a guest was reasonably young or famous they'll be returned once a doll, to make themselves more known or respectable before they "die" and go back to the party full time

•Zosi notices something is Wrong while Jekyll is asleep and tries to wake him up to no avail, Zosi can't bark for attention and he's scared of leaving Jekyll alone, the few times he does go out to find someone he's largely ignored or avoided, or they misinterpret what the zombie pup wants. When Jekyll does wake up, Zosi immediately notices that it's not Jekyll, at least not anymore. Zosi knows he's supposed to get rid of any evil creatures, but this was once Jekyll. So the pup runs away and avoids him instead

•ooo I dont want to describe this whole branch? This has already taken way longer for me to write then I want XD, just check out this reblog chain about it bsksndks

•

Branch 2 ½: Jekyll dies

•Jekyll fully turns into a doll, however instead of entering the real world his real body simply dies. He's found rotting in bed. "Jekyll" however, is still in the party. (Fun fact, this was the original plan for the au)

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Extra notes:

▪All the dolls in the party were once people, except for maybe one or two? A handful? But it has long since been lost who's who. And it never mattered

▪Lanyon would not have ever been invited to the party. He doesn't seem to want to be a gentleman, and he knows too much about etiquette to be fodder either

▪Jasper is a proper candidate to be invited, and in branch 2 "Jekyll" is giving him alot more lessons on how to be a proper gentleman, planning to invite Jasper to the party at some point

▪The party always has a host that they cycle though, the host talks to guests a bit more than everyone else

▪Porcelain Jekyll gets to keep his new clothes when returning to the real world

#porcelain Jekyll au #the glass scientists

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amazingphanisnotonfire-imagines · 3 years

Text

Sweet Pea//my only sunshine

Request: Hello good morning, afternoon or night depending on the place you are from❤ I love your work👅 Could you do a headcanon of Sweet Pea dating a sweet, shy and pure girl?? Please??? Love you❤

hey!! i hope you like this!! and i hope you’re all having a lovely day/night! also, sorry if you’re name is sandy...this one isn’t for you. she was the only sweet/shy/pure girl i could think of.

- As soon as he meets you

- He doesn’t like you

- Its the first day at Riverdale Hell High

- He’s surrounded by Northsiders

- And one look at you

- He knows you’re the definition of n o r t h s i d e r

- You’re more like Betty Cooper, than Betty Cooper

- You’re too kind and sweet to be considered anything other than:

- 1: a psycho

- Or

- 2: a serial killer

- All kind smiles

- And bright eyes that make whoever looks into them feel safe

- Right now

- You look more like you’re welcoming literal angels into heaven

- Than gang members into a school

- After Veronica’s speech

- During which you would chime in with enthusiastic ‘yeahs!’

- And Sweet Pea knows you’re going to be eaten alive

- You might be able to get away with being sweet, shy and pure around northsiders

- But if you’re like that when southsiders are around

- You won’t last five minutes

- It doesn’t matter whose territory you’re on

- When everyone is sent away after the almost fight

- You manage to catch him before he gets to class

- He doesn’t really know where he’s going

- But he doesn’t care

- This whole thing is bullshit anyway

- He wants to punch something

- And he wants to see Fangs and Toni

- Both of which seem to have gotten separated from him

- So now he’s alone

- To everyone else he looks absolutely terrifying

- But there’s something about him that catches your eye

- He looks...not scared, maybe nervous

- So you scramble to find an excuse to talk to him

- You know the serpents aren’t going to want to talk to anybody unless there’s a reason

- So you grab the first leaflet you see and jog after him

- You catch his jacket and you swear you’ve never seen anybody turn around quicker

- One arm already raised and in a fist

- The other pining you to a locker

- He quickly lets go of you and drops his fist when he see’s who he’s about to punch

- But the scowl on his face doesn’t go away

- Even more so, when he glares at all of the people that have surrounded the two of you

- Its a mix of northsiders and southsiders

- But for the first time ever, you think the northsiders have the upper ground

- So you send them a look and they leave you two alone

- Something Sweet Pea is secretly relieved about

- This place may suck

- But he doesn’t want to be kicked out on his first day

- Mainly because Toni and Fangs would still be here

- You’re only a little bit terrified

- (You’re actually a lot terrified but thats not the point)

- ‘what.’ He huffs, looking at the floor

- ‘oh.’ You clear your throat and smooth your outfit out. ‘i thought this would be something you’re interested in.’

- You smile brightly at him while handing him the leaflet

- And your fingers brush past each other

- Its only for a few seconds

- But it starts something that lasts a lifetime

- Both of you just don’t know that...yet

- Anyway

- He looks between it and you

- Before his scowl worsens

- ‘is this a joke?’

- ‘huh?’

- ‘you gave me a leaflet for cheerleading’

- ‘what?’ Your eyes widen as you look down at the paper. ‘oh. sorry. that was the wrong thing. but, you could try out for it if you want.’

- ‘do you want to be shoved in a locker instead of against one this time?’ He replies and backs you even more into the cold metal

- ‘do we go to school in the 90′s? because that insult sure sounded like it.’

- You can’t believe you actually said that

- Never in your life have you ever said anything like that

- You’ve had no need to

- Everybody is always really nice to you

- But your lips moved before you even had a chance to realize what was happening

- And now you’re definitely going to get punched

- But he doesn’t

- In fact, you’re sure you see the corners of his lips turn up into a smile

- But he suppresses it before it gets any further

- Instead muttering a ‘leave me alone sandy’

- ‘my name isn’t sandy.’

- ‘whatever!’

- The next time you see each other

- Is when you’re talking to Jughead and Betty

- Its been a week since the serpents started

- And they’ve been avoiding everybody as much as possible

- But today they decide to brave the school cafeteria

- So once they spot Jones, they all gather around his table

- You pull your attention away from the conversation you’re having with Betty and soon as you see a shadow looming over the three of you

- As soon as you look up

- A bright smile appears on your face as you start to greet as many people as you can

- Even offering your seat to some of them

- They all send you confused/annoyed looks

- Everyone but Sweet Pea

- He’s been watching you over the past week

- Not in a weird, creepy way

- More in a curious way

- Because you’re so different from anybody he has ever met

- And you’re just so nice to everyone

- He honestly doesn’t know how you do it

- Because you talk to everyone you see

- And you’re always smiling

- He’s never seen you with anything but a smile on your face

- Apart from when you’re concentrating in class and your tongue sticks out just a little

- Which is very cute

- There’s only a few people that he can bare to be nice to

- But with you, it just comes naturally

- And in a weird way

- He kind of likes that about you

- So he takes you up on your chair offer

- ‘sure sandy, if you’re offering’ He smirks down at you and you send him an unsure smile before standing up

- He’s kind of secretly sad that he didn’t get a proper smile

- But he gets it

- He hasn’t exactly been the nicest

- Or most approachable person in the world.

- ‘my name is y/n’

- ‘okay.’ He shrugs

- He’s actually really happy he knows you’re name now!

- The rest of the seats around the table are taken so you’re left standing awkwardly beside Betty

- But you don’t seem fazed

- Instead you’re trying to coax Fangs into a discussion about your History assignment

- He doesn’t look at all interested

- And the conversation is mainly one-sided

- But you don’t seem to mind

- ‘hey, northsider. if you want a seat, i’ve got one here.’ A serpent named Liam smirks as he looks at you

- The whole table goes silent

- The serpents trying not to laugh

- Betty and Jughead are wide-eyed

- And Sweet Pea is just confused

- Because he barely knows anything about you

- But he kind of wants to punch Liam in the face

- Maybe its because Liam is always that annoying

- Or at least thats what he’s telling himself

- ‘oh, erm. no thank you’ You reply, you’re cheeks bright red

- ‘are you sure?’ He presses

- ‘she said no. leave her alone’ Sweet Pea chimes in and you send him a relieved smile

- ‘i need to go’ You quickly excuse yourself and rush off

- The rest of the table goes back to normal

- But Sweet Pea knows something was wrong

- He may have only been stalking watching you for a week

- But you’ve never ran away from anybody like that before

- So he follows you out

- And frowns when he finds you sat in an empty stairwell

- He sits beside you and you jump a little

- But you smile at him anyway

- Only this time its sad

- And he’s decided he doesn’t like it

- He’d rather see Jones naked than see you smile sadly at anyone, let alone him, ever again

- ‘whats wrong sandy?’

- ‘my name isn’t sandy’ You roll your eyes making him laugh

- ‘liam is a dick. just ignore him’

- ‘i’m sure he’s nice somewhere deep down. he just hasn’t found that part of him yet’

- ‘do you actually believe that?’

- ‘yeah.’ You nod. ‘i think there’s good in everyone. Even you.’ You make sure to look him in the eye when you say the last part making him smile (and blush a little)

- ‘whatever’

- ‘it just upsets me that people think they can say whatever they want to me because they know i won’t say anything that isn’t polite back’

- ‘you weren’t polite to me’

- ‘that was a mistake. i was having a bad day’

- ‘its not a bad thing to stand up for yourself you know. i do it all the time...maybe thats our problem.’

- ‘what is?’

- ‘well, you don’t stand up for yourself enough, i do it too much’

- ‘together we make a functioning human’

- ‘yeahhh.’ He says awkwardly. ‘i don’t think so. there are so many other parts of me that need fixing before i can be a semi-functioning human...let alone fully’

- ‘thats not true’ You nudge him softly

- ‘sure its not’ He laughs. ‘maybe you need to start being a little more mean to people’

- ‘i don’t want to be mean to anyone. i like being kind.’

- ‘what if i’m mean for you’

- ‘thats also too mean’

- ‘what if i’m mean and it just so happens to be to people that aren’t very nice to you?’ He says and you send him a look. ‘okay. i won’t’

- He does.

- After that you two become very odd friends

- Even if he still calls you Sandy

- You’ve been trying to come up with a nickname for him

- And he loves it

- Because you’re too sweet to come up with a mean nickname for him

- So instead you call him Sunshine

- And he hates it

- He hates it so much

- Because every time you say it...he blushes

- Every. Single. Time

- You continue to be sweetness and light

- And he continues to be bitterness and dark

- Although you are kind of having an effect on him

- Because he is a little nicer to some people

- And Toni and Fangs have never seen him smile more than when he’s either with you or talking about you

- He definitely likes you

- He falls for you more and more every single day

- Despite everything going on between the north and southside

- But one day he just can’t help it

- You’re talking to him

- And you’re just so happy

- So he goes for it

- He’s so scared that you’re going to push him away

- But you don’t

- You kiss him back

- And its just as sweet as you are.

- When you start dating its a surprise to everyone

- Obviously

- You are like the most opposite to each other anybody can be

- Some people think he’s been dared to ask you out

- Others think you’ve slowly lost your mind/been brainwashed

- And everyone else is just confused

- At first people make snide comments

- But they’re quickly shut up by Sweet Pea threatening them

- And as people see that you’re actually serious about each other

- And you kind of compliment one another

- They slowly start to accept it

- Plus, Sweet Pea is so much nicer when you’re around

- They start to get used to it

- Some people even think its quite cute

- Plus, it starts a truce between both sides

- Like a successful Romeo and Juliet

- Anywayyyyy

- He l o v e s teasing you

- Its one of his favourite things to do

- Because its so easy to make you blush or stutter

- And so he does it all the time

- You get very sweet good morning texts

- But rather dirty goodnight texts

- Followed by a sweet one

- And he’ll whisper in your ear when you’re talking to your friends

- ‘that dress looks amazing on you babe’ Cue you smiling. ‘but it’ll look so much better on the floor.’ Cue you blushing like mad

- And he definitely sends inappropriate texts at inappropriate times

- But his favourite thing is when you don’t understand what he’s just said

- Because you’re so confused

- And he thinks its so cute

- He also continues to call you Sandy

- Forever

- But you still call him sunshine

- Sooooo

- He also always has your back

- If someone is being rude to you

- He’s threatening them in a heart beat

- ‘what the fuck did you just say to my girl?’

- You’re also rarely apart so if someone is mean to, they’re gonna get their ass kicked

- But on the rare occasion that you aren’t together

- You are all he talks about

- Whether its relevant to what he’s doing or not

- If he’s watching a film with Toni and Fangs

- ‘y/n would like this’ and ‘that character is like y/n! but she’s much cuter obviously’

- Or if they’re just hanging out and talking

- ‘y/n once ate that...she didn’t like it’ or ‘hey did i tell you about the time y/n did that?’

- ‘yes!’

- ‘you’ve told us 1000 times’

- But you’re exactly the same about him

- And thats what so great about you two

- Because you love each other no matter what

- He loves that you’re the nicest person in the world

- Who wouldn’t?

- Because how lucky is he that he gets to spend his life with the sweetest human ever

- And you secretly like the fact that sometimes he’s a bad influence on you

- Because thats part of him

- And you wouldn’t change that for the world

- He could be the most cynical person in the world

- But to you, he’s literal sunshine

✨taglist ✨

@popcrone818

#sweet pea #sweet pea imagine #sweet pea x reader #sweet pea x you #sweet pea x y/n #riverdale #riverdale imagine

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